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> decreased fatal gun accidents from ~800 to ~600 per year You think that is even in the ballpark of acceptable? Again. You need to take a long hard look at y

> decreased fatal gun accidents from ~800 to ~600 per year You think that is even in the ballpark of acceptable? Again. You need to take a long hard look at yourselves. There were 372 mass shootings in the US in 2015, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870 There were 64 school shootings in 2015 Some 13,286 people were killed in the US by firearms in 2015 and 26,819 people were injured (excluding suicides) A seriously long hard look.

hga 11y ago
To quote from memory another about our ever hardening position on decades of bad faith attacks on firearms ownership: "How many children are we willing to let die?" "Every single one of them." Let me assure you we're very bit as callous as those who think that "a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her own pantyhose is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound." You're just not going to disarm us, heck, we're winning at the state level more and more, as mentioned in another comment Idaho and WV are going Constitutional Carry, and they're not the only states where that's in play this legislative year. Why? Well, we think these bad outcomes are more than outweighed by the good ones, like the ~2.5 million uses of guns in self-defense per year. Even in terms of raw numbers of dead and injured our approach probably wins, and we think the value of having this defense for the lives of our families and ourselves is of inestimable value. At the extreme, we look at longer time frames, including the 20th Century, where substantially more than 100 million previously disarmed people were murdered by their own governments, or conquerors like in the bloodlands between Germany and the USSR. As for your specifics: There were 372 mass shootings in the US in 2015, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870 That "study", if you can call it that, is grossly fraudulent, you know you're in trouble when anti-gun Mother Jones calls you out: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/12/no-there-were-not-355-mass-shootings-this-year http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/12/no-there-were-no... Ditto the "school shootings", that redefines the term to include gang sorts of crime. As for how many killed and injured, we're an historically violent people, and an obsession on one particular instrument we use to express that violence is misplaced.
- easytiger 11y ago
  Jesus.
  - hga 11y ago
    "God, Guns and Guts"
    - easytiger 11y ago
      > that "study", if you can call it that, is grossly fraudulent If someone shot at multiple people, then its a mass shooting. My stats are verbatim from a Jan article by the BBC and I think they are fine. Is there any hoop you won't jump through to justify tens of thousands of deaths?
      - hga 11y ago
        If someone shot at multiple people, then its a mass shooting. Not as it's officially defined by the FBI. It requires, in a single incident, 4 people being murdered. You can of course change the numbers by redefining the words of art as the "study" did, but so what? Did you even read the Mother Jones article? I can't recall exactly what it said, but I myself picked apart some of the "study's" cited incidents, like the infamous one where couple of reporters were killed, one was wounded, and the killer later took his own life. Which obviously doesn't fit the FBI definition. Others were reported to simply not exist, or at least no one could find any verification. Is there any hoop you won't jump through to justify tens of thousands of deaths? "We don't care." Are you from the U.K.? (A guess based on your comment history, word choices, Commonwealth spelling, etc.)
        easytiger 11y ago
        I am from the UK. Who cares about an FBI definition. If someone attempts to kill multiple people and fails, it is still a mass shooting. Perhaps the terminology needs a definite glossary and we can give different names to these things. Either way you are jumping through hopps to defend a personal freedom that, over time, has a negative impact on more people. UNless of course you think some population reduction by way to gun is a positive thing for a population

hga 11y ago

To quote from memory another about our ever hardening position on decades of bad faith attacks on firearms ownership: "How many children are we willing to let die?" "Every single one of them." Let me assure you we're very bit as callous as those who think that "a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her own pantyhose is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound." You're just not going to disarm us, heck, we're winning at the state level more and more, as mentioned in another comment Idaho and WV are going Constitutional Carry, and they're not the only states where that's in play this legislative year. Why? Well, we think these bad outcomes are more than outweighed by the good ones, like the ~2.5 million uses of guns in self-defense per year. Even in terms of raw numbers of dead and injured our approach probably wins, and we think the value of having this defense for the lives of our families and ourselves is of inestimable value. At the extreme, we look at longer time frames, including the 20th Century, where substantially more than 100 million previously disarmed people were murdered by their own governments, or conquerors like in the bloodlands between Germany and the USSR. As for your specifics: There were 372 mass shootings in the US in 2015, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870 That "study", if you can call it that, is grossly fraudulent, you know you're in trouble when anti-gun Mother Jones calls you out: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/12/no-there-were-not-355-mass-shootings-this-year http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/12/no-there-were-no... Ditto the "school shootings", that redefines the term to include gang sorts of crime. As for how many killed and injured, we're an historically violent people, and an obsession on one particular instrument we use to express that violence is misplaced.

easytiger 11y ago
Jesus.
- hga 11y ago
  "God, Guns and Guts"
  - easytiger 11y ago
    > that "study", if you can call it that, is grossly fraudulent If someone shot at multiple people, then its a mass shooting. My stats are verbatim from a Jan article by the BBC and I think they are fine. Is there any hoop you won't jump through to justify tens of thousands of deaths?
    - hga 11y ago
      If someone shot at multiple people, then its a mass shooting. Not as it's officially defined by the FBI. It requires, in a single incident, 4 people being murdered. You can of course change the numbers by redefining the words of art as the "study" did, but so what? Did you even read the Mother Jones article? I can't recall exactly what it said, but I myself picked apart some of the "study's" cited incidents, like the infamous one where couple of reporters were killed, one was wounded, and the killer later took his own life. Which obviously doesn't fit the FBI definition. Others were reported to simply not exist, or at least no one could find any verification. Is there any hoop you won't jump through to justify tens of thousands of deaths? "We don't care." Are you from the U.K.? (A guess based on your comment history, word choices, Commonwealth spelling, etc.)
      - easytiger 11y ago
        I am from the UK. Who cares about an FBI definition. If someone attempts to kill multiple people and fails, it is still a mass shooting. Perhaps the terminology needs a definite glossary and we can give different names to these things. Either way you are jumping through hopps to defend a personal freedom that, over time, has a negative impact on more people. UNless of course you think some population reduction by way to gun is a positive thing for a population