Read the earlier parts of the thread.

Scanning the thread, the only other point I see being raised is that we have inherent rights to things that a government can't take. Speech, guns, due process, etc.

Do you have a right to have enriched uranium? Tanks? A Death Star? I don't even have a right to the damn joint in my hand right now.

That's probably a good thing though, because I was going to go use that joint to go kill innocent people this afternoon.

@ gunfighter - "I don't care what those pollsters say" and now we get to the truth, I believe you don't want your guns to defend the American people from an over authoritarian state, you want them to enforce what you want and hold dear. There is nothing wrong with having deeply held views and being prepared to back them up, (and in all fairness I think your views and that of other gun enthusiast are genuine), but is it right to seek to deny the views of others just because you hold in your hand something that can kill?

Let me ask you another question if America had a single issue referendum about striking out the second amendment would you bear arms against the state if the America people voted to ditch the clause? If so at what point do you accept the people's verdict 80/20; 90/10; 65/45?

A) That's not how the Constitution gets amended.
B) Such a repeal of the 2nd Amendment would never happen. Public opinion is actually strongly pro-gun rights.
C) Your point is to attempt to portray gun-rights advocates as a bunch of potentially-violent fanatics, who will use weapons to enforce their opinions. That's pretty low.

"You would deny the 99.9% the good of self-defense to prevent the evil of the 0.1%"

1. No, I would deny them military grade weapons, NOT THE RIGHT TO DEFENSE, if you'll notice, NONE of the gun owners I listed and know owned a military grade-weapon...my Army friend had a pistol and a shotgun, my father a CHP pistol while he was on the force (I don't know what kind of pistol it was back in his day, as I have to assume as with most branches that carry guns they upgrade from time to time) and so on...

NONE of them had military-grade assault weapons or felt the need to.

Defense =/= having military grade weapons.

Even if I conceded defense = guns (and I still don't, as again, my father defends himself quite nicely with a bat and a crossbow, but I'll readily concede that handguns are at least a reasonable defense in theory in this day and age) it does NOT then follow that defense = all guns or that it = military-grade weapons.

2. YES, as I just said, the evil spoils things for the good here...

99.9% of the people wouldn't ever become an Adam Lanza or James Holmes or OKC bomber or, for that matter, a 9/11 terrorist.

But the .1% in this case is SO destructive (case in point, 9/11) that sometimes limitations on ALL, INCLUDING, sadly, the 99.9%, are warranted out of necessity.

MOST people wouldn't steal, either...

But we have security surveillance cameras, scanners, and armed guards for banks because there ARE those who would do such a thing.

"Public opinion is actually strongly pro-gun rights."

Yes and no--

I'd say right now public opinion is strongly pro-gun rights but rather anti-military grade weapons...

I think more people than not would agree that such weapons have no place in a civilized society, including some GOOD gun owners who realize their pastime and their good names are being dragged through the mud via association to those who are conspiracy theorists who claim assault weapons as their "natural right" and now further claim that Sandy Hook was all an elaborate hoax by the US government to create justification to take their guns, going so far as to call out the STILL GRIEVING FAMILIES and call them liars and crisis actors while their kids are now dead.

GOOD gun owners, actually in possession of both a conscience and a brain, tend not to want to be associated with that ilk, and thus I think there's a consensus in the Center right now:

Moderate Leftists like myself are readily agreeing that guns ARE necessary for defense and that there ARE responsible gun owners...
Moderate Right-Wingers are also recognizing, I think, that it looks bad socially and politically to tie their innocent desire for defense and recreation to the likes of radicals and conspiracy theorists...

Hence while we have a pro-gun majority, I think we also have a growing anti-assault weapon majority; how large that majority is or becomes will dictate what gets limited and what does not, as different people have different ideas as to what's an assault weapon, but overall, most people now acknowledge SOMETHING has to be done.

obi I would +1 your posts if it wasn't for the all caps words tripping me out while I try to read them. you should let other people glean emphasis from your words, you don't have to force it down their throats.

^Fair point :)

You ask why they shouldn't be banned, but as that's against the current state of affairs shouldn't we instead be asking why they SHOULD be banned? If banning guns (or any subset thereof) can be demonstrated as not having an impact on the problem, then it would be reasonable to suggest banning guns (or any subset thereof) is not the correct solution, and at the very least the discussion then becomes a moot point as it devolves into subjective interpretations of philosophy and politics, IE simply which person holds what worldview and their interpretation of an 'ideal society'.

I know you may be tired of the "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument, but here's a defense of that argument by statistic, which you may not have yet seen. I'll use Wikipedia since you already stated you consider that a credible source. I will list homicide statistics for three countries- the US and two European countries on each extreme of the gun control spectrum.

The homicide rate by firearms in Switzerland- where gun ownership by the citizen militia is mandatory, and firearms are kept in the home, giving an incredibly high ownership rate of exactly the type of weapons that are ALREADY BANNED in the US, is about 1 per 200,000 people. Total homicides are about 1/100,000. In Switzerland, homicides with guns outnumber homicides without, 0.56:0.4/100,000

In the US, which has bans in certain firearms, but not on others, and in general the right to bear arms is protected constitutionally but regional differences apply, we have a firearm-related homicide rate of about 3/100,000, and a non-firearm homicide rate of a little more than half that, for a total of 4.5/100,000. It should be noted that the majority of gun crime in the US occurs in areas of stricter gun control, IE areas more likely to already have blanket bans on firearms of ANY type; this is typically cities but many states overall have tighter laws (For example, Illinois, California, and Maryland have higher firearm homicide rate by percentage of total homicides than Texas, Massachusetts and Colorado are practically tied). This is a point I will return to later. Another point of note is that the vast majority of these crimes are handgun related, weapons you already ceded should not be controlled. Again, I will return to this later.

England has very strict gun control laws, and this reflects in the homicide spread; 0.12:1.33/100,000 for a total of 1.45/100,000. This is among the lowest rate of gun crime in the world, though not the lowest homicide rate. In England the gun control is so strict not even most police carry firearms.

If we quantized gun control and threw these three points up on a graph, we'd see that going from least to most gun control we'd witness a net drop but it'd still rise first. The rate of total homicide would display a net RISE but again a peak in the middle. First and foremost then gun control is not correlated to homicide rate, and only vaguely or ambiguously related to even homicides by firearms. Stricter control does not mean less homicide in a general sense. For a more detailed look at this, again I go back to the US state-by-state analysis, where Texas- a state notorious for its lax control- is merely 15th in the list. New Hampshire, with by far the laxest gun control laws in the control-burdened New England region, is 47th by percentage of overall homicides. To plot amount or severity of gun control legislation (could be quantized by a ratio of number of gun models outlawed to number of gun models legal in any given state) against the percentage of homicides committed by firearms would be an almost random plot- no clear trend would emerge.

England's example proves that for gun control to be at all effective you need to outlaw basically all guns (Which is prohibited by the Constitution, and for good reason; minds more Enlightened in the classical sense than the standards even you hold yourself to had good reason to ensure this right), and in the greater scheme, the reason to implement the plan in the first place (which is, I presume, the eradication of all homicide, which is the unspoken goal of such measures in which gun control is typically advertised as the 'first step', see your "X minus Y" example but projected to its logical conclusion) it isn't even effective at all.

Furthermore, as the majority of firearm-related homicides are committed by handguns- which there is a much more stable defense of from a human rights standpoint- outlawing 'assault weapons' is therefore much more likely to infringe in the rights of law-abiding citizens than criminals. Even then you get into the "If you outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns" angle, though from this analysis it becomes clear this phrase has two meanings. The obvious and textual one is that when guns are outlawed you suddenly made criminals of hundreds thousands of otherwise law-abiding citizens. The intended meaning and the one more often made is that criminals are already breaking the law in committing a crime- gun control enforcement isn't exactly going to deter or stop them. "Where there's a will, there's a way" as the old adage goes. Again as England shows you would have to completely eradicate all forms of firearm for gun control to even APPROACH effectiveness, which is expressly forbidden by the constitution which I will touch upon later.

With all that information it can be demonstrably proved that any limited measure ('assault weapons' only, for example) measure of gun control is not effective as legislation, and therefore it fails BOTH a cost/benefit analysis and a problem/solution analysis (for all you "ends justify the means" folks; the end is not reached therefore the means are not justified) as far as any meaningful criteria of determining whether or not an action should be taken. This is a rather passive defense of the issue, so I'll switch tacks and elaborate on a more active defense.

When the Founding Fathers- which I will remind you are as much "Sons of the Enlightenment" as any other- included the Bill of Rights, it's important to remember their intent. Arguably the first four are the most important, but all ten are means of securing the people from the tyranny of their own government at different levels (starting with very concepts themselves in the first, individuals for the second straight through the middle of the bunch, and ending with securing the states against the federal with ninth and tenth). The Fathers understood that America is not blessed in any way; it was merely a new experiment, and can turn out as corrupted as any other in time. They tried to engineer a good system, but held no illusions that system was perfect. They codified the right for people to overthrow a tyrannical government- they did not limit their critique to just England, and remember several also agitated the French Revolution as well. The Second Amendment was put in place as much to allow people to protect the country from foreign attack as to allow them to mobilize to protect themselves against their own country. Though you've discredited such arguments as 'conspiracies' and 'paranoia' (Which is a CLASSIC ad hominem, and it saddens me you'd stoop to such a low while partaking in what you seem to hold as a respectable debate) that does not in any way change that such arguments was the very intent of the Second Amendment. To hold to this understandably the people would have to be armed as the government they are fighting is armed- with 'military' weapons. I understand that since warfare has changed it has introduced a new battlefield dynamic, but that is no reason to discard the concept altogether, in fact it's all the more reason to allow citizens to secure whatever means they can to achieve parity (And I can see the argument from absurdity coming a mile away here; "Oh so you're saying people should be able to own tanks?" No that is not what I'm saying, nor is it even a logical conclusion of this thought as argument from absurdity is a fallacy). Whether the government is going to kick in people's doors in one year (highly unlikely), ten years (doubt it), a hundred years (definitely within the realm of possibility), or a thousand years from now (will we even last this long?), the lack of immediacy does not in any way make it alright to infringe upon this right; it's not like a tyrannical government will say "Oh we're going to start oppressing you all soon, we better give you back this right we took away when we were more just". The Second Amendment is as much in place as to protect us NOW as it is in place to protect us IN THE FUTURE. Just because the government is playing nice now doesn't mean that in another two hundred and fifty years everything will be just as hunky-dory, and it is that very possibility the ENTIRE Bill of Rights- the first ten amendments as a package deal- was put in place. With this in mind, understand that infringing on any part of the second amendment and discrediting arguments against such infringement as 'paranoia' is exactly the same- not worse or better but equal to- doing the same to the first amendment, because the first and second amendments alone and TOGETHER- both equally important and reliant on each other's integrity- are the people's only defense should the government ever infringe on any others. At the beginning you wonder why people seem to hold the second above the first; they don't. It simply SOUNDS like they do because the second is under much heavier attack than the first. Supporters of the second amendment understand that the first is just as important because together is the only way both of them can be guaranteed, and only through both of them together can the rest be guaranteed.

And, finally, I will depart from my analysis and reasoning to implore something of you personally. There is an old proverb (that I am paraphrasing here as I cannot find the exact text at the moment) that speaks of a man sitting at an old gate, when a younger man comes up to it, traveling the road it obstructs. The man encounters the gate and exclaims in frustration "I don't even know why this gate is here, it should be torn down!" The old man replies "Turn back, then, I will not let you touch this gate until you understand its purpose." Everything that was artificially created exists for a reason. You cannot adequately speak for or against it until you understand its purpose for existing. Dipplayer2004 touched upon this but from the unfortunate angle of personal attack ("Most liberals come at this from a place of ignorance"). You are asking why, and being given an answer, but you turn around and say you don't buy the answer. Just because a philosophy (and philosophy is what all political matters come down to) does not match with yours does not make it invalid, as you yourself indicate with your first response. You can find your answer without asking a question at all, if you simply take the time to try and see the problem through the eyes of those you may disagree with. It may not change your mind, sure, and in fact I highly doubt it will, but you will at least understand why your opponent is your opponent, and respect their position, instead of dismissing their claims that even you point out is valid (your second post/first reply in this thread) and calling them paranoid or conspiracy theorists.

@dipplayer - "Your point is to attempt to portray gun-rights advocates as a bunch of potentially-violent fanatics, who will use weapons to enforce their opinions. That's pretty low." I'm doing no such thing, gunfighter said he would take up arms against the state if they tried to force him to hand over his guns. My point is simple - who should decide gun policy - (a) The current population of America, (b) The legislators who drafted the 2nd Amendment some time ago (c) anyone holding lots of guns.

With regards to your point about how the constitution could be amended, i bow to your understanding about how it could be altered, but that doesn't change the thrust of my arguement which is at what point do you accept the will of the people if at some future time they favoured tighter gun laws? Do you only accept laws if they are supported by a huge majority, or would you still hold on to your guns if overwhelming public opinion and law makers thought otherwise?

["Let me ask you another question if America had a single issue referendum about striking out the second amendment would you bear arms against the state if the America people voted to ditch the clause? If so at what point do you accept the people's verdict 80/20; 90/10; 65/45? "] - Maniac

Our government is expressly structured to deny the country a "Tyranny of the Majority" for reasons like these. If all issues were resolved this way we would have a very dysfunctional country indeed. So I believe even if the result was 95%/5%, that 5% would have the right to rise up, yes, as "The people's verdict" holds no sway over an individual's rights- look at the battles on abortion and same-sex marriage. I have a feeling both issues will be resolved in a 'liberal' (used for literal definition and not political, though here they happen to be the same) outcome, and I support these resolutions (pro-choice and pro-same-sex respectively) even though I personally only agree with the latter, because on the former issue even if the majority of the country agreed with me, it would not be right to infringe upon individual rights, which I feel the issue does.

"You ask why they shouldn't be banned, but as that's against the current state of affairs shouldn't we instead be asking why they SHOULD be banned?"

...I think we've made the case for that already...?

That's a bit of rhetorical nonsense, I'm sorry--

Whether you agree with it or not, the case for why we should have gun control/ban certain guns HAS been made...

Both in the media and in this very thread.

So, yeah, please refer to both the media and this thread for that as, I'm sorry, that's a very nice sounding statement, but a rather hollow one--the gun control lobby here and in the US knows why they feel certain guns should be banned, and the pro-gun people here and in the US know why we think certain guns should be banned...

The rationale against guns is NOT vague, not at all.
You can argue it's flawed...
As many folks here do...
But you cannot argue that we're being vague as to our motivations and why we feel certain guns should be banned.

["Whether you agree with it or not, the case for why we should have gun control/ban certain guns HAS been made..."]

Just as a case against it has been made. At the end of that very paragraph, as well as at the end of the post, I state it ultmately comes down to a philosophical judgment and there is no right or wrong. The entire first two-thrids of that post hwoever was an analysis of the impact of gun legislation, using other parts of the world as a case study, which I feel is as close to an objective case as can be made. The data is unclear, so creating a new law would be a needless adjustment of the system.

In fact I made no argument at all about motivation or rationalization being vague. I made an argument for the EFFECT of such legislation being vague in all cases excepting the most extreme- which is not possible in this situation. Please read my post comprehensively before you critique it.

Skipping past your statistics, not because they're not invalid, but because we've already played the stat game and, quite frankly, both sides have their favorite stats, and I think we all already know each other's song and dance already...

"England's example proves that for gun control to be at all effective you need to outlaw basically all guns (Which is prohibited by the Constitution, and for good reason; minds more Enlightened in the classical sense than the standards even you hold yourself to had good reason to ensure this right),"

1. I'm always puzzled by that rationale, "The Founders put it in, therefore The Founders knew better?" Need I remind you a great deal of these people were also perfectly OK holding slaves, considering human beings as property, and counting slaves as 3/5 of a person?

Do I hate The Founders?
Not at all, I think most of them were BRILLIANT, ADMIRABLE MEN...for their age.
But just as The Founders THEMSELVES encourages free thought and inquiry...
I reserve the right to say "The Founders were wrong wrong *wrong*" about X if they were.

And, you know what?
Sometimes, many times, in fact, The Founders WERE wrong...
Hence the reason our Constitution has been amended more than 20 times...
This does NOT speak to the fact that The Founders were stupid or evil...

But that they were HUMAN.

They couldn't have known in 1789 what the world of 2013 would've been like!
We couldn't have imagined what the what the world of 2013 would've been like!
Just think how much the world has changed in YOUR lifetime!

I've seen cellphones go from enormous bricks to some of the slimmest, most intricate pieces of technology we possess, things that seem straight out of Star Trek...
I've seen the "viewscreen calls" idea of Star Trek come true with Skype...
I've seen a black man rise to the Presidency and Saddam overthrown...
I've seen companies like AOL, Lehman Bros. and Myspace go from top to bottom...
I've seen revolts not only started but FUELED by Social Media groups on Facebook...
I've seen newspapers give way to the online newspapers I read everyday...
I've seen my country go from seemingly-invincible post-Cold War to the target of the most devastating terrorist attack in human history...
I've seen not one, not two, but three of the Western World's great cities in NYC, London, and Madrid all attacked by terrorists...
I've seen all THAT lead to immense questions on civil liberties set against security in the face of such terrorism in the form of The Patriot Act, many Executive Orders, and so on...

Hell, I've even seen the BOSTON RED SOX WIN NOT ONE BUT *TWO* WORLD SERIES!!! :O

The Founders couldn't have foreseen this crazy-if-fun world we live in!

So WHY take their word as Gospel?

I'd almost be tempted to argue that that last sentence gives it away right there; we as a society in America are, as is oft-stated, one of the most religious nations in the Western World...as such, we have a propensity, I'd argue, to take past decrees from people we (rightly) admire as if they were the Ten Commandments or some other, intractable holy order.

Certainly many Americans see the TC and Bill of Rights as similar in that regard; each one's a Decalogue, after all, and both were given by people most Americans admire...

But, regardless of how you feel about the TC (and I think my feelings on it are well-known, but here that's irrelevant, so I'll press on) you CANNOT treat the Bill of Rights that way...

The clincher?

The Founders wouldn't have WANTED YOU to take their word that way, as Gospel, or as unbreakable, unchangeable, literal law.

Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Paine--

All these men helped to forge early America, and all of them were huge proponents of the Enlightenment way of thinking, which was not only highly empirical, but built on the idea that you question EVERYTHING...that nothing and nobody is above change or above critical scrutiny.

That Madison wrote the Constitution as he did when he did does NOT mean he would have written it the same way if he had the chance to do so today.

So I'm sorry, the "wiser men than we" argument doesn't hold.

The Founders, on average, were NOT smarter than those of us today for the same reason that my beloved Shakespeare wasn't smarter--

We simply know more as a people and as a species than we did then.

For Shakespeare, the Copernican/Galilean theory regarding the Earth and Sun was still very new and radical, and it's questionable if Shakespeare, the grand master of the English language and one of the great deep poetic minds of all-time, grasped THAT...

Now consider all that's been discovered SINCE old Willy S. has returned to dust.

It's no point of arrogance when I say I, obiwanobiwan, am smarter than Shakespeare, because EVERYONE HERE IS...not because Shakespeare was stupid, he was BRILLIANT, but just because we know more now. He could still likely school all of us at writing, hence the reason he's still regarded as one of the greatest of all-time, but in terms of sheer knowledge...all of us here know far, far more than old Will because we have a 400 year head start, plain and simple.

And if I can apply that to my hero of heroes, I can apply that to The Founders as well.

The Founders lived in a time when a "military-grade weapon" was a good musket--
NOT when it was an automatic weapon capable of killing dozens and doing so fast.
The Founders lived in a time when an international attack meant a naval attack--
NOT when an inter-continental ballistic missile or, hell, a cyber attack could hit us in minutes.

We live in a different age, and we must act accordingly--

The 2nd Amendment was wonderful.
It was.
I don't hate it, not at all, it was progressive--
For the 18th century

But the same way Shakespeare being "progressive" with women by daring to suggest they could be on par with me in terms of wits (or even--gasp!--smarter than some men!) and that hey, maybe they could do more than just be idle dowries to be married off was progressive for 1600, but his conservative, monarchy-first politics are wholly conservative by today's standards...

So to does the 2nd Amendment, a document once progressive, now become conservative and outdated in its language...after all, it's written for "a well-regulated militia," this taking place in the time when militias were a lot more commonplace and it actually made sense to make provisions for them.

NOW.

Do I mean to say it's OK to completely ignore the 2nd Amendment?
Absolutely not.
It may be a touch on the arcane side, but regardless of my feelings there, it's the law.
That being SAID...

Acknowledging X is the law and saying "X is above question or reproach BECAUSE it's the law/BECAUSE "smarter" people wrote it centuries ago" is absurd.

The 2nd Amendment, amazingly, has nothing to say about AR-15s.
The reason?
It was written well before such technology was even a gleam in that mad genie's eye.

But the genie is out of the bottle now, and you can't pretend it isn't, or act as if it's still 1789.
You have to address this as if it's 2013...because it is.

I'll say it again:

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" DOES NOT =
"People should be allowed ALL ARMS."

If you disagree, then please explain why you'd take issue with someone owning a nuclear bomb.
I have to imagine at that point even the most ardent "for defense" arms defenders will balk.

SO.

Why are bombs not OK, but guns are?
The 2nd says nothing about not allowing bombs...
Possibly because nuclear bombs had not yet been discovered?

The 2nd was written at a time when the most destructive thing you could own domestically, just about, was a cannon.

Do you think that The Founders would be perfectly OK with people owning, say, rocket launchers?
If not, why?
"The right to bear arms" after all...



More than anything, I have to end by restating--

1. The Founders DID *NOT* know better than us just because we've built them monuments and they're (again, rightly) legends...they didn't know how to run a 2013 America better than WE do.

2. You cannot defend your position, thus, by clinging to The Founders or "what The Founders wrote/said," again, these are also the same people, in many cases, who would look at our current President as 3/5 of a person (and even if you despise Obama, I have to imagine everyone here is above considering ANYONE sub-human like that.)

3. You have to consider the 2nd Amendment in the context of the world it was written in, and not to do so is both fallacious and to a certain extent a bit of legal cowardice...

Granted I've never gone myself, obviously, and correct me if I'm wrong, UK citizens:

But my Shakespeare professor last semester (and current English Renaissance Lit professor) spent a good few years at studying in England, and according to her, you DO NOT get up from the table to pee in the middle of a fancy dinner party and break social convention, and likewise, actors who go to The Black Duck get very drunk in-between shows.

:p

OK, all that's what she said as well, and had to say it, but relevantly--

She said there's quite a bit of English law from centuries back still on the books, technically, and, as is the case when you have a centuries-old nation, there are quite a few rather wacky technicalities from the 1700s one fellow student exploited before a professor exploited a similar 1700s-era, arcane, no-one-follows-it-anymore technicality to get back at said smartass student.

I obviously have no way of knowing if that's true or not, but if it is...and I have to imagine there's at least some degree of truth to her story...

Then clearly laws still on the books can become arcane, and you can't just blindly expect those who came before you to be in possession of more enlightened smarts, as it were.

:)

Again you skip over the stats when the stats are the main thrust of the post. If we've been over this song and dance already, then please lets hear an encore. You skip over the only part of my post that is actually falsifiable to go back to picking the philosophical fight that I already said was pointless! Even though we hold completely different stances, YOU ARE NOT WRONG THERE. I AM NOT WRONG THERE. Can we move on? That part of my post was simply for a feeling of completion, but since it's obviously too distracting, I will simply cease to defend it. Please review the actual original point I was trying to make.

My stats said- not cherry picked but straight off a list from a source you deemed credible, says that WHETHER THE LAW IS RIGHT OR WRONG, it would have little effect, thus not worth implementing. Can you provide statistics to the contrary, or alternately, can you defend implementing a law we already know will not even be marginally effective?

I am making that graph I alluded to right now (% of homicides committed by firearms versus gun control severity). I'm using two sources- one is the Wikipedia article on gun violence in the US by state which is sourced from official US governmental data, and the other is the Brady Campaign to prevent Gun Violence- a pro-gun-control group. If this graph- sourced from not your opponents but your supporters, so you cant claim it's cherry-picked- shows that the laws will have little to no effect, will you be able to present equally compelling evidence to the contrary? If you already can I'd love to hear it.

As an American,

GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! GUNS!

"I am making that graph I alluded to right now (% of homicides committed by firearms versus gun control severity). I'm using two sources- one is the Wikipedia article on gun violence in the US by state which is sourced from official US governmental data, and the other is the Brady Campaign to prevent Gun Violence- a pro-gun-control group. If this graph- sourced from not your opponents but your supporters, so you cant claim it's cherry-picked- shows that the laws will have little to no effect, will you be able to present equally compelling evidence to the contrary? If you already can I'd love to hear it."

If you're talking about the US, than sure--

As I've already said, time and time and time again--

On average, the states with the 10 most strict gun control laws have lower homicide/armed assault rates than the 10 most lenient states in the nation.

Further, compare the gun death totals for the US and the UK.

You've already said it yourself, the UK has a low-low-low total, whereas ours is pretty high in the Western World...

Excepting countries where "they system is broken," as it were (by which I mean nations like Syria and the Israel-Gaza region, as for obvious reasons there's going to be plenty of tension and death in regions with civil wars and inter-racial violence, as well as most South American countries tied up in the Drug Cartel, as where drugs go, guns and death tend to follow, and many of those nations' leaderships are thus puppets or impotent) the US has one of the highest gun death rates and totals in the Western World.

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/335-156/12554-58-murders-a-year-by-firearms-in-britain-8775-in-us

58 murders via guns in the UK according to that article VS. 8775 in the US

Sorry, but it isn't even close in the stats game, you can't win with stats--

AT BEST you can twist statistics your way and show counterexamples to the examples I just gave and we're at a draw again and back where we started, neither statistical argument giving us an edge...

And if that's not the case, well, my side wins...8775 to 58, as it were.

You've already admitted that the UK has some of the strictest gun control laws in the West, so you can't really claim it has a lower total for another reason (even adjusted for the difference in size, according to the article, "Since Britain's population is 1/5 that of US, [58 murders] is equivalent to 3,095 US murders," so even if we allow for the differences in population size, the UK system of gun control wins here by more than a 2:1 margin.



Quite simply, I skip past the stats here as

1. We've already gone over them ad naseum,
2. I started this thread to ask why psychologically and principally the pro-gun people here defend AR-15/assault weapon ownership as if it were a God-given right, and
3. Quite simply, the stats are either a draw or NOT in your favor anyway.

You're already twisting stats by not including rates per set amount of population- recognize that my stats listed per unit of 100,000 population, as is the reporting standard. The US has far more people overall, of course it's going to have more murder. (and tried to head my off by accusing I'd do the same thing, which I will demonstrate clearly I am not)

The article goes on to do the basic math you would not, and arrives at better represented numbers. However it has already been pointed out that Britain's brand of absolute gun control is not feasible in the United States due to the Second Amendment- and you already ceded that an absolute ban would be inappropriate because you recognized a handgun's utility for defense. Britain is therefore an inappropriate defense for your stated position. Stop moving the goalposts and please chose one: Absolute ban on all guns, or allow handguns and hunting rifles but not 'assault weapons'.

Your statement about 10 best vs 10 worst, see that's a valid stat. We're getting somewhere. But, again, does it account for population variance? (From the way the data I am receiving direct from government sources, this does not look like it will hold up anyway)

Now, Britain and Switzerland both have much lower murder rates than the US, gun-oriented or otherwise. Switzerland in fact lower than Britain. Gun ownership rate alone, then, isn't the factor is it?

I have no doubt that, if you're dedicated and educated enough, you'd have a rebuttal for my evidence likewise. If you don't, of course, you'd have to cede the point, and you don't strike me as the person who would do so with just a single graph, no matter how rock-solid it is. I welcome the attempt, and will try to counter-rebut that.

Now as you say, this round would be a draw and we end back up at where we started. But we made progress; we presented, parsed, and rebutted factual information. That's how debates work- it isn't just spouting philosophy and ideology at each other until someone capitulates. Congratulations, you have entered the world of debate as it was meant to be. There are no quick victories.

Looks like you're top/bottom claim, at least as it directly pertains to the issue on hand, that is, when you look at it as % firearm homicide rate instead of just total homicide rate (and wouldn't you agree the former is more relevant than the latter? Murder is already illegal, afterall) is incorrect. The Brady Campaign- a pro-gun-control lobbying group, says that if you average the ten states with the lowest percentage of firearm homicides together, you get a result that would merely rank 22nd in their list of states by gun control strictness, in a four-way tie. If we remove a single state from that number, Hawaii, as an outlier (with a score of fifty compared to every other single-digit score, including two '0's for "worst gun laws possible") the score drops to 41st place, in a three-way tie. That is when you consider nine of the ten states with the LOWEST firearm homicide rate, 80% of the country has stricter gun laws than they do.

Without further ado, here is the graph. The firearm homicide rate is expressed on the X-axis as a percentage compared to overall homicides according to data given by he US Census Bureau and US Bureau of Justice Statistics, as presented by Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States_by_state). The Y axis displays each state's score according to the Brady Campaign, the higher the numerical score, the stricter that state's gun laws are. That information was retrieved from a publication on their own website (http://www.bradycampaign.org/xshare/stateleg/scorecard/2011/2011_Brady_Campaign_State_Scorecard_Rankings.pdf)

http://i.imgur.com/CRHlUje.jpg This is the scatterplot.

As you can see, there is absolutely no correlation to gun control strictness (when not taken to the extreme, again in my last post I explained why Britain is an untenable example unless you choose to go back on what you said earlier about handguns being a valid self-defense weapon- which I'm welcoming you to do if that is how you truly feel and would then admit that your perspective has merit) and the reduction of homicides via firearms.

What do you have to counter the information presented here?

Glad to see the great state of Iowa with the lowest murder rate in the nation, at least in 2004. You've heard of "Iowa nice"? It's true. We just don't like killing people around here. We do like guns though ;-)

"You're already twisting stats by not including rates per set amount of population"

They adjusted for the US/UK population differences...

3905 is the number adjusted, again, still more than 2x the US death-by-gun total.

I already addressed that in the post. I also went on tos tate why the UK does not support the position you have personally expressed to hold. WIll you change your position, or discard UK as evidence in your favor?

Do you have a rebuttal for the claim that the laws have no effect, as supported by the graph I posted?

5 people have been accidentally shot at various "Gun Appreciation Day" events.

lol

^

http://news.yahoo.com/three-hurt-firearm-accident-north-carolina-gun-show-234451916.html

"I am not restricting your right to defend yourself by saying weapons that are military-grade and often used for offensive, murderous purposes, in this country and around the world, shouldn't be allowed-[...]"

Um, yes you are, duh. You're not removing it altogether, but you're CERTAINLY restricting it.

As for the "logical error" I'm committing by "equating" guns and the right to defense, please let me remind you who it was that first equated those two in this context -- that would be you.

Others have made the point tons of times, including dipplayer frequently, so I don't feel there's really any point, but anyway, yes, as any knowledge of history would show you, highly civilized societies often degenerate to places where a citizen would need protection either against or in spite of his government. Both of those have happened frequently.

And yes, my other point still remains, youtube references notwithstanding. Not everything the government does gets filmed and put on youtube. I'm sorry if you think it does. Of course, as dp and others have pointed out, breakdown of civil order is just as big a problem, and another situation where serious guns would be very useful.

well then you can continue the circular logic by challenging that idea that heavy guns and artillery are needed to protect from civil disorder, since the practice of freely distributing/selling/not regulating said weapons is easily a cause of said civil disorder.

the amount of disorder contributed by the free reign of such weapons should the debating point here

@Clear Skies – firstly welcome to webdip. I must say that as someone who is against the private ownership of guns, I find your arguments extremely well reasoned and presented. I disagree with them; but you have raised the level of debate and caused me and others to address certain points.

I should point out that I live in the UK and believe strongly that America’s gun law is a matter for Americans, I only post my opinion in the same way Americans and others discuss European socialism or China’s single child policy.

You said that “Our government is expressly structured to deny the country a "Tyranny of the Majority" for reasons like these. If all issues were resolved this way we would have a very dysfunctional country indeed. So I believe even if the result was 95%/5%, that 5% would have the right to rise up, yes, as "The people's verdict" holds no sway over an individual's rights.” A point well made. But what about the “Tyranny of the Minority”? Should I be able to prevail my view on others if I carry a big enough stick? Society can not organised so that anybody can opt out of things they disagree with by citing individual rights. If a society is to function as a democracy we need to abide by the outcomes of that democracy, if someone wants to sleep with children or animals society quite rightly will seek to stop it; it infringes the individuals right to do what he likes, but society has, in my opinion the right to limited certain rights. I am not of course suggesting that gun lobbyist are in the same camp as people who wish to sleep with animals or children.

You make the point that the drafters of the second amendment knew better than we do what was required. I don’t accept this point. People have the self determination and self government otherwise what is the point of electing our representative if we are just going to say all issues have already been discussed and agreed upon therefore they can never be altered. Even the second amendment altered something.

You make a very good argument about the UK, Switzerland and the USA. If I understand you correctly you are saying if gun control is to be effective then all guns need to be banned as in England’s model. I think we can agree that such a policy is just not possible. You draw the conclusion that if we can’t get to zero guns and be effective that we shouldn’t alter the existing policy if there is no discernable benefit. As I say, this is a really good argument. I think its flaw is that the USA and Switzerland are too very different countries, you make the point that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” Switzerland may have more people less inclined to kill people than the USA or England; Why? Well they are one of the richest countries in the world only 3% would be adjudged ‘poor’ and less than 3% claim any kind of state benefit. You would expect countries with less social problems to have lower crime rates.

In other threads I supported the notion of gun insurance and tariff payouts for innocent victims (nor those killed or injured while committing an offence). The idea is that every gun needs insuring and the insurance company pays out if that gun is used to kill or injure someone. The gun insurance industry then becomes motivated to do proper checks on all gun owners. This doesn’t seek to ban all guns, but could make a difference to the gun crime rate.

I note your argument that gun ownership can prevent a possible government tyranny in the future. I disagree that the real lives of innocent victims should be sacrificed in order to possibly prevent some possible event many years in the future.

In summary my questions are.
(1) Should a gun totting tyrannical minority of 5% be able to ride roughshod over the wishes of the 95%?
(2) Should we now decide not to pass any new laws about anything anywhere as all points have already been discussed and decided?
(3) Do you think gun insurance could address some of the problems without violating the constitution?