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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
 Posted - 06/29/2008 : 23:01:13 [Permalink]
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Dave_W said:
This report says Sweden's homicide rate was at 1.94 and the USA was at 6.26 per 100K (from 1997 to 99). The only Western democracy within the 3-5 range was Northern Ireland at 3.13. Estonia, Russia, the US and South Africa were all well above that range, while all other European countries (except N. Ireland) were below it (and the EU member states' average was 1.7).
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Ok, I misread the site I got the 3 from. It was just for the capitol of Sweden. So the US varies from 5-7/100k. Other western democracies are 1.5-5/100k. That is still a comparable number.
As for DC... that place has been a craphole for a long time. The gun ban there didn't lower crime rates either. In fact, its interesting that the US city with the most strict ban on guns has one of the highest murder rates.
Ricky said:
In my mind, it is unimaginable that anyone could actually overthrow the government, let alone last 20 minutes against the US military.
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Then you just haven't thought about it. I and another person with my level of marksmanship skill (can hit center mass on a human size target from 800m with a .300 win mag) could overthrow the US government on any day that Bush and Cheney will both be outdoors. Pelosi becomes president, regime change accomplished.
Dude, I think you have a misunderstanding about this entire thread. The way I read it, it seems to be more of a discussion. I believe you are interpreting it as being a debate. There is no need to be demanding arguments in a discussion at all, which you have done.
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Of course there is a need to be demanding in arguments, even if they are "in a discussion". At least on serious topics. A discussion about where to eat dinner doesn't need to be demanding and rigorous, but discussions about the important topics of the day do.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2008 : 03:35:26 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Ricky
Freedom has been thrown around in this thread, and I often find myself pondering what it is referring to. Is it freedom to defend one's self, or freedom to own guns which would allow one to rebel against the government? I've at times heard people arguing for the latter. If memory serves me right, Penn and Teller did on "Bullshit!" But in today's world, such an argument hardly seems to make sense. In my mind, it is unimaginable that anyone could actually overthrow the government, let alone last 20 minutes against the US military.
Dude, I think you have a misunderstanding about this entire thread. The way I read it, it seems to be more of a discussion. I believe you are interpreting it as being a debate. There is no need to be demanding arguments in a discussion at all, which you have done.
But perhaps I've misread it...
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Me, I still think of it as a discussion. Here's a couple of handguns that have put food on the table on a regular basis. For some reason, probably due to some screw-up of mine, I'm having a problem with Image Shack, so you'll have to click the link.
http://img166.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture053vs2.jpg
This is a retired match pistol that has been used for deer hunting off & on for 30 years. It is a single-shot Thompson Center Contender chambered in .357 Super-Mag. It is tack-hammer accurate and hits like a sledge hammer out to 200+ meters. A few years back, I mounted a 'scope on it, but the optics failed to survive the recoil. If I get my money right, I might try it again with a higher quality 'scope.
http://img55.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture054wg5.jpg
Thus is a Heritige .22 cal. wheel gun that I put together some 3 years ago. The weird-looking, electronic sight came off a Daisy BB gun. It is quite accurate and used exclusively for rabbit and grey squirrel still-hunting. It's sighted in at 20 yards using .22 CB Caps, and shoots flat at 30 using .22 Short with no sight adjustment. This thing had a really horrible trigger so the gob of apparent crap in the trigger guard is an epoxy trigger stop. The trigger rebound spring has been lightened and the internals smoothed.
And here's one that failed to survive load development:
http://img372.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture036wx4.jpg
I won't go into it except to say that it is a perfectly good & reliable pistol as long as you stay within factory load pressures. This was an expensive mistake on my part. Oddly, the frame went south; usually the cylinder blows out when this happens.
And, whilst we're about it, this is the one that lives in my pocket:
http://img296.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picturerv2.jpg
S&W Airweight, .38 Spl. with a set of Red Line (laser) stocks.
I hand load for everything except the rimfire and have been doing so since I was a kid.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2008 : 07:41:16 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dude
Ok, I misread the site I got the 3 from. It was just for the capitol of Sweden. So the US varies from 5-7/100k. Other western democracies are 1.5-5/100k. That is still a comparable number. |
Well, if you wish to maintain rigor here, you should tell us what statistical test you used to arrive at a p-value large enough to suggest that the homicide rates of the US and other Western democracies aren't significantly different. One standard deviation would have to be very large compared to either absolute number for p to exceed 0.05, would it not?| As for DC... that place has been a craphole for a long time. The gun ban there didn't lower crime rates either. In fact, its interesting that the US city with the most strict ban on guns has one of the highest murder rates. |
[Shrug] We'd already established that gun laws don't affect crime rates, but the fact that Sweden's capital city had a murder rate just 5.3% of the US's capital city is simply a data point against the idea that the crime rates of the two countries are more-or-less the same.| Then you just haven't thought about it. I and another person with my level of marksmanship skill (can hit center mass on a human size target from 800m with a .300 win mag) could overthrow the US government on any day that Bush and Cheney will both be outdoors. Pelosi becomes president, regime change accomplished. |
If "regime change" equals "overthrowing the US government," you're right. However the larger point, that the Second Amendment was written in part to allow the citizenry to defend itself against a despotic government seems to get lost by turning a couple of citizens into the madmen. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2008 : 16:04:08 [Permalink]
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Ricky said:
| Because political assassination is precisely what the framers of the constitution had in mind. |
Political assassination, armed uprising... is there a difference? If the goal is to end tyranny and/or despotism. And yes, there is a great deal of grey there, and almost no black/white.
I wouldn't personally consider either of those options unless other remedies had already been attempted and failed, and the reason would have to be something very clear cut.
My point was simply to illustrate that an individual or small group can change things, with force if need be.
Dave_W said:
| If "regime change" equals "overthrowing the US government," you're right. |
In the specific example I cited they are close enough to the same thing.
| However the larger point, that the Second Amendment was written in part to allow the citizenry to defend itself against a despotic government seems to get lost by turning a couple of citizens into the madmen. |
Letting your personal bias slip in there Dave_W. Unless you are going to adopt some position that all killing is always wrong, then you can surely imagine a circumstance where assassination would be the right thing to do. If they are justified, then the assassins aren't "madmen". (yes yes, how do you justify it.. not a question that I can answer without a specific circumstance to examine)
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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@tomic
Administrator
USA
4607 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2008 : 18:14:07 [Permalink]
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Forget crimes rates. This link:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/30/guns.suicides.ap/index.html
Says that half of all gun deaths are suicides. I wonder how the authors of the constitution would feel about the second ammendment in light of this chilling statistic. Subtract accidental deaths and crimes of passion (often against family members) and you're left with a still fairly significant number of murders and anecdotal references to self-defense.
Canada looks better every day with their dimwitted refusal to give every man, woman and child a gun.
@
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Gravity, not just a good idea...it's the law!
Sportsbettingacumen.com: The science of sports betting |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2008 : 19:39:41 [Permalink]
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Canada looks better every day with their dimwitted refusal to give every man, woman and child a gun.
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The only dimwitted thing here is the reasoning that you use to place blame on inanimate objects. Do you really think getting rid of guns will decrease suicide or crime?
That is what you'd call delusion.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2008 : 20:01:57 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dude
In the specific example I cited they are close enough to the same thing. |
Then the Constitution itself includes the provision for the government to be peacefully overthrown once every four years (possibly).
And since you didn't offer any statistical test, I take it that your claim that the USA's and Sweden's murder rates are close enough will go unsupported by you. I'm interested, though, I'll do it.
The data from the 24 EU member states (plus Northern Ireland) gives and average of 1.68 murders per 100K, with an 0.69 standard deviation. This means that the USA's 6.26/100K murder rate represents a 6.67-sigma deviation from that norm, for a p-value of 0.0000000000249777 (for comparison purposes, Australia has p=0.74, Canada has p=0.81, Japan has p=0.35 and New Zealand has p=0.63, while Estonia, Russia and South Africa are so far off-scale that Open Office calculates their p-values to be zero). Physicists consider anything below p=0.001 to be statistically significant. The USA's murder rate would need to drop to 3.94/100K to become that insignificant.
Interestingly, Northern Ireland's 3.13/100K homicide rate offers p=0.035, which would be significant in a medical setting where the threshold is typically p=0.05. Of course, N. Ireland had all that Christian-on-Christian violence, which could be why the statistical significance test for that area points so heavily towards "significant."| Letting your personal bias slip in there Dave_W. Unless you are going to adopt some position that all killing is always wrong, then you can surely imagine a circumstance where assassination would be the right thing to do. If they are justified, then the assassins aren't "madmen". (yes yes, how do you justify it.. not a question that I can answer without a specific circumstance to examine) |
Meh. Everyone we call a "terrorist" is someone else's "freedom fighter." Semantics over substance. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2008 : 20:15:19 [Permalink]
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Isn't the problem with the gun debate that nothing can be done about it in the US. They're here. It is impossible to get rid of them. We can compare stats all we want and say that such-and-such gun-less country has a ridiculously low murder rate compared to the US, ergo guns must be the culprit. But then so what? If we banned guns tomorrow, I'm pretty sure we'd see only the slightest drop in the murder rate, as criminals and the like would certainly not feel compelled to turn in their weapons.
If there's any blame to go around, it's America's rather curious history, coupled with the worst-worded Amendment in the Constitution.
It's sort of like our fuel problem. It would be cool if our major cities were more compact and connected with better mass transit and regional rails. Fact is, they expanded when cars and gas were cheap. There's nothing we can do about that (you can't make Oklahoma City, Los Angeles, or Houston more compact) but work with what you already have, even if it sort of sucks. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2008 : 20:41:39 [Permalink]
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| Cune, I would be first to admit that this is going to be nothing more than an intellectual exercise. I would like to know if firearms ownership can be objectively justified on a basis other than the Second Amendment. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard
USA
4907 Posts |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2008 : 20:46:36 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Cune, I would be first to admit that this is going to be nothing more than an intellectual exercise. I would like to know if firearms ownership can be objectively justified on a basis other than the Second Amendment. |
Oh. Well, if the USA dropped out of the sky sans firearms except for certain law-enforcement officials, then it would be hard to make the case, I think.
There's still a big hunting contingent that might argue for things like hunting rifles and one could make the case for that. But overall, in the modern world, I'm not sure a compelling case could be made.
And really, whatever "Founding Father" let through the Second Amendment without a solid grammar check should be demoted to like "Founding Drunk Uncle" or something. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2008 : 20:59:04 [Permalink]
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Dave_W said:
The data from the 24 EU member states (plus Northern Ireland) gives and average of 1.68 murders per 100K, with an 0.69 standard deviation. This means that the USA's 6.26/100K murder rate represents a 6.67-sigma deviation from that norm, for a p-value of 0.0000000000249777 (for comparison purposes, Australia has p=0.74, Canada has p=0.81, Japan has p=0.35 and New Zealand has p=0.63, while Estonia, Russia and South Africa are so far off-scale that Open Office calculates their p-values to be zero). Physicists consider anything below p=0.001 to be statistically significant. The USA's murder rate would need to drop to 3.94/100K to become that insignificant.
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If only there were some way to link those statistics to private gun ownership.
Poverty, as I have said before in previous threads, is the only thing I know of that has been causally tied to crime rates.
Gun control advocates would be better off spending their time working to reduce poverty if they want to reduce murder rates and other crime rates.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2008 : 21:01:12 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Ricky
Cune:
| It is impossible to get rid of them. |
An all out ban on guns would force them to go underground, and with this police could arrest criminals for gun ownership, even if it is a much lesser crime. Because of this, I believe that there would be a significant drop in gun level, though I won't rigorously define what that would be. However, you would also lose the ability to accurately track guns. Not worth it in my opinion.
Having guns be legal but not purchasable would avoid some of this problem, but not much.
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Wouldn't it just be like cocaine or pot? Guns and ammo would just be spirited in and sold on the black market. Perhaps that would limit some activity, but how much?
On the practical side, there's a huge economic factor-- the guns and ammo manufacturers and retailers. I don't know what Wal-Mart's sales are from ammo, but people like them would be upset if that revenue stream were cut short.
I think (off topic) that this is why tobacco sales will never go away. Sure, ban cigarettes. Then what do you do with a company like Philip Morris? Lots of jobs there... |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 06/30/2008 : 21:14:00 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Cuneiformist
Oh. Well, if the USA dropped out of the sky sans firearms except for certain law-enforcement officials, then it would be hard to make the case, I think. |
I'd like more than "I think" is all.| There's still a big hunting contingent that might argue for things like hunting rifles and one could make the case for that. But overall, in the modern world, I'm not sure a compelling case could be made. |
And competitive shooting provides some amount of our overall GNP, for another example. Hell, there even used to be a celebrity skeet-shooting TV show (I forget the name, it's been 20-something years). In short, there are non-crime-related and non-hunting-related used for firearms, and their benefit (with very, very few risks) need to be added into the overall ratio before a conclusion can be reached.| And really, whatever "Founding Father" let through the Second Amendment without a solid grammar check should be demoted to like "Founding Drunk Uncle" or something. |
Really, the First Amendment's religion clauses aren't much better, as evidenced by the fact that Jefferson had to explain them years later. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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SCOTUS Hand Gun Decision
