Mostly fair points, but
isn't saying that we should not ban guns because of the positive example X when someone had a gun just as reactionary as saying we should ban then because of negative example Y? Anecdotes are not data.
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monkeon schmonkeon, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:02,
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Ideology doesn't depend on data.
The thinking is that individuals have the right to their own power, even at the risk of someone abusing it, and that a state monopoly on power is unacceptable even if the state is benevolent.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:07,
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No, but if you were arguing that you want to ban/keep guns
then it would help to, for example, have data that the slacker the gun laws of a country, the more / less / same homicides (obviously many other factors would need to be taken into account).
Saying "Someone stopped a crime with a gun" or "Someone did a crime with a gun" is meaningless.
Ideologies don't depend on data, no, but it does give them weight.
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monkeon schmonkeon, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:14,
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There are studies that say that the more guns, the less crime
It is the "I don't know if I'm going to get killed if I burgle this house" thought process.
My understanding is that after the UK tightened its gun laws, "hot" burglaries increased significantly. Presumably, because people weren't afraid of the homeowner cappin' dey ass.
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BrokenCoccyx doesn't mind if you grope on, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:21,
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nobody has ever been afraid of a home-owner cappin' dey ass,
we've never had a culture of gun ownership. Hardly anyone owns a gun. Even the police don't normally carry them. Crime rates have consistently gone down for decades.
From what I can tell from dodgy internet statistics, the rate of civilian gun ownership seems to be rather an irrelevant factor in the amount of crime and deaths by shooting.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:26,
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"studies that say that the more guns, the less crime"
Do you have a link to those studies?
My personal belief is that gun law makes very little difference - there are so many other ways to kill people.
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monkeon schmonkeon, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:34,
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if you want to kill people, you can.
you could get hold of a cheap SUV and drive it into a school playing field while the kids are out to play, or mount the pavement of a busy shopping street. A car is potentially a very dangerous weapon if you just want to kill a bunch of people.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:37,
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"Someone stopped a crime with a gun" is a kind of apologetic strategy,
but the theory is that if everyone has power a sort of stable equilibrium is reached by individuals protecting themselves and each other. It doesn't necessarily matter that the equilibrium has more shootings than the state-controlled society, because the principle of freedom also has intrinsic value, which is difficult to quantify.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:22,
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And if you have a theory
then you need data, right? Otherwise it is guesswork.
My example was over-simplified, but there is lots of crime data that could be analysed and debated rather than just people appealing to emotion.
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monkeon schmonkeon, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:29,
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ultimately all data has to be evaluated according to a value system.
it's not the data that justifies the values. it's the values that give relevance to the data.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:31,
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So you think data isn't as valid
as appealing to someone's emotions and not even trying to get statistics to back up your case?
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monkeon schmonkeon, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:39,
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when it comes to ideology it's emotions all the way.
only two people with some ideological common ground can have a meaningful discussion of statistics. If one person values freedom more than life, how can you sway them by saying that their policies would result in loss of life?
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:43,
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As soon as people don't use logic to reason
then it all becomes a matter of "faith" which is impossible and pointless to argue with as there is no language to do so.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_emotion
edit: obviously you can argue logically without data, though it helps to have some data. However, you can't argue logically if it is "emotions all the way".
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monkeon schmonkeon, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:48,
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yep,
that's about right.
Our values don't come from reasoning, they come from the society we wish to fit into.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:51,
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There is data here to support and refute
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Guns,_Less_Crime
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BrokenCoccyx doesn't mind if you grope on, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 17:26,
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Kurt Vonnegut said, "when only the police own guns, that's called a police state" (or something like that)
The amount of traffic fatalities in the US each year make gun deaths look insignificant. I suppose we could ban those as well.
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BrokenCoccyx doesn't mind if you grope on, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:14,
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Do you actually have the reference to that?
Googling for it returns nothing, and his quote I did find "That there are such devices as firearms, as easy to operate as cigarette lighters and as cheap as toasters, capable at anybody's whim of killing Father or Fats [Waller] or Abraham Lincoln or John Lennon or Martin Luther King, Jr., or a woman pushing a baby carriage, should be proof enough for anybody that, to quote the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, "being alive is a crock of shit." hardly makes him sound pro-gun (different issue to whether he thinks some people should be allowed them and not others, though).
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monkeon schmonkeon, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:24,
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this is a point I've made before,
in the UK there are about 3500 deaths on the road each year and nobody wants to ban driving. According to the book "Freakonomics" there are more accidental deaths from swimming pools than from firearms.
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Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:29,
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no-one wants to ban driving but there are plenty of campaigners for lower speed limits, lower drink-driving limits etc
Gun control isnt about 'banning' guns. It's about making gun ownership safer.
(, Fri 20 Jul 2012, 16:41, Reply)