So we still don't really know what is causing this increase in shootings. Homicides have been decreasing for the last twenty some years, and according to some who post here, the percentage of home with firearms are decreasing as well. Yet, there only seems to be one repeated solution for this problem. Restrict access to guns. When you fixate on one solution, you tend to not listen to other possible causes and therefor miss a potential solution.
People who want to curb killings are not just fixated on guns, but you gun loons think it's an intrusion on rights, to use other methods. So yes, the focus is on guns, and rightfully so with 30,000 gunshot deaths a year. Not 30,000 stabbings a year, not 30,000 strangulation's a year... get the point? Why would we eliminate the weapon of choice by these murderers? They didn't choose an ice pick, or a shovel to kill, they chose guns. A good choice since guns are the best weapons to kill with. What did Rachel say about the similarities among these killers? Yes, we have a clue why these people do what they do, but you deny the evidence, as usual.
You're playing loose with numbers again, since of those 30,000, over half are suicides, not murders. Removing guns might shift the suicide rate a tiny bit, but not enough to justify violating the rights of many. Better and more available mental health services would do much more. Of the 12,000 or so murders with a firearm, a large percentage are gang violence. Better policing and legalizing drugs would do a lot to change that rate.
What we see here is that gun control advocates go after the easy solution that isn't really a solution at all, rather than promoting the hard work that would achieve good results.
"People who want to curb killings are not just fixated on guns, but you gun loons think it's an intrusion on rights, to use other methods. So yes, the focus is on guns, and rightfully so with 30,000 gunshot deaths a year."
Jim, As I said in my earlier post, homicides over all are going down and some claim that the percentage of households with guns is also going down. So why are the numbers and rate of these shootings involving the targeting of random victims increasing? What has changed to cause this increase? Discovering the answers to these questions can help find a solution to the root problem. As this most recent event illustrates, even weapons that aren't targets of gun legislation can produce horrendous outcomes.
We know what your solution to drug dealers is, you would handle it yourself with your gun, and not call the police. I'll go along with mental evaluations, but the Congress won't and neither will the NRA. You guys won't even go along with background checks at gun shows, where a felon can easily buy a gun. By the way, a mental evaluation IS one gun control method.
Jim, as usual, you're being fast and loose with the facts. You do have to have a background check at gun shows. And buying off the internet, you also have to undergo a background check. BTDT
Private sales don't require background checks in most instances. (I do have a friend who makes private sales, but he requires you have a CCW permit and photo ID before he'll sell to you.)
As far as private sales go, someone made the suggestion to make it easy for people to do background checks online for private sales, but it wasn't good enough for y'all.
Just admit that the only solution that will work for you and your ilk is a total ban and be done with it.
Sorry Mike I won't admit that I want to eliminate all guns, or make owning guns illegal. I am a gun owner and holder of a permit to carry myself. I know for a fact I can buy at a gun show without a background check, because that's where I bought one of my guns, and the seller did not do a background check, she did not even ask me one question about my background. You guys can split up the 30,000 any way you want; it doesn't change the fact that 30,000 are now dead by gun shot.
How is he "reasonable"? In the past day he has expressed hopes for Greg and me to be killed in mass shootings--a hope that implies our deaths and the deaths of random others--and has expressed hope that Texas would accidentally shoot himself.
Regarding his being pro-gun, he has claimed to own guns and have a carry permit, but I have yet to see a comment from him that supports any mode of gun ownership or carry. Instead, he has made broad statements insulting most gun owners. If he ever answers when and why he would/does carry, why he owns guns, the types he owns (even in broad terms), he would come off as more believable.
As is, Ed Schultz and Rachel Maddow more convincingly pro-gun than Jim. We at least know that Ed is a hunter and Rachel target shoots. We know that they have certain views of what guns there should be access to, and where they draw their lines. I have yet to get a similarly clear picture of Jim's positions from his comments.
Jim told us he is a gun owner and a concealed carry permit holder. Yet, he thinks you guys are fanatics. That makes perfect sense to me. Reasonable people agree.
So you're throwing in with this guy in spite of us pointing out how he has expressed desires for us to die in accidents and in mass shootings along side innocent bystanders. In spite of him expressing his "reasonable" nature by trolling Texas, saying that a very calm and reasonable post which did nothing but state his own opinions on the law was somehow "hate filled".
Ah, yes, a wonderful, reasonable partner in Gun Control you have there. You'll have to forgive us if we judge you by the company you keep after having their flaws pointed out to you. You want to call Jim rational after all of this is pointed out? Fine. But we can only assume that you, also, wish for our deaths by accident or by the hands of psychotic mass shooters.
So much for Mikeb, the self-proclaimed opponent of violent death for anyone. Apparently he is enough of a saint to oppose Nidal Hassan's execution, but not enough to call out people on his side who cheer for the deaths of gun owners or others who wish for the same.
Mikeb, you don't know what Jim's position is, unless he's communicated with you in private. He refuses to explain his stand on ownership and carry. It's not a surprise that you call someone or something reasonable without knowing anything about what you're judging.
T., that's got to be one of your wildest, jump-to-conclusion-type comments ever. And the funny part is you keep talking about other people's lack of logic and reason.
"But we can only assume that you, also, wish for our deaths by accident or by the hands of psychotic mass shooters."
You try to hold us responsible for the statements of people related to our side. Here, I'm just holding you responsible for people you identify with, hold up as examples of "reasonable gun owners", and whose bad behaviors have been pointed out to you.
Nonsense. We're well aware of the different factors involved and their various solutions. The thing you won't accept is that gun availability is one of them and it's one about which we can do much more.
As I've mentioned too many times already, the ESTIMATE of how many DGUs there are come from a calculation that 95% of them are the brandishing kind for which there is no evidence or proof whatsoever.
You, Greg, of all people, should be ashamed of yourself for even talking about this, so often do you demand proof and evidence from us.
Being a fake English professor who doesn't know the definition of "push" it's no surprise you have no clue about math. If we only had 100,000 cars in the country, would the number of "accidents" be same as today with the number of cars we have? It's not a trick question, but does take simple Math skills to answer.
No, Jim, we wouldn't. But by your logic we should be banning cars rather than having driver's ed courses, adding seatbelts and airbags, etc. After all, by keeping cars on the road, you're defending all of those deaths in accidents, including the deaths of children, all so that you can have the convenience of motorized transportation. This is the same whether we keep today's large amount of freedom with cars, or we cut them down to a smaller number and switch to more public transportation--people will still die in accidents that they wouldn't die in without the vehicles, so you're defending the deaths of those people if you keep any vehicles!
And before you say that there's a difference between firearms Negligence and vehicle accidents, they're both caused by Negligence on the part of the owners and operators.
No, it's not inevitable that more of X means more accidents with X. People can learn how to handle X. When X is a popular thing, we have skills and safety classes made available.
I've always stated that there's some negligence on the part of some party in gun accidents (can be one person, or split among people like in a vehicle accident). I've just said that we should apply the same laws to it as we do to other negligence--civil penalties for civil negligence, and criminal penalties when the negligence rises to the criminal level.
Greg said: "it's not inevitable that more of X means more accidents with X. "
I think TS would have a problem with that. He's always pointing out, and rightly so, that it's misleading to say that where there are more guns there are more gun crimes. His point is that we need to look at overall crime, not just gun crime. He seems to accept that where there are more guns there will be more gun crime.
Greg, I think this is another example of your contradicting yourself in your excessive attempt at contention.
It's possible to go from a situation with few guns, but many accidents due to poor safety training to a situation with more guns and better safety training and thus keep the raw number of accidents the same, or even shrink them.
Yes, the number of accidents generally will increase with the number of items in use, but, as Greg pointed out, it doesn't always have to be the case.
Greg used the word "inevitable" which makes the statement valid. Is the presence of guns correlated with gun use? Of course. Is it inevitable? No, not really. Inevitable implys a perfect (or near perfect) correlation, and even the gun to "gun death" correlation is far from perfect.
There are two very different ways to look at gun statistics that I have talked about before. One is a static analysis looking at the presence of guns geographically, and Mike, you summarized my position quite well. The second is a dynamic analysis where you look at the same place over a period of time. These numbers have worked out even worse for you than the former because there has been an increase in guns over the last 20 years while even the grossly improper metric of "gun death" has gone down. I think that might be what Greg was referring to when he says it is not inevitable.
Interested enough, if we look at just accidents (removing murders and suicides) we see that the availability of guns is a much smaller factor than things like education, culture, and technology improvements. This makes sense since accidents by definition are unintentional. The 90% reduction we have seen in accidental gun death rate is testament to that. So to say it is not inevitable that increasing guns will increase gun accidents is very true. Cars have been the same way. Of course increasing the amount of cars on the road and miles driven is a factor in more accidental injuries, but what we have found is that other factors are bigger and have been able to reduce overall injuries. Regarding guns, reckless behavior is the biggest contributer. If you look at IANSA website for international gun data, you will see that there are many countries with a small fraction of USA's ownership, yet with more accidental gun deaths. I would attribute this to a lack of gun culture where most of their gun ownership is underground, there's no training going on, and people act careless (like celebratory gun fire). But all else being equal (same culture, same time, same technology), sure we will see that where there are more guns there are more gun accidents- and that is not surprising.
So we still don't really know what is causing this increase in shootings. Homicides have been decreasing for the last twenty some years, and according to some who post here, the percentage of home with firearms are decreasing as well.
ReplyDeleteYet, there only seems to be one repeated solution for this problem. Restrict access to guns. When you fixate on one solution, you tend to not listen to other possible causes and therefor miss a potential solution.
"Fixate on one solution"
ReplyDeletePeople who want to curb killings are not just fixated on guns, but you gun loons think it's an intrusion on rights, to use other methods. So yes, the focus is on guns, and rightfully so with 30,000 gunshot deaths a year. Not 30,000 stabbings a year, not 30,000 strangulation's a year... get the point? Why would we eliminate the weapon of choice by these murderers? They didn't choose an ice pick, or a shovel to kill, they chose guns. A good choice since guns are the best weapons to kill with. What did Rachel say about the similarities among these killers? Yes, we have a clue why these people do what they do, but you deny the evidence, as usual.
You're playing loose with numbers again, since of those 30,000, over half are suicides, not murders. Removing guns might shift the suicide rate a tiny bit, but not enough to justify violating the rights of many. Better and more available mental health services would do much more. Of the 12,000 or so murders with a firearm, a large percentage are gang violence. Better policing and legalizing drugs would do a lot to change that rate.
DeleteWhat we see here is that gun control advocates go after the easy solution that isn't really a solution at all, rather than promoting the hard work that would achieve good results.
"People who want to curb killings are not just fixated on guns, but you gun loons think it's an intrusion on rights, to use other methods. So yes, the focus is on guns, and rightfully so with 30,000 gunshot deaths a year."
DeleteJim,
As I said in my earlier post, homicides over all are going down and some claim that the percentage of households with guns is also going down. So why are the numbers and rate of these shootings involving the targeting of random victims increasing? What has changed to cause this increase? Discovering the answers to these questions can help find a solution to the root problem.
As this most recent event illustrates, even weapons that aren't targets of gun legislation can produce horrendous outcomes.
We know what your solution to drug dealers is, you would handle it yourself with your gun, and not call the police. I'll go along with mental evaluations, but the Congress won't and neither will the NRA. You guys won't even go along with background checks at gun shows, where a felon can easily buy a gun. By the way, a mental evaluation IS one gun control method.
DeleteJim, as usual, you're being fast and loose with the facts. You do have to have a background check at gun shows. And buying off the internet, you also have to undergo a background check. BTDT
ReplyDeletePrivate sales don't require background checks in most instances. (I do have a friend who makes private sales, but he requires you have a CCW permit and photo ID before he'll sell to you.)
As far as private sales go, someone made the suggestion to make it easy for people to do background checks online for private sales, but it wasn't good enough for y'all.
Just admit that the only solution that will work for you and your ilk is a total ban and be done with it.
Sorry Mike I won't admit that I want to eliminate all guns, or make owning guns illegal.
DeleteI am a gun owner and holder of a permit to carry myself.
I know for a fact I can buy at a gun show without a background check, because that's where I bought one of my guns, and the seller did not do a background check, she did not even ask me one question about my background.
You guys can split up the 30,000 any way you want; it doesn't change the fact that 30,000 are now dead by gun shot.
Given your attitudes, why do you have a gun, why do you have a gun carry license, and why did you go to a gun show?
DeleteAttitude? I'm a pro gun guy.
DeleteYou're not a pro-gun guy in my book. But whatever you want to call yourself, answer the question.
DeleteGreg, Jim is a reasonable pro-gun guy, that's as opposed to a fanatical one like yourself.
DeleteHow is he "reasonable"? In the past day he has expressed hopes for Greg and me to be killed in mass shootings--a hope that implies our deaths and the deaths of random others--and has expressed hope that Texas would accidentally shoot himself.
DeleteRegarding his being pro-gun, he has claimed to own guns and have a carry permit, but I have yet to see a comment from him that supports any mode of gun ownership or carry. Instead, he has made broad statements insulting most gun owners. If he ever answers when and why he would/does carry, why he owns guns, the types he owns (even in broad terms), he would come off as more believable.
As is, Ed Schultz and Rachel Maddow more convincingly pro-gun than Jim. We at least know that Ed is a hunter and Rachel target shoots. We know that they have certain views of what guns there should be access to, and where they draw their lines. I have yet to get a similarly clear picture of Jim's positions from his comments.
Jim (earlier today): “So arms doesn't mean guns? Great, problem solved, no guns.”
DeleteThis doesn’t sound like the words of a “pro-gun guy”.
Let's put it this way: The fact that you call Jim a pro-gun guy is one of the many reasons that your ideas must never become law.
DeleteJim told us he is a gun owner and a concealed carry permit holder. Yet, he thinks you guys are fanatics. That makes perfect sense to me. Reasonable people agree.
DeleteSo you're throwing in with this guy in spite of us pointing out how he has expressed desires for us to die in accidents and in mass shootings along side innocent bystanders. In spite of him expressing his "reasonable" nature by trolling Texas, saying that a very calm and reasonable post which did nothing but state his own opinions on the law was somehow "hate filled".
DeleteAh, yes, a wonderful, reasonable partner in Gun Control you have there. You'll have to forgive us if we judge you by the company you keep after having their flaws pointed out to you. You want to call Jim rational after all of this is pointed out? Fine. But we can only assume that you, also, wish for our deaths by accident or by the hands of psychotic mass shooters.
So much for Mikeb, the self-proclaimed opponent of violent death for anyone. Apparently he is enough of a saint to oppose Nidal Hassan's execution, but not enough to call out people on his side who cheer for the deaths of gun owners or others who wish for the same.
Mikeb, you don't know what Jim's position is, unless he's communicated with you in private. He refuses to explain his stand on ownership and carry. It's not a surprise that you call someone or something reasonable without knowing anything about what you're judging.
DeleteT., that's got to be one of your wildest, jump-to-conclusion-type comments ever. And the funny part is you keep talking about other people's lack of logic and reason.
Delete"But we can only assume that you, also, wish for our deaths by accident or by the hands of psychotic mass shooters."
Great reasoning there, very sensible conclusion.
You try to hold us responsible for the statements of people related to our side. Here, I'm just holding you responsible for people you identify with, hold up as examples of "reasonable gun owners", and whose bad behaviors have been pointed out to you.
DeleteNonsense. We're well aware of the different factors involved and their various solutions. The thing you won't accept is that gun availability is one of them and it's one about which we can do much more.
ReplyDeleteWe don't accept that because we know for a certainty that more guns doesn't equal more crime and we insist on respecting basic rights.
DeleteYou don't know shit for a certainty. You think by repeating it enough the Lott and Kleck nonsense will gain credibility. It won't.
DeleteHey fake NRA professor, your certainly flies in the face of Math, a real certainly. "We" meaning the NRA?
DeleteWe meaning people who can think. But please explain, how does math object to my statement?
DeleteAs I've mentioned too many times already, the ESTIMATE of how many DGUs there are come from a calculation that 95% of them are the brandishing kind for which there is no evidence or proof whatsoever.
DeleteYou, Greg, of all people, should be ashamed of yourself for even talking about this, so often do you demand proof and evidence from us.
Being a fake English professor who doesn't know the definition of "push" it's no surprise you have no clue about math. If we only had 100,000 cars in the country, would the number of "accidents" be same as today with the number of cars we have? It's not a trick question, but does take simple Math skills to answer.
DeleteNo, Jim, we wouldn't. But by your logic we should be banning cars rather than having driver's ed courses, adding seatbelts and airbags, etc. After all, by keeping cars on the road, you're defending all of those deaths in accidents, including the deaths of children, all so that you can have the convenience of motorized transportation. This is the same whether we keep today's large amount of freedom with cars, or we cut them down to a smaller number and switch to more public transportation--people will still die in accidents that they wouldn't die in without the vehicles, so you're defending the deaths of those people if you keep any vehicles!
DeleteAnd before you say that there's a difference between firearms Negligence and vehicle accidents, they're both caused by Negligence on the part of the owners and operators.
So you concede that just like cars these gun "accidents" are really negligence. Thank you.
DeleteNo, it's not inevitable that more of X means more accidents with X. People can learn how to handle X. When X is a popular thing, we have skills and safety classes made available.
DeleteI've always stated that there's some negligence on the part of some party in gun accidents (can be one person, or split among people like in a vehicle accident). I've just said that we should apply the same laws to it as we do to other negligence--civil penalties for civil negligence, and criminal penalties when the negligence rises to the criminal level.
DeleteGreg said: "it's not inevitable that more of X means more accidents with X. "
DeleteI think TS would have a problem with that. He's always pointing out, and rightly so, that it's misleading to say that where there are more guns there are more gun crimes. His point is that we need to look at overall crime, not just gun crime. He seems to accept that where there are more guns there will be more gun crime.
Greg, I think this is another example of your contradicting yourself in your excessive attempt at contention.
It's possible to go from a situation with few guns, but many accidents due to poor safety training to a situation with more guns and better safety training and thus keep the raw number of accidents the same, or even shrink them.
DeleteYes, the number of accidents generally will increase with the number of items in use, but, as Greg pointed out, it doesn't always have to be the case.
Greg used the word "inevitable" which makes the statement valid. Is the presence of guns correlated with gun use? Of course. Is it inevitable? No, not really. Inevitable implys a perfect (or near perfect) correlation, and even the gun to "gun death" correlation is far from perfect.
DeleteThere are two very different ways to look at gun statistics that I have talked about before. One is a static analysis looking at the presence of guns geographically, and Mike, you summarized my position quite well. The second is a dynamic analysis where you look at the same place over a period of time. These numbers have worked out even worse for you than the former because there has been an increase in guns over the last 20 years while even the grossly improper metric of "gun death" has gone down. I think that might be what Greg was referring to when he says it is not inevitable.
Interested enough, if we look at just accidents (removing murders and suicides) we see that the availability of guns is a much smaller factor than things like education, culture, and technology improvements. This makes sense since accidents by definition are unintentional. The 90% reduction we have seen in accidental gun death rate is testament to that. So to say it is not inevitable that increasing guns will increase gun accidents is very true. Cars have been the same way. Of course increasing the amount of cars on the road and miles driven is a factor in more accidental injuries, but what we have found is that other factors are bigger and have been able to reduce overall injuries. Regarding guns, reckless behavior is the biggest contributer. If you look at IANSA website for international gun data, you will see that there are many countries with a small fraction of USA's ownership, yet with more accidental gun deaths. I would attribute this to a lack of gun culture where most of their gun ownership is underground, there's no training going on, and people act careless (like celebratory gun fire). But all else being equal (same culture, same time, same technology), sure we will see that where there are more guns there are more gun accidents- and that is not surprising.
So you admit: The more guns, the more gun "accidents" thus the more gun deaths. Thank you.
DeleteAll other things being equal, yes.
DeleteDo you also admit that where there are more guns, there are more DGUs?
I'll agree to that, but I'll also remind you of my position that gun crime far outnumbers DGUs. In other words, guns do far more harm than good.
Delete