Nov 2023 Mod notice:
There may be other, more specific, threads about some aspects of US politics, but this one tends to act as a hub for all sorts of related news and information, so it's usually one of the busiest OTC threads.
If you're new to OTC, it's worth reading the Introduction to On-Topic Conversations
and the On-Topic Conversations debate guidelines
before posting here.
Rumor-based, fear-mongering and/or inflammatory statements that damage the quality of the thread will be thumped. Off-topic posts will also be thumped. Repeat offenders may be suspended.
If time spent moderating this thread remains a distraction from moderation of the wiki itself, the thread will need to be locked. We want to avoid that, so please follow the forum rules
when posting here.
In line with the general forum rules, 'gravedancing' is prohibited here. If you're celebrating someone's death or hoping that they die, your post will get thumped. This rule applies regardless of what the person you're discussing has said or done.
Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
![]()
It's the internet, people come out here to vent. Yell at us, or me if it makes you feel better, okay? :)
And yes, avoid the news. The world keeps spinning. You're allowed to take a break every so often, so do that for yourself, too.
Glove and Boots is good for Blog!I take a rather practical stand point on gun ownership: does owning a gun make you safer? All the data I've seen says no. For every one legitimate usage of a firearm for self defense I'm guessing there's probably ten improper usages. Killing your cheating wife, yourself, a guy who wanted to steal your stereo, (that ones debatable in the states but not here, btw), injuring yourself or others by accident, a child getting ahold of it and of course; someone stealing it and using it to kill people.
From a purely practical stand-point there are far, far more negative outcomes possible then good ones.
I guess what I want is data. I want stats that prove that having guns makes you safer.
from where I'm sitting
it seems to be the opposite.
Stats and hard data for how many crimes that are prevented by guns don't exist. There are -estimates- that say as many as 700,000 crimes are prevented by firearms, but there is no hard data. This is often because there is nothing to report by a law enforcement agency.
And by "nothing to report" means no crime reached the point of actually being committed because of the presence of a legally owned firearm, so there is nothing to record.
Now, what you do see in the hard data is a fraction of homicides classified as "justifiable" homicides, or deaths resulting from acts of self-defense as well as those committed in the line of duty by law enforcement. It's a pretty small number compared to the rest done in malice. A few people's lives may have been saved. Without more concrete data, it's difficult to say.
The rest is anecdotal evidence. And that will never be enough for some people.
(What does anecdotal evidence entail? A just citizen does not use their firearm unless their life is threatened.
The story of a woman who barricades herself in the corner of her bedroom while burglars loot her house as she waits to call the police. She's not forced to use her gun because they just take her stuff and leave her physically alone.
The story of a father who answers the door late at night with his gun at his side to answer for a bunch of drunks who have the wrong address and could get rowdy if given the wrong answer. They see the father with his gun at his side and decided to move on.
Things like that are anecdotal.)
edited 16th Dec '12 6:39:59 AM by DevilTakeMe
Glove and Boots is good for Blog!My linked data shows less gun murders by a large number for countries with strict gun laws so...
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?
So what? Nationmaster doesn't exactly break it down for people and show exactly what is going on.
It will also show you that several of those countries with much more restrictive gun laws also have ridiculously higher total violent crime rates.
Compare the United States with, say, the United Kingdom.
Without breaking it down, it will clearly tell you that the United Kingdom is a much more violent, much more crime-ridden nation than the United States per capita, even though there are fewer murders.
Under 12 million crimes (one million violent crimes) total for the United States, which has 5 times the population, versus the UK, 6 million total crimes (one million violent crimes as well.
1 million violent crimes (ten thousand homicides) for a population of 300 million.
UK - 1 million violent crimes for a population of 60 million.
You can easily say that Nationmaster is including assaults that are more or less "harsh language" and no injury was actually involved. But I'm not adding that, just the numbers of crimes that end in injury or death. The number would be much higher than that if those were included in this particular count.
According to the numbers published by the United Kingdom (compiled from the Crime Statistics of England and Wales, and what I could get from Scotland and an estimate of Northern Ireland - hard to put those together) and compared those from the FBI Uniform Crime Stats for the United States, it's also just as easy to point out that the UK is five times more violent than the United States, but only a fifth as lethal.
Is it easy to explain the difference? No. Different cultures, different population density. There's no uniform factor that will adequately explain why there is more crime and fewer murders, or more murders and less of a crime rate.
edited 16th Dec '12 6:58:38 AM by DevilTakeMe
Glove and Boots is good for Blog!Whenever people say that "owning a car is much more dangerous than owning a gun!!" I kind of want to scream because not only can a car be used for things besides hurting people, but the US created pretty draconian traffic laws to deal with the fact that it was more dangerous to be on the road than it was to be in the Vietnam war. So it's not like the US has never done anything to improve one's chances of living with some dangerous thing.
edited 16th Dec '12 7:01:09 AM by ohsointocats
The main problem I have with the pro-gun crowd is they have this insane idea that everyone is rambo in a stressful situatuion, and that arming teachers wont just make collateral damage worse as teachers who likely arent trained to disregard the life of other humans will have HUGE problems gunning down potential attackers in cold blood, especially when they have next to no time to get to these guns and prepare them for use.
The most ;likely scenario of arming everyone to prevent gun crime is you get a lot of people who are nowhere near trained enough to kill someone without hesitation firing wildly in an attempt to save peoples lives, not some heroic movie gun fantasy.
edited 16th Dec '12 7:17:20 AM by Midgetsnowman
![]()
Does it matter if a car can be used for something else, when it is still lethal? And I like to point out that you deal with cars much more often than you do guns, and you learn how to drive defensively. You have to deal with people every day who are also on the road being incredibly unsafe. It's not the person driving 70 using their knees to steer while texting (which is illegal, by the way, but they still do it), it's you who has to react to how other people are driving.
I use my guns once a week against paper targets, and I intend on only using them for target shooting. Does this change your perception of how dangerous a gun is? No. It doesn't change my perception that it's dangerous either.
edited 16th Dec '12 7:20:51 AM by DevilTakeMe
Glove and Boots is good for Blog!
I read it. Did you read what I wrote?
You have to deal with dangerous things all the time. You have to deal with dangerous people who don't even realize just how dangerous they make it for you to just exist by going about their daily lives.
But the fact is you have learned to react to it. It might have even made you a better driver for having to put up with it, right?
Glove and Boots is good for Blog!![]()
a lot of us dont have problems with people owning a gun to go to a range or go hunt deer. We have problems with the idea that gun owners are magical superheroes with the shooting abilities of Deadpool or Vash the Stampede or Rambo that can stop all gun violence by criminals if they just had permission to arm everyone.
edited 16th Dec '12 7:30:00 AM by Midgetsnowman
I'm not really looking at other data. I'm simply looking at gun deaths. Even if you adjust for population the US is insanely high. There are several reasons for this but I really don't see how less guns will equal more deaths.
By the way, the reason assaults and the like are far higher is because they dont have guns to kill each other. Sort of like all the head injuries that showed up once helmets became common place. People didn't become reckless they just didn't die because they were their gorram helmets.
edited 16th Dec '12 7:31:54 AM by thatguythere47
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?- 44031 That's not comparing like with like. The UK is a 'more violent' nation in the sense that it's very fond of having a huge fight outside a pub. But not generally in the sense of shooting someone outside said pub.
A 'violent crime' in the UK includes any and all violence against the person, any and all sexual offences - as well as the US definition of 'murder, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault and simple assault'.
Most of the 'violent crime' in the UK comes under categories that wouldn't make the US definition. You can see a more detailed breakdown
here.
edited 16th Dec '12 7:38:48 AM by Bluesqueak
It ain't over 'till the ring hits the lava.
To which I answered that the CESW doesn't include the statistics for Scotland and Northern Ireland (just England and Wales), and that it's easy to compare without breaking it down.
![]()
Explain it any way you want. Does that make it alright? Is it better to have more violence overall because there's a lack of lethality?
![]()
![]()
Where are you getting this from? You're basing this opinion based on what is said by keyboard commandos on the internet? Or is this from some argument that because Israel has this that everyone with a gun is going to turn into a movie action hero? Or is this from a knowledgeable source?
I'd like to meet those people and ask them if they could do what they say at a range, let alone in real life. Arming teachers who aren't ready for it is a stupid idea. The issue at hand has been denying teachers and faculty who -are- ready to defend themselves and the children they teach from carrying concealed on school grounds because of "gun-free zone" laws.
edited 16th Dec '12 7:45:45 AM by DevilTakeMe
Glove and Boots is good for Blog!Okay people need to stop comparing guns to cars. Cars have a use outside of killing people. You also need to practice for 50 hours in my state and pass a knowledge and skill test before getting a license otherwise you are breaking the fucking law. You do not have to do this to get a gun which is something that you only use to kill people. Either take away the guns or make it harder to get them because you do not fucking need them.
Now, don't say you need them for protection. Anybody who wants to rob you will assume you have a gun and point their's at you first giving you no time to react. They also wouldn't have helped in this scenario since the teacher will just get shot before they can grab the gun.
edit: WHAT IS WITH THIS FUCKING STUPID FASCINATION WITH LETTING TEACHERS BE ARMED! Do you want your kids to go to school with teachers that could snap and shoot up the class? What about that kid that had a bad day and grabs his teacher's gun? It's a stupid idea and is not worth debating AT ALL!
edit 2: I am sorry for blowing up but this will not solve a damn thing and when I have kids I will not want the faculty to be one bad day away from shooting them.
If you must have guns on the premises get a police officer assigned to the school in case someone goes nuts. That's what mine does.
edited 16th Dec '12 7:46:20 AM by Kostya
It's called Concealed Carry. The kid would not even know it was there.
This is what I'm talking about. Overreactions without an understanding of what is being said.
"Concealed carry." Meaning "hidden." You do not know it is there until it used.
edited 16th Dec '12 7:48:52 AM by DevilTakeMe
Glove and Boots is good for Blog!Which would you prefer? A black eye, or a slab in the morgue?
[addendum]
You've never been a teacher, have you? Schoolkids would find out who was carrying; or worse, they'd have rumours about who was carrying.
edited 16th Dec '12 7:51:17 AM by Bluesqueak
It ain't over 'till the ring hits the lava.You really think nobody will find out the teacher is carrying a gun? Someone is going to find out. Even so the teacher could still go insane. I do not want my kids around guns and I sure as fuck would not want them around without my knowledge. It is appalling that you are suggesting this.
You are also ignoring that two guns equals more dead people and criminals that are a lot more likely to shoot first and ask questions later. Also what happens if the police get there? Who do they shoot?
edit: Again, if you must have a person there defending the students make it a police officer. Someone who is trained to deal with these situations. Not a random teacher that is probably a terrible marksman.
edited 16th Dec '12 7:53:37 AM by Kostya
Option 3. Neither. Is this so hard to understand?
Glove and Boots is good for Blog!![]()
Why, are you going to shoot the guy who'll give you a black eye?
Seriously, that's called 'disproportionate response'. A gun is a tool, a device. It is not a magic wand that can be waved to dispel evil.
All you need is someone stoned, or drunk, or frankly stupid - and then you've got a dead body where there was no need for it.
It ain't over 'till the ring hits the lava.
It's not disproportionate retribution, it's justifiable use of force, and it's a good point to bring this up because how do you know what someone intends? Speaking of politics, this is how the Trayvon Martin case is going to be debated.
![]()
Your entire argument has been to get rid of guns and all violence and all chances of dying will somehow magically vanish. Would you prefer your child to be stabbed or be shot? Do you want someone else being responsible for your child's safety? Do you want that person to be properly trained in defending your child?
Purely emotional responses without any knowledge of how it can and will work just make this harder to communicate. Every post you've made up to this point has been about how people in the NRA refuse to open an intelligent dialogue, and here you are, ad hominem.
edited 16th Dec '12 8:00:12 AM by DevilTakeMe
Glove and Boots is good for Blog!

Have you considered skipping the news a bit more, then?
That's actually a serious question - I've heard that it works quite well for cushioning a depressive episode, interestingly enough.
What's precedent ever done for us?