Required Viewing for NRA Members

[Burning Petard]

The second amendment does not GIVE any rights to anybody. It recognizes rights that are already inherent in the people and restricts actions of the government. Other wise, big RR, you agree with me.

snailgate.

[Big RR]

True BP, it restricts the government; but it also has been recognized by the court as recognizing an individual right to ownership of firearms, which makes its effect pretty broad based. Any law which has a negative effect on individual gun ownership is automatically constitutionally suspect, which makes legislating in this are much tougher.

[Crackpot]

3/5ths RR

[Big RR]

Yeah, but what's 6% among friends--even Sherlock Holmes required 7%.

[oldr_n_wsr]

The proposal for universal background checks regularly polls at 90%...(over 80% among NRA members)

I stand corrected on this one proposal.
I still question the word "reasonable" and

proposed controls and limitations that are supported by 90% of Americans

which implies more than just the background checks.

FYI, I recently passed a background check, aka post suicide attempt.
I was going to buy a few of my deceased cousins rifles. In the end my brother bought them instead as my wife didn't want any guns in the house, a position she has taken for a very long time, even pre-suicide attempt. I ended up buying his crossbow instead. The Remington 600 rifle which my cousin had given me is now over my brothers house too (it was in my cousins safe).

[Jarlaxle]

The problem with "universal" background checks is that there is-exactly-one way tbey can be enforced: universal registration.

Hell. Fucking. No.

[Bicycle Bill]

Require all gun owners to have insurance, just as we do with cars. We don't care if you wreck your own vehicle: we just want you to have insurance in the very unlikely event that you wreck mine. The insurance company will give low risk owners a better rate, just as it does with my car if I take reasonable and prudent steps such as locking it in my garage every night, taking a defensive driving course etc.

I agree with ex-KA. In, fact I have been saying the same for years. We should have strict financial accountability for all harm caused by firearms. The shooting sports community ought to pay 100% of the costs which guns cause to society.

Uhhh, no.  The shooting sports community ought to pay some of the costs which guns cause to society through registration fees, excise taxes, and surcharges when they purchase their weapons and ammunition, but the bulk of the cost should be borne BY THE FUCKING CRIMINALS AND NUT-CASES who commit these assaults, murders, drive-bys, and massacres like Newtown.

How do you do it?  Simple.  Make it a 'penalty enhancer' similar to the 'hate crime' or 'repeat offender' enhancers that are already in place.  Use a gun, go to jail.  Do not pass go and do not collect $200.  Bond, if granted, is higher because of the nature of the offense, and if convicted so are the time served and other financial penalties.

If people do not respect law and authority itself, maybe it's time they learned to fear the penalties that come as a result of that disrespect.

-"BB"-

[BoSoxGal]

I'd like to hear one good reason we shouldn't allow the NIH and CDC to research ways to address gun violence?

[Big RR]

Because such an investigation is a social science one and not a disease or condition of they tyoe these bodies were formed to investigate?

I'm not sure what their charters are, but do they usually study behavioral sciences or criminology? Do they have experts who can make useful recommendations in this area?

I'm all for investigating it, but I think we need the right experts to do it properly; I know MDs think they know everything, but they really don't.

But if they have the proper professionals on staff, then barring such investigations is just idiotic (and if they don't, not putting together some other body to investigate with the proper professionals is just as idiotic.

[BoSoxGal]

Much of NIH and CDC research is outsourced via grant funding of research projects by the relevant experts. This is true of a number of public health issues studied by both of those government agencies.

Here's an article about the funding ban:

http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/20 ... lence.aspx

[rubato]

The second amendment does not GIVE any rights to anybody. It recognizes rights that are already inherent in the people and restricts actions of the government. Other wise, big RR, you agree with me.

snailgate.

Jeremy Bentham, Edmund Burke, and Antonin Scalia would disagree with you. They would say that rights are created by the laws enacted to enforce them. The advantage of this position is that it is easy to see what rights you have and you don't need a theory to explain what rights you 'ought to' have.


Js Mill, the Declaration of independence, and I would agree with you that there are certain "natural rights". In addition to those rights created by law. But then we face the problem of explaining what our 'natural rights' are. I have not seen any theory which derives a "natural right" to own guns by individuals any more than there is a "natural right" to own dynamite or ricin.





yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

"... , but the bulk of the cost should be borne BY THE FUCKING CRIMINALS AND NUT-CASES who commit these assaults, murders, drive-bys, and massacres like Newtown.
... "
-"BB"-

Nearly every one of whom was armed with a gun originally bought by a careless asshole who failed to secure it.


We have done the experiment where we raise the penalties for violent crime and gun crime and we have proven it does not work.



yrs,
rubato

[Big RR]

BSG--as I said, the studies should be done, but it might more appropriately be done through the NSF than either of the other two organizations (because then we could assure relevant experts were reviewing the proposals and awarding the grants), but it ahouls be done whoever does/funds it.

[Lord Jim]

I'd like to hear one good reason we shouldn't allow the NIH and CDC to research ways to address gun violence?

Well, I already did that, but I don't expect you to find it any more persuasive than you did the first time...(Since I believe that you've already decided that there is no such thing as a "good reason " and your request to be given one is purely rhetorical )

If the government wants to commission an independent honest study on "gun violence" (I put it in quotation marks because "gun violence" is really just a sort of lazy short hand that lumps together a collection of very different problems that we'd probably be better off addressing individually) okay, (I can think of worse things the government wastes money on) but I see absolutely no logic whatsoever in having the Centers For Disease Control having the brief...

It would make just as much sense to have the Bureau of Inland Fisheries conduct the study...

"Gun violence" is in no way a "disease" except in the minds of some people in a metaphorical sense; the CDC doesn't deal with metaphorical diseases; it deals with actual real ones...

If one wishes to call "gun violence" a "disease" then they are making an ideological choice; they are certainly not making a characterization based on anything remotely scientific...

If the CDC is going to morph itself into the "Centers For Control Of Anything that Kills Anybody" are they also looking to do studies on people falling down the stairs or slipping in bath tubs?

Totally agree on increases/improvement in mental health care and research.

So do I...

There's violence related to mental health issues, there's gang-related violence, there's domestic-related violence, etc., etc. etc....

And each of these require different approaches to deal with, because they are very different sorts of problems...

Guns are just a tool used to carry out this violence; and like most tools they can be used for both good and bad purposes...

"Gun violence" is a very unhelpful phrase because it lumps together a very different array of problems that all require different kinds of approaches...It's neither a useful or even particularly meaningful expression.

When a person hits their spouse with a baseball bat, we don't call that "baseball bat violence" we call that (correctly) domestic violence...

If a mentally ill person stabs someone, we don't call that "knife violence" we call that a violent act by a disturbed person...

But suddenly when it's a gun that is the tool, it's all about the gun, and not the real cause for the violence...

We'll have no chance at all of solving any of these problems if we don't even define them in an accurate and meaningful way...

If you want a study done specifically addressing the mental health aspect then this government agency:

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)

http://www.samhsa.gov/

Would be a far better fit than the CDC...

The CDC should stick to focusing on its core competencies; ie, protecting the country from actual physical disease, not branching out in to mental diseases or let alone a completely made up pseudo-disease like "gun violence"...

It seems to me that the CDC has quite enough difficulty just dealing with the things it is supposed to do (as Exhibit A I point to their bungling of the Ebola incident) without trying to expand its reach into areas it was not set up to address...

[Burning Petard]

BSG--there is none, other than 'priorities'. Resources (time, human talent, finances) are limited. What problems do you want to focus on?

If you have one of those particular diseases that affect less than a thousand people in the whole world, and there is knowledge of chemicals that will give relief--but they cost the individual in America $200,000+ a year to get--that is where you want attention. The tv stories of the suffering little child gets lots of broad sympathy. If your family member is in a wheel chair for the rest of their life because a bullet in a drive-by shooting penetrated the wall of your home, you want guns off the street. I understand. But good policy is not based on anecdotal evidence. To disagree with BigRR, I believe epidemiology could have something useful to say about gun death and injury in America. The social sciences do not have a brilliant track record on this kind of problem.

But to paraphrase a current authority figure, "who knew it could be so complicated.?"

snailgate

[BoSoxGal]

Gun violence affects @50-60k people per year, with over 30k dying. The traumatizing effects on families and community are profound. I'd say it's worth funding. It's not banned due to budget shortcomings, it's banned due to NRA lobbying. Guess why?

[oldr_n_wsr]

About 60% of those gun deaths are suicides. Without access to a gun what would the numbers be? 50%?

Less than 3% are accidental (less than 1000) not that it is any less horrible.
from here
http://jpfo.org/articles-assd03/gun-sta ... ective.htm (yes, it's a pro-gun site, Jews for the Preservation of Gun rights.)

There are roughly 32,000 gun deaths per year in the United States. Of those, around 60% are suicides. About 3% are accidental deaths (less than 1,000). About 34% of deaths (just over 11,000 in both 2010 and 2011) make up the remainder of gun deaths.
.....
But the reality is that gun homicides are overwhelmingly tied to gang violence. In fact, a staggering 80% of gun homicides are gang-related......

Now the gang bangers are just going to go out and get insurance on those guns, right?
And a permit.
And a background check.

[Lord Jim]

About 60% of those gun deaths are suicides. Without access to a gun what would the numbers be? 50%?

Actually the evidence doesn't suggest there'd be any drop in the suicide rate at all; as I've posted before:

Will the suicide numbers decrease?

The evidence says no:

I've been conceding that the data that has been brought to the table here does show a higher likelihood of suicide being committed in households with guns than in households without, (as opposed to the data on homicides, which shows nothing of the sort)

But I've also raised the "chicken or the egg" question about it; ie, do the people get guns because they are suicidal, and that's the method they choose, (if guns weren't available, they'd simply choose something else) or does the presence of a gun in the household somehow make the commission of a suicide more likely?

Seems I was right to raise this question; the statistics on suicide rates between countries shows absolutely no correlation between suicide rates and the relative ease with which one can obtain a firearm in any country.

At this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... icide_rate

You will see a table ranking the suicide rate per 100,000 of population for 107 countries. (Given the table pasting formating challenges on the forum, there ain't no way I'm going to take the time to copy and paste it all)

The US ranks 34th. Several countries with much stronger gun control laws rank higher (again, all numbers per 100,000 of population) Japan, (some of the toughest gun control laws in the free world) 21.9, France 15.0, New Zealand, 13.2, Austria, 12.8....

The US comes in at 12.0, but right behind us are tough gun law countries Sweden and Denmark, (each at 11.9) Ireland and the UK (both 11.8) and Canada and Iceland at 11.3....

Now, there are many factors that that go into explaining suicide rates, social, cultural, economic, etc, (for example, it's logical to assume that one of the reasons the rate is so high in Japan is related to the whole "face" and "shame" thing...)

But these numbers pretty conclusively demonstrate is that the relative availability of firearms isn't one of those factors...

So whenever you see some "study" on "gun violence" that is attempting to argue that reducing gun ownership will reduce deaths, and to make their data fit their conclusions they are including firearm suicides, you know which end of their anatomy they are talking out of...

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=15613&p=199940&hil ... ty#p199940

One of the things I find about the gun control discussions we have at this point, is that it's frequently not necessary to post anything new...

[Burning Petard]

"One of the things I find about the gun control discussions we have at this point, is that it's frequently not necessary to post anything new..."

That is exactly what makes so many discussions about social/political problems in my family or in the world in general so depressingly pointless. Just mental and emotional self-pleasure with no change expected in anything.

snailgate.

[rubato]

BSG--as I said, the studies should be done, but it might more appropriately be done through the NSF than either of the other two organizations (because then we could assure relevant experts were reviewing the proposals and awarding the grants), but it ahouls be done whoever does/funds it.

You should visit the CDC website sometime. They produce reports on deaths and injuries from: workplace falls, backing vehicles, trench cave-ins, electrocution, confined spaces, handwashing. And it should be obvious that most of their brief involves sociology when you consider that nearly all morbidity and mortality involves human behavior.


yrs,
rubato