Rockbridge Forum

Coondog, no law is going to put an end to any kind of violent crime. I wish people would get that through their thick heads
All rifles are basically the same. The major difference is some are auto loaded between rounds and some are manually loaded between rounds by use of a bolt or lever. The socalled assualt rifles only differ in appearance from other rifles. The don't have any special ability to kill more people in less time.
But as long as the stupids are pushing for more and stricter laws I guess they will have to push for hysteria to get things their way.

And you are right about some folks like to shoot things or blow things up. When I was in the army I had the oppertunitty to fire several different types and sizes of howitzers, rifles, carbines and two sizes of machineguns. My prersonal favorites were the self-propelled 105 howitzer and the Browning .50 cal machinegun.

My prersonal favorites were the self-propelled 105 howitzer and the Browning .50 cal machinegun.

In my view, for a very good reason, many of the items you enjoyed in the army are reserved for the armed forces exclusively.
Somewhere, somebody decided that the general public did not need a Browning .50 cal machinegun for deer hunting (unless you want your venison well tenderized).

Prohibitions against private ownership of 105 howitzers (they don't sell them at Walmart...I checked) and the such are restrictions upon the 2nd amendment's unfettered right to arms.

It may surprise you to find that I have no problem with you having a 105 howitzer or a Browning .50 cal machinegun, as long as certain licensing provisions are met. (and perhaps mental evaluation).

I, myself, have a hand me down 308 simi-automatic rifle with a five round capacity. Weighs a ton. The "assault rifles" people are concerned about
today are lightweight and adapt to well endowed clips. Now, I'm sure I could find a 30 round clip that would fit, a handle for the front and some other really cool accessories to make it look snazzy and make me feel like a real tough fellow, but it would probably weigh upwards of 2 tons.
The definition of an "assault rifle" is difficult to pin down, but deserves discussion and eventual resolution.

Regardless, we must agree that there are already regulations and restrictions on the second amendment as illustrated by the distinction between what the army has and what we can legally get our hands on. Therefore, the argument that the second amendment cannot be regulated is moot.

Coondog

I came across two reference today giving both rate of gun ownership and rate of gun deaths, by state. I wondered, "Is there a connection between the two?"

Each point on the graph below is one state. The result indicates an unmistakable correlation between prevalence of guns and the chance of gun death (correlation coefficient = 0.7). We must drive a stake through the nonsensical NRA ideology that turns the facts upside down.



References:

Gun ownership rates by state
Gun death rates by state

I was wondering the same thing so I just googled gun ownership and rate of gun deaths by state and found a graph identical to yours. Weird coincidence?



But seriously:

1. The Gun death rates by state include justified homicide and suicide. So if a person defends themselves with a gun and shoots an assailant (a women defends herself from a rapist, a store owner defends himself from a robber) this is included in the gun death rates by state negatively, driving up the percentage of gun deaths even though most ordinary people (liberals exempted) would consider self-defense a right and would view a scenario where a person defended their life or their family's life with a gun as justified.

Two-thirds of gun deaths are suicides. Banning guns would not have an impact on suicides. Japan has one of the lowest gun ownership rates in the world but has nearly double the suicide rate of the United States. South Korea, Poland, Hungary, Belgium and Austria have stricter gun-control laws yet still have higher suicide rates than the United States.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/08/gun-control-suicide-rates-ezra-klein/

2. The actual homicide by gun rates by state are meaningless due to the inclusion of justified homicide and suicide. As an example,Illinois has a low gun ownership rate as well as a low gun death rate, but exceeds Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Wyoming, Minnesota, Alabama and Mississippi(all states with high gun ownership and high gun death rates) in the murder rate. What is our goal? To reduce the number of people who are murdered or just the people killed by guns (even those killed justifiably)?

https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/murder-rates-nationally-and-state#MRord

3. Defensive use of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence. The ability to defend yourself with a firearm is a positive factor for gun rights.

Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.

Another study estimates there are 1,029,615 DGUs per year “for self-protection or for the protection of property at home, work, or elsewhere” excluding “military service, police work, or work as a security guard,” (within the range of the National Academies’ paper), yielding an estimate of 162,000 cases per year where someone “almost certainly would have been killed” if they “had not used a gun for protection.”

(In comparison, there were 11,208 homicide deaths by firearm in the US in 2012. There were a total of 33,636 deaths due to “injury by firearms,” of which the majority were suicides, 21,175.)

Congrats on finding a similar plot produced elsewhere by somebody else ... I'm gratified to see that they are essentially identical.
Here are responses to your thoughts:

• Details (suicide, murder, ...) are less important to me than the aggregated totals. Guns are a public health problem, not mainly a crime problem. Causing any and all of those deaths to decline is a worthy goal. NRA always frames this as exclusively a crime problem; it is not.
• Your comparative Japan/US suicide rates are misleading for several reasons. They are wrong or out of date, the difference rapidly declining. They are not age adjusted; suicide is strongly correlated with age and Japan has a markedly older population. Age-adjusted 2015 comparison is Japan=15, US=13, not that dissimlar and the gap has narrowed further in the last 3 years.
• Any "need" to defend oneself is hugely greater in the US because, insanely, we have scattered guns by the hundreds of millions everywhere without control. More guns = more death.
• Cherry-picking individual states that depart from a straight line on my graph is meaningless and dishonest. What counts is correlation, what the group as a whole is doing because of contaminating influences like interstate transport/sales of guns. One must acknowledge larger uncertainties for individual single state data points, and more accuracy for aggregated 51-state data.

I went to the March for our Lives today in Washington DC. The kids who spurred this event are amazing, and deserve out thanks for accomplishing what their elders have been unable to do for decades.

Well, not all elders. I saw this sweet old lady. She has deadly aim on the target, idiotic gun fetishists like the NRA and their accomplices.

Congrats on finding a similar plot produced elsewhere by somebody else ... I'm gratified to see that they are essentially identical.

Even the sources and years of the sources identical. But go ahead, claim you independently found the same sources and devised your own graph that just happened to be identical to the Mother Jones article from the exact same sources from the exact same dates. Coincidence???

Details (suicide, murder, ...) are less important to me than the aggregated totals. Guns are a public health problem, not mainly a crime problem. Causing any and all of those deaths to decline is a worthy goal. NRA always frames this as exclusively a crime problem; it is not.

And there is the problem. To lump justifiable homicides (situations where people protected themselves or someone else by using a firearm and killed a perpetrator of a crime) into the catch all "gun deaths" and to try to use the aggregate of gun deaths to make a political case is absurd. Justifiable homicides by firearms actually prove that guns are a benefit to society. Gun deaths from suicides are also suspect. There are other countries that have very strict gun laws and have a much lower gun ownership rate yet have higher suicide rates. If there was a correlation between suicides and gun ownership than we would expect countries with strict gun laws and low ownership of guns to have low suicide rates. We do not.

There is no relation between suicide rate and gun ownership rates around the world. According to the 2016 World Health Statistics report (link is external), (2) suicide rates in the four countries cited as having restrictive gun control laws have suicide rates that are comparable to that in the U. S.: Australia, 11.6, Canada, 11.4, France, 15.8, UK, 7.0, and USA 13.7 suicides/100,000. By comparison, Japan has among the highest suicide rates in the world, 23.1/100,000, but gun ownership is extremely rare, 0.6 guns/100 people.

Suicide is a mental health issue. If guns are not available other means are used. Poisoning, in fact, is the most common method of suicide for U. S. females according to the Washington Post (34 % of suicides), and suffocation the second most common method for males (27%).

Secondly, gun ownership rates in France and Canada are not low, as is implied in the Post article. The rate of gun ownership in the U. S. is indeed high at 88.8 guns/100 residents, but gun ownership rates are also among the world’s highest in the other countries cited. Gun ownership rates in these countries are are as follows: Australia, 15, Canada, 30.8, France, 31.2, and UK 6.2 per 100 residents. (3 (link is external),4 (link is external)) Gun ownership rates in Saudia Arabia are comparable to that in Canada and France, with 37.8 guns per 100 Saudi residents, yet the lowest suicide rate in the world is in Saudia Arabia (0.3 suicides per 100,000).

Third, recent statistics in the state of Florida (link is external) show that nearly one third of the guns used in suicides are obtained illegally, putting these firearm deaths beyond control through gun laws.(5)

Fourth, the primary factors affecting suicide rates are personal stresses, cultural, economic, religious factors and demographics. According to the WHO statistics, the highest rates of suicide in the world are in the Republic of Korea, with 36.8 suicides per 100,000, but India, Japan, Russia, and Hungary all have rates above 20 per 100,000; roughly twice as high as the U.S. and the four countries that are the basis for the Post’s calculation that gun control would reduce U.S. suicide rates by 20 to 38 percent. Lebanon, Oman, and Iraq all have suicide rates below 1.1 per 100,000 people--less than 1/10 the suicide rate in the U. S., and Afghanistan, Algeria, Jamaica, Haiti, and Egypt have low suicide rates that are below 4 per 100,000 in contrast to 13.7 suicides/100,000 in the U. S.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-new-brain/201607/fact-check-gun-control-and-suicide

Your comparative Japan/US suicide rates are misleading for several reasons. They are wrong or out of date, the difference rapidly declining. They are not age adjusted; suicide is strongly correlated with age and Japan has a markedly older population. Age-adjusted 2015 comparison is Japan=15, US=13, not that dissimlar and the gap has narrowed further in the last 3 years.

Now your just splitting hairs. Gun ownership in the US is 88.8/100 residents and in Japan .06/ 100 residents. Even adjusted for age (or if you need to by gender, height, weight, left-handed or right-handed or whatever other adjustment you feel you need to make to make it more fair) there is a remarkable difference in the availability of guns between the two countries and yet the suicide rate in Japan is higher, as is the case in many other countries that have low gun ownership rates.

Any "need" to defend oneself is hugely greater in the US because, insanely, we have scattered guns by the hundreds of millions everywhere without control. More guns = more death.

Wrong again.

Cherry-picking individual states that depart from a straight line on my graph is meaningless and dishonest. .

But that is not what I did, I used several states as an example (and I stated "as an example") that homicide by gun rates by state are meaningless due to the inclusion of justified homicide and suicide. If you look at the homicide rates by state you have this:



This graph pretty much shows that there is no correlation between murders and gun ownership.

So once you take away suicides, which have no correlation to gun ownership, Your are left with justifiable homicide, homicide and accidental death. Justifiable homicide should not be used as a justification against gun ownership unless you believe people should not be able to legally protect their families and themselves. Homicides have no correlation to gun ownership (see graph above). Pretty much all you have left is accidental deaths and that is really pretty insignificant.



If you are truly concerned about public health concerns, there are many more prevalent issues than guns that should be addressed.



But than we know the liberal cry of guns being a public health concern is really just a charade,

Kevsky wrote:Even the sources and years of the sources identical. But go ahead, claim you independently found the same sources and devised your own graph that just happened to be identical to the Mother Jones article from the exact same sources from the exact same dates. Coincidence???

You are unnecessarily rude as you drop snarky comment with no shred of evidence that I didn't independently analyze the data.
I had not seen the Mother Jones plot. Evidently the data on which both plots are based are the same.
The proof is in the attached Excel file, produced by me using the data in the references given within the spreadsheet and in my prior posting.

Kevsky wrote:Justifiable homicides by firearms actually prove that guns are a benefit to society.

Not so. A huge effect of the proliferation of guns is to cause the instances of "justifiable homicide" to skyrocket. But even these deaths are a small fraction of the total.

Kevsky wrote:Gun deaths from suicides are also suspect. There are other countries that have very strict gun laws and have a much lower gun ownership rate yet have higher suicide rates. If there was a correlation between suicides and gun ownership than we would expect countries with strict gun laws and low ownership of guns to have low suicide rates.

Also not true. Yes, you can cherry-pick countries that depart from the strong correlation between gun ownership and suicide but that is a deliberate warping of general reality. But apparently the proclivity to commit suicide has little to do with gun ownership. The success rate for attempted suicide, however, is hugely different between suicides by gun and suicides by other means.


The plots below show that for suicides committed without using guns, there is no relation between whether the victim owned a gun or not. In other words, the motivation has nothing to do with guns. For those who both owned and used guns in suicide, the outcome is strongly gun ownership dependent.

Damn!

We were having a nice conversation about reasonable gun restrictions and you guys have managed to flood the entire valley with graphs and charts regarding everything from gun deaths in Alaska to Suicides in Japan to Automobile wrecks and drownings.

To me, arguing about the ratio of gun deaths between America and Antarctica is a useless conversation. How about we compare firearm deaths in America to zero gun deaths. Start there and work your way to some sort of understanding. Make a chart. That may or may not tell you something.

All you need to know is that nobody is talking about banning all guns, so any argument based upon that premise is false from the beginning.
The idea is impractical as well as impossible, regardless of how many graphics one might conjure up.

Here's a challenge for all you graph fans: Find one that depicts the ratio of killings committed by males in society as opposed to females. That will tell you who should and who should not be allowed to handle a firearm.

Coondog

Coondog, I started an exhaustive correlation analysis to examine the points you just made.

My computer started groaning, then burst into flames, then went kablooey all over the desk.

In summary, I am forced to conclude that you are correct.

Kevsky wrote:Now your just splitting hairs. Gun ownership in the US is 88.8/100 residents and in Japan .06/ 100 residents. ... there is a remarkable difference in the availability of guns between the two countries and yet the suicide rate in Japan is higher ...

While the age adjusted suicide rate is similar between Japan and US, you have a point in highlighting the disparity in gun ownership between the two countries. This needs further examination. (Grasping at straws here, maybe the Japanese are more disciplined and skilled in the use of non-firearms techniques than their American counterparts? Lots of Bruce Lee movies and instruction on the finer technical points of non-firearms hari-kari? Ha!)

The graph of changes in rates is irrelevant for several reasons. First, it's misleading apples-to-oranges: firearms growth is total, whereas the homicide rate is per capita. Putting both on a per capita basis would bring the curves closer. Second, it speaks only of homicide, a minority of gun deaths. Our problem is much bigger than homicide alone, much bigger than murder alone, much bigger than accidents alone. Third, it diverts from the real fact ... notwithstanding a decline in gun homicide rate, the correlation between numbers of guns and total gun deaths remains real and strong.

The graph on gun murders is mystifying and suspect. It is not referenced in the Wiki article that displays it, and its data source is not referenced either. Especially because the result in nonsensical, this needs to be defended with reference to the original material.

Finally, the graph comparing all accident rates to firearms accident rates is fraudulently diversionary. It's like saying we shouldn't take flu vaccine because the number of influenza deaths is small compared to cancer + circulatory diseases. Moreover, it addresses only the tiny and technically arcane subset called "accidental gun deaths." This dishonestly diverts attention from the real problem, TOTAL gun deaths from all causes which are directly related to the immediate availability of guns to most of the US population without sensible public safety precautions.

Coondog wrote:
All you need to know is that nobody is talking about banning all guns, so any argument based upon that premise is false from the beginning.
The idea is impractical as well as impossible, regardless of how many graphics one might conjure up.

Total BS 'dog. Your stupid assertion is not worth obliterating, again. You didn't pay attention to the Feinstein AWB then, or the prolific voices now. It is as easy now as it was then to prove you wrong. OH. You mean we all get to legally keep and bear muskets, and single shot firearms. Sorry.

Here's a Republican talking about solving the American gun problem.

He makes sense.

Juggler and Neeck, Are you guys for real or are you just a couple of wise one's minions?
I ask because your postings are a ridiculous as the ones he posts.
Because they have nothing to resist with the people in North Korea are forced to put up with the abuse. In North Korea only the police and the military are armed.
The jeck on the vidio who refers to himself as a republican may be one, but he is as much a liberal as any democrat. both policital parties are filled with self serving morons and criminals.
Maybe you guys would like to live under the same conditions as the people in North Korea.

Coondog wrote:
All you need to know is that nobody is talking about banning all guns, so any argument based upon that premise is false from the beginning.

Justice John Paul Stevens isn't NOBODY, and a 5-4 SCOTUS decision is no joke. You can not be that dense. Sorry. You are that dense...

He is the former Chief Justice. There is no shortage of voices from the left that are calling for the very thing, banning all guns, EFFECTIVELY.


https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opin ... dment.html

Juggler wrote:gunnut2.png

Your photo is more about fat shaming. You have no idea if that guy is ex-special forces, wounded and disabled, etc.
Also, LEFTISTS like my own shallow little brother, are simply WRONG. Philosophically and Historically...

A well armed citizenry is a deterrent to Government Tyranny. It was 250 years ago and it is today.

Leftists, always seeking to disarm blacks, women, free people and THE GOOD AMERICAN CITIZEN.

Another air head cartoon Juggler???????

The main reason a well armed citizenry is a deterrent to a tyrannical government is not because an army of civilians can fight the military.

It's because of all the problems an armed citizenry can cause a tyrannical government.

Maybe you should read about all the problems the underground groups gave the Germans in Europe and the problems the Japs had in the Philippines

from just a small number of armed civilians. More recently, the problems the Russians had in Afghanistan. Another example would be the Jews dealing

with the British prior to Partition.

The object of being armed isn't to fight the government. Its only so the government knows we can if we ever have to.