Virginia Tech Shootings

[Inquartata]

Which should suggest that it's likely there won't be that many students taking advantage of the ability, for a number of reasons.

I would have done so, back when I was in school. I know a number of college students with CCWs who would probably do so if permitted.

But then, even in my state the number of CCW holders amounts to something less than 2% of the eligible population. So PM's worries are vastly exaggerated ( as one can expect of those both afraid of and completely unfamiliar with a phenomenon ). His odds of sharing a class with even one fellow student with a legally carried firearm would be perishingly small.

But of course the prospective shooter could never be sure that he wouldn't encounter one or two such by pure bad luck; the uncertainty adds to the deterrent effect.

Some years ago there was a bank robbery. The robber passed a note to the teller, but it was illegible and she asked him what he wanted. He mumbled something, she asked him to speak up. "I'm a robber, give me the money!" he said. "I'm a cop; don't move", said the off-duty officer standing right behind him in line, and arrested him. Such are the vagaries of coincidence sometimes.

[telkanuru]

Do you really think that has a reasonable likelihood of being passed, nationwide?

--Philistine

Absolutely not. You asked me what *I* would do.

Inq, the best argument against "guns stop gun violence" is that everyone has guns, and we still have vastly more gun murders then the entire civilized world.

You know where the highest instances of gun ownership are? Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana. You know which states have the highest per capita gun murders? Oh hey look at that. If your point were valid, why would this trend repeat across the entire country? Why is it that my very own state of Massachusetts, with the strictest gun control laws in the country, also has the lowest % of its population murdered by guns?

[Philistine]

Absolutely not. You asked me what *I* would do.

Actually, I asked what you would suggest. And clarified it by asking what measure you thought might be passed would have an effect.

If you have an answer, I'd like to hear it.

I agree there is a problem in the US. OTOH, gun homicide rates are decreasing by a substantial amount across the nation--According to the FBI: "For U.S. Average, the gun involved homicide rate began at 5.6 in 1976 and decreased to 5.5 in 1977. The rate then increased to 6.4 in 1980, before decreasing to 4.7 in 1984, where it remained constant until 1985. Then it increased to 6.6 in 1993, before falling to 3.6 in 2000, where it remained constant until 2001. Then the rate rose to 3.8 in 2002, where it remained constant until 2003. Then it decreased to 3.6 in 2004." Link

Inq, the best argument against "guns stop gun violence" is that everyone has guns, and we still have vastly more gun murders then the entire civilized world.

Only on a pretty loose reading of what the "civilized world" is--apparently it excludes Mexico as well as Brazil and most of the rest of South America (not to mention some of the really high places like Thailand).

You know where the highest instances of gun ownership are? Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana. You know which states have the highest per capita gun murders? Oh hey look at that. If your point were valid, why would this trend repeat across the entire country? Why is it that my very own state of Massachusetts, with the strictest gun control laws in the country, also has the lowest % of its population murdered by guns?

You're conflating gun deaths with gun murders (your source probably includes suicides in gun deaths).

For the list of gun ownership by state: List

For firearms deaths by state (you have to click on each state) seperated by homicide, suicide, accidental, see Here

With regard to Massachusetts--its firearms homicide rate is 1.29 per 100,000 (with a gun ownership percentage of only 12.6%).

Contrast that with neighboring Vermont--with very lenient gun ownership laws--.58 per 100,000 gun murders, and gun ownership at 42%.

Heck, the highest percentage of gun owners in a state is Montana, at 59.7%, and their gun homicide rate is only a shade higher than Massachusetts'--at 1.45 per 100,000.

--Philistine

[keith]

You're conflating gun deaths with gun murders (your source probably includes suicides in gun deaths).

Of course if I shoot the repo guy in texas it isn't murder.

[Philistine]

Of course if I shoot the repo guy in texas it isn't murder.

It's just good sense....

--Philistine

[telkanuru]

Actually, I asked what you would suggest. And clarified it by asking what measure you thought might be passed would have an effect.

If you have an answer, I'd like to hear it.

Only on a pretty loose reading of what the "civilized world" is--apparently it excludes Mexico as well as Brazil and most of the rest of South America (not to mention some of the really high places like Thailand).

You're conflating gun deaths with gun murders (your source probably includes suicides in gun deaths).

For the list of gun ownership by state: List

For firearms deaths by state (you have to click on each state) seperated by homicide, suicide, accidental, see Here

With regard to Massachusetts--its firearms homicide rate is 1.29 per 100,000 (with a gun ownership percentage of only 12.6%).

Contrast that with neighboring Vermont--with very lenient gun ownership laws--.58 per 100,000 gun murders, and gun ownership at 42%.

Heck, the highest percentage of gun owners in a state is Montana, at 59.7%, and their gun homicide rate is only a shade higher than Massachusetts'--at 1.45 per 100,000.

--Philistine

The statistics I have come from the newsweek magazine which was specific to the VT tragedy. In fact, it separates murders from accidental deaths. There were 11,000 murders in 2003 (I think, the article has disappeared into the black morass that is my desk), which accounted for 45% or so of gun deaths in the US. It also gave the number of gun murders as a function of both population and gun ownership, with Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Florida leading. The numbers you give are actually quite misleading, and giving number of gun murders as a % of the population is IMHO a much better yardstick to measure by.

In an odd quirk, VT is in fact worse than NH and NY when it comes to gun murders, so one can conclude it's definitely a culturally induced trend, but that trend is invariably tied to guns, and guns are easier to remove than whatever is messed up in people's heads.

I say cultural because places that aren't war zones with equally high ratios of guns to people (Switzerland approaches a ratio of 1:1 as well, while maintaining a very low rate of actual murders; the majority of their 45 shootings in 2003 were accidental). And no, I wouldn't count South America in this context. There is no way to equate law enforcement there with how it is here and in Europe. To do so would be laughable.

The decrease in gun murders in the US can be attributed to the crackdown on inner city crime and dissolution of an overt mafia and gangs, as well as police call-ins and buyback programs of handguns. To me, handguns represent the greatest part of the threat. They're small, concealable, and devastating. They serve no practical purpose besides killing someone, and as I say again, if handguns stopped handgun violence, the US would have fewer gun murders than the UK or Japan. They only do damage and don't help, so why keep them.

As to legislation, the NRA is so firmly entrenched in DC that I have no hope of anything substantial passing there. This issue will come up every few years when some insane idiot decides killing 30 people is a grand life statement, and then quietly subside again. People will continue to die, and nothing will be done. So it goes.

[Inquartata]

Speaking of DC, check the site Philistine cited for the numbers for THAT paradise. Toughest gun control laws in the country*, including an outright ban on the ownership handguns not registered before 1976 until just recently, FAR lower incidence of gun ownership than Massachussetts---and yet...

Another "odd quirk", no doubt. ( Or is it just that any result which doesn't comport with your beliefs must be called an anomaly in order to stave off the unpleasant cognitive dissonance? )

BTW, your assertion that "the highest instances of gun ownership", being "Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana", also have higher homicide rates with firearms is also incorrect. Arizona and Nevada, Tennessee and Georgia, North and South Carolina, even Indiana, Michigan and and Illinois have higher rates than at least 2 of the states you nominate. Maryland has a higher rate than 3 of the 4. In fact, South Dakota has the same firearms prevalence as Arkansas and Mississippi but a gun homicide rate lower than that of Massachusetts. California has fewer guns and much more restrictive gun control laws than Texas but a higher firearm-involved homicide rate.

And in essence the CDC has already done this work for us, examining an enormous number of studies and failing to find any correlation between gun control and homicide rates:

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm

"The systematic review development team identified 51 studies that evaluated the effects of selected firearms laws on violence and met the inclusion criteria for this review. No study was excluded because of limitations in design or execution. Information on violent outcomes was available in 48 studies, and the remaining three studies, which provided information on counts or proportions of regulated firearms used in crime, were used as supplementary evidence. Several studies examined more than one type of firearm law.

In summary, the Task Force found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws reviewed for preventing violence."

This from an organization with a pre-existing bias toward and belief in the usefulness of gun control. And the best even it could in conscience manage was "insufficient evidence" and "research should continue"!

*Also incorrect that Mass. has "the strictest gun control laws in the country". It does not require guns to be registered with the state police, for instance, as DC does. It does not require application for licenses to be made in person, as DC does. It does not regulate even the possession of ammunition, as DC does. Etc.

Inq, the best argument against "guns stop gun violence" is that everyone has guns, and we still have vastly more gun murders then the entire civilized world.

Alas, no, "everyone" doesn't, and of those who do only a tiny percentage carry them so that they are available when needed. As I said in a previous post, even in my "gun crazy" state , less than 2% of the over-21 population eligible to do so has a permit to carry a concealed weapon. To be conservative, let's just double that and assume that another 89,000 or so people carry openly or illegally. Still under 4% of the adult population. Texas is at about 1.5% of the adult population, Florida at about 4%. ( The latter, despite having twice the percentage of its people walking around with handguns as in my state, has fewer gun-involved homicides and fewer total deaths involving firearms than my state. )

So you see, statistics cannot be telling the simplistic story you believe they are telling...

[Philistine]

{snip}
The numbers you give are actually quite misleading, and giving number of gun murders as a % of the population is IMHO a much better yardstick to measure by.{snip}

In what way are the numbers I gave "misleading." They are gun deaths per 100,000 population. You could quite easily convert them to % of population by dividing by 1000, but I'm not sure what the point would be.

--Philistine

[scrapinpeg]

Gun violence does not correlate with gun ownership. The rates of gun violence PER GUN OWNER vary widely from place to place. There are large parts of the US population where improper gun violence per gun owned is minimal. There are parts of the US population where such violence per gun owned is significant.

The variation tends to be cultural. In locations with a significant criminal gang presence, for example, you get more gun violence per gun. Places where people are more likely to preserve their "respect" with violence against slights tend to have more gun violence per gun. There are many other cultural factors that increase the odds that a gun will be used offensively. (It is presumed that a shot fired in self-defense, or for target competition, or for hunting does not count here.)

The parts of the US where guns are less likely to be used offensively tend to be less culturally heterogenous, with fewer people in the mix who are culturally more likely to use guns offensively. You may actually have more guns per capita there, but you'll have fewer acts of gun violence per capita.

So it is not useful to say "the US has a gun culture" or a culture of violence. Certain groups of people in certain parts of the US have a culture of violence, but the vast overwhelming majority of the population does not.

And comparing gun violence in the culturally heterogenous US with that of incredibly more homogenous countries is similarly flawed. Gun violence in Scotland or Sweden is not usefully compared with gun violence in a country that contains not only Los Angeles, D.C. and New York, but also Idaho, Nebraska and North Dakota. Nor can gun violence be usefully compared between the US and Colombia or South Africa.

[jBirch]

Speaking of gun violence, take a gander at this:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18864872/site/newsweek/

James.

[Slim]

Speaking of gun violence, take a gander at this:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18864872/site/newsweek/

James.

Ridiculous. Some lame a$$ attempt at social commentary. They could remove the person (an Iraqi, of course, what else? ) and just had a bullseye target, and you would get the same reaction.....fighting over control of the cam and taking a shot as soon as you had control.

And this made Newsweek. Figures.

[Inquartata]

Meh, it's on the internet. Drunk college students and mouthbreathers probably think it's a new video game.

[Slim]

Meh, it's on the internet. Drunk college students and mouthbreathers probably think it's a new video game.

Mouthbreathers. Awesome...I gotta remember that one.