Another mass shooting in the U.S

Ush1

MadsL wrote: »

Why are you so hung up on this. I don't know what it is that you think I am in denial about?

But while you figure it out, does this look "designed to injure" to you?

http://www.eberlestock.com/2006%20red%20usa%20logo1.jpg

Think about what?

Read my original comment. Ever since then it has been tiresome deflection from you.

Good night and stay strapped!

MadsL

Ush1 wrote: »

Think about what?

Read my original comment. Ever since then it has been tiresome deflection from you.

Good night and stay strapped!

I see these questions were too hard for you to answer.

MadsL wrote: »

Ush. I have asked you several times now to explain how your position would work in practice.

You say you are not in favour of guns being owned by the American people.

1. How would you remove this provision from the US Constitution?
2. If you were successful, how would you remove this from the individual States Constitutions?
3. If you were successful, how would you physically remove these guns from the people?
4. How would you then address the fact that illegal guns remain at large?
5. How would you identify legitimate uses?
6. Would you enact stronger measure than Ireland does, or similar measures?
7. How would you enforce the no guns rule? What sanctions would you impose?

You seem intent on making that argument that "Guns are designed to kill, therefore guns are bad and should be banned" - probably best we don't visit the archery forum eh?

pabloh999

The NRA who call the shots(pun intended) , are really just the gunmakers, i.e they who PROFIT from gunsales.
More guns = More profits.


It really is Corporate America at its most despicable.

CollardGreens

It really is Corporate America at its most despicable.

Have you ever tried to say the word "despicable" real fast after a few beers?

You know, speaking of despicable, despicable, despicable (hard to type fast too) what I found despicable was the two groups of ppl that stood together in the line to get ammo today and grabbed most all of it up after everybody else stood in line so nicely at the big box sports store.

Manic Moran

pabloh999 wrote: »

The NRA who call the shots(pun intended) , are really just the gunmakers, i.e they who PROFIT from gunsales.
More guns = More profits.


It really is Corporate America at its most despicable.

I believe you're mixing that up with the American Firearms Coalition. 90% of NRA funding comes ftom their members. When you have four and a half million members each giving a minimum of the $25 annual dues, you're talking some serious cash

Arawn

Manic Moran wrote: »

I believe you're mixing that up with the American Firearms Coalition. 90% of NRA funding comes ftom their members. When you have four and a half million members each giving a minimum of the $25 annual dues, you're talking some serious cash

Honest question as you do come across as a level headed poster on boards.

Do you believe that you could honestly have the same civil conversation with the majority of nra members?? I do not believe the problem with america is with it's gun control but with the american people and it's psyche itself...thoughts? opinions?

Sparks

Ush1 wrote: »

Yes, you got it in the first sentence. As has been said a million times, I could play grand theft auto and want to run people over with a car but the car wasn't designed for that purpose.

StinkyMunkey wrote: »

People are talking about gun control and the pro gun heads come back with cars can kill O.o

People keep saying that, but they don't seem to understand that that's only one school of thought, that there are others, and those other schools of thought save more lives.

I mentioned it earlier, but it bears repeating, since some people won't even listen...

Sparks wrote: »

Ush1 wrote: »

Cars? Videos games? What are they designed for? Aren't most firearms designed for killing things?

That's one school of thought.

Another is the Swiss school of thought, where they looked at what was actually killing people. End result, more firearms than anywhere outside of Somalia but incredibly low gun crime; but you drive over the speed limit and you're in incredibly deep ****e. Get caught (and traffic stops there are serious business - it's not two lads and a sign, it's half the cop shop on the side of the road to process as many as they can catch) and you're paying a percentage of your gross annual salary as a fine the first few times (and the percentage rises every time) and then they just pull your licence. Get caught driving without having removed all the snow from your windscreen, and that's your licence gone. And so on - things that we see on our roads every day here, would lose you the licence and possibly mean jail time over there.

End result of the crackdown on cars? In 2011, Switzerland had a death rate of 3.83 per 100,000 (source) while Ireland had a rate of 6.11 per 100,000 (source). And while our roads are mostly on the flat, Swiss roads look like this:



Personally, I think if you can get results like that, there's a lot to be said for how you're doing things.

InTheTrees

I agree with the idea that 80% of posters dont know what they're talking about.

It should be understood that there is gun control in the USA.

The debate is about how much more there should be. And how effective that would be.

Background Checks is a start. There's a huge loophole right now that private citizens can sell to other private citizens and they dont need to conduct any background checks. Its resulted in huge markets (or "gun shows") where pretty much anything goes.

Cleaning up that would be a start.

MadsL

InTheTrees wrote: »

I agree with the idea that 80% of posters dont know what they're talking about.

It should be understood that there is gun control in the USA.

The debate is about how much more there should be. And how effective that would be.

Background Checks is a start. There's a huge loophole right now that private citizens can sell to other private citizens and they dont need to conduct any background checks. Its resulted in huge markets (or "gun shows") where pretty much anything goes.

Cleaning up that would be a start.

How do you make that non-punitive in terms of costs for small time sellers though?

How about a buyers licence rather than a seller being required to run the background check? Or Firearms dealers givin a 30 day buyers clearance certificate.

The complaints are mainly that gun show buyers feel any legislation will drive prices up.
How

pabloh999

CollardGreens wrote: »

Have you ever tried to say the word "despicable" real fast after a few beers?

You know, speaking of despicable, despicable, despicable (hard to type fast too) what I found despicable was the two groups of ppl that stood together in the line to get ammo today and grabbed most all of it up after everybody else stood in line so nicely at the big box sports store.

You were drunk buying ammo? Or drunk typing?
Either way well done

Manic Moran

Arawn wrote: »

Honest question as you do come across as a level headed poster on boards.

Do you believe that you could honestly have the same civil conversation with the majority of nra members?? I do not believe the problem with america is with it's gun control but with the american people and it's psyche itself...thoughts? opinions?

Yes, as long as the hyperbole isn't used at them. We often react poorly to such silliness. This starts at the statement that 'nobody needs a gun', which is frequently heard and strongly disagreed with by the other side and is indicative that the person you're talking with is set in his opinion.

I don't think there's a specific issue with the American psyche itself, there are serious differences of opinion for many political topics from immigration through food stamps. The difference with guns, though, is that it's inherently such an emotive subject given that the benefits of use and the problems of mis-use are at the extreme ends of the scale.

How do you make that non-punitive in terms of costs for small time sellers though?

How about a buyers licence rather than a seller being required to run the background check? Or Firearms dealers givin a 30 day buyers clearance certificate.

The complaints are mainly that gun show buyers feel any legislation will drive prices up.

The simplest method is that any seller is given the abilty to call NICS just like an FFL (Licensed firearms dealer). It's about a three minute call, and the NICS is paid for by the government. Now, whether the government wants to donate all the tax revenue rerquired to staffing NICS so that calls are quick, and sending agents on sting operations to random shows to verify that the NICS is being used is another matter.

pabloh999

Manic Moran wrote: »

I believe you're mixing that up with the American Firearms Coalition. 90% of NRA funding comes ftom their members. When you have four and a half million members each giving a minimum of the $25 annual dues, you're talking some serious cash

NRA's corporate patrons include 22 firearms manufacturers, 12 of which are
makers of assault weapons with household names like Beretta and Ruger, according to a 2011 analysis by the Violence Policy
Center.

The report, drawn from the NRA's own disclosures, also
identified gifts from dozens of firms that profit from high-capacity magazines,
including Browning and Remington. Donors from the industry and other dark
reaches of the corporate world – including Xe, the new name of the mercenary
group Blackwater – had funneled up to $52 million to the NRA in recent
years.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-nra-vs-america-20130131


Read that

MadsL

Manic Moran wrote: »

The simplest method is that any seller is given the abilty to call NICS just like an FFL (Licensed firearms dealer). It's about a three minute call, and the NICS is paid for by the government. Now, whether the government wants to donate all the tax revenue rerquired to staffing NICS so that calls are quick, and sending agents on sting operations to random shows to verify that the NICS is being used is another matter.

I see how dealers could give a dealer ID number to verify identity for NCIS, how would you prevent private citizens using NCIS to snoop on neighbours/friends.

Perhaps buyers given a cert using their social security # might work better?

MadsL

pabloh999 you are acting as if political lobbying is some kind of new discovery. Is it really a surprise to anyone that the NRA gets gun manufacturers donations?

Next up, big oil in shock $34 million political donations, with 78% of that money going to Republicans.

pabloh999

MadsL wrote: »

pabloh999 you are acting as if political lobbying is some kind of new discovery. Is it really a surprise to anyone that the NRA gets gun manufacturers donations?

Next up, big oil in shock $34 million political donations, with 78% of that money going to Republicans.

Of course lobbying(corruption?) goes on.
But groups like the NRA do not have your "freedoms" in mind when they flood the country with guns and ammo. Profit is their only goal.
Marketed and packaged as defending your second ammendment right
Any debate or research on gun violence is shut down

http://www.forbes.com/sites/robwaters/2012/12/21/nras-courageous-stance-arm-schools-silence-research/
In fact, Rosenberg said, CDC-funded studies like two that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine “showed that having a gun in your home increases the chances of being murdered in the home 2.7 times and increases the chances of a family member committing suicide five-fold.”

The NRA conducted a protracted campaign to undermine CDC’s credibility, Rosenberg told me yesterday. “Gun-makers dominated the NRA and they want to sell guns and make more money,” he said. “So the NRA paid people—doctors, public health people—to go out and criticize CDC and the research we were doing.”

StinkyMunkey

Sparks wrote: »

People keep saying that, but they don't seem to understand that that's only one school of thought, that there are others, and those other schools of thought save more lives.

I mentioned it earlier, but it bears repeating, since some people won't even listen...

Ill entertain this chain of thought for the moment.

Because cars have to ability to kill, manufacturers have done as much as possbile to make them as safe as possible - Now take a gun, the manufacturers have in general tried to make them more lethal or accurate.

The government has brought in laws to try stop road deaths, if you break the law, you get punished. Because road deaths where on the increase, the government brought in "tougher" laws. As a result road deaths are down. The Irish mentality to driving has always been bad. People always used to drink and drive, speed and just plain drive dangerous. So the government has tried to address that problem with better education of how dangerous the roads can be. I agree with everything they are doing, lowering the limit you can drink before u can drive, more speed cameras/vans, harsher punishments, the points system and so on.

The vast majority of road deaths are "accidents", but there are exceptions, you can drive at someone with the intention of killing/maiming them.

Everyday hundreds of thousands of people use thier cars, and everyday hundreds of thousands of people go about thier buisness with no intention of harming anyone unless there is an accident. Do we ban cars(police)/trucks/ambulances/airplanes/tractors/fire engines/boats/JCB's etc etc....! because they can kill, or is there main function to provide transport in the case of cars, life saving assistance in the case of the emergency services.

Can a gun be used to save someone? you could argue, that yes it could - you could shoot an intruder or bank robber who might kill. But you are taking a life or injurying someone. Therefore the purpose of that gun is to kill or injure. When you are taken away in an ambulance, no one has to get hurt.

Now, because gun deaths/crime in america is so high, the government wants to bring in stricter laws, just like the government brought in tougher laws to decrease road deaths.

Pretty much everything thats surrounds us has the ability to kill:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0225/1224312374220.html

Random i know, but to get my point across that the debate here is guns, not cars or popcorn!

I am in favour of laws that prevent more deaths, whether it be cars or guns.

Sparks

pabloh999 wrote: »

Any debate or research on gun violence is shut down

I'm curious about that article; it says all funding was cut off from the CDC in 1995 and they were gagged from reporting about firearms...
...but then there's this report from 2003 on work done from 2000 to 2002. And this one in 2011 on data from 2006-7. And that's only from a 10-second google search.

So if that research was banned, how was it done?
Or is it a case that this is something complex being reduced to an incorrect soundbite that doesn't quite catch all the nuances of the original topic?

pabloh999

Sparks wrote: »

I'm curious about that article; it says all funding was cut off from the CDC in 1995 and they were gagged from reporting about firearms...
...but then there's this report from 2003 on work done from 2000 to 2002. And this one in 2011 on data from 2006-7. And that's only from a 10-second google search.

So if that research was banned, how was it done?
Or is it a case that this is something complex being reduced to an incorrect soundbite that doesn't quite catch all the nuances of the original topic?

Not sure but i think some data is there, but not allowed to be released.
Either way its f*cking sickening, education may affect gun sales so its gagged. Does this seem normal or right to anyone?
Meanwhile carnage train rolls on

MadsL

pabloh999 wrote: »

Of course lobbying(corruption?) goes on.
But groups like the NRA do not have your "freedoms" in mind when they flood the country with guns and ammo. Profit is their only goal.
Marketed and packaged as defending your second ammendment right
Any debate or research on gun violence is shut down

http://www.forbes.com/sites/robwaters/2012/12/21/nras-courageous-stance-arm-schools-silence-research/
In fact, Rosenberg said, CDC-funded studies like two that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine “showed that having a gun in your home increases the chances of being murdered in the home 2.7 times and increases the chances of a family member committing suicide five-fold.”

The NRA conducted a protracted campaign to undermine CDC’s credibility, Rosenberg told me yesterday. “Gun-makers dominated the NRA and they want to sell guns and make more money,” he said. “So the NRA paid people—doctors, public health people—to go out and criticize CDC and the research we were doing.”

You see, you would have a point if A. Anyone in this thread was defending the NRA and B. They represented the majority of US gun owners (they don't - not by a long, long, long way)

I would not join the NRA if a (pun intended) gun was at my head (well, maybe then) - I don't know if anyone here is a member either.

In fact, Rosenberg said, CDC-funded studies like two that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine “showed that having a gun in your home increases the chances of being murdered in the home 2.7 times and increases the chances of a family member committing suicide five-fold.”

That is Kellerman's study. Gary Klerk has already pointed out that gun household vs non-gun household falls prey to the "counting guns" fallacy.

"The observed gun-homicide association is so weak that it could easily be due entirely to a higher rate of concealing gun ownership among controls than among cases."

In other words such blatant observations as "chances of being murdered in the home 2.7 times and increases the chances of a family member committing suicide five-fold" are entirely at the mercy of people either reporting guns in the home at the time or later admitting to having a gun. Police reports and survey data are notoriously flawed in this regard.

Another study, conducted in part due to "the small sample used in the Kellermann study," found that 10.3 percent of hunting license holders and 12.7 percent of handgun registrants denied household gun ownership in interviews. (Rafferty, Ann P. et. al. "Validity of a household gun question in a telephone survey." Public Health Reports. May-June 1995 v110 n3 p282(7).)

This would entirely negate Kellerman's conclusions.

For roughly four years Kellermann refused to honor requests from legitimate scholars to examine his data, prompting law professor Daniel Polsby to comment that it was seriously debatable whether "the Kellermann results should be credited at all, because the data on which their work rests was neither deposited with the New England Journal nor otherwise made available to independent researchers.

But go ahead with your soundbites from Kellerman's 20 year old study.

Sparks

StinkyMunkey wrote: »

Because cars have to ability to kill, manufacturers have done as much as possbile to make them as safe as possible - Now take a gun, the manufacturers have in general tried to make them more lethal or accurate.

Er, no.
That doesn't match up with the reality of what car manufacturers or firearms manufacturers have done (Ford pinto memo anyone?). Leaving aside groups like blackwater, firearms manufacturers have focussed on accuracy (which is not directly related to lethality - I mean, if Anschutz say their new air rifle is more accurate, that doesn't mean it's suddenly more lethal...), reliability, safety of the user, cosmetic features, and those kind of features. Even the military manufacturers haven't really focussed on lethality - that's why the US army uses rifles whose calibre is designed to hunt foxes; it's lethal enough for military purposes (though they have long discussions about how they need to get something more lethal because of new threats, they've not decided to do so yet en masse). Mostly they worry about logistics - how much ammo can a soldier carry, how much does it cost, how much can they get to use (remember, for every insurgent shot in Iraq, they were firing over a hundred thousand rounds between training and rounds that either missed or were intended to miss and just keep people from shooting back by keeping them behind cover).
In terms of raw lethality, the firearms we're talking about just haven't gotten much more lethal. The few that have (things like Blackwater's development of the Kriss, and FN & H&K's development of things like the P90 and MP7 which are designed to work against body armour, or some anti-materiel sniper rifles) have specialist uses and are not available to the general public pretty much anywhere in the western world (certainly not in the US or EU).

The government has brought in laws to try stop road deaths, if you break the law, you get punished. Because road deaths where on the increase, the government brought in "tougher" laws. As a result road deaths are down.

This sounds great.
It's also incorrect for the same reason gun control laws are often ineffective -- because it ignores the difference between words written on paper banning something and paying for the Gardai to effectively enforce those words (we're great at one and ****e at the other and I'll let you guess which we love to do with only the hint that the first is really cheap compared to the second).

Yes, our traffic deaths are down; but the amount of money pulled from these programs, the amount of political will not given to them -- it doesn't let you compare our efforts to the Swiss with anything other than a vaguely dirty feeling of shame. Talk to Uncle Gaybo about it sometime, he'd tell you the same thing. Okay results to date, but could have been so much better - in other words, people are dead today because we tried to do it on the cheap. We did not adopt the Swiss school of thought here.

The vast majority of road deaths are "accidents", but there are exceptions, you can drive at someone with the intention of killing/maiming them.

When some eejit drives at 100mph down a road that's rated for half that and kills someone because the laws of physics apply to his car even if he thinks he's the star from Transporter, that's not an accident. We might call it that, but you can call **** marmite and it won't taste any better if someone spreads it on your toast. This is why they have the charge of "vehicular homicide" in some countries. Again, not the Swiss school of thought.

Everyday hundreds of thousands of people use thier cars, and everyday hundreds of thousands of people go about thier buisness with no intention of harming anyone unless there is an accident.

Swap the word cars out for the word guns and that sentence would be completely and equally true. And you wouldn't have to go to the US for it to be true, you could say that about Ireland.

Do we ban cars(police)/trucks/ambulances/airplanes/tractors/fire engines/boats/JCB's etc etc....! because they can kill, or is there main function to provide transport in the case of cars, life saving assistance in the case of the emergency services.

You're talking about taking guns out of the hands of all bar the professionals (armed police and the army). How about we take motor vehicles out of the hands of all bar the professionals? That'd leave us with police, ambulances, airplanes, fire engines, JCBs and so on, and with enough public transport we wouldn't need cars.

See, right now you're thinking that'd be ridiculously unworkable, aren't you? And you can't see a benefit to it that'd warrant the personal inconvenience to you, can you?

Now, swap out car for gun and you get the same end result. We know it won't do what you hope it will (because it never ever has) and we know that the causes are somewhere else and we're not addressing them; but banning something would feel like doing something, wouldn't it?

It's just a pity that the only people who'd obey that ban are the same people who obey that law against not harming other people, isn't it?
If only the criminals would obey the laws....

Can a gun be used to save someone?

Why does my air rifle, or someone else's target rifle have to save anyone?

And how the hell can you say that someone being injured because of a genuine case of self-defence is an argument against preventing people using firearms for self-defence? That makes no sense at all!

When you are taken away in an ambulance, no one has to get hurt.

Er. That might be a bad example - generally the person being taken away in the ambulance is hurt, often quite badly...

Now, because gun deaths/crime in america is so high, the government wants to bring in stricter laws, just like the government brought in tougher laws to decrease road deaths.

That's not actually what they seem to be doing for the most part - those 23 executive orders are either calling for the enforcement of existing laws or researching into the actual problem itself (rather than a particular legislative direction).

Random i know, but to get my point across that the debate here is guns, not cars or popcorn!

See, there's the rub. The problem is violence, not firearms ownership, but people think the two equate perfectly. They don't. If they did, Switzerland would look like Somalia, and we'd have 200,000 murderers running around in Ireland. We don't. Whatever is causing the US's problem with violence isn't just firearms ownership, even if that's the easiest thing to point at (but hey, symptoms are usually more easily spotted than causes, aren't they?)

Example: this ban on high capacity magazines they brought in in New York. Won't work. How do I know? Because it didn't stop the shooting in Virginia Tech. The shooter there didn't have 30-round magazines (or a rifle) - he just carried a backpack with nineteen loaded 10/15-round magazines in it and reloaded (an operation that takes less than a second - forget about this "Oh, we can tackle him while he reloads" myth, because (a) you can't notice he's reloading, come out from whereever you were hiding, run over to him and subdue him in the 2 seconds a slow reload takes; and (b) you can reload while there's a round in the chamber, so you'd just get shot anyway).


But all of this is ignoring my original point - which is that it doesn't matter how big and scary something looks to you, or how common sense tells you banning it would be a good idea; the better way to do things is the way we now demand medicine operate, ie. in an evidence-based manner. You study the problem, you figure out a solution, you study the solution and you amend it if it's not working. You don't just decide "oh, this looks right" and get out the scalpel and the cocaine (because otherwise you get medical people using cocaine to treat things we now treat with antibiotics or cough syrup or better hydration. Instead we now restrict its medical use quite severely and it's mainly only used for treating dermal lacerations in children in the US).

In other words, this direct assumption that we should obviously ban guns is the social policy equivalent of homeopathy. I'd like to see some citations and some academic debate and critical evaluation of evidence and replication of studies first please. You know, the same thing we demand before we let people market a new headache pill. I figure, if it's good enough for a mild analgesic, it's good enough to figure out how you adjust the underlying legal foundation of a nation...

Sparks

pabloh999 wrote: »

Either way its f*cking sickening, education may affect gun sales so its gagged. Does this seem normal or right to anyone?

Sorry, but you missed my point - that "gag" supposedly kicked in in 1995, but there was a lot of work done after 1995 and released, so how was it a "gag"?
What's the detail we're not being told? It can't be a gag and not gag them...

MadsL

StinkyMunkey wrote: »

Ill entertain this chain of thought for the moment.

Because cars have to ability to kill, manufacturers have done as much as possbile to make them as safe as possible - Now take a gun, the manufacturers have in general tried to make them more lethal or accurate.

On the contrary, a modern pistol has significant safety features prevent accidental discharges unless the gun is gripped and the trigger pulled. Pistol grip safety, firing pin safety, and trigger safety are all modern innovations in preventing accidental discharges.

The government has brought in laws to try stop road deaths, if you break the law, you get punished.

There are laws against irresponsible gun use. For example firing in a residential area, brandishing a firearm etc.

Because road deaths where on the increase, the government brought in "tougher" laws. As a result road deaths are down. The Irish mentality to driving has always been bad. People always used to drink and drive, speed and just plain drive dangerous. So the government has tried to address that problem with better education of how dangerous the roads can be. I agree with everything they are doing, lowering the limit you can drink before u can drive, more speed cameras/vans, harsher punishments, the points system and so on.

Violent crime is decreasing steadily in the US.

The vast majority of road deaths are "accidents", but there are exceptions, you can drive at someone with the intention of killing/maiming them.

Yes, you can.

Everyday hundreds of thousands of people use thier cars, and everyday hundreds of thousands of people go about thier buisness with no intention of harming anyone unless there is an accident.

Every day 1-2% of Americans go about their business carrying a concealed firearm with no intention of harming anyone unless there is an incident where they fear for their life. Every day an estimated half of all American households have a gun kept in the home with no intention of harming anyone unless there is an incident where they fear for their life.

Do we ban cars(police)/trucks/ambulances/airplanes/tractors/fire engines/boats/JCB's etc etc....! because they can kill, or is there main function to provide transport in the case of cars, life saving assistance in the case of the emergency services.

The main function of a self-defence firearm is life saving assistance is it not?

Can a gun be used to save someone?

Yes. How is that even debatable?

you could argue, that yes it could - you could shoot an intruder or bank robber who might kill. But you are taking a life or injurying someone. Therefore the purpose of that gun is to kill or injure. When you are taken away in an ambulance, no one has to get hurt.

So my friend I mentioned earlier who woke up in bed with a guy on top of her should have just let him rape her? The woman who unloaded in the face of the guy who opened the closet where she and her young daughters were hiding should have laid down and taken it?

Both of those shot intruders survived by the way.

Are you asking sympathy for rapists? Seriously?

Now, because gun deaths/crime in america is so high, the government wants to bring in stricter laws, just like the government brought in tougher laws to decrease road deaths.

Except US crime is dropping.

Pretty much everything thats surrounds us has the ability to kill:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2012/0225/1224312374220.html

Random i know, but to get my point across that the debate here is guns, not cars or popcorn!

I am in favour of laws that prevent more deaths, whether it be cars or guns.

Fast food banned = heart disease 597,689
Smoking banned = smoking deaths 574,743 cancer victims, plus 138,080 respiratory deaths
Alcohol banned = 75000 drunk driving deaths

The fact is that guns are no more than a tool, fatal if used incorrectly, just like a car.

MadsL

Sparks wrote: »

In other words, this direct assumption that we should obviously ban guns is the social policy equivalent of homeopathy.

This. Best comment in all boards gun threads, evar. :pac:

CollardGreens

Next up, big oil in shock $34 million political donations, with 78% of that money going to Republicans.

Ban politicians, not guns = happy citizens, less anger, less shootings .

StinkyMunkey

Sparks wrote: »

1 Er, no.
That doesn't match up with the reality of what car manufacturers or firearms manufacturers have done (Ford pinto memo anyone?). Leaving aside groups like blackwater, firearms manufacturers have focussed on accuracy (which is not directly related to lethality - I mean, if Anschutz say their new air rifle is more accurate, that doesn't mean it's suddenly more lethal...), reliability, safety of the user, cosmetic features, and those kind of features. Even the military manufacturers haven't really focussed on lethality - that's why the US army uses rifles whose calibre is designed to hunt foxes; it's lethal enough for military purposes (though they have long discussions about how they need to get something more lethal because of new threats, they've not decided to do so yet en masse). Mostly they worry about logistics - how much ammo can a soldier carry, how much does it cost, how much can they get to use (remember, for every insurgent shot in Iraq, they were firing over a hundred thousand rounds between training and rounds that either missed or were intended to miss and just keep people from shooting back by keeping them behind cover).
In terms of raw lethality, the firearms we're talking about just haven't gotten much more lethal. The few that have (things like Blackwater's development of the Kriss, and FN & H&K's development of things like the P90 and MP7 which are designed to work against body armour, or some anti-materiel sniper rifles) have specialist uses and are not available to the general public pretty much anywhere in the western world (certainly not in the US or EU).


2 This sounds great.
It's also incorrect for the same reason gun control laws are often ineffective -- because it ignores the difference between words written on paper banning something and paying for the Gardai to effectively enforce those words (we're great at one and ****e at the other and I'll let you guess which we love to do with only the hint that the first is really cheap compared to the second).

Yes, our traffic deaths are down; but the amount of money pulled from these programs, the amount of political will not given to them -- it doesn't let you compare our efforts to the Swiss with anything other than a vaguely dirty feeling of shame. Talk to Uncle Gaybo about it sometime, he'd tell you the same thing. Okay results to date, but could have been so much better - in other words, people are dead today because we tried to do it on the cheap. We did not adopt the Swiss school of thought here.


3 When some eejit drives at 100mph down a road that's rated for half that and kills someone because the laws of physics apply to his car even if he thinks he's the star from Transporter, that's not an accident. We might call it that, but you can call **** marmite and it won't taste any better if someone spreads it on your toast. This is why they have the charge of "vehicular homicide" in some countries. Again, not the Swiss school of thought.



4 Swap the word cars out for the word guns and that sentence would be completely and equally true. And you wouldn't have to go to the US for it to be true, you could say that about Ireland.



5 You're talking about taking guns out of the hands of all bar the professionals (armed police and the army). How about we take motor vehicles out of the hands of all bar the professionals? That'd leave us with police, ambulances, airplanes, fire engines, JCBs and so on, and with enough public transport we wouldn't need cars.

See, right now you're thinking that'd be ridiculously unworkable, aren't you? And you can't see a benefit to it that'd warrant the personal inconvenience to you, can you?


6 Now, swap out car for gun and you get the same end result. We know it won't do what you hope it will (because it never ever has) and we know that the causes are somewhere else and we're not addressing them; but banning something would feel like doing something, wouldn't it?

It's just a pity that the only people who'd obey that ban are the same people who obey that law against not harming other people, isn't it?
If only the criminals would obey the laws....

Alot of people who kill, do obey the law "until" they go shoot someone.


Why does my air rifle, or someone else's target rifle have to save anyone?

And how the hell can you say that someone being injured because of a genuine case of self-defence is an argument against preventing people using firearms for self-defence? That makes no sense at all!

Missing the point here, a gun used to kill/injury someone is doing what it was designed for. A car wasnt designed to kill.


7 Er. That might be a bad example - generally the person being taken away in the ambulance is hurt, often quite badly...


8 That's not actually what they seem to be doing for the most part - those 23 executive orders are either calling for the enforcement of existing laws or researching into the actual problem itself (rather than a particular legislative direction).




9 See, there's the rub. The problem is violence, not firearms ownership, but people think the two equate perfectly. They don't. If they did, Switzerland would look like Somalia, and we'd have 200,000 murderers running around in Ireland. We don't. Whatever is causing the US's problem with violence isn't just firearms ownership, even if that's the easiest thing to point at (but hey, symptoms are usually more easily spotted than causes, aren't they?)




10 Example: this ban on high capacity magazines they brought in in New York. Won't work. How do I know? Because it didn't stop the shooting in Virginia Tech. The shooter there didn't have 30-round magazines (or a rifle) - he just carried a backpack with nineteen loaded 10/15-round magazines in it and reloaded (an operation that takes less than a second - forget about this "Oh, we can tackle him while he reloads" myth, because (a) you can't notice he's reloading, come out from whereever you were hiding, run over to him and subdue him in the 2 seconds a slow reload takes; and (b) you can reload while there's a round in the chamber, so you'd just get shot anyway).



11 But all of this is ignoring my original point - which is that it doesn't matter how big and scary something looks to you, or how common sense tells you banning it would be a good idea; the better way to do things is the way we now demand medicine operate, ie. in an evidence-based manner. You study the problem, you figure out a solution, you study the solution and you amend it if it's not working. You don't just decide "oh, this looks right" and get out the scalpel and the cocaine (because otherwise you get medical people using cocaine to treat things we now treat with antibiotics or cough syrup or better hydration. Instead we now restrict its medical use quite severely and it's mainly only used for treating dermal lacerations in children in the US).


12 In other words, this direct assumption that we should obviously ban guns is the social policy equivalent of homeopathy. I'd like to see some citations and some academic debate and critical evaluation of evidence and replication of studies first please. You know, the same thing we demand before we let people market a new headache pill. I figure, if it's good enough for a mild analgesic, it's good enough to figure out how you adjust the underlying legal foundation of a nation...

There you go again with the assupmtions, im not calling for an all out ban.

Im calling for stricter gun controls/laws

1. Er, yes that does add up.

Which is safer?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T

OR

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_fiesta

Are trying to tell me car manufacturers have not striven to produce a car that has more safety features....!

Now which is more lethal? And thank you for making my point for me, More accurate = more lethal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musket

OR

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AR-15

Have the gun manufacturers not produced bullets that are alot more lethal since the time guns where first invented?


2. Do you not watch TV?

have you not seen the ad's involving car crashes and the hazards of speed?

Is there not alot more speed camera's?

Was the drink drive limit not lowered?

Is the government not trying to raise awareness and change attitudes?

3. So everyone killed in a car accident is hit by a lunatic doing 100mph? Eh no.

4. So people needs guns to go about there daily buisness O.o

5. Im guessing you are pulling that out of the air assuming i called for a ban on all gun?

6. Alot of people who kill, do obey the law "until" they go shoot someone.

7. Exactly, the ambulance is there to help them, thats its purpose.

8. See above.

9. So guns are not related to gun deaths and in no way play any part?

Does Ireland have a gun culture?

Does America have a gun culture?

I know of 2 people who own guns (bith locked in gun safes).

Now how many people does the average person in America know who owns a gun? (and saying your in a gun club and know alot of people who do is not the "average person")

10. Ill take your word for it, people generally run and hide when people start shooting. not wait for the moment he reloads to play hero.

11. So watching the aftermath of a guy go postal with an automatic rifle isnt evidence that they are dangerous in someones hands who has it in mind to go out and kill.

12. There you go again with the assupmtions, im not calling for an all out ban.

Im calling for stricter gun controls/laws

MadsL

StinkyMunkey wrote: »

Im calling for stricter gun controls/laws

What controls/laws specifically? Have you abandoned your idea of banning semi-autos?

InTheTrees

MadsL wrote: »

Have you abandoned your idea of banning semi-autos?

Oh god, dont go back there again...

Manic Moran

pabloh999 wrote: »

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-nra-vs-america-20130131


Read that

I've read it.

Your quote states: "Donors from the industry and other dark
reaches of the corporate world – including Xe, the new name of the mercenary
group Blackwater – had funneled up to $52 million to the NRA in recent
years."

Dues alone from the membership are on the order of $100 million per year, and this doesn't count other voluntary contributions, including those of the NRA's associate groups such as the Legislative Action Group. The publicly available tax return form for the central NRA shows an annual income for 2010 of a quarter-billion dollars.

NTM

Sparks

StinkyMunkey wrote: »

1. Er, yes that does add up.

It really doesn't, because you're assuming car manufacturers are altruistic; they're not. I know I just gave the most famous example of that, but I thought it was sufficiently well-known that it didn't need that much elaboration.

Are trying to tell me car manufacturers have not striven to produce a car that has more safety features....!

Yes! We've had to fight them every step of the way on that.

And thank you for making my point for me, More accurate = more lethal.

I believe I just explained why that's simply not true.

Now which is more lethal?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musket
OR
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AR-15

The first one. I've tried to explain this before: muskets are basicly 50 calibre rifles firing dum-dum bullets. The Hague Convention banned that kind of thing from warfare as too horrible to use on people back when, frankly, damn little horrified anyone. If you had to pick one or the other to be shot with (and I can't think of why you'd have to, but for the sake of argument...), pick the AR-15 because you're more likely to survive.

Remember, the reason the US army uses the round used in the M-16 is not because it's lethal; it's because it takes the enemy soldier out of the fight, and it lets their soldiers carry more ammunition and be more accurate. Killing the enemy soldier is not required, and injuring them is better for the US army because then the other side needs to expend resources to care for their wounded.

Have the gun manufacturers not produced bullets that are alot more lethal since the time guns where first invented?

Actually, not so much. More accurate at long range, yes, but its hard to be more lethal than a 50-calibre ball.

2. Do you not watch TV?

Don't have one.

have you not seen the ad's involving car crashes and the hazards of speed?

Yes, my father made them and they had some childhood friends of mine in one.

Is there not alot more speed camera's?

Compared to three or four, yes. Compared to what was hoped for, no. Compared to Switzerland, not even in the same ballpark.

Was the drink drive limit not lowered?
Is the government not trying to raise awareness and change attitudes?

Yes, but not to where they wanted it; and sure, so long as it's free.

3. So everyone killed in a car accident is hit by a lunatic doing 100mph? Eh no.

No, just most of them.

4. So people needs guns to go about there daily buisness O.o

Yup. Most of the 200,000 firearms in Ireland are owned and used by farmers for farming. Then there are hunters and target shooters, and it wouldn't be their day job, but it would be their daily lives. And that's just Ireland.

6. Alot of people who kill, do obey the law "until" they go shoot someone.

/headdesk
So why have a law at all?
(BTW, they've broken several laws long before they pull the trigger...)

7. Exactly, the ambulance is there to help them, thats its purpose.

Except that you were saying that it didn't need someone to be hurt to fulfill that purpose.

9. So guns are not related to gun deaths and in no way play any part?

/facepalm
If the problem is violence, then taking away an abused tool won't fix the problem.

Does Ireland have a gun culture?
Does America have a gun culture?

Yes and yes, but they're different cultures.

Now how many people does the average person in America know who owns a gun? (and saying your in a gun club and know alot of people who do is not the "average person")

Has it occurred to you that Ireland is wierd?
We're not the statistical norm, probably because for thirty years we had a rather serious domestic terrorism problem and we demonised firearms. Go anywhere in the continent and you get a completely different story.

10. Ill take your word for it, people generally run and hide when people start shooting. not wait for the moment he reloads to play hero.

The myth that you could stop him during a reload is why they banned high capacity magazines in NY...

11. So watching the aftermath of a guy go postal with an automatic rifle isnt evidence that they are dangerous in someones hands who has it in mind to go out and kill.

That's as useful as arguing to ban kool-aid because of Jim Jones.

12. There you go again with the assupmtions, im not calling for an all out ban.

What are you calling for? And what's your evidence for that measure?

Im calling for stricter gun controls/laws

That's nice. Now explain what you mean in detail, because that's so vague and ill-defined that it's meaningless noise.

MadsL

StinkyMunkey wrote: »

Now which is more lethal?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musket

OR

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AR-15

Sparks wrote: »

The first one. its hard to be more lethal than a 50-calibre ball.

Priceless.