Volitions Advocate on 21/5/2016 at 00:18
Quote Posted by Renzatic
It's come to the point where if I see anyone say anything like "sheeple" or "the masses", I instantly assume they have no point.
I'll drink to that. Renz, we've talked about this before and obviously don't agree. So thanks for having a frank discussion.
Muzman on 21/5/2016 at 01:32
Quote Posted by Volitions Advocate
What I don't give any credence to, however, is the argument that all illegal guns were legal at some point. That's like victim blaming a rape victim for the way they dress. If a firearm is stolen, it's 100% on the person who stole it, and they need to be caught and the firearm recovered. Nobody WANTS their gun stolen.
That wasn't what I was saying. It's really a volume debate. The argument generally runs, in my experience, that if you pass a law or two that restricts or somehow retrieves guns from owners, only the law abiding are going to hand them in. Thus this would only touch legal guns and not 'illegal' ones which the non-law abiding won't hand in.
If you do this properly that's not true. Reducing the number of legal guns from every facet reduces both. Likely at different rates over time, but the result is the thing. Partly because the categories are a bit artificial (since laws change, legit weapons are used in crimes etc etc). But it (should) also stem or slow supply of legal ones that can become illegal, simply because there is less of them to be sold legitimately and then sold on, or stolen, hijacked, black marketed etc. If you're doing it right (not common with many of the proposed legislation ). And then more solid registration and so forth makes it easier (ideally) to track down when and where they make this transition and who did it, are they to blame or not, a greater disincentive for misuse and so on.
There's quite a few hurdles to this in the US, of course, mainly with the different states and jurisdictions. Different attitudes etc. Some of this sort of attitude seems to exist already, but isn't very effective in some places, for various reasons, so people don't buy it. But it's a systemic approach that requires a lot of political, institutional and public will to establish and they're always complicated (ie hell if people won't play ball).
The thing is I think most people actually want this, when you get down to it. And I think when you strip away ideology from either side, the ideal scenario allows for more guns than either extreme team thinks (that is, one lot are worried there'll be no guns so their answer is all guns, and the other lot are
hoping there'll be no guns. There's gonna be some guns instead).
It'd be a long term strategy in any case, assuming the will part, for something that may not make much difference to life or crime in some areas. It wouldn't be a grand scheme to 'fix' everything in an election cycle. It might not 'fix' anything in some places. But there's a number of reasons I still think it's worth considering, even if they're subtle effects not immediately obvious.
bjack on 21/5/2016 at 06:17
My wife has a family member that is insane due party to genetics and mostly due to drugs. This person runs with some very questionable people. I remain locked and loaded at home, directly due to threats from this person. We expect this person and buddies to come murder us. I am not kidding.
The police so far are have not been much help. In the recent past, we did what we could to help this person. Those acts of love and kindness only brought heart ache and potential death. This person will bring its evil buddies with it to come to take what it thinks is its due. The recent text messages my wife got from this person are chilling and terrible.
We have a good alarm system that will alert the police. They will arrive about 5 to 10 minutes after we are dead. A shot gun is ready for this person and its criminal buddies. VP Binden told me to buy one. I bought one. I will use it. I may need to. The police will not protect me. And a part of me will die forever if I have to take this person’s head off. I will do it to protect my wife and myself, but I don’t ever want to have to do it. We can no longer commit “crazy” people in our state. This person is free to go about business as usual. Insane. Basically on something like meth... Not sleeping for over a week. Not eating at all for weeks. I hope it dies soon. God help me, I hope it dies tomorrow. We can’t go on like this.––––
demagogue on 21/5/2016 at 06:57
I don't know if there's a coherent debate here, but I'll give some of my thoughts on guns.
Personally I like them, or some, first just in the sheer mechanical engineering sense that they're complex mechanical devices to accomplish a task, and some are made very ingeniously or elegantly. Using one for shooting disks or targets is even more fun than archery. And I'm particularly conscious of the important role they've played in history, where some quite significant turns in history, both positive and negative, turned on particular guns. To dismiss them too lightly would be having a blindspot to history.
Culturally, I mean I'm from Texas where they've always been a part of the culture. But personally speaking I don't see any need to actually own one if I'm not living in a rural place. In my ideal world, I'd have them largely just for use in ranges. I think arguments that some public good comes out of personal ownership is too self seving to be taken at face value. It's not an argument someone would latch on to outside the context of justifying their own ownsership of a gun. And if people were really interested in deterring crime or govt over-reach, they'd come up with much different approaches for a lot of reasons going beyond this post.
As for the law, I'll put on my lawyer hat a bit. In the US of course it's first of all largely state law, and that's good. Montana doesn't need the same laws as New Jersey. Re the 2nd Amendment, one thing people get going to law school is a healthy disillusionment that the US Constitution isn't a religious document and could be improved, even recognizing it's been influential and has positive things. But anyway the 2nd Amendment is at the top of the list of the kind of laws that have no place in a modern constitution. It's not even anything to do with its importance. The main reason is because it's not procedural, it's substantive, and constitutions should only be about procedural rules, the things that actually constitute a state. Substantive rules are for normal legislation. And even as normal legislation, as said before, it's not really the federal govt's business. It should be just a state matter.
As for the different public safety arguments, it's quite context dependent and context matters. Urban and rural use are different cases. One thing that I think is an obvious reform is that gun manufacturers should be liable for unjustified gun-caused injuries and deaths so that the risk gets internalized (in the economic sense) and then you'd see the landscape change. It's going to be much easier for the gun industry to control the tech and market than the govt through regulation anyway (it's not replacing it, the 2 would work together), but there needs to be the threat of liability to drive it. There's a theory of tort law supporting it and an article by Mark Geistfeld gives the case really well I think, in terms of the actual legal theory for it.
ffox on 21/5/2016 at 14:05
The preceding arguments are a bit deep for me. Look at(
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-34996604) the statistics:
Quote Posted by "BBC News"
13,286 people were killed in the US by firearms in 2015, according to the Gun Violence Archive, and 26,819 people were injured [those figures exclude suicide]. Those figures are likely to rise by several hundred, once incidents in the final week of the year are counted.
The number of gun murders per capita in the US in 2012 - the most recent year for comparable statistics - was nearly 30 times that in the UK.
So many people die annually from gunfire in the US that the death toll between 1968 and 2011 eclipses all wars ever fought by the country.
Couple those figures with(
https://www.nami.org/Learn-More/Mental-Health-By-the-Numbers) the Nami reports:
Quote Posted by "National Alliance on Mental Illness
Approximately 1 in 5 adults in the U.S.—43.8 million, or 18.5%—experiences mental illness in a given year.
Perhaps the problem is really about keeping guns out of the hands of nutters or potential nutters. Those of you posting in favour of carrying guns appear to be sane, but we can't be sure that one you of isn't going to flip his/her lid in the near future and go on the rampage shooting everything in sight.
Surely the easiest way to reduce the unbelievably high death toll is a ban on guns? (A ban on psychotics would be impossible to achieve.)
Starker on 21/5/2016 at 17:35
Quote Posted by ffox
Couple those figures with(
https://www.nami.org/Learn-More/Mental-Health-By-the-Numbers) the Nami reports:
Perhaps the problem is really about keeping guns out of the hands of nutters or potential nutters. Those of you posting in favour of carrying guns appear to be sane, but we can't be sure that one you of isn't going to flip his/her lid in the near future and go on the rampage shooting everything in sight.
Um, but this is just the caricature stereotype in the media and popular culture, though. In the real world, mental illness is a far less reliable predictor of violence than, say, alcohol or drugs. Someone with depression or Tourette's is not just going to suddenly "flip their lid and go on a rampage" any more than the next "sane" person is. The disorders that have violent symptoms (like for example acute psychotic episodes) are fairly rare. In reality, most of the people with mental illnesses are people getting panic attacks or having a compulsion or suffering from PTSD or experiencing rapid mood swings or something like that.
demagogue on 21/5/2016 at 21:21
I think the question isn't 'of mentally ill how many misuse guns' but 'of those that misuse guns, how many are mentally ill', and there a stronger pattern emerges. I imagine everything else is dwarfed by drugs and that the US statistics would drop like a brick if we legalized them already and killed the demand-side of the criminal trade.
Pyrian on 21/5/2016 at 21:36
Excluding suicide? That's insane. A handy gun increases the suicide rate so much it exceeds all other forms of gun violence combined.
Starker on 22/5/2016 at 00:20
Quote Posted by demagogue
I think the question isn't 'of mentally ill how many misuse guns' but 'of those that misuse guns, how many are mentally ill', and there a stronger pattern emerges.
Actually, it doesn't seem to be the case. From what US crime statistics I've looked into, there seems to be a very weak correlation, but when other effects are accounted for (unemployment, poverty, substance abuse, etc), gun related crimes are no more likely to be committed by people with mental illness than by the general population. In fact, they are more likely to be the victims of gun violence rather than the perpetrators. Also, it's likely that people tend to exaggerate connections to previous mental illness episodes after an incident (post hoc, ergo propter hoc).
Muzman on 22/5/2016 at 02:25
Quote Posted by demagogue
Personally I like them, or some, first just in the sheer mechanical engineering sense that they're complex mechanical devices to accomplish a task, and some are made very ingeniously or elegantly.
You've scooped my less contentious contribution. It's exactly what I was going to say. I think the awe and power of the sound and fury of the things is definitely a big selling point. But I think people focus on that too much. The mechanical aspect to their appeal is really strong, with me especially.
I don't know if there's a word for this, but I have decided to call it the 'cachunk' factor. It's something to do with assembling and operating something of precisely engineered tolerances. Some people get the same feeling from automatic machinery and engines as well. But there's something else about fine machinery that you have to operate yourself.
I think cameras and other such things prod the same nerves.
