When only bad guys have guns...

[gwendally]

The most depressing thing I've seen coming out of the tragedy in Connecticut is my friend Heather saying that an armed Good Guy would have made it MORE likely that more children would have been killed.  The belief that Guns Are Evil and Only The State Can Save Us is so strong and so closely held that the concept of individual agency using a tool

Comments

[gwendally]

You said "if we are going to let people have deadly weapons". Your mindset is that you get to decide whether to disarm people who have a perfectly valid and reasonable reasons for having weapons. It's as if you said, "if we are going to let people eat meat"... it's an incredibly intrusive statist way to address things that are fundamental to life and liberty for people. Not people just like you, people who are DIFFERENT than you. But soverign and resonsible for themselves and if they choose to eat meat - even if the world would be better off if everyone were vegetarian - then it isn't YOUR RIGHT or obligation to stop them.

Do you know why it's a bad idea to advertise that your house is gun-free? Because then the bad guys know where it's safe for them to go. That, in its essence, is why most people are against being disarmed. The very State that you comfortably feel should be able to dictate personal choices about safety is EXACTLY the thing a lot of us fear. In fact, it was so fundamental to the culture of our country that a State could turn despot that it made it to the second amendment of our constitution. Yes, our country is different than others in that regard. We've seen despots and we stand up against them. It's reflected in our defense budget, too, and the wars we fight over and over again. It's kind of our schtick. Despots don't get faced with sheep when Americans are nearby.

My town was attacked in 1704 by an invading army and my minister's wife and baby were murdered. Her grave is next to my church. Yes, it was 300 years ago, but the place memory remains. My grandmother's family were Jews from Poland. I don't want to lay claim to tragedies that weren't mine, but I hear the history well enough.

Bad guys exist. Not a lot, but enough. In my personal estimation, it's a good idea to have a gun. It's fine if you don't believe that, but do NOT think you have a right to substitute your judgment for mine in this matter. You really don't, and shouldn't, and people believe VERY strongly that they get to be the final arbiter of what they feel they need to be safe. To many of us, giving up personal agency over our own safety is a very very VERY bad idea.

[wyllenn]

I'm sorry you saw my post that way, but don't see anywhere in my post where I tried to disarm anyone. It was certainly not my intent.

At least, in my mind it is NOT the same thing to equate disarmament with better safety.

Guns are deadly weapons. Cars can be deadly weapons, too, and if we are going to let people drive cars then we do train them AND find ways to make the cars safer.

Can we not even have a conversation about making gun ownership safer (like we do with cars?)

You said people "get to be the final arbiter of what they feel they need to be safe." I agree. I feel less safe with guns around. I feel that guns make ME less safe. I certainly know that if I lived in certain neighborhoods of Chicago I would be less safe. Statistical fact.

I understand, however, that I'm not going to live in a society without guns.

So to me, it sounds like YOU are telling ME that you have a right to tell me I have to endure what I perceive as a less safe society, or buy into the notion that I, too need a gun.

So, you think I'm substituting my judgement for yours. I in no way feel that I'm trying to do that, but ironically, feel that you are substituting your judgement for mine. Somehow both of us feel our civil rights are being violated.

Is this why we can't have this conversation in this country? If you and I can't even have a conversation without being misunderstood?

[gwendally]

Interesting point about me substituting my judgment for yours, making you live in a world with guns. I'm not sure how you propose rolling back the existence of guns even 51% of the country suddenly decided that, yeah, guns are bad. Because 49% would still feel like they'd rather NOT be disarmed, thank you very much, and 1% would be criminals who see it as an opportunity to better exploit the weak.

I don't see it as ME making you live in a world with guns, it's just reality.

However, I'm totally and completely in favor of gun training. Send every 16 year old to the range to learn gun safety, to demystify them, to teach them the four cardinal rules of gun use. Just like we teach them to sew in home-ec and to run a table saw in shop class and to drive in Driver's Ed. Used to be every 14 year old learned to shoot a rifle before they went out hunting with their Dad and Uncles the first time. It's just a TOOL and it has rules of operation. Yeah, training.

I'm licensed to carry a concealed weapon and I need to renew the license every few years. Currently I do not have any continuing ed requirement for this. I think it would be a good idea to add that. I have to spend X number of hours on the range in mandatory safety training. But when you go one step past this, to determining who ought to have guns and who ought not to, now you have the State knowing exactly who has guns and that defeats the purpose of having guns to be able to resist state despotism.

[wyllenn]

I specifically said "I understand, however, that I'm not going to live in a society without guns. "

I am not trying to take away anyone's guns or rollback the existence of guns. I never said that.

I just said I don't feel safe with so many guns around and I wished I lived in a world where more people valued GUN SAFETY and we had a society where we could rationally talk about this issue.

I'm starting to feel like you and I can't (at least not in this forum).

[gwendally]

Well, I think we started, but we won't finish tonight. I'm going to bed now!

[ford_prefect42]

I value gun safety. I prefer to discuss this issue rationally. I also prefer to bring all aspects of the discussion into the conversation.

That means bringing in, not just the statistics that I like, but the statistics that I don't. Such as, I recognize that the higher gun ownership states have higher rates of accidental deaths, higher rates of "passion" killings, and, as far as it goes, higher rates of overall crime. I acknowledge that. But that's not the only aspect of the conversation. Check into the deaths caused in nations that *outlawed* guns. Such as Wiemar Germany (you've probably heard how that turned out, it was pretty widely publicized). Czechoslovakia (in the 80s), Pol pot, etcetera. There has literally *never* been a major genocide in a place with liberal gun laws.

There's an argument to be made that "it can never happen here", but if you look at history, it *has* happened here. the reconstruction south tried to institute gun control, because too many members of lynch-mobs were getting shot. genocide has been tried here a number of times, as has tyranny been. we're still a mostly free country after all this time because we the people only have to be pushed so far, so the elites only push so far.

[wyllenn]

I am a person who loves to look at statistics, and like you, will bring in statistics that do and don't fit with my views. This check on my "confirmation bias" is part of how my own thinking evolves.

[lds]

May I make a suggestion, then? You might avoid trying to advocate for a position or share an opinion if you are going to have to use the words "I feel" to justify yourself in every sentence. You've done in throughout this thread already: "I feel" this way about guns or "I feel" that way about personal responsibility for security. Count them up; it's quite appalling.

In a thread below, you wrote, "And figuring out the statistics (rather than a bunch of anecdotes that both sides can dredge up) is very difficult." Well yes, that can be a bit tricky, but doing that difficult work is actually a requirement to having this discussion like mature, fact-based rationalists who are actually intent on solving real-world problems. I would say, until you've actually put in at least a few hours on Wikipedia and Google, one's best strategy would be simply to keep those heart-felt emotions under wraps. It's not that they're not real emotions to you; it's just that you know about our many psychological biases (like the confirmation bias you mention here) and how easy it is for us to be factually wrong. It takes work not to make things worse with our good intentions. Let's actually do that work first, then take up our position of advocacy afterward, shall we?

Here's a good jumping-off point for research, and it would be a good indicator, a sort of litmus test, to let other careful researchers know you intend to be taken seriously, rather than as a knee-jerker: how did the UK Home Office change the way it collected crime stats after the crime skyrocket when handguns were banned in the UK? Did the new method report more or fewer violent crimes as a result of those statistic-gathering changes? Which method do you think provided the more useful metric, and why?

[crazyburro]

This was in the paper last week - Wall Street Journal, December 8th.

"In Medical Triumph, Homicides Fall Despite Soaring Gun Violence"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324712504578131360684277812.html

[crazyburro]

Not firewalled from here - perhaps it's one of those porous firewalls that allows a certain number of unchallenged accesses during a time period. Anyway I have the paper downstairs...

Nothing contradictory there, sorry. Overall deaths from firearms down due to improved treatment is the claim the article makes. Improvements in treatment that would reduce deaths in intentional injury would likely result in improvement in deaths from accidental discharge as well, though obviously fewer people are killed from accidental discharge since no one is (presumably) trying to kill them. Probably a lot of appendages in there.

Injuries, from your second post, is a far more interesting number there and is far more likely to be relevant to your argument about a "pro gun safety culture". (which I don't see evidence for or against...)

[ford_prefect42]

I stand corrected, and pleased to be so.