Another shooting in the USA. Remind me about the reason for having guns again. - by SubJeff
Ryan Smith on 30/8/2012 at 19:29
Why are we talking about gun control? Guns don't kill, criminals kill.
LarryG on 30/8/2012 at 21:00
Because all factors that contribute significantly to death and injury are worthy of discussion?
Consider it a human health issue.
Gun related deaths and injuries are at endemic in the United States (that is they are both at significant levels and at a steady state over time and geography). Sometime this is mistakenly called epidemic or even pandemic, but that would indicate a widespread increase in cases of gun related mayhem, which is not the case. We just have a "low grade infection" of the body politic which is harming large numbers of our citizens on a consistent basis.
Some might argue that these deaths and injuries each year are just the price of freedom and we should accept them. Some might argue that having constant ear infections is just the price that needs to be paid to swim in polluted water. I think that if we can clean up the water, we could swim in it without getting sick. Similarly I think that if we could manage (note, I don't say regulate) the guns properly we could have the freedom we desire without so many unnecessary deaths. It's just a public health problem. And it doesn't even need an expensive drug to fix, just a little non-inflammatory discussion and decisions. Perhaps we need a political analgesic to get the inflammatory remarks down before we can address the core issues? All I know is that our current immune systems need a boost to address it, otherwise we would have recovered from this disease long ago.
Chimpy Chompy on 30/8/2012 at 22:22
Quote Posted by Keyla The Otter
Why are we talking about gun control? Guns don't kill, criminals kill.
man this entire thread has been waiting for such enlightment. Why didn't we think of that earler? All gun control debates resolved, forever. :cool:
june gloom on 30/8/2012 at 22:29
I was going to reply to that comment but then I saw it was Keyla the Otter, no real reason to engage with her.
Jason Moyer on 31/8/2012 at 03:40
Urban areas have higher homicide rates than either suburban or rural areas. The vast majority of violent crime does not involve firearms (I'm talking over 60% here) but a higher percentage of violent crimes involve firearms in urban areas than suburban or rural.
Gun ownership in rural and suburban areas is more prevalent than in urban areas. Support for gun rights is higher in rural and suburban areas than in urban areas.
My question is - if firearms are a problem, why a.) are most violent crimes committed without them and b.) is the homicide rate lower in areas where more people carry them?
CCCToad on 31/8/2012 at 03:43
Quote Posted by Keyla The Otter
Why are we talking about gun control? Guns don't kill, criminals kill.
Ridiculous. All killing involves death, so the solution is just to outlaw death.
Shug on 31/8/2012 at 04:54
Where are those stats from, Jason? That's fairly interesting. I assume the threat of producing a firearm is included as 'using' one - for example, flashing a weapon or having a suspicious item in one's jacket.
Beleg Cúthalion on 31/8/2012 at 07:45
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
My question is - if firearms are a problem, why a.) are most violent crimes committed without them
Probably for the same reason alcohol is a problem for car drivers, even though most accidents (at least in Europe AFAIK) are caused by sober drivers.
DDL on 31/8/2012 at 08:19
Also, saying "the vast majority (over 60%)" is problematic, because
A) 60% is not that vast a majority if purely compared against the other 40%, and
B) when your category is "everything not gun-related", what you're really saying is 40% of ALL violent crime is gun-related.
So if gun crime is 40%, beatings are 20%, stabbings are 20%, rape is 10% and 'other' is 10% (numbers entirely pulled out of nowhere for pure thought experiment example, because that BJS website is fucking awful to navigate), then you could say "60% is not gun related", but it would be a highly misleading representation of the data.
Also, I'm assuming the 'homicide rate' is adjusted for population (because...seriously), but even then that would tend to miss quorum effects. It's not just that urban areas have more people (total), they also have more people closer together: it's going to be much harder to establish a gang in a farming village somewhere in the corn belt than it is in say...compton.
It's not as simple as "guns per person": gun owners in low population density, low crime areas could have eighty guns each, but it wouldn't change the fact that they're in low population density, low crime areas. Conversely, a high population density, high crime area is going to produce violent crime no matter how you cut it, but adding guns to the mix (any number of guns) is going to convert a lot of non-lethal crime to lethal crime.
