Who actually thinks a US gun ban would work?

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Do you think a US gun ban would work?

Yes	9%	[ 5 ]
No	56%	[ 31 ]
Somewhat	16%	[ 9 ]
Unsure	7%	[ 4 ]
I hate guns and have an unreasonable aversion to them!	4%	[ 2 ]
I love guns and have an unreasonable attachment to them!	4%	[ 2 ]
(Those last two were tongue in cheek)	4%	[ 2 ]

Total votes : 55

Jacoby
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23 Dec 2012, 12:30 pm

The_Walrus wrote:

Jacoby wrote:

The_Walrus wrote:

Aren't suicides and accidents relevant?

Switzerland has 0.52 gun homicides per 100,000 per year. This compares poorly to the 0.18 in Austria or the 0.06 in Germany.

The Swiss are over 3 times more likely to be killed by a gun than the Germans, and significantly more likely than the Austrians.

No, it is not relevant. Germans and Swiss are statistically about as likely to kill themselves regardless so the method makes very little difference.

I don't think you understood my post. What I meant was "don't suicides and accidents matter?", not whether there was any point to them.

After the Australian gun ban, there was no evidence of "substitution" happening with suicides. The suicide rate dropped along with the gun suicide rate. So maybe Germans just have more stressful lives, or worse mental health provision.

Magneto wrote:

I don't think more gun control will work in the USA, because it hasn't worked in the UK.

Look at the homicide rate over the 20th century for the UK.

It actually begun to rise in the 60's, then they brought in the Firearms act and it continued to rise even more. If you look at the more recent statistics, it continued to rise after the 1997 handgun ban, brought in because of people panicking after the Dunblane mass killing. It's been a total failure here in the UK. I don't really see why it would be any different in the US (in fact, I suspect it would lead to more criminals getting guns as people tried to get rid of their now illegal firearms - after 1997, the number of handguns used in crimes went up by 40% here).

So, remind me - what gun did Timothy McVeigh use?

Hmm. The statistics here (for those of you unfamiliar with the British press, the Telegraph is a right wing Broadsheet newspaper), homicides stayed roughly constant from 1994 to 2000, except for 1996. The only increase came three years after the gun ban, and that's made to look scarier by the Harold Shipman murders (which no gun would have stopped). Since the crackdown on knives, homicides have fallen further and we now have levels of homicide comparable to the 1980s.

So basically, once any gun ban is enforced, it helps if police and prosecutors also treat people who carry other concealed weapons harshly too.

correlation does not imply causation

shrox
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23 Dec 2012, 12:34 pm

Seabass wrote:

The 2nd amendment should be taken at face value. Any attempt in trying to "modernize" the Constitution, as Obama has implied, could very well lead to tyranny. Here's a good pic:

You can't really use tobacco to kill someone in a fit rage...

Jacoby
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23 Dec 2012, 12:36 pm

shrox wrote:

Seabass wrote:

The 2nd amendment should be taken at face value. Any attempt in trying to "modernize" the Constitution, as Obama has implied, could very well lead to tyranny. Here's a good pic:

You can't really use tobacco to kill someone in a fit rage...

you can kill somebody with your bare hands in a fit of rage

Jacoby
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23 Dec 2012, 12:43 pm

Raptor wrote:

If the 2nd amendment doesn't protect the right to own modern firearms then it stands to reason that the 1st amendment doesn't protect free speech using the internet since the internet did not exist when those amendments were enacted in the late 18th century.

don't give them any ideas

shrox
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23 Dec 2012, 12:45 pm

Jacoby wrote:

shrox wrote:

Seabass wrote:

The 2nd amendment should be taken at face value. Any attempt in trying to "modernize" the Constitution, as Obama has implied, could very well lead to tyranny. Here's a good pic:

You can't really use tobacco to kill someone in a fit rage...

you can kill somebody with your bare hands in a fit of rage

You can't use your bare hand to kill someone a 100 feet away.

The_Walrus
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23 Dec 2012, 12:47 pm

Seabass wrote:

The 2nd amendment should be taken at face value. Any attempt in trying to "modernize" the Constitution, as Obama has implied, could very well lead to tyranny. Here's a good pic:

It is much easier to "do something" about guns than it is to "do something" about blunt or sharp weapons, or bare hands.

Jacoby wrote:

correlation does not imply causation

It depends. "Imply" is an equivocal word.

Correlation does not prove causation.
Correlation does suggest causation.

In any case, I was responding to the other user's suggestion that murders rose as a result of the reaction to Dunblane.

Lack of correlation is good evidence against causation, which is actually what I'm arguing.

Raptor
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23 Dec 2012, 12:51 pm

shrox wrote:

Jacoby wrote:

shrox wrote:

Seabass wrote:

The 2nd amendment should be taken at face value. Any attempt in trying to "modernize" the Constitution, as Obama has implied, could very well lead to tyranny. Here's a good pic:

You can't really use tobacco to kill someone in a fit rage...

you can kill somebody with your bare hands in a fit of rage

You can't use your bare hand to kill someone a 100 feet away.

Most people other than regular shooters can barely hit the broad side of a barn at 100 ft.
I know this from experience.
Regular shooters very rarely are murderers.

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Jacoby
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23 Dec 2012, 12:51 pm

The_Walrus wrote:

Seabass wrote:

The 2nd amendment should be taken at face value. Any attempt in trying to "modernize" the Constitution, as Obama has implied, could very well lead to tyranny. Here's a good pic:

It is much easier to "do something" about guns than it is to "do something" about blunt or sharp weapons, or bare hands.

Jacoby wrote:

correlation does not imply causation

No it doesn't. That's why it is considered a fallacy.

visagrunt
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23 Dec 2012, 12:53 pm

We are wandering around in the world of simplistic policy solutions.

Of course a gun ban won't work, because a gun ban won't legislate firearms out of existence. But that does not mean that there is not a place for other forms of regulation, to mitigate the issues of access to firearms by people who oughtn't to have them.

To my way of thinking, the most important effect of new thinking on regulating the acquisition and possession of firearms is the opportunity that it presents to start a change in public perception. At present, the debate is limited to two mutually exclusive, simplistic arguments: "guns protect us," and, "guns threaten us." There cannot be a dialogue when no one will come to the middle ground. And until people start to articulate that middle ground, there is no potential for cultural change.

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Magneto
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23 Dec 2012, 12:59 pm

I wasn't actually seriously suggesting that murders increased as a result of the handgun ban, I was raising it to point out that the handgun ban did not decrease the homicide rate...

I don't know why you mentioned the Telegraph. I'd linked to an official government publication...

shrox
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23 Dec 2012, 1:01 pm

Raptor wrote:

...Most people other than regular shooters can barely hit the broad side of a barn at 100 ft.
I know this from experience.
Regular shooters very rarely are murderers.

Exactly! So should more incompetent people be owning guns? They can't even take driving as a serious responsibility!

A dozen panicked people shooting in the dark (like a movie theater) is not safety to me.

BlueAbyss
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23 Dec 2012, 1:03 pm

PM wrote:

Did prohibition work? No.

Is the drug war working? No.

So.......

Exactly, and yet lots of tax dollars were and are spent on those efforts, to no avail. Lots of people have been imprisoned who were harming no one but themselves.

Seabass
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23 Dec 2012, 1:03 pm

visagrunt wrote:

So what policy, exactly, would be the middle ground solution? Banning "assault" (such a vague term) weapons. The very weapons that would used by a police state if martial law was passed. I'll pass on that.

shrox
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23 Dec 2012, 1:12 pm

BlueAbyss wrote:

PM wrote:

Did prohibition work? No.

Is the drug war working? No.

So.......

Exactly, and yet lots of tax dollars were and are spent on those efforts, to no avail. Lots of people have been imprisoned who were harming no one but themselves.

Prohibition was to keep people from harming themselves as it were.

A gun ban is to keep people from hurting others.

Very different. Both a symptom of how most upright mammals can't control themselves.

The_Walrus
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23 Dec 2012, 1:22 pm

Jacoby wrote:

The_Walrus wrote:

Seabass wrote:

The 2nd amendment should be taken at face value. Any attempt in trying to "modernize" the Constitution, as Obama has implied, could very well lead to tyranny. Here's a good pic:

It is much easier to "do something" about guns than it is to "do something" about blunt or sharp weapons, or bare hands.

Jacoby wrote:

correlation does not imply causation

No it doesn't. That's why it is considered a fallacy.

Educate yourself, and make sure you read the points people made.

The last user stated a correlation existed. I showed there wasn't. You said "correlation does not imply causation". That is not a valid criticism of my point, because I wasn't using correlation to show causation (unless you are referring to my comments about the strict approach towards knives reducing crime, in which case I apologise, that could be an example of correlation not implying causation- though more accurately post hoc ergo propter hoc, there's no correlation here).

Besides, it is not fallacious to say that correlation suggests causation. It is fallacious to say that correlation and causation have no link. Correlation does not prove causation, but it is a big hint.

Let's say less oranges are sold in markets as the murder rate increases.
Either the decline in oranges sales cause the murder rate to increase (because oranges are spiked with anti-violence chemicals by the government)
or the murder rate reduces orange sales (because people don't want to visit markets and instead buy from shops or online)
or they are both caused by a third variable (perhaps orange sellers see a life of crime as more exciting)
or the association is coincidental (markets aren't being used due to online retailing and home delivery, whilst crime skyrockets due to the war on drugs and increasing poverty).

In three of those four scenarios, there is a causal link. So whilst correlation is no proof of causation, it is a pretty big hint, particularly if there is no better explanation.

Jacoby
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23 Dec 2012, 1:24 pm

shrox wrote:

BlueAbyss wrote:

PM wrote:

Did prohibition work? No.

Is the drug war working? No.

So.......

Exactly, and yet lots of tax dollars were and are spent on those efforts, to no avail. Lots of people have been imprisoned who were harming no one but themselves.

Still doesn't work. You can't control the minds of people.

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