Question for gun grabbing liberals

Kinda hard to seperate cause and effect on lots of things.

Like second hand tobacco smoke. Conisdering all the other carcenogens in our environment.
 
Good Luck said:
What EVIDENCE have you given that gun control laws are effective for their purpose? All you have given is the statement that the purpose of your gun control laws is to minimize harm. You linked a couple studies that showed a drop in gun deaths, but not anywhere was there evidence that drop was due to gun control laws.

Not once have you presented actual evidence that a gun control law has accomplished its purpose. That is all I ask for: evidence (not blind statements of assurance) that a gun control law actually works. You cannot show it in the U.S. where the intent is crime control, you cannot show it in your own country where the intent is "minimize harm." And you cannot show it anywhere else that private ownership is allowed.

In fact, not even countries with outright bans on private ownership are the laws effective. They make ownership illegal, but that s all they do.
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Hey if there are no guns in private hands then it must follow that harm from firearms will be less than in a society where there are more firearms than citizens. That's what I mean by intuitive knowledge. Some things are just obvious, that's one of them.

I wouldn't begin to refer to the US and use "gun control" in the same sentence, except to say, "don't bother, it's not possible."

Now, the purpose of gun control is to reduce harm. That's self-evident. If a bunch of starry-eyed fools in the US are trying to link it with crime then they're welcome to stay on their mission impossible but I won't be with them. Regulation of private ownership/use of firearms is good policy where it can work. It can't work in the States so it's a null question.

I'll say it again. The purpose of gun control is to reduce harm. That's my point. In jurisdictions that have gun control there is no way that they are going to set up a situation where it's reduced so that a study can be carried out as to the extent of its effectiveness. So, asking me to prove its effectiveness is pointless. All societies have legislation in place in which they place their faith and don't ask for evidence of efficacy. Take DUI. It's generally accepted that having DUI laws in place are a good thing. And so they are. But what about prohibiting people from driving with a certain percentage of alcohol in their blood? What if someone can be .08% and yet not have their faculties impaired as in DUI? They're prosecuted for what is effectively a status offence. Is that fair? But that's only an example and my question is rhetorical. The point is that the legislators believe that it does more good than harm to have that legislation in place. It's the same for gun control.
 
uscitizen said:
We also hear voices in moderation like mine and Sols. And then the 'you will pry my gun from my cold dead hands' bunch that want an ak47 for squirrel hunting.
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from my cold dead hands....and I don't hunt. I don't want an AK either. I rather liked my M16 when I was a marine. My M16 won't be used for squirrels either. It will be used for politicians and gun grabbers when the time comes.
 
Diuretic said:
Hey if there are no guns in private hands then it must follow that harm from firearms will be less than in a society where there are more firearms than citizens. That's what I mean by intuitive knowledge. Some things are just obvious, that's one of them.

I wouldn't begin to refer to the US and use "gun control" in the same sentence, except to say, "don't bother, it's not possible."

Now, the purpose of gun control is to reduce harm. That's self-evident. If a bunch of starry-eyed fools in the US are trying to link it with crime then they're welcome to stay on their mission impossible but I won't be with them. Regulation of private ownership/use of firearms is good policy where it can work. It can't work in the States so it's a null question.

I'll say it again. The purpose of gun control is to reduce harm. That's my point. In jurisdictions that have gun control there is no way that they are going to set up a situation where it's reduced so that a study can be carried out as to the extent of its effectiveness. So, asking me to prove its effectiveness is pointless. All societies have legislation in place in which they place their faith and don't ask for evidence of efficacy. Take DUI. It's generally accepted that having DUI laws in place are a good thing. And so they are. But what about prohibiting people from driving with a certain percentage of alcohol in their blood? What if someone can be .08% and yet not have their faculties impaired as in DUI? They're prosecuted for what is effectively a status offence. Is that fair? But that's only an example and my question is rhetorical. The point is that the legislators believe that it does more good than harm to have that legislation in place. It's the same for gun control.
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Comparing Gun Control laws to DUI laws is not a good comparison. Gun Control laws prevent or limit gun ownership. You can have a bottle of Jack Daniels on the front seat without being charged with DUI. Gun Control makes just the mere owning of a gun frame a crime. A gun that is not used and is locked up in a safe can be a crime with today's Gun Control Laws.

As far as Gun Control Laws preventing harm, the same could be said for automobiles, knives, power tools, and pretty much anything else around the house except there are no laws preventing ownership of these items.

DUI is a crime just as shooting someone without provocation. Owning the bottle of Jack Daniels is not, unless you are underage, but under Gun Control laws, just owning a firearm becomes a crime even though there was no intent to harm anyone. In Massachusetts, crossing the state with a frame of a pistol tucked away in a locked trunk in a moving van is punishable by a mandatory 1 year in prison. Who does this make safe?
 
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DUI is not comparable to shooting someone.

It more like owning a gun and using it in an unsafe manner.

You will be charged differently if you actually hurt someone or damage property while DUI.
 
Desh said:
DUI is not comparable to shooting someone.

It more like owning a gun and using it in an unsafe manner.

You will be charged differently if you actually hurt someone or damage property while DUI.
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But that is not what Gun Control Laws address. Gun Control Laws do not address the use of a gun, but rather the existence and ownership of the firearm.

In a city where stringent Gun Control Laws exist, if a woman defends herself against a home invasion with a butcher knife and kills the intruder, she is justified. If the same happens with a pistol, she is arrested and tried in front of a jury of her peers.
 
Diuretic said:
Hey if there are no guns in private hands then it must follow that harm from firearms will be less than in a society where there are more firearms than citizens. That's what I mean by intuitive knowledge. Some things are just obvious, that's one of them.

I wouldn't begin to refer to the US and use "gun control" in the same sentence, except to say, "don't bother, it's not possible."

Now, the purpose of gun control is to reduce harm. That's self-evident. If a bunch of starry-eyed fools in the US are trying to link it with crime then they're welcome to stay on their mission impossible but I won't be with them. Regulation of private ownership/use of firearms is good policy where it can work. It can't work in the States so it's a null question.

I'll say it again. The purpose of gun control is to reduce harm. That's my point. In jurisdictions that have gun control there is no way that they are going to set up a situation where it's reduced so that a study can be carried out as to the extent of its effectiveness. So, asking me to prove its effectiveness is pointless. All societies have legislation in place in which they place their faith and don't ask for evidence of efficacy. Take DUI. It's generally accepted that having DUI laws in place are a good thing. And so they are. But what about prohibiting people from driving with a certain percentage of alcohol in their blood? What if someone can be .08% and yet not have their faculties impaired as in DUI? They're prosecuted for what is effectively a status offence. Is that fair? But that's only an example and my question is rhetorical. The point is that the legislators believe that it does more good than harm to have that legislation in place. It's the same for gun control.
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Your first statement is falacious because you equate absence of guns to gun control. It is also "intuitive" that if there were no diseases, we would all live longer. So what? Where does this "intuition" come into play with reality? Again, I ask for evidence, you give me theory. Intuition does nothing to prove gun control works. All it does is associate a theory (less guns means less harm) with the justification for gun control laws. It still does not, in any way, prove, or even support the claim that gun control laws are effective in their design.

And excuse the lack of data all you want. The lack of data comes from the complete inability to make a statistically sound conclusions that gun control laws do what they are designed to do. It is not because no one has tried. It is not because there is no pre-law vs. post law data available. There is a TON of data available regarding gun injuries and deaths brefore a law was enacted, and data after a law was enacted. The data is available from all over the world, in relation to thousands of different gun control legislation. And the problem is all the analysis of all the data indicates ZERO correlation between gun related injuries (including gun deaths) and gun control laws. The correlation R-squared is so low that the statistical conclusion is the two are unrelated. And THAT is why you cannot find evidence that gun control laws work. Because the data analysis already says gun control makes no significant difference.


It has already been pointed out that DUI vs gun OWNERSHIP is an invalid comparison. There are laws against doing others harm. If a person drives while intoxicated, they are endangering others. That is a crime. If a person runs down the street waving a loaded weapon, they are endangering others. That, too, is a crime. NEITHER crimes have anything to do with the legality of owning the alcoholic beverage, or the weapon. The crime is in the USE of the item that causes, or threatens to cause others harm.

There is no objection I know of to laws which penalize people for causing or posing a significant threat to cause harm.

But there ARE objections to laws which try to prevent such events by limiting the possession of something, only because it MAY possibly, if misused (purposely or accidentally), cause harm.
 
Diuretic said:
The purpose of gun control is to reduce harm.
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That is the essence of your argument or definition of Gun Control Laws. It sounds like you are focusing on the premise of a child finding a loaded gun and getting hurt or killed. If that is the extent of your argument, it is a very narrow view of the consequences.

How do Gun Control Laws that leave a segment of the population unable to defend itself make anyone safer?
 
uscitizen said:
The purpose of gun control laws is just to piss of Republicans.
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Now that makes perfect sense. That I can believe. Gun Control Laws are nothing more than an agenda that has no intellectual foundation whatsoever and is completely based on hysterical and reactionary emotions.

Of course, this is something that Conservatives have always known.
 
Advocacy of gun control by politicians (at least in the Unites States - who knows why Aussies do what they do....) is basically a political tool some use as a means to "prove" they want to do something about violent crime.

Why people support gun control is simply a reaction to the successful fear mongering done by the politicians in turning fellow law abiding citizens into deranged gun wielding hysterics.

ALL politicians, political parties, and political philosophies have their pet "I'm doing something by doing nothing" social and economic issues. It is up to the citizenry to recognize when a "solution" proposed by the politicians will solve a problem, and at what cost.

Gun control laws have NOT solve a damned thing. Even laws which are specifically (and correctly) aimed at keeping guns from convicted violent criminals only affect legal sales of guns. Gun control laws have been in existence for almost a century now, and no analysis of data can show they have done anything with regard to their intent. And they come at the cost of violating a specified constitutional protection. That makes most of them a BAD idea.

The few laws which, as written, are designed to prevent sales of weapons to criminals WITHOUT affecting sales to law abiding citizens are OK. But the laws which limit and/or deny legal sales to citizens who do not have criminal backgrounds are poorly written, unconstitutional, and need to be either rewritten so they only address possession by criminals, or they need to be tossed entirely.
 
PorterM said:
Comparing Gun Control laws to DUI laws is not a good comparison. Gun Control laws prevent or limit gun ownership. You can have a bottle of Jack Daniels on the front seat without being charged with DUI. Gun Control makes just the mere owning of a gun frame a crime. A gun that is not used and is locked up in a safe can be a crime with today's Gun Control Laws.

As far as Gun Control Laws preventing harm, the same could be said for automobiles, knives, power tools, and pretty much anything else around the house except there are no laws preventing ownership of these items.

DUI is a crime just as shooting someone without provocation. Owning the bottle of Jack Daniels is not, unless you are underage, but under Gun Control laws, just owning a firearm becomes a crime even though there was no intent to harm anyone. In Massachusetts, crossing the state with a frame of a pistol tucked away in a locked trunk in a moving van is punishable by a mandatory 1 year in prison. Who does this make safe?
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My point in bring up DUI laws – and BAC laws – was the difference between them. DUI is a sensible law, it's based on actual sensory impairment. The evidence that's required (among other things) is that the driver was driving under the influence of liquor or a drug and whose senses were impaired. Driving with excess alcohol in the bloody (BAC) is a status offence. Someone can be unimpaired but if their BAC is above a certain amount then they are committing an offence.
Legislators created DUI laws, which is good, but they created BAC laws as soon as an instrument was invented which could measure the concentration of alcohol in the blood by breath analysis. Why? Because they thought it would be a good idea and would minimise harm. Does it? Who knows? But I tell you, they won't repeal it.

Gun control laws don't stop vehicle accidents, stabbings, misuse of DeWit power tools or teenage acne. They are intended to minimise harm from misuse of firearms.
 
PorterM said:
But that is not what Gun Control Laws address. Gun Control Laws do not address the use of a gun, but rather the existence and ownership of the firearm.

In a city where stringent Gun Control Laws exist, if a woman defends herself against a home invasion with a butcher knife and kills the intruder, she is justified. If the same happens with a pistol, she is arrested and tried in front of a jury of her peers.
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I can't speak for any other jurisdiction but where I am in the circumstances you've described, it's irrelevant what weapon was used, the focus is on the defendant's actions and state of mind, not the weapon.
 
Good Luck said:
Your first statement is falacious because you equate absence of guns to gun control. It is also "intuitive" that if there were no diseases, we would all live longer. So what? Where does this "intuition" come into play with reality? Again, I ask for evidence, you give me theory. Intuition does nothing to prove gun control works. All it does is associate a theory (less guns means less harm) with the justification for gun control laws. It still does not, in any way, prove, or even support the claim that gun control laws are effective in their design.

And excuse the lack of data all you want. The lack of data comes from the complete inability to make a statistically sound conclusions that gun control laws do what they are designed to do. It is not because no one has tried. It is not because there is no pre-law vs. post law data available. There is a TON of data available regarding gun injuries and deaths brefore a law was enacted, and data after a law was enacted. The data is available from all over the world, in relation to thousands of different gun control legislation. And the problem is all the analysis of all the data indicates ZERO correlation between gun related injuries (including gun deaths) and gun control laws. The correlation R-squared is so low that the statistical conclusion is the two are unrelated. And THAT is why you cannot find evidence that gun control laws work. Because the data analysis already says gun control makes no significant difference.


It has already been pointed out that DUI vs gun OWNERSHIP is an invalid comparison. There are laws against doing others harm. If a person drives while intoxicated, they are endangering others. That is a crime. If a person runs down the street waving a loaded weapon, they are endangering others. That, too, is a crime. NEITHER crimes have anything to do with the legality of owning the alcoholic beverage, or the weapon. The crime is in the USE of the item that causes, or threatens to cause others harm.

There is no objection I know of to laws which penalize people for causing or posing a significant threat to cause harm.

But there ARE objections to laws which try to prevent such events by limiting the possession of something, only because it MAY possibly, if misused (purposely or accidentally), cause harm.
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Fallacious? Oh I don't know, I think it was a pretty solid statement. If there are no firearms in private hands wouldn't it follow that harm from firearms would be reduced?

You can demand all you like but I've indicated that what you're asking is probably not possible. But by all means keep asking. You'll get the same answer though.

As for the DUI/BAC analogy – I wasn't drawing a comparison between DUI and gun ownership, not directly anyway, that was someone else getting confused. I hope I've clarified the point of the analogy.
 
PorterM said:
That is the essence of your argument or definition of Gun Control Laws. It sounds like you are focusing on the premise of a child finding a loaded gun and getting hurt or killed. If that is the extent of your argument, it is a very narrow view of the consequences.

How do Gun Control Laws that leave a segment of the population unable to defend itself make anyone safer?
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No, my argument is a bit more complex than that. The key to understanding it is to stop thinking “gun control” means “banning guns.” For example, certain people should not be permitted to own/use a firearm, that's a gun control premise. People who are not suitable (just using shorthand here) to ow./use a firearm shouldn't be able to get one.

On defence. It's your premise that they're needed for self defence, not mine. I haven't made that argument so it's not relevant for me. I've indicated several times that in the US your crime problem is so bad that gun control is pointless. I have no problems with ccw laws.
 
Diuretic said:
Fallacious? Oh I don't know, I think it was a pretty solid statement. If there are no firearms in private hands wouldn't it follow that harm from firearms would be reduced?
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The fallacy in your statement comes from the "IF" in your statement. "IF" pigs could fly we'd need bigger shotguns for upland bird season. IF statements that are based on an impossibility have zero meaning. It would be impossible to remove all guns from private hands because not everyone would obey those bans.


Diuretic said:
You can demand all you like but I've indicated that what you're asking is probably not possible. But by all means keep asking. You'll get the same answer though.
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And that is exactly my point. You cannot provide any data that shows gun control laws accomplish the purpose for which they are enacted. When a law interfers with individual freedom, but has no demonstrable purpose, then it is a bad law. It does not matter if that freedom is enumerated as it is in the U.S., or if it is implied through historical context of the society. Yet despite the inability to show any good derived from gun control laws, even within your own society, you continue to defend them.

Diuretic said:
As for the DUI/BAC analogy – I wasn't drawing a comparison between DUI and gun ownership, not directly anyway, that was someone else getting confused. I hope I've clarified the point of the analogy.
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What was the point? That someone can have BAC of .08 and not be impaired, therefore conviction of DUI based on BAC is unjust?

And how does that relate to gun control laws? If it was not meant to draw a parallel between DUI laws and gun control laws, what WAS the purpose of bringing up DUI laws? Is that supposed to mean that one "unjust" law that is intended to reduce harm from drunk drivers excuses another unjust law intended to reduce harm from gun owners?

It still does not work because DUI laws are based on ACTIONS of an individual which have been proven to be harmful to society. But gun control lawsare based on actions (ie:mere ownership) which in and of themselves have zero impact on society. DUI is based on what someone already did that poses a threat of harm. Gun control presupposes the POTENTIAL of harmful action with no other justification that what a person MIGHT do with a weapon, or with a certain class of weapons.

If it were legal to charge a person with DUI for owning a bottle of whiskey, you'd have a connection. (We tried that route once - didn't work fer shit.)

But last I looked, it is not illegal to own alcohol or use alcohol. It is only illegal to use alcohol beyond a certain point of impairment, and then endanger others by operating a motor vehicle on public roads. The illegal action is derived from the impairment itself, not from the use of alcohol. BAC is a limit placed by law to give both law enforcement and the individual a defined point of acceptable use while operating a motor vehicle. But it is still based on actions already taken by the individual, not on potential actions.
 
Diuretic said:
Gun control laws don't stop vehicle accidents, stabbings, misuse of DeWit power tools or teenage acne. They are intended to minimise harm from misuse of firearms.
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How are they suppose to do that? If they are intended to minimize the harm from misuse of firearms, why are jail sentences imposed? Have Gun Control Laws prevented the misuse of firearms in Washington DC? In case you do not know, Washington DC has some of the most stringent gun laws in the country. This is what Mayor Marion Barry has to say about the success of that.

"Outside of the constant killings, Washington [DC] has one of the lowest crime rates in the country."
-- Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, DC.​
 
PorterM said:
How are they suppose to do that? If they are intended to minimize the harm from misuse of firearms, why are jail sentences imposed? Have Gun Control Laws prevented the misuse of firearms in Washington DC? In case you do not know, Washington DC has some of the most stringent gun laws in the country. This is what Mayor Marion Barry has to say about the success of that.

"Outside of the constant killings, Washington [DC] has one of the lowest crime rates in the country."
-- Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, DC.​
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LOL.

Americas crimerate is actually equal to or lower than most European countries.

Except for the murder rate, which is five times higher. God bless our guns.
 
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