funny to watch humans deny logic. Here's a logical explanation that more guns= more gun violence, using arguments made by some in these threads and touching on the precise facts at issue in the movie theater shooting. Note the author's last two sentences in bold
The total prevalence of violent crime in America in 2010, according to the National Crime Victimisation Survey, was 10.8 per 1,000 people; that is, you had about a 1.1% chance of being a victim of a violent crime. In England and Wales, according to the British Crime Survey, it was 3.1%. This makes England's violent crime rate three times as high as America's, not five times. That's still a striking difference. But counterintuitively, "violent crime", in both America and Britain does not include homicide. (Violent-crime stats are usually based on survey data rather than police reports, since many crimes are never reported to the police; but homicide victims tend not to respond to surveys.) Homicide is a separate category, and here the difference is startling: as we reported this summer, the homicide rate in America is four times as high as that in England and Wales. There were 622 homicides in England and Wales in 2011. In America, with a population 5.5 times as large, there were 14,022.How much of that difference should be chalked up to the presence of guns? Well, gun-rights advocates often argue that there's no point taking away people's guns, because you can kill someone with a knife. This is true, but in practice people are nowhere near as likely to get killed with a knife. In America, of those 14,022 homicides in 2011, 11,101 were committed with firearms. In England and Wales, where guns are far harder to come by, criminals didn't simply go out and equip themselves with other tools and commit just as many murders; there were 32,714 offences involving a knife or other sharp instrument (whether used or just threatened), but they led to only 214 homicides, a rate of 1 homicide per 150 incidents. Meanwhile, in America, there were 478,400 incidents of firearm-related violence (whether used or just threatened) and 11,101 homicides, for a rate of 1 homicide per 43 incidents. That nearly four-times-higher rate of fatality when the criminal uses a gun rather than a knife closely matches the overall difference in homicide rates between America and England.Then there's the related argument that people have a right to defend themselves against aggressors carrying firearms, and that if you criminalise gun ownership, only criminals will have guns (which is perhaps what Ice-T was getting at). That may be valid in the abstract. In practice, 0.8% of victims of gun violence say they responded to their attackers by either using or threatening to use a gun. Not much of a risk for the criminal, it seems. Perhaps that was because too few Americans own guns or carry them on their persons to have a substantial effect, but it's hard to imagine driving those numbers up much higher; Americans already own twice as many guns per person as any other nation. How many more Americans would need to carry weapons in public in order to create a serious criminal deterrent? Five times as many? Ten? Is this even possible, let alone desirable?None of this should be particularly surprising. We know that overall, firearm deaths are lower in states with stricter gun-control laws. More recently, we've learned that the expiration of America's assault-weapons ban was responsible for a substantial portion of the subsequent increase in gun deaths in northern Mexico. It's really not terribly shocking that making it harder to get your hands on machines designed to kill people results in fewer people being killed. But we've worked very hard over the past few decades to convince ourselves otherwise.
As regards the movie theater shooting -- If the 71 year old man has a knife, its less likely the father of a 2 year old is killed. It could still happen, but it is far less likely because of the hopefully UNDISPUTED FACT that guns are more deadly (shocking, I know)It should also be undisputed that the 71 year old CWP holder carried a gun for SELF-DEFENSE. There is an incredibly low demonstrated need for a gun as a means of self-defense in the US anyway, but it should be an UNDISPUTED FACT that a daytime suburban movie theater is not generally a place one would expect to need to defend oneself with a gun. The 71 year old man WAS NOT a criminal . . ie., he did not carry the gun for the purposes of carrying on criminal acts . . . he carried it for self-defense and yet it was turned into an offensive weapon in the heat of passion.Put the two together and you have the simple undeniable logic that the gun was the proximate cause of the death. If the 71 year old doesn't have a gun on him, there is likely no death. if he had a knife, there could be a death, but even then death is far less likely. Simply put . . ."but for" there being a gun present, no one dies. That is because -- as the author above explains:"It's really not terribly shocking that making it harder to get your hands on machines designed to kill people results in fewer people being killed" even if we have "worked very hard over the past few decades to convince ourselves otherwise.a lot of people in this thread have bought into the "convincing" to the point that they deny simple logic. . . some do so for fear
[the gun was the proximate cause of the deathIf that ^^^ statement by me was not true, this thread ends pages ago with a simple honest counter,
knew it was too good to be true ..... oh well
what was the counter? did someone post that the gun was not the proximate cause, because I would love to read that argument? What was then? I saw you posted the negligence definition, maybe I missed a response?Maybe that is the issue, let me ask the same question, just in reverse:IF NOT THE GUN, then what was the proximate cause of the death?anyone?
"Put a specific proposal on the table, so the whole forum can finally see exactly what you want on the subject of gun control."He'll dance Swan Lake if he needs to, but you wont pin Shifty Dancer down.
You saw it. You are wrong again. You will continue to post your nonsense anyway. Carry on. lol
