Guns

[TheButterZone]

We could argue about it all day long, each side will probably find sources and statistics data that prove our point of view.

The fact of the matter is, smarter people then us have been debating it for years longer then we probably ever will. Since they are still arguing about it, I highly doubt on a little forum like this that we'd find a solution.

Except there really is no debate, not amongst honest, peer-reviewed academics (professors, researchers, statisticians, economists, epidemiologists, etc) at least. As I understand it, there were initially three camps:
Unbiased academics
Honest anti-gun academics
Dishonest anti-gun academics paid by, or simply, criminal safety advocates

The honest anti-gun academics proved their own prejudices wrong with science, and retracted any flawed studies they had published. The dishonest anti-gun academics refused to publish their methodology, data sets, or respond to peer review & criticism.

So that leaves us the only honest debate being between those who can show guns in the hands of innocents don't increase crime at all (which should be obvious, as innocent people don't commit crimes), and those who can show more guns decrease crime overall, and the exact degree of how much of a decrease.

P.S. If you are figuring gun suicides as a reason to ban guns, then either 1) you must not believe people have the right to control their own destiny 2) you believe people don't commit suicides without guns, when in fact less guns usually equals more suicide with everything else

[vampire]

Except there really is no debate, not amongst honest, peer-reviewed academics (professors, researchers, statisticians, economists, epidemiologists, etc) at least. As I understand it, there were initially three camps:
Unbiased academics
Honest anti-gun academics
Dishonest anti-gun academics paid by, or simply, criminal safety advocates

The honest anti-gun academics proved their own prejudices wrong with science, and retracted any flawed studies they had published. The dishonest anti-gun academics refused to publish their methodology, data sets, or respond to peer review & criticism.

So that leaves us the only honest debate being between those who can show guns in the hands of innocents don't increase crime at all (which should be obvious, as innocent people don't commit crimes), and those who can show more guns decrease crime overall, and the exact degree of how much of a decrease.

P.S. If you are figuring gun suicides as a reason to ban guns, then either 1) you must not believe people have the right to control their own destiny 2) you believe people don't commit suicides without guns, when in fact less guns usually equals more suicide with everything else

There is no statistics to prove either way, because each situation is special. What works for one city, may not work for an another one. IF conceal carry worked then the crime in Detroit would be lower than in NYC, but stats shows that Detroit leads in violent crimes while NYC doesn't even make top 30.

[nimda]

Just to make it clear: I'm not anti-gun, I'm just playing on that side of the argument because it's the minority. I haven't yet formed a solid opinion.
What I'm looking for now is unbiased historical data which isn't cherry-picked. Simply showing one side of the data (people with gaping holes in vital organs die) isn't enough when the other side of the data may be stronger (people with guns are victims of crime less often).

[Equilux]

There is afcourse another factor that could tip the scale. Let me put it this way;

Yes, there are instances where having a gun on you will prevent harm, where otherwise harm would have certainly come to one or more people.

There are instances where having a gun doesn't alter the outcome in any way

There are also instances where having a gun on you actually makes things worse, meaning (serious) harm has been done to on or more persons where otherwise no, or very little harm would have occurred.

This are all the options, of which it is easy to think that they just occur between attacker and defender, between criminal and innocent civilian. And might make you think that it could be worth is anyway.

But these instances als happen between one (usually) normal innocent civilian, and another, when people don't act rationally like I've described in my earlier post. Almost all of these encounters usually happen without serious harm being done to either, but with one or more guns added to the mix, suddenly it can end in irrevocable disaster. To make this a bit less abstact, an example;

imagine just to guys getting into an argument, they didn't like eachother very much to begin with, but let's say one looked at the other his girlfriend the wrong way. Neither of them backs down. What normally happens is that a few punches get thrown and a 2 minute wrestle occurs. In the end they go home with a bloody nose, a few bruises and a black eye, and probably a bruised ego. Add one or more guns in the mix; suddenly one is dead and the other in jail.

It's excactly these frequent, but mostly harmless situations that suddenly have very grave consequenses where people act just human, or even fairly stupid, that illustrate where the real danger resides with being permitted to carry a gun.

[Brunic]

Wiser words have hardly ever been spoken. Guys, we can argue all day about gun control. The fact of the matter is, smarter people then us have been debating it for years longer then we probably ever will. Since they are still arguing about it, I highly doubt on a little forum like this that we'd find a solution.

Yeah, it's more a philosophical question than anything else. Our respective societies were build on a different model, with different values. I mean, USA got their independance shooting at the queen, while here in Canada, we're still stuck with her ugly face on our money.  

And Canadians are probably better at shooting hockey pucks than shooting a rifle, so we didn't want to take any chances with guns.  

Just to make it clear: I'm not anti-gun, I'm just playing on that side of the argument because it's the minority. I haven't yet formed a solid opinion.
What I'm looking for now is unbiased historical data which isn't cherry-picked. Simply showing one side of the data (people with gaping holes in vital organs die) isn't enough when the other side of the data may be stronger (people with guns are victims of crime less often).

Like I said before, it depends of the society. Try to write the US 2nd amendment in the Canadian constitution and the whole province of Québec is going into civil war, I swear. We're already suing the Canadian government because they want to destroy the gun registry and relax gun control. Our society valued that we didn't want to have an open access to firearms, and we want to control who owns them. We used other measures to prevent crimes, and overall, it work pretty well. Crime rate is really low, guns are well controlled and we like it this way.

But trying to implement this in the US would probably be harder, because this society value other things. That's why I think that arguing about stats and data is pretty irrelevant, and trying to prove the other side wrong is a waste of time. I can't be "wrong" about gun control, because it work in my society model.

[TheButterZone]

There is no statistics to prove either way, because each situation is special. What works for one city, may not work for an another one. IF conceal carry worked then the crime in Detroit would be lower than in NYC, but stats shows that Detroit leads in violent crimes while NYC doesn't even make top 30.

In Michigan, the right to self-defense is converted to a taxed privilege that costs a minimum of $105. If you're poor and law-abiding (like most Detroitans), you're legally defenseless - if you can even afford a gun (or inherit/are gifted one), ammo, and range time. http://www.michigan.gov/msp/0,4643,7-123-1586_27094-10953--,00.html

The poorer the area, the lesser people are able to pay an unconstitutional tax to exercise their fundamental human rights, or sue in federal court for the deprivation thereof. The tax is many times higher in NYC (and entirely arbitrary and capricious), but so are the incomes, bribes, and campaign contributions to ensure the privilege is granted.

Like I said before, it depends of the society. Try to write the US 2nd amendment in the Canadian constitution and the whole province of Québec is going into civil war, I swear. We're already suing the Canadian government because they want to destroy the gun registry and relax gun control.

Government security breaches are commonplace. Gods forbid violent criminals lose their lists of where to steal guns from, let alone stare down the barrels of their intended murder, rape, maiming victims and surrender or flee.

[caveden]

I bet with you that, if 20% of those people had guns in their homes, at least the eviction process would have been conducted in a much more civilized manner. The police wouldn't dare to do it the way they've done it.

LOL. You assume that police doesn't have access to heavy hardware?

I assume they are not suicidal, and that politicians don't want to trigger a potential revolution. Probably the eviction would have happened regardless of people having guns or not, but they wouldn't have done it so brutally, passing bulldozers over the neighborhood, doesn't even giving time for people to take their furniture, belongings and pets out. People were even ran over and killed by those trying to run away from police bombs. Even the police captain admitted that police used excessive force in the operation.

If the population was partially armed, such an attitude from the police would potentially turn an eviction into a mini civil war, potentially sparkling something much bigger. Politicians definitely don't want that - what was done was already enough to put a lot of pressure on them, if a mini-war happened, things would get much more serious. No wonder why politicians all over the world want to take guns out of people's hands. Even in the sole nation I'm aware of where there's an explicit and clear constitutional amendment forbidding that, governments do it nevertheless.

[caveden]

It's not very high on our list of concerns. If we banned smoking for one year, we'd save more then ten times the amount of people that would die from gun violence in a year.

Oh please, you want to ban smoking now? Just let people kill themselves as much as they want! Jeez...

We could argue about it all day long, each side will probably find sources and statistics data that prove our point of view.

Wiser words have hardly ever been spoken. Guys, we can argue all day about gun control. The fact of the matter is, smarter people then us have been debating it for years longer then we probably ever will. Since they are still arguing about it, I highly doubt on a little forum like this that we'd find a solution.

If that's really so, why don't we just stick with ethics then? It's plain simple, logic and straightforward: you don't get to use violence against someone who's not using violence against anyone. Somebody merely bearing a gun isn't causing harm to anyone. Nobody should use violence against him only for that.

[caveden]

And Canadians are probably better at shooting hockey pucks than shooting a rifle, so we didn't want to take any chances with guns.  

The thing is that you don't get to tell what other Canadians should be doing, at least not in an authoritarian manner. If a single innocent person, Canadian or not, wants to own a firearm, the rest of the entire planet has no ethical right to stop him/her.

[caveden]

Anyway, giving guns to people to reduce crime is not solving the source of the problem, the crimes.

It might not change the nature of criminals, but it might change at least the way they would proceed. In Brazil, as criminals know people are mostly defenseless, they don't burglar your house. They just wait for you to come back from work, point a gun at you, and rob you with the convenience of you telling where things are, giving your bank card for some withdraws while others watch you and so on.
In places where lots of people have guns, criminals tend to prefer furtive burglaries, when nobody's at home.

We could argue about it all day long, each side will probably find sources and statistics data that prove our point of view.

Off-topic, but that's why the human action should be studied praxeologically, not empirically.

A big majority didn't dream of becoming a criminal, but circumstances in life brought them at that point. It's not news that poor neighborhood have a higher crime rate than richer ones. Schools makes wonders long-term to reduce crime, but the effect of guns on crime rate is debatable.

Here you are just saying poor people tent to be more criminal. Hooray to prejudice!

I wonder if all these hackers stealing from bitcoin owners are also from poor families who lacked education...

I don't believe the level of income or education influences a person moral values. What it does influence, is how criminals will act. Those who have criminal intends but lack education, will probably resort to violent crimes, as that's all they know how to do. Smarter immoral people will resort to elaborate scams, cybercrime, creating "new religions", political career etc, that is, ways to take other people's money that are more efficient, call less attention and are much less risky - sometimes not even ethically/legally criminal, but immoral for any person capable of understanding what's going on.
Summarizing, IMHO being poor/uneducated doesn't influence the chances of being immoral, it just influences the kind of attitudes and immoral person will have.

Yeah, I agree than in certain countries in the world, I would prefer having a gun with me. But it's only a short-term solution, that only provides me self-defense in an hostile environment.

It's not just self-defense in dangerous situations. An armed society is also a strong dissuasion against some types of crimes. The idea is that you never really have to pull the gun.

In my country, we worked to provide free education and free health care to any citizen

There's no such thing as a free lunch.
These services are financed with money stolen from the productive sector. That's just another disguised, massive crime. If massively increasing theft is your technique to reduce criminality rates, you're doing it wrong.

That the guy who need to steal or sell drug to survive is going to stop?

There's nothing wrong with selling drugs, it should be allowed. And nobody needs to steal to survive.

But I really think you should put energy to make a society where your citizens can feel safe without a gun.

Ok if you want to dedicate effort to that. But you should realize societies cannot be engineered.

And if you live in a society where you're more afraid of the corrupted police force or the governement than criminals, get a cellphone instead of a gun.

Why not both?

Anyway, I know I'm against the majority here, and I simply taught that you could find interesting of having a complete opposite point of view of somebody who lives in a society where guns are irrelevant.

It's perfectly fine to have one's opinion on that matter, and not wanting a gun. The problem is that normally those who advocate gun control want to impose their opinions on others, by forcing them not to have guns.

[FirstAscent]

If that's really so, why don't we just stick with ethics then? It's plain simple, logic and straightforward: you don't get to use violence against someone who's not using violence against anyone. Somebody merely bearing a gun isn't causing harm to anyone. Nobody should use violence against him only for that.

Don't be an idiot. I'm serious. And I'm going to predict that you can't see the idiocy of your statement quoted above, which will only reinforce my opinion.

[Explodicle]

Poor countries have more crime - guns or not.

In other words, Guns don't kill people, people kill people?

Repeating memes might indicate that to argue your case, you can't think on your feet, can't post original arguments, and are victim to group think.

Based on my biased personal experience, less original statements are more often true than clever new statements. Not to make an appeal to the masses, but good ideas often become memes, and bad ideas often die with their creator.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/culture/is-there-a-%E2%80%98liberal-gene%E2%80%99/
"Some of the questions used to measure openness are also used to measure novelty seeking, so we thought people with the gene related to novelty seekers might be more open and therefore more liberal."

[Distribution]

I haven't read through all of the replies here, but for me what it boils down to is this: whether or not you trust freedom. I don't mean that in "you're with or against us" kind of way, but the idea of actual freedom scares a lot of people. Because to have it, you have to give it to others. Sometimes it's messy. But most of the time people all acting in their own self-interest leads to a mutually beneficial situation (as in RodeoX's example). People having guns deters crime. It's simple economics. Citizens having guns deter governments, or at least make them think twice about their actions. But as has been said, there is statistical evidence to suggest that widespread gun ownership reduces violent crime, especially murder. See this and this.

I don't know if you've used guns before, but once you do, you start to trust them. You see how as a person you control it, which means you really just have to be afraid of bad people in the world. But that's the case with or without guns. One of the biggest things though is the culture and the education kids (yes, children) receive about guns. The people I see act most irresponsible and dangerous with guns are people who didn't grow up with them or people who did grow up with them in a place that didn't encourage responsible gun ownership (like New York). In addition, when you look at how the United States government teaches us how to solve problems, it's no wonder people turn to the gun. The crime in our country has more to do with the social and political climate more so than the presence of guns.

We can look at graphs of crime in Canada and say, "See! Fewer guns, fewer deaths." But Canada doesn't have a culture that wants to bomb everyone around the world. Canada's military spending isn't half of what the world spends in military spending. Canada isn't an immigrant nation (which have higher rates of violent crime). It's hard to point at one factor as a definite cause of crime, and then assume that by eliminating that factor we'll have peace.

Like I said, I didn't read every post so I hope these points haven't been posted before.

[FirstAscent]

Poor countries have more crime - guns or not.

In other words, Guns don't kill people, people kill people?

Repeating memes might indicate that to argue your case, you can't think on your feet, can't post original arguments, and are victim to group think.

Based on my biased personal experience, less original statements are more often true than clever new statements. Not to make an appeal to the masses, but good ideas often become memes, and bad ideas often die with their creator.

Not true. Memes such as the one in question are slogans, mantras, etc., fabricated by people with agendas. It's basically PR, brainwashing, and laziness on the part of the meme spreader.

Consider: Guns empower people to kill people. Guns empower people to kill people at a distance. Guns empower people to have accidents otherwise not possible. Guns are the tool to kill.

There is nothing more irrelevant than the idea or notion that guns don't kill people but people kill people.

Explodicle, I like you when you do make good observations. This wasn't one of them.

[Brunic]

There's no such thing as a free lunch.
These services are financed with money stolen from the productive sector. That's just another disguised, massive crime. If massively increasing theft is your technique to reduce criminality rates, you're doing it wrong.

I probably need a gun to fight against those criminals who want free education and free healthcare  

Honestly, I can't believe I just read that in 2012. I taught we evolved from the stone age...

It's perfectly fine to have one's opinion on that matter, and not wanting a gun. The problem is that normally those who advocate gun control want to impose their opinions on others, by forcing them not to have guns.

Yeah, that's exactly right, and you know why? Because you need limits in life, you need rules that defines how far you can go.

If you permit guns for citizens, why don't you also give them the options to buy grenades, bazooka or nuclear bombs? I mean, they need to defend themselves right? What are they going to do with their 9mm if a criminal with a tank want to attack their house? You can't buy nuclear bombs at wal-mart because your society decided for a limit in weaponry. The difference between your society and mine is that my society used a more severe limit on weapons. No rights have been violated, we simply made stricter rules about that, that's all.

We can look at graphs of crime in Canada and say, "See! Fewer guns, fewer deaths." But Canada doesn't have a culture that wants to bomb everyone around the world. Canada's military spending isn't half of what the world spends in military spending. Canada isn't an immigrant nation (which have higher rates of violent crime). It's hard to point at one factor as a definite cause of crime, and then assume that by eliminating that factor we'll have peace.

I was about to ragequit this topic, but your reply just popped. Thanks dude, I still have hope! Somebody who understand I'm not living in Brazil, India or Pakistan and that stories of poor women getting robbed butshouldhaveagun is not the case here. And why is that? Because we didn't build our society that way.

[FirstAscent]

If you permit guns for citizens, why don't you also give them the options to buy grenades, bazooka or nuclear bombs? I mean, they need to defend themselves right? What are they going to do with their 9mm if a criminal with a tank want to attack their house? You can't buy nuclear bombs at wal-mart because your society decided for a limit in weaponry. The difference between your society and mine is that my society used a more severe limit on weapons. No rights have been violated, we simply made stricter rules about that, that's all.

Trust me, some of the same individuals (at least one) in this thread have indeed argued in this forum in a very long thread for the right for individuals to own nuclear weapons. I kid you not. And it wasn't just a quick mention - it was hundreds and hundreds of posts arguing for just that.

[cmg5461]

If you permit guns for citizens, why don't you also give them the options to buy grenades, bazooka or nuclear bombs? I mean, they need to defend themselves right? What are they going to do with their 9mm if a criminal with a tank want to attack their house? You can't buy nuclear bombs at wal-mart because your society decided for a limit in weaponry. The difference between your society and mine is that my society used a more severe limit on weapons. No rights have been violated, we simply made stricter rules about that, that's all.

Trust me, some of the same individuals (at least one) in this thread have indeed argued in this forum in a very long thread for the right for individuals to own nuclear weapons. I kid you not. And it wasn't just a quick mention - it was hundreds and hundreds of posts arguing for just that.

Why shouldn't we own nuclear weapons?  Every man has the right to own atom splitting devices for protection against total government domination.  WE need to be able to put the government in its place.  If they knew every man had a neutron decaying device sitting in their kitchen cabinet there is NO WAY IN HELL they will be kicking down your door.  Would they risk frying every electrical device in a 5 mile radius just to take your ass to jail? FUCK NO.

Imagine is Soviet Russia started sending nukes over to us?  INTERCEPTION, WE ALL HAVE NUKES.  Men, we're going to fight for the country we live in.  1 nuke vs. 300 million.  Bring it on Korea.

also:
>derail

[caveden]

Yeah, that's exactly right, and you know why? Because you need limits in life, you need rules that defines how far you can go.

I'd say it's precisely people wanting to coercively control other people's lives, like you, who desperately need to learn their limits.

If you permit guns for citizens, why don't you also give them the options to buy grenades, bazooka

It's not me who's taking their options to buy these!

or nuclear bombs? (...) You can't buy nuclear bombs at wal-mart because your society decided for a limit in weaponry.

Nuclear bombs cannot be used for self-defense. Their usage will inevitably hurt innocents.
Plus, relax, even in a truly free society, nobody would be able to buy weapons of mass destruction in a super-market. Not only it's totally unfeasible, as absurds like this can be prevented without coercive institutions. You can even have some level of "voluntary gun control" in free societies, and I believe you'd probably have the option of living in a "gun free" place if that's what you wanted.

Finally, "my society" (which?) hasn't decided anything, because that's impossible. Societies don't make decisions. You seem to confuse societies with governments, that's a serious mistake.

[Distribution]

We can look at graphs of crime in Canada and say, "See! Fewer guns, fewer deaths." But Canada doesn't have a culture that wants to bomb everyone around the world. Canada's military spending isn't half of what the world spends in military spending. Canada isn't an immigrant nation (which have higher rates of violent crime). It's hard to point at one factor as a definite cause of crime, and then assume that by eliminating that factor we'll have peace.

I was about to ragequit this topic, but your reply just popped. Thanks dude, I still have hope! Somebody who understand I'm not living in Brazil, India or Pakistan and that stories of poor women getting robbed butshouldhaveagun is not the case here. And why is that? Because we didn't build our society that way.

Another thing I forgot to mention is that Canada doesn't house 1/4 of the world's prisoners (with only 5% of the world's population).

I certainly understand that every country (and state for that matter) is unique in its make up. I live in a town where if you go outside of it and tell someone you have two guns, they say "What?! Are you preparing for war?" whereas in the town they'll say, "Did someone steal the rest?" There aren't a lot of shooting deaths here. Everyone here was raised around guns and nobody makes comments like "Don't make him mad, he has guns."

That's why I said it comes to being comfortable with freedom. Some people are comfortable with the freedom of an armed citizenry, some people aren't. We should be able to choose as individuals which is best for us (and not necessarily free to choose what's best for everyone else). So if a community wants to ban guns, they should be able to. While I don't think they should, I think it should be possible for the sake of freedom. But I also think every person should go shooting at least once, because the majority of people I've experienced who are anti-gun have never shot one.

However, this July 4th I'll be thankful the founders had guns which they used to give us Independence Day rather than Canada Day.  

[myrkul]

or nuclear bombs? (...) You can't buy nuclear bombs at wal-mart because your society decided for a limit in weaponry.

Nuclear bombs cannot be used for self-defense. Their usage will inevitably hurt innocents.

Used, no. They cannot be used without harming innocents, at least not on Earth. Asteroid mining is another matter. But my goodness, they're a great deterrent. Thus, they can be owned and kept defensively, and used for peaceful purposes.