The case against guns

[Collector1337]

OK I've had enough of insults from Gallstones Seth et al, all the Gun Nuts! So for the first time I'm hiding a Ratz forum.

Guns are an effective way to communicate if you don't want any talking back. Go clean your barrels or shoot some pigeons.

[Seth]

OK I've had enough of insults from Gallstones Seth et al, all the Gun Nuts! So for the first time I'm hiding a Ratz forum.

Coward.

Guns are an effective way to communicate if you don't want any talking back.

You're absolutely right, they are. When some thug tries to rob me I'm not interested in conversing with him, I want him to cease and desist what he's doing immediately and giving him a look down the barrel of my H&K USP Compact .45 is a great way to cut the conversation short and get right to the point. Sixty percent of the time or so it's precisely that conversation-stopper that prevents or thwarts a criminal victimization without a shot being fired.

And the good thing is that if that conversation-stopper isn't enough to stop the crime, there's always the one that comes out of the muzzle at 1008 fps.

That usually does the trick.

[Hermit]

Guns are an effective way to communicate if you don't want any talking back.

You're absolutely right, they are. When some thug tries to rob me I'm not interested in conversing with him, I want him to cease and desist what he's doing immediately and giving him a look down the barrel of my H&K USP Compact .45 is a great way to cut the conversation short and get right to the point. Sixty percent of the time or so it's precisely that conversation-stopper that prevents or thwarts a criminal victimization without a shot being fired.

And the good thing is that if that conversation-stopper isn't enough to stop the crime, there's always the one that comes out of the muzzle at 1008 fps.

That usually does the trick.

It appears that in this case the conversation was very brief, and it did not involve some thug trying to anyone. The conversation concerned the issue of loud music emanating from a car, and it was stopped by the issue of a hail of eight bullets that resulted in the death of one of the occupants of that car. I don't think that the defendant's lawyer's claim that "Mr. Dunn acted responsibly and as any responsible firearms owner would have acted under these same circumstances" is doing the gun lobby any favours.

[Jason]

Sounds like a gangbanger crime to me.

Naturally I didn't read the article I assume you're referencing.

[Hermit]

Sounds like a gangbanger crime to me.

Naturally I didn't read the article I assume you're referencing.

Come back with a reply when you have.

Florida man pleads not guilty to shooting teen to death over loud music

[Jason]

I see. I guess we'll have to wait and see what these presently unreleased 'facts' are that his lawyer claims will prove he acted responsibly.

[Seth]

I see. I guess we'll have to wait and see what these presently unreleased 'facts' are that his lawyer claims will prove he acted responsibly.

Yup. If I had to make a guess he was subjected to threats of violence, death and serious injury by the teens, and they may have appeared to be going for guns in the car.

But we'll have to wait for the trial. That's what trials are for.

I found it interesting that the news report didn't bother to report anything beyond that the guy shot at someone. No investigation, no interviews with witnesses, no description of the events that transpired, virtually nothing that any credible and objective journalist would insist on having before publishing.

In other words I believe we're looking at the start of another yellow-journalism instigated white-boy gun-owner witch hunt. Anyone taking bets?

[Woodbutcher]

Could only happen in US.

[Seth]

Could only happen in US.

No, it happens all over the place, in every society on earth throughout time immemorial.

People have been defending themselves for a long, long time.

[Blind groper]

Except, Seth, that was murder, not defense.

When you make tools for committing murder easily obtained by any nut case who wants one, of course the murder rate rises.

Seth's idiotic theory of more guns less crime is like the following.

The Mayor says to the Counsellors. "We have a major graffiti problem in our city, people. Time to change the laws and make spray cans of paint more easily available to our teenagers."

In the same way, Seth believes that handing out the means of committing murder will reduce the number of murders. Doh!

[Seth]

Except, Seth, that was murder, not defense.

Was it, Mr. Vigilante Justice? We'll see.

When you make tools for committing murder easily obtained by any nut case who wants one, of course the murder rate rises.

Strawman fallacy, try again.

Seth's idiotic theory of more guns less crime is like the following.

The Mayor says to the Counsellors. "We have a major graffiti problem in our city, people. Time to change the laws and make spray cans of paint more easily available to our teenagers."

In the same way, Seth believes that handing out the means of committing murder will reduce the number of murders. Doh!

Another strawman fallacy. It's gratifying to see that you've run out of actual arguments because they have all been thoroughly debunked and destroyed, and that all you have left is strawmen and ad hom. It means you're done and overdone.

Bye loser.

[Woodbutcher]

Sorry Seth, you are not allowed to use your own definition of strawman fallacy. Use the real one. And while you are at it, please submit one peer reviewed study that agrees with Lott et al. You can't. He's a fucking weasel that wrote shit for NRA to suck and the fucking morons fell for it. You were had, man.

[Seth]

Sorry Seth, you are not allowed to use your own definition of strawman fallacy. Use the real one.

I am:

Description of Straw Man

The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of "reasoning" has the following pattern:

Person A has position X.
Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X).
Person B attacks position Y.
Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed.

This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. One might as well expect an attack on a poor drawing of a person to hurt the person.

BG wrote: "When you make tools for committing murder easily obtained by any nut case who wants one, of course the murder rate rises."

That's a strawman (and it's also a fallacious appeal to fear) because handguns are not "tools for committing murders" any more than kitchen knives, baseball bats and cyanide are, and we don't make firearms easily available to "any nut case who wants one" (which conveniently elides the meaning of "nut case"), as a matter of legal fact, firearms are the most heavily regulated consumer product in the US, with more than 50,000 laws nationwide controlling the manufacturing, distribution, sale, possession and use at virtually every step. The one thing that the Progressives want is "universal background checks" because they (wrongly) think this will prevent crooks from getting guns. Ain't so. Moreover, the dangers to the body politic and our liberties that would be created by a gun registration system far outweighs all the gun crimes ever committed.

Besides which, it's simply utterly impossible to effectively police private transactions in the first place. You can't possibly know if I hand my pistol to a neighbor and he hands me a hundred bucks, and because there are 300 million guns already in circulation it would be prohibitively expensive and logistically impossible to find and register them all so you can tell who sold what to whom, as Canada finally admitted after spending more than a billion dollars trying to do exactly that...and failing miserably.

It's simply not possible. And that's why the NRA and other gun-rights advocates refuse to support this "common sense measure." It's not common sense, it's a shame, a farce and a fraud that the liberal hoplophobes have been trying to turn into the conventional wisdom for nearly a hundred years. It's actual intent is to create a national database of LAW-ABIDING gun owners, who are the only people who will dutifully register their firearms, as California and New Jersey prove. It will NOT register a single firearm possessed by anyone not willing to voluntarily register it, because it can't, and what's more, due to a Supreme Court case from decades ago, the government cannot make it a crime for a criminal to fail to register an illegally-possessed handgun because that violates the 5th Amendment proscription against self-incrimination.

Therefore, arguendo, what the government ends up with is a massive database of law-abiding gun owners, the overwhelming majority of whom will never misuse their firearms. And to what end? To the end of being able to ban guns, one model or type at a time, and send out the jackboots with machine guns to collect them from their registered owners. There is simply no other reason to compile such a database. None.

And we know it. Which is why we oppose it. It violates the privacy rights of law-abiding citizens, brands them as suspects in the absence of any evidence of a crime, stigmatizes them when those records get published by the anti-gun media (as happened in, guess where, New Jersey when a local yellow rag put up and on-line interactive map showing the home addresses and locations on Google Maps of every licensed gun owner in two counties, which resulted in a number of them being burglarized, putting MORE illegal guns in circulation) in a bald faced attempt at demonizing gun owners.

Such a system does NOTHING to prevent criminals from obtaining guns, nothing at all. Therefore it has no legitimate governmental purpose other than to burden and infringe the rights of gun owners.

And while you are at it, please submit one peer reviewed study that agrees with Lott et al. You can't.

Submitted for your consideration:

This report from the NRC which cites Lott et al favorably and dismisses Kellerman as "inconclusive."]

He's a fucking weasel that wrote shit for NRA to suck and the fucking morons fell for it. You were had, man.

Actually, as you would know if you weren't drinking BG's Kool-Aid, he was initially biased against firearms when he began his research and was looking to support the thesis of "more guns, more crime", but he changed his mind after actually doing the research (which was NOT funded by the NRA) and concluding that he was wrong in his presuppositions.

That makes you the fucking moron, not me.

[Blind groper]

Seth

When I said a hand gun is a tool for committing murder, that was exactly and precisely correct. A hand gun is designed for killing human beings. It has no other real purpose. It is an inferior hunting weapon. While it can be used for sport target shooting, that is really just a way of practising how to kill another human, since putting bullets into a cardboard target is otherwise a pointless activity.

Hand guns are the weapon of choice when you want something seriously lethal to people, and which can be hidden away on our body till you are close enough to whip it out and kill your victim. Long guns cannot be used in this way.

Your usual excuse (self defense) is shown to be a crock when I point out that owning a hand gun increases your personal risk, rather than reducing it. So it does the opposite of self defense.

By elimination, we are left with killing other humans, which is a very effective use of a hand gun. It is called murder, which means hand guns are tools for committing murder.

On your NRC reference which you claim proves Lott is a reputable peer reviewed researcher. I could not access the whole article and the abstract said nothing of the sort.

[Seth]

Seth

When I said a hand gun is a tool for committing murder, that was exactly and precisely correct. A hand gun is designed for killing human beings. It has no other real purpose. It is an inferior hunting weapon. While it can be used for sport target shooting, that is really just a way of practising how to kill another human, since putting bullets into a cardboard target is otherwise a pointless activity.

Well, tell that to the Olympic pistol shooters who spend years of their lives putting bullets into a cardboard target. It's not nearly as easy as you think it is, which is why it's an Olympic sport. Any tool used to murder is a tool for committing murder. Handguns are actually less so than, as I said, hands, feet, boots and blunt instruments. fewer than 1 in a hundred thousand handguns are ever used to commit a crime.

Hand guns are the weapon of choice when you want something seriously lethal to people, and which can be hidden away on our body till you are close enough to whip it out and kill your victim.

Why yes, yes it is, which is what makes it the most perfect self-defense weapon ever invented. Indeed, that's WHY so many millions more people are carrying them now.

Long guns cannot be used in this way.

Ever hear of a "sawed-off shotgun" or a "short-barrelled rifle" you dunce? I've got a Sig P556 which is a Sig 556 action without a stock and with a 9 inch barrel. It shoots exactly the same cartridge as the AR-15 and uses exactly the same magazines. But it was built officially as a "pistol" because it has no stock and can be fired from the hand. I have a custom-made shoulder rig that works just like the ones the FBI uses to carry their H&K MP-7 PDWs, or their Uzis (Reagan's team) on the presidential protection detail. Mine has far more power because it uses a rifle cartridge rather than a pistol cartridge like the MP-7.

All I have to do is file some paperwork and pay a $200 tax and I can add a folding stock to it and turn it into a short-barreled rifle, which I'll even be able to silence sometime in the next month or two.

I don't even have to buy a stock because I can swap the lower from my Sig 556 rifle that has a folding stock onto the P556...as soon as I get the tax stamp.

Now, there's absolutely nothing to prevent a crook from doing exactly the same thing, without the paperwork. Or he can saw off the barrel and stock of a bolt-action rifle or even a semi-auto, although that takes some extra engineering if it's a gas gun.

Any of those weapons, the shotgun, the sawed off rifle and the SBR is easily concealed under even your standard suit coat...just like the FBI does. Works even better with a heavy winter jacket.

So, once again you don't know shit about firearms and you're parading your absymal ignorance around like it's a crown, clown.

Your usual excuse (self defense) is shown to be a crock when I point out that owning a hand gun increases your personal risk, rather than reducing it. So it does the opposite of self defense.

Except it doesn't and your favorite bit of hoplophobe propaganda has been long and thoroughly debunked by experts.

By elimination, we are left with killing other humans, which is a very effective use of a hand gun. It is called murder, which means hand guns are tools for committing murder.

Unless they aren't, and the vast majority of them aren't, and are in fact used for self-defense and sport shooting. And sometimes someone needs to be killed. That's a "homicide" but not a "murder" in that it can be a lawful use of deadly force, and is, fairly often.

On your NRC reference which you claim proves Lott is a reputable peer reviewed researcher. I could not access the whole article and the abstract said nothing of the sort.

[/quote]

Which just means that you're an ignoramus because I cited the relevant section quite some time ago. You can look up the footnotes yourself if you have the wit.

So what this means is that your hoplophobic characterization of handguns is in fact a fallacious appeal to fear. You are using deliberately strongly biased terminology to poison the well, so to speak, because you don't like handguns.

Tough shit dude, it's not your decision.