A kid was shot to death today at Foss High School in Tacoma, Washington.
One of the arguments given by gun control proponents is that handguns make it really easy to take out aggressions on someone. It’s hard to find fault with that claim.
From 1999 to 2004, there were 70,200 people in the U.S. that died of gun-related homicide, which is a rate of 41 gun-related homicides per million people. (And this does not include gun-related suicides.)
Over the same time period, there were 2,927 people who died of terrorism—a rate of less than 2 terrorism-related deaths per million people.
Yet, somehow we’ve chosen a war on terror™ [sic] as our national obsession. And using that “war” as justification, we’ve weakened the Constitution and abandoned other fundamental American values, we’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars in the effort, we’ve invaded other countries, and we’ve brought death, injury and violence into the lives of millions of innocent people.
My point is this: if we really wanted to make America safer, wouldn’t it be far more effective to launch a war on gun violence with the same resolve? I mean, that war would involve weakening the constitution, too, but I cannot imagine it would entail all the other bad side effects….
Hey, we haven’t heard any screeches from Pam Roach lately. Guess this issue ought to coax her out of her cave.
I like the “right to bear arms.” There is a pre-filed bill waiting in the wings for the new Washington State legislature to further limit our rights to purchase weapons in this state.
We can make America safer by closing our borders with fences and killer dogs.
We can make America safer by banning all automobiles so that no-one dies in a car crash.
We can make America safer by banning all sex so no-one will die of a sexually transmitted disease.
We can make America safer by banning all cigarettes and alcohol so no-one will die of cancers and other horrible diseases.
Oh, wait, Democrats are already on the move in this state to ban cigarettes, alcohol, cars, guns, etc.
Big stretch there trying to tie gun deaths with terror related deaths.
This always boils down to whether one believes the gun is the issue, or the person pulling the trigger.
In terms of this terrible story, I wonder if this is gang related? I thought I heard that in a news update on the radio. If so, I pose the question….why are gang members allowed to attend public school?
Get known gang members out of there. Immediate expulsion for any gang affiliation…
Right Stuff @ 3
“Big stretch there trying to tie gun deaths with terror related deaths.”
Read again. I did not “tie” gun deaths with terrorism-related deaths. Rather, I compared the rates of death due to each cause. Big difference.
I stand corrected.
You indeed did not “tie” them together.
I never want to see the Second Amendment removed from the Constitution. It’s as important as any of the others in the Bill of Rights.
Per Tac police – does not appear to be gang related…suspect has no criminal record…suspect and victim knew each other…hand gun used…
It really is too bad. As a gun owner (and a liberal), I fully support the right to own guns. Pretty much of any kind. But where people or kids get guns is a big problem. An irresponsible parent? From a friend who stole it? Who knows… we might find out.
Being responsible with firearms, locking them up, hiding the ammo, teaching your kids about them (gun safety when I took it was like “Scared Straight” and a very serious course). There is a level of responsibility to owning a gun like no other. This post could be titled “ignorance kills”.
So, if he had stabbed his victim with a 2 1/2 inch paring knife, would you ban all paring knives??????
As another liberal who owns guns – I agree with #6 & 8…However, if kid got the gun from his parents, and it wasn’t initially* secured..parent’s should have some liability too.
* – if gun was locked up and kid stole key then parents are only liable for raising a screwed up kid
@2 – yeah, way to open up an intelligent dialogue..jeesh
sgmmac @ 9
“So, if he had stabbed his victim with a 2 1/2 inch paring knife, would you ban all paring knives??????”
No. There are almost no deaths due to 2.5 inch paring knives in any given year.
In any case, I didn’t say anything about banning guns either, did I?
@8 you bet!
Respsonsible gun ownership and properly teaching adults/kids about them is key…
I also believe that if someone is hell bent on killing someone, they will. Be it gun, knife, car, fist, etc.
waterboy says:
As another liberal who owns guns – I agree with #6 & 8…However, if kid got the gun from his parents, and it wasn’t initially* secured..parent’s should have some liability too.
* – if gun was locked up and kid stole key then parents are only liable for raising a screwed up kid
Totally agree
I think you touched on the real issue here…screwed up kids.
I hold parents responsible…mostly…. We (parents) owe it to our kids to be involved in their lives. To make them a priority.
No, Darryl, YOU didn’t! But it is the typical knee-jerk reaction to gun violence! You did point out that people can and do actually die in much greater numbers from a variety of other reasons, war, cancer, drug overdose, car accidents, etc.
As for your comment “we’ve brought death, injury and violence into the lives of millions of innocent people.”
America didn’t bring the violence into the innocent people’s lives. Saddam and the Taliban brought the violence into the innocent people’s lives. I would rather die than live in Afganistan with those penis challenged males over there.
Religion has brought murder, misery and death to many millions of people throughout the centuries. Man’s fascination/obsession with absolute power has been at the spearpoint of most wars, death and destruction throughout the history of man.
sgmmac
How do you feel about personal nuclear devices? Should they be legalized? While I agree with you that we cannot make the world free of hazards (a friend once told me in this regard that “the world is not a Nerf ball”), that does not mean that we simply give up entirely. Safety laws and regulations always reflect tension between notions of personal responsibility and a nanny state; errors will occur on each side of the equation. Somewhere between the extremes of the NRA and the gun abolitionists is probably where our gun laws should be.
Compare the deaths of children who reside in homes that have guns, and those that have swimming pools. Accidental drownings in swimming pools causes considerably more deaths than weapons.
Proud Lefist,
I’ve never heard of a personal nuclear device being manufactured. They do make small deployable suitcase size devices, but the deployment teams wouldn’t survive the explosion so I’m not sure they would ever be used.
I wouldn’t support legalizing them, if someone did devise a way to make them. I’m not really against gun control, and I’ve been religiously wearing my seat belt for decades. I like safety, but some of the extremes get me riled up. Like banning talking on a cell phone……..that should pop up this session too!
The current prefiled bill on gun control is for gun shows and it’s being introduced by our idiot rep down here in Olympia. Last year his big issue was protecting ducks from being farmed for foie gras, they don’t farm them here, but he wanted to ban all foie gras in Washington State anyways. I personally have never eaten foie gras and I positively despise liver, so the chance of me trying it is slim to nothing. But I really hate stupidness and that’s what his bill was – stupid.
Our state Senator down here is Karen Frasier and she pushed through a bill banning travel agencies from advertising sex tours to Thailand. Again, there wasn’t any travel agency in the State doing that, but that didn’t stop her crusade and Gregoire signed that law declaring that it would save females from becoming prostitutes in Thailand….. But, the sad fact is families sell their daughters into prostitution because they can’t afford to feed them. Unless you deal with the extreme poverty and misery, those girl babies will end up as prostitutes or drowned/strangled when they are born.
Your view on gun control sounds fair to me. The real question here is how many of the deaths from gun violence are caused because of LAX gun control laws?????
Do criminals buy and register guns to commit crimes or do they buy them from friends/underground dealers. steal them or borrow their parent’s guns???????????
@15
It is almost like we need to educate both the NRA and the gun abolitionists.
You would think the NRA would focus ever more safety and responsibility than being a reactionary political force. And likewise, those who would ban guns would take a proactive approach to safety rather than potshots at the NRA. It’s like anti-abortion zealots not actively advocating funding for birth control.
Blinded by ideology I say.
There is more to this. Demographics etc… but when stuff like this happens the discussion can go ZINGO!! off into space and I just sit here in amazement.
Darryl didn’t write a hit piece here I don’t think. We aren’t his thought police. Besides, I think this post has more to do with sensless violence, where we tolerate it, and where we don’t. Wouldn’t you agree?
So is Darryl proposing sending perpetrators of gun violence to Guantanamo, interning them as enemy combatants, trying them by military commissions, and using waterboarding for interrogations related to finding gun violence perpetrators? And don’t forget wiretapping.
“But it is the typical knee-jerk reaction to gun violence!”
It is a little disingenuous to say that people calling for stricter gun controls in respose to gun violence are having “knee-jerk reactions.” The pro-gun-control folks have well thought-out, rational arguments whether or not you agree with them.
You did point out that people can and do actually die in much greater numbers from a variety of other reasons, war, cancer, drug overdose, car accidents, etc.”
I didn’t mention any of these other causes of death (except warfare, indirectly). In fact, we do have a “war on cancer” that has made spectacular progress in the last 50 years. I fully approve of this priority. We do have a very expensive war on drugs, so that certainly has been a priority (although many feel its execution is deeply flawed).
I completely agree that we could “make America safer” by using the billions and billions of dollars now being spent prosecuting the “war on terror” [sic] and use the money to further decrease deaths from traffic accidents. Motor vehicles have an extremely high utility in our society, so naive solutions like “banning cars” are, obviously, out. Highway safety improvements, lower alcohol tolerances, technological enhancements to cars are all proven, but underfunded, strategies, that can be deployed to balance utility and body count.
Many people believe guns have high utility value in our society. Less certain is whether handguns (specifically) have much (if any) utility. But, for only a fraction of the half-trillion we have spent prosecuting the “war on terror” [sic], we could almost certainly develop regulatory and technological solutions for guns (or just handguns) that better balance utility and body count.
“America didn’t bring the violence into the innocent people’s lives.”
America most certainly did! Even the wingnuttiest of wingnuts cannot deny that we invaded Iraq. Almost everyone now agrees that the “evidence” used to justify Iraq as a threat to the U.S. was deeply flawed (at best) or a series of intentional lies (at worse). Either way, the invasion to
save America from Iraq’s WMDsliberate Iraqi’s from violence and oppressionstop Iraq’s active support for terrorism against Americahang Saddam, and the badly managed post-invasion governance, have brought much suffering, violence, and death to Iraqis.mac @ 17
I was being facetious in referring to personal nuclear devices, using the concept as a rhetorical device. Sometimes you make a helluva lot of sense, mac. I think democracy is an imperfect process that invariably leaves people unhappy with its product. It happens, however, to beat the hell out of the alternatives.
Jimmy: The NRA champions many safety classes. Where have you been? Charleton HEston when he was lucid talked about them on talk shows! I don’t know if your ignorance is Moonbat!itis or naturally acquired, so I’ll give you a pass this time.
Look it up. You have the Power!
The pro-gun-control folks have well thought-out, rational arguments whether or not you agree with them.
Darryl: Name a few for us!
Until you remove the gun from the criminal nothing will work.
Do I have to remind the Moonbat! audience here about the crime escalation in Australia when they banned guns. I submitted it for review many months ago!
Oh… wait… the bad guys didn’t turn in their guns!
More moronic Stupididity from a Goldie friend!
Union Fireman @ 16
“Compare the deaths of children who reside in homes that have guns, and those that have swimming pools. Accidental drownings in swimming pools causes considerably more deaths than weapons.”
Nope. For all ages, gun-related deaths (including suicide, homicide, law enforcement, and accidents) for the period 1999-2005 total 177,057. For the same period there are 24,166 drowning deaths.
Even if we look at minors only (ages 0-17) all gun related deaths over the period total 8,898 and drowning deaths total 6,538.
As a former hunter (and damned fine shot, to boot) my weapon of choice was a .30-06; hunted pheasants on Whidbey Island with a 20 gauge. Firm believer in the Second Amendment. But I have to tell you, I have a problem with handguns. They seem to be so easy to find and so easy to get and everywhere, becoming lethal extensions of our growing impatience, anger, and rage as a people.
I certainly do not have any answers… I do know that I don’t want to live in a society where the answer is to simply be quick on the draw…
Lets try things from a new perspective…we teach our youth about the right to free speach as in the Bill Of Rights, we teach them of the right to assemble and all other rights. Lets try to require the teaching of the safe handling as well as the results of unresponsible handling of the gun? Works in the military. BTW why wasnt a school official armed, may have been a good preventive strike!
Jimmy,
“Besides, I think this post has more to do with sensless violence, where we tolerate it, and where we don’t. Wouldn’t you agree?”
The post was certainly inspired by sensless violence. But it ended up being about priorities in “keeping ‘merica safe.”
Darryl,
America didn’t bring it, because Iraq already had the misery, the suffering and the death. You know it’s real hard for Americans to appreciate what they were born with, what they have and take for granted.
Equally, it’s very hard for American women to understand how fucking lucky we are to be born in this country, instead of a country where we are sold by our families, drowned at birth because we don’t have a penis, covered head to toe in a burka, having our clitoris’s chopped off with dull rusty implements and our vagina’s sewn shut, just to name a few of the horrors. Did I mention honor killings or vengenance gang rapes?
I spent 5 1/2 months in Saudi, 5 months in Albania, and have been to Thailand, Japan, and Mexico — I saw things that I would have never believed existed today in the 21st century.
Proud Lefist,
It definitely beats all of the alternatives……..
Richard Pope @ 19
“So is Darryl proposing sending perpetrators of gun violence to Guantanamo, interning them as enemy combatants, trying them by military commissions, and using waterboarding for interrogations related to finding gun violence perpetrators? And don’t forget wiretapping.”
Yes…yes…yes. This is exactly the type of solution I was fishing for. :-)
Jimmy @ 18
I do agree. Issues like gun control are nuanced, both constitutionally and politically. Just as everyone (since Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.) recognizes that the free speech clause of the First Amendment does not protect the idiot who yells “fire” in a crowded theatre, you would think that the progun people would recognize limitations on the right to bear arms, particularly since the Second Amendment has much more squishiness concerning its reach than does the First. All of us should want to limit handgun deaths–efforts to do so do not undermine the NRA’s cherished arguments. Sometimes, when I look at NRA positions, I almost wonder if its position is that the right to die by gunfire is what the Second Amendment protects.
@22
I know they do. Heck, why wouldn’t they. But they have also turned into the psudo defenders of the 2nd Amendment and have historically taken their eye off the ball. It’s a big white mans club full of religious fanatical divisive bigots at the top. They need a big turnaround in their ideology. With so many members I think they could do so much more for the good of society. Including URBAN America where the worst of gun violence takes place.
Pope, I thought that was funny too. LOL
Hey MWS,
Did your mother refuse to breastfeed you? Is that why you are incapable of showing any sign of humanity? Keep expressing yourself. The entertainment you provide is priceless.
Sgmmac @ 28
“America didn’t bring it, because Iraq already had the misery, the suffering and the death.”
In fact, America made it many times worse. The definitive study of pre- and post-invasion mortality (Burnham, et al. (2006) Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey, Lancet 368(9545):1421-8.) shows that there was a dramatic increase in crude mortality rate in Iraq following the invasion. The pre-invasion rate was 5,500 deaths per million (from all causes). The period March 2003-April 2004, the rate rose to 7,500 deaths per million. From May 2004 to May 2005 the rate rose to 10,900 deaths per million. And from May 2004 to May 2005 the rate was 19,800 deaths per million.
If we look only at violent deaths, the pre-invasion violent death rate was 100 deaths per million. The numbers for the three post-invasion time-periods are 3,200 deaths per million, 6,600 deaths per million and 12,000 deaths per million.
@2 I like the “right to bear arms” too. When I read the rabid blatherings of sociopaths like Jonathan Gardner aka Federal Way Conservative, who thinks Bush “has authority” to summarily execute Americans who criticize him — and should do it — well, it makes me feel kind of insecure, and it motivates me to oil my guns and buy a fresh boxes of ammunition! Because I don’t doubt for a minute that nutbags like Gardner would participate in Latin American-style “death squads” sent by Wingnut Central to roam the streets hunting liberals … if they believed they could get away with it. And, frankly, I wouldn’t much mind having to defend myself against these guys with a reasonable amount of lethal force such as would be used by a reasonable person in my paws who reasonably concluded these “death squads” posed an imminent threat of death or grave bodily harm to myself and/or others around me — there’ll be more oxygen to go around for the rest of us if they aren’t breathing it anymore.*
* Just kidding! Wingnut humor, ya know? See Ann Coulter for details.
Darryl,
You are only looking at the deaths……. There are other things, such as living under a crazed dictator who loves weapons, all kinds of weapons; chemical, biological, nuclear, etc….. Do your figures include all of the “missing” people in Iraq, you know those found in mass graves?
not having medicine for your kids or food while your President is building new palaces all over the country, drinking, having affairs, torturing and murdering people for fun!
would you like to live in a country where simply saying that your President is an idiot will get you tortured, brutalized, and killed?
would you like to live in a country where you get gang raped by Saddam’s sons because he is pissed at your father?
The misery was there long before America was there!
Afganistan under the Taliban was much worse, especially for women…………
@14 Your broad-brush stereotyping of liberals is showing again.
16 “Accidental drownings in swimming pools causes considerably more deaths than weapons.”
Cite, please.
Roger@37,
Tthere isn’t any stereotyping of liberals in my post.I developed by dislike of knee-jerk reactions in the military. Whenever something is goes wrong – the knee-jerk reaction to fix it rarely focuses on the real problem, most of the time it just makes the problem worse or is just a waste of time.
Damn, I shouldn’t type and talk to someone at the same time………..
@16 (continued) Never mind, I’ll save you the bother.
“Op-ed piece on swimming pools vs. guns as the most dangerous weapon by Steven D. Levitt, Professor of Economics, University of Chicago
“[Editor’s note: A version of this piece was published in the Chicago Sun-Times on July 28, 2001 under the title ‘Pools more dangerous than guns.’ ]
“What’s more dangerous: a swimming pool or a gun? When it comes to children, there is no comparison: a swimming pool is 100 times more deadly.
“In 1997 alone (the last year for which data are available), 742 children under the age of 10 drowned … 550 of those drownings — about 75 percent of the total — occurred in residential swimming pools. According to the most recent statistics, there are about six million residential pools, meaning that one young child drowns annually for every 11,000 pools.
“About 175 children under the age of 10 died in 1998 as a result of guns. About two-thirds of those deaths were homicides. There are an estimated 200 million guns in the United States. Doing the math, there is roughly one child killed by guns for every one million guns.
“Thus, on average, if you both own a gun and have a swimming pool in the backyard, the swimming pool is about 100 times more likely to kill a child than the gun is. …
“[Editor’s note: John Lott has claimed that this op-ed was written for the express purpose of concealing Levitt’s ‘rabidly anti-gun’ views.]”
Quoted under Fair Use; for complete article and/or copyright info, see http://tinyurl.com/yln3u6
Roger Rabbit Commentary: This op-ed piece could be a poster-boy for how to manipulate statistics to reach a pre-determined conclusion. First, let’s count only kids under 10 killed by guns, which removes most kids killed by guns from the statistical pool. Then, let’s shrink the number of “kids killed by guns” some more by defining the term to include only intentional homicides. Then, to make guns look even more innocuous, let’s measure the relative danger of swimming pools vs. guns in terms of “deaths per pool” compared to “deaths per gun,” which, because there are 33 times as many guns as pools, makes guns look 33 times relatively safer than pools. Sheesh. What a piece of balderdash this is. As the editor points out, Mr. Levitt apparently has an agenda beyond comparing pool deaths to gun deaths.
According to Physicians for Social Responsibility, about 5,000 children under age 15 are killed in the U.S. by guns every year. http://tinyurl.com/ssb89 That’s 10 times the pool drowning deaths. If you count all teen gun deaths, the numbers are much higher, of course.
proud leftist says: Nothing worthwhile.
Meanwhile proud leftist can’t refute my argument on Australia and criminals keeping their guns and gun crimes escalated.
Why is that proud leftist? Facts hurt the libtard mind?
BTW I was breast fed. What’s your excuse? Goat nipples?
Darryl: Where are those great arguments?
I am waiting patiently!
As another gun owning democrat. I just wonder why the laws already on the books don’t seem to be enforced? Like the one about felons having guns. I also know that when I lived in Montana and North Dakota there were loaded guns in every corner and damn few accidents or shootings.It seems people are different in more rural areas. I am also a union tradesman and we had about a third of our membership vote for Bush even though they knew he would bust every union in the country if he could. The reason guns.
@17 “They do make small deployable suitcase size devices”
No “they” don’t, and “they” never have. Don’t you ever research anything, Mac?
“Both the USA and the USSR manufactured nuclear weapons small enough to fit into large backpacks during the Cold War, but neither have ever made public the existence or development of weapons small enough to fit into a suitcase. … The smallest nuclear warhead manufactured by the USA was the W54 … which could be fired from a 120 mm recoilless rifle …. While this warhead, with a weight of only 51 lb (23 kg), could potentially fit into a large suitcase, it would be a very tight fit. …
“In 1997, former Russian National Security Advisor Alexander Lebed made public claims about lost ‘suitcase nukes’ following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. … However both the US and Russian governments immediately rejected Lebed’s claims. Russia’s atomic energy ministry went so far as to dispute that suitcase nuclear weapons had even ever been developed by the Soviet Union. … Russian president Vladimir Putin, in an interview with Barbara Walters in 2001, stated about suitcase nukes, ‘I don’t really believe this is true. These are just legends. One can probably assume that somebody tried to sell some nuclear secrets. But there is no documentary confirmation of those developments.'”
http://tinyurl.com/yajb74
Even if it is possible to make “suitcase nukes,” it would take the engineering know-how, technology capabilities, and resources of an extremely advanced industrial nation to do it — probably Russia and the U.S. are the only potential candidates. There is no chance that a backyard tinkerer or terrorist group could put one together. The only way such a group could get one would be to steal it from the government of a superpower.
Darryl: I back up my assertions with facts.
http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/.....riment.pdf
Moonbats, notice it’s from Canada, home of many libtards!
Darryl: I back up my assertions with facts. More facts to hurt the libtard minds:
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=.....&cd=6
“Now, Keith Tidswell of Australia’s Sporting Shooters Association reports the results are in.
Drum roll, please. Mr. Tidswell reports, based on a full 12 months of data: Australia-wide, homicides up 3.2 percent. Australia-wide, assaults up 8.6 percent.
Australia-wide, armed-robberies up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent.) In the state of Victoria, homicides-with-firearms are up 300 percent. (Up until the government gun grab, figures for the previous 25 years had shown a steady decrease in homicides with firearms, as well as armed robberies, Mr. Tidswell notes.)
Although at the time of the victim disarmament order, the Aussie prime minister decreed “self-defense is not a reason for owning a firearm,” there has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the elderly, now left with no means to protect themselves. (One wonders whether the prime minister’s personal bodyguards gave up their military-style weapons.)
Mr. Tidswell reports: “Australian politicians are on the spot and at a loss to explain how no improvement in ‘safety’ has been observed after such monumental effort and expense to successfully ‘rid society of guns.’ “”
26 “Lets try to require the teaching of the safe handling as well as the results of unresponsible handling of the gun? Works in the military.”
Not really. The military are better trained, disciplined, and controlled than any civilian gunners, but they still have gun accidents. Lots of them. Guns are inherently dangerous, and humans are inherently careless.
More about the effects of gun control in Australia. Within a few years of their gun ban:
Countrywide, homicides are up 3.2 percent;
Assaults are up 8.6 percent;
Amazingly, armed robberies have climbed nearly 45 percent;
In the Australian state of Victoria, gun homicides have climbed 300 percent;
In the 25 years before the gun bans, crime in Australia had been dropping steadily;
There has been a reported “dramatic increase” in home burglaries and assaults on the elderly.
Roger,
Whether a suitcase or backpack is bigger is rather subjective. 51 lbs is rather small! I was talking about the US = not terrorists or Russians….. small deployable tactical nuclear weapons….
@48
The military does NOT have lots of gun accidents. Actually, the number would be extremely low considering the amount of ammunition and guns fired every year.
@28 As brutal as Saddam was, removing him may cost more lives in the long run because, as we are seeing, Iraq’s unruly factions will slaughter each other in the absence of an iron-fisted ruler to keep the lid on.
@39 RR reply, and I quote: “typical knee-jerk reaction to gun violence”
Some years ago when Washington had an initiative on the ballot to require registration (or ban, I forget which) of handguns, voters rejected it by 4-to-1. In this solidly blue state, those voters obviously weren’t all Republicans or conservatives. There are lots of gun-owning Democrats who oppose gun registration or handgun bans. This isn’t really an a partisan or conservatives-vs.-liberals issue — it’s more of a gun-banners vs. everyone-else issue. And the gun banners are nowhere near a majority; they’re a vocal minority.
Roger,
This isn’t really an a partisan or conservatives-vs.-liberals issue…..
“typical knee-jerk reaction to gun violence” …
I didn’t say typical liberal knee-jerk reaction.. Lots of conservatives want gun control. I like some gun control, but I also think it’s a waste of time as a crime fighting tool. Criminals will get guns and usually they don’t register their guns. I was told you don’t have to register guns in this state. I hope not, because I have a 9mm that I bought from another soldier here.
Roger @ 41,
You forgot to list how many guns per death and how many swimming pools per death. The number of guns in circulation in the US is far more that the number of swimming pools in the US. Did that factor into your commentary? Nope. Why? Because responsible gun owners are just that. Responsible. You want an all out ban or mandate that every gun must be registered? That will do nothing to stem the gun violence. And I should also remind you, that in many cases, guns have saved many peoples live. The Tacoma Mall shooting for example. Want more? Here is a site that has a few more and cites the instances.
http://www.gunowners.org/sk0802.htm
http://www.truthinjustice.org/guns-save-lives.htm
http://www.issues-views.com/in.....ticle/2012
http://www.dartreview.com/issu.....ssave.html
The solution is responsible gun ownership and stiffer penalties for those that break the laws. Just because someone in your state drinks and drives doesn’t mean you shuold have to bet a breathalizer installed on your car. But then again, because you all you liberals, we can’t even send criminals to prison any more. They get sent to a “Correctional Facility” because they are being corrected not punished.
The LSoS is, indeed, rather funny. He finds about a half-dozen web sites all citing the same unsubstantiated, and inappropriate, statistics, but doesn’t find a web site that shows his “facts” are cooked. It’s interesting to note how the Australian Bureau of Statistics contradicts the “facts” that the LSoS cites.
And, once again, the LSoS demonstrates that he lacks very basic critical thinking skills.
For the href link impaired, here’s the URL I linked at 56:
http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/ausguns.asp
http://www.snopes.com/crime/cops/judd.asp
Proper Gun control right here.
Golly Don JoeSmoe: the link you provided stops at critical years. Because Don JoeSmoe the data doesn’t match. You can go on all you want but this site stops when it gets critical.
Why did violent crime rates averaged 32% higher in the six years after the law was passed (from 1997 to 2002) than they did the year before the law went into effect? Why did armed robbery rates increased 74% (from 1997 to 2002) than they did the year before the law went into effect?.
Don JoeSmoe: If the web site was updated in 2004 why does his data stop at 1999 and 2000 respectively? Cause his stupid argument loses steam!
yes Don JoeSmoe, you are the lost stupid obtuse shithead!
Don JoeSmoe: from the Fraser Report, accepted as fact in Canada:
Following shocking killings in 1996, the Australian gov-ernment made sweeping changes to the firearm legisla-tion in 1997. Unfortunately, the recent firearm regula-tions have not made the streets of Australia any safer. The total homicide rate, after having remained basically flat from 1995 to 2001, has now begun climbing again. The decline in homicide rate in the gun-permissive Unit-ed States stands out against the trend in Australia. The divergence between Australia and the United States is even more apparent with violent crime. While crime is decreasing in the United States, it is in-creasing in Australia. Over the past six years, the over-all rate of violent crime in Australia has continued to increase. Robbery and armed robbery rates continue to rise. Armed robbery has increased 166% nationwide. The confiscation and destruction of legally owned fire-arms cost Australian taxpayers at least $500 million. The costs of the police services bureaucracy, including the hugely costly infrastructure of the gun registration system, has increased by $200 million since 1997. And for what? There has been no visible impact on violent crime. It is impossible to justify such a massive amount of the taxpayers’ money for no decrease in crime. For that kind of tax money, the police could have had more pa-trol cars, shorter shifts, or maybe even better equipment. Think of how many lives might have been saved.
Golly Don JoeSmoe: It hurts to be really stupid! Snopes failed you AGAIN!
Now Don JoeSMoe a fact lost on your libtard mind. Earlier I wrote if you get the guns out of the criminal hands first I can live with your call. Until you first take care of that I see no validity to your argument.
Darryl: I give up! You have no arguments!
Hey Don JoeSmoe: I’ll leave you with this quote:
“So gun ownership prevents genocide (the evidence of this is hard to refute. Genocide just does not happen to armed populations) and increases or reductions in gun ownership do not appear to contribute to crime. Is this the reason that gun control has suddenly disappeared from the Democratic issue arsenal?”
LSoS,
The link stops at “critical years,” quite likely, because later data wasn’t available when it was written. It, nevertheless, debunks the urban legend you cited @47 above.
As for “critical years,” you now run into a serious problem of causation. Australia’s gun control laws went into effect in 1997. Any changes in crime rates after the year 2000 are very likely to be attributable to a wide variety of factors having nothing to do with gun control laws that went into effect three years earlier. How do you know that the gun control laws didn’t make more recent crime rates lower than they would have been without those laws?
But, lastly, you completely miss the entire point. Your “facts” are cooked. Even the Frasier Institute’s article is clearly little more than a partisan spin job, and all you have to do to recognize that fact is spend a few seconds thinking about the data that they don’t list.
But, you don’t recognize that fact, because you never spend one iota of intellectual energy doing even a few seconds’ worth of critical thinking about the sources you cite. You just round around until you find something that looks like it props your forgone conclusion, and spend endless hours trying to prop up an analysis that anyone with half a brain can see is obviously flawed.
Gads, LSoS, do you even read the crap you post. “Armed robbery rates,” with no break down as to what kind of weapon was used in the “armed” robbery. And you think this isn’t a spin job? Talk about stupid!
Oh, by the way, the whole argument about supposedly disarming gun owners leading to increased crime rates is complete bunk when you’re talking about Australia. See the snopes link for a good rundown on why that dog doesn’t bark.
sgmmac,
“You are only looking at the deaths…….”
Yes…because it is well studied. And mortality serves as a good proxy for morbidity and of quality of life.
“There are other things, such as living under a crazed dictator who loves weapons, all kinds of weapons; chemical, biological, nuclear, etc…..”
Hardly relevant. They are living under a civil war now that has caused deaths from violence to surge to many times higher than it was living under the dictator in the immediate pre-invasion period.
“Do your figures include all of the “missing” people in Iraq, you know those found in mass graves?”
The figures are estimates of all mortality for the period just prior to the invasion and all mortality in three post invasion periods.
“not having medicine for your kids”
That, of course would be reflected in the non-violent mortality rate—which either remained unchanged or increased just a little bit. (Technically: mortality increased but the increase was not statistically significant.)
“would you like to live in a country where simply saying that your President is an idiot will get you tortured, brutalized, and killed?”
No…but I don’t want to live in a country in the midst of a civil war with much higher rates of violence, either.
“The misery was there long before America was there!”
True…but it is just many time worse under U.S. occupation and destabilization that it was in the period leading up to the war.
MWS
“Darryl: I give up! You have no arguments!”
Arguments about what? My post simply discussed re-prioritization: a “war on gun violence” undertaken with the same sense of urgency as the “war on terror” [sic], as a means of keeping America safer.
I did not argue for or against any specific measures to achieve victory in the “war on gun violence.”
You are, apparently, assuming that the only way to achieve victory is to ban guns. But I’ve not made that claim. I accept that there are many, many paths to reducing gun deaths and injuries.
MWS @ 62:
from the Fraser Report, accepted as fact in Canada
Hello again from beautiful Vancouver, BC!
Uh, nope.
The Fraser Institute is indeed pretty well known up this way. However, it’s known largely as a think tank that pushes the agenda of resource companies and the Reform wing of the Conservative Party of Canada (what we’d call “neo-cons” down in the US). To say that anything from the Fraser Institute is “accepted as fact in Canada” is to say that the Discovery Institute is “accepted as fact in the United States”.
Thanks for playing. Please do come again.
(I’m not going to comment directly in a gun violence thread. Everyone has their thoughts on this subject, and nobody is going to change their minds based on what I write, but please don’t tell outright lies here. They make your argument look bad).
@51 But the amount of ammunition and guns fired is very large. And firearms accidents are more likely to happen in combat than training.
According to Wikipedia, about 14% to 16% of U.S. fatal casualties in WW2 and Vietnam were due to “friendly fire.” I don’t know whether this includes simple accidents, or just firing on friendly troops in combat.
When I was in the Army and Army Reserve, I witnessed accidents both in training and the war zone, so I know they happen with significant frequency. I watched a guy stick a cleaning rod down the barrel of a machine gun to knock out a jammed round and get away with it, and saw a guy pull the trigger of his M-16 to see if the safety was on and not get away with it. Guys forgetting to clear their weapons after coming out of the field back on base was commonplace. In Vietnam, my unit’s NCO club was blown up by an idiotic tank crew, and one day when I was working in an ammo dump another tank crewman blew up himself and the rest of the tank crew by dropping a shell. And that doesn’t count the people who get injured or killed playing with flares and other ordnance. This kind of shit didn’t happen every day but it happened every month and sometimes every week.
@55 “Lots of conservatives want gun control.”
You could’ve fooled me. They sure pulled the wool over my eyes on that one.
This whole debate is a tempest in a teapot anyway. The gun control debate is over, and the anti-gun faction lost. Oh, they’re still around, but the issue has no traction and isn’t on the legislative radar screen anymore.
Not because of the NRA, or hunters, but because much of the public believes the police can’t protect them, especially in rural areas where everyone has guns. All the police do is arrest the bad guys after a crime is committed. Outside the city, the police may be an hour away. Right or wrong, many people believe the 200 million guns in America’s households deter burglaries and home invasions.
Washington has a law that tacks on 5 years of mandatory time for committing a crime with a gun. So far as I can tell, nobody serves it, even though gun crimes are prevalent. Prosecutors have discretion to not charge it, and I rarely see it charged. I would say less than 5% of the cases where a gun was involved in committing the crime.
Gun accidents is a different issue involving different causes, problems, and solutions. I would suggest that there are countless ways to get injured or killed accidentally, and guns are being singled out. Even if you confiscated all the guns, people would still get hit by cars, fall off ladders, burn their houses down, drown themselves in raging rivers, and so on. Humans are extremely ingenious in their carelessness, and taking guns away from them merely removes only 1 of 1,000,000 different instrumentalities by which they manage to injure and kill themselves.
Keeping guns away from kids is a whole ‘nother issue …
Roger Rabbit @ 41
I looked at the “Physicians for Social Responsibility”. Yes, their website does claim that in the United States, approximately 5,000 children under 15 years of age are killed every year in America due to guns”.
http://www.psrla.org/program_gun_violence.htm
The “Physicians for Social Responsibility” are also FULL OF SHIT about this alleged statistic.
I went to the Centers for Disease Control website suggested by Darryl, and looked at people from 0-14 years of age killed by fireams from all causes. During the period from 1999-2004 (which is six years), the total numbers of children under 15 killed by firearms in the USA was only 2,496. This is an average of only 416 children under 15 killed per year, less than 1/10 of the grossly inflated rate alleged by the “Physicians for Social Responsibility”.
http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/n.....10_sy.html
What a bunch of LYING QUACKS! I sure hope they don’t misplace the decimal point when they are calculating drug dosages for their patients. Maybe the decimal point should be moved over one place to the right when their medical malpractice insurance premiums are calculated …
Roger Rabbit @ 72
The prosecuting attorney will tack on the firearms enhancments (5 extra years for Class A felony, 3 extra years from Class B felony, and I think 18 extra months for Class C felony) if the defendant insists on taking the case to trial.
Otherwise, both the firearms enhancement and the less severe deadly weapon enhancement are waived by the prosecuting attorney in exchange for a plea bargain. In King County, these enhancements are almost never included in the original information for this reason. That way, it doesn’t look like Maleng is dismissing firearm or deadly weapon enhancements in exchange for plea bargains. Also, the judge doesn’t have to approve amended the charges to delete fireams enhancements, if they were never filed in the first place.
@56 “You forgot to list how many guns per death and how many swimming pools per death.”
I didn’t forget, I intentionally omitted it, because it’s a meaningless statistic. A rather high percentage of zookeepers get killed by elephants, relative to the total number of zookeepers and elephants, but that doesn’t make elephant accidents a more serious problem than car accidents.
@56 “You want an all out ban or mandate that every gun must be registered?”
No. Where did I say that? Do you just peel shit like this off the wall without thinking? I’ve repeatedly posted on this board that I oppose gun control.
56 (continued) “But then again, because you all you liberals, we can’t even send criminals to prison any more.”
Please take your inaccurate stereotyping of liberals and shove it up your lying ass.
59 What’s the point?
@59 (continued) Proper gun control is getting the job done with one shot.
Some years ago, a group of Army Rangers from Fort Lewis were attending a barbecue at a buddy’s home in Tacoma’s notorious Hilltop neighborhood. There was a drug house across the street, and an altercation ensued between the drug dealers and Rangers during which over 2,000 rounds were fired — yet nobody got hit on either side.
If I was their commanding officers, those soldiers would have been out on the firing range every day, all day, until I was satisfied they could hit the fucking target.
@73 What are the numbers if 16 to 19 yo’s are included? Seems to me most of the gun deaths would be in that group.
@74 So they plea-bargain it away? Figures. The NRA has a point when they say we have plenty of laws on the books; we simply don’t enforce them.
Darryl: I think the Second Amendment works. If one wants to espouse gun control, first one has to handle the gray/grey market WRT criminals getting a S&W type 38 snubnose. I agree why does anyone need an AK-47. But I also agree if a criminal tries a B&E and doesn’t know if the owner has gun protection, I “pity the fool”! That’s why concealed carry states have lower crime.
Do you remember the teacher in Alabama or Mississippi who stopped a killing spree by using his permitted weapon?
Don JoeSmoe is a baka but I have no pity for him. For him to say the critical data ended there is ludicrous! No, the date changed the argument and the person chose not to use it. Come on Don JoeSmoe, he kept updating his website and never added data past 1999? Three years? You need help Don JoeSmoe.
Why do economists study events for 10, 20 or 30 years out? Why do Moonbat!s love to go back to the Reagan years to make their puny points?
Interest analysis by JSA on the Fraser Institute.
Funny, when I read their columns they seem to be more middle of the road unlike libtard columnists like Paul krugman, Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd, etc.
http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/.....038;id=445
Don Joe says: LSoS, The link stops at “critical years,” quite likely, because later data wasn’t available when it was written. It, nevertheless, debunks the urban legend you cited @47 above.
No it doesn’t. The data is not an URBAN LEGEND excpet the legend you are in your own mind. The nevertheless comment doesn’t debunk anything. The stats display an increase in 1997 and through 2002 crime went up. Otherise someone would have refuted the Fraser Institute author! Keep up the mantra Don JoeSmoe, being a legend in your own mind does your body good!
JSA you mentioned the Discovery Institute. This is no comparison. The Fraser Institute is a libertarian think tank. The Discovery Institute is a conservative religious one!
“The pro-gun-control folks have well thought-out, rational arguments whether or not you agree with them.”
So let’s hear them.
BTW: Why should Mayor Nickels have a car that can exceed the national speed limit….why should anyone. Have you seen the number of deaths on the roads due to speed?
By the way for all of you that thinks the government will proctect and take care of you just look at what happened in a minor disaster here….the wind storm. In a significant disaster we will be on our own for a much longer time.
MWS @ 85:
The Fraser Institute describes itself as libertarian. It’s a good word. Everyone loves liberty. If you’re against personal freedom, there’s something more than a bit wrong with you.
The Institute is largely funded by resource companies. Their policy positions represent the conservative wing of the Conservative party. Canada’s political spectrum pulls a bit left of the US, everyone knows that. My point is that you cannot say the Fraser Institute’s reports are broadly “accepted as fact” here. They’re not. The only thing that can be said is that they are now considered to be a valid part of the political dialog whereas 10 or 15 years ago they would have been out on the lunatic fringe.
LSoS,
Comments like yours @84 are why you’ve acquired the LSoS moniker. The urban legend you cited was @47. That’s not the Fraser Institute piece.
More curious, however, is the way you rely on someone else to refute the Fraser Institute piece without taking the time to see the flaws for yourself. Apparently you missed my comment regarding “armed robbery” and the lack of any breakdown on the weapons.
Lastly, regarding your claim of “critical years” missing in the snopes piece, I pointed out the causation problem which you have yet to repair. So, it takes three years for Ausie criminals to figure out that tighter gun restrictions have gone into effect? What exactly is the causal mechanism that would explain this delay in “critical years”?
Roger,
The Army Rangers weren’t trying to hit anybody, otherwise they would have. As for them being at a firing range, they are some of the very best marksmen in the world, because of the high amount of time spent on ranges practicing……
Roger @ 75.
Of course you would think that the per capita deaths is irrelevant. Because it makes sense to look at that figure.
@76
Read my post. That odd little symbol at the end of the sentence is a question mark. That means I was asking you a question. Jesus, for as smart as you think you are, you sure aren’t very smart.
@77
That was a play on words. Once again read the entire post. I was talking about how you liberals have insisted that we call prison correctional facilities.
My post @ 59 just a post, no point (Much like the vast majority of your ramblings).
Another handgun death and what do we hear from hizzoner??? We need an assult weapons ban and need to close the “gun show loophole”.
Way to go, Greg. Keep fighting the good fight.
drunken rabbits… and asses shouldn’t be allowed to own guns
Yeah those “assault weapons” are a huge problem.
Its already against the law to have a gun in school …
Using this as an opportunity for gun law restrictions is inappropriate . Bury the child first ..
The debate about gun laws should be based on our Constitution and safety for all citizens .
I don’t like guns , never shot a gun , do not have in my home . But I never want to see the day that only the hoodlums and terrorists have them either .
Don JoeSmoe: Are you a criminal? I have no idea how the criminal mind works. The crime statistics went up.
Mick@94: I like your last sentence. That’s the exact point I’ve tried to make on Don JoeSmoe which seems lost in his world. Lost simple obtuse stupid! The good people in Australia gave up their guns in the $big Aussie buck buyback but the criminals kept theirs.
JSA: Canada’s political spectrum is a “bit to the left”?
Ha ha ha ha! They are wildly left until the new premier was elected. That was a big-time understatement!
MWS @ 97:
They are wildly left until the new premier was elected.
No. The political spectrum remains the same regardless of who runs the country. (and Harper has very little power to do anything. Read up on parlimentary democracy and specifically something called a “minority government”. Write back if you have any questions).
I repeat, a right-wing think tank in Canada is still a right-wing think tank. You seem to be trying to create a story that says “Look! Even Canadians think gun control is a failure!”. That is the opinion of a very small group of people working in an office building in downtown Vancouver. The popular consensus here is 180 degrees from that.
Turns out the gun found on the suspect was stolen.
There should be a law against stealing guns.
There should be a law against anyone under 21 posessing a handgun.
There should be a law against taking guns to school.
Problem solved.