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Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Hello,

The non-aggression principle seems very sound:

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Originally posted by rue:
AnthonyT


Thinking about it further - I don't think the problem is the need for guns. I think it's the breakdown of 'civil' society.

And I can't think of one heavily armed society* that I'd want to live in - Afghanistan ? The Congo ? Somalia ?

Guns simply don't improve the society and make it better, more law-abiding or more considerate.


* Finland's gun ownership rate is far below that of the US. Also, most guns in Finladn are dbl brl shotguns or hunting rifles.


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Silence is consent.

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Country/Guns per 100 residents/Year
United States 90.0 2007
Yemen 61.0 2007
Switzerland 46.0 2007
Iraq 39.0 2007
Serbia 37.5 2007
France 32.0 2007
Finland[5] 32.0 2008
Canada 31.5 2007
Sweden 31.5 2007
Austria 31.0 2007
Germany 30.0 2007
New Zealand[2] 26.8 1993
Saudi Arabia 26.3 2007
Greece 23.0 2007
Angola 20.5 2007
Thailand 16.0 2007
Australia 15.5 2007
Mexico 15.0 2007
South Africa 13.1 2007
Turkey 13.0 2007
Argentina 12.6 2007
Italy 12.1 2007
Pakistan 12.0 2007
Spain 11.0 2007
Russia 9.0 2007
Ukraine 9.0 2007
Brazil 8.8 2007
Colombia 7.2 2007
United Kingdom 5.6 2007
Iran 5.3 2007
Philippines 4.7 2007
India 4.0 2007
China 3.5 2007
Nigeria 1.0 2007

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Rue,

I appreciate your faith in me. In fact, I enjoy violence in my television shows, movies, and video games, but abhor it in my life. Each gun I've ever owned has been accompanied by a silent prayer. May I never, ever find occasion to draw this on a person. Violence is only ever fun in the make-believe world. I never want to do more than imagine the horror of actually ending a life. I think it would haunt me forever.

--Anthony

"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:

Hello,

I do not mind any reasonable process to purchase a firearm. Reasonable meaning this to me:

1) Everyone should be able to afford it. Any fee associated with the qualification process should be within the means of poverty-stricken Americans, and perhaps even payable with the aid of government assistance.

2) Every law-abiding adult-minded citizen should be able to purchase a firearm. This means if you haven't broken the law, and have the reasoning capacity of an adult, you should not be barred.

3) Mental instabilities/disabilities/illnesses should only factor into the equation if the individual either A) can not reason as an adult or B) represents a harm to others due to the nature of their illness.

4) The process for qualification should be as brisk and efficient as possible, with no artificial padding of waiting periods or other delays. If a person qualifies, they qualify.

5) The process for qualification should be routinely examined to make sure it is not being used as a tool to disallow firearms from the citizenry. Especially the process should be routinely vetted against any political leanings or influence. The basic premise of the process should always be that 'Any law-abiding adult has a right to own firearms.'

6) The process for qualification should include some sort of training for the weapon(s) in question, with a focus on legal use and basic safety. The test to confirm this knowledge should be very basic, and tied especially to item 5.

There are a lot of concessions I'd be willing to make in regards to my right to own and carry firearms. I am prepared to be very reasonable.

My problem has always been those that do not recognize my right, and who wish to enact legislation not as a tool to enable it, but rather as a tool to eliminate it.

--Anthony

"Liberty must not be purchased at the cost of Humanity." --Captain Robert Henner

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Originally posted by SignyM:
...while people should be able to defend themselves. the presence of guns BY THEMSELVES do not create a civil society.


So, the next question is: If guns do not improve society, do they actively cause it to deteriorate? Do they foster "the Myth of Redemptive Violence", or can you have a civil society AND widespread gun ownership at the same time?.

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Originally posted by SignyM:

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Signy seems to think it's somehow important to point out that not all people seeking a CCW permit would be responsible with their guns. Um. So, because some vanishingly small percentage of folks would be irresponsible, that means what exactly? There are plenty of ways for irresponsible people to get guns--seems going through the process of aquiring a CCW permit would be a self-selecting process for a slightly more responsible crowd

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I think you're making too much of what was a minor point on my part, HK. I was simply rebutting Frems' point that ALL CCW'ers are automatically responsible.

My real point is the question whether guns are "the answer", "the problem", both, or neither (irrelevant). I'm leaning towards the "may be part of the problem or irrelevant" simply because... just as incarceration hasn't seemed to deter crime, neither will widespread gun ownership. Something else is at work. I dont' know if its the media, a culture of greed (captalism), the myth of redemptive violence, dependence on religion, or fluoride in the water ... but something is seriously awry with our society and I dont' see guns solving that problem.

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It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Thank you, Anthony.

I do dispute that 80% figure though, I think it's lower than that for the same reason most folk won't pocket a pack of chewing gum while picking up groceries - it's simply beneath our human dignity to do so, and a petty, malicious act barred far more by our own conscience than any threat of consequence.

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Geezer wrote:


And there's yer problem right there(not your problem, SignyM. "The" problem).

There is no "the answer". Or, to paraphrase Mencken, "For every complex problem there is a simple solution. And it is wrong."

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:

Hello,

I think a lot of the reason that the Wild West is romanticized so much is because in some cases it really was a more polite society. Wild West movies always depict bloody violence, because they are action films after all. But the shooting violence of the real Wild West could be neatly catalogued in a tome or two. Barring warfare or revolution, this same thing could probably be said of Victorian England, or most western countries at the time. It was an age when people seemed to hold life in higher regard, and when people seemed to have more manners. (Though this is debatable depending on what sorts of things offend you.) There were probably great and horrible miscairrages of justice back then, too, but this doesn't stick in the popular memory (unless you are of Mexican, Chinese, or African American descent, in which case the stories of injustice are probably carried on in family tellings.)

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Guns aren't the answer. Taking guns away isn't the answer. Jailing all criminals, or letting them all go, isn't the answer. If the answer was simple we'd have figured it out by now. We're not dealing with 'good guys' and 'bad guys'. We're dealing with 300 million individuals who each have different things that set them off or calm them down. You got folks who will kill over a perceived insult, and others who wouldn't ever use force to save their lives. One size does not fit all.

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And when they outlawed gun ownership, crime skyrocketed

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Some social factors appear to have enormous impact on violent crime. Two social factors in particular have been getting increased attention from researchers lately; the first is media violence. Many sociologists do not consider it an accident that the crime wave that hit America in the 60s and 70s coincided with the first television generation coming of age. Dr. Brandon Centerwall has produced one of the most famous studies, which found that the mere introduction of television into a region causes its crime rate to double as soon as the first television generation comes of age. (1) In a 22-year study of 800 children from grade 2 to early adulthood, Leonard Eron and Rowell Huesmann found that the best predictor of later aggression was a heavy childhood diet of TV violence -- more so than poverty, grades, a single parent in the home or exposure to real violence. (2)

The second is income inequality. Although absolute poverty levels do not correlate too significantly with the crime rate, income inequality does (oddly enough). Two separate studies, one from Harvard, the other from Berkeley, compared state crime rates to their income inequality rates, and found that the states with the most inequality had the highest rates of homicide, violent crime and incarceration. This correlation holds internationally as well; Europe has much lower levels of inequality than the U.S., and much lower violent crime rates as well. In the U.S., the rising murder rate has accompanied a rising level of income inequality. In 1968, the Gini index of income inequality was a record low .348; by 1994, it had risen to .426, the highest level since the Great Depression. (3)

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If anything, a review of the European experience demonstrates more guns correlating with less murder. Nine European nations (including Germany, Austria, Denmark and Norway) have more than 15,000 guns per 100,000 members of the population. Nine others (including Luxembourg, Russia, and Hungary) have fewer than 5,000 guns per 100,000 members of the population. But the aggregate murder rates of these nine low-gun-ownership nations are three times higher than those of the nine high-gun-ownership nations.

Some groups, particularly the gun lobby, might argue that this shows how widespread gun ownership actually reduces violence rates. There is substantial evidence that this is true in the United States, where gun ownership for self-defense is very common. But there is no evidence that Norwegians, Germans and other Europeans often keep guns for defense.

The reason that European nations with more guns tend to have lower violence is political rather than criminological. Gun ownership generally has no affect on how much violent crime a society has. Violent crime is determined by fundamental economic and sociocultural factors, not the mere availability of just one of an innumerable bevy of potential murder instruments. Politicians in nations with severe crime problems often think that banning guns will be a quick fix. But gun bans don't work; if anything, they make things worse. They disarm the law-abiding while being ignored by the violent and the criminal. Yet nations with severe violence problems tend to have severe gun laws. By the same token, the murder rates in handgun-banning U.S. cities -- New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C. -- are far higher than in states like Pennsylvania and Connecticut, where handguns are legal and widely owned.

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Yes, we are nation of individuals. And damn proud of it.

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Originally posted by SignyM:

What I'm getting out of this is that... in nations like ours which are breeding grounds for violent crime (due to economic and sociological factors) gun bans don't work, but that in nations which enjoy general security and prospertiy, gun bans are unecessary.

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Cooper created the Violence Intervention Program (VIP) at the Shock Trauma Unit of the University of Maryland Medical Center, the state's busiest hospital for violent injuries. It became one of the country's first hospital-based anti-violence programs.

"We approached this problem like any public health crisis, like heart disease or smoking," he said. "We tried to work on the root causes." Since 1998, VIP has provided substance abuse counseling, job skills training and other support services to nearly 500 trauma victims.

"Using that scalpel blade to save their life is the first step," Cooper said. "The next step is to try to keep them from coming back."

A 2006 study by Cooper and his colleagues, published in the Journal of Trauma, showed that people in the program were six times less likely to be readmitted with a violent injury and three times less likely to be arrested for a violent crime.

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I'm always very fuzzy on what you would consider right, in a concrete and specific way.

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Originally posted by rue:
Children are remarkably, if unknowingly, inconsiderate and even cruel - grabbing toys with their little hands, squishing ants with their little fingers, poking dogs with their little sticks ...

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Originally posted by SignyM:

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I'm always very fuzzy on what you would consider right, in a concrete and specific way.

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Don't take the "might makes right" approach with children. Don't assume they are for YOUR benefit, or reflect on YOUR self-worth. Be fair. Listen to what they have to say. ACT as you want them to behave.

Right frem?

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Originally posted by AgentRouka:
Seems reasonable... So is this behavior actually so rare in parents, in such a fundamental way that it is shaking society apart and making children violently vicious?

I mean, obviously parent-child relationships are often complex and have difficulties. Many people in my circle of friends had issues with their parents that messed them up in some way, myself included, but it didn't turn them inhuman. How wide-spread is the kind of emotional abuse that would turn children violent and dangerous?

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Originally posted by rue:
"People are not born like this."

Ahem - yes, they are. Children are remarkably, if unknowingly, inconsiderate and even cruel - grabbing toys with their little hands, squishing ants with their little fingers, poking dogs with their little sticks ...

Children have to learn empathy like they learn anything else.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
As widespread as drug abuse, alcoholism, and a family history of abuse?

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Originally posted by citizen:

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Originally posted by AgentRouka:
Seems reasonable... So is this behavior actually so rare in parents, in such a fundamental way that it is shaking society apart and making children violently vicious?

I mean, obviously parent-child relationships are often complex and have difficulties. Many people in my circle of friends had issues with their parents that messed them up in some way, myself included, but it didn't turn them inhuman. How wide-spread is the kind of emotional abuse that would turn children violent and dangerous?

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I think neglect is probably more widespread and damaging. Most parents don't seem to give a fuck.

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Originally posted by AgentRouka:
Most parents, really?

A fair number of parents, I could buy, but most? Isn't that a bit of a cynical assumption?

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Originally posted by SignyM:
As widespread as drug abuse, alcoholism, and a family history of abuse?

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Originally posted by citizen:

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Originally posted by AgentRouka:
Most parents, really?

A fair number of parents, I could buy, but most? Isn't that a bit of a cynical assumption?

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Probably. Most parents care about themselves more than their kids, in my experience. They don't outright neglect them, but they come first and their kids come second. In my opinion that's on a continuum of "don't give a fuck"ism.

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Originally posted by rue:
"People are not born like this."

Ahem - yes, they are. Children are remarkably, if unknowingly, inconsiderate and even cruel - grabbing toys with their little hands, squishing ants with their little fingers, poking dogs with their little sticks ...

Children have to learn empathy like they learn anything else.

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Originally posted by rue:

It's just that with 10% of the US population testing out as sociopathic (by some figures) it seems to me that empathy isn't automatic, nor is it extended universally even in those who have it. That's why a lot of people cringed when they saw the picture of the office-worker falling head-first to the pavement from the Twin-Towers, but will show disgust or contempt for the homeless dude on the sidewalk. So I see it more as a potential, not as a basic human trait.

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Originally posted by AgentRouka:
I'd say people stopping to gawk at accident sites, enjoying pictures or video clips of people getting hurt, or ignoring very obvious signs of violence or abuse in their own neighbors (ignore - not fail to notice) are better examples for a lack of empathy that are much harder to explain.

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Although a bit out of character for me, a hug for you Agentrouka, because you've understood enough already to ask the right questions.

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This is where the parent, in seeking control, winds up treating their own child as an adversary or enemy to be conquered - I referred to it as "Adversarial Parenting" before getting involved in Ms Millers work cause I too saw how obvious the damage was.

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And when children face mixed messages of what their own humanity and empathy are telling them crossing up with exactly the opposite demanded of them for social success and acceptance, aberrent behavior is all but gauranteed, especially in so toxic an environment.

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We need to make support of parents a PRIORITY, instead of stigmatising them, HONOR them, instead of penalising them.
(and let's not lie, most workplaces in the US *WILL* penalise you for it, if not outright try to be RID of you as unproductive deadweight for it!)

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Originally posted by citizen:

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Originally posted by AgentRouka:
I'd say people stopping to gawk at accident sites, enjoying pictures or video clips of people getting hurt, or ignoring very obvious signs of violence or abuse in their own neighbors (ignore - not fail to notice) are better examples for a lack of empathy that are much harder to explain.

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And look at how successful television shows that exploit that are.

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