BTW, for the sake of complete disclosure and truth:

My Master's Degree was probably done solely for monetary reasons.

Nope. But this:

Is a blatant logical fallacy

Let me rephrase it to the opposite than.
"A regulation of gun ownership creates a more peacefull mindset in society"

- Would you concider a gun a tool with the main/intended use being violent in nature?
- Would you say that regulating gun ownership makes it marginally harder to own guns -> lead to a decrease in guns "on the streets" at any given time?
- Do you think people exist who are not criminals but are rather easy to provoke/snap quickly?
- Would you say some percentage of said people would be detered from owning guns by regulation laws?
- Gun accidents are quite uncommon but what do you think is adequate punishment for someone who leaves a gun in easy reach of say children and it leads to fetal shootings?
- Do you think school shootings etc. are more/less/equally likely to be initiated with a widespread availability of guns?
- What do you think is the reason that the US is so much more violent than France? Do you think I'd feel safe walking around any major US city at night; what about Paris? Do you think it would change if I'd carry a gun (in either?)

This is easily prevented by using fetus-proof locks on your guns.

I specifically asked about how to handle punishment not how to improve the situation.

Oh. Make 'em watch The View for a few hours or something.

seriously though, we protect our children too much. I dont know much about guns, but I suspect if you actually teach a small kid what a gun does, he wont be shooting it at his friend/himself, whereas leaving it around the house without telling him what it does can get him in a ****load of trouble....

this reminds of the reasons for sex-ed for some strange reason

Nonsense. Ignorance is strength. The more ignorant children are, the stronger their morals.

Another question to all the pro-gun folks:
- In what cases do you think using a gun (fatally) is justified; who do you think should be the authority in making this judgement?
- Depending on the previous answer: How would you handle cases of trigger happy (i.e. shoot someone in the face for stealing my wallet); who do you think should be the authority in handling this?

Again, correlation != causation

You're going to have to show some evidence that restricting gun ownership creates a more peaceful society before I'll even talk about your other points

These are loaded questions. (Get it? Loaded questions? LOL).

in switzerland, iirc, there's mandatory gun ownership for adult males, since they are all reservists in the army, and they don't ever go to war.

(I think their murder rate is through the roof, though Edit: turned out i was wrong, it's quite low)

Switzerland's murder rate isn't that low. It is one of the highest in the western world. Only the US and Portugal have higher rates.

i also feel obliged to point out that murder rates are not _that_ comparable. There's a surprising amount of difference from country to country as to what gets classified as a murder, manslaughter, suicide, accidental death etc, aiui

I think if it were possible to manipulate statistics we would have heard of it by now.

if you listen to This American Life (and if you aren't, you're wrong) you'll have heard this, but the last segment of this starting from where she says "there's just not that much to do with hedgehogs" is the best radio i've heard for a while

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/...t=1&f=93559255

Planet money is a bit meh on the economics but does come up with some pretty cool social phenomena.

I've got that bookmarked to listen later today. This American Life tends to strike me a mite précieux though.

wtf does this even mean and will it become clear if I listen to this?

Don't know if it has been mentioned in this thread, but the BBC's political panel show Question Time (wiki it?) has allowed the leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin, onto it. I'm watching and I don't know whether this will be the most hilarious thing ever, or whether it will fail horribly. Time will tell.

Why? Answering the other questions is in no way related to this point.

If you object to statistics in general it's impossible for me to show such a relation but it's also impossible for you to show that guns are of any use.
Since the usefullness of guns can't be shown I say revert to occams razor.

I don't object to statistics in any wya.

What I do object to is you assuming that removing guns leads to a more peaceful society, when it's far more likely that a peaceful society leads to the desire to remove guns.

wow, the bbc sucks more than i ever thought before. instead of actually discussing proper issues that people care about and let griffin implode on his own, just spend the entire show pointing out that the BNP might actually be a bit racist. well done, that's a few thousand licence fees well spent.

I'd imagine it means the same thing as if you were talking about all inclusive human health insurance plans i.e. when there is a fixed monthly cost and no accountability for actual use - the product or service in question becomes vastly overused.

Oh, government pet insurance.

nice ad hominem


but it doesn't neccesarily have to be government for waste to be involved. Insurance companies (especially pet ones) aren't neccesarily perfectly efficient nor do they move immediately. Cadillac HI plans may actually be profitable for health insurance companies despite being incredibly wasteful overall to the health industry as crazy paranoid suburban moms may sign up their kids for unneccessarily robust plans and then underutilize them.


Which reminds me - I just picked up a copy of Tim Harford's 2nd book, "The Logic of Life" at the library today. Only a few pages in but it seems fairly interesting so far. From what I understand it to be, its essentially a defense of the notion in economics that all agents are (generally) acting rationally. More real world accessible than philosophical ime so far.

ohh but he does point out the paradox of decisions being made on the same thing that lead to different outcomes depending on the wording of the question


note I'm buzzed - if that doesn't make sense I can clarify it.