The Pernicious Myth of the Good Guy With a Gun

I always do

 

Boogie woogie. Lol

 

Try the monkey bars

 

You're very good at ignoring factual information that is not on your side. You're very good at ignoring studies that reveal a link between gun ownership and higher homicide/suicide rates. Who is standing in the way of people being punished for violating laws? It certainly is not my side. It is your side. You need to take a closer look at the NRA and the influence they've had over Congress. Gun control advocates are not trying to violate anyone's rights. On the contrary, they are trying to protect the right to life.

 

why does he lose-he is obviously honest about his motivations. Most gun owners are. Most gun banners are not honest about their real motivations And your posts prove you really don't care about improving public safety but rather harassing people who own guns because you don't their politics.

 

I will take that as a concession

 

see, it always comes out. the BM members aren't about bashing criminals. their desires to limit our gun rights is not because its a collateral effect on their anti criminal desires. its all about their hatred of the NRA. Claiming that the BM members are not trying to violate ANYONE's rights is one of the most laughable falsehoods I have ever seen. in fact its a bald faced lie unless they want to claim that we don't have any right to own firearms-which I suspect many of them think

 

No, you don't. There is no "link" between legal gun ownership and higher homicide/suicide rates.

There is no link between firearm ownership and suicide. Owning a gun does not make one suicidal. Many countries, such as France, have a higher suicide rate than ours. The top countries in the world for suicide all have low to no private gun ownership. The cause of suicide is feeling suicidal.

There is no link between firearm ownership and homicide. We have urban areas with high gun ownership and low homicide. We have urban areas with low gun ownership and high homicide. This is true in less urban areas as well. There is no correlation at the state, county, or even the global level when it comes to firearms and homicide. Owning a gun does not make one homicidal. Homicides are committed by those who have homicidal tendencies. Trying to keep guns out of their hands still leaves the person with homicidal tendencies on the street.

Here's what people like you don't get: someone who is willing to ignore the penalties for MURDER are going to ignore all lesser laws, including gun laws. Tell us what law you could pass that would stop a murderer from getting their hands on weapons?

Let's say you make it so no one can get their hands on firearms. How would you do that? All you would do is create a booming business smuggling weapons along with the drugs currently pouring across our border. If Prohibition taught us anything, it's that criminals are going to break the law, and they're going to get weapons to protect their illegal businesses. It's the primary reason we have so much gun violence in our country: to protect their illegal drug trade.

Once your average law-abiding citizen can no longer get a firearm to defend themselves, what happens to them when 3 or 4 men break into their house armed with knives, or just with their own fists? Who protects the women dragged off running trails and raped and killed? Who protects the young, the old and the disabled? The police? Who comes to the aid of the police when they're dragged down and beaten to death? What happens when natural disasters happen and there is no rule of law?

If we wanted to stop violence in this country we would take a zero tolerance stance on those criminals who try to illegally obtain weapons. We would put violent people in jail for very long times. We would initiate studies to find out WHO is pulling the trigger in this country. We would seek to understand the PEOPLE who are committing the violence in this country and put an end to it.

But no, gun banners don't really care about any of that, they simply want to take all the guns away, as if that's even a realistic thing that could be achieved. They don't look any further than that because their assumption is that guns CAUSE violence.

Guns don't cause violence. A gun in the hands of a person does not make them more violent, it makes them better able to resist violence.

 

That is all true, but it isn't about gun control, it's people control and creating sustained dependence.

 

Exactly.

They try to paint it as "to save lives", yet they can't defend that.

Most shooting deaths in this country consist of one criminal killing another, victims of criminals, or a would-be victim shooting a criminal attacker. All of these fall into their category of "gun violence", while ignoring the fact that (even according to liberal sources), guns are used defensively far more often to save lives.

The only category of "gun violence" we should be concerned about are criminals killing law abiding citizens of this country. Criminals killing criminals and "victims" that take out an attacker should be in the "good job" category.

Start giving violent felons mandatory 20 years when caught with a firearm. Start giving violent people and criminals who refuse to change ever increasing prison sentences. Get them out of society permanently. Execute those committing heinous crimes, like the ones we currently keep in supermax's. While it might not be a deterrant, there are people who can never be rehabilitated and it removes the possibility of them ever hurting another human being.

The thing that really points out that they don't care about criminals hurting people though, is that most of the anti-gunners are the same ones who want to defend criminal illegal aliens.

Like you said, it's not about protecting people, it's about control. And of course we know there's no better form of control than needing to depend on someone else for your own life.

 

The NRA owns congress

 

Mostly because these studies were debunked long ago.
You're very good at ignoring this fact.

Nonsense. No one wants to limit punishment on those that break the law more than the anti-gun side.

Except the rights of the law-abiding. These rights they seek to violate at every turn.

 

if that were true, there would be no 1934 NFA, no Hughes amendment, and the politicians in california, CT and MD would be facing treason charges and people like you would be seen as persona non gratis in this nation

 

Exactly. My zip code has a combination of beachfront, waterfront, suburban and inner city poor--some of the richest and the poorest in my county. Very little could be used statistically from it.

 

Much better to use state or national data

 

In order to make a valid comparison between France and the US you would have to control for other confounding factors that affect suicide. No one is claiming that guns make people suicidal. That is a straw man argument. What guns do is make it more likely that a suicide attempt will be successful.

Guns make it more likely that violence will be fatal. You are more likely to survive a knife injury than a gun injury. Bullets do more damage and make it more likely the victim will die. All I've seen from you is a very superficial analysis of the link between gun ownership and homicide. Professional researchers have found a link at the individual level in case control studies.

And why are there many examples of countries in which the criminals, for the most part, follow gun laws? No one has been able to answer that question which I asked in another thread. The US has a much bigger problem with gun trafficking than nations like Australia. Lots of guns + lax gun control = lots of illegal guns. So your imagined scenario of gun control leading to "a booming business smuggling weapons" does not seem to be a reality.

Can you name one person trying to take all guns away? Most people just want common sense gun control. Just because one supports common sense traffic laws (speed limits, laws against DUI, etc.) does not mean that one supports a complete ban on all cars. I don't believe a gun is a good option for self defense. Owning something that increases your overall risk of being murdered defeats the purpose.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/sunday-review/more-guns-more-killing.html
http://www.livescience.com/39813-gun-ownership-increases-firearms-deaths.html

These people are arguing that more guns equals more suicide.

We've not seen any "common sense gun control" proposals.

Legally owning a gun does not increase your overall chance of being murdered.

 

I believe there is evidence to support the idea that more guns in the US lead to more suicides

 

Not true!
Stand your ground and constitutional carry are both gaining steam.

 

Then show it, don't just mention it.

Here are some numbers from WaPo:

https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-a...the-fix/files/2015/12/Guns-v-people.jpg&w=480

Using the more conservative NIJ numbers we see that the number of guns increased by 71%, and using population figures we see that the per capita ownership rate increased from 69 per 100k to 100 per 100k. In 1995 the overall suicide rate was 11.79, and the firearm suicide rate was 6.99, with firearm suicides being 59% of all suicides. In 2015, the overall suicide rate was 13.26 with a firearms suicide rate of 6.48, a half point less than it was in 1995. That's a reduction in the firearms suicide rate over 20 years with 135 million more guns available and with a 45% increase in the guns per 100k population. Suidice data from CDC WISQARS.

The only way that your claim that "more guns in the US lead to more suicides" holds true is if the increased number of guns leads to more non-gun suicides. Please provide support for that claim.

 

States with the most lax gun laws have the most gun deaths and most of those are by suicide.

 

So, there's what you wrote, with no citation, and there's the actual numbers I gave, with supporting documentation that showed that there is a negative correlation between the change in number of guns in the US and the suicide rate by gun. Of course, you've moved the goalposts. as your first claim was about the number of guns and now it's about lax gun laws.

You also realize that there is nothing that can be done about the number of guns in the US, and that any gun, regardless of restrictions, can be used for suicide.

 

There is a lot that can be done with ammo and I have long advocated ammo control. I have cited my reference many times.

 

What kind of ammo control?

 

Licensing, universal background checks, registration of weapons (you can only buy ammo for YOUR registered weapon), mandatory training....etc