Gun Nuts

keycocker · Joined: 10 Jul 2005 Posts: 3598

One stat seems clear. Countries with a lot of guns ,like US, Somalia ,Afghanistan have high gun death rates. Countries with few guns like Japan have low gun death rates.
Countries like Belize that go from no guns to private guns ownership show dramatic increase in gun deaths, mostly from guns in the hands of mental patients and criminals.
That increase was about three thousand percent.
The NRA blocked legislation to do background checks in the US.

coboardhead · Joined: 26 Oct 2009 Posts: 4303

Mac

I agree, and have/do support those type of gun control measures . Mostly, because I believe that they will have some impact. However, there really is not conclusive evidence of that.

My problem is when the statistics are exaggerated, such as Pueno's numbers on Australia, or Reinerehler's comparison of Canada vs the US to make a point. It seems that we should look at why Minnesota has a low homicide rate (comparable to Canada) and other locations are much higher, when we talk about our gun problem.

Lumping the entire nation together on this issue is no different than lumping the tolerance on multi-culturism of those in the Mountain West with those in Britain.

mac · Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2014 11:39 am Post subject:

Absolutely true in most respects CB. It is like dishonest statistician working for the Koch's. If you lump together fundamentally different populations--e.g. urban cultures and rural cultures--you will obscure whatever the data might tell you. Perhaps that is sometimes the intent. You cannot ignore the cultural factors--the United States' culture is much more violent, and hee-hah in nature than that of Canada and Australia.

I disagree about domestic violence, one of the leading murder categories, and one where the rural trends are just as strong. The requirement of some screening process entailing a wait would reduce impulse murders and suicides.

isobars · Joined: 12 Dec 1999 Posts: 20935

mac · Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2014 12:03 pm Post subject:

There's a coherent argument for you. Backed by facts, clear prose, and logic.

pueno · Joined: 03 Mar 2007 Posts: 2807

pueno · Joined: 03 Mar 2007 Posts: 2807

uwindsurf · Joined: 18 Aug 2012 Posts: 968 Location: Classified

http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/GunBuyback_Panel.pdf

mac · Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2014 4:09 pm Post subject:

Fascinating conclusion. Gun buy back led to a drop of almost 80% in gun suicide rate. That's the nasty secret the NRA doesn't want you to know. Guns in the house lead to suicide far more than to "protecting your homestead."

Hum a few bars of the favorite theme of the nutty right--I scare myself.

beaglebuddy · Joined: 10 Feb 2012 Posts: 1120