Guns gave us a civilized society

[Quantum Windbag]

My mistake. I thought you knew what you were talking about.

NRA has strong lobby in states - Dec. 20, 2012

Look at where the big money goes: DC.

Look at the top 20 candidate contribs: All US Cong/Sen.

Look where millions in lobbying and PAC money goes.

Where did NRA lobbyists come from: federal government.

Their state level efforts are small, comparatively.

Wow Koios and Quantum:
If we could just get all those NRA lobbyists with money to invest
to team up with the advocates pushing for REAL mental health
and safe housing reforms needed under "health care", maybe we COULD fund some
Constitutional alternatives to ACA, by investing in more jobs and medical education/services
in the private sector (instead of the govt messing with gun and health care legislation on the outside that doesn't solve the root problems of why people who need help aren't getting it).

Ya think?

There is no real mental health treatment, is all based on guessing and wishful thinking.

 

[FA_Q2]

State bans are ineffective since crossing state lines is a relatively small inconvenience, as the NRA and gun makers / dealers are well aware.

So they mildly oppose them and then highlight the ineffectiveness saying bans do not work, full knowing only federal bans do, which would hamper their sales, in case you're wondering why local vans meet with little resistance, while opposition to federal bans brings out their most aggressive opposition.

According to what? Again, demanding that they do work and producing zero evidence to support this is asinine. Country wide bans also do not work as has been proven many times in other countries.

You have zero data to back you up but you keep making the same claims.

 

[NYcarbineer]

"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life."

R.A Heinlein.

Then the USA would be the most polite society on the planet.

But perhaps we are, and the latest nut case politely urged students, with something to the effect of, "Excuse me, children; would you be ever so kind as to stand against that wall..."

Reality is lost on people like you.

The school was a Gun Free Zone. The mentally disturbed shooter knew he would not meet anyone who could answer him in kind.

Gun free zones are not what you think they are.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Like the bans in Britton? Or the ones in Australia? Or the city bans that were even more strict than the national ones? Perhaps the state bans that were strict?

I posted many examples with strengthening AND relaxing weapons regulations. NONE worked. You are taking a single example out of the sea that is available to you and even that one does not support your claim. I guess you could make blanket claims that your very specific idea has not been tried but the facts are that a wide variety of gun control has been tried all over the world as well as in the states and the vast majority of them are coming up with little to no evidence supporting any change whatsoever.

No. The USA is unique in its treatment of gun ownership, due to both the 2nd Amendment and the gun lobby, principally the NRA.

So we need to do our own experiments and not rely on those in environments very unlike ours.

The only thing unique about the US is that the government has never succumbed to the temptation to turn massive numbers of citizens into outlaws simply to control something they can't control. Ever look at what happened in countries that outlawed guns and compare the number of guns registered/collected to the number of guns estimated to exist? In Germany it ran at less than 10%, which is about typical for European countries, and actually gives me hope that the world isn't as bad as I thought.

How many Americans own fully automatic firearms?

 

[FA_Q2]

No. The USA is unique in its treatment of gun ownership, due to both the 2nd Amendment and the gun lobby, principally the NRA.

So we need to do our own experiments and not rely on those in environments very unlike ours.

The only thing unique about the US is that the government has never succumbed to the temptation to turn massive numbers of citizens into outlaws simply to control something they can't control. Ever look at what happened in countries that outlawed guns and compare the number of guns registered/collected to the number of guns estimated to exist? In Germany it ran at less than 10%, which is about typical for European countries, and actually gives me hope that the world isn't as bad as I thought.

How many Americans own fully automatic firearms?

I have no idea tbh. What's your point?

I don't see how that has any relation to what we are talking about?

 

[midcan5]

How does one measure civilized? Could America claim a high place given the gun deaths, is that a sign of a successful, civilized, happy people? To juxtapose the question with the happiest people on earth (?) check these two articles out. Some will say they don't compare, but that does not matter for often it assumed this is the only way there is and thus we must except it. Maybe there are other ways and they are missed or yet to come.

"According to Statistics Iceland there were 69 deaths by firearms in the years 1996 to 2010. Five homicides, the rest were suicides. That means on average there are about 4.6 suicides per year in Iceland by firearms (one with a handgun) and 0.3 homicides per year. It so happens that Americans are almost exactly 1,000 times as many as Icelanders. Hence if we multiply Icelandic numbers by 1.000 we get the equivalent of 4.500 suicides and 300 homicides. This means the suicide rate in the US by guns is about four times that in Iceland and the homicide rate about 39 times." link below

"Iceland, the block of sub-Arctic lava to which these statistics apply, tops the latest table of the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Human Development Index rankings, meaning that as a society and as an economy - in terms of wealth, health and education - they are champions of the world. To which one might respond: Yes, but - what with the dark winters and the far from tropical summers - are Icelanders happy? Actually, in so far as one can reliably measure such things, they are. According to a seemingly serious academic study reported in the Guardian in 2006, Icelanders are the happiest people on earth. (The study was lent some credibility by the finding that the Russians were the most unhappy.)"

John Carlin on why Iceland has the happiest people on earth | World news | The Observer


""The only thing that I never understood [about many Americans] was religious intolerance and the insistence on owning guns. Even relatively pleasant people talked in phrases: “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns” (To which I would reply, if only mentally: Then you will only be shot on the remote chance you meet an outlaw, not by your relatives or friends). Steven T Abell of Fremont, California rebuts: “[Y]our relatives and friends do not make a career of assaulting you, while criminals do.”

Steve, obviously you don’t know my relatives.

In general you are right, thank God. However, experience shows that often people are worst to those that they love the most. Not because they are hurting them all the time, but because they spend a lot of time with them and in a moment of anger or thoughtlessness people say or do things that hurt their loved ones. And having a gun makes it much easier to kill yourself in a moment of anguish. Let’s look at the statistics:

In 2004 a year that I readily found info on, there were 29,569 gun deaths in the U.S:

16,750 suicides (56% of all U.S gun deaths),
11,624 homicides (40% of all U.S gun deaths),
649 unintentional shootings, 311 from legal intervention and 235 from undetermined intent (4% of all U.S gun deaths combined)."

John Carlin on why Iceland has the happiest people on earth | World news | The Observer

 

[YoungRepublican]

I just discovered this blog post, and it got me to thinking about things in a way I never actually articulated to myself before.

why the gun is civilization. « the munchkin wrangler.

There is a simple fact of life that most people do not really think about, all human interaction boils down to one of two things, reason, or force.

People today like to pretend they live in a society where reason has triumphed over force, they are wrong. If that was true, we would live in a society where violence does not happen at all. (Please note, the fact that violence exists does not prove that that we live in a violent society. Whether or not our society is violent is a separate discussion to my point, and not one that I believe is critical to the point I want to make.)

If you want to convince someone who is stronger than you of the merits of your arguments you have to either accept the fact that he might decide to ignore your reason and opt to use force, or find away to negate his advantage in force over you. Guns are that equalizer, and they are why control passed from the hands of people who could fight to the hands of people who can think. In other words, it wasn't reason that triumphed over force, it was guns that defeated it.

Guns turned the American west from a place where the strong triumphed over the weak to a place where farmers planted crops and built towns that became cities. Without guns we would be living under feudalism, not as free people. Taking gins out of the hands of people will turn our society from one where everyone is equal to one where the strong, who are usually the young, rule by fiat.

We took the West away from the Indians because we had greater firepower. Is that what you mean?

Disease, manpower, technology.. Guns werent the only reasons we took the West sure they played a factor, but the natives had guns too.

 

[Koios]

State bans are ineffective since crossing state lines is a relatively small inconvenience, as the NRA and gun makers / dealers are well aware.

So they mildly oppose them and then highlight the ineffectiveness saying bans do not work, full knowing only federal bans do, which would hamper their sales, in case you're wondering why local vans meet with little resistance, while opposition to federal bans brings out their most aggressive opposition.

According to what? Again, demanding that they do work and producing zero evidence to support this is asinine. Country wide bans also do not work as has been proven many times in other countries.

You have zero data to back you up but you keep making the same claims.

What all businesses, and their lobbying associates must know: 'does it hamper commerce?,' which state bans do not due to the relative ease of shopping across state lines; and the original AW-ban only did to a very minor degree since the grandfather clause was simply too inclusive of dealer and importer inventories, which were scaled up dramatically in anticipation of the 10 year ban.

Thus I'd advocate an AW-ban, this time, which and only 'grandfathers' weapons already in possession of end-users; also I'd encourage one with no 'sunset provision,' since if it works we should keep it in place; and if it does not work, we already pay a Congress to revise / eliminate laws which serve no useful purpose, and they should do that work and not merely kick it down the road.

 

[PaulS1950]

Since the news of an impending ban sales of the "assault weapons" has skyrocketed to the point where one cannot find one to purchase or even the parts to make one. More than three years worth of sales in a matter of weeks..... Just like last time. The last time, with all those guns sold there were speculations that crime would go up proportionally, but it didn't go up at all. Lawful owners are not the ones that kill people. Why restrict their access to the firearms?
Now, how are they going to get criminals to register their "assault weapons" if the law actually gets passed? There is no record of sales that they can look at to track people down with so just how will that be done?
I don't really care one way or the other about the ban for myself (I hate chasing brass) but it is completely opposite to the second amendment and if they can restrict gun rights then they can restrict any of your rights. They already do unlawful searches and seizures that people just accept, it is a felony to disagree with president Obama within earshot of the secret service, and now they want to limit the ability of the people to resist an opressive government. Well, I hope they are ready for a long fight because the people in this country are going to wake up someday (I am an optimist) and realize that the government isn't making them safer by letting the criminals have guns that are better than those who are supposed to help keep the states free.