5 ms·

The safest "gun" is not owning a gun. There's an abundance of studies showing that gun ownership tracks with an increase in home injury/death. The idea that hav

The safest "gun" is not owning a gun. There's an abundance of studies showing that gun ownership tracks with an increase in home injury/death. The idea that having a gun protects you from home intrusion is a red herring because home intrusions almost never happen and the chance of an accident is possible every day there is a gun around. Private firearm ownership should be illegal.

pmalynin 11y ago
The safest way to ski is not to ski. The safest way to sky-dive is not to sky-dive. The safest way to have sex is not to have sex (I like the last one the most as it is touted by various groups). That logic is absolutely broken.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  To be fair, ski enthusiasts don't spend a lot of words on how skiing can enhance your personal safety.
- otterley 11y ago
  What's broken about the logic? All of those things are logically consistent. If you mean that foregoing experiences for safety's sake isn't your cup of tea, that's one thing; but claiming it's logically broken is simply false.
  - pmalynin 11y ago
    It's not logically consistent. You're claiming that p implies not p
    - rwjwjuwjudf 11y ago
      Oh come on, the claim is that safe (p) <-> !p, which is a bit different. Attack the actual claim.
      - woodman 11y ago
        @pmalynin, you forgot the safety variable. p | q | p ∧ q → ¬q --+---+----------- T | T | F You can't be safe and own a gun. T | F | T You can be safe and not own a gun. F | T | T You can be unsafe and own a gun. F | F | T You can be unsafe and not own a gun. @rwjwjuwjudf, logical implication is correct - logical equivalence leads to this trainwreck: p | q | p ∧ q ↔ ¬q --+---+----------- T | T | F You can't be safe and own a gun. T | F | F You can't be safe and not own a gun. F | T | T You can be unsafe and own a gun. F | F | F You can't be unsafe and not own a gun.
        rwjwjuwjudf 11y ago
        Nice analysis! I was thinking safety is a function equivalent to negation. But I agree if safety and gun ownership are separate variables. p | safe (p) | ¬p | safe (p) ↔ ¬p --+----------+----+-------------- T | F | F | Owning a gun is unsafely owning a gun. F | T | T | Not owning a gun is safely owning a gun. I think this is the original reason why it's confusing, because the sentence "not owning a gun is safely owning a gun" is highly unintuitive. There is a contradiction because safely owning it conflicts with not owning it. edit: I think we can legitimately fix the confusing sentence to read "not owning a gun is safely not owning a gun".
        woodman 11y ago
        Safety as a negation would be an xor operation, which leads to the wacky logic. Both of you are right though, I was probably far too generous in treating @minikites's use of the word "is" as a logical implication instead of the logical equivalence that you suggested. The resulting logic leads to conclusions that both support and refute the likely intent of the original statement. So either the logic is broken or the intent is :) If only @minikites had used the word "maybe" instead of "is"... the weaker position would have been supported with a logically consistent argument.
        rwjwjuwjudf 11y ago
- fugue12 11y ago
  No it's not, it is perfectly self-evident that you eliminate all risks involved in doing a thing by not doing it. I'll grant you that this is an boring and unhelpful way of minimising risk, but not an invalid one.
  - pmalynin 11y ago
    The constraint is to do the activity. One cannot do the activity by not doing it.
strathmeyer 11y ago
Home intrusions happen all the time around here not sure what part of the world you are fun. The safest car is not owning a car. The safest knife is not owning a knife. There's no such thing as gun control, you don't get to control guns. Just narcissistic ramblings.
- minikites 11y ago
  Really? Where do you live that you are at high risk of home intrusion? Post the statistics for your ZIP code.
  - thescribe 11y ago
    For reference the DOJ says there were 259,000 home invasions in 2010.
  - heartbreak 11y ago
    In my ZIP we're averaging just over 1 home invasion per day for 2016. Three people have been shot and killed. In the next ZIP over a wealthy nationally-recognized clothing CEO fatally shot someone breaking into his home last month.
  - strathmeyer 11y ago
    Well, America.
- ctdonath 11y ago
  Home intrusions when someone is home are far lower here than in "strong gun control" jurisdictions. News reports of "shot dead by homeowner" are considered stories with happy endings. Hard to have a discussion when data is spun & cherry picked, and cultural differences abound.
c3534l 11y ago
> There's an abundance of studies showing that gun ownership tracks with an increase in home injury/death. This isn't true. A classic example of confirmation bias. Obviously the pro-gun people say the exact opposite: that every gun study shows the opposite. http://www.factcheck.org/2012/12/gun-rhetoric-vs-gun-facts/ http://www.factcheck.org/2012/12/gun-rhetoric-vs-gun-facts/
- franciscop 11y ago
  Gun ownership: 88.8% Is that right? If so, USA is in a much worse state than I thought so.
  - wl 11y ago
    Nope. 88.8 guns per 100 people, which is not the same as 88.8%. Most people who own guns in the US own several. The actual percentage of people who own guns is lower.
  - hga 11y ago
    That's an 2007 number. "Since Obama was elected" "100 million guns have been sold" (although the sales increases really started after 9/11), and more significantly, US production has doubled, and importation is similarly higher. I could run the numbers if anyone wanted, but it should be around 1 gun per US resident nowadays, although as others have noted, this is very unevenly distributed. ADDED: on the other hand, the claim all the new ones are being bought by existing gun owners is fatuous, a back of the envelope calculation I made would have us existing gun owners own an average of $100K worth each, and I doubt even my father, who was born in the early '30s, every had quite that much. Assume, given the unwillingness of many gun owners to answer the questions of nosy, anonymous people making telephone and other surveys, that at least half the nation's households have a gun. With then nationwide sweep of shall or better issue concealed carry laws, now all but 7 states, making gun ownership significantly more useful, which is particularly important to an aging population, I'd be surprised if the fraction wasn't higher. The number of permits issued has been astounding, 300,000 in Wisconsin since the law passed in 2011, 1 million in Texas, in these states generally 5-10% of the residents have one, and ~10 states don't require a permit or very soon won't (that number is changing very rapidly right now).
SerLava 11y ago
making them illegal wouldn't make them go away. They would just make criminals out of people who are trying not to die. They will always be readily available until the end of humanity. Illiterate Third world tribesmen create high tech automatic firearms in mud houses. Prisoners create low tech firearms in between anal cavity searches. Think about that. Gun control is possible with the extinction of the human race.
- zyxley 11y ago
  > They will always be readily available until the end of humanity. The funny thing is, many non-US countries don't have "readily available" guns everywhere you go.
  - Animats 11y ago
    Japan, for one. At the end of WWII, the US Army of Occupation took away all the guns. The Government of Japan never removed restrictions on gun ownership. In 2013, 12 people in Japan were killed by guns.
    - hga 11y ago
      The laws keeping "civilians" from owning effective personal weapons go back to a minimum of 1588: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_hunt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_hunt I don't think there's any removing of Japanese crime and crime control from the following 2.5 century Tokugawa military dictatorship, which had profound effects in creating modern Japanese society.
    - SerLava 11y ago
      Japan's not the best example to hold up as a success for gun control. The last 70 years have been nice. During the prior 400 years, the various Japanese governments used gun and sword confiscation to enable crimes ranging from brutal to genocidal.
  - SerLava 11y ago
    They don't have the demand. As I said, taking away guns from people who want guns will just cause them to build their own guns.
woodman 11y ago
> ...the chance of an accident... Private firearm ownership should be illegal. For their own good, right? The prisons are already full of people who violated laws enacted under that guise. Anti-2A people don't seem to be aware of the fact that pro-2A people aren't very excited at the prospect of others deciding what is in their best interest. If you are afraid of getting shot by a privately owned gun then base your argument on that, because a temperance movement mkII isn't going to fly.
- minikites 11y ago
  Temperance movement? It's easy to brew your own beer and not that easy to machine the parts for your own gun.
  - woodman 11y ago
    Are you confusing the concepts of practicality and legality? Making your own gun is easy btw.
  - LyndsySimon 11y ago
    That's not even close to true. You can buy all the parts to make a working 12ga shotgun in two aisles of Home Depot, for about $30. Making beer or spirits at least generally requires you to leave the store.

pmalynin 11y ago

The safest way to ski is not to ski. The safest way to sky-dive is not to sky-dive. The safest way to have sex is not to have sex (I like the last one the most as it is touted by various groups). That logic is absolutely broken.

maxerickson 11y ago
To be fair, ski enthusiasts don't spend a lot of words on how skiing can enhance your personal safety.
otterley 11y ago
What's broken about the logic? All of those things are logically consistent. If you mean that foregoing experiences for safety's sake isn't your cup of tea, that's one thing; but claiming it's logically broken is simply false.
- pmalynin 11y ago
  It's not logically consistent. You're claiming that p implies not p
  - rwjwjuwjudf 11y ago
    Oh come on, the claim is that safe (p) <-> !p, which is a bit different. Attack the actual claim.
    - woodman 11y ago
      @pmalynin, you forgot the safety variable. p | q | p ∧ q → ¬q --+---+----------- T | T | F You can't be safe and own a gun. T | F | T You can be safe and not own a gun. F | T | T You can be unsafe and own a gun. F | F | T You can be unsafe and not own a gun. @rwjwjuwjudf, logical implication is correct - logical equivalence leads to this trainwreck: p | q | p ∧ q ↔ ¬q --+---+----------- T | T | F You can't be safe and own a gun. T | F | F You can't be safe and not own a gun. F | T | T You can be unsafe and own a gun. F | F | F You can't be unsafe and not own a gun.
      - rwjwjuwjudf 11y ago
        Nice analysis! I was thinking safety is a function equivalent to negation. But I agree if safety and gun ownership are separate variables. p | safe (p) | ¬p | safe (p) ↔ ¬p --+----------+----+-------------- T | F | F | Owning a gun is unsafely owning a gun. F | T | T | Not owning a gun is safely owning a gun. I think this is the original reason why it's confusing, because the sentence "not owning a gun is safely owning a gun" is highly unintuitive. There is a contradiction because safely owning it conflicts with not owning it. edit: I think we can legitimately fix the confusing sentence to read "not owning a gun is safely not owning a gun".
        woodman 11y ago
        Safety as a negation would be an xor operation, which leads to the wacky logic. Both of you are right though, I was probably far too generous in treating @minikites's use of the word "is" as a logical implication instead of the logical equivalence that you suggested. The resulting logic leads to conclusions that both support and refute the likely intent of the original statement. So either the logic is broken or the intent is :) If only @minikites had used the word "maybe" instead of "is"... the weaker position would have been supported with a logically consistent argument.
        rwjwjuwjudf 11y ago
fugue12 11y ago
No it's not, it is perfectly self-evident that you eliminate all risks involved in doing a thing by not doing it. I'll grant you that this is an boring and unhelpful way of minimising risk, but not an invalid one.
- pmalynin 11y ago
  The constraint is to do the activity. One cannot do the activity by not doing it.

strathmeyer 11y ago

Home intrusions happen all the time around here not sure what part of the world you are fun. The safest car is not owning a car. The safest knife is not owning a knife. There's no such thing as gun control, you don't get to control guns. Just narcissistic ramblings.

minikites 11y ago
Really? Where do you live that you are at high risk of home intrusion? Post the statistics for your ZIP code.
- thescribe 11y ago
  For reference the DOJ says there were 259,000 home invasions in 2010.
- heartbreak 11y ago
  In my ZIP we're averaging just over 1 home invasion per day for 2016. Three people have been shot and killed. In the next ZIP over a wealthy nationally-recognized clothing CEO fatally shot someone breaking into his home last month.
- strathmeyer 11y ago
  Well, America.
ctdonath 11y ago
Home intrusions when someone is home are far lower here than in "strong gun control" jurisdictions. News reports of "shot dead by homeowner" are considered stories with happy endings. Hard to have a discussion when data is spun & cherry picked, and cultural differences abound.

c3534l 11y ago

> There's an abundance of studies showing that gun ownership tracks with an increase in home injury/death. This isn't true. A classic example of confirmation bias. Obviously the pro-gun people say the exact opposite: that every gun study shows the opposite. http://www.factcheck.org/2012/12/gun-rhetoric-vs-gun-facts/ http://www.factcheck.org/2012/12/gun-rhetoric-vs-gun-facts/

franciscop 11y ago
Gun ownership: 88.8% Is that right? If so, USA is in a much worse state than I thought so.
- wl 11y ago
  Nope. 88.8 guns per 100 people, which is not the same as 88.8%. Most people who own guns in the US own several. The actual percentage of people who own guns is lower.
- hga 11y ago
  That's an 2007 number. "Since Obama was elected" "100 million guns have been sold" (although the sales increases really started after 9/11), and more significantly, US production has doubled, and importation is similarly higher. I could run the numbers if anyone wanted, but it should be around 1 gun per US resident nowadays, although as others have noted, this is very unevenly distributed. ADDED: on the other hand, the claim all the new ones are being bought by existing gun owners is fatuous, a back of the envelope calculation I made would have us existing gun owners own an average of $100K worth each, and I doubt even my father, who was born in the early '30s, every had quite that much. Assume, given the unwillingness of many gun owners to answer the questions of nosy, anonymous people making telephone and other surveys, that at least half the nation's households have a gun. With then nationwide sweep of shall or better issue concealed carry laws, now all but 7 states, making gun ownership significantly more useful, which is particularly important to an aging population, I'd be surprised if the fraction wasn't higher. The number of permits issued has been astounding, 300,000 in Wisconsin since the law passed in 2011, 1 million in Texas, in these states generally 5-10% of the residents have one, and ~10 states don't require a permit or very soon won't (that number is changing very rapidly right now).

SerLava 11y ago

making them illegal wouldn't make them go away. They would just make criminals out of people who are trying not to die. They will always be readily available until the end of humanity. Illiterate Third world tribesmen create high tech automatic firearms in mud houses. Prisoners create low tech firearms in between anal cavity searches. Think about that. Gun control is possible with the extinction of the human race.

zyxley 11y ago
> They will always be readily available until the end of humanity. The funny thing is, many non-US countries don't have "readily available" guns everywhere you go.
- Animats 11y ago
  Japan, for one. At the end of WWII, the US Army of Occupation took away all the guns. The Government of Japan never removed restrictions on gun ownership. In 2013, 12 people in Japan were killed by guns.
  - hga 11y ago
    The laws keeping "civilians" from owning effective personal weapons go back to a minimum of 1588: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_hunt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_hunt I don't think there's any removing of Japanese crime and crime control from the following 2.5 century Tokugawa military dictatorship, which had profound effects in creating modern Japanese society.
  - SerLava 11y ago
    Japan's not the best example to hold up as a success for gun control. The last 70 years have been nice. During the prior 400 years, the various Japanese governments used gun and sword confiscation to enable crimes ranging from brutal to genocidal.
- SerLava 11y ago
  They don't have the demand. As I said, taking away guns from people who want guns will just cause them to build their own guns.

woodman 11y ago

> ...the chance of an accident... Private firearm ownership should be illegal. For their own good, right? The prisons are already full of people who violated laws enacted under that guise. Anti-2A people don't seem to be aware of the fact that pro-2A people aren't very excited at the prospect of others deciding what is in their best interest. If you are afraid of getting shot by a privately owned gun then base your argument on that, because a temperance movement mkII isn't going to fly.

minikites 11y ago
Temperance movement? It's easy to brew your own beer and not that easy to machine the parts for your own gun.
- woodman 11y ago
  Are you confusing the concepts of practicality and legality? Making your own gun is easy btw.
- LyndsySimon 11y ago
  That's not even close to true. You can buy all the parts to make a working 12ga shotgun in two aisles of Home Depot, for about $30. Making beer or spirits at least generally requires you to leave the store.