You appear to be agreeing and disagreeing with me at the same time? Yes, bigger weapons would involve more civilian casualties, but that's not relevant to the point you are being pressed on. A citation is not required to know that showing up with a knife to a gun fight puts you at a disadvantage. Your point about civilian casualties is a distraction tactic, LDSman. I'd let this one go.
I'm agreeing that lesser weapons make the fight harder. I'm not agreeing that means surrender all weapons. I'm not the one claiming that military hardware would result in fewer civilian deaths!
Thanks.
How do we balance having a deterrent to a potentially oppressive regime with a healthy and functioning society? One could argue that at this point, an oppressive regime would be less deadly than the state of current gun control laws.
I'd disagree heartily with that assertion. Sure if people didn't fight back and the gov't didn't start killing select members of it citizens or institute policies that lead to the starvation of millions of its people.... But I digress. Separate argument.
Interesting link.
I'm also failing to understand if how, as you say, 2/3'ds of gun deaths are suicides, that negates the need for stricter gun control legislation. We tightly control substances like narcotics and other powerful drugs for example, which people commonly use to end their lives.
The suicide rates seem to function independently of gun ownership. Sure some areas with stricter gun control show fewer gun suicides. However, they also show higher suicide rates in other means. Look at Japan. High gun control, high suicide rate. And then there is the argument that a person made a choice to commit suicide. Sure, I agree that it was the wrong choice and I wish that they could have gotten the help they needed or even listened to their relatives that told them they were loved and what happened to their son wasn't their fault...
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-new-brain/201607/fact-check-gun-control-and-suicide
Anyway. At what point does the mantra of "their body, their choice" stop being applied?
We also don't completely ban narcotics for misuse. Imagine the outrage. Sorry that you are dying and in a lot of pain. Here's an aspirin. The better pain killers were banned because someone else abused them.
Someone tried to use their shoe once on a plane and that caused so much panic it make flying a million times worse.
Yeah, they used a shoe bomb, not just their shoe. It'd have been a bit silly to change regulations for a man using just a shoe.
It's kinda scary that so many things get immediate regulation without much fuss, but guns don't.
Maybe because there are already a lot of regulations that aren't really being enforced? Look at the prosecution rate for people trying to buy firearms when on the no buy list?
I kinda think part of it is some people just think a government with more control is oppressive by default, .
In some cases that is true. Look at the people who lose the use of land because the gov't decided a frog might live there.
First, dismissing 20,000+ gun deaths as just being suicides is...frustrating, to say the least. How much more likely is someone to commit suicide if they have access to a gun? I.E. what is the rate of someone with suicidal tendencies committing suicide at baseline and then what happens if you then hand suicidal people guns?
See above response to Baba. And those kind of numbers are hard to come by. Likely because people frown on researchers giving suicidal people a gun. A big problem is that suicide with a gun is more effective. No second chances usually. I also try to distinguish between suicide and non-suicide because they have different causes, different solutions.
And "Blame the CDC" is not a defense for lack of governmental research into a major public health issue. Regardless of whether research was flawed (I would like to see examples of the "flawed" research used to strip CDC gun research funding), you simply can't ignore a singular cause of thousands of deaths as a government for the people. That's dereliction of duty.
Google it then. CDC biased gun research works. The CDC went from simple research into political advocacy.
Second, investigating illegal obtainment of guns is made drastically more difficult by lack of searchable databases of gun ownership. Are you amenable to a manufacturer-operated database of gun owners for any gun that manufacturer sales? If not, why?
Based on the past behaviors of anti gun groups? No. These groups would leak the names of gun owners or use the database to target owners.
And more importantly...You keep talking about fixing problems post-hoc. Why is it acceptable to be reactive to gun deaths when literally every other means of premature death is approached from a proactive perspective? We don't treat cancer after it's spread too far - we screen for it, diagnose it, research ways to treat it.
How would you screen for a behavior that might not happen for decades? The problem is that anti gun people see guns as the problem. The guns aren't the problem. If it was the guns, the millions of gun owners would have proven that claim. Guns are a tool used by the problem, be it caused by mental health, greed, anger or terrorism.
We don't wait for a car crash to analyze what's wrong - we constantly update safety standards and laws and traffic flow to lessen the chance of death. So why in the case of guns do we have to wait for someone to snap before we act?
See above.
Edit: Missed this one, sorry.
Specifically, I'm talking about how many cases of "Self-defense" end up in the "defender" shooting the instigator/attacker.
200-300 per year. That doesn't count the tens of thousands or more that don't result in someone getting shot.
How many cases of self-defense are specifically a result of someone else owning a gun?
No way to tell.
How often does owning a gun actually lead to an escalation of a conflict that would otherwise normally be solved non-fatally?
Surprisingly few. Why? Because gun owners know that they would be under a lot of scrutiny if they shoot someone. They are lots of cases of over zealous prosecutors going after gun owners. (I could have sworn I saw a reference to a Florida case.)
When is it considered justifiable to defend yourself at the expense of another's life?
Usually when you fear for your life and the other person has expressed an intent to hurt or kill you.
On a more philosophical stint:
What does putting a person's property before another's life do to one's psyche? How does that damage one's world view?
I dunno. My world view is just fine. I'm not going to kill someone so my owning a gun doesn't mean a thing as far as gun deaths go.
No one's expecting drastic change over night. You have to treat gun control like a drug dealer - small doses that seem innocuous to get them hooked and then up the dosage from there until your mark can't imagine living without it.
The only difference here is gun control saves lives instead of ruining them.
Nice see a gun control person admitting that they want to pass small things to get an eventual ban. And gun control doesn't ruin lives? I have to laugh at that. Guy in Jersey who had lived in a different state where he bought a gun legally. He moved to NJ and tried to get a permit for his gun. (Need a permit to buy a gun or to conceal carry a gun) Got denied. Eventually got pulled over by police for a traffic ticket. Found his gun locked in the trunk of his car unloaded but with the ammo locked in the case with the gun. NJ arrested him, charged him with a variety of guns and eventually sentenced him to 7 years in prison. Inmates thought he was an arms dealer based on the number of charges. The governor commuted his sentence after 7 months or so. He is still a felon. Lost custody of his kids, can't get a good job, can't get a good apartment. Tell me. Legally bought firearm. Who's life was saved? Who's life was ruined? New York regularly arrests and charges people who are found to have ammunition in a checked bag at the airport. Citizens who can legally own firearms. Not just convicted felons.
I think there is a big possibility it would save some lives, especially when it comes with children finding their parents' loaded gun. Yet I still do not see how it would stem the tide of violence in inner cities where so many shootings happen. If anything it would just send many people to find more illegal methods to obtain firearms, which would hurt the preventive measures already in place like back ground checks and serial numbers on fire arms.
Accidental rates of child shootings have been steadily dropping for years.
Accidental rates of death, at least for 2007, showed higher for a lot of other things.
http://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-myths/accidental-deaths/
Five times more likely to burn to death
Five times more likely to drown
17 times more likely to be poisoned
17 times more likely to fall to your death
And 68 times more likely to die in an automobile accident
Yes, it's terrible when a child dies in a needless event. People need to be smarter about where they store weapons around children. I have a nice lock box and a trigger lock to use if any children are visiting my home.
Now I'm getting bored with people not responding to points I raise or refutations I make. A debate is supposed to go back and forth. So I'm probably going to do something else. Say something interesting or new and I may respond.
In summary, the 2nd covers gun ownership. See various Supreme Court rulings on that. The media makes a big deal about assault rifles but handguns kill more people. Heck, physical violence killed more people than rifles last time I checked. If you want to argue that "if one life is saved" by instituting a new gun law, then the inverse should be considered as well. If a gun saves one life, then what? Is a gun owner's life not just as important as someone else killed by a gun?
I also see a lot of anti gun groups lying to people. See groups that do things like list the Boston Bombers as "victims" of gun violence or the videos of guns mislabeled as rifles when they are shotguns or that ridiculous USA Today video of the chainsaw bayonet. The misleading arguments on "armor piercing bullets", the ******** claims of "internet gun sales" or any number of lies or misleading claims. Especially amusing when an anti gun politician is caught owning a gun, having armed bodyguards, or even caught selling guns to actual terrorists.
Guns are a great equalizer. They let people who are weak and frail defend themselves against thugs and criminals. Owning a gun also means that I don't have to depend on someone else for protection. When it counts, the police are minutes to hours away.