Aswad
Posts: 9374
Joined: 4/4/2007
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quote:
ORIGINAL: servantforuse
Crimes like this go un noticed by the anti gun crowd here. It always seems to me that they are anti gun and not anti crime. Another armed passenger could have saved this passenger...
The thing about guns is that they give you range, putting multiple targets in your kill zone right off the bat.
A knife is far superior to a gun for a point blank range kill, but even in a packed crowd, there will be no more than 4-6 people in your kill zone, and just pinning your arm with corpses will put an end to the aggression before you do any more harm. Can you recall any instances where anyone took a knife to church, school, work or the bus, and then proceeded to kill a shitload of people with it? How many instances of the same have happened with guns in the same space of time, if you can even think of one incident?
Risk management is about net cost vs net risk, and public risk management does this at a population level.
My pencil has legitimate, non-violent uses. It is also a useful pointed weapon, i.e. knife. My razor has legitimate, non-violent uses. It is also a useful edged weapon, i.e. knife. There is no item in my household that makes a useful firearm that has any legitimate use other than to serve as a exactly that: a firearm. It is a given that if I buy a firearm that is not a registered antique or somesuch, it will be used as a firearm, or not used at all. Meaning that I can't realistically say that I have anything other than violence, or potential violence, in mind for it. Not so for a number of useful knives. I don't buy pencils and razors specifically for violent uses (most of the time, anyway); I buy those for other uses. Hence, I have legitimate, non-violent reasons for acquiring items that will serve me well as knives if I want one.
Banning guns only limits violent use.
Banning knives only limits non-violent use.
The former is also a less expensive measure than the latter is, making the tradeoff a simple one. Also bear in mind that accidental killings are a factor. The number of accidents have been more favorable lately, as I recall. But the ratio between lives saved and lives taken is still in the red, and there are no secondary uses for a firearm. That makes it one of those cases where you actually don't really care if a criminal has one or not, but you do care that random people don't. Simply put, accidents and the fact that this guy could have shot a number of people before anyone got him, plus the aforementioned ratio, makes any argument of prevention null and void at the interesting level.
Exceptions may exist for areas that mandate carrying a firearm and knowing how to use it, for all eligible citizens.
Note that whether only criminals have guns doesn't really matter, as unbannable homemade weapons would do just as well for most of the violent crime out there. Or would you care to forward the notion that a woman is more likely to fight back at a guy with a knife than one with a gun? Or that people would be more inclined to fight a robber with a knife than one with a gun? If so, and provided you're right, then Darwin wins again. And if not, then you'd have to agree that it gets the job done: the criminal gains. In fact, guns may very well contribute to keeping the standards of criminals lower.
Besides, a gun has less chance of killing non-criminal citizens if it belongs to a criminal.
I'm not anti-gun. Guns do have a legitimate civilian use: insurgency.
Just stop confusing the issue with crime, crazies and such.
Health,
al-Aswad.
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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RE: Sleeping man decapitated on Greyhound Bus - 
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