[lit-ideas] Re: The United Gun Guys of America
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2015 10:31:47 +0000 (UTC)
Sure, guns should be restricted to government use only. We can trust the
government to do right, and prohibiting guns to law-abiding citizens will
drastically reduce the population of gun holders to soldiers, cops, and
crooks.>
Sarcasm aside, this raises the point that gun legislation has two broad effects
(a) between citizen and citizen (including citizens who are crooks) (b) between
citizen and state.
Surely (b) is much more important than (a)? Using guns to resist tyranny by the
state is (arguably) a political right (if we are democrats). Legislation, that
would remove or restrict a citizen's ability to use arms in exercise of this
political right, needs careful scrutiny in the interests of democracy [i.e. the
avoidance of tyranny]. Otoh, while the state need not have a monopoly of force,
in a democracy the state still needs a preponderance of force - for we should
not have a state so weak that it could be overthrown by tyrannical citizens.
There are serious dilemmas here and serious alternatives: a strong democratic
ethos within the state and its institutions [underpinned by laws] may be much
more important a safeguard than a citizen's right to arms, especially given the
preponderance of state force.
Despite this - as per Lawrence's comments - it seems (a) becomes the focus of
much of the argument - premised largely on the availability of guns as a method
of crime prevention [mere appeal to 'freedom' here strikes me as too weak to
justify the carrying of guns in civil society].
These arguments in favour of arms for citizens re (a) strike me as much weaker
both in terms of evidence that liberal gun-laws have a greater overall deterent
effect on crime (than more restrictive laws) and in terms of the political
dangers were we to try to take guns out of the equation of relations between
citizens.
Few in Europe who read of these mass killings in the US think it would be an
idea to promote a gun-carrying culture here or feel Europeans are less
protected against their fellow citizens because of our much more restrictive
laws. Quite the reverse.
It also seems that the US debate becomes strangely heated and not
evidence-based: for example Lawrence's use of guns as a possible means for
fending off rape is highly charged and raises more questions than it answers
(including how an armed rapist might be more deadly and difficult to fend off
than an unarmed one; how many rapes could feasibly be fended off by a gun; and
the scope of self-defence).
DL
On Monday, 5 October 2015, 6:16, Carol Kirschenbaum <carolkir@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Mike,I see on so-called social media that you and another friend of mine got
embroiled in a go - nowhere Imbruglia ( damn this autocorrect!). He's a once -
friend - turned gun nut. Unfortunately, there's no discussion to be had on this
subject. Not with him. Years have passed yet we hold the same views we did in
the 1990s. Dan hard to feel optimistic.Ck
Sent via the Samsung Galaxy S® 4 mini ™, an AT&T 4G LTE smartphone
-------- Original message --------From: Mike Geary
<jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx> Date:10/03/2015 10:42 AM (GMT-08:00) To:
lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Cc: Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The United Gun Guys of
America
I'm not looking to get into an argument over guns. I've been in hundreds and
never once was I convinced of the necessity or the efficacy of owning a gun and
never once have I swayed a gun owner that society would be immeasurable better
without citizen ownership of weaponry. My world view (as opposed to my
non-existent religious view) is that private ownership of guns is insane for
any society. The manufacture of guns should be against the law and punishable
by stoning. Guns exist to kill and only to that end. Yes, there are other
means of killing -- strangling for instance, but hands have other uses. Guns
do not. Knives have other uses, guns do not. Dynamite has other uses, Guns do
not. The various poisons have many different uses. Guns do not. Etc., etc.,
etc. We do not need to shoot game for food. We haven't for quite some time
now. And yet it is estimated that 1 in 3 Americans owns a gun. WHY???
Because they're afraid of that "other guy" -- who just might own a gun. It's
insane. Confiscate ALL the goddamn guns and melt them all down, each and
every one. I suppose it's amazing that our suicide and murder rates are so
"low" given the amount of weaponry around. What am I bitching about? So 9
college kids get blown away. So what, we've still got the Constitutional right
to own our own guns. It's in the Constitution -- the 2nd Amendment to the Bill
of Rights: "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free
State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
To hell with those 9 kids. It's just another day in Amerika. Flip Wilson had
the best answer to guns. Let people have their guns. Just tax ammunition so
much that each bullet costs $5000. I'm not looking to anger people, just
wanting to get rid of the guns.
On Sat, Oct 3, 2015 at 8:23 AM, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
I don't disagree with the criteria disparities. I found that to be true as
well. I have heard something a bit different about the Homicide statistic in
America, namely that if you shoot someone who has invaded your home or in any
other way defend yourself such that an attacker is killed, the event is
initially called a homicide until someone later on, perhaps even a jury decides
that it isn't. In the meantime it is called a homicide and entered into
statistics as such. There probably isn't anything that can be done about that.
Local police forces aren't given the authority to determine when a death is a
homicide and when it isn't.
As to the definition of violent crimes, probably we in the U.S., many of us,
wouldn't accept the idea that it is more acceptable that our wives and sisters
be raped than that we kill the rapist, e.g, he had your sister down and had
pulled her pants off and you shot him??? Did you have to do that? Attempted
rape isn't as serious a crime as an actual rape. we're going to call that a
homicide and you are in a whole lot of trouble.
Would a few cases like that get gun owners stirred up so that they would
strenuously fight having their guns taken away? The way the media works, just
one case has gotten Geary stirred up -- a lot of other people as well. If the
threat of the creation of a bureaucracy to take away the guns of normal
American citizens became serious enough, counter examples could be produced in
abundance.
Having said all that, I was a rifle instructor in the Marine Corps at one time
and all the coaches I knew would agree that some of our shooters couldn't be
trusted with weapons. You get a shooter who falls well below a qualification
score, forgets that he needs to keep his rifle pointed down range, fires a shot
into the air by accident and you tell the coach next to you, "I sure hope I
never end up living next to that guy." If "that guy" had a family that cared
about him they ought to make sure he didn't have access to any guns once he got
out of the Marine Corps.
Heck, a lot more people get killed by cars than guns, and each time my son is
in a car with me, he watches me suspiciously (even more so now that I've
entered my 80s) and threatens to take my keys away if I start showing any signs
of senility. He laughs and jokes about it, but he'd do it. I read an article
in this morning's paper about the Oregon shooter showing homicidal
inclinations. He was living with his mother and had tantrums like the ones he
had as a child. Also, he had a fascination for murderers who killed a lot of
people. If we are going to authorize the intrusion of a governmental agency
into anyone's life to take their guns away, I would much prefer you do it to
people who are inept with firearms (as my shooters of old) or people with a
fascination with homicides -- than old fashioned folk who think its okay to
protect their wives and sisters.
Lawrence
On 10/3/2015 12:56 AM, Donal McEvoy wrote:
"According to the Sydney-based Institute for Economics and Peace, the U.K.
had 933 violent crimes per 100,000 people in 2012, down from 1,255 in 2003. In
the U.S., the figure for 2010 was 399 violent crimes per 100,000 people. Still,
while the U.S. violent-crime rate is less than half Britain’s, its homicide
rate between 2003 and 2011 was almost four times as high."
It would help to have access to reliable statistics but this kind of claim
raises obvious issues as to its reliability: reliable comparisons should be
like-for-like, but nothing in the above makes clear (a) whether the US and UK
are using a comparable definition of "violent crimes" [is 'threatening
behaviour' a "violent crime" in the US?] (b) how reliable is the data gathering
process (given differences in underreporting of crimes or in the
classifications of reports of crimes) (c) how prevalence of "violent crimes"
relates to factors like population density.
These issues are particularly acute within the criminal justice system where
parties [like police and government] may have their own agendas in how they
define and assemble data.
As a rule of thumb, the figures as to "homicides" are likely to be much less
questionable than figures as to "violent crimes" generally, as homicides are
more clearly defined and less subject to underreporting and other forms of
distortion within the societies in question.
The above quotation is inadequate to ground an argument that by having a much
higher homicide rate the US avoids having such a high rate of "violent crime"
generally as that suffered by the UK - an argument that (even if it were
soundly based statistically) might be met with the (moral) argument that
suffering the lower homicide rate is better than suffering the lower rate of
"violent crime" generally.
D L
On Friday, 2 October 2015, 23:30, Lawrence Helm
<lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Here's another interesting article:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-04-24/u-k-gun-curbs-mean-more-violence-yet-fewer-deaths-than-in-u-s-
It includes the following paragraph: "According to the Sydney-based
Institute for Economics and Peace, the U.K. had 933 violent crimes per 100,000
people in 2012, down from 1,255 in 2003. In the U.S., the figure for 2010 was
399 violent crimes per 100,000 people. Still, while the U.S. violent-crime rate
is less than half Britain’s, its homicide rate between 2003 and 2011 was almost
four times as high."
There is a lot more violent crime in the UK but fewer homicides. Perhaps a
lot of bad guys that would be walking around in the UK with guns and
occasionally killing people are now walking around with knives, clubs or small
gangs and since all the innocent civilians over there (with few exceptions) are
unarmed . . . they provide a great feast of victims -- so why kill them and
draw the attention of the bobbies when you can rap them on the head with a
steel pipe and take whatever you want -- and with so much of that going on the
chance of being cot is way lower than if they murdered someone
We are still (in the US) a nation of Emersonian self-reliant people and would
rather, many (if not most) of us, defend ourselves than hire a huge expensive
bureaucracy to control us so that we don't kill to many of each other. The
idea of letting ourselves be robbed or letting someone we love be raped in
order to reduce the homicide rate wouldn't set very well with a lot of us.
And I always wonder about some of these statistics. If you shoot a bad guy
who has broken into your house with the intent to do you or a loved one bodily
harm, does that count as a violent gun-related death? Probably, but I'm not
sure.
Lawrence
On 10/2/2015 1:15 PM, Mike Geary wrote:
What a sad little country we are. What is it that supposedly we value in our
gun "rights"? Obviously not life. Are we all hoping that one day we will have
a chance at shooting the bastards, to know the relief in blowing the
sonsofbitches away? During the Vietnam war I was working (in Memphis, not
Vietnam) with a guy who would talk about joining the Army so that he could get
over there and mow those commie gooks down. He really, truly wanted to kill,
to destroy everything that he didn't understand, that he saw as hostile to his
own very small world. I quit that job and I have no idea if he ever made it to
Vietnam ( but 3 million Vietnamese were killed, so I doubt they needed his
help), but on learning of massacres like this one today in Oregon, I wonder
just how many people out there are cleaning their rifles everyday aching to mow
the bastards down. No virus found in this message.
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