: : : Admitedly, VPC, Amnesty, and handgun Control are also biased, but their data can't be ignored.: : Don: In fact, it can be ignored. They have no facts of value.
: Well, the purpose of debate is to offer contradicting points of view and evaluate their relative merit. If you just reject all points other than your own as lacking in value, the whole conversation falls apart.
Don: I do not think HCI or VPC have any compelling facts on their side. I think their arguments can be defeated on a case by case basis, and any of their arguments you wish to offer I will tackle. Further, I do not believe that either HCI or VPC does any research of scientific value, and that they basically serve as sources of questionable "facts" for use in sound bytes and public debate. I believe they are purely political organizations which use psudo-scientific data as a tool, just as they use highly emotional imagary.
Don: I have little opinion on Amnisty International at this time.
:I'm not, even for a second, suggesting that you change your mind, since you obviously have a deep emotional commitment to firearms. The point I was making is that other people with alternative views have raised issues that must be addressed if you want your argument to be persuasive. To simply say that your opponents lack any valuable facts and then ignore their critiques isn't a very convincing argument, IMHO.
Don: I believe most of these arguments have been met, most with ease. I do not feel that either HCI or VPC offer substansive arguments.
: You raised what I thought were some interesting topics, although I tend to have a different interpretation of the second ammendment than you do. I still feel that the best way to reduce lethal violence is to limit access to lethal weapons.
: You'll notice that I didn't suggest banning firearms entirely, since that wasn't the point of the post, nor is it my goal, but I do support limits on access. If it is easy to get a lethal weapon quickly, with no restrictions on who can purchase one, we will have more and better-armed criminals than if it is difficult to get a gun. That's simple common sense, is it not? The easier it is for people to buy weapons, the more criminals will buy them, since criminals are a subset of the population.
Don: This reasoning ignores several important facts. First, not everyone has the same level of motivation to aquire a gun. A criminal who intends to use a gun to commit a crime has a high motivation to aquire one. Further, he can aquire a gun by means not open to law abiding citizens: theft and black market contacts. At the time Brady was becoming law, a US Justice Dept. study suggest that "point of purchase" laws such as Brady would have little effect: most guns used in crime (in the ten cities with the largest youth crime problems) were either stolen by the criminal or purchased from a drug dealer (drug dealers were accepting guns in exchange for drugs, and becoming intercity gun dealers). A law abiding citizen is more likely to be effected by a reduction in guns, because he buys a gun because he *might* need it, not because he *will* need it. Further, reducing the number of guns owned by law abiding citizens lowers the risk to criminals engaged in confrontational crime.
: Background checks, waiting periods, and letters of reference from gun safety instructors all strike me as potentially useful, even life-saving.
Don: People who had a need for a gun have been murdered during the waiting period. Several people have bought a gun and used it to defend from an attacker the night they brouht it home. This is not as unlikely as you may think: people under threat of violence often go out and buy a gun. I feel background checks are based on the assumption that we have to prove our innocence. I don't want to rely on some instructor to give the OK before I can own a means to defend myself.
:We make people demonstrate proficiency in driving before we let them loose on the streets, doesn't it seem wise to have similar precautions for gun ownership? This is particularly true, since the potential repercussions of letting an emotionally unstable person, a person with a history of violence, or a person with no sense of necessary safety precautions have a lethal weapon are so dire.
Don: I think this type of requirement is fine, for people who want to carry concealed. We in fact have no license requirement for owning a car, just for driving one on state property. My feeling on people with violent histories is that they shouldn't be running free in the first place.
: : Don: Lott and Mustard are the only ones to do a nation wide study on the effects of liberalized concealed carry laws. It is by far the best study of its type.
: Well, ok, but that's not really saying much is it? If they are the only ones to have studied this phenomenon, then naturally their study is the best. It is also the worst, and it is both the longest and the shortest, and Lott and Mustard are the tallest people ever to study exactly what they studied. Seriously, being the best, when you have no competition, isn't really all that difficult. Sorry, perhaps I'm being pedantic.
Don: Several studies have been done on the effects of liberalized concealed carry laws. All of these studies have been done at the state or city level. Most have been done on a short-term basis. The results of these studies have been mixed. The Lott and Mustard study used almost every county in the US, over an extended period, and considered all types of crime and all of the economic and crime fighting measures that anyone could think of. Lott gave his study to other researchers and to pro-gun and anti-gun activists to see if they could think of any factors he left out before the study was published. He has also provided his raw data to other researchers (in contrast, anti-gun researcher Kellerman still refuses to release all of his data).
: You also seem to be under the impression that any alternative to free and easy handgun access is an assault on you freedom and/or safety. Is that really your opinion? If so, why is that? Can you imagine any middle ground? Might some restrictions on ownership be acceptable? How about child-proof trigger locks? How about restrictions on sales to people with a history of violence? How about waiting periods for purchase?
Don: I believe that the right to defend life and liberty is a fundamental right, and that the right to keep and bear arms is a practical necessity to the right to defend life and liberty. I oppose any arbitarary government control over a citizen's right to own arms.
Don: People who have been convicted of violent crimes give up a portion (or all) of their rights, and one of the rights they give up is the right to arms. I do not believe children possess the full rights of adults, and this goes for people who lack full mental capacity as well (this does not mean we can treat children however we wish--we are responsible for them).
Don: Trigger locks: these can cause safety problems as well as solve them. I think is should be up to the person buying the gun to decide whether to buy one of these, not the state. In any case, accidental gun deaths are the least likely cause of death: something less than 1,400 occured in the US the last year I have heard the data. This, in a nation with some 250 million people, an estimated 200 million guns, and 40 million households with guns. Further, gun accidents tend to occur more often in violent or irresponsible households, not in "typical" gun owning households. This suggests that: getting the rate lower will be difficult (the law of diminishing returns), and that means such as trigger locks won't work (the people in these households won't use them).
: I'm not suggesting that the ATF should come take away your weapons; not at all. I'm suggesting that it should be made as difficult for psychos to get guns as possible. If guns themselves are not readily available, sure some people will find other weapons, but given a choice between an assailant with a gun and one with a pointed stick, I'll go for the pointy stick every time! Wouldn't you?
Don: Yes, but I would rather that both my wife and her 250 lb attacker have guns than both of them don't. I'd rather my 83 year old dad and his attacker both have guns than neither of them have guns.
Don: As stated before, I think that law abiding citizens will be more effected by firearms avaiablity than criminals. Further, current research (by Lott, Kleck and others) suggests that criminals modify their behavior when the possiblity of facing an armed victim is high: they go else where, choose non-confrontational crimes, or don't commit crime at all.
None.
