Connecticut (et al)

[Seth]

Try reading The Better Angels of our Nature sometime Seth, if you can comprehend social science. The old west was a far, far more violent period than our time.

Nope. You're simply wrong. Outside of Indian wars, Civil wars and a few notoriously violent cowtowns, life was pretty peaceful and safe in most of the United States, outside of some urban areas, during the 1800s and early 1900s. The Draft Riots in New York during the Civil War were an example of the sort of rare circumstance where violence was widespread. In most cities and towns however, guns were commonplace and violence was rare.

You've been drinking the Marxist Progressive Kool-Aid I'm afraid. Pinker's book is hotly contested, and is inapplicable in part because it includes warfare, human sacrifice and reference to Medieval Europe in his rather unusual analysis when what we are discussing is civil order in the United States and its relationship to the keeping and bearing of firearms. I'll take my information from Old West historians who know far more about the subject than you or Pinker, thanks.

[Blind groper]

If JUST ONE person in the movie theater in Aurora had a gun, or several of them had, and had engaged the shooter immediately, no telling how many lives would have been saved. But that's just beyond your understanding, isn't it?

Not beyond my understanding. What you are trying to say is really, really easy to understand.

What you do not appreciate is that killings like the Aurora one is the smallest, tiniest part of the problem. Those massacres kill a few dozen people each year at most. The real problem is the other 20,000 killed each year and 80,000 maimed each year with bullets.

If every second person had a gun on them, it might stop a tiny part of those massacres, but the price to pay would be a massive increase in homicides. As I said before, there are literally millions of Americans who become mean drunks, or throw temper tantrums. Without a gun, those people will resort to their fists, and the police constantly deal with those people and their fists. If they had hand guns, though, those millions of people would, each and every one, be major risks for homicide.

Give out more guns, and the homicide rate goes up accordingly. That is what you, Seth, do not seem to understand.

[Blind groper]

To Seth

Homicide rates in the old west.

Would you consider Ohio State University a valid source of data?
http://cjrc.osu.edu/researchprojects/hv ... 0west.html

I quote :

"Even in Oregon, 1850-1865, which had the lowest minimum rate yet discovered in the American West (30 per 100,000 adults per year), an adult faced at least a 1 in 208 chance of being murdered."

For comparison, the murder rate across present day USA is under 5 per 100,000 per year. In the UK, it is 1.2. In my country, it is 0.9.

A murder rate of 30 per 100,000 per year is massive. And that is the smallest rate the researchers discovered.

Sorry Seth. You are wrong.

[Wumbologist]

There are clear cut things that can be done right now. Like removing the right of private citizens to sell weapons of murder to just anyone who turns up with a handful of cash. Everyone who buys a gun should have a full and thorough background check, regardless of what gun they buy and who from. Any private citizen who sells a gun to someone with no check should be subject to prosecution, and a likely jail sentence.

So basically, extend the NICS system to private sales in addition to pre-existing? In theory I don't necessarily see a problem with it, but as Seth pointed out, the NICS system as it already exists has some flaws that need to be addressed before it would necessarily be a good idea to extend it.

[Svartalf]

I think he was just trying to build off my satire.

So I was I fear.

[Wumbologist]

Now, what's all this silliness about banning "assault weapons"?

[Seth]

If JUST ONE person in the movie theater in Aurora had a gun, or several of them had, and had engaged the shooter immediately, no telling how many lives would have been saved. But that's just beyond your understanding, isn't it?

Not beyond my understanding. What you are trying to say is really, really easy to understand.

Then why are you incapable of understanding it?

What you do not appreciate is that killings like the Aurora one is the smallest, tiniest part of the problem. Those massacres kill a few dozen people each year at most. The real problem is the other 20,000 killed each year and 80,000 maimed each year with bullets.

Indeed, that's a problem.

If every second person had a gun on them, it might stop a tiny part of those massacres, but the price to pay would be a massive increase in homicides.

Prove it. Oh, wait, you CAN'T prove it. In fact the 20+ year experiment with arming citizens with concealed weapons and the massive increases in the number of arms in circulation in the US in the last four years alone proves that you're full of crap. And Just because you mendaciously ignore the 2 million or so times a year people use their guns to defend themselves lawfully doesn't mean they didn't happen. You've not once been able to refute any of the many examples I've cited of people doing exactly that. So, my 2 million innocent citizens NOT victimized every year because they had and/or used a firearm for self defense trumps your horseshit statistical argument and false predictions.

As I said before, there are literally millions of Americans who become mean drunks, or throw temper tantrums.

Yup. And very few of them actually resort to violence of any kind, and those that do get arrested.

Without a gun, those people will resort to their fists, and the police constantly deal with those people and their fists. If they had hand guns, though, those millions of people would, each and every one, be major risks for homicide.

Well, since a large proportion of them very likely already own guns, your predictions are so much...what was the term Cali used...oh, yeah, "bum custard." (thanks for the graphic elif!)

file.jpg (21.92 KiB) Viewed 1302 times

Give out more guns, and the homicide rate goes up accordingly. That is what you, Seth, do not seem to understand.

Except, of course for the fact that the number of guns in circulation in the US HAS gone up, rather remarkably, and yet the homicide rate, and the rate of violent crime, continues to go DOWN.

Sucks when facts dash all your hoplophobic propaganda, doesn't it?

[Azathoth]

bum custard

[Blind groper]

Seth

I used google to investigate the reduction in crime rates in the USA. Guess what? Not one researcher put it down to an increase in guns. From half a dozen different sources, I found the main explanation given was an increase in the prison population. That is : more convicted criminals are kept in prison longer. Since they are not out on the streets, they are not committing violent crimes.

But of course, Seth is wiser than all the expert researchers.

The relationship between gun ownership and murder rate is shown in my previous post about the old west. Where they had a lot more guns, they had a lot more murders. Also in the comparison between the USA and other western nations. Only the USA has anything like 88 guns per 100 people and only the USA has a murder rate close to 5 per 100,000 people per year.

[Seth]

Seth

I used google to investigate the reduction in crime rates in the USA. Guess what? Not one researcher put it down to an increase in guns.

So what? An increase in guns has not resulted in an increase in crime, as you predict. Therefor your argument is bum custard.

file.jpg (21.92 KiB) Viewed 1297 times

From half a dozen different sources, I found the main explanation given was an increase in the prison population. That is : more convicted criminals are kept in prison longer. Since they are not out on the streets, they are not committing violent crimes.

But of course, Seth is wiser than all the expert researchers.

No, but your claim, which is that more guns means more crime has been shown to be absolutely false.

The relationship between gun ownership and murder rate is shown in my previous post about the old west. Where they had a lot more guns, they had a lot more murders. Also in the comparison between the USA and other western nations. Only the USA has anything like 88 guns per 100 people and only the USA has a murder rate close to 5 per 100,000 people per year.

Damn, it must suck for your bogus argument that while gun sales in the US are through the roof, crime continues to decrease.

What The Left Won't Tell You About The Boom In U.S. Gun Sales

Frank Miniter, Contributor

As gun sales surged in early 2009 the going joke among employees of gun manufacturers was that President Barack Obama was the “greatest gun salesman of all time.” The trouble with this backhanded complement, however, is Left-leaning news outlets have since used it to avoid something that really scares them.

As ABC put it, Americans are buying more Glocks and Berettas simply because they fear “a second Obama administration might restrict gun ownership.” Their reporting conveniently stops right there.

Before getting into why, I should note they’re partly right. For example, in December 2011 there was a record number of background checks (1,410,937) called into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) this was an increase of 24.5 percent over December 2010. (For those who don’t know, NICS was started in late 1998 to instantly determine whether a prospective buyer is eligible to purchase firearms or explosives. Not every NICS check results in a sale. A small percentage of people are denied for various reasons (keeping criminals from buying firearms is why we have this system), some simply decide not to purchase the gun and so on. So NICS checks statistics are like exit-poll data, they’re a pretty good indicator, but have margins of error.)

Now though the December 2011 number was a record there were actually slightly less, but still over 1.5 million NICS checks, in November of 2011. The only other November to break 1.5 million NICS checks was November of 2008—when President Obama won the presidency.

But the thing is the surge is gun sales didn’t begin in 2008. Over the last 10 years (from 2002 to 2011) there has been a 54.1 percent rise in the number of NICS checks and the increase hasn’t all taken place since 2008. In 2005 there were 8,952,945 NICS checks. In 2006 the number topped 10 million. In 2007 NICS checks pushed passed 11 million. In 2008 NICS checks passed 12 million, and then hit the 14 million mark in 2009. They increased slightly (4 percent) through 2011.

So attributing this entire trend to President Obama’s anti-gun reputation is disingenuous, yet many in the media like this explanation because by saying the increase in gun sales is only about President Obama they can then write the whole thing off as a simple-minded fear from those who “cling to guns and religion.”

To understand what’s really going on, let’s start with some sales figures.

Last January Steve Sanetti, president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), told me, “The $4.1 billion shooting industry has been growing in an otherwise anemic economy. We’re grateful and proud that our industry has helped maintain jobs from the manufacturer through retail levels during these difficult economic times.”

He had good reason to be pleased. In general, firearms manufacturers have been beating the downturn. In one example, last March Sturm, Ruger & Company, Inc. (which trades on the New York Stock Exchange as “RGR”) completed the fourth and final quarter of its “1.2 Million Gun Challenge to Benefit the NRA.” During this yearlong challenge, Ruger donated a total of $1,254,000 to the NRA as it built and shipped more than one million firearms.

Smith & Wesson Holding Corp. (NASDAQ: SWHC) saw its fiscal year sales surge 20 percent in 2012. Many makers of handguns and “black guns” (what the Left calls “assault rifles” but the NSSF calls “modern sporting rifles”) also did very well. For example, the number of U.S. semi-automatic pistols produced (imported and exported) was in the 900,000-range from 1998 to 2000, but then fell to a low of 626,836 in 2001. Since then, this category has risen nearly every year. In 2009, some 1,868,268 pistols were imported or exported by U.S. manufacturers, according to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) data.

So why did overall gun sales begin going up well before President Obama was elected? The answer is in the way American’s view guns. In 1959 some 60 percent of the American public favored handgun bans, according to Gallup, whereas today 73 percent oppose such bans and only 26 percent want bans on handguns.

Other Gallup polls are even more interesting. The number of women gun owners in America has gone up from 13 percent in 2005 to 23 percent today. Also, the number of Democratic households with firearms in their homes skyrocketed from 30 percent in 2009 to 40 percent today.

What has been happening is that the NRA, the NSSF and other gun-rights groups have been busy fighting for Second Amendment rights, advocating for participation in the shooting sports, instructing people how to shoot and store firearms safely, working with police officers and the military and doing a myriad of other things. The NRA has also been lobbying, defending the Second Amendment in courtrooms all over the country and growing its membership. As a result, they’ve attracted more Americans to the shooting sports, made the shooting sports safer and helped more people learn to shoot and to defend themselves.

You can see this reflected in the number of concealed-carry permits. From the mid-1980s to today America has become a mostly “shall-issue” nation with regards to concealed-carry permits. (Shall-issue laws typically prevent local governments from arbitrarily refusing to give permits.) Today 41 states have right-to-carry laws and 38 states have “shall-issue” laws. In fact, a total of 49 states have laws that, to varying degrees, solidify citizens’ right to carry certain concealed firearms in public, either without a permit or after obtaining a permit. Only Illinois is without such a provision.

To visualize what a big change this has been, simply log on to Wikipedia. Now Wikipedia can’t always be trusted as a fact-based source, but search under the entry “concealed carry in the U.S.” and you’ll find a color-coded map of the U.S. changing year-by-year from 1986 to today. Over those years the color changes show the spread of shall-issue laws. Nationally, the NSSF estimates there are 6.8 million concealed-carry holders today. This is up from about one million in the mid-1980s.

All of this pro-gun legislation has not only added to freedom, personal protection and a whole lot of fun at ranges across America, but has also grown the numbers of gun owners and increased the sales of firearms.

Now The History Channel’s “Top Shots” and Discovery Channel’s “Sons of Guns” are showcasing how much fun the shooting sports can be.

The Boy Scouts of America reported that the number of “shotgun shooting” merit badges increased 27.8 percent from 1999 to 2010. The NSSF’s “female-participation” statistics in the shooting sports show that from 2002 to 2010 an estimated 30.2 percent more women are now shooting shotguns. The number of hunters actually increased nationally by 9 percent from 2006 to 2011 according to a preliminary report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And active-shooting sports, such as 3-Gun and sporting clays, have taken off.

There are many other categories and statistics showing the tidal shift in gun ownership beneath this current wave of sales, all of which are related to legislative successes that freed up Second Amendment rights, judicial victories and a popular shift in the way American’s view guns. With all of this going on it’s a shame so many in the media are ignoring or cynically simplifying the movement behind gun sales. It’s just more convenient for them to say the surge in gun sales is only about fear of new gun-control legislation.

Though I don’t want to discount the fear. After all, when the Supreme Court twice comes within one vote of ruling that the Second Amendment of the U.S. Bill of Rights isn’t an individual right, Americans have a right to be concerned. When an incumbent president seeking a second term has already put two people on the nine-member Supreme Court who would vote away this basic human freedom, they have the right to be fearful. And when you realize that, if reelected, that incumbent president would have a good chance of getting a few more Supreme Court picks, and so could reshape the high court for decades, people have a right to be motivated to buy firearms now.

Source: Forbes Magazine

[Azathoth]

bum custard

[Blind groper]

Seth

Roughly 50% of Americans who buy guns say they do so for 'self defense'. In other words, they buy guns out of fear. Fear is the great ally of the firearms industry, and they work on it. Your own posts show how successful they are. Kind of ironic, that at a time when crime world wide is dropping, more people in America buy guns for 'self defense' because they are afraid.

Why are they scared? Simple. Because the NRA and the gun industry know this is their best tactic and they have set out, very successfully, to scare Americans into buying guns.

What do you call an industry that sets out to make people afraid, so as to make more money?

[Blind groper]

Let me add to the business of fear.
Americans are made to feel fear in order to sell guns. Is that fear appropriate?
Answer, no. Very few people are killed by strangers. So buying guns to protect against strangers who might attack you is not appropriate.
http://malini.data360.org/graph_group.a ... up_Id=1177

I quote :

"You are much more likely to be murdered by a partner, family member, friend or acquaintance. In 2004-05 only 2 percent of female and 25 percent of male victims were killed by a stranger. These percentages do not change very much over time."

As I pointed out before, 87% of killings in the home where a gun is kept were suicide by the gun owner, or a member of his family. Buying a gun adds to your risk. It does not reduce it.

[orpheus]

Let me add to the business of fear.
Americans are made to feel fear in order to sell guns. Is that fear appropriate?
Answer, no. Very few people are killed by strangers. So buying guns to protect against strangers who might attack you is not appropriate.
http://malini.data360.org/graph_group.a ... up_Id=1177

I quote :

"You are much more likely to be murdered by a partner, family member, friend or acquaintance. In 2004-05 only 2 percent of female and 25 percent of male victims were killed by a stranger. These percentages do not change very much over time."

As I pointed out before, 87% of killings in the home where a gun is kept were suicide by the gun owner, or a member of his family. Buying a gun adds to your risk. It does not reduce it.

Excellent point.

[Seth]

Seth

Roughly 50% of Americans who buy guns say they do so for 'self defense'. In other words, they buy guns out of fear.

Fear or prudence. But so what? Fear is a valid emotion and it's often proven to be justified, with guns, fire extinguishers, insurance policies, first aid kits, life jackets, survival kits, warm coats, shoes, and a host of other things that we acquire to help protect us against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Fear is the great ally of the firearms industry, and they work on it.

And two million or so times a year they are proven correct in their "fearmongering."

Your own posts show how successful they are.

Indeed, and thank God for that, because there are some two million people a year who heeded that message, bought a gun, and were protected against crime because of it.

Kind of ironic, that at a time when crime world wide is dropping, more people in America buy guns for 'self defense' because they are afraid.

Do you go to the dentist or doctor for a checkup? Cowardly scum, you only go because fear has been instilled within you by the medical industry! Oh, wait....

Why are they scared? Simple. Because the NRA and the gun industry know this is their best tactic and they have set out, very successfully, to scare Americans into buying guns.

And it's working, which is a good thing, because all those guns people are buying are making society safer and our Republic more durable without, as you fallaciously suggest, an increase in "homicides" resulting from the massive increase in the number of guns in our society. Sucks to be you right now, what with your asinine rhetoric in shreds about your ankles and your dick hanging out for everyone to see...at least I think it's a dick, only smaller.

What do you call an industry that sets out to make people afraid, so as to make more money?

Government.