<p>My H believes he has prevented many crimes by providing each of our Ds’ dates with a personalized tour of his shotgun case. 
With 2 Ds having about 3 different dates per year, that would be 6 DGUs from one family alone! The premise doesn’t sound too far fetched to me, kluge.</p>
<p>Oh please. Sorry if each post is not a dissertation. My first post mentioned demographics which usually includes race AND income. Try to keep up.</p>
<p>Indians if you mean from India are not considered a minority in the usual usage here. Now Native Americans are and they are both poor and have crime problems.</p>
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<pre><code> Well under any normal definition of Minority Indians are a minority. You’re just trying to frame the defintions to fit your conclusion. You claim minorities that aren’t poor aren’t really minorities , and then therefore conclude that remaining minorities cause crime. Which then implies a causal link between crime areas and minority areas.
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<p>The above is a summation of Barrons and Tancredo.</p>
<p>Actually Bay, I figured that every day that a pickup with a bumper sticker that says “This truck is insured by Smith & Wesson” wasn’t stolen was being counted, too, but apparently they’re talking about actually using the gun in response to an immediate threat of criminal acts. :)</p>
<p>Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.</p>
<p>People tend to believe Kleck’s research partly because there are several major universities on his resume. He was working for Northwestern at the time. The methodology is very flawed and the estimates from various DGU surveys vary wildly. I have not seen statistics related to DGUs that I believe, be they NCVS or Kleck-Gertz. It is a difficult thing to measure and the inconsistency between reports challenges the validity of them all.
[Journal</a> of Criminal Law and Criminology](<a href=“http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/SmithT1.htm]Journal”>http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/SmithT1.htm)</p>
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<p>Ah, the good 'ole favorite line.
While the guns don’t kill and it is the people who choose to kill…they have an easier time taking out a lot of lives with a gun and if they could not have a gun, they might find another way but it wouldn’t be so easy to kill many people in a short period of time. The gun is a tool that accomplishes that. Sure, if they want to kill, they still can without a gun. But often less damage is done, for instance, with a knife…a person can get away, whereas a gun can be shot even if you are running away, and also a gun can kill many in succession whereas another device like a knife cannot. So, while people do the killing, guns are a tool that makes it easier to kill, and to kill many. </p>
<p>Kluge…I’m with ya. I sure read and know about a lot more people who have used guns to kill than have used guns to actively protect or ward off a crime. </p>
<p>The string of mass murders in recent times would be harder to achieve without guns. As well, certain guns only exist for killing people and no other purpose. Assault rifles…who truly NEEDS one…but to kill people? I’m not talking hunting rifles and such.</p>
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My criminal procedure prof at Boalt Hall in the 70’s was Phillip Johnson, who is currently one of the leading proponents of “Intelligent Design” and the theory that AIDS isn’t caused by HIV virus. Maybe we could get the two of them together with Prof. Malcolm, and see what else they can cook up? </p>
<p>I’m pleased that you are taking a cautious approach to all statistical claims in this area, ninja - you’re quite right - accurate data is hard to come by, for a variety of reasons.</p>
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<p>Really? Is a knife a one-time use only thing now? Must have missed that somewhere - guess all my kitchen knives are defective then… they work time and time again. Come on, do you really believe that someone could not kill more than one person at a time with a knife? Or that they couldn’t chase after someone with a knife?</p>
<p>As for making it easier… having a car makes it easier to kill people than not having a car - hell, i’ve personally seen people killed/seriously maimed by cars. Shall we ban everything that has a potential for misuse?</p>
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<p>If you think that a madman with a knife can commit damage that is anywhere close to what a person with a gun can commit, you might be the madman.</p>
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<p>The difference is that a car has a potential for good use for MOST People. A gun has a potential for GOOD USE for FEW people (Hunters and Law Enforcement)</p>
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<p>No, thats not what I think - and if you read my post, you should realize that. I am merely pointing out the flaw in the argument that a knife can only kill one person.</p>
<p>A knife may only kill one a person but I can think of many things that are not a gun that are completely legal and relatively easy to obtain which can kill just as many as a gun.</p>
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<p>Using a utilitarian argument won’t end well for your position. What about people like me who enjoy target shooting? Guns have a potential for good use for us. What if it turns out that more than 50% of the population is either a hunter or an LEO or enjoys target shooting? Do guns automatically become good once that magic number (i.e. “most people”) has been reached?</p>
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<p>Get a new hobby :)</p>
<p>Many things nowadays have tremendous potential for misuse. I think the argument is that the guns are just so easy to do such serious damage with. Think 1990’s commercials</p>
<p>^ clever, but this illustrates one of the big problems I have with the anti-gun crowd. Who are you (general) to tell me what hobbies to have? Its the proliferation of the nanny state and the attitude of “let the government take care of you from cradle to grave”. But this simply isn’t realistic. </p>
<p>Britain has very much become like this in recent years, and people have gone along with it for the most part. Take a look at this poster from London:
<a href=“http://subjunctive.net/photoblog/2003/watchful-eyes.jpg[/url]”>http://subjunctive.net/photoblog/2003/watchful-eyes.jpg</a></p>
![http://subjunctive.net/photoblog/2003/watchful-eyes.jpg[/url]](http://subjunctive.net/photoblog/2003/watchful-eyes.jpg%5B/url%5D){kind=link}
<p>Cars can kill…yep. But usually that doesn’t happen intentionally. Yes, people are shot by accident as well. But lots of killing with guns is with intent to kill. </p>
<p>I never said a knife could only kill one person. I said it was EASIER to take out many people with a gun than with a knife. As a killer is attacking one person with a knife, others can escape, for example. With a gun, a killer can kill many within seconds. Also, a knife requires close contact and it can sometimes be easier to escape from an attack with a knife (not always) but harder to escape being attacked by a gun. The mass murders certainly could not have been accomplished with a knife, let alone taking out numerous people in minutes as with a gun. </p>
<p>And the assault weopens have no purpose other than to be used to kill people. That is not the case with say, a hunting rifle. Who NEEDS an assault rifle or certain guns (sorry to not know the names of them as I am not into guns) that are really only for shooting people and are not designed for other purposes? What good are those?</p>
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<p>Don’t make such broad sweeping statements. You make it seem like knife attacks are all relatively slow (or at least that everyone else can get away while the killer is tied up with one person). I guarantee you that you can make cuts with a knife in mere seconds that will kill someone. </p>
<p>On the other hand, don’t make it seem like all GSWs (gun shot wounds) are fatal. I forget the stats offhand, but its a very small percentage of GSWs that actually die. As an EMT, I’ve even seen people with GSW’s to the head survive.</p>
<p>All this being said, you are completely right to say that guns make killing easier. Of course they do - thats the point. They are the latest in personal weaponry. Back in the day, the crossbow made killing easier than its predecessor. There is nothing inherently evil or wrong about this fact. Weapons are simply tools and have no moral standing on their own.</p>
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<p>Well, lets be clear - all weapons were designed to kill things. Knives, spears, swords, guns, etc. were all “designed” to kill. There is nothing special about guns in that regard.
Next, lets clarify what an assault weapon is. It is not what the media (or CA legislature) will have you believe. An assault weapon is a fully automatic military rifle. I own a semi-automatic AR-15 that looks very “evil” (like [this[/url</a>] one), but I guarantee you it is not an assault weapon and is functionally and ballistically the same as other guns that fire the .223 cartridge. </p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjM9fcEzSJ0]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjM9fcEzSJ0]YouTube</a> - The Truth about “Assault Weapons”](<a href=“http://img.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/albums/v224/comp1911/Guns/Armalite%20KISS%20Middy/Img_1203.jpg]this[/url”>http://img.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/albums/v224/comp1911/Guns/Armalite%20KISS%20Middy/Img_1203.jpg)</p>
![http://img.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/albums/v224/comp1911/Guns/Armalite%20KISS%20Middy/Img_1203.jpg]this[/url](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v224/comp1911/Guns/Armalite%20KISS%20Middy/Img_1203.jpg%5Dthis%5B/url){kind=link}
<p>But to address the question - to be blunt, some people need killing (or to be stopped by any means necessary). We can all think of many many examples, so I won’t get into that here. Yes, I know there are people who say that they would never take someone else’s life in any circumstance, but I just find this ridiculous. There are countless instances where it is morally and legally permissible to take someone’s life.</p>
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<p>I would like to touch on this again. gottaloveucla was very much correct to point out that there is a significant confounding variable: income. Minority enclaves tend to have low per capita income and low upward mobility, leading to higher crime. It likely has nothing to do with the minorities themselves, but with the socio-economics. The problem with pointing at minority crime and then declaring that minority status is the culprit is the fact that middle class minorities commit crimes at very similar rates to their majority counterparts. We see the same thing in Japan, as well, which is quite interesting.</p>
<p>As for guns…</p>
<p>The problem with guns is that it gets down to an interesting question: do we want more liberty or more safety? It’s overly simplistic to think of it as a straight line spectrum, but one could make the argument that you have to give up one for the other.</p>
<p>Americans, by some historical determinism, demand liberty more often than security. This is particularly poignant with attitudes toward the state: Americans would rather give up a standard of living than their perceived “God-given liberty.” </p>
<p>Of course, there are also interesting questions to ask about guns anyway. Is it guns that are the causal variable by themselves, or is it that there is some sort of interaction effect between guns and something else that’s driving up violent crime?</p>
<p>I don’t know the statistics very well, but I suspect that Switzerland has much lower gun crime rates than the US despite having a fair number of guns per capita. Of course, they may have other gun related problems as well, including domestic terror.</p>
<p>The real solution is to simply ban dangerous people. By doing this we eliminate a host of crimes and an ad nauseum discussion about firearms and A2. :)</p>
<p>Switzerland also has more fully automatic weapons - one per citizen of active age.</p>