2009: More guns, less crime

[Kulindahr]

thats a huge faith based assumption in teachers reasoning skills....which i particularly dont feel comfortable believing in

If they don't have that good of reasoning skills, WTF are they doing being teachers?

Most teachers I know have far better reasoning skill than most cops I know -- but we let cops run around with guns all the time.

 

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If they don't have that good of reasoning skills, WTF are they doing being teachers?

Most teachers I know have far better reasoning skill than most cops I know -- but we let cops run around with guns all the time.

i'll bite...how do you decide which teachers to arm and which ones stay unarmed?

 

[Kulindahr]

i'll bite...how do you decide which teachers to arm and which ones stay unarmed?

Send 'em to the same NRA instructors who teach the police.

 

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Send 'em to the same NRA instructors who teach the police.

i mean ....dont get me wrong....i agree with you....but the american school system as a whole is broken......theres no way any of this is gonna happen soon...seeing as school budgets get cut every year

 

[Kulindahr]

i mean ....dont get me wrong....i agree with you....but the american school system as a whole is broken......theres no way any of this is gonna happen soon...seeing as school budgets get cut every year

We need to ditch the grade structure, for starters -- the lockstep advancement that leads to lack of understanding of a wide variety of subjects is outmoded. In the information age with its incredible flexibility, we need a new model.

But that's another thread.....

 

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We need to ditch the grade structure, for starters -- the lockstep advancement that leads to lack of understanding of a wide variety of subjects is outmoded. In the information age with its incredible flexibility, we need a new model.

But that's another thread.....

i know...im just bored before i have to go back to work

 

[Kulindahr]

i know...im just bored before i have to go back to work

Don't forget your gun.

 

[JB3]

so crimes are only committed when guns are involved?
there's going to be crime whether there are guns or not.
certainly, taking guns away from criminals will decrease the chance that they will use them for crime, but looser gun laws doesn't mean that more people will have guns.
sure, those people who want guns to protect themselves will have one, but it doesn't mean more people will have them.

The biggest lie ever told by the anti-gun freaks is that strict gun laws somehow limits criminal's access to weapons. Newsflash: they're criminals for a reason. If they want a gun, they'll find a way to get one. All gun laws do is take guns out of the hands of people that might actually want to use them responsibly, leaving them defenseless against the criminals that don't.

 

[andysayshi]

It's clear as day that known gun possession stops crime in its tracks and it's been proven by the FBI that this is the case in one of their studies. I don't care enough about this subject however to go search for it, so you can trust me or not that it exists.

I've seen studies that suggest this to be true, and others that suggest it is false. The process of collecting gun crime stats is so complex, and the US gun lobby so powerful, that it's hard to decipher what goes on in the US where guns are concerned.

What we DO know, however, is that there are more guns per person in the US than in any other nation (around 9 guns for every 10 people) and that the US has some of the highest levels of gun murder and gun suicide in the western world.

I don't pretend to know the answers, or to even fully understand the US gun debate, but 30,000 dead Americans every year tell a damning story. Considering your Government can spend trillions of dollars to rescue banks and car companies from going broke, I'd suggest a billion dollar programme to register gun ownership and gun capability would be a small price to save even one tenth of those lives each year.

 

[JB3]

I've seen studies that suggest this to be true, and others that suggest it is false. The process of collecting gun crime stats is so complex, and the US gun lobby so powerful, that it's hard to decipher what goes on in the US where guns are concerned.

What we DO know, however, is that there are more guns per person in the US than in any other nation (around 9 guns for every 10 people) and that the US has some of the highest levels of gun murder and gun suicide in the western world.

I don't pretend to know the answers, or to even fully understand the US gun debate, but 30,000 dead Americans every year tell a damning story. Considering your Government can spend trillions of dollars to rescue banks and car companies from going broke, I'd suggest a billion dollar programme to register gun ownership and gun capability would be a small price to save even one tenth of those lives each year.

That number is meaningless without context. 30,000 sounds like a lot, but I'd wager the majority of those crimes were committed with guns not registered or obtained illegally. No amount of gun control laws would fix that.

 

[andysayshi]

Obviously gun control cannot hope to prevent crime committed with illegal guns. That's not my point. (However, part of gun control should be holding gun manufacturers accountable for where their guns end up.)

More than half the gun deaths in the US are suicides, and evidence around the world suggests gun control often prevents access to guns during a crime of passion, including suicide.

 

[Kulindahr]

I don't pretend to know the answers, or to even fully understand the US gun debate, but 30,000 dead Americans every year tell a damning story. Considering your Government can spend trillions of dollars to rescue banks and car companies from going broke, I'd suggest a billion dollar programme to register gun ownership and gun capability would be a small price to save even one tenth of those lives each year.

Just a note -- I like being in a country with more guns per capita than anywhere. If we're ever invaded, the enemy is in for a lot of hell.

We've broken down the statistics on JUB before; take away criminals shooting criminals, and that figure shrinks by a huge chunk (I'm not recalling the figure just now). Most of the weapons they use have been stolen; they would never show up in a registry.

Another big chunk is accidents, and registration won't cure that, either. also in the top three is suicides, and again, registration won't help.

Canada has a gun registration program that has cost them over a billion dollars, and by the admission of their government it has never helped solve a single crime.

Far better to spend your billion setting up Eddie Eagle programs in every grade school, and ask the NRA to develop educational programs for middle schools and high schools, and shelters available to anyone feeling suicidal.

Then end the "War on Drugs", which is the cause of over three-fourths of all violent crime in the U.S. At the same time, make severe, irreducible penalties for merely using a firearm in a crime.

That would address the vast majority of firearms deaths directly, and not waste taxpayer dollars on an utterly useless program.

 

[Kulindahr]

Obviously gun control cannot hope to prevent crime committed with illegal guns. That's not my point. (However, part of gun control should be holding gun manufacturers accountable for where their guns end up.)

Penalize honest businessmen for the improper use of a legal, federally licensed product?

Will you punish medical schools for every medical error? Allow suits against the manufacturers of medical instruments for the people who die from their misuse? What about lumber companies for boards that rot and someone gets injured? Shall we make oil companies pay for arson, where petroleum products are still am instrument of choice?

This goes against all rational notions of responsibility. You penalize the wrongdoer, and his allies, not those who provide defense against the wrongdoer.

More than half the gun deaths in the US are suicides, and evidence around the world suggests gun control often prevents access to guns during a crime of passion, including suicide.

 

[JB3]

Obviously gun control cannot hope to prevent crime committed with illegal guns. That's not my point. (However, part of gun control should be holding gun manufacturers accountable for where their guns end up.)

More than half the gun deaths in the US are suicides, and evidence around the world suggests gun control often prevents access to guns during a crime of passion, including suicide.

Thats ludicrous. You want to hold gun manufacturers responsible for the fact that some thug decided to steal a weapon? Once the gun leaves their factory and is sold by a vendor, the manufacturer's responsibility ends. Period. If they are purposely skirting laws, that's a different story. But if they're following the law to the T, what right is it of yours or anybody else's to hold them responsible for what is being done with their product.

You also ignore the fact that the flag waving gun-control advocates that scream bloody murder whenever a violent crime is committed DO point to gun control as solving all of this nation's violent crime problems, which is utterly laughable. (and actually sort of sad that otherwise reasonable human beings can't actually see how ludicrous that is)

And what evidence are you talking about? There is no concrete evidence that gun control has any significant effect on suicide. And again, numbers without context are meaningless. How many of those were with stolen guns? How many were with guns that were registered? Without knowing that, those numbers mean nothing to this debate.

 

[JB3]

The registration law was for long guns — rifles and shotguns — not hand guns. The stiff hand-gun law is entirely separate and wasn't touched.

As well, the Tory government was the opposition when long-gun registration became law, and was against it. When it formed the government, it ignored the law then killed it. Since the Tories were against the registration of long guns to pander to their fundie Alberta base, and like the neo-con liars they are, they vastly inflated the cost of the registration. No one knows whether it solved or prevented a crime. They simply say it didn't.

Over and above all that, registration didn't restrict ownership.

As I recall, didn't Canada come out with gun crime numbers a bit ago that showed that their numbers were as bad, per capita, as the US?

 

[Kulindahr]

As I recall, didn't Canada come out with gun crime numbers a bit ago that showed that their numbers were as bad, per capita, as the US?

If you subtract druggies and gangs shooting each other, it comes out about even.

The drug part is violent crime caused by the federal government, just like with Prohibition. A lot of gangs deal in drugs, so much of that violence is also caused by the government.

Take away government-caused crime, and we're close to even.

 

[Kulindahr]

First time I've heard that. Maybe Toronto only, the main market for guns smuggled in from the States.

I'll see what I can find.

According to news reports at this edge of the continent, B.C. is the main market for guns smuggled from the U.S. The majority of guns marketed illegally in Toronto are stolen -- and the majority of those are stolen in Ontario.

Interestingly, the gun market in B.C. is generated by the U.S. government because of the laws against marijuana. Smugglers can trade a quality handgun for its weight in herb!

BTW, I noticed that several articles about guns being smuggled into Canada repeat the falsehood that guns can be sold at gun shows without a background check. In reality, the laws are the same at a gun show as they are anywhere else; further, checking is more thorough at gun shows than otherwise, because many dealers make their lines available to private buyers and sellers to run checks, for a fee. I know some people who've met others at a gun show simply because that's where they can go to be sure a background check gets run!

 

[Kulindahr]

So if I'm reading these numbers correctly — but I doubt it — in 2006 the gun-crime rate in the U.S. was 129.9. In Canada it was 2.4.

If someone more adept with numbers than I am could double-check that, I'd be grateful.

You're making a set of very simple mistakes: first, the U.S. rate is given as per hundred thousand population; the Canadian rate is given as a percentage; second, the Canadian rate is a figure for all victims of violence.

The way to get these to match is to find the number of violent crimes per unit of population in Canada and use that to convert percentage per violent crime into percentage per unit population, then multiply by 1,000 to get per hundred thousand.

That's not too hard: the report says there were "just over 8,100 victims of violent gun crime". The population of Canada in 2006 was 33.1 million. That's 81 per 331,000, or 24.5 per hundred thousand.

So the figures you have yield a comparison of 129.9 to 24.5, both in per one hundred thousand.

And IIRC, the figure for the U.S. if you take out all the government-caused crime is somewhat under 25.


What this says is the best way to reduce gun vioence in the U.S. is to end the "War on Drugs".

 

[Kulindahr]

Look where most gun violence is being committed, it's not where the highest concentration of gun owners is

That's true -- good point.

There are towns in Oregon where the number of guns exceeds the number of humans and their pets combined by a serious factor, and the rate of gun violence is negligible -- and what does happen is often out-of-towners.

I lay the blame squarely on what is almost a culture of gun violence in major American cities, and the failure for local governments to do anything about it. Somebody gives you a raw deal on crack? Why not pop a cap in his ass? I mean that's what everyone else does, right? ...It would be funny if it weren't so true and serious.

The government-caused crime in our cities is a disgrace. We need to end the "War on Drugs", and if gang violence doesn't drop, go in and round them all up and put them in the Army.

 

[Kulindahr]

A bazooka brings a lot of pot.

LOL it sure would!

I can't find anything that says bazookas, though; the biggest weapon I read about was shotguns. But at street rates here, just a Smith & Wesson .45 semiauto would bring over ten times its purchase value!

I'm not even going to do the figures for a shotgun.....