There Have Been 5 Major Shootings in the U.S. in the Past Week Alone

Why do none of you gun advocates respond to my earlier post?



*statistics from a study by the US Justice Department

Guns are used by people primarily to shoot people they know. They aren't used for protection and they aren't used as much by random criminals. Think about that. That means the convenience of a gun nearby is helping people premeditate the lethal intent and lethal result of someone they know.

To compare a modern US society to Stalin, N.Korea, just shows how primitive and archaic gun advocates think. The reality is that gun advocates tie their pervasive fear of being criminalized, love of guns, and need to assert masculinity to owning a gun. By doing so, they lie in arguments and have created a society that has 9 guns for every 10 people (gun ownership has declined per capita in the US every year - the intelligent people are voting through action).

Gun ownership is not masculinity or protection. It's the exact opposite. It's cowardice, fear, and the creation of convenience for lethal results by people you know and love. All sane and righteous people can become weak and perverse at times. You don't need a gun laying around to help them down that direction when they could be helped back into the right direction.

Just trade in your lethals for non-lethals - why are you gun advocates so stubborn?

 

The gun laws in the us are one of the reason why I do not want to live in the us.

The opinions some of the posters here have are really interesting. I wonder in what type of world they live in. They make it sound like they live in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. Maybe the US is just such a messed up place that you actually need a gun to protect your family (I wonder how many of the pro gun people have actually used a gun to protect their family).

The one argument I do not understand is that since guns are not the sole problem we shouldn't tackle the gun problem. So if having more restrictive gun law do not get rid of all the mureders why have them (since IMHO saving 1 life is worth having better laws).

Ofcourse there are more problems that should be adressed, but having so many gun and such easy access to guns makes it easier for these idiotic people to kill people.

Treeman, you have been in the army. You understand how important it is to have training to properly use guns. Do you support it being legal to own and carry an assault riffle in public?

 

Jesus Christ yes there is. The only problem is gun nuts like yourself would rather protect your fetish for gun ownership instead of working towards a solution.

It's like slamming your head against the wall over and over and over again.

 

Says the guy who packs heat everywhere he goes just in case a brown guy decides to attack him.

No I remember why I found you so damn annoying. For a second one can almost convince themself that you're a semi-intelligent poster but the more one reads the more one realizes you're just another clown.

 

Looks like maybe 30% or less could be chalked up to "convenience of a nearby gun" pretty close to stranger gun shots actually. 50% are "other acquaintances." Basically meaning you know the person who shoots you.

You getting killed by your drug dealer falls in that category? Rival gang member you have beef with? Etc.

So potentially 70% or so of gun violence is chalked up to someone that is either a stranger or an abstract "other acquaintance" outside of spouse, family and boyfriend/girlfriend.

Also, illicit drugs kill more people via overdose or poison than all gun homicides per year in the United States. So do prescription drugs.

I personally have no issue with gun regulation. However, I find the left's obsession with gun control odd when that same party embraces loosening the restrictions on drugs. Gun violence in schools is a tragedy, but it's also rare compared to drug deaths in schools.

I'm not sure what it is about guns that makes them such a bane of existence for liberals. Is it the silly masculine identification with guns by many on the right? Is it the correlation between guns and war?

Legalize drugs, criminalize guns.

 

Except his chart appears to be just criminal homicides - it doesn't include non-fatal criminal shootings & accidental shootings & suicides. it's just a fraction of the actual gun violence. I guess you're not an actuary, so you can't be blamed.

The correlation between gun violence and guns is 100%, which appears to be largely preventable based on available empirical evidence within and without the US.

 

If "guns" are a reason you don't want to live in the USA, then your perspective is skewed. You are very, very, very unlikely to be a victim of gun violence in USA. I can think of a number of day to day issues that would or should dissuade someone from moving to USA, but "guns" are way down the list. Also most of USA is not a slum and affluent. This is coming from a man that loves Western Europe and spends a quarter of his time there.

 

The correlation between drug deaths and drugs is 100%.

 

Good point - let's regulate legal guns like we regulate legal drugs then.

 

I lean slight left (now anyways) on most issues, but not guns.

As I get older, I think the right to bear arms is sacred and should be protected at all costs. Now that I have seen how our quickly our rights can be stripped away (Patriot Act), NSA, etc.

Let me be clear, I have never owned or fired a gun, nor do I intend to.

Gun violence is tragic, but if I wanted to kill a lot of people and a gun was not available to me, I would simply get in my car and find a highly populated area of pedestrians, which would allow me to kill just as many if not more.

I believe that gun violence is sensationalized by the media, and while tragic, the net "Death" effect from guns is likely lower than many other areas (food, shelter, water, cars, disease, alcohol), so I find it a bit silly to focus in on guns.

 

We've outlawed illicit drugs and more people die from them than guns.

We regulate legal prescriptions and more people die from than guns.

I'm actually not opposed to regulation, as I've already said. I also said that outlawing guns completely would probably stop school shootings, or at least greatly reduce them due to the nature of those crimes.

However, my question is why do you think regulation of guns will be so much more successful than regulation of drugs?

In fact, many on this board think we should stop regulation of drugs.

 

No you probably wouldn't. But anyway fine - we have many more ways to keep you from being an ******* driver than from keeping you from being an ******* gun owner. I'm fully confident that there is no inverse relationship between motor vehicle fatalities and gun violence (i.e., reducing one won't necessarily raise the other.)

 

Which makes the arguments for guns guns guns so funny
The chances of you being involved in gun play is not that likely
UNLESS YOU SEEK IT OUT!!!!

i.e. being involved in criminality, Join the police or some such protection related job, etc

Rocket River

 

You misunderstand my post.

If I were intent on a mass violence spree, which I presume is what we want to prevent, I could still likely carry out my objective with or without a gun.

 

What is the relevance of absolute numbers like this? How many incidents of drug use are there compared to gun use, and what percentage of each result in death?

We also regulate nuke ownership, and the number of nuke deaths per year is pretty low. Is that proof that regulating weapons works?

 

Honestly this "guns don't kill the most people" argument is so stupid on its face and has been debunked so many times...It doesn't matter that it's not the leading cause of death or violence....if it's preventable at minimal cost, you stop it. Enhanced background checks, insurance, taxes, etc are all pretty minimal costs.

Guns are an integral part of a signficant amount of deaths and violence in the US, and the empirical evidence shows us (both in the US and outside the US) that the fewer guns there are per person/region, the rate of gun violence goes way down. This is not really hard to see.

And it is in fact achievable to remove guns from large portions of the US. There are large swathes of the country in which gun ownership (both legal/illegal) is incrdibly low. The easiest way to do this is to increase the cost of doing so.

The same generally applies to drugs btw. When illegal drugs are cheap and freely available, their use spreads and proliferates. Think the crack epidemic of the 1990's. When supply actually is constrained, they become more expensive and harder to find. Same for legal drugs - think of when drugs go generic or OTC - usage increases.k

Why do you think the two are perfect analogues? The two products are inherently different (not to mention the huge specturm of what the generic term "drugs" encompasses) and I don't see why a regulatory regime in one is the perfect predictor for another. And if you're referring to imported illegal drugs, the supply chain for a kilo of coke vs. a Bushmaster rifle to the American consumer could not be more different. I suppose you could say that if we shut down all gun factories overnight (which, btw, nobody is proposing.) eventually an underground homemade gunsmithing trade/gunrunning boats would pop up in their place. But again, that's a 40 foot tall straw man.

But regardless of that - you're basically answering your own question. The regulation of prescription drugs in the US has, by and large, been pretty successful in the last 100 or so years since Roosevelt & the progressives began it, striking a balance between innovation, utility and safety. A smiliar system of regualation for firearms is more than achievable (licensing, insurance, etc).

 

But your'e a lot less likely to be able to do so effectively, and further the barriers to doing so are harder. And that's a good thing, because it might not deter you, it would probably deter others.

There's a reason why people who use commit mass violence use guns - it's the most efficient means of doing so. There's a reason why armies use guns, its' the most efficient means of killing people.

 

Mass violence sprees are the big news, but I don't think they are the primary prevention goal - regular everyday deaths are a much bigger concern and problem. But that said, even when it comes to mass violence sprees, the easier it is to do, the more likely someone is to actually do it successfully. If you can get a bomb at a neighborhood 7-11, its more likely some low level punk will blow something up than if they had to travel across the country to secure one.

 

That is your perspective, and I can understand it. However, that is not how many people view it. To them, guns are not just for defense against someone else with a gun. To them, they like to hunt, like going to the range and believe that guns are ingrained in the basic fabric of America.

 

Not that it would matter to anyone, and I know that no libtard would ever click one of my links for fear that something I claim might actually be correct, but...

Professor: Statistics show mass shootings not on the rise

http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2014/06/12/professor-statistics-show-mass-shootings-not-on-the-rise/

It's CNN, so it might be safe for a libtard to click. Or are they lumped in with Faux News now in the rightwingconspiracycomplex?