Semiautomatic rifles to be Assault Weapons in CA

[Paddy O Fernature]

It would be really nice Bluth if you could provide some real world evidence and statistics regarding your arguments.

I tend not to make the sorts of arguments where those things are terribly relevant, because they don't interest me that much. Wonkery is boring. Critical analysis is fun.

So you openly admit, that you don't make arguments based on fact or any relevance to the actual debate going on, because you have no interest in such things.

Good to know.

[Bezombia]

No you didn't, because your point is very flawed and rides on the idea that only firearms can be used to kill people, and that Y will not be killed if X does not have a firearm, which is not only blatantly untrue but is downright dangerous to assume.

How exactly does it "ride" on that? All it rides on is that the higher the risk, the lower the occurrence, which I assume is common sense.

Nope.

You literally said that Y would die if X had a gun but wouldn't if he didn't.

[DnalweN acilbupeR]

Bluth has already proven his complete disconnection with the real world .

In Bluth's perspective, it is not a paranoid person's responsibility to properly inform him/herself and perform whatever else he ore she might have to do in order to overcome his or her paranoia, but it is instead the world's fault for not taking notice and completely banning/removing from itself that element which is the object of said person's paranoia.

[DnalweN acilbupeR]

How exactly does it "ride" on that? All it rides on is that the higher the risk, the lower the occurrence, which I assume is common sense.

Nope.

You literally said that Y would die if X had a gun but wouldn't if he didn't.

Whatever you understood, forget it. Read my latest reply instead. That was what I meant.

[Occupied Deutschland]

It would be really nice Bluth if you could provide some real world evidence and statistics regarding your arguments.

I tend not to make the sorts of arguments where those things are terribly relevant, because they don't interest me that much. Wonkery is boring. Critical analysis is fun.

Aristotle thought so too.
His ideas also meant everyone thought the world was made of fire-water-earth-air for a millenium and a half.

Welcome to the real world, which tends to not be very friendly to unrealistic logical ideals.

[Tule]

Which compound the problems inherent to gun ownership.

You do realize that things can have multiple causes, yes?

The problems inherent with gun ownership are insignificant in the absence of the confounding factors, considering how much recreational shooting raises the quality of life of countless people

At what cost?

I suppose it could be calculated, to a certain extent.

There are 30,000 gun owners here in Iceland, a very conservative estimate puts the number of days they spend using their firearms per year on average at 1 day.
We average a gun murder every 10 years.

So these 30,000 gun owners spend 822 years doing something that gives them immense pleasure for every person that is murdered.
We can reasonably assume that each murder victim loses 50 years of life to the murderer. There will be family and friends to grief the victim but it's unlikely to result in more than a total of 770 years of grief.

So from a Utilitarian standpoint at least, guns cause more good than bad, at least here in Iceland where there are few socioeconomic factors affecting homicide rates.

and the questionable morality of gun bans, as gun ownership is by itself a victimless crime.

No, it's not.

The mere knowledge that someone has a weapon can in itself make some feel compelled to avoid engaging in perfectly valid and legitimate behavior that one knows that the weapon-possessor nonetheless disapproves of.

If a gay man's neighbor is openly homophobic and, while he never makes overt or implicit threats, the gay man also happens to be aware that the neighbor owns several weapons, the gay man might feel like his own safety requires him to avoid holding hands with his partner while walking down the street, kissing goodbye on the front porch, etc.

If you think weapons possession is acceptable, you hate freedom. It's really that simple.

So a man should be forced to give up his sporting equipment under threat of imprisonment because his neighbor has an irrational and unfounded fear of him using said sporting equipment to commit murder?

That's a terrible argument.

[Franklin Delano Bluth]

I tend not to make the sorts of arguments where those things are terribly relevant, because they don't interest me that much. Wonkery is boring. Critical analysis is fun.

So you openly admit, that you don't make arguments based on fact or any relevance to the actual debate going on, because you have no interest in such things.

Good to know.

Apparently, pretending someone said something other than what was actually said is the chic thing to do.

[Bezombia]

So you openly admit, that you don't make arguments based on fact or any relevance to the actual debate going on, because you have no interest in such things.

Good to know.

Apparently, pretending someone said something other than what was actually said is the chic thing to do.

Apparently, pretending you didn't say something you actually did say (and was quoted saying) is the chic thing to do.

[Free Soviets]

more later, but this now

those numbers are wrong:
the high one is kleck, and his number are impossible and nonsensical.
the lower end of that probably is accurately reporting the amount of times people claim they used a gun defensively, but studies that have looked at what the people claiming defense say happened reveal that a huge percentage of those were actually illegal uses that escalated the situation (pulling the gun on somebody who is merely verbally arguing with them, etc).
the best we can figure, the actual number is closer to 70k legitimate defensive gun uses per year, compared to approximately 420k victims of firearms violence (2008 was the low year for it, and the actual number was 380k-ish victims).

How is merely pulling out a gun in a conflict "illegal"?

because it flat out is in most cases. you don't get to pull a gun on somebody who is merely arguing with you. but, i mean, check this out:

Self defense gun use incidents [collected through surveys conducted for this research - FS] were summarized and sent to five criminal court judges (from California, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts) who were assured anonymity. The judges were told to assume that the respondent had a permit to own and carry the gun and had described the event honestly from his/her own perspective. The judges were then asked to give their best guess whether, based on the respondent's description of the incident, the respondent's use of the gun was very likely legal, likely legal, as likely as not legal, unlikely legal, or very unlikely legal.
...
Twenty per cent of the time a judge rated a case as “as likely legal as illegal”. Excluding these ratings (when judges often said there was not enough information), a majority of the judges rated 18 of the 35 (51%) as probably illegal and 15 of the 35 (43%) as probably legal. For two there was no majority opinion. In 23 of 35 events the judges were unanimous in their ratings; nine times there was one dissenter; and in three instances the ratings were either 3–2 or 2–2 in terms of the probable legality of the self defense gun use.

Two examples from the 1999 survey of incidents that were unanimously deemed probably illegal were:

• A 62 year old male said that at 6 pm “the police called. My alarm at my business went off so I went there to shut it off. Two men were outside my building, so from my car I shot at the ground near them”. The respondent said the men were trespassing.

• A 58 year old male was inside his home at 2 pm. “I was watching a movie and [an acquaintance] interrupted me. I yelled that I was going to shoot him and he ran to his car”. The respondent said his acquaintance was committing a verbal assault. The respondent's gun, a .44 Magnum, was located “in my holster on me”.

like, holy shit. he 'defended' himself by opening fire at some people he assumed were trespassers because they were standing outside his building"? and the other one 'defended' himself by threatening to kill a guy who talked during a movie? jeebus fuck, these people are insane.

and, of course, almost all cases of 'self-defense' come from a handful of people:

Over two thirds (68%) of the 146 self defense gun use incidents from the two surveys were reported by six respondents. Three people claimed 50, 20 and 15 self defense incidents in the previous five years, but refused to describe the most recent event. In the 1999 survey, an 18 year old male reported six cases.

these are either the unluckiest people alive or the nuttiest of gun nuts, threatening random people because they haven't gotten mental health treatments to help deal with their paranoid delusions/anger issues. i'm pretty sure we all know the right answer here.

There is this very simple fact that a lot of people can't grasp, apparently. The higher the risk a person has to take in order to act in a certain way, the less likely it is for him to act as such. It's common sense, really. In an armed society the risks one has to take in order to commit a crime are far higher than in an unarmed society.

except, of course, failed states awash with guns exist. and they are the least safe places on the planet outside of literal battlefields. so, something is obviously missing from your simple-minded picture.

[Blakk Metal]

It would be really nice Bluth if you could provide some real world evidence and statistics regarding your arguments.

I tend not to make the sorts of arguments where those things are terribly relevant, because they don't interest me that much. Wonkery is boring. Critical analysis is fun.

Breathing ruins the air by increasing its humidity, and is therefore a violation of freedom.

[Wytenigistan]

I don't want to live in this state anymore.

[L Ron Cupboard]

I was reading an article on New Scientist which says the following:

One oft-stated explanation is that the gun lobby has quashed federal funding for research into firearms violence. President Obama tried to put that right after Sandy Hook. But the new funding he ordered is a modest $10 million and it comes with strings: using the findings of any resulting research to advocate gun control would be a crime

Is that true?

[Imperializt Russia]

I was reading an article on New Scientist which says the following:

One oft-stated explanation is that the gun lobby has quashed federal funding for research into firearms violence. President Obama tried to put that right after Sandy Hook. But the new funding he ordered is a modest $10 million and it comes with strings: using the findings of any resulting research to advocate gun control would be a crime

Is that true?

It's on New Scientist, so it's probably not going to be fake at any rate.

Presumably, one could cherry-pick small studies and say "See! Guns are evil!"
Though even if you stretch that "logic" to its breaking point, it's still hopelessly bizarre.

But, then again, this is America we're talking about.
Home of the intransigent.