‘Gun Control Fails,’ Say Statistics from … Gun-Control Advocates
Fiction 5: Gun Ownership Is Declining
Klein cites one researcher who claims: “We are in fact currently experiencing a waning culture of guns and violence in the United States.” Klein relied on surveys to make his point. But surveys run risks of underreporting gun ownership. More curiously, Klein cited Gallup, which reported in 2011: “Self-Reported Gun Ownership in U.S. Is Highest Since 1993.”
Klein would have us believe that a shrinking group of old white men are adding to their burgeoning arsenals, but media reports corroborate Gallup. CBS reported:
More women than ever are picking up rifles, shotguns, and handguns. And target shooting is one of the fastest-growing female sports.
After Newtown, one news outlet reported:
Nearly three-fourths (73 percent) of respondents in the National Sporting Goods Association’s annual survey of firearms retailers reported an increase in female customers in 2011 over the previous year.
The Boston Globe reported growth in Massachusetts firearms permits despite the state’s “antigun reputation,” as “more people … seek personal protection” because of concerns over the economy, terrorism, and “intense news focus on horrific crimes.”
The FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) reports that since 2004, background checks have grown faster than population:
(The FBI notes: “a one-to-one correlation cannot be made between a firearm background check and a firearm sale.” For example, a small percentage are denied, and one check may represent multiple purchases.)
Even without December, 2012 has already exceeded previous years:
ATF data show that since 2005, civilian firearms inventory grew from an annual average of 4.8 million to 7.2 million. Meanwhile, with a growing number of Americans purchasing an increasing number of guns, violent crime declined (see graph below):
Fiction 6: The U.S. Is One of the Most Violent Countries
Klein cited data from the United Nations Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), carefully selecting only those countries that made the U.S. appear relatively more violent.
But the latest OECD crime data show the U.S. ranks 7th lowest in robbery out of 26 countries:
The U.S. ranks 8th lowest out of 25 countries when people were asked if they felt unsafe on the street after dark:
In 2011, the United Nations published homicide data for 189 member countries, all of them OEDC members. The U.S. only had the 92nd highest homicide rate, placing it in the 52nd percentile:
The Small Arms Survey (SAS) is an “independent research project” located in Geneva, Switzerland, providing information on “all aspects of small arms and armed violence,” and partnering with international gun-ban organizations including the UN. In 2007, SAS published estimated civilian firearms inventories for 172 UN member countries. The U.S. clearly has the most gun ownership:
The U.S. remains in the 52nd percentile among the SAS countries (see graph below).
Gun control: facts are no object, the Constitution is no object– elimination of privately own guns and left/liberal control (for “our own good”) is end.
Gun control has always worked for fascist/government/marxist control. Not so good for the People.. but Meh, the State loves it.
But – conservatives hate math!!!
If you have been reading climateaudit.org and wattsupwiththat.com as I have for the last 10-15 odd years, its highly enjoyable to see the libs own data finally thrashed about and turned against them. Be prepared for the onslaught. They like math, just so long as they can make it work for them.
Take a good hard look at Chicago.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-chicago-500th-homicide-20121229,0,3765416.story
Chicago has the most draconian gun control laws.
What is happening is “because” it’s illegal ..think of a person running
from the police in a car.do you think they are going to respect stop signs,
speed limits and use their turn signal?
A gangster with a gun is the same thing.
Lawless hoodlums keep the law-abiding population cowed, politicos protect only those whom they like (i.e., supporters) w/ police and have fat salaries/pensions… left/liberal tyranny on the cheap.
Ill I have to say is im a progressive, and all of my friends span the entire political spectrum. Most of us are pretty much in favor of gun ownership. You simply cannot look to liberal and automatically assume they are anti gun rights. It plays well in Washington and in the mainstream media, but here in the real world, most folks, lib and con, like packing heat for home protection and hunting.
The extremes on either side make no sense. Extreme left nutjobs thinks prohibition will work ( but not for drugs, hmm?) and the fringe right nutjobs thinks they can somehow stockpile enough guns to defeat U.S. Army, Air Force and Marines, or even S.W.A.T. teams….oh id like to see THAT battle!
Anyways- ill take a Mossberg 500 and S&W .45
What you want to call “right wing extremist” who stockpile arms are not doing so with the intention of having to defeat our military, or even police. Most of the military and police will NEVER violate their oath to the constitution to unconstitutionally confiscate weapons, it is an unlawful order, and when it comes to that most will likely be fighting the unlawful, unconstitutional, tyrannical government that would issue such an order.
Secondly, what you think you would “like to see” if you thought rationally about it, you would actually be horrified if it happened, and very likely yourself to end up a statistic. It will be a bloodbath of citizens, countrymen, your family and friends and neighbors if it comes to civil war in this country because of the over reaching of the Obama administration and the marxist/communists infiltrated in our government that are attempting to destroy our constitution and government.
Here is a scenerio that might be likely to happen, just stop with the wise cracks and really think about YOUR friends and family being killed as part of a planned population reduction and imposition of the NWO.
http://www.bob-owens.com/2012/12/what-youll-see-in-the-rebellion/
What about the unlawful confiscation of private weapons by N.O. police after hurrican Katrina?
S&W M&P .45? Right on.
Chicago and IL are the prime examples of the failures of gun control.
Chicago has so many illegal guns it could take on the National Guard.
It is not unusual to read news reports like : “18 year old apprehended for riding the train without a ticket ,was also carrying 1 lb of pot and a tech 9. ”
“Man arrested for drunk driving also charged with driving without a license ,being in the country illegally and carrying a loaded 9 mm. ”
These are from my local newspaper in IL.
The entire state has been terrorized by armed criminals for years . In the majority of mid sized IL towns that have muslims ,blacks or hispanics everyone white knows to be cautious traveling in minority areas and after dark.
It’s not racist ,it is a fact of life.
Criminals carry guns ,law abiding citizens can not.
Personal stats demonstrate the crime rate :
My father has been robbed 6 times.
I was robbed once,assaulted once for being white.
My aunt was beaten and robbed 4 times.
My grandmother was murdered by a woman and her 11 year old son.
My neighbor was shot 6 times and killed,his home was set on fire.
My cousin was brutally raped and beaten with a hammer.
My brother was killed by a drunk driver.
My ex was stabbed 6 times in a robbery and shot at in another robbery.
Only two of these crimes was committed by a white person.
At my former place of employment ,you could go outside at lunch time and buy drugs,stolen guns and computers out of several other employees car trunks. All were black or hispanic .
Save your money and MOVE! I suggest North Dakota, where they are having an economic boom because of oil and fracking. Get your entire family to save and move! This is what I would do if I wasn’t already retired. Texas is a second choice, better weather but I think there is more opportunity in North Dakota.
I have read that in North Dakota, McDonalds workers are being paid $15/hour start because they have a SHORTAGE of workers!
Pick a city and contact the chamber of commerce and get informed of what you need and what to expect. Don’t stick in that crime riddled s**thole of a state, almost any other state would be better.
Good Luck
Lydia, I need to know where you live so to avoid that area. I commute to Chicago everyday from the south ‘burbs. Where are these areas? This state is crazy with their gun laws and Rahm wants to ban more, it’s statistically insane.
Rule #1 when debating people about gun control.
Remove all emotion and only let logical and fact based aguments come forth.
I only wish the anti’s could be honest with people when presenting their side, but they can’t.
When you convince, said the greeks you must convince with Logos, Ethos, and Pathos. Logic, Ethics, and Emotion.
Logic: As presented above, Gun control does not increase safety.
Ethics: It is morally wrong to disarm honest people when criminals are unaffected.
Emotion: If you are unarmed, and unprotected, surrounded by potenpeople whtial criminals, you should feel scared, and angry at the o prevent you from being unarmed and unprotected. Change the laws!
“I come to bury Caesar.. not too praise Him.”
The emotive argument will always win the Populus. …..”Look..guns are killing your children”.
See how Brutus ended up.
Ethics is subjective to what is taught as moral. Gay(perversion) marriage as a contemporary example.
Facts… well now, who knows them. Not the populace.
I suspect you are mistaken when it comes to the “Gun Control” issue. While the Lame Scream Media and the Leftists scream, “It’s the GUNS! IT’S THE GUNS!!!,” the response from the populus is increasingly, “I’ll have that AR-15 with the 30 round clip! Does that come with 500 rounds?” The emotional question that ends the discussion is, “Who was there able to DEFEND the children?” As dense as the average American seems to be, they seem to be coming to the conclusion that Dirty Harry might have made a difference.
“Dirty Harry” is by far your most persuasive phrase.
these interlopers of our country we mean the democrap progressive communists,can only lie this is from the potus all the way to senate and repersentitives,we must start throwing all of these communists on both sides now,,,
WHERE IS MCCARTHY WHEN WE NEED HIM,IT IS TIME FOR HIM TO RETURN,ALSO MY GOOD LORD IS HERE AND HE WILL TAKE CARE OF THESE COMMUNISTS.
NEWSFLASH: it is not about the kiddies. It never has been…never will be, at least from the left’s game plan. But it IS about total control.
The proof, as is said, is in all the statistics, regarding how best to keep innocents safe but this matters not a whit to them.
Here is what they are after – http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/12/27/dhs-americas-planned-deconstruction-via-valerie-jarrett-domestically-foreign-policy-wise-addendum-to-barack-hussein-obamas-deconstruction-plans-commentary-by-adina-kutnicki/
And trust DHS and its pronouncements like the plague….and this is not conspiracy mongering! IF only.
I recently had a debate with a female cousin of mine. Every time she made a false statement about “assault weapons” and what is legally available to the public, I corrected her with hard, cold facts which she actually had to agree with. She finally made her only true true statement to close down the argument, “Well I don’t care. I don’t like them so no one should be allowed to own one.” I replied, “I’m sure all the criminals currently in possession of “assault weapons” will turn them in when they find out you don’t like them.” Just to clarify the situation, I do not own nor have I ever owned an “assault weapon” although with ms. feinstein’s latest “wish list”, who knows, even my .22 rimfire rifle might become an “assault weapon” in her eyes.
Your cousins final comment is scary, anyway. People shouldn’t be allowed to own a thing because SHE doesn’t like them?
Well I don’t like what your cousin has to say so she shouldn’t be allowed to say it.
Nothing like turning the anti’s own logic right back on them.
Maybe you could tell your female cousin that you don’t care for abortions therefore no one should have one.
Seems nobody took much time to comment on the number of deaths in Chicago from knifings this past summer. I think it was something like 18 in a week.
Anyway British doctors are calling for a ban on “long” kitchen knives:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4581871.stm
” A team from West Middlesex University Hospital said violent crime is on the increase – and kitchen knives are used in as many as half of all stabbings.
They argued many assaults are committed impulsively, prompted by alcohol and drugs, and a kitchen knife often makes an all too available weapon.
The research is published in the British Medical Journal.
The researchers said there was no reason for long pointed knives to be publicly available at all.
They consulted 10 top chefs from around the UK, and found such knives have little practical value in the kitchen.
None of the chefs felt such knives were essential, since the point of a short blade was just as useful when a sharp end was needed. ”
Yeh, long kitchen knives=assault weapons.
I’d like to see a chef handle a big piece of beef with a pairing knife.
The “progressive” (actually regressives) response: We shouldn’t eat meat. It’s mean-spirited to kill animals, and raising beef is bad for the environment.” The end result of socialism is the death of the human race.
Short knives are bad for vegetarians too: ever try to cut chop a Vidalia onion with a paring knife?
The people you refer to want to embark on a quixotic quest to change human nature and legislate emotion. It’s ridiculous.
Forget about guns and long knives. What progressives (and especially environmentalists) really want to get rid of is people. They believe that people are a cancer on the earth.
Just like everything else regarding progressives worldview.
Higher taxes for thee, not me.
More regulations for thee, not me.
Wind power for thee, not me.
There are too many of thee, not of me.
disclaimer: I am the proud owner of a cast iron skillet and two (2) cast iron woks.
What are we going to do when long sharp pointy knives are banned and people start bashing each other with cast iron skillets?
Or waiting for their significant other is taking a bath, and dropping a plugged in radio into the bath water? Just kidding. Nobody a) takes a bath, everybody showers and b) listens to the radio anymore.
Frying pans! Who knew?
Nobody needs 2 cast iron woks to go squirrel hunting.
Or something…
The story you refer to was from 2005.
It was one tiny group of doctors who called for the ban. Which was never acted on, or even taken seriously. Bizarrely, it seems to reappeared post Newtown during gun control articles.
WE ALSO MUST PASS LAWS ON DOING AWAY with mix drinks for their children get these drinks from their houses and then drive and kill other peoples children,so we must get rid of all alcohol,and a other law is to ban all prescriptions from adults because their children get them and overdose or drive and kill other children,we also must pass a law on getting names of all adults who don’t wear condoms so we all know who not to get with,we must get a list of all adults who have aids so we don’t get this,,,,
SO THERE ARE A LOT OF LAWS WE MUST GET GOING WE ARE LOOSEING TIME AND CHILDREN
This whole article is a load of tosh.
Let’s start with the bushfire “mass murder”. First of all, understand that we’re not talking about a single fire – there were many fires, scattered across south australia and victoria. Many of them had been burning for some time.
While arson has been speculated about, very few people have ever been charged – make what you will of that. The one conviction that I’m aware of relates to 10 deaths in gippsland. Another very conspicuous cause was faulty or inadequate power transmission lines – the power company in question was sued. Lightning was also undoubtedly a factor (these were biblical weather conditions). This was the sort of weather where a discarded cigarette butt really could have destroyed a town.
On the day in question, the weather conditions were extreme – temperatures in the high 40′s, wind gusts up to 100km/hr, many years of drought conditions and zero humidity. Fires really did start by accident – one fire was caused by some sparks from a power tool that burned out a number of houses before being brought under control.
What I’m trying to say is … it was not a single event, and there were many factors involved. There was a lot of anger in the aftermath, and rudd was playing to that. Anyone who tries to lump all of those deaths into a single “mass murder” is flat-out wrong. Trying to use that as an argument against rational gun control is obscene.
WOW. You certainly refuted all of the statistics in the article by citing facts about one multiple death incident cited.
Even if guns were completely banned (which would require confiscation of 300 million weapons, many of which would not be surrendered without a fight), crazy people bent on mass murder (e.g., Adam Lanza) could turn to such devices as arson to achieve their ends.
Gun control is about two priorities on the liberal agenda of folks like Senator Feinstein: (1) growing the power and scope of government and (2) restricting individual rights. It is not, never has been and never will be about making our country safer.
I wasn’t finished. There’s more below.
I don’t quite know how to respond to your “they’ll turn to arson” thing. Generally speaking, setting fire to things is a really ineffective way to kill people. The specific conditions that lead to those monster fires in australia (and california) are pretty localised in time and place. If you think that maniacs are going to travel around the world to set fire to things in order to get back at their mum/teacher/schoolmates, then I think you’re a bit silly.
That “multiple death” incident (or however you described it – I can’t be bothered scrolling back up) was just so egregious and misleading that I couldn’t let it go unchallenged. By way of comparison – I have no doubt that some violent crime occured in louisiana after/during hurricane katrina. But that doesn’t mean that hurricane katrina was a single “mass murder”. But that’s basically how our intrepid commentator just described a natural disaster in australia.
Hey, pookie. You need to take it up with Australia’s prime minister. He’s the one who called it a mass murder. Your post below shows how much you believe we should listen government bureaucrats when they say crime is falling. Now you say we shouldn’t believe a government bureaucrat who calls mass murder for what it is. You need to decide which criteria you’re going to follow if you want anybody to believe your credible. Or is it that we should believe the government when it fits your ignorant narrative, and disbelieve them when it does not?
He’s not the prime minister any more. He was rolled, about a year later.
And I don’t care what he called it on the day, so I don’t need to take it up with him. We know more now than he did then. In any case, he was responding to a hypothetical – a question about “what if” arsonists had been involved. I don’t think it was meant to be a legal finding of fact.
“Now you say we shouldn’t believe a government bureaucrat who calls mass murder for what it is. You need to decide which criteria you’re going to follow if you want anybody to believe your credible. Or is it that we should believe the government when it fits your ignorant narrative, and disbelieve them when it does not?”
Well, no. I don’t believe or disbelieve a politician when he’s expressing an opinion in the aftermath of a natural disaster. I don’t think it’s particularly relevant. We’re also not discussing this in 2009 – so we have the benefit of the findings of a royal commission. What kev said back in 2009 doesn’t actually determine whether or not the black saturday fires were “mass murder”. You’re the one who’s nailed your claim to a throwaway comment from a politician in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. I’m able to point to way more information that we’ve learned since (look for yourself – “2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission”)
Can the semantics. You either genuinely still believe that black saturday was a “mass murder” of 135 people, or you don’t. You’re still saying that rudd called it “for what it is”, which suggests that you DO still believe that. That’s curious, given that you’ve had certain facts pointed out to you.
No, pooks. Nice try on the alinsky. You quote govt wonks when it suits, and disregard them when it doesn’t. When you decide to play by a consistent set of standards, come on back. And bring your real name if you want to be taken seriously. I’ve spent enough time 12-stepping you, but it’s obvious you’re not “curious”. Nor are you capable of research. Your first comment led off with complete derogation based upon your ignorant interpretation of the British Crime Survey.
“This whole article is a load of tosh.”
A researcher would have looked at it, compared it to UK police reporting, and decided to look deeper. But that didn’t fit your narrative. So go ahead and keep your head down there. Let the women be “sexually assaulted” because in your ignorant fantasy that’s nicer than rape, even though the two describe the same acts of violation. Keep those racists afloat. And feel good because you’ve fooled yourself into believing you’re doing it for the children.
Wow. We’ve gone past “I’m not doing your research” and now we’re into the “I don’t have to debate with you because X, Y and Z”. And you’ve even managed to work alinsky into your response. This is most astonishing.
And all because I challenged your conclusions and asked you to tell us what specific data supports them.
Your claim about the consistency of my standards is just desperate. You pinned a claim about a mass murder on an off-hand comment by a politician answering a hypothetical during a press conference after a natural disaster. I point out that far more factual information is to be found in the report of a royal commission into those fires and you decide that this is just too arbitrary for you, and if I insist on ignoring spur-of-the-moment opinions (which I believe that you’ve misinterpreted anyway) in favor of the results of actual investigation then I’m not allowed to use the UK home office crime reports because they’re compiled by bureaucrats … or something. On what planet do you think that sort of schoolyard argument works?
“I’ve spent enough time 12-stepping you, but it’s obvious you’re not “curious”. Nor are you capable of research”
You haven’t answered a single specific question. You’ve diverted, insulted and dismissed, but you haven’t backed up a single claim with a reference to data. Not one. While I’ve been naming the reports and sources that I’m referring to in each post – anyone here can go look for themselves, but nobody has the foggiest what you’re relying on unless they go buy your book.
“Your first comment led off with complete derogation based upon your ignorant interpretation of the British Crime Survey”
False. I haven’t posted a single comment that “led off” with that subject at all. My first comment was about the black saturday fires. My second comment started by looking at definition differences between the ABS and FBI UCR. You assert that I’ve “ignorantly interpreted” the british crime survey, but as far as I can tell that’s just your opinion. Again – I’m supposed to go buy your book.
“A researcher would have looked at it, compared it to UK police reporting, and decided to look deeper. But that didn’t fit your narrative”
Actually, I did look deeper. You’ll notice that I’ve cited a number of surveys, and I’ve read the home office’s estimates (have you?) on the effects of the NCRS (which you still haven’t indicated that you’ve mentioned anywhere in your book). I have actually compared the data, and I’ve told people here where they can find that data for themselves.
“Let the women be “sexually assaulted” because in your ignorant fantasy that’s nicer than rape, even though the two describe the same acts of violation”
Aah, I did wonder when somebody would try that on. In other threads I’ve added the disclaimer that no, I’m not excusing sexual abuse, so leave it out. I didn’t do that this time, and sure enough …
I don’t condone sexual assault, just as I don’t condone rape. All I’m pointing out is that there are crimes included in the ABS headline figures for “sexual assault” that are not included in the FBI figures for “forcible rape”. They DON’T describe the same collection of “violating acts”, and that’s the problem with comparing them. I think we can all agree that the FBI should update its definitions so that they DO include “sexual assault” more broadly. Then we could even compare the figures.
Are you really THIS desperate to avoid being asked questions about your data and definitions?
“Keep those racists afloat”
Where on earth did that come from? What?
Howard- I’d like to see the statistics behind the right to carry states having lower crime rates chart.
I know the second I link to this article, my gun-ban favoring friends will want to know where you got your data.
Thanks,
Michael
The “keep those racists afloat” comment comes from the fact that all historical examples of gun control (prior to Brady Campaign and similar efforts in modern day) have been with the EXPRESS PURPOSE (by that, I mean that it was the reason voiced by those who implemented it) to oppress certain ethnic groups so they could not rebel against the “status quo”.
Hi Michael. Good question. I have a series of Excel workbooks that collate annual FBI violent crime data (e.g.: Table 4 – Crime in the United States by Region, Geographic Division, and State, 2009-2010) with that year’s Brady report card, or scorecard beginning in 2007. I then divide the data by right-to-carry status. That’s where one graph comes from above. Unfortunately, Brady decided to remove most of their historic reports from the internet. If you haven’t archived them, you can’t show them to your friends. That may not be a satisfactory answer, but an enterprising person could still access the list of RTC states by year from various sources like NRA-ILA, collate them with FBI crime data by year, and arrive at a similar graph without the Brady reference. You would still find that RTC states are less violent on average than those states who restrict your civil right of self-defense.
> Generally speaking, setting fire to things is a really ineffective way to kill people.
Rubbish. Even in Oz, most people don’t live in the outback.
One of the most effective ways to kill a lot of people is block a couple of exits, turn off the sprinklers, and set a fire at the remaining exit.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Land_fire . (That arsonist didn’t need to turn off the sprinklers, but that’s no big obstacle.)
Many/most US classrooms have exactly one exit. The school building as a whole may have more but you can kill 20-30 kids per classroom by setting one fire after another.
Actually, setting fires to things is a highly effective way to kill people, as anyone versed in the problems faced by industrial workers of the last century would know.
If you wanted to kill a theatre full of people, you could simply spot weld a small steel plate over the seam of the exit doors – take you about 5 minutes in the alley behind the theatre – then throw a Molotov cocktail filled with gas/powder detergent slurry into the lobbies and primary entrances. You could well get everyone inside and be home in time to watch it on the news.
You guys are grasping at straws, seriously. Give it up. It _is_ conceivable, but very very unlikely.
I’m surprised neither of you tried to appeal to quentin tarantino’s movie-theater fire plot.
The author tried to claim that the black saturday bushfires were a “mass murder” that killed 135 people. He was obscenely wrong. Just accept it.
Techno
It is feasible enough that someone I went to high school with lost his wife and infant daughter when somebody poured gasoline on the door and windows and lit his house on fire. The brother of that guy had been staying with them and while he was there he dated a divorced woman. The brother could not find a job and so moved on. The ex-husband of the divorced woman didn’t know he had moved away and torched the house. This incident did not count as a mass killing because the body count was only two dead and one badly burned.
This took place in Hawaii where restrictions on guns are comparable to Europe or Australia. Not only is it feasible it has happened.
Techno. I own firearms. Several. Many. More than I need but less than I want. I keep them safely locked away. Except for one which is loaded but only accessible by me when I am present. It is my God-given right to protect myself from harm by another. Anyone entering my home with the intent of exacting harm upon me or my family will be met not by statistics but by the superior force of my firearm. That’s my right, my intent, and the way I like it. Others who wish to live and behave otherwise are perfectly free to do so. I will and cannot force anything upon them regarding their choices and have absolutely no right to do so. Likewise, you and the gun-control mindset that you advocate for will never force me to behave otherwise as no right exists for you to do so. The Founders acknowledged this as fact. They did not create a right. Our Creator did so just as He created the world as round even though you may wish it flat. You will save yourself a lot of frustration if you simply accept that as fact and move on. That ends the statistics debate for me.
Ok, you don’t accept the statement by Rudd that the arson was mass murder.
Will you accept a statement by “Techno”?
According to him, someone was convicted of arson in the death of ten of the victims of that fire.
Killing ten sounds like mass murder to me.
Or do you believe this was a miscarriage of justice?
If so, could you give a hint of your evidence for that conclusion?
“Killing ten sounds like mass murder to me”
I completely agree. But 10 is not 135.
I’m not an expert but setting fires seems to be an excellent way to kill a lot of people. I remember this incident:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dupont_Plaza_Hotel_arson
The fire was set by three disgruntled employees of the hotel who were in the middle of a labor dispute with the owners of the hotel. The fire claimed 97 lives and caused 140 injuries. It is the most catastrophic hotel fire in Puerto Rican history, and the second in the history of the United States.
I would consider your point that arson is an ineffective way to kill people to be refuted.
Actually, fire, explosives, and airplanes produce the most prolific of the mass-murders, as the following shows:
The media’s chance to pass propaganda off as truth has become sickening especially during these last few days(like their innate ability to differentiate from an assault rifle and a machine gun). These people would have you believe that guns are the problem and not the person who made the decision to do these things. Yes we know guns are the main choice in most mass murders in America , killers in countries where civilians tend to be armed show a slight preference for guns. Swiss and American murderers use guns simply because they’re around. South Korean, Chinese and British murderers don’t have guns freely available, so they use knives. People are going to kill whether that be with a gun, a knife, a bomb, or fire. Not counting the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the top three worst mass murders were accomplished w/o the use of a gun. Counting 9/11 the top 2 out of 5 mass murders were committed using airplanes
9/11/2001: 2998 weapon of choice: airliner
4/19/1995: 168 weapon of choice: explosives
3/ 25/1990: 87 weapon of choice: a match and two cans of gas
5/18/1927: 45 weapon of choice explosives
12/7/1987: 43 weapon of choice: airliner
Read more at: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=76a_1356444970
“Techno –
I wasn’t finished. There’s more below.
I don’t quite know how to respond to your “they’ll turn to arson” thing. Generally speaking, setting fire to things is a really ineffective way to kill people.”
Oh, I don’t know about that, just ask all the victims in that arson set fire at the clothing factory a couple of weeks ago. Further, arson doesn’t only mean setting a fire, it also includes using infernal devices, you might check Oklahoma City on the effectiveness of AMFO. Or NYC; where the aircraft hitting the Towers didn’t do enough initial damage to bring them right down, but the fire, fueled primarily by aviation grade kerosine with a chimney affect creating temperatures far in excess of that required to process steel, finally caused the floors above the impact points to begin to pancake, completing the process of destruction and, I might add, the deaths of almost 3000 persons from around the country and world.
Yet, you sit where ever it is that you reside and try to tell Americans that arson isn’t an effective means of mass murder? What planet are you from??
Well, if you don’t like the facts in the above article, try reading what the Founders had to say about all of it, in their own words and in context: google: ‘online library of liberty.’ also: ‘liberty library of constitutional classics.’ Presented w/o an agenda or pov. Just the texts of numerous documents, letters and official correspondance.
The Bill of Rights was meant to limit government power. It was not meant to ‘grant’ liberties that the people already inherently possessed. The government cannot legally or even constitutionally take or limit a freedom that it has no power to grant in the first place.
See: The Plain Meaning Rule. Original intent. Constitutional construction.
In short, the Founders themselves said that when they wrote The Constitution, they said what they meant and meant what they said.
‘Shall not be infringed’ cannot, by any sane or rational individual, be construed to include government licensing and regulation of firearms or gunowners. In order to do that, The Constitution should be amended. It hasn’t been amended. Gun licensing and registration was accomplished by government fiat and judicial activism. Even such an amendment would be un-constitutional on it’s face.
Once you read the Founder’s own words, you’ll find that private gun ownership was meant as a check on government power. Self-defense and hunting were important considerations, but they were secondary to being a check on government power. It was also meant as further protection for the property rights of citizens against government intrusions.
Also, in the Founder’s own words, a militia wasn’t equivalent to a government controlled national guard or standing military. Having a local militia was meant as an additional check on government and on police state intrusions by the government. This includes being an additional protection against government confiscation of guns and other weapons and properties.
I’d love to take the bait, but I think we should just focus on the topic at hand.
The Constitution is either a superior paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and, like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it.
If the former part of the alternative be true, then a legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law: if the latter part be true, then written constitutions are absurd attempts on the part of the people to limit a power in its own nature illimitable.
Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently, the theory of every such government must be, that an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void.
This theory is essentially attached to a written constitution, and is, consequently, to be considered as one of the fundamental principles of our society.
Of course you want to run and hide.
Fact is control does not work. Anders Beivek killed 77 in Norway. Plenty of gun control in the most Hoplophobic group of nations in the world.
Odds of dying in Norway to a mass shooter.. 1 in 64,000. Odds in America.. 1 in a Million.
Prove me wrong hoplophobe.
“Fact is control does not work. Anders Beivek killed 77 in Norway”
67 of them by gunshot. 8 of them were killed in a separate bomb blast and 2 drowned trying to escape.
But the background homicide rate in norway is .6 per 100,000, vs the US 4.2. You go figure out how many hours it took for the US’ normal, everyday murder rate to make up that difference.
“Plenty of gun control in the most Hoplophobic group of nations in the world.”
Well, yes, gun control. But sweden and norway rate 10th and 11th in the world for per-capita gun ownership. Finland is 8th. These countries are armed to the teeth. I think you need to go think this through again.
“Odds of dying in Norway to a mass shooter.. 1 in 64,000. Odds in America.. 1 in a Million”
Actually, given Norway’s population in 2011 and the fact that 67 people were shot, that’s one in 74,000. But that’s the only event of its kind ever. Now, re-run those figures for the last half century and let us know what you come up with. Meanwhile, consider that (according to the CDC, which has an excellent online search engine), 106,000 people were shot in the US in 2010, badly enough that they either died, or had to seek medical attention. That’s “normal”.
@ Techno
“But sweden and norway rate 10th and 11th in the world for per-capita gun ownership. Finland is 8th. These countries are armed to the teeth. I think you need to go think this through again.”
Wouldn’t this tend to refute your own main argument? The countries listed above have low overall murder rates and high firearm ownership, while countries like Mexico have pretty extreme gun control and an astronomical murder rate. Hell, I think Switzerland even issues a full auto weapon and ammunition to all male citizens and has a very low murder rate. In the US the murder and overall crime rate drops very substantially once you’ve corrected for race.
At best (for you) the data shows that gun control and crime rates are at very most extremely loosely correlated and other factors (cultural, economic, etc.) dominate.
“Wouldn’t this tend to refute your own main argument?”
No.
“The countries listed above have low overall murder rates and high firearm ownership”
Yes, but very strict gun regulations, as folks here like to keep pointing out. I don’t think anyone serious has ever claimed that the problem the US has is the straight number of weapons. The problems are (a) the types of weapons, (b) controls on how those weapons are stored, transferred and used, and (c) the US’ attitude to guns.
“while countries like Mexico have pretty extreme gun control”
I think that tends to get overplayed a bit. I don’t think mexico’s gun laws are extreme. But they just have a few other problems as well – as does south africa, as does brazil.
“Hell, I think Switzerland even issues a full auto weapon and ammunition to all male citizens and has a very low murder rate”
Again – it’s about the regulations. Those people are trained and disciplined, and the gun isn’t seen as their own personal toy or self-defense crutch. If they went on a yippy shoot with it, there’d be hell to pay.
“In the US the murder and overall crime rate drops very substantially once you’ve corrected for race”
I’m staying out of that one.
“At best (for you) the data shows that gun control and crime rates are at very most extremely loosely correlated and other factors”
Apart from a very small number of outliers (which includes the US – lucky you), the correlation between gun control and lower crime is very strong.
@ Techno
“The problems are (a) the types of weapons, (b) controls on how those weapons are stored, transferred and used, and (c) the US’ attitude to guns.”
(a) So the Gun Breivik was legally able to buy after filling out the paperwork and wading through all the legal BS wasn’t actually just as efficient at murdering 69 people as any gun in the US? Good to know.
(b) Pray tell, how does a control on how a weapon is to be legally stored or used have any effect on someone whose intent is to use it to commit a crime? Our controls on use clearly prohibit murder, yet somehow it still happens.
(c) This is cultural and actually prevents any of your solutions from having a chance of working. See my post below.
“I think that tends to get overplayed a bit. I don’t think mexico’s gun laws are extreme. But they just have a few other problems as well – as does south africa, as does brazil.”
So you admit that just maybe there are a whole host of other factors at play that tend to drive crime? That just maybe our inner cities drive crime more than our Second Amendment, and a gun ban like the one in the UK or AUS would be a terrible idea here?
“Again – it’s about the regulations. Those people are trained and disciplined, and the gun isn’t seen as their own personal toy or self-defense crutch. If they went on a yippy shoot with it, there’d be hell to pay.”
You know, the Sandy Hook shooter was also “well trained” and supposedly spent hours on the range. And it wasn’t his toy either, he killed his mother and stole it from her. Someone like that would have no problem stealing his father’s machine gun and going on a rampage with it. As for their being “hell to pay” if they go on a killing spree, that’s actually far more true in the US. As far as I know Switzerland does not have the death penalty. Brievik got 20 years in Norway, in the US he’d have gotten life or been executed. Picking up a gun and killing someone with it will carry a far stiffer sentence in the US than in Europe, in that sense you could say that we have stricter gun control, or at least stricter laws against their misuse. There’s actually a higher price to pay for murder in the US than in any of those European countries.
“Apart from a very small number of outliers (which includes the US – lucky you), the correlation between gun control and lower crime is very strong.”
Not really. The most dangerous places in the world (Mexico, South Africa, etc) all have strict gun control laws on the books, the few countries that actually respect a legal right to gun ownership (Switzerland, US, Israel) are all comparatively safe.
So, long story short, there was an arson wildfire that killed multiple people, just not as many as the article alleges, and all the rest of the points stand, including the other non-gun mass murders in Oz.
That’s top-notch fisking there.
No, that many. 135 = 135, not some insane gibberish repeatedly garbled by somebody intent on excusing more raped women and murdered blacks. See for yourself.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/09/australia-bushfires
“The Australian prime minister accused arsonists of “mass murder” today as the death toll from the deadliest bushfires in the country’s history reached 135.”
“The prime minister, Kevin Rudd, announced a $10m (£4.5m) emergency relief fund and said: “Hell in all its fury has visited the good people of Victoria … many good people now lie dead.”
Speaking about the fears that arson could have played a part, he said: “What do you say about anyone like that [an arsonist]? There’s no words to describe it, other than it’s mass murder.”
That’s just desperate. You now know that there was an extensive inquiry, and there were many reasons found for those fires. You know where to find the royal commission report, and you know that only one person has ever been convicted for the murder of 10 people.
But you insist in deferring to a single comment from a politician in the immediate aftermath, before the fires were even out, or the full extent of damage or causes known.
And then you throw in a bit about me excusing “more raped women” because I’ve pointed out to you that different countries don’t all use the same definition and therefore can’t be directly compared. I don’t even know what you’re basing you claim that I want “more murdered blacks”. I’m surprised that you haven’t called me hitler yet.
This is most extraordinary.
Techno is some kind of troll. Just ignore it. It keeps lying (“This whole article is tosh.” followed by “I never said that.”) This is how progressives argue, with slander, lies and misdirection. Honest people will read the thread and see who won the argument. “Techno”, you lost.
Okay, Techno, let’s see how this works:
Only 1 person convicted of ten deaths in the fires, ergo, it’s not mass murder because nobody else was convicted.
Sandy Hook was not mass murder. The nutjob who did it will never be brought to trial, much less convicted.
Tucson (Gabby Giffords shooting) was not mass murder. The nutjob will never be convicted.
Virginia Tech, not mass murder. The nutjob will never be brought to trial nor convicted.
rinse. repeat.
The only important distinction is simply this: were the fires caused by gross negligence or deliberate intent, or were they garden variety negligence/natural? Lightning and power line failures into the second category, arson and dumbasses tossing lit cigarettes into the first. Whether or not the perpetrator in the first case is ever identified, much less brought to trial and convicted has no bearing on “is it mass murder”?
Of course, if you had your head out of the weeds, you’d know that.
I’m not really sure how I can respond to some of those other “mass murders”, because the source that the author cites doesn’t tell us what they were. For all we know, the original source just did some googling. If you can tell me what they were, then maybe we can discuss them.
Sorry, but I can’t fisk something which is never actually specified.
But if you want to cut past the nonsense, just compare australia’s (or the UK’s) homicide rate with the US. Or look at what happened those those homicide rates after the new gun regulations. Game over, basically. Duck and weave all you like.
Think of this, Techno. You have a God-given right which is protected in America as in no other nation. You can exercise your freedom of speech right and advertise that you do NOT own a weapon of any kind. You can identify yourself publicly by any means available to you to advertise the fact that you live totally free of firearm ownership both at home or on your person while away. You can carry a sign on your back stating your unarmed status and advertise your name and address to the world. You can place signage on your home that identifies your non-armed status. You can stroll thru the most crime ridden areas of LA or Chicago late at night while campaigning for gun control. So why don’t you do so? It’s your right. Nobody is denying it to you. Is it that you prefer hiding behind the protections afforded to you by the lawful gun owner and that you actually realize that the criminal with a weapon of any kind will never be removed from society? I believe so. I anticipate your response as “I don’t wamt all guns outlawed…just the ones I don’t happen to like.
(Note: If you should happen to follow thru with my suggestions then maybe you will be permanently eliminated from these pages. Good luck.).
I recommend not using “God Given” in a political argument. It’s unnecessary – the right to self defense is inherent in every living thing. Broccoli defends itself against predation.
But it also allows them to simply dismiss the argument. They’ll just say to themselves, “He said God. Everything after that is inadmissible.”
It may e a logical fallacy, but it’s one they use frequently as a dodge. When dealing with people for whom neither facts, nor outcomes outside of their own sense of superiority matter, you can’t give them any opportunities to slip out.
You use no data to refute the article’s data. Instead, you make long winded assumptions. Assumptions told eloquently are still assumptions.
That’s because somebody who’s afraid to tell us his real name also wants to hide behind his rhetoric and hysterical repetition of falsehoods. I think we’ve all gotten about as much value out of responding to someone who has no intent on facing reality today. Many have presented facts here, but he’s not ready for intervention and treatment. We can only hope some seeds were planted that may one day germinate. His long-winded denials and projections are a cry for help, so there’s hope that you helped him. If you got any insight in rebutting and sharpening your debate skills, that’s all to the good, too.
Techo, Techno, Techo,
Not sure if you understand the American system. The right to bear arms is a constitutionally guaranteed right. The government can not just take it away without the consent of the people. You are arguing details not the core issue which is that the gov’t seeks to limit the people’s ability to defend themselves against criminals and the gov’t itself. That is no small thing and I am quite willing as an American to trust my fellow citizens with a firearm. I do not trust my gov’t to reasonably handle a budget.
My leftists believe we have to understand the motives behind terror which is an active use of weapons yet gleefully ban guns which are a passive use of weapons for self defense. If you believe there is no absolutes when it comes to killing then you should certainly err on the side of freedom.
The largest mass murder in the last 50 years in Canada, was an arson using gasoline in Montreal, less than 10 years later another with 14 women shot at a school resulted in a gun control craze, we’re just getting out of. The end result of the registration, and gun control legislation was, an increase in homicide, we have 4 times the violent crime that the US presently has, women are 6 times more likely to be raped.. Strangely, no one thought of banning gasoline and matches though..
The canadian homocide rate is 1/4 of the US’. Violent crime overall has been dropping since 1992 (and what happened in 1991 – do you want to give the readers a hint?). And no, the rape statistics in canada are not 6 times what they are in the US. I haven’t spent as much time looking at canada’s crime stats as I have the UK and australia, but 6X is just patently ridiculous. I can’t find a single source that even HINTS at that sort of difference. But by all means – name a source of data (not commentary, please – just the data will do) and we can take a look at it.
Technerd, the Canadian statistics for sexual assault can be found on the UN site for crime statistics, the Canadian homicide rate has generally been trending down at a constant rate since the 1970′s however the rate is falling at a significantly slower rate than the US, with the States having much different firearms legislation. When you compare our Western Provinces, with their neighbouring US states, you’ll find the per capita homicide rate in those provinces is much higher.. In spite of having concealed carry, a much higher gun ownership rate etc. so comparison rates indicate that the more firearms, less crime. Canada largely does not have the issue of inner city, ghettos and its subsequent drug/gang culture, which appears to be the driver of the US homicide rate.
“Technerd, the Canadian statistics for sexual assault can be found on the UN site for crime statistics”
I’d love to see you post a link to that source. The UNODC doesn’t compare sexual assault with the US for reasons that should be obvious by now (ok, I’ll repeat it – because the US UCR doesn’t collect statistics on sexual assault).
http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/statistics/crime.html
The UNODC figures for rape in canada are less than 10% of the figures in the US. Personally, I’m inclined to not believe that. I suspect there’s a definition error there – canadians don’t walk around with halos on their heads.
But I don’t understand how you can use those statistics to claim that “women are 6 times more likely to be raped”, let alone “we have 4 times the violent crime that the US presently has”. You didn’t get that claim from the UN crime stats either – check the link (canada has 2/3 the rate of assaults and 1/3 the homicide rate)
“you’ll find the per capita homicide rate in those provinces is much higher”
If you’re referring to the whole seattle-vs-vancouver thing, I think you’ll actually find that the rate of violent crime (including homicide) is lower in vancouver, but the rate of property crime is higher. That was some kind of big gun-rights argument back in 2009 – somebody brought it up in another thread (which is why I checked).
See, this is what I’m talking about – bang on about rights, or the second amendment, or theories about inner city blacks or whatever, but stop trying to pretend that international statistics support your arguments, because they don’t.
Actually, the same thing that has been happening in the US, the baby boomers are getting older.
You know, the largest age group which then had the largest # of people at the prime age for criminal activities, is getting older, getting killed, getting imprisoned and have reached the physical age of not being able to commit as many crimes.
Canada has the same phenomena, and the trends in crime and violent crime reflect that, in fact if one compares percentages of decline, I would bet their a near mirror image, want to try?
“… the baby boomers are getting older … you know, the largest age group which then had the largest # of people at the prime age for criminal activities, is getting older”
You don’t seem to understand what the baby boom was. It wasn’t a sudden spike in births which then dropped back to historical levels. It was a sudden spike in births which then more or less continued – think less a surf wave, and more a tidal wave. Go look at the “population pyramid” for the US and you’ll see why that theory is bogus.
Does Canada have lots of inner city black people, techno?
If you guys want to pin all your hopes on blaming african americans for the US’ violent and gun-related crime, go right ahead. I’m not going to get involved. See if Howard will bite (although getting answers out of that guy for specific questions is nigh impossible)
I honestly don’t think race is the issue. There are enough african countries with a far lower homicide rate than the US’ to make me think you’re on the wrong track.
But whatever your justification, things would still be a lot better if people couldn’t get their “nine” out of a packet of breakfast cereal.
African countries with a far lower homicide rate than america…
Good one techno.
Using the UNODC figures (feel free to nominate a different data set if you want)
The US: 4.2 (per 100,000 pa)
Tunisia: 1.1
Niger: 3.8
Algeria: 1.5
Djibouti: 3.4
Egypt : 1.2
Morroco : 1.4
Mauritius: 2.5
Sao Tome: 1.9
Rational gun control? We all have determined that there is no rationality on the behalf of gun banners.
I have already destroyed zeke, sinz54, and your points already. Now the real question is what is your motivation?
There are two types of gun banners:
Those that know gun control doesn’t work but push for it because they have malevolent intentions towards the 99%.
Those that just bleat ignorantly because they prefer to be sheep.
Since everyone is picking on you, I wanted to point out something you’re right about… there was a lot of anger going around. Well, there’s a lot of anger going around in the US about the deaths of those children. People get emotional. Politicians respond to that anger. That’s understandable.
But it’s a horrible basis for passing laws, particularly laws that do nothing to solve the problem EVEN if (like Australia) there wasn’t any Constitutional guarantee of the right to carry arms. “Reasonable” is not “whatever makes angry people feel better.”
“Since everyone is picking on you”
It’s like being struck repeatedly with a stale lettuce-leaf. Oh, you have no idea how awful this is.
“I wanted to point out something you’re right about… there was a lot of anger going around. Well, there’s a lot of anger going around in the US about the deaths of those children. People get emotional. Politicians respond to that anger. That’s understandable.”
I don’t think I ever made reference about that. I actually don’t think that the “mass killings” need to be the focus. I think the US should be focusing more on the background level of violence – injury AND death – which is horrific by developed-world standards. One thing you should be grateful for is the amount of money being spent on emergency medical care, otherwise your homicide rate would be way higher. For every 10,000+ (recorded) firearm homicides a year, 76,000 people are shot, and injured badly enough to turn up in the CDC statistics (they have a search database – go look). Just imagine if those people only had access to developing-world medical care. Your homicide rate would be way, way higher.
“But it’s a horrible basis for passing laws, particularly laws that do nothing to solve the problem”
Wrong on all counts. Sorry.
I might as well respond, “I know you are, but what am I?”
Even you have repeatedly admitted that the gun bans may not have done anything at all, that they may well be neutral.
And your response to my claim that something doesn’t solve the problem is a content free, “No, wrong on all accounts?”
I know you are, but what am I?
Oh, and the Alamo doesn’t have a basement.
“I might as well respond, “I know you are, but what am I?””
It would be more substantive that most of what “R7 Rocket” posts.
“Even you have repeatedly admitted that the gun bans may not have done anything at all, that they may well be neutral”
No, I’ve said that at _best_ somebody might try to claim that gun control changes were not the cause of a subsequent drop in crime (but I think they’d be wrong). I’ve also said that, with the exception of a few outliers, the correlation among developed countries between strong gun control and low crime is very strong. Just go look at the data. The US _is_ the stand-out example. Take mexico out of the picture, and you’ve got the worst violent crime rates in the OECD. Every other country with effective gun control policies has a fraction of the US’ violent crime.
“And your response to my claim that something doesn’t solve the problem is a content free, “No, wrong on all accounts?””
It’s an assertion. I say it’s wrong. *shrug*.
Ok…. fair enough.
Now…. explain to us how ya’alls rape rate is three times higher than in the States.
“Now…. explain to us how ya’alls rape rate is three times higher than in the States”
Easy – it isn’t.
The Australian Bureau of Stats doesn’t collect or public headline statistics for “rape”, whereas the FBI UCR _only_ publishes “rape”.
The UCR’s definition is:
“Forcible rape, as defined in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, is the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will. Attempts or assaults to commit rape by force or threat of force are also included; however, statutory rape (without force) and other sex offenses are excluded.”
The australian figures are for sexual assault is:
“physical assault of a sexual nature, directed toward another person who: does not give consent, or gives consent as a result of intimidation or fraud; or is legally deemed incapable of giving consent because of youth or incapacity”
Those are the definitions used to collect the official national figures. They are not the same category of crimes. I’m not excusing either, but you can’t compare them – the US data specifically excludes far too many attacks which would (quite correctly) be counted as a sexual assault in australia. Most astonishingly, the rape of a male victim isn’t a “rape” according to the FBI UCR – it’s considered an assault. That’s why the UCR can publish its rape stats by 100,000 women, rather than per 100,000 population.
Howard tries to claim that I’m “excusing rape”, or something, by pointing this out, but I think he’s just desperate to hide his dodgy comparisons. This is by far the most difficult statistic to compare internationally – but assault is also fairly tricky, because the UCR (again) excludes a lot of crimes that would be considered assault in australia or the UK (assault with robbery, for example, isn’t recorded as an assault – the FBI UCR calls that a robbery, and the standard of injury required is far higher than it is required to be anywhere else). This is tricky stuff, and I think howard knows that but doesn’t want to admit it. It’s why I’m on his case about specifics – they’re important.
Also, you’ll be pleased to note that on the 6th of Jan, 2012, the DOJ announced that it’s updating its (1920) definition of “forcible rape” for the UCR – it still requires vaginal penetration, but the overall definition is broadened. So your official rape statistics are about to go up for the 2012 results. Feel free to blame obama, or suddenly get very concerned about the importance of definitions, but even WITH the new changes, the US will be massively under-counting (by australian standards) its sex crimes.
If you switch to looking at standardised victimisation surveys instead (have a look at the 2004/5 ICVS, for example – the last one they did) you’ll see that the US has a higher prevalence of sexual assault than pretty much every other developed country, including australia. Don’t say anything, don’t deny it – just go look.
They allowed too many muslims to immigrate, who see defenseless women to be had.
Techno, you’re well-named for a genre of music that consists of grinding, tedious, repetitive droning punctuated with synthetic ‘zing’ noises and looped snippets of found vocals chosen for their sound and repeated until they have lost all meaning.
Conservative argue facts while liberals use tactics. If the facts mattered there would be no debate about “gun control.”
Moving along … can we please STOP comparing historical data between the US and other countries?
You can’t compare the australia “rape” statistics with the US. The Australian Bureau of Stats doesn’t actually collect “rape” data – it publishes sexual assault data. The definition of sexual assault in australia is any unwanted assault having a sexualised nature (you can find this on their web site). The US (FBI) UCR figures only include “forcible rape” – i.e. a specific, unwanted penetrative sex act with the involvement of violence. No penetration – no rape. No violence – then it doesn’t go into that total (think unconscious victim, statutory rape without violence, incest). Oddly enough, if the victim is male it’s not even recorded as rape – that goes under the assault figures (don’t believe me? Go read the UCR explanatory notes). And if that’s not enough – they publish their figures as a rate per 100,000 women (because rape of males isn’t included, see?), not per 100,000 people. Very few people seem to notice that.
You can not compare those figures. You just can’t. They’re not the same thing. But these ARE the figures that people compare, and they’re just flat-out wrong to do that.
Incidentally, the FBI announced this month that it’s going to be updating its wording for rape from its present 1920 definition. That’s good news for you guys – that means the number is about to go up, and you can blame obama for it!
Australia’s assault figures are also far more inclusive that the DOJ UCR definition. The UCR has a much higher standard of injury (real or possible) and has tricks for lumping assaults into another category (e.g. if it includes theft, then it’s not registered as an assault). The numbers aren’t comparable – they’re just not. But still, people compare them anyway, and they’re wrong.
And I’d like to see a reference for women being “twice as likely” to be raped in the UK compared with the US. I guess if you cherry-pick a year out of the ICVS (last issued 2004/2005, in which year the US was way out in front of the UK and Australia, and I mean in a bad way) then you might find a year when that’s true, but their numbers are extremely volatile. But let’s hear it – what is your reference (original source please – tell me where the data comes from) for that claim?
As for the UK … sheesh. Go look up the NCRS – the National Crime Reporting Standard. That was a measure introduced in the UK in 2001 – it created a standardised framework for nationwide crime reporting with far stricter requirements on police. By 2003, the home office estimated that it had increased the annual recording of crime by as much as 23% (you can find that work on the home office web site, by the way). If you go get the crime statistics tables from the home office (they’re freely available) you will note that there is a footnote on each table for the year 2003 – saying specifically that you CAN NOT directly compare pre- and post-2003 figures. Not too surprisingly, every single UK newspaper ignores that, and publishes the 1998/1999 figures alongside whatever year post-2003 best suits their agenda. Maybe they don’t know they’re comparing apples and oranges, but I think they probably do. That should stop doing it, because the US pro-gun lobby jumps on those (frankly wrong) reports about rising crime and assumes that they’re accurate. They aren’t accurate.
But there are other places we can go to see the overall trend in UK crime during that period. For example, there’s the British Crime Survey, which has collected crime victimisation survey data from 1981 onwards. It’s a different benchmark, absolutely – I wouldn’t dream of mixing those figures – but the trend should still correspond pretty well (apart from the 2001-2003 increase, they track very well). The BCS figures show that the absolute peak year for pretty much all types of crime – personal, violent, property – was 1997/98. It’s been steadily dropping ever since. That tends to give a great deal of credibility to the home office’s claim that the spike leading up to 2003 wasn’t an increase in crime, it was due to the NCRS. Not that anyone listened.
Bottom line – violent crime in the UK is not rising. It’s falling. The numbers themselves have been consistently falling since 2003, which is the year that the NCRS fully took effect. Look at other contemporaneous sources (or factor in the NCRS influence), and you’ll see that violent crime actually peaked in 1997/98.
All of this stuff is easily found online. It’s taken me a couple of weeks to get my head around it all though – it’s surprising that nobody ever mentions it when comparing the US vs Australia and Britain. I sort of get the impression that the pro-gun lobby isn’t all that interested in putting these numbers in context. They just cherry pick isolated statistics that suit their agenda and hope/assume that nobody will check. Well … I checked.
Does anyone want me to debunk the rest of this article? Or do you want to go mull that over for a while? I need to go to bed now, but if you like I can post the names of the specific reports in the morning so you can get the data for yourself.
If you bothered to research before displaying your ignorance to the world, you would know that their definition of “rape” is called “sexual assault”. Read my book to get the full explanation.
I’m sorry, but who is “they”? Are you referring to the FBI? Or the UK? Or the ABS? Who?
I’m challenging you to cite your data, with its definitions. You can either do that, or you can’t. As far as I can see, most of this stuff is available in some form online from the sources – why do I have to buy your book?
I sincerely do not believe that the rate of sexual assault (or rape) in the UK is twice what it is in the US. I just don’t. Not when comparing like for like. Look at other forms of violent crime, and the UK is safer than the US is. Look at the latest International Crime Victimisation Survey 2004/05 and you will see, on page 78, in the table “Sexual assault against women; one-year prevalence rates in 2003/04 (percentages) in countries and main cities and results from earlier surveys” that the US scores a figure or 1.4 and the UK 0.9. Those obviously can’t be directly compared with recorded crimes – they’re survey data – but they do tend to support my position.
So I’ve just told you where I got my data from. Over to you.
My book has over 1,000 endnotes. Australian Bureau of Criminology. British Home Office. The same places you misused. And many more. You need to defend yourself here. I’m not going to do your work for you.
Oh, wow. The old “do your own research” response – awesome.
Little steps. Let’s see if we can just get past this one question. You wrote this:
“If you bothered to research before displaying your ignorance to the world, you would know that their definition of “rape” is called “sexual assault”. Read my book to get the full explanation.”
It wasn’t at all clear who you meant by “their” in that comment. I asked you to tell me who you meant. Who are you talking about?
You responded by telling my I had to go get your book and read 1000 footnotes and how you won’t do my work for me.
This isn’t looking too impressive. That wasn’t a difficult question. I wasn’t asking you to do complex regressions or explain anything obscure – I just asked you who you were talking about when you said their definition of “rape” is called “sexual assault”. Who is “they”? We’re talking about a two or three letter acronym, at most. For extra points, you could name the data set, so I (and everyone else here) can just look at the data for ourselves.
Are you going to answer ANY specific questions about data or definitions? Or are you just going to keep calling me names and telling me to go buy your book?
And I wasn’t even finished with the problems with your article. There’s still more.
I’m off to bed. Let’s see if any of these posts are still up in the morning.
Oh, and there isn’t any Australian Bureau of Criminology. It’s the Australian Institute of Criminology. A small point, I agree. Their figures draw pretty heavily on ABS data, though.
True that’s a typo. Australian Bureau of Statistics. Australian Institute of Criminology. I cite both repeatedly.
Techno, Howard has cited his sources and shown his data in the best way the medium allows (only a book could do what you want, which he has already written). It is upon you, the accuser of his falseness, to find contradictory data, so his “do your own research” comment is the most rational to be made.
Likewise, if you want him to give you EVERY SINGLE DETAIL AVAILABLE, like you keep asking, THEN BUY HIS EFFING BOOK.
“Oh, wow. The old “do your own research” response – awesome.”
It keeps on getting used, because it is effective.
Its no dodge here.
Nemerov has written a book which is extensively documented. Prove it wrong–don’t just claim–if you want any credibility.
“Nemerov has written a book which is extensively documented. Prove it wrong–don’t just claim–if you want any credibility.”
Desperate.
I’m not claiming anything about howard’s book. I’m taking issue with points in THIS article about international statistical comparisons (and one very ridiculous use of a misunderstood quote in preference to the findings of a royal commission).
Just because howard’s written a book which is “extensively documented” doesn’t prove anything that he says is right. When he makes claims about crime rising in the UK or australia being less safe, and even tries to say that rape (or sexual assault) are more prevalent in one country over another, or that a series of widely-distributed fires in australia which burned over a period of weeks were a single “mass murder” of 135 people, and when I can point to, quote and cite the data which shows otherwise, then he needs to do better than hide behind the claim that he’s written a book.
“Desperate.”
I can see why you are.
“I’m not claiming anything about howard’s book.”
Yes you are, you are claiming it is s falsehood, a misrepresentation.
“I’m taking issue with points in THIS article about international statistical comparisons (and one very ridiculous use of a misunderstood quote in preference to the findings of a royal commission).”
And where so you think the points are coming from? And the quote doesn’t seem even slightly hard to get.
“Just because howard’s written a book which is “extensively documented” doesn’t prove anything that he says is right.”
Unless you can show falsehoods in it, then yes it and he are right.
“When he makes claims about crime rising in the UK or australia being less safe, ”
I know that is true, I read about it every week in the Daily Mail, Guardian, et al.
“and even tries to say that rape (or sexual assault) are more prevalent in one country over another,”
They most certainly are.
“or that a series of widely-distributed fires in australia which burned over a period of weeks were a single “mass murder” of 135 people”
He didn’t say they were single mass murder.
“and when I can point to, quote and cite the data which shows otherwise,”
Except you haven’t.
“then he needs to do better than hide behind the claim that he’s written a book.”
It’s more than you’ve done, and he can and does back up his claims. Your cherry picking does not avail you.
Wow! I get a thrill every time I see somebody mention, “… in my book” in a thread I’m enjoying. I looked you up and wikipedia says you are dead. I don’t know what a dead Russian poet has to say about gun control anyway…..
Just kidding … found you on Amazon. I’ll check out your book.
Tee, hee! I’m just well-preserved. I think if I tried poetry, PJM would fire me, so let’s leave that to BuzzSawMonkey.
If you bothered to research before wasting your time spewing onto your keyboard, you would know how the British Crime Survey has manipulated their results to manufacture what they want people to believe. I explain that in my book, too.
Righto, then. I see.
Care to explain? And do you mention the effects of the NCRS in your book anywhere? Just curious.
Chapter 2, with 86 endnotes. Australian Institute of Criminology, Reuter and Mouzos, Van Dijk and Mayhew, The Hague: Ministry of Justice, Department of Crime Prevention, U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, FBI Uniform Crime reports, Amnesty International, British Home Office Crime in England and Wales reports, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, numerous UK media sources.
Yes, you keep telling us that you cite lots of things. I don’t doubt that.
I am astonished that you’re so resistant to just telling me who it is you were referring to. I don’t think it’s even a very important important question – I’m just amazed that you can’t or won’t answer it. You were very quick to make the point – although I’m not sure what point it was – and now getting you to explain what you said is like getting water out of a stone. What’s the big problem?
Techno, if you look up the agencies he has cited, you will find that he has answered your question. Unless you’d prefer he’d write a book just for you; which is what he’d have to do to answer your question directly.
Oh, please. I only asked who he was referring to when he said:
“their definition of “rape” is called “sexual assault””
It’s a simple question, and I don’t think it’s even particularly earth-shattering. But he won’t answered it – he’s ducked and weaved and called me names instead (I’m a racist and I hate women, apparently). You might support everything that this guy stands for, but don’t you agree that this is at least a bit odd? I didn’t think much of it at first, but then I realised that he won’t answer any other questions either. Instead he just keeps telling me that he’s written a book with lots of citations in it, and huffing and puffing that I dare to question his assumptions. That’s not the response of somebody who is confident about his arguments.
Hey pooks. I gave you the reference agencies above. Now you’re just holding your hands over your eyes and squealing for attention, not realizing that your noise level is blocking any input.
“I gave you the reference agencies above”
Ok, I’ll play this game. You threw out some chaff to stall, so I’ll deal with that and we can see where you stand.
Reuter and Mouzos does not define “rape” as “sexual assault”. In fact, in in the UK context it refers to the two categories separately (pages 61 and 66).
The Australian Institute of Criminology uses ABS data, which I’ve already explained. In fact, I think it’s where I started with this argument.
Van Dijk and Mayhew are (I’m assuming) a reference to the ICVS, year 2000 – which uses two sexual offense categories: (1) Offensive Sexual Behavior and (2) Sexual assualt – which includes “incidents described as rape, attempted rape or indecent assaults”. That’s a lot closer to the australian definition than it is to the US. But it definitely isn’t “defining rape as sexual assault” – it’s just grouping categories. And I don’t see how this helps you compare rape statistics across countries – the US can’t be compared with the UK or Australia. It’s also a victimisation survey, which isn’t comparable to the home office, UCR or ABS stats. That reference doesn’t answer the question. Not even close.
I’m not entirely sure what you want me to do with “The Hague: Ministry of Justice, Department of Crime Prevention”. That’s not a report or an article. Maybe you’re talking about the ICVS – in which case see the previous paragraph.
U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics – does not define rape as sexual assault. The BJS uses a definition of rape similar to the UCR, but defines sexual assault separately, as “A wide range of victimizations, separate from rape or attempted rape …” and then goes on to describe attacks that would more closely fit the australian definition. Their reports do then group the results, yes. But that’s still based on victimisation surveys – not directly comparable to ABS or UCR data.
You’re just flat-out wrong about the FBI Uniform Crime reports. I’ve already explained that. They do not define rape as sexual assault, or even vice versa.
When did Amnesty International start publishing standardised national crime statistics? Seriously – are you just cutting and pasting anything you can find or something?
As for British Home Office Crime in England and Wales reports – now you’re getting somewhere close. You’re still wrong, but close. The UK crime stats (which appear to have now been moved to the ONS) use a reporting category of “most serious sexual crime” for roughly what the ABS would call “sexual assault”. It encompasses rape, sexual assault (which are separate categories, defined in “The Sexual Offences Act 2003″), and sex with a minor. See page 28 of “User Guide to Crime Statistics for England and Wales”, 2012. So the two categories are still separate (and different), but they are grouped together for reporting. I still don’t see how this helps compare the US statistics with the rest of the world.
And when did the ATF publish statistics on sexual assault? Nice try. Desperate, but a nice try.
As for “numerous UK media sources”, don’t even get me started on that.
Let’s try this again – do you want to tell us how you justify the claim that, by 2007, “UK women were raped twice as often as American women”?
See, this stuff matters. You claim to use data, but when challenged on your data you try to stall or change the subject – even claiming that I shouldn’t trust the data. Are you claims based on data, or truthiness?
I remember reading somewhere that NYC cooked their books too regarding crime statistics. Kind of like a fox guarding the hen house.
Techno, darling, how do you square this poignant plea of yours with this description of your own research activities?
Plea: “Moving along … can we please STOP comparing historical data between the US and other countries?”
Activities: “Actually, I did look deeper. You’ll notice that I’ve cited a number of surveys, and I’ve read the home office’s estimates (have you?) on the effects of the NCRS (which you still haven’t indicated that you’ve mentioned anywhere in your book). I have actually compared the data, and I’ve told people here where they can find that data for themselves.” And: “Look at other forms of violent crime, and the UK is safer than the US is.”
Also, while he is correct in the absolute sense that the UK is safer than the US, the UK is becoming LESS safe with time, while the US is becoming MORE safe with time.
The U.K. is safer because they are 90% white, and only 2 % black and very few mexicans swim that far.
“Also, while he is correct in the absolute sense that the UK is safer than the US, the UK is becoming LESS safe with time”
You were half right. The problem you have is that all of the evidence (and there is a lot of it) says that the UK is actually getting safer. Much safer. I think even howard would have to admit that, assuming he didn’t try to cherry pick a date from before the NCRS changes came into effect … assuming he knows what the NCRS actually is …
Good point. He’s doing the alinsky as well as promoting fiction as truth. The point remains: AUS and UK banned guns to make people safer. People are less safe. Gun control failed to work as advertised. Governments didn’t recant, but instead implemented further restrictions to the civil right of self-defense.
Therefore, gun control is not about public safety or removing “dangerous guns” from society. It’s strictly about civilian disarmament and restricting civil rights. Another issue I cover in 400 Years of Gun Control: Both AUS and UK recently began dismantling Double Jeopardy, in the name of making society safer. Sound familiar?
“He’s doing the alinsky as well as promoting fiction as truth”
I have no idea where your getting this “alinsky” nonsense from.
“The point remains: AUS and UK banned guns to make people safer. People are less safe”
No, that point does not remain. In the case of the UK, it’s trivially wrong – just look at the data. The UK is a safer place to day than it was before the handgun ban. You might argue that the ban was irrelevant, but you can’t claim (on the basis of the data) that the UK is less safe today. It just isn’t. Even if you choose to ignore the effects of reporting changes in 2001, and even if you ignore population growth, then at current trends you can wait a couple of years and the all of the raw numbers will STILL be lower than they were in 1997/98. The sheer magnitude of the fall in all types of crime in the UK since the mid 90′s has been remarkable. It’s unequivocal – the UK is safer today than it was in 1997. Far safer.
Australia is more complicated. The gun buyback had the intended effect of reducing gun crime – that’s beyond dispute. Our homicide rate fell. Assaults (including sexual assaults) have continued to rise, though. That’s a problem, I agree. But in other categories, crime has stay fairly flat, or even declined slightly.
http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/violent%20crime.html
That graph is not ideal, I agree, but it does put a few curves in one place – if you look at the AIC’s other statistics you’ll see that armed and unarmed robberies have both fallen from 1996 levels (after a peak in 2001).
I don’t think you can claim that australia is less safe now than it was in 1996.
Geez. Get over yourself. Look, do you live here? If yes, then deal with it. Guns are allowed by OUR Constitution and Bill of Rights. I could give a f%ck about the UK and DownUnder.
Your argument is circular and typically of you, just plain dumb and only meant to provoke…
If you don’t like our system…leave. The gov’t will NOT take away my guns. There will be a civil war or secession before you and your kind will disarm me and my fellow Ameircans.
Oh oh. Misdirection alert. So banning guns has not made Australia more safe? It remains just as dangerous now as it was before gun-grabbers won the political day? What a waste and shame!
Techno: “I don’t think you can claim that australia is less safe now than it was in 1996.”
It achieved its intended purpose – to prevent a rise in gun violence. It led to a decrease in gun violence, therefore it was successful. I don’t think people getting a skinful on a friday night and getting punched in the nose quite compares with the 106,000 people who get shot badly enough to die or need medical attention in the US in a year (2010, to be precise).
The prime minister at the time (John Howard – a bit of a fave amongst US conservatives these days) specifically said that he didn’t want to see australia going down the path of american-style gun culture.
Australia’s biggest violence problem right now is alcohol (which is very much a cultural problem). As a number of hospitals and police departments in our larges cities have pointed out – you can actually track the pub and club closing times on friday and saturday nights in our assault reports and hospital admissions, and they’ve been steadily growing over time. It’s a shame, but it’s not gun crime, it doesn’t kill people, and there are moves under way to try to do something about it. And I know one thing for sure – it would not be improved by the addition of easily-available firearms.
Fred, do you understand what the word “historical” means? Go read my post and try to understand what I was actually saying.
Techno, you sir have done a excellent job diverting the primary message of the article by arguing semantics and accuracy of surveys and reports. You are lost in the trees and don’t even realize you are in a forest. Step back and realize it is to a country’s benefit to under-report crime for many obvious reasons. Then take the data you can obtain, along with compiling your own information, sprinkle in a little common sense, and it is obvious that the presence of firearms does not increase crime in a particular country. Societal issues and culture play a much bigger role. Spend some time in Mexico and various African countries instead of behind your keyboard and you will begin to understand.
The point is easy to see and understand, at least for those that do not have their own agenda – in countries and locations where the law abiding are disarmed, crime and oppression rule. Study a little history during all the google searches for data sources you cite but do not actually provide any analysis. Your not in denial, you are just selective about the reality you want to accept.
If you want to be considered credible, let us know who you are and who you work for. We know abut Mr. Nemerov and his background.
If you’re going to ignore the data and just go with what your gut tells you, that’s fine. But don’t post graphs and claim that they fit the data.
Talk about wanting to ignore the data, at least when it is data that does not support your distraction. Also, you completely ignored everything I wrote. I didn’t say anything about “gut” feel. Again, tell us who is paying you to troll these sites and spend so much of your time and energy to distract?
It is not lost in the trees. It is playing with y’all, and you are falling for it. Understand that its agenda is to disrupt the conversation. This thing here is a classic troll. Leave it alone and it will eventually get bored and go away. It is thrilled that it is getting feedback from the author of the piece.
No, I’m actually horrified that the author (apparently) can’t respond.
I’m not all that fussed (for now) about inter-state comparisons across the US. I haven’t put much time into understanding that data. But on international comparisons, the claims in this article are just flat-out wrong, and the data shows that.
If you guys want to argue about whether chicago is safer than miami, or whatever, go right ahead. But leave australia and the UK out of it – your comparisons are bogus, and you’re claiming things which are simply not true.
No, the author did respond and responded effectivly. You and your viewpoint are defeated.
People write books so they don’t have to repeat themselves. You are asking Nemerov to repeat himself for your convenience. Can you see how that is an unreasonable request?
“No, the author did respond and responded effectivly”
You have very low expectations, I’m afraid.
“People write books so they don’t have to repeat themselves”
Then why did he write this article?
“You are asking Nemerov to repeat himself for your convenience”
No, I’m asking him to back up some very contentious (and, I would suggest, just plain wrong) claims.
“But leave australia and the UK out of it”
You mean that you don’t want to hear that someone in Great Britain is more likely to be accidentally killed by the National Health Service than an American is likely to be shot to death?
“You mean that you don’t want to hear that someone in Great Britain is more likely to be accidentally killed by the National Health Service than an American is likely to be shot to death?”
What?!?!? Why not just say that more people in the UK will die of old age than be shot to death in the US? It’s a meaningless comparison.
I dare you to actually find any definitive data on how many people are “accidentally killed” by the NHS. For every survey, you’ll find some opposition MP who’ll claim it’s under-reporting by 90%. Then I dare you to find equivalent numbers for the US public/private heath system. Good luck. Let us know how it goes.
In any case, even including the horror-show claim by the daily mail for 2008/09 of 3,645 accidental deaths in the NHS – adjust that for population and you get a figure just under 18,000 – which is less than 2/3 of the number of people shot to death in the US p.a. in a recent years.
Nice try.
” Why not just say that more people in the UK will die of old age than be shot to death in the US?”
Well, that is an interesting point. If we add in the number of people who are deliberately killed by the NHS, largely because they are old and in the way, the numbers are even more impressive. I guess that you could describe that as dieing of old age.
You’re trying to change the subject, and talking cr@p as well.
The health care debate is over. America won.
“Moving along … can we please STOP comparing historical data between the US and other countries?”
Yes, please, let’s do that. I’m very tired of hearing about how horrible the US is, in terms of guns as well as crime, morality and a host of other areas as compared to Europe or China or Australia or whoever, when each country uses different definitions and has different cultural influences and so forth.
America has a gun culture (or at least those of us outside the enclaves in the cities do). It’s enshrined in the document that defines our nation. There is about one gun per American currently, and they’re being manufactured much faster than they could possibly wear out. We’re a people that believes everybody has the right to self defense, and while violence is a last resort, it is *A* resort and it DOES settle things in a pretty final way if it becomes necessary. “Violence never settles anything” is one of the most laughable phrases ever uttered. Ask the Nazis. Ask the jackbooted thugs that currently have the citizenry under their thumb in places like North Korea or interior Africa. Ask the Islamists…they’ve begun their hand-and-head-chopping ways in new areas of Africa…something that wouldn’t be remotely possible if the population were as well-armed as America.
So yes, let’s have the Brady Campaign and top gun-grabbing politicians stop making ridiculous comparisons between cherry-picked data from the US and other countries. This article amply demonstrates that at the very least, data can be cherry-picked any way you want. Americans have our own approach to solving problems, and we believe ours is better. Others (and some Americans) believe theirs is better, and we are all prosecuting our own approach to the problem. Statistics are nice to look at, but they don’t take into account things like civil rights, general freedom, moral implications of forcibly disarming innocent people, etc. Even if I believed that things would be slightly more dangerous with more guns around (I emphatically DON’T)I’d still be for more guns in more hands. As Obama said, we should “spread the wealth around”. And guns are power, and power is a form of wealth.
Okay, let’s do that. Let’s only compare states within the United States, who have similar cultural backgrounds and…find that gun-freedom states are, on average, MUCH safer than gun control states, according to the same statistics in this very article. The only reason to compare the different countries is because that is the first place progressives go to to try to prove us gun-freedom advocates wrong. It is only fitting to deflate their narrative by showing that our country, with MASSIVE gun ownership, has an average crime rate.
Bingo! That’s the reason I looked at AUS and UK in the first place. I myself was using them to convince myself that they were morally superior and safer. I wanted to believe with Brady and the media was telling me. Their crime data proved otherwise. So what’s the only reasonable response? Admit I was wrong. As with all addictions, taking the first step and admitting is the best way to recover.
Techno said:
You started that direction of argument. I have caught you making a dishonest argument.
The question now is, what is your real motivation?
There are two types of gun banners:
Those that know gun control doesn’t work but push for it because they have malevolent intentions towards the 99%.
Those that just bleat ignorantly because they prefer to be sheep.
Which one are you techno?
Okay. I present the facts in hopes that people will develop tactics with them. The banners design their tactics around their carefully manipulated “facts”. Same difference.
How about talking points about Obama’s daughters going to a school with armed security. The next time somebody says that’s a bad idea to arm teachers, or “another gun will only escalate the violence” reply with “but the president sends his daughters to a school with armed guards. You support the president, don’t you?” Put them on the defensive. Use their beliefs against them. Read Saul Alinsky. His rules for radicals are just as effective going the other way.
http://polizeros.com/2009/09/16/saul-alinsky-rules-for-radicals/
Retake the moral high ground by using their belief structure against them. Radicals are good. The new est ablishment says regular people shouldn’t have the ability to defend their lives. Yet that same group of elites sends their kids to schools with armed guards. They surround themselves with armed guards that our tax dollars pay for. We’re the radicals; we’re the good guys. Anybody supporting the establishment is wrong. Make them feel guilty by using their own beliefs against them.
Quit playing nice with people who consider that a sign of weakness. And use your energy to find ways to design tactics that work.
Gun control is the idea that the 1% should violently seize the guns from the 99%.
There are two types of gun banners:
Those that know gun control doesn’t work but push for it because they have malevolent intentions towards the 99%.
Those that just bleat ignorantly because they prefer to be sheep.
I suspect the ruling elites belong in the first category.
And here is a quote from DiploMad that’s pretty much on the button:
“Speaking of guns, while getting ready to go to Vegas, I visited my local bank here in California, and guess what? The bank had an armed guard! How about that? Institutions, e.g., banks, museums, jewelry stores, courthouses, Congress, the White House, put armed guards wherever there are valuables to protect. So I guess that’s why we don’t have them at schools . . . nothing valuable there, right?”
http://thediplomad.blogspot.nl/2012/12/vegas-bound.html
You’ve got an error under Fiction 6. In the graph titled “Robbery Victims – 26 OECD Countries”, the U.S. ranks 7th lowest, not 8th. Take a close look at the red “United States” box and the arrow pointing to one of the bars on the graph. The arrow does indeed point to the bar for the country ranking 8th lowest, but that’s Luxembourg, not the U.S.
You’re correct. I’ll see if we can fix it.
Fixed now. Thanks for pointing it out. Makes U.S. slightly safer than I first reported. Of course, the key point there is that we’re being lied to by media manipulators that American is soooo violent, and the best way to “prove” this is to take a tiny slice out of a large dataset, and actually boasting about doing so.
I have read that the homicide rate attributed to guns is one of the manipulated figures you speak about, that the leftists include suicide by gun, and also deaths of criminal perpetrators of crimes in the figure to about double the actual figure. I have a link somewhere, but couldn’t find it to show, but when these deaths are taken out of the equation, it makes the homicide by gun figure significantly lower.
It becomes “old” explaining to anti-gun people the reason for the 2nd Amendment. Unfortunately, pundits and educational institutions have done a poor job of explaining the Founders reasoning for the 2nd Amendment. The result is an uninformed America which believes it is for hunting or even protection from criminals. If such people believe that the 2nd Amendment does not apply in a day of modern weapons then I would say that since the Founders only knew about print journalism, the 1st Amendment’s freedom of the press does not apply to cable TV and television journalism. The courts have ruled it does, therefor the basis of the 2nd Amendment to have citizens armed, meaning weapons comparable to those of troops is valid. That includes semi-automatic AR-15 rifles. One could make a case for having automatic firearms on that basis.
After the experience with England, the Founders recognized the need for citizens in our new county to have the ability to defend themselves from government as was done during the Battle of Athens (TN), also known as the McMinn County War on August 1, 1946.
As Eleanor Roosevelt wrote at the time:
We in the U.S.A., who have long boasted that, in our political life, freedom in the use of the secret ballot made it possible for us to register the will of the people without the use of force, have had a rude awakening as we read of conditions in McMinn County, Tennessee, which brought about the use of force in the recent primary. If a political machine does not allow the people free expression, then freedom-loving people lose their faith in the machinery under which their government functions.
In this particular case, a group of young veterans organized to oust the local machine and elect their own slate in the primary. We may deplore the use of force but we must also recognize the lesson which this incident points for us all. When the majority of the people know what they want, they will obtain it.
Any local, state or national government, or any political machine, in order to live, must give the people assurance that they can express their will freely and that their votes will be counted. The most powerful machine cannot exist without the support of the people. Political bosses and political machinery can be good, but the minute they cease to express the will of the people, their days are numbered.
This is a lesson which wise political leaders learn young, and you can be pretty sure that, when a boss stays in power, he gives the majority of the people what they think they want. If he is bad and indulges in practices which are dishonest, or if he acts for his own interests alone, the people are unwilling to condone these practices.
When the people decide that conditions in their town, county, state or country must change, they will change them. If the leadership has been wise, they will be able to do it peacefully through a secret ballot which is honestly counted, but if the leader has become inflated and too sure of his own importance, he may bring about the kind of action which was taken in Tennessee.
“It’s reasonable to extrapolate that incrementally enacting more “sensible” gun laws does in fact result in civilian disarmament:”
Isn’t it more accurate to say that states with more gun owners are less likely to pass more gun restrictive control laws?
Those states all started out with a Second Amendment, then lost it.
It’s a reasonable question. Without knowing what the gun ownership rate was before the laws were passed, how do you tell if the disarmament was due to the gun control laws or if the gun control laws were due to initial low levels of gun ownership?
“I’ll vote for this because I don’t own and gun and don’t want one” is very probably part of the process of getting those laws passed to start with.
The correlation is there and I’m not saying it doesn’t mean what you said it means. I’ve no doubt in my mind at all that any words from the gun grabbers about their intentions not including disarmament are mere noise.
What I’d actually question is what the actual gun ownership rates are in Brady “A” states. After all, if gun ownership is illegal, or even if the legal atmosphere is quelling, who are you going to give your gun inventory list to? I wouldn’t do it. Who would?
Since we don’t know any differently, we have to use the data we have. These data I cited have been used by numerous scientists. While that doesn’t make them right, it does make them the most reliable data available. And since these data are used by antis to promote gun bans, I use them as well to show their fictions.
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
H.L. mencken
Good one but why is this true? Perhaps power can cheat the angel of death for another day as the 3rd of the angels see in their rebellion against God. but human you are not angels. This may mean your father is William Spengler, your son Adam Lanza and your unholy spirit dwells in the great city where 500 murdered this year another 500+ murdered in 2008 and few people practice only love defeats the angel of death but great faith is needed to see this through
(it was not God that turn the 3rd of the angels into demons but this was proof what happens with the absence of God in even angelic lives as the sweet sweet smile from the angel of death could not go deep enough to release them from the immortal as it is with the human where hell awaits them or purgatory where there is hope from having great distance from God.)
wait
this thread about keeping your guns to cheat the angel of death
I’d love to see research on homicides in CHicago in 1929, when Automatic Weapons were legal, versus now, when automatic weapons are illegal. I’m willing to bet there were more homicides in Chicago this year than then.
Here’s a start. Further links within the article:
http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/Lets-Make-Chicago-As-Safe-As-It-Was-During-Prohibition-163189636.html
You can’t look at just the annual total # of murders, which have increased with population growth. Look at homicides per capita.
From the linked articles:
Chicago homicides per 100,000 residents:
1910 – 9.2
1920 – 10.5
1930 – 14.6
1940 – 7.1
1950 – 7.9
1960 – 10.3
1970 – 24.0
1980 – 28.7
1990 – 32.9
2000 – 22.1
2010 – 15.6
2012 – 18.5 *
* Estimate based on most recent figures I could get: July 2011 population of city of Chicago (2,707,120) and the homicide count for 2012 (500, with shooting of Nathaniel Jackson on 12/28/12). If anyone has more recent #s, please feel free to correct.
Chicago is an interesting case because it was the locus of so much gang violence during Prohibition (specifically, the Beer Wars that broke out between gangs starting in the mid-1920s). The other spike c. 1990 is the crack wars.
Beware the bait & switch that politicians & others like to pull re: whether crime rates are rising or falling. What you usu. find is that they will cite “falling” crime stats when the starting point is 1965. But as attested to by even the Chicago homicide rates (which have seen periods of spiking, always in conjunction with some banned substance & the gang violence that erupts in direct connection with the trafficking thereof & territorial control of such trafficking), violent crime exploded in the mid-1960s from the rates that had been seen for the previous 20-30 years (c. mid-30s/1940 – 1965).
Urbanization, population density, and lack of a homogeneous population (i.e. effects of immigration) also play roles in violent crime rates in 20th century America. So the violence can’t be laid entirely at the feet of substance bans & gang violence. BUT, these last two things do seem to be somewhat equivalent to lighting a match in a gas-filled room. They make dangerous circumstances massively deadly.
My point is that 40+ years of spiking violent crime (spiking from what Americans lived with in the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s) have desensitized most of us. Fewer & fewer living Americans also have first-hand memories of what that “other America,” pre the mid-60s brutalization of society & culture, was like. And don’t think our Dear Leaders don’t recognize this and use the cultural memory loss to their advantage.
Chicagoans are not just living in Capone’s Chicago. They are living in worse. And have been for 40+ years. Why is this tolerated? Anarcho-tyranny always serves the tyrants pretty darn well. It’s the little guys who get squashed like bugs.
Collating this with Brady grades shows that more gun control correlates perfectly with less guns …
Not really. It correlates perfectly with gun owners being less willing to admit that they have a gun. No one has any idea what actual effect gun-control laws have on actual gun ownership.
And you know this because of your research?
Howard, in respect to people not admitting to firearms ownership to the state, I have to agree.. It was common practice for Canadians when the Long Gun Registry was enacted, for people to deny ownership, or only register a single shot 22. Furthermore, with the import information available, plus domestic production, there was an estimated 21 million rifles & shotguns in the country, there never was more than 7 million registered. People basically told the state to eff off.. then they got cute, and registered, staple, glue and caulking guns. One enterprising fellow even registered his Jack Russell Terrier as a firearm.
Perhaps, but there’s no evidence that this reluctance differed from state to state. Kleck did a lot of research into survey shortcomings, but it seems more likely to be general. Do you have some evidence of state variations based upon what laws the state had? The surveys I cite were done by the CDC, not states. The Canadian registry you mention also discusses the national response, not province by province. So it’s best to assume a general reluctance, and that this reluctance generally is even across states. So somebody in DC will answer untruthfully as often as somebody in Wyoming. Perhaps for different reasons. Maybe the DC resident was afraid of the police finding out. Maybe the Wyoming resident didn’t like talking to strangers. So surveys are unreliable, but this unreliability crosses state boundaries. So without evidence to the contrary, I’ll stick with my conclusions.
Howard, it seems to be lost in translation, when I referred to the ‘state’ I was talking about our federal government not an individual province. However, Gary Mauser did some work on the civil disobedience and non compliance to the registry. Further, in surveys done by both the CSSA and NFA in Canada, they were confident that there was about a maximum 40% compliance rate, and the production import data supports this. Sorry for the confusion… ps.. I suspect that the Western Canadian compliance was about 20% and Quebec and eastern Canada about 50%.
Great stuff, Howard
the most likely outcome in a mass murder situation where the murderer is confronted with armed resistance is the murderer committing suicide. . . . What if an armed defender had been present at Sandy Hook Elementary School?
When armed defenders arrived at Sandy Hook the perp killed himself so the trend holds.
“What if an armed defender had been present at Sandy Hook Elementary School?”
While not written that way as quoted, I think the obvious implication is what if an armed defender had been present far more promptly–as in an adult already on the premises.
It is plausibly Lanza would have been shot dead while he was trying to gain entrance, without killing anyone on the school grounds.
“Unfortunately, pundits and educational institutions have done a poor job of explaining the Founders reasoning for the 2nd Amendment.”
For which one can blame the 19th Amendment. Prior to that there was a linkage between the franchise and militia duty. One of the very first acts of Congress in 1792 was the Militia Act which incorporated all free white males, who happen to be the electorate, into the militia, per its authority under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution – ..”To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States,”. They had ‘skin in the game’. That Act would be amended in 1862 to include Americans of African decent and followed by the 15th Amendment extending the franchise. It was the 19th that decoupled the linkage. Today that militia law is found in Title X USC, para 311 -
” Sec. 311. Militia: composition and classes
-STATUTE-
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied
males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section
313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a
declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States
and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the
National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are –
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard
and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of
the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the
Naval Militia.”
All males 17 to 45 are members of the unorganized militia whether they want to or nor, or are aware of it or not. However, only females ‘volunteer’, they are not subject to ‘selective service’ or its requirements or be called upon to give ‘the last full measure of devotion’. Why should they be interested in the intent of the 2nd Amendment?
Still, that means that ALL males still have the right to be armed, as members of the militia, even IF the progressives win with their “militia only” argument. Which would not bode well for females, but at least all the guys could have guns.
“There’s a problem with all of their hyperbole: it is based upon myth and manipulated data.”
That doesn’t stop authors at PJM from demanding permanent institutionalization for everyone with a mental illness. Why should it only apply to the gun-control crowd?
Ah! Now we cut to the heart of the matter.
The left has been demonizing the right. (I know, but wait a minute. I’ll get there.) Thus far, especially since the election, those efforts have steadily increased and become more, shall we say, insistent. You’ve all but completed your ‘long march’ through our institutions. ow, all you need is an ‘internal enemy of the people.’ The right has been chosen to be that ‘enemy.’ You’ve even got ‘scientific’ evidence to prove that people on the right are nuts. Something Must Be Done! to protect us all from their insanity.
Sadly, were the right in power in D.C. today, and in a similar position as thelft, the right would be doing the same thing to the left as you, yourslf, are now doing and advocating.
iow, one side was going to end up putting the other on railroad cars and buses and sending them to camps. It just happens that the left has the advantage, instead o the right.
While I agree with the right wrt many issues, I’m strongly opposed to them on others. However, some of them actually stop and think, once in awhile. The left? Naw. Talking to them is like talking to the wall, or asking the wind to stop blowing.
Neither side relly, truly, embraces The Constitution. Just as you’ve now demonstrated, the point seems to be gaining and exercising power over others, instead of fighting for freedom and liberty for all of us. If the right truly believed in freedom, we wouldn’t have the DHS and TSA, just for one example. If the left truly believed in freedom, they would’ve dismantled the DHS and TSA…just for one example.
When we stop trying to controlo thers, exept to prevent them from physically harming us or stealing from us, that’s when we’ll be free. That’s when we’ll have restored The Constitution to its proper place in our lives and in our nation.
Pray tell: when has the Right ever been in charge since at least WWI?
Don’t tell me either Bushes qualify as “the right”, and Reagan’s excuse was that he still dealt with a Congress that was dominated by Dems who fought back.
John Boehner ain’t no Tip O’Neal (may he enjoy his time with the Devil).
The Right hasn’t had he kind of control that the dems have had over most of the last 90 years…EVER.
And that’s because the Donks cheat, at a shocking level. I don’t think Ostupidhead was EVER really elected. Then again, I’ve looked into it, so I know something ain’t right. Too bad that after every election, voter fraud completely disappears from the radar until it’s almost the next election.
That, my friends, is the real problem. The Democratic Party is merely a criminal enterprise masquerading as a political party.
Once you understand that, you’ll understand EVERYTHING.
So, you’re saying that in the last ten or twenty years, that the Republicans have never held any power in D.C., then? Like, mebbe having a republican controlled House, Senate and White House, all at once, for example? …or that they’ve never controlled the House and Senate, mebbe? …or that in the last thirty or forty years that they’ve never held one part of Congress while also holding the White House? …and that none of that sort of thing has ever happened during the last ninety years…
If that’s what you’re saying, and you are, I’ve got to wonder if you’ve been living under a rock, somewhere.
Yep for one four year period out of, what 60 years the GOP controlled both Houses and the WH. But..and here’s the big BUT. The left has always controlled the media, information highways and education. So they prevented the GOP from taking the nation further right. W got his wars but the left got Part D and almost amnesty for illegals.
You really cannot compare the right and left when in power because the left always has the media to either cover for them or denigrate, defame and destroy the right on anything they propose or do. If we had a fair media, do you REALLY think the WON would have been elected in the first place???
If we had a supportive or at least fair media, this nation would be in a much better situation vis a vis gun control, security for our children, locking up criminals, controlling those with MH issues, etc, etc.
I think what he’s getting at is that you shouldn’t confuse “Republican” with “the right”. Just because someone has an (R) after their name doesn’t mean they don’t worship at the very same altar of state power that the people with a (D) after their names do.
That being said I agree with your sentiments overall about the historical “right” and “left” both attacking various freedoms from different sides.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum
I think that the various models showing a square/diamond are much more informative than the simple “right” and “left” commonly used in political dialogue. I think the terms “authoritarian” and “libertarian” are much more informative, or should at the very least be used to qualify the terms “left” and “right”.
The truth is that both parties, whatever they preach when out of power, have been steadily drifting more to the authoritarian side of things for awhile. Liberals used to rail against the “War on Drugs” and the various governmental over-reaches in the “War on Terror” (points that I agreed with them on), but now that they’re in power they preserve and indeed supersize those programs because it gives the state, currently controlled by them, more power. “The left” used to believe that the slogan “my body my choice” applied to more than abortion, but now you see them going after big gulps.
You quote the author’s comment about the Left’s hyperbole; “There’s a problem with all of their hyperbole: it is based upon myth and manipulated data.”…then your next statement is…hyperbole;
“That doesn’t stop authors at PJM from demanding permanent institutionalization for everyone with a mental illness.”
thereby making his point and destroying your own argument.
And in the process demonstrate that gun control is about tyranny.
I hope no one on PJM is calling for locking up mental patients except as a way to illustrate the principle of freedom. After all, maybe wanting to own guns makes a person clinically paranoid, right?
There does need to be something better for the mentally ill and certainly some people ought to be “locked up” for their own safety and others (for the most innocent example… we “lock up” an Alzheimers patient so they don’t wander off and get lost, it doesn’t have to mean that conditions are poor or a person is in a jail cell.)
Still, the problem is the same one as it is when it comes to other freedoms. Until someone commits a crime, they’re innocent. Until it happens, we can’t tell that it will happen. It would be wrong to treat the mentally ill as if they are dangerous when most are not.
And that makes us less safe.
(Insert quote about those who give up freedom for safety not deserving either.)
Personally,I would rather have a law abiding gun owner living next to me than a paranoid schizophrenic.
Alinsky alert. When you can’t win the debate currently in front of you, distract everybody into another issue in hopes they forget the original issue. Nice try, pookie.
Same IP as Techno?
Tom: Do you want me to ask my editor that question? We’ve blocked trolls before for such shenanigans.
Not if it’s a bother. It would be interesting to know.
Nope. He’s not me.
I’m not particularly interested in changing the subject. As I said in my second post, I could keep plugging away at your arguments (at least as far as international comparisons are concerned) but your responses to what I’ve posted so far tell me that I’ve struck a nerve.
I’m resisting the temptation to take the bait to change the subject.
And I did a google books search on your book. The only NCRS reference I could find was in the header of a single chart (and I didn’t see an explanation). Now, I realise that’s not necessarily an exhaustive search, but I do ask again – when you tell your readers that the UK is less safe than it was, no doubt using the home office statistics, do you explain the NCRS reporting changes in 2001-2003 (and their effect), or don’t you? Because without understanding those changes, those results are hugely misleading (at best).
I have a couple problems with this sort of thing.
First, and foremost, there are fundamental differences between the UK, Australia, and the US, and the biggest here, I think, is our “Black” problem, or, more precisely, the level of violence committed by and to Blacks in this country. As can be seen by the above statistics, Black males are many times more likely to shoot someone than non-Black males, and Blacks are many times more likely to be shot, and mostly by other Blacks. (And, lest anyone think that this is racially based – my theory is that much of this is a result of the greatly increased assault on lower economic class families, most notably Black families, greatly accelerated by LBJ’s War on Poverty, and the resulting welfare state that replaces males with the state as the primary support mechanism, and without adult males in the household, juvenile males are often not fully domesticated).
The dirty secret is that there really is a reason to be more fearful of young black males at night than non-Black males, and that is because, statistically, they are as a group more violent and much more likely to try to kill you.
Getting back to the statistics. Australia and the UK don’t have this racial divide, or to the extent that they do, it isn’t nearly as highly correlated with murder and violence. Eliminate this, and the statistics look much different, esp. since a lot of those legal guns in this country are in the hands of non-Blacks.
But, then the other part of this racial divide is that many of the more draconian gun laws in this country are also in the cities with the biggest “non-indigenous” Black populations – notably older northern cities (plus D.C.) Cities where large numbers of Blacks moved in the late 19th and first half of the 20th Century. And, therefore cities with the worst Black violence problems. I would suggest that this Black (and, really underclass) urban violence is driving their gun control measures, and not the other way around.
That is not to say that the politicians are right there, because almost inevitably the same politicians who push gun control measures also strongly oppose any attempts to address what are probably the root causes of these problems, notably that breakdown of lower class families through advancing the welfare state. And, of course, this state dependency that they provide is how they maintain their political power. Their draconian gun control measures are a band-aid applied to try to cover the reality of this dysfunctional dynamic.
True, there’s cultural issues. This is another reason why the simplistic gun control approach is invalid. But let’s look at some statistical similarities: gun control followed by increased violence in AUS and UK. Gun control correlated with increased violence in American states. Two varied data points based on geography and demographics, yet two similar outcomes.
For pete’s sake – EVERY country has its own “demographic problems”. The UK and australia have both had changing demographics since WWII. Australia has its own challenges as well. Just go search sydney’s daily telegraph for the words “crime gangs” to find out what our (current) popular excuses are (the ethnic group we like to blame changes every decade or two)
And your evidence that all these problems are of equal severity is where?
Howard:
The Bradys stack the deck by leaving Washington DC and Puerto Rico off their report card. These are the two very violent state-like entities with extremely strict gun laws. You might have a little fun giving them some kind of estimated Brady grade and running the stats with them in the mix.
I already include DC in my analysis. DC is listed with the states in both CDC and FBI data. Brady likes to ignore it, until it’s important, such as their friend of the court filing in Heller. But good racists know when to hide the very chocolate DC and when to bring “those people” out when it suits their agenda to make us all slaves. My main concern is that gun control correlates strongly with higher black homicide.
I am a legal gun owner who submitted to background checks, completed the appropriate training, and take gun ownership seriously. As law-abiding citizens we are expected to navigate the labyrinth of conflicting state laws regarding firearms and we do successfully everyday. Although many of these laws are conflicting between neighboring states, we still respect them and abide by them everyday. Let’s make it easy for everyone (including David Gregory) and develop a basic framework across the United States.
With 300 million firearms in private hands (one-third of them pistols), the overwhelming majority of gun owners ARE responsible, law-abiding citizens, which is why these horrific massacres are not commonplace, but rather horrific outliers that can never be legislated away (e.g. DC, Chicago, and “Gun Free Zones”).
For several examples for the recent use of firearms for defensive purposes not typically reported by the national media please visit: http://www.equalforce.net please forward this address to others to whom this information may be useful. @forceequalizer
Every summer I drive from Florida to Michigan and back fully heatered. Naturally I must avoid any mistake that takes me into Illinois. The rest of the states I travel through are fully Americanized.
After a career assessing statistical analysis of performance, I take all Pro/Con arguments with a grain of salt, based on the old wisdom, “Figures don’t lie, but liars always figure.” The colloquy above demonstrates that an objective reader can quickly get out in the weeds, debating the definition of terms, e.g. “rape”. My “favorite horror” is the guns killing children in the home statistics. If you dig through the numbers, most of the homicides involve one teen age drug dealer wiping out his competitor, another teen age drug dealer, in a home.
The current push, outlawing large capacity magazines, is worthy of consideration. In Washington D.C., they are already illegal to possess, but one was brandished on national T.V. by an objective (irascibly anti) talking head who was attempting to make the NRA spokesman out as an extremist. Depending on which report you believe, he did/ did not have legal permission from authority to possess the devise. A full discussion is here.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/336573/laws-are-little-people-mark-steyn
Despite perfect proof of a felony, no one expects any sanction. But it is clear that hundreds of thousands of law abiding D.C. citizens do not possess the device, and those citizens who innocently transgress a gun law are heavily sanctioned.
While we know that the Newtown shooter, and the Webster, NY shooter (four firemen shot, two killed after setting a home ablaze as bait) intentionally commited many felonies. Would one more have deterred their evil?
Most people want laws that work, ie reduce the murders. If there was an honest, informed debate, the anti’s would seek to revoke our Second Amendment rights, to achieve this. Currently they seek useless laws, which only constrain honest citizens. Perhaps we should outlaw large green plastic magazines, on the basis that it is blatantly useless, but will makes some folks happy. I offer this as plan B, since we can not revoke, “Thous shalt not murder”, and “Thou shalt not lie”.
If Americans are serious about murder, we must address three ubiquitous evils: the collapse of the family, including a functioning adult male, particularly within the black community, the management of psychotic killers, and an honest decision on the death penalty. Americans have not been serious in two generations, and continue to pay for our “feel good” phony nonsense with the blood of our children.
Spot on! And I might add, no one wants to talk in general about sin. No God, then no way to define sin. Sin is corrupting the world not excluding this nation. This culture has bought into the do what makes you feel good and it’s OK by me. Set your own standard. Problem is, many thugs feel good when they kill innocent people and that is their standard. However, when it intrudes the liberals boundaries, then they go after anything but the truth. And why? Because the truth is an uncomfortable truth for most of them. God’s standards expose their nasty lifestyles and how they have corrupted and eroded families. The real truth is….people like their sin. And some are not willing now or ever to let it go. So they do anything to avoid accountability. By the way, the guy that killed the firemen in NY that you referenced, he did something like 14 years in prison for killing his grandmother…….with a hammer! Bye bye hammers.
Oh, Hails!
There you go again, bringing all those unimportant things like facts and logic to bear, instead of just FEELING!
Designing government using logic and facts will never get you anywhere. How, then, would the pols get to steal our money and give it to their friends, who then pass back a cut? That is the government we have today. This is a feature, not a bug.
If pols really wanted to fix thngs, they could do it in a second. They don’t want it fixed, because it would involve loss of power. When they speak of the “suffering” that would be caused by, say, letting 60% of government employees go next Friday, they are speaking of their own suffering, not the workers they fire.
So then having more “gun control” will mean a reduction in expenditures for armed security.
LOL
Attach an amendment to the “gun control” measure to reduce security for federal facilities, since we will be safer then.
… and watch them explode
This is too much data for most folks, but the gist is clear. The attack on Americans’ 2nd Amendment rights has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with controlling the law abiding side of the American population; in most cases sheeple who are content to follow their leaders off whichever cliff is nearest.
Gun control has nothing to do with guns and everything to do with government control. We have only two choices – stand up for the U.S. Constitution and contact elected representatives. Or do nothing. Then, like the folks who voted this past election to destroy us financially, own the result.
For the former group, it’s as easy as using http://www.congress.org to email all of your federal electeds in one email (can do the same for state electeds). You don’t need to craft a six page college dissertation, just a line that the 2nd Amendment means what it means and that you care. For the latter group, move along. Nothing to see here.
I have a question:
Given that your default position on possession and use of firearms turns out to be perfectly contradictory to the facts, would you be interested in documenting some personal introspection for the benefit of your readers? I’m most interested in the origin of your instinctual position and how/why it became your default setting.
For myself, I think I understand the nature of this sort of dissonance, but for those in support of personal firearms rights but mystified by the anti-gun positions, as well as those who hold those anti-gun positions, your introspection could be useful.
Well, Walter, now that you ask a question, perhaps you could contribute to my understanding of the issue by answering two questions I have. Who gave the right to gun- banning libruls to try to prevent me from defending myself, self-defense being a human and civil right more essential and basic than every other human and civil right. In that sense it seems libruls seek to aid and assist anyone who intends to do me serious harm, so am I not correct to then fear, dispise, and seek to thwart those libruls as an act of self-defense?
I’m not sure what you’re asking. What do you think my “default position” is?
It takes more guns to kill one person in the USA than it does in six other nations, most of which are hailed by the anti-gun crowd as utopias of safety from gun murders.
Number of Guns Per Murder
Country 1 Murder Per # of Guns
1. Taiwan 1 Per 5,664 Guns
2. Netherlands 1 Per 9,272 Guns
3. Germany 1 Per 15,8822 Guns
4. Italy 1 Per 16,786 Guns
5. Ireland 1 Per 17,142 Guns
6. Belgium 1 Per 25,714 Guns
7. USA 1 Per 29,521 Guns
(WrittenWord Consulting, 2012)
The Populist Postulate:
For every thorny, intractable, entrenched problem there exists a solution that is simple, direct, soul-satisfying and completely wrong.
Gun control is such a solution.
Nicely put. And widely applicable.
PS. IOW:
26,000 guns in Taiwan = 5 dead by gun
Same number in the Netherlands = @ 2.5 dead by gun
Germany. Italy, Ireland = @ 1.25 dead ” ”
Belgium = 1 dead ” ”
USA = 0 dead
Guess us “cowboy” Americans just know better when to keep our six-shooters holstered and when to draw.
Instead of legislation against “gun violence”, There should be laws against WEAPONS ABUSE.
This will be more comprehensive, covering everything from laser guided drones to sticks and stones.
And it could cover a piece of stem ware used to stab a spouse.
I’m sure the U.N. would just love the idea.
But then, Democrats and their propaganda bureau (MSM), are abusing law abiding citizens with their hysteria as a weapon, so it might not work.
“…..I personally believed in civilian disarmament……”
How stupid can you be?
Just because a law is passed does not mean that the intent or aims of the law will be achieved.
The prohibition of alcohol – via a constitutional amendment – in the 1920s demonstrated the falsehood that just passing a law would reduce problems associated with booze.
The law was a total and complete flop.
Heroin, other opiates, crack, meth, etc. , are illegal in the USA and, for the most part, in every country of the world. The US experience with prohibition of alchohol could have told anyone with an open mind that drug prohibition would not work.
Well, it does not. ANYONE (including teens !!) can buy any drug they choose to buy.
Unfortunately we live in a violent society where whackos can easily obtain guns (mostly illegally by the way) and commit atrocities as we just witnessed.
The only solution, unfortunately is a crummy one, and that solution is to allow any mentally stable adult to carry a concealed weapon; this includes school teachers and school administrators.
You can rest assured the police will always show up to a school shooting – generally about 15 minutes too late. The cowards that shoot up schools, malls and movie houses will kill themselves as soon as they see a gun pointed at them.
One problem with arguments from both sides is the assumption that there has ever been such a thing as a peaceful society of men. Human society has always been violent, or else has always contained men or women of violence and abusive behaviors. It has always contained violent governments, tyrants, dictators, power mongers and politicians who can easily be corrupted by other men and by other governments.
To deprive any human being of the right of self-defense, in any way, shape or form, against violent people and against the violence and corruption of government is, in itself, an inhumane position to propose or to promote. It is also in direct violation of the Founder’s intent and is in opposition to the plain meaning of The Constitution. Otherwise, a constitution would never have been necessary to begin with, and we aould all be living a utopian dream. Sadly enough, the real world is no utopia, for either individuals or for nations.
Thus, such protections against government and violent men are provided and found in our constitution. One of those protections and rights is the inherent and inviolable right to personal and individual self-defense against both violent men and against tyrannical and corrupt governments.
The world has never been a peaceful or safe place to exist…and never will be sort of its complete and utter destruction. So,let us opt for the practice of the humane treatment of others in both normal societal interactions and by humanely allowing the individual to protect himself against the abnormal interactions of other men and against the ill-concieved plans of the governments of men.
You just made a correlation that I believe has merit for wider distribution: “gun-control” == “inhumane”. This is perfectly accurate, and uses a nice, emotional word that leftists can identify with. Good job!
Sometimes, you gotta use emotional terms in order to get through to conservatives. Simply humanity tells us that we have to let people defend themselves against violence and to let them be prepared to defend themselves against violence. Anything less is not only inhumane, it’s insanity.
I like the username, btw.
With my down-home accent and education, I’d a gone for malaprop, myself…if I’d a thought about it…
So that’s your contribution? I’m stupid? And you think you’re making the pro-rights community a more attractive place for somebody on the fence by handing out insults to people who’ve already become pro-rights? An apology right now would make you look a lot better to others who may be reading this.
Wow. And you accuse ME of inconsistency.
http://polizeros.com/2009/09/16/saul-alinsky-rules-for-radicals/
“Rule 13: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. As soon as you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack, all of the “others” come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by their support of the target.”
You must be feeling pretty lonely. Hope you have something enjoyable to do Monday night.
I would seem to me to be a lot easier to skip the wild accusations and just answer those questions.
Howard, quit playing with the troll. It likes to be abused.
Techno wants his “questions” to be asked yet refuses to try to debunk the reality that gun control doesn’t work.
I’m beginning to think he is the malevolent form of gun banner, not the bleating form of gun banner.
Michigan right to carry law lowers crime.
http://generalnewsgroup.wordpress.com/2008/10/14/michigan-right-to-carry-law-lowers-crime/
What if an armed defender had been present at Sandy Hook Elementary School?
When an armed defender arrived the perp committed suicide, there’s no what-if about it just a when.
The left has never shown any serious interest in stopping violent crime. They are against the death penalty, for shorter sentences, for easier parole, etc. So why should we believe their sincerity when they say that gun control will reduce violent crime. Their real fear is that the rubes will start to fight back when they push the left wing agenda too far. They aren’t scared of criminals; they’re scared of you.
On point!! Numbnuts like Techno are just tools for the left. He has no idea of what the left has in store or maybe he does and thinks he will be part of their plan. Little does he actually know….
This convenient crisis, as horrible as it and others were, are all about tyranny.
The left ARE criminals, and they are afraid that we are going to have an economic collapse they have planned with certain banksters to bankrupt and take over our country. They should be VERY afraid of Americans if this happens.. There will be consequences to not only these politicians, but also to their accomplices……
I agree with most of what you say. But the whining about “racist oppression” is simply after-the-fact moral self-indulgence and exhibitionism, very easy to play at when you are long removed in time from the context and circumstances.
You will doubtless find this idea reprehensible, but if it were legally possible to disarm Blacks today, the gun-related crime rate would plummet so fast that the human eye could not see it falling.
Yes, I do find the idea of disarming Blacks reprehensible. More the the point, in most big cities like Chicago, DC and New York, the possession and carrying of handguns by private citizens is outlawed. If law abiding black citizens in such cities were allowed to arm themselves for self-defense, the crime rate would likely plummet.
Then your issue is not with us, legal gun owners but the white progs and their slaves in suits who control all those urban centers.
Answer me this: If the white progs were concerned about the safety of Americans, white and black, how come they don’t clean up the inner cities. lock up all the black and hispanic gangbangers and throw away the keys (also deport the illegal gangbangers like MS-13 guys)? No way will they do that for that would be racist…right? So there you go.
No, I find you projecting. Talking in a simplistic manner that “only if we could disarm all blacks the world would be a safer place” is whining. Whining is intentionally not accepting any responsibility for understanding a problem, then blaming somebody else when it’s you who hasn’t bothered to understand.
I agree that most of the gun violence in America is perpetrated by black thugs, but passing a law banning the ownership of firearms by blacks will only disarm law-abiding black gun owners. I don’t think that’s fair. And it won’t work anyway since criminals of all races ignore the law anyway.
It’s true in the exact same way that all truisms are true. If we didn’t have food to eat, we’d be hungry. So? That doesn’t explain why we’re hungry.
I think that the stats on the inverse relationship of black victims to gun control is shocking and profoundly important. Why would the two things correlate in that way? It’s possible that something causes both situations but that they don’t cause each other. Maybe it’s an inner-city thing. Maybe it’s an anti-family liberal policies thing. But even if gun control doesn’t cause the high black homicide rate, it clearly doesn’t solve the problem. All it does, as has been pointed out, is disarm law abiding black men and women.
And the hits just keep on coming:
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/12/27/5079151/california-gun-sales-increase.html
Albeit I can appreciate all this effort to produce all this proof about the benefits of law-abiding gun ownership, the simple fact is, as everyone should know, our Constitution grants all of us the right to bear arms to protect ourselves. We are complete & utter fools to allow any infringements upon this right, no matter the rationales.
Hasn’t anyone heard of (much less read) Professor John Lott’s book, “More Guns Less Crime”?
New edition out this year. (Amazon)
“On its initial publication in 1998, John R. Lott’s More Guns, Less Crime drew both lavish praise and heated criticism. More than a decade later, it continues to play a key role in ongoing arguments over gun-control laws: despite all the attacks by gun-control advocates, no one has ever been able to refute Lott’s simple, startling conclusion that more guns mean less crime.”
It’s been refuted repeatedly. Go take a look at tim lambert’s commentary (deltoid blog), and pay particular attention to the bit where he talk about trying to get some evidence – any evidence at all – out of lott to support one of his most popular claims.
Declaring victory when observers see nothing of the kind is not a successful refutation.
Then open your eyes and look for yourself.
Lott’s been debunked, usually by his own data. He just pretends it never happened. As do you.
Your points are already refuted on previous comment sections here, techno. The real question is, what are your true intentions?
Do you actually have anything to say about the thread topic, or are you just going to keep posting you belief that you’ve beaten me? Because I don’t see how you can claim that unless you actually engage with the topic.
I have already beaten you on previous comment sections liar. And everyone here knows it.
Now, answer my question, what are your real intentions?
Techno, I am happy you feel much more secure in your own country after disarmament despite the statistics provided by your own government. I have often heard that perception is greater than truth to many.
However please leave your sniveling about guns being evil and everything is better without them. Maybe in Australia (at least in your own mind) but it won’t work here. People are people and they are the problem.
Let me give you a bit of information about the US. We don’t want to run from our houses if an intruder breaks in the door or window. We would have a real problem with being arrested because we got in a fight with an intruder. We have a problem with running. We have a problem with surrendering. “Here take all our money, our possessions, here have my wife”.
So do what you want over there in Australia. JUST LEAVE MY UNITED STATES ALONE. When you move here permanently you can vote (Lord help us) but until then you have no skin in this game.
I don’t believe you are just trying to protect us from ourselves. Maybe you are trying to spread the misery or maybe you just enjoy feeling self-righteous but whatever it is I for one am not interested.
Hi Howard. I have a question. First I’ll say that this is some extremely devastating data and you’ve done an excellent job. My question is related to the fact that we live in a very complex society in which every issue seems to have hordes and hordes of data related to it. For someone not well versed in a particular issue, the data for any given issue is simply overwhelming. Moreover, it becomes even more confusing when you hear different people cite different numbers–often contradictory–as authoritative. So, just to clarify: Is every statistic in this article taken from data used by the pro-gun control crowd?
All the crime data are sources relied upon by the anti-rights crowd to promote their agenda. They just decided to slice and dice the data until it fit their desires.
i just today had a dream (nap time) where the fed. government did manage to take away all of the guns in the land. then some marxist dictator in a neighboring country sold plenty-o-weapons to the border drug cartels with which to murder us by the thousands, and they did.
the remaining (gunless) u.s. population was so so pathetic and sheep-like by then as to blindly support some pseudo-dictator and even reelect him. even called him cool. then he started giving out free stuff to these same sheeple, and they voted to stay his slaves forever; or, until such time as quaint concepts such as honest voting and the constitution had lost any real meaning, purpose or intent.
(upon waking) – what a nightmare! naaaah, couldn’t happen here. we have the 2nd amendment.
happy new year!
Gun statistics? The left wouldn’t give a hoot if you and your family became gun statistics.
To prevent that from happening, the good people of the nation should be armed to the teeth. My personal rule of thumb; followed assiduously by my neighbors and friends across the United States, especially ones living in the country, is this:
At night, make sure you can find a loaded firearm as quickly as you can find the bathroom. During the daytime, make sure you can reach a firearm as quickly as you can reach your remote control.
If you live in a relatively save town like Bernardsville, NJ or Wayne, Illinois, the same time constraints hold fast.
When it comes to self protection, seconds count.
My only reservation about these rules come into play when children are in the area. This is a situation where the need to keep arms out of young hands outweighs the requirements that you’re never more than 30 seconds away from a loaded weapon.
Now I’ll provide you with a few simple thoughts about firearm types designed for self protection. In the city apartment or condo, handguns will do the job. One for every adult of sound mind and body. My favorites are the Walther P99 and the Glock 17.
Life in the suburbs requires a little more firepower. One loaded handgun with safety on for each adult (no more than 15 seconds from the bedroom). And one long gun, possibly the Remington 870 pump action 12 Gauge 18inch barrel, top folding stock with pistol grip, laser,flashlight and ghost rings.
Life in the country mandates a hand gun for every adult, one Remington 870, 12 gauge pump action shotgun and one M-14 with both semi-automatic and automatic capability. This uber dependable weapon loads a 20 shot magazine, but for jam free operation, never put more than 17 rounds in one clip.
Better safe than sorry.
Which brings me to a discussion of Barack Obama, more dangerous in this nation than a loaded 38 in the hands of an 8 year old. We need a Barack Obama President like we need a hole in the head.
The gun-o-phone is bent on destroying us.
I’ve gotten an acute case of hoarseness trying for four years to explain the depths of Obama desires to destroy every facet of the United States that so many of us revere: not just the second amendment, but, for starters, capitalism; add to that a standing army capable of fighting a two front war; privately run healthcare; energy independence, border security; the belief in the American dream. Of course, this doesn’t cover everything we care deeply about; it just hits some of the high spots.
Over the past four years, though, President Barack Obama has, like a human wrecking ball, attempted to destroy every one of these base American ideals.
Not because of his incompetence. Because of his intent; his scienter.
The low information whites along with misinformed blacks, millions in voter fraud along with the help of an anemic Romney communication’s campaign, proceeded to put B. Hussein in office for a second term, which puts us in danger of having our nation fundamentally destroyed.
With glee, and no consideration for the good of the nation, Oreo cookie Obama voters are mindlessly ready to trample on any of the Bill of Rights that Obama disagrees with. Like the second amendment. They took the Sandy Hook massacre and ran with it. Truth and logic are being used to beat back the gun phobic leftist liars who now are trying to lie their way into making semi-automatic rifles illegal as automatic weapons. But with the mass media cheerleading for Bamabits, winning the verbal war is a battle.
While the Republicans sit in Congress on their hands like bumps on a log, fretting and trying to keep their jobs, with no idea how to extricate this nation from the clutches of Obama, Barack blithely lies to America till his mouth gets tired.
At the same time, the Republican party acts like a bunch of medieval eunuch fools dancing for the emperor with John Boehner, the lead Obama brown noser, obviously with better suited for juggling than being the source of a steely resolve to keep America strong and free.
If Obama has his way; if this nation is to die under Obama’s sword, let’s die fighting, not acceding to every Obama wish. If this country is to have its throat slit by Obama’s 17 trillion, applauded-by-the-mass-media, deficit,(and rising), let’s invade the newspapers that act as the equivalent of his brownshirts and turn them into bird cage filler.
If Obama is going to do his Hitler imitation, perhaps we should take a page from the Russians book of 1945, and revise the ending.
A Hitleresque, great speech making, lying hypocrite is trying to transform your nation; re-writing the Constitution, placing your rights in front of a firing squad; a present day Malmedy, while filling the Supreme Court with Obamunist pukes.
In effect, they’re taking your nation’s freedoms from you and your children and in its place setting up a totalitarian regime. If they succeed in taking away our guns, what’s left to fight with?
Surely, we must do more than wring our hands, and flap our jaws? Perhaps it’s time to draw a line in the sand. Obama voters and supporters are being led around by rings in the nose.
They’ll tell you armed guards would only cause more children to be massacred.
I guess that’s why, where Obama’s kids go to school, eleven armed guards stand at the ready, two per entrance. Armed to the teeth.
How wonderful it is to “hear” the sound of rationality in these troll-infested waters! Bravo, rachel, carry on, and spread your message as widely as you can!
You guys are awesome.
“… let’s invade the newspapers that act as the equivalent of his brownshirts and turn them into bird cage filler … If Obama is going to do his Hitler imitation, perhaps we should take a page from the Russians book of 1945, and revise the ending.”
So … let’s hear more about this plan to invade washington. Stalin had rockets and artillery – what have you got? And do you have any hints on which newspaper you’re going to invade first?
America’s Descent into Deception and Tyranny: Agenda Prevails Over Truth By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts Global Research, December 29, 2012
http://www.globalresearch.ca/americas-descent-into-deception-and-tyranny-agenda-prevails-over-truth/5317207
Save the Filibuster Stop Harry Reid’s Power Grab
https://secure.freedomworks.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=651&JServSessionIdr004=mk1cq7mlv1.app341a
There is no truth but socialist truth.
– that this would have been a serious debate topic, but DiFi never debates her opponents and the Cal press and media is fine with that.
Most people reading this article are already wholly in agreement with it.
I suggest everyone copies it & sends it to their representatives & Senators.
Preaching to the choir isn’t going to win this one & the MSM wont carry the message, so it’s up to all those in favour of individual freedom to get the message out.
If we don’t, we lose.
A far better solution for chitcago, would be to arm all black residents. Since they are the number 1 choice of being victims by black thugs, arming all blacks gives them a chance to defend themselves and their families from the thugs that seek to victimize them. The same is true for hispanics who are oftern the victims of choice from hispanic thugs
Howard (and Techno),
I am the most involved editor on the Gun politics in Australia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Australia . I am pro-gun but trying for a rational arms-length encyclopedic viewpoint. The biggest issue with the before and after crime stats is that it assumes that Australia (and even the UK) had some level of self-defense handgun ownership before the 1996 gun laws, that was reduced in impact by the laws. Its true that self-defense is not a legal reason to get a gun license, but CCW and home defense handguns were very rare before 1996, and the gun laws did not reduce handgun ownership by much anyway. What they destroyed were mostly Ruger 10/22s and Remington pump or Browning A5 auto shotguns – the guns that Americans think of as pure sporting arms. In the UK, the guns taken were entirely target pistols, never carried for self defense or used as ready home defense guns. The US assumption tends to be that it is as if they took our defenses as they are trying to do in the US but it is not so.
The important question is why the laws had the effects they seem to. I have linked the efforts of anti-gun activists and their media partners with training and motivating the mass killers, and the Online Opinion article in my link is referenced in comments.
The dishonesty of the activists and journalists is manifest, but worse is that they are the true cause of massacres.
Hi Chris. What some are trying to obfuscate here is the fact that media and politicians in U.S., AUS, and UK all point to your gun ban as “proof” that it’s a good idea. That’s the reason I supported civilian disarmament, too. But researching history and modern police crime data proved “safety” wasn’t the result, yet your government did not rescind a failed policy.
If banners want to desist from comparing the U.S. to UK, AUS, and other select countries in order to promote their agenda, then there’s no need to examine their veracity on that point. When they lay out their arguments and criteria to include AUS and UK versus U.S., it’s valid to analyze them to see if their conclusions hold up in the bright light of logic and reality. They set the table, I sat down and sampled the meal. Somebody else needs to take responsibility for all this alinsky blather (not you).
Notice how the gun banners never compare the US to Mexico or Brazil, countries that are actually more demographically similar to the US than the UK and Australia.
“Notice how the gun banners never compare the US to Mexico or Brazil, countries that are actually more demographically similar to the US than the UK and Australia.”
And politically/economically completely different.
In what way techno?
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/united-states/121212/whites-be-minority-america-2043-census
Rather than submitting a host of data that is completely irrelevant to gun control why not address the real root causes of gun violence and gun deaths. maybe something like adressing:
1. Illegal gun access to ownership exemption classes.
(a) Secure storage of weapons can certainly be addressed with owner/source some liability.
2. A better means of regulating for mental defect
(a) Everybody without a criminal record and certified mental defect is “presumed” without mental defect or the (pre)disposition to commit a crime with a weapon. That is simply idiocy! Look at law enforcement for example. Everybody is a law abiding citizen — until they aren’t! Dead victims of gun violence prove this point everyday.
3. Better defining and regulating of gun use
(a) The Second Amendment is very clear on the point of gun ownership. However, it does not definitively go much beyond the concept of matilitas with regards to weapon use(s). The Supreme Court has however, systematically and systemically moved to define this area of constitutionally unsettled law; a point whether intended or not, left to congress to define since it is a federalized law.
None of these points disturb the intent of the Second Amendment and could have a reasonable and positive impact.
I think you’re on the way there.
The first thing I think the US needs to do is to start regulating transfer. If you own a gun, that’s fine – keep it. But if you give/sell it to somebody, and you don’t accurately report that (or if they don’t), then that should be a federal crime with some serious penalties for both of you. If you inherit a gun, or somebody gives it to you, you should have 30 days to decide what you’re going to do with it – either hand it in at the local police station or register it. If someone is ever found in possession of an unregistered gun (after an amnesty period – maybe up to a year), then that’s a federal crime, with some serious penalties. Until the easy transfer of existing legal guns is addressed, nothing else matters. You can ban anything you like, but there are more than enough of everything to go around. It’s too late now to just try to limit the supply.
I’d provide exemptions for plinkers – lower-power airguns, maybe small caliber bolt-action rifles with limited magazine sizes, in a pinch. Basically, do what the UK does now.
I think the US should start assuming that the overwhelming majority of illegal guns are previously-legal guns that weren’t tracked, and start dealing with that.
That should only take a decade or so to be properly effective. When that’s done, then (and only then) can congress meaningfully start talking about what sorts of guns should be in circulation. Until you’ve got some oversight over the circulation of existing weapons, bans of new ones are just pointless. Trying to prevent people with previous records or mental illness is equally pointless. They can just show up at a gun show and skip the background check.
The next thing that I’d do is start making the user pay. Apply a small yearly registration feel on all firearms. Make it cost a little bit to own a gun – enough that an owner will think about whether they really need one, or if it’s just a vanity trophy they can leave lying around for the kids to find. Use the registration fees to fund a buyback scheme. Start getting the level of useless (but dangerous) armaments down a bit.
And accept the ridiculousness of the idea that an armed US civilian population is going to make any meaningful contribution in the unlikely event that the US is invaded (even by aliens!), or have so much as a snowball’s chance in heck if the whitehouse went rogue and somehow took the entire military with it (not likely). The era of the minutemen is long gone.
Why, of course, as we’ve seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, no resistance is possible after the overwhelming might of the US military is brought to bear.
The 2nd Amendment was conceived specifically with a rogue government in mind.
Techno said:
The fed govt is $16T in debt with (now) $71.6T in unfunded liabilities, an armed revolution would be successful since the govt would have no real coin to pay the legions. Hey! Didn’t I already refuted this point from Techno on an earlier discussion?
Yes I did!
http://pjmedia.com/michaelwalsh/2012/12/22/assault-the-democrat-media-complex-strikes-again/#comment-10347
techno is deliberately necro-ing his bullshit points.
An armed revolution by the civilian gun toters? You wouldn’t stand 5 minutes in a gun fire battle with a modern military! Anybody who thinks they could is seriously ‘clinical’ delusional and by law disqualified to own a gun.
Thank you. I didn’t really know where to start with that.
Some of us elderly folk remember the LA riots, and how quickly things calmed down when the national guard turned up.
“Oh, you have a tec 9, do you? That’s nice – I have this assault rifle, 50 of my best mates and we’ve been practicing with proper tactics for the last several years – you’d best put that thing down now before you get hurt”
And that’s without any helicopter gunships turn up, not to mention the air force.
I don’t think they even needed armor.
Militaries don’t fight for free zeke. You should actually read the post first before responding.
Are you saying that the military is currently fighting for free? If not, then what’s your point?
If the US govt initiated civil war by initiating gun confiscation at a time when it is rapidly spiraling into debt, it will have a very hard time issuing paychecks with real currency to the troops. Militaries don’t fight for free. You’re as delusional as the Western Late Roman Emperors were when they issued useless decrees without an army.
Just keep shifting those goalposts …
So a repetition of the same argument is “shifting” the goal posts eh?
I said:
Later I said, since apparently you and zeke were too dumb to understand it:
What’s it like being a repetitive liar?
Now enough with this boring stuff. More interesting is why does techno reject the theory of evolution?
I never said anything about the fed confiscating firearms. My point is that if it DID turn to tyranny (and if the military followed it – please don’t try to claim that I never qualified that) then those firearms would not stop them.
The firearms that people have aren’t a match for the good stuff that the military has.
I would imagine that these new tyrannical overlords would find a way to pay the military. Just sell alaska back to russia or something.
There are a lot of much better reasons why the US government isn’t going to turn into a military dictatorship – the low likelihood of taking the military with them is the most obvious one (as I’ve pointed out). It’d also lose its relationships with most of its trading partners as well (for good reasons). And the outcome would be to live in a country that they wouldn’t want to live in. None of which has anything to do with anyone’s rifle under the spare blanket.
No you dummy. The problem isn’t the 5 minutes, what would destroy the military is the 5 years they have to try to exist among a populace that kills them any and every way they can, while a 5th column within them helps that enemy.
God you’re stupid!
I think zeke and techno have never been in the military.
Now, let’s get back to the real question at hand. What are the true intentions of people like zeke and techno?
You must be one of them arrogant wet behind the ears youngin! I really don’t think you’d want to compare you military service to mine! End of story! Are you capable of contributing to any discussion in a mature and civil means without personal attacks and cutsie irrelevant comments?
Given that I caught you lying before on earlier comment sections, zeke. I doubt you will be telling the truth on whether you were in the military or not.
“The first thing I think the US needs to do is to start regulating transfer.”
Seriously, you had a emotional break-down because someone said something about Australia, why do you imagine anyone in the US cares even a little bit what you think that the US needs to do about anything?
1) It is settled law that no one can be held liable for the crimes of another person which they had no part in furthering. This is no reason to change that.
2) It’s only the gun grabbers insisting easing involuntary commitment isn’t the way to go.
3) Funny, below you claim it’s settled law. Although I can see why you can’t make up your mind, you don’t have much to work with.
Sooo…..I’m reading Techno’s posts and a number of fallcies jump out at me–the most frequent is “inflation of conflict” where little bity differences are spun as major problems.
I also note the attempts to re-define a number of points to allow him to re-frame his arguements.
Not really. I’ve just focused on one particular aspect of the article – comparison of the US with the UK and Australia. I haven’t said anything about cross-state US comparisons, because I don’t know the data, and I didn’t ever get any further with critiquing the international comparisons because, well, I’m still not getting any answers on the part I did debunk.
I’ve pointed out (with evidence) that the author has made some ridiculous claims about events and statistics in australia and the UK. Rather than either demonstrating why I was mistaken or admitting that he was wrong, the author has doubled down and just tried repeated assertion (come on – you have to admit that his reliance on one quote to justify a claim of 135 people mass-murdered is bunk) or got personal. When I’ve challenged him to provide sources, he’s either tried to stall or cut and pasted some stuff hoping that I wouldn’t go through it all and show that it didn’t support his claims. I actually don’t believe that he CAN back up the things that I’ve questioned with sources, because they’re not true – that’s why I’m not letting it go.
Other posters here haven’t (apparently) bothered to go look at the arguments or data for themselves. Instead they just barrack, or postulate that I’m working for somebody (oooh, scary), that I’m a troll, that I hate black people or women whatever. The author, in particular, hasn’t even attempted to respond with real arguments. He’s just gone straight for the ad hominem and ducked and weaved and told me that his book cites lots of people – but he can’t find a relevant citation for us now. Which is odd for an article that’s full of graphs and claims to be based on data.
You guys can say what you like about gun policy in the US. You’ve got that all to yourselves. But the claims about the UK and Australia in this article are not sustainable. You should drop it until you understand it. That’s all I’m saying.
The broken record keeps spinning.
Not only that, techno is actually repeating arguments that have already been refuted.
I think his real motivation is his malevolence towards the 99%.
Oh, this looks like fun.
Which of my arguments has anyone here actually refuted? Over to you.
I already did, see above. You’re a disgusting liar, techno. This tells me that you probably know that your ideas are bunk and think that by repeating them over and over again so you can waste other people’s time. Just keep repeating the lie until it becomes “true”.
All of this sounds familiar to the times I debated Young Earth Creationists.
Sadly, I think you’re probably one of the few people here who COULDN’T successfully debate a young-earth creationist. It’s not all that convincing to just turn up, contribute nothing and declare repeatedly that you’ve already won, then start calling people liars when they ask you what your point is.
What’s your scene, then – more an intelligent-design advocate?
Because I’ve already debated you on an earlier comment section with you using the same dumb points over and over again. I’ve already provided a link. But then again, you’re not interested in actual arguments.
I accept the theory of evolution as the best current possible scientific explanation for life’s diversity here on earth.
As far as the theory of evolution goes, I highly suspect that you don’t really accept it.
Look at your own government’s statistics. Those are from a government who wants to make everything they have done appear in the best light. Even so they refute your arguments.
“Those are from a government who wants to make everything they have done appear in the best light”
If they were inclined to do that, they’d adopt the 1920′s FBI definitions, and overnight all of our crime statistics would drop overnight.
“Even so they refute your arguments”
I’d love to hear how. Homicide and manslaughter – down. Kidnapping – down. Robbery victims – down. Assault is still trending up, I conceded, but I still maintain that’s alcohol-driven (as suggested by the seasonal trend. It spikes in summer, and the recording of offenses change across the week – it peaks on the weekends, maximum on saturdays (you can find the graphs under the statistics area on aic.gov.au) Even better, the police and hospitals can see the trend in arrests and admissions just after closing time. The evidence all points to a very serious problem with alcohol.
Apparently, too many australians like to get tanked up on a weekend and go looking for a fight (girls too – it’s not pretty). It’s not our finest characteristic as a nation, and it’s not new (see reports of drunk australians trashing the brothel districts of cairo in WWI). But it’s not gun-related, thank goodness.
Our weekend, binge-fueled violence problem (which, it should be said, is still lower than the US’) would not be improved by the addition of concealed handguns. That would be a slaughter.
Hi Chris.
I’m not sure that stats can assume much – they’re just numbers. It’s their interpretation that requires assumptions.
The main point of the australian buy-back was to remove semi-autos from the market. I’m not an expert in gun types, but I do know that AR-type rifles were starting to gain popularity in the early 90′s, being bought through gun shops in queensland, where regulations were less strict than elsewhere (I know this because I had a military acquaintance who bought one in 1993 or so precisely for that reason). Those sorts of weapons were seen as a domestic threat without a legitimate purpose – and it doesn’t take a genius to understand why. Port Arthur just spelled it out for the hard of hearing.
I don’t doubt that a lot of relatively harmless weapons were handed in, and that’s fine, but the objective was to get semi-auto’s out of circulation.
Obviously, crime depends on a lot of things other than whether people happen to have access to weapons. Economics counts for a lot – australia (like the US) was emerging from a period of economic recession and high inflation and interest rates in the early 90′s. When people’s lives are crappy, I think we can expect to see that reflected in crime statistics – not because everyone is more likely to go out and commit crime, but because the people who are on the margins are.
I don’t think australia has had a culture of “guns for self defense”, at least not in my lifetime. I have never personally known anyone who has owned a handgun, but I have seen plenty of rifles – mostly bolt-action. Australian popular gun culture has historically tended toward rifles.
But I take issue with people trying to claim that australia has become more dangerous since the gun buyback (sometimes even claiming that “crime has skyrocketed”). It’s just not true. At best, one might be able to claim that the buyback didn’t achieve anything (I think one would be wrong, but one could claim it), but it certainly didn’t make australia a more dangerous place. That’s just ridiculous.
Please, Techno, get a sex-change operation, go to Britan, get raped. If they don’t get your butt, no prob, off to Austrailia with you. Women everywhere will rejoice to hear another enabler of criminals becomming a statistic himself…ah…herself.
Nice crowd.
Techno,
let’s make our comparisons by raw numbers, eh? It’s not an excuse that America has a much larger population than the UK, Canada, and Australia combined – nearly three times more! I would say we here in the USA are doing pretty good if we simply compare our data against the old reliable “Law of Large Numbers”, and y’all socialists really suck. Just Sayin’…
Techno, gun crime has skyrocketed in Australia since the buyback. Sydney now has a regular occurrence of driveby shootings (by people of a certain name-want nice people-spend some time on their wrong side. You will get more than impolite words) These drivebys were unheard of in my youth. To be honest, I don’t see why guns can’t just be kept at an armory and collected for a hunting trip. I see no need for one at home, though America is different as it has unspeakable crimes over committed. But that is the fault of moral relativism, the forked tongue media, depraved conceptual arts, multiculturalism (yes, whites are under represented criminally) and the loose and narcissistic education system. Naturally gun accessibility will create deaths but the left has a great complicity in this issue of violence gun or otherwise as guiltless though they ostensibly appear. Who us?
“Techno, gun crime has skyrocketed in Australia since the buyback”
No. It hasn’t. Just because the daily terrorgraph wants to keep going on about a feud between two crime families doesn’t mean that the overall statistics have been going up. Do you honestly think that there were no shootings in australia before the ibrahims came along? Don’t you remember that LAST crime panic in sydney – the vietnamese drug gangs? And the asian crime gangs before that? Sydney has had its share of violence as long as it’s existed – australia’s first mass riot was caused by returning soldiers after WWII. A decade or so later, tilly devine and her mates were slashing up prostitutes with her razor. Around that time, sydney was awash in cocaine and the police made corruption into an art form. The problem isn’t that a few thugs in western sydney like to make showy drive-bys, the problem is that people have short memories.
“let’s make our comparisons by raw numbers, eh?”
No. Let’s stick with per capita.
Techno, you have misrepresented my point. We didn’t have as many as 3 drivebys a week when I was a kid. Sure the Telegraph is a psychopathic rant, generally a pc rant though any fodder will do them, and I have read the equally salacious and sordid novel “Leviathan” which I haven’t bought hook line and sinker. I am sure mum and her average Aussie mates never came across this nose candy in which Sydney was “awash”. Awash: funny your type have no skepticism on utter nonsense if it suits your point. As for the Asains gangs, they were presented as an extortion threat to the Asians mostly. Several school acquaintaces Odeed on their product but the Asians didn’t go around blasting guns willy nilly. My point was crime needs also to be addressed beyond the simple reactionary stance of gun control. Try reading Ruth Park’s The Sydney We Love instead of Leviathan. This rancid view of our history is a factor in our continuing loss of unity as a culture and the demoralization leads to alcoholism, drug and way too high crime rates considering our extreme and ongoing affluence as a nation.
“We didn’t have as many as 3 drivebys a week when I was a kid”
And you don’t now.
“I have read the equally salacious and sordid novel “Leviathan” which I haven’t bought hook line and sinker”
Actually, I have to admit that most of what I’ve read about early 20th sydney comes through books not primarily concerned with that side of life. I was very taken with the memoir of one Don Stewart (“recollections of an unreasonable man”). He played rugby at school in pre-war sydney, entered the police force because that’s what big strapping lads did back then, got to see all the corruption and crime first-hand. A heck of a read – his interest was in portraying sydney as it was, to explain the way the police had developed.
“I am sure mum and her average Aussie mates never came across this nose candy in which Sydney was “awash””
They were probably kids, that’s why. And they probably weren’t looking. It might not have been peddled in schools – the cops would have simply dropped the dealers into the harbor if they’d tried that – but it was there, all right.
“As for the Asains gangs, they were presented as an extortion threat to the Asians mostly”
And what do you think the “lebanese crime gangs” are doing? Mostly they are (or were) just killing each other and nicking each other’s stuff.
“Several school acquaintaces Odeed on their product but the Asians didn’t go around blasting guns willy nilly”
No, they had other weapons.
“My point was crime needs also to be addressed beyond the simple reactionary stance of gun control”
Well sure, particularly when our crime is not particularly heavily weighted toward gun crime. Where the current mob are getting their hand guns is a good question, but one that The Authorities are currently trying to work out. I’m all for the status quo here in australia – what, are you suggesting we make guns easier to get? That’d be a lark.
“This rancid view of our history is a factor in our continuing loss of unity”
Why? Why not just accept reality? Do you think that nice man on the horse who opened the bridge was part of the act? Do you think people like mark reid are just paid entertainers? Do you think roger rodgerson got a bad rap? Do you think the communists and returned soldiers (google the New Guard) who threatened proper violence if jack lang was sacked were just a fairy tale that somebody made up to tell the kiddies? If you think ye olde sydney was a nice quiet place until about 1990, you don’t have any idea.
“as a culture and the demoralization leads to alcoholism, drug and way too high crime rates considering our extreme and ongoing affluence as a nation”
Actually, I suggest that alcoholism and drugs lead to crime and demoralisation. Guns are no longer australia’s main problem – I reckon booze is.
Do you realize that the term “semi-auto” applies to virtually every firearm designed after the year 1900 or so? Semi auto means that one trigger pull fires one bullet, even a double-action revolver fits the bill. The only things that don’t are pump action, lever action, bolt action, and muzzle-loaders.
My great grandfather’s WWII rifle fires a more powerful round than the AR-15 and is semi-automatic. There is nothing uniquely lethal about the AR-15, it just happens to be make appearances in high profile crimes because it’s a popular model. It’s like asking why a certain model of car is involved in a lot of drunk driving accidents, then noting that it’s one of the most popular cars on the road. There’s nothing uniquely lethal about that car.
“Semi auto means that one trigger pull fires one bullet, even a double-action revolver fits the bill”
I know. Here in australia, the legislation calls them “self-loading”, and they’re all banned (subject to the occasional strict exception).
It is sad that the Australians we all have admired are now subjects. My condolences.
It must be that they inherited their fear of both authority and an armed population from the old sod, Angel-land that is. A comprehensive history of the founding of Australia can be read in painful detail in “The Fatal Shore” by Robert Hughes.
The origins of the country of Techno (or the object of his national affections) make the energy driven by anger and opinions driven by feelings more understandable. Thinking of moving to Australia to escape the Demunists? Forget it. The knees of those in the Australian government seem to jerk just as high as those of Barbara Feinstein.
Oh, FLASH: my lady friend, Ms Snarky Doucher[as always, pronounced in the French manner dooSHAY] just informed my that there is news that a Demunist gun-grabber, a State Senator from North Carolina, just shot a home invader. The Demunist motto: ‘For me, not for thee.’ Wonder how one says that in Latin, Techno?
Here we go: ‘Mihi, non tibi’. If you prefer: ‘Pro me, non propter te’.
“It must be that they inherited their fear of both authority”
Fear of authority. Australians. Yeah.
“and an armed population from the old sod, Angel-land that is”
No, I just think australians have a very different relationship with guns.
“The knees of those in the Australian government seem to jerk just as high as those of Barbara Feinstein”
Maybe, but you’d be safer and you’d live longer. And right now you’d be better off economically (but that’s a different discussions)
The following is my response to an American socialist diatribe published this morning in New York. A response to his article entitled “Dodging Fire in no man’s land”:
Well, well! I never imagined, when I read “The Fountainhead” when I was young, that I would ever read the like words of Ellsworth Toohey in print for citizens of the United States.
I am not a member of the NRA, nor any grassroots organization, and I am seriously considering changing my voting status to anything but Republican or Democrat. I served in the US Army for about 10 years, and was discharged honorably.
I would like to assist in eliminating your obvious ignorance regarding any permutation of the semi-automatic rifle trademarked by Colt as the AR-15. The AR-15 was created around 1957 by Eugene Stoner and others of the Armalite company, ironically of California. The design was sold to Colt around 1959. It was first a semi-automatic, whizzy aluminum and composite rifle, capable of holding 20 rounds of ammunition. Only when Colt marketed it to the US military services did it become the fully automatic M16, and it didn’t enter Military service until the peak of the Vietnam War in the late 60′s. This design is over 50 years old – you would think the public would be used to it by now! It is a light weight, accurate rifle, not only capable of putting a lot of food on the table or tight shot groups in competition as an arguably unmatched sporting rifle, but it also may easily be used to eliminate tyranny of any sort in our country. What a fabulous and multi-purpose design! Your daddy’s 1959 semi-automatic Remington 740 pales in comparison, but for LESS than $50.00, it can be converted to use a 30-round magazine, or a brand new 740 can be purchased which has that capability built in. Honestly, you are lying when you say that you can easily convert an AR-15 or any derivative to full automatic – I can’t find the parts, and have no desire to other than to refute your ignorant claim.
History lesson complete. What irks me most about your article is the act of threatening the American Public that we would be “well advised” to abandon our hardline stance regarding gun control. Your editor should fire you. We, the people, deserve an apology for your statements. It is a felony in this country to conspire to kill a bald eagle – I am sure your threat to corrupt the Constitution is equally felonious, or worse – treasonous.
Are you aware of the penalty for treason? Just who would enforce your “advice”? OK, I will lower myself to your way of thinking, and we will get on the playground: You, and what Army? The Military is sworn to defend the Constitution, not your right to be stupid. You are not allowed to rewrite the Constitution, nor interpret it in treasonous fashion, nor are the Socialists you are conspiring with in print. Take a reality pill.
A snippet of history, perhaps for background.
Years ago, I was asked to do a technical assessment of hand held weapons for the development of the future combat weapon. I was dumbfounded to learn that most of the major technical decisions, for successful US military weapons were made in the first third of the twentieth century. The 30-06 was, and is a superb weapon, as is the 45 cal model 1911, the M-2, “Ma Deuce” 50 cal MG, and the later Thompson SMG are as good today, as the first time they were fired. A strategic decision by the General of the Army, D. MacArthur, was that the newfangled M-1 gas recoil rifle would use the identical cartridge as the 30-06 bolt action Springfield (I simplify, omit some important facts.) The root argument was the fear, by top brass, that in combat, terrified troops would burn all their ammo, and become disarmed due to logistical limitations, “pass the ammo.” In “Nam” jungles, the average combat distance was 75 yards, we had developed chopper resupply, so the weapon was lighten and everyone had automatic fire capabilities. The more recent 50 cal Barrett M107 rifle is like the bumble bee, technically both are impossible. The former can not fly and the latter’s recoil would kill the shooter.
One learns that technical experts are useful but not always correct. And American weapons are the best on earth.
One also learns that there is absolutely no technical difference in weapons. We use the term, dual use, one for military purposes, the other for civilian purposes. For combat, or anti crime defense, the function is identical. (I ignore hunting and target shooting.)
To this believer, it is the simply the difference between good and evil; the materials and design are technically fascinating, but laws outlawing “bad” guns are worthless, indeed harmful. They result in distrust and reduced loyalty to dumb governance.
If we are to reduce murder in our society, we must focus on ethics, family, and treatment of the insane. Gun laws will only have a secondary impact on homicide.
“One learns that technical experts are useful but not always correct. And American weapons are the best on earth.”
I hate to get personal but — for somebody claiming to have been a military weapons assessor for future development needs — that is a statement that stretches beyond comprehension.
Since Vietnam, our weaponry hasn’t; let me repeat, hasn’t been battle tested again a viable ‘military’ enemy. If you’re old enough, remember back to the earliest days of mass military deployment in Vietnam, when they handed out the worlds newest greatest weapon they called the M14. Remember what a piece of junk it was in the Vietnam battlefield environment and cost hundreds if not thousands of american lives?
So, until all the ‘technological toys’ developed at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, are tested against a viable military, its a bit arrogant to make such a claim as you made. Seems even a non viable enemy of the past 11 years, has effectively killed thousands of american troops with old weaponry, stone age tactics, materials and ingenuity.
I do not argue the pro or con of our current military rifle, you miss my main point. The development of weapons has never run (in the twentieth century, or even before) on two separate paths, military and civilian. Hence I see no technical basis to segregate, “bad” or “ugly” weapons from “nice” hunters’ weapons. It would be a distinction without a difference, lacking any real meaning. America experienced this debacle in the ill fated Assault Rifle ban, a worthless, even harmful law. Democrats want to repeat it, which would be an even worse idea.
If we want to reduce murders, we must look elsewhere for solutions, basically we must focus on the mind and heart behind the trigger finger.
To address your point, there were tons of screw ups, particularly in “Nam, and some in weapon development. Screw ups in the military cause loss of life. But the M-14, or M-16, were not a major cause for our defeat. IMHO, we lost that war in Congress. And yes, I have several close friends whose names are chiseled on that wall.
With freedoms comes great responsibilities! Abuse it – you lose it! The American experiment is about to be lost or significantly diminished to a society of irresponsible with or without guns. If you survey the endless numbers of political internet sites feeding to the worst characteristics of human emotion, you will find a common theme esculating day by day — violence towards one another and on one side violence toward the government. Division and violence perpetuated by a certain class of activists and their philosophies. Thats pretty much the bottom line in these times. More guns is a solution projected by whom? A tyrannical government is defined and deemed to be in effect, by whom? By whom will the bugle sound the call to march and fire? Its all organized radical idiocy! Nobody who engages in government and politics is free to independent thought. They all allow themselves to become captives of radical special interest activists manipulations and philosophies.
These time don’t represent the founders vision of American values. They only represent a society thats lost all its individual integrity.
“Abuse it – you lose it! ”
There is no abusing it in the manufacture, transport, sale, trade, training with and supplying with ammunition of and for militarily useful guns.
Only in misusing it can there be abuse.
Guess what, it’s already illegal.
Reality Pill
The Second Amendment only speaks to gun ownership, limitied essentially, in the context of malitia’s which has become pretty much settled law between the states and the federal government. Beyond that, the Second Amendment does NOT speak to either, types of guns or gun use(s). I’m sure you recall, having studied the constitution, that anything not definitive or addressed in the constitution is granted to the congress and or the states to address. Since gun ownwership has been constitutionaly mandated as federal law the congress has constitutional authority to address those issues not specifically addressed in constitution pertaining to gun ownership.
“the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” That is an unequivocal right of all citizens. That is superior to any state and federal government.
And you are wrong. What is not specifically given to the federal government belongs to the states, not the states and the federal government.
If you don’t like it then amend the constitution as is provided for in the self same document.
Period.
It is settled law the 2nd amendment refers to the private ownership of weapons, one mentioned purpose for which is that the militia will be armed. There is not one fact controverting this, neither is there even one SCOTUS case to the contrary.
How long before you start blithering like the lefty troll you are, as in previous threads?
Although the points in this article are certainly valid it is also worth examining purely from the point of rights. The stance of the left seems to be that whatever makes us safer must be good, and rights be damned.
It is well known that black males between the ages of 14 and 28 or so (for numerous and debatable reasons) commit a disproportionate amount of the violent crime in this country. A vastly disproportionate amount. Locking them all up preemptively would undoubtedly lower crime rates, and save lives.
Now would this be a reasonable thing to do? Of course not. Depriving innocent people of their liberties is intolerable. The same can be applied to gun rights; even if you could show that banning guns would lower crime rates (all data suggests otherwise) it would still be intolerable to deny millions of innocent people their right to self defense on the basis of crimes which they did not commit.
This is the stance we need to be taking. The constitution protects the right to liberty, and the right to bear arms. Infringing either to achieve some societal good is neither legal, nor acceptable.
I agree that there is a very strong argument that gun control has not made other countries safer, but that whatever the results in other countries they cannot be directly compared to the US for a variety of reasons.
The United States is unique in its cultural, legal, and historical attachment to firearms. The right of private citizens to bear arms has been entrenched in our culture for nearly a quarter of a millennium, nowhere else is that the case. A gun ban like the ones enacted in the UK or Australia will have very different results because:
1. The people here see the 2nd amendment as one of the most important checks and balances on government power. Trying to gut it would have similar results to the president dissolving congress, the supreme court being abolished, the right to vote being restricted, etc. Many people would see it as a very big red line that had been crossed. One possible (and somewhat likely) result would be a civil war resulting in millions dead on both sides.
Even if this did not occur, people would not comply with the buyback or confiscation to the same degree they have in other countries. It is culturally ingrained from a young age that gun ownership is a right that the government has no right to curtail. You would have a much higher instance of people claiming to have “lost” their guns, hiding them in creative places, and otherwise actively working to undermine the confiscation. Even in the absence of open rebellion, many millions would passively resist on a scale many times greater than other nations. If you don’t believe me on this then ask yourself why Americans buy so many millions of guns and hundreds of millions of rounds of ammunition every time the politicians start talking about a ban. Would they be buying weapons and ammo in anticipation of a potential ban if they had any intention of complying with it? Who buys something just to go and turn it back in? The shelves in gun stores across the country are empty. The intent to resist, in force or in spirit, any gun control measure is palpable here.
2. There are over 300 million guns in this country already. Guns do not go bad. I’ve shot firearms made in the 19th century and ammunition manufactured before my grandparents were born. If properly stored, guns and ammunition last virtually forever. Even if you banned them all tomorrow and grabbed every one you could find, they’d still be turning up in basements across the country for the next 200 years in perfect working condition. The number of existing firearms coupled with the cultural resistance described above would create a situation unseen in other nations that have implemented bans.
3. The US has a porous southern border through which a tremendous amount of contraband flows. If they cannot stop 12 million illegals and however many millions of tons of drugs, how are they going to stop weapons? Australia and England are basically islands, they share none of the border problems the US has.
Regardless of the wisdom (or lack thereof) of having a “gun free” society, that is not an option in the US. There is no way, short of a full police state, to implement it here. Any attempt at doing so, even assuming it didn’t start a bloody conflict, would fail miserably to disarm criminals to an extent even greater than similar programs have in other countries. Arguing for gun control in America “because it worked in country X” is like arguing that we should grow sugar cane in Antarctica because it works so well in other places. I wish foreigners, and those who praise their programs, would consider these things before demanding that America follow their “enlightened” example.
Switzerland?
Israel is a special case, because the large number of soldiers and solderiettes, of various parties and persuations, walking among the people with the weapons they were issuesd and required to guard, serves as a deterrent to both crime (even tohugh they can’t really use them for that) and tyrrany.
As long as we have terrorism, we will not have these issues.
I don’t think even Switzerland is directly comparable to the US. For one thing their guns are issued to them by the government, they are intended mainly to repel foreign invaders, there is not the same tradition of them being considered one of the most important checks and balances of domestic government. If the Swiss government ordered that all of the guns be turned in there would probably be nearly universal compliance, unlike in the US.
That being said one area in which a direct comparison can be made is the overall availability of guns. Breaking into virtually any home in Switzerland could net the thief a fully automatic rifle and plenty of ammo. Some sad sorry waste of life like the Connecticut shooter could just as easily steal his dad’s Swiss military service rifle as his mom’s private rifle, but they don’t seem to have the same problem with massacres that we do, proving that the liberal contention that our massacres are due to the availability of guns is a falsehood. Furthermore, although their guns are not intended for individual use, there are stiffer penalties in the US for the misuse of guns than in Switzerland. There is no death penalty there, but someone going on a rampage here may well pay for it with their life.
Great post, great logic.
God help us if they attempt to alter or destroy the second amendment, or confiscate our weapons, the people didn’t stock up just to turn it in, it will be civil war, and it will be personal and terrible. Liberals never seem to think that far ahead, and how they will “feel” when it is THEIR family, friends and neighbors being killed to install the NWO.
Gun banners lie. ALL of them. Its been this way for many many decades.
I agree.
There are two types of gun banners:
Those that know gun control doesn’t work but push for it because they have malevolent intentions towards the 99%.
Those that just bleat ignorantly because they prefer to be sheep.
The sheeple type gun banners (such as your typical antigun soccermom hysteric) will often brainlessly bleat out the lies generated by the malevolent type of gun banners (such as Josh Sugarmann).
PLEASE!!! Everyone stop feeding Techno the Troll!! Maybe, just maybe it will stop $hitting on my screen. Have you any idea how difficult it is to get the smell out?
I have carried handguns as well as rifles and shotguns since 1974both as a member of the United States Navy and now carry concealed daily and never in the past 39 years have I ever had an accidental discharge nor have I had the need to use my weapon. I only carry openly when I am at the gun range and actually training with my weapons and keeping my skills sharp.
My state is a shall issue state and yes I carry legally. In Tennessee we have what the State refers to as a handgun carry permit or HCP, you may carry either openly or concealed, however it is not a good idea to advertise your carry status by openly carrying and the classes required highly suggest that you do carry concealed, some people are afraid of guns so don’t give an excuse for one of them to make a big spectacle out of you for doing what the law allows.
I feel confident that if the situation arouse where I actually had to draw and fire my weapon that at least I stand a chance of survival, however if I did not have that option, in other words was not armed I would likely suffer grave harm or even death from an armed thug or nut case!
Wouldn’t that threshold to qualify as a mass shooting (four victims) sort of screens out those incidents that are stopped by armed resistance by lawful CCW-ers?
Figures don’t lie, but progs are liars.
Exactly. The press will never report when a gun is used in defense of self or others. Doesn’t further the narrative. Go read the NRA magazine, every month they have an “armed citizen” section with pages of verified instances of people using guns to prevent crime, save the lives of themselves and others. These stories never make it beyond local news and are often taken directly from police reports because often even local press won’t cover it. The behavior of the press in this country is execrable, it would make Goebbels blush.
Time to delegitemize the press and break their power. Zerg rush them into bankruptcy.
The threshold of four is from the FBI’s informal definition of a mass murder:
“a number of murders (four or more) occurring during the same incident, with no distinctive time period between the murders.”
If you want to lower the threshold of a mass shooting to two, then that’s going to push the stats up a bit.
“The threshold of four is from the FBI’s informal definition of a mass murder:”
Yes it is, and it is of course arbitrary.
Well, sure. But without SOME definitions, there can’t even be any discussion. The FBI doesn’t just defined “mass murder”, they also distinguish them from “spree killings” etc.
Much of Hollywood is on Techno’s and the gun-grabbers side. Unfortunately, Hollywood presents us many times a year with smorgasbords of maximum violence. It’s not only a way of life for movie actors, it is a way of making a living. We call them brazen hypocrites over here, Techno. What do you call them in Australia?
Foul language warning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxRlpRcorEU
“Unfortunately, Hollywood presents us many times a year with smorgasbords of maximum violence”
Do you go to see these movies?
That is probably why the arbitrary number is 4. To prevent showing the effectiveness of an armed citizen in stopping these shootings.
I think when an armed citizen intervenes, the average number of victims is 2.5. That is what I read in an article about the shooting in Portland Oregon at the Clackamas mall. Isn’t it ironic that the lame stream media NEVER report when these shooting are stopped by an armed citizen. How many people even know that the Clackamas shooter was stopped by a concealed carry citizen, or that this mall was posted a “gun free zone” , but the citizen said he did not notice the sign. My wife has shopped at this mall many times, as her sister lives in Portland.
this doesn’t fit the narrative…
http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2012/12/media-quiet-about-san-antonio-theater-shooting-2524596.html
repeated over and over again, but never in the left wing news.
Where did you get the statistics for gun sales in the chart of violent crime vs gun sales. That is not referenced in the article.
Thanks!
Techno is just like Pierced Molebrain (CNN). Not a US Citizen and therefore nothing they say matters when it comes to our Constitution.
And for the most part I’m ignoring the constitutional issues. That stuff’s just arbitrary – let the makeup of the supreme court change a bit, and that first clause about the well-regulated militia might suddenly mean something.
My argument (in this thread) is that, as I’ve explained repeatedly, you can’t justify these pro-gun arguments on the basis of international crime comparisons. Because the evidence is against you.
I’m curious about something. I’ve been citing my sources of data (which are all freely available) for a day or so, now. Any of you could take the names or links that I’ve supplied and googled them for yourselves to take a look.
I haven’t seen a single one of you come back and claim that you’ve looked at the data (the same data that howard claims to use, I should point out, at least to the extent that he understands it) and decided that it disagrees with me. Not once.
So what that means is that either none of you have bothered to look, or you’ve realised that I’m actually telling it straight and decided to drop the subject.
Go on – go look for yourselves. Don’t trust me or howard – just go look at the British Crime Survey, the Home Office Crime Statistics, the Australian Institute of Criminology, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the UNODC crime statistics, the FBI Unified Crime Reporting statistics (and definitions – those are important), the International Crime Victimisation Survey. They’re all online, they’re all freely available. Go have a look for yourselves. Actually look at some data.
T-NO: “My argument (in this thread) is that, as I’ve explained repeatedly, you can’t justify these pro-gun arguments on the basis of international crime comparisons.”
The counter argument is that you cannot justify taking away implements I need for my obvious right to self-defense by American law, natural law, nor by logic. All you have done is demonstrate again that statistics may be used to justify two sides of an argument, and we already knew that. Sorry, old chap, but you are wasting your valuable time.
Why don’t you just come over here and visit, say, Panama City Beach, Florida. You will be surrounded by many many gun-carrying folks who will do their best to ensure nobody will successfully attack you with intent to seriously injure or kill you, and you won’t even be able to tell that protection is there.
“All you have done is demonstrate again that statistics may be used to justify two sides of an argument”
Well, no. My point (and I think I’ve been pretty consistent) is that international comparisons of crime (particularly where the US, UK and Australia are concerned – and I’m beginning to include Canada) can NOT be used to justify the pro-gun position. There is no ambiguity about the comparisons. Feel free to compare states, but the international comparisons with nearly all developed countries is against you. For those four countries, I’s pretty unequivocal
Funny you should mention the SCOTUS, and the possibility of having a couple of activist liberals “appointed” by the imposter in chief that would “rule” that the constitution means exactly opposite what it has for over two hundred years.
Typical liberal, you seem to think that our founders fought a revolution and created a country simply to be ruled by 9 liberals in black robes. They are not the “final” word, in AMERICA, THE PEOPLE are the final word. The SCOTUS is not supreme over government or the people, only the courts. We have a problem now because branches that were designed to be co-equal and balance power have been infiltrated by communists and are now conspiring together against the people. I don’t view this ending well for the communists, the military and law enforcement will not support them or unconstitutional legislation against our second amendment and constitution. They might have the DHS and TSA, but it won’t be enough.
The truth beautifully presented, Mr. Nemerov.
Guns are not banned in the UK. This is a myth.
Assault rifles (which almost no UK gunowner owned anyway) were banned in 1988 after the Hungerford massacre. Handguns are banned (with exceptions) on the UK mainland, but are legal in Northern Ireland, as is concealed carry. Rifles and shotguns are legal across the UK.
As stupidly kneejerk as the 1997 handgun ban was, in fact the vast majority of UK guns have always been rifles and shotguns. Handguns were a minority, so ironically, the ban only partially affected the gun ownership of most British gun owners.
There are approx 930,000 gun owners and 2.3 million legal guns in the UK.
Yet you have to duty to flee your home if an intruder breaks in. Correct me if I am wrong please.
You are wrong.
In the UK, you have a legal right to use reasonable force to protect yourself of prevent a crime. You don’t have to withdraw.
Yes, the question of “reasonable force” is likely to be questioned after the face, but I imagine that if an armed intruder threatens you, your case for shooting them (or hitting them repeatedly with a cricket bat) is pretty safe.
Oddly enough, I actually happened to be visiting the house of commons a few years ago when a member was doing the first reading for a private bill to reform the law so that an occupant’s interpretation of “reasonable force” could not be questioned after the fact. An utterly stupid idea, if you ask me.
“In the UK, you have a legal right to use reasonable force to protect yourself of prevent a crime. You don’t have to withdraw.”
No you do not have that right. Lethal force is what is reasonable, because it is all that is fast enough to be effective.
Techno, does the term ‘reasonable force’ apply to firearms in the UK, my world traveling friend? Can a Brit shoot a home invader legally? To restate, can a Brit EVER shoot a home invader legally?
There was a Tony Martin case that seems to have changed at least some of the draconian laws there enacted in the 1990s.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/tonymartin
Why ask me, when finding out for yourself is so simple?
http://www.cps.gov.uk/publications/prosecution/householders.html
There were a lot of problems with the tony martin case. Just go read what happened. If I shot at somebody when they were clearly (and provably) trying to escape, then I’d expect to be arrested too. He was found guilty by a jury which had the option of a lesser charge if they didn’t think he’d intended to kill the victim.
The supposed UK rape figures quoted in the article are bunkum.
They are not official figures, they are taken from a British Crime Survey, the validity of which has been questioned.
“has been questioned”
Aah – that reminds me of a Yes Minister. Humphrey’s advising Hacker on how to talk down a report. He runs through a few possible responses and gets to “questions … have been asked”
Hacker responds “no they haven’t”
Humphrey: “then ASK them!”
Victimisation surveys obviously have their problems. They can’t (obviously) be directly compared with records of convictions, because the standard of proof (not to mention the rigor of definitions, which can be quite fuzzy when it comes to sexual assault, sometimes leaving it up to the respondent to decide his/her own definition) is utterly different. Certainly, nobody should be comparing victimisation surveys in one country with recorded crimes in another.
But comparing standard victimisation BETWEEN countries can be more useful than comparing the official headline figures, because (particularly when it comes to rape) the inclusiveness of official recorded crimes are radically different between countries (see earlier discussion). But there’s no perfect measure, I agree – particularly when crimes like rape are so massively under-reported.
And I think they’re still very useful as a check against official figures over time – particularly when legal definitions or reporting standards change.
For example – in 2012 the FBI is broadening its definition of rape – that will lead to a surprising increase in the UCR report for “forcible rape”. That obviously won’t mean that there’s been a sudden increase in the rate of crime, just that more crimes are being counted. Victimisation surveys will not show a sudden increase, and the trend can therefore be used to estimate the impact on the figure of the reporting change.
So there – I’ve just handed you a ready-made argument against why rape statistics haven’t suddenly gone up in the US in 2012, and told you how to prove it. You’re welcome.
Heh. Murray, had you read comment 7 you would see the thread proving that the rape stats are not from the survey but from police data. You should have gotten your lies straight with Tech?No before the both of you committed intentional lies in a public forum. Tech?No, that you responded to Murray without making this correction shows that you will accept any lie as good as long as it furthers your own. I will remember the both of you and refer to these comments the next time you try to lie/comment/troll PJM. Evil eventually exposes itself by its own arrogance.
“Heh. Murray, had you read comment 7 you would see the thread proving that the rape stats are not from the survey but from police data”
I don’t see anything in that thread that proves what you suggest. There’s a bit of discussion about the stats, but nothing that refers to your “twice as likely” claim. Feel free to quote it in response, so I can see if I’m wrong.
“You should have gotten your lies straight with Tech?No before the both of you committed intentional lies in a public forum”
Wow. You really don’t understand the concept of civilised debate, do you?
“Tech?No, that you responded to Murray without making this correction shows that you will accept any lie as good as long as it furthers your own”
I can’t tell where you get your numbers from for your claim, because you’ve ignored repeated requests for that information. You cite a book, but I can’t tell from that where it gets its information from either. The point being – you made a claim and didn’t back it up with data. I’ve asked repeatedly for you to cite that data and you’ve ignored me. Now, in the post where I didn’t think it was the most important issue, you NOW decide that I’m “accepting a lie”.
I think it’s clear enough that my response to murray is about the problems of victimisation surveys. Until you actually tell us the original source for your data, whether the BCS is in fact that source is just speculation.
“I will remember the both of you and refer to these comments the next time you try to lie/comment/troll PJM. Evil eventually exposes itself by its own arrogance”
Wow. You really are a piece of work.
I see that the thread under comment 9 _does_ contain a post from you saying that you were using “home office” data. That’s closer, but … the UK home office publishes the BCS as well as recorded crime data.
Very interesting and informative article. And the comments! why, Techno really earned his keep.
If only I was being paid. I’m honestly not.
I’d love to know what definition of “troll” I fit under, though. Something I’ve noticed about the right – it’s extended the word “troll” to include “people who disagree with the host in a substantiated and civilised way and who refuse to take the bait to engage in an abuse-war with the host and other posters”.
And for the benefit of Howard, I had a great new year’s. I had some friends over and we watched some gangster and zombie flicks on The Big TV.
Somebody here (or in another thread) commented that honest people would read these threads and decide for themselves. Well, I hope that at least I give them some things to think about, and next time they read some sensational claim from the pro-gun lobby, they’ll think to ask how they back it up.
And I hope that somebody who reads this gets to interview howard on TV. Because they’ll be pretty well prepared to shred his arguments about international comparisons.
When are you going to answer the key questions, Techno, my good but inappropriately self-congratulatory friend? (1) Does each of us have the right to self-defense? (2) If not why not? (3) Does each of us have the right to have arms as effective as criminals have, like the Secret Service have, like the bodyguards of politicians and celebrities have? (4) If not why not?
Additional question: Replace ‘self defense’ with ‘the defense of weaker others’, to those questions above, others like children and the aged.
Techno, I have resided in Australia since 1995 and have followed the level of violence argument in Australia closely. I believe you are correct in attributing much of the violence in Australia to alcohol, but also must say that you are being disingenuous in your assertion that John Howard’s media frenzy induced gun laws had any significant impact on criminal misuse of firearms in Australia.
This well presented paper summarizes the data well:
http://www.ssaa.org.au/capital-news/2008/2008-09-04_melbourne-uni-paper-Aust-gun-buyback.pdf
but the facts are that credible positive results from Australia’s so called “buyback” are not evident. This outcome, of course, would be due to the fact that mass-shootings were and are extremely rare in Australia, from the time of Federation (which is about the time of common availability of commercial self loading firearms)up to 1996 and on to the present. Criminal homicide involving firearms was dropping steadily as a trend from the early 1980′s and that trend has continued with no dramatic change.
And here’s another well-presented (but more detailed) paper that says the opposite.
http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/GunBuyback_Panel.pdf
Hi Howard,
Great article, I am including it in a letter to my Alaska congressional delegation, I am preparing to voice opposition to the planned legislation by Feinstein and the statists.
The REAL problem with these horrific mass shootings, that never gets talked about is except for one they occur in “gun free” zones, where these killers know they can shoot like duck in a barrel without fear that someone will be armed and able to shoot back. It takes a good guy with a gun to stop these shootings, and the solution is to ban these zones and allow citizens to be armed and defend themselves as the constitution specifically states, keep and BEAR arms!
Liberals get their panties in a wad when it is suggested that teachers be allowed to get concealed carry and protect themselves and their students. Bill Clinton suggested this and they didn’t object when HE stated this. I saw an article where a concealed carry instructor in Ohio offered to give his course to teachers for free, and 450 teachers signed up! This should tell all that this is a popular idea. There are also others in the school besides teachers, maintenance people and such. I think there could be dozens of volunteers to do this in each school, fact of life, teachers don’t want to be victims of a crime like this either, or even to be helpless to protect the children in their care. It is also obvious that they NEED the right to DEFEND themselves, and this government has stripped them of this RIGHT in the course of “political correctness”.
My suggestion is BAN GUN FREE ZONES, and constitutional carry in all 50 states.
Again, thanks for a great article.
Excellent!
BTW, when one considers domestic violence, alcohol is so often at the root.
Yet, no one is calling for a ban on alcoholic drinks.
Helpful information. Lucky me I discovered your web site accidentally, and I am shocked why this twist of fate did not happened in advance! I bookmarked it.
Alas, I must fall on my own sword. I did not do sufficient research before posting.
Newtown and Virginia Tech surpassed the massacre in Germany. Beslan is the most deadly by a factor of 8.5 unless you include the slaughter in Norway (with very strict gun control which reduces the multiplier for Beslan to a mere 5.
With the gun control that the statists would like to have, I do believe it is possible to have a country that is as safe as Mexico. Surely that is what we should strive for.