What did this family not have that it needed?

[Blind groper]

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firea ... and-death/

The above reference is a summary of research results from Harvard University. The clear conclusion across different developed countries and comparing American states is that where there are more guns, there are more murders. More guns = more killings.

Seth, you do not realise that you, yourself, with your attitude, are a symptom of a major disease afflicting the USA. The disease is guns, the love of guns, and the harm that guns do. It is not just murder, though that is the most obvious harm.

It is also the wide ranging crimes committed with guns. Robberies and assaults with guns in the USA add up to 100 per 100,000 people per year.

Your solution to gun crime is more guns. That is like a country with a smallpox epidemic 'solving' the problem by injecting lots of people with live smallpox virus to make them immune. If you do that, there will, indeed, be survivors who become immune. But there will be a great many extra deaths as well.

So it is with guns. More guns means a few survivors but a lot more victims.

[Seth]

If the above post is correct, and that is the number of offensive uses by guns each year, it is time they were seriously restricted. Why you Americans put up with your situation is beyond me. Most Americans are intelligent people, but this is lunacy.

Why? What are you, some kind of criminal that you don't want victims to defend themselves? That's the only explanation I can think of for your completely asinine statement.

People use guns to defend themselves because they have an absolute and unquestionable right to defend themselves against criminal violence. If they can do so without firing a shot, as appears to be the case, so much the better. Why on earth would you want to prohibit people from protecting themselves?

And using a gun for self defense is not an "offensive use." You're just propagandizing and trying to move the goalpost again because your thesis has been destroyed, yet again, by credible sources...yet again.

Give it up.

[Seth]

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firea ... and-death/

The above reference is a summary of research results from Harvard University. The clear conclusion across different developed countries and comparing American states is that where there are more guns, there are more murders. More guns = more killings.

Seth, you do not realise that you, yourself, with your attitude, are a symptom of a major disease afflicting the USA. The disease is guns, the love of guns, and the harm that guns do. It is not just murder, though that is the most obvious harm.

It is also the wide ranging crimes committed with guns. Robberies and assaults with guns in the USA add up to 100 per 100,000 people per year.

Your solution to gun crime is more guns. That is like a country with a smallpox epidemic 'solving' the problem by injecting lots of people with live smallpox virus to make them immune. If you do that, there will, indeed, be survivors who become immune. But there will be a great many extra deaths as well.

So it is with guns. More guns means a few survivors but a lot more victims.

No, it's like immunizing people by using a killed virus vaccine. Doing so puts antibodies in the bloodstream that kill the smallpox virus when it attempts to infect the person, just as having a gun kills the virus of criminal violence before it can harm the body.

Smallpox has been largely eliminated not by banning vaccines but by doing everything possible to make vaccination universal. Do people still die from smallpox vaccinations? Yes, they do, but the overall benefit to humanity makes those tragic losses a worthy sacrifice.

Firearms are no different at all. Do innocent people die because firearms exist? Of course they do, but many millions more do not die because they are armed. Like vaccines, firearms work best when everyone who needs one has one when they need it. And like viral infections, where it's impossible to predict when someone will be exposed to the pathogen and will need the immunity, it's impossible to predict which persons will need a gun to protect themselves, and therefore the only reasonable method of immunizing society against the disease of criminal violence is to allow everyone who wants one to be armed. Indeed, the viral analogy suggests that it is in the best interests of society for each person to be compelled to own a gun, as a matter of public safety and health, because where there is a large pool of unarmed persons, just like a large pool of unvaccinated persons, the disease will take root and infect the whole community. This process is the same for Ebola as it is for Chicago's East Side, where law-abiding citizens can't have guns so violent crime runs rampant.

Thanks for bringing up that analogy, it's a good one...though not for your thesis.

[Blind groper]

On the virus metaphor...

The equivalent of using dead virus as a vaccine is the proper use of a well trained police force. When vaccinating, you use just enough of the infective agent to create immunity, but not enough to kill. A well trained police force does that, without the great harm that making guns available to everyone does.

Here in NZ, we have rational restrictions on gun ownership. Guess what, Seth? The end result is that guns are few and far between, and criminals in the main do not have them and do not use them. NZ has a gun crime incident of 1.7% of total violent crimes. Violent criminals, in other words, rarely use guns. In the USA gun crime is tragically common. Approximately 300,000 gun crime incidents per year. And 100,000 people each year who receive a bullet through some part of their body.

The idea that more guns is a good thing is beyond wrong. It is sheer madness.

[Seth]

On the virus metaphor...

The equivalent of using dead virus as a vaccine is the proper use of a well trained police force. When vaccinating, you use just enough of the infective agent to create immunity, but not enough to kill. A well trained police force does that, without the great harm that making guns available to everyone does.

Wrong. The police are like trying to quarantine infectious people. Marginally useful, wasteful of resources, unable to be everywhere at once, and unable to tell who is infectious and who isn't.

Here in NZ, we have rational restrictions on gun ownership. Guess what, Seth? The end result is that guns are few and far between, and criminals in the main do not have them and do not use them.

Whoopee for you!

NZ has a gun crime incident of 1.7% of total violent crimes. Violent criminals, in other words, rarely use guns.

But they DO use guns. They also use clubs, bricks, bats, knives, saws, table lamps, automobiles, beer glasses, bottles and all other manner of weapons that are not guns and they use them to bash, cut, strike, slice, crush, bruise, break and otherwise injure innocent people with one or another weapons.

The mistake in your logic, such as it is, is that you make the mistaken assumption that a gun is only used against an attack by someone with another gun. This is not the case. The purpose of carrying a handgun is so that you, the law-abiding potential victim, is always better prepared than the thug who wants to hurt you. Your means of defense must always be (or try to be) far superior to that of your attacker, so that it creates a serious disincentive for him to continue his attack, whether he's armed with a gun or a broken beer bottle.

In the USA gun crime is tragically common. Approximately 300,000 gun crime incidents per year. And 100,000 people each year who receive a bullet through some part of their body.

The idea that more guns is a good thing is beyond wrong. It is sheer madness.

Except it's not, as proven by our declining violent crime rate as more and more law-abiding citizens choose to carry a handgun.

Your problem is that you can't distinguish between a law-abiding citizen who can carry a concealed handgun for half a century without ever misusing it or hurting anyone with it and a criminal or deranged person against whom the unarmed have no defense whatsoever, which is why 12 people died and more than 50 were injured in the movie theater shooting. Nobody in that theater was able to shoot back, so the nutcase did as he pleased.

Not going get that luxury around me I'm afraid. He would have been ducking MY bullets while others escaped and hopefully he'd have taken one between the eyes to end the incident.

You are simply mentally unable to accept the fact that guns are used for peaceful and lawful purposes far, far more often than they are used for criminal purposes, which makes your hysterics...well...hysterical.

[Blind groper]

I think I am going to stop posting here. It is like pushing shit uphill with my head. Liquid shit at that.

[Seth]

I think I am going to stop posting here. It is like pushing shit uphill with my head. Liquid shit at that.

Your characterization of your arguments is quite apt, so I recommend you do so.

[Seth]

Here's a Brit who needed a gun: