I know I may have confused matters by going along with questions about homicide specifically (vs all gun related deaths) out of interest, but you ought to bear in mind that it is not my view that it's only gun homicides which matter. But I do agree that gun homicide rates in the US are no simple function of ownership rates by state, and I haven't made that argument at all.

edit: also I suppose your post is introducing the idea of partisanship, but I also haven't made any arguments about gun violence being a Republicans-in-power problem vs. a Democrats-in-power problem either.

I'm not going to argue about the rest of the post (largely because I'm not actually sure what point you're making) but this is essentially just a population density map:

No.

I'm pointing out that high gun ownership does not correlate to frequent homicides. Certainly, causality is not proven as the counties with the highest gun ownership densities also have some of the fewest homicides (or approximately zero over large time spans).

If you can find a county by county map of gun ownership density, by all means post it.

At best you are making the arguments (I am paraphrasing here, so dispute these if you care to), guns lead to increased crime/homicide, and that the US is more dangerous because of the gun itself. You are making the preposterous argument, if we could somehow magic away all guns, the US would be a pristine utopia of virtue.

Albeit with the worlds largest military, nuclear weapons, history of repression/slavery, etc... I suppose if I were to make a partisan argument, I hypothetically propose that we can take away all civil ownership of guns so long as Trump gets 2020 and Trump Jr. gets 2024 and 2028... but I'm guessing few would make this trade...

In reality I would never make such a revolting bargain.

In fact, there are other factors that are orders of magnitude more likely to contribute instead of guns.

The desire for gun control in the US is, and always has been, specious, racist, or at least class-ist.

Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393, 416-17, 449-51 (1857)

Today is no different. Even the "Hero of the Right", Reagan signed a racist gun control law (enacted by a bi-partisan state Senate and Democrat state Assembly -- so I guess as long as the racist gun control laws are bi-partisan in nature, all good then right?).

Mulford Act

OK, one more time

A fire extinguisher in the home makes the home MORE safe

A gun in the home makes the home LESS safe

Stop trying to twist the analogy as if there's some mental gymnastics to be done to turn fact into falsehood

And lol @ NRA's about page and mission statement. I have a bridge for sale. The NRA is corrupt and that is not up for debate. Words mean nothing. Their actions do all the talking

This isn't about left wing or right wing bull****. This is about fact, fiction, and blatant truth about entities with power. If you want 2A repealed, then you are against the NRA. If you want to preserve and uphold the spirit and sanctity of 2A, then you should still be against the NRA. The reasons why are obvious and clear, and there's no way around that other than to behave in a deliberately obtuse manner and/or feign ignorance

I personally think the number of guns in this country and many individuals' obsession with them and violence is absurd. There is a cult like culture out there that is also absurd. However, I'm well aware and particularly like preserving tradition where it is not stupid. Families hunt. Guns are awesome and fun to play with. Fathers and sons bonding is all good and a beautiful thing in my book. Self defense and the choice thereof should exist and be preserved within reason. The key word is reason. America seems stubborn and staunch in its ideological rigidity and it is unreasonable. To immediately NOT want to do something about mass shootings is, at this point, the definition of insanity

Your dead kid doesn't trump my rights has an element of truth to it and is understood, but it's also a bullet of callous indifference with a trail of dead bodies littered on the sidewalks of history. It's not so much I want X law passed or Y regulation implemented, it's that the public wants things, bipartisan polling proves it, and nothing happens (mainly because of the NRA and the politicians it has arguing in unison with them like sock puppets). That is the antithesis of democracy and so is pretending all the corrupt practices that go on are done so in defense of the 2nd Amendment when they so very clearly are using it like a human shield protecting their ulterior motives

I think the main driver for gun violence or any violence for that matter is a sense of extracting retributive justice in the mind of the perpetrator, however demented or distorted that sense of justice may be. Guns factor in because they allow for a high likelihood of success and a low risk of failure compared to other weapons or using one’s bare hands, along with the possibility of getting away with it. So it’s probably not the presence of guns that leads to a higher instance of gun violence as much as a lack of guns preventing people from acting out on their impulses. Put another way: if homemade voodoo dolls actually worked, the murder rate would explode by orders of magnitude.

Proof, right there.

The level of Socialist hypocrisy that is displayed by the modern, "Democrat"

And what Lapidator said.

Its all irrelevant, because you will never change a liberal's mind

Yes and no. Data being used in a misleading way to represent what looks like a problem doesn't really constitute a problem. And the biggest issue is that most of these comparisons come from a group of carefully selected "developed" countries, most of which are very unlike the US. It's usually European or Asian countries that are ethnically non-diverse, and they are usually very small countries in comparison to the US, usually less than 15 million where the US is close to 340 million. Most of the countries used like Japan, Estonia, and Norway are drastically different in basically every major way, politically, historically, and demographically. But countries like Mexico are always left off the list, which has much more in common with the US in terms of size, history, ethnic diversity, and location. Why Croatia, but not Uruguay, or Costa Rica, or Russia?

Also, you never see comparisons between individual states vs other countries, which doesn't makes sense given that the US is a huge country with lots of varying laws in between states. There are plenty of states in the US that have gun homicide rates comparable with the other countries on your list, yet they have lax gun laws. States like Oregon, Minnesota, Utah and Washington (and with populations larger than a decent amount of those countries too). And all this with many many many more guns per 100 people than everyone else.

I already addressed all these possibilities in my previous post, so I'll do so again.

ban assault style rifles

What is your definition for what an "Assault Rifle" is? Because mostly people use the term "Assault Rifle" to mean something that it doesn't. The military defines an assault rifle as an intermediate caliber rifle with a removable box magazine and select-fire capability (i.e. able to switch between semi-automatic and full-auto or burst-fire). So any weapon that can only fire semi auto (basically every handgun and most hunting rifles) are not assault rifles. Only weapons that are capable of firing fully automatic are assault rifles. And there are already extremely heavy restrictions on buying and owning automatic weapons in the US, and almost no crimes are committed with automatic weapons.

Magazines over 7-10 capacity

There is basically no evidence that shows that having magazine restrictions has any impact on the gun crime as a whole. The biggest problem would be the sheer number of magazines already in circulation, far higher than the number of firearms. It would be basically impossible to stop people from obtaining them if they really wanted to, or to collect them from people who didn't turn them in. It would also only matter in instances where the shooter fired more than 10 rounds, which by itself is an extremely rare event. The mass mass majority of shootings involve the suspect firing 3 times or less. And at the end of the day, shooters can just carry more magazines, the speed of a reload is pretty fast and it is very very rare that people attempt to disarm a shooter, even when he reloads or has a malfunction.

Require 8-12 hours of safety training PER year with registration requiring disclosure of how the gun is safely stored, longer waiting periods for better background checks.

I think most pro gun people would have no problem with more safety requirements, and the are plenty of states that already have similar requirements to what you're suggesting. As far as gun safes go, they would be far to slow to use a firearm effectively for self defense, unless you are already in the room where the safe is, that's why they aren't mandatory. What kind of "better background check" would you prefer that isn't already being done?


Also take a stance on opening gun owners up to liability for crimes/deaths committed with their weapons if they weren't stored safely

This is basically victim blaming, if someone breaks into my house, or my car, and steals my firearm, the person at fault is the thief, not me. I'm not responsible for someone else's crime just because they decided to rob me, the same as I'm not responsible if I leave my car running with the keys in it and someone steals it and runs someone over.

The actual future is going to have to be bio-metric guns.

Smart gun technology is an interesting concept to be sure but it's nowhere close to reliable enough yet. I believe the current numbers say it fails about 1 in 1,000 tries, and there are also issues with low battery problems, something that won't be ok when your life is on the line.

What you think is reasonable and what others think is reasonable is not necessarily the same. Just because you think America is being unreasonable doesn't mean that it is. That's why there should be working data and proof, not just opinions, and especially not opinions of people who are usually very poorly informed about the subject that they want to drop the legislative banhammer on. And the issue is, none of the "solutions" that people propose actually solve the problems of mass shootings. People not wanting to agree to passing useless laws that do nothing but affect law abiding citizens doesn't mean they don't want mass shootings to stop. They just don't want to waste time and money on things that won't work that people that don't know what they're talking about and respond with emotion think will work.

The public has no idea what they want, and that's the problem. They want to see action, even if the action accomplishes nothing, and that's ridiculous. The average person doesn't know that there has been no shootings committed with automatic rifles since 1997 in the north Hollywood shootout. They don't know that AR-15 stands for "ArmaLite Rifle" and not "Assault Rifle". They don't know that bump stocks are a straight up novelty and don't provide you any real advantage if you seriously wanted to hurt people. They don't know that AR style weapons shoot a much smaller caliber round than most deer hunting rifles. They don't know that you can't just go out and buy a rocket launcher or a grenade or a fully automatic rifle at your average gun show or pawn shop, or that if you have a felony or a domestic violence misdemeanor, you can't legally purchase a gun. The list goes on and on and on. People are full of opinions about how they want to legislate everything away from other citizens but don't know **** about what they are wanting to remove and what effect will it have.

I don't think you've actually established that, have you? You've suggested it as a hypothesis after glancing at a couple of maps. I think it's probably a correct hypothesis within the US, although it's a lot less clear internationally.

Also noteworthy, the Vox piece I linked originally shows a correlation between gun ownership and gun deaths (again, including suicide) by state (Figure 5)

No, nothing I've said is even remotely similar to your last sentence. Here is the belief I've expressed in this thread: I think if we got rid of most of the guns we have, and if we implemented stricter regulations on the guns we allow people to keep, like the policy ideas I quoted from slighted, that we would have fewer problems related to guns (mass shootings, suicides, other gun-related deaths).

I've not been narrowly focused on homicide as a category, we just took a detour there because someone asked and I enjoy poking about with data.

I think this is a cute rhetorical strategy but I'm not at all persuaded that my interest in gun control is any of those things.

You need to finish your thesis here. What is it about the US in terms of history and its ethnic diversity that leads to all this gun violence?

Lol right wingers.

Except we already know that the gun laws in those places aren't helping, because of the ready access to guns in close by areas:

https://www.foxnews.com/us/9000-fire...-flood-chicago

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-polit...-iron-pipeline

https://money.cnn.com/2016/01/19/new...rol/index.html


In fact, the reason Mexico has so much gun violence is in large part due to the easy availability of firearms right across the border:

https://www.economist.com/the-americ...-latin-america

And it's not just there. Most illegal guns across the world come from, you guessed it, the USA, where they're purchased totally legally.

https://www.americanprogress.org/iss...d-our-borders/


And really that's the whole point of the discussion. In the US gun control is needed at the national level.

The FBI UCR data shows that violent crime in the US is at a multi decade low.

Gun ownership in the US is at an all time high.

Do you agree that both of these statements are true?

Its hard to know. Gun control bigots say things like, "I don't want to take away your guns... just the guns from other people who shouldn't have them", which leads me to believe that the indisputable historical data that gun control has been principally a racist/classist policy remains true today. The wealthy and ruling class have always been able to skirt these rules -- they always will be able to.

NYC’s ‘1 percent’ totally ‘gun’-ho

Should a minority single mom in Queens applies for a pistol permit, I expect identically zero chance of it being granted. She's the first person who should be allowed to carry a gun if she wants to.

Its laughable to start off this thread with a quote from David Frum, Bush speech writer. Do you think any gun control will have any affect on the likes of Frum or Bush? They will always be able to get the guns they want. They will never be faced with a corrupt government applying repressive policies -- they literally are the government (ruling class). They will never live in a bad neighborhood that society is trying to ignore. They will never have to put up with selective enforcement of civil laws, except where it benefits them.

You are claiming to be concerned with the quantity of guns, and their features. The data shows conclusively that these are not large factors in violent crime and homicide. The focus on the gun is a ruse -- possibly you even believe it. The historical data shows conclusively that gun control is racist/classist in its application.

I don't know guns seem to play a large part in violence committed with a gun

Yes, I think that selective gun control measures along the lines you're describing can be classist/racist/etc.

However, I am saying explicitly that I do want to take away your guns, meaning everyone's guns, not just from "people who shouldn't have them." So presumably my desire to get rid of all of the guns is less likely to run into the sort of problem you're describing.

Yes. I haven't checked on gun ownership specifically to see if it's an all-time high but I'm taking your word for it.

I'm just scrolling through this and maybe i'm missing something but where is mexico here? I thought mexico and places like honduras were leaders in homicide? surely guns are the tool of choice, no?


Other than "different history" generalization, does anyone have a better or more specific explanation as to why the swiss have so many guns and so few homicides?

National homicide rate (2017): 5.4 p/100k
NYC homicide rate (2017): 3.4 p/100k
LA homicide rate (2017): 7.0 p/100k

Not the worst murder rates.

They have very specific rules on how guns must be stored, maintained, and used.
It has absolutely nothing to do with a different history except for their history has involved these rules since guns became available.

And oh yeah, even with their much better numbers than the US, they are STILL implementing stricter gun control.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.eur...ronews-answers

If you add a trend line (easily done on excel) the trend shows a very slight trend of more guns=more homicides. However, when you throw out the US it shows that more guns=less homicides.

https://www.vox.com/2018/11/13/17658...-laws-licenses

Lol at pointing to MA gun permit policy... One of the most racist in the nation. Yeah, good luck as a black man applying to your local police chief for a concealed carry permit.

Oh, and btw...

https://www.nhpr.org/post/nh-one-nat...tates-caveat-0

I suspect you will say this has nothing to do with NH and ME and (until recently) VT having extremely liberal gun laws.

Seems fine. That's why we don't just pick one state and instead use more robust data. The data is pretty clear, more liberal gun laws allows more gun violence

Actually no. Explain how closely the two are related

Nm, I grunched and see. So the constant threat of a fire in your kitchen is the same as a home invasion huh? You got thieves on your house as common as a stove top you cook grease on?

The latest studies have shown you are more likely to bash your child's skull in with a fire extinguisher than ever put out a fire with it.