I'll give it a shot in here...2nd amendments rights

Great Debates
141

I never said they were useless (if they make people feel safer, they arent useless). begbert2 implied it.

See cheesesteak and **LAZombie **made the mistake of cherrypicking a few areas with lower crime and tough gun laws vs others with high crime rates and loose gun laws. I then pointed out other areas that didnt fit that model, thus “So there appears to be zero correlation between restrictive gun laws and violent crime rates.” begbert2 then made the classic excuse that guns can come in from other areas- which of course just means state & local gun control laws are useless. It proves exactly the opposite of what he wanted to show.

And here is what your cite sez: MAY INCREASE VIOLENT CRIME
Concealed-Carry Laws
Stand-Your-Ground Laws
*Effects of Concealed-Carry Laws on Violent Crime
March 2, 2018

Summary: Evidence that shall-issue concealed-carry laws may increase violent crime is limited. Evidence for the effect of shall-issue laws on total homicides, firearm homicides, robberies, assaults, and rapes is inconclusive.*
*Effects of Stand-Your-Ground Laws on Violent Crime
March 2, 2018

Summary: Evidence that stand-your-ground laws may increase homicide rates is moderate, and evidence that such laws may increase firearm homicides is limited. Evidence for the effect of stand-your ground laws on other types of violent crime is inconclusive.*

and then:
INCONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE
Bans on the Sale of Assault Weapons and High-Capacity Magazines
Child-Access Prevention Laws
Licensing and Permitting Requirements
Minimum Age Requirements
Surrender of Firearms by Prohibited Possessors
Waiting Periods

So, according to your cite (and I have respect for RAND) there is INCONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE that* any gun control laws actually effect violent crime.* I said "No significant effect", But- OK, I will buy “INCONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE” instead if you must.

Now, I am not a fan of how some stand your ground SYG laws are written (altho* in theory*, I like the idea)so I can see RANDs point that (imho badly written) “SYG” laws may backfire.

That’s actually a damn good cite. Thanks- I may use it.

142

It isn’t a “classic excuse” when restrictive state & local laws can be thwarted with impunity by driving an hour, it’s simply reality.

It is also reality that competent countries with national firearm regulations appear to effectively control the murder rate, resulting in a rate of murder topping out at about 1/3rd of ours, with many countries far less than that. I believe we should aspire to have America be a safe and peaceful place to live, rather than be satisfied because our murder rate is slightly better than Ecuador’s.

By the way, before you get a cramp patting yourself on the back, let’s review:

143

Do you mean liberal as in what the progressive Left is in favor of; or liberal in the sense of permissive, against restriction? Because where guns are concerned the two definitions are in conflict.

144

Do any of those low-murder rate countries have an entrenched underclass comparable to the USA’s African-Americans? Because if not you’re congratulating gun control for an effect that’s the result of having an ethnically and socially homogeneous population. It’s an uncomfortable but undeniable fact that if you could count only non-African Americans, America’s violence ranking in the world would drop precipitously. If America has violence statistics more in line with a third-world country, it’s because we have social conditions more in line with a third-world country. Some of which like Mexico have stringent gun control laws that accomplish bupkis.

Gun advocates resent guns being made the scapegoat for America’s failed social policies.

145

I agree with this point however we have had this underclass throughout our history and never had these mass shootings. Of course, we also had pretty much unregulated gun ownership throughout our history and never had these mass shooting.

You are correct in that the 1920s you could order fully automatic rifles out of the Sears catalog and that gun ownership laws were pretty non-existent up until the Brady Law was passed. I mean, they were there in practice, but all you had to do was lie on the form and you could buy a gun.

Your point is well taken. These arms and more have been available since they were invented yet only recently have we seen these mass shootings. It must not be the guns that are the cause of them. Perhaps if we solve the underlying problem we help the people and stop the killings.

146

What a bizarre argument. 43% of violent crimes in 2018 were commited by African-Americans, 46% by white people. So doesn’t the same argument work if you say if you ignore all violent crime by white people?

https://crime-data-explorer.fr.cloud.gov/explorer/national/united-states/crime

147

But the thing is, children are now in LESS danger nfrom traffic accidents, suffocation and poisoning than they used to be because efforts have been made to mitigate those dangers.

Accidents involving cars have long been the #1 misadventure cause of death for kids (and adults) but that didn’t stop people from also taking steps to reduce accidental poisonings.

But this just isn’t true.

The argument for gun control is not “trust the police.” It’s that more guns is correlated with more deaths and woundings. Guns result in more people dying from homicide and suicide; that is epidemiological fact. (Suicidies are oft-forgotten in these discussions, but they count, too. And yes, they would go down if there were fewer guns.) WHY that happens, and why reducing the number of guns makes those numbers go down, is quite a complicated thing, and making the number of guns go down is itself not simple or easy. But it is just plainly true, and that is the central point of gun control.

148

What % of the total population does that break out to be??? Hmmm

149

Here you go.

13% of the total population accounts for 43% of all violent crime ….

150

My ass I implied it. I refuted your terrible argument that gun regulations don’t work everywhere with facts, and you made an even more terrible argument from there lunging to the conclusion that gun regulations don’t work at all.

Don’t try to push your terrible arguments on me. They’re all yours.

151

:dubious: This is a super-sloppy (not to mention super-sketchy) way of putting it. It is not true that African-Americans in general constitute an “underclass”, as nearly half of African-Americans are socioeconomically middle-class or above, and a much smaller percentage of African-Americans have incomes below the poverty line.

What I think you’re clumsily trying to say is that the USA’s entrenched underclass is disproportionately African-American, not that African-Americans as a group constitute an entrenched underclass.

That likewise seems to be a gross misstatement. An “ethnically and socially homogeneous population” doesn’t necessarily correlate with low violence levels. Consider Lithuania, for example, which has a murder rate comparable to that of the US but is over 83% ethnically Lithuanian, with the largest minority groups Poles and Russians. Ukraine is also very homogeneous, almost entirely white and over 77% Ukrainian, but has a murder rate more than twice that of the US.

Not that precipitously, actually. If you consider murder statistics, for example, the US has about 5.3 murders per 100,000 people annually, on par with countries like Niger, Sudan, Zambia, and Cuba. If you disregarded approximately half those murders in an attempt to “count only non-African Americans”, the US murder rate would be about 2.7, on par with countries like Egypt, Libya, Iran, and Azerbaijan.

Most other highly developed countries, on the other hand, have murder rates under 1.5 (e.g., the UK, France, Germany, Sweden) and in many cases under 1 (e.g., Ireland, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia, Norway).

So no, not buying the “it’s all the blacks’ fault” line of argument here. It’s just a red herring to distract attention from the significant impact of gun proliferation.

152

What proliferation? Again, gun violence in the USA has not tracked the number or availability of firearms, as one would expect from a naive epidemiological model of guns as vectors of injury and death. ETA: in fact oddly enough, gun homicides and gun suicides geographically track completely differently! Geographic Evidence that Gun Deaths are Cultural - Handwaving Freakoutery - Medium