We’ve been missing it, and it sounds like it’s been a phenomenal success.
- In Raleigh, NC, three people, including a sheriff’s deputy, were wounded when a shotgun gun accidentally discharged at the show’s safety check-in booth.
- In Medina, OH, a gun dealer was checking out a semi-automatic pistol he had just bought shooting an old friend if his in the leg and arm.
- In Indianapolis, IN, a man was loading .45 he had just purchased when ha accidentally shot himself in the hand.
- In Tupelo, MI, an accidental discharge grazed one man and injured a four year-old child with bullet fragments after hitting a wall.
- In Marietta, GA, an man was shot in the ankle by a friend who was showing it to a third person.
Maybe if we made it Gun Appreciation Month these idiots would end up exterminating themselves. Although I’m afraid they’d probably end up taking out a few innocent bystanders, like that four year old.
Poor four-year-old.
So sad.
If only it had been armed.
If only there’d been some armed bystanders around to shoot the gun owners before they’d had a chance to hurt anyone.
There’s a postscript with a slight correction at the end of the article. The writer says the last two bulleted items did not happen today.
Doesn’t change the point.
I’ve been thinking it would be good if Dick “Shot His Hunting Partner in the Face” Cheney was to come out on the issue. Good for Jon Stewart, anyway.
With self-defense like that, the police state will have nothing to do when Obama’s dictatorship comes: They need only distribute more weapons so people can shoot themselves. Uncanny plan.
Yeah – it kind of makes the point even more, that he was searching for gun accidents at gun shows this weekend and came upon some at other recent gun shows.
Apologies for not even being remotely close to on-topic (and double-apologies if it’s already found its way into the comment section on this blog), but here’s a thing: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-god-we-trust-money-and-under-god-our-money/5XlmzXGm
I feel like it would be worth it simply to hear the Obama press team’s response, especially after this guy: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/addressing-freedoms-speech-and-religion. How would the team end up carefully crafting the response so that the fact that it completely ignores the Establishment Clause is least noticeable?
For every truly “responsible” gun owner out there, there are *hundreds* of asshats who have no business owning a gun. And they wonder why we do not believe them when they say the answer is “more guns!”
Speaking of off-topic: Only a few more days left before the expiration of my “We the People” petition supporting the right of citizens to keep and bear SWORDS!
Enhance Public Safety By Allowing All American Adults to Carry Razor-Edged Crime-Preventing Swords in All Public Places
Though the NRA defends the 2nd Amendment right of all Americans to keep and bear firearms, they fail to support the more ancient right of citizens to protect loved ones with ready arm and naked blade.
Therefore, we petition the Obama Administration and Congress to pass a federal law allowing all peace-loving adults to carry razor-edge bladed weapons in all public places, to include but not limited to the broadsword, cutlass, katana, claymore, foil, epee, rapier, saber, scimitar, bayonet, machete, kris, switchblade, throwing knife, dagger, sickle, skewer and rib-tickler.
Further, we implore the White House to institute classes not only in swordplay and short-blade infighting, but in witty repartee and swinging from chandeliers while battling miscreants who threaten the public safety.
http://wh.gov/QaDu
Thank you for the link, but I need to let you all know that I made a mistake. The last two didn’t happen this week. I should have checked the dates on the news pieces I used. This especially embarrassing because I regularly give people grief for just that.
As every firearms instructor I’ve ever had has said…
There are no accidental discharges. There are only negligent discharges.
Every example in the OP wouldn’t have happened if range safety rules were being followed. OOPS, there goes concealed carry, the real violation of range safety rules, and an enabler of unsafe practices.
Not to pick nits, but I’m pretty sure Tupelo is in Mississippi, not Michigan.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled comments.
“As every firearms instructor I’ve ever had has said…
There are no accidental discharges. There are only negligent discharges.”
You can add to the list one more instructor who says that.
Members of our well-regulated militia, folks.
Speaking as an old gun owner and hunter, people like that piss me off enough to want their weapons confiscated. The degree of utter carelessness is nothing short of epic and should never be excused with the phrase “it was an accident”.
Dick “Shot His Hunting Partner in the Face” Cheney
He was just trying to be like his hero, Napoleon Bonaparte, who shot out Marshal Massena’s eye on a hunting trip. Those crazy right wing wingnuts, they’re such cut-ups!
With you on that one, but then I feel the same way about the people who injure over 4 million others every year on our country’s roads.
There is no excuse for ignorance, incompetence or recklessness.
ps. Whoever came up with “gun appreciation day” is a cretinous imbecile as well.
Sounds like something from the ONION!
Remember Lake Wobegon! All gun owners are above average in responsibility.
Gun owners and their families are in greater danger with the guns than they would be without.
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_9747969
When I learned basic firearm safety (back when the earth was cooling), I had two things drummed into my 12-year-old brain:
* Rule number one, the gun is always loaded.
* Rule number two, don’t point it at anything you don’t plan to shoot.
I agree with those who say these dumbasses should have their permits and firearms confiscated.
In Medina, OH, a gun dealer was checking out a semi-automatic pistol he had just bought shooting an old friend if his in the leg and arm.
What, once wasn’t enough, so he drilled him again to be sure?
In Indianapolis, IN, a man was loading .45 he had just purchased when ha accidentally shot himself in the hand.
Is it that hard to remember which end the lead thingies come out of?
Seconding anyone who say these gomers deserve to lose their guns. For the safety of everyone around them, maybe their cars and any power tools they have, too.
Apparently you’re forgettingRule number 2 :)
ps. Is the “preview” button colossally fucked up for anyone else using Chrome or have I ballsed up a setting somewhere?
Nah, it’s cool. I have a probably-former friend who assures me that cases like the four year old are “Darwinism in action.”
*spits*
I’m a once (and maybe future) gun owner… most gun owners are apparently idiots.
Yeah, I count myself apart. I’m a former Marine, and I did a little marksmanship coaching while I was on active duty. So I trust myself around firearms because I’m sort of probably a little overly careful around firearms, even the ones I’ve owned. And while I don’t agree with what some people like Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls call “responsible” behavior, I know they are coming from a good, ignorant, mostly untrained and very privileged place. The problem is that the NRA and the gun nuts are also coming from an ignorant, mostly untrained and very privileged place and from the other direction.
While neither version of things is realistic, I’d be much more happy to live in Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls‘s world than the NRA’s version. One is focused on keeping the most people safe, and the other is focused on being able to hurt other people as efficiently as possible.
Two words:
Monty Python
illdoittomorrow @22,
Meanwhile, authorities in Ohio said a gun dealer in Medina was checking out a semi-automatic handgun he had bought when he accidentally pulled the trigger, injuring his friend. The gun’s magazine had been removed from the firearm but one round remained in the chamber, police said.
Police Chief Pat Berarducci said it appears the bullet struck the floor and the man was wounded in the arm and leg. Berarducci said the man was taken by helicopter to a Cleveland hospital. His condition was not immediately known.
Read more: Vancouver Sun article.
This needs an update, the last two events were not ‘gun appreciation’ events
Unfortunately, even if incomplete, this list is pretty average for any day in the US. There is an an average of 11 gun homicides every day in the USA. Gun injuries are likely much higher and gun owners doing stupid things just isn’t news.
Okay, FTB, be that way:
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Accidental+shootings+shows+leave+five+injured/7845189/story.html#ixzz2IV3W7k8T
http://shootfromthelefthip.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/three-shot-in-gun-show-accident/
I found this blog that was written after the NC incident but before the other two. He writes of several other similar incidents in the last two years. It seems that these accidents are typical so three in one day are statistically expected considering the scale of Gun Appreciation Day.
The solution to every problem for gun nuts is more guns everywhere but the gun show organizers don’t allow personal weapons at many shows.
Where is the ignorance, and what is it that you don’t agree with?
quidam
You can actually check those numbers on WISQARS at the CDC site.
Accidental shootings are actually pretty rare (most firearms deaths/injuries are deliberate, whether it be murder or suicide), with only around 600 deaths per year. They also reckon there’s only around 14,500 accidental firearms injuries per year.
I say only, because according to WISQARS, traffic accidents account for roughly 12,000 injuries PER DAY, some 4.2 million per year (when you factor in pedestrians, cyclists & “other” to motor vehicle occupants), along with over 37,000 fatalities.
Assuming the numbers on WISQARS are to be believed (and if anyone knows different, I’m all ears), the total number of people killed or seriously injured by firearms per year (excluding suicides, which is a whole other issue) is around 100,000 (~10,000 murders, ~70,000 attempted murder/other violence, ~15,000 accidents), whereas the number of people killed or seriously injured on the road is something like 4.3 million.
Of course, this is largely unsurprising given that most of the 70-80 million gun owners in this country don’t generally start shooting at random people on any given day, but you’re exposed to hundreds of possible imbeciles any time you drive anywhere.
Better testing and training would help immensely in both of these, the UK traffic fatality rate is, for example, roughly a quarter that of the US (1970 people were killed on UK roads in 2011, even adjusted for the population that’s still under 10,000).
The US driving test is a joke, just like (the complete lack of) US firearms training, but I don’t see anyone passing ill conceived midnight legislation to make the driving test harder, even though that would save countless more lives, prevent HUGE numbers of injuries and wouldn’t face a constitutional battle.
Why not?
Is killing or injuring 4.5 million people a year perfectly OK simply because we don’t want to take the bus or learn to drive properly?
…because traffic has a purpose, and we therefore have a reason to tolerate the injuries caused by it. Whereas guns for anyone who isn’t a hunter or a professional killer are just very dangerous toys.
You’re welcome.
(Not that I wouldn’t be in favour of legislation to promote better road safety. The two cases are just not comparable at all.)
Why don’t the gun nuts share a day with the napalm appreciation dickwads?
I think they appreciate the fact “gun” is very easy to spell. And say.
It’s ironic to note that gun shows require weapons to be unloaded for ‘safety’.
This ties in with a moonbattery (dot com, I hesitate to link to this right wingnuttery site, but it’s the post labelled “Gun-Owners Outed by Journal News Hit by Burglars”) post that with a sublime lack of self awareness, demonstrates that guns do not protect you from burglars, rather they make you a target.
So even lunatic NRA right wingnuts realize that
a) lots of loaded guns make you less safe
b) having guns in the house does not protect you from burglary – they make you a target
Of course you can still use your gun to oppose an
elected government you don’t liketyrannical dictatorship, but I find it interesting how many mass shootings are ended when the gunman’s (consumer grade) gun jams. I wonder how long they would last when the military comes knocking?To be fair, if guns were illegal, these people are dumb enough to kill themselves with a butter knife. Some even with a butter sandwich.
Fortunately, accidentally stabbing and killing somebody else with a butter knife would probably be next to impossible. Not to mention butter knife stabbing sprees.
So…what was that poopular little ditty about “Guns don’t kill people…”
They may have to attribute the rest to ‘responsible’ owners as well as idiot enthusiasts, or accept that loaded firearms are devices specifically primed to discharge and can do so by accident regardless of intent or diligence.
Zeppelin
If we’re going to reduce them to the level of a dangerous toy (and I do agree, guns ARE dangerous toys), then so are sports cars, motorcycles, SUVs and above all, alcohol; none of which have a valid reason for ownership or use beyond recreation (ok, motorcycles have some benefit in California, which allows lane splitting, but there’s almost nothing constructive you can do with an SUV that you can’t do with a station wagon or minivan) and all of which can put other people at risk if abused or even used without sufficient training.
Speaking of which, one thing I have noticed (I’m British) is that Americans just don’t seem to believe in training and testing, at all – there’s no real safety or proficiency testing for firearms (like there is in EVERY other industrialized country that allows them – which is all of them, incidentally) or motorcycles and as I stated, the driving test really is a joke – crank up the training and testing requirements on all of these things and the death rate for all of them will drop to the same level as every other country.
In most parts of Europe (or Canada), if you want to own a gun, recreation (as in sport/target shooting) is still considered a perfectly valid reason to own one, including handguns, but you have a bunch of hoops to jump through.
Curiously, self defense is almost never considered a valid reason to own a gun there, but it’s the only legally protected reason to own one here.
I’m completely in favor of more hoops, but apart from better background checks, nobody seems to be pushing for that here, it’s all a case of “what do we have to ban to stop this?” and the answer is nothing; There’s nothing we can ban (and certainly no regulation being proposed) that would curb our high murder rate or even prevent mass shootings (there was a guy in the UK in 2010 who killed 12 people and injured another 11 and he was only armed with a double barreled shotgun and a 5 shot 22 caliber bolt action rifle, the Virginia Tech shooter was armed only with handguns and a ban of those isn’t on the cards).
Banning high capacity magazines and semi automatic rifles will have absolutely no effect, just like it did last time, it isn’t even “a start” or “better than nothing”, because by the time both of those have been pushed through, nobody will have the political capital to do anything else.
The only way to fix both is to change attitudes towards guns, which as far as I’m concerned is grounded entirely in education, but again, nobody as far as I can tell is proposing anything that will do that.
quidam
I’m not sure about that (not that I buy the armed insurrection argument in favor of gun ownership either).
Most mass shootings I can think of end when the shooter commits suicide or gets shot by a police officer.
The only ones I can think of in recent memory where that wasn’t the case was Aurora (where the rifle did jam, but the shotgun & handguns didn’t) and Tucson, where the shooter was only equipped with a single handgun (which is unusual for a mass shooter) and dropped the magazine during his first reload, but neither was ended by a malfunction.
In addition to age restrictions and a written and practical driving exam as barriers to entry, we also have police stationed in every city in the US monitoring drivers, spot-checking them for regulation compliance, and regularly issuing tickets for reckless behavior. Think the NRA would approve of having gun users continually monitored in that fashion?
So much nonsense spewed: gun owners, stupid … gun owners, irresponsible … guns have no legitimate purpose other than hunting … the typical left-leaning screed.
Meet Sam Harris: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-riddle-of-the-gun
brianrookard:
Are you arguing that the gun owners cited above are responsible?
Also, Sam Harris’ article has already been dismantled. Repeatedly.
You are a bit late. This has already been discussed and Harris’s flawed arguements dismissed. You know this, so please explain your stupidity.
Any gun owners not following range safety rules regularly are irresponsible.
And any gun-owner who “accidentally” shoots someone is also irresponsible. They are not really accidents, hence the inverted commas.
I’ve read those articles and Sam Harris was not “dismantled.” More like “we talked to people we agree with that guns are bad and we can’t figure out why Sam Harris would say such dastardly things.” The typical echo chamber. So, when you or someone you love is being attacked by an intruder with a gun … you would rather call someone with a gun (the police) to take out the intruder with the gun, rather than have a gun to defend yourself if necessary. What’s wrong with that picture?
As to the accidents – so what do you suggest we do to deal with the accidents?
They are not accidents. They are the result of negligence. They would only be accidents if somehow the gun loaded, and somehow any safety catch was releases. and somehow the gun happened to get pointed at someone, and then somehow the trigger happened to get pulled.
If you think all that happens by chance you a fucking idiot.
And please, cut out that crap about guns being useful for self-defence. It demeans you when you make it, since it means you are ignorant and dishonest.
So the question stands. Explain why you linked to Harris when you know (or should know) his article is bullshit.
Oh, and you need to explain how a gun can be useful in dealing with an intruder. You must explain how you get the intruder to stand around waiting whilst you unlock your gun cabinet, assemble the gun, unlock the ammunition cabinet and then load. Unless you are willing to admit you think keeping a loaded gun unsecured in the home is a good idea. But if you do that, you know you will be admitting to promoting irresponsible behaviour.
Hank Fox @ #8, those people carrying the scimitars would be Muslims won’t they? Good.
DUH. Follow range safety rules. The gun and ammo are not united until the firearm is ready to be fired at something in the near future. DUH.
Shorter brianrookard: bet you didn’t see this one coming i give you sam harris CHECKMATE commie bastards
@44 brianrookard, very typical, VERY TYPICAL argument of the lost. Cherry picked example, sweeping generalization(applying a specific incidence to draw a very general principle), and complete avoidance of empirical data. What else is new.
kyoseki 20 January 2013 at 3:20 am
I’ve just read that the number of deaths from guns and from cars are approximately equal at around >30,000 per year.
I’m also thinking that although the number of accidental injuries from gun use is much less than cars, the severity of gun accidents is much greater. I’ll check, but I wonder how many auto accidents result in whiplash claims (being hit from behind at 5 mph, for instance) and other boo-boos.
I would also like to compare the time spent driving compared to the time spent handling and using guns. It’s hard to find recent data, but from trikipedia, I got this:
Overall, there were an estimated 254.4 million registered passenger vehicles in the United States according to a 2007 DOT study, and estimates of over 60M unregistered. And yes, there are a lot of incompetent drivers, I think everyone will agree(no fucking kidding, mikmik).
This, from Harvard Firearms Research: We analyzed a national representative household telephone survey of over 2750 adults conducted in 2004. We found that 38% of households (45% of men and 11% of women) reported owning at least one firearm. Almost half (48%) of gun owners report owning four or more guns with a few possessing large numbers of guns; 64% of gun owners own at least one handgun. Gun ownership remains widespread, but a smaller percentage of gun owners possess an increasing percentage of the gun stock.
This is a wicked good site for stats on guns, giving The estimated total number of guns held by civilians in the United States is 270,000,000
Rate of All Gun Deaths per 100,000 People: 2011: 10.3
.
triki-pedia: Road fatalities per capita (fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants per year): 12-15.5
Rate of deaths, guns/autos = 10.3/13.75 = .75, so gun deaths per capita is lower, by ~ 30%. Also, I think a majority are gang related:
(wiki-thingia)
Fuck, this is long already ;)
Ok, fatal/ nonfatal crash injuries autos: 0.6/27.6
Guns
wish I would have found that effin link first!
So Matt, the next time the intruder comes into your house, you tell him to wait while you call the police to come and protect you. Who’s the idiot?
And also, cut out that crap about guns not being useful for self-defence. It demeans you when you make it, since it means you are ignorant and dishonest. I can do that too. See how easy it was to end the argument.
If you’re so confident of your position, and you’re such a gun control freak, then you should be more than willing to put up a sign on your front yard telling everyone that your home is a gun free zone. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wt1Zy_ASNyA
You are disagreeing with Sam Harris too … so he must be an idiot as well and he is “ignorant and dishonest.”
80,000,000 gun owners in this country … there are something like over 20,000 non-fatal gun accident per year … that’s 79,980,000 owners who owned guns without any accident. The facts are not with you.
This is a slightly edited version of a post I left at ‘En Tequilla…’ last night; I just thought it was pertinent here too.
I was thinking about guns last night while being walked by The Dog, or more accurately, ambling through eight inches of crisp snow carpeting the ancient oak coppice while The Dog did his own thing, which was basically ploughing through the snow (literally; he’s only 7″ high at the shoulder!) to investigate every smell and every patch of undergrowth. Anyway, I was initially pondering the problem of privately owned guns in the USA, and my train of thought led me to realise the those guns are as redundant today as the gods, and for pretty much the same reason.
The gods were used almost from their conception by humans as tools of control over the masses; as a way of keeping order; and as a means to concentrate a lot of power in just a few people.
Oh, and to explain how everything works.
Nowdays we have the police and legal systems and national – and international armies to control the population and keep order, and governments to concentrate power.
Oh, and science for the rest.
Which makes gods pretty redundant, because the jobs they were dreamt up to fill are no longer theirs. Humankind has reclaimed control of itself from its own creation, leaving it twiddling its metaphorical thumbs. We do have to be watchful for its death-throes, though, it won’t go quietly and will continue to mete out misery at every oppotunity.
So where do guns tie in?
The reason that Americans were granted the right to bear arms was largely because the Government of the time needed a well-armed militia to boost its own armies – so many having been killed in the Civil War and many more ‘draftees’ returning to their previous occupations (yes there’s more reasons, but who’s got time to go into them all when the conclusion will be the same?). None of that applies any more; America has a huge military to protect its borders (and those of its oil-producing friends; but I digress) and heavily armed county, state and federal police forces, private security companies, and federal agencies to protect its citizens, so negating the need for a militia, and therefore rendering privately-owned firearms practically redundant. Sadly, just as with religion, guns won’t go quietly, “cuz yer gub’mint asswipe’s gunna have ta tek mah gun from mah cold dead fingers”.
Or in other words, guns and gods have run their course; they’ve far outlived their usefulness and are now simply dangerous, seemingly intent on hindering our progress.
So they have to go. The sooner the better.
Ah, I didn’t see this one before I posted:
And the alternative is to ask him to wait while you nip to the gun locker to fetch your gun? Or is it the norm (and, more importantly, is it legal) for Mr and Mrs J.Q. Public to keep loaded, unsecured guns around the house? Because that really doesn’t sound safe to me. Just saying, that’s all.
Acolyte, Americans were not “granted” the right to bear arms, you have the inherent right to defend yourself.
That would be like saying the first amendment “grants” you the right to free speech, which will be revoked should we revoke the first amendment.
The bill of rights was a declaration of your rights, not a granting of rights which can be revoked at whim.
So, leftists are fine relying on the police and the police and army will be there to protect you. They can never be abusive. Ok.
Acolyte, not all households have children, and some keep their guns in the nightstand drawer, ready for use – and so it’s possible to have the weapon available for use, and not be irresponsible.. There’s also a quick opening small safe that can be placed nearby and which takes seconds to open.
And while we’re tossing around facts, you threw out 31,000 gun deaths, but only 11,000’ish are actual homicides. Of those homicides, roughly HALF are black-on-black shooting deaths. Since blacks are some 12-13% of the population, when you run the numbers that means a murder rate of somewhere around 16 per hundred thousand (looking at different sets of numbers I came up with 14-17). That is compared to the rest of the population which calculates out to 2 or less than 2 per 100,000. That means that the black community has a murder rate that is 7 to 8 times the rest of the population. It appears that the focus should be on solving the high homicide rates in our urban areas. But that undermines the gun control case because many of these urban areas have very strict gun control laws.
It would be interesting to know what the actual number of accidental/negligent discharges are in the US. A large number, perhaps most, presumably go unreported because no one is harmed, and they occur in circumstances where law enforcement doesn’t get involved.
no you don’t have an inherent right to defend yourself. For many that’s called resisting arrest
also the next time someone breaks in!? What shit hole war zone are you living in where this happens regularly
@ Ing: I live in the Detroit region – you know, that hotbed of democrats and liberals who like to shoot the place up and kill each other … thanks for asking.
Ing, if your home is a gun free zone, I’m sure you’ll be more than happy to announce that fact and that any mo-fo’s who come to your home to rob you will be dealt with hand-to-hand, ninja style. Let me know how that works out for you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=wt1Zy_ASNyA
@Brian
Thanks for that threat
odd how places with less guns but better police and less poverty are safer than Detroit
A self-defense argument is disingenuous at best – it doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Armed home invasion with residents in the home are extremely rare. Burglars want your stuff, not a confrontation. They hit the homes that present the fewest obstacles. If you want to protect your home, a security system, or better yet, a dog, offer much greater defense by prevention. A gun in the home is just an additional target for theft, making the home MORE likely to be robbed.
If you’re talking about self-defense from being attacked on the street, the justification for carrying an loaded weapon for effective self-defense similarly does not hold up under scrutiny. If someone is aiming a gun at you with the intent to do harm, reaching for your own weapon just gets you shot first. Reaching for a weapon under any circumstances in the presence of law enforcement, same bad end. If you think you’re going to protect others from a mass shooting, such as we have been seeing with increasing regularity, note that none thus far have been stopped in this way. In fact, it just greatly increases the odds of bystanders getting hurt/killed as well as anyone doing the shooting.
Nope, the self-defense justification is a no go. Why not just admit that you like your guns?
You are, if you keep a loaded gun lying around. It seems that responsible gun ownership is not something you practice.
Call me cowardly but in case if break in I’m taking dog and fleeing. Not willing to risk harm or killing someone over my tv
Hee hee. Oh, this one’s clever.
Yep.
Plus fleeing best case to protect self from harm and criminal investigation.
Harris has a history of paranoid aggression masked as rationality
Well what do we have so far, re brianrookard ?
It seems he is not a responsible gun owner. He also does not seem to be concerned about evidence, in that he should know that the self-defence argument for gun-ownership fails when you take into account guns kept for that purpose being used to kill someone who is a member of the household, and in deaths caused by negligence. He should know, and has no excuse for not knowing, which amounts to intellectual dishonesty. He he also seems unaware around 70% of all guns held illegally were stolen from people who owned them legally. Keeping a gun securely locked away makes it much harder to steal, whereas leaving one loaded and lying around ….
In short, a typical conservative.
It is.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/8yearold-accidentally-exercises-second-amendment-r,725/
We have yet another mass family murder tragedy unfolding in Albuquerque.
Guns sure kept that family protected, didn’t they.
You are disagreeing with Sam Harris too … so he must be an idiot as well and he is “ignorant and dishonest.”
Yeap, and not for the first time.
That is one point I think I’ll reiterate. From what I’ve seen, the dominant gun culture is one of irresponsibility.
Another point PZ made in an earlier post I think is worth repeating: If you’re in a situation where you need a gun to defend yourself, you’ve already lost the battle for home safety.
I want more and better lines of defense. I want barriers that prevent would-be criminals from getting guns in the first place. I want laws that promote safety and self-control before you can carry a gun, since it’s not so easy to tell who’s going to turn arguments into shootings. I want the police to be on a crook’s trail for an illegal gun purchase before the murder attempt takes place. I want to deter gun violence by making it logistically difficult and expensive, not just tactically risky.
I once heard of a guy who kept a loaded handgun on his nightstand for self defense.
One night, the phone rang while he was asleep. He woke up, fumbled around on his nightstand, grabbed what he thought was the phone, and shot himself in the head when he tried to answer. It’s in the Darwin Awards.
In Sam Harris’ FAQ on guns, he gives an example of a man who shook another man’s hand, pulled him in, and stabbed him.
WHAT USE WOULD A GUN HAVE BEEN?!
Indeed. That’s the thing, no matter what the scenario, a gun is way down on the list of effective self-defense. If someone is REALLY concerned about self-defense, the first thing to do is avoid the need for it. The second is to train in martial arts or good self-defense course to know what to do if you’re attacked. A gun almost always puts you in greater danger, if for no other reason than to give you a very false sense of security.
Apparently Quickdraw McGraw Cowboy style is inherently less ridiculous than “ninja style”. Obviously. Because you keep a loaded gun readily available in your house in order to keep yourself safe when your house is invaded by dangerous people who can ONLY be dealt with by killing them before they kill you. I mean, obviously, Murderous Intruders is a far more of a dangerous risk factor in one’s life than a loaded gun on one’s bedside table.
I believe that holding a Gun gives a Gunwielder the ability to infallibly detect dangerous Bad Guys. Like a paladin’s Detect Evil ability. Ironic tidbit: The biggest indicator that someone is a dangerous Bad Guy, according to Gunwielders and Gunwielder Lovers, is if they are wielding a Gun. Obviously, the Gunwielders telling you this are the exception to this vital, unbreakable rule.
carlie
There are already age restrictions on firearms ownership, you have to be 18 to own a long gun and 21 to own a handgun (I think you can be given a long gun by a family member earlier, but I could be wrong on that point).
I would personally go a little further than this and mandate that someone have a history of owning less powerful weapons before they can own the more powerful ones – say you have to own a pump action shotgun or bolt action rifle (both of which should be limited to fixed magazines so they can’t be reloaded quickly) for a year before you can own a handgun and you have to have owned handguns for a couple of years before you get to own semi automatic rifles, but I think this will be a hard sell.
We already have mandatory education and spot checks on hunters (ie. people who specifically carry firearms in public) for compliance so I don’t see why mandatory education for all firearms owners is such a problem (and the police will already “issue tickets” – usually 9mm or 40 caliber ones – if you’re being reckless with a firearm in a public place).
Mandatory spot checks on all firearms owners would be a harder sell (and there’s no real parallel with vehicles since police don’t tend to come by and make sure your car is parked safely, they only do “spot checks” if they see you doing something stupid) and it’s hard to tell who is carrying a firearm in a public place unless they have it out in the open.
That said, I believe that some states mandate storage safety checks for people who own automatic weapons (there are a handful of true machine guns and burst fire assault rifles in private hands, but they have to have been owned prior to 1986 and the government keeps very close tabs on them) so there is a precedent here.
The NRA themselves could actually draft the syllabus for any training and ensure that the courses are freely available to anyone who wants them (so we don’t get the DC problem where you have to take a training course that’s unavailable anywhere within 100 miles of the district).
Remember that, for all their political yelling, the NRA is, ostensibly, a training organization, so there is already a sizable training infrastructure in place, but I would love to see them arguing against the idea that gun owners shouldn’t know what they’re doing.
May I ask how you’ve dealt with the home invader’s you’ve faced?
You have dealt with some, yes?
So we know you’re not just talking out of your ass?
Can we assume you’ve got a sign stating “I’ve got plenty of guns around the place – so you better not break in or I’ll shoot you when I’m not here!”
If an alarm company tried to sell you a home security device which:
1) didn’t work when you were not home,
2) had a greater chance of killing your own kids than an intruder, and
3) had been stolen out of private homes in the US an estimated 100,000+ times last year,
…you’d laugh them out of your house, and rightly so.
If a typical home invader is breaking in when you’re there, he’s already failed in his primary job skill – casing the place.
To put it another way, if guns are so good at stopping criminals, how do so many of them get stolen every year?
Wow. I may live in a shithole, but I’ve managed to avoid succumbing to the paranoid fantasy that I’m some sort of gun slinging vigilante.
I just can’t imagine getting all hot and bothered thinking that one day, I might get to shoot someone who wants to steal my stuff. I mean, Jesus, is an Xbox worth killing over?
kyoseki:
Don’t you know by now that there are Good Guy White Hat Guns and Bad Guy Black Hat Guns?
Sadly, it’s possible for a GGWH Gun to be come corrupted into a BGBH Gun by having it taken away from it’s Good Guy White Hat owner through trickery or Ebil Gummit Tyranny. But until it does, the GGWH Gun can only ever fire GGWH Bullets that can only ever hurt BGBH People (easily identifiable by the red outline when you target lock them).
Ok, I kid.
Yes, I’m straw-manning.
But not as much as I’d like to hope.
Also: Do gun nuts not have homeowner’s/renter’s insurance? Your shit is replaceable, is what I’m sayin’.
The paranoid fantasy comes first, I’m pretty sure. It doesn’t matter if they live in a real world version of Gotham City or if they live in a gated community in the middle of nowhere, the Gunwielder’s world is always the Wild West, with demons-made-flesh known as Criminals lurking everywhere. Everywhere is a violent shithole where they will stabbed to death in their sleep, even if the murder rate of the area is lower than the price of gas.
Remember, in Gunwielder World, not only are home invaders commonplace but they are such Inherently Evil assholes that they are either breaking in to kill you first and steal crap second, or they are perfectly willing to murder anyone who so much as hears their jackets rustle because murder is second-nature to those non-people called Criminals. You aren’t killing people to defend stolen property: You are killing bloodthirsty Criminals with unbeatable ninja skills that can only be fought off with the superior gun-toting abilities of the average half-awake, fear-stricken Gunwielder.
I wonder how many of those who keep a loaded gun lying around so they can jump to the rescue should armed intruder break-in, also have working smoke alarms, or a fire-blanket in the kitchen ?
Ing said: “Thanks for that threat”
Don’t be a paranoid idiot, I made no threat against you.
Allegro said: “They hit the homes that present the fewest obstacles.”
Exactly. Which is why the idea of “gun free zones” is moronic, and which is why the murdering bastards target those areas.
*slaps forehead in realization*
So that’s why Tokyo has such a massively higher rate of gun violence than Boston!
If only I had seen it the first time!
How could I have been so stupid!
Yeah, the US has the highest rate of murders using firearms in the developed world, but it also has the highest rate of gun-ownership. That would not seem to be a good argument that guns prevent murders.
MikMik
Actually, I think that according to the FBI, gang related violence accounts for only around 900 out of the 13,000+ murders each year – though it’s also worth noting that this table does tend to debunk the “only criminals will have guns” argument, since only around 1/3rd of all firearms murders involve the comission of another felony.
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/offenses/expanded_information/data/shrtable_11.html
Yes, but 2/3rds of those are suicides, they don’t involve one person being killed through negligence or the malicious intent of another, so just comparing the fatality and injury rates there is disingenuous.
Again, if you take the suicides out of the equation, then firearms drop to 5th, after traffic collisions, poisonings, falls and suicides.
Guns probably DO make suicide too easy, but it’s still one person taking their own life rather than the life of another.
These are both dishonest factoids, aren’t they? They’re attempting to show that you’re more likely to be killed by a firearm in the US than you are in a warzone, but they ignore two very obvious points;
1: Most deaths in a warzone are NOT self inflicted
2: Most deaths in either warzone were the actual populace of those countries, why not compare the total number of people killed in either war instead of just counting the Americans who represent a tiny fraction of the overall population?
… and again, we’re still only referring to fatalities and ignoring serious injury, you are still vastly more likely to be seriously injured in a traffic collision than you are to be shot.
The US murder rate is definitely a problem, as is the US suicide rate (although it’s worth noting that the US suicide rate isn’t radically dissimilar to Canada’s, for example), but the overall NEGLIGENCE rate isn’t nearly as high as most people seem to think (though it’s still inexcusable), the fact is that gun negligence gets reported whereas traffic negligence by and large doesn’t, unless they’ve done something REALLY stupid.
Anri
This seems to be replying to a comment I never made, that was the person above me.
… I’ve never been a huge fan of the guns for self defense argument, since it relies too heavily on the armed individual knowing what they’re doing without any mandatory training to guarantee that – which is why it’s not generally considered a valid reason for gun ownership in Europe.
PZ, I love Pharyngula and agree with you the majority of the time (including on gun control), but this is a horrible post. The “news items” are not sourced in your post nor in the original blogger’s. The list your quoting is riddled with spelling and grammatical errors which doesn’t do much to lend it credibility. I don’t know who this John McKay fella is, but even he retracted the last two stories as having happened on the wrong day. Let’s not do what the other side does. Let’s spread factual and evidence-based information. Anything else would do harm to the movement. Please consider removing this post entirely or failing that, at least update it to include actual sources (not from another blog) and McKay’s two-item retraction. Thank you!
Bus? What bus? Seriously though, our obsession with cars is far worse than our obsession with guns, and any attempt to even try to improve infrastructure and public transportation is met either with the insane stupidity of California (i.e., “We studied it before, and it would have cost millions, so we studied it again, and it would cost tens of millions, so, we studied it some more and…”, or a vehement denial of reality, and necessity, from way more than the one useless, over powered, lobby, and a few wackos, like the Tea Party, of the need to fix the problem. So, yeah, its not that people don’t *want* to take the bus, or use other transportation, but rather that everyone, including people that might otherwise carpool, refuse to make it possible to even do such a thing.
Not everyone lived in one of the “tiny” number of large/largish cities that actually have more or less functional (thought not always) public transportation. Most of use have to contend with either none, or bullshit like the “city”, i.e., government, owned bus system, like my city, where they don’t run at all on Sundays, and, just because its funnier than hell to do so, won’t run past 6 PM at all, and stop running at 3 PM on the long route out to the shopping mall, where several hundred underpaid, carless, no other way to get to and from work, people have their jobs, because it was “costing too much” to run that one the extra 3 hours.
Hell, you can’t even make a decent day shopping with that BS, since you are looking at getting there at like 10 AM, when things open, spending what.. 5 hours wandering around Wally mart, several clothes stores, the hobby place, etc., all of them “scattered”, since its not an indoor mall (yep, would have made no sense to build one of those in a desert where it got to 124°), then, somehow catch the bus on the last trip back? Oh, and.. the most recent stupidity, the mall theater bought out the down town one, so.. now, if you plan to see a 2 hours movie (hmm. 5 – 2 = you’re screwed?), you have to somehow make it out to the mall.
Yeah.. Again, “What f-ing bus?” Its not just the driving test that is the problem, its the complete denial of reality, from how we structure smaller cities, to whether or not anyone, like say, the government, especially morons like the Tea Party, would be willing to lift a finger to get any of those people any place, if they didn’t have cars to drive, because they couldn’t pass a test. And, lets not forget the idiocy that already exists, when it comes to teaching people/retesting them, since having to have someone that barely can afford a car, thanks to.. right to work laws, for example, pay $20 out of pocket, every year, or 6 months, or what ever they decided, to retest… Oh boy would that go over real well… This is just one more example of something that probably worked right, at one time, but where its been gutted, mangled, distorted, and/or undermined, ever since, to the point where nothing short of ripping the whole system out and redoing it, would fix it ***completely***. Mind.. doing that, without revoking nearly every license, license plate, etc., in the country, and retesting everyone, while expanding public transportation on a scale not seen country wide at all since.. the continental railroad perhaps?, would still leave a bloody damn mess.
But, I suppose, we could just “grandfather” everything that is already there in, then, a few years down the road, throw our hands up, and stop trying, like we have done with guns before. It seems to be about all anyone is willing, never mind has the vision, to fail upward at.
I’ve had friends who I worked with who were held up while they were out taking pictures
I had a client who lived in Detroit tell me how people walked into his home while he was there and robbed him.
I had someone in my neighborhood answer their door, and they were confronted by someone with a gun who robbed them.
I had someone two doors down have someone walk in the front door, at night, while they were sleeping upstairs, and steal things.
The fact of the matter is that many people have guns for hunting and they need to live. There was an interesting discussion on democraticunderground.com where they were talking about the poorer areas of Appalachia and out west where people need guns just to be able to hunt to put food on the table for their families. In the Michigan U.P. the folks regularly poach deer in order to eat (and the D.N.R. guys know this and basically turn the other way).
There are very legitimate reasons to own guns. Merely displaying the gun can defuse a potential confrontation. Criminals will move on to easier prey. The facts are, luckily, that there are some 80,000,000 gun owners, and if there are approximately 300,000 incidents where a victim is confronted with a gun and throwing in another 20,000 accidental non-fatal injuries, then that means that no less than 99.6% of gun owners are acting responsibly. Whatever the naysayers say on this forum, there is simply no cause to believe that the overwhelming majority of gun owners are acting irresponsibly or that we have some major problem. As I stated above, the numbers actually demonstrate that the worst problem is black-on-black crime in our urban centers, which is not surprising. Bury your heads in the sand if you want.
I don’t think you should be worrying about this guy (I would feel rather safe knowing he’s around) … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsLx5ISBXw4
Yet the right wing nuts are complaining that publishing the names and addresses of gun owners made them the target or burglaries. So advertising that you possess guns makes you a target, advertising that you don’t have guns makes you a target, which is it?
I’ve been burgled once. I lost a several hundred dollars worth of stuff and after insurance it cost me around $100. It wasn’t worth getting into a fight with a desperate person over – besides I wasn’t home at the time, just like the folk that got their guns stolen. But if you really want to prevent burglaries – get a dog. It’s far more effective than a sign saying ‘Protected by Smith & Wesson”. And no one is going to die.
how often do ppeople use their car vrs how often they use a gun. How many people own cars compared to guns. Stop comparing the two…it’s moronically dishonest
Oh so now it’s needed for hunting? Goal posts much?
Fine bolt rifles and shot guns. I’m fine wt that
somewhat more relevantly, how many people would be able to get basic chores of living accomplished without a car, and how many could do so without a gun?
Because personally, I’d be the happiest person in the world if this country finally got around to getting something resembling a decent public transportation system to make cars a choice, rather than a necessity. Guns OTOH are already a choice rather than a necessity for virtually all Americans.
brianrookard,
Do you have smoke alarms in your house ? And if so, do you check them on a regular basis ? If you have any source of heating other than electricity, do you have a carbon monoxide detector, and again, do you check that on a regular basis ? Do you have a fire-blanket in your kitchen ?
or escalate it, given that now the thief will have to worry for their life.
Yeah, I totally borked that one – sorry ’bout that.
Thanks for the catch!
out of curiosity and you rob a place and someone comes at you wt a weapon or such you strive and kill him does that count as self defense? If not why is protecting a toaster more valid than genuinely protecting your life?
Anri said: *slaps forehead in realization*
So that’s why Tokyo has such a massively higher rate of gun violence than Boston!
If only I had seen it the first time!
How could I have been so stupid!
And why Chicago with its very strict gun laws has no … oh wait. Bad example.
Oh yeah, its why Mexico, with its very strict gun control laws no … oh wait. Bad example.
Of course, we could also say that with the overturning of Washington D.C.’s gun control laws that crime would skyrocket … oh wait, that didn’t happen and in fact murders declined
because libertarianism, and freedom, and principle of “non-aggression”. Also, U!S!A!
cute, given where so many of the guns in mexico come from.
anyway, if I had my choice, I’d prefer living in the country where even bank-robbers can’t get their hands on guns, and rob them with toy guns and bags of flour instead.
Yeah, it is a bad example given the reason Mexico has a gun problem is in no small part because many of them are smuggled over the border from the US. Strangely you never the same demands for a crack-down on the smuggling of guns south than for people coming north.
So yes, Mexico has a problem, but in part that is because of the US’s slack laws, and the US Government and those who support those laws, like you, must share some blame.
If you’re American picking on Mexico is now just adding piss to your practice of shitting on the country
Seriously.. A) who exactly needs to do that in the US, outside of very few places in the country any more? B) as to your other contentions – how many “accidents” go unreported because no one goes to the hospital, and how many guns never get taken out, and even used, during home robberies, where no one is either home, or no one gets shot at, or where the robber gets in before they have a chance to get to the gun, or… Hell, you would be better off giving someone martial arts training, which included, “how to use everything as a weapon”, given that, the odds are, short of wearing your gun 24/7, you are more likely, most of the time, to be in reach of a bloody table lamp, than your precious “defensive weapon”. This is what most of us find so bloody idiotic. That, and the fact that if robbers knew that *everyone* they where going to run into all had guns, the first thing they would be doing on breaking in, would be hosing down each room, just to get anyone that might have a gun, before they have a chance “too” defend themselves. The idea that everyone being armed would end crime is nuts. It wouldn’t. People would still be desperate, people would still see more money from robbing your house, than it would cost of buy a gun, they would just be more careful that the house was empty, and/or better armed, while doing it.
There is absolutely no logic, at all, in this. The equation only works one way – more guns = more armed criminals = more deaths. It doesn’t work this way – more guns = people scared to commit crimes = fewer dead people. Basic bloody logic says that the latter will ***never*** happen. We tried that, it was call the old west. The only thing that changed between then and now is – the criminal doesn’t just shoot you in the back, before robbing you, so you can’t draw on them. That was how it worked back when everyone had them. When someone decided to commit a robbery, or got pissed at a neighbor, or otherwise decided to commit a crime, they shot the “defender” in the back, directly, or from safety, then went in and stole everything, once they where sure no one was left to shoot back. There is no equation that makes placing more guns in people’s hands actually prevent/reduce crime. Where crime is bad, like in your “black no black” comment, more, and higher capacity/more dangerous guns, has only just meant more dead bystanders, more bullet holes, and a transformation from the silly assed world you think exists, where arming yourself in your house helps something, to the old-west style, “Blow everything to hell, to make sure we get the target and/or shoot them in the back, when they are not looking.”, methods of crime.
So, yeah, in a stupid sense, the gun lobby is right. If some real gangsta style criminal knew they had a gun, they would probably spray they house with bullets, first, before robbing it. This is *especially* true if they got their wet dream of every citizen owning their own gun. The only way “more guns = less crime” works, at all, is if you are the only one with it, the criminals know that, and they are more interested in going after the dozen other neighbors around you, which “don’t” have them. The moment they have them, your argument that you having one means jack goes right out the window, because the criminal is still going to commit the crime. They will just pick a time with lower risk, or they would take steps to make sure you *can’t* defend yourself, like there being a sudden huge run on professional/homemade silencers, so your “neighbors” won’t notice when the robber pops you through the bathroom window, while you’re on the pot, before slipping in to rob the house.
Criminals might be, relatively, stupid, but they are not total idiots, nor are most of them in financial/professional/etc. conditions to just go find a job at Burger King, instead of stealing your computer. Some of them might be deterred, the rest will simply adapt, and we will all be less safe as a consequence, since the assumption, now, is, “Most people are not armed”. When it becomes, “Most people are.”, the tactics will change, and, ironically, the stupid ones will change those tactics by simply making sure they are armed themselves, to remove the danger, before their own lives are risked. The smart ones.. don’t break into people’s houses at night, or when someone is/might be home, in the damned first place.
What it appears to come down to for most on this forum, and many liberals generally, is the choice not to have a gun because of their personal feelings. But a large percentage of the country has guns, and have made the choice to keep them because they believe that it does, in fact, deter violence. When gun laws are liberalized, liberals will often protest that we will see more gun crime. The facts demonstrate that gun violence has not increased, but has continued to decrease. One may argue that crime continued to drop despite the easing of carry laws, but you cannot claim that crime increased as a result.
So, the choice to keep guns, or allow the carrying of guns, has not exacerbated the problem, despite the claims of the left.
So, if I choose to have guns, I certainly have that choice – I choose to be ready if needed. And if I want to train my son in the proper use of firearms, I will also make that choice as well. My purpose in obtaining firearms was to go hunting – my brother-in-law is able to feed his family quite well with the deer meat he stocks in the freezer. It just so happens that they can, if necessary, double for defense.
But liberals don’t want me to have that choice, even though, as I’ve shown, the overwhelming owners of guns have no incident whatsoever (you don’t do much better than 99.6%). It’s sad that liberals are really only for “choice” when it comes to one area, which ironically involves the taking of life.
brianrookard,
The fact you were unwilling to answer my questions suggests you do not in fact fire alarms and the like. Which makes you incredibly stupid I think you will agree.
Oh please just fellate your gun
anyone shocked by this BS?
yeah, me neither.
Kagehi said: The equation only works one way – more guns = more armed criminals = more deaths.
The facts do not support your conclusion. We have more guns, and violent crime has, in fact, been declining. But you don’t want facts. You are making an emotional appeal and reflexively reacting against the idea that we might actually be safer with more guns.
Just as the Detroit Free Press (Detroit News? – this was years ago) whined and complained about how higher traffic speeds (moving from 55 to 70) would result in more carnage on the freeways. It didn’t happen. But at least the editorial board of the paper had the intellectual honesty to admit that they were wrong.
Fuck off violent idiot
In fact they do. You are showing a remarkable ignorance since I have previously pointed this out to you, so you have no excuse.
Compare the US to Western Europe, and look at gun ownership rates. Then look at crimes involving firearms, and violent crime in general. Western Europe has less guns, and less violent crime.
Please explain why you felt you needed to lie. And please undertake not to lie in future.
To address Matt’s stupidity … yes, as a matter of fact the batteries in the fire alarm were just replaced a couple of months ago. I don’t have a grease blanket, but then I have the baking soda easily available.
Now that I’ve answered your question, how about admitting that violent crime has continued to decline despite increasing gun ownership? Does your continued evasion of the points that I’ve made make you stupid? Or, at least, intellectually dishonest?
I mean, really, you would rather attempt to smear me as not having proper fire alarms than address the facts of gun ownership? It only shows that you have no clue about firearms generally, the statistics, or much else in this debate. You’d rather engage in ad hominem. Typical of lefties when cornered.
To provide some data.
In 2011, England and Wales had 39 murders as the result of the use of firearms. If they had the number of murders in line with the US, it would have been over 1700. In fact, that figure of 1700 is well over double the number of murders in England and Wales in 2011 from ALL causes.
The UK has strict gun control laws. It is not legal to own a handgun. Shotguns require a licence, and must be kept in a secure cabinet and the police have the right to check you are doing so. Rifles can be owned either for hunting, in which case you must show a need to hunt, and you must keep them secure in cabinet. You can also get a licence for target shooting and then you must keep the rifle at a licenced gun club.
oh yeah I trust this moron with a gun. Fuck this is a country of idiots
I should have taken a bet on your not knowing what an ad hominem fallacy is.
Here is a hint. I called you an idiot, but that is not an ad hominem. An ad hominem fallacy would require me to dismiss your argument because you are an idiot. I did not do that of course, I gave reasons why your arguments failed and then pointed out you were an idiot. Not the same thing at all.
Can you explain how come you came to say such a stupid thing ? Do you not feel any embarrassment at being shown up as being quite so ignorant ?
Someone must be near getting a full-house in right-wing nut-job bingo!
Matt Penfold
Yes, but the UK never had a particularly high murder rate even when you could buy assault rifles there (prior to the Hungerford Massacre in 87).
Of course, it’s also worth noting that banning assault rifles didn’t stop the Dunblane massacre in 1996 and banning all handguns didn’t stop the Cumbria murders in 2010 (which rather illustrates the point that no matter which firearms or components you ban, you can’t stop someone determined to commit such atrocities).
Additionally, the UK was only really able to enact such stringent firearms control because they were already marginalized, they weren’t fighting a full third of the population who already owned the things (or a Constitution that protected their ownership).
It’s also worth noting that the UK has by far the strictest gun control in Europe, however their murder rate isn’t much different to most other European countries that allow firearms – most European countries like Norway, France, Germany etc have guns per capita of roughly 30 per 100, compared to the UK which has only around 5. So you have a lot of countries with six times the number of guns without any significant increase in murder rate, which suggests that other factors are significant.
What all countries with relatively high firearm ownership rates and low murder rates do have in common is socialized healthcare and stringent training & storage requirements, it’s probably also worth noting that income inequality in those countries is far lower than it is here.
Sigh.. Because, of course, there can’t “possibly” be any other reason for crime going down, other than masses of more guns… I notice you don’t a) acknowledge, or explain, the increase of deaths, when such crime does happen, or b) have any explanation for how anything else I said won’t happen, such as the obvious tipping point, where the criminal’s assumption about if a gun is there or not changes, or the other problems, like social/economics, which actually make it more profitable to commit crime, and get away with it, than to avoid the risks. Things that we ***need*** to address, instead, if we plan to do jack all about easy access to guns by just about everyone, including criminals (who will continue to have easy access, unless we make it a lot damn harder for non-criminals to get them too, pretty much by default). This isn’t to say that people should have it “impossible” to get them, but bloody hell, you can do as much damage, in terms of dead people, with a handful of guns, as you could with one stick of explosive, but the licensing, training, certifications, etc. needed to even make, never mind own, or use, explosives makes so called “gun regulations” look like we where selling people ice cream cones, not weapons. And, absurdly, the explosives are, if anything, easier to get (if you bother to spend five minutes looking up how to make them).
If drug dealers and gang members, started a rash of IED making, just after they gutted legislation limiting legal use of explosives, people like you would be arguing that there was a critical need for the average person to be allowed to own C4, to remover tree stumps, and that you personally knew someone that used it to secure his houses windows, against unauthorized entry. And, you would, I am sure, have some statistics, or some sort, showing that, world wide, over the last few years, the number of deaths by IED had dropped (or, better yet, something more local, claiming the same thing). If you want to show me evidence, then show me evidence that addresses what happens when you hit “saturation”, and violent crime, in the context, a) addresses the specific case of guns, and/or, b) can be shown to actually be dropping as a result of guns, and not for other reasons. You have no evidence to suggest that more guns is the core cause of the decrease, or that such things are even involved in the majority of such violent crime, and so, no evidence to, at all, claim that more guns = safer. All you are doing is asserting that, “What some people fear, hasn’t happened, but, instead, for no reason I have real explanation for, certain crimes have gone down, therefor, without any provable correlation/connection, I am simply going to assert that their fears are baseless, and that the opposite is true instead.”
Uh, huh.. Well, if you want to play that game, in the same time frame, the amount of anime, and novelty products, out of Japan, has grown significantly, so I assert, that possession of such things, which you can’t prove where not equally present in all cases where crime decreased, are the “true” cause of the decline in violent crimes. And, unlike your assertion, you can’t simply go back 100 years and show that more anime actually *caused* a rise in death, when it was not merely way common, but **universal**, like with guns.
Because, I would think, you would have to address why, if its supposedly making things better now, it ***didn’t*** at any prior time. Heck, if you want to make a stupid argument, why not argue that the decrease in violent crime isn’t because of availability of guns, but the increase of violent video games, and movies? There is even some argument that this might be the case, among some people, and claims by others that people with serious problems are made worse by them. Sort of.. the identical claims made about how rational people with guns = good, but crazy people with them = bad.
Point being, citing a decline in violent crime, without evidence that guns had jack all to do with it, isn’t worth much. And, worse, it contradicts **prior** historical facts, which all, pretty much, show that violence, and crime, change due to social issues, war, etc., and that the only net change the type of weapon, or their availability, has ever had is ***how many people die, when things get more violent again***.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-country-Europe-Britain-worse-South-Africa-U-S.html
See also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States
Check your facts. I know its easier for you to just throw out assertions rather than engage the facts.
BTW – Mexico has a higher homicide rate than the U.S. even though they have strict gun laws. What’s the deal?
Matt said … I should have taken a bet on your not knowing what an ad hominem fallacy is.
Don’t be obtuse. “Poisoning the well” is a form of ad hominem. And that is exactly what you are trying to do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well
So, since my questions have been ignored, I’m going to assume 1) gun nuts don’t have homeowner’s insurance and 2) stuff is worth killing over.
liberals always do blank guy now complaining about poisoning the well? Fuck me
Audley
I personally have plenty of insurance and don’t feel that stuff is worth killing over – someone is welcome to take whatever they like from downstairs, but if they try to come upstairs, things are unlikely to end well.
That said, I honestly don’t ever expect to ever use a gun for self defense, but I’m a sport shooter, so that’s not what I bought them for.
Audley says: So, since my questions have been ignored, I’m going to assume 1) gun nuts don’t have homeowner’s insurance and 2) stuff is worth killing over.
Or, the questions just may be silly.
If someone is jacking your car (while you’re in it), pointing a gun at you and telling you to get out of the car, do you think that they will just let you get out and not kill you? And they might. But do you also agree that there may be the occasion that the perp may not want any witnesses and will kill you? Or do you think that criminals aren’t smart enough to figure out that they should eliminate witnesses?
The same scenario might play out in your home. Or do you think that all robbers just leave peacefully and don’t kill the occupants?
So, you’re going to kill them first?
Quite frankly, I’m not important enough to kill.
Do you listen to yourself? I mean, you think it’s good that most gun deaths are accidental?? FFS?? Accidental injuries and deaths are what us freakoid commie-fascists want to avoid! You just said that for every intentional homicide, two people are killed accidentally! I suppose, though, that it’s worth the collateral damage to make sure that legitimate homicides get committed, I don’t know.
Hey, how come you never bring up other crimes that are committed with boom-sticks? Did you know that women are 8 times as likely to be killed when there is a gun in the house? That the major use of guns is not self defense, as if that ever happens anyways, but to threaten their partner? I am assuming that this is vastly weighted for men doing the threatening. How about that women are killed much more often during disagreements and fights?
Okay, here’s the deal. I was wondering if you can explain why states with tougher gun control have fewer homicides, that countries that have gun control legislation in place have fewer homicides.
Here perhaps you can explain this: time[dot]com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2121660,00.html
You know, brianrookbard(I’m going to call you that from now on because you are so eloquent with your prose), I’m starting to think you might be here trolling, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.
Shit, I’ve posted links so many times to the Firearms Research Center it’s a wonder I don’t just make it my home page. If you would be so kind as to debunk the studies there….
Hey, look what I found. A database!
Please, please , Mr. BB gun enthusiast, will you validate my trusting you by looking up any topic of concern at the “firearmsresearch[dot]org” firearms research center, described as this:
”
A database of social science, criminology, law reviews, medical and public health research concerning firearms (2000-2009), compiled by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center.” and debunk it, and show it to be another bleeding heart mythology?
It’s fucking wicked! Best resource I’ve seen yet, Mr BB. Take a shot at their stats, if you would be so kind, and then shoot them full of holes, as you know much more than a bunch of pencil pushing wimps that collected all that faulty bullshit they call evidence.
In fact, you absolutely sound much more knowledgeable and sophisticated in your reasoning , so I imagine it will be a minor inconvenience for you, at best, to cut them off at the legs like a Claymore land mine filled with so many little round pellets of metal. I can never remember what they’re called!
…
Okay, how about this then. Can you go and read a few short paragraphs at “hsph.harvard[dot]edu/hicrc/firearms-research/editorials-encyclopedia-comments-book-reviews” HFRC and debunk them for me? Please? It would be an act of good faith.
In fact, here the paragraphs are already!
###
I’ll start you off with this – that something about lines three and four in the first paragraph above don’t feel quite right to me.Maybe you can use that as a head start and find out if that’s an unfortunate turn of the phrase, Mr Bard, and in fact, I will provide you a link to the PDF of the paper that is referenced in the bibliography for that part: goo[dot]gl/VnAcc
That’s a link directly to the pdf file, so beware if it wants to download. The link can be found in the abstract here: caepv[dot]org/getinfo/docdetail.php?docID=326&catID=2 Batterers Use of Guns to Threaten Intimate Partners (Emily Rothman et al, JAWMA)
It should be quite straight forward. I’ll even give you a link to a criticism of that work, called Harvard dumbasses – http://wildbillbaldwin.blogspot[dot]ca/2012/03/harvard-dumbasses.html
I even let it be a valid hyperlink for you. Or, am I making this too easy for you? I apologize, but even so..
Will you take a shot at it, BB? The stuff above, marked with ### can you explain how it’s wrong, if indeed it is?
I’m sure you are not a troll, and you will dispatch the fallacies it contains like shooting pellets from a barrel. At fish, or something.
Thanks bro.
{Shite, I hope that all makes sense, ffs]
And honestly, I pity people like you. Must be a depressing life you lead, always thinking that there’s nothing standing between you and the “bad guys”.
I will guarantee that the vast majority of murders aren’t random, so I’m probably safer with a stranger than I am with people I know.
Kagehi said: Because, of course, there can’t “possibly” be any other reason for crime going down, other than masses of more guns …
Hold on … the point that people on the left try to make is more guns = more crime.
Now, it can honestly be said that more guns has not resulted in more crime. I think the numbers are that we have 50% more guns over the last several decades, and we have not seen more crime, crime has gone down. Whether there is a direct causal link between more guns and the crime drop is not important. But certainly you must agree that more guns has not resulted in more crime.
If more guns has not resulted in more crime … what is everyone afraid of? Can you admit that maybe the assumption that more guns = more crime is not proven by the facts?
mikmik
Whoa whoa whoa, most gun deaths are NOT accidental, most gun deaths are suicide, which is deliberate intent.
Only around 600 firearms deaths a year are accidental and I’m quite sure almost all of them could have been avoided if people were taught to to respect the things and handle them safely (and store the fucking things where kids and teenagers can’t get their hands on them).
Audley
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-10
Generally speaking, yes, but there’s a large “unknown” column – so about all we can really say right now is that about 50% of all murder victims knew their attacker, although the most common relationship seems to be “acquaintance”.
Mikmik says: Do you listen to yourself? I mean, you think it’s good that most gun deaths are accidental?? FFS?? Accidental injuries and deaths are what us freakoid commie-fascists want to avoid! You just said that for every intentional homicide, two people are killed accidentally! I suppose, though, that it’s worth the collateral damage to make sure that legitimate homicides get committed, I don’t know.
Actually, Kyoseki already addressed this … are you just posting mish-mash without actually reading and understanding?
“Accidental shootings are actually pretty rare (most firearms deaths/injuries are deliberate, whether it be murder or suicide), with only around 600 deaths per year. They also reckon there’s only around 14,500 accidental firearms injuries per year.”
2/3 of gun deaths are suicides, not accidental deaths. Please read before you just spout off. Are you going to tell Kyoseki he (she? -sorry, don’t know) is wrong?
Furthermore, the other assertions you made that we are so much more violent than other countries is just plain wrong – I’ve already cited to the links that show that England has a higher overall violent crime rate.
Mexico has strict gun control laws, and 4 times the gun murder rate. What’s up with that?
The larger point is that you can cherry pick statistics and show that a few countries have lower gun murder rates … but there are others with strict gun laws and higher rates.
Further still, as I explained previously, if you really want to attack gun murders, you need to look to black society in the urban centers of America where the gun murder rate is something like 7-8 times the rest of the population. Why am I not surprised that nobody here has addressed this point? The rest of the population has a gun murder rate (around 2 per 100,000) that is actually on par with other countries with low gun murder rates.
Audley: So, you’re going to kill them first?
Of course, every scenario would present different opportunities. In a car jacking scenario, and thank god I’ve not been in that situation, if I were at a red light I have thought that if someone was approaching with bad intentions I would normally slam the gas and run the light – f__k it, right! It is actually hard to hit someone with a handgun, even at close range.
But if someone is going to kill me to get my vehicle, what would you have me do … succumb? Sorry, I have a beautiful little boy who loves and needs his dad.
Audley: Quite frankly, I’m not important enough to kill.
Why would you place so little value on your life? I would rather see the criminals be dispatched than you.
Dude, I live in a high crime rate area in a high crime rate city and NO ONE is murdering me over my Toyota. Even in the extremely rare case of a car-jacking, I’m still probably not going to get shot because I’m not going to fight over a car.
Here’s the thing: I’m not saying my life is worthless; I’m saying these mythical bad guys have no reason to kill me. Contrary to every wishful vigilante’s fantasies, burglars aren’t after your life and would rather flee than face killing someone. (Completely ignoring the fact that home invasions are down ‘cos nothing has resell value anymore (excluding drugs and, of course, firearms)).
It’s sad to think that you keep a loaded gun in your car– possibly accessible to this 5 year old you claim to love so much.
Playing a racist argument won’t get you too far here, I suspect. But at least you’ve stopped with the self-defense justifications since you obviously can’t refute the arguments made here. You’ve just moved the goal posts.
But since you want to, let’s do talk about inner city gun crime. Where are those guns coming from? As others have pointed out, many of those guns were legally purchased by the more affluent and stolen. If there weren’t so many guns easily stolen, i.e. not properly secured by you “responsible gun owners” (actually, that doesn’t seem to include you since by your own admission, you don’t lock your handgun(s) up) there wouldn’t be so many inner city, poor people who have guns. Likewise, if there was more onerous requirements for gun/ammo purchases, there would be fewer guns in fewer hands.
Education, opportunity, and a more equalized society would likely go far in reducing gun violence as studies suggest in comparing gun violence in other modern countries, along with stricter controls. Brian,l are you in favor of the measures it would take to vastly increase education funding that would include free university education? Do you support single payer health care? Increased taxes, especially on the very wealthy and corporations, many of whom pay significantly less in taxes proportionally to the middle class and poor? The cessation of corporate welfare?
Day saved.
Already answered above: almost all of the murders happen in Ciudad Juárez right next to the border, and almost all of the guns come, illegally, from los Estados Unidos del Norte.
I’m also somewhat amused that you cite the Daily Fail as a source.
And is a classic example of failing to follow firearm safety rules. No loaded weapon should be out of “control” of an adult, meaning stored anywhere without the ammo and gun separated. Funny how the gun nuts don’t follow the basic firearm safety rules I learned back in the boy scouts 50 years ago….Must be a character defect…
brianrookard, if you’re so afraid of armed burglars, what’s your door like? The American house entrances I’ve seen have been quite surprising, and not in a good way. I could probably kick most of them in without harming myself, and I’m not Karate Kid. (Hey, there are house walls in the US that I could kick in.) Here in Germany, I live in an apartment with two locks on the door, and even the room doors would be difficult to kick in.
Up to 5 links are allowed in one comment.
Has it ever occurred to you that maybe guns aren’t the only influence on crime rates???
For those of you who assume that I keep my firearm in my car, I never said that I did. I have started the process for a concealed pistol license, and so right now it would be illegal for me to carry my weapon in Michigan in my vehicle unless I am heading to some approved area – gun range, gun store, other places. Some of my examples are clearly that, examples. I hope to never, ever have to use my weapon … but I want that option to defend myself. Lefties are all about choice, aren’t they?
Why is it that everyone here assumes that everyone else who owns a gun is some irresponsible moron. I am an attorney and a felony gun violation would be catastrophic for me – as it would result in some sort or disciplinary action I’m sure.
So please, enough of the drivel.
David: Has it ever occurred to you that maybe guns aren’t the only influence on crime rates???
And again, I’ll assume that more guns was not the primary driver in the decrease in violent crime … I have pointed out that it has not been proven that more guns has increased crime either – as is typically predicted by liberals. Certainly, the facts have not borne that hypothesis out and it shouldn’t hurt to admit it.
Everyone here doesn’t. In fact, I have seen no one here express that opinion.
We’re responding to and refuting your own arguments. Perhaps if they were less moronic you and your fellow gun owners who continue to make such arguments would be seen as more intelligent, informed, and responsible.
It’s good to see that some laws are having a positive effect.
Indeed.
Well geez, brian. Now you’re gonna get carjacked and shot. Aren’t you so scared?
I thought this was a sane and rational discussion on the problem;
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/20/we_need_to_make_the_gun_control_debate_about_crime_control/
Guns aren’t defensive weapons. They are offensive weapons. You can’t stop a bullet with a gun, and you lie to yourself if you think so…If you lie about that, what else will you lie about to yourself?
All, 99%, evidence to the contrary. I back up every statement I make, and I have ten times as many links to articles and studies that all show the same thing.
You, you have your opinion, based on unfalsifiable hearsay. You never provide any references to basck up your claims, so we are left with your word, which we have already demonstrated is as fucking phony as an NRA’s claim to intelligence.
Did you even take a look at what I gave you? I not only questioned my own right to claim what I did, by pointing out that the harvard quote about batterers didn’t seem to be relevant. It says that women are 8 times more likely to be threatened with a gun in homes that contain a firearm, than in homes that don’t! Can’t you even take an opportunity, to question my shit, when I hand the answer to you on a silver platter?
Then I did all the work for you on my other research based quote, by finding a criticism of it for you.
Finally, that link to the Times was an op ed, by a guy that got suspended from his column for a month, for plagiarism, and contained no supporting references for his opinions, at all. Oh, wait, you wouldn’t notice anything amiss at all.
What the fuck is your basic problem? Do you not understand that opinions are worthless without solid reasoning and empirical to validate them??
So now, let me look at your statement that violent crime has been declining, which you think proves that universal access to firearms, and no limits on the numbers that can be owned, or on the lethality and mass firepower of fucking assault rifles with 30 round mags, with armor piercing ammunition, you think that because the level of violent crime is dropping, however slightly, that there is no correlation between gun ownership and crime? Am I right, brainrookard? Is that your argument?
That’s exactly what you say.
Have you accounted for the fact that fewer and fewer people actually own firearms now, and that the ones that do, own an average of 4, fucking FOUR, guns each?
That means that at any given time, up to three quarters, or more(or maybe less), of the guns are out of fucking circulation, or combat ready, at any fucking given time???????????
Did the idea that there are far less people packing might have something to do with the apparent, to you, drop in crime. Did it occur to you that there is an equivalent drop in crime in countries that have no fucking guns laying around?
Hmm, I wonder… Can this guy be so blind as to not realize that funding for police de3partments has gone through the roof, and that that might have something to do with the decreases??? Huh, DID YOU??
No, I thought not. That would involve giving attention to more than your artificially limited example allows.
Fucking almost guaranteed that you will never, almost ever, allow focus on other relevant, and critical, information.
You will always artificially limit discussions to homicides, or the dropping crime rate. It is the fucking number one tactic you employ, and it is so fucking debunked, incessantly debunked, that there is no longer a question of the correlation of almost unrestricted access to weapons, and violence, and increases in suicides, and domestic abuse and death, and probably the ease with which rapes are commited.
You are, in essence, FUCKING TERRORISTS, for all intents and purposes, fucking goof. . You want people to be afraid of you, and you exhibit almost all the signs of a chronic, and dangerous, addiction. You NEED guns, don’t you?
You can never have enough of them, or the power of their ability to kill. That’s called tolerance.
You need guns to cope, because you have lost the social skills necessary to form healthy, trusting, relationships with society.
Another sign: denial of the facts that your world is falling apart(I hope!), and that your arguments justifications are faulty. What the fuck is with the armor piercing ammo, you fucking freak. What for?
To promote fear, that you can take out cops wearing body armor, or shatter ‘bulletproof’ glass like the presidential limo, and other govt. transportation is protected with.
So, I think it’s time for you to say that those things have3 nothing to do with danger, and are, of course, undeniably the reason for violent crime decreasing. You never mention how much it decreases, or other relevant considerations, that might have effects on, or even be the sole reason for, the reported decreases, but you will only restrict your arguments as tightly as possible to red herring bullshite.
Let me explain the red herring. If you get everyone to limit their focus to the one single idea of violent crime, or even just homicides, no one will take into consideration the most important part of the picture – the fear others have, and astronomically increase in fucking abuse of women.
Let’s not forget suicides, the overwhelming percentage of 17 – 24 year olds using and killing each other with guns, not to mention danger and injury to bystanders.
– road rage
– suicide by gun
– the supply of your fucking boogy-man home invaders and gangs with access to a supply for 70% of the guns they possess, because they easily steal them from idiots that have so many laying about, that they can’t take all of them with themselves when they venture into the outside to get groceries, thereby providing excessive opportunity for them to be stolen.
Further proof that you are a fucking chickenshit little terrorist and bully, is that you want more weapons around to supply the violent offenders that gladly get and use them, the same ones that you claim you need protection from, because they have so many fucking guns!
Now those are people that can put armor piercing rounds to good use, they must be jumping for joy that you so willingly provide the means to acquire them.
I still haven’t even addressed all the ways in which guns affect society, and families, and school grounds, and drug trafficking, and it’s subsequent escalation of wars between gangs out on the streets. Let us not forget that they are even more psychotic, and paranoid, and uninhibited using guns, than even Ted Nugent, et al. Far more careless and unconcerned and aggressive. They don’t even value their own life, let alone yours.
Again, aren’t you supposed to be calling me names, accusing me of having an agenda, telling me how fucking stupid I am, that I just don’t understand that “crime rates are decreasing, you stunned idiot, don’t you fucking have any sense, oh I see, you want to destroy the world because you are the pure, poisonous, embodiment of depraved evil.”
Well, get to it, dog. I better stop now before I get on a roll, and cover every little way in which unencumbered access to BB guns, all the way up to special forces weaponry, endanger almost every aspect of participating in society.
Especially dangerous, is the idea that it might be nice to marry, or have a relationship, with a dude that needs a gun to control his old lady, and anyone that might smile at her.
Coming soon: the sex trade and forced slavery of the women.
You are fighting for the arming of there very people that you are trying to protect youreself from
David said: I’m also somewhat amused that you cite the Daily Fail as a source.
So see … http://www.uturnuk.org/the-problem/violent-crime
Whatever numbers you want to use, it looks like in England it’s not a safe place when compared to other EU nations, and the U.S. You can decry the gun violence rate, but the overall violent crime rate if you use the above links 763,000 violent offences and a population of 56.1 million is 1360 per 100,000. That dwarfs the U.S. at a little over 400 per 100,000.
But even if you assume that there are significant differences in recording and the number is HALF … you are STILL left with a violent crime rate higher than the U.S. You can’t just wish away the difference.
Now, are you going to refute the numbers, or accept the evidence?
You know, there’s a really obvious point here that nobody has picked up on (apologies if I’m wrong).
brianrookard #98
Never mind the fact that this could be interpreted as 99.6% of gun owners not needing their toys for defence, what struck me was the figure of 320,000 gun ‘incidents’; that goes up to 351,000 if the actual fatalities have to be added (it’s not clear if they were included in his 320,000).
The July 2007 census showed the population of the USA to be 311,591,917.
Which gives at first sight a 0.11% chance of, or odds of 1000/1 against, an individual being involved in a gun-related ‘incident’ in one year. But if we take his claims that most of the problem is localised (I’m sure he’d prefer ‘ghettoized’) at face value, and assume that mere ‘incidents’ follow the same trend, then the acual odds for the average ‘respectable’ (again, by brianrookard’s apparent standards) American increase by 7/8 times, so around 7000-8000/1 against involvement.
So what are they so worried about, exactly?
Audley said: Well geez, brian. Now you’re gonna get carjacked and shot. Aren’t you so scared?
I’m a pretty calm guy.
Let me turn it around … and ask yourself honestly … are you being irrationally afraid of gun owners? 99.6% of the 80,000,000 or so gun owners own their guns without incident. That’s a pretty good track record. Does it really look like there’s much to worry about?
Now, that’s not to downplay violence, but at the same time, there has to be some perspective.
One could look at the effects of alcohol and the terrible tragic effect that it has on families and lives … and alcohol related deaths are higher than gun related deaths … http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6089353/ns/health-addictions/t/alcohol-linked-us-deaths-year/#.UPyWVR1fCSo
Is your opposition to guns merely ideological … because if you were honest, you might also advocate for prohibition again with respect to alcohol which is behind more deaths than guns are.
Is your opposition to guns a visceral revulsion … because if so, maybe you could just agree that you don’t like it, but leave the choice open to others … since again, the numbers show that in the grand scheme of things, most people own their guns peacefully.
I believe this is called a red herring. None of this has anything to do with gun violence in the U.S. to justify gun ownership without stronger, enforced regulation in an attempt to reduce the very unacceptable number of deaths and injuries.
Acolyte – I would have to go looking for the numbers again but I wanted to use the largest number of “incidents” I could find so that I wouldn’t be accused of under-reporting and inflating the percentage I came up with. I think the 300,000 number included everything and the kitchen sink, whether thefts, murders, whatever. I didn’t want someone to say “well you only used the murders, but not all other incidents of unlawful gun use.”
When it comes to deaths, though, the numbers are pretty much … a little over 30,000 gun deaths, about 11-12,000 of which are actual homicides. And I think the numbers I saw for black homicides was in the neighborhood of 5,600 and that was from the FBI crime statistics.
As to incidents and surveys which attempted to determine where gun use prevented a crime, the surveys vary from 65,000 to 2,500,000. Even if one tends to the low end, it could easily be that guns helped to prevent more deaths than they caused.
320,000+ reported gun incidents a year. Assholes walking around Portland, OR and JC Penneys with military rifles to prove a point about how “responsible” they are. People, including a 4 year old child, getting shot at gun shows by “responsible” gun owners. Paranoid Fox news watchers hollering about “second amendment solutions” because there’s a black man in the White House and making violent, threatening YouTube videos and comments in public venues.
How about the choice to NOT get fucking terrorized and/or shot? Where’s that choice?
Acolyte said: So what are they so worried about, exactly?
Again, turn it around … could it be that we don’t have to worry because we do have guns? And maybe criminals aren’t so stupid given the armed nature of our society.
Have I advocated a prohibition on guns? Here’s the thing: I have no problem with the regulation alcohol (and its consumption), just like I have no problem with the strict regulation on guns and ammo. I wouldn’t call for total bans on either. Nice try though.
Also: if you’re worried about home invasions, you might not want to tell the entire internet that you ♥ guns. Just a thought.
If you even for a moment think that having a gun means that you don’t have to worry, then you are the one who is stupid. Statistically proven stupid. Dangerously stupid, with the greatest danger being to your own family.
” I hope to never, ever have to use my weapon … but I want that option to defend myself.”
Which can be done, efficiently and effectively, without firearms.
Nope, only fuckwitted thinking on your part. When are you going to require real gun safety, including criminal measure for having loaded weapons not under the direct hands on control of the user? Basic gun safety. But gun nuts think keeping loaded weapons in a drawer are a safety feature, rather than a safety issue that is resolved by unloading the weapon.
Allegro said: If you even for a moment think that having a gun means that you don’t have to worry, then you are the one who is stupid. Statistically proven stupid. Dangerously stupid, with the greatest danger being to your own family.
And not having guns in society does not mean a less violent society … as the figures for England show. It can also mean that its easier for you to be a victim.
You have no way of knowing that. Assault weapons account for a tiny fraction of total gun deaths, so it’s very difficult to measure the effects of a ban statistically. But assault weapons appear frequently in mass shooting events, and quite obviously (as per their design) make such events potentially more deadly than they otherwise would be. If you can reduce the severity of those events you’ve made progress, even if the few dozen lives saved get swamped out by statistical noise.
Of course, it doesn’t help when existing weapons and magazines are grandfathered in. You either have to ban the sale of those too (and actually enforce it) or wait a very long time for them to slowly drop out of circulation.
Wuh? So in other words, we should do nothing so as not to ruin our ability to do something. Does this make sense to you?
WMDKitty said: Which can be done, efficiently and effectively, without firearms.
In what world do you live? It is amazing how liberals are so utopian in this regard – as if a gun free society will mean the end of violent and dangerous people. Let’s all just be nice to each other … give them cookies when they come to rob you and tell them they’re the victims of corporate America and you’re really on their side. Please try that for me … let me know how it works.
Glad he’s only shooting strawmen
Area Man said: “…. you’ve made progress, even if the few dozen lives saved …”
Here we go … the “if just one life can be saved argument” ….
If we just banned abortion, we could save a bunch of “potential” lives.
If we just banned alcohol, think of all the live save there.
If we banned swimming pools, we could stop a bunch of child drowning … hey, if one life can be saved
If we banned cars, we could save lives.
We could REQUIRE guns on the argument that homes are safer.
We could ban protesting since such confrontations lead to violence, and people get beat up and killed … if one life can be saved after all … so let’s get rid of free speech … all this stuff about people speaking their minds just gets people angry.
That sort of argumentation can be used to justify any sort of restriction on freedom of any type whatsoever.
There are many factors influencing the violence in a society. Having fewer guns with increased regulation in the US will reduce gun violence, accidents, and suicides. This has been demonstrated in areas with increased and enforced regulations.
Got some news for you: you – with your gun – are much more likely to be injured or killed that I am in most attack-type situations. I am considerably more likely to walk away unharmed. Why? Let me illustrate…
Let’s revisit that car-jacking you fear. You are walking up to your car and a would-be car jacker steps up behind you, gun pressed against your ribs. This is actually a common scenario for car jackers, is it not? What are you gonna do? Pull out your gun? Haha. You will probably wet your pants and hand over your car keys, hoping you don’t get killed. The car jacker just got your car AND your gun.
In that same situation, what am I going to do? I am going to defend and disarm. I will do this before the car jacker ever knew what hit him. See, he made the mistake of getting within reach of my arm/hand. If he manages to pull the trigger, the only one who will get shot is him because the first thing I did was turn the gun barrel at him and away from me. While I’m at it, his trigger finger will most likely be badly broken. Am I so special and talented to be able to do this? Not at all. I’m a small woman (5’2″, 125 lbs) – anyone can learn to do it. The difference is that I really am concerned about effective self-defense so I took the time to learn how to defend myself in the most realistic scenarios. I don’t have the false security of a gun. That’s why I will drive away in my car, unharmed… and you won’t.
Allegro said: In that same situation, what am I going to do? I am going to defend and disarm. I will do this before the car jacker ever knew what hit him. See, he made the mistake of getting within reach of my arm/hand. If he manages to pull the trigger, the only one who will get shot is him because the first thing I did was turn the gun barrel at him and away from me. While I’m at it, his trigger finger will most likely be badly broken. Am I so special and talented to be able to do this? Not at all. I’m a small woman (5’2″, 125 lbs) – anyone can learn to do it. The difference is that I really am concerned about effective self-defense so I took the time to learn how to defend myself in the most realistic scenarios. I don’t have the false security of a gun. That’s why I will drive away in my car, unharmed… and you won’t.
My son does karate, and is pretty darn good at sparring. I’ve gotten “in the ring” myself if only for a few times. I am truly glad that you took self-defense courses of the practical type.
However, in the car jacking scenario, how are you going to disarm the perp when he’s pointing the gun at or through the window? If the window is shut and the bullet can go through the window … then what? What did your self defense training get you? What if there are multiple attackers? Have you ever truly fought a guy who weighs 300 pounds. Hate to say it, but at 5’2″ and 125 … I hope you’re very, very good … and strong.
I love how conservatives talk out of both sides of their mouth on this topic. Consistently.
“People will be violent and dangerous with or without guns! Guns really aren’t that big of a deal, you see. No added danger, no added efficiency to commit violent crime! Really, any weapon would do. Obviously you naively expect paradise without guns but guns really don’t matter much at all. No big thang at all…
Wait, what do you filthy libruls mean that you’re gonna take my guns! Then how will I stand a chance against fighting evildoers! How would it ever be possible for me to muster the sheer power needed to kill someone without access to firearms! What do you mean that any weapon would do? That’s just naive and unrealistic like a typical librul!”
Really, is it so hard to blockquote? I mean, am I some sort of evil genius for figuring it out on my own?
Don’t be obtuse. Cars (and swimming pools, and alcohol) are utilitarian objects in a way that assault weapons are not. Assault weapons aren’t healthy when used in moderation. Their only non-criminal use is as a dangerous toy.
I for one don’t have a problem with people owning guns for hunting and self-defense, but assault weapons and high capacity magazines are not appropriate for those purposes. I cannot think of a single other example where we allow people to own something that exposes others to risk and terror just so some small minority can play with it. But this is gun-nuttery we’re talking about.
Well we could, but that would be stupid, since adding more guns to more homes would almost certainly increase deaths and injuries.
Actually, it’s your argument that leads to the notion that we should never ban or regulate anything, no matter how obviously dangerous and useless it may be, on the idiotic premise that next thing you know we’ll start banning cars.
Okay, since it looks like chigau isn’t here to provide a tutorial, here we go:
<blockquote>text goes here</blockquote>
gives you
Really not that difficult.
I’m sure that’s the fantasy that you regularly jack off to, in between sessions of howling at the moon in an attempt to tell the moonfolk about the evils of Big Gubmit and right before nodding off to sleep while listening to recordings of Rush Limbaugh strangling hobos. But, sadly, it isn’t actually the case . So sorry to burst your bubble. Shed a single red-blooded American tear and get on with your regularly scheduled mental restructuring of reality.
It is not realistic to omit suicide from the count of gun deaths. Guns make impulsive suicide too easy.
The harm done by guns and rifles includes murder, accident, and suicide.
How will a gun help you in those scenarios? You really think you can get ahold of your gun and take him/them out before he/they shoot you? Hardly. In fact, once again, my odds are better than yours. He sees your gun, he fires. I get out of the car and say “take it.” If he tries to force me back into the car, he will very unlikely succeed because he has put himself within my sphere of effective defense. If the guy just shoots through the window to push aside the body, then we’re both dead. Again, your gun is not an effective defense.
I don’t have to be very strong. I just have to have the knowledge. Clearly, you know little of martial arts. Yes, I can take a 300 pound guy to the ground and do him considerable harm if I so choose. And have.
FYI, at least 84 people were shot in America on gun appreciation day: 35 killed, 49 injured http://bit.ly/VHjac1
Great, now you’ve got him worrying about martial artists kicking his ass. He’s going to have to weld three guns together and tuck it under his pillow to deal with that menace.
Area Man said:
Oh … ok, cars are utilitarian … then ban Corvettes because I see no need to be able to go that fast, and they’re not “utilitarian” … people get them to compensate … or whatever.
And swimming pools should be regulated to wading pools. You can have them … but we’ll limit their size because … hey, if one life can be saved.
And alcohol`can only be used in industrial or medical applications since that’s the only real legitimate use, right.
And pretending that guns have no legitimate use is equally obtuse. Ask the millions who hunt.
Strawman and goal post changing yet again. Not one person – not one here or anywhere else – has suggested that firearms used for hunting be outlawed in any sense. Regulating does not equal banning.
Got any more?
It was provocative of the NRA to put Gun Appreciation Day right before Martin Luther King Day, don’t you think?
Actually, crime goes down as the population ages. And fifteen years after abortion is legalized.
While there may be some liberals who want all gun ownership banned, I cannot think of any politicians who are trying to do so. A ban on some types of guns (assault rifles) is not a ban on all guns.
And so what if Black-on-Black crime makes up a significant percentage of gun violence? African Americans are citizens and misuse of guns in their communities has to be dealt with as an American problem. Plus with all the White males who have gone around shooting large numbers of people, it’s obvious that gun violence is not just a “Black problem”. It’s an American problem.
Right now, a majority of Americans want sensible gun control legislation, which in my opinion is great.
http://news.yahoo.com/newtown-shootings-most-back-gun-controls-poll-shows-220035304–abc-news-politics.html
Area Man
Actually we do, banning assault rifles did not stop a crazed gunman from killing 16 elementary schoolchildren in Dunblane in 1996 – reading the timeline of the attack, the only reason I can see for the slightly lower body count was because the class sized in the UK are typically smaller.
Most mass shooters choose assault rifles because they look cool and for no other reason, functionally speaking you can do just as much damage with a couple of semi automatic handguns which are also a lot easier to conceal.
… I’ve never really bought the “ooh, we need assault rifles for self defense” argument, but the fact is that the vast majority of these things only ever see daylight at the gun range.
Assault rifles have shown up more recently and obviously the media plays up their presence, it’s almost like they’re disappointed these days if one hasn’t been used, but the deadliest shooting in US history was accomplished with handguns using regular magazines, just like practically every mass shooting and certainly almost every regular murder.
The Washington sniper used another bushmaster AR-15, but only fired a handful of shots at each shooting, so a bolt action rifle would have been just as effective.
In Aurora, the rifle jammed, most of the rounds fired were from handguns, the shooter reloaded at least 3 times without interference (something like 25 rifle were rounds fired, but I would say something like 75 handgun rounds fired – the Glock 22 is a 15 round handgun, there were 3 empty magazines on the floor and presumably another 2 empty magazines in the guns).
In Newtown, the shooter was armed with two semi automatic handguns and left a semi automatic shotgun (a hunting weapon, even though there are functionally identical but much scarier looking “tactical” versions) in the trunk of his car, if a rifle hadn’t been present, the handguns would have been used just as they were in Dunblane – he reloaded frequently as well, sometimes dropping magazines that were still half full (all magazines were the standard 30 round size afaik).
There is no rate of fire difference between an “assault rifle” and a semi automatic handgun – they both fire as fast as you can pull the trigger – depending on the handgun, there isn’t even a magazine size difference and some handgun rounds put out a lot more energy than the intermediate round of the AR. Even if there were a significant rate of fire difference, it hardly matters when a shooter has half an hour to shoot at largely stationary or trapped and invariably defenseless targets (not that I’m arguing in favor of arming everyone, I don’t really buy that argument either).
The only real advantage of a semi automatic rifle over a semi automatic handgun is accuracy at long range, which is irrelevant in the case of mass shootings because they’re invariably all indoors or at the very least at close range outdoors.
The same argument goes for magazine size – to my knowledge, there’s only ever been ONE mass shooting that was stopped when the shooter stopped to reload, that was in Tucson and that was unusual in that he only carried a single firearm, most mass shooters carry multiple weapons and invariably commit suicide LONG before they run out of ammunition – there isn’t even usually a shootout with police, they usually blow their brains out as soon as they hear sirens.
So, explain to me HOW banning assault rifles or high capacity magazines will help reduce body counts in mass shootings?
I’m honestly curious, what mechanism are you envisioning here? Because I simply can’t see one.
Which is another point, even California aren’t proposing a ban on the things, only a ban on their sale.
As you quite rightly say, this whole exercise is largely pointless if we aren’t going to get rid of anything already in circulation (but again, I don’t think doing so would have any impact anyway).
If you read my other posts you will see I’ve been constantly pushing for better training & testing of all firearms owners, as well as better rules on firearm storage – something that will NEVER happen if we spend all of our energy banning things that ultimately are not significantly more dangerous than the ones that are constitutionally protected.
He says, conveniently ignoring the word “assault” and conveniently ignoring that even if this were about guns in general, many hunters are doing so for fun rather than necessity. Hence “dangerous toy”.
Conservatives and logic: Mortal enemies.
Markita Lynda
Gun Appreciation Day has to be close to the dumbest goddamned idea I think I’ve ever heard of.
Anteprepro
I wouldn’t read too much into the name, “assault” is like slapping a “turbo” sticker on a car.
A true assault rifle, like the M4 Carbine has an automatic mode that fires multiple rounds per trigger press, which no civilian rifle does.
The AR in AR-15 does not stand for “Assault Rifle” it comes from the name of the company that developed it – Armalite.
@kyoseki
You make very valid points that I generally agree with. My thoughts on a place to start are as follows:
1. Gun owners must be licensed by a certain date and their guns registered in a national database.
2. To buy ammo, it must be done in person with a license presented. That purchase is noted in the database under the licensee’s name.
3. No more internet or mail orders for ammo. If you need ammo that the dealer doesn’t regularly carry, the dealer can order it for you, recording the purchase in the database when you pick it up.
3. Purchases in unusually high quantities are flagged as suspected straw purchases. With purchases being noted in the national database, you can’t just run from dealer to dealer making exceptionally large purchases without notice.
4. Purchases for ammo for firearms not registered in your name aren’t allowed.
By controlling ammo purchases, it is a de facto control of firearms. You can have all the guns you want, legal or legal. If you don’t have the ammo, they aren’t going to hurt anyone.
That would be legal or illegal.
allegro
I don’t personally have much of a problem with firearms registration, but there’s a lot of people out there who do, mainly the “we want to be able to overthrow the gubment!” crowd, so that would be an uphill struggle.
I’m ok with tracking purchases though, anything to help identify straw purchasers is fine by me – according to a sacbee article from earlier this year, something like 40% of all guns used in crime were bought by family/friends.
Tracking ammunition purchases is actually more difficult than you might think, though in principle, it doesn’t seem like a terrible idea.
I don’t have a problem with swiping my driver’s license any time I buy ammunition, but it’s going to generate a ridiculous amount of data for any federal agencies to track – for every prospective mass shooter out there, there’s hundreds of sports shooters or hunters buying the same quantity of ammunition.
Most mass shootings seem to go through 100-200 rounds of ammunition – I go through that much during any range session, especially if I’m there with friends (and believe me, this is far from an unusual amount, I have friends who compete in practical shooting events who go through 1000 rounds a day in practice).
Much was made of the fact that the Aurora shooter bought 6000 rounds of ammunition, but that’s something like 3-400 lbs of ammo, he was only carrying a few hundred rounds during the shooting.
Online ammo purchases are actually probably easier for the government to track than ones made in person, but they could still work with this new system as long as they get shipped to a FFL and you have to swipe your license to pick it up (of course, you’d have to crack down on reloading supplies as well, and that’s actually more common than you might think).
Lastly, you can buy different gun parts to change the caliber of your firearms (for example, I have a slide and barrel for my 40 S&W P226 that allows me to shoot 22LR “plinking” ammunition) that can be bought without any need for registration, so you’d have to change the law to encompass those as well.
Of course, right now, any ban on ammunition is rather redundant because it’s rarer than rocking horse shit right now, particularly the intermediate assault rifle stuff (like assault rifle parts as well, they’re sold out practically everywhere).
We can probably throw another couple of “right now”s into that last sentence :)
@kyoseki
As I said, it’s a start and there is no weapons ban to get the fetishists all whacked out. I acknowledge that the sheer numbers of firearms out there makes it impossible to do a lot to limit them. It’s also handguns that do the most damage. That’s why I think regulations of ammo would be the most effective approach. Yes, it would take a massive database but that is well within the realm of do-ability. The IRS does it with a whole lot more information to record. ;)
The fetishists are always going to whine and stomp their little feet. I believe they are in the great minority and are not among those responsible gun owners we keep hearing about. It may surprise a few after my comments here, but I’m one of them. I would not find these regulations at all onerous.
I should say I’m one of the responsible gun owners – a necessary piece of equipment for my profession – not one of the fetishists.
allegro
Ah fair enough, but you never know what the firearm knowledge level of the other person is here.
As I say though, I don’t really have much of a problem with any of these proposals, they’re a lot less onerous than some of the things out there (like 7 round limits and micro stamping – someone’s been watching too much CSI).
Like you, I feel that any new legislation needs to target all firearms equally, banning individual firearms or accessories is futile.
I would love for firearms to be relegated to the same recreational category we use for archery these days, which is generally how they’re viewed in Europe, but we have a ridiculous uphill struggle to reach that point.
Let me get this straight. From a single incident in another country, in which someone racked up a high body count with handguns, you infer that the assault weapons ban in the US had absolutely no effect?
I rest my case. You don’t know what effect it may have had.
It’s amazing the things you think you know that you have absolutely no way of knowing. It even extends to mind-reading.
It depends on the weapon, but as a general rule, this is untrue. Assault rifles are designed to use more powerful ammo than handguns with better penetration and more accuracy. To the extent that there are some handguns that can approach this, they are more difficult to use due to their recoil. And at any rate, they are also unnecessary for civilian use.
In other words, we were lucky the assault rifle didn’t work. If it had, the body count would have almost certainly been higher.
And every time he reloaded it gave people extra precious seconds to get out. If the assault rifle had not jammed, this would not have been the case. He had a 100-round drum and there would have been nonstop firing.
Even if true — I’m pretty sure there are other cases — given the relative rarity of mass shooting events, the fact that it happens at all shows that forcing a shooter to reload can only help reduce fatalities.
James Holmes did not commit suicide (you might want to look up the word “invariably”). He apparently stopped his rampage when new potential victims had escaped. I believe he had also exhausted the ammo of his still-functioning weapons, but I’m not sure about that.
You clearly know the answer to this question because you anticipated it with multiple objections. They are, however, very poor objections.
Claiming that there are other highly deadly weapons does not make a ban on assault rifles less of a good idea; at most, it just increases the necessary scope of the ban. And just because many or most mass shooting events take place such that reloading doesn’t give people time to get away or give them a chance to attack the gunman does not mean that this has always been case or that it always will be. Those things have happened before and will happen again.
Sorry, I don’t buy the notion that these are somehow mutually exclusive policies. We could do both. And I can assure you that gun nuts are no more willing to bend when it comes to training and storage laws, which they view purely as a nuisance designed to interfere with their ownership rights. The fact that they won’t even give up assault rifles and high-capacity magazines, which truly have no non-criminal purpose other than they “look cool”, to use your own words, is proof positive that they’re not going to give in on anything.
WTF? Is it stupid scenario time already? Lets see. You are in the car, facing forward, with your hands in no position to point jack at anyone, and they will be occupied through the process of getting out too, and… you figure that telling this “armed” thug, “I have a gun, so leave me alone!”, is ***less*** likely to get you shot? Wow.. you are super expert on this logistics thing aren’t you?
My home has been broken into a total of 4 times. Three times we weren’t home, thankfully. The last time I would have been home alone sleeping with fucking ear plugs in if my sig. other hadn’t come home from work sick only 30 minutes prior to the incident. I guess this would be an attempted break in since they never actually made it into the house. The guys who were using a crow bar to jam their way into our door turned and ran to their car quicker than shit the second my SO opened the door. He wasn’t armed, he was barely even clothed, and magically they still ran away. It seems pretty safe to say that most robbers are a lot more interested in your stuff than they are in a fight, or they would attacking random people on the street instead of breaking into homes that they think are empty.
We were talking about this because of all the gun talk lately. We actually do have a gun in the house because the SO was worried about what would happen if something like that happened and he wasn’t home. It is a scary thought, I’ll admit that. I don’t feel any safer with the gun here, though. I know in many cases (maybe most? I admit I don’t know for sure) it is more likely for a weapon to be taken and used on the person trying to wield it. I can easily imagine that scenario where I try too protect myself with a gun , or any number of weapons, only to have it ripped out of my hands and used against me. So as someone who has a pretty great reason to worry about home invasions, I still don’t understand the argument that having a gun is some magical protective barrier.
Ignoring the BS daily mail, violent crime in the UK is higher than in other western/northern European countries because we’re generally more right wingy/tax-haveny and thus more unequally meaning that there’s a lot of bitterness among the working classes and blah blah condensed complicated social factors blah blah violence.
If we had guns, especially in places like London and Birmingham, I imagine that homicide would increase drastically. We have a fairly major problem with gangs in the lower-income areas. Very few have guns.