Mega-Thread: Gun Control Thread

[THE Bigzoman]

If we're going to use accounting terms.../eyeroll.

What are the costs associated to a woman using a gun to prevent herself from being raped?

Gun depreciation?

[Rukentuts]

And he benefited by defending himself and society benefited by one less criminal on the street for a while to break into someone else's house.

And meanwhile more crimes were committed than he stopped thanks to guns. Society doesn't get shit for a benefit.

[THE Bigzoman]

And meanwhile more crimes were committed than he stopped thanks to guns. Society doesn't get shit for a benefit.

And this cost doesn't exceed the societal cost for a rape victim?

[Rukentuts]

And this cost doesn't exceed the societal cost for a rape victim?

Let's see, more people being victimized thanks to guns? Yes.

Guns are absolute shit for deterring crime anyway.

[Ghostpanther]

And meanwhile more crimes were committed than he stopped thanks to guns. Society doesn't get shit for a benefit.

Not true. The crime rate has actually gone down the last 20 years.

[Rukentuts]

Not true. The crime rate has actually gone down the last 20 years.

And yet the proportions remain incredibly skewed. In the case of gun homicides, 36:1. In the case of stopping burglaries...0.1%, or 1 in 1000. Guns in the hands of civilians are not a widespread deterrent for crime. Guns for "defense" offer nothing but an emotional crutch on the macro scale, and this crutch is barbed as it also tends to undermine a person's safety and mental state (less defensive, more aggressive).

[Jaxi]

This thread has become a shining example as to why the gun debate always falls apart: an absolute lack of civility. Monkeys flinging shit at a zoo show more respect.

[Ghostpanther]

And yet the proportions remain incredibly skewed. In the case of gun homicides, 36:1. In the case of stopping burglaries...0.1%, or 1 in 1000. Guns in the hands of civilians are not a widespread deterrent for crime. Guns for "defense" offer nothing but an emotional crutch on the macro scale, and this crutch is barbed as it also tends to undermine a person's safety and mental state (less defensive, more aggressive).

Only from your prospective. Just the way you look at it and your own convictions which are fine because you believe in your cause. I happen to disagree, but also have my convictions and cause. I will continue to exercise my right to own a gun and use one for self defense and be within my legal right to do so.

[Rukentuts]

Only from your prospective.

Nope, that's the facts we have presented. Whether or not you care is different.

[Ghostpanther]

This thread has become a shining example as to why the gun debate always falls apart: an absolute lack of civility. Monkeys flinging shit at a zoo show more respect.

Not really. Sure some have resorted to name calling and mud slinging, but overall this is a very good study and for myself I have learned some things and in some ways my mind has been swayed to some degree. Most notable would be a more receptive attitude for more background checks to keep guns out of the wrong hands. Not wavered however on my belief of my basic right to own a gun and use it for self defense.

[THE Bigzoman]

This thread has become a shining example as to why the gun debate always falls apart: an absolute lack of civility. Monkeys flinging shit at a zoo show more respect.

This thread has it's high-points.

Just pretentious pricks come and derail it time in and time out.

[Eroginous]

Nope, that's the facts we have presented. Whether or not you care is different.

Your entire argument hinges on making shit up or using bad studies. Societal cost? Really? Please explain to me how much it costs society to stop a rape from happening. In case you haven't noticed, society is made up of individuals. If one of them is all of a sudden not worth saving from a rape, how are any of them worth saving, and what exactly are you trying to save by removing guns?

[PhaelixWW]

we were talking about victimization, 6.5% is not true

We've been talking about it all. Burglary rates, rates with people at home, rates of victimization.

When I said this, however, I wasn't talking about victimization. I was just compiling the data into a statistic. And I was very clear to what I was referring:

1 million times a year, someone comes face-to-face with a burglar in their home. With 115m households in the US, that means that there's about a 0.9% chance of your household being burglarized while someone is at home per year. With an average life expectancy of 75 years, that means that there's a 6.5% chance that someone in your household will come face-to-face with a burglar in your lifetime.

See? I never specified victimization.

If you want violent victimization, then it changes to 1.7%, or 1 in 60 odds. That's still not great.

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So *I* isn't individual now?

Or can't you tell the difference?

Since you suck at reading comprehension, let me fill out that statement so you can understand it:

I[, an individual,] don't need to compare that shit to any other country to know that a 6.5% [statistical] chance is enough [for any American] to warrant some kind of protection [for their home].

So the "I" was the subject for the verb "know" in the first part of the sentence, and the second half of the sentence, including the statistic and "to warrant" was for the implied citizenry of the US.

I thought that was fairly obvious, but I guess you need everything spelled out for you.

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i haven´t made a comparison, i asked if he locks his car, out of curiosity as he´s not closing his windows, i wanted to find out where he draws the line

Uh, that's still a comparison, even if you try to claim it's not. Comparing security of home with security of a vehicle.

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This math is such a dramatic oversimplification it's laughable. You now have the same change no matter if you're urban or rural. You have the same chance whether you have a security system, a dog, locks, whatever.

It's a statistic. Just like homicide rates. You think national homicide rates are appropriate to use, but not this statistic? Completely hypocritical.

Because all categories of people are equally likely to be murdered, pfft.

That's why it's a national statistic, not an individual chance. It's meant to paint a picture of the nation as a whole.

But you don't seem to understand math or statistics, either.

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you just acknowledged your error and now flip out about it? what?

You're the one misunderstanding. I made no error when I stated that statistic. I was intentionally talking about burglaries with a person at home, regardless of victimization, since that's just about the full subset of times when home defense is potentially an issue. Just because, in some of those situations, the robber left before victimizing someone doesn't make it not a home defense situation.

In fact, those 3/4 million cases without victimization might just (gasp!) not have included victimization because the person at home was able to effectively scare off the intruder, sometimes with the use of a firearm as a deterrent.

Just because you want to focus on all the failed self-defense cases (victimizations) doesn't mean that the statistic I stated was meant to follow that train of thought.

The error I made was specifically in regards to the 65% known intruder statistic that Pre referenced. I missed the fact that he was talking specifically about victimizations only, since we were talking about methods of entry for all burglaries with someone at home, not just victimization burglaries.

That statistic makes some sense, however. People with a personal grudge against the homeowner are more likely to victimize said homeowner. Also, if the victim knows the intruder, then the intruder knows that they can identify them, too, which may cause them to be more apt to violence towards that inhabitant.

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i get where you´re going, but the 6.5% figure is off when talking about chances

I'll say it a third time, here, just to maybe clarify. The 6.5% statistic was in regards to questions about whether there was enough justification to warrant having the ability to use a firearm to defend yourself against a home intruder. To that end, the statistic was designed to illustrate the chances of someone in your household being in a home defense situation - i.e. coming face-to-face with a burglar.

It's a question of perspective, really. I was showing the statistical probability of being in this situation, without specifying only a negative outcome.

In other words, I wasn't showing the likelihood of being a victim, but the likelihood of the chance to avoid being a victim.

In yet other words, I was showing the likelihood of a future situation in which a defensive firearm use could be beneficial, as opposed to the specific data about past situations in which, given hindsight, a firearm used in self-defense would definitely have been beneficial.

Unwritten future vs. failed past. Does any of that make sense to you?

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Do you know what "net" is? Or did they cover that the same day you missed the class about the scientific method. It's a grade school concept.

It's so very amusing when you try to chide someone while not understanding the concept.

Even if we were to take the study's claim that half of all defensive uses of firearms were illegal as true, then it still doesn't completely invalidate (zero out) the importance of adding them in.

For that, you have to actually understand math.

Let's say we have 40k incidents of offensive gun use around those homes (since half of the purported ratio was suicides, and using 19k suicides per year as a base) and only 2k defensive shootings. That gives us our 20:1 ratio, right? Now let's say we add in 400k defensive gun uses that occur without a shot being fired. Even if half of those go on each side of the offensive/defensive equation, you're now talking about a 240k to 202k ratio, or a 1.2:1 ratio... which is a damn sight different than 20:1.

But, just to circle back around to the beginning, you shouldn't take it as true that half of all defensive uses are illegal. The study even states:

Our findings have various limitations. Our results are based on self reports of past events, with the potential of recall bias. The surveys under-sampled poor people who may have more hostile conflicts with firearms than their richer counterparts. The key questions from the two surveys, though very similar, were not identical, and neither survey sampled anyone under age 18. In addition, we have detailed information only on the most recent self defense and criminal gun incidents; to the extent that the most recent incident is not typical of all the incidents experienced by the respondent, our findings may not be representative.

Only five judges, from three states, assessed the self defense gun incidents from the surveys; they were a convenience rather than a random sample, and the sample is too small to be confident of the stability of the aggregate ratings we report here.

...and more importantly:

However, our results should not be extrapolated to obtain population based estimates of the absolute number of gun uses. If we have as little as 1% random misclassification, our results could be off by orders of magnitude.

So the people doing the study, at least, understand the limitations. Too bad the internet experts who post these studies as "proof" don't.

It's really hard to argue with gunners that don't even have a high school equivalent in terms of concepts.

It's really hard not to laugh when a person who owns (or at least has owned, despite his attempts to delete certain posts) guns call someone who has never owned a firearm a "gunner", especially while they continuously, and ironically, try to claim that other people don't understand math, science, logic, and whatever else, when his posts fail in such spectacular fashion to demonstrate any kind of real understanding of those same concepts.

[Kurioxan]

Not true. The crime rate has actually gone down the last 20 years.

If guns were introduced 20 years ago then you would have positive correlation, guns have nothing to do with this reduction, which is also verified in every western world country and many asian. Better life, higher education etc are contributing factors, guns aren't quite relevant in that argument.

Another side of the argument is that guns in the hands of most of the population (ignoring all the training/actually being able to use them in such situations) will escalate on the criminals side, crimes happen for many reasons and they will still happen regardless of the population being armed or not, what will change however is the perceived risk the criminals have and their adjustment to it, and how confident people with guns will be when faced with an assailant. (people watch way too many movies and think too highly of themselves)

That said, i actually quite like guns, but do guns prevent crime? Not quite sure about that, it does makes people stupid and give a false sense of empowerment which can aggravate things, its a hard topic to discuss considering the lack of proper parallels.

[Mayhem]

if guns prevent crimes, and the prevented crimes don´t lead to 100% convictions, would the criminal not try to get a gun himself? could crime prevention with guns lead to an increase in illegal gun possession?

[Deleted]

if guns prevent crimes, and the prevented crimes don´t lead to 100% convictions, would the criminal not try to get a gun himself? could crime prevention with guns lead to an increase in illegal gun possession?

It will lead to an increase in illegal gun possession. Around here owning or carrying guns is pretty much banned and getting one for hunting or certain other activities making them necessary is incredible hard and entails a lot of paper work and going through a lot of checks and controls. Yet criminals get them anyway, we still have certain criminals shooting at one another occasionally and other crimes involving guns and other weapons which are outlawed.
Criminals do not care about laws to begin with, does anyone really think telling someone who's robbing a bank or trying to murder someone that his gun is illegal will do any good? I'm not in favor of everyone freely opening guns by any means but that seems kind of naive to me.

[Deleted]

It will lead to an increase in illegal gun possession. Around here owning or carrying guns is pretty much banned and getting one for hunting or certain other activities making them necessary is incredible hard and entails a lot of paper work and going through a lot of checks and controls. Yet criminals get them anyway, we still have certain criminals shooting at one another occasionally and other crimes involving guns and other weapons which are outlawed.
Criminals do not care about laws to begin with, does anyone really think telling someone who's robbing a bank or trying to murder someone that his gun is illegal will do any good? I'm not in favor of everyone freely opening guns by any means but that seems kind of naive to me.

Not all criminals have access to the guns though. I think that's one key factor you missed out. Most of the criminals with guns are pretty serious criminals that need the kind of protection the police cannot help them with, where as common burgulars or thiefs don't have access to guns.

[tombstoner139]

I think it's telling that you, Lockedout, Phaelix, and myself have spent hundreds of pages defending gun rights even though none of us own guns and therefore do not directly benefit from the rights we are fighting for.

Not true... We all directly benefit from gun ownership much in the same way as immunization protects a community. It's people who think we dont need guns or immunization that place us all at risk.

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Not all criminals have access to the guns though. I think that's one key factor you missed out. Most of the criminals with guns are pretty serious criminals that need the kind of protection the police cannot help them with, where as common burgulars or thiefs don't have access to guns.

The have all the access they want. They simply choose not to use them. Simply having a fire arm is suficant grounds to make the punishment for many crimes far more severe. it just not worth the risk vs. reward.

[Rukentuts]

Since you suck at reading comprehension, let me fill out that statement so you can understand it:

Just like 65%, why am I not surprised? Let me clarify.

1 million times a year, someone comes face-to-face with a burglar in their home. With 115m households in the US, that means that there's about a 0.9% chance of your household being burglarized while someone is at home per year. With an average life expectancy of 75 years, that means that there's a 6.5% chance that someone in your household will come face-to-face with a burglar in your lifetime.

Oh wait, I thought you said your conjured statistic wasn't on an individual basis? Do you even read your own posts?

Let's watch you backtrack on this like your raw data garbage.

Uh, that's still a comparison, even if you try to claim it's not. Comparing security of home with security of a vehicle.

Like all gunners have, it is a bull fucking shit comparison.

It's a statistic. Just like homicide rates. You think national homicide rates are appropriate to use, but not this statistic? Completely hypocritical.

Yeah, a rate you just conjured.

But you don't seem to understand math or statistics, either.

Coming from a guy that tried to disprove a scientific study with raw data. Funny. As. Hell.

Just because you want to focus on all the failed self-defense cases (victimizations) doesn't mean that the statistic I stated was meant to follow that train of thought.

Yeah, why focus on the 90+%?

It's so very amusing when you try to chide someone while not understanding the concept.

This is so fucking funny it's begging for a sig. You don't even know what "net" is, and you post this

Even if we were to take the study's claim that half of all defensive uses of firearms were illegal as true, then it still doesn't completely invalidate (zero out) the importance of adding them in.

We get it. You're unable to understand such a basic concept as net. Because taking over half and adding them in as crimes doesn't affect society at all

I really don't know why I have to explain such basic concepts to gunners.

But, just to circle back around to the beginning, you shouldn't take it as true that half of all defensive uses are illegal.

Of course, because you said so. Because you have nothing so just make shit up.

It's really hard not to laugh when a person who owns (or at least has owned, despite his attempts to delete certain posts) guns call someone who has never owned a firearm a "gunner", especially while they continuously, and ironically, try to claim that other people don't understand math, science, logic, and whatever else, when his posts fail in such spectacular fashion to demonstrate any kind of real understanding of those same concepts.

It's really hard not to laugh when gunners just resort to bullshit when they fail at grade school concepts in such spectacular fashion.

Maybe you should dispute science with raw data some more. What a joke.

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Your entire argument hinges on making shit up or using bad studies. Societal cost? Really? Please explain to me how much it costs society to stop a rape from happening. In case you haven't noticed, society is made up of individuals. If one of them is all of a sudden not worth saving from a rape, how are any of them worth saving, and what exactly are you trying to save by removing guns?

Just claim science is bullshit and move on with your life. Wouldn't be your first time propagating ignorance like gunners and their NRA have to do.

Because you, like Phaelix, seem to have trouble with such a basic concept of net. Seriously, I don't get how people have this much trouble.

[TZucchini]

Another Active Shooter scenario occurred yesterday at Seattle Pacific University. One individual was killed and three were injured, one critically.

This one was interesting, for me, on two fronts:

1). While I'm not a huge advocate of magazine capacity bans, the shooter was subdued while reloading. I often hear statements like "Magazine bans won't accomplish anything. It only takes two seconds to reload." In this instance, it appears that was just enough time to stop the shooter from killing more people.

2). The shooter was subdued by a security guard with pepper spray. Kinda puts a hole in that old adage, "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun."

Anyway, I'm sure I'll be accused of "dancing on graves," or something like that. I know there's a lot people that get sensitive about talking about these shootings as they occur.