Gun Control - A Superficial Solution ?

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

Arms can only be made inaccessible to the law-abiding and criminals will have no trouble keeping an ample supply.

This is false:
1. Given the FBI statistics (already linked). The vast majority of incidents are spontaneous, i.e. That the perpetrator was a law abiding citizen until the moment he/she committed the crime.
2. It is just false to assume that the black market supply of arms is unhindered by the legal availability of those same arms. This is the root of our disagreement, yet you just assume this baloney as if it was an absolute truth, unquestioned. I will not let this bullshit slide like this, not in here.

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.

Except of course it is a gun show, in that case you don't need anything. Which comparatively it is about the same restrictions as buying a computer, you are legal to buy one as long as you are not convicted of electronic fraud.
Compare that to, what it is practiced to other countries, i.e. by default you cannot own a gun, however a permit for a handgun (and no other weapon) can be issued (and revoked at any time) if you prove to have:
1. No criminal record
2. Attended a certified gun training facility (where you not only learn how to handle a gun, but learn how to safely store it and all the legislation regarding guns). To attend this certification facility you need authorization from the police (the practical training is given by an officer to).
3. A legally recorded reason why it is strictly necessary for you to have a gun
You can only have a small quantity of ammo, and you are not allowed to discharge your weapon in any circumstance without a justified reason. If the weapon is fired the police must always get involved and a criminal investigation must follow suit and you will be put in front of a judge, either because you prevent a crime or because you are going to be criminally charged (and your gun apprehended) because you unlawfully discharged a weapon.
If you lose your weapon, you license is revoked. Fail to report a missing weapon lands you in jail.
You can also apply for a permit of a hutting weapon (which has to be renewed and paid for). This will allow you access to weapons specially classified for the hunting permit you are requesting (no pump action shotguns, no auto or semi-auto weapons, no large clips, no funky attachments).
You must also have no criminal record, and must also attend a certified training facility.
You can only use your weapon, in a specifically marked hunting area and in the proper season under penalty of it being confiscated and your license revoked. You cannot take your gun anywhere else under penalty of it being confiscated and your license revoked.
If you are caught with an unlicensed gun, it will be confiscated and your ass is landed in jail.
There are no loopholes, there are no gun shows, and there are about 3 to 4 gun shops in the country TOTAL, all under police supervision and all appended to the certification facility.
(And a bunch of other limitations)
That is gun control.
To top all that, the neighboring country has about the same level of gun control (it is not a joke like in the US, that not only doesn't have a proper ID system that can really certify who you are, you can commit a crime in one state and get a gun in the other).

No amount of restrictions on the law-abiding will affect the lawless.

Yes because, this is fucking western where we are all bandits or sheriffs and everyone knows who they are from the first 4 minutes of the movie. Oh yeah, and guns grow on fucking trees.

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.

Bull shit! Now you are comparing emergency kits, cricket bats and rocks with guns as if they were comparable. When they start selling first aid kits at gun shows as an efficient method of garroting people, when police can justify shooting you on sight because you were threatening them with a first aid kit, and when guns start to have an efficient primary purpose other than killing the shit out of something, then you might have a point of comparison. Even so, IT'S A FUCKING GUN! There is still a gradation of danger there, if it were a tool it would have been banned until you come up with a design that integrates a failsafe that prevents it from injuring people when they are trying to hammer in those pesky nails.

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.

Unless you can link me statistics that show that more people are saved by guns than killed, then I would kindly ask you to roughly shove back the claim that "guns have are life savers" back where you took it from.
Secondly. It'sa fucking gun! It is a tool made to kill people! If it successfully managed to kill someone other than yourself, then job well-done.

They are highly recommended by experts in self-defense.
http://backwoodshome.com/blogs/MassadAyoob/2012/12/29/why-good-people-need-semiautomatic-firearms-and-high-capacity-magazines-part-i/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MassadAyoob+%28Massad+Ayoob%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/01/m-why_does_anybody_need_a_30-round_magazine.html
http://townhall.com/columnists/katiepavlich/2013/01/10/the-need-for-semiautomatic-assault-weapons-n1485999
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2012/12/foghorn/three-reasons-an-assault-rifle-is-better-than-a-handgun-for-home-defense/

Oh yes, more gun nut links. I'm so impressed.

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.

Not allowing you to have a gun is not a punishment. A gun is not a toy you baby.

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.

If the attackers couldn't have guns, I would like to see what motivation would allow them to do what they generally do. You are again running under the fallacy that the availability of guns to criminals is independent of legally available weapons.
You have accused me of not giving much thought on the matter, but when I give you a detailed model of the problem, you simply ignore. Look at here. If there is a mistake in my reasoning it must be here and nowhere else.

Self-defense is legal and ethical and should not be lumped together with criminal homicide.

And it isn't. The FBI discriminates people lawfully killed in their statistics, so your argument is bullshit.

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

Oh No, not another essay from John Lott, how could I argue against such intellectual heavy weights as this?
It will be my pleasure to dissect this paper.

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."

i.e. He made that all up! It doesn't take a scientist to figure that out.

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.

FBI Statistics for TOTAL defensive uses, does not justify the availability of guns much less justify the availability of specific guns.

In a couple of days I will dissect both of Lott's papers, although it is obvious that you have no valid arguments or leg to stand on. You are more concerned with petty issues other than what is important, i.e. are, overall, more people getting killed (than what would otherwise happen) because there is free access to guns, or not?

 

[Visaki]

I'll just leave THIS here, since it's kinda relevant. And funny. And all this seriousness is getting me gloomy.

 

[PAB]

Everyone's favorite lunatic Glen Beck speaking with David Barton on the "truth" of gun rights and history in America.
The highlight has to be the reference to schoolchildren using firearms to prevent a pupil shooting a teacher back in the 18th century. And yes i think they are trying to draw lessons from that to apply to today.

 

[wswolf]

Arms can only be made inaccessible to the law-abiding and criminals will have no trouble keeping an ample supply.

This is false:
1. Given the FBI statistics (already linked). The vast majority of incidents are spontaneous, i.e. That the perpetrator was a law abiding citizen until the moment he/she committed the crime.
If by "The vast majority of incidents" you are referring to murder in general: "The problem is that it simply is not true that previously law abiding citizens commit most murders or many murders or virtually any murders. Thus, disarming them would not, and could not, eliminate most, many, or virtually any murders. Homicide studies show that murderers tend not to be ordinary law-abiding citizens, but rather extreme aberrants." - Guns and Public Health: Epicemic of Violence or Pandemic of Propaganda?, Don B. Kates and others. 61 Tenn. L. Rev. 513-596 (1994), Page 28-29. http://www.guncite.com/journals/tennmed.html
Footnotes 277-281 cite publications by the FBI and Bureau of Justice Statistics and articles in professional journals.

If you are referring only to mass public shootings, many were obviously planned and could not be called spontaneous unless you want to stretch the definition quite a lot. An action that included gathering weapons, spare ammunition, (and in some cases body armor and home-made explosives), transporting them to a place with lots of helpless victims and finally beginning an assault shows a definite lack of spontaneity. In many, perhaps most cases, the criminal is too dead to comment on his planning or lack thereof and the degree of spontaneity will remain unknown. If you mean that these mass shooters had no record of serious crimes before going nuts, that is correct in some cases but the "vast majority" claim requires some evidence; and that's a very strange usage of spontaneous.

2. It is just false to assume that the black market supply of arms is unhindered by the legal availability of those same arms.
Again the meaning of this sentence is unclear but I will try to answer anyway. As long as arms are legal the black market can be supplied by theft or straw-buyers (persons who are not legally prohibited from buying arms for themselves but are willing to commit a federal felony by illegally buying them for those who are prohibited). If arms became illegal the supply available for theft might slowly diminish and smuggling them could become a profitable sideline for drug smugglers. In addition guns are very durable and can remain functional for generations with minimal care. I see no realistic reason that criminals will ever be unable to get guns.

Even if all criminals and lunatics decided to never touch a gun again the need for self-defense and the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense would not disappear.
This is the root of our disagreement, yet you just assume this baloney as if it was an absolute truth, unquestioned. I will not let this bullshit slide like this, not in here.
I think the root of our disagreement is that I maintain that the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense is a basic human right.

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.

Except of course it is a gun show, in that case you don't need anything.
The regulations for buying or selling firearms at a gun show are no different than anywhere else.
Which comparatively it is about the same restrictions as buying a computer, you are legal to buy one as long as you are not convicted of electronic fraud.
You don't need to fill out a federal form (it is a crime to lie on the form) and undergo an FBI background check to buy a computer from a dealer. Computer manufacturers and dealers do not have to be licensed by the BATF and are not subjected to periodic inspections.
Compare that to, what it is practiced to other countries, i.e. by default you cannot own a gun, however a permit for a handgun (and no other weapon) can be issued (and revoked at any time) if you prove to have:
1. No criminal record
2. Attended a certified gun training facility (where you not only learn how to handle a gun, but learn how to safely store it and all the legislation regarding guns). To attend this certification facility you need authorization from the police (the practical training is given by an officer to).
3. A legally recorded reason why it is strictly necessary for you to have a gun
You can only have a small quantity of ammo, and you are not allowed to discharge your weapon in any circumstance without a justified reason. If the weapon is fired the police must always get involved and a criminal investigation must follow suit and you will be put in front of a judge, either because you prevent a crime or because you are going to be criminally charged (and your gun apprehended) because you unlawfully discharged a weapon.
If you lose your weapon, you license is revoked. Fail to report a missing weapon lands you in jail.
You can also apply for a permit of a hutting weapon (which has to be renewed and paid for). This will allow you access to weapons specially classified for the hunting permit you are requesting (no pump action shotguns, no auto or semi-auto weapons, no large clips, no funky attachments).
You must also have no criminal record, and must also attend a certified training facility.
You can only use your weapon, in a specifically marked hunting area and in the proper season under penalty of it being confiscated and your license revoked. You cannot take your gun anywhere else under penalty of it being confiscated and your license revoked.
If you are caught with an unlicensed gun, it will be confiscated and your ass is landed in jail.
There are no loopholes, there are no gun shows, and there are about 3 to 4 gun shops in the country TOTAL, all under police supervision and all appended to the certification facility.
(And a bunch of other limitations)
That is gun control.
So the government can allow the right of self-defense to favored groups or individuals and deny it to others. That did not work out well for the disfavored people in Turkey, Nazi Germany, USSR or China to name a few.
To top all that, the neighboring country has about the same level of gun control (it is not a joke like in the US, that not only doesn't have a proper ID system that can really certify who you are, you can commit a crime in one state and get a gun in the other).
The National Instant Criminal Background check system is used in all states.

No amount of restrictions on the law-abiding will affect the lawless.

Yes because, this is fucking western where we are all bandits or sheriffs and everyone knows who they are from the first 4 minutes of the movie. Oh yeah, and guns grow on fucking trees.
Does not follow.

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.

Bull shit! Now you are comparing emergency kits, cricket bats and rocks with guns as if they were comparable. When they start selling first aid kits at gun shows as an efficient method of garroting people, when police can justify shooting you on sight because you were threatening them with a first aid kit, and when guns start to have an efficient primary purpose other than killing the shit out of something, then you might have a point of comparison. Even so, IT'S A FUCKING GUN! There is still a gradation of danger there, if it were a tool it would have been banned until you come up with a design that integrates a failsafe that prevents it from injuring people when they are trying to hammer in those pesky nails.
You apparently misunderstood the metaphor. My point was that it is an injustice to deny useful objects, whether cricket bats or defensive firearms, to the law-abiding because the lawless might use those types of objects in crimes.

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.

Unless you can link me statistics that show that more people are saved by guns than killed, then I would kindly ask you to roughly shove back the claim that "guns have are life savers" back where you took it from.
Whether more people are saved by guns or killed by guns does not affect the individual right to self-defense. The right does not depend on the outcome over the entire population. The right is inherent in each individual.

Here are a few of the studies on the defensive value of firearms.

A 1993 nationwide survey of 4,977 households found that over the previous five years, at least 3.5% of households had members who had used a gun "for self-protection or for the protection of property at home, work, or elsewhere." Applied to the U.S. population, this amounts to 1,029,615 such incidents per year. At least 0.5% of households had members who had used a gun for defense during a situation in which they thought someone "almost certainly would have been killed" if they "had not used a gun for protection." Applied to the U.S. population, this amounts to 162,000 such incidents per year. Paper: "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun."
By Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Fall 1995. http://www.law.northwestern.edu/jclc/backissues/86-1.html

Based on survey data from a 2000 study published in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, U.S. civilians use guns to defend themselves and others from crime at least 989,883 times per year. Paper: "Measuring Civilian Defensive Firearm Use: A Methodological Experiment." By David McDowall and others. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, March 2000. http://www.springerlink.com/content/rngn3274255v6j67/

A 1994 survey conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that Americans use guns to frighten away intruders who are breaking into their homes about 498,000 times per year. Paper: "Estimating intruder-related firearm retrievals in U.S. households, 1994." By Robin M. Ikeda and others. Violence and Victims, Winter 1997.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9591354

A 1982 survey of male felons in 11 state prisons dispersed across the U.S. found:
"¢ 34% had been "scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed victim"
"¢ 40% had decided not to commit a crime because they "knew or believed that the victim was carrying a gun"
"¢ 69% personally knew other criminals who had been "scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed victim"
Book: Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and Their Firearms (Expanded Edition). By James D. Wright and Peter D. Rossi. Aldine De Gruyter, 1986 (Expanded edition published in 1994).

Secondly. It'sa fucking gun! It is a tool made to kill people! If it successfully managed to kill someone other than yourself, then job well-done.
It is a tool made to defend people. I repeat: The use or misuse of any tool depends on the character and intent of the individual who wields it.

They are highly recommended by experts in self-defense.
http://backwoodshome.com/blogs/MassadAyoob/2012/12/29/why-good-people-need-semiautomatic-firearms-and-high-capacity-magazines-part-i/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MassadAyoob+%28Massad+Ayoob%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/01/m-why_does_anybody_need_a_30-round_magazine.html
http://townhall.com/columnists/katiepavlich/2013/01/10/the-need-for-semiautomatic-assault-weapons-n1485999
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2012/12/foghorn/three-reasons-an-assault-rifle-is-better-than-a-handgun-for-home-defense/

Oh yes, more gun nut links. I'm so impressed.
Do you have any criticism of the actual content? In the first link the author has over 30 years of experience as a police officer and has been a teacher of threat management to police and civilians for much of that time. What are your qualifications as an expert on firearms and self-defense and precisely where did the author get it wrong?

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.

Not allowing you to have a gun is not a punishment.
Being forbidden to save your own life could be considered a form of punishment.
A gun is not a toy you baby.
I have never said that guns are toys. Babyish behavior is giving up the responsibility to protect your own life and the lives of your family and expecting others to protect you.

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.

If the attackers couldn't have guns, I would like to see what motivation would allow them to do what they generally do. You are again running under the fallacy that the availability of guns to criminals is independent of legally available weapons.
Citation needed. The fallacy is your unfounded assumption that a gun ban will prevent criminals from getting them. Where has a gun ban ever been effective at disarming criminals?
You have accused me of not giving much thought on the matter, but when I give you a detailed model of the problem, you simply ignore. Look at here. If there is a mistake in my reasoning it must be here and nowhere else.
Other than your numerical assumptions you assume that guns are the active agents that drive individual human decisions. Statically predicting the outcome of human interactions is an exercise in futility.

Self-defense is legal and ethical and should not be lumped together with criminal homicide.

And it isn't. The FBI discriminates people lawfully killed in their statistics, so your argument is bullshit.
I should have made it more clear that I was not referring to FBI statistics. I was replying to this: "Exercising rights does facilitate the endangerment of people when that right involves arming the general population. This right is also the reason that 65% of homicides in the U.S are gun related."

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

Oh No, not another essay from John Lott, how could I argue against such intellectual heavy weights as this?
It will be my pleasure to dissect this paper.
You might find some previous dissections of Lott's work entertaining.
.
"The Debate on Shall-Issue Laws" by Carlisle e. Moody and Thomas B. Marvell, published in Econ Journal Watch, volume 5, number 3, September 2008 http://www.econjournalwatch.org/pdf/MoodyMarvelCommentSeptember2008.pdf

Does the Right to Carry Concealed Handguns Deter Countable Crimes? Only a Count Analysis Can Say By Florenz Plassmann and T. Nnicolaus Tideman, published in the Journal of Law and Economics http://johnrlott.tripod.com/tideman.pdf

Testing for the Effects of Concealed Weapons Laws: Specification Errors and Robustness By CARLISLE E. MOODY, published in the Journal of Law and Economics http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.1086/323313?uid=3739920&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101567622193

Right-to-Carry Concealed Weapon Laws and Homicide in Large U.S. Counties: The Effect on Weapon Types, Victim Characteristics, and Victim-Offender Relationships By DAVID E. OLSON AND MICHAEL D. MALTZ, published in the Journal of Law and Economics http://johnrlott.tripod.com/Maltz.pdf

Confirming More Guns, Less Crime by Florenz Plassmann and John Whitley, published in the Stanford Law Review http://johnrlott.tripod.com/Plassmann_Whitley.pdf

The Effect of Concealed Weapons Laws: An Extreme Bound Analysis by William Alan Bartley and Mark A Cohen, published in Economic Inquiry http://econpapers.repec.org/article/oupecinqu/v_3a36_3ay_3a1998_3ai_3a2_3ap_3a258-65.htm

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.

FBI Statistics for TOTAL defensive uses, does not justify the availability of guns much less justify the availability of specific guns.
In your opinion at what point would the number of defensive uses justify the availability of guns? Are individual lives worth defending only if defensive use of guns exceeds criminal use? Are those same lives no longer worth defending if criminal use exceeds defensive use?
In a couple of days I will dissect both of Lott's papers, although it is obvious that you have no valid arguments or leg to stand on.
Even if Lott and all of the other researchers are wrong and the increased carrying of firearms does correlate with an increase in violent crime the individual right to self-protection still exists.
You are more concerned with petty issues other than what is important, i.e. are, overall, more people getting killed (than what would otherwise happen) because there is free access to guns, or not?
The issue that concerns me is the right of each individual to defend their life. And, to quote L. Neil Smith, "The freedom to own and carry the weapon of your choice is a natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right -- subject neither to the democratic process nor to arguments grounded in social utility."

I care about our fellow humans as individuals who have rights that ought to be respected.

You seem care about our fellow humans not as individuals but only as a herd and seem willing to use them as lab animals to test your hypothesis that disarming them will eventually result in less crime.

Regards,
Wolf

 

[Prolescum]

Before I go on, I have no stake in this conversation (although I believe the particular US Constitutional amendment does not grant individuals the right to own any and all firearms), but I have to pick this up.

"The freedom to own and carry the weapon of your choice is a natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right -- subject neither to the democratic process nor to arguments grounded in social utility."

I think bollocks is the correct term here.

The freedom to carry my weapon of choice (a semi-automatic nuke-chainsaw-machete) is not a natural right. There are no "natural" rights; rights are granted by the governing authority; they are not innate. The concept of "natural rights" comes from the same flawed understanding that brought us God, slavery, and the American corporation-as-person.

The freedom to carry my weapon of choice (a jet-propelled blunderbuss) is not a fundamental right. The application of other rights are not contingent upon it, ergo, it is not fundamental (see: Europe).

The freedom to carry my weapon of choice (a laser gauntlet) is not an inalienable right. Even in messed up countries like the USA that right is wavered, given certain conditions.

The freedom to carry my weapon of choice (a child-bearing bazooka) is not a human right. You can check, there aren't enough of them to cause confusion on this issue.

It is arguably only a constitutional right, and then only to those whose constitution confers that right. Your thinking (and the thinking of the person you're quoting) comes straight out of the pamphlet of manifest destiny. Your constitution is not the apex of homo-political thought.

I care about our fellow humans as individuals who have rights that ought to be respected.

I call bullshit for two reasons:

1. It isn't a natural, fundamental, inalienable or human right. It isn't even a regular (individual, civil, constitutional as the tautological quote says) right except in certain cases (like the US).
It is very likely that it just happens to suit your personal world view to "stand up" for this particular right. Do you write to your representatives in congress to protect the rights of Palestinians to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? How about Mexicans? Have you lobbied your representatives to sign America up to the international criminal courts?

2. Below.

You seem care about our fellow humans not as individuals but only as a herd and seem willing to use them as lab animals to test your hypothesis that disarming them will eventually result in less crime.

You cast aspersions upon MGK because he does not agree with your beliefs (for that is all we're really discussing - rights aren't natural but granted, remember?).
That, dear friend, is nothing more than spite.

Also, gun crime is not all crime. Best not to confuse the two.

Here's a test to move the whole conversation along a bit. Fresh research by everyone involved!

Pick a state with a comparable population to, say, the UK, locate and compare gun death statistics over 30 years. Official sources preferred.
How many times has the regulation changed during that period?
What effects, if any, did the change in regulation have?
What were the estimated amounts of regulated weaponry?

Ask yourself these (and any other) types of questions during and after (it prolongs the pleasure).

Post your findings and results here.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

If by "The vast majority of incidents" you are referring to murder in general: "The problem is that it simply is not true that previously law abiding citizens commit most murders or many murders or virtually any murders. Thus, disarming them would not, and could not, eliminate most, many, or virtually any murders. Homicide studies show that murderers tend not to be ordinary law-abiding citizens, but rather extreme aberrants." - Guns and Public Health: Epicemic of Violence or Pandemic of Propaganda?, Don B. Kates and others. 61 Tenn. L. Rev. 513-596 (1994), Page 28-29. http://www.guncite.com/journals/tennmed.html
Footnotes 277-281 cite publications by the FBI and Bureau of Justice Statistics and articles in professional journals.

Well you can just shove it your gun nut link right. I don't need a Gun nut to tell me what the FBI statistics says, I can can read the fucking FBI statistics on my own.
If it sources the FBI statistics and comes to a different conclusion that the FBI statistics show, guess what? It's Bullshit!

If you are referring only to mass public shootings, many were obviously planned and could not be called spontaneous unless you want to stretch the definition quite a lot. An action that included gathering weapons, spare ammunition, (and in some cases body armor and home-made explosives), transporting them to a place with lots of helpless victims and finally beginning an assault shows a definite lack of spontaneity. In many, perhaps most cases, the criminal is too dead to comment on his planning or lack thereof and the degree of spontaneity will remain unknown. If you mean that these mass shooters had no record of serious crimes before going nuts, that is correct in some cases but the "vast majority" claim requires some evidence; and that's a very strange usage of spontaneous.

No, I am not talking about mass public shootings. Even if I was, guess what? Gathering weapons, spare ammunition is all legal in the US and the perpetrator rarely has any criminal record, plus this process is made easy precisely because it is legal.
As for the right to carry, it is totally irrelevant, if a person already got the guns and intends to commit a crime, it is not a law that says that he can't do it that is going to stop them. This is not gun control, this is a joke, proper gun control starts before the perp is able to get a gun. Yet this is aim of the criticism of all gun advocates, i.e. they draw bogus 1 year statistics, haphazardly conclude that concealed carry laws increase crime (which I agree, if everyone can get a weapons, but aren't allowed to carry, who is going to carry it?). But on the gun nut lingo, carry laws becomes gun control, and gun control becomes any and all forms of gun restrictions. But more of this later.

Again the meaning of this sentence is unclear but I will try to answer anyway. As long as arms are legal the black market can be supplied by theft or straw-buyers (persons who are not legally prohibited from buying arms for themselves but are willing to commit a federal felony by illegally buying them for those who are prohibited). If arms became illegal the supply available for theft might slowly diminish and smuggling them could become a profitable sideline for drug smugglers. In addition guns are very durable and can remain functional for generations with minimal care. I see no realistic reason that criminals will ever be unable to get guns.

It is true that it will take time to flush guns out of the black market, they will not immediately run out. But you can only sell the stockpile of weapons you have so far, if they have no supply they will eventually run out, and as weapons get rarer they become harder to buy. The only reason why you can't see any realistic reason is because (as I have previously mentioned) you have a very short sighted perspective. Unfortunately this is all a gun nut can see, they go "A law X has passed and we see no immediate effects after it, then it means that it doesn't work, then it must be repealed", then obviously it becomes a self fulfilling proficy.

So the government can allow the right of self-defense to favored groups or individuals and deny it to others. That did not work out well for the disfavored people in Turkey, Nazi Germany, USSR or China to name a few.

And here we have Godwin's law in practice.
1. USA is not a totalitarian regime
2. Screening is not the same of favoring, if you don't have a reason to get a gun, you don't get a gun, independently of who you are. I haven't seen you complain about favored groups of individuals when you talk about citizens that have previous criminal records against those that don't.
3. Even if you USA was a totalitarian regime hell bound on the genocide of their own people, it wouldn't be the guns you own that were going to stop them.

You apparently misunderstood the metaphor. My point was that it is an injustice to deny useful objects, whether cricket bats or defensive firearms, to the law-abiding because the lawless might use those types of objects in crimes.

And I told you not to try and compare guns to cricket bats because they are not comparable. But I have a solution for your dilemma, a gun is only useful to you if you have a valid reason, so until you have a valid reason, you don't get a gun. How about that?

Whether more people are saved by guns or killed by guns does not affect the individual right to self-defense. The right does not depend on the outcome over the entire population. The right is inherent in each individual.

Then this argument is over. You have already expressed that you don't care what happens as long as you get your gun, there is nothing left to discuss here. Neither should you complain when a mass shooting occur, because you have already expressed that you don't care that "the reason that such is able to happen in the first is because you are able to get your gun" as long as you get your gun.

If the attackers couldn't have guns, I would like to see what motivation would allow them to do what they generally do. You are again running under the fallacy that the availability of guns to criminals is independent of legally available weapons.

Citation needed. The fallacy is your unfounded assumption that a gun ban will prevent criminals from getting them. Where has a gun ban ever been effective at disarming criminals?

It hasn't, except in every developed country in the world not located in the American continent. Oh and the fact that all guns used in mass murders were acquired legally. Citation already given.

Other than your numerical assumptions you assume that guns are the active agents that drive individual human decisions. Statically predicting the outcome of human interactions is an exercise in futility.

No it doesn't, it mostly simply regards incidents vs availability of guns. The few psychological factors used were slanted in your favor.
It's a model that allows me to analyse the expected effects of gun policy, and openly describes what is going on in my head when I think about this issue. Which is more than what you have.

And it isn't. The FBI discriminates people lawfully killed in their statistics, so your argument is bullshit.

I should have made it more clear that I was not referring to FBI statistics. I was replying to this: "Exercising rights does facilitate the endangerment of people when that right involves arming the general population. This right is also the reason that 65% of homicides in the U.S are gun related."

I don't see how that makes a difference?

You might find some previous dissections of Lott's work entertaining.
"The Debate on Shall-Issue Laws" by Carlisle e. Moody and Thomas B. Marvell, published in Econ Journal Watch, volume 5, number 3, September 2008 http://www.econjournalwatch.org/pdf/MoodyMarvelCommentSeptember2008.pdf
Does the Right to Carry Concealed Handguns Deter Countable Crimes? Only a Count Analysis Can Say By Florenz Plassmann and T. Nnicolaus Tideman, published in the Journal of Law and Economics http://johnrlott.tripod.com/tideman.pdf
Testing for the Effects of Concealed Weapons Laws: Specification Errors and Robustness By CARLISLE E. MOODY, published in the Journal of Law and Economics http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.1086/323313?uid=3739920&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101567622193
Right-to-Carry Concealed Weapon Laws and Homicide in Large U.S. Counties: The Effect on Weapon Types, Victim Characteristics, and Victim-Offender Relationships By DAVID E. OLSON AND MICHAEL D. MALTZ, published in the Journal of Law and Economics http://johnrlott.tripod.com/Maltz.pdf
Confirming More Guns, Less Crime by Florenz Plassmann and John Whitley, published in the Stanford Law Review http://johnrlott.tripod.com/Plassmann_Whitley.pdf
The Effect of Concealed Weapons Laws: An Extreme Bound Analysis by William Alan Bartley and Mark A Cohen, published in Economic Inquiry http://econpapers.repec.org/article/oupecinqu/v_3a36_3ay_3a1998_3ai_3a2_3ap_3a258-65.htm

Excuse me. I do my own dissections. If I want to openly criticize a paper, I read the paper! I'm not going to ask Lott for what is wrong with his own papers.
I would have posted it by now, but unfortunately the PC which had all my notes on this broke-down, so it is going to take a little longer. The review of it so far is not good, it has gems like:
Quoting a conclusion made on another paper. Who's paper? His own paper. Fine, one is allowed to cite is own work, but is it any good? Well the paper he cites is flimsy and it is nothing more than a shouting match against noisy data of 1 year statistics, but this is not the interesting part. The interesting part is, his own paper does not conclude what he says it concludes when he later cites the paper. You have to read it to appreciate the full beauty of it.

In your opinion at what point would the number of defensive uses justify the availability of guns?

When the defensive use supersedes the amount of people killed precisely because the perp had a gun, at least certainly more than 10% of that amount.

Are individual lives worth defending only if defensive use of guns exceeds criminal use?

No, they are always worth defending. What I am saying is that allowing almost anyone to have guns is actually detrimental to the defense of individuals life.

You seem care about our fellow humans not as individuals but only as a herd and seem willing to use them as lab animals to test your hypothesis that disarming them will eventually result in less crime.

Then I say to you.
"You don't seem care about our fellow humans at all, you are willing to preserve the status quo and dwell in the most caustic delusion that arming them will eventually result in less crime".

 

[Frenger]

Dear WsWolf.

I decided to step aside on this, largely because we were taking past each other but also because MGK is doing a far better job then I could hope to.

Unless stated otherwise, please take MGK's posts as what I would say if I were capable brain wise.

This of course goes for Prole's post as well.

 

[devilsadvocate]

UNODC published murder rates per 100 000 capita:

United States 4.8

Canada 1.6

Northern Europe 1.5

Southern Europe 1.4

Western Europe 1.0

Australia 1.0


Firearm-related death rates (homicides):

United States 3.6 [OAS 2012]

Canada 0.5 [UNODC 2011]

France 0.22 [WHO 2012]

United Kingdom 0.04 [WHO 2012]

Australia 0.09 [UNODC 2011]

Japan 0.02 [Krug 1998]


Other countries that do better than United States in this regard include; Costa Rica, Uruguay, Montenegro, Israel, India, Uzbekistan...

 

[wswolf]

Before I go on, I have no stake in this conversation (although I believe the particular US Constitutional amendment does not grant individuals the right to own any and all firearms), but I have to pick this up.

The amendment does not grant a right. It protects a pre-existing right from government infringement but you are correct that it does not cover all firearms.

‘We look to this because it has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right. The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it “shall not be infringed.” As we said in United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 553 (1876), “[t]his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed . . . .” .

"The freedom to own and carry the weapon of your choice is a natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right -- subject neither to the democratic process nor to arguments grounded in social utility."

I think bollocks is the correct term here.

The freedom to carry my weapon of choice (a semi-automatic nuke-chainsaw-machete) is not a natural right.

In an effort to stir things up a bit and get to the basis of this disagreement I deliberately used the most outrageous and provocative statement of the right that I could find.
Since I already explained that weapons capable of blowing up buildings are not necessary to exercise the right to personal defense and that no reasonable person would suggest them, I did not expect to see the semi-automatic nuke-chainsaw-machete- jet-propelled blunderbuss- child-bearing bazooka strawman yet again.

There are no "natural" rights; rights are granted by the governing authority; they are not innate.

Here, at last, is the basis of the disagreement. “Rights” granted by government are not rights at all but only temporary privileges.

The concept of "natural rights" comes from the same flawed understanding that brought us God, slavery, and the American corporation-as-person.

The concept of natural rights came from a flawed understanding of what, exactly, and how can their recognition lead to slavery? The concept of natural rights enabled our liberation from the totalitarian norms of religion and monarchy. To paraphrase another writer of whom you would doubtlessly disapprove: “Rights” are the concept that provides the link between the moral code of the individual and the legal code of a society, between ethics and politics. Individual rights are the means of binding society to ethical behavior.
Every political system is based on some code of ethics. For most of history the dominant ethics were doctrines which subordinated the individual to some higher authority. Most political systems were variants of state-run tyranny, limited only by the accidents of tradition. Ethics was applicable to the individual but not to the ruler. Government and/or religion were placed outside of ethical considerations as their source or interpreter and the indoctrination of social duty advantageous to the rulers was the main purpose of ethics.

In other words without natural rights individuals are little more than livestock, existing only to produce goods and services for the state for as long as the state finds them useful, and protected from predators only if the state finds them worth protecting.

The freedom to carry my weapon of choice (a jet-propelled blunderbuss) is not a fundamental right. The application of other rights are not contingent upon it, ergo, it is not fundamental (see: Europe).

The application of the right to self-defense is contingent uopn the freedom to carry a weapon, ridiculous weapons excepted.

The freedom to carry my weapon of choice (a child-bearing bazooka) is not a human right. You can check, there aren't enough of them to cause confusion on this issue.

Not all human rights have been listed by the UN.

It is arguably only a constitutional right, and then only to those whose constitution confers that right. Your thinking (and the thinking of the person you're quoting) comes straight out of the pamphlet of manifest destiny.

Once again, the constitution cannot confer rights that existed before it was written. It can only protect pre-existing rights. This was pretty much the basis of the founding of the US government. (see: Declaration of Independence) I have not heard of the Pamphlet of Manifest Destiny. Would you kindly provide a link?

I care about our fellow humans as individuals who have rights that ought to be respected.

I call bullshit for two reasons:

1. It isn't a natural, fundamental, inalienable or human right. It isn't even a regular (individual, civil, constitutional as the tautological quote says) right except in certain cases (like the US).

Previously posted:
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 ones 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 individuals 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 persons right to life. Such a government must, therefore, recognize the right of the people to keep and bear their private arms for defense.

I sincerely hope that you are not going to reply that we do not have a right to our own lives or that the ownership of our lives has been granted to us by governments.

It is very likely that it just happens to suit your personal world view to "stand up" for this particular right.

I am concentrating on this particular right because it is the subject of this particular conversation.

Do you write to your representatives in congress to protect the rights of Palestinians to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? How about Mexicans? Have you lobbied your representatives to sign America up to the international criminal courts?

I do not encourage the U.S. Congress to become involved in matters where it has no constitutional authority.

You seem care about our fellow humans not as individuals but only as a herd and seem willing to use them as lab animals to test your hypothesis that disarming them will eventually result in less crime.

You cast aspersions upon MGK because he does not agree with your beliefs (for that is all we're really discussing - rights aren't natural but granted, remember?).
That, dear friend, is nothing more than spite.

My humblest apologies to MGK who has at all times been as courteous as he knows how to be. Allow me to rephrase in a way that leaves out any personal reference, as I should have done in the first place: The idea that our fellow humans have no value as individuals but are only valuable en masse and that it is acceptable to institute a policy that will cause great suffering and loss of life in order to test the hypothesis that disarming them, making them easy prey for violent lunatics, rapists and robbers, will eventually result in fewer of them being murdered with guns, is ethically repugnant in the extreme.

Also, gun crime is not all crime. Best not to confuse the two.

Thank you for the reminder that MGK was focused exclusively on crimes committed with guns. I have strayed from that path but did previously state quite clearly that even if all criminals decided to stop using guns for all time, the law-abiding would still need them for self-defense.

If you or MGK had actually known any victims of gunless violence and seen their horrible, disfiguring, life-threatening and crippling injuries, I cannot imagine you staunchly maintaining that it is a legitimate function of government to ensure that good people are disarmed and that they have no inalienable right to the tools that they could have used to save themselves.

Regards,
Wolf

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

The amendment does not grant a right. It protects a pre-existing right from government infringement but you are correct that it does not cover all firearms.

Let me disagree with you on 2 counts:
1. For it to be a pre-existing right, it needed to be a right before the constitution was written. Given that the original constitution (that went in effect early that same year) did not have such provision, and since the previous government was British and they did not grant such a right to the Americans. Independently of any court ruling, it is just factually wrong to say that it protects a pre-existing right. And you should be ashamed because this has played a key part in American history.
2. The American constitution does not discriminate or make any exception to the nature of the arms, and saying that it does is trying to read into the text what isn’t there. So technically a semi-automatic nuke-chainsaw-machete is protected under the United States Constitution either you like it or not.
3. To add an extra point since your argument is self-defense, you cannot exclude the ownership of a semi-automatic nuke-chainsaw-machete-missile-bomb, after all it is only to be used by responsible Americans in the event of foreign invasion.
So unless you have another argument, I have established that you don’t really believe in the rights given by the constitution but rather a distorted version of it. I would defend that you do so for reasons that you do not want to apply to guns.

The concept of natural rights enabled our liberation from the totalitarian norms of religion and monarchy.

There is no such thing as natural rights. Rights are emergent social norms born out of the conflict of human beings. All we have to do to understand this is to realize what happens when those rights are violated.

The concept of natural rights came from a flawed understanding of what, exactly, and how can their recognition lead to slavery? The concept of natural rights enabled our liberation from the totalitarian norms of religion and monarchy.

*Waiting for the irony train to hit you*
…
…
*But it never did*


Historical “Natural Rights”, were indistinguishable from “God Given Rights”. Kings were viewed as being appointed by God to rule over everyone else, when the king kicks the bucket and his heir raises to the throne, he does so as “his God given right”, his “Natural right”. And in case you are wondering, it is in the exact same context as you use it.
So it didn’t liberate anyone from totalitarian religious or monarchic norms, but rather embraced it. Another history lesson which you have failed to learn.

Not all human rights have been listed by the UN.

Did you mean: “Not all things that I wish it was considered a right, like the right to own a gun, is not listed by the UN.”

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

This argument has already been debunked. And again I point, the problem is number 4.
“the individuals right to his/her own life” does not necessarily imply “a right to keep and bear arms”.

My humblest apologies to MGK who has at all times been as courteous as he knows how to be. Allow me to rephrase in a way that leaves out any personal reference, as I should have done in the first place: The idea that our fellow humans have no value as individuals but are only valuable en masse and that it is acceptable to institute a policy that will cause great suffering and loss of life in order to test the hypothesis that disarming them, making them easy prey for violent lunatics, rapists and robbers, will eventually result in fewer of them being murdered with guns, is ethically repugnant in the extreme.

1. This assassination to my character has already been addressed.
2. I see my fellow human beings valuable as individuals.
3. It is not to test the hypothesis, it has already been tested with success. It is implement it.
4. The increase of crime following the institution of such policy is temporary.
5. Violent lunatics use guns when given the opportunity. Rapists can use guns when given the opportunity. Robbers will use guns when given the opportunity. The power balance conferred by a gun goes both ways, when a gun fires it does not discriminate, the only problem is, those who are intent to use it are the ones who will most probably do so.
6. The reduction of the amount of people being murdered with guns will reduce the overall amount of people killed. Given 5, it will also reduce crime overall.
7. What it is repugnant to the extreme it to keep the current status quo, harming everyone else, because of comfortable delusions.

Thank you for the reminder that MGK was focused exclusively on crimes committed with guns.

Straw-man. If crimes committed by guns goes down, crime overall goes down. As I have stated, it is a false assumption that if guns were out of the equation that criminals would just simply commit crimes with something else regardless.

If you or MGK had actually known any victims of gunless violence and seen their horrible, disfiguring, life-threatening and crippling injuries, I cannot imagine you staunchly maintaining that it is a legitimate function of government to ensure that good people are disarmed and that they have no inalienable right to the tools that they could have used to save themselves.

Appeal to emotion, Straw-man, non-sequitur, generic fallacy.
1. Americans currently have the right to own guns, yet you are indeed right that you are more likely to know such victims only by the fact that you are American. So how does that “guns are an instrument to prevent such cases” working out for you?
2. Nobody said that removing guns would magically remove all crimes. Just because you can’t cure all ailments of the world it does not mean that cancer research is not important.
3. And just so we are clear. I'm not even for an all out ban on guns.

 

[tuxbox]

Quick question: Why is it people want/need assault rifles again?

They some how think it would be a good weapon to have if the U.S. military ever decided to attack Texas.

Also, I'd argue that gun control IS a superficial solution.

Perhaps especially in the US. There are so many factors involved in these shootings, that there is no sole solution.

It seems clear that the US is "too far gone" to have a bit of gun control solve even a fraction of the problem.

But it also seems clear that some restrictions of SOME kind are in order.

+1

 

[wswolf]

If by "The vast majority of incidents" you are referring to murder in general: "The problem is that it simply is not true that previously law abiding citizens commit most murders or many murders or virtually any murders. Thus, disarming them would not, and could not, eliminate most, many, or virtually any murders. Homicide studies show that murderers tend not to be ordinary law-abiding citizens, but rather extreme aberrants." - Guns and Public Health: Epicemic of Violence or Pandemic of Propaganda?, Don B. Kates and others. 61 Tenn. L. Rev. 513-596 (1994), Page 28-29. http://www.guncite.com/journals/tennmed.html
Footnotes 277-281 cite publications by the FBI and Bureau of Justice Statistics and articles in professional journals.

Well you can just shove it your gun nut link right. I don't need a Gun nut to tell me what the FBI statistics says, I can can read the fucking FBI statistics on my own.
If it sources the FBI statistics and comes to a different conclusion that the FBI statistics show, guess what? It's Bullshit!

Don Kates was a professor of constitutional and criminal law, and a criminologist. Do you really think it is accurate to dismiss him as a “Gun nut”? The cited article was published in the Tennessee Law Review. Do you really think that the Tennessee Law Review is a hotbed of gun nuttery? Do you have any criticism of the actual content of the article or did you refuse to read it just because a copy is posted on http://www.guncite.com? Which FBI statistics contradict “murderers tend not to be ordinary law-abiding citizens, but rather extreme aberrants.”?

Again the meaning of this sentence is unclear but I will try to answer anyway. As long as arms are legal the black market can be supplied by theft or straw-buyers (persons who are not legally prohibited from buying arms for themselves but are willing to commit a federal felony by illegally buying them for those who are prohibited). If arms became illegal the supply available for theft might slowly diminish and smuggling them could become a profitable sideline for drug smugglers. In addition guns are very durable and can remain functional for generations with minimal care. I see no realistic reason that criminals will ever be unable to get guns.

It is true that it will take time to flush guns (drugs) out of the black market, they will not immediately run out. But you can only sell the stockpile of weapons (drugs) you have so far, if they have no supply they will eventually run out, and as weapons (drugs) get rarer they become harder to buy. The only reason why you can't see any realistic reason is because (as I have previously mentioned) you have a very short sighted perspective.

This hypothesis is obviously invalid with respect to drugs, a consumable commodity. Guns can be smuggled as easily as drugs and criminals will always have an adequate supply. http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/106105/Gun-smuggling-is-easy.html

Whether more people are saved by guns or killed by guns does not affect the individual right to self-defense. The right does not depend on the outcome over the entire population. The right is inherent in each individual.

Then this argument is over. You have already expressed that you don't care what happens as long as you get your gun, there is nothing left to discuss here. Neither should you complain when a mass shooting occur, because you have already expressed that you don't care that "the reason that such is able to happen in the first is because you are able to get your gun" as long as you get your gun.

Rejecting your unrealistic hypothesis is not the same as not caring what happens. Your understanding of the concept of individual rights is as unintelligible to me as it would be to the founders of the U.S.
http://www.infowars.com/statistics-prove-more-guns-less-crime

You might find some previous dissections of Lott's work entertaining.
"The Debate on Shall-Issue Laws" by Carlisle e. Moody and Thomas B. Marvell, published in Econ Journal Watch, volume 5, number 3, September 2008 http://www.econjournalwatch.org/pdf/MoodyMarvelCommentSeptember2008.pdf
Does the Right to Carry Concealed Handguns Deter Countable Crimes? Only a Count Analysis Can Say By Florenz Plassmann and T. Nnicolaus Tideman, published in the Journal of Law and Economics http://johnrlott.tripod.com/tideman.pdf
Testing for the Effects of Concealed Weapons Laws: Specification Errors and Robustness By CARLISLE E. MOODY, published in the Journal of Law and Economics http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.1086/323313?uid=3739920&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101567622193
Right-to-Carry Concealed Weapon Laws and Homicide in Large U.S. Counties: The Effect on Weapon Types, Victim Characteristics, and Victim-Offender Relationships By DAVID E. OLSON AND MICHAEL D. MALTZ, published in the Journal of Law and Economics http://johnrlott.tripod.com/Maltz.pdf
Confirming More Guns, Less Crime by Florenz Plassmann and John Whitley, published in the Stanford Law Review http://johnrlott.tripod.com/Plassmann_Whitley.pdf
The Effect of Concealed Weapons Laws: An Extreme Bound Analysis by William Alan Bartley and Mark A Cohen, published in Economic Inquiry http://econpapers.repec.org/article/oupecinqu/v_3a36_3ay_3a1998_3ai_3a2_3ap_3a258-65.htm

Excuse me. I do my own dissections. If I want to openly criticize a paper, I read the paper! I'm not going to ask Lott for what is wrong with his own papers.

None of the above papers are by Lott but they do tend to confirm Lott's work.

In your opinion at what point would the number of defensive uses justify the availability of guns?

When the defensive use supersedes the amount of people killed precisely because the perp had a gun, at least certainly more than 10% of that amount.

Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year or about 6,850 times a day. (Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense With a Gun," 86 The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law, 1 (Fall 1995):164.)

This means that each year, firearms are used more than 80 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives. (See: Injury Facts, published yearly by the National Safety Council, Itasca, Illinois.)

Of the 2.5 million times citizens use their guns to defend themselves every year, the overwhelming majority merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers. Less than 8% of the time, a citizen will kill or wound his/her attacker. (Kleck and Gertz, "Armed Resistance to Crime," at 173, 185.)
As many as 200,000 women use a gun every year to defend themselves against sexual abuse. (Kleck and Gertz, "Armed Resistance to Crime," at 185.)

According to the U.S. Justice Department, there are as many as 1.5 million cases of self-defense every year. (Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig, "Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms," NIJ Research in Brief (May 1997)); (http://www.ncjrs.org/txtfiles/165476.txt) The finding of 1.5 million yearly self-defense cases did not sit well with the anti-gun bias of the study's authors, who attempted to explain why there could not possibly be one and a half million cases of self-defense every year. However, the 1.5 million figure is consistent with nearly a dozen independent surveys showing similar figures. The sponsors of these studies include anti-gun organizations, news media organizations, governments and commercial polling firms. See also Kleck and Gertz, supra, pp. 182-183.

Are individual lives worth defending only if defensive use of guns exceeds criminal use?

No, they are always worth defending. What I am saying is that allowing almost anyone to have guns is actually detrimental to the defense of individuals life.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding your intent but how can having a gun be “detrimental to the defense of individuals life”? Please explain it in a way that will be convincing to three of my friends who would not be alive today if they had not had guns. This is not an appeal to emotion but an appeal to practicality.

You seem care about our fellow humans not as individuals but only as a herd and seem willing to use them as lab animals to test your hypothesis that disarming them will eventually result in less crime.

Then I say to you.
"You don't seem care about our fellow humans at all, you are willing to preserve the status quo and dwell in the most caustic delusion that arming them will eventually result in less crime".

According to FBI data the highest murder rate since 1960 was 10.2 (per 100,000 population) in 1980. How do you explain the steady decrease in the murder rate to reach 4.8 in 2010, its lowest since 1963 (4.6), when millions of firearms are sold each year? http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/ucrdata/Se...3d008ffad-99922E1E-04DF-12F8-7413B92E55E88F3B

According to the BATF nearly 54 million firearms were produced for domestic sale from 1998 through 2011. http://www.atf.gov/statistics

Firearm sales are not tallied but according to The Guardian the FBI received 156,577,260 applications to purchase firearms from 1998 through 2012. How do you explain drop in the murder rate from 6.3 in 1998 to 4.8 in 2010? If your hypothesis is correct why does the U.S., with by far the highest gun ownership rate, have the 28th highest gun murder rate instead of the highest gun murder rate?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list

If you wish to confirm The Guardian’s count of firearms applications the FBI background check data is here:
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ni...98_2013_state_program_to_date_purpose_ids.pdf

Another article showing that the crime rate has decreased while the gun supply has increased. It has several links to government sources. http://factcheck.org/2012/12/gun-rhetoric-vs-gun-facts/


I have no idea if you will agree but think that the article below porvides an accurate description of the basis of our disagreement.

“The debate over gun control is, at its core, a larger conflict over culture and an individual’s relation to government. It is a culture war between those who value independence and individual liberty and those that value community coercion and dependence on the government.” - http://www.humanevents.com/2013/02/10/gun-culture-vs-the-culture-of-dependency/

This has been an interesting, if puzzling, conversation but I see no reason to continue because I do not think we are capable of understanding the opposing point of view. As a hick from Montana with a love of liberty and independence, I find your apparent love and trust of government, even to the extent of giving over the defense of your lives to government, to be utterly baffling and more than a little disturbing. Because of the utter misunderstanding of my motives and the concept of natural rights I suspect that the bafflement is roughly equal on both sides of the discussion. Given sufficient time and honest effort we might be able to bridge this cultural divide but I regrettably do not have the time.

I wish you well in your most able efforts against the preachments of creationists.
Regards,
Wolf

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

Which FBI statistics contradict “murderers tend not to be ordinary law-abiding citizens, but rather extreme aberrants.”?

Murder Circumstance (Relationship)
Murder Circumstance (Weapon)
Murder Circumstance (2007-2011 trend)
Just out of curiosity:
Justifiable Homicide (Law Enforcement)
Justifiable Homicide (Civilian)

It is true that it will take time to flush guns (drugs) out of the black market, they will not immediately run out. But you can only sell the stockpile of weapons (drugs) you have so far, if they have no supply they will eventually run out, and as weapons (drugs) get rarer they become harder to buy. The only reason why you can't see any realistic reason is because (as I have previously mentioned) you have a very short sighted perspective.

The day guns grow out of trees, then you might have a point.

Whether more people are saved by guns or killed by guns does not affect the individual right to self-defense. The right does not depend on the outcome over the entire population. The right is inherent in each individual.

Then this argument is over. You have already expressed that you don't care what happens as long as you get your gun, there is nothing left to discuss here. Neither should you complain when a mass shooting occur, because you have already expressed that you don't care that "the reason that such is able to happen in the first is because you are able to get your gun" as long as you get your gun.

Rejecting your unrealistic hypothesis is not the same as not caring what happens. Your understanding of the concept of individual rights is as unintelligible to me as it would be to the founders of the U.S.
http://www.infowars.com/statistics-prove-more-guns-less-crime

Strawman. My point was clear, i.e. that your statement is not about self-defense, it is about the ability to own a gun regardless of the consequences. What Hypothesis is there to reject?

None of the above papers are by Lott but they do tend to confirm Lott's work.

Then You can't read.
I realized that I probably had enough time to review the all paper from scratch in my backup computer instead of waiting for my own to get fixed, I do apologize for the time it is taking. I should have buried this point by now, but I am lazy. However I will eventually do it.

Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year or about 6,850 times a day. (Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense With a Gun," 86 The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law, 1 (Fall 1995):164.)
This means that each year, firearms are used more than 80 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives. (See: Injury Facts, published yearly by the National Safety Council, Itasca, Illinois.)
Of the 2.5 million times citizens use their guns to defend themselves every year, the overwhelming majority merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers. Less than 8% of the time, a citizen will kill or wound his/her attacker. (Kleck and Gertz, "Armed Resistance to Crime," at 173, 185.)
As many as 200,000 women use a gun every year to defend themselves against sexual abuse. (Kleck and Gertz, "Armed Resistance to Crime," at 185.)
According to the U.S. Justice Department, there are as many as 1.5 million cases of self-defense every year. (Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig, "Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms," NIJ Research in Brief (May 1997)); (http://www.ncjrs.org/txtfiles/165476.txt) The finding of 1.5 million yearly self-defense cases did not sit well with the anti-gun bias of the study's authors, who attempted to explain why there could not possibly be one and a half million cases of self-defense every year. However, the 1.5 million figure is consistent with nearly a dozen independent surveys showing similar figures. The sponsors of these studies include anti-gun organizations, news media organizations, governments and commercial polling firms. See also Kleck and Gertz, supra, pp. 182-183.

That is simply unfounded, Kleck does not have data to support such claims. The numbers are in fact so preposterous that they outnumber the total amount of crimes reported in the last 10 years. How the fuck did that happen?
Instead of copy/pasting stuff out of gun nut webshites, make sure that they actually have sources or at least that the sources actually exist.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding your intent but how can having a gun be “detrimental to the defense of individuals life”? Please explain it in a way that will be convincing to three of my friends who would not be alive today if they had not had guns. This is not an appeal to emotion but an appeal to practicality.

I fundamentally disagree. And I would add personal anecdote on top.
However, if your hypothetical friend is wondering, the moment he walked in that store to buy his gun that saved his life, he forgets that the guy who threatened his life was able to do so because he had a gun that started in exactly the same fashion.

According to FBI data the highest murder rate since 1960 was 10.2 (per 100,000 population) in 1980. How do you explain the steady decrease in the murder rate to reach 4.8 in 2010, its lowest since 1963 (4.6), when millions of firearms are sold each year? http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/ucrdata/Se...3d008ffad-99922E1E-04DF-12F8-7413B92E55E88F3B
According to the BATF nearly 54 million firearms were produced for domestic sale from 1998 through 2011. http://www.atf.gov/statistics
Firearm sales are not tallied but according to The Guardian the FBI received 156,577,260 applications to purchase firearms from 1998 through 2012. How do you explain drop in the murder rate from 6.3 in 1998 to 4.8 in 2010?

The Brady Act.

If your hypothesis is correct why does the U.S., with by far the highest gun ownership rate, have the 28th highest gun murder rate instead of the highest gun murder rate?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list

There are about 200 countries in the World, of those 186 are listed in the article you cited. As far as murder rate goes, the only countries that supersede the US are either currently in war or have institutionalized gang violence. Shit, even some Waring countries have less gun crime than the US.
Being 28th is not something to be proud of.

This has been an interesting, if puzzling, conversation but I see no reason to continue because I do not think we are capable of understanding the opposing point of view.

I understand your point of view perfectly well, I just think that you are wrong.
However I don't think you do mine:

I find your apparent love and trust of government, even to the extent of giving over the defense of your lives to government, to be utterly baffling and more than a little disturbing. Because of the utter misunderstanding of my motives and the concept of natural rights I suspect that the bafflement is roughly equal on both sides of the discussion.

Given sufficient time and honest effort we might be able to bridge this cultural divide but I regrettably do not have the time.

Indeed, I don't know what it is to live in constant fear of my government or my fellow human being.
I respect that you have no more patience for this discussion, frankly speaking, neither do I. But consider this before you abandon it altogether:
Imagine that you are going to embark on a flight from LA to NY.
Do you think that they should prevent you from carrying guns on board the Airplane?
Do not forget that:
1. It is still possible for other people to smuggle weapons on board.
2. The 9/11 hijacks could have been prevented if someone had a gun on board.
3. According to you, you have the right to self defense at all times (including inside a plane) and that implies the right to carry your gun.
Should they allow you to carry weapons on board?
If the answer is No. Then you have allot of explaining to do.

EDIT: Removed some references of none-existing link, the website was temporarily offline so I was unable to view it, but I can see it now.

 

[Prolescum]

[. . .] gun nut webshites [. . .]

This tickles the Scotsman in me and will have pride of place in the lexicon of the wild web book I'm probably never going to compile.

For those not of the British Isles, here is why. Whether intentional or not, it radiates classic punnage from its pores.


On topic: Did you address our assessment of your misunderstanding of natural/inalienable/human rights, wswolf? I can't seem to see it.

 

[dog_face_painting]

In justice to Wolf, you weren't particularly clear on natural rights. In justice to you, Wolf used a convoluted and incorrect definition of the philosophical abstract.

Do they exist or don't they exist? Are they the same as divine rights or are they a concept to refute and juxtapose then preexisting conventional thinking?

I don't think any of you clearly defined the different concepts of "rights" and their meanings. Probably a post elsewhere, oh well!

In the tree, part of the tree...probably.

 

[Prolescum]

That's the point; Wolfie claims natural, inalienable rights to weapons but cannot show that such rights exist, so s/he ignored this critical point. I need not delve deeper as an earlier post already explains this flaw.

 

[tuxbox]

I am not exactly sure how one would go about proving humans have a natural right to weapons for defense and/or for hunting, but I do know that spearheads have been found dating back 300 thousand years. That is nearly 300 thousand years before civilization and human made laws existed.

 

[Prolescum]

Interesting side note, but irrelevant. Until you can accurately show what constitutes a "natural right", the argument that says you have them as a basis for legislation is invalid. You'd also have to show the difference between a natural right and a god-given one to have any hope of convincing me of its existence.

That's the royal you...

 

[tuxbox]

I would first like to admit that arguing for the existence of “natural rights” is just as futile as arguing for the existence of god. Neither of which can be proven to exist.

Interesting side note, but irrelevant. Until you can accurately show what constitutes a "natural right", the argument that says you have them as a basis for legislation is invalid. You'd also have to show the difference between a natural right and a god-given one to have any hope of convincing me of its existence.

My point was that prior to civilization and “civil rights” hominids were constructing weapons for self-defense and hunting purposes. To me that is the closest bit of evidence I can think of when it comes to natural rights. It is natural for for every mammal to defend itself to the best of its ability. Beyond that, this discussion goes into the realm of philosophy. Here is Thomas Paine's take on the matter:

“…Natural rights are those which appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the natural rights of others. Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to security and protection.

From this short review it will be easy to distinguish between that class of natural rights which man retains after entering into society and those which he throws into the common stock as a member of society.” ~ Thomas Paine

The freedom to carry my weapon of choice (a semi-automatic nuke-chainsaw-machete) is not a natural right. There are no "natural" rights; rights are granted by the governing authority; they are not innate. The concept of "natural rights" comes from the same flawed understanding that brought us God, slavery, and the American corporation-as-person.

If rights are granted by a governing authority, and humans have no other rights, how can we know when “our rights” are being violated, and what are those “rights” if they are not something that goes beyond what is given to us by a governing authority?

That's the royal you...

I have no idea what that means?

 

[Prolescum]

I would first like to admit that arguing for the existence of “natural rights” is just as futile as arguing for the existence of god. Neither of which can be proven to exist.

Yes, exactly. This is why Wolfie's argument (and the person he was quoting) failed at the first hurdle.

Interesting side note, but irrelevant. Until you can accurately show what constitutes a "natural right", the argument that says you have them as a basis for legislation is invalid. You'd also have to show the difference between a natural right and a god-given one to have any hope of convincing me of its existence.

My point was that prior to civilization and “civil rights” hominids were constructing weapons for self-defense and hunting purposes. To me that is the closest bit of evidence I can think of when it comes to natural rights. It is natural for for every mammal to defend itself to the best of its ability. Beyond that, this discussion goes into the realm of philosophy.

Indeed, and Wolfie was arguing from a US-centric position, i.e. that the right to bear arms, as granted by the US constitution, is natural and inalienable when that cannot be shown to be the case.

Here is Thomas Paine's take on the matter:

“…Natural rights are those which appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the natural rights of others. Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to security and protection.

From this short review it will be easy to distinguish between that class of natural rights which man retains after entering into society and those which he throws into the common stock as a member of society.” ~ Thomas Paine

Thanks. He lived just up the road from me.

If rights are granted by a governing authority, and humans have no other rights, how can we know when “our rights” are being violated, and what are those “rights” if they are not something that goes beyond what is given to us by a governing authority?

Just because they're granted by authorities does not mean they are decided upon by a particular authority. They are not necessarily static nor do they necessarily reflect everyone's views. Some come from precedence in court, some from parliament/congress...

We know when our rights are being violated because they are codified in some manner; you can't just make them up and claim they're being violated.

That's the royal you...

I have no idea what that means?

It means I wasn't directing my post to you specifically, but the general you. The royal we, as in "we are not amused", is used in the singular. It's a play on words. Not a good one, but nonetheless...