Philotic Web

Acknowledging the horror of what happened and mourning for innocent lives snuffed out and families destroyed by the incomprehensible act of a madman is precisely what the country should be doing right now. If it seems as if that is a passive non-reaction, that's because too many people understand what mourning entails. After that can come a policy battle that can be fought with passion but not with emotionalism and ignorance of relevant, basic facts standing in for rational analysis and honest debate.

Nick Gillespie sums up my feelings pretty nicely:

Acknowledging the horror of what happened and mourning for innocent lives snuffed out and families destroyed by the incomprehensible act of a madman is precisely what the country should be doing right now. If it seems as if that is a passive non-reaction, that's because too many people understand what mourning entails. After that can come a policy battle that can be fought with passion but not with emotionalism and ignorance of relevant, basic facts standing in for rational analysis and honest debate.

Contrary to initial reports, the assault rifle, at close range, was the primary weapon. The children all had multiple gunshot wounds, the least three, the most eleven. First graders. Please. Tell me ending the assault weapons ban was a good, necessary thing.

And with regard to "Legally Owned" guns...no, I got that right. You read it right. ... If there are less guns available to people, there will be less gun violence.

Only 13.9 percent of prison inmates who possessed firearms purchased them legally. That's not really surprising, given the fact that 84 percent of the prison inmates who possessed firearms were ineligible to legally purchase them.

We used to have one, and we had a lot LESS of this massive gun violence. So expect that to come back.

In 1992, for instance, the violent crime rate per 100,000 residents was 758. In 2012, it was 386. Between 2000 and 2009 (the latest year for which I could easily find data) use of firearms in violent crime had decreased from a rate of 2.4 per 1,000 to 1.4 per 1,000.

In one of your links in one of the early pages, talking about how personal ownership of firearms kept other school shootings from becoming worse (The Appalachian Law School incident), the two "civilians" with guns were actually off-duty police officers.

You also talk about " Or do you not understand the implications of being able to manufacture working firearms in your bedroom?" and "Airport security doesn't actually prevent things from getting through. Even metal ones."

So...you're an anarchist? Why have rules, after all, if they can be broken? ...

A "Minarchist"?

Oh, good lord.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minarchism" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I had a room-mate once, who was an Objectivist (from the link: "Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism, supports the establishment of a minarchist state responsible for a court system, police, and military."). I had to leave. He was a soul-less (this, coming from an atheist), compassionless, self-absorbed egoist. Hopefully, your mileage may vary.

Syphon: Let's mandate that all semi-automatic weapons must be PINK, with a "Hello Kitty" logo on the stock. Purely cosmetic, you know. Let's see how many get sold.

Except that in this case (and in most of the cases in these mass shootings that capture media's attention) it wasn't a criminal. It was a law abiding citizen. Just a law abiding citizen with a personality disorder, according to the news (and it isn't strange, again, these mediatic shootings are almost always done by people who are going through a potentially dangerous mental disease).

This is exactly and precisely the kind of case that could be avoided with a gun ban. With an European-like restriction on firearms, his mother would have never been able to get a gun, living with a person with mental disease.

No, she wouldn't have been able to get a gun legally, there's a huge difference.

But if we want to talk about crime, we can consider this: the EU has a slightly higher rate of violent crime than the US. Still the intentional homicide rate is roughly 3 times lower.
Is this because of our gun restrictions?

As Syphon pointed out a few pages back, criminals are most concerned about their victims being armed, and as lots of us have pointed out, areas that institute gun control see a dramatic rise in crime. Areas that remove gun control or even make gun ownership mandatory see a dramatic drop in crime.

When there is a ban on firearms, they become much harder to obtain. Also, they become much scarcer. Scarcity increases price, which means that less criminals are going to be able to afford guns in the black market.

Are you familiar with the phrase "Bootleggers and Baptists"? It applies just as much here as it does to drug or alcohol prohibition. Take a look at the situation in Mexican with cartels. Fighting the "war on drugs" only makes the drug cartels more violent and their merchandise more profitable. Ending prohibition destroys their profits and their power.

On the other hand, a gun ban makes victims less weaponized. If all potential victims were to be armed, all criminals would "need" a gun to be able to intimidate/coerce them. But if victims are de-weaponized, the intimidation effect can be obtained without a gun, and it doesn't justify the investment required. This makes the confrontations criminal-victim less lethal in average, because the weapons used will be much lethal.

An interesting argument, but again, read back a few pages and take a look at the numbers. Chicago is a direct counterexample to this argument. So is Vermont. So is Kennesaw, GA, who haven't had a murder since they made gun ownership mandatory.

The only argument that holds water to allow guns, as i see it, is that it gives the potential victim an actual chance to not become a victim. But even this isn't really strong, in my opinion: a criminal will have a greater expertise in the use of the gun, as it's his "trade tool". His quality of life literally depends on how good he is using weapons for intimidation or damage. The only potential victims that could realistically benefit from having guns are the gun hobbyists.

That's the incentive behind laws which mandate gun ownership and training for heads of households. As a libertarian I'm opposed to gun control OR mandatory gun ownership, but I think the latter is a much more intelligent policy. People who own guns for self defense are going to be motivated to know how to use it defensively and how to shoot well.

I should go back to reading "Contract as Promise"

As passed by the Congress:

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.

As ratified by the States and authenticated by Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State:

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.

I should go back to reading "Contract as Promise"

When you're done with Fried, try out Barnett. I'm more of a contract as consent kind of guy.

Must they be owned ONLY if you are a member of a regulated militia?

And yet those who study mass shootings say they are not becoming more common.

"There is no pattern, there is no increase," says criminologist James Allen Fox of Boston's Northeastern University, who has been studying the subject since the 1980s, spurred by a rash of mass shootings in post offices.

...

Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections who has written a history of mass murders in America, said that while mass shootings rose between the 1960s and the 1990s, they actually dropped in the 2000s. And mass killings actually reached their peak in 1929, according to his data. He estimates that there were 32 in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s and 26 in the first decade of the century.

With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.

And yet those who study mass shootings say they are not becoming more common.

"There is no pattern, there is no increase," says criminologist James Allen Fox of Boston's Northeastern University, who has been studying the subject since the 1980s, spurred by a rash of mass shootings in post offices.

With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.

Two contradictory quotes. One says there is no pattern, the other says there is a pattern.

In any case, there hasn't been many changes in the last few decades on the two "guilty parties" regarding mass shootings: gun proliferation

Kids feel their community is the school, adults their workplace... consequently these places will harbor most of the shootings.

I notice you limited your statement to mass shootings, not mass killings. Is it because guns killed an average of 4.92 victims per mass killing in the US during the 20th century, just edging out knives, blunt objects and bare hands, which killed 4.52 victims per mass killing? (By comparison, fire killed 6.82 victims per mass killing and explosives killed 20.82 victims per mass killing.) Also, gun ownership has been on the decline for decades.

This is a nice bit of pop-psychology. Do you have any evidence to actually back it up? Just 28 percent of the mass killings in the US during the 20th century were in a public setting. Only 5 percent were done in the workplace.

Mass killings are typically classified as those incidents in which four or more victims were killed within a 24-hour period.

Even if it's just the members of the same household?

you can't just go to the street and kill 5 people with a knife.

Please. Tell me ending the assault weapons ban was a good, necessary thing.

Until then, have you been following the past 2-3 years of school massacres in China? Plenty of examples of more than 4 or 5 victims (children and adults alike).

And firearms are not a cause here, that's for certain. I think not even the police carries firearms... which is surprising, given the kind of government we have. Of course, people has too little respect for the police, so it would be hazardous if you gave them weapons

and about how the government will always have to put a grandfather clause in for all the guns already owned that will now be illegal.

Mao was a typical tyrant. He disarmed the Chinese people and then slaughtered them ruthlessly.