Just barely. Pretty much anybody with a pulse can get a driver’s license, and many people drive without them. There are even legally blind people who have licenses. And you can’t really protect your child from other people’s cars. Both cars and guns have valid uses, and both can be used to cause horrible things to happen.
You want to talk about your safety being in the hands of strangers: I do a considerable amount of bicycling. Any stranger in a car could kill me with a flick of their wrist - probably hundreds of people per day have the ability to end my life if they so chose, or just have a moment of carelessness. Others have met that fate. But this cannot be used to justify removing the right of responsible people to drive. It’s not the object that’s the problem, it’s what you do with it.
What I find most appalling about this case is that there are families so broken down that something like this could happen. Crackhead mother, father in prison - this is not a recipe for success. I think the problem here is wedged far deeper into our society than we’d like to think.
The only way to keep guns out of the hands of children is to hold the parents MORE responsible. It’s as simple as that. If a child brings a gun to school, lock the parents up for 5 years. If the child kills another student at school, lock the parents up for 15 years.
The answer will never be to DISARM America. That is ridiculous and unconstitutional.
(I probably won’t check this post again. If you have any questions or comments directed at me, email me. upstatic@hotmail.com
And despite the ‘background check system’, anybody with a pulse can buy a gun - through the classifieds, at a gun show, and who knows where else. The number of places covered by the Brady law is surprisingly small.
Since what you do with cars is very different from what you do with guns, that seems to point right back to the object. I’d say you’re arguing with yourself.
Cars, due to their nature, are subject to different types of abuse than guns. For a variety of reasons, people are much less likely to deliberately use a car as a weapon than a gun, despite the fact that the potential is there.
(BTW, if you want to join me in a crusade for a society with better public transportation and less private automobile use, I’d be glad of the company. Because you’re right, we’re not doing nearly enough to minimize the carnage on our roads.)
Or I could just not have any guns in my house, which appears to be far more effective in that direction.
But it still doesn’t make a hell of a difference overall. We’re talking about diffuse sources of risk; taking care of one of them leaves the odds basically unchanged. If I act responsibly, I get a nice warm fuzzy out of the deal, but the world is no different.
There are problems that need concerted action, rather than individual action, to make a dent in. This is one of them.
The Violence Policy Center, despite its official sounding name, is an anti-gun lobby group. Anti-gun people don’t like it when pro-gun people cite from the NRA, so I don’t (see my posts in “Joe Bloggs and Guns” for PLENTY of material from neutral sources). I would expect the same consideration from anti-gun posters. Try getting your statements from neutral sources and not the NRA equivalent on the anti-gun side.
The stats cited by the VPC supposedly come from the 1995 FBI “Crime in the United States” report. I read through it. The statistics are not there. Repeat, they are NOT there. The statistics in that document deal with crime and crime alone. There is nothing in there about gun ownership as it relates to homicide.
Again, please see my post in “Joe Bloggs and Guns” for several neutral sources of firearm data.
Oh what the hell, I’ll just repeat them here.
John Lott - Many books and studies (University of Chicago, School of Law).
Dr. Gary Kleck - Many books and studies (Flordia State University, School of Criminology).
Morgan O Reynolds - National Center for Policy Analysis
W.W. Caruth III - National Center for Policy Analysis
James D Wright & Peter H Rossi - “Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms”
Paul Blackman - Journal of Firearms and Public Policy
Marianne Zawitz - “Guns Used in Crime” & “Firearm Injury from Crime” (Bureau of Justice)
Patsy A Klaus - “The Cost of Crime to Victims: Crime Data Brief” (Bureau of Justice)
Micheal R Rand - “Guns and Crime: Handgun Victimization, Firearm Self Defense, and Firearm Theft” (Bureau of Justice)
Ted R. Miller, Mark A. Cohen and Brian Wiersema - “The Extent and Costs of Crime Victimization: A New Look” (National Institute of Justice)
If this gun was stolen and used as payment for drugs, all the gun control laws and education in the world wouldn’t have worked. This kid was living in pathetic, almost third-world conditions, without his parents, without any kind of RESPONSIBLE role-model adults around. How could he possibly have a grasp on morals or right and wrong. Hanging out with drug dealers and criminals would naturally give a kid some bad ideas even without the aid of television, Marilyn Manson, etc.
I want to know what happened when the same six-year-old earlier attacked anoter student with a knife (apparently it occured)?
Wouldn’t that be a warning sign? I disagree with the blaming of the teacher. After having taught students in similar situations (living in cars, deserted by parents, one set of clothes, living at the City Mission, infested with fleas, etc.) I realize the futility of trying to be a cop. Those teachers (mostly) are working their asses off to be the only positive and loving role-models that these kids have. They are putting in long hours at a very thankless and low-paying job because they really care about the students (if they didn’t care they’d be working at Arby’s for more $$!)
Even with the most careful, strict teachers, however,there are times when the students are less supervised when they can break rules, and laws. How much stuff did YOU get away with in school that the teacher didn’t see. They aren’t prison guards…
Oh well. I wish I knew what the “final answer” to this is… I’d be a millionaire!
Glitch - when major news outlets cite statistics, I don’t usually have the time to check them out before quoting them. If they’re wrong, I apologize, but I have to assume that they do some minimal amount of checking out their sources.
These numbers were cited in the Washington Post. I assumed that the Violence Policy Center was in favor of gun control, but excepting official government stats (and some people would disagree with that, even) it’s hard to find ‘neutral’ in the gun control debate. I mean, hey, your Lott stuff is on the Texas State Rifle Association page. Now that’s neutral.
I’ve yet to find an ‘anti-NRA’ in the gun debate. They’ve lobbied for plastic handguns, bullets that pierce bullet-proof vests that the police use (hence called ‘cop-killer’ bullets), and all sorts of other bizarrities. There must be some group that’s as virulently and irrationally anti-gun as the NRA is pro-gun, but I’ve yet to see them. (Where’s the ‘My President is Sarah Brady’ bumper stickers?) If they exist, I doubt they’ve had any influence on the debate, whereas the NRA is the major player on the pro-gun side, and I almost never hear more rational voices opposing gun control disassociate themselves from the NRA.
That said, I share your fondness for honest numbers. Are either the VPC report or the FBI stats online? It would be interesting to compare the VPC claims with the numbers they claim to rely on.
BTW, I can only deal with so many gun threads at once; I’m sticking to the new thread about guns that Freedom started from here on out. You’re already over there (I already slammed you once - feel free to slam back!); see you there.
Only ONE question: since the perp was black and the victim was white-why hasn’t anybody charged this to be a “hate” crime-seems to me the usual loudmouths ("Reverends " Jackson, Sharpton, et.al) should be made to comment on this incident!
I agree the site itself is not exactly neutral; however, your only other option is to go to get the originals made by Lott from a large variety of sources. Not exactly convienent. Lott is an eminently neutral researcher, although his findings support the anti-gun control cause. If you would rather read the originals I could probably find where each of those articles was written so that you can see for yourself the neutrality of the source (they are mainly in law journals).
The VPC; however, is actually stating the stats themselves i.e. as part of their own research. Since they are themselves pro-gun control, it makes their own research perhaps a bit circumspect.
To be honest, I couldn’t find the exact quote on the VPC. So, it is possible that the Washington Post screwed up and that the quote wasn’t based on FBI stats at all, but some other statistic.
And while I wrote this I actually found the stat. It wasn’t from the FBI (shame on you Washington Post) it was from the CDC.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t get their full report with regards to the triple in homicide rates and quintuple of suicide rates because their web site wasn’t working. I don’t know what they are using as a methodology or how accurate it is.
However, assuming it is true, and it probably is these are issues that are resolvable by insisting on proper training and responsible conduct of gun owners. Even I will tell you that if you don’t plan on learning how to use a gun properly (that does NOT mean how to aim it) and you don’t plan on being responsible with it, do us all a favor and don’t get one. It isn’t going to do you any good. Any good self defense expert will tell you that.
However, there is overwhelming evidence that guns reduces crime and that gun control costs lives and money
Paraphrased by me from Lott:
IMO, the answer here lies somewhere between a total ban and total availablity. I know for a fact that as a martial arts trainer and firearm self defense instructor that I can pick the bozo out of the crowd, and I won’t teach him. Get teachers like me teaching the classes because we give a shit, and you won’t have a problem with irresponsible people with guns. Impossible? Hardly, it just takes more effort than we, western culture, are willing to put into stuff. We want quick and easy solutions (you don’t want to know how much money is spent per year on self defense gadgets. It will make you cry.) that don’t work but make us feel better because we think we are doing something.
Hell, you want to reduce crime, there is one simple step that could reduce crime by 80%. 80-90% of all crime is commited by recividist criminals. Instead of releasing violent criminals we should keep them in prison. I think we would find that if we would keep violent criminals off the streets that guns wouldn’t find their way into kids hands, and we wouldn’t be discussing this at all. Imagine, an 80% REDUCTION in violent crime by taking a hardline approach to prison sentencing and parole.
I agree that that’s the way to go, but exactly how did we put 2 million people in prison without incarcerating most of the repeat violent offenders already?
And let us not forget the guy who shot up the McDonald’s and Burger King in the Pittsburgh area recently. He told his hostages he was out to kill white people and he let several black hostages go free.
See what can happen when a black person has been a victim of racism all his life, and has witnessed racist acts perpetrated against his fellow blacks? I certainly don’t excuse or condone his crimes and I hope he’s in prison for a long time, but I’m not surprised WHY he did it. Even a mentally healthy person can take only so much.
And he is probably mentally ill, according to this story. According to this report, what set him off was a delay in fixing the door to his apartment.
I don’t see Sharpton or Jackson calling for this guy’s imprisonment.