[AWB]Dems prep ground for 2014 Electoral Defeat

[The Mad Monk]

Having a gun in the house puts you at a higher risk of dying from homicide and dying from suicide. You don't think guns are in any way culpable?

It occurs to me that being more capable of murder or suicide puts you at greater risk of having a gun in the house.

[regexcellent]

You can support that by showing a credible study that does not include illegal guns and which presents an opposite conclusion?

I don't think one exists.

[DaShi]

It occurs to me that being more capable of murder or suicide puts you at greater risk of having a gun in the house.

Evidence? Or have your posts degenerated so far as to just copy what other posts just said?

[ricketyclik]

Where are these countries giving guns out like candy?

At the risk of repeating the point, the US has a far higher rate of gun ownership than every other developed nation on earth.

[Lonestar]

At the risk of repeating the point, the US has a far higher rate of gun ownership than every other developed nation on earth.

We also have a federal system that causes wide variation in gun laws within the country. Gun laws are more lax in, say, Canada then they are in IL or NY.

Within the US we have States that have strict gun control regimes but high instances of violent crime(IL), and low instances of violent crime(MA). We alos have states that have very lax gun laws that have high violent crime rates(AZ) and states that have very lax gun laws with very low rates of violent crime(VT).


The unending drug war, lack of social mobility in the country, lack of cheap mental healthcare...all play a bigger role in violent crime than "lol guns".


Talking about banning firearms(especially those that are outliers in violent crime usage, so-called Assault Weapons) is a cop out that ignores that severe problems that cause violent crime.

[regexcellent]

Oh please, there's plenty of social mobility here. And I don't think access to mental healthcare is even slightly related.

[Jon Miller]

Due to my observations, I think Lonestar is correct.

This isn't due to my 'leftness', when I was more left in ~2000 I (IIRC) would not have agreed with him that the US lacked social mobility or that the lack of mental healthcare was a problem.

JM

[Jon Miller]

Due to my observations, I think Lonestar is correct.

This isn't due to my 'leftness', when I was more left in ~2000 I (IIRC) would not have agreed with him that the US lacked social mobility or that the lack of mental healthcare was a problem.

JM

[Hauldren Collider]

The lack of social mobility is a fraud, just like the idea that Europeans have better healthcare. (More efficient, sure, but not better)

We've been over this before many times.

Your observations, Jon? Like the one where Reg pointed out the real wealth of Swedes was on average lower than that of American blacks, and so you angrily shouted "live there" repeatedly?

[MikeH]

Well efficiency is very important unless you are so rich you can afford to spend any amount on healthcare.

[Hauldren Collider]

The reason it is inefficient is because we don't place many direct costs on the consumer. I agree that inefficiency is a big problem. What it has a tendency to do here is mean that old people get prioritized far too heavily over young people for healthcare.

[MikeH]

And re mobility:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howard-steven-friedman/class-mobility_b_1676931.html

Cross country comparisons have been performed for a number of years using different measures (for a summary, please see the Economic Mobility Project ) where the countries included Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden and United States. The studies have examined income mobility elasticity (the percentage of increase in a son's income associated with a 1 percent increase in the father's income), correlations between income of two generations as well as examining the probability of someone born in one income level moving to another. All of these studies have drawn the same conclusion, that the United States has lower, not higher, mobility than other wealthy countries. For example, in the studies on income mobility elasticity, it was seen that an American man's income is nearly twice as reliant on his father's background as a Canadian man's.

One interesting study examined the probability that a son will remain in his father's income quintile, where a quintile represents one-fifth of the population ranked from lowest to highest income. In that study of six countries (Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States), the data demonstrate that 42 percent of the American sons of fathers born in the poorest quintile landed in the poorest quintile themselves. This rate of the persistence of poverty was far higher than the 30 percent found in the United Kingdom and well above the 25 percent to 28 percent range found in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway.

This same study on income quintiles examined what might be called the rags-to-riches version of mobility, looking at the percentage of sons born to fathers in the poorest quintile who ended up in the wealthiest quintile. The U.S. rate was 7.9 percent, far lower than that of the other countries, where rates ranged from 10.9 percent to 14.4 percent. Some of this measured immobility may derive from America's striking income inequality; that is, an American born into the poorest quintile has farther to travel to reach the highest quintile than those in countries with greater income equality.

Overall, these statistics are very depressing for those who subscribe to the notion that America is a meritocracy and a "land of opportunity." We see that there is far less social mobility in the United States than in other countries and other studies have shown clearly that this mobility is declining.

[Jon Miller]

Your observations, Jon? Like the one where Reg pointed out the real wealth of Swedes was on average lower than that of American blacks, and so you angrily shouted "live there" repeatedly?

It is an easy comparison to make.

I would be 'poor' in Sweden rather than middle class in the US.

It is a much better life, with an abundance of material goods, more opportunities, more protections against risk, more time to enjoy life.

Your 'wealth' comparison would seem to be meaningless.

JM

[Jon Miller]

Nice posts Mike, I don't have any more Thanks for today though.

My change in opinion was due to experiencing the world, even though I have become more 'right' economically.

JM

[kentonio]

Oh and the New Mexico kid? Seems he used one of those 'harmless' .22's we keep hearing about to kill his mother and brother and then fetched an AR-15 to kill his father. At least its not really an assault rifle, eh? He also planned to use it to randomly kill a load of strangers, but it seems that part of the plan failed at least.