Can we get a clarification from Bricker on this?
I don’t see how all these points are really relevant to my comments.
Here’s my basic point: spree shooting deaths are rarer than lightning deaths. They are dramatic, and the media leads you around the nose to make you think they’re a big deal. But it’s only because you don’t consider the thousand more mundane ways you could die that you misjudge the relative risk or relative consequences of such things.
To draw a comparison, people are deathly afraid of nuclear power plants because an accident might some day kill a few dozen people. However, they are completely oblivious to the hundreds of thousands of deaths per year that are caused on a regular basis by the poison that coal plants spew into our atmosphere. Nuclear threats are exotic and overblown, coal threats are mundane and ignored.
If you feel that somehow the murder vs accident thing is terribly relevant, then a comparison might be terrorism. Odds of any person in the US dying of a terrorist attack are miniscule, and yet we reshaped our entire governmental policy around it. The cure was more harmful than the poison in that case.
Now it’s not a perfect analogy, since in the case of terrorism there’s an organized group and ideology and 9/11 was probably intended to be the opening salvo of an ongoing war, whereas spree shooters are just random people going crazy, so you could justify a more coordinated, dramatic response to terrorism. But certainly there are some similarities - people estimate the dangers of, and importance to terrorism to be far higher than they are and we’d be enacting major societal policy to fix a minor issue.
There are almost 100 million gun owners in the US. Major changes to gun laws would end up being a huge societal change. Invoking that change on the basis of a dozen or two deaths per year is idiotic. Again, that’s my point.
If you argue that policy needs to change because of 11k gun homicides per year, I’m willing to have the debate. If you argue to change that policy because something minor in the grand scheme of things but really dramatic happened and the news is revelling in it for weeks, you’re an idiot.
According to the National Weather Service, there have been 19 lightning fatalities so far in the US in 2012 (cite).
According to the Brady Campaign’s ongoing tally, there have been 56 deaths so far in mass shootings in the US (cite - PDF). I did not include shootings that looked like gunfights between gangs – only cases where it looked like someone shot three or more unarmed people in one spree.
We have five months left in the year, so maybe lightning will catch up. Go, Lightning!
What’re the annual averages for each?
I don’t know. You made the claim. You provide the data to back it up. I looked at a year, which seemed to me sufficient to call your assertion into question. So, you say spree killings are less common than lightning strikes? I say, cite.
Well, Martin Hyde posted the FBI’s definition earlier of 4+ murders at a time, and the annual number for that he posted was 16 per year. Wikipedia says 40-50 deaths per year in the US. I’m too lazy to check beyond that, but even if I’m off by double or triple, they’re still within the same area.
I would also as a general suggest it’s the burden of the people in this thread acting like this is some huge threat that requires huge legal changes to give us some perspective on how many people die from these spree every year.
How many victims of mass shootings do we have to get to before we stop considering those people an acceptable loss?
To start to discuss major shifts in national policy? It’d have to go up probably two orders of magnitude at the low end, and that could still easily be a pretty major overreaction depending on specifically what you tried to do.
In other words, when enough people die to affect voting patterns.
Yes, you got me. The secret plan is to murder democrats (I assume?) via spree shootings until there are none left. Not sure how the spree shooters know who democrats are, or that deaths in the low thousands per year are going to change the voting demographic of the country, but I think you cracked the case.
You could start out easy, see if maybe you can stand it. Like maybe those extra extension magazines for pistols? Don’t know that anybody goes deer hunting with a 9mm automatic pistol. And if they do, I don’t see how being able to rip out thirty rounds or so in about ten seconds is particularly sporting. Duck hunting is right out…
How many more people do members of Neo-Nazi groups have to kill before we start banning unacceptable political views? After all, I support the First Amendment, just not for really outrageous ideas…
Nope. Just some black humor.
You continue to embarrass yourself. Coal plants kill quite a few less than the “hundreds of thousands” you claim; in fact, the number is approximately 13,000 people per year.
[
](Power Plant Air Pollution Kills 13,000 People Per Year, Coal-Fired Are Most Hazardous: ALA Report | HuffPost Impact)
Here’s another report:
[
](http://www.catf.us/resources/publications/files/The_Toll_from_Coal.pdf)
By your logic, coal-fired power plants are much more desirable than guns, since they provide heat, air conditioning, lighting, refrigeration, computers, traffic signals, and a host of other applied uses to more than 300 million people, while only killing 13,000.
Guns provide much less to far fewer people (only 100 million own guns, by your numbers) yet kill about the same amount of people.
And lest you forget, coal-fired plants are regulated, and not anyone can just start one up.
We enact legislation all the time because of small numbers of people being adversely affected. Remember Adam Walsh? Huge changes in the way we viewed and dealt with kidnappings after that. How many infant deaths were there before we made changes in neonatal care? How many died in a year from any 1 malady before vaccinations were made mandatory? How many people got help from Dr. Kevorkian before laws around the country were changed or enacted to either prevent or allow euthanasia?
Your arguments fall flat, because you’ve already made your mind up about what should be, without having a firm, factual basis for it.
You cry about societal change, but sometimes societies have to change. Abolishing slavery was a huge societal change, but the country survived it. Giving women the right to vote was a huge societal change, but the country survived it. The civil rights movement was a huge societal change, but the country survived it. America, and Americans, are resilient enough to withstand change, even on a grand scale.
And the thing is, most people aren’t talking about change on a grand scale. The number of voices crying out for all guns to be banned and destroyed is minuscule, barely a peep in the discourse of this nation. But any talk of restrictions, of caution, of licensing, or regulation is met with accusations of tyranny, of oppression, of cruel despotism. That’s what’s idiotic.
I used the worldwide figure for coal pollution related deaths, which varies depending on what you consider to be a coal related death. It’s true that the US is below average at around 30,000 deaths per year, but it’s well over 500,000 worldwide.
I know you’re not good at understanding the point people are trying to make, but I wasn’t comparing coal deaths vs gun deaths. I was trying to give examples where people misunderstand the dangers of something sensational or exotic over something more mundane and more deadly.
It is somewhat ironic that you’re an anti-nuclear tard too, though.
This is a non-sequitor or a straw men, depending on how it’s taken. I’ve not only not made a utility argument in favor of guns, nor did I compare coal power vs guns, at any point. In fact I very specifically have indicated on several occasions that I have no interest in just having a generic gun control debate. I’m only addressing the idea that sensational shootings should be a reason for laws.
None of these analogies hold - except I don’t know anything about the kidnapping thing, so maybe it does. But is there some sort of simple solution like a vaccine that we can implement to make people not go crazy and shoot people up?
Improvements to neonatal care and vaccines are simply us getting better at certan things. Gun laws are far more ambiguous with far greater tradeoffs and almost always with misugided intentions or flat out stupid and ineffective clauses that serve only to inconvience or deny rights to those who are least likely to commit crime.
Anyone with half a brain can see that people who evaluate relative dangers by the sensationalism of the danger aren’t making rational evaluations. I don’t understand how such a judgement can have or fail to have a factual basis - it’s pretty obvious.
Were any of those changes implemented because of isolated stories spun into sensationalistic narratives on the news? No, those were moments when the entire fabric of society changed and hence dramatic changes came with it.
Maybe one day society will change enough to significantly change our attitudes on guns, but it shouldn’t come from the media spooging a few sensational incidents all over us.
Incidentally, I know you won’t ever come to realize it, but talking about issues where reasonable people can disagree, where there are upsides and downsides, and value judgements and comparing them to pretty cut and dry situations like abolishing slavery makes you look like an arrogant asshole. To be so very convinced not only that you’re right, and not only that everyone who disagrees as wrong - but they’re wrong to some obvious degree as if they were pro-slavery is not a nuanced take on the situation and really means that you should be dismissed out of hand.
Several people in this thread have already said things like “I don’t want to ban all guns, just those capable of rapid fire” and such. Sounds good, right? Except that you’re going to ban about 80% of the weapons made in the last 100 years with such a declaration. Entire classes of weapons, up to and including your grandpa’s antique revolver from the 1800s.
The reality of gun control in the US is that we get utter bullshit like the 1986 FOPA which bans machine gun production and importation when they’d had a 60 year long perfect record amongst legal ownership and the assault weapons ban which is utterly nonsensical and a joke. These things sound good to people like you because you have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about, but they’re written by people whose agenda goes beyond what they claim it to.
For example, we’ve had congress consider laws that would ban all rounds that could penetrate the basic level of police bulletproof vests. Makes sense, right? Who needs armor piercing bullets that can kill cops. Woops, you just effectively banned rifle ammunition, because pretty much every rifle ever made can easily penetrate a level 1 police vest. You go from good intentions “we don’t want cops dying, do we!?”, add in a little bit of DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT, add politicians with a gun control agenda that extends past the “common sense” moderate limitations they claim to want, and you have a recipe for legislation that does nothing at all to impede crime but only infringes on the rights of the law abiding gun owner. The predictable and almost pathetically funny thing about that whole mess is that when the NRA understandably fought against a law that would essentially ban rifles, it was painted as “Extremist NRA wants to keep cop killer bullets legal!”, and people like you would buy that shit completely.
Maybe the Board could start a pool like the Celebrity Death pool next year.
In this version, you select a State and a month - say you get twenty selections, and if you hit the correct State/month, the number shot dead is added to your total: how cool would that be?
I think we’d prob need to restrict it to the number dead by midnight on the day, all those lingering on life support just complicate the hell out of things.
/weird gun thread #1042
I don’t think that was Bo’s point. Instead, he seemed to be pointing out that issues like slavery and women’s suffrage and so forth formerly were highly controversial “issues where reasonable people can disagree, where there are upsides and downsides, and value judgements”.
I didn’t read Bo’s comment as saying “if you oppose gun regulation then you’re just as obviously wrong as if you were pro-slavery”. Rather, the point is that deep societal change, starting from a position that we once thought was indispensable to our principles and our very identity, is possible, and has happened.
Meh. Just because some people push for over-regulation out of ignorance doesn’t mean that all regulation is something to be feared and rejected, or that the whole concept of regulation should be dismissed out of hand.
There will always be people on every side of every issue who DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT, but we shouldn’t use that as an excuse to try to silence debate altogether. The more we discuss the pros and cons of specific regulatory legislation, the more people there will be who have at least some dim idea of WHAT THE FUCK THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT.
Yes, that was my point. I thought it was very clear, given that 3 sentences in a row mentioned “but the country survived it” but SenorBeef seems to have a block in place.
Ted Nugent baits his game and still needs a 100 round magazine to take out just one buck.
No, the US has about 13,000 deaths per year related to coal-plant pollution. I gave you 2 cites that show this number. I don’t see how worldwide statistics matter, given that we are talking only about gun policies in the US.
I understand things just fine. For instance, I understand that you mis-state statistics, presumably because you think that inflated numbers will bolster your case.
Nope, not anti-nuclear power at all, just anti-nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain.
And I knew the personal attacks would start soon from you. Grats. It’s really classy and surely helps people’s perception of you and your argument. You don’t seem to realize that I think guns are cool and that I have been trying to help you find better arguments for your position. And yet you say that I’m not good at understanding the point people are trying to make. :rolleyes:
Abolishing slavery was hardly a “cut and dry situation”. Perhaps you aren’t aware that a war was fought over it? cite
Unsupported invective. You have no idea what my position is on guns, obviously. Not sure how you justify the last sentence there; do you read minds? Or are you just fearful?
“People like you” 
That’s my favorite part, right there! It makes me Let’s go to the quarry and throw stuff down there!