Gun Master Debate

[Summerian]

And yet the fact that violent crime of every type has been trending down, inverse to the rise in gun purchases, continues to be ignored.

Right now it's - Gun hater ego > Facts.

Oh just give it time.
I'm sure it'll hit you like a ton of bricks when the accumulated effects of poverty, debt, unemplyment, social unjustice, racism and gun ovenship and what not all rises to the surface.
We'll see just how much fun your gun will be then.
Hey, at least you'll be playing one of them Shoot 'Em Up computer games for real just before you die. Its always that...

Nah, you'll thank the heavens when you finally come up from hiding in your basement and find Communist China has showed up and brought "Peace and Stability" to your neighbourhood. Then you'll be all like - "I was against guns all along, I promise! I didn't know. I'm innocent!!"
Gun nuts are so very tough till reality comes knocking.

 

[UltimateApathy]

You are the absolute last person who should be accusing anyone of "spewing out nonsense here to support your irrational beliefs".

In order for beliefs to be rational, they need to be grounded in verifiable, proven facts. Every post you’ve made in this entire thread has been nothing but a complete regurgitation of anti-gun propaganda. You haven’t backed up one claim you have made, and a couple of different posters have refuted your claims in their posts with actual facts proving your points to be nothing more than hokum. Yet you persist with the same tired arguments that hold no water, and clearly aren’t well versed on the subject at hand. You are doing the same thing over and over, yet expecting a different result. Not exactly rational behavior now is it?

I assume you will respond to this post claiming your superior logical thinking, claim that I’m brainwashed by propaganda because I don’t agree with you, and make more unsustained claims. Then you’ll sit back and bask in your ‘logical thinking’ even though you lack the basic skills to effectively participate in an actual debate.

Don’t pat yourself on the back too hard.

Apparently, son, if you think everything I've been saying is unsubstatiated then you clearly haven't been reading what I've been writing. I'm going to post what I said on the previous page here and you will see that via the linked statistics we can tell several things:

65% OF ALL MURDERS in America occur at the hands of guns. Small coincidence then that American gun ownership sits at 88 guns per 100 people which is by far the highest rate in the world (the nearest is only 54/100) and most countries have less than 10 guns per 100 people. There are a few rotten third would countries with higher homicide rates via guns than the USA but that is hardly surprising considering conditions there. If you can't see the grim picture these statistics and my accompanying logical commentary paint of a country with a serious gun crisis, then you truly are a brainwashed political pawn.

Do you even realize what a laughing stock you American gun nuts are to the rest of the world? For sure, almost every country has its gun nuts, but none have a super-powerful political organization (NRA) dedicated solely to the promotion of gun ownership - at least they can look at talking monkeys like you and know that the millions of dollars they spend on propaganda is doing its job...

Don't scratch yourself on the back with your AK47 too hard.

"The point is that, like I said a million times but your little mind seems to conveniently ignore, is that a gun is far more likely to be used in a crime than in successful self-defense. Now of course they don't actually keep records of how many people manage to use guns successfully in self-defense and most crimes committed with guns are simple "stick ups" that don't actually get recorded as "gun crime" (which also means that any gun crime statistics are also seriously skewed) - a gun cows civillians into fearful resistance far more than any knife or whatever could. So when we don't have any solid reliable statistics about a situation we just need to use our logic and common sense to figure out what is most likely true. If I were tell you that there are more ants than people in the world, would you demand to see statistics to prove it even though it is obviously true? Even in many situations where statistics could be provided the answer if often very clear and obvious - for example, if I were to say that men are more inclined to commit violence than woman, would you really ask to see evidence to support such an obviously true claim? If you try it, I'm sure that you will see that you can correctly determine things with sound logical deductive reasoning when your mind is unpolluted by rightwing redneck propoganda. Things such as:

* the likelihood of a gun being used in a crime as opposed to a successful self-defence
* the very small chance of a successful self-defence with a gun in almost any situation when the criminals are alert and prepared, as they usually are
* the likelihood of the U.S. government becoming a dictatorship and the gun carriers of America waging a successful guerilla war against them (lol, what a joke).
* the "power effect" that guns have on criminals which encourages them to commit crime more brazenly

I could go on and on with these, really...


Firstly, I'd ask where you are getting your information. If you are referring to the world at large, I would believe it since the vast majority of countries out there don't hand out guns willingly to all in sundry like they do in the U.S. In the USA 65% OF ALL MURDERS are committed by people with guns, according to this chart
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_crime

You've only provided one set of statistics so far, and I already pointed out how it doesn't even support your case in any way at all. Furthermore, it only recorded actual shootings and made no mentions of the uncounted thousands upon thousands of additional gun-related crimes such as stick-ups etc.

India, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, are just a few of the MANY examples of democratic countries that have very few guns and also very little violent crime. Even non-democratic countries like China and Vietnam have very few guns and very little violent crime. We're talking about vast portions of the Earth's population here, and furthermore Wikipedia also shows that most countries in the world have fewer than 10 guns per every 100 people, but in the U.S.A. people have 88 guns per 100 people

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_...ita_by_country

Having a society that awash with guns is not normal or healthy, as is evidenced by the endless string of mass shootings and other gun crime. I've lived in a country that had gun problems almost as severe as the US and I've also lived in a country that basically has no guns, and the difference between the two is absolute night and day in terms of safety and crime levels. You should go out and see the world to decipher the truth rather than relying on propoganda fed to you by political groups with obvious profit incentives.

I never mentioned anything about "apologetics courses" so don't even bother trying to put words into my mouth. If you study politics or international relations etc you'll be bound to come across some portions about the necessity and role of the military in the modern state. You certainly won't find any such academic information relating to the necessity of civillian gun ownership because there IS NONE, other than N.R.A propoganda.
At least your military background explains your gun obsession and willingness to blindly and heedlessly follow orders from NRA propogandists."

 

[Dak]

You were too afraid to reply to my earlier lengthy post but now come groveling back to reply to a much shorter one which doesn't make you look like a total fool? LOL. Oh yeah, and conveniently ignoring most of what I said in that post too, and yet still having the gall to accuse me of having nothing to back-up my claims? Don't make me laugh...

Logical fallacies: It's all you post. You use them here again. If you want me to reply to your "scary post", post it in some other typography than the written equivalent of yelling. I responded to the one I responded too because it wasn't written in a disrespectful manner. Furthermore, I don't see anything that I ignored. Please quote what was ignored and ask nicely for either agreement or rebuttal.

If (as it seems) you would like me to say that hunting should be banned then I would generally say so BUT as someone mentioned in a really whiny tone earlier that hunting is part of American culture and I do believe in cultural preservation as a concept too, and as long as the only people who have guns are in fact hunters (who are relatively rare in society as a whole anyway), then I see no harm in them possessing hunting rifles. Introduce strict requirements to obtain hunting rifles like the ones I mentioned earlier (like the ones that they have in most civilized countries) and the only guns in civilian hands won't be landing in the hands of would-be criminals, and society becomes a lot safer. Or just ban hunting too without any cultural concessions and annoy the hunting crowd, I certainly wouldn't mind.

So another appeal to emotion on an arbitrary distinction for hunters, or no distinction at all (what about gun culture preservation?). Separately, why would you care whether hunting rifles fall in the hands of criminals? Clearly even with there available abundance people would rather use bats to kill each other. It's amazing how many facts you have to ignore to make your "logic" work.

Next you will want to argue some such absurd thing like a terracentrism, since clearly we can see that the sun moves in the sky, and the ground under your feet is stationary. All that astronomy and science stuff is just Copernican propaganda.

 

[UltimateApathy]

Logical fallacies: It's all you post. You use them here again. If you want me to reply to your "scary post", post it in some other typography than the written equivalent of yelling. I responded to the one I responded too because it wasn't written in a disrespectful manner. Furthermore, I don't see anything that I ignored. Please quote what was ignored and ask nicely for either agreement or rebuttal.

So another appeal to emotion on an arbitrary distinction for hunters, or no distinction at all (what about gun culture preservation?). Separately, why would you care whether hunting rifles fall in the hands of criminals? Clearly even with there available abundance people would rather use bats to kill each other. It's amazing how many facts you have to ignore to make your "logic" work.

At this point you're just saying random things that make little sense to keep the argument going and making arbitrary excuses for your ealier incompetence. What other "gun culture" is there if not for hunting? Surely you can't mean those nuts that think they're gonna have to launch an armed rebellion against the big bad government at any minute? What culture is there in that? Oh wait, its like that meme Sumerian just posted earlier "Being Insane - Now a Political Movement". As I linked earlier, there are many countries that allow civillians to only own hunting rifles, and they have really low gun-crime rates. Why? Because they have proper vetting processes for giving out and tracking the relatively low number of guns that are in society, unlike the U.S.
The ease with which you can obtain firearms in the U.S (hence the astronomic gun ownership rate) is right there in the first paragraph of the whole article:

"Gun control laws and policy vary greatly around the world. Some countries, such as Australia, the United Kingdom or Germany, have very strict limits on gun possession while others, such as the United States, have relatively lenient limits."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics

 

[matt schrauben]

Apparently, son, if you think everything I've been saying is unsubstatiated then you clearly haven't been reading what I've been writing. I'm going to post what I said on the previous page here and you will see that via the linked statistics we can tell several things:

65% OF ALL MURDERS in America occur at the hands of guns. Small coincidence then that American gun ownership sits at 88 guns per 100 people which is by far the highest rate in the world (the nearest is only 54/100) and most countries have less than 10 guns per 100 people. There are a few rotten third would countries with higher homicide rates via guns than the USA but that is hardly surprising considering conditions there. If you can't see the grim picture these statistics and my accompanying logical commentary paint of a country with a serious gun crisis, then you truly are a brainwashed political pawn.

Do you even realize what a laughing stock you American gun nuts are to the rest of the world? For sure, almost every country has its gun nuts, but none have a super-powerful political organization (NRA) dedicated solely to the promotion of gun ownership - at least they can look at talking monkeys like you and know that the millions of dollars they spend on propaganda is doing its job...

Don't scratch yourself on the back with your AK47 too hard.

"The point is that, like I said a million times but your little mind seems to conveniently ignore, is that a gun is far more likely to be used in a crime than in successful self-defense. Now of course they don't actually keep records of how many people manage to use guns successfully in self-defense and most crimes committed with guns are simple "stick ups" that don't actually get recorded as "gun crime" (which also means that any gun crime statistics are also seriously skewed) - a gun cows civillians into fearful resistance far more than any knife or whatever could. So when we don't have any solid reliable statistics about a situation we just need to use our logic and common sense to figure out what is most likely true. If I were tell you that there are more ants than people in the world, would you demand to see statistics to prove it even though it is obviously true? Even in many situations where statistics could be provided the answer if often very clear and obvious - for example, if I were to say that men are more inclined to commit violence than woman, would you really ask to see evidence to support such an obviously true claim? If you try it, I'm sure that you will see that you can correctly determine things with sound logical deductive reasoning when your mind is unpolluted by rightwing redneck propoganda. Things such as:

* the likelihood of a gun being used in a crime as opposed to a successful self-defence
* the very small chance of a successful self-defence with a gun in almost any situation when the criminals are alert and prepared, as they usually are
* the likelihood of the U.S. government becoming a dictatorship and the gun carriers of America waging a successful guerilla war against them (lol, what a joke).
* the "power effect" that guns have on criminals which encourages them to commit crime more brazenly

I could go on and on with these, really...


Firstly, I'd ask where you are getting your information. If you are referring to the world at large, I would believe it since the vast majority of countries out there don't hand out guns willingly to all in sundry like they do in the U.S. In the USA 65% OF ALL MURDERS are committed by people with guns, according to this chart
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_crime

You've only provided one set of statistics so far, and I already pointed out how it doesn't even support your case in any way at all. Furthermore, it only recorded actual shootings and made no mentions of the uncounted thousands upon thousands of additional gun-related crimes such as stick-ups etc.

India, Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, are just a few of the MANY examples of democratic countries that have very few guns and also very little violent crime. Even non-democratic countries like China and Vietnam have very few guns and very little violent crime. We're talking about vast portions of the Earth's population here, and furthermore Wikipedia also shows that most countries in the world have fewer than 10 guns per every 100 people, but in the U.S.A. people have 88 guns per 100 people

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_...ita_by_country

Having a society that awash with guns is not normal or healthy, as is evidenced by the endless string of mass shootings and other gun crime. I've lived in a country that had gun problems almost as severe as the US and I've also lived in a country that basically has no guns, and the difference between the two is absolute night and day in terms of safety and crime levels. You should go out and see the world to decipher the truth rather than relying on propoganda fed to you by political groups with obvious profit incentives.

I never mentioned anything about "apologetics courses" so don't even bother trying to put words into my mouth. If you study politics or international relations etc you'll be bound to come across some portions about the necessity and role of the military in the modern state. You certainly won't find any such academic information relating to the necessity of civillian gun ownership because there IS NONE, other than N.R.A propoganda.
At least your military background explains your gun obsession and willingness to blindly and heedlessly follow orders from NRA propogandists."

Your sources leave out other important facts such as this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_control#Statistics

Evanston, Illinois, a Chicago suburb of 75,000 residents, became the largest town to ban handgun ownership in September 1982 but experienced no change in violent crime.

Source: Reynolds, Morgan O.; Caruth, W. W., III (1992). Myths About Gun Control. National Center for Policy Analysis. ISBN 0-943802-99-7.

Among the 15 states with the highest homicide rates, 10 have restrictive or very restrictive gun laws.

Source: Lott, John JR. More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws. Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 1998, pp. 50-96, 135-138.

Twenty percent of U.S. homicides occur in four cities with just 6% of the population—New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Washington, D.C.—and each has or, in the cases of Detroit (until 2001) and D.C. (2008) had, a requirement for a license on private handguns or an effective outright ban (in the case of Chicago).[

Source: Reynolds, Morgan O. and Caruth, III, W.W. (1992). NCPA Policy Report No. 176: Myths About Gun Control. National Center for Policy Analysis. p. 7. ISBN 0-943802-99-7. "20 percent of U.S. homicides occur in four cities with just 6% of the population – New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Washington, D.C., and each has a virtual prohibition on private handguns"

It's an extremely well documented fact that increased restricitons or outright bans on guns doesn't do anything to actually reduce crime. Also, take a look at the facts King Richard posted in the first post. We aren't 'awash' with mass shootings.

 

[matt schrauben]

Apparently, son, if you think everything I've been saying is unsubstatiated then you clearly haven't been reading what I've been writing. I'm going to post what I said on the previous page here and you will see that via the linked statistics we can tell several things:

65% OF ALL MURDERS in America occur at the hands of guns. Small coincidence then that American gun ownership sits at 88 guns per 100 people which is by far the highest rate in the world (the nearest is only 54/100) and most countries have less than 10 guns per 100 people. There are a few rotten third would countries with higher homicide rates via guns than the USA but that is hardly surprising considering conditions there. If you can't see the grim picture these statistics and my accompanying logical commentary paint of a country with a serious gun crisis, then you truly are a brainwashed political pawn.

Do you even realize what a laughing stock you American gun nuts are to the rest of the world? For sure, almost every country has its gun nuts, but none have a super-powerful political organization (NRA) dedicated solely to the promotion of gun ownership - at least they can look at talking monkeys like you and know that the millions of dollars they spend on propaganda is doing its job...

Don't scratch yourself on the back with your AK47 too hard.

"The point is that, like I said a million times but your little mind seems to conveniently ignore, is that a gun is far more likely to be used in a crime than in successful self-defense. Now of course they don't actually keep records of how many people manage to use guns successfully in self-defense and most crimes committed with guns are simple "stick ups" that don't actually get recorded as "gun crime" (which also means that any gun crime statistics are also seriously skewed) - a gun cows civillians into fearful resistance far more than any knife or whatever could. So when we don't have any solid reliable statistics about a situation we just need to use our logic and common sense to figure out what is most likely true. If I were tell you that there are more ants than people in the world, would you demand to see statistics to prove it even though it is obviously true? Even in many situations where statistics could be provided the answer if often very clear and obvious - for example, if I were to say that men are more inclined to commit violence than woman, would you really ask to see evidence to support such an obviously true claim? If you try it, I'm sure that you will see that you can correctly determine things with sound logical deductive reasoning when your mind is unpolluted by rightwing redneck propoganda. Things such as:

* the likelihood of a gun being used in a crime as opposed to a successful self-defence
* the very small chance of a successful self-defence with a gun in almost any situation when the criminals are alert and prepared, as they usually are
* the likelihood of the U.S. government becoming a dictatorship and the gun carriers of America waging a successful guerilla war against them (lol, what a joke).
* the "power effect" that guns have on criminals which encourages them to commit crime more brazenly

I could go on and on with these, really...


Firstly, I'd ask where you are getting your information. If you are referring to the world at large, I would believe it since the vast majority of countries out there don't hand out guns willingly to all in sundry like they do in the U.S. In the USA 65% OF ALL MURDERS are committed by people with guns, according to this chart
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_crime

Also, check your sources. That 65 percent statistic you got from Wikipedia is from 1999. Very outdated and almost a decade before the Supreme Court decisions that ruled all handgun bans and bans on concealled carry were unconstitutional.

 

[EffigyForgotten]

Also, check your sources. That 65 percent statistic you got from Wikipedia is from 1999. Very outdated and almost a decade before the Supreme Court decisions that ruled all handgun bans and bans on concealled carry were unconstitutional.

What is it now?

 

[matt schrauben]

What is it now?

Good question really. As Overwatch stated a few times, crime has been trending down but I haven't seen any numbers yet. Although I'm not the one pushing outdated statistics to support claims, so burden of proof isn't on me. Although, I'll see if I can't dig something up.

 

[UltimateApathy]

Your sources leave out other important facts such as this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_control#Statistics



Source: Reynolds, Morgan O.; Caruth, W. W., III (1992). Myths About Gun Control. National Center for Policy Analysis. ISBN 0-943802-99-7.




Source: Lott, John JR. More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws. Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 1998, pp. 50-96, 135-138.



Source: Reynolds, Morgan O. and Caruth, III, W.W. (1992). NCPA Policy Report No. 176: Myths About Gun Control. National Center for Policy Analysis. p. 7. ISBN 0-943802-99-7. "20 percent of U.S. homicides occur in four cities with just 6% of the population – New York, Chicago, Detroit, and Washington, D.C., and each has a virtual prohibition on private handguns"

It's an extremely well documented fact that increased restricitons or outright bans on guns doesn't do anything to actually reduce crime. Also, take a look at the facts King Richard posted in the first post. We aren't 'awash' with mass shootings.

Interesting how I kept seeing this phrase popping up throughout the article "The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page" Interesting that the only other country discussed there (Australia) experienced far lower levels of gun crime after restrictions were enforced. Here's what I find amusingly-mindless: in a society so overflowing with guns as the U.S.A. some people think they can extract meaningful data from banning guns in a particular city for a little while and seeing what the statistics on crime say. That fails to take into account that (a) banning guns sure as hell doesn't magically mean that the criminals (or even regular civilians) suddenly no longer have them, and (b) it's easy for said people to bring them in from other cities or states if they need/want to use them.

The only solution (and I could find you plenty of statistics to support this from many countries if you like) is to enforce a nation-wide tightening of restrictions. It takes years but the amount of guns will slowly but surely go down over time, and with them the level of gun crime (and your "65% of all murders are gun deaths" statistic). It's worked in many other countries before, and it would work in the U.S. too if the NRA weren't so powerful and didn't so many puppets like you dancing on their propaganda strings. What part of "less guns = less gun crime" don't you understand? Furthermore, I love the way you ignored the logic behind 95% of what I said and simply quoted the tiny number of marginally pro-gun statistics that you could find in that entire significant index - you know the N.R.A. hires people to do gun studies for them as long they have gun-favorable statistics, right? Your brain sure is well-washed...

 

[matt schrauben]

I found this.

http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_new...un-control-offers-no-cure-all-in-america?lite

It's from 2011, so we are missing 2012, but percentage wise it's actually up to 68% (I found other sources that said 2/3 which is only 66 pecent, but whatever). However, percentages can be decieving, because the amount of gun related crimes is actually down substantially since 1993.

The rate of firearms-related murders in 2011 was 3.2 per 100,000 people – a sharp decline from 1993 when the rate of firearms-related murders was 6.6 per 100,000 people.

The number of firearms-related murder victims dropped from more than 17,000 in 1993 to 9,903 in 2011.

 

[UltimateApathy]

And how about this modernized chart that shows how the USA has far more gun-related crimes than other developed country in the world. It's very telling indeed, especially the SIZE of the American spike. How do you mindless muppets not see the truth behind the statistics? http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...ed-killings-than-any-other-developed-country/

"The Sandy Hook Elementary shooting that killed 27, including 20 children, is already generating the same conversation that every mass shooting in America generates: Why are there so many shootings?

One piece of this puzzle is the national rate of firearm-related murders, which is charted above. The United States has by far the highest per capita rate of all developed countries. According to data compiled by the United Nations, the United States has four times as many gun-related homicides per capita as do Turkey and Switzerland, which are tied for third. The U.S. gun murder rate is about 20 times the average for all other countries on this chart. That means that Americans are 20 times as likely to be killed by a gun than is someone from another developed country.

The above chart measures data for the nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which includes all Western countries plus Turkey, Israel, Chile, Japan, and South Korea. I did not include Mexico, which has about triple the U.S. rate due in large part to the ongoing drug war.

The rate in several developing countries, particularly in Latin America, is significantly higher. Honduras, which has been called the murder capital of the world, has an average firearm murder rate that’s about 20 times America’s. But make no mistake: For a rich, developed country, the U.S. gun-related homicide rate is very, very high."

 

[UltimateApathy]

I found this.

http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_new...un-control-offers-no-cure-all-in-america?lite

It's from 2011, so we are missing 2012, but percentage wise it's actually up to 68% (I found other sources that said 2/3 which is only 66 pecent, but whatever). However, percentages can be decieving, because the amount of gun related crimes is actually down substantially since 1993.

Oh, so now you find some statistics that disagree with your claims and prove you dead wrong, but suddenly you're able to dismiss them off-hand - why I am not surprised ...? All other gun crime pales in terms of a serious nationally-problematic nature in comparison to homicide - this is pretty obvious to anybody with half a moral-centered brain, unless you want me to prove this with statistics too? LOL

 

[viewerfromnihil]

I'm honestly pretty sick of people pretending that the NRA is some political power-house. They're not, they merely have a media spotlight on them. Their yearly reciept of donations was mentioned on Real Time with Bill Maher last week. It was some pathetic figure, in terms of money in Washington, like $12 million. You can barely buy a handful of congressmen with that. They are not the ones preventing anti-gun legislation from passing. Anti-gun legislation will not pass because all Republicans and a very large portion of Democrats are also against gun restrictions. Make no mistake, though the media makes it appear Democrats are 100% for various gun restrictions with their spotlight pointed at Obama, Pelosi, and Feinstein, most Democrats do not support this. Hell, Gabby Giffords is still pro-gun after getting shot in the head.

 

[matt schrauben]

oh, so now you find some statistics that disagree with your claims and prove you dead wrong, but suddenly you're able to dismiss them off-hand - why I am not surprised ...? All other gun crime pales in terms of a serious nationally-problematic nature in comparison to homicide - this is pretty obvious to anybody with half a moral-centered brain, unless you want me to prove this with statistics too? LOL

How does it disagree with my claims when gun related crime has decrease dramatically since '93? It doesn't prove anything I've said wrong.

You are looking at things with tunnel vision. Fact of the matter is, gun crime is down. Even if most crimes are committed with guns, actual gun crime itself is down a lot. Would you still be advocating disarming the population if say there were only 3 crimes commited last year, but 2 of them were with guns? That's still 66%. I guess by your logic you would be.

 

[UltimateApathy]

Here's another realling telling chart that details "Number of victims of the worst mass shootings in western democratic countries from 1966 to 2012" Count them and notice that the US has as many serious mass killings (16) during that period as THE REST OF THE DEMOCRATIC WORLD COMBINED (16). Regardless of what your NRA puppet-masters tell you, the US does has a serious problem with mass shootings, and it's because of lax gun control laws.

http://www.statista.com/statistics/...ss-shootings-in-western-democratic-countries/

 

[UltimateApathy]

Here goes your theories about the N.R.A. not being a powerful political force, as well as the gun-crime statistics claim.

http://www.businessinsider.com/cdc-nra-kills-gun-violence-research-2013-1

How The NRA Killed Federal Funding For Gun Violence Research

More than 100 scientists from universities in the United States lobbied Vice President Joe Biden, asking him to allow the Center for Disease Control and Prevention to once again fund research into the public health impacts of guns.

The scientists signed a letter to Biden last week, urging him to consider making "direct investments in unbiased, scientific research and data infrastructure" related to firearm safety.

The CDC isn't allowed to pursue many kinds of gun research due to the lobbying strength of the National Rifle Association.

As a result of the National Rifle Association's lobbying efforts, governmental research into gun mortality has shrunk by 96 percent since the mid-1990s, according to Reuters.

Prior to 1996, the Center for Disease Control funded research into the causes of firearm-related deaths. After a series of articles finding that increased prevalence of guns lead to increased incidents of gun violence, Republicans sought to remove all federal funding for research into gun deaths.

In 1996, Republican Rep. Jay Dickey removed $2.6 million from the CDC budget — the precise amount the CDC spent on gun research in 1995 — at a time when the center was conducting more studies into gun-related deaths as a "public health phenomenon," according to The New York Times. The NRA and some pro-gun Congressmen perceived this as more of an attack.

Here's an excerpt of a 1997 article in Reason about the fight to kill gun science:

Since 1985 the CDC has funded scores of firearm studies, all reaching conclusions that favor stricter gun control. But CDC officials insist they are not pursuing an anti-gun agenda. In a 1996 interview with the Times-Picayune, CDC spokeswoman Mary Fenley adamantly denied that the agency is "trying to eliminate guns."

At the behest of the NRA, Congressional Republicans successfully removed all federal funding to the Center for Disease Control that would have gone into researching the effect of guns and the root causes of gun violence.

That funding was eventually reinstated, but has been decreasing since, and the CDC re-designated the money to conduct research on traumatic brain injuries.

The current law reads: “None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”

Because of the NRA's successful campaign to eliminate the scientific research into the public health effect of firearms, very few researchers specialize in the field anymore, University of California, Davis, professor Garen Wintemute told Reuters. He said there isn't enough money to sustain research.

Since there is a lack of funding for independent research, the gun debate has been lacking in unimpeachable statistics that could effect a change in the status quo.

As it stands, the main available statistics regarding the gun debate are raw gun homicide and suicide stats collected through the FBI, international data and data from groups with a direct stake in the gun debate — for instance, pro-gun stats from the NRA and pro-gun control stats from the Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Violence.

The scientists writing the letter to Biden wrote that, effectively, the NRA has successfully hamstrung a credible gun control conversation. When the only statistics available are imperfect, it becomes that much easier to disregard them.

 

[Dak]

It's worked in many other countries before, and it would work in the U.S. too if the NRA weren't so powerful and didn't so many puppets like you dancing on their propaganda strings. What part of "less guns = less gun crime" don't you understand? Furthermore, I love the way you ignored the logic behind 95% of what I said and simply quoted the tiny number of marginally pro-gun statistics that you could find in that entire significant index

Sure, banning guns can potentially lead to less gun crime, while simultaneously leading to an increase in all other crimes. You keep ignoring that inconvenient truth. Sound like a Pyrrhic victory to you? Or is referencing a "Pyrrhic victory" going to fly over your head? Apparently you haven't a clue what a logical fallacy is, with your frequent use of them and confusion over my pointing them out. I must assume there is much you don't know.

Your logic is useless when based on incomplete or inaccurate facts. If your premises is that the universe revolves around the earth, your flawless logic is going to be worth absolutely nothing.

The UK and Australia both banned guns. Both have seen an increase in crime levels. However, both nations are geographically isolated as islands. The US shares a broad border with both Canada and Mexico. Guns flowing across the border into Mexico could easily go the other way just like the drugs we banned do. So a nationwide gun ban isn't going to stop guns flowing into the US any more so than a citywide gun ban stopped guns flowing into the city, anymore so than these bans stopped drugs.

During the same time period the UK and AU have seen increases in crime, the US is trending down to near historic lows, while gun purchases are and have been soaring. The UK and AU don't even have to worry about spillover violence from cartel activity influencing their crime rates like the US does. Yet the US is nowhere near the top in crime rates or gun violence, while being the most armed nation in the world by a long shot.

So if more guns =/= more gun crime, less guns =/= less gun crime. Your equation is a myopic reduction.

 

[Dak]

Here's another realling telling chart that details "Number of victims of the worst mass shootings in western democratic countries from 1966 to 2012" Count them and notice that the US has as many serious mass killings (16) during that period as THE REST OF THE DEMOCRATIC WORLD COMBINED (16). Regardless of what your NRA puppet-masters tell you, the US does has a serious problem with mass shootings, and it's because of lax gun control laws.

http://www.statista.com/statistics/...ss-shootings-in-western-democratic-countries/

So 16 mass shootings (assuming they are using the FBI definitions, that's 4 or more victims in one incident) in a little under 50 years? More people died by baseball bat in one year than 16 "mass shooting" incidents combined. All while other crime has been plummeting for the last 20 years while the same crime has been rising in these other countries? Seems like your priorities are severely skewed by all this anti-gun propaganda.

Again, focusing solely on "mass killings" and "gun deaths" is about as narrow minded and myopic as you can get on the subject. When you go shopping do you ignore unit price and normal pricing for total price and BIG SALE EVENT signs?

 

[Scott Martin]

I don't have stats handy. Anybody want to dig up a stat about what percentage of gun crimes are committed with legally obtained guns?

My gut tells me that taking guns out of the hands of well-meaning citizens won't do much to solve the cause of the vast majority of gun violence. Mass shootings? Probably. But in the grand scheme of things those numbers are few compared to those everyday shootings on the streets that society only cares about for the thirty seconds they're reported on the local news.

There is no question that there is an unhealthy gun culture in the US. And using a gun yourself to defend yourself from that is a legitimate reasonable choice that I have chosen not to make.

 

[UltimateApathy]

Here's an article and graph about gun crime in the US. The number of crimes committed by people with guns may be falling (it's falling in the UK too) but it still FAR and away outstrips other violent crime by a huge proportion. The same of goes for the murder-via-guns statistic:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jan/10/gun-crime-us-state