Acknowledged already: You dismiss something as impossible to quantify (which is, in any event, quite possible to quantify), and then throw out a random un-quantified statement like "plenty of shooters have been stopped..."? Uh. Okay. Specifically, I think points #5 & 6 are important on that list. There is a lot of argument that guns are critical for personal protection, but the studies indicate that a gun is statistically far more likely to cause harm than good. Note that I am perfectly aware these are statistics and that individuals can safely own or carry a gun. This is a problem that the serious gun advocates rarely acknowledge or want to deal with.
Wasn't even worth posting, the author either addressed obvious fallacies or poorly interpreted data to back up his own views. If it was impossible to quantify and I threw out a quantified statement wouldn't that be contradicting what I just said? Sorry, there isn't a national database that keeps tracks of gun crime stopped by armed civilians, there are sources that back up what I say out there but I don't find any of them non-biased enough to post, but it happens every day in the US, you just won't hear about it unless you look for it. No, they aren't really because there are multiple variables at play that have much more to do with your chances of being a victim of a gun crime, or any crime for that matter than simply whether or not you own a gun. It's common sense that the more guns you are around the more likely you are to be involved in an accident involving one, but human error is the sole cause for almost every single accidental shooting, I just don't view human incompetence as a valid reason regulate guns, it's a good reason to force education and training on gun owners though. As far as the suicide thing goes, the problem is people with mental problems and no access to treatment but ready access to weapons kill themselves. That's why when Australia implemented extremely strict gun control recently the overall suicide rate and the amount of attempts didn't go down, people just used other means to off themselves. Unless you keep people in padded cells they will find a way to commit suicide, but that isn't really addressing the problem.
And if said incompetence is inherent in humans, and therefore intractable to training? Yes but remarkably less successfully.
This... I just... I don't...even... In the interest of continuing productive discourse, I'm not going to pursue this line of thought since I wholeheartedly disagree with both your assessment of the statistics and feelings on the subject. It's been well documented in a number of studies and corroborated in meta-studies that suicide rates are elevated specifically in households that contain guns, even adjusting for poverty/urbanization/employment/etc. It's a fallacy to believe that all suicide victims have a deep, continuous urge to kill themselves and will do so by any means necessary. A number of psychiatric studies have indicated suicides are often a momentary urge that will pass if there isn't access to a gun. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-ownership-and-use/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firea ... p-and-use/</a> Israel also determine that soldiers taking their guns home was a higher risk for suicide: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/14/mythbusting-israel-and-switzerland-are-not-gun-toting-utopias/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/won ... g-utopias/</a> This is documented and studied all over the place, the insistence that "people will commit suicide by any means available" is widely refuted. Another peer-reviewed source: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp0805923#t=article" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NE ... #t=article</a> In any event, your claims about Australia are under some doubt, with studies finding that it did, in fact, decrease suicide rates, and a simple Google search yields a whole lot of peer-reviewed data indicating that. As a matter of fact, I'm having a very difficult time finding sources that agree with your assertion.
I posted one a while back: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ssaa.org.au/capital-news/2008/2008-09-04_melbourne-uni-paper-Aust-gun-buyback.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.ssaa.org.au/capital-news/200 ... uyback.pdf</a> Yes, its hosted on a sporting shooter website. The study was not commissioned by them however, it just supports their views. Im fairly skeptical about the other studies ive seen, all the ones ive seen are either commissioned by the anti-gun lobby or well know anti-gun lobbyists have participated in them, the one most often cited is by Andrew Leigh and Christine Neill (Andrew Leigh is a federal member of parliament and is a well known anti-gun lobbyist). The one i link above is the only one that has: a) studied a long period of time (not just the immediate years before and after) b) been done independently of any pro or anti gun lobby influence Some more info on the various studies and their conflicting results can be found here: <a class="postlink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Australia#Contention_over_effects_of_the_laws" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politi ... f_the_laws</a>
I'm not being facetious, this is a legit question, have you seen any studies similar for other countries like Japan and China? Both countries have banned arms but have very high suicide rates, significantly higher than the US.
A statistic in isolation doesn't help, though. A high suicide rate doesn't correlate with anything. Where can we show that gun ownership helped or hindered the suicide rate? Guns have been highly restricted in Japan and China basically forever. Who's to say that legalizing firearm ownership wouldn't cause that rate to double? I'm not saying it would - it's a completely different culture - but there's nothing to draw from, "guns are outlawed there and people commit suicide." archer, thanks for the link. I'll take a look at it when I have some time later today.
http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/86/9/0042-9686_86_07-043489-table-T1.html This is interesting. Suicide by hanging is the most popular method globally, and by a wide margin. Only 3 countries included in the WHO study showed a higher suicide rate by firearms than by hanging: Colombia, Switzerland and the US. But in the US, it was a ratio of 3:1.
Switzerland's an oft-discussed case in anti-firearm legislation because virtually all the adult male population is packing an assault rifle. And I don't mean what sensationalist media claims is an assault rifle, I mean, a full-auto, designed-for-battle, assault rifle. This one: Spoiler As part of their militia training Swiss adults over the age of 18 are expected to have their guns at home and to take them to the range and practise with them assiduously. Once the militia reserve period's over, you can keep your rifle (although I think an armourer converts it to semi-auto only). However, changing policy means that they are not issued with ammunition (which is kept at local dumps). That being said, if you were bent on doing some damage, given the porous nature of European borders I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult for you to drive back to Switzerland with a couple hundred rounds of .223. Switzerland's interesting because although everyone's carrying an AR, gun crime is virtually non-existent. Besides a convenient way to commit suicide, it's unheard-of (besides a single, solitary mass-shooting incident in 2008) for a Switzer to use his issued weapon for that purpose. http://world.time.com/2012/12/20/the-swiss-difference-a-gun-culture-that-works/
Switzerland has a pretty interesting gun culture. Mandatory military service goes a fair way towards this, but it's clearly a fundamental difference in the culture as well, since military service in the US doesn't breed responsibility into all of its participants. It's a point that's often brought up in these discussions but I have a hard time bridging the gap between their culture and ours. How, exactly, do you enact a massive, widespread culture shift that encompasses the mentality of gun ownership (which, by its very nature, is largely driven by the culture of the country) and strict training on their use? Does the US suddenly enact compulsory military service? Their non-gun-related crime rates are ridiculously low as well, and it's not like everyone walks around with these rifles all the time, so you can't just point to an armed populace as the reason.
Depending on the argument it's either that or insanely strict bullet control!?!?!?!?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I completely agree. One of the things that's interesting to me is that there is a political correlation between the most passionate gun advocates and those that think social safety nets are nothing but socialism and enablement for lazy people to stay lazy...
So has this discussion come full-circle yet? We are a society that has/had high school rifle teams and boy scout marksmanship merit badges. Now we have high school shootings and elementary school mass killings. Can everyone agree now that we are in the midst of decades-long societal decay and that is more likely the root cause than firearms? For those who may question what I mean by decay: Portrayal of violence, breakdown of family structure, decreased standards of living, lack of education/awareness, accessibility to healthcare, apathy, arbitrary political deviciveness etc. etc. etc. Perhaps it would be more useful to us to look at this than to focus on firearms.
Y'all know that only 29% of Swiss households contain a firearm, right? Compared to 43% of American households? And that in terms of guns per capita, it's also about half the rate of the US? You guys are talking as if there are twice as many guns there. While things like apathy and arbitrary political divisiveness are a bit hard to measure, the other items in the post above me just aren't really true. While there is generally tiering in these measures (the rich get richer, the poor less so), the average American is wealthier, more educated, and healthier than he has ever been before. Fewer families are getting divorced that 30 years ago, and that was always a crappy measure (since all it really measured was gendered coercion and entrapment in bad marriages). The idea of spiraling societal decline, at least as you've defined it, doesn't especially make sense. If you're going to make this argument, a better version would be that we have created a society that is more tolerant of and more frequently promotes isolation and decreased communal ethos. This doesn't create monsters, per se, but it may lead to exacerbating worrying traits that people already have. Examples of stats below: Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler Spoiler
Regarding "societal decline", that's generally only claimed when someone believes (consciously or not) that the world of Beaver Cleaver reflected reality back in the day. For my money, the decline of that kind of rigidity is making the world easier to live in. As far as crime, it's been declining for years now and there is a compelling theory that it's a direct result of decreased lead exposure in children after the USG passed environmental controls in the 1970s and 1980s. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.nber.org/digest/may08/w13097.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.nber.org/digest/may08/w13097.html</a>
Interesting choices in charts, I won't sit here and refute them one by one. I will merely point a few things out: Divorce: From wikipedia: Household Income: $17,000 in 1960 dollars is equivalent to how much in 2013 dollars? What is the make-up of the family budget in 1960 as opposed to 2013? Standards of Living: From Wikipedia: EDIT: I would also agree with what you point out as a startling change in the American Ethos.
Yes, the graphs were generally chosen for convenience/time rather than perfect fit. But generally, in inflation adjusted dollars (which is what Real GDP measurements use), GDP growth has easily outpaced cost measures like CPI. The growth in GDP is actual output growth, not merely notional dollar change. We are actually richer than we were in a real sense, although the distribution of this richness has been highly unequal. As for poverty, it's a relative measure defined in proportion to the "standard" expenditures. The average person living in poverty today is probably in much better material condition than the person in poverty in 1960, and certainly better than 1920. Also, those rates are rising from relatively low levels historically, and one must remember that our poor today exist with a different level of government support than the poor of yesteryear. The recent spike is partially attributable to the recession of 2007 - 20??; in general, poverty has been fairly stable since 1980 or so. Real GDP: Spoiler CPI: Spoiler Poverty: Spoiler All things considered, the post-war period in the United States has been a relatively good time for the average person economically. Additionally, divorce stats are typically tricky business, for both methodological and philosophical reasons. They're often lacking good data and are poorly measured, since people sometimes report numbers like # of divorces / # of marriages. Philosophically, they're tricky because there are all sorts of good reason for people to get divorced. Traditionally, people avoided divorce due to social shame, religious bans, and gender inequality in legal rights and economic circumstance. Everyone can probably agree that divorce spikes fueled by those things are not, on their face, terrible things. So it's unclear what level of divorce is the social optimum. Especially since positing the two options as Happy Nuclear Family vs Divorce is probably wrong; generally, the people who get divorced are people who were unhappy in their marriage. But all these points aside, what you'll see with divorce stats is that there was a big spike in the 1960s and 1970s, with decline thereafter. This is consistent with the idea that social changes in these eras vastly changed how people viewed relationships, but also suggests that relative to then, we aren't seeing much further breakdown in marriages.