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Old 12-21-2012, 08:48 PM   #151 (permalink)
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Originally Posted by Really View Post
Laws are passed based upon the public perception of what their effects will be, not based directly upon actual studies and test cases. For example, we here in the US are now talking about a new 'assault weapons ban'. In spite of the fact that these are mythical devices, when we tried this before, there was ZERO effect on crime. This is being justified by the argument that the previous ban was an important part of tougher crime legislation passed at the time that did reduce crime. Our politicians have apparantly hired the same people that came up with the advertizing gimmick that sugary cereal is an important part of a nutricious breakfast.

Seat belts don't save lives unless you have a wreck - so would it not be paranoid on part of your government to require you to wear them? Do live in constant fear that a wreck may happen? Yes it is a stupid argument, just like your name-calling accusations about my redneck arguments. You are so locked-in to your hatred of guns that you cannot see them for what they are - a dangerous machine. Not really different than a car is a dangerous machine.

Let's talk about published information about the Australian utopia. Since the 1997 gun buy-back program, not everything has gone well. I see many sources that show poor trends, such as the accidental gun death rate going up from .15/100k to .25/100k (data after 2004 is not as available as prior to 2004). Also the assault rate went from 250/100k to 400/100k in 2002, but then began dropping between '02 and '04 - something other than guns is driving this as there is no change in the trend around when the gun buy-back occurred. Your burglery and murder rates also appear unchanged by the gun buy-back. Results of the '96 Australian Gun Laws (updated 2009) (GunsAndCrime.org)

Looking at NationMaster - Crime stats: Australia vs United States it seams that your assault rate is twice ours, your rate of people raped is 150% more than ours, your total crime victim rate is 43% more than ours.

Your position that things are so much better in Australia is nonsense. Some things may in fact be better, but others are much worse.
You know what...I got nothing left. You and John Galt are fucking idiots. You offer no quarter in the pursuit of your ideology. Looking back though my contributions to this thread, I have at least tried to see it from your side. I just got through watching the Wayne LaPierre's presser - he just confirmed what I have thought all along.

Good luck in your idiocracy.

Last edited by Dean from Australia; 12-21-2012 at 09:02 PM.
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Old 12-22-2012, 12:17 AM   #152 (permalink)
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Originally Posted by Dean from Australia View Post
The idea that gun advocates think the Government is going to take over the populace and that they have to defend themselves from that outcome is just fucking stupid.
While this really isn't one of the reasons I own firearms, it's certainly one of the reasons our founding fathers wrote the 2nd Amendment. And I really have a hard time understanding how you don't think this could happen. It happened/is still happening all over Northern Africa and the Middle East. You've heard of Libya and Syria (just to name two of the more popular revolts), no?

Now I'd imagine most would point out the vast differences between the US government and these volatile dictatorships/regimes. That's a valid point and I don't consider the current conditions in the US to be all that bad (e.g. the whole "police state" notion). But there have been some pretty fundamental shifts in the power that have been granted to the federal government over the past 12 years (plenty of valid arguments regarding the degradation of our 4th & 5th Amendments, started by the Bush administration and pushed even harder by Obama's, but that's a whole other argument).

Look, I'm not clairvoyant. I don't know what's going to happen 1 year from now, let alone 10, 20, 50 years down the road. Furthermore, while life in the US is pretty damn good even when things are at their worst (relatively speaking), I'm not audacious enough to assume that it will remain this way forever. I'd rather retain the rights already granted to US citizens than give them up now (especially under false pretenses) and place the burden on future generations to have to fight to get them back.

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Originally Posted by Dean from Australia View Post
The idea of concealed carry is just an extension of that lunacy that I cannot get my head around. Yeah, let's just all be armed and nothing bad willl happen or if it does, we can minimize the damage.
Richmond fatal shooting likely a justified self-defense | WTVR.com – Richmond News & Weather from WTVR Television CBS 6

This just happened on December 20th near an area where I'm from. Who knows how it would have ended if the intended victim wasn't carrying a firearm of his own. Justifiable homicides/self-defense shootings occur more often than you would think.

Finally, I've heard many people tout Australia's gun control laws as the model in which others should follow, but never bothered to actually look into it much. Last night I glanced over some studies (The Australian Firearms Buyback and Its Effect on Gun Deaths - Wang-Sheng Lee and Sandy Suardi - From the University of Melbourne's "Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series" - particularly intersting due to the statistcal methods employed by the authors). Would it surprise you, Dean, that most of the studies I've come across (granted they were found in the Wikipedia entry here) don't show any large reductions in gun violence attributable to Australia's gun laws and reduction in firearms? It surprised me, considering how successful I've heard it's been (side note: some claim that gun crimes had risen since the band, but that doesn't appear to be credible, so let's ignore that).

Some argue the ban has reduced firearm related suicides, but fail to mention the already declining trend existing before the major gun control laws were passed (apparently 'they', whoever that is, have also ignored the "substantially rising" suicide rate by substitute methods. Doesn't appear to be any solid evidence that suicide substitution methods are due to the gun control legislation though).

Also, there seems to be some controversy surrounding someone named Simon Chapman. Apparently he wan't too pleased in 2005, when New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Don Weatherburn, revealed that "the level of legal gun ownership in New South Wales increased in recent years, and that the 1996 legislation had had little to no effect on violence."

Here's a little back and forth between the two (source - Gun politics in Australia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

Quote:
Professor Simon Chapman, former co-convenor of the Coalition for Gun Control, complained that his words "will henceforth be cited by every gun-lusting lobby group throughout the world in their perverse efforts to stall reforms that could save thousands of lives".

Weatherburn responded, "The fact is that the introduction of those laws did not result in any acceleration of the downward trend in gun homicide. They may have reduced the risk of mass shootings but we cannot be sure because no one has done the rigorous statistical work required to verify this possibility. It is always unpleasant to acknowledge facts that are inconsistent with your own point of view. But I thought that was what distinguished science from popular prejudice."
Perhaps that is what lead Chapman to this.

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A study co-authored by Simon Chapman argued that reduction in firearm numbers had prevented mass shootings because in the 18 years prior to the Port Arthur massacre there were 13 mass shootings and in the decade since 1996 there have been none.[46] The 2002 Monash University shooting of seven people, two of whom died, is ignored by Chapman because the usual definition requires four deaths. Data interpretation of trends in this study differs from other authors, while clearly being based on the same data.
Then there is also this.

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Media reports gave Chapman wide publicity while failing to note his long history as an anti-gun lobbyist, which continues to this day.[47] Since then, evidence to a Senate Inquiry showed that Chapman's research was fast-tracked for publication by the journal Injury Prevention, which bypassed the standard peer review process.[48] The original emails between Chapman and Pless, and reviewer comments, are contained in the Senate Inquiry submission.

Despite the documentation demonstrating this breach of academic protocol, Chapman insists that the emails sent from his University of Sydney account to the then-Injury Prevention editor Barry Pless, and the disclosed reviews that highlight concerns with Chapman's paper, should be ignored.[citation needed]
I wish we had a citation to know what the hell is going on here. I'd like to know why we should ignore the concerns raised by the reviewers. Shouldn't be too hard to find more information on this, but if anyone has it readily available please let me know (a news link to a reputable source regarding the Senate Inquiry would be great).

Anyway, I'm not to sure what's going on with this guy, his credibility has certainly been called into question. I'll be reading his study tomorrow on a lengthy car ride to visit some family. Here's link to his paper for all interested parties (HTML Verison, PDF Version).

Time permitting, I'll post anything noteworthy that I find (may be difficult due to the holiday though). Seems like the wikipedia page is a good start to find more detailed information on the subject.


-Golgi

Last edited by golgi body; 12-22-2012 at 01:48 PM.
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Old 12-22-2012, 03:08 AM   #153 (permalink)
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Originally Posted by Dean from Australia View Post
You know what...I got nothing left. You and John Galt are fucking idiots. You offer no quarter in the pursuit of your ideology. Looking back though my contributions to this thread, I have at least tried to see it from your side. I just got through watching the Wayne LaPierre's presser - he just confirmed what I have thought all along.

Good luck in your idiocracy.
Uh..Golgi, Galt and I have been citing data and studies, and have formed our opinions based on that reality. I think we would be willing to move our position if there was anything more than opinion to support your side, but you have not brought anything other than name calling to support your position. Because you have not supported your argument we each have researched data related to your 1997 buy back program to see if your claims are true, but they really are not. (And to be fair the stuff the NRA has published about it appears not to be true either)

It looks to me like you are the ideologue here, you don't want to be troubled by inconvenient facts and you wish to remain unencumbered by the thought process.

Last edited by Really; 12-22-2012 at 09:39 AM.
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Old 12-22-2012, 05:11 AM   #154 (permalink)
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Originally Posted by Dean from Australia View Post
You know what...I got nothing left. You and John Galt are fucking idiots. You offer no quarter in the pursuit of your ideology. Looking back though my contributions to this thread, I have at least tried to see it from your side. I just got through watching the Wayne LaPierre's presser - he just confirmed what I have thought all along.

Good luck in your idiocracy.
I didn't realize you were asking for quarter. Are you?
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Old 12-22-2012, 12:26 PM   #155 (permalink)
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"This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet.

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.

Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs."

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.

I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again."

Robert F. Kennedy, 1968.
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Old 12-26-2012, 12:23 PM   #156 (permalink)
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Wasn't sure where to post this, so I chose here.

Look At All These Guns People Got for Christmas - National - The Atlantic Wire
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Old 12-26-2012, 08:57 PM   #157 (permalink)
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--Oregon Mall last week, after killing two, the shooter saw a conceiled carry holder aiming a handgun at him and took his own life.
I haven't read that anywhere reputable. Do you have anything to prove this? The cops were there within a minute, the shooter's gun jammed and then started working again, so he shot himself. I found something about a guy hiding behind a pole holding his gun that admits to making eye contact, but that wasn't on anything reputable.
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Old 12-31-2012, 04:58 PM   #158 (permalink)
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I haven't read that anywhere reputable. Do you have anything to prove this? The cops were there within a minute, the shooter's gun jammed and then started working again, so he shot himself. I found something about a guy hiding behind a pole holding his gun that admits to making eye contact, but that wasn't on anything reputable.
I wondered about the reputability of this story myself, but I did hear an interview of the guy who is making these claims but there is no way to know what actually happened in the mall as nobody was watching this guy. Believe him or call him a liar...what ever. You will have to go to what you will consider right-wing sources to get this story, the networks have signed up to an agenda that will preclude them from pursuing it.

"The key fallacy of so-called gun-control laws is that such laws do not in fact control guns. They simply disarm law-abiding citizens, while people bent on violence find firearms readily available....

If gun-control zealots had any respect for facts, they would have discovered this long ago, because there have been too many factual studies over the years to leave any serious doubt about gun-control laws being not merely futile but counterproductive....

Guns are not the problem. People are the problem — including people who are determined to push gun-control laws, either in ignorance of the facts or in defiance of the facts. -- Thomas Sowell"

Gun-Control Ignorance - Thomas Sowell - National Review Online
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Old 01-01-2013, 05:47 AM   #159 (permalink)
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I wondered about the reputability of this story myself, but I did hear an interview of the guy who is making these claims but there is no way to know what actually happened in the mall as nobody was watching this guy. Believe him or call him a liar...what ever. You will have to go to what you will consider right-wing sources to get this story, the networks have signed up to an agenda that will preclude them from pursuing it.

"The key fallacy of so-called gun-control laws is that such laws do not in fact control guns. They simply disarm law-abiding citizens, while people bent on violence find firearms readily available....

If gun-control zealots had any respect for facts, they would have discovered this long ago, because there have been too many factual studies over the years to leave any serious doubt about gun-control laws being not merely futile but counterproductive....

Guns are not the problem. People are the problem — including people who are determined to push gun-control laws, either in ignorance of the facts or in defiance of the facts. -- Thomas Sowell"

Gun-Control Ignorance - Thomas Sowell - National Review Online

The Columbine shooting is a good example of this problem. It occurred right in the middle of the Clinton Assault Weapons ban. Instead of a big gun control controversy, it sparked a discussion about school bullying and how desperate and isolated it makes some students feel. Address the problem.
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Old 01-01-2013, 05:00 PM   #160 (permalink)
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. Instead of a big gun control controversy, it sparked a discussion about school bullying and how desperate and isolated it makes some students feel. Address the problem.
Absolutely. Mental wellness is a key component to these events.
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