This is somewhat of a back-and-forth between a facebook friend of mine and myself. I thought if anyone would appreciate this, it would be my INGO friends and family.
A friend of mine recently posted this video on her facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151578316252446 (apologies if it doesn't load for you)
In case it didn't load, it's a 5 min clip from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart attempting to illustrate how gun control DOES work, and used Australia as an example.
I simply commented on her link with
She argued that the video it a completely logical approach to gun control. (Of course it's full of logical fallacies, and half-truths)
I replied: I'm a strong supporter of the 2nd amendment and strongly disagree with pretty much everything in this video. I would welcome and encourage a debate, but you can't ignore inconvenient facts like this video did.
She replied: I don't know I'm up for debates any more. It's pretty exhausting to me to have to keep defending my right to not be scared of being shot. I think this video is full of the "inconvenient facts" that gun-supporters are ignoring. 1. The more guns in the country, the more Americans die by gun. 2. There isn't any reason not to have a thorough background check before buying a gun. Chicago has had more gun deaths than war zones. My world view is different from yours. And I'm tired. (She is a Chicago resident)
I replied (and this was more directed at the video than her previous statement): You get no argument from me that in countries where guns are legal, gun deaths are more common. What the video completely failed to acknowledge is that in countries where guns are not legal (the UK, and Australia for example), violent crime is MORE common (per capita) than in the U.S.
She: I'd rather have violent crime done to individuals who are more likely to recover than gunmen killing masses of people. Violent crimes leave less dead bodies than those same criminals would leave if they had guns.
This is the point at which I unleash both barrels... You might notice, not once do I even bring up the subject about it being a constitutional right: To keep the info easy to find, the following stats are taken from nationmaster.com. Take this link as an example: NationMaster - Crime stats: Australia vs United States. According to this particular link, you're 2x more likely to be the victim of an assault, and 2.5x more likely to be raped in Australia than in the United States. You can look for yourself, that this particular site that you are 4x more likely to be murdered in the U.S. But only 1.42x more likely to be murdered by a gun (per capita... our populations don't even come close, so I'm not comparing the 59 deaths in Australia to the 9,000+ in the U.S.). Perhaps a bit more telling is that suicide, and total crimes against an individual are more common and more likely in Australia.
If you will not be persuaded by violent crime statistics, then let me suggest something else. In some of your previous comments, you make no mention of what good people with guns do, or could do, only that violent criminals with guns leave piles of dead bodies in their wake. Have you ever heard of a criminal being stopped by a good guy with a gun? What about a crazed gunman? Those stories are more difficult to find because they're generally not considered news worthy. I have stacks and piles of these stories where good people, law-abiding citizens, have stopped bad people, some career criminals, all of them potentially dangerous, with a gun... often without ever firing their weapon.
Those of us in the rest of the U.S. plainly look at Chicago, the murder capital of the country, and see that a large reason is that Illinois, and Chicago especially, have some of the most strict gun laws in the country. And who is killing who with guns? It's gangs shooting at one another, killing one another, and countless (unarmed) innocent bystanders. These are criminals who are clearly violating Chicago and Illinois laws by... well doing everything they're doing (guns in Chicago are already illegal, murder is illegal, organized crime is illegal). More laws aren't going to solve any problems in Chicago.
You mention your "right to not be scared of being shot." I take real issue with this. You have no right to not be scared of anything. You have a right to not be scared of being shot the same way that I have a right to not be scared of spiders. (I think that's right.... I'm stuffing too many negatives in a sentence to keep track) What you suggest, although probably specific to Chicago's violent crime problems, aren't IMO anything more than a phobia which, by its definition is illogical and irrational. So let's take a deeper look. What is your real fear? If it really is getting shot, then you understand that passing a gun ban won't actually help your fear, right? Chicago had a murder rate of 15.2 (in 2010, but it has gone up since then)... You understand that that is 15.2 in 100,000? I know you do. You're smart, and I wouldn't dare suggest otherwise. I'm just honestly curious if this is an illogical/irrational phobia, which stands to reason that no amount of reasoning will change your mind, or if it is somehow rooted in something else that hasn't been mentioned.
Background checks! I promised I would get to it, and here it is. The majority of responsible gun owners have no issue with submitting to a background check when buying a gun through an FFL (FFL stands for Federal Firearm License, and is used as an abbreviation for basically a licensed gun dealer). Something to note: Despite what politicians might suggest, if you buy a gun online, it must be shipped to an FFL who will do a background check when you come to pick up your gun (if not before... ordering a gun online is a lengthy, complicated process). Yes, it's true that an individual may sell a gun to another individual without the buyer submitting to a background check. It is also true that this is not an uncommon occurrence at gun shows. However, most responsible gun owners want to somehow make sure that the person they're selling a gun to is legally allowed to own a gun because selling a gun knowingly or unknowingly to a person not otherwise allowed to own or legally possess a gun is a felony. There are ways to do this that I won't get into here (unless you honestly want me to explain it all to you). Also, mental health is NOT currently part of the background check system except in the most extreme of cases because mental health is protected under HIPAA. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or the HIPAA was endorsed by the U.S. Congress. The HIPAA Privacy Rule, also called the Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information, provided the first nationally-recognizable regulations for the use/disclosure of an individual's health information. NICS checks (National Instant Criminal Background Check System is the point-of-sale system for determining eligibility to purchase a firearm in the United States of America) are not covered under the regulations where mental health information is allowed to be disclosed. That's a whole lot to say that the expanded background checks that failed in the Senate recently wouldn't have helped anything at all. People not legally allowed to own a gun wouldn't have submitted themselves to the background check system and would've purchased on the black market or stolen them like they already do. The dangerously mentally ill would've still slipped through because their mental health wouldn't have been covered due to HIPAA laws already on the books. Which leaves the people who are legally allowed to own a gun submitting themselves to a system which would've been extremely costly to the taxpayer for almost no return what-so-ever.
I haven't heard anything since.
:takeabow:
gnight!
A friend of mine recently posted this video on her facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151578316252446 (apologies if it doesn't load for you)
In case it didn't load, it's a 5 min clip from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart attempting to illustrate how gun control DOES work, and used Australia as an example.
I simply commented on her link with
She argued that the video it a completely logical approach to gun control. (Of course it's full of logical fallacies, and half-truths)
I replied: I'm a strong supporter of the 2nd amendment and strongly disagree with pretty much everything in this video. I would welcome and encourage a debate, but you can't ignore inconvenient facts like this video did.
She replied: I don't know I'm up for debates any more. It's pretty exhausting to me to have to keep defending my right to not be scared of being shot. I think this video is full of the "inconvenient facts" that gun-supporters are ignoring. 1. The more guns in the country, the more Americans die by gun. 2. There isn't any reason not to have a thorough background check before buying a gun. Chicago has had more gun deaths than war zones. My world view is different from yours. And I'm tired. (She is a Chicago resident)
I replied (and this was more directed at the video than her previous statement): You get no argument from me that in countries where guns are legal, gun deaths are more common. What the video completely failed to acknowledge is that in countries where guns are not legal (the UK, and Australia for example), violent crime is MORE common (per capita) than in the U.S.
She: I'd rather have violent crime done to individuals who are more likely to recover than gunmen killing masses of people. Violent crimes leave less dead bodies than those same criminals would leave if they had guns.
This is the point at which I unleash both barrels... You might notice, not once do I even bring up the subject about it being a constitutional right: To keep the info easy to find, the following stats are taken from nationmaster.com. Take this link as an example: NationMaster - Crime stats: Australia vs United States. According to this particular link, you're 2x more likely to be the victim of an assault, and 2.5x more likely to be raped in Australia than in the United States. You can look for yourself, that this particular site that you are 4x more likely to be murdered in the U.S. But only 1.42x more likely to be murdered by a gun (per capita... our populations don't even come close, so I'm not comparing the 59 deaths in Australia to the 9,000+ in the U.S.). Perhaps a bit more telling is that suicide, and total crimes against an individual are more common and more likely in Australia.
If you will not be persuaded by violent crime statistics, then let me suggest something else. In some of your previous comments, you make no mention of what good people with guns do, or could do, only that violent criminals with guns leave piles of dead bodies in their wake. Have you ever heard of a criminal being stopped by a good guy with a gun? What about a crazed gunman? Those stories are more difficult to find because they're generally not considered news worthy. I have stacks and piles of these stories where good people, law-abiding citizens, have stopped bad people, some career criminals, all of them potentially dangerous, with a gun... often without ever firing their weapon.
Those of us in the rest of the U.S. plainly look at Chicago, the murder capital of the country, and see that a large reason is that Illinois, and Chicago especially, have some of the most strict gun laws in the country. And who is killing who with guns? It's gangs shooting at one another, killing one another, and countless (unarmed) innocent bystanders. These are criminals who are clearly violating Chicago and Illinois laws by... well doing everything they're doing (guns in Chicago are already illegal, murder is illegal, organized crime is illegal). More laws aren't going to solve any problems in Chicago.
You mention your "right to not be scared of being shot." I take real issue with this. You have no right to not be scared of anything. You have a right to not be scared of being shot the same way that I have a right to not be scared of spiders. (I think that's right.... I'm stuffing too many negatives in a sentence to keep track) What you suggest, although probably specific to Chicago's violent crime problems, aren't IMO anything more than a phobia which, by its definition is illogical and irrational. So let's take a deeper look. What is your real fear? If it really is getting shot, then you understand that passing a gun ban won't actually help your fear, right? Chicago had a murder rate of 15.2 (in 2010, but it has gone up since then)... You understand that that is 15.2 in 100,000? I know you do. You're smart, and I wouldn't dare suggest otherwise. I'm just honestly curious if this is an illogical/irrational phobia, which stands to reason that no amount of reasoning will change your mind, or if it is somehow rooted in something else that hasn't been mentioned.
Background checks! I promised I would get to it, and here it is. The majority of responsible gun owners have no issue with submitting to a background check when buying a gun through an FFL (FFL stands for Federal Firearm License, and is used as an abbreviation for basically a licensed gun dealer). Something to note: Despite what politicians might suggest, if you buy a gun online, it must be shipped to an FFL who will do a background check when you come to pick up your gun (if not before... ordering a gun online is a lengthy, complicated process). Yes, it's true that an individual may sell a gun to another individual without the buyer submitting to a background check. It is also true that this is not an uncommon occurrence at gun shows. However, most responsible gun owners want to somehow make sure that the person they're selling a gun to is legally allowed to own a gun because selling a gun knowingly or unknowingly to a person not otherwise allowed to own or legally possess a gun is a felony. There are ways to do this that I won't get into here (unless you honestly want me to explain it all to you). Also, mental health is NOT currently part of the background check system except in the most extreme of cases because mental health is protected under HIPAA. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or the HIPAA was endorsed by the U.S. Congress. The HIPAA Privacy Rule, also called the Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information, provided the first nationally-recognizable regulations for the use/disclosure of an individual's health information. NICS checks (National Instant Criminal Background Check System is the point-of-sale system for determining eligibility to purchase a firearm in the United States of America) are not covered under the regulations where mental health information is allowed to be disclosed. That's a whole lot to say that the expanded background checks that failed in the Senate recently wouldn't have helped anything at all. People not legally allowed to own a gun wouldn't have submitted themselves to the background check system and would've purchased on the black market or stolen them like they already do. The dangerously mentally ill would've still slipped through because their mental health wouldn't have been covered due to HIPAA laws already on the books. Which leaves the people who are legally allowed to own a gun submitting themselves to a system which would've been extremely costly to the taxpayer for almost no return what-so-ever.
I haven't heard anything since.
:takeabow:
gnight!
