"Ghug. Are you saying it would be better if homeowners who used guns on home invasions would be better off getting killed/raped/beat/robbed than killing the invader?"
Where exactly am I saying that? I'm saying that guns are primarily violence escalators and secondarily crime preventors. This is pretty clearly shown by lower rates of gun violence everywhere outside of the US.

Everywhere? You must be kidding right?

I am sure you are also wrong on the other part. I am on my cell now but Iam sure Ihave seen plenty of stats saying how many crimes a day were 'prevented' from the potential victim over how many people are actually killed. And also remember the highest % of people killed by guns are criminals

"This is pretty clearly shown by lower rates of gun violence everywhere outside of the US."

Huh?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

Mexico and Brazil both have far more restrictive gun laws than the United States, yet their gun-related homicide rates are 3 and 5 times greater than the US. Switzerland, where everyone just about everyone has a military-style semi-automatic weapon in their home, has a gun homicide rate 1/7th the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

Given the level of development in the United States compared to nations in South America and Africa, US gun violence rates are abnormally high.

So South Americans and Africans are 'primitive' and shouldn't be expected to live up to the standards of the "civilized" world. Not surprising to find this sentiment among gun grabbers, given that most gun control laws in America throughout the last 150 years have been the result of racist scaremongering.

Notice he said 'gun deaths' homicides in nations such as russia/ukraine etc are much higher than us but since we want to grab the guns and disarm the population we need to show stats to support that

No, governments in those countries are less developed than governments in the US and Europe. They have less power, less control, less stability, and less infrastructure. If you need to pull racism out of a hat to validate your points, you should really rethink your arguments. You should also try citing things ("most gun control laws in America throughout the last 150 years have been the result of racist scaremongering") when you make bullshit claims like that.

Generally speaking, countries in which the government has little power to enforce gun laws and countries in which guns are legal have higher rates of gun related death. You found one exception in Switzerland, and I'm no expert, but I believe that they have such high rates of gun ownership because their standing army is so small that they would have need of a militia in case of invasion. Switzerland is nothing more than a red herring.

"Notice he said 'gun deaths' homicides in nations such as russia/ukraine etc are much higher than us but since we want to grab the guns and disarm the population we need to show stats to support that"
Can you clarify? I have no idea what you're talking about.

Russia and ukraine have very strict gun laws and getting guns there is near impossible. That does stop their homicide rate from being thru the roof

Trust me.Ihave been to russia a lot. The people have no guns but still finds ways to massacre each other at a far faster rate than we do

Before 2008, your right to bear arms was not Constitutional per se. It was statutory. As in, it existed, but not because of the Constitution. It was no more Constitutionally protected than your right to drive a car.

District of Columbia versus Heller was the first Supreme Court case to address the existence of an individual right to bear arms. There is no case law confirming or denying its existence before then. Pointing directly to the Second Amendment doesn't work because the Second Amendment grants the right to keep and bear arms to "The People" because "A well regulated militia" is "necessary to the security of a free state."

The grammar of that Amendment, by the way, is an issue... because it's different in the text that Congress passed than it is in the copies that the States got and ratified.

As passed by Congress:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

I don't like that one. The first and last commas just doesn't make grammatical sense.

As ratified by the States and authenticated by Thomas Jefferson:

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Makes a lot more sense, doesn't it? It reads like a grant of authority to the States to raise well-regulated militias. It's a power delegated from the "United States" to the States. It's the version that the States passed. And its language certainly implies that the individual States, not the federal government, and hopefully not the Supreme Court, get the say-so on future changes to "the right of the people to keep and bear arms," seeing as how this Amendment exists to address the issue of "the security of a free state."

So then we get the Miller decision in 1939, in which the Court says that

"In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length' at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument."

Which is SCOTUS for "The Second Amendment doesn't apply to this case."

Every time the Court addressed a Second Amendment issue thereafter until 2008, it cited Miller and did the same thing the Court did in Miller for the same reason: if you're not part of a well-regulated militia, the Second Amendment does not protect any right to bear arms you may think you have.

And, by extension, any right to bear arms you may have is statutory.

Heller treads on VERY new ground. The Scalia decision even admits it. "since this case represents this Court’s first in-depth examination of the Second Amendment, one should not expect it to clarify the entire field."

Seriously, read the Heller decision. And definitely read the dissents.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZS.html

"Russia and ukraine [sic] have very strict gun laws and getting guns there is near impossible. That does stop their homicide rate from being thru [sic] the roof"
Again, red herrings. Ukraine and Russia have incredibly high rates of violence and low rates of gun violence, but what do you think would happen if they loosened their gun laws? You provide a statistically insignificant number of counterexamples that fail to prove anything.

"You should also try citing things ("most gun control laws in America throughout the last 150 years have been the result of racist scaremongering") when you make bullshit claims like that."

Sorry ghug, but your ignorance does not make my claims "bullshit":
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=gun+control+is+racist

It has nothing to do with ignorance, you have a responsibility to cite your facts when you're arguing with someone. Sure, the slaveowners did everything they could to keep their slaves from owning guns, and continued doing so after their slaves were freed. Implying that those motivations are the same ones that drive gun-control activists today is a gross misconstrual of the facts to meet your own needs withing the context of this argument and thus will not even be dignified with an answer.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608/?single_page=true#

THE EIGHTH-GRADE STUDENTS gathering on the west lawn of the state capitol in Sacramento were planning to lunch on fried chicken with California’s new governor, Ronald Reagan, and then tour the granite building constructed a century earlier to resemble the nation’s Capitol. But the festivities were interrupted by the arrival of 30 young black men and women carrying .357 Magnums, 12-gauge shotguns, and .45-caliber pistols.

The 24 men and six women climbed the capitol steps, and one man, Bobby Seale, began to read from a prepared statement. “The American people in general and the black people in particular,” he announced, must

"take careful note of the racist California legislature aimed at keeping the black people disarmed and powerless Black people have begged, prayed, petitioned, demonstrated, and everything else to get the racist power structure of America to right the wrongs which have historically been perpetuated against black people The time has come for black people to arm themselves against this terror before it is too late."

Seale then turned to the others. “All right, brothers, come on. We’re going inside.” He opened the door, and the radicals walked straight into the state’s most important government building, loaded guns in hand. No metal detectors stood in their way.

It was May 2, 1967, and the Black Panthers’ invasion of the California statehouse launched the modern gun-rights movement.

http://www.guncite.com/journals/gun_control_wtr8512.html

"Some white liberals have said essentially the same thing. Investigative reporter Robert Sherrill, himself no lover of guns, concluded in his book The Saturday Night Special that the object of the Gun Control Act of 1968 was black control rather than gun control. According to Sherrill, Congress was so panicked by the ghetto riots of 1967 and 1968 that it passed the act to "shut off weapons access to blacks, and since they (Congress) probably associated cheap guns with ghetto blacks and thought cheapness was peculiarly the characteristic of imported military surplus and the mail-order traffic, they decided to cut off these sources while leaving over-the-counter purchases open to the affluent." Congressional motivations may have been more complex than Sherrill suggests, but keeping blacks from acquiring guns was certainly a large part of that motivation. (Incidentally, the Senate has passed legislation that would repeal the more-onerous provisions of the 1968 act. The bill faces an uncertain future in the House of Representatives.)"

http://www.bookwormroom.com/2012/12/19/supporting-gun-control-is-racist/

"Chicago is now, and has long been, a deadly city for blacks. The sweetness and light of non-stop Democrat rule has done nothing to make it safer. At a certain point in this deadly trajectory, Chicago Progressives made an announcement: a lot of the people who died in Chicago died from gunshots. Thinking simplistically, they decided that the next step was to get rid of the guns. Chicago therefore enacted some of the most repressive gun-control in the nation. Had the Democrat logic been correct, the “homicide by gun” rate in Chicago should have plummeted in the wake of this legislation. As John Lott explains, the opposite was true:

'Since late 1982, Chicago has banned the private ownership of handguns. Over the next 19 years, there were only three years where the murder rate was as low as when the ban started.'

'As shown in the forthcoming third edition of my book “More Guns, Less Crime,” before the ban, Chicago’s murder rate was falling relative to the nine other largest cities, the 50 largest cities, the five counties that border Cook county, as well as the U.S. as a whole. After the ban, Chicago’s murder rate rose relative to all these other places.'

"In other words, banning guns killed black men.

"Chicago is not anomalous. Washington, D.C., showed precisely the same pattern. Here’s John Lott again, looking at the way the numbers are, rather than the way Progressives think they ought to be. When Washington banned legal guns, murder rates (and that would be murder rates of black men) shot up:

'Washington’s murder rate soared after its handgun ban went into effect in early 1977 (there is only one year while the ban was in effect that the murder rate fell below the1976 number and that happened many years later — in 1985). Its murder rate also rose relative to other cities. Washington’s murder rate rose from 12 percent above the average for the 50 most populous cities in 1976 to 35 percent above the average in 1986.'"

You can lead a horse to water but can't make him drink.

ghug, two things.

1) "Gun violence" is the wrong statistic for comparison -- "violence" is the right one. It is, of course, still higher in the US, but not by as much. In any case, I assume it's obvious this is the relevant statistic.

2) You cannot simply assume that the differences are due to the presence of guns, as there are a great many different cultural factors that contribute, and it is actually quite difficult to say which ones contribute how much. See e.g. the Lott vs. Donohue debates. Notice that this is not a "conservative versus liberal" thing, it's just a "misusing statistics versus not misusing statistics" thing.

http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/c0.0.403.403/p403x403/16752_480887241977353_25176272_n.jpg

I could probably just sit here and let all of your arguments speak for themselves, but I'm nice, so I won't.

@Tolstoy, not only are your sources so biased it's laughable, but this entire line of reasoning is completely irrelevant. Somebody took advantage of powers to make racist laws. That is bad. That does not mean that what I am advocating for is racist legislation. From now on, I'm going to ignore all of your arguments until they become relevant. Goodbye.

@semck,
"1) 'Gun violence' is the wrong statistic for comparison -- 'violence' is the right one. It is, of course, still higher in the US, but not by as much. In any case, I assume it's obvious this is the relevant statistic."
No, they're both relevant. See the Jok3r's post. Your side argues that gun laws will increase gun violence by taking the guns only out of the hands of the good, yet statistics (generally, I'll address point two in a second) disagree. Therefore gun violence statistics do matter. Regardless, both are higher than they should be and suggest that something is fundamentally wrong.

"2) You cannot simply assume that the differences are due to the presence of guns, as there are a great many different cultural factors that contribute, and it is actually quite difficult to say which ones contribute how much."
I'm not assuming that that is the only cause, but there is a clear trend, and examples such as Britain and Australia (don't argue Australia further here, it belongs in the other thread) show that tightening gun laws does help.

"Notice that this is not a 'conservative versus liberal' thing, it's just a 'misusing statistics versus not misusing statistics' thing."
No, you're wrong. It is a "conservative versus liberal" thing, as these arguments fall very regularly along party lines. It's also completely stupid and disrespectful to accuse one side of the argument of misuse of statistics when you know perfectly well that both sides have idiots that will do anything to get their points across. Come at me with real arguments or be quiet. What I said to Tolstoy stands for you as well. Goodbye.

Funny how the gun control movement is supposedly spurred by fear of black people while the gun lobby uses thinly veiled expressions of fear of black people to promote its agenda...

ghug,

1) You're right, gun violence is an important statistic. But _by itself_ it's an irrelevant one. If you want to argue that gun violence would not be replaced if guns were outlawed, and the other related arguments you'd have to make, then make it, but you were citing only that statistic in a vacuum. The major point here is that gun violence is relevant only to the extent that an argument is present to support the claim that it is related to violence. (It doubtless is, but how exactly is of course much of the controversy).

2) " It is a "conservative versus liberal" thing, as these arguments fall very regularly along party lines."

My point was that people who understand statistics will not use them the way you are, while people (yes, on both sides) who don't will. I happen to have been taught this point most memorably by a liberal professor who was an avid gun-control supporter, for example. He would never have countenanced the silly use of statistics you were attempting to make. I doubt you would seriously argue that the US doesn't have profound cultural and societal differences from say Norway, other than gun ownership, that impact crime and violence. I hope you wouldn't, anyway. Since you offered no argument one way or the other as to the relative impact of these other factors (and the only good argument would be a lengthy quantitative one), your naive statistical argument just fails.

"It's also completely stupid and disrespectful to accuse one side of the argument of misuse of statistics when you know perfectly well that both sides have idiots that will do anything to get their points across. "

I do know that perfectly well. What I'm not sure is why that means that I can't criticize either of them, which is what this claim would suggest.

"Come at me with real arguments or be quiet."

I did come at you with a real argument -- that you were completely ignoring other important factors such as poverty, racial segregation, cultural history of violence, urbanization, and a score of other things that any reputable social scientist would quickly admit was a relevant thing to consider. I'm sorry if you don't recognize good statistical practice as an argument.

I'm not ignoring those factors. I can't possibly take them all into account, but I can see that the one factor that I am discussing (namely gun control) has had a positive effect in other environments, and thus it's not too far fetched to believe that it might actually help to do something similar here. Citing a statistic in a vacuum is bad, but completely ignoring it because it doesn't account for all factors (something that is impossible) is equally bad.

"@Tolstoy, not only are your sources so biased it's laughable"

I hereby proclaim all your hoplophobic arguments not only laughable, but racist and dishonest as well. I win!

ghug,

You just cited a list of murder rates in a bunch of different countries. That does not let you "see that the one factor that I am discussing (namely gun control) has had a positive effect in other environments" at all. It just lets you see that it and a bunch of other factors all taken together have a given effect.

Now you may earlier have made an argument about the change in a given FIXED country when the law there was changed. That's a better argument, but it wasn't present in the post I was criticizing. Comparing across different countries (or even different states) and drawing conclusions from two variables -- an independent and a dependent -- is about as bad as statistical practice can get.

Oh, and

"Citing a statistic in a vacuum is bad, but completely ignoring it because it doesn't account for all factors (something that is impossible) is equally bad. "

No, actually, it's not. True, you can't account for all factors -- but you need to account for all you possibly can, and do so carefully (and then, yes, keep in mind that you may have forgotten something). Refraining from drawing conclusions from erroneously incomplete statistics in the meantime is EXACTLY what you're _supposed_ to do.

In general, just remember -- "knowledge" supported by a demonstrably bad argument is not preferable to suspension of judgment.

@octavious - I agree with you entirely that the US 'problem' needs a US solution. Whilst I'd like to see all countries impose stricter gun control including a ban on all privately held guns, I realise this is not possible in countries like the US. I have been advocating gun insurance, so that every owner has to insurance against any damage done buy guns in their ownership, regardless of who does the shooting.

@gunfighter - I note you avoided answering how you would feel if someone wanted to carry dynamite onto a plane. Also, I accept that carrying a gun is a constitutional right, but that doesn't close down all debate. Rights change, in the UK men had a right to beat is wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb (hence the expression, the rle of thumb). Times change and when/if they do you will still be allowed to hold and debate the counter view.