MrsDoyle
ahh, go on...
not sure of the source of this response but it seems to be in response to this article from 2013 by William Hamby
What if gun laws were like abortion laws?
Yet another US college gun slaughter - "at least 10" killed in Oregan shooting
- Thread starter TomUS
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not sure of the source of this response but it seems to be in response to this article from 2013 by William Hamby
What if gun laws were like abortion laws?
editor
hiraethified
Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
I think similar issues may have been at work in this Irish case:
'Joker' set fire to old school in revenge on 'hypocrite' staff - Independent.ie
In this case, however, the lad didn't live in a context where guns are easily available, and although he did a million euros worth of damage with his arson attack, he didn't actually hurt anyone.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
tbf that's not enough evidence that the firearms laws are the telling factor. One glance at that shows me that there is a very likely correlation between inequality and firearm deaths. States with less poverty are more likely to have both lower firearms deaths and stronger firearms laws, but the direction of causation isn't necessarily clear. For instance, I bet I could show you a negative correlation between firearms deaths and the state minimum wage.
ETA:
Another strong correlation I see there is between the ex-Confederacy states and firearms deaths. There's a huge difference Confederacy vs Union.
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8ball
Decolonise colons!
The map shows a much weaker correlation than I expected, though the cross-hatching is a very simplified representation of the specific laws in place. Overlaying with both rates of gun ownership and rates of inequality (as lbj has said) would be interesting.
Edit: and no, 8den didn't say "map"
Edit: and no, 8den didn't say "map"
mauvais
on reddit or something
It also tells you nothing about cause vs effect; do the states with gun laws have those laws as a reaction to out of control gun violence, for instance? (arguably unlikely)
Same-state rates for before & after legislative intervention, compared against the national trend in gun violence, would be interesting, and I would guess exist.
Same-state rates for before & after legislative intervention, compared against the national trend in gun violence, would be interesting, and I would guess exist.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
I just had a little look at global rates, and found this representation of gun-related deaths. (This is skewed a bit because it includes suicides. In France, it would appear that shooting yourself is a very popular method of self-topping, and most of the French figure is suicides, while in the UK it isn't. In the US, too, shooting yourself is a favoured form of suicide. In fact, in most of those places with figures hovering around 2-3 per 100,000, the majority are suicides.)
Very troubling stats for many parts of Central and South America, but given the regional variation within the US, parts of the US, in particular the southern states, are right up there with South Africa and Brazil, which have huge problems.
(some countries are missing from the stats - Russia, for instance)
What I do find staggering is that the US has about 5 per cent of the world's population, but between 30 and 50 per cent of the world's civilian-owned guns. Deaths per gun are actually reasonably low.
Very troubling stats for many parts of Central and South America, but given the regional variation within the US, parts of the US, in particular the southern states, are right up there with South Africa and Brazil, which have huge problems.
(some countries are missing from the stats - Russia, for instance)
What I do find staggering is that the US has about 5 per cent of the world's population, but between 30 and 50 per cent of the world's civilian-owned guns. Deaths per gun are actually reasonably low.
two sheds
Least noticed poster 2007
Deaths per gun owner would be more relevant I think.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
It's not just a question of laws. It's also a question of whether or not there is a functioning state that can enforce those laws. Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world. Lots of the crime is drug-gang-related. Honduras is a mess.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
yes, certainly. There are clearly people who own whole arsenals. Presumably they only shoot one at a time, although I guess they might do a John Woo and try two.
MrsDoyle
ahh, go on...
I liked this report, very emotive but from a real person common sense perspective:
An Oregon teacher’s letter to lawmakers: We don’t need your prayers, we need your courage
An Oregon teacher’s letter to lawmakers: We don’t need your prayers, we need your courage
Gun ownership is perfectly legal in Honduras.
In fact Latin Americans generally take a more sensible approach to this question than Europeans. Has anyone mentioned the Brazilian referendum yet?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Too obvious, phil.
4/10
4/10
It's obvious alright.
It's the only time in all of history that the people have actually been allowed to choose whether gun ownership should be legal. The Brazilians voted in favor of full legality by an absolutely overwhelming margin. That's because they have experience in such matters, unlike the Brits, and are thus qualified to make an objective assessment.
MrsDoyle
ahh, go on...
well yes, BUT they do have gun control laws too, the referendum was about whether to restrict COMMERCE in firearms, the buying and selling which of course would have affected their availability, but notwithstanding this vote a decade ago it is illegal to carry a firearm outside your residence and also they are not able to be sold to under 25s, even cops have to have a special firearms permit like uk armed responders...and they introduced a blanket registration scheme with a 3 year grace period to register them or have them seized as illegal if discovered...
Yes, but the point is that such restrictions are deeply unpopular.
The Brazilian people, like all people outside of the privileged enclave that is Western Europe, know that it is unwise to allow the state a monopoly of violence. They expressed that opinion decisively and unequivocally. No other population has ever been asked for their opinion, because their rulers know only too well how they would respond.
MrsDoyle
ahh, go on...
well, the fact that police inefficiency and corruption meant that it was politic to be able to defend homes and the fact that brazil's economy depended heavily on their manufacture and sale as a major gun producing nation..oh, and significant lobbying by the NRA...yes that NRA...might have swayed that vote a bit too
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Ah context, the enemy of dwyer...
That referendum came a couple of years after the introduction of gun control laws, sparked by a terrifying rise in gun crime, mostly associated with the drugs trade. Yes, it was defeated 2:1, but the referendum was a call for a blanket ban on gun-ownership, and Brazil in 2003 had already enacted gun control laws that fell short of an outright ban, and guess what, gun deaths fell by 3,000 the following year. It's since got much worse again - in part due to gun control legislation proving ineffective in its implementation, which has various reasons, and in part of course due to the ongoing human tragedy that is the drug trade in the Americas.
Gun control is back on the agenda in Brazil, and of course as in the US, the majority of the victims of gun crime are young, black and poor. One question would have to be 'how much does the majority give a shit about this minority?' Another, how much of an effect did the enormous funding for the 'no' campaign from the US NRA sway the result of the referendum, which had been looking to be going the other way until soon before the vote? Guns are big business in Brazil, and the gun lobby is powerful. Article from the time
Is gun control the full answer? Clearly not. How effective would it be in Brazil without also addressing the drug trade? Hard to say - quite probably not very. Same questions can be asked about the US. As ever, sort out drugs has to be the main cry. Provide social justice. At the same time, those guns all come from somewhere.
Context and nuance, phil.
A bit, but not enough to provide a two-thirds majority. And I bet any population in the world (Western Europe always excepted) would vote the same way.
MrsDoyle
ahh, go on...
much more eruditely expressed by LBJ ^^
The most dangerous enemy of the Brazilian people is the Brazilian state. I've seen police helicopters firing indiscriminately into favelas. Why would anyone vote to deprive themselves of the means of resisting such tyranny? They wouldn't, would they? And they didn't.
Western Europeans feel differently about this because their states haven't used violence against their populations in the recent past. But even there, the state's motives for disarming the people has always been fear of revolution. See Britain in 1918, France in 1945 etc.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
The forced buybacks in the UK weren't really massive - not in comparison to the size that any US buyback would be. The UK one encompassed about 1 point 2 million handguns and shotguns (semi-auto and pump-action with a capacity of more than three rounds). So, less than half of a percent of the size of a possible US buyback.
There's also an added problem regarding a US buyback: The tensions between federal and state gun laws.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
To an extent I accept your point about the state. Especially somewhere like Brazil with living memory of military rule, yes, of course, many see the police in a very different light, in more the light that many on here see them in fact - as a danger to our freedom, not protectors of it. Disarm the police as well! (Yes, I know, that wouldn't happen.) And the corruption of the state was a theme of the no campaign.
However, what evidence do you have that this is why people voted as they did? Looking at the breakdown of the vote by state, there was a majority no in every state - you're right that it was decisive - but the vote was narrowest in urban areas and widest in remote states with large rural populations. In the remote states, at least, this will not have been a vote to stay protected from state violence. It will have been a vote to keep arms to protect you from bandits in the almost complete absence of state protection.
I can't find stats - if indeed they exist - showing how those living in the favelas voted. Despite this being a compulsory vote, turnout was just under 80 per cent. This article discusses the campaign. The 'yes' campaign was led by the group that had managed to get gun control on the agenda in the first place, and these people were operating specifically in the favelas, where your likelihood to be killed by a gun is a scary 240 in 100,000 per year. They lost, from a position in which most people thought they'd win.
yes campaigners were mostly people who wanted to disarm the citizenry in a search for peace. The no campaign was a pretty unholy alliance of right-wing former supporters of dictatorship:
[note, idade penal is the legal age of criminal responsibility, btw - these fuckers want to be able to imprison children]
And again from that article, this was the thrust of the yes campaigners' message:
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ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Most of your replies on this thread haven't incorporated a decent argument, just name-calling and appeals to "common sense" every bit as vapid as the Glen Beck et am tropes you're accusing Athos of.
Raise your game, ffs.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
IIRC some states are looking at "personalised solutions", but haven't so far got further than exploring the tech implications - i.e. they haven't even started looking at state-level legal implications.
A long hard road, I suspect.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Or the fact that many German Jewish males over the age of 35 were military veterans.
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