School shooting: but don't mention guns!

[rwguinn]

You are not the first to say some form of this, and you won't be the last. A gun is a weapon; a car is not. How is this difficult to understand? A car makes many things in life much easier, and some things possible that otherwise would not be. A gun is for shooting things. On the basis that it's useful for, say, gamekeepers to shoot things, few people are campaigning to make guns completely illegal. It is just the case that a cost-benefit analysis of making guns widely available to the public appears to some people to show it not to be worth it.

Simply saying that cars kill more people and no one wants to ban them is a supremely facile argument.

A Firearm is a tool
A vehicle is a tool
so are hammers, knives, and chainsaws
All can be misused and abused with deadly consequences.
Why blame the tool in one case, and not any of the others?

 

[Rat]

It is just the case that a cost-benefit analysis of making guns widely available to the public appears to some people to show it not to be worth it.

 

[Nessie]

A Firearm is a tool
A vehicle is a tool
so are hammers, knives, and chainsaws
All can be misused and abused with deadly consequences.
Why blame the tool in one case, and not any of the others?

Remove firearms and society will not grind to a halt. Vermin can be culled with traps or hunted with spears and bow and arrow. You could also remove chainsaws and make people go back to axes and hand saws, so that would be doable. Hammers, I cannot see an alternative for them that is not just calling something else a hammer (like a rock being used to hit a nail into wood would be in effect a hammer). Knives, that would cause huge difficulties especially if you mean any portable bladed instrument. Ban vehicles and society would collapse within the predicted 5 days between us and total anarchy. The other favourite in arguments like this, swimming pools, you could ban them and society would manage fine and use lakes, rivers and the sea instead.

 

[GeeMack]

All you do is say that is not true and then make claims of dishonesty, fear, lying and not understanding English.

That is another one of those things you've said which are not true. There's a word for that. I have been pointing out your inability to objectively support your claim. Your arguments are built on falsehoods, arguments from fear, incredulity, and ignorance, and apparent misunderstandings of the English language. Those are the grounds for your failure. But the fact of the matter is that you made a claim which you clearly cannot support.

Come back when you are able to link to the surveys I have used as evidence whereby you can show how may claims are incorrect based on that evidence.

I have no requirement to demonstrate that your claim is not true. The burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that your claim is true. The abject dishonesty in trying to deflect responsibility for your burden of proof is once again noted.

Your claim...

But the non NRA gun owners are still a force which is anti-gun control.

... remains unsupported.

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

A Firearm is a tool
A vehicle is a tool
so are hammers, knives, and chainsaws
All can be misused and abused with deadly consequences.
Why blame the tool in one case, and not any of the others?

To be fair, none of the tools but firearms are specifically designed to kill other people.

 

[Nessie]

That is another one of those things you've said which are not true. There's a word for that. I have been pointing out your inability to objectively support your claim. Your arguments are built on falsehoods, arguments from fear, incredulity, and ignorance, and apparent misunderstandings of the English language. Those are the grounds for your failure. But the fact of the matter is that you made a claim which you clearly cannot support.

So in response to me saying "All you do is say that is not true and then make claims of dishonesty, fear, lying and not understanding English." you do exactly the same again!!!!!!!

I have no requirement to demonstrate that your claim is not true. The burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that your claim is true. The abject dishonesty in trying to deflect responsibility for your burden of proof is once again noted.

This is a debate, not a court of law where you have appointed yourself the judge. In a debate each side puts forward their case, backed by evidence and then each side examines the others case and evidence and we see how things go from there. The reality of debate forums is that then tend to wind down into stalemate, but every so often someone makes a point that can change a mind.

Your claim...

​

... remains unsupported.

The problem for you is that using your same technique I will now say, that is not true. You are being dishonest, ignorant, offensive and your inability to evidence anything means you are useless in a properly conducted debate.

Then any come back you may have, even if evidenced I will then say again, that is not true, you are being dishonest, ignorant etc, ad nauseam.

The correct response in a debate would be to explain why you think I am wrong and to then present your case.

http://www.actdu.org.au/archives/actein_site/basicskills.html

 

[Darat]

I think it's slightly weird that any time people are killed with a gun, a certain portion of the population decides that we now need to ban guns.

When a nice young family is splattered around a telephone pole, nobody calls for a ban on cars. The logic with guns is that it wouldn't have happened without it, so we need to ban it. Yet the car crash wouldn't have happened either without the car, and we don't feel the need to ban motor vehicles.


...snip..

No but we do find people campaigning for safety measures on roads and cars. For example there may be certain stretches of road that have seemed to have a higher than usual incident of such accidents and you will find locals campaigning for something to be done, for example make a road one way, have safety cameras erected and so on.

 

[GeeMack]

[* Irrelevant babbling snipped. *]

Your claim...

But the non NRA gun owners are still a force which is anti-gun control.

... remains unsupported. It is your claim. It is your responsibility to support it. You have failed.

 

[Darat]

A Firearm is a tool
A vehicle is a tool
so are hammers, knives, and chainsaws
All can be misused and abused with deadly consequences.
Why blame the tool in one case, and not any of the others?

I think you've got your reasoning back-to-front. We tend to have restrictions on many things that can be dangerous, for example the instant shut off on chainsaws that seeks to stop people cutting their leg off! You seem to be arguing that even if guns were just a tool like the other things you list that it is guns that should be treated differently to the other tools.

 

[Nessie]

Your claim...

​

... remains unsupported. It is your claim. It is your responsibility to support it. You have failed.

Please learn how to debate properly. If you think my argument is unsupported and has failed say why.

 

[Nessie]

Money donated as political contributions from 1990 to 2010

http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp#politics

Gun Rights Total $22,467,579, 85% of that to the Republicans

Gun Control Total $1,888,886, 94% of that went to the Democrats.


Then the money is going where the support is

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162...ricter-gun-control-at-10-year-high/?pageNum=2

Gun Control laws should be more strict Rep 38%, Dem 78%

Gun Control laws should less strict Rep 14%, Dem 5%

Gun Control laws should be kept as is Rep 41%, Dem 14%

Yet there are those who think that there is no influence over the law makers by the gun rights, anti-control side.

In fact both sides have an influence, its is just that the gun rights side spend more and as a result they get more favourable laws. As earlier posts and links have show the gun owners are more in favour of gun rights over gun control.

 

[Light23]

Remove firearms and society will not grind to a halt. Vermin can be culled with traps or hunted with spears and bow and arrow. You could also remove chainsaws and make people go back to axes and hand saws, so that would be doable. Hammers, I cannot see an alternative for them that is not just calling something else a hammer (like a rock being used to hit a nail into wood would be in effect a hammer). Knives, that would cause huge difficulties especially if you mean any portable bladed instrument. Ban vehicles and society would collapse within the predicted 5 days between us and total anarchy. The other favourite in arguments like this, swimming pools, you could ban them and society would manage fine and use lakes, rivers and the sea instead.

This is actually a pretty good argument.

However, do you not feel that it might be necessary for people to own a gun in order to defend themselves? Yes, it may not be all that likely for an intruder to break into my home and try to kill me, but this does and will happen to a significant number of people.

Is it not possible that the uses of guns for self-defence and as a deterrent could actually outweigh the damage they do?

Although that's incredibly problematic to quantify - both the damage caused and the good done. Guns used in murders may just have been the most preferable tool, and the murders might have taken place in the absence of a gun.

The number of times guns are used in self-defence can be estimated (I read a study where it was estimated at 2.5million times a year), but their effect as a deterrent cannot.

Either way, I wouldn't be in favour of making a decision to ban guns based on some freak incident, even if the victims are kids. You'd be removing a person's only reliable means of self-defence from them permanently, which could hurt a lot of people, for a long, long time.

Btw, if you could get some other highly effective non-lethal self-defence tool, I would be in favour of banning guns. It would probably require some form of range, like a taser which fires those prongs. The problem with one of those is single shot capability, the potential of not making it through clothing, and being unable to permanently stop an attacker.

 

[DavidJames]

This is actually a pretty good argument.

However, do you not feel that it might be necessary for people to own a gun in order to defend themselves? Yes, it may not be all that likely for an intruder to break into my home and try to kill me, but this does and will happen to a significant number of people.

Is it not possible that the uses of guns for self-defence and as a deterrent could actually outweigh the damage they do?

Those questions have been asked and answered. Multiple times in multiple threads on this forum, in fact. Independent research shows you or someone in your home is more likely to be harmed with your gun then you are likely to use the gun in defense of your home.

 

[Light23]

Those questions have been asked and answered. Multiple times in multiple threads on this forum, in fact. Independent research shows you or someone in your home is more likely to be harmed with your gun then you are likely to use the gun in defense of your home.

Couldn't that stat be because it's more likely you or a family member will commit suicide, or get into an argument and kill each other, than it is that you will need to defend your life from an intruder? And if a gun is present it will be used in the suicide since this is a preferable choice, and the same with a deadly argument.


So couldn't the stat be misleading? It really depends on why the statistic is as it is in the first place. Your use of it insinuates that the gun makes it more likely you or your family will be harmed, than if a gun was not present.

 

[Ranb]

To be fair, none of the tools but firearms are specifically designed to kill other people.

Manufacturers design guns for specific purposes besides killing people. How did you come to the conclusion that a gun designed to hunt animals or be used in Olympic competition was actually designed to kill humans?

Ranb

 

[AlBell]

Please learn how to debate properly. If you think my argument is unsupported and has failed say why.

Sorry, this is a skeptics forum, not a debate club. The assertion you made needs evidence that you furnish; opponents have no responsibility to provide proof of what you consider alternate views until you have provided evidence that backs your claim.

 

[GeeMack]

Please learn how to debate properly. If you think my argument is unsupported and has failed say why.

Your argument is unsupported because in order to support it you would have to objectively demonstrate this claim to be true...

But the non NRA gun owners are still a force which is anti-gun control.

You have not done that, and that is why you have failed. Please learn how to debate properly. Part of that is understanding that you are responsible for supporting your claim. Even your own alleged evidence refutes your claim...

Money donated as political contributions from 1990 to 2010

http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp#politics

Gun Rights Total $22,467,579, 85% of that to the Republicans

Gun Control Total $1,888,886, 94% of that went to the Democrats.

Then the money is going where the support is

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162...ricter-gun-control-at-10-year-high/?pageNum=2

Gun Control laws should be more strict Rep 38%, Dem 78%

Gun Control laws should less strict Rep 14%, Dem 5%

Gun Control laws should be kept as is Rep 41%, Dem 14%

Yet there are those who think that there is no influence over the law makers by the gun rights, anti-control side.

In fact both sides have an influence, its is just that the gun rights side spend more and as a result they get more favourable laws. As earlier posts and links have show the gun owners are more in favour of gun rights over gun control.

Whether you're being dishonest or just communicating very poorly, you are conflating those who do not support more gun control with being anti-gun control. You are conflating those who support gun rights with being anti-gun control. You mention people favoring gun rights over gun control as if they are mutually exclusive. They aren't, so whether it's dishonesty or lousy communication that gets you there, your reasoning is flawed. There is near universal agreement that gun control is acceptable. And you have still failed to show that anyone at all is anti-gun control. So this claim...

But the non NRA gun owners are still a force which is anti-gun control.

... remains unsupported.

 

[rwguinn]

Your argument is unsupported because in order to support it you would have to objectively demonstrate this claim to be true...
You have not done that, and that is why you have failed. Please learn how to debate properly. Part of that is understanding that you are responsible for supporting your claim. Even your own alleged evidence refutes your claim...




Whether you're being dishonest or just communicating very poorly, you are conflating those who do not support more gun control with being anti-gun control. You are conflating those who support gun rights with being anti-gun control. You mention people favoring gun rights over gun control as if they are mutually exclusive. They aren't, so whether it's dishonesty or lousy communication that gets you there, your reasoning is flawed. There is near universal agreement that gun control is acceptable. And you have still failed to show that anyone at all is anti-gun control. So this claim...
... remains unsupported.

It's dishonesty. Several of us have pointed out that we would support certain specific and some general "controls".
but "Until gun owners accept responsibility" is the repeated lie from our friend across the pond.

 

[triforcharity]

Especially considering quite a few of us agreed that there are some gun control that is necessary, and also some more gun control that could be implemented to make our country better and safer.

But, for some reason, he ignores that.

 

[gumboot]

I think it's slightly weird that any time people are killed with a gun, a certain portion of the population decides that we now need to ban guns.

When a nice young family is splattered around a telephone pole, nobody calls for a ban on cars. The logic with guns is that it wouldn't have happened without it, so we need to ban it. Yet the car crash wouldn't have happened either without the car, and we don't feel the need to ban motor vehicles.

1,900 people die on the roads each year in the UK, and I don't think this includes pedestrians hit by cars. I'd imagine the number of children killed in the UK alone this year either while on the road, or from being hit as pedestrians is >20.

The only difference I can see is that a lot of people are anti-gun and inevitably blame it for the death, whereas most people have a car and view any car death as a simple tragedy.

Even when the gun is clearly not at fault, a lot of people still feel the need to blame it. For example, when that NFL linebacker shot his girlfriend - he used a gun, so clearly this wouldn't have happened without a gun, right? This ignores the fact that he's a very large, trained, professional athlete who would have no problem killing me, let alone a small woman.

Even when someone is murdered with a knife, nobody again blames the availability of a knife. When someone goes on a killing spree with a knife or an axe and kills ten people in China, it's a footnote in the paper. When someone goes on a killing spree with a gun, it's sensationalized and is always front page news.

I think there might be a number of things at play here, which you're not taking into account. Firstly, you have to consider the fact that few people call for outright bans on firearms after such a shooting, and most people don't take such calls seriously. What is far more common is a call to increase regulation of firearms or restrict access to particular types of weapons that are perceived as more dangerous (often this is itself based on ignorance about firearms, but that's another issue entirely).

This sort of response is far from unique to firearms. In the 1980s the MADD movement reacted to high levels of drunk driving by calling on stricter regulation of drunk drivers.

Serious air accidents result in calls to increase regulation of air safety. Terrorist incidents result in calls to increase national security and counter-terrorism measures.

In New Zealand high numbers of drownings in backyard pools resulted in laws regulating such things as fencing. High numbers of brain injury from cycling accidents resulted in mandatory use of helmets. Currently there are calls to restrict the engine size of cars for young drivers because of the problems with so-called "boy racers".

There is nothing really unusual about the way society reacts to killing sprees with guns.

But when comparing killing sprees to other causes of death and injury, it's very important not to make direct comparisons, because there are numerous factors that affect how people react to them. Such as:

1. Frequency - you have to take into account how widespread the event is to assess the level of danger. Americans make billions of car trips every single years, so while the death and injury rate is quite high, relative to the volume of car use it's actually rather low.

2. Severity - you'll note that one-off shootings or single suicides seldom result in calls to restrict guns, despite representing the lion's share of gun violence. High-casualty events always cause more calls for restrictions. If we were seeing single car accidents resulting in enormous numbers of injury and death you'd see widespread calls to increase regulation of cars too (which is why society regulates air travel far, far more tightly than motor vehicle travel). To use a car example, there are periodic calls to impose speed limits on German autobahns, and these often follow particularly spectacular car accidents which result from very high speeds. In September 2011 a school bus in New Zealand collided with a logging truck, resulting in over 30 children being injured, and this led to widespread calls to put seat belts on school buses and prohibit standing passengers.

3. Benefit-Cost Relationship - ultimately any sort of control comes down to society's perceived benefit-cost balance. The more useful and important something is seen to be, the more harm society is willing to accept. Guns are not as vital to society as motor cars, therefore society will generally not accept as high a cost for retaining use of them. Once you get into specific types of firearm, the perceived usefulness of those items can often decrease even further. For example you'll often hear people remark that they don't mind people having guns, but they shouldn't have "assault weapons" as they're not necessary. Likewise countries like Australia, the UK and New Zealand apply greater restriction to weapons that are perceived as unnecessary.

4. Perceived effectiveness of increased control - this comes back to the misguided calls to ban "assault weapons" that you hear about. When people are ignorant of an issue they might seek changes because they think they'll make a difference. Something that is already highly regulated is less likely to be made safer by more regulation. Many people view firearms as poorly regulated, so there's an assumption that tighter regulation will make them safer.