The 'Guns? Who needs guns?' Thread

[Muse]

When you get a story of over 50 killed and hundreds injured by one person from inside a hotel room with something other than a gun, please post it.

It can be done but so so obviously, the lazy or tweaked person's (mass) murder weapon is a gun, and most murderers are way too tweaked (and lazy) to get into a complicated murder plot involving explosives ala Timothy McVeigh. Now, Ted Kaczynski was a horse of a different color. He wasn't the lazy sort (a math professor). He was tweaked, but not lazy.

 

[ImpulsE69]

You're going to need to link to those statistics. As far as I know gun deaths are only 'down' in the US insofar as the US follows the same trend as the whole developed world, in that violent crimes and murder hit a peak during the '90s, not just in the US but almost everywhere.

I mean, even here everyone is getting agitated about stabbings in London, but the London murder rate is not particularly high, it's lower than it was in the '90s - just as in most Western countries.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/colu...n-deaths-suicide-cdc-1216-20181214-story.html

 

[ImpulsE69]

It can be done but so so obviously, the lazy or tweaked person's (mass) murder weapon is a gun, and most murderers are way too tweaked (and lazy) to get into a complicated murder plot involving explosives ala Timothy McVeigh.

speaking of someone touting all out gun bans. No offense man, I am not one to call people out, but I just read your posts in the Florida thread.

 

[Muse]

speaking of someone touting all out gun bans. No offense man, I am not one to call people out, but I just read your posts in the Florida thread.

OK, what did you find out? It's no secret, yeah, I'm for making it illegal to own a gun, don't care who you are. So, what are you trying to say???

 

[ImpulsE69]

OK, what did you find out? It's no secret, yeah, I'm for making it illegal to own a gun, don't care who you are. So, what are you trying to say???

That wasn't for you, it was for @dank69. He was expecting me to pour through threads to prove there are people calling for bans. I don't have that kind of time or desire.

 

[Muse]

That wasn't for you, it was for @dank69. He was expecting me to pour through threads to prove there are people calling for bans. I don't have that kind of time or desire.

I don't think it's hard to sustain an antipathy for guns. They are instruments of murder and intimidation. Some claim to love guns. They are insane.

 

[pmv]

https://www.chicagotribune.com/colu...n-deaths-suicide-cdc-1216-20181214-story.html

Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in most European countries.

(LOL)

Care to summarise the argument being made there?

I'm just hoping it isn't based on an invalid comparison of violent crime across different jurisdictions with different definitions and data-collecting methods. That keeps coming up and it's always mistaken. But perhaps this is something new.

There's plenty of evidence that practical questions of availability of means has an effect on suicide rates, for sure. Probably harder to prove for murder rates.

Edit - seriously, I'm irked I can't see the article, because I'm curious what the argument is. New statistics do appear with the passage of time, after all.

 

[pmv]

There are certainly some far left groups that are pro-gun, you will always have some that think violence is the answer, but the vast majority of the far left are pacifists.

I think we just have different definitions of 'far left', to be honest.

 

[dank69]

OK, what did you find out? It's no secret, yeah, I'm for making it illegal to own a gun, don't care who you are. So, what are you trying to say???

That wasn't for you, it was for @dank69. He was expecting me to pour through threads to prove there are people calling for bans. I don't have that kind of time or desire.

Yeah, I am aware that there are people that want to ban guns, I just don't think they call everyone who disagrees about that point a conservative.

 

[dank69]

(LOL)

Care to summarise the argument being made there?

I'm just hoping it isn't based on an invalid comparison of violent crime across different jurisdictions with different definitions and data-collecting methods. That keeps coming up and it's always mistaken. But perhaps this is something new.

There's plenty of evidence that practical questions of availability of means has an effect on suicide rates, for sure. Probably harder to prove for murder rates.

Edit - seriously, I'm irked I can't see the article, because I'm curious what the argument is. New statistics do appear with the passage of time, after all.

It's the usual trope about suicides not counting and gems like this:

There is evidence that people who have firearms in their homes are more likely to kill themselves than people who don’t. But correlation is not causation.

 

[pmv]

OK, found that article reposted on some right-wing news site.

It wasn't that convincing. Pretty insubstantial, in fact. The claims about Japan's suicide rate are easily dispensed with - nobody says availability of guns is the only factor in suicide rates.

The Australian data ignored the fact that the Australian gun ban was only partial, covering only a limited class of firearms. Australian gun law is still quite permissive compared to the UK for example.

There is strong data about the influence of availibility-of-means on suicide rates from the effects of restricting the availability of large quantities of pain-killers. It reduced the suicide rate. Because suicides are very often impulsive, and if someone can't act on them straight away they often never do so.

There really wasn't much to that article, beyond the valid point that many of the gun deaths are suicides - and I entirely agree that suicides are a different moral issue to homicides. The effect of gun ownership on each of those things probably should be argued about separately, rather than lumping all the deaths together. That much I think is a fair point. But both seem to point to the same conclusion.

 

[Zaap]

When you get a story of over 50 killed and hundreds injured by one person from inside a hotel room with something other than a gun, please post it.

Why is 'inside a hotel room' the out here? Does it really matter? Is 'from inside the cab of a truck' a disqualifier or somethibg?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack

87 dead, 400 plus injured in the space of a couple seconds. Guess it doesn't count.

 

[ImpulsE69]

(LOL)

Care to summarise the argument being made there?

I'm just hoping it isn't based on an invalid comparison of violent crime across different jurisdictions with different definitions and data-collecting methods. That keeps coming up and it's always mistaken. But perhaps this is something new.

There's plenty of evidence that practical questions of availability of means has an effect on suicide rates, for sure. Probably harder to prove for murder rates.

Edit - seriously, I'm irked I can't see the article, because I'm curious what the argument is. New statistics do appear with the passage of time, after all.

Yea odd that you can't see that one, it was one of the only ones I COULD see. Trying to find a better more articulated article that isn't behind a paywall. I found a really good one last night by accident that listed actual numbers. Oddly, I can easily find 2017's gun homicide numbers, but not 2018's....go figure.

Here's a middle left leaning (supposedly) with more details.

https://www.thetrace.org/2019/01/gun-deaths-2018-america-mass-shootings-suicide/

Take it how you will.

 

[brycejones]

Why is 'inside a hotel room' the out here? Does it really matter? Is 'from inside the cab of a truck' a disqualifier or somethibg?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack

87 dead, 400 plus injured in the space of a couple seconds. Guess it doesn't count.

Feel free to start a truck control thread.

 

[pmv]

Why is 'inside a hotel room' the out here? Does it really matter? Is 'from inside the cab of a truck' a disqualifier or somethibg?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack

87 dead, 400 plus injured in the space of a couple seconds. Guess it doesn't count.

Motorised vehicles are indeed potential weapons and there needs to be far more restrictions placed on who can use them and where they are allowed to go with them. That's a separate argument, though in a UK context it's the argument we should now be having, having already dealt with guns.

Yet another point is how many spree-killers turn out to have a history of domestic violence and misogyny. That probably needs more attention as well. But for the US, guns seem to be rather an important issue.

 

[Paladin3]

I didn't really read this thread, just wanted to chime in as a gun owner...

The OP's post is NOT how we as law abiding gun-owners are going to defend our 2A right. Both sides of this debate understand you can still murder and hurt others even without a gun. But we are disingenuous, at best, if we try to make it seem as if guns in the wrong hands isn't a real problem. If we want to preserve our 2A rights, gun owners should be championing true gun control measure that would help keep the criminal/sick/evil individuals from getting their hands on guns. If we don't, we will see more and more calls for a total ban for the lawless and the lawful alike.

In other word: you didn't do us or our cause any favors by created this thread. You just made us look kinda silly.