Posted by 79 at 8:41pm Jul 2 '12providing education can and does put the brakes on the "death spiral" of crime-ridden neighborhoods, whereas passing anti-gun laws does not.
Which means that our time, energy, and money is far better spent focusing on those other factors.
i definitely agree that the majority of the effort should be focused in other areas - as crazy as i may be about guns, i'm far more invested in the other ways of cleaning up neighborhoods (such as education, promoting sane drug control laws so poor people who are only concerned with their own personal use don't spend years behind bars, that kinda thing).
what i would really like to see first where guns are concerned would be ways of actually enforcing current gun laws. take that as an undercurrent to my position; that enforcing current laws is more important, realistically, than passing new ones.
The federal "gun-free schools" law isn't restricted to the school grounds -- it prohibits guns within a quarter of a mile of school grounds!
which is a different issue, in my view. gun-free schools gets a complete green light from me. the parts of laws governing the areas around schools i generally don't like - for similar reasons that i dislike the drug-free school zones. it's pretty easy to tell, imho, whether a guy is dealing to school kids versus having his own personal stuff.
I wonder if you would say the same thing about obstacles in front of voting, or even in front of your freedom to speak your mind...
if it applies to everyone equally, i don't actually mind. poll-taxes and picture-id laws most certainly make it more difficult for some people to vote without bothering others in the least - that is unconstitutional in the extreme. but, say, a test you had to pass in order to register to vote? if applied in the correct way (can't read? don't speak english? etc? no problem at all!), i'd be in favor of it. i don't think you have the right to vote if you don't care to understand the basics of our government system (i envision something similar to the test for citizenship that naturalized citizens have to pass).
as for speaking one's mind, the first amendment is already pretty fucked. anyone can speak their mind to an empty room, no matter what. only a very few people can speak their mind to everyone - it takes a lot of money. corporations apparently have the same rights, free-speech wise, that i do. i'm not allowed to offend other people whenever i want (eg, saying "fuck" on prime time television, walking around town nude, etc). so yeah, i want less restriction there.
of course, i consider the first amendment far more important and crucial than the second. c'est la vie.
And we haven't even gotten to the biggest hurdle of all: Over 99.99% of guns used in the commission of a crime are illegally possessed -- either stolen, or bought on the black market, or smuggled into the country from overseas; either way no part of any registry anymore.
i must admit, i find the order of magnitude in that statistic pretty unbelievable. but i do think that the vast majority of guns used in crime are possessed illegally. i'll point out the arms-race bit (used to be, in places like nyc, that muggers were usually only armed with knives and the like; after citizens started arming themselves, the criminals started carrying heavier weaponry).
but, again, we're looking at pretty lax enforcement and all kinds of loopholes (haven't heard much good about the restrictions and security at gun shows, for instance).
basically, i'd like to give law enforcement more tools to stop a gun's illegal use before it happens. simply having one on a college campus, for instance, carrying without having your permit on you, having an unregistered gun, that kind of thing. of course, illegal search and seizure would still take precedence, but i think you get the direction i'm going in. i don't see how those things would be too onerous for legal gun possession.
i don't know exactly what the best way to about curtailing the number of illegal guns is, but it's frustrating as all hell that the moment some politician starts coming out with ideas about it, he gets blacklisted by the NRA and shouted down. recently in wisconsin we had that recall election - one of the advertisements for scott walker blatantly showed that hunting rifles would be completely confiscated under his opponent. that's kinda scary to me.
Actually, you explicitly excluded victims of crime from your assertion.
yup. the cartoon made no distinction. if it had stipulated that it was only talking about victims of violent crimes, i wouldn't have bothered with that argument. however, it only stated a broad rule; to prove it false, i only needed to show a counter-example.
To my knowledge, there are no stats anywhere that divides up the population into gun owners and non gun owners, and then compares the respective groups' victimization and accident rates, however even if there were there's a significant causal relationship that would be overlooked -- often guns are bought specifically because the buyer feels threatened in some way, e.g. living in a dangerous neighborhood, or being threatened by a deranged ex, or the target of a stalker, etc
i agree that there's a lack of data. i'm skeptical that it couldn't be found, but i'm lazy. i do think that causal relationship wouldn't have much impact. you could parse the statistics by neighborhood, and i'd be surprised if the portion of people feeling threatened by an ex/stalker/etc had a significantly higher rate of gun ownership. as far as my own experience goes, people are either going to buy a gun or not; it's more of a lifestyle choice than a response to a threat. of the people i know who feel threatened (neighborhood or crazies), there's actually a lower percentage of gun ownership than people don't. but that's far from statistical analysis.
If we didn't see shades of grey, then why would I (and the NRA, and numerous others) be pointing out that Loughner shouldn't have been able to buy the gun he used to shoot Giffords?
because it's pretty easy to see where a gun shouldn't have been allowed after the fact. responsive versus preventative.
but i know there are some gun-rights people who honestly believe background checks should be stringent enough to block those sorts of sales.
Why would the NRA have helped draft the legislation that created the NICS checks in the first place
you know that sets off all kinds of alarm bells, right? it's like letting the oil lobby help draft energy legislation. of course any lobby would be more than happy to help write their own legislation.
and later helped to expand it to include mentally unstable people like Loughner
...and why wasn't this in the first draft? it just didn't occur to anyone? i can't believe it was just overlooked.
But also a problem -- even more so, in fact -- is passing "feel-good" anti-gun laws that do nothing to address crime.
ouch. even more so than crime?
the thing is, it's mostly ineffective legislation that gets passed. politicians simply can't take on the NRA and survive. i dislike ineffective legislation as much as the next guy. but try finding someone elected willing to take the responsibility to even look for anything restrictive with enough power to actually enforce - even if it were clear that the only target would be illegal gun owners, the gun-rights lobby would fry them.
it shows that you consider us just as dangerous as the actual criminals, and does make you look like you have no regard for our rights.
not the actual criminals, of course. i have yet to call for you all to be locked up, heh. and even though i disagree with the idea that gun ownership is a legitimate "right" (ie, i don't think it should be part of the constitution, not that it's not a right in the US), i still acknowledge it as so. i've never tried to argue that rifles, shotguns, and most pistols shouldn't be freely available to the citizenry (barring obvious exemptions like anyone who has flaunted the law or is mentally unstable to a significant degree).
but to the degree that the gun-lobby throws its weight around (stifling reasonable debate by politicians, carrying openly in order to intimidate opponents, etc), yes, i do think there is a very real danger to democracy in that.
Which means that our time, energy, and money is far better spent focusing on those other factors.
i definitely agree that the majority of the effort should be focused in other areas - as crazy as i may be about guns, i'm far more invested in the other ways of cleaning up neighborhoods (such as education, promoting sane drug control laws so poor people who are only concerned with their own personal use don't spend years behind bars, that kinda thing).
what i would really like to see first where guns are concerned would be ways of actually enforcing current gun laws. take that as an undercurrent to my position; that enforcing current laws is more important, realistically, than passing new ones.
The federal "gun-free schools" law isn't restricted to the school grounds -- it prohibits guns within a quarter of a mile of school grounds!
which is a different issue, in my view. gun-free schools gets a complete green light from me. the parts of laws governing the areas around schools i generally don't like - for similar reasons that i dislike the drug-free school zones. it's pretty easy to tell, imho, whether a guy is dealing to school kids versus having his own personal stuff.
I wonder if you would say the same thing about obstacles in front of voting, or even in front of your freedom to speak your mind...
if it applies to everyone equally, i don't actually mind. poll-taxes and picture-id laws most certainly make it more difficult for some people to vote without bothering others in the least - that is unconstitutional in the extreme. but, say, a test you had to pass in order to register to vote? if applied in the correct way (can't read? don't speak english? etc? no problem at all!), i'd be in favor of it. i don't think you have the right to vote if you don't care to understand the basics of our government system (i envision something similar to the test for citizenship that naturalized citizens have to pass).
as for speaking one's mind, the first amendment is already pretty fucked. anyone can speak their mind to an empty room, no matter what. only a very few people can speak their mind to everyone - it takes a lot of money. corporations apparently have the same rights, free-speech wise, that i do. i'm not allowed to offend other people whenever i want (eg, saying "fuck" on prime time television, walking around town nude, etc). so yeah, i want less restriction there.
of course, i consider the first amendment far more important and crucial than the second. c'est la vie.
And we haven't even gotten to the biggest hurdle of all: Over 99.99% of guns used in the commission of a crime are illegally possessed -- either stolen, or bought on the black market, or smuggled into the country from overseas; either way no part of any registry anymore.
i must admit, i find the order of magnitude in that statistic pretty unbelievable. but i do think that the vast majority of guns used in crime are possessed illegally. i'll point out the arms-race bit (used to be, in places like nyc, that muggers were usually only armed with knives and the like; after citizens started arming themselves, the criminals started carrying heavier weaponry).
but, again, we're looking at pretty lax enforcement and all kinds of loopholes (haven't heard much good about the restrictions and security at gun shows, for instance).
basically, i'd like to give law enforcement more tools to stop a gun's illegal use before it happens. simply having one on a college campus, for instance, carrying without having your permit on you, having an unregistered gun, that kind of thing. of course, illegal search and seizure would still take precedence, but i think you get the direction i'm going in. i don't see how those things would be too onerous for legal gun possession.
i don't know exactly what the best way to about curtailing the number of illegal guns is, but it's frustrating as all hell that the moment some politician starts coming out with ideas about it, he gets blacklisted by the NRA and shouted down. recently in wisconsin we had that recall election - one of the advertisements for scott walker blatantly showed that hunting rifles would be completely confiscated under his opponent. that's kinda scary to me.
Actually, you explicitly excluded victims of crime from your assertion.
yup. the cartoon made no distinction. if it had stipulated that it was only talking about victims of violent crimes, i wouldn't have bothered with that argument. however, it only stated a broad rule; to prove it false, i only needed to show a counter-example.
To my knowledge, there are no stats anywhere that divides up the population into gun owners and non gun owners, and then compares the respective groups' victimization and accident rates, however even if there were there's a significant causal relationship that would be overlooked -- often guns are bought specifically because the buyer feels threatened in some way, e.g. living in a dangerous neighborhood, or being threatened by a deranged ex, or the target of a stalker, etc
i agree that there's a lack of data. i'm skeptical that it couldn't be found, but i'm lazy. i do think that causal relationship wouldn't have much impact. you could parse the statistics by neighborhood, and i'd be surprised if the portion of people feeling threatened by an ex/stalker/etc had a significantly higher rate of gun ownership. as far as my own experience goes, people are either going to buy a gun or not; it's more of a lifestyle choice than a response to a threat. of the people i know who feel threatened (neighborhood or crazies), there's actually a lower percentage of gun ownership than people don't. but that's far from statistical analysis.
If we didn't see shades of grey, then why would I (and the NRA, and numerous others) be pointing out that Loughner shouldn't have been able to buy the gun he used to shoot Giffords?
because it's pretty easy to see where a gun shouldn't have been allowed after the fact. responsive versus preventative.
but i know there are some gun-rights people who honestly believe background checks should be stringent enough to block those sorts of sales.
Why would the NRA have helped draft the legislation that created the NICS checks in the first place
you know that sets off all kinds of alarm bells, right? it's like letting the oil lobby help draft energy legislation. of course any lobby would be more than happy to help write their own legislation.
and later helped to expand it to include mentally unstable people like Loughner
...and why wasn't this in the first draft? it just didn't occur to anyone? i can't believe it was just overlooked.
But also a problem -- even more so, in fact -- is passing "feel-good" anti-gun laws that do nothing to address crime.
ouch. even more so than crime?
the thing is, it's mostly ineffective legislation that gets passed. politicians simply can't take on the NRA and survive. i dislike ineffective legislation as much as the next guy. but try finding someone elected willing to take the responsibility to even look for anything restrictive with enough power to actually enforce - even if it were clear that the only target would be illegal gun owners, the gun-rights lobby would fry them.
it shows that you consider us just as dangerous as the actual criminals, and does make you look like you have no regard for our rights.
not the actual criminals, of course. i have yet to call for you all to be locked up, heh. and even though i disagree with the idea that gun ownership is a legitimate "right" (ie, i don't think it should be part of the constitution, not that it's not a right in the US), i still acknowledge it as so. i've never tried to argue that rifles, shotguns, and most pistols shouldn't be freely available to the citizenry (barring obvious exemptions like anyone who has flaunted the law or is mentally unstable to a significant degree).
but to the degree that the gun-lobby throws its weight around (stifling reasonable debate by politicians, carrying openly in order to intimidate opponents, etc), yes, i do think there is a very real danger to democracy in that.
Re: it's a pretty picture, yes - 79