US Gun Control (Yes, again).

[Republica Newland]

China is pretty developed, and so is Brazil.

[The Steel Magnolia]

I think it could use a little more oversight, especially in the area of background checks. I also wouldn't mind mandatory classes either.

[Uieurnthlaal]

China is pretty developed, and so is Brazil.

Not according to my sources, they're not. If you look at the countries with very high HDI's, those considered to be "developed", you get the following list:
Norway, Australia, US, Netherlands, Germany, New Zealand, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, Japan, Canada, South Korea, Hong Kong, Iceland, Denmark, Israel, Belgium, Austria, Singapore, France, Finland, Slovenia, Spain, Liechtenstein, Italy, Luxembourg, UK, Czech Republic, Greece, Brunei Darussalam, Cyprus, Malta, Andorra, Estonia, Slovakia, Qatar, Hungary, Barbados, Poland, Chile, Lithuania, UAE, Portugal, Latvia, Argentina, Seychelles, and Croatia.
Notice the absence of both Brazil and China.

[Chernoslavia]

1. Define developed.

2. Whether a country is developed (whatever that's supposed to mean) or not isnt relevent.

Developed. Do I have to define common knowledge to you? OK. D e v e l o p e d.
2. Of course it's relevant. If you live in Namibia, your going to have more crime than if you live in Iceland, because Namibia is much less developed. While Iceland has progressive policies in education welfare, and a fairly affluent, low-income-inequality populace, Namibia is a poor nation, with underdeveloped infrastructure, and a high level of economic inequality.

1.You do realize china, Mexico, Russia, S. Africa and atleast some parts of brazil are what you would consider developed.

2. And most countries that you'd consider developed have a significantly smaller population than the US. Meaning less metropolitan areas where most crimes are committed.

[Uieurnthlaal]

Developed. Do I have to define common knowledge to you? OK. D e v e l o p e d.
2. Of course it's relevant. If you live in Namibia, your going to have more crime than if you live in Iceland, because Namibia is much less developed. While Iceland has progressive policies in education welfare, and a fairly affluent, low-income-inequality populace, Namibia is a poor nation, with underdeveloped infrastructure, and a high level of economic inequality.

1.You do realize china, Mexico, Russia, S. Africa and atleast some parts of brazil are what you would consider developed.

2. And most countries that you'd consider developed have a significantly smaller population than the US. Meaning less metropolitan areas where most crimes are committed.

1. "Developed" is not subjective. It is objective, and based on the HDI. China, Mexico, Russia, S. Africa, and Brazil don't make the threshold necessary to be considered "developed".
2. Smaller populations? Yes. Less metropolitan areas? Have you heard of "per capita"? That accounts for disparities in population. And if you mean that they are more rural, than your wildly wrong. The vast majority of the countries considered developed are far more urban than the US. If your logical held, than they would have higher crime rates, because of the combination of gun-control and urban population. However, they have lower crime rates.

[Norjagen]

I believe that gun control is a good idea, since criminals are unlikely to be stopped just by a neighborhood with a high proportion of gun owners. If those neighbors really did try to shoot down the criminal, they would more likely shoot innocent bystanders. Therefore, I believe that taking back most particularly dangerous guns and regulating the purchase and repair of new guns would be most effective at reducing gun-related crime. What do you think?

A woman is walking to her car in a dark, mostly empty parking lot, when a 200-pound man emerges from behind her vehicle, produces a knife, and orders her to get into the back seat. Once she's hidden away from view, he climbs into the car with her and starts tearing at her clothes.

At that moment, I would argue that the woman needs a gun more than any other thing on planet earth. A gun ban would leave her defenseless, raped, and possibly dead.

Let's get a round of applause for public safety, everyone.

[Chernoslavia]

1.You do realize china, Mexico, Russia, S. Africa and atleast some parts of brazil are what you would consider developed.

2. And most countries that you'd consider developed have a significantly smaller population than the US. Meaning less metropolitan areas where most crimes are committed.

1. "Developed" is not subjective. It is objective, and based on the HDI. China, Mexico, Russia, S. Africa, and Brazil don't make the threshold necessary to be considered "developed".
2. Smaller populations? Yes. Less metropolitan areas? Have you heard of "per capita"? That accounts for disparities in population. And if you mean that they are more rural, than your wildly wrong. The vast majority of the countries considered developed are far more urban than the US. If your logical held, than they would have higher crime rates, because of the combination of gun-control and urban population. However, they have lower crime rates.

2. Actually the Uk has more overall violent crime rates than the US. I'd also like to point out that those so-called developed countries have less poverty. This still doesn't disprove how having a bigger population would be the result of more crimes.

3. Prohibit any firearms and people will simply just get them illegally. Unless depending on what gun control your proposing.

[Grave_n_idle]

But banning something that can be used to protect people is punishment.

Paying rent is not slavery. Abortion is not genocide. A fetus is not a baby. Taxes are not stealing.

And not letting you have your way just because you want it... is not punishment.

Seriously - it's almost impossible to debate with this constant barrage of emotional bullshit in place of arguments.

Words have meanings.

[Grave_n_idle]

No, you still don't get it. You're acting like I'm finding you exceptions from the general rule of banning being good, when I am in fact doing the exact opposite.

You are indeed. Very convincingly.

Do you even know how long a crack high lasts? Or rather, should I say, doesn't last? Thought so.

Even that being said, crack is still pretty god damn addictive. One could that argue that with lax laws and high quality cheap coke few would still be on the pipe.

I... I'm not sure what point you think you're making. That just looks like fluff.

EDIT: Also, stopping parents from doing crack is anywhere from miles to light years away from the war on drugs if somehow you were trying to defend it.

You don't think stopping parents doing crack is an example of banning something?

[Frisivisia]

But banning something that can be used to protect people is punishment.

Paying rent is not slavery. Abortion is not genocide. A fetus is not a baby. Taxes are not stealing.

And not letting you have your way just because you want it... is not punishment.

Seriously - it's almost impossible to debate with this constant barrage of emotional bullshit in place of arguments.

Words have meanings.

WORDS ARE BIKE THEFT

[Norjagen]

Paying rent is not slavery. Abortion is not genocide. A fetus is not a baby. Taxes are not stealing.

And not letting you have your way just because you want it... is not punishment.

Seriously - it's almost impossible to debate with this constant barrage of emotional bullshit in place of arguments.

Words have meanings.

WORDS ARE BIKE THEFT

WAR IS PEACE.
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.

[Uieurnthlaal]

I believe that gun control is a good idea, since criminals are unlikely to be stopped just by a neighborhood with a high proportion of gun owners. If those neighbors really did try to shoot down the criminal, they would more likely shoot innocent bystanders. Therefore, I believe that taking back most particularly dangerous guns and regulating the purchase and repair of new guns would be most effective at reducing gun-related crime. What do you think?

A woman is walking to her car in a dark, mostly empty parking lot, when a 200-pound man emerges from behind her vehicle, produces a knife, and orders her to get into the back seat. Once she's hidden away from view, he climbs into the car with her and starts tearing at her clothes.

At that moment, I would argue that the woman needs a gun more than any other thing on planet earth. A gun ban would leave her defenseless, raped, and possibly dead.

Let's get a round of applause for public safety, everyone.

Who are the alarmists now? And what about my proof that that won't happen, by showing example of all the developed countries in the world, with intentional homicides on the y-axis, and gun-ownership on the x-axis:
.
Here is a trend line, showing the average linear relation between gun-rates and murder-rates:

Now you might say, while the line does point slightly up, it's not very certain, and what about those three points at the beginning with low gun rates but high murder rates? Those are the Seychelles, Estonia, and Cuba. We can deal with them on a case by case basis: First, the seychelles only recently became a multiparty democracy, and still has some crime remaining from prior days. They are still plagued by a somewhat undemocratic government. Estonia has significant organized crime as a result of problems associated with the previous socialist regime. And Cuba is, well, Cuba. So, I think it's fair to say that those countries have very special histories that give them high levels of crime, so including them would just skew the analysis because of a few outliers. This is commonly done in statistics, in order to account for special cases. How about on the other sides? Outliers that are too low? Well, the majority of them seem to follow a simple line, except for those three outliers, so we can assume that those are the only outliers. Now, if we get rid of them, we get this:
.
A fairly convincing graph, showing that developed countries as a whole, when they have more guns, they have more crime. What's the anti-gun control crowd's response to this?
Sources: Crime, HDI, and Guns.

[Norjagen]

A woman is walking to her car in a dark, mostly empty parking lot, when a 200-pound man emerges from behind her vehicle, produces a knife, and orders her to get into the back seat. Once she's hidden away from view, he climbs into the car with her and starts tearing at her clothes.

At that moment, I would argue that the woman needs a gun more than any other thing on planet earth. A gun ban would leave her defenseless, raped, and possibly dead.

Let's get a round of applause for public safety, everyone.

Who are the alarmists now? And what about my proof that that won't happen, by showing example of all the developed countries in the world, with intentional homicides on the y-axis, and gun-ownership on the x-axis:
.
Here is a trend line, showing the average linear relation between gun-rates and murder-rates:

Now you might say, while the line does point slightly up, it's not very certain, and what about those three points at the beginning with low gun rates but high murder rates? Those are the Seychelles, Estonia, and Cuba. We can deal with them on a case by case basis: First, the seychelles only recently became a multiparty democracy, and still has some crime remaining from prior days. They are still plagued by a somewhat undemocratic government. Estonia has significant organized crime as a result of problems associated with the previous socialist regime. And Cuba is, well, Cuba. So, I think it's fair to say that those countries have very special histories that give them high levels of crime, so including them would just skew the analysis because of a few outliers. This is commonly done in statistics, in order to account for special cases. How about on the other sides? Outliers that are too low? Well, the majority of them seem to follow a simple line, except for those three outliers, so we can assume that those are the only outliers. Now, if we get rid of them, we get this:
.
A fairly convincing graph, showing that developed countries as a whole, when they have more guns, they have more crime. What's the anti-gun control crowd's response to this?
Sources: Crime, HDI, and Guns.

Well, if you can PROVE that a woman will never be raped in a gun-free society, then I suppose we have nothing to worry about.

Either that, or you're so anti-gun that you've inadvertently become pro-rape without even realizing it.

[Suicune]

I believe that gun control is a good idea, since criminals are unlikely to be stopped just by a neighborhood with a high proportion of gun owners. If those neighbors really did try to shoot down the criminal, they would more likely shoot innocent bystanders. Therefore, I believe that taking back most particularly dangerous guns and regulating the purchase and repair of new guns would be most effective at reducing gun-related crime. What do you think?

A woman is walking to her car in a dark, mostly empty parking lot, when a 200-pound man emerges from behind her vehicle, produces a knife, and orders her to get into the back seat. Once she's hidden away from view, he climbs into the car with her and starts tearing at her clothes.

At that moment, I would argue that the woman needs a gun more than any other thing on planet earth. A gun ban would leave her defenseless, raped, and possibly dead.

Let's get a round of applause for public safety, everyone.

A woman is walking to her car in a dark, mostly empty parking lot, when a 200-pound man emerges from behind her vehicle. She shoots him without a second thought.

Lets get a round of applause for public safety, everyone.

[Uieurnthlaal]

Who are the alarmists now? And what about my proof that that won't happen, by showing example of all the developed countries in the world, with intentional homicides on the y-axis, and gun-ownership on the x-axis:
.
Here is a trend line, showing the average linear relation between gun-rates and murder-rates:

Now you might say, while the line does point slightly up, it's not very certain, and what about those three points at the beginning with low gun rates but high murder rates? Those are the Seychelles, Estonia, and Cuba. We can deal with them on a case by case basis: First, the seychelles only recently became a multiparty democracy, and still has some crime remaining from prior days. They are still plagued by a somewhat undemocratic government. Estonia has significant organized crime as a result of problems associated with the previous socialist regime. And Cuba is, well, Cuba. So, I think it's fair to say that those countries have very special histories that give them high levels of crime, so including them would just skew the analysis because of a few outliers. This is commonly done in statistics, in order to account for special cases. How about on the other sides? Outliers that are too low? Well, the majority of them seem to follow a simple line, except for those three outliers, so we can assume that those are the only outliers. Now, if we get rid of them, we get this:
.
A fairly convincing graph, showing that developed countries as a whole, when they have more guns, they have more crime. What's the anti-gun control crowd's response to this?
Sources: Crime, HDI, and Guns.

Well, if you can PROVE that a woman will never be raped in a gun-free society, then I suppose we have nothing to worry about.

Either that, or you're so anti-gun that you've inadvertently become pro-rape without even realizing it.

Respond to the irrefutable statistics, please. I can only address one sort of crime at a time, so the most obvious choice is intentional homicide rates. I took me long enough to make these graphs and this statistical analysis, so I'll give you this link which will show you that US, UK, and Australia all have the problem at around 30/100 000, and most developed countries have a much lower rate, which conversely also have a much lower gun rate.

[Uieurnthlaal]

A woman is walking to her car in a dark, mostly empty parking lot, when a 200-pound man emerges from behind her vehicle, produces a knife, and orders her to get into the back seat. Once she's hidden away from view, he climbs into the car with her and starts tearing at her clothes.

At that moment, I would argue that the woman needs a gun more than any other thing on planet earth. A gun ban would leave her defenseless, raped, and possibly dead.

Let's get a round of applause for public safety, everyone.

A woman is walking to her car in a dark, mostly empty parking lot, when a 200-pound man emerges from behind her vehicle. She shoots him without a second thought.

Lets get a round of applause for public safety, everyone.

Remind's me of Roald Dahl's book Revolting Rhymes, particularly that of Little Red Riding Hood. I don't care whether your 8 or 90, it's a book worth reading.
Anyway, what you said above is my point too.

[Chernoslavia]

But banning something that can be used to protect people is punishment.

Paying rent is not slavery. Abortion is not genocide. A fetus is not a baby. Taxes are not stealing.

And not letting you have your way just because you want it... is not punishment.

Seriously - it's almost impossible to debate with this constant barrage of emotional bullshit in place of arguments.

Words have meanings.

1. What does this have anything to do with gun control?

2. Here's the kick: Me having my way meaning me having whatever gun I want, doesnt put anyone at risk. The only people acting in a ''my way or no play'' attitude is you and the god damned gun control lobby.

3. Emotional bullshit? EMOTIONAL BULLSHIT? Emotional bullshit is the anti-gun crowd wanting to ban rifles that account for less than 3% of overall gun crime. Emotional bullshit is the gun control crowd's unadulterated bitching about the NRA sponsoring NASCAR, emotional bullshit is Obama dropping temper tantrums because Congress refused to feed into his ''Universal Background check''.

4. I dont want my defensive resources to be limited to just a pistol with only 10 rd mags when my attacker has an ak47. I dont want to waist fuel and time to go to a police station to sign a 4473 just to lend my wife a handgun for two minutes.

5. Words do have means however if misused, they become irrelevent. Just like your arguement....if you call it that.

6. So I'll say it again, restricting law abiding citizens to certain firearms just because of the actions of a criminal is punishment, whether you call it punishment or ''public safety'', its only criminalizing the law abiding.

[Uieurnthlaal]

Paying rent is not slavery. Abortion is not genocide. A fetus is not a baby. Taxes are not stealing.

And not letting you have your way just because you want it... is not punishment.

Seriously - it's almost impossible to debate with this constant barrage of emotional bullshit in place of arguments.

Words have meanings.

1. What does this have anything to do with gun control?

2. Here's the kick: Me having my way meaning me having whatever gun I want, doesnt put anyone at risk. The only people acting in a ''my way or no play'' attitude is you and the god damned gun control lobby.

3. Emotional bullshit? EMOTIONAL BULLSHIT? Emotional bullshit is the anti-gun crowd wanting to ban rifles that account for less than 3% of overall gun crime. Emotional bullshit is the gun control crowd's unadulterated bitching about the NRA sponsoring NASCAR, emotional bullshit is Obama dropping temper tantrums because Congress refused to feed into his ''Universal Background check''.

4. I dont want my defensive resources to be limited to just a pistol with only 10 rd mags when my attacker has an ak47. I dont want to waist fuel and time to go to a police station to sign a 4473 just to lend my wife a handgun for two minutes.

5. Words do have means however if misused, they become irrelevent. Just like your arguement....if you call it that.

6. So I'll say it again, restricting law abiding citizens to certain firearms just because of the actions of a criminal is punishment, whether you call it punishment or ''public safety'', its only criminalizing the law abiding.

Can you please react to my extensive analysis showing that developed countries with fewer guns per capita also have lower intentional homicide rates?

[Chernoslavia]

1. What does this have anything to do with gun control?

2. Here's the kick: Me having my way meaning me having whatever gun I want, doesnt put anyone at risk. The only people acting in a ''my way or no play'' attitude is you and the god damned gun control lobby.

3. Emotional bullshit? EMOTIONAL BULLSHIT? Emotional bullshit is the anti-gun crowd wanting to ban rifles that account for less than 3% of overall gun crime. Emotional bullshit is the gun control crowd's unadulterated bitching about the NRA sponsoring NASCAR, emotional bullshit is Obama dropping temper tantrums because Congress refused to feed into his ''Universal Background check''.

4. I dont want my defensive resources to be limited to just a pistol with only 10 rd mags when my attacker has an ak47. I dont want to waist fuel and time to go to a police station to sign a 4473 just to lend my wife a handgun for two minutes.

5. Words do have means however if misused, they become irrelevent. Just like your arguement....if you call it that.

6. So I'll say it again, restricting law abiding citizens to certain firearms just because of the actions of a criminal is punishment, whether you call it punishment or ''public safety'', its only criminalizing the law abiding.

Can you please react to my extensive analysis showing that developed countries with fewer guns per capita also have lower intentional homicide rates?

You mean the ones that nevertheless have a higher violent crime rate than the US?

[Uieurnthlaal]

Can you please react to my extensive analysis showing that developed countries with fewer guns per capita also have lower intentional homicide rates?

You mean the ones that nevertheless have a higher violent crime rate than the US?

You didn't read a scrap of my analysis, did you.

[Grave_n_idle]

1. What does this have anything to do with gun control?

Words have meanings. I thought I was quite clear.

All this 'gun control is punishment' bullshit is the same as the 'taxes are stealing', 'abortions are genocide', 'meat is murder' bullshit.

Words have meanings - x is not y because it sounds more drastic for your rhetoric - x is x, because that's what it means.

2. Here's the kick: Me having my way meaning me having whatever gun I want, doesnt put anyone at risk. The only people acting in a ''my way or no play'' attitude is you and the god damned gun control lobby.

I don't see the problem with having a platform that says 'all guns should be regulated'. Am I supposed to object to that?

3. Emotional bullshit?

Yes.

EMOTIONAL BULLSHIT?

Um. YES!?

Emotional bullshit is the anti-gun crowd wanting to ban rifles that account for less than 3% of overall gun crime.

No, you can say that's a BAD argument, but it's not necessarily an emotive one.

Emotional bullshit is the gun control crowd's unadulterated bitching about the NRA sponsoring NASCAR,

I don't think I've ever even mentioned a link between the NRA and NASCAR.

I suppose they both serve the same demographic.

... emotional bullshit is Obama dropping temper tantrums because Congress refused to feed into his ''Universal Background check''.

I'm not actually Obama.

4. I dont want my defensive resources to be limited to just a pistol with only 10 rd mags when my attacker has an ak47. I dont want to waist fuel and time to go to a police station to sign a 4473 just to lend my wife a handgun for two minutes.

*shrugs*

I don't want psychopaths to have access to firearms.

This is why I'm pro-control, not pro-ban.

5. Words do have means however if misused, they become irrelevent.

Right. So when you misuse the word 'punishment', you're saying it's irrelevant?

6. So I'll say it again, restricting law abiding citizens to certain firearms just because of the actions of a criminal is punishment,

It's not. Because words have meanings. Even if you repeat it and put it in ALLCAPS.

[Chernoslavia]

You mean the ones that nevertheless have a higher violent crime rate than the US?

You didn't read a scrap of my analysis, did you.

You mean the one that fails to mention OVERALL violent crime rate which is higher than the US?

[Uieurnthlaal]

Sure, the moment I bring actual indisputable statistics into the thread, everyone just ignores it and goes on arguing on and on about pointless minutiae.

[Grave_n_idle]

Sure, the moment I bring actual indisputable statistics into the thread, everyone just ignores it and goes on arguing on and on about pointless minutiae.

Not everyone ignores it.

I'm glad you put all the work into it, just as I'm sad that the people who most need to actually read it, won't.

[Grave_n_idle]

You didn't read a scrap of my analysis, did you.

You mean the one that fails to mention OVERALL violent crime rate which is higher than the US?

Not all violence is equal.

If one country has low gun-ownership, high violence, but very little LETHAL violence - that is not the same as a country having high gun-ownership, moderate violence, and lots of lethal violence.

So, how about seeing if you can address the actual points being made, and we can move onto the tangent about whether NON-lethal violence might be higher in an unarmed society later?