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-=Vagrant=-
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here and there
Feb 2002
time: 07:18
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I'm a bit lame because I'll just quote other people. Can't be bothered to write long text on sundays.
"In 1973, the American firearm stock totalled 122 million, the handgun stock was 36.9 million, and the homicide rate was 9.4 per 100,000 people. At the end of 1992, twenty years later, the firearm stock had risen to 221.9 million, the handgun stock had risen to 77.6 million, but the homicide rate was 8.5--or 9.5 percent lower than it had been in 1973. The percentage of murders committed with firearms decreased as well. In 1973, 68.5 percent of murders were committed with guns. Fifteen years later, after Americans had purchased almost as many new firearms as they had in the preceding seventy-three years, 62.8 percent of homicides were committed with guns. . . . In sum, over a twenty year period of unparalleled increase in guns, homicide rates were erratic, unpatterned, and completely inconsistent with the shibboleth that doubling the number of guns, especially handguns, would increase homicide rates. -[Cato Policy Analysis #284]"
Is there a connection? I don't know. -=Vagrant=-
"Most gun-advocates accept that heavy machine guns should be regulated. So clearly, they realize there is a limit to how much freedom can be excersized.
However, those that oppose guns appear to have no limit on risk: they want all the risk gone.
One of these two positions is inherently irrational, and it's not the gun advocates.
As a liberal who supports gun liscensing (you have to have a liscence to drive a car, don't you?) and owns a gun, I think it's pretty obvious that the real debate is not about guns.
Removing guns from American society will not make American society materially safer. It will prevent a few tragic accidents, but so what (see the Hockey thread if you think a few tragic accidents justifies curtailing 280 million people's freedom)? Violence in America is not caused by guns. Guns don't kill people, people do: and in New York City, the year after they outlawed guns, death by guns went down, and death by club & knife went up (more than the drop in gun deaths, I believe).
Furthermore, half the people who die to guns in this country are suicides. I personally think they have the right to kill themselves in the least painful manner known to man.
Our country has a love affair with violence: we substitute it for sex whenever possible. We are also a nation founded on smuggling, so pretending you can keep guns out of the hands of criminals is like pretending you can keep marijuana out of the hands of paying customers.
Liscensing guns might help us track down who did what after the fact. That would be good. But if you want to stop violence, it's not really the guns. After all, we do have gun control: you can't buy a handgun (or ammunition) until you are 21, you can't carry it to bars or schools (even here in Arizona where you can carry an open weapon anywhere else), you can't mail them around the country, you need a background check to buy one... these are all ways of minimizing the risk while preservering the freedom.
Those that object to any legislation of guns are as irrational as those that demand complete removal of guns, but for different reasons: one thinks risk can be controlled, and the other doesn't. The truth is, risk can be influenced.
But until "Bloodsport" and "Dirty Harry" are X-rated films, and "Debbie Does Dallas" is PG, we are going to have a violent society.
(Not that I think films cause violence; but they certainly tell you something about the society that produces and watches them).
As a martial artist, I understand that guns are a) a tool that allows a weaker person to defeat a stronger one, and b) a form of power that can be obtained without training or the screening process that goes with training.
Guns are not the cause of violence. They are the symptom. Gun violence in this country certainly is at a level that we should do something; but gun legislation is only a tiny, tiny part of what needs to be done.
After all, the two most devestating attacks on Americans required no guns: just fertilizer and box cutters. "
-Yahzi in James Randi Discussion Forum
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Wraith
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Austin, Texas, USA
Aug 1999
time: 23:18
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Not another one of these...
Does anyone honestly believe that getting rid of guns is going to stop murders?
--"guns are bad plain and simple"
Guns are objects. They are neither good nor bad, they simply are. It is only the uses to which they are put that can be described as good or bad.
--"As noted above the right to bear arms would not be infringed (hunting rifles would be allowed)."
Do you not see the contradictions inherent in this statement? That's like saying "Well, you can still say "Ni!" all you want, so your right to free speech isn't infringed. You just can't say anything else."
--"What is wrong with americans?"
Lack of training in logic, apparently.
--"Until recently, the Supreme Court has ruled that individual American citizens did not have the right to bear arms."
Bullshit. The Supreme Court has made very few rulings regarding the Second Amendment, and not a single one of them can be interpreted this way. All of them were much more narrow in scope.
If you think otherwise, please provide a citation, so I can go read the decision for myself.
--"But now, with the last and most recent Supreme Court ruling"
Which would be what, exactly?
Wraith
"Any time somebody tells you won't need a gun, you better take one that works."
-- Phillip Marlowe
Last edited by Wraith on 24-03-2002 at 18:28
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Dr Strangelove
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The AMA technically supports gun control. No other group ( except maybe for victim's and their families ) witnesses so frequently the extent of damage that excessively free access to firearms does. Medical studies show how phony the claim that guns prevent crime is, but you'll never see them widely publicised. Unfortunately the societies have never really pushed their views. It would be interesting to see the might of the NRA matched against the might of the AMA, but they're too tied up in their struggle with HMOs, and Medicare fee cuts.
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Wraith
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Austin, Texas, USA
Aug 1999
time: 23:18
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--"Medical studies show how phony the claim that guns prevent crime is, but you'll never see them widely publicised"
Actually, you see them publicised all the time. The problem is that they're not being done by the right people. Why should doctors be expected to have the kind of criminology training necessary to performe good studies on this subject? Gary Kleck, as an example, is a criminologist, and publishes in peer-review criminology journals.
Reports done by doctors about criminology, published in medical journals (where they will not be subject to peer review on non-medical claims) are not exactly a reliable source of information. Nevertheless, most of the claims cited in the media on the gun-control side of the debate come from studies done on such a basis.
Edit:
As an example, here is a draft version of a chapter from one of Kleck's books, "Targeting Guns: Firearms and their Control".
Wraith
I feel like I'm diagonally parked in a parallel universe.
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Urban Ranger
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Apolyton Duke of Off-Topic
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quote:
Originally posted by -=Vagrant=-
"In 1973, the American firearm stock totalled 122 million, the handgun stock was 36.9 million, and the homicide rate was 9.4 per 100,000 people. At the end of 1992, twenty years later, the firearm stock had risen to 221.9 million, the handgun stock had risen to 77.6 million, but the homicide rate was 8.5--or 9.5 percent lower than it had been in 1973. The percentage of murders committed with firearms decreased as well. In 1973, 68.5 percent of murders were committed with guns. Fifteen years later, after Americans had purchased almost as many new firearms as they had in the preceding seventy-three years, 62.8 percent of homicides were committed with guns. . . . In sum, over a twenty year period of unparalleled increase in guns, homicide rates were erratic, unpatterned, and completely inconsistent with the shibboleth that doubling the number of guns, especially handguns, would increase homicide rates. -[Cato Policy Analysis #284]" |
Is it? What I am seeing here are two data points. How do they form a pattern I do not know.
Now if there is a graph that plots the whole thing over 20 years I like to see that.
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Wraith
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Austin, Texas, USA
Aug 1999
time: 23:18
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--"Actually, doctors are very good with gun shot wounds and stuff like that. Com'on, where do you think criminologists got their info?"
This is also called a strawman 
Please read the article, UR. Let me quote a small segment.
quote:
As a result of these limitations, combined with a willingness to combine scholarship with personal advocacy of a political agenda (Kates et al. 1995; see Teret et al. 1990 for an overt defense of advocacy research), research published in medical outlets is commonly of poor quality. The major exceptions are (1) research on the more traditionally medical aspects of gun violence, such as the frequency and nature of gunshot wounds and their treatment, and (2) research providing simple descriptions of gun homicides, suicides, accidents, and nonfatal woundings, usually based on examination of hospital and medical examiner records. Medical researchers are better qualified than others to do the former kind of work, while the latter requires only modest research skills.
Unfortunately, the central research issues in the guns-violence field are ones of causal linkages. Does greater gun availability cause more violence? Do higher violence rates cause higher gun ownership rates? Does the use of a gun by an aggressor cause higher risks of attack, injury, or death -for the victim? Does the use of a gun by a victim cause lower risks of attack, injury, or death for the victim? It is fair to describe the work of medical researchers on these issues as almost uniformly incompetent, and consistently biased. |
You can read the link for the details and justifications.
Wraith
"If love can kill people, hatred can also save them."
-- ("Noir")
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Wraith
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Austin, Texas, USA
Aug 1999
time: 23:18
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--"OK wraith. Then we should allow machine guns as well to be sold the the public."
Yup. Amusingly enough, the only real Supreme Court decision on the Second Amendment (Miller), if strictly interpreted, would agree. The decision only claimed the sawed-off shotgun was not protected by the Second Amendment because it was not (to their knowledge) a viable military weapon, which a machine gun certainly is.
Edit:
About nukes and other large-scale weapons...
It is reasonable to claim that the language of the Second Amendment (keep and bear) means it is limited to man-portable weapons. I, personally, wouldn't agree, but this argument is a lot more reasonable than the "it's not an individual right" arguments. I see no reason to simply bar ownership of any single piece of property without other reasons (like felony convictions).
Wraith
"If the government doesn't trust us with our guns, why should we trust them with theirs?"
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David Floyd
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The bottom of a large bottle of beer
Jan 1970
time: 05:18
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quote:
OK wraith. Then we should allow machine guns as well to be sold the the public. Because making them illegal is like making profanity illegal in speech. It is a restriction on a right. |
So now you support making swearing illegal? If not, you aren't being consistent, and picking and choosing which rights you like.
Personally, I think that if you can afford a weapon of any sort, you should be able to buy and own it - that goes beyond the 2nd Amendment and into both property and privacy rights.
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David Floyd
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The bottom of a large bottle of beer
Jan 1970
time: 05:18
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True, but saying "****" in public is.
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Lancer
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Oregon Coast, USA! or Bohol, Philippines!
Apr 1999
time: 05:18
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:Grim reeper smiley:
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Wraith
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Austin, Texas, USA
Aug 1999
time: 23:18
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--"Sorry -- I made a mistake. There was no recent Supreme Court ruling, but a circuit ruling."
Right. Now what about that precedent you mentioned as being overturned? The Supreme Court has never issued a decision that stated explicitly one way or another on this issue.
--"Actually, profanity has been considered libel, and therefore isn't protected by the First Amendment."
Unless I'm missing something, they're talking about obscenity, not profanity (which is what David Floyd is talking about).
From Roth v US:
quote:
The words "obscene, lewd and lascivious" as used in the law, signify that form of immorality which has relation to sexual impurity and has a tendency to excite lustful thoughts. |
More related to porn (which seems to be the original complaint anyway) than swearing.
Wraith
"I ran three miles today. Finally I said, "Lady take your purse."
-- Emo Philips.
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24-03-2002 13:36
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