Rant Gun Control?

Yeah, because he's a solid and un biased source. Dude, that is the guy who spent a good portion of his career figuring out how to make bullets more efficient at creating wounds and killing. And he's an MD. Not exactly the model of a rational and reasoned human being.

And the "gun blast quick facts" are laughable if only because there is a ad for a special edition SuperBlackHawk barrel. Not to mention, none of those facts are in any context. I mean, come on: "FACT: Guns prevent an estimated 2.5 million crimes a year, or 6,849 per day." I would love to see the method used to get that number. That's like saying street lights prevent 2.5 million crimes a year.

I'm pointing this out because, while I like to shoot, I think the numbers presented by both sides are stretched and twisted in the extreme. While the "more guns, less crime" idea holds weight, I think it does so only in a limited data set; which is convenient for the people who support this view. I have yet to see any data that comes from credible sources that shows this. And the data that I have see in support of it, is questionable in even the most basic ways. Even in Switzerland, the government has moved away from it's traditional view that all men maintain a weapon with ammunition in the home.

 

My eyes! The goggles, they do nothing!!!

Well, I did.

Nope. Fewer guns in Europe, and no more crime than in the US. Fact.

 

Slightly off topic, but:

Personally, I think that humanity is too emotionally immature to handle any type of weapon, whether it is a gun, a sword or even a sharp stick

We are too quick to anger and far too slow to forgive and forget. We are also too obsessed with getting as much as possible (by legal or illegal methods, hence murder and theft). We need to mature as a race and start to forget all the old grievances and imagined crimes. Personally, I think that if humanity stopped fighting and started to work together, we could be off this ball of rock and colonizing into space within 100 years (at the most).

However, the (depressing) truth is that mankind doesn’t work together. We all fear (whether we doing it consciously or unconsciously) the different and the unknown. Or we envy what the different have. That is why the Crusades occurred. Not because the East worshipped the wrong theoretical deity, but because they had wealth that could be taken, lands that could be stolen and cities that could be torn down to satisfy the crusaders’ basic instincts and urges.

All conflicts or feuds are rooted in anger or envy, and therefore are easily preventable by rational discussion and compromises.

 

great article!

 

to Voluntary_Pariah:

as that is a nice idea, i don't think you can see 'humanity/mankind (whatever the difference)' as a person that is going to mature.

people, ants, cells, molecules, everything in a certain organisation does not 'work together', it interacts. the more independent each particle becomes, the complexer you can make your organisation, the complexer rules you need. but an organisation is never going to 'mature' in the sense a human can. it is going to mature in a sense of working better/becoming bigger/more complex.

in this picture: guns are tools people use to interact with each other. 'we' will never mature. only you and i can. and for those of us who don't, we need rules to prevent them doing stupid things too easily.

 

Note that this statement is presaged in the second sentence of the OP's OP: "At the age of eight my father and uncle taught me how to shoot a gun under strict supervision and discipline."

I'm not terribly comfortable with the idea of firearms being introduced to minors at the age of eight or (in the case of a parent I once met) six years old. The idea that a child in the first grade might reach for a weapon as if it were a stuffed animal seems unnecessary and dangerous no matter how carefully guns might be locked away. I doubt that people who advocate this rite-of-passage for children would feel the same way about supervised cocktails for first-graders or supervised sex with an adult. Certain activities require a certain maturity. And I wonder how such easy familiarity would play out with an adolescent predisposed to self-injury.

It all seems to degenerate too easily into possible scenarios involving tragic death or mortal reduction of the quality of life: The child itself or someone nearby reduced to existence without an eye, or a face like a gelatinous shoe-horn cobbled together with rods. An achingly young person subject to multiple brain operations while learning to write again slowly; kept from second suicide only by clinging to some grid of faith, perhaps simplified pictures of crosses or crescents for the desperate believer with two-thirds of a lobe remaining.

 

Bad article. It is extremely selective about its sources and does not provide (and debate) alternative explanations for the patterns that are observed:

This article suggests that gun control has been ineffective in controlling gun crime. The author however uses it to argue that gun control increases gun crime. If that is true, the UK and mainland Europe should be experiencing significantly more gun crime than the US. Yet they do not.

Interestingly, the statisitics also show that of the approx. 50 school shootings worldwide, 36 occured in the US. He fails to mention or examine this.

It also coincides with the hypothesised demographic Roe vs. Wade effect --something that he as a physician should be well aware of. Yet he does not mention this theory or challenge it.

This is the center of his argument. However it is based on selective data and premises, and also fails to consider that perhaps these gun control laws failed because legal gun owners choose to disregard them. It's a bit like me saying that I don't need a driver's licence because I know that I'm a safe and responsible driver, and then going on to complain that they don't work anyway because there are so many incompetent people driving without a licence.

Legal gun owners buy guns to defend themselves but because they fail to register them, when those guns get stolen or lost they can slip anonymously into the criminal sphere. Because gun owners want their guns cheap and freely available they are also cheap and freely available to criminals. However research shows that when you raise the price of a handgun from $50,-- to about $300,--, it drastically cuts the supply of guns to criminals. The point is: legal gun owners refuse to consider that the registration of guns is another way of defending oneself against criminals with guns.

But the real kicker is this:

Am I the only one who thinks that there is something inherently contradictory about a law-abiding gun owner who refuses to obey the law just because he simply does not agree with it? Whether effective or not, counterproductive or not, it does not matter as long as you get to own your gun, right? After all, we're not dealing with a ban on guns, just a registration of them. What reason could a law-abiding citizen possibly have to not register his gun? The author does not address this.

What he does do, however, is make a spurious emotive link to the American patriots who fought for its independence and caps it off by predicting the breakdown of society as we know it. It is cheap, it is cliche (particulalry the "drug-dazed teenager") and we saw it coming a mile off. On that point alone his entire article should be disregarded as the propaganda it is. He should follow his own advice:

 

lawl. That article just got owned.

 

I must confess, I've only read the OP and the first page or so of replies.

Control of firearms in the method proposed by the bill OP mentions is the best kind of control, without infringing directly on what are perceived as 'constitutional rights'.

It bothers me more that people can take issue with it, rather than be in support of it.

Registered firearms are much easier to follow, and this is much less intrusive than banning of certain types of firearms.

I'm pro-gun, by quite a wide margin, but even to me, this makes more sense than the current system. It's a shame that it likely won't be adopted.

Side note; Nexxo, you considered a job in PR? You've shot more arguments than American hunters shot Bison.

 

For me, the rankest bit is the above gerrymandering of our collective mental playpen, in which a certain gun-coveting patriot ennobles the imaginary mob with which he threatens us -- a mob of supposedly rational gun enthusiasts who take up arms against the government because mandatory registration is too much for them to tolerate -- by contrasting their (still imaginary) behavior with the excesses of (equally imaginary) drug-addled youths. Oh, no -- not drug-addled youths! When Obama's done, only drug-addled youths will have guns! Or so I think I might possibly have been told by someone on talk radio once.

By that logic, I could justify anything I liked with contrast and hyperbole. Sure, I might have thrown feces at your turtle farm, but I'm a reasonable and moral individual who can no longer tolerate your anti-feces legislative efforts. It's all a hindrance to the American dream of replacing every turtle farm with a miniature caterpillar sauna. No government may deny my right to bear feces and caterpillar steaming equipment. After all, I'm not some foam-flecked degenerate humping light fixtures, and there are thousands of reasonable people just like me ready to fling feces in sober outrage at the unconstitutionality of various laws they've decided they don't like. I'm not worried how I'll fare when they revolt, I'm worried about what will happen to the country.

But enough about rational disobediance -- focus on the foam-flecked degenerates. They're the scary yet strangely effeminate ones. They're the people at whom you ought to be angry right now, not the sober individualists with pyramids of neatly balled poop and tiny sauna accessory kits.

 

Gun crime has gone down in the UK but assault and non-firearm crimes have gone up. The crime is still around but it's harder for you to kill each other. The UKs crimes of choice are drugs, assault and a little kidnapping.

Per capita the UK has more crime than the US.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri_percap-crime-total-crimes-per-capita

Total Crime the US has more crime than the UK
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri-crime-total-crimes


Interesting side stat (non-topic related):http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/mil_mil_cap_mil_cap_def_bud-military-capabilities-defense-budget

 

I'm a psychologist. Cognitive therapy is mostly spotting flaws and holes in dysfunctional belief systems.

Prestidigitweeze, on the other hand, is a writer:

^^^ Quality post.

It's mostly YMMV stuff; the thing that the pro-gun and anti-gun lobby can't get their head around is that guns don't make much difference to overall crime levels. But limiting guns tends to lower the fatalities-- it ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it...

 

To be honest, I think that the guns should be limited to hunting rifles/shotguns. I'm not talking about people hunting with an AK-47 or any other full/semi automatic gun.

 

i agree that civilians dont need to be owning ak's and such. though if i had the opportunity to buy one i certainly would.

i do want an ar-15 though. some versions can be bought in canada legally. it would make great target rifle and very fun hunting rifle.

handguns shouldn't be banned i dont think but having it like it is here in canada isn't a bad idea. to buy a handgun you must belong to a handgun club and the gun has to be registered and stuff.

 

I was humming and hawing whether I should throw in my opinion like I always do in these threads but this is the essential bare bones of it.

 

Prestidigitweeze, you make my brain hurt, your writing is to expensive and elaborate... I LOVE IT!!! continue as usual and i will continue reading your high quality posts.

Nexxo is simply awesome, he pokes holes in other peoples reasoning like a rocket propelled grenade pokes holes in soft cheese.

 

catterpillars, catterpillars... it reminds me of something

a TLA starting with the letter L and it has has certainly something to do with previously mentioned teenagers...

that was a GREAT post. let's ban turtle farms and start trowing poop, instead of playing with guns.

 

The mere fact of registration, of a firearm, in the states means that your on the governments lists of gun owners. What would stop them from confiscating your guns? This is why nearly anyone would give their left arm to buy a gun at a gun show OR from someone that has one already. Cause its off the radar!

I can tell you now that as law abiding citizen that I would tell the feds that I sold my guns, even though I hid them away somewhere. Why? Cause I dont trust the government! The government should fear the public, not vise-versa. And if it really thinks its doing society a favor by making 1,001 laws to obtain a weapon, it isnt! If someone wants a gun bad enough, they will find the dang thing some way or another.

People are so freaking afraid of everything these days it makes me sick... Stupid liberal hippies, go hug a tree while the government makes one irrational stupid law after another to protect you from yourself....

 

Nicb, the republitard party was screaming this same line of false shite back in 2000. They were screaming that Gore will take away your guns blah, blah, blah. Nothing but a load of shite. Then their hero hitlerII gets elected and appoints an attorney general who firmly believes that the mere act of owning a gun is a violent crime.
8 years later, buying an assault rifle is still ridiculously easy and will continue to be for the forseeable future. You, the republitards, and the NRA need a new shtick because this load of crap is old and boring.

P.S.
I have absolutely no problems with anyone owning firearms. Bullets are a different story, I think they should levy monstrous taxes on bullets to the point where they cost $100 each.

 

agree...