Since this is today's gun argument thread, I'll just point out that the UK is currently commemorating the 20th anniversary of its first and last "mass shooting" incident, at a school in Dunblane, Scotland.
The ensuing total ban on handguns and further restriction on gun licensing mean that mass shootings are nonexistant, firearm murders are extremely rare (about one per year in a country of 60m), shooting of suspects by police is extremely rare (police are not routinely armed, except for anti-terrorist patrols at strategic points with MP5s), and of course firearm accidents and suicides are less common as well. Sadly suicide is a problem in the farming community; farmers often have shotguns for pest control purposes and deer culling.
I'm a gun owner and this is the key point for me. No politician is in a position to tell me I don't need my semi-automatic pistol if every day I see a patrol car go by my house with 2 fully automatic AR-15s locked between the front seats and my local police department owns an armoured vehicle. If you really think you have a plan for getting rid of guns for bad guys as well as me, prove it. Demilitarize the police at the same time.
edit: To be fair, I think such a plan is possible, but it requires fixing other problems that too many politicians are afraid to touch. It's obviously been done successfully elsewhere, but only when cultures and geographies were more ready for it. I enjoy shooting and prefer to own a gun, but I'd give them up for a plan I thought would work. I just haven't seen one proposed in the US yet.
SWAT teams were deployed about 3,000 times in 1980 but are now used around 50,000 times a year.
New Haven, Connecticut sent a SWAT team to a bar suspected of serving under-age drinkers. That same year heavily-armed police raided barber shops around Orlando, Florida; they said they were hunting for guns and drugs but ended up arresting 34 people for “barbering without a licence”. Maricopa County, Arizona sent a SWAT team into the living room of Jesus Llovera, who was suspected of organising cockfights. Police rolled a tank into Mr Llovera’s yard and killed more than 100 of his birds, as well as his dog.
Federal cash -- first to wage war on drugs, then on terror -- has paid for much of the heavy weaponry used by SWAT teams. Between 2002 and 2011 the Department of Homeland Security disbursed $35 billion in grants to state and local police.
...it is hard to see why Fargo, North Dakota—a city that averages fewer than two murders a year—needs an armoured personnel-carrier with a rotating turret. Keene, a small town in New Hampshire which had three homicides between 1999 and 2012, spent nearly $286,000 on an armoured personnel-carrier known as a BearCat. The local police chief said it would be used to patrol Keene’s “Pumpkin Festival and other dangerous situations”.
This is a good point. I think it's ingrained in American culture (and the Constitution) that part of the purpose of personal gun ownership is to curb governmental power. How can gun control be justified when police are roaming around like a para-military group?
the purpose of personal gun ownership is to curb governmental power
No, that's what the legal system is for. The idea of trying to have some sort of legal right to political violence (terrorism) is bonkers. Maybe it comes from the Lost Cause or something.
(The Troubles seems like the exact nightmare scenario pro-gun people talk about when they talk of armed resistance to the government firing on demonstrators, coming round to the houses of dissidents in the middle of the night, etc., and yet I've never seen it discussed)
You don't have a "legal right" to political violence, by definition. You have a moral right under some circumstances and the legal right to own guns helps gives the ability to act.
I completely agree that the "curb government power" is a common argument for gun ownership in the US.
However, I've never understood the logic behind it. Do people really think their handgun is going to help them resist a predator drone strike? The US military is vastly more powerful than any gun owner. Do people really think they can compete? What's more, advocates of legal gun ownership often also push for more military spending (though that might be less true here on HN). Am I missing something here?
Edit: To be clear, I certainly don't mean to be dismissive of legal gun ownership - I tend to argue in favor of it. What I don't understand is the argument that gun ownership curbs government power in any meaningful way. Guns and/or shooting and/or hunting seem like great hobbies.
> Do people really think their handgun is going to help them resist a predator drone strike?
For a single person, or a small group? I know of no one who believes that.
> The US military is vastly more powerful than any gun owner. Do people really think they can compete?
The US military is composed predominately of gun owners :).
> What's more, advocates of legal gun ownership often also push for more military spending (though that might be less true here on HN). Am I missing something here?
From my perspective, this is almost pure cognitive dissonance. They also tend to support things like NSA spying and restrictions on effective encryption.
> For a single person, or a small group? I know of no one who believes that.
Fair enough. Neither do I. I meant it as a rhetorical question because it's such an absurd thing to think, but I realize that wasn't necessarily clear.
> The US military is composed predominately of gun owners :).
So is the thinking that people in the military would disobey commands and join the uprising? (Or are you being entirely facetious, like the smile might suggest?)
> From my perspective, this is almost pure cognitive dissonance.
Exactly. But there are presumably smart people who make this argument. There's got to some kind of reasoning behind it. Right?
>So is the thinking that people in the military would disobey commands and join the uprising?
Yes. tl;have work to do: The knowledge of the potential for large portions of the population to resist oppression by use of small arms is sufficient to deter governments from radical, direct assaults on human rights.
The knowledge of the potential for large portions of the population to resist oppression by use of small arms is sufficient to deter governments from radical, direct assaults on human rights
No it isn't; the US has massive gun ownership and direct assaults on human rights. Especially of nonwhite people. The US never really "signed up to" human rights in the modern (postwar) sense.
Yeah, if the order came today. They haven't been programmed for that. It would take at least a few months of intensive witchhunting (probably for Domestic Terror) to work up to it -- or the right convenient incident to spark adequate mass hysteria.
> The US military is vastly more powerful than any gun owner. Do people really think they can compete?
Various insurgencies have given the US military a run for their money, even with all the advanced weaponry at its disposal. I think that a similar insurgency of Americans on American soil would be even harder for the US military do deal with than those foreign ones.
They're exploiting the weaknesses of the American military, as they must, since the alternative is suicide and assured defeat. It's unreasonable to expect your enemy to present himself so that your advantage is maximized. If there's an American insurgency against the government, I'm certain they'll employ similar tactics, rather than gathering in fields and waiting to get killed by a drones.
>Do people really think their handgun is going to help them resist a predator drone strike?
No, but as a group the people of the US would most certainly defeat the US military. As others pointed out much less armed and smaller groups have held the military at bay, and for long periods of time. But there are two much bigger factors in US military vs US people.
1) Telling soldiers to attack their own people is not going to be as smooth as telling to attack foreigners, especially in any size.
2) The biggest issue by far is that the US military needs a massive functioning economy to provide support for them to function any length of time. Look how much war costs - that represents acquisitions, salaries for civilians, replacement, etc. If they disrupted their own economic base they'd fall pretty quickly.
So comparing a handgun to a drone is shortsighted. In reality the people are a massive check on the current form of the military.
Tyrrany doesn't just occur at the highest levels. The argument works at lower levels. When local cops deal with major drug dealers that they know are armed to the hilt they usually treat the suspect with respect and carefully select a time to peacefully confront the person. But some (usually a minority) unarmed kid in a school committing a minor infraction? Gets a beat down.
That's why Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan were a cakewalk - regular people with guns can't possibly resist predator drones and the like.
What you are actually missing is that guns are part of (some American's) tribal culture. The move to ban guns is mainly, at this point in time, a front in the culture wars. (Historically it was also about disarming blacks in order to empower terrorists.) There are many cultural artifacts and other enjoyable practices which kill people; Britain's drinking culture, gay sex (http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/basics/statistics.html), etc.
Gun control is mainly about attacking one of the cherished cultural values of our tribal enemies, in much the same way that Bush-era "faith based $X" or opposing various gay things is.
Everday patrol officers having an AR-15 in the trunk is a fairly direct consequence of the North Hollywood Shootout [1]. The Miami FBI shootout also contributed to the adoption of conventional semi-automatic handguns over revolvers [2].
I'd also like to point out that in the case of the North Hollywood Shootout, the responding police were able to effectively arm themselves within minutes by requesting the assistance of a nearby gun store.
And part of the reason why cops are armed to the teeth is because the citizens are. It would require real total mutual disarmament of citizens and police to change anything in the USA.
American citizens have always been armed to the teeth, so to speak. American police departments were not, this is a more recent phenomenon. It's partly due to the Federal level programs that are equipping the police with surplus military hardware. I find it doubtful that a regular street cop is going to encounter a situation in their day-to-day to justify the level of armament as if they were on the SWAT team.
I don't believe that US criminals are more heavily-armed than those in other countries. In fact, the opposite is likely true.
In the US most criminals who are armed have inexpensive, unreliable handguns. An armed criminal in the UK (while less common) would seem more likely to have something like a submachinegun or a machine pistol. If the penalty is severe and the gun is rare and expensive... why go through all that trouble and risk for a .32 revolver, when you could just as easily obtain a Skorpion?
You're thinking like an American: bigger is better :)
UK armed robberies are often [citation needed] carried out with imitation or deactivated firearms, as the robbers neither need nor want to kill anyone and it's considerably cheaper, easier to get hold of, and less illegal.
What about the criminals in the UK that do not obtain any firearm?
Someone carrying a cheap pistol is still more heavily armed than someone carrying brass knuckles.
I'm not going to go find the facts and figures, still, I'm pretty sure that the incidence of gun crime is higher in the US, pointing out that gun buying criminals in the UK probably buy nicer guns doesn't change that.
> What about the criminals in the UK that do not obtain any firearm?
There are likely a greater portion of unarmed criminals in the UK. Since their potential victims are also unarmed, that means that are at the mercy of physically dominating criminals. I fail to see how this is an improvement.
> Someone carrying a cheap pistol is still more heavily armed than someone carrying brass knuckles.
Practically speaking, a person with a 6" knife can do far more damage to a person and have a higher likelihood of inflicting a mortal wound than someone with a .38 revolver.
> I'm not going to go find the facts and figures, still, I'm pretty sure that the incidence of gun crime is higher in the US, pointing out that gun buying criminals in the UK probably buy nicer guns doesn't change that.
Yeah, me neither, and rates don't really factor into this thread. My entire point is that more restrictions means that it's in the best interest of an armed criminal to obtain the most effective firearm possible.
A statement like I don't believe that US criminals are more heavily-armed than those in other countries. sure sounds like a statement that is inclusive of rates to me.
Say 1 guy uses a legitimate high caliber machine gun to commit some crime, is that the only crime that gets used when describing how criminals are armed in that country?
OK, let me rephrase then - "I believe that the average effectiveness of the weapons possessed by those criminals who are armed with firearms in jurisdictions where firearms are heavily restricted is almost certainly much greater than the average effectiveness of the weapons possessed by those criminals who are armed with firearms in jurisdictions with comparatively permissive firearms laws"
Without wanting to weigh in on the rest of the gun debate issues, statistics don't show criminals in the UK having more effective firearms, in fact just the opposite.
More than half of the firearms offences in England&Wales involved the use of air weapons, a substantial number of the rest are imitation weapons, and only 12 of over 8,000 recorded violent crimes involved a machine gun (http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/htt... table 3.02)
A study by the police of the gun crime market (http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110218135832/htt...) concluded that automatic weapons were mostly used in gang warfare and as a status symbol; they're more expensive and the study noted that ammunition for all weapons was in short supply, which would make a bullet-hungry gun less attractive for other criminal usage (which is mainly to threaten).
With an imitation gun going for £20 and an automatic costing £1000, why would you choose the real gun to commit a robbery?
As someone who spent most of their life in the UK, allow me to explain why you are utterly wrong.
> There are likely a greater portion of unarmed criminals in the UK. Since their potential victims are also unarmed, that means that they are at the mercy of physically dominating criminals.
It's certainly true that most criminals in the UK are unarmed, but the "physically dominating" bit is way off the mark because most criminals are not physically dominating - anyone can be a criminal - the factors driving people towards crime have nothing to do with physical stature. This means that the majority of criminals are actually not particularly threatening, I have a friend who was mugged and simply picked up his assailant and threw him over a wall, another just laughed in the face of the teenager who threatened to mug him and walked off. Pepper spray and some knowledge of self defence will make you well prepared to handle the vast majority of criminals in the UK.
> Practically speaking, a person with a 6" knife can do far more damage to a person and have a higher likelihood of inflicting a mortal wound than someone with a .38 revolver.
First of all, knifes are also tightly controlled in the UK, though obviously smaller knifes are not particularly hard to come by. No doubt a skilful knife wielder can do a lot of damage to a person, but most criminals also are not skilful. At all. An inept gun wielder of any physical stature can effortlessly kill someone from yards away, in an instant. It's so easy, a toddler can do it. Also it's a lot harder to accidentally stab someone than to accidentally shoot them. Furthermore, those so inclined can (and do) learn how to fendoff a knife attack - you can't do that with a gun attack.
> my entire point is that more restrictions means that it's in the best interest of an armed criminal to obtain the most effective firearm possible.
That's completely backwards. You could hold up pretty much anywhere in the UK using a fake gun or an air rifle. There's absolutely no need for criminals to have actual weapons when their victims and the police too, are unarmed, because they pose no threat. Contrast this with the non-restrictive environment in the US where an unarmed or poorly armed criminal risks being shot by their victim, a responder, or the police. I live in the US now and my local ATM has an armed guard for crying out loud. That's an incredible incentive for criminals to turn up very well armed.
> rates don't really factor in to this thread
Oh but they do, because criminals with guns don't just wave them around for show: they use them. The per-capita homicide rate in the US is 5x higher than the UK and that difference is almost entirely composed of gun crime [1]. Take a moment to think about that.
So in conclusion, the U.K. is much, much safer because criminals don't have access to lethal weapons that are effortlessly easy to use and the statistics spell this out as clear as day.
> The per-capita homicide rate in the US is 5x higher than the UK and that difference is almost entirely composed of gun crime.
Is this because of the accessibility of firearms or other factors (specifically inequality and poverty)? While it's true that the US has a higher per capita rate of homicide, the impacts are not evenly distributed across society. Most Americans live in safe communities with crimes rates similar to other OECD countries. Even within cities with high rates of crime, homicide is usually restricted to a small geographic area.
That's a good question. The US is only marginally more unequal than the UK, and has a considerably higher GDP per capita. Much like the US, cities in the UK are a mix of wealth and grittier post-industrial areas, and poverty is often rural and multi-generational. So, it would look like the answer is a fairly strong "no". The US has more money than Britain, and it's distributed in almost the same manner.
> Practically speaking, a person with a 6" knife can do far more damage to a person and have a higher likelihood of inflicting a mortal wound than someone with a .38 revolver.
Because you couldn't just as easily. It's hard and expensive for a criminal to get hold of even a real revolver. Machine pistols and submachineguns are the preserve of organised crime. There's no way any regular criminal will be able to get their hands on one. Most handguns used by criminals are reactivated antiques and replicas. Guns are rare and expensive, but some are rarer and more expensive than others. Even when handguns were legal they were not common, as the licensing laws were already tight.
You seem to be dividing people into "law abiding" and "law disregarding". I posit that it's more complicated, and a law can disincentivize an activity even for people who break other laws.
Sigh...good guys with guns, again? Right. Your good guy with a gun is only that up until the moment he decides to go on a mass shooting spree. Is he still a good guy with a gun then?
That's why we should stop thinking that government employees are always good guys too. I've been through more background checks than most cops, and through about as much training as most young cops - but that doesn't make a difference in most gun control schemes that get discussed in the US.
>And part of the reason why cops are armed to the teeth is because the citizens are.
The vast majority of deaths from firearms result from handguns not AR15s. You dont have criminals in Level 4 hard plates roaming around down town LA with shoulder fired rockets.
You don't need a gun because nobody is going to shoot you. And secondly because even if you had a gun, I don't trust YOU to not flip out and go postal when someone looks at you the wrong way, or carry your loaded gun in an unsafe manner. From my point of view, and for anyone who doesn't know you, you are no different than a criminal with a gun. By simply owning a gun YOU increase the threat level for other people.
For a slightly different take: I won't let my seven year old have play dates at the houses of her friends when there is a gun in the house. And yes, I do ask.
I think it's great that you ask (as a parent unsecured firearms also concern me) but wouldn't it make more sense to ask what type of firearms are in the house and how they are stored? There is a huge difference between an unloaded rifle locked in a safe and a loaded pistol in a drawer. Even then, how can you be sure that people respond truthfully? I intend to teach my kids about the hazards of firearms in the same way I would with chemicals and tools.
I don't differentiate because I don't believe that those are sufficient safeguards. I believe this because when I was 12, friends routinely accessed firearms that their parents believed were secured, and many a starwars figurine was thus destroyed.
Your comment about chemical safety and tools bring up a very good point - a gun is just a tool, like a woodchipper, and while I wouldn't let my kid play with a woodchipper, I've never asked if there's one available at her friends house.
I'll freely admit that I'm inconsistent on this, and my attitude is based in part on my general anti-gun stance, and the easy moral superiority I feel when asking the question.
But seriously, my 12 year old self and friends never treated guns with the respect that we would a woodchipper. Possibly too many TV shows where guns were just bang bang bang, or that _Fargo_ hadn't come out yet.
Fair enough. Thanks for the reply. My high school had a target shooting club that satisfied much of the curiosity for my friends and I at that age and taught us gun safety. Since moving to the US I've definitely noticed that some gun owners here are much more lax about safe/secure storage.
The whole point of the 2nd Amendment was that the country was founded by taking up arms against tyranny, and the framers knew that the new government they were forming could just as easily lean towards tyranny.
Well, we're here. The police are no longer community organizations, rather they're full military units charged with waging war against the citizens they purport to protect.
Personally, I lean towards the side of always needing guns available, as a check. Quote nukes and F-16s all you like, civil uprisings are much more likely in a country where people are armed, no matter how poorly in comparison to the military.
That said, as I see tyranny increasing and police militarization increasing there is no part of me willing to now part with the rights I have left.
All that said, guns are not safe, they are for killing. The woman quoted in the article got lax in a place that requires constant vigilance (gun safety). One of the biggest problems with our gun culture is that the divide runs along the "don't take our guns!" line, and rational discussion, where we can admit the truth about the dangers ownership presents aren't heard.
> civil uprisings are much more likely in a country where people are armed*
Yes - but this is not a good thing! It's a bug not a feature!
I started this thread mentioning Dunblane, but perhaps I should have mentioned the Easter Risings and the Good Friday Agreement instead. The UK had an armed uprising for decades in Northern Ireland and it was terrible. I can't seem to get any of the guns-are-important-for-fighting-the-government advocates to engage with this and look at what actually happened when people responded to civil and human rights violations with AR-15s and Semtex.
>Yes - but this is not a good thing! It's a bug not a feature!
From the point of view of many Americans, not only is it a feature, but the defining feature of a free state.
Then again, many Americans take to heart Jefferson's line about the 'Tree of Liberty needing to be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants' without realizing what he actually meant by referring to both patriots and tyrants as 'its natural manure.'
As an outsider, I've always wondered about this: Since a lot of people in America are so much hell bent on keeping a gun for a hypothetical future situation of government turning hostile (completely ignoring the 'real, actual' killings that are happening very frequently because some psycho got access to what they obtained for their own safety) - will all these people be personally willing to take responsibility and go to jail for (mass) murder if some psychopath gets access to their gun and shoots people because of their negligence? I mean someone sane should be responsible for the continued acts of psychopaths after all.
I think it's irresponsible to not take reasonable precautions with guns. I keep mine in a GunVault. But mandating that by law and assigning liability to the owner is a slippery slope. I agree it makes sense with guns, but if someone breaks into my house looking for prescription medicines and I failed to adequately label poison, am I liable? If they ban guns and an armed robber breaks into my house, are the politicians who wrote the law liable?
To this and all such similar analogies, sure, anything can be used to kill, but let's talk about only the things whose primary purpose is to kill. Like Guns. Bombs. Canons. etc.
Now one might argue that the "primary purpose" for them is their safety and not killing, but no, it's not. That is assuming safety by creating a 'threat of getting killed' to the opponent.
I know this punishment is little harsh (and should be decided on per case basis based on the level of negligence) - but we should also agree that if there's no punishment whatsoever - this will continue happening. Mass killings is a real problem that needs to be solved, and most of them get access to guns in their mom's drawers or something like that.
I don't think your drug analogy is right, there most certainly are laws that mandate secure storage of dangerous items, explosives, animals, chemicals, etc. A more apt one would be an explosives store owner that locked their front door but didn't store their explosives in a safe. If someone broke in and stole the explosives wouldn't you expect the owner to be in big trouble?
A significant number of guns used in crimes are stolen, so its too bad that more gun owners don't believe in secure storage like you do. I don't get your "slippery slope" comment, could you expand on this more?
If this person poisons a dozen or ppl with your poison - yes the hell you are responsible!
edit: if you were a business that works with poisons and you did not provide adequate security measures, you would be so fined if someone steals the poisons. Then why you as individual wouldn't be responsible for the same thing.
Strange line of argument. But I will be okay if such policy is broad based. All good doctors to be responsible for some one in their professional indulged in massive malpractice, all s/w developers be responsible for someone writing virus or other kind of malware and so on.
I guess this amounts to a chicken-and-egg problem. In many European countries, police officers are only minimally armed (just a handgun, used only in rare circumstances).
Unlike USA police, for a typical European police officer shooting at someone is a career-limiting move. Even self-defense guarantees an unpleasant trial.
> In many European countries, police officers are only minimally armed (just a handgun, used only in rare circumstances).
And yet when I've been in Europe I've seen plenty of police and/or paramilitary units carrying submachine guns, something I never saw here in the U.S. even after 11 September.
At a guess, you saw them at the airport, the largest central rail station or the parliament building - which are just about the only places they carry automatic weapons. A tourist will visit all of these points, the average local - especially one that doesn't live in the capital - might go years without seeing one.
something I never saw here in the U.S. even after 11 September.
They were there, mainly at the airport. Not in recent years, and probably not very long after 2001, but I certainly saw armed military at the U. S. airports for six months or more after 09/11/01.
Yeah, transport hubs especially airports but also some railway stations will often have conspicuously armed police patrolling. And high-profile government buildings. The UK gun of choice for this is the distinctive HK MP5 submachine gun.
Conversely if you want to see the use of the AR-15 in public artwork, you should go to Northern Ireland.
In Switzerland I once saw a conscript get on a train and put his rifle in the luggage rack exactly as if it were an umbrella. But Switzerland is different (guns are mandatory, ammunition heavily controlled, the people are the "militia" and support the government, and the whole country is a mountain fortress).
Last summer when I was in Switzerland I got on train with at least 50 conscripts, all casually on their way home with a beer in one hand and an assalt rifle in the the other. Kind of a weird sight.
Huh, what's wrong with me then. I absolutely do not need a gun, ever. Nobody needs a gun. If you think you need a gun then you have serious problems.
Let's talk about basic human needs. Food, water, Air, and to a lesser extent clothing and shelter. You don't need a gun for any of those things. Sure a gun can help with food, but guess what, you don't even need to eat meat, there are so many other sources of food.
So no, you don't need a gun, and you sure as hell don't need a "semi-automatic pistol".
Respectfully, what right do you have to determine my needs?
From a more practical perspective, what are you going to do about it? Are you proposing to take arms from the American people by force? How many deaths are acceptable to make that happen?
To be clear, I don't mean the above as a threat or anything of the sort. I'm merely pointing out the certain result of a policy of disarmament, and the hypocrisy of using force to render a population defenseless.
Not to mention that self defense is a natural negative right. Gun ownership falls in the same category. My negative right to defend myself with a gun, from someone wishing to do me egregious or fatal harm doesn't affect anyone else.
> Are you proposing to take arms from the American people by force
To the extent that libertarians believe that taxes are extracted by force (I usually see this written as "violence") then yes. If each gun carried a tax sufficient to mitigate it's societal cost, and if each cartridge were an order of magnitude more expensive, we would be done with this issue in 100 years.
It will take a long time, but it won't get done if we don't start.
(Preventively - yes, you can 3D print yourself a handgun, and likely blow your hand off, and reload your own bullets. At that point your personal time doing that work is a proxy for the taxes you would have payed.)
It would never be an overnight event, it would take a generation of ratcheting restrictions. In that sense the "slippery slope" pro-gun people are right; the end point of incremental measures has to be a country with far fewer guns.
But it looks just as feasible from an ideological point of view as ending white supremacism in the US.
> Nobody needs a gun. If you think you need a gun then you have serious problems.
Tell that to the president and secret service.
EDIT: The purpose of the comment above is to point out the prescription above isn't a black and white issue. At least not if you are thinking about the real world we live in.
Imagine the absurdity of US citizens being told this by their government, who then drafts their 18 year old children and sends them to a foreign land to kill people with the most lethal technology the US military industrial complex can come up with. Paid for by US citizens tax dollars.
And the government "needs" to take them, why? And the police "need" bigger ones, why? And the government "needs" attack drones, why? I don't think my post is unreasonable - I'm calling for demilitarization all over the place - not just the ones unlucky enough to not get a secret service detail or government issued weapon for life.
What about a musket, one chosen purposefully for inefficient reloading speed. Is that more appealing for home protection because we'd be prevented from committing a mass shooting?
"nobody needs a gun"
This is a statement that for anyone to take seriously requires you to say your age and approx geographic location as it clearly is informing your belief.
It did point out that I was wrong about no mass shootings (p57):
"In 2010/11, the police provisionally recorded 642 offences of homicide, which includes the 12
people killed by Derrick Bird in June 2010. Homicide offences increased by four per cent (24
offences) compared with 2009/10 (Table 2.04).3 Caution should be taken in looking at short
term changes in the number of homicides, as they can fluctuate from year-to-year. For
example, the rise in homicides this year follows a fall the previous year"
But the dead giveaway is buried in a footnote on p58:
"As measured by the Homicide Index. The number of currently recorded homicides peaked in 2001/02 at 794. There
are more currently recorded homicides for 2002/03 (943), but these include the 172 victims of Harold Shipman,
which were all recorded in 2002/03 but took place over a number of years."
Harold Shipman was a doctor who spent a large part of his career murdering elderly patients with medication. The huge spike in John Lott's graph is almost entirely due to this one set of crimes being recorded in 2002/03.
But are homicides down overall? What's the purpose of banning firearms if they don't prevent murders? Because if we compared home invasion rates (and perhaps some other categories), I'm guessing they'd look drastically lopsided. In the US state where I live 80% of those convicted of home invasion said they carefully picked a house where they believed the owner was not armed. And the news often carries stories of people stopping assaults, rapes, and home invasions with their personal firearm, nearly always with no one being harmed. These stats are of course not recorded.
"Home invasion" is not a category known to UK crime reporting; the same PDF says
There has been a general downward trend in police recorded homicides over recent years. If
the provisional figure of 642 homicides is confirmed when the final figures from the Homicide Index are published, then this would represent a fall of 19 per cent in homicides since
2001/02."
and
"The BCS shows that the number of violent incidents increased gradually through the 1980s
and then increased sharply after 1991 to reach a peak in the mid 1990s. The number of
incidents then showed steep decreases in the late 1990s. Since then, despite non-statistically
significant year-on-year changes, there has been an overall decline."*
The decline in violence is actually somewhat global and not really anything to do with firearms either way. What the gun ban does unambiguously reduce is the opportunity for mass shootings.
(Did you mean compare rates within the same country, or rates between the UK and US? The UK's overall murder rate is comparable to that of two or three US cities. Sadly this PDF only goes back to 2000/2001 and doesn't cover the 90s.)
I was sure there was a nasty bit of deception going on, I was digging through gov.uk's England/Wales crime stats PDFs looking for the explanation and it seems you've figured it out :) However if my previous chats with pro-gun types are anything to go by, please don't be surprised if there's a reply along the lines of "so if that was the cause then why don't you go ban medication..."
I think DC is an anomaly because of its small size and proximity to Virginia, which has one very permissive gun sales laws. State-by-State reporting only really works when states are large enough that the populations you are studying live almost entirely within the border of such state and the actions that take place in the state are done by the same population. DC as a very small city (500K or so actual residents) is not going to be accurately captured by such a study because many of the activities that take place in DC are undertaken by residents or Maryland or Virginia. For a more mundane example than gun deaths, one could look at traffic accidents. If one took the number of traffic accidents that occur in DC and dvided by the number of DC residents, I would expect DC residents would look like bad drivers (high rate of accidents per resident), but that is a false conclusion because many of the cars on the road on any given day come in from neighboring states (I have been told that daytime population of the city is three times the number of residents, but I don't have a citation for that, so it may be wrong but is certainly directionally correct). So your denominator is wrong, you should look at traffic accidents in DC/cars on the road in DC or some similar metric.
I agree on the tracking on gun ownership in the US, which is why I treat all such research with the same distrust. Whether they are pro or anti gun in nature.
I've seen numerous times people complaining that crime statistics are recorded differently from country to country and the differences being used strategically to prove an argument. I've seen such spikes used to prove and disprove the same arguments before.
The UK had a spike in homicides in 2003, so what? The overall trend is clearly downwards. The 2009 firearm homicide rate is less than half the avg. rate for the 90's and I believe it has only gone down further since (cherry picked date ranges).
Ireland had an increase in homicides following gun bans in the 70's? And it was the gun ban that caused it, not the Troubles? Likewise Jamaica - nothing at all to do with the massive increase in drug trafficking flowing through the Carribean, following the start of drug-prohibition in the 70's?
EDIT: It turns out the data is dodgy as well. The spike is due to all 170+ of Harold Shipman's murders being recorded solely in 02/03
So... because England doesn't agree with your agenda it must not be a large enough sample and its laws must have the same legitimacy that you get from the random dictates of some random Somali guy? I see.
Just google "gun crime rates in the UK". All the stats I've seen, and what I've been lead to believe in the news, is that gun crime rates have dramatically increased since the handgun ban (and illegal gun ownership has also increased). That's not to imply cause and effect, but I don't see any evidence that the handgun ban did anything to curb gun crime.
Licensing rules were already very stringent at the time - you just can't compare it to the US - and Dunblane was a feak incident. I'm not aware of one like it before or since in the UK.
Yeah that's an excellent sketch. I think he really does touch on an important point, the only good reason to have guns is because they're fun. Self defense is nonsense and protection from government is even more nonsense nowadays.
I'm actually fairly pro-gun (for the UK at least), I think we're quite restrictive on the type of guns allowed (eg. larger calibre rifles would be fun down a range). But at the same time I'm very pro gun-control; they should be licensed, inspected, restricted in type and how/where you're allowed to carry, etc.
Overall I'm happy with how it's worked out, I'd rather not have guns than have the problems of mass gun ownership.
"Yeah that's an excellent sketch. I think he really does touch on an important point, the only good reason to have guns is because they're fun. Self defense is nonsense and protection from government is even more nonsense nowadays."
You're completely overlooking (dismissing ?) animal husbandry and predator control for livestock, etc.
Depending on your location, a rifle (or three) is absolutely necessary to protect animals.
On our ranch, we have a herd of sheep that we need to protect from heavy fox and coyote and bobcat predation. We also have to trap raccoons that go after our flock of chickens, so we have a .22 to put them down (no reason to wake up the whole valley with a larger caliber just to kill todays raccoon).
Remember that next time you're at the farm to table restaurant eating the local lamb or the free range chicken - "your farmer"[1] uses firearms and considers them essential tools.
[1] Popular in the US is a bumper sticker "Know your Farmer, Know your Food" ... or ... "I know my farmer"
Yeah, sorry. Work guns are the exception. They're the exception in the UK also.
However, the vast majority of firearms sold are not for farming purposes. Agricultural jobs make up ~1% of the US workforce, yet there's over 1 gun per person. It's a bit of a red herring to talk about it though; no-one is advocating complete gun bans, but sensible gun control.
"Similar in Australia, farmers are allowed to own rifles."
Not really. Farm workers in Australia are allowed to own "class C" firearms which are "Pump-action or self-loading shotguns having a magazine capacity of 5 or fewer rounds and semi automatic rimfire rifles" ...
I wouldn't really characterize a rimfire weapon as a real rifle and I am not really sure how useful that is, other than the raccoon work that I mentioned above. I wouldn't attempt shooting foxes or coyotes with a .22.
The Australian gun laws are amazingly restrictive for a country that large and wild and varied. I would feel quite hamstrung as a farmer (or even simply a resident) in a remote, rural area with only a shotgun and/or a .22 (the typical rimfire weapon) ...
Actually, a re-reading of the wiki page[1] suggests that I misunderstood - it looks like bolt action rifles are "class B" and, although it's hard to tell, are available to regular folks in some shape or form.
Uhm, that graph shows the gun crime rate going up directly after the handgun ban, not down. That doesn't say to me that banning handguns reduced gun crime.
Here's another graph showing the same thing, and another one below showing a correlation in the reduction of gun crime to an increase of policing resources.
You must be wearing some funny glasses, I see a very clear downward trend from left to right over all those charts. And that chart you just linked is the very same one that was completely debunked earlier in the thread and still shows a consistent long term downward trend...
It's not irrelevant as a large number of firearms were unlicensed. There were a ton of old service guns lying in peoples attics completely unregistered. It takes time to enforce a law.
long term, yes, but in the few years after the gun ban, the graph goes steeply up, so I don't know how you can draw the conclusion that banning guns had the consequence of reducing gun crime. And the graph I linked to seems to use the same data yours does, so aparently your data is just as worthless as mine.
It's not irrelevant as a large number of firearms were unlicensed. There were a ton of old service guns lying in peoples attics completely unregistered. It takes time to enforce a law.
There are probably still service guns lying in people's attics; I don't suppose much crime is being done with them.
As far as handguns that were in active use - i.e. the ones relevant to this conversation - they had to be (and were) handed over to police within the year iirc. It was done quickly and efficiently.
The licensing laws are and were very strict. Anybody who had a handgun was required to have a licence for it, for which good character references and criminal record background checks were (and are) required, and they had to renew it every year. They also had to be an active member of a gun club (the only place you were allowed to use a handgun), and that membership was also reviewed every year.
So it's difficult to imagine how banning handguns would have much of an effect on handgun crime in the first place, unless you want to argue that licenced gun owners were committing crime and getting away with it, which I don't.
But still, I'm willing to be convinced with evidence. A graph that doesn't show gun crime increasing after a ban would be a good place to start.
The chart is very clearly downward, with a couple of upward slopes in the middle. If you cherry pick the evidence like that crimeresearch.org link does, you'll get the upward slope. If you look at the data as a whole, you get the long term downward trend. This is pretty much the definition of Simpson's Paradox. The downward trend is the correct one.
If anyone is falling prey to Simpson's Paradox, it's you. You're the one implying a causation based on those statistics. I'm asserting that there's not enough information there to make any such connection, and I'm highlighting on the graph a short-term upward trend that contradicts the assertion that you are trying to make. Ignore that part of the data if it makes you feel better; I still wouldn't accept that there's enough data there to support your theory.
Another interpretation of the data, also just a theory but no less valid, is that handguns rose in popularity as the weapon of choice within gangs, and the police responded by targeting gun crime. Again, I wouldn't want to state it as fact, but it would be a useful starting point for additional research.
The reason frankly why I would need so much convincing that banning hand guns had any effect gun crime rates in the UK is because I just don't think there were enough gun owners to be statistically significant in the first place. Handgun shooting was a niche sport - a very niche sport.
Simpson's Paradox frequently arises because of cherry picking though. Marrs is specifically looking at an upwards slope over 3-4 data points after 1998. Whereas the overall slope of the chart from 1996-2009 is downwards. Clearly falling foul of the paradox. Not to mention, as has been repeatedly stated in this thread - that peak around 02/03 was solely due to the 172 Harold Shipman serial killings being added to the statistics in that year only. And they weren't even anything to do with gun crime...
As for Ireland and Jamaica, the increase in homicides are very explainable given the Troubles and rise of Carribean drug trafficking in the 70s.
I was referring specifically to the situation in the UK because this is what the GP was talking about. I don't know enough about US culture to be able to comment on the issues faced there. I can only say that US citizens appear to have a comfort with firearms that makes me uneasy.
But again, a lot of my understanding on this subject comes from the media, so you can take it with a pinch of salt if you like.
I'm not familiar with that institution so I might be committing a blunder here, but their reporting seems incredibly biased for a "research" institution, and I can't help but wonder what methodology they're using to classify their data.
- 303 deaths in the EU. This is simply an incorrect result, it counts victims from Norway, which is not an EU member.
- Only 4 mass shootings in the US in 2015. I don't live in the US and I can name at least 6 that made the headlines over here in Europe (e.g. the Harris County mass shooting isn't included).
- Hundreds of victims in France -- which is correct in terms of numbers, but most of them were victims of terrorist attacks, not mentally-deranged students who bought a rifle one sunny morning and started firing around. Most of those incidents barely match their own definition: "four or more people killed in a public place, and not in the course of committing another crime, and not involving struggles over sovereignty".
- A high number of victims for Norway, all of which are due to the Breivik incident. Limiting the debate to the Obama administration has the convenient consequence of keeping Norway's figures high. It would literally be twice as low if it were to include the Bush administration as well; I suspect the figure for the US wouldn't be twice as low in that case.
Besides, the conclusion is highly debatable. It tries to obtain that "US becoming safer compared to Europe" but:
- It does not include data from all European countries
- It "statistically" (i.e. incorrectly) conflates countries with widely differing legislation and enforcement status. This is very blatantly wrong: Serbia, second in that list, has a very strong gun culture and very liberal gun ownership laws compared to other European countries. My Serbian friends can carry guns that are only issued to members of the police and military where I live.
I don't know enough about how things are in the US to challenge that institution's opinions on the US, but their analysis of the European landscape is shaky at best, betrays a very obvious cluelesness about European laws and Europe in general, and frankly, I think the numbers are nicely tuned to give useful statistics.
I'm sorry, what I was trying to say was it'd be enlightening to see a news article (links?) on someone killed by a gun to correlate truth to anything with those stats or the implied representation anyway.
Also it looks like you created a throwaway to say this. It says a lot about your conviction on what you're saying.
You know you can find data supporting whatever you want, or at least casting doubts on whatever you don't like.
This does not mean data is irrelevant, but it is quite important to know who collected it, following what procedure, and with what goal in mind. Not sure that study above is the most unbiased, for instance.
Come and try the UK for a bit. People do not have guns.
If you like, take the time to go through the data and understand why it does not actually fit the reality of the situation here. Don't expect other people to disprove shit data.
Both events lead to changes in firearm licensing rules, and in both cases if the existing rules had been correctly enforced, it's doubtful either person would have held a licence.
It appears everything was correctly enforced? He went through the appropriate channels - filled in the correct forms, and appeared sane at the time of application.
I guess another question would be, why on earth would anyone need _any_ of those guns.
There was a lot of discussion at the time, and my recollection is he was already known to mental health services. The Sun et al had him painted as a rabid survivalist of course. Wiki seems to say it was retrospective diagnosis, so I'm not sure...
I can understand wanting to collect, or at least try, different types, but who in the world needs an assault rifle?
People interested in self defense. The term "assault rifle" or "assault weapon" was made up by the media. An assault rifle is just your typical rifle that your great grandfather would have used for hunting back in the day. It is not what the media and politicians will lead you to believe.
I think what leads people to ask this question is an major misunderstanding that an "assault rifle" is a big scary machine gun. They are not. An AR15 or AK47 are not machine guns that spray bullets with a single trigger pull. (Those are fully automatic weapons that are already heavily restricted). Assault weapons account for, on average, 2% of all firearms used in crimes, with the highest estimate being 13%. [1]
The semi-automatic AR15 or AK47 are actually very effective and safe home defense firearms for a few reasons:
- The round they use is less likely to penetrate through walls compared to a standard handgun round. This has been ballistically tested numerous times but no one likes to mention it when talking about the issue.
- They are easier to shoot more accurately at close range and longer distances.
- They hold more rounds. Why do you need more rounds? Because one shot is unlikely to stop most threats. Shocking I know, this is also something that is not how it seems in the movies. Also unmentioned when talking about self defense is that there may be multiple attackers. It's not so uncommon to have more than one attacker in a home invasion.
It was wikipedia that describes the AK 47 as an assault rifle. I followed a link from the hungerford page wondering what a type 56 was.
Wouldn't you be better off with a semi auto pistol if wanting self defence in a house? Rifle seems a little, well, unwieldy and better suited for range. Clearly I'm not an expert. :)
> People interested in self defense
See that's always been a difference in UK / US gun use and ownership.
If I were to shoot an attacker with even a .22 rimfire target pistol I'd expect to go to prison for a considerable number of years. Somehow we've managed to avoid the use of firearms in self defence aside from the occasional farmer with shotgun. Even then it gets widely reported and discussed.
Even at the height of legal gun ownership using one against a person, or in pursuit of a crime has been relatively rare. For the longest time using a firearm against police (generally unarmed here) carried a very high stigma and until the 60s likelihood of being hanged. It's still newsworthy for the police to get out an armed response unit in many areas.
The only self-defence legislation permits the use of reasonable force, which generally means the bare minimum you can get away with. Legally you can kill someone in self defence, but it's almost unheard of. Woe betide you if you hit them a little too hard or often and badly injure the poor burglar.
We tend to view discussion of home invasions and wanting self-defence weapons as a quaint excess of our transatlantic cousins. We don't keep firearms in the home, there are very few baseball (or even cricket) bats kept by our beds. We don't expect, or prepare for, home invasions. Probably in some of the worst areas it's a little more common, and illegal gun use a little higher.
It's interesting our nations diverged so much given gun ownership was fairly common here in earlier years, and both wars lead to many old service weapons kept in drawers and attics, unlicensed of course.
In many US states there is a requirement to retreat - that its not self-defence if you could have avoided the incident. Sounds like the UK has a requirement like that too?
Depends on what one is defining an "assault rifle". The most common definition used by the news media can be a semi-automatic hunting rifle with aftermarket parts on it. The term "assault rifle" is a dishonest attempt by certain people to influence a certain reaction in people.
From wikipedia "Type 56 assault rifle". The title of the page that loaded when I followed a link from the wiki page on the Hungerford shooting. Far as I knew it was the correct name.
I am not attempting to influence any reaction. Are wikipedia?
I can understand the deep interest in guns, for instance I thoroughly enjoy FPS russia. But I do not think as a society we can manage the general public having guns, Australia and the UK are a very good example of how new laws have come into place.
> But I do not think as a society we can manage the general public having guns, Australia and the UK are a very good example of how new laws have come into place
There are numerous other developed/OECD countries with "high" rates of firearms ownership and use that do not have the same rate of violence seen in the US. Not to mention the millions of responsible gun owners who safely use firearms for hunting, sport, and self protection. Violent crime with firearms still occurs in both the UK and Australia - both countries have a seedy underbelly that occasionally spills over (e.g. the gang related shooting in Sydney yesterday or the drive by shooting in Brixton last month). Gun control is a spectrum - there are other other countries that have sensible gun control measures that help to limit violent crime without penalizing responsible gun owners. Personally I have no issue with sensible control measures, but I do wish society would also address many of the other associated issues (access to mental health services, inequality/poverty, the war on drugs).
I used to fly. I'd quite like to fly many different marques, Spitfire included. So I can understand someone with an interest in firearms wanting to shoot many calibers and types. In the UK target shooting and clay pigeon shooting were the commonest use of firearms, rather than doing damage. Unless you count the paper.
I'm well aware the Sun is just a comic, just sharing the recollection. :)
Overall I'm in favour of law abiding citizens being able to shoot if they wish to, but the experience of the likes of Hungerford and Cumbria tells us it's not worth the risk. I'm inclined to think that in the absence of firearms Ryan or Hamilton would have done something equally terrible with an axe or bread knife. We already had a school machete attack in the 90s. It's the mental state not the firearm per se that's the problem. So I don't find it as clear cut as maybe I'd like it to be.
Indeed. It would be great if everyone were responsible and it could be a harmless collector's hobby, but they aren't and we can't have nice things.
I was actually taught to shoot at school in the UK (cadet scheme), so it's not something entirely alien to me. But it's not something I can see as "necessary" either.
Ignoring the "assault rifle" part of this. Semi-automatic carbines are great fun to shoot, they have a lower recoil impulse than traditional larger rifles and military surplus ammunition and parts generally creates a cheap and easy way to enjoy firearms. You can get an AR-15 for $600 or so and spend an afternoon enjoying it without a hurt shoulder or a bloody nose.
Everything can be used in a destructive fashion, if a society is mature enough then it can enjoy them. Alcohol, private planes, cars, knives, food,etc all carry the same risk of abuse as guns.
More americans die of eating too much food each year than in all gun deaths ,let alone mass shootings.
Let's not forget that the UK also doesn't have brown bears, black bears, mountain lions, wolves, coyotes, and a southern border with a country that routinely has horrific murders involving decapitated bodies. Personally I can understand why SOME Americans feel the need to carry a firearm. It's highly unlikely that you would be harmed by the animals mentioned above or even be affected by the violence in Mexico, but it's also unlikely that you will need your smoke alarm or seat belt on any given day. We don't all live in safe urban areas where the police are minutes away.
BTW doesn't the UK have zoos, animal sanctuaries or wealthy residents who own predators?
In the USA thousands of lions, tigers, cheetahs, cape buffalo and other non-native predator species reside in zoos, animal sanctuaries or even back yards. Subplots of apocalyptic movies/stories sometimes depict the ensuing confusion/mayhem should these predators get loose.
Hunting African game species is significantly more difficult than hunting North American game species. Indeed the African species may be hunting you! Larger-caliber firearms are recommended, larger than most firearms commonly used in North American. The .223 (e.g., AR-15) is a varmint cartridge designed for coyotes and stretched to hunt deer and men, the 30-06 (.30 caliber) a military round intended to kill humans. Hunters of African predators typically use larger calibers, .375" and up.
A true SHTF scenario in either the UK and USA would result in some interesting inter-species encounters, to say the least. But they would still pale in comparison to the intraspecies encounters.
while all unlikely, happen with regularity in the USA. We are lucky we don't need to deal with famine here, but in the rest of the world it is a real threat.
1. Do you know police shot and killed unarmed people at Danziger Bridge during Hurricane Katrina?
Don't you have armed police/military who, while a blessing in some instances, are in others a curse?
Occasionally. This is why I keep bringing up Northern Ireland. However that is a situation in which armed civilians fought back against having their civil rights violated by the state, resulting in a >30 year civil war and bombing campaign.
I don't even understand what you're saying should have happened instead in New Orleans - should people have been shooting back? Surely the right answer is everyone being less trigger happy?
"I don't even understand what you're saying should have happened instead in New Orleans - should people have been shooting back? Surely the right answer is everyone being less trigger happy?"
The police, federal officers and National Guard should not have confiscated weapons. Then people could have protected themselves as was their right. Note that there was no evidence of "everyone being trigger happy".
> Protection from wild animals? Contrary to popular belief, we don't all have polar bears in our yard. > We had a coyote on our street last year, but nobody felt threatened enough to pull out a gun.
I didn't mean to suggest that everyone should carry a firearm because of this. I've hiked in areas with brown bears, regularly go into areas with black bear/mountain lion/wolves, and often encounter/hear coyotes at my house. I personally do not feel the need to carry a firearm because of this, but I can understand why others may. It depends upon you tolerance for risk. For some, the small chance of a dangerous encounter justifies their need to carry a firearm. I think it would be disingenuous to suggest that firearms are totally useless for that purpose
Understood, couldn't find aggregated gun murders (easily) but I'm fairly certain it's a lot more than the 1 / year the op was proposing.
It's quite a lot more than that in N.Ireland alone / year, even since '96.
[edit] My bad, found it. It's the graph below the one I originally linked. Of the total guns deaths, it looks like roughly 1/4 are homicide, 38 in 2011.
No question, a lot less than the US. Even when we Irish were at the height of bashing the crap out of each other there were still more total gun related incidents in D.C. than had happened across the peak 25 years of the troubles.
All other factors aside your proposition is true; fewer guns per capita, fewer bullets leaving said guns at capita
DC is a good example, because it highlights that the problem is not the number of guns but the propensity to use them. Ther e are many states with very high gun ownership rates but relatively lower gun death rates; for example TX has twice the ownership of CA but half the gun homicides. The distribution of gun deaths is very uneven, for your 'average' American the risk of death by gun is only marginally higher than in Europe.
I don't know anyone who is pro-gun that is going to give up his gun as long as there is a terrorism threat to his family and country. Politicians need to squelch the terrorism war chanting if they ever want any form of gun control to pass in the U.S.
No one but scared liberals want "gun control". Freedom-loving Americans want elected officials to enforce the existing laws, not create new ones out of fear.
Registration is the first step to disarmament. Look back no further than Janet Reno, thankfully no longer in her position, who famously said that the actual goal is disarmament of the population. A certain venomous Democrat presidential hopeful has also echoed this sentiment publicly, recently stating on the record that only police and military should own handguns. Why on Earth would anyone vote for someone who wants to take away freedoms enshrined in the Constitution?
To some degree I agree. The problem with most vocal proponents of "reasonable" regulation in this space is that they are negotiating in bad faith. In many ways it reminds me of the current debate on encryption. Fundamentally these people don't want to seek a viable middle ground which protects freedoms while mitigating problems, they want to remove the rights or protections entirely. It therefore becomes almost impossible to take anything other than an absolutist stance because every negotiation involves the outcome of previous "reasonable negotiations" being used as the starting point for the people on defense. Their fundamental goal is to slowly chip away until there is nothing left.
> Why on Earth would anyone vote for someone who wants to take away freedoms enshrined in the Constitution?
Because it is adjusted as we develop and learn more about the world we live in, it has happened in the past, and I sincerely hope it continues to happen.
Then the politicians who wish to ban guns should do it through the front door and propose a constitutional amendment. They won't do that, because it won't pass because there is nowhere near the level of consensus in the country to get such a massive change to the American law done.
I am quite pro-gun, and terrorism doesn't even register on the reasons why. I believe the same could be said of most everyone I know in that community.
It's not about fear; it's primarily about a worldview that centers on individuality and distrust of government.
I've never understood this argument. The day you pull a gun on "government" is the day you will be killed on the spot, or sentenced to death row, or sent to life in prison with no chance of parole. You will be permanently removed from your comfortable life, and whomever takes that life away from you will face no penalty for doing so.
So you own a handgun? The government will have assault rifles. Oh, you own an assault-like rifle? The government will have RPG's and grenades. It doesn't matter what you own, the government will win every time. You are guaranteed to lose.
We hear this argument from Americans every single time this topic is brought up. "It's to keep the government in check!". What a load of horse crap. Every time, we only hear repeated "Constitution! Constitution!". Perhaps a little rational thought is required to comprehend that a document written ~227 years ago is probably out of date with modern reality when it comes to firearms.
It's a combination of amusing, frustrating, and bewildering to witness a large number of Americans' behaviour whenever this topic resurfaces. Honestly, most of the rest of the world out here just can't understand how you people are so goddamn self-indoctrinated into keeping your guns. There is no reasoning that I can apply to even begin to validate the concept that guns in the hands of citizens is a good thing.
No one is imagining turning into Rambo and overthrowing their local sheriff. The idea is that there are limits to how far the American people can be pushed before we - as a group - simply refuse to go along anymore.
This stems directly from American history. The Constitution was written in a time when things like the Boston Massacre, Bunker Hill, and Col. Parker's stand in Concord and Lexington were fresh in the collective consciousness.
> Perhaps a little rational thought is required to comprehend that a document written ~227 years ago is probably out of date with modern reality when it comes to firearms.
I don't believe it is - and there are millions of others who agree with me. We're armed to the teeth, so good luck changing it. That's the whole point :)
> It's a combination of amusing, frustrating, and bewildering to witness a large number of Americans' behaviour whenever this topic resurfaces. Honestly, most of the rest of the world out here just can't understand how you people are so goddamn self-indoctrinated into keeping your guns. There is no reasoning that I can apply to even begin to validate the concept that guns in the hands of citizens is a good thing.
I understand that. Sitting here in Virginia, I cannot fathom how the Brits gave up their weapons without a fight less than a generation after they were literally asking the American public to donate firearms in preparation of a German invasion.
That's OK though, because I don't live under their rule. I'm happy to share my perspective and learn about theirs. I hold no ill will against people on the other side of an ocean that don't understand my political views.
No one is imagining turning into Rambo and overthrowing their local sheriff.
I think people certainly do imagine that, although few of them put it into practice. What about those guys who occupied the wildlife refuge? Like a lonelier, more heavily armed Occupy?
Brits gave up their weapons without a fight .. German invasion
Funny thing this. The war looms large in UK national identity; our finest hour, Dunkirk, the Blitz, the Few, etc. However there's no English(+) tradition of anti-government armed struggle, and obviously WW2 we were fighting for the government. There is very little gun culture either. It's just not an important factor in politics. The idea of the government going rogue is just not something people think about - unless you're on the left, which has perhaps a few more wounds. Whereas in the US this particular kind of armed antigovernmentalism seems to be a right-wing thing.
(+) does not apply in Scotland and NI!
The UK history of violent confrontation with the state is mostly "left". Bloody Sunday. Orgreave. Hillsborough(++). Peterloo. Red Clydeside. Brixton.
(++) an accident made far worse by aggressive victim-blaming and systematic evidence forging by police and press.
The ways in which violence, crime, race, poverty, policing, politics, political violence and dissent are conceptualised are mostly entirely different. Ideas do constantly leak through from the US film industry though.
> It doesn't matter what you own, the government will win every time. You are guaranteed to lose.
I think this isn't true if enough people decide to attack the government in concert, say 10% of the population, that's 30 million people. I'm not saying that will ever happen, but American police forces are already stretched to the limit and can be easily tied up.
But probably, knives would suffice for that purpose. Or just not showing up for work.
> American police forces are already stretched to the limit and can be easily tied up
Which is why state police and then the National Guard and then other branches of the military become involved in any serious unrest. E.g. Ferguson for an extremely recent example.
> say 10% of the population
Overwhlemingly dispersed throughout suburban and rural populations that are far more easily controlled than a large urban uprising. And also, it would take extraordinary circumstances to find 10% of the population willing to commit to an armed revolution. If you have that many people that angry, odds are that the democratic process would work far better anyways. That's the rub with this fantasy and why it hasn't happened in recent memory -- once that many people are that angry, they probably have a sympathetic majority anyways.
Keep in mind that the United States has 2mil+ prisoners and has absolutely no problem keeping the police. If we assume only a small fraction of people who could land in prison actually do, then it's entirely possible that 10% of the population is or was at one point at danger of being locked up and still would never commit to an armed insurrection.
Also, only ~60% of the US even votes. So 10% is a truly huge number.
Actually, the most ironic thing about this part of the gun debate is that the people who are least persecuted by actual systemic violence against subpopulations of the United States both 1) insist that this violence doesn't exist or is justified; and 2) worry about their own non-existent completely hypothetical persecution at some vague distant point in the future.
All the while, people who are in actually persecuted groups (poor, racial minorities who have double digit odds at incarceration) don't get involved in the gun debate because they know the "standing up to the man" fantasy is dangerous bullshit.
10% is absurdly high. That's beyond an insurgency, straight past an insurrection, and on into civil war.
> All the while, people who are in actually persecuted groups (poor, racial minorities who have double digit odds at incarceration) don't get involved in the gun debate because they know the "standing up to the man" fantasy is dangerous bullshit.
In my experience, racial minorities see firearms as a tool of a criminal and the oppressor, because they often grow up in a place where the only people they see with them are criminals and cops.
Meanwhile, I've personally introduced several individuals who are members of minority groups to firearms, and the message of self-reliance is something that really resonates with them. Consider that the motto of the Pink Pistols is "armed gays don't get bashed". It's not like it used to be, the gun community isn't just a bunch of old middle-class white dudes. Sure, I'm a member of the NRA - but I'm also a member of the Pink Pistols and the JPFO.
"Actually, the most ironic thing about this part of the gun debate is that the people who are least persecuted by actual systemic violence against subpopulations of the United States both 1) insist that this violence doesn't exist or is justified; and 2) worry about their own non-existent completely hypothetical persecution at some vague distant point in the future.
All the while, people who are in actually persecuted groups (poor, racial minorities who have double digit odds at incarceration) don't get involved in the gun debate because they know the "standing up to the man" fantasy is dangerous bullshit."
I regret that I have but one upvote to give for this.
> It doesn't matter what you own, the government will win every time. You are guaranteed to lose.
You're thinking at the individual level. Of course the state is going to have far more firepower than anything an individual can muster.
Think in terms of asymmetrical warfare.
Why is the U.S. still in Afghanistan? Why did OIF go from a three-week invasion to over a decade of grueling counterinsurgency operations? Surely those scrappy little resistance fighters couldn't stand up to our might...they die in droves, yet they persist.
I distrust my toddler, because she is incapable of making rational choices. I'm not going to let her walk across a parking lot by herself.
I distrust a venomous snake for the same reasons. I'm also extremely cautious around them, because they can cause pain or death if mishandled. That doesn't mean I'm afraid of them.
But that has to be cultural reaction as well. The UK was subject through the 80s/90s to a persistent, genuine, armed terrorist threat in the form of Irish republican and unionist terrorism. If the reaction of the population of Northern Ireland and England to that had been to demand that they be allowed to arm themselves, I don't think we'd have ever reached an end to the Troubles.
France has roughly the same permitting system and storage regulations as Switzerland but you may not posses given types of rifles/handguns. Furthermore there is a limit on ammunition you can purchase per year.
Let's go beyond just gun control here.. Look at Canada gun ownership there is More per capita than the United States and gun violence is practically unheard of. -- There's something else wrong w/ this country..
Rather than two events which, however horrible, are an anomaly.
How many mass shootings per year over the last decade? Two decades? And so on?
It's like those who pointed to Australia banning guns after the Port Arthur massacre:
"Homicides went up three per cent the next year! Gun control doesn't work!"
1. "Homicides" encapsulated other methods than "with a gun", and most importantly,
2. Whilst there are 17,000 homicides a year in the US for which a three per cent rise represents over five hundred more deaths, the conveniently omitted fact was that that same three per cent rise in Australia meant that deaths went from 94 to 96, in other words, an anomaly.
Right, because if some crazy asshole shoots people randomly it's a mass shooting but if he happens to be muslim it's terrorism. Sorry, keep forgetting about that memo.
Well the relevant difference is whether the shooters had external support to commit their crime.
That it's possible for a determined group to acquire guns and attack people is one thing. It being possible for a single mentally unstable person to do so is quite another.
Actually I think the current practice is to label pretty much everything terrorism. Part of the perpetual crisis strategy used to justify the militarization of police forces.
The ensuing total ban on handguns ... mean firearm murders are extremely rare
Given that firearm murders rose after the ban (link from jjoonathan), please explain very clearly to me how can the low rate (it was low in the first place) be caused by the ban (you said the ban 'means' the low rate)?
I'm really looking forward to seeing how you can support your claim.
That wasn't what was claimed by the person I replied to. He claimed at the low rate of firearms murders was a result of the ban. But firearms murders rose after the ban.
The ban was put in place after mass shootings for both the UK and Australia - I believe that was primary driving factor behind it so I am not sure how that stat would or would not be effected by it and would suggest it is a bit of a red herring - and I am sure that data is interesting, if someone had the time to go through it and break it down.
All I can say is that in the UK, you don't need to worry about being shot.
So what? He/she didn't say there was a _total-and-exclusive_ correlation between the ban and the murders; other factors come into play. You got to watch on the long term here.
UK govt does kill its citizens though. Without trial. The restrictions of guns by the government ensures you have no defense from the one entity that has killed more people than anything. Their own govt.
I am mid thirties, grown up in the UK and not having guns here is amazing. People don't get shot, as a teenager in the council flats in the UK, no-one is going to turn up with a gun, or carry a gun. And unsurprisingly, people make mistakes with guns (accidents happen).
I have been forever conflicted, as I love the idea of guns, I wanted them as a kid/teenager, the idea of having such a tool is fascinating. However they are reserved for video games in my life...
The only time I may regret this is in some kind of completely hypothetical situation (zombies, aliens, gov gone crazy) which is so unlikely to happen I would rather the tools to kill each other very quickly were not legally available.
I'm in my late twenties, in rural New England, and having guns here is amazing. People don't get shot, and accidents almost never happen. People that have guns typically have rifles and shotguns for hunting purposes (venison is delicious, by the way), and know enough about them to respect them and use them properly. In my state, provided you aren't a felon, you can purchase a firearm in about an hour, with a simple background check (from your local Walmart, even), and you can apply for a concealed carry permit at your local police station, which they are required by law to grant you within fourteen days, again provided you come back clean on the background check. It's a fantastic state, but then again, it's more akin to living in Iceland than the rest of the country
I'm more likely to get hit by a bus or drop dead of an aneurysm than shot and killed by anyone.
There's also just a metric fuckton of guns out there, so you'd have a hard time tracking them all down. I'm really not a gun collector, but I've personally got at least a dozen rifles and shotguns, and three or four pistols. You inherit these things... I work with a couple guys that are actually target shooting enthusiasts, and it's amazing the armories that they've put together.
Maybe this is subjective, I personally do not think it will happen in the UK. I would also rather take that risk than allow everyone to own guns just for this unknown eventuality...
If it assures you in anyway, my grandfather who was in the war, handed in his 1911.
The thing is, when the gov goes crazy it is usually against some group of people. If you are not part of that group then you may actually believe the gov is quite sane.
Also, all it takes is some really bad times for nice people to elect a tyrant. We've seen it before many times in history.
Trump phenomenon fueled on xenophobia, racism, and authoritarianism, which is scary for minorities, is an example of a gov that could go crazy.
I believed the negative hype about Trump till I actually listened to what he had to say in context. I don't agree with the guy on a lot, but the emotional reactions instead logical debate really need to stop
>Trump phenomenon fueled on xenophobia, racism, and authoritarianism, which is scary for minorities, is an example of a gov that could go crazy.
Sentences like this are not arguments they are emotional regurgitations of fear created by endless news cycles of ad hominem attacks and half truths.
Trumphobia is the irrational fear of Donald Trump created by media attacks on a candidate they can not control.
I'm not defending trump, I just don't see a place for emotional "-ist" words based on very selective framing of someones speech.
we need to talk about illegal immigration and criminal activity.
We need to talk about Black on Black violence not just police violence.
Why should he know David Duke is? and he disavowed 15 times.
I love the push back, that is what america is about having debates about important issues, not shouting down people who have different opinions.
"David Duke, former grand wizard of the KKK... would you disavow his support or that of his organization?"
"I don't know who David Duke is, and as for any organization, well, I'd have to do further research before disavowing their support"
The next day "Oh, of course I would. It was a bad earpiece they gave me, I told them it wasn't working well."
Well enough that he heard the question just fine and was able to put together a coherent (if bad) answer. Nope, blame your earpiece. Some disavowal that was.
Ok.. you might not trust him saying he had a bad earpiece but he did disavow many times. I'm still not seeing the most evil man on the planet as many try to associate him with. Every argument is based on 90% emotion and a tiny bit of negatively framed fact.
>Donald Trump knows perfectly well who David Duke is
fair enough, good debate on if trump knew him, but since that first interview where he claimed to have a bad ear piece he had disavowed him many times since. I know it gets a lot of air time because the media gets to say "Trump" and "kkk" in the same sentence but this is just an association fallacy and not even an evidence for anyones argument.
Because they are illegals the stats are difficult to prove or disprove.
-An estimated 25,000 of these undocumented immigrants serving sentences for homicide
-A cumulative total of 2.89 million offenses committed by these undocumented immigrants between 2003 and 2009 (although half a million of these were for immigration-related offenses)
-Among those offenses: An estimated 42,000 robberies, 70,000 sex crimes, 81,000 auto thefts, 95,000 weapons offenses, and 213,000 assaults
Nationwide, illegals are Five time Less likely to be in prison than native born US citizens. Also, immigration violations, not violent acts account for most immigrants in federal prison.
Now that is a good argument. I don't give a shit who win the illusion of choice professional wrestling match we call US presidential elections. I would like to see Trumps ideas discussed logically instead of putting blinders on to real problems that are hard to deal with.
> > Trump phenomenon fueled on xenophobia, racism, and authoritarianism, which is scary for minorities, is an example of a gov that could go crazy.
> Sentences like this are not arguments they are emotional regurgitations of fear created by endless news cycles of ad hominem attacks and half truths.
or maybe they're simple observations of the guy himself talking uninterrupted in his election rallies. i saw some on tv, it was embarrassing.
I agree he is a sales man and it can be off putting to a lot of people. On the other hand comparing him to the qualities of Hitler is a extreme misrepresentation and it is just godwin's law.
you're the first to pull the hitler card in this thread.
though you have a point, his campain does resemble Hitler's. sure, it's jews in one and brown people in the other... other than that? the greatest nation on earth under siege! let's make this country great again! they will pay for what they've done to us!
>xenophobia, racism, and authoritarianism, which is scary for minorities, is an example of a gov that could go crazy
These are the qualities of hitler, I pull it to illustrate how ridiculous and lazy your arguments are.
You get offended by someone saying people coming over the boarder illegally are criminals, yet it is ok compare Trump to someone that called for the killings of tens of millions of people most not jews or brown, but white[1]. I don't see the media yelling for apologies on that one...
I would argue that if Trump gets voted in, it is the people who are crazy. I do see your point though - I guess everything feels very nice and pedestrian here... nothing owning guns would solve anyway.
I would also argue that all those xenophobic trump fans can legally own guns...
After the last elections in the UK, I don't really trust the "general public" =D
The US founders also did not trust the general population which is why the electoral college was used to elect the president. Being young I could not understand why when I first read about it. I understand now why, the masses can be quite stupid as demonstrated many times by history.
Again, we actually had an armed insurrection in the UK in Northern Ireland, including civilians being shot dead by the military, and it offends me to see people fantasising about political violence as some kind of first resort. It went on for decades, killing and immiserating a large number of people.
How is that related? If your own government, for some reason, decided to kill you, there's not much you can do against a heavily armed SWAT team, with or without your small firearm. And if by this argument you mean that owning firearms en masse somehow keep government in line and ensures democracy, that's a moot point, since there are even (arguably) better functioning democracies than USA all over the world that chose to ban firearms completely except for military/antiterorist use.
in simpleton speak.. UK killed a citizen with a drone.... without trial... this means they will use a tool to kill citizens without trial... as have many many other govts in history....
simple economics of scale... your govt cannot afford to drone kill everyone and everyone can afford a rifle / pistol... it will be bloody but an armed citizenry will always win...
it will be bloody but an armed citizenry will always win...
Who won in Northern Ireland?
One of the things that annoys me about this stupid phoney insurgency that's always brought up as a pro-gun argument is that we actually had one in the UK and it was awful.
Well, that particular incident was similar to the US killing of a US national in a drone strike, and in neither case does having a firearm really help.
Having an actual discussion on armed political conflict vs. the government would involve Northern Ireland, which would take far too long for HN.
As opposed to the USA I assume you mean. Given the number of deaths from police officers alone it hardly supports your argument.
You had a revolution once and talk about gun rights as if you were expecting one again. And the threat of one is hardly doing anything to contain your governments continual erosion of all of your other constitutional rights.
Indeed. Somehow I don't think the commentator is a supporter of the Black Panthers, who I think were the last US political group trying to prevent their members being killed by "the government".
Terrorism is like a mosquito in a room. Hearing its buzz will drive people nuts but the actual harm caused is negligible.
But right now people are pretty much ready to throw their basic rights and freedom away in the hope it will make the buzz go away.
The worst part is that attacks like the Paris attacks are pretty much impossible to prevent unless we transform our democracy into a totalitarian state...
unless it's a mosquito with malaria or dengue :) (aka terrorist with nuclear/dirty bomb).
terrorism is, above all, politically motivated theatrical act that should manipulate audience into something (fear and thus irrational behavior, election choices etc). plus some stray dogs that are out of any reasonable control.
we humans are vastly irrational, and just because mankind landed on the moon doesn't mean emotions don't hold more power than reason in most of us. that's why so many people are afraid of flying, are superstitious, believe in horoscopes and so on. you know, general folks out there who have same voting power as you or me or anybody else
The problem is the more we over react to it, the more we encourage the next attack. When a plane crashes, the medias are now reasonable and repeat again and again that it is an extremely rare event and that flying is very safe. For terrorism the message is "this could happen to you!".
It would be naive to think that turning the other cheek would make these people rethink their viewpoint, if we cannot expect them to rethink their viewpoint by pacifism then what other choice do we have than to take a hard stance against such actions. There should be a good balance between not exploiting peoples fear but also realizing that at some point you have to react.
The moon landing was a tool to create a different emotion, though. It was to stir up some national pride and put a happy face on the rocket tech that nearly led to a total nuclear annihilation during the cold war.
what I meant that we can achieve amazing stuff as mankind (especially with 60's tech), but still be completely irrational redneck-style when emotions kick in
We're kind of arguing past each other -- you're saying emotions can lead to irrational behavior, while I'm saying emotions can be manipulated for many ends.
> unless we transform our democracy into a totalitarian state
The irony is that in totalitarian states terrorism increases, not decreases. Because then even more people have a reason to hate their own totalitarian leaders.
I am not sure that's true. Crime under totalitarian regimes is usually very low, because the level of control and delation makes it almost impossible to get away with it.
It makes sense that the general crime rate would be much lower, but people planning terrorism aren't trying to get away with it; this reduces the government's capacity to control them relative to people violating other laws.
Everything I read about the soviet union. It's a system where everyone is watching each other, where kids are brain washed and pushed to denounce their parents, etc.
Which is also why the western intelligence agencies were struggling to infiltrate the soviet union.
I am talking about totalitarian regimes (Nazi Germany, Soviet Union, North Korea, Maoist China, etc). Simple dictatorships are different. They exert less control over their population.
This doesn't mean toddlers are more dangerous than terrorists. It means there are more toddlers.
I don't think the internal logic of the argument works anyway. Do people react to terrorism solely because of the perception of present danger? I always thought terrorism was feared because it signalled that a group of people would prefer to dominate their host with violence than to assimilate into the predominant culture.
Increasing terrorism is a sign of increasing difficulties assimilating. The ultimate worry is that in 100 years our countries will be split into separate warring tribes.
Edit: Everybody is misunderstanding me. I'm not saying that "terrorists are more dangerous than toddlers!" or "gun control is bad!". I'm saying that people fear terrorism for different underlying reasons than its impact on fatality, and that understanding this will help communication between the right and left (perhaps allowing your arguments to be heard across political lines.)
The point of this article is not that children are more dangerous than terrorists. The point is that terrorism over-dominates national discussion of priorities.
Focus on terrorism is worrisome because it kills relatively fewer people than the top national stressors, it distracts the nation in its very limited capacity to discuss anything, it justifies extreme expenditure, and by its covert nature it is difficult to mediate in effect size.
Does terrorism warrant attention and expenditure? Yes. But it should get in line behind highly preventable or mediatable stressors like vehicle and gun related deaths.
The nation has spent trillions trying to fight terrorism, terrorism that has killed several thousand American civilians in total throughout all years. In response the nation went to war with Iraq, which itself costed thousands of lives on the American side, and over 100,000 deaths to Iraqis.
Terrorism has justified massive expansion of executive powers, it has led to opaque operations like extraordinary rendition, torture, and black sites, it has justified mass surveillance, it has led the discussion on privacy and encryption, it has led to new executive departments with budgets in the billions per year, and it justifies the use of secret courts with secret judges and secret warrants.
All in the name of fighting terrorists, while severe domestic stressors take a backseat in national priority.
I tried to explain to somebody else here [0] already - "[This establishes] a frame in which stressors are measured solely by their impact on fatality. The extra attention given to terrorism relates more to the conservative fear of losing their 'way of life'. Attempting to measure both of these things solely in relation to their impact on fatality misunderstands the reasons for fear over terrorism and creates a communication problem between the left and right."
Effectively the reason terrorism appears to over-dominate the public sphere is that it does so for different reasons than the ones that are visible to you. You can mitigate these reasons but first you have to acknowledge them (otherwise you're just preaching to the choir.)
The "way of life" thing either depends on terrorism killing enough people to destroy our way of life, or it's a self-fulfilling prophecy when we destroy our own way of life by overreacting. Either way, "terrorism doesn't kill very many people, so don't worry about it so much" addresses it. Not that people will listen, but it doesn't fail because it misses the point.
> depends on terrorism killing enough people to destroy our way of life
Demographic and therefore cultural shifts do not only occur when a majority population has a high number of killings. They can also occur when immigrant populations are more fertile than the majority population. Terrorism is a signal of clashing ideologies but this in itself isn't a problem for a majority culture unless they believe themselves to be in rapid decline.
If you want to convince a group of people not to be fearful, you should probably show them communities in which different cultures peacefully co-exist, and actively try to lessen their fears that their own culture is weakening as its members grow older and die. Reducing the causes of fear seems to me a better path than misunderstanding it and then calling them ignorant.
The way everybody is going I see the opposite happening, and it's only going to ramp up fear and hatred. I worry about eventual violence.
I don't see much fear of being out-bred. Maybe in some fringe, but the mainstream seems to fear foreign terrorists coming here to kill people.
For example, look at the debate over Syrian refugees. The "against" side is not talking about refusing them because they'll start breeding here and their ideologies will clash, at least not that I've seen. Their reasoning is that terrorists will hide among the legitimate refugees as a way to gain access to the country.
You are right about what you see in the mainstream but I have a different perspective.
It is my opinion that media scapegoating is a symptom of people with poor economic opportunity and declining institutions giving attention to anybody that can point at an enemy. Decline, opportunism and imperfect psychologies are the root causes.
I'm hopeful that elites will attempt to lessen the underlying causes which would make it more difficult for demagogues to capitalise. However, so far I've only seem attempts to demonise whole peoples - a mirror image of itself.
> This doesn't mean toddlers are more dangerous than terrorists. It means there are more toddlers.
The article never made this point.
All it said is that they kill more people. In which case it would seem reasonable to ask, can we save more lives, more effectively with enhanced gun control then with enhanced anti-terrorism measures (I suspect governments are more interested in the later because it really is a power grab for global surveillance and other not-yet-legislated powers).
> a group of people would prefer to dominate their host with violence than to assimilate into the predominant culture.
I think 'dominate' is hardly the right word in this case, even relatively uneducated proponents of the ideology must know that such concept is totally fantastical. Rather it is more likely that assimilation is deemed (by some groups or ideologies) so completely impossible (with as you say the 'predominant culture' and I think this is important part to note, because as westerners we tend to forget that it is indeed predominant and forcefully so) that any form of destruction possible is considered preferable.
> Increasing terrorism is a sign of increasing difficulties assimilating. The ultimate worry is that in 50 years our countries will be split into separate warring tribes.
I really don't think any such worry is realistic, these people are marginalized and completely inconsequential to their nations GDP or the progress of civilization - even North Korea, which would seem the closest in this vein to have some kind of defense against as you put it 'assimilation' I think will ultimately mean very little in terms of global developments.
> I always thought terrorism was feared because it signalled that a group of people would prefer to dominate their host with violence than to assimilate into the predominant culture.
To sum it up, I always thought terrorism was feared because this is an emotion which the government and the media sell.
> The article never made this point. All it said is that they kill more people.
If that was the case they would not have mentioned terrorism. The comparison to terrorism exists because it makes the article travel better between members of the Blue Tribe who think anxieties over terrorism are overblown and better gun control would be good.
Remove the link to terrorism and the article would have had less currency within this group.
> I always thought terrorism was feared because this is an emotion which the government and the media sell.
The message already resonates with conservatives as they already have high anxiety about losing their 'way of life'. It's not just a case of a message that has been sold by the government and the media. Real people's innate fears [0].
> I really don't think any such worry is realistic, these people are marginalized and completely inconsequential to their nations GDP or the progress of civilization.
Yes - in many cases. But there are a few countries in Europe that will be majority islamic over the next 100 years, and in those places people might lose their 'way of life'. Demographic changes are underway.
As you probably realise, fear isn't always rational. Many groups of people are very sensitive to fears of losing their 'way of life'. Even without the existence of a significant threat.
>>> This doesn't mean toddlers are more dangerous than terrorists. It means there are more toddlers.
>> The article never made this point. All it said is that they kill more people. In which case it would seem reasonable to ask, can we save more lives, more effectively with enhanced gun control then with enhanced anti-terrorism measures..
> If that was the case they would not have mentioned terrorism.
Your first statement 'toddlers are more dangerous than terrorists' is not to be found anywhere in the article, the article mentioned terrorism in order to make the second statement which I pointed out to you. I'm not sure what you are unclear about?
My point is that the article and subsequent comments by you and threatofrain establish a frame in which stressors are measured solely by their impact on fatality. The extra attention given to terrorism relates more to the conservative fear of losing their 'way of life'. Attempting to measure both of these things solely in relation to their impact on fatality misunderstands the reasons for fear over terrorism and creates a communication problem between the left and right.
I did not invoke your second point as I fully agree with it.
It doesn't mean individual toddlers are more dangerous than individual terrorists. But it is largely irrelevant to us given that we don't have an easy way to influence the relative numbers.
> Do people react to terrorism solely because of the perception of present danger?
Of course not. Which is why it is worth making the point that the degree of our response to terrorism is totally out of proportion, and that the terror should not be our focus.
> I always thought terrorism was feared because it signalled that a group of people would prefer to dominate their host with violence than to assimilate into the predominant culture.
This is a very odd way of looking at it to me. They are not nearly the only two choices.
> Increasing terrorism is a sign of increasing difficulties assimilating.
Is terrorism increasing? I'm not saying it's not. I genuinely haven't looked at the numbers.
What I do know is that in Europe, for example, a long range of terrorist groups that were active in the 60's, 70's, 80's and/or 90's either does not exist any longer or have stopped carrying out attacks. New ones have appeared, but it's not clear to me whether over the longer term are seeing more or less terror. Whether that's true or not probably depends a great deal on what time-frame you look at, and what geographical region you choose to look at.
I don't think I've ever seen that assimilation thing. The kind of terrorists that people are afraid of in the US tend to be visitors who come to this country with the purpose of doing violence, not anyone who would be assimilating, even if they were perfectly nice people.
It sounds like it's different in Europe, and maybe that's the perspective you're coming from. In the US, it's not generally about the difficulty of assimilation. The 9/11 attackers, for example, lived outside the US and only came here to carry out their attack. For mass shootings, the perpetrators are usually considered to be outright insane, but perfectly well assimilated. This isn't universal; San Bernardino and Fort Hood are two examples of mass shootings by Americans who you could say didn't assimilate well. But for the most part, it's either crazy people in our midst or invading visitors.
Look at the ongoing controversy over Syrian refugees for an example. I haven't heard people say that we shouldn't admit Syrian refugees because they'll fail to assimilate and turn into an outsider minority prone to violence. I have heard lots of people say that we shouldn't admit Syrian refugees because terrorists will hide among them and gain access to our country.
Anyone I've talked to who is afraid of terrorism is afraid because they don't want to get killed in an attack. It's not really more complicated than that.
Some people fear terrorism because they believe that the potential future risks are much higher than past rates. But a whole lot of people fear terrorism simply because they have no understanding of the risks. That's who articles like these are aimed at.
I don't think the internal logic of the argument works anyway. Do people react to terrorism solely because of the perception of present danger? I always thought terrorism was feared because it signalled that a group of people would prefer to dominate their host with violence than to assimilate into the predominant culture.
The reason why terrorism works is because of the media bias for extraordinary events becoming familiar events, not solely because a subgroup wanted to be dangerous.
Violence by terrorist groups does not accomplish political objectives and often encourages governments to take a hardline approach rather than accede to any political demands that they may have, provoking state-actors to go to war or enact security policies contrary to civil liberties.
Increasing terrorism is a sign of increasing difficulties assimilating. The ultimate worry is that in 100 years our countries will be split into separate warring tribes.
Suppose muslim terrorists keep doing what they do. Tit for tat, you got people fearful of terrorists, becoming fearful of Muslims beyond justification.
Muslims become more discriminated as alienation went up, encouraging more Muslim youth to join terrorist groups to act out their alienation.
The ultimate worry is that in 100 years our countries will be split into separate warring tribes.
The ultimate worry is that there won't be a 100 years. Some demagogues and dogmas attract ruthless followers. It only takes one well-supplied psychopath (with access) to cause a huge amount of damage. It might be an idiot with a bomb in his underwear, or it might be a North Korean nuclear submarine captain.
> I always thought terrorism was feared because it signalled that a group of people would prefer to dominate their host with violence than to assimilate into the predominant culture.
people fear terrorism because it's virtually nonexistent. we fear the thing we have no experience with more than those we do, because the lack of experience lets our lizard brain have a parade. the movie Alien works with this very well.
also... terrorism, aka politically-motivated violence is nothing new. it's just the framing by the mass media that seems to have changed a lot.
In 2000, Magee spoke about the bombing in an interview with The Sunday Business Post. He told interviewer Tom McGurk that the British government's strategy at the time was to depict the IRA as mere criminals while containing The Troubles within Northern Ireland
(edited in a failed attempt to fix the list formatting)
To play devil's advocate, which gun law would have prevented this person from getting shot by her toddler?
As a gun rights advocate, she presumably has been around guns for a long time and should have been well versed in how to handle them safely. I doubt there's any training that could be mandated that would exceed the experience she already had. Short of banning guns entirely, which would require a constitutional amendment, I don't see what the proposed solution is.
She should definitely be facing some harsh penalties for negligence and endangering a minor if she isn't already. In general, I think it makes more sense to have laws that punish people for bad things that actually happen, not for things that might, conceivably, possibly lead to something bad happening.
No amount of legislation is going to prevent idiots from being idiots.
I live in South Africa and while our gun situation is very depressing, I've never heard of a situation like this happening here. The owner needs absolutely no common sense about how to safely store a gun. There are very specific laws about this and there are heavy penalties for neglecting them. Your training is not about safety, that is merely a consequence of learning the rules.
> No amount of legislation is going to prevent idiots from being idiots.
You can, however, swing probabilities.
> She should definitely be facing some harsh penalties for negligence and endangering a minor if she isn't already.
This is a key point I think. One of the main arguments I hear from gun advocates is "protecting your family." For argument's sake assume that this is a valid point, play the devil's advocate. By leaving a loaded weapon lying around there is a higher probability of your family getting hurt by that weapon, than someone walking into your home and hurting your family. At this point you have become an imminent threat to everyone around you and that threat must be eliminated, possibly by preventing your whole household from ever laying their hands on a weapon (blacklisting).
In other words, by allowing Gilt to own a gun you are endangering her life and her child's life. She should not be let near one.
Settling the gun advocacy argument is clearly going to take a long time, but "common sense" laws can be put in place until a conclusion has been reached. In the short-term this would benefit both sides of the argument were they not both so belligerent.
This is no different than the anti (strong) crypto arguments. The overwhelming amount of law abiding citizens give up liberties in the name of reducing a probability which is less significant than the risk of eating cheese burgers every day and dying from heart disease, or entering a vehicle.
All I argued for was "common sense" gun laws. If guns were handled correctly (by law) this article or discussion wouldn't exist - gun advocacy would look good. Under the same conditions gun control advocates would have a shorter leap up to strict legislation. This is not a net step forward or back for either side.
Gun advocates see it as a step toward limitations of their freedom. Control advocates see it as not a large enough step. This is depressing because people are at risk around idiots every day. Everyone is fixated on the end-goal, instead of saving lives - which is why both sides are having this argument in the first place.
Considering this is america we are talking about the "common sense" is that liberty is better than government provided safety for a large portion of americans.
>If guns were handled correctly (by law) this article or discussion wouldn't exist
Cars kill more people by a large margin, if we really cared about safety then why is it that we see articles about gun control more so than car deaths, or heart disease? Sensationalization of an issue isn't some basis we should be using for arguments about how to write laws.
>Gun advocates see it as a step toward limitations of their freedom.
Every single piece of legislation which exhibits control chips away at freedom even if its imperceptible in the short term view, we just saw the FBI try and use a 200+ year old law to limit the freedom of apple to protect their customers. The thing about the US government is that once a law is written it is difficult for to go away and very easy for it to be forgotten about until conveniently needed in court. Coalescing piece by piece, legislation over time has brought us to a point where most citizens are breaking some law in some form without knowing it. Calling each step forward in gun control a small step towards limiting freedom isn't really that crazy.
>Everyone is fixated on the end-goal, instead of saving lives
Terrorists have been known to carry guns, babies accidentally fire guns. Let's contrast the two sets.
This falls into the clickbait narrative that so easily triggers opinions either side of the gun law debate. If there's any value to be taken from this comparison it's how "terrorism" is used to direct funding towards agencies like the TSA (and many others) who don't perform any meaningful function.
Or distract us from any of the other difficult to monetize causes of death that overshadow "terrorism".
Meanwhile we all squabble between those holding up the constitution and those yelling 'told you so'. Yet another day in 'Merica.
The TSA performs a very meaningful function. If you want to fly in the US, you have to submit to their probing. This is an important part of maintaining the terror, which serves many useful political functions. We'd put up with a lot less incursion on our liberties if they stopped feeding the terror.
Obviously if you are leaving a loaded gun in the back of a pickup truck within reach of a toddler, you haven't been paying attention to gun safety rules enough. :) Unfortunately, I don't think "gun rights advocate" these days means someone who is properly versed on gun safety. Too often, "gun rights advocates" is more a philosophical or political position -- wrapped in Dirty Harry-esque tails, paranoia about governments taking over, a way to display masochism, etc.
Guns are a tool, but a potentially dangerous one. And any statistics I find (one reference for instance: http://library.med.utah.edu/WebPath/TUTORIAL/GUNS/GUNSTAT.ht...) suggest that the United States' safety record with guns is pretty horrible compared to everyone else (eg compared to other rich countries, we have a higher incidence rate of injuries, deaths, and gun-oriented suicides than any other).
While no amount of legislation is going to prevent complete idiots from being idiots, perhaps properly drawn up safety oriented regulations may help drive home the point to everyone who is not an idiot. Safety regulations seem acceptable in most other places in life, even when there has been some freedom-oriented resistance. (Think of seat belt laws, for instance -- despite the resistance from some, they have ended up being very effective at reducing traffic fatalities and injuries.)
Maybe some gun safety legislation is indeed misguided, but I have to roll my eyes when some gun rights advocates act like something like, say, a safe gun storage law is a Hidden Agenda To Facilitate Governments Disarming the American Public or something. I don't think that's the intention. Safety laws can be good; safety laws can be misguided... but if a safety law is misguided, I want to hear technical reasons why from the firearms crowd, not conspiracy diatribe.
I think just having a culture shift away from the romantic idea that private guns deter crime and offer protection would bring down the amount of gun accidents considerably. Punishing people after something bad happens turns out to not work very well for prevention. Another romantic idea demolished by reality.
Compare:
Psychoactive substances: We just lock up anybody touching them.
Guns: We lock up anybody abusing them.
Observe how both approaches fail to protect us from irresponsible people.
Banning Guns may Decrease Gun Violence, But they do not have the effect of reducing Violent Crime In General. Case In point Australia After the Gun Ban Saw Violent Crimes increase, for a few years and after those the decline in Violence was less than the decline seen in most first world nations like the US.
http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/violent%20crime.html
Ask yourself this question why do people advocating for gun control only talk about the decrease in gun violence and not violence/homicide in general. Why is a stabbing death not equal to a gun death?
I was talking about gun accidents. You are talking about something else, violence. People playing with knifes hardly ever accidentally stab people to death.
Now if we assumed that homicides would go up when guns are effectively banned (dubious assumption), we would likely still see a drop in overall gun deaths due to the avoided accidents and suicides.
To your question, The one that out rightly bans guns would have definitely prevented this.
We can debate to no end about how she should have, could have, would have, etc taken preventive measures. But the fact of the matter is, accidents do and will happen.
We should really take a look at how literally the rest of the world does it and take notes.
Especially since so many people can interpret the cause of such a death in so many ways. One person says terrorism, another says work place violence. Not many people argue over describing an accidental death caused by a toddler.
>Broad counts indicate that 21 toddlers shot and killed themselves or others in 2015; 19 Americans died at the hands of potential or suspected Islamic terrorists.
Neither seem to be by foreigners, so snopes is not wrong, just confusing. The guardian is flat out wrong. The numbers are 9+3+19=31 versus 21 for toddlers.
2. The fear of terrorism is of the tail. People aren't that worried over the 10 people who die in an attack, comparatively. They're worried about the 3000 people that die for a large scale attack, even if it's less likely.
I bet if you took the last 25 years, terrorist deaths would be more than toddler gun deaths. If the latter is around 25 a year, we have a total of 625, versus 3000 from 9/11 alone.
What interests me about the gun debate (if one can call it that), is that there are ways of dying that are considered acceptable risks and ways of dying that are not. If you are driving your kids across town and get t-boned by a drunk driver and everyone dies, that is considered a tragedy. But no one will advocate giving up driving. Something really bad happened, everyone move on with your lives.
Or when a relative dies because of a medical error, they might be rage at the particular doctor at fault, but there isn't a general outcry against hospitals or doctors. Everyone will still urge you to go to the ER at first signs of a serious problem.
But if a lunatic shoots a few people in a public place, then guns should just be banned altogether and there is a general outcry and the POTUS needs to visit the victims to console them.
Maybe someone can enlighten me why the risk of gun deaths is so much less acceptable (to a portion of the population) than the risk of death by automobile.
EDIT: Skiing is purely entertainment. About 41.5 people die a year in skiing accidents[1]. This, too, is considered an acceptable risk.
Because guns are expressly designed to kill. They serve no other purpose (ignoring sporting uses, as those are basically a proxy for proving how well one can kill with a gun). There is no reason anybody outside of the military needs a gun to carry out their day to day jobs.
I'm not sure how being designed to kill changes the risk calculation. Cars are not designed to kill, but they are designed to do something that is inherently dangerous and potentially lethal. The fundamental thing is how much risk is posed, not whether the risk is incidental to the goal or intentional, right?
...I think you are suggesting that people consider the risk of cars acceptable because the risk/reward ratio is acceptable, but many people see no value in guns and so the risk/reward ratio is abysmal in their eyes. That is a rational argument.
If that is what is going on, then processing the risk/reward ratio is subconscious. If it comes out badly, people just think and talk about the risk. If it comes out well, one just doesn't think of that thing as risky. That makes some sense, but it doesn't feel like it fully accounts for the terror I read in such articles as this one in the Guardian.
(Incidentally, if you live in the country and keep animals, having a gun might not be strictly necessary, but it is a tool you probably do not want to be without.)
I think I've put my finger on why it doesn't seem to explain things.
Let's say guns were solely about entertainment, no other use. Alcohol is also solely about entertainment, so it should have a similar risk/reward ratio. And in the US, about the same number of people (~10k) die of DUIs every year as die of gun homocide (~10k). Yet alcohol does not raise the same fear and terror in the population as guns. The original article even cited drunk teenagers as something we should not care about when there are people who own guns.
It feels like there must be something else driving the fear and revulsion of guns.
But guns aren't about entertainment. Or, at least not to a large portion of the population. Even among gun owners, many own out of a sense of fear, not because they enjoy visiting the range or plinking cans.
I think you're previous comment really sums it up. The risk/reward analysis just doesn't make sense to many people. To the extreme anti-gun population, the only possible outcome of owning a gun is somebody dies. And that is almost never warranted.
In many cases, it's the classic "This is why we can't have nice things." A few bad apples don't store their guns properly, causing some deaths, and it doesn't take long for the general population to shift towards an anti-gun stance.
>Because guns are expressly designed to kill.
And whats wrong with that? There are always two sides to every situation, a party that is bend on taking away someone's assets (possibly life) and another party defending that.
Nothing is wrong with it. Guns have their place. I was just answering the question - "why do people react differently to guns than cars?" Because guns are fundamentally different.
I'm not personally opposed to gun ownership. I think we need better regulation of guns, though I don't really have any answers (and certainly none that are viable in today's political climate).
Knives are expressly designed to cut. They serve no Purpose (ignoring cooking, as those are basically a proxy for proving how well one can cut with a knife). There is no reason anybody outside of the kitchen needs a knife to carry out their day to day jobs.
Encryption is expressly designed to hide terrorists. It serves no purpose (ignoring privacy, as that is basically a proxy for proving how well one can hide from the government). There is no reason anybody outside of the military needs encryption to carry out their day to day jobs.
So sick of replying to this sort of logic. Nobody says we should GIVE UP guns. We are talking about regulating. Just like the dam car you used in your retarded analogy. WHY is the car strictly regulated in the US like anywhere else, but NOT the gun!!!???
Are guns somehow way safer than cars?
Pretty much anything which is dangerous is regulated. I mean McDonalds even has to put a sticker on your cup, stating it is hot. Somehow hot coffee gets stricter regulation in the US than guns. That is totally backwards and it just boggles the mind of the rest of us why so many Americans are so dense they can't see this.
Guns are regulated. You must be at least eighteen in most states in order to buy a gun. In many places (most?), there is a waiting period. You pay one day, you come back another to pick it up. Concealed carry is either illegal or requires taking a class, registering, and getting a permit. Open carry is legal in some places, illegal in others.
It is harder to get a concealed carry permit than a driver's license, at least past the age of 21.
I'm not saying that there aren't more regulations that could be passed that would make gun ownership safer. I think there probably are. But to hold that car ownership is more regulated than gun ownership is not a tenable position.
Cars require registration, insurance, and inspection. The government has spent considerable resources researching causes of injury/death and pushed over decades ever stricter safety standards and new technologies. This is a considerable amount of regulation that guns do not have and would probably make a big difference.
No, there are quite a number of people saying everyone should give up their guns. Quite a few on this page in fact.
Guns are regulated quite heavily in the US, you should read up on the subject before making the claim they are not. But to get to your car regulated part, it's different because cars are not covered in the Constitution. Plus, there's nothing preventing you from buying and driving a car at your leisure regardless of government regulations. You just can't do it on the government roads. You can drive your car all you like on your own property. Finally, depending on the year's totals, cars are often a greater cause of death than guns in the US. In most years you are more likely to be killed by your doctor than a gun, but that depends on how you interpret the data.
You coffee is more regulated than guns example is simply the most idiotic thing I've read on this site in quite a while. This provides why exactly it is difficult to have a proper discussion over such things because people who obviously have no idea what they are speaking of wish to claim an equal representation at the table.
Cars are used everyday by a large part of the population and are very useful and often essential for transportation.
Guns are only useful in rare cases for preventing or stopping crime, and most people don't have one or if they do they have never used it beyond practice.
Do you think that we are familiar with cars and driving, and so find the risks acceptable? Or is it that because most people want to drive, they rationalize the risk?
PS. I live in the country and have most of my life. A gun is a very useful tool if you live in an area with wild animals.
Using the argument form of this article you could make any number of outrageously nonsensical claims. The form is basically X does Y more than Z, where X occurs vastly more than Z in some population.
Examples:
1. white caucasians commit more crime in the Canada than all other ethnic groups combined!
2. In Sweden the common cold is more lethal than HIV!
In my opinion article exemplifies the antithesis of a decent argument or even ligitimate journalism.
No it's not 'just' an 'X does more Y than Z'. There's more that's implied.
i.e., there's a Z which does Y, and it's a tiny, tiny problem that nobody considers to be an actual threat. e.g., toddlers murdering people.
And then there's an X, which is even less dangerous than that, namely terrorism.
And then there's a response to this X, which has trampled on basic civil rights, privacy and the constitution in the form of mass surveillance, and shows few signs of slowing. Further, there's another response which is inciting hysteria, fear, ignorance and increasingly racism towards a minority who hate terrorism as much as anyone.
That's what this article implies, and it's completely true. It presents an absurdity of threat vs response that has lost all sensibility, an absurdity that, though has been mentioned before many times in various articles, still hasn't resonated with the general public and media.
Not that this will change your opinion, but Switzerland is not that great of an example to support your "fact" (and even if it was - a few outliers don't prove the lack of an correlation).
For starters it has fairly strict gun laws (essentially no carry permits, gun safes, etc.).
Second the reason for the high gun ownership is the mandatory military service (no standing army) - you can purchase your service weapon at the end of your service period.
And for the service weapon the ammunition is stored at the armory - not at home.
And without ammunition I would think killing someone with a gun is much more difficult.
Hmm what you are saying is that gun laws have an impact on gun related death? I totally agree. Lets create a study that tells us how can we drive down the gun related death in the US by better laws. That has all of my support.
Perhaps if HIV was endlessly highlighted by government and the media as a major problem in Sweden your analogy might have made some sense. In my opinion your post exemplifies the antithesis of a decent argument or even legitimate criticism.
Okay, try this: far, far more people die in the US in car accidents than are shot. More people die because of DUIs than because of guns. Yet guns are endlessly highlighted as a major problem and the talk is constantly about making it harder to attain them and yet few people are ranting on about the dangers of automobile or licquor.
Indeed, the original article dismisses drunk teenagers as a non-threat. Drunk teenagers almost certainly kill more people than toddlers with guns.
Gun ownership is less about protecting individuals from other individuals, and more about protecting our society from governments that want to oppress it. You could make the argument that no such power exists today, but that's besides the point. Powerful, oppressive, nations have existed before and they could exist again. An armed population is our last line of defense.
That is actually an extremely weak argument. Iraq had higher gun ownership than the US, and yet they were all under an oppressive dictator. There are actually several oppressive countries with high gun ownership.
A bunch of armed citizens does not make an effective army. Untrained and uncoordinated citizens are no match against well trained soldiers.
Very few armed resistance fights have succeeded in bringing democracy or freedom anywhere. More often than not it has been non-violent resistance which has succeeded.
In most cases when violence gets involved it is the wrong kind of people who end up on the top of the pecking order and you end up with an equally bad or worse regime in the end. We've seen this in the french revolutions, south american revolutions, various revolutions and independent fights across Asia and Africa, and more lately the Arab spring.
Freedom of speech, privacy etc is more important for keeping a country free than gun laws. If you have no free press, society will have advanced too far in the wrong direction before you can make a difference with your gun.
Ironically the same right wing people supporting gun rights, seem to not care a lick about privacy, surveillance, excessive police mandates or draconian laws.
I've noticed that too. The trend of right wing gun activists to support increased survalence. It's an odd issue that seems to draw support from both political parties. President Obama has made his stance on privacy and survalence pretty clear. Ironicically it's the same stance that most of the republican candidates are taking.
I am a right wing gun nut and I am strongly pro-Snowden, for what its worth. I am a gun nut because I fear government, and the NSA revelations are proof that my fears are justified.
A lot of other gun nuts think like me. Don't assume the Republican party represents us.
An armed populace is a deterrent to the worst abuses. Even with the modern military. They can't drone strike everyone and can't carpet bomb every town. Guerrilla wars are bloody and hard to win, as Vietnam and Iraq showed.
Don't really see this happening in a modern western country to be honest.
Or do you have some concrete scenario in mind?
There are limits on how much the military will blindly follow orders.
So either it will only affect small groups of people (in which case having the house full of weapons and explosives will be of limited help to you [2]) or it will affect enough people, that even the people in the military might start wondering if they are doing the right thing here.
Also isn't Iraq an counter example to your point (as mentioned in a parent post [1])?
Since it did have a fairly high gun ownership rate and yet it had an oppressive government.
Or did it simply not yet reach the necessary worst abuses level yet?
Or was the gun ownership rate not high enough?
It's interesting you think you own something that is going to stop a SWAT team from entering your home and executing you because they determined you have a gun and might be a threat while serving a completely legal search warrant.
If they didn't see you with a gun they might not have acted with a dozen cops rushing the door but now you've escalated yourself into a threat in their eye, legit or not.
You are already being oppressed by the NSA sharing domestic data with the FBI, your gun will do zero to stop that.
This is more a reflection of how vanishingly rare either event is than a compelling argument for fewer guns.
In a population of 300m or thereabouts some people will die in some very peculiar ways. We can dig up some of the rarer ones to compare with terrorism.
That said some limitation of US gun ownership law does seem sensible. But this story is no more than gossip.
This will no doubt be framed as a victory for our Pro-Gun society.
After all, ubiquitous gun ownership has so diminished the rampant terrorism problem facing the USA that fewer people in 2015 were killed by terrorists than by small children. Compare that to, say, 2001, when thousands of people were killed by terrorists on average each month, and you can only see a victory in todays improved pro-gun climate.
I don't hold out much hope for a return to reason any time soon.
And more toddlers die in backyard swimming pools than by any terrorist. Once again, the CDC has an amazing list[1] of what kills US citizens in the USA. Violence doesn't even make the top 15 anymore. Self-harm is at position 10 and we really need to work on that. Plus, all the places with the most restrictive gun laws in the US are the most violent and have the most murders. Stop blaming an object, and start blaming the policies of government that create a cycle of crime.
There's also a funny, "startling" correlation between those who would be both the largest defenders of gun rights and ownership who point to "terrrorists and the mentally ill"... who also are the heaviest lobbiers for reducing funding and services available to those same mentally ill, decrying it as 'not their problem'.
I'd ask for actual stats including citing a study that is not geographically isolated to the inner city. This is another one of those soundbite arguments in the US. Also, dig up some stats on donation to charities by party members.
Both sides in the US have reduced our services to the mentally ill. The Democrats don't like institutions and wanted in-community services to the point of cutting funding for institutions. The Republicans don't want mental treatment homes in the community and vote to cut there funding. Since they cannot agree we get a whole lot of problems.
That being said, conservatives are far more likely to give to their church as a charity, and when churches (but not 'all religious organizations') are removed from the equation, the balance dramatically shifts. It could certainly be argued that while for many churches their charitable contributions are valuable and well used, but that for others they are used more for publicity/promotional/snowballing purposes.
Certainly this is compounded too, by certain churches, of which LDS is the biggest, that mandate tithing of income, skewing the numbers substantially.
Is your argument that we give to a charity that we see the results in, that informs us where the money goes, we agree with the philosophy of the charity, and part of our beliefs might include mandatory giving, then that charity is invalid?
"but that for others they are used more for publicity/promotional/snowballing purposes"
But it did say that most large churches spend "slightly less than half their givings on staffing costs".
"The most strategic churches we work with are realizing that a premier children’s pastor/leader can become one of, if not the largest growth engines for the church. And such churches are paying accordingly. We are seeing an increasing trend of churches who pay the top person over children’s ministry more and more. In some cases, the children’s pastor is one of the top paid people on staff, higher than the student pastor, worship pastor or small groups pastor."
This is from a site that is specifically pro-Christianity, and goes directly to that - whilst I might not believe in a religious organization, spending money on growing the church is in no way something I'd consider 'charitable giving'.
"Elevation Church does post some financial records on its website, reporting that the church took in $33.5 million in offerings last year and gave away about $3.8 million in outreach, spent $9 million on personnel and reported $13.9 million in cash assets."
A study by ECCU (http://web.archive.org/web/20141019033209/https://www.eccu.o...) stated that churches use 3 percent of their budget for children’s and youth programs, and 2 percent for adult programs. Local and national benevolence receives 1 percent of the typical church budget.
So I -do- place some skepticism on the idea of blanketing 'religious giving' as 'charitable contribution'.
> So I -do- place some skepticism on the idea of blanketing 'religious giving' as 'charitable contribution'.
So, you cherry picked the megachurches without showing how much of the Church going population they make up. I could throw in an equal list[1] of all the charities (some well known) that have horrible giving records . Also, yes, staffing costs are big at churches because these people do actual pastoral work. Of course a church tries to spread the word. That is not much different than a lot of secular charities.
I can't help but feel like you're engaging in goalpost moving.
Me: "much money is used for publicity purposes"
You: "you need to prove that"
Me: here's some links talking about both megachurches AND a cross section of churches and how much they spend on publicity.
You: "well of course they have to spread the word, that's no different to secular charities!"
Charity Navigator is awesome. I was 'glad' to see that the Wounded Warrior Project finally ousted their leadership, who were happier spending money on parties to pat themselves on the back than they were to help soldiers.
Here's the thing. The initial discussion is about charity giving as it related to party affiliation, and how the conservative side was "ahead", only if you factored in religious giving.
Yes, there are many, many valid religious charities (and by this I mean organizations, as well as that component of church giving that factors into benevolence).
But by studies performed by religious organizations themselves (who if anything are likely to skew the numbers more positively), across the board, "Local and national benevolence receives 1 percent of the typical church budget", and an additional 5% goes to "church run programs" (be it after school care, social or group activities).
If a secular charity - and lets go back to Charity Navigator here - Top Ten Inefficient Fundraisers (http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=topten.detail&...) we see some of the worst charities spending 15% of their donations on "program expenses" (i.e. doing what they are being given money to do).
I'm not familiar with the monitoring of 501(c)3 groups, but I suspect if charities were to regularly spend only one per cent of their givings on what they got to enjoy tax exemption to do, they'd likely have such a status revoked.
And, if you factor in this average percentage (even the six per cent combined, which is generous, as as much fun as social and youth activities are, they're not necessarily serving a critical need), and start to question 'how much money is being spent on 'spreading the word', patting themselves on the back, competitions in Texas to see who can built the world's biggest cross just down the road from where the world's previously biggest cross was built at costs of millions, there comes more and more skepticism of just how highly you can value "giving to your church" on the scale of charitable contributions.
What you call publicity is the primary purpose of churches. I consider that a purpose not an advertisement. I don't take the megachurches as a representative percentage of the church going community. Funding an actual church facility is just as valid as any other charity giving and benefits a neighborhood. Calling that administration is insulting.
> I'm not familiar with the monitoring of 501(c)3 groups, but I suspect if charities were to regularly spend only one per cent of their givings on what they got to enjoy tax exemption to do, they'd likely have such a status revoked.
Well, no. You can scam 9/11 money and get away with it (e.g. Red Cross & United Way).
Also, all that giving on secular charities part does go to someones salaries and administration and supplies and stipends. Giving to A pays for group B. The grants we've received went to salaries and administration but are listed as giving.
Most things that kill people in the USA kill more people than terrorists do. The comparison is purposely sensationalistic and cheapens the argument much like 'think of the children.'
"Think of the children" is for hypothetical issues where there really isn't any clear danger to children actually. This is the opposite. People are so irresponsible with their guns that toddlers have access to guns. This is very shameful and not a "Think of the children" worthy issue.
Have you perhaps considered that the treatment of terrorism is "purely sensationalistic" as well? The argument against terrorism shouldn't be "cheapened", but it should have far less value than it currently does.
There are far more pressing issues, some of which will actually decrease the threat of terrorism. (for example: global access to education and healthcare, as well as moderate, tolerant leadership will decrease the ability for extremism to forment in the first place).
Terrorism is almost by definition sensationalist. The argument I referred to as cheapened was the argument being made in the article against guns.
Both sides of the gun argument are very passionate. In order for either to make headway with the other they have to avoid starting with hyperbole. Instead, all you get is both sides shouting at each other.
As an Australian I find the gun debate in the US confusing. I think there should be more attention on the middle ground's point of view, as the arguments on both extreme sides are not realistic (In current US culture). On the pro-gun side there is a resistance to the idea that gun-control will limit the number of gun-related deaths ("the criminals will just get guns on the black market") and on the anti-gun side there seems to be willful ignorance of the fact that guns seem to be already prevalent in the US culture, and many US homes.
My personal view is that guns should be controlled to a greater degree than motor vehicles, and ammunition should be even more closely monitored. In Australia we still have gun related injuries and deaths, but they're almost always illegal guns involved. We tend to not have toddler related gun crimes.
Gun control doesn't mean you can't have a gun. It means that the gun you have is subject to restrictions.
Same as car control doesn't mean you can't have a car, but you do everything you can to stop your three year old from driving it down the motorway.
EDIT: I feel like I should describe the uses of guns I feel are acceptable (given a modern agrarian viewpoint)
1: Killing any (non endangered) animal causing harm to your livelihood.
2: Killing any (non endangered) animal you are going to eat.
A reasonable thought on gun control and gun violence is not allowed the US! Either you're for the mass killings of Americans or you're for the door to door confiscation of all guns. /s
”If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” - Marc Aurelius.
When was the last time a toddler killing someone led to the passage of something like the Patriot Act or the creation of a department like Homeland Security. Terrorism isn't about killing as many people as possible, it's about instilling terror in your enemy and all the negative stuff that goes along with that. Comparing it to accidents involving guns and toddlers is lazy.
Soon as I got to "rightwing scapegoat" I stopped reading. Sorry, but if it included "leftwing wacko" it would be the same with me. If you can't get your point across without trying to be witty and calling Florida, USA's penis, you don't deserve my attention.
Many people have rightly pointed out that terrorism, being a tail risk, should not have such an out-sized influence on policy or lead to the erosion of civil rights. If that is your take-away from this article, good for you.
Some people, including the article's author, then go on to argue that because of a different tail-risk (toddler's shooting people with guns) we should ban* all guns. This is a terrible argument. I am not saying there are no good arguments out there, I am saying this is not one of them.
*Yes, I said ban. Guns are already regulated, no proposed legislation would prevent this incident, and bans are the explicit end goal of most pro gun-control groups[1]
The statistics are always misinterpreted; they can't be considered in the same domain. Terrorists fall in the risk domain that is subject to tail events. Toddlers with guns don't. In plain English, you're not going to see a 10x increase in deaths one year from toddlers playing around with guns, while that's very possible with terrorist activity. In fat-tailed domains like terrorism, single, extreme events make up the entire mean, so just because something bad doesn't happen for a short period of time doesn't mean it's any safer. All it takes is one extreme terrorist event to do some serious damage.
How exactly do we define "terrorist"? For example, why is the San Bernandino mass shooting NOT considered terrorism? Because more people were killed in that single incident than were shot by toddlers in all of 2015.
Wait, the San Bernandino shooting is constantly referred to as terrorism by the media and by politicians... When the perpetrator isn't Muslim though, the situation is different (e.g. Dylan Roof, Anders Brevik, James Holmes) and the same people instead are much more likely to frame the violence as a mental health issue.
I see no meaningful distinction between the San Bernandino shooters and the "lone wackos". Cultural background influences how an angry, mentally ill person will brand and target their particular act of violence. For Dylan Roof it was racism, for Anders Breivik it was Christianity, and for Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, it was radical Islam. So far even the FBI says they acted alone.
It's undeniable that whether or not a person is Muslim influences how their violent act is framed by the media and politicians. Also worth noting:
So does cancer, diabetes and cows... they don't do it with firearms though. The operative word here is firearms and that's what people are trying to discuss.
You have to remember only law abiding citizens in the US follow the gun laws.
If a bad guy breaks into your house in the middle of the night, the police response time is not enough to save you and your family. If you want to protect your young child in this case, its better to lawfully own a gun and have proper training on how to use it.
You're presuming that the person breaking in to your house at night wants to harm you. If they're breaking in at night they probably want to steal your stuff without you encountering them. So the best course of action is probably to stay in your bedroom, stay quiet, and call the police. Pull out your gun and that bad guy probably also has one and you've put your own life in danger and made a non-violent situation life threatening.
You're calling someone (who you say is probably armed) breaking into your home a non-violent situation?
...??
And what about in San Francisco, where that person could very likely be mentally unstable.. Should I just assume they probably won't harm me?
What about in a rural area, where police could be tens of minutes away?
This logic seems incredibly unreasonable to me.
If someone breaks into my home in the middle of the night, I'm not going to be a robot and be running probabilities in my head. I'm going to protect myself and my family to the fullest extent possible, which is eliminating the threat. I'm not going to assume anything other than the worst about the threat.
>> "You're calling someone (who you say is probably armed) breaking into your home a non-violent situation?"
Yes. It's a non-violent situation until myself or the intruder decides to make it violent. I'm going to do what I can to minimise the chances of that happening.
I think this is just a different cultural attitude. In many places, the US in particular, there is a culture of fear. There is probably also a much greater chance of an intruder in the US having a gun due to the prevalence of them.
This is how I think about it:
Someone is breaking into my home. Why? They have nothing to gain by harming me unless they are insane in which case they can harm someone on the streets much more easily. They probably want my possessions. If I don't disturb them they aren't going to seek me out. If they are threatened they will, if not they will leave me alone. If you are truly scared keep your weapon in your bedroom and stay in your bedroom. If they don't come near you you have no reason to use it unless you are crazy enough to risk your like for your possessions.
Any discussions of guns in America that doesn't delve into the differences between states is bound to be uninformed just like this article. You want to see what gun control looks like in America? Go to New Jersey. We have gun control. You cannot leave your house in New Jersey with a gun. The laws and their enforcement are so draconian, you cannot safely even go to the gun range with your very legal gun. This is what gun control looks like in America. We have some of the worst ghettos and gun violence in America because we have gun control, because the only people stupid enough to have a gun on them in New Jersey are criminals. This isn't some hypothetical. This has been reality for decades here. So before some uninformed idiots make idiotic generalized statements about guns in America, I'd like to invite them to New Jersey and see how safe and wonderful their gun-controlled vision of America is.
No one could possibly make such arguments if they really considered the outcome of their actions, but most Americans are too stupid to do that generally and can only consider their own fantasies as reality. That's how we ended up in this situation of draconian drug and terrorism laws. Americans consider what they want to happen as what will and what is happening, despite a flood of evidence to the contrary. Then they write idiotic articles like this without even doing research and finding out what really happens when you have gun control in America.
When there's a researched, well-thought out article on gun control, maybe there'll be something to discuss. Until then, we're wasting words on both sides. Conversation my ass.
This is the latest in a line of articles (and arguments) for that matter that completely fails to address the gun culture we have in the United States. It paints a picture that people who have guns are just these crazy old hicks, ha ha look at them with their silly guns.
First of all in large areas of the country (and around the world) guns can be useful tools of survival or hobbies, including around where I live. We have shooting ranges, gun safety courses, numerous retailers that sell them, and no mass shootings either alongside a healthy and large hunting population. Guns are important here is the takeaway.
It's awfully sad what happened to Jamie Gilt and that toddler is probably going to have some serious issues to work out as they grow up, but let's be clear: she left the gun loaded in an accessible area. That was her choice and now she's paying for it.
Second of all, the problem with this article is that it's basing all of it's arguments in the rational. Guns are dangerous; yeah, we know, they're literal killing machines, that's what they're for. Guns are unnecessary; maybe where you live and we could get by without them too, but we don't want to. We LIKE the guns, that's why we spend large amounts of money on them. In Australia they made big steps in what many consider to be the right direction with a buyback program, but if that was offered here I can honestly say I wouldn't go for it. I bought my guns for a reason; I want them here.
You know a Toyota Camry would probably be much safer and much more economical and better for the environment than a Charger with a V8 engine, but the argument of safety, economy and environment completely misses the reasons I would buy the Charger; it's fun and I like it. And I feel it's an essential part of our freedom to make certain that people are allowed to choose what they WANT instead of what is necessarily the best decision FOR them.
Well considering how effective the War on Drugs has been, I'm honestly fine with you buying cocaine. You can't possibly do as much damage as the various District Attorney's do.
In a world full of corporate sponsered politicians who make the laws without regard of the masses, a power mad executive branch that uses state of the art tech to monitor everything in an attempt to detect precrime, the mass incarceration of males based on balance sheet projections, and wide spread police brutality, and growing geopolitical unstability due to interventionalists refusing to allow the markets to reflect risk, it is no wonder the fourth estate and their loyal cadre of narrative worshippers want to totally eliminate gun ownership.
Obvious answer: Ban toddlers rather than end-to-end encryption.
On a more serious note, the gun deaths in America are a cultural problem (being careless with weapons, not locking them away properly, etc). No ban will fix culture. There are ways of improving the world without bans. I loathe the kneejerk reactions like "someone was harmed by X - BAN IT FOR EVERYONE!". What happened to self-responsibility? Why can't we just educate people and encourage them to train in the safe handling of guns? It's not that hard.
As a Canadian raising a small child in America, I echo the sentiment expressed by the author. It may be slightly irrational (e.g. statistically I should be more afraid of my kid getting hit by a car), but I don't think the author is just intentionally sensationalizing. When you don't grow up around guns, and regularly hear news stories about kids accidentally or intentionally shooting each other/family members, it is quite concerning.
EDIT
I deleted a line about poor healthcare in America being a greater risk than guns because it was not necessary to the point I was making and possibly inflammatory.
I am a bit baffled by the terror-stricken tone of the article, summed up in this sentence.
I live in Appalachia. I hear shooting on almost every nice day. I am playing outside in the yard with my toddlers and the neighbors are shooting things. I don't even think about it.
The 2nd Amendment forestalls many arguments about what the law IS. It does not forestall arguments about what the law SHOULD BE.
And it is important that we engage in a discussion about what the law ought to be. For instance, although courts do not (well, ought not) respond to public opinion, there is a public discussion going on now about the appropriateness of the government ordering Apple to rewrite their OS to allow the FBI to decrypt a phone. That discussion is healthy, and a good thing. As another example, I often engage with people in discussions of why freedom-of-expression (1st Amendment) is so important, and I am prepared to lay out the arguments for why it is a good law.
The 2nd Amendment ought to be treated the same way. Those who think it is good policy should be able, and willing, to lay out the reasons why it is a good law. And many of them do. I believe some of those reasons may be based on bad science (e.g. "It is good not to restrict gun ownership because greater gun ownership reduces crime."), and we can talk about that. Other gun rights supporters pass laws requiring that no federal money be spent on collecting data on gun-related risks (perhaps for fear that the results will not support their positions?). I object to that behavior, and I hope you would too.
My understanding, and someone correct me if I am wrong, is the 2nd amendment was in no way held to be a generic right for all to bear arms until the 1970s.
The NRA created the gun lobby out of nothing at all.
So, we should all be allowed to own bazookas and nukes and aircraft carriers? Because, if this is about securing the state (either against a tyrannical government, or a 3rd party), rifles and handguns aren't going to cut it.
Or, are you limiting your interpretation to firearms in common use at the time of the Constitutional Convention? In which case, you can turn in your Glock and your AK.
Point being, we already have established restrictions on firearms. These restrictions have held up in court (for the most part).
> So, we should all be allowed to own bazookas and nukes and aircraft carriers?
Yes, of course. You'll need quite a bit of money to buy the second two and comply with safety regulations, though …
There is an argument that the 2nd Amendment only covers personal weapons, e.g. rifles, pistols, swords, knives, bazookas &c. I don't find it fully persuasive, but I don't really feel strongly enough about the issue to spend all my time arguing about whether nukes should be legal: I'm far more concerned about things like firearms, knife & sword bans.
> So, we should all be allowed to own bazookas and nukes and aircraft carriers?
I can't think of any reason why someone couldn't own an aircraft carrier today, other than that they cost four billion dollars of course. You can own your own tank, as long as the weapons are nonfunctional and you just drive it on your own property.
>So, we should all be allowed to own bazookas and nukes and aircraft carriers?
Most of those are prohibitively expensive, but why not? Is your argument that somehow ordinary people will be more likely to use them indiscriminately?
I mean, who is the US government, which owns bazookas and air craft carriers, but a collection of ordinary people who have done their share of indiscriminate usage of weaponry?
My argument was that the 2A isn't absolute, as the parent implied. There are restrictions placed on the ownership and use of firearms (see child comment about NFA items and the extra paperwork, fees, and licensing involved).
I'm not anti-gun, in the general sense. I am pro-gun control in a much as the current system allows too many irresponsible people to own guns for no good reason (Jamie Gilt being a prime example).
You can actually own a bazooka if you fill out the correct paperwork. It is a NFA item as regulated by the ATF and each round (aside from rounds containing no explosives) are their own NFA regulated item. Each bazooka and explosive round requires a long approval process, $200 fee, fingerprinting and passport photos. Each explosive round must be stored in a ammunition bunker built to strict ATF regulations and you must inform the ATF of each round fired.
Rifles and handguns sure are doing quite a number in the middle east and they worked in vietnam.
Isn't that kind of the point? Americans can't decide if they want new laws or to amend the constitution before deciding what the ideal would be. Your point is to shut down discussion before they get that far.
In any case, IANAL but the US has not been crippled by absolutism in the pass. There are limits to free speech, for example (defamation, libel, fire!). Are you sure that stricter background checks would be found unconstitutional?
> > Are you sure that stricter background checks would be found unconstitutional?
> Would they be unconstitutional? Yes, without a doubt.
I don't really think so. The State has the power to deprive citizens of their rights — to include their right to life — so long as it observes due process, so it has the ability to deny firearms ownership to e.g. felons (otherwise one would argue that the 2nd Amendment protects the right to arms of prisoners …). I think that it can require sellers to check whether or not someone is permitted to receive an item before transferring it.
I just don't know that this is particularly effective. Honestly, weapons crime is not a problem of weapons: it's a problem of criminals.
And I'm sure that well-regulated militia would be an improvement! Perhaps the country should start adhering to the second amendment, rather than statutorily ignoring the first half?
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are—
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.
The first half (the prefatory clause) needn't be ignored for the Second Amendment to apply to everyone - unless you're arguing for firearms restriction to apply only to women of all ages and men over age 45, but I doubt that's the case.
The ensuing total ban on handguns and further restriction on gun licensing mean that mass shootings are nonexistant, firearm murders are extremely rare (about one per year in a country of 60m), shooting of suspects by police is extremely rare (police are not routinely armed, except for anti-terrorist patrols at strategic points with MP5s), and of course firearm accidents and suicides are less common as well. Sadly suicide is a problem in the farming community; farmers often have shotguns for pest control purposes and deer culling.