Gun Control - A Superficial Solution ?

[Frenger]

^^^ what he said.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

You have dismissed the work of respected criminologists because their conclusions do not agree with your preconceptions. Your denial that they have any data makes it obvious that you have not as much as glanced through any of their books or even any reviews of their books. After I pointed out that Lott's website has links to his data you continued to deny that any data exists. And then you compare criminologists to creationists. If you had a reputation for credibility and honesty you have badly tarnished it with these sorts of statements.

You posted this: http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdgeff.html
Number of references that loop back to the same website: 5
Number of external reference with 404 page not found: 1
Number of working external references: 0
Of those 4 of the 5 loop back references are attempted to be passed as external references.
But ok, maybe the only external reference that was not found was simply moved, well let's look for it: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbse&sid=58
Well what exactly does he do with this external reference? Nothing, it says that someone else analyzed it and takes a meaningless quote from him. But does the quote support the actual data?

"[W]hile defensive gun use is generally safe, it does not appear to be uniquely safe among self-protection methods as data from earlier NCVS data suggested. Nevertheless, there does not appear to be any increase in injury risk due to defensive gun use that counterbalances its greater effectiveness in avoiding property loss."

No. The data actually has a disclaimer:

The victimization survey cannot measure murder because of the inability to
question the victim.

Does the loop back references support their data with external references? No!
Not only there aren't any sources for the relevant core of the argument, the relevant core of the arguments is retarded.
So the page is 100% bogus.

Next: http://www.gunsandcrime.org/auresult.html
Number of external references with 404 page not found: 1
Number of external references that link to no data: 1
Number of working external references: 0
Either the page (that was not found) was moved or not is irrelevant, because it is reported to have been published in 1993 while in the core of the page content shows data up to the year 2007.
But let us try and find the data, which was supposedly used to construct those graphs?
Ok let us see the murder trend"¦ Why does it stop in 2000 while other graphs go up to 2007? In 2007 statistics for the following years should exist.
Oh look: http://www.aic.gov.au/documents/0/B/6/%7B0B619F44-B18B-47B4-9B59-F87BA643CBAA%7Dfacts11.pdf
What do you know, his graph is actually correct, it just does not show the declining murder rates in the following years.
And not surprisingly, gun murder rates are wrong!
Not totally bogus, but some data is made up or hidden. The points made are almost irrelevant given the time frame. It commits the magic pill fallacy, i.e. that the effects of the policy must be observed immediately.
So yeah. I have dismissed John Lott, who is not a criminologist as hogwash. And also dismissed the so called content supported by data by the fact that the so called data doesn't actually do any supporting at all.

You have conjured imaginary scenes to support your fixed idea that only people with guns commit crimes, and that killing them is the only way to stop their assaults. Apparently your knowledge of this subject comes only from cinematic fiction, video games and sensational news reports.

Strawman.
Point to me where I have ever stated this.

You ask for sources but when I cite them you respond not with criticism of their work but lines like this. "Unfortunately, what the "Historian" Joyce Lee Malcom says means nothing what so ever to me. It is nothing but an appeal to authority."

What you cited was someone else's opinion, an opinion which by the way flies in the face of the actual text she is opinionating about. Even you disagree with her, which is evidenced by your following reply:

Then you attempt to give lessons in English grammar that are completely wrong. In a compound sentence: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." the meaning is carried by the complete sentence, not the preceding sentence fragment. "[T]he right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." is a complete sentence and caries meaning. "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state" is not a complete sentence and has no meaning on its own. Its meaning comes only in relation to the complete sentence

You are almost on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, you even go so far as to say that the part "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state" has no meaning. How do you mesh that with this:

The Second Amendment was meant to accomplish two distinct goals, each perceived as critical to the maintenance of liberty. ("¦)The second and related objective concerned the militia, and it is the coupling of these two objectives that has caused the most confusion.

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state", most certainly has a meaning, it just doesn't grant you a right, the right is granted on the second part. But as I have argued, not only your interpretation of the founding fathers view on the second amendment was wrong, I also don't give a crap about what it says in it and that the 2nd amendment must be abolished.

Bull shit! How much easy can it be than to purchase a gun in a store like buying a TV?

Whether this nonsense was deliberate of the result of ignorance it is another strawman.

It is not a strawman. You can legally buy guns and ammo on eBay, you don't need absolutely anything else other than cash to buy guns and ammo on a gun show. And any restrictions on buying a gun on a gun shop that exist are ridiculous at best. It is not harder than to buy a TV. If you can show me how this has misrepresented the actual state of gun access in the US I will accept it to be a strawman. Otherwise if you do not like your own reflection, tough!

And I would really want an answer to this questions:
How else (not forcing teachers to have guns) you would you expect the right to bear arms prevent things like school shootings?
What else do you suggest to be done so that school shootings could be prevented?

You said that a madman obtained guns legally by killing his mother and inheriting them.

Which is actually technically correct, and much less ridiculous than to say that "he would still have those guns had they not been legally for sale".

You said that when someone bought guns ("¦)

No matter what comes next, if the sale was legal they were legally acquired.

and then illegally transferred them; the Columbine lunatics had obtained them legally.

They have obtained it legally. If that was a valid argument then I could have just said "well you cannot legally buy guns if you intend to murder people with them, since every gun used to murder people have murdered people means that they weren't legally acquired and therefore all guns used in murders are illegal." Which I think it is hardly the point you want to make.

By advocating a gun-banning policy "with some minor consequences" that you admit will increase crime and human suffering in the short term so that in "the long run [less] people would be robber, extorted, assaulted, raped and killed than what would have happened otherwise" you are advocating human sacrifice. You are willing to have some of your fellow humans suffer terribly and unnecessarily for a hypothetical future benefit. Please be so kind as to keep your culture of human sacrifice to yourself. Or perhaps only "Americans as stereotypically short sighted baboons" reject the callous sacrifice of the innocent as unspeakably indecent.

Let me draw you a graph.

Who here is promoting a culture of "human sacrifice"?
And yes your view is short sighted.

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

I'm not sure I understand the above graph, Master_Ghost_Knight.

If I read it right, it indicates that deaths go up when you ban guns, and go down when you do nothing?!

Kindest regards,

James

 

[Moky]

Yeah, that's what I'm also reading based on your y-axis. If anything, assuming the graph stays as I assume, which is that less deaths as one goes down the y-axis, the graph should be steadily decreasing. The murder rates in the States are slowly going down.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

Greetings,

I'm not sure I understand the above graph, Master_Ghost_Knight.

If I read it right, it indicates that deaths go up when you ban guns, and go down when you do nothing?!

Kindest regards,

James

Ok... In green it is marked what I expect to happen if you ban guns, in red is what happens if you do nothing.

When you start to remove guns from the general population it is expected that people with shady intention would not promptly give back their guns, there may even be people resisting, this coupled with a slightly increase in criminal motivation (because people are less armed) means that in the beggining you actually expect the death rates to go up instead of down. But as time progresses and weapons get increasingly confiscated, flushed out of the black market and coupled with the less incidents where guns used in brawls (or other non-felony events), means that in the long run death rates will tend to go down to lower levels.

In the mathematical model I provided earlier, this corresponds to the eficiency in removing guns from criminals (the term "u"; because removing guns from the population is a gradual process) will lag behind the encitment to crime (the term "v"). And if you are an engineer or if this means anything to you, it is characteristic of a system with a non-minimum phase.

The solid color portion ilustrates how much the expected murder rate differs between the 2 options (ban guns or do nothing), the area in blue indicates the portion when the option banning guns leads in death rate, the area in yellow indicates the portion when the option of doing nothing leads in death rate compared to banning guns. And because the yellow area is bigger than the blue area this means that overall banning guns kills less people.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

Yeah, that's what I'm also reading based on your y-axis. If anything, assuming the graph stays as I assume, which is that less deaths as one goes down the y-axis, the graph should be steadily decreasing. The murder rates in the States are slowly going down.

The graph is an ilustration, it does not take into acount the change in culture or crime trends.

 

[Dragan Glas]

Greetings,

Ok, I understand what you're saying for your model, but I would have thought that, in real life, it would not be just a case of banning/removing guns on its own.

There would have to be an increase in police officers on the street first - along with an increase in law enforcement - to mitigate against the potential for an initial increase in violence.

Kindest regards,

James

 

[wswolf]

Exercising rights does not endanger anyone. There is no right to put anyone at risk. People are endangered by criminal behavior.

Exercising rights does facilitate the endangerment of people when that right involves arming the general population.

Frenger,

Apology accepted. I hope you don't mind if I skip a lot of detail and address the basic issues.

Your main arguments seem to be (and I apologize if I am wrong):
that the right to keep and bear arms is obsolete
and that our fellow humans are too ill-tempered and prone to panic to be trusted with firearms.

The right to keep and bear arms is not obsolete. I paraphrased Jeff Snyder in another post:
The derivation of the right to keep and bear arms is simply stated.
1. Each individual owns his/her life, or has a right to his/her life.
2. The right to life necessarily implies that the individual has a right to protect or defend that life.
3. The right to defend one's life is meaningless unless that right includes the means necessary to maintain it.
4. Since the right to life implies a right to the means to protect that life, the individual's right to his/her own life necessarily implies a right to keep and bear arms suitable for self-defense.
5. A government of a free people is instituted, as it says in the American Declaration of Independence, only with the consent of the governed, in order to secure each person's right to life. Such a government must, therefore, recognize the right of the people to keep and bear their private arms for defense.

Each point listed leads logically to the next. If you think there is a place where the logic fails, please point it out and explain your reasoning. I have tried and found no logical flaw so can only conclude that the right to keep and bear arms is inalienable.

In actual practice our fellow humans are quite capable of defending themselves with firearms. Every state that has enacted laws allowing adults who have no criminal record to carry concealed firearms (after getting a license) has had reductions in violent crimes and no increases in accidental shootings. Mass public shootings now take place almost exclusively in places where concealed carry by civilians is not allowed. As for military-style semi-automatics (not "assault rifles", I explained the difference in another post and we might as well use the correct terminology) there are millions of them in private hands because law-abiding people find them versatile and practical. They are precisely the sort of weapons protected by the Constitution (according to the Supreme Court) and the law-abiding should not deprived their use even if they are, extremely rarely, used in sensational crimes.

Regards,
Wolf

 

[wswolf]

I must respectfully disagree that owning a gun is not a basic human right. The derivation of the right to keep and bear arms is simply stated.
1. Each individual owns his/her life, or has a right to his/her life.
2. The right to life necessarily implies that the individual has a right to protect or defend that life.
3. The right to defend one's life is meaningless unless that right includes the means necessary to maintain it.
4. Since the right to life implies a right to the means to protect that life, the individual's right to his/her own life necessarily implies a right to keep and bear arms suitable for self-defense.
5. A government of a free people is instituted, as it says in the American Declaration of Independence, only with the consent of the governed, in order to secure each person's right to life. Such a government must, therefore, recognize the right of the people to keep and bear their private arms for defense.

Non of the above necessitates gun ownership, nor dot hey justify gun ownership as a right.

Each step logically leads to the next. At what specific point do you think the logic breaks down?

I don't want to get sidetracked onto health care but anyone with the means to discourage rape or other violent assaults may not require as much health care.

Utter nonsense.

I was being a bit flippant. Are you suggesting that someone who has been beaten and raped will need no more medical attention than someone who was uninjured because she used her gun to scare off an attacker?

I find it unfathomable that people want to own something that has only one purpose; to kill.

As I have explained in previous posts: the purpose of having a gun for self-defense is not to kill the attacker but to keep innocent people from being harmed. Up to the last moment before the defender is forced to shoot him the attacker has the option to stop the attack, retreat and go look for a helpless victim.

Besides, there are other "means" to save ones self from those things, other than guns.

Please enlighten us. What other means can a petite woman have immediately at hand to scare off a 200 pound rapist?

How many law abiding citizens have broken the law by shooting someone?

As I said before, with rare exceptions murderers have histories of violent behavior and in most cases have been arrested more than once for violent crimes. In the extremely rare instances where previously law-abiding people decide to commit violent crimes we still have the need to defend ourselves against them.

Being law abiding doesn't mean a thing, every criminal was law abiding to a point. It's not a badge of any merit.

Being law-abiding shows an desire to be a part of a community and a part of a civilized society and to have the respect of ones fellow citizens. Criminals, by their behavour, place themselves outside of civilized society and work actively against it. I don't understand why you think that being law-abiding has no merit.

Why stop at semi-autos then? Surely a grenade launcher would provide a bigger advantage. Maybe weaponised sarin gas.

Once again, I have explained in previous posts that the use of explosives or weapons so indiscriminant as to endanger anyone in the surrounding area would be unethical in the extreme. You are the only one who has suggested that launched grenades or poison gas could be advantageous in a self-defense situation.

Regards,
Wolf

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

Each point listed leads logically to the next. If you think there is a place where the logic fails, please point it out and explain your reasoning. I have tried and found no logical flaw so can only conclude that the right to keep and bear arms is inalienable.

Let me poke those holes in your logic for you.

1. Each individual owns his/her life, or has a right to his/her life.

There are exceptions, let's say for instance if that person tries to take someone elses life, then they are fair game. But sure ok.

2. The right to life necessarily implies that the individual has a right to protect or defend that life.

Ok, sure.

3. The right to defend one's life is meaningless unless that right includes the means necessary to maintain it.

Depends of what that means. If someone has heart failure, I do not supouse that he/she has the right to take someone else's heart by force. But ok, I guess.

4. Since the right to life implies a right to the means to protect that life, the individual's right to his/her own life necessarily implies a right to keep and bear arms suitable for self-defense.

No. That simply does not follow. Do you know what other tools you have to protect you life? Society, law and law enforcement. If systems are in place that prevents people from geting away with unhetical behavior that potential endanger my life, or if systems are in place to stop bad people from having a good chance of ending my life, then that is a means to protect ones life. What happens when the "means" are conflictuouse between them? You can't have all, and you have to pick between them.
Foreign invasion can potentially endanger my life, should I have the right of owning a nuclear warhead, intercontinetal missiles and neurotoxins to protect myself?

5. A government of a free people is instituted, as it says in the American Declaration of Independence, only with the consent of the governed, in order to secure each person's right to life. Such a government must, therefore, recognize the right of the people to keep and bear their private arms for defense.

It no longer follows.

 

[Frenger]

Frenger,

Hello

Apology accepted. I hope you don't mind if I skip a lot of detail and address the basic issues

Probably not, if I think you missed something important I will highlight it here.

Your main arguments seem to be (and I apologize if I am wrong):
that the right to keep and bear arms is obsolete

Not completely. I think it is largely obsolete, but my main point is that this right can no longer apply to the world we live in now. It wasn't written when the population was this dense and arms were this powerful and accessible. I am suggesting this "right" needs readdressing to restrict not only the types of guns people can own, but also who can own them and how many. They are too easily handed out to seemingly anyone. I know you outlined a few conditions earlier on, but I think I showed why that simply wasn't enough.

and that our fellow humans are too ill-tempered and prone to panic to be trusted with firearms.

In a word "yes", but it's more than that. People can act too quickly with a gun, before they assessed a situation properly. Also, they can remain largely detached when pulling the trigger (until someone is dead obviously). This was an argument put forward (as I mentioned earlier) by Jared Diamond where he says technology is sidestepping around our evolution to a point where we can act now, ask questions later. This isn't a good thing when people have their lives at stake.

It is appallingly obvious our technology has exceeded our humanity

The right to keep and bear arms is not obsolete. I paraphrased Jeff Snyder in another post:
The derivation of the right to keep and bear arms is simply stated.
1. Each individual owns his/her life, or has a right to his/her life.

I utterly agree.

2. The right to life necessarily implies that the individual has a right to protect or defend that life.

Ok fine.

3. The right to defend one's life is meaningless unless that right includes the means necessary to maintain it.

emphasis mine. Is a semi-automatic weapon really necessary?

4. Since the right to life implies a right to the means to protect that life, the individual's right to his/her own life necessarily implies a right to keep and bear arms suitable for self-defense.

This only works if you don't life in a society with laws, law enforcers, a military etc. This only works if your world is, as I said earlier, governed by the laws of mad-max. Everyman for themselves. The places you referenced earlier as having armed civilians were all in a state of civil unrest, America isn't. It has the biggest military,a strong police force and a good economy in which to ensure this continues.

5. A government of a free people is instituted, as it says in the American Declaration of Independence, only with the consent of the governed, in order to secure each person's right to life. Such a government must, therefore, recognize the right of the people to keep and bear their private arms for defense.

I'm guessing this was written before a military? Before a police force? Yep.

Each point listed leads logically to the next. If you think there is a place where the logic fails, please point it out and explain your reasoning. I have tried and found no logical flaw so can only conclude that the right to keep and bear arms is inalienable.

I think the reason you have failed is because, you probably quite like guns.

In actual practice our fellow humans are quite capable of defending themselves with firearms.

My point was that they're maybe a little too good. As the 65% gun related death figure shows.

Every state that has enacted laws allowing adults who have no criminal record to carry concealed firearms (after getting a license) has had reductions in violent crimes and no increases in accidental shootings.

citation please.

Mass public shootings now take place almost exclusively in places where concealed carry by civilians is not allowed.

same.

As for military-style semi-automatics (not "assault rifles", I explained the difference in another post and we might as well use the correct terminology) there are millions of them in private hands because law-abiding people find them versatile and practical.

Practical for what exactly? Not that I know much about hunting, but are they really the weapon of choice for such endeavours?

Unless you find me some statistics to show they are used for self defence, I'm calling bullshit on that one too.

They are precisely the sort of weapons protected by the Constitution (according to the Supreme Court)

How can they be PRECISELY the sort of weapons protected by the constitution when they were nowhere near existence when it was written? The only way this works is because they constitution is vague and can be interpreted in many different ways.

and the law-abiding should not deprived their use even if they are, extremely rarely, used in sensational crimes.

Rare? Maybe. On the rise? In the last 8 years, certainly sauce. Now I'm not saying gun rights are the reason for this increase, but I am saying that they make them A, easier to carry out, and B, much worse than they should be.

 

[Moky]

I have a question, what happens to vulnerable populations that can only defend themselves with a firearm from an abusive spouse or some dangerous situations?

 

[australopithecus]

Define "vunerable populations'.

 

[Moky]

Anyone who is more likely to be attacked and not able to defend themselves for whatever reason. Women and gay people come to mind immediately, I know aeritano and his fiance(probably husband now) were both shot and attacked and no one stepped forward to help them. Even after the shooter was gone. Where as with me, you could probably beat the shit out of me and I'd have jack shit to do about it without a few weeks of training.

 

[)O( Hytegia )O(]

A quick note -

all of the studies linked here show that the number of gun-related homicides, crimes, and such go down after bans on such weapons are instituted...

Of course they are (no shit) - but is there a study that shows that overall crime goes down with the ban of guns and weapons? Incidents in which persons are hurt during the crime? Last I heard, knife-related crime in the UK was on the rise.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

A quick note -

all of the studies linked here show that the number of gun-related homicides, crimes, and such go down after bans on such weapons are instituted...

Of course they are (no shit) - but is there a study that shows that overall crime goes down with the ban of guns and weapons? Incidents in which persons are hurt during the crime? Last I heard, knife-related crime in the UK was on the rise.

Overall crime involves more than just crimes that can be performed with the use of weapons, there are non-violent crimes.
Even if all criminals stoped using guns and started using knives, guns are more effective at killing people than knives, it would still logically mean less deaths and therefore a better solution.
However such graphs exist, which does show that overall crime has indeed gone down (actually faster than what I would expect by gun control alone):
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9411649/Graphic-how-the-murder-rate-has-fallen.html
I can link to shady websites too: http://guninformation.org (main difference being that the sources actually exist)

 

[wswolf]

You are almost on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, you even go so far as to say that the part "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state" has no meaning.

Hint: if you expect to get away with quote mining you should not place your mis-quote two lines below the original. I actually wrote: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state" is not a complete sentence and has no meaning on its own. Its meaning comes only in relation to the complete sentence." This might be the most incompetent example of quote-mining in the history of that despicable art.

You dismissed articles, not because of their content, but because the discussions of their summaries have links to related articles on the same web site. You ignored the fact that books were also cited as sources. These are wonderful excuses for dismissing anything that does not support your fixed ideas.

You dismiss any citation that contradicts your ideas as "nothing but an appeal to authority." Especially if it is from a genuine authority on the subject. You wrote: "Unfortunately, what the "Historian" Joyce Lee Malcom says means nothing what so ever to me." Did you read To Keep and Bear Arms, the debates over the constitution, the Federalist Papers and the various states' proposals for the Second Amendment before you concluded that Joyce Lee Malcom's statement "flies in the face of the actual text she is opinionating about."? When you write to Professor Malcom, pointing out the errors in her work, I would be most interested in reading her reply.

Your graph is just a figment of your imagination. Why not graph actual rates of violent crime before and after gun bans? Could it be because in the real world violent crime rates increase after bans? Don't bother to reply. Your religion-like fixation and dishonesty leave no ground for discussion.

Regards,
Wolf

 

[Frenger]

Pretty inspirational

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20975608

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

You are almost on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, you even go so far as to say that the part "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state" has no meaning.

Hint: if you expect to get away with quote mining you should not place your mis-quote two lines below the original. I actually wrote: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state" is not a complete sentence and has no meaning on its own. Its meaning comes only in relation to the complete sentence." This might be the most incompetent example of quote-mining in the history of that despicable art.

Before you acuse people of quote mining go fucking learn what a quote-mine is. There is noting about what you have said that contradicts what I have said in my representation of your position. And yet, you still failed to see the most glaring problem that your own position is contradictory to the source you yourself provided. In your quote of Joyce Lee Malcom not only states that sentence has a full meaning on its own, but also states that it has a regulatory purpouse regarding the melitia, which is false no matter how you slice it.

You dismissed articles, not because of their content, but because the discussions of their summaries have links to related articles on the same web site. You ignored the fact that books were also cited as sources. These are wonderful excuses for dismissing anything that does not support your fixed ideas.

I haven't ignored that books were also cited as sources. What you have ignored is that only 2 of those websites cites books and both are inconsequential. Because in one of them they are only used to cite the authors opinion on the matter (which contains no verifiable data what so ever, and I couldn't give a rats ass about it), on the other the book cited is authored by the author of the article himself. Which contrary to your claims never was a criminologist, he is a politician, something that you could easily learn by reading his fucking bio.

You dismiss any citation that contradicts your ideas as "nothing but an appeal to authority."

No. I dismiss any and all opinion based citation. If you are going to tell me that a duck is a mamal, you beter have a good and verifiable reason why you say a duck is a mamal, and if you want me to be convinced by that you better present me that reason. What I will not do is to be convinced that a duck is a mamal because you fucking said so no matter who the fuck you are. Just because someone writes some bullcrap on book doesn't make it less bullcrap.

Especially if it is from a genuine authority on the subject.

I.E. A FALACY BY APPEAL TO AUTHORITY!
An authority whish you yourself disagree with!
And you are still arguing over a mute fucking point, because as I have stated, I think the second ammendmant should just be fucking abolished.

Your graph is just a figment of your imagination. Why not graph actual rates of violent crime before and after gun bans?

No my graph was a response to your fucktarded response of:

By advocating a gun-banning policy "with some minor consequences" that you admit will increase crime and human suffering in the short term so that in "the long run [less] people would be robber, extorted, assaulted, raped and killed than what would have happened otherwise" you are advocating human sacrifice. You are willing to have some of your fellow humans suffer terribly and unnecessarily for a hypothetical future benefit. Please be so kind as to keep your culture of human sacrifice to yourself. Or perhaps only "Americans as stereotypically short sighted baboons" reject the callous sacrifice of the innocent as unspeakably indecent.

Because I said, I would expect crime to increase before they decrease for reasons that were already specified

Could it be because in the real world violent crime rates increase after bans?

1. In case you haven't noticed, my model shows that violent crime rates should increase right after a ban, this of course before they decrease to rates lower than before.
2. To tell the truth, I wouldn't expect to have enough data to suport my model, about a problem of the late 20th century early 21st, that has been hardly adressed and has few case examples. However if you had looked at the Australian statistics (which I had link; which was the object of study by a website that you yourself had linked), it shows exactly that patern. Which shows that you didn't even bother to read the fucking sources you cite or the objections I made.

Don't bother to reply. Your religion-like fixation and dishonesty leave no ground for discussion.

Next time you want to insult my intelect, you better have a good reasons to support what you are saying.

 

[wswolf]

Frenger,
I hope that replies win green will not be irritating.

Your main arguments seem to be (and I apologize if I am wrong):
that the right to keep and bear arms is obsolete

Not completely. I think it is largely obsolete, but my main point is that this right can no longer apply to the world we live in now. It wasn't written when the population was this dense and arms were this powerful and accessible.
I have not seen any indication that the world is so peaceful or well-policed that there is no need for self-defense. I do not value my life any less or think it less worth protecting because the population density has increased. As for powerful: a .73-caliber musket ball packs quite a wallop. Arms can only be made inaccessible to the law-abiding and criminals will have no trouble keeping an ample supply.


I am suggesting this "right" needs readdressing to restrict not only the types of guns people can own, but also who can own them and how many.
The types of guns people can own are restricted quite enough by federal law and much more in some cities and states. Loosely speaking, the people who can legally own guns are sane adults who haven't committed any felonies but some cities and states have many more restrictions.

They are too easily handed out to seemingly anyone. I know you outlined a few conditions earlier on, but I think I showed why that simply wasn't enough.
No amount of restrictions on the law-abiding will affect the lawless. And I don't think the law-abiding should be limited by the actions of criminals, denied emergency survival equipment because it could be misused by criminals. This tells the law-abiding: you can't have a rock because a mythical Cain used one like it to brain his mythical brother, you can't have a cricket bat because some crook might use one like it to assault someone, you can't have a carving knife because it could kill just as effectively as a modern military combat knife. You can't maintain a civilized society by forcing the law-abiding to do only what criminals will allow; you do it by forcing criminals to do only what the law-abiding will allow.
http://armsandthelaw.com/archives/2007/04/don_kates_take_1.php

and that our fellow humans are too ill-tempered and prone to panic to be trusted with firearms.

In a word "yes", but it's more than that. People can act too quickly with a gun, before they assessed a situation properly. Also, they can remain largely detached when pulling the trigger (until someone is dead obviously). This was an argument put forward (as I mentioned earlier) by Jared Diamond where he says technology is sidestepping around our evolution to a point where we can act now, ask questions later. This isn't a good thing when people have their lives at stake.
People can act too quickly with a sharp stick, before they have assessed a situation properly. The use or misuse of any tool depends on the character and intent of the individual who wields it. Yes, terrible accidents with guns can and have happened but we can learn from them and be damned careful to not repeat them instead of abandoning their life-saving benefits.

The right to keep and bear arms is not obsolete. I paraphrased Jeff Snyder in another post:
The derivation of the right to keep and bear arms is simply stated.
1. Each individual owns his/her life, or has a right to his/her life.

I utterly agree.

2. The right to life necessarily implies that the individual has a right to protect or defend that life.

Ok fine.

3. The right to defend one's life is meaningless unless that right includes the means necessary to maintain it.

emphasis mine. Is a semi-automatic weapon really necessary?
They are highly recommended by experts in self-defense.
http://backwoodshome.com/blogs/Mass...yoob+(Massad+Ayoob)&utm_content=Google+Reader
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/01/m-why_does_anybody_need_a_30-round_magazine.html
http://townhall.com/columnists/kati...ed-for-semiautomatic-assault-weapons-n1485999
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/20...le-is-better-than-a-handgun-for-home-defense/

4. Since the right to life implies a right to the means to protect that life, the individual's right to his/her own life necessarily implies a right to keep and bear arms suitable for self-defense.

This only works if you don't life in a society with laws, law enforcers, a military etc. This only works if your world is, as I said earlier, governed by the laws of mad-max. Everyman for themselves.
Laws and law enforcers can, or should, only enable a society to punish criminals after a crime has been committed and this is certainly an important deterrent to crime. The presence of police is obviously a powerful deterrent to criminals, who take great care to not commit crimes in their sight. I do not value my life any less or think it less worth protecting because there are laws against violence and the police are doing a good job of catching criminals. The right to keep and bear arms is about personal protection (though not exclusively). Since criminals attack when the police are not present the need for arms exists no matter how peaceful the society. If you are ever attacked by a vicious criminal, and I hope you never are, you will be on your own. You will have only your own resources. To borrow your colorful metaphor: our world is not governed by the laws of Mad-Max, criminals are governed by the laws of Mad-Max.

The places you referenced earlier as having armed civilians were all in a state of civil unrest, America isn't. It has the biggest military,a strong police force and a good economy in which to ensure this continues.
The places I referenced earlier had armed teachers and it matters not at all whether the attackers are motivated by religion, politics, rape, pillage or they are just plain nuts.

5. A government of a free people is instituted, as it says in the American Declaration of Independence, only with the consent of the governed, in order to secure each person's right to life. Such a government must, therefore, recognize the right of the people to keep and bear their private arms for defense.

I'm guessing this was written before a military? Before a police force? Yep.
""¦,in order to secure each person's right to life." You can pretty much guarantee the police won't be there when you need them the most.

Each point listed leads logically to the next. If you think there is a place where the logic fails, please point it out and explain your reasoning. I have tried and found no logical flaw so can only conclude that the right to keep and bear arms is inalienable.

I think the reason you have failed is because, you probably quite like guns.
The logic stands because society cannot provide personal protection, only a general deterrence to crime which is no substitute for self-defense. Liking guns has nothing to do with it. My wife doesn't like guns at all yet has agreed with everything I have written so far. She regards her gun as just another piece of emergency equipment like a fire extinguisher or spare tire.

In actual practice our fellow humans are quite capable of defending themselves with firearms.

My point was that they're maybe a little too good. As the 65% gun related death figure shows.
Self-defense is legal and ethical and should not be lumped together with criminal homicide.

Every state that has enacted laws allowing adults who have no criminal record to carry concealed firearms (after getting a license) has had reductions in violent crimes and no increases in accidental shootings.

citation please. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=161637

Mass public shootings now take place almost exclusively in places where concealed carry by civilians is not allowed.

same.
http://www.davekopel.com/2A/OpEds/Gun-Free-Zones.htm
http://www.volokh.com/2013/01/09/ho...ngs-right-now-abolish-pretend-gun-free-zones/http://www.scribd.com/doc/7876073/Gun-Free-Zones

I asked John Lott for the basis of his often repeated claim that all but one of the mass public shootings since 1950 were in gun-free zones. He replied: "The data original came when I put this paper together, though that particular result isn't stated. I have updated discussion in The Bias Against Guns and to a lesser extent in MGLC[More Guns, Less Crime]. Still you can see the basic data."
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=272929
See footnote 13 on page 5 and the Conclusion on page 20. From page 18: "The new regressions shown in Section B clearly show that the states with the fewest gun free zones have the greatest reductions killings, injuries, and attacks."
He also listed several of his articles
http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2012/10/finally-news-article-that-describes.html
http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2012/08/sikh-temple-of-wisconsin-was-another.html
http://johnrlott.tripod.com/2007/02/proof-that-trolley-square-mall-in-utah.html
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/09/10/did-colorado-shooter-single-out-cinemark-theater/

I am not pleased that I could find no specific list with dates and locations. I cannot offer an iron-clad citation at this time. That said, the only mass public shooting that I can think of that was definitely not in a gun-free zone was the attempted assassination of Rep. Giffords. Post Offices and other government facilities, schools, universities, shopping malls, stores, restaurants, businesses and almost all churches ban guns. The only exceptions I can think of are Starbucks and a small ammunition manufacturer I once worked for, neither of which had any mass shootings. Given the lack of data to the contrary I think that "Mass public shootings now take place almost exclusively in places where concealed carry by civilians is not allowed." is at least a reasonable hypothesis.

As for military-style semi-automatics (not "assault rifles", I explained the difference in another post and we might as well use the correct terminology) there are millions of them in private hands because law-abiding people find them versatile and practical.

Practical for what exactly? Not that I know much about hunting, but are they really the weapon of choice for such endeavours?

Unless you find me some statistics to show they are used for self defence, I'm calling bullshit on that one too.
As to practicality I will leave that to the four articles already cited and my previous paragraph on the subject in an earlier post. As for statistics I don't think any exist. I recall reading a long-ago study that tallied defensive instances of handguns and "long guns" but it did not go into greater detail. The FBI tracks the numbers of handguns, shotguns and rifles used in crimes but does not record different categories of rifles. (Interestingly "hands and feet" are used in nearly twice as many murders as rifles according to the FBI.) The examples of defensive use in the cited articles show conclusively that they have been used successfully when lesser weapons would not have been adequate. Knowing that they are effective, the relative frequency of their use is not really relevant. Who was it who said, "I'd rather have one and not need it than need one and not have it."?

They are precisely the sort of weapons protected by the Constitution (according to the Supreme Court)

How can they be PRECISELY the sort of weapons protected by the constitution when they were nowhere near existence when it was written? The only way this works is because they constitution is vague and can be interpreted in many different ways.
I should have been more clear. The sort of weapons protected by the constitution are those suitable for militia use. This has been affirmed by the Supreme Court in at least two cases.

and the law-abiding should not deprived their use even if they are, extremely rarely, used in sensational crimes.

Rare? Maybe. On the rise? In the last 8 years, certainly sauce.
The article you linked contains this link: http://boston.com/community/blogs/crime_punishment/2012/08/no_increase_in_mass_shootings.html
with this graph.
http://boston.com/community/blogs/crime_punishment/Mass Shootings 1980-2010.jpg
If there is an upward trend here the author didn't see it and neither do I.

Now I'm not saying gun rights are the reason for this increase, but I am saying that they make them A, easier to carry out, and B, much worse than they should be.

They also make it possible to implement the right to self-defense. Tools magnify our ability to accomplish good or evil.