Guncrazy USA

Really... people don't use guns recreationally. Are you retarded? Hunting is recreational. Target shooting is recreational. There are groups and organizations all over the place that hold shooting contests, as well as different contests related to hunting. I shoot recreationally. I go out in my back yard and shoot in to a sand pile at targets I set up. Guns aren't solely used to kill people; and you can use, and enjoy, a gun without ever being violent or harming another individual.


This is what drives me insane in debates like these. You have a lot of people who just shoot off their opinions without really knowing what they're talking about. I'm not saying everybody here does that, but how many people here have actually shot a gun? If you haven't, then you can shut your mouth right now. I don't care how many statistics and "facts" you may have, if you haven't even experienced what you're so vigorously trying to put down, then you really need to try it.


It's like arguing against private ownership of vehicles, or something, without ever having been behind the wheel of a car.

 

ya but if you kill a can that is wrong! free the cans!!

 

I have shot a gun, yes, several times. 'recreationally' as you put it. I don't think killing or training your ability to kill is really recreational. People like guns because they give them a sense of power, but they are not designed for fun, they are designed to kill. If they were designed for fun, they would fire foam pellets and be unable to fire anything metal. The fact of the matter is, they are weapons.

 

Well, I can see where you think you have a point but truth is, you really don't. Here's why (read carefully):

Well, that WOULD make sense...that is, if armed robbery had "stayed fairly similar with or without gun control" as you say. Well uh, it didn't. IMMEDIATELY AFTER (and therefore logically a directly result of) the gun ban was enacted, armed robbery rates SKYROCKETED.

Now why on Earth do you suppose that is? My guess is, it's because the low-life scumbags knew that they were now free to stick people up and invade houses with virtually *NO* chance of resistance. Makes sense to me...do you have another theory?

According to the United States Department of Justice, 70 million people LEGALLY own a firearm in the USA. Of those, 1 in 140,000 will commit a crime with that legally owned weapon.


1 in 140,000. That's .0007%


.0007% which amounts to about 500 actual criminal acts performed per year with legally owned guns out of the 70 MILLION owners of 200 MILLION or so legally owned guns in this country.


Now I'm aware we're talking about Australia and not the U.S. but I'd be willing to bet the sentiment remains much the same, if not even moreso like, in Australia.

So in short, your argument about "ordinary people losing it" is essentially bollocks, friend.

First of all, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more liberal source than "The Left Rudder"...although I'll accept those stats as the truth. Those are the firearm death rates.


But


They are NOT the firearm HOMICIDE rates, which you were certainly implying they were. Maybe you just didn't realize...but at any rate, THESE are the overall yearly homicide rates in Australia, according to http://www.aic.gov.au/stats/crime/homicide.html :

















Now take a look at that. Those numbers are significantly lower than the chart you presented (compare 5 per 100,00 to 1.9 per 100,000). So why the difference? The accidents and suicides.


It looks like there's roughly a 1:1 ratio of firearm MURDERS to firearm DEATHS (and that's assuming EVERY murder was a gun murder which they obviously weren't). Until 1996...then all of a sudden, fewer firearm DEATHS; but basically the SAME EXACT AMOUNT of firearm HOMICIDES.


So...what happened?


They took everyone's guns away so all the suicides and accidents stopped, but the criminals just kept on MURDERIN' like they always have!!!


:hysterical





OMG you can't make this shit up!




To be fair, after the ban passed in 1996 the overall murder rate (by guns, knives, and fists and poisons) DID drop...by 0.5 people per 100,000...a half a person in 100,000. We really don't know if that was a decline in gun murders or murders in general or whatever...but let's just assume for the sake of argument they were all gun murder decreases.

You know what else happened during the same period? ARMED ROBBERY SUDDENLY WENT UP BY ABOUT 20-30 PEOPLE PER 100,000!!!


Now, I'm not a math wiz...but that does NOT sound like a very good trade-off to me! Does it to you?

A few people were saved from clumsy accidents, and a few people had to find another way to off themselves probably in a slower, more painful way. And thousands and thousands got robbed at gunpoint. Yay for gun control!!!

It's also interesting to note that during that period, UNARMED robberies skyrocketed to nearly double as well. The curve on the chart pretty much matching that of the armed robbery curve. And don't get cute and say "Unarmed robbery went up because the people that turned their guns in didn't have a gun to rob with". That would be false, because a person that willfully surrenders up their weapons as per the government's request is NOT a person going out and committing robberies. Besides, if this were the case armed robberies would have went down and unarmed robberies would have went up. They BOTH NEARLY DOUBLED very rapidly. Yes indeedy, the minds of many a criminal were put at ease thanks to this draconian government action. Just goes to show you who gun control really hurts...the law-abiding citizen, of course. The law has no effect on criminals.


And it's really very sad that for all we know, ZERO firearm murders were prevented. Especially when you apply the statistic that approximately .0007% of LEGAL firearm users actually use their guns in the commission of a crime. I won't claim that, however, because even though I'm sure it's very very close to the truth, maybe a couple lives did get saved. Many lives would be saved from many things, like lowering the speed limit even more than it already is. Is it always worth it? Is it always justified? Is it always RIGHT?

Well yeah if you're taking guns away! But not in my world.




Enjoy your version of reality, gentlemen. I'm going to bed.

 

ANYWHERE and EVERYWHERE in the U.S. you can see that the more strictly guns are controlled, the higher the instances of gun crime in that area. In each of the 48 states that allow some form of concealed carry, they immediately saw MARKED DECREASES in violent and gun crimes...

Can you please tell me what this is based on?

**

*Your interpretation is different from mine. You think that the changes in reporting/recording policy are the main (or perhaps only?) reason for the rise in crime stats. I on the other hand think that although the policy changes probably played some role in the increase, they didn't do nearly as much to balloon the crime stats as the actual increases in crime did.

Neither of us can prove our interpretations as fact on this forum, so I'm done talking about this.

But you are basing your view wholly it seems on your belief you are right and I’m taking the advise of the statisticians that compiled the data.

You are not challenging what they are saying you are just ignoring it because it is inconvenient to what you want to believe.

And with the very handy “so I'm done talking about this” you are refusing to discuss it again.

**

The question is: What do I think is wrong about your theory?

*My answer is: Every last bit of it, especially since it comes from someone who doesn't live in the U.S. And if you want my reasons as to why I think this, just look over every single post that I've made in this thread as each and every one was designed to show the fallacy of the statements you keep repeating.

I’ve read your posts and none of them even challenge my theories, let alone refute them.

This is the problem when confronted with ideas you don’t like you seem unable to oppose you just claim you are right and the other person wrong the thing is that without a rational explanation of why you think it wrong all that is left is hollow assertions.

**

 

I love how you point to an article on an "Urban Legends" website to try and make it seem like there's ANYTHING at all false about those stats. Those stats are ACCURATE. I read that entire page, and all Snopes does is pull out that old tired argument that "stats can be interpreted many ways". Sure they can. You have your interpretation, and I have mine.

But can you explain why you have yours? Snopes’ makes certain claims can you explain why you think them incorrect?

Lets look at some –

"In the specific case offered here, context is the most important factor. The piece quoted above leads the reader to believe that much of the Australian citizenry owned handguns until their ownership was made illegal and all firearms owned by "law-abiding citizens" were collected by the government through a buy-back program in 1997. This is not so. Australian citizens do not (and never did) have a constitutional right to own firearms — even before the 1997 buyback program, handgun ownership in Australia was restricted to certain groups, such as those needing weapons for occupational reasons, members of approved sporting clubs, hunters, and collectors. Moreover, the 1997 buyback program did not take away all the guns owned by these groups; only some types of firearms (primarily semi-automatic and pump-action weapons) were banned. And even with the ban in effect, those who can demonstrate a legitimate need to possess prohibited categories of firearms can petition for exemptions from the law.
Given this context, any claims based on statistics (even accurate ones) which posit a cause-and-effect relationship between the gun buyback program and increased crime rates because "criminals now are guaranteed that their prey is unarmed" are automatically suspect, since the average Australian citizen didn't own firearms even before the buyback. But beyond that, most of the statistics offered here are misleading and present only "first year results" where long-term trends need to be considered in order to draw valid cause-and-effect conclusions.
For example, the first entry states that "Homicides are up 3.2%." This statistic is misleading because it reflects only the absolute number of homicides rather than the homicide rate. (A country with a rapidly-growing population, for example, might experience a higher number of crimes even while its overall crime rate decreased.) An examination of statistics from the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) reveals that the overall homicide rate in Australia has changed little over the past decade and actually dipped slightly after the 1997 gun buy-back program. (The chart found at this link also demonstrates how easily statistics based on small sample sizes can mislead, as when the homicide rate in Tasmania increased nearly eight-fold in one year based on a single incident in which 35 people were killed.)
Then we have the claim that "In the state of Victoria alone, homicides with firearms are now up 300 percent." This is another example of how misleading statistics can be when the underlying numbers are not provided: Victoria, a state with a population of over four-and-a-half million people in 1997, experienced 7 firearm-related homicides in 1996 and 19 firearm-related homicides in 1997 (an increase of 171%, not 300%). An additional twelve homicides amongst a population of 4.5 million is not statistically significant, nor does this single-year statistic adequately reflect long-term trends. Moreover, the opening paragraph mixes two very different types of statistics — number of homicides vs. percentage of homicides committed with firearms. In the latter case, it should be noted that the Australia-wide percentage of homicides committed with firearms is now lower than it was before the gun buy-back program, and lower than it has been at any point during the past ten years. (In the former case, the absolute number of firearm homicides in Australia in 1998-99 was the lowest in the past ten years.)
Other claims offered here, such as the statement that "While figures over the previous 25 years showed a steady decrease in armed robbery with firearms, this has changed drastically upward in the past 12 months" and "There has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the elderly" are even more difficult to evaluate, because they don't offer any figures or standards of measurement at all. Do they deal with absolute numbers, or percentages? Do they reflect all incidents of crime, or only those committed with firearms? How much of an increase constitutes a "dramatic" increase? According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the proportion of armed robberies involving firearms has actually declined over the last several years:
1995 - 27.8%
1996 - 25.3%
1997 - 24.1%
1998 - 17.6%
1999 - 15.2%
2000 - 14.0%
The ABS does report that the number of assaults on victims aged 65 and over has increased over the last few years, but hardly in a proportion one would describe as "dramatic":
Number of victims of assault aged 65 and over:
1996 - 1474
1997 - 1662 (12.8% increase from previous year)
1998 - 1663 (0.06% increase from previous year)
1999 - 1793 (7.8% increase from previous year)
The main point to be learned here is that determining the effect of changes in Australia's gun ownership laws and the government's firearm buy-back program on crime rates requires a complex long-term analysis and can't be discerned from the small, mixed grab bag of short-term statistics offered here. And no matter what the outcome of that analysis, the results aren't necessarily applicable to the USA, where laws regarding gun ownership are (and always have been) much different than those in Australia.”
http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/ausguns.asp

 

So nobody was "had" as you say.

Oh yes I think Jon Dougherty was had or was trying to con people and I’ll explain why.

This supposedly serious article was based on a dubious email. He doesn’t explain this and quotes the ‘statistics’ as if they were direct from official sources not highly biased chain letter.

Even then that email was supposedly written in 1997 while Jon article was written in 2000 that is 3 years after the statistics being quoted. Jon doesn’t explain this either he quotes them as if they were current figures.

A less biased or more honest reporter would have been more objective and actually done some research rather than just repeating something from a suspect source without question (for example the 300% increase that wasn’t).

And someone who was less biased and more honest would not be reproducing this article in 2008 eight years after it was written and based on eleven year old statistics, as if it were current (I noticed you left out the date while pasting all the rest).

**

 

Michael

Considering the beam in your own eye?

Mass shootings

I believe no murder spree type mass shooting have occurred in Australia since 1996
In the US they are common, their have been several in the last year alone.

*

Murder

There is a huge difference in the homicide rates per 100,000 of population between the two countries -

US 5.9

AU 1,28

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...cide_rate#2000s

*

The prison population

The US seems to feel it needs to lock up far more people.

US – 714 per 100,000 (I believe the highest in the world)
AU – 117 per 100,000

*

State murder used as deterrent.

Australia doesn’t have the death penalty.

The US, I believe, is the fourth or fifth highest executioner in the world.

*

So I’ll ask you again - Who do you think has a worse societal problem the US or Australia?

Now are you arguing for these problems to be looked at, so that solution may be found or are you arguing that you need a gun to protect you from your society’s obvious problems?

But this is it you don’t seem to care about your society or how it can be made better all your efforts seem to be aimed at defending or promoting gun ownership.

 

ZZ

So unless you have actually murdered someone you shouldn’t have an opinion on if it’s a good or bad thing?

Should only people that have stood for office be allowed to vote, should only ex-presidents be allowed to vote for the next president?

I mean otherwise people are just giving an opinion on subjects without really knowing what they're talking about.

I have shot guns but so what, does that mean I’ve got some greater knowledge on the subject, no, it just means I’ve shot guns.

**

Cocytus

I’ve already said I think the US constitution is in real need of a rewrite.

*

Actually I’ve been told, that one of the problems is the many current laws so, new clear and concise ones might actually be in the long run easier and cheaper.

Prohibition of things people like, such as alcohol or other types of drugs rarely works, as to gun related deaths or injuries are you claiming people like them, that they want them because they get pleasure in inflicting pain and misery on their fellow citizens? How far would you go in that belief? Should any citizen be able to own or stockpile high explosives, mustered gas, nerve agents, bubonic plague, smallpox, nuclear weapons?

Anyway I’m not talking about banning guns I’m talking about regulating them. Think about it, alcohol prohibition might have ended in the US but the trade and industry is still regulated and monitored. I’m a believer in the decimalisation of drugs but I’d still want the manufacture and trade regulated and monitored.

 

there are too many evil people in the world to allow people to own guns. also there are too many potential victims of evil people not to allow people to own guns. what are you gonna do? you're all right and you're all wrong. comparing stats from vastly different cultures is not helpful. let's face it as amercans if we were not shooting each other we'd be figuring out some way to kill each other.

i err on the side of self preservation. i am wheelchair bound and was always intimidated in public. i had no means of self defense. now when i'm out i feel perfectly safe with my springfield xd .45 in my jacket. no other means of self d. is effective for me. i can't tazer or mace a group of theives mugging me but as long as there are 13 or less of them, my xd will do just fine.

 

Dog

This brings up many questions.

But first -

Do you think Americans are just more violent and more criminal than people in other countries?

If so why?

 

Balbus=Spin Doctor

 

imagine a world without guns.....bliss.

here's a few ideas:

-put a STRICT limit on amount of guns someone can buy, if we really "need" them so much. not long ago there was a story in my local newspaper of a guy who owned about 60 guns. that's fucking crazy.

-how about actually securing buildings with security?! at my high school anyone can bring in a gun or something. security. please.

-flat out ban guns/stop making them. we see how misused they are on a DAILY basis, yet we still manufacture them and sell them. what the hell is that?!

 

The same could be said of cars, which we don't have a Constitutional right to have.

 

If you were truly ignorant, you wouldn't imagine.

 

How on Earth does it matter how many guns someone owns??? It's not like you can use more than 1 at a time anyway! Someone could do just as much damage with 1 gun and a lot of bullets as they could with a thousand guns. STOP DEMONIZING COLLECTORS, IT'S A LEGITIMATE HOBBY. Many guns are true works of art. Whatever happened to our having a "free country"? Anti-gun fascists...

What about women who have dozens of pairs of shoes? I doubt anyone would say there's something seriously wrong or "fucking crazy" about that, as many women do have massive shoe collections.

Why not impose "STRICT" limitations of the amount of shoes someone can buy? After all, think of all those poor little kids in the 3rd world who have to slave away in sweat shops to make them! At least gun manufacturers CHOSE their career, and don't work under those dreadful conditions.

 

By the way: Finnaz, why no comment on my reply to your post?

 

SHOES.
DO.
NOT.
KILL.
GUNS.
DO.


I understand gun collecting is a "hobby". there are som really sick people, though, who buy and buy and buy guns-the more they have, the more power they have.
i was just bringing up the fact that gun shops AROUND MY AREA (that is waukegan, IL.), don't seem to do background checks.
i still say owning any gun is crazy. but to compare guns to SHOES is ridiculous. get a grip.

 

MAN that got me angry. i need to chill.

 

You know what else kills?

Cars kill.


In the U.S. alone, cars kill over 40,000 a year, EVERY YEAR without any exceptions.


The number of deaths from firearms are MUCH lower than that.

Hell, every year more people die as a result of doctors making mistakes.


And your statement about Waukegan gunshops not doing background checks shows how little you really know.

The state of Illinois has some of the strictest gun laws in the country. Before ANYONE can legally possess a firearm they have to apply for an FOID card, during which time the State Police spend about a month running a thorough background check. Any past convictions involving violence, or even minor drugs violations, OR any history of treatment for mental illness makes it impossible to legally buy a gun.


You think owning any gun is crazy. However, I somehow seem to respect the words and writings of the likes of Washington and Franklin just a bit more.