|
Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On November 07 2014 16:41 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2014 15:29 IgnE wrote:
I don't think they are substitutes at all. Without a gun people just don't commit murder very often. I'm glad we have all viewpoints represented in this thread. I have a lot more respect for people that genuinely believe this is statement at its heart, than those that pretend the second and third reasons for pro-gun control are the real reasons for its popularity (in some places).
I love my guns, and I still support increased background checks (like most gun owners). I voted against I-594 even though I support background checks. So don't pretend there aren't reasonable reforms that people on all sides support or reasonable gun control supporters who don't blindly sign onto every anti-gun piece of legislation.
Democrats can't write gun legislation to save their lives(literally and figuratively), although, Reagan in his later years wasn't much better.
|
I'm not even advocating for gun bans. I'm simply stating what I think is a fact. People with access to guns kill more readily and frequently than people without guns, especially in impoverished, violent communities. You have cases on both sides: a disintegrating USSR vs China, Japan, much of Europe, etc. The data is hard to parse, but an analysis of the situation leads one straight to the essence of the matter.
This can be readily understood:
Are there circumstances in which people without guns would be less likely to kill someone? Yes, obviously. Drive-by shootings come to mind. Armed drug deals. Armed robberies with scared assailants. Etc.
Are there circumstances in which people without guns would be more likely to kill someone else? If there are any, they are few and far between.
|
So what's the answer about the cause of 5-10 times higher homicide rate in USA compared to all other developed and a few developing countries in Europe, Asia and Oceania? So far this thread seems to have rebuked explanations related to poverty, inequality, guns, culture, ethnicities and history... What's left? Americans just like killing people? Or is it perhaps the combination of all or most of these factors, each contributing a little bit, but together leading to such a huge gap?
|
I don't think that's what this thread has done at all. If anything the thread has advanced explanations related to poverty, inequality, guns, culture, ethnicities, and history.
|
On November 07 2014 20:30 Alex1Sun wrote:
So what's the answer about the cause of 5-10 times higher homicide rate in USA compared to all other well developed countries, both in Europe and Asia? So far this thread seems to have rebuked explanations related to poverty, inequality, guns, culture, ethnicities and history... What's left? Americans just like killing people? Or is it perhaps the combination of all or most of these factors, each contributing a little bit, but together leading to such a huge gap?
I would say you are correct that they each contribute. Also a criminal justice system that is not very interested in rehabilitation and reintegration, and the general idea that the fix to crime is to increase policing, rather than solve the underlying social problems like poverty, fatherlessness and inequality of opportunity. Lack of psychiatric options for those that need them (disappearance of assylums), lack of social safety net. etcetc
Bit of a digression, but America is different in so many ways to Europe and Asia, and that makes explaining the gap very difficult. The possible causes are so numerous that statistics are not terribly helpful. Additionally, often institutions or lack there of are complementary in nature, and reinforce each other for better or worse. Expressing this linearly is then too difficult or even impossible and that makes standard statistical techniques inappropriate. Which is why statistics cary less weight, and are employed less often, in sociological debates than in many other of the social sciences.
|
On November 07 2014 20:30 Alex1Sun wrote:
So what's the answer about the cause of 5-10 times higher homicide rate in USA compared to all other developed and a few developing countries in Europe, Asia and Oceania? So far this thread seems to have rebuked explanations related to poverty, inequality, guns, culture, ethnicities and history... What's left? Americans just like killing people? Or is it perhaps the combination of all or most of these factors, each contributing a little bit, but together leading to such a huge gap?
The answer is "it's complicated" and the thread has not rebuked each cause as contributing factors but attempts to simplify it into any individual one as a single whole answer.
Americans also kill each other in road incidents, particularly drunk driving, at much higher rates than most of the OECD countries too, and 3x as many Americans died from cars than from guns.
|
On November 07 2014 21:04 Crushinator wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2014 20:30 Alex1Sun wrote:
So what's the answer about the cause of 5-10 times higher homicide rate in USA compared to all other well developed countries, both in Europe and Asia? So far this thread seems to have rebuked explanations related to poverty, inequality, guns, culture, ethnicities and history... What's left? Americans just like killing people? Or is it perhaps the combination of all or most of these factors, each contributing a little bit, but together leading to such a huge gap? I would say you are correct that they each contribute. Also a criminal justice system that is not very interested in rehabilitation and reintegration, and the general idea that the fix to crime is to increase policing, rather than solve the underlying social problems like poverty, fatherlessness and inequality of opportunity. Lack of psychiatric options for those that need them (disappearance of assylums), lack of social safety net. etcetc Bit of a digression, but America is different in so many ways to Europe and Asia, and that makes explaining the gap very difficult. The possible causes are so numerous that statistics are not terribly helpful. Additionally, often institutions or lack there of are complementary in nature, and reinforce each other for better or worse. Expressing this linearly is then too difficult or even impossible and that makes standard statistical techniques inappropriate. Which is why statistics cary less weight, and are employed less often, in sociological debates than in many other of the social sciences.
Thanks for your in-depth reply! By the way Canada appears to be there with Western Europe, quite far from USA in terms of murder rate, so it's not the whole America where things are not as good.
|
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On November 07 2014 17:46 IgnE wrote:
Chinese have no access to guns and they live in squalor while records of new billionaires are being created there. Yet their homicide rates are much lower than the US.
if you concentrate all the homeless people in china into one place, and take away the family social fabric, it will get bad as well. there's already quite a bit of stabbing and such
|
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
looks like an ISI compromised diplomat, jumping to conclusions.
diplomat in counter intelligence investigation
if i didn't know better i'd say this can be a bad hit against hillary.
i know i've said the middle east is a distraction before, but if ISIS gets a grip in pakistan then real shit will go down.
|
On November 07 2014 23:29 oneofthem wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2014 17:46 IgnE wrote:
Chinese have no access to guns and they live in squalor while records of new billionaires are being created there. Yet their homicide rates are much lower than the US. if you concentrate all the homeless people in china into one place, and take away the family social fabric, it will get bad as well. there's already quite a bit of stabbing and such
Yes.
|
On November 07 2014 23:40 oneofthem wrote:looks like an ISI compromised diplomat, jumping to conclusions. diplomat in counter intelligence investigationif i didn't know better i'd say this can be a bad hit against hillary. i know i've said the middle east is a distraction before, but if ISIS gets a grip in pakistan then real shit will go down.
If Obama had intervened earlier, before Syria spiraled into civil war, we wouldn't be in this mess.
Nyeh.
|
On November 08 2014 01:06 Lord Tolkien wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2014 23:40 oneofthem wrote:looks like an ISI compromised diplomat, jumping to conclusions. diplomat in counter intelligence investigationif i didn't know better i'd say this can be a bad hit against hillary. i know i've said the middle east is a distraction before, but if ISIS gets a grip in pakistan then real shit will go down. If Obama had intervened earlier, before Syria spiraled into civil war, we wouldn't be in this mess. Nyeh.
If he did that it would look absolutely ridiculous to the public eye.
|
On November 08 2014 01:23 wei2coolman wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2014 01:06 Lord Tolkien wrote:On November 07 2014 23:40 oneofthem wrote:looks like an ISI compromised diplomat, jumping to conclusions. diplomat in counter intelligence investigationif i didn't know better i'd say this can be a bad hit against hillary. i know i've said the middle east is a distraction before, but if ISIS gets a grip in pakistan then real shit will go down. If Obama had intervened earlier, before Syria spiraled into civil war, we wouldn't be in this mess. Nyeh. If he did that it would look absolutely ridiculous to the public eye.
Not to mention that it did/does absolutely nothing to solve the problem, a.k.a end "the war on terror".
|
Isn't the whole gun ownership argument more of a cultural thing anyway? I mean even if we all would agree that guns are responsible for a ton of deaths in the US then the next argument would probably be "yes but the second amendment guarantees me to own guns, because if my government turns fascist"... etc? At that point it's so fundamental that you'll hardly convince anyone to change their opinion.
|
On November 08 2014 01:47 Nyxisto wrote:
Isn't the whole gun ownership argument more of a cultural thing anyway? I mean even if we all would agree that guns are responsible for a ton of death's in the US then the next argument would probably be "yes but the second amendment guarantees me to own guns, because if my government turns fascist"... etc? At that point it's so fundamental that you'll hardly convince anyone to change their opinion.
That's a big part of the problem. The Constitution, like the Bible, is gospel and one can't even think about changing any part of the Bill of Rights unless its to add an amendment banning gay marriage. To even suggest that the 2nd Amendment may require tweaking or a different interpretation in today's day and age is blasphemous and anti-American.
|
Not to mention the vast majority of gun violence happens to the small group of people that have extremely little political voice.
|
On November 08 2014 01:23 wei2coolman wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2014 01:06 Lord Tolkien wrote:On November 07 2014 23:40 oneofthem wrote:looks like an ISI compromised diplomat, jumping to conclusions. diplomat in counter intelligence investigationif i didn't know better i'd say this can be a bad hit against hillary. i know i've said the middle east is a distraction before, but if ISIS gets a grip in pakistan then real shit will go down. If Obama had intervened earlier, before Syria spiraled into civil war, we wouldn't be in this mess. Nyeh. If he did that it would look absolutely ridiculous to the public eye.
So what. The US effectively intervened in Libya (the Europeans were primarily to spearhead it, but the US ended up being the ones to provide the carriers, munitions, etc. that the Europeans sorely lacked [extremely low munition stocks and what not). No one in the US gave a hoot about Libya, or about Egypt, but the US intervened relatively effectively in both areas, and ensured as reasonable a transition of government to a democracy as possible. Foreign policy is and always has been an area of "high politics", where public opinion has significantly less influence in the formulation of (not to say that there isn't public input, only far more limited than one of "low politics").
Quite frankly, if the US had intervened when Assad initially began his suppression of pro-democracy groups and protestors, or when the civil war was in its initial phases and the liberal pro-democracy groups were not only the most powerful of the rebel groups, but also begging for US aid or intervention (even just equipment), or even when Obama made the terrible blunder of drawing a red line on chemical weapons and not doing anything when Assad ended up using them (though this is already late as fuck), the amount of treasure, manpower, and materiel the US would've had to devote to preserving Middle Eastern stability would be a far smaller fraction than what we needed to devote now.
Now, after the civil war has fed extremist groups like ISIL into being a major threat to already fragile regional stability, we're going to have to spend ALOT MORE, to accomplish ALOT LESS than we would've if Obama had some modicum of foresight. We knew since practically the start of the Syrian Civil War that the extremist groups were benefiting from US non-action, and anti-Assad support was slowly shifting to them.
On November 08 2014 01:24 Doublemint wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2014 01:23 wei2coolman wrote:On November 08 2014 01:06 Lord Tolkien wrote:On November 07 2014 23:40 oneofthem wrote:looks like an ISI compromised diplomat, jumping to conclusions. diplomat in counter intelligence investigationif i didn't know better i'd say this can be a bad hit against hillary. i know i've said the middle east is a distraction before, but if ISIS gets a grip in pakistan then real shit will go down. If Obama had intervened earlier, before Syria spiraled into civil war, we wouldn't be in this mess. Nyeh. If he did that it would look absolutely ridiculous to the public eye. Not to mention that it did/does absolutely nothing to solve the problem, a.k.a end "the war on terror".
...what does that have to do with anything? This is purely a geopolitical question: had the US intervened earlier, we could've:
1) lanced a sore before it became inflamed
2) helped establish another functioning democracy in the region
3) won the support and goodwill of a large segment of said democracy's population
4) overall, advance US interests and influence in the region
5) done so at comparatively little cost
Right now, there's literally no good ending for Syria. The liberal pro-democracy groups are simply far too weak in comparison to groups such as ISIL given the desperation the anti-Assad coalition is in (so the chance of a functioning democracy springing up in Syria are slim to none) AND the other option is Assad, there are millions of IDPs and refugees from Syria now and the overall human cost of the Syrian civil war is pretty damn massive, pro-democracy Syrians, once highly pro-American, are now extremely dejected and critical of the US, the US has lost face and, ugh, "appears weak" (zzz, hate to use that phrase) on the international stage after letting Assad essentially get away with defying our ban of chemical weapons scot-free (you can speculate that this emboldened Putin to push on the Ukraine issue, but I doubt that part highly), and we now have a major destabilizing factor in a region where US influence is already delicate (better than Europe's non-factor whatsoever, but nonetheless a very bad situation overall).
And yes, I hold Obama responsible for this. He had a large window of time to intervene, and he blew it.
If you can't tell, I'm a major foreign policy hawk. Or at least, an active internationalist.
|
On November 08 2014 01:47 Nyxisto wrote:
Isn't the whole gun ownership argument more of a cultural thing anyway? I mean even if we all would agree that guns are responsible for a ton of deaths in the US then the next argument would probably be "yes but the second amendment guarantees me to own guns, because if my government turns fascist"... etc? At that point it's so fundamental that you'll hardly convince anyone to change their opinion.
This mostly occurred during the 70s, with the radicalization of the NRA (which was an open advocate of gun control during the time of the Kennedy assassination).
|
...what does that have to do with anything? This is purely a geopolitical question: had the US intervened earlier, we could've:
1) lanced a sore before it became inflamed
2) helped establish another functioning democracy in the region
3) won the support and goodwill of a large segment of said democracy's population
4) overall, advance US interests and influence in the region
5) done so at comparatively little cost
Yeah that worked wonders in Iraq didn't it? I didn't know Rummy was on this forum  Also have you served in the military?
|
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
LT what do you say about the concern that the islamists would have taken syria regardless given the highly porous border they have with iraq and the lack of security presence on the syrian side of that border. IIRC the assad civil war was primarily concentrated around urban areas far away from the iraq border region.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
