It's a huge difference if people own a hunting rifle in remote areas, or semi automatic weapons in heavily populated areas. The percentage of gun owners alone doesn't give an accurate picture.
An federal gun ban will affect someone who lives in a big city and someone who lives in a small village in Alaska. So, is an single persons live will be impacted by an unjust law, is an valid point.
Of course the organized criminals will always know where to buy illegal weapons. But the usual man or woman won't have access to firearms in case of a fight, a sudden rage, a perceived insult, thoughts of revenge, domestic violence... whatever.
See marijuana and the dry law. Both din't worked and only made criminals far more powerful. All narco states in the world have strict gun control. I an not saying that US will become an narco state like Mexico, but some states mainly on South will become.
That wouldn't avoid all homicide, of course. But reducing the number means saved lives. Against what?
Gun control NEVER reduced homicides. Show me one city on US who approved harsh gun control and managed to reduce homicides. Not just "gun homicide", but homicide in TOTAL. And how many rapes, theft, residence invasion, etc got prevented by gun owners?
I wanted to vomit when I heard about that child being shot while he played, and people said that now others want to ban weapons, robbing parents of the chance to protect their children.
That depends. Was an accident or not? If was an accident, even pools are more dangerous to children. If was intentional, then someone who shots children without any reason will have no problem getting access to illegal firearms.
The UK is certainly not alone in that experience - other large European countries, like Spain and Germany have also seen substantial falls in crime over recent years and are currently at historically low levels.
But the lowest criminality on eastern europe is Czech republic. The most gun free country. And in Western Europe, in Swtizerland...
Again, "Gun control NEVER reduced homicides" is belied by the fact that a number of countries with strict gun control have the lowest homicide rates ever recorded in history. When you repeatedly assert things like "NEVER", you're just showing an unwillingness to look at any data and have a sincere argument on this issue.
Again, "Gun control NEVER reduced homicides" is belied by the fact that a number of countries with strict gun control have the lowest homicide rates ever recorded in history. When you repeatedly assert things like "NEVER", you're just showing an unwillingness to look at any data and have a sincere argument on this issue.
Not true. The most peaceful country in South America? Uruguay and Falklands if you consider the British territories as an country. Exactly the most armed ones. The most peaceful country in eastern Europe? Czech republic. Far more armed than Russia, Ukraine, etc. The most peaceful country in western Europe? Switzerland. The most peaceful country in middle east? Israel. The most armed one. The most armed US STATE? Alaska, and the lowest in homicides.
Again Victor, you're not arguing with the points I made. You said "bans NEVER work", you've said "Gun control NEVER reduced homicides". Citing an example of a well-armed but safe country is not evidence in support of those assertions.
For Athena's sake there is no white genocide in South Africa. Genocide Watch doesn't say there is, and the latest story on that site is from six years ago (October 14, 2013). One article linked on the Genocide Watch site states in the strongest possible terms that it's allegedly "politically correct to kill whites" but this comes from a website called Frontpage Magazine, and well
I know this is old and I wasn't involved in the conversation, but god, that Pulitzer article was such garbage. Just laden with ideology and narrative crafting at every turn, fear mongering about racist white south africans rather than talking about the issues, etc. It can hardly be called anything but an opinion piece, and a bad one at that. Whenever I hear the phrase "whiteness" thrown around, always in the context of being an inherent problem and something to be dismantled, I know i'm dealing with a crazy person, and rarely am I disappointed. Harpers is just a repeat of that article, and Snopes is just a joke, spending nearly the entire time on Trump and Tucker Carlson rather than the issue. It's all very revealing when all the sources are primarily motivated by the fact that it scares them that "white supremacists" might "seize on the story" and distort it like they do.
I am content with calling it not genocide. But even they admit the racial motivation to the attacks, and none of them talk about the obvious evidence that political elements there are virulently against them to the point of punitive laws which would send the western press into a spiral if advocated for anywhere else, not to mention songs which explicitly call for the murder of them. I am simply not interested in their distraction tactics, beating on the easy strawman of a "genocide" claim and seeing it fit to ignore the elephants in the room, hoping we will forget them.
I did stumble across a number of interesting factoids in scrolling through all this though, one being the fact that there are a number of problems in the collecting of data on this issue, so nobody really knows for sure if you could say they are being targeted or not. The South African man that Tucker Carlson interviewed- as mentioned in the Snopes article- claims the lack of knowledge on this subject is deliberate, but I haven't read his book and haven't seen any other interviews with him, so I can't shed any light on the merits of this claim. But it is very telling to me that they bring none of these known issues with the data up when trying to speak of this claim, preferring to hyperventilate about the fringe.
I honestly can't understand people who defend the right to own guns under any circumstances. Do you really feel safe knowing one in three people you know has firearms and knows how to use them?
In my experience, it's: "one in three people I know owns firearms, and about 25% of them know how to use them."
I honestly can't understand people who defend the right to own guns under any circumstances. Do you really feel safe knowing one in three people you know has firearms and knows how to use them?
In my experience, it's: "one in three people I know owns firearms, and about 25% of them know how to use them."
And any one of them is potentially one bad day away from going on a shooting rampage. "Background checks" won't prevent that. There would have to be ongoing background checks in case something changes like you lose your job, or your girlfriend or wife leaves you (most common reason). And even then there's stuff that can happen in one day.
<...>
Again, the assertion being argued by you is that gun control "never works".
Again only looking to the """"gun"""" violence. The most violent crimes that i saw in news was committed without guns. Including the most cruel crimes committed by drug lords.
And again comparing countries completely different in demography, culture, geography region and most important SIZE with US and looking only to per capita GDP. And why the gun is the problem? US always had guns, some people blame the ethinic minorities, i don't agree but one question. Do you really think that if US adopt the same gun law as canada(that is not an completely ban), that the criminality will drop to Canadian levels? Why an gun ban would be different than war on drugs or dry law? Just answer this two questions.
Prohibition din't worked with marijuana
Prohibition din't worked with alcohol
Prohibition din't worked with guns in municipal level(generated the most violent US cities)
Prohibition din't worked with guns in state level
Why an gun prohibition would work in federal level that is insanely more complex? with far more variables and realities to account?
I honestly can't understand people who defend the right to own guns under any circumstances. Do you really feel safe knowing one in three people you know has firearms and knows how to use them?
In my experience, it's: "one in three people I know owns firearms, and about 25% of them know how to use them."
And any one of them is potentially one bad day away from going on a shooting rampage. "Background checks" won't prevent that. There would have to be ongoing background checks in case something changes like you lose your job, or your girlfriend or wife leaves you (most common reason). And even then there's stuff that can happen in one day.
It's interesting that, of the gun owners I know personally, the ones who just must have the latest - greatest - coolest AR variants are the ones I might describe as "high-strung". The really stable gun owners I know all have bolt-action rifles, double-barrel shotguns and "varmint guns".
And again comparing countries completely different in demography, culture, geography region and most important SIZE with US and looking only to per capita GDP. And why the gun is the problem? US always had guns, some people blame the ethinic minorities, i don't agree but one question. Do you really think that if US adopt the same gun law as canada(that is not an completely ban), that the criminality will drop to Canadian levels? Why an gun ban would be different than war on drugs or dry law? Just answer this two questions.
Prohibition din't worked with marijuana
Prohibition din't worked with alcohol
Prohibition din't worked with guns in municipal level(generated the most violent US cities)
Prohibition din't worked with guns in state level
Why an gun prohibition would work in federal level that is insanely more complex? with far more variables and realities to account?
@SorcererV1ct0r while no 2 countries are identical, I disagree that countries like Canada, Australia and the UK are poor comparators for the US. I would suggest that the countries you've regularly cited in support of your views (like Uruguay and the Falkland Islands) are worse as comparators.
I posted figures a while ago on gun deaths by state showing there is a negative correlation with the amount of regulation. If regulation applies across a wider area, you would expect that negative correlation to be stronger for the US as a whole - even before you consider the impact of the far stronger border control at the national level.
On the prohibition comparison, I'm not sure that anyone has made the point about the type of activity being prohibited. In essence, taking drugs and alcohol are things you do to yourself - while using guns is something you do to other things or people. Restricting freedoms about what you do to yourself is always more controversial than what you do to other people. You can see that in relation to the way arguments get framed over time for areas where regulation has been more successful than with drugs or alcohol, e.g.
- attempts to stop smoking by informing people of the harm they do to themselves have been much less successful than providing information about the harm they do to others through passive smoking (even though that danger to others is lower).
- the introduction of seat-belt laws concentrated heavily on the harm you could do to others (directly, through acting as a missile inside a car, and indirectly, through travel disruption and higher health care costs), rather than the harm you could do to yourself.
Not true. The most peaceful country in South America? Uruguay and Falklands if you consider the British territories as an country. Exactly the most armed ones. The most peaceful country in eastern Europe? Czech republic. Far more armed than Russia, Ukraine, etc. The most peaceful country in western Europe? Switzerland. The most peaceful country in middle east? Israel. The most armed one. The most armed US STATE? Alaska, and the lowest in homicides.
And again comparing countries completely different in demography, culture, geography region and most important SIZE with US and looking only to per capita GDP.
And again comparing countries completely different in demography, culture, geography region and most important SIZE with US and looking only to per capita GDP. And why the gun is the problem? US always had guns, some people blame the ethinic minorities, i don't agree but one question. Do you really think that if US adopt the same gun law as canada(that is not an completely ban), that the criminality will drop to Canadian levels? Why an gun ban would be different than war on drugs or dry law? Just answer this two questions.
Prohibition din't worked with marijuana
Prohibition din't worked with alcohol
Prohibition din't worked with guns in municipal level(generated the most violent US cities)
Prohibition din't worked with guns in state level
Why an gun prohibition would work in federal level that is insanely more complex? with far more variables and realities to account?
while no 2 countries are identical, I disagree that countries like Canada, Australia and the UK are poor comparators for the US. I would suggest that the countries you've regularly cited in support of your views (like Uruguay and the Falkland Islands) are worse as comparators.
I posted figures a while ago on gun deaths by state showing there is a negative correlation with the amount of regulation. If regulation applies across a wider area, you would expect that negative correlation to be stronger for the US as a whole - even before you consider the impact of the far stronger border control at the national level.
On the prohibition comparison, I'm not sure that anyone has made the point about the type of activity being prohibited. In essence, taking drugs and alcohol are things you do to yourself - while using guns is something you do to other things or people. Restricting freedoms about what you do to yourself is always more controversial than what you do to other people. You can see that in relation to the way arguments get framed over time for areas where regulation has been more successful than with drugs or alcohol, e.g.
- attempts to stop smoking by informing people of the harm they do to themselves have been much less successful than providing information about the harm they do to others through passive smoking (even though that danger to others is lower).
- the introduction of seat-belt laws concentrated heavily on the harm you could do to others (directly, through acting as a missile inside a car, and indirectly, through travel disruption and higher health care costs), rather than the harm you could do to yourself.
I din't say that Falklands is a better comparation. Only that is better to compare AT STATE level on US since states differs a lot on gun laws and that that most armed countries in north america, in south america, in western europe, in eastern europe, in middle east, etc are the safest ones.
And are you really saying that owning/using guns affects other people? There are more than 300 million guns on US and less than 0.0003% of then is being used violently. Arguably alcohol is far dangerous than firearms. Even using the inflated statistics "an woman fired an rapist in self defense, this is gun violence"
Probably more people in percentage uses Slackware/Backtrack linux to commit crimes in relation to the linux users than gun owners. Same with VPN/TOR. Should we ban this technologies too?
I see no reason to believe that an federal gun ban would have an different result than any local gun ban on US....
I din't say that Falklands is a better comparation. Only that is better to compare AT STATE level on US since states differs a lot on gun laws and that that most armed countries in north america, in south america, in western europe, in eastern europe, in middle east, etc are the safest ones.
I see no reason to believe that an federal gun ban would have an different result than any local gun ban on US....
I've posted before on the fact that US states with more permissive gun laws are associated with higher levels of gun deaths. This article is specifically about the correlation between lack of regulation and mass shootings, but it has links to other articles covering general gun homicides and suicides.
And are you really saying that owning/using guns affects other people? There are more than 300 million guns on US and less than 0.0003% of then is being used violently. Arguably alcohol is far dangerous than firearms. Even using the inflated statistics "an woman fired an rapist in self defense, this is gun violence"
The point I was making was not how dangerous guns were compared to other factors, but what the purpose of guns is - the purpose of alcohol is to affect yourself, but the purpose of guns is to affect other things or other people.
You've said many times that gun regulations would not work well because bans on drugs and alcohol have not worked well. I was explaining why that need not be the case - and that difference helps explain why gun regulations in the vast majority of western countries, other than the US, are not controversial and enjoy widespread public support. The level of public support is lower in the US, largely as a result of the NRA campaigns waged over many years. Nevertheless, even in the US there is a clear desire by the public for more regulation.
Grond0, regulations exists all around the world. Just like theft(and regulations are worse than theft imo). This doesn't means that is OK. IF the majority supports the back of slavery, this doesn't means that is right. And as for "more control". And you din't talked about what regulations the public wanna. If they wanna in federal or municipal level, if they wanna strict background checks, if they wanna ban large calibers or etc. And if in municipal or federal level.
As for "mass shootings", your article defines "Mass shootings were defined as independent events in which four or more people were killed by a firearm. " why not take in account the gang violence??? And terrorism???
Mass shootings with any hint of political motive ARE terrorism. They are just never defined or framed as such unless it's a Muslim pulling the trigger. Otherwise, it's always a "mentally ill lone-wolf".
When homemade methamphetamine became a problem in this country, we literally made it impossible to buy cold medicine with pseudoephedrine in it without leaving a CLEAR paper trail for the cops. You can't buy it online, you can't buy over a certain amount, and it has to be given to you by a pharmacist. People seem to have absolutely no problem with limiting their access to a decent decongestant to slow down meth manufacturing, yet we are somehow paralyzed as to what to do with assault rifles.
chicago is not an island. People can easily bring guns in from nearby places that don't have gun control.
More guns, more mass shootings. It's just that simple. And the US has more guns than people and more mass shootings than the rest of the world probably combined.
As of September 1, which was the 244th day of the year, there have now been 283 mass shootings in the U.S.
This story is in regards to (mostly (Deborah Ramirez):
Mr. Kavanaugh, now a justice on the Supreme Court, has adamantly denied her claims. Those claims became a flash point during his confirmation process last year, when he was also fighting other sexual misconduct allegations from Christine Blasey Ford, who had attended a Washington-area high school near his.
Ms. Ramirez’s story would seem far less damaging to Mr. Kavanaugh’s reputation than those of Dr. Ford, who claimed that he pinned her to a bed, groped her and tried to remove her clothes while covering her mouth.
But while we found Dr. Ford’s allegations credible during a 10-month investigation, Ms. Ramirez’s story could be more fully corroborated. During his Senate testimony, Mr. Kavanaugh said that if the incident Ms. Ramirez described had occurred, it would have been “the talk of campus.” Our reporting suggests that it was.
At least seven people, including Ms. Ramirez’s mother, heard about the Yale incident long before Mr. Kavanaugh was a federal judge. Two of those people were classmates who learned of it just days after the party occurred, suggesting that it was discussed among students at the time.
We also uncovered a previously unreported story about Mr. Kavanaugh in his freshman year that echoes Ms. Ramirez’s allegation. A classmate, Max Stier, saw Mr. Kavanaugh with his pants down at a different drunken dorm party, where friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student. Mr. Stier, who runs a nonprofit organization in Washington, notified senators and the F.B.I. about this account, but the F.B.I. did not investigate and Mr. Stier has declined to discuss it publicly. (We corroborated the story with two officials who have communicated with Mr. Stier.)
So not only is Kavanaugh a liar, but the FBI "investigation" was a complete sham, and seems to have not actually taken place in any substantial way AT ALL.
And before the gaslighting goes into full-force, let's get one thing perfectly straight here. Brett Kavanaugh's defense was NOT that he made some bad decisions as a youth and he regrets anything that may have happened. He could have said that and gotten confirmed with the exact same vote totals in the Senate. No, his claim was that none of it EVER HAPPENED. And he is a liar. And he lied about it under oath in a Supreme Court confirmation hearing. Which means that one of 9 people among hundreds of millions of Americans chosen to be the ultimate arbiters of the LAW in this country perjured himself to get the job. We all knew this at the time. It's gone down the memory-hole, and many suggested we were ruining a man's life with baseless smears. The fact that that narrative has now completely fallen apart is par for the course at this point. Kavanaugh was exactly what we said he was.
chicago is not an island. People can easily bring guns in from nearby places that don't have gun control.
Even if the state was omnipresent, omnipotent and could cast an spell that magically disintegrate any weapon brought from neighbor cities, people will use homemade guns.
As for the "mass shootings" numbers. Seriously that Brazil had only one???? Are you kidding me. Only if you consider politically motivated isolated massacre with legal owned firearms, you can reach this low number. Or do you believe that Drug lords owns legal owned anti materiel rifles and anti air arillery in a country with the second most draconian gun laws of americas, losing only to Mexico.
I have the impression that for some people someone picking an truck and "roadkilling" 50 people is somehow less important than someone picking an rifle, or an pistol and doing the same... The Arson attack that happened in a animation studio doesn't count, but if the perpetrator had made an homemade gun and killed one person, the "gun death" sounds more important than the dozens of fire deaths, sorry if it sounds like an strawman but is really the impression that i have.
If we were to go strictly by the sheer number of gun deaths, without making special exceptions for any given reason, the dominant factor would be suicides, and that is a situation where greater availability of guns indisputably increases the death toll. It ain't like you can point a gun at someone about to commit suicide and threaten them into stopping.
I honestly can't understand people who defend the right to own guns under any circumstances. Do you really feel safe knowing one in three people you know has firearms and knows how to use them?
In my experience, it's: "one in three people I know owns firearms, and about 25% of them know how to use them."
Knowing how to use them is usually just 'are you calm enough to use them sensibly' Unfortunately the overwhelmingly correct answer is 'no'. Now the question is what percentage of 'no' is unacceptable?
If we were to go strictly by the sheer number of gun deaths, without making special exceptions for any given reason, the dominant factor would be suicides, and that is a situation where greater availability of guns indisputably increases the death toll. It ain't like you can point a gun at someone about to commit suicide and threaten them into stopping.
Then the question is. Why so many people are killing themselves? And Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world and draconican gun control.
I'll say it once again, for home defense I'll take my pump action 12 gauge over anything. Any intruder who hears me cock that bitch will know what they have in store. My guess is that 99% of them will head for the hills when they hear that!!!
Apparently the Saudi Crown Prince is now the de-facto Commander in Chief of the United States military:
Let me guess, the attacker was Hillary Clinton's emails. "We know the culprit", come on the dumbass doesn't even know which way Hurricane Dorian was going to blow or the Vice President's last name (fun fact: he's not Mike Pooounce.
BTW The acting head of the DNI is withholding a whistleblower complaint illegally that probably involves the President. If the administration is going to cover up Trump's stupid lies about the weather, then of course they are going to cover up things that are more serious.
- The complaint has been deemed "credible" by the inspector general of the intelligence community (IC IG).
- "...The serious misconduct at issue involves the President of the United States and/or other senior White House or Administration officials," according to the chairman of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
- No director of national has ever refused to turn over a whistleblower complaint
Apparently the Saudi Crown Prince is now the de-facto Commander in Chief of the United States military:
Let me guess, the attacker was Hillary Clinton's emails. "We know the culprit", dumbass, you don't even know which way Hurricane Dorian was going to blow or the Vice President's last name (he's not Mike Pounce.
BTW The acting head of the DNI is withholding a whistleblower complaint illegally that probably involves the President. If the administration is going to cover up Trump's stupid lies about the weather, then of course they are going to cover up things that are more serious.
- The complaint has been deemed "credible" by the inspector general of the intelligence community (IC IG).
- "...The serious misconduct at issue involves the President of the United States and/or other senior White House or Administration officials," according to the chairman of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
- No director of national has ever refused to turn over a whistleblower complaint
Apparently the Saudi Crown Prince is now the de-facto Commander in Chief of the United States military:
Let me guess, the attacker was Hillary Clinton's emails. "We know the culprit", dumbass, you don't even know which way Hurricane Dorian was going to blow or the Vice President's last name (he's not Mike Pounce.
BTW The acting head of the DNI is withholding a whistleblower complaint illegally that probably involves the President. If the administration is going to cover up Trump's stupid lies about the weather, then of course they are going to cover up things that are more serious.
- The complaint has been deemed "credible" by the inspector general of the intelligence community (IC IG).
- "...The serious misconduct at issue involves the President of the United States and/or other senior White House or Administration officials," according to the chairman of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
- No director of national has ever refused to turn over a whistleblower complaint
Sorry but one journalist doesn't equate to a strategic interest. An attack on Saudi oil reserves is. Grow up!
Are you really sure? This idea of a strategic interest in Saudi Arabia seems to me to be outdated thinking. The world has far more known oil reserves than it could burn without climate change being even more catastrophic than we're already heading for. While that could be changed if serious money was committed to direct extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere, it would be more cost effective to just change the source of energy. The US is also currently self-sufficient in oil, so it has neither a current, nor a future strategic interest.
If you take away the consideration for oil, what exactly is the US interest there? You might argue there's an interest in preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons, but I think it's pretty clear from the actions of the US government that's not been their main motivation over the last few years.
You could also stretch a point and say that the US wishes to promote democratic ideals and the rule of law around the world. To say the least though, undermining an existing government by using sabotage and disinformation, while unilaterally breaking international agreements and ignoring binding UN resolutions is not likely to be perceived by other countries as a good example to follow ...
More directly on point, it's not the journalist that's relevant, but the story. This just seems to be the latest example where existing laws and/or conventions are ignored as a result of a move towards raw 'power politics'. To me that seems worthy of concern.
Comments
An federal gun ban will affect someone who lives in a big city and someone who lives in a small village in Alaska. So, is an single persons live will be impacted by an unjust law, is an valid point.
See marijuana and the dry law. Both din't worked and only made criminals far more powerful. All narco states in the world have strict gun control. I an not saying that US will become an narco state like Mexico, but some states mainly on South will become.
Gun control NEVER reduced homicides. Show me one city on US who approved harsh gun control and managed to reduce homicides. Not just "gun homicide", but homicide in TOTAL. And how many rapes, theft, residence invasion, etc got prevented by gun owners?
That depends. Was an accident or not? If was an accident, even pools are more dangerous to children. If was intentional, then someone who shots children without any reason will have no problem getting access to illegal firearms.
But the lowest criminality on eastern europe is Czech republic. The most gun free country. And in Western Europe, in Swtizerland...
Not true. The most peaceful country in South America? Uruguay and Falklands if you consider the British territories as an country. Exactly the most armed ones. The most peaceful country in eastern Europe? Czech republic. Far more armed than Russia, Ukraine, etc. The most peaceful country in western Europe? Switzerland. The most peaceful country in middle east? Israel. The most armed one. The most armed US STATE? Alaska, and the lowest in homicides.
Canada tried to register long firearms and reached the conclusion that was too expensive and inefficient. Canada is not free as US, but compared to other countries in Americas is relatively an gun free country.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2013/01/22/canada-tried-registering-long-guns-and-gave-up/
I know this is old and I wasn't involved in the conversation, but god, that Pulitzer article was such garbage. Just laden with ideology and narrative crafting at every turn, fear mongering about racist white south africans rather than talking about the issues, etc. It can hardly be called anything but an opinion piece, and a bad one at that. Whenever I hear the phrase "whiteness" thrown around, always in the context of being an inherent problem and something to be dismantled, I know i'm dealing with a crazy person, and rarely am I disappointed. Harpers is just a repeat of that article, and Snopes is just a joke, spending nearly the entire time on Trump and Tucker Carlson rather than the issue. It's all very revealing when all the sources are primarily motivated by the fact that it scares them that "white supremacists" might "seize on the story" and distort it like they do.
I am content with calling it not genocide. But even they admit the racial motivation to the attacks, and none of them talk about the obvious evidence that political elements there are virulently against them to the point of punitive laws which would send the western press into a spiral if advocated for anywhere else, not to mention songs which explicitly call for the murder of them. I am simply not interested in their distraction tactics, beating on the easy strawman of a "genocide" claim and seeing it fit to ignore the elephants in the room, hoping we will forget them.
https://www.reuters.com/article/ozatp-safrica-racism-20100330-idAFJOE62T0IM20100330
I did stumble across a number of interesting factoids in scrolling through all this though, one being the fact that there are a number of problems in the collecting of data on this issue, so nobody really knows for sure if you could say they are being targeted or not. The South African man that Tucker Carlson interviewed- as mentioned in the Snopes article- claims the lack of knowledge on this subject is deliberate, but I haven't read his book and haven't seen any other interviews with him, so I can't shed any light on the merits of this claim. But it is very telling to me that they bring none of these known issues with the data up when trying to speak of this claim, preferring to hyperventilate about the fringe.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-41807642
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country
Obviously with the big caveat that it's wikipedia, but this is just a quick analysis not intended to be definitive, but it does tell a compelling story imo.
In the form:
Country Murder rate Firearm rate
USA 5.30 120.5
France 1.30 19.6
Germany 1.00 19.6
Canada 1.80 34.7
Australia 0.80 14.5
Again, the assertion being argued by you is that gun control "never works".
In my experience, it's: "one in three people I know owns firearms, and about 25% of them know how to use them."
And any one of them is potentially one bad day away from going on a shooting rampage. "Background checks" won't prevent that. There would have to be ongoing background checks in case something changes like you lose your job, or your girlfriend or wife leaves you (most common reason). And even then there's stuff that can happen in one day.
Again only looking to the """"gun"""" violence. The most violent crimes that i saw in news was committed without guns. Including the most cruel crimes committed by drug lords.
And again comparing countries completely different in demography, culture, geography region and most important SIZE with US and looking only to per capita GDP. And why the gun is the problem? US always had guns, some people blame the ethinic minorities, i don't agree but one question. Do you really think that if US adopt the same gun law as canada(that is not an completely ban), that the criminality will drop to Canadian levels? Why an gun ban would be different than war on drugs or dry law? Just answer this two questions.
Prohibition din't worked with marijuana
Prohibition din't worked with alcohol
Prohibition din't worked with guns in municipal level(generated the most violent US cities)
Prohibition din't worked with guns in state level
Why an gun prohibition would work in federal level that is insanely more complex? with far more variables and realities to account?
I remember this meme
It's interesting that, of the gun owners I know personally, the ones who just must have the latest - greatest - coolest AR variants are the ones I might describe as "high-strung". The really stable gun owners I know all have bolt-action rifles, double-barrel shotguns and "varmint guns".
Taliban Visits Moscow Days after Trump Says Talks ‘Dead’
@SorcererV1ct0r while no 2 countries are identical, I disagree that countries like Canada, Australia and the UK are poor comparators for the US. I would suggest that the countries you've regularly cited in support of your views (like Uruguay and the Falkland Islands) are worse as comparators.
I posted figures a while ago on gun deaths by state showing there is a negative correlation with the amount of regulation. If regulation applies across a wider area, you would expect that negative correlation to be stronger for the US as a whole - even before you consider the impact of the far stronger border control at the national level.
On the prohibition comparison, I'm not sure that anyone has made the point about the type of activity being prohibited. In essence, taking drugs and alcohol are things you do to yourself - while using guns is something you do to other things or people. Restricting freedoms about what you do to yourself is always more controversial than what you do to other people. You can see that in relation to the way arguments get framed over time for areas where regulation has been more successful than with drugs or alcohol, e.g.
- attempts to stop smoking by informing people of the harm they do to themselves have been much less successful than providing information about the harm they do to others through passive smoking (even though that danger to others is lower).
- the introduction of seat-belt laws concentrated heavily on the harm you could do to others (directly, through acting as a missile inside a car, and indirectly, through travel disruption and higher health care costs), rather than the harm you could do to yourself.
Lotta words in this post. None of them are evidence supporting the proposition that gun control "never works".
I din't say that Falklands is a better comparation. Only that is better to compare AT STATE level on US since states differs a lot on gun laws and that that most armed countries in north america, in south america, in western europe, in eastern europe, in middle east, etc are the safest ones.
And are you really saying that owning/using guns affects other people? There are more than 300 million guns on US and less than 0.0003% of then is being used violently. Arguably alcohol is far dangerous than firearms. Even using the inflated statistics "an woman fired an rapist in self defense, this is gun violence"
Probably more people in percentage uses Slackware/Backtrack linux to commit crimes in relation to the linux users than gun owners. Same with VPN/TOR. Should we ban this technologies too?
I see no reason to believe that an federal gun ban would have an different result than any local gun ban on US....
The point I was making was not how dangerous guns were compared to other factors, but what the purpose of guns is - the purpose of alcohol is to affect yourself, but the purpose of guns is to affect other things or other people.
You've said many times that gun regulations would not work well because bans on drugs and alcohol have not worked well. I was explaining why that need not be the case - and that difference helps explain why gun regulations in the vast majority of western countries, other than the US, are not controversial and enjoy widespread public support. The level of public support is lower in the US, largely as a result of the NRA campaigns waged over many years. Nevertheless, even in the US there is a clear desire by the public for more regulation.
As for "mass shootings", your article defines "Mass shootings were defined as independent events in which four or more people were killed by a firearm. " why not take in account the gang violence??? And terrorism???
When homemade methamphetamine became a problem in this country, we literally made it impossible to buy cold medicine with pseudoephedrine in it without leaving a CLEAR paper trail for the cops. You can't buy it online, you can't buy over a certain amount, and it has to be given to you by a pharmacist. People seem to have absolutely no problem with limiting their access to a decent decongestant to slow down meth manufacturing, yet we are somehow paralyzed as to what to do with assault rifles.
More guns, more mass shootings. It's just that simple. And the US has more guns than people and more mass shootings than the rest of the world probably combined.
As of September 1, which was the 244th day of the year, there have now been 283 mass shootings in the U.S.
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
here's a viral chart that compared the numbers when they were at "only" 249 mass shootings.
This story is in regards to (mostly (Deborah Ramirez):
Mr. Kavanaugh, now a justice on the Supreme Court, has adamantly denied her claims. Those claims became a flash point during his confirmation process last year, when he was also fighting other sexual misconduct allegations from Christine Blasey Ford, who had attended a Washington-area high school near his.
Ms. Ramirez’s story would seem far less damaging to Mr. Kavanaugh’s reputation than those of Dr. Ford, who claimed that he pinned her to a bed, groped her and tried to remove her clothes while covering her mouth.
But while we found Dr. Ford’s allegations credible during a 10-month investigation, Ms. Ramirez’s story could be more fully corroborated. During his Senate testimony, Mr. Kavanaugh said that if the incident Ms. Ramirez described had occurred, it would have been “the talk of campus.” Our reporting suggests that it was.
At least seven people, including Ms. Ramirez’s mother, heard about the Yale incident long before Mr. Kavanaugh was a federal judge. Two of those people were classmates who learned of it just days after the party occurred, suggesting that it was discussed among students at the time.
We also uncovered a previously unreported story about Mr. Kavanaugh in his freshman year that echoes Ms. Ramirez’s allegation. A classmate, Max Stier, saw Mr. Kavanaugh with his pants down at a different drunken dorm party, where friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student. Mr. Stier, who runs a nonprofit organization in Washington, notified senators and the F.B.I. about this account, but the F.B.I. did not investigate and Mr. Stier has declined to discuss it publicly. (We corroborated the story with two officials who have communicated with Mr. Stier.)
So not only is Kavanaugh a liar, but the FBI "investigation" was a complete sham, and seems to have not actually taken place in any substantial way AT ALL.
And before the gaslighting goes into full-force, let's get one thing perfectly straight here. Brett Kavanaugh's defense was NOT that he made some bad decisions as a youth and he regrets anything that may have happened. He could have said that and gotten confirmed with the exact same vote totals in the Senate. No, his claim was that none of it EVER HAPPENED. And he is a liar. And he lied about it under oath in a Supreme Court confirmation hearing. Which means that one of 9 people among hundreds of millions of Americans chosen to be the ultimate arbiters of the LAW in this country perjured himself to get the job. We all knew this at the time. It's gone down the memory-hole, and many suggested we were ruining a man's life with baseless smears. The fact that that narrative has now completely fallen apart is par for the course at this point. Kavanaugh was exactly what we said he was.
Even if the state was omnipresent, omnipotent and could cast an spell that magically disintegrate any weapon brought from neighbor cities, people will use homemade guns.
As for the "mass shootings" numbers. Seriously that Brazil had only one???? Are you kidding me. Only if you consider politically motivated isolated massacre with legal owned firearms, you can reach this low number. Or do you believe that Drug lords owns legal owned anti materiel rifles and anti air arillery in a country with the second most draconian gun laws of americas, losing only to Mexico.
I have the impression that for some people someone picking an truck and "roadkilling" 50 people is somehow less important than someone picking an rifle, or an pistol and doing the same... The Arson attack that happened in a animation studio doesn't count, but if the perpetrator had made an homemade gun and killed one person, the "gun death" sounds more important than the dozens of fire deaths, sorry if it sounds like an strawman but is really the impression that i have.
Knowing how to use them is usually just 'are you calm enough to use them sensibly' Unfortunately the overwhelmingly correct answer is 'no'. Now the question is what percentage of 'no' is unacceptable?
Then the question is. Why so many people are killing themselves? And Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world and draconican gun control.
Saudi Arabia is a strategic ally of ours. Say what you want but supporting them is in our interests...
Let me guess, the attacker was Hillary Clinton's emails. "We know the culprit", come on the dumbass doesn't even know which way Hurricane Dorian was going to blow or the Vice President's last name (fun fact: he's not Mike Pooounce.
BTW The acting head of the DNI is withholding a whistleblower complaint illegally that probably involves the President. If the administration is going to cover up Trump's stupid lies about the weather, then of course they are going to cover up things that are more serious.
- The complaint has been deemed "credible" by the inspector general of the intelligence community (IC IG).
- "...The serious misconduct at issue involves the President of the United States and/or other senior White House or Administration officials," according to the chairman of the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
- No director of national has ever refused to turn over a whistleblower complaint
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/adam-schiff-says-dni-cited-higher-authority-in-refusal-to-turn-over-whistleblower-complaint/
Sorry but one journalist doesn't equate to a strategic interest. An attack on Saudi oil reserves is. Grow up!
Are you really sure? This idea of a strategic interest in Saudi Arabia seems to me to be outdated thinking. The world has far more known oil reserves than it could burn without climate change being even more catastrophic than we're already heading for. While that could be changed if serious money was committed to direct extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere, it would be more cost effective to just change the source of energy. The US is also currently self-sufficient in oil, so it has neither a current, nor a future strategic interest.
If you take away the consideration for oil, what exactly is the US interest there? You might argue there's an interest in preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons, but I think it's pretty clear from the actions of the US government that's not been their main motivation over the last few years.
You could also stretch a point and say that the US wishes to promote democratic ideals and the rule of law around the world. To say the least though, undermining an existing government by using sabotage and disinformation, while unilaterally breaking international agreements and ignoring binding UN resolutions is not likely to be perceived by other countries as a good example to follow ...
More directly on point, it's not the journalist that's relevant, but the story. This just seems to be the latest example where existing laws and/or conventions are ignored as a result of a move towards raw 'power politics'. To me that seems worthy of concern.