Con_Alma;1384559 wrote:It has been my position all along that the desire to furventy fight for the right to maintain arms is deeply cultural.

I would suggest that the solution to the kind of gun violence that we have could be lessened with a better sense of community and cultural changes.

Honestly, I think that's the ONLY solution.

Con_Alma;1384558 wrote:I'm not making the claim nor have I that you did. I did, however, follow some of your posts with a reminder that the Court has ruled that citizens are protected in maintaining arms for any lawful purpose.

You are reminding me of something that is incorrect based upon the very SCOTUS case you claim supports it.

BoatShoes;1384572 wrote:If I had a child or a loved one die at the hands of a gun...I think I would feel differently...than if they died of cancer, or a stroke or something.

Anyone with human feelings would, just like a family member would beg and plead with the government to negotiate with terrorists to free their loved one. Doesn't mean that not negotiating with terrorists is the wrong policy. It's not.

With all sympathy to the families of the victims in Connecticut, several times more children died of cancer that day. Fix that first.

Gun Control and Government Genocide goes hand and hand

http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/dictat.html

Mao Ze-Dong (China, 1958-61 and 1966-69, Tibet 1949-50)	49-78,000,000
Adolf Hitler (Germany, 1939-1945)	12,000,000 (concentration camps and civilians deliberately killed in WWII plus 3 million Russian POWs left to die)
Leopold II of Belgium (Congo, 1886-1908)	8,000,000
Jozef Stalin (USSR, 1932-39)	6,000,000 (the gulags plus the purges plus Ukraine's famine)
Hideki Tojo (Japan, 1941-44)	5,000,000 (civilians in WWII)
Ismail Enver (Turkey, 1915-20)	1,200,000 Armenians (1915) + 350,000 Greek Pontians and 480,000 Anatolian Greeks (1916-22) + 500,000 Assyrians (1915-20)
Pol Pot (Cambodia, 1975-79)	1,700,000
Kim Il Sung (North Korea, 1948-94)	1.6 million (purges and concentration camps)
Menghistu (Ethiopia, 1975-78)	1,500,000
Yakubu Gowon (Biafra, 1967-1970)	1,000,000
Leonid Brezhnev (Afghanistan, 1979-1982)	900,000
Jean Kambanda (Rwanda, 1994)	800,000
Saddam Hussein (Iran 1980-1990 and Kurdistan 1987-88)	600,000
Tito (Yugoslavia, 1945-1987)	570,000
Suharto (Communists 1965-66)	500,000
Fumimaro Konoe (Japan, 1937-39)	500,000? (Chinese civilians)
Jonas Savimbi (Angola, 1975-2002)	400,000
Mullah Omar - Taliban (Afghanistan, 1986-2001)	400,000
Idi Amin (Uganda, 1969-1979)	300,000
Yahya Khan (Pakistan, 1970-71)	300,000 (Bangladesh)
Ante Pavelic (Croatia, 1941-45)	359,000 (30,000 Jews, 29,000 Gipsies, 300,000 Serbs)
Benito Mussolini (Ethiopia, 1936; Libya, 1934-45; Yugoslavia, WWII)	300,000
Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire, 1965-97)	?
Charles Taylor (Liberia, 1989-1996)	220,000
Foday Sankoh (Sierra Leone, 1991-2000)	200,000
Suharto (Aceh, East Timor, New Guinea, 1975-98)	200,000
Ho Chi Min (Vietnam, 1953-56)	200,000
Michel Micombero (Burundi, 1972)	150,000
Slobodan Milosevic (Yugoslavia, 1992-99)	100,000
Hassan Turabi (Sudan, 1989-1999)	100,000
Jean-Bedel Bokassa (Centrafrica, 1966-79)	?
Richard Nixon (Vietnam, 1969-1974)	70,000 (Vietnamese and Cambodian civilians)
Efrain Rios Montt (Guatemala, 1982-83)	70,000
Papa Doc Duvalier (Haiti, 1957-71)	60,000
Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic, 1930-61)	50,000
Hissene Habre (Chad, 1982-1990)	40,000
Chiang Kai-shek (Taiwan, 1947)	30,000 (popular uprising)
Vladimir Ilich Lenin (USSR, 1917-20)	30,000 (dissidents executed)
Francisco Franco (Spain)	30,000 (dissidents executed after the civil war)
Fidel Castro (Cuba, 1959-1999)	30,000
Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam, 1963-1968)	30,000
Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez (El Salvador, 1932)	30,000
Hafez Al-Assad (Syria, 1980-2000)	25,000
Khomeini (Iran, 1979-89)	20,000
Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe, 1982-87, Ndebele minority)	20,000
Bashir Assad (Syria, 2012)	14,000
Rafael Videla (Argentina, 1976-83)	13,000
Guy Mollet (France, 1956-1957)	10,000 (war in Algeria)
Harold McMillans (Britain, 1952-56, Kenya's Mau-Mau rebellion)	10,000
Paul Koroma (Sierra Leone, 1997)	6,000
Osama Bin Laden (worldwide, 1993-2001)	3,500
Augusto Pinochet (Chile, 1973)	3,000
Al Zarqawi (Iraq, 2004-06)	2,000

Richard Nixon (Vietnam, 1969-1974)

70,000 (Vietnamese and Cambodian civilians)

Would Vietnam of happen if the citizen had weapons ?

BoatShoes;1384572 wrote:This is a good point. Why do we care so much more about gun deaths when there are much larger causes of death like heart disease etc.

I'm not sure what the answer is to that.

If I were to guess, there does seem to be something different about randomly dying at the hands of a gun. If I had a child or a loved one die at the hands of a gun...I think I would feel differently...than if they died of cancer, or a stroke or something.

There's some kind of feeling that these deaths are "needless" or that they "don't have to happen" and maybe even in the minds of a lot of people, that they have no kind of divine lesson to derive.

I'm not sure.

I think you and QCB raise a good issue. I think the answer is that it's a death of unnatural causes. With cancer and other diseases, they are horrible, but there is no sentient villain. With a shooting, there is, so there is the additional emotional relationship with that person.

This is all speculation, of course. I'm just completely spit-balling what I think makes the most sense.

I do still insist that we should, and I know this might sound mean-spirited, eliminate the emotional reactions from the discussion of what to do about it. Emotions are good things, and they have a variety of purposes and advantages, but I maintain that dictating law by which people abide is not one of those.

So as intense as the emotions may be, and as much as we may empathize with those directly affected, emotions do have a history of making people do unwise things, so I don't think they should be influencing policy.

WebFire;1384588 wrote:

It's a cute cartoon and it sounds intuitive....If you outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns...If I had no access to evidence from around the world I'd be inclined to believe that. However, when you enact strict gun control on a national level, rich, industrialized countries with people that play violent video games, watch rated R movies, have abortion on demand....and even some who had a large affinity for guns...not as much as us but enough to make it significant....have provided evidence that the heuristic "if you outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns" is false.

BoatShoes;1384625 wrote:have provided evidence that the heuristic "if you outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns" is false.

They have? So there is no gun violence in those countries? Please provide a link.

BoatShoes;1384625 wrote:It's a cute cartoon and it sounds intuitive....If you outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns...If I had no access to evidence from around the world I'd be inclined to believe that. However, when you enact strict gun control on a national level, rich, industrialized countries with people that play violent video games, watch rated R movies, have abortion on demand....and even some who had a large affinity for guns...not as much as us but enough to make it significant....have provided evidence that the heuristic "if you outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns" is false.

Why is the violent crime rate in the UK so much higher that the violent crime rate in the US? Could it be that criminals know that their victim does not have a gun (even if the criminal doesn't have one either) thus making it much "safer" to attack with whatever weapon they choose? Our violent crime rate ranks somewhere around #100 in the world, I believe. How can that be when we have so many guns floating around?

Brits are stupid.

Use the french for a more valid comparison. They run or surrender.

Cleveland Buck;1384632 wrote:They have? So there is no gun violence in those countries? Please provide a link.

There is close to zero gun violence in Japan. Links at the beginning of the thread.

And, the meme implies that it would be rampant and yet it is substantially less than ours per capita in other countries.

justincredible;1384685 wrote:Why is the violent crime rate in the UK so much higher that the violent crime rate in the US? Could it be that criminals know that their victim does not have a gun (even if the criminal doesn't have one either) thus making it much "safer" to attack with whatever weapon they choose? Our violent crime rate ranks somewhere around #100 in the world, I believe. How can that be when we have so many guns floating around?

I don't think you can say it's so much higher that Britain is tangibly worse off considering that their homicide rate is lower...They also have looser classifications of violent crime. In any event, although their crime rate is worse, are they ultimately that much worse off since they have less homicides or even worse off at all? It's certainly not that mad carnage of rape and robbery that firearm aficionados would have you believe will occur when "only outlaws have guns". Are slightly for more assaults and robberies worse outweighed by less gun deaths and gun violence? That is the UK's experience.

O-Trap;1384577 wrote:I would suggest that the solution to the kind of gun violence that we have could be lessened with a better sense of community and cultural changes.

Honestly, I think that's the ONLY solution.

I couldn't agree any more.

BoatShoes;1384699 wrote:There is close to zero gun violence in Japan. Links at the beginning of the thread.

And, the meme implies that it would be rampant and yet it is substantially less than ours per capita in other countries.

I have no interest in being or doing anything like Japan.

WebFire;1384811 wrote:I have no interest in being or doing anything like Japan.

You dont think some possible world wherein the united states only had the amount of gun homicides That he japanese have ould e desirable?

Do u not think that reducing gun deaths is desirable? If we had fewer gun deaths we would be more like Japan in at least a small way.

Nope, because I don't believe in curbing individual rights for the collective good. What if we outlawed alcohol? How many lives would that save? You have to draw a line. We could all not do anything dangerous and have a government agent living in our houses to make sure we don't and I bet millions of lives could be saved. I don't want to live like that.

BoatShoes;1384830 wrote:You dont think some possible world wherein the united states only had the amount of gun homicides That he japanese have ould e desirable?

Do u not think that reducing gun deaths is desirable? If we had fewer gun deaths we would be more like Japan in at least a small way.

How many more people did the government kill with guns this past year than did private individuals? Come on now, are you really concerned about gun deaths?

BoatShoes;1384830 wrote:You dont think some possible world wherein the united states only had the amount of gun homicides That he japanese have ould e desirable?

Do u not think that reducing gun deaths is desirable? If we had fewer gun deaths we would be more like Japan in at least a small way.

There would be a trade off in giving up a part of who the U.S. is culturally stemming from individual practices that is not desired by the people collectively in mass.

Cleveland Buck;1384844 wrote:How many more people did the government kill with guns this past year than did private individuals? Come on now, are you really concerned about gun deaths?

Yes I find it a worthwhile goal to reduce domestic gun deaths and to reduce deaths needlessly caused by our reckless foreign dventures

BoatShoes;1384922 wrote:... and to reduce deaths needlessly caused by our reckless foreign dventures

Brother, I knew we had some common ground somewhere.

BoatShoes;1384922 wrote:...needlessly caused by our reckless foreign dventures

The disagreement lies in the fact that it is not deemed to be needlessly caused.

BoatShoes;1384704 wrote:I don't think you can say it's so much higher that Britain is tangibly worse off considering that their homicide rate is lower...They also have looser classifications of violent crime. In any event, although their crime rate is worse, are they ultimately that much worse off since they have less homicides or even worse off at all? It's certainly not that mad carnage of rape and robbery that firearm aficionados would have you believe will occur when "only outlaws have guns". Are slightly for more assaults and robberies worse outweighed by less gun deaths and gun violence? That is the UK's experience.

They have looser classifications of violent crime, yes. Ben Swann did a Reality Check segment on it and with an apples to apples comparison their violent crime rate is still twice ours. That's significant.

You seems to focus only on the negative when it comes to guns. How many lives are SAVED by a citizen with a gun each day?

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-1

Since 1992 essentially all rates of crime have decreased year over year. This includes violent crime, murder/manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, etc. At the same time gun sales have increased year over year. How is crime going down with more guns being sold? I don't understand it.

Cleveland Buck;1384844 wrote:How many more people did the government kill with guns this past year than did private individuals? Come on now, are you really concerned about gun deaths?

I am not discounting the innocent lives our government kills in foreign adventures for which there is little evidence we are safer as a whole...

However...

More u.s. citizens have been killed in domestic, gun-related violence since 1960 than in all of the wars we've ever fought, including the Civil War.






http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jan/18/mark-shields/pbs-commentator-mark-shields-says-more-killed-guns/

justincredible;1385039 wrote:http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-1

Since 1992 essentially all rates of crime have decreased year over year. This includes violent crime, murder/manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, etc. At the same time gun sales have increased year over year. How is crime going down with more guns being sold? I don't understand it.

You're suggesting that Guns might be related to the overall decrease in violent crime but that is giving the Rooster credit for the dawn. In the aggregate, violent crime rates have been dropping in all industrialized nations. However, even considering that, the United States still has homicide rates on par with some 3rd developing countries like India and staggering amounts of gun related injuries and homicides.

If you accept that the reason the UK has more batteries as opposed to homicides is because they have fewer guns...and they still have a generally declining violent crime rate like all industrialized nations do...I think that is a worthwhile tradeoff and part of the point gun control advocates make...in the U.S. robberies, batteries, larcenies, domestic disputes, trespassings....turn into homicides.