So you're a drug dealer? :p

Ooohhh...oooooo... I want some Juji fruits!

The vast right-wing conspiracy media shadow government keeps those figures under wraps. You have connections - use them and find out for yourself.

I thought it was the liberal media? What is going on here?! My head hurts!
Now I gotta' shoot sumthin'!

Let's go shoot us a Sally!

Well... um... HELL YEAH!!!

Nancy! Mary! Gertrude!

See, this is how the shootin' gets out of hand!:thepain:

Oh, that's a much better application of Occam's Razor than "there weren't any".

No, but I could be in line as a target for rape/robbery/burglary. Although the TV appearances with the Pink Pistols probably reduce that probability a little.

Which would be your fantasyland.

And as I said, I'm uninterested in a return to a world where bludgeons and knives are the only weapons (I'm not worried about that actually happpening, because what would actually happen is only the criminals having effective weapons). I only point it out to say that even if you could get what you say you want, it's not desirable.

Instead you're headed straight for 100% unintended consequences.

For instance, 34 of 46 (74%) registered school shootings all over the world between 1996 and 2005 happened in the US. And the 3 last ones weren´t even included. This gives an indication already.

The rate of firearm deaths among kids under age 15 is almost 12 times higher in the United States than in 25 other industrialized countries combined.

American kids are nine times more likely to die from a firearm accident than children in 25 other industrialized countries combined.

The National School Boards Association estimates that more than 135,000 guns are brought into U.S. schools each day.

You want us to believe that all these kids are drugs criminals?

PS I see MaggieL´s fetish with Occam´s Razor is almost equals to TW´s thingie with Rush Limbaugh...

Perhaps not all. But certainly most of them. They're not getting shot for their lunch money. Ever been in an urban US public school?

How exactly are you adding rates to get these "combined" numbers?

Please source your statistics (and "The Brady Campaign" isn't a source). I'd like to see percapita numbers, not relative rates. (Especially if you think they can be validly "combined".)

For example, in 2001 there were 21 accidental fireams deaths for US children under 15, compared with 2,100 drownings.

Go read the Gun Facts book; all their stats are sourced. Free download from http://www.gunfacts.info

I'm curious which 25 industrialized countries we're discussing as well.

Couple of points;

I think you'll find the majority of firearm deaths in this country take place in urban (low gun density per capita) rather than rural (High gun density)locations.

More shootings than the other industrialized nations? Well, we do have 300,000,000 people here.

Those 115,000 guns brought to school, (not to mention other weapons) are to convince the predators they are not prey. I'm not supporting the idea just explaining.

Saddam passed out AK-47s, when? Baghdad violence increasing, when? Non Sequitur.

If UG keeps posting, I may have to change positions. :blush:

The Gunfacts Book isn't a source...

I reject your source and replace it with my own!

You want sources?

School Safety

* Between 1994 and 1999, there were 220 school associated violent events resulting in 253 deaths - - 74.5% of these involved firearms. Handguns caused almost 60% of these deaths. (Journal of American Medical Association, December 2001)
* In 1998-99 academic year, 3,523 students were expelled for bringing a firearm to school. This is a decrease from the 5,724 students expelled in 1996-97 for bringing a firearm to school. (U.S. Department of Education, October 2000)
* Nearly 8% of adolescents in urban junior and senior high schools miss at least one day of school each month because they are afraid to attend. (National Mental Health & Education Center for Children & Families, National Association of School Psychologists 1998)
* The National School Boards Association estimates that more than 135,000 guns are brought into U.S. schools each day. (NSBA, 1993)

Children and Gun Violence

* America is losing too many children to gun violence. Between 1979 and 2001, gunfire killed 90,000 children and teens in America. (Children's Defense Fund and National Center for Health Statistics)
* In one year, more children and teens died from gunfire than from cancer, pneumonia, influenza, asthma, and HIV/AIDS combined. (Children's Defense Fund)
* The rate of firearm deaths among kids under age 15 is almost 12 times higher in the United States than in 25 other industrialized countries combined. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)

America and Gun Violence

* Every day, more than 80 Americans die from gun violence. (Coalition to Stop Gun Violence)
* The rate of firearm deaths among kids under age 15 is almost 12 times higher in the United States than in 25 other industrialized countries combined. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
* American kids are 16 times more likely to be murdered with a gun, 11 times more likely to commit suicide with a gun, and nine times more likely to die from a firearm accident than children in 25 other industrialized countries combined. (Centers for Disease Control)

Thank you, Hip

Next time you want to know whether the users were left- or right handed, whether they had long or short hair, had eye defects, or other red herrings.

But, to answer your question this time, I consider our country Holland as an industrialised country with a population of 16 Mio. Gun related death (inc.suicide) 2001: 47, 2002: 38, 2003: 28. Since you want to know the source of everything: www.iva.nl/forceDL.php?filename=pubPDF1405.pdf

This means in average 37 gun related death a year = 0,10/daily. In the US there are 80 death related to gun violence.

US has 18,75 times more population than Holland, so in Dutch relations, you should have 1,875 gun related death daily.

As a lurker on the boards I usually just read the stuff the flows across, but I felt compelled to post on this, it seems that most people are arguing over things that don't really have much to do with the issue. I am not a champion speller, I am very well read and an internatioanal parli debater, so hopefully people can focus on the ideas rather than the literal verbage. Please understand that when I ask a question I never mean it rhetoricaly or in a sarcastic manner, I really do want to hear what people think about this. I have for months enjoyed reading the threads here, thank you for that =D

A little history to explain the perspective: I grew up in a very poor, rural area in California. Being in California, poor and rural are relative for most, but I grew up on a farm, not a rich farm, a working farm, where as an 8 year old I got up in the middle of the night to fix irrigation ditches breaking down from time to time. I grew up with mostly mexican kids (who see the word Hispanic as an insult, a nod to the spanish conquistadors.) Real mexicans whose fathers taught them concepts like machismo and honor, kdis that would get pissed if you called em a wetback, because most likely they did swim over. I bring this up because more and more I realize that the world at large does not value things like honor anymore, so maybe I grew up in a different environment than is the norm. We learned to take a whuppin and give one, you don't go for a knife or a gun, if you got a problem you take it out mano e mano if you can't talk your way through it. I never had to worry about getting jumped by 8 guys, or stabbed, or shot. We had plenty of guns around, it just wasn't even an idea that you would use a gun to solve a problem with another person. My family are all white christian cowboys, while I may be the black sheep in the family, we found alot of common ground with the people we worked with, we all fought for our honor and are great friends, even greater enemies. Looking back at it I can say I didn't grow up the california norm, but who does?

Thats not true anymore though.

Most of this thread has centered around school based gun violence. Both that caused by students and by adults not involved with the school. As far as the students go, my perception is that most of these kids are either A. afraid to take a whuppin or B. afraid they will get jumped/stabbed/shot if they try to deal with the issue mano e mano. But understand, that to fall into either of those categories, you must have already decided that violence is the answer to your problem. The thought process does not instantly devolve to gun = kill. First you have to decide upon that method as resolution. After that, you begin to take stock in your resources. Even if that thought process takes less than a second, it happens in that order, probably not with conscious thought all the time. Can I fight fairly? Will that solve the problem? Will I have to worry about vengence? There is no reason to consider the gun as an answer until you have already decided that other answers will not resolve your issue, so the gunis all that is left. Fear takes over.

So this is my question to the people in the thread talking about guns being a direct reason for violence. This is not rhetorical, nor sarcastic. Do you think that violent crimes would have have occured if guns were not available? Do you think that if they had not had the access to firearms that they wouldn't have gone to a knife? Or somthing else?

There is a broader issue occuring that EVERYONE in this thread agress on, but maybe it takes someone else to point it out.

Our world has become more violent, and that violence is intruding upon areas of our lives that we traditionaly have not had to relate to violence. (I say we in general, there are large portions of the world that do or do not have the problem in the same proportion that we do.)

Some people in the thread have accused others have having a wild west attitude. If you look at that period in history, many many people died of gun violence. But was it in schools? Were children performing these acts, and were schools the target they have become then? If not, then why not? There was just as much lawless activity and viciousness, if not more, with more firearms readily acessible and accepted publicly.

The truth of the matter is that the world is evolving, AS USUAL. At one time statistics told people that fighting back against a rapist, or home assalt, or classroom assault, would get more people killed, as the people doing those crimes were not as likely to kill the victim. That is no longer true though, rapists and child molesters are much more likely to do away with the victim when they are done rather than run the very real risk of being caught. That has changed the paradigm under which "victims" may respond. Today, if an armed gunman takes overa school campus, it is not very likely that a student will not get shot, that people will not die. I lived though the Stockton Massacre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockton_Massacre), my girlfriend in highschool was a very good friend of some of the cambodian girls that were killed, she still remembers what happened. That guy decided before he showed up at that school that people were going to die. As a result of that, semi-automatic assault weapons were debated and then a federal law was put into place to try and stop these kinds of things from happening. As a gun owner and hunter, I was very happy for that, I have no problem not owning semi-automatic weapons, just have to be a better shot.

Sorry for the long post :redface:

Look at what happened at Beslen! Had the teachers been armed, had they fought back against the intruders, they would never have had the chance to work explosives into the scenario. Even if some children were hurt doing this, wouldnt some be better than 186? On the other hand, they had alot of problems with local parents showing up armed, they finally had so many of them that at one point there were reports coming out indicating that they had to include them in the police work, had to organize and utilize them to get them outta the way. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beslan_massacre)

What Im really saying here folks, is that there is NO one answer for a situation like this. Saying that situation X will best be solved by Answer Y because that worked last time, or the opposite, situation X will not be solved by Answer Y because that didnt work last time, is a verifiable and defined fallacy of logic. Logic dictates that each situation be evaluated and analyzed on its own, we can apply the lessons history has taught us, but not in a rote manner, always with reason and analysis. At times force will be the only means of saving our childrens lives, at times we will be able to find other means of resolution. At times its appropriate to gather all the kids into a fortress of a classroom and lock themselves in to prevent some madman with an AK from shooting them, at other times that same action will provide the attacker with a defendable base and hostages, with time for explosives. Prioviding an easily defensible area may not be the a good thing when taken with things like Beslan in mind, or take a step back farther and see the power a few people can wield in a small defensible arena. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae)

How to tell ahead of time?

Steve

PS I know that there are statistics that would support every viewpoint in the world, so please refrain from them, unless you can give the statistic for every variable, which we know isn't possible. Logic and reason are the flavor of the day.

PPS Its not fair to compare the US to a country with legal pot, of course there is less violence and shooting there. :D

Thanks theirontower, and welcome to the Cellar. :D
To your point of Mano on Mano, to settle a dispute with the other guy. There is a culture that's developed, and spreading, where losing a fight is unacceptable. A loser is a social pariah, shun by the entire peer group. It's better to kill, or die, than lose.

I firmly believe this attitude (Gangsta) is driving the increase in violence with weapons. I also believe it's a damn shame.

I guess they don't teach proper citiation forms in your oh, so "civilized" land.

No, it's a compendium. It cites its sources.

Concur. Remeber that in drug-related violent crime, sometimes the drug is testosterone.

Which is a point that's been brought up often in the other arguments here on this subject (the thread count surely exceeds a dozen by now)...and is never credibly responded to.

The problem of violence isn't weapons. Violence isn't caused by weapons any more than arson is caused by matches. Violence is caused by violent people. Liberals/progressives, whose philosophy is driven by identifying "victims" (and then grabbing power on the pretext of "helping the victims") prefer to reflexively relabel criminals as victims, while displacing responisbility for their criminal behavior onto inanimate objects, "society", "oppression" and "injustice". This ensures a steady supply of "victims"...

So you're suggesting that a particular group - liberals - are responsible for violence in schools Maggie?

These ain't no proper citations? Or does it not fit your world view?

You asked for hard facts and sources, you got it.

Well, that tells a lot of how you view the outside world and how it really is. Drug using here is less than 1% of the population, so there goes your theory up in smoke.

Yes, the world is becoming more violent, especially when El Presidente of World Greatest Power is using violence cq. threatening to use it to solve the World problems an settles arguments with his father "mano a mano".

I think that guns are the most effective weapon that is commonly available. I think that criminals are generally lazy and cowardly people who are emboldened by having a gun instead of another less effective weapon like a knife. Criminals would be more afraid to commit their crimes without that overwhelming advantage over their victims. The only way you can kill me with a knife is if you can outrun me or if you surprise me. Even if you do either of those two things, you still need to overpower me. It's simply more work for a criminal. Criminals are lazy, so they will do it less. It's simple human nature.

I think that violence would still exist without guns, but there would be less of it, and where it did exist, the damage would be less.

But there are guns. So...it's all kind of a moot point, isn't it?

Yup.

I'll agree with "cowardly"; I think "lazy" is less certain, given some of the ingenious criminal schemes that have existed. But by the same token that they may be emboldened by having a gun, they're inhibited by the knowlege that the law-abiding may have them too.
That's speculation, of course. Even if it were possible, there's no reason to think that depriving a violent man of weapons makes him less violent, nor that they would "do less damage"...whatever that really means.

They're certainly responible for making it safer for criminals to be violent in *any* victim disarmament zone: school, post office, airliner, etc.

At least with the Flight Deck Officer program we're allowing pilots commanding airliners the opportunity to defend the passengers and crew under their care. The encumberances imposed on those pilots is insane; that any of them take the matter seriously enough to put up all that crap is spectacular.

You think it's the Liberals' fault, even though conservative policy ensures that more guns are accessable to general public, for criminals to use? Wow, that's some logic you have going on, Maggie.

A proper citation enables an interested reader to examine the original study to read how it was conducted and the logic behind its conclusions. "AMA 1974" is approximately as useful as "I live in New York and my name is Smith, look it up in the phone book".

First off, I never said "Since prohibition doesn't work, the conclusion is obvious." I'll assume you inadvertently included that sentence with my quoted text.

I don't know what you mean by "a violent man." Does that mean "in the midst of a violent act" or "has violent thoughts that he wants to act upon?" If a person has violent thoughts, I think they are more likely to act on those thoughts if they are confident that they will be successful. If they are armed with a gun, they will be highly confident. If they are armed with a less effective weapon, they will be less confident. I think it's very obvious that guns embolden men with violent thoughts to act on those thoughts when they otherwise wouldn't. Not in every case. Not every time. But overall.

Is this speculation? Sure. But so is your position.

edit: And when I say "do less damage" I mean that a gun does more damage than a knife.

It's superior to logic that conflates the three different categories "the general public", "citizens legally entitled to posess firearms" and "criminals".

It's the formatting that convinced me...

You mean a link like this, that you posted, presumably so that we could READ THE LAWS? Which says

And if you CLICK HERE (above)
you get

Which, in essence is a list of all the laws of Pennsylvania. So much for reading the laws concerning hanguns, MaggieL. Check your links and sources before you post them.

Well, that's petitio principi; (question-begging).

But it's also not true. Guns do have more range than knives, but a knife, depending on it's size and how it's wielded, can easily do more tissue damage than a bullet. And a bludgeon can deliver more kinetic energy.

Yes. Yes. But the million dollar question is "what do you choose to carry, Maggie?"

Tw, I've seen for myself that an armed society is indeed a polite society. I think I know more about it than you ever will. If you are a genuine scientist, tw, rather than a poorly advised crank, undertake the ever-so-minimal research effort of spending six weekends at any shooting range you can get to, learning and doing the rather delicate business of getting your shots to fall within the ten-ring, among dozens of others likewise engaged.

The thing that has always struck me about the people shooting is how very nice, how unfailingly courteous, they are to each other. What's more, it continues after they're done shooting, chatting at car tailgates, yakking over a refreshment (club members, invariably after shooting, might adjourn to the members-only room for a beer), perhaps inviting one another for dinner. And I act just that way on the firing line myself: it seems nearly instinctual that when you are disposing of genuine lethal force, without lethal intent, that your manners become sweet, not harsh; reassuring, rather than otherwise.

I know why you can't draw the conclusion, given the obstacles placed in the way of felons possessing arms, that there are thus more guns for YOU to use on the criminals. With due care, of course.

But I do understand why you CANNOT THINK THAT.

You are a fully florid hoplophobe, and without professional help, you shall never have a rational view of armed defense of self or other. You shall remain unable to practice either, which would seem morally insupportable -- though too, I just hate bullies, criminals being a prime example of bullying. You need to adjust to your urge to kill, and release and exhaust from you the buried rages and fears that give you that urge.

In a nutshell, Spexx needs therapy, target practice, and tactical practice, along with introduction to tactical shooting games as a means of directly discharging his urge to kill. Until he gets this help, his moral position remains inferior to those of MaggieL, rkzenrage, and Urbane Guerrilla.

In my opinion, and this opinion is derived from my upbringing and lifestyle; there's a time and place for weapons. I'm not unfamiliar with guns. Have fired many. Even into animals on occasion, so I'm not some liberal whiner who has no concept of the point of guns.

I like the fact that people in Australia are not allowed to carry weapons - of any kind (including knives) - legally in public. I don't believe that if all people are armed you're lowering the chances of gun related violence. I don't believe you're increasing it either although accessability has to make it easier for crimes of passion to be more deadly and also for children - the original topic of this thread - to access adult's weapons.

It's not the responsibility of the general public to protect the rest of the general public. It's the responsibility of police and other law enforcement agencies to do to. Obviously there can't always be a cop around, and even if there is people will still shoot people.

I don't think liberals or conservatives are to blame for school shootings. I think the people that committed the crimes are responsible.

Reread that paragraph, Aliantha: can you not see how the last sentence shoots the first two down? (I should smile!)

We in this Republic take precisely the opposite view -- that it is part of a citizen's lawful militia powers, which rise out of his being an adult human, and which are to some degree demanded by this Republic's laws (Sec's 310-311 USC, which establish the legal existence of the US Militia, all as part of the concept of a citizen Army), and that a citizen of a Republic has a responsibility to defend against the society-destroying acts of any criminals, without any regard to their degree of violence. While it is helpful to have a professional, sworn police force to do this work well, it is not at all bad to have the amateurs hold the line until the pros can reinforce them. Obviously there can't always be a cop around -- there is NO moral requirement to be helpless before armed agression in that circumstance. Do not ask that we not shoot back. We have wives and children to keep alive, woman! Some of us have husbands!

ahuh...and you live in a country with one of the highest crime rates in the world. No wonder you want to be armed.

OK, we've at least actually gotten you to load the page. This is progress.

Now let's refine the skill to actually include reading.

This is called the World Wide Web. Let me explain how it works.
Those blue headings with the underscores? They are called "unvisited links".

In this case, when you click on them they each take you a pages containing a different section of Chapter 5 (General Principles of Justification) of Title 18(Crimes and Offenses), which is the law in question. It's all there.

The ones you're looking for look like this:

Taken together, sections 500 through 510 constitute Chapter 5 of Title 18, which is the actual law on justification of the use of deadly force in the Commonwealth.

Now go back to the page and read, and do try to restrain your impulse to click the mouse spasmodically in random locations without actually reading the page and then returning here in triumph claiming that the link is bogus.

You would, too, and probably do a most creditable job of it, given your experience.

It's also a matter of record that for some years, Scotland's murder rate (murders/100K of population is the usual measure) under UK gun laws, ran well over the overall US rate of 4.8/100K/year. The US murder rate is not at all uniform, either. All the more rural states have murder rates that look like England's. What brings the US's rate up to its sub-Scotland level is the murder rate of a few ghetto-ridden urban areas: the inner cities of New York City, Washington DC, Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles.

And you shouldn't be speaking of "crime" generally if it's the murder rate you are addressing. We citizens save, year in and year out, about 2.5 billion dollars US, by the mere act of sticking guns into criminal faces. Don't ask us to lose 2.5B just to satisfy your notions of propriety, Aliantha!

I wasn't addressing the murder rate. If I was addressing that then I would have said so. I was addressing the crime rate UG, that's why I said, crime rate.

As to the saving 2.5B. Presumably the goods will be remaining in the US after they're stolen anyway, so you'll still have them (if stopping robberies by threatening theives with a gun is what you were trying to imply). They've just been reappropriated. lol

OK...sorry, I shouldn't have laughed. This is a serious subject, but you just crack me up sometimes UG. ;)

That's 2.5B of wrongs not committed, Ali -- nothing to sneeze at, is it?

We can at least estimate an economic value to self defense. I don't think that's been even semiseriously attempted before.

No, it's wonderful UG. I'm very pleased your happy. :)

Erm... you're very pleased my happy? Quick, edit! ;)

you're then. I'm sorry I can't type everything perfectly every time. ;)

If my Backspace key ever breaks, I might as well be typing encrypted. :rolleye:

lol...well I'm pretty sure most of us use that facility fairly regularly, except maybe the perfect ones among us.

Peer pressure is not a drug.
As for testosterone, what?.... are the girls wearing patches? They are just as violent in the Gangsta culture although the usually would rather cut than shoot. :eyebrow: