A lot of commenters seem sure that having a legal gun around substantially increases the likelihood that someone will, in a moment of rage, shoot someone--so sure that they are clearly convinced I am a lunatic for even suggesting otherwise. I understand the intuition, and maybe it's right. But the evidence for the proposition is not all that strong.
First of all, as it shows in the articles I linked earlier, something like 90% of homicides are committed by people with criminal records, i.e. people who probably cannot legally own a gun. A lot of the rest are committed by juveniles, or mentally unstable people, who also cannot legally own a gun.
It is perfectly true that adding a gun to a dispute involving violent criminals increases the likelihood that someone will be shot. But violent criminals are not like the rest of us. They have very poor impulse control, and, well, a demonstrated willingness to use violence. They also are not likely to apply for a permit before packing heat.
Murder is not something that usually just happens, even among family members. The people who do it are usually abnormal in some way, and it shows. For all the fears that allowing concealed carry would lead to murderous road rage and bar fights, these incidents have failed to materialize. I have managed to find one murder in Florida that was even arguably the result of having a gun available in a heated moment--the few others were either clearly premeditated, or involved a weapon other than a handgun. Given how small the number is, as far as I can determine, the good done by defensive uses of concealed weapons would virtually have to outweigh the harm, since several concealed carry holders have stopped violent crimes.
And if you think about it, you already know this. You have access to fatal weapons every day. How often, after a fight with someone, have you been seriously tempted to run them over with your car? Or grab a knife from the rack in the kitchen and brandish it at them? Put rat poison in their morning coffee? Or take an exacto blade to their throat while asleep? The men in the readership, at least, could be fairly confident of their ability to stab their spouse to death whenever she says something really awful. Yet none of you have done it. Virtually no one else has done it, either, except for people who were already clearly deeply troubled--either abusive, or mentally ill. That's why not a lot of hunters report getting into disputes with their friends or family that suddenly, unexpectedly, and tragically, turn violent.
It would be a very good thing if we could take guns out of the hands of criminals. But they really don't seem to make ordinary people any more murderous. (Possibly more effective suicides, but this is hard to assess, since the gun suicides may just be more determined people who would otherwise choose another, equally effective and irrevocable method). There is more we could be doing to keep criminals from getting guns--unlike most second amendment supporters, I would support extending the requirement for background checks to private sales. And perhaps there should be a presumptive temporary revocation for those who have restraining orders out on them. But with 220 million people in this country and a very long border, no gun control scheme is going to make much difference in the availability of guns to people who really want to have them.
Copyright © 2010 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
I think there are also accidental shootings to account for in there, but I don't think it changes the conclusion much. As far as I can tell, for most people, having a gun around isn't a particularly good move from a safety perspective, but that's because the risk of criminal violence against them is so low that the risk of suicide or accidental shooting[1] swamps it. But not because guns make peaceful people homicidal.
And this is a 99% emotional issue, IMO, with plenty of people either scared of guns (and so convinced they're evil) or romanticizing them.
[1] Imagine if you kept a ready-to-use, fueled up chainsaw around the house all the time--there'd be a lot of potential for disaster, just from stuff like small children messing with it or dumb accidents. The same is true of a loaded gun.
"As far as I can tell, for most people, having a gun around isn't a particularly good move from a safety perspective, but that's because the risk of criminal violence against them is so low that the risk of suicide or accidental shooting[1] swamps it."
I think it was Freakonomics which noted that the risk of pools swamps the risk of accidental firearm death. I am too lazy to confirm that factoid.
When you compare the utility of lounging in a pool to a drowned child, I think the balance is strongly in favor of banning all pools. When you balance the risk of defenselessness in the face of rape, murder or other predation against, the permitting guns seems a better argument than permitting pools. Leisure loses as against life. But defending life generally can justify the accidental and very sad loss of life.
It was indeed Freakonomics. And that chapter was quite influential in the evolution of my thinking on gun control.
Eventually what I came to is this: nobody seriously argues for banning all backyard swimming pools on safety grounds, and (unlike guns), pools aren't even constitutionally protected. So we should find that the idea of banning all privately-owned guns is an order of magnitude more ridiculous than the idea of banning backyard pools.
But. We do accept (though with some grumbling) safety legislation that requires pools to have fences of a certain height to prevent small children from wandering in; we do regulate what sort of drain covers must be used to prevent children from being trapped; we do require that certain safety equipment must be readily accessible to facilitate rescue of a person in distress.
So the analogous argument, to me, is whether accidental deaths by guns are important enough to justify restraining the second amendment right so far as to allow the firearms equivalent of fences and drain covers -- requirements for trigger locks and/or gun safes. Such safety measures seem to me to be the right sort of compromise between deference to the constitutional right and minimizing its tragic consequences.
No, for the simple reason that you are very, very unlikely to need to access your pool in an emergency situation where seconds count. OTOH, with a gun, that becomes one of the primary functions.
having a gun around isn't a particularly good move from a safety perspective, but that's because the risk of criminal violence against them is so low that the risk of suicide or accidental shooting[1] swamps it.
And why is the risk of criminal violence against them "so low"?
Studies of criminals in the US, and a survey of modern violent crime in the UK, are pretty clear that criminals do fear confronting an armed victim or an armed homeowner. Thus, non-gun-owners are obtaining a very beneficial freeriding effect.
http://www.davekopel.com/2a/Foreign/gold-standard-of-gun-control.pdf
Accidental shooting is a reasonable counter-concern, but suicide is not. Guns merely make the first attempt more effective, they don't control suicidal tendencies in and of themselves.
There's very tight gun control in Hong Kong. So, when a family member goes berserk and decides to kill someone else in the home, it's often a chop attack (i.e., they use one of those big chopping knives that are common for preparing Cantonese food).
And, when triads (kind of like mafia or gangs) want to really hurt someone, they may set their apartment on fire. Most people live in apartments with only one exit, and at least some have barred doors (kind of like gates) outside their regular doors, for extra security. So sometimes (at least in the 1990s, when I lived in Hong Kong) we'd hear about a whole family killed because the criminals used chains and padlocks to keep the barred door from opening, and then set the fire. It was awful to think of the family trapped inside, with no way to get the chains off in time.
In other words, the truly determined can find other ways besides guns, although they may have to work a bit harder at it.
In other words, tightly regulating the distribution and ownership of guns makes them rarer and more expensive, which makes it more difficult and expensive for criminals to own them, which makes gun crimes and homicide less common.
(And please: I wrote "tightly regulating," not "banning" -- so spare me the spittle flecked NRA fury).
And the elasticity of demand for weapons among violent criminals is likely much lower than the general populace. So Ann's point stands.
And the elasticity of demand for weapons among violent criminals is likely much lower than the general populace.
yes,
So Ann's point stands
Nonsense. The minor league, 15-year old hood whose sole job is to be on the lookout for police can easily possess a gun in a country whose grotesque surfeit of firearms dooms sensible regulations to ineffectuality. On the other hand, a country with strong, rigorously enforced gun regulations is a country where minor league hoods have to content themselves with knives, and expensive, difficult-to-obtain-outside-official-channels firearms are usually reserved for kingpins and bosses.
On the other hand, a country with strong, rigorously enforced gun regulations is a country where minor league hoods have to content themselves with knives
I don't know, the minor leaguers around here seem to have no trouble getting affordable drugs imported from thousands of miles away.
And please: I wrote "tightly regulating," not "banning" -- so spare me the spittle flecked NRA fury
You're going to have to be more specific if you want me to hold my spittle.
You mean like Mexico Jasper? There is not a single large country in which gun control works.
In other words, tightly regulating the distribution and ownership of guns makes them rarer and more expensive, which makes it more difficult and expensive for criminals to own them, which makes gun crimes and homicide less common.
This is absolutely not proven, and in fact is fatally wounded by the results of same approach in regards to the Drug War. The US border, particularly the one south of us, is simply too pourus and the land on the other side is too well stocked with contraband goods, for a prohibition or extremely tight regulation effort to succeed.
Therefore, all you do is remove the goods from the hands of the law abiding, which wasn't really the point of the exercise (or if it was, then a remedial class in high school civics is in order).
Right. Because everybody knows there are no examples of countries who do a much better job than the US at keeping guns out of the hands of criminals.
Huh? What are you talking about? I'm not advocating banning the ownership or manufacture or importation or export of firearms. The situation with respect the the border is irrelevant.
Er, no, I don't advocate removing guns from the hands of the law-abiding. I favor a system that combines widespread gun ownership with very strict and rigorous controls designed to limit their possession -- to the greatest extent possible -- to the aforementioned law abiding. (Similar to what is done in, say, Canada or Germany or Finland or Switzerland -- all countries with widespread firearms ownership and strict, effective, and rigorously enforced regulations). The problem with American gun enthusiasts is they want the former but see in the latter an evil Marxist conspiracy.
Guess it all depends on your definition of "substantial."
> The men in the readership, at least, could be fairly confident of
> their ability to stab their spouse to death whenever she says
> something really awful. Yet none of you have done it.
Pretty sure of your readership, aren't you? Personally, though, I haven't even been TEMPTED - my wife never says anything THAT awful!
ability != desire
She's not saying you've ever wanted to hurt your wife. She's saying you're physically capable of murder. After all, the argument against guns is essentially about decreasing a person's capacity, not their motivation.
But with 220 million people in this country
It's neither here nor there, I suppose, but we've actually got about 305 million people in this country. We passed the 220 million mark back in 1978.
There are 220 million white people in the US, but I'm going to assume (hope) that's not what you meant.
Is 220 million about the number of ADULTS? That would seem about right, and nobody is arguing for allowing children to carry guns.
It was the number of guns, actually. Mind freeze
Megan writes: "But with 220 million people in this country and a very long border, no gun control scheme is going to make much difference in the availability of guns to people who really want to have them."
Clearly this is not true. What you mean is no gun control scheme that you think will pass will have an effect.
What we need is a natiowide dragnet, stop everyone, search everyone, search every home meticulously. Find all the guns and destroy them.
While we're at it we could destroy subversive literature ("Free to Choose", I'm looking in your direction...) and unhealthy food. (Goodbye high-sugar diets!)
Look, nobody says that creating a perfect world will be easy or pleasant but that doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't be done. As any utopian revolutionary will tell you, you have to break a few (million) eggs to make an omlette. And breaking eggs is most of the fun of being a cook... or revolutionary.
Blighter, I like your style.
Check the lawn, too. Hitler's sweeping gun control laws were stymied in part because people just buried their guns and claimed to have lost them.
Blighter, I find your views fascinating and would be interested in subscribing to your newsletter.
As someone who would (reluctantly) label himself a "progressive" ( I hate labels) I enthusiastically support the Second Amendment and want to keep gun control limited to convicted felons and clinically unstable people and juveniles.
I am delighted that our political leaders know that Americans posses some 200 million firearms. I don't think any nation is completely free unless it allows citizens to be armed.
Anticipating the notion that modern states like ours can easily crush a rebellion, I'd point out that revolutions typically start with small arms. If there's wide backing, the heavier stuff finds its way into peoples' hands soon enough.
Mao was right about where political power originates (one of the few things he was right about).
Mao was right about where political power originates (one of the few things he was right about)
If Bush v. Gore had been decided the other way, I wonder if that theory would have been put to the test.
Megan,
Your defense of the safety of firearms is all fine and good when your talking about normal people legally carrying guns in normal scenarios. Your neighbor who brings a concealed weapon to church is probably not making church more dangerous. But protesters who hold their gun in one hand, a poster of Obama with a Hitler mustache in another, and are choking back tears of rage as they scream that a "death panel" is going to kill their grandmother are NOT NORMAL PEOPLE. You say that homicides that are are "committed by juveniles, or mentally unstable people". If you believe the wild socialist fantasies of Sarah Palin and have the time and will to show up to a town hall and scream at your senator at noon on a Wednesday then you are either juvenile or mentally unstable.
My father and my brother are both hunters, both own guns. However, neither one of them would ever consider bringing a gun to a political rally, no matter what the cause. There is no useful purpose for bringing a gun to a townhall meeting. I still don't understand what point the gun tries to make. If it's a reminder to the government that the public is armed, I think this point is ridiculous and completely useless. I doubt any congress persons are afraid of bloody revolution when debating health care reform or if they do, they're insane.
I think Megan is trying to broaden the point, since a lot of the responses to her initial posts were very "visceral." Guns do that to people - some people are just afraid of them. Same with dogs.
Your point, however, really is *the* point. Guns were designed for killing. As such, to display them at a Town Hall meeting is extremely inappropriate and inflammatory.
Illegal? Perhaps not. Wearing a bikini to church isn't illegal, either - but that doesn't make it right.
And, yes, I know that firearms are used for things other than killing - but their reason for being is killing (including self defense).
There's a reason that people conceal their handguns, and this is one of them. A visible weapon is a lightning rod for any number of bad things, from being "called out" to just scaring other people. I respect people's need and desire to carry a firearm for self defense. It's a scary world.
But there's no reason to carry a gun openly outside of a firing range or a hunting trip.
It makes the point that Union thugs shouldn't beat you up for expressing your political views.
Exactly! In fact, if you're the type of person who feels the need to carry a gun around in ordinary circumstances (ordinary circumstances being anything other than a war), you are by definition not a normal, mentally fit person. The very impulse to have a gun should automatically disqualify anyone from having a gun!
The latest, cutting-edge psychological research has been looking into the question of whether anyone who doesn't fervently believe in the progressive agenda can properly be termed "sane". The early findings indicate (as any sensible person would tell you) that no, they cannot.
The world will be a much better place when we lock up the half of the country that has some atavistic aversion to the glorious future we forward-seeing progressives have mapped out.
"The world will be a much better place when we lock up the half of the country that has some atavistic aversion to the glorious future we forward-seeing progressives have mapped out."
Blighter: You are SO WRONG on this. Those locked up people will still be contributing a "carbon footprint" leading to a world that's so hot it will be prone to spontaneous combustion.
I'm sure you'll agree that it would be far more beneficial to the world if those so blind to the wonders of socialism were simply eliminated.
Hey, if we bury them alive, then it's carbon capture, right?
That's not the point I was making, in fact it's the opposite. Like I said, normal people can carry guns, and we shouldn't be afraid of them. It's the abnormal people, which is not all gun owners, that we should be worried about. It's these kinds of hysterical judgements about the dangers of gun carrying that Megan is reacting so strongly, in fact overreacting so strongly, against.
I think you have amalgamated about nine different protesters into one terrifying Republican monster. And some of them are LaRouchies, who self-identify as Democrats.
Megan, the only charitable interpretation of ao's post is that (s)he
was pulling a blighter (see blighter's earlier two posts). ao must know that the protester described actually exists only in Pelosi's wishful thinking, and perhaps in a few MSNBC descriptions of events (although as far as I know, even they haven't gone quite so far yet).
ao, if you're going to make more of these types of posts, you should try to learn from blighter's style - so believable at first that it sucks you in, and you're not really sure that it's a joke until halfway through. You had a good finish there with the part about using willingness to go a townhall meeting as a marker for mental instability, but still, the way your post reads, it almost looks like you might have been serious.
Ann, blighter has not admitted to being a satirist. I work at a university, and I ensure you that there are people who earnestly believe that stuff and would agree completely.
That being said, I think blighter is satire, because he describes his "policies" as "draconian." The True Believers at my university would call it "compassion" and "guidance."
@Grundles -- blighter is a self-styled satirist in the line of your squirrely uncle who would tell you a story and then gradually string it out into increasingly fantastic terms, just to see how far you would go along with it before de-suspending disbelief. You may need to follow his work over multiple threads to truly appreciate it.
Ann, some advice: Go to your local flea market and find the guy handing out conspiracy theorist pamphlets, Ron Paul essays, and selling copies of "The Creature From Jekyll Island". Talk to him for about 15 minutes about his various theories on how the world works. Then after listen to him nearly come to tears over the federal reserve and the Bilderberg Group, Obama's muslim heritage, and whether or not the government has the constitutional right to prevent citizens from owning nuclear weapons, you can tell me whether or not these people exist. What you will find is that they do exist, and in fact you've just spoken with one, and you don't want them anywhere near you or your president with a concealed weapon.
I'm glad you folk are enjoying my occassional missive.
I'm a bit worried that I've overstepped the bounds for our usually very welcoming hostess as I got a "too many posts in too short a time" error several times when trying to post earlier. So I'll try to rein myself in a bit.
As to whether I am a satirist or an earnest idealist laboring to create the sound theoretical underpinnings of the progressive paradise to come, who can tell? I think the very idea that some would see a fine line between ridiculousness and a purely expressed progressive ideology is telling in and of itself.
But ao did NOT mention the word Republican! You've gone partisan unprovoked here. Saying insane Larouche supporters are Democrats, and therefore implying that Democrats are behind town hall meeting craziness, is not a good faith argument. It's like saying Nazi's were fascists, and fascism is right wing (or left wing, Jonah Goldberg), so Nazis were Republicans (or Democrats) -- as in, it's stupid and unhelpful.
Proposition 1:
Legally carrying a gun does not increase the likelihood of violence.
Fine.
Proposition 2:
Attending a rowdy, nasty protest with angry people on both sides, including some insane people who you call Democrats despite their clear hatred of Democrats, increases the likelihood of violence.
Do you agree?
Proposition 3:
When violence breaks out, if someone is carrying a gun, particularly someone involved in the violence, gun violence is more likely.
Do you agree?
Sorry for the stupid comment. I'm just frustrated with this whole Larouche is a Democrat line of argument.
The Democratic Party has publicly repudiated Larouchies. So as much as they won't to self-identify as Democrats, Democrats don't want anything to do with them.
And some of them might be Raelians too for all I know or care. Their underlying ideology or political affiliation is not the point, the point is their behaviors and the specific nutty beliefs they indicate (screaming stupid things, holding crazy signs, etc) are signs of mental deficiency, instability, or just plain craziness of some sort. They are not the normal, safe, gun owners at your local BBQ.
"But protesters who hold their gun in one hand, a poster of Obama with a Hitler mustache in another, and are choking back tears of rage as they scream that a "death panel" is going to kill their grandmother are NOT NORMAL PEOPLE."
What a truly pathetic argument. According to the left we're bordering on anarchy with the right dangerously out of control, and still what you describe has ocurred not one single time in a country of 300 million people.
Clearly therefore we must restrict the freedom of 300 million Americans.
It's funny that nowhere did I mention that the crazed person I was describing is "on the right", and yet you assumed so. I guess it's a little like when someone yells out "Hey stupid!" and all the idiots in the room go "Huh?" and turn to look.
And you're clearly correct, nobody from the far left or right has ever turned their political rage into violence. Nobody from Jim David Adkisson to Tim McVeigh to Leon Czolgosz have ever existed.
Yes, references to "wild socialist fantasies of Sarah Palin" are clearly neutral. But you need to hang your hat in such ridiculous assertions since you can't defend the substance.
"Yes, references to "wild socialist fantasies of Sarah Palin" are clearly neutral."
It's really almost tiring at this point to have to say that the Larouchies of the left share in the exact same paranoia. I'm sorry, I should have said the "wild fascist fantasies of Sarah Palin" in order to achieve the proper neutrality.
Let's review your rightist references:
Church, poster of Obama with a Hitler mustache, death panels, killing grandmother, socialist fantasies of Palin, town hall screaming at your senator.
Let's view your leftist references:
.
And you think it's unreasonable for people to think you meant the right simply because you didn't use the word. I have a hard time believing you're serious.
But better, you're still avoiding the issue. You used a series of circumstances to justify your position. And even in this time of such incredible anger some leftists argue their opponents are driving someone to assasinate Obama, the circumstance you note has never ocurred. Not one single time.
So your argument consists of:
Because A, therefore B.
But the facts are ~A. So your argument doesn't support B.
mj,
I apologize that my use of figurative language has confused you. No, there was not literally a guy who did all three of those three crazy things at the same time. That's incredibly insightful of you. My point is that each of those three things is crazy itself, someone doing all three would be really really crazy, but any person doing any one of them is actually pretty crazy. Your pointing out that none of the three insane behaviors has every been done by the same person is quite beside the point.
and mj, one more thing. Thank you again for automatically considering that litany of crazy behaviors "rightist references". I actually would categorize them as crazy behaviors exhibited by both far left and right. But hey, if that's what you think "rightist behavior" looks like, then that's your perception. You certainly must not think highly of "rightists".
ao,
You keep pretending you weren't referring to the right, we'll keep recognizing you as a sophist.
Nice to see you admit you think voicing dissent alone is a "crazy behavior" to use your phrase. It used to be patriotic, but I guess that was pre-Obama.
Lyndon LaRouche a leftist. LaRoucheis have been the ones demonstrating with pictures of Obama as Hitler that I specifically referenced. See this, and please, come to grips:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A_touch_of_teh_crazee.jpg
And while it's pointless to counter you yet again, because you will clearly just throw another handful of sh!t against the wall to see if anything sticks, I will point out that nowhere have I said that "voicing dissent" makes you crazy (and, my god, what a sad, tired, excuse for an argument that is. You sound like a Merlge Haggard song. Did you seriously think that was my point, or were you hoping that I would become too frustrated and exhausted by your inanity to respond?).
No, "voicing dissent" does not make you crazy, but screaming at the top of your lungs about "death panels" does make you crazy. It really just does. I implore you to speak to some of the kinds of people who say and do these things and see their insanity for yourself. Have you never spoken to a Larouchie on a college campus? Try it some time, and tell me they aren't crazy. Or maybe take a pamphlet and sign up.
ao,
You used the whole list to make the protestors sound crazy, because individually the actions you mention aren't all that convincing in support of your conclusion. So you had a choice, fudge the facts or accept that your position was not particularly convincing.
So you fudged the facts hoping no one would notice. When challenged you back off on the facts hoping we won't notice how weak your comments are now. Yes, that person carrying the Obama is Hitler sign is soooo scary we have to outlaw firearms, even though this person was not carrying a firearm. My favorite part of your comment is where you admit your argument is so weak a resonable person would not have made it, apparently believing this is a defense.
In your list of crazy behaviors (which you now hold as independently justifying the label) you included anyone who has "the time and will to show up to a town hall and scream at your senator at noon on a Wednesday". In reasonable circles this is known as dissent. The "scream" part being a rhetorical flourish on your part and not what most protestors actually do.
The term "Death Panel" is also a rhetorical flourish. In fact, it's no differnt than your rhetorical flourish that "protesters who hold their gun in one hand, a poster of Obama with a Hitler mustache in another, and are choking back tears of rage as they scream that a "death panel" is going to kill their grandmother are NOT NORMAL PEOPLE". So I find it hysterical that someone who follows no standards in their own language would act as the language police for others.
Speak honestly or don't whine about others doing the same thing you do.
Yeah, mj, nobody has ever fired a gun at or killed a public figure in the United States of a America. Certainly not around a political rally What's the big effing deal, right?
If you want to make the argument that past political assasinations justify a ban on firearms at political rallies feel free to do so. That is not the argument ao made.
Her argument is that because these people are demonstrably scary and unreasonable they should not be allowed to have firearms at political rallies. But she lies about what people have done to demonstrate that they are scary and unreasonable. Since the premise she used to justify her conclusion doesn't actually exist her conclusion is unsupported.
Pointing out that my comment isn't responsive to arguments not made by ao has no relevance I can determine.
Much shorter Megan McArdle: Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
Until gun-control advocates learn how to disprove this simple fact, they will always come across as control-freaks with a dismal and extremely condescending view of human nature. Giving agency to inanimate objects while denying it to human beings is a pretty difficult position to argue. It makes the rhetorical job of anti-2nd-amendment types much harder than pro-2nd-amendment people. It's not my car's fault when I drive recklessly and smash into the back of your hybrid.
Guns don't kill people, people kill people.
And nuclear weapons don't kill people either, but I'll bet you're not advocating the right to own them.
Get off your high horse. It's all a continuum of how much power to kill do we give an individual and it reaches from nuclear weapons down to safety scissors.
Each of us weighs the benefit that the weapon might bring (ability to defend oneself, cultural continuity, ability to protect oneself from the government, simple freedom to own stuff) against the danger of giving individuals the ability to kill more easily. We each find our own place on the spectrum that we're comfortable with and the trade-offs (for us) are about equal, and when enough people settle on any one point, laws get passed.
Gun control advocates are banking on the fact that as time goes by, individuals (especially urban individuals) see less benefit from the legal availability of guns. This has pretty much happened in the rest of the world which tends to have gun-control laws with popular support.
However, the USA does have a cultural and historical attachment to guns that means any large changes in gun laws will be a long time coming, if ever.
If nuclear weapons empowered individuals (by providing individual self-defense in the absence of government authorities) and offered substantial legitimate recreational functions, then yes, I would support the right to own nukes. But in those cases, nukes would not be nukes, right? So that's a fantastical situation, and the comparison is apples and oranges.
Besides that part, I truly do understand your very good point about a "continuum" along which we, as a society, decide where to draw an (ultimately arbitrary) line. Personally, in that debate I would prefer to err on the side of "greater individual freedom."
As an "urban" person, I don't own guns, but I have a hard time going from there to telling other people what they can and can't own. One of my college buddies grew up on a farm where the family had a bunch of shotguns and rifles stacked on the front porch like umbrellas. Even the 12-yr-old kid sister knew how to use them. They were utterly de-mystified; just tools, like a hammer. Just because I'm uncomfortable and unfamiliar with something doesn't mean I have the right to limit other people's freedom if its not harming me.
I'm trying to point out that your rhetorical points guns don't kill people and Just because I'm uncomfortable and unfamiliar with something doesn't mean I have the right to limit other people's freedom if its not harming me don't match your *actual* criteria, which is the obvious one everyone uses: do the positive uses outweigh the negative increased risk.
Nukes (or a little less ridiculous, hand-grenades) don't kill people, and stored properly, don't harm you, so by the two points you made, nukes *aren't* ridiculous.
I'd suggest that arguing using your *actual* criteria is more productive and less likely to be picked apart than using irrelevant rhetorical points which sound good, but aren't actual part of (almost) anyone's decision making process.
Neither nukes nor hand grenades can really be aimed. As the saying goes, close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and hydrogen bombs. Also, the only people who would be able to use a nuke in a non-terroristic fashion at all would be people who could also afford a long range bomber or minuteman launch system, which reduces the amount of people who could afford such a venture to a bare handful. Then there's the constant upkeep etc.. etc.. I know of no billionaires who want to own nukes that badly to toss a great deal of their wealth into it, do you?
"Much shorter Megan McArdle: Guns don't kill people, people kill people."
Actually I think her point can be more precisely summarized as: guns don't force people to kill people.
Yeah, and Tom West's point still stands - if we're above assigning agency to inanimate objects, then it shouldn't be a problem if I own a rocket-propelled grenade (to stop drive-by shooters) or a howitzer (to stop drive-by shooters in armored cars). Yet, I don't see gun rights advocates arguing for either of those two rights.
Because you don't leave the rpg up the spout, as it were, so by the time you got the weapon and loaded it the car would be long gone. That is why you couldn't claim self defense against drive-by shooters.
I used to have a shirt that said:
Guns don't kill people,
Knives do
It wasn't true, of course, but it led to some hilarious situations...
Well, if the dish ran away with the spoon, it's certainly possible the knife and fork were up to something. Something bad.
Or the old favorite:
Guns don't kill people.
I kill people.
Guilty confession: I laughed at that. heard it 20 times before, yet still I laughed...
It's classic democratic stuff, isn't it?
If I prefer not to own guns, then I derive a small benefit and almost no cost if the governement outlaws your gun. I don't have to deal with the emotional stress of having my self-righteous worldview challenged, and I am relieved of the (relatively small) risks that you turn out to be unstable and use your gun in a spree, or that your gun ends up in the hands of criminals. All the benefits (that you enjoy owning a gun and that it makes you safer) accrue to you, so what do I care if those benefits are lost? If I have the democratic majority, I can pass the law and you can lump it.
See also: smoking bans, sodomy laws. If I'm not into smoking and/or sodomy, the fact that you enjoy them doesn't do me any good, while outlawing them will give me some emotional satisfaction. Q.E.D.
It is indeed classic democracy. They've already taken away our explosives, hand grenades, nuclear weapons, fully automatic machine guns, etc.
And as our urban societies become more and more insulated from violence, the individual's perceived risk of guns (and other weapons - machetes are often in line to be banned) goes up and the perceived benefit (self defense? Like I would ever perpetrate physical violence! Fight against the government? Hahaha!) goes down.
At some point, democracy kicks in and guns are history.
And not to surprisingly, sodomy laws disappeared when the perceived risk became low enough to match the perceived benefits. Sadly for guns, it seems the trend is running (very slowly) the other way.
Oddly, the ONLY legal full-auto weapon used in a crime between 1934 and 1986 was was used by a police officer.
Of course, someone might be deterred from attacking/robbing you based on the possibility that you might have a gun, or that such a person might take out a criminal. (Shooting sprees via illegal gun owners are frequently ended by legal gun owners. The fact that a legal gun brought down an illegal one is almost never reported. The news articles almost always are made to sound like the guy was tackled or similar nonsense.)
Since we have far more than ten times the gun murder rate of comparable countries like Britain, you could cut out all those 90% of murders committed by criminals with illegal guns and we'd *still* have more handgun deaths.
Not if you also removed the juveniles and crazies.
Also, at least some of those murders would simply be displaced into other sorts of murders. We had a higher rate of murder than Britain before they controlled guns, and after.
Thank you. This is the important point. We are a far less safe country than the sensible countries that already have stringent gun control like Great Britain, Japan or Russia. Instead we are in the crazy-dangerous side of the spectrum along with the other idiot-nations that have huge gun ownership like Nigeria, Somolia or Switzerland.
Do we really want to be like Nigeria? Wouldn't we rather be like Japan? As anyone even passingly familiar with the two countries will tell you, gun control is a key difference between them. We could take a huge step in the right direction by simply abolishing private gun ownership and implementing a suitably draconian enforcement regime.
Perhaps if I were Japanese, I might prefer we turn into Japan. But I'm not, so no thank you.
Witness the way Great Britain's murder rate has been rising and rising and rising as their gun control laws have gotten -- err, more draconian?
scratches head
The gun control people only assert that gun control laws 'reduce gun death.' Their statistics, at best, don't support any reduction in # of total homocides.
'm pretty sure Megan meant 220 million guns.
I used to be big on gun control arguments, but I've pretty much given up. I think gun control can work, but Americans just don't want gun control. They may pay lip service o the idea of keeping it from crazies and criminals ( the "official" NRA position) but in reality, Americans don't want effective gun control. There are two things that we know about Americans.
* They like their guns
* They like to kill each other with their guns
*THE END
When Americans be moan their 10,000 handgun homicides a year ( versus a few dozen in other civilized countries) or decry the latest rampage by some homicidal maniac who bought his automatic rifle at a gun show or on the Internet, I just shrug my shoulders . " What do you expect?Its America. We organize our society that way, so get the homicide rate we deserve.
One writer editorializes:
Why are people like this walking the streets with pistols in their pockets? Why does the gun lobby endlessly defend their "right to bear arms"? Why does the lobby oppose bans on armor-piercing "cop-killer" bullets and plastic pistols that can be sneaked past metal detectors? What kind of brutal America is the lobby trying to create?
http://sundaygazettemail.com/Opinion/Editorials/200807240601
Indeed.
They want the thoretical option to wage an insurgency against the government if it does things they really don't like, or elects people they really don't like.
But they always point out that gun laws don't prevent criminals from having guns. Insurgents are criminals, obviously, so wouldn't they have all the guns they needed?
I'm sure these people don't think of themselves as potential insurgents, but it's what they're really saying when they talk about "reminding the government where the power really lies."
Criminals may kill people with their weapons, but they have little to no training and in any sort of organized defense would suck ass. In order to keep the idea and culture present and not simply reduce the set to mere criminals over time the mechanism must remain legal.
Americans. So stupid. So stubborn. Can you believe they actually think that a government by and for the people should not have the power to tell the people what they can and can't own? Why can't they be more sensible and compliant, letting superior people like me tell them how to live?
"handgun murders."
Say, why are baseball murders, knife murders, arson murders so much nicer?
Small problem with your position: Gun control seems to have no salutary effect on existing trends in homicides and violent crime, and very little effect on criminal access to illegal guns. Meanwhile, when enacted on a scale large enough to be effective at restricting or disarming the law-abiding populace, it does have the unsalutary effect of increasing the types and frequencies of violent crimes that were previously uncommon.
In short, no matter how good the intentions or the theory, in practice you get all of the disadvantages and none of the benefits.
The average gun control advocate would do their homework and then never fall for that kind of deal when buying a used car, but say the word "gun" and suddenly the brain divorces itself from a beneficial lifetime of logic, reason, and experience. Why?
Meanwhile, when enacted on a scale large enough to be effective at restricting or disarming the law-abiding populace, it does have the unsalutary effect of increasing the types and frequencies of violent crimes that were previously uncommon.
Which is why Japan and Canada are hot-beds of violent crime :-)
Look, while I know the gun control advocates like to point out the "Little gun control in the USA" -> "High violent crime rate in the USA" correlation and try to pretend it's causation, but it hardly makes it legitimate to pretend the opposite. Especially when the correlation is largely the other way around.
False claims of causation makes one sound weak. Completely spurious claims of correlation makes one sound desperate.
And what spurious claim of correlation do you think was involved, let alone a false claim of causation?
Well, causation is implied by you in the sentence I quoted, and I can't see how you'd claim causation without correlation. As for which correlation, I await the example that you based your claim upon. (I assumed Great Britain, since that's popular right now, if somewhat nonsensical.)
The long and short of it is that legal gun ownership does not seem causitive of violent crime, and the mild correlation in Western countries seems more a cultural and social artifact.
Personally, I'm a gun control advocate for the same reason I'm a hand-grenade control advocate. No big benefits to me (no cultural/emotional attachment to guns, only a marginal regard for freedom to own stuff for its own sake) and costs of marginally increased danger to myself and my family and much increased discomfort.
Then again, I'm Canadian and probably fall right in middle of the Canadian urban mainstream. I'd like to see effective American gun control for the same reason that Americans want to see effective Mexican drug control: Spill-over effects across the border cost lives.
Realistically, I think the American cultural/historical attachment to guns is strong enough to endure the gradual shift away from guns that typifies urbanization of a population.
I assumed Great Britain, since that's popular right now, if somewhat nonsensical.
I suppose it is very easy to win arguments if the most relevant and damaging real-world experiment available can be hand-waved away as "nonsensical", but Tom West Jedi Mind Tricks are not among my weaknesses. (Maybe try kryptonite, since nobody else has.)
At any rate, the UK is hardly a "nonsensical" example. We have for our consideration a modern western nation which shares with the US the strongest cultural and legal tradition (a) in absolute terms and (b) compared any other nation. It previously had an ultra-libertine view on gun ownership and self-defense and saw six hundred years of low and ever-declining crime rates. It then transitioned in less than 100 years to an extremely hostile view on gun ownership and self defense generally. As a party bonus, it has 1/5 as much population, 2/5 as much political boundary, and 1/40 as much geographic area, while being completely surrounded by water. Therefore, it ought to have better odds than the US of being able to police guns in the population and to curtail illegal arms imports.
The fact that the UK has seen a corresponding rise in violent crime (including a high proportion of home-invasion robberies) and an increasingly armed criminal class, suggests that a highly restrictive gun control model is exactly the last thing the US should be attempting, and that the real root problems of crime lie somewhere other than private gun ownership.
Mouse, one can hash out the British situation all one likes, but the correlation with gun control measures and rising crime are iffy at best. Concealed weapons were banned decades before crime jumped up, and handguns were banned long *after* the crime spike started.
It's another "just so" story that *both* sides are so enamored with.
Let's just cut the rhetoric and cut to the chase. What really matters in deciding which side of the fence you are on is:
(1) How comfortable you are with the idea of people around you being armed with dangerous weapons.
(2) How enamored you are with the *concept* of self defense.
(3) How important guns are to your cultural identity.
(4) [US Only] How enamored you are with the inviolability of the Constitution.
(5) How much you hate restrictions on the right to own specific items.
That's pretty much all the degrees of freedom that I suspect almost everyone uses to arrive at their position. From there on in, it's simply justifying the position by presenting "facts".
Let's be real. If I found a perfect counterexample where the introduction of gun control laws caused crime to plunge, would you be re-considering your position? Of course not. If the British example really had a correlation *and* all the other factors indicated crime should have gone down, would I have changed my position? Of course not.
Really, the only way the status quo in gun control will change is cultural shift, and that happens slowly. We'll see if the (mostly urban) shift away from (1) and (2) ever outweighs the uniquely American weight given to (3) and (4) and somewhat (5).
Why does the [gun] lobby oppose bans on armor-piercing "cop-killer" bullets and plastic pistols that can be sneaked past metal detectors?
Because both "cop-killer bullets" and "plastic pistols that can be sneaked past metal detectors" are urban legends which the anti-gun lobby uses for propaganda purposes rather than things that actually exist in the real world.
Yes, really. At the time of the uproar over teflon-coated "cop-killer" bullets there was no evidence that such bullets had ever been used to kill through the vest even a single cop. Teflon-coated bullets were specialty rounds sold to law enforcement for a purpose that had nothing to do with shooting through vests. In fact, the coating doesn't even make the bullets pierce vests any easier. This is a movie-plot threat believed by people who watched the Lethal Weapon series, not a real threat.
As for the plastic pistols, they were at the time - probably still are - an entirely theoretical threat. In reality, some guns were being made using some amount of plastic (sometimes as a replacement for wood) to make the gun a tiny bit lighter/cheaper/stronger but they still had metal parts too, still looked like guns in a scanner, and still set off metal detectors. Actually if you think about it even if the gun were entirely made of plastic wouldn't the bullets still set off the metal detector?
In short, gun groups don't like to pass laws against nonexistent (but scary sounding!) threats, just so the people passing the laws can feel good about themselves and get publicity for their various causes.
Fantastic post Megan! I would add that the problem of gun trafficking can be controlled but it will take the willpower of the federal government (it's a cross-state issue) and the cooperation of the NRA. I think they could be brought on board if the pressure came from the Right, rather than the Left.
The best article I have read on the subject of U.S. gun trafficking is a piece called, “Deepen Gun Ownership” by Jim Kessler. It was oringinally posted at Democracy Journal. Very much worth a read.
Many other calm answers to Megan's argument here can be found here:
http://politics.thomasswan.net/gun.htm
People are more likely to commit murders when highly efficient killing machines are close to hand. Either that or there must be some other really odd co-factor that explains why gun ownership and gun murders correlate so neatly. You could argue that people buy guns in response to gun murders, but that little bit of question-begging isn't exactly an argument for the NRA's old chestnut that an armed society is a polite one. An armed society is, unsurprisingly, a violent one.
Hi Megan! We're still friends, but I couldn't disagree much more on this.
But this is trivial. People who have guns commit gun murders. You are making the leap to "people who do not have guns will not commit any murder". That's a very large stretch. You are also assuming that having a gun never deters any murders, a fact which is demonstrably false, because there are well publicized cases of people using a gun to stop a violent crime in progress, and presumably other crimes that never got to that stage.
But in the end, we're not having an argument. You're saying something like "It would be nice if no one had any guns because then no one would get shot". That's debatable, but it's also just totally irrelevant, because that is not even remotely in the possible solution set.
I'm saying something like, "Non-criminals who buy guns are vanishingly unlikely to use them against someone else, and therefore restricting them serves no public purpose". To which you are simply repeating that people who get shot are killed by guns. I've already said that we should take the guns out of the hands of criminals, juveniles, and the mentally ill. If we did that, the gun murder rate would drop down to something we should worry about well behind vicious killers like non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. I don't have any good way to do that, but I'm willing to give it the old college try.
Well, we agree that a national dragnet to get rid of every gun would be impossible. So unfortunately, a combination of law, history and culture has made us the most violent rich country in the world, something I'm regularly very ashamed of.
If I were the progressive dictator blighter is having so much fun impersonating? Well, on policy I think you and I agree on background checks. I'd also basically ban handguns and gradually try to get them out of the system, which would take a long time and may not work so hot. Meanwhile I'd tell people that shotguns are the best for home defense. The problem isn't guns, but portable and concealable handguns.
Just so we're clear, though: what I'm saying is nothing more or less than that lots of guns correlates quite strongly with, and probably causes, lots of violent death. If we could make guns disappear magically, not all murders would nonetheless go ahead by knife, pillow or rat poison. Guns are just too easy to kill people with, which is why murderers in America are so fond of them. This may not be fixable. Or second amendment purists my not think it should be fixed by gun restrictions. But the truth of it is pretty hard to deny. "Guns don't kill people" is simply one of the stupidest statements in sloganeering history. Guns do kill people, and particularly many of them in our glorious country.
While shotguns are a perfect weapon for home defense, what tool do you propose for people who need to defend themselves outside of their home? A handgun seems to fit the bill perfectly, but you are opposed to those, so would you be in favor of allowing people to carry around shotguns? And if so, why would that be any better?
You must mean those other rich nations of Western Europe and SE Asia that are largely racially homogenous, often openly racist and hostile to ethnic minorities in both social and legal structures, and to the extent that ethnic minorities have entered in, have seen a pooling of unassimilated low-income ethnic groups and a corresponding increase in violent crime. (Maybe their citizens run around bleeding shame on comment forums for these traits, I don't know.) And incidentally, most of those same nations don't have puritanical prohibition-type policies on soft drugs, which is where a large proportion of violent crime in the US arises.
Maybe the reason the US is "the most violent rich country in the world" (cite?) has rather little to do with guns and rather more to do with its deliberately diverse cultural heritage, some of which is good and some of which is not.
Or, you can blame the inanimate tool, ultimately accomplishing nothing even if you accomplish everything you hope for in regards to that tool. I suppose you could do that.
Shotguns are not the best weapon for home defense. Shotguns are in fact incredibly dangerous to the other people who may be in your home unless you are basically standing next to the intruder. They're also usually time consuming to reload.
Two good illustrative national examples are Switzerland and Mexico. In one, far more guns per capita than the US, but less violent crime of every sort. In the other, very strict gun control, and a knife homicide rate which exceeds the total US homicide rate with all weapons. The logical conclusion is that the hardware is not the problem. The people are.
Shotguns are not the best weapon for home defense. Shotguns are in fact incredibly dangerous to the other people who may be in your home unless you are basically standing next to the intruder. They're also usually time consuming to reload.
As I understand it, they're good for home defense because you don't have to be completely precise to begin with, and if you miss, the pellets aren't going to travel through 3 walls and kill your neighbor.
As I understand it, they're good for home defense because you don't have to be completely precise to begin with, and if you miss, the pellets aren't going to travel through 3 walls and kill your neighbor.
Both of those points are mostly false; shotgun patterns don't spread all that much at home-defense distances, and buckshot has considerable penetrating power, as much as handgun rounds, and more before they have spread out. Also, shotguns have pretty substantial recoil, especially if compared to a carbine firing pistol rounds.
Shotguns certainly have their advantages, but there is no one "best" choice for home defense.
shotgun patterns don't spread all that much at home-defense distances, and buckshot has considerable penetrating power
I remember reading somewhere that a load of birdshot at home defense distances could be considered a single projectile, with a lot of expansion capability, for sure :) And the wad penetrates the drywall partitions at these distances...
"An armed society is, unsurprisingly, a violent one."
Which explains why Switzerland, where every single male aged 18 to 50 has a fully automatic, government issued, assault rifle at home, has all those millions of gun murders and shootings per year - on not.
Which brings up a puzzling question: Why, then, is America so violent?
Rofe,
that's a very complicated historical and cultural question. It has no easy answer, and it would probably be impossible for anyone to provide an answer that was not subject to tendentious criticism/support from people who want it answered a certain way for their own political reasons.
America is violent compared to certain other societies: therefore comparisons with those societies wrt gun crime rates and life expectancies are worth a lot less than they appear when uncritically examined. I'm afraid that's about as far as we can take this, because we are not a politically mature enough society to examine questions like the one you ask without reducing it to a partisan/nationalist shouting match.
Another puzzle is why, when you point out the gun situation in Switzerland, the liberals don't answer and run away from the discussion.
Well, ed, it's because the 'guns in Switzerland' argument trotted out regularly by the US gun strokers is largely specious. If you want to state a purely mathematical comparison and leave it at that, then yes Switzerland is swimming in large, dangerous guns. But gun ownership in Switzerland comes a lot closer to the well-regulated militia concept than any gun ownership in the US does. How do the Swiss do when it comes to open carry or concealed carry? Right, I didn't think so. So what the difference in levels of gun violence seems to boil down to is mentality rather than guns per capita. And a gun mentality is the domain of the gun strokers in the US. I will certainly admit that I don't draw the conclusion that the gun mentality in the US is what leads to the violence, but something in the US mentality certainly does.
Stuff in quotes taken from the poorly constructed and reasoned out website.
First I'll critique the nice little graph however. Funny thing about the graph. Ignoring the US, there is little correlation between firearm homicides and total homicides. Moreover, the entire graph is not shown with total number of guns in country as it were. With only two plot criteria and one year shown the graph is worse than useless and doesn't actually show anything, except perhaps poor graph-making skills
"'The states enforcing gun control in the U.S.A have higher murder rates than the states that allow people to freely own firearms.'
This is an example of an argument which fails to present all the facts. No reference is made to the murder rate in these states prior to gun-control being enforced. In fact a high murder rate is why gun control was enforced in the first place. Attempting to blame this high murder rate on gun-control is therefore very deceptive, but is still a common argument found on pro-gun websites."
*cough*bullshit*cough* The gun control enacted throughout the 60's had little to do with rising crime rates and everything to do with control as a leftover from the highly racist progressives of the early 1900's.
"'Gun-control has not significantly reduced the murder rate in states that use it.'
This is debatable, but if true, would not be a convincing argument against gun-control. State borders are not enforced by the authorities, and do not have any detection equipment to prevent the trafficking of illegal weaponry. All a person need do is buy a gun in another state, and travel back across the state-border. The only gun-control that is in any way effective comes with the deterrent presented by national borders."
No, it's not debatable. No scientifically reliable and valid statistical analysis of any gun control enacted within the US in the 1900s onward will come up with a return of reducing the murder rate. As for the entirely specious claim about national borders somehow stopping the gun trade, even if we ignore the fact that a great frigging deal of the US is bordered by water, that still leaves a border by which we can't even keep something the size of a person from crossing. How exactly do you propose to stop guns from crossing the border? Hell, the drug wars been damned successful, wouldn't you say? That of course, assumes that you can mysteriously vanish the supply of guns already in the US of course, a rather impossible endeavor.
The rest of the arguments become more banal, confused, and easier to refute as one goes on.
" ...It would be a very good thing if we could take guns out of the hands of criminals...."
The way to keep guns out of the hands of criminals is to cut off their hands.
OK, I'm kidding -- but just barely. The vast majority of murderers have a long history of escalating violence before they finally graduate to murder. If our criminal justice system were serious about reducing violent crime, it would have as its number one priority, severe punishment for *violent* criminals instead of obsessing over people who want to possess the wrong kinds of dried plant extracts, and various & sundry other non-violent, victimless crimes.
The same thing applies to mentally unstable persons: If they are too dangerous to be trusted with a gun, then they shouldn't be running around loose in the first place. I'm not advocating a return to the mental hospital snake-pits of the pre-1950's era, but we have gone waaay too far in the opposite direction: It is now virtually impossible to lock a mentally ill person up until they actually commit a crime -- no matter how obviously dangerous they are.
Um, the USA already locks up more of its population that pretty much any other country on earth. Just how much more of its population do you think it needs to 'neutralize' in order to be safe?
Many of which are drug addicts, not violent criminals. If you stopped locking up drug addicts, and locked up more violent criminals, its reasonable to think that their might be a decrease in the overall prison population.
When an inmate is in for a "drug crime," that means that the most serious thing he's been charged with is a drug crime. Most have committed violent crimes as well.
Define "most", and if you can, identify how many of them committed a violent crime in the course of satisfying a desire for an illegal "soft" drug that would have otherwise been available OTC from any tobacconnist or drug store.
Not that I advocate recreational drug use, but a society that makes felons out of persons having or accessing modest quantities of pot probably hasn't struck the right balance in its criminal justice system.
Theodore Dalrymple established by judicious questioning that most of the addicted criminals he dealt with had done time for violent crime before taking up drug addiction. Some actually took up drugs in prison.
I don't think your assumption that addiction drives the crime can stand without evidence for it.
Define addicted criminal. Certainly not anyone that smokes pot seeing that pot is not remotely physiologically addicting. Then there's the fact that a shitload of gang crime is driven by the illegality of drugs. Take away the distribution of the drugs and their reason for existence shatters.
Any situation in which a single person can potentially do a disproportionately large amount of damage is going to be a problem. That why we ban machine guns and heavy weapons for civilian use. Should we ban semi-automatic weapons? Probably not outright, but you can't deny that in certain situations the potential for large amounts of damage inflicted by a person equipped with these weapons exist. A large, highly-emotional crowd with a few armed people might just be one of them. It only takes one. The VA Tech killer got his guns legally, after all (I'd be curious to find out how many crazed mass murderers were law-abiding citizens who go their guns legally).
"Any situation in which a single person can potentially do a disproportionately large amount of damage is going to be a problem."
Precisely. This is why I advocate the complete government control of automobiles. Automobile accidents are a leading cause of death, think of how much safer the world will be once we get them off our streets.
A few years back a car ploughed into a crowded bar here in NYC on New Year's Eve. I couldn't help but think about the appalling loss of life that could have been so easily prevented if Americans weren't stupidly wedded to their deadly "car culture".
We DO have government control of automobiles, at least a lot higher than what we do for guns in certain parts of the country.
I never said ban all guns. But there's a bid difference between simply owning a gun, and taking that gun to a large gathering of angry people. If you had a guy who liked to drive his car into crowds and narrowly miss people, you'd take that guy's license away before he ploughed into a crowded bar. The same should apply for guns.
I would beg to differ with this statement. While I could list the ways that it isn't true, I think I'll let this old Dave Kopel post due it for me:
http://www.reason.com/news/show/31170.html
Please describe controls on cars that do not exist for guns.
One needs to pass a capability test in order to get a license to operate a car. Up for discussion is how stringent the various tests are, but there is no testing to be able to use a gun. Restrictions on purchasing but no baseline training required on how to use them. Odd, no?
Responsible gun owners, i.e. the environment in which I learned to handle guns, take gun safety seriously. For example, where I took my gun safety courses, we learned that you don't pull the trigger unless you are certain of your target. (Apparently the big Dick Cheney missed that lesson.) And there are plenty of cowboys out there who consider guns some kind of macho toy.
We DO have government control of automobiles, at least a lot higher than what we do for guns in certain parts of the country.
I don't think that's true.
If guns were regulated like cars, an 8-year-old could own a gun. Anybody could legally buy as many guns as they wanted with no "waiting period". Anybody could use a gun *on their own property* freely with no restrictions and no need for a license or registration. Anybody could carry a gun freely on public roads without a license as long as they weren't actually *using* it at the time - just as you can legally *tow* a car that's not licensed, registered or street-legal. There would be no limit on how *powerful* your gun was, though again there might be limits on using it in public places if it was unduly noisy or polluting. Licenses and registration would be relatively cheap and easy to obtain ; these would let you use your gun in public places in addition to your preexisting right to use it in private places...
Machine guns can in fact be owned by civilians.
You have to jump through a million stupid hoops and pay a $200 tax each time you buy one, but they can be owned.
Actually, most of them. When MM talks about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and crazies, I wonder how she proposes doing so. The only way of course is by much stricter handgun control laws-which she likely opposes.
You're right. Just look at how those strict drug laws have prevented any access to illegal drugs - the vast majority smuggled into the US.
Look at how well the government has been able to prevent knock off copies of name brand consumer items from being smuggled in. It's good to know that all those street vendors and stores in New York are selling real Rolex watches for 25 bucks.
A long time ago the government "banned" booze. The fact that there was a "speakeasy" on every corner shows that the government was so successful in stopping booze smuggling. They were so successful that they repealed prohibition.
No, we 'ban' full auto weapons because a ratfuck of a politico from jersey got it put on the FOPA bill quite sneakily in a dead-of-night voice vote.
It would seem having these protesters with guns would be a distraction to security personnel who have to be on the lookout for the real nutters with weapons. Isn't it better to make their job easier by reducing the number of potential problems they need to keep an eye on?
You think a guy who shows up with plans to USE a gun will strap it over his shoulder and walk down the street in broad daylight?
When you've only seen guns on HBO, yes.
The men in the readership, at least, could be fairly confident of their ability to stab their spouse to death whenever she says something really awful. Yet none of you have done it.
Yeah, well, she'd probably shoot me if I tried.
And perhaps there should be a presumptive temporary revocation for those who have restraining orders out on them.
That is already the law. It has caused some trouble for people in divorce cases, either where the order was entered ex parte, or where the judge has a policy of entering a no-contact order pro forma.
Why does the lobby oppose bans on armor-piercing "cop-killer" bullets and plastic pistols that can be sneaked past metal detectors?
Why does the anti-gun lobby persistently invent things that simply do not exist? On of the reasons gun nuts are so adamant is because the anti-gun lobby is so utterly dishonest.
Let's help violent spouses: all they have to do to disarm their victims is get a restraining order. Then they can murder at their leisure.
How Many Gun Advocates Can Dance on the Head of a Pin?
This is a delightful example of the way in which "libertarian economics" has become the medieval scholasticism of the American Empire, pure dogma and creed gussied up as expertise, arcane logic, and methodology.
By comparison to other advanced nations, the United States has an enormous gun industry, gun sales, gun profits, and gun lobby--complete with lavishly funded gun groups, gun advocates, gun think tanks, gun research, and gun-partial economists.
Consequently, the United States has:
(A) More guns, guns, guns, by any measure, than other nations. Way, way more. Something like 350 million floating around, all of which start out as legally purchased commodities. The U.S. also has:
(B) More gun deaths than any other advanced nation. Way, way more. Over 30,000 per year, over 80 blood-splattering deaths per day, etc. (More overall than have been killed in all wars by all foreign enemies, if we exclude the Civil War.) People in other advanced nations find this, well... grotesque.
The role of the "libertarian economist" is to formulate numbers, studies, and scholarly sounding words to prove that there is NO POSSIBLE relationship between A and B. Many medieval proofs of this are religiously and loudly chanted.
Consider some famous demonstrations of libertarian scholasticism: First Proof: If the angry co-worker did not own that assault rifle, he could have killed his colleagues with the stapler on his desk. It just would have taken longer. Second Proof: "Normal" gun owners do not kill people. Only "abnormal" gun owners kill people. How do we know which gun owners are "abnormal"? Easy. Those are the ones who kill people. Third Proof: If everyone carried a gun, we could all shoot shooters before the shooters shoot someone, so everyone is safer.
Needless to say, there is always generous patronage for any licensed "Doctor of Economics" who can torture some data into a further "proof" of the social benefits of more and more guns. Like debt, obesity, and cringing faith in the wisdom of The Market, the right to carry a big, ballistic phallus is just part of the American way. ("Just try it, Pal! Just try and take my phallus!") It is the work of libertarian scholasticism to demonstrate why it is all logical.
I think Nelson's three proofs do cover all the anti-handgun control arguments in hilarious fashion, but why bother? dumb as these arguments are , the American populace accepts them and we live in a democracy.
Well put. And phrased with just the right amount of scorn.
I would just like to add that the firearms covered by the 2nd amendment were muskets, wildly inaccurate firearms that took about one minute for an experienced soldier or hunter to load. Then there's the whole "well-regulated militia" question. But even granting that the founders' intent was to arm the citizenry for personal self-defense--and not so that they can be a part of an organized fighting force, or for hunting--even some of the gun-nuts on this site have to admit that we're dealing with semantics when we talk about what is meant by the "arms" that we're entitled to keep and bear.
And when you think about what a crazy kid can do with a modern firearm--and one doesn't have to list the instances--it is disgusting that these comparisons to knives or cars (which I can't believe I have to clarify has some utility outside of killing things) or what have you keep being made in these comments.
and the first amendment covered hand-run printing presses.
So what?
When we're talking about crazy kids and guns, it's instructive to remember that the 1997 Pearl, MS school shooter was stopped by an assistant principal who had a handgun in his car. (Illegally, but given the circumstances, he wasn't charged for it.)
I think we need a variant of Godwin's law here. When somebody has made the inevitable penis reference on a thread about gun control, no more useful debate can occur and that person has lost the argument.
Herr Bombloader,
Point taken! I retract penis reference. As Freud said, sometimes a gun is just a gun.
And if anyone want to go to public hearing (or get close to a president) with their penis hanging out, it is fine with me. I'd even support a constitutional amendment...
Real Clear World (part of Real Clear Politics) - March, 09
"Like most crime data, the incidence of knife-related violence in London has been disputed and debated by some. That notwithstanding, despite disputed statistics, even conservative estimates show KNIFE-related violence in London occurring at a rate of every 52 minutes."
So that's 24 per day - JUST in London.
Nelson: Something like 350 million floating around, all of which start out as legally purchased commodities.
proof?
Nelson: More gun deaths
There's no statistical evidence that gun control reduces total number of murders, and some to the
contrary. That's why there's so much absurd focus on 'gun deaths' rather than 'total deaths' in
gun control literature. (Which should be a tip off. Kind of like those advertisements
that tout that their product has "The great taste of real beef!"... something's amiss with that
statement.)
I will leave all those hard statistics like "some," "seem to be," "many," and "usually" to qualified economics professionals like McArdle. I don't have a lot of funding, and in policy debates you get the statistics you pay for.
As for "total deaths" I do not follow. Gun deaths, suicides, homicides, or household accidents with mommy's Tech-9, we are way out front internationally. And tops in exports, just ask any dead Mexican policeman.
But I do take your point. We do have a few gun control laws out here on the East Coast, and that probably explains it. If we did away with them we would undoubtedly be the safest nation of earth. Then we could get to work on those problems with obesity, geography, history, and logic.
Does that mean you would have no objection to being beaten to death with a baseball bat? Since it would not be a "gun death."
On the internet, you can get the statistics that other people pay for. Florida's concealed carry law coincided with a drop in total homicides of -36% over a nine year period relative to ~-.5% change in the general US.
http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp#Right-To-Carry%20Laws
The question we should be asking is not "Does America have more murders than Britain" but rather "does enacting gun control laws increase or reduce crime in the area that they're enacted." Otherwise, the result is like giving a drug to an elephant and a placebo to a rabbit and noting that the elephant weighs more, so the drug must therefore increase weight. Good science requires a similarity in control groups.
Nelson: As for "total deaths" I do not follow.
Are you seriously putting forward gun control as a way to prevent suicide?
What's a good outcome for a gun control law? Lets say that in year foo you have 10 gun deaths and 10 people stabbed with knives. In year foo +1 you enact gun control and have 30 people stabbed with knives. My point is that the second scenario is worse because more people die, even if you succeed in reducing 'gun deaths.' The only moral purpose of gun control laws are to prevent people from being hurt, and the statistics show they fail at that.
I look at concealed carry laws like I look at seatbelts. They don't solve society's underlying problems but they do reduce the harmful effects.
What a weak strawman you have presented.
The link between A and B does not prove anything about what our policy should be. Gun rights folks are willing to accept as a given that More guns -> more gun deaths per capita. That is not the same as proving that More guns -> more deaths per capita. The classical example is the suicide rate. The US has a lower suicide rate than Japan, but a significantly higher suicide by gun rate. Dismissing these sorts of issues with your murder by stapler version is asinine.
Going the other way, it has been demonstrated that areas with a high legal concealed carry rate tend to have lower crime levels. Which is nice for the gun rights folks, except that crime correlates with population density, and gun carry rates inversly correlate with it.
First, to Mischief: Huh? Well, now that you have clearly focussed the debate down, um, I'll take gun, provided it is to the head and I die instantly. You win! I can't argue with logic!
As to Phlinn, I believe you are confusing straw and satire. You are right. I did not "prove" anything. The nature of medieval scholasticism was to "prove" whatever orthodoxy demanded, hence its similarity with market libertarianism.
I will add your argument to my case file of libertarian proofs under the label "The Magic of Correlations." I never thought of of that, but you do make a good point. The higher Japanese suicide rate does offer some proof that people who aren't allowed to carry guns are not as happy as those who are.
So correlation only equals causation when you agree with the result anyway. Otherwise it's "just correlation."
Please, keep your guns. I am a liberal who is NOT for gun control. But please stop telling liberals that we are paranoid or crazy when we say we are afraid some right-wing crazy is going to shoot us. They have and continue to do so. Please be a responsible gun owner and do not open carry at health-care town halls. It gives the perception of an attempt at intimidation.
Please give us some evidence that you are not paranoid or crazy.
You have neither particularized your "have and continue to do so" nor explained the scale of the matter to warrant your fear.
For the second, instead of explaining the scale, you can also expand that you are afraid of cars, swimming pools, buckets, and all those other things that are much more likely to kill you than guns.
Okay, I say let's become much more like Japan and China and other Asian countries. Not now, but in their glorious imperial pasts when ordinary civilians weren't allowed to own any weapons (including swords) and had to develop all those really cool martial arts involving bare hands, big sticks, and farm implements. Because that would be kind of interesting.
Not really. But the point is that people denied access to the weapons that their landlords and county commissioners have will be forced to figure out SOMETHING.
"...It would seem having these protesters with guns would be a distraction to security personnel who have to be on the lookout for the real nutters with weapons...."
That's certainly a legitimate argument for why open-carrying a gun to a protest is a dumb idea. (Of course, just because something is dumb does not necessarily mean that it should be illegal.)
Also, as a matter of self-interest: I don't think I would want to be a 'good guy' openly carrying a gun in the crowd just at the moment when some 'bad guy' decided to start shooting at an elected official; That might have a very adverse impact on my life expectancy.
"There is more we could be doing to keep criminals from getting guns--unlike most second amendment supporters, I would support extending the requirement for background checks to private sales."
Better yet, if a felon cannot be trusted with a gun (or a vote, for that matter), don't parole them until they can be; conversely, once a convict does not pose a statistically significantly higher risk, relative to a random citizen, of engaging in violence (e.g., marijuana users), let them out. Not much risk of an inmate getting their hands on a firearm.
You can refuse to parole them as much as you like, but most of them have finite sentences.
I think it was Miss Congeniality...
Character 1: He has a gun!
Character 2: This is Texas. My florist has a gun.
In the opening of the movie War Games, two airmen manning a missile silo get the order to launch. Both are seated at separate consoles, both have side-arms, and both must turn a key in their consoles simultaneously, so that one rogue person cannot launch the missile.
One of the airman balks, and refuses to launch. The other unholsters his weapon and attempts to force him to turn his key and launch the missile.
And this, in a nutshell, is the Hollywood view of weapons: guns are used to intimidate others.
In my opinion this is exactly backwards: the reason these airmen in the missile silo are armed with lethal force is so that no one can intimidate them into doing something they think is wrong.
Chesterton wrote "The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him." Some see armed citizens and think only of hate going forward. I see armed citizens (or I don't see them, in `must issue' states) and think of the love for what is behind them.
Trivia point: the actor who refused to launch later played Leo, Martin Sheen's Chief of Staff, on West Wing.
Thank you for your post, Max. It clarifies things nicely.
However, I think that the "Hollywood view" *is* the view of many urbanites who are more-or-less effectively insulated from violence, and it makes sense. If the idea of protecting yourself from violence with a gun is laughable, then the *only* purpose a gun can serve is to intimidate. (They certainly intimidate me, even in the hands of law-enforcement...)
It's a huge, essentially unbridgeable, cultural gap that is only going to be resolved at the ballot box with each election.
It also makes clear that useless debates about whether gun ownership or gun control causes crime are essentially irrelevant frippery used to try and justify one's cultural position.
Is this comment serious? Because if it is, I have had an epiphany about a truly original screenplay idea that the folks in Hollywood just might bite on. At the risk of giving away my royalties, here's how it goes: Something bad happens to X. X may be a modest man (or woman); X may be a badass. But when the bad guys perpetrate the bad on X - wait, maybe on someone he loves, wife, daughter, et al - X goes off. Straps it on, locks and loads (with tons of potential here for serious sound effects) and goes off in search of the bad guys. When he finds them, no doubt smirking over some lattes while planning more mayhem and the socialist overthrow of the health care system, he cracks wise (but oh so cynically) before he exacts revenge for what he loves. I can see maybe Chuck Bronson in the role . . . wait, he's passed . . . maybe Liam Neeson. Quiet power, lurking danger. But, hell, what does it matter? The idea is so novel and Hollywood is so stuck on guns as intimidators rather than as defenders of loved ones that essentially every A list actor would be thrilled to get the part.
Sheesh !
Yes, it was serious, and I think you miss (and also make) my point. You can only see X's active use of the gun on others.
This is another example of what is seen, and what is not seen (in the spirit of Bastiat).
What is seen is the active use of guns, the agression, the intimidation, and the vigilante revenge cliche you mention. What is not seen is the home invasion that never happened (because the potential criminal was deterred by the possibility he would not have a monopoly on lethal force), the mugging that never occurs (because the risk of encountering a concealed carry citizen outweighs the possible proceeds), the argument where everyone backed off and walked away (because escalating into violence could too easily lead to a fatality).
In a related matter, some argue against the deterrent power of punishment, because we only see punishment when an infraction has occurred. The infraction has already occurred: what use could punishment be now? Clearly, the deterrent didn't work in this case. Exacting punishment now just adds evil upon evil, and only demeans the punisher.
The deterrent power of punishment is not seen: it is in all of the infractions that never occurred.
The power the gun gives to just be left alone is also not seen: it is in all of the bad not perpetrated on someone we love: wife, daughter, et al.
"That why we ban machine guns and heavy weapons for civilian use."
Not correct. We don't ban machine guns at all. There are well over three quarters of a million machine guns in civie hands in the US, all duly licensed and paid for. The NFA '34 imposed controls on machine guns in a half-assed attempt to control gangsters in a few American cities. As usual, it didn't work, but bureaucratic inertia did the rest. The next federal attempt to control machine guns was the FOPA '86, in which a further restriction was not even argued, but snuck in by parliamentary maneuver. The only rationale for regulating machine guns is that such regulation is part of the third component of the Triple Crown of harassment - regulate the person; regulate the time and place; regulate the hardware. With enough regulations, the typical citizen will eventually give up on the whole thing. Maybe.
The mystery of (perfectly legal) guns at political meetings may possibly have something to do with union thugs showing up to stifle those who wish to petition the government for redress of grievances. News reports of such brownshirt activity stopped at the same time that reports of those wacky gun-toters appeared. Coincidence? Perhaps.
And seriously, somebody really should brush up on the deplorable situation regarding restraining orders, gun ownership, and presumption of guilt before opining on such. The situation is already grim; no need to make it worse.
The notion of extending background checks to private sales only looks good if one doesn't think about it too seriously. For one thing, is it possible to show that the whole gigantic program (by gigantic, I mean more than 10 million checks per year) for checks on dealer sales enhances the public safety? I don't mean guesswork, I mean evidence. I am aware of no evidence that any of our thousands of gun laws have had any positive effect. This was quite a scandal maybe two years ago, when the feds had to admit that they were aware of no such evidence, either.
Politics and guns do not mix. Every normal person should know how to use a gun and own one if they wish. But bringing weapons (including but not limited to guns) to political debates? That's not a path we should head down. The entire point of democracy is to move away from politics via violence.
Government is force. It doesn't matter if it's one person, a few people, or a majority - It's someone forcing their will on someone else.
We call that "violence" where I come from.
Actually, I'm pretty sure most of us have made the following claims, which only vaguely resemble the arguments you seek to refute in this post:
1) Carrying a gun--particularly something along the lines of an AR-15, which may be easily mistaken for its automatic cousin--to a political rally is a pretty threatening gesture.
2) Carrying a gun into any large and boisterous crowd is going heighten tensions even further and thereby increase the likelihood of violence.
3) If things actually did turn violent, you're likely as not to hit a random and innocent person if you try to use your gun in the middle of a crowd.
4) You're just distracting law enforcement/SS/etc from doing their jobs.
Just for the record, I agree with all but 2). Given how many people have already said "I wouldn't argue with a guy who had a gun," it's possible that "tensions" would be minimized as everyone kinda quietly edged away from him.
And I still think it's a dumb idea.
Yeah, I suppose that's possible. But it seems like there's just as many possibilities that don't have a favorable outcome. It's one thing to say you won't argue with the guy; it's another to say you wouldn't and couldn't be spooked/agitated by it regardless. The underlying impulse in either case is fear for your own safety, and no matter how many times Megan blithely asserts that "having a gun around" is perfectly safe, I think that sort of reaction is pretty normal. To twist an analogy I saw in one of these threads, mere proximity to a car may not be unsafe, but you could still be freaked out (and rightly so) by somebody trying to drive one through a crowd.
Anyway, my point is just that people who fear for their safety don't always make the best decisions.
Regarding three, people who choose to carry are much, much, much more cognizant of what's backstopping their target than most LEOs. The SS might be an exception to this, but then, they don't care what backstops their target. If a child is within the bullet path behind a target, they will still take the shot if the target pulls a weapon.
The origin of this discussion concerned guns, at emotionally charged political events, where vehemently opposing groups are brought together in close proximity. Nothing that has been said in favor of permitting this, contradicts the idea that it is both dangerous and anti-democratic. "Liberals" are not shouting down "conservatives" nor denying them their right to present argument, to the point that ANYONE needs to be armed. Posters pretending to the assembled forum here, that the presence of an armed individual DOESN'T have a chilling effect on the free expression of points of view is nonsense. NO ONE actually believes this.
Discussion points about "unstable people" or "Not if you also removed the juveniles and crazies" (uhhh, Megan? stop that turn around in your seat, and SEE ME AFTER CLASS) or whatever that was about stabbing a spouse (?) are simply not germain. The naked truth is that conflict + anger/fear + guns = shot. Anyone bringing a gun to a townhall meeting is NOT stable or responsible, almost by definition. Can we get back to the discussion on HEALTHCARE....PLEASE?
Open gun possession is more likely to decrease violence as increase it.
It is extremely common for Israelis to be carrying a gun - many of them fully automatic right there in the open.
Yet violence is almost unheard of. Everyone knows that the other guy is likely to have a gun so they don't even go to the step of taking a punch at the other guy.
If you see someone carrying a gun are you likely to start antagonizing him? Unlikely.
Well, Israel is a society in a permanent state of war, so I'not sure that this is a model that we should emulate. Then there is this:
However the arming of Israeli society has had some unintended, and distinctly undesirable, consequences. The ready access to arms within Israel has led to the emergence of clandestine networks supplying militants in the Palestinian territories, adding to the stockpiles of weapons and ammunition smuggled in from elsewhere in the Middle East. In November 2006, Israeli police busted a network of Israeli Arabs selling arms to militant cells in the West Bank, while in 2002 an arms ring involving Israeli settlers was uncovered. It is not uncommon for guns stolen from the military by Israeli soldiers to end up in the hands of the very people they are supposed to be fighting.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article3506205.ece
The analogue to the USA is that most of the guns that end up in hands of the "criminals and crazies" start out in the hands of legal purchasers. But hey , what do reason, logic and evidence have to do with people's desire to emulate Clint Eastwood or John Wayne?
But hey , what do reason, logic and evidence have to do with people's desire to emulate Clint Eastwood or John Wayne?
They haven't touched you, yet, considering that Mexico is verging on a failed state and is an international arms bazaar at this point. Legally purchased guns, later given to, lost to, or stolen by criminals, may make for one source of convenient firepower but there's nothing to prevent a supply of arms (many of them not currently available for legal sale in the US) to start coming up from the cartels operating in Mexico and South and Central America. Any place in a vehicle where you can covertly stash several kilos of cocaine will just as easily hold an assortment of weapons, and if weapons are in demand because they can't be legally purchased in the destination zone, they will be just as lucrative to smuggle.
Legally purchased guns, later given to, lost to, or stolen by criminals, may make for one source of convenient firepower but there's nothing to prevent a supply of arms (many of them not currently available for legal sale in the US) to start coming up from the cartels operating in Mexico and South and Central America.
So? The existence of black markets should be a factor in the consideration of whether to criminalize something, but it's hardly the final word on the matter. Unless you favor a complete repeal of any and all gun controls laws, to the point where any person--US citizen or not--can legally purchase machine guns and anti-aircraft missiles, there's always going to be a lucrative black market for weapons of some sort. It doesn't necessarily follow, though, that such an arrangement would be ideal, even though it would preclude the existence of a black market.
The point is that criminals will not be any more disarmed by gun control than they are de-drugged by drug control. Which means that the continuing problem of violence committed by career criminals and violent morons unable to control their impulses--that is, the vast majority of violence--will not be affected by gun control. Nor will pre-planned mass shootings be much reduced, as long as people can by a gun as easily as they buy cocaine.
It was a statement of refutation, not an assertion of further desirable policy positions. His implication was that "logic, reason, and evidence" would lead us to believe that more gun control would result in less access to weapons by "criminals and crazies". I counter that he has none of those three things on the side of his argument because:
(a) a very large selection of weapons is available just south of the US border;
(b) this same border has proven to regularly defeat "drug control" (and, for that matter, "undocumented resident control"); and
(c) weapons could be smuggled with equal facility and to equally lucrative ends as drugs, were a demand for them to be created.
It was a statement of refutation, not an assertion of further desirable policy positions. His implication was that "logic, reason, and evidence" would lead us to believe that more gun control would result in less access to weapons by "criminals and crazies". I counter that he has none of those three things on the side of his argument because:
(a) a very large selection of weapons is available just south of the US border;
(b) this same border has proven to regularly defeat "drug control" (and, for that matter, "undocumented resident control"); and
(c) weapons could be smuggled with equal facility and to equally lucrative ends as drugs, were a demand for them to be created.
Well, again, so? Yes, some volume of weapons will be smuggled in, but undoubtedly fewer weapons than would be present if there were no legal restrictions at all. Gun control may not be 100% effective at preventing "criminals and crazies" from obtaining weapons but it is certainly more effective than no legal restrictions at all.
Furthermore, the trickle down effect means that the weapons they do have access to are less dangerous than they might otherwise be. It's very easy for a legally purchased weapon to fall into the black market, but harder for a weapon which is illegal in the first place to do so. That's one of the reasons people still rob banks with pistols and shotguns. Sure, in theory, there's a black market for combat-grade automatic weapons, but the fact that they're illegal means they're hard to get even in the black market. Or to use the example of UK knife crime that gun nuts are so fond of citing: people use knifes because guns, despite their availability on the black market, are generally illegal and hard to get. Likewise, while I favor legalizing many drugs, I'm under no illusions about the fact that more people will be using them when there's fewer legal restrictions.
Obviously there are other factors to be considered here, but if you think that "they'll just get smuggled in anyway" is the end of the discussion, you're either not serious, or not thinking hard enough.
Sure, in theory, there's a black market for combat-grade automatic weapons, but the fact that they're illegal means they're hard to get even in the black market.
This blog deals in economics, so surely you've heard of supply and demand, and substitutable goods? If the goal is to rob a bank, there isn't anything an UZI will get you that a small pistol won't get. So why go to the trouble of procuring an illegal UZI -- for which the global supply is less than the global supply of handguns, and the price will likely be higher regardless -- when the pistol, legal or or illegal, is available? (For that matter, with modern bank teller training, you don't even need the gun -- just make sure your penmanship is legible before writing up a touching, thoughtful robbery note. The liquor store holdup might require a gun, though, and may be worth it as you're less likely to get caught.)
But this does not reassure us of what will happen if the substitute is reduced or remove from availability.
Or to use the example of UK knife crime that gun nuts are so fond of citing: people use knifes because guns, despite their availability on the black market, are generally illegal and hard to get.
Most knives are severely restricted or illegal to carry in the UK as well, so why do the criminals have them available for criminal enterprise? Presumably, ease of concealment and smuggling plays a role, but that doesn't remove the real problem (violent crime). Also, the UK had a longstanding prisoner's dillemma in which both the police and the criminal element refrained from gun use, but that has been breaking down in the recent generation or two, and an estimated one-third of young UK criminals claim to own or have ready access to a firearm.
Nice sleight of hand - but you changed the subject.
The discussion isn't whether or not easy access to guns is a good idea, the question is whether openly carrying firearms is a risk.
Regardless of your opinion of Israel and their policies they are a verifiable example of it not being a risk.
Care to engage in an actual debate on that point or would you like to dodge again?
Megan:
To be honest, your defense of guns at protests does bother me – not because I think you’re a lunatic (though I really have no idea whether or not you’re a “mentally stable” person who should be allowed to legally own a gun) but because I think your arguments are disingenuously naïve. You’re awful quick to assume that anyone carrying a gun must be, by the fact that they’re doing so legally, mentally stable. But how is it that you know that, and I don’t?
How do you determine if a man with a gun strapped to his leg at a political protest who carries a sign that reads “It’s time to water the tree of life” is just an “ordinary” person expressing his rights and not a mentally unstable person who shouldn’t legally be allowed to carry a gun? What about a man (or woman) carrying a gun who is holding up a sign with a picture of the President defaced to look like Hitler? And how do you know these people have “good impulse control”? I don’t.
Contrary to your belief that “guns, it turn out, do not turn ordinary people into murderers…they make murderers more effective,” the presence of guns do indeed result in more murders and more accidental deaths:
- A gun in the home is 4 times more likely to be involved in an unintentional shooting than to be used in self-defense.
- A gun in the home is 7 times more likely to be used to commit a criminal assault or homicide than to be used in self-defense.
- A gun in the home increases the risk of homicide of a household member by 3 times compared to homes where no gun is present.
Note that these figures would seem to indicate there are more instances in which the presence of gun did in fact result in a murder that otherwise wouldn’t have occurred than the “1” case in Florida that you seemed willing to concede fit this scenario.
Also, these statistics would seem to put doubt on your belief that “the good done by defensive uses of concealed weapons would virtually have to outweigh the harm, since several concealed carry holders have stopped violent crimes.” But it was “several” huh? Good to know.
The above statistics come from two publications cited as references by the Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence. As you may remember, Mr. Brady was shot in the head in 1981 during an assassination attempt on President Reagan. If you want to refute the statistics, go for it. To be honest, I haven’t checked them but here are the full references:
- “The Epidemiological Basis for the Prevention of Firearm Injuries,” A Kellerman, et al., Journal of Trauma, August 1998; Kellerman AL, Lee RK, Mercy JA, et al. Annual Review Public Health. 1991; 12:17-40.
- “Suicide in the Home in Relation to Gun Ownership,” Kellerman AL, Rivara FP, Somes G, et al. NEJM. 1992; 327:467-472
Finally, I still do challenge you to put your money where your mouth is – and lead the campaign to allow guns in federal buildings. If they’re allowed at political events then why not, right? They’re just guns; people have a right to carry them; guns don’t kill people, murderers do; and legal gun owners have “good impulse control.” There's no reason why they shouldn't be legal in federal buildings too. And I’d really like to find out just how many congressmen and senators want to pass that legislation. Wouldn't you?
One obvious problem with these statistics is no attempt to control for previous criminal convictions. See here for here for Gary Kleck's analysis of some of these studies:
http://www.guncite.com/kleckjama01.html
Also here:
http://guncite.com/gun-control-kellermann-3times.html
Furthermore, I don't see why guns shouldn't be allowed in most federal buildings. There may be justification for banning them in federal courtrooms and other places where access is easy to control and armed security is provided, but there is no justification for the same ban applying to a post office which is publicly accessible. And, yes an open air political protest is a public venue so it is comparable.
Dr. Kellermann (two ns) is a crock, as any honest person who actually reads his numerous papers will realize instantly. An entertaining crock, to those with some background in statistics, but a crock nonetheless. See also his "Protection or Peril? An Analysis of Firearm-Related Deaths in the Home" (with Donald Reay), "Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home" (with Rivara and Rushforth), "Guns and Homicide in the Home" (with Somes and Rivara), and "Firearm Regulations and Rates of Suicide, A Comparison of Two Metropolitan Areas" (with Sloan, Tivara, Reay, Ferris, and Path). No need to read them all; Kellermann is a bit of a one-trick pony, and his articles are all of a muchness.
It is obviously correct that an American's basic civil rights shouldn't be removed just because he enters a federal building. One can argue that the Second Amendment doesn't impose restraints on the police power of the states, but the Bill of Rights certainly applies to the feds. Senators and congressmen, of course, will do all they can to fight this, just as they have done in the past. Recall that the Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed, not because of the MLK and Kennedy assassinations of a few years earlier (as was widely claimed at the time), but because the Black Panthers were threatening to show up in Washington with rifles.
eric:... allow guns in federal buildings
There's a problem with this comparison; You already have a lot of cops guarding a federal building. But if someone is attacked in other circumstances, police will typically just clean up the mess afterwards. Personally, I'm fine with disallowing guns any public place where the cops can ensure safety. But given how a few people have been beaten by union thugs at rallies, I think carrying arms for the purpose of self defense there is perfectly valid.
The citation that "A gun in the home increases the risk of homicide of a household member by 3 times compared to homes where no gun is present." is from "Gun Ownership As A Risk Factor For Homicide In The Home", NEJM October 9, 1993, also by the prolific Dr. Kellermann. In that study of 420 residential homicides, only 45% (190 homicides) were by firearm, and of those not one, not even one, was linked to the gun kept in the victim's home. Note the title of the study:"...For Homicide In The Home", not "...For Gun Homicide In The Home."
Yes, all of those victims kept a gun in their home, and yes, all of them were homicide victims, but does correlation equal causation? Hypothetically, all 420 victims could have been disarmed the night before their slaying, and they still would have been killed, all 420 of them. Kellermann recommended that people be strongly discouraged from keeping guns in their home, but what sense does that make if you haven't demonstrated any mortality or morbidity as a result of having done so?
Nearly all of the homicides in Kellermann's sample occurred in extremely dysfunctional homes, where there were people who had histories of drug abuse, alcohol abuse, criminal records and histories of domestic violence. That was probably what got them killed; owning a gun was incidental, not integral. Yet Kellermann ignored the possibility that the tail might be wagging the dog. He ignored a conclusion that fit the data just as well and was considerably more plausible, namely, that all of these people already had a very high risk of homicide before they brought a gun into their house, and that the presence of the gun did nothing to increase their risk. Certainly it would be difficult, if not impossible, to blame gun ownership for stabbings or stranglings, but that's just what Kellermann did in his 1993 study.
Finally, in his summary, Kellermann noted that 15 of the 190 gun homicides were "legally excusable". Four of the 15 were shot by police, acting in the line of duty, and 11 were shot by civilians acting lawfully in self-defense. But Kellermann designed his study in such a way that he could use these examples of self-defense with a gun as "shooting tragedies".
The men in the readership, at least, could be fairly confident of their ability to stab their spouse to death whenever she says something really awful.
The women in the readership could not only be fairly confident of their ability to kill their husbands (while sleeping with gun, axe, hammer, whatever) but also about their chances of getting away with little or no prison time by claiming spousal abuse. And yet none, as far as we know, have done it--unless, of course, Mary Winkler reads this blog...
"The people who do it are usually abnormal in some way, and it shows."
If I were 'normal' I would need a gun...to commit suicide!
As for:
"The men in the readership, at least, could be fairly confident of their ability to stab their spouse to death whenever she says something really awful."
Megan, you obviously haven't been married for very long. Many spouses, after 30 years of marriage, lie in bed at night, looking at their sleeping husband or wife, wondering 'if I held a pillow over their head could I get away with it?' Now, are they serious? I don't know. Let's suspend the law against murdering your spouse for a few months and find out. Heck, let's have the government subsidize it in the ultimate 'cash for clunkers' program. Then we wouldn't need death panels to get rid of grandma...grandpa would do it for us!
Look at Kennesaw, GA:
"March 25th [2007] marked the 16th anniversary of Kennesaw, Georgia's ordinance requiring heads of households (with certain exceptions) to keep at least one firearm in their homes.
The city's population grew from around 5,000 in 1980 to 13,000 by 1996 (latest available estimate). Yet there have been only three murders: two with knives (1984 and 1987) and one with a firearm (1997). After the law went into effect in 1982, crime against persons plummeted 74 percent compared to 1981, and fell another 45 percent in 1983 compared to 1982.
And it has stayed impressively low. In addition to nearly non-existent homicide (murders have averaged a mere 0.19 per year), the annual number of armed robberies, residential burglaries, commercial burglaries, and rapes have averaged, respectively, 1.69, 31.63, 19.75, and 2.00 through 1998."
However, I'm sure these Kennesaw stoics are unrepresentative of humans in general. Carry on.
I'm not sure why you replyed to my comment. Personally, I'm for freedom. I believe I should be able to own any damn thing I like, except for another human being. The government is just my neighbors and who the heck are they to tell me whether I can own a gun, a knife or a toaster for that matter. If I damage you or your property I should be held accountable until then enough of the psychological ramblings about who is more 'normal' or who is 'more likely' to commit a crime. When you combine the tyranny of the majority with the tyranny of the thought police, well, its just plain fascist!
"First of all, as it shows in the articles I linked earlier, something like 90% of homicides are committed by people with criminal records."
The New York Times studies all the murders that occur in New York City. They found a striking correlation. It seems that you aren't very likely to die by being killed in New York City as long as you avoid being around black or Hispanic men.
http://projects.nytimes.com/crime/homicides/map?ref=nyregion
90% of all of these murders were committed by black or Hispanic people (92% of them with a gun or knife).
Armor-pierciing "cop-killer" bullets were a haox. Hunting rifles can put soft-tip bullets through a police vest.
The plastic pistol thing was another haox. When Glocks first came out, there was a big to-do about how they were plastic and could sneak past metal detectors. Whoever said that, though had clearly never seen a Glock. The barrel and slide are still metal, a good several pounds' worth. The grip is plastic but it's also not very dangerous without the metal bits.
eric - do those statistics (and I'm always highly skeptical of the Brady Campaign) include legally owned guns only or guns owned by criminals as well as law-abiding citizens?
Megan,
I'm curious how you researched the following: "I have managed to find one murder in Florida that was even arguably the result of having a gun available in a heated moment--the few others were either clearly premeditated, or involved a weapon other than a handgun."
I actually witnessed one such murder in a bar in Evanston, IL in 2005. Started as a fistfight, ended as gun murder. I also saw a man take a shot at another for kicking his car after the driver almost hit him. My personal examples don't refute the point, but I wish there was a little more there to counter something I think many (correct or not) would consider conventional wisdom.
That said, I've enjoyed the debate and its forced me to reconsider my original assumptions.
Your right its anecdotal. But it does give evidence that "crimes of passion" are fairly rare. Check out the links I posted to Gary Kleck's papers in response to another commenter. The actually give a pretty good profile of the "typical murderer." He's not really an average Joe on a bad day.
AFAIK, any fight you saw in Evanston IL involved an illegal gun, no?
Well, I don't know why I bother, but here is some evidence that refutes Megan's "lawful gun owners are always harmless" argument:
On August 4, George Sodini , 48, walked into the LA Fitness Center in Collier, Pennsylvania, wearing black workout gear and a headband. In his pocket was a .32 semiautomatic handgun. He carried a duffel bag with three more handguns: two 9mm semiautomatic pistols with 30-round clips and a .45 caliber revolver. All told, he was carrying 150 rounds of ammunition.
Sodini entered an exercise room where an aerobics class was taking place, turned off the lights, and opened fire, emptying one of the 9mm pistols. He then drew the second 9mm pistol and continued firing. In his last act, Sodini drew the .45 revolver and shot himself in the head. When the smoke cleared, at least 36 rounds had been fired and Sodini and three women lay dead. Sodini’s victims were Heidi Overmier, 46; Elizabeth Gannon, 49; and Jody Billingsley, 37. Nine other women were wounded in the shooting.
Within minutes of the tragedy becoming national news, the internet community discovered a journal that Sodini had posted online. In it, Sodini provided his name, date of birth, and hometown—and in a series of entries dating back to November 2008 detailed his plans to commit mass murder. Sodini asked “Why do this?? To young girls?” and made it clear that it was because he was lonely, suicidal, and deeply angry at women, who he felt had spurned him his entire life. He took comfort, however, in a conversation with his pastor at Tetelestai Church in Pittsburgh, who convinced him that “you can commit mass murder then still go to heaven.” The journal even detailed a previous failed murder-suicide attempt by Sodini on January 6 of this year. “I chickened out!” he wrote. “I brought the loaded guns, everything. Hell!”
Authorities had also had previous contact with Sodini. Jack Rickard, a deacon at Tetelestai Church, reported Sodini after he harassed a woman there. A state trooper called Sodini to discuss the matter with him, but no charges were filed. Sodini was asked to leave the church, however, and he did.
A week before the shooting, Sodini came to authorities’ attention again when they received reports that a man on a public bus in Pittsburgh had pulled out what appeared to be a grenade from a computer bag. The man saw a passenger on the bus watching him and said, “It is real. Do you want to hold it?” Soon after, police questioned Sodini—who matched a description provided by the passenger. Sodini denied any involvement, and escaped charges when the passenger couldn’t confirm him as the suspect. After the shooting at LA Fitness Center, Allegheny County Police found a note in Sodini’s home that referred to the grenade incident. “Don’t worry about that; it was a fake,” it said.
Despite all this, Sodini purchased the firearms using in the shooting legally (and bought one of his high capacity-magazines and a magazine loader from Eric Thompson, the online gun dealer who also armed mass shooters Seung-Hui Cho and Steven Kazmierczak). Sodini also held a permit to carry a concealed handgun in the state of Pennsylvania.
The screening process for both purchasing firearms and obtaining a concealed carry permit in Pennsylvania involves a computerized background check. That check searches a state database and also the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), the federal database maintained by the FBI. Because he had no significant criminal record, and because he had not been involuntarily committed to a mental institution or adjudicated as a “mental defective,” Sodini passed those checks. No background investigation is conducted in Pennsylvania to determine if there is any significant history that is missed by the computer check (this is despite the fact that the NICS database is missing millions of records that should be disqualifying purchasers). The result is that Pennsylvania authorities allowed Sodini to purchase firearms and carry a handgun in public without even looking for what it took bloggers minutes to find—a publicly-posted journal detailing his plans to slaughter women.
George Sodini is the fourth confirmed concealed carry permit holder to commit mass murder this year. Like him, the others—Frank Garcia, Michael McClendon, and Richard Poplawski—all had obvious red flags in their background that should have prevented them from obtaining their permits. It has been clear for some time in America that our weak gun laws make it easy for dangerous individuals to purchase firearms. The frequency with which they are obtaining permits to carry concealed handguns in public is a phenomenon that is even more disturbing.
Yup, those concealed carry gun permit holders-all good, peaceful, law abiding folks.
A straw man crossed with a red herring; a standard Brady Bunch tactic. Nobody ever said permit holders were all good, peaceful, or anything else.
All you have begun to demonstrate is that our permitting process is very possibly useless.
So why do we keep pretending otherwise? If it's useless, let's dump it.
Reading excerpts from Sodini’s blog posts, I'm surprised no one tried to get him mentally evaluated. I've said before, cases like these say more about how badly our mental health system is than anything else. I've read a few instances where friends and families tried for years to get people who were engaging in bizarre or threatening behavior evaluated with little success. Its misguided at best and disingenuous at worst to make this about guns, and not the mental health system.
Wait, so Sodinia apparently had access to a grenade? I thought those were normally illegal to be in private possession. It would seem his legally owned firearms were legally owned out of convenience, not because he didn't have access to illegal arms when he wished to get them.
You know, if you're going to put forth flimsy arguments, you may as well go the whole way and selectively edit the stuff that gives people like me the ability to blow up the central claim without having to do any additional research on the topic.
Yup, those concealed carry gun permit holders-all good, peaceful, law abiding folks.
Well, I'm not about to defend this guy (or the other three) as anything but a murdering scumbag.
But on the other hand, police officers have also committed murders, rapes, robberies, etc., sometimes even when in uniform.
So the best thing to do is not to pick out one guy, it's to look at the numbers, and the fact is that permit holders have lower crime rates than the general population, and in many cases lower crime rates than the local PD and state legislature.
I can't support gun carriage in public, in urban, populated areas, or in closed spaces amongst strangers. Whether by the small fraction of dangerous people or by the large majority of rational people- it's deeply intimidating and stressful to me and what I suspect is the vast majority of people who don't own or carry or want to own or carry.
You can certainly run a society where *everyone* carries guns, and some small towns have done so, with some success in reducing crime, etc. But crime just moves elsewhere. And the model as a whole just does not scale. Expecting that *everyone* should own a gun- along with pay taxes and die- in modern society is fantasy. Everyone could similarly print their own money and grow their own food. Not going to happen.
If you're concerned about personal safety and want to carry in public, then become a citizen militia/volunteer sheriff/etc. Many communities do this sort of thing, and many permit carriage, while requiring licensing/testing/training along with the real police force. This is a much better model.
That all said, I don't have a problem with individual/personal gun carriage in rural areas beyond the reach of civil/community services. But in populated areas- that is, in the population model that's likely to become more prevalent in America as oil prices rise and economics forces increased densities- personal gun ownership doesn't have a place.
The gun lobby, fundamentally, wants a free for all. This is not what civil society is for. If you want to live in a free for all world, go live in Haiti, or Afghanistan, or Sudan.
The fact that you find something stressful is not a very good guide to public policy. There are people who find it stressful to be around poor people and minorities, or gays, but we don't tell any of those groups that they have to mend their ways so it won't stress out the bigots.
Thanks for replying. I'll take the point that taken too far, something unmeasurable like "stress" is not a good metric on which to base public policy.
That said, gun ownership isn't close to the same thing as those others. It's elective- you aren't born with a gun- and arguably freedom-reducing for non-gun-carriers.
Being minority or gay are not elective and not arguably freedom reducing for non-minority and non-gay. Poverty is complicated, for the sake of argument I'll accept that its maybe both elective and recognizably freedom-reducing for others. Hence things like the concern over the impact on housing stock when foreclosures creep into a stable area. But we do have mechanisms to prevent the poor from mixing with the wealthy- housing prices.
Why not restrictions on guns?
The best argument against my point I think is to see gun carriage analogously to HIV+. Though there is a risk of restriction of freedom of others- guns can be shot, HIV can be transmitted- in the course of normal events in public spaces, neither happens, and if you take actions to impact others- infecting others with HIV, or shooting someone- there are legal consequences.
So, if we don't confine HIV+, why confine guns?
For me, to finish a tortured analogy, it comes down to the goals and culture of the gun lobby. They're unique in advocating provocative, risky behavior. Some of course argue the gay community does the same, but I think that's a pretty weak argument. Condom use and safe sex are pretty visible in gay culture- if often ignored, of course, but still visible.
There's no equivalent on the NRA side. There's no advocacy for gun safety and responsibility. Their public policy positions are to fight such moves every step of the way.
There's no equivalent on the NRA side. There's no advocacy for gun safety and responsibility. Their public policy positions are to fight such moves every step of the way.
This is completely and unequivocally false. The NRA has taught more people safe gun handling than any other institution on Earth, and in no way endorses unsafe or illegal practices. Nor would any gun club tolerate routine mishandling or criminal misuse of guns.
JB, I have to echo Rob here--you seem not to know very little about the NRA, which is almost certainly the leading advocate for, and provider of, gun safety training in the world outside of a military. Its Eddie Eagle gun safety training for kids is common in many schools (or was, last time I looked)--which is, before you start hyperventilating, the very sensible lesson that if you find a gun you should immediately stop, not touch it, leave the area, and find an adult. Gun safety is very, very, very, very, very, very, very visible in gun culture, for the simple reason that it is all too easy for an idiot to kill someone. The very first thing they teach you in shooting class, long before you are allowed to fire a weapon, is how to behave safely around guns: where to point it and where not to, how to safely load and unload it, safe carrying, etc.
I don't want to pick on you, because I think we're having a decent conversation. But this is a thread running through these arguments. People who don't spend a lot of time with gun nuts are very afraid of them. They draw conclusions about meanings and intentions based on their limited ability to imagine what is going on in the heads of people they don't know or like. Then they're astonished that anyone could disagree with their utterly logical inferences. I myself felt this way about Saddam Hussein's possession of WMD--I literally could not come up with any other explanation for his behavior. And yet, there must have been one.
There's no equivalent on the NRA side. There's no advocacy for gun safety and responsibility.
Are you serious? Really? Ever heard the name Eddie Eagle
Most gun violence and deaths in the US happens via accidents and not via criminals? Correct me if I am wrong but in this context the math is as follows?
1 gun x risk of accident vs. 0 guns x risk of accident
If I had a household with children - I'd have a really really difficult time explaining to myself why I would want a gun. Wait - I got it - to protect my children. Now show me the stats... How many Dads have successfully protected their children with guns from a live threatening situation and how many kids have killed themselves. Should be easy to figure out, no? Oh no - wait - I forgot - when it comes to you and your children - you are so smart and strong and capable that an accident could never happen to you. You are a good driver!
PS: I think Megan's suggestion that we should make it harder for proven criminals to get hold of guns.. ingenious. Great point!
If I had a household with children - I'd have a really really difficult time explaining to myself why I would want a gun
This is beyond inane... ever heard of gun safes? Fast-access lock boxes? If keeping a loaded firearm immediately accessible is an important part of your defense plan, you're living in WAY TOO DANGEROUS an area to have a household with children.
OTOH you are welcome to compare the home invasion rates in Texas and UK. That is exactly "Dads successfully protecting their children" that you were sneering at. We are all protected by the invader's expectation of seeing the business end of a 12-gauge.
Max
I am genuinely interested in the stats. How many children (and adults) hurt themselves accidentally due to guns each year and how many parents do successfully protect their children with guns from life threatening situations each year? In other words - when it comes to actual physical harm - how does it play out.
Invasion numbers that you mention do no yet make sense to me. Are you saying that if somebody invades your home - the chances that your children get hurt are less if you are quickly armed yourself and can start shooting? What? All of that does not yet make sense to me. Maybe you can help. (Please bear in mind this simple equation: (1 gun x risk of accident vs. 2 guns x risk of accident).
Cheers, Hugo
I thought deterrence was the main function of guns in protecting against invasion of occupied properties. A significant portion of US homes and businesses have guns on the premises, and NOBODY KNOWS WHICH ONES. This makes it very risky to rob places when there is anyone around, and so fewer criminals attempt to do it.
Note that not everyone needs to own a gun for this to work. But I would say that more than a self-advertising fringe element needs to do so.
I am genuinely interested in the stats. How many children (and adults) hurt themselves accidentally due to guns each year and how many parents do successfully protect their children with guns from life threatening situations each year
I am not terribly interested in either of these numbers. The risk of gun accident is very much in control of the parent -- re: the lock boxes and such. The protection of children, on the opposite, rests almost entirely on deterrence, whether specific parent arms himself or not. Gun restrictions at the level of DC, Chicago or UK are guaranteed to drastically reduce or eliminate this deterrence factor.
@MC
We all know the reason d'etre of the doomsday machine. We also know that we do not want for Iraq and Iran and North Korea and for everybody to have a nuke under their belt. This is why Obama rightly, in order for diplomacy to get a first chance, has followed Reagan's footsteps and is telling the word that the American goal is to get rid of all nukes abroad and at home.
Deterrence does not work for Iran and North Korea - quite the contrary. Because we have a gun - they go and get a gun. Not the other way around.
@Max
You right that it is a parent's responsibility to secure a gun in case his children are running around... Thanks for pointing this out to us and for clearing up this confusion. I am sure you agree regarding this equation however:
1 gun x risk of accident > 1 gun x reduced risk of accident > 0 gun x risk of accident
What if the stats stated that almost NO child's life gets saved by his gun carrying parents and many many children die or get hurt due to accidents?
What if the stats stated that almost NO child's life gets saved by his gun carrying parents and many many children die or get hurt due to accidents?
This is a misuse of statistics -- failure to control for (just to be fashionably snarky) the IQ of the parents. Unless the statistics say what is your "reduced risk of accidents" given the appropriate safety measures, which they don't.
Statistics gets bandied about too much in Web discussions. IRL, the common sense takes over.
Strategic nukes aren't usable in any conventional armed conflict -- that was always the doomsday scenario.
Doesn't apply for regular weapons, or for rational calculations in other situations. The economically motivated robber who might face an armed householder doesn't go in armed for a shootout. He has another option: robbing unoccupied buildings.
(That problem is dealt with by locks, alarms, and insurance, and in any case it's the preferred situation because it doesn't put the residents at risk.)
Max,
Your common sense seems to be different than my common sense. Maybe we both mean gut feeling?
Common sense is not a formally verifiable algorithmic process. There's nothing particularly surprising in the fact it may lead to opposite conclusions for different people. I'd venture a guess there may be rather little in common between our respective life's experiences.
The risk to small children from guns is considerably less than the risk to small children from swimming pools. Most of the "children" who get killed by guns are juvenile gang members. This is not less tragic, but accidents are really very uncommon.
"If I had a household with children - I'd have a really really difficult time explaining to myself why I would want a gun."
The thought process you go through to justify your actions to yourself is none of my business. However, when you try to decide why I would want to own a gun (or anything else for that matter) your only answer should be its none of your business because you believe in freedom.
We have taken a very dangerous turn in this country if you believe in freedom. We arrest people for driving drunk because they might hurt someone. We even arrest people for not wearing a seatbelt because they might hurt themselves. Freedom somehow got morphed into meaning the ability to do what the majority thinks is right. This isn't freedom, its tyranny.
Life is full of all kinds of threats and dangers and you are never going to be able to legislate them away. All you do, in the process of trying, is to restrict the concept of freedom. Now you may believe that the concept freedom is a small concern when compared to your safety but this country was supposedly founded on this concept. We supposedly fight wars and die for this concept. I believe it was Ben Franklin who said that people who give up their freedom in return for security end up with neither.
You don't fight for your right to own a gun. You fight for the right of others to own a gun so that they will fight for whatever freedom that is important to you!
Are you addressing me mutex? Where on earth did you read "I want to take away your freedom to have slaves, beat women, or anything?" Thanks for a lesson in freedom anyway. My parents risked their and our lives in order to fight tyrannies - I am sure so have you.
Come on... I am just trying to make my mind up about something. Ane Ryand never found a clean standpoint as a libertarian and I struggle too... In this context I am first interested in finding out some fact. How many children's lives are saved due to das carrying a gun vs how many people get harmed by accident. Just the facts - no nazi communist tyranny projections please.
Max above claims that he is not interested in the stats (but he did quote Texas and UK stats when it served his purpose). What of it turned out that almost no child is getting saved due to guns but many many die or get hurt?
he did quote Texas and UK stats when it served his purpose
Actually I didn't; I suggested they will serve without bothering to quote (or check) them. My common sense is sufficiently served by the plurality of anecdotes: hard data is not a requirement in such cases. BTW my personal requirements for "hard data" are more in line with those used in natural sciences and engineering so I do not consider a Web link found by random googling to be an argument of any practical value...
Where on earth did you read "I want to take away your freedom to have slaves, beat women, or anything?"
I must be losing my mind. I have reread my post three times and I can't for the life of me figure out where you got the idea that I wanted to have the freedom to "have slaves, beat women, or anything". In quotes, no less!!! I simply believe I should only be responsible for actual damage or harm I cause --- not damage I MIGHT cause.
My point, in case I wasn't clear about it, is that the statistics you are so interested in are immaterial to the legitimacy of gun ownership laws if you believe in freedom. Acts are committed by individuals, not by percentages. We have started down a path as a society of restricting behavior based on probabilities. Is the purpose of life to preserve inidividual liberty or to preserve the society. My personal view is that the concept of society is only valuable to the degree that it serves the individual. Somehow people in the United States have turned this around and seemingly believe that the individual is suppose to serve society!
Perhaps this is too subtle a point for this blog.
Hugo, I may be the worst drunk driver in the world. Heck, I may be the worst sober driver in the world. What does it matter if I run over your child and kill them whether I'm drunk or not, let alone whether I'm wearing a seatbelt or not. Your child is still dead. Maybe I was adjusting the radio. Perhaps I was daydreaming. The point is that if I am at fault in killing your child and I should be held responsible. I should not be held responsible simply because society has determined it is 'more likely' I will kill your child if I have been drinking. If I never hit your child what harm has been done?
How have we become so brainwashed that we would allow millions of people to be punished every year who have caused NO actual damage? Why have we succumbed to the tyranny of statistics?
Relax mutex. It wasn't serious but a joke that should convey the following point: "I have never said that anybody should take away your right to carry a gun". You started talking about issues like freedom, in a very strange way I may add and without trying to read too much into your instinctual reaction.
Ayn Rand for example was as much a libertarian freedom lover as I am and as you claim to be. She herself said in 1973 about gun control issues:
My personal quest here was to find out how much damage to individuals, defenseless individuals like children, whose rights should also be respected, actually happens and due to what reason. I do not demand statistics per se. Just show me how often we can read: "child killed due to gun accident" and how often we read "heroic father saves child by gunning down violent armed criminal mind".
If asked for my personal standpoint - I think I am with Megan - that a few more regulations would help. Again - I have never suggested full prohibition here but merely asked a few questions here. Your reactions, again, ... either strange or telling?
PS: I liked Megan's last sentence. If people wanted to get guns - they will. Pure Wittgenstein, no? Question is - why was I beaten down in NY so that I could be robbed for $60. The guy risked more prison from beating me than from his actual goal - stealing the money. What is, culturally, wrong with this mindset? What can we do to change that mindset?
Hugo, I don't even own a gun. I have no desire to own a gun but I do desire freedom for myself and everyone else.
Your quest for information regarding the ratio between "child killed due to gun accident" vs. "heroic father saves child by gunning down violent armed criminal mind" may be extremely relevant in your personal decision about whether to own a gun but should have NO bearing on whether we as a society ALLOW gun ownership. I have no problem with people trying to persuade others not to own a gun but that is a far cry from making it a law.
The only reason you state that I began "talking about issues like freedom, in a very strange way" is because our society has indoctrinated the majority with the idea that we are all our brother's keeper. I reject this concept. Public discussion of these issues is all well and good. Government can even disseminate information advising people about the safety issues of gun ownership and drunk driving BUT they cross the line of freedom when they turn this advice into laws!
In an age where most Americans worship at the alter of consumption and view the government as the source of both their security and sustenance it is no wonder that actual freedom has lost its attraction. We have become a nation of frightened sheep looking to our bureaucratic herders to tell us which direction to go next. These type laws deprive us of our freedom and give us in return the illusion of safety. Its not a trade I'm willing to make.
why was I beaten down in NY so that I could be robbed for $60
Because the likelihood of you effectively resisting -- in NY -- was rather low.
Max
I am afraid you did not quite get my point. At the risk of belittling your mental capabilities I simply repeat with italics on: "The guy risked more prison from beating me than from his actual goal - stealing the money. What is, culturally, wrong with this mindset?"
Again - it is not an issue of acting tough. Does that confuse you?
You're misunderstanding the concept of freedom, and of what was fought for. Freedom is not the ability for *you* to do whatever *you* want to do. What was fought for is the concept of freedom as a *universal* principle. It applies equally to all.
*You* are not "free" to rape, murder, and conduct myriad other smaller offenses because those actions conducted by *you* result in a deeper loss of the freedom of *someone else*. Want to drive your car without a seatbelt? Go right ahead- do it somewhere where there aren't other people! That's the meaning of universal freedom.
If your view of "freedom" is that you get to abridge the freedom of others at will, you're not talking about freedom. You're talking about fascism, where you're the dictator.
If you accept the *universal* concept of freedom for all, then you recognize that these universal social processes- however effing flawed they are- are *essential* for preserving freedom.
It's a mistake to think that this is rule of the majority. Majority rule applies to a very, very small number of decisions that impact individual well-being. The vast majority of decisions are actually made by individuals or little minority cabals who take action and have their interests- "special interests"- protected *against* the wishes of the majority. The reason is simple- quite often the majority just doesn't care enough. A tiny minority is enough to change the world- at least this world.
Maybe this system is frustrating to you. It is for everybody. Life in this system isn't easy. It is, though, better than what the other guys have.
Well, except maybe the kings. It's definitely good to be the king. But only one guy, and no girls, get to be king.
Are you kidding me???? Where did I say that freedom meant the right to rape and murder or to cause ANY harm to someone's person or property?
Please explain how my not wearing a seatbelt injures anyone?
I will even make it easier for you. Please explain how my driving drunk injures anyone?
If I damage you or your property I should be held responsible and endure whatever punishment our society has decided is befitting the damage I've caused but my driving drunk or without a seatbelt, in and of itself, damages no one! The fact that some majority of people have decided that these acts increase the liklihood I MIGHT cause such damage is beside the point. I MIGHT cause damage even if I'm not drunk or am wearing a seatbelt. People suggesting they know the liklihood of me (as an individual) committing any act are engaging in sophistry.
It all comes down to my view of the purpose of life. I believe all life is lived on an individual level. Therefor all rights are individual rights. The supposed rights of the majority aren't rights at all but restrictions proscribing the behavior of others. Thus the phrase 'tyranny of the majority'.
The fact that statistics can be produced to show that drunk drivers cause more damage than sober drivers says absolutely nothing about any individual and whether they personally will cause any damage. The majority has decided they don't like this behavior and they, through our legislative and legal system, have imposed their will on the minority.
This is the fundamental argument behind the current question of gun ownership. What is society's concern over whether I own a gun or not? Its only concern should be whether I cause harm with a gun or without. This pre-emptive determination about who is more likely to cause harm is antithetical to the very concept of freedom.
mutex,
I am sure you are a good driver - even when you are drunk. Please drive at whatever velocity you wish or can. With or without children on board. No matter how old or sick you are. It is your god damn right and nobody, nobody, should take this away from you. No democratic majority. And especially not some... government. Especially not some socialist, tyrannical government. You go boy.... yeahh!
Um, no. The vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of gun deaths are suicide and homicide. Accidents are negligible. It's much more dangerous for a child to ride in a car, swim in a pool, play in the bathtub, or play with a 5 gallon bucket than it is for them to be in a household with guns.
Sometimes a slip is just a Freudian slip. Megan's statement that there are 220 million people in the country, er guns, does reflect the fact that sometimes technology does lead culture which is behavior. The Origin of War cites the archeological evidence for a group of people taking up predation on others as a useful economic activity did not begin until the invention of the bow and arrow of which the gun is the successor. So, yes there was a Garden of Eden and it might be nice to go back to it. Liberals will try by changing the availability of guns, conservatives by talking the individual into finding Eternal Truth perhaps.
This discussion grows out of the 'carrying of firearms to political rallies.' Although Obama may have contributed to this by saying 'We'll take a gun to a fight' I think he has contributed to defusing the problem by supporting people's Second Amendment rights. Thus he has not added fuel to the confrontation and perhaps, in this, has listened to the Secret Service which would try to handle the problem in that way.
Megan, you're spot on with your analyses. Too bad so many urban types have a visceral reaction against guns without facing the facts.
BTW, I have been careful to avoid fights even when I get angry, because I don't really know how to fist-fight. But I can kill with my bare hands, thanks to my Marine training.
One distinction we made in the Marines that applies to this discussion as well: we're not trained killers; we're trained to know how to kill. This mindset applies to legal gun owners as well.
I don't really know how to fist-fight. But I can kill with my bare hands
Now this line should win the thread... or something. There really is no such thing as limited violence.
Rex, as one rural gun owner to another, here's the problem. We need to be able to defend our RIGHT to carry guns without having to defend everyone who exercises that right in every situation.
Take, as an analogy, speeches from white supremacists. A majority of Americans, I think, would die to defend the right to free speech of these people even as they condemn the content of what they're saying. I suspect most commenters on this blog, left and right, would generally agree with that statement, at least as it applies to them.
But that logic seems to fly out the window when the debate turns to guns and not speech. Gun control advocates want to control guns in a way that they would never allow for speech. And gun rights advocates defend anyone who does anything with a gun, even when what they're doing with a gun is stupid and counterproductive.
To me, that's the situation here. These guys are making everyone less safe by putting a gun into that situation. I'll defend to the death their right to do so, but that doesn't mean I have to think it's a good idea. Because it's not -- it's a terrible idea.
And Megan uses the wrong criteria when she says the evidence shows people are wrong when they say, "having a legal gun around substantially increases the likelihood that someone will, in a moment of rage, shoot someone". Having my shotgun's safety off when I'm crossing a fence probably doesn't "substantially increase" the likelihood that I will, in a momentary slip-up, blow my own head off. Because with the safety on the likelihood is zero, and with it off it's still pretty close to zero. But do we teach kids to put the safety on when they cross a fence? Absolutely.
My point is that "low odds" is not how responsible gun owners think about gun safety. Instead, you're mindful of the potential consequences of every situation, and you do everything you can to eliminate the likelihood that someone will get hurt by your gun, no matter how low the odds. And gun rights advocates need to be able to say that while still defending the right to keep and bear arms.
Rex,
We are not discussing if the military should be armed or not?
Speaking of mindsets - what if the stats say that more children get hurt due to accidents than parents manage to protect their children with guns. What kind of mindset would you read into this? As a man - I can say that I have met too many inadequately equipped men who just feel "more powerful" with a long, hard, dangerous weapon.
Some of these men that I've met go off and buy long-nosed, fast cars and express their power and freedom by speeding. Isn't it amazing how they can move their foot just a little in order to accelerate? Luckily we have laws that restrict their freedom (speed limit) so that they are not too much of a danger to others. What about guns? Tell me, seriously, except for (former) army personnel and from your own experience, what mindset does the average guy who carries a gun have?
Luckily we have laws that restrict their freedom (speed limit) so that they are not too much of a danger to others
Another good one. We have laws that restrict the speed mostly as an extra revenue stream for local governments. Try your argument again when the limits are set at 85-th percentile, i.e. above the speed at which the majority drives.
FWIW the cars I see (or is it hear?) swishing past me in traffic tend to be dirty-looking Civics and the like -- in the area of the metro that's chock full of BMWs. Long-nosed they sure ain't.
Here are some statistics on gun accidents among children.
"The risk of being a victim of a fatal gun accident can be better appreciated if it is compared to a more familiar risk...Each year about five hundred children under the age of five accidentally drown in residential swimming pools, compared to about forty killed in gun accidents, despite the fact that there are only about five million households with swimming pools, compared to at least 43 million with guns. Thus, based on owning households, the risk of a fatal accident among small children is over one hundred times higher for swimming pools than for guns."
Here is a link to the site:
http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcgvacci.html
BTW, if you see much higher numbers, investigate how "children" is defined. Some studies have defined it to include people as old as 24.
The risk of being a victim of a fatal gun accident can be better appreciated if it is compared to a more familiar risk...
To quote the great John McEnroe once again - you can't be serious? We are not comparing gun accidents with the threat of child obesity. We comparing the risk of having a gun at home to the actual effectiveness of defending yourself with it. Please, ladies and gentlemen, show me heroic acts of self-defense with guns. Pathetic. Simply pathetic. Wanna be strong. Wanna be unafraid. Clearly scared like shxt. Excuse my.... This ain't 'bout acting tough. A girl could kill a grown man if she pierced her finger into his eye fast enough. It is not ill meaning or ignorance that causes the most needless suffering but insecurities me thinks. Of all the commenters here Troy makes the most sense to me so far.
Did you click on the link? You would find very good info on gun defenses their. Or on the other two links I posted in response to other commenters. I will tell you, so you don't have to do all the hard work of clicking on a link, that defensive gun uses are estimated to be approximately 2 million per year.
"Tell me, seriously ... what mindset does the average guy who carries a gun have?"
If someone is willing to commit rape or attempt murder, or engages in another act in which murder commonly follows, he is too violent to simply hope they will not follow through. Therefore I will do everything in my power to ensure they do not have the power of life and death (or rape) over me or my family.
Megan:
Here's a little more on one of those "ordinary" gun toters you're so eager to defend:
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/08/pastor_of_gun-toter_at_obama_event_day_before_even.php?ref=fpblg
Enjoy!
The moral of this story is: do some fact finding before you decide to take a libertarian stand on the safety of your normal American gun owner attending a protest armed. The guy you choose to defend may be crazy, and may have just listened to his pastor advocate Obama's death the day before.
So what you've proven is that his pastor is a lunatic. So was one Barack Obama's pastor.
Uh, what does Barack Obama's former pastor have to do with this?
To be honest, I'm really not trying to prove anything -- except that you don't know anything about these people and pretending that you do and making sweeping generalizations that they must be mentally stable and have good impulse control...is foolish.
And I am still curious about your views regarding guns in federal buildings. You must be all for it, right?
I'm not the one making sweeping generalizations. I've just said I have no reason to think they're planning to hurt anyone, and statistically, the threat of violence is vanishingly small.
Or, listen to this guy for 2 years and let all of America vote on whether he should get to attend to attend a rally with a gun.
Seriously, you're sticking to this?
Instead of backing down, even with respect to this one guy, you make this "counterargument":
1. Obama's pastor is lunatic and Obama's not a lunatic.
2. Therefore, this guy's pastor advocating for Obama's death the day before he brought a gun to a town hall meeting Obama was attending has no bearing on this matter.
Is that argument supposed to contain some sort of logic? Or worse, evidence?(Frankly, it would make a lot more sense as an argument if you thought Obama WAS a lunatic.)
I think you're being stubborn.
"I'm going to pray that [Obama] dies and goes to hell." -Steven Anderson, pastor of Chris Broughton.
I think he's a lunatic with some evil, evil thoughts. But if it is true that this protester planned his outing long before he went to church, and had no idea what his pastor was going to say, then no, it doesn't particularly worry me. Or maybe it would have worried me, before the rally. Now that the rally has passed, totally without incident or any apparent danger to the president, then I conclude that in fact, this guy was not there to act on his pastor's horrifying words. I'm frankly a little bewildered that you have come to the opposite conclusion.
Meagan writes that "that's why not a lot of hunters report getting into disputes with their friends or family that suddenly, unexpectedly, and tragically, turn violent."
eric-
Did you read the links I sent you in response to your previous post? Do you think the plural of anecdote is data?
I do not demand statistics per se. Just show me how often we can read: "child killed due to gun accident" and how often we read "heroic father saves child by gunning down violent armed criminal mind".
The former number is likely to be well reported, because it's good news; the latter is far less likely to make the news (no blood), and indeed even the cops might never know, if the homeowner doesn't actually fire a shot and is disinclined to explain to a possibly hostile cop what happened. So the numbers you want are hard to obtain reliably.
My guns live in a big ol' safe. Tough for the kids to get in.
By "good news," I meant "has substantial news value" or "good for ratings," not "the sort of thing one likes to see happen."
May we put at least one part of this argument out of its misery?
Your toaster is no threat to me. Your gun potentially is. Your swimming pool is no threat to me. ("Swimming pools can kill but we don't outlaw them, do we"? is the argument of a seventh-grader.) Your assault weapon potentially is. Your car may be a threat to me, but its primary and legal function is as transportation, and if you use it for that carefully, it's no threat to me. Your hunting rifle, if used for its intended purpose, is no threat to me. Your handgun, which is solely designed to kill people, potentially is.
The entire libertarian fantasy is based on unlimited personal choice controlled via unalloyed personal responsibility. However, the fact that you "take full responsibility" for accidentally wounding or killing me, however much it comports with your proud, self-sufficient notion of responsibility, is of cold comfort to me.
Or, if as a libertarian you really don't give a fuck about me, turn the argument around. Will you be philosophically satisfied, as you sit quadriplegic in your wheelchair (paid for, if you're lucky, by the private health insurance policy that the market has in its wisdom made sure is of maximum benefit to you), if, after shooting you accidentally or on purpose, I admit that I'm responsible, and if I go to jail? How'd that be? Fair enough?
Your hunting rifle, if used for its intended purpose, is no threat to me. Your handgun, which is solely designed to kill people, potentially is.
This makes absolutely no sense. My hunting rifle is vastly more powerful, can fire projectiles vastly farther, and is far more likely to overpenetrate its intended victim (a deer, say) and hurt you. A handgun is far less of a threat to you...unless I'm actively trying to kill you. In which case my hunting rifle, which is far more accurate over a far greater range, and is, again, far more powerful, is much more dangerous to you.
And the swimming pools thing came up in the context of accidents, not murders, particularly accidents involving children. In that context, it's not stupid, it's precisely on point.
You use your powerful, overpenetrating hunting rifle for shooting deer. The legitimate use of it doesn't include bringing it into public places where I might be. Or would you feel better if I talked about an assault weapon? Is that powerful enough to constitute, in your mind, a valid threat to me?
The pool argument was indeed about accidents, but as in the car and toaster argument, it ignores the distinction in purposes between the pool and the gun. Anything can cause accidental death. My daughter almost choked on a plum pit once. The legality of pools and plum pits is not comparable to the legality of hand guns or assault weapons. The former have legitimate uses that aren't lethal, and so we don't regulate them but we encourage care in their use. The latter are specifically made to be lethal. Even as a deterrence, their lethality is their primary characteristic and function.
An "assault weapon" is a meaningless term for a gun that has certain scary looking cosmetic features. It has nothing to do with the gun's killing power. A good hunting rifle is more power than you need.
You use your powerful, overpenetrating hunting rifle for shooting deer. The legitimate use of it doesn't include bringing it into public places where I might be.
The lethal range of a perfectly ordinary caliber such as .270 Win is measured in miles (not necessarily the accurate range, of course). So there's a halfway decent chance that a public place where you might be is in range of somebody's hunting ground.
Or would you feel better if I talked about an assault weapon?
If you think you can define "assault weapon" meaningfully, then by all means let's discuss it. But definition first, so I have some idea what you mean.
I've said many times, BTW, that I think openly carrying guns at protests is stupid and pointless. It just doesn't scare or worry me particularly.
Yes, and if you call a rifle a "gun" in the military you get in trouble. I don't know if they still do it, but a new recruit who makes this mistake is made to march around the field holding his dick in one hand and his rifle in the other, chanting, "This is my rifle/This is my gun./One is for shooting/And one is for fun."
So what? Your comment is beside the point.
He's saying that you have failed to define your terms. And you have. There is no such thing as an "assault weapon" outside the fever-dreams of the gun-control fanatics. It's a phrase intended to confuse and frighten those who don't know enough about the subject to realize that it's nothing more than a bogeyman.
Furthermore, use of the phrase implies that you either don't know that it's meaningless propaganda, or that you are attempting to further a deliberate deception.
The weapons that are commonly lumped under the term "assault weapon" typically fire lower powered cartridges than hunting rifles. Military assault rifles are intended for turning enemy soldiers into casualties (not necessarily corpses). Hunting rifles are intended for turning large animals into corpses in one shot.
I don't have the numbers at hand, but home invasions while the family are in their home are much more common in the UK than in the US. When interviewed, burglers in the US will state that they don't like to break into an occupied home because they don't know if the occupants will be armed. So everyone benefits from some houses having armed occupants.
I would like for anti-gun folks to put their money where their mouth is and post a sign in their yard stating that their house is a gun-free zone...
I would like for anti-gun folks to put their money where their mouth is and post a sign in their yard stating that their house is a gun-free zone...
Wait. Do I get this right. Gun-free citizens should trust gun-carrying citizens but they should not reveal that they are gun-free themselves because... Interesting point, Earnest. Thanks.
Oh come on, the best wages are paid by pacifists! Lay down your guns and prosper (vulcan: live long and prosper).
Do you know how most criminals get their guns? They steal it from homeowners. This is yet another inconvenient fact that I am sure the gun fanboys will ignore.
Hell, arguing with the gun fanboys is kind of like arguing with creationists-they have their theories, don't confuse them with those stupid things called facts.
Tell them that even gun permit owners can engage in mass murder? They claim that only abnormal gun permit owners commit crimes and otherwise commit mass murder? How do you identify these abnormal gun permit owners? Why when they commit mass murder. (Hat tip to Nelson Alexander).
Explain that criminals get their guns by stealing from legal owners?Well, they will just deny or ignore that.
Point out that most mass murderers don't have criminal records before they commit mass murders they say we need to improve the mental health system (Doesn't make a lick of sense, but when did their arguments make sense).
Again, you might as well argue with creationists-something that I have done as well. Useless.
That's an argument for better gun safes, not gun control, and also, isn't true; most criminals get their guns through diversion of shipments, or purchasing from legal owners. That's why I think that private sales should also require background checks.
They steal it from homes. When they're DAMNED sure the house is unoccupied. Or as in a recent case they befriend an old man, suffocate him with a pillow, and then steal his gun collection.
Yeah I only send you links to real statistics that disprove most of the things you say, and apparently you don't read them . You continue to say things that a simple click on one of the links to Gary Kleck's papers would cast into doubt. You sir, are the one with whom argument is useless. Just stick to penis jokes, they're are the one argument you aren't out of your league trying.
Once again I see that you are simply pulling numbers out of your ass (apparently your go to source for hard data to back up your bullshit lunatic assertions). According to the Department of Justice, only 14% of murders are committed by strangers, while 15% were committed by spouses or family and 1/3 by acquaintances. The relationship was unknown in 1/3 of the cases. I think the default assumption from now on is that anytime you use numbers, you are lying.
You do realize that technically speaking, someone you've spoken to once before is an acquaintance if they later shoot you according to the justice department. Then there's the fact that most gang-bangers know each other and aren't total strangers as well. Assuming that one third is split evenly, this means most of the time is will be realtive unknowns killing you, and not people you know well.
Hmmm. No that is not how DoJ defines "acquaintance." They define them as "Friend/Acquaintance includes neighbor, employee, employer, and other known." No reasonable interpretation of the data gets you anywhere near Megan's gross and unsubstantiated overstatement.
I also would like to challenge the widespread and totally unsubstantiated claim that having guns really protects you from crime. Nobody really keeps statistics on self defense, but the DoJ reports exactly 100 justifiable homicides by civilians 1976-2005 compared to over 100,000 homicides committed by family members or significant others in the same period. That suggest that you are 1000 times as likely to get killed by a gun in your house as to protect yourself with it.
Theft of privately owned handguns is also the major source of guns used by criminals.
This only makes sense if the only way you can protect yourself with a gun is to kill someone else with it.
This calculation does not take into account the times that just brandishing a gun protected someone.
And it certainly does not count the times where just the possibility of a gun in a house deterred a crime.
A sad facet of our human nature is on grim display during riots, when the sense that actions will not have the regular consequences lead ordinary people to do things they would not ordinarily do. The strong possibility of retribution makes civilization possible.
My home town paper recently had articles proudly hailing that our village's hand gun ban had not been struck down in court, and also decrying the frightening increase in home invasions. Is it foolish to think there is a connection?
"People who don't spend a lot of time with gun nuts are very afraid of them."
But knowing about guns doesn't make one a gun nut. My father was an amateur gun smith, reloader, target shooter--which grew out of his WWII sniper experience, or maybe one fueled the other. He wasn't a big wacko about gun rights, but he pointed out that his familiarity and expertise with guns made him valuable to the country in time of war, so it seemed pretty short-sighted of the same country to declare him a criminal for owning guns in peacetime.
I live in a big city, where guns are very easy to get if you're a criminal and very hard to get, if you wanted to take up a hobby or train for a biathlon.