Re: safety and politics
 

And its internal trouble that lead governments (not only in the US) to try and "externalize" them.
It's a well known fact, that an external enemy that you can separate yourself from unites any given group of people and makes them forget about problems among themselves.

This will make it very hard for Obama. He promised to tackle those US-internal problems and doing so will connect these problems to his person/regency, although they occurred long before.

So, returning to the topic. "Safety" is the easy way out in politics.
You just need to to add some ingredients commonly associated with "safety" like more soldiers, more weapons, more police, more laws and most people will think that adds to their safety while it mostly archives the opposite result.

Not only that, with these changes the government itself controls the people and can suppress any opposition. Often the biggest threat for the individual is its own power hungry leaders. The US as a state has not made that experience yet, but the ancestors of many of its citizens have...

Just look around you. Now Americans are much less safe than 8 years ago. Because now Terrorists actually have a reason to hate US-America and the big old enemy Russia is not so convinced anymore that the West, especially the US aren't a threat.
So, 8 years of justifying every cut of rights and increase in state control with "protecting the american people" actually led to the opposite.
And still, ironically, one of the big theses in the republican campaign was that with a democrat as president everyone would be in danger.
So, hooray for Obama for not taking the safety-train (exclusively).

Re: safety and politics
 

Which is exactly why I want to own a firearm. :rolleyes:

Re: safety and politics
 

And that would probably be the only valid reason in my eyes. :o

But it is still outweighted by all the negative aspects...

Re: safety and politics
 

"By calling attention to 'a well regulated militia', the 'security' of the nation, and the right of each citizen 'to keep and bear arms', our founding fathers recognized the essentially civilian nature of our economy. Although it is extremely unlikely that the fears of governmental tyranny which gave rise to the Second Amendment will ever be a major danger to our nation, the Amendment still remains an important declaration of our basic civilian-military relationships, in which every citizen must be ready to participate in the defense of his country. For that reason, I believe the Second Amendment will always be important."

-Senator John F. Kennedy, April 1960

Re: safety and politics
 

I decided to do a bit of research to support my original post- the idea that the framing of the safety debate needs to be dramatically widened beyond it's apparent current frame of mostly outside threats to the USA.

Gun deaths since 911 happened :

15 children lose their lives every day to hand gun violence. So in the 7 years since 9-11 happened that would be 38,325 kids dead.

The same source says that 103 people (USA) of all ages are killed every day. So, that's 263,165 Americans of all ages killed by gun violence since 9/11 happened.

The following link has plenty of references to where this information came from
http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/Aborn1.html


Traffic fatalities:

Around 37,000 people die every year in auto accident related events. This includes pedestrians and all other folks unfortunate enough to be around.

So that's 259,000 people dead since 9-11 in auto accidents. And 39 percent of accidents are caused by drunk drivers. So, if we had been able to stop people from driving drunk in the US after 9-11, more than 100,000 people would be alive right now on this fact.

http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx

Cancer;

I realize solving cancer is a tall order, but I kinda think this one belongs in the national debate about safety because we know that so many cancers are caused by toxins in the environment.

So, deaths of all types from cancer per year are about 555,000. So that's about 3,885,000 since 911. Gee, I'm not an expert here, but even if we could just save a small percentage of those folks with a major input of money like we just spent in Iraq we'd have a real safety improvement. Let's say we do really badly and save 1/10 of 1 percent of those folks. That'd be nearly 39,000 people saved since 911 there. I know, highly theoretical here. But if you are a scientist, I'm happy to listen to the odds of improvement.

Suicide

Hmm, what can the government do about suicide, well paying for more and better mental health programs could help, of course it's tough to prove a negative ( like how many were saved because they did not commit suicide.

But I found statistics for 2005 In 2005 more than 32,000 suicides occured in the US
A very sad number indeed. But this one sort of does relate to the gun debate. Maybe folks wouldn't kill themselves quite so frequently if there wasn't a gun around.
Link e http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/dvp/suicide...data_sheet.pdf

So, how do we want to continue to spend our safety dollar? Another trillion fighting in the Iraqs of the world, or perhaps putting a bit more into the above?

Neil

Re: safety and politics
 

http://www.gunfacts.info
PDF: http://www.gunfacts.info/pdfs/gun-fa...5-0-screen.pdf

I will say this though... a vast majority of the statistics you just quoted, and of my rebuttle buried inside of numerous pro-gun sites... Both are completely useless.

Your article was written in 1995... the GunFacts pdf uses sources from 1980 all to a few that were in the 2000+.

We desperately need more recent information... but also statistics like this are a little more complicated than just singleing out one thing. IE: Guns or Gun Control.

When Gun Control laws are enacted or retracted in a state.. that isn't the only law that changes over the time of the statistical data to see if crime rate rises or falls. Of all your suicides you quoted from that article, were they centered in a certain area? Is there a common regulations in the area(s)? Were they mostly in poor, or rich neighborhoods? Did they leave any indication of why?

Likely you will find if a kid (or adult) is depressed enough that they want to kill themselves... they will find a way - with or without a gun. Where's the statistics on how many of those suicides were done by hanging? By knives? By jumping?

And.. how exactly do you plan to micro-manage every single drinker in the entire United States of America to make sure they don't do something stupid? Ban Alcohol?

Next you'll be asking for a Ban on Spices, and then red Meat, candy, ice cream, and anything else considered "unhealthy"....

Demolition Man, anybody? 1984 sound familiar? We will all become fluent in newspeak and have a bellyfeel of the blackwhite released by Big Brother. No matter how you try.. crimestop is not likely to occur - and you'll just wind up making everyone crimethinkers.

Re: safety and politics
 

I'll let others debate guns. I think we both could quote statistics till we are blue in the face really. Although I do find it amusing you can just dismiss mine so easily and be sure you are correct. Bottom line, lots and lots of people die every year from guns. You don't feel OK about that do you?

But again, this is only part of my thesis anyway.

Neil

Re: safety and politics
 

I didn't just "dismiss" yours.. if you read what I put .. I said that both yours and my statistics are suspect.

A) You almost never find a complete study that was done to be 100% unbiased.
B) Most of the statistics are from OLD data

Do I deny people die from guns? No. Do I think Gun Control is the answer? No. But even ignoring Gun control altogether.. what about the last half of my response?

Where are the statistics of the deaths NOT involving guns? How exactly do you plan on making every alcohol drinker in the entire country to never drink and drive? It's already illegal for crying out loud.. are we going to have to register for alcohol now? Put limits at bars?

Then how do you deny that you are going down the 1984 road of total domination? Killing entire freedoms in the name of "saving lives"? Hamburgers cause Heart Attacks, Cell phones cause cancer.. let's ban everything in your house because it might be emitting a small microwave, radiowave, EM field, or anything else that might someday be possibly proven to be detrimental to your health..

Is that really the direction YOU want to go? Let's force people to live, whether they want to or not, and whether they enjoy it or not.. I mean after all.. it's for their own good, right?

Re: safety and politics
 

Not quite, but somewhat close, especially if you narrow those questions from "anyone can" to "there can be no law against". I'll take them one at a time, though.

• Homicidal maniacs: Are we talking about the sort of homicidal maniacs that should be permitted to roam freely with axes, chainsaws, and the like, but not guns? If so, yes, they have the right to carry guns, too.
  Or would we be talking about people who should be locked up in the first place? Ones who can already have certain rights removed (by due process of law), permitting confinement and disarmament... No problem there.
• Carrying a machine gun to the elementary school: Well, somewhat yes*. It seems quite weird to think of someone casually going to a school while packing a "machine gun" in the military sense, where it refers to LMG and up, but legally speaking, a machine pistol is counted a machine gun. Stripped of the weirdness implication, it doesn't seem so unreasonable, to me at least, that someone who habitually and conveniently carries an eminently practical sidearm should be able to carry it in a school.
• Touring the White House while toting a machine gun: The same "somewhat yes*", although the "somewhat" eclipses the "yes" for this one. And ditto about your wording making the situation look weirder than it is.

Again, convicts may be deprived of certain freedoms and rights. While this is not spelled out in general in the Constitution, it's stated for specific cases; Congress is specifically authorized "To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations" and "To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States", with no particular restriction on the punishments (notably the fifth and eighth amendments pose general restrictions on all punishments). Any sane reading of the elastic clause grants Congress the authority to provide for punishments for violations of the various other regulations they are authorized to make. And all punishments necessarily involve some forfeiture of rights, as otherwise the punishment is no different from life before conviction.

Now for the "somewhat" above:
*The government, in the context of any government-owned land, is acting in two roles: as a government, and as a property owner. Of course the owner of land is free to control who enters that land, and to establish conditions (such as carrying no guns, or no weapons at all) for entry, and this still applies for the government. So any government school, or the White House, these regulations can certainly be made administratively. But Congress cannot legitimately ban carrying of automatic weapons on any government school property outside DC (as they are under the control of state or local governments), "within xxx yards of a school", or on any private school. (To the extent that Federal funds are given to other school systems, of course, they're likely to impose conditions on the disbursement of those funds to accomplish it indirectly...)

For the White House, of course, it's owned by the federal government, and presumably the President (or maybe someone provided for by the Congress; I'm not sure on the details here) has control over tour policies. So while I want to be very clear that Congress cannot pass a law forbidding carry of automatic weapons on some generic class of land that would include the White House, someone can certainly forbid armed touring. While it may seem like nitpicking to answer this one "somewhat yes" rather than "no", it does matter whether it's a law or an administrative policy by the land-owner, as it totally alters the possible consequences for violating it. As that distinction wasn't made in the question, I made it in the answer instead. :cool:

Re: safety and politics
 

Lots and lots of people die a year from a lot of things. Death is a reality of life. Problem is, banning things rarely has the effect the "good intentions" of the ban had in mind.

Take drugs, for example. Banning certain substances hasn't had much affect on their use. In fact, it likely increases fatality rates because people are more likely to engage in risky behavior to acquire expensive, illegal substances, and less likely to seek medical attention in the case of overdoses and injury.

Banning guns will have a similar effect. Only criminals will have guns, so all you're doing is removing the ability of law abiding citizens to defend themselves.

But, really, statistics aren't a factor in my decision making. People have a right to defend their freedom. All you seem to want to do is remove that right.