njlauren
Posts: 1577
Joined: 10/1/2011
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quote:
ORIGINAL: BamaD
quote:
ORIGINAL: njlauren
Okay, I am going to enter this one, because the pro gun, arm everyone school of things is pulling one of the oldest tricks in the book, they use one example and claim it proves something, and it doesn't. Sure, there are cases where someone armed has helped stopped a crime, there is no doubt about it, but making stupid claims like "all the mass shootings have happened in gun free zones" is a)not true and b)doesn't prove anything.
Newtown happened in a school in Connecticut, so that is a gun free zone. However, there have been mass shootings in states with liberal carry laws and gun laws, the Aurora colorado movie theater didn't have metal detectors (obviously) and colorado has relatively easy gun laws, so how come the guy was able to do what he did?
I also will add take a look at crime statistics in this country, and you might be a bit shocked. Some of the highest rates of violent crimes happen in states with pretty liberal gun laws, take a look at FBI stats, and Texas was in the top 5 of per capital violent crime, murder, rape, etc...despite all the gun guys running around saying how it deters crime. NY, NJ and Connecticut have pretty strict gun laws, yet for example, NYC has one of the lowest homicide rates in the country, and its per capita rate is eons lower then Dallas (and I believe Houston as well). If what the gun proponents are claiming is true, the southern states with lax gun laws should be at the bottom of the crime stats, but they are not, they are up in the top percentages if you look at the FBI sites, while states with relatively tough laws are much lower.
And the exceptions with lax gun laws and low crime that fun proponents have thrown at me are examples of not looking at the whole picture. States like Montana have low crime rates and lax gun laws, but it also is an unfair comparison, because those are very rural states with very low population density (I think Montana's total population is less then 3 or 4 counties in my area combined...). On the other hand, no surprise, the Dakotas, which likewise have lax gun laws, are showing rapid rises in crime, violent and otherwise, thanks to oil and gas revenue, and all those guns don't seem to be stemming the tide.
I am neither an NRA purist nor a total anti gun, ban them person, but I get tired when I hear idiotic arguments from both sides.The NRA/Rural "guns should be available to all, easy to get as buying nails" is just as stupid to me as 'ban guns completely', neither works well, but that doesn't mean we don't need rational gun laws, that unlike todays laws, prevents guns easily getting into wrong hands. Using examples and citing correlation is causation is always a big problem in this debate, and you are dealing with complex factors. NYC would have a lot easier time of it if they didn't have states like Virginia and Georgia whose gun laws are so lax, that they invite people to make money funneling guns into the black market. One way to solve this would be if guns used in commission of a crime in one state were bought legally in another, and the person who bought that gun never reported it lost or stolen, it would be a federal crime irregardless of what their home state had as law, and the person would be tried and sentenced as selling guns illegally. It is perfectly legal under the constitution, since such an action is interstate which is legal jurisdiction for the feds, and it would stop some bright boy who figures he can fill up his trunk with guns legally, sell them in the black market, and not have to worry, now he does. Or pass a federal law that all states have mandatory reporting for when guns are lost or stolen; if Joe Billy Bob keeps buying guns and has to report them if they are lost or stolen, he isn't going to be able to get away with selling guns illegally. These are rational laws, extensions of common sense law, that states like Virginia and Georgia refuse to enact because quite frankly they probably think it is a good source of revenue for the good ole boys and the gun shop owners.
I also will state something obvious, that if we allowed in all places in this country the kind of lax carry laws the extreme pro gun advocates want, what will be the consequences? With the hodgepodge of laws we have today, it is hard to tell, but the question needs to be asked. Will for every crime prevented, like the case of this hospital, will we see 10 accidental shootings, where someone opens fire thinking they have killed a perp? When Gabby Giffords was shot, someone wrestled the perp to the ground, and some drugstore cowboy who was carrying, coming out of the convenience store, came close to shooting the good samaritan. How many of those would we see if we allowed lax carry and ownership laws? How many people per capital are shot and killed accidentally in the lax carry states like Texas, and more importantly, how many criminals get guns easily there because of the lax laws? What statistics are there for Texas, with some of the loosest gun laws in the country, on how many crimes are stopped by armed people getting involved? And how many accidental shootings do they have where people mistakenly shoot? It is great to make claims like easy gun ownership will prevent crime, but what if the consequences are worse than any crime prevented? I will reiterate that despite claims of pro gun people, there is little statistical evidence that lax gun laws prevent crime, like I said, the FBI stats show that a lot of the loose gun law states, like Texas, Georgia and Virginia, have higher rates of crime, including violent crime, then states with tight ones, and the states with lax gun laws that also have low crime also tend to be low population density where it is a lot harder to commit crimes (and where gun ownership makes sense).
Among other things, both extremes are wrong because they don't take into account every area of the country is different. What works for rural Alaska won't work for Chicago, what works for rural Texas might not be so good for Dallas. But instead of rational gun laws that keep guns out of the hands of the ones who shouldn't have it (and the bullshit about enforcing current laws is most of them are punishing people after they have killed or hurt someone, not preventing it). The worse part is that primarily because of the GOP, there are no large scale studies of guns and how gun laws affect crime, violence and accidental killings, there are stats, but there are no serious studies being funded because the federal agencies are forbidden from doing them, not to mention there being no funding for them, primarily because the extreme gun supporters know if serious studies are done that their broad based claims about easy carry laws preventing crime are dubious and more importantly, that the cost of those lax gun laws is much higher then any benefit. I am not saying we should ban guns, I am saying we can't come up with rational gun laws if we don't have evidence to back it. Some congressman from Texas saying "guns prevent crimes" is not fact, nor is Maxine Waters saying "all guns should be banned". You can't make rational law without facts, and facts take controlled studies factoring out bullshit, factoring out independent variables that skew the numbers, and come to do serious causality....and to me, it is telling that the GOP has been the primary reason this hasn't happened. If what the gun proponents claim is true, then they would welcome such studies of actual benefits and costs of easy gun ownership, get some serious funding and let real analysis happen. Based on the hodgepodge of data I have seen, I suspect quite strongly that easy gun ownership doesn't do all that much to deter crime, and that those loose laws actually help fuel crime a lot more, both in the home state and also, through no accountability in the home state, guns flooding the black market.
For the record, even in strict carry law states like mine, people who are at risk are allowed to carry, couriers carrying large amounts of cash or valuables are allowed to, for example. It is interesting the doctor who shot the guy was facing a mental patient with a gun, does it dawn on the loose carry crowd that maybe, just maybe, if the state had strong laws on buying and carrying guns, that the nut wouldn't have access to a gun? The reason the black market works as it does today is because they are fed a steady stream of legally purchased guns, something like 65% of the guns they pull off the streets in NYC were bought legally in a handful of states, for example, and because of that steady stream of legally purchased guns, guns are relatively cheap on the black market. If they had to smuggle them in, if it was hard to get supply, the cost of black market guns would be so high, that it would deter many from getting them. Not to mention, of course, that in the lax gun law states, mentally ill people, like the Korean kid in Virginia, can often buy guns because the background check done is a joke. I can't recall a cause in NJ, my home state, of someone mentally ill being legally able to buy a gun, because in NJ there is a real background check, not the brady bill instant one, but a full background check that takes time.
Not going to make a point by point response to your long post.
A view key points however.
1 Being declared a danger to yourself and/or others should be in the background system. The main opposition to that I have seen on here have come from pro gun control people. They would rather take away every ones Constitutional right than infringe on the privacy of the truly dangerous.
2 Nobody wants people to be able to buy guns "as easy as buying a box of nails"
3 The theater in Aurora was the only one in the area with a no carry policy, i. e the theater had declared it to be a gun free zone.
4 There have been studies on armed citizens shooting the wrong person, I have posted them before, and they show that it happens more often with the police.
5 Arm everyone? Again you exaggerate.
6 One irrelevant incident? Hardly, studies also show that armed resistance reduces the body count, that even unarmed resistance does. This lowers the profile of such cases.
1)In virginia, their reporting laws specifically don't have provisions for mental health patients, hence the Korean koo koo getting a gun legally. More importantly, the 'gun control' people most specifically want better background checks, your statement is complete Fox News bullshit, to say the least, it is made up claims of liberals 'protecting' the mentally ill. The instant background check that the GOP fought and watered down is a big part of the problem, because it precludes real checking, because the extreme pro gun crowd does not want comprehensive background checks. Put it this way, in NJ when you want to buy a gun, you get fingerprinted and it runs through detailed checks with the FBI and such, they have done studies of the system here, compared to the electronic background check mandated by the brady bill, and the NJ system flagged a larger percentage of people, caught serious problems the electronic one doesn't cover (not to mention, of course, the private exemption that basically has no checks).
2)Really? The NRA fought the background check rule, they fought and continue to fight the laws that prohibited buying guns by mail and then on the net, they have fought vociferously tighter standards on gun purchases, like limiting how many guns you can buy at a time and how often (which would deter the fill up the trunk and sell them in the black market)...they also have fought registration rules that would hold gun owners accountable. Put it this way, Bama, in Georgia, Virginia, Florida and other states, it is a lot easier to buy guns then it is to get licensed to drive a car and register the car.
Not to mention, of course, the NRA fighting laws banning teflon bullets (whose only purpose is to cut through body armor), talon bullet, dum dum bullets, and limits on magazine size on semi automatic weapons. The NRA has come out outright and said that it sees the second amendment as guaranteeing unfettered access to guns, and they fought the brady bill and the background checks, they have continued in court to try and get gun registration laws off the books. When Congress tried to pass laws about how many guns could be bought at a time, the NRA squelched it through the GOP.......we have national laws governing registering boats, we have laws on registering cars and licensing drivers, we have very little laws with guns nationally, they barely managed to pass a basic background check requirement (that the GOP has been trying to get rid of as well, arguing it is too burdensome), so it is really hard for you or any gun proponent to argue that the goal of the extreme gun nuts is to make them pretty easy to purchase.
3)Did the theater have metal detectors to prevent people from carrying? Also, do we know the shooter chose that theater cause it didn't allow carry?
4)I would love to see those studies, last studies I saw showed that police as whole use their guns a very low percent of the time. I have seen some "studies" that claim that, but what they do is make arguments like x million civilians own guns, and there are Y cases of them shooting someone by mistake, whereas there are Z cops, and L percentage of them shoot innocent people....it is silly statistics. Cops at least spend time in training on how to use deadly force, and they have rules. They spend time in training on assessing situations and deciding where to use deadly force, which I am sorry, most John Q gunowner has not had, most people who own guns at best have had a basic gun safety course (most states don't even require any kind of instruction, or proof of it, while many states now have mandatory boat safety courses, and of course driver's license tests). I would love to see a study that has been put through rigorous fact checking before believing that one.
5)The common argument made by the NRA and pro gun types is that if you allow people to carry weapons, to the point that some towns have tried laws forcing people to have guns, it will reduce crime. The NRA after Virginia tech argued that if the student body had been carrying weapons, koo koo would have been shot dead before doing anything. One of the questions none of them could answer was if the college campus, or society at large, allowed carry in any kind of numbers, what would happen? Would kids have gotten spooked by what happened on campus, not knowing what is going on, and shoot another student by mistake, in panic? The NRA watches too many movies, they are in total denial about panic, about what happens when the shit hits the fan. Guys in the military make all kinds of fucking stupid mistakes in combat, often because they are scared shitless, as much as 20% of casualties can be friendly fire...and you expect John Q public not to panic, when they have zilch training?
6)Studies showing armed resistance reducing body count? Sure, it sounds great on paper, and I am sure it has happened, someone pulls a gun out and shoots someone before they do damage. The problem with those studies is that they are studying something with no controlled basis, where all the factors in the situation are taken into account. I have heard claims, for example, that at Newtown in connecticut had a guard or a teacher been armed, the slaughter wouldn't have happened.....but would some clown with a 9 mm pistol been able to take out Adam Lanza, or would he have likely blown them away with the firepower he had before they could shoot? We don't know of course, but unless you do a longitudinal study where causative factors are separated out, no such study shows much.
And like I said, take a look at the crime stats for loose gun carry states, take a look at the southern states, including Florida, that have lax gun laws, or take a look at texas, and compare their crime rates, specifically violent crime rates, to NY, NJ, Connecticut and other states with strict gun laws, and then tell me how people carrying weapons reduces crime, or prevents it before it happens. Texas was top 5 in violent crime and the other loose gun states were in the top 10 last I checked, if your theory is right, gun owners should have blown away the bad guys, but the stats say differently.
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RE: Doctor shoots man at hospital - 
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