Forums / Just For Fun

Actually, it doesn’t, crime rate where strict gun control laws are in place are higher then those areas that don’t have it, and you want to tell that to the victims of drunk drivers.

To me alcohol is a lot like firearms, both are dangerous for different reasons, but both can be handled with respect, and when either one is used improperly, shit will happen, and banning either one will not work.

And no, it’s not about control….actually it is, mainly about the government trying to control what you can and cannot do.

And by the way, even if somehow, some way all guns were banned, people would still find ways to kill, and then you’d have to resort to trying to ban those as well.

Actually, it doesn’t, crime rate where strict gun control laws are in place are higher then those areas that don’t have it,

“Crime rate” does not equal “mass murder.” Theft is crime. It is not the crime that this law is trying to prevent. So even if the crime rate is higher, that doesn’t mean the rate of violent crime with guns is higher.
 
And yes, I would say that to the victims of drunk drivers. It would be tactless to do so, but you simply don’t intend to get into a car drunk and kill dozens of people.

Alcohol is for recreation.
Driving is a practical way of getting around.

Guns are for one thing: to put a hole in a living thing. If it can’t do so and/or the person you’re using the gun on doesn’t think it can kill them, then it serves no purpose.

And no, it’s not about control….actually it is, mainly about the government trying to control what you can and cannot do.

You sound biased. I think you’re biased.

In any case, the government already controls a lot of what you can do. You can’t go an shank a guy, because you want to. Heck, that’s how mandatory insurance was passed: because an external harm is imposed upon others from those who cannot pay for health care and do not have insurance. That wasn’t Obama purely nor was it Congress purely. That got taken to the Supreme Court. That was their ruling.

So yeah, when it comes to people owning guns that are good only for taking out multiple targets, I’m alright with the government putting massive restrictions on them. Something small enough to scare off burglars? Something small enough to defend yourself as you’re going to your car at night? Sure.

An assault rifle? I don’t think “because I want it” is a good enough reason for it to become even a small threat to the people around you.

And by the way, even if somehow, some way all guns were banned, people would still find ways to kill, and then you’d have to resort to trying to ban those as well.

In our current society, firearms are the only thing that will be feasibly used to commit mass murder. A person with a knife isn’t going to be able to kill as many people as a person with an assault weapon. A person with his bare hands most certainly won’t.

What else can a person reasonably obtain that will be a threat to so many people in only a few seconds?

I would say that I question that anybody who thinks they need an assault rifle is a fully responsible person. To be honest, I feel much the same way about sports cars: if a person feels they need a car that can go 200 m.p.h., I’d say that’s exactly the sort of person who shouldn’t have one.

I don’t quite follow the logic in this. Besides, I wasn’t talking about this on a basis of need in my last post, I was talking about this on the basis of want, and I don’t see why wanting to own a heavy weapon would make you an irresponsible person.

@Verbose: Actually, Coily has a point. According to this article gun restriction or lack thereof doesn’t have much of an impact on crime rate either way. The Australian Bureau of Criminology acknowledged this themselves. If you want examples from the US, take a look at this map of 2011 gun crime statistics. You’ll notice, states like California which have strict gun laws also had 65-80% of all murders be from firearms, while Texas with it’s more lax gun laws have it between 50-65%. So Coily is technically right when he says strict gun laws don’t work, they don’t affect gun crime either way.

Thank you very much, and I am quite glad to say that I am from that proud state, and I hope that the governor should ignore this should it actually go into place.

@Crimson Locks

I can appreciate the US map. Karma for you.

But that’s a misleading graph.

• California: “In California in 2011 there were 1,790 homicides, 68% involved guns”
• Texas: “In Texas in 2011 there were 1,089 homicides, 64% involved guns”

The difference is only 4% even though the color changes because of the arbitrary threshold.

Is such a difference meaningful? Possibly, actually. If strict gun laws don’t decrease the proportion of gun crimes, then what’s the point?

However, you also have to consider the urban make up of California compared to Texas. You don’t have as many urban neighborhoods and cities with a culture of gun violence in Texas as compared to California. Considering the cities in California compared to those in Texas, I’d expect California to have much higher rates of gun violence (but there’s only a slight difference that may not even be statistically significant.)

Also:

• New York (a state with very strict gun laws): “In New York in 2011 there were 774 homicides, 57% involved guns”

So even though New York City has more people than any city, and often more than any state’s combined urban population, it has lower rates of homicides involving firearms.
 
Finally, these homicides rarely include mass murders, and they rarely include the ban on weapons of discussion: assault weapons. Not ones for self-defense. So this graph is related but not quite relevant.

Nikolaki8 wrote:

If a COMPLETE ban of guns happened, what would happen?

See, this is a place where I’m in near-complete agreement with pro-gun types. What’s the saying? “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” While I have no interest in owning a gun myself, I feel a small amount of comfort in the fact someone who desires to perpetrate a crime against me has to gamble on the state of my gun ownership. (That came out pretty awkwardly, but hopefully got the point across.)

Coily the Snake wrote

And no, it’s not about control….actually it is, mainly about the government trying to control what you can and cannot do.

Sure, but guess what? That’s part of what government is there for.

Everyone knows that murder is illegal. Likewise, everyone knows that murder still happens. Does that mean there is no point in having laws against murder, and such laws are just “government trying to control”? I don’t think so. Such laws facilitate removing dangerous criminals from the public, and serve as somewhat of a deterrent, even if not 100% effective.

Crimson Locks wrote:

I don’t quite follow the logic in this.

I freely admit that on that point, it wasn’t about logic, but personal feelings. Let me take it to an extreme: Suppose I managed to get my hands of a nuclear warhead, and I kept it in my basement as a curiosity item. I don’t need it, I have no intention of using it, but I just feel it’s sort of cool to have one around. I don’t know what you feel, but that feels awfully nutty to me.

Verbose wrote:

I can appreciate the US map. Karma for you.
But that’s a misleading graph.

This is why I’m always so keen to question statistics; even the points you make don’t quite hold up (sort of). I noticed that Wyoming, a state with very little urban population, had 73% of its murders involving guns. How do you explain that? Oh, wait, that’s 73% of a grand total of 15 homicides; not much of a sample set, is it?

There’s so much that’s not known about this data, and one of the difficult things to manage is a comparison with how “strict” gun laws are, since it’s not a simple sliding scale. Those of you who know which states have “stricter” gun controls might be able to suggest the correlation to:

• Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Michigan, which are the states with the highest rates of firearms murders. (all over 5 per 100,000 population)
• Maryland, Tennessee, and Georgia, which are the states with the highest rates of firearms robberies. (over 70 per 100,000)
• Tennessee, South Carolina, and Arkansas, which are the states with the highest rates of firearms assaults. (over 100 per 100,000)
• Hawaii, South Dakota, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Montana, Iowa, Maine, and Washington, which are the states with the lowest percentages of firearms murders as % of all murders. (All under 50%)

If any one does think they have a source of some numerical value(s) that characterize gun law strictness per state, I’d love to run an analysis with such data appended to the data present here.

Yet you completely miss the point that crime =/= murder. If I steal a bag of cheetos from the local store, I am already comitting a crime. If the owner of that store had a gun, I doubt I would suddenly choose not to go steal that bag of cheetos. Why would he point a gun at me and pull the trigger for the 99 cents that bag of cheetos is worth? If I get caugth, chances are I’ll make a run for it and drop the bag of cheetos. I go home with nothing and he goes to the cops with a nice tape showing me dropping my precious 99 cent cheetos.

I find that criminal rates are a bad argument in discussions about death by gun statistics.

Now there’s one part on that article you linked that really bothered me.

>“Between 1995 and 2007, Australia saw a 31.9 percent decrease (murder rates); without a gun ban, America’s rate dropped 31.7 percent.”

And where does it mention how much technology increased in the catching of criminals? How finger print scanning, DNA research, etc. evolved in those years? How the chances of you getting caught for murder are a lot higher nowadays than they were in 1995?

Someone who commited a murder has a much higher chance of getting caught nowadays, and people know that. Nowadays you think again before you pull the trigger, that wasn’t always the case back then. There are plenty of reasons like that on why murder rates dropped over those 12 years, the fact that nothing changed on gun control isn’t one of them.

To me in a country where guns are banned unless you go to a firing range etc. I’ve got say it works here. I don’t see a need for people to have guns unless your constantly under a possible threat of a animal attack say your one of those “mountain men” bears are constantly there.

I’d rather have no one has the tools to harm then most having a tool to protect.

I totally forgot to share this important tidbit:

An excellent Simpsons episode that treated the issue of gun ownership pretty even-handedly, IMO. I can’t find a clip of the second gun shop scene, but the script goes:

Homer: Now, I believe you have some sort of firearm for me?
Clerk: Well, let’s see here. According to your background check, you’ve been in a mental institution…
Homer: Yeah.
Clerk: frequent problems with alcohol…
Homer: Oh… yeah.
Clerk: …beat up President Bush!
Homer: Former President Bush.
The clerk puts a stamp on Homer’s paperwork.
Homer: “Potentially dangerous”?
Clerk: Relax, that just limits you to three handguns or less.
Homer: Woo hoo!

Also the classic line from Krusty, “Hey, yutz! Guns aren’t toys. They’re for family protection, hunting dangerous or delicious animals, and keeping the King of England out of your face!”

You’re really going to go with the Simpsons on that? Really?

@Coily:
If nothing else, it was hilarious. What do you want?

Wait, snakes can’t even hold guns! Why are you so interested?

He carries weapons to protect children and other people from “criminals, cartels, drug lords” and other “evil men.”
J.C. Penney in Riverdale, Utah where Cartels go to shop

Great, there was something on that on my homepage, now that I want to read it, I can’t find it.

here

Thanks, and yes, that is a bit excessive, especially carrying the thing around in public. Yes, I don’t agree with the gun restriction laws, but even I find that kinda stupid.

I like guns personally, I agree with certain gun laws and disagree with taking away guns from law abiding citizens.
I agree with the statement that guy was trying to make but as soon as he said "I carry weapons to protect children and other people from “criminals, cartels, drug lords and other “evil men” I knew he was an idiot. What drug lords and cartels are in Utah (other than morons)? It’s this type of idiot that should not represent law abiding gun owners.

He’s not, but this is the kinda person that anit-gun law people would keep their focus on, never minding the fact that for guys like him, there are many other reasonable gun owners, but honestly, you probably never would hear about them.

But yes, while the guy in the picture is not insane, yeah, he’s clearly an idiot for carrying that thing around in public, and you’re right, his reasoning for carrying is good, but well, flawed would be an understatement.

Oh Obama-chan, you always know the right things to say.

What the heck happened to this thread in the last 20 hours? (I’m pretty sure it didn’t get derailed, but…)

I think that citizens should maintain a nuclear deterrent. A silo in every home.
It’s the only way to be sure.

Brucker wrote:

There’s so much that’s not known about this data, and one of the difficult things to manage is a comparison with how “strict” gun laws are, since it’s not a simple sliding scale. Those of you who know which states have “stricter” gun controls might be able to suggest the correlation to:

• Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Michigan, which are the states with the highest rates of firearms murders. (all over 5 per 100,000 population)
• Maryland, Tennessee, and Georgia, which are the states with the highest rates of firearms robberies. (over 70 per 100,000)
• Tennessee, South Carolina, and Arkansas, which are the states with the highest rates of firearms assaults. (over 100 per 100,000)
• Hawaii, South Dakota, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Montana, Iowa, Maine, and Washington, which are the states with the lowest percentages of firearms murders as % of all murders. (All under 50%)

If any one does think they have a source of some numerical value(s) that characterize gun law strictness per state, I’d love to run an analysis with such data appended to the data present here.

Well, since nobody had this data for me, and my curiosity on number-crunching tends to get the best of me, I made up my own scale, based on data on concealed carry laws, assault weapon bans/regulations, and requirement to register sales of firearms. What I found will probably surprise few people. (Well, it didn’t surprise me.)

Based on my scale, states that were most gun-restrictive were Maryland, California, New York, Hawaii, New Jersey, Illinois, and Massachusetts. Among those, Hawaii and Massachusetts are actually below national averages for all sorts of firearms crimes, while the rest are slightly above average on at least firearms murders except for Maryland, which is one of the worst states overall for firearms-related crime. New York, New Jersey, and Illinois have below average rates for firearms assaults, New York and Illinois the same for firearms robberies. So, it’s a mixed bag there.

The states I figured to be least gun-restrictive were Arizona, Alaska, Wyoming, and Vermont. Vermont and Wyoming look great overall. However Arizona’s firearms crimes rates are all above national average, and while Alaska’s firearms murders and robberies stats are low, for whatever reason they are in the top ten worst states for firearms assaults.

So overall, running the data to find correlations between restrictiveness of gun control and rate of firearms crimes yields no significant results. Actually, the only data correlation I found that wasn’t essentially trivial was that the higher the overall murder rate is, the more of those murders happen to be with firearms. Note that this does not imply that guns are causing murders, nor does it imply (although I suspect it could be the case) that people more likely to murder probably like guns.

Statistics can often be used to show whatever you want, but I’m hard-pressed to find a way to make this data show that more gun control either lowers or raises the crime rate. It’s probably something that should be figured on more of a case-by-case basis: I’m guessing the stats show that Vermont gun owners are more responsible than those in Arizona, but who really knows?