NIU shooting

[will641]

havent you guys ever heard the quote (not sure who said it), "If guns were outlawed, only outlaws would have guns."

[Lukie]

...yet people still argue AGAINST gun control.

fucked up place we live in

i argue AGAINST gun control

don't really feel like getting into it though. but a system where only criminals are armed, quite frankly, sucks.

more so a system in which only the government is armed really sucks imo..

yes that's another issue, and i agree

[shazbox]

People misunderstood me I think. There is a difference between gun control and banning guns altogether.

[will641]

People misunderstood me I think. There is a difference between gun control and banning guns altogether.

whats the difference? gun control makes people think they are doing something effective whereas banning guns is just outright moronic?

[mcatdog]

Wow, I just assumed that the gun control people were being honest when they implied that the US had a lot more murders and suicides than other wealthy countries. But you guys (spoon and boost) are absolutely right, I just looked up, so thanks.

Also I don't like the "it's because the US has a violent culture" argument because I think a lot of the time people who say that are kind of racist. Nice to know that I'll never have to resort to that argument since I can just say that the gun control people's statistics are just plain misleading / wrong.

[a500lbgorilla]

If you feel this thread should be left for condolences and what not I think everyone would be fine with a split. If thats not waht you mean, Im not sure what youre getting at.

No, simply put stats are very poor for arguments. That is, of course, in my opinion.

well yah, often statistics are too easily skewed and have no direct relation to what they are being related to.

but its usually better than the whole "but I think..."

Then the argument you're having isn't going to be resolved.

[DrivingDog]

Wow, I just assumed that the gun control people were being honest when they implied that the US had a lot more murders and suicides than other wealthy countries. But you guys (spoon and boost) are absolutely right, I just looked up, so thanks.

googling 'murder rate industrial countries' seems to suggest otherwise than what Spoon and Boost have said. Not sure how suicide is relevant to the debate unless you are bothered that the mass killers tend to take their own lives at the end of their spree.

http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/mmwrhtml/00046149.htm

http://www.nysun.com/comments/4542

...and one for the gun fans
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2656875.stm


i haven't tried googling 'guns vs. knives close-up danger' but yeah if i were fighting someone in a phone booth i'd rather have a knife than a gun. Otherwise i'd take the gun.

[will641]

a big reason there are more murders in the U.S. is because there are way more gangs then finland, or any other industrialized country as far as i know.

[boost]

a big reason there are more murders in the U.S. is because there are way more gangs then finland, or any other industrialized country as far as i know.

Indeed, the dynamics of a melting pot society are completely different than those of a society such as japans in which almost everyone is the same race and share a common background. Mcat dont shy away from the idea simply because you are afraid youll come across as racist. If you explore our countries past you can see that (violent) gangs were formed in almost every immigrant group. People would come over and be the outsiders, they would be picked on, abused. They had to band together and protect their neighborhoods. This is true with the irish, jews, italians, mexicans, cubins, assyrians, ect ect. This simply does not exist in many other countries. Countries that are having mass foreign immigrations at later times than the US arent seeing these problems as much simply because western society has changed as a whole and become more tolerant of outsiders. So therefore comparing the U.S. murder rate to that of the canadian, french, japanese or whatever other country is just not an adequate support to a pro gun control argument.

Pretty much, there are way to many factors that make our society in america unique in this regard.

[Lukie]

Wow, I just assumed that the gun control people were being honest when they implied that the US had a lot more murders and suicides than other wealthy countries. But you guys (spoon and boost) are absolutely right, I just looked up, so thanks.

googling 'murder rate industrial countries' seems to suggest otherwise than what Spoon and Boost have said. Not sure how suicide is relevant to the debate unless you are bothered that the mass killers tend to take their own lives at the end of their spree.

http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/mmwrhtml/00046149.htm

http://www.nysun.com/comments/4542

...and one for the gun fans
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2656875.stm


i haven't tried googling 'guns vs. knives close-up danger' but yeah if i were fighting someone in a phone booth i'd rather have a knife than a gun. Otherwise i'd take the gun.

yeah knives are no joke. it's hard for people to grasp this, but the average self defence scenario involving a gun is usually at something like 5 feet away. knife wounds are also generally much more serious than a wound from a handgun.

[boost]

Not sure how suicide is relevant to the debate unless you are bothered that the mass killers tend to take their own lives at the end of their spree.

ok, its been broken down for you time and again in very easy to read simple text. Now I have just concluded that you are a fucking idiot and I will ignore your posts from now on.

[Lukie]

a big reason there are more murders in the U.S. is because there are way more gangs then finland, or any other industrialized country as far as i know.

Indeed, the dynamics of a melting pot society are completely different than those of a society such as japans in which almost everyone is the same race and share a common background. Mcat dont shy away from the idea simply because you are afraid youll come across as racist. If you explore our countries past you can see that (violent) gangs were formed in almost every immigrant group. People would come over and be the outsiders, they would be picked on, abused. They had to band together and protect their neighborhoods. This is true with the irish, jews, italians, mexicans, cubins, assyrians, ect ect. This simply does not exist in many other countries. Countries that are having mass foreign immigrations at later times than the US arent seeing these problems as much simply because western society has changed as a whole and become more tolerant of outsiders. So therefore comparing the U.S. murder rate to that of the canadian, french, japanese or whatever other country is just not an adequate support to a pro gun control argument.

Pretty much, there are way to many factors that make our society in america unique in this regard.

too much logic, not enough mind-numbing speculation and irresponsible use of statistics

[DrivingDog]

Not sure how suicide is relevant to the debate unless you are bothered that the mass killers tend to take their own lives at the end of their spree.

ok, its been broken down for you time and again in very easy to read simple text. Now I have just concluded that you are a fucking idiot and I will ignore your posts from now on.

Boo hoo hoo. He's calling me names. Boo hoo.

Seriously, dude. If you don't like what i say, ignore it. Don't have a tantrum just because someone sees things differently than you. Grow up.

[jyms]

I think it was your statement that needs to grow up. When asking what relevance suicide statistics have in gun related death reasoning. All the stats that have been quoted include suicide, and in fact they include almost as much if not more than murders. I think if you spent more time looking at murder rates and not death by guns, you may see why your arguments are going to become ignored.

[DrivingDog]

did you not see this?

googling 'murder rate industrial countries' seems to suggest otherwise than what Spoon and Boost have said. Not sure how suicide is relevant to the debate unless you are bothered that the mass killers tend to take their own lives at the end of their spree.

http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/mmwrhtml/00046149.htm

http://www.nysun.com/comments/4542

...and one for the gun fans
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2656875.stm


i haven't tried googling 'guns vs. knives close-up danger' but yeah if i were fighting someone in a phone booth i'd rather have a knife than a gun. Otherwise i'd take the gun.

[ProZachNation]

a big reason there are more murders in the U.S. is because there are way more gangs then finland, or any other industrialized country as far as i know.

Indeed, the dynamics of a melting pot society are completely different than those of a society such as japans in which almost everyone is the same race and share a common background.

There are statistics that show that white people usually kill white people and black people kill black people.

News just tends to blow up when it there is cross race violence.


There is a really good book called The Culture of Fear by Glassner that we use in my Language and Power class. It talks a lot about media and the incorrect perceptions it produces.

[boost]

a big reason there are more murders in the U.S. is because there are way more gangs then finland, or any other industrialized country as far as i know.

Indeed, the dynamics of a melting pot society are completely different than those of a society such as japans in which almost everyone is the same race and share a common background.

There are statistics that show that white people usually kill white people and black people kill black people.

News just tends to blow up when it there is cross race violence.


There is a really good book called The Culture of Fear by Glassner that we use in my Language and Power class. It talks a lot about media and the incorrect perceptions it produces.

I dont remember mentioning anything about cross race violence. Why did you come to this assumption? My reasoning works perfectly fine even knowing that most victims are of the same race as the perpetrator of the crime.

[vqc]

Not sure how suicide is relevant to the debate unless you are bothered that the mass killers tend to take their own lives at the end of their spree.

ok, its been broken down for you time and again in very easy to read simple text. Now I have just concluded that you are a fucking idiot and I will ignore your posts from now on.

Boo hoo hoo. He's calling me names. Boo hoo.

Seriously, dude. If you don't like what i say, ignore it. Don't have a tantrum just because someone sees things differently than you. Grow up.

People tend to get pissed when they attempt to present their view in an easily understood way and the only response they get is "NOOOOOOOOOO thats soooo wrong."

[boost]

did you not see this?

googling 'murder rate industrial countries' seems to suggest otherwise than what Spoon and Boost have said. Not sure how suicide is relevant to the debate unless you are bothered that the mass killers tend to take their own lives at the end of their spree.

http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/mmwrhtml/00046149.htm

http://www.nysun.com/comments/4542

...and one for the gun fans
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2656875.stm


i haven't tried googling 'guns vs. knives close-up danger' but yeah if i were fighting someone in a phone booth i'd rather have a knife than a gun. Otherwise i'd take the gun.

I apologize, I did hastily read your post and misread the bolded part.

[boost]

http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/mmwrhtml/00046149.htm

This article has no relevance. It shows us that homicide and suicide rates are higher in the U.S. It also shows that guns are the weapon of choice more often in the U.S. What this does not show is that availability of guns is the cause of these higher rates, nor does it show that enacting stricter gun control laws would lower these rates.

http://www.nysun.com/comments/4542

Why did you even include this? This is not relevant at all. We know that we have a higher murder rate here, but youre coming to a conclusion based on very little information. Heres what youre doing: This piece of fruit is not an apple, therefore it is clearly an orange.

...and one for the gun fans
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2656875.stm

again, why did you include this? This just completely dismantles your stance in this discussion. GG.

[DrivingDog]

I apologize, I did hastily read your post and misread the bolded part.

I appreciate that, and I apologize as well for losing my cool.

[DrivingDog]

I suppose I thought the conclusions to be drawn from those links were self-evident, but perhaps I was wrong.

It's also possible that I still don't understand the arguments you and others have put forth, so tell me if I have at least managed to capture the gist of them

Argument 1) You can't blame gun deaths on guns.

My counter to this argument is that the availability of guns leads to more deaths than if they weren't available.

So, for example, look at Figure 1 in
http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/mmwrhtml/00046149.htm

Examine the bit showing unintentional deaths from firearms in children in different countries. Note the relatively high numbers in countries like the US and Canada (where there's lots of guns) relative to (e.g.) Japan and Germany (where there's few guns).

The stark conclusion from this is that guns are dangerous, and independent of anyone's proclivity to mass murder, result in more deaths by their mere presence than would occur in a civilization without guns. One may argue that US and Canadian children are inherently reckless or stupid, and would find other ways to accidentally kill themselves or their peers even if guns weren't available to them, but this argument strikes me as implausible.


Argument 2) Gun death figures are misleading because they include suicides. This link shows that homocide rates in the US are the highest of any industrial nation.

http://www.nysun.com/comments/4542

Although this may be purely coincidental with the fact that the US has more guns per capita than any other industrialised nation (and in particular automatic or semi-automatic weapons and hanguns - correct me if I'm wrong), one might be tempted to conclude that the easy availability of the means of disposing of another human being or beings may contribute to a high homicide rate.

You are correct to argue that the correlation between the availibility of guns and prevalence of homicides in the US (or Canada for that matter) may simply be a random occurence, and does not in and of itself prove a positive causal link between the availability of guns and homocide rates. Naturally, ethical considerations preclude us from testing this hypothesis empirically. However, my view is that if we gave everyone in the world the means to easily kill another human being or beings, there would be a lot more homicides. I do not mean this simply with regards to guns, but also to large knives, nuclear bombs, poison, etc. This of course is just my opinion and you are free to dispute or disregard it.

I included the final link because I think it offers an interesting argument in favour of loosening gun control, and at the bottom and on the next page, some people's responses to it

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2656875.stm

I did not say I agreed with it or supported the arguments proposed by Joyce Malcolm. I do not. I simply offered it because it provided (to me at least) an interesting assortment of opinions that I thought others might find interesting as well.

In the end, I have no personal stake in the matter. I do not have a fancy for guns or weapons of any sort. I don't hunt. I don't enjoy shooting tin cans off of fenceposts. I don't know anyone who's been shot at or even had a gun pointed at them. If any of these things were true about me I might very well feel differently and/or more passionately, and I certainly understand why others do feel differently and/or more passionately. I'm simply trying to make a reasoned argument for why any country would be better off without free access to guns. I'm interested in hearing other views.

[boost]

ok, now I feel like we are getting somewhere. You do understand my (our) side of it quite well. The thing is though, you still are making big assumptions on your side. I am not in anyway saying that your assumptions are wrong, but simply that there is nothing to back it up.

As for the accidental deaths by gun, yes it can clearly be assumed that if there were less guns there would be less accidental deaths by gun. And of course I agree that american kids arent inherently accident prone.

I agree with you that the world would probably be a better place sans weapons, but this is simply unrealistic. All in all gun control is just a point of political debate, its not actually a solution to anything. Our society has problems that may be highlighted by the availability of guns, but none the less exist independently of gun availability. I firmly believe that it is these problems that we need to address, and unfortunately there is no quick easy fix.

[will641]

kind of irrelevant idea, but i think its an interesting one...

even if (and this is a big if) the government managed to get guns banned, then do they compensate everyone for the value of their guns? because that would just be so grossly unfair to the gun manufacturers, distributers, retailers, and owners. is the government going to fork over however many billion dollars worth of guns there are in the u.s. as compensation
?

[boost]

kind of irrelevant idea, but i think its an interesting one...

even if (and this is a big if) the government managed to get guns banned, then do they compensate everyone for the value of their guns? because that would just be so grossly unfair to the gun manufacturers, distributers, retailers, and owners. is the government going to fork over however many billion dollars worth of guns there are in the u.s. as compensation
?

and then what do they do with said guns? Melt them down? Hell no. They resell to an international wholesale dealer who will inturn resell them in some other part of the world.

[Renton]

@ people saying gun control wouldn't reduce these occurrences:

lol

@ people saying gun control would lead to a fascist regime

once again lol.

Look at every other country other than US that has a stricter gun policy. They not only have a small fraction of gun related deaths, they also have much more liberal/lenient policies with regard to drugs/media/censorship/etc than we do.

You guys way underestimate the effect of the increased difficulty in acquiring a gun on someones propensity to go on a killing whim.

"Man, I'd like to kill those people over there. But I'm way too far away to get the job done. Hmm. Well I could go to the black market gun shop, spend 10 times MSRP for a gun, risk getting jacked etc, or I could just say fuck it and continue jacking off to internet porn in my darkened apartment."


Even so, a very large part of our gun problem is in our fearmongering media.

[Pelion]

I think people are massively underestimating the number of gun related deaths that are accidents or spur of the moment tantrums. Not having access to guns (or having access much more carefully controlled) makes both of these far less likely. Just because it is still possible for people to get hold of guns illegally doesnt mean a guy who has just found his wife cheating on him is going to go out and get one he doesnt already own and then come back before hes cooled down.

[mcatdog]

Indeed, the dynamics of a melting pot society are completely different than those of a society such as japans in which almost everyone is the same race and share a common background. Mcat dont shy away from the idea simply because you are afraid youll come across as racist. If you explore our countries past you can see that (violent) gangs were formed in almost every immigrant group. People would come over and be the outsiders, they would be picked on, abused. They had to band together and protect their neighborhoods. This is true with the irish, jews, italians, mexicans, cubins, assyrians, ect ect. This simply does not exist in many other countries. Countries that are having mass foreign immigrations at later times than the US arent seeing these problems as much simply because western society has changed as a whole and become more tolerant of outsiders. So therefore comparing the U.S. murder rate to that of the canadian, french, japanese or whatever other country is just not an adequate support to a pro gun control argument.

Pretty much, there are way to many factors that make our society in america unique in this regard.

I agree with you 100%, I guess I didn't explain my point very well. When I hear people use words like "thug" or "gang violence" etc. it's been my experience that they're usually just talking about black people but they don't want to come right out and say it. Yes it's a fact that there are/were gangs from a lot of different groups but when people SAY gang they're just talking about one group of people. It's also a fact that the higher murder rate in the US has more to do with our culture than it has to do with availability of guns but I feel like when I make that argument, a lot of times the argument goes down a road that I hate so that's why I shy away from it.

[boost]

yah I definitely know what you mean. I say it and know where Im coming from and try to support my argument, but you are right most of the people who say these things are just racist to some degree. They might have the end right, but the means is all wrong. They are thinking, "if only those damn niggers and spics knew how to behave." Which clearly isnt the problem, whatever community finds itself at the bottom of an urban society is going to have dynamics nearly identical to what we see in black and latino ghettos.

[Warpe]

If anyone ever wanted any evidence of how ingrained America's gun culture is, they just need to read this thread.

[a500lbgorilla]

If anyone ever wanted any evidence of how ingrained America's gun culture is, they just need to read this thread.

Yes, but would they be able to appreciate why it is so ingrained?

[Warpe]

Inherent anti-rationalism?

[a500lbgorilla]

I disagree.

[Renton]

See, I can understand the pro-gun point of view to a certain extent, but why do we need handguns? Why do we need automatic weapons?

It seems concealable weapons should be banned at the very least. You can perfectly well defend your estate with a 12 gauge shotgun. Theres no need to smuggle it in your knickers.

[Jack Sawyer]

Stir the pot

http://www.pokernews.com/news/2008/0...poker-game.htm

[Jack Sawyer]

I think people are massively underestimating the number of gun related deaths that are accidents or spur of the moment tantrums. Not having access to guns (or having access much more carefully controlled) makes both of these far less likely. Just because it is still possible for people to get hold of guns illegally doesnt mean a guy who has just found his wife cheating on him is going to go out and get one he doesnt already own and then come back before hes cooled down.

Nail on the head, Pelion. I started to believe that only suicides were done with guns