The Great ILX Gun Control Debate

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man the killfile

― Catsupppppppppppppp dude ‫茄蕃‪, Thursday, 19 April 2007 19:11 (seventeen years ago) link

s africa has the highest murder rate in the world, i believe?

― river wolf, Thursday, 19 April 2007 19:11 (seventeen years ago) link

anyone find a description of south africa's gun laws?

― deej, Thursday, 19 April 2007 19:12 (seventeen years ago) link

it takes skill to ruin a thread not even Roger could kill

― milo z, Thursday, 19 April 2007 19:12 (seventeen years ago) link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_South_Africa

― milo z, Thursday, 19 April 2007 19:13 (seventeen years ago) link

our rate is 30x that of the UK, but by our own admission, only 6x that of germany or SWITZERLAND. does the britishes spend a lot of time discussing "the culture of violence" in germany?

― moonship journey to baja, Thursday, 19 April 2007 19:13 (seventeen years ago) link

did you know finland has the 2nd highest rate of firearm homicide in people aged 15-26 in a survey of 25 industrialized nations including the US? (.5 in 100000, compared to ~1.5 in 100000 for the US)

― moonship journey to baja, Thursday, 19 April 2007 19:17 (seventeen years ago) link

Gun-related deaths per 100,000 people:

U.S.A. 14.24
Brazil 12.95
Mexico 12.69
Argentina 8.93
Finland 6.46
Switzerland 5.31
France 5.15
Canada 4.31
Israel 2.91
Australia 2.65
Greece 1.29
Germany 1.24
England and Wales 0.41
Japan 0.05

our gun-related death rate is only 3x as high as finland, whereas by anyone's admission, there are at least like 100x more guns floating around ... is it really down to a "culture of violence"?

or is it just down to high-risk behavior due to the fact that at the end of the day, the levels of income disparity and the decay / nonexistence of the social fabric here make america more of a 3rd world nation than a 1st world nation?

― moonship journey to baja, Thursday, 19 April 2007 19:20 (seventeen years ago) link

http://www.guardian.co.uk/gun/Story/0,,2061247,00.html

― admrl, Thursday, 19 April 2007 19:38 (seventeen years ago) link

AFAIK In Switzerland nearly everyone has guns! and bomb shelters! And although a lot of people just use their bomb shelters as storage cellars there's apparently a large number of survivalist types who still keep them stocked & in readiness. I'm pretty sure that gun use is taught as part of mandatory national service, too. So I suppose the question is whether the gun-death rate in CH is surprisingly high given that people are actually taught to use guns (also the fact that it is chocolate-box switzerland), or surprisingly low given the number of guns there are.

I'm really surprised by how low the england-wales number is! I don't think of gun crime as being some rare thing, maybe that's from constant exposure to scaremonger news stories. Perhaps our knife crime stats more than make up for it though.

― c sharp major, Thursday, 19 April 2007 19:53 (seventeen years ago) link

As I've said elsewhere, despite figures like these I feel exponentially safer out at night in SF, LA, NYC or Chicago than I ever did in London. We may not have as many guns but there is a serious feeling of tension and aggro in many places in and around Central London. I admit to sometimes enjoying that "edginess", it's part of what makes it such a great city, but on the occasion where myself or a friend has fallen victim to violence it is predictably unsettling.

― admrl, Thursday, 19 April 2007 20:00 (seventeen years ago) link

^^^^^ I agree with adam (though my exposure to LDN is somewhat limited). I felt a little edgier walking around C1itheroe, Lanc, than I did in some of the rougher parts of Chi, simply because, if my cousin is any indication, casual violence is a bit more common in England (ie - bar fights, muggings, being in the wrong neighborhood, whatever)

― river wolf, Thursday, 19 April 2007 20:02 (seventeen years ago) link

Absolutely, never rock up in Clitheroe without a glock on your waistline.

― admrl, Thursday, 19 April 2007 20:03 (seventeen years ago) link

haha, srsly, though, i get more "long hard looks" in Clitheroe from the local dudes than i've ever gotten anywhere in my life

― river wolf, Thursday, 19 April 2007 20:05 (seventeen years ago) link

also vahid is pretty otm up and down here, guys

― river wolf, Thursday, 19 April 2007 20:06 (seventeen years ago) link

Perhaps you have the look of a Accringtonian about you. That's like a red rag to a bull.

xp

― admrl, Thursday, 19 April 2007 20:07 (seventeen years ago) link

Who is vahid?

― Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows, Thursday, 19 April 2007 20:10 (seventeen years ago) link

I don't know anymore.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 19 April 2007 20:11 (seventeen years ago) link

vahid = moonship journey to baja

― jaymc, Thursday, 19 April 2007 20:15 (seventeen years ago) link

I realize that this is maybe a stupid question and a stupid place for such a question, but does anyone else who was anticipating seeing Hot Fuzz this week feel queasy about going to see a film where so much humour is derived from the display of guns and firepower? I don't know, maybe I'm just a "sensitive" type.

― admrl, Thursday, 19 April 2007 20:21 (seventeen years ago) link

i think undercutting the machismo associated with gunz is a lot better than the usual week in, week out sincere reinforcement/celebration of gunz=awesomeness

― félix pié, Thursday, 19 April 2007 20:23 (seventeen years ago) link

I am totally gonna rock Hot Fuzz.

― Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows, Thursday, 19 April 2007 20:23 (seventeen years ago) link

I guess, I just feel like a need a break from the fetishization of firearms in any context. I literally do not feel like looking at them right now.

xp

― admrl, Thursday, 19 April 2007 20:25 (seventeen years ago) link

I watched (and enjoyed) Grindhouse two days ago, so the day after, I think, and I only felt kinda guilty about it after the fact when I remembered. Just let the escapism do its magic. You're not going to glorify guns, you're going because Simon Pegg is funny as shit.

― Will M., Thursday, 19 April 2007 20:30 (seventeen years ago) link

as much as i hate to sound like some kind of batty sort, i think the portrayal of guns in the media and in video games does have an ill effect on many people. guns are mostly depicted as thrilling rather than terrifying.

― félix pié, Thursday, 19 April 2007 20:33 (seventeen years ago) link

but thrills and terror are inextricably intertwined

― Shakey Mo Collier, Thursday, 19 April 2007 20:34 (seventeen years ago) link

I can't disagree with that. I'm sure if you replaced every gun in every film with a penis, twenty years from nowe there'd be way fewer gun crimes (and many more public masturbation crimes)

― Will M., Thursday, 19 April 2007 20:36 (seventeen years ago) link

i watched "the departed" yesterday, made me feel mega-sick, but then again scorsese does that to me in general (see also: wahlberg dropping the n-word)

― moonship journey to baja, Thursday, 19 April 2007 20:36 (seventeen years ago) link

well, thrills as in "damn that looks cool" are different than thrills as in "damn that is fucked up", i.e. the difference between robert mitchum jogging across the beach at normandy with a pistol and a smirk and everyone in tom hanks' boat getting cut to pieces. bad example, maybe : \

― félix pié, Thursday, 19 April 2007 20:36 (seventeen years ago) link

okay this post is a bit late now but w/evr i spent too much time typing to not post it.

One reason why I was surprised at the UK's low gun death stat was because I think a lot of the things Vahid says about growing income disparity and decaying social fabric hold increasingly true in the UK as well, and it seems only logical to connect those social problems to that palpable aggression you get in a lot of UK cities. So I suppose it is a proof that stringent gun control means low gun crime - but it hasn't solved the problem of casual violence, it's just restricted one particularly deadly method of expressing that violence. And UK gun crime is increasing, it just involves mostly illegal firearms. The 'gun wound' stats are a deal higher, idk but to me that kinda suggests people having guns but no expertise in actually shooting them? They seem to be guns bought as something you can, at the very least, use to threaten others with (whether in offence or defence), not for any other reason (like e.g. sport, historical interest). It doesn't seem likely to me that, if someone buys a gun only because it's this threatening thing, only because of the promise of violent power they see in it, they're going to be open to having a more uh reasoned attitude towards it (frinstance not enacting yr mad brainblip of a revenge fantasy even though having a gun means you 'can').

― c sharp major, Thursday, 19 April 2007 20:50 (seventeen years ago) link

I enjoy violent films, and I love gun-play in movies, but I do not enjoy real life violence, and I am sickened by not just physical violence but cruelty in general.

I suspect that I am the in norm and not the exception.

xpost

― Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows, Thursday, 19 April 2007 20:51 (seventeen years ago) link

I suppose it is a proof that stringent gun control means low gun crime

not necessarily, this might be due to the "non-graininess" of a lot of the gun figures, which is something NOBODY ever talks about when the statistics come out (except jon wlms upthread) ... yes, there are 80 million guns in america, but that doesn't mean 1 in 4 peopel on the street are packing.

there are places where gun ownership is near 0% and handgun crime is extremely low (the very wealthy CA neighborhood i grew up in), just as there are places where i am sure gun ownership is near 100% and handgun crime is extremely low (homogenous neighborhoods in the south and rural west).

now if you look at areas where gun violence is extremely high (black neighborhoods in philadelphia and chicago, where the murder rates is ~10x the nat'l average) gun ownership is actually *LOWER* than the nationwide average (~15-25%, i think), and there is clearly some externality that isn't gun availability driving the murder rate up up up.

― moonship journey to baja, Thursday, 19 April 2007 20:54 (seventeen years ago) link

i think a similarly meaningful approach to UK gun control statistics would be to split off places like public housing in cities like london + bristol from a heterogeneous smaller city like manchester (which IIRC was the place that reminded me the most of the US when i visited great britain) and then compare our slums and your slums and see what's going on.

― moonship journey to baja, Thursday, 19 April 2007 20:57 (seventeen years ago) link

BTW DID YOU ALL SEE THIS?!?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two Secret Service officers were injured on the White House complex on Tuesday after a gun accidentally fired, according to a spokesman, Darrin Blackford. Their injuries are non-life threatening, the spokesman said.

One officer suffered a shrapnel wound to the face, and the other was wounded in the leg. Both were from the service's uniform division. They were taken to George Washington Hospital. At the time, President George W. Bush was on a trip to Blacksburg, Virginia, to attend a ceremony at Virginia Tech university following Monday's shooting rampage.

― moonship journey to baja, Thursday, 19 April 2007 21:01 (seventeen years ago) link

places where i am sure gun ownership is near 100% and handgun crime is extremely low (homogenous neighborhoods in the south and rural west).

oh hey

― river wolf, Thursday, 19 April 2007 21:03 (seventeen years ago) link

and yeah, i saw grindhouse last night (a little stoned, mind) and while the gunplay itself wasn't disturbing, the accidental suicide and el ray going batshit in the hospital were, at least a little.

i will definitely see hot fuzz, though, shit looks hilarious

― river wolf, Thursday, 19 April 2007 21:04 (seventeen years ago) link

Still going to Hot Fuzz, not sure when. this is the last weekend of the play i've been working on, so who knows when I'll get a chance.

― kingfish, Thursday, 19 April 2007 21:04 (seventeen years ago) link

"non-graininess"?

I'm guessing here that means the figures aren't 'how many people have gun licences' or 'how many people have conceal and carry permits' or 'how many people regularly carry their gun around with them', but are 'how many guns there are', but I've never come across the term before...?

haha Manchester is the place in the UK that has made me feel most uneasy because no-one was on the streets at 10.30pm (or weren't one time when i went: i don't know how common this is): whereas in London, there's always someone around, I don't know why but that makes me feel safer. Actually I feel pretty uneasy in small towns too, maybe it is the absence of aggression in the air, a bit like like being unable to sleep without road noise.

― c sharp major, Thursday, 19 April 2007 21:06 (seventeen years ago) link

i mean that there's not much resolution in the figures: it doesn't make sense to look at NATIONAL figures on gun control, because jesus, we're fifty states stretching across a whole continent with ~300,000,000 people, and a mess of conflicting local, state and federal laws and communities with different patterns, characters and problems

― moonship journey to baja, Thursday, 19 April 2007 21:09 (seventeen years ago) link

ah, okay.

― c sharp major, Thursday, 19 April 2007 21:20 (seventeen years ago) link

I don't really know a lot of people on ILE, I'm such a sporadic poster, but I sometimes hate it when the vast lurking majority remains disappointingly silent in the face of, well, hysteria -- and what happened upthread seemed to me to be just that -- a hysterical fingers-in-the-ears "lalala i can't hear you" in the face of one person's perfectly reasonable point about gun control -- namely, that people be weird so it's probably not a great idea to have a lot of little instant death machines around. He or she, the lurker, even illustrated his or her own point quite nicely, by getting all kneejerk and defensive and heavy handed under the hysterical onslaught. Understandably, probably. A couple of people (most notedly nabisco and jaymc) tried admirably to dial down the righteous indignation factor and someone else said they won't ever speak to them again as a result. I mean, WTF people?

Oh, and I was raped for what it's worth -- at age 8 actually -- and I had no problem whatsoever with the initial analogy, understanding it in the context of the poster trying to establish what kind of "victim" we'd give a pass to if they did happen to harbour intense revenge fantasies. Personally, I've never harboured elaborate revenge fantasies over that, but I was once swarmed by a group of around twelve guys and was hospitalised, and thoughts of (mostly impractical) revenge did cross my mind once in a while, less so as time goes by. It is one aspect of human nature, and we are all capable of it. That's all lurker-person was saying. Anyone arguing against that? Of course it's awkward and unpleasant and weird -- in extremis, we be creepy sometimes. Maybe it's not socially acceptable to discuss some of the more harrowing aspects of trauma outside of the therapist's office, though, who knows?

I know I'm probably missing a whole dimension of ILX relationship history here, but the lengthy thread derail (which I'm adding to now, fuck, sorry) made me feel really sad in some difficult-to-express way, something about the very concept of cliques and bullying which the lurker-pariah was trying to explore, something about wilful misunderstanding, something about loneliness, something about the necessity to root out a hapless scapegoat when we're freaked the fuck out.

I should add that, although I personally had no problem with the rape stuff, I have no more right to speak for another sexual assault survivor than lurker or anyone else.

But, hey, at the risk of having someone on an Internet message board "threaten" to not speak to me, like, ever again... nabisco OTM once again. Really.

― Lostandfound, Thursday, 19 April 2007 23:49 (seventeen years ago) link

LostandFound, your post is exactly how I feel, and you have managed to get it across in a much more articulate manner than I had planned to do.

Reading through the lynching of Lurker made me angry enough to finally register with new-ILX. When things went south with the old code I decided that I would continue reading ILX in the sandbox and new-ILX, but not bother registering. I have a tendency to get quite emotionally involved in topics such as this, and I've found it's best that I just keep my mouth shut. However, when Lost said "I sometimes hate it when the vast lurking majority remains disappointingly silent in the face of, well, hysteria", I felt I had no choice but to show my agreement and support.

I too agree that Lurker's point is completely valid, and to be honest I really don't even find his reaction to the (as Lost put it so well) righteous indignation all that bad. He simply tried to make an analogy and people lost their minds. I find Manalishi's admission that the"Fact is I like guns. I like owning them. I like shooting them. I like how they look and smell. And it's my right to stockpile them if I want to" comments far "creepier" than anything Lurker said.

Lurker, I commend you on your patience in the face of the childish gangbang against you. Again echoing Lostandfound, thanks to Nabisco, Jaymc, Trayce and a few others for actually reading Lurker's posts and trying to make others understand his points.

― Shorty, Friday, 20 April 2007 00:56 (seventeen years ago) link

I agree with the last two posts.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Friday, 20 April 2007 01:03 (seventeen years ago) link

I don't.

― HI DERE, Friday, 20 April 2007 01:14 (seventeen years ago) link

childish gangbang

― félix pié, Friday, 20 April 2007 01:18 (seventeen years ago) link

I find Manalishi's admission that the"Fact is I like guns. I like owning them. I like shooting them. I like how they look and smell. And it's my right to stockpile them if I want to" comments far "creepier" than anything Lurker said.

As did everyone who called Lurker creepy, dumbass. (If not creepier then equally creepy.)

― milo z, Friday, 20 April 2007 01:35 (seventeen years ago) link

"dumbass".

Another classy response.

― Shorty, Friday, 20 April 2007 01:38 (seventeen years ago) link

And for the record Milo, wasn't it John Justen who initially called Lurker creepy? Shortly thereafter he said this:

Returning to the point at hand, I would rather see Manalishi/Roger etcetera (even in the (hopefully) exaggerated stance he has chosen to take) have access to firearms, in place of you (again, in the (hopefully) exaggerated stance you have chosen to take) having access to them.

-- John Justen, Thursday, April 19, 2007 5:41 AM (16 hours ago)

Unless you have a different interpretation for the word everyone, it seems my post wasn't as dumb as you would like it to appear.

― Shorty, Friday, 20 April 2007 02:15 (seventeen years ago) link

"Roger's creepy, but you're fucked in the head" is difficult for you to understand, then?

― milo z, Friday, 20 April 2007 02:19 (seventeen years ago) link

Hey guys, I'm back, did I miss anything?

― John Justen, Friday, 20 April 2007 02:21 (seventeen years ago) link

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