Why should we give up something we want and like just because somebody else wants to manipulate us with “compassion” and guilt-tripping?
And there are many things that we don’t really need. Cars, natural gas, swimming pools… we even lived without electricity not quite so long ago.
Where are you getting political beliefs? Is it like calling her a bitch: you think it and say it, and then blame everyone else for your words?
Yes, and a person of color might also face higher risk of intervention by child welfare with more accompanying narratives about moral depravity instead of lessons learned.
That’s part of your criteria? If you get shot in the commission of a crime you don’t go to jail? How about someone who got shot robbing a bank? Or maybe just holding up a bodega? Would your view change if the child pointed it out the window and shot someone else? Or perhaps HIMSELF?
No, the crime she committed was allowing a four year old child to get a hold of a loaded .45 automatic that already had a round in the chamber. The fact she got shot is totally irrelevant.
For sure we have many similarities, but for sure we have many differences. My personal theory on what makes America different is this - we are full of more independent rebels (not a technical term). But think about this. Nearly everyone who lives here immigrated here within the last 200-300 years. They were unsatisfied with where they were and moved. Uprooted the whole family to face certain uncertainly for an opportunity for something new and hopefully better. Assuming personality is at least partly genetic, that means we are full of people who are more likely to take risks and take aggressive action to get things done. I could be waaay off on this, but it is an interesting hypothesis and I’d like to see someone try to test it.
And here is where we have to respectfully agree to disagree. I know some people think I just have no heart, and don’t care if babies are shot as long as I can have my “toys”. But that is a disingenuous depiction off my position. I empathize with crime victims. I knew of and my mom knew someone who was horribly murdered. One of the worst murders to happen in our little state.
But first off, we can disagree on what is or is not a NEED. Second we can argue is a NEED the only justification on whether someone should be allowed to own something or not? There are many recreations and recreational items that lead to accidental deaths no one needs. Soda is one of the leading contributes to obesity, no one NEEDS it. Plastic bottles from bottled water are polluting our world. Except in emergency situations, no one NEEDS it. They can fill reusable metal bottles from filtered water.
Encryption is a hot topic on BB. But come on. The average Joe doesn’t NEED it. We don’t even really NEED privacy from our government either. I know the UK has given their government much more oversight over themselves than the US has with their much broader use of CCTV everywhere. The gov. doesn’t care about your extramarital affair and dick picks while looking for terrorists - but it is human nature to want privacy. (And if we do end up with a Big Brother like government, then we just gave them the tools to control us.)
I know you don’t drive as much as us, but what if we set the limit to like 40mph everywhere - even the highway - fatal crashes would be greatly reduced. And we would save money on fuel (the reason the first speed limits where put in place in the US). You don’t NEED to go faster. Just leave sooner to get where you are going.
Your appeal to emotion I get. But really, when you are talking about taking away or severely limiting something 80 million people own, I think you need to base it more on rational thought. No I don’t want bad things to happen to people, but disarming me won’t stop that. You probably would reduce suicides and these high profile mass shootings. But criminals in the middle of a net of illicit activities will still have a net work to get what they want. Also there is what ever too silk roads place.
The solution is harder than just taking away an angry kid’s rocks. You need to focus on the societies and cultures that turn to crime and figure out what you can do to make it so individuals don’t turn to crime. And when you find those individuals, we need to get rid of our revolving door prison system and work on rehabilitation. I don’t know what he UK does, but our prison system is shit. Our social safety net system isn’t complete shit - but still basically shit.
Even then, though. Even if we get true equality for all, and crime is at a fraction of what it is today, we will still have a segment of evil or messed up people who will do horrible things to people. That is just the reality of the world.
It’s illegal to sell a kidney or other internal organ.
Legal schmegal, it is possible.
Apparently making trade in organs legal in Iran is working out well.
So very much like New Zealand and Australia then. 
(I grant you, some of the initial wave of European migrants didn’t want to go to Oz, but the majority did).
The appeal to emotion came after the appeal to rational thought.
How many of those 80 million gun owners merely buy as part of an arms race, because they’re worried that they’ll be threatened, so they need one too?
Even though we know that owning a firearm makes gun owners less safe?
[quote=“aeon, post:292, topic:75521”]
How many of those 80 million gun owners merely buy as part of an arms race, because they’re worried that they’ll be threatened, so they need one too? [/quote]
Yeah, but those people aren’t HURTING anyone. Worst case they might have an accident, but overall they are sitting in a case or safe collecting dust. Worst worst case is 10 years down the line the become suicidal and use it.
Active criminals obtaining weapons with intent to use them to rob or hurt people are the MAIN culprits of gun violence.
Eh I have seen the correlations and concede the point that if you have access to firearms then you of course have a higher risk of accidents or using them for a suicide. I suppose this has a trickle down effect to a degree, the larger the LEGAL pool of guns, the more will be stolen or otherwise enter the ILLEGAL pool.
But this doesn’t make the risk of ownership not worth it. 1) we don’t have good data at all on what GOOD guns do. I have A LOT of news stories of people using guns for protection. Usually shots aren’t even fired, and if they are, people aren’t even killed. But we don’t track those stats. John Lott wrote a book on gun control, going in for gun control and coming out the opposite end partly because of the number of cases he found supporting people using them for defense. I have never brought him up here because while I think he is onto something, his estimates are just that - estimates - and I can’t really give them any clout. It is one of those things I would really like to track and have been thinking of making a web site that is populated by people with documented cases of guns used for protection (either with a police report or legit news sources.) Because if you get enough anecdotes it becomes data.
Yes! So why not reduce the flow? 
Because properly rigorous epidemiological study of gun violence as a public health issue hasn’t been done. Something about the NRA getting CDC funding pulled? And yes, I know Obama got it reinstated. But scientists like having paid employment too, so I doubt they’ll be anything other than too scared to touch it with a barge pole for a long time.
If the data were there to prove that an armed society is safer and happier overall —despite the occasional random carnage— I’d go and buy a gun for myself; just to make us safer and happier. But instead the data we do have suggest quite the opposite. Having lived in societies which get along just fine without (and don’t have the gun carnage either), I find it really hard to believe you aren’t doing your society a disservice by insisting that widespread ownership is a good thing.
Your own CDC’s numbers suggest that in the USA suicide and homicide by firearm are a significantly greater risk than drowning once aged 10+ and the only age group they doesn’t come in the Top 10 is in the <1 group. Suicide and homicide by firearm doesn’t figure at all in equivalent data from the UK, Oz and NZ.
Plus, I can teach you in less than an hour what to do if you find a kid at the bottom of your pool. Anyone can do it and if you’re quick enough about it there’s a reasonable chance of success. If you find the kid flopping around in a pool of blood with a .44 hole through and through, you’re going to need a hospital with a switched on trauma team fast. If there’s even a chance to do anything at all: odds are the flopping around will stop before the ambulance arrives. Guns are that good at what they do well.
That’s why I said ACCIDENTAL deaths vs ACCIDENTAL drownings. Just one of those “huh, thats interesting” facts that Freakonomics is littered with. It’s Chapter 5.
More gun owners in the community means foreseeably increased general risk of harm in the community.
The intent of individual cautious gun owners may mitigate some risk, but other community members still suffer overall increased risk of irreparable harm.
And because irresponsible people are attached to a childish hobby? It’s ridiculous.
Good thing I also grow facial hair as a hobby to fool people into thinking that I’m an adult.
ETA - “You will never be completely free from risk if you’re free.” - Edward Snowden
When you’re a kid and you lose a parent to a gun homicide and grow up listening to morons make excuses for a moronic hobby, then you end up with … an opinion.
If we stopped the national debates about weaponry, and started talking about better weaponry…
Well fuck in an alternate 2016 Tesla motors could have been Tesla Phasers… and we could actually just be stunning the shit out of eachother as a country right now.
And that would be a problem I would like to see…
Cop stuns unarmed black kid… 1200 stuns a year unreported by police.
Police stun car 137 times… Two occupants stunned.
I’ve seen the nonlethal weaponry, and it’s promising. It’s too good in some senses, not so much in others…
But it is terrifically underfunded regarding R&D, and there’s this huge market… Yet somehow… Non-lethal weaponry is law enforcement only.
Who wants to be able to protect themselves without having to kill anyone over it? Most of us I assume.
this is one of the huge cultural differences between the US and the countries in Europe I know. here the need for weaponized self-protection is rarely discussed or needed, be it lethal or non-lethal. makes living much more relaxed, btw.
The majority of homicides are committed by people who see themselves as agents of justice reacting to a transgression.
Not psychopaths, not robberies-gone-wrong, not planned criminal assassinations. Just cranky people who think that violence is an appropriate response to insult or injury.
Oh, totally agreed there!
I’m an outside-the-box kind of guy, so I’m a fan of Teddy Bear Herders myself (instead of agile human like cop-robots, lots of cheap clumsy soft robots that swarm you and entangle you in hugs)
Plus, I find the idea of weaponized hugs hilarious.
Same down under. The rare deaths from gunshot wounds down here are generally from hunters mistaking their mates for a stag, with predictably bad outcomes. And that’s still rare.
The USA really is an outlier in this respect, and not in a good way.
