The US War on Blacks!

[Hauldren Collider]

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley announced that the state will seek the death penalty for the suspect, quote: "We will absolutely will want him to have the death penalty."

[Hauldren Collider]

Using these tragedies to support the simple-minded falsehood that "gun-free zones" and gun control legislation promote mass murder is an outright lie, and disingenuous in the extreme. Statistically, the households most likely to fall prey to gun violence are those with a gun present. Suggesting that Chicago's gun laws cause Chicago gun violence is causally backwards.

Statistically, there is literally no evidence for causation forwards or backwards. Correlation is not causation, and correlation is symmetric. Furthermore, there is no testable causal hypothesis ("bayes net") in this instance, since there is no way to perform repeated trials.

I think it's fair to say that there is no (statistical) evidence for the efficacy of gun control. Conversely, there is also no (again, statistical) evidence for the ineffectiveness of gun control.

And yes, for the record, I am firmly in favor of gun control, including confiscation from known violent felons and confiscation of all assault weapons. For starters.

You'd need a constitutional amendment for that. No chance that'll happen. Frankly I think confiscation would just end with law-abiders lacking guns and law-breakers having guns. If this were a country that didn't have a gun culture and never had many private firearms it might work, but at this point it's just not possible.

[Guynemer]

You'd need a constitutional amendment for that. No chance that'll happen. Frankly I think confiscation would just end with law-abiders lacking guns and law-breakers having guns. If this were a country that didn't have a gun culture and never had many private firearms it might work, but at this point it's just not possible.

That's really the key point here. There are, literally, more guns than people in our country. They will never, ever, ever be going away. If school massacres don't move the needle an inch, nothing will.

It's not that I support guns. I hate 'em. But we have to be realistic. Cat's been out of the bag for a long, long time.

[Hauldren Collider]

Yeah. I think that even if you tried to take them away, you couldn't do it. I'm sure you'd collect millions of guns but how on earth could you hope to collect them all, particularly from people who are ipso facto lawbreakers? You might reduce corner cases like this one where the kid gets a gun and goes crazy, but for street thugs blowing away street thugs? Forget it. It's not going to help.

[kentonio]

Statistically, there is literally no evidence for causation forwards or backwards. Correlation is not causation, and correlation is symmetric. Furthermore, there is no testable causal hypothesis ("bayes net") in this instance, since there is no way to perform repeated trials.

I think it's fair to say that there is no (statistical) evidence for the efficacy of gun control. Conversely, there is also no (again, statistical) evidence for the ineffectiveness of gun control.

This is nonsense. You have the evidence of all those other countries around the world that have gun control and incredibly tiny numbers of gun deaths. Sure you can say that the number of guns makes America different, but that's nothing to do with gun control in principle, just that your problem is a huge one.

Yeah. I think that even if you tried to take them away, you couldn't do it. I'm sure you'd collect millions of guns but how on earth could you hope to collect them all, particularly from people who are ipso facto lawbreakers? You might reduce corner cases like this one where the kid gets a gun and goes crazy, but for street thugs blowing away street thugs? Forget it. It's not going to help.

You do it by running amnesty after amnesty for people to legally hand over their weapons for cash. You also stop the manufacturers selling guns to people of course, cutting off the majority of the incoming stream. Then over decades as the police apprehend suspects during crimes and as people in criminal lives get older and start wanting out, those weapons out there reduce and reduce and reduce. You never stop running open amnesties, because because change over time, and the goal is to get rid of the guns, not to criminalize people.

You'll never get them all, but then again it doesn't matter, you don't need to get them all. Within a few decades you'd have gotten plenty to slash that figure of over 10,000 firearms homicides a year down to a fraction of that.

Oh and in case you were tempted to think it, no that doesn't mean they'll just stab/drive over/bludgeon each other to death.

[Guynemer]

I don't disagree with you Kentonio. In a perfect world, that'd probably work.

This sure as **** ain't a perfect world, and there are zero politicians willing to die on that hill.

[kentonio]

I know, and I know its a waste of my breath. It just makes me furious and sad that I have so many American friends who are at a much higher risk of being killed than they need to be. That infuriates me, chiefly because it's so utterly needless.

[giblets]

I don't think he should get the death penalty because he probably has mental issues.

[Tuberski]

This guy was apparently a "white nationalist" and there is a Facebook photo of him wearing a jacket with the old flags of apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia sewn on it while his front license plate on his car was removed and replaced with Confederate flags. His parents bought him a gun for his 21st birthday and that is the weapon he used during the mass killing.

Or, you could just look at posts #15 and #19 in this thread...

ACK!

[grumbler]

That's really the key point here. There are, literally, more guns than people in our country. They will never, ever, ever be going away. If school massacres don't move the needle an inch, nothing will.

It's not that I support guns. I hate 'em. But we have to be realistic. Cat's been out of the bag for a long, long time.

I agree with this. Approaching this from a gun ban strategy is going to fail. What we need to is to figure out how to reduce the hate and lack of empathy. People don't shoot other people because they have a gun and thus feel compelled to shoot people, they do it because they think the other people are evil, somehow, and deserve to get shot, or because they are angry and believe that the people they are shooting aren't really people at all.

I blame poor education (and I am a teacher myself). No properly educated person would listen to the likes of Glenn Beck with anything but contempt. And yet, guys like him are making tens of millions of dollars a year because poorly-educated people eat his **** up with a spoon.

So long as we have powerful voices promoting hatred and paranoia, we are going to have people who take these voices as calls for violent and paranoid action. Thus, we have a guy who thinks a 59-year-old female librarian is raping white women and taking over the country, and should die for that.

[rah]

Mostly agree, but it would be harder for poorly educated people to kill people if there weren't as many guns.

[The Mad Monk]

I know, and I know its a waste of my breath. It just makes me furious and sad that I have so many American friends who are at a much higher risk of being killed than they need to be. That infuriates me, chiefly because it's so utterly needless.

We really need to get all these bad drivers off the roads!

[rah]

I know, and I know its a waste of my breath. It just makes me furious and sad that I have so many American friends who are at a much higher risk of being killed than they need to be. That infuriates me, chiefly because it's so utterly needless.

Unless your American friends live in real bad neighborhoods that "much higher" risk is still pretty infinitesimal. Not that I want to minimize the issue.

[Ben Kenobi]

Using these tragedies to support the simple-minded falsehood that "gun-free zones" and gun control legislation promote mass murder is an outright lie

Why? It's the truth. Most mass murders in the US occur in 'gun-free' zones. Murderers like having unarmed prey where they know by the time their spree is done, nobody can stop them.

Secondly, they don't turn into sprees where others are carrying because they might threaten one person, or shoot one person and then someone who's carrying shoots them. Threat over.

Suggesting that Chicago's gun laws cause Chicago gun violence is causally backwards.

Statistically Chicago has the highest homicide rates in the country. If, as you presuppose, strict gun laws make people safer, how do you reconcile this?

[PLATO]

I know, and I know its a waste of my breath. It just makes me furious and sad that I have so many American friends who are at a much higher risk of being killed than they need to be. That infuriates me, chiefly because it's so utterly needless.

I don't feel at risk on a daily basis at all. Of course, my neighborhood is mostly Hindus and does have a sheriff deputy living in it...