In the how come dept

https://definitions.uslegal.com/p/protected-class/

I get the convenience factor, but you do it, it'll just be an inconvenience. Plenty of ranchers don't carry guns. My argument is more like if atvs were a significant cause of death in the us and were outlawed. Some people use them for work and will be inconvenienced, but if it saves 10s of thousands of lives per year, then that's a reasonable and not unusual trade off. Effective chemicals are outlawed, environmentally damaging practices are outlawed. It's annoying to a select few, but a reasonable trade off in a society.

So you're right, it's been a while since I broke down the kleck thing. As the cdc notes, the data at this point is highly inaccurate.

So, yes, lots of it is lying since most gun nuts live in a fantasy land. So, lots of that is for example, a gun is pulled and nothing happens. Probably nothing would have happened anyway. I'm sure when these guys get asked, they want to justify the emotional investment they have in these things. So, they think, "well that one guy looked like he was going to start trouble, but he knew I was packing." If you get asked the question, you can justify it, and it's hard to blind these things. But, if you look at countries that have strict controls on guns, it's not like they have an extra violent crime for every person. If it really was significant, then you would expect the overall violence in these areas to be significantly more violent, and they aren't, when you control for other things. Surveys also have the difficulty of sample sizes and small probabilities. If you survey three people and one of them happens to have cancer, you could conclude 1/3 of Americans have cancer.

 

No firearm is inherently dangerous. It’s an inanimate object. The danger is human behavior.

Laws punishing armed robbery or murder are fine. Laws that negatively impact innocent people but have no effect on the violent offender are ridiculous. But logic eludes people today on this issue like it did Prohibitionist back in the day.

 

Laws creating protected classes and fundamental human rights are not equivalents. A law creating gun owners as a protected class would be a bit redundant considering the 2A.

ATVs are responsible for many more deaths and injuries in my world than firearms. By far. Guns kill/injure far more gangsters than ATVs. Not a particularly strong argument.

So you are definitely a safety before freedom guy then? What about alcohol? It has no real legitimate use and causes many orders of magnitude more mayhem than firearms. Why not reinstate the 18th Amendment?

Where do you stand on CDC numbers? Are they legit? Does it bother you that they hid their findings from the public? Why would they do that?

The Justice Dept. reports over 67,000 confirmed cases of self defense annually. Instances like my experience obviously won’t show up in such statistics. Kleck attempts to quantify stats missed by DOJ and CDC. Admittedly his numbers are likely on the high side. Reality is maybe somewhere in the middle. Even going with DOJ numbers I’m pretty comfortable saying firearms are more than toys or props. Unless you don’t care about people defending themselves. Such people exist I’m told.

Again, what percentages matter? Should someone be denied the opportunity to defend themselves because someone else offs themselves with a firearm?

As far as crime in the absence of firearms are you counting places like Mexico or just a European country here and there?

 

If you're talking about mass shootings, you are correct, but if you're talking about gun shootings, you are incorrect. Blacks commit more than 50% of all gun crimes and all murders by gun. Of the 45% committed by "whites", Hispanics account for a large percentage. In New York city, 90% of all murders (by all weapons) are committed by blacks and Hispanics, with Asians accounting for 3%, leaving just 7% of all murders for the 45% of the population that is white, non-Hispanic. And while mass shootings get all the attention, they account for less than .1% of all gun crimes.

 

Guns don't vote. Illegal immigrants do after their "path to citizenship."

 

No, despite the constitutional amendment, owning a gun is not a human right. Nor is a gun owner a class of people who need protecting.

Safety before freedom isn't a black and white thing. But, if mining with a chemical leeches dangerous toxins into the public water supply, then yes, I support banning the use of that chemical.

I have had this argument before, and I did a deep dive into the studies. Here is what I remember:

Outside of kleck and lott, most studies that have been done show that guns in general decrease public safety. This fits my anecdotal experience in that most guys that are into guns are very eager to cling to any justification to have them. And, that includes making up stories, and exaggerating minor incidents. A buddy of mine shot a bear that had broken into his house. I don't really blame him for it, but, a little knowledge of bears and he could have just chased it out. He was mostly just excited to have a justified excuse to use his gun. It was a justified use, but avoidable. I suspect a large number of cases on the criminal side are the same.

What I remember about the kleck study was that if you ran the actual numbers from his survey, you get some ridiculous number which if true would mean you should expect to be immediately murdered the moment you set foot in germany. He used an arbitrary, unexplained correction factor to revise the results significantly downwards even though the paper talks almost exclusively about his belief that they are under-reported.

The cdc report says they consider their results inaccurate. That fits with, for example, this report:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41954182?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

And, in the end, an immigrant is a human. A gun isn't.

 

And yet many aren't, given the number of kids who are wounded or killed because a moronic adult left a loaded gun accessible to children.

 

Having the ability to defend oneself is a human right. That this doesn’t include use of firearms is a willful denial of logic on your part. If you can guarantee disarmament of any threat to me including the government you would have a foundation for your argument.

And I support banning crime of all kinds, even crime using a firearm.

Since you have no hard data answer me this. If firearms make people less safe why has crime decreased in this country as number of firearms increases? Why, if you exclude small demographics, is our firearm crime rate comparable to places with outright bans? Isn’t it obvious we don’t have a “gun” problem?

Why do you avoid my questions about other risky behaviors/products much worse than guns?

Not accessible without pay/jumping through hoops. Sorry, you can post the link to entire article or try another.

Yes, in the end, immigrants are breaking our laws. They should be held responsible for that from border crossing to the other crimes they commit here. We should focus on the actors based on logic and reason, not inanimate objects based on our emotions.

 

Yep, just like all the kids killed and wounded by drunks, addicts, parents with pools, ATV’s, unprotected electrical outlets and on and on.

 

Is that true? In general?

 

What does all that have to do with the comment I replied to? Do you always have trouble focusing on the topic of discussion?

 

Actual firearm I’d have to look up. Violent crime/homicide definitely. I’m sure there are instances like Japan where there really isn’t any firearm violence. There are also places like Brazil where the more gun control they implement the worse it gets. They are considering going the other way now because banning didn’t work.

Also, even though ownership rates have held steady in the US gun homicides have dropped by nearly 50% and other gun crime by almost 75% since the late ‘80’s. To say guns cause crime or gun crime specifically is absurd.

 

Where is this data from?

 

In other words, I think all crime in general has decreased since the 80's.

 

No, I’m just demonstrating how your comment was absurd. We shouldn’t let emotions cloud our judgement of firearms when our energy would be much better spent fighting other harmful things. Does kids death caused by the things I mentioned mean that little to you? Is there some reason you only care about kids hurt by firearms even though it’s statistically irrelevant compared to other things?

 

https://www.statista.com/statistics...eholds-in-the-united-states-owning-a-firearm/

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/05/07/gun-homicide-rate-down-49-since-1993-peak-public-unaware/

http://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-myths/guns-in-other-countries/

 

Exactly. While ownership rates remain stable and total numbers of guns in circulation skyrocket.

 

Seems you're the emotional one. You made the following comment...Parents are supposed to be intelligent enough to figure this stuff out..."
All I did was merely point that many aren't intelligent enough. I never made any claims about firearm related deaths being more important than any other deaths. YOU made that assumption. You seem to be reading more into my comment than need be.

 

Fair enough. There are many lousy parents. That’s a whole issue unto itself. But it’s a people issue as well. That’s my point.

Just out of curiosity, in your first comments on my parent statement you referenced guns not the other danger I mentioned in the same sentence. Why?

 

Because the discussion you were having was centered around whether or not guns were dangerous. If the main discussion had been about poisonous liquids I would have said there are lots of moronic parents who leave poisonous liquids accessible to kids.

 

Because the majority of illegals wouldn't be stopped by any kind of border control as they already come in through a legal entrypoint.

 

So what then does poor parenting have to do with inherent danger of an inanimate object?

Do we agree then “guns” aren’t dangerous but bad parents can be?

 

Guns are not dangerous, only deranged people or criminals are.

 

Nothing, which is why I didn’t put any blame on the gun. Again, you’re reading way too much into what I actually posted.

 

I never claimed guns were so not sure why you’re telling me this.