What you think of as empathy for those who get shot by guns is not what I equate as empathy. You're thinking that unless I am for getting rid of guns, I have no sympathy for those who get shot. That's simply false. Empathy does not automatically mean I want to do anything and everything for a person to help them get what they want at my utter and total expense. That's not empathy. Here's your problem: Less guns in the world may mean less people get shot by guns by virtue of there being less guns. What it DOES NOT equate to, is less people get killed and maimed and injured by violent criminals. What has tended to happen is that when gun laws are relaxed, crime goes down, and when gun laws are made stricter, crime remains unchanged, or increases. Chicago, Florida, DC are examples of this.
And an assault rifle is what, Madness? What defines an assault rifle to you? (I want to be sure I'm looking up what you consider an assault rifle.)
This is also a sort of answer to the hypothetic question: Why didn't you use real examples ? More liberties: Anarchy Less liberties: Nazism (yes, this is the real answer, that I'll explain). You all know the anarchy, probably, (if not, then look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism ) You also know the nazism, but you don't get my point of view here (because of jews). If you remove the jews' extermination, in the nazism there was VERY LESS crimes! (Might it also be because most of the mens gone to war... We don't know.) I know by advance, kira, that you will totally reject this idea and I knew this since I made my other message, and that's why, to avoid a loss of time, and explanations that will finally get rejected by your closed mind, I didn't tell it the first time. I'm sorry, kira, to tell you that my numbers proofed that with less guns, in europe, we have less kills... VERY LESS kills!
Florida enacted their shall-isssue gun law (a lessening of gun laws) in 1987: http://www.fdle.state.fl.us/Content/FSAC/Menu/Crime-Trends/Violent-Crime.aspx Chaeris, your numbers did not "prove" that with less guns you have less kills. You only showed you have less kills. You are drawing conclusions beyond the reach of your data. Even my data doesn't prove that lessening the gun laws in Florida is the reason for less crime. 1997, UK Labour party comes into power and passes strict gun laws: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...crime-going-NOT-Home-Office-chief-admits.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/7402232/Full-scale-of-violent-crime-revealed.html Hell, in the United States crime rate, murder included is decreasing over time, in spite of marked relaxations of gun laws around the country: Note the rate numbers over time: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-1 http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/uc...s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8 Your arguments would have us believe that as a result of the increasing freedom with regard to gun ownership, crime should be going up. It is not doing that. Here's more, for a much longer period of time: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=2221 Read the PDF. Guns, legally owned, provide a sure means of self defense. You guys are focused on who gets shot and killed. You are ignoring the ancillary benefits of owning guns, namely concealed carry, which allows would-be victims to better be able to defend themselves from incidents of rape, theft, and other crime. If you open the Florida link there is a data table. Murder is less, but not overly so, but there is a marked decrease in sexual assault and robbery.
For the term used in the 1994-2004 US Assault Weapons Ban, or the possible 2013 US Assault Weapons Ban under legislative consideration, see assault weapon. "Assault weapon refers to different types of firearms and weapons, and is a term that has differing meanings and usages." But Madness, to answer your question: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/uc...s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8 You're looking for the Rifles row under Homicides. 453 in 2007, 323 in 2011. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, handguns are the weapon primarily featured in homicides. Banning rifles will have negligible effects, if any.
For the first time I approve Kira: To ban assault rifles won't change a thing... Assault rifles is nothing compared to handguns! 60% of kills are done only with HANDGUNS (and not other guns).
60% of kills? There were only 12,664 homicides in 2011. Of which only 6,220 were committed with a handgun. That is less than 50%. 12,664 homicides, 6,220 of which done with a handgun, in a country which in mid-2011 had a population of 311,800,000. That is 1 murder by handgun per 50,129 people. The percentage of people who were murdered in 2011 (by handgun) was 0.002% (rounded up.) And this is part of a decreasing trend. The numbers of murders overall, as well as those by handgun, and firearm generally, are decreasing in the United States. Think rationally, objectively, and not based on a visceral emotional response to a media frenzy over single incidents. The situation is resolving itself already, we do not need to fix what is not broken. You will always have crime, you will always have murder. Banning guns will only change the way in which it is conducted, but as it stands, it's a teeny tiny fraction. You want to affect 39%-50% of Americans based on 0.002% of the population? It's simple reality that people are going to get murdered. It's sad, but it's true. There are scum out there who are going to perpetrate evil. They already break the law to do this, why do you think more laws will change this at all? If anything steps should be taken to increase security at schools so that if any psychopath (and they are psychopaths) decides to take a shot, he faces a dramatically increased likelihood of getting shot before he can do anything. As it is, schools are "gun free zones" or in other words, soft targets for people inclined to wreck mayhem to target. Lockdowns and waiting for a SWAT response won't save anyone. Demonstrably, HAS NOT. You need an immediate response to the threat, not a wait and huddle in the corner and get massacred. I personally think arming every teacher is overkill, but there are schools already that have security guards, that are armed. Edit: Corrected my math, I forgot a 0 in the overall population numbers. The rate of murder is ten times LESS than I had previous indicated. And just to stir the pot, the Sandy Hook event that set off this huge debate involves 0.000008% of the population. And you want to take away liberties enshrined in the constitution for THIS? FOR THIS?
Your actual opinion is exactly what I though originally in this debate too! Your numbers proofed against me; and also boring math from me. You are right, it doesn't worth removing the 2nd amendment, I don't think it would change anything... But many people would just disagree wich could make things worth, so please: NEVER TRY TO REMOVE THE 2ND AMENDMENT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMTUMANCE, BUT NEVER ADD IT TO A COUNTRY THAT HASN'T IT ALREADY. BOTH WOULD BE TERRRIBLE!
Here in germany we have a saying that goes like: "don't trust a statistic you didn't fake yourself" Numbers aren't the only thing that matters - to me it's the lifes of the people who have died from assault rifles.
You're just such a saint. Weren't you accusing me of dismissing statistics and sources that I don't like? Oh wait, that was SK. My sources are the state and federal government, the FBI/DOJ. But, Madness... how do you propose to have a rational and objective discussion about this issue without DATA? Do you just want to go by your gut? What if your gut feeling isn't the same as others? What then?
The real question here is whether or not the number of guns in an area has an affect on the number of violent crimes, i.e. murder, rape, assault and robbery in that area. It is important to not confuse a connection with a correlation. For example, on a recent study registered republicans reported a much higher level of sexual satisfaction in their relationships than registered democrats. That is a correlation. So republicans have better sex then democrats? No. They don't. The ratio of men to women is much higher in the Republican party than in the Democratic Party, and men report having a more satisfying sex life than women. There is no connection present. So, out of the 35 countries belonging to the OECD, which is just about every politically cooperative modern country (so no PRC or Sudan), the US has the third worst homicide rate, at 5.0 cases per 100,000 population. Canada has 1.8, Scotland 1.6, England and Whales have 1.1 and Germany has 0.8. (these numbers are from before 2010). So, the US has a much higher homicide rate and a much lower level of gun control. So the more guns, the more violent crime? No. What the US has is a border shared with Mexico. Mexico has the highest homicide rate of all the OECD countries, at 18.1 people per 100,000 population per year. And that is just what the mexican authorities are willing to report to the UN. It doesn't count the Juarez war-zone, where cops simply don't go. It doesn't count every corpse that is simply vanished by its murderers. And that number is relying on the honesty of a corrupt government in the first place. And it is still almost four times higher than any other modern country. What the US has that England and Canada and Australia and Germany don't is a network of massive criminal organizations waging a drug war that has killed somewhere between 60,000 to a 100,000 people. Further proof that there is no connection between gun ownership and violence is the case of Switzerland. Switzerland does not share a border with a crime-ridden country. It manages to keep one of the lowest crime rates in the world, despite putting almost no restrictions on gun ownership. Almost every non-violent adult in the country is armed, and it has a lower crime rate than just about every other European country. (and Canada and Australia). So, is there a connection between number of guns and violent crime rate? No. There is not. (This information is from the UN). As for being accused of sounding like a psychopath, I have two things to say. First, you mean that I sound like a sociopath, a person with the inability to feel empathy. Second, so what if I do? If banning guns saved 2 people from getting shot, one of whom was later stabbed to death instead, and caused 2 more people to be killed because they couldn't defend themselves, then 2 people died to save one. Is is sociopathic to count people like that? Yes it is. Does it change the fact that 2 people might die in place of one? No it does not.
Sorry for double post. Madness, does it matter to you how someone dies? Does it matter if they are killed with a gun or with a knife? Is it better for one person to be shot than for 2 people to be knifed? This is why numbers matter. If you want the least amount of people to be hurt, then you have to care if a weapon ban does more harm then good. You cannot disregard numbers from credible sources like the CDC, the FBI and the UN simply because you don't like them. This is not a utopia. Utopias are impossible. There is a reason the word comes from not (u) place (topia). If you try to ignore reality you do vastly more harm than good. You say "finally, someone who's serious" when someone agrees with you. You think that I am not serious? You think that I don't feel the tragedy of Sandy Hook, and Aurora, Colorado, and the madman who butchered his own mother, father and siblings in the city where I live last week? AM I NOT FUCKING SERIOUS ENOUGH FOR YOU!? The difference between you and I is that when you see a madman shoot up a school, you wish that he hadn't done it. I wish that the principal had an M-4 locked in her cabinet, so that she could have blow that fuckers head off instead of having to rush at him unarmed and get riddled full of holes.
1. My last statement was obviously sarcasm. 2. I didn't discredit the statistics given by the fbi or cdc or un, i just stated that statistics can be misleading. 3. I don't want a utopia, i just want people not to be able to shoot each other. 4. If the principle had a M-4 locked in her cabinet, there's always a key to that cabinet. That key can be stolen, which means the M-4 gets into the hand of the person who will shoot people. Or to the black market... I want that this doesn't happen. I want people to not shoot each other. Why can't this be a priority, rather than your "eye for an eye" mentality?
You want people to not shoot each other. You totally ignored a good portion of what Rahau said concerning what happens when you take guns away, and the alternate means that people have to inflict murder and mayhem. You don't want people to shoot each other. Alright, do you give a rats ass if they knife each other? Push each other off buildings? Into the path of oncoming trains and subway cars? Do you care about all the people who have defended themselves with handguns from robbery, rape, and being killed? Self defense is alive and well. Home invasion is a real problem, and home owners armed with guns subduing home invaders or killing them, legally under Castle Doctrine, is REAL. Guns are not used by criminals alone. There are millions of legal, law abiding citizens who own and use guns on a daily basis. To quote an NRA leader, the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. You are obsessed with saving one or two people who may be killed because guns are legal. And are blind to the thousands who are saved each year by being able to defend themselves from perpetrators in this country and around the globe. You are naive in the extreme, Madness.
