Wed
Jan 9 2013
01:04 pm
Remedy for Gun Violence
By: KnightLord

Some maintain that laws restricting the sale of firearms will reduce "gun violence". Let us say that firearms are made illegal, and for the sake of argument let us say that all law-abiding citizens surrender their firearms. Who will have the remaining firearms? Police and Military? Sure, but is it really such a stretch to think that criminals will also have them? Last I heard criminals don't obey laws.

Police can't be everywhere at once, but at every crime scene there is someone who is there every time, the victim. Perhaps it is because I'm not a criminal, and that I don't assume that everyone else is, that I don't fear the idea of firearms in the hands of law-abiding adults. The people that really scare me are those who seem to want all of us to live as though we were inmates in a continental prison. Well, the guards are more interested in reaching retirement than saving our lives, so where does that leave us?

I've always believed that my rights end where your rights begin, and vice versa. If you don't wish to own a firearm, don't buy one, but don't infringe my right to keep and bear my own. You never know, it might just be that one day your life could be saved by someone like me, if I haven't been disarmed by then.

Topics:

That's a rant, not a remedy.

Submitted by WhitesCreek on January 9, 2013 - 1:18pm.

That's a rant, not a remedy. It doesn't belong here at RoaneViews.

Not so bad

Submitted by onetahiti on January 9, 2013 - 3:34pm.

WC,

No remedy was given, true, but as a "rant" KL's post wasn't so bad. Some people might say even you rant about guns now and again. :)

-- OneTahiti

Did I not mention?

Submitted by KnightLord on January 9, 2013 - 4:48pm.

I guess it was more implied than stated. Because "Gun Control" favors the criminal element and puts the law-abiding citizenry at greater risk, the remedy is less control and more responsible gun ownership.

(link...)

Thank you for pointing out my oversight, and I do apologize for taking the implication for granted.

================================================================

"Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses." - Plato

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.

I do rant but I try to do it

Submitted by WhitesCreek on January 9, 2013 - 5:29pm.

I do rant but I try to do it in the context of news. This is just opinion with no backing facts. There's no evidence that gun control favors the criminal element, for instance. Sensible regulation favors the law abiding over time. You have a handgun in your house, for instance, you are far more likely to use it on a family member or yourself than for self defense. Here's the peer reviewed study.

WC, I have 20 years of

Submitted by onetahiti on January 11, 2013 - 12:35pm.

WC,

I have 20 years of personally collected evidence that gun control does favor criminals. In my 20 years of living in strict gun control states, the criminals around me never lacked for guns. I lost count of the number of times I, as a law-abiding unarmed victim, had guns pointed at me by criminals.

I was very short, very myopic, and female. I might as well have been wearing a big sign that said, "Unarmed victim here!"

I am so much safer in Tennessee.

Don't get me started.

Also, while it may or may not be true that if "you have a handgun in your house, for instance, you are far more likely to use it on a family member or yourself than for self defense," I know for certain it is not true for me. Statistical generalities cannot logically be extended to the particular.

-- OneTahiti

I respect your right to

Submitted by WhitesCreek on January 9, 2013 - 7:40pm.

I respect your right to determine what happens in your own house. I don't buy it when we're talking schools and my property.

Hmmm. I didn't really

Submitted by KnightLord on January 9, 2013 - 11:10pm.

Hmmm. I didn't really expect this kind of reaction to a simple OpEd piece on what I thought was my own Blog. If you wish for some facts, perhaps the video at the other end of this link will suffice.

(link...)

==================================================================

"Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses." - Plato

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote" - Ben Franklin

KL

Submitted by onetahiti on January 10, 2013 - 5:09am.

The software does call each person's original posts a "blog." However, if you truly want your own blog independent of this community and of WC's oversight, you probably need a different host.

For myself, I don't want the burden of having a full-featured stand-alone blog, so am very happy here.

-- OneTahiti

your own blog on RV

Submitted by ConcernedCitizen on January 10, 2013 - 1:49am.

I believe having your own blog here is like bringing your own ball to the playground. You may own the ball but the playground still makes the rules of how you play. :)

Hmmm

Submitted by WhitesCreek on January 10, 2013 - 7:06am.

After re-reading the rules I can see how they can be misinterpreted to allow something other than fact based opinion. The object is not to stifle discussion but to keep it within a certain boundary of rationality. We're trying to avoid the crazy and the out there comments that can't be backed up with facts. Differences of opinion are fine and welcome, but you had better be able to back up anything you say with some good evidence. I'll work on the usage rules to clarify. The goal is still for all of us to work on making our world a better place for all of us.

rules

Submitted by ConcernedCitizen on January 10, 2013 - 9:28am.

We're trying to avoid the crazy and the out there comments that can't be backed up with facts. Differences of opinion are fine and welcome, but you had better be able to back up anything you say with some good evidence.

I agree with that and believe that is the way it should be. However, in the past you have been slow to enforce it in certain situations. An example is last year during a hotly contested political race one of the candidates came here many times posting about what he had heard and what he had seen that was hurtful to the other candidate. I called for him to provide some proof about what he was saying many times and he ignored it in public. He did contact me in a private message and tried to explain his actions with a bunch of nonsense. You turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to that and never stepped in or called his hand on making brash statements on RVs that couldn't be substantiated. Your only response that I remember was that you had inside information that would back up what he was saying. The fact that you knew something that we didn't shouldn't override the requirement of him having to back up what he was posting. I think what I'm saying is accurate and can be backed up by going back and reading the posts from last year here on RVs.

This is your forum/blog/playground. If I were you I would use it to promote my ideas and agenda as I saw fit. I think that is what you do regarding a lot of hot topics like the handgun issues that are at the forefront today. I have avoided even commenting on that issue recently because I know that no matter what I say it will be put down swiftly with a link to a website that agrees with your way of thinking. We all know the pen is mightier than the sword... or in this case the handgun... :)

Melinda Herman

Submitted by Mike on January 10, 2013 - 7:38am.

We cannot prove a negative, so we can't show how many time a gun prevented violence. We can't show how many times a violent crime wasn't committed because the victim was armed or perceived to be armed. I'm sure Melinda Herman and her twins are glad they had a gun in the home. I can cite several stories where would-be victims were able to defend themselves with a firearm.

Links to web sites

Submitted by WhitesCreek on January 10, 2013 - 10:34am.

I try to link to peer reviewed studies or sites that condense and report on those studies if I am offering to back up something I say. What I want to avoid here are posts like the one in the KNS that made the absurd claim that since hammers killed 496 people last year while rifles only killed 323, we should ban hammers and not rifles. First of all the real numbers were 496 people killed with blunt objects and 8,583 were killed with firearms. As this analysis shows by linking to the FBI report. If you have to misrepresent facts to make your case you have no case.

Feel free to argue with my choice of sources. In this case I think you'll have a tough time arguing with the Oxford Journal. It is pretty much the gold standard in peer review. I'm looking for rational discourse as much as possible. Critical thinking is the method by which we try to weed out emotion, and what we want to be true, and settle with the facts we need to make good decisions.

Real Numbers

Submitted by Mike on January 10, 2013 - 11:27am.

Firearms were used in 8,583 (which is showing a downward trend for the years provided while firearm sales are increasing) and 6,220 were attributed to handguns.

What is really interesting about the 2011 FBI statistics is that in Washington DC 77 of the 108 total murders were committed with firearms (0 with rifles, 1 by shotgun). Of the 452 murders in Illinois, 377 were committed with firearms. Handguns were used in 364 of those 377.

Washington DC and Illinois have some of the strictest firearm laws - especially regarding handguns.

(link...)

Re: Real Numbers

Submitted by KnightLord on January 12, 2013 - 2:18pm.

Thank you Mike. There are other stats that could be cited, such as Connecticut having some of the strictest laws against "assault" weaponry in the country.

============================================================

"Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses." - Plato

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting

Gun Remedy

Submitted by RefugeeBamaDem on March 5, 2013 - 12:20pm.

If guns make us safer, then why is the relationship between higher numbers of guns per capita and higher murder rates and gun murder rates almost perfectly linear? The number of guns per capita in the USA is 10 times higher than the UK, 6 times higher than Australia, 3 times higher than Canada, and almost 150 times higher than Japan. We have 300 million guns and 311 million people. Your chance of being murdered in the USA is 4 times higher than in the UK, Canada or Australia, and 100 times higher than in Japan. I'm not arguing what the Constitution says. I'm just arguing with the notion that buying a bunch of guns makes the community safer.

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