Aye, ‘means of production’ would be far more egregious to arrogate to one’s peon self than a pointy thing in the eyes of yer local Bishop.
1 Like
There are 2 things that make me boiling mad when people list gun deaths in the US.
No 1. They dont list how many are Law Enforcement killing someone else,
No 2. They never list how many gun deaths where the guns are illegal/unregistered. Here in California the dirty little secret is a large number those deaths are guns that came across the border. Gun control does nothing to fix this problem, as it is already illegal to transport guns across the boarder, without certain paperwork that your average border smuggler fails to file. While Australia is a shining example of taking away guns to lower gun violence AUSTRALIA DOES NOT BORDER MEXICO.
How do the 11 Districts mesh with Hazel Markus’ ideas?
Studies show that your thoughts, perceptions, emotions, and behaviors in response to a particular setting will reliably differ from those of others in that same setting depending on where you spent your childhood or even where you spent six years or more of your adult life.
There are indeed a lot of guns being smuggled across the US/Mexico border but most of them are going in the opposite direction than you seem to indicate.
2 Likes
'Specially if yer local Bishop’s St. Albans, aye Wat?
1 Like
Right now the strategy seems to be to restrict the sale and use of such things to those least likely to use them for the benefit of the common man.
3 Likes
Oh, I’m not saying it’s bad at all, acknowleding that we as Americans often have divergent views. But I don’t think it’s just a regional thing.
Try following the links in the post.
There, for each country, you will find the entry “Justifiable Gun Homicides”. There is a nice info link next to it, that explains what it means:
The reported, or estimated annual total of ‘legal intervention’ firearm homicides by law enforcement personnel or by civilians, in years descending.
In the US, in 2010:
- 617 “justifiable gun homicides”
- 31,672 gun deaths
=> Good news, there is no need to get boiling mad over that issue any more: it’s negligible!
1 Like
And yet even the text of the second amendment shows an unresolved disagreement between the states, which is why it’s remained contentious to this day. The “well-regulated” part reflects the thinking of northern states like New York that had top-down state-regulated militias and state constitutions that preserved elite power, while the “right to keep and bear arms” reflected Jefferson’s individualistic, bottom-up militia model for Virginia.
I’d agree with others, however, that the “peasants with swords” argument is anachronistic and misleading here: 18th-century Britain had come through a civil war, a parliamentary coup against the monarch, and a Jacobite rebellion that extended into the heart of England. It was not a medieval nation.
It probably does not help that the CDC was basically banned from studying gun violence:
The CDC conducted gun violence research in the 1980s and 1990s, but it abruptly ended in 1996 when the National Rifle Association lobbied Congress to cut the CDC’s budget the exact amount it had allocated to gun violence research.
“It’s worth pointing out that the language never specifically forbade the CDC from conducting the research,” Wintemute said.
The 1997 appropriations bill stated, “None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.” Congress also threatened more funding cuts if the gun research continued.
“The message was really clear,” Wintemute said.
In 2003, the 1997 bill language was updated to include the words “in whole or in part,” which expanded the ban. Then, in 2012, the appropriations bill expanded the restriction to all Health and Human Services agencies.
Link: CDC Ban on Gun Research Caused Lasting Damage - ABC News
Finding answers to your two questions is made difficult by the people who oppose research on gun violence, background checks, and a gun registry.
For your first question, one study found that 313 black people were killed by police, security guards and vigilantes in 2012, but it also mentions that around 8000 black people are murdered every year ( http://mxgm.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Operation-Ghetto-Storm.pdf ). Other sites indicate that 7000-8000 black people are murdered every year and that there are 14,000 to 16,000 people murdered in the US every year.
The FBI appears to limit the definition to “felons” killed by police officers or private citizens ( http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/offenses/expanded_information/homicide.html ). So I would not be surprised if their numbers underestimate the number of people killed by police officers.
This number includes “gun homicide, gun suicide, unintentional fatal shootings and gun deaths for which the cause or intent remains undetermined”. I have seen other people argue that accidents and suicides are not relevant to the discussion of gun violence, so here is something which focuses on just murders: The Wall Street Journal - Breaking News, Business, Financial & Economic News, World News and Video
I agree.
1 Like
I was a bit slapdash and historically inaccurate, true–this is what happens when you try to write long even-handed posts about contentious issues while ignoring work emails on a Thursday morning. While “Orf with their 'eads!” wasn’t the order of the day by the late 18th century, it wasn’t exactly a distant memory either, and to codify it in the supreme law of the land (and so prominently in the Bill of Rights) was, for the time, a truly radical act.
1 Like
Clearly you eat babies.
lol
I feel the same way, the conversation often starts with some suggestion of “reasonable common sense gun control” and ends up in a bizarre spittle flecking blather.
Fight for freedom
End the war on freedom (war on drugs, war on privacy, war on computing, war on guns)
3 Likes
I found the “Eleven Nations” framework of the article to be far more interesting than the gun issue. Which, as the article makes clear, isn’t really about guns; rather, cultural values about violence. So much of my personal identity is wrapped up in these cultural politics as a person who moved from a Yankee/Midland border area to Greater Appalachia just before adolescence (so much so that my “about me” in my profile is explained exactly this way.)
The “Eleven Nation” model is relevatory. It has me revisiting key memories of mine and the backgrounds of my family, and this model explains so much of my experience it’s uncanny–right down to the way the people drive!
while I agree with you in theory, these policies do tend to discriminate against the poor, which undermines the egalitarianism of the second amendment that you seem to laud. This is why we got rid of poll taxes and voter competency tests. Either you’ve got a fundamental right to vote, or the state gets to weed out the poor and uneducated. For guns, I certainly wish for more education, but implementing it means there’d be a fee for the testing, not to mention taking time off work to re-up your license/take your test, which favors professionals over wage-slaves.
Again, I’m with you in spirit, but it can never be simple, amirite?
doesn’t seem to be fine print.
A slight majority of the population (well, over 52% as per this poll) are in favor of more gun regulations. There is often a discussion about “do laws work to curb gun violence?” A number of us would immediately say “Yes, just like traffic laws generally keep people from running each other over.” The problem with having a good argument about this is that we can point at the Swiss, or some other developed countries with reasonable gun control laws but those are difficult to apply to the culture and current state of the US.
Australia was (is) a decent model with their gun buy back program and a reduction in homicide and suicide rates but they also have a smaller, less diverse populous that has no physical borders with other countries (which may or may not effect the flow of guns and amount of violence). The best way to make the argument for more stringent gun control laws would be to review the success of laws in states like CA but you run into the issue that gun violence data is inconsistently collected and does not easily lend its self to analysis.
Even if a good argument could be made though (showing the positive effect of gun control measures), this is such an emotionally charged that you will never be able to convince a small percentage of the population. Some of this may merely be an education issue (and can be handled with logical means), some of it purely emotional. I do think though, that the media makes us look more split than we are… I believe that with some honest discourse most of us (60-80%) can find common ground and come to an agreement.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
