Call me soft-hearted, but I say that every life is precious. Since apparently you feel otherwise, how many lives lost would be enough to advise someone to find another hobby?
I too feel every life is precious. Since apparently you feel otherwise, how many lives saved would be enough for you to stop trying to prevent law abiding individuals from defending themselves?
That sort of reasoning doesn’t resonate to me. I’m sorry to take this sentiment to the extreme, but to me…If one life is precious and one death too many, then you will have to ban everything. Even oxygen and water. Everything kills.
On the other, less absurdum, side of the fence, banning guns wouldn’t serve a useful purpose. It makes it far easier for things like a tyrannical government to come to power, and it means people get victimized without recourse for defense.
Now, I do agree with you. It certainly is a very sad affair for onlookers (and a tragedy for those personally affected) by things like Sandy Hook. But in a lot of the cases, mental instability has been historically evident when the media goes and looks into the pasts of the people that do these things. So, at this point, wouldn’t it be wiser to invest in proper mental health care instead of treating everyone who happens to own a gun like they are an automatic criminal for wanting/needing one?
And then there are statistics… In most 1st world countries, crime of all stripes has fallen significantly over the last 30 years. This includes gun crimes. No matter if the country fully, partially, or didn’t ban guns, the rates of crime have fallen. On top of that, if you look at the sheer number of guns in this country, and then compare that to gun crimes, the rates are incredibly low.
There are roughly 220-250 million guns in this country, and the number of gun-related crimes (all gun-related crimes) country wide is less than 100,000 (most numbers are around 50,000 incidents, assaults, and deaths). Even if you assume that each gun crime was committed by a completely different gun, that’s still a minute percentage.
Why do we get to dictate to what amounts to 99.9% of owners that they are fucked, even though they are law-abiding? There’s no reason for it. It would be akin to taking all cars off the road in the US (around 250 million) because there are 30,000 car-related deaths each year. You penalize the almost-everyone majority class of users for the crimes of the tiny, tiny minority.
Why should we do this? It won’t save lives. Anyone who’s crazy can easily find out how to make bombs. It’s not like someone with mental stability issues is going to go “I really wanted to kill, but without guns I can’t.” All it’ll do is make them prepare a little more. That may even drive the body count up, which would be a terrible turn of events.
I’m not saying that we are in an ideal situation, but there are better ways to address the roots of this issue than to pretend that the number of rounds in a magazine, what color the gun is, or what kind of grip it has makes any sort of difference in regards to lethality.
Awesome, another overly broad solution to a non-existant problem. Ban guns that are accurate at long range? Because those are so readily used in crimes? Because they’re a menace to society? Just ban a substantial portion of all guns on a whim, based on a stretched interpretation of some gotcha-hunting quote mining?
This is why it’s so difficult to take most gun control advocates seriously. They don’t argue in good faith. They aren’t primarily concerned with improving public safety or evaluating the cost and benefit analysis of specific laws. Instead, they are only interested in an emotional plea to ban and any all guns they think they can create the most tenuous case for. If they could ban guns made on a Tuesday, they would. If they could ban guns that weighed an odd number of pounds, they would. There’s no rhyme or reason, logical analysis about actual public safety and the implication of particular laws - any swipe they can take at gun rights and gun ownership, they will take.
How do you have a reasonable discussion with those who do not come in good faith, have no interest in actually improving public good, and only have an irrational axe to grind against you in any way they can?
This OP is a very good example why the default stance against gun control proposals is to fight them tooth and nail. They’re almost never driven by a rational attempt to improve the public good, but rather, they’re driven by an attempt to ban any gun and restrict any right that they feel that they can lie and/or appeal to emotion to ignorant people. That’s why we spend so much political clout debating absurd, stupid shit like assault weapons bans instead of talking about something that may actually do some sort of public good.
Tell that to the shopkeepers caught in the Rodney King riots.
It would be great if gun control proposals could be assessed using hard scientific evidence-- but the NRA has done a lot in the past decade or so to prevent the data-gathering and scientific studies that would give us that kind of evidence.
The Center for Disease Control and the National Institute of Health are the main funding agencies in the US which would underwrite studies on gun safety and gun violence, but they are effectively banned from it. In 1993, a study, “Gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home,” funded by the CDC, came out in the New England Journal of Medicine. The paper concluded that, “Rather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.” The NRA responded by going after the CDC. To make a long story short, in 1996, a provision known as the Dickey Amendment was added to the CDC’s appropriations bill stating that “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.” In 2012, a similar clause was added to the NIH appropriations bill. (NRA’s side of things here.) It wasn’t clear what the clause did or didn’t prohibit, but, in the words of one scientist, “no federal employee was willing to risk his or her career or the agency’s funding to find out. Extramural support for firearm injury prevention research quickly dried up.”
The battle goes on. One of the most important ways to gather data on accidents and injuries is through anonymized hospital reporting systems, but the NRA lobbied to add a provision to the Affordable Care Act restricting physicians’ ability to gather data about their patients’ gun use.
There’s a good discussion of the basic research gaps here.
The push to outlaw various types of guns with no rhyme or reason behind it, that’s not great. Really not great!
But how can a reasonable discussion even take place when an organization on one side has actively worked against (and effectively destroyed) the rational and evidence-based foundation for any kind of debate? That is absolutely acting in bad faith.
You both are putting words in my mouth. I generally advised against gun ownership. However, I am not a big one for outlawing what I advise against. There are entirely too many people in prison already.
As for the oxygen and water, I think there are lots of activities with risk that not only should be legal, but even should be mildly encouraged (say, baseball). However, when you see people a getting killed, don’t dismiss it. Instead, let’s see if anything could be done to improve the situation.
To go back to what I was commenting on, Miltonyz asked how many people are murdered at 200 yards. I don’t know, possibly for the reason given in #26. But to continue the dialog, I asked him or her how many it would take to care about. Perhaps we will get that answer later tonight.
Now, here’s my answer to Bone’s question at the top of this post: If I thought there was a net saving of one life, that would be enough to to stop me from wasting time by advising Americans who keep personal firearms for self-defense to disarm. The key word here is net. And since 19,000 Americans kill themselves each year with a gun, and far fewer are murdered, no plausible arithmetic is going to show more lives saved than taken by our gun culture.
What about non-Americans? I am open to the idea that in some other country, with a high homicide to suicide ratio, gun ownership makes some sad sense. I’d even allow the possibility of responsible gun ownership in the US, except that I think it far more rare than gun enthusiasts claim. At a minimum, you would have to make sure your gun collection, after your death, was destroyed, so it couldn’t ever get into the hands of a suicidal individual.
Ten thousand Americans commit suicide by suffocation each year. Do you blame America’s “suffocation culture” for this?
Whatever the number is, it is way too many.
You didn’t ask about this, but the case fatality rate for suffocation, while high, is still lower than for firearms:
So given that, I fear, there always will be a portion of humanity who attempt a permanent solution to temporary problems, a shift from firearms to other means would save lives.
As for “gun culture”, I was referring to the fact that lots of Americans look on gun ownership as a positive, thus contributing to the number of guns. Does that mean we also have an electrical cord culture? OK, if you want. But, realistically, I can’t live a modern life without some of the objects that can also be used in suffocation suicide. I can live without owning guns, and live more safely.
How? Because they’re more likely to fuck it up?
I’m not. That’s what you said. I specifically said I was running with the ball after your statement.
I suggested a way to improve the situation. What are your thoughts about expanded mental health care?
Well, yeah. Why do you say that like it’s something incredulous?
The entire purpose of guns is that they make killing things easier. Someone who is on suicide watch is not only prevented from having guns, but knives, sharp objects, ropes, full access to drugs, etc.
We very often prevent those intent on self harm from harming themselves by making it much harder to actually pull off. That’s kinda the point.
I don’t know whether it’s people in general or just this board, but I do find it tiring that reasoning so often goes out the window when the gun debate comes up. Guns aren’t special, especially not because a 250-year old document says they are.
I’m incredulous because a botched suicide is not a good thing. Wanting people to torture themselves so that you have enough time to go pick up the pieces is a shitty plan.
We do not and should not want to extend that logic to the entire population. To deny people the capacity to commit suicide requires a severe attack on their rights and freedoms. Removing their ability to run their car off a cliff alone would deny the vast majority of Americans their livelihoods, as they would lose their ability to commute to work.
Guns are special. PhillyGuy isn’t telling people they shouldn’t own rope in case they decide to hang themselves. We don’t have legislators arguing that red cars should be banned.
I’m not putting words in your mouth - simply restating your silly question in the contrary position.
So because some small fraction of our population chooses to use a gun to commit suicide, that is sufficient justification in your view to restrict the liberty of the other 10’s of millions of lawful gun owners? Without a gun, I believe there would be some number of people who would otherwise have committed suicide that would be prevented. That is not sufficient to restrict the liberty of everyone else.
And even granting this was some kind of balancing of rights vs. cost (which I don’t subscribe to), there are north of 100K (pulling from KOS just because it may receive a friendlier reception. The only thing I’m relying on from this cite is the low end estimate) defensive gun uses each year. Here are summaries of 7 studies (6 of which have an estimate). Since that time, there have been at least 7 more. Every study that estimates the amount of DGU has a figure north of 700k. Not all result in a life saved that would otherwise have been lost, but it is a substantial number. Consider the positive utility of keeping personal firearms for self defense before offering any advice.
My point is not to quibble over the detail figure. It is to say that DGU is not rare and occurs in such significant amounts that the efficacy of gun ownership should not be ignored or dismissed out of hand.
PhillyGuy: how many people kill themselves with guns every year?
That’s the figure you seem to be arguing constitutes suicide lives that would be saved absent a “gun culture.”
But it seems to be that an extremely large percentage of those lives would still be lost: lacking a gun, the would-be suiciders would hang themselves, throw themselves in front of subway trains, drive into retaining walls, or poison themselves.
Can you address this seemingly glaring oversight in your claims?
“You know how to click a cite link, don’t you? You put your finger together and push.” (With apologies to Lauren Bacall.)
Someone killing themselves with their own gun is not a compelling enough reason to give up mine.
And yet I doubt you’d feel this way if we were talking about people killing their unborn children and not themselves. Or do you support measures intended to make abortion as drawn out and painful as possible, so that the mother has time to reconsider?
Is your post intended as some sort of sarcasm?
The claim was that gun availability increases suicides. Bricker wrongly disputed that. I taught him how to click a link.
Period. If you want to debate abortions start a different thread, with a different sparring partner.
Sorry if this non sequitur startled me. On reflection I realize that by opposing a misclaim by someone opposing gun control (or opposing someone opposing someone opposing gun control) – to some minds – I ally myself with gun grabbers, so need to be enlightened with images of tortured babies.
Actually I have no strong feelings, or even knowledge, one way or the other on gun control and clicked on the thread only because I often find arguments of Distinguished Counsel interesting!
As with many issues where I have no knowledge, I may nevertheless form an opinion based on the diction and argumentation of each side of the debate. By this standard, gun fanatics lost me long ago.
Grumman’s non sequitur exemplifies this point. The anti-gun side puts forth a fact; pro-gun claims the fact is false; someone (innocent bystander me in this case) demonstrates that the fact was true all along.
But debating the truth or falsity of that fact, in one corner of the overall debate, just enrages the pro-gun side. My only intervention was impartial fact-checking … and then I’m asked how I feel about torturing babies! :smack: :rolleyes:
Wow.