Apparently I forgot to hit send last night.
The semantics of what you call it are irrelevant though. Others have argued things like “cars kill more people than guns, so why aren’t you trying to outlaw cars?!?” Such comparisons are irrelevant because any number of gun violence deaths that form a noticeable pattern indicate that there’s a problem with guns.
If, nearly every week, we saw headlines that said “MAN USES CAR TO DELIBERATELY MOW DOWN 50 PEOPLE IN STREET”, you can bet that after a few years of that, lawmakers would be holding sit-ins to try to force votes on laws to make it harder for cars to be used as weapons of mass murder. But that’s not happening. People using high-powered firearms to murder groups of people is. Again, not an apt comparison.
So start by taking a nonstandard definition (pretty sure professional psychiatrists don’t give out diagnoses of “shot-someone-once”), move into a tautological restatement of the definition, and then loop that back to the real world. I could similarly say that I define “white men” to be people who have shot someone, conclude that therefore all shooters are white men, and say, “This country doesn’t have a gun problem, it has a white man problem. We just need to keep the guns out of the hands of white men.”
I’m sure white men (as the term is normally used) would understand that I wasn’t trying to say anything bad about them.
If the sarcasm seems harsh, I guess I’m just trying to express my annoyance at blaming an already marginalized group virtually unrelated to the problem at hand.
[quote=“Daneyul, post:201, topic:80545, full:true”]
Far as I know, it’s illegal for someone to, in a fit of anger or insanity, force a big gulp down my mouth. Much less an entire nightclub full of people. [/quote]
Are you any less dead if you die from obesity than if you die from a gunshot? I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. I guess you do consent to drinking a big gulp, but you probably didn’t have a hand in creating an addictive sugary formulation, so I question if the resulting obesity is really something people consent to and it’s questionable if giving in to an unconscious sugar craving is consent really. The gunshot is potentially inflicted on you without any form of consent, but you’re still dead either way.
I argue that resources should be spent to have the greatest impact and not as a kneejerk reaction to the latest divisive politics. We could have far more impact addressing inner city violence, funding medical research, raising vehicle safety standards, improving mental healthcare, or many other initiatives. I think Obama’s ‘moonshot’ effort to cure cancer is wonderful (something that might even be mostly achievable, with the rise of CRISPR). There is so much low hanging fruit for policies that save lives and aren’t divisive… why bother with oppressive gun control? Time and money could be far better spent elsewhere.
I do reiterate that almost all gun crime related deaths are performed with illegal weapons. Mass shootings are bit of a different phenomenon and might favor legal firearms for all I know, but they are still a tiny fraction of overall gun crime deaths. Seizing legally owned weapons won’t affect that much.
Guns enabling suicide raises a good point, but I still believe we’d have a better return on investment funding better mental healthcare. That point actually strikes home for me, as we (my family) recently took the guns away from a family member that is going through an incredibly rough time and started drinking heavily again. Of course, we didn’t need gun control laws to figure out that was a good idea and we’re getting him actual medical care as well. I don’t think it’s realistic to expect law enforcement to hunt down people ‘at risk’ and lock up their guns though. At some point, YOU need to help people you know. The government can’t do everything for you. I expect if we did take all guns, suicides probably wouldn’t drop much anyway. The methods would change. There are plenty of ‘easy’ ways to do it. The best way to prevent suicide is to actually care and be there for people. The whole ACE thing is good advice. Ask. Care. Escort.
Note: The stats I used were from a 2008 study and are for lifetime mortality. Stats restricted to younger age groups would obviously favor more injury related death and less medical problems.
To take the ammosexual argument, “all that regulation and insurance requirements are just a way to keep guns out of the hands of people by making it more difficult and expensive to own them”
Sane person reply, “Just like they did with all the regulation and insurance requirements for automobiles. Its why nobody drives anymore”
What makes the arguments against mandatory insurance even dumber is the fact that the NRA sells liability and theft insurance for firearms already.
There’s this weird, persistent obsession I see with the government trying its best to “seize” or “take” guns from people, and the assumption that what gun control advocates (and liberals in general) want to do is use mass shootings as an excuse to take guns from people. That’s never been proposed and is in no way part of what’s being talked about in Congress or by the President. Obama’s repeatedly said “I seriously don’t want your guns!” but I guess nobody believes him? The focus isn’t at all on taking guns away. It’s on preventing people from getting them so easily. Or, in some cases, at all.
Not true at all. Gun crime also includes menacing, use of firearms for intimidation and escalation of conflicts. Incidents which are usually counted by the ammosexual lobby as “defensive gun use”. Also criminal negligence with firearms (usually when a child finds the parents gun and kills someone accidentally) is almost always with legally owned firearms.
Also legally purchased weapons can easily become illegal weapons through straw purchasing and huge loopholes in regulations between states. Lack of sane and consistent regulation concerning registration and licensing makes it quite easy for guns to pass through to the underground market.
Almost all accidental gun deaths are with legally purchased weapons cared for and used by irresponsible morons. Ones who shift the cost of damages of their misuse on the entire public. Insurance requirements would handle both the registration issues (putting it in the hands of private industry rather than big brother) and promote less moronic care and safety with firearms (something the NRA has actively campaigned against).
Short of being in a horror movie where coyotes are attacking en masse or in an SF movie where they have evolved to the point where they are bipedal and sporting bolt action rifles, you do not need an AR-15 for coyotes.
I’d like to know your source on this. This seems like a very difficult thing to get good information on. Unless the gun has been reported stolen or is just generally prohibited, how do you tell whether it was legally or illegally obtained? The Department of Justice did a survey of prison inmates in 1991 that indicated that 9% of guns used in crimes were stolen and 28% were purchased through black markets. But that’s some very old data and I don’t know how reliable prison surveys are anyway. Another government source I can find suggests that up to 40% are stolen, but admits that the data are fragmented and subject to sampling bias.
Suicide is a much bigger issue than guns, but you don’t need to engage in fantasy to make that point. Without guns suicide completion rates would drop. I can’t think of any credible way to look at the evidence around suicide and not come to this conclusion. You may think, “Well, if I wanted to kill myself I could just jump off a roof, no problem.” But unless you are currently suicidal I think it’s fair to say you aren’t thinking like a suicidal person (at least that’s a minority of suicidal people, I’m sure there are a few people who have rationally decided to die and then coldly execute that plan, but they are not the norm).
If guns simply didn’t exist that wouldn’t save everyone who killed themselves with a gun, but it would save some. Feel free to argue that gun bans aren’t practical or that the lives saved in suicide prevention wouldn’t be worth the costs or loss of freedom, but saying it wouldn’t prevent any suicides is just lying to yourself - I won’t blame anyone for not buying into “if it saves just one life” thinking.
Presumably this is projection. If you think that the government should deal with the “drug problem” by seizing drugs and putting people in prison, or if you think the government should deal with the “abortion problem” by putting doctors who perform abortions in prison, or if you think the government should deal with the “Mexican problem” by rounding up Mexicans and sending them to Mexico, then why wouldn’t you think that the proposed solution to the “gun problem” is seizing guns and putting people in prison?
I keep telling people I’d love to treat guns the same way we treat cars. Insurance. Registration. Testing. Licenses. Performance reviews. Inspections. Higher costs for riskier behaviors. Loss of license for abuse. Standard, expected safety equipment. So, if they want to discuss treating them the same I’m all for it.
Whole cloth, of course.
They don’t want to solve these problems because understanding these problems would involve hard truths and accepting the responsibility of violence. Instead they handwave and every murderer is pathologized as something that is not a “gun owner”, no true Scotsman would ever do such a thing.
I found one site that indicated that most firearms used in crime are illegally obtained. It also had a big headline reading:
#Myth: Guns are not a good deterrent to crime
Riiiiiiiiiight…
You can’t have a trampoline in your yard, here. What I mean is: you literally void your house insurance if you have a trampoline on the property. “Attractive Nuisance” is the legal term, I believe.
So: what are the insurance consequences for having guns on the property? What’s that do to you premiums and ability to get insurance in the first place?
Honestly, though- this is it. If I want an in-ground pool, I have to carry an (at least) million-dollar insurance rider. Because it’s dangerous. If I want to have an AR-15 on my property, I think it’d make sense for there to be insurance consequences.
OT: When I was like… 10 or so, a neighbor had a trampoline and I went over there once when they weren’t home and nearly broke my arm (I landed wrong)… Maybe not a bad law? But I KNEW I shouldn’t have been there with no grown ups about, so how much of that was my own fault?
My day is all the better for learning that term. Thank you. 
Ah, and in my state, the homeowner would still be on the hook for your injury.
Because Massachusetts.
But what I like is this: it’s not illegal to have a trampoline here. You can totally buy/sell one. But: your home insurance will specify that all your insurance is void if you have one on your property. Maybe there’s a specialty firm out there that drafts riders just for trampolines? I don’t even want to know what the premiums for that are…
Anyway.
If we can do that with the death traps that are trampolines, is there a reason we can’t do it with the death machines that are guns?
I don’t think it even occurred to my parents that I hadn’t caused it all myself, TBH! Fortunately, it wasn’t broken and all was well…
To be clear, I do think a homeowner bears some responsibility where guns are concerned. I think insurance for gun ownership is a great idea, honestly and I don’t see it putting an undue burden on the 2nd amendment in anyway.
[quote=“Humbabella, post:214, topic:80545, full:true”]
I’d like to know your source on this. [/quote]
[quote=“Mangochin, post:212, topic:80545, full:true”]
Not true at all. [/quote]
It is true. It’s hard to nail down exactly, but no matter how you cut it, only a small fraction of crimes utilizing guns are committed by legal gun owners. Here is an article discussing those numbers that pulls from a variety of sources.
