The Post Your Thoughts of the Moment Thread 2

[mikey]

what happened after 2002

[BlackDragonSlayer]

This, I think.

[mikey]

dang maybe the us needs more cops

[Ruto]

Maybe the US needs fewer angry idiots that think they know everything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Australia

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-35048251

Guns per capita in Australia and US: 1996 vs now
Australia
1996: About 17.3 guns per 100 people
2007 (most recent numbers available): Approximately 15 guns per 100 people
United States
1996: Approximately 91 guns per 100 people
2009 (most recent numbers available): Approximately 101 guns per 100 people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_death_rates_in_the_United_States_by_state
http://www.vpc.org/press/states-with-weak-gun-laws-and-higher-gun-ownership-lead-nation-in-gun-deaths-new-data-for-2014-confirms/

^Alaska, Louisiana Have Highest Gun Death Rates in the Nation; Hawaii, Rhode Island Have Lowest after adjusting for population.

Alaska:  56.4% of households own guns, 19.68/100,000
Louisiana: 40.0%, 19.27/100,000
Mississippi: 54.3 % 18.27/100,000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States

"Fringe cases"? Really? Seems to me like Ruto is the one using "fringe cases," far-fetched comparisons, and idealistic examples.

Go back and try reading again, maybe go live in a civilized nation for once. Who actually brought up Prohibition (an attempted total ban on alcohol?)? At least I didn't use these cases:

http://gawker.com/5828944/arizona-man-accidentally-shoots-his-penis-off
http://www.mediaite.com/online/meet-the-man-who-shot-his-own-penis-and-blamed-it-on-a-black-guy/
http://www.rawstory.com/2012/09/florida-man-accidentally-shoots-penis-while-cleaning-gun/
http://newsok.com/man-shoots-self-in-penis-is-arrested-in-oklahoma-city/article/3692972
http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/193576/at-least-five-americans-accidentally-shot-off-their-penises-since-2010/

I probably mentioned that the Estonians asked me whether they would get shot in the cities they planned to visit. After 3 vodkas and 3 beers each, they probably wouldn't remember even if I did.

[deku_link]

Go back and try reading again, maybe go live in a civilized nation for once. Who actually brought up Prohibition (an attempted total ban on alcohol?)? At least I didn't use these cases:

That sure is a nice ad hominem you got there.

Also, what does linking to stories about men shooting their penises off have anything to do with the topic at hand?

And as for gun crime in Louisiana, that doesn't have anything to do with, say, gangs in louisiana?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans_crime_family

[mikey]

ruto's lying

lol jk

[BlackDragonSlayer]

Maybe the US needs fewer angry idiots that think they know everything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Australia

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-35048251

Guns per capita in Australia and US: 1996 vs now
Australia
1996: About 17.3 guns per 100 people
2007 (most recent numbers available): Approximately 15 guns per 100 people
United States
1996: Approximately 91 guns per 100 people
2009 (most recent numbers available): Approximately 101 guns per 100 people

Since 1996, Australians have been steadily replacing the outlawed firearms they sold back with legal ones, and gun ownership here has now risen back to pre-1996 levels.

One might assume that there's more than one factor at work here; there's no reason to assume that as many people in the U.S. would be so compliant or willing to change especially given the, uh, wide support behind the Second Amendment. As I said, laws themselves don't change people, something you're eager to ignore in favor of pie in the sky goals (change doesn't always happen overnight, unfortunately). The article even mentions this!

So could it work in the US?

The simple answer is - probably not.

Although Australia does have a long history of hunting and sport, there is no equivalent to America's Second Amendment right to bear arms here.
Another significant difference is the speed of government action. In 1996 John Howard managed to get all six Australian states to agree to and pass uniform sweeping gun control legislation in just 12 days.

It is hard to fathom the US government ever being able to get all 50 states to agree to something, let alone act that quickly.

But according to Prof Alpers, the bigger difference is the cultural mindset.

"I don't for a moment think it would happen in the US," he says. "Australia already had a pre-disposition to doing something about it."

He explains that although by far the deadliest, the Port Arthur shooting was not the first Australia had experienced.

He says the country had lost nearly 150 people in the years running up to 1996 in mass shootings, and the national mood was changing.

"Port Arthur was the straw that broke the camel's back. You have to go back to those years to remember how visceral that backlash was."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_death_rates_in_the_United_States_by_state
http://www.vpc.org/press/states-with-weak-gun-laws-and-higher-gun-ownership-lead-nation-in-gun-deaths-new-data-for-2014-confirms/

^Alaska, Louisiana Have Highest Gun Death Rates in the Nation; Hawaii, Rhode Island Have Lowest after adjusting for population.

Alaska:  56.4% of households own guns, 19.68/100,000
Louisiana: 40.0%, 19.27/100,000
Mississippi: 54.3 % 18.27/100,000

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/09/d-c-gun-laws-some-of-the-strictest-in-the-u-s/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States_by_state

District of Columbia:
Gun Ownership (%) (2007): 3.6%
Murders (rate per 100,000 inhabitants) (2010): 21.8
Gun Murders (rate per 100,000 inhabitants) (2010): 16.5

In terms of total gun murders, California had the highest at 1,257 in 2010 (with less than half of gun ownership rates!), whereas Alaska had 19 (even disregarding total number of murders). As of 2007, Wyoming had a higher gun ownership rate than Alaska, yet both murder and gun murder rates were much lower. Maybe there are other reasons for this than simply guns (essentially, I'm suggesting that we should try to eliminate the cause rather than the symptom: for accidental death, for example, taking steps for widespread gun safety education, something that is at least doable and something people would likely be more open to; for suicides, actually addressing the underlying issues to try and treat the problem as a whole, which, to be fair, is another discussion in itself)?

While looking for information about that image deku_link posted, I found this article, which is a pretty interesting look at the situation.

Go back and try reading again, maybe go live in a civilized nation for once.

Do as I say, not as I do?

Who actually brought up Prohibition (an attempted total ban on alcohol?)? At least I didn't use these cases:

http://gawker.com/5828944/arizona-man-accidentally-shoots-his-penis-off
http://www.mediaite.com/online/meet-the-man-who-shot-his-own-penis-and-blamed-it-on-a-black-guy/
http://www.rawstory.com/2012/09/florida-man-accidentally-shoots-penis-while-cleaning-gun/
http://newsok.com/man-shoots-self-in-penis-is-arrested-in-oklahoma-city/article/3692972
http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/193576/at-least-five-americans-accidentally-shot-off-their-penises-since-2010/

I should hope you wouldn't use Gawker in a serious debate; to be fair, I'm wondering just how serious you are, given that your speech and general attitude seems to indicate that you think that you might as well be arguing with two talking potatoes.

[FireArrow]

http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/ausguns.asp
Don't use misleading statistics, nothing suggests that laws wouldn't reduce gun violence.

You want to actually try and make a point? Compare these:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_of_gun_laws_by_nation

Notice how stricter gun laws correlate with less gun violence? America, with very little laws on the matter, is near the top. Japan and hong kong, with the strictest gun laws of first world countries, are at the bottom.

[BlackDragonSlayer]

http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/ausguns.asp
Don't use misleading statistics

How am I using "misleading" statistics? The article you linked to doesn't really apply to anything I said about the Australia situation (and I would argue actually tends to support the information I provided; my argument is nowhere close to that of the piece provided by the argument, and I would take mild offense at you potentially suggesting that it is), and especially the article Ruto linked to; if you want to go that route, though, then the page says this:

Context is especially important, and percentages alone don't provide context.

Context, which is something I deliberately tried to include in my post. It also says this:

Most importantly, percentages don't establish cause-and-effect relationships — at best they highlight correlations which may be due to any number of factors.

The main point to be learned here is that determining the effect of changes in Australia's gun ownership laws and the government's firearm buy-back program on crime rates requires a complex long-term analysis and can't be discerned from the small, mixed grab bag of short-term statistics offered here. And no matter what the outcome of that analysis, the results aren't necessarily applicable to the USA, where laws regarding gun ownership are (and always have been) much different than those in Australia.

Which is corroborating exactly the point I was trying to make.

nothing suggests that laws wouldn't reduce gun violence.

except, you know, the statistics i posted, and everything else, like this

Since 1996, Australians have been steadily replacing the outlawed firearms they sold back with legal ones, and gun ownership here has now risen back to pre-1996 levels.

You want to actually try and make a point? Compare these:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_of_gun_laws_by_nation

Notice how stricter gun laws correlate with less gun violence? America, with very little laws on the matter, is near the top. Japan and hong kong, with the strictest gun laws of first world countries, are at the bottom.

Homicides:
United States: 3.55 (2013)
Honduras, at the very top of the list: 66.64 (2013)

It seems like there's a very stark difference there, and suggests that you're trying to tilt data to suggest more than it does (also, keep in mind the population, size, and demographics of the United States compared to other countries). If there were an easy catch-all solution to this problem (as you are trying to suggest), I guarantee you that there would be more people working to implement it (I tend to lack faith in people, but not an unreasonable lack of faith!).

Suicides and accidental deaths are classifiable differently than gun-related crimes; the first Wikipedia page even shows that the rate of firearm-related suicides is higher than homicides (in terms of suicides, the U.S. is on the top of the list; though Japan is higher than the U.S. in terms of total suicides per 100,000 people), which is an issue that won't be solved by taking away guns. As I said, there's more we can do to address the issues that really need to be addressed. You can't just put a little band-aid over the real issues and expect that to make everything right!

[mikey]

glad that people here are willing to do research
I'm too lazy \0/

[E. Gadd Industries]

^^Same.

In other news, the 30 Hour Famine is going well! I'm 1/3 the way in! WOOOO!!!! Perhaps this food deprivation is making me go insane...

[Nebbles]

...why are you starving yourself?

[InsigTurtle]

last time i did that, the 30 hour famine, i fainted from low blood sugar

shit ain't lit, fam

[E. Gadd Industries]

It's a nationwide event hosted by WorldVision to raise awareness for world hunger. We raise money before the event, though, so it actually does something. It isn't a COMPLETE fast, though. I can drink juice and water, along with chew gum. However, I got gum in my top retainer, and it's all messy and junk, and that's the stupidest mistake I've made all night... D:

[deku_link]

http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/ausguns.asp
Don't use misleading statistics, nothing suggests that laws wouldn't reduce gun violence.

You want to actually try and make a point? Compare these:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_of_gun_laws_by_nation

Notice how stricter gun laws correlate with less gun violence? America, with very little laws on the matter, is near the top. Japan and hong kong, with the strictest gun laws of first world countries, are at the bottom.

Hong Kong and Japan are also heavily in support of the death penalty and both are heavily against violent crime as a culture. Keep in mind Japan still has a massive mafia.