However, I’m sure you’ll agree that there is probably a fixed percentage of idiots in the country.
More guns in the hands of more people therefore = more guns in the hands of idiots.
More guns = more idiots with guns. Idiots like the guy in the cite above, who is very unlikely to avail himself of sensible marksmanship training devices. Because he’s an idiot. Idiots don’t know that they are, in fact idiots (see Dunning-Kruger Effect), so they won’t take sensible precautions.
Also, more guns in the hands of more people = more accidents that even normally safe people would not have. Because they are accidents, and it just takes a TINY MOMENT of inattention to have a fatal accident with a gun. This is not the case with other objects, because the other objects are not specifically DESIGNED to be fatal to living things.
So to summarize…
More guns = more guns in the hands of idiots
More guns = more accidents by non-idiots who make one tiny error
Laser training systems offer a very affordable of quickdraw training that can be used at home and also trains your marksmanship. All without firing any live rounds or even loading any rounds into your gun. Sure it costs as much as a cheap gun but it probably saves you many times its cost in ammunition (especially these days).
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Is that what you use when you’re fantasizing about your showdown with the bad guy?
Is it still the official Obamabot position that we need to continue giving unlimited powers to the FBI and the CIA because terrorists are hiding in our cereal, but that anyone who owns a gun for protection is being a paranoid idiot because crime will never happen to them (except getting shot with a gun, which is happening all the time despite those doubtless NRA-bribed ‘numbers’ showing it on the decrease year after year)?
Are we back to the dreary issue of whether or not “measurable” means the same thing as “significant”? Is that why you chose the word “pronounced”?
And that wording “Hemenway has conceded”? Doesn’t that imply a partisan and biased viewpoint on his part, that he must “concede” rather than simply “conclude”? Have you established his biased viewpoint already, that we may take it as Gospel, or is this only an innuendo on your part? Play fair, show your work, define your terms, its not complicated.
Continuing to disagree with you does not constitute “obstinate refusal”. And the one thing we are most in need of, objective facts, is in very short supply. One powerful partisan of the argument has done everything in its considerable power to keep it that way. That is not your fault, and I certainly don’t hold you accountable. But it is my prejudice that those who wish to impede research are not to be trusted as agents of truth. Call it a hunch, if you like.
Even one who is, like I am, unsophisticated when it comes to statistical analysis knows that truly definitive studies are somewhat rare. The more variables go into the mix, the less reliable the result, unless an effective effort is made to resolve them all.
A human population is an organic machine to produce variables. About the only things Utah and New York have in common is English as the dominant language (if we exclude Long Island). Either you don’t know you are offering a shaky foundation for your adamant demand for agreement or it doesn’t matter much to you. You demand respect for results and in the next breath, undermine their significance.
At one and the same time, you say the results are not particularly compelling, yet seem to expect me to reel away in dismay.
And would it have been all that difficult to define your terms so that we might know what the range is between “measurable” and “pronounced”? By any chance, does that range correspond closely to the range friend Hentor the Contrarian might say lies between “measurable” and “significant”?
Seems to me you might have accomplished that rather easily, saving you the energy of bristling and ruffling your feathers. I asked for definition, you gave me a homework assignment. If I want to know what you mean to say, who better to ask than you?
Short of repealing the 2nd amendment, what do you propose to do about it?
I don’t do quickdraw training (I just don’t think its important for someone in my situation, I’d be better off spending my time learning CPR) but I do laser training now just because its something I can do at home.
Hemenway is an anti-gun vilifier of gun owners. And even he has conceded that CCW is not harmful.
No its not, you just keep insisting it is but its not.
I have the same prejudice and when I defend the NRA on this have a point point it is only because I think that they when they claim that health professionals are biased. We have had this debate and you just haven’t been able to address the comments made by the folks who did the study.
Its not just Utah and NYC.
I’m not saying you need to go out and get a CCW today but I am saying that there is probably little harm in allowing CCW.
I voted for Obama twice. I donate money to his campaign. I donated money to his superpac. Maybe this is a partisan issue in the general sense but its not partisan for me.
With that said WTF is Obama is not quite as liberal as most people think.
Most people realized that some time ago, including the ones desperately trying to paint him as the second coming of Che Guevara to prevent his election and reelection.
**Guns and Gastronomy edition:
**
For those not willing to walk onto someone else’s property to shoot an 800 pound pig you don’t own with the intention of gutting and dressing it in plain view of a highway (how else would you pick up an 800 pound carcass?)
If the gun-confiscation brigade is actually on board with taking them away from cops too, maybe we have something to talk about. Otherwise I don’t see how your plans would stop that from happening, especially since everything you’ve proposed thus far gives more power and trust to cops and not less.
Well, the GA hamburgler isn’t a cop any more. And don’t forget that dude from CA who was going to go all Rambo and stuff… he’s now a crispy critter, so no longer a cop either.
It must suck to get shot in the thigh. At least he still has one testicle, so he’s not entirely out of the gene pool. But I bet his jeans are shot now.
The Violence Policy Center reported that in 2010, there were 19,393 gun suicides, 8,275 criminal gun homicides, 606 unintentional gun deaths, and a whopping 230 justifiable homicides… http://www.vpc.org/studies/justifiable.pdf
Kable claims that defensive gun use (he shortens this to the acronym ‘DGU’) to prevent crime events number in the millions every year, a figure I believe he obtained form the NRA.
From the link above: "According to the 2004 book Private Guns, Public Health by Dr. David Hemenway, Professor of Health Policy at the Harvard School of Public Health and director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, "This estimate is not plausible and has been nominated as the “most outrageous number mentioned in a policy discussion by an
elected official.” " (Page 8, in the linked PDF)
He believes the “DGU” number is more likely closer to 5,000 a year, or 0.8 % of crimes, if I understand correctly.