The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
DemProgs and conservatives alike share the same concerns: they don’t want killers to have guns. It’s just that DemProgs haven’t quite figured out who the real killers are. Their obsessive focus is on individuals and corporations. — Bookworm’s 5-Point Gun Manifesto; or why I believe in gun rights
RTWT. It bears repeating.
(h/t to reader Scott who sent me a link via email.)
So Hillary comes out and says:
…we cannot let a minority of people — and that’s what it is, it is a minority of people — hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people.
She’s speaking about the right to arms, but it really doesn’t matter.
Why do we have a Constitution and Bill of Rights?
TO PROTECT THE RIGHTS OF THE INDIVIDUAL – the smallest minority there is.
The whole of the Bill (of Rights) is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals…. It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of. — Albert Gallatin of the New York Historical Society, October 7, 1789.
—
The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections. – West Virginia v Barnette (1943)
We already knew that Hillary was a collectivist, but this is just the cherry on top.
With all the kerfuffle over the OCT guys toting long guns into Chipotle, etc., I humbly submit that they’ve lost track of the goal. The idea is to make people COMFORTABLE around firearms, and you don’t do that by waving them in their faces. As other people have noted, this:
and this:
share a common meme – “We’re not going away, get used to us!” But waving guns in the face of the public really isn’t any more effective than waving genitalia. However, as Teresa Nielson Hayden put it so well several years ago,
Basically, I figure guns are like gays: They seem a lot more sinister and threatening until you get to know a few; and once you have one in the house, you can get downright defensive about them.
It’s that “getting to know a few” that we need to keep concentrating on. THIS is how we keep winning:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yygVDFR_YWk?rel=0]
It’s “The Smile.” You ALWAYS get The Smile.
Scares the hell out of the anti-gunners, that does.
Sweet BLEEDING Jeebus. I thought “professional” “news” “media” had “layers of editors and fact-checkers.” Here’s just the FIRST PARAGRAPH of a Guardian (UK) article.
A plan by President Barack Obama to close a loophole which allows Americans to buy weapons such as machine guns, grenades and sawn-off shotguns without undergoing background checks is set to be delayed, due to intense opposition from the NRA and other anti-gun-control activists.
And it goes on like that!
The mind boggles.
Read the comments, too.
(h/t to my favorite Merchant O’Death.)
Right now I was[sic] given a gun, the best gun in the world, the only thing I’d want to do it find a way to be as far from it at all times. Guns make people do stupid things, they attract problems and create situations where people get killed.
(Bold emphasis mine.) Sounds like another Barry.
OK, so someone asked the question Why is the NRA is so vehement that the 2nd Amendment is interpreted as broadly as possible and is interpreted as if it’s 1776?
One “Andy Zehner, statistical analyst at Purdue University” gave an answer. Let the frivolity begin!
They espouse a strong interpretation of the 2nd amendment because it works to their favor. But I don’t believe the NRA is much concerned about civil rights as a principle. The NRA works for what is beneficial to gun manufacturers.
From their point of view, more guns is the only answer. If the problem is “Not Enough Guns,” then the answer is “More guns.” If the problem is “Too Many guns,” the answer still is, “More Guns.”
Are you sure about the second part of your question? I don’t think the NRA wants to “interpret as if it’s 1776.” I think if Thomas Jefferson came into the room, Wayne LaPierre would dismiss him as quickly as he dismissed the Sandy Hook survivors. Cleaving to 1776 and original intent means justifying private gun ownership in terms of a “well-regulated militia.” That isn’t something the NRA wants to have to do. They want “The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” and damn the consequences.
I replied:
Cleaving to 1776 and original intent means justifying private gun ownership in terms of a “well-regulated militia.” That isn’t something the NRA wants to have to do.
So you mean that the NRA wouldn’t want all eligible males of military age to be required to keep an M4 carbine, body armor, and a standard infantryman’s loadout of ammunition at home? (See The Militia Act of 1792.) (And given their support for women with guns, perhaps them too?) Actually, I don’t think they’d really have much of a problem with that. But if instead you mean that they’re more interested in making sure that deer and duck hunters get to keep their wood-and-blued-steel guns, well, you may have a point.
What they’ve worked for in recent decades has been ensuring that law-abiding citizens are not made unable to defend themselves by state action. The NRA (along with the Second Amendment Foundation and many other national and state pro-rights groups) have worked towards expanding right-to-carry laws nationwide, so that now there are NO states where concealed-carry is outright prohibited, and only eight states where the law remains “may issue” instead of “shall issue.”
And the worst thing that can be said for this massive expansion in the right to arms is that it might not have contributed to the massive drop in violent crime that’s been recorded since the mid-1990’s.
So, yeah: “More guns” does seem to have been “the answer.” Or at least, it’s not “the problem.”
Facts are funny that way.
Of course, he took the bait:
“So you mean that the NRA wouldn’t want all eligible males of military age to be required to keep an M4 carbine, body armor, and a standard infantryman’s loadout of ammunition at home?”
No, I don’t think the NRA would want that. Dictating which weapons and the amount of ammunition would be a considerable curtailment of gun owners’ rights as they exist today. If I want a BushMaster or a Glock, what right has the government to tell me I have to have a M4?
And more to the point, the makers of the BushMaster and the Glock wouldn’t want that (unless one of them happens to make the M4, which I don’t know and am not going to bother to look up.)
So I set the hook:
Of course you won’t bother to educate yourself. Your mind is made up! Facts are irrelevant!
Yes, Bushmaster does make M4 carbine clones. As do over two hundred other manufacturers including (but not limited to) Armalite, Colt’s Manufacturing, Stag Arms, Rock River, DPMS, H&K, Fabrique Nationale, Barrett, and on and on and on. The AR-15 platform is the most popular rifle sold today, after all.
What right would the government have to tell you you must have an M4? Surely you jest! The same right it has to tell you you must have health insurance, of course!! (Though in point of fact, it isn’t the government’s right – governments don’t have rights. Governments have powers.) Supporters of the Patient Protection and Affordable (yeah, right) Care Act held up the 1792 Militia Act as a model for the individual mandate.
And the government wouldn’t tell you you must have a Glock. If anything, they’d tell you you must have either a Beretta 92 (standard 9mm issue sidearm) or a 1911 (the previous standard issue sidearm). I’d bet on the latter, since there are just as many manufacturers of that weapon as there are manufacturers of M4 carbines.
We’ll see if he doubles-down on the stupid.
UPDATE: He did.
There is logical fallacy called “shifting ground” or non sequitor(sic), in which the arguer fails to address the rightness or wrongness of what has been said, and instead jumps to a different place without connecting what they are saying now with what was said previously.
Here’s an example:
Earlier Kevin Baker said: “So you mean that the NRA wouldn’t want all eligible males of military age to be required to keep an M4 carbine?”
I responded that I thought the NRA would not want that. I responded to the question he asked, which was about what the NRA would want. I said nothing about whether the government would want that or would do that. Clearly, what the government would or wouldn’t do is a different question from what the NRA would want.
And then Kevin Baker implies (rudely) that I’m all kinds of wrong because the government would do one thing rather than something else. But we weren’t even talking about what the government would do.
Oh, and here’s a bonus logical fallacy: All the minutia about which gun maker manufacturers which types of weapons proves that Kevin Baker knows more than I know about guns. He know a lot about guns, in fact. But it’s all just stacked evidence or extraneous detail. He could expend any number of words listing which manufacturer makes which guns and it wouldn’t erode the validity of my point in the slightest. My point stands: The maker of any particular gun wouldn’t want people to be required to own different guns from the ones they make, and the NRA wouldn’t want such requirements as opposed to unlimited right to own guns.
Sounds like he’s got a little sand in his mangina. We’ll see if he replies to this:
Oh, there’s some “ground shifting” going on, but it’s not coming from me.
“Earlier Kevin Baker said: ‘So you mean that the NRA wouldn’t want all eligible males of military age to be required to keep an M4 carbine.’
“I responded that I thought the NRA would not want that. I responded to the question he asked, which was about what the NRA would want.”
My question was in direct response to your original assertions: “The NRA works for what is beneficial to gun manufacturers.” and: “Cleaving to 1776 and original intent means justifying private gun ownership in terms of a “well-regulated militia.” That isn’t something the NRA wants to have to do.”
Given those two assertions, I asked if you meant that the NRA wouldn’t want all males of military age to be required to supply themselves with rifles suitable for militia duty as per the Militia Act of 1792? After all, if “The NRA works for what is beneficial to gun manufacturers,” what would be more beneficial to gun manufacturers than a need to produce, oh, 100 million M4 carbines?
“I said nothing about whether the government would want that or would do that. Clearly, what the government would or wouldn’t do is a different question from what the NRA would want.”
Read your own reply:
“If I want a BushMaster or a Glock, what right has the government to tell me I have to have a M4?”
Since what people decry is the NRA’s involvement in legislation (or stopping of said legislation) then the basic question is what the NRA can or can’t get the government to do. Restoration of the Milita Act – “justifying private gun ownership in terms of a “well-regulated militia” – would fit that bill.
“And then Kevin Baker implies (rudely) that I’m all kinds of wrong because the government would do one thing rather than something else. But we weren’t even talking about what the government would do.”
And that right there is “ground shifting.” I imply you’re “all kinds of wrong” because you’re all kinds of wrong, but we were most definitely discussing what the government COULD do if influenced by the NRA for the benefit of gun manufacturers, as you asserted is their raison d’etre.
“My point stands: The maker of any particular gun wouldn’t want people to be required to own different guns from the ones they make, and the NRA wouldn’t want such requirements as opposed to unlimited right to own guns.”
But you didn’t assert that the NRA exists to benefit “the maker of any particular gun”. (Thus, you’re shifting the ground, not me.) You asserted that the NRA exists to benefit gun manufacturers. All or most or many of them. If this is true, then creating a demand for, say, 100 million M4 carbines and 100 million 1911 pistols (both of which are made by numerous manufacturers) would be a net benefit to “gun manufacturers,” Q.E.D.
And once you’ve established not only a right, but a DUTY to possess weapons suitable for use in militia service, what does it matter if those same individuals have “sporting” rifles, shotguns and handguns? In essence, haven’t you established an “unlimited right to own guns” (from your perspective)?
UPDATE II: Aaaaand this one’s over:
You’re all sound and no sense. You really don’t see your errors, do you?
Pot? Meet kettle.
Since I’m not posting here much, I guess I can recycle my stuff from other sites.
In today’s episode, I take one Nick Lilavois to task for his response to the question “Why are fully automatic guns banned for civilians without special permits in the US?“
Here’s the thread to date, his responses in blue background, mine in green:
Why are only people with special permits allowed to fly a plane?
Because those who do not have those permits would be putting people’s lives at risk.
Requiring some training, and some reason, why certain people are allowed to do certain dangerous things is a way to minimize death and injury for all of us.
And as a side thought- I get why someone would want to fly a plane. While it may be dangerous, when used properly it is not.
It is just not the same with a gun. When used properly, as intended by the manufacturer, someone ends up dead.
Really? I might agree with you concerning my M1 Garand, M1 Carbine, No. 5 Enfield, 1917 Enfield or P14, but my Thompson/Center Encore? My Ruger Mk II? My Remington XP-100? These are all designed to kill people?
My what an odd world you occupy.
Oh, the “tax stamp” you get from the government that allows you to possess a fully-automatic weapon, short-barreled rifle, short-barreled shotgun, suppressor, “destructive device” or “any other weapon” covered under the 1934 National Firearms Act is NOT a “license to operate” in the way a pilot license is. It’s just a tax form. It requires no training nor “reason” – just approval from the government.
Quote:
“These are all designed to kill people?”Pick any one of the items in your collection, load it, point it at your spouse or child and pull the trigger.
Notice what happens.
The odd thing about the world I occupy is that people like you would even WANT to own such things.
The odd thing about the world I occupy is that people like you don’t seem to understand who is responsible for their safety. As a friend of mine once put it,
In a truly civil society peopled primarily by enlightened, sober individuals, the carriage of arms might be deemed gratuitous, but it is nonetheless harmless. In a society that measures up to anything less than that, the option to carry arms is a necessity.
We know what the world was like when nobody had firearms. It was run primarily by large men with swords, and was not just, fair, or democratic.
Now, which of us belongs to the “reality-based” community?
Still me, I’m in the reality-based community, because I realize the people responsible for my safety are the police and the military, and to an extent judges, lawyers, wardens, etc.
Not regular citizens with guns.
I never said I had a problem with cops having guns, and soldiers without guns would be silly.
As the constitution says rather clearly in the 2nd amendment, it is perfectly OK for men in a well-regulated militia to bear arms.
Not regular citizens NOT in a militia.
Heck, you still don’t get that guns were designed to kill people, so you certainly can’t claim you are dealing with reality.
BTW- you do know that democracy was invented in ancient Greece, LONG before the invention of guns, don’t you?
You do realize that the presence or absence of guns has nothing whatsoever to do with curtailing the power of the government, because your vast arsenal will do nothing to save you from a drone strike, a tank, a grandee launcher, or anything else that took down the cult in Wacco, Texas? You do understand that, right?
So the whole concept that people having guns protects us from an imaginary government out of control is just a bunch of mental masturbation because, let’s face it- you have guns because you WANT them. You LIKE them. You do not NEED them.
You collecting guns is no different from an old lady collecting little porcelain figurines from the Hallmark store, except that very few people get killed by porcelain figurines.
See? THAT was reality.
“Still me, I’m in the reality-based community, because I realize the people responsible for my safety are the police and the military, and to an extent judges, lawyers, wardens, etc.”
So, have you ever read the Supreme Court’s Warren v. District of Columbia decision from 1981? Or the more recent Castle Rock v. Gozales decision from 2005? I suggest you might find them enlightening. From Warren:
“A publicly maintained police force constitutes a basic governmental service provided to benefit the community at large by promoting public peace, safety and good order. The extent and quality of police protection afforded to the community necessarily depends upon the availability of public resources and upon legislative or administrative determinations concerning allocation of those resources. Riss v. City of New York, supra. The public, through its representative officials, recruits, trains, maintains and disciplines its police force and determines the manner in which personnel are deployed. At any given time, publicly furnished police protection may accrue to the personal benefit of individual citizens, but at all times the needs and interests of the community at large predominate. Private resources and needs have little direct effect upon the nature of police services provided to the public. Accordingly, courts have without exception concluded that when a municipality or other governmental entity undertakes to furnish police services, it assumes a duty only to the public at large and not to individual members of the community.” (Bold my emphasis.)
“Individual members of the community” being, well, YOU. And me. Something bad happens, they don’t show up, they’re not at fault. They do show up and don’t do anything, they’re not at fault.
THAT’S the “real world.”
“As the constitution says rather clearly in the 2nd amendment, it is perfectly OK for men in a well-regulated militia to bear arms.
“Not regular citizens NOT in a militia.”
Oh really? Are you familiar with 10 U.S. Code § 311 – Militia: composition and classes?
“(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are—
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.”In other words, if you’re between the ages of 17 and 45, male and are or intend to become a U.S. citizen, or a female citizen member of the National Guard, you, my friend, are a member of the militia – by Federal law.
Have you read the 1857 Scott v. Sandford Supreme Court decision? This one is reviled because it denied citizenship to blacks, free or slave, but it did so under the reasoning that citizenship:
“…would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognised as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.”
It seems the Supreme Court of 1857 understood the Second Amendment somewhat differently than you do, seeing as THEY did not consider milita service to be a requirement. So after a war in which hundreds of thousands died to determine just who WERE going to be citizens, we passed the 13th Amendment making blacks citizens, and the 14th Amendment ensuring that they would get the same rights as everyone else. Of course, that didn’t pan out too well with all those Jim Crow laws. But in 1875’s U.S. v. Cruikshank the court once again declared what it was the Second Amendment protected, while denying that protection to blacks:
“The right there specified is that of ‘bearing arms for a lawful purpose.’ This is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed; but this, as has been seen, means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress. This is one of the amendments that has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government, leaving the people to look for their protection against any violation by their fellow-citizens of the rights it recognizes….”
In other words, “It’s not the job of the .gov to protect your (pre-existing, individual) right to arms (also not mentioning militia service). See your friendly neighborhood Klansman about that.”
So we finally got another Supreme Court decision on the topic of the meaning of the Second Amendment in District of Colubia v. Heller, in which the Court said:
“The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes….”
And slightly later the McDonald v. Chicago decision “incorporated” the Heller decision under the 14th Amendment’s
“privileges or immunities” clause (which wording dates back to the Dred Scott decision)“Due Process” clause against STATE infringement of the fundamental, individual right, just as the First Amendment, Fourth Amendment and Fifth Amendments have been. (Third, too, but not by SCOTUS.) [Ed. note: I originally stated that McDonald was decided under the “Privileges or Immunities” clause of the 14th. That was an error. In the 5-4 decision, four Justices found in favor of McDonald based on the “Due Process” clause. Clarence Thomas found in favor based on the “Privileges or Immunities” clause. I happen to think he was correct, but that’s not the basis of the majority decision. My error.]THAT’S the “real world.”
Democracy did originate in Greece, but it was a strictly limited franchise – you are aware of who the Helots were, right? They didn’t get to vote.
Or own swords.
“You do realize that the presence or absence of guns has nothing whatsoever to do with curtailing the power of the government, because your vast arsenal will do nothing to save you from a drone strike, a tank, a grandee(sic) launcher, or anything else that took down the cult in Wacco(sic), Texas? You do understand that, right?”
I admit that I’m really curious as to what a “grandee launcher” would look like, and why would I want to launch a Spanish nobleman anyway? As to whether guns might “curtail the power of government,” you might want to check in on what just went down in Nevada over the weekend. Not the best example, but who blinked first?
Personally, I’m more concerned about what happened in places like Los Angeles during the Rodney King riots, or New Orleans post Katrina, when law-enforcement (you remember, those guys who are not responsible for your safety?) broke down in the face of riots and natural disasters. I recommend you read Jew Without a Gun on the topic of the LA riots. Very enlightening.
True, I like guns, I want them, and I hope – fervently – never to NEED them, but as others have said it’s better to have and not need than need and not have.
Finally, I’ll quote Alex Kozinski, Chief Judge of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on the topic of the Second Amendment from his 2003 dissent to Silveira v. Lockyer:
“The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed – where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.“
Should those contingencies come to pass, I intend to still have a vote.
So: the government ISN’T responsible for your protection; depending on the courts is hit-and-miss; if you believe in non-discrimination, pretty much EVERYBODY is the militia; the Second Amendment protects an individual right to arms OUTSIDE militia service; Grecian democracy wasn’t really all that democratic; the government DOES pay attention to armed citizens; and being armed is not useless in the face of adversity, disaster and runaway government.
And THAT’S the world I live in. I submit that it reflects reality a great deal more closely than does the one you apparently occupy
No response as of yet.
A while back over at Quora.com I responded to the question, “How do you solve the gun problem in the United States in a realistic way?” thus:
America does not have a “gun problem.” It has an inner-city violent crime problem. Yes, I understand that the majority of deaths attributable to firearms are suicides, but suicide rates seem to be unaffected by firearm availability. If firearms are not available, other methods are substituted and are equally effective. The U.S., for all of its guns, ranks rather low for suicide internationally.
Criminal homicide is heavily concentrated in large urban centers, in specific areas of those large urban centers, and among a very small, self-identifying group in those specific areas. Yet no one raises a hue-and-cry when one more inner-city youth is gunned down by another inner-city youth, especially when both of them have long criminal records of escalating violence.
It’s been two years since Trayvon Martin died. During that period, more than 10,000 young black men 34 years of age or younger have died of criminal homicide by firearm.
Name three without using Google or another search engine.
Yet every time the media gets a victim they can run with, it’s the rural gun owner in Ohio or Wyoming they want to slap new restrictions on. We’ve watched it happen for literally decades, a slow-motion hate crime against gun owners, because “the problem” is defined as (and only as) “too many guns.”
Young black men are killed – overwhelmingly by other young black men – at a rate six times higher than the rest of the population. A demographic that consists of less than 7% of the population makes up over 40% of the victims, but no one wants to talk about it, or try to find a solution for it other than “midnight basketball” or greater welfare subsidies.
No, it’s much easier (and politically safer) to blame “gun availability” and the “gun culture.” Here’s a newsflash: There are three distinct “gun cultures” – one recreational, one defensive, and one criminal. Guess which one “gun control” doesn’t have any effect on?
So tonight I get an email that someone has responded to my answer. Here’s the comment in its entirety by one “Jesse James Richard”:
Interesting answer, but yes the US does have a gun problem by the standards of highly developed nations based on gun related deaths. From your answer I get you’re saying gun related death don’t matter because they are committed by black people.
Violence in the developed world is invariably related to poverty, so by extension I read that it gun related deaths don’t matter because they happen to the poor and should be dismissed because they rarely effect white (important) people.
I am a gun owner.
Here’s my reply:
“From your answer I get you’re saying gun related death don’t matter because they are committed by black people.”
Then you need to improve your logic skills.
“Violence in the developed world is invariably related to poverty, so by extension I read that it gun related deaths don’t matter because they happen to the poor and should be dismissed because they rarely effect white (important) people.”
So I’m not only a racist, I hate poor people too. Check.
“I am a gun owner.”
You forgot the “But….” My logic skills are quite good, though, so I know it’s implied: “I am a gun owner, but not a racist, classist, homophobic, anti-immigrant climate-denier like you.” Did I miss anything?
Now that we’ve gotten your obvious social sensitivity and implied moral superiority out of the way, let’s discuss FACTS.
Here’s the deal, Jesse James: facts are not racist. They’re not classist, they’re not homophobic, they’re not anti-environment, anti-immigrant, anti-handicapped or anything else – they’re just facts.
The inability to look at FACTS because of the fear of saying something politically incorrect is the reason nothing ever gets done.
Gun control – what politicians do instead of something.
I’m saying deaths – all deaths – matter, not just “gun deaths.” And that if you want to affect THAT problem, then you have to look at who is dying and where they are dying and why they are dying. Making rural and suburban gun owners license and register their firearms does not address the deaths of inner-city youths, regardless of the color of their skin. It so happens that inner city youths are overwhelmingly black, but that is not the fault of guns. But addressing the epidemic problem of inner-city youth homicide can’t be done because to do so would be considered “racist” by our political victim class.
The FACT of the matter is that homicide in the U.S. is heavily concentrated in a very small, easily identifiable demographic to the point that it severely skews the overall numbers. If it were possible to reduce homicide within that group to the same level as the average of the rest of the population, then the overall homicide rate in the U.S. – despite all of our guns – would be more in line with the rest of the “developed world.”
Look up the Centers for Disease Control’s WISQARS tool. Here are some relevant FACTS.
Leading causes of death, all races, both sexes from 1999 – 2010, from 15 years of age to age 34
1. Unintentional injury
2. Homicide (15-24 years of age) and Suicide (25-34)
3. Suicide (15-24) and Homicide (25-34)
4. Malignant neoplasms (cancer)
5. Heart disease
6. Congenital anomalies (15-24), HIV (25-34)
7. Flu and pneumonia (15-24), Diabetes (25-34)Now, if we look specifically at black men in those groups:
1. Homicide – both age subgroups, by almost TWICE the runner-up, “unintentional injury.” Over that twelve year period, the CDC recorded 57,349 young black men between the ages of 15 and 34 died as a result of homicide – 46.2% of the total victims of homicide in those age groups (though they are only 7.2% of that population), 58% of the male victims of homicide in those age groups (14.2% of that population – I guess I’m anti-male, too), and 27% of all homicide victims, though they make up only 2% of the total population.
But I’m racist for pointing this out and saying “LOOK! THIS IS A BAD THING WE DON’T TALK ABOUT!”
Yet you want us to believe this is a “GUN problem”?
The homicide rate in 2010 according to the CDC was 5.27/100,000, all races, both sexes, all ages. For young black men ages 15-34 it was 73.21/100,000 almost fourteen times higher.
When performing triage on a patient, don’t you want to stop the arterial bleeding first? Or am I a racist for saying that?
If we could somehow reduce the homicide rate in this group to the 5.27/100,000 average of the nation, that alone would have saved the lives of 4,343 people in 2010. Is that not a goal to strive for? Then why are we talking about “assault weapon” bans and magazine size restrictions?
Oh, and by reducing the homicide rate in that demographic to 5.27/100,000, the total U.S. homicide rate would then decline to 3.86/100,000. I leave extrapolation of THAT data to you.
Yeah, we kill each other a lot. I get it. But when arterial blood is spurting from a limb, putting a Band-Aid™ on the victim’s finger doesn’t help. (OMG! A brand name! I must be in the pay of evil CORPORATIONS!!)
I wonder if he picked up on the subtle “FUCK YOU!” in my response?
UPDATE: He replied!
First let me state that your retort is great and your band aid tm made me laugh. You can chose to value or devalue this as disingenuous if you so see fit. It’s not.
By no means do I think you’re a racist or hate the poor, but it sure reads that way and this why:
If this question was about anything that killed people en-mass race, or really any social subclass, say gender, height, weight, educational background, surely would not have been brought up, right? It’s only because it’s guns and violence that we talk bout thugs before we talk about the guns.
1) do we have a problem with obesity in this county
2) do we have a problem with car accident-related deaths in this country
3) do we have a problem infant mortality in this countYou could never answer “we don’t have a problem with shitty drivers, we have a problem with women who are four to one more likely to crash a car.” That might be true, but you still have a problem with cars killing people.
You didn’t really answer the question, that’s my point. You skirted the issue and said we don’t have a problem with guns we have an inner city violent crime problem. Both might be true, but the fact that the US has between 5 – 10 x the gun related homicide deaths compared to other developed counties. This does suggest you have a problem with guns…. Or not, I guess. That’s up to you as an American.
Stats aren’t racist, on that we can agree.
He’s a Canuck, BTW. Haven’t decided if I want to beat on him some more.
…pop over to Rummel’s place and read his old essay Confessions of a Deathbeast. It disappeared for a while, but I asked him about it, and he reposted.
As I mentioned a couple of days ago, in playing over at Quora.com I managed to draw a Wall-‘o-Text comment from one Alex Nuginski, to which I gave an (uncharacteristically) brief reply. He responded. So I fisked. (His quotes have the colored background and are in italics.)
Yes, my reply did require some thought and prior research that I had done in the past… you might consider the same for your replies.
Dude, you have NO IDEA what you’re asking for. I freaking LIVE for this. You want Wall-‘o-Text, I’ll GIVE you Wall-‘o-Text:
1) “The bipartisan Manchin-Toomey bill to extend background checks to gun shows and Internet sales has died in the Senate. It got 54 votes, but that wasn’t enough to overcome what was essentially a Republican filibuster. – April 2013 – Washington Post”
Yeah, so?
2) Personal insults? “Tea Baggers” is the initial name choice that those who now call themselves the “Tea Party” chose for themselves before they figured out the urban meaning of that phrase, so I am merely respecting their original name for themselves.
You? Respect? I’ve read some of your other comments. Don’t make me laugh.
3) How does the NRA get a cut from every gun sale? Here ya go!…
“How The Gun Industry Funnels Tens Of Millions Of Dollars To The NRA”
http://www.businessinsider.com/g…
QUOTE:
“Since 2005, the gun industry and its corporate allies have given between $20 million and $52.6 million to it through the NRA Ring of Freedom sponsor program. Donors include firearm companies like Midway USA, Springfield Armory Inc, Pierce Bullet Seal Target Systems, and Beretta USA Corporation. Other supporters from the gun industry include Cabala’s, Sturm Rugar & Co, and Smith & Wesson.
The NRA also made $20.9 million — about 10 percent of its revenue — from selling advertising to industry companies marketing products in its many publications in 2010, according to the IRS Form 990.
Additionally, some companies donate portions of sales directly to the NRA. Crimson Trace, which makes laser sights, donates 10 percent of each sale to the NRA.
Taurus buys an NRA membership for everyone who buys one of their guns. Sturm Rugar[sic] gives $1 to the NRA for each gun sold, which amounts to millions. The NRA’s revenues are intrinsically linked to the success of the gun business.
The NRA Foundation also collects hundreds of thousands of dollars from the industry, which it then gives to local-level organizations for training and equipment purchases.”
UNQUOTE
So Sturm Ruger and Taurus, Springfield, Smith & Wesson and Beretta donate to the NRA. And many BUY advertising! In GUN MAGAZINES! (And I would like to point out that Taurus OFFERS an NRA membership with every gun sold, but that hardly means that they get taken up on the offer every time. Lots of buyers are already members.) But your assertion was – and I QUOTE: “the NRA, who gets a cut from every legally sold gun…”
Not “Crimson Trace.” Not “Midway USA,” not “Pierce Bullet Seal Target System,” EVERY GUN MANUFACTURER. Now, are you insinuating that Armalite, Astra, Browning/FN, Colt, Glock, Heckler & Koch, IMI, Izmash, Remington, Shiloh Sharps, Sig Sauer, Tanfoglio, Walther, Weatherby, Norinco, Zastava, CZ, MKE, Miroku, Pietta, Pedersoli, and literally HUNDREDS of smaller manufacturers have a checkbox on their invoices marked “cut for NRA” or not? Sure looked that way to me.
“Since 2005, the gun industry and its corporate allies have given between $20 million and $52.6 million to it through the NRA Ring of Freedom sponsor program.”
OK, let’s assume it’s on the high end, $52.6 million since 2005. And, let’s assume that the cutoff is 2010 for the most recent data when that piece was published, so six years. $52,600,000 / 6 = is $8,766,667 PER YEAR. If the NRA is getting “a cut from every legally sold gun” it’s a damned small cut.
The number of NEW guns manufactured in the U.S. PER YEAR according to the ATF:
2005: 2,163,864 Page on atf.gov
2006: 3,268,255 Page on atf.gov
2007: 3,531,279 Page on atf.gov
2008: 3,866,444 http://www.atf.gov/files/statist…
2009: 5,008,623 Page on atf.gov
2010: 4,900,313 Page on atf.gov
That’s (carry the one…) 26,270,057 firearms manufactured over the period where the NRA got (at most) $52.6 million from the ENTIRE “firearms industry,” including many, many companies that don’t MAKE guns or even SELL them. Being insanely generous, you’re looking at a whopping $2 per gun!
Now, look at 2010. Here’s the NRA’s IRS Form 990 for that year:
Their income was listed:
$12,573,541 from “related organizations.” That would be, for example, the rifle range I’m a member of.
$58,572,260 from “all other contributions, grants, gifts, and similar amounts not included above.” I’m going to assume the monies from Crimson Trace, Midway USA and Pierce Target Systems and the like are included here, but are hardly exclusive. That’s money retailers get from people like ME, when I buy stuff and when I use their “NRA Roundup” option to support the NRA.
$6,552,336 from “Program fees.”
$100,531,465 from “Member dues.” I’m a Life member. I don’t pay dues anymore, but I do occasionally write them a check that goes into that pile two line-items above.
$852,154 from “Investment income.”
There’s a lot more, but total revenue for 2010 was listed as $227,811,279. Total guns manufactured in 2010 were 4,900,313. At $2 per gun, that’s $9,800,626, or LESS THAN 5% of total income, and I’m being INSANELY generous here. So, the “gun industry funnels millions of dollars to the NRA.” Granted.
What’s your point?
“The NRA’s revenues are intrinsically linked to the success of the gun business.”
Yeah, so? The overwhelming majority of their funding comes from sources other than the firearm industry. The American Automobile Association’s revenues are “intrinsically linked to the success” of the automobile industry. What I don’t get is why this important to you.
4) Again, you failed to tell me how you can tell the difference between a law abiding citizen and a citizen who wants a gun for nefarious reasons, whether they be convicted felons with a criminal record or just felon wannabes who have no record.
How do internet gun sales people distinguish the difference between a criminal or an illegal gun dealer and a law abiding citizen? It seems you fail to address that issue because you can’t respond in a logical way.
Sure I can. We can’t. We’re prohibited by law from using the NICS system without transferring through a licensed dealer. But generally, I’m not worried that the guy I sold a Marlin lever-action .30-30 rifle to was going to use it to hold up a liquor store, or the guy I sold a Mossberg 500 shotgun to was going to use it to whack his neighbor. I figure if Joe Felon wants a gun, he’ll get it from the same guy he gets his weed or his meth from, or his cousin Sumdood.
I do have an idea how to make this work without having to go through the background check, but I doubt you’d be interested in hearing about it, given your obvious political proclivities.
5) Requiring full background checks for internet gun sales and gun show sales IS NOT making sales of guns in those places illegal… that is something that you apparently cannot differentiate.
Did I say it was? Please, point out where, specifically.
6) As far as giving a gun to someone as a gift, YES, I think that ANYONE who will the[sic] take ownership of that gun should go through a background check and gun licensing procedures.
I’m glad we’ve got that out of the way.
You guys love the comparison of guns to cars so much, then there it is… if you get a car as a gift, you STILL have to get a driver’s license, requiring weeks of education and training, and then getting the car registered is a seperate procedure… it SHOULD BE same for guns, with maybe at least a 3 day gun safety and training course instead of 6 or more weeks for a car. There, I’d say I’m being pretty generous there.
I love this comparison? Actually I’m tired of it, but here we go: If I don’t drive it on public roads, I need neither a driver’s license nor vehicle registration. There’s no limit on the horsepower it has, how much fuel it can carry, or whether it has a manual or fully-automatic transmission. I can buy a muffler for it at any parts store without paying a $200 tax and requiring an extensive background check and sign-off by a local chief law enforcement officer. Neither licensing nor registration prevents me from using the vehicle illegally or prevents accidents. I’d say your argument is empty.
7) Guns stats for England and Australia compared to the U.S. that were in my original post above…
________Homicides-2013:
AUSTRALIA: 13,000 gun homicides
UNITED KINGDOM: 4,000 gun homicides
UNITED STATES: 360,000 gun homicidesAdjusted for population size:
AUSTRALIA: 22.68 million people
UNITED KINGDOM: 63.23 million people
UNITED STATES: 313.9 million peopleThe U.S. population is 13.84 times the size of the Australian population, but it has a gun murder rate 27.69 times as high.
The U.S. population is 4.96 times the size of the U.K. population, but it has a gun murder rate 90 times as high.
What happened to your meticulous sourcing? 360,000 “gun homicides” in the U.S. in 2013? 4,000 in the UK? What color is the sky on YOUR planet? The most recent data I’ve seen comes from the FBI Preliminary Six-Month Crime Stats for 2013 Releasedand it’s for only the first six months of 2013:
“In the violent crime category, forcible rape was down 10.6 percent, murder was down 6.9 percent, aggravated assault decreased 6.6 percent, and robbery was down 1.8 percent.”
The stats for 2012 showed TOTAL homicide in the U.S. in 2012 at 16,259 with firearms being the cause of death in 11,078 of them: FASTSTATS – Homicide
Get better stats. Then we can talk. Or, you know, not.
8) So skipping a lot of what I wrote buys you a lot of credibility, I guess then, right? Well, I guess that’s worked for Republicans in the past, so you fit right in.
I skipped a lot of what you copied-and-pasted. This is the comment section of a Quora answer. If you want to write Wall-‘o-Text comments, you really should start a blog.
Or therapy.
9) Tell me what hand gun (besides an Uzi) or rifle (besides a semi-automatic or fully automatic rifle) can kill 27 people in THREE DIFFERENT CLASSROOMS consecutively in less than 3 minutes, please. One would need to have the children lined up and standing still to kill as many with a handgun, reloading, then continuing to fire.
Pretty much anything that holds more than one or two rounds. As illustrated in that video you just ignored. Here’s another you can ignore:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvjMNW3ur5s?rel=0]
And another:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzHG-ibZaKM?rel=0]
Jerry’s using a revolver in this one. He’s hella-fast, but you’re talking 27 aimed shots in THREE MINUTES. Not a problem for Joe Nutcase unless he’s missing a hand.
A guy I know tried to make the argument that Adam Lanza or James Holmes could have killed just as many children and adults with a knife if the knife had poison on the blade, provided that he got the poisoned knife in their jugular vein. Yes, if all the people lined up and tipped their heads back and stood still, perhaps with one big poison knife blade slash, one could do that.
Your argument, Kevin, is just as ridiculous.
We’re not talking about knives, Alex, we’re talking about firearms. And you’re arguing with ME, not “a guy” you know. YOU’RE the one insisting that the AR-15 type rifles used by Lanza and Holmes were absolutely necessary in the infliction of large scale deaths. I’m merely pointing out that YOUR argument is ridiculous.
10) Obama and the Democrats in Congress proposed extended background checks (see link at the top of this post) but it is the gun snugglers like you who keep interjecting gun ban hysteria, going in to some kind of “nam myoho renge kyo” type chant about the 2nd amendment whenever background checks come up, so THAT’S why I refer to the banning of some semi-automatic weapons, which does make perfect sense to me, however it has nothing to do with the topic of extended background checks, in spite of efforts by people like you trying to tie the two together.
OK, let’s look at this argument. You, personally, support a ban on semi-auto weapons. You seem to believe that extending the background check system to all firearms transfers would somehow help prevent these mass shootings. I don’t get the association, since Lanza’s mother DID undergo a background check for the weapons she purchased, and Lanza killed her to take them from her. Holmes also passed a background check each time he purchased one of the four firearms he used in Aurora. He also bought explosive materials that he used to booby-trap his apartment. Why he didn’t use bombs in the theater, we’ll never know.
But as for bans, how’s that working out in Connecticut? Massive civil disobedience. I thought Lefties were all for civil disobedience?
How do you take something if you don’t know where it is and the possessor of it doesn’t want to give it up? How does a background check system work if you don’t know who owns what?
11) I would fathom that your study can be traced back to some NRA sponsored Repblican[sic] think tank (oxymoron) or “The Herritage Foundation” or “Freedom Something or Other”, or the Koch brothers, like so many gun, health insurance and anti-gay studies can be traced back to.
Is your tinfoil hat a little tight? You want sources? The 2007 United Nations Small Arms Survey estimated that the number of firearms in private hands in the U.S. was between 270,000,000 and 290,000,000. Page on smallarmssurvey.orgI refer you back to the 2008, 2009, and 2010 ATF production reports and ask you to extrapolate on to 2011, 2012 and 2013. I don’t think you can argue convincingly that the UN Small Arms Survey is “NRA sponsored” or a tool of the eeeeeeeeeeeevil Koch Brothers. The 100 million estimate for the 1980’s comes from a study commissioned by the Carter administration in 1979, published as Under the Gun: Weapons, Crime and Violence in America in 1983. It’s available at Amazon. Interesting read.
Here are my stats, again, not sponsored by any politically affiliated group…
Gun crime statistics by US state
http://www.theguardian.com/news/…“Gun ownership globally: US ranks first, ahead of Yemen”
“The United Stateshas 88 firearms per 100 people. Yemen, the second highest gun ownership country in the world has 54.8.”
Note that your Guardian link shows the number of firearm-related homicide in 2012 at 8,855, not 360,000. DO try to be consistent. And note that the Guardian also puts the number of guns in the U.S. at “roughly 35-50% of the world’s civilian-owned guns.” The statistical error-bars on that number are pretty high. Me? I’m going with the Small Arms Survey.
This Washington Post article has some telling facts on the subject of gun violence, and not all of it favors my argument, but much of it does, so in all fairness, I included it.
Twelve facts about guns and mass shootings in the United States
http://www.washingtonpost.com/bl…
Yet your argument was – and I quote – “It’s a simple equation – more guns, more guns deaths.” Your own link illustrates your error. I repeat: The number of guns in the U.S. has increased threefold since the 1980’s, yet the rate of “gun deaths” over the last fifteen to twenty years has declined dramatically. Your “simple equation” is simply incorrect.
Wikipedia:
Gun violence in the United States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun…“During the 1980s and early 1990s, homicide rates surged in cities across the United States (see graphs at right).
wikipedia.org
[26] Handgun homicides accounted for nearly all of the overall increase in the homicide rate, from 1985 to 1993, while homicide rates involving other weapons declined during that time frame.”
But YOU want to ban semi-automatic RIFLES. I fail to see the logic.
For further damning facts and links, please refer to my original reply, above.
Your turn now, Kevin, but try to keep it accurate and truthful this time.
THIS TIME? I’M not the one claiming 360,000 “gun deaths” in 2013. I’m not the one claiming “more guns, more gun deaths.” I’m not the one claiming that background checks will somehow stop mass shootings in some kind of underpants gnomes logic:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO5sxLapAts?rel=0]
Step 1: Universal Background Checks
Step 2: ?
Step 3: No more rampage shootings!It’s been fun playing with you, Nugi, but really, the comments to Quora questions is NOT the forum for this kind of thing.
