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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Zoltan! who wrote (10943)	4/11/2001 12:12:08 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

2) The ease of access to or availability of guns is NOT cause crime; 3) Mass killings would NOT be avoided if guns were not available; These two are really funny. It would seem impossible to me to prove or disprove either one- way too many variables (actually I am not even sure you could KNOW all the variables) and for your author to categorically issue his definitive position on these strikes me he must be...insane, or holding a very different interpretation of the scientific method than that which I hold.. It must be gun religion- both ways. All hail the mighty gun. Or damn the demon gun. I offer no personal position to you on guns or gun control- only a comment that statements number two and three appear quite irrational. Pretty funny stuff, thanks for posting it.

To: Zoltan! who wrote (10943)	4/11/2001 1:02:10 PM
From: thames_sider	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

Without bothering with the entire gun debate again, on the specific points 'debunked'... 1) Women in particular, are NOT in more danger if they carry or own guns; 2) The ease of access to or availability of guns is NOT cause crime; 3) Mass killings would NOT be avoided if guns were not available; 4) Gun violence is NOT the leading accidental cause of death in children. 1. Never heard that before, it doesn't seem particularly likely one way or another. I assume it refers to this: For example, studies on women and handguns claim that a woman is up to 100 times more likely to be killed by handgun than to fire one for protection. "But they ignore the most important use of firearms -- protection. In 98 percent of cases, all you have to do is brandish a firearm. But these studies don’t take those incidents into account. All they do is count women who have been killed in criminal acts and compare it to the number of women who have used a gun in self-defense." there's a fallacy in his question, too. The only reliable study would be more on the lines: what proportion of women carrying guns have prevented a crime against themselves by 'using ' it [which is hard - assessing intent, belief, meaning of 'use' etc], against the proportion that has had a violent crime committed against them. Break down maybe with deaths, injuries, etc. To be fair, I guess this only includes 'stranger' violence? Then compare against unarmed US female population, US female population, and as a control a comparable society of similar social/civil style where no one (or only the occasional criminal) is armed: e.g., the UK - actually has similar/more per capita crime, I think. I don't know of any such study. Be interested if you or others do. 2. Not a cause of crime... possibly. Might be a cause of more gun-related crime, though... think so? 3. Nope - but there'd be a damn sight less. If you're sufficiently skilled and motivated, I suppose you can make bombs. The Columbine killers did. Trouble is, only one went off and it didn't kill anyone. It's a lot harder than pulling a trigger, takes way more preparation and can't be done on a whim or sudden rage. UK's last mass killing with automatic weapon? Hungerford, 1987 (I think) Automatic weapons banned after it... no mass killings since. [a few criminal/gang killings using auto weapons... these are not the same.] UK's last mass killing with handgun? Dunblane, 1991/2. Handguns banned/massively restricted. None since. Sure, you can use bombs, or drive your car very fast into a crowd, or drop rocks from the top of a high building in a crowded area... but without guns - especially automatics and handguns - you don't have a tool designed explicitly and solely for killing people. It's hard to electrocute yourself in a home without electricity - not impossible, but much harder... 4. Oh, goody. So? It's OK if it's only the second-commonest cause of children dying? By the way, there was a case in the US about two weeks ago of a 5-year-old child shooting (killing?) his own mother... the family were at a range, the father went to get the boy's own(!) rifle from the trunk and the child got hold of the father's .38 ... personally, I don't think a 5-year-old is that dangerous without a gun. With one, it's lethal. Did you hear about it or did it not get much coverage? I would have thought public health would be helped by fewer guns. Certainly the health of the people shot by them...