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> It's disingenuous to compare shootings purely by a per-capita basis. It should be per-capita among gun owners. First off, I don't live in the US and I don't

by girvo 11y ago

> It's disingenuous to compare shootings purely by a per-capita basis. It should be per-capita among gun owners. First off, I don't live in the US and I don't have a horse in this race. You may have a point. However, wouldn't the fact that having a large number of gun owners directly correlating to mass-shooting fatalities still come down to the same conclusion: that guns should be regulated further? Or do you think that if the analysis was done it'd show something different to what the analysis in the original article shows?

bmelton 11y ago
> First off, I don't live in the US and I don't have a horse in this race. Not living in the US presumably subjects you to position bias. Those who live in countries where gun rights are strong tend to favor gun rights. Those who live in countries where gun control is strong tend to favor gun control. This is true of most things, as the moral compasses of most are drawn from what is currently normative to their existing environment. This is true of most places in which socio-political biases are codified into law, whether regarding religion, gay rights, whatever; Change in these areas tends to come slowly if at all. > guns should be regulated further Perhaps they should, perhaps they shouldn't. I have my bias, as I'm sure does everyone engaged in the discussion, but, at the end of the day, the document of the highest possible authority suggests that the citizenry should have access to guns, and the only way to overturn that is by ratifying that document. Thankfully, the document itself offers prescriptive measures for such ratification, but at the end of the day, without a strong enough amount of support throughout the nation and states for such a measure to pass. At present, such support does not exist, so our politicians play different games on what does or does not constitute "infringement". In the past, the argument was that it wasn't infringing if the person who wanted to exercise gun rights wasn't a member of a militia. We can prove historically and grammatically that this isn't true, but it took the Supreme Court's agreement for the legislature to accept it. Then, the argument was that sure, it's an individual right and not limited to those in the militia, but hey, the second amendment says you can keep and bear arms, but it doesn't say where, so instead, the government insists that the right is only applicable to within the home. Have as many guns as you like, and carry them anywhere you want, as long as it's inside your home. It took Chicago v. McDonald getting that one overturned in 2012 by the Supreme Court. So, legally speaking, we know that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right, disconnected from membership in a militia, and it extends outside the home. To those who favor gun rights, the matter might settled, but to those who favor gun control, it's a challenge to come up with a new rule that doesn't directly contradict those recently affirmed rules by the Supreme Court. In D.C., the argument is currently that the right to keep and bear arms is only available to those with a heightened need... but what other right in our Constitution merits such a high bar to exercise? Would it be okay to restrict voting only to those harmed by the current administration? Would it be okay to limit speech only to those who can show that they have been victimized? Anyway, I'm obviously ranting, and there's certainly more of my bias in this post than I intended, so I should shut up. The point, that I'm sure I made poorly, is that the law here says that we can have firearms, and that not even the elected legislature has the power to overturn that without ratifying the Constitution... unless they can come up with something legally clever, or wait until there exists a more favorable court to their cause.
- girvo 11y ago
  > Not living in the US presumably subjects you to position bias. Sure. And I have my own opinion on the matter, but I kept it out of my comment for a reason: my opinion isn't particularly important on this matter. I was merely discussing the article and kromem's call for a different analysis.
  - bmelton 11y ago
    Understood, and apologies for not having kept my own biases in check, but I felt it worth pointing out that ignoring whether or not imposing additional regulations is good or bad, there is much more complication to the matter than just passing a law, especially as the passage of a law that countermands the Constitution is an exercise in futility.
- umanwizard 11y ago
  What's your point? You just wrote a 9 paragraph comment to say "US law supports gun ownership". We know. That's the whole issue. The question is whether U.S. law (including the constitution) should support gun ownership, which is something completely different.
  - bmelton 11y ago
    The point was that until enough of the US supports gun control for the Constitution to be amended, there's not really any changing whether or not the US law supports gun ownership, and that majority support does not currently exist. Congress could not simply pass a law to ban speech because it is protected by the Constitution. To ban free speech, you would have to modify the Constitution. To modify the Constitution, you would have to have much more support for it than currently exists.
    - umanwizard 11y ago
      Yeah, I know all this. What's your point? I'm sure Petzold and everyone in this thread knows that gun control laws are hard to change -- what you're talking about has nothing to do with the actual question at hand, which is whether they should be changed.
kromem 11y ago
If your only concern is reducing the number of mass shootings, yes, that is exactly (and the only) correct answer from the data. The only reason why the US has more of these shootings is because we have more guns, and reducing the number of guns will reduce the number of shootings. However, the fact that these are extremely rare occurrences needs to be noted. Gun control has a lot more factors that are probably much more important than the rare issue of mass shootings. To put it in perspective, doctors' sloppy handwriting kills roughly 7,000 people annually. That's far more than combined spree shooting victims. Certainly mandating doctors to type out all communication would be much easier than the herculean task of ridding the US of guns. And the broader gun control issue has other issues and data that would need to be examined. Unfortunately, we don't have particularly good data regarding guns in the US due to the effective ban on government funded gun data (thanks NRA!). Personally, I'd like to see the first step in gun control being federal funding directed toward research. Do guns (concealed carry, etc) actually deter other forms of violent crime? How many homeowners have used guns in self defense during a home invasion? For example, a study in the 1990s found between 800,000 to 2.4 million defensive gun uses annually (Kleck & Gertz). And apparently while in the UK roughly half of all burglaries are when homeowners are present, in the US it's only 13%. There's also some data that suggests increases in crime rates in the years after gun bans, but the data comes from strong pro-gun sources and I'm a bit skeptical as to the validity. Basically the data I could find regarding general gun control is spurious at best. We need better data on the pros and cons of gun ownership, and our decisions should be driven from that data and not anecdotal or tragic but extremely uncommon (statistically) events. So in my opinion, the rallying cry when national attention is on guns should not be taking head conjecture from all sides, but rather a national plea for better data so we can have an informed opinion on the issue.
- ajuc 11y ago
  > To put it in perspective, doctors' sloppy handwriting kills roughly 7,000 people annually. That's far more than combined spree shooting victims. Certainly mandating doctors to type out all communication would be much easier than the herculean task of ridding the US of guns. This is a false alternative. There's nothing forcing us to solve just 1 of these problems. > Personally, I'd like to see the first step in gun control being federal funding directed toward research. Do guns (concealed carry, etc) actually deter other forms of violent crime? How many homeowners have used guns in self defense during a home invasion? Another question that should be asked to be fair - do gun ownership among general population encourages criminals to take guns with them when they perform crime? Does the presence of a gun increase probabililty of a crime turning violent/deadly? My expectation: gun ownership makes crimes slightly less frequent (higher barrier to entry), at the cost of making it much more common for the crime to turn violent/deadly to someone.

by girvo 11y ago

bmelton 11y ago

> First off, I don't live in the US and I don't have a horse in this race. Not living in the US presumably subjects you to position bias. Those who live in countries where gun rights are strong tend to favor gun rights. Those who live in countries where gun control is strong tend to favor gun control. This is true of most things, as the moral compasses of most are drawn from what is currently normative to their existing environment. This is true of most places in which socio-political biases are codified into law, whether regarding religion, gay rights, whatever; Change in these areas tends to come slowly if at all. > guns should be regulated further Perhaps they should, perhaps they shouldn't. I have my bias, as I'm sure does everyone engaged in the discussion, but, at the end of the day, the document of the highest possible authority suggests that the citizenry should have access to guns, and the only way to overturn that is by ratifying that document. Thankfully, the document itself offers prescriptive measures for such ratification, but at the end of the day, without a strong enough amount of support throughout the nation and states for such a measure to pass. At present, such support does not exist, so our politicians play different games on what does or does not constitute "infringement". In the past, the argument was that it wasn't infringing if the person who wanted to exercise gun rights wasn't a member of a militia. We can prove historically and grammatically that this isn't true, but it took the Supreme Court's agreement for the legislature to accept it. Then, the argument was that sure, it's an individual right and not limited to those in the militia, but hey, the second amendment says you can keep and bear arms, but it doesn't say where, so instead, the government insists that the right is only applicable to within the home. Have as many guns as you like, and carry them anywhere you want, as long as it's inside your home. It took Chicago v. McDonald getting that one overturned in 2012 by the Supreme Court. So, legally speaking, we know that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right, disconnected from membership in a militia, and it extends outside the home. To those who favor gun rights, the matter might settled, but to those who favor gun control, it's a challenge to come up with a new rule that doesn't directly contradict those recently affirmed rules by the Supreme Court. In D.C., the argument is currently that the right to keep and bear arms is only available to those with a heightened need... but what other right in our Constitution merits such a high bar to exercise? Would it be okay to restrict voting only to those harmed by the current administration? Would it be okay to limit speech only to those who can show that they have been victimized? Anyway, I'm obviously ranting, and there's certainly more of my bias in this post than I intended, so I should shut up. The point, that I'm sure I made poorly, is that the law here says that we can have firearms, and that not even the elected legislature has the power to overturn that without ratifying the Constitution... unless they can come up with something legally clever, or wait until there exists a more favorable court to their cause.

girvo 11y ago
> Not living in the US presumably subjects you to position bias. Sure. And I have my own opinion on the matter, but I kept it out of my comment for a reason: my opinion isn't particularly important on this matter. I was merely discussing the article and kromem's call for a different analysis.
- bmelton 11y ago
  Understood, and apologies for not having kept my own biases in check, but I felt it worth pointing out that ignoring whether or not imposing additional regulations is good or bad, there is much more complication to the matter than just passing a law, especially as the passage of a law that countermands the Constitution is an exercise in futility.
umanwizard 11y ago
What's your point? You just wrote a 9 paragraph comment to say "US law supports gun ownership". We know. That's the whole issue. The question is whether U.S. law (including the constitution) should support gun ownership, which is something completely different.
- bmelton 11y ago
  The point was that until enough of the US supports gun control for the Constitution to be amended, there's not really any changing whether or not the US law supports gun ownership, and that majority support does not currently exist. Congress could not simply pass a law to ban speech because it is protected by the Constitution. To ban free speech, you would have to modify the Constitution. To modify the Constitution, you would have to have much more support for it than currently exists.
  - umanwizard 11y ago
    Yeah, I know all this. What's your point? I'm sure Petzold and everyone in this thread knows that gun control laws are hard to change -- what you're talking about has nothing to do with the actual question at hand, which is whether they should be changed.

kromem 11y ago

If your only concern is reducing the number of mass shootings, yes, that is exactly (and the only) correct answer from the data. The only reason why the US has more of these shootings is because we have more guns, and reducing the number of guns will reduce the number of shootings. However, the fact that these are extremely rare occurrences needs to be noted. Gun control has a lot more factors that are probably much more important than the rare issue of mass shootings. To put it in perspective, doctors' sloppy handwriting kills roughly 7,000 people annually. That's far more than combined spree shooting victims. Certainly mandating doctors to type out all communication would be much easier than the herculean task of ridding the US of guns. And the broader gun control issue has other issues and data that would need to be examined. Unfortunately, we don't have particularly good data regarding guns in the US due to the effective ban on government funded gun data (thanks NRA!). Personally, I'd like to see the first step in gun control being federal funding directed toward research. Do guns (concealed carry, etc) actually deter other forms of violent crime? How many homeowners have used guns in self defense during a home invasion? For example, a study in the 1990s found between 800,000 to 2.4 million defensive gun uses annually (Kleck & Gertz). And apparently while in the UK roughly half of all burglaries are when homeowners are present, in the US it's only 13%. There's also some data that suggests increases in crime rates in the years after gun bans, but the data comes from strong pro-gun sources and I'm a bit skeptical as to the validity. Basically the data I could find regarding general gun control is spurious at best. We need better data on the pros and cons of gun ownership, and our decisions should be driven from that data and not anecdotal or tragic but extremely uncommon (statistically) events. So in my opinion, the rallying cry when national attention is on guns should not be taking head conjecture from all sides, but rather a national plea for better data so we can have an informed opinion on the issue.

ajuc 11y ago
> To put it in perspective, doctors' sloppy handwriting kills roughly 7,000 people annually. That's far more than combined spree shooting victims. Certainly mandating doctors to type out all communication would be much easier than the herculean task of ridding the US of guns. This is a false alternative. There's nothing forcing us to solve just 1 of these problems. > Personally, I'd like to see the first step in gun control being federal funding directed toward research. Do guns (concealed carry, etc) actually deter other forms of violent crime? How many homeowners have used guns in self defense during a home invasion? Another question that should be asked to be fair - do gun ownership among general population encourages criminals to take guns with them when they perform crime? Does the presence of a gun increase probabililty of a crime turning violent/deadly? My expectation: gun ownership makes crimes slightly less frequent (higher barrier to entry), at the cost of making it much more common for the crime to turn violent/deadly to someone.