I'm thinking of someone who is basically this bad caricature of why-welfare-is-bad. She'd make a good GOP attack ad. The gov has tried to 'fix' or 'help' her multiple times and I think "enable dysfunctional behavior" is probably a better description of what's happened.
What people object to (seems to me) is your advocacy that the solution to the problem of gun violence is more gunz.
"Gun violence" stats are dominated by suicide and the war on drugs, neither of which seems likely to yield to a gun control solution (unless you count changing suicide-by-gun to suicide-by-something-else as a victory).
The underlying "advocacy" which people are arguing for, and I'm objecting to, is that a gun in the hands of a good person is every bit as much of a problem as a gun in the hands of an active shooter.
To be fair, some argued that "guns + alcohol is bad" which is at least passes some sanity test, but all too often I've seen the "more guns=bad" line of thought extended to "people are safer if they're unarmed, even if there is an active shooter (or lynch mob) trying to kill them", and we saw hints of that argument at various times here.
It doesn’t, because guns in the hands of alcohol-impaired againts-ISIS self-appointed vigilantes are way, way, more dangerous that any ISIS murderer will ever be
What we know about our sample 20 potential carriers is that they disarmed because of a sticker on the door, i.e. they're law abiding.
This suggests that the entire alcohol+guns thing could be fixed via regulation, rather than a flat ban.
You wrote that arming up is a legitimate response since on your analysis twelve armed people with intent to kill can show up on anyone’s porch at any time. Hence, it’s not about your (faulty) analysis, but your (perfectly legitimate) response.
Are you claiming that's the only situation in which a gun would be useful? We've got that gay bar shooting on the table as an example, it doesn't count?
You want to talk reasonable fear? AWESOME! What are the odds of being shot by ISIS? A “gangbanger”? A loved one? What are the odds a weapon purchased for self defense is used to protect innocent life? Is used to harm innocent life? What are the odds a weapon purchased for self defense is used to protect innocent life? Is used to harm innocent life?
This would be a very interesting statistic. How many times a private gun is used in a household or the street to stop a crime. How many people are killed or injured in handgun accidents (I’m excluding rifles because of the hunting thing). The balance will tell you a lot about how good firearms are to protect your home and life.
:Amusement: No, you don't get to lump all sorts of gun risks into the stats. People who carry mostly come from hunting/law-enforcement/ex-military communities and they've already got the risk of having guns in the house. Similarly suicide is off the table.
The issue is whether *your* fear of being injured via someone who carries is reasonable.
We had roughly 475 people die from mass shootings last year (pbs).
One of these anti-carry websites claims we've had 700 people die in carry incidents over the last 10 years. Ideally we'd subtract incidents where the person carrying gets himself killed but whatever.
That is your position as you’ve laid out. I’m asking you to justify the difference in treatment you advocate.
You're pointing out a linguistic difference, not a policy difference.
The US is able to make it impossible for a person to defend himself. Not difficult, not expensive, not against morals, but actually impossible via "we'll arrest you if you try".
The US sometimes even does this without offering any effective defense for that person ("gun free" zones enforced not by armed guards but by trusting criminals to obey the law, various cities where guns are outlawed but people get shot on the street).
Despite lip service, the US is unable to force the same thing on countries. (We don't threaten to nuke any country which gets nukes)
It is a good thing to have effective law enforcement and other things which prevent the need for weapons at a personal/country level. It is a good thing to try to convince countries/people they don't need them. It's a bad thing to force people to die merely so that you can feel good about your ethics in your comfortable home where you can ignore the risks they face.
DarkMatter: You’re comparing “going to war and killing many thousands of people” with “carrying a gun and not using it unless you have to”. IMHO a better comparison would be “insurance”.
Stillwater: No, I’m comparing you’re decision-making about this issue to Cheney’s 1% doctrine. It’s not about your analysis, it’s about your response.
I must be missing something here. You seem to be claiming that carrying a gun is extremely aggressive in and of itself (and can be sensibly compared to the deaths in a war), even if it's never used.
I doubt they will feel great. “Yes, I got three or four bystanders down with friendly fire, but at the end I got the bad guy, so I’m not overtly concerned about the other ones I killed. Even if I had hit a dozen people, is still an improvement”
True. They'll also have legal problems since the system only covers for police in "friendly fire". For that matter they'd probably still feel horrible even if they only shoot the active shooter.
But the other realistic option on the table is 100 people shot.
Facing up to that is grim, but not facing up to it is looking at the world with rose filtered glasses.
Because, of course, all of the twenty will magically know that the other nineteen good shooters are all fighting the lone bad ISIS guy together. At no time would they think that any of their nineteen co-heroes might be a second, third, fourth, …., nineteenth, twentieth, ISIS shooter, and start shooting at each other in all directions.
If I don't get to assume some Clint Eastwood movie, then you don't get to assume the keystone cops.
Not all of the 20 will be there, they certainly don't have the ammo to reload many multiples of times, and they'll probably think the bad guy is the one deliberately mowing down unarmed people.
And the default situation without them is really, really nasty. Saying it will kill someone, or even a dozen people, is still an improvement.
Oh, no, the *historic* example in the US of an authoritarian government is not the KKK. This is because the KKK is, obviously, not a form of government.
No, the issue on the table is not "authoritarian government". The issue on the table is gun control, and with the KKK (and lynchings) as the example, the question is whether or not it was better for the Blacks to be disarmed. Government failure/cooperation in the face of the KKK is only a backdrop to these issues.
Please note that as soon as Federal troops were withdrawn, the KKK *went away*. (The first one, at least. It lasted maybe a decade.) Why? Because they didn’t need to do that shit in secret anymore.
The last of the federal troops were withdrawn via The Compromise of 1877. The Klan's membership peaked in 1924. Lynchings occurred most frequently from 1890 to the 1920s, a time of political suppression of blacks by whites, with a peak in 1892. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States
Like I keep pointing out, no one on the right actually seems to be doing *any* logical thinking *at all* about how the government would *actually do things* in a modern society.
We always respond to the last emergency, not the next one.
Does insurance ever carry the risk of…
…being turned around to harm the carrier?
…accidentally harming innocent bystanders?
…being stolen or lost and then used to harm others?
…being misused or misapplied and harming others?
The first one is a risk to the person carrying so they should decide for themselves. The 3rd is a problem with firearms existence and beyond the scope of this discussion (unless you want to argue for total gun confiscation of everyone).
The 2nd and 4th are better, the question is whether or not they're reasonable fears on your part.
So American individuals should have access to weapons for self-defense and deterrence reasons but nation-states should not?
What on Earth gives you the idea that nation states don't have access to weapons? Despite all the moral posturing the US tries to put on, as far as I can tell we've failed to stop anyone from going nuclear the moment they think they need nukes for self-defence.
Our allies (Israel), our enemies (North K, Iran), with Pakistan we knew what they were doing and the President called them up and basically begged/bribed them not to go nuclear and it still didn't work.
Nation states have "individual choice" as far as whether or not they have weapons, and yes, most of them live in comfortable suburbs and don't arm themselves.
Your question would be better phrased as "Shouldn't American individuals have access to weapons for self-defence just like states do?"
One doesn’t need to be afraid of fire in order to carry a concealed fire extinguisher with them at all times.
You are the one trying to claim all people who are carrying are doing so because of fear, a dark view of reality, a misunderstanding of reality, and so forth.
Thus far you've offered nothing to back up this claim other than Telepathy and a lack of understanding of the mindset. My expectation is that you've never actually talked to people who carry to find out what/how they think, whether they understand the odds and so forth. As far as I can tell, fundamentally it's a gift to you and me. Their insurance may help others.
If you're serious about society needing to trust everyone, then trust that they know more about firearms than you do and understand that they're lugging around a piece of metal that they'll probably never use.
We can talk about the events you claim never happen when they're less in the headline news.
Suppose we had twenty gun carrying guys at the bar. Are we to suppose that they would be able to react, pinpoint who the shooter is, and take him off WITHOUT hitting any of the scores of innocent patrons surrounding the gallant gun carrying heroes.
So you're saying it's better to let the bad guy shoot 100 people rather than risk an innocent or two getting hit in a cross fire?
If every one of those twenty had accidentally shot four innocent people, the body count still would have been less than the reality, and people wouldn't have been left bleeding for hours waiting for the authorities.
As the people in the bar watched the shooter reload for the 10th time, they probably didn't turn to each other and say "Think about how much worse it'd be if some of us were armed!"
Kazzy: So American individuals should have access to weapons for self-defence and deterrence reasons but nation-states should not?
Dark Matter: ...nation states that think they have a “self-defence” need for nukes have always gotten them.
Kazzy: You didn’t answer the question.
Go re-read that steam again. Regardless of what "should have access" means in this context, the reality is that the moment "self-defence" is on the table the state has gone nuclear.
On “On Reversing the Tide”
I'm thinking of someone who is basically this bad caricature of why-welfare-is-bad. She'd make a good GOP attack ad. The gov has tried to 'fix' or 'help' her multiple times and I think "enable dysfunctional behavior" is probably a better description of what's happened.
On “Confession of a Liberal Gun Owner”
Thank you.
Ouch. Gov can not only fail, but doesn't really have the duty to succeed.
On “On Reversing the Tide”
What do "high Trust" societies do with/about trust breaking people?
On “Confession of a Liberal Gun Owner”
"Gun violence" stats are dominated by suicide and the war on drugs, neither of which seems likely to yield to a gun control solution (unless you count changing suicide-by-gun to suicide-by-something-else as a victory).
The underlying "advocacy" which people are arguing for, and I'm objecting to, is that a gun in the hands of a good person is every bit as much of a problem as a gun in the hands of an active shooter.
To be fair, some argued that "guns + alcohol is bad" which is at least passes some sanity test, but all too often I've seen the "more guns=bad" line of thought extended to "people are safer if they're unarmed, even if there is an active shooter (or lynch mob) trying to kill them", and we saw hints of that argument at various times here.
"
Any reason not to drink is a good one.
"
20 law abiding people and none of them are a designated driver? Is it legal to drink and drive in Florida?
"
What we know about our sample 20 potential carriers is that they disarmed because of a sticker on the door, i.e. they're law abiding.
This suggests that the entire alcohol+guns thing could be fixed via regulation, rather than a flat ban.
"
Are you claiming that's the only situation in which a gun would be useful? We've got that gay bar shooting on the table as an example, it doesn't count?
"
@j_a @kazzy
:Amusement: No, you don't get to lump all sorts of gun risks into the stats. People who carry mostly come from hunting/law-enforcement/ex-military communities and they've already got the risk of having guns in the house. Similarly suicide is off the table.
The issue is whether *your* fear of being injured via someone who carries is reasonable.
We had roughly 475 people die from mass shootings last year (pbs).
One of these anti-carry websites claims we've had 700 people die in carry incidents over the last 10 years. Ideally we'd subtract incidents where the person carrying gets himself killed but whatever.
"
You're pointing out a linguistic difference, not a policy difference.
The US is able to make it impossible for a person to defend himself. Not difficult, not expensive, not against morals, but actually impossible via "we'll arrest you if you try".
The US sometimes even does this without offering any effective defense for that person ("gun free" zones enforced not by armed guards but by trusting criminals to obey the law, various cities where guns are outlawed but people get shot on the street).
Despite lip service, the US is unable to force the same thing on countries. (We don't threaten to nuke any country which gets nukes)
It is a good thing to have effective law enforcement and other things which prevent the need for weapons at a personal/country level. It is a good thing to try to convince countries/people they don't need them. It's a bad thing to force people to die merely so that you can feel good about your ethics in your comfortable home where you can ignore the risks they face.
"
I must be missing something here. You seem to be claiming that carrying a gun is extremely aggressive in and of itself (and can be sensibly compared to the deaths in a war), even if it's never used.
"
True. They'll also have legal problems since the system only covers for police in "friendly fire". For that matter they'd probably still feel horrible even if they only shoot the active shooter.
But the other realistic option on the table is 100 people shot.
Facing up to that is grim, but not facing up to it is looking at the world with rose filtered glasses.
"
If I don't get to assume some Clint Eastwood movie, then you don't get to assume the keystone cops.
Not all of the 20 will be there, they certainly don't have the ammo to reload many multiples of times, and they'll probably think the bad guy is the one deliberately mowing down unarmed people.
And the default situation without them is really, really nasty. Saying it will kill someone, or even a dozen people, is still an improvement.
"
No, the issue on the table is not "authoritarian government". The issue on the table is gun control, and with the KKK (and lynchings) as the example, the question is whether or not it was better for the Blacks to be disarmed. Government failure/cooperation in the face of the KKK is only a backdrop to these issues.
The last of the federal troops were withdrawn via The Compromise of 1877. The Klan's membership peaked in 1924. Lynchings occurred most frequently from 1890 to the 1920s, a time of political suppression of blacks by whites, with a peak in 1892.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States
We always respond to the last emergency, not the next one.
"
The first one is a risk to the person carrying so they should decide for themselves. The 3rd is a problem with firearms existence and beyond the scope of this discussion (unless you want to argue for total gun confiscation of everyone).
The 2nd and 4th are better, the question is whether or not they're reasonable fears on your part.
"
The question is whether or not this is a reasonable fear.
"
That example was in the context of the old South dealing with KKK. The modern equivs show up in the news on a reasonably regular basis.
"
What on Earth gives you the idea that nation states don't have access to weapons? Despite all the moral posturing the US tries to put on, as far as I can tell we've failed to stop anyone from going nuclear the moment they think they need nukes for self-defence.
Our allies (Israel), our enemies (North K, Iran), with Pakistan we knew what they were doing and the President called them up and basically begged/bribed them not to go nuclear and it still didn't work.
Nation states have "individual choice" as far as whether or not they have weapons, and yes, most of them live in comfortable suburbs and don't arm themselves.
Your question would be better phrased as "Shouldn't American individuals have access to weapons for self-defence just like states do?"
"
Restate it. One of us has lost the other.
"
Only if they've got subs for a 2nd strike ability.
"
The nice thing about CCarry as insurance is it can help the people around you.
"
You are the one trying to claim all people who are carrying are doing so because of fear, a dark view of reality, a misunderstanding of reality, and so forth.
Thus far you've offered nothing to back up this claim other than Telepathy and a lack of understanding of the mindset. My expectation is that you've never actually talked to people who carry to find out what/how they think, whether they understand the odds and so forth. As far as I can tell, fundamentally it's a gift to you and me. Their insurance may help others.
If you're serious about society needing to trust everyone, then trust that they know more about firearms than you do and understand that they're lugging around a piece of metal that they'll probably never use.
We can talk about the events you claim never happen when they're less in the headline news.
"
So you're saying it's better to let the bad guy shoot 100 people rather than risk an innocent or two getting hit in a cross fire?
If every one of those twenty had accidentally shot four innocent people, the body count still would have been less than the reality, and people wouldn't have been left bleeding for hours waiting for the authorities.
As the people in the bar watched the shooter reload for the 10th time, they probably didn't turn to each other and say "Think about how much worse it'd be if some of us were armed!"
"
Go re-read that steam again. Regardless of what "should have access" means in this context, the reality is that the moment "self-defence" is on the table the state has gone nuclear.
"
One doesn't need to be afraid of fire in order to have fire insurance.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.