Gun sales jump following election

[Darwin]

Mike, this site offers a contrary viewpoint to your own. My guess is that the highest rates of noncompliance are in the hinterlands, i.e. 30 miles outside Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.

Do you have an actual credible source, as opposed to an obscure political advocacy site which uses the word "LIE-BERAL" in bold red print on the front page?

http://www.donmeredith.ca/outdoorsmen/R ... tion3.html
http://www.edmontonsun.com/Comment/Comm ... 92061.html
http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/pdf/Arc ... g00554.pdf

[Darth Wong]

Would The National Review count?

No. They don't do any research, and merely quote what political advocacy groups have been saying. Quoting National Review quoting an advocacy group is no more credible than simply quoting the advocacy group. Maybe less, since National Review is a notorious right-wing rag.

The author, Dave Kopel, in this and other writings, backs up his conclusions with concrete, verifiable data.

How are you supposed to get concrete data on the number of non-compliant gun owners in Canada, when those people are not listed by definition? The fact that some of the advocacy groups have memberships numbering in the thousands? In a country of more than 30 million people?

[Darth Wong]

Mike, this site offers a contrary viewpoint to your own. My guess is that the highest rates of noncompliance are in the hinterlands, i.e. 30 miles outside Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.

Do you have an actual credible source, as opposed to an obscure political advocacy site which uses the word "LIE-BERAL" in bold red print on the front page?

http://www.donmeredith.ca/outdoorsmen/R ... tion3.html
http://www.edmontonsun.com/Comment/Comm ... 92061.html
http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/pdf/Arc ... g00554.pdf

Editorials are not sources. Hell, that third one is just a PDF that somebody made of a newsgroup posting! If anything, the pitiful quality of the sources that you two keep quoting only says to me that there aren't any good sources for these claims.

[Count Chocula]

Kar Kar, you're overlooking the datum that, outside of the major metro areas Canada has both a smaller and more homogeneous population. America is more populous and more heterogenous than Canada, with more large cities.

Take Switzerland as an example. Despite the fact that adult males are issued light machine guns which are kept in the home after their mandatory military service, Swiss crime rates are very low. By the same token, Swiss citizens are generally of the same race and the same culture. That makes a difference.

I was tempted to respond to your last two sentences, but instead I'll simply ignore them. Me writing this tells you I'm ignoring them.

[Darth Wong]

Take Switzerland as an example. Despite the fact that adult males are issued light machine guns which are kept in the home after their mandatory military service, Swiss crime rates are very low. By the same token, Swiss citizens are generally of the same race and the same culture. That makes a difference.

So the difference is that they are of "the same race and the same culture", and not the fact that every one of these people is in fact registered, and has been through extensive training? Could you explain how you draw this conclusion?

[Master of Ossus]

Take Switzerland as an example. Despite the fact that adult males are issued light machine guns which are kept in the home after their mandatory military service, Swiss crime rates are very low. By the same token, Swiss citizens are generally of the same race and the same culture. That makes a difference.

How the fuck do the Swiss share the same culture when they speak 4 primary languages (and learn a fifth--English--in primary schools) and are separated into over 20 cantons that frequently view themselves as being largely autonomous? The fact that they are economically homongenous is a far better argument for you.

[Formless]

Is it okay to "collectively punish" the owners of some hypothetical item in which 50% of the owners do something wrong? How about 999/1000? There is presumably a point at which it is sensible and legitimate, right?

About 57 million US adults own at least one firearm, and about 400,000 crimes were committed with guns in 2006. Someone earlier in this thread suggested that it would be equally valid to lock up all men's penises due to rape. The rape rate in the US is about 0.5 per thousand. This is more than a factor of ten lower than the rate of firearm crime. Note that I have not taken into account repeat murders, nor repeat rapists. Don't have the data, unfortunately, since a lot of reported crimes are never solved.

I think it's vitally important that people be conscious of the rate of crime compared to the total ownership (of guns, penises or something else) before making asinine off-the-cuff analogies.

Lets see... 400,000 divided by 57,000,000 = .007018. That is in the thousandths of the population, around where Coyote estimated. So that is still one thousand people paying the price for seven peoples stupidity. How does that change what Coyote said? Off the cuff numbers are worse than off the cuff analogies.

[Kar Kar]

Kar Kar, you're overlooking the datum that, outside of the major metro areas Canada has both a smaller and more homogeneous population. America is more populous and more heterogenous than Canada, with more large cities.

Take Switzerland as an example. Despite the fact that adult males are issued light machine guns which are kept in the home after their mandatory military service, Swiss crime rates are very low. By the same token, Swiss citizens are generally of the same race and the same culture. That makes a difference.

I was tempted to respond to your last two sentences, but instead I'll simply ignore them. Me writing this tells you I'm ignoring them.

The urban vs. rural makeup is about 80 vs. 20 percent according to Statscan. So it's hardly the country of happy all white master race theme you've got flowing through your post.

So how does that disprove my assertion that less guns equals less gun violence?

[erik_t]

Is it okay to "collectively punish" the owners of some hypothetical item in which 50% of the owners do something wrong? How about 999/1000? There is presumably a point at which it is sensible and legitimate, right?

About 57 million US adults own at least one firearm, and about 400,000 crimes were committed with guns in 2006. Someone earlier in this thread suggested that it would be equally valid to lock up all men's penises due to rape. The rape rate in the US is about 0.5 per thousand. This is more than a factor of ten lower than the rate of firearm crime. Note that I have not taken into account repeat murders, nor repeat rapists. Don't have the data, unfortunately, since a lot of reported crimes are never solved.

I think it's vitally important that people be conscious of the rate of crime compared to the total ownership (of guns, penises or something else) before making asinine off-the-cuff analogies.

Lets see... 400,000 divided by 57,000,000 = .007018. That is in the thousandths of the population, around where Coyote estimated. So that is still one thousand people paying the price for seven peoples stupidity. How does that change what Coyote said? Off the cuff numbers are worse than off the cuff analogies.

Do you know what off-the-cuff means? Numbers sourced from the Department of Justice and the Harvard School of Public Health are not "off-the-cuff".

Further, seven is very nearly an order of magnitude more than one.

Even further... did you even read the post? The point is that we can't all freak the hell out about some kind of arbitrary "punishing many for the misdeeds of the few" alarmism. We all accept that some things are used almost exclusively for nefarious deeds, even if there are some non-harmful uses for them (the aforementioned high explosive grenades would be fun as hell but it seems unanimous that their effective ban is not a bad thing). The point is that we have to discuss the fraction at which global punishment is reasonable for local screw-ups, not throw out the whole idea.

Lord knows what everyone here thinks of fireworks laws, which to me seem perfectly analogous.

[Formless]

Off the cuff in the way you used them, not in the sense of validity. I never questioned the validity of your sources, I questioned the premise that they were being used to support. 7/1000 is an order of magnitude larger than 1/1000, but its still too damn small to justify taking it out on legitimate gun owners, anyone with half a brain can see that.

[Count Chocula]

To Lord Wong's point, there is no doubt in my mind that the Swiss system of training their citizens in the proper use of firearms has a beneficial effect. I honestly don't know about the effect of registration; I can imagine, though, that if Uncle Sam issued me an M16 for civil defense after my enlistment he'd want to know where his gun was!

Kar Kar, BTFO on the "happy all white master race theme" line. Don't put words in my mouth.

[erik_t]

Off the cuff in the way you used them, not in the sense of validity. I never questioned the validity of your sources, I questioned the premise that they were being used to support. 7/1000 is an order of magnitude larger than 1/1000, but its still too damn small to justify taking it out on legitimate gun owners, anyone with half a brain can see that.

Why, because you declare so by fiat?

Far, far, far fewer people were hurt by nearly any recalled item you care to name. Should those recalls not have been mandated? Was the Ford Pinto safe enough for you toss your kids in back and drive around?

What gives you the right to mandate what numbers are okay and what numbers are not?

[Formless]

What the fuck does recalled toys have to do with gun control?

And seriously, seven out of one thousand gun owners! if it was fifty percent of gun owners, sure, there is a problem. If it was thirty percent, fine. Ten percent. One percent? This is less than one percent of the population. Mass banning is a rediculous overreaction to the action of a very small subset of people by your own numbers. Take your head out of your ass and think.

[erik_t]

I did think. I have come to the reasoned conclusion that handguns, probably being the vast majority of those weapons used in crimes and having minimal hunting utility, should be banned or should at least be controlled to the extreme that fully automatic weapons are.

Will you tell me to "think" some more? Is your conclusion the only reasonable one?

[Formless]

When you are basing your conclusion on patiently rediculous statistics? Why yes, your position is very reasonable.

[Lusankya]

Registration doesn't look that bad on the surface, but historically has lead to bans Every. Single. Time.

Do you have a source for this statement? It sounds like material generated pasted together by people who define gun rights as absolutely zero supervision.

New York 1996
Canada 1997 (legally registered handguns of .32 or 25 caliber or barrel length under 105mm)
California 2000 (legally registered SKS rifles)
Illinois 2002 (Chicago illegally registers guns of anyone with an Illinois FOID card)
New Orleans 2005 (led to passage of bill denying state confiscation of guns during an emergency)

Australia, Bermuda, Cambodia, China, Cuba, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Guatemala, Ireland, Jamaica, Soviet Georgia, Uganda

It may take 50 years, but eventually someone in a system that has gun registration uses this list to turn people into criminals, or disarm them and take away their rights.

Take Australia off that list. The gun buyback was in no way related to regsitration and was in every way related to the Port Arthur massacre. If you don't know what that is, go and educate yourself. Perhaps you could provide some evidence of causality there rather than just showing some weak correlation.

Also, in most places, gun ownership is a privelige and not a right. Also, I think it's hilarious that you're using the "Hitler did it, therefore it was evil" argument. Because clearly being a vegetarian, abstaining from alcohol and being nice to your dog are evil too. And Saddam Hussein let all his people have guns if they wanted. Clearly he's all hunky dory!

[RedImperator]

A handgun ban is politically impossible, even without District of Columbia v. Heller taken into account. If you're looking to squander all the progress progressives have made in the last few years, handing the Republican Party the gun issue again would be the way to do it.

That said...

When you are basing your conclusion on patiently rediculous statistics? Why yes, your position is very reasonable.

You're making a terrible argument here. His statistics are fine. The counter-argument is the overall utility of a handgun ban, not "ZOMG COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT". I think the utility of a handgun ban is net negative (I listed one reason above) and a case against Erik's position can be made, but you're going to get your ass kicked, and rightly so, if you keep pursuing this line of argument.

[erik_t]

When you are basing your conclusion on patiently rediculous statistics? Why yes, your position is very reasonable.

All right, little tip for you. Statistics can't be ridiculous, let alone patently ridiculous. When you grow up to be a big kid, you're going to find that there are a lot of judgement calls in this world, and you're going to find out that calling someone's numbers ridiculous doesn't make them false. You're also going to find that there is space for disagreement between rational, thinking people, particularly on a judgement call like this. Guns aren't a central part of society the way, say, automobiles are. If someone said that cars should be banned because there was an occasional crash, then that would indeed be pretty silly. Adults have this conversation over and over and over because there isn't an easy, closed-form perfect answer that will satisfy everyone.

I'll be ignoring you in this thread from here on out unless you bring more to the table than calling my facts impolite names.






RI, I know it's not politically feasible, and I should have made that clear in the vein of where this thread started out. I would not advocate that Obama or anyone else try to make it happen. That doesn't mean I don't think it's the best answer.

[Formless]

Never mind. Like I said, I never questioned your numbers. I was just pointing out that they seemed to me to say just how little of a problem it is. Feel free to disagree with that assessment if you must, I don't really care. However, you have not convinced me either.

[Formless]

Actually, you know what? Let me retrace my steps since you guys seem to take issue with a single line. You are right, a statistic cannot be rediculous, it can only be true or not. Its binary, either the numbers are right or they aren't.

However, the judgement calls we make based off them can be rediculous, and that is what I meant by that remark. That the numbers say that less than one percent of gun owners commit gun crimes suggests to me that the majority of gun owners are not 'POSTAL HOMICIDAL PSYCHOPATH WITH A GUN RAR!!!1!' who are going to go out and shoot someone at some point in their life. Our laws say that we punish those who actually do something wrong, and we do not go banning things unless they prove to be a consistent danger to the public. Those numbers seem to me to say that there is a significant enough problem to justify banning them. Pistols? they would probably be the first on the ax, true. Its not like they are good for hunting or anything. Banning all guns? Over-reaction, IMO.

And on the insults bit, that is how I feel, and I did bring some logic, if you will so kindly reread them, the one line notwithstanding. Like I said before, I am not used to working without an edit button, and was actually kicking myself when I realized what I wrote. But the insults? Fuck off. I had the impression that this place did not dismiss people just for coming off as abrasive. If you can show me to be stupid, so be it, but I had a point in there regardless.

[Darth Wong]

The majority of car drivers are not homicidal or reckless, yet we treat them with suspicion, license them, register them, etc. In fact, most people would argue that the driver licensing scheme is far too lenient as it stands right now.

[Formless]

Those numbers seem to me to say that there is a significant enough problem to justify banning them. Pistols? they would probably be the first on the ax, true. Its not like they are good for hunting or anything. Banning all guns? Over-reaction, IMO.

Damnit! That should read "Those numbers seem to me to say that there is NOT a significant enough problem to justify banning them." I'm going to have to get used to this...

[Formless]

We also do not ban cars in their entirety, either. Even particularly dangerous ones like motorcycles. We regulate them and have anti-idiot measures (admittedly ones that do not work well enough, but that is another topic). I fail to see how his position is justified even taking that into account. Especially when the percentage of car drivers who kill people compared to the number who drive is a whole lot larger than the number of gun owners who kill people compared to the number who own guns. If you have a reason to think otherwise, educate me. I'll listen.

[AdmiralKanos]

We also do not ban cars in their entirety, either. Even particularly dangerous ones like motorcycles. We regulate them and have anti-idiot measures (admittedly ones that do not work well enough, but that is another topic). I fail to see how his position is justified even taking that into account. Especially when the percentage of car drivers who kill people compared to the number who drive is a whole lot larger than the number of gun owners who kill people compared to the number who own guns. If you have a reason to think otherwise, educate me. I'll listen.

Those points of difference are not relevant to the point under discussion, which is the notion that it is always wrong to apply anything that could be construed as "collective punishment".

[erik_t]

There are 237 million registered vehicles in the US, and about 43,500 traffic deaths occurred in 2004. That's about 5500 cars per death per year

In 2005, there were 13,141 homicides and accidental shootings (compared to about 31,000 total) in the US. That's 4300 gun owners per death per year (again, not counting suicides and such).

So yes, guns are more dangerous. Next time do your own damned research instead of claiming one number is "a whole lot larger" than another.




Never mind that, again, it's an invalid comparison ANYWAY because the good coming from automobiles is much greater than that from firearms.