Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

Yet, even with what RJ lists as his overwhelming  reasons not to go there, America is still the most desired place where peoples from all around the world still wish to migrate to. [...]

About 13% of the world's adults -- or about 630 million people -- say they would like to leave their country and move somewhere else permanently. For roughly 138 million people, that somewhere else would be the U.S. -- the No. 1 desired destination for potential migrants. Canada, France, and the U.K. also rank among some of the other top choices for potential migrants.

So--- what happens when Santa visits Smiley's house? Smiley's first response to noises made at night appears to be to grab his AR-15 and shoot first.

So--- what happens when Santa visits Smiley's house?

Quote from: mjmsprt40 on 2014-12-23, 10:16:47

So--- what happens when Santa visits Smiley's house?

You know damned well what happens!

    MERRY 

        MERRY 

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

If you had to sum up the National Rifle Association’s response to the Newtown (Conn.) school massacre, and to any proposal for tougher gun-control laws, that one sentence from the NRA’s Dec. 21 press conference pretty much does the trick.

The gun owners’ lobby opposes restrictions on civilian acquisition and possession of firearms because, it contends, law-abiding people need guns to defend themselves. Millions of people also use guns for hunting and target-shooting. But at the core of the NRA’s argument is self-defense: the ultimate right to protect one’s ability to remain upright and breathing.


So how often do Americans use guns to defend themselves? If it almost never happens, then the NRA argument is based on a fallacy and deserves little respect in the fashioning of public policy. If, on the other hand, defensive gun use (DGU) is relatively common, then even a diehard gun-control advocate with any principles and common sense would admit that this fact must be given some weight.

Criminologists concur that the unusual prevalence of guns in America—some 300 million in private hands—makes our violent crime more lethal than that of other countries. (See, for example, the excellent When Brute Force Fails, by UCLA’s Mark Kleiman.) That’s the cost of allowing widespread civilian gun ownership: In this country, when someone is inclined to commit a mugging, shoot up a movie theater, or kill their spouse (or themselves), firearms are readily available.

One reason the gun debate seems so radioactive is that gun-control proponents refer almost exclusively to the cost of widespread gun ownership, while the NRA and its allies focus on guns as instruments and symbols of self-reliance. Very few, if any, participants in the conflict acknowledge that guns are both bad and good, depending on how they’re used. Robbers use them to stick up convenience stores, and convenience store owners use them to stop armed robbers.


If guns have a countervailing benefit—that lawful firearm owners frequently or even occasionally use guns to defend themselves and their loved ones—then determining how aggressively to curb private possession becomes a more complicated proposition.

As with everything else concerning guns in this country, the DGU question prompts divergent answers. At one end of the spectrum, the NRA cites research by Gary Kleck, an accomplished criminologist at Florida State University. Based on self-reporting by survey respondents, Kleck has extrapolated that DGU occurs more than 2 million times a year. Kleck doesn’t suggest that gun owners shoot potential antagonists that often. DGU covers various scenarios, including merely brandishing a weapon and scaring off an aggressor.

At the other end of the spectrum, gun skeptics prefer to cite the work of David Hemenway, an eminent public-health scholar at Harvard University. Hemenway, who analogizes gun violence to an epidemic and guns to the contagion, argues that Kleck’s research significantly overestimates the frequency of DGU.


The carping back and forth gets pretty technical, but the brief version is that Hemenway believes Kleck includes too many “false positives”: respondents who claim they’ve chased off burglars or rapists with guns but probably are boasting or, worse, categorizing unlawful aggressive conduct as legitimate DGU. Hemenway finds more reliable an annual federal government research project, called the National Crime Victimization Survey, which yields estimates in the neighborhood of 100,000 defensive gun uses per year. Making various reasonable-sounding adjustments, other social scientists have suggested that perhaps a figure somewhere between 250,000 and 370,000 might be more accurate.

What’s the upshot?

1. We don’t know exactly how frequently defensive gun use occurs.


2. A conservative estimate of the order of magnitude is tens of thousands of times a year; 100,000 is not a wild gun-nut fantasy.

3. Many gun owners (I am not one, but I know plenty) focus not on statistical probabilities, but on a worst-case scenario: They’re in trouble, and they want a fighting chance.

4. DGU does not answer any questions in this debate, but it’s a factor that deserves attention.

Damn dangerous country that needs so many guns and infantile reasons given for them and a paramilitary police direction.

Blah, blah blah. Whatever the hell I'm babbling about now. I don't know what it is myself.

In a nutshell, we don't do guilt, so you're waistin' yer breath ole man, & from the sounds of your 'windbaggery'

Quote from: SmileyFaze on 2015-01-01, 02:34:45

In a nutshell, we don't do guilt, so you're waistin' yer breath ole man, & from the sounds of your 'windbaggery'

I have to disagree, feeling that it's more douchbaggery.

Quote from: rjhowie on 2014-12-31, 21:34:03

Blah, blah blah. Whatever the hell I'm babbling about now. I don't know what it is myself.

But trying to reason with you is like doing so with a brick wall, isn't it?

A new Pew Research Center survey finds that, for the first time in their surveys, the majority of Americans oppose more gun control. Gallup and CNN polls tell a similar story. Opposition to gun control has been increasing over at least the last couple of decades.

Gun control groups have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to try to convince Americans that gun control is the answer. In 2013, gun owners’ groups — including the NRA — spent less than one seventh as much on television advertisements. This year looks to be even more lopsided, thanks to the unrelenting efforts of individuals such as Michael Bloomberg, George Soros and Gabriel Giffords.

Perceptions have changed dramatically, with most people now believing the “More Guns, Less Crime” hypothesis. Gallup recently asked Americans if they thought residents are safer with a gun in the home. People answered “Yes” by a margin of 63 to 30 percent. In 2000, Americans gave just the opposite answer by a margin of 51 to 35 percent. In 2013,[3]  Sixty percent of gun owners listed “Personal Safety/Protection” as the reason for owning a gun.

Academic research aligns with current public opinion. If you have a gun in the home, that gun is far more likely to prevent murder than it is to be used in an accidental shooting or to kill a loved one.

Accidental gun deaths get a lot of press coverage, but the press is quite misleading when it talks about juvenile gun deaths . In fact, many news reports lump in young deaths involving gang fights. These deaths are also tragic, but they have nothing to do with whether law-abiding citizens should own guns.

The Centers for Disease Control reports that, in 2012, there were 58 accidental gun deaths involving children under the age of 15. More than 20 times as many children died due to accidental suffocation. In most cases, an adult accidentally shoots a child, not children shooting themselves or other children. And many of those adults have criminal records and drug or alcohol problems.

Between 2000 and 2014, the number of concealed handgun permits soared from about 2.7 million to well over 12 million.  Similarly, the annual number of federal background checks increased from 8.5 to 21 million. According to Gallup, 42 percent of Americans now have a gun in the home.

The Pew Research Center survey found that 57 percent of Americans believe gun ownership “protects people from becoming victims of crime.” Thirty-eight percent believe that it “puts people’s safety at risk.” Support for gun ownership has grown particularly sharply among blacks and women, with their support since 2012 rising by 25 and 11 percentage points respectively.

My research shows that since blacks are the most likely victims of violent crime, they are also the ones who benefit most from being able to defend themselves. Women and the elderly are especially unlikely to be able to fend off a male attacker without the benefit of a firearm.

Gary Kleck, Larry Southwick and other academics have shown that having a gun is by far the safest option when confronted by a criminal.

Police are extremely important in reducing crime. Indeed, I have found that they are by far the single most important factor. But police know that they almost always arrive on the crime scene after a crime has occurred, and because of that police are among the strongest supporters for private gun ownership.

PoliceOne, which has a membership of about 450,000 active and retired police officers, found last year that 76 percent of its members believe legally armed citizens are either extremely or very important to stopping crime. Over 91 percent of members "support the concealed carry of firearms by civilians who have not been convicted of a felony and/or not been deemed psychologically/medically incapable." This is a less stringent standard than exists in most right-to-carry states.

In the wake of tragedies such as Newtown, gun control advocates keep pushing for more restrictions. But the proposed regulations have nothing to do with the tragedies. Even Mark Glaze, who was executive director of Bloomberg’s Everytown For Gun Safety until earlier this year, conceded to the Wall Street Journal, “Is it a messaging problem when a mass shooting happens and nothing that we have to offer would have stopped that mass shooting? Sure it’s a challenge….”

Even worse for gun control advocates, people are realizing that regulations — such as gun-free zones — tend to encourage attacks by disarming law-abiding citizens instead of criminals.............continued

The Pew Research Center survey found that 57 percent of Americans believe gun ownership “protects people from becoming victims of crime.” Thirty-eight percent believe that it “puts people’s safety at risk.”

Well, if a careless person has the gun, it obviously puts people at risk.