The Glade 4.0

As an anti-gun control advocate, Elm, you really don't want to get into comparing murder/suicide rates across countries (or, frankly, even across states).

Actually I do. It emphasis cultural effect on these things which dramatically shatters the gun control advocates who believe there is a shamanistic power of the firearm as an object over its owner.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

So, clearly, if we're serious about putting a stop to mass gun violence, the proven method is to stop being an apple and become an orange. So we should mandate gun training, say, in the Senior year of High School, and then mandate a period of gun carry afterwards.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

It may surprise you Kaffis, but I would actually be all for mandatory military enlistment for all citizens for say 2 years.

It also emphasizes the effect of stronger gun control laws. And the cultural differences with respect to violence are less than you seem to be suggesting.

But that's not the topic at hand.



Except that I'm 100% right because while not being able to get a gun during readiness moment A might dissuade them at that particular moment, readiness moment B could occur an hour, a day, a couple days, or a week later and then, having learned they can't buy a gun will obtain one another way or else they will use another method. Then there will be readiness moment C, and moment D. Notice that you're talking about mental health screenings before purchasing a gun when stealing a gun, or using someone else's that can be accessed, will work just as well, and hence the correlation with the accessibility of a firearm.

Second, there is the questionable idea that mental health screenings can accurately identify the suicidal when they are not at or close to the moment of readiness. The concept is utterly worthless for someone who purchased a gun during a period of being otherwise mentally healthy, and then later experienced some life event that caused them to become suicidal, or for that matter, abusive or willing to go on a rampage. Development of addictions in particular; the suicidal "readiness moment" can appear and disappear with alcohol or drug intake and that may greatly affect the ability of any screening to detect it, even assuming the happy circumstance that the person in question has no other reasonable means of access to a firearm and goes to purchase one legally only when bent on suicide or mayhem.

The fact is that you're focusing on this idea of stopping obtainment of firearms by irresponsible persons at the point of purchase, and the assumption that the point of purchase, or that obtainment of the firearm at all is through purchase, simply doesn't hold water.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

This would be devastating to military effectiveness, both in an absolute sense and in a effectiveness per dollar spent measure. Enormous resources would be spent on basic training for a huge pool of unnecessary reserves. The positive effects on the population as a whole for having to engage in some military service are there, but the purpose of the military is not social engineering.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Except that it does not emphasize the effect of gun control laws at all. It is not gun control laws that reduce the violence in the nations that have them. Germany, for example, would not suddenly develop the same crime and social issues as the United States has if they adopted our general gun control laws, or lack thereof.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The effect of stronger gun control laws such as UK and Australia both for whom civilian firearm weapon ownership was standard (unlike Japan culturally) where after the gun bans violent crime rates rose dramatically?

Or should we go with Russia and Mexico both very highly restrictive of firearms yet both with very high crime and murder rates?

Exactly what is it that you believe the statistics show RD because they do not seem to be showing what you believe they do? (I am also not left handed).

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

So your argument is that closing the easiest path to obtaining a firearm will have zero impact on the number of deranged/homicidal people who obtain firearms because it's just as easy to steal a gun or buy one on the black market as it is to walk into Walmart and plunk down your Visa?

Yes which is why there are very few drug users in the nation because you can't just go to a store and buy drugs.

Law school has done exactly what it was designed to do to you RD and that is a shame.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

I said nothing about "zero impact". Zero impact means even less than statistically insignificant impact, or even impact that is not worth the burden.

The simple fact is that showing that it has "some impact" or "a percentage" is worthless. People have a right to own a firearm without undue government interference, and in order to show that mental health screenings are not "undue", you need to show they have a very significant impact. Merely statistically significant would even be enough.

As for closing the "Easiest" path, given the cost of a gun and the fact that mental health screenings do not "close" it at all but merely make it harder to an unspecified degree, you can't make either of those claims as necessarily true. In point of fact, mental health screenings wouldn't "close" the path at all without establishing some unreasonably high standard of stability that a person must meet to pass it.

For that matter, how are these screenings to be conducted? Who bears the cost? What protections are there to be to ensure that people are not screened out simply because of "suspected" mental health problems? How about people with past problems that exhibit no current signs of problems, and most important of all, what makes you think that people who develop mental problems and buy guns necessarily buy the guns at a time when the problems are readily detectable?

The simple fact is that you're pushing this idea on the assumption that it will have some non-zero effect on mass shootings, suicides, and spousal killings. Aside form the questionable practice of singling out certain shootings, or even murders by gun in general, as somehow in need of special societal attention, the simple fact is that the burden is not on those against gun control to prove that the effect is zero, it's on those advocating control to prove that these controls are so effective that they are worth the burden on something we, as a society, regard as a fundamental right. Furthermore, the bar for where it's worth it is not where gun control advocates think it's worth it, but where society in general thinks its worth it. That means the aggregate of everyone, and while that doesn't mean you have to prove it to the most die-hard gun advocate out there, it does mean that their opinion counts in the aggregate as much as yours does.

Yes, people can walk into Wal-Mart (not sure why you keep talking about Wal-Mart) and buy a gun easily. That's frankly a lot better than having to go to a psychologist, get evaluated, and hope he decides you can buy a gun under standards that are subject to A) the inexactitude of mental science B) the political whims of the locality and the Congress and whatever regulatory body and C) that psychologist's personal viewpoints.

A mental health screening is a significant burden and it relies on a lot of happy assumptions to be of reasonable value. You keep trying to construct assumptions to make it work in a best-case scenario. In a worst-case or even middle-case scenario it's practically worthless. Doctor-shopping alone could render it irrelevant.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That's not what he advocated.

Also, you had a major sarcasm fail in this thread.




The core point is that these events are not caused by guns. Or videogames. Or President Obama. Or President Bush. They're caused by nutjob psychos. Period.

If you want to talk about enabling factors, fine; but leave the word "cause" or even the notion of causality out of it.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Deal Elmo, first of all firearm ownership was never standard in Australia. Neither did the control result in a rise in violent crime rate. In fact what was growing continue to grow and things like robbery declined.

http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/violent%20crime.html

Another place where I found interesting was actually snopes.

http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/ausguns.asp

I also point you to our internal statistic, that shows since 1997, the year where firearm bans were put in place, murder by firearm have been steadily declinning, not a lot mind you, but by 3% per year. (Page 19 if you can't be bothered to read the whole thing)

http://www.aic.gov.au/documents/0/B/6/% ... acts11.pdf

Murder by firearm is somehow less preferable to murder by...?

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Oh and
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/curr ... paper.html

I said violent crime not "murder with guns".

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Not saying any method of murder is more prefered, however there is a marked reduce in murder rate and a marked reduction in murder rate by a firearm. Is there a correlation? maybe, or maybe not... However it goes against your comment that there is an increase in violent crimes. so with your clarification, i'll continue in my next point.



From the link you posted.



And while it states , the paper itself admits

The reason why I originally posted the murder rates, and as supported by your link .

I would also like to point your attention to your link where the graphs show that the increase in assult rates was the same prior to and after the banning of the guns, without a marked increase, nor decrease. Therefore your assertion that the gun ban constituted an increase in assult rate can not be definitively made. (gun ban were actioned in late 1996, early 1997)

And seriously, it's less practical to sexually assult (rape) someone while holding onto a gun... while it's much more practical to use a gun in a robbery or a murder.

It is hard to assess the success of Australia's gun control because 1) we already had some form of gun control prior to the banning of guns and 2) we never had a culture of gun ownership, except in rurual areas. I was merely correcting your assertion that 1) civilian firearm ownership was standard, and 2) gun bans resulted in dramatically risen violent crime rates which are abnormal for a normal growing society.

Elmo, I'm not against gun ownership in the US because it is much too easy to smuggle guns there, where it is harder with all the lazer sharks swimming around Aust. Hell I'm not even against gun ownership here, I just think it needs to be regulated and shouldn't be taken for granted as a right... (and yes I know you disagree =P)

Statistics are always such fun, aren't they Lydiaa?

So, assault, sexual assault, robbery and kidnapping are all up in AUS since 1996, but homicide is down.

Since 1996, homicide is down by 27% in AUS. It's down 36% in the US, while ALL violent crime in the US is down 37% while apparently, it's increased in AUS.

I used the Unified Crime Reporting stats from the FBI for the US numbers (http://www.ucrdatatool.gov/Search/Crime ... OneVar.cfm) and page two of the Australian crime:
Facts & Figures 2011 for AUS numbers.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Sadly Vindicarre... I'm a geek, and to me statistics are fun haha ...

It is a sad fact violent crimes (apart from murder and robbery) are actually going up in Australia. I can make many complaints and give you many observations... but walls of texts are boring and I whinge enough as it is hehe.

p.s. robbery went down in numbers, which is the only one actually showing any sort of trending.
pps. Murder rate decline was actually consistent prior to and after gun ban and really can't be used to asertain trending.

However that being said the trending prior to 1997 and those after 1997 are mostly consistent and therefore is not a good indicator for the effects of gun control.

ppps. can't access your link, might be behind a firewall of some sort.. just times out and then dies...

edit. looking at robberies which really is the only one being effected by gun control overall. between 1998 and 2001, there is a steadily increase in unarmed robery, consistent with the trending prior to gun control, however there is a decrease in armed robery. Now without more statistics, we don't know if there was a decrease in guns used in armed robery...

Try that: http://www.ucrdatatool.gov/ , and click on "data building tool".

You're right, robbery is down in AUS, my mistake.

While you might think:

I don't think it's "less practical" to hold a gun to someone and demand that they comply. On the other hand I would think it's much "less practical" to rape a woman while she's holding a gun.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Generally, reported sexual assaults have gone up all over the place because fewer assaults are going unreported (and many nonexistent assaults are being reported.)

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I've never stated that these events were caused by guns.

General usage of the word you.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Of note

Citation:
http://boston.com/community/blogs/crime ... tings.html

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Huh. 2003 was the year of the multiple-offender mass shooting, apparently...

Also, the 1994-2004 period of the Assault Weapons Ban doesn't seem to have done much, here. There's no precipitous drop in victims/incident after it went into effect, nor a noticeable spike after it sunsetted.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades