Gentlemen! Howyadoin, Freedom, ExTank, Spoofe, tracer…I was just thinking the other day that we’ve been pretty dry on gun debates lately.
I don’t have time right now to really sink my teeth into this mostly excellent discussion, but in the meantime I’ll just say this:
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by SPOOFE *
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…not to mention the fact that for about $75 worth of tools and materials at wal-mart, you can make a gun. There is no way to utterly disarm people, and we need to accept it. Where traditional weapons are restricted, violence with other kinds of weapons increases, as several people already stated (think Japan/Okinawa in the middle ages. The Okinawans weren’t allowed swords or lances, so they learned and perfected a style of empty-handed combat and became even more dangerous than they were before).
Ignore him, jcmckaig. minty green is evidently humor impaired, and humor is wasted on him.
minty, we talked about this before. It’s IRONY. It’s a JOKE. It’s obviously a ridiculous claim, used to point out the stupidity of the argument it appears to be countering. It’s really not that complicated. You are college educated, yes? So why is this so difficult for you? Just let it go already!
It’s not funny, Joe. It’s b.s. pro-gun propaganda that is intended to be persuasive, not just ironic. Problem is, it’s not even remotely persuasive if you consider blatant omissions of fact, and it ought not to be taken seriously in any reasonable discussion of the subject.
And Freedom, I find your “love fest” comment very funny, in light of your earlier comments that most gun control advocates are incapable of rational thought. You may remember the terms “EMOTIONAL RESPONSE” and “knee-jerk,” yes? Heaven forbid that anybody could actually come to a well-reasoned and intellectually honest position in favor of gun control.
When you read jcmckaig’s the statistic of course you immediately think of how silly it is to tally deaths caused by doctor mistakes without tallying lives saved by doctors. This is not a flaw in the statistic. It is the main point of it. It is just as silly to tally those killed by someone using a gun without tallying lives saved by people using guns, and lives saved by the deterrent effect of gun ownership. It is not propaganda and it is based in logic–not emotion–unless you really think the last line about banning doctors is serious.
sail:Civilians use guns to prevent over 2 million crimes a year. That is a very conservative estimate from multiple independent studies by pro-gun, anti-gun, and neutral academic researches. These studies have elaborate procedures to avoid over counting. No study has refuted these findings.
Hmm, I’d like some evidence to back up this claim. We’ve been over this “DGU (defensive gun use) issue” several times on previous gun control threads, and while the state of the research is definitely still hazy, I think your 2 million number is way over on the high end of the estimates. As this 1997 analysis points out, the estimates for annual DGUs range from as high as 2.55 million according to studies by gun-liberalization advocates, to as low as 55 thousand according to studies by their opponents. Some of the objections to the high-end estimates detailed in the linked article are:
The studies that produced them are vulnerable to over-counting of incidents (which contradicts sail’s claim, unless s/he is talking about other studies more recent than 1997, in which case it would be good to get a cite for them).
The “prevented crimes” that they claim to document aren’t verified in any way except by the bare assertion of the gun user. That is, jamming a pistol into the face of a knife-wielding rapist and waving your gun out the window at a shadow you think might be a trespasser both count as “prevented crimes” in these studies if you report them as such.
As the article notes, “there is a significant amount of sampling error around the direct DGU estimates.”
The article also points out flaws in the low-end estimates, btw. It concludes that the quality of the data simply isn’t good enough to make an accurate assessment of how many and what kind of crimes DGU actually prevents—not even within an order of magnitude. So while it’s certainly accurate to say that defensive gun use prevents some crimes, it’s not true to say that we have a reliable estimate of their number. Or if you have information about new studies that have settled that question conclusively, I’d like to see cites.
I think that the big grin smiley at the end of jcmckaig’s post shows that he didn’t intend it to be taken seriously. Having said my piece, I shall now step out of the crossfire.
SPOOFE: either you’re slipping or my college education is doing something funny to my brain.
Am I missing option C? That certain criminal elements may simply shoot from ambush and rob the dead? While I don’t believe that it would be a prevalent “displacement,” I’m sure that some (more than curently are) would attempt it, so I also feel that it must be considered.
Minty: while I can appreciate that you don’t appreciate the little statistical hyperbole posted above, your reaction is precisely what those of us with a dog in this fight feel when we hear the infamous “43 times” statistic, so thoughtfully provided us by the good Dr. Kellerman, and generously harped upon by Sarah Brady and trundled out for public consumption every now and then on the 6 o’clock news. Even though it has been so thoroughly trashed by the academic community that it’s a wonder Dr. Kellerman can even bear to show his face in public.
At least ours is a joke, and not meant to be taken seriously, or at least not as an actual statistic.
Kimstu: even the low-end 55,000 still out-numbers the C.D.C.'s 31,000 (roughly 60% of which are suicides, and I’ve fairly well debunked the gun ownership/suicide correlation before, as well) firearm deaths for 1998 (latest hard numbers available as of the last time I checked their website).
But regardless of numbers, speaking strictly from a moral/philosophical standpoint, if even one person prevented or deterred a violent crime with a gun, it would still be all plus. You see, no one has a right to use force upon another person for personal gain, while everyone has a right to use force in defense of themselves or another to prevent a person from using force for personal gain.
The calcualted deprivation of the means to apply force in defense of self or another is even less moral than using force for personal gain.
ET:The calcualted deprivation of the means to apply force in defense of self or another is even less moral than using force for personal gain.
I see your point, but that doesn’t take into account the possibility that such deprivation on a large enough scale can reduce everybody’s need to apply force in defense. For example, we might claim that it’s immoral to deny private citizens the means to defend themselves with tactical nukes. But instead, we prefer to deprive them of tactical nukes across the board so that nobody actually needs that level of force to defend themselves or others.
In other words, before concluding that it’s immoral to restrict gun ownership in any particular way, we have to be able to assess whether that restriction will reduce the threat of illegal force from others enough to result in less need for guns in self-defense.
As far as I can tell, nobody has been able to make a really convincing statistical argument in either direction for any realistic proposed policy change. That is, most of us are probably agreed on the extreme cases: i.e., depriving citizens of all privately owned guns outright would most likely increase their danger, so it would be immoral; on the other hand, depriving citizens of mortars or anti-aircraft guns most likely makes them safer overall, so it’s not immoral. But it’s very hard to get a reliable analysis of the consequences of less extreme instances of gun legislation.
Kimstu, I should not have said 2 million but rather that estimates of defensive gun use (DGU) range from 760,000 to 3.6 million. I apologize for being sloppy. Thank you for correcting me. Here is a source for you:
Gary Kleck is as neutral on gun control as a researcher can be. He started out in favor gun control but his research has led him to a more neutral stance while he remains liberal politically on other issues.
You state that the Tom Smith article you cite “also points out flaws in the low-end estimates”.
That is an understatement. From your cited article: “Second, the NCVSs do not directly inquire about DGUs.” It only counts people who happen to mention on their own that they used a gun defensively. So the 55,000 to 80,000 number is meaningless and is not an estimate of DGUs.
This is true. However, I am working under the assumption that most criminals are aware that murder is a much more serious crime than simple highway robbery, and as such they would prefer to keep a corpse out of their dealings as much as possible. It becomes a bit more of a hassle, and, I believe, criminals generally like to avoid hassle (except for the few that are in it for “sport”… :D).
I think that the whole “ambush” thing wouldn’t be that huge of a factor. Too much trouble for not enough guaranteed gain.
Tejota…
No, but there are some that want measures that could lead to that. While their intentions are good, their opponents fear that their proposed measures would have the side effects as described by SenorBeef.
Ehm - I kinda grew up in a gun-free society (Denmark), and I don’t really recall that as especially brutal. Perhaps there are other factors in play ?
S. Norman
Spiny, I’m sorry to say that you did not grow up in a gun-free society. (unless you are older than I think you are;))
You can’t rule out the benefit you receive from guns other people have. You can’t live next to a police station, and claim that that you never needed a gun, so no one else does.
I’m willing to bet that the police in Denmark have guns. Then I’m willing to bet that military has guns.
Then I’m willing to bet that Denmark exists in a world with allies that also have guns.
For me personally, all these gun-free country utopia stories have one large gaping hole.
America.
Ok, so I’m about to get a little Amero-centric here, so brace yourself. Let’s forget about crime for a second and just focus on keeping people free and preserving human rights. If the whole friggin world eliminated private ownership of guns, and then turned around and laughed at America because we were obviously so backwards for not recognizing that we could be free without keeping our citizens armed, I still wouldn’t be convinced.
America is a huge stabilizing force in the world, and many things are able to happen in other countries that wouldn’t be possible if America didn’t exist. For example, I don’t remember Denmark having a nuclear arsenal, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t need one to be safe back in the 60’s. America can not act under the assumption that it is a normal run of the mill country, for America is currently the foundation for the whole house of cards.
So to try and tie all that together…
You didn’t grow up in a gun free society, you grew up in a gun-sparce zone within a society protected by guns. That society protects itself from outside forces with guns, and the whole system is currently kept together by one big guy with a whole bunch of guns.
Somehow, I don’t think police and armies were exactly what Norm was talking about, Freedom. I’d also comment that your quip about not believing gun control could ever work even if every other country in the world adopted it with glowing success says much about your inability to even consider contrary data.
Freedom - I believe the quote did mention the police as being armed.
Of course the Danish police and military have guns. (As have hunters and active target shooters, btw.) I kept a military-issue gun in my own home for well over a decade - I’m not naive as to the necessity of defending one’s nation and its laws. What I’m saying is that the populace is unarmed. If you see a gun in public, you call the police.
(And I wouldn’t dream of bashing the US for whatever gun laws you wish to pass or not pass. You know your society better than I do.)
What I wanted to point out is that there’s not a cause-and-effect relationship between a (practically speaking) unarmed populace and a brutal society.
Minty, I am having trouble finding where Freedom said “glowing success”. What do you mean by this term? (1)Sucess in removing the guns, or (2) success in reducing crime by removing the guns?
