GreekChat.com Forums - Guns and Gun Control

You are absolutely correct about JAMA not being the same thing as NEJM. My bad!! Last time I try to post at 3 or 4 AM. NEJM is not as bad as JAMA, they still don't publish any pro-gun articles, but then again I don't think that they should be posting articles on guns, knives, falls, or automobile injuries anyway, unless it would be on techniques to treat the injuries.

This is the map that you refer to when you mention land area. The USA Today graphic: http://www.usatoday.com/news/vote2000/cbc/map.htm
I think that the govt has gone WAY overboard in ignoring the 10th Amendment because Ca., Ma, NJ, and NY are not representative of the country as a whole. Most issues should be left to the states and not decided by the federal govt for the whole country. The reason for the 10th was to protect the rights of statest and prevent interference from a big central govt, something that the founding fathers were opposed to. It allows Ca. to decide what is right for them and Texas to decide what is right for the people who live there. Gun control is one of these. One thing not mentioned by USA Today is the crime rates in the Gore area when compared to Bush areas. Professor Joseph Olson of the Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul Minnesota has looked up the crime statistics for the counties and came up with this:
Avg Murder per 100,000 residents in counties won by Gore: 13.2
Avg Murder per 100,000 residents in counties won by Bush: 2.1
This info is available from KWTN news:
http://kwtn.com/news/opinions/cooper...at_A_Ride.html
(If you want to see the link you will need to remove the space in the link, I had to edit it in to keep from messing up the forum format)
Note that the high crime Gore areas also tend to have the most strict gun control. More gun control = more crime.

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So, to say that just because only 4 or 5 states are liberal, does not indicate what percewntage of the population feels a certain way on a certain issue.

True, which is why the electoral college was set up and the purpose of the 10th Amendment which I mentioned above. Note in the map above that the population of the land area that Bush won was actually greater than the population of the areas that Gore won. If we let true majority rule without the protections of the 10th and the electoral college we would be a democracy. We are not. Our form of govt is a representative democracy, but the country is a republic. This prevents the majority from doing whatever they want and restricting or infringing on the rights of the minority.

Regarding the cougars, it was just a surprise to me that an animal would be thought of as being more important than humans. In Texas, should an animal run across the road and you slam on your brakes to keep from running it over, if that action causes an accident you would be at fault in the accident since animals have no rights. People have rights, not animals. The term 'animal rights' is a term that was invented recently. 'Gun violence' is another. When was the last time you heard the term 'automobile violence'? Here is the U.S. Constitution http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html and nowhere are there rights given to animals, only to people. The people of Ca. obviously feel that cougar kittens are more important than human children, I disagree with that regardless of whether cougars are indangered in Ca. or not. Human lives are more important IMO. This doesn't surprise me because of the number of pet owners, when given the option of saving their dog or cat or saving a stranger from a burning building, choose to save their pet over the human.

Only some members of society do NOT possess the necessary level of maturity and that is a small percentage. With over 260 million guns in private hands in the U.S., if we count all crimes committed with firearms, you find less than .31% of firearms used in crime. If we look at only non-justifiable homicides it goes down to .004% and that is if a different firearm is used in each homicide. If you want to impact crime significantly and identify where the maturity problem lies, it would be far more effective, and have a greater impact on crime rates, to incarcerate all black males until age 30. Of 275 million people in the U.S. black males make up approximately 14-15 million of that number. Yet 21.4% of black males will go to prison by their 30th birthday (about 3 million people). http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/llgsfp.txt Keep in mind that this is black males who actually go to state or federal prison, not those who are not caught, do not serve time in a prison, or are arrested but not charged due to lack of evidence, and we have already seen that blacks are 7 times more likely to commit murder than whites from http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm We would reduce crime much more by targeting black males in general than by trying to control the .31 % of misued firearms by targeting guns in general. There are fewer black males than guns and they are much easier to find. I am working in Indianapolis right now and it is such a problem here that the state made recommendations: http://www.state.in.us/icssbm/recommend/ on how to reduce crime committed by black males. Yet with all this info there is no call for mass incarceration of black males from birth. The reason is that it would adversely effect the majority of black males who are good law abiding citizens. It would SEVERELY impact their rights and infringing on a person's rights is not an option. As a result we must all live with an average amount of crime, the U.S. ranks 8th out of the 17 major industrialized nations in the recent European crime study. It is not an acceptable excuse to infringe upon an individuals rights for the good of society as a whole. This is why the Miranda decision in the 60's and the strict interpretation of the 4th and 5th Amendments that frequently make it difficult for the police to do their jobs, that often allow guilty people to go free. It is areas like this where I believe that the ACLU provides a great service as they watch over the govt. I don't necessarily like that police don't have more leeway and criminals can get off n technicalities, but it is the price that one must pay for living in our free republic.

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Even the ones who operate them legally sometimes get them stolen and their guns are then used for crimes.

So you are saying that, although I have not had any guns stolen, I am to give up my rights and participation a legal sporting activity because a criminal might, in the course of plying his 'trade', steal my guns and use them illegally? Sorry, I couldn't disagree more. I don't think that the criminal should be out in the first place. (85% of crime is commited by repeat offenders) I think he should be locked up if he can't follow societies rules. I do not believe for one minute that any law abiding individual should have to restrict the way they live their lives because someone might commit an illegal act. This includes going for a walk in Central Park at midnight. If you can't safely go for a walk in the park using your logic it is your own fault if you get mugged, so you should stay home. From my point of view the problem is that someone has not locked up the muggers permanently and that it is nearly impossible to obtain a permit to carry a concealed firearm in New York City. On the other hand, there is not any place in the entire city of Austin, Tx that I could not safely walk through anytime day or night.

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I do not agree that guns are a right.

Now we are getting into the 2nd Amendment area. It is part of the Bill of Rights and it was called that for a reason. They are not a list of privledges, they are a birthright. I believe that I included the legal definition of a 'militia', quotes regarding the intent of the founding fathers, and a statement from Thomas Jefferson on how it is to be interpreted.

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Also, if you are saying that Americans are just naturally violent (nature rather than nurture), isn't it useless to do anything but take the guns away? If something is due to one's nature, that means they are unable to be taught or trained differently. So, the only answer would be to not allow them access to objects that let them act out their violent nature?

I do think that we are a violent group as a whole. Our history shows that not only are we violent, but fight with tenacity. I disagree that behavior cannot be modified to some extent. We have seen successful behavior modfications with campaigns against drunk driving, seat belt use, you are too young to remember the safety campaign to teach kids the dangers of blasting caps, cigarettte smoking, littering, pollution, and forest fires, even recently teaching that same sex partners is an acceptable alternative lifestyle (at least in Ma. schools). Although I do think that a certain level of violence is in our nature, I also believe that it is a lack of moral judgement, a learn behavior, that does not suppress it.

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how do you propose to change the state of our country without reducing access to guns, yet also not being able to change genetically or biolgically inherited traits?

I am a big believer in Darwin. Survival of the fittest, the strong survive. If allowed to, things will work themselves out. There will be the defenseless prey (wildebeast) whose 'defense' is to hide and or only go to safe areas for fear of being eaten, there will be the predators (the lion, though I hate to equate a criminal with an animal as great as the lion, but rats don't fit the symbolism effectively), then there are the potential prey that are not generally dangerous unless provoked, herbivores even, but because of their defenses the lions leave them alone if they are healthy adults (elephants and water buffalo). What you will see is the predators only preying on the herds of wildebeast in areas where there are few elephants or water buffalo. In other areas, where people are allowed the means of which to defend themselves, you will see water buffalo killing lions until the lions figure out they need to be better able to identify the difference in a widebeast and a water buffalo, both have horns but are somehow different. I have no problem with a person wanting to be a wildebeast if that is the choice they make. If a person wants to live their life with restrictions to stay within certain boundaries, it is their business. I have a BIG problem with someone not allowing me to defend myself and my right to choose whether or not I want to be food.

[This message has been edited by Jeff OTMG (edited May 08, 2001).]