Why do the liberal Democrats want to take guns away from Americans? page 186

I’m not seeing the problem. Are you saying that some of the worlds most powerful, charismatic, and intelligent leaders; as well as anti-capitalist champions of the proletariate can all agree on something?

I’ve gotta say, if those four all agreed on something, I’d be very inclined to agree with them.

Originally posted by Captain_Catface:

I’m not seeing the problem. Are you saying that some of the worlds most powerful, charismatic, and intelligent leaders; as well as anti-capitalist champions of the proletariate can all agree on something?

I’ve gotta say, if those four all agreed on something, I’d be very inclined to agree with them.

I love you and I want to have your babies.

I’m completely against gun control, but your argument is very weak. Nazism was also very fond of nature, it was against harming one’s body with drinking alcohol and cigarettes, etc. – Your argument is pretty much Reductio ad Hitlerum (and others).

I’ll just leave this here

Originally posted by beauval:

I’ll just leave this here

But if everybody had had guns in the movie theatre…….. o.O

Wow, a news story. That proves so much. I’ll just leave some stuff that really make a point, here:

Even with a high level of development, gun control made it a more dangerous country than shitty countries:




“Everyday, on average, over 550 rapes, 1.100 homicides and 5.200 other violent crimes are avoided simply because the victim showed his firearm.” (KLECK, G., 1997)
“In 1982, Kennesaw, GA, published a lei obligating the existence of at least one firearm per residence. In 1983, the amount of household break-ins dropped by 89%.” (KLECK, G., 1988)

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IS THIS ENOUGH?

Originally posted by WorufgangoSama:

sure they’re for protection but if no-one had them why would you need to protect yourself?

The problem is that it’s not the case that “no-one” has them. Criminals have and always will have them – so arming the population with guns is a wonderful solution as given by statistics. It also decreases the amount of rapes heavily, even if the offender is unarmed.

I’m still all for personal gun ownership (subject to the caveats I previously posted)… but if you’re going to make an argument you’ll need to do better than that.

Yes, some criminals are still be armed with a firearm, but rather than facing swarms of armed outlaws it would appear that the vast majority commit their crimes completely unarmed or with improvised weaponry (e.g. the pry bar used to gain entry) / a knife.

I, and others, have posted the crime stats clearly showing that following the ban on handguns here, for example, that firearms related crime rates first rose but have fallen steadily since and are now virtually non-existent (as a proportion of overall crime rates).

In 2009/10 there were 12995 Total ‘firearms’ offences in England & Wales. Of which;
4928 were Air rifles/pistols (which I would argue aren’t firearms)
3748 were Handguns [compared to peak of 5874 in 2001/02]
2219 were ‘Other’
1515 were Imitations, and
585 were shotguns

Police recorded crime showed a four per cent reduction between 2010/11 (4.2 million offences) and 2009/10 (4.3 million offences). This places police recorded crime at its lowest level since the National Crime Recording Standard (NCRS) was introduced in April 2002.

source

13,000 out of 4,200,000…. approximately one third of one percentage point of all offences involved a firearm (arguably less if you discount the ‘air weapons’).

Now, unless your argument is that there is something ‘different’ about the makeup of the American psyche and your disposition towards violence that would mean criminals there would do the opposite of what they’ve done elsewhere (e.g. continue to arm themselves with guns despite the lack of ‘need’ to do so), your first point appears to be pure nonsense.

USA: source 10,639,000 sexual offences, 2009 (81 per 100,000 approx)
UK: source 54,982 sexual offences 2010/11 (91 per 100,000 approx)

Conclusion: Presence of firearms makes little discernible difference, such a small variation likely due to the way such crimes are classified and recorded.

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Side note: Reported in yesterday’s news homicide rates here are at a 30 year low.

That’s likely because gun ownership has risen a lot in England and Wales.
“These latest figures from the Home Office have released in March 2011 show that more guns have been licensed than ever before.”

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Congrats, you just helped me prove you wrong.

look at australia’s gun killing stats

Originally posted by WorufgangoSama:

That’s likely because gun ownership has risen a lot in England and Wales.
“These latest figures from the Home Office have released in March 2011 show that more guns have been licensed than ever before.”

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Congrats, you just helped me prove you wrong.

KongBot can’t find the page you are looking for?

And how do you figure that I’ve helped prove me wrong? Do that stats lie? With incredibly low gun ownership rates (compared to the US, for example) we have considerably lower murder rates, similar sexual offence rates, etc.

Firearm Certificates in England and Wales

2010/11
SUMMARY
• There were 141,347 firearm certificates on issue on 31 March 2011, a slight fall of 0.3 per cent
compared with 141,775 on issue at the end of March 2010.
• There were 564,269 shotgun certificates on issue on 31 March 2011, a fall of three per cent
from the 580,653 on issue at the end of March 2010.

• While the number of firearm certificates on issue fell in the last year, the number of firearms
covered by such certificates (464,839 firearms) increased and is the highest number since
these figures were first collected in 1995.

EG – less people are registering firearms, those that do are registering more of them.

Conclusion: Despite the rise in registered firearms, any particular criminal is less likely to encounter one, despite this increasing number of registered firearms the number of incidents has decreased year on year, as per my earlier post.

IS THIS ENOUGH?

My dear boy, I may be old but I’m not deaf, well not completely anyway. There’s no need to shout.

Now the memory’s not what it used to be, but I don’t recall contributing to this thread previously, although I’m not about to check 186 pages to make sure. Feel free to prove me wrong. So you’re making a lot of assumptions about me from a single link posted without comment.

But you’re right of course. I don’t approve of guns getting into the hands of a load of idiots who all think they’re John Wayne. Gun ownership is a bit like car ownership. Everybody thinks they’re a great driver, but in actual fact very few are. Everybody thinks that they’re so bloody sensible and responsible that if they own a gun nothing could possibly go wrong. Until it does. Yeah, I know two of them are old news, and you don’t like news stories anyway, but I really don’t give a flying fuck.

Cherry picking single countries and short time spans is idiotic anyways.

“The role played by firearms in homicide is fundamental
and, while the specific relationship
between firearm availability and homicide is complex,
it appears that a vicious circle connects firearm
availability and higher homicide levels.
Firearms undoubtedly drive homicide increases in
certain regions and where they do members of
organized criminal groups are often those who
pull the trigger.”

“Nonetheless, the high overall homicide rates combined
with a very high proportion (more than 60
per cent) of homicides by firearm seen in regions
such as Central and South America shows that,
depending on the context, the availability of fire-
arms and therefore easy access to guns can play a
significant role in influencing homicide rates. In
such contexts, a certain proportion of civilian firearms
(utilized by a certain proportion of the population)
may be considered a major “enabler” of
homicide events.”

“Like homicide itself, the use of firearms in homicide
is not equally distributed around the world.
Data based on criminal justice and public health
sources provide different breakdowns of homicide
mechanism committed in different regions. Using
public health sources, it can be estimated that 74
per cent of homicides are committed by firearm in
the Americas (based on 30 countries), as compared
to 21 per cent in Europe (based on 32 countries).
In contrast, sharp objects such as knives account
for a greater proportion of violent deaths in European
countries (36 per cent) than the Americas (16
per cent), while the use of any weapon accounts
for 90 per cent of homicides in the Americas but
for only 57 per cent of homicides in Europe (figure
3.1).
As discussed in this and chapter 5, this pattern is
likely to be closely tied to the different distribution
of homicide typologies in the Americas and
Europe; a larger proportion of homicides in the
Americas being linked to organized crime and
gangs as compared to a large proportion of homicides
in Europe being linked to intimate partner/
family-related causes. In particular, the 43 per cent
of homicides linked to “other” mechanisms in
Europe is largely reflective of assault by bodily
force, blunt objects and strangulation, which are
often seen in intimate partner or family-related
homicide.3”

“Most Western and Northern European countries
have long been among those with the lowest homicide
rates in the world, yet, paradoxically, violent
crimes and drug offences have increased in many
European countries since the early 1990s.8 This
may be partly due to changes in the lifestyles of
European youths, including changes in their consumption
patterns of drugs and alcohol (heavy
episodic or “binge” drinking, for, example) and the
emergence of new street gangs based on ethnic
minority or immigrant group affiliations.9 There
are indications that these developments have an
impact on increased street violence and hospital
admissions.10
Such a discrepancy between violent crimes and
homicide could be due, in part, to the lack of
availability of firearms11 (only 27 per cent of homicides
are committed with a firearm in Western
Europe as opposed to 65 per cent in Central
America) as well as to an improvement in the quality
of health services reducing the lethality of violent
assaults and homicide attempts.12 Some
researchers have also postulated that decreases in
homicide rates in Europe may be explained by
greater levels of economic equality and an absence
of major social conflicts.13”

from: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2011 study on homicide

Oops. Here’s the link

less people are registering firearms, those that do are registering more of them.

3% less than last year, but far more than years ago when crime was on the high. It’s a “X” graph. As the amount of gun certificates rise, the amount of crimes fall.
And wat, this statistics from the link you provided also… contradicts itself? IS IT A INCREASE OR DECREASE??

• There were 11,286 new firearm certificates granted in 2010/11, a 19 per cent increase from the 9,462 certificates granted during 2009/10. The increase this year follows an 18 per cent fall between 2007/08
  and 2009/10 (Table 1).

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Also, you can see there were 117,700 certificates (311,000 total guns) in 2002, when crime was at a high level, and 141,340 certificates (464,839 total guns) in 2010/11.
You can also see that the number of applications for registration from gun dealers rose by 200 from 2008/09 and 700 from 2002 (that where previously unregistered), and by a full 1000 for those that were registered (from both years). Maybe this also made the criminals more aware that the population were getting themselves guns.

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Did you even read all 23 pages of the PDF article you sent me?…

Originally posted by beauval:

But you’re right of course. I don’t approve of guns getting into the hands of a load of idiots who all think they’re John Wayne. Gun ownership is a bit like car ownership. Everybody thinks they’re a great driver, but in actual fact very few are. Everybody thinks that they’re so bloody sensible and responsible that if they own a gun nothing could possibly go wrong. Until it does. Yeah, I know two of them are old news, and you don’t like news stories anyway, but I really don’t give a flying fuck.

I couldn’t agree any more w/ this. It is at the very heart of the debate on gun CONTROL//REGULATION.

Thanks beauval for the EXCELLENT comparison to the automobile PERSONAL “ownership”. While I can’t show it to ya (a snipe at the “conservatives”) in the Constitution,,, I feel it can make a very good analogy about the “sanctity” of the 2nd Amend.

Yes, we “allow” some extremely pathetic owners//users of automobiles (guns) to have them. We do this out of certain reasons—mostly the reasons of//for particular expediencies—like providing transportation of a more personal nature (use of guns for a more personal nature?…self defense) than use of public transportation (use of police). Our extreme lack of regulation of both driving & ownership of guns is appalling. We hand out drivers’ licences as if they were candy. The paper tests are OPEN BOOK. The driving test is an initial one-time thing. We think so little of driving education that we drop it from high school curriculum (mostly due to our current budget crisis). It is likely to stay that way because our modern conservative climate here in Kansas has a dim view of public education.

Thank gawd the carnage from both “killing machines” is very low. This DOES NOT MEANT it couldn’t be even lower were we to do better by -as beauval points out-denying them to certain individuals who have FAILED to achieve ownership//rights to these tools. AND, as I’ve proposed…failing to do so would carry extreeeeeme consequences for violations. This is called: Putting TEETH in laws.

Originally posted by beauval:

I’ll just leave this here

Holy crap that freaks me out though. I was going to see that movie in that area.

Originally posted by WorufgangoSama:

IS THIS ENOUGH?

Yeah I think we’re good.

Obviously the answer is giving everyone a gun. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that.

But then again, let’s look at the stats between countries that have strict gun laws and countries that have lax gun laws and compare the homicide rate. We can all cherry pick one or two countries to prove or disprove a claim, but lets take a shit load of countries and see what happens.

Lets have a look at gun ownership per head per capita and homicide rate per head per captia.
Will we see a trend?

I’m a little drunk on Gin at the moment…so excuse me if I can’t quite make a conclusion. I looked at the wiki stats, and fuck if I can coherently make a point for or against this topic.

Could someone do the dirty work pleasssssse.

Guns are great, look at how they protect us from the bad guys!

If everyone had a gun in the theaters, I can assure you that this would not have happened. Regardless, you’re showing a case in which a few dozen people die (it was 16 deaths and 50 wounded IIRC), when on the other side you’re seeing thousands of people not getting raped, not having their homes robbed or being assaulted because they have guns.

Originally posted by WorufgangoSama:

If everyone had a gun in the theaters, I can assure you that this would not have happened. Regardless, you’re showing a case in which a few dozen people die (it was 16 deaths and 50 wounded IIRC), when on the other side you’re seeing thousands of people not getting raped, not having their homes robbed or being assaulted because they have guns.

The problem is that guns certainly do facilitate in killing people and inciting them to commit heinous crimes like the Colorado theater massacre that took place. If everyone had a gun in the theater, do you honestly think that would stop the gunmen? There would be probably more casualties due to panic and inexperience and that would do more harm than good. Banning all guns except for law enforcers is the solution. Why aren’t even assault weapons banned and why is it so easy to legally obtain a gun in the first place? The problem is that democrats release people who are mentally ill and they release violent offenders and that republicans cling to their guns and use an out dated amendment to justify owning guns even assault weapons. At the very least, there should be stricter background checks.

Originally posted by WorufgangoSama:

Did you even read all 23 pages of the PDF article you sent me?…

No, I only pulled the raw numbers out as the link wasn’t working and included the source so you knew where they came from.

But now, using the figures from the link you’ve provided (which are based on the same Home Office official stats linked to above) we can see that yes, ownership levels were at 1.810 Million in 2010, the highest they’d been throughout the period covered by that table.

However, the actual change is actually very, very small – circa 8,000 from the previous high (2009) and only 50,000 more than the previous high in the 90’s. In broad terms, despite this year being a ‘high’ numbers are remarkably consistent with a variation of only 200,000 (approx) between the lowest and the highest years with the size of any yearly change (either positive or negative) also fairly consistent.

As we see consistent (over the period) reductions in recorded crime with only, relatively, small fluctuations in the number of firearms in private hands (both up and down) arguing the presence of an additional 83 registered firearms per 100,000 population, most of which were shotguns issued by rural forces, being responsible for the year on year fall in crime across the whole country over the same period (1995-2010) of more than 45% since 1995) is simply ludicrous for at least two reasons…

1. Over the same period, as well as some rises, your own link shows in many years total ownership fell year on year and yet recorded crime was falling and continued to fall (source previously provided).

2. Firearms ownership, primarily shotguns, is very much focussed in the countryside / rural forces… IF the increase in firearms was related to the drop in recorded offences, one would also expect the decline to be focussed in those areas, rather than across the whole country. It was not.

If everyone had a gun in the theater, do you honestly think that would stop the gunmen?

Would you start shooting around if you knew everybody had a gun with them? It prevents crimes from even beginning, along with stopping crimes that have already begun to take place.

There would be probably more casualties due to panic and inexperience and that would do more harm than good.

It probably wouldn’t have even started. I’m talking about extremely high probabilities here.

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Even if there were ultimate powerful strict checks to take firearms away from all Americans, criminals would still easily get them just like we can easily get weed, cocaine or heroin. It only rolls money around in the black-market, enriching criminals. And we can’t even defend ourselves.

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As we see consistent (over the period) reductions in recorded crime with only, relatively, small fluctuations in the number of firearms in private hands

So we reached a conclusion that, in this case, crime didn’t get higher nor lower because of firearms, but because of other reasons. There’s nothing to further discuss besides the boring job of reading extensive papers and trying to grab more statistics and analyze them – I really don’t feel like it. Do you agree?

Originally posted by WorufgangoSama:

So we reached a conclusion that, in this case, crime didn’t get higher nor lower because of firearms, but because of other reasons. There’s nothing to further discuss besides the boring job of reading extensive papers and trying to grab more statistics and analyze them – I really don’t feel like it. Do you agree?

Yes, absolutely. The only issue to debate is whether or not the same would and does hold for the US…

For the sake of argument if the government were to ‘ban all guns’ (yes I know, not going to happen – and not my favoured approach) would we see the same benefits experienced elsewhere? e.g. If firearms ownership is not a deciding factor in the level of observed crime, would the nature of those crimes change to match our patterns (e.g. much fewer homicides, accidental shootings, etc – more ‘woundings’ rather than deaths) or is there something inherently different, more violent if you will, that means Americans are more inclined to kill one another meaning that the status quo would remain?

Originally posted by donseptico:

Originally posted by WorufgangoSama:

So we reached a conclusion that, in this case, crime didn’t get higher nor lower because of firearms, but because of other reasons. There’s nothing to further discuss besides the boring job of reading extensive papers and trying to grab more statistics and analyze them – I really don’t feel like it. Do you agree?

Yes, absolutely. The only issue to debate is whether or not the same would and does hold for the US…

For the sake of argument if the government were to ‘ban all guns’ (yes I know, not going to happen – and not my favoured approach) would we see the same benefits experienced elsewhere? e.g. If firearms ownership is not a deciding factor in the level of observed crime, would the nature of those crimes change to match our patterns (e.g. much fewer homicides, accidental shootings, etc – more ‘woundings’ rather than deaths) or is there something inherently different, more violent if you will, that means Americans are more inclined to kill one another meaning that the status quo would remain?

Ah interesting point, if the status quo remained, it might mean the banning of violent movies, videogames and music.

Guys, don’t let that one annual major shooting deter you. Just remember all the good things guns do for the community.

WorufgangoSama, I really like all of the graphs you found. Good job. The facts are right there and I can’t believe we are still hearing arguments for gun control.