I will never, ever understand my fellow man.

The BBQ Pit
201

[QUOTE=silenus]
Yet, 39 states have “Shall Issue” CCW laws, and none of them have erupted in shootouts.
[/QUOTE]

Quite frankly, I’ve been amazed at this. CCW has been more benign that I would’ve ever predicted. We have millions of CCW holders in the US, hundreds of thousands of people who carry on a regular basis - and yet when have you heard of anyone abusing the priviledge? And I assure you, you would hear about it - the media would love to jump on a case like that.

And the funny thing is - despite 15 years of CCW permits, and millions of permit holders having, as far as I know, essentially a perfect record, if one of the few states without CCW provisions debates enacting one, gun control advocates still storm in hysterically screaming “IT WILL BE A WARZONE! THERE WILL BE SHOOTOUTS OVER PARKING SPACES!!!”

202

There was a study a few years ago about this, and if I remember it right, less than .03% of CCW holders have had their licenses revoked, and **none ** of them were for gun-related offenses. Mostly they were for things like DUI. In any case, the percentage was miniscule.

203

[QUOTE=An Arky]
Nope. That’s a strawman. One does not have to have a ready-made solution in order to correctly identify the problem(s). I do agree that we’re too lax about who can have guns, what type, and how many. But we are currently politically unable to solve that problem, either. So, blaming it on the access to guns is also reducing it to an “insoluble solution”.
[/QUOTE]

“Insoluable solution”? You didn’t do too well in English class, did you?

At any rate, what you’ve made clear is that you can’t make a distinction between something that is politically difficult and something that is simply not possible at present and not possible in the foreseeable future. You’re basing your answer to social problems on something that is impossible. Not difficult, like amending the Constitutional, but rather impossible, like going faster than light. There is simply no way to fix every single person in the country to ensure they won’t want to kill people. There is simply no way to even identify the ones likely to do it. Science is so far from being able to accomplish either task that we don’t know how to start investigating how we might go about attaining that knowledge.

That’s a gun-control thread for you. It’s one issue that the SDMB can’t discuss without lapsing into fantasy - and I use that word in a very literal sense - and the heights of absurdity. Crafter_Man wants teachers to be armed and three-year-olds to shoot their psychotic mothers (that’s the only possible relevance his reference to Susan Smith could have, isn’t it?) SenorBeef can’t understand that sometimes a statistical phenomenon is the result of multiple causes. And you decide, hey, forget the guns. Let’s wave our magic wands and ensure that there are no more criminals in society ever again!

Perhaps you’re just very, very ignorant of that which you speak of. Let me put it to you this way: science is hundreds of years away from doing what you imagine if indeed it ever becomes possible; even the grossest understanding of what turns people into criminals is lacking. We not only have no way to fix these people, we don’t know who they are, and we don’t even know how to begin trying to find that out. Your answer to this problem in a very literal sense depends on the impossible - or magic, if you prefer it that way. Short of Harry Potter coming to save us all, your solution simply will not work.

204

[QUOTE=Excalibre SenorBeef can’t understand that sometimes a statistical phenomenon is the result of multiple causes.[/QUOTE]

Bullshit. You’re the one that’s been talking in absolutes - that more guns leads to more violence - and I’m the one who’s been saying that it’s more complex than that, that there are other issues.

What the hell is it with you people miscategorizing me?

First, CarnalK makes unsupported assertions about DGU. I link to a peer reviewed scientific study to try to inform him (I’m going to assume “him”, dunno for sure). Instead, he simply ignores that, and continues to assert his gut feeling, what he “knows” is right, and pretends the facts don’t exist.

Then he says I am acting like a creationist, when he did PRECISELY WHAT CREATIONISTS DO, choose intuitive feelings over rationality or science.

Then you make make a blanket assertion about a cause behind a statistical phoenomia. You say that more guns leads to more violence. I counter the assertion, saying that it’s more complex than that, there are other factors. And then what do you do? You claim I am the one who fails to understand that there are several factors at work.

In both cases, you two accused me of doing precisely what you yourselves were doing, when I was actually doing quite the opposite.

205

… So, does anyone have any other constructive solutions on how to stop the exceptionally low-probability whackjob who goes off his nut and picks a school to kill people in? Columbine could have been stopped with social counseling… maybe.

This one’s harder.

206

[QUOTE=E-Sabbath]

Most likely, it’s even odds that said teacher would already have a suitable gun, but the training would have to be dealt with. It’s not much more expensive than any standard training certification. Might be cheaper. There’s systems in place to handle it. As for a biometric gun safe, a box with a lock to put guns in, that is biometric in nature… can’t check, at work. Froogle says $479 for one version.

[/quote]

Do half the teachers have a biometric gun?
If a biometric system costs nearly $500 and you multiply by the number of US teachers … who’s going to pay for that?

[QUOTE=E-Sabbath]

Nope, but having one person in every neighborhood happens to work. I took down a racoon once, and I grew up shooting rats down by the pond. Couldn’t poison them, as they were eating the duck food (and the ducks), and it’d kill the ducks. So I shot 'em till they were all dead. Havn’t seen a rat there for twenty years, now. (Yeah, we tried Havahart and other traps. Didn’t get 'em all)

[/quote]

I appreciate that you dealt with some pests in your neighbourhood.
Have they all gone now? if so, why do you need your gun?
How many gun owners would you need nationwide for this?

[QUOTE=E-Sabbath]

Doesn’t matter, it’s literally impossible, with human abilities, to get rid of all the guns in the US. And we aren’t going to do it. Can we talk reality here?

[/quote]

You asked for solutions and I showed you something that works in my country.

[QUOTE=E-Sabbath]

Hm. Bout one threat every quarter, two real bombs, zero deaths. (One bomb was actually a chem teacher’s fireworks demo. REALLY cool chem teacher)

[/quote]

So this isn’t as big a problem as shootings?

[QUOTE=E-Sabbath]

Cause you can’t eliminate the shootings. You can’t get rid of the one or two nutbars who seem perfectly normal for twenty years and then flip out. All you can do is try to protect people when they do flip out.

[/quote]

As I’ve said, you can eliminate the shootings.

[QUOTE=E-Sabbath]

Could have made the revolver in the UK. It just requires enough tools to machine auto parts. And much less precision. And if I was a raving loony and british, the obssessive sort, I might well build exactly the gun I wanted, and go out shooting with a Webley duplicate elephant gun. That said, there seem to be shootings and gang incidents in Manchester. So there are guns there…

[/quote]

Well we don’t seem to have raving loonies who build guns.
Yes, there is some drug-related gun crime here. Mainly criminals killing each other.
Far less gun homicides than in the US.
And no school shootings for a decade (and little before that).

‘I think, by and large, this is a problem society can solve to 99% accuracy. And has.’

[QUOTE=E-Sabbath]

It’s that .001 percent that gives you what you had yesterday. And the only way to deal with it is to have someone on the scene.

[/QUOTE]

You mean 1%, right?! :slight_smile:
Since banning guns works, it’s clearly not the only way to deal with it.

207

[QUOTE=Airman Doors, USAF]
glee, if you won’t even acknowledge the possibility that something like Dunblane could happen again in the UK we really don’t have anything else to discuss. I’m not interested in talking past each other anymore.
[/QUOTE]

Dunblane was 10 years ago. It shocked the UK, since there were so few school shootings here.
We passed a law to prevent repetition (which did penalise law-abiding gun club members).
Since then there have been no UK school shootings.
In the same 10 year period, sadly there have been many US school shootings.

if you don’t see anything significant in the above facts, then I agree there is no point in debating.

208

[QUOTE=glee]
Since banning guns works, it’s clearly not the only way to deal with it.
[/QUOTE]

There are like 800000000 generic gun control threads on this board that address this issue. It’s simply not cut and dry.

It’s not as if England had 100 million guns, and 5000 gun homicides, then they banned guns, and suddenly there are 100 homicides or something. They had low gun crime before and after the ban. The proper conclusion there isn’t necesarily “see! after the gun ban, gun crime was low, therefore the ban worked!”

…

Dunblane was 10 years ago. It shocked the UK, since there were so few school shootings here.
We passed a law to prevent repetition (which did penalise law-abiding gun club members).
Since then there have been no UK school shootings.
In the same 10 year period, sadly there have been many US school shootings.

if you don’t see anything significant in the above facts, then I agree there is no point in debating.
[/QUOTE]

First, changing governmental policy and enacting legislation based on one freak occurance is just stupid policy. Secondly, it was an isolated, statistically odd incident. It may have never happened again even without the gun ban, or perhaps (much less likely obviously) there’d have been 10 school shootings if not for the ban.

But your logic is faulty across the board. Dunblane was an exceedinly rare, almost random statistical blip. Drawing conclusions about the effectiveness of anything when there is no pattern to be seen is foolish.

209

Sigh, the part after the “…” was meant to be another quote.

210

[QUOTE=SenorBeef]
Bullshit. You’re the one that’s been talking in absolutes - that more guns leads to more violence - and I’m the one who’s been saying that it’s more complex than that, that there are other issues.
[/quote]

No, dear. I said that it made sense to guess that an environment in which there are more guns is liable to have more gun violence than one with less of them. Imagine, for instance, a world with no guns at all. Gun violence would likely be significantly lower, wouldn’t it? I certainly didn’t say you could draw a perfect correlation between the two. catsix and I went back and forth a few times, and I pointed out that other confounding factors exist that influence the rate of gun violence. I pointed that out. I pointed out that gun violence has more than one cause. And you have been trying to argue with me ever since I said that, because you imagine that proving that other things contribute to gun violence as well will somehow prove that guns themselves don’t.

Before you even barged your way into that particular exchange, I was contending that multiple factors are at work. For you to claim otherwise - for you to suggest that I have even come close to saying that the only factor underlying gun violence is the number of guns in the world - is simply a falsehood, and a very blatant one at that. The very fact that I proposed that a confounding factor was in play is absolute proof positive that I have been arguing that there are multiple factors behind gun violence. You are lying when you claim I said anything contrary to that.

Jesus, can’t you people argue this issue without blatantly lying? I know what I said, SenorBeef. Just look at my posts if you doubt it.

What the hell is it with you people and . . . aw, fuck it. u r dum - or rather, I don’t think you are, but you’re doing a damn good impression of it right at the moment.

That is precisely false. Either you are a liar or you are simply unable to debate this issue with any shred of rationality. Reexamine my posts, apologize, and we can talk further.

211

[QUOTE=Crafter_Man]
My wife is 5’ 0" and weighs 110 lbs. I just asked her, “Let’s say you’re pregnant. What if a 6’ 2” male, armed with 3 guns, broke into our house while I wasn’t here? Furthermore, he orders you out of the house, while telling our 3 young children to stay inside. What would you do?" She replied, “I would use whatever means I have to stop him, including biting and kicking. I would do everything possible to stop him. Any other mother would do the same.”
[/QUOTE]

Any other mother, including me, is likely to believe she would do the same. And any other mother, including me, has no idea what she would really do if the situation actually came up. Those adults had the other children to worry about, not to mention their own infants, born and unborn. What would your wife do if the gunman ordered her out of the house, with two of the kids, and threatened to shoot those two if she didn’t go? If she attacked him, with the weapons at her disposal, like teeth and nails, you’d have motherless children, if you had any children at all.

212

[QUOTE=Excalibre]
No, dear. I said that it made sense to guess that an environment in which there are more guns is liable to have more gun violence than one with less of them. Imagine, for instance, a world with no guns at all. Gun violence would likely be significantly lower, wouldn’t it?

[/quote]

It would be logically impossible for a world without guns to have gun violence. However, you cannot draw from that the conclusion that more guns scales directly with more gun violence. It could very well that parity of force establishes a deterrence. A room with a ‘bad guy’ with a gun and 10 unarmed good guys may very well be more conducive to violence than a room in which all 11 were armed.

Guns are certainly contributing factors in gun violence, that’s a logical necesity - since, as you pointed out, you can’t have gun violence without them. But will disarming those inclined to obey the laws, and therefore reducing the total number of guns, reduce crime?

If the mere presence of guns caused violence, then gun shows would be blood baths.

I am not lying. I may misunderstand you, I may even be dumb, but I’m not being intellectually dishonest.

Here’s what you said:

I don’t think it’s dishonest on my part to take from this that you think the mere presence of guns affects gun violence in a correlative manner. More guns, more gun violence. Am I wrong in interpreting your assertion in this manner?

I disagree with this notion. Who has the guns is an important factor. I think that more guns in the hands of people who have no ill intent actually reduces gun violence through deterrence and not giving a monopoly on force to criminals. There’s data to back this position up.

I’m not a “you people”, I’m me. And you have insufficient information to accuse me of lying.

Classy.

Okay, you assert, essentially, that more guns leads to more gun violence, right? And this stems from the idea that if there were no guns, there would be no gun violence. This is an “obvious notion” to you.

I disagree. For example, the prevalence of concealled carry permits has put more guns on the streets - yet has certainly not inspired any sort of additional violence. You could argue, and the data backs this up, that arming non-criminals discourages criminals. And so, in this case, more guns very well may mean less crime.

If I misrepresented your position, then I’m sorry. I am not intending to be dishonest. I believe that your assertion at its core is that more guns leads to more violence, and I don’t believe that to be inherently true, but rather, it depends on other factors.

213

[QUOTE=glee]
Do half the teachers have a biometric gun?
If a biometric system costs nearly $500 and you multiply by the number of US teachers … who’s going to pay for that?

[quote]

Glee, you’re being dishonest. Or amazingly stupid. Biometric modifies the noun ‘safe’, not ‘gun’. A gun safe is a safe built for storing guns. As for the rest of it, you silly person, I was suggesting perhaps one or two per school. It’s not chicken feed, but it is possible to fit it in the budget, generally.

You’re still being a silly and dishonest person here.

You’re being dishonest, stupid, and inaccurate.
It is impossible to ban guns in the USA. Deal with it. Now behave properly, or we simply can’t debate.

214

Sorry, I switched between “crime” and “gun violence” a few times in the post. Take them to mean the same thing.

215

[QUOTE=Crafter_Man]
CarnalK:

You still haven’t answered my questions:

  1. Do you have a smoke alarm in your house? If so, why?

  2. Do you wear a seatbelt when you’re in a moving vehicle? If so, why?
    [/QUOTE]

My landlord is required by law to install fire alarms. I’m required by law to wear my seatbelt. And yes, I feel a little safer with them in place. What wild way are you going to spin my answer to be pro-gun?

Yeah, your redefinition of “accidental” firearm deaths and your useless estimate sure are convincing.

Just admit that your only justification for owning a gun is that it makes you feel more safe, despite the statistical evidence. It’s fucking pathetic you trying to logic your way out of it.

And oh yes, I’m very impressed with your oh so scientific vanity press link , SenorBeef. Whatever you do, don’t link to the actual work done at the DoJ so we can gain our own “impression” that your opinion piece gives.

216

[QUOTE=CarnalK]

Yeah, your redefinition of “accidental” firearm deaths and your useless estimate sure are convincing.

[/quote]

I’m just saying - people don’t just die totally at random because of the presence of guns - negligent behavior has to happen. It’s similar to drunk driving.

You are way out of line, and anyone reading this can plainly read that. I have been patient and calm and rational with you, and you can’t stop hitting me with insulting presumptions and insults.

You have offered “no statistical evidence” (sorry, was the Wisconsin hospitalization cite supposed to solve the gun debate?). I have said nothing whatsoever about my reasons for owning a gun, or even if I do, and yet here you are, insulting me over things you are clueless about.

You make reference to “actual work done” without an actual cite.

“Opinion piece”? You are being willfully ignorant here. It was published by a professor of criminology in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (Northwestern). I’ve heard that it’s peer-reviewed, but I don’t personally know how to go about finding that out. It is a heavily cited paper that’s obviously far, far from an “opinion” piece.

I have offered rational arguments with evidence to back them up. You reject the journal paper as “opinion piece” (sounds kind of like “Evolution is only a theory”, doesn’t it?), and instead of offering up counter-evidence, or even a rational counter argument, since you just know what is right, you’re getting emotional and attacking me when I have done no such thing to you.

You are acting just like a creationist. Seriously.

217

[QUOTE=SenorBeef]
I’m just saying - people don’t just die totally at random because of the presence of guns - negligent behavior has to happen. It’s similar to drunk driving.
[/quote]

Only if they are drunk when they shoot someone, ffs. Besides, cars have some real obvious benefits that can be honestly weighed against the negative. Gun advocates clearly need to rely on all these unmeasured good things that happen. TRUST US! GUNS STOP BAD SHIT! Gun Owners told us so!

?
So now you are redefining “no statistical evidence” because it didn’t solve the debate? You aren’t doing a single thing to change my mind about the creationist comparison.

Do you swallow everything Chomsky says? He’s got an awful lot of footnotes.

Not really, you have one argument that adds weight to your side but doesn’t negate that the hard and accepted statistics show there are more accidental gun injuries and assaults than actually crime stopping injuries. People actually being arrested and put in the hospital, not just some guy telling a pollster about this crime he stopped. Ignoring the solid facts in favour of more nebulous claims puts you firmly in the “like a creationist” section compared to me.
An annoying thing about your link: none of the tables referenced in the article are shown but I’ll back off on the opinion piece angle, the authors seem respectable enough on second glance. However, the article itself notes that the DoJ is of the opinion that other surveys cited are nine times their own estimates.

BTW, a bunch of the stuff you’re replying to was directed at Crafter_Man, particularly the “justifying” comment.

218

I don’t really have a big dog in this fight but thought someone might find this interesting from wiki:
Historically Australia has had relatively low levels of violent crime. Overall levels of homicide and suicide have remained relatively static for several decades, while the proportion of these crimes that involved firearms has consistently declined since the early 1980s. For example, between 1991 and 2001, the number of firearm related deaths in Australia has declined 47% [3]. The Sporting Shooters Association of Australia argues that there is no evidence that major advances in gun control in 1987, 1996 and 2002 had any impact on this already established trend[4][5]. A similar interpretation of the statistics has been made by the head of the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Don Weatherburn[6], who also notes that the level of legal gun ownership in New South Wales has increased in recent years.

In the year 2002/2003, over 85% of firearms used to commit murder were unregistered.[7] In 1997-1999, more than 80% of the handguns confiscated were never legally purchased or registered in Australia[8]. Knives are used up to 3 times as often as firearms in robberies[9]. The majority of firearm related deaths are committed with hunting rifles[3].

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics [2], in 1985-2000, 78% of firearm deaths in Australia were suicides, yet only 5% of suicides involved firearms. The suicide rate has only fluctuated, not statistically changed, from 1993-2003.

The number of unregistered or uncontrolled firearms continues to increase, with an average of over 4,000 firearms stolen per year, primarily from residences (although one gun-dealer had approximately 600 firearms stolen sometime between 1999 and 2000)[10]. Concern has been raised about the number of smuggled pistols reaching Australia, particularly in New South Wales.

From the article gun politics in Australia.

219

[QUOTE=CarnalK]
Only if they are drunk when they shoot someone, ffs.

[/quote]

In order to unintentionally kill someone with a gun, you have to be negligent in some manner. When you drive drunk, you’re being negligent. In either case, it’s not the gun/car that’s the cause of the problems, although if you removed either from the situation then the situation wouldn’t occur.

You’ve just made up your mind that there can be no benefits to gun possession. How do I argue against that if you’re unwilling to give critical analysis?

The creationist comparison is stupid. None of the arguments I’ve made have been based on faith, nor based on my gut feeling. I wasn’t a gun rights activist most of my life - it was only after a period in my life where I completely desconstructed my biases and tried to rebuild my world view using rational, complete thought that I came to be clearly pro gun rights.

Your bias is that guns are evil, and can do no good. You’re twisting everything to fit that bias. To recall a quote from another message board… “You can’t reason anyone out of anything they weren’t reasoned into”

You had a cite about a year of reasons for hospitalization records in one state. My cite was a through and dedicated study specifically to this subject, taking in much more data and many more factors.

Is what he writes considered academic journal material with a peer review process?

Your cite in no way painted a complete picture of “the solid facts” - I mean, seriously, for a subject so hard to properly quantify and analyze, we’re going to go off of one minor tiny data set? And that’s supposed to be conclusive proof?

I’m not “ignoring solid facts”, I’m just putting it in perspective. A comprehensive academic study with huge amounts of data specifically about the subject is going to be more conclusive than what we can garner off a few hundred hospitalization cases.

Sorry, this is a more proper link. I think it includes the tables and such - I haven’t read the whole thing, so I’m not sure if anything is missing.

http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/KleckAndGertz1.htm

It also notes that there are huge flaws in the data that the DOJ is extrapolating from, and that every other major study done in the area also disagrees substantially with the DOJ estimates.

You’re right, sorry. I hit reply to that post because there was a comment about me at the end, then came back to it a few minutes later and forgot that you weren’t quoting me. My bad.

220

I want to reiterate - this has become pretty much a generic gun control thread, of the sort where we’ve had detailed arguments over the various issues on the board many many times. I suggest doing a search, in GD, for “gun” in the title, so we don’t have to rehash everything that’s been pretty well covered. Happy reading.