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

[Ten oz]

@ Overtone, as John pointed out Guns are not free. Further more companies make huge profits selling them. Do you feel gun manufacurers should be forced to sell firearms at cost non-profit? It is a "right" after all. I don't have to pay someone for speech. Seperately enviromental regulations relating iron and steel have a directly effect the costs of the material required to produce firearms and thus the cost of those firearms. So has energy prices and transportation laws. If a state increases retail tax or a county increase business fees that impacts the cost of buying a gun too. If you adhering to the 2nd Admendment means the government cannot do anything that impacts the retail cost of a gun then we (USA) needs to roll back centuries worth of taxes, labor laws, and enviromental protection.

Firearms, "right" or not, are a product manufactured by corporations who earn billions a year. The government has a role to play in quality assurance and product safety.

.

 

"Almost irrelevant statistic. "

Said the man who introduced a discussion of bike helmets.

​But "almost irrelevant" or not, it shows that "and almost no gain in safety " simply isn't correct.

If you say something and I point out that the evidence shows it's wrong, the evidence is not irrelevant.

In all fairness I mentioned helmets in response to Overtone insisting that seatbelt laws were intrusive. In most every part of the country I have live (California, Idaho, Virginia, and now D.C.) helmets are mandatory for children but not adults. Yet adults overwhelming choose to wear the helmets. The example was meant to reflect that once safety standards are introduced over time they are often adopted without intrusive government enforcement. Overtone flipped the context some by implying that bicycle helmet laws in fact have been intrusive and have negatively affected him in someway.

[overtone]

@ Overtone, as John pointed out Guns are not free.

And as I pointed out not government controlled - or they might have to be.

 

Further more companies make huge profits selling them. Do you feel gun manufacurers should be forced to sell firearms at cost non-profit? It is a "right" after all. I don't have to pay someone for speech.

You have to pay them for printing presses and ink. Or TV stations. Or radio broadcast frequencies. Or pencil and paper.

 

 

 

If you adhering to the 2nd Admendment means the government cannot do anything that impacts the retail cost of a gun then we (USA) needs to roll back centuries worth of taxes, labor laws, and enviromental protection.

That kind of thing, with reference to Constitutional rights, is a matter of occasional litigation - the government's occasional attempts to reduce the cost of speech, for example, via the Fairness Doctrine et al, have ended up in front of the Court on exactly those grounds.

 

Maybe the firearms manufacturers, or the would-be well armed militia looking at public broadcasting, will take you up on your suggestion. They might win.

 

The defense might point out that people can and do make their own firearms. And that 300 million of them already made is enough to keep the price within reason.

 

The example was meant to reflect that once safety standards are introduced over time they are often adopted without intrusive government enforcement.

This is true. But the question is of course what happens when the suggestions of the experts are not adopted in that manner. In my region the pressure to make various helmets, swimming and boating gear, playground equipment, the latest thousand dollar car safety invention, this or that feature of food or drink or clothing or household warning devices, or how one is to dance safely in bars or walk when crossing the street (that last not a joke), a matter of government enforced regulation, has been growing and at times effective.

 

Firearms aficionados have taken note. They buckle their seat belts in front of their air bags with their child in the second of the three - or is it four? - mandatory sizes of car seat crying in back because they dropped their bottle on the floor, not of their own free will, but under duress now: and that is what they think of every time somebody enthusiastically compares regulation of guns to regulation of cars and driving.

Edited October 11, 2015 by overtone

[John Cuthber]

And as I pointed out not government controlled - or they might have to be.

 

 

You still don't seem to have addressed the point.

The government's actions do sometimes make guns more expensive so there is a precedent.

They could mandate insurance for gun ownership.

The gun lobby say it should lead to a cut in the premium because they claim that more guns = less crime.

So, why not require the insurers to set premiums that reflect the risks associated with gun ownership.

Of course, there's the slight problem with the payouts to the families of roughly 1 child per day.

 

 

"And pa said "what do you usually pay?"

http://monologues.co.uk/Albert_and_the_Lion.htm

[overtone]

 

 

You still don't seem to have addressed the point.

The government's actions do sometimes make guns more expensive so there is a precedent.

I addressed that point directly, in the very post you reference, in simple English sentences. My point was that people who want to restrict guns should tread that path with care.

Here's the quote:

 

That kind of thing, with reference to Constitutional rights, is a matter of occasional litigation - the government's occasional attempts to reduce the cost of speech, for example, via the Fairness Doctrine et al, have ended up in front of the Court on exactly those grounds.

Maybe the firearms manufacturers, or the would-be well armed militia looking at public broadcasting, will take you up on your suggestion. They might win.

The question of whether or not indirectly and incrementally increasing the cost of free market purchased firearms - or purchased free speech outlets, purchased secure dwelling infrastructure, purchased locations for religious ceremony, etc - creates a barrier for the exercise of a Constitutional right, is a topic for the Supreme Court. But if you actually impose a direct and onerous cost on the keeping and bearing of even a single firearm, by government edict, you're going to lose that case.

 

They could mandate insurance for gun ownership.

The gun lobby say it should lead to a cut in the premium because they claim that more guns = less crime.

Nobody says that mandating an increase in somebody's insurance coverage will lead to lower insurance premiums. Neither is it true that "less crime" means "cuts in insurance premiums".

What is it about gun control that renders its advocates incapable of ordinary reason?

[Lagoon Island Pearls]

What is it about gun control that renders its advocates incapable of ordinary reason?

 

 

FFS.

Nonsense like that says more about your MO than gun advocates.

[ydoaPs]

Only 34% of American households have at least one gun. The number of people per household is 2.54, so it's not like you can say that even as much as 34% of Americans own guns. The vast majority of guns are owned by NRA brainwashed nutjobs who horde guns thinking that Obama is going to march his secret Gun Confiscation Force into their homes and take all of the guns away. These people are impulsive, angry, and at risk for mental disorders.

 

The fact is, gun control works. study after study after study after studies show that gun control curbs homicide. More guns means more murder.

 

This isn't a fringe opinion. In fact, the lies pushed by the NRA are fringe. There's quite the consensus in the field that just about everything the NRA has told you about gun control and gun availability is false. At this point, you may as well argue that global warming isn't real or that the Earth is only 6,000 years old.

 

Even then, the number of gun owners is decreasing, so you're doubly wrong about the gun ownership and you're wrong about the effectiveness of gun control.

 

 

Actually, yes. It's quite the consensus in the field and there are just tons and tons and tons of studies demonstrating as much. See the links above in this post for a start.

 

In case anyone was wondering, good guys with guns don't actually stop bad guys with guns. No mass shooting has ever been stopped by an armed civilian.

We should add that for every justifiable homicide using a gun, there are 34 murders, 78 suicides, and 2 accidental deaths with guns.

[overtone]

We should add that for every justifiable homicide using a gun, there are 34 murders, 78 suicides, and 2 accidental deaths with guns.

The more effective guns are in legitimate self defense, the bigger those numbers will look.

 

Because legitimate self defense almost never involves shooting people. In a perfect world of self defense, there would be not one single "justifiable homicide" by gun.

 

So all of this repetition of such numbers by people advocating for gun control emphasizes - more and more definitively - how unreliable and ill-informed their agenda is. How muddled their thinking must be. And, in consequence, how little one can trust them with regulatory power over firearms.

 

And in the US, with so many firearms owners on top of a generally libertarian streak in their neighbors, that is a political factor of significance.

 

Hence the political knot, and the damage done not only to prospects for sensible gun regulation in the US, but to US politics in general. How many more good politicians are we going to handicap with this one screwed-up mess?

 

The strength of the liberal, the left libertarian, the "good guys" (imho), is not in money or power, not in repetition and volume, but in reason, in actually making sense.

Edited October 14, 2015 by overtone

[ydoaPs]

The more effective guns are in legitimate self defense, the bigger those numbers will look.

 

Because legitimate self defense almost never involves shooting people. In a perfect world of self defense, there would be not one single "justifiable homicide" by gun.

 

So all of this repetition of such numbers by people advocating for gun control emphasizes - more and more definitively - how unreliable and ill-informed their agenda is. How muddled their thinking must be. And, in consequence, how little one can trust them with regulatory power over firearms.

 

And in the US, with so many firearms owners on top of a generally libertarian streak in their neighbors, that is a political factor of significance.

 

Hence the political knot, and the damage done not only to prospects for sensible gun regulation in the US, but to US politics in general. How many more good politicians are we going to handicap with this one screwed-up mess?

 

The strength of the liberal, the left libertarian, the "good guys" (imho), is not in money or power, not in repetition and volume, but in reason, in actually making sense.

So, let's swap out your pistol for a water gun that we spray paint black. It's functionally the same, right?

[dimreepr]

And in the US, with so many firearms owners on top of a generally libertarian streak in their neighbors, that is a political factor of significance.

 

 

Are you suggesting gun owners, will actively, threaten their liberal neighbours?

 

 

Hence the political knot, and the damage done not only to prospects for sensible gun regulation in the US, but to US politics in general. How many more good politicians are we going to handicap with this one screwed-up mess?

 

 

 

All knots, however entangled, can be untied.

[overtone]

So, let's swap out your pistol for a water gun that we spray paint black. It's functionally the same, right?

 

 

 

And in the US, with so many firearms owners on top of a generally libertarian streak in their neighbors, that is a political factor of significance.

Are you suggesting gun owners, will actively, threaten their liberal neighbours?

 

 

And the hits keep coming.

The problem with this is that in reality gun control is a change in the status quo favored by reason, and opposed by an inertia favored by irrationality and confusion It is a part of good order, a well regulated society, that we do not yet have. -> So undermining the role of reason and fact and careful thinking in a society automatically favors, to that extent, the forces opposed to gun control in the US. A pox on both houses favors the status quo.

 

All knots, however entangled, can be untied.

Not by yanking on them.

Edited October 14, 2015 by overtone

[John Cuthber]

I addressed that point directly, in the very post you reference, in simple English sentences. My point was that people who want to restrict guns should tread that path with care.

Here's the quote:

 

The question of whether or not indirectly and incrementally increasing the cost of free market purchased firearms - or purchased free speech outlets, purchased secure dwelling infrastructure, purchased locations for religious ceremony, etc - creates a barrier for the exercise of a Constitutional right, is a topic for the Supreme Court. But if you actually impose a direct and onerous cost on the keeping and bearing of even a single firearm, by government edict, you're going to lose that case.

 

Nobody says that mandating an increase in somebody's insurance coverage will lead to lower insurance premiums. Neither is it true that "less crime" means "cuts in insurance premiums".

What is it about gun control that renders its advocates incapable of ordinary reason?

 

OK, let's have a quick look at this

"Neither is it true that "less crime" means "cuts in insurance premiums". "

Since insurance (in this context) is designed to pay out in order to mitigate the effects of crimes there really should be fewer (and/ or smaller) payouts if there's less crime.

If, for example, there were no crimes there would be no pay outs.

People would very quickly migrate to insurers whose premiums reflected that.

 

Imagine that the government required insurance for gun ownership- in the same way that they require it for cars.

I have already pointed out that waving your favourite bit of paper isn't an argument against that because it can be amended out of existence so please don't waste time mentioning it again.

 

If the insurers had to pay out the cost to the victims (and/ or the next of kin) for damage done by a gun, what do you think the premiums would be?

There are broadly speaking two possible answers.

Either they would be small- perhaps technically negative- because guns contribute so much to security, that they would be able to reduce ordinary household insurance or (as I suspect) they would be dominated by the costs of the payout to the family of roughly 1 child a day (obviously, it's rather less than that because it's often the owner's kid who is killed).

If that was the case then the premiums would be enormous.

 

Now, isn't it part of the "American way" that people are responsible for their own actions- like the decision to buy a gun?

How would that work out if it was actually enforced and they were made to actually pay for their carelessness?

There's nothing "unconstitutional" about expecting people to take responsibility for their actions and, if they can't, to not act that way.

Edited October 14, 2015 by John Cuthber

[MonDie]

YdoaPs' article's data came from here.

http://www.vpc.org/studies/justifiable15.pdf

 

For the five-year period, there were 103,000 self-protection instances involving a firearm (with a subset of 1,108 leading to a "justifiable" homicide). 103,000 is roughly double the number of criminal homicides (42,419). However there are also instances wherein a criminal uses a gun but does not kill the victim.

 

note: Are those criminal homicides with guns only? It should be closer to 80,000 for a rate of ~16,000 per year.

 

Another question is whether the justifiable homicides actually prevented a murder, and likewise for those "self-protection bevahiors" in general. Table three tells us the relationships of the killed persons to the justifiable killers. If we exclude "Unknown Relationship", 67% were strangers and another 19% were acquiantances.

Edited October 14, 2015 by MonDie

[overtone]

Since insurance (in this context) is designed to pay out in order to mitigate the effects of crimes there really should be fewer (and/ or smaller) payouts if there's less crime

But it isn't.

Like I said - an inability to reason. It's characteristic.

 

 

 

Imagine that the government required insurance for gun ownership- in the same way that they require it for cars

==

If the insurers had to pay out the cost to the victims (and/ or the next of kin) for damage done by a gun, what do you think the premiums would be?

 

That's not how car insurance works. So we have two different imaginary scenes, there.

 

 

 

Now, isn't it part of the "American way" that people are responsible for their own actions- like the decision to buy a gun?

How would that work out if it was actually enforced and they were made to actually pay for their carelessness?

There's nothing "unconstitutional" about expecting people to take responsibility for their actions and, if they can't, to not act that way.

So the agenda of the gun control advocate is 1) revoke the 2nd Amendment, and register all the guns individually to their owners 2) Establish by law that anyone who buys a gun has to pay an insurance company to cover the prorated State-established costs of the suicidal, homicidal, or accidental behavior of everyone else who even possesses a gun - any gun 3) Revoke the current system of personal responsibility for personal carelessness etc - as currently enforced by civil law, and covered by existing insurance systems, at the expense of gun owners individually.

Edited October 14, 2015 by overtone

[John Cuthber]

But it isn't.

Like I said - an inability to reason. It's characteristic.

 

OK, two points.

If I'm factually wrong that's not an error in reason (well, it is, but on your part to characterise it as such, not mine)

And the point of insurance is to pay out so when called on, where's my error of fact?

 

And I know that car insurance isn't quite the right analogy- but that's simply because the point of cars isn't to kill things.

A requirement for insurance where the gun owner pays the premium and the insurer pays out for damage caused by the gun would work.

What's the problem?

 

Oh, and of course this

" law that anyone who buys a gun has to pay an insurance company to cover the prorated State-established costs of the suicidal, homicidal, or accidental behaviour of everyone else who even possesses a gun - any gun"

 

is a straw man, hardly worth commenting on since insurers charge according to an individual's risk - insurers are good at calculating that sort of thing.

Edited October 14, 2015 by John Cuthber

[overtone]

 

 

A requirement for insurance where the gun owner pays the premium and the insurer pays out for damage caused by the gun would work.

= =

is a straw man, hardly worth commenting on since insurers charge according to an individual's risk - insurers are good at calculating that sort of thing.

= =

What's the problem?

We have that already - the non-strawman version. I thought you were advocating for something new.

[Ten oz]

People would very quickly migrate to insurers whose premiums reflected that.

 

Imagine that the government required insurance for gun ownership- in the same way that they require it for cars.

I have already pointed out that waving your favourite bit of paper isn't an argument against that because it can be amended out of existence so please don't waste time mentioning it again.

 

If the insurers had to pay out the cost to the victims (and/ or the next of kin) for damage done by a gun, what do you think the premiums would be?

There are broadly speaking two possible answers.

Either they would be small- perhaps technically negative- because guns contribute so much to security, that they would be able to reduce ordinary household insurance or (as I suspect) they would be dominated by the costs of the payout to the family of roughly 1 child a day (obviously, it's rather less than that because it's often the owner's kid who is killed).

If that was the case then the premiums would be enormous.

 

Now, isn't it part of the "American way" that people are responsible for their own actions- like the decision to buy a gun?

How would that work out if it was actually enforced and they were made to actually pay for their carelessness?

There's nothing "unconstitutional" about expecting people to take responsibility for their actions and, if they can't, to not act that way.

I am all for solving my countries (USA's) gun problem. I find most of the justifications for firearm ownership ridiculous and dishonest. People in this country just have a fetish for firearms. With that said our laws do provide people the right to own guns. Silly as it may be the majority of our population view gun ownership as a founding principle of this country. Any messaure, like insurance, meant to price people out of firearm ownership overtime will fail. Modest safety features that raise the price a by a few percent the total cost I believe could be tolerated. Something like insurance is a reccuring cost that for people with several or more firearms would be too expensive and prevent them from owning the firearms they wanted. Politically it is a loser. Any politician that campaigns hard on such a proposal would be doomed.

 

Some societal shifts require baby steps. The government mounted an information campaign against tobacco and over time that has significantly reduced use. Meanwhile the government started a war against illicit drugs and that hasn't accomplished anything. People must participate in change. It can not be forced upon then or else they will revolt. Safety devices like safes and gun locks allow for participative change. People can have their firearms; all the government would be doing is incouraging safe keeping of those firearms. It is a baby step but one which can be made. A debate over insurance will only make pro gun advocates dig in deeper in my opinion.

[iNow]

The "good news" continues to stack up while in parallel our response remains ineffectual and obstructionism rampant.

 

http://www.vox.com/2015/10/15/9539263/children-die-accidental-shootings

A new study finds 110 US children die in accidental shootings each year

<snip>

110 American children ages 0 to 14 die in accidental shootings each year. What's worse, the researchers found this estimate was 80 percent higher than federal data from the National Vital Statistics System previously suggested. So not only do these tragedies happen quite often, but oftentimes the federal data doesn't even pick up on the accidents.

 

Using data from the National Violent Death Reporting System on unintentional firearm deaths for children ages 0 to 14, researchers David Hemenway and Sara Solnick looked at 16 states from 2005 to 2012 and extrapolated their findings to the entire US. (This, researchers note, is the study's biggest weakness: The system doesn't have data for all 50 states, but the 16 analyzed states varied in demographics and appeared to be fairly representative of the US as a whole.)

 

The study found the victims of gun accidents were boys 81 percent of the time. In about two-thirds of cases, the victim was shot by someone else. In those cases, 97 percent of the time the shooter was male. And more than 90 percent of the time, the shooter was family or a friend. About 19 percent of victims were shot in the homes of friends, and 11 percent of deaths involved hunting. It was very rare for an adult who's not a family member to be accidentally shot by or accidentally shoot a child.

We all know this situation can be improved while simultaneously respecting personal liberties and rights, without sacrificing personal security or our ability to fight back against potential tyranny. We all know there's a better way and we need to find a way to change this unacceptable status quo.

[John Cuthber]

I am all for solving my countries (USA's) gun problem. I find most of the justifications for firearm ownership ridiculous and dishonest. People in this country just have a fetish for firearms. With that said our laws do provide people the right to own guns. Silly as it may be the majority of our population view gun ownership as a founding principle of this country. Any messaure, like insurance, meant to price people out of firearm ownership overtime will fail. Modest safety features that raise the price a by a few percent the total cost I believe could be tolerated. Something like insurance is a reccuring cost that for people with several or more firearms would be too expensive and prevent them from owning the firearms they wanted. Politically it is a loser. Any politician that campaigns hard on such a proposal would be doomed.

 

Some societal shifts require baby steps. The government mounted an information campaign against tobacco and over time that has significantly reduced use. Meanwhile the government started a war against illicit drugs and that hasn't accomplished anything. People must participate in change. It can not be forced upon then or else they will revolt. Safety devices like safes and gun locks allow for participative change. People can have their firearms; all the government would be doing is incouraging safe keeping of those firearms. It is a baby step but one which can be made. A debate over insurance will only make pro gun advocates dig in deeper in my opinion.

Well, I certainly agree with all you say up to this bit.

" Any measures, like insurance, meant to price people out of firearm ownership overtime will fail."

And I agree with most of the rest of what you say after it; in particular I agree that that "Some societal shifts require baby steps. ".

I just think that , if it were done slowly at first, insurance might be a "baby step".

 

Also, thus far I have seen damned near zero other workable solutions, so even if this one is practically doomed (and I accept that it might well be) I think it's more practical that the science fiction world of "signature guns" that are going to cost so much that they will never sell in significant numbers, unless you make that feature compulsory. If yo do that it fails on the same basis as the insurance until you guys remember that the original constitution didn't have the 2nd amendment and, in much the same way that times changed and someone thought it was a good thing to add, times have changed and it would be a good thing to remove.

You did it with prohibition (in spite of the massive self interest of a large drinks industry); you can do it again.

[waitforufo]

And I know that car insurance isn't quite the right analogy- but that's simply because the point of cars isn't to kill things.

 

The point of guns is self defense.

[overtone]

 

 

You did it with prohibition (in spite of the massive self interest of a large drinks industry); you can do it again.

And the gun control advocate blows their foot completely off.

 

The gun control approach is, at least temporarily, sunk. There are several other ways of reducing gun violence in the US, that are not so hopelessly bollixed - and a couple of them bid fair to be more effective, anyway.

 

That is the issue, after all, right?

[John Cuthber]

The point of guns is self defense.

You seem to have missed the educational video.

 

 

The gun control approach is, at least temporarily, sunk.

 

Why?

By whom?

When does "temporary" end?

And why do you think pointing out a historical fact is a problem?

 

On a related not, give that I deliberately didn't give details of how an insurance scheme might work and yet you felt able to say this about it

"register all the guns individually to their owners 2) Establish by law that anyone who buys a gun has to pay an insurance company to cover the prorated State-established costs of the suicidal, homicidal, or accidental behavior of everyone else who even possesses a gun - any gun 3) Revoke the current system of personal responsibility for personal carelessness etc - as currently enforced by civil law, and covered by existing insurance systems, at the expense of gun owners individually. "

 

why did you make up all that bollocks?

[MonDie]

YdoaPs' article's data came from here.

http://www.vpc.org/studies/justifiable15.pdf

 

For the five-year period, there were 103,000 self-protection instances involving a firearm (with a subset of 1,108 leading to a "justifiable" homicide). 103,000 is roughly double the number of criminal homicides (42,419). However there are also instances wherein a criminal uses a gun but does not kill the victim.

 

note: Are those criminal homicides with guns only? It should be closer to 80,000 for a rate of ~16,000 per year.

 

Another question is whether the justifiable homicides actually prevented a murder, and likewise for those "self-protection bevahiors" in general. Table three tells us the relationships of the killed persons to the justifiable killers. If we exclude "Unknown Relationship", 67% were strangers and another 19% were acquiantances.

I found FBI data to suplement this.

 

Firstly, it appears to be justifiable homicides by private citizens only, otherwise it would be more than double. https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_15_justifiable_homicide_by_weapon_private_citizen_2008-2012.xls

 

Secondly, of the homicides where it's known, about 22% are strangers. About 44-45% of homicides are "unknown relationship" in these graphs, but even if we assume all of those were strangers, it's still only 57%, 10% below the 67% of "justifiable" homicide victims who were strangers.

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expandhomicidemain

 

The point is that a lot of these people who were "justifiably" killed probably weren't out to kill.

Edited October 16, 2015 by MonDie

[waitforufo]

John commented that the point of guns was to kill people. I replied that the purpose of guns is self defense. To that John replied.

You seem to have missed the educational video.

I own guns. Many people I know own guns. None of them have killed anyone.

[iNow]

John commented that the point of guns was to kill people. I replied that the purpose of guns is self defense. To that John replied.

 

I own guns. Many people I know own guns. None of them have killed anyone.

Logic fail... On multiple fronts.

 

First, the fact that you and your friends haven't personally used guns to kill people has no bearing on the fact that their purpose is, in fact, to kill. Your argument here is equivalent to suggesting that the purpose of a car is not to transport people from point A to point B merely because neither you nor your friends have driven it.

 

Second, whether intentionally or not, you've just introduced a strawman (or, at the very least, exemplified once more your frequent challenge with reading comprehension). John didn't say the purpose of guns is to kill PEOPLE. He said the purpose of guns is to kill THINGS.

 

Either way, this series of exchanges serves as further evidence of the validity of my above suggestion that too many people seem to prefer obstructionism and petty distraction over achievable improvement and meaningful progress that will save actual lives.

Edited October 16, 2015 by iNow

[overtone]

Why?

By whom?

By the impossibility of getting past your approach, which is shared by so many gun control advocates. You just advanced Prohibition - the most disastrous single legislative effort of the US government since the articles of secession, and famously so - as an encouragement, as something similar to gun control and proof of its possibility.

 

When does "temporary" end?

Dunno. I hope it's when the gun control advocates get a clue - that's the "side" that benefits, inherently, from the restoration of reason to the discussion.

 

And why do you think pointing out a historical fact is a problem?

I rest my case. This is, uniquely, a "both sides" clusterfuck.

 

On a related not, give that I deliberately didn't give details of how an insurance scheme might work and yet you felt able to say this about it

You have no idea how insurance works? Or is it that you expect the gun rights folks not to notice?

 

Either way, this series of exchanges serves as further evidence of the validity of my above suggestion that too many people seem to prefer obstructionism and petty distraction over achievable improvement and meaningful progress that will save actual lives.

So far there is one poster here who has pointed to realistic possibilities for achievable improvement and meaningful progress. It's not you. Demanding that the 2nd Amendment be "interpreted" in violation of its language because you find it outdated, for example, is an obstruction and a distraction. Even insisting on gun control as the first and central step in reigning in America's gun violence is obstruction, in my view of this situation- and it's a view with plenty of evidence in its support.

Edited October 16, 2015 by overtone