A Sane Discussion About Gun Violence

[carpedm9587]

OK, back to the topic at hand.....

I keep seeing 'gun deaths per capita' and 'guns owned per capita' stats as compared with other countries.

There IS no other country like the USA! We are unique. And, something I'd like to propose, for which I anticipate being blasted (do so civilly )

No other country on the face of the planet has changed culturally as much as we have changed in the last 50 years. Think about that - all those other countries cited have been in existence long before we were. And our inception was rather violent, including guns, against the British. That's part of our heritage. We glorify "the Minute Men" (at least, we did when I was a kid) in history, because they played a vital part in our rebellion from the crown. They probably saw us as terrorists, shooting from behind rocks and trees and not "playing fair" in marching in straight lines and shooting in organized volleys...

In fact, the whole 2nd Amendment thing come from this clash with the Brits, the Quartering Act, mistrust of the government, etc.

Meanwhile, in the last 50 years, we've had this whole sexual revolution, the whole "get rid of Christianity", the purging of the Judeo-Christian ethic, the attempt to wipe out any evidence that we were ever a "Christian nation", getting rid of the concept of the sanctity of human life, the attack on the nuclear family, the denigration of "absolutes", and the "anything goes" culture.

And, I'd admit we brought a lot of problems on ourselves with the whole concept of slavery and its aftermath.

Most of us who have been around a while reminisce about the good old days when you could, indeed, leave your loaded firearm on the kitchen table, knowing nobody would misuse it, or we were trained in the safe use, we were schooled in the respect of our elders, the value of the (again) sanctity of human life....

We have changed drastically since Ozzie and Harriet and Leave it to Beaver and Happy Days.

What other nation (of the ones being used to compare our gun use / death / per capita stuff) has had a similar (even close) drastic change in their own culture over the past 50 years.

So, is it really fair to compare the US to other nations where there are so many other factors involved, so as to make "statistics" pretty much irrelevant?

This is an interesting direction - but the U.S. is not alone in change. Much of the world has experienced the electronic revolution of the last 3 decades. Much of the world has experienced that changes associated with international flight. I would suggest that EVERY culture on the planet has experienced amazing changes in the last 50 years.

[Darth Executor]

DE - let's please assume the best of those discussing here. That was the spirit intended for this thread.

I was talking about one of the sources, not one of the posters here.

[carpedm9587]

Because CP has decided to carp out.

[carpedm9587]

Don't let the door hit ya on the way out.

Thread rules... please...

[Darth Executor]

No one with two brain cells in their skull is going to accept that ridiculous take of my post. Troll harder.

Hmm. Let's find out.

Woh. So my point was incoherent and I had no real argument, and you were still able to destroy it? You're a maniac.

...Again, this sort of thing sounds a lot better in your head than it does on the screen.

Yes, I destroyed it by showing it's incoherent to claim to be pro life and then value unborn children less than born people, a contradiction in terms. It sounds perfectly normal to normal people.

And this is the third time you've insulted me, against the spirit of this thread.

[carpedm9587]

Any evil government (or an occupying government in the case of successful invasion) would then have a database of every gun in the country and could confiscate the guns. I know you probably think something like Nazi Germany could never happen here or today, but I doubt the world thought it could happen then either.

A national registry of guns is not a good idea.

I cannot say I share this sentiment. As far as I know, the governmetn already knows pretty much everything about me it could possibly know. Who owns what gun does not appear to me to be a a significant shift, and it does enable some significant capabilities. We live in a representative democracy. Although I had some serious misgivings when Trump was first elected, our system appears to be resilient enough to even deal with him. So I do not share your fear.

[carpedm9587]

In the case of a pool you would only be liable to a civil suit, not a criminal charge. And not if they climbed the fence. If you did not have a fence maybe.

The key is "due diligence." A fence would be "due diligence."

[carpedm9587]

In 20-30 years (probably less) 3d printing will make gun control obsolete.

Quite probably true.... - and probably MUCH less...

[carpedm9587]

You have protection from unreasonable searches and seizures. If you can murder your unborn kid under the privacy clause then keeping a gun without Big Brother knowing should be common sense.

As far as I know - murdering your child is not protected by the privacy clause.

It means we do not collect unnecessary data. The government can just demand that gun retailers keep a record of who buys what for X number of years and subpoena them if someone commits a crime with a gun bought from them (this might actually be the law already, I dunno). There's ways of keeping track of guns without having a maliciously negligent government that has routinely made a mockery of the law do it.

I would be good with a HIPAA-like law that requires gun merchants to maintain searchable records.

[carpedm9587]

http://www.numberofabortions.com

US since 1973: Roe vs Wade
60,217,286

How many people did Hitler kill again?

OK - I need to jump in here with a "what about" claim. Abortion has nothing to do with gun control. It is a "what about" argument.

[carpedm9587]

We do know this. People use those other methods to commit suicide all the time. They jump, use poison, exhaust, razor blades, hang themselves and so on. All. the. time.

That they do so "all the time" does not provide us with data about what the impact would be of eliminating guns as an alternative. We simply do not know how many would (successfully) resort to one of these other choices, and how many would simply not try. We are guessing without a well-structured study.

[carpedm9587]

No one with two brain cells in their skull is going to accept that ridiculous take of my post. Troll harder.



Woh. So my point was incoherent and I had no real argument, and you were still able to destroy it? You're a maniac.

...Again, this sort of thing sounds a lot better in your head than it does on the screen.

OK - we're drifting well away of the intent of the thread... Adrift - DE - please...?

[Adrift]

Yes, I destroyed it by showing it's incoherent to claim to be pro life and then value unborn children less than born people

You're correct, that would be incoherent. Good thing I never made that argument. Troll harder.

[Darth Executor]

You're correct, that would be incoherent. Good thing I never made that argument. Troll harder.

I started a new thread on this, let's see what others think.

[Darth Executor]

OK - I need to jump in here with a "what about" claim. Abortion has nothing to do with gun control. It is a "what about" argument.

Not my intention but you do incidentally bring up another good point. Adrift, who claims to be pro-life, wants to disarm people in the face of a government that is worse than the nazis (I know you don't think abortion is murder so this argument doesn't really apply to you). So it's imperative that he pretend the slave owning, tear trailing, abortion enabling US government isn't as bad as the nazis, or really all that bad to begin with.

Anyway, I will take all further questions on this topic in its own separate thread, which I started.