Machine gun fire into Las Vegas crowd at Route 91 music Festival

[Jig_Saw]

This gets said a lot, but what exactly is the evidence for this claim? Gun accidents do occur. But I don’t know that it is more likely you harm a family member accidentally than use it for self defense.

That seems to be a common claim. You can see some of the work here.

Harvard Injury Control Research Center | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

The Center aims to reduce the societal burden of injury and violence through surveillance, research, intervention, evaluation, outreach, and training.

www.hsph.harvard.edu

I don’t have time to vet it to be honest, right now.

 

[josie_L]

Australia was able to get rid of 650,000 guns through a buy back program and banned automatic and semiautomatic weapons. It involved a tax hike but both suicide and homicide decreased afterwards.

As per the article in the Journal of Harvard Law:

WOULD BANNING FIREARMS REDUCE
MURDER AND SUICIDE?
A REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL AND
SOME DOMESTIC EVIDENCE
DON B. KATES* AND GARY MAUSER**

In sum, though many nations with widespread gun ownership have much lower murder rates than nations that severely restrict gun ownership, it would be simplistic to assume that at all times and in all places widespread gun ownership depresses violence by deterring many criminals into nonconfrontation crime. There is evidence that it does so in the United States, where defensive gun ownership is a substantial socio‐cultural phenomenon. But the more plausible explanation for many nations having widespread gun ownership with low violence is that these nations never had
high murder and violence rates and so never had occasion to enact severe anti‐gun laws. On the other hand, in nations that have experienced high and rising violent crime rates, the legislative reaction has generally been to enact increasingly severe antigun laws. This is futile, for reducing gun ownership by the law‐abiding citizenry—the only ones who obey gun laws—does not reduce violence or murder. The result is that high crime nations that ban guns to reduce crime end up having both high crime and stringent gun laws, while it appears that low crime nations that do not significantly restrict guns continue to have low violence rates. Thus both sides of the gun prohibition debate are likely wrong in viewing the availability of guns as a major factor in the incidence of murder in any particular society. Though many people may still cling to that belief, the historical, geographic, and demographic evidence explored in this Article provides a clear admonishment. Whether gun availability is viewed as a cause or as a mere coincidence, the long term macrocosmic evidence is that gun ownership spread widely throughout societies consistently correlates with stable or declining murder rates. Whether causative or not, the consistent international pattern is that more guns equal less murder and other violent crime. Even if one is inclined to think that gun availability is an important factor, the available international data cannot be squared with the mantra that more guns equal more death and fewer guns equal less death. Rather, if firearms availability does matter, the data consistently show that the way it matters is that more guns equal less violent crime.

 

[josie_L]

The author of this piece uses the same source for his whole article, i.e., David Hemenway.

 

[FirstFiveEighth]

It’s a right to bear arms. But a privilege to qualify for that right.

Just like a drivers license.

I’m just proposing a better means to regulate.

It’s a right to freedom of religion. But its a privilege to qualify for that right. Just like a driver’s license. I am simply proposing a better means to regulate religion in this country.

 

[ucfengr]

What specific costs are you paying due to the actions of the hundreds of millions of legal firearms owners that they should be responsible for? Please be specific.

 

[Jig_Saw]

Like I said, I didn’t have time to vet it. I will have more time over the weekend. It is a good question and I would like to know what’s out there.

 

[Jig_Saw]

What specific costs are you paying due to the actions of the hundreds of millions of legal firearms owners that they should be responsible for? Please be specific.

The costs associated with the death and injuries as a result of using those firearms. And any property loss as well.

 

[ucfengr]

How much, to the nearest dollar, do the hundreds of millions of legal firearms owners cost you personally? You’ve asserted that you’re bearing a personal cost. Quantify it. Show your math.

 

[marybobo]

Thank you for responding, but I am looking for solutions that will work in the US.

 

[Jig_Saw]

How much, to the nearest dollar, do the hundreds of millions of legal firearms owners cost you personally? You’ve asserted that you’re bearing a personal cost. Quantify it. Show your math.

Is there some minimal amount of personal property that you feel justified in taking and I should accept it as no big deal?

 

[Roseeurekacross]

Ok, we all need to learn from New Zealand. They have no mass shootings and no gun laws. Every second shop on the South Island is a gun shop.

Of course, they love jumping out of choppers onto livestock too, hmmm

 

[AlNg]

If a person in the U.S. owns a gun, it is a virtual certainty that he does not intend to kill anyone with it.

I suspect that your argument doesn’t mean too much to the families of the 58 innocent people gunned down and killed in the Las Vegas massacre. And it probably doesn’t mean anything to the 500 wounded there. It only takes one person with a gun to murder 58 innocent people and to harm 500 others. That is what is a certainty. OK, so you have your right to buy guns. But what happened to the rights of the 58 people and the 500 people wounded in Las Vegas?

 

[AlNg]

How much, to the nearest dollar, do the hundreds of millions of legal firearms owners cost you personally? You’ve asserted that you’re bearing a personal cost. Quantify it. Show your math.

The costs are incalculable because any human life is worth more than 10 million dollars. But if you say 1 million dollars for each person wounded and 10 million dollars for each person killed that would amount to more than one billion dollars of damage due to the one massacre at Las Vegas. And of course, there are many other innocent people being gunned down every day.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I suspect that your argument doesn’t mean too much to the families of the 58 innocent people gunned down and killed in the Las Vegas massacre. And it probably doesn’t mean anything to the 500 wounded there. It only takes one person with a gun to murder 58 innocent people and to harm 500 others. That is what is a certainty. OK, so you have your right to buy guns. But what happened to the rights of the 58 people and the 500 people wounded in Las Vegas?

Well, you really don’t know that, and I doubt anyone has taken a poll of any of them. You might be surprised at the result if anybody ever does do that. It was, after all, a country music concert, not a DNC convention.

In direct answer to your question, their rights were taken away by a killer about whom, at this point, we know almost nothing. We do have good reason to believe, however, that he had non-gun murders in mind as well; perhaps even more lethal ones. There does seem to be a tentative consensus that he thought he would escape the scene and then go on to use the ammonium nitrate and tannerite in his car to kill others with one or more bombs, either there or elsewhere.

It only took one killer with a bomb to kill 168 people in Oklahoma City. As far as I know, nobody has ever polled the families of the victims about their views on ammonium nitrate and/or diesel fuel.

 

[dvdjs]

No, he is not discounting his opponents but refuting them. In fact, a study from the Journal of Harvard Law corroborates his findings:

Whatever else he did in his refutation, he did make the dismissive remark discounting his opponents that I quoted and bolded. So please don’t start with no he didn’t. I don;t doubt that there are various opinions on this work. The failure to quote and MoE and to rely on personal report makes his findings suspect.

 

[dvdjs]

Five minutes on google would disabuse you of that belief.

Five minutes on google and you could present a cogent argument. Maybe.

 

[dvdjs]

If you read through this thread, you will see at least one poster why explicitly called for the wholesale repeal of the Second Amendment. Or simply look at Jig_Saw, claiming that the second amendment is directly contradictory to his right to “life and property”.

Modification or repeal of the second amendment does not equate to disarming citizens.

Others have proposed restrictions so draconian, hardly anyone would be allowed to own, let alone fire, a firearm in their perfect benevolent dictatorship.

Who? What?

Outside this forum, there are thousands of people who are perfectly willing to tell you that they would like to disarm law abiding citizens. It is not hard to find at all.

Who?

 

[Jig_Saw]

Or simply look at Jig_Saw, claiming that the second amendment is directly contradictory to his right to “life and property”.

It’s a balance of rights. I have a right to life and property. I don’t see why I need to give up either for someone else’s right to own a weapon.

Outside this forum, there are thousands of people who are perfectly willing to tell you that they would like to disarm law abiding citizens. It is not hard to find at all.

And inside this forum, there are people who are perfectly willing to tell you that they want to take property from law abiding citizens. Why do you expect I should respect your rights when you don’t seem to respect mine?

 

[FirstFiveEighth]

Because your whole “balance of rights” concept in this case is nonsense. The right to self defense, the right to bear arms, is not contradictory to the right to life and property. In fact, the right to bear arms exists partly to protect the right to life and property. The fact that some people use firearms to take life or commit armed robbery does not invalidate the right to bear arms- if anything it strengthens it.

Someone can use any number of deliberate means to take your life or your property, Jig-Saw. All of them are illegal. Just because the potential exists for someone to take those away from you, does not mean your rights to life and property are diminished.

 

[FirstFiveEighth]

Modification or repeal of the second amendment is being called for expressly to disarm citizens. Or did you think people want it repealed just to limit magazine capacity.

The second amendment is quite clear that citizens have the right to own and use firearms. The repeal is called for by some because they don’t like that protection. They wish to turn the right of self defense, the right to bear arms, into a privilege so that the state can then have any arbitrary reason it wants to confiscate any weapons it wants at any time it wants. They don’t like firearms, they don’t understand why anyone else would like them or want to have them, and they see their fellow citizens who own firearms as dangerous people who should be avoided at parties. They do not currently posses the power to make these dangerous people go away because of enumerated rights in the Constitution. But if they could just get rid of that, they could live in a crime free society.

As for your other questions, it seems you insist on being deliberately obtuse. I’m not doing your homework for you. It’s easy to scroll through the thread yourself. I already mentioned Jig Saw. Another guy whose names starts with “r” thinks the state should have to approve and issue permits to anyone who wishes to take their firearm to the range, or really anywhere outside of their house, among other things. Leaf has repeatedly stated that he thinks entirely too many people own firearms and they should be removed from their possession.

It’s not hard to find. If you refuse to look, one can only assume it’s because you wish to keep repeating, “No one wants to disarm citizens” with some degree of conviction.