Gun Control is "illogical"

[FranG]

As the saying goes, "guns don't kill people, people kill people." The argument for gun control is fallacious.

---------------------

Source: LewRockwell.com (http://www.lewrockwell.com/molyneux/molyneux36.html)

The Hypocrisy of Gun Control
by Stefan Molyneux
by Stefan Molyneux


DIGG THIS

As we saw with the Virginia Tech shootings, whenever guns are pointed at the wrong people, by the wrong people, the knee-jerk reaction is to want to ban guns. There are two important aspects to the question of gun control, however, which have not been discussed in the recent anti-gun hysteria.

Most gun control arguments are based on the "argument from effect," or the belief that the question can be settled by appealing to evidence. In general, the question runs thus:

Do guns promote crime or diminish it?

Unfortunately, the "argument from effect" can never decisively answer any question ? just as, in the absence of a theory of gravitation, measuring the falling rate of individual items does little good. Rocks fall down, helium balloons fall up, and no progress is made.

The question of gun control can only be settled in relation to a logical theory of morals, and to an appeal to incontrovertible evidence. Let's step through two examples of this in action.

Incontrovertible Evidence

If you ask someone whether it is moral to sell handguns for profit to known criminals, the answer is almost invariably "no" (and if it isn't, RUN!). If handguns are ideally used for self-defense, selling them to active criminals can be considered a fairly negative act.

How would we feel about a man who made his fortune selling guns to a mass murderer? Would we put him in charge of disarming a country? What if he also sold RPGs and tanks and chemical weapons to known mass murderers?

Yet this is exactly what governments do, by selling billions of dollars of weapons to despotic tyrants the world over ? and the US government leads the pack in this blood-profiteering.

If it is wrong to make profits selling arms to criminals, then we must abolish the government, not give it additional powers to disarm us. If it is not immoral to sell arms to anyone ? even criminals ? then gun control is a non-issue.

Logic

In general, the argument for gun control comes down to this.

Guns are used to commit crimes.
A crime is defined as the initiation of violence against a peaceful citizen.
Thus guns must be restricted or banned, in order to reduce crime.
It is easy to see the illogic of this argument. How does the government go about banning guns? Why, by initiating violence against those who possess them "illegally." Thus there is no way to ban guns without initiating the use of force ? in other words, a certain crime must be committed for the sake of possibly preventing an unknown crime at some point in the future. We might as well jump off a cliff when we are 20 to prevent the possibility of falling off a cliff when we are 70.

It is important to understand that those who love state power will use any argument to increase it. When arguing about gun control ? or any other moral issue ? steer clear of the "argument from effect," and spend the effort to define your terms from the ground up. It is only by digging that we shall uproot this tree.

April 28, 2007

Stefan Molyneux [send him mail] has been an actor, comedian, gold-panner, graduate student, and software entrepreneur. His first novel, Revolutions was published in 2004, and he maintains a blog. Listen to his podcast, which you can get by clicking here ? or, you like iTunes better, you can click here. For more on DROs, please see my archives. He is host of Freedomain Radio.

Copyright ? 2007 LewRockwell.com

[rek]

Of course it's illogical but they don't need logic, all they need is emotion.

It's much easier to argue the emotional side of all issues, especially when people are already spoiled and take everything they have for granted - in gun control just like in every other political issue.

EDIT - oh and lew rockwell is an awesome site, I read it daily.

[meshou]

Of course it's illogical but they don't need logic, all they need is emotion.I'm anti-gun control, but that's stupid strawman bullshit.

[meanlittlechimp]

How many times has anyone ever used their gun to defend themselves from criminals or "defend" themselves from anyone. And how many times deaths would have been avoided if it was harder for your average jackoff to get a hold of a lethal automatic weapon.

What do you think the murder statistics in the US would be if there were serious gun control laws. If you think the number would be significantly lower (which I do), than it's not illogical to pursue gun control policies from a pragmatic viewpoint.

I get the feeling you agree with me (re: murder rate outcome) but are against stiffer gun control laws from some silly wrong headed philosophical viewpoint.

[ApeTheDog]

Some people only feel safe when they have a gun. The more people have guns, the more people are going to want a gun of their own to feel safe - since everybody else has one. The only solution in a world where everybody has a gun, is to have a gun.

Do we propagate the cycle, or end it? Ideally, it would get turned back. Less people owning guns is a good thing. Unfortunately, since the government cannot control who owns guns - as in, they cannot stop criminals from obtaining them, it is impossible to come to a situation where nobody owns one, and thus, nobody feels like they need one to protect themselves, either.

It's also pretty damn logical that, if you have a gun, you're going to use THAT to defend yourself with. When you don't have a gun, and someone attacks you, you might hit them with a chair, or a bat, or you might just punch them out cold. If you have a gun, you're (at least far more likely) going to shoot them - you won't bother with the other shit.

Guns just take violence to another level. They don't, imo, create more violence, but they make the violence that does exist, and, pretty much always will exist, and is inherent to any society, worse. Where before, a person would get bruised, not they get killed.

A solution to this "taking violence to a new level" thing, in my opinion, IS very much possible, and probably the best bet governments have in solving this problem.

Create stun guns. Let those substitute the real guns. To the people who need a gun to feel safe/protect themselves, a stun gun serves the exact same purpose as a real one does. If you can shoot your burglar, and have him be incapacitated, you have what you want. You don't need to be able to murder them.

Have stun guns. Have them be 5 times cheaper than regular guns. People will buy those, instead of real one (IF, and only IF, they work as well as a regular one does, so, it would take out your assailant right away, and ensure they could not get up/move around for, say, 3 hours) and you've screwed down the violence in the system.

Hell. Maybe criminals would even start using them, as it would mean the difference between being prosecuted for murder and intentional harm/bruising.

[nfinityi]

I always thought the expression was, "Guns don't kill people, dangerous minorities do."










Kidding!

[rek]

I always thought the expression was, "Guns don't kill people, dangerous minorities do."










Kidding!

hahahaha! :theclap:

[meanlittlechimp]

I always thought the expression was, "Guns don't kill people, dangerous minorities do."



They're only white when they eat their flesh and have sex with the corpse.

[rek]

I'm anti-gun control, but that's stupid strawman bullshit.

I was giving an opinion that they do not need logic; I was in no way misinterpreting their position to argue against it (hell I wasn't even interpreting or even commenting on their position at all). I can see where you got that from, I wasn't very clear, but I was just randomly stating an opinion (sort of out of context) - just clearing that up.

[booyalab]

How many times has anyone ever used their gun to defend themselves from criminals or "defend" themselves from anyone.

heh I bet you didn't think anyone could answer this, did you?

According to a Florida State University survey in 1993, there are approximately 2 million defensive gun uses per year by law-abiding citizens. According to a subsequent survey sponsored by the DOJ in '94, there are approximately 1.5 million a year.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JacobSullum/2007/04/18/virginia_techs_gun-free_zone_left_cho_seung-huis_victims_defenseless


In shootings at other schools, armed students or employees have restrained gunmen, possibly preventing additional murders. Four years ago at Appalachian Law School in Grundy, Va., a man who had killed the dean, a professor and a student was subdued by two students who ran to their cars and grabbed their guns. In 1997 an assistant principal at a public high school in Pearl, Miss., likewise retrieved a handgun from his car and used it to apprehend a student who had killed three people.


In a 1999 paper, economists John Lott and William Landes presented evidence that such concerns do in fact deter attacks. Looking at public shootings with multiple victims between 1977 and 1995, Lott and Landes found they were substantially less common in states where law-abiding residents are allowed to carry handguns after meeting specified requirements, such as a background check and firearms training.

This difference remained even after Lott and Landes controlled for a variety of variables, such as population, poverty and arrest rates, that might be expected to affect violent crime. They also found that attacks in states with relatively liberal carry permit policies tended to be less lethal, presumably because they are more often stopped by armed bystanders.

[meanlittlechimp]

It could be that states with liberal carry laws are places like Kansas and Wyoming which have substantially less crime to begin with. If they didn't have liberal carry laws they might have even less crime. A lot of crimes of passion would be far less deadly without guns (and many murders fall into this category).

Also, Urban areas where there is more poverty, crowding, crime etc would probably have even worse crime with liberal carry laws.

The defensive gun uses was interesting though, I wonder how they defined defensive gun uses. Is that pulling it out or shooting? I can't imagine that many uses with shots going off, but maybe that is indeed the case.

The statistic we need to see is how many murders would there be with less guns available. Hmmm... maybe Europe or Asia?

[Niffer]

the fact that some people don't feel safe without a gun in their possession should already be a heads-up. paranoid much?

[booyalab]

It could be that states with liberal carry laws are places like Kansas and Wyoming which have substantially less crime to begin with. uh, Kansas City has a TON of crime and Kansas only just became a conceal carry state. A big indicator of crime is population, which they controlled for.


A lot of crimes of passion would be far less deadly without guns (and many murders fall into this category).
if criminals are going to disobey the law against murder, why would they obey the law against owning guns?

[zserf]

The statistic we need to see is how many murders would there be with less guns available. Hmmm... maybe Europe or Asia?

I think American culture is in general more violent and competitive, so that would be thoroughly useless. I agree that gun bans would probably reduce violent acts, but here are three things that need to be considered.

1.) An unarmed country is unprotected.
2.) An unarmed citizenship are at danger from their own military if led by a leader without scruples.
3.) Some people live subsistence life styles and would be unable to hunt or survive without guns.

Until you can come up with a counter argument to these points I will be opposed to bans of hand guns and hunting guns. No one needs automatic machine guns.

[meanlittlechimp]

What do you think the murder statistics in the US would be if there were serious gun control laws.


Do the pro gun people here really believe there would be more murders with stricter gun control laws? Booyalab, are saying the research you pointed it indicates this?

or do the pro gun people here merely believe it would be negligible in terms of the murder rate?

[garak]

Some people only feel safe when they have a gun. The more people have guns, the more people are going to want a gun of their own to feel safe - since everybody else has one. The only solution in a world where everybody has a gun, is to have a gun.

I don't think the desire to carry a gun is influenced by how many other people have them NEARLY as much as how much you think you'll need it. In the ghetto they're illegal and everybody has one. Meanwhile, "Vermont and Alaska place no restrictions at all on lawful citizens carrying concealed weapons" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics), yet you don't hear about gun problems in either place.

Guns appear where people feel they are needed, for whatever reason. In a nice, safe, low-crime place, I doubt you'd feel compelled to carry a gun just because some percentage of other people happen to.

[booyalab]

Do the pro gun people here really believe there would be more murders with stricter gun control laws? Booyalab, are saying the research you pointed it indicates this?


look at D.C., crime skyrocketed at like 10 times a faster rate than it did in the rest of the US, between the time they were banned until the present.

[rek]

Do the pro gun people here really believe there would be more murders with stricter gun control laws? Booyalab, are saying the research you pointed it indicates this?

or do the pro gun people here merely believe it would be negligible in terms of the murder rate?

I'm unsure if I think there would be more murders but I certainly think there would be more crime. If I were a criminal I would definitely prefer that no law abiding citizens had weapons - it'd make my job a whole lot easier. Most the time if you're the only one with a gun you don't even need to shoot it. If your biggest worry is the cops coming then I'd say you're not too worried - no offense to cops, it's literally impossible for them to be everywhere all the time, but by the time they arrive people are dead. So yea I think it'd be negligible in either direction for murders, there's really no way to tell, but I think crime in general would go up.

The main reasons I support the right to bear arms have a lot more to do with other issues than the murder rate. Freedom mostly (surprise!). I still like my right to make a choice even if it's the wrong one. I still like other peoples right to bear arms even if they shoot me with it. I'm a stubborn little bitch when it comes to freedoms, but hey at least I'm consistent! :mellow:

[darlets]

1.) An unarmed country is unprotected.
You have the most powerful army ever known to mankind. I'm sure anyone that can take our your airforce, navy and army won't have to much trouble with your "armed citizen"
2.) An unarmed citizenship are at danger from their own military if led by a leader without scruples.
You got to be F@#$ing kidding me. For starters, WTF is your armed population going to against an M1 Abram battle tank??????? Secondly how likely do you think it is a western country is going to be part of a coup or whatever you are suggesting.

3.) Some people live subsistence life styles and would be unable to hunt or survive without guns.
Australian gun laws take this into consideration. You can own a gun if you have a reason generally your a farmer, hunter or a comp shooter, self defence isn't a reason in Australia.


"Guns appear where people feel they are needed, for whatever reason. In a nice, safe, low-crime place, I doubt you'd feel compelled to carry a gun just because some percentage of other people happen to."
I agree with this. Australia bought in really tough gun laws after our massacares (yes other countries have them too) and the public accepted them mainly because we live in a low crime country.

You can look up the homocide rates here.

http://www.nationmaster.com/cat/cri-crime

The U.S is just a violent place. That's the underlying problem. You guys don't need bigger guns or more guns or less gun. You need less crime. You have a big divide between the have's and the have nots.

A British documenty maker interview a U.S soldier in Iraq and asked him about what he thought of being there. He said he didn't mind because he gets shot at more back home. His was from Miami.

Having guns laws the vary majorly from state to state is just silly.

[meanlittlechimp]

The main reasons I support the right to bear arms have a lot more to do with other issues than the murder rate. Freedom mostly (surprise!). I still like my right to make a choice even if it's the wrong one. I still like other peoples right to bear arms even if they shoot me with it. I'm a stubborn little bitch when it comes to freedoms, but hey at least I'm consistent! :mellow:

I have no problem with this stance. If someone would rather have more freedom AND more murders - it's a preference. I can't dispute it from a logical viewpoint.

If it could be proven that the murder rate would be halved but all other crimes stay the same - would you still have the same view? If you accept that tradeoff, fine. I don't find most pro gun folks thinking of it in those terms.

If one believes that guns (especially of the automatic variety) are actually beneficial to society in some pragmatic sense rather than philosophical one, than I have more of an issue.

[meanlittlechimp]

1.)
The U.S is just a violent place. That's the underlying problem. You guys don't need bigger guns or more guns or less gun. You need less crime. You have a big divide between the have's and the have nots.



So if you take a violent disenfranchised individual with easy access to automatic rifles with laser scopes in society A (let's call that the United States) and take the exact same individual in Society B (let's say France or Denmark); which person is more likely to hurt or kill others. Which society is more likely to have higher violent crime rates? How many people would the VA tech guy would have killed with a regular hunting rifle. Instead of an automatic weapon where he can reload with ease? or with a knife?

How many drunken assholes or crackheads wouldn't have killed somebody if they only had a baseball bat instead of a gun?

I think the answer is obvious. Of course tougher gun laws won't magically vanish murder or violent crime but it will have an overall net benefit, don't you think?

[darlets]

So if you take a violent disenfranchised individual with easy access to automatic rifles with laser scopes in society A (let's call that the United States) and take the exact same individual in Society B (let's say France or Denmark); which person is more likely to hurt or kill others. Which society is more likely to have higher violent crime rates? How many people would the VA tech guy would have killed with a regular hunting rifle. Instead of an automatic weapon where he can reload with ease? or with a knife?


Probably something like this I would guess.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_%28Australia%29
Vrs this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monash_University_shooting






How many drunken assholes or crackheads wouldn't have killed somebody if they only had a baseball bat instead of a gun?

I think the answer is obvious. Of course tougher gun laws won't magically vanish murder or violent crime but it will have an overall net benefit, don't you think?

Preacher to the choir here, given I'm anti gun yes, I do think that.

Per 100,000
United States: 3.6 homocides with guns
United States: 5.5 homocides without guns
total 9.1

Per 100,000
Aus 0.3073 with guns
Aus 1.5729 without
Total 1.8802

Australia is just a more peaceful place. We have less crime. That why are really tough gun laws were accepted by the population. You aren't going to get tougher gun laws without lowering the crime rate. You need to make people feel safe otherwise they are going to want to carry guns.

One of the U.S biggest problems outside of crime is its massively varying gun laws. Australia gun laws vary from state to state but not by much.

If you want to read about how a different country went about it's gun laws then this is Australian's history on the matter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Australia

[meanlittlechimp]

I think American culture is in general more violent and competitive, so that would be thoroughly useless. I agree that gun bans would probably reduce violent acts, but here are three things that need to be considered.

1.) An unarmed country is unprotected.
2.) An unarmed citizenship are at danger from their own military if led by a leader without scruples.
3.) Some people live subsistence life styles and would be unable to hunt or survive without guns.

Until you can come up with a counter argument to these points I will be opposed to bans of hand guns and hunting guns. No one needs automatic machine guns.

Most gun control laws go after automatic weapons, hollow point shells, etc. So point 3 isn't much of an issue. I'm not necessarily saying all guns must be outright banned, but again, most gun control laws don't affect subsistence life styles (let alone recreational hunters). What subsistence life styles depend on hunting in the US btw? They probably exist, I'm just drawing a blank right now of which people you speak of.

As for your other points: The right to bear arms, constitutionally, made sense because of the times in which it was written. Having arms, you could repel the British or put down tyranny, or stop paying taxes on tea etc.

In modern times, if the US military was actually lead by a "leader without scruples" as you say; do you really think access to guns would do much good against aerial bombing or organized military action from our government? or any non third world government for that matter.

I doubt Franklin, Jefferson, Madison etc would support the sale of Mac 10s, M-16s, Glocks and M60s to rednecks who read soldier of fortune or shoot deer with armor piercing rounds. Do you realize how easy it is to get an M60? There is no justifiable reason for this. I don't care how many M60s you purchase, you are not going to stop the US government with them. They manufacture them remember? They'll cut you off if the citizenry became a threat.

[garak]

Most gun control laws go after automatic weapons, hollow point shells, etc. So point 3 isn't much of an issue. I'm not necessarily saying all guns must be outright banned, but again, most gun control laws don't affect subsistence life styles (let alone recreational hunters). What subsistence life styles depend on hunting in the US btw? They probably exist, I'm just drawing a blank right now of which people you speak of.

As for your other points: The right to bear arms, constitutionally, made sense because of the times in which it was written. Having arms, you could repel the British or put down tyranny, or stop paying taxes on tea etc.

In modern times, if the US military was actually lead by a "leader without scruples" as you say; do you really think access to guns would do much good against aerial bombing or organized military action from our government? or any non third world government for that matter.

I doubt Franklin, Jefferson, Madison etc would support the sale of Mac 10s, M-16s, Glocks and M60s to rednecks who read soldier of fortune or shoot deer with armor piercing rounds. Do you realize how easy it is to get an M60? There is no justifiable reason for this. I don't care how many M60s you purchase, you are not going to stop the US government with them. They manufacture them remember? They'll cut you off if the citizenry became a threat.

Guerilla warfare against the US military is still effective, if bloody. Look at Iraq.

As for what that implies about gun laws, I'm not sure. How many people in Iraq had guns under Saddam? Would be interesting to know.

[meshou]

I was under the impression that, while we have a higher murder rate, Austrailia has a higher violent crime rate overall, and comparable murder attempts.

Y'all have quite a bit of voilence, but not as much follow-through.

[Someshta]

Yes, obviously, stricter gun control laws won't stop criminals from having them--but it might make it tougher for the criminals to buy stolen guns if there were fewer out there to steal. It just seems logical to me that the more guns are in people's hands, the more chance there is of me (or someone I care about) getting shot by one of them. Is that a knee-jerk reaction on my part? Does it need to be more complicated than that?

[Xander]

Do you need a license to own a gun?
Do you need a certain amount of training before your allowed to have one?
Do you have to take certain precautions in the storage of the guns and control on who has access to them?
Are the films right where you have one in your bedside draw with the clip next to or in it?

It seems to me that there is more fuss made over owning a driving a car than there is over guns. Seems a little silly. Sure cars can and will kill but if your going to allow people to have firearms to protect themselves and hold up some sort of community policing then surely that requires training so you don't get a granny with a .454 Casul shooting someone's head off at the drop of a hat and breaking both of her arms in the process.

[PlayerOfGames]

The people that say that stricter gun control laws will have no effect because illegal guns will be just as easy to come by - what is your explanation for gun control laws in the UK etc. and the difficulty of obtaining guns there?

I knew a guy who worked airport security, and on encountering some burglars in a warehouse he and his partners subdued them with their nightsticks - he went straight in there because the odds of them having guns was so low, because the penalty is pretty high.

Or is the idea that things are too far gone in the US in this direction for tougher gun laws to have an effect?

I'm referring only to this specific argument against gun control here, not to the personal freedom/revolution aspects.

[darlets]

Guerilla warfare against the US military is still effective, if bloody. Look at Iraq.
Irrelavant. That's totally different. In Iraq the U.S is trying to establish order and have a duty of care towards the population. If they held a coup, there would be no duty of care, they'd just shoot people.

In Iraq the guerilla warfare is trying to win politically, they want the U.S to withdraw, so the more dominate powers can take charge and rule the roost.
(How many dead have you had????? 5000+ compare to the 500000 odd in your military.) The only reason it's effective is because their hands are tied by the rules of warfare and can be defeated politically by eroding the U.S populations will to fight.

The U.S military if it couped obviously couldn't be contained politically, because it would have no goverment to pull its reigns. It wouldn't have to obey the rules of warfare and it isn't going to have to care what the people think.

If the U.S didn't "care" about the population in Iraq they'd just protect the oil and have an exclusion zone around those areas. There would be no warning shots or asking people to stop.


Back to the topic, you have two underlying issues here, firstly you have a gun culture that can be traced back to your civil war and the wild west. And secondly you have an improvished underclass that find it easier to turn to crime because setting up a legal source of income has been made to hard for them. They feel disassociatd from society.

As far as I understand it your unemployment system gives cash for 13 weeks and then gets cut off????

Australia welfare for example just continues as long as you look for work. This is a drain on the system and we do have long term unemployed (some would suggest permanent unemployed) but it allows people to survive without turning to crime. There's also alot of Government scheme for training and education to try and get people back into the workforce, from being disabled, unemployed or made redundant.

You can make any gun laws you like, but as long as people feel that turning to crime is more profitable and easier than making an honest living they'll turn to crime.

[Xander]

You can make any gun laws you like, but as long as people feel that turning to crime is more profitable and easier than making an honest living they'll turn to crime.
Exactly.

This does raise the issues of countries who do not care for those who do not contribute (contribute in their definition that is). Also it raises the issue that if your going to have such a problem then is it wise to make guns more prevalent as these people are likely to get a little desperate at times. To arm them seems a little myopic IMO.

[darlets]

I was under the impression that, while we have a higher murder rate, Austrailia has a higher violent crime rate overall, and comparable murder attempts.

Y'all have quite a bit of voilence, but not as much follow-through.

That site I posted (which is the first one I found, not saying it's definitive)
seems to suggest, you have higher murder rate per 100,000.
12 times more by guns but only 4 times more by other means. So our guns laws seem to push up our number of non gun murders and bring down the ones involving guns.

We have about the same % of assaults .

I'm not saying for a minute you could take another countries gun laws and enforce them onto the U.S. What I am saying, is I think violent crime is a sympton of a deeper problem. And you can try and treat the sympton all you like but unless you cure the disease, it won't help much.

Australia's economy, like most in the world, is going through a boom, and the crime rate has fallen. When the economy takes a down turn I would fully expect for the crime rate to come back up. There is a relationship between how much legal opportunity people have and crime.

I really doubt guns laws affect mass killings, only in they MAY restrict what weapons people have access too. I think it restrict them if they don't have a lot of cash. In the case of Port Arthur, the guy that did that had inherited alot of money and didn't have to work. All the guns laws in the world isn't going to stop someone with cash from getting guns.

Gun laws, I think, push up prices of illegal guns and decrease access to them.
(You do need a national system though. Having states with different laws defeat this quite quickly)

But essential you need to solve this problem which garak raise before
"Guns appear where people feel they are needed, for whatever reason. In a nice, safe, low-crime place, I doubt you'd feel compelled to carry a gun just because some percentage of other people happen to."

[mtene]

I have no problem with this stance. If someone would rather have more freedom AND more murders - it's a preference. I can't dispute it from a logical viewpoint.

If it could be proven that the murder rate would be halved but all other crimes stay the same - would you still have the same view? If you accept that tradeoff, fine. I don't find most pro gun folks thinking of it in those terms.

If one believes that guns (especially of the automatic variety) are actually beneficial to society in some pragmatic sense rather than philosophical one, than I have more of an issue.

It is illegal for any felon in the united states to own any firearm. Automatic weapons are extremely expensive to acquire and highly regulated, low end automatic weapons tend to start off around 5000 dollars.

[s'box]

Irrelavant. That's totally different. In Iraq the U.S is trying to establish order and have a duty of care towards the population. If they held a coup, there would be no duty of care, they'd just shoot people.

In Iraq the guerilla warfare is trying to win politically, they want the U.S to withdraw, so the more dominate powers can take charge and rule the roost.
(How many dead have you had????? 5000+ compare to the 500000 odd in your military.) The only reason it's effective is because their hands are tied by the rules of warfare and can be defeated politically by eroding the U.S populations will to fight.

The U.S military if it couped obviously couldn't be contained politically, because it would have no goverment to pull its reigns. It wouldn't have to obey the rules of warfare and it isn't going to have to care what the people think.

If the U.S didn't "care" about the population in Iraq they'd just protect the oil and have an exclusion zone around those areas. There would be no warning shots or asking people to stop.



Coups are not exempt from politics, and are just as bound to angry masses as any other state form. A coup would have to be bound in shrouds of 'legitimacy' which also very much involves avoiding a heavy hand as you don't want to piss off those who might only passively react. Slaughters and indiscriminate bombings and other such ugly messes would have to be avoided as to maintain this sense of legitimacy and keep an organized movement (of people with guns) from coming about, this was more the policy in iraq than any bullshit about human rights and the rules of warfare, the idea is never to play fair its to win, and you don't win when everyone hates you and you dont keep people from hating you by killing everyone all the time. So it would come out to quite a similiar situation to Iraq in terms of military policy.

Failing all that, and if there were some ominous heavy hand, an armed insurrection would have the power to react quickly enough to overt a takeover. This sense of awe at the technology and such of the us military really doesn't line up to the power of guerrilla warfare, which has taken on that military, with all its gadgets and numbers, in several places coming out succesfully and giving it hell, since theres so much more to guerrilla warfare than comparitive measures of force. Think for instance domestic supply lines. An armed and even small insurgency against a tyrannical us administration wouldn't really have that hard of a time making sure the military base doesn't get their fancy guns in the first place, or even their lunch if it so much as passes through the home town of these folks. This is an advantage that the Iraqis and the vietnamese didn't have nearly as much, as the gun and tank factories weren't in their home towns, they dont have potential sabateurs on the aircraft carriers and in the assembly lines and so on. Theres not really any way to handle this sort of bombardment if its kept up, and a couple folks in the woods with their home shotguns can attack weaker targets and then all of a sudden theyve got fancy new armaments anyway.

[Kropotkin]

Do you need a license to own a gun?
Do you need a certain amount of training before your allowed to have one?
Do you have to take certain precautions in the storage of the guns and control on who has access to them?
Are the films right where you have one in your bedside draw with the clip next to or in it?



In most states you don't need a license to own a gun, including a handgun. However, you cannot carry it outside your property, at least loaded or in an unlocked box in most cases without a permit. You do need a license to carry a concealed handgun in most states; you often need to take a course in order to get this license. In some states (or cities/counties in a state) it's almost impossible to get a concealed handgun permit, however. In a few states (e.g., Nevada and Arizona) you are allowed to carry a handgun as long as it's viewable (cowboy style) without a permit, subject to city/county restrictions. In Vermont, there are no state laws about guns. At all. Long guns, generally, have fewer restrictions, everywhere.

There are few rules regarding storage methods; however, some states have extra punishments if guns are easily accessible by children in the home. (Normally too-late reactive ones.)

Hell yeah you can one loaded next to your bed.

If you want to know more: http://www.packing.org

[Samurai Drifter]

Guns don't kill people, but they make it much easier for criminals to do their job and psychos to go on mass rampages. You're not going to be able to kill 30 people with a knife.

I'm at least partially of the opinion that guns be banned from everyone but people who need it for their jobs (such as soldiers and police officers) and hunters, who would have extensive background checks and mental screenings before they got their licens (same for the soldiers and police officers). I think that would largely cut down on the amount of violent crimes.

This would be ideal. However...


Thus there is no way to ban guns without initiating the use of force ?
This is also correct. While the results of the "crime" the government would commit would be more saved lives and a lower crime rate, the problem would be practically applying the solution. There are lots of people who wouldn't just give up their arms peacefully. We would probably face at least something of a second civil war.

[rek]

So all you gun control advocates hold the opinion that even if guns were completely banned from the US besides for government uses that the number of guns held by criminals would go down?

I'm not sure how many of you are aware just how many guns there already are out there. They don't expire like food either, a well made and properly maintained gun can last a very long time. Also consider how much drugs there are held by criminals since they've been outlawed, or how well prohibition worked.

I think the war on drugs is really the best example. Making drugs illegal may have made less people die from the drugs themselves (I doubt this, i think it's increased the number, but maybe). But then you have to consider the insanely large illegal drug market which wouldn't exist were drugs legalized (especially common ones like pot). The gang wars, the massive amounts of money funding crime through drug sales, all that would go down a lot if you could buy pot from Walmart. At the same time all of that would go up a lot if criminals were the only way you could get guns.

Are you suggesting we could actually stop, or even slow, the import and distribution of guns? (We can't stop the import of people let alone drugs, what are we going to do build a wall around the country with large metal detectors?)

What about the guns already out there? Are we going to form a police line that will cross every inch of the entire country searching for guns? If mine is inside my safe in my wall are they going to search my house and find it? Or will they just demand my gun from me only if it's a currently legal one (letting the criminals keep theirs)?

Again, even if this were possible, I'd still be opposed to a complete outlaw of guns for other reasons, but I'd really like to know how any of these questions are answered? (Is it simply if we make less legally then there should be less eventually?)

[FranG]

Do the pro gun people here really believe there would be more murders with stricter gun control laws? Booyalab, are saying the research you pointed it indicates this?

or do the pro gun people here merely believe it would be negligible in terms of the murder rate?

Bottom line is this: If I wanna kill you Imma do it. If I can't get a gun, i'mma use a knife. If that don't work, I'll walk around with a fork, a can of mase, pick up a stick or brick on you, etc. A gun is just a tool, that's it. But if a killer wants to kill, he'll figure out how to do it. The Virginia Tech guy coulda been a suicide bomber or he could have made a cocktail bomb and just unloaded in the classrooms. The list is endless. A gun is merely a tool use to commit crimes. It's not the cause of crimes. If you want to eliminate crime, you have to eliminate all tools, including what I named above, and also you would have to cut off people hands too and feet in certain instances. And mental brainwashing might help too as it all starts with one's thoughts.



Irrelavant. That's totally different. In Iraq the U.S is trying to establish order and have a duty of care towards the population. If they held a coup, there would be no duty of care, they'd just shoot people.

In Iraq the guerilla warfare is trying to win politically, they want the U.S to withdraw, so the more dominate powers can take charge and rule the roost.
(How many dead have you had????? 5000+ compare to the 500000 odd in your military.) The only reason it's effective is because their hands are tied by the rules of warfare and can be defeated politically by eroding the U.S populations will to fight.


You are right about the rules of warfare and the PR of not blowing Iraq off the map. But it's different when a domestic government tries to inflict martial law on its own citizens. The government obviously can't blow it's populous into the stone age because they need your slave labor still. So they have to occupy the land. They can't just blast the country and then leave because where would they go? An armed citizenry is a nuissance to a corrupt government and it serves as a deterrent from them developing absolute power over you (i.e., stealing your land from you cause that's what it's all about anyway). Shit you think slaveowners killed every slave when they tried to run away or even tried to attack a slaveowner? Hell na'll because slaves were property and worth a lot of money. They needed the slaves. And it's the same today. A dictatorial government still needs its citizens to do the leg work for whatever evil bidding they are involved in.


Guns don't kill people, but they make it much easier for criminals to do their job and psychos to go on mass rampages. You're not going to be able to kill 30 people with a knife.



But most murders don't happen in bunches of 30 anyway. It's usually one or two mofos that get killed. You can easily do that with a knife.

[earwax]

Bottom line is this: If I wanna kill you Imma do it. If I can't get a gun, i'mma use a knife. If that don't work, I'll walk around with a fork, a can of mase, pick up a stick or brick on you, etc. A gun is just a tool, that's it. But if a killer wants to kill, he'll figure out how to do it. The Virginia Tech guy coulda been a suicide bomber or he could have made a cocktail bomb and just unloaded in the classrooms. The list is endless. A gun is merely a tool use to commit crimes. It's not the cause of crimes. If you want to eliminate crime, you have to eliminate all tools, including what I named above, and also you would have to cut off people hands too and feet in certain instances. And mental brainwashing might help too as it all starts with one's thoughts.

That's true, if someone wants to kill they will find a way. On the other hand, you don't hear of too many "crimes of passion" being committed with a fork.

I really don't have any opinion on gun control. (I've never owned one and I have no desire to.) And while it's true that "guns don't kill people, people kill people" - I've heard of many cases where someone died because a gun was handy. Had there been no gun, the two people may have beat the shit out of each other.. But they would've both woken up the next morning.

[FranG]

That's true, if someone wants to kill they will find a way. On the other hand, you don't hear of too many "crimes of passion" being committed with a fork.

I really don't have any opinion on gun control. (I've never owned one and I have no desire to.) And while it's true that "guns don't kill people, people kill people" - I've heard of many cases where someone died because a gun was handy. Had there been no gun, the two people may have beat the shit out of each other.. But they would've both woken up the next morning.

No I hear what everyone is saying about how guns make it easier. That's true. But it's besides the point. The bottomline is it's no reason to ban guns from the people just because you have a few idiots out here. Idiots will always exist. They're needed for balance. But it's like everytime something happens the first thing they wanna do is snatch guns. Shit we should ban cars for all the car accidents that people get involved in.

[CoHo]

I think everyone should be assigned a 9mm at birth and have to go through regular training

Seriously

[MacGuffin]

I think everyone should be assigned a 9mm at birth and have to go through regular training

Seriously
Kind of like the Swiss?

[CoHo]

Kind of like the Swiss?

Kind of like The Road Warrior

[MacGuffin]

Kind of like The Road Warrior

They got training?

http://www.gamerevolution.com/images/misc/road_warrior.jpg

[intpgolfer]

1. Guns are equalizers - they make little men - big?

2. A rich mans gun is a lawyer - a poor mans lawyer is a gun?

3. Why are 95% of all murderers in america - men?

4. Guns make crimes of passion end - too quickly?

5. Can a president and an army take over america and delete her Constitution?

[Wolf]

Gun control is perfectly logical. Maintain good muzzle control, keep your safeties on when not in use, holstered when not in use, and your finger off the trigger until you are prepared to fire, boys and girls. Always control your guns, because nobody else can do it for you.

[Wolf]

I'm also for CW's idea, but I'm against compulsory ownership and use. I believe all willing and able people should be permitted and encouraged to carry a firearm. Training should be widely available and government-subsidized or sponsored to maintain our national guard (the "well regulated (trained) militia" that they talk about).

I believe they give them machine guns (rifles) after training and compulsory service in Switzerland.

[Rice-Tactics]

I heard on CNN that someone was thinking of arming students??? I dont know... it seemed like an even dumber idea.

[Wolf]

Not at all. Criminals are actually quite rare, while law-abiding people are common.

The problem is training - you must train them, because most people in this country have not grown up with them and don't know how to properly and safely handle and use a firearm.

I didn't grow up with them, I had to be trained when I was old enough to make the choice to do so. Even before that, I advocated private gun ownership.

[paulwhy]

All the USA needs to do in order to prevent mass shootings in schools and universities is to force all students to carry handguns.
Simple.

[darlets]

Coups are not exempt from politics, and are just as bound to angry masses as any other state form. A coup would have to be bound in shrouds of 'legitimacy' which also very much involves avoiding a heavy hand as you don't want to piss off those who might only passively react. Slaughters and indiscriminate bombings and other such ugly messes would have to be avoided as to maintain this sense of legitimacy and keep an organized movement (of people with guns) from coming about, this was more the policy in iraq than any bullshit about human rights and the rules of warfare, the idea is never to play fair its to win, and you don't win when everyone hates you and you dont keep people from hating you by killing everyone all the time. So it would come out to quite a similiar situation to Iraq in terms of military policy.

Failing all that, and if there were some ominous heavy hand, an armed insurrection would have the power to react quickly enough to overt a takeover. This sense of awe at the technology and such of the us military really doesn't line up to the power of guerrilla warfare, which has taken on that military, with all its gadgets and numbers, in several places coming out succesfully and giving it hell, since theres so much more to guerrilla warfare than comparitive measures of force. Think for instance domestic supply lines. An armed and even small insurgency against a tyrannical us administration wouldn't really have that hard of a time making sure the military base doesn't get their fancy guns in the first place, or even their lunch if it so much as passes through the home town of these folks. This is an advantage that the Iraqis and the vietnamese didn't have nearly as much, as the gun and tank factories weren't in their home towns, they dont have potential sabateurs on the aircraft carriers and in the assembly lines and so on. Theres not really any way to handle this sort of bombardment if its kept up, and a couple folks in the woods with their home shotguns can attack weaker targets and then all of a sudden theyve got fancy new armaments anyway.

You're looking from the inside out not the outside in. The U.S military aren't stupid, they'd get their supplies externally in terms of food. The U.S military could just go claim the Oil in the middle east and the uranium in Australia and hold the world to ransom. I doubt the U.S Military would coup to start with, but if they did it would make alot of sense to secure a source of income.

There would be alot of third parties willing to deal with them externally and internally to the U.S. Alot of the external ones would be quite happy for the economic boost of military factories and bases would provide and the benefits of siding with the most powerful army in the world.

The U.S military ability to fund itself is quite high in my opinion. And once they have cash, their need to interact with alot of their motherland would be removed.

The people that could stop them would be the rest of the world, not your "armed militia"

[Veradicere]

Why are 95% of all murderers in america - men?


Maybe we're having the wrong discussion here. We should ban men.

[Architectonic]

As the saying goes, "guns don't kill people, people kill people." The argument for gun control is fallacious.

The argument for gun control is fallicious because it assumes that guns can be controlled.

But what frightens people is not single murders, but indiscriminate massacres. And large massacres are difficult without automatic guns, or explosives (which are also restricted).

But I don't see people complaining about restrictions on explosives....

[Samurai Drifter]

But most murders don't happen in bunches of 30 anyway. It's usually one or two mofos that get killed. You can easily do that with a knife.
Not as easily as with a gun.

[Hustler]

So all you gun control advocates hold the opinion that even if guns were completely banned from the US besides for government uses that the number of guns held by criminals would go down?

I'd say this is an economic certainty. Guns would become scarcer, as manufacturers would stop or reduce production, importers would stop importing, and retailers would stop selling, and the means to illicitly supply people with guns would become far more complicated, as it would require a more extensive chain of black market interactions to bring a gun to the customer. As such, guns (and let's not forget bullets) would be more expensive and, therefore, fewer people would be able to buy them. Thus, the poorest or least resourceful echelons of the criminal heirarchy would be without firearms.

If you really wanted to shut down gun possession by criminals, you could go ahead and make the possession of a firearm equivalent to attempted murder in terms of the legal penalties it carries. With enough incentives against having a gun, the majority of crooks who currently have one would surely reject the idea of carrying one or simply be unable to obtain/afford one. Switchblades would make a huge comeback, and with them, the switchblade combs that were the signifier of badassedness in 4th grade in yesteryear.

I'm not saying I support this idea; I'm just saying the argument that "if guns are illegal, only criminals will have guns" while, true in a semantical sense (owning a gun would be a criminal act, thus 100% of gun owners would be criminals), says nothing of the efficacy of such measures and, in fact, neglects economic considerations that, when analyzed in terms of cost vs. benefit or risk vs. reward to the would-be gun carriers, point toward a certain reduction in gun possession, given the adoption of powerful enough disincentives to such.

[meshou]

I believe that a successful democracy based on enlightenment ideals should have a populace powerful enough to overthrow its own government if it devolves into tyranny-- in education, in spirit, and in raw firepower.

[demagogic_schizoid]

criminals and the state will always have weapons. when you restrict the sale of weapons to citizens, all you do is weaken the citizenry in relation to those other two.

[rek]

If you really wanted to shut down gun possession by criminals, you could go ahead and make the possession of a firearm equivalent to attempted murder in terms of the legal penalties it carries.

Well, I suppose that's true, you could lower the amount of water people drank if you started throwing them in jail for it too...

But aren't our jails already overpopulated with people who are charged with nonviolent victim-less crimes? Is making even more things crimes really the answer to that?

In fact, do it and I will be among the first to nonviolently protest and go to jail for carrying a weapon - I'm very certain MANY people will join me, so you'll be left with the choice of letting us go or letting real criminals go.

My point is: while your point is logical it's completely impractical.

[demagogic_schizoid]

true, a law only works if most people are prepared to go along with it. If large numbers of people disobey that law, no government is going to give them all life sentences, and no police force will be able to enforce it. Maybe in some countries with a very limied number of guns it would work, but not somewhere like the USA with so many guns alread out there and with so many people who simply wouldn't return them no matter what laws you passed.

[Hustler]

But aren't our jails already overpopulated with people who are charged with nonviolent victim-less crimes? Is making even more things crimes really the answer to that?

In fact, do it and I will be among the first to nonviolently protest and go to jail for carrying a weapon - I'm very certain MANY people will join me, so you'll be left with the choice of letting us go or letting real criminals go.

My point is: while your point is logical it's completely impractical.
Yes, American jails are overpopulated by people who have been convicted of so-called victimless crimes. That isn't really relevant, and it doesn't render my idea impractical. Our jails are not overcrowded with people serving out 30 year or life sentences for attempted murder; they're overcrowded with people serving out 5 year sentences for drug possession. If drug possession carried with it a life sentence, you can bet people wouldn't be so quick to be caught with drugs. In fact, drug use would likely plummet if the disincentives for using it were higher. So, too, would gun possession. And you talk a good game, but if the penalty for illegal possession of a firearm were a mandatory 30 year prison sentence or something outrageous like that, I don't think you'd be so quick to line up to go to prison for most of the rest of your life.

And this is not even taking into account the rest of my argument, which you seem to have just ignored. The whole point was that it was a response to your question of whether guns would be less common among the criminal populace. The answer to that is still yes, because gun prices would soar, which is a disincentive to owning one in and of itself. Tacking on enhanced criminal penalties to gun possession would only drive it down rates of illegal firearms possession even further.

[demagogic_schizoid]

Yes, American jails are overpopulated by people who have been convicted of so-called victimless crimes. That isn't really relevant, and it doesn't render my idea impractical. Our jails are not overcrowded with people serving out 30 year or life sentences for attempted murder; they're overcrowded with people serving out 5 year sentences for drug possession. If drug possession carried with it a life sentence, you can bet people wouldn't be so quick to be caught with drugs. In fact, drug use would likely plummet if the disincentives for using it were higher. So, too, would gun possession. And you talk a good game, but if the penalty for illegal possession of a firearm were a mandatory 30 year prison sentence or something outrageous like that, I don't think you'd be so quick to line up to go to prison for most of the rest of your life.

And this is not even taking into account the rest of my argument, which you seem to have just ignored. The whole point was that it was a response to your question of whether guns would be less common among the criminal populace. The answer to that is still yes, because gun prices would soar, which is a disincentive to owning one in and of itself. Tacking on enhanced criminal penalties to gun possession would only drive it down rates of illegal firearms possession even further.

Do you really think it would work? There are 60 million registered gun owners in the US and according to the BBC over 200 million firearms. If even 10% of those gun owners resist, you've got 6 million people who you have to give life sentences. If you don't, then no-one's going to respect the law. It sounds pretty unworkable.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=number+guns+in+america&meta=

I don't know how many people, say, smoke weed, but I guess trying to stamp out gun ownership would be roughly equivalent to stamping out people smoking weed by giving them life sentences - and perhaps even harder because the issue is more politicised.

What you say about guns becoming more expensive might be true though, but for a career criminal it could still be worth the investment. In Britain guns are very restricted, but lots of criminals have guns, very few normal citizes do, and this empowers the criminal in relation to the average citizen. You could argue that in a market with very limited supply of guns it becomes worth the criminals while to pay a higher price for the gun, if they know it gives them a clearer advantage than it would in a market where guns are readily available to all. True, when you outlaw guns and restrict their availability, maybe the guns price does increase for the criminal, but it's value to them also increases as it gives them a clearer advantage than it gave them before.

[meshou]

In fact, drug use would likely plummet if the disincentives for using it were higher. So, too, would gun possession.Er, if I were into coke, which I am not, I believe having enough to last me a weekend'd get me charged as a dealer, and i'd porbably get the equivalent of manslaughter time in jail. Drug laws are pretty damn steep.

Still, drugs are not much like guns at all. Guns have complex moving parts and cause pain and can be difficult to sneak around. Drugs are easy to make and are increadible fun and are easy to hide.

[Hustler]

What you say about guns becoming more expensive might be true though, but for a career criminal it could still be worth the investment.
Right, my intention is only to address the question I originally quoted. And, the answer is that gun ownership among criminals would decline. You say that it could still be worth the investment for a criminal, and that's right, but it also could not still be worth the investment. It just depends on the criminal and what alternatives are available to him. Maybe some thug thinks he can still make a good living sticking up people with just a knife, and so he forgoes buying a gun, because the price has shot up so high that it's no longer worth it for the difference it represents in personal safety and earning potential. That's the whole point: economics dictates that, yes, the rate of gun possession, even among criminals, would decline if guns were entirely banned.

[Hustler]

Er, if I were into coke, which I am not, I believe having enough to last me a weekend'd get me charged as a dealer, and i'd porbably get the equivalent of manslaughter time in jail. Drug laws are pretty damn steep.
No, they're not, and especially not for first-time offenders. If a person were going to be forced to serve out a mandatory 30 year sentence the first time he was caught with coke, the supply would dwindle, the price would rise, and would-be recreational users would be far less likely to have any.

[HilbertSpace]

What if we leave aside, for the moment, the political question of whether or not the government has the responsibility to act to reduce the death rate by restricting firearms (which, in the US, are a tenth of the deaths blamed on tobacco, a tenth of the deaths blamed on lack of exercise/poor diet, and about a third of those blamed on alcohol).

One of the central suppositions here seems to be that gun ownership positively correlates with homicide rate. I just ran a quick scatter plot of percent gun ownership versus homicide rates. For the countries listed in the data I found (mostly early to mid 90s), there was actually a slight negative correlation for a linear fit. If we include only Western Europe (but remove N. Ireland), Australia, New Zealand, and the US (that is, we remove Central and South American countries, as well as South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong), we can see a small positive correlation.

If, however, we additionally remove the US, the correlation again disappears. What this means is that countries with roughly similar cultures and economies seem to have homicide rates ranging from Ireland's .69 to Hungary's 3.5. Gun ownership percentages range from 0% (Hungary, among others) to 27% (Switzerland). There is, in fact, a slight negative trend that does not appear to be statistically significant.

If the hypothesis were to hold, we would expect a country like Canada, which has a relatively high rate of firearm ownership, to have a much higher homicide rate than a country like Portugal, which has low firearms ownership. Instead, Portugal's rate is higher.

Therefore, I think it is quite possible that firearm ownership is not significantly related to homicide rate. Rather, it may be that other factors play a larger role. You might check for social and cultural homogeneity, or create an estimate of "cultural violence" or "cultural criminality" by including other types of violent or property crimes.

This was just quick and dirty, mainly to illustrate the point that you need to always check the data. Correlation does not equal causation, but a lack of correlation means that the data sets are probably not significantly related.

[demagogic_schizoid]

expandig on what Hilbert said:


GUNS and Violence: The English Experience + was clearly intended as a contribution to the ongoing American debate about gun control. Several years ago, Joyce Lee Malcolm, an historian at Bentley College, published a careful study of the English legal background to the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment. That book lent support to the claim that America's Founders intended to safeguard an individual right to own guns. In her new book, Malcolm offers a wider historical survey, which strengthens the policy case for private gun ownership. She also offers intriguing hints about why American policy in this area differs so much from the English (or general European) consensus.

Most of Guns and Violence is a chronological survey of crime patterns in England since the High Middle Ages. The big picture is fairly clear: Century by century, as guns became more widely held, violent crime declined. In the decades since the Second World War, as British law limited private gun ownership and largely disarmed the population, rates of violent crime have increased dramatically. A long concluding chapter of the book sharpens the point: Over the past two decades, as gun ownership has become more prevalent in the United States, violent crime has steadily declined here. Meanwhile it has continued to climb in Britain, amidst nearly total bans on private gun ownership.

Malcolm cites many studies purporting to make sense of this pattern. Economist John Lott, in a survey of all American counties between 1977 and 1996, found strong correlations between the advent of laws allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons and a decline of violent assaults on citizens. Other studies have found that while half of all burglaries in Canada and Britain target houses where someone is at home, the comparable figure in the United States is just 13 percent. Surveys of convicted felons in the United States confirm that most are quite leery of confronting a victim who may be armed. And surveys of the general U.S. population indicate that each year there are hundreds of thousands of episodes of "defensive gun use," in which respondents claim to have averted a crime or saved someone from attack by displaying a firearm--in most cases without actually firing.

Nor, according to Malcolm's evidence, does the United States pay a high price for these crime-control benefits. Fatal gun accidents among children are very rare: More than twice as many children die each year from bathtub drownings. Guns do not, by themselves, turn family disputes into scenes of carnage among otherwise law-abiding individuals: Of those convicted of gun-related murders, 90 percent have prior criminal records, involving four or more felony arrests.

AS Malcolm acknowledges, however, gun-ownership rates are only one element in the overall crime pattern. Wider cultural patterns also make a difference. In the United States, violent crime is five times more likely to be committed by blacks than whites. The same relation holds true between blacks and whites in England, though the overall proportion of whites is much higher. Meanwhile, overall rates of violent crime in England and Wales had surpassed those in the United States by the late 1990s, but murder rates in the United States remained more than five times higher. Higher rates of murder in the United States are not simply a reflection of racial disparities; nor do they depend, one way or the other, on guns. American cities also witnessed more lethal violence two hundred years ago: "Even without guns," an English researcher found, "New Yorkers still managed to outstab and outkick ... Londoners by a multiple of 5.6."

Some of the contemporary difference, according to Malcolm, reflects differences in reporting techniques. Federal authorities in the United States have, for decades, classified incidents so as to magnify the "crime problem," while British authorities seem to have had the opposite impulse. American "homicide" figures include defensive uses of force, for example, even when subsequently endorsed by prosecutors or juries, while English statistics carefully weed out every case that can be reclassified. Rape rates--where the U.S. statistics still suggest a much larger problem than in Britain--may actually be comparable, when adjusted for different methods of record-keeping.

Overall crime figures probably respond more to public crime-control measures than to private action by gun owners. Over the past two decades, the United States has moved quite aggressively to prosecute and imprison those guilty of street crime, while Britain has, by comparison, taken a more lenient approach. That might be enough to explain most of the disparities. But Malcolm still offers plausible evidence that the availability of guns has helped Americans to defend themselves. Clearly, many millions of Americans believe that gun ownership improves their security. Almost half of American households now have a gun. The majority of owners are middle class, married, and law-abiding. Guns are more prevalent in rural areas and in the South, but the proliferation of guns in northern cities and suburbs indicates a widening respect for the defensive value of gun ownership.

complete article (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0377/is_2002_Fall/ai_91972739)

[shum]

i liked making guns.

i had a big struggle with it but then i twisted my thinking to make it ok.

i just wanted to make some money to feed my kids. but i know that i have now helped to kill some mother's baby.

its tough and it sucks and people that arent in an environment where guns are should not be making opinions. you dont know. specualate all you want and form ignorant opinions. and be thankful the whole time that you can do such a thing.

i am an ass for what i have done. i could have said no and i didnt. i will live with this for the rest of my life.

[FranG]

Did anybody read the OP? The point was that the whole debate is silly from a logical standpoint. The issue can only be argued from a moral standpoint. When anti-gun advocates try to use logic to justify their position, they always fall short. I have yet to see an argument that wasn't full of holes (although Hustler's reply was interesting it still had moral implications). But gun control lobbyists would rather not argue against banning guns on moral grounds because that's much harder to sell. Unfortunantely for them though they have no logical argument to support their claims



Not as easily as with a gun.

I can kill someone with a rock too; but not as easily as with a knife. So let's ban knives now (As you can see, we can go on endlessly with this line of reasoning).

[Xander]

Did anybody read the OP? The point was that the whole debate is silly from a logical standpoint. The issue can only be argued from a moral standpoint. When anti-gun advocates try to use logic to justify their position, they always fall short. I have yet to see an argument that wasn't full of holes (although Hustler's reply was interesting it still had moral implications). But gun control lobbyists would rather not argue against banning guns on moral grounds because that's much harder to sell. Unfortunantely for them though they have no logical argument to support their claims
Remote controls make it easier to switch the channels on your TV. People change channel more often. Guns make violence easy.
Giving access to guns as a matter of course is as poor a decision as giving out driving licences in your morning cereal.
If you can have a gun then why not an automatic? If you can't have an automatic, presumably because your worried about collateral damage etc, then why allow shotguns and large bore firearms?
If the populace can be armed then why not allow only a limited selection of weapons?
Is it logical that a person who has been told that their sight is too poor to hold a driving license any longer can still go out and buy an anti material rifle?

In essence the idea of no gun control is illogical from the point of view of the society. The point of total gun bans seem to also be coming out as illogical according to the data, not that I trust just naked numbers. What point you pick in the middle depends a lot on how you reason it.

Personally I'd say yes you can own a firearm, if that's what the people want, but it has to be a .38 revolver. No exceptions. All ammunition has to be ball. No exceptions.

Okay you'd still be able to drop somone but it should lead to less fatalities.

[rek]

Yes, American jails are overpopulated by people who have been convicted of so-called victimless crimes. That isn't really relevant, and it doesn't render my idea impractical. Our jails are not overcrowded with people serving out 30 year or life sentences for attempted murder; they're overcrowded with people serving out 5 year sentences for drug possession.

True, they are over crowded for different reasons (as I stated: not attempted murder but silly things like drug possession). I don't see how that changes the fact that there simply is not enough room in our jails for them.


If drug possession carried with it a life sentence, you can bet people wouldn't be so quick to be caught with drugs. In fact, drug use would likely plummet if the disincentives for using it were higher. So, too, would gun possession.

You highly under estimate the will of the people and highly over estimate the power of the state to control them. Like I said you could technically lower the consumption of water if you attached a life sentence too. As demagogic already pointed out for me: laws don't work unless people agree with them (or at the very least, if they don't, they have to be sure they will be caught).

Its really easy to convince normal people why murder is bad. It's harder to convince them why smoking a little pot is bad (so, the majority of people I know - granted i'm in SF - smoke it despite the laws). It's harder yet to convince them why downloading music is bad (which is why we have an entire culture based around it - like the Pirate Party in Sweden).

Your point would really only work if there was a policeman for every couple people. Otherwise there's absolutely no way the enforcement of such a law could get even relatively close to being effective.


And you talk a good game, but if the penalty for illegal possession of a firearm were a mandatory 30 year prison sentence or something outrageous like that, I don't think you'd be so quick to line up to go to prison for most of the rest of your life.

You highly underestimate me. You should (re-)read some of my other posts in the current events section and reconsider your opinion. There's no way I would even let such a thing get close to discouraging me. Though, I'll admit your plan would make my only other option of keeping my guns and shooting anyone who tries to take them away seem a lot more appealing (I obviously would lose this fight eventually, so it's still unlikely for me, it'd make more of a point to go to jail anyway - pretty sure others would take this route though).


And this is not even taking into account the rest of my argument, which you seem to have just ignored. The whole point was that it was a response to your question of whether guns would be less common among the criminal populace. The answer to that is still yes, because gun prices would soar, which is a disincentive to owning one in and of itself.

Thank you for answering my first question, but it was a question not a statement nor an expression of there only being one answer. Like I said in my second post you're right you can slightly decrease ownership of anything you want if you attach life sentences to it (at least until your jails fill up). My last question was "Is it simply if we make less legally then there should be less eventually?" and your implied answer was "Yes" but what about the rest of my questions? I'd still like to know how you plan to enforce this law, starting with how you find the millions of illegal guns.

I don't mean to sound like a little bitch, I'm just honestly interested in the answers to those questions (which is why I asked them).

[s'box]

You're looking from the inside out not the outside in. The U.S military aren't stupid, they'd get their supplies externally in terms of food. The U.S military could just go claim the Oil in the middle east and the uranium in Australia and hold the world to ransom. I doubt the U.S Military would coup to start with, but if they did it would make alot of sense to secure a source of income.

There would be alot of third parties willing to deal with them externally and internally to the U.S. Alot of the external ones would be quite happy for the economic boost of military factories and bases would provide and the benefits of siding with the most powerful army in the world.

The U.S military ability to fund itself is quite high in my opinion. And once they have cash, their need to interact with alot of their motherland would be removed.

The people that could stop them would be the rest of the world, not your "armed militia"

How could it just claim that oil in the middle east when its forces are already stretched thin on the basis of controlling the domestic situation of the country? Those local populations could also react in some way or another, creating another chaotic situation for them to handle.

and while its certainly a valid point that they could just buy from elsewhere, that doesn't change that they would still have to move around within US borders to fight and quell disturbances and quick uprisings, and even the US army cant move everything it has in massive impenetrable groups. There will always be weak spots and the wonder of guerilla warfare is that those who resist will always find them. Buying from other countries also relies on having and maintaining your money supply, something a well organized resistence could likely disrupt. The source of income is not some abstract which it can just easily take up from some foreign country, whose citizenry would likely resist and disrupt much the same way, just as theyre doing in Iraq. Even with cash flowing freely, theres only so much money can buy, and no matter how many laser guided robot helicopter hunter seeker death drones you purchase, you still cant predict that style of random attack and these folks will still have the ability to attack and fade right away back into the general populace wherever they go.

Guerilla warfare has successfully weakened and disrupted superior forces constantly, and in the american example we have vietnam and iraq to show what effect it has on a foreign campaign. An internal campaign would be far harder to work with the ability to hit the most basic of infrastructure which that military relies, to rally the public, as well as weaken the will of the military to fire on its own people. I suspect for instance that in the case of a takeover, a fair amount of the national guard would be inclined to simply desert rather to fight a war on their home soil.

[FranG]

Remote controls make it easier to switch the channels on your TV. People change channel more often. Guns make violence easy.
Giving access to guns as a matter of course is as poor a decision as giving out driving licences in your morning cereal.
If you can have a gun then why not an automatic? If you can't have an automatic, presumably because your worried about collateral damage etc, then why allow shotguns and large bore firearms?
If the populace can be armed then why not allow only a limited selection of weapons?
Is it logical that a person who has been told that their sight is too poor to hold a driving license any longer can still go out and buy an anti material rifle?

In essence the idea of no gun control is illogical from the point of view of the society. The point of total gun bans seem to also be coming out as illogical according to the data, not that I trust just naked numbers. What point you pick in the middle depends a lot on how you reason it.

Personally I'd say yes you can own a firearm, if that's what the people want, but it has to be a .38 revolver. No exceptions. All ammunition has to be ball. No exceptions.

Okay you'd still be able to drop somone but it should lead to less fatalities.

Again you're right but the argument is circular. Guns are merely tools, albeit effective tools, that are used in crimes. But the argument is that guns cause crime are fallacious. It's simply a means to an end. Like your remote control example; if somebody once to see three shows at once bad enough, they are gonna walk to the TV and keep flipping the channels back and forth. Or they may just sit in front of the TV so they don't have to keep getting up. People will do what they want to do regardless.

Like I said, the argument is moral and doesn't stand up to any logical scrutiny. If u curb guns, one can make the case to curb everything else that causes crimes (or injury to people). Like for instance restricting cars to only go up to like 30 mphs to lessen the impact of car collisions. Or only selling x amounts of Big Macs per day by McDonal's because they cause injury to people. I can go on and on man. But the point is u can only make a moral appeal, not logical.




I don't mean to sound like a little bitch, I'm just honestly interested in the answers to those questions (which is why I asked them).

So am I bro.

[demagogic_schizoid]

Remote controls make it easier to switch the channels on your TV. People change channel more often. Guns make violence easy.
Giving access to guns as a matter of course is as poor a decision as giving out driving licences in your morning cereal.
If you can have a gun then why not an automatic? If you can't have an automatic, presumably because your worried about collateral damage etc, then why allow shotguns and large bore firearms?
If the populace can be armed then why not allow only a limited selection of weapons?
Is it logical that a person who has been told that their sight is too poor to hold a driving license any longer can still go out and buy an anti material rifle?

In essence the idea of no gun control is illogical from the point of view of the society. The point of total gun bans seem to also be coming out as illogical according to the data, not that I trust just naked numbers. What point you pick in the middle depends a lot on how you reason it.

Personally I'd say yes you can own a firearm, if that's what the people want, but it has to be a .38 revolver. No exceptions. All ammunition has to be ball. No exceptions.

Okay you'd still be able to drop somone but it should lead to less fatalities.


Read that article I posted. Less guns does not equal less violence. Your argument makes sense but it contradicts a lot of evidence.

[Jacque]

As the saying goes, "guns don't kill people, people kill people." The argument for gun control is fallacious.

There might be problem with this logic, which tests its ideological consistency. If applied in other situations, would you find it acceptable?

1.) "Weapons of mass destruction don't kill people, terrorists and rogue states kill people."

2.) "Falling pianos don't kill people, piano players (or gravity) kill people."

3.) "Poor nutrition doesn't kill people, people who don't exercise kill people (themselves)."


1.) Can we accept this logic on other levels? Since anti-gun control advocates hold aggressive foreign policy positions, I doubt it.

2.) The argument seems absurd with intent. Do people unintentionally kill each other with guns? Yes, especially children and those involved in domestic disputes.

3.) Must everything have a single cause? No, when one is as essential as the other.

Now, I'm not blaming poor reasoning, logical or illogical, for these possible inconsistencies. No, I happen to be a strong believer in "illogical arguments don't fool people, people fool people." :grin:

[intpgolfer]

Originally Posted by intpgolfer View Post
Why are 95% of all murderers in america - men?


Maybe we're having the wrong discussion here. We should ban men.

=))

[Prothero]

Noticing the map for murder by firearms on an earlier link, I noticed how peaceful South America appeared and yet it is not quite as safe as it looks. You may not be as likely to be gunned down, but dead is dead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder

[Krill]

I think everyone should be assigned a 9mm at birth and have to go through regular training

Seriously

I give you the Swiss. (http://www.stephenhalbrook.com/articles/guns-crime-swiss.html)

EDIT: Well, that teaches me to post in response to a post only halfway through the thread. In order to keep from redundancy, why doesn't anyone bring up the Swiss? It's always England or Australia.

[HilbertSpace]

Noticing the map for murder by firearms on an earlier link, I noticed how peaceful South America appeared and yet it is not quite as safe as it looks. You may not be as likely to be gunned down, but dead is dead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder

I removed South America from my quick and dirty analysis because of that very thing. It's a little silly, in my opinion, to act like a correlation between homicide rates with firearms and firearm ownership is particularly meaningful. The proper comparison, in my mind, is firearm ownership and total homicide rate.

[Hustler]

Thank you for answering my first question, but it was a question not a statement nor an expression of there only being one answer. Like I said in my second post you're right you can slightly decrease ownership of anything you want if you attach life sentences to it (at least until your jails fill up). My last question was "Is it simply if we make less legally then there should be less eventually?" and your implied answer was "Yes" but what about the rest of my questions? I'd still like to know how you plan to enforce this law, starting with how you find the millions of illegal guns.
The key to reduction in the presence of firearms when you pass a law banning them is that their production shuts down. Your various Colts and Remingtons and so forth will halt all production save for that originating from military contracts. Guns are confiscated in droves year after year in the United States by the police, and this trend would continue to happen, but the guns that were confiscated would not be replaced as quickly as they are now. Enforcing the law starts with regulating the manufacture of firearms to be in line with the new laws, and that is certainly a lot easier to do than trying to go out on the street and hunt down every gun, because corporations are massive entities that are comparatively easy to pin down and regulate. CEOs aren't interested in having them companies go under or be disbanded by the government, and they certainly aren't interested in going to prison themselves, so they would surely comply with government regulations once it was determined there was no more fighting it in court. Over time, the existent guns would be confiscated, and eventually the population of guns out on the streets would be very low compared to what it is now, simply on account of the level of scarcity guns would achieve. Of course, there would be a black market for guns, and of course some crooks would still have them, but they wouldn't be nearly as commonplace as they are now.

All of this is achieved without even busting individual gun owners anymore than they are busted now. This is just from shutting down production of firearms that are to be commercially available for the general public, and allowing the attrition of guns as a resource to do the rest.

This is tangential and not even all that relevant to your question, but you're wrong about the jails filling up thing. Jails don't get full with people being convicted with life sentences. Large numbers of people don't do things that carry life sentences, precisely because they don't want to end up in jail with a life sentence. The jails are full of people with much shorter sentences, because people will still do those things, because the disincentives to such are not great enough to prevent people from doing them.

[Hustler]

(although Hustler's reply was interesting it still had moral implications).
No it doesn't. My argument isn't even for gun control. I'm just saying that if you ban guns, the number of guns being held by criminals would decrease on account of economic forces. Gun prices would rise, and the average crook's ability to afford a gun would drop. It's the same reason people who rob banks and then have to flee the scene at high speed don't all drive Ferraris.

[rek]

This is tangential and not even all that relevant to your question, but you're wrong about the jails filling up thing. Jails don't get full with people being convicted with life sentences. Large numbers of people don't do things that carry life sentences, precisely because they don't want to end up in jail with a life sentence. The jails are full of people with much shorter sentences, because people will still do those things, because the disincentives to such are not great enough to prevent people from doing them.

I know, I agreed with you. I didn't say they were filled with people doing life sentences I said they are full (period) and that means less space for the hundreds of thousands of new "criminals" you're plan would create.


True, they are over crowded for different reasons (as I stated: not attempted murder but silly things like drug possession). I don't see how that changes the fact that there simply is not enough room in our jails for them.

[Hustler]

I know, I agreed with you. I didn't say they were filled with people doing life sentences I said they are full (period) and that means less space for the hundreds of thousands of new "criminals" you're plan would create.
My point is that it wouldn't. And I assume those criminals, with the more severe sentences, would just mean more of the pot smokers who are in for 6 months would be released to make way for those more in need of incarceration.

[rek]

Ok, well that makes more sense. I still think it's an unjust, immoral, and extremely impractical plan though.

[FranG]

There might be problem with this logic, which tests its ideological consistency. If applied in other situations, would you find it acceptable?

1.) "Weapons of mass destruction don't kill people, terrorists and rogue states kill people."

True. I don't have a problem with weapons of mass destruction. They serve the same purpose as guns on a macro level.



2.) "Falling pianos don't kill people, piano players (or gravity) kill people."

I like pianos too; they should not be banned. And falling pianos are caused by people too. They don't fall on thier own so irresponsible or fraudulent people are still the culprits here.



3.) "Poor nutrition doesn't kill people, people who don't exercise kill people (themselves)."

True to the latter. Also, people who have poor nutrition kill themselves via eating poor nutrition. Irresponsible people are still the culprits here too.

See it's basically like this. You can look at it as if it were a regression with crime being the dependent variable, guns (and other tools) being the independent variable(s), and the intent, skill, ignorance, etc. of people who use guns (or other tools) as the constant regression coefficient(s). Crime is driven by the subjective human factors, not objective tools such as guns.




1.) Can we accept this logic on other levels? Since anti-gun control advocates hold aggressive foreign policy positions, I doubt it.

I don't have any data to refute this, but I can say that I'm anti-gun control and I do not support aggressive foreign policy. But if we are talking about people within government, remember people who would want to take your gun to render you defenseless against they who would still have guns would be aggressive with their foreign policy. Again it's the same thing on a macro level. That's why Iran is under pressure to disarm. Our terrorist government would like to remove Iran's means of defending itself from an aggressive nation (i.e., themselves) so they can have no means of defense against an invading standing army.



2.) The argument seems absurd with intent. Do people unintentionally kill each other with guns? Yes, especially children and those involved in domestic disputes.

Again this goes back to "people killing people." Whether by accident or not is irrelevant. Guns should be kept away from kids who would accidently harm themselves or others. And husbands who do not have control of their emotions should not have a gun or should learn to leave the house when the argument gets heated.



3.) Must everything have a single cause? No, when one is as essential as the other.

Everything doesn't have a single cause. I agree with you. But my initial point is that this debate is one of morals just as the decision to raise taxes or not. It's an infinity argument but gun-control lobbyist try to make it sound like their way is the only logic alternative and that's just false. I guess the founding fathers were illogical according to them.



Now, I'm not blaming poor reasoning, logical or illogical, for these possible inconsistencies. No, I happen to be a strong believer in "illogical arguments don't fool people, people fool people." :grin:

:grin: yeah I agree. You gotta watch people.


No it doesn't. My argument isn't even for gun control. I'm just saying that if you ban guns, the number of guns being held by criminals would decrease on account of economic forces. Gun prices would rise, and the average crook's ability to afford a gun would drop. It's the same reason people who rob banks and then have to flee the scene at high speed don't all drive Ferraris.

Yeah I agree with u. I think me, you and Rek are saying the same thing. Your example would work but it's moral still though because it involves stripping one of a right. Also, crime mayt decrease as a result of guns by this example, but may increase by other means (i.e., with knife murders as someone said earlier). Overall reduction in crime would not necessarily follow from this line of reasoning.

[rek]

1.) Can we accept this logic on other levels? Since anti-gun control advocates hold aggressive foreign policy positions, I doubt it.

Oh dear god that's so far from correct it's not even funny... I blame the media for you thinking this, and our jacked up 2 party joke of a system of course... FranG already said he doesn't, I most certainly do not, I'm sure demagogic doesn't either, in fact I'd guess 90% if not everyone who's posted here that's anti gun control is also anti aggressive foreign policy.

[darlets]

How could it just claim that oil in the middle east when its forces are already stretched thin on the basis of controlling the domestic situation of the country?
Firstly they already have it by means of the control both bottle necks. There are two bottle necks in the oil cycle from the middle east. A big processing plant the most/all of the oil goes through in Saudi arabia. This is the most defended place on the planet (well, which is public knowledge anyway) It has 24/7 air patrols over its air space. You will be shot down if you fly into the exclusion zone and you have to pass through several ground level exclusion zones to get to the gates.
The U.S military provide this service for the Saudi Government.
Secondly they control what comes in and out of the gulf via their navy.

If you're talking about the U.S military going "rogue" then you're talking about a new world order. The American public would play a very small role in this if any.

The notion that U.S forces are stretched in Iraq is a word game your goverment plays with you. You ground forces are stretched, you navy and airforce are not. Everytime Iran rattles a few sabres the U.S Navy/Air force does wargames in the gulf. For example, the display of power they put down when the british soldiers were capture. They were so "stretched" they actually sent more aircraft carrier battle groups to the area.



Those local populations could also react in some way or another, creating another chaotic situation for them to handle.

They wouldn't care. They wouldn't have to handle it. What they wouldn't want is to engage with world in a economic and production based war because they'd lose (maybe). The more chaos the better.

They can get oil from else where (though I think the Saudi's would give them enough) The point would be to bring the world economy to its knees. Let the people rebel and go nuts. The Europen countries would have to come quell the unrest. As long as the Rogue Military has a supply of oil it's all good and if others don't all the better.



and while its certainly a valid point that they could just buy from elsewhere, that doesn't change that they would still have to move around within US borders to fight and quell disturbances and quick uprisings, and even the US army cant move everything it has in massive impenetrable groups.

Again, bring on the chaos. What does the U.S have that the Rogue military want???? The General just secures all his bases, creates and exclusion zone around them. They would need to secure food, ammunition and labour. They can get them else where and most likely move them "off shore".



There will always be weak spots and the wonder of guerilla warfare is that those who resist will always find them. Buying from other countries also relies on having and maintaining your money supply, something a well organized resistence could likely disrupt. The source of income is not some abstract which it can just easily take up from some foreign country, whose citizenry would likely resist and disrupt much the same way, just as theyre doing in Iraq. Even with cash flowing freely, theres only so much money can buy, and no matter how many laser guided robot helicopter hunter seeker death drones you purchase, you still cant predict that style of random attack and these folks will still have the ability to attack and fade right away back into the general populace wherever they go.

The U.S military again doesn't need you, they just need someone to provide labour for them. This isn't the 18th century, they can just go build bases in South America.

As long as the U.S military is the biggest, baddest bully on the block you don't have to worry about them being a tyrant to you, they have better things to do. You have to worry about them deserting you.



Guerilla warfare has successfully weakened and disrupted superior forces constantly, and in the american example we have vietnam and iraq to show what effect it has on a foreign campaign. An internal campaign would be far harder to work with the ability to hit the most basic of infrastructure which that military relies, to rally the public, as well as weaken the will of the military to fire on its own people. I suspect for instance that in the case of a takeover, a fair amount of the national guard would be inclined to simply desert rather to fight a war on their home soil.
Exactly and why the F@#$ would they hang around the U.S. They can secure their bases and just outsource everything else. They have bases else where, in other countries. I would guess any number of south american countries would sign on to being the next world power.

Anarchy would reign in the U.S, and this is a valid argument for why you might want to bear arms (If the military pisses off else where). But again I don't think they will.

The whole Guerilla warfare thing works if the bigger army wants or has need to move through your land. The U.S Military would have no need for the rest of the U.S other than its bases and if a few are too hard to defend, they'll just trash it and move it to a safer location. You seem to be stuck on the idea that they want order, when its to their advantage to see as much chaos as possible (not just in the U.S, but in the world).

Aside from all this, Guerilla warfare is mainly fought with explosive, antitank weapons, RPG and sniper rifles, if people are arguing that they have the right to bear arms to fight a guerilla campaign against the army, then bear the right sort of arms. This notion that a hand gun will do much in Guerilla warfare or on a modern battlefield is laughable.

This then comes down to weighing up is your society going to be more stable with the heavier weapons being public available Vrs how likely is the need for a Guerilla campaign and how long would it take to get them if they were required. The mess in Iraq is really just been done with explosives manufactured locally.

[Xander]

Again you're right but the argument is circular. Guns are merely tools, albeit effective tools, that are used in crimes. But the argument is that guns cause crime are fallacious. It's simply a means to an end. Like your remote control example; if somebody once to see three shows at once bad enough, they are gonna walk to the TV and keep flipping the channels back and forth. Or they may just sit in front of the TV so they don't have to keep getting up. People will do what they want to do regardless.

Like I said, the argument is moral and doesn't stand up to any logical scrutiny. If u curb guns, one can make the case to curb everything else that causes crimes (or injury to people). Like for instance restricting cars to only go up to like 30 mphs to lessen the impact of car collisions. Or only selling x amounts of Big Macs per day by McDonal's because they cause injury to people. I can go on and on man. But the point is u can only make a moral appeal, not logical.
I'm not saying ban guns cause guns kill people, that IS illogical. What I am saying is that people should NOT be allowed to just go out and buy a .454 Casul with hydrshock bullets because there is no logical reason to allow them to. The whole thing of allowing the populace access to rifles which could be used for sniping is illogical without controls. Ergo it IS logical to have gun CONTROL not necessarily a ban on guns.

Hence I beleive it is logical to only allow private ownership of a .38 revolver.
#1 It's a very reliable weapon
#2 The round is powerful enough for defence but isn't likely to cause blow through
#3 It's cheap
#4 It's not a very attractive gun so you should only really get people buying it who need it
#5 It only holds six rounds so is not too good for blazing away or assault

What I would ask FranG is that you state why it is logical to NOT control guns. They are at the moment are they not or do you have your finger resting on an MG36 at the moment?

There is no logical reason to have no gun controls. There are logical reasons for contrlling them, namely that you cannot expect to effectively police and control a populace which is armed to the teeth, as the enthusiast will always have more money to spend on his armoury than the police force can afford to spend on each officer. No this doesn't mean more crime or anything of the sort but it DOES change the feel of the community. If you have a gun then why do you need your neighbour? If you have a gun then why do you need the police?

I wonder if there is any correlation between the number of guns owned privately and the number of vigillante actions committed? That would be interesting.

Anyhow this all breaks down to simple things.
Humans aren't logical. Ergo whether they should be allowed to do X or not is not a question of logic. If everyone was logical then you wouldn't require guns. Ergo the whole line of thinking is circular.

[immortalmack]

What I see in this topic is crime,law abiding citizens rights to bear arms,disarming criminals and a bunch of other garbage about minorities.

Let's put it plain: the majority of crime is done for money. As the employment rate goes up so does the crime. Give a person a job he won't have time to do crime. give a person an education and he will have resources to get more money legally with no short cuts.
The right to bear arms is for guvment tyranny. if you think western governments won't go tyrant you don't know your history.Just because democracy of some type is deep tradition in western countries don't mean they won't abuse their citizens. They do it everyday to poor populations all over the west. If you take away the right to have guns, the guvment is no longer afraid of a citizens uprise and you'll get what you had in France where they just let the the outskirts burn down and continued to insult them. Why do they not care of the concerns of that particular group of people: hell yea,one cause they are biased against that group and they won't take them seriously caused they don't have guns and can not harm the government (property destruction, loss revenue, bad investment enviroment, no foreign investment, loss in world stock markets, general revolt, etc). If the powers that be see that you can defend yourself they won't just rush in any kind of way. Examples: normally when police raid a drug den they just rush in because they know that drug dealers are not normally armed nor willing to battle with police. However when a person is known to have a gun held up in a house or somewhere do they rush in there all gun-ho? hell no cause no cop wants to be the first to get shot in the face with the bullets of an unknown caliber. They'll talk with the guy and get cigaretts and call his wife and get him breakfast and all that.
the government needs to fear that if things are out of order the population will rise up and defend it's interest. If thats not the case then there are to many examples in todays world of government abusing its people and the people have no means to defend itself . Most tyrannies happen when the people don't have a right to guns.

[FranG]

Anyhow this all breaks down to simple things.
Humans aren't logical. Ergo whether they should be allowed to do X or not is not a question of logic. If everyone was logical then you wouldn't require guns. Ergo the whole line of thinking is circular.

We agree on this point. It's a moral debate and circular as the OP eluded to, (Argument from effect). It basically comes down to an opinion which we can go back and forth on. I just don't like when they try to appeal to emotion with the gun control arguments, then turn around and use bad logic to justify banning them.

I mean we might as well ban all guns, but that would include the police and the military. Only then will I see your point. If I don't have a gun, the police shouldn't need a gun to take me down.

[s'box]

Firstly they already have it by means of the control both bottle necks. There are two bottle necks in the oil cycle from the middle east. A big processing plant the most/all of the oil goes through in Saudi arabia. This is the most defended place on the planet (well, which is public knowledge anyway) It has 24/7 air patrols over its air space. You will be shot down if you fly into the exclusion zone and you have to pass through several ground level exclusion zones to get to the gates.
The U.S military provide this service for the Saudi Government.
Secondly they control what comes in and out of the gulf via their navy.

This is really rather ludicrous. Just because the military dominates the oil processing plant doesn't mean they own the oil, or ever see any money from it till its been filtered through local officials, oil companies, then taxes then corrupt politicians. They would have to begin stealing it outright if they were disconnected from the national government and its corporate sponsors, which is a situation an armed resistence in the US could muster, causing economic ruin within the US would naturally cause those corporations to flee and the national government would need the militarys presense to maintain order. Once they started doing that the saudis would cease to do buisness with the US military, even with threats of force. The saudis would just make a new plant somewhere else and break off relations with the americans. If the US tried to just take it over it would find itself just like it does in Iraq, profitless. The guerilla war in Iraq has successfully kept the iraqi oil fields from turning any sort of profit, even losing money, and the saudis would do the same.

After doing this then, the US would find itself isolated and without anywhere to put those military bases you seem to think can exist in a political and economic vacuum. You can be a little belligerent with your guns and people will still let you in, but you cant fuck with their money. If youre a thief in saudi arabia, you'll be a thief everywhere else and having your money stolen is in no national interest.

The US is not as strong as this situation would require and it can't hold a gun to the head of everyone and its never had that power. Thats why its always moved in subtle gestures like coups and election fraud and left the military option for places where few would complain.

Lots of variables here (and statements disguised as questions) this is far from a sure thing, if not completly unlikely. The saudis are not real friends, much less people to rest your entire agenda on.


The notion that U.S forces are stretched in Iraq is a word game your goverment plays with you. You ground forces are stretched, you navy and airforce are not. Everytime Iran rattles a few sabres the U.S Navy/Air force does wargames in the gulf. For example, the display of power they put down when the british soldiers were capture. They were so "stretched" they actually sent more aircraft carrier battle groups to the area.

yea and whats the navy and airforce going to do exactly? bomb new york city? bomb dixietown north dakota? bomb where exactly? the rebel hideout somewhere on the mountain? bomb the urban ghettos? peoples homes?

The navy and the airforce exist mostly for conventional warfare and thats where their strength is. A guerrilla war is vastly different and theyre mighty helpful towards fighting one I'd imagine, but against popular support their power is dwindled to all hell. A popular militia is only a full time job for some involved, and if you start bombing or navy-ing the bulk and power of a peoples militia in their secret lairs, you'll be bombing them in their own homes and you will be certain to do nothing but kill a few innocent people and rally hundreds more against you.


The U.S military again doesn't need you, they just need someone to provide labour for them. This isn't the 18th century, they can just go build bases in South America.

No this isn't the 18th century, they cant just build bases in South America. South America wont have it. Whos going to let a rogue army, who already is threatening those who hold its bases already (they'll remember how bad it pissed off the saudis by stealing all their oil, and the 'terrorist' bombings that conviently began to occur afterwards), with no clear source of income to pay for that which means no economic leverage over those governments due the situation of civil strife which would cripple the US economy. With no economic incentive, and politics that would lead to mass protests and general local resistence from both leftists resentful of imperialism and rightists who seek not to have their resources stolen, theres no incentive at all to let them in. They cant invade everyone you know.


What does the U.S have that the Rogue military want????

The whole Guerilla warfare thing works if the bigger army wants or has need to move through your land. The U.S Military would have no need for the rest of the U.S other than its bases and if a few are too hard to defend, they'll just trash it and move it to a safer location. You seem to be stuck on the idea that they want order, when its to their advantage to see as much chaos as possible (not just in the U.S, but in the world).

This situation of yours where the US military breaks off as an independent entity from the American state and runs around the world unmolested and with its current political alliances (which stem from the power of the state and the economy vastly more than the brute force of the military, which only exists from the power of state and economy) and theyre doing this for.. what purpose exactly? is fundamentally flawed and beyond unlikely. A rogue army holding the world hostage with no country to claim as its own is not one that can manage anywhere, and really doesn't serve any purpose at all, much less will be able to sustain an income based on outright thievery to fight an endless war of attrition.. everywhere?

No, if a coup were to occur, and it doesn't have to be a military coup at all, it would be on the basis of excersizing political power over US soil and even if its intentions were international it would require control over the US to maintain the political and economic capital (because contrary to your assertion, the US military really cant just walk in and take all the money from the natural resources of the world) that would allow it to be succesful in achieving its aims.

The most likely situation is a slow and quiet looking takeover done with congressional authority as its probably vastly easier to do than politicizing the whole us armed forces, and theres probably endlessly more will for that then running the hell off to nowhere for who knows what reason. Getting a million soldiers to peacefully and quietly abandon their homeland entirely wouldn't exactly be an easy task either.


This notion that a hand gun will do much in Guerilla warfare or on a modern battlefield is laughable.

20 people with handguns can take the machine guns from 10 people. 10 people with machine guns can take the machine guns from 5. 15 people can take the machine guns from 10, 25 people can take the machine guns from 20and maybe 45 people with machine guns and a few home made explosives can score a tank or a night raid on an armarment storehouse. 70 million americans own guns. 1.5 million americans are in the armed forces. The math works out real nicely.

[Jacque]

See it's basically like this. You can look at it as if it were a regression with crime being the dependent variable, guns (and other tools) being the independent variable(s), and the intent, skill, ignorance, etc. of people who use guns (or other tools) as the constant regression coefficient(s). Crime is driven by the subjective human factors, not objective tools such as guns.

But gun control isn't about controlling passive objects such as guns. Its about controlling people, their acess to guns. Gun control is people control.

Despite my personal inclinations, I support controlling certain people with background checks and assault rifle bans. Even if they are ineffective, institutions can become very powerful cultural actors. The more guns become a symbol of violence, the larger a target it becomes. The greater the symbol the more potent its undoing. The real targets of gun control are the masses.

[Jacque]

Oh dear god that's so far from correct it's not even funny... I blame the media for you thinking this, and our jacked up 2 party joke of a system of course... FranG already said he doesn't, I most certainly do not, I'm sure demagogic doesn't either, in fact I'd guess 90% if not everyone who's posted here that's anti gun control is also anti aggressive foreign policy.

Our two party system makes for strange bedfellows. That's why I say that. If you want to have a voice on issues that matter the most, you learn to remain silent on those that matter the least. Neither of you have ever had to win an election in US politics.

[darlets]

This is really rather ludicrous. Just because the military dominates the oil processing plant doesn't mean they own the oil, or ever see any money from it till its been filtered through local officials, oil companies, then taxes then corrupt politicians. They would have to begin stealing it outright if they were disconnected from the national government and its corporate sponsors, which is a situation an armed resistence in the US could muster, causing economic ruin within the US would naturally cause those corporations to flee and the national government would need the militarys presense to maintain order. Once they started doing that the saudis would cease to do buisness with the US military, even with threats of force. The saudis would just make a new plant somewhere else and break off relations with the americans. If the US tried to just take it over it would find itself just like it does in Iraq, profitless. The guerilla war in Iraq has successfully kept the iraqi oil fields from turning any sort of profit, even losing money, and the saudis would do the same.

So the U.S military, the ones that are actually going to go rogue and impose this tyrany on you, actually need you. Wow what a shock.

Truth be know they would find it very difficult to go rogue, like I said at the start and repeated in my second post.
The very notion of them going rogue as a one is silly. They would be hunted down by the rest of the world.

The notion that you need hand guns in a guerilla warfare in the U.S as it currently stands is silly though. The main thing people over look here is that there is 300 million people in the U.S. That amount of population can't be supported with primative farming. You need industry.
If some external threat took out your army, all they would have to do is destory your industry and agent orange all the farm land. And just leave you for a couple of years. In modern war the biggest killer is taking a population that is reliant on a level of technoloy to survive (to produce enough food) and taking them back to a primative level. Our population level is well passed the level of living off the land.

When the right to bear arms was first instituted this wasn't the case. People with guns could just take to the country, live off the land and be a real pain in the arse to oppressors.

There's 6 billion people in the world currently, tryants aren't going to oppress you, they're going to kill you. They don't need slaves, they need resources. All the hand guns in the world isn't going to stop 80% of the population of a large country dying.

[s'box]

So the U.S military, the ones that are actually going to go rogue and impose this tyrany on you, actually need you. Wow what a shock.



Truth be know they would find it very difficult to go rogue, like I said at the start and repeated in my second post.
The very notion of them going rogue as a one is silly. They would be hunted down by the rest of the world.

It sure is silly and sure isn't a shock which sure seems contradictory to the rest of your posts here. I don't know why youre so stuck on this wierd 'military breakoff and run away' thing which doesn't really have any historical basis, especially when i've already mentioned that while the military will likely back a coup instead of being the initiator of one, it wouldn't be the prime force, and even if it were it would wrap itself in shrouds of civilian legitimacy. There really are other ways the US can turn into a tyrannical state which could be fought and removed with the use of guerilla warfare short of some wierd military dicking about which never happens.


The notion that you need hand guns in a guerilla warfare in the U.S as it currently stands is silly though. The main thing people over look here is that there is 300 million people in the U.S. That amount of population can't be supported with primative farming. You need industry.
If some external threat took out your army, all they would have to do is destory your industry and agent orange all the farm land. And just leave you for a couple of years. In modern war the biggest killer is taking a population that is reliant on a level of technoloy to survive (to produce enough food) and taking them back to a primative level. Our population level is well passed the level of living off the land.

When the right to bear arms was first instituted this wasn't the case. People with guns could just take to the country, live off the land and be a real pain in the arse to oppressors.

There's 6 billion people in the world currently, tryants aren't going to oppress you, they're going to kill you. They don't need slaves, they need resources. All the hand guns in the world isn't going to stop 80% of the population of a large country dying.

Well first off who was talking about external threats the idea of the armed militia was mostly to counter government imposed tyranny by holding some degree of force within the populaces hands (and yes there is more than just a crazed dr strangelove style general to count as government imposed tyranny)
but even if we were people are resources. Especially in the US which if you look at what its actually producing... well its really not producing all that much at all, but it sure does a lot of owning. The US is not really that valuable without all its population and its money and its infrastructure. They'd leave us around, and then with our guns we hold so tight we can make it at least a slight bit irratating for awhile.

and in most guerilla warfare situations again, the guns you can buy legally are all you need untill you use those guns to steal better ones. You dont need an automatic rifle to take a shot and run away.

[darlets]

Somnus, I take your point you can be a pain in the arse with hand guns and such, my main point would be this.

Just to be historically for a moment, the concept of keeping and bearing arms stems from the middle ages. You had to provide a weapon bigger than a knife so you could be a militia for both keeping the peace (policing) and for making war (soldiering), you didn't have the right not to bear arms

At the time of the the war of independance 2-3 civilian with muskets would in my opinion be worth about 1 trained armed soldier (who accounted for alot of the might of the army), my point being it was a pretty close ratio. This musket was most likely used alot for hunting and other duties (i.e they had some clue how to use it)

You could use this weapon for both policing and soldiering. To me the logic falls down in the modern society when people buy a six shooter and 20 bullets and claim they are going to fight a tyrant.

Hand gun + shooting baddy coming in your house to me is something I can entertain in reality
Hand gun walking around the streets and coming across baddy, again something I can entertain in reality.
Hand gun fighting off a modren army in a guerilla campaign. Nope I have a hard time swallowing. If people are serious about the soldiering aspect of it then I think they would need
Surival training
A full chem/bio suit
And a rifle.

It's important to understand the Kurds in northern Iraq had AK47 and RPG and rebelled against Saddam prior to the first gulf war and they were gassed by helicopters and the rebelion crushed. The Iraqi people were ruled by a tryant and they had AK47's coming out their wazoos. It was the lack of air craft and ability to defend themselves against biological agents that stopped them becoming independant.

When the no fly zones were implemented and the ground war playing fields somewhat leveled (the U.S had destroyed most of the Iraqi tanks during the first gulf war) the Kurds pretty much were a self governing independant state after a few years of fighting. (Other than the period of the initial second gulf war campaign, security hasn't been a problem there, so much so that it put them so far ahead in the reconstruction of Iraq they currently have a tourist industry)

It's hard to say what the ratio of a civilian with a gun vrs an infantry man is now, but the question becomes quite mute due to the nature of warfare.

You'd have to go to the impossible length to reach the same ratio of power that was around when the War of independance was fought, so that ever forth house in the suburbs had some sort of military vechile, up to a tank, and every city in american having 10 or so fighter bombers independant of the Government (somehow)

Tyrants have nerve agents and napam at their disposal currently and people can't just desert and flee city and live off the land any more due to the numbers involved.

We live in the age when a B2 bomber can take off from the U.S, fly to Iraq, getting refueled on the way, drop thirty guided bombs on gps coordinates and return. (B2's can reach anywhere in the world without touching down.)

Nobody knows what other nastys the U.S military has because they rocked up to anyone that owned a satelite that passed over Afganistan and Iraq and bought all the air time for everytime it passes over.

[Xander]

We agree on this point. It's a moral debate and circular as the OP eluded to, (Argument from effect). It basically comes down to an opinion which we can go back and forth on. I just don't like when they try to appeal to emotion with the gun control arguments, then turn around and use bad logic to justify banning them.

I mean we might as well ban all guns, but that would include the police and the military. Only then will I see your point. If I don't have a gun, the police shouldn't need a gun to take me down.

English coppers generally don't have guns. We do have specific firearms units which are called upon to deal with those criminals who have somehow go hold of firearms but other than that the coppers will just man handle you.

The military no having guns though is a little counter productive as they are dealing with government sanctioned opponents. They do and will kill with legal backing.