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The gun control that works: no guns

economist.com

81–84 of 84 posts

Re: The gun control that works: no guns

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a non fantasy... You want to want to make the vulnerable defenseless. You are a despicable person.

What a ridiculous thing to say. Let's arm all the kids, they're defenceless. Let's arm all the old people too, they're defenceless. In fact, let's arm everybody because after all, when kids and old people have arms everybody else is defenceless. And then we'll both sit back and watch the world burn while the defenceless people try to come to terms with their new-found power and slaughter each other. What's despicable…

-What a ridiculous thing to say. Let's arm all the kids, they're defenceless. Let's arm all the old people too, they're defenceless. In fact, let's arm everybody because after all, when kids and old people have arms everybody else is defenceless.

I don't know what to make of this silly argument.

-And then we'll both sit back and watch the world burn while the defenceless people try to come to terms with their new-found power and slaughter each other.

So in your world view a populace given the responsibility or defending themselves from bad people will inevitably lead to wide spread slaughter. You are an idiot and apparently have no love of your fellow humans.

-What's despicable is that there is a country full of people that are so insecure and that have such little faith in their law enforcement that they feel the need to stockpile ammo and weapons as if there is going to be a shoot-out any moment. And guess what, they're all surprised when there is going to be the occasional shoot-out and when people that shouldn't have access to guns find it all too easy to get their hands on them.

People who shouldn't have guns will always have access to them because they don't care what law there is to prevent them. You can make it more difficult but you can't make it 100%. You can however make it 100% for those who are responsible and capable of owning a gun without going on a power induced rampage. Your goal seems to be to make the responsible law abiding person weaker in a confrontation with the law breakers. That is why I don't like you.

-The power to kill is bad enough when we pass it on to the state but that's a necessary evil. It isn't called the state monopoly on force for nothing.

It's a monopoly on the initiation of force. No one has the right to initiate force against others but they do have the right to fight back. Removing a persons ability to use force to defend themselves by law makes them a slave to those who do not care about following the law.

-If you're so insecure that you can't live without a chunk of iron under your pillow then you should look at how you can improve your society to the point where it is safe enough to live a normal life without having metal detectors at grade schools and armed shopkeepers.

I've tried and I'm still trying to improve the world around me but there are way too many people like you that think there is strength in making others weak.

-Keep the poor as poor as they are, keep the insane living on the streets, give everybody access to as much hardware as they want and you will reap exactly what you sow.

I think you are projecting on to me somehow. I don't believe in any of what you wrote. I believe the poor should not have impediments put int their way. I don't believe in giving them a hand out. I have no idea what to do about insane people. If they are violent and hurt others then lock them up but other than that I'm clueless about what to do. I don't believe the average person should have a howitzer in their garage.

I probably shouldn't have called you despicable because I'm sure you mean well. The end result of your ideas would be awful but you obviously don't see it.

Re: The gun control that works: no guns

#82

This article does a fairly convincing impression of being reasonable and balanced. However, a typical sentence is this one: "And my hunch is that the model found in places like Japan or Britain—no guns in homes at all, or almost none—is on balance safer." My hunch is that the author did very little real research or any analysis beyond the attempt to compare statistical enumerations that do not seem properly comparabl…

> My hunch is that the author did very little real research or any analysis beyond the attempt to compare statistical enumerations that do not seem properly comparable. Assuming it could be carried out, what research would you find convincing?

At a minimum I would like to see a clear statement of what hypothesis is being examined.

Re: The gun control that works: no guns

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My hunch is that the author did very little real research or any analysis beyond the attempt to compare statistical enumerations that do not seem properly comparable. Assuming it could be carried out, what research would you find convincing?

At a minimum I would like to see a clear statement of what hypothesis is being examined.

Hypothesis: removing guns from a society can be done to a tolerance of X within Y years. (i.e. there will always be some guns, but you can restrict them to rare status)

Hypothesis: doing so reduces deaths from A to B.

... assuming there could be a study of the above, and it came up with yes in both cases, and A >> B, would the case for gun control be made?

The question I'm asking is whether there is a study that would be acceptable, and gun control simply depends on whether this can be proven, or whether the question of reducing death is a red herring, and gun ownership is believed worth it regardless?

Re: The gun control that works: no guns

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a minimum I would like to see a clear statement of what hypothesis is being examined.

Hypothesis: removing guns from a society can be done to a tolerance of X within Y years. (i.e. there will always be some guns, but you can restrict them to rare status) Hypothesis: doing so reduces deaths from A to B. ... assuming there could be a study of the above, and it came up with yes in both cases, and A >> B, would the case for gun control be made? The question I'm asking is whether there is a study that woul…

Are these your proposals for research, or are they hypotheses that you claim the author was examining and that I somehow missed? If the former and you're looking for a critique, I would start by saying that I don't think hypothesis #1 is well posed. Do you mean any society, or the USA? And do you mean by any means at all, or only using legal, constitutional means?

In examining hypothesis #2, do we have available a sample of societies where guns were removed and nothing else changed, so we can perform a statistical analysis of the change in "death" rate following the sudden removal of guns? I think that's extremely unlikely, and therefore I don't see how we can reach reliable conclusions. Also, I'm confused about what you're proposing to look at: by "death", do you mean murder by gun? All murders? Suicides? Accidents, illness, etc.?

Of course we can be confident of tautologies: if all guns were made to disappear, including those in the hands of the government, there would not be any gun murders. But this does not seem very illuminating. Even in that case, how do we know that murders by other means, and other violent crimes, would not increase?

Your question is "whether there is a study that would be acceptable". I think the answer is clearly yes, and there are studies on this subject in the literature, of varying quality. My point was that the author seems not to know or care much one way or the other, and prefers to sling "hunches".

I'm not sure I understand anything that follows "acceptable", but I think you're wondering whether some people would be against a gun control measure even if it could be known that said measure would lead to a net decrease in murders. The answer to that (and I'm sorry if that's not what you were asking) is obviously "yes" in some cases. As an analogy, many people are harmed, even driven to suicide, by speech. This harm could possibly be reduced by enacting speech controls. But there are people who, even if they agree that a particular speech control measure would reduce harm caused by speech, would nevertheless be against it.

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