Tuscon incident and gun control discussion

[Mr. Coffee]

Knives are more dangerous than guns, here's why...

Any idiot can use a knife, all you need to know is "pointy end toward the person you want to stab" and you're golden. Guns take a bit of training and whole lot of practice in order to maintain reasonable accuracy (especially under stressful conditions, aka "pucker factor"). Knives are great at causing lots of trauma to the cardiovascular system (that means you're gonna bleed, a lot), meanwhile with a fire arm (depending caliber) you have to land rounds in very specific areas of your target to guarantee a kill (that's where that training and practice comes in). Since most handgun shooting take place at 21ft or less, and a reasonably fit human can cross 21ft pretty goddamn quickly, unless you've done some very specific firearms training and practiced that training constantly and consistently the guy with the knife is a more immediate threat.

Then there's this whole thing about disarming a guy with a knife. Sure, it can be done, but unless you're damn quick and/or have some very specific training your ass it going to get cut and going to get cut badly. Meanwhile, disarming a guy with a gun is mostly about pushing the barrel away so the business end ain't pointing at you, and the barrel of the weapon bit of leverage for doing that. A knife, yeah, go ahead and grab the blade and tell me how many fingers you just lost.

[Serafina]

Oh, I get it. You're one of those idiots who thinks "effectiveness" of a weapon boils down to "how much damage does it do to the body, economics be damned". Yeah, by that standard you have to wonder why more criminals don't use hand grenades.

Because they are hard to acquire?
This only supports my argument that limiting access to deadly weapons is a good thing. I do not discard economics, my argument is in fact based on them - stricter access to guns will make them more expensive, therefore reducing their numbers. If given a choice, it is better for the criminal to have a gun than to have a knife.

Even if you do not accept that, then without said restrictions the criminal will have access to both, instead of just the knife, so it's still a desirable outcome.
If a knife is, say, the smarter choife for mugging someone, then a criminal will chose the knife. If the gun is better for another crime, then he can chose it under your system, but not under mine - thereby being at a disadvantage.

The Columbine shooters managed to whip up their own homemade pipebombs, and while unreliable some of them did in fact detonate. They were teenagers and by all accounts pretty mental themselves. It doesn't take that much skill to create a destructive device, just to make one that's safe to handle.

I was talking about the skill in order to use said weapon, not about creating it. That was pretty obvious.

So I take it that you aren't going to show me that evidence I asked for.

Have you presented any evidence for your "it's purely cultural"? Not accessability of guns, but that criminals prefer guns for solely cultural reason?

And you never asked for specific evidence. Oh, you want evidence that it is easier to kill with a handgun than with a knife? Gee, ask anyone who knows anything about weapons. Yes, it IS possible to kill with a knife, and it is not necessarily that hard. But it is easier still with a handgun, and it is possible over greater range.
If you seriously want to claim that a handgun doesn't make it easier to kill when compared to a knife, it's your job of providing evidence for that claim.

lso because a gun is more expensive; with more effective gun laws this becomes even more pronounced, and so the criminals choose more cost effective means of committing crimes.

To hammer it into you again:
This is essentially my argument. Such an outcome is desirable because a knife is less likely to kill someone than a gun. It is better to make someone operate based on cost efficiency than based on effectivity.

[Broomstick]

I also never claimed that it was impossibe to rob a store with a gun. I admit that the information given by Broomstick and others is new to me, but given that it is possible to do these robberies without any weapon at all, it does not exactly relate to the debate.

Well, it does in a way... but it's not entirely obvious.

There was a time when bank robberies were closer to what has been portrayed in the movie genre "Western" or "Cowboy" - crooks might use explosives to blow a safe, tellers might have guns, shoot outs could occur... but there was a death toll. Between modern bank vaults being almost impregnable with any reasonable amount of explosives one could get inside a bank to other security features in play, bank robbers are pretty much reduced to getting just what is at the tellers' stations if they want to get in and out quickly (and they do, and the more urban the area the quicker they want to move, and the faster the police response times will be). MOST bank robbers just want the money, they don't really want to hurt anyone or engage in a shoot out. So... eliminate the possibility of that and suddenly a lot of bank robbers no longer feel a need to carry a gun, or any weapon at all, and those that still do are less inclined to use any weapon they do hold because it's far less likely anyone will resist at all. What's still scary, of course, is that not everyone wants JUST the money. You could still get a crazy madman or deranged person or someone who wants more than just money - maybe a hostage or two or someone to rape later on. That's a lot less common that the common "just a thief" bank robber.

In other words, we found a way to reduce the demand for guns in a certain situation, and then gun use dropped in that particular situation.

That is a valid approach to reducing the harm caused by guns.

I have to wonder if you see a drop in gun ownership - or a shift to owning hunting and sport weapons instead of "self-defense" weapons - in areas with lower crime and/or better police response times? You certainly have less demand for hunting guns in heavily urban areas simply because there is less hunting there.

That's why it's worthwhile to talk about reducing the social and cultural reasons people own guns. What we're really interested in is not so much abolishing guns but preventing harm caused by guns. One way is take away the guns entirely, but we've already covered why that's not practical in the US, and in fact even where private ownership of guns is banned illegal guns do show up. Another way is to attempt to reduce the harm and misuse. We've talked about training programs, licensing, who should and shouldn't own a gun.... but not that much in taking away the reasons people want to own a gun, or the reasons guns are misused. Not only would that reduce problem with guns, but also reduce the chances of replacing one type of weapon violence with another type of weapon violence (such as shifting from guns to knives).

Of course, that sort of thing is more difficult than passing a ban on something.

[Broomstick]

Then there's this whole thing about disarming a guy with a knife. Sure, it can be done, but unless you're damn quick and/or have some very specific training your ass it going to get cut and going to get cut badly. Meanwhile, disarming a guy with a gun is mostly about pushing the barrel away so the business end ain't pointing at you, and the barrel of the weapon bit of leverage for doing that. A knife, yeah, go ahead and grab the blade and tell me how many fingers you just lost.

Actually, with a knife-wielding opponent you're better off pushing against his wrist to divert the blade away from you - BUT that is not easy to do in a high-stress situation and you stand a very good chance of getting your hand and/or arm sliced up, particularly if it's a long blade or the attacker has a longer reach than you or both.

[Serafina]

Knives are more dangerous than guns, here's why...

Any idiot can use a knife, all you need to know is "pointy end toward the person you want to stab" and you're golden. Guns take a bit of training and whole lot of practice in order to maintain reasonable accuracy (especially under stressful conditions, aka "pucker factor"). Knives are great at causing lots of trauma to the cardiovascular system (that means you're gonna bleed, a lot), meanwhile with a fire arm (depending caliber) you have to land rounds in very specific areas of your target to guarantee a kill (that's where that training and practice comes in). Since most handgun shooting take place at 21ft or less, and a reasonably fit human can cross 21ft pretty goddamn quickly, unless you've done some very specific firearms training and practiced that training constantly and consistently the guy with the knife is a more immediate threat.

Then there's this whole thing about disarming a guy with a knife. Sure, it can be done, but unless you're damn quick and/or have some very specific training your ass it going to get cut and going to get cut badly. Meanwhile, disarming a guy with a gun is mostly about pushing the barrel away so the business end ain't pointing at you, and the barrel of the weapon bit of leverage for doing that. A knife, yeah, go ahead and grab the blade and tell me how many fingers you just lost.

If that is the case (and i am not inclined to disagree), then stricter gun laws still prevent a skilled criminal from having a gun. Thus, still a desirable outcome.

It is also important to consider the cases where non-criminals kill someone with guns (say, a mother shooting a father in an argument or something like that - of course she is a criminal after that). Such situations are less likely to be deadly if ready access to guns is not given - yes, she could also use a knife, but it takes more guts to assault someone with a knife than to point a gun at him and pull the trigger.

That's why it's worthwhile to talk about reducing the social and cultural reasons people own guns. What we're really interested in is not so much abolishing guns but preventing harm caused by guns. One way is take away the guns entirely, but we've already covered why that's not practical in the US, and in fact even where private ownership of guns is banned illegal guns do show up. Another way is to attempt to reduce the harm and misuse. We've talked about training programs, licensing, who should and shouldn't own a gun.... but not that much in taking away the reasons people want to own a gun, or the reasons guns are misused. Not only would that reduce problem with guns, but also reduce the chances of replacing one type of weapon violence with another type of weapon violence (such as shifting from guns to knives).

Oh, i agree completely. Legal restrictions are only one possible tool and perhaps not even the best one. That doesn't mean that such restrictions is a bad thing for reducing the amount of people killed, which is apparently what Formless is saying.

[Mr. Coffee]

Such an outcome is desirable because a knife is less likely to kill someone than a gun.

Ok, I really, really want to see some evidence for that. A gun is only more likely to kill someone if the guy shooting is actually able to place his fire in very specific areas of the human body, and that takes a good amount of train to pull off under stress (ever wonder why you keep reading about police shootings where the officers involved dump entire magazines for a handful of hits? It's called stress). A knife if relatively simple to operate and it can cause deep penetrating wounds (All you kneed is about 4.5" worth of blade and you can penitrate damned near every organ in the human body), and they tend to cause a lot more blood loss.

Actually, with a knife-wielding opponent you're better off pushing against his wrist to divert the blade away from you - BUT that is not easy to do in a high-stress situation and you stand a very good chance of getting your hand and/or arm sliced up, particularly if it's a long blade or the attacker has a longer reach than you or both.

Yeah, like I said, unless you're damned fast, lucky as hell, and/or have some very specific training trying to disarm a knife attacker is going to result in you bleeding.

[Formless]

Have you presented any evidence for your "it's purely cultural"?

That's your strawman, not my argument. I said that its a factor, and one you consistently refuse to even consider. You just keep on holding up that wall of ignorance for all to see, serafina.

To hammer it into you again:
This is essentially my argument. Such an outcome is desirable because a knife is less likely to kill someone than a gun. It is better to make someone operate based on cost efficiency than based on effectivity.

Uh huh... and once again you've failed to grasp the ultimate reason this argument was made. It doesn't matter if the criminals are using guns or knives, what matters is that there are so many people turning to crime in the first place. You are trying to deal with the symptoms of social problems, rather than the root causes, and in a way that won't really change things much as shown by people who know far more about crime and far more about violence than you do. You just won't hear any of it.

[Thanas]

Jesus Christ.

This thread is a mess to read and the quality of arguments from some posters is really hurting my brain. So I'll just reply to two posts and my apologies if I miss anything else. I'll also add that I am not going to reply to anybody else replying to me as I feel I am currently debating too many people already for me to keep track of on who said what.

RE: accidental gun deaths

So we have 30.000 accidental gun deaths over 20 years. Wow. And that is just deaths, not counting injuries etc.

While that is not an acceptable number (I'm all for improved gun safety, and no question responsible gun ownership includes keeping them out of the hands of kids) remember that we have something like that number of fatal auto crashes a year, meaning over that same 20 year span we had 600,000 fatal car accidents (again, deaths, not just injuries). The US is a big country, a lot of people die every year from a lot of causes. While 30,000 over 20 years is a significant number and scary by itself it's by no means the leading cause of death in any demographic group. It's important, yes, but arguably not THE most important item on an agenda to reduce deaths.

However, people need to drive in order to earn a living. They do not need a gun to do so except for a very narow group of people, with those guys usually having the best training (cops, soldiers). Equating gun deaths with car accidents is also pretty bad coming from the viewpoint that people use a car every day, they do not use a gun every day.


Re: Public safety
Again, those who claim that a third of Americans need guns to defend themselves should cite statistics to prove that a third of Americans have been victims of crimes and are living under such continuing threats.

Or, like I said, there could be solid statistical proof that a knife is as dangerous as a gun (at least in registered crime cases). That's pretty simple - find the percentage of successful gun assaults (i.e. gun assaults turned into firearm murder) and compare it to the same for knives.

Maybe I'm just bad with google fu, but who the hell would have those stats? Should we have other info comparing lacerations to puncture wounds? Survivability between hemorrhage versus organ failure? Hypovolemic shock versus blunt force trauma? Lead poisoning versus steel poisoning?

A good way would be to look into robberies committed in countries with no guns available to the common public and find out how often these turn out to be lethal in ratio to the number of cases committed. Sorta like death/robbery vs death/robbery in the US.

Yet still, the fact that a gun offers way more advantages to a criminal than just a knife is undisputable. Why else would heavy criminals in Germany always try to own guns instead of knifes? Really, I have to wonder how far people have to be removed from reality to argue with a straight face that a criminal with a gun is not as dangerous as a criminal with a knife. A criminal with a knife is deadly only when he manages to make contact. A criminal with a gun can shoot you from a distance.

Will criminals turn to knifes? Sure. Will they be as dangerous as criminals armed with guns? If so, I'd like to see the statistical evidence for it.

[Mr. Coffee]

Yet still, the fact that a gun offers way more advantages to a criminal than just a knife is undisputable. Why else would heavy criminals in Germany always try to own guns instead of knifes? Really, I have to wonder how far people have to be removed from reality to argue with a straight face that a criminal with a gun is not as dangerous as a criminal with a knife. A criminal with a knife is deadly only when he manages to make contact. A criminal with a gun can shoot you from a distance.

Again, a gun only really confers a physical advantage if you're a decent marksman, and unless you train for it, any sort of stress will have a profound effect on your accuracy. A knife doesn't take any training to use, and under stress the whole adrenaline surge thing means you're going into stabby mcstabberson overdrive. Guns are seriously dependant on accuracy and cartridge for causing lethal injury, the first takes training and constant practice, the second is a function of availability.

Will criminals turn to knifes? Sure. Will they be as dangerous as criminals armed with guns? If so, I'd like to see the statistical evidence for it.

Sure thing, DOJ/BJS Report on Violence-Related Injuries Treated in Hospital Emergency Departments. According to this about 5% of injuries treated were from gunshots and 31% were from cuts/stab wounds/internal injuries from knives.

[Thanas]

According to this about 5% of injuries treated were from gunshots and 31% were from cuts/stab wounds/internal injuries from knives.

Are you kidding me? That study say nowhere what you think it does. In fact, it says the exact opposite of what you claim it does.

Weapon identified with injuries treated/ Treated and released / Hospitalized

Gun 39.6/ 60.4 %
Knife/sharp object 76.0/24.0 %

So right here - according to your own study, a gunshot victim has a three times as high chance to require hospitalization for injuries sustained during a gun attack. In fact, nearly two-thirds of victims of gun injuries have to be hospitalized, while only a fifth of knife victims do.


So thanks for actually proving my point for me.


EDIT: besides:

Of all persons treated for violence related injuries :
7% had been injured by a spouse or ex-spouse.
10%, by a current or former boyfriend or girlfriend.
8%, by a parent, child, sibling, or other relative.
23%, by a friend or acquaintance.
23%, by strangers.

Rape/sexual assault 65,100 4.6%
Robbery 22,000 1.5%
Assault 1,330,400 93.8%
(Fight/altercation 416,600 29.4%
Assault 913,800 64.5%)

[Mr. Coffee]

words

Ok, point conceded then.


Post moved back in, with pointless shot cropped.
-SCRawl

[Shroom Man 777]

Or you can throw the chair and while he ducks you run out of the room... oh wait that works in both situations. Well I guess your in trouble then because there have been no incidences whatsoever of trained gun users firing at each other at short or long ranges and missing each other. Damn you really are screwed, because obviously all people armed with guns make kill shots at long distance due to their stellar 100% accuracy.

The gun may have longer range than a thrown chair? The gunman might shoot me, from a distance of five to ten meters away (GASP! LONG RANGE!!!!) while I am trying to get a chair? Gasp, maybe if a gunman doesn't have 100% accuracy then he can, uh, fire multiple times from a distance and hit and/or miss? And, uh, maybe even if he fires blindly, if there are many people there even a blindly shooting gunman who does not aim can still kill with indiscriminate fire?

IF they have a gun they are going to shoot at the people nearest them, as they are the threat, and guess what, that's ranges that a knife will work at.

Guns only work at arms length?

What if the nearest people to them are a handful of meters/feet away? Are you saying that they have to close in to knife/stabbing range before they can shoot anything?

BTW if someone has a knife and your stupid enough to go closer to them, chair or not, you deserve all the pain they give you. Throw chair, run away.

Maybe, just maybe, in a strange hypothetical RAR scenario like those postulated by Zor, the knife-wielder will be the one who goes closer to me? Because unlike a gun, you have to close in on someone to injure/kill with a knife?

Your cafeteria has vats of boiling oil just lying around on the counter? You need to report theem for health and safety violations... oh wait your quoting a scene from watchmen, winner.

Yeah. But I guess I must be mistaken since firearms only have the same ranges as thrown cooking oil. No, wait, thrown cooking oil can splash farther than knives. Therefore they have longer range than knives, and since guns have same range as knife, then cooking oil has longer range than gun too.

IF only life were full of 100% accurate gun-toting bad guys and knife users who are helpless against chairs.

IF only life were full of 100% inaccurate gun-toting bad guys who only shoot people within arms length of themselves and can only kill at the same distances as knives...

Even if gunmen weren't 100% accurate, they can still fire repeatedly and can kill from further distances than knifers, man.

How about soem decent debating here, and less emotional rants ( or quoting comic books).

The comic book quotes were for levity. I find inappropriately quoting Watchmen to be very amusing.

Look, what I'm saying is that guns can kill people from further ranges than knives, and I am sure that you won't dispute that. Also, because knifers have to close in to attack, a person has more options to defend himself against a knife-wielding maniac than a gunman.

Gunmen can even injure people when they put their guns in their bags and accidentally drop their guns and accidentally discharge their guns. They didn't even have to aim or close in to knife-range. When have you ever heard of a knife accidentally stabbing someone because it was inside a bag, and the bag got accidentally dropped?

Or... "He would've harmed just as many people if he had been using a knife, or if it had been a knife or a machete that fell out of his backpack."

[Mr. Coffee]

IF they have a gun they are going to shoot at the people nearest them, as they are the threat, and guess what, that's ranges that a knife will work at.

Guns only work at arms length?

What if the nearest people to them are a handful of meters/feet away? Are you saying that they have to close in to knife/stabbing range before they can shoot anything?

What he means is people tend to engage threats/targets prioritized nearest to furthest away. Nearer threat is more of immediate danger because of the closer proximity, farther threats less so because of distance. Ask yourself this, if you had a gun and you had three guys trying to attack you, one at 10ft, one at 20ft, and one at 30ft, which are you most likely to shoot first?

[SCRawl]

The Bickersons have been split into HoS. Signal high, noise low, people.

[Shroom Man 777]

What he means is people tend to engage threats/targets prioritized nearest to furthest away. Nearer threat is more of immediate danger because of the closer proximity, farther threats less so because of distance. Ask yourself this, if you had a gun and you had three guys trying to attack you, one at 10ft, one at 20ft, and one at 30ft, which are you most likely to shoot first?

The one at ten feet. The nearest threats a gunman can engage will not necessarily be at "ranges that a knife will work at". A man with a knife will have to close the distance and fight at melee ranges or whatever. A man with a gun can shoot from a distance, and despite what Rob says, they can still shoot and kill/injure people without 100% accuracy.

I mean, shit, could those Columbine shooters or that VTech shooter have killed as many people if they ran around with a bunch of balisongs?

[Mr. Coffee]

The one at ten feet. The nearest threats a gunman can engage will not necessarily be at "ranges that a knife will work at". A man with a knife will have to close the distance and fight at melee ranges or whatever. A man with a gun can shoot from a distance, and despite what Rob says, they can still shoot and kill/injure people without 100% accuracy.

There's a gun drill that Ilike to run sometimes to break up to monotony of shooting stationary paper that simulates an attacker with a knife or a bat starting at 21ft and moving directly at you at about average human running speed. Here's a video of the drill I'm talking about. Even armed with a gun, unless you have that weapon already drawn and presented at the target you can get an idea of just how small a distance 21ft really is and the sort of reaction times needed to engage an attacker.

You're right in that you don't need to be 100% accurate to kill with a gun, as you can just overcome accuracy by increased volume of fire (spray and pray), but you'll find that the more compitent the shooter (i.e. more acurate) the greater the chance that whoever they shoot if going to die ebcause of better shot placement. Worse, the more accurate shooter can kill/injure more people for a given number of rounds fired then the guy using the "spray and pray" method.

I mean, shit, could those Columbine shooters or that VTech shooter have killed as many people if they ran around with a bunch of balisongs?

Probably not, but then again it depends on how many people overcome the "oh fuck, he's got a knife" fear of getting cut/stabbed. Guy with a gun can still get mobbed over same as a guy with a knife, but the knife guy has to close distance and up close and personal is where shit gets dicey for both the attacker and the attackee.

[Thanas]

I think we can all come up with plenty of hypothetical situation in which a knife might beat a gun and vice versa, but the fact of the matter is that gun wounds cause 60% of the victims to be hospitalized, knife wounds only do in 20% of the cases. So by and large, a knife is far less dangerous than a gun.

[Shroom Man 777]

Coffee:

Yeah, I get. But in our case, the gunman has probably already drawn his gun and has started shooting if people are trying to attack him and overcome him? So he is the one attacking, and the others are reacting?

Also, this means a prepared and gunman who knows how to use his shit - like those Columbine shooters - would be far more dangerous than any knife-wielding lunatic, even if the knifer is similarly prepared and "trained" to use his weapon. Right?

[K. A. Pital]

I think we can all come up with plenty of hypothetical situation in which a knife might beat a gun and vice versa, but the fact of the matter is that gun wounds cause 60% of the victims to be hospitalized, knife wounds only do in 20% of the cases. So by and large, a knife is far less dangerous than a gun.

Indeed. I would like to once again draw attention that bulk statistics matter, because we're talking about the overall situation, not some isolated cases.

[Dark Hellion]

Hypothetical solutions aren't good for much as is. I can come up with a hypothetical solution in which Obama covering himself in honey and buttfucking Sarah Palin stops a red dawn style invasion but that wouldn't make it realistic or plausible. Personally, I believe that one of the root causes of this obsession with hypotheticals is that it allows the arguer to control the scenario so that they don't have to answer the evidence against them, usually by making the scenario one in which the evidence seems contradictory. Of course if guns existed back in Aristotle's day he'd pop a cap in the kind of people making these arguments because of the gross sophistry of them.

Let's just be honest here guys. There is no denying that in general a gun is more deadly than any bladed weapon. This is why the USMC doesn't go about issuing gladius and pikes. Guns have hundreds of years of technological development behind them designed to make them more deadly that weapons like swords, knives and bows. The thing is that acknowledging this deadliness doesn't necessarily mean that a ban is the logical conclusion. You just have to include it in your argument for why guns should be legal. I'll get back to this in a second.

Secondly, the idea that one can make any definite claim about effectiveness is laughable at best. Crimes are a complex thing that depends upon the nature of the acts, the location, the time and the skill of the perpetrator as well as their weapon of choice. The most effective tool for a crime has little to do with the deadliness of the tool. The most effective tool is the one that lets you successfully commit the crime and not get caught. You could probably claim that the best criminals don't need a weapon at all. So the question comes down to which weapon has the greatest risk of injury or death associated with it?

But as I said before, the fact that a gun is a much deadlier weapon than others is not the sole piece of evidence that an anti-gun platform can be built upon. It just requires that any pro-gun argument take it into account. As HDS graph pointed out, the rate of gun possession has no linear correlation to numbers of homicides. Other statistics have pointed out that gun ownership rates have no linear correlation to crime rates in general. The evidence seems to indicate that the level of restriction upon guns has little to do with actually reducing crime. So the deadliness of a gun is an argument of risk management, not one of crime prevention. "Criminals might get guns" and "self-defense" are both exceedingly hallow arguments that both sides cling to because they are half-truths that contain huge appeals to emotion.

On another hand, the fact that anti-gun movements in the U.S. have been disingenuous in the past does not allow pro-gun platforms to be disingenuous back. Tu quoque is still a fallacy. So please stop with the petulant manipulation of situations just so you don't have to admit that guns might have to have responsibilities tied to their ownership. Stop the continuous obfuscations of red herrings about bats and machetes and other bullshit. If guns are as much a "natural right" as some are arguing it should not be difficult at all to show why this is based upon long standing existent philosophical principles. And you should show the opposition the honesty to admit that no right is absolutely inviolable; there are always restrictions even upon hallowed freedom of speech there is "no yelling fire in a theatre". There is no ethical basis by which you can claim that guns are specially privileged and unrestrictable so try not to imply that with your arguments and instead suggest what you feel are reasonable restrictions. I have seen some do that but others seem to be much more interested in taking it to them "pinko commi nazis" who want to take our guns (and precious bodily fluids) than form a reason for why the status quo is acceptable.

Really, I always dislike these debates because neither side can seem to differentiate between practical and theoretical arguments and so it becomes a mish-mash of both fueled by rhetoric that primarily consists entirely of Tu quoque, Appeal to Emotion, and Red Herrings. It is so sad too because understanding where your rights come from and why they are important is probably the most powerful thing you need to save them.

[Shroom Man 777]

Does anyone have any postmortems from Columbine and VTech, et al. detailing how far the shooters were when they killed people?

[Thanas]

*snip idiocy*

Why don't you go and read the thread and realize issues are discussed here (like risk management) instead of posting a huge rant that acocomplishes nothing, adds nothing to the discussion and does not help any of us in any meaningful way? This is not a venting thread.

And you should re-read Aristotle if you want to invoke his name.

[His Divine Shadow]

Somebody complained about lack of practical and realistic posts, well I did make this one here.

Seems me there are two things you can do on the gun front in america that aren't impossible on the scale of making the drug war look winnable.

1) Make private sales without NICS checks illegal. This is a common way for criminals to get guns. Closing this off would be functionally equivalent to having to own a gun-permit for purchasing and owning guns. It would also be far, far easier to pass as a law than a firearms license scheme and probably be just as effective anyway (because the govt would probably just use the NICS system to see if they should hand out licenses or not to applicants).

2) Subsidise gun safes, stolen guns are another common method for criminals to get guns, try and lower prices of good safes and/or offer tax breaks to people who buy them.

Thats amount as much as you can realistically hope for and what could actually qualify as "efficient" gun control rather than "feelgood fantasies" or "black hole money drains".

[Hamstray]

The evidence seems to indicate that the level of restriction upon guns has little to do with actually reducing crime. So the deadliness of a gun is an argument of risk management, not one of crime prevention.

Maybe the reverse is true (in a democracy): gun crazy voters who are likely to shoot someone most likely push for loose gun regulation.
Restricting concealable hand-guns though should still be a good idea. A shotgun is probably more effective for defending your home anyways. This may not curb shootings related to domestic violence but at least make public places safer for gun free citizens.

[Lagmonster]

I think we can all come up with plenty of hypothetical situation in which a knife might beat a gun and vice versa, but the fact of the matter is that gun wounds cause 60% of the victims to be hospitalized, knife wounds only do in 20% of the cases. So by and large, a knife is far less dangerous than a gun.

Question: if this data comes from hospitals and involves hospitalizations, how do the numbers change if you factor in the people who didn't live long enough to make it to the hospital in the first place? Is there a lethality factor that is being overlooked, or am I re-stating someone else's point?