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- Manlobbi
Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy❤
No. of Recommendations: 12
After reading 10 pages worth of the Left vs Right gun debate here on the Atheist Fool Board
I think I've managed to distill the discussion down to a few sentences...
Dems: If you have a gun in your home the odds of you or a family member being shot go up exponentially.
Guns are the leading cause of death for children in America.
If we institute a few simple regulations we could save tens of thousands of lives each year.
Background checks, assault rifle bans, proper storage. These measures have worked well in other countries.
We should "well regulate the militia."
Repubs: After watching thousands of hours of Fox News I am scared to death of my own shadow.
I know that at any moment a caravan of immigrants is going to kick in my front door and try to steal my prized Hummel figurine collection.
I need guns to shoot them! First it'll be background checks then they'll force me to wear a dress, drink Bud Lite and use my seatbelt! (the slippery slope)
Do not regulate the militia! All you need is thoughts and prayers!
Sound about right?
No. of Recommendations: 1
I think I've managed to distill the discussion down to a few sentences...
Well done!
No. of Recommendations: 0
Dems: If you have a gun in your home the odds of you or a family member being shot go up exponentially.
Guns are the leading cause of death for children in America.
If we institute a few simple regulations we could save tens of thousands of lives each year.
Background checks, assault rifle bans, proper storage. These measures have worked well in other countries.
We should "well regulate the militia."
Repubs: After watching thousands of hours of Fox News I am scared to death of my own shadow.
I know that at any moment a caravan of immigrants is going to kick in my front door and try to steal my prized Hummel figurine collection.
I need guns to shoot them! First it'll be background checks then they'll force me to wear a dress, drink Bud Lite and use my seatbelt! (the slippery slope)
Do not regulate the militia! All you need is thoughts and prayers!
Sound about right? - vsg
--------------------
Thank you for that balanced and completely objective summary.
No. of Recommendations: 0
<<Thank you for that balanced and completely objective summary.>>
You are welcome Mike!
That's exactly what I was going for "fair and balanced" just like they tell it on Fox News.
No. of Recommendations: 0
Sound about right?
Sure. Sounds about right. Of course, to arrive at that conclusion I had to suffer a major brain injury.
No. of Recommendations: 5
Sound about right?
No. I mean, I know you're trying to be funny - but that's the same kind of willful mischaracterization of another side's position that makes your own side seem unreasonable and unwilling to have an actual conversation about these issues.
A short version of the Republican version is as follows:
Crime exists, is not infrequent, and our criminal justice system is geared almost entirely towards deterrence through after-the-fact punishment, not physically interrupting crimes before people get hurt. I am not scared of my own shadow - I have a legitimate, fact-based concern that someone may attempt a crime of violence against me or my family, and would like to be able to stop them in that moment.
Secondarily, the existence of an armed population is an important check against the democracy devolving into a security state - even if that seems unlikely.
Finally, the existence of an armed populace is protected by the Constitution, and thus needs to be ensured even if specific instances of it might have negative consequences (in the same way that the First Amendment protects Nazis). While you get specific negative consequences that can be quite bad (Nazis and white supremacists and other awful people can organize!), the general rule benefits society and its citizens (government doesn't get to decide what speech can exist). You can't have free speech without suffering some Nazis, and you can't have an armed populace without having gun violence - but the question of whether we are going to have free speech or an armed populace has already been decided by The People.
No. of Recommendations: 3
albaby,
You're one of my favorite posters and I recommend just about everything you post!
That being said, I'm absolutely exhausted by the sight of more children being gunned down day after day while those on the right block every attempt to stop it.
Who, besides the gun lobby, the politicians owned by the gun lobby, and the gun-fetish nuts who worship the politicians owned by the gun lobby, wants to life like this?
You've spent countless hours discussing this issue with the folks on the right,
how much progress have you made?
What changes are they willing to accept to stop American children from being shot day after day after day? (I bet I know answer.)
What I've seen you argue against among other things is fear, straw men, and the old slippery slope.
Yes we all know our founding fathers guaranteed us the right to bear arms; a well regulated militia.
Our founding fathers also didn't think women should be allowed to vote...
and they thought keeping people as slaves was a fine idea. (Maybe not all their ideas were so great.)
Of course I'm poking some fun at the folks on the right, but I stand by the heart of my characterizations:
Democrats want a 'well regulated militia' Republicans not so much.
Lastly I'll leave off with a few words from one of my favorite posters'
"If you're armed with a gun, you're vastly more dangerous than not. That's the whole point, when guns are owned with the intent of using them for self-defense.
You pose more danger to innocent people if you make a mistake. You're a threat - not intentionally,
but you pose a much greater danger to everyone around you while you're armed.
All of those people who killed innocents who came to their doors? I'm sure if you asked them ex ante,
they too would have insisted they weren't a threat to anyone. But it turns out they were." ~albaby
I couldn't have said it better. All the best!
I hope I don't get shot today!
No. of Recommendations: 2
I voted Trump 2016, Biden 2020.
*Fully support tough background checks.
*INSISTING on bans on war-like, mass killing weapons and ammo - I feel that morality, culture, and the old American culture - are gone. Therefore certain rights Americans - some Americans - can't be trusted with. Hence, unflinching support for banning such weapons.
No. of Recommendations: 2
BTW, you people - do not have a debate.
Your country's melting pot is now a mosaic.
Socioeconomic policies and trends - and culture decay - and lack of a common culture- turned you into tribes.
You don't see each other.
You don't see equal Americanism in each other.
So - to say your country is debating - is dead ....wrong.
No. of Recommendations: 0
Therefore certain rights Americans - some Americans - can't be trusted with. - Wilton
--------------------------
Way too many believe (and behave) this way about the freedom of speech.
No. of Recommendations: 5
Who, besides the gun lobby, the politicians owned by the gun lobby, and the gun-fetish nuts who worship the politicians owned by the gun lobby, wants to life like this?
No one. Not even the folks you name. Any more than people who value the First Amendment want there to be Nazis, or the people who think we ought to have cars want there to be auto accidents. But if you give the public the right to do something (or the license or privilege or whatever you want to call it), some individuals will end up misusing it. They don't want to give up something that they value - and think is valuable to society - solely because it gets misused.
You've spent countless hours discussing this issue with the folks on the right, how much progress have you made?
Great progress - but I think you misunderstand why I talk to people on the right. I don't do it to change their minds. No one's mind is ever changed on the internet. I do it so that I can hear what they have to say. So I can understand their point of view. It's my way of inoculating myself against what happens when judge people that we disagree with based on what their critics say, rather than speaking with them directly. I try to gain a better understanding of what other people in the world think of these things and why they think that way, including - and indeed especially - people who I disagree with.
What changes are they willing to accept to stop American children from being shot day after day after day?
If you could come up with a policy that could stop that from happening, but not significantly limit the values that they want to protect, they'd probably accept it. The problem is that most of the things that are "common sense" gun regulations are unlikely to stop the mass shootings you're referring to, and the sorts of things that would stop those mass shootings end up approaching disarmament. There's not a lot of middle ground, so they defend the thing they believe is very important.
No. of Recommendations: 3
<<Well done!>>
Thank you,
I used to be a republican! So as a recovering gop'er I know their arguments better than most!
The gun violence statistics are grim when it comes to kids:
Every day in th U.S., 22 children aged 17 and under are shot.
Five die, three of them are murdered and two killed by suicide.
Eight are shot by accident and survive, and eight are shot by a gun left unsecured and unattended at home.
And all people want to do is talk about it.
https://www.rd.com/article/gun-violence-statistics...
No. of Recommendations: 0
If you could come up with a policy that could stop that from happening, but not significantly limit the values that they want to protect, they'd probably accept it. The problem is that most of the things that are "common sense" gun regulations are unlikely to stop the mass shootings you're referring to, and the sorts of things that would stop those mass shootings end up approaching disarmament. There's not a lot of middle ground, so they defend the thing they believe is very important. - Albaby
--------------------
"Stop" is a pretty high bar. Perhaps reduce to a significant degree might allow some middle ground to appear.
The increased frequency and intensity of serious crimes, gun crimes, assaults, mass shootings, all of it is what is new. I don't think crime has been more or less constant for the last fifty years but we are just hearing about it more now with the internet and modern communications. When I was growing up, there were not roving bands of feral teenagers beating the crap out of random strangers or drugged out zombies pushing people onto the subway tracks or organized smash and grab robberies or frequent sensational mass shootings.
There were plenty of guns around when I was growing up yet crime seemed to be under control, not zero of course but way less than we have today. So IMHO the solution to today's violence is rooted somehow in social issues, not the simple availability of guns.
I don't claim to know how to address the loss of hope, the disrespect for order, disregard for human life, disrespect for police, or the sense of victimhood that is used to justify most of this anti-social and dangerous behavior. But this is a complex societal problem and won't be resolved by banning modern sporting rifles or raising the age to 30 to buy any gun. Mental health has been to be getting some attention now and that is a step in the right direction.
Another thought. Many police chief have talked about the large percent of the crimes being committed by a small number of repeat offenders. Keeping someone with a long rap sheet that includes serious felonies in jail rather than unleashing him back on the street on bail seems obvious. The cops know who these people are.
No. of Recommendations: 0
Way too many believe (and behave) this way about the freedom of speech.
***
And eventually they are going to get their way. A dumbed down people - divided and tribal - are easy to control and manipulate. The Right, the Left, they both want their Madrassas.
And they'll get it.
Furthermore, "Americans" are an interesting specifies - less and less know even the basics about their rights - how those rights were obtained, why, and how they can be preserved. That Beaver Cleaver stuff was taken out of our culture - by the Left - long time ago.
But - given a choice.
I'm tired of these culturally defunct Americans - having easy access not to guns - but to weapons designed solely for mass casualties.
Culture - takes everything down with it.
Including the Bill of Rights. And "Democracy!"
No. of Recommendations: 5
I always enjoy reading Albaby, and would love to learn how to write like him, but there's not enough time left. This is a general reply and not directed at anyone or anything.
I see beliefs expressed by the right not represented here. Militia in the prefatory clause means they are entitled to weapons that would put them on par with the US Military. I remind them they have an individual right unconnected to the militia. They cite law on organized and unorganized militia. I point out the organized militia by law is the National Guard, and the unorganized militia is the pool of able bodied men (and women) the Federal Government and the State may look to for enlistment and draft purposes. That there is no self appointed militia. You can have a club and call yourself a militia, but that has nothing to do with Constitutional militia.
They see the individual rights in the 2d Amendment as unlimited. Any limitation is an "infringement". They see Scalia's dicta in Heller recognizing long held prohibitions on "dangerous and unusual weapons", etc., as problematic. I point to Federalist 29 in which Hamilton states the Militia is subject to regulation by the Federal Government, and that each state's representation in the legislature should counter an misuse of the military(represented by the militia) as a standing military was not contemplated at that time. Tired, stopping here.
No. of Recommendations: 1
'There is here, therefore, an antinomy, right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchanges. Between equal rights force decides.'
Since one side has the guns, I think we know how this turns out.
No. of Recommendations: 1
It seems rather obvious Mike that we should proceed in both directions - gun control and mental health. We are likely to get marginal results from mental health because we really don't know how to deal with it efficiently We don't have to support every capitalist that wants to make a buck with a gun either. Gun safes at home and in the car woud deter theft,but not entirely, as they are clever\
No. of Recommendations: 8
The increased frequency and intensity of serious crimes, gun crimes, assaults, mass shootings, all of it is what is new. I don't think crime has been more or less constant for the last fifty years but we are just hearing about it more now with the internet and modern communications. People generally have
terribly inaccurate perceptions of crime. They always think crime is worse now than it used to be. Even during periods when it was utterly inarguable that it wasn't. Crime spiked in the U.S. from 1960 to a peak in the early 1990's, and then it collapsed again from the early 1990's to the present day. Even during the collapse, most people thought that crime was worse than it was ten years ago. We are terrible at estimating the relative level of crime compared to year's past; we are terrible at estimating the actual level of current crime:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/10/10...https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/many-american...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_...We have a (mistaken) tendency to attribute crime to the problems of modernity. Yet it was just as worth your life to encounter the street gangs like the Bowery Boys or the Dead Rabbits in the 1850's, or to cross the Five Points Gang in the 1910's, as it was to run afoul of the criminals in 1970's and 1980's Alphabet City. We're just ignorant of the prevalence of crime outside of our own experience and time frame - and we (again) have a hagiographic tendency to underestimate how much crime was happening when were younger compared to today.
Nearly all crimes are
vastly lower than they were 30-40 years ago. Things are
nowhere near as bad as during the 1980's and early 1990's. Certain of the property crimes we've talked about on these recent threads, like burglary, are lower than they've been for nearly a century or longer (certainly for all the periods we have reliable and comparable data) - even with the recent uptick in some areas. If we're attributing our (probably mistaken) perception that these crimes are a greater problem today to
recent social phenomena, then that's clearly wrong.
Which makes trying to fix gun violence by tinkering with the levers of broad social policy
incredibly unlikely to be successful. We don't know why crime rose in the 1960's-1980's. We don't know why it collapsed utterly during the late 1990's through today. We intuitively think that modern things we hate (cell phone addiction, increased availability of drugs or guns, isolation and despair, lower marriage rates) are what's causing crime - but crime's been
falling while those things were around and increasing over the last 40 years.
Even though we think things are worse today, we're wrong - the 80's and 90's were when crime was
really bad, and today isn't much different from the 1960's and before for most crimes. Only homicide is different - but even there, our current rate of about 6.5 per 100K is much closer to that of the 1950's (5.1 per 100K) than the 1980's (10.4 per 100K).
https://www.statista.com/statistics/187592/death-r...
No. of Recommendations: 0
People generally have terribly inaccurate perceptions of crime. They always think crime is worse now than it used to be. Even during periods when it was utterly inarguable that it wasn't. Crime spiked in the U.S. from 1960 to a peak in the early 1990's, and then it collapsed again from the early 1990's to the present day. Even during the collapse, most people thought that crime was worse than it was ten years ago. We are terrible at estimating the relative level of crime compared to year's past; we are terrible at estimating the actual level of current crime:
-------------------
Thanks albaby. I am going to try my best to temper my reaction to current events with that perspective.
Since homicides now are half of what they were in the 1980's, can we conclude that today's gun control advocates are somehow better people than those of the 80's who failed to agitate against private ownership of guns?
Are today's gun control advocates perceptions being distorted by the constant and sensational reporting about gun crime in the same fashion I was misled about the overall crime rate?
No. of Recommendations: 2
My two cents worth...
Good policy is based on statistics, and implemented by changing perceptions through anecdotes.
Bad policy is based on ideology, and implemented by changing perceptions through anecdotes.
Also, keep in mind the GOP supported sensible gun control measures in the early '90's with the Brady bill.
Alan
No. of Recommendations: 0
Since homicides now are half of what they were in the 1980's, can we conclude that today's gun control advocates are somehow better people than those of the 80's who failed to agitate against private ownership of guns?
Are today's gun control advocates perceptions being distorted by the constant and sensational reporting about gun crime in the same fashion I was misled about the overall crime rate?Somewhat, ye.s
The
homicide rate has plummeted from an all-time high in 1993 at about 10 per 100K down to today's ~6.5 per 100K. The
firearm homicide rate has remained basically flat - dropping from about 7 per 100K in 1993 to 6.7 per 100K in 2022. Citations for the data below. As you might expect, the proportion of homicides committed with firearms (as opposed to other weapons) has increased - the homicide rate for
every other method has collapsed, but the murder rate with guns has not dropped very much.
Gun control advocates point to that data and argue, with some legitimacy, that with
every other metric of crime dropping precipitously, something is causing that one type of crime - gun homicide - to remain at levels near the all-time historical peak. When no other crime, at all, is anywhere close to historic peaks. Since every other type of crime has collapsed in frequency, something
other than general social or economic or law enforcement conditions must be contributing to that elevated level. To their mind, that "something" is the broad availability of firearms.
That said, I'm not sure the data entirely support that. The spike in gun violence (as opposed to other crime) was short, sharp, and pronounced in the last few years. Overall gun murder was close to a multi-decadal
low in the early 2010's - it really only picked up between 2014 and now. In the later days of the Obama Administration, vastly fewer people were being killed with guns
by other people** than at any time in our recent history.
But that's the thing - the increase in gun homicide has been so rapid that we don't know why it's happening, we don't know if it's temporary or permanent, and so we don't know if policy choices short of removing firearms altogether (or nearly so) will affect it.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26...https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00042178...https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm**Many many people were killing themselves with guns, as we've discussed, but I don't think that this thread is necessarily about that and I don't want to hijack it into that discussion again.
No. of Recommendations: 1
Good policy is based on statistics, and implemented by changing perceptions through anecdotes.
Bad policy is based on ideology, and implemented by changing perceptions through anecdotes.Good policy is made by identifying a problem to be solved, correctly root causing said problem, then implementing a targeted solution.
Good policy is
NOT made by
-Lecturing one side on what they "need"
-Insulting the other side
-Relying on emotional arguments
-Dismissing concerns the other side raises
-Labeling everything one side says as "Common sense", thus automatically labeling everything the other side says as Not Common Sense
-Refusing to compromise
The gun control debate features 100% of the NOT list above and is therefore never going to result in good policy.
Speaking of statistics, I'll reference one of the three lawsuits challenging Washington State's new Assault Weapons ban:
https://assets.nationbuilder.com/firearmspolicycoa...The fact that 'assault' rifles are used extremely rarely in crime underscores that AR-15s
and other banned rifles are commonly possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.
Evidence indicates that 'well under 1% [of crime guns] are 'assault rifles.' ' GARY KLECK,
TARGETING GUNS: FIREARMS AND THEIR CONTROL 112 (1997). From 2015 through 2020, only
2.4% of murders were committed with any type of rifle. See Crime Data Explorer, FBI, U.S. DEP'T
OF JUST. (2020), https://bit.ly/3AA8Qwj; Expanded Homicide Data Table 8: Murder Victims by
Weapon, 2015'2019, Crime in the United States, FBI, U.S. DEP'T OF JUST. (2019),
https://bit.ly/31WmQ1V (72,781 total murders; 1,573 with rifles). Murder by 'hands, fists, feet, etc.' was almost twice as common, at 3,346, over the same time period'and murder by handgun,
at over 30,000, was over 20 times as common. You mentioned anecdotes. Here's one.
At 6AM I saw in my Ring app feed that a neighbor a few blocks away heard a sawing noise at 4:30. When he yelled at the people outside (who were trying to cut off his catalytic converter from his car) they fired several shots in the air.
No. of Recommendations: 0
The same Google Jockeys.....
Who to their credit are knowledgeable and eloquent.....
Who for years have been nothing but apologists for the Establishment, who for years questioned anything that arose in opposition or question to the Establishment....
Who for years supported the great Free Trade deals, the great modernizing, who glibly could post this statistic or that showing how this "progress" is positive....
Are now at a point today where on paper, the standard of living is higher than ever.
Economic output is higher than ever.
Wealth per capita is robust compared to most times in history.
Medical treatments and care have made huge strides.
"Wellness!" and "gym!" and ?yoga" are all in full effect.......
BTW these people who are openly shoplifting and doing crimes - their kids are going to grow up just swell. Maybe the Google Jockeys can highlight some tax credit that will transform that generation too.
Yet.
Rampant, mass, indiscriminate violence is a daily thing now.
And mental health - more and more are mentally screwed up.
But all these years, the Google Jockeys had it under control. After all, a link and a statistic is always reality on the ground.
Duck and cover.
Lockdown drill.
Increased police presence.
(Oh that just describes schools on any given day).
Hopefully the assault weapons get banned - eventually, I feel they are going to be.
And after that - heinous acts of violence, nit just by nut jobs - but between political camps will continue to increase, and will be the new normal - not even newsworthy.
But hey - the "link" will say it's all good.
No. of Recommendations: 0
Well, things went awry in the 90s to 2000s. Clinton supported some gun legislation, Smith and Wesson signed up for it and nearly went out of business due to a boycott started by the NRA. You had GOA billing itself as the only "no compromise" gun group because at one point the NRA supported some gun control. As is usual, when I reread this history it seems different from my memory. :)
https://www.businessinsider.com/smith-and-wesson-a...
No. of Recommendations: 2
IIRC, the homicide clearance rate (Murder solution) was above 90% in the 60s but is now hovering just above 50%. This is blamed on a lack of cooperation with police in the ghetto/barrio areas. This isn't helped when we vilify ghetto dwellers and many are migrants, so talking to the police carries risk of deportation, etc. Some see the police as just another gang, and that view is understandable.
No. of Recommendations: 1
We don't know why crime rose in the 1960's-1980's. We don't know why it collapsed utterly during the late 1990's through today.
It appears to be partially due to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_h...Though, not entirely.
As a side note, I heard today (but did not verify) that there have been more mass shootings this year than there have been days so far this year.
No. of Recommendations: 4
It appears to be partially due to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_h...
There are a half dozen or so attempts to explain, but Albaby is right, we just don't know why, and I've learned to live with that.
On guns, when I proposed getting rid of barrel magazines, some gun owners were receptive. But when I proposed limiting magazine capacity to 10 rounds - big resistance. I described several instances where either police or hostages made successful moves against a shooter. That wasn't persuasive. I came to the conclusion that we might get somewhere after the current generation of gun enthusiasts dies off.
