192 replies to this topic

[the rebel]

Manoka:And no, you've never mentioned why you think guns should be banned over other things that kill innocent people in larger amounts.

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You only posted that very recently, your memory that bad

[Manoka]

As an electrical design and build technician, earthing rods aren't required on normal houses and only required on large buildings and even then they are only used to stop damage to the building and/or electrical supply.

So instead of silly excuses why don't you tell us all why you're against gun restrictions and a proper answer non of this changing the subject away from guns.

It does matter, because the ultimate goal is to save lives by taking away freedoms. There are far more deadly things that would save more lives, that would take away other freedoms, but one's you aren't willing to give up. I also talked about drugs, alcohol etc., and a host of other things. What it does show is bias.

 

I'm not opposed to gun control at it's core, but I don't think it will stop mass attacks. Trying to keep guns out of the hands of criminals is fantastic and everything, but it won't solve the already high number of people with guns, or the fact that you could kill lots of people with other weapons. To truly solve the problem, you have to go deeper than what's on the surface, and go after the human issues, rather than reducing them down to a gun, a knife, a car bomb, a spatula etc.

 

And yes, people have been killed by spatulas. 

[Manoka]

Manoka:And no, you've never mentioned why you think guns should be banned over other things that kill innocent people in larger amounts.

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You only posted that very recently, your memory that bad

I didn't say you wanted to ban all guns then or now. 

[ᗅᗺᗷᗅ]

It's not just that guns kill people, it's that they only kill people. Handguns, particularly, are made with no other purpose in mind. This is a machine designed to make killing people easy. And it does. And that's the problem.

 

Other things that kill a lot of people, cars for example, do so only incidentally. That is to say, they are not meant to kill people; when they do so it is usually the result of an accident (the number of deliberate vehicular homicides is insignificant). And, of course, cars fulfill other important functions. Take away civilians' guns and nothing would change in most people's daily lives; take away civilians' cars and it would be social and economic chaos.

 

There are about 33,000 automobile-related deaths per year in the United States, based on an average of the years 2009-2013. In 2013, there were 33,169 firearms-related deaths in the United States. So the overall numbers are identical. According to the internet, there are 256 million automobiles in the United States; there are about 300 million guns. But those numbers are misleading. In terms of daily interaction, way more people are exposed to cars than to guns. I would hazard a guess that most Americans never see a gun in the course of an ordinary day, and when they do it is being worn in a holster by a police officer or other law-enforcement official on some routine business. On the other hand, most Americans probably encounter multiple cars every day, possibly hundreds or even thousands (depending on what you mean by "encounter"). In terms of fatalities per man-hour spent with cars vs. guns, guns would win hands-down.

[Manoka]

It's not just that guns kill people, it's that they only kill people. Handguns, particularly, are made with no other purpose in mind. This is a machine designed to make killing people easy. And it does. And that's the problem.

 

Other things that kill a lot of people, cars for example, do so only incidentally. That is to say, they are not meant to kill people; when they do so it is usually the result of an accident (the number of deliberate vehicular homicides is insignificant). And, of course, cars fulfill other important functions. Take away civilians' guns and nothing would change in most people's daily lives; take away civilians' cars and it would be social and economic chaos.

 

There are about 33,000 automobile-related deaths per year in the United States, based on an average of the years 2009-2013. In 2013, there were 33,169 firearms-related deaths in the United States. So the overall numbers are identical. According to the internet, there are 256 million automobiles in the United States; there are about 300 million guns. But those numbers are misleading. In terms of daily interaction, way more people are exposed to cars than to guns. I would hazard a guess that most Americans never see a gun in the course of an ordinary day, and when they do it is being worn in a holster by a police officer or other law-enforcement official on some routine business. On the other hand, most Americans probably encounter multiple cars every day, possibly hundreds or even thousands (depending on what you mean by "encounter"). In terms of fatalities per man-hour spent with cars vs. guns, guns would win hands-down.

Most gun deaths are from suicide, which could be done via other means. In fact after Australia restricted guns, the number of other forms of suicide sky rocketed, for example. If you were to insist that suicides should be included, I could insist overdoses, or self inflicted deaths to be included, as well.

 

However, I've been arguing alcohol and drugs. The number of alcohol related fatal car accidents doesn't need to happen (about a third of all fatal car accidents), as there is no societal need for alcohol. Take away alcohol, and life would carry on as usual. We don't need it, the only purpose is recreation. 

 

 

The purpose of the tool shouldn't matter. Guns can be used to kill animals, or just for target practice. Someone building a rocket launcher for the expressed purpose of hunting shouldn't change anything in regards to legality, and it doesn't change the danger. A form of poisonous toothpaste should be banned regardless of it's intent, since millions could die if they used it.

 

Guns can also be used in self defense. According to a study authorized by Obama and spear-headed by the CDC, guns are used at least as often in self defense as they are in violent crimes with guns, which means we'd probably have a doubling of successful violent crime in this country if guns were taken away. So guns actually have a practical use, compared to say, alcohol, which has no use. " Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals"

 

 

The thing is, you claim you'd ban something that had no practical use, but you wouldn't, because you aren't going to work towards banning alcohol anytime soon, and in fact you want to legalize things like marijuana. I'm sure there's other useless things you're willing to keep around that kill people. That's not a strong enough argument on your part to get something banned.

[the rebel]

I also talked about drugs, alcohol etc., and a host of other things. What it does show is bias.

Where's the bias? Just because I'm dismissing your deflecting doesn't mean I'm biased. If you should know I'm all for restrictions on drugs and alcohol. I live in the UK where those exist. Society hasn't crumpled.

[Haflinger]

You can't fucking ban old age, you can ban drugs you fucking dolt. 

No, you can't. There isn't a modern Western democracy that has succeeded in banning recreational drugs. Many have tried, but you can still buy pot, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines and LSD fairly easily in all of them. A few tried to ban alcohol as well, but all those efforts met with dismal failure and were aborted.

 

Only in the Islamic world has there been any success on banning recreational drugs (including alcohol), and there they have the cooperation of the vast majority of the population. In places where they don't (say, Morocco) then they have the same problems.

 

However, gun control has been shown to be possible in most of the western world, outside of the United States. Which is also the country which has the highest homicide rate in the western world (I mean, crap, Kosovo has a lower rate). This is not a coincidence.

 

https://en.wikipedia...rate#By_country

[Manoka]

You can't fucking ban old age, you can ban drugs you fucking dolt. 

No, you can't. There isn't a modern Western democracy that has succeeded in banning recreational drugs. Many have tried, but you can still buy pot, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines and LSD fairly easily in all of them. A few tried to ban alcohol as well, but all those efforts met with dismal failure and were aborted.

 

Only in the Islamic world has there been any success on banning recreational drugs (including alcohol), and there they have the cooperation of the vast majority of the population. In places where they don't (say, Morocco) then they have the same problems.

 

However, gun control has been shown to be possible in most of the western world, outside of the United States. Which is also the country which has the highest homicide rate in the western world (I mean, crap, Kosovo has a lower rate). This is not a coincidence.

 

https://en.wikipedia...rate#By_country

Other than your lack of evidence, you can in effect, ban drugs. There's only going to be a certain level of effectiveness, but the same is true with guns, since you can illegally smuggle guns just like drugs. The U.S. does not have the highest homicide rate; Greenland for example has a substantially higher one. And not every single western country has strict gun control. In Switzerland for instance, the government passes out fully automatic machine guns and expects you to defend yourself with it, and, they have one of the lowest homicide rate in the world. Norway does the same. Iceland has pretty loose gun laws, and the like. You're also excluding countries like Japan which aren't western and have low homicide rates (although they are anti-gun). Then we can look at countries such as say, Mexico, of whom has strict regulations, and despite there being about 2.5 million legal firearms in legislation, has an additional 13 million+ illegal firearms, which means their legal firearms only make up 16% of the total, indicating how prevalent smuggling is. The U.S. has the highest firearm ownership rate in the world per capita, and it does not have the highest homicide rate. The connection is arbitrary and there isn't even a correlation. If you're just going to compare the U.S. to X country and say they have a lower homicide rate than us, I can compare the U.S. to Y country and say, they have a higher homicide rate, and so on. To really be able to come up with something useful, you'd need to look at the world average. 

 

 

For the sake of brevity and to target the issue, I'll take a look at the top 25 countries with the lowest homicide rates, whom possess information regarding their total civilian firearm ownership, and compare that to the world average. According to the United Nation's small arms survey, there are approximately 875 million firearms total in the world, and 650 million in civilian hands (Page 1). The world population on July 15th 2015, according to the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, is approximately 7.3 billion. Doing simple math, that means there are approximately 8.9 guns per 100 people in the world on average, in civilians hands. 

 

The U.S. possess a third to a half of these firearms, creating a world average excluding the U.S. of approximately 5 guns per 100 people (350 million out of 7 billion), and countries such as Switzerland or Israel have fully automatic weapons in the homes of civilians, military firearms, given to them by the state, which offsets this figure somewhat. Nonetheless, this gives us a rough baseline of the world average of guns. How high is the gun ownership rate in the the countries with the top lowest homicide rates?

 

20 out of the 25 (80%) have a higher gun ownership rate higher than the world average. Of these, 15 have a gun ownership rate higher than 15 per person (60%), 11 (44%) have a gun ownership rate higher than 20, and 7 (28%) have a firearm ownership rate of 30 per 100. Another common association is that the U.S. has a significantly higher homicide rate than Europe. While Europe does in fact have countries with lower homicide rates than the U.S., the average is about 3.0, while it was about 4.5 in the U.S. suggesting a not so extreme difference. Comparatively, Russia had a homicide rate of 13, Greenland 19.4, Brazil 25.2, Venezuela 48, and El Salvador 65.

 

 

 

 

 

This is a comprehensive list of the UNODOC's self reported homicide and civilian firearms ownership rate. The bolded are countries above the average. The Raw numbers are Japan is .6, Singapore is at .5, Iceland is at 30.3, Brunei is at 1.4, Bahrain is at 24.8, Austria is at 30.4, Luxembourg is at 15.3, Oman is 25.5, Slovenia is 13.5, Switzerland is at 45.7, United Arab Emirates is at 22.1, Czech Republic is at 16.3, Spain is at 10.4, Germany is at 30.3, Qatar is at 19.2, Denmark is at 12, Norway is at 31.3, Italy is 11.9, New Zealand is at 22.6, China is at 4.9, Bhutan is at 3.5, Saudi Arabia is at 35, Sweden is at 31.6, Malta is at 11.9, and Australia is at 15.

 

 

 

20 out of the 25 (80%) have a higher gun ownership rate higher than the world average. Of these, 15 have a gun ownership rate higher than 15 per person (60%), 11 (44%) have a gun ownership rate higher than 20, and 7 (28%) have a firearm ownership rate of 30 per 100.

 

Monaco, Palau, Hong Kong, French Polynesia, Guam, Macau, Vanuatu, Federated States of Micronesia are not on the list of recorded guns per capita by country. So technically, this is the top 25 countries with the lowest homicide rate with information regarding their civilian ownership of guns. The lowest homicide rate listed is for Japan at 0.3 per 100,000 individuals, and the highest is 1.1 for Australia. 

 

Bolded countries have higher than the world average, or 8.2 guns per 100 people. Red countries have the same or higher than 15 guns per 100 people. Green countries have higher than 30 guns per 100 people. 

 

1. Japan is .6

2. Singapore is at .5

3. Iceland is at 30.3

4. Brunei is at 1.4

5. Bahrain is at 24.8

6. Austria is at 30.4

7. Luxembourg is at 15.3

8. Oman is 25.5

9. Slovenia is 13.5

10. Switzerland is at 45.7

11. United Arab Emirates is at 22.1

12. Czech Republic is at 16.3

13. Spain is at 10.4

14. Germany is at 30.3

15. Qatar is at 19.2

16. Denmark is at 12

17. Norway is at 31.3

18. Italy is 11.9

19. New Zealand is at 22.6

20. China is at 4.9

21. Bhutan is at 3.5

22. Saudi Arabia is at 35

23. Sweden is at 31.6

24. Malta is at 11.9

25. Australia is at 15.

[the rebel]

The U.S. does not have the highest homicide rate; Greenland for example has a substantially higher one.

 

I laughed, its you not unstanding the statistics and methods which gives it an artificially high number.

 

As for your bottom list with green, red and bold on gun ownership per 100, its funny why you intentionally miss out the US with 112.6 guns per 100. Did you miss it out because your wall of text would of been just nonsense and misinformation. Its a bitch when your own sources defeat your argument

 

Edit: but for shits and giggles, if more guns equals a safer world, lets look at the murder rate in Serbia which is number 2 in gun ownership behind US with 50 per 100. They have a rate of 1.2 so you would think US should be lower not higher.

[Manoka]

The U.S. does not have the highest homicide rate; Greenland for example has a substantially higher one.

 

I laughed, its you not unstanding the statistics and methods which gives it an artificially high number.

 

As for your bottom list with green, red and bold on gun ownership per 100, its funny why you intentionally miss out the US with 112.6 guns per 100. Did you miss it out because your wall of text would of been just nonsense and misinformation. Its a bitch when your own sources defeat your argument

 

Edit: but for shits and giggles, if more guns equals a safer world, lets look at the murder rate in Serbia which is number 2 in gun ownership behind US with 50 per 100. They have a rate of 1.2 so you would think US should be lower not higher.

I've never tried to argue that more guns alone will lower crime. I've argued that there is not a correlation between gun violence and the number of guns in civilian hands. If anything, there is a positive trend that having more guns means a lower homicide rate. But correlation does not imply causation. Mexico for instance has 15.5 million guns, but only 2.5 million are legal, meaning that the other 13 million are in the hands of criminals. That's not a good situation for Mexico to be in. Similarly, having 1 million guns when all 1 million guns are in the hands of criminals doesn't necessarily mean you will have low crime. I've never once argued otherwise, just that your information is wrong, not that more guns is necessarily safer. It has close to no impact one way or the other. 

 

Also, I never once mentioned how many gun the U.S. had per capita, I said the world average is 8.9, and that almost every country in the 25 lowest homicide countries (with information about guns), is far above this. If you exclude the U.S., the world average is 5.0. How does this defeat my argument in any way? It's not even relevant. 

[the rebel]

I know you never mentioned the US guns per capita, the question is why? Because at face value you dismissed it due to the fact it being ridiculously high which means you couldn't include it in yourt argument as it would defeat your argument since none of those other countries you mentioned have ownership of guns anywhere as high so isn't comparable.

 

You mention Switzerland but they have 0.5 of a gun per 100 people

You mention Israel but they only have 7.3 guns per 100 people

 

So you arguing that gun ownership needs decreasing to those levels, since you mention them two countries a lot of times to back up your gun ownership and no to restrictions arguments.

[Manoka]

I know you never mentioned the US guns per capita, the question is why? Because at face value you dismissed it due to the fact it being ridiculously high which means you couldn't include it in yourt argument as it would defeat your argument since none of those other countries you mentioned have ownership of guns anywhere as high so isn't comparable.

 

You mention Switzerland but they have 0.5 of a gun per 100 people

You mention Israel but they only have 7.3 guns per 100 people

 

So you arguing that gun ownership needs decreasing to those levels, since you mention them two countries a lot of times to back up your gun ownership and no to restrictions arguments.

Currently, that source has been messed with as of today, right before you made this comment, literally, because some moderator made an edit that caused a glitch and they'll probably have to fix it, later. 

 

So instead, look at the original source, here. I also included the primary source intended for wikipedia, here. If you just don't have the capacity to understand this, we could cut out 1 country in the list, Switzerland, and it changes virtually nothing. The evidence is overwhelming. 

 

 

 

The U.S. wasn't included because they aren't in the top 25 countries with the lowest homicide rate per capita, so again, they're irrelevant.

 

The argument was that there is a correlation between high violence and gun volumes of guns, and it's actually the exact opposite. If you want to say that the U.S. must not be compared to the rest of the world, that's a different argument in and of itself. There, irregardless, always going to be outliers, but the general trend is not the case. 

[Manoka]

Believe it or not, violence went up after prohibition ended [1]. Because organized crime could no longer make profits from relatively peaceful transactions (I.E. selling alcohol), they switched to violent one's to make their money, extortion, blackmail, robbery, etc. They actually got larger and more powerful after prohibition ended. 

 

There are countries in the world that have low drug use and drug bans, even one's that have successfully banned alcohol. You claim that it worked because the people would support it, but ignore that the people wouldn't support a gun ban and measure the success from that manner. I digress. 

 

 

Alcohol use fell by half, where as liver cirrhosis fell by two thirds, [2][3] People were no longer drinking publicly, so the rates of alcohol related car accidents fell too. 

 

Even if we could institute prohibition again and it would successful drop cirrhosis deaths, car accidents etc. I wouldn't support it, because it would remove our freedoms. Every time you accept freedoms, you accept a little bit of danger that comes with them. If the price of owning guns- which I don't think it is- is slightly higher deaths than average, because murder makes up less than 1% of all the deaths in the U.S., I don't think it would be enough to remove our freedoms. You claim they have no practical use, but you don't support banning dozens of other things that have no practical use. Even the death of 1 person should be sufficient, yes? But, you don't actually believe in your own argument that useless things should be banned just because some lives would be lost. 

 

I don't believe banning guns will have a positive effect, but you can at least compare it's effect to other things we could potentially ban that have no use. You wouldn't choose to ban those things however, for freedom's sake. You have to argue successfully why our freedoms are worth less, not just that a small amount of lives would be lost.

 

 

I also never once mentioned anything about banning cars, so I'm not sure why you brought that up. 

[the rebel]

Yep the evidence is overwhelming, you have more guns in private hands than people, no where else in the world is that the case and no where else in the world are mass shootings of children and similar is an regular occurrence, there is a problem with gun laws. Instead of making excuses why don't you tell us how you would sort out the gun issue instead of ignoring it.

Use your brain.

[the rebel]

Because one thing is a certainty, if it continues to happen regularly and the gun nuts keep blocking any changes to make it harder for it to happen.

Obama will force changes into law, as he is starting to get visibly distressed and angered over the issue and now has nothing to lose as his presidency is nearly over and that is a dangerous thing to ignore.

[Manoka]

Yep the evidence is overwhelming, you have more guns in private hands than people, no where else in the world is that the case and no where else in the world are mass shootings of children and similar is an regular occurrence, there is a problem with gun laws. Instead of making excuses why don't you tell us how you would sort out the gun issue instead of ignoring it.

Use your brain.

Other than the fact that you've failed to demonstrate that guns correlate or have a causative link directly with mass shootings, I've also demonstrated that this is factually wrong. 

 

http://www.ijreview....oves-him-wrong/

 

http://www.politifac...ont-happen-oth/

 

[the rebel]

Guns do correlate with mass shootings look in the newspaper and online news. That is a fact.

Now what's your solution to stopping children regularly getting gunned down in one of the most advanced nations in the world?

If you don't have a solution then shut the fuck up repeating yourself, parroting gun lobbying propaganda.

What's your solution, do you even have one or you too fucking stupid to think for yourself and need wiki to answer all questions in life for you?

[Manoka]

These aren't all pro-gun organizations, it includes numerous studies and groups, such as the United Nation's, the government of each respective country, and their information reported to other countries. It isn't made up, it's a fact, it's raw data for each country. Looking at "the news" doesn't actually prove anything, I've already googled it, shown you documents showing exactly the opposite. 

 

Whether or not I believe there's a solution to mass violence is completely irrelevant to whether or not your solution would work.

 

 

But, like I said, the one thing every mass violence incidence has in common, be it by explosives, guns, knives etc., is the person's mentality. They're either crazy or have an extreme ideology, such as that for terrorism. You can look at the unibomber, terrorists, or other groups. Why does violence happen at all? It's in their heads. It's inherently a psychological problem. If we had a society tomorrow that decided to commit no more violence, no more violence would happen. The gun means nothing.

 

Mental health, focusing on people and their psychological issues, their beliefs, is essential to catching and potentially stopping these people. Damage control, to prepare people for the attack, be it spreading out EMT training, arming and training them, creating options for people to report crazy people without fear of them being labeled their entire lives. Almost every single mass shooter has been on some kind of drug, and most were on prescription drugs. While prescription drugs are common, only about 5-10% seriously take psychological medication daily, and yet almost all mass shooters were on some kind of drug. [1] Focusing on people as people, rather than a single tool, is the problem. It's not guns, it's people, making decisions, based on faulty wiring in their brains. 

 

Until we figure that out, there's really no way to stop them or even predict it. Furthermore, violence in general has an association with poverty. Poor countries tend to have more violence compared to rich countries; poor areas, such as Detroit or Chicago, tend to have more violence than rich areas in the U.S. Poverty is directly correlated with violence. When people are desperate, they're more likely to do desperate things, and other poor people have less ability to stop the crime. Organized crime seeds in to the environment, and this increases violence exponentially. Despite making up less than 1% of the population, organized crime makes up 48% of the violence. Nearly half of all violent crime is connected with organized crime. How much is facilitated by the smuggling of firearms? How much is caused by drugs? 46.7% of all violent crimes (Page 7) are committed by people dependent on drugs or addicted to drugs, and 27.7% are committed by people on drugs. Compared to maybe 5% of the population that uses illicit drugs regularly. 

 

It's people's minds we need to be worried about. You can pat yourself on the back, pretend to have done something because you took the gun out of his hand, while he presses the detonator for the bomb in the other, and accomplish nothing. Or you can focus on what makes people commit crimes in the first place, and attack it from a fundamental angle. Rather than focus on over 100 million Americans, statistically of whom the majority will never commit a major crime in their life, and instead focus directly on the criminals and problems at hand. 

[Haflinger]

Greenland isn't a country, it's a territory. That's like me claiming that the U.S. is terribad because of the U.S. Virgin Islands' homicide rate (which is shockingly high).

[Manoka]

Greenland isn't a country, it's a territory. That's like me claiming that the U.S. is terribad because of the U.S. Virgin Islands' homicide rate (which is shockingly high).

It was an example, there's other advanced countries with higher crime rates, and it nonetheless doesn't prove that it's the gun's faults. Greenland is actually considered a country, but it's a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, which is a sovereign state, but not territory. [1][2] Dank ass politics, I know. I personally think they're irrelevant. You've got countries with low crime, and countries with high crime, that have low and high guns. Banning the guns might do nothing, and there's already so many guns in circulation, it would probably have close to no impact. 

 

Not to mention it would even begin to get at the core of the issue.