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I just want to say two important things..
First the recent school shooting is a tragedy and we should all be sad about the death of any children, especially as a victim of muder.
Second, we have to realize, for the sake ofperspective, how unfathomably rare it is for a child to die in a school shooting in america. It seems common because america is huge and the news makes this stuff public. But the numbers are more telling.
To put some numbers to it the chance of a child dyingin a school shooting in a public shool on any given day is 1 in 614 million. For comparison the chance of a person getting struck by lightening on any given day is **less** than 1 in 370 million.
In other words a child is more than **twice** as likely in the USA to get struck by lightening as they are to die in a school shooting.
Should we still mourne and be outraged by it... sure.. does that mean it is a problem that is common enough to be a huge concern... not really. We should probably put more effort into addressing the "lightening problem" than we should be about addressing school shootings.
I'm a little bit confused here.
Are you saying that school (or other mass) shootings are as "natural" as lightning?
@pj i am not. I am saying it is half as common as lightening to get killed in a school shooting.
@freemo
I do not agree with this statement:
>"We should probably put more effort into addressing the "lightening problem" than we should be about addressing school shootings."
The question is: "What can we do about it as a society?"
You can see the storm coming and you can choose not to go outside or you may try to find shelter and protect yourself in some other way, but a child who ***has*** to be in school supposedly safe under adult supervision doesn't have such a privilege.
How can we consider ourselves a civilized society if we don't have the means to keep deadly weapons out of the hands of individuals that should not have them?
You need a license to drive a car and you can't buy cigarettes and alcohol under a certain age but you can carry a gun or even an army-style assault rifle no questions asked.
Interesting theory about why guns are so loved in the US:
>White Southerners started cultivating the tradition of the home arsenal immediately after the Civil War because of insecurities and racial fears. During the rest of the 19th century, those anxieties metamorphosized into a fetishization of the firearm to the point that, in the present day, gun owners view their weapons as adding meaning and a sense of purpose to their lives.
@freemo @pj Sources for my comment:
https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/1002107670/historian-uncovers-the-racist-roots-of-the-2nd-amendment\
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/24/opinion/second-amendment-slavery-james-madison.html
I take that view from the publications of these historians.
The often stated view of individuals being armed against the government seems to me to be a bit shakier in view of how the fledgling US government responded to things like the Whiskey rebellion. If they sincerely wanted individuals to be able to shoot federal agents, they would not have responded so strongly to those attacks.
@freemo @pj Slavery was definitely not the only factor in drafting the 2nd amendment.
Also, the colonies were more rural at that time than most of the USA is now and the country as a whole was in a more precarious state.
I feel that a lot of the division on gun rights in the USA is a rural/urban divide. Living at my uncle's ranch in West Texas, you really need a gun for pest control, etc. In the college town where I live now, a gun really has zero utility. So residents of those two regions will have a legitimate difference of opinion.
Finding that guns provide a "sense of meaning to your life" as stated in the Scientific American article is not something I would be able to accept anyway. Neither do I get a sense of self from my car, house, etc.
Many, especially younger, people get a sense of self from things such as guns, cars, and boats, but that's not the point.
A "well-regulated militia" doesn't mean everyone can simply buy an assault rifle at the nearby grocery store. You can't do this in Switzerland or Israel where I believe everyone that is supposed to, have a gun, but, afaik, there are no mass shootings like in the US.
Something is wrong with a society where you can't drive a car without a permit or even a medical exam if you are of a certain age, but you can own a gun without any restrictions.
Yes. Let the bad drivers expunge themselves naturally, either by dying after hitting a tree or being killed when they hit someone having a gun.😀
If you take this stance then requiring proof of competence or professional credentials from let's say, engineers, medical personnel, and similar jobs where one can do lots of harm if they don't know what they are doing is also an attack on their freedom.
Everyone should be allowed to build and sell highrises and airplanes using whatever or no standards, as they like. That's their freedom. If people die when one of those fails, who cares, they should have known better and protected themselves.
Alternatively, their families (with guns) can get such bad actors permanently out of business so only the "good ones" will remain.
Actually, this may work😀
Many states dont require boating licenses, works out just fine for the boaters. You also dont need a license to fly an ultralight plane, even with a passanger, works out well there too.
As for high rises, same thing, make sure someone is checking the highrise meets code in its planning and building phase, as long as it does its safe to build regardless of ghe credentials of the person who designed it.
We have countless examples of this sort of stuff being very workable and safe without needing licensing by having other mechanisms that ensure safety.
That's all I'm asking: effective collective "mechanisms that ensure safety" enforced by the community, elected government, or whatever, that work for the vast majority of their constituents.
Giving everyone guns and saying that this is for their protection just doesn't work for most people, despite what Jefferson was thinking when he said that having a gun will more likely prevent someone from attacking them.
What we know is that gubs arent the solution, but we know they arent the problem either. Banning them in a violent society makes things more violent. Im willing to suspect in a peaceful society banning them or not has no effect.
The solutions lie in changing our environments to be healthy, and improving access to mental health (which by the way is the exact opposite of what woukd haplen kf we toom away gun rights from people who seek therapy and get diagnosed)
No the right vs privilage argument is secondary for me... im a scientist i care about what works. What i know is the numbers show almost every time, you ban guns it either has no net benefit or, more kften, causes violent acts, especially rape, to sky rocket.
I support guns because banning them takes lives.
And the whole schizophrenic thing... doesnt matter if you thinknifs a privilage or a right. If you tell people they will no longer have access to guns and the ability tonuse it to protect themselves if thry go seek therapy and happen to get a mental health diagnosis, then leople will avoid therapy... you just made things way worse not better.
@freemo @rrb I don’t understand how's having a gun to protect oneself from a sick (or just evil) person is a better solution than making sure those people can't get a gun in the first place.
Using more guns to protect against bad people with guns is only good for gun manufacturers.
And nobody is asking the outright *banning* of guns, just to make sure peoplw that want them have the capacity to use them safely.
This is not in the Wild West anymore. I thought the government as an instrument of a civilized society was responsible for the protection of its citizens, especially the weak.
You say these people would be alive today if only they had guns. I believe some of them may have owned one, and one of the people killed, a police officer Const. Heidi Stevenson had used her and died anyway:
No its not the wild west, and in theory polkce shoukd orotect us... but in practice thst makes little sense. Police come when you call them and there is going to be a delay no matter how well funded. You cant even call police if your being jumped or raped most of the time.
In the end its great to talk about ideals and what shoukd be or shouldnt be. But we have to schknowledge reality, and the reality is that in most incidents the police will never be a reliable security.
For example only 46% of violent crimes in general are reported, i suspect much less for rape. Of those reported only 30% even result in an arrest. Its clear from these numbers very very few, if any, rape cases are acted on by police and prevented.
It is not just the police. Their role is to react to incidents and investigate afterward. I'm talking about #prevention. Gun ownership regulation is a part of it but not all.
The killer in this instance had a history of domestic abuse and obvious mental issues but nobody bothered to check his guns, two of which were smuggled from the US.
The issue with gun registration is that one day thr government may become oppressive and make guns illegal and thrn those registrations can be used by an oppessive govt.
The other issue is profiling. Cops might use registrations to target people as suspected and as such owning a gun, even if you never use it, makes you a target of wrongful arrest.
We already have a "one-way" system that is essentially a registrstion. As long as you have a gun or its serial number you can track it back to who owned it, but not the other way around. Assuming it is all legal of course.
This is a "strawman" argument. You can't base your current safety policies on the remote possibility that the government may one day become oppressive.
All governments are more or less oppressive but the good thing is that they don't survive for too long and inevitably collapse when they become too oppressive.
My argumebt was only half about that. The other hakf was about profiling, whicb we all know would and is an issue right now.
Having a gun in and of itself, something that is a rigbt, shoukd not be able to be used to generate suspicion, which is the only real ourpose of a register.
Now if you susoect someone because of actual evidence, then you have the right, and can, search the records and lookup based on the serial number.
Its the same reason cops cant look up who is poor in order to create a list of suspects for a robbery.
@freemo @pj Most gun sales are not record. Only 40% of sales are recorded:
https://www.aap.org/en/advocacy/state-advocacy/universal-background-checks-for-gun-purchases/
Most (60%) are not recorded with no background checks. This does not deal with 3-D printing of guns
Ok so just checked... all gu sales in all ststes by dealers (this appesrs to inckude gun shows) require record keeping.
Private sales only requires record keeping in 19 states, though these are demcrat states mostly so thry do represent thr overwhelming majority of the usa population.
I woukd be ok with supporting a federal law that extended the record keeping requirements on gun sales as they currently exist toninckude all private sales.
I think existing liability law could probably handle that well enough... if you have something stolen and were negligent about storage you might have some liability.
That said id be willing to explore it.
My only concern there is
1) the rules for storage cant be prohibitive such as requiring a safe which many people wont have money or access to
2) the user should be allowed to keep it unlocked and without a trigger lock at a minimum while they are home ao in the case of a home invasion thry have quick access to it
One might expect that if you keep a gun at home youd take reasonable precautions if you left town such as security camera or somethibg maybe. As long as the two concerns above are properly balanced i would consider more discussion about ways we could better address this.
@rrb @freemo @pj it’s interesting how much one’s views are moulded by one’s environment. “Home invasion” is just not something we think of in the UK. Because, absent easy guns, it is astonishingly rare. And as it is astonishingly rare I feel no need - in my isolated house in the country - to have anything at hand for “defence”. I guess had I been brought up in the US I would have a different attitude. And there are counties with high rates of gun ownership but low rates of gun crime - but usually they seem to have guns as a result of military training and have a less casual regard for them.
This is a very intellectually dishonest talking point...
**of course** having a gun in your home drastically increases your chances of death by firearm. Much in the same way that getting a vaccine drastically increases your chance of death by vaccine.. Both of these arguments are intellectually dishonest because they frame the question in a biased way and ignore the fact that they also simultaneously significantly increase your chances of **not** dying from non-firearm related deaths (like stabbings, or baseball bats, or even just being raped)
Its not the easy access to guns that makes it so rare. Most home invasions in the USA are done by people without guns, largely because if they are robbing your home they are like drug addicted and/or poor and never had the money for a gun.
The reason home invasions in the UK is rare is likely many other factors such as how children are raised or easier access to mental health.
In fact when the UK banned guns violent crimes of all sorts skyrocketed and never really recovered. So from a relative perspective this seems contrary to the facts.
Sure, and do you understand why that statistic isnt just irrelevant to the conversation but intellectually dishonest...
I said this elsewhere in a co-thread but ill say it again.
**Of course** gun deaths are less in countries that ban or restrict guns.. much in the same way that vaccine deaths would be less in any country that bans vaccines. That is an argument people use who are trying to use stats to manipulate people rather than provide a fair and objective argument. The argument for guns is that it **prevents non-gun deaths** not that it prevents gun deaths. Much as the argument for vaccines is that it prevents non-vaccine related deaths, not for presenting death by vaccine.
None, you dont compare countries to each other, you compare a country to itself both before and after a gun ban... The effect (change in violence or rape rates or whatever) should follow the effect (a ban on guns or a revocation of a ban) with a time delayed lag (roughly the time it takes for the effect to take effect).
You do this, comparing several instances across several countries, and see if a pattern emerges.
Which is why you never compare countries to answer this question, way too many factors at play... also why a granger causality test for a country against itself before and after a fun ban, looking if it effects various types of violence is a far more credible way to analyze the question
Yea there is no shortage of examples of guns saving lives, and there are admifditly a lot of examples of them taking lives... the key is figuring out which one is larger.. the problem is we document murder with a gun far more rigerously than we document murder-prevention with a gun.
Any idea where to find out more or maybe an analysis about such occurrences?
Does the NRA maybe keep record and track such instances? If I was in their position and making the argument that "more guns in the hands of good people is stopping bad people with and without guns" I would have a database of such instances and constantly trumpet them to the public but I don't recall having seen anything like that.
@pj @freemo @DutyBard Reliable data is hard to come by. Johns Hopkins Center on Gun Violence:
and Adam Winkler:
https://law.ucla.edu/faculty/faculty-profiles/adam-winkler
are the ones I would trust. The NRA got laws passed forbidding the federal government to keep statistics on gun violence. Which kind of makes the case that they are afraid of the data.
From everything (not much) that I was able to find on the topic, this one seems like a pretty decent, leveled accounting of the matter:
https://www.thetrace.org/2022/06/defensive-gun-use-data-good-guys-with-guns/
@pj @freemo @DutyBard Seems reasonable, although, I would posit that defensive gun use is pretty objective. If I see kids on my lawn and brandish a firearm to scare them, for me it may seem to be defensive gun use for them it is aggression.
In any case, gun violence is now the #1 cause of death among young people in the USA. Gun deaths are higher in states with laxer laws. They are increasing over time. If you compare the USA with, for example, Australia which is culturally pretty similar, some conclusions seem pretty clear.
Paywall means i cant read.. but based kn the title it stands a good chance of beibg a bad faitb argument like i described.
A gun in the house is more likely when you live in an area that is dangerous. Therefore even if the correlation exists it isnt in good faith to the intended argument which is causation
@freemo @pj @DutyBard Failure to read is not paywall, it was my inept cut and paste. Sorry:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/22/opinion/american-shootings-guns.html
@thatguyoverthere @DutyBard @freemo @pj Those comments are quite reasonable. One could do it per capita. I would suspect that overall violent death still higher in USA. We have a declining life expectancy, which is an OECD anomaly.
If we assume for a moment that we do have more violence (I don't think we are #1 in that area, but for the sake of argument), the question should be how to quell the violence not how to change it's form. Why do we seem to have a higher percentage of our population willing to become violent to get what they want. Is it a higher percentage or is there a lot of recidivism? If so is there any way to reduce that? If not what needs to change in our culture? It can't simply be access to guns the problem of violence starts before you grab a weapon.
> At Newspaper Row, across from City Hall, Henry Raymond, owner and editor of The New York Times, averted the rioters with Gatling guns, one of which he manned. The mob, instead, attacked the headquarters of abolitionist Horace Greeley's New York Tribune until forced to flee by the Brooklyn Police.
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/harp/0801.html
@thatguyoverthere @DutyBard @pj @rrb
Equivelant argument: vaccine deaths were 1000x more likely in countries where vaccines are legal.... yea the argument makes no sense when you really look at it
@thatguyoverthere @DutyBard @freemo @pj It is an opinion piece. He cites statistics to bolster his argument. Both are legit. He is not falsely claiming his opinions are facts, but opinions should be interpretations of facts.
@thatguyoverthere @DutyBard @freemo @pj
Stating the stats per capita would have been better and more effective.
I see comparing the death rates of say auto fatalities, diseases, and gun violence in the same regions eye opening. Since it is in the same geographic location, that gets rid of a lot of extraneous factors.
The declining life expectancy in the USA is shocking and worrisame.
@freemo @pj @DutyBard Being more likely to have a gun if you live in a dangerous area would imply that white Republicans are more likely to live in bad areas:
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-demographics-of-gun-ownership/
@freemo @pj @DutyBard I know base rates. but gun ownership is highly skewed by party. The Republican/Democrat divide is pretty close. So, without doing the algebra, if gun ownership is highly skewed towards high crime areas....
The Venn diagram would have to be really weird for that to not be the case.
You can have it be highly skewed for violent areas and highly skewed for republican areas while still allowing republican areas to be rich (though thatisnt necceseraly reality).
So lets look at real numbers. 36% of republicans make under 15k a year. Similarly 63% of democrats are under 15k.
So roughly speaking 1/3 of poor high crime areas (you are assuming this is the same but ok) is republican while 2/3 democrat. Oversimplification but sure.
So now why cant the democrat areas have 10% .ore guns than a low crim democrat area, and republican area the same, also have 10% more.. how is this invalidated just because republican areas will have more guns since they are republican and in high crime at the same time, so they have 2 factors while the deocrat areas have one factor...
Your logic is making no sense.
Similar questions as previous opinion, different opinions. I do not agree with his conclusions, since peer nations with lower mortality have more regulations. He has the questions and factors right, I think
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/04/america-mortality-rate-guns-health/673799/
@DutyBard @freemo @pj Actually, this is not a reality but a perception. Having guns in the home greatly increases your chance of death by firearm. This is especially true for the women and children in the family.
2/3 of death by firearms in USA are suicides. The next largest reason for firearm injury is domestic dispute.
Knowledge that firearms are in the house does not deter incursions. It makes it more attractive. Firearm thefts are a large source of illegal guns. And the reason for most car break-ins.
There is an industry being fed by this disinformation.