Posted by Kromey at 1:33am Jul 1 '12my supposition would go thus: that there are perhaps many reasons violent crime has gone down in our nation
Precisely.
but it seems that allowing more guns has slowed the decline. in other words, if the real reasons for the drop were ignored, guns would cause an increase in violent crime.
Possibly, however:
If this premise were true, then we should see a general slowing in the rate of decline as fewer and fewer states are heavily restricting guns. Why? Quite simply because there'd be fewer and fewer Illinoises affecting the statistics. We don't, though -- the rate of decline from 1991-99 is roughly the same as from 2007-11. There's definitely a slowing of the decline between those runs, including the two anomalous years where violent crime actually increased, however it resumed without any change to the trends on gun ownership and gun laws.
That said, though, if Illinois is indeed exceptional (thing about averages is that there's always some above and always some below...), then they certainly warrant closer inspection to figure out what they're doing differently, figure out what's working, why, and then see if that's applicable elsewhere. Ditto Arizona -- if they're exceptional (as in, exceptionally poor) then we should study them to find out why, and try to fix it.
because you're using a strawman argument. only the crazies are concerned about, say, a hunter's shotgun or a policeman's pistol. most of us who are in favor of more regulation and care are worried in particular about guns owned and used illegally. so trying to argue your point by including all guns is extremely unfair to what we're actually advocating - you're in fact arguing against something we're not saying.
It may not be what you're trying to do, but the real result of all gun control laws is "going after" the private arms of citizens who overwhelmingly do no harm, ever, with them.
Removing CCW rights, for example, does nothing to deter the criminal who would hide his gun anyway. Instituting "gun-free zones" similarly only disarms law-abiding citizens -- the criminals intent on doing harm will not stop and turn around just because there's a sign saying he can't bring his gun in! (Case in point: Columbine, which also demonstrated that people with criminal intent to do harm won't obey legally-mandated age limits, either.)
it's a valid question. you only talk about guns in aggregate - as if there were no difference between a guy who takes his rifle out to the range like others go to the driving range and someone who got a semi-automatic without a full background check - or someone shown to be unstable, potentially criminally, acquiring weapons.
That's because laws do only affect the aggregate. That hypothetical guy who bought a gun without a background check? That's already illegal. How are more laws going to change that? Similarly a criminally insane individual -- that, too, is illegal. Again, how would more laws change that? [And to clarify: In both situations, it is illegal for anyone to sell to these individuals, in addition for it to be illegal for the buyers under these circumstances.]
If you have ideas for how to go after illegal guns without further impinging on the rights of law-abiding citizens -- including law-abiding gun owners -- then I'm all ears. The problem is, no one's done that -- almost every single suggestion for how to tackle the problem of illegal guns invariably incurs significant "collateral damage" against law-abiding gun owners.
what i actually meant was that an innocent person is safer without a gun than with one, unless another human agent with the will and capability to do personal harm is involved.
All activities incur risk. You're safer flying than driving cross-country, and yet no one's talking about "road trip control" laws. (Incidentally, you're also safer owning a gun than you are driving a car -- just sayin'.) You're safer living in a home with no windows and only hardened steel doors, and yet no one's talking about "window control" laws.
Yes, guns can be dangerous. No one disputes that. That doesn't in and of itself justify laws targeted at them. Individuals make choices that put them at risk all the time, and that's just simply a fact of life.
As for Ben Franklin, the rate of accidental injury or death from a gun is actually lower than that of being the victim of a violent crime -- 613 fatal gun accidents in 2007, for example, as compared to 16,929 murders. Admittedly not all gun accidents are fatal -- in that same year, there were 15,698 non-fatal gun accidents that resulted in a trip to the hospital, as compared to 1,408,337 violent crimes (well, less the almost 17,000 murders, if we're sticking to non-fatal). [Accident stats are from the CDC; crime stats are from Disaster Center -- awesome resource, by the way, thanks for bringing it to my attention!]
Now, admittedly, not all of these crimes -- fatal or otherwise -- would necessarily have been preventable had the victim or a bystander had a gun. However, that's not the point -- the point is that owning a gun is actually safer than simply living in the US, before even factoring in the other ways you can accidentally harm or kill yourself (another fun fact: gun accidents are no longer on the CDC's "top 10" list of accidental fatalities or injuries, and haven't been for at least a few years).
[also, WTF does 9/11 have to do with personal firearms? i've never understood that point of view. not saying it's yours, just saying it seems utterly ridiculous.]
Y'know, I don't get that part, either. Yes, there are some nutters out there who insist that 9/11 could have been prevented -- or at least reduced in scale/scope -- had the passengers of the hijacked planes been armed; however, if the terrorists hadn't known that their victims would be disarmed, they would simply have taken a different approach to carrying out their mission -- like perhaps bringing along guns of their own, or using something other than an airplane altogether.
At any rate, I actually wanted to just lop that part of the cartoon off altogether, since as far as I'm concerned it's irrelevant, but instead ended up just hotlinking it rather than downloading it, cropping it, and uploading it somewhere.
Precisely.
but it seems that allowing more guns has slowed the decline. in other words, if the real reasons for the drop were ignored, guns would cause an increase in violent crime.
Possibly, however:
If this premise were true, then we should see a general slowing in the rate of decline as fewer and fewer states are heavily restricting guns. Why? Quite simply because there'd be fewer and fewer Illinoises affecting the statistics. We don't, though -- the rate of decline from 1991-99 is roughly the same as from 2007-11. There's definitely a slowing of the decline between those runs, including the two anomalous years where violent crime actually increased, however it resumed without any change to the trends on gun ownership and gun laws.
That said, though, if Illinois is indeed exceptional (thing about averages is that there's always some above and always some below...), then they certainly warrant closer inspection to figure out what they're doing differently, figure out what's working, why, and then see if that's applicable elsewhere. Ditto Arizona -- if they're exceptional (as in, exceptionally poor) then we should study them to find out why, and try to fix it.
because you're using a strawman argument. only the crazies are concerned about, say, a hunter's shotgun or a policeman's pistol. most of us who are in favor of more regulation and care are worried in particular about guns owned and used illegally. so trying to argue your point by including all guns is extremely unfair to what we're actually advocating - you're in fact arguing against something we're not saying.
It may not be what you're trying to do, but the real result of all gun control laws is "going after" the private arms of citizens who overwhelmingly do no harm, ever, with them.
Removing CCW rights, for example, does nothing to deter the criminal who would hide his gun anyway. Instituting "gun-free zones" similarly only disarms law-abiding citizens -- the criminals intent on doing harm will not stop and turn around just because there's a sign saying he can't bring his gun in! (Case in point: Columbine, which also demonstrated that people with criminal intent to do harm won't obey legally-mandated age limits, either.)
it's a valid question. you only talk about guns in aggregate - as if there were no difference between a guy who takes his rifle out to the range like others go to the driving range and someone who got a semi-automatic without a full background check - or someone shown to be unstable, potentially criminally, acquiring weapons.
That's because laws do only affect the aggregate. That hypothetical guy who bought a gun without a background check? That's already illegal. How are more laws going to change that? Similarly a criminally insane individual -- that, too, is illegal. Again, how would more laws change that? [And to clarify: In both situations, it is illegal for anyone to sell to these individuals, in addition for it to be illegal for the buyers under these circumstances.]
If you have ideas for how to go after illegal guns without further impinging on the rights of law-abiding citizens -- including law-abiding gun owners -- then I'm all ears. The problem is, no one's done that -- almost every single suggestion for how to tackle the problem of illegal guns invariably incurs significant "collateral damage" against law-abiding gun owners.
what i actually meant was that an innocent person is safer without a gun than with one, unless another human agent with the will and capability to do personal harm is involved.
All activities incur risk. You're safer flying than driving cross-country, and yet no one's talking about "road trip control" laws. (Incidentally, you're also safer owning a gun than you are driving a car -- just sayin'.) You're safer living in a home with no windows and only hardened steel doors, and yet no one's talking about "window control" laws.
Yes, guns can be dangerous. No one disputes that. That doesn't in and of itself justify laws targeted at them. Individuals make choices that put them at risk all the time, and that's just simply a fact of life.
As for Ben Franklin, the rate of accidental injury or death from a gun is actually lower than that of being the victim of a violent crime -- 613 fatal gun accidents in 2007, for example, as compared to 16,929 murders. Admittedly not all gun accidents are fatal -- in that same year, there were 15,698 non-fatal gun accidents that resulted in a trip to the hospital, as compared to 1,408,337 violent crimes (well, less the almost 17,000 murders, if we're sticking to non-fatal). [Accident stats are from the CDC; crime stats are from Disaster Center -- awesome resource, by the way, thanks for bringing it to my attention!]
Now, admittedly, not all of these crimes -- fatal or otherwise -- would necessarily have been preventable had the victim or a bystander had a gun. However, that's not the point -- the point is that owning a gun is actually safer than simply living in the US, before even factoring in the other ways you can accidentally harm or kill yourself (another fun fact: gun accidents are no longer on the CDC's "top 10" list of accidental fatalities or injuries, and haven't been for at least a few years).
[also, WTF does 9/11 have to do with personal firearms? i've never understood that point of view. not saying it's yours, just saying it seems utterly ridiculous.]
Y'know, I don't get that part, either. Yes, there are some nutters out there who insist that 9/11 could have been prevented -- or at least reduced in scale/scope -- had the passengers of the hijacked planes been armed; however, if the terrorists hadn't known that their victims would be disarmed, they would simply have taken a different approach to carrying out their mission -- like perhaps bringing along guns of their own, or using something other than an airplane altogether.
At any rate, I actually wanted to just lop that part of the cartoon off altogether, since as far as I'm concerned it's irrelevant, but instead ended up just hotlinking it rather than downloading it, cropping it, and uploading it somewhere.
Re: it's a pretty picture, yes - Kromey