Guncrazy USA

what that interesting anecdote proves is how much more difficult and impractical it is to cause deaths and injuries in the absence of guns... If he had managed to ignite and throw his molotov cocktails, the resulting fires may have caused a few injuries, almost certainly no deaths, and the building would have been able to be evacuated well before any resultant fire took hold, even if it were able to before the nearest fire extinguisher could be called into action.

 

Where disgruntled kids want to make a dramatic and violent statement, I would be much, much happier if all they had were access to were knives or petrol bombs...

I'd be happier again if they didn't feel the need to resort to violence at all of course, but given that resolving those kinds of societal issues is a far greater and more complex problem than removing easy access to guns, I know which route would be the first course of action to take and the most effective way of limiting harm.

 

Firstly, I think you need to look up "anecdote" if you think I was accusing you of making that up...

Secondly, even if the deployment of a molotov cocktail could have resulted in one or more deaths (a suggestion I find HIGHLY implausible, it would involve huge amounts of luck/stupidity to manage to burn people to death without them choosing to move out of the way of the fire for a good couple of minutes, and I suspect would be something of a freak occurrence in the history of the molotov cocktail) - even IF it could kill one or more person, what the anecdote demostrates was how much more difficult a weapon it is to transport, conceal and use, compared to a gun. Probably the reason why molotov cocktails are not commonly used as weapons of mass assault.

 

As so often is the case, your point is murky to the point of unintelligibility. Schools are generally known to have much higher standards of fire safety than crowded, dark basement clubs with one staircase access. Are you really trying to suggest that arson is or could be just as much a problem in terms of deliberate mass casualty assault if guns were not available, and that the choice of weapon is entirely irrelevant?

Really, this is absolute nonsense, pure obfuscation. To me it sounds like you are in denial about the fact that guns are the most efficient and effective (publicly available) way of committing murder, and the obvious point that if you have fewer guns in circulation, you will have fewer murders.

Like I said before, I wish those in favour of guns would be honest rather than attempting this fatuous and specious argument against the overwhelmingly obvious fact that the easy availability of guns feeds into a higher death toll. Perhaps you even believe it, though it seems like you are employing specious reasoning to support an ideological position rather than clearly and openly considering the point. I have respect for an ideological position with which I disagree (eg guns should be freely available to all) as long as it is honestly held. What's going on here is disingenuous to say the least!

 

Had to dig through a horribly sprawling thread to get to what you were talking about...

That page talks about several different studies which show the same thing - the one you are talking about is dealt with in some detail. It was a study of people admitted to hospital specifically with abdominal wounds from either being stabbed or shot. Data not being available as to what weapon was used to stab the individual concerned does not discount the fact that the individual was stabbed with a sharp object causing a "penetrating wound of the abdomen". So the point is demonstrated that penetrating abdominal injuries involving shootings far outweigh those involving the use of sharp implements in terms of the number of fatalities caused.

Interestingly the page mentions that the study did not include those who died before reaching hospital, so there would be a bias in the figures - the death rate from gunshots would have been higher than appears in the results since "a significant percentage of patients wounded [in the abdomen] by gunshot die before reaching the hospital."

The page references many studies all demonstrating that the mortality rate from gunshot wounds versus stab wounds, and from with-gun robberies versus with-knife robberies is usually higher by a factor of at least three.

 

Dirk Pitt, no disrespect, you are an intelligent person, even though we disagree on the right to bear arms issue.

The point I want to make is this:

Very often you have said that getting rid of guns in the US wouldn't work. Violent crime would continue at the same rate, regardless of whether firearms were freely available.

But, surely, without trying, how can you know this?

There is a problem. Ideas have to be implemented to counter the problem. Isn't that what set human beings apart as the dominant animal species on the planet in the first place? Problem solving?

How can you know that getting rid of guns will not work? Are you a mystic? Do you have some crystal ball on your lap that shows the future?

Sitting around a camp fire cross-legged and singing "Koombaya my Lord" will not solve anything. If we don't get rid of guns then we need to formulate some other plan to tackle the situation. What do you suggest?

We need action.

We need protest.

We need it now.

 

But you are ignoring the point that, in societies where there are no guns, the murder rate is a lot lower. The point is a simple correlation between opportunity to kill with a gun and no opportunity to kill with a gun - Ban the gun and overnight your guncrime will halve = give it a couple of decades and your gun crime will go down to about 300 rather than 10,000. I just dont get what youre afraid of, so far you've got more guns per square inch than food, yet you still got the highest murder rate on the planet.

It may have escaped your attention, perhaps you just dont want to see it? perhaps you have some mental impairment, but you will see that there are no societies where the gun is outlawed that has a higher crime statistic than the usa

I havent had any bob hope for ages, I havent bought any or smoked it

this is a particularly unfortunate picture as he looks like he's about to shit in his pants

 

I agree with Sentient. Why can't some people in the US see the blatant truth? I know that Americans tend to see themselves as set-apart from the rest of the world, but almost all of the ones I know are good, happy people. Why do they refuse to do something that will continue to affect their children if nothing is done about it?

 

I do not hate people from the USA but I just get annoyed when all their diplomatic service, and all their politicians are in denial about issues the rest of the world long ago accepted. Also now I find that its people are indenial about the fact that they have a serious problem and that serious problem is attitudes towards weaponry and murder with weapons.

To be honest I get annoyed because the USA is like a bald guy that is in denial about being a slap-head and even though everyone can see the false head of hair and has ignored it until now, someone in the room has shouted out "BALDY" !!!!!!! at the top of their voice. The bald eagle cant deny it has been wearing a wig till now, a very badly made one - but dont shoot the messenger huh!!!

 

With all due respect, this talk about various weapons doesn't mean shit.I believe it's really about care, consideration,respect and love that all kids should be taught by parents,schools and anyone else, beginning at the earliest of age.This society is obviously not set up this way and the results are equally as obvious.Sure,we have a history of gunning our way across this land after finding our lot not to our liking 'over there'.We also have a history of clubbing the shit out of each other a few hundred thousand years ago.We also weren't overly fond of being occupied and taxed by those we had hoped we left behind.Had the principle of non- violence been employed instead of guns--this may have turned out to be a differant place.At least we were dealing with somewhat civilised folks.We weren't all that civilised,but we knew what we didn't want to put up with.I won't go into the other wars that we engaged in over time,but suffice it to say,non-violence would have given hitler and other fine specimens of humanity a good laugh.It's going to be well nigh impossible to disarm humans of this era-for many ,many reasons too numerous to list here.-------Now if we,who AT LEAST give lip service to the horrible and unconscienable slaughter and/or neglect of our fellow humans,can come up with some kind of movement that will begin to teach and show the little ones about caring,ect, that I mentioned--a serious movement to start shortly after birth and continued on,to show the little ones that the entire earth and it's inhabitants need a paradigm shift in the way we have dealt with each other and organised ourselves since before recorded history--If this movement started --I can see that as they moved up into higher education-ie college and on into adulthood--these loving,caring people would start to be in the majority and the haters,bigots and destructive ones would disappear by attrition.It would take hundreds of thousands,no,millions to affect such a sweeping change,including teachers and every other citizen that gave a shit about the human condition.This------uh--unnamed movement could never happen without some degree of socialism.No more- vast ghettos in the cities-forgotten enclaves where folks have no hope .No more- health care for only those who have sufficient ,increasingly useless dollars.No more-billionaires-while people die of starvation and easily preventable maladies-no more-equal justice under the law if you have the bucksto buy it-------Somehow ,somewhere, we have to begin to throw the old ways out-and start to operate on the idea that altruism,care for the earth and all humans and animals is really THE RIGHT THING TO DO if we want to survive.Then and only then will we (those who would be alive )see that guns,violence,neglect,self aggrandising environmental decisions,wars,polution,family dynasties,crooked politicians,crooked anyone,are inimical ,,immoral,stupid and downright deadly if continued.People would have to be convinced that these ideas meant something real-that the right -wing type fuck you-I got mine-suffer if it's too hard for you, type mentality is out dated and won't work any more.-------hopefuly under such a long term program-----there go your guns,knives,bombs,ect.---------------Would this be -is this possible???Doubt it.------scratcho------

 

Yes, violent crime is a problem in certain societies and is not related to the availability of guns. But those countries which have comparable problems with violent crime show lower murder rates where guns are restricted. Therefore restricting guns = fewer murders given the same instance of violent crime. QED.

Once you've done that you can move on to the more inexorable problems of a culture of violent crime. Poverty, the gap between rich and poor, opportunity and education, discrimination and prejudice, access to healthcare, all these things cause disaffection and alienation which feeds into problems with violence in society. There's no easy answer to that. But one thing is perfectly clear - restrict access to guns and you decrease the amount of death and suffering caused by violent crime - at a guess, threefold.

 

I must say I do enjoy the "it's not about guns, it's about respect" argument because of its spectacular naivety. Yes, respect is a wonderful thing to aim for. But given that we have problems with respect in society, what would you prefer: a disaffected violent youth with semi-automatic weapons, or without semi-automatic weapons?

 

If that was refering to what I posted,I said I doubted it could ever happen because of people who say that it could never happen.Conservatism would never let equality take place.

 

We're not exactly comparing like with like there, are we? It makes sense to compare the democracies of Western Europe, Australia, Canada and the US because the culture and socioeconomic conditions are similar. A former Communist state whose economy and society has collapsed and which has seen massive amounts of systematic organised crime, political upheaval and which has endemic poverty is not exactly a fruitful comparison.

A small proportion of Russia's high murder rate is carried out with guns - the same is true in South Africa, a society which has basically fallen apart over the past couple of decades and which has one of the highest murder rates in the world - but again with a relatively low number of murders committed with guns.

What we are talking about inthe cases of the liberal democracies are not societies whose very fabric have torn apart, but societies with comparatively small (and similar) problems with violent crime.

 

You didn't answer the question. Given that we have a disaffected section of society who are prepared to turn to violence, and given that we can't magic the problem away, would you prefer them to have easy access to semi-automatic weapons or would you prefer they found them somewhat harder to obtain?

 

I'm aware I was being a little unfair to your post, and wasn't really calling you "naive".

But what we have are two distinct parts of the problem: the problem of disaffection and violent crime itself and the gun culture which feeds into it and magnifies its consequences. Solving the second part of the problem is administering to the effect, solving the first is administering to the cause. We need to do both. Making the changes which will reduce alienation and seek to combat the causes of violent crime will require political vision and if they are to work and be sustainable, they will take decades - if they are even possible. In the meantime we can seek to alleviate the consequences of the violent crime we have, and which for now we're stuck with, by restricting access to guns. Reducing the availability of guns and introducing stricter laws will bring down the rate of gun crimes. This could start to have effects within years.

We should also make clear we're not talking about a gun "ban" (guns are not "banned" in the UK) but restrictions on the type and number of weapons people can get hold of and how quickly, as well as much fuller checks on the person and a judgement on how safe a decision giving them a deadly weapon is for wider society.

 

No, I was making the point that you need to understand a multiplicity of factors about the cultures you're comparing in order to attempt to make useful and valid comparisons. It's just not as simple as attempting to draw a correlation between gun restrictions and murder rates, the amount of violent crime is a rather key consideration. In Russia, as in South Africa, violent crime is through the roof.

Interestingly in the case of Russia I came across a statistic that gun deaths account for about 12% of murders, which is not too far away from the percentage of deaths in the UK (just under 10%). In the USA it's what - 70%? Given a violent crime rate probably 10 or 20 times greater, Russia may well correlate when you consider these three major factors - gun restrictions and availability, violent crime and murder rate. Though clearly other factors will be at play too.

At the very least you need to take into account the social climate and instance of violent crime before you attempt to make any correlation between gun availability and murder rate. It's the same issue as with Canada's high gun ownership figures but low murder rate, but in reverse and it's explained by the presence or lack of a culture of violent crime.

 

:lol:

Sorry if I hurt your feelings - I haven't read every post in this thread. If you're in favour of more stringent restrictions on who should be allowed to get their hands on a deadly weapon then in principle we agree. It's one step towards the logic of restricting gun ownership because of the danger unlimited gun ownership poses to society.

 

It's reasonable to assume that socioeconomic climate feeds into violent crime rate, and weapon availability feeds into the likelihood of fatality as a consequence of violent crime - and consequently into murder rate. You need to compare like with like, or make adjustments to account for such differences. It's not going to be as simple as that, but at the very least if you want to have a sensible conversation you need to be aware of these factors.

The USA's socioeconomic climate is not *that* different from the other liberal democracies - clearly it is different, but it has comparable rates of violent crime and a similar culture. Russia, South Africa etc have entirely different socioeconomic climates and different cultures, and also vastly higher violent crime rates. We need to factor in these differences to any comparison.

 

Does that not tell you something? High rates of violent crimes, but three times fewer murders? What's the difference - no guns!


This thread is 41 pages long, I think I can be forgiven for not poring over every golden word. Your suggestion of rigorous medical checks is the bare minimum we should expect for gun sales, I would suggest! But I'd also think that your proposing such a scheme basically makes you a communist in the eyes of most pro-gun Americans...

It's a step inthe right direction. It's founded on the idea that unrestricted gun availability is not necessarily a good idea, since you don't know who it is that's getting hold of weapons. Not everyone can be trusted, and these kinds of deadly weapons in the hands of criminals or the mentally ill is a really bad idea. The logic leads inevitably on to stricter controls and more rigorous police checks, demonstration of genuine need - like we have in the UK. But I realise you are not that far along the line of reasoning yet.