Do I Have a Constitutional Right

[beero1000]

According to the NRA, Bill O'Reilly, and people like Loren Pechtel, massacres are just a price we have to pay so that a small portion of the population can get its rocks off with guns. Also, gun control won't stop gun related massacres because....

Sure, often, the people that pay the price for such, often never actually benefit in one way from the terribly wide-open new interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, but as long as the Gun Lobby (which started hijacking the NRA in the 60's) is happy, that appears to be all that matters.

All you are constitutionally protected for is equal protection under the law, meaning that the shooter will have to be held equally liable for your death as they would for the other people they killed.

Quit misrepresenting my position!

Lets look at some data. From the Mother Jones database we have 758 mass shooting fatalities in the last 35 years. That's 21.7 per year. This is less than 10% of what even an anti-gun group says is the number of times someone was shot in legitimate self defense.

By removing guns you thus increase the innocent death toll at least 10x. In practice it will be even more as eliminating the guns doesn't preclude other methods (the MGM shooter would have likely have gotten a higher body count with a truck) and it increases the other attacks because they the deterrence is less.

Thus I see banning guns as both ineffective and throwing the baby out with the bathwater if it were effective.

How many of the legitimate self defense shootings were in defense from someone with a gun? How many were by police or armed security? Why are you assuming all of those would have ended in death if they didn't have a gun? Why are you only counting mass shooting fatalities?

Really poor analysis.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

According to the NRA, Bill O'Reilly, and people like Loren Pechtel, massacres are just a price we have to pay so that a small portion of the population can get its rocks off with guns. Also, gun control won't stop gun related massacres because....

Sure, often, the people that pay the price for such, often never actually benefit in one way from the terribly wide-open new interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, but as long as the Gun Lobby (which started hijacking the NRA in the 60's) is happy, that appears to be all that matters.

All you are constitutionally protected for is equal protection under the law, meaning that the shooter will have to be held equally liable for your death as they would for the other people they killed.

Quit misrepresenting my position!

Not misrepresenting, just changing the angle.

Lets look at some data.

Let's.

From the Mother Jones database we have 758 mass shooting fatalities in the last 35 years. That's 21.7 per year. This is less than 10% of what even an anti-gun group says is the number of times someone was shot in legitimate self defense.

This is a great point!
21.7 deaths a year from mass shootings
250 justifiable homicides (self-defense)

Oh... how about this one?
500 accidental deaths

So the number of accidental gun deaths is double the justifiable homicide. Can we look at decent restrictions on guns now? Oh what... you had more?

By removing guns you thus increase the innocent death toll at least 10x.

First off... there is increasing gun restrictions and then there is banning guns outright. A full out gun ban isn't happening in this country. Secondly, bullshit. A big huge pile of bullshit. The number of justifiable homicides is around 250 a year. That isn't increasing anything by 10x.

In practice it will be even more as eliminating the guns doesn't preclude other methods (the MGM shooter would have likely have gotten a higher body count with a truck) and it increases the other attacks because they the deterrence is less.

Like I said before, it'd been really hard to get a truck up the freight elevator.

Thus I see banning guns as both ineffective and throwing the baby out with the bathwater if it were effective.

But you do find using strawman arguments as extremely useful. Maybe we should use strawmen to block bullets?

But back to your original claim... you are pretty much saying that this shit is just fodder. We are better off with massacres than with more restrictions on guns because U-Haul trucks.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Lets look at some data.

Do you have a link to your data?

From the Mother Jones database we have 758 mass shooting fatalities in the last 35 years.

Why look at 35 years as opposed to more recent trends? Why only focus on mass shootings whatever that means?

That's 21.7 per year.

...but that's misleading since mass shootings in recent years are far more trendy than they used to be. If you look at, say, mass shootings in the last 10 years, you'll get a different average.

This is less than 10% of what even an anti-gun group says is the number of times someone was shot in legitimate self defense.

...but that's a triple apple to orange comparison. You're comparing persons to mass shootings more than once.

By removing guns you thus increase the innocent death toll at least 10x.

It doesn't seem like it based on problems above but moreover no one is advocating for the complete removal of guns, I don't think.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

This year alone there were 279 mass shootings. Mass shootings can have 10 injuries to persons but 0 deaths--that's just an example not a definition or a limit. The number of deaths from these 279 mass shootings was 351.

http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting?sort=desc&order=# Killed

There were 1572 defensive uses of guns this year so far and there were 1564 unintentional shootings.

http://www.gunviolencearchive.org

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Quit misrepresenting my position!

Lets look at some data. From the Mother Jones database we have 758 mass shooting fatalities in the last 35 years. That's 21.7 per year. This is less than 10% of what even an anti-gun group says is the number of times someone was shot in legitimate self defense.

By removing guns you thus increase the innocent death toll at least 10x. In practice it will be even more as eliminating the guns doesn't preclude other methods (the MGM shooter would have likely have gotten a higher body count with a truck) and it increases the other attacks because they the deterrence is less.

Thus I see banning guns as both ineffective and throwing the baby out with the bathwater if it were effective.

How many of the legitimate self defense shootings were in defense from someone with a gun? How many were by police or armed security? Why are you assuming all of those would have ended in death if they didn't have a gun? Why are you only counting mass shooting fatalities?

Really poor analysis.

1) From someone with a gun--what difference does that make? If they had to use a lesser weapon you think they wouldn't have? Lesser weapons favor the attacker.

2) The number is too low to include the police. I have never seen numbers on shootings by armed security.

3) Few people are going to go for a gun if they don't feel that either their life is in serious danger or that their assailant intends rape. I have never seen a breakdown as to the threat but most of the time it's a man so the rape numbers will be fairly low.

4) I'm only counting mass shootings because those are the driving force behind trying to get rid of guns and they're also the only deaths where a gun ban would have a substantial effect on the death rate.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Quit misrepresenting my position!

Not misrepresenting, just changing the angle.

Lets look at some data.

Let's.

From the Mother Jones database we have 758 mass shooting fatalities in the last 35 years. That's 21.7 per year. This is less than 10% of what even an anti-gun group says is the number of times someone was shot in legitimate self defense.

This is a great point!
21.7 deaths a year from mass shootings
250 justifiable homicides (self-defense)

Oh... how about this one?
500 accidental deaths

And most of these would go away if we had reasonable training standards for gun ownership.

So the number of accidental gun deaths is double the justifiable homicide. Can we look at decent restrictions on guns now? Oh what... you had more?

But note that the number of attacks prevented is far higher than the number of dead attackers. Most of the time when the defender fires the attacker doesn't die. And most self defense uses of a gun don't even involve firing it--the most common self defense use is that the attacker realizes the defender is armed and executes a hasty retreat.

By removing guns you thus increase the innocent death toll at least 10x.

First off... there is increasing gun restrictions and then there is banning guns outright. A full out gun ban isn't happening in this country. Secondly, bullshit. A big huge pile of bullshit. The number of justifiable homicides is around 250 a year. That isn't increasing anything by 10x.

If you want to stop the mass shootings you need something close to a full gun ban.

In practice it will be even more as eliminating the guns doesn't preclude other methods (the MGM shooter would have likely have gotten a higher body count with a truck) and it increases the other attacks because they the deterrence is less.

Like I said before, it'd been really hard to get a truck up the freight elevator.

Huh? Just drive in. There was nothing that would stop a runaway truck from plowing into the crowd and if you take a big U-haul and load it to max weight it's going to run over a lot of people before it's brought to a stop. The barriers were meant to control pedestrians.

Thus I see banning guns as both ineffective and throwing the baby out with the bathwater if it were effective.

But you do find using strawman arguments as extremely useful. Maybe we should use strawmen to block bullets?

But back to your original claim... you are pretty much saying that this shit is just fodder. We are better off with massacres than with more restrictions on guns because U-Haul trucks.

You seem to be ignoring substitution. You want to put a bank vault on the front door--next to the unprotected glass window. Look at Europe--the Islamists have a hard time getting guns so they used cars or trucks.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Do you have a link to your data?

I have the downloaded .csv, I didn't keep the URL. It shouldn't be hard to find.

From the Mother Jones database we have 758 mass shooting fatalities in the last 35 years.

Why look at 35 years as opposed to more recent trends? Why only focus on mass shootings whatever that means?

35 years because that's what's in the database. I think they originally did 30 years and have kept it up to date since.

That's 21.7 per year.

...but that's misleading since mass shootings in recent years are far more trendy than they used to be. If you look at, say, mass shootings in the last 10 years, you'll get a different average.

Ok, 45.8 per year. Doesn't change my argument.

This is less than 10% of what even an anti-gun group says is the number of times someone was shot in legitimate self defense.

...but that's a triple apple to orange comparison. You're comparing persons to mass shootings more than once.

Huh? I'm comparing those that might be saved by a gun ban vs those who likely die because of a gun ban.

By removing guns you thus increase the innocent death toll at least 10x.

It doesn't seem like it based on problems above but moreover no one is advocating for the complete removal of guns, I don't think.

If you don't pretty much remove them you aren't going to stop the mass shootings.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

This year alone there were 279 mass shootings. Mass shootings can have 10 injuries to persons but 0 deaths--that's just an example not a definition or a limit. The number of deaths from these 279 mass shootings was 351.

http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting?sort=desc&order=# Killed

There were 1572 defensive uses of guns this year so far and there were 1564 unintentional shootings.

http://www.gunviolencearchive.org

They claim not to be biased but they're using a pretty bad definition of "mass shooting". What we think of as a mass shooting is things like the MGM, not gangs fighting it out. Looking at the same database as before I find 92 mass shootings in 35 years.

 

[bilby]

It doesn't seem like it based on problems above but moreover no one is advocating for the complete removal of guns, I don't think.

If you don't pretty much remove them you aren't going to stop the mass shootings.

That explains why places like Australia, where licenced guns are readily available to those with a demonstrated need for them (despite the changes to the law post Port Arthur), still have about one mass shooting per annum, just as we did before the changes.

Oh, wait, no we don't; We have less than 10% of that number. It's almost as though your hypothesis was directly at odds with the actual observed results.

Or, to use the vernacular: Bullshit.

It is very convenient to suggest that anything short of a total ban on all guns will be ineffective, because it is quite easy to argue that a total ban is unreasonable.

Sadly for those who wish to employ that argument, reality tells us the even fairly mild restrictions are quite effective, and that it is not necessary to remove all of the guns (or even all of the illegal guns) from a society to massively reduce the frequency of both mass shootings, and other illegal use of guns.

 

[Kharakov]

According to the NRA, Bill O'Reilly, and people like Loren Pechtel, massacres are just a price we have to pay so that a small portion of the population can get its rocks off with guns.

Ohh, I thought the corrupt middle class wanted guns to protect them from the people they rip off through socioeconomic shell games.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

This year alone there were 279 mass shootings. Mass shootings can have 10 injuries to persons but 0 deaths--that's just an example not a definition or a limit. The number of deaths from these 279 mass shootings was 351.

http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting?sort=desc&order=# Killed

There were 1572 defensive uses of guns this year so far and there were 1564 unintentional shootings.

http://www.gunviolencearchive.org

They claim not to be biased but they're using a pretty bad definition of "mass shooting". What we think of as a mass shooting is things like the MGM, not gangs fighting it out. Looking at the same database as before I find 92 mass shootings in 35 years.

Sorry, but no, shooting up 10 people is also a mass shooting.

 

[untermensche]

The Constitution implicitly accepts that humans have the INALIENABLE right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

These ideas were not abandoned by the Constitution.

The question is: Which right is more supreme?

The right of people to have life?

Or the right of people to have assault rifles?

Seems a trivial question.

But we live in insane times. Humans always have.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Written to Loren Pechtel:

... This is less than 10% of what even an anti-gun group says is the number of times someone was shot in legitimate self defense....

...Why are you only counting mass shooting fatalities?...

Right, this is an apples-to-oranges comparison. He uses a strict definition of mass shooting so it becomes rare and then takes deaths associated with those as compared to self-defense shootings. It's like comparing the number of abortions due to heroin to the number of live births. It makes no sense because one item of comparison is way too narrow while the other isn't. Now I did give a different interesting statistic in last post which was number of unintentional shootings versus self-defense shootings. Those were nearly even.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Not misrepresenting, just changing the angle.

Lets look at some data.

Let's.

From the Mother Jones database we have 758 mass shooting fatalities in the last 35 years. That's 21.7 per year. This is less than 10% of what even an anti-gun group says is the number of times someone was shot in legitimate self defense.

This is a great point!
21.7 deaths a year from mass shootings
250 justifiable homicides (self-defense)

Oh... how about this one?
500 accidental deaths

And most of these would go away if we had reasonable training standards for gun ownership.

So the number of accidental gun deaths is double the justifiable homicide. Can we look at decent restrictions on guns now? Oh what... you had more?

But note that the number of attacks prevented is far higher than the number of dead attackers. Most of the time when the defender fires the attacker doesn't die. And most self defense uses of a gun don't even involve firing it--the most common self defense use is that the attacker realizes the defender is armed and executes a hasty retreat.

Just say it, the 58 that died in Las Vegas is a good number. A number you are fine with, because... U-Hauls.

- - - Updated - - -

The Constitution implicitly accepts that humans have the INALIENABLE right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

You misspelled The Declaration of Independence.

The question is: Which right is more supreme?

The right of people to have life?

Or the right of people to have assault rifles?

Seems a trivial question.

But people could rent U-Hauls, therefore we should be thanking the mass killers for using semi-automatic to near fully automatic weapons instead of vans, rental trucks, and submarines!

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Look at Europe--the Islamists have a hard time getting guns so they used cars or trucks.

I'm glad you agree that the gun control in those countries is working.

By your weird logic we should allow mortars, machine guns, grenades, and nerve gas be purchased. Somehow that makes us all safer by your reasoning.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Look at Europe--the Islamists have a hard time getting guns so they used cars or trucks.

I'm glad you agree that the gun control in those countries is working.

Since they're using cars and trucks, we should loosen regulation on dirty bombs.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

The Constitution implicitly accepts that humans have the INALIENABLE right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

These ideas were not abandoned by the Constitution.

The question is: Which right is more supreme?

The right of people to have life?

Or the right of people to have assault rifles?

Seems a trivial question.

But we live in insane times. Humans always have.

I don't see a conflict between the right to life and the right to own a firearm.

I do see a conflict between the right to life and the act of shooting that firearm at someone.

The term "assault rifle" does not accurately describe any firearms as firearms are rated and categorized by capability.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

If you don't pretty much remove them you aren't going to stop the mass shootings.

That explains why places like Australia, where licenced guns are readily available to those with a demonstrated need for them (despite the changes to the law post Port Arthur), still have about one mass shooting per annum, just as we did before the changes.

Oh, wait, no we don't; We have less than 10% of that number. It's almost as though your hypothesis was directly at odds with the actual observed results.

Or, to use the vernacular: Bullshit.

Hey, when theory finds itself at odds with reality, reality can feel free to just wander off and fuck itself.

 

[untermensche]

The Constitution implicitly accepts that humans have the INALIENABLE right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

You misspelled The Declaration of Independence.

So these inalienable rights were not so inalienable once the Constitution was written?

The question is: Which right is more supreme?

The right of people to have life?

Or the right of people to have assault rifles?

Seems a trivial question.

But people could rent U-Hauls, therefore we should be thanking the mass killers for using semi-automatic to near fully automatic weapons instead of vans, rental trucks, and submarines!

Rational people do everything possible to eliminate unnecessary dangers.

There is nothing necessary about owning a semi-automatic rifle.

 

[untermensche]

The Constitution implicitly accepts that humans have the INALIENABLE right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

These ideas were not abandoned by the Constitution.

The question is: Which right is more supreme?

The right of people to have life?

Or the right of people to have assault rifles?

Seems a trivial question.

But we live in insane times. Humans always have.

I don't see a conflict between the right to life and the right to own a firearm.

Did those people in Vegas have a right to life?