Despite that higher levels of legal gun ownership correlates with more gun crimes, do you still think that high levels of gun ownership is preferable?

An error in logic: “Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.” ( After this, therefore because of this. )

I am neither for nor against guns in a very strong way. I would not own a gun but I know gun advocates are very strongly in favor of their rights, and the NRA is an extremely powerful lobby,

I am willing to bet that most gun crimes are not committed by people who own guns legally.

Gun ownership is entirely unnecessary for the vast majority of people.

I do not believe widespread gun ownership or concealed carry reduces crime but I am clearly in the minority here in the States.

I have a Constitutional right to keep and bear arms—it’s written there in pretty plain English. I do find if preferable to not take away any Constitutional rights just because one may not agree with the right. Or worse, do the “Well, what they meant to say is….” thing and try to rewrite the Constitution.

@jca
How about this?

The violent crime rate has dropped precipitously in every city and State where gun ownership, concealed carry, etc., as been instituted. Enough said.

An error in logic: “Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.” ( After this, therefore because of this. )”

Well, actually, Switzerland & Finland have about half the number of guns per head as the USA (56&46 vs 90 per 100), but the rate of firearm homicide is much lower, proportionally (0.58&0.86 vs 7.06 per 100,000).

So I’d say that perhaps a more important issue to address is the horrendous level of inequality in the USA and the utter disregard shown by the middle- and upper-classes, with regards to the destructive social issues that plague vast areas of each city, dooming millions to lives of poverty and violence.

Here are some some interesting reports on the matter.

…But then I suppose, if the richest, most powerful country on Earth can’t solve these problems, who can? Oh, wait, almost every other country in the world.

Perhaps if the USA didn’t have comparable levels of income inequality to Uganda & Zimbabwe, they wouldn’t have comparable rates of homicide either?

No, I do not think there should be more gun owners.

@CaptainHarley – Alas I don’t speak Latin. Could you be more specific? I’m thinking that you have ignored the fact that I specifically concentrated on gun crime as opposed to say, as you seem to want to focus on, violent crime. ‘nemo me impune lacessit’, I got that from a coin in my pocket. Sounds appropriate.

I am with @CaptainHarley here. I know a lot of gun owners back East, but according to some studies, there is a lower rate of gun-related crime in NH than in Japan where the gun laws are very strict. Accordingly, I feel that it is a coincidence rather than a correlation than increased rates of gun ownership cause an increase in gun-related crime.

Notice that there is more crime (per capita) in densely populated areas and areas of high poverty? There are other factors to consider here, and I think that the stress of living in a city and/or being poor are bigger factors in crime rates than gun ownership.

@markferg I took his comment to be a Latin way of saying what I just said; it’s a coincidence, not a correlation or cause.

Perhaps one of the more interesting findings of “Bowling for Columbine” was the fact that higher levels of legal gun ownership does not clearly correlate with more gun “crimes” – Canada is a great example.

Gun ownership is perhaps the last place we should look to attempt to regulate guns as dangerous instrumentalities. Gun sales and transfers should be. @ragingloli points to the fact that the most common source of guns is from family and friends – that’s disturbing, considering that it indicates people are legally buying guns and then giving or selling them to whoever they know without recourse.

@iamthemob I can’t remember the exact number, but aren’t like 90% of the guns used in crimes obtained from somewhere other than a licensed gun dealer (either a shop or gun show)? I seem to recall the number being in the 85–90% range.

@jerv – Probably sounding pedantic here but a correlation is a relationship between quantities without drawing an inference as to the cause of the relationship, so guns/gun-crime can be correlated but the reasons are still open to debate. I am saying that the correlation exists, I offer no explanation why this is so. If you argue against the correlation, then you are saying that number of guns do not vary with number of gun crimes but there is no need to add additional explanation, it is a simple case of looking at numbers. There is of course as question of semantics and in the case of ‘violent’ crime this does need some looking into. ‘Violent’ could be considers as including all instances of assault and all instance of assault could include cases where contact is made between a number of people. So, a ‘violent’ crime could be where one person lightly touches another person to stop them encroaching on their personal space. Personally, I don’t think this is really violence. Perhaps that is just a consequence of the environment that I have grown up in. If you want to debate a correlation then you need to agree a basis for the measurements first.

It would seem that there is some confusion (ok, maybe it’s just that I’m confused) about legal and illegal gun ownership. Which is why I talked about ownership being inclusive of legal and illegal ownership. If you are the registered owner of a gun but you let someone else have the gun I would say that the other person is an illegal owner of a gun. In any case, the number of guns doesn’t vary so I’m not sure what the obfuscation is about here?

There isn’t much of a correlation. There are countries with much smaller rates of gun ownership, and much higher rates of gun violence, and also countries with relatively high rates of ownership, but with minuscule levels of gun violence.

Obviously, if there were not so many guns in the USA, there would be less gun-crime, but what is clear is that the abundance of guns is NOT the cause of the gun violence, as there is not even a correlation, when you look worldwide. The cause of gun-violence in the USA is the extreme inequality, and the “fuck ‘em” attitude that those with the ability to change the situation have, towards the poor sections of society, which has given rise to the whole ghetto culture and mindset of “the world is against you” and “only the strong survive”.

It is plain to see, for the entire world, that the level of violence in the USA is due to social policy of segregation, containment & imprisonment, rather than enabling and empowering the poor to overcome the myriad obstacles, imposed by perversely unequal wealth distribution upon their potential to succeed in the conventional manner…

I don’t know how anyone could be surprised that these people give up any hope of “making it” in the rest of society, and turn to lives of violence and crime, when their entire life experience from birth has been of the “rest of society” essentially telling them that they live in poverty because their parents never worked hard enough, and that it’s somehow also your fault, so why should we help you out?

@markferg

No, guns should be illegal except in the hands of the police, military, etc., and others who use them in their line of work. Not in the hands of ordinary civilians. There are too many irresponsible people out there, not to mention nuts.

This sounds like the gun control argument that says a person is “X” times more likely to get hurt with a gun if they are kept in the home VS a home with no guns in it at all. I wonder who was the first genius to come out with that? That statement is so broad and intentionally ambiguous that it really says nothing except maybe if you remove choice and free will from the equation then it will be impossible for anything bad to happen.

@MRSHINYSHOES SO in basic form there, you agree that rights of the vast majority should be illuminated to solve the shortcomngs of a tiny group (comparatively) of irresponsibles? Should all laws be tailored to cater to the minute groups even if they hold back honest, responsible and productive people? So cater to the lowest possible denominator and the rest will eventually grow to live with it after many generations?

@woodcutter Yes, because when the crimes they commit against the innocent majority result in unnecessary, immeasurable grief, tragedy and human suffering, then laws must be applied for all concerned, irregardless of whether people are responsible or not. Take the analogy of administering polio vaccinations for all children. You do it for the good of society as a whole, whether or not some people may have a beef about it and don’t want to vaccinate their kids.

@MRSHINYSHOES But a disease like polio or any other will always afflict people it touches. It does not discriminate and it does not have a mind. I think that analogy is a fail. Vaccinations are not prohibiting people from exercising there right of self defense against an attacker with a brain.

@MRSHINYSHOES so one group of very powerful people in a society (government entities) should have a monopoly on violence? What is it about the police that make them so much more capable than the average citizen at handling weapons? (Don’t say “training.” A lot of cops only qualify with their handguns once a year.)

Like @CaptainHarley said, gun laws have been continually liberalizing at the Federal and State level in the US (read: being relaxed) and according to the FBI, gun crime has continued to drop rapidly. I wonder why this is? Perhaps guns in the hands of regular, law-abiding folks isn’t the problem that so many assert it is. Like I said, the FBI says gun crime is dropping while rates of gun ownership have skyrocketed in the past few years. Why then is blood not flowing in the streets like many folks on here suggest would happen if more people had guns? Why have we not “regressed to the Wild West” like others have suggested? Because more decent people, owning more guns, is not the problem, it is not the cause of gun crime, and it is not a bad thing.

I’ve got statistics and documents to back up all of my claims, if anyone wants them, but nobody has ever actually addressed them in any of these threads, so I’m only going to post them if someone actually asks.

Most gun crime in this country is related to two interrelated factors: enforced poverty/ghettoization, and the new Prohibition(i.e. the “War on Drugs”, or more accurately, the War on Poor People of Color). If you can’t understand that, you aren’t adequately understanding the situation. I wag my finger at any so called “liberals” who don’t examine that aspect of gun crime, or the uneven application of laws.

Feudalism was enabled in big part because the enslaved masses (“serfs”) were disallowed from having real weapons, thus maintaining the State’s monopoly on violence being used to coerce them to work. Considering that our own economic system is only one step away from that (just barely, even, since the rich own most of the land and the means of production), further disarming the populace would simply allow for an easier return to feudalism and outright slavery. Wage slavery is already close enough.

Between four and six people die every day in the U.S. due to their exposure to police.

Slaves don’t own weapons. Free men and women (and other gendered people) do. I’d like to be free, thankyouverymuch.

The violent crime rate has dropped precipitously in every city and State where gun ownership, concealed carry, etc., as been instituted.

A nonsensical, dishonest argument.

Violent crime has plummeted across the US in the past thirty years, including in places like Chicago where handguns were banned for years.

@jaytkay But Chicago, DC, etc STILL have the highest crime rates in the country. True, crime rates there in those cities did drop a tad but no where near the national average, which is a shame. In fact in Chicago violent crime increased dramatically on or about the time their oppressive gun laws went into effect. Not saying that was the reason why, but it does seem hard to label it a coincidence.

Maybe if guns were not so readily available to anybody who just wants one for the sake of having it, then the true criminals wouldn’t be able to access them so easily themselves. I think all states should have the same rules and the same procedures for people who want to own a gun. In some states it’s ridiculously easy for any maniac to own a gun legally. Everybody who wants a gun should have a background check and should have to pass psychological evaluation.

@kheredia All states do require background checks, and while they don’t require psychological evaluation they do bar people who’ve been diagnosed with certain disorders from buying firearms.

Plus, as I’ve stated before on other gun control threads, psychiatric diagnoses are used as a tool to clinicalize political dissent and unpopular philosophies. Last I checked (it’s been years since I was in school), the current DSM listed as a disorder what basically amounted to labelling anyone with strong anti-authoritarian views as severely mentally disturbed, sometimes even as a danger to society. What bullshit. Considering that one of the most recent additions was a “disorder” of kids not wanting to go to school, I doubt the current version is getting any better.

crime rates there in those cities did drop a tad
Wrong. A 50% drop in homicides is not “a tad”

but no where near the national average
Wrong. See above.

Chicago violent crime increased dramatically on or about the time their oppressive gun laws went into effect
Along with crime rates in every other place in the US, regardless of local gun laws.

@jaytkay So you’re not going to also mention in this discussion that Chicago was also the scene of a serious amount of socio-economic and racial conflict 30–40 years ago. Say, wasn’t that where the cops murdered Fred Hampton?

Do I even need to point out the irony of the argument ignoring the civil and humanitarian works of militant organizers when discussing drops in violent crime?

@jaytkay Chicago, DC, NYC are the most violent cities. I’m making comparisons to other large cities, no matter how you slice it. And they still have the most restrictive gun laws. So common logic suggests that making it all but impossible for the citizenry to own there doesn’t have the effect of less crime. Here’s one for you. When a reporter asked Mayer Daley about this, the mayor suggested he shove a bayoneted rifle up his ass. Waa? That town is rotten with violence starting at the top with King Richard.

@woodcutter Newsflash: Big cities had high crime many centuries before firearms were invented. Seriously. It’s true.You can look it up

The rise and fall of crime rates in Chicago in recent decades is the same as the national average.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_rate now this chart is about a couple years old but here in a quick search it’s looking like the windy city is far from the national average on killings and crime in general. It’s right up there with the worst of the worst at least according to these FBI #‘s. Also guns get used in many crimes that didn’t cause death so there is no way to tell if the bounty of crimes in that line didn’t include some firearm use. You can provide another link if you want but the nuts and bolts of them all will indicate a high percentage of cases per 1000 people in Chicago, you know…the city with the tough gun laws. It’s the tough gun laws telling the story. Sure,lots of big population ares can have high crime but the one’s with severe gun control should be like the Emerald City, no? If it isn’t then what is the point of having them? http://www.cityrating.com/citycrime.asp?city=Chicago&state=IL

@jaytkay I’m sorry, but was that comment of yours about historical cities supposed to support your previous comments? Because I gotta tell ya, it does not.

Crime rates soared in the US from the 60s up to the 90s…
EVERYWHERE regardless of lax or strict local gun laws.

Crime rates plummeted in the US in the past 20 years…
EVERYWHERE regardless of lax or strict local gun laws.

If you want ignore those facts I can’t get past your willful ignorance. Enjoy. I am done here.

@jaytkay burn

I’d also like to suggest that we consider that some people are confusing cause for effect, and vice versa. Maybe people are buying guns in certain areas because of the very real perceived threat of violence. Is everyone familiar with the story of Robert F. Williams? I thought not Robert was a military veteran and the militant chairperson of the Monroe, NC chapter of the NAACP. His stance was simply that black people should exercise armed self defense. Why? Because racist Klansmen were fucking shooting at them! And guess who they were. The cops, the judges, the people in authority. Still think they’re the only people who need guns? Can anyone seriously even say that so soon after countless Libyans were mowed down by their own military?

Even now, Klansmen and members of racist militias often go into these sorts of jobs. Last year a big expose uncovered that one of the biggest racist militias in the country was headed by a guy who worked security at an explosives production plant. And given that these groups can get guns and other weapons through a) official means, b) criminally, or c) by fabricating them themselves (not hard, even I could do it), doesn’t it seem a bit misguided (or downright criminal). These militias often have homophobic and mysogynistic goals, as well, and not uncommonly they include evangelical Christianity in the mix.

Fun fact: membership in hate based militias has risen dramatically in the past couple of years.

So, do we have any reason to own a gun?

@jaytkay “There are three types of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics” – Mark Twain

Statistics are not facts.

The sentence that begins “And given that these groups…” is supposed to have this tacked onto the end: ”...to tell average citizens, particularly those who are targets, that they can’t defend themselves with adequate weapons?”

Also, can we stop using the ‘number of guns in the country per people’ statistic, and instead use statistics like ‘how many people actually own guns’? We all know that lots of people who own guns own multiple (I own four), and some people have way too many, so using the first statistic makes it sound like everyone is packing heat when a minority are. In Switzerland, many people own a single rifle because of their National Guard system. These things make a difference when you’re comparing statistics.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Um, I think we’d be safer in the long run if guns were in the hands of the police than in the hands of “who knows who” in general society.

@woodcutter Perhaps that wasn’t a great analogy, but I think you know what I mean.

@MRSHINYSHOES, implying that police always have the best interests of the public in mind.

@MRSHINYSHOES Did you even read my comments? Or @Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard‘s? Because your response leads me to believe you didn’t. Simply repeating something ad nauseum doesn’t make it true.

Can we have a substantive argument, please?

And seriously, how many times to cops have to get away with shooting unarmed black men (and one recent case of shooting a deaf indigenous artist) before you give up the mythology that police are here to protect us? Also, an estimated 550 rapes are prevented each day by a woman simply pulling a gun on an attacker. Since we all know that rape statistics are understated, this is a HUGE amount of violence prevented.

@MRSHINYSHOES explain to me please what is “the long run” And if you would, how long does it take for your cops to come to your house in an emergency?

Jeez, how could I not already have linked to this video yet? It’s like my ace card in making the case that gun control is racist.

@incendiary_dan, check your link…

There we go.

Higher levels of legal gun ownership does not correlate with more gun crimes.
Violent Crime Declined As Gun Sales Climbed in 2009

Historic events dictates that it’s preferable to have high levels of gun ownership. Plenty of historical tyrants, yes? Plenty of crime and domestic violence, yes? It’s not so easy to prey on those that can defend themselves, is it?

Personally, I’m a multiple gun owner for a about five years now and I’ve had to use my guns to defend myself on more then a couple occasions. A few times from home and a few times in public. Body armor and residential security plays a role as well. I’ve had death threats due the type of work I do. I also used my guns to help another. Sometimes you don’t even have to fire off a shot to defend yourself or help someone. I can only carry hand guns, but if I could, I would carry the assault rifles I have at home in a heart beat. I and any other victim would be long dead if we had to rely on authorities to protect us. What happens when the protectors become the offenders? I haven’t had to use it on tyrants yet, but that boat is never to late.

“Based on production data from firearm manufacturers, (By the Committee to Improve Research and Data on Firearms and the Committee on Law and Justice, National Research Council of the National Academies.) there are roughly 300 million firearms owned by civilians in the United States as of 2010. Of these, about 100 million are handguns.”

Seems a lot of people agree that high level of gun ownership is preferable.

Gun control is going to be even MORE racist and elitist if some people have their way. By levying new taxes on ammo,parts ,licensing, conducting background checks, and every other thing that can be passed, it will make it even more costly for low wage earners to keep guns. This includes many blacks as well as just about all who are in the middle class(the way IT is heading).

It’s very difficult to address topics like this in a forum such as this one where a lot of extraneous things get lumped in, and facts and statistics are often misquoted, misunderstood or sometimes just exaggerated.

For example, the question talks about “gun crimes”, but there’s no differentiation between types of “gun crimes”. For example, homicide by gunshot is a clear “gun crime”, but not all “armed robberies” are gun crimes, even if the overriding majority of them are. We already know that not all homicides are gun crimes. How often is rape a gun crime, or kidnapping or extortion? On the other side, we don’t have accurate statistics for how often crime (of any kind) is prevented because a potential victim either shows a gun or fires a warning shot, or simply creates doubt in the mind of an assailant that “I might have a gun.”

So what starts out as a question about the correlation between gun ownership and gun crime gets hijacked into a thread about “crime rates” in general or “homicide rates” in particular, “social justice”, “inequality” and as always in these threads politics. Meanwhile we mostly not all, I see ignore co-factors such as The War on Some Drugs, selective prosecution, plea-bargaining and even such things as the increasing availability of abortion starting in the mid-1970s and the growth of the economy and more politics decreased availability of large public housing projects which were often taken over by armed gangs, and even reductions in welfare. There are all kinds of correlations between various kinds of crimes, criminals and rates of crime, and reasons for those rates to rise and fall. It’s not just about “more guns” or “fewer guns”.

It’s a huge, complicated and messy soup. To imagine that “we can pass laws” that restrict gun ownership, even if we could do that on paper if we would, more or less ignores the fact that millions of weapons are already in unknown hands. To attempt to take those weapons from all of those people would be the new “most dangerous job in the world”. So if you admit that there are probably unregistered, unlicensed and possibly totally illegal weapons in the hands of people in your own neighborhood whom you’d rather not have them, and you don’t want a gun in your own home, then doesn’t it make sense to take some comfort that there are also some responsible, well trained and safety-minded people in your neighborhood who also own guns? Wouldn’t it be better to have more of the sane, rational and responsible people in your neighborhood have weapons, if the crazy ones already have them? I’ve been thinking lately that perhaps I should have one myself, for just that reason, in order to be a more responsible citizen than I already am.

I admit that the chance of accident exists, but that’s a chance that I think we can live with. After all, our cars, which we use on a daily basis, are far more deadly to us, and we accept the risk of using them each time we get into one, or even when we choose to walk or use a bicycle instead. They’re all around us. And cars are used in the commission of countless crimes every day, too. Why no hue and cry to ban cars, since that’s the case?

Finally, for all those who say that “the only purpose of a gun is to kill” and that’s the end of their argument, they’re wrong. The only purpose of a gun in action is to deliver a bullet to a target. It’s up to responsible owners to select their targets carefully. Guns ‘not in action’ have all sorts of purposes, from art and engineering to passive defense. It’s simplistic in the extreme to think that “they only do one thing.”

I saw a few here that want to outlaw all guns, and they overlook a few facts.

1) Most criminals get their guns illegally anyways.
2) Guns are not hard to make. “Zip guns” can be made by a trained monkey, and any person with a little skill in metal crafting (especially machinists) can make damn near anything. Go ahead and ban them; I’d be fucking rich!
3) We humans managed to slaughter each other en masse before gunpowder

@markferg It’s not pedantic if there is no relationship at all except in someones imagination.

@Fiddle_Playing_Creole_Bastard Aside from a few bad apples, the overwhelming majority of police officers are good. I would say the overwhelming majority of strangers do not have the best interests of their fellow men, and that is more scary! If you look at Great Britain, where gun ownership is illegal, the murder rates by guns is astonishingly low compared to that in the U.S. It’s really a no-brainer. Less gun ownership in the general population equals less violent murders by guns.

@woodcutter What I mean is that if guns were legalized among the public, over a period of time, say 10 years, you would see much higher rates of violent murder by guns in the general population than if guns were used by the police solely. Sure, there’d be senseless murders by errant police officers with their guns, but like I said, this would not be a common thing like the senseless murders that occur everyday by guns in the U.S. !

To be open and fair, I made up the reference to the correlation between guns and gun crime. I haven’t a clue as to what the numbers are or should be. It might even be true. Perhaps someone might actually post links to some factual numbers. I just fired the starting pistol, if you’ll excuse the pun! All I know is that in the UK we have extremely strict gun control laws and remarkably few people are killed or injured by guns. I’m happy with that situation. The worse cases we have seem in recent years (Dunblane , Hungerford and Cumbria) were all perpetrated by men with firearms certificates. The police also seem to have shot a lot of people in recent years too. I think I would be fairly safe in positing the suggestion that if you don’t have a thing that fires bullets, or any form of projectile material, then you won’t be able to go about shooting people.

@MRSHINYSHOES

You’re posting from a place that doesn’t exist. The fact is that we already have those millions of guns and gun owners. To imagine what it would be like if we didn’t have them is to imagine Shangri La. That’s not where we live.

I also think that you have an overly pessimistic opinion of your fellow citizens. What makes you think that “the overwhelming majority of strangers do not have the best interests of their fellow man [in mind]”? Personally, I’d be very willing to trust the overwhelming majority of strangers a great deal, and I could hardly live my life as I do if I didn’t feel that way. I live, work and shop among strangers all the time. I am often served by strangers in restaurants that I visit for the first time, for example, and I do that frequently. Maybe it’s not fair to your statement to say that “they have my best interests in mind”, but I believe that most of the strangers I meet from day to day follow basic rules of their profession, of common sense and safety, and aren’t out to hurt me. That’s all that I need from gun owners, and most of those whom I’ve met and talked with are very diligent about the safe care and handling of their weapons.

Finally, and this is to @markferg as well, comparing US homicide rates to Great Britain, Japan, Canada or other nations is unfair to all of us, since the underlying cultures in each of those nations is so different, one from another. For those really interested in some excellent thought about the discussion, I recommend The Samurai, The Mountie and The Cowboy by David Kopel.

@WasCy Why are people so quick to overlook the cultural differences? When will people realize that the problem isn’t gun ownership, but rather the fact that our society is inherently violent? We think nothing of letting our children watch gunfights, yet we are upright about sex. Sucking chest wounds are fine, but sucking cock is not.
It’s not the guns; it’s the fact that we’re crazy!

Gun ownership makes sense when there’s plenty of ferocious animals nearby and the next ranger or police station is at least 20 miles away.

This doesn’t apply to downtown Detroit or downtown Manchester.

This is just my humble opinion.

@mattbrowne And what if you are somewhere where the cops either may as well be 20 miles away due to slow response times or just won’t go? Besides, poverty runs rampant in Detroit, and there is a provable link between poverty and crime, unlike gun ownership which has far too many exceptions to be considered fact.

@jerv – I would rather deal with poverty in a serious way. Social workers can achieve a lot. Schools can achieve a lot. People should learn musical instruments for example. Or learn boxing and be proud of this. I’m also in favor of extensive video observation in trouble hotspots. No one becomes a murderer overnight. New prison concepts can help too. Standard prisons just foster the careers of criminals.

@MRSHINYSHOES Your assertion that most cops are good, and that bad apples ruin the bunch, is unfounded and false.

@mattbrowne I’m with you on dealing with issues of poverty more directly, but I have to ask, are those your actual suggestions? Or were those suggestions unrelated additions? Because I gotta tell ya, they sound nothing at all like substantial efforts to influence socio-economic exploitation.

@MRSHINYSHOES When you say that most strangers don’t have your best interest at heart, that’s called Projection. What you really mean is likely “I don’t have the self-control to be trusted with the responsibility of a firearm, so I assume everyone else would also use it to murder everyone they don’t like.” You also mention Britain, without also mentioning that there are actually more assaults and homocides in London, just generally using knives (and there was actually an increase in firearm homicide after the ban). Your response to @woodcutter is just asinine, and proves you haven’t bothered to show any of us posting real ideas and statistics any respect by reading or recognizing our contributions. It also clearly indicates a sheer disconnection from reality.

And just for fun, the newest video from the JPFO, which is not as good as the last one I posted, as it’s addressed primarily to Jews and their responsibilities, and sounds a bit too ‘right-wing conspiracy-ish’ to me right around the middle, but even putting aside the Torah, the rabbi makes fantastic points about victim complexes and the necessity of victimized populations to be able to defend themselves (and the idiocy of saying anything close to “It can’t happen here”).

I’m starting to contemplate taking it as a compliment when people ignore me in these sorts of discussions.

@mattbrowne It would be nice for a lot of other reasons, but the simple truth is that our culture prefers to ignore the poverty problem. It would require a fundamental change in attitude for that to happen, and I don’t see us doing that.

@incendiary_dan Most people already have their minds made up, so expect to be ignored.

@jerv True. I suspect it is because, as some other research suggests, for most people, belief systems (whether religious, political, or something similar) often has more to do with identity than with opinions. I can honestly say that it took me a long time and a lot of introspection to stop thinking that way.

A comprehensive suggestion list would contain at least 200 action items. But there certainly are some top 20 best practices among them alternative prison regimes especially for young offenders.

Of course we can find 1 out of 10 real cases where armed civilians might have prevented a homicide. But we have to compare the opportunities related to arming more people with the risks. Once knifes and guns are readily available they are used more often including situations that would otherwise not go beyond fist fights. Young people are very impulsive. If they are humiliated by a teacher for example, they might feel like shooting at the teacher. But feeling like it is different from actually doing it.

@mattbrowne Young people cannot legally have guns, and responsible gun owners use a safe to keep kids from getting them, and/or trigger locks to prevent unauthorized use.
We don’t need more laws.

@jerv – I’m not necessarily talking about more laws or making changes to existing laws. I’m talking about shifting our focus. With all the talk of arming students in Texas we might overlook the fact that some extra psychologists in schools and establishing better early warning systems might have 50 times the effect of preventing serious incidents. Same for inner cities. NRA slogans are so easy to understand. Got a problem? Here’s an easy solution. Well, in my opinion it’s not that simple.

@mattbrowne Now that’s something I can get behind.

problem is ;the neocons , who are generally pro gun are the same sect who will not want to allocate any funds to get programs for the mentally ill, things even they say are needed. Is that a catch 22 ? or am I thinking of some form of irony?

@woodcutter Nah, just idiocy.

@incendiary_dan ah.

The more guns I got the better.

@buster – I agree. You should have more guns. Best to keep them all loaded and under your pillow. With a bottle of vodka.

@markferg Vodka? is that so it can be converted into a flame bomb in a pinch? Good idea.

@woodcutter Vodka burns to fast. Best to drink the vodka, then fill the bottle with gasoline or something. But not one after the other; incendiaries and alcohol do not make a good combination. :P