Every day, 20 US Children Hospitalized w/Gun Injury (6% Die)

[waitforufo]

One must have the 'right' to recklessly endanger others without limit?

One must deny another person's rights because he sees a doctor?

[overtone]

 

 

Yet it can require that we aren't felons...

The State can take rights from individual citizens, one by one, by due process of law - hence the term "felon". It can also regulate the exercise of rights, so long as no burden is placed on them, and no citizen is deprived of them, thereby.

[MonDie]

It can also regulate the exercise of rights, so long as no burden is placed on them, and no citizen is deprived of them, thereby.

 

Okay, I see. I guess that doesn't include the burden of maintaining your vehicle to avoid the felony of manslaughter.

Please tell me where these ideas come from.

Edited September 4, 2015 by MonDie

[overtone]

 

 

Okay, I see. I guess that doesn't include the burden of maintaining your vehicle to avoid the felony of manslaughter.

Cars again. You keeping count, tenoz?

[MonDie]

Overtone is such a bad ass.

[Ten oz]

Yes. Read this thread, for example. Try the very next two posts. Or do a count of your own posts.

 

Thing is: cars and drivers shouldn't come up. At all. Their fraction of the argument for gun control should be negligible. It's a radical position on a Constitutional rights issue. It's not ok or reasonable. And combine it with allusions to the 2nd Amendment being a suicide pact, the country about to fall apart in the throes of a gun violence crisis, that kind of rhetoric, and you have what should be a fringe making wild and paranoid threats instead right at the center of the public discourse.

 

Which makes two of them, and a political jam.

 

 

It's not a matter of law, because such laws would violate the Constitution of the United States.

I did review this thread and my own posts which is how I produced a post from July. You are disregarding evidence to the contrary of your view.

 

I do not believe the country is about to fall apart do to gun violence But I can certianly sympathize with a parent who may have lost a child to gun violence that may believe that it is. You are making an affirmitive statement that it is not okay for the sake of comparison to bring up cars or mention the constitution not being a suicide pact. On what authority do you make such affirmitive statements? Thomas Jefferson, a man with better first hand constitutional knowledge than yourself, said;

 

"a strict observance of the written law is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to the written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the ends to the means."

 

Why do you demand that pointing this out is not okay? In the United States there is higher rates of gun violence than in other comparable nations. Police shoot and kill unarmed citizens and are able to justify it by simply saying they thought the citizen may have been armed. That justification is successful in part because so many people are armed that the majority accept the personal safety concern above and beyond the life of the dead suspect. This situation is unique to the United States. It isn't happening in the UK, Germany, France, and etc. Same can be said for our (USA) rates of mass shootings and accidental shootings. So many die that in these discussion we don't even bother addressing the tens of thousands injured. The scale of the problem is radical in comparison to other countries so I see nothing wrong with radical suggestions for solving it. The Constitution does not limit what may or may not be considered. The Constitution does not outline which ideas are acceptable for discussion and which ones are not. It is an empty throne you sit on in an attempt to lord over our opinions.

The State can take rights from individual citizens, one by one, by due process of law - hence the term "felon". It can also regulate the exercise of rights, so long as no burden is placed on them, and no citizen is deprived of them, thereby.

There are currently 206,000 people in federal prisons.

http://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/population_statistics.jsp

Edited September 5, 2015 by Ten oz

[dimreepr]

One must deny another person's rights because he sees a doctor?

 

 

So you think a mentally unstable person should have a firearm (a doctor would only recommend it if he/she thought it was necessary); perhaps you’d rather shoot them when they go on the rampage (I have little doubt you’d just consider that as target practice)?

[overtone]

I did review this thread and my own posts which is how I produced a post from July. You are disregarding evidence to the contrary of your view.

You have presented none. I can't find any to disregard.

 

My claim was that arguments from car and driver regulation are far more common (here and in the public discourse) than arguments from free speech regulation - or even all Bill of Rights regulatory comparisons together, I would add. An example of one of the rare arguments from free speech regulation does not counter that argument, and the fact you had to go back to July to find it I will take as further support - I found a car argument within a few posts in either direction.

 

And my contention is that this is overkill - even if car and driver arguments were fairly rare within the standard and accepted discourse, the implications of their presence at all would remain.

 

 

Why do you demand that pointing this out is not okay? For the tenth or eleventh time: because jamming the politics with irrational extremist threats is in my opinion a bad thing to do, for all the reasons listed multiple times above.

 

 

 

 

The scale of the problem is radical in comparison to other countries so I see nothing wrong with radical suggestions for solving it.

The scale of the problem is not all that "radical" in the context of the US: a violent country with bad drug laws, much alienation homophobic and military, a history of lead exposure and corporal punishment, a serious racial hostility structure, and a citizenry awash in firearms.

 

What's wrong with pushing "radical" solutions? They supplant the better ones, if implemented they risk severe damages of their own, and they create reflexive resistance to the entire prospect of "solutions" among the kinds of reasonable people whose cooperation is necessary.

 

And poorly reasoned attempts to exaggerate the scale of the problem really don't help either.

Edited September 5, 2015 by overtone

[Ten oz]

You have presented none. I can't find any to disregard.

 

My claim was that arguments from car and driver regulation are far more common (here and in the public discourse) than arguments from free speech regulation - or even all Bill of Rights regulatory comparisons together, I would add. An example of one of the rare arguments from free speech regulation does not counter that argument, and the fact you had to go back to July to find it I will take as further support - I found a car argument within a few posts in either direction.

 

And my contention is that this is overkill - even if car and driver arguments were fairly rare within the standard and accepted discourse, the implications of their presence at all would remain.

 

I do not post in collaboration with any of the other posters on this site. You are conflating several independent arguments from multiple posters into a single narrative. I went back to July to show that I had already made the free speech argument. That I have made it in this thread multiple times. Rather than acknowledging that fact and moving forward you are carrying on about what you feel other posters have done. I am responsible for my own posts. It is not my cross to bare; to debate or explain all posts that have aggrieved you. You dont like the Car comparison so I accommidaited you and made other (which I have made previously in this thread). To this you persisit that the car comparison is simply too egregious for you to move beyond. All while insisting that I am exaggerating the issues at hand. You are circling the drain as if it is the only place you feel comfortable. Threads are not meant to be one persons private soapbox. You either want to participate is discusion or you don't. Right now it seems you are just venting. You are not acknowledging posts on their own merits without conflation and are writing with a tone of affirmative authority over what is obviously a matter of opinion. You leave no room for the discussion to evolve which in itself is a tactic used by pro-gun advocates to perptuate the status qou. You are fillibusters.

Edited September 5, 2015 by Ten oz

[MonDie]

This looks like one all debaters ought to read.

 

Rates of Household Firearm Ownership and Homicide Across US Regions and States, 19881997

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447364/?report=classic

 

Summary below.

Using a validated proxy for firearm ownership, we analyzed the relationship between firearm availability and homicide across 50 states over a ten year period (1988-1997).

 

After controlling for poverty and urbanization, for every age group, people in states with many guns have elevated rates of homicide, particularly firearm homicide.

 

Miller, Matthew; Azrael, Deborah; Hemenway, David. Household firearm ownership levels and homicide rates across U.S. regions and states, 1988-1997. American Journal of Public Health. 2002: 92:1988-1993.

 

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/

[overtone]

This looks like one all debaters ought to read.

It's been posted before, and discussed before (see the string of posts in the mid 70s around 45 - 55, 115 - 120, rather (I forgot - my post around 70 was removed) on this thread,). It features a couple of dubious assumptions, an invalid lumping of data by State, and some other problems, but the rehash is long and the basic situation it illustrates - that having a gun around increases one's likelihood of killing someone with a gun, people who expect to be killing somebody often obtain guns in order to do that, etc - is taken for granted by pretty much everybody anyway.)

Edited September 5, 2015 by overtone

[Willie71]

This looks like one all debaters ought to read.

Rates of Household Firearm Ownership and Homicide Across US Regions and States, 19881997http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447364/?report=classic

Summary below.

These results are well known, and consistent with other studies on the subject. This is the reason the NRA lobbied for laws preventing firearm research. If the science was on their side, they wouldn't ban research, they would use it to support their position.

[MonDie]

It's been posted before, and discussed before (see the string of posts in the mid 70s on this thread, for one). It features a couple of dubious assumptions, an invalid lumping of data by State, and some other problems, but the rehash is long and the basic situation it illustrates - that having a gun around increases one's likelihood of killing someone with a gun, people who expect to be killing somebody often obtain guns in order to do that, etc - is taken for granted by pretty much everybody.

iNow doesn't include this research paper, but links to the Harvard article and other research on page 6, post 118. On page 9, post 173 they are rehashed, and you decline to discuss them in post 175, refering iNow back to "earlier posts, in the 70s and so forth."

 

These results are well known, and consistent with other studies on the subject. This is the reason the NRA lobbied for laws preventing firearm research. If the science was on their side, they wouldn't ban research, they would use it to support their position.

I figured we could use the stats in their results section to estimate just how bad the problem is/might be. Granted the data is old, and the US homicide rate is lower now. Edited September 5, 2015 by MonDie

[Willie71]

iNow doesn't include this research paper, but links to the Harvard article and other research on page 6, post 118. On page 9, post 173 they are rehashed, and you decline to discuss them in post 175, refering iNow back to "earlier posts, in the 70s and so forth."I figured we could use the stats in their results section to estimate just how bad the problem is/might be. Granted the data is old, and the US homicide rate is lower now.

Part of the issue is how the stats are recorded. Sometimes improvements in one category is simply from changing the definition of the category. With politicized issues like this, and the pro gun culture in the U.S., I would suspect the stats are an under representation of the extent of the real problem. In any event, what we do know, even if an under representation is that the U.S. Far outpaces its peers in terms of gun deaths and deaths by police officers, at least in part due to the fear that suspects might be armed.

 

It would take a fool to argue that increasing the prevalence of an object would result in a decrease in the effect of that object. More cars equal more auto related deaths, more Poole equals more pool related deaths. The exception comes when we see something such as drug use, where legalizing and regulating access/safety results in lower negative impacts. This appears to be the slant that gun advocates go for, but they reject regulations based on age, skill, type of weapon, or accounting for histories of violence, or mental health issues related to serious impairment in judgement, impulse control, self harm, or harm to others. We pull people's drivers licences when they are impaired mentally. It just seems obvious to do so. Why are reasonable restrictions seen as a loss of freedom, when people lose their lives over maintaining these freedoms?

[overtone]

iNow doesn't include this research paper, but links to the Harvard article and other research on page 6, post 118. On page 9, post 173 they are rehashed, and you decline to discuss them in post 175, refering iNow back to "earlier posts, in the 70s and so forth."

Yeah, sorry about that - I had "70s" on the brain, because I forgot about the problems I was having posting. Try around 45, if really interested: the problems with the stats carried over into the later years of such research, and are kind of obvious, I think, (invalid aggregation by State, invalid demographic corrections, failure to handle race and drugs carefully, inversion of cause and effect not considered, etc).

 

To illustrate: in Minnesota the greatest per capita gun prevalence is semi-rural, and the highest homicide rates are inner city - the lowest gun prevalence neighborhoods. This disappears in a whole State aggregation. Similar patterns are widespread in the northern tier of States, including some very populous ones.

 

 

 

It would take a fool to argue that increasing the prevalence of an object would result in a decrease in the effect of that object

The argument at issue concerns decreasing the prevalence of an already present object. And it carefully avoids the question of how that is to be accomplished - the only model mentioned so far is Australia, where firearms were confiscated in large numbers and great benefit in mass shooting prevalence gained thereby - but essentially no visible effect on homicide rates, which continued the existing pattern of long decline visible everywhere there is no hot drug war and the lead was removed from the gasoline fifteen years or more past.

 

 

 

 

We pull people's drivers licences when they are impaired mentally. It just seems obvious to do so

Cars again. I ran back a couple of hundred posts, and found 15 such, skimming (465, 454, 449, 446, 423, 424, 428, 419, 363, 321, 262, 253, 226, 201, 204 ). Edited September 5, 2015 by overtone

[MigL]

Seems Overtone again has a point ( damn, I hate to agree with him; just kidding ).

 

If you don't look at state by state statistics, but rather, at factors like gun availability by area ( rural versus urban, as in Overtone's Minnesota example ), it seems that gun homicide rates are lower in areas with less guns. That flies against Willie's common sense ( see his posts above ).

Rather it seems to correlate more closely with population density than gun ownership.

And maybe it implies that there's some truth to the old adage that

"Guns don't kill people, people kill people".

[iNow]

The argument at issue concerns decreasing the prevalence of an already present object. And it carefully avoids the question of how that is to be accomplished - the only model mentioned so far is Australia, where firearms were confiscated in large numbers and great benefit in mass shooting prevalence gained thereby

Try again. Switzerland was mentioned. Canada was mentioned, as was the UK. Believe also Japan, but that may have been another thread so I won't belabor it. Core point being, your claim that "the only model mentioned so far is Australia" is easy enough to check in this text based medium, and you are once again asserting things that are trivially wrong.

.

Rather it seems to correlate more closely with population density than gun ownership.

I've already corrected you on this point here in this thread. Do I need to do it again, or perhaps direct you to where I did last time? If I do, will you agree to update your thinking and change your position such that it aligns with the actual data equally available to us all? Edited September 5, 2015 by iNow

[MonDie]

To illustrate: in Minnesota the greatest per capita gun prevalence is semi-rural, and the highest homicide rates are inner city - the lowest gun prevalence neighborhoods. This disappears in a whole State aggregation. Similar patterns are widespread in the northern tier of States, including some very populous ones.

Then homicide rates are correlated with and potentially influenced by both variables: guns-per-capita AND popultation density. All you've demonstrated is that the correlation coefficient (r-value) is not a perfect 1.0.

[MigL]

( don't mention that to iNow, or he'll be all over you )

Seems some people insist that the number of guns is the SOLE reason for the incidence of gun fatalities in the US.

[MonDie]

In fact, your argument implies that failing to control for state-wide population density should lead to an underestimate.

[overtone]

Try again. Switzerland was mentioned. Canada was mentioned, as was the UK.

Not as examples of significantly decreasing the prevalence of guns, which was the explicit "argument at issue" - the matter I explicitly addressed, just as you quoted, and the subject of the post. Australia is the only current example of that, and it was accomplished by confiscating more than half a million firearms.

 

Since we are assured that mass confiscation of firearms is not on the table in the US, the relevance of that example is not direct - except of course for the information value of the large and immediate drop in mass shootings Australia achieved. Although statistically insignificant as risk factors, mass shootings nevertheless loom very large in the less rational and more psychological arena, an important one in the US. So the fact that drastically reducing the prevalence of guns had no visible effect on the already declining homicide rate in Australia does not dismiss the example from relevance. But it does bring some considerations into all arguments based on firearm prevalence.

 

 

 

 

Core point being, your claim that "the only model mentioned so far is Australia" is easy enough to check in this text based medium, and you are once again asserting things that are trivially wrong.

That post, like the others of mine you've screwed up throughout this and a couple of other threads, is not complicated. I stated explicitly exactly what I was addressing, and then addressed it. What is your problem?

 

 

 

Seems some people insist that the number of guns is the SOLE reason for the incidence of gun fatalities in the US.

Whichever factor is being considered at the moment gets that honor, generally.

 

 

 

 

In fact, your argument implies that failing to control for state-wide population density should lead to an underestimate.

Failing to control for the gun prevalence, demographics, and such known factors as drug wars and lead exposure, in the actual area and population of the homicide, leads to confusion and possible large error. Aggregating by State is a blunder, in that respect. So is failing to consider drug law enforcement patterns, racial segregation history, etc.

 

When all that has been settled, it's time to look at the direction of argument: one might reasonably postulate that a high rate of violence and risk in an area might well lead to an increase in gun prevalence, rather than (or as much as) the other way around. Not impossible, eh?

Edited September 6, 2015 by overtone

[iNow]

Seems some people insist that the number of guns is the SOLE reason for the incidence of gun fatalities in the US.

I don't believe anyone here has argued that. People have, however, used evidence that gun prevalence is strongly correlated with gun death in an attempt to refute claims people like you have put forth suggesting this is not the case...claims like the one you just made and to which I was responding... claims such as the assertion that population density is more relevant than gun density... A claim you've now repeated more than once just in this thread and which I've rebutted more than once just in this thread.

 

Let's simplify, though...

 

Since you seem to feel population density is more relevant than gun density, I encourage you to review countries with drastically higher population densities than the U.S. and compare the gun homicide rate in those countries, countries like India, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore. Once you have, please let us all know if you still think that your position holds water and if you understand why so many of us dismiss it as self-evidently false.

Edited September 6, 2015 by iNow

[overtone]

Many high density populations with few guns have little gun violence. Many low density populations with many guns have little gun violence. So?

 

Guns are less prevalent in Mexico than in the US, homicide is much more prevalent. Mexico's population density is twice the US.

 

Guns were not remarkably prevalent in Rwanda in 1994. Population pressure was - even though the country was not densely populated compared with Japan or Singapore.

 

The murder rate in most Western ancestral cultures dropped significantly with the advent of firearms. Among the Eskimo, Inuit, Cree, Ojibwe, Cheyenne, Saxon, Viking, Finn, Lapp, Germanic, Celtic, etc etc peoples, introduction of firearms was statistically correlated with lower homicide and violence rates. Steven Pinker summarizes this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature No one with any sense thinks this gun correlation is via cause and effect. It's a coincidence - other factors are key.

 

Exactly how one aggregates makes a big difference in the validity of the conclusions drawn. The larger the scale, the greater the cultural differences other than gun prevalence, the more arbitrary the boundaries, the less informative the data. Aggregating by State in the US misleads, and I would not be at all surprised to find aggregating by country over the planet misleads.

Edited September 6, 2015 by overtone

[iNow]

What specific changes to current gun laws and regulations would you support? Any?

[Ten oz]

Many high density populations with few guns have little gun violence. Many low density populations with many guns have little gun violence. So?

 

Guns are less prevalent in Mexico than in the US, homicide is much more prevalent. Mexico's population density is twice the US.

 

Guns were not remarkably prevalent in Rwanda in 1994. Population pressure was - even though the country was not densely populated compared with Japan or Singapore.

 

The murder rate in most Western ancestral cultures dropped significantly with the advent of firearms. Among the Eskimo, Inuit, Cree, Ojibwe, Cheyenne, Saxon, Viking, Finn, Lapp, Germanic, Celtic, etc etc peoples, introduction of firearms was statistically correlated with lower homicide and violence rates. Steven Pinker summarizes this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature No one with any sense thinks this gun correlation is via cause and effect. It's a coincidence - other factors are key.

 

Exactly how one aggregates makes a big difference in the validity of the conclusions drawn. The larger the scale, the greater the cultural differences other than gun prevalence, the more arbitrary the boundaries, the less informative the data. Aggregating by State in the US misleads, and I would not be at all surprised to find aggregating by country over the planet misleads.

What metric are you using to reflect that Mexico and the United States are similar enough for a comparison? GDP, USA is number one in the world and Mexico is 15th. By median income USA is 4th in the world and Mexico is 58th. By the Human Development Index which calculates life expectancy, literacy, education, and overall quality of life USA is 5th and Mexico is 71st.

 

In Saudi Arabia woman still get stoned to death. In Mexico drug cartels behead people and toss them in mass graves. What does any of that have to do with gun violence statistics in the United States? No one in here has suggested that guns are the only means by which a person can be killed or that people are only killed in countries where guns are widely accesible. The inclusion of a country like Rewanda into this conversations only serves to distract from having any comparisons. Why not skip the pretext and just say you are not willing to consider comparisons between the USA and other countries for reason(s) xyz?