|
Although this thread does not function under the same strict guidelines as the USPMT, it is still a general practice on TL to provide a source with an explanation on why it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion. Failure to do so will result in a mod action. |
On December 21 2012 16:18 Maxyim wrote:
Pistols serve a purpose - to kill other humans with pistols who are trying to kill you, your loved ones, or those around you. It's just like nukes; as long as one entity has them, all others need to have their own in order to maintain balance.
Did you really think about this before you said it? What about people who attack with knives? Blunt objects? Their bare hands?
You're right that pistols are for killing people, but it is quite ignorant to claim the only time someone needs an equalizer like a pistol is when their attacker has a pistol. Women and the elderly simply cannot defeat a young male--the majority of violent criminals--in hand to hand combat.
Dade City man accused of killing social worker who came to helpSince day one, police say, social worker Stephanie Ross had been uncomfortable visiting Lucious Smith, a man with a criminal history dating to 1977 when he was charged with carrying a concealed ice pick and resisting arrest. [...] Just before noon Monday, Ross once again visited the 53-year-old man known as "TooFats" at his apartment complex at 37020 Coleman Ave. to help him manage his Medicaid benefits. Witnesses told police she fled the apartment and ran screaming down the road, with Smith chasing her and slashing at her with a large butcher knife. Ninety minutes later, she died at a hospital of multiple stab wounds to her upper body. http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/dade-city-man-accused-of-killing-social-worker-who-came-to-help/1265700
Take this article for example. Had this woman listened to her instincts and carried a pistol for self defense, she could have done something more than just run and scream until she died.
I bet whoever taught her that guns are scary and bad is really proud of themselves right now. They are probably very happy that her murderer Luscious Smith is okay! He could have been seriously hurt if she had a weapon. Who knows, she may have even shot bystanders, then bystanders maybe would have started shooting randomly, then everybody would die! It would be terrible, scary, bad, and downright doubleplusungood!
|
There's that South Park video (a TV series I hate) that kinda nails the matter on weapons history in the USA. Probably filled with wrong facts but still the general idea holds.
I've never been afraid of being attacked by an armed person because there are no real weapons in my city. I've never seen one outside a cop's belt in my 26 years of life. That's why I don't need one and never will.
And even if I ever were robbed I would much rather give my money than risk killing someone. That would be terrible, might affect my sanity and it's a burocratic mess. The alternative is just money, ezpz choice.
|
On December 21 2012 22:17 Salteador Neo wrote:
There's that South Park video (a TV series I hate) that kinda nails the matter on weapons history in the USA. Probably filled with wrong facts but still the general idea holds.
I've never been afraid of being attacked by an armed person because there are no real weapons in my city. I've never seen one outside a cop's belt in my 26 years of life. That's why I don't need one and never will.
And even if I ever were robbed I would much rather give my money than risk killing someone. That would be terrible, might affect my sanity and it's a burocratic mess. The alternative is just mone
y, ezpz choice.
What about if someone is chasing and stabbing you, as in the article I quoted above?
You are okay with dying to protect your attacker?
|
United States42525 Posts
On December 21 2012 22:39 Zaqwe wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2012 22:17 Salteador Neo wrote:
There's that South Park video (a TV series I hate) that kinda nails the matter on weapons history in the USA. Probably filled with wrong facts but still the general idea holds.
I've never been afraid of being attacked by an armed person because there are no real weapons in my city. I've never seen one outside a cop's belt in my 26 years of life. That's why I don't need one and never will.
And even if I ever were robbed I would much rather give my money than risk killing someone. That would be terrible, might affect my sanity and it's a burocratic mess. The alternative is just mone
y, ezpz choice. What about if someone is chasing and stabbing you, as in the article I quoted above? You are okay with dying to protect your attacker?
And what if Richard Attenborough makes a park for dinosaurs and a velociraptor comes after you and some kids, what then? These are not common occurrences in countries with gun control. Acting as if they are will result in a breakdown of communication as your reality becomes nonsense to the person you're debating with.
|
On December 21 2012 22:39 Zaqwe wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2012 22:17 Salteador Neo wrote:
There's that South Park video (a TV series I hate) that kinda nails the matter on weapons history in the USA. Probably filled with wrong facts but still the general idea holds.
I've never been afraid of being attacked by an armed person because there are no real weapons in my city. I've never seen one outside a cop's belt in my 26 years of life. That's why I don't need one and never will.
And even if I ever were robbed I would much rather give my money than risk killing someone. That would be terrible, might affect my sanity and it's a burocratic mess. The alternative is just mone
y, ezpz choice. What about if someone is chasing and stabbing you, as in the article I quoted above? You are okay with dying to protect your attacker?
What about the danger of getting struck by lightning? You can take measures to avoid that ,but i'm pretty sure you don't.
|
On December 21 2012 22:39 Zaqwe wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2012 22:17 Salteador Neo wrote:
There's that South Park video (a TV series I hate) that kinda nails the matter on weapons history in the USA. Probably filled with wrong facts but still the general idea holds.
I've never been afraid of being attacked by an armed person because there are no real weapons in my city. I've never seen one outside a cop's belt in my 26 years of life. That's why I don't need one and never will.
And even if I ever were robbed I would much rather give my money than risk killing someone. That would be terrible, might affect my sanity and it's a burocratic mess. The alternative is just mone
y, ezpz choice. What about if someone is chasing and stabbing you, as in the article I quoted above? You are okay with dying to protect your attacker?
What if someone was actually giving him candy offering him a magic unicorns? This is just as likely to happen considering the location which this scenario is taking place.
|
On December 21 2012 13:05 mcc wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2012 12:45 jacosajh wrote:On December 21 2012 11:38 mcc wrote:On December 21 2012 09:56 jacosajh wrote:On December 21 2012 05:49 mcc wrote:On December 21 2012 02:10 jacosajh wrote:On December 21 2012 02:04 Focuspants wrote:On December 21 2012 02:01 Esk23 wrote:On December 21 2012 01:45 silynxer wrote:On December 21 2012 01:38 Esk23 wrote:[quote] Or maybe because most of the people on those drugs commit suicide rather than go on shooting sprees. I agree that we need to make sure we have ways to keep guns out of mentally insane or psychiatrically drugged people, BUT this has to be done without infringing upon law-abiding citizens rights to own guns who have done nothing wrong. http://www.ssristories.com/index.php?p=suicides Suicide is another interesting topic. People who own guns are more likely to die in a suicide (because they are more likely successful), there was a study linked in this thread I think. Whether that's good or bad or not that bad is again a bit difficult to decide. Your links to ssristories do not show anything if you do not have a complete list of all incidents (with and without drug or suicide). People die from suicide 3-4 times more than they do from firearms. If I find a statistic that shows how many people who commit suicide are on drugs or psychiatric drugs I will post it. If someone wants to commit suicide, they will do so with or without a gun. "The Harvard School of Mental Health just published the results of a study that examined the relationship between household firearms ownership and the rate of suicide. According to the study suicide among people 45 years of age and younger suicide is the 3rd leading cause of death in the United States. Among the 50 states in the United States, those with higher rates of household gun ownership had higher rates of suicide among children, women and men. It is important to understand, according to the study, that the higher rates of suicide among those who own guns has to do with the fact that guns are much more lethal than other methods of attempting suicide. What is troubling about this is that suicide attempts are viewed as a desperate call for help among those who are depressed or mentally ill with a psychotic illness. The rate of successful suicide completions is far less for people who use other methods than using a gun. For example, 75% of all suicide attempts are by the use of drugs. These people are found alive 97% of the time. Those who succeed in using drugs to attempt suicide are successful only 3% of the time. By contrast, more than 90% of all suicide attempts by use of firearms are successful. The bottom line is that anyone using a gun to commit suicide is not likely to have their call for help heard and responded to before its too late." That is all you need to know. There is a chance to receive help if you survive. You don't survive if you use a gun. It is a waste of a potentially salvageable life. Again, you are wanting to deal with the symptom, not the cause. Taking away guns would decrease the amount of total successful suicides? But what about dealing with why people want to commit suicides? Unless you think there is no issue there -- suicide attempts will happen no matter what you do and there is no value in trying to deal with this issue? So basically we end up with a lot more of people, who probably happen to have mental issues, but of no way with trying to cope with this? So we just assign someone to watch them 24/7? Or hope that the 3% chance of success decreases or holds up over infinity time? In a lot of cases there is no way to help the person before he attempts a suicide, because he hides that anything is wrong. So by eliminating guns from the equation you allow that cause to be discovered and treated. You are assuming there is a way to treat the cause beforehand. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not. In the latter case lack of guns allows possibly saving that person. You are saying there is no way to discover/treat this issue before hand? So then why is it that some countries have prevailing instances of suicide than others? Certain societal/cultural norms yield higher risks of suicide -- this is a common understanding in psychology and other professions. If you don't believe there is a cure/preventive way of treating potential suicides, what the hell is the point of "discovering" people who failed to commit suicide via drugs? Are we going to assign people to watch them 24/7 for the rest of their life? Even your logic implies there is some way to treat this, so why not start with that? And your solution DOES NOT address the issue I brought up in another post. Not every one in suicide is looking for a quick out. Read my post and then tell me where did I say or imply things you are accusing me of saying. I never said it is never possible to discover the issue beforehand. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not. Cure does not equal preventative treatment. Preventative treatment means beforehand, cure means whenever. So again you are lying about what I said as I never said anything about not believing in cure. If the person fails the attempt we can cure him since we know now that he has a problem. This is impossible in many cases to know beforehand even using all epidemiological data about risk factors, because those are statistical and thus cannot tell you exactly who actually suffers from what. It only allows you some measure of targeted preventative actions, but it will never allow you to accurately pinpoint all of those people (I am talking never as in in a near to medium future). Also I never presented it as a solution to anything I just pointed out that if guns are not present, many people attempting suicide can be saved and no preventative action will have similar effect. Is it a good policy in general ? That is another question as then we need to consider issue other than only mental health. But purely from the standpoint of suicides, getting rid of the guns from society would save a lot of people. You are not understanding what I'm saying. So to make it simple for you: Even if a policy with no guns saves people with a deeper issue, what's the point? If there is a way to prevent these things besides taking away guns, why not try it? It seems it is you who does not understand as that objection makes absolutely no sense considering what I wrote. To reiterate : No such way exists for many of those cases as there is no possible action before the suicide attempt and after it they are dead due to presence of guns. There is nothing that you can do as those cases are inevitable without some technology that we can only dream about for a long time. And in presence of guns those inevitable cases will have high mortality.
I don't know if you are just running around in circles on purpose so you don't have to admit you don't have an answer or you really don't understand.
-I am not disagreeing that someone who attempting suicide by a gun is going to have a higher success rate. You would to dumb to argue with this.
-What is the merit of "saving" someone temporarily by taking a "higher rate of success" item from them if you can't help them in the long-term? Unless you believe that there is something inherently good about just saving someone temporarily. I don't think you believe this, so your logic implies there is merit in saving someone because you can help rehabilitate them. In this case, why not start with "preventive rehabilitation," whatever that is?
-As for "early detection" of suicide attempts, I already addressed this. Some cultures yield higher suicide attempts than others. There is a reason for this. Of course, we don't have it all figured out -- and that is the point. We need to try. We might not even have to "detect it early" if we can just help fix the dumb shit in our culture that makes people want to commit suicide in the first place.
Just because you take the tool away doesn't mean someone isn't going to come up with a tool of their own.
|
As a Canadian I'm not personally invested in the US gun control debate, but this blog piece was Biblical, operatic and theatrical enough to get me to repost it:
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/dec/15/our-moloch/
Our Moloch - Gary Wills
Few crimes are more harshly forbidden in the Old Testament than sacrifice to the god Moloch (for which see Leviticus 18.21, 20.1-5). The sacrifice referred to was of living children consumed in the fires of offering to Moloch. Ever since then, worship of Moloch has been the sign of a deeply degraded culture. Ancient Romans justified the destruction of Carthage by noting that children were sacrificed to Moloch there. Milton represented Moloch as the first pagan god who joined Satan’s war on humankind:
First Moloch, horrid king, besmear’d with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears,
Though for the noise of Drums and Timbrels loud
Their children’s cries unheard, that pass’d through fire
To his grim idol. (Paradise Lost 1.392-96)
Read again those lines, with recent images seared into our brains—“besmeared with blood” and “parents’ tears.” They give the real meaning of what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School Friday morning. That horror cannot be blamed just on one unhinged person. It was the sacrifice we as a culture made, and continually make, to our demonic god. We guarantee that crazed man after crazed man will have a flood of killing power readily supplied him. We have to make that offering, out of devotion to our Moloch, our god. The gun is our Moloch. We sacrifice children to him daily—sometimes, as at Sandy Hook, by directly throwing them into the fire-hose of bullets from our protected private killing machines, sometimes by blighting our children’s lives by the death of a parent, a schoolmate, a teacher, a protector. Sometimes this is done by mass killings (eight this year), sometimes by private offerings to the god (thousands this year).
The gun is not a mere tool, a bit of technology, a political issue, a point of debate. It is an object of reverence. Devotion to it precludes interruption with the sacrifices it entails. Like most gods, it does what it will, and cannot be questioned. Its acolytes think it is capable only of good things. It guarantees life and safety and freedom. It even guarantees law. Law grows from it. Then how can law question it?
Its power to do good is matched by its incapacity to do anything wrong. It cannot kill. Thwarting the god is what kills. If it seems to kill, that is only because the god’s bottomless appetite for death has not been adequately fed. The answer to problems caused by guns is more guns, millions of guns, guns everywhere, carried openly, carried secretly, in bars, in churches, in offices, in government buildings. Only the lack of guns can be a curse, not their beneficent omnipresence.
Adoration of Moloch permeates the country, imposing a hushed silence as he works his will. One cannot question his rites, even as the blood is gushing through the idol’s teeth. The White House spokesman invokes the silence of traditional in religious ceremony. “It is not the time” to question Moloch. No time is right for showing disrespect for Moloch.
The fact that the gun is a reverenced god can be seen in its manifold and apparently resistless powers. How do we worship it? Let us count the ways:
1. It has the power to destroy the reasoning process. It forbids making logical connections. We are required to deny that there is any connection between the fact that we have the greatest number of guns in private hands and the greatest number of deaths from them. Denial on this scale always comes from or is protected by religious fundamentalism. Thus do we deny global warming, or evolution, or biblical errancy. Reason is helpless before such abject faith.
2. It has the power to turn all our politicians as a class into invertebrate and mute attendants at the shrine. None dare suggest that Moloch can in any way be reined in without being denounced by the pope of this religion, National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre, as trying to destroy Moloch, to take away all guns. They whimper and say they never entertained such heresy. Many flourish their guns while campaigning, or boast that they have themselves hunted “varmints.” Better that the children die or their lives be blasted than that a politician should risk an election against the dread sentence of NRA excommunication.
3. It has the power to distort our constitutional thinking. It says that the right to “bear arms,” a military term, gives anyone, anywhere in our country, the power to mow down civilians with military weapons. Even the Supreme Court has been cowed, reversing its own long history of recognizing that the Second Amendment applied to militias. Now the court feels bound to guarantee that any every madman can indulge his “religion” of slaughter. Moloch brooks no dissent, even from the highest court in the land.
Though LaPierre is the pope of this religion, its most successful Peter the Hermit, preaching the crusade for Moloch, was Charlton Heston, a symbol of the Americanism of loving guns. I have often thought that we should raise a statue of Heston at each of the many sites of multiple murders around our land. We would soon have armies of statues, whole droves of Heston acolytes standing sentry at the shrines of Moloch dotting the landscape. Molochism is the one religion that can never be separated from the state. The state itself bows down to Moloch, and protects the sacrifices made to him. So let us celebrate the falling bodies and rising statues as a demonstration of our fealty, our bondage, to the great god Gun.
December 15, 2012, 5:25 p.m.
|
On December 22 2012 00:43 jacosajh wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2012 13:05 mcc wrote:On December 21 2012 12:45 jacosajh wrote:On December 21 2012 11:38 mcc wrote:On December 21 2012 09:56 jacosajh wrote:On December 21 2012 05:49 mcc wrote:On December 21 2012 02:10 jacosajh wrote:On December 21 2012 02:04 Focuspants wrote:On December 21 2012 02:01 Esk23 wrote:On December 21 2012 01:45 silynxer wrote:
[quote]
Suicide is another interesting topic. People who own guns are more likely to die in a suicide (because they are more likely successful), there was a study linked in this thread I think. Whether that's good or bad or not that bad is again a bit difficult to decide.
Your links to ssristories do not show anything if you do not have a complete list of all incidents (with and without drug or suicide). People die from suicide 3-4 times more than they do from firearms. If I find a statistic that shows how many people who commit suicide are on drugs or psychiatric drugs I will post it. If someone wants to commit suicide, they will do so with or without a gun. "The Harvard School of Mental Health just published the results of a study that examined the relationship between household firearms ownership and the rate of suicide. According to the study suicide among people 45 years of age and younger suicide is the 3rd leading cause of death in the United States. Among the 50 states in the United States, those with higher rates of household gun ownership had higher rates of suicide among children, women and men. It is important to understand, according to the study, that the higher rates of suicide among those who own guns has to do with the fact that guns are much more lethal than other methods of attempting suicide. What is troubling about this is that suicide attempts are viewed as a desperate call for help among those who are depressed or mentally ill with a psychotic illness. The rate of successful suicide completions is far less for people who use other methods than using a gun. For example, 75% of all suicide attempts are by the use of drugs. These people are found alive 97% of the time. Those who succeed in using drugs to attempt suicide are successful only 3% of the time. By contrast, more than 90% of all suicide attempts by use of firearms are successful. The bottom line is that anyone using a gun to commit suicide is not likely to have their call for help heard and responded to before its too late." That is all you need to know. There is a chance to receive help if you survive. You don't survive if you use a gun. It is a waste of a potentially salvageable life. Again, you are wanting to deal with the symptom, not the cause. Taking away guns would decrease the amount of total successful suicides? But what about dealing with why people want to commit suicides? Unless you think there is no issue there -- suicide attempts will happen no matter what you do and there is no value in trying to deal with this issue? So basically we end up with a lot more of people, who probably happen to have mental issues, but of no way with trying to cope with this? So we just assign someone to watch them 24/7? Or hope that the 3% chance of success decreases or holds up over infinity time? In a lot of cases there is no way to help the person before he attempts a suicide, because he hides that anything is wrong. So by eliminating guns from the equation you allow that cause to be discovered and treated. You are assuming there is a way to treat the cause beforehand. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not. In the latter case lack of guns allows possibly saving that person. You are saying there is no way to discover/treat this issue before hand? So then why is it that some countries have prevailing instances of suicide than others? Certain societal/cultural norms yield higher risks of suicide -- this is a common understanding in psychology and other professions. If you don't believe there is a cure/preventive way of treating potential suicides, what the hell is the point of "discovering" people who failed to commit suicide via drugs? Are we going to assign people to watch them 24/7 for the rest of their life? Even your logic implies there is some way to treat this, so why not start with that? And your solution DOES NOT address the issue I brought up in another post. Not every one in suicide is looking for a quick out. Read my post and then tell me where did I say or imply things you are accusing me of saying. I never said it is never possible to discover the issue beforehand. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not. Cure does not equal preventative treatment. Preventative treatment means beforehand, cure means whenever. So again you are lying about what I said as I never said anything about not believing in cure. If the person fails the attempt we can cure him since we know now that he has a problem. This is impossible in many cases to know beforehand even using all epidemiological data about risk factors, because those are statistical and thus cannot tell you exactly who actually suffers from what. It only allows you some measure of targeted preventative actions, but it will never allow you to accurately pinpoint all of those people (I am talking never as in in a near to medium future). Also I never presented it as a solution to anything I just pointed out that if guns are not present, many people attempting suicide can be saved and no preventative action will have similar effect. Is it a good policy in general ? That is another question as then we need to consider issue other than only mental health. But purely from the standpoint of suicides, getting rid of the guns from society would save a lot of people. You are not understanding what I'm saying. So to make it simple for you: Even if a policy with no guns saves people with a deeper issue, what's the point? If there is a way to prevent these things besides taking away guns, why not try it? It seems it is you who does not understand as that objection makes absolutely no sense considering what I wrote. To reiterate : No such way exists for many of those cases as there is no possible action before the suicide attempt and after it they are dead due to presence of guns. There is nothing that you can do as those cases are inevitable without some technology that we can only dream about for a long time. And in presence of guns those inevitable cases will have high mortality. I don't know if you are just running around in circles on purpose so you don't have to admit you don't have an answer or you really don't understand. -I am not disagreeing that someone who attempting suicide by a gun is going to have a higher success rate. You would to dumb to argue with this. -What is the merit of "saving" someone temporarily by taking a "higher rate of success" item from them if you can't help them in the long-term? Unless you believe that there is something inherently good about just saving someone temporarily. I don't think you believe this, so your logic implies there is merit in saving someone because you can help rehabilitate them. In this case, why not start with "preventive rehabilitation," whatever that is? Just because you take the tool away doesn't mean someone isn't going to come up with a tool of their own.
The logic is the following:
You can often help people who are depressed and want to commit suicide, IF you know about it.
It is not that easy to find out if someone wants to commit suicide.
If someone tries to commit suicide, and succeeds, you can't help him anymore.
If he does not succeed, you know he is in need of help, and you can help him, because he is not dead.
Thus, reducing the rate of success of suicide is a good thing.
Note what this does NOT imply:
It does not say that you can prevent every suicide. It does not say that you should not try to preemptively prevent them. It does not say that you should only use this.
But if you are of the opinion that people who are depressed and commit suicide can be help, reducing the success of suicide attempts is a good thing.
|
On December 21 2012 09:08 mcc wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2012 08:56 Zaqwe wrote:
Working at reducing crime.
The goal of crime fighting is to reduce crime, right? Not to make criminals' lives comfortable. There is absolutely no evidence that mandatory minimums are behind the reduced rates.
I'd give up my right to carry a gun in public if our police could adequately protect the population.. We may be a nation where crime is frequent.. but that should be a stain on U.S. law enforcement.. they very people you say I should surrender my weapons and basically the lives of my families to protect me.. The world you step outside to is very different from what's on the other side of my front door...
I'm proud to live in a place where I am given the luxuries of a great life.. A place where the phrase, Innocent until proven guilty, is suppose the mean something. I have a firm belief that this should be a corner of the foundation of our justice system. If I want to own a fully automatic machine gun... or 100 of them... or even a shoulder-fired missile system. I shouldn't be accused of wanting to shoot down planes of spraying rounds willy-nilly towards a crowd.. "Where does it end?" I would say it stops at grenades, tanks, artillery...
|
United States24664 Posts
On December 22 2012 00:51 AmericanNightmare wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2012 09:08 mcc wrote:On December 21 2012 08:56 Zaqwe wrote:
Working at reducing crime.
The goal of crime fighting is to reduce crime, right? Not to make criminals' lives comfortable. There is absolutely no evidence that mandatory minimums are behind the reduced rates. I'd give up my right to carry a gun in public if our police could adequately protect the population.. We may be a nation where crime is frequent.. but that should be a stain on U.S. law enforcement.. they very people you say I should surrender my weapons and basically the lives of my families to protect me.. The world you step outside to is very different from what's on the other side of my front door... I'm proud to live in a place where I am given the luxuries of a great life.. A place where the phrase, Innocent until proven guilty, is suppose the mean something. I have a firm belief that this should be a corner of the foundation of our justice system. If I want to own a fully automatic machine gun... or 100 of them... or even a shoulder-fired missile system. I shouldn't be accused of wanting to shoot down planes of spraying rounds willy-nilly towards a crowd.. "Where does it end?" I would say it stops at grenades, tanks, artillery...
Law enforcement is not solely (or even mostly) to blame for the amount of crime in the USA. The police are only one piece of it.
The laws are created by the legislative branch. What laws are made/unmade affects the crime rate. The executive branch enforces the laws (technically i think police are considered part of this but I will keep them separate for now). The judicial branch interprets the laws. All of these parties have a major hand in how much crime there is, and how many repeat offenders there are.
The police are supposed to be pro-active in preventing crime, but there is a limit to what they can do; especially without the full support of the rest of the government. Mostly police respond to crimes rather than prevent them, because it's much harder to prevent crime as a police department than react to it.
I will agree the police share a piece of the pie of fault for our crime rate, though.
|
On December 22 2012 00:43 jacosajh wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2012 13:05 mcc wrote:On December 21 2012 12:45 jacosajh wrote:On December 21 2012 11:38 mcc wrote:On December 21 2012 09:56 jacosajh wrote:On December 21 2012 05:49 mcc wrote:On December 21 2012 02:10 jacosajh wrote:On December 21 2012 02:04 Focuspants wrote:On December 21 2012 02:01 Esk23 wrote:On December 21 2012 01:45 silynxer wrote:
[quote]
Suicide is another interesting topic. People who own guns are more likely to die in a suicide (because they are more likely successful), there was a study linked in this thread I think. Whether that's good or bad or not that bad is again a bit difficult to decide.
Your links to ssristories do not show anything if you do not have a complete list of all incidents (with and without drug or suicide). People die from suicide 3-4 times more than they do from firearms. If I find a statistic that shows how many people who commit suicide are on drugs or psychiatric drugs I will post it. If someone wants to commit suicide, they will do so with or without a gun. "The Harvard School of Mental Health just published the results of a study that examined the relationship between household firearms ownership and the rate of suicide. According to the study suicide among people 45 years of age and younger suicide is the 3rd leading cause of death in the United States. Among the 50 states in the United States, those with higher rates of household gun ownership had higher rates of suicide among children, women and men. It is important to understand, according to the study, that the higher rates of suicide among those who own guns has to do with the fact that guns are much more lethal than other methods of attempting suicide. What is troubling about this is that suicide attempts are viewed as a desperate call for help among those who are depressed or mentally ill with a psychotic illness. The rate of successful suicide completions is far less for people who use other methods than using a gun. For example, 75% of all suicide attempts are by the use of drugs. These people are found alive 97% of the time. Those who succeed in using drugs to attempt suicide are successful only 3% of the time. By contrast, more than 90% of all suicide attempts by use of firearms are successful. The bottom line is that anyone using a gun to commit suicide is not likely to have their call for help heard and responded to before its too late." That is all you need to know. There is a chance to receive help if you survive. You don't survive if you use a gun. It is a waste of a potentially salvageable life. Again, you are wanting to deal with the symptom, not the cause. Taking away guns would decrease the amount of total successful suicides? But what about dealing with why people want to commit suicides? Unless you think there is no issue there -- suicide attempts will happen no matter what you do and there is no value in trying to deal with this issue? So basically we end up with a lot more of people, who probably happen to have mental issues, but of no way with trying to cope with this? So we just assign someone to watch them 24/7? Or hope that the 3% chance of success decreases or holds up over infinity time? In a lot of cases there is no way to help the person before he attempts a suicide, because he hides that anything is wrong. So by eliminating guns from the equation you allow that cause to be discovered and treated. You are assuming there is a way to treat the cause beforehand. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not. In the latter case lack of guns allows possibly saving that person. You are saying there is no way to discover/treat this issue before hand? So then why is it that some countries have prevailing instances of suicide than others? Certain societal/cultural norms yield higher risks of suicide -- this is a common understanding in psychology and other professions. If you don't believe there is a cure/preventive way of treating potential suicides, what the hell is the point of "discovering" people who failed to commit suicide via drugs? Are we going to assign people to watch them 24/7 for the rest of their life? Even your logic implies there is some way to treat this, so why not start with that? And your solution DOES NOT address the issue I brought up in another post. Not every one in suicide is looking for a quick out. Read my post and then tell me where did I say or imply things you are accusing me of saying. I never said it is never possible to discover the issue beforehand. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is not. Cure does not equal preventative treatment. Preventative treatment means beforehand, cure means whenever. So again you are lying about what I said as I never said anything about not believing in cure. If the person fails the attempt we can cure him since we know now that he has a problem. This is impossible in many cases to know beforehand even using all epidemiological data about risk factors, because those are statistical and thus cannot tell you exactly who actually suffers from what. It only allows you some measure of targeted preventative actions, but it will never allow you to accurately pinpoint all of those people (I am talking never as in in a near to medium future). Also I never presented it as a solution to anything I just pointed out that if guns are not present, many people attempting suicide can be saved and no preventative action will have similar effect. Is it a good policy in general ? That is another question as then we need to consider issue other than only mental health. But purely from the standpoint of suicides, getting rid of the guns from society would save a lot of people. You are not understanding what I'm saying. So to make it simple for you: Even if a policy with no guns saves people with a deeper issue, what's the point? If there is a way to prevent these things besides taking away guns, why not try it? It seems it is you who does not understand as that objection makes absolutely no sense considering what I wrote. To reiterate : No such way exists for many of those cases as there is no possible action before the suicide attempt and after it they are dead due to presence of guns. There is nothing that you can do as those cases are inevitable without some technology that we can only dream about for a long time. And in presence of guns those inevitable cases will have high mortality. I don't know if you are just running around in circles on purpose so you don't have to admit you don't have an answer or you really don't understand. -I am not disagreeing that someone who attempting suicide by a gun is going to have a higher success rate. You would to dumb to argue with this. -What is the merit of "saving" someone temporarily by taking a "higher rate of success" item from them if you can't help them in the long-term? Unless you believe that there is something inherently good about just saving someone temporarily. I don't think you believe this, so your logic implies there is merit in saving someone because you can help rehabilitate them. In this case, why not start with "preventive rehabilitation," whatever that is? -As for "early detection" of suicide attempts, I already addressed this. Some cultures yield higher suicide attempts than others. There is a reason for this. Of course, we don't have it all figured out -- and that is the point. We need to try. We might not even have to "detect it early" if we can just help fix the dumb shit in our culture that makes people want to commit suicide in the first place. Just because you take the tool away doesn't mean someone isn't going to come up with a tool of their own.
Ok now I am sure that you cannot read. I already said that cure DOES NOT EQUAL prevention. So the merit of saving the person temporarily is in the fact that after that we know there is a problem and can possibly cure that person. We cannot cure him beforehand as we do not know he has a problem. Is that simple logic that I already explained too complicated for you still ?
EDIT: Large percentage of suicides have internal triggers, you cannot prevent them by changing "culture". Again not in the near future.
|
So, who is listening to this press conference?
So far it has been 'We need to stop covering gun violence in the media, and we need guns in schools.'
Now saying the biggest threat is video games. That movies and video games are the "worst form of pornography."
And the conclusion: "Why does the political class hate the NRA so much that you are willing to let these 26 little innocent children die?"
'Deploy the police, military, and private security to each and every school in the nation.'
|
On December 22 2012 00:56 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On December 22 2012 00:51 AmericanNightmare wrote:On December 21 2012 09:08 mcc wrote:On December 21 2012 08:56 Zaqwe wrote:
Working at reducing crime.
The goal of crime fighting is to reduce crime, right? Not to make criminals' lives comfortable. There is absolutely no evidence that mandatory minimums are behind the reduced rates. I'd give up my right to carry a gun in public if our police could adequately protect the population.. We may be a nation where crime is frequent.. but that should be a stain on U.S. law enforcement.. they very people you say I should surrender my weapons and basically the lives of my families to protect me.. The world you step outside to is very different from what's on the other side of my front door... I'm proud to live in a place where I am given the luxuries of a great life.. A place where the phrase, Innocent until proven guilty, is suppose the mean something. I have a firm belief that this should be a corner of the foundation of our justice system. If I want to own a fully automatic machine gun... or 100 of them... or even a shoulder-fired missile system. I shouldn't be accused of wanting to shoot down planes of spraying rounds willy-nilly towards a crowd.. "Where does it end?" I would say it stops at grenades, tanks, artillery... Law enforcement is not solely (or even mostly) to blame for the amount of crime in the USA. The police are only one piece of it. The laws are created by the legislative branch. What laws are made/unmade affects the crime rate. The executive branch enforces the laws (technically i think police are considered part of this but I will keep them separate for now). The judicial branch interprets the laws. All of these parties have a major hand in how much crime there is, and how many repeat offenders there are. The police are supposed to be pro-active in preventing crime, but there is a limit to what they can do; especially without the full support of the rest of the government. Mostly police respond to crimes rather than prevent them, because it's much harder to prevent crime as a police department than react to it. I will agree the police share a piece of the pie of fault for our crime rate, though.
Population itself and its beliefs and attitudes also has to change.
|
|
|
I can't believe no one within the NRA predicted how childish that press conference would look to the average person......like seriously? It was like a 3 year old pointing at objects in the room when prompted for a reason why he pissed on the floor.
|
I found this really interesting article:
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2012/07/geography-gun-violence/2655/
It isn't a peer reviewed article so I'm going to dig deeper to find out more, but it says:
'Gun violence and drug abuse are often presumed to go together, but we found no association between illegal drug use and death from gun violence at the state level. While it is commonly assumed that mental illness or stress levels trigger gun violence, we found no association between gun violence and the proportion of neurotic personalities in any given state."
Firearm deaths are significantly lower in states with stricter gun control legislation. Though the sample sizes are small, we find substantial negative correlations between firearm deaths and states that ban assault weapons (-.45), require trigger locks (-.42), and mandate safe storage requirements for guns (-.48).
The Northeast has generally stricter gun laws, especially NY, NJ and MA and those states have the lowest gun violence. Go figure.
If these stats hold up and come from peer reviewed articles, then I think the case for gun control reducing violence is made without a shadow of a doubt.
Anyway the NRA is ridiculous. Were people safer back in the Wild West when everyone had a gun? Is that not the most ridiculously rhetorical question ever asked?
We don't need to replace school shootings with school shoot-outs. That isn't a solution.
|
Did not expect much from the NRA but that press confrence was an absolute joke, shame on them for blaming video games.
|
Amazing, after their fucking products causing a tragedy like this, they respond by saying more people should buy their product to stop the crazy people that use them.
And Obama just takes it straight up his ass, no arguments, because guns = money, fuck the whole democrat philosophy, fuck the dead kids, we have to support America's greatest industry.
|
Well, the NRA has a couple of valid points in there, watered down with insanity.
http://www.defenseactions.com/utahconcealedcarry/cfp-faqs
Utah, the only state allowing concealed carry in schools.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States
Ctrl+F Utah. One suicide.
And, the point about stupid, useless legislation of arbitrary features, the majority cosmetic or irrelevant to violence, very true, been stated by a lot of gun owning moderates, in this same thread. The main problem with that, of course, is that most gun owners kind of dislike the notion of suddenly becoming a felon because they have features that really don't change the effectiveness of a weapon for mass violence.
But, they turned around and sounded like looneys with delivery.
Note, I'm not attributing 100% of the lack of school shootings in Utah to concealed carry. I'm merely pointing to the fact that there IS a correlation, which may or may not be entirely causal.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
