Seems to work everywhere else for the most part. Very few spree killers shooting up holiday parties in the Netherlands…
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But maybe America just hasn’t ignored the possibility hard enough yet…
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“Bad poets borrow, good poets steal.” -T.S. Eliot
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How are we sure it works? You can’t prove a negative. Maybe the Netherlands’ society doesn’t produce mass killers in the same way/rate the U.S. society does.
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Turns out we’re a lot more familiar with the processes that create firearms than we are the processes that create murderous psychopaths, and thus are a lot closer to a workable solution. Maybe let’s try that one first?
Gun rights, IMHO are in the same class as and are analogous to “smokers rights.” Those who love smoking think it makes them look tough and cool, while everyone else sees it as a ridiculous, deadly habit. My response to the barking about the infringement on the habit is the the same. Go ahead, play with your firestick, but do it in your designated area, and try not to blow it in other people’s faces.
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The problem is that the designated areas tend to shrink.
First it is a lounge on each building floor. Then it is at just one floor. Then it mysteriously vanishes and the smoking spot goes to the front of the building. Then ordnance comes that it has to be x meters away from the entrance. And so on and on it goes.
I prefer a face full of smoke over a militant antismoker. It’s less irritating.
Between 1996 and 2012, Australia’s homicide rate has fluctuated between 1 and 2 per 100,000. They’ve also seen a drop in robbery of more than 25%. Here’s their data: Australian Violent Crime Rates
During the same period, the rate in the United States dropped from 7.4 to 4.7 per 100,000. Our robbery rate declined approximately 45% during the same period. Here’s our data: US Violent Crime Rates
Australia instituted some very tough gun laws in 1996, making gun ownership more difficult and outlawing broad swaths of firearm. The United States did not pass any significant gun laws during this period. Yet America’s violent crime rate has declined at a much faster rate than theirs.
There are gun control measures I support because I believe they’re practical and will save lives, but I don’t believe any amount of gun control will affect the overall rate of violence in this country. I think a vocational track in public schools, mandatory national service, and an end to the War on Drugs would have much better success reducing violence in this country.
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Probably because everything besides “x meters away from the entrance” was woefully inadequate and that’s where it should have started in the first place. I remember when restaurants had no-smoking sections that were just separated from the smoking sections by a waist-high partition, as though smoke would just hang stationary in the air once blown. A few had glassed-off sections, but even then, seems awfully unfair for any waitstaff having to work there, being forced into a room full of noxious smoke just to do their job. Maybe things have swung too far in the other direction now, but let’s not pretend that the measures you first mentioned were anywhere close to fair for nonsmokers. I’m personally in favor of smokers wearing fish bowl-like space helmets so they can smoke anywhere they like while keeping it to themselves. If you think smoking makes you look cool now, imagine your face half-hidden in a dim, swirling grey fog- it would be a sci-fi noir fashion statement.
Wait, were we talking about guns? I think I lost the analogy.
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I’d say the one-room-per-floor, in office buildings, was just the right approach.
For the record, I am a non-smoker. I don’t exactly love smoke. But I tolerate it much much better than antismoking nazis and their tendency to push other people around.
A lot of issues can be cleared in an informal discussion during a smoke break.
Put the room under negative pressure, and maybe I’d agree with you. However, that’s hella expensive.
Srsly?
If you’re okay excluding the people who want to stay the Hell away from secondhand smoke.
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Yes but that’s a personal belief since our government bans folks, like the CDC, from compiling actual data on gun mortality. My personal belief is that it would make a difference.
What data would you like the CDC to compile?
Start here:
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I was involved in first attempts to provide negative pressure rooms for smokers in the late 80s and early 90s. These rooms worked, but there is a reason they no longer exist.
We were contracted to make one of these so called lounges for a company that generally cared about it’s employees. The expense was considerable, but they began the project. The job was mostly done, and paid for, when we were notified that we should remove the equipment since the building was going to be totally non smoking. We were told that the lawyers feared that smokers could claim that the employer made it too easy to continue to smoke, and then they could be liable in future lawsuits. This is the main reason that a lot of company require that smokers not only leave the building, but to leave the property.
Lawyers. Or, why we cannot have nice things anymore.
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I’m on board with more data informing better decisions. If CDC studies suggest that further gun control is unlikely to impact rates of violent crime, accidental injury, and/or suicide, will that alter your position(s) on gun control?
I’m not sure how they would get this mythical data but if a seemingly non-politically biased study comes out, perhaps. Personally, I don’t think reasonable restrictions are a burden and all rights in the bill of rights have restrictions. I’m not sure why we shouldn’t, for example, require that if you own a firearm, you must by firearm insurance to pay for the costs (medical and otherwise) of accidents or damage with said firearm.
I think this is where data fail us. I suspect that no matter the outcome of any given study, one side will have their bias confirmed, and the other side will reject the study as politically biased.
My initial post showed that the violent crime rate dropped faster in the US without significant gun control than in Australia with strict gun control during the same period of time. I cited data directly from government sources in both cases. What do you make of that?
I’m fine with the insurance you’re describing, by the way.
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Crime has been dropping for 20 years in the USA and you’re discussing one other nation with its own issues and solutions so I’m suspecting your conflating different phenomena.
