Wanted: fact based arguments for gun control.

[hafr]

Originally Posted by citizenzen

Yes!

Give lifetime welfare payments until we find the cause to idleness.

You're pretty ridiculous. And this discussion is over for me, I'm out.

[PracticalMac]

Originally Posted by citizenzen

Instead of balancing government budgets, we'll let them spend all they want until scientists find the CAUSE behind spending more than one takes in.

Economists (Science of money if you will) already have a extremely good idea on the CAUSE of the economy.

Politicians don't believe them.

And you are right, it is a VERY good comparison becuase there is a plenty of research on the CAUSE of violence, but politicians do not want to act on it, becuase certain powerful people do not believe it.


To reiterate, we DO need controls on guns,
I will support SMART controls on guns
such at:
Mandatory education for ALL (even those who do not intend to buy)
Mandatory mental screening for those who do want to buy
More accountability for the weapon purchased by purchaser (keep tight control).
More accountability and jail time for FFL gun dealers who sell the gun to a someone who is "strange'
Gun dealers and shooting ranges report people with strange behavior (last 2 are mental health related, not weapon related, actually)

Possibly limits on how many guns with ammo purchase in a week.

I might agree to limits on magazine size, although 100 round (modern make) mags are really nuts.

----------

Originally Posted by Moyank24

I understand what you're saying. And this order would make sense for many things in the US, but it doesn't seem to be what happens.

For instance, instead of being for a total ban on abortion, the pro-life crowd should be pushing for research on the reasoning behind ones' choice for an abortion. And so on....

Yes, I know...
Perhaps one day...

----------

Originally Posted by hafr

Hear, hear! Someone who gets it.

Thank you!

Refining the message is the hard part.

[Iscariot]

Originally Posted by hafr

Unless the average Swiss gun owner owns 1,5 guns per one gun owned by the average Canadian gun owner, it's simply not true.

That was a clarity error on my part. I meant "Canada has a higher level of ownership" in the context of the developed world, not than Switzerland or the US. I apologize for the confusion, I'm also on my phone which this forum handles poorly, so if my explanation is inadequate ill try to address that later.

[leekohler]

Originally Posted by PracticalMac

Economists (Science of money if you will) already have a extremely good idea on the CAUSE of the economy.

Politicians don't believe them.

And you are right, it is a VERY good comparison becuase there is a plenty of research on the CAUSE of violence, but politicians do not want to act on it, becuase certain powerful people do not believe it.


To reiterate, we DO need controls on guns,
I will support SMART controls on guns
such at:
Mandatory education for ALL (even those who do not intend to buy)
Mandatory mental screening for those who do want to buy
More accountability for the weapon purchased by purchaser (keep tight control).
More accountability and jail time for FFL gun dealers who sell the gun to a someone who is "strange'
Gun dealers and shooting ranges report people with strange behavior (last 2 are mental health related, not weapon related, actually)

Possibly limits on how many guns with ammo purchase in a week.

I might agree to limits on magazine size, although 100 round (modern make) mags are really nuts.[COLOR="#808080"]

Agreed, but good luck getting any of this past the NRA- not gonna happen. And that's the problem.

[Squadleader]

Magazine capacity is an irrelevant side argument and you know it...The Va. Tech shooter used 10 round magazines, Connecticut shooter dropped magazines with 15 rounds still left in them...Wonder why that is....training, Call of Duty.....and they were NUTS..Everything suggested on this forum, on this these threads are BS..I suggest the Gov't closing down the press for awhile and stop feeding the lemmings...
52% percent of Americans own guns...Now if they would only vote...
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!

[Menel]

Originally Posted by hafr

It's impossible to miss the discussion following the latest shootings in the states, and there is a very loud group of people saying "banning guns means less guns and less gun violence" and another very loud group saying "don't you dare touch our guns, they're protected by the constitution".

Now, as a person who's not the least bit interested in owning weapons (my time in the army was enough) and as an economist - I'm mostly interested in numbers, correlations and such.

I just can't seem to find any kind of evidence that imposing tougher gun laws would in fact make society safer. When saying this I usually get to hear that I'm a scary man, that I'm stupid for not being able to understand the concept of "less guns = less crime" and other argumenta ad passiones.

The only fact based argument I hear against gun ownership is that suicidal gun owners are more likely to use their guns when killing themselves than suicidal people who do not own guns, and that crimes of passion in the home more often include guns when there is a gun in the house than when there is not. These are both very good arguments against gun ownership, but it says absolutely nothing about the general security in the society or that it would stop these mass killings.

Another argument is comparisons between Japan and the US. Which is a comparison that lacks any importance when looking at comparisons between the states in the US or comparisons between more countries. Using only two examples when comparing only two factors is just ridiculous.

So, I'm not out to disprove anyone, I have no interest in protecting anything, I just want to know if there is anything fact based to support the claim that tougher gun control makes for a safer society - and if so, please show it to me.

WOULD BANNING FIREARMS REDUCE MURDER AND SUICIDE? A REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL AND SOME DOMESTIC EVIDENCE: http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/...useronline.pdf

Just Facts: http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp#crime

No Correlation Between Gun Control Laws and Violent Crime Rates: http://inmalafide.com/no-correlation...t-crime-rates/

Gun Laws and Crime: A Complex Relationship: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/we...anted=all&_r=0

Violent Crime Rate.
UK with guns banned.

In the UK, there are 2,034 offences per 100,000 people

US with gun ownership.

The U.S. has a violence rate of 466 crimes per 100,000 residents

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...frica-U-S.html

USA has actually dropped further since then, 386 in 2011. We've been on a steady decline in violent crime since at least 1992 (as far back as the data goes).
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr...tables/table-1

[Eraserhead]

Originally Posted by Menel

Violent Crime Rate.
UK with guns banned.

US with gun ownership.

The most obvious difference between the UK and US figures is that the UK figures include assault without injury and the US figures do not.

Additionally the British get drunk much more often and are more likely to be violent at that point, which will have a large effect, and which is a cultural difference.

[citizenzen]

Originally Posted by hafr

You're pretty ridiculous.

Yes. I'm being purposefully ridiculous because I'm reflecting the ridiculous nature of PracticalMac's proposal.

If the requirement to do anything regarding guns is understand and solve the nature of human violent tendencies then you are never going to do anything at all. Obviously that's the desire of gun some advocates, to forestall any obtainable solutions by creating impossible hurdles to overcome.

Unfortunately for those people, society will move forward without them ... just as we have with civil rights, abortion, gay rights, etc. There are reasonable measures that can be taken that will reduce the risk that guns introduce into society. It's time we took steps toward implementing them.

[Macky-Mac]

Originally Posted by PracticalMac

But do CAUSE, then EFFECT, becuase then it will be much easier to see what does need control, and there will be much more agreement.[COLOR="#808080"]....

Probably more effective to address what facilitates the effect. When somebody is drunk, angry, delusional, abusive......or whatever particular cause you want to choose......reaching for a handy gun is a far easier and quicker route to killing somebody than all of the usual red herrings....."you can kill somebody with......a wet macaroni noodle!!!!"

Well sure you can, but nowhere as quickly or easily as with a gun.

[hafr]

Originally Posted by citizenzen

If the requirement to do anything regarding guns is understand and solve the nature of human violent tendencies then you are never going to do anything at all. Obviously that's the desire of gun some advocates, to forestall any obtainable solutions by creating impossible hurdles to overcome.

What do you say to someone who wants to ban knives because of how many people are stabbed to death every year?

Unfortunately for those people, society will move forward without them ... just as we have with civil rights, abortion, gay rights, etc. There are reasonable measures that can be taken that will reduce the risk that guns introduce into society. It's time we took steps toward implementing them.

Are you absolutely certain you want to compare the ban of firearms with the right to have an abortion? Are you still being ridiculous on purpose?

----------

Originally Posted by Macky-Mac

Probably more effective to address what facilitates the effect. When somebody is drunk, angry, delusional, abusive......or whatever particular cause you want to choose......reaching for a handy gun is a far easier and quicker route to killing somebody than all of the usual red herrings....."you can kill somebody with......a wet macaroni noodle!!!!"

Well sure you can, but nowhere as quickly or easily as with a gun.

Do you have any statistics about how many percent of gun related homicides are committed under these circumstances? And how does these numbers compare to those where the murder is committed with another weapon?

I mean, a knife is a far more common weapon and also very, very easy to kill someone with. Are you proposing drunk, angry, delusional, abusive people are more likely to kill someone if a gun is present than if a knife is?

[Eraserhead]

Originally Posted by hafr

I mean, a knife is a far more common weapon and also very, very easy to kill someone with.

If it is so easy to kill someone with a knife how come that Chinese guy who only had a knife who went on a rampage in a school at the same time as Newtown didn't kill a single person?

[Apple OC]

States with concealed carry permits have lower crime rates than those states without.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Guns,_Less_Crime

[citizenzen]

Originally Posted by hafr

What do you say to someone who wants to ban knives because of how many people are stabbed to death every year?

And you complain because you think I'm being ridiculous?

[Moyank24]

Originally Posted by Apple OC

States with concealed carry permits have lower crime rates than those states without.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Guns,_Less_Crime

It seems, according to this link, that there is a great deal of opposition to this particular study. My favorite is "The Final Bullet in the Body of the More Guns, Less Crime Hypothesis', Criminology and Public Policy, 2003"

[hafr]

Originally Posted by Eraserhead

If it is so easy to kill someone with a knife how come that Chinese guy who only had a knife who went on a rampage in a school at the same time as Newtown didn't kill a single person?

I notice you avoided the question, but that's okay. It was fairly expected actually.

[rdowns]

Originally Posted by Apple OC

States with concealed carry permits have lower crime rates than those states without.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Guns,_Less_Crime

John Lott, really? Really?

From your own link…

Academic studies that have rejected Lott's conclusions include the following. These studies contend that there seems to be little or no effect on crime from the passage of license-to-carry laws. Donohue's 2003 study finds a temporary increase in aggravated assaults.

Rutgers sociology professor Ted Goertzel stated that "Lott’s massive data set was simply unsuitable for his task", and that he "compar[ed] trends in Idaho and West Virginia and Mississippi with trends in Washington, D.C. and New York City" without proper statistical controls. He points out that econometric methods (such as the Lott & Mustard RTC study or the Levitt & Donohue abortion study) are susceptible to misuse and can even become junk science.[14]

Ian Ayres, Yale Law School, and John Donohue, Stanford Law School, "Shooting Down the More Guns, Less Crime Hypothesis," Stanford Law Review, 2003.[15]

Jens Ludwig, Georgetown University, "Concealed-Gun-Carrying Laws and Violent Crime: Evidence from State Panel Data", International Review of Law and Economics, 1998.[16]

Dan Black and Daniel Nagin, "Do 'Right-to-Carry' Laws Deter Violent Crime?" Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 209–213 (January 1998).

Mark Duggan, University of Chicago, "More Guns, More Crime," National Bureau of Economic Research, NBER Working Paper No. W7967, October 2000, later published in Journal of Political Economy.[17]

Tomislav V. Kovandzic and Thomas B. Marvell, "Right-To-Carry Concealed Firearms and Violent Crime: Crime Control Through Gun Decontrol?" Criminology and Public Policy 2, (2003) pp. 363-396.

John J. Donahue III, Stanford Law School, 'The Final Bullet in the Body of the More Guns, Less Crime Hypothesis', Criminology and Public Policy, 2003.[18]

John Donohue and Ian Ayres. "More Guns, Less Crime Fails Again: The Latest Evidence from 1977–2006" Econ Journal Watch 6.2 (2009): 218-238.[19]

[hafr]

Originally Posted by citizenzen

And you complain because you think I'm being ridiculous?

This is quite interesting though. What's the difference between a knife and a gun here? Since you claim I'm being ridiculous in comparing them in this way, would you be okay with allowing people to carry knives?

[Moyank24]

Originally Posted by hafr

This is quite interesting though. What's the difference between a knife and a gun here? Since you claim I'm being ridiculous in comparing them in this way, would you be okay with allowing people to carry knives?

The difference may be in the result. As you were already asked - what is the difference between the two school attacks in December? One resulted in zero deaths and one resulted in 26.

The fact is, and you were asking for facts, that there is a reason these mass killers are bringing guns when they are trying to kill as many people as they can, as quickly as they can.

If knives are just as deadly, maybe our US Military should think about leaving their guns at home and just carry knives.

[Apple OC]

Originally Posted by rdowns

John Lott, really? Really?

From your own link…

any idea why the shooter picked the only theatre that banned hand guns? He drove past other theatres showing the same movie ... problem is ... those theatres had armed citizens attending the show.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/...emark-theater/

[Moyank24]

Originally Posted by Apple OC

any idea why the shooter picked the only theatre that banned hand guns? He drove past other theatres showing the same movie ... problem is ... those theatres had armed citizens attending the show.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/...emark-theater/

You aren't going to seriously link an opinion piece and present it as a fact, are you? You have no idea, and neither does Fox, why he chose the theater he did.

[Eraserhead]

Originally Posted by Apple OC

States with concealed carry permits have lower crime rates than those states without.

Transporting guns between US states is trivial, so the difference in gun laws are irrelevant.

Originally Posted by hafr

I notice you avoided the question, but that's okay. It was fairly expected actually.

Given drunk people (and angry people) are generally not exactly great fighters they are going to struggle to kill someone with a knife. And as I pointed out killing someone with a knife is much more difficult than with a gun.

Originally Posted by Apple OC

any idea why the shooter picked the only theatre that banned hand guns? He drove past other theatres showing the same movie ... problem is ... those theatres had armed citizens attending the show.

Unless there are metal detectors on the door what exactly stops concealed carriers going to that cinema anyway?

[Apple OC]

Originally Posted by Moyank24

You aren't going to seriously link an opinion piece and present it as a fact, are you? You have no idea, and neither does Fox, why he chose the theater he did.

then you think it was just a coincidence he drove past other theatres and chose the only theatre with no armed citizens?

In a state with a concealed carry law ... I am saying he chose that theatre on purpose.

[rdowns]

Originally Posted by Apple OC

any idea why the shooter picked the only theatre that banned hand guns? He drove past other theatres showing the same movie ... problem is ... those theatres had armed citizens attending the show.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/...emark-theater/

No. I have no more idea than you or John Lott does in his opinion piece. Maybe he knew the theater layout better than others and knew he could get in the back door. Maybe he knew someone he wanted to kill was at that show.

[Apple OC]

Originally Posted by Eraserhead

Unless there are metal detectors on the door what exactly stops concealed carriers going to that cinema anyway?

The Law ... most concealed carriers are law abiding citizens.

Originally Posted by rdowns

No. I have no more idea than you or John Lott does in his opinion piece. Maybe he knew the theater layout better than others and knew he could get in the back door. Maybe he knew someone he wanted to kill was at that show.

maybe? ... I believe he targeted that theatre because there would be no citizens who would be experienced marksmen trying to stop him.

[Moyank24]

Originally Posted by Apple OC

then you think it was just a coincidence he drove past other theatres and chose the only theatre with no armed citizens?

In a state with a concealed carry law ... I am saying he chose that theatre on purpose.

I am saying that I have no idea why he chose the theater he did. And neither do you. Ironic you posted this in a thread that is supposed to be about "facts".

You may get your "facts" from opinion pieces on Fox News, but I prefer reality. And until the suspect states his reasoning, you have no idea. And to pretend otherwise is ridiculous. Unless, of course, you are a mind reader.