Mass Shooting Las Vegas...

[Sparko]

I am beginning to think they will never get to find what set him off. This is gonna be a running debate until Judgment Day.

I am going to bet on Trump Derangement Syndrome.

[One Bad Pig]

Honestly, Crystal, given your track record this smells like post hoc justification. Assuming it was done purposefully, Why? Why clutter up a substantive thread with a deliberate snipe-war with Roy? The rest of us mostly find it annoying.

[Adrift]

Liberals seem to think guns are cheap or you can just pick them up off the street. They are not. Even cheap used legal handguns typically run around $300-$400 and up. Buying one illegally usually will cost a lot more. So that kinda tells you where the priorities are in poor neighborhoods where gang violence is such a problem. Instead of spending money on food and families, they are spending money on guns. Lots of money.

http://www.firearmspriceguide.com/guns/search/glock

They're honestly not that hard to get. Really. My early 20s coworker has four guns. He didn't buy a single one of them. He won two of them at a raffle, and the other two were given to him. He didn't have to register a single one of them, and nor did he have to wait for any sort of background check before receiving them.

[lilpixieofterror]

Honestly, Crystal, given your track record this smells like post hoc justification. Assuming it was done purposefully, Why? Why clutter up a substantive thread with a deliberate snipe-war with Roy? The rest of us mostly find it annoying.

[Sparko]

They're honestly not that hard to get. Really. My early 20s coworker has four guns. He didn't buy a single one of them. He won two of them at a raffle, and the other two were given to him. He didn't have to register a single one of them, and nor did he have to wait for any sort of background check before receiving them.

What kind of guns? rifles and shotguns are usually what you get at raffles. Not many inner city gang members do raffles or carry around rifles and shotguns.

I was looking at buying a handgun a couple of years ago, and they are damn expensive. Even in pawn shops.

[Sparko]

he made a snide comment about your misspelling of "cue" but then he admitted you were right. Move on.

[lilpixieofterror]

he made a snide comment about your misspelling of "cue" but then he admitted you were right. Move on.

Already did, did you two?

[Adrift]

What kind of guns? rifles and shotguns are usually what you get at raffles. Not many inner city gang members do raffles or carry around rifles and shotguns.

I was looking at buying a handgun a couple of years ago, and they are damn expensive. Even in pawn shops.

If I remember correctly he said he won a rifle and a handgun at the raffles.

[Sparko]

If I remember correctly he said he won a rifle and a handgun at the raffles.

When I was a kid I won a 12 gauge at a VFW raffle.

[Mountain Man]

I was looking at buying a handgun a couple of years ago, and they are damn expensive. Even in pawn shops.

Top brands like Glock, Ruger, and Smith & Wesson are pricy, but there are less expensive brands on the market. You can get a decent handgun suitable for concealed carry for around $250. But stay away from the cheap, cheap stuff since a lot of it is junk.

[One Bad Pig]

No, you seem to have missed the point entirely. You never, ever, seem to take responsibility for your own actions - you always point to the other guy.

[Sparko]

Top brands like Glock, Ruger, and Smith & Wesson are pricy, but there are less expensive brands on the market. You can get a decent handgun suitable for concealed carry for around $250. But stay away from the cheap, cheap stuff since a lot of it is junk.

I was also worried about buying a used handgun because you never know the history. I wouldn't want a gun that ended up having been used in a crime and have it tracked to me.

[Joel]

the average height of tall people doesn't tell us what is the average height of people....

But in this case, what you want to do is compare apples and oranges. You want to compare the use of ordinary ladders in ordinary environments with the controlled environment that is a firing range.

Barring a controlled environment for ladder use, we may be stuck with the fact that guns are generally risky to use, or at least, riskier to use than ladders. I know that's not the answer you want, but it seems that's all we're left with.

I'm sorry. I'm afraid I don't accept that for reasons mentioned above.

You are saying you aren't interested in the average risk of all actual usages. But your original claim was that if the quantity of ladder use was equal to the quantity of gun use (supposing we come up with some common unit of quantity), there would be more gun deaths than ladder deaths. Which is equivalent to saying that the average risk of all actual gun use is greater than the average risk of all actual ladder use.
Now, you don't have to be interested in those averages of the whole population. That's fine. But then you are abandoning your original claim.


To be fair, your comparison (of gun use at a range to ladder use at a hypothetical ladder range) would be useful in identifying the inherent riskiness of guns vs ladders (with all else held equal). But the inherent riskinesses was not your claim (that I've been disputing). Your claim was about the riskiness of actual usage. You were using inherent riskiness as an argument for riskiness in practice. I haven't been arguing against the inherent riskiness, but only against the argument that it is the same thing as riskiness in practice. The riskiness of actual usage depends not only on inherent properties of the object; it depends on how it is used.

Every law is backed by physical force or the threat thereof, ultimately backed by the threat of death.
A law to take away the guns from millions of innocent people is to use violence (or the threat thereof) upon millions of innocent people. Some may resent that, and or see it as an injustice. The more laws we pass and the more they impose upon innocent people, the more it teaches people that physical force is an appropriate way for people to deal with one another.

This isn't a very good argument. One could argue that every law is ultimately backed by some sort of threat, whether its paying your taxes or wearing your seat belt. If we take your logic to its extremes, we should just upend the government and live in some sort of anarchist state so that none of us have to ever worry about the government preventing us from keeping or doing something we want, whether it's for the good of the whole or not. Or is that something you're actually suggesting here? I recently read on this forum that a lot of libertarians desire an anarchist state (or something near that). Are you a libertarian?

It is a fact that every law is backed by threat of physical force. Otherwise it is a suggestion, like anyone could make. Note that I didn't say physical force is never appropriate. That would be total pacifism (and I've not encountered many libertarians that are total pacifists). Most people agree that sometimes force is justified, as in defense of self or others or their property, and in requiring restitution to victims.

When you talk about banning guns, then you are no longer using force just against bad guys, but using force against millions of people not because of anything wrong they have done or might do, just for the goal of using force against the few bad guys.

Can you at least see why people would view that as an injustice--an act of aggression--against millions of innocent people? Can you see why people might be inclined to engage in self-defense against such an act of aggression? (In this particular case, of a gun ban, there additionally is the element that if they submit this time, they are surrendering their means of self defense against such aggression in the future.)

Whenever people say this I make the comparison to banning all Muslims if it means keeping out the relatively few bad Muslims.

I'm not sure I get the comparison. It doesn't seem like a very good one, since I'm not referring to banning people. In fact, most of your guy's comparisons haven't been making much sense to me, but as I said earlier, I don't claim to be very bright.

It's not really a difference of object vs people. In both cases it is passing a law banning people from doing something (e.g. making/buying/possessing/using a gun, or migrating). In both cases it is the use of force on millions of innocent people just to reduce a (already statistically small) risk from a small number of bad guys. (I mean "innocent" in the sense above: that the point is not per se to use force against those millions who aren't the ones doing the wrong, but using force against those millions is included in the means to reduce the risk from the few bad guys.

[Joel]

The suburbs have less violent crime because they are more affluent, not because they have greater access to guns. Urban areas would have more violent crime, not because of their access to guns, but because they are poor and more desperate.

So you are retracting your claim that "the problem [of Chicago vs the suburbs] is people having easy access", with your statement here that it is "not because of their access".

[Sea of red]

No, you seem to have missed the point entirely. You never, ever, seem to take responsibility for your own actions - you always point to the other guy.

My condolences.