Gun accidents? Guns are dangrous?

[mosdef]

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Most individual rights are clear.

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Clear to whom? To some people, it is clear that we are all servants of God and the only rights we have are those that can be interpretted from Bible verse. To some people, it is clear that women don't have any rights because they're property. To some people, it is clear that Jews don't have any rights because the world would be a better place if they were eradicated. Whose clarity defines the rights for all humanity?

[mosdef]

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What I think he's saying is that your only subjected to this risk if you interact with him. That is, if you don't want to take the risk of getting shot, don't deal with him.

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If my property is next to his and his bullets can travel from his property into my property, I can't avoid to risk. My point is that it is not always easy or even possible to avoid interaction. In fact, it seems to me that he is forcing me to take on risk on my property without consulting me.

[BCPVP]

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What I think he's saying is that your only subjected to this risk if you interact with him. That is, if you don't want to take the risk of getting shot, don't deal with him.

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If my property is next to his and his bullets can travel from his property into my property, I can't avoid to risk. My point is that it is not always easy or even possible to avoid interaction. In fact, it seems to me that he is forcing me to take on risk on my property without consulting me.

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There's been no interaction until a bullet actually does travel from his property to yours.

[revots33]

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This is another application of the broken window fallacy. You only account for what you see (felons denied guns) and not at what you can't see (people killed because it's too difficult to defend themselves effectively).

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Conversely, you only account for what you see (people who used guns in self defense) and not what you can't see (crimes that never happened because the criminal never got guns in the first place).

It is easy to bend statistics to fit your viewpoint. The issue is whether we feel, as a society, we should try to make it as difficult as possible for criminals to acquire guns. I think we should. If you think it is a useless effort because criminals will always find a way to get a gun, then I disagree.

Please note I've never said that any law-abiding citizen should be denied the right to own a gun.

[slickss]

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Gee, that if it saves just one life can be used for both sides of the argument, what do you know?

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Gee, yourself. I'm sure there are isolated cases arguing for both sides here. My point with "guns do more bad than good" implies that more lives would be saved because criminals have harder access to guns than what would be saved because law-abiding citizens could protect themselves within the waiting period, i.e. their inconvenience. In other words, I claim it is worth the inconvenience if one more life is saved with gun control than without.

However, as we disagree on the basis of this - that guns do more bad than good - this doesn't really help much. You are convinced that a people fully armed will save more lives than it takes. I completely disagree.

[mosdef]

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There's been no interaction until a bullet actually does travel from his property to yours.

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"The state is not actually using force to coerce behaviour from you until you break the law and the put you in jail."

True or not true?

[pvn]

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I was not trying to make a point about crime, I was simply stating that probation decreases use.

I will argue that if guns are banned, a lot less criminals would use them, as they are a lot more difficult to acquire. Yes, in countries with strict gun control, some criminals still possess guns.

If I go to USA, the number of guns in the country implies that I am more likely to get shot. To me, this makes me feel less safe in USA than in a country with strict gun control.

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Do you think getting shot is the only threat to your safety?

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If I could choose between a 5% chance of getting mugged and a 2% chance of getting shot, or a 10% chance of getting mugged and a 1% chance of getting shot - I pick the latter.

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I think this is the best way to formulate policy. Let's just pull some numbers out of my ass and go with that. Good show!

[pvn]

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This simplistic thinking makes the discussion very difficult. If just one life is saved because a criminal with the intent to kill couldn't get his hands on a gun, and he didn't have the friend you mention, I think it's worth the "annoyance" of law-abiding citizens.

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Let's keep everyone in individual padded cells. Then nobody will hurt anyone else. This would save far more than just one life, so obviously it's worth it.

[pvn]

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I'm sure you will disagree with me here, but I think that any firearm sold any civilian is more likely to be used for bad than for good.

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More good policy-making. "I *think* that anyone who buys a car is more likely to run over someone than not to. So no cars."

[pvn]

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There are 200 million firearms in the United States. This report (pretty old; 1990's) says that there are 44 million gun owners. There are several orders of magnitude fewer crimes committed with firearms than there are firearm owners. So your opinion has no basis in fact. Standard for the anti-gun crowd.

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Did you expect something else? I would think that the vast majority of guns are never used for anything but target practice.

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If the "vast majority" are only used for target practice, how can it possibly be that *more* guns are used for evil purposes than good? You just said that *more* than 50% are used *only* for good things.