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UPSG -> RE: No need to hijack (4/4/2009 10:51:42 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: TheHeretic
Guns are tools that make things die. A free people should have the right to own them. Discuss.
The issue here is complicated in my view - well, if not complicated then at least more than one layer to the issue exists.
The United States has a tradition of gun owning and or gun carrying citizenry. Before saying this is wrong or saying this is right, it would seem fair to acknowledge that there exists other alternatives to living in a civilized democracy. Are the citizens of London less free than the citizens of Detroit or Rio de Janeiro because the populace of London do not have as easy access to small arms weapons like the AK-47 or the semiautomatic pistol? And what constitutes "freedom"? Fear? Locked doors? Tribalism?
I'm largely pro-guns for a number of reasons not excluding shaping by U.S. traditions (but as I said in so many words - I acknowledge there are other ways to live). One thing a pistol can do is to erase the advantage a 6'4" 250 lbs man has as he rushes through a gate with an aluminum baseball bat. F*ck double tap, you can fire multiple times into his lower abdomen, close in and then finish with a shot to his throat.
That said, weaponry and tactics have advanced beyond the point where small arms weapons can be said to throw back a professional military. In the 1700's aviation warfare didn't exist and neither did modern paramilitary police forces. The cities of the United States are policed by law enforcement who have military grade weaponry and light armored vehicles - they even have helicopters, and the National Guard can be called up to suppress most civil unrest.
The other issue is that the streets of the United States are more violent then perhaps the 1930's - and perhaps even far more so than then, given that medical trauma care today reduces the homicide rate in the U.S. dramatically. Gun violence is a key factor in U.S. homicide rates, and that's an objective fact.
Full article: http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/29192834.html
quote:
Troy is one of thousands of shooting victims walking the streets of Milwaukee. Each year, on average, about 600 people are struck by gunfire in the city and survive, according to a Journal Sentinel analysis of data obtained from police, hospital and fire officials.
quote:
Traditionally, communities count homicides as an important measure of violence. Shootings that don't kill often aren't tracked with any precision, in part because the FBI doesn't require it.
Milwaukee has seen 94 homicides this year, down about 14% from this point in 2005. But serious shootings are coming in at a furious clip. Froedtert is on pace to treat 459 shooting patients in its trauma center by year's end, a 34% increase over last year. Through September, Children's Hospital was running 38% ahead of last year, when it treated 110 young gunshot victims.
Researchers say paramedics, doctors and nurses have become so good at preventing shootings from becoming deaths that the homicide rate is no longer an accurate barometer of violence.
These urban medics save thousands of people who are shot every year in cities around the country, using techniques that were honed in war zones from Vietnam to the Middle East.
Now their own innovations are helping their military counterparts save the lives of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Advances in emergency medical care over the last 40 years are responsible nationally for 30,000 to 50,000 fewer homicides annually, a study at the University of Massachusetts Amherst concluded in 2002.
Bold my emphasis.
There are 365 days in a year. Assuming the same people are not always being shot, then we can presume 600 people shot annually takes an enormous toll on a city (factoring in the population size of a given city also).
The other factor is that homicide and gun violence is not democratically spread across all communities in a city. So, usually the violence is concentrated in certain areas, which would suggest if a city has a homicide rate of 30 per 100,000 people, the neighborhoods where the gun violence is concentrated might presumably have homicide rates of something like 100 per 100,000 people. The FBI and most cities in the U.S. do not give the homicide rates of individual neighborhoods however.
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