Yet more gun advocacy

Alan

Fri Nov 21 19:49:52 -0800 2008

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Just *repelling* pirates doesn't help the next guy or you long range, while sinking them *does*. Instant karma.

Yeah, you "help" the next guy when the pirates kill him preemptively. You can't win an arms race with these guys. They have millions of dollars in ransoms they've collected in the last year and access to any weapons they want.

And how much karma do you get when you kill an innocent fisherman -- maybe he was carrying a gun for self-defence too? Everyone armed and on a hair trigger. What a wonderful solution that is.

What do you think navies are for?

And economically, what do you think is cheaper: insuring against the loss of a $100 million dollar ship in a firefight, or taking the long way round the Cape of Good Hope?

Yet more gun advocacy

atrius

Sat Nov 22 10:12:14 -0800 2008

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And I imagine your solution is to just lay down like a good little sheep and hope the pirates don't kill you anyway? Look back through history and see if you can find an example where lying down didn't result in conquering, death, or encouraging additional bad behavior.

Your 'solution' is what has given us "Gun Free Zones", and we all know how well that has worked out. Strange, there's never a massacre at a gun store, gun range, or gun show. Funny that, no?

The most interesting thing to me is, the idea that guns and weapons in the hands of the State is automatically a good thing. However, those same guns and weapons in the hands of individuals is automatically a bad thing.

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haeger

Sat Nov 22 16:53:28 -0800 2008

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Strange, there's never a massacre at a gun store, gun range, or gun show. Funny that, no?

And there's never been a massacre at a Star wars convention either, nor has their been one in a air show or in an linux kernel development meeting. What's your point?

Your argumentation sounds a lot like that old saying about a man that walks around in central park tossing breadcrumbs, when asked what he's doing he sais "I'm scaring away the lions". When told that there are no lions here he replies "See, it's working".

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atrius

Sat Nov 22 21:13:28 -0800 2008

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And there's never been a massacre at a Star wars convention either, nor has their been one in a air show or in an linux kernel development meeting. What's your point?

All true. Point being, there are plenty of guns and people carrying and/or using them in the locations I named. Yet, no issues. I'm not saying that the mere presence of those guns ensures there will be no problems, just that the presence doesn't mean there will be problems. If there were problems, they would at least be able to deal with it. As opposed to the suggestion given above which is to basically be defenseless and rely on the kindness of strangers.

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haeger

Mon Nov 24 13:53:38 -0800 2008

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You're still advocating an arms race. A friend of mine is from Italy. Where she lived carjackings were not uncommon. Some local gangster would approach your car, knock on the window and tell you to get out. You did because he has a gun, and they would leave with your car. Unpleasent and scary, but as robberies go a quite happy ending. You contact insurance and get a new car. The police will go look for your car which is already on a boat to somewhere. Eventually the gangster will get killed in a firefight with either the police or another gangster. End of story.

Now if the owner of the car were equipped to "deal with the situation", what do you think would happen. Would carjackings stop? Or would the gangster "shoot back first" to make sure that he got the car? Most criminals don't care about you, you are an obstacle to what they want. But if you become a threat they will care, and they will eliminate that threat.

And then there's that other thing about why guns in the hand of the people is a bad thing but in the hands of the police it's good. That's because the police are generally well trained in gun use, sober, taught how to cool down from heated situations, and fewer. And hopefully the've been screened properly so most nuts are eliminated from being an officer.

I'm sure you can bring up corner cases where a gun helped or would have helped, but the fact remains that the US have the highest gun mortality rate in the world. Why is that?

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James Parker

Fri Nov 28 19:26:25 -0800 2008

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"...but the fact remains that the US have the highest gun mortality rate in the world. Why is that?"

Wrong.  If you mean people killed by others, intentionally.

The United States is 47th in homicide rate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Map-world-murder-rate.svg

 

I'm not sure what "gun mortality rate" means.  Is it the percentage of the people who die,  who die by guns?  Or is that the percentage who die when they get shot?

 

If you're trying to make the point that the United States has the most guns, I'll concede the point.  The U.S. has a number of firearms that compares, very roughly, to the number of citizens.

 

Looking at the map (murder rate map, link above), you will notice that the U.S. is bordered by two other countries, Canada and Mexico. 

Both countries restrict guns more than the United States. Canada is the less restrictive of the pair, allowing shotguns and rifles.  Mexico bans all guns.

Mexico has a far higher homicide rate.  5 times that of the United States. 

So, the data do not show that more guns correlates with more homicides.  

If we're concerned about the number 1 root cause of homicides, we have to look somewhere else.  

Can anyone venture a guess?

Yet more gun advocacy

haeger

Sat Nov 29 01:04:58 -0800 2008

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I'll just assume that I wasn't clear about what I meant, but this is the statistics that you're supposed to be looking at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

Granted both Mexico, Estonia and Brazil are higher than the US, and Argentina is a close second, but do you really want to compare the US with developing third world countries?

When it comes to industrialised countries the US is a clear winner, almost twice as many as the runner up. Doesn't this scare you?

And in the link you sent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate) it does seem that the US has more than twice the murder rate that Canada does. Or am I reading the table wrong?

And have a look at the countries above the US in that list. I'd say most of them are underdeveloped countries in Africa, Former Sovjet, south America and the top one is in the middle of a very bloody war.

You don't see a problem here?

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James Parker

Sat Nov 29 10:35:51 -0800 2008

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The statistics you are citing includes the suicide rate, and for the U.S., Switzerland, France and several others, the total firearm death rate is driven almost entirely by the suicide rate.

Since suicide can be committed in any number of ways, and since from everything I've read and heard a gun makes a very poor choice, I don't believe suicide numbers are valid as a basis for comparing public gun policy.

If the question is what country has the highest suicide rate, then the next  question becomes Why.  But then we need total suicide statistics.

If you want to compare Canada to the U.S., Canada has a lower homicide rate and lower crime rate than the U.S., and it always has.  But Canada did not always have the same gun policy.  The public policy used to be more like the U.S.  Probably a more relevant question is what changes did Canada see when they changed their public policy and moved to restrict guns?

Getting back to the U.S., I will say that the homicide rate bothers me.  This is not an abstract question.  I recently moved to a mid-sized city that has shootings and stabbings all the time.  When I lived in Pasadena, California in the early '90's I heard the gangs shooting every other night, and then there were the L.A. riots in 1992.  But that's a story for another post.

As for the cause of the high U.S. homicide rate, it turns out that the question has been answered.  Imagine my suprise to find that an old acquaintance, Dr. Kirby Cundiff of Hillsdale College, performed the research and found it.

http://www.independent.org/pdf/working_papers/34_homicide.pdf

My expectation that it is the nation's drug control policy has been confirmed.

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haeger

Sat Nov 29 11:54:36 -0800 2008

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This study http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/cdic-mcc/19-1/d_e.html summarized here http://odonnell.lohudblogs.com/2007/04/23/gun-related-deaths/ shows that even when suicides are taken out the US is still remarkable high.

Finland has a higher percentage of guns/household but a much more restrictive gun policy than the US. Finland has a higher suicide rate than the US as shown here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate but a lower suicide by gun rate than the US. Probably because guns aren't very common in Finland because the high rating comes from hunters having a lot of different guns. Most people don't have one in their home.

I don't know what you call a "mid sized city" but where I live we're about 100k. We don't have any shootings here. Not a single homicide by gun in the last 15 or so years that I've lived here. People get killed every now and then but very rarely. I'd say 5 in the last 10 years? A guesstimate. Most of them domestic violence type of things.

What changes Canada saw when banning guns? Seems that I can't get http://www.statcan.gc.ca to work properly. Perhaps the doctors had to work harder to patch up stabbed people instead of writing death certificates for shot people? Hard to say. Feel free to let me know if you find anything.

Yet more gun advocacy

James Parker

Sat Nov 29 15:19:35 -0800 2008

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Expanding on the U.S. data, the paper by Cundiff proves what many have been saying for many years.

http://www.independent.org/pdf/working_papers/34_homicide.pdf 

   That the high rate of U.S. violence is driven by drug prohibition policies. Actually, the number one driver is a violent black market caused by the War on Drugs today. 

That's why I'm excited someone has proven this with some rigor.

This is intuitively obvious to one living here through the different phases of the U.S. drug wars.

As the illegal drug trade gets more hot and competitive, the violence goes up.      

The Canadian data are interesting.  If the U.S. can get its numbers down anywhere near where Canada's are now, then some of the recommendations for Canada might be good for the United States. 

The top cause of the U.S. violence problem needs to be reined in--our drug laws.  We're starting to reform some of the laws, from the bottom up, state by state.  Maybe there will even be some help at the federal level.

 

My city has most of its violence in gang fights, gangs who fight for drugs, gangs who will murder to get drugs, to get turf, or just to fight another gang.  By mid-size, I mean its about 300,000 and has new gang problems that used to be associated with the big drug centers like Los Angeles.  L.A. gangs have fanned out to the cities in the middle of the nation, bringing the drug trade and their way of conducting it.  We get about 25 to 35 murders a year, I think.  Other mid-sized cities I have lived near had similar numbers, and the same cause.  One even had a crooked cop to spy for her Crips gang leader son who had moved his drug business from L.A. to Michigan.

Yet more gun advocacy

haeger

Sun Nov 30 23:56:26 -0800 2008

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Almost all (Netherlands being the notable exception) developed countries have a strict drug enforcement policy, and the same problems with drugs, yet the US is still way up there with the gun homicides. 

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Alan

Sat Nov 22 22:17:19 -0800 2008

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And I imagine your solution is to just lay down like a good little sheep

No. You imagine incorrectly. I really get sick of you gun nuts always calling your opponents cowards. As if it takes courage to point a gun at someone and pull a trigger.

However, those same guns and weapons in the hands of individuals is automatically a bad thing.

That however is correct.

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atrius

Sun Nov 23 14:06:39 -0800 2008

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I didn't say anything about being a coward. I said lay down like a good little sheep. As in meekly and waiting to see what happens as opposed to doing something about it. If you call that cowardice that's up to you. If lying down like a sheep isn't what you have in mind, what do you have in mind?

I'm curious why you imply that using a gun in your defense is a act which requires no courage? Standing up and defending yourself doesn't require courage? Would you say that is the act of a coward?

Why are weapons in the hands of individuals a bad thing? More to the point, why should the State have a monopoly on such force? How does that make things better?

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Alan

Sun Nov 23 16:54:27 -0800 2008

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I didn't say anything about being a coward.

Now you're being disingenuous.

Yet more gun advocacy

President4242

Mon Nov 24 08:06:33 -0800 2008

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Strange, there's never a massacre at a gun store, gun range, or gun show. 

Now there's an interesting idea- since there's bound to be a lot of ammo to cook off there, it seems to me that incedinary devices would be the proper way to attack a gun store, gun range, or gun show for maximum effect.

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James Parker

Sat Nov 22 10:37:30 -0800 2008

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"And economically, what do you think is cheaper: insuring against the loss of a $100 million dollar ship in a firefight, or taking the long way round the Cape of Good Hope?"

Good question.  If I were Lloyds of London, would I be taking less of a risk if I were insuring an armed crew or an unarmed crew?

Yet more gun advocacy

Paul Jackson

Sat Nov 22 13:59:49 -0800 2008

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And how much karma do you get when you kill an innocent fisherman -- maybe he was carrying a gun for self-defence too? Everyone armed and on a hair trigger. What a wonderful solution that is.
That's the historical solution, of course now we could back the non-lethal sonic barrage up with a couple KW of microwave energy to give the baddies that warm fuzzy feeling until their brains boil.

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Alan

Sat Nov 22 22:19:30 -0800 2008

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Right. Or maybe you could set your phasers on stun. Meanwhile the pirates are using real world weapons, like RPGs.

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atrius

Sun Nov 23 14:08:16 -0800 2008

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Right. Or maybe you could set your phasers on stun. Meanwhile the pirates are using real world weapons, like RPGs.

Seems like all the more reason to respond with real weapons. Unless you've got a transporter in your pocket that can beam help to these people on a moments notice.

When seconds count, the nearest cop is always only minutes away.

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President4242

Mon Nov 24 08:08:33 -0800 2008

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All the more reason to use a high powered directed microwave against them- as their ammo cooks off.

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John3141

Mon Nov 24 09:53:42 -0800 2008

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You don't need to back it up with anything except a high precision laser based distance meter, capable of detecting the resonating effects of the sonic beam on the hull of the enemy vessel.  A simple computer program to find the most effective combination of resonant frequencies, and the pirate ship shakes itself to pieces.  Of course, this would not be effective on the inflatable boarding craft, but if you have let them get that close, you already have problems and probably not enough time for defense before you are in range of the pirate with an RPG.

Boombox Security Against Pirates

James Parker

Sat Nov 22 10:31:57 -0800 2008

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Like it or not, this--the sonic cannon and the fire hose--is probably the sort of thing we will be seeing.  Less than a fulsome response to criminals of the worst sort, it will be seen as the politically correct thing to do in the first few years of the New World Order. 

What was it that was said of those who don't read history?

While it astonishes me that big merchantmen are such easy pushovers, I am even more amazed that all of the forces summoned in response to these dandy thugs have yet to deal effectively with just about ANY of the pirates.

The Indian frigate's action is the sole exception.  We have all the world's navies staring at the anchored MV Faiva, but nothing is done.  No commando raid, no limpet mine, nothing.  (The ship was carrying a cargo of illegal tanks for Sudan, but the manifest said Kenya.  Sudan's Al-Bashir is accused of genocide.)  The Russians got there, but nothing. 

You would think the Saudis would favor a commando raid on their ship.

Assuming a few pirates are taken alive, then the Saudis could say they had apprehended criminals on their territory.  And you know what happens next.

The world's navies patrol, but without results.  Is it just that the pirates' boats are too small and too fast?  The frigates carry helicopters.  I don't get why they haven't shot any.  Has the atmosphere of political correctness infected them too?  

I like the idea of the Q-ships, myself.