I’d love it as an optional course, but I can’t imagine schools affording the insurance required.
Sure I know the difference. An anecdote is the Newtown Massacre, data is rifles making up only about 3% of firearm related homicides, and “assault” type rifles making up only a subset of that 3%. That data I just presented you, along with anecdotes from before, are also “facts.”
Home invasions happen in seconds. Even if cops are alerted immediatly, the best they can do is arrive in minutes. In my home invasion the cops were really fast, and only took about 5 minutes to arrive, however everything was over by then. Did you forget about this lady? She was on the line with 911 and the cops were not there in time, which is pretty much what you would expect.
Yes, because some of us don’t want to defer our right to self-defense.
I love science!
Do you deny that people do in fact save their, and others, lives with guns?
Not sure why insurance would be a big issue. State run game and fish departments don’t seem to have trouble teaching gun safety as big part of their hunter education programs. It could be like their hunter education program…
http://www.azgfd.gov/i_e/edits/hunter_education.shtml
…but just take out all the hunting stuff.
Yes, and people make retarded-ass decisions all the fucking time. If you want to live longer, don’t smoke, don’t ride a motorcycle without a helmet, and don’t keep a gun in the house. It’s that simple.
And yet, in my state, people are allowed to do all 3! Doesn’t stop me from spreading the word that they’re all bad ideas.
You should add not drinking, not having a pool or trampoline in your backyard, and not riding a motorcycle at all because helmets don’t make the risk go away. Should probably stop driving cars too. Should we outlaw all that? I should add that a gun did save my life. My Harley Davidson so far hasn’t.
Who said fuck all about outlawing anything? I’m just talking about public education. But I agree with the trampoline thing and put my foot down on that one. Same with pools, because I have kids. And motorcycles, I won’t buy one even though a lot of my friends ride. Driving is a calculated risk because my life would be much worse (and probably shorter) if I couldn’t earn a living.
Lucky for you he made all that noise. But there are ways for him to slip in silently. Maybe you forget to lock a door or window. Maybe the garage door is obstructed and stays open. Or maybe he makes just a little bit of noise breaking a window and you don’t wake up. If he did make it into your bedroom before you woke up, how would you manage to reach your gun before he shot you? He’s not going to politely stand there and wait for you to get it.
If you had an alarm, likely he would flee as soon as it went off. And if he didn’t, you would certainly wake up.
I agree you should take appropriate precautions, but it sounds like you are relying too heavily on the gun. A gun requires you do something with it to be useful. If you’re away, sleeping, incapacitated, etc. then the gun doesn’t do anything to deter the intruder.
This is the false security you get from guns. You think that since you have a gun, you’re safe. You’re thinking that you’ll always be able to hear the intruder, always be able to get your gun, and always get the jump on the intruder. That’s not the case. The benefit from other systems like alarms and dogs is that they work without you having to do anything or put yourself in harms way. From an overall security standpoint, they may be better since they cause the intruder to flee rather than requiring you to face him down in your bedroom.
If you love science, do you know what anecdotal evidence is worth?
Or do you deny that bullets entering a person’s body will cause it damage?
Not if swallowed! Or introduced as a suppository! Its possible, even likely, that such bullets will simply pass out through the Nixon without any damage whatsoever!
You remain irretrievably stupid on the question of risk and exposure.
I ask again, have you put your home up for sale yet? You know that 1/3 of all accidents occur within one mile of your home. “You have to get out of there!!!”, as Keanu Reeves might tell you.
If my purpose in drinking was to be sober more often, I should not drink.
If my purpose in having a pool was to reduce the risk of drowning, I should not have a pool.
If my purpose in having a trampoline was to reduce the odds of breaking my neck, I should not have a trampoline.
If my purpose in riding a motorcycle was to reduce the odds that I hit highway asphalt at 40 miles an hour, then I should not have a motorcycle.
If my purpose in driving a car was to reduce the odds of dying in a car crash, I should not own a car.
If my purpose in owning a gun is to reduce the odds I die by gunfire, I should not own a gun.
Yeah, those are good. You know what makes them better? A gun.
Yeah, they would have helped, unless they didn’t.
Well, thats what the licensing procedure is for.
Why would you say that? The DOJ does:National Crime Victimization Survey - Wikipedia
I don’t agree with them but the NRA isn’t preventing all studies on gun violence, just ones by the CDC. They don’t have problems with the ones from academia, the DoJ, ATF, whatever, but I understand why they are offended by the apparent lack of neutrality from the CDC on this issue.
Wait, are we talking about an AWB again? Dear Lord, I thought we resolved that an AWB was retarded and it was ignorance that caused the gun control side to support an AWB in the first place. Do we have to go through that argument all over again?
There is NO partial weapons ban that will have ANY effect on gun violence. We had a 10 year old assault weapons ban and it had NO effect on gun violence. The only type of weapons ban that will have that sort of effect is a near total nationwide ban on guns, if we can live through the years of rampant criminal violence.
Thats not the argument. The argument is that that an AWB ban will have ZERO effect on criminal activity. Not in the near term and not even in the mid-long term.
I think part of the problem is that you are operating without the context that there is a second amendment. This doesn’t mean that we can’t do anything to regulate guns but this does mean that you need to have a good reason to regulate guns and that your regulation has to be tailored to accomplish your goal. We have a ten year history with an AWB and it did nothing. Now you want another bite at the apple to try and make the next ban better (assuring us it will make a difference this time), at this point I think that an AWB would be unconstitutional without a congressional study on the efficacy of an assault weapons ban.
No its not. They are targetting one agency, the CDC, I don’t agree with it but I understand why the gun lobby is upset with the CDC’s approach to studying gun violence. The DoJ does studies on gun violence, they don’t like their own results but there you have it.
What research questions are you trying to answer? Because sometimes the question that folks are trying to answer seems to be “why should we ban guns?”
I’m not concerned at all. I don’t think they will ban anything and if they did, I think it would be unconstitutional without a congressional study. I think we will have a marginally effective background check rule implemented at places like gun shows. If they had played their cards right, we might be talking about licensing and registration right now but instead we are talking about a watered down version of watered down background checks that would only apply at places like gun shows.
What a wasted opportunity for sensible gun regulation. Wasted chasing something as retarded as an AWB.
You’re not even going to get your magazine capacity limit because you’ve spent so much political capital on an ineffective and utterly retarded AWB.
Its not that the NRA is all powerful, its that their opponents are just so fucking stupid (tactically and strategically).
It should be an elective. When I was in high school, you could choose between home economics, woodworking, photography, printing, and a bunch of other stuff, I don’t see why gun safety shouldn’t be one of them.
Right, because those table saws are really safe. Gun safety doesn’t require using live rounds. They have these dummy bullets (I forget what they are called but they are orange or red) that people use to demonstrate gun safety in classroom environments, like a CCW class.
Physics and chemistry are pretty important to making guns work.
Like wasting all your political capital on a retarded, ineffective, ill-conceived AWB?
You speak out all you want against gun ownership, just don’t try to pass any laws banning gun ownership before you repeal the second amendment. Complain all you want, I complain about dignifying Fox News as “press” under the first amendment andabout Citizens United all the time but I don’t think we can pass a law against it.
The same can be said for a knife or a nail or axe or whatever. Noone is denying that guns are lethal, if they weren’t, we wouldn’'t want them. We are saying that your skittishness and irrational fear of being around a gun is not sufficient reason to violate the second amendment.
Not afraid of being around guns. I’m afraid of being around irrational people with guns. This includes vast numbers of people that think that owning an AR-15 makes them Rambo.
I find it ironic that the same people that claim that the AR-15 is just a rifle are often the people that buy it because it is intimidating-looking. Scalia cited laws dating to the founding fathers that banned “frightening” weapons when affirming what kinds of laws were on the table for discussion.
So you can’t even name what you’re talking about and why its relevant to the discussion?
You brought it up, maybe you should list why you did specifically. You’re just trying to dodge your horribly inept questioning by covering your ass. Its easy to see what you’re getting at, dropping the word Uzi into the conversation like a pink elephant in the room. Here’s my answer: If the pistol is functionally different than a standard glock or revolver, having the capabilities of higher shooting rates or magazine capacity, then yes, it should be banned. It is not a standard pistol. You should ONLY have standard pistols
I like it fine. I would also add that like cars or booze, there should be an age limit on when one can use a gun, and ownership comes mandatory with licensing, registration, and other regulations. How do you like that idea?
What were you talking about?
You keep saying that as if it was established fact, its not. The AWB had some positives and negatives, the positives being that it began to dry up the supply for the guns on the list, and the negatives being the loopholes and the million types of other guns it didn’t ban. Please don’t keep repeating that the AWB didn’t do anything because it did, maybe not as much as I wanted, and not as much as you dreaded
You brought up the issue about regulations. If you want to get back to the main point instead of going off on a tangent, let’s do so. My point is that it doesn’t matter if there is at first a more severe impact on legal gun ownership when it comes to regulations. Over time, the illegal version will follow due to the disruption in supply. Also, it is perfectly ok with this initial asymmetry in impact, as the law affords you plenty of other options for self defense. If your ultimate claim is that only guns can be used to defend against guns, then that is a circular and pointless argument that I will not entertain. Maybe in that GD thread that I’ll get back to, but not in the Pit
You seem as ignorant on this subject as you were on the issue of crimes committed by CCW people.
Show me how the CDC is biased. Show me where they’ve called for a ban. Show me how they are not academic. Show me where they lack neutrality.
Here’s the mission of the CDC
I guarantee you that gun-strokers don’t like the work of David Hemenway, and he’s at Harvard. Certainly that’s academia, right?
I don’t know anymore, its hard to keep track. I thought we were talking about the notion that legally reducing the NUMBER of guns was a useful goal in itself without regard to WHO had those guns.
It had no discernable effect on gun violence. Reducing the number of a particular type of gun in society is not a benefit if that reduction has NO DISCERNIBLE EFFECT on gun violence, it is merely an imposition.
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And if there is no discernible effect on gun violence, then what have you accomplished other than restrict choice, expended political capital and riled up the gun nuts?
I’m not sure why you make reference to Hemenway. I know who he is and I know which side of the debate he is on (BTW, has the NRA banned research on this issue by Harvard as well? nope, only the CDC). He applies academic rigor to the research he does and reviews and he seems intellectually honest as far as I can tell but he has some policy preferences that all seem to fall on one side of the debate, concern over the rights of gun owners hardly seems like a factor at all as far as he is concerned.
Thank you for all your cites :rolleyes: disproving what I said and I have already said that I don’t think we should stop any sort of research, let the CDC publish what it wants and if there is spin in it, then expose the spin, it will undercut their credibility. When it comes to the NRA argument on the CDC research funding, I have already said that my explanation of their reasons is merely my understanding based on things they have said but here is why I reasonably relied on their explanation.
First of all, the ban on the CDC is NOT a ban on research, its not even a ban on government research. Its a ban on CDC research. The DoJ does research on gun violence without objection.
Second their conclusions are made a bit uncritically so they don’t really inspire confidence that they are neutral. For example they conclude that having a firearm in your home increases the chances of being a victim of gun homocide by 300%. This conclusion is reached without critically reviewing whether the same factor that leads to gun homocides are also the factors that lead to gun ownership (living in a dangerous neighborhood, being a gang member, having a stalker, etc.), it merely sees the correlation and assumes causation.
Here is an interview with the person who was involved with this at the CDC and I would just like to point out this line:
Emphasis added. Gee is 20% correleation would be enough to ban a drug, why wouldn’t a 500% correlation be enough to ban guns?
The CDC is also focused on saving lives rather than reducing violence or crime or giving very much weight to crimes deterred or prevented. Because so many successful suicides are accomplished with firearms it is very easy to reach the conclusion that any reduction in firearms is a good thing even if it is only a reduction among law abiding citizens. They reinforce this with the correlation between gun ownership and gun murders and they just want to get rid of guns in society without looking any further. I understand their perspective, I have several friends at the CDC and they are all doctors, they all think the lethality of guns make them inherently unacceptable risks.
I think CDC research can be useful but I understand why the NRA is skeptical of them.