Shooting at Jason Aldean show in Las Vegas, 50+ dead

Flamencology said:
I am heavily sceptical of those statistics.

Even if I accepted them at face value, and excluding suicides, the US homicide rate is 6 times higher. And it’s a given that firearms are the leading factor in that.
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The US non-firearm homicide rate is 3 times higher. If you add in firearms it's 6 times higher. I don't believe infringing on the rights of law abiding citizens will cut the rate in half. It will result in people being denied the ability to exercise their right to bear arms.
 
wagdog said:
The US non-firearm homicide rate is 3 times higher. If you add in firearms it's 6 times higher. I don't believe infringing on the rights of law abiding citizens will cut the rate in half. It will result in people being denied the ability to exercise their right to bear arms.
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It may not cut it in half, but it will influence it.

And it’s a bullshit right. Just like the right to own black people.
 
I am 100% for denying people the right to bear arms. I think it shouldn't be a right. And I know that many others disagree. I think a good democracy is going to involve a lot of compromise. And TBH, I think we actually do have lots of compromise, until very recently.

Honestly, I don't see why we don't split the country up. So much talk about a 'glorious union,' but hell, I feel safer in Massachusetts than Texas, and can't we just sort of make this stuff official? Not out of hate, but practicality?
 
wagdog said:
The US non-firearm homicide rate is 3 times higher. If you add in firearms it's 6 times higher. I don't believe infringing on the rights of law abiding citizens will cut the rate in half. It will result in people being denied the ability to exercise their right to bear arms.
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It is a well established tenet of our government that your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. Rights cannot be unlimited - we must put limits on rights to insure that the rights of all are balanced.

Limiting rights in this manner does not equal "infringement".

Every right enumerated in the Constitution has legal limits. Furthermore, whenever changes occur in the methods of exercise of those rights , we routinely change the limits in place to insure the continuing balance of rights for all.

Take speech for example. When changes occur in the technology involved, we adjust limits to insure balance. Telegraph, telephone, radio, television, fax, email, internet, cell phones - all of these manners of speech have required their own sets of limits to insure the balance of rights for everyone. While not everyone agrees on exactly where the proper balance is, everyone understands the need for balance.

Which is why I'm confounded by so many otherwise reasonable people who protest "infringement" every time anyone suggest we need to put *any* limits on firearms in order to balance rights.
 
wagdog said:
As the report Chad linked to pointed out: when compared to 22 other high-income countries, we have a LOWER suicide rate, even with easy access to guns.

Yes, I know people who shouldn't own guns but legally do. I've also lost a friend to suicide, with a gun.

You asked why suicide is brought up when we talk about gun deaths: the reason is suicdes are lumped into our "gun problem" discussions, but rarely, if ever is that fact mentioned (certainly not in the headline). People are going to commit suicide with or without access to firearms. The aforementioned report has the numbers to prove that.

The honest question is, "would the number of suicides by gun go down if we didn't have guns?", the answer is obviously yes. Unfortunately that dodges the actual real question, which is "would the number of suicides go down?". Or, if those 22 other countries had more access to guns, would their rate go up?

I'm glad you have a handle on your depression. I also appreciate and admire that you're comfortable sharing a lot of this online.



No, I'm not against driver training. I'm on the road daily with other drivers. I don't know the numbers, but I suspect I pass a lot fewer people with guns on a daily basis than people with cars.

Guns are nowhere near as complicated to operate when compared to vehicles. Yes, I've witnessed incredible incompetence from people with firearms; trained people who should have known better. I witness idiots in vehicles on a daily basis. Presumably they are licensed and trained idiots.

Here's a question for you: Since we teach drivers Ed in schools, should we teach firearms safety?
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Hmm, I'm struggling here because you're so clearly either missing the point, or you are invalidating it based solely on opinion. I don't know how to put it any clearer: many suicide deaths ONLY happen because of access to a fire arm. Both HIAR and myself went to great lengths to illustrate why this is a known fact. Banning guns would have ZERO impact on the number of depressed people with ideation of suicide... That is where you would be right. But, the transition from ideation to action is inflated greatly by access to a gun because it offers the easiest and quickest way out.
 
wagdog said:
Here are the charts. Table 1 is the US, Table 2 are the 22 other countries. Source: http://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(15)01030-X/fulltext

View attachment 37013 View attachment 37014

If you throw out our "firearms homicide", our homicide rate is 1.7 to .6 (nonfirearm to nonfirearm) - about 3 times higher. We're more violent in the US, but we're less suicidal (12.4 to 15).

The CBS article states in it's first line: "Americans are 10 times more likely to be killed by guns than people in other developed countries, a new study finds."

They are referring to total firearms deaths, including suicide - that is the "fact" that people take from that. By the way, the research DID cherry pick 22 other countries from the list of OECD countries, of which there are 35 (as of 2016), not 22.

Here's the leap this article wants us to make: if we get rid of all the guns in the US, the firearm homicide rate will drop to a statistical 0 and the firearm suicide rate will drop to statistical 0.

I don't buy it.

The homicide rate by other means will go up and the suicide rate by other means will go up. Will they go up as much as much as the dropped? I don't know, and neither does anyone here.
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But our firearm homicide rate is 3.6 to their 0.1. That's 36 times higher. So we are really freakin violent in the US.

Only 27 countries reported mortality information, you can't include countries with no data on mortality and the study was from 2010, not 2016, so it makes no difference how many were in the OECD in 2016, the study didn't have a time machine to travel into the future. Some countries were not counted in the study because they have less than 1 million people in them.

I don't really care what the article is trying to get you to think, I only focused on the actual study. I don't believe and I don't think any reasonable person would think that 0 gun deaths will occur if you make guns illegal. But you are 100% wrong if you say get rid of all the gun, if there were no guns the gun homicide rate would be 0, because no guns would exist :tongue: :grin:

I know you can't eliminate gun violence 100% but it would be nice if we could get anywhere close to the rest of the modern world. The argument we continue to hear is getting rid of guns doesn't work, it doesn't make you safer. Then what the hell is the rest of the world doing because our gun homicide rate is 36 times higher than the rest of the modernized world. It seems like they have figured it out and if we are the greatest country in the world it seems we could do better.
 
Danhedonia said:
I am 100% for denying people the right to bear arms. I think it shouldn't be a right. And I know that many others disagree. I think a good democracy is going to involve a lot of compromise. And TBH, I think we actually do have lots of compromise, until very recently.

Honestly, I don't see why we don't split the country up. So much talk about a 'glorious union,' but hell, I feel safer in Massachusetts than Texas, and can't we just sort of make this stuff official? Not out of hate, but practicality?
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I've been saying we need to split the country for years. There is such a divide in the country now and it keeps getting bigger. I'm not sure it will ever come back, I think it's time for a divorce.
 
wagdog said:
The US non-firearm homicide rate is 3 times higher. If you add in firearms it's 6 times higher. I don't believe infringing on the rights of law abiding citizens will cut the rate in half. It will result in people being denied the ability to exercise their right to bear arms.
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One last question, then I am out.

Do you think there is no gun violence issue in the US? Or there is but restricting access won't change that? Or there is but the second amendment is there so nothing you can do about it?
 
One question from me too and I am done.

The 2nd amendment is there allow people to be armed in case they have to overthrow a government which gets out of hand - that much is pretty well established.

Over the last number of decades, the government has pulled so much crap on the people starting who knows when (I generally say that it starts with Vietnam but that part is debatable) and ending who knows when (I generally say that it ends with the guys in suits with briefcases bankrupting much of the economic backbone of the country by theft and criminal action, then other guys in suits with briefcases giving the first group of guys in suits with briefcases the taxpayers' money to straighten out their problems with no provisions put in place to give the taxpayers' money back) that I often wonder if any of the big 2nd amendment people are ever going to get their crap together enough to stop the cycle.

The government has set it up so that the thieves with a facemask and a handgun stealing $150 from a corner store pays for it by being jailed for life but the thieves with suits and briefcases steal bazillions and the only people who pay is Joe and Jane average who follow the rules, never have anything except the house that it takes them their entire adult lives to pay for so that they can retire just in time to sell it because they can't afford to keep it anymore.

This is what leads me to ask the question:

How bad will it have to get before the 2nd amendment people say "ok let's get that militia together"?

It's a rhetorical question.
 
For a rhetorical question, it sure seems to beg a goddam answer. It seems the 2nd Amendment is simply a smokescreen to keep the NRA, et al., as powerful as they wanna be.

But I gotta admit, I don’t really know crap about law and mass murder, and can have knee-jerk reactions to hot button issues.
 
I fully support every Americans right to own a single shot smoothbore musket. Thats what the founding fathers were talking about. New technology that has evolved since then, so we need to reassess the appropriate level of regulation.

Also, I wonder how many 2A advocates are members of a well regulated militia. If not, then I guess it doesnt apply to them.
 
2manband said:
I fully support every Americans right to own a single shot smoothbore musket. Thats what the founding fathers were talking about. New technology that has evolved since then, so we need to reassess the appropriate level of regulation.

Also, I wonder how many 2A advocates are members of a well regulated militia. If not, then I guess it doesnt apply to them.
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The climate of the nation when the 2nd Amendment was written included a fear of slave uprisings. A militia was the insurance needed to squash possible uprisings.
 
smorgdonkey said:
One question from me too and I am done.

The 2nd amendment is there allow people to be armed in case they have to overthrow a government which gets out of hand - that much is pretty well established.
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No, that's how the 2nd amendment was sold by the people trying to form the US. Something that most people tend to forget is that the founders of this country were politicians, and the notion of a Federal government was not popular among the states. Small states were afraid they'd be trampled by larger states. Large states were worried that smaller states would have too much power. Slave owners were afraid of the growing anti-slave sentiment taking hold in many states.

If the framers of the Constitution had wanted a mechanism for the people to give the government the boot, they'd have simply written it into the Constitution.

smorgdonkey said:
Over the last number of decades, the government has pulled so much crap on the people starting who knows when (I generally say that it starts with Vietnam but that part is debatable) and ending who knows when (I generally say that it ends with the guys in suits with briefcases bankrupting much of the economic backbone of the country by theft and criminal action, then other guys in suits with briefcases giving the first group of guys in suits with briefcases the taxpayers' money to straighten out their problems with no provisions put in place to give the taxpayers' money back) that I often wonder if any of the big 2nd amendment people are ever going to get their crap together enough to stop the cycle.

The government has set it up so that the thieves with a facemask and a handgun stealing $150 from a corner store pays for it by being jailed for life but the thieves with suits and briefcases steal bazillions and the only people who pay is Joe and Jane average who follow the rules, never have anything except the house that it takes them their entire adult lives to pay for so that they can retire just in time to sell it because they can't afford to keep it anymore.

This is what leads me to ask the question:

How bad will it have to get before the 2nd amendment people say "ok let's get that militia together"?

It's a rhetorical question.
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Any thoughts that the people of this country could stage an armed uprising against the federal government is absolutely absurd. Even if they could organize, All the Joe six-packs in the whole country with their AR-15s would be little threat to the armed, organized, and trained national guard, not to mention the resources of the US military.
 
Do you really think the National Guard will fire on Joe Sixpack? (i.e., their buddies)

Naw. You have to be tinted to get fired on in this country.
 
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