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Gun Talk Re: have you heard about...?

Started by emay, July 20, 2012, 09:35:53 AM

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gah

Quote from: nab on August 06, 2012, 04:15:40 PM
Quote from: rowjimmy on August 06, 2012, 03:48:38 PM
Getting rid of guns might not end violence but keeping them sure isn't helping things, is it?





Couldn't you apply the same logic to anything that is potentially dangerous?  "If we get rid of bees it may not eliminate the danger of being stung (because hornets sting as well), but keeping them sure isn't reducing stings either."

I don't see how the existence of gun violence is in and of itself an argument for total prohibition. 



Quote from: rowjimmy on August 06, 2012, 03:48:38 PM


So are we discussing guns or the violence of our culture?

Two different, although related, topics.


I'm not talking specifically about the violence of our culture, though that can certainly be understood as another symptom of cultural inequality, certainly of the same sort that produces the more specific gun related variety. 


I'm talking about systemic change that eliminates the need for gun violence.  To me that is a more practical approach than prohibition.  It starts mainly with education that can lead to informed dialog.

That doesn't sound practical at all. It's sound naively idealistic. Educating an entire nation vs changing a law, and you think the former seems easier to do?

Also, and completely serious question here, if the existence of gun violence can't be used as an argument for better gun control laws, what can?
Sometimes we live no particular way but our own.

UncleEbinezer

Quote from: nab on August 06, 2012, 04:15:40 PM
Quote from: rowjimmy on August 06, 2012, 03:48:38 PM
Getting rid of guns might not end violence but keeping them sure isn't helping things, is it?





Couldn't you apply the same logic to anything that is potentially dangerous?  "If we get rid of bees it may not eliminate the danger of being stung (because hornets sting as well), but keeping them sure isn't reducing stings either."


I support getting rid of bees AND hornets!

I know you may think I am making smart ass comments, but I hate those things. 



Quote from: bvaz
if you ever gacve me free beer, I'd bankrupt you  :-D

barnesy305

Quote from: slslbs on August 06, 2012, 03:24:42 PM
lots of damage was done to people and property in the ghettos in Eastern Europe without guns.
As much as I believe in gun control, this guy would have used Molotov Cocktails or something like that. I say that only because we shouldn't kid ourselves into thinking that less guns would have prevented this.
we need to figure out a way to stop this kind of hatred - although it has been going on since time began.

that all said, it sure would be nice if there were less guns.

This is the real issue in my eyes, our race is violent regardless of what weapon is used. We always have been and unfortunately it looks like we always will be.

nab

Quote from: goodabouthood on August 06, 2012, 04:29:09 PM
Quote from: nab on August 06, 2012, 04:15:40 PM
Quote from: rowjimmy on August 06, 2012, 03:48:38 PM
Getting rid of guns might not end violence but keeping them sure isn't helping things, is it?





Couldn't you apply the same logic to anything that is potentially dangerous?  "If we get rid of bees it may not eliminate the danger of being stung (because hornets sting as well), but keeping them sure isn't reducing stings either."

I don't see how the existence of gun violence is in and of itself an argument for total prohibition. 



Quote from: rowjimmy on August 06, 2012, 03:48:38 PM


So are we discussing guns or the violence of our culture?

Two different, although related, topics.


I'm not talking specifically about the violence of our culture, though that can certainly be understood as another symptom of cultural inequality, certainly of the same sort that produces the more specific gun related variety. 


I'm talking about systemic change that eliminates the need for gun violence.  To me that is a more practical approach than prohibition.  It starts mainly with education that can lead to informed dialog.

That doesn't sound practical at all. It's sound naively idealistic. Educating an entire nation vs changing a law, and you think the former seems easier to do?

Also, and completely serious question here, if the existence of gun violence can't be used as an argument for better gun control laws, what can?



First, the bolded part:

My argument was that the existence of gun violence alone is not criteria for total prohibition, not partial prohibition.


As far as naive idealism and social change are concerned, I don't find it naive to advocate for systemic change to effect historical change.  There is a wide gulf between the legality of something and the cultural acceptance of that idea. 

Take racial segregation for instance.  Which has precipitated more racial integration, the outlawing of segregation or decreasing acceptance for public racism in late 20th century America?   

The right answer is both.


That is why I argue for partial prohibition and systemic change.  I fail to see what is idealistic about that; from my perspective it is cultural/historical due process. 

twatts

Quote from: UncleEbinezer on August 06, 2012, 04:42:14 PM
Quote from: nab on August 06, 2012, 04:15:40 PM
Quote from: rowjimmy on August 06, 2012, 03:48:38 PM
Getting rid of guns might not end violence but keeping them sure isn't helping things, is it?





Couldn't you apply the same logic to anything that is potentially dangerous?  "If we get rid of bees it may not eliminate the danger of being stung (because hornets sting as well), but keeping them sure isn't reducing stings either."


I support getting rid of bees AND hornets!

I know you may think I am making smart ass comments, but I hate those things.

We need the Bees...  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_crop_plants_pollinated_by_bees

More than the smart-ass comments...   :-P

T
Oh! That! No, no, no, you're not ready to step into The Court of the Crimson King. At this stage in your training an album like that could turn you into an evil scientist.

----------------------

I want super-human will
I want better than average skill
I want a million dollar bill
And I want it all in a Pill

Hicks

Bees dont kill people, histamines do. 
Quote from: Trey Anastasio
But, I don't think our fans do happily lap it up, I think they go online and talk about how it was a bad show.

PIE-GUY

Quote from: Hicks on August 06, 2012, 05:42:26 PM
Bees dont kill people, histamines do.

Lulz. Also, a white-supremicist killing a bunch of Sikhs over 9/11 is like a guy killing a tabby kitten because a lion mauled his brother.

The only thing worse than murderers are stupid murderers.
I've been coming to where I am from the get go
Find that I can groove with the beat when I let go
So put your worries on hold
Get up and groove with the rhythm in your soul

Superfreakie

Quote from: PIE-GUY on August 06, 2012, 07:48:54 PM
Lulz. Also, a white-supremicist killing a bunch of Sikhs over 9/11 is like a guy killing a tabby kitten because a lion mauled his brother.

yeah, this crossed my mind
Que te vaya bien, que te vaya bien, Te quiero más que las palabras pueden decir.

rowjimmy

Quote from: PIE-GUY on August 06, 2012, 07:48:54 PM
Quote from: Hicks on August 06, 2012, 05:42:26 PM
Bees dont kill people, histamines do.

Lulz. Also, a white-supremicist killing a bunch of Sikhs over 9/11 is like a guy killing a tabby kitten because a lion mauled his brother.

The only thing worse than murderers are stupid murderers.

[hillbilly voice]But they're brown... Surely they're like cousins of them terrorisms or somethin'.[/hillbilly voice]
:roll:

sls.stormyrider

thought this was a very good (if unoriginal) column
QuoteMonday, Aug. 20, 2012
The Case for Gun Control
By Fareed Zakaria
Update Appended: August 10, 2012

After the ghastly act of terrorism against a Sikh temple in Wisconsin on Aug. 5, Americans are pondering how to stop gun violence. We have decided that it is, in the words of New York Times columnist David Brooks, a problem of psychology, not sociology. We are trying to fathom the evil ideology of Wade Michael Page. Only several weeks ago, we were all trying to understand the twisted psychology of James Holmes, the man who killed 12 innocents at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo. Before that it was the mania of Jared Loughner, who shot Congresswoman Gabby Giffords last year.

Certainly we should try to identify such people and help treat and track them. But aside from the immense difficulty of such a task--there are millions of fanatical, crazy people, and very few turn into mass murderers--it misses the real problem.

Gun violence in America is off the chart compared with every other country on the planet. The gun-homicide rate per capita in the U.S. is 30 times that of Britain and Australia, 10 times that of India and four times that of Switzerland. When confronted with such a large deviation, a scholar would ask, Does America have some potential cause for this that is also off the chart? I doubt that anyone seriously thinks we have 30 times as many crazy people as Britain or Australia. But we do have many, many more guns.

(Cover Story: How Guns Won.)

There are 88.8 firearms per 100 people in the U.S. In second place is Yemen, with 54.8, then Switzerland with 45.7 and Finland with 45.3. No other country has a rate above 40. The U.S. handgun-ownership rate is 70% higher than that of the country with the next highest rate.

The effect of the increasing ease with which Americans can buy ever more deadly weapons is also obvious. Over the past few decades, crime has been declining, except in one category. In the decade since 2000, violent-crime rates have fallen by 20%, aggravated assault by 21%, motor-vehicle theft by 44.5% and nonfirearm homicides by 22%. But the number of firearm homicides is essentially unchanged. What can explain this anomaly except easier access to guns?

Confronted with this blindingly obvious causal connection, otherwise intelligent people close their eyes. Denouncing any effort to control guns, George Will explained on ABC News that he had "a tragic view of life, which is that ... however meticulously you draft whatever statute you wind up passing, the world is going to remain a broken place, and things like this are going to happen." I don't recall Will responding to, say, the 9/11 attacks--or any other law-and-order issue for that matter--with a "things happen" sentiment.

The other argument against any serious gun control is that it's unconstitutional, an attempt to undo American history. In fact, something close to the opposite is true.

On Friday, August 10, Fareed Zakaria issued the following statement about this article: "Media reporters have pointed out that paragraphs in my TIME column this week bear close similarities to paragraphs in Jill Lepore's essay in the April 22nd issue of The New Yorker. They are right. I made a terrible mistake. It is a serious lapse and one that is entirely my fault. I apologize unreservedly to her, to my editors at TIME, and to my readers."

TIME has since issued its own statement: "TIME accepts Fareed's apology, but what he did violates our own standards for our columnists, which is that their work must not only be factual but original; their views must not only be their own but their words as well. As a result, we are suspending Fareed's column for a month, pending further review."

Adam Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at UCLA, documents the actual history in Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America. Guns were regulated in the U.S. from the earliest years of the Republic. Laws that banned the carrying of concealed weapons were passed in Kentucky and Louisiana in 1813. Other states soon followed: Indiana in 1820, Tennessee and Virginia in 1838, Alabama in 1839 and Ohio in 1859. Similar laws were passed in Texas, Florida and Oklahoma. As the governor of Texas (Texas!) explained in 1893, the "mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law-abiding man."

(See photos of the Batman movie theater shooting.)

Congress passed the first set of federal laws regulating, licensing and taxing guns in 1934. The act was challenged and went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1939. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's solicitor general, Robert H. Jackson, said the Second Amendment grants people a right that "is not one which may be utilized for private purposes but only one which exists where the arms are borne in the militia or some other military organization provided for by law and intended for the protection of the state." The court agreed unanimously.

Things started to change in the 1970s as various right-wing groups coalesced to challenge gun control, overturning laws in state legislatures, Congress and the courts. But Chief Justice Warren Burger, a conservative appointed by Richard Nixon, described the new interpretation of the Second Amendment in an interview after his tenure as "one of the greatest pieces of fraud--I repeat the word fraud--on the American public by special-interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime."

So when people throw up their hands and say we can't do anything about guns, tell them they're being un-American--and unintelligent.
"toss away stuff you don't need in the end
but keep what's important, and know who's your friend"
"It's a 106 miles to Chicago. We got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses."

gah

Yeah, that's the one he just got in trouble for. Still...
Sometimes we live no particular way but our own.

VDB

QuoteGun violence in America is off the chart compared with every other country on the planet. The gun-homicide rate per capita in the U.S. is 30 times that of Britain and Australia, 10 times that of India and four times that of Switzerland. When confronted with such a large deviation, a scholar would ask, Does America have some potential cause for this that is also off the chart? I doubt that anyone seriously thinks we have 30 times as many crazy people as Britain or Australia. But we do have many, many more guns.

If Fareed is going to use facts and figures to bolster his argument, he should at least be truthful. The U.S. has the 12th-highest firearms-related death rate in the world. Still high, but not "off the chart compared with every other country on the planet." And those deaths aren't all murders (the topic of the column) -- it breaks down to about 40% homicides, 56% suicides and 4% accidents.

I know, I know, this isn't going to change anyone's mind -- but if we are going to talk statistics we might as well be accurate.
Is this still Wombat?

Hicks

Quote from: V00D00BR3W on August 13, 2012, 12:23:08 PM
QuoteGun violence in America is off the chart compared with every other country on the planet. The gun-homicide rate per capita in the U.S. is 30 times that of Britain and Australia, 10 times that of India and four times that of Switzerland. When confronted with such a large deviation, a scholar would ask, Does America have some potential cause for this that is also off the chart? I doubt that anyone seriously thinks we have 30 times as many crazy people as Britain or Australia. But we do have many, many more guns.

If Fareed is going to use facts and figures to bolster his argument, he should at least be truthful. The U.S. has the 12th-highest firearms-related death rate in the world. Still high, but not "off the chart compared with every other country on the planet." And those deaths aren't all murders (the topic of the column) -- it breaks down to about 40% homicides, 56% suicides and 4% accidents.

I know, I know, this isn't going to change anyone's mind -- but if we are going to talk statistics we might as well be accurate.

I don't know the real numbers but violence and death rate are not the same thing.
Quote from: Trey Anastasio
But, I don't think our fans do happily lap it up, I think they go online and talk about how it was a bad show.

gah

Quote from: Hicks on August 13, 2012, 12:34:27 PM
Quote from: V00D00BR3W on August 13, 2012, 12:23:08 PM
QuoteGun violence in America is off the chart compared with every other country on the planet. The gun-homicide rate per capita in the U.S. is 30 times that of Britain and Australia, 10 times that of India and four times that of Switzerland. When confronted with such a large deviation, a scholar would ask, Does America have some potential cause for this that is also off the chart? I doubt that anyone seriously thinks we have 30 times as many crazy people as Britain or Australia. But we do have many, many more guns.

If Fareed is going to use facts and figures to bolster his argument, he should at least be truthful. The U.S. has the 12th-highest firearms-related death rate in the world. Still high, but not "off the chart compared with every other country on the planet." And those deaths aren't all murders (the topic of the column) -- it breaks down to about 40% homicides, 56% suicides and 4% accidents.

I know, I know, this isn't going to change anyone's mind -- but if we are going to talk statistics we might as well be accurate.

I don't know the real numbers but violence and death rate are not the same thing.

You also just quoted wikipedia, and if you look at where the stats comes from, it's four different sources, and years looked at anywhere from 1993 to 2009, depends which country you're looking at. But I agree, we're not that bad compared to those ahead of us, i.e. South Africa, Colombia, El Salvador, Jamaica, Honduras, Guatemala, Swaziland, Brazil, Estonia, Panama, and Mexico. As long as we count third world countries, we're doing ok.
Sometimes we live no particular way but our own.

VDB

Quote from: Hicks on August 13, 2012, 12:34:27 PM
Quote from: V00D00BR3W on August 13, 2012, 12:23:08 PM
QuoteGun violence in America is off the chart compared with every other country on the planet. The gun-homicide rate per capita in the U.S. is 30 times that of Britain and Australia, 10 times that of India and four times that of Switzerland. When confronted with such a large deviation, a scholar would ask, Does America have some potential cause for this that is also off the chart? I doubt that anyone seriously thinks we have 30 times as many crazy people as Britain or Australia. But we do have many, many more guns.

If Fareed is going to use facts and figures to bolster his argument, he should at least be truthful. The U.S. has the 12th-highest firearms-related death rate in the world. Still high, but not "off the chart compared with every other country on the planet." And those deaths aren't all murders (the topic of the column) -- it breaks down to about 40% homicides, 56% suicides and 4% accidents.

I know, I know, this isn't going to change anyone's mind -- but if we are going to talk statistics we might as well be accurate.

I don't know the real numbers but violence and death rate are not the same thing.

That's correct -- and so at a minimum it's a good idea to look at homicide rate as opposed to overall gun death rate (in a conversation about murders, obviously). Past that, you can look at total number of non-fatal gun injuries and other incidents in which guns were used (e.g. armed robbery) but didn't result in injury. I'm not sure how the various countries of the world would break down in that regard. I don't have any particular reason to think people in other countries are much better or worse than anyone else when it comes to firing a gun and killing someone vs. not killing them.

But anyway, Zakaria opened that paragraph with a line about gun violence and then immediately dove into some stats about homicides, so I assume he was focusing on homicides. On that list I cited, the U.S. ranks 12th either way, but the list was missing some pieces of information that conceivably could push it a little higher or lower.
Is this still Wombat?