Gun Ownership

[j2k4]

Originally posted by myfiles3000@15 July 2003 - 08:51
j2, lynx, whoever else, lets move on

Yes--Let's do.

[j2k4]

Originally posted by ilw+15 July 2003 - 09:10--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (ilw @ 15 July 2003 - 09:10)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-lynx@15 July 2003 - 16:00
you stepped in front of a stray bullet.

lol
was that meant to be ironic? [/b][/quote]
I&#39;m sure any irony was unintentional.

[lynx]

Originally posted by ilw+15 July 2003 - 15:10--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (ilw @ 15 July 2003 - 15:10)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-lynx@15 July 2003 - 16:00
you stepped in front of a stray bullet.

lol
was that meant to be ironic? [/b][/quote]
It seemed appropriate given the context

[Rat Faced]

Originally posted by j2k4+15 July 2003 - 12:35--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (j2k4 @ 15 July 2003 - 12:35)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-ilw@15 July 2003 - 05:51
I&#39;ve been thinking about the switzerland thing and talking to some people and i think the fundamental difference between swiss gun ownership and american is not only the type of gun (as it seems quite a few swiss people here have handguns), but also the purpose of having the gun. Here as j2k4 pointed out its a legal requirement and I haven&#39;t met any&nbsp; swiss people who would even consider having a gun for home defence. All the swiss guns are carefully locked away making them unsuitable to protect anyone from an intruder, but this makes the gun very hard for children to get at and the incidence of &#39;gun death&#39; is much lower. I personally reckon there probably wasn&#39;t really a need for having a gun to protect your home until people did start protecting their homes with guns and now its a vicious circle. More people with guns to protect themselves leads to more people getting killed by guns (as shown by stats)&nbsp; as well as leading to more guns on the street (higher availability of guns)&nbsp; and this all leads to more people wanting a gun to protect themselves

Okay-

If you reject the example of Switzerland, please attempt a similar disection of the Israeli situation.

In Israel, the variety of weaponry is certainly greater, and they are likely to be kept situated in a much more convenient fashion. I&#39;m also sure adequate training in the use of guns in Israel is not a strict requirement.

What say you? [/b][/quote]
Hasnt Israel got full conscription? (Men and Women)

Im not 100% sure, but i heard that somewhere.

If so, then Israeli&#39;s in General will be much more fully conversant with Fire Arms safety than the US citizens in General.

In addition, as someone said earlier....In Israel, the last thing someone is going to do is brandish a Gun.


Sorry, but i hadnt given an opinion...and needed to get my twopennyworth in


This is what i was saying earlier j2k4.

In order to compare (for example) Main, you need to find a country matching Main in terms of Guns per Capita/relative wealth/culture.

Its unfair on Main (and i dont know if this State has a low Crime rate or not..its just off the top of my head) to include New Yorks murder rate in there....it pulls the average up.

Its also not fair in the debate, as New Yorks rate is lowered...

To get valid data you must compare like with like.


Lets start a different way.

Not all States are gun toting cowboys....which has the lowest number of Handguns per capita?

One where the State makes it difficult to get them?

Lets look at ITS gun related murder rate in isolation.

[myfiles3000]

here&#39;s a claim i&#39;ve heard: there are 17 firearms for every man woman and child in texas. can anyone confirm whether or not this is BS?

[hobbes]

Originally posted by myfiles3000@15 July 2003 - 20:36
here&#39;s a claim i&#39;ve heard: there are 17 firearms for every man woman and child in texas. can anyone confirm whether or not this is BS?

Myfiles,

To even make such a post really solidifies my belief that you are not in touch with America and should visit Clocker.

I live in Texas, I do not own a handgun, I have never owned a gun. None of my college graduate collegues owns one, except for the occassional shotgun, for hunting.

I have never been threatened by a gun toting maniac, and I can only recall 1 gun related incident in my life. A case of a friend of a friend, who was drunk and in the a bad part of town at 3:00am (He got shot in the leg for insulting his mugger).

There are no random drive by shootings in the suburbs, we don&#39;t cower at home fearing gun assaults. Sure, we have the occasional crazy, who makes big headlines, but why the hell a citizen needs an automatic weapon is beyond me.

What I am trying to paint for you is a picture of reality for the middle and upper middle class. Guns just aren&#39;t an issue. I don&#39;t live in fear of being shot. When you go to the local convenience store be prepared that someone is much more likely to hold the door open for you than hold you up. I will admit that I know where not to be, and that is the secret. Don&#39;t take the short cut through the ghetto at 3:00am. You will still, more than likely, get knifed, as it is so much quieter.

For the lower class, walk quickly and keep your head down. Poverty and drugs make for desperate times and are handled in the like.



I have not addressed the issue of handgun control (which I strongly favor), I just wanted to dispel this caricature of the "Texan". I do, however; live in a town filled with tumbleweeds, own a sassy old mule named, "Miss Daisy" and walk around with a hayseed sticking from between my teeth.

[myfiles3000]

Originally posted by hobbes+15 July 2003 - 22:42--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (hobbes @ 15 July 2003 - 22:42)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-myfiles3000@15 July 2003 - 20:36
here&#39;s a claim i&#39;ve heard: there are 17 firearms for every man woman and child in texas. can anyone confirm whether or not this is BS?

Myfiles,

To even make such a post really solidifies my belief that you are not in touch with America and should visit Clocker.

I live in Texas, I do not own a handgun, I have never owned a gun. None of my college graduate collegues owns one, except for the occassional shotgun, for hunting.

I have never been threatened by a gun toting maniac, and I can only recall 1 gun related incident in my life. A case of a friend of a friend, who was drunk and in the a bad part of town at 3:00am (He got shot in the leg for insulting his mugger).

There are no random drive by shootings in the suburbs, we don&#39;t cower at home fearing gun assaults. Sure, we have the occasional crazy, who makes big headlines, but why the hell a citizen needs an automatic weapon is beyond me.

What I am trying to paint for you is a picture of reality for the middle and upper middle class. Guns just aren&#39;t an issue. I don&#39;t live in fear of being shot. When you go to the local convenience store be prepared that someone is much more likely to hold the door open for you than hold you up. I will admit that I know where not to be, and that is the secret. Don&#39;t take the short cut through the ghetto at 3:00am. You will still, more than likely, get knifed, as it is so much quieter.

For the lower class, walk quickly and keep your head down. Poverty and drugs make for desperate times and are handled in the like.



I have not addressed the issue of handgun control (which I strongly favor), I just wanted to dispel this caricature of the "Texan". I do, however; live in a town filled with tumbleweeds, own a sassy old mule named, "Miss Daisy" and walk around with a hayseed sticking from between my teeth. [/b][/quote]
thanks hobbes, for all the anecdotal evidence, but as they were often fond of saying in first year, "you&#39;re friends are not representative of the general population." I might add, "especially your college graduate, non-lower-class friends."

please note that I made no comment on life in texas or in the usa, i simply repeated a statistic that i have heard more than once, to see whether anyone had hard data. A quick search of the ATF did not yield an answer.

However, 2 sources have been provided for the following stats: Texas&#39; 17 million residents own a total of 68 million guns, for an average of four guns apiece, while 16,600 Texans legally own machine guns.

The Forward (Jewish Weekly of New York City) (May 14, 1993).
Houston Post, March 9, 1993, p. A8:

I have not been able to confirm these numbers with government stats, but it seems sensible that the original stat of 17 million guns morphed into 17 guns per person.

there, i answered my own question.

[lynx]

Originally posted by j2k4+15 July 2003 - 15:14--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (j2k4 @ 15 July 2003 - 15:14)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'>

Originally posted by ilw@15 July 2003 - 09:10
<!--QuoteBegin-lynx

@15 July 2003 - 16:00
you stepped in front of a stray bullet.

lol
was that meant to be ironic?

I&#39;m sure any irony was unintentional. [/b][/quote]
Was that 45 years old ?
More likely got hit with a .45

[hobbes]

Yeah, but my point was this: we&#39;ve posted lots of "statistics" on this thread. What we have found is that you cannot simply take "gun ownership" and correlate it with "murder rate". There are too many other variables involved, many being unique to a particular country. Switzerland was a good example as poster earlier.

So, more importantly, how do guns actually effect people in a given country and who exactly is getting shot.

I was just pointing out that for people like you and me, guns aren&#39;t a real issue. As I have said before, it&#39;s basically blacks killing blacks and whites killing whites for gangs, for "territory", for drugs. I think if guns were illegal, these groups would still have guns- desperate situations are handled in the like(from prior post).

So, I knew full well, that my post was anecdotal, but it seemed to cut through all the numbers crap and at least give a glimpse into how they play out in real life.

What does 14 guns per person mean? That is an average, with no standard deviation and no mode. Maybe we just have alot of gun collectors or dealers.

I took not offense at your post, I just wondered if you might be suprised if you were to actually walk around here, numbers on charts and graphs are just that, sometimes.

Anyway, the tone of my post was casual, with a rather obvious wink (since you don&#39;t like emoticons and such)with the closing paragraph. No need for "in the first year" comments. That is called a "playground" shot. You may need an injection of a sense of humor and a break from charts and graphs. Look at the number of posts I have made, humor, albiet subtle at times, is a key element in most, and should be taken into account when reading my replies.

My overall point to you was that it is difficult to construct how a society functions based on press clippings and statistics. Like in other thread about anglos being threatened by the fast growing latin american communities, I clarified what this really means and how it is no threat to me. I tried to take it from a number you read somewhere to how it plays out in reality. So it all goes back to: Go visit Clocker, walk around and see how your statistics look when you fold them into a little real life context.

In regard to this thread as a whole, statistics can be used to prove anything, if you hide the pertinent variables well enough. That is why I find a topic, which really relates to human nature, discussed in terms of statistics to be a lost cause. No way it can be solved this way, as both sides have plenty of wonderful numbers to throw around.

Sorry, this got a little loose, but I need to leave about 30 minutes ago.

[j2k4]

Originally posted by myfiles3000@15 July 2003 - 14:36
here&#39;s a claim i&#39;ve heard: there are 17 firearms for every man woman and child in texas. can anyone confirm whether or not this is BS?

I&#39;ve heard that, but doubt that it is true, even lacking empirical proof.

I&#39;m also pretty sure whoever concocted that figure admittedly includes gun collections, which is statistically specious.

Rat-

I&#39;m not trying to be lazy (yes I am), but for purposes of this thread, which, I think the thrust of which was, "why doesn&#39;t the U.S. have gun control to an extent it&#39;s murder rate reflects that of an actual civilized country"; the question of regional trends (which run the gamut from very high, statistically, to virtually nil) are of little consequence when discussing a "national" problem.

As far as permissiveness of gun laws on a state-to-state basis, there may be a legal disparity relative to rules and regs re: gun purchases, but ultimately the availablility is there in all cases.

Illegal gun possession is also a problem, but the relevant laws have little impact there unless you have the illegal possessor in hand, as well as the illegal weapon.

There are however several easy-to-spot trends, as I&#39;m sure you can deduce:

Urban areas are, by comparison to rural areas, relative "kill-zones" although to say this is a uniform condition would be untrue.

Certain cities are much worse, per capita, than they should be: Washington, D.C., Miami, Florida, and Houston, Texas, to name a few.

New York City is an interesting case in that, while it was among the per capita leaders in the &#39;70s, it&#39;s rate has fallen gradually since then, much more drastically during Guiliani&#39;s terms as mayor, and continues even now under the leadership of a relative softy on law-and-order, Michael Bloomberg.

There is a school of thought that says one of the reasons for this is that New Yorkers got tired of being known as inhabiting one of the American "Murder Capitals", and this "change of attitude" did the rest.

Stranger things have happened.

Gang activity is a huge contributor, statistically, also; as yet, there seems to be no real answer for this, though.

In any case, all the the real aggravating factors appear to be cultural/societal/economic in nature, and it is also true that the overwhelming number of murders are commited by the criminal element, who obtain their weapons illegally, and truly accidental shootings are, by comparison, extremely rare.

I am aware that any accidental firearm deaths are regretful situations, but until someone can suss a way to eliminate accidents of all types, we will, as in the case of abortion, have to settle for the continuation of educational efforts as a means of dealing with this.