CDZ Gun control laws what a joke

[320 Years of History]

I don't have the time right now to provide sources, so I make no claim. However, I challenge the assumption that "Gun-Control" laws have any real effect on the number of violent crimes involving a gun. I also challenge the assertion that defence of the 2nd is backed by an irrational fear.

You may find this informative:

• A scholarly study of the impact of gun control laws on crime rates (not specifically gun-related crime):
  "Finally, despite our belief that the NRC’s analysis was imperfect in certain ways, we agree with the committee’s cautious final judgment regarding the effects of shall-issue RTC laws: “with the current evidence it is not possible to determine that there is a causal link between the passage of right-to-carry laws and crime rates.” Our results here further underscore the sensitivity of guns-crime estimates to various modeling decisions. If one had to make judgments based on panel data models of the type presented in the NRC report, one would have to conclude that RTC laws likely increase the rate of aggravated assault. Further research will be needed to see if this conclusion survives as more data and better methodologies are employed to estimate the impact of RTC laws on crime."
• A scholarly study on Firearm Ownership and Violent Crime in the U.S.
• "These analyses do not support the hypothesis that firearm ownership deters violent firearm crime. Instead, this study shows that higher levels of firearm ownership are associated with higher rates of firearm-related violent crime. Public health and legislative stakeholders should consider these results when responding to or engaging in the gun control debate."
  
• The Relationship Between Gun Ownership and Firearm Homicide Rates in the United States, 1981–2010
  "We found a robust relationship between gun ownership and firearm homicide rates, a finding that held whether firearm ownership was assessed through a proxy or a survey measure, whether state clustering was accounted for by GEEs or by fixed effects, and whether or not gun ownership was lagged, by up to 2 years. The observed relationship was specific to firearm-related homicide. Although we could not determine causation, we found that states with higher levels of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides."
  
• Gun violence: experts explore critical issues from multiple angles
  "Relative to medicine, public health is underfunded; within public health, the injury prevention field is underfunded; and within the injury prevention field, the firearms area is particularly underfunded. A 2013 report of the Institute of Medicine emphasized the critical need for research into preventing firearm injuries."

Sidenote:
["Killing two birds with one 'stone,' "as it were, with the remarks in the third bullet point below ...FA_Q2, this is part of the reply I owe you. The remarks you made and that pertains to the content in the third bullet is just below.]

Then you would be mistaken. While the quote has been shortened rather needlessly IMHO, the meaning is not changed.

End Sidenote:

What is clear to me is:

• There are folks, like Don B. Kates, who suggest that we should determine the cause(s) of gun violence, yet those folks haven't been among the folks whom I've observed to also advocate for the repeal of Dickey-Wicker. Dickey-Wicker is a key reason the research studies above have little to no data to support inferences about the causality of gun crime. Moreover, to the extent those studies were funded by federal/CDC grants, they are legally prohibited from including causality in their scope.
• Regardless of what Mr. Kates claims are the reasons people use guns against others or themselves, the fact is neither he nor any other writer has any directly relevant (i.e., non-anecdotal) empirical evidence to support those claims. Dickey-Wicker is the reason that is so. So no matter whether you read/hear folks "on about" why folks do "this or that" with guns, know that the only thing they have to go on is their own judgement as to why that is so.
  
  I'm not saying that their proposed causes are implausible, I'm saying that no matter how plausible or implausible they be, they no better or worse reasons than anyone else can propose. I don't care what side of the gun-control issue one falls, failing to admit that reality is a mark of one's fleeting integrity and commitment to actually preventing the occurrence of gun-related crime and deaths.
• Just as there is no clear causal link between gun-carry laws and crime rates, the converse is too so. Were that not so, folks wouldn't spend their energies trying to find one or the other such relationships.
• There is a wealth of written information from the founders that can support both the position of the gun rights and that of the gun control side of the issue.
  
  That said, you'll notice that Kates, rather than providing Thomas Paine's sentences in full, as does every other conservative who cites it, removes the parts that make it clear Mr. Paine wasn't at all writing about an individual right:

From the House of Commons the troops of Britain have been exhorted to fight, not for the defence of their natural rights, not to repel the invasion or the insult of enemies; but on the vilest of all pretences, gold. “Ye fight for solid revenue” was vociferated in the House. Thus America must suffer because she has something to lose. Her crime is property. That which allures the Highwayman has allured the ministry under a gentler name. But the position laid down by Lord Sandwich, is a clear demonstration of the justice of defensive arms. The Americans, quoth this Quixote of modern days, will not fight; therefore we will. His Lordship’s plan when analized amounts to this. These people are either too superstitiously religious, or too cowardly for arms; they either cannot or dare not defend; their property is open to any one who has the courage to attack them. Send but your troops and the prize is ours. Kill a few and take the whole. Thus the peaceable part of mankind will be continually overrun by the vile and abandoned, while they neglect the means of self defence. The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside. And while a single nation refuses to lay them down, it is proper that all should keep them up. Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them; for while avarice and ambition have a place in the heart of man, the weak will become a prey to the strong. The history of every age and nation establishes these truths, and facts need but little arguments when they prove themselves.
-- Thomas Paine

One need only recall that John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich's, speech before Parliament to understand that the ministry strategy which Paine writes need be repelled is not a personal one, one for which the Second Amendment need grant an individual right, but rather a governmental one. It is in this context that it becomes clear that Paine had not in mind whether you or I should have a gun for our defense against individual ruffians. The man wrote of the ruffians who acted at the Crown's behest.

As if various mid-paragraph elements in that oft cited Paine passage didn't make it clear that individual rights have nothing to do with Paine's intent, his concluding remarks in it make it patently clear that he wasn't thinking in the least of a right granted for the sake of allowing individuals self-defense for their own sake rather that for the sake of the nation, the state. Even the title of the work in which Paine's paragraph is found, "Thoughts on a Defensive War," doesn't suggest that the overall subject has a damn thing to do with individuals, but rather with nations. The opening metaphor Paine develops -- Israelites vs. Pharoah -- conjures not images of persons defending against personal assault, but of people collectively fighting tyranny for the sake of their tribe, albeit stateless at the time.
As if that weren't enough, the paragraph following the one quoted above drives home the central theme of Paine's essay pertains to the use of arms to protect against state oppression and infringement on collective liberty.

The Jewish kings were in point of government as absolute as the Pharaohs. Men were frequently put to death without trial at the will of the Sovereign. The Romans held the world in slavery, and were themselves the slaves of their emperors. The madman of Macedon governed by caprice and passion, and strided as arrogantly over the world as if he had made and peopled it; and it is needless to imagine that other nations at that time were more refined. Wherefore political as well as spiritual freedom is the gift of God through Christ.
-- Thomas Paine
​

Immediately following that paragraph, Paine goes on to expressly write of "political liberty" and further using metaphors that call the reader to consider matters of state, not matters of individuality. So tell me, why would a man like Thomas Paine, in writing "Thoughts on a Defensive War," put in just one sentence about individual rights when over and over again he makes clear that the theme of the whole essay has to do with protecting the state? The reality is that the only way one can construe Mr. Paine's words as pertaining to individual rights for the sake of the individual is to deliberately want to use them for that purpose.

It is clear to me, having read Mr. Paine's essay, that any use of his statements to support the assertion that the Founding Fathers intended the Second Amendment as a protection of an individual's right to bear arms must take the man's words completely out of context. Do that is the misrepresentation of which I wrote earlier.

As with any misrepresentation perpetrated by overlooking contextual relevance, one must ask why one or a group might be inclined to do so. I wrote, "the 'huge arms industry' has distorted the Founding Fathers' intent; the reason why they would do is clear. Profit. One need only look at a profile of the small arms industry to see how strong a motivator that is, that is if one can't discern its singular inspirational value without doing so.

FA_Q2: here ends the comments I present in reply to your quoted remarks.​

• Anti-gun control proponents are quick to cite crime patterns in Washington, D.C. and Chicago, two localities that had gun ownership prohibitions, but they fail to recognize that nearby jurisdictions have no such limitations and for which there exist no restrictions on interjurisdictional travel.
• Anti-gun control proponents cite violent crime rates in cities like D.C., but they ignore just who is committing those crimes. In my part of D.C., "west of the Park," crime rates are generally low. (Two areas "west of the Park" have somewhat high rates of gun-related crime -- Woodland and Sheridan. I don't know why, and I should for I live in one of them.) In the less economically advantaged parts of town, the rates are generally high(er). I am certain that poor folks travel to wealthier parts of town, but I'm inclined to think that well off folks rarely travel to poor parts of town, and -- I'm going out on a limb here -- I doubt when they do go there, they (often) have cause to shoot people or accost them with a gun.
• An absolute prohibition on gun ownership is a tactic that has not been tried across the board in the U.S., thus it's no surprise that making limited areas like D.C. or Chicago be gun-free zones had little impact.
• Gun ownership has been (roughly) universally permitted in the U.S. and we see where that's got us as goes gun-related violence. It seems to me that trying the opposite tack is at least worth a shot.

 

[M14 Shooter]

I don't have the time right now to provide sources, so I make no claim. However, I challenge the assumption that "Gun-Control" laws have any real effect on the number of violent crimes involving a gun. I also challenge the assertion that defence of the 2nd is backed by an irrational fear.

I suppose we won't know if gun control, yet to be defined in practice here in the states, can have real effects until we try it. As for defending the Second A. I have no doubt that many of those who post obsessively on gun issues are paranoid.

No gun control in the US.
You are a hoot.

He lies to himself and then tries to pass those lies off as a reasoned argument -- what do you expect?

 

[FA_Q2]

I don't have the time right now to provide sources, so I make no claim. However, I challenge the assumption that "Gun-Control" laws have any real effect on the number of violent crimes involving a gun. I also challenge the assertion that defence of the 2nd is backed by an irrational fear.

You may find this informative:

• A scholarly study of the impact of gun control laws on crime rates (not specifically gun-related crime):
  "Finally, despite our belief that the NRC’s analysis was imperfect in certain ways, we agree with the committee’s cautious final judgment regarding the effects of shall-issue RTC laws: “with the current evidence it is not possible to determine that there is a causal link between the passage of right-to-carry laws and crime rates.” Our results here further underscore the sensitivity of guns-crime estimates to various modeling decisions. If one had to make judgments based on panel data models of the type presented in the NRC report, one would have to conclude that RTC laws likely increase the rate of aggravated assault. Further research will be needed to see if this conclusion survives as more data and better methodologies are employed to estimate the impact of RTC laws on crime."
• A scholarly study on Firearm Ownership and Violent Crime in the U.S.
• "These analyses do not support the hypothesis that firearm ownership deters violent firearm crime. Instead, this study shows that higher levels of firearm ownership are associated with higher rates of firearm-related violent crime. Public health and legislative stakeholders should consider these results when responding to or engaging in the gun control debate."
  
• The Relationship Between Gun Ownership and Firearm Homicide Rates in the United States, 1981–2010
  "We found a robust relationship between gun ownership and firearm homicide rates, a finding that held whether firearm ownership was assessed through a proxy or a survey measure, whether state clustering was accounted for by GEEs or by fixed effects, and whether or not gun ownership was lagged, by up to 2 years. The observed relationship was specific to firearm-related homicide. Although we could not determine causation, we found that states with higher levels of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides."
  
• Gun violence: experts explore critical issues from multiple angles
  "Relative to medicine, public health is underfunded; within public health, the injury prevention field is underfunded; and within the injury prevention field, the firearms area is particularly underfunded. A 2013 report of the Institute of Medicine emphasized the critical need for research into preventing firearm injuries."

The above citations all make the same erroneous error in a blatant effort, IMHO, to force the conclusion that they want to come up with. The constant 'firearm ownership increases fierarm related crimes.' That qualifier is there for one purpose only, to filter the data. There is no reason to do that whatsoever unless you are trying to bias the conclusion from the start.

If we simply look at the raw data we find that there is likely no relation to firearm control and crime in general. As I already posted:

We see gun control pass on a national level and we see little change in homicide rates or, more importantly, homicide rate trend lines.

Sidenote:
["Killing two birds with one 'stone,' "as it were, with the remarks in the third bullet point below ...FA_Q2, this is part of the reply I owe you. The remarks you made and that pertains to the content in the third bullet is just below.]

Then you would be mistaken. While the quote has been shortened rather needlessly IMHO, the meaning is not changed.

End Sidenote:

What is clear to me is:

• There are folks, like Don B. Kates, who suggest that we should determine the cause(s) of gun violence, yet those folks haven't been among the folks whom I've observed to also advocate for the repeal of Dickey-Wicker. Dickey-Wicker is a key reason the research studies above have little to no data to support inferences about the causality of gun crime. Moreover, to the extent those studies were funded by federal/CDC grants, they are legally prohibited from including causality in their scope.
• Regardless of what Mr. Kates claims are the reasons people use guns against others or themselves, the fact is neither he nor any other writer has any directly relevant (i.e., non-anecdotal) empirical evidence to support those claims. Dickey-Wicker is the reason that is so. So no matter whether you read/hear folks "on about" why folks do "this or that" with guns, know that the only thing they have to go on is their own judgement as to why that is so.
  
  I'm not saying that their proposed causes are implausible, I'm saying that no matter how plausible or implausible they be, they no better or worse reasons than anyone else can propose. I don't care what side of the gun-control issue one falls, failing to admit that reality is a mark of one's fleeting integrity and commitment to actually preventing the occurrence of gun-related crime and deaths.
• Just as there is no clear causal link between gun-carry laws and crime rates, the converse is too so. Were that not so, folks wouldn't spend their energies trying to find one or the other such relationships.
• There is a wealth of written information from the founders that can support both the position of the gun rights and that of the gun control side of the issue.
  
  That said, you'll notice that Kates, rather than providing Thomas Paine's sentences in full, as does every other conservative who cites it, removes the parts that make it clear Mr. Paine wasn't at all writing about an individual right:

From the House of Commons the troops of Britain have been exhorted to fight, not for the defence of their natural rights, not to repel the invasion or the insult of enemies; but on the vilest of all pretences, gold. “Ye fight for solid revenue” was vociferated in the House. Thus America must suffer because she has something to lose. Her crime is property. That which allures the Highwayman has allured the ministry under a gentler name. But the position laid down by Lord Sandwich, is a clear demonstration of the justice of defensive arms. The Americans, quoth this Quixote of modern days, will not fight; therefore we will. His Lordship’s plan when analized amounts to this. These people are either too superstitiously religious, or too cowardly for arms; they either cannot or dare not defend; their property is open to any one who has the courage to attack them. Send but your troops and the prize is ours. Kill a few and take the whole. Thus the peaceable part of mankind will be continually overrun by the vile and abandoned, while they neglect the means of self defence. The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside. And while a single nation refuses to lay them down, it is proper that all should keep them up. Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them; for while avarice and ambition have a place in the heart of man, the weak will become a prey to the strong. The history of every age and nation establishes these truths, and facts need but little arguments when they prove themselves.
-- Thomas Paine

One need only recall that John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich's, speech before Parliament to understand that the ministry strategy which Paine writes need be repelled is not a personal one, one for which the Second Amendment need grant an individual right, but rather a governmental one. It is in this context that it becomes clear that Paine had not in mind whether you or I should have a gun for our defense against individual ruffians. The man wrote of the ruffians who acted at the Crown's behest.
​

Again, that is YOUR interpretation of that passage and again, I challenge that is the only way these words can be taken. You ASSUME that because the founders spoke regularly that these rights were integral in protecting the state that the right itself was one that belonged to the state and I think that is contrived.

Taken as a whole, the statements of the founders seem to tell me that they believed a personal right to own firearms was integral to the state being able to call upon them for common defense as no one defended people's homes like those that actually lived in them.

The purpose of the second amendment clearly involves an element of common defense (the amendment states this directly) BUT that does not make the protected right itself one that is for the states. I also find the 'collective right' theory sorely lacking in that it is the ONLY right that some demand is given to a collective.

As if various mid-paragraph elements in that oft cited Paine passage didn't make it clear that individual rights have nothing to do with Paine's intent, his concluding remarks in it make it patently clear that he wasn't thinking in the least of a right granted for the sake of allowing individuals self-defense for their own sake rather that for the sake of the nation, the state. Even the title of the work in which Paine's paragraph is found, "Thoughts on a Defensive War," doesn't suggest that the overall subject has a damn thing to do with individuals, but rather with nations. The opening metaphor Paine develops -- Israelites vs. Pharoah -- conjures not images of persons defending against personal assault, but of people collectively fighting tyranny for the sake of their tribe, albeit stateless at the time.
As if that weren't enough, the paragraph following the one quoted above drives home the central theme of Paine's essay pertains to the use of arms to protect against state oppression and infringement on collective liberty.

The Jewish kings were in point of government as absolute as the Pharaohs. Men were frequently put to death without trial at the will of the Sovereign. The Romans held the world in slavery, and were themselves the slaves of their emperors. The madman of Macedon governed by caprice and passion, and strided as arrogantly over the world as if he had made and peopled it; and it is needless to imagine that other nations at that time were more refined. Wherefore political as well as spiritual freedom is the gift of God through Christ.
-- Thomas Paine
​

Immediately following that paragraph, Paine goes on to expressly write of "political liberty" and further using metaphors that call the reader to consider matters of state, not matters of individuality. So tell me, why would a man like Thomas Paine, in writing "Thoughts on a Defensive War," put in just one sentence about individual rights when over and over again he makes clear that the theme of the whole essay has to do with protecting the state? The reality is that the only way one can construe Mr. Paine's words as pertaining to individual rights for the sake of the individual is to deliberately want to use them for that purpose.

It is clear to me, having read Mr. Paine's essay, that any use of his statements to support the assertion that the Founding Fathers intended the Second Amendment as a protection of an individual's right to bear arms must take the man's words completely out of context. Do that is the misrepresentation of which I wrote earlier.

As with any misrepresentation perpetrated by overlooking contextual relevance, one must ask why one or a group might be inclined to do so. I wrote, "the 'huge arms industry' has distorted the Founding Fathers' intent; the reason why they would do is clear. Profit. One need only look at a profile of the small arms industry to see how strong a motivator that is, that is if one can't discern its singular inspirational value without doing so.

FA_Q2: here ends the comments I present in reply to your quoted remarks.​

See above.

Just because the purpose here is a defense of the nation does not speak to the inherent receiver of the right itself. The founders claimed these rights were self evident and existed regardless of the state. How then can this right belong to the state? It simply cannot - the state does not have rights at all nor do they need 'protection.' the entire point of the BoR was to identify rights the people held that were specifically protected from federal interference. The sudden idea that part of the BoR was to identify rights that the state had is unfounded IMHO.

• Anti-gun control proponents are quick to cite crime patterns in Washington, D.C. and Chicago, two localities that had gun ownership prohibitions, but they fail to recognize that nearby jurisdictions have no such limitations and for which there exist no restrictions on interjurisdictional travel.
• Anti-gun control proponents cite violent crime rates in cities like D.C., but they ignore just who is committing those crimes. In my part of D.C., "west of the Park," crime rates are generally low. (Two areas "west of the Park" have somewhat high rates of gun-related crime -- Woodland and Sheridan. I don't know why, and I should for I live in one of them.) In the less economically advantaged parts of town, the rates are generally high(er). I am certain that poor folks travel to wealthier parts of town, but I'm inclined to think that well off folks rarely travel to poor parts of town, and -- I'm going out on a limb here -- I doubt when they do go there, they (often) have cause to shoot people or accost them with a gun.
• An absolute prohibition on gun ownership is a tactic that has not been tried across the board in the U.S., thus it's no surprise that making limited areas like D.C. or Chicago be gun-free zones had little impact.
• Gun ownership has been (roughly) universally permitted in the U.S. and we see where that's got us as goes gun-related violence. It seems to me that trying the opposite tack is at least worth a shot.

No, you do not get to simply 'try' to eliminate a basic right that is outlined in the constitution (no matter what you may think of original intent) simply to see what happens. Why do we not eliminate free speech and see where that gets us?

No, because that is specifically barred in the constitution and rightly so. On the same token, if you want to eliminate guns then you need to change the constitution itself. That is not going to happen and, again, rightly so because the data IS out there - those opposing the existence of protections for firearm ownership simply refuse to acknowledge this. It has been done on from the local scale to the national scale with little change.

 

[320 Years of History]

The above citations all make the same erroneous error in a blatant effort, IMHO, to force the conclusion that they want to come up with. The constant 'firearm ownership increases fierarm related crimes.' That qualifier is there for one purpose only, to filter the data. There is no reason to do that whatsoever unless you are trying to bias the conclusion from the start.

Blue:
??? What? How do you propose that those researchers "forced the conclusion" they desired? What they did was examine data. They didn't create data; it exists.

Red:
??? If we want to reduce the incidence of people falling down the stairs, building structures that have ramps instead of stairs would eliminate the problem of folks falling down the stairs in those structures, wouldn't it? It may not stop folks from falling, but then we'd need to discern why they fall to deal with that.

The thing is that with falling, were it thought that it might be public health concern, there'd be funding from public health organizations like the CDC to determine the causes of falling. However, with gun-related violence, there is no such source of funding (due to Dickey-Wicker Amendment) available, so we cannot determine what its causes are. Thus the only option available for surely ending gun-related deaths and injuries is to deal with (eliminate or make very hard to obtain) the guns themselves rather than what might be the real causes of the problem. I fully agree that guns don't just shoot by themselves, but I also know that neither I nor anyone else has clear information indicating why their owners do.

When you write of biasing a conclusion on the matter of gun-related deaths/injuries, I bid you consider that the NRA and its "friends" have done more than bias a conclusion. They have totally closed off one avenue of discovery related to identifying the causes of the problem itself. By getting Dickey-Wicker passed, they have effectively said for everyone, "We don't think having access to guns has a damn thing to do with gun-related deaths/injuries/crime, and we are we are going to, to the fullest extent we can, prohibit the government from exploring what might be the causes of it." Does it get any more biased than that?

If we simply look at the raw data we find that there is likely no relation to firearm control and crime in general. As I already posted:

I don't have a lot to say about gun violence in the UK; I'm not familiar enough with their laws or social circumstances as it pertains to gun-related homicides. Does the chart above even pertain to gun-related homicides?

Did you actually look at the caption for the dashed line on that graph? You realize that it says (in positive terms) "Homicides with large anomalies related to guns." What does that mean? What "large anomalies?"

We see gun control pass on a national level and we see little change in homicide rates or, more importantly, homicide rate trend lines.

Of the national gun-related laws, I'm not aware of any that one can expect to have more than a very limited impact. As best as I can tell, they appear, at least coincidentally, to have worked; I'll grant that establishing a causal link between the legislation and activity is difficult.

• Law Enforcement Officers Protection Act of 1985: I don't hear of many law enforcement officials being harmed by armor-piercing rounds. I can't imagine that this law affects more folks than cops and military fighters. That said, it seems to benefit cops who one never hears of one having been shot by an armor piercing round. Are such rounds so much more difficult to make than are "normal" rounds that folks who want them cannot make them on their own? If indeed they are very hard to construct, I'd say the ban has been effective because it has meant that few (if any) folks who want to fire such rounds at cops -- clearly we know there's no shortage of such folks -- have been able to produce them and use them.
  
  Ronald Reagan signed this bill and now folks are "on about" how such a bullet has never killed a cop when the thing was, apparently until recently, not a bullet that could be fired from a handgun, which is largely the type of gun typically aimed at people, be they cops or not. Until recently, the bullet received the "hunting exclusion" and, FWIW, I suppose that was okay -- God only knows what animals other than turtles have "armor" that militates for needing "armor piercing" functionality, but whatever -- and it makes sense to me that legitimate hunters weren't aiming guns loaded with armor piercing rounds at cops.
• The Gun-Free School Zones Act and the The Gun-Free Schools Act: My observation is that school shootings are infrequent. (They are, however, quite sensational when they occur.) I don't know of a source that distinguishes between the shootings that occurred using a gun fired outside of the building vs. those fired inside the school. I do know there's only so much one can do outside the school building. I'm not suggesting one should not try; I'm saying that I realize the rate of success from doing so will be lower.

Again, that is YOUR interpretation of that passage and again, I challenge that is the only way these words can be taken. You ASSUME that because the founders spoke regularly that these rights were integral in protecting the state that the right itself was one that belonged to the state and I think that is contrived.

Taken as a whole, the statements of the founders seem to tell me that they believed a personal right to own firearms was integral to the state being able to call upon them for common defense as no one defended people's homes like those that actually lived in them.

The purpose of the second amendment clearly involves an element of common defense (the amendment states this directly) BUT that does not make the protected right itself one that is for the states. I also find the 'collective right' theory sorely lacking in that it is the ONLY right that some demand is given to a collective.

Just because the purpose here is a defense of the nation does not speak to the inherent receiver of the right itself. The founders claimed these rights were self evident and existed regardless of the state. How then can this right belong to the state? It simply cannot - the state does not have rights at all nor do they need 'protection.' the entire point of the BoR was to identify rights the people held that were specifically protected from federal interference. The sudden idea that part of the BoR was to identify rights that the state had is unfounded IMHO.

Red:
Well, I have to agree with you; it's not the only way to interpret the words and writer's intent. I am convinced it's the only way that it makes sense to do so and that it's the most apt way to do so.

Blue:
No, that is not the assumption I have made. The assumption I make in reading the passage is that the state is the intended beneficiary of the right. Based on that, I believe that if the state no longer faces threats to its very existence that can best be preserved by citizens privately/individually bearing arms, there no longer is a need for citizens to bear them. If I saw cause for citizens (as individuals) to take up arms against a tyrannical/oppressive U.S. government, or to do so as individuals -- rather than as part of the U.S.' governmentally sponsored armed forces -- against a foreign entity in defense of the U.S., then by all means, I'd be fine with citizens bearing arms.

Frankly, I don't imagine an uprising of either nature being in the minds of the majority of the citizenry. Do you? I do imagine individuals being ticked with "this or that" policy and potentially taking up arms to shoot its enactors and supporters. I don't think that last is at all what the founders sought to enable.

Purple:
I would tend to agree with that in the main. I think the sovereignty and integrity of their nation is what they had in mind as the object being defended more so than an individual's home and business. Certainly defending the state's sovereignty and sanctity of its ideals necessarily leads to preserving the nature and extent of one's home and livelihood.

Green:
I think the Second Amendment is the only one focused on collective rights. That agreed between us, I don't see any logical basis for accepting that its being the only instance of the founders granting a collective right is an indication that they didn't so intend it. I see no reason to accept that it was the only right they envisioned as there having been necessary to present as a collective one. Indeed, that they chose to expressly codify it as a collective one speaks to their intent that it not be misconstrued as an individual one.

Pink:
The right does not belong to the state; it belongs to the people and the intended use of the right is to defend against the misdoings of the individuals charged with acting on the state's behalf.

In 1660 the English monarchy was restored with the coronation of Charles II (1630-1685), but the battle between Parliament and the monarchy continued. King James II (1633-1701) was deposed in 1688, and the following year his daughter, Mary (Queen Mary II, 1662-1694), and her husband, William (King William III, 1650-1702), were installed as co-rulers of England. When the pair took their oaths of office, they were presented with a new Bill of Rights, which outlined the relationship of Parliament and the monarchy to the people. This Bill of Rights condemned abuses committed by standing armies (armies maintained by the government on a long-term basis, even while at peace) and declared "that the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of Parliament, is against law."

The founders were well aware of those historical exigencies. They knew well that if armed revolt by the citizenry was called for, there should be no impediment to citizens doing just that. Providing the right to bear arms makes it possible. Strictly speaking, "arms" need not be limited to personal firearms. Applying the "individual right" aspect of the Second Amendment in the full spirit gun rights advocates espouse would allow you and I to own arms of any sort, yet there are clearly arms that are illegal to own. I don't see anyone clamoring over that. Do you? A bit disingenuous that they don't if you ask me....

What do you mean by "the state doesn't need protecting?" How can it not other than in cases where one advocates anarchy as the mode of statehood? Surely you aren't suggesting that I'm referring to the physical state -- a geographical region having politically agreed upon borders -- rather than what its nature is with regard to its relationship, and that of the persons managing that relationship, with the people who live within the state?

No, you do not get to simply 'try' to eliminate a basic right that is outlined in the constitution (no matter what you may think of original intent) simply to see what happens. Why do we not eliminate free speech and see where that gets us?

No, because that is specifically barred in the constitution and rightly so. On the same token, if you want to eliminate guns then you need to change the constitution itself. That is not going to happen and, again, rightly so because the data IS out there - those opposing the existence of protections for firearm ownership simply refuse to acknowledge this. It has been done on from the local scale to the national scale with little change.

Other amendments to the Constitution have been repealed and/or modified. I see no reason -- other than that there may not presently be sufficient popular will to do so -- that the same cannot occur with the Second Amendment.

Truly, if I thought there were widespread life threatening issues pertaining to the right to free speech, I would advocate for modifying that amendment too.

Brown:
I discussed that and I didn't see from you any response to it that directly refute my points about why the local attempts have been less successful than were desired.

 

[2aguy]

I don't have the time right now to provide sources, so I make no claim. However, I challenge the assumption that "Gun-Control" laws have any real effect on the number of violent crimes involving a gun. I also challenge the assertion that defence of the 2nd is backed by an irrational fear.

You may find this informative:

• A scholarly study of the impact of gun control laws on crime rates (not specifically gun-related crime):
  "Finally, despite our belief that the NRC’s analysis was imperfect in certain ways, we agree with the committee’s cautious final judgment regarding the effects of shall-issue RTC laws: “with the current evidence it is not possible to determine that there is a causal link between the passage of right-to-carry laws and crime rates.” Our results here further underscore the sensitivity of guns-crime estimates to various modeling decisions. If one had to make judgments based on panel data models of the type presented in the NRC report, one would have to conclude that RTC laws likely increase the rate of aggravated assault. Further research will be needed to see if this conclusion survives as more data and better methodologies are employed to estimate the impact of RTC laws on crime."
• A scholarly study on Firearm Ownership and Violent Crime in the U.S.
• "These analyses do not support the hypothesis that firearm ownership deters violent firearm crime. Instead, this study shows that higher levels of firearm ownership are associated with higher rates of firearm-related violent crime. Public health and legislative stakeholders should consider these results when responding to or engaging in the gun control debate."
  
• The Relationship Between Gun Ownership and Firearm Homicide Rates in the United States, 1981–2010
  "We found a robust relationship between gun ownership and firearm homicide rates, a finding that held whether firearm ownership was assessed through a proxy or a survey measure, whether state clustering was accounted for by GEEs or by fixed effects, and whether or not gun ownership was lagged, by up to 2 years. The observed relationship was specific to firearm-related homicide. Although we could not determine causation, we found that states with higher levels of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides."
  
• Gun violence: experts explore critical issues from multiple angles
  "Relative to medicine, public health is underfunded; within public health, the injury prevention field is underfunded; and within the injury prevention field, the firearms area is particularly underfunded. A 2013 report of the Institute of Medicine emphasized the critical need for research into preventing firearm injuries."

Sidenote:
["Killing two birds with one 'stone,' "as it were, with the remarks in the third bullet point below ...FA_Q2, this is part of the reply I owe you. The remarks you made and that pertains to the content in the third bullet is just below.]

Then you would be mistaken. While the quote has been shortened rather needlessly IMHO, the meaning is not changed.

End Sidenote:

What is clear to me is:

• There are folks, like Don B. Kates, who suggest that we should determine the cause(s) of gun violence, yet those folks haven't been among the folks whom I've observed to also advocate for the repeal of Dickey-Wicker. Dickey-Wicker is a key reason the research studies above have little to no data to support inferences about the causality of gun crime. Moreover, to the extent those studies were funded by federal/CDC grants, they are legally prohibited from including causality in their scope.
• Regardless of what Mr. Kates claims are the reasons people use guns against others or themselves, the fact is neither he nor any other writer has any directly relevant (i.e., non-anecdotal) empirical evidence to support those claims. Dickey-Wicker is the reason that is so. So no matter whether you read/hear folks "on about" why folks do "this or that" with guns, know that the only thing they have to go on is their own judgement as to why that is so.
  
  I'm not saying that their proposed causes are implausible, I'm saying that no matter how plausible or implausible they be, they no better or worse reasons than anyone else can propose. I don't care what side of the gun-control issue one falls, failing to admit that reality is a mark of one's fleeting integrity and commitment to actually preventing the occurrence of gun-related crime and deaths.
• Just as there is no clear causal link between gun-carry laws and crime rates, the converse is too so. Were that not so, folks wouldn't spend their energies trying to find one or the other such relationships.
• There is a wealth of written information from the founders that can support both the position of the gun rights and that of the gun control side of the issue.
  
  That said, you'll notice that Kates, rather than providing Thomas Paine's sentences in full, as does every other conservative who cites it, removes the parts that make it clear Mr. Paine wasn't at all writing about an individual right:

From the House of Commons the troops of Britain have been exhorted to fight, not for the defence of their natural rights, not to repel the invasion or the insult of enemies; but on the vilest of all pretences, gold. “Ye fight for solid revenue” was vociferated in the House. Thus America must suffer because she has something to lose. Her crime is property. That which allures the Highwayman has allured the ministry under a gentler name. But the position laid down by Lord Sandwich, is a clear demonstration of the justice of defensive arms. The Americans, quoth this Quixote of modern days, will not fight; therefore we will. His Lordship’s plan when analized amounts to this. These people are either too superstitiously religious, or too cowardly for arms; they either cannot or dare not defend; their property is open to any one who has the courage to attack them. Send but your troops and the prize is ours. Kill a few and take the whole. Thus the peaceable part of mankind will be continually overrun by the vile and abandoned, while they neglect the means of self defence. The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside. And while a single nation refuses to lay them down, it is proper that all should keep them up. Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them; for while avarice and ambition have a place in the heart of man, the weak will become a prey to the strong. The history of every age and nation establishes these truths, and facts need but little arguments when they prove themselves.
-- Thomas Paine

One need only recall that John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich's, speech before Parliament to understand that the ministry strategy which Paine writes need be repelled is not a personal one, one for which the Second Amendment need grant an individual right, but rather a governmental one. It is in this context that it becomes clear that Paine had not in mind whether you or I should have a gun for our defense against individual ruffians. The man wrote of the ruffians who acted at the Crown's behest.

As if various mid-paragraph elements in that oft cited Paine passage didn't make it clear that individual rights have nothing to do with Paine's intent, his concluding remarks in it make it patently clear that he wasn't thinking in the least of a right granted for the sake of allowing individuals self-defense for their own sake rather that for the sake of the nation, the state. Even the title of the work in which Paine's paragraph is found, "Thoughts on a Defensive War," doesn't suggest that the overall subject has a damn thing to do with individuals, but rather with nations. The opening metaphor Paine develops -- Israelites vs. Pharoah -- conjures not images of persons defending against personal assault, but of people collectively fighting tyranny for the sake of their tribe, albeit stateless at the time.
As if that weren't enough, the paragraph following the one quoted above drives home the central theme of Paine's essay pertains to the use of arms to protect against state oppression and infringement on collective liberty.

The Jewish kings were in point of government as absolute as the Pharaohs. Men were frequently put to death without trial at the will of the Sovereign. The Romans held the world in slavery, and were themselves the slaves of their emperors. The madman of Macedon governed by caprice and passion, and strided as arrogantly over the world as if he had made and peopled it; and it is needless to imagine that other nations at that time were more refined. Wherefore political as well as spiritual freedom is the gift of God through Christ.
-- Thomas Paine
​

Immediately following that paragraph, Paine goes on to expressly write of "political liberty" and further using metaphors that call the reader to consider matters of state, not matters of individuality. So tell me, why would a man like Thomas Paine, in writing "Thoughts on a Defensive War," put in just one sentence about individual rights when over and over again he makes clear that the theme of the whole essay has to do with protecting the state? The reality is that the only way one can construe Mr. Paine's words as pertaining to individual rights for the sake of the individual is to deliberately want to use them for that purpose.

It is clear to me, having read Mr. Paine's essay, that any use of his statements to support the assertion that the Founding Fathers intended the Second Amendment as a protection of an individual's right to bear arms must take the man's words completely out of context. Do that is the misrepresentation of which I wrote earlier.

As with any misrepresentation perpetrated by overlooking contextual relevance, one must ask why one or a group might be inclined to do so. I wrote, "the 'huge arms industry' has distorted the Founding Fathers' intent; the reason why they would do is clear. Profit. One need only look at a profile of the small arms industry to see how strong a motivator that is, that is if one can't discern its singular inspirational value without doing so.

FA_Q2: here ends the comments I present in reply to your quoted remarks.​

• Anti-gun control proponents are quick to cite crime patterns in Washington, D.C. and Chicago, two localities that had gun ownership prohibitions, but they fail to recognize that nearby jurisdictions have no such limitations and for which there exist no restrictions on interjurisdictional travel.
• Anti-gun control proponents cite violent crime rates in cities like D.C., but they ignore just who is committing those crimes. In my part of D.C., "west of the Park," crime rates are generally low. (Two areas "west of the Park" have somewhat high rates of gun-related crime -- Woodland and Sheridan. I don't know why, and I should for I live in one of them.) In the less economically advantaged parts of town, the rates are generally high(er). I am certain that poor folks travel to wealthier parts of town, but I'm inclined to think that well off folks rarely travel to poor parts of town, and -- I'm going out on a limb here -- I doubt when they do go there, they (often) have cause to shoot people or accost them with a gun.
• An absolute prohibition on gun ownership is a tactic that has not been tried across the board in the U.S., thus it's no surprise that making limited areas like D.C. or Chicago be gun-free zones had little impact.
• Gun ownership has been (roughly) universally permitted in the U.S. and we see where that's got us as goes gun-related violence. It seems to me that trying the opposite tack is at least worth a shot.

Wow...so much typing to post so much crap.......on the Stanford crap...

Study: More Guns Means More Crime. Or Not. - The Truth About Guns

I’m not sure how the authors (or the breathless journalists reporting it) can claim an increase in violent crime when violent crime in the United States has been dropping for two decades at the same time firearm sales are at historic highs. I take that back — I know exactly how they can do that. If you know the results you want and the study is sufficiently long, you can make it say whatever you want. Even if you need to drop the confidence interval to hilariously low levels and ignore half of your results.

 

[2aguy]

I don't have the time right now to provide sources, so I make no claim. However, I challenge the assumption that "Gun-Control" laws have any real effect on the number of violent crimes involving a gun. I also challenge the assertion that defence of the 2nd is backed by an irrational fear.

You may find this informative:

• A scholarly study of the impact of gun control laws on crime rates (not specifically gun-related crime):
  "Finally, despite our belief that the NRC’s analysis was imperfect in certain ways, we agree with the committee’s cautious final judgment regarding the effects of shall-issue RTC laws: “with the current evidence it is not possible to determine that there is a causal link between the passage of right-to-carry laws and crime rates.” Our results here further underscore the sensitivity of guns-crime estimates to various modeling decisions. If one had to make judgments based on panel data models of the type presented in the NRC report, one would have to conclude that RTC laws likely increase the rate of aggravated assault. Further research will be needed to see if this conclusion survives as more data and better methodologies are employed to estimate the impact of RTC laws on crime."
• A scholarly study on Firearm Ownership and Violent Crime in the U.S.
• "These analyses do not support the hypothesis that firearm ownership deters violent firearm crime. Instead, this study shows that higher levels of firearm ownership are associated with higher rates of firearm-related violent crime. Public health and legislative stakeholders should consider these results when responding to or engaging in the gun control debate."
  
• The Relationship Between Gun Ownership and Firearm Homicide Rates in the United States, 1981–2010
  "We found a robust relationship between gun ownership and firearm homicide rates, a finding that held whether firearm ownership was assessed through a proxy or a survey measure, whether state clustering was accounted for by GEEs or by fixed effects, and whether or not gun ownership was lagged, by up to 2 years. The observed relationship was specific to firearm-related homicide. Although we could not determine causation, we found that states with higher levels of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides."
  
• Gun violence: experts explore critical issues from multiple angles
  "Relative to medicine, public health is underfunded; within public health, the injury prevention field is underfunded; and within the injury prevention field, the firearms area is particularly underfunded. A 2013 report of the Institute of Medicine emphasized the critical need for research into preventing firearm injuries."

Sidenote:
["Killing two birds with one 'stone,' "as it were, with the remarks in the third bullet point below ...FA_Q2, this is part of the reply I owe you. The remarks you made and that pertains to the content in the third bullet is just below.]

Then you would be mistaken. While the quote has been shortened rather needlessly IMHO, the meaning is not changed.

End Sidenote:

What is clear to me is:

• There are folks, like Don B. Kates, who suggest that we should determine the cause(s) of gun violence, yet those folks haven't been among the folks whom I've observed to also advocate for the repeal of Dickey-Wicker. Dickey-Wicker is a key reason the research studies above have little to no data to support inferences about the causality of gun crime. Moreover, to the extent those studies were funded by federal/CDC grants, they are legally prohibited from including causality in their scope.
• Regardless of what Mr. Kates claims are the reasons people use guns against others or themselves, the fact is neither he nor any other writer has any directly relevant (i.e., non-anecdotal) empirical evidence to support those claims. Dickey-Wicker is the reason that is so. So no matter whether you read/hear folks "on about" why folks do "this or that" with guns, know that the only thing they have to go on is their own judgement as to why that is so.
  
  I'm not saying that their proposed causes are implausible, I'm saying that no matter how plausible or implausible they be, they no better or worse reasons than anyone else can propose. I don't care what side of the gun-control issue one falls, failing to admit that reality is a mark of one's fleeting integrity and commitment to actually preventing the occurrence of gun-related crime and deaths.
• Just as there is no clear causal link between gun-carry laws and crime rates, the converse is too so. Were that not so, folks wouldn't spend their energies trying to find one or the other such relationships.
• There is a wealth of written information from the founders that can support both the position of the gun rights and that of the gun control side of the issue.
  
  That said, you'll notice that Kates, rather than providing Thomas Paine's sentences in full, as does every other conservative who cites it, removes the parts that make it clear Mr. Paine wasn't at all writing about an individual right:

From the House of Commons the troops of Britain have been exhorted to fight, not for the defence of their natural rights, not to repel the invasion or the insult of enemies; but on the vilest of all pretences, gold. “Ye fight for solid revenue” was vociferated in the House. Thus America must suffer because she has something to lose. Her crime is property. That which allures the Highwayman has allured the ministry under a gentler name. But the position laid down by Lord Sandwich, is a clear demonstration of the justice of defensive arms. The Americans, quoth this Quixote of modern days, will not fight; therefore we will. His Lordship’s plan when analized amounts to this. These people are either too superstitiously religious, or too cowardly for arms; they either cannot or dare not defend; their property is open to any one who has the courage to attack them. Send but your troops and the prize is ours. Kill a few and take the whole. Thus the peaceable part of mankind will be continually overrun by the vile and abandoned, while they neglect the means of self defence. The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside. And while a single nation refuses to lay them down, it is proper that all should keep them up. Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them; for while avarice and ambition have a place in the heart of man, the weak will become a prey to the strong. The history of every age and nation establishes these truths, and facts need but little arguments when they prove themselves.
-- Thomas Paine

One need only recall that John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich's, speech before Parliament to understand that the ministry strategy which Paine writes need be repelled is not a personal one, one for which the Second Amendment need grant an individual right, but rather a governmental one. It is in this context that it becomes clear that Paine had not in mind whether you or I should have a gun for our defense against individual ruffians. The man wrote of the ruffians who acted at the Crown's behest.

As if various mid-paragraph elements in that oft cited Paine passage didn't make it clear that individual rights have nothing to do with Paine's intent, his concluding remarks in it make it patently clear that he wasn't thinking in the least of a right granted for the sake of allowing individuals self-defense for their own sake rather that for the sake of the nation, the state. Even the title of the work in which Paine's paragraph is found, "Thoughts on a Defensive War," doesn't suggest that the overall subject has a damn thing to do with individuals, but rather with nations. The opening metaphor Paine develops -- Israelites vs. Pharoah -- conjures not images of persons defending against personal assault, but of people collectively fighting tyranny for the sake of their tribe, albeit stateless at the time.
As if that weren't enough, the paragraph following the one quoted above drives home the central theme of Paine's essay pertains to the use of arms to protect against state oppression and infringement on collective liberty.

The Jewish kings were in point of government as absolute as the Pharaohs. Men were frequently put to death without trial at the will of the Sovereign. The Romans held the world in slavery, and were themselves the slaves of their emperors. The madman of Macedon governed by caprice and passion, and strided as arrogantly over the world as if he had made and peopled it; and it is needless to imagine that other nations at that time were more refined. Wherefore political as well as spiritual freedom is the gift of God through Christ.
-- Thomas Paine
​

Immediately following that paragraph, Paine goes on to expressly write of "political liberty" and further using metaphors that call the reader to consider matters of state, not matters of individuality. So tell me, why would a man like Thomas Paine, in writing "Thoughts on a Defensive War," put in just one sentence about individual rights when over and over again he makes clear that the theme of the whole essay has to do with protecting the state? The reality is that the only way one can construe Mr. Paine's words as pertaining to individual rights for the sake of the individual is to deliberately want to use them for that purpose.

It is clear to me, having read Mr. Paine's essay, that any use of his statements to support the assertion that the Founding Fathers intended the Second Amendment as a protection of an individual's right to bear arms must take the man's words completely out of context. Do that is the misrepresentation of which I wrote earlier.

As with any misrepresentation perpetrated by overlooking contextual relevance, one must ask why one or a group might be inclined to do so. I wrote, "the 'huge arms industry' has distorted the Founding Fathers' intent; the reason why they would do is clear. Profit. One need only look at a profile of the small arms industry to see how strong a motivator that is, that is if one can't discern its singular inspirational value without doing so.

FA_Q2: here ends the comments I present in reply to your quoted remarks.​

• Anti-gun control proponents are quick to cite crime patterns in Washington, D.C. and Chicago, two localities that had gun ownership prohibitions, but they fail to recognize that nearby jurisdictions have no such limitations and for which there exist no restrictions on interjurisdictional travel.
• Anti-gun control proponents cite violent crime rates in cities like D.C., but they ignore just who is committing those crimes. In my part of D.C., "west of the Park," crime rates are generally low. (Two areas "west of the Park" have somewhat high rates of gun-related crime -- Woodland and Sheridan. I don't know why, and I should for I live in one of them.) In the less economically advantaged parts of town, the rates are generally high(er). I am certain that poor folks travel to wealthier parts of town, but I'm inclined to think that well off folks rarely travel to poor parts of town, and -- I'm going out on a limb here -- I doubt when they do go there, they (often) have cause to shoot people or accost them with a gun.
• An absolute prohibition on gun ownership is a tactic that has not been tried across the board in the U.S., thus it's no surprise that making limited areas like D.C. or Chicago be gun-free zones had little impact.
• Gun ownership has been (roughly) universally permitted in the U.S. and we see where that's got us as goes gun-related violence. It seems to me that trying the opposite tack is at least worth a shot.

And on the mythical ban on gun research by the CDC...

Ban on "Gun Violence" Research Does not Exist

The only problem is that there is no ban on “gun violence” research. There is a ban on spending federal dollars, by the Department of Health and Human Services, on research that advocates for more gun control. It is called the Dickey Amendment, and was put in place after the leaders of the CDC proclaimed what they expected from research results (advocating for more gun control) before the research was conducted.

The CDC had already funded severely flawed, advocacy “research” to advance gun control. The Congress responded by cutting off their funding. They did not cut off funding to other agencies that might be expected to research the effects of gun ownership; for example, the Department of Justice. But The Hill headline gives the opposite impression. The article gives the correct purpose of the ban, but with caveats, and only after quoting Democrats to “explain” what the ban “really” does. From The Hill:

Led by Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), the Democrats said the so-called Dickey Amendment — a long-standing provision that has effectively blocked federal research on gun violence — leaves lawmakers in the dark when it comes to crafting policies aimed at tackling the problem.
“We dedicate $240 million a year on traffic safety research, more than $233 million a year on food safety, and $331 million a year on the effects of tobacco, but almost nothing on firearms that kill 33,000 Americans annually,” the lawmakers wrote.

Notice that Rep Jackie Speir deliberatively uses bad grammar to obfuscate the issue. Guns do not kill people. They have no volition. They can be used to kill people; and people can be killed with guns; but guns by themselves; do not kill people. Later, The Hill author, Mike Lillis, gives this explanation of the legislation:

First passed in 1996, the Dickey Amendment does not ban gun-violence research outright, but stipulates that “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”





Read more: Ban on "Gun Violence" Research Does not Exist
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
Follow us: @Ammoland on Twitter | Ammoland on Facebook

 

[2aguy]

And the point is that gun research is conducted by many different government agencies...but the CDC is filled with anti gun activists...

Disarmists turned to the attempt to “medicalize” crimes committed with guns when research funded by the Justice Department did not show any support for more restrictive gun control policies. It is why you see most research funded by Michael Bloomberg in medical journals, not in criminological journals or in economic journals. Medical “researchers” seem to feel no need to cite studies done in other fields. They routinely ignore studies by Gary Kleck, or John Lott, for example.

The disarmists want the CDC to be able to produce more propaganda. The scandal is that the CDC ever produced any to begin with. There are plenty of studies about guns and crime, guns and suicides, and others. They are simply not funded by the CDC, and rightly so.



Read more: Ban on "Gun Violence" Research Does not Exist
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution
Follow us: @Ammoland on Twitter | Ammoland on Facebook

 

[2aguy]

I don't have the time right now to provide sources, so I make no claim. However, I challenge the assumption that "Gun-Control" laws have any real effect on the number of violent crimes involving a gun. I also challenge the assertion that defence of the 2nd is backed by an irrational fear.

You may find this informative:

• A scholarly study of the impact of gun control laws on crime rates (not specifically gun-related crime):
  "Finally, despite our belief that the NRC’s analysis was imperfect in certain ways, we agree with the committee’s cautious final judgment regarding the effects of shall-issue RTC laws: “with the current evidence it is not possible to determine that there is a causal link between the passage of right-to-carry laws and crime rates.” Our results here further underscore the sensitivity of guns-crime estimates to various modeling decisions. If one had to make judgments based on panel data models of the type presented in the NRC report, one would have to conclude that RTC laws likely increase the rate of aggravated assault. Further research will be needed to see if this conclusion survives as more data and better methodologies are employed to estimate the impact of RTC laws on crime."
• A scholarly study on Firearm Ownership and Violent Crime in the U.S.
• "These analyses do not support the hypothesis that firearm ownership deters violent firearm crime. Instead, this study shows that higher levels of firearm ownership are associated with higher rates of firearm-related violent crime. Public health and legislative stakeholders should consider these results when responding to or engaging in the gun control debate."
  
• The Relationship Between Gun Ownership and Firearm Homicide Rates in the United States, 1981–2010
  "We found a robust relationship between gun ownership and firearm homicide rates, a finding that held whether firearm ownership was assessed through a proxy or a survey measure, whether state clustering was accounted for by GEEs or by fixed effects, and whether or not gun ownership was lagged, by up to 2 years. The observed relationship was specific to firearm-related homicide. Although we could not determine causation, we found that states with higher levels of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides."
  
• Gun violence: experts explore critical issues from multiple angles
  "Relative to medicine, public health is underfunded; within public health, the injury prevention field is underfunded; and within the injury prevention field, the firearms area is particularly underfunded. A 2013 report of the Institute of Medicine emphasized the critical need for research into preventing firearm injuries."

Sidenote:
["Killing two birds with one 'stone,' "as it were, with the remarks in the third bullet point below ...FA_Q2, this is part of the reply I owe you. The remarks you made and that pertains to the content in the third bullet is just below.]

Then you would be mistaken. While the quote has been shortened rather needlessly IMHO, the meaning is not changed.

End Sidenote:

What is clear to me is:

• There are folks, like Don B. Kates, who suggest that we should determine the cause(s) of gun violence, yet those folks haven't been among the folks whom I've observed to also advocate for the repeal of Dickey-Wicker. Dickey-Wicker is a key reason the research studies above have little to no data to support inferences about the causality of gun crime. Moreover, to the extent those studies were funded by federal/CDC grants, they are legally prohibited from including causality in their scope.
• Regardless of what Mr. Kates claims are the reasons people use guns against others or themselves, the fact is neither he nor any other writer has any directly relevant (i.e., non-anecdotal) empirical evidence to support those claims. Dickey-Wicker is the reason that is so. So no matter whether you read/hear folks "on about" why folks do "this or that" with guns, know that the only thing they have to go on is their own judgement as to why that is so.
  
  I'm not saying that their proposed causes are implausible, I'm saying that no matter how plausible or implausible they be, they no better or worse reasons than anyone else can propose. I don't care what side of the gun-control issue one falls, failing to admit that reality is a mark of one's fleeting integrity and commitment to actually preventing the occurrence of gun-related crime and deaths.
• Just as there is no clear causal link between gun-carry laws and crime rates, the converse is too so. Were that not so, folks wouldn't spend their energies trying to find one or the other such relationships.
• There is a wealth of written information from the founders that can support both the position of the gun rights and that of the gun control side of the issue.
  
  That said, you'll notice that Kates, rather than providing Thomas Paine's sentences in full, as does every other conservative who cites it, removes the parts that make it clear Mr. Paine wasn't at all writing about an individual right:

From the House of Commons the troops of Britain have been exhorted to fight, not for the defence of their natural rights, not to repel the invasion or the insult of enemies; but on the vilest of all pretences, gold. “Ye fight for solid revenue” was vociferated in the House. Thus America must suffer because she has something to lose. Her crime is property. That which allures the Highwayman has allured the ministry under a gentler name. But the position laid down by Lord Sandwich, is a clear demonstration of the justice of defensive arms. The Americans, quoth this Quixote of modern days, will not fight; therefore we will. His Lordship’s plan when analized amounts to this. These people are either too superstitiously religious, or too cowardly for arms; they either cannot or dare not defend; their property is open to any one who has the courage to attack them. Send but your troops and the prize is ours. Kill a few and take the whole. Thus the peaceable part of mankind will be continually overrun by the vile and abandoned, while they neglect the means of self defence. The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside. And while a single nation refuses to lay them down, it is proper that all should keep them up. Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them; for while avarice and ambition have a place in the heart of man, the weak will become a prey to the strong. The history of every age and nation establishes these truths, and facts need but little arguments when they prove themselves.
-- Thomas Paine

One need only recall that John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich's, speech before Parliament to understand that the ministry strategy which Paine writes need be repelled is not a personal one, one for which the Second Amendment need grant an individual right, but rather a governmental one. It is in this context that it becomes clear that Paine had not in mind whether you or I should have a gun for our defense against individual ruffians. The man wrote of the ruffians who acted at the Crown's behest.

As if various mid-paragraph elements in that oft cited Paine passage didn't make it clear that individual rights have nothing to do with Paine's intent, his concluding remarks in it make it patently clear that he wasn't thinking in the least of a right granted for the sake of allowing individuals self-defense for their own sake rather that for the sake of the nation, the state. Even the title of the work in which Paine's paragraph is found, "Thoughts on a Defensive War," doesn't suggest that the overall subject has a damn thing to do with individuals, but rather with nations. The opening metaphor Paine develops -- Israelites vs. Pharoah -- conjures not images of persons defending against personal assault, but of people collectively fighting tyranny for the sake of their tribe, albeit stateless at the time.
As if that weren't enough, the paragraph following the one quoted above drives home the central theme of Paine's essay pertains to the use of arms to protect against state oppression and infringement on collective liberty.

The Jewish kings were in point of government as absolute as the Pharaohs. Men were frequently put to death without trial at the will of the Sovereign. The Romans held the world in slavery, and were themselves the slaves of their emperors. The madman of Macedon governed by caprice and passion, and strided as arrogantly over the world as if he had made and peopled it; and it is needless to imagine that other nations at that time were more refined. Wherefore political as well as spiritual freedom is the gift of God through Christ.
-- Thomas Paine
​

Immediately following that paragraph, Paine goes on to expressly write of "political liberty" and further using metaphors that call the reader to consider matters of state, not matters of individuality. So tell me, why would a man like Thomas Paine, in writing "Thoughts on a Defensive War," put in just one sentence about individual rights when over and over again he makes clear that the theme of the whole essay has to do with protecting the state? The reality is that the only way one can construe Mr. Paine's words as pertaining to individual rights for the sake of the individual is to deliberately want to use them for that purpose.

It is clear to me, having read Mr. Paine's essay, that any use of his statements to support the assertion that the Founding Fathers intended the Second Amendment as a protection of an individual's right to bear arms must take the man's words completely out of context. Do that is the misrepresentation of which I wrote earlier.

As with any misrepresentation perpetrated by overlooking contextual relevance, one must ask why one or a group might be inclined to do so. I wrote, "the 'huge arms industry' has distorted the Founding Fathers' intent; the reason why they would do is clear. Profit. One need only look at a profile of the small arms industry to see how strong a motivator that is, that is if one can't discern its singular inspirational value without doing so.

FA_Q2: here ends the comments I present in reply to your quoted remarks.​

• Anti-gun control proponents are quick to cite crime patterns in Washington, D.C. and Chicago, two localities that had gun ownership prohibitions, but they fail to recognize that nearby jurisdictions have no such limitations and for which there exist no restrictions on interjurisdictional travel.
• Anti-gun control proponents cite violent crime rates in cities like D.C., but they ignore just who is committing those crimes. In my part of D.C., "west of the Park," crime rates are generally low. (Two areas "west of the Park" have somewhat high rates of gun-related crime -- Woodland and Sheridan. I don't know why, and I should for I live in one of them.) In the less economically advantaged parts of town, the rates are generally high(er). I am certain that poor folks travel to wealthier parts of town, but I'm inclined to think that well off folks rarely travel to poor parts of town, and -- I'm going out on a limb here -- I doubt when they do go there, they (often) have cause to shoot people or accost them with a gun.
• An absolute prohibition on gun ownership is a tactic that has not been tried across the board in the U.S., thus it's no surprise that making limited areas like D.C. or Chicago be gun-free zones had little impact.
• Gun ownership has been (roughly) universally permitted in the U.S. and we see where that's got us as goes gun-related violence. It seems to me that trying the opposite tack is at least worth a shot.

Hmmm...can you explain why Los Angeles and New York have less gun crime than Chicago and D.C.? Is it because their criminals can't get guns? They have the same level of gun control as Chicago and D.C. and lets throw in Baltimore as well........

And why is it that states with gun stores and guns readily available...don't have the gun murder rates of Chicago, D.C and Baltimore?

 

[2aguy]

And it is sad for them that they wasted time on that study...since gun murder rates are going down, not up, as more Americans own and carry guns.....

Expanded Homicide Data Table 8

Expanded Homicide Data Table 8

And here is the FBI table 8……it is a great table because it goes back4 years to show the rates of decrease….

2014 table…..

Expanded Homicide Data Table 8

From 2014…..and I added 2011……

2006

Expanded Homicide Data Table 8

2006 fbi table 8

Murder by firearm….

2006-- 10,225
2007 10,129
2008-- 9,528
2009-- 9,199
2010- 8,874
2011-- 8,653
2012-- 8,897
2013-- 8,454
2014-- 8,124

 

[2aguy]

I don't have the time right now to provide sources, so I make no claim. However, I challenge the assumption that "Gun-Control" laws have any real effect on the number of violent crimes involving a gun. I also challenge the assertion that defence of the 2nd is backed by an irrational fear.

You may find this informative:

• A scholarly study of the impact of gun control laws on crime rates (not specifically gun-related crime):
  "Finally, despite our belief that the NRC’s analysis was imperfect in certain ways, we agree with the committee’s cautious final judgment regarding the effects of shall-issue RTC laws: “with the current evidence it is not possible to determine that there is a causal link between the passage of right-to-carry laws and crime rates.” Our results here further underscore the sensitivity of guns-crime estimates to various modeling decisions. If one had to make judgments based on panel data models of the type presented in the NRC report, one would have to conclude that RTC laws likely increase the rate of aggravated assault. Further research will be needed to see if this conclusion survives as more data and better methodologies are employed to estimate the impact of RTC laws on crime."
• A scholarly study on Firearm Ownership and Violent Crime in the U.S.
• "These analyses do not support the hypothesis that firearm ownership deters violent firearm crime. Instead, this study shows that higher levels of firearm ownership are associated with higher rates of firearm-related violent crime. Public health and legislative stakeholders should consider these results when responding to or engaging in the gun control debate."
  
• The Relationship Between Gun Ownership and Firearm Homicide Rates in the United States, 1981–2010
  "We found a robust relationship between gun ownership and firearm homicide rates, a finding that held whether firearm ownership was assessed through a proxy or a survey measure, whether state clustering was accounted for by GEEs or by fixed effects, and whether or not gun ownership was lagged, by up to 2 years. The observed relationship was specific to firearm-related homicide. Although we could not determine causation, we found that states with higher levels of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides."
  
• Gun violence: experts explore critical issues from multiple angles
  "Relative to medicine, public health is underfunded; within public health, the injury prevention field is underfunded; and within the injury prevention field, the firearms area is particularly underfunded. A 2013 report of the Institute of Medicine emphasized the critical need for research into preventing firearm injuries."

Sidenote:
["Killing two birds with one 'stone,' "as it were, with the remarks in the third bullet point below ...FA_Q2, this is part of the reply I owe you. The remarks you made and that pertains to the content in the third bullet is just below.]

Then you would be mistaken. While the quote has been shortened rather needlessly IMHO, the meaning is not changed.

End Sidenote:

What is clear to me is:

• There are folks, like Don B. Kates, who suggest that we should determine the cause(s) of gun violence, yet those folks haven't been among the folks whom I've observed to also advocate for the repeal of Dickey-Wicker. Dickey-Wicker is a key reason the research studies above have little to no data to support inferences about the causality of gun crime. Moreover, to the extent those studies were funded by federal/CDC grants, they are legally prohibited from including causality in their scope.
• Regardless of what Mr. Kates claims are the reasons people use guns against others or themselves, the fact is neither he nor any other writer has any directly relevant (i.e., non-anecdotal) empirical evidence to support those claims. Dickey-Wicker is the reason that is so. So no matter whether you read/hear folks "on about" why folks do "this or that" with guns, know that the only thing they have to go on is their own judgement as to why that is so.
  
  I'm not saying that their proposed causes are implausible, I'm saying that no matter how plausible or implausible they be, they no better or worse reasons than anyone else can propose. I don't care what side of the gun-control issue one falls, failing to admit that reality is a mark of one's fleeting integrity and commitment to actually preventing the occurrence of gun-related crime and deaths.
• Just as there is no clear causal link between gun-carry laws and crime rates, the converse is too so. Were that not so, folks wouldn't spend their energies trying to find one or the other such relationships.
• There is a wealth of written information from the founders that can support both the position of the gun rights and that of the gun control side of the issue.
  
  That said, you'll notice that Kates, rather than providing Thomas Paine's sentences in full, as does every other conservative who cites it, removes the parts that make it clear Mr. Paine wasn't at all writing about an individual right:

From the House of Commons the troops of Britain have been exhorted to fight, not for the defence of their natural rights, not to repel the invasion or the insult of enemies; but on the vilest of all pretences, gold. “Ye fight for solid revenue” was vociferated in the House. Thus America must suffer because she has something to lose. Her crime is property. That which allures the Highwayman has allured the ministry under a gentler name. But the position laid down by Lord Sandwich, is a clear demonstration of the justice of defensive arms. The Americans, quoth this Quixote of modern days, will not fight; therefore we will. His Lordship’s plan when analized amounts to this. These people are either too superstitiously religious, or too cowardly for arms; they either cannot or dare not defend; their property is open to any one who has the courage to attack them. Send but your troops and the prize is ours. Kill a few and take the whole. Thus the peaceable part of mankind will be continually overrun by the vile and abandoned, while they neglect the means of self defence. The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside. And while a single nation refuses to lay them down, it is proper that all should keep them up. Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them; for while avarice and ambition have a place in the heart of man, the weak will become a prey to the strong. The history of every age and nation establishes these truths, and facts need but little arguments when they prove themselves.
-- Thomas Paine

One need only recall that John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich's, speech before Parliament to understand that the ministry strategy which Paine writes need be repelled is not a personal one, one for which the Second Amendment need grant an individual right, but rather a governmental one. It is in this context that it becomes clear that Paine had not in mind whether you or I should have a gun for our defense against individual ruffians. The man wrote of the ruffians who acted at the Crown's behest.

As if various mid-paragraph elements in that oft cited Paine passage didn't make it clear that individual rights have nothing to do with Paine's intent, his concluding remarks in it make it patently clear that he wasn't thinking in the least of a right granted for the sake of allowing individuals self-defense for their own sake rather that for the sake of the nation, the state. Even the title of the work in which Paine's paragraph is found, "Thoughts on a Defensive War," doesn't suggest that the overall subject has a damn thing to do with individuals, but rather with nations. The opening metaphor Paine develops -- Israelites vs. Pharoah -- conjures not images of persons defending against personal assault, but of people collectively fighting tyranny for the sake of their tribe, albeit stateless at the time.
As if that weren't enough, the paragraph following the one quoted above drives home the central theme of Paine's essay pertains to the use of arms to protect against state oppression and infringement on collective liberty.

The Jewish kings were in point of government as absolute as the Pharaohs. Men were frequently put to death without trial at the will of the Sovereign. The Romans held the world in slavery, and were themselves the slaves of their emperors. The madman of Macedon governed by caprice and passion, and strided as arrogantly over the world as if he had made and peopled it; and it is needless to imagine that other nations at that time were more refined. Wherefore political as well as spiritual freedom is the gift of God through Christ.
-- Thomas Paine
​

Immediately following that paragraph, Paine goes on to expressly write of "political liberty" and further using metaphors that call the reader to consider matters of state, not matters of individuality. So tell me, why would a man like Thomas Paine, in writing "Thoughts on a Defensive War," put in just one sentence about individual rights when over and over again he makes clear that the theme of the whole essay has to do with protecting the state? The reality is that the only way one can construe Mr. Paine's words as pertaining to individual rights for the sake of the individual is to deliberately want to use them for that purpose.

It is clear to me, having read Mr. Paine's essay, that any use of his statements to support the assertion that the Founding Fathers intended the Second Amendment as a protection of an individual's right to bear arms must take the man's words completely out of context. Do that is the misrepresentation of which I wrote earlier.

As with any misrepresentation perpetrated by overlooking contextual relevance, one must ask why one or a group might be inclined to do so. I wrote, "the 'huge arms industry' has distorted the Founding Fathers' intent; the reason why they would do is clear. Profit. One need only look at a profile of the small arms industry to see how strong a motivator that is, that is if one can't discern its singular inspirational value without doing so.

FA_Q2: here ends the comments I present in reply to your quoted remarks.​

• Anti-gun control proponents are quick to cite crime patterns in Washington, D.C. and Chicago, two localities that had gun ownership prohibitions, but they fail to recognize that nearby jurisdictions have no such limitations and for which there exist no restrictions on interjurisdictional travel.
• Anti-gun control proponents cite violent crime rates in cities like D.C., but they ignore just who is committing those crimes. In my part of D.C., "west of the Park," crime rates are generally low. (Two areas "west of the Park" have somewhat high rates of gun-related crime -- Woodland and Sheridan. I don't know why, and I should for I live in one of them.) In the less economically advantaged parts of town, the rates are generally high(er). I am certain that poor folks travel to wealthier parts of town, but I'm inclined to think that well off folks rarely travel to poor parts of town, and -- I'm going out on a limb here -- I doubt when they do go there, they (often) have cause to shoot people or accost them with a gun.
• An absolute prohibition on gun ownership is a tactic that has not been tried across the board in the U.S., thus it's no surprise that making limited areas like D.C. or Chicago be gun-free zones had little impact.
• Gun ownership has been (roughly) universally permitted in the U.S. and we see where that's got us as goes gun-related violence. It seems to me that trying the opposite tack is at least worth a shot.

And other researchers disagree....

http://crimeresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Survey-of-Economists_Final.pdf

For North American researchers: 88% believe that guns are more frequently “used in self-defense than they are used in the commission of crime;” 91% believe that gun-free zones are “more likely to attract criminals than they are to deter them;” 72% do not believe that “a gun in the home causes an increase in the risk of suicide;” 91% say that “concealed handgun permit holders are much more law-abiding than the typical American;”

and 81% say that permitted concealed handguns lower the murder rate. Including the researchers from Australia and Sweden lowers these percentages by between 3 and 8 percentage points, but the numbers are still quite high.

The percentages here are similar to those found in literature surveys on concealed carry laws.2 As we will discuss, this survey also provides results that are consistent with surveys of the general United States adult population by Gallup and the Pew Resea

 

[2aguy]

I don't have the time right now to provide sources, so I make no claim. However, I challenge the assumption that "Gun-Control" laws have any real effect on the number of violent crimes involving a gun. I also challenge the assertion that defence of the 2nd is backed by an irrational fear.

You may find this informative:

• A scholarly study of the impact of gun control laws on crime rates (not specifically gun-related crime):
  "Finally, despite our belief that the NRC’s analysis was imperfect in certain ways, we agree with the committee’s cautious final judgment regarding the effects of shall-issue RTC laws: “with the current evidence it is not possible to determine that there is a causal link between the passage of right-to-carry laws and crime rates.” Our results here further underscore the sensitivity of guns-crime estimates to various modeling decisions. If one had to make judgments based on panel data models of the type presented in the NRC report, one would have to conclude that RTC laws likely increase the rate of aggravated assault. Further research will be needed to see if this conclusion survives as more data and better methodologies are employed to estimate the impact of RTC laws on crime."
• A scholarly study on Firearm Ownership and Violent Crime in the U.S.
• "These analyses do not support the hypothesis that firearm ownership deters violent firearm crime. Instead, this study shows that higher levels of firearm ownership are associated with higher rates of firearm-related violent crime. Public health and legislative stakeholders should consider these results when responding to or engaging in the gun control debate."
  
• The Relationship Between Gun Ownership and Firearm Homicide Rates in the United States, 1981–2010
  "We found a robust relationship between gun ownership and firearm homicide rates, a finding that held whether firearm ownership was assessed through a proxy or a survey measure, whether state clustering was accounted for by GEEs or by fixed effects, and whether or not gun ownership was lagged, by up to 2 years. The observed relationship was specific to firearm-related homicide. Although we could not determine causation, we found that states with higher levels of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides."
  
• Gun violence: experts explore critical issues from multiple angles
  "Relative to medicine, public health is underfunded; within public health, the injury prevention field is underfunded; and within the injury prevention field, the firearms area is particularly underfunded. A 2013 report of the Institute of Medicine emphasized the critical need for research into preventing firearm injuries."

Sidenote:
["Killing two birds with one 'stone,' "as it were, with the remarks in the third bullet point below ...FA_Q2, this is part of the reply I owe you. The remarks you made and that pertains to the content in the third bullet is just below.]

Then you would be mistaken. While the quote has been shortened rather needlessly IMHO, the meaning is not changed.

End Sidenote:

What is clear to me is:

• There are folks, like Don B. Kates, who suggest that we should determine the cause(s) of gun violence, yet those folks haven't been among the folks whom I've observed to also advocate for the repeal of Dickey-Wicker. Dickey-Wicker is a key reason the research studies above have little to no data to support inferences about the causality of gun crime. Moreover, to the extent those studies were funded by federal/CDC grants, they are legally prohibited from including causality in their scope.
• Regardless of what Mr. Kates claims are the reasons people use guns against others or themselves, the fact is neither he nor any other writer has any directly relevant (i.e., non-anecdotal) empirical evidence to support those claims. Dickey-Wicker is the reason that is so. So no matter whether you read/hear folks "on about" why folks do "this or that" with guns, know that the only thing they have to go on is their own judgement as to why that is so.
  
  I'm not saying that their proposed causes are implausible, I'm saying that no matter how plausible or implausible they be, they no better or worse reasons than anyone else can propose. I don't care what side of the gun-control issue one falls, failing to admit that reality is a mark of one's fleeting integrity and commitment to actually preventing the occurrence of gun-related crime and deaths.
• Just as there is no clear causal link between gun-carry laws and crime rates, the converse is too so. Were that not so, folks wouldn't spend their energies trying to find one or the other such relationships.
• There is a wealth of written information from the founders that can support both the position of the gun rights and that of the gun control side of the issue.
  
  That said, you'll notice that Kates, rather than providing Thomas Paine's sentences in full, as does every other conservative who cites it, removes the parts that make it clear Mr. Paine wasn't at all writing about an individual right:

From the House of Commons the troops of Britain have been exhorted to fight, not for the defence of their natural rights, not to repel the invasion or the insult of enemies; but on the vilest of all pretences, gold. “Ye fight for solid revenue” was vociferated in the House. Thus America must suffer because she has something to lose. Her crime is property. That which allures the Highwayman has allured the ministry under a gentler name. But the position laid down by Lord Sandwich, is a clear demonstration of the justice of defensive arms. The Americans, quoth this Quixote of modern days, will not fight; therefore we will. His Lordship’s plan when analized amounts to this. These people are either too superstitiously religious, or too cowardly for arms; they either cannot or dare not defend; their property is open to any one who has the courage to attack them. Send but your troops and the prize is ours. Kill a few and take the whole. Thus the peaceable part of mankind will be continually overrun by the vile and abandoned, while they neglect the means of self defence. The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside. And while a single nation refuses to lay them down, it is proper that all should keep them up. Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them; for while avarice and ambition have a place in the heart of man, the weak will become a prey to the strong. The history of every age and nation establishes these truths, and facts need but little arguments when they prove themselves.
-- Thomas Paine

One need only recall that John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich's, speech before Parliament to understand that the ministry strategy which Paine writes need be repelled is not a personal one, one for which the Second Amendment need grant an individual right, but rather a governmental one. It is in this context that it becomes clear that Paine had not in mind whether you or I should have a gun for our defense against individual ruffians. The man wrote of the ruffians who acted at the Crown's behest.

As if various mid-paragraph elements in that oft cited Paine passage didn't make it clear that individual rights have nothing to do with Paine's intent, his concluding remarks in it make it patently clear that he wasn't thinking in the least of a right granted for the sake of allowing individuals self-defense for their own sake rather that for the sake of the nation, the state. Even the title of the work in which Paine's paragraph is found, "Thoughts on a Defensive War," doesn't suggest that the overall subject has a damn thing to do with individuals, but rather with nations. The opening metaphor Paine develops -- Israelites vs. Pharoah -- conjures not images of persons defending against personal assault, but of people collectively fighting tyranny for the sake of their tribe, albeit stateless at the time.
As if that weren't enough, the paragraph following the one quoted above drives home the central theme of Paine's essay pertains to the use of arms to protect against state oppression and infringement on collective liberty.

The Jewish kings were in point of government as absolute as the Pharaohs. Men were frequently put to death without trial at the will of the Sovereign. The Romans held the world in slavery, and were themselves the slaves of their emperors. The madman of Macedon governed by caprice and passion, and strided as arrogantly over the world as if he had made and peopled it; and it is needless to imagine that other nations at that time were more refined. Wherefore political as well as spiritual freedom is the gift of God through Christ.
-- Thomas Paine
​

Immediately following that paragraph, Paine goes on to expressly write of "political liberty" and further using metaphors that call the reader to consider matters of state, not matters of individuality. So tell me, why would a man like Thomas Paine, in writing "Thoughts on a Defensive War," put in just one sentence about individual rights when over and over again he makes clear that the theme of the whole essay has to do with protecting the state? The reality is that the only way one can construe Mr. Paine's words as pertaining to individual rights for the sake of the individual is to deliberately want to use them for that purpose.

It is clear to me, having read Mr. Paine's essay, that any use of his statements to support the assertion that the Founding Fathers intended the Second Amendment as a protection of an individual's right to bear arms must take the man's words completely out of context. Do that is the misrepresentation of which I wrote earlier.

As with any misrepresentation perpetrated by overlooking contextual relevance, one must ask why one or a group might be inclined to do so. I wrote, "the 'huge arms industry' has distorted the Founding Fathers' intent; the reason why they would do is clear. Profit. One need only look at a profile of the small arms industry to see how strong a motivator that is, that is if one can't discern its singular inspirational value without doing so.

FA_Q2: here ends the comments I present in reply to your quoted remarks.​

• Anti-gun control proponents are quick to cite crime patterns in Washington, D.C. and Chicago, two localities that had gun ownership prohibitions, but they fail to recognize that nearby jurisdictions have no such limitations and for which there exist no restrictions on interjurisdictional travel.
• Anti-gun control proponents cite violent crime rates in cities like D.C., but they ignore just who is committing those crimes. In my part of D.C., "west of the Park," crime rates are generally low. (Two areas "west of the Park" have somewhat high rates of gun-related crime -- Woodland and Sheridan. I don't know why, and I should for I live in one of them.) In the less economically advantaged parts of town, the rates are generally high(er). I am certain that poor folks travel to wealthier parts of town, but I'm inclined to think that well off folks rarely travel to poor parts of town, and -- I'm going out on a limb here -- I doubt when they do go there, they (often) have cause to shoot people or accost them with a gun.
• An absolute prohibition on gun ownership is a tactic that has not been tried across the board in the U.S., thus it's no surprise that making limited areas like D.C. or Chicago be gun-free zones had little impact.
• Gun ownership has been (roughly) universally permitted in the U.S. and we see where that's got us as goes gun-related violence. It seems to me that trying the opposite tack is at least worth a shot.

And a direct rebutttal....

The Relationship Between Gun Ownership and Firearm Homicide Rates in the United States, 1981–2010
"We found a robust relationship between gun ownership and firearm homicide rates, a finding that held whether firearm ownership was assessed through a proxy or a survey measure, whether state clustering was accounted for by GEEs or by fixed effects, and whether or not gun ownership was lagged, by up to 2 years. The observed relationship was specific to firearm-related homicide. Although we could not determine causation, we found that states with higher levels of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides."

Problems with Public Health Research: Michael Siegel, Craig Ross, and Charles King, "The Relationship Between Gun Ownership and Firearm Homicide Rates in the United States, 1981-2010," American Journal of Public Health - Crime Prevention Research Center

The letter I submitted to the journal was rejected, but it is pretty surprising that a count data approach was not used with actual count data and that the regressions didn’t use the most basic controls for panel data: for example, state fixed effects to pick up the average differences across states.

Dear Editor:

Siegel et al. conclude gun ownership is positively related to firearm homicide rates in the US, but they use inappropriate statistical tests and their results are extremely sensitive to the test used.1

Negative binomial regressions use count data, not the rate data these authors use. In addition, overdispersion (the variance greater than the mean) doesn’t imply the distribution is negative binomial in form and it isn’t in this case. Economists and criminologists frequently deal with skewness in homicide rates by running the negative binomial regressions on true count data (not on the rates) or by taking the natural log of the rate.2-6 Performing either procedure dramatically alters their results. The natural log of the rate is normally distributed.

Siegel et al.’s regressions fail to take advantage of the panel nature of their data set. While fixed year effects are accounted for, because of failure to obtain convergence, fixed state effects are virtually never included.

Redoing the negative binomial regression using count data on age-adjusted number of firearm homicides, the variables reported in Tables 2 and 3, and year and state fixed effects, I found the percent of suicides committed with guns (FS/S) significantly positively related to firearm homicides, though the effect is half what they found (a one standard deviation change in FS/S explains just 7.8% of one standard deviation in firearm homicides).

However, replacing firearm homicides with nonfirearm homicides implies an even greater statistically significant negative relationship with FS/S (p=0.002). I found no relationship between total homicides and FS/S. Replacing FS/S with the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey data on gun ownership didn’t produce convergence.

Weighted least squares regressions with the natural logs of the rates raise questions about their measure of gun ownership. I found a one percentage point increase FS/S produced a 1.2% increase in firearm homicides, but the point estimate using the BRFSS survey data implied the same change produced a 1.2% decrease.

The correlation between FS/S and the BRFSS survey data is 0.80. But running the BRFSS data on FS/S after accounting for fixed year and state effects shows an insignificant negative relationship. FS/S is clearly not related to gun ownership when basic fixed effects are accounted for. Instead, firearm suicides appear to be measuring demographic and other variables related to homicides, not gun ownership.

* President, Crime Prevention Research Center.

 

[2aguy]

And it is sad for them that they wasted time on that study...since gun murder rates are going down, not up, as more Americans own and carry guns.....

Expanded Homicide Data Table 8

I don't have the time right now to provide sources, so I make no claim. However, I challenge the assumption that "Gun-Control" laws have any real effect on the number of violent crimes involving a gun. I also challenge the assertion that defence of the 2nd is backed by an irrational fear.

You may find this informative:

• A scholarly study of the impact of gun control laws on crime rates (not specifically gun-related crime):
  "Finally, despite our belief that the NRC’s analysis was imperfect in certain ways, we agree with the committee’s cautious final judgment regarding the effects of shall-issue RTC laws: “with the current evidence it is not possible to determine that there is a causal link between the passage of right-to-carry laws and crime rates.” Our results here further underscore the sensitivity of guns-crime estimates to various modeling decisions. If one had to make judgments based on panel data models of the type presented in the NRC report, one would have to conclude that RTC laws likely increase the rate of aggravated assault. Further research will be needed to see if this conclusion survives as more data and better methodologies are employed to estimate the impact of RTC laws on crime."
• A scholarly study on Firearm Ownership and Violent Crime in the U.S.
• "These analyses do not support the hypothesis that firearm ownership deters violent firearm crime. Instead, this study shows that higher levels of firearm ownership are associated with higher rates of firearm-related violent crime. Public health and legislative stakeholders should consider these results when responding to or engaging in the gun control debate."
  
• The Relationship Between Gun Ownership and Firearm Homicide Rates in the United States, 1981–2010
  "We found a robust relationship between gun ownership and firearm homicide rates, a finding that held whether firearm ownership was assessed through a proxy or a survey measure, whether state clustering was accounted for by GEEs or by fixed effects, and whether or not gun ownership was lagged, by up to 2 years. The observed relationship was specific to firearm-related homicide. Although we could not determine causation, we found that states with higher levels of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides."
  
• Gun violence: experts explore critical issues from multiple angles
  "Relative to medicine, public health is underfunded; within public health, the injury prevention field is underfunded; and within the injury prevention field, the firearms area is particularly underfunded. A 2013 report of the Institute of Medicine emphasized the critical need for research into preventing firearm injuries."

Sidenote:
["Killing two birds with one 'stone,' "as it were, with the remarks in the third bullet point below ...FA_Q2, this is part of the reply I owe you. The remarks you made and that pertains to the content in the third bullet is just below.]

Then you would be mistaken. While the quote has been shortened rather needlessly IMHO, the meaning is not changed.

End Sidenote:

What is clear to me is:

• There are folks, like Don B. Kates, who suggest that we should determine the cause(s) of gun violence, yet those folks haven't been among the folks whom I've observed to also advocate for the repeal of Dickey-Wicker. Dickey-Wicker is a key reason the research studies above have little to no data to support inferences about the causality of gun crime. Moreover, to the extent those studies were funded by federal/CDC grants, they are legally prohibited from including causality in their scope.
• Regardless of what Mr. Kates claims are the reasons people use guns against others or themselves, the fact is neither he nor any other writer has any directly relevant (i.e., non-anecdotal) empirical evidence to support those claims. Dickey-Wicker is the reason that is so. So no matter whether you read/hear folks "on about" why folks do "this or that" with guns, know that the only thing they have to go on is their own judgement as to why that is so.
  
  I'm not saying that their proposed causes are implausible, I'm saying that no matter how plausible or implausible they be, they no better or worse reasons than anyone else can propose. I don't care what side of the gun-control issue one falls, failing to admit that reality is a mark of one's fleeting integrity and commitment to actually preventing the occurrence of gun-related crime and deaths.
• Just as there is no clear causal link between gun-carry laws and crime rates, the converse is too so. Were that not so, folks wouldn't spend their energies trying to find one or the other such relationships.
• There is a wealth of written information from the founders that can support both the position of the gun rights and that of the gun control side of the issue.
  
  That said, you'll notice that Kates, rather than providing Thomas Paine's sentences in full, as does every other conservative who cites it, removes the parts that make it clear Mr. Paine wasn't at all writing about an individual right:

From the House of Commons the troops of Britain have been exhorted to fight, not for the defence of their natural rights, not to repel the invasion or the insult of enemies; but on the vilest of all pretences, gold. “Ye fight for solid revenue” was vociferated in the House. Thus America must suffer because she has something to lose. Her crime is property. That which allures the Highwayman has allured the ministry under a gentler name. But the position laid down by Lord Sandwich, is a clear demonstration of the justice of defensive arms. The Americans, quoth this Quixote of modern days, will not fight; therefore we will. His Lordship’s plan when analized amounts to this. These people are either too superstitiously religious, or too cowardly for arms; they either cannot or dare not defend; their property is open to any one who has the courage to attack them. Send but your troops and the prize is ours. Kill a few and take the whole. Thus the peaceable part of mankind will be continually overrun by the vile and abandoned, while they neglect the means of self defence. The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside. And while a single nation refuses to lay them down, it is proper that all should keep them up. Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them; for while avarice and ambition have a place in the heart of man, the weak will become a prey to the strong. The history of every age and nation establishes these truths, and facts need but little arguments when they prove themselves.
-- Thomas Paine

One need only recall that John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich's, speech before Parliament to understand that the ministry strategy which Paine writes need be repelled is not a personal one, one for which the Second Amendment need grant an individual right, but rather a governmental one. It is in this context that it becomes clear that Paine had not in mind whether you or I should have a gun for our defense against individual ruffians. The man wrote of the ruffians who acted at the Crown's behest.

As if various mid-paragraph elements in that oft cited Paine passage didn't make it clear that individual rights have nothing to do with Paine's intent, his concluding remarks in it make it patently clear that he wasn't thinking in the least of a right granted for the sake of allowing individuals self-defense for their own sake rather that for the sake of the nation, the state. Even the title of the work in which Paine's paragraph is found, "Thoughts on a Defensive War," doesn't suggest that the overall subject has a damn thing to do with individuals, but rather with nations. The opening metaphor Paine develops -- Israelites vs. Pharoah -- conjures not images of persons defending against personal assault, but of people collectively fighting tyranny for the sake of their tribe, albeit stateless at the time.
As if that weren't enough, the paragraph following the one quoted above drives home the central theme of Paine's essay pertains to the use of arms to protect against state oppression and infringement on collective liberty.

The Jewish kings were in point of government as absolute as the Pharaohs. Men were frequently put to death without trial at the will of the Sovereign. The Romans held the world in slavery, and were themselves the slaves of their emperors. The madman of Macedon governed by caprice and passion, and strided as arrogantly over the world as if he had made and peopled it; and it is needless to imagine that other nations at that time were more refined. Wherefore political as well as spiritual freedom is the gift of God through Christ.
-- Thomas Paine
​

Immediately following that paragraph, Paine goes on to expressly write of "political liberty" and further using metaphors that call the reader to consider matters of state, not matters of individuality. So tell me, why would a man like Thomas Paine, in writing "Thoughts on a Defensive War," put in just one sentence about individual rights when over and over again he makes clear that the theme of the whole essay has to do with protecting the state? The reality is that the only way one can construe Mr. Paine's words as pertaining to individual rights for the sake of the individual is to deliberately want to use them for that purpose.

It is clear to me, having read Mr. Paine's essay, that any use of his statements to support the assertion that the Founding Fathers intended the Second Amendment as a protection of an individual's right to bear arms must take the man's words completely out of context. Do that is the misrepresentation of which I wrote earlier.

As with any misrepresentation perpetrated by overlooking contextual relevance, one must ask why one or a group might be inclined to do so. I wrote, "the 'huge arms industry' has distorted the Founding Fathers' intent; the reason why they would do is clear. Profit. One need only look at a profile of the small arms industry to see how strong a motivator that is, that is if one can't discern its singular inspirational value without doing so.

FA_Q2: here ends the comments I present in reply to your quoted remarks.​

• Anti-gun control proponents are quick to cite crime patterns in Washington, D.C. and Chicago, two localities that had gun ownership prohibitions, but they fail to recognize that nearby jurisdictions have no such limitations and for which there exist no restrictions on interjurisdictional travel.
• Anti-gun control proponents cite violent crime rates in cities like D.C., but they ignore just who is committing those crimes. In my part of D.C., "west of the Park," crime rates are generally low. (Two areas "west of the Park" have somewhat high rates of gun-related crime -- Woodland and Sheridan. I don't know why, and I should for I live in one of them.) In the less economically advantaged parts of town, the rates are generally high(er). I am certain that poor folks travel to wealthier parts of town, but I'm inclined to think that well off folks rarely travel to poor parts of town, and -- I'm going out on a limb here -- I doubt when they do go there, they (often) have cause to shoot people or accost them with a gun.
• An absolute prohibition on gun ownership is a tactic that has not been tried across the board in the U.S., thus it's no surprise that making limited areas like D.C. or Chicago be gun-free zones had little impact.
• Gun ownership has been (roughly) universally permitted in the U.S. and we see where that's got us as goes gun-related violence. It seems to me that trying the opposite tack is at least worth a shot.

Gun ownership has been (roughly) universally permitted in the U.S. and we see where that's got us as goes gun-related violence. It seems to me that trying the opposite tack is at least worth a shot.

Our gun murder rate is going down, not up...as more Americans own and carry guns......the Britis banned and confiscated guns and their gun murder rate spiked then levelled off to what it was before the confiscation....

Our rate is going down.......

 

[FA_Q2]

The above citations all make the same erroneous error in a blatant effort, IMHO, to force the conclusion that they want to come up with. The constant 'firearm ownership increases fierarm related crimes.' That qualifier is there for one purpose only, to filter the data. There is no reason to do that whatsoever unless you are trying to bias the conclusion from the start.

Blue:
??? What? How do you propose that those researchers "forced the conclusion" they desired? What they did was examine data. They didn't create data; it exists.

I already explained that.

They FILTERED the outcome. Rather than look at homicide or crimes rates they specifically filtered the data they looked at by referring to 'gun related crime.'

If homicide trend rates remain constant while gun homicides decrease what, specifically, is the benefit of the gun control? The reality is that those trend lines continuing to rise means that those homicides are still committed but they are done with another implement. If the goal of gun control is that homicides are unaffected but they are stabbing instead of shootings it would be nonsensical. The obvious goal is LESS people killed or victimized. Looking at 'gun crime' (a contrived statistic) rather than crime as a whole completely blinds the research as to the actual effect on crime that the gun control has.

Red:
??? If we want to reduce the incidence of people falling down the stairs, building structures that have ramps instead of stairs would eliminate the problem of folks falling down the stairs in those structures, wouldn't it? It may not stop folks from falling, but then we'd need to discern why they fall to deal with that.

And if you didn't stop people from falling then the point would be? If just as many people fell and injured themselves on the ramps as on the stairs then you have achieved nothing but expensive regulations.

Those supporting such regulations, however, would point out that stairwell injuries were practically non-existent. That is the same thing they did above - gun control leads to less 'gun crime.' Just ignore the fact no change in homicide rates actually occurs.

The thing is that with falling, were it thought that it might be public health concern, there'd be funding from public health organizations like the CDC to determine the causes of falling. However, with gun-related violence, there is no such source of funding (due to Dickey-Wicker Amendment) available, so we cannot determine what its causes are. Thus the only option available for surely ending gun-related deaths and injuries is to deal with (eliminate or make very hard to obtain) the guns themselves rather than what might be the real causes of the problem. I fully agree that guns don't just shoot by themselves, but I also know that neither I nor anyone else has clear information indicating why their owners do.

When you write of biasing a conclusion on the matter of gun-related deaths/injuries, I bid you consider that the NRA and its "friends" have done more than bias a conclusion. They have totally closed off one avenue of discovery related to identifying the causes of the problem itself. By getting Dickey-Wicker passed, they have effectively said for everyone, "We don't think having access to guns has a damn thing to do with gun-related deaths/injuries/crime, and we are we are going to, to the fullest extent we can, prohibit the government from exploring what might be the causes of it." Does it get any more biased than that?

There is no reason for me to consider what the NRA has done to 'bias' anything because I dont really care what the NRA has to say on the subject. That is why I pulled direct numbers. My own research ios strangely unaffected by any advocacy group.

If you want to debate about the other issue you are now bringing up there is not much to say there - I totally agree that the ban on researching the effects of guns and crimes is not only asinine - it is outright criminal. Such a ban should be repealed immediately. The stunning reality with that is that the gun industry above all else should be calling for such. They are big supporters of such a ban though and that is just asinine.

If we simply look at the raw data we find that there is likely no relation to firearm control and crime in general. As I already posted:

I don't have a lot to say about gun violence in the UK; I'm not familiar enough with their laws or social circumstances as it pertains to gun-related homicides. Does the chart above even pertain to gun-related homicides?

Did you actually look at the caption for the dashed line on that graph? You realize that it says (in positive terms) "Homicides with large anomalies related to guns." What does that mean? What "large anomalies?"

We see gun control pass on a national level and we see little change in homicide rates or, more importantly, homicide rate trend lines.

Of the national gun-related laws, I'm not aware of any that one can expect to have more than a very limited impact. As best as I can tell, they appear, at least coincidentally, to have worked; I'll grant that establishing a causal link between the legislation and activity is difficult.

• Law Enforcement Officers Protection Act of 1985: I don't hear of many law enforcement officials being harmed by armor-piercing rounds. I can't imagine that this law affects more folks than cops and military fighters. That said, it seems to benefit cops who one never hears of one having been shot by an armor piercing round. Are such rounds so much more difficult to make than are "normal" rounds that folks who want them cannot make them on their own? If indeed they are very hard to construct, I'd say the ban has been effective because it has meant that few (if any) folks who want to fire such rounds at cops -- clearly we know there's no shortage of such folks -- have been able to produce them and use them.
  
  Ronald Reagan signed this bill and now folks are "on about" how such a bullet has never killed a cop when the thing was, apparently until recently, not a bullet that could be fired from a handgun, which is largely the type of gun typically aimed at people, be they cops or not. Until recently, the bullet received the "hunting exclusion" and, FWIW, I suppose that was okay -- God only knows what animals other than turtles have "armor" that militates for needing "armor piercing" functionality, but whatever -- and it makes sense to me that legitimate hunters weren't aiming guns loaded with armor piercing rounds at cops.
• The Gun-Free School Zones Act and the The Gun-Free Schools Act: My observation is that school shootings are infrequent. (They are, however, quite sensational when they occur.) I don't know of a source that distinguishes between the shootings that occurred using a gun fired outside of the building vs. those fired inside the school. I do know there's only so much one can do outside the school building. I'm not suggesting one should not try; I'm saying that I realize the rate of success from doing so will be lower.

This is rather nonsesnical. I have not commented on either of these items nor do you present anything that resembles them being effective. I think it is rather crystal clear that gun free schools have accomplished virtually nothing. In order to establish either of these laws as being effective you would have to establish before and after trend lines for the laws in question.

You also outright rejected actual national gun control the likes of which was spoken about before. The UK was brought up because they have essentially eliminated private ownership of weapons. While they can own firearms, the ability to do so is severely limited and sightly controlled. After passage of those laws homicide trends were unchanged.

You directly stated that gun control had not been tried here so we don't know if it would be effective. Well, that is a false assertion. We can look at other places that have effectively controlled firearms and see that such bans are ineffective in general.

Again, that is YOUR interpretation of that passage and again, I challenge that is the only way these words can be taken. You ASSUME that because the founders spoke regularly that these rights were integral in protecting the state that the right itself was one that belonged to the state and I think that is contrived.

Taken as a whole, the statements of the founders seem to tell me that they believed a personal right to own firearms was integral to the state being able to call upon them for common defense as no one defended people's homes like those that actually lived in them.

The purpose of the second amendment clearly involves an element of common defense (the amendment states this directly) BUT that does not make the protected right itself one that is for the states. I also find the 'collective right' theory sorely lacking in that it is the ONLY right that some demand is given to a collective.

Just because the purpose here is a defense of the nation does not speak to the inherent receiver of the right itself. The founders claimed these rights were self evident and existed regardless of the state. How then can this right belong to the state? It simply cannot - the state does not have rights at all nor do they need 'protection.' the entire point of the BoR was to identify rights the people held that were specifically protected from federal interference. The sudden idea that part of the BoR was to identify rights that the state had is unfounded IMHO.

Red:
Well, I have to agree with you; it's not the only way to interpret the words and writer's intent. I am convinced it's the only way that it makes sense to do so and that it's the most apt way to do so.

Blue:
No, that is not the assumption I have made. The assumption I make in reading the passage is that the state is the intended beneficiary of the right. Based on that, I believe that if the state no longer faces threats to its very existence that can best be preserved by citizens privately/individually bearing arms, there no longer is a need for citizens to bear them. If I saw cause for citizens (as individuals) to take up arms against a tyrannical/oppressive U.S. government, or to do so as individuals -- rather than as part of the U.S.' governmentally sponsored armed forces -- against a foreign entity in defense of the U.S., then by all means, I'd be fine with citizens bearing arms.

Why do you think such an external threat is now gone?

I think that is a rather naive way of seeing the world - such a threat exists all over the place. We are top dogs today - that does not mean we will be in 50 years. Our slide from being the dominant military power is already occurring.

Many of these countries that we go in are defending themselves from US in exactly this manner.

Frankly, I don't imagine an uprising of either nature being in the minds of the majority of the citizenry. Do you? I do imagine individuals being ticked with "this or that" policy and potentially taking up arms to shoot its enactors and supporters. I don't think that last is at all what the founders sought to enable.

Not today.

I am, however, 100 percent positive that it will happen at some point. That is a given, the nation will eventually fall into corruption and vice that will require the citizens to 'renew' the government as is the way of governments. Right now Americans are very well off and the very idea of a violent uprising (which there are many here that actually pretend to support), is outright insane.

Purple:
I would tend to agree with that in the main. I think the sovereignty and integrity of their nation is what they had in mind as the object being defended more so than an individual's home and business. Certainly defending the state's sovereignty and sanctity of its ideals necessarily leads to preserving the nature and extent of one's home and livelihood.

Green:
I think the Second Amendment is the only one focused on collective rights. That agreed between us, I don't see any logical basis for accepting that its being the only instance of the founders granting a collective right is an indication that they didn't so intend it. I see no reason to accept that it was the only right they envisioned as there having been necessary to present as a collective one. Indeed, that they chose to expressly codify it as a collective one speaks to their intent that it not be misconstrued as an individual one.

Yet they didn't codify it as a collective right...

I do put forth that the simple fact there are no instances of collective rights in the BoR that ensuing the second somehow is a collective right is simply viewing the right as you want it to believe. The founders were damn intelligent people and had they wanted to ensure that the right was collective I am sure that they would have plainly stated thus.

We also have to recognize that the original intent has been obscured by the fact that the original intent of the entire document has been drastically modified. The founders claimed they believed in inherent rights but the constitution and nation at the time clearly violated this concept including measures that the founders themselves supported AFAIK.

In the early years of this nation there were things like state religions and other inroads against basic rights that were totally in line with the constitution - a document that pertained ONLY to the federal government (congress shall make no law and the like). The original intent certainly did not apply to the states as NONE of our rights were protected from the individual states themselves, just the State. However, we have recognized that tyranny of the individual state is no different than tyranny of the central state - a gaping hole in the founders 'original intent' if you ask me - and have extended those protections to the state governments as well.

IF that caused issues with the purpose of the second then that is only to be addressed through amendment.

Pink:
The right does not belong to the state; it belongs to the people and the intended use of the right is to defend against the misdoings of the individuals charged with acting on the state's behalf.

In 1660 the English monarchy was restored with the coronation of Charles II (1630-1685), but the battle between Parliament and the monarchy continued. King James II (1633-1701) was deposed in 1688, and the following year his daughter, Mary (Queen Mary II, 1662-1694), and her husband, William (King William III, 1650-1702), were installed as co-rulers of England. When the pair took their oaths of office, they were presented with a new Bill of Rights, which outlined the relationship of Parliament and the monarchy to the people. This Bill of Rights condemned abuses committed by standing armies (armies maintained by the government on a long-term basis, even while at peace) and declared "that the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of Parliament, is against law."

The founders were well aware of those historical exigencies. They knew well that if armed revolt by the citizenry was called for, there should be no impediment to citizens doing just that. Providing the right to bear arms makes it possible. Strictly speaking, "arms" need not be limited to personal firearms. Applying the "individual right" aspect of the Second Amendment in the full spirit gun rights advocates espouse would allow you and I to own arms of any sort, yet there are clearly arms that are illegal to own. I don't see anyone clamoring over that. Do you? A bit disingenuous that they don't if you ask me....

That is a Reductio ad absurdum.

It is not disingenuous to restrict certain weapons. No right is infinite in its application and this is well established nor is an armed populous in need of nuclear warheads to commit an armed insurgency. What is needed is basic firearms - being FAR more effective than a pile of RPG's anyway - AND a majority of the population willing to use them.

There is clearly a need to restrict people owning weapons that are exotic and highly deadly such as an RPG. This is far different from an M-4.

What do you mean by "the state doesn't need protecting?" How can it not other than in cases where one advocates anarchy as the mode of statehood? Surely you aren't suggesting that I'm referring to the physical state -- a geographical region having politically agreed upon borders -- rather than what its nature is with regard to its relationship, and that of the persons managing that relationship, with the people who live within the state?

No, you do not get to simply 'try' to eliminate a basic right that is outlined in the constitution (no matter what you may think of original intent) simply to see what happens. Why do we not eliminate free speech and see where that gets us?

No, because that is specifically barred in the constitution and rightly so. On the same token, if you want to eliminate guns then you need to change the constitution itself. That is not going to happen and, again, rightly so because the data IS out there - those opposing the existence of protections for firearm ownership simply refuse to acknowledge this. It has been done on from the local scale to the national scale with little change.

Other amendments to the Constitution have been repealed and/or modified. I see no reason -- other than that there may not presently be sufficient popular will to do so -- that the same cannot occur with the Second Amendment.

Truly, if I thought there were widespread life threatening issues pertaining to the right to free speech, I would advocate for modifying that amendment too.

Brown:
I discussed that and I didn't see from you any response to it that directly refute my points about why the local attempts have been less successful than were desired.

The same certainly could occur with the second. You have not been advocating for such though and it has been, up until this point, outside the scope of our debate. If you think that there should be another amendment I would gladly bring that into the debate as well. I think it is rather clear that such tinkering is unnecessary because there is no real gains from doing so as I have already posted.

As to your last statement, that is because you passed right over it I have brought up a few nations that have tried exactly that - national bans on weapons. Those national bans have failed. We really cannot use the USA in that respect because the only national ban we have passed was massively nonsensical (the AWB) BUT there are other nations that have tried it and we see little change in the homicide trend line. They are also surrounded completely by water without a wide open border to smuggle weapons across (like the southern border would become should the supply and demand across it shift). We can also look at Switzerland as they have done the exact opposite and we see that their trend lines are also unaffected AFIK.

 

[oldsoul]

As I did not read the entirety of all posts after my last one, do to time constraints, I am not sure if this point has been made, so I will put forth this concept, or question:
If it is illegal for law abiding citezens to own guns, Who do you think will be armed, and who will be unarmed?
My suggested answer:
Criminals will be armed, and law abiding citezens will be unarmed.
How would it benefit society to disarm the people who are most likely to use guns in an accepted and leagal way, while doing little, or nothing, to disarm those who are most likely to commit crimes, armed or not? How we go about "disarming" criminals, outside of imprisonment which can only be done after a crime has been commited (at least in this country), is beyond me. More to the point, I don't beleive it is possible to effectively disarm the criminals on any society. Therefore, IMO, the best solution is to allow law abiding citizens to own and carry guns, thereby presenting a deterent to crime, if only in theory.

 

[320 Years of History]

As I did not read the entirety of all posts after my last one, do to time constraints, I am not sure if this point has been made, so I will put forth this concept, or question:
If it is illegal for law abiding citezens to own guns, Who do you think will be armed, and who will be unarmed?
My suggested answer:
Criminals will be armed, and law abiding citezens will be unarmed.
How would it benefit society to disarm the people who are most likely to use guns in an accepted and leagal way, while doing little, or nothing, to disarm those who are most likely to commit crimes, armed or not? How we go about "disarming" criminals, outside of imprisonment which can only be done after a crime has been commited (at least in this country), is beyond me. More to the point, I don't beleive it is possible to effectively disarm the criminals on any society. Therefore, IMO, the best solution is to allow law abiding citizens to own and carry guns, thereby presenting a deterent to crime, if only in theory.

I might be willing to buy this argument if I were aware of a meaning quantity of armed civilians actually needed and using their guns to do something to thwart crimes. The fact is that I just don't see that happening with enough folks to make the line about armed civilians being of any merit.

• 12 Times Mass Shootings Were Stopped by Good Guys With Guns
  
• Private Guns Stop Crime 2.5M Times A Year In US -- I came across this guy who claims somewhere between 800K and 2.5 million civilians stop crimes using their guns each year. I read his interview, but not his study, and from that I think his figures are overstated (based on there being about 125 million U.S. households, 38% of them saying they own guns, and 1.3% of those people saying they used their gun "defensively," which may or may not have a damn thing to do with stopping a crime). Even if his figures are accurate, we're talking about something on the order of 1% of the population of households and less than 1% of U.S. adults who are ostensibly deterring crime by dint of owning a gun.
  
• The Myth of the Good Guy With the Gun
  
• Guns Don't Deter Crime, Study Finds

I'm not saying that lay folks don't from time to time prevent crime/violence by using their guns. I'm saying that even if they do, it isn't something that happens often enough to be a materially weighted factor in the debate over whether guns deter violence. I think, as Thomas Paine did, that arms ownership is a neutral factor in the matter.

I also see a lot of so-called "common wisdom" about the deterrent effect of having an armed populace -- and, frankly, the common wisdom isn't lost on me; it seems plausible, but I want to see something that shows it's extancy -- but I don't see any credible evidence of there being a causal relationship between an armed populace and crime actually being deterred. Sure, I see the circumstantial correlation between gun violence/death figures (and I see it as existing for both sides of the argument) and lots of people having guns. I don't see established the causal relationship between the latter and the former.

I'm not saying there is no correlation; I'm saying I don't see anything indicating the correlation is causal. Moreover, for all the input I've seen touting that there exists the correlation you mentioned, time and again I come across researchers showing/stating the correlation isn't causal, that the correlation cannot be shown as such, or that gun ownership boosts homicide rates. There's no question that seemingly (to me) qualified researchers have published papers arguing each viewpoint. The conclusion I draw from that is that there must be variables the researchers -- in both camps, if an independent scholar/researcher can be said to be in a camp -- overlooked or discounted.


Source: 10 Correlations That Are Not Causations

I don't own a gun, I never have, and I don't plan to. I have been accosted on the streets of D.C.

In the 1980s, I and a date were leaving a nightclub around 1:30 a.m or so, and three guys approached us demanding our money. They had knives; I had the remainder of a buzz and my date on my arm. When they demanded our money, I laughed out loud and told them they were idiots, asking them what in their right mind made them think they would find someone of our age (I was 20; my date was 19; our assailants were about the same age.) leaving the club and still having money in their pocket? I suggested that if they expect to get money, they should approach people before they enter the place and spend it on drinks. I didn't show them my wallet; my date didn't either. They asked to see my watch, which I showed them; they didn't want it. I offered them my gold high school class ring; they didn't want that either. They walked away, and we drove home unscathed.

That was just one incident, the only such one in my life, but it highlights a key point: if one doesn't have a gun, one still has one's wits and they are as good a means as any for disarming the situation and handling things. I could hold my own in a one-on-one fight with most folks, but not against three guys with knives, and as it was summer, I'm sure they could see I wasn't a weakling, but I have no idea what role that played in things. I don't know whether I'd have attempted to use a gun had I one.

 

[oldsoul]

As I did not read the entirety of all posts after my last one, do to time constraints, I am not sure if this point has been made, so I will put forth this concept, or question:
If it is illegal for law abiding citezens to own guns, Who do you think will be armed, and who will be unarmed?
My suggested answer:
Criminals will be armed, and law abiding citezens will be unarmed.
How would it benefit society to disarm the people who are most likely to use guns in an accepted and leagal way, while doing little, or nothing, to disarm those who are most likely to commit crimes, armed or not? How we go about "disarming" criminals, outside of imprisonment which can only be done after a crime has been commited (at least in this country), is beyond me. More to the point, I don't beleive it is possible to effectively disarm the criminals on any society. Therefore, IMO, the best solution is to allow law abiding citizens to own and carry guns, thereby presenting a deterent to crime, if only in theory.

I might be willing to buy this argument if I were aware of a meaning quantity of armed civilians actually needed and using their guns to do something to thwart crimes. The fact is that I just don't see that happening with enough folks to make the line about armed civilians being of any merit.

• 12 Times Mass Shootings Were Stopped by Good Guys With Guns
  
• Private Guns Stop Crime 2.5M Times A Year In US -- I came across this guy who claims somewhere between 800K and 2.5 million civilians stop crimes using their guns each year. I read his interview, but not his study, and from that I think his figures are overstated (based on there being about 125 million U.S. households, 38% of them saying they own guns, and 1.3% of those people saying they used their gun "defensively," which may or may not have a damn thing to do with stopping a crime). Even if his figures are accurate, we're talking about something on the order of 1% of the population of households and less than 1% of U.S. adults who are ostensibly deterring crime by dint of owning a gun.
  
• The Myth of the Good Guy With the Gun
  
• Guns Don't Deter Crime, Study Finds

I'm not saying that lay folks don't from time to time prevent crime/violence by using their guns. I'm saying that even if they do, it isn't something that happens often enough to be a materially weighted factor in the debate over whether guns deter violence. I think, as Thomas Paine did, that arms ownership is a neutral factor in the matter.

I also see a lot of so-called "common wisdom" about the deterrent effect of having an armed populace -- and, frankly, the common wisdom isn't lost on me; it seems plausible, but I want to see something that shows it's extancy -- but I don't see any credible evidence of there being a causal relationship between an armed populace and crime actually being deterred. Sure, I see the circumstantial correlation between gun violence/death figures (and I see it as existing for both sides of the argument) and lots of people having guns. I don't see established the causal relationship between the latter and the former.

I'm not saying there is no correlation; I'm saying I don't see anything indicating the correlation is causal. Moreover, for all the input I've seen touting that there exists the correlation you mentioned, time and again I come across researchers showing/stating the correlation isn't causal, that the correlation cannot be shown as such, or that gun ownership boosts homicide rates. There's no question that seemingly (to me) qualified researchers have published papers arguing each viewpoint. The conclusion I draw from that is that there must be variables the researchers -- in both camps, if an independent scholar/researcher can be said to be in a camp -- overlooked or discounted.


Source: 10 Correlations That Are Not Causations

I don't own a gun, I never have, and I don't plan to. I have been accosted on the streets of D.C.

In the 1980s, I and a date were leaving a nightclub around 1:30 a.m or so, and three guys approached us demanding our money. They had knives; I had the remainder of a buzz and my date on my arm. When they demanded our money, I laughed out loud and told them they were idiots, asking them what in their right mind made them think they would find someone of our age (I was 20; my date was 19; our assailants were about the same age.) leaving the club and still having money in their pocket? I suggested that if they expect to get money, they should approach people before they enter the place and spend it on drinks. I didn't show them my wallet; my date didn't either. They asked to see my watch, which I showed them; they didn't want it. I offered them my gold high school class ring; they didn't want that either. They walked away, and we drove home unscathed.

That was just one incident, the only such one in my life, but it highlights a key point: if one doesn't have a gun, one still has one's wits and they are as good a means as any for disarming the situation and handling things. I could hold my own in a one-on-one fight with most folks, but not against three guys with knives, and as it was summer, I'm sure they could see I wasn't a weakling, but I have no idea what role that played in things. I don't know whether I'd have attempted to use a gun had I one.

All I can say for sure is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to "prove" why a crime did not happen, similar to how it is impossible to "prove" one is not a racist, bigot, or the like.
As for me, I would rather have a gun and not need it, than need it and not have it. That is why I have, and will continue to advicate for gun rights.