I think this has been done on a local level. I don’t have time to search at the moment. I’m cooking in between posts.
Where I live, crime is pretty much zero. And I would guess that 99% of the homes have guns.
Wow. Just, wow. I like being right, but I don’t really like being THAT right.
Wow.
What exactly would we see? I didn’t know that modern American mid-sized cities were such dystopian hellscapes these days.
These recurring themes of “well what if a rapist breaks into your house!” or “that’s why you can’t even walk down the streets of the Loop at three in the afternoon!” that the gun-promoters constantly repair to only serve to cement the idea that you guys are wallowing in a paranoid unreality.
Wow. Just wow. Instead of offering a logical refutation to my argument, you spout off meaningless idiotic one-liners. Great job, ace.
I’m going off to the gym, to work out, as I do every day, because I don’t want to die of a heart attack or diabetes. If everyone in America did THIS, I guarantee there would be far more lives saved than if every single gun in the country instantly disappeared. But it’s easier to villify guns because there are way too many fat lardasses in America to try to save lives by focusing on THEM. Loss of life is loss of life, as I already said. And more people die in America from being a lazy fatbody than from being shot. You want to save lives, lobby for mandatory physical education or something. I’ll see you in an hour. Maybe some of you anti-gun zealots will have thought of something more intelligent than meaningless one-liners.
This isn’t Twitter.
Are you retarded? Honestly. Reading comprehension fail…
How many different ways can it be said that blame lies primarily with the person who pulls the trigger, and only peripherally with those who helped put the fucking gun in their hands? You hear what you want to hear; what you feel qualified to respond to. Your whole view on this issue is clouded by the trembling fear that someday a jackbooted government agent will burst into your home, interrupt happy time with your copy of HEAT, and demand you give up your own private arsenal that you have spent years of your life putting together, posing in the mirror with, and showing off to your friends.
NOT ONE PERSON HERE HAS SUGGESTED THAT THIS WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA.
And yes, you’re right in that this country will finally get to a point where the majority sees through your bullshit, and can see that the real issue is personal rights vs those of the community. And you’re right in the respect that it will be a good day for the Lissners and the TigerTamers. But, and here’s the kicker, we are actually hoping that this day will be good for EVERYONE, not just ourselves. My stake in this is completely unselfish: I am not worried at all about being gunned down in the street. Plenty of you guys have already assured me that this is exceedingly rare. But it does happen, to other people, who aren’t me, and gosh-darn it, I’m not ok with that, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to feel like I tried to prevent it.
I fail to see how this position is anything but righteous. Could you say the same about your position? Or does it all boil down to what YOU want, when YOU want it, fuck how it effects anyone else (by this time it should be clear that I’m not talking about your LEGAL responsibility, but your moral one)?
Extrapolated: “The fact that everyone will eventually die is perfectly adequate justification for killing them.”
Is it possible to diagnose sociopathy over the internets? I think we have an open and shut case here.
:rolleyes: No, but he’s also right.
But you don’t live in a city. What’s the minority population of Summit County? How many poor people are there year-round?
That’s fine, provided that “breathe” doesn’t mean “conveniently ignore”.
Entirely reasonable, except that what do you mean by “strengthening” gun control laws? Behond enforcing the laws we already have, there doesn’t seem to be any way to further “strengthen” gun control except by restricting possession of guns by the law abiding. You say that no one claims that complete disarmament would eliminate gun violence. What do you propose then? Having to prove you “need” a gun? No handguns? A series of gradual “choke gun ownership to death” laws like were passed in Britain over the decades? If you can give some examples of “common sense” gun laws that don’t punish the law-abiding, I’d be happy to hear them.
If I thought for a minute that a British-style ban on private gun possession would actually work, then I’d have to concede that gun abolition would be a legitimate option. My personal opinion is that we’d be more likely to end up with what happened in Jamaica.
“There is no place in this society for the gun, now or ever” - Prime Minister Michael Manley
I got: Blah blah blah recycled bullshit I’ve said a hundred times guns=cars=rock and roll.
Your response to people trying to curb gun violence is to change the subject and talk about cars. And obesity. And what the fuck ever else floats through your brain.
No one here is saying “Let’s find a way to make sure that no one is ever hurt/killed/made fun of again!”
We are saying: “What can be done about the FIREARMS problem/infatuation/addiction in this country?”
You’re answering the first one, that no one asked, and saying that the second one isn’t, in fact, a problem, when the newspapers and body counts tell us it is every single day.
Now we’re talking about the moral high ground: gun owners are selfish, care only about themselves and their precious guns, and don’t give a shit about the rest of society? Ok, let’s talk about society: I believe that a country where every lawful and responsible gun owner is effectively a police auxillary or private security guard would be a far safer and more peaceful society than one that tries (and utterly fails) to enforce gun prohibition. I believe that only gives you a Chicago; or a Mexico; or a Jamaica. I believe that “unselfishly” giving up private gun ownership would cost much and gain nothing. I believe that overall, lawful and responsible gun ownership helps society.
Thank you for this. You are the first poster in 7 pages who has made a non-selfish rationalization for why they believe they should be allowed to own firearms.
Honestly, this is what I was looking for. I disagree but, at least to this response, respectfully.
Hey asshole, how was this post selfish, exactly?
If you’re going to call me selfish, I’m going to call you asshole, asshole. 
Are you suggesting that nobody ever has a rapist break into their house, or that nobody is ever attacked at night in the city?
Sure, it probably won’t happen to you, statistically. But what if it does? Don’t you think that people (PEOPLE - not me, PEOPLE - everyone from suburbanites in their homes to an immigrant liquor store owner in the ghetto to a black guy traveling through a racist town in the South - since you harped so much on me being “selfish” before) should have the right to defend themselves in the event that it does?
It’s so easy to just say “oh, it won’t happen to me.” But if it does, then what? Personally I am NOT going to rely on the government or the cops to protect me; I’m going to rely on myself. (Note = the word “myself” is not the same as the word “selfish.”)
Also, as far as I can tell, nobody’s ever responded to the point about how liquor prohibition didn’t stop people from getting alcohol, and weed prohibition doesn’t stop people from getting weed, and the “border” doesn’t prevent people immigrating illegally - so how do you propose to stop criminals from getting guns if they want them? Psychic powers? Magic? Prayer?
Well, your argument was that the onus was on us to show why you should not have easy access to guns, as opposed to you telling us why you should. That is a perfectly fair response, but it didn’t (and I’m sure wasn’t intended to) answer my basic question about why you believe you should be allowed to own them.
I apologize if you thought I was saying that no one else had posted rational responses in this thread, obviously they have. But I feel like Lumpy is the only person who attempted to answer my question, as asked.
And it wasn’t a loaded question, meant to lure any of you into a trap. I do understand, as I’ve said, that 99% of gun owners are perfectly sane, law abiding individuals.
A discussion board like this should be just that, a discussion.
Some of us/you should learn to play well with others. Jeez. The right to disagree is at the basis of the whole personal rights issue.
Back to your corners, wipe down, and come out swinging.
Okay, you guys just don’t understand simple statistical concepts.
Let me try to illustrate this. The odds ratio is the number of events over the number of non events for one group divided by the number of events over the number of non events for another group. So we need to know four things. First, the number of deaths in motor vehicle accidents. Second, the number of firearms deaths. Third, the number of times a car was used and fourth, the number of times a gun was used.
I just don’t think we’ll find the fourth, but we’ll see what makes sense when we get there.
It’s actually kind of hard to find the number of times a car was used in this country. If anyone can give us some kind of count of annual or daily numbers of cars on the road in the US, let me know. The best I could find is this: http://www.scribd.com/doc/1621663/Transportation-Statistics-table-automobile-profile. It says that in 2002, there were 1,668,193,000,000 total vehicle miles in the US.
So, how many trips is that? During my search, I found an estimate of an average US car trip to be about 33 miles. Seems kind of high, but until someone can offer another, we’ll use it. Dividing the total miles by the average mileage per trip gives us 50,551,303,030 motor vehicle trips in 2002.
In 2002, the number of motor vehicle related fatalities was 45,579. In 2002, the number of firearms fatalities was 30,242.
We don’t have any way to estimate the number of times a firearm was used, so let’s think about it logically. Does it make sense to say that overall a car is used in America about 1,000 times more than a gun is used? No, you say? Guns are used more frequently than that? Okay, is the ratio 100 to 1? That seems very unlikely, given the number of car trips taken in America every day. But, just for grins, why don’t we say it’s 50 to 1.
Using our estimate of car trips per year, we would then guess that a gun is used in some fashion about 1,011,026,061 times per year. That means that the odds ratio would be (30,242/1,010,995,819)/(45,579/50,551,257,451),or 33.18. That means that a death would be 33 times more likely to occur with each use of a firearm than each use of a motor vehicle.
Okay, so now you are probably saying, “Wait, about that 50 to 1 business, that’s unfair!” Okay, just for shits and grins, let’s assume that for each 10 car trips in the US, someone uses a gun once. That would give us 5,055,100,061. Over 5 billion instances of using a gun. That still gives us an odds ratio of 6.63, or a use of a firearm being 6 times more likely to end up in death than the use of a car.
This doesn’t even consider non-fatal outcomes.
I do welcome any effort to provide better numbers. It won’t really matter, because as you can see, with the numbers of fatalities being fairly equal, you’d have to assume that guns and cars are used approximately equally often in America to end up with an odds ratio of 1.
Please, Gun Dopers, don’t be so fucking stupid as to bring up cars, car fatalities and the idea that “more people are killed by cars so why don’t we ban cars” in future gun threads.
Actually, I believe it was I who called your reasoning selfish, among many other things. Lissener chimed in with sociopathic, just for the record.
And yes, everyone has responded to this point. Go back and read every one of my posts one more time, or maybe for the first time.
Basically my reasoning is that even if gun/alcohol/marijuana prohibition (which, again, no one has suggested banning all firearms) doesn’t work, then the logical response isn’t to make it EASIER to get those things.
Does this compute? At all? Are you done telling us that there is some amazing point that you have made that we silly hippies are incapable of refuting? Because we have. Every one of them.
Again, my head remains unesploded.
*Also, great post Hentor. Thank you.