Is it time to talk about guns?

Many like to believe that getting rid of guns will stop the shooting, killing, murders ,

The US has many city’s with “NO guns” laws on the books , take Detroit for example and look up how many people are shot-killed daily in that city , nothing is ever on the news about the dozens victims each weekend,

 

Are you happy with the Pa gun laws ?

 

The lack of Pa gun laws, are you happy about it , or would you rather the laws were more inline with NY ?

 

Toe

But how do you decide?

I mean a different perspective or opinion doesn’t mean it is an accurate perspective or opinion.

For example - if one side says that covid is no more dangerous than the flu and another says it is much more dangerous than the flu – how do you decide?

It one side says climate change isn’t real and others say it is - how do you decide?

If one side says voter laws are not about voter suppression and the other says it is - how do you decide?

To me a lot of rolling news coverage is about entertainment rather than been informative, it can be, but it is limited, and I often go back to reading about things in places that can go into more context and detail, with citations and suggested further reading.

It should also be realised that the vast majority of the mainstream media (especially in the US) are wealth owned and operated and have a bias and agenda that is capitalistic in nature, so while say CNN and Fox may seem to have differing perspectives, they are at their core hewn from the same rock.

 

Toe

Have you read the thread – I ask because many of the things you have brought up have already been covered.

Not sue if you mean domestic abuse specifically or criminal behaviour in general.

You could look at the proposals in post 37

In general, it is about trying to limit the possibility of guns falling into the hands of the irresponsible or criminal. In specifics to me if there is even a hint of domestic abuse taking place then the perpetrator should not be allowed to own a gun, and social services should be involved (counselling, anger management training, publicly funded refuges for victims etc) – for as I’ve said in post 157 - to tackle the gun issue it needs a holistic approach it is not just about gun control laws but things like healthcare reform, drug policy reform and welfare reform.

As has been already explained - given that the US does not have state border checks guns can easily travel around the US that is why gun control supporters what Federal laws rather than local ones.

 

Toe

I would also like to go back to something from an earlier post that might be helpful to get an understanding of your position.

Given your circumstance I can see that you might be afraid enough to wish to be armed, but what if circumstances were different or changed so that the fear associated with it was removed, would you then stop having a gun?

 

You keep using the word “Afraid” is that what you think people are that own a weapon, Afraid ?

 

I did not ask you to get into any detail about Pa or NY gun laws I asked a question, You Assumed , I do not know the laws

 

Toe

Well, those that get a gun because they fear being attacked would seem to define the definition of being afraid

Some have told me that they just want to be prepared but the only reason they feel the need to be prepared is because they fear being attacked.

Others (like yourself) say ‘better to have and not need than to need and not have“ - but again I would opinion that they only feel the need to have because they fear being attacked.

People that aren’t afraid of being attacked don’t feel they need weapons.

And in the same way it would seem to go in degrees – the most fearful would wish to have the most dangerous weapon.

How else would you describe it?

 

In 2015, David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, and Sara Solnick, an economist at the University of Vermont, analyzed national government surveys involving more than 14,000 people and reported that guns are used for self-protection in less than 1 percent of all crimes that take place in the presence of a victim. They also found that people were more likely to be injured after threatening attackers with guns than they were if they had called the police or run away.
Meanwhile, in a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1993, researchers found that having a gun in the home was linked with nearly three times higher odds that someone would be killed at home by a family member or intimate acquaintance. Studies using more recent data have come to the same conclusion. In a 2019 study, researchers found that states with high levels of household gun ownership have more domestic gun homicides than other states do. In fact, the states with the highest rates of gun ownership have 65% more domestic gun homicides than the states with the least.
In another study published this June in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers followed more than 26 million adults in California for up to 12 years, keeping track of whether they purchased handguns and if they died by suicide. They found that men who had purchased handguns were then more than three times as likely to die by suicide — primarily gun suicide — compared with men who hadn’t bought handguns, and that women who’d purchased handguns were more than seven times as likely to die by suicide as women who hadn’t bought handguns (this is what happens when you get your information from sources other than the arms dealers and their lobbyists).

So much for any rational argument that owning firearms for defense makes you safer.
What you're left with is the irrational; subjective emotions and subconscious, lizard-brain imperatives, which by nature don't give a shit about empiricism and are wholly impervious to analytic reason.

If it was simply a matter of a dispassionate cost-benefit analysis, folks would turn off the police dramas and evening news (why do you think it's called "programming"?), meditate for twenty minutes, have a nice cup of chamomile, and crawl under a heavy comforter for the night...and arguably be the happier (and safer) as a result.

 

Not sure why people seem prejudice of lizards, what is wrong with lizard brains.

I can also say the same of the left, the motive to ban guns is hysterical and fear driven as well. Creating "gun-free" zones is not based on logic but just an invitation for more shooters to target those zones.

A 2013 study ordered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and conducted by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council found that:

Defensive use of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence... Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million...in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008... On the other hand, some scholars point to a radically lower estimate of only 108,000 annual defensive uses based on the National Crime Victimization Survey...”

More People Use a Gun in Self-Defense Each Year Than Die in Car Accidents | Mark W. Smith

As for suicide people should have the right to suicide. As for domestic gun homicides, if their family is that dysfunctional and toxic that they decide to shoot each other on purpose, such as shooting toxic abusers, then at least they are no longer spreading in the future and/or reducing the net amount of suffering in the world. Probably 30% or more of the victims are innocent victims, which is unfortunate but they would probably be killed anyway by other means, are we going to ban knives as well?

I am anti-news as well but crimes aren't just caused by mainstream media. There are significant economic problems and there will always be crimes in America until economic problems, such as taxing the poor and middle class, are reduced. There is class conflict, not between proletariat and bourgeois, but between the political/banker/megacorporation class and the poor/middleclass.

Hmm finally a post from you I can agree with.

 

MeAgain

I was just about to post on that very matter

For what you are saying is the opposite side of the same coin

In that those that believe the best way to deal with the fear of attack is to have a very dangerous weapon to hand are basically expressing the view that violence, intimidation and suppression are legitimate means of social control

So for some with that mentality that wish to steer society to their own liking are likely to turn to iintimidation to bring that about and also, it can also lead to people not wondering what the causes of the fear they feel might be and tackling them – but rather only thinking about how to deal with the symptoms through initiation

So the reaction to the fear of a violent society is to get a gun (and support draconian laws and brutal prisons) rather than thinking why is my society so violent.

 

Post 133

The Defensive Gun Use arguement - is actually very bad for the pro-gun lobby if you just think about it for a minute

The argument is that guns are good at tackling crime

But it has already been established that the general crime rates of the US are not that different than other comparable countries with much lower levels of gun ownership or eaase of access to guns.

But if guns are good at tackling crime - then the US with its much much higher rates of gun ownership and ease of access to firearms should have much lower rates of crime than places witthout.

But it doesn't - in other words ease of access to guns doesn’t seem to relate to lower general crime rates.

Some gun people argue that these crimes stopped by DGU are not reported - but if that's the case then the US has higher crime rates than comparable countries that don’t have guns so actually they are doing a lot better at tackling crime than the US with guns.

But the US has vastly greater gun related deaths and injuries compared to those countries where ease of access to guns is lower.

So ease of access to guns doesn’t seem to tackle crime but does increase the likelihood of people getting killed or injured by a gun.

Any rational and reasonable person would conclude that it would be better to take ease of access to guns out of the equation when tackling crime, for both law enforces and citizenry

 

Your Lizard Brain
When you get an education, get back to us. Until then, please remain seated at the children's table, and don't interrupt the adults when they're talking.

 

Not sure why you feel shame about the part of brain that is devoted to survival. Without it mammals wouldn't even exist. Maybe you and Nature had a divorce?

Not to pull the race card but I'm sick of arrogant wypipo belliting me all the time, esp. leftists.