America as a Free Fire Zone - A Critical Examination of Gun Culture Rationalizations

[jpak]

http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/83582

On January 12, thirty thousand people attended a memorial service for the seven victims of the Tucson massacre.

Thirty thousand: that’s about the same number of Americans who died in 2006 from gunshot wounds. Almost one hundred every day.

That is a statistic that stands alone among the civilized nations of the world. The Brady Campaign reports that the annual gun homicides in Finland were 17, in Australia 35, in England and Wales 39, in Spain 60, in Germany 194, in Canada 200, and in the United States 9484. This means that homicides amounted to almost one third of gun deaths in the United States.

Compared with other industrial countries, the U.S. firearm homicide rate was:
— 5 times that of Canada
— 10 times that of Finland
— 13 times that of Germany
— 19 times that of Australia
— 24 times that of Spain.
— 44 times that of England and Wales

<more>

[Ken_Fish]

1. So lets spend billions to buy back all legal guns like they did in OZ, and come up with 0

that's right after their emotion driven buyback their rate has stayed the SAME.

There is a solution to gun violence, the real problem is just harder to solve than passing some do nothing backslapping law on firearms.

[Zoeisright]

2. Facts just elude you, don't they?

READ that post before you regurgitate NRA talking points.

[Ken_Fish]

5. Sorry Stats are cool. They have no side. The keep the bullshit off my shoes..

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/buyback-has-no-effect-on-murder-rate/2006/10/23/1161455665717.html

There is a problem alright. Wanna fix it, let me know. I'll be happy to post the solution.

Wanna fight the culture war, well I have no interest in that.

[RKP5637]

3. Just asking, what is the solution to gun violence? n/t

[Ken_Fish]

8. 3 part. Numbers break into suicide (mood disorder related murder), drug related, and random.

Suicide / homicide related to mental illness are greater than 50% of the total. Mental illness it treatable in some people. Destroying the state system of treating mentall illness in the 60's has proven a failure. We need to address it with something better than institutions but dumping people on the street and in prison does not work.

We need to get people into treatment and if they are dangerous take steps to make them maintain treatment. (not an easy problem, but its a start)

Drugs dont cause crime, the shit tons of drug money do. Mexico, Colombia, and drug / gang related violence revolves around an underground economy. While this exists it is natural for people to take part in this. It needs to stop.

A quick look at the prison system should be compelling. (not easy, no one wants to be the guy to decrim drugs) but hey its true.

last, random violence will never be stopped. All countries suffer this. Like DWI stemming from legal alcohol there will be some number of true random.

none of this involves bans, restrictions, or otherwise pissing on people who statistically have shown less criminal behavior than police. Those people vote, sounds like a good idea to INCLUDE them.

[RKP5637]

10. Thanks, you made some good points IMO. n/t

[Ken_Fish]

13. No worries, the mentally ill really got screwed over

and it is counterproductive to have no system to treat these people. Addressing this one issue would have a MASSIVE impact on homelessness, loss of productivity, suicides, and a dozen other things.

I think this issue is in the top 10 the nation must address to continue.

[jpak]

4. Ban 30 round magazines - that's a start

yup

[Ken_Fish]

9. Start to what? What measurable impact do you think this will produce..

I mean other than the loss of the executive and legislative branch due to voter backlash?

You think this will impact the overall us murder rate. you realize more people are stabbed to death than assault weapon ed to death?

[jpak]

14. Yeah - the Loughner/Nidal assassin/terrorist lobby won't stand for it

Americans with brains will be all for it though.

yup

[Ken_Fish]

17. Loughners mag caused a jam. Having fired glocks with this magazine

and seen many others compete with them. I have no desire to use one in a defensive role. In a competition where legal, sure.

So because of 2 fucking criminals the law should change?

Don't you wanna ban the FN "cop killer" pistol too while you are at it?

And no Americans will not be for it. Gun Control is over in the US.

[jpak]

20. Product safety issue - getting rid of these defective products will not burden the law abiding

yup

[Ken_Fish]

26. So a 29 rounder is ok. What about a 42 round AR mag

they work just fine.. What are you trying to accomplish with these changes?

[jpak]

29. A 6 round max - just like most revolvers. No one needs a 42 round AK mag

nope

Accomplish? Reduce the number of people assassins/terrorists can kill without reloading.

yup

[TheWraith]

33. So first it was 10 rounds that was "okay." Now it's six.

If you got your way, how long until that drops to 2? Then how long before ANY number of bullets is "unacceptable"?

[jpak]

39. Six is my final answer

yup

[Ken_Fish]

49. 8 ok in revolvers, or do i need to leave those cylinders clear?(nt)

[jpak]

52. 6 max - plug 2

yup

[Ken_Fish]

53. Great you feel this way.. I also feel that this will never happen, ever

but hey, thats just an opinion.

[TheWraith]

58. It'll never be your "final answer."

You openly support an organization which has called for a total ban.

[jpak]

61. No I have not - but don't let the facts get in your way!

:rofl:

[rl6214]

69. don't know about that

maybe after you have taken your meds the number will change again.

[Ken_Fish]

36. They are used in 3 gun matches. Not on AKs

in AR15's most run upwards of $2000 for the rifle.

So you dont care if they kill, just as long as they have to do a half second reload?

[jpak]

38. That half a second could mean the difference between life and death

yup

and they can reload

yup

[Ken_Fish]

42. Well good thing he shot to slide lock (or jam). rather than leaving a round in the chamber

and performing a reload on a loaded gun. If someone is already killing people the problem is not the weapon.

[GreenStormCloud]

50. Cho reloaded. So did the Luby's killer. N/T

[rl6214]

70. Kind of like the Va Tech killer

17 reloads, 170 shots fired, 32 people killed because they were trapped in a gun free zone with a crazed killer. Smart move.

[GreenStormCloud]

47. The U.S. does not have a Dept. of Needs.

You are not the Needs Czar. I do not have to justify my purchases to you on the basis of need. If I want something and can afford it, I can get it.

[PavePusher]

57. I ask again...

Are you volunteering to be personnaly liable for any damages/injuries/death that occurs if your assertion doesn't work for someone?

Or are you going to dodge again?

[rl6214]

68. And just how many people have assassins/terrorists killed

without reloading because of hi cap mags? And how many law abiding gun owners should be affected because of a couple of wackos and your irrational fear of them?

[Common Sense Party]

79. I own one gun. It has a 19-round magazine. What will happen to

it, under the new JPAK gun control laws?

[rl6214]

67. Actually I would be for tighter quality control in the manufature

YUP

YUP

YUP

[PavePusher]

56. Accusation of supporting criminal activity? How classy. n/t

[rl6214]

66. the Loughner/Nidal assassin/terrorist lobby won't stand for it

That's probably one of the most stupid comments I've seen here.

[rl6214]

65. "that's a start"

And that's what gun owners always fear. You give an inch and the anti gun crowd, LIKE YOU, take every gun right away.

[Common Sense Party]

78. How many murders are committed by 30-round magazines?

How many accidental deaths from 30-round magazines?

Suicides?

[Tesha]

18. Perhaps the Australians actions *MAINTAINED* their very low gun homicide rate...

...of 35 per year?

But yeah, sure, try to distract us by discussing the
rate of change rather than the rate.

Tesha

[Ken_Fish]

25. That is not how numbers work. You have 80 years of data before and 10 after the ban

the number of homicides is at 300 or so. NO Measurable CHANGE. Year to year delta is what matters.

Now I can go into detail here since I teach Statistics but it does not warrant more than what I posted.

Note the murders with guns trend, back down to 1950's level. Back when people could still own guns.

http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide.aspx


EDIT: no change 10 years before or after ban.

[Buzz Clik]

6. Yeah, but the lives of how many people each year are saved by firearms?

Ten? Twenty? I mean, at least once a month we get the story of the old lady who blows away an intruder with her shotgun. (Is that kind of case considered a wash -- one saved (assuming granny was gonna die) but one dead?)

[Old Codger]

7. But

the good guy(Granny) was the winner and one less bad guy to worry about.

[Hoopla Phil]

11. Depending on the study - between 1.5 and 3 MILLION each year.

[jpak]

15. Nope

yup

[Hoopla Phil]

45. Yep. Refusing to look at the evidence does not mean it doesn't exist.

LMAO!!!

[Tesha]

22. It's the same sort of equivalence that the Tea Baggers depend upon.

The Left can show up at a rate that is ten times that
of the Teabaggers but the media creates the false
impression that the two sides are balanced in numbers.
It's the same thing with gun deaths versus "gun saves".

Tesha

[east texas lib]

55. Ah, the pro 2A DU'er = Tea Bagger meme...

How quaint. As is the "right wing talking points" meme, the "NRA talking points" meme, the "pro 2A DU'ers are not TRUE progressives" meme, the "you want to arm all the toddlers" meme, the "what have you got against public safety" meme, the "gun owners just carry to intimidate me" meme and my personal favorite, the "why do you need a gun in the first place?" meme...and on and on ad nauseum.

[Tesha]

64. You know, you say that as if it's a joke or a falsehood.

But strangely enough, yesterday in Concord, NH, the
*ONLY PEOPLE* at the labor demonstration wearing
in-your-face blatant NRA gear were the Tea Baggers.
Why do you suppose they were, essentially, wearing
their gun-love on their sleeves/hats/etc.?

None of the pro-Union folks were making any point
about guns, pro or anti.

Tesha

[hack89]

85. Because Democrats are by nature respectful of others

and don't see the need to rub their civil right choices into the faces of those that might disagree. In Concord the pro-gun pro-union democrats saw no reason to wear their "gun love" (a very bigoted phrase by the way) because it had nothing to do with the issue at hand. All we ask is that people respect our choices as we respect theirs.

Tea Baggers don't know the meaning of the word respect so I don't understand your point. Why would you expect fellow progressives to act like ultra-conservative repukes?

[GreenStormCloud]

51. You don't have to kill the attacker for the life to be saved.

That is a common mistake that the anti-gun people make. You count only bad guy corpses as saves. But if the would be attacker runs away because he discovers that his intended victim is armed that is a save. Compare the murder rates of states before and after they pass shall-issue concealed carry laws, and compare them with their neighbors. You will find a drop in the murder rate in shall-issue states.

Further, there are web sites that track gun saves that make it to the newspapers. http://thearmedcitizen.com/ Usually those involve thugs who got shot. If we wanted to we could easily post several stories of saves per day. Your estimate of ten or twenty per year is low by several orders of magnitude.

[Hoopla Phil]

59. Good site. Maybe it should be CHECKED EVERY DAY. n/t

[Buzz Clik]

60. Are you willing to count armed robberies with no shots fired in the negative column?

People being intimidated by someone carrying a gun demanding something (other than money)?

If you want to count ALL the good things done with guns, count all the bad things, too.

[X_Digger]

74. Still outnumber the bad uses..

There are ~400k 'gun uses' in crime-- whether or not the gun is actually fired.

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/guncrime.cfm

Defensive uses outnumber crime uses per the NCVS survey, among 10-12 others.

http://www.ncjrs.gov/txtfiles/165476.txt

[russ1943]

80. Bullshit alert.

As is common with this poster, the very link the poster provided demonstrates the claim in this post is um er uh NOT quite true, erroneous.
Post#74 clearly states “Defensive uses outnumber crime uses per the NCVS survey, among 10-12 others.
In the link provided there is the statement; “On the basis of data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics' National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data, one would conclude that defensive uses are rare indeed, about 108,000 per year.”
The NCVS states there are about 108,000 defensive uses per year.

Later in the National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms,(NSPOF) linked, it notes; "The key explanation for the difference between the 108,000 NCVS estimate for the annual number of DGUs and the several million from the surveys discussed earlier is that NCVS avoids the false-positive
problem by limiting DGU questions to persons who first reported that they were crime victims."

This has been referenced numerous times before on this board.

[GreenStormCloud]

81. Bullshit alert back at you.

Many people who use guns defensively without actually firing a shot don't report the incident. If your gun stops the crime from being committed then you aren't a crime victim. So you would discount my wife's incident because the bad guy ran away when he saw her gun, no shots fired, no assault happened.

[X_Digger]

83. Here's another quote..

Applying those restrictions leaves 19 NSPOF respondents (0.8 percent of the sample), representing 1.5 million defensive users. This estimate is directly comparable to the well-known estimate of Kleck and Gertz, shown in the last column of exhibit 7. While the NSPOF estimate is smaller, it is statistically plausible that the difference is due to sampling error. Inclusion of multiple DGUs reported by half of the 19 NSPOF respondents increases the estimate to 4.7 million DGUs.

Some troubling comparisons. If the DGU numbers are in the right ballpark, millions of attempted assaults, thefts, and break-ins were foiled by armed citizens during the 12-month period. According to these results, guns are used far more often to defend against crime than to perpetrate crime. (Firearms were used by perpetrators in 1.07 million incidents of violent crime in 1994, according to NCVS data.)

...

The key explanation for the difference between the 108,000 NCVS estimate for the annual number of DGUs and the several million from the surveys discussed earlier is that NCVS avoids the false-positive problem by limiting DGU questions to persons who first reported that they were crime victims. Most NCVS respondents never have a chance to answer the DGU question, falsely or otherwise.

Cook and Ludwig collected the data that indicate 1.5M DGUs, then try to rationalize it down to 108,000.

I said NCVS when I should have said NSPOF. Sue me.

[old mark]

12. After you antis get rid of the second amendment, you can start working on the others that don't

appeal to you, too.

If you really hate guns, you are free not to own one.

Mark

[jpak]

16. Which "antis" want to do that?

:rofl:

[TheWraith]

21. That same Brady Campaign you just cited.

Ever read their "Phase II" memos from the early 90s when they enjoyed their brief swing of success? They admitted in their internal documents that their goal was a complete gun ban.

[jpak]

24. The Bradys wanted to get rid of the Holy 2A? Somehow I missed that

I don't believe it

nope

[TheWraith]

32. So you're supporting an organization without knowing anything about their goals.

Yup.

[jpak]

44. Where do get that idea?

:rofl:

[Straw Man]

75. These, for a start.

http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2007/0319governance_wittes.aspx
http://www.commondreams.org/views/052400-103.htm
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2007/04/18/second_amendment
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2002/5/15/repeal-second-amendment-when-two-thirds-of/

[Buzz Clik]

62. Pure hyperbole. Very, very few who support gun control support a total ban on guns.

[benEzra]

86. Very, very few who support abortion restrictions support a total ban on abortion.

Very, very few who support censorship of books support a total ban on books. And so on.

Lack of a total ban doesn't make unreasonable restrictions reasonable.

Why do you think I'd care if the gun control lobby would allow a small minority of hunters and skeet shooters to own a few 19th-century style guns, when the Brady Campaign wants to outlaw most of the firearms in my gun safe? Like most gun owners, I don't hunt and I and I don't shoot skeet, so the "I don' wanna ban your huntin' gunz" meme doesn't exactly resonate with me.

[TheWraith]

19. You're spamming this again, after already getting debunked and shown as lies and propaganda once?

Hey, it's your credibility.

[jpak]

23. This is the gun forum where we discuss gun issues - don't like the thread, hide it

yup

[rrneck]

27. Why hide it?

You sell more guns than anybody.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

34. actually, no. it is time to confront you and your spamming of this forum

I, for one, am getting bored with it. yawn. yup.

[RSillsbee]

40. Remember, it's only spamming if it's PRO gun NT

[Tuesday Afternoon]

46. oh yeah, thanks

mea culpa. yup.

[jpak]

48. Sorry, this is a political discussion forum where news and politics are discussed

spam is not something you disagree with

yup

[beevul]

71. Except YOU never discuss anything here.

Single statements ended with "yup" x 3 do not a discussion make.



If YOU actually bothered to discuss any of it, you might have a point.



That or your definition of the word discuss is far different than anyone elses, and nowhere near the dictionary definition.

[Euromutt]

28. Gun homicides, gunshot wounds, artificial restriction of comparisons

The whole raison d'être of the Brady Campaign is morally corrupt in that it only cares about gun violence and evidently doesn't give a rat's ass about violence inflicted by means other than guns.

In 1994, a genocide took place in Rwanda, resulting in at least 800,000 deaths, possibly over a million, nobody really knows. However, most of those deaths were inflicted with Chinese-made machetes, and very few with firearms. By the standards of Brady Campaign, therefore, the United States probably looked worse than Rwanda because the firearm homicide rate was way smaller, and never mind the hundreds of thousands of dead killed by means other than firearms. They aren't as dead, or something, because they were "only" hacked to death. In actual fact, victims of the genocide paid Rwandan government troops to shoot them, so that they wouldn't be hacked to death.

And that reflects the moral bankruptcy of the adherents of increased gun control in general: they don't give a rat's ass about the dead, regardless of how they died. They only care about the dead from gunshot wounds because they can be used as an argument against the icky guns, and fuck the people who were knifed or beaten to death; their examples don't serve the cause.

We could be working on ways to further reduce the overall homicide rate by trying to identify the people likely to kill, but outfits like the Brady Campaign and fuckwad congresscritters like Schumer, Lautenberg & McCarthy keep trying to distract us from that by focusing on guns instead of murderers. It's almost as if they don't want fewer murders, because that would undermine their anti-gun campaign.

Oh, damn, am I being too cynical? It sure would explain a few things, though, wouldn't it?

[Name removed]

30. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[lawodevolution]

31. Let's look at total homicide and violent crime rate, UK is most violent in Europe

[Name removed]

35. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[kudzu22]

37. There are lies, damned lies and statistics

The stats quoted in the OP are utterly pointless. The anti-gun lobby likes to quote totals for "firearm deaths" implying the false notion that those people are all innocent victims who would all be alive today if not for firearms. The problems with this are several:

1) Most "gun deaths" are suicides. If they didn't have a gun, they'd kill themselves another way. The motive is the important factor, not the means.

2) Many others are murders, and the same logic applies. If you're planning to do someone in, there are many ways to get it done. Yes, maybe a small fraction of the would-be victims survive, but it's far from 100%. Motive over means. To quote Archie Bunker, "would you feel any better, little girl, if they was pushed out of windows?"

3) It includes police shootings and other justifiable homicides.

4) It ignores people who didn't die because guns were legal and available. I see the numbers thrown around for 'defensive uses' in the millions. I doubt it's really that high, but if it's anywhere near 30,000, it's significant. Those are people who would be dead or seriously injured if no gun was available.

It's this last one that bothers me the most. Every action has a reaction. If you note that 10,000 people drown every year and your solution is to ban water, you aren't saving 10,000 lives, because the reaction is that everyone dies of thirst. But your drowning numbers would definitely go down.

[Taitertots]

41. Why don't you put all the nations of the world on your little list?

Oh because it is not about giving an accurate comparison between countries, it is to intentionally mislead by using cherry picked data.

[GreenStormCloud]

43. Interesting that you count suicides in the U.S. as "gun homicides".

Japan has extremely strict gun control and has a higher suicide rate than we do.

[petronius]

54. The best thing about that article is that Ernest Partridge has a very funny name

Otherwise, it's just overly-long self-congratulatory op-ed piece that falls into as many logical pitfalls as it purports to expose...

[rl6214]

63. This means that homicides amounted to almost one third of gun deaths in the United States.

Inaccurate statement. They list gun deaths then switch to total homicides. Typical Brady bunch at BS.

[X_Digger]

72. Duplicate topic.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x589998

I'll just copy my response from that thread-

For a professor of philosophy familiar with critical thinking, you contribute more than you debunk..

So what is to account for those 30,000 gun deaths in the United States? There are many hypotheses, by no means mutually exclusive: A “gun culture” based upon a long historical tradition, the depiction of gun violence in the popular mass media (movies and TV, computer video games), the large number of privately owned firearms (though less, per capita, than in Canada), and finally, the almost total absence of laws restricting gun ownership.

The unrestricted access to and ownership of guns in the United States is largely a result of the lobbying of the gun industry through its surrogate, the National Rifle Association, which wields virtual veto power over the Congress. This despite the fact that a majority of the American public, including the rank and file members of the NRA, approve of restrictions on gun ownership. In particular: 79% of Americans and 63% of gun owners support a requirement of a police permit for gun purchases., and 87% of Americans and 83% of gun owners approve of background checks before purchasing guns.

See USC 922, generally regarding federal gun laws- http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/18/I/44/922 and various state gov websites for state law.

Unsupported assertion.

Re the 'majority.. approve of restrictions'..

1) Argumentum ad populum.

2) Factually incorrect.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/145526/Gallup-Review-Public-Opinion-Context-Tucson-Shootings.aspx

The Slippery Slope - (alternatively called "the domino effect" and "the camel's nose"). We've all heard the argument: "once they (meaning , of course, the government) take away our assault weapons, what's to keep them from confiscating all handguns, and then our sporting and target rifles? Where do you draw the line?" An interesting but often overlooked feature of "slippery slope arguments" is that the slope slips in both directions. Hence, the arguments of the gun-control advocates: "once you allow citizens to own assault weapons, why not artillery, or even atomic weapons? Where do you draw the line?"

It's not a slippery slope if you can demonstrate that the intent is to move in that direction.

Such as:

"In fact, the assault weapons ban will have no significant effect either on the crime rate or on personal security. Nonetheless, it is a good idea . . . . Its only real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation." Charles Krauthammer

We're going to have to take one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily -- given the political realities -- going to be very modest. . . . e'll have to start working again to strengthen that law, and then again to strengthen the next law, and maybe again and again. Right now, though, we'd be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice. Our ultimate goal -- total control of handguns in the United States -- is going to take time. . . . The first problem is to slow down the number of handguns being produced and sold in this country. The second problem is to get handguns registered. The final problem is to make possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition-except for the military, police, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors-totally illegal.

Pete Shields, founder of Handgun Control, Inc. which is now the brady campaign

"Brady Bill is "the minimum step" that Congress should take to control handguns. "We need much stricter gun control, and eventually we should bar the ownership of handguns except in a few cases,"

Rep. William L. Clay D-St. Louis, Mo

I think you have to do it a step at a time and I think that is what the NRA is most concerned about, is that it will happen one very small step at a time, so that by the time people have "woken up" to what's happened, it's gone farther than what they feel the consensus of American citizens would be. But it does have to go one step at a time and the beginning of the banning of semi-assault military weapons, that are military weapons, not "household" weapons, is the first step."

Stockton, California Mayor Barbara Fass

"Waiting periods are only a step. Registration is only a step. The prohibition of private firearms is the goal." U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, December 1993

"I am one who believes that as a first step the U.S. should move expeditiously to disarm the civilian population, other than police and security officers, of all handguns, pistols and revolvers ...no one should have a right to anonymous ownership or use of a gun." Dean Morris

"We have to start with a ban on the manufacturing and import of handguns. From there we register the guns which are currently owned, and follow that with additional bans and acquisitions of handguns and rifles with no sporting purpose." Major Owens

Next..

The Fallacy of the Sacred Text. To the NRA and other gun-advocates, the Second Amendment simply means what it says. More precisely, they hold that the second clause regarding "the right to keep and bear arms" means what it says. They conveniently overlook the first clause which justifies the second through the "free state's" need of a "well-regulated militia." And the less said about that word "regulated" the better. Like scripture, say the absolutists, the Constitution is exempt from the ordinary weaknesses of human language such as ambiguity, vagueness and historical contexts. The founding fathers speak, say the absolutists, like the voice of God, unequivocally, clearly, and with ultimate authority.

Accordingly, the Second Amendment "means what it says - 'shall not be infringed.'" Period!

That is a straw man. The NRA (among other gun groups) is fine with regulations against felons, those adjudicated mentally ill, those dishonorably discharged, etc from owning guns. Who actually claims that any right is unlimited?

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

73. More lethal instances of guns used defensively than offensively.

Ergo, net positive effect on society.

[Tejas]

76. US murder rate 127 times higher than Antarctica

But less than half that of India.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_mur-crime-murders

source; United Nations 2002

[Remmah2]

82. An obvious cold fact. nt

nt

[Tejas]

84. I see what you did there LOL!

[krispos42]

77. And if we only didn't have any guns at all, every single one of those 30,000 would still be alive

Or not.

Once again... low gun homicide rate does not translate into low total homicide rate.





Fix the income inequality and end the War on Drugs, and the gun homicide rate will plummet like a rock.

[Euromutt]

87. For a self- described "teacher of critical thinking," Partridge's skills are a bit deficient

Because there are a number of inaccuracies in his piece, and he fails to even pause to consider some possibilities (let alone argue against them).

Thirty thousand: that’s about the same number of Americans who died in 2006 from gunshot wounds. Almost one hundred every day.

One hundred every day would be 36,500, an increase of over 20% from the actual number (which would be 82.2/day). Inflated death tolls are, in my experience, a strong indication that the speaker doesn't quite believe his own rhetoric. If you think 30,000/year is bad enough, why do you want to put a number into your audience's minds ("one hundred every day") that is more than 20% larger than the actual number?

There are many hypotheses, by no means mutually exclusive: A “gun culture” based upon a long historical tradition, the depiction of gun violence in the popular mass media (movies and TV, computer video games), the large number of privately owned firearms (though less, per capita, than in Canada), and finally, the almost total absence of laws restricting gun ownership.

If we're talking specifically about mass shootings and assassinations of public figures, there is a factor Partridge curiously overlooks: the role of the news mass media. The mass media created celebrities, and then created a shortcut to celebrity levels of renown by murdering one. Thing was, you used to have to murder a serving president (and a popular one at that) or someone of the caliber of John Lennon to really get noticed. Then, after the arrival on the scene of 24-hour rolling news channels like CNN, attention-seekers noticed that you didn't have to kill the president: if you murdered a dozen or so random people, you'd get noticed as well, and that was way easier than killing one specific celebrity or politician.

Seriously, ask someone like Park Dietz; when the news media are saturated with reports of a mass shooting, and the shooter is portrayed as some fearsome anti-hero ("clad in black military-style clothing and wielding two lethal semi-automatic handguns...") with his face being displayed on every news channel from here to New Delhi, there's usually a copycat shooting within two weeks.

This phenomenon appears to have passed Partridge by.

The unrestricted access to and ownership of guns in the United States is largely a result of the lobbying of the gun industry through its surrogate, the National Rifle Association, which wields virtual veto power over the Congress. This despite the fact that a majority of the American public, including the rank and file members of the NRA, approve of restrictions on gun ownership.

The American arms and ammunition manufacturing industry isn't exactly a powerful lobby. It consists of about 300 companies with a combined annual revenue of ~$5bn (for sales to the private sector) and about 21,000 employees. What gives the NRA its power is its ability to direct voting; there's a reason its initials have been semi-jokingly referred to by those holding elected office as "Never Re-elected Again." But how can this be, when the opinion polls Partridge cites indicate such a large percentage of respondents favoring additional restrictions on gun ownership?

Well, the limitations of opinion polls are well known; in particular, they may suffer from "response bias" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_poll#Response_bias) in which respondents may, for example, give an answer that they perceive as more socially acceptable than their actual opinion, and the way they actually end up voting. As the Wikipedia piece notes, "If the results of surveys are widely publicized this effect may be magnified - a phenomenon commonly referred to as the spiral of silence."

At the end of the day, opinion polls carry no weight; what matters is how the votes go, and the evidence points to additional gun control being a vote-loser. Apparently, there are a lot of people who may tell pollsters they favor licensing, say, but they won't vote for a candidate who supports the idea.

Following each assassination or massacre in the United States, there is a public outcry for gun control: the Kennedy and King assassinations in the sixties, the Columbine High School Shootings in April,1999, the Virginia Tech massacre in April, 2007. The Tucson shootings last month, however, were ominously different.

Actually, no. Following the Virginia Tech shooting, there was little public outcry, and what little there was was dampened when it emerged that Cho had purchased his guns illegally (since he lied on his ATF forms 4473), and only passed the NICS check because of bureaucratic inertia.

The horrible incidents in Littleton, Colorado, Blacksburg, Virginia, Tucson, Arizona, and other places too numerous to mention, routinely provoke in the public media a flow of logical fallacies, originating from or encouraged by the gun lobby, sufficient to launch a thousand books devoted thereto.

Say what? In my experience, the news media's tendency when reporting gun policy issues is to let Helmke or Henigan of the Brady Campaign yak on for a paragraph, then Sugarmann or Stewart of the VPC for another, and finally provide "balance" by quoting one sentence (two at the outside) from an NRA spokesperson. Am I living in the alternate reality here, or is Partridge?

The Slippery Slope - (alternatively called "the domino effect" and "the camel's nose"). We've all heard the argument: "once they (meaning , of course, the government) take away our assault weapons, what's to keep them from confiscating all handguns, and then our sporting and target rifles? Where do you draw the line?" An interesting but often overlooked feature of "slippery slope arguments" is that the slope slips in both directions. Hence, the arguments of the gun-control advocates: "once you allow citizens to own assault weapons, why not artillery, or even atomic weapons? Where do you draw the line?"

As other posters, such as benEzra and TPaine7, have pointed out on this forum, one of the lines has been drawn with the National Firearms Act of 1934. Private citizens cannot legally possess weapons capable of burst or automatic fire, over .50" in caliber (with the exception of smoothbore shotguns and black powder muzzle-loaders), any "destructive device," any rifle with a barrel under 16" in length, any shotgun with a barrel under 18" in length, Any Other Weapon that is a firearm capable of being concealed that is not a standard handgun, or a suppressor, without undergoing a background check, filling out a ton of paperwork, having the item registered and paying the ATF $200 for a "tax stamp." Quite a few states won't allow some or all of the aforementioned (for example, in my home state of Washington, private citizens can't own automatic weapons, SBRs or SBSs, and while you can own a suppressor, it's illegal to actually use it on a firearm). Nobody's mounting any serious challenge to the provisions of the Gun Control Act of 1968 either, which prohibit those adjudicated "mentally defective," convicted of a felony, or a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, or subject to a restraining order, from purchasing firearms, and requires interstate commerce of firearms to go through Federal Firearms Licensees. So insofar as the slope is slippery away from gun control, it is a very short slope.

In the other direction, as X_digger rightly noted earlier, the slippery slope isn't a fallacy when the opposition actually does want to keep advancing the restrictions. Time and again, gun control advocates have described any measure as "a good first step," which implies that more steps are to follow. The appropriate metaphor is actually not so much the "slippery slope," but rather, "you give an inch, they (try to) take a mile."

And on constitutional issues--and this applies to Partridge's next point, the "Sacred Text," as well--it is highly inadvisable to give an inch, ever, because your opponents will then cite the fact that you gave that inch as precedent for why you should yield another, and another, and another. This is why the ACLU, Americans United etc. make such a fuss over something as seemingly trivial as Christmas decorations on government property.

All-or-Nothing Causation. This fallacy is heard in the remark, "millions of kids play video games and watch violent TV and movies, but they don't all go on shooting rampages." In this we hear echoes from the tobacco industry: "millions of people smoke, but most of them don't get lung cancer. Ergo, smoking does not cause lung cancer."

That's an enticing analogy, but it doesn't work if you reverse the argument. The causal link between smoking and lung cancer is supported by the fact that something in the order of 90% of lung cancer patients are current or former smokers, while very few non-smokers contract lung cancer.

Partridge's observations also betrays his ignorance of the subject. Most opposition to video games is based on the notion that most gamers are minors; in actual 2/3 of gamers are over 18, and their average age is 30. Half the American population plays video games; simple statistical chance decrees that many violent criminals and mass shooters will turn out to be gamers as well, just as statistical chance decrees that many of them will be licensed drivers, monotheists, drink soda and eat wheat.

Scientific "proof" is not only probabilistic (i.e., "a matter of degree"), in addition valid scientific hypotheses must be "falsifiable in principle" - i.e., the proponent of the hypothesis must be prepared to describe "what it would be like" (contrary to fact) for the hypothesis to be false. It is unlikely that "hired gun" debunkers in either the tobacco or the firearms industries are prepared to tell us what sort of "proof" might convince them that their products are, in fact, public menaces.

Markedly lacking from this piece is what evidence would convince Partridge that they aren't. Hypocrisy may not be fallacious, but that doesn't make it right.

As I have argued above, "the culture of violence" does not have a single cause, and thus does not have a single remedy. But if asked to identify, in descending order of significance, the root causes, I would begin with this: depersonalization. We live in a society that reduces persons to "personnel" in corporate structures, to "consumers" and "utility maximizers" in our economy, and to targets in our media. To the Columbine killers, Harris and Klebold, their fellow students were no more "persons" than the video images in "Doom" or the cinema images in "The Basketball Diaries." It all comes down to this: a deranged individual is capable of shooting at human-flesh-as-object. However, except in such desperate circumstances as warfare or self-defense, or in cases of extreme stress, few individuals can shoot to kill someone recognized as a fellow personal human being.

I actually think he's onto something with the notion of depersonalization, but more in the way it motivates the killers directly. A lot of shooters, I think, are motivated by frustration caused by feeling they aren't being treated as individuals--by their schools, their employer, their banks and insurance companies, the courts--and that the only way to get even part of society to sit up and take notice of them is to kill a bunch of people. It does seem to be just about the one sure-fire way to displace Brangelina, Lindsay Lohan and Charlie Sheen from the television and supermarket check-out magazine rack. Opening the window and shouting "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more" stopped working before the movie Network was even over (which was one of the points of the movie).

I'll also agree that "the culture of violence" doesn't have a single cause (though given the tenor of Partridge's piece, it's a bit difficult to believe he actually believes that: he seems to think 90% of it is due to "the almost total absence of laws restricting gun ownership"; alternatively, the closing paragraphs are a tacit admission on his part that blaming guns is overly simplistic), but in addition I'll argue that neither does it have a single means of expression. For every individual who commits a major act of violence, there are thousands who watch in rapt fascination. It wouldn't matter if every 24-hour news channel fixated on the latest mass shooting if we didn't pay so much attention to it.

I'll conclude by pointing out that mass killings are not limited to the United States. We've seen them in the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, and France, and more recently in east Asia and even though they haven't occurred with anywhere near the frequency that they do in the United States, evidently all the necessary ingredients are present in societies other than the United States, despite the absence of the NRA. All it evidently takes is for the would-be killer to acquire a suitable weapon, which does not necessarily mean a firearm. Tightening gun laws won't stop mass killings; maybe we should focus on finding what will.