But that would be taken into account by looking at murders. If you get rid of 10,000 gun deaths, and stabbing deaths only go up 1,000 because it is easier to survive a madman with a knife, then the murders went down 9,000. If you get rid of 10,000 gun deaths and the stabbing deaths go up by 10,000 because you aren't defending yourself from a madman with a knife with your gun anymore, then the murders go down zero. So looking at murders without the gun qualification is a better picture. Moderate is weaker than I would like as evidence in taking away people's rights, especially when you look behind those numbers at everything that I mentioned. Even RAND isn't saying it is a strong case, I think you are letting your bias color your views. You can already do that. Your chances of being filled with holes from rifle fire while shopping are infinitesimal. I don't think law abiding people should be subjected to additional scrutiny because someone else wants to kill himself. If you try to kill yourself, I don't care if you use a gun or pills or jump off a bridge (also a gun is really only more successful than poisoning/cutting, slightly more effective than hanging). No more people are surviving jumping off a 30-story building than are surviving a self-inflicted gunshot wound. If the preschooler had trauma care training, depending on the injury, they may have been able to save the one-year-old. More importantly, if the pre-schooler had been taught gun safety by the parent, they may not have shot the one-year-old in the first place. Are you under the impression that it is somehow bad to teach people how to help others? Breonna Taylor didn't stay in bed, she was standing in a hallway next to her boyfriend that just shot a cop. Ultimately this is fearmongering though. Go ahead and knock on doors, walk down streets, go to the mall and the park and the school and the church and work and concerts and parades and theatres and post offices and restaurants. It is very, very unlikely you will be shot. This comic doesn't even mention the most common forms of gun homicides, which are gang violence and intimate partner/family violence. Why do you think that is? They want you to think these incidents are representative of gun violence and that they are very common and you are in danger. They are not common, you are not in danger, you really just shouldn't waste a minute of your life worrying about guns, especially since the person trying to make you worry can't even get the one incident they name checked correct.
I’ve just skimmed the last page of this thread but want to address one point. Yes the threat of getting shot in any given daily reaction is very small. Saying though That means we shouldn’t worry about firearms is a misleading. In any daily event that happens a lot such as getting on an airplane the threat of crashing is very small. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have safety regulations for air travel. In fact given the history of aviation the amount of regulation is what has made air travel very safe. The same thing could be said about cars. We drive cars a lot and car ownership and use is very very high in the US. In any car trip you aren’t likely to get in an accident. Using that logic then we should just do away with safety regulations on automobiles. Given the history of automobiles though we see massive improvements in safety including lives saved when new regulation like mandatory seat belts were out in place. So yes it’s very unlikely that any of us today will get shot just going about our daily lives. It’s also unlikely that we’ll be in a car crash, place crash or suffer food poisoning. That doesn’t mean that such things don’t happen and if you look at history when those things were much more common it’s becaue if regulation that has made them rare.
It's not - there's no data to suggest it's a zero sum game, in fact it's not. RAND is not saying its weak - it defines moderate with quite a high standard - I literally quoted the language from the study. And it's not infinitesimal. You have a higher chance of being killed in a mass murder than dying on an airline flight - and airline flights are far more regulated! And people are put through all sorts of inconvenience. Look, you can't even concede an inch here - not one bit against every point and study put in front of you - you always find a way to push back on everything. You have to realize you are dug into a position and not willing to move. Not willing to concede a millimeter. When someone feels they are 100% right and won't acknowledge a point against many other people and evidence, it says something about them. It's up to you to see what you are doing, to have the self-awareness to see your own bias. You don't want gun regulations. Ok, fine. You don't want regulations - fine. But don't sit there and tell us that they don't make a difference or that your decision is justified because every gun death would just be replaced with another weapon like hands. You can say you feel that personal convenience with gun trumps saving lives, because that is what you are saying. Just don't spin it man. Own it.
lol for real gotta skip and scroll past walls of texts to see if any recent news about an event was posted How long is this gonna go on?
What do you mean it isn't a zero sum game. Of course it isn't. There isn't a pool of murders that have to be assigned to different methods. I am talking about measurement. There is no reason to only count one type of murders when discussing the efficacy of changing policy with regard to saving lives. That's why the proper measure is all murders, not gun deaths, so you can see what effect if any the policy change has on other murder methods. I didn't say RAND said it was weak, I said RAND didn't say it was strong. Clearly they said there was moderate support that it may reduce homicides. The moderate support is two studies by the same professor that also blames police killing black suspects at a rate higher than their population percentage on systemic racism. It is infinitesimal. That it is higher than another thing that is also infinitesimal doesn't change that. We should also have far less security theater at the airport. The amount of security that we have to get on a train or bus should be more than sufficient. I am happy to concede things all the time. I totally reversed on drug legalization in the past 20 years. My issue is that all counterexamples are ignored and things for which there is much stronger evidence are ignored. This is not a claim I have made. I said you should use that as your measurement. Maybe murders would go down, maybe not. If you only look at gun deaths, you are ignoring the possibility that even one gun murder would be replaced with a different weapon. I don't think we should implement policies that affect everyone to try to solve problems caused by a tiny minority. We should instead focus on the people causing the problems. It isn't a matter of personal convenience, it is a matter of infringing on people's rights for dubious benefits when there are better means available to address the issue. When states with high gun ownership, lax gun laws, and Constitutional carry can have the absolute lowest murder rate in America, it tells me gun laws and gun ownership cannot possibly be the most important factor in murder rates. On the other hand, we do know that there are specific neighborhoods with high rates of violence, generally speaking in urban centers with criminal street gangs. To me, our focus would be better spent there than trying to make it more difficult for law abiding citizens in Utah to get a gun. Feel free to use your ignore function.
Why do we have to hear from both sides? Media loves giving these idiots a platform and trying to normalize wack job behavior
I do have sympathy for the position espoused by @StupidMoniker and other firearm owners that yes most firearm owners do at least try to behave responsibly including handling and storing their weapons. The problem is that there are many who don’t especially many who decide to open carry their weapons to supermarkets or other places. This goes to whether it is legal there are many things that are legal but still a bad idea. While many people do act responsibly for instance I suspect if most of us suddenly were given control of a nuke we would take it seriously it is the fear that there will be a few even if very tiny who want while we don’t allow civilians to have WMD. While it’s unlikely that most people don’t become mass shooters we already see way too many who do. The argument that we hear is that this a right and therefore the government shouldn’t interfere with it ignores that rights should come with responsibilities. The situation we have now is that the victims of mass shootings are price paid for that right rather than considering how to add responsibilities.
The responsibility is to not misuse the firearms. This responsibility is enshrined in a number of laws at both the state and federal level. It is, except under very specific circumstances, illegal to discharge a firearm in public, to shoot someone, to use a weapon to destroy public or private property, etc.
Have to admit, I kind of like the visual tension of a Mr Rogers look and posture with a rifle and MAGA hat. "You are special. I am special. And my gun is special. Would you like to play with my gun?"
Sorry I didn’t see this earlier. That goes to my pint though. Certainly a private individual wouldn’t be allowed to set off a nuke, of for that matter a pound of C4. We don’t simply allow private individuals to own nukes or C4 without a lot of regulatory controls. The problem with your argument is that it relies on too much after the fact. While for public safety we do recognize prevention. For example it’s a crime to be publicly high while on heroin. It’s recognized though that heroin is dangerous enough that possession of it is also a crime. Responsible possession of heroin is outweighed by that many irresponsible use heroin.
It’s been a year since Uvalde happened and while there have been some small improvements there isn’t really anything stopping another Uvalde from happening. Most likely we will have another Uvalde in the near future.
There have been 55 school shootings since Uvalde. Most of them got little or no coverage. 40 people were killed, including 6 of the shooters. The only one I have seen much coverage of was the Nashville Christian school.
