A well regulated militia...

[tzor]

Let's consider the parallel issue of Fireworks. I am in favor of firework rights. I think that I should be able to buy and use fireworks for holidays and special occasions without fear of police harassment.

I am also in favor of firework rights, but then again I am also a member of LIARS (Long Island Advanced Rocketry Society). Here is one of my LIARS friends (a former co-worker and a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan) setting up two "SNITCH" units to demonstrate to Boy Scouts a few years ago.



"Easy to prep for flight, no parachute to pack! Pop in a motor and go! The Snitch flips over at apogee and lands on wire antennas." Max height 200'

Even these simple rockets are taken very seriously by us; we need to make sure there is adequate space, we need to make sure there is adequate procedures during launch. Even small rockets are SERIOUS BUSINESS. And these things don't explode like fireworks.

Clearly, I think there needs to be a process to ensure that people who use fireworks know all the dangers that can happen. Safety courses are a must. There is nothing so dangerous as a firework that is supposed to be going up heading sideways into a group of bystanders. And yes I saw that happen, right outside of my house! (Fortunately it didn't head towards the bystanders, but it was heading towards my neighbor's house!)

[CatharzGodfoot]

Incidentally, fireworks are available in stores over here in Switzerland. And it's not really a problem. I was very surprised to learn they are strictly regulated in the US.

There are federal regulations relating to pollution and military-grade weaponry. Most regulation, however, is at the state level, and can vary a lot. Here is a rough map:
http://www.americanpyro.com/pdf/2011Sta ... orkMap.pdf

[Starmaker]

I think banning honest citizens from owning legal guns because they could be used for a crime shows a view of citizens that runs counter to democratic ideals.

That's what banning means: something is legal, the lawmakers decide their goals are better achieved with something being banned, and it's no longer legal.

"Democratic ideals" means that the lawmakers are We the People, the goal is Public Good, and everyone has 100% perfect knowledge of the issue, fully qualified to vote and actually votes. This is a perfectly democratic process, whether the subject is cigarettes, guns, stealing personal info (what constitutes personal anyway?) or the color purple.

(unless you think banning or lifting bans shouldn't be done at all, in which case, RIBBIT)

If you think you cannot generally trust your fellow citizens not to shoot you, why do you trust them with the power to vote?

Statistics.

I am rather sick of the fearmongering that paints every gun-owning citizen as a potential murderer. That's exactly the kind of attitude that paints every black man as a drug dealer, pimp, or both, and every latin american immigrant as a cartel and gang member.

I am rather sick of the fearmongering that portrays every drunk driver as a potential murderer... what?

[CatharzGodfoot]

If you think you cannot generally trust your fellow citizens not to shoot you, why do you trust them with the power to vote?

Statistics.

I am rather sick of the fearmongering that paints every gun-owning citizen as a potential murderer. That's exactly the kind of attitude that paints every black man as a drug dealer, pimp, or both, and every latin american immigrant as a cartel and gang member.

I am rather sick of the fearmongering that portrays every drunk driver as a potential murderer... what?

There's no reason you can't do both. I've been in parts of the US where driving around drunk while shooting guns is a regular form of weekend entertainment.

Seriously, though, it's more akin to portraying every driver as a potential murderer.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Seriously, though, it's more akin to portraying every driver as a potential murderer.

My dad does describe a driver's license as a "license to kill"...

[sabs]

Except that again, a car is not a tool made for killing. You can kill with a Car, but it's not it's primary function.

A gun's primary function is to kill.
A car's primary function is to go from point a to point b.
And yet, cars are more regulated as to who can use them, than guns are.

[JigokuBosatsu]

they break a window getting in, that wakes you up, you grab the minigun you keep under the bed, and the very moment they open the door you gun them down. The instant they do it.

Sorry, that's how I read it at first, which made me wonder how well Australian gun control was working.

And personally, I've never been in a violent situation where snapping out a police baton would not have been preferable to having a firearm. Or, ya know doing nothing at all. Someone with a shotgun having the drop on you just kind of sucks all around. Here's to darkness and hedgerows and running fast!

And here's more, just something I can add personal experience to:

Putting it in that perspective, letting people cure their depression in a quick, painless manner is about the kindest thing you can do. Unless they're Buddhist, in which case it's just a temporary solution to a permanent problem.

As far as most Buddhists are concerned, from what I understand, suicide is a total last resort option. "Paying it forward"- the tragedy and violence etc.- is way shittier than any personal pain you may be experiencing. In my own experience with transient suicidal experiences (brought on by a 1-2 punch of antidepressant rejection/spousal abuse), it was only the fact that I had been hitting the dharma books so hard that I didn't jump in front of a train- I was aware of the idea of metacognition and trying to assimilate it into my life, so when those "KILL YOURSELF" thoughts popped up and seemed foreign to my consciousness, I was able to say "Shit, these are foreign to my consciousness, something is up."

[Koumei]

That last bit was a joke: Buddhism generally involves reincarnation (depending on which sect of it you follow). So killing yourself merely gives you a short reprieve before you come back as a depressed (someone else).

Hence temporary solution for permanent problem.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Oh, I know. I had something non-jokey to say so I went with it.

But if you do think reincarnation is a real thing, it opens up for some new humor. "Oh, think you want to kill yourself now? Wait until you're an insatiably hungry ghost with a mouth too small to eat anything!"

[PoliteNewb]

Except that again, a car is not a tool made for killing. You can kill with a Car, but it's not it's primary function.

A gun's primary function is to kill.
A car's primary function is to go from point a to point b.
And yet, cars are more regulated as to who can use them, than guns are.

Primary functions are irrelevant. Utterly and completely.

As to your statement about what is more regulated...wha?

A 16 year old can walk into the DMV in most (all?) states, take a quick test, and very shortly be legal to operate the vast majority of automobiles, in public. By 18, they can do so almost without restriction, as long as they obey the law. They can also own a wide variety of makes/models, as many as they want, and can walk into a car place and buy anything on the lot the same day, provided they have the cash.

If they just want to drive around on their own property, they don't even need the license.

Comparison for guns?

[sabs]

You go to a gun show, and buy a gun.
No permits, no restrictions, no background checks.

That quick test written test? Followed by a practical driving test. That is quite possible to fail. There are no requirements of having ever taken a gun safety course in order to buy a gun. You never have to renew your gun permit, you don't have to have your gun inspected to make sure it still works properly.

And you're completely wrong, primary functions are completely relevant.

[Gx1080]

@sabs

Armor piercing rounds and hollow points tend to have shots so powerful that the very sound can leave the USER deaf if used on a closed room. And at that potency, they are way harder to control than regular guns.

So, there's a very good reason to ban them.

[sabs]

GX you completely fail @ reading comprehension.

[shadzar]

more regulations on drivers license
more regulations on gun owner/use license

lets add regulations on birthing licenses.

that way stupid people wont breed and have stupid kids that can get a hold of guns and cause problems. well behaved society because of better home life and upbringing means less volatile society that would use guns incorrectly.

[PoliteNewb]

You go to a gun show, and buy a gun.
No permits, no restrictions, no background checks.

Ever done it? Because it seriously does not work that way.

[Username17]

You go to a gun show, and buy a gun.
No permits, no restrictions, no background checks.

Ever done it? Because it seriously does not work that way.

If you purchase from someone who has a registered business or who crosses state lines, they are required to run your ID through an instant background check before transferring the firearm. If on the other hand, you buy from someone in-state who makes only occasional sales, they don't have to check or report shit. So the main booths require background checks, but the swap meet guys don't. A rather significant amount of gun smuggling goes through that particular loophole.

A 16 year old can walk into the DMV in most (all?) states, take a quick test, and very shortly be legal to operate the vast majority of automobiles, in public. By 18, they can do so almost without restriction, as long as they obey the law.

What the fuck are you talking about? There is no age limit where you magically don't have to take a test to get a driver's license. People who are under 18 are required to undergo driver's training courses before they are allowed to take the learner's permit test. Upon getting the learner's permit, they are allowed to drive with a licensed driver over the age of 25 in the car with them. The learner's permit expires after an amount of time that varies depending on what state you live in if you haven't upgraded it to a valid license by demonstrating driving skills in a practical exam. If you're over 18, the only thing that changes is that you don't need the driver's training course before you're allowed to get the learner's permit, and when you have the learner's permit you're allowed to drive if you have a licensed driver in the car of any age.

Statistics.

Yes.

Toyota Camrys in the United States produce 71 fatalities per million cars per year.
Firearms in the United States produce 169 fatalities per million guns per year.

Now, there are vehicles that are a lot less safe than the Toyota Camry. The highest risk vehicle in the mid-size category is for some reason the Chevrolet Lumina, which kills 144 people per year per million vehicles. But I gotta point out: that's still significantly lower than the death rate from firearms.

I can't actually find good death stats on a per-weapon model basis. I can get the gun deaths per capita and I can get the guns per capita both fairly easily, and I can divide one by the other and get gun deaths per gun without much trouble. But I have a hypothesis that if you chalked up all the deaths from different types of guns and divided by how many guns there were, you'd find a relatively low death rate for sport rifles and a ludicrously obscene death rate for pistols. But I don't actually know that.

And gun advocates really go out of their way to obfuscate shit like that, because when all you see is the average, you see a pretty atrocious number (especially when you consider how much more cars are used per day than guns for most people). But I suspect that the data is way swingier than car models and if the American people really took a hard look at that sort of thing we'd have stuff similar to the assault weapon ban popping up all over everywhere.

I don't actually know what gun models have twice the average rate of fatalities per gun, but I'm pretty sure there are some. And 300+ fatalities per million weapons per year is a crazy high number. Compare to relatively non-dangerous activities like taking MDMA. Which in the US has a fatality rate of one per million users per year.

-Username17

[RadiantPhoenix]

Firearms in the United States produce 169 fatalities per million guns per year.

That post didn't make sense until I reread it and noticed the bolded part. Just posting this in case someone else makes the same mistake.

Without it, it sounds like, "yeah, cars are way more deadly than guns! A single model of car kills almost as many people per year as all guns combined!" Which isn't the actual meaning.

[Gx1080]

Firearms in the United States produce 169 fatalities per million guns per year.

And 300+ fatalities per million weapons per year is a crazy high number.

[DSMatticus]

I don't actually know what gun models have twice the average rate of fatalities per gun, but I'm pretty sure there are some. And 300+ fatalities per million weapons per year is a crazy high number.

[Gx1080]

So, where's this weapon with "twice the average rate of fatalities"?

Because it seems like stretching statistics + making up BS to support your narrative. Good old leftist debate tactics there.

[DSMatticus]

Toyota Camrys in the United States produce 71 fatalities per million cars per year.
Firearms in the United States produce 169 fatalities per million guns per year.
...
Compare to relatively non-dangerous activities like taking MDMA. Which in the US has a fatality rate of one per million users per year.

These are the statistics that are relevant to the point. The 300+ per million fatality weapon, whether it exists or not, is not necessary to establish the point, because 169 > 71 > 1. Your choice to focus on that single unessential claim, express skepticism, and pretend that invalidates everything else that has been said actually is a bullshit underhanded debate tactic. And it was so blatant in this case that you should be ashamed.

Now, if you'd like to call the three statistics which make up the core of the argument into question, instead of trying to distract from them with irrelevant bullshit, say so.
http://eetd.lbl.gov/ea/teepa/pdf/LBNL-49675.pdf
http://thedea.org/statistics.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violen ... ted_States

Relevant info from wikipedia: ~44 million gun owners, and 31,224 firearm deaths. These numbers are from slightly different years, so it may not be completely accurate, but that would actually put the deaths at 709 deaths per million gun owners, compared to say 7 deaths per million ecstacy users. I'm suspicious of this, and would like to find a more direct source/study, but weeding through bullshit for certain topics on google is hard. Ask Tzor, he has that problem a lot.

[Gx1080]

The biggest statistic was the Lumina, which brings 144 per year per million vehicles.

Is expected that guns have a higher fatality rate than cars, since they are designed to kill stuff. Duh. Is also irrelevant.

Here's a question. If you think that the War on Drugs is a huge waste of money and better at promoting mafias than the Prohibition, how much would you think that a War on Guns would cost?

I have already wrote it, but if you make weapons illegal, the only ones that have them are cops, military guys and criminals. You may be fine with that. I'm not. Something to do with not surrendering freedoms to the State, but is a waste of time explaining that to a leftist.

[Username17]

Looking over the stats, I'm pretty sure it's over estimating the number of deaths per vehicle. The deaths per vehicle is the number of people in the car killed plus the number of other people killed in the collision. And that's a really good way to compare the safety record of one vehicle to another. But the way that is set up, if a Camry runs into a Lumina and the occupants of both cars die, then that's two deaths for the Camry and two deaths for the Lumina. So cars are actually killing substantially less people compared to guns than those statistics would imply. Of the Camry's 71 deaths per million vehicles, 24 of them are deaths from vehicles and pedestrians that the vehicle struck - and some non-zero number of those are therefore being double counted. Since in the US, about 16% of collision fatalities are non-motorist, I would guess that 14 of those 71 deaths are double counted - appearing also in the death tallies of the car they ran into. That 71 deaths per million Camrys would be ~64 deaths per million if we counted it like gun deaths.

There is another thing that needs to be said, which is that cars are much more evenly distributed than guns. There are 90 guns for every 100 Americans, and there are 80 highway vehicles for every 100 Americans. But obviously there are people who own more than one car and people who own more than one gun. Apparently 61% of people in the US are licensed to drive a car, although obviously some non-zero number of those people don't actually have access to a car and are licensed for identification purposes. On the gun side: I find an upper estimate of 55 million gun owners in the US.

What that means is that like half the population is driving cars but like a sixth (17%) of the country is owning guns. So if you track it up by deaths per driver and deaths per gun owner, the numbers skew horrendously in favor of the cars. Those 64 Camry deaths per million cars shoots up to 102 deaths per million Camry Owners, but the deaths for guns shoots up to 857 deaths per million gun owners. Now that's significantly lower than the death rate from, for example Cancer (3219 per million inhabitants), but if we split cancer out into the multiple diseases that it actually is, the numbers change. If we go to the state with the highest rate of death from Lung and Bronchus Cancer (Kentucky), the death rate is 746 per year per million inhabitants.

So... gun owners are more deadly than lung cancer. By a substantial margin, even if you live in a place where everyone smokes (note the state with the lowest death rate from lung cancer is California at 220 per million per year). Individual firearms are not, but if you count collections of guns instead of individual guns, they are more deadly than lung cancer.

-Username17

[Draco_Argentum]

For fucks sake, the NRA lobbied against banning hollow points and armor piercing rounds. There is /no/ reason for a gun enthusiast or a hunter to need either of those.

@sabs

Armor piercing rounds and hollow points tend to have shots so powerful that the very sound can leave the USER deaf if used on a closed room. And at that potency, they are way harder to control than regular guns.

So, there's a very good reason to ban them.

I've just quoted two reasons why people are not qualified to talk about gun control in any meaningful fashion.

sabs, punch yourself in the face right now. Anyone suggesting the use of FMJ projectiles for most hunting applications is a monster. Thats just plain inhumane.

Gx, go get a gun, load it with FMJ and fire it a few times without hearing protection. The sound is created by the bullet's shock wave and the propellant gasses expanding at high velocity. The bullet's composition is not relevant.

[Username17]

I've just quoted two reasons why people are not qualified to talk about gun control in any meaningful fashion.

What a coincidence, your post was a pretty good reason too!

Gx, go get a gun, load it with FMJ and fire it a few times without hearing protection. The sound is created by the bullet's shock wave and the propellant gasses expanding at high velocity. The bullet's composition is not relevant.

That is the most stupid fucking thing anyone has said on this thread. Which is impressive, considering that it's a gun thread. The bullet's composition has everything to do with whether it breaks the sound barrier, and if it does the noise is very much louder than if it does not. Like how a whip cracks and a sword whooshes. High velocity armor piercing rounds are called that because they go very fast. Subsonic FMJ rounds are called that because they go slower than the speed of sound. Bullets travelling at high speed make more noise than bullets traveling at low speed.

Now: stop being retarded.

-Username17