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Jeff Stehman
Sage
      
Date Joined Mar 2005
Total Posts : 1224
| Posted 4/19/2007 10:37 AM (GMT -5) |   | tchernabyelo said...
Unfortunately, there's no way of knowing. There are no controlled experiments in the real world
Yep. Since there are nations that are with lots of guns and violent crime, lots of guns and low crime, few guns and lots of crime, and few guns and low crime, there's obviously more involved here than just gun ownership or the lack thereof. In the US, we have a violent culture. For certain, take away all our guns and we'd be less efficient killers, but violence level drop? I doubt it.
And I think it's a moot point. We can't do more than estimate the number of guns and gun owners in the US, but the numbers are big. We have an open border to the north, a porous closed border to the south, and we import several million shipping containers each year, only a handful of which are searched. Whether they're legal or not, guns will not be removed from our society.
There have been many long gun debates on my gaming community's forums, and some of the non-US antigun members have decided it is impossible to remove guns from the US, and if they lived here, they'd probably own one.
--Jeff Stehman | | Back to Top | | |
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nathan
Sage
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 2176
| Posted 4/19/2007 11:42 AM (GMT -5) | |
tchernabyelo said...
Nathan said...
I don't think the UK's experience has been very successful to be frank Unfortunately, there's no way of knowing. There are no controlled experiments in the real world, and we do not know whether gun crime would be better or worse had the post-Dunblane regulations not come into legal effect.
What we can say is that SO FAR there has been no repeat of a Hungerford/Dunblane incident, and it is THESE incidents the laws were brought in to prevent. In that sense, the law has worked. It may or may not have had unintended byproducts.
In the UK, there is no cultural tradition of owning a gun (excellent! I mistyped that as "gnu" first time, which is also true, but irrelevant). Most guns (aside from those at shooting clubs, and there are very few people involved in that particuar hobby) are shotguns, mostly owned by farmers or gamekeepers, and used to blow the crap out of crows, rabbits or foxes. In the US, there is an ENORMOUS cultural tradition of gun ownership - both in terms of the original rebellion and the Second Amendment, and in terms of the "frontier mentality", in which guns empowered people either to take what was not theirs or hold what was. IMHO, partly as a result of this, there is a general cultural belief in the US that guns can solve problems, whereas in the UK (and much of the rest of the Western World) the predominant perception is that guns CAUSE problems. Witness the fact that many commentators are indeed suggesting - perhaps rightly - that Cho's rampage could have been ended much more quickly if he had been faced with armed "victims". This is still symptomatic of the mindset that a gun is a solution, not a problem. Until people at least recognise these underpinnings to the debate, and where they spring from, I don't think anyone's going to get anywhere.
(And to add some perspective of my own; I'm a Brit, I'm married to an American, I've visited the US many times, and I know how to shoot a rifle and have used live ammunition on several occasions, though not for a very long time).
T: there's no cultural tradition in the UK of having a gun because good King George took them away to prevent the means of regicide--nobody fought him and a generational view of guns formed. I don't find that anything to be proud of from a historical viewpoint and certainly not an arugment. With all due respect. The way the UK experiment is being spun here (in some quarters) is along the lines of "the only ones who have guns now in Britian are criminals." Why on earth would any clear thinking person want such a thing? A quick google came up with this rant which I link because its short and provides links to info source even though the guy writes like Mike Savage. My point is only that when Britians say: "Hey! Look what we did with guns!" A large portion of US society thinks they are delusional, therefor using the UK model in a discussion of VT incident seems counter-productive.
Also your use of the term "mentality" seems perjorgative. Lets call it an epistomology evolution. That is Knowledge is that part where Truth & Belief overlap.
I think you/they hold a belief that guns CAUSE problems [caps yours]. I submit, as I state, that holding your belief is not the same as bald fact.
But I'll be honest. I see a lot of data showing how, at the very least, guns execerbate problems. But then the immediate problem becomes that I've seen a lot of data for the otherside. It is the original Global Warming debate where so much statistical data has been flooded into the public arena that we could link-counter-link until this page was the longest on the board.
In the end it'll get down to core beliefs about the world and the individual's place in it. Those things are rarely argued out as at the root they are emotional self perception and not pure logic where counterpoints change minds. For example the idea that we would put our faith in someone other than ourselves for immediate protection seems ludicrous to me--just not a logical place to build a foundation for an argument on. So I agree with you that mentality does play a role in it.
I will say this. Statistically VT's campus Zero Gun Policy was a success. Of all the people on that campus on that morning in that building only one of them had a gun. That kind of lawful complience (99.5% complient to .5% uncomplient) would be considered a staggering success if we were talking about drug use, prostitution, drunk driving, or any crime of your choice.
To me it seems a hollow victory.
VIEW IMAGE"Writing the wet dreams of teenage boys" - Lindsey Llyod, Tangent Reviews
Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages." | | Back to Top | | |
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4554
| Posted 4/19/2007 1:30 PM (GMT -5) | | Leaving aside the gun debate, it would seem that the VT massacre was caused in fact by the failure of the system to deal with an adequetly recognised threat. Cho should not have been able to buy a gun, anywhere in the country he should not have been able to buy a handgun. It seems doubtful he should have been in residence at VT.
Unlike my first impression when the coverage began it now seems that his department and the university administration had a very good idea exactly how much a danger he represented. Special safety words in classrooms would seem to indicate hs instructors did not feel safe working with him, so why on earth did they think it was safe having him on campus? I know there is a huge tendency to make allowances, to try to foster success, even with the most troubled students, and generally this is laudable. But a student who rates secret "get help" code words and special one-on-one classes because the other students are afraid to go to class with him is about as big a warning sign as you are ever going to get that something like this is brewing.
At a minimum it would seem that a security alert to instructors and staff, and a heightened presence on campus by their security staff, would have seemed called for from the begining of the first incident. Forget the second amendment arguments, the school has its own cops, with training and guns. One in each building might have cut down the carnage even if it wouldn't have prevented the second wave. Instead it seems like the school officials immeadiatly went into "spin control", trying to manage the damage from the dorm killings with no serious thought given to the idea the incident might not be over. I know that most times they'd have been right, but protecting the university's reputation is a secondary responcibility, protecting the schools students is a primary one, and it seems to me they had their priorities distorted.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Dutchman Rescue"in Continuum SF #6
www.continuumsciencefiction.com/orders.htm
"An Incident at Black Tongue Tavern" in _Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy_ from Fantasist Enterprises:
www.fantasistent.com/books/anthologies/BASH.php | | Back to Top | | |
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Jeff Stehman
Sage
Date Joined Mar 2005
Total Posts : 1224
| Posted 4/19/2007 2:34 PM (GMT -5) | | erazmus said...
I know that most times they'd have been right, but protecting the university's reputation is a secondary responcibility, protecting the schools students is a primary one, and it seems to me they had their priorities distorted.
I worked for a small-town university police department for several years. The student population was about half the size of VT. On a day like Monday, we'd have had 4-5 uniformed officers on duty, plus another 4-6 detectives and administrative personnel who were sworn officers. I doubt very much the first shooting would have brought in any off-duty officers or any assistance from the city or county. It wasn't initially linked to the shooter, and they were interrogating a "person of interest." The actual scenario was not one that would have leaped to anyone's mind.
Once the second shooting started, we'd have probably had thirty additional armed personnel there within an hour, with the first ones arriving in just a few minutes. We still would have had more buildings than cops.
The police may or may not have handled the situation well, but the front end of this is what really needs to be scrutinized. Those kinds of widespread warning signs can't be overlooked, and I'll be very interested in hearing the final report on why they were. Fear of litigation? Fear of harming the student? No one wanting to take responsibility for it? Fear of setting him off?
--Jeff Stehman | | Back to Top | | |
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4554
| Posted 4/19/2007 2:56 PM (GMT -5) | | Nathan,
Yes, it is a lighting strike kind of incident. And yeah, it probably would have strained the school police-- I forget how many buildings and how few officers most schools have. Since our state schools police force here in colorado are actually State Troopers, and use the State Trooper barracks and facilites to back their own resources, all the campus police here are uniformed officers, augmented by contract armed guards for events and emergencies, with detectives and others provided as needed by State agencies. In other words, we're set up differently. The benifits of having gone through this before.
But the key would definatly be the precursor conditions, they didn't know who'd done the dorm shooting but they did know, for years, they had a dangerous person on campus.
Mike
Michael D. Turner
"Psyched Up" in _Turn the other Chick_-ed. E. Friesner-Baen books
www.baen.com
"Dutchman Rescue"in Continuum SF #6
www.continuumsciencefiction.com/orders.htm
"An Incident at Black Tongue Tavern" in _Bash Down the Door and Slice Open the Badguy_ from Fantasist Enterprises:
www.fantasistent.com/books/anthologies/BASH.php | | Back to Top | | |
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BethS
Adept
Date Joined Jun 2004
Total Posts : 751
| Posted 4/19/2007 5:02 PM (GMT -5) | |
nathan said...I blame some of the problems on a cultural unwillingness to judge people as much as I do on rampant fear of litigation.
I think you're right.
Oh, and in the Pearl, MI, shooting, Joel Myrick, the assistant principal, stopped the boy with a Colt .45, not a hunting rifle. (The boy was using a hunting rifle.) Because of the school's gun policy, Myrick had had to leave the gun in his car. So when the shooting began, he ran to get the gun and was able to prevent Woodham from escaping. It was not in time, unfortunately, to prevent the deaths and injuries that had already taken place; however, Woodham had planned to drive to a nearby middle school and start shooting there. Myrick at least stopped that.
In the days following, he became something of a pariah among his colleagues for having held a gun to a student's head--even though it likely saved more lives, including (ironically) the shooter's.
I think teachers and staff at schools should be allowed to carry weapons, or have quick access to them. That's absolutely the only way these shooters can be dealt with quickly enough.
John Lott, a Yale professor, wrote a book called More Guns Less Crime, which grew out of a study he did that showed permits-to-carry-concealed reduced crime. It caused something of a firestorm at the time.
~Beth | | Back to Top | | |
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MichaelEhart
Sage
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 2352
| Posted 4/19/2007 5:47 PM (GMT -5) | | We already have more gun laws than any other country on the planet. I do work in politics, and it is axiomatic that, regardless of party, public safety is an infallible hot-button. A result of this is the fact that we have more people incarerated per capita than any other country, too. "Tough on crime" has replaced any real thinking about how things should be done.
Beth, we are largely in agreement, but I seem to remember that this part: "In the days following, he became something of a pariah among his colleagues for having held a gun to a student's head--even though it likely saved more lives, including (ironically) the shooter's." was sourced to LaPierre, the very extreme head of the NRA (I am a lifetime member, BTW--- LaPierre is a nutcase), and so must be taken with a grain of salt. If you have a better source, I would like to read it, because that sort of stuff interests me. And even if true, shame on them, but no larger meaning should be taken from it. Survivors of traumatic situations aften have stupid reactions after.
As far as the Rambo-fetishists are concerned, there is one place I can think of right off the top of my head where everyone has a gun and is happy to use it, but I doubt they would be happy raising their families in Bagdad.
"The Scarlet Colored Beast" The Sword Review, September 2007 "Nothing But Our Tears" The Sword Review. August 2007
"Weaving Spiders Come Not Here" The Sword Review, July 2007
"The View From the Shotglass Floor" Ray Gun Revival, coming soon!
"Six Zombies Doing That Mick Jagger Strut" Damned in Dixie, March 2007
"The Death of Number 23" Dark Krypt, Fall 2006
"Servant of the Manthycore" Sword Review, April 2006
"Voice of the Spoiler" Better Fiction, Spring 2006
"Dancing with the Elder Gods"-- Thirteen Magazine, October 2005
"It's a Living" Byzarium---November 2005
"An Exorcism Straight, Hold the Elvis" The Sword Review, October 2005
Host, 2005 Nebula Awards Live Chat, sff.net
http://mehart.blogspot.com/ | | Back to Top | | |
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nathan
Sage
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 2176
| Posted 4/19/2007 6:16 PM (GMT -5) | | |
You know these points cause frustrations in a certain sense. There you have clear examples of how people having the ability to defend themselves stopped a problem and people who did not [VT & Columbine] did not. And in the case of Columbine and VT the police were on campus while the incidents were going down: The government agents gun control proponents think to replace personal defense with did not stop the gunmen.
It isn't fair to compare apples and oranges but it is fair to compare one campus shooting with another. I think comparing Pearl MI to Columbine and one Virgina campus to another Virgina campus (VT in this case) is quite logical and fair.
Yet many people see connecting those dots as alarming or possibly as signs of a delusional psychosis left over from thought processes a century out of date. Their answer? That somehow tighter gun controls would keep the guns out of the hands of everyone and therefor none of the above tradegities would have happened in the first place.
I see nothing factual or historical to support this viewpoint and think it based on a worldview of The Way Things Should Be instead of The Way Things Are.
I honestly don't understand how as an exercise of reason divorced from personal emotion any conclusion other than "personal defense is good" can be reached considering the lack of concrete-sequential evidence to the opposite.
This logic chain apperantly makes me a gun-nut cowboy in some people's eyes (no one on this board has called me one, I hasten to add) and I'm left scratching my head.
VIEW IMAGE
"Writing the wet dreams of teenage boys" - Lindsey Llyod, Tangent Reviews
Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages." | | Back to Top | | |
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MichaelEhart
Sage
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 2352
| Posted 4/19/2007 6:46 PM (GMT -5) | | Nathan, I'll call you a gun-nut cowboy, but you have to return the favor :)
"The Scarlet Colored Beast" The Sword Review, September 2007
"Nothing But Our Tears" The Sword Review. August 2007
"Weaving Spiders Come Not Here" The Sword Review, July 2007
"The View From the Shotglass Floor" Ray Gun Revival, coming soon!
"Six Zombies Doing That Mick Jagger Strut" Damned in Dixie, March 2007
"The Death of Number 23" Dark Krypt, Fall 2006
"Servant of the Manthycore" Sword Review, April 2006
"Voice of the Spoiler" Better Fiction, Spring 2006
"Dancing with the Elder Gods"-- Thirteen Magazine, October 2005
"It's a Living" Byzarium---November 2005
"An Exorcism Straight, Hold the Elvis" The Sword Review, October 2005
Host, 2005 Nebula Awards Live Chat, sff.net
http://mehart.blogspot.com/ | | Back to Top | | |
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Jordan Lapp
Ebony & Ivory
Date Joined Sep 2006
Total Posts : 2951
| Posted 4/19/2007 6:57 PM (GMT -5) | |
Jeff Stehman said...
Yep. Since there are nations that are with lots of guns and violent crime, lots of guns and low crime, few guns and lots of crime, and few guns and low crime, there's obviously more involved here than just gun ownership or the lack thereof. In the US, we have a violent culture. For certain, take away all our guns and we'd be less efficient killers, but violence level drop? I doubt it.
I'm in Canada where we have very few handguns (long gun we've got a-plenty), and we aren't exactly blowing each other way (I think New York had more homicides than our entire country last year). I think socio-economic status has more to do with the violence in Washington, D.C., not a gun ban. Beside, if the States weren't so awash in gun in the first place, it would be tougher for criminals to get guns.
In canada, you are 70% more likely to be killed with your OWN gun than with someone else's. How's THAT for a scary statistic..
Jordan Lapp
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nathan
Sage
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 2176
| Posted 4/19/2007 7:15 PM (GMT -5) | | Actually this [quote]Canada
The contrast between the criminal violence rates in the United States and in Canada is dramatic. Over the past decade, the rate of violent crime in Canada has increased while in the United States the violent crime rate has plummeted. The homicide rate is dropping faster in the US than in Canada.
The Canadian experiment with firearm registration is becoming a farce says Mauser. The effort to register all firearms, which was originally claimed to cost only $2 million, has now been estimated by the Auditor General to top $1 billion. The final costs are unknown but, if the costs of enforcement are included, the total could easily reach $3 billion.
“It is an illusion that gun bans protect the public. No law, no matter how restrictive, can protect us from people who decide to commit violent crimes. Maybe we should crack down on criminals rather than hunters and target shooters?” says Mauser.[/quote]
Nothing illiterate about the Fraser Institute.
[quote]The Fraser Institute is an independent research and educational organization based in Canada. Its mission is to measure, study, and communicate the impact of competitive markets and government intervention on the welfare of individuals. To protect the Institute’s independence, it does not accept grants from governments or contracts for research.[/quote]
Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages." | | Back to Top | | |
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Jordan Lapp
Ebony & Ivory
Date Joined Sep 2006
Total Posts : 2951
| Posted 4/19/2007 7:20 PM (GMT -5) | |
nathan said...
Actually this [quote]Canada
The contrast between the criminal violence rates in the United States and in Canada is dramatic. Over the past decade, the rate of violent crime in Canada has increased while in the United States the violent crime rate has plummeted. The homicide rate is dropping faster in the US than in Canada.
The Canadian experiment with firearm registration is becoming a farce says Mauser. The effort to register all firearms, which was originally claimed to cost only $2 million, has now been estimated by the Auditor General to top $1 billion. The final costs are unknown but, if the costs of enforcement are included, the total could easily reach $3 billion.
“It is an illusion that gun bans protect the public. No law, no matter how restrictive, can protect us from people who decide to commit violent crimes. Maybe we should crack down on criminals rather than hunters and target shooters?” says Mauser.[/quote]
Nothing illiterate about the Fraser Institute.
I'd um, watch who you quote Nathan. He's regarded as a bit of a nut by the academic community. To wit:
Mauser's earlier work on arming for self-protection was funded by the NRA and has been critiqued by many academics. In one often cited study, Mauser argued that firearms are used between 62,500 and 80,000 times per year for self-defence. This is based on a 1995 telephone survey of 1,505 Canadians, in which 2.1% (32) of respondents claimed that they or a member of their household had used a gun for self-protection (either against a person or an animal) over the last five years. Of those, 12.9 % (5) claimed they or a member of their household had used a gun to protect themselves against a person within the last 5 years. Mauser extrapolates this to the Canadian population.
Dr. David Hemenway, Professor, Harvard University in an affidavit to the Alberta Court of Appeal, notes that Mausers study contains "incorrect assertions and misleading statements." The study fails to distinguish perception from reality - grabbing a gun in response to a bump in the night does not mean that anyone has actually been defended themselves against a threat. " It is not appropriate to extrapolate the results of a simple, self-reported study or a RARE event, particularly when there is the possibility of positive social desirability response, or personal presentation bias. The results will be wild over estimates." He compares Mauser's methodology to a 1995 survey by NBC which asked 1500 Americans "Have you personally ever been in contact with aliens from another planet or not?". Extrapolating the results (0.6%) to the entire US population would suggest that 1.2 million Americans have been in actual contact with aliens.
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nathan
Sage
Date Joined Mar 2006
Total Posts : 2176
| Posted 4/19/2007 7:33 PM (GMT -5) | | |
It seems FI has political enemies. Yet the political free info site Answers.com reports:
[quote]Critics of the Institute and other similar agenda-driven think tanks have claimed the Fraser Institute's reports, studies and surveys are usually not subject to standard academic peer review or the scholarly method. The accuracy and reliability of the information they produce would therefore often be questioned. However, the Institute's own publications often refer specifically to their own peer review process.[2][3] A Google Scholar Search reveals that the Fraser Institute's work is cited more often in peer reviewed journals than the work of any other public policy Institute in Canada. The Institute dedicates less than five percent of its budget to actively promote their findings and their agenda to broadcast and print media, a practice followed by most research foundations or in the research work of university departments.[/quote]
If Mauser's a nut then he certainly seems to have gone through all the proper channels to adequately cite his sources to a higher standered than those attacking him.
Not the use of the term "agenda-driven" by this neutral source (Answers.com).
Now in all seriousness, and one-up-manship to the side, if you can show me that Answers.com has been proven to be unreliable I would actually appreciate it because I use it as a jump-platform all the time.
EDIT: I read the quote again Jordan to make sure I understood what was being said and it seems the article has a problem with statistical extrapolation as a research tool. I actually agree SE is a flawed system but it is a common and well used one in academia. The mathematical models used can be corrupted: Kindergardeners are Americans. Ergo 300 "Americans" surveyed believe in the tooth fairy there for through SE we estimate 1 million americans believe in the tooth fairy--however SE is a primary tool and its use is not proof positive of lying or intentional misinformation.
VIEW IMAGE
"Writing the wet dreams of teenage boys" - Lindsey Llyod, Tangent Reviews
Tarantino himself has been forward and unapologetic about his influences. In a 1994 interview with Empire magazine, he said, "I steal from every single movie ever made. If people don't like that, then tough tills, don't go and see it, all right? I steal from everything. Great artists steal, they don't do homages." | | Back to Top | | |
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MichaelEhart
Sage
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 2352
| Posted 4/19/2007 10:48 PM (GMT -5) | | Thanks Beth!
"The Scarlet Colored Beast" The Sword Review, September 2007 "Nothing But Our Tears" The Sword Review. August 2007
"Weaving Spiders Come Not Here" The Sword Review, July 2007
"The View From the Shotglass Floor" Ray Gun Revival, coming soon!
"Six Zombies Doing That Mick Jagger Strut" Damned in Dixie, March 2007
"The Death of Number 23" Dark Krypt, Fall 2006
"Servant of the Manthycore" Sword Review, April 2006
"Voice of the Spoiler" Better Fiction, Spring 2006
"Dancing with the Elder Gods"-- Thirteen Magazine, October 2005
"It's a Living" Byzarium---November 2005
"An Exorcism Straight, Hold the Elvis" The Sword Review, October 2005
Host, 2005 Nebula Awards Live Chat, sff.net
http://mehart.blogspot.com/ | | Back to Top | | |
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erazmus
Master
Date Joined Jul 2005
Total Posts : 4554
| Posted 4/20/2007 2:51 AM (GMT -5) | | And again, aside from the gun related arguements, there seems to have been something wrong with the system in Blacksburg, Virginia.
He'd been found a danger to himself and others in court, his instructors were afraid of him, his fellow students were afraid of him, h | |
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