Chimpy Chompy on 19/6/2016 at 14:08
Here in cramped and crowded britain, people often barely know their neighbours too. I doubt physical space between houses has much to do with it.
Tony_Tarantula on 19/6/2016 at 17:09
But yeah....the cause is harder to address, but it's a powerful contributing factor to society. If you think about a society where people have become very socially disconnected, traditional community structures have vanished due to the breakdown of families which has also resulted in a poorly socialized, low achieving next generation, interactions with government agencies which range from apathetic to antagonistic, the worst schools in the first world (funny...they seem more worried about bathrooms and whether you can say "God" than they are about their abysmal academic scores), criminal organizations being allowed to run unchecked by or even aided by law enforcement, a visible decay of infrastructure, etc....it creates an extremely hostile, insecure social mood. The kind of mood where you feel that you really can't depend on anyone except yourself and need to be prepared to handle anything that comes your way without help if the situation calls for it.
That's why it's a difficult situation to address. America's violence problem isn't something that you can just "fix" with an easy solution. Like they say in driver's ed course about vehicle accidents, accidents are almost always the result of "an amalgation of factors" rather than any individual cause. Same way here. There are literally dozens of factors that make violence common and fixing any one of them would be useless on its own. Furthermore any proposal that would make a meaningful difference is bound to receive immense opposition from entrenched financial, business, government, and social interests who would resist any attempt to (as they would say) "bring America back into the stone age".
Tony_Tarantula on 21/6/2016 at 01:41
Tangentially related, but it's also worth pointing out that it's often not as easy to just buy a gun as people think it is. A reporter tried to buy an AR 15 and failed because the background check showed a domestic violence accusation: (
http://hypeline.org/reporter-tries-to-buy-rifle-fails-because-of-his-alcohol-abuse-and-domestic-battery/)
Also worth noting is that the "gun show loophole" is somewhat of a myth. I actually ran into that one myself when trying to pick up a weapon for the wife(who is, somewhat scarily, a natural with them being almost as good a shot as the instructor at her safety course). Turned out that since she didn't have a pre-approved background check we couldn't buy at the show...which was somewhat more stringent than I anticipated. I knew they had to run a background check but didn't know that it had to be done in advance of a purchase.
As noted before that's why I favor a Switzerland style mandatory military training. That way you'll know who has no business being near a gun. It's also extremely good for national cohesion and tolerance of diversity: it makes it a lot harder to be a racist(not impossible by any means) when you're going through a difficult, comraderie building experience with people from all demographics and backgrounds.
Fafhrd on 21/6/2016 at 05:20
Quote Posted by Tony_Tarantula
I don't believe they would. Let's just say that I have some old friends, who in turn hang out with an extremely bad crowd(think Hell's Angels bad). Banning the weapons would do all of jack shit when you have an effectively limitless supply coming up from Mexico.
Except that the flow of guns is from the US
TO Mexico. (
http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2012/may/29/jim-moran/jim-moran-says-70-percent-traced-firearms-mexican-/) 70% of guns used by criminals in Mexico are purchased in the United States.
Quote Posted by Tony_Tarantula
shady characters...intimidating characters...
That's B and I in my racist dogwhistle BINGO card filled in. Got any more?
Muzman on 24/6/2016 at 06:52
There is one thing that should probably be underlined when it comes to Australia. While the point that you can't really tell the direct impact any given gun law has is fine enough, many people (Americans chiefly) still use that to reinforce that they are correct about crime itself. And they're not.
The meme is that a notional gun is a deterrent to crime, so a public knowledge that all the guns have been turned in will cause them to strike as they can be more confident people can't defend themselves. This is probably hogwash for a number of reasons, generally speaking, but I can imagine it might happen somewhere in the world at some time.
People like to use the Australia figures to reinforce this idea in their heads a lot though and it couldn't be more wrong. Guns were not used for personal or home defense in Australia before the law tightening and they were not used after. Gun laws before Port Arthur were already kinda tight.
So while the point of the connection to the laws and gun crime being uncertain is fair, I still like to see that other side reading expressly eliminated as it gets bandied about a lot.
Volitions Advocate on 28/6/2016 at 06:09
Been away from this for awhile. I get worn out arguing about the topic.
I've got a couple peer reviewed studies examining the effects of gun laws on violent crime. I don't remember who wrote the first, but they used a bunch of different rubrics and basically determined there was an association of numbers but they couldn't scientifically nail down a cause-and-effect relationship.
The other is specifically Canadian, and demonstrates that a reduction in gun violence has little to do with legislation compared to the effect that changing demographics has. It was written by somebody named Langmann or something like that. I"ll have to find both studies and post them.
If nothing but to prove that anybody can prove anything they want, even opposing points with the same data, and peer reviewed no less.
Anyway. I'm a right wing conservative type Christian redneck gun nut, or so I've been characterized anyway. I'm working on my Masters degree at a liberal arts university and know a great deal of progressive and/or liberal type people, and while I hear so often than "i'd trust YOU with a gun probably" they still like to complain and slander and paint a lot of people with the same brush on issues like this.
So I did the uncanny thing to prove that people can compromise, and just because you're a conservative religious white guy, it doesn't mean you're a racist, homophobic bigot. Out of solidarity for my gay friends after Orlando, and trying to take the humanist perspective, I sold my Ar 15, and I don't plan to buy another one. I consider this a sacrifice, as I still don't believe there is a problem with civilians owning semi-automatic rifles, but I don't own one anymore. My wife didn't like it and I didn't tell her to just deal with it. I hear a lot of anger at gun owners who never hurt anybody, and did it to demonstrate that we don't have to hate each other to disagree. I'm not sure this is going to do anything at all other than give me the right to bitch about what people are saying about me, I don't expect other people to make similar sacrifices on either side of the debate, but I just wanted to do something I felt was tangible and might show a bit of good will.
