basic educational information on guns

[linate]

Below is basic information regarding guns, including gun science, policy, and law. 

https://guneducationalinformation.weebly.com/

i guess if ya'll want to debate, debate how the stuff in the link is misleading or inaccurate. 

 

Gun Educational Information

Below is basic information regarding guns, including gun science, policy, and law. 

GUN SCIENCE
-where there is more gun control, there is less murder. this is the scientific consensus, as shown with the literature review. being a literature review makes this a lot more informing than just being a single study; we see the consensus forming. also included is a link to a poll of scientists but a literature review itself makes the claims even stronger.
https://www.vox.com/2016/2/29/11120184/gun-control-study-international-evidence
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-oe-hemenway-guns-20150423-story.html
-where there are more guns, there is more murder, across geographic regions from localities and larger. this is also a lot more informing because it a literature review of lots of studies. what's more, people are shown not to kill with other weopons instead of guns, as is often argued, because if they did there would be no correlation here.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/
-women are five times more likely to be killed if their significant other has a gun. this is a practical point in illustration of the guns v murders correlation. same in individual lives as general trends
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447915/
-you are more likely to be murdered if you have a gun, as well as those close to you
https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/160/10/929/140858
-only around two hundred and fifty killings are done in the name of self defense per year. people like to pretend defense is such a huge thing, but the odds of being murdered is is closer to forty times higher.
-we have half the worlds guns in the usa but a small percent of the worlds population
-the idea that guns cause problems for society is not just consensus within science, but also the news. here are two links.... the first controls for mental health capacity and other factors in the usa v other countries and concludes it isn't our mental health but rather the fact that we have so many guns. the second link controls for crime and concludes we dont have more crime than the rest of the world, just a lot more people getting shot and killed, again a gun problem. showing it's not just deviants being deviants as some suggest but an emphasis on the gun problem.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur
https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9217163/america-guns-europe
-Compared to 22 other high-income nations, the United States' gun-related murder rate is 25 times higher. it is also true that most murders are minority and gang related, but even those high of proportions dont negate such higher murder rates compared to the rest of the civilized world. it's still a problem. the numbers here about gangs and such are basic numbers that can be arrived at with simple google search information. 
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-u-s-gun-deaths-compare-to-other-countries
-people like to throw around number of defensive gun use. the idea is that not all defensive gun uses result in a killing. the most common number in literature is tens of thousands, though the number vary wildly. the only thing is, even if you are more likely to use a gun in self defense than being murdered, you are still more likely to be murdered than someone who doesn't have a gun. also, a lot of those thousands of defensive uses are not all that critical.... downplaying their significance. even if we used the higher numbers, is it all that convincing that there are tens of thousands more near murders in a nation with already a globally disproportionate number of murders? it holds true, that we could give lots more people guns, and that may increase defensive use... but it would come at the cost of more murder, too.
-in the usa, the number of murders has overall gone down in recent decades. the thing is, while the number of guns went up, the number of people owning them went down. also, this is just one measure: all the other measure include all the countries and localities where gun levels are proportionate to murder rates.
-for more information on gun policy in the usa and other countries: www.gunpolicy.org 
-australia. they enacted major gun reform around twenty years ago after a mass shooting. they bought back a bunch of guns and enacted other gun control. their mass shootings stopped. this almost surely is not an anomloy. their homicides dropped by up to fifty percent. the idea is a lower murder rate came with a lower gun ownership rate. misinformation attempts like to point that overall murder went up slightly after reform, but the rate did not and went down. also, the number of guns have gone up closer to previous level but the gun ownership rate is still lower. it is true that global murder went down, and some of that correlates with australi's rate... but global reductions arent as drastic s australia's.
https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9212725/australia-buyback
-japan. they literally have barely any murders, and barely any guns. they have a rigorous process for allowing guns

POLICY AND COMMON SENSE POINTS
-here are some ideas for gun control ranked by experts as more to less effective, with a comparison to how much public support each has. this is important because experts say gun control can be effective, and this shows examples.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/05/upshot/how-to-reduce-mass-shooting-deaths-experts-say-these-gun-laws-could-help.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur
-i read a story about a boy who got a gun out of his house to shoot some bullies who followed him home. they were challenging him. he admits he wouldn't have did this if he didn't have access to a gun. ive seen with my own eyes an adult do in a pretty exactly the same situation... it's not just limited to kids. remember again that men are five times more likely to kill their significant other if they have a gun. guns cause escalation when the situation otherwise wouldn't. a gun is critical.
-the world isn't magically split into those who will stop at nothing to get a gun and those who aren't. preventing some from being allowed a gun will sometimes prevent them from getting one. when they go off on their significant other or get into a tussle, as the examples and trends show.... they are less likely to kill someone.
-40% of gun sales involve no background check. 90% of people support background checks. 70% of the NRA does. most people want better gun control. congress isn't doing anything, it stands to reason, because they are beholden to the gun lobby.
-barely anyone is hard core per the second amendment. everyone has limits. no machine guns, no grenade launcher, some like the current set up. the thing is, the current set up is arbitrary, there is nothing magical about it.
-the idea of rigid approach to gun control is atypical from a historical perspective as shown in the following section, and a world wide perspective. barely any other countries enshrine such fundamental rights to gun, and these countries aren't those who we'd otherwise want to emulate or be compared to. people just cling to what they have been taught. before the NRA got involved politically, most people wanted to ban hand guns in the recent century.
-the best approach forward is to enact the ideas in the examples link from experts. then, gradually buy back guns like australia did and follow some of their lead on other gun control. eventually we can start treating guns as a privilege instead of a right. some localities can experiment with bans, but even i dont know if that's a good idea. we can be like japan and then only allow some people who especially think they need a gun to have one. 

CONSTITUTIONAL LAW
-the phrase "bear arms" historically meant to use a gun in a militia. the preface of the amendment says the purpose regards militias.
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/48302
-when the constitutional convention occurred, they didn't talk about the need for people to have guns or self defense, all the emphasis was on the need for a militia and the militia langauge in the constitution. the following link is for both this factoid and the next one too. 
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/second-amendment-guns-michael-waldman/
-when the amendment was passed they had all kinds of laws regarding who could have guns for all kinds of reasons, along with gun control
-the supreme court historically didn't touch the amendment much, but when they did treated it as pertaining to militias. as recently as the reagan administration, the conservatives said the same thing. it was called a quote unquote "fraud" on the public, to say otherwise, by the conservative chief justice Burger.
-drafts of the amendment included a conscioustious objector clause, if you objected to militia duty for religious reasons you can be exempt from a militia. this reinforces that the amendment pertained to militia stuff.
-half the population from postal workers to priests were exempt from the militia. this reinforces that it wasn't generally understood that the people informally make up an informal militia. a militia is what a state defines it as.
-all the amendments have limits on them. including the first amendment. you can always read into the amendment what exactly it means to infringe on someone's rights, and find other reasonable exceptions
-the bill of rights and this amendment was originally designed as a safeguard against the federal government. that's why some hard core conservatives say states should be free to regulate as they see fit. others, say the fourteenth amendment incorporated the bills of rights against the states as fundamental "liberty" interests. the issue still exists though, that how can you incorporate something as a fundamental right if it was never there to begin with?
-what does "arms" mean? if we want to be originalists and faithful to orginal intent, there is a difference between military grade weopons and the muskets they had when the amendment was passed
-you would have to use the word "keep" in the amendment to spin your way into individual rights. this ignores all the historical and amendment itself context, and ignores straighforward reading of the words taken together. 

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[Anomaly]

Although the US has the highest rate of guns per citizen by many degrees of magnitude, the US barely cracks the top ten in per capita of murder by gun.  Guns are corollary to violence, convenient for violence, but not necessarily a primary cause of violence.  

You cannot unring a bell.  Unlike Japan, Australia, and UK, private gun ownership has been widespread throughout our history and culture.  It is unproductive and self defeating strategy to include the goal of elimination  of private ownership of guns concurrently with discussion of reasonable increase of gun regulation.

  Your writing shows that although increases background gun checks and other restrictions are widel supported, those measures fail when in the same conversation the goal of eliminating private ownership is included. Two different agendas where one is exclusive of the other and the later is duplicitous.

This failed strategy of pushing for extremes along with reasonable increments is politics of the two party system that has become the politics of a Winner vs a Loser. No pragmatic and intelligent compromise is ever reached in gun control, immigration, healthcare, etc.    Mass media and social media exacerbates the conflict for drama and attention, solely to monetize viewership/attention for advertisers, not to illuminate or educate. 

Linate, do you think it is  a worthwhile concession to not debate the validity or interpretation of the 2nd Amendment or gun bans in order to enact background checks and sharing of civil infraction information between state, local, and federal law, health, and education agencies?  And to discuss what that means in our society if a kid who makes a gun shape with her fingers is put into a national data base as a potentially violent person and should be restricted from gun ownership or not considered for stressful or authoritative job twenty years later?

Edited March 4, 2018 by Anomaly

[linate]

you do raise an important point that it may not be productive to advance the reasonable gun control agenda, while also talking about gun bans and recasting constitutional law. that could be a pragmatic point for lobbyists and politicians, but it's still good to advance the cause in wider debates. before the NRA got politicially involved, the supreme court and the public were a lot more suspicous of guns, even willing to ban wide guns by majority support. times change. the younger generation is angry at being victims of gun violence in schools and such. they are the future. 

[Anomaly]

The young are angry at guns because they are pawns of media and political manufactured “outrage”.  It helps that they are not minority kids in Chicago, Detroit, or Compton.  

  There are important fundamental issues regarding personal rights and limits of government involvement and control.   However, illuminating discussion is prevented by emotionally charged debate that is incapable of fostering intelligent development of a balanced compromise.  

The NRA is successful because it can easily accuse the other side of using any gun regulation as an incremental step towards an intrusive government stomping on personal freedoms to both take guns away and increase government control and power.  Everyone is happy with government powers and control when it’s making the other guy do what you think they should do.  Anti NRA groups are more against the other political party, than getting reasonable gun regulations.   Here in Florida, measures to tighten background checks and raise age for rifles because last minute additions to ban “assault rifles”   Sacrificing gains for political points.   

Gun elimination in Australia was relatively easy because the country and culture was founded on keeping arms and rights away from the aboriginal people and convict labor population, and consolidated power and authority in the few privileged and monied class.   The same for the UK and Japan and other long established countries that slowly pushed back against totalitarian governments and societies.   The US was birthed in a fraught miasma of rebellion and personal freedoms without the anchor of generations of cultural subservience to the ruling class.   There is a difference between evolutional change and advantageous serendipitous mutation of culture.  

There is no point in bringing it up in a wider debate because it’s fundamentally devisive.  So what kids are the future?  Adults are the present.   What does that even mean, other than it’s an emotion baiting platitude.  

[little2add]

 

 

Florida lawmakers on a key committee approved a bill to allow teachers to carry guns in school.

The bill included a $67 million program to train teachers to carry guns.

The bill would leave it up to the discretion of individual school districts to decide whether they wanted to arm teachers or not

[GreenScapularedHuman]

12 hours ago, Anomaly said:

Although the US has the highest rate of guns per citizen by many degrees of magnitude, the US barely cracks the top ten in per capita of murder by gun. 

Here is a wiki list of countries by firearm-related crime... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate I think comparing the United States to developing nations that have systemic sociopolitical instability, corruption, and in some cases near-outright civil war is really a quite bad comparison.

12 hours ago, Anomaly said:

You cannot unring a bell.  Unlike Japan, Australia, and UK, private gun ownership has been widespread throughout our history and culture.  It is unproductive and self defeating strategy to include the goal of elimination  of private ownership of guns concurrently with discussion of reasonable increase of gun regulation.

I think this is a farce argument, no one who is significantly involved in the firearm safety/control movement is interested in abolishing the right to bear arms. But the UK and Australia both had firearms in somewhat ample amounts, though I concede not the staggering amount that the United States has...  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country and they successfully reduced their amount of firearms with little blow back despite concerns and threats of blow back. Australia still has a relatively high amount of firearms per capita in fact at least according to the wiki article mentioned here.

12 hours ago, Anomaly said:

This failed strategy of pushing for extremes along with reasonable increments is politics of the two party system that has become the politics of a Winner vs a Loser. No pragmatic and intelligent compromise is ever reached in gun control, immigration, healthcare, etc.    Mass media and social media exacerbates the conflict for drama and attention, solely to monetize viewership/attention for advertisers, not to illuminate or educate.

There is actually some rather strong majorities from left to right American voter on reform...  http://news.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx and a more comprehensive proposal by proposal review https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/28/gun-control-polling-parkland-430099 however despite strong majorities of Americans supporting these reforms the government, in particular the Republican party proper, have been slow and resistant to voice support or enact such proposals.

1 hour ago, Anomaly said:

The young are angry at guns because they are pawns of media and political manufactured “outrage”.  It helps that they are not minority kids in Chicago, Detroit, or Compton.  

Dipping into conspiracy theory territory or at very least summarily dismissing views that don't reflect your own because you don't want to hear them... likely the reason why you need to believe it was 'manufactured' and that they are 'pawns'... I think it is relevant to note that the "March for our Lives" movement has taken root across the United States from bluest to reddest districts.

1 hour ago, Anomaly said:

There are important fundamental issues regarding personal rights and limits of government involvement and control.   However, illuminating discussion is prevented by emotionally charged debate that is incapable of fostering intelligent development of a balanced compromise.  

This is very likely an informal fallacy called 'poisoning the well'. You are attempting to fame this as 'fundamental and personal rights/liberty' vs 'government control'... that is a farce. You are also attempting to frame this as merely 'emotional' dismissing even the possibility of reasonableness of your opponent. Your words exactly are quite telling "that is incapable of fostering intelligent development'... That might also be simply calling your opponent idiots (at best).

1 hour ago, Anomaly said:

Gun elimination in Australia was relatively easy because the country and culture was founded on keeping arms and rights away from the aboriginal people and convict labor population, and consolidated power and authority in the few privileged and monied class.   The same for the UK and Japan and other long established countries that slowly pushed back against totalitarian governments and societies.   The US was birthed in a fraught miasma of rebellion and personal (filtered) without the anchor of generations of cultural subservience to the ruling class.   There is a difference between evolutional change and advantageous serendipitous mutation of culture. 

It was not 'easy' in Australia. The United States has had a shady history on restricting firearm rights to minorities (particularly African Americans) and has for quite some time now had restrictions on firearm ownership on adjudicated felons among others... It is also fair to argue that the original right to bear arms was much more limited than it is today for today we have less regulation, more deadly weapons, more ease of access to them, more people are legally able to own them, and I could go on and on... Including that since 2010ish the Supreme Court finally incorporated the second amendment because originally the authors of the second amendment very likely wanted States to have the right to decide how they regulated firearms.

1 hour ago, Anomaly said:

There is no point in bringing it up in a wider debate because it’s fundamentally devisive.  So what kids are the future?  Adults are the present.   What does that even mean, other than it’s an emotion baiting platitude.  

There is a point and as the polls I shared shows it is NOT at all divisive... for many reform proposals carry super-majorities of the American people. It may be divisive for conservative/Republican leaning Americans but not for Americans at-large. But supposing it was divisive doesn't mean that it is pointless or that it shouldn't be discussed... and many of these teenagers who are marching for firearm reform will very shortly be voters and even if not America is founded on the idea of the 'consent and will of the governed' is it not?

 

57 minutes ago, little2add said:

Florida lawmakers on a key committee approved a bill to allow teachers to carry guns in school.

The bill included a $67 million program to train teachers to carry guns.

The bill would leave it up to the discretion of individual school districts to decide whether they wanted to arm teachers or not

Just one more thing for teachers to do... despite not being well-funded enough to even supply their students with proper supplies having to dip into their own funds States are seriously considering arming teachers.... meaning screenings, training, and even buying firearms? I think its important to note too that there were trained police officers at this last shooting (and others) and despite that the shootings happened anyways...

[linate]

yeah to respond to that point, even if there are other countries worse than we are, they are by and large undeveloped and not rich. we shouldn't be so easily led into thinking it's normal or okay to be as if we are a crime ridden sh*thole ourselves. 

the nra is not our friend. trump wants to do even basic stuff that most conservatives want, but the nra is standing in the way of most of it. as i said in the opening post, ninety percent of the population wants better gun control, more than just tinkering. the gun lobby and nra is the main problem. politicians are afraid of single issue voters, and there's too much gerrymandering to score political party points instead of representing the people.  even conservatives who want some more gun control are getting in the way of themselves fighting amngst others instead of focuing on the problem, congressial sell outs to the gun lobby. believe me, if the public spoken in unison about this more, congress would listen. even if you dont want to vote for clinton or someone like that, vote in the primaries someone who is decent on that point. 

i do acknowledge the gun control lobby is not always productive. my general sense was the assault weopons ban wasn't all that helpful in the nineties. an assault weopon is just a pull and shoot gun like a lot of em. there is a lot of ignorance from gun control proponents about a lot of that somewhat technical stuff. though it's not like i have a lot of sympathy for keeping  assault weopons... it's just not worth fighting too much about, to me. 

i mean i also like trump's talk about arming some well trained teachers. or at least making sure they are safe and not just kids out of college who want to take guns with them to work with em. 

to be more accurate per my opening post and in response, australia has a smaller percent of the population with guns than it used to, despite the fact that the number of guns have reverted to higher levels. you'd have to say the consensus on gun control is science gone wrong, and austrlia is an outlier to your narrative... in order to think no gun control is good. 

[linate]

when i made the kids are our future point, i wasn't just throwing around catch phrases. i was pointing out that there is a lot of resistance to these gun points of mine to the current population... but times change, as they have in the past too. human progress and us catching on with the rest of the world can still happen some day, even if it ain't in my life time for the more progressive stuff. reasonable gun control could and should be possible though if the people spoke a little more in cohesion on what they agree on. 

[Tab'le De'Bah-Rye]

There are many reasons why people kill or try and hurt someone else, but the simple fact is its easier to kill someone with a gun then a knife whether accidently or deliberately. The countries that allow guns should have training before being liscenced to carry a gun, just like cops are trained how to handle a gun and threatening situations, unsure what that training would look like for an ordinary citizen but definitely aiming skills to shoot to harm and not to kill, arms, shouldrrs and legs and avoid the head and vital organs.

Australia is trying to eradicate all violence here, even black belts are now classed as weapons and if they kill someone or seriously harm them they get in more trouble them someone who's not a black belt, and all weapon related knives are banned also and swords, knuckle dusters etc. We also have a day called white ribbon day which is a movement that is trying to stop violence against women, and sorry day which encourages people to own there faults. Unsure why weapon control can't work anywhere, we even have anti bullying programs in schools. I really do hope u.s.a street gang culture dies out, I feel sad for you all.

[Tab'le De'Bah-Rye]

If I had a choice between the hippy revolution,u.f.c or weapons of war I'm choosing u.f.c without a doubt, though i would rather none of the above.

There needs to be programs in schools nowadays educating kids how to be good/respectful/caring/kind. Parents are letting the television and internet raise there children, the government and schools need to pick up the slack and get more involved unfortunately.

[linate]