Fun Gun Statistics

[sgreger1]

Re: Fun Gun Statistics

I could go on and on, but listen Judge, I understand you are from a foreign country and therefore are ignorant of what being an American means. This is not your fault, as soviet propaganda has always been a very effective way of controlling the masses of useful idiots.
In America we have these things called rights. These rights are afforded to us by our founding document (the constitution) and other documents such as the bill of rights etc.

So while people from soviet russia are free to live in our cities and complain ad nausium about how much better it is to live in a soviet style slave country, the second amendment is clearly written in plain english, which gives us the right to bare arms. This is America and those are our rules. Unlike failed ex governments like your own, we stay true to our beliefs and will not give up our rights just because the commies want us to. So you are free to slander whatever you want, as the first amendment allows you that privilege (see why rights are important?), but it does not mean we have to listen.

Spare me the theatrics, friend. Your "founding document" also stated in no uncertain terms that a black individual is 3/5 of a person. Should we bend over backwards to uphold your "founding fathers'" primitive racism, as well? Times change, my friend, and we must change with them.

But your problem goes deeper than that... What you need is a quick lesson in Constitutional Law. Pull up a chair, then, and listen.

Second Amendment:

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Looks clear, right? Wrong. Look again:

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Huh. So, you need guns because you need militias, apparently. What's a "militia," anyway? Glad you asked: at the time the Bill of Rights was ratified, the US had no standing army. Instead, it had a volunteer corps of armed citizens. Yes, that's a militia, and no, the US no longer has one.

Many people, including myself, maintain that the two clauses of the Second Amendment are complimentary rather than independent. In other words, you have both, or you have none. If a militia is no longer necessary, than you no longer need private gun ownership. You don't get to cherry-pick just the parts that you like while discarding the rest.

But let's move on. Assume that the Second Amendment DOES mean what you think it means. Question: who does the Constitution apply to? If you answered anything but "only the federal government," you are wrong. Feds only; private individuals, states, municipalities not covered.

Now, this somewhat changed with the Fourteenth Amendment and its Privileges or Immunities Clause. Long story short: the Supreme Court finally decided that some Amendments DO in fact apply to state governments. The Second Amendment is not one of them (though there is a case pending on this topic, so stay tuned). As it stands, any state can take all of your guns away, and there's absolutely nothing you can do.

Any questions?

God you are red through and through aren't you Judge. Thank you for the course in America's history captain obvious! I've heard every freshman college student i've ever met give me the same lousy, poorly researched answer that you just did.
Also, fyi, the leading argument right now is that: militias of the state transitioned into the national guard, and therefore the lefties claim that only the national guard are allowed to own weapons.


I understand the controversy over the wording of the second amendment, but that is easy to figure out if you dig a little deeper. Since the wording may be unclear to some, why not take a look at the people who wrote the document, what were their thoughts on guns, what do you think (based on their opinions) they meant when writing it down? Well it's pretty clear that they were all very pro-gun ownership and wanted a well armed citizenry incase the government got out of hand and needed to be corrected.

And don't give me the crap about blacks and slavery, that's sucha lame excuse. Slavery was rampant in all of the world, even in Africa where blacks enslaved other blacks. It was the way labor worked in those days.

But guess what... WE FOUGHT A ****ING CIVIL WAR TO ABOLISH IT. We killed our own citizens because we would not stand for slavery any longer. Now of course the civil war really had more to do with trying to give more power to the fed and take it from the states but that's another story. The point is we championed civil rights.



Like I said judge, why do you communist types always want to come here and lobby to change our government? What would you have us to, emulate what the USSR had going on? Lol, yah no thanks that didn't work out too well for them. You can try and sell your snake oil all you want but America just doesn't want to follow in the footsteps of a failed system that never works anywhere it's tried.

[Judge Faust]

The important statistic I'd like to see is what percentage of criminal gun usage was with the use of a legally purchased gun, buy it's user, and if the user is a legal adult citizen.

I know where I live, and my guess is, it'd be the same everywhere, is that most all gun crime are committed by criminals, often underage, and sometimes non-citizens, and the gun is illegally aquired.

This is the problem with guns in America. Your adult citizen that legally purchases his firearm only on rare occasion uses his gun in an illegal manner.

The problem is enforcement of gun laws, and being lax on gun criminals. The answer is not to deprive legal adult citizens their right to legally purchase a firearm. If we did this, the thug criminals would still have their guns, and legal citizens would be at their mercy.

All of these issue were already addressed by the statistics, Tom.

First of all, it's meaningless to say that most gun crimes are committed by criminals. Well, um, yes - crimes are committed by criminals, that's pretty much a given.

Here's what I wanted you to get out of the statistics: if you're not a criminal, than you do not need a gun. Self-defense is nonsense, seeing as fewer than 200 people actually employ it per year, is obviously not a reasonable reason to keep a firearm (given the much greater dangers inherent therein).

Moreover, the age old argument "if you ban guns, only criminals will have guns" is just plain silly. What, you think firearms grow on trees? That was the point of the Mexico and Canada statistic - their criminals have to import it from a neighbor where guns are easily acquired. If the US bans them as well, North America will be more or less gun-free. Death rates will plummet in all 3 nations, and that's a pretty positive development in my book.

[RedMacGregor]

i'm still not aware of any reason we should be concerned with your opinion.

[sgreger1]

Look your logic is severely flawed. There is no evidence to corroborate your wild claims.

There are several Harvard papers on this and they make it pretty clear that you are wrong, since places with less guns and more gun control are not usually safer or more crime free.


http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/...useronline.pdf

CONCLUSION

This Article has reviewed a significant amount of evidence from a wide variety of international sources. Each individual portion of evidence is subject to cavil—at the very least the general objection that the persuasiveness of social scientific evidence cannot remotely approach the persuasiveness of conclusions in the physical sciences. Nevertheless, the bur‐ den of proof rests on the proponents of the more guns equal more death and fewer guns equal less death mantra, espe‐ cially since they argue public policy ought to be based on that mantra.149 To bear that burden would at the very least require showing that a large number of nations with more guns have more death and that nations that have imposed stringent gun controls have achieved substantial reductions in criminal violence (or suicide). But those correlations are not observed when a large number of nations are compared across the world.

and

The findings of two criminologists - Prof. Don Kates and Prof. Gary Mauser - in their exhaustive study of American and European gun laws and violence rates, are telling:

Nations with stringent anti-gun laws generally have substantially higher murder rates than those that do not. The study found that the nine European nations with the lowest rates of gun ownership (5,000 or fewer guns per 100,000 population) have a combined murder rate three times higher than that of the nine nations with the highest rates of gun ownership (at least 15,000 guns per 100,000 population).

For example, Norway has the highest rate of gun ownership in Western Europe, yet possesses the lowest murder rate. In contrast, Holland's murder rate is nearly the worst, despite having the lowest gun ownership rate in Western Europe. Sweden and Denmark are two more examples of nations with high murder rates but few guns. As the study's authors write in the report:

If the mantra "more guns equal more death and fewer guns equal less death" were true, broad cross-national comparisons should show that nations with higher gun ownership per capita consistently have more death. Nations with higher gun ownership rates, however, do not have higher murder or suicide rates than those with lower gun ownership. Indeed many high gun ownership nations have much lower murder rates. (p. 661)

You have nothing but lame statistics meaning nothing to prove a point about something which you know nothing about.






If you want to be a pussy and not own a gun because they scare you than that's fine. But didn't they ever teach you about the zombie apocalypse in russia? It's coming...

[Roo]

i'm still not aware of any reason we should be concerned with your opinion.

It's pretty obvious that we are by the number of replies. That's all I'll say for now, I need to pick my battles with both Faust and sgreger these days. Don't own a gun, but I like it when other people let me shoot theirs out in the woods.

[Roo]

OK I'll say this: for once I agree with at least part of what Tom502 says. One factor in this discussion is the severity of punishment. In China the violent crime rate is very low because for decades the severity of punishment for such crimes is a genuine deterent. I don't believe we should increase capitol punishment tenfold to match theirs (statistic not accurate), although I do believe in sentencing certain criminals to death, but this came to mind when reading sgregers1's post about Norway. I remember hearing that despite having one of Europe's highest levels of alcoholism, the severity of punishment for drunk driving is so high that incedents of drunk driving in Norway are among the lowest. Perhaps the same severity applies to gun crimes in Norway. Not gonna look it up because it's my one time per year that I sit down to intentionally watch football. Just a thought. Bottoms up, go Saints.

[tom502]

I personally do not have a gun. But I know when I watch the news everyday, another murder, and it's lowlife criminal thugs, often/usually drug and gang related, and often under 21, often under 18, and I know they are not legal gun owners. And it's not hard to see the jails, and even prisons are revolving doors for gun criminals, often times they just let them go. Honest Joe citizen who legally purchases his firearms are not doing the gun crimes. It might happen, but it's rare.

[sgreger1]

Tom is 100% right on this.

And you know what, I don't care what any commies think about whether owning a gun is good or just or whatever, and i'll tell you why. After living through the LA riots, I know how quickly shit can go south, and owning a gun becomes mandatory for survival in many situations like that. You may go your whole life without using it, but should there be some big disaster or event like the Rodney King trial, people will start looting and acting in ways you've never seen. Better to be prepared. An honest citizen should have the right to be prepared. End of debate.

Law obiding citizens don't kill people with guns. Criminals do. The gun is not the problem. Banning guns will not make guns go away, it will just increase the value of them on the black market. In LA it is very easy for young kids to obtain illegal firearms for as cheap as 500$ or less. You do not have to be well connected.
If we make it illegal to have guns, this market will just increase.

Only a sheltered elitist like Faust would not understand the value of having a gun. If he was from where he claims he is, he would know how quickly shit in your region can blow up, and how important it is to be able to fend for yourself if some major even happens.




I bet faust is in favor of regulating the internet like china does as welll. That way criminals can't use the internet for crime. Amirite Faust?



EDIT: I'd like to remind everyone that Judge was quoted as saying:

"Hate Stalin if you wish, but it is undeniable that he was always concerned about the wellbeing of his people."

This man is obviously far removed from reality. He claims to be a litigator who moved here from the ex USSR and now resides in san francisco. Commie, ex soviet, lawyer, bay area resident... these are all terrible qualities, even for a made up online persona.

[shikitohno]

EDIT: I'd like to remind everyone that Judge was quoted as saying:

"Hate Stalin if you wish, but it is undeniable that he was always concerned about the wellbeing of his people."

Somehow I think the millions of Soviet citizens Stalin murdered would beg to differ with that statement. Personally, I just vote we ignore Faust until goes away, or if he keeps hanging around, hope his obvious trolling gets him banned.

Personally, I don't agree with the sentiment that we should put people to death at all (it's prove that sentences like that really don't serve as a solid deterrent. For an example, Norway has already been mentioned for its extremely low crime rates, and has a maximum sentence of 21 years), but I don't see why we should ban firearms. Some, yes. There's really no legitimate need for civilians to be able to buy automatics (already banned) or semi-auto assault rifles. Unless you're literally fighting off hordes of unfeeling crackheads every day you need to leave the house, a semi-auto handgun/rifle works well enough for any of your self defence needs or hunting.

Faust, your arguments are flawed, as others have pointed out. For one, Japan has some of the tightest gun laws in the world, but one of the highest suicide rates in the world. And if I'm set on killing you, a gun only make it easier. It doesn't stop me if I can't get one. I can still go out and buy materials, and make a car bomb for example, if distance is what I'm concerned about. As revolutionary as your ideas may strike you, they're quite frankly crap that I've heard before. They were crap the first time, and they haven't aged well. If you're so keen on communism, why don't you leave us be and bugger off to Belarus. See how you like dealing with the rigged elections, state ownership of property and the KGB again? I'll be ignoring you for the rest of your stay here.

Guys, don't feed the troll. Just reported the jerk.

[tom502]

Well, like the topic on socialism, in the USA, gun banning would not work for the good. The quality of the citizenry is totally different than other nations like Denmark. They don't have the high level of crim thug gun toters like we do. They don't have an underclass that worships gun crime, that spills in the streets everyday, like we do. Those nations are a totally different world than what we have here, with this popular, even culturally popular gun crim thug love. We have it here, with the dope gangs, and illegals that are in this. You ship a few 1000 MS-13 and Bloods and Crips to Denmark, or any similar nation, and their nation and laws will change.

[Old Frothingslosh]

I attended a gun show yesterday. What a privilege it was to be able to celebrate the freedom we have in this country. I was able to legally buy a Ruger LCP in a matter of minutes through the instant check system.

I agree with some of the other comments here. We need to crack down on criminal use of firearms. Recently a police officer was shot and killed by a criminal who at one time had that very gun taken from him by the police. That gun was returned to him and later used to kill a policeman. Anyone who uses a gun to commit a crime should never see the light of day again.

[sgreger1]

To own a gun, everyone should have some training in it. This reduces accidental discharges and common safety errors, and makes one efficient in maintaining and operatnig a firearm whether it be for self defense, hunting, or just target practice.


Shooting guns is fun, guns are not just for self defense. I can't believe we are in such a nanny state mentality sometimes. Why in the hell shouldn't I be able to own a gun? I'm a grown ass man in the nation that pioneered kickass firearms. I am an ex paratrooper and a father charged with keeping my family safe. I don't see any logical reason why anyone would even debate whether or not it should be "legal" for me to own a piece of metal that launches another piece of metal as a projectile.


This is what we get from our public schools and liberal colleges, a bunch of scared yuppies who are afraid of even seeing a gun. This will not serve us well when WWIII comes around. The reason we kicked ass in WWII was because most of the countries 16 year olds all knew how to use a rifle from their life on the farm. We do not have that anymore.


I cannot believe that this debate is still going on some 300 years later. If we start banning everything that is percieved to be evil, or could be used in a crime, than where does it stop? In california I already can't have a knife with a blade longer than 4 inches. 4 inches!! It's illegal for me to even own my army K-bar that is 6 inches. No more nanny state, no more crying wimpy communists. Mutually assured destruction does not work when you disarm yourself.

[RedMacGregor]

dad started me shooting his .22 rifle when i was around 6..

20 years later, i had my first negligent discharge, fortunately the weapon was downrange, and it was someone elses revolver that had a stupid hair trigger on it, i picked it up and my finger on the side of the trigger was enough to discharge the weapon. DUE TO my safe handling practices, the weapon was pointed downrange and no harm came of it, but i set the gun down and left the lane for a bit to calm my nerves... IF I had not made safe range practice a habit, it might've been much worse. People need to understand how to handle guns if they're gunna... many do not, and that's when people get hurt.

[RRK]

No tool should be made illegal. Only the improper use of tools should be regulated. I think cars probably pose a larger risk then firearms but no one would think of making those illegal. What about producing food? Food or drug companies could wipe out large populations if they were negligent. The whole nanny-state idea is ridiculous. Everything is dangerous to a degree. We should have the right to choose those things that might benefit us and we have a responsibility to weigh risk.

I can't believe I responded to another one of the judges trolling topics.

[lxskllr]

No tool should be made illegal. Only the improper use of tools should be regulated. I think cars probably pose a larger risk then firearms but no one would think of making those illegal. What about producing food? Food or drug companies could wipe out large populations if they were negligent. The whole nanny-state idea is ridiculous. Everything is dangerous to a degree. We should have the right to choose those things that might benefit us and we have a responsibility to weigh risk.

Nope... It's crayons, and plastic sheets of "paper" for you. You might accidentally stab yourself with a pen, and paper cuts are the leading cause of office work place injuries.