Bang, Bang, Yer Dead!

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Blind groper
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Re: Bang, Bang, Yer Dead!

Post by Blind groper » Mon Aug 27, 2012 2:10 am

I have already made the point that you cannot realistically compare Swaziland with the USA.
A high crime rather there does not transfer.

The more realistic comparison, with other western nations, shows that having few firearms, and especially few hand guns does not mean a high crime rate. That is just a fantasy used by gun lovers to support their obsession.

According to my calculations, Italy has exactly the same per capita crime rate as the USA, with 12% gun ownership versus 89% for the US, and very, very few hand guns in private hands. Spain has half the crime rate of the USA, and only 10% firearm ownership. Finland, however, has more than double the crime rate of the USA, with 32% firearm ownership. All of which shows that the number of people owning firearms has no effect whatever on crime rates. That idea is pure fantasy.
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Re: Bang, Bang, Yer Dead!

Post by laklak » Mon Aug 27, 2012 2:31 am

Well, if owning firearms has nothing to do with the crime rate then why do you want to restrict their ownership? You can't have it both ways, either handguns (and weapons in general) have an effect on the crime rate or they don't. When it suits your purpose you blame handguns for the murder rate (ignoring the gang related element), when it doesn't you claim gun ownership has no effect. Do you actually have a consistent position, or are you just arguing for the sake of argument?
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Re: Bang, Bang, Yer Dead!

Post by Blind groper » Mon Aug 27, 2012 2:57 am

laklak

The overall USA crime rate is unexceptional compared to their peer group nations. However, the homicide rate is incredibly high for a first world developed country. I am sure you are intelligent enough to see that homicide rate and overall crime rate are two different things.
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Re: Bang, Bang, Yer Dead!

Post by JimC » Mon Aug 27, 2012 4:52 am

Blind groper wrote:laklak

The overall USA crime rate is unexceptional compared to their peer group nations. However, the homicide rate is incredibly high for a first world developed country. I am sure you are intelligent enough to see that homicide rate and overall crime rate are two different things.
Also, violent gangs are not restricted to the US. In other societies, the fact that hand guns and assault rifles are very thin on the ground means that they are relatively rarely used, even by gangs. Sure, some criminals will always lay their hands on weapons, but you will not have a situation were even the dumb and lowly members of a youth gang are carrying...

There will still be violence from these gangs, but they will not be usually spraying bullets around at all and sundry...
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Re: Bang, Bang, Yer Dead!

Post by Jason » Mon Aug 27, 2012 5:06 am

Blind groper wrote:
PordFrefect wrote:
You do realise, if we accept your argument as true, that it cuts both ways: That means societies with far less guns are no safer.
Pord

I am sorry, but that "logic" does not wash. The USA has a very high homicide rate. The 4.2 murders per 100,000 people per year is pretty damn clear cut. The high homicide rate seems clearly linked with the high rate of firearm ownership, and with hand guns in particular.
This is pointless. Neither side is listening to the other.

What I was saying, by the way, was that your argument against the claim that 'guns lower crime' (which I suppose someone made) also works against your claim that 'society is safer without guns'.

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Re: Bang, Bang, Yer Dead!

Post by Seth » Mon Aug 27, 2012 5:11 am

Blind groper wrote:
Seth wrote:Artificially limiting your statement to the "modern free world" is merely a convenient way to ignore the rest of the planet,
No.

It is a way to make a comparison that actually means something.

If I chose to compare the USA to Swaziland, it would be a major insult to Americans everywhere. I am assuming that the USA is civilised. As such, I compare it to other civilised nations. I exclude Asians from the comparison, not because they are not civilised (they were among the first nations on planet Earth to become civilised) but simply because they have substantially different cultures, making a comparison tenuous. In order to make a proper "apples with apples" comparison, I compare the USA with its peer group - other free, civilised, western countries.
Another strawman, and a racist one at that. The right of a resident of Swaziland to self defense is exactly the same as the right of a resident of the US or the UK. Crime is everywhere, and so to make a valid analysis you need to look at ALL crime rates and how the presence or absence of firearms affects crime rates, if at all. Artificially removing places like Swaziland or Nigeria or Congo or Bolivia or Mexico from the calculus merely reduces the victims of violent crime in those countries to less than statistics, it ignores them completely.

You still don't understand that this is NOT a statistical argument. It doesn't matter what the handgun homicide rate is in the UK or Canada or the US, all that matters, the ONLY consideration morally acceptable is whether or not a particular victim of a particular violent crime anywhere on earth could have thwarted or prevented the crime if he or she were armed. That's it. No other fallacious, bogus, diversionary pseudo-statistical arguments are allowed until you address the moral issues surrounding a government disarming it's law abiding citizens without at the same time finding a way to guarantee their personal, individual safety from criminal victimization.

If a government cannot absolutely guarantee that each and every individual in that society will be instantly defended and protected against criminal violence OF ANY KIND, then it is utterly and irredeemably immoral and unethical for that government to disarm any or all citizens, particularly based on bogus statistical comparisons of crime rates in different countries. This makes it sound as if it's acceptable to have ANY CRIME AT ALL and that one's right to personal safety may be bargained away by bureaucrats trying to fiddle percentage points on a chart.

So long as there is ONE criminal anywhere on the planet that can threaten violence against ANY law-abiding citizen using ANY weapon from fists to nuclear bombs, the right of every law abiding individual on the planet to keep and bear arms to defend against that criminal attack is absolute and unquestionable.
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"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth

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Re: Bang, Bang, Yer Dead!

Post by Seth » Mon Aug 27, 2012 5:12 am

Blind groper wrote:laklak

The overall USA crime rate is unexceptional compared to their peer group nations. However, the homicide rate is incredibly high for a first world developed country. I am sure you are intelligent enough to see that homicide rate and overall crime rate are two different things.
So long as the violent crime rate is nonzero, the right to keep and bear arms may not be infringed. The higher the homicide rate, the more compelling the need to arm law abiding citizens for self defense.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S

"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke

"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth

© 2013/2014/2015/2016 Seth, all rights reserved. No reuse, republication, duplication, or derivative work is authorized.

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Re: Bang, Bang, Yer Dead!

Post by Blind groper » Mon Aug 27, 2012 5:19 am

Seth made the claim that guns lower crime.
I disagree.
The crime rates for a number of countries that fit the American peer group description show the USA is unexceptional. All those hand guns in the hands of civilians have not resulted in a crime rate lower than its peers. Nor is it higher. Except for homicides.

I also have not tried to say society should be without guns. Just that, with the exception of the police and the military, hand guns should not be possessed by civilians. If a person has a legitimate reason to own and use a gun, like hunting deer, then it should be possible to earn a gun license for that gun.

If someone really has to shoot a hand gun at targets, then either he uses an air pistol, or he goes to a club where hand guns are used for target shooting and then locked in the club safe afterwards.

It is people like Seth, who insist on wandering around in public carrying a hand gun, who are pushing the wrong use of guns. When hand guns are readily available like that, they also become readily available for criminals, which leads inevitably to a rise in homicides and a lot of innocent people killed.
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Re: Bang, Bang, Yer Dead!

Post by Blind groper » Mon Aug 27, 2012 5:23 am

Seth wrote:The higher the homicide rate, the more compelling the need to arm law abiding citizens for self defense.
Not correct.
The reality is the opposite. More hand guns means more homicides. The more the number of law abiding citizens with hand guns, the larger the number of criminals with hand guns. You cannot make them available to good people without them being available to the bad. And the bad are more likely to take full advantage of that availability.

Nor is there any point introducing restrictions in one place, if those criminals can just cross a state line and get the guns they want. Restrictions would have to be nation wide to be effective.
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Re: Bang, Bang, Yer Dead!

Post by Seth » Mon Aug 27, 2012 5:25 am

Blind groper wrote:Seth made the claim that guns lower crime.
I disagree.
You're wrong. On average, in states where concealed carry has been made lawful, violent crime rates ALWAYS drop, an average of 8 to 15 percent in the first year, and the reductions are sustained. Source: Kleck et al.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S

"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke

"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth

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Re: Bang, Bang, Yer Dead!

Post by Blind groper » Mon Aug 27, 2012 5:33 am

Seth wrote: You're wrong. On average, in states where concealed carry has been made lawful, violent crime rates ALWAYS drop, an average of 8 to 15 percent in the first year, and the reductions are sustained. Source: Kleck et al.
The USA has never tried a nationwide ban on hand guns. So you do not know what impact that would have. My prediction is a substantial drop of homicides.

We have no concealed carry here in NZ, and we have next to zero hand gun ownership, except within the police. I go out in public totally confident of my own safety. We do not get the shootings that seem to happen every other week in the USA, and I have no fear of anyone with a gun. That is not true on those rare occasions when I visit the USA.
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Re: Bang, Bang, Yer Dead!

Post by Seth » Mon Aug 27, 2012 5:34 am

Blind groper wrote:
Seth wrote:The higher the homicide rate, the more compelling the need to arm law abiding citizens for self defense.
Not correct.
The reality is the opposite. More hand guns means more homicides. The more the number of law abiding citizens with hand guns, the larger the number of criminals with hand guns. You cannot make them available to good people without them being available to the bad. And the bad are more likely to take full advantage of that availability.
And you cannot morally disarm law abiding citizens on that premise because that disrespects the individual right of each person to effective self defense against criminals.
Nor is there any point introducing restrictions in one place, if those criminals can just cross a state line and get the guns they want. Restrictions would have to be nation wide to be effective.
Won't work. Where exactly do you think all those machine guns and illegal handguns seized in the UK come from? They're smuggled in from other countries. So unless you somehow figure out how to get rogue nations like North Korea and Communist China (not to mention Cuba and a bunch of other communist states) from manufacturing firearms for the express purpose of smuggling them into gun-ban countries for sale to criminals at a premium price, it's all pointless futility. Why do you think the IRA has little difficulty in obtaining weapons and explosives?

Market forces will always find a way around gun bans, and there will always be plenty of criminals who want to get their hands on guns to make a market for smuggled guns viable.

All gun bans do is disarm law abiding citizens, not criminals, who can, and do get them when they want them.
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S

"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke

"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth

© 2013/2014/2015/2016 Seth, all rights reserved. No reuse, republication, duplication, or derivative work is authorized.

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Re: Bang, Bang, Yer Dead!

Post by Seth » Mon Aug 27, 2012 5:42 am

Blind groper wrote:
Seth wrote: You're wrong. On average, in states where concealed carry has been made lawful, violent crime rates ALWAYS drop, an average of 8 to 15 percent in the first year, and the reductions are sustained. Source: Kleck et al.
The USA has never tried a nationwide ban on hand guns.
Quite right it hasn't, because it can't. Our right to keep and bear handguns is enshrined in the 2nd Amendment, as ratified most recently by the Supreme Court.
So you do not know what impact that would have. My prediction is a substantial drop of homicides.
Actually, there would be a drastic increase in homicides among liberal Senators and Representatives and other government functionaries who voted for or tried to enforce such a ban.

We have no concealed carry here in NZ, and we have next to zero hand gun ownership, except within the police. I go out in public totally confident of my own safety. We do not get the shootings that seem to happen every other week in the USA, and I have no fear of anyone with a gun. That is not true on those rare occasions when I visit the USA.
I guess it's necessary at this juncture to mention the Port Arthur massacre and point out that there's absolutely nothing whatever stopping a Martin Bryant or an Anton Brevik from doing the same thing somewhere in NZ. Nothing at all. For a determined killer, smuggling in the weapons and ammunition is a minor inconvenience.

And when (not if) it happens to you, you'll be pissing your pants and praying that there's someone like me present whose willing to take the shooter on.

And then there's this:
"New Zealand is perceived correctly as a place with high levels of violent crime, Sensible Sentencing Trust spokesman Garth McVicar said after New Zealand scored highly an international crime survey." Source
"Seth is Grandmaster Zen Troll who trains his victims to troll themselves every time they think of him" Robert_S

"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Edmund Burke

"Those who support denying anyone the right to keep and bear arms for personal defense are fully complicit in every crime that might have been prevented had the victim been effectively armed." Seth

© 2013/2014/2015/2016 Seth, all rights reserved. No reuse, republication, duplication, or derivative work is authorized.

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Re: Bang, Bang, Yer Dead!

Post by Blind groper » Mon Aug 27, 2012 8:40 am

Seth wrote:Where exactly do you think all those machine guns and illegal handguns seized in the UK come from?
Actually, nowhere. Since that is a fantasy. Very few illegal machine guns and hand guns end up in the UK. Compared to the USA, they are rare as hens teeth.

And Seth

The fact that you choose to quote the Sensible Sentencing Trust in relation to New Zealand shows how little you know. Those guys are crackpots that no one takes seriously.
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Re: Bang, Bang, Yer Dead!

Post by Wumbologist » Mon Aug 27, 2012 1:56 pm

Blind groper wrote:laklak

The overall USA crime rate is unexceptional compared to their peer group nations. However, the homicide rate is incredibly high for a first world developed country. I am sure you are intelligent enough to see that homicide rate and overall crime rate are two different things.

JimC wrote:
Also, violent gangs are not restricted to the US. In other societies, the fact that hand guns and assault rifles are very thin on the ground means that they are relatively rarely used, even by gangs. Sure, some criminals will always lay their hands on weapons, but you will not have a situation were even the dumb and lowly members of a youth gang are carrying...

There will still be violence from these gangs, but they will not be usually spraying bullets around at all and sundry...
It really is quite a different beast when you talk about violent gangs in the US. When you look at the backgrounds of the people killing and the people being killed, it becomes abundantly apparent that the homicide rate in the US is inflated by criminals killing criminals.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepubli ... s0903.html
In Baltimore, about 91 percent of murder victims this year had criminal records
Philadelphia also has seen the number of victims with criminal pasts inch up, to 75 percent this year from 71 percent in 2005
And in Newark, N.J., roughly 85 percent of homicide victims killed in the first six months of this year had criminal records

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-0 ... lent-crime
More than 90 percent of the 71 people arrested on murder charges and 80 percent of the 196 people who were slain last year had criminal records, according to Baltimore police statistics released Monday.

For the average Joe living in the US, not involved in a gang, not a career criminal, the real-world odds of becoming a homicide victim are probably not far from Western European norms. The US's homicide rate is inflated by the fact that we have a whole lot of criminals killing each other in inner cities, who are likely to continue killing each other with whatever weapons are available to them, unless the root causes of their criminality to begin with (hint: it's not guns) are resolved.

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