Guns used for lawful self defense Pt. 4

[Clinton Huxley]

CES loves it, being patronised by Europeans. It's his dirty little secret. Before the Internet, he would phone premium-rate telephone numbers to be abused by cultured Brits and Frenchmen.

I'm just guessing this is true.

[Coito ergo sum]

Orpheus is an American.

The response was to Rum's initial post.

Orpheus' addition that Americans do not "even know" about Rum's salient point was an added bonus. There most certainly are Americans who buy into the idea that the Yerpeeins are this bastion of rational enlightenment to be wondered at from afar -- would 'twere we could only be like Greece, Portugal or Cyprus or Italy --- ah yes, the rest of the world -- walking around in robes and philosophizing about how best to solve the worlds problems in an enlightened, caring fashion, open to the ideas and interests of others in the spirit of mutual cooperation....

Us poor silly Merkins....we not only don't understand it or recognize it, we don't even know about it.

Shoulder chip much?

Perhaps. This is not new. This is the endless refrain coming from Europeans and to some degree Canadians and Australians, although the latter in my experience not as much.

I find it amazing that the amount of comments similar that of Rum's, on every topic, can keep coming --- a great effluvia of smug, superior comments wafting across the pond. One can become viscerally sick of hearing the same shit, over and over again. It's almost as if these twerps take a course in it at university -- "why Merka sucks and why everyone should be like Yerup - 101."

Maybe it's the holdover attitude -- two generations out from Empire, instead of actual, affirmative colonialism, all the Yerpeeins are left with is the colonial mindset. Yerup remains, in its own collective mind, the Great White Hope, carrying the White Man's Burden for the rest of the world, and bringing their superior ways to the rest of the world and civilizing the savages. They can't actually civilize anyone anymore, so like ineffectual capons they gripe and grouse from their little cocoons and pretend that they may have lost their global influence, but they still are better than everyone else, if only the "rest of the world" would see it....

[Coito ergo sum]

CES loves it, being patronised by Europeans. It's his dirty little secret. Before the Internet, he would phone premium-rate telephone numbers to be abused by cultured Brits and Frenchmen.

I'm just guessing this is true.

A cultured Brit? Where?

I'll grant the French culture. But British?

Classy British broad:

[Rum]

Coito - I have heard America referred to as the Klingons of the world. True.

I'm sure you have. That would make sense, coming from people who think that the United States is a generally aggressive country in which the people solve their problems with force first. Gunfights in the streets, for sure. Saw it on Gunsmoke. QED. Never mind that the US crime rates, including violent crime rates, are not higher than in most of Europe.

I am a reasonably sophisticated and well educated individual with a decent knowledge of history, politics and philosophy, so please take it that my short and highly judgemental post was a summary and intended to encompass a lot of ifs. buts and maybes and an indication that I gave up long heated debates on forums some years ago. It was also meant to sound condescending and superior.

I have no doubt that it was meant to sound condescending and superior. That's the point I in response. It was insulting and a rather dubious comment, not in keeping with someone who is educated, sophisticated, etc.

We have more crime in our deprived inner cities too and what little gun crime we have is mostly there too. And yet proportionally firearms related deaths in America are 10.2 per 100,00 of the population as opposed to 0.25 here. You may think that is a price worth paying for 'freedom'. Personally I don't.

It's also only part of the picture, being as only 3.2 out of 100,000 are homicides. 6.3 out of the 100,000 are suicides. So, that ought to change the analysis. The intentional homicide rate for the US, in total, is 4.2 per 100,000, which makes us better in that regard than most of the "rest of the world."

Yes, the US has more gun crime, because we have more guns. It's an issue and a problem that we are attempting to solve.

One thing we really don't care for, though, in general, is smug, self-satisfied Europeans who refuse to look at their own problems of high violent crime (albeit not gun crime) and instead pretend that they are nonviolent whereas the US is violent based only on the use of one particular weapon. It also is rather -- as I pointed out -- stupid for folks to consider a few isolate, protected, nationally homogenous, social democracy welfare states as "the rest of the world" when in fact most of the "rest of the world" tends to be far more violent than the US. Western Europeans conveniently leave out the nastier bits of your continent -- like eastern Europe and European Russia, and the balkans, and such. You forget about that, opting to compare countries the size of Vermont and populated almost exclusively by a homogeneous people with the nearly continent sized United States.

Of course the US has geographic areas of very high crime, just like Europe does. You get to leave out most of your nastier areas, though, and won't consider that the US's inner cities may well be contributing to the issue disproportionately, and just perhaps -- perhaps -- the issue is not that "Americans" are generally violent and solve their problems with violence.

Anyway - I suppose I shouldn't have attempted to explain anything, and I should have just chalked it up to yet another snotty Yerpeein self-satisfied, conceited put-down of Americans. It's not like that hasn't been going on for 225 years anyway. It's a wonder how the US got as far as it did, given that we're a bunch of incompetents who just can't stop shooting each other in the streets.

Murder rates (irrespective of guns) are 4 times higher in the USA than the UK per 100,000 people.

[Jason]

You said that criminals get their guns from illegal sources. That is mostly incorrect.

Source? The graph I posted shows very few get their guns from legal channels.

[Blind groper]

Faku

The graph you posted showed mostly second hand sources, which are legal. Even buying from a drug dealer is not illegal, since it is simply buying a second hand gun.

[Jason]

Loosely speaking. They are not affected by gun control laws and that's the point.

[Coito ergo sum]

Orpheus

Your comments on cost and benefit are very good. I like it. A good explanation.

coito
You said that criminals get their guns from illegal sources.

No I did not.

That is mostly incorrect.

Also something I never wrote.

The end result is that guns are held by criminals everywhere, and used in murders and gun crimes. If no one in the USA is prepared to stand up for the majority wishes, and rise above the tyranny of the minority (the NRA), and implement sane and rational gun laws, then the population as a whole will continue to pay the price in thousands of needless gun deaths, and 100,000 needless gun woundings every year.

You make some mistakes here:

1. The majority of Americans are in favor of private ownership of firearms in general. I think your assumption that there is a small minority of gun nuts who have hijacked the political process and that the vast majority of Americans are not getting their way is just not true.
2. The majority of Americans are also in favor of sane and rational gun laws, but not the overall or general prohibition on the private ownership of guns. The push and pull between being in favor of the private ownership of guns for hunting and defense vs. sane and sensible regulations is what causes this issue to be difficult to resolve. Most people do not consider confiscation of private firearms and imposition of a British style regime as sane or sensible for the United States.
3. Certainly, there are areas where American gun laws can be improved. The Devil, of course, is in the details.

[Blind groper]

1. The majority of Americans are in favor of private ownership of firearms in general.

Certainly. Nor have I, or anyone else tried to argue for a total ban. (My thesis is to get hand guns out of civilian - which also means criminal - hands.) However, the majority of Americans are for tighter gun laws. I suspect that the second hand gun loophole is one most Americans would like to plug.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

G.S., you know that gillie suit would never pass muster.

[Coito ergo sum]

Faku

The graph you posted showed mostly second hand sources, which are legal. Even buying from a drug dealer is not illegal, since it is simply buying a second hand gun.

It's not buying a second hand gun that is unrestricted, it's buying a second hand gun from a non-dealer that is not restricted much. That's because a non-dealer is a person that only transfers a few guns.

If I have a gun and want to give it to my brother, or sell it to him, I can. I am not a dealer. If, however, I am in the business of selling firearms, then I have to comply with the reporting requirements. My brother would have to comply with applicable registration and licensing requirements himself, so the recording of the sale really is pointless. I am legally prohibited from selling my brother a gun, though, if he is legally prohibited from owning one and I have reason to know it -- like, if he's a felon or if he was adjudicated mentally incompetent or something.

Now, where the "hole" is that can certainly be plugged up is where a person illegally becomes a gun dealer without complying with the gun dealer rules -- i.e. Joe Muggs starts buying guns for his own account, and selling them to friends in the Wild Bunch Gang. However, by doing so he is breaking the law since when he buys the gun from a store he has to sign a documents stating that he is buying for himself, and if you transfer enough guns to third parties you become statutorily a dealer. So, those kind of transactions are illegal now -- the real problem is that it is very difficult for law enforcement to find out about them -- they're easy to conceal.

I think that one thing that could be done to curb gun crime in the US would be to eliminate the war on drugs. Right there we'd save most of the lives cost by gun crime. I would raise the punishments for committing crimes with guns, and lower the punishments for nonviolent possession and use crimes (mainly drug crimes). Get all nonviolent druggies out of jail, and make room for folks who rob or physically harm people with guns. If people know that by committing a crime with a gun they get hammered hard, but if they just rob a place without a firearm they will not be as hard hit, then I think people will shift away from using guns during crimes.

I also have no problem limiting magazines - and limiting the types of weapons that can be used. I object, however, to sweeping, overly broad laws that would eliminate, say, all semiautomatics because that is not a good line to draw since many normal hunting weapons are semiauto, etc. What I'm looking for is a sane, sensible set of laws.

I don't have a problem with registration of guns or mandatory training, etc.

However, our problem is not with rifles purchased at Dick's Sporting Goods. Our problem, really, is not even with high capacity assault rifles. Our problem is with handguns. Handguns do most of the killing, because they are concealable, easily disposable, etc.

[Gallstones]

G.S., you know that gillie suit would never pass muster.

It would if you were hunting turkeys.

[Coito ergo sum]

1. The majority of Americans are in favor of private ownership of firearms in general.

Certainly. Nor have I, or anyone else tried to argue for a total ban. (My thesis is to get hand guns out of civilian - which also means criminal - hands.) However, the majority of Americans are for tighter gun laws. I suspect that the second hand gun loophole is one most Americans would like to plug.

Well, that isn't true. The Sensible Brits advocate for a total ban, while suggesting that those who even want to own a gun are psychotic paranoids. That's not an uncommon position here. The Brits say their system is the sensible one, and that is a near total ban.

It's hard to say what they're for, but what they're not for are the overbroad proposals. Problems exist on both sides of this fight. The progun NRA lobby tends to object to everything, because they are nervous the antigun lobby will use any crack in the wall as a way to break the whole wall down. And, the antigun lobby, they pull the old switcheroo with their proposals, whereby they say stuff like -- we want to get rid of all these assault rifles -- and then most people are like - hell, yeah! "assault" rifles ought to go - we don't like assaults! But, then the antigun lobby includes among the assault rifles, guns which are not that.

Neither side can be trusted, because one side will oppose any gun regulation because they don't want it to be a wedge to sneak in other stuff, and the other side is in favor of any gun regulation because they hope to include within it all sorts of stuff that is not within the ambit of the initial proposal or the sales pitch for the proposal.

[JimC]

Loosely speaking. They are not affected by gun control laws and that's the point.

Not immediately, sure. But once the total number of handguns in circulation drops, it at least becomes harder for low-level criminals to obtain one - it certainly is in Oz (which is not to say a determined criminal pro can't obtain them, obviously...)

[Coito ergo sum]

Murder rates (irrespective of guns) are 4 times higher in the USA than the UK per 100,000 people.

3.5, not 4.

So what? The murder rates in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Vermont are lower than in the UK. Why don't you do things they way they do? In New Hampshire, you do not need a license to buy a gun, and long guns can be purchased from any store. No problem.

The murder rate in Puerto Rico (counted among US statistics) is 22.61 per 100,000 -- and Puerto Rico has arguably the strictest gun laws in the United States, far more restrictive than New Hampshire, and they have 20 times the murder rate.