Gun attack at Dallas police headquarters

[Hermit]

Did anybody else not read the above?

I gave up on the scroll wheel after a while and hammered the PGDN key instead.

[JimC]

Did anybody else not read the above?

I gave up on the scroll wheel after a while and hammered the PGDN key instead.

I sort of rapidly scanned it...

[Brian Peacock]

I read it in full, of course, because I'm a sucker for that kind of punishment.

One of the conditions of serious discourse is the requirement for intellectual honesty, a condition which, one hopes, obliges parties to not misrepresent or mischaracterise each other's positions, or to engage in petty points scoring. Even though I am quite patient with those who do adopt such tactics--because I know from my own practice that discussing serious issues seriously is as much about exploring and articulating one's own point of view and reactions as it about meeting and setting challenges which might uncover another's point of view, and because I have on occasion resorted to the odd dig and dismissive remark--on this occasion I'm not inclined to disambiguate my interlocutor's misrepresentation by writing another 2000 words to reiterate and qualify what I have already said, and which any dispassionate reader would, I'm sure, readily acknowledge as quite straightforward and easy to parse.

[Seth]

Did anybody else not read the above?

I gave up on the scroll wheel after a while and hammered the PGDN key instead.

Ah, the sound-bite generation! What a disappointment.

[Seth]

I read it in full, of course, because I'm a sucker for that kind of punishment.

One of the conditions of serious discourse is the requirement for intellectual honesty, a condition which, one hopes, obliges parties to not misrepresent or mischaracterise each other's positions, or to engage in petty points scoring. Even though I am quite patient with those who do adopt such tactics--because I know from my own practice that discussing serious issues seriously is as much about exploring and articulating one's own point of view and reactions as it about meeting and setting challenges which might uncover another's point of view, and because I have on occasion resorted to the odd dig and dismissive remark--on this occasion I'm not inclined to disambiguate my interlocutor's misrepresentation by writing another 2000 words to reiterate and qualify what I have already said, and which any dispassionate reader would, I'm sure, readily acknowledge as quite straightforward and easy to parse.

Um, if you want a more concise response, kindly refrain from strawmen, fallacies and ignoring the obvious. Also, don't expect me to capitulate a point merely because you are choosing to be nigglingly abstruse.

Your thesis is quite straightforward as I see it. You feel that the presence of firearms in society, whether lawfully held or otherwise, unacceptably increases the risk that some armed individual will act improperly with that weapon due to anger or fear, and that this hypothetical risk outweighs any claim of a right to be armed in public for the purposes of actual lawful self-defense. Part of your rationale in stating this opinion appears to be your personal analysis of the relative risks of being unarmed versus armed, particularly in your society, where firearms are quite uncommonly carried by private citizens, law abiding or otherwise. You appear to use your relatively low-risk threat assessment as an argument against the need for individuals to be armed for their personal defense.

If this is not correct feel free to correct me.

My response is that your opinion is based in an irrational fear of your fellow citizens that manifests in a universal distrust of a law-abiding person's ability to safely carry a concealed weapon in public without increasing the risk of them committing a sudden and transient deranged act of firearms impropriety. You also studiously ignore the unintended consequence of disarming everyone as it applies to those persons, however many of them there may be in any particular society, who actually are violently attacked, as well as disregarding the functional impossibility of removing all possible weapons that facilitate violent attacks from society in an attempt to pander as relevant some utopian "unarmed society" as the ideal, which is something that has never in all of time actually existed and cannot, by the facts of physics and human behavior, ever occur.

Therefore, because there will always be a threat of violent criminal attack to the law-abiding citizen, to whatever statistical degree you happen to believe to be true, but always greater than zero, it is both necessary and reasonable for law-abiding citizens to be armed for defense against such attacks if that is what they choose to do based on their personal risk analysis.

So long as they do not misuse their arms there is factually no increased risk to the general public at all. And if some one of them should misuse his or her arms, which as I have shown is much less likely than some malfeasance by an unlicensed person, the law provides appropriate penalties to both deter inappropriate behavior and punish it when it occurs, and therefore there is no rational reason to engage in the banning of inanimate objects as if they have some maleficent and evil intent. That applies to everything from firearms to automobiles, cricket bats and pint bar glasses.

The 30 year experiment with CCW in the US that directly and specifically addresses your thesis proves conclusively that both your fears and your hypothesis are completely wrong. The incidence of a lawfully-armed civilian suddenly going off the rails and committing some firearms offense is provably far smaller than even the incidence of the commission of any crime whatsoever much less a violent crime, much less a violent gun crime by the public in general. FBI and state statistics prove conclusively that the rate of offense by licensed concealed-carry permit holders is less, and sometimes far less than one percent of all licensed gun carriers.

Permit holders are extremely law-abiding. Consider the several states at the front of the current debate, Florida, Michigan, and Texas: each one provides easy web access to detailed records of permit holders. While permit holders in each and every state are very law-abiding,5 Florida is included here because it has issued more permits than any other state. Michigan and Texas are discussed below because they provide detailed data on active permit holders and revocations by age.
These three states account for over 2.5 million of the over 11.1 million active concealed handgun permits.
During almost three decades, from October 1, 1987 to May 31, 2014, Florida issued permits to almost 2.66 million people. These permits have been revoked for firearms-related violations at an annual rate of only 0.0003 percent. For all revocations, the annual rate in Florida is 0.012 percent.
The numbers are similarly low in Texas. In 2012 (the latest year that crime data are available), there were 584,850 active license holders. Out of these, 120 were convicted of either a misdemeanor or a felony, a rate of 0.021 percent. Only a few of these crimes involved a gun.
Revocations and suspensions occur when people are charged with a crime, but only about 5 percent or less of these cases result in conviction and thus people are eligible for having their licenses reinstated.6 While 120 were convicted of a crime in 2012, 905 people had their permits revoke, for a total rate of 0.15%.7 Over the last five years that revocation data is available (2009 to 2013), the rate is slightly lower, 0.13%.
For Michigan, overall revocation rate for the five years from July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2014 is slightly higher but still low, at 0.26%.
To get an idea how law-abiding permit holders are, make a comparison to those for police. National data on firearms violations by police officers is available during the three years from January 1, 2005 through December 31, 2007.8 The annual rate of such violations by police was at least 0.007 percent. That is about twice the 0.003 percent rate for permit holders in Florida.
Police data also provide a direct comparison for Florida and Texas. The rate of all crimes committed by police is 0.124 percent – a number about 6 times higher than the rate for in Texas and about 10 times higher than for Florida. Source

As should be obvious, persons who go to the trouble of acquiring a CCW permit actually decrease the risks to the general public simply by doing so, from a statistical point of view.

In short, there is approximately zero evidence that the increase of licensed concealed carry in public increases the risk of a violent confrontation between the permit holder and anyone else. There is also approximately zero evidence that the overall increase in licensed concealed carry in public increases the incidence of the occurrence of either violent crime or accidental shootings. In fact, the opposite appears to be true: more licensed concealed carry, less violent crime.

[Tero]

In Seth world. Wonder what those concealed carry people are doing for me? Nothing. It only helps the carrier. And not always.

[Seth]

In Seth world. Wonder what those concealed carry people are doing for me? Nothing. It only helps the carrier. And not always.

Your assertion is factually untrue, as the overall drop in crime rates in places where lawful concealed carry has been authorized proves. If you live in such a jurisdiction, you are benefiting from it. If you do not, well, you're just stupid not to move to somewhere it is legal.

And just because self-defense is not always successful is no argument against the preparation or attempt.

[Hermit]

Did anybody else not read the above?

I gave up on the scroll wheel after a while and hammered the PGDN key instead.

Ah, the sound-bite generation! What a disappointment.

More a case of having given up hope already of reading something that is not a repetition of what you have posted at the Richard Dawkins forum before you got banned there about five years ago.

[Seth]

Did anybody else not read the above?

I gave up on the scroll wheel after a while and hammered the PGDN key instead.

Ah, the sound-bite generation! What a disappointment.

More a case of having given up hope already of reading something that is not a repetition of what you have posted at the Richard Dawkins forum before you got banned there about five years ago.

Well, if you would quit making the same stupid anti-gun assertions all the time I wouldn't have to do so. But as long as you do, I'll continue to rebut them because it's important that your ignorant, biased anti-gun lies and propaganda be authoritatively refuted each and every time, lest some credulous lurker think you have any idea what the fuck your talking about, because you don't.

[Hermit]

Well, if you would quit making the same stupid anti-gun assertions...

You must have missed my change of mind about the efficacy of gun bans about five years ago, but then you never were much into facts. Just because I do not share your extreme views about such things as "Shall Issue" policies and the paranoia that necessitates militias does not mean I am gun ban happy.

My change of mind, incidentally, is due to a comment of yours at RDF that gun bans are not generally reflected in a decrease of murder, homicide and suicide rates. I did not believe your claim, but thought it might be a good idea to research the facts. It turns out that you were right. In under a year 20% of Australia's privately owned firearms were taken out of circulation with the gun buyback scheme. Yes, the rates of murder, homicide and suicide by firearm dropped massively, and demonstrably so, a fact that gun control advocates keep crowing about to this day, but there was no corresponding drop in those rates overall. The steady drop in those rates in the years after the buyback scheme was the same as in the years before, and I have pointed this out repeatedly, citing statistics and sources while I was at it, but as far as you are concerned I remain an anti-gun nut.

[JimC]

Seth keeps saying that anybody that opposes his views on guns wants to "ban guns". That is a loose and absurd contention. For a start, one needs to be very clear whether one is talking about the US, or one's own country.

In Oz, guns are not "banned", we simply have more stringent restrictions on ownership than the US, particularly in terms of hand guns, which is our choice, and our right. However, there is a very healthy community of hunting and shooting enthusiasts, which included myself in my younger days. The key point is that the vast majority of Australians are comfortable with the level of gun control that exist here - there is not a widespread movement like the NRA demanding change...

As for the US, most of us have stated that, in the long run, of course it is up to US voters to sort out the level of gun control that is acceptable. To me, it seems very unlikely that change is a realistic option; fair enough, as long as you are prepared to accept the consequences of a level of gun violence much, much higher than comparable developed nations. Of course, if you are comfortable being statistically compared to third world shitholes, then again, fair enough...

[Brian Peacock]

Seth keeps saying that anybody that opposes his views on guns wants to "ban guns". That is a loose and absurd contention. For a start, one needs to be very clear whether one is talking about the US, or one's own country.

In Oz, guns are not "banned", we simply have more stringent restrictions on ownership than the US, particularly in terms of hand guns, which is our choice, and our right. However, there is a very healthy community of hunting and shooting enthusiasts, which included myself in my younger days. The key point is that the vast majority of Australians are comfortable with the level of gun control that exist here - there is not a widespread movement like the NRA demanding change...

As for the US, most of us have stated that, in the long run, of course it is up to US voters to sort out the level of gun control that is acceptable. To me, it seems very unlikely that change is a realistic option; fair enough, as long as you are prepared to accept the consequences of a level of gun violence much, much higher than comparable developed nations. Of course, if you are comfortable being statistically compared to third world shitholes, then again, fair enough...

That's a good point. Seth instantly ramped my initial two-line response to the level of an unjust demand that he should be rendered defenceless in the face of potentially overwhelming and lethal violence, throwing in for good measure insinuations that this was because I was irrationally and illogically fearful and/or paranoid about what he might do me with his personal firearms (as well as denigrating my character and motivation in his usual manner of course). But in fact all I did was raise ideas about the difference in consequences (for society and for individuals) between a gun and a no-gun environment, which I maintained even as Seth continued to present my point as being about the consequences for vulnerable, defenceless, gunless people faced with the threat of gun-totting criminals etc.

Guns are not banned in the UK either, but their use is very strictly regulated such that even private ownership for legitimate sporting or agricultural purposes requires accepting the restrictive conditions which effectively places one under the permanent scrutiny of the authorities. This does not mean guns are not used by criminals in the pursuance of their criminal activities or in random acts but it does mean there are few guns in circulation and that the impromptu use of guns is almost entirely averted along with the incidences of mass shooting.

In the US the imposition of a blanket 'ban' on personal firearms would not do away with its particular gun-related problems at a stroke, it would be naive to think it would, and for Seth to present this as among my contentions is, frankly, disingenuous. I offered one justification why nobody having guns in society is better (for society and individuals) that everybody having free access to them, and it was clearly not the responsible gun-use of responsible gun-owners which I suggested had disproportionate and potentially fatal consequences for others but the unconsidered, emotive, ill-judged, reckless, downright dangerous, or wanton, etc, use of firearms by responsible and irresponsible gun-owners alike. That Seth miscast my point and refused to engage in the discussion on any terms other than those which he felt justified his own personal possession simply showed how an honest debate is almost impossible with him on this. For example....

What I am saying is that in circumstances where someone feels inclined, however transiently, to harm someone else they are demonstrably less likely to follow through on that where it involves making direct physical contact. This is not a difficult sentence to parse.

You have failed to demonstrate this assertion. You have also failed to explain how shooting someone is anything other than "direct physical contact."

Demonstrating the point isn't a necessary condition for taking it at face value and addressing it's implications (although I could have offered the work of Foot and Jarvis Thompson on social ethics, McMahan on Just War Theory, or any number of studies on conflict and impromptu violence). That Seth flatly refused take this at face value or make any effort even to consider the implications of the gun vs no-gun comparison presented, and instead equivocated on what 'unarmed' or 'direct physical contact' should really mean--despite it being quite clear that the latter phrase was used to draw a distinction between confrontations that involved a person making physical contact with another vs harm caused remotely, 'at a distance', without touching, etc (again, it is tiresome that one should have to engage in this level of petty qualification simply in order to move the discussion forward)--only demonstrate that on this issue, like so many others, his discursive tactics are wholly shackled to asserting and maintaining the moral, rationality, and practical superiority of his own ideals without regard or reference to what anything anybody might actually be saying on any given matter.

For the record I have no interest in somehow forcing Seth to capitulate and recant, why would one bother(?), but neither am I interested in engaging an interlocutor who willingly employs intellectual dishonesty to force this from others or who starts from the expressed presumption that mere disagreement or challenge is a de facto signifier of irrationality, illogicality, and/or a default deficit in moral reasoning.

[Tero]

In Seth world. Wonder what those concealed carry people are doing for me? Nothing. It only helps the carrier. And not always.

Your assertion is factually untrue, as the overall drop in crime rates in places where lawful concealed carry has been authorized proves. If you live in such a jurisdiction, you are benefiting from it. If you do not, well, you're just stupid not to move to somewhere it is legal.

And just because self-defense is not always successful is no argument against the preparation or attempt.

Those are just the NRA funded studies. The real numbers do not support guns. But most of the neutral studies still need to be done. And cause and effect was never shown. There are too many other factors and there us no control group. There can't be if the laws are all pro gun.

[Seth]

Well, if you would quit making the same stupid anti-gun assertions...

You must have missed my change of mind about the efficacy of gun bans about five years ago, but then you never were much into facts. Just because I do not share your extreme views about such things as "Shall Issue" policies and the paranoia that necessitates militias does not mean I am gun ban happy.

My change of mind, incidentally, is due to a comment of yours at RDF that gun bans are not generally reflected in a decrease of murder, homicide and suicide rates. I did not believe your claim, but thought it might be a good idea to research the facts. It turns out that you were right. In under a year 20% of Australia's privately owned firearms were taken out of circulation with the gun buyback scheme. Yes, the rates of murder, homicide and suicide by firearm dropped massively, and demonstrably so, a fact that gun control advocates keep crowing about to this day, but there was no corresponding drop in those rates overall. The steady drop in those rates in the years after the buyback scheme was the same as in the years before, and I have pointed this out repeatedly, citing statistics and sources while I was at it, but as far as you are concerned I remain an anti-gun nut.

That was the collective "you."

[Seth]

Seth keeps saying that anybody that opposes his views on guns wants to "ban guns". That is a loose and absurd contention. For a start, one needs to be very clear whether one is talking about the US, or one's own country.

In Oz, guns are not "banned", we simply have more stringent restrictions on ownership than the US, particularly in terms of hand guns, which is our choice, and our right.

Er, it's my understanding that civilian ownership of magazine-fed semi-automatic long guns that resemble military rifles is per-se illegal for the average citizen. That's a "ban." And when the system denies the average law-abiding person the permission to own, for example, a handgun, that's a ban. It's sophistry to suggest otherwise.

However, there is a very healthy community of hunting and shooting enthusiasts, which included myself in my younger days. The key point is that the vast majority of Australians are comfortable with the level of gun control that exist here - there is not a widespread movement like the NRA demanding change...

Typical of the slave mindset. It's not within the province of the majority of Australians to deny anyone their right to be effectively armed against criminal attack, as that right is a universal natural human right that cannot be taken away. It can be suppressed by the tyranny of the majority (or minority) but the right continues to exist nonetheless, and it accrues to every human being on the planet at all times.

As for the US, most of us have stated that, in the long run, of course it is up to US voters to sort out the level of gun control that is acceptable. To me, it seems very unlikely that change is a realistic option; fair enough, as long as you are prepared to accept the consequences of a level of gun violence much, much higher than comparable developed nations. Of course, if you are comfortable being statistically compared to third world shitholes, then again, fair enough...

Er, no, it's most absolutely NOT up to US voters. The right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental natural human right that is not subject to popular vote. Ever.