Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Zeropoint]

2 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

I agree that someone piping up with "See? Gun control in Australia doesn't work!" is in extremely poor taste after a mass shooting. However, I don't see any evidence that it's had a large impact. Australia already had a downward trend in homicides. Australians still have access to firearms. The sheer number of arsons and stabbings on that list demonstrates that people who aren't armed with guns aren't necessarily deterred. At the end of the day, they have a LOT less mass murder than we do in the U.S., but then again, they always have.

 

That's about where I am. Despite being a firearm owner, I do acknowledge that we have way too much firearm-enabled violent crime here in the US, and that Something Must Be Done. However, I also have serious qualms about whether the kind of laws popular among my fellow liberals would actually help. Many such laws focus on cosmetic features, and are thus useless. We also see that in many cases, shooters were already prohibited by law from having the guns they used, making it obvious that laws aren't an effective barrier. And finally, as Pattern Ghost pointed out, there are many ways for people to commit mass violence, if that's their goal, which don't require access to firearms.

 

I'm in favor of actual solutions, and I'd be willing to accept some restrictions on my firearms ownership if I felt confident that those restrictions would actually save lives. However, I don't think the root of the problem is access to guns--I think it's cultural. There's some pervasive aspect of US culture that makes people think that enacting violence is a go-to solution, and I feel that until we address that, passing laws against specific tools of violence won't accomplish anything good.

[Lord Liaden]

10 hours ago, Zeropoint said:

I'm in favor of actual solutions, and I'd be willing to accept some restrictions on my firearms ownership if I felt confident that those restrictions would actually save lives. However, I don't think the root of the problem is access to guns--I think it's cultural. There's some pervasive aspect of US culture that makes people think that enacting violence is a go-to solution, and I feel that until we address that, passing laws against specific tools of violence won't accomplish anything good.

 

That's where I come down, as well. Speaking as one of your northern neighbors, where the culture surrounding guns is very different, it looks like the root issue isn't that Americans have guns. It's that, as a society, Americans love guns. You treat shooting a gun as if it were as natural an act as eating or sex. You glamorize them in your media as being cool, sexy, the symbol of and key to power and respect. Your heroes have become the ones with the biggest guns who blow away the most "bad guys," however they choose to define bad guys. Note that I'm not saying those media are the cause of the problem; I view them more as a symptom of an underlying mindset. They are a manifestation of an environment that I believe encourages less stable people to consider taking up a gun as a legitimate, acceptable means to deal with any offense they feel they've suffered.

 

As I've mentioned on these forums before, I would like to see a concerted campaign to deglamorize guns, similar to what was used to change habits around smoking, or drinking and driving. Tone down the blatant gun worship in the media. Emphasize the harm that's done through irresponsible use of firearms. Set up substantial penalties for misuse of guns, improper storage of guns, not following through on background checks for gun ownership, or not keeping track of who, when, and where guns are lent to those not their owners; and then enforce those penalties.

 

I'd just like to add that while the practical benefits of gun control legislation are debatable, IMO that's only one dimension to them. Another significant element is that they symbolize and signal to all members of a society that irresponsible gun use is not acceptable and will not be tolerated. I don't think we should underestimate the effect that can have on changing people's attitudes in the long term. And unfortunately, it will take a long time. But we have to start somewhere.

[Toxxus]

11 hours ago, Zeropoint said:

I'm in favor of actual solutions, and I'd be willing to accept some restrictions on my firearms ownership if I felt confident that those restrictions would actually save lives. However, I don't think the root of the problem is access to guns--I think it's cultural. There's some pervasive aspect of US culture that makes people think that enacting violence is a go-to solution, and I feel that until we address that, passing laws against specific tools of violence won't accomplish anything good.

 

As someone who lives/works in the Plano, TX area I'd like to point out that we have massively, unbelievably high rates of gun ownership.  Not "do you have a firearm", but rather "how many firearms do you have?" and we have a murder rate that is so low that it shames most European countries.

 

It's gone up in recent years, but at one point we were at 0.4 murders per 100,000 people (2012) in an affluent pro-gun part of Northern DFW.

 

Gun ownership went up hugely during the Obama years due to gun-control fears, yet murder rates continued to drop.  I don't think I can state anything as simply and elegantly as the following chart:

 

 

 

 

[Lord Liaden]

The listed source of that chart intrigues me, given that the CDC website lists firearms-related deaths in Texas in 2017 (latest stats I could find) at 12.4 per 100,000 : https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/firearm.htm .  That's about middle of the pack for American states. Overall the gun death rate in 2017 was the highest in the US in over twenty years: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/13/us-gun-deaths-levels-cdc-2017 .  However, those stats are for all gun-related deaths, including accidents and suicides. That last category is actually the highest percentage of those deaths according to the CDC, suggesting that a broader mental health-care approach would help reduce gun mortality.

 

If one considers just the rate of violent gun death per 100,000 people, the United States is orders of magnitude ahead of most developed countries, including in Europe, per stats assembled by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation:  https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/11/09/666209430/deaths-from-gun-violence-how-the-u-s-compares-with-the-rest-of-the-world

 

With respect, Toxxus, I would suggest that your example of "an affluent pro-gun part" of Texas already implies a skewed sample.

[Toxxus]

6 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

That last category is actually the highest percentage of those deaths according to the CDC, suggesting that a broader mental health-care approach would help reduce gun mortality.

 

I 100% agree with this.  We should also be separating suicides from gun deaths since it intentionally skews the numbers upward by a very large amount.

 

Yes, the last couple years have been the first significant upward swing in the last two decades.  Still, I find the fact that gun ownership went up 50% at the same time the murder rate went down 50% makes a very strong case that rates of gun ownership and gun-related homicide are not correlated.

 

Culture, imo, more than anything else sets the murder rate.  It is the willingness of citizens to kill each other that is the problem.  We've had no meaningful gun control in the country and the murder rate dropped by half over the last two decades.

 

 

[Sociotard]

I sometimes wonder if that graph should use different data.

1) Guns per people vs. gun ownership rate. The graph uses number of guns per people, but much of that is weighted by people who own dozens of guns. I prefer the ownership rate, meaning households with one or more guns. Because, obviously, if a household goes from five guns to twenty, it doesn't change the odds that an argument with a spouse or neighbor might turn bloody.

 

2) What kind of gun. Rifles are used in fewer murders than blunt objects. Handguns though, those easily lead the pack. For preplanned murders, the use of a concealable weapon is obvious.  For heat-of-the-moment murders, people are far more likely to actually have a handgun about their person.

 

The problem is, this is really hard data to get! I found some gun ownership data, but it was a one off rather than a multi-year study (so it can't be compared to trends). Worse, it was compiled using a phone survey, meaning it was easy to lie on. That's the only reason I could think why the study claimed dark-blue, little hunting, low crime Hawaii had a higher gun ownership rate than Texas or Kentucky. Sure, Hawaii has a very large military population, but I remain exceedingly dubious.

 

If I could wave a magic gun-control-legislation wand, I'd start with something to give me better data.

[Pattern Ghost]

13 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Another significant element is that they symbolize and signal to all members of a society that irresponsible gun use is not acceptable and will not be tolerated. I don't think we should underestimate the effect that can have on changing people's attitudes in the long term. And unfortunately, it will take a long time. But we have to start somewhere.

 

You're talking about "all members of society" and "changing people's attitudes" in a broad sense. Generally, Americans aren't particularly any more violent than anyone else. Why target the general population versus the populations that account for the majority of gun homicides?

 

It seems like these conversations always start with a mass shooting then veer off to general gun violence solutions, including statistics about how the US has more gun crime, how our culture is more violent, etc. If we want to reduce crimes like mass shootings, we need to look at the minds of mass shooters, not the general population. If we want to reduce general gun crimes, we need to look at the populations that are committing the bulk of those crimes: career criminals and gangs. I don't see this as a general problem that can be handled by restricting the largely peaceful bulk of our population and infringing on their rights without first addressing the specific problem populations.

[Pattern Ghost]

Here's a clearly biased article that nonetheless has some merit. The author links sources for his data, so the article can be fact-checked. (For example, I disregard Lott's "data" to support his "more guns = less crime" mantra as meaningless; the point is, check these points for yourself and decide their validity.) Link.

[Toxxus]

11 minutes ago, Pattern Ghost said:

I don't see this as a general problem that can be handled by restricting the largely peaceful bulk of our population and infringing on their rights without first addressing the specific problem populations.

 

Let's try the solution for other behaviors:

1-  Some people drive drunk and hurt people.  We will make vehicles illegal.

2-  Some people steal things.  We will make personal property illegal.

3-  Some criminals assault other criminals in prison.  We shall make prisons or criminals or both illegal.

4-  Some people cheat on tests.  We shall make tests illegal.

 

We really do need to focus on the behavior and mindset of the roughly 5 per 100,000 that get gun murderous and leave the other 99,995 per 100,000 alone.

 

And why do these conversations almost universally overlook the successful defensive gun uses per year?  The CDC had some fun data:

 

Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.

[Pattern Ghost]

Here's a PDF from the Bureau of Justice Statistics about violent crime trends.

[Lord Liaden]

34 minutes ago, Toxxus said:

 

Let's try the solution for other behaviors:

1-  Some people drive drunk and hurt people.  We will make vehicles illegal.

2-  Some people steal things.  We will make personal property illegal.

3-  Some criminals assault other criminals in prison.  We shall make prisons or criminals or both illegal.

4-  Some people cheat on tests.  We shall make tests illegal.

 

We really do need to focus on the behavior and mindset of the roughly 5 per 100,000 that get gun murderous and leave the other 999,995 per 100,000 alone.

 

And why do these conversations almost universally overlook the successful defensive gun uses per year?  The CDC had some fun data:

 

Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.

 

So, we stop roadside testing of drivers for the influence of alcohol or drugs, because most drivers don't drive impaired? We don't screen air passengers for dangerous items, because the vast majority won't commit violent acts on a plane? Obviously that's not practical, but those arguments are in the same vein. It's not possible to leave the other people alone, because without checks in the system we won't identify many dangers until it's too late.

 

The concept of applauding sizeable numbers of "defensive gun use" sounds bizarre to a Canadian. The situation rarely comes up here, because it rarely has to. As a society we just don't look to guns for defense anywhere near as often as Americans do. And we're right across the border from you. We live much the same kind of lives as you do. Huge numbers of both our populations cross the border and interact with each other every day.

 

Whether trends of gun violence in the United States go up or down over whatever period of years you look at isn't the point of concern. It's that the statistics, any way you look at them, remain excessively inflated compared to any other economically and politically comparable nation. That's not circumstance, that's not small groups of people. That's something uniquely fundamental to the United States.

[Starlord]

How about making gatherings of more than 2 people illegal?  Most people are annoying after more than 20 minutes in-person anyway.

[Lord Liaden]

I'm always disappointed by straw-man arguments, making examples of such an unreasonable extreme that they become ridiculous. It's too easy a tactic to try to discredit more measured viewpoints.

[Pattern Ghost]

6 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

I'm always disappointed by straw-man arguments, making examples of such an unreasonable extreme that they become ridiculous. It's too easy a tactic to try to discredit more measured viewpoints.

 

One person's straw man is another person's reductio ad absurdum.

[Pattern Ghost]

18 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

That's not circumstance, that's not small groups of people.

 

Support this assertion with statistics, because all of the statistics I see indicate the opposite. Gun crime tends to follow the Pareto principle, as far as I can tell.

[Lord Liaden]

I'm going to make myself probably even less popular here than I already am, by bringing up the example of a very popular anti-hero of current American action movies, John Wick. When I look at the concept of this man, I see a professional murderer, someone who killed large numbers of people for pay. Yes, he eventually got out of that profession; but that big house he lived in? That fancy car he was so protective of? They were paid for in blood. You can point out that he follows some sort of professional code of conduct. You can assert that the people he killed were arguably even worse than him. I consider a hierarchy of mass-murderers to be a morally insupportable concept.

 

In John Wick's first movie he goes on a rampage of vengeance because someone stole his car and killed his dog. Sure, I appreciate the sentimental symbolism of the dog, and why it impacted him. But for that reason alone, he ruthlessly killed a small legion of people whose only crime against him was getting between him and the man he wanted vengeance on.

 

But audiences applaud him. They applaud his skill, his ruthlessness, his unforgiving determination, his single-minded fixation on his goal. I grasp, intellectually, the appeal to our instincts for vengeance, our desire for empowerment, the sheer roller-coaster thrill of the experience. Emotionally, though, I admit I just don't get it. I know it's supposed to be treated as just a fantasy, something we'd never expect in real life; but fantasies often say more about who we really are than real life does. And I'm given pause to contemplate the mind set behind the culture that creates such a character, and that receives him so warmly.

 

I will now withdraw from this topic of discussion altogether, and prepare to be pilloried.😣

[Toxxus]

9 minutes ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

Support this assertion with statistics, because all of the statistics I see indicate the opposite. Gun crime tends to follow the Pareto principle, as far as I can tell.

 

That article was great and chock full of specifics I hadn't seen before. 

 

Hard to believe so much of the murder is concentrated in such small areas. 

 

[Lord Liaden]

10 minutes ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

Support this assertion with statistics, because all of the statistics I see indicate the opposite. Gun crime tends to follow the Pareto principle, as far as I can tell.

 

You keep pointing to pockets of concentrated behavior as the exception that proves the rule; when other comparable countries don't even have pockets like those. I have to ask, why do those pockets arise in the United States and not those other countries?

 

And drawing parallels with Mexico? That's apples and oranges.

[Lord Liaden]

26 minutes ago, Pattern Ghost said:

 

One person's straw man is another person's reductio ad absurdum.

 

Only if you can show direct progress from the initial contention to the absurd consequence, with no measured steps in between.

[Pattern Ghost]

28 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

I'm going to make myself probably even less popular here than I already am,

 

You'll never be unpopular with me. (Though that post was kind of silly. )

[Pattern Ghost]

24 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

I have to ask, why do those pockets arise in the United States and not those other countries?

 

Now there's a good question.

 

21 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

And drawing parallels with Mexico? That's apples and oranges.

 

I have to admit I'm confused by this comment. My post linked to an article of where crime is concentrated in the US, then the CDC, the National Gang Center, the National Institute of Justice (a .gov that's a subset of the DOJ). Did I accidentally draw a parallel with Mexico?

[Lord Liaden]

14 minutes ago, Pattern Ghost said:

I have to admit I'm confused by this comment. My post linked to an article of where crime is concentrated in the US, then the CDC, the National Gang Center, the National Institute of Justice (a .gov that's a subset of the DOJ). Did I accidentally draw a parallel with Mexico?

 

For some reason my first click on your last link brought up a Google search page headed by surveys of crime rates in Mexico, which I assumed was your point. It's not happening any more, though.

[Pattern Ghost]

16 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

For some reason my first click on your last link brought up a Google search page headed by surveys of crime rates in Mexico, which I assumed was your point. It's not happening any more, though.

 

That's weird. Maybe run a virus scan. It could be some bad hombres are trying to take over your computer.

[Ternaugh]

2 hours ago, Toxxus said:

 

Let's try the solution for other behaviors:

1-  Some people drive drunk and hurt people.  We will make vehicles illegal.

2-  Some people steal things.  We will make personal property illegal.

3-  Some criminals assault other criminals in prison.  We shall make prisons or criminals or both illegal.

4-  Some people cheat on tests.  We shall make tests illegal.

 

We really do need to focus on the behavior and mindset of the roughly 5 per 100,000 that get gun murderous and leave the other 99,995 per 100,000 alone.

 

And why do these conversations almost universally overlook the successful defensive gun uses per year?  The CDC had some fun data:

 

Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.

 

1. People who operate cars are required to hold a valid license, and the vehicles that they drive are required to be registered if driven off of private property. By extension of this argument point, should we require licensing of people who want a gun, and then register their guns?

[Toxxus]

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

So, we stop roadside testing of drivers for the influence of alcohol or drugs, because most drivers don't drive impaired? We don't screen air passengers for dangerous items, because the vast majority won't commit violent acts on a plane? Obviously that's not practical, but those arguments are in the same vein. It's not possible to leave the other people alone, because without checks in the system we won't identify many dangers until it's too late

 

Is it not practical?  I would disagree.  Look at the degree of inconvenience and cost we're absorbing so the TSA can harass the living sh*t out of us at airports for what appears to be virtually no gain in safety.

 

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jul/6/tsa-failed-detect-95-percent-prohibited-items-minn/

https://abcnews.go.com/US/tsa-fails-tests-latest-undercover-operation-us-airports/story?id=51022188

 

I prefer the older approach of inconveniencing people who seem to be up to no good and leaving everyone else alone.  I'm old enough to remember flying prior to TSA and it was lovely.  So much faster.  So much less harassment.

I think I've managed to take 1 flight where I wasn't **randomly** selected to be screened.

 

Pull over the guys who are driving in an unsafe manner.  Stop harassing people who are just trying to drive home on a Holiday weekend.