Guns in the U.S need to go away now (or in a few years :))

[Lung]

Originally posted by faded glory
Lung the Jews had guns. The warsaw uprisings.....And it was a huge moral booster to know some kind of revenge was being meted out.


Oh and Hitler was a democratically elected leader.

Hello, Faded Glory! We meet on tha battlefield once again!

I think MacTBone answered the first bit.

I live in a free country. But theres always a chance some asswit might want to change that. in any case ; im ready to head for the hills and join the militia

You think i wouldn't? Resorting to something on an extremely remote chance of it happening is a bit paranoid, don't you think?

Guns, RPG's, you cant get guns easier in america than you can in Somalia. Go to a gun show ; ask for there "Barreled Specials or Hot stuff"...lots of illicited stuff. That just a start.

But I believe the supply should be available in the event of tyranny. Your pretty Naive to think freedom may be around forever. Always be ready...

Isn't it better to prevent rather than cure? Surely, once it comes to defending yourself against the government with guns, isn't the fight for freedom already lost? Your best chance of freedom is to defend the freedom you already have, and that can't be done with guns against the enemy from within. In any case, a bunch of headless people with guns are hardly going to defend your country in the absence of an organised military like the one your taxes pay for.

I believe farmers in Australia should be allowed guns so they can shoot rabbits It's a far better argument and, in our case at least, a greater threat

BTW, where's that Lungmatch turn?

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Lung
Why is the threat of a psychopath being elected to president significantly more than, say, a giant meteor wiping out Texas?

You wouldn't need a psychopath to be elected. The Australian Governor-General already has dictatorial power granted to him in your Constitution.

[KrazyHorse]

Silly overly-legalistic Americans. They think that the law corresponds to reality...

[David Floyd]

Silly us, huh?

[KrazyHorse]

I think that's one of the big problems with the US, actually (being serious now). Too much strict adherance to rule of law.

[Wraith]

--"Certainly even you can understand that penetrating wounds of the abdomen, chest or head would require treatment in a hospital"

Right, but so? Look, my father is a police officer. I know that gunshot wounds are not nearly as automatically dangerous as people think. Penetrating chest wounds, yes, will be rather dangerous, but a lot of morons manage to hurt themselves with guns without doing major damage. The principle is the same here.

--"First, if they lied about hiting someone, they might have lied about everything else."

Which is why you ask a lot of questions. And yes, I happen to agree with you on the blood evidence, which is another reason I think the number of hits was rather overstated. Especially since I've seen how people act on a firing range. If they (on non-scoped weapons) have a hard time accurately numbering their hits on a paper target in a relaxed environment, imagine how bad their reports will be in the heat of the moment.

Again, please read the re-eport carefully. He covers all of this stuff and more.

--"Why is the threat of a psychopath being elected to president significantly more than, say, a giant meteor wiping out Texas?"

Because it's already happened several times? After all, most Europeans on this forum seem to think Bush Jr. is a psycho. We've definitely had some questionable people in power here.
This is the point, after all. Politics is, by its nature, corrupting. The kind of people who desire power over others are almost never the kind of people that should that power.

--"If you have enough checks and balances in your constitution (like you do), you shouldn't need to fear for your life."

You're assuming that the Constitution gets followed. This is the point of the 2nd Amendment, to make sure its too risky for the politicians to flat out ignore it.
It hasn't worked as well as I would like, mind, since the majority of the US federal government's actions these days are unconstitutional, but I worry what they'd be like if they didn't at least have to pay it lipservice from time to time.

--"Silly overly-legalistic Americans. They think that the law corresponds to reality..."

No, just that in an argument over legalities, the law is going to take a central place.

--"Too much strict adherance to rule of law."

Did you know that in a lot of places in the US, it's still illegal to drive your horseless carriage in the street? Strict adherance to rule of law is not our problem...

Wraith
"PH33R my reality!!"
-- Megatokyo

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Wraith
--"Certainly even you can understand that penetrating wounds of the abdomen, chest or head would require treatment in a hospital"

Right, but so? Look, my father is a police officer. I know that gunshot wounds are not nearly as automatically dangerous as people think. Penetrating chest wounds, yes, will be rather dangerous, but a lot of morons manage to hurt themselves with guns without doing major damage. The principle is the same here.

--"First, if they lied about hiting someone, they might have lied about everything else."

Which is why you ask a lot of questions. And yes, I happen to agree with you on the blood evidence, which is another reason I think the number of hits was rather overstated. Especially since I've seen how people act on a firing range. If they (on non-scoped weapons) have a hard time accurately numbering their hits on a paper target in a relaxed environment, imagine how bad their reports will be in the heat of the moment.

Again, please read the re-eport carefully. He covers all of this stuff and more.

Wraith
"PH33R my reality!!"
-- Megatokyo

You're Dad is a police officer? Wow, he must treat alot of gunshot wounds. Perhaps you should ask him how often he's encountered someone who has been shot, and among those how many didn't require treatment at a hospital. Over 80% of gunshot wounds in the US involve the head, chest or abdomen. If you think about body proportion and how people aim their weapons that makes a lot of sense. The legs are proportionately under-represented because people don't generally aim for them.

The likelihood of sustaining "minor injury" from a gunshot wound to the head, neck, chest or abdomen is pretty small. Sit back and think now, about your chest and abdomen being wrapped in perhaps one or two inches of muscle, skin, and fat. The rest of the bulk of those body parts is the "danger zone". Anything going deeper will kill you if untreated. Infections of those areas will become beyond salvage if neglected for more than 12 hours. While you're thinkng try to grasp that the portion of these body parts that is outide of the "danger zone" is really very small. The probability that a bullet striking these areas won't penetrate a body cavity is less than 10%. Wounds to the head have an even greater chance of being serious. Even a wound to the jaw is going to require extensive surgical treatment.

Even a wound to the hand is likely to require surgical treatment. Any wound to the hand is likely to involve fracturing of a bone. Such a wound, allowing ingress of bacteria from the skin, has a high likelihood of being complicated by an infection of the bone, osteomyelitis, if not treated properly. If you take this wound to some hypothetical "black market doctor" who releases him on oral antibiotics you will likely lose the hand or your life, at which point the incident becomes reported.

You say that Kleck has "covered all of this stuff". No, he hasn't. Laughing off the obvious discrepancy between his estimates of persons shot with reality as due to treatment by "black market doctors" is sheer fantasy. The burden of proving that "black market doctors" who treat the gunshot wounds of criminals even exist is on him. That is a serious allegation he's making. Every doctor gets a bulletion from his state board listing doctors being disciplined for improper practices. In almost 20 years of practice I have never seen anyone charged with such an offense. Given the danger inherent in a practice such as treatin gunshot wounds on an outpatient basis there would be high likelihood that eventually someone would die and the offending doctor would be subject to board discipline as well as criminal charges.

What then of the suggestion that perhaps some of the reports of woundings via "DGU' might be mere bragging? Twenty three percent of DGU's reported firing at the "offender". Out of thos 8% reported hitting the offender. That's a ratio of about one- third, which to me sounds about right. From his data it would appear that more than half of the DGU incidents occured indoors, and therefore at close range.

Another thing I noticed is that 65% of the "defenders" claimed to have reported the incident to the police. Surely this can be verifyed? No? Kleck blithely charges all the police in the United States with sheer laziness or gross incompetence because their records don't support his results. I think that the burden of proof is on him regarding this claim too.

[OzzyKP]

"Isn't it better to prevent rather than cure? Surely, once it comes to defending yourself against the government with guns, isn't the fight for freedom already lost? Your best chance of freedom is to defend the freedom you already have, and that can't be done with guns against the enemy from within. In any case, a bunch of headless people with guns are hardly going to defend your country in the absence of an organised military like the one your taxes pay for. "


See everyone has this misconception that the only possible use someone could have for a gun is to shoot and kill another. Guns are entirely preventative. Their use is the knowledge that the COULD be used to shoot and kill someone.

This is why they function as a check on government power. A dictator would be less likely to take over when he knows there are 80 million people with guns out there. If that check is gone the likelyhood of a dictator is much greater.

Also I'd like to address the safety and ignorance everyone feels about government. No one realizes how these things happen. Adolf Hitler is not going to march into the United States and get the Nazi party elected tommarrow on a platform of killing Jews. Things don't go that suddenly. Things go very gradually and people usually go along with it.

No one, including Hitler, is going to get on TV and say, "Our government is worried about people being able to think freely and learning things to oppose us, so we are going to burn all books we have a problem with." No, thats dumb. It will be done for your own good, or "for the children". We have censorship and book burning in this country, and the people who do it believe it is a right, honorable thing to do.

Many people in many places want Huckleberry Finn banned from school cause it says the word ****** in it. Others want Harry Potter banned cause it promotes witchcraft. These people are normal liberals and conservatives that think their agenda is more important than basic freedoms.

Look at Europe for an example of this. In their hypocrisy they have taken away the freedom of many people to avoid loosing freedom. I know that in France the book "Mein Kampf" is illegal. Can't be sold or owned or read. In Germany the Nazi party is outright illegal. Now there are many people who defend this as protecting freedom rather than taking it away, but as things dribble in a bit at a time this slippery slope increases.

Lets say we ban the Nazi party in the US. Then people who speak out against banning the Nazi party must be Nazis themselves, and they should be put in jail. Then liberals make many comparisons to Pat Buchanan and the Nazis. So Pat Buchanon and the Reform Party is banned. Again people who support the party, or oppose its ban must be Nazis too, and they are jailed. Then literature or material that supports Nazis or the Reform party get banned. This is a very useful tool for smashing opposition and finally we have one-party control of our country.

We all dislike Nazis, that is a given. Do we take away their freedom because of it? Hell no. They deserve equal rights just like everyone else. In Germany people disliked Jews, Hitler was able to point the finger at opposing parties, the communists, and declare they were the same as Jews or had great Jewish influence, so he got communists banned.

Hell, look in our own recent history. It isn't so hard to believe. Look at McCarthyism in the United States. People were jailed and cast out of Hollywood and many jobs, blacklisted for years just because of their beliefs. For anyone who says "it can't happen here" is absolutely fooling themselves. It can and will happen if we allow our freedom to be taken away.

[Wraith]

--"Wow, he must treat alot of gunshot wounds"

Treated? No, but do you honestly think that the police don't end up on the scene fairly often in cases involving gunshot wounds?

As for hospital treatement, well, one of his stories involved a guy who shot himself in the foot three times. He certainly needed hospital treatment, but not at first. The first weapon was a .22 pistol, you see (the guy was drunk and decided to clean his guns), which doesn't make much of a wound. Last one was a .45, however...

BTW, I've made far more of the black market clinic thing than Kleck does. In fact, I don't really recall him mentioning that, but he does comment on criminals avoiding medical attention if possible (since "Physicians in many states are required by law to report treatment of gunshot wounds to the police, making it necessary for medically treated criminals to explain to police how they received their wounds.").
Don't blame him for my arguments.

--"That's a ratio of about one- third, which to me sounds about right."

Based on what? I'm just curious.

If 8.3% really hit their adversaries, and a total of 15.6% fired at their adversaries, this would imply a 53% (8.3/15.6) "incident hit rate," a level of combat marksmanship far exceeding that typically observed even among police officers. In a review of fifteen reports, police officers inflicted at least one gunshot wound on at least one adversary in 37% of the incidents in which they intentionally fired at someone.[78]

[78] William A. Geller & Michael S. Scott, Police Executive Research Forum, Deadly Force: What We Know 100-106 (1993).

--"From his data it would appear that more than half of the DGU incidents occured indoors, and therefore at close range."

No, based on his data, about a third occur indoors.

About 37% of these incidents occurred in the defender's home, with another 36% near the defender's home.[80] This implies that the remaining 27% occurred in locations where the defender must have carried a gun through public spaces.

--"Another thing I noticed is that 65% of the "defenders" claimed to have reported the incident to the police. Surely this can be verifyed?"

Finally, we asked if Rs had reported these incidents to the police, or if the police otherwise found out about them; 64% of the gun-using victims claimed that the incidents had become known to the police. This figure should be interpreted with caution, since victims presumably want to present their use of guns as legitimate and a willingness to report the incident to the police would help support an impression of legitimacy. Rs who had in fact not reported the incident to the police might have wondered whether a "no"" reply might not lead to discomforting follow-up questions like "why not?" (as indeed it does in the NCVS). Further, it is likely that some Rs reported these incidents but did not mention their use of a gun.

Here he's blaming the respondants, not the police.

--"Kleck blithely charges all the police in the United States with sheer laziness or gross incompetence because their records don't support his results."

If they are not required to keep records on such things, how is this either laziness or incompetence on their part? Police officers have enough paperwork to deal with as it is, they sure aren't going to be doing stuff they don't have to. They don't have time to, for that matter.

Nevertheless, in a ten state sample of incarcerated felons interviewed in 1982, 34% reported having been "scared off, shot at, wounded or captured by an armed victim."[60] From the criminals' standpoint, this experience was not rare.

with 60 being "James Wright & Peter Rossi, Armed and Considered Dangerous (1986);" (a book rather than an article).

Wraith
"I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves."
-- August Strindberg

[Dr Strangelove]

According to one of his tables 23.9 % fired at their "attackers". If 8.3% hit their marks that leaves 15.6% to have fired and missed.

37% occured at the defenders home, 7.5% in a commercial establishment, 4.2% in or near a friend's place, 0.3% at a school, comes out to be avout 50%.

But what did happen to the guy who shot his foot?

Even a .22 fired into the foot will at least partially break a bone, and that's enough to set up the condition for a rip roaring osteomyelitis resulting in either loss of limb or loss of life.

Doctors are required to report of gun shot wounds in ALL 50 states.

Finally, regarding Kleck's statement that he doesn't believe that all his respondents who claimed to have reported the incident actually did so, he's admitting the weakness of the survey. Evidently at each point where we might have a chance to verify his findings his repondents have suffered from a little bit of mendacity. This does indeed lead me to question why we should believe any of his results. If he had reason to doubt some of his results he should have followed up on them.

Over what period of time did this sample of 34% of criminals face armed victims?

I think that police are generally required to report and record any use of a firearm, even if just brandished. Maybe some respondents who reported an attempted crime didn't report the gun use, but that should have been followed up on by Kleck also.

[Lung]

Originally posted by OzzyKP

Hell, look in our own recent history. It isn't so hard to believe. Look at McCarthyism in the United States. People were jailed and cast out of Hollywood and many jobs, blacklisted for years just because of their beliefs. For anyone who says "it can't happen here" is absolutely fooling themselves. It can and will happen if we allow our freedom to be taken away.

Did gun ownership stop McCarthyism?

The best reason to allow people to say whatever they think is that stupid people are more easily identified

As i've said, the most fundamental aspect of democracy is the limitation of power. That means limiting the government, the police, the judiciary, corporations, self-interest groups, and anyone else who desires power at the expense of everyone else. And yes, this includes the gun lobby.

I'm not particularly anti-gun, but allowing psychopathic mass-murderers to horde caches of guns is NOT a justifiable cost of protecting your anonymity.

[Wraith]

--"But what did happen to the guy who shot his foot?"

After the .45, he called 911. Ambulance to the hospital and all. He hadn't done anything illegal, just incredibly stupid.

--"Finally, regarding Kleck's statement that he doesn't believe that all his respondents who claimed to have reported the incident actually did so, he's admitting the weakness of the survey."

Yes, but this is a weakness of all such surveys. This isn't something specific to Kleck, but inherent in this type of research.

--"Over what period of time did this sample of 34% of criminals face armed victims?"

Good question. I'll have to see if I can find that book at the library and see what their scope was.

--"Did gun ownership stop McCarthyism"

I wish it had... that was something that should have been ended quicker. Luckily, it wasn't quite necessary.

Wraith
To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

[Dr Strangelove]

IIRC a spunky lady congresswoman named Helen Douglas, in conjunction with an unflappable President Eisenhower, stopped McCarthy. He did get stopped and guns weren't needed.

Ironically many of his accusations are now known to be true now that we have declassified information available from the old Soviet Union The State Department did have a number of planted double agents. Alger Hiss was a Soviet agent. McCarthy was wrong of course to use the Congress in a manner it was never intended to be used and wrong again when he went after non-governmental persons, such as Hollywood writers, whose politics just didn't matter.