One of the topics I am most determined about is gun-control laws. I am very much in support of ending gun related violence. I am very in support of ending violence. I am very much in support of ending accidental deaths. And I am extremely supportive of gun-rights. We should definitely have the right to keep an bear arms as citizens of the United States, and really... every "free country" should be the same.
I just wanted to make clear my position. Because I think I'm one of the most reasonable gun supporters you're going to find. I wholeheartedly support the use of background checks. We have laws (already) that make it illegal for anyone who has been convicted of a felony crime to own a firearm. It is also already illegal for someone with a diagnosed mental illness that affects judgement to own a firearm. So the laws are already there to make it illegal for those people to purchase a firearm, and I acknowledge that a seller of firearms would have to do a background check to accomplish the important feat of not selling a gun to a person that shouldn't be anywhere near any kind of weapon. Hooray... common sense.
A friend sent me a link to this article and asked for my thoughts on it. Unfortunately, it's going to take a lot, so if this topic interests you, strap in for a lot of reading. You have my apologies if you are interested in the topic, but not in reading. Here's the link...
http://www.vox.com/2015/8/24/9183525/gun-violence-statistics
The article seems pretty well put together, and it does raise some good points here and there, but right in the first paragraph is a problem that makes me question the rest of it. I guess I'll quote the whole paragraph so I can't be accused of taking the part I'm focusing on out of context. I'll bold and italicize the important part...
America is an exceptional country when it comes to guns. It's one of the few countries in which the right to bear arms is constitutionally protected, and presidential candidates in other nations don't cook bacon with guns. But America's relationship with guns is unique in another crucial way: Among developed nations, the US is far and away the most violent — in large part due to the easy access many Americans have to firearms. These charts and maps show what that violence looks like compared with the rest of the world, why it happens, and why it's such a tough problem to fix.I take offense at that assertion. A great of offense. I have fairly easy access to firearms because I'm not a criminal and I'm not crazy in any way that makes me more likely to hurt anyone. And I've never hurt anyone with a gun. I've never hurt anyone with a knife, a bomb, a frying pan, a baseball bat, my fists or feet, a bow and arrow, or a big stick. Short of someone trying to kill me or an innocent person in my vicinity, I wouldn't hurt anyone ever. To suggest that I am going to be violent with firearms because I have easy access is horribly offensive. The author assumes that anyone who obtains a gun is going to attack someone with it is just nonsense. And I'm really curious to know what source of information this person is using that suggests that "many Americans" fall into the violent category. The research I've done suggests that the vast majority of legal gun owners have never shot at anyone unjustly. Instead of me linking another article (most likely the CDC findings), I'll let you look for yourself. See if you think "many Americans" are irresponsible violent people.
So now I have to address each chunk of the article. This is even going to get long for me, and I'm told I'm verbose all the time.
Chart 1
The tagline for chart number one is "America has six times as many firearm homicides as Canada, and 15 times as many as Germany". It goes on to explain that the research shows that there are more gun related homicides because there are more guns. Ugh. What a surprise. What I'm curious about though is how many murders there are per-capita regardless of the weapon used. And on the other side of the coin, check out murder rates in cities with strict gun control compared to places with less strict gun control. You will find that places like Chicago, NYC, Washington DC, and cities like them all have much higher murder rates than other places in the country. From my research, our murder rate is comparable or even better if you exclude those places that are doing it wrong. Again... I'm going to tell you to do the research yourself. But here's the simple logic for why that happens (you decide if you agree): If you were a criminal with a mind to start robbing houses, carrying a gun with you in case you run into anyone awake, where would you choose to start doing so? Would you do that in a city where you're pretty sure 1 in 3 (or more) of the houses will have a person that has a firearm, or in a city where citizens are basically legally badgered into not owning any firearms? An insane person won't care I guess... but I'm thinking that that's were all the stories of people successfully defending their home come from. You can find plenty of those online too.Summary: Chart 1 is basically meaningless. It entirely ignores important factors; ignores regional differences; and ignores homicide rates in general which are pertinent for understanding the underlying problem which is violence.
Chart 2
This chart is frustrating because its entire purpose is to elicit an emotional response. It doesn't convey useful information. And it is conveying estimated information without mentioning that it is estimated. Oh, and what counts as a civilian? In the middle east, my understanding is that there are guns everywhere, and that there is a lot more shooting going on there than here, despite a lower population. Maybe I'm wrong about that. And you might suggest that it's a war-zone and doesn't count... but you're wrong if that's what you think. Those places are where those people live. People there still go grocery shopping, raise children, and so on. It may be a war-zone, but why the hell wouldn't it count? Their society is in much worse shape than ours, and I'd blame religion before I'd blame the number of guns.Alright... I'm off track. The chart says that we Americans own way more guns than anyone else in the world. Aside from the huge problems with tracking that information, if we do in fact own more guns... it's because we the people are free (at least mostly... the CEO's and owners of our big corporations are taking away our freedom with their money... but that's another essay entirely). If we ask our government to stop us from owning guns, we're doing something colossally stupid. As I mentioned in my introduction: most of us who own guns are not murderers. We don't abuse the right to own guns. We are simply willing to take on the responsibility. Pointing out that there are a lot of us that own guns doesn't have any bearing on this conversation.
Chart 3
This chart is actually a map of the United States with marks for the locations of mass shootings since Sandyhook. Now let me remind you that I very much want this kind of violence to stop. I want people to treat each other well, and have a respect for life. Anger is not an acceptable reason to hurt anyone no matter how angry anyone makes you. There might be other reasons that make you angry in parallel, but anger itself is a terrible motivation for violence. And that's really the key. Sandyhook happened because a person was angry and despite several events prior to that awful day where family and medical professionals should have helped more, no one did anything to help this kid. He was the perfect example of our health system going wrong. And he is exactly why we need to stop making it an insult when people have mental illness. Especially if they have the self awareness to ask for help. It's infuriating to me that 20 kids and 6 adults died because people who could have helped the shooter before he was a shooter were lazy or complacent. The anti-gun crowd picked up the event as a banner to campaign for stricter gun control, but stricter gun control would not have addressed the issue, and would not have removed every means possible of killing large numbers of people from the shooter's grasp. Getting rid of the stigma around mental health issues; making help more readily available; and then applauding people who realize they have a problem and who ask for help is the direction I'd love to see us go. I understand what I'm suggesting won't protect people already in the line of fire, but neither will more laws, and neither will more police presence. What I'm suggesting though does do something that nothing else does: if it does stop a shooting, it has done so without the need to imprison someone, and without the potential for shooting them to stop them.I think I may have hurried through that paragraph, so I apologize if it seems disjointed, but the point of it is that pointing out there are lots of people shooting several other people at a time is not a sign that there are too many guns, but that we as a society are broken. Our society has enough pressures and stresses to break some of our members. We need to fix the problem where people are left to fall apart. We need to make it so that people who aren't "tough enough" to deal with life aren't looked down upon, but are offered help. When you see the stressed out person in the office, talk to them and see if you can help. Maybe all they needed was someone to talk to. Maybe there's a problem in the office that needs to be addressed. Or when someone in your family or group of friends seems stressed... talk to them too. Don't just sit back and say "wow I guess they just can't handle real life". We're a community... we are people who need each other to live. We depend on each other for a great many things, and it's sad to me that when we see one of our fellow people having a hard time, we scoff at it instead of helping. I'm not saying I've done better... I've walked past homeless people asking for money and ignored them. I was told many are just people in costume making good money. ugh... our society is broken.
Summary: Showing a map of mass shootings doesn't support the argument for stricter gun control. All the laws needed are already in place. The only thing we might do in legal contexts would be to fund police better so they have a better chance of enforcing the laws already existing. Mass shootings do not support a push for more gun control laws. What it supports is a push for better mental health help availability.
Chart 4
And we're still on mass shootings. I'm not re-hashing that. The problem is not the availability of tool that makes killing easier Cars and swimming pools would fall into that category too. The problem is that people are willing to hurt and kill other people unjustly. Please start thinking along those lines so we can move forward with means of dealing with the problem instead of fruitless legal flailing.Oh... there's text after the chart. Good... we needed more text.
The text talks about how gun-rights supporters (like me) suggest that discussing gun-control is not appropriate after a shooting, and then with the frequency of shootings asks when a good time to talk about it is. First I'd like to say I've never argued that we shouldn't discuss gun-control. But I will suggest that I think that anti-gun folks seems to get emotionally charged after a shooting, which leads them to make emotional arguments instead of logical ones. If they were making logical arguments, they wouldn't calling for stricter gun-control laws... they'd be calling for our health care to better help people with mental illness; calling for society to stop effectively bullying people who instead need help; and calling for some more of our tax money to go to our law enforcement offices so that they can enforce the already existing gun control laws.
So again, we have a part of this article that fills space, evokes an emotional response, and doesn't actually support stricter gun-control laws.
Chart 5
I'm just shocked. This is such awful crap that I'm not sure where to begin, and I'm starting to react emotionally because I'm angry about how misleading this segment is. Give me a moment....
Okay.
Even their own linked sources and the quick search I did on my own suggest that the vast majority of those gun related deaths are suicides. The top five states for gun related deaths, are not even on the list of the states that include the top 15 cities for suicide rates. This suggests to me that suicide is going to happen regardless of the available methods, and the fact that some of the states with high gun counts also have gun related suicides more than others just seems like an obvious conclusion.
In order to better address this one, I am reading the other link to this mother jones site trying to debunk "pro-gun myths". And it's making me angry again. I'm trying to calm down enough to keep going. I'll link it here so you can look at it if you want. I'm not going to address that whole article here too. I'll just say that the article makes assumptions about the stance that pro-gun people take that I don't agree with (and being a pro-gun person, I'm disappointed that the article doesn't even start from a solid foundation). And then some of the arguments the author makes are based on statistics that they seem to be making up. No citations for some of their "facts", and the citations they make in other places are not what they claim to be. CDC research which is one of my main sources of information disagrees with what they're saying in the article despite them claiming it is their source. I'm very angry that this article I'm linking makes itself out to be reasonable and supported by fact when it seems to be false in too many places to be useful. And I'm name-calling. I'm sorry. I'm going to have to leave you to read it and fact check it yourself. Don't just rely on my words here. Check for yourself.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/pro-gun-myths-fact-check
Chart 6
They are re-iterating the same piece of information they started with in the main article. A place with more guns has more homicides with guns. What they're ignoring again is the total homicide rates, and the potential that the presence of guns in the hands of police and law abiding citizens might actually be making that homicide rate lower than what it would be if we had stricter gun control. It's frustrating to me that anti-gun folks ignore the fact that stricter gun control has zero effect on the gun ownership rates among criminals. Do you really think the street gang in California is going to have fewer guns if we make the laws stricter? Do you really think that the police are going to be better able to enforce the laws if we just make them stricter?Showing a chart that says that our gun-related homicide rate is far higher than in other places that don't have as many guns does not support stricter gun control. It is again only an argument for improving our society. Improving business to provide more and better jobs is a good start. Making good education more readily available is a good choice too. Being nicer to each other is a great choice. Fixing the problem of concentration-of-wealth is a tremendously difficult step, but one that I think will achieve so much more for diminishing violence than gun-control laws that I'm thinking it might be a conspiracy of the uber-rich to keep us normal folks from agreeing with each other to protect their ridiculous wealth. Sorry... I'm diverging from the topic again.
The chart shows we have lots more gun deaths than other places, but doesn't take into account regions, regional issues (like gang crime), other killing implements, and probably a large number of factors that are highly important to determining why murder rates are high like job stress, relationship stress, financial stress, and so on. The United States is one of the worst countries in the world for job stress if I'm not mistaken. We're expected to work more hours with fewer vacations than any of those countries at the low end of the list. Is that not a factor?
I'll actually link a couple sources for this one since I'm making a claim and I want to support it... and the research is really hard to find.
http://cheezburger.com/80901 (yup... cheezburger, but they cite their sources, and I can't find anything that makes me think the information they provide is false, though my later wiki link suggests some of the numbers are a little off.)
The above article shows us basically (if you line up mentioned countries with countries with low murder rates) that more vacation seems to correlate with lower murder rates. Yes... it's a stretch. I'd need to do a lot of research before I could reliably claim there is definitely a causal relationship. But what do you think? Again... you need to decide. Is a high murder rate the result of having a tool that makes it easier, or the result of something else which could for example be something like too much societal pressure?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statutory_minimum_employment_leave_by_country (check out the United States...)
The United States is ridiculous here.
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/99-101/
Here's an article about Job Stress in the United States. It doesn't compare to other countries, I suspect because we don't have data for other countries. So I'm linking it here simply to show that the CDC has a page for it. It's enough of a problem that the CDC has a page for it, and gives advice on how to deal with it. It does show job stress survey results, and those are worrisome... we do seem to be pretty stressed. But this is venturing into opinion. I'm trying to give you things to consider that might be important when you're thinking about homicide rates. To suggest that the only factor (or even an important factor) in homicide rates that are gun-related is simply how many guns there are is irresponsible and unscientific.
Chart 6 summary: another pointless chart as there are too many factors left out for the information shown to mean anything useful for the sake of a gun-control argument. Yup... the United States has lots of guns in it. And yup we have a lot of gang violence that is more likely the result of societal problems than the presence of guns.
Chart 7
Another misleading chart. The chart in the article doesn't mention something extremely important that the original article mentions: The map includes gun deaths from suicide, self-defense, and accidental shootings. So it stands to reason that a state with more guns in it is going to have more gun related incidents. And don't forget that according the main articles own linked sources, suicides using guns are the most prevalent gun-deaths. Again: of course the states with more guns are going to have more suicides using a gun. A suicide is a tragic thing that I hope we can find a way to stop... but taking away the tools is not the answer. States with fewer guns lead the list in highest suicide rate, so it's not simply the availability of guns that pushes that number up.Another really important thing to consider is that crimes rates aren't mentioned, and the map doesn't show detail on the city level. It's also really hard to see DC on that map but it better be red.
This is kind of awesome. In my effort to find information about crime rates at the city level I noticed something. I was looking to support my longstanding belief that places with the strictest gun-control have the highest crime rates. But in doing my research, I'm finding that gun-control laws seem to have zero to do with it. So I'm still going to crush this map provided by the main article, but I'm doing it in a different way, and I got to learn something... which is awesome. I love learning.
So here's a website that I find to be excellent. I'd like to spend more time with it, but with high level checking, it seems to hold up.
http://www.city-data.com/crime/
What I originally set out to do was show that cities with strict gun control have higher crime rates than cities with less gun control. I started out by comparing Chicago, IL (strict gun-control) with a small city in New Hampshire: Manchester (correct amounts of gun control). Obviously, the small city had less crime than Chicago, so I figured it was an unfair comparison. I chose Houston, TX for my next city to compare... and I was surprised to see just as high a crime rate as Chicago. The same. At first I didn't know how to reconcile that.
But I was falling prey to what I'm blaming the main article for... I was assuming certain factors were the primary factors. I compared a couple more, and found that the crime rates seem to have far more to do with whether you're looking at a big city or a more rural place. I'm beginning to think gun-control laws have nothing to do with crime rates. I'll need to read more and do more comparisons with more sources... but my current hypothesis is that crime rates have much more to do with population density than gun-control laws.
In any case, the map shown in the main article is misleading as it fails to take into account many factors, and the conclusions in the main article are poorly drawn.
Chart 8
Holy crap this is getting long. I'm sorry. How many charts are there? Seventeen? ugh.So Chart 8 is actually kind of nice. Shows that homicide rates with firearms have been declining for years. That's good. It goes on to say that most experts say the reason for the decline is related to mass incarceration, better policing, and reduced lead exposure from gasoline. Okay. I don't have a problem with that yet. I won't dig too deep on those, but they aren't supporting their claims here just to be clear. It's when they make a statement about how "more guns might have increased the crime rate instead of reducing it". I paraphrased, but I did so accurately. The chart/segment of the main article doesn't really contribute anything again. It's a chart about the decline of homicide rates with firearms, and a bit about some argument over why it's going down. And then at the end the author throws in that it is not because more guns are around... maybe. What a useless piece of information for the article.
I just went back and re-read the introduction, and I will give a little credit here. The article is not openly against guns in its premise. It just says it's an article about the state of gun violence in the United States. The article does seem to have a tilt toward being anti-gun, but I suppose sharing that firearm homicide rates are dropping for an unknown reason instead of being useful as a support of gun-rights or gun-control laws is helpful. It just removes one more piece of information from the discussion. Hooray.
Chart 9
Wow... a chart that states again what has been mentioned before: most deaths involving firearms are suicides. Okay. As I pointed out before too though... the suicide rate is in places that don't match up with the list of places with the highest suicide rates where a gun is used. And this is where the Chart 9 segment turns stupid. It asserts that the fact that most of the deaths involving firearms are suicides is "actually one of the most compelling reasons for reducing access to guns...". The stupidity is palpable. They flat out say that research shows that greater access to guns means a greater risk of committing suicide. The research they reference is around what happened after a buyback program in Australia... and pointing out that suicide rates dropped. GAH! Look up the definition of Correlation! Did these researchers interview a large number of people that came forward and said "I was going to kill myself, but because I couldn't get a gun, I didn't"? Did anyone look for other possible factors? Does anyone understand the idea of reducing variables? I kind of hate these people for passing off their shoddy research and conclusions as reliable information. Oh... and I'd like to note that this linked to source about the correlation between increased gun-control laws and decreased suicides is on the same site as the main article I'm responding to. They're referencing themselves as the source. I supposed if the source article has good citation... it's okay... but the problem is that the main article draws conclusions from conclusions their source article draws. They're stepping away from simple facts and going toward editorializing.I completely support finding ways to reduce suicide rates. I want people to not give up hope. But taking away one tool, that isn't even the most widely used tool, isn't the solution, and it might not even help since we can't draw a conclusion from the poorly put together article given.
Chart 10
ugh... that's just false, or at least is contested. They state that "More guns, more suicides", which is the part I take exception to. I found other sources that counter this. What this says to me is that someone is wrong, and that it's possible no one is correct. Suggesting again that owning a gun makes a person more likely to kill themselves than if they didn't own a gun is not only bizarre, but it is not supported by all sources (or even most sources that I found), and is even countered by most of the sources I found. This is another spot where you should find your own information and think it through on your own. I personally think it's stupid to associate owning a gun with a higher probability the owner will want to kill themselves.I just had an idea. Maybe the statistic is coming about because people who don't own guns have a harder time using a gun to kill themselves. So saying that a gun owner is more likely to kill themselves is just a function of the fact that people who don't have guns don't kill themselves with guns.
This chart/segment is stupid.
Chart 11
Ugh... why... why are they harping on this? They are arguing using cherry-picked data and "maybe"-arguments. And also suggesting that the government is responsible for saving us from ourselves using the method of reducing our freedom instead of offering real help. There is so much wrong with this. If we continue this method of thinking, the government should never let us have access to cars, swimming pools, bridges over highways, skyscrapers, cliffs, knives, medicine/drugs, and so on. Anything that's dangerous is something we should be protected from. My head hurts thinking about how stupid this segment in the article is. If a person commits suicide, no matter the method, it is likely the result of a lot of steps along the way that could have included friends/family/associates who didn't notice the person was depressed, or didn't think it was serious. To me, again, this is a matter of people paying attention to each other and showing some kindness. This is not something the government is responsible for fixing via limiting our freedom, or really any means. Come to your own conclusions again.Chart 12
Oh holy crap. Just stop. Another mention of how awesome the Australian buy-back program was at stopping suicides. The lack of proof is astounding and frustrating.Chart 13
The article is making it very hard for me to stay objective. But at least it moved away from suicide. It instead talks about how many people police have shot and killed. And I'm trying to figure out what they mean to accomplish by pointing it out. It's part of a police officer's job to decide when deadly force is necessary. Yup... there are examples of terrible cops, but we need to figure out that they're terrible and fire them before they kill someone unjustly. The police are supposed to be able to deal with crime... and no matter how much anti-people wish it was possible, using laws to get rid of guns will never ever stop criminals from having guns and shooting at police officers. Was the main article suggesting we should not allow our police to carry guns? Or was this another pointless section? I don't know... I'm just... I'm having a hard time continuing to read the main article.Chart 14
okay... calm... I can be calm. The segment says that states with higher gun ownership rates have three times the law enforcement officer death rates while on the job as a result of gunshot wounds. The source information says it accounts for other factors known to affect homicide rates, but never specifies which ones, or how they're accounted for. They use statistical analysis terms to explain that they did everything right, but don't actually give you the information you'd need to decide whether they're trustworthy or not. And again, they completely ignore whether or not there is a causal relationship or if it's just a correlation. I don't have counter information in this case. I haven't done research here in this context. I'm getting tired, so I'll just say this: finding statistics that support your claim is not difficult. I would very much like for better sourcing and scientific rigor. Oh wait... I'd also like to know if this segment is suggesting that more gun control would actually have an effect on whether the type of people who would shoot at police will have access to guns.Chart 15
Woo HOO!!! A segment I can cheer for. A little oasis in the pile of crap. This segment says that support for gun-rights is increasing over time. Good. I'm glad people are going in the right direction on this one. But the author of the article had to throw in a snipe. The author says that this trend is happening despite more coverage of mass shootings like Columbine and Sandyhook. I believe the author is implying that it is bizarre that support for gun rights would go in that direction when one considers the awfulness of the mass shootings. To author I'll just say: gun rights and gun ownership are not the problem. Sick people that fail at dealing with life are the problem. We should focus on helping people deal with the world and living in it.Chart 16
Um... again... good. The fact that gun-rights support doesn't go down after the shootings tells me that people understand that gun-rights aren't the problem.Chart 17
This last one needs a lot of addressing. The general thrust is that people support specific gun control proposals. Unfortunately, this tells me again how little the author and the people who hold those views actually know. I'll pick out a few from the chart...Background Checks for private and gun show sales: There's huge support for this, but there's a huge problem. How do you enforce this? It's literally impossible. The best motivation for running a background check is ALREADY there. It's illegal to sell to someone who is not legally allowed to own a firearm. If a seller doesn't do a background check, they're just being stupid, or they don't care... in which case, make a law making those checks mandatory is pointless. I'd support it... but it's not helpful.
Preventing people with mental illness from purchasing guns: There's huge support for this too. And that's great... because it's already illegal for people with diagnosed mental illness to own firearms. People supporting this proposal have somehow missed that it's already law.
Federal Database to track gun sales: Wow... uh... this is a terrible idea. It has lots of support for some reason, but hypothetically... if the federal government is tracking sales, they have a list of all the people who own guns. If something went completely wrong with the government (I more than it already is broken) and they sent police to confiscate guns... that list would be horrid. If we ever end up against our own government again somehow, one of the very few advantages we have is secrecy. And beyond that, our government isn't in place to monitor us in that way. Do we live in a police state? Are we supposed to be controlled by the government or is the government there to serve us? I personally don't want the government tracking us like that.
Ban on semi-automatic weapons: If you don't understand what a semi-automatic weapon is, you shouldn't be taking a stance on whether they should be banned. Most civilian firearms are semi-automatic. What it means is that one trigger pull shoots one bullet and the next round is loaded. Fully-automatic is already difficult to get (requiring federal and state permission, as well as local sheriff permission, and a fee... and you can't be a criminal). Fully-automatic is when you pull the trigger and bullets keep coming out until the ammo is gone. The only thing left would be things like bolt action firearms... you load a shot, close the chamber, fire the gun, open the chamber to clear it, and you have to put in another bullet. Banning semi-automatic weapons would effectively be banning guns for citizens.
And I'll address the closing paragraph...
For people who believe the empirical evidence that more guns mean more violence, this contradiction is the source of a lot of frustration. Americans by and large support policies that reduce access to guns. But once these policies are proposed, they're broadly spun by politicians and pundits into attempts to "take away your guns." So nothing gets done, and preventable deaths keep occurring.This author is not intelligent. They use the term "empirical evidence" to suggest that his own collection of statistics and stories somehow amounts to empirical evidence. I don't think the author knows what that really means. Most of what was presented was too flimsy to count as evidence of any kind. And the author draws conclusions that aren't reliable. Most especially in that last paragraph is the implied statement that gun-control measures would save lives, when none of his "evidence" is capable of supporting that assertion. The author fails to realize that there are many actions that can be taken that have nothing to do with stricter gun-control laws which have a much better chance of success given that they would actually address the problem instead of trying to get rid of a tool that isn't the actual problem.
Alright... I'm tired... and I have work tomorrow... I hope this was useful for you.
