Originally posted by Tzeentch
Welcome back, DDM.
Thank you. I assume you mean that.
Originally posted by Omega Vision
If you're saying that the way to reduce gun violence is to ameliorate the American gun culture, I agree.The first step of that? Stop enshrining the Second Amendment so much. 🙂
I cannot disagree with anything in this post. 👆
Originally posted by dadudemon
I cannot disagree with anything in this post. 👆
Actually, I spoke too soon. Gun culture is not the issue. Not even close. Gun culture actually has almost nothing at all to do with gun violence. That's the red herring I was talking about.
We could mandate that every last American has to have 5 guns and carry one gun and that would do nothing for gun violence (or it would slightly reduce it). Making more strict gun laws would be the same (but some say that gun violence would slightly increase because of the protection idea. One study said people prevent a violent crime happening like 200,000 times a year or something...self reported, however: could be confirmation bias).
If you we normalized the SES of the bottom 15% of Americans, we'd see gun violence drop by a significant majority. There's your problem. Tackle that. Resolve that. That stops the gun violence and violence in general (but not all).
Originally posted by Star428
The Nazis disarmed their citizens too so none of their citizens could fight back.Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it- George Santayana (Spanish philosopher)
Wake up, sheep, before it's too late.
Bottom line is history has shown many times how bad things often happen to the citizens of countries who've had their guns taken away from them by the government. If the citizens had still had their guns then they at least would've had a fighting chance. People can dispute the facts all they want to just because they don't like that those facts don't support their ridiculous argument that guns should be banned but it still doesn't change those facts whether they like them or not.
I'm done debating this ridiculous argument with hard-headed people who keep disputing facts that are right in their faces. IMO, the fact that there is even any argument at all about whether or not the second amendment should be taken away or even modified is silly.
I'm not actually aware of any particular example where the government taking away guns has then been followed by some sort of citizen catastrophe, let alone enough cases to describe this as 'often'.
Hitler, of course, did in no way disarm his citizens, only the Jews- and this, of course, was part of a much wider programme of Jewish persecution, not some cunning, advanced preamble. In broad terms, Hitler actually relaxed most gun control laws compared to the Weimar Republic. And in any case, having guns would not have protected the Jews one bit, seeing as it was mostly other (and logically speaking, also armed) citizens that were turning them in, and in any case the Jewish resistance movements found guns easily enough (it being war and all).
Asking whether there should be an argument at all is also a bit weird. The Second Amendment is a literally extraordinary piece of legislation- it is very unusual in global terms and its existence does need proper justifying. Justifying it on the grounds that 'otherwise the government might come and oppress us all' is also in of itself an extraordinary claim that needs justifying. I'm sitting here in the virtually guns-free UK and feeling pretty liberated, all things considered. Also with very low gun crime.
Not that these things are instantly transferable- there's a cultural thing with guns in the US that would take more than a law change to sort out. It'll be a generational thing to ease the guns mentality out of North America. In any case, the text of the Second Amendment is a joke in modern day terms- a 'well-regulated militia' has pretty much no connection at all to what we see the SA used for in the modern day as the whole idea of citizen militias has gone out the window, in the US as much as anywhere. The circumstances under which this law was created no longer exist, so this is now more an argument about defining what the US actually is, culturally.
As per the topic- plenty of people saw this as an Obama thing but there's little evidence for that other than that a lot of gun control advocates wanted it to be him because it makes an easy focal point for them to rally against. After all, it's been stopped from happening, and if this really was Obama throwing his weight around, he would have done it anyway as he doesn't give a damn about the arguments raised against it.
As for banning assault rifles vs. handguns- no doubt, handguns are the far more dangerous thing. But they'll be the last to go as they are the most widely carried thing; you can't start there in the US because of the mentality (in most countries with gun control laws, handguns got taken out first). The assault rifle look of the AR-15 is symbolic- it represents the militarisation of segments of American citizen life. As I am of the opinion that said militarisation is a problem, banning such guns would be an excellent first step.
It'll be a LONG time before this is done- I hope in my lifetime but we'll see. In the long-term, though, the US cannot isolate itself forever and its exposure to global influence will erode these erratic parts of its culture- just as it is finally giving way on healthcare, even if only in small ways.
That link's no help. The information is not sourced and I can instantly dismiss some of them with just a glance- for example, in the China period mentioned, that was during a civil war, so not only was there no single authority that could even ban guns to start with, the country was tearing itself to pieces irrelevant of legislation anyway. There were millions dying before 1948 as well, in the same conflict. Calling the effects of a war 'murder', trying to imply that a government was massacring defenceless citizens, is very disingenuous. Incidentally, the Government lost that war.
I'm afraid you are not very credible when you say you do not give a damn. If you want to proved examples, you will have to do a lot better- and if you want to establish that this happens 'often', you will have to do this repeatedly to show it is at least a reasonable outcome rather than an outlier. As it is, it just looks like you are using fake historical claims to defend your own interests.
Originally posted by dadudemonMake no mistake gun culture plays a hand in gun violence. How much so though I do not know.
Actually, I spoke too soon. Gun culture is not the issue. Not even close. Gun culture actually has almost nothing at all to do with gun violence. That's the red herring I was talking about.We could mandate that every last American has to have 5 guns and carry one gun and that would do nothing for gun violence (or it would slightly reduce it). Making more strict gun laws would be the same (but some say that gun violence would slightly increase because of the protection idea. One study said people prevent a violent crime happening like 200,000 times a year or something...self reported, however: could be confirmation bias).
If you we normalized the SES of the bottom 15% of Americans, we'd see gun violence drop by a significant majority. There's your problem. Tackle that. Resolve that. That stops the gun violence and violence in general (but not all).
I do know that dangerous weapon often gets treated like a toy because the way many Americans have grown up seeing it. A kid from my school was accidentally shot while he and some buddies were out drinking and shooting cans.
Make no mistake the fact that we revere the gun as some kind of toy and right contributes to the problem. Once again though I'm not willing give a percentage but on a personal level I do think eliminating the gun culture would help making gun regulation easier and safer.
Originally posted by UshgarakPersonally I think the gun culture is starting to die out in the US. Maybe not from an overall mental picture perspective but gun ownership is down in the us.
I'm not actually aware of any particular example where the government taking away guns has then been followed by some sort of citizen catastrophe, let alone enough cases to describe this as 'often'.Hitler, of course, did in no way disarm his citizens, only the Jews- and this, of course, was part of a much wider programme of Jewish persecution, not some cunning, advanced preamble. In broad terms, Hitler actually relaxed most gun control laws compared to the Weimar Republic. And in any case, having guns would not have protected the Jews one bit, seeing as it was mostly other (and logically speaking, also armed) citizens that were turning them in, and in any case the Jewish resistance movements found guns easily enough (it being war and all).
Asking whether there should be an argument at all is also a bit weird. The Second Amendment is a literally extraordinary piece of legislation- it is very unusual in global terms and its existence does need proper justifying. Justifying it on the grounds that 'otherwise the government might come and oppress us all' is also in of itself an extraordinary claim that needs justifying. I'm sitting here in the virtually guns-free UK and feeling pretty liberated, all things considered. Also with very low gun crime.
Not that these things are instantly transferable- there's a cultural thing with guns in the US that would take more than a law change to sort out. It'll be a generational thing to ease the guns mentality out of North America. In any case, the text of the Second Amendment is a joke in modern day terms- a 'well-regulated militia' has pretty much no connection at all to what we see the SA used for in the modern day as the whole idea of citizen militias has gone out the window, in the US as much as anywhere. The circumstances under which this law was created no longer exist, so this is now more an argument about defining what the US actually is, culturally.
As per the topic- plenty of people saw this as an Obama thing but there's little evidence for that other than that a lot of gun control advocates wanted it to be him because it makes an easy focal point for them to rally against. After all, it's been stopped from happening, and if this really was Obama throwing his weight around, he would have done it anyway as he doesn't give a damn about the arguments raised against it.
As for banning assault rifles vs. handguns- no doubt, handguns are the far more dangerous thing. But they'll be the last to go as they are the most widely carried thing; you can't start there in the US because of the mentality (in most countries with gun control laws, handguns got taken out first). The assault rifle look of the AR-15 is symbolic- it represents the militarisation of segments of American citizen life. As I am of the opinion that said militarisation is a problem, banning such guns would be an excellent first step.
It'll be a LONG time before this is done- I hope in my lifetime but we'll see. In the long-term, though, the US cannot isolate itself forever and its exposure to global influence will erode these erratic parts of its culture- just as it is finally giving way on healthcare, even if only in small ways.
Mostly it is a steadily declining segment of the populace keeping the citizen-gun romance alive. I think as less and less people have guns they realize more and more they don't really need them.
Of course this may just be me looking through hopeful goggles.
I'm with Newjak on the issue of gun culture.
And I think that coupled with great economic inequality will inevitably lead to some nasty statistics.
Both Canada, France, Sweden and Norway have around a third/one half of the guns per capita that America does, yet only a fraction of the murder statistics.
Well this is part of the whole thing. A lot of people like to throw around that West Wing quote from Toby Ziegler:
"if you combine the populations of Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and Australia, you'll get a population roughly the size of the United States. We had 32,000 gun deaths last year, they had 112. Do you think it's because Americans are more homicidal by nature? Or do you think it's because those guys have gun control laws? "
... which was all very effective television and good for making a broad point. However, there are two issues here. First, he;s talking gun deaths, not homicides, and that can skew things a tad (but even focussing on gun murders, the proportionate difference is still immense). More to the point though, he makes it sound like there is no option but to link directly the disproportionate numbers to laws. As you just mentioned, Krisblaze, the issue there is that even in countries where guns are allowed, the proportion of gun homicides to gun owners is not as crazy high as in the US. So in a way, I'm afraid what Toby Ziegler dismisses is true- something IS making people more homicide-inclined with guns in the US. Obviously I'm not saying here that Americans arr raving maniacs, but this supports the idea of it being a cultural thing as much as a law thing. It's not just about owning guns, it's about being determined to use them.
Some caveats before I am mis-interpreted here. This is not an argument that gun control does not work- on the contrary, it's an essential part of the solution to the issue. This is just about the extra cultural complication in the US as an explanation for its guns problem. Yes, 'people kill people', but you can't just say that and then ignore what it is that drives such an absurdly high number of American people to do just that with guns.
Once the culture has been challenged, then the laws can start to deal with ownership. It'll never work the other way around.
It may be better expressed that the strong gun control laws in countries with low gun crime rates are more of a symptom of their attitude to guns than the out and out solution. It is the attitude that keeps the rates low; the laws are an expression of how people feel. But in all cases, the attitude always starts from a basic point- guns, generally, are just too damn dangerous in civilian hands and require extreme regulation. The chasm before the US gets to that point is very wide.
Originally posted by UshgarakIt'll be a LONG time before this is done- I hope in my lifetime but we'll see. In the long-term, though, the US cannot isolate itself forever and its exposure to global influence will erode these erratic parts of its culture- just as it is finally giving way on healthcare, even if only in small ways.
The idea of disarming citizens and up armoring police with military weapons seems idiotic and I have no clue why anyone would want this to be happening, its a fact that regular police now roll around with military grade weapons and as being in military we had stuff that was beyond what police had.
Originally posted by Newjak
Make no mistake gun culture plays a hand in gun violence. How much so though I do not know.
Very very little, I suspect. The only deaths I could think of that you could attribute to gun culture are accidental gun deaths. 606 in 2010, iirc.
No real data on that, I don't think, according to this Wash.Po. article:
Injuries should count, too.
This biased site has done some of the leg work for us.
Lots of injuries from guns:
http://smartgunlaws.org/gun-deaths-and-injuries-statistics/
A very significant part of those injuries is from gun culture, no doubt.
Despite their bias, they still cite their sources and it is decent data.
I think that covers what you and I are wanting (and it cites that 606 number I was talking about).
Originally posted by Newjak
I do know that dangerous weapon often gets treated like a toy because the way many Americans have grown up seeing it. A kid from my school was accidentally shot while he and some buddies were out drinking and shooting cans.
Yes, you and I are thinking the same thing. That is definitely a gun culture problem, his injury (or death).
Originally posted by Newjak
Make no mistake the fact that we revere the gun as some kind of toy and right contributes to the problem. Once again though I'm not willing give a percentage but on a personal level I do think eliminating the gun culture would help making gun regulation easier and safer.
Well, the gun culture and "stupidity and accidents" stuff is really no different than the trampoline argument.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/05/07/home-trampoline-hospital-visits/8820793/
More injuries happen from trampolines than guns, each year. Granted, guns kill more (they are far more effective at killing, obviously) people than trampolines.
Originally posted by Time Immemorial
The idea of disarming citizens and up armoring police with military weapons seems idiotic and I have no clue why anyone would want this to be happening, its a fact that regular police now roll around with military grade weapons and as being in military we had stuff that was beyond what police had.
I certainly can't argue with the latter part being an issue- the militarisation of many US police forces is a mistake and will only worsen things. I think it has fuelled a lot of the gun violence by making gun usage even more engrained into society.
Originally posted by Time Immemorial
The idea of disarming citizens and up armoring police with military weapons seems idiotic and I have no clue why anyone would want this to be happening, its a fact that regular police now roll around with military grade weapons and as being in military we had stuff that was beyond what police had.
You are right, I don't think the people that are against citizens having guns are usually the people that want a more militarized police force though.