Guns used for lawful self defense Pt. 4

[Gallstones]

To a historian, this is rather funny.

In which context? The claim that the colonists 'defeated' the most powerful empire on Earth at the time?

Laughing is easier than explaining.
Takes fewer keystrokes too.

[orpheus]

I don't feel trapped Jim.
I don't even have to lock my doors, I can walk any street anytime of day or night.
We have a very low incidence of violent crime with a high gun ownership.  We have some of the least restrictive gun laws of all the states. My state is reacting to preempt and deny increased federal restrictions and these bills are passing with an easy majority of both parties.

I have guns because it pleases me to have them.

And the high gun ownership in the US in general has ensured that criminals have guns. Insofar as that is the case, any gun owner is contributing to that problem. That's where the trap lies, whether or not you, GS, personally feel it.

Again with this bullshit?
Every car owner is contributing to the problem of impaired driving.

Well, every car owner is contributing to many of the problems a huge number of cars brings to society: accidents, pollution, etc. That is certainly true, and it's one reason I choose not to own a car.

It's a cost/benefit analysis, you see, whether you like it or not. Society as a whole has ended up with lots of cars because individuals place more importance on the benefits of cars than the costs (to the environment, to human life, etc.) Many may not have consciously thought of it in this way, but that's the result. 

Now, saturating a society with guns also has benefits and costs. The benefits are few, as we've been discussing. The costs are significant. One of these costs is that criminals will have a steady supply of them. (That's not the only cost, of course; there are other horrific ones. But it's the one under discussion now.) You deem the benefits to outweigh the costs. Fine. I disagree with you, and because I see the terrible cost to American society I will continue to fight for gun control. But the cost/benefit analysis is there, whether or not you acknowledge it. 

Incidentally, to pursue your car analogy: we do have restrictions in place to mitigate the societal costs: one must pass tests to be able to drive a car; there are laws restricting what one can do with a car; one is penalized for breaking those laws (from minor fines up to permanently losing the right to drive, as well as imprisonment). We have required safety behaviors (e.g., mandatory seatbelts, speed limits). One must carry insurance. The car itself must pass repeated safety inspections. All cars and drivers must be registered. If ownership of a car changes hands, the legal title and responsibility for it does too. Etc. 

There is no trap.
It's a Right. A choice to exercise or not.

By choosing to exercise the right to own guns - multiplied by many people (thus many guns in the country), we have accepted the concomitant costs. We cannot have all those guns without paying the price. That's what we have trapped ourselves into. And it's made worse by pretending that there are no costs. 

"We live in a free society. We accept that certain actions of the individual aren't always positive for the body politic..."

Freedoms have costs.
I prefer to assume the costs of freedoms to the costs of oppression.

How about yourself?

So you want to do away with restrictions on driving and car ownership?

Wow.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I could regurgitate a few semester of grad school if you want.

[orpheus]

I don't suppose it bothers many of you, but a thought anyway. I wonder if you know how aggressive, violent and prone to solving problems with force American's seem to much of the rest of the world.

I don't think they know - or care - that they're giving America a bad name.

Personally, I care about America and its part in the rest of the world.

[Coito ergo sum]

I don't suppose it bothers many of you, but a thought anyway. I wonder if you know how aggressive, violent and prone to solving problems with force American's seem to much of the rest of the world.

I don't think they know - or care - that they're giving America a bad name.

Personally, I care about America and its part in the rest of the world.

I wonder if you folks know how arrogant and superior this sort of inquiry sounds. Well, I don't suppose it bothers many of you.

One, to preface the statement with the insult -- "I don't suppose it bothers many of you..." - implying that Americans are the sort that just don't care that they might be seen as aggressive, violent and prone to solving problems with force. Yes yes -- we are the great unwashed, not as enlightened as the peace loving British, French, Germans....et al.

Two, it's interesting that you myopically consider yourselves -- a tiny minority of social democratic, largely homogeneous (within national boundaries) countries the "rest of the world." Are you including Africa, South America, Mexico, Russia, eastern Europe, and other violent, including gun violent countries as among the "rest of the world?" Or, is the "rest of the world" Britain, France, Germany, Holland, Scandinavia, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal, switzerland, luxemburg, lichtenstein, and Vatican City?

Three, do you not consider your own violence -- and "problem solving" with violence? With respect to a great many crimes, like violent robberies, assaults, batteries, sexual assaults, etc., the "rest of the world" commits far more of them than we see in the United States. Do any of your bother to care about any of that? Or, do you reserve your judgments for when you can finger point at the problems of the US, and exempt yourselves from similar analysis?

Four, do you not ever consider the details of where gun violence occurs in the US? Do you not understand, or care, that the vast majority of America's gun violence is committed in a small minority of geographical areas (inner cities) and involve a small minority of gun users (who tend to be associated with gangs and gang violence)? Yet, you ascribe to the entire nation of the United States the notion that we are "violent" and that we "solve problems through force."

Five, do you leave open the possibility that you are, in fact, being fed - at least to some extent -- a line of bullshit on this issue? Or, do you cling to the notion that the only brainwashed people on the planet are Americans, who are fed a prepackaged media propaganda piece to make us think the way we are told to think -- all the while, you folks get the "truth" from your government funded and regulated media, ensuring that the people are well-informed?

Yes, Rum, most Americans care how we are viewed in the world, to some extent. However, there has long been a tendency on the part of Europeans to consider themselves superior to the rest of the world, and it becomes very difficult to find a winning path here to get SOME Europeans to view Americans other than by looking down their noses. We're used to it. Every generation, in some way, Americans are to be looked down upon by Europeans -- we're uncooth, unkempt, fat, lazy, stupid, fake, too young/no history, late to the war, unjustifiably taking credit, violent, aggressive, cowboys, and unenlightened. We know. We get it.

EDIT TO ADD: And, of course, we don't even "know" that "the rest of the world" views us as violent cowboys engaged in gunfights in the streets. We're just so oblivious to such things, since Yerpeeins are so worldly and enlightened, and Merkins are brainwashed provincials, whose lack of brains and inability to engage in abstract cripple the nation from functioning as an ongoing political entity.

[Jason]

Orpheus is an American.

[Rum]

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

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.

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.

[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.

[Gallstones]

"We live in a free society. We accept that certain actions of the individual aren't always positive for the body politic..."

Freedoms have costs.
I prefer to assume the costs of freedoms to the costs of oppression.

How about yourself?

So you want to do away with restrictions on driving and car ownership?

Wow.

My kind of strawman


Let's try this again.

There are already regulations and restrictions on the Second. More than enough.

[Gallstones]

I could regurgitate a few semester of grad school if you want.

Please put it in another thread.
It would probably be interesting and it might be a treatment for my insomnia.

[Gallstones]

I don't suppose it bothers many of you, but a thought anyway. I wonder if you know how aggressive, violent and prone to solving problems with force American's seem to much of the rest of the world.

I don't think they know - or care - that they're giving America a bad name.

Personally, I care about America and its part in the rest of the world.

So you do think some of us should feel shame?

[Gallstones]

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

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.

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.

You, personally, aren't paying any of the price of the freedoms possessed by US citizens.
You just like to tell us how we shouldn't want to pay the [alleged] price either.

[Coito ergo sum]

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.

[Jason]

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?

[Blind groper]

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. That is mostly incorrect. The problem is that American gun laws have a loophole a Sherman tank could drive through. On the second hand market, there are no restrictions. No limits. No background checks. No licences etc. This is the craziest aspect of American gun law ever. So a criminal, quite legally, buys a gun from any one of a number of supposed 'second hand' sources. According to my reading, this includes brand new guns of the latest and most lethal design, under assorted pretenses of 'second hand.'

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.