[MP-Ryan]

Now it might be a good idea to make firearm safety training mandatory but I'm not aware of this really entering into the debate. Are there any countries or states that actually do this?

In Canada, you must pass a course administering both a written and practical exam in order to apply for a firearms license, a measure the vast majority of us agree with (I have a license valid for non-restricted and restricted firearms).  The license application includes provisions for background checks and character references as well (though they're not all that stringent).

Of course, we also have the additional annoyance that all firearms must be registered by make/model/serial# in a national registry, which is a fairly contentious issue that a fair number of Canadians would like to see abolished for shotguns, rifles, and other non-restricted weapons.

But Canada doesn't have the equivalent of a 2nd Amendment, nor a real "gun culture" like many American states.  We also have much lower rates of  firearm-related injury, homicide, suicide, and accident-related deaths than the United States as a whole.

[Mustang19]

But Canada doesn't have the equivalent of a 2nd Amendment, nor a real "gun culture" like many American states.  We also have much lower rates of  firearm-related injury, homicide, suicide, and accident-related deaths than the United States as a whole.

I'd also like to point out that Canada has a much lower rate of non-gun homicide too. The US is kind of in a class by itself there, for whatever reason.

Wow, I didn't know that the US was number one in the world in gun ownership until I just read Wikipedia. I mean we have like twice as many guns as the third place country.

[Nuclear1]

It doesn't bother me that most HLPers are liberal. What bothers me is that virtually all of the ones that are able to construct a coherent argument are liberal. And I don't care about whether conservative views are tolerated here as long as factual evidence is presented against them and these debates don't result in instaban/threadlock whenever they come up. Really, polite debates and euphemisms can get stale.

Well, it helps when conservative members don't jump in on a thread and start spewing Fox News talking points and accusing liberal members of being socialists.    Not that you do that, but we just have a habit of answering dickishness with the same.

[Klaustrophobia]

It doesn't bother me that most HLPers are liberal. What bothers me is that virtually all of the ones that are able to construct a coherent argument are liberal. And I don't care about whether conservative views are tolerated here as long as factual evidence is presented against them and these debates don't result in instaban/threadlock whenever they come up. Really, polite debates and euphemisms can get stale.

Well, it helps when conservative members don't jump in on a thread and start spewing Fox News talking points and accusing liberal members of being socialists.    Not that you do that, but we just have a habit of answering dickishness with the same.

the reason it looks like that is because most of the rest of us have learned just not to bother, when what we get back is essentially either a complete dismissal or a more sophisticated version of "LOL rednecks!"  so then you've got about a hundred on the couple who keep going, get backed into a corner, and then of course it degenerates.

[Mustang19]

the reason it looks like that is because most of the rest of us have learned just not to bother, when what we get back is essentially either a complete dismissal or a more sophisticated version of "LOL rednecks!"  so then you've got about a hundred on the couple who keep going, get backed into a corner, and then of course it degenerates.

I think we won this thread though. Turns out there happens to be not too many vocal gun control people on HLP, quite a surprise. Also you have to separate instances of "complete dismissal lol rednecks" from instances of "I'm not really interested in politics so I'll just drop XKCD comics and cynical remarks." There are people who will debate with you, seems like The E and Batutta are two examples.

And I don't think you ever get backed into a corner in this place as long as you have Google and Wikipedia on your side.

[Nuclear1]

It doesn't bother me that most HLPers are liberal. What bothers me is that virtually all of the ones that are able to construct a coherent argument are liberal. And I don't care about whether conservative views are tolerated here as long as factual evidence is presented against them and these debates don't result in instaban/threadlock whenever they come up. Really, polite debates and euphemisms can get stale.

Well, it helps when conservative members don't jump in on a thread and start spewing Fox News talking points and accusing liberal members of being socialists.    Not that you do that, but we just have a habit of answering dickishness with the same.

the reason it looks like that is because most of the rest of us have learned just not to bother, when what we get back is essentially either a complete dismissal or a more sophisticated version of "LOL rednecks!"  so then you've got about a hundred on the couple who keep going, get backed into a corner, and then of course it degenerates.

Damn, you're onto me!

Also you have to separate instances of "complete dismissal lol rednecks" from instances of "I'm not really interested in politics so I'll just drop XKCD comics and cynical remarks."

Yeah, pretty much.  There are jackasses on both sides of the spectrum here on HLP, but the only people I harp on is the ****-and-run posters who drop Fox News talking points and then never post in the thread again.  I leave it to The E and Battuta among others to handle the people who actually stick around for a debate.

This thread definitely is one of the better political discussions we've had in a while though, I'll admit.

[General Battuta]

I don't feel like I know enough about gun control to really have an opinion on it (unlike most things, which I know everything about)

I did own a few guns growing up but it was kinda bleh

[MP-Ryan]

I don't feel like I know enough about gun control to really have an opinion on it (unlock most things, which I know everything about)

I didn't chime in earlier, but there's a lot of mixed evidence.  Rates of success depend on the country, and have to be tailored to culture.  Trying to implement Canadian or British control measures in the US would be a disaster.  The research is really conflicted on this issue too.  Tough to take a hard-and-fast position on it.

[Mustang19]

You guys are just afraid you might lose, I bet.

It's the internet. Feel free to reveal your half-formed opinions on gun control, criminology and racial science. About the worst that can happen is that you might learn something.

I'm interested to hear some examples of "rates of success varying by country", MP-Ryan. The impression I got from skimming a few Reddit articles on this matter was that if there is an effect of gun control on crime either way it is almost negligible, and any evaluation of "effectiveness" is going to have to deal with far too many confounds for it's conclusions to be meaningful. You can't just yell "Success!" when a graph bounces one way or another after policy changes.

And then there's the lesson from the drug war, that efforts to outlaw something is probably going to create some crime in itself.

[Nuclear1]

Don't get cocky there buddy.

[MP-Ryan]

You guys are just afraid you might lose, I bet.

Lose what?  To lose, you'd have to argue a perspective not based in fact.  As I said, the research is conflicted, so a factually grounded position in favour of specific firearms-controls can be an elusive beast at best.

It's the internet. Feel free to reveal your half-formed opinions on gun control, criminology and racial science.

Now you're just baiting   Besides, I don't have half-formed opinions on any of the above, one of my degrees is in sociology/psychology, with a heavy emphasis on criminology coursework

I'm interested to hear some examples of "rates of success varying by country", MP-Ryan. The impression I got from skimming a few Reddit articles on this matter was that if there is an effect of gun control on crime either way it is almost negligible, and any evaluation of "effectiveness" is going to have to deal with far too many confounds for it's conclusions to be meaningful. You can't just yell "Success!" when a graph bounces one way or another after policy changes.

Well, such things are always bound up in the correlation != causation mess, but it really depends on the way you measure success.  Violent crime is declining in Canada - has been since the '70s.  Firearms-related crimes are also way down, especially since the 90s - when the Firearms Act was introduced.  Firearms-related homicide, suicide, injury, and accidental deaths are also all down, also since the introduction of the Act.  All of those are pretty fair measures of success, provided changes in firearms-related laws actually precipitated them.  There's also the number of possible suicides and accidents prevented (by training and storage requirements), which isn't actually measurable (but given the decline in rates in general, can be analyzed as a trend).  Success of firearms-control measures isn't just a function of crime rate.  In fact, I tend to argue that the most compelling reason for some controls (including licensing and safety training) has more to do with the safety of the owner and their family (and the public at large) than anything to do with crime rate.  By that measure, the controls introduced in Canada have been an overwhelming success.

Of course, by contrast you need only look at the handgun ban in Washington, D.C. to see abject failure of a control measure.

So it's really not that clear-cut.  Evidence is mixed, success depends on the how, where, and whats of implementation.

And then there's the lesson from the drug war, that efforts to outlaw something is probably going to create some crime in itself.

Disingenuous argument.  Prohibiton (outright bans) always fails due to supply/demand considerations.  Regulation of a substance has more nuance.  Banning alcohol created a new category of crime; regulation of alcohol alleviated some social problems [and crime] while permitting a small criminal sector to exist around it (as it did when alcohol was unregulated, albeit in a different form).  Regulation of drugs may in fact be considerably more effective than either full prohibition or full legalization.

Firearms are best viewed from the analogy of vehicles (which was mentioned earlier).  Unregulated operation of motor vehicles is probably not desirable from a public safety standpoint, but that doesn't mean they should have been banned.  Instead, and large and flexible network of safety regulations exist:  both on vehicles themselves, and the people who operate them.  There is no compelling reason for firearms to be treated any differently, 2nd Amendment considerations momentarily put aside (since we're talking about principle, rather than specifics).

Perhaps the lesson here is to be careful declaring a win when the facts don't support it (and much as research is conflicted, the facts do not support completely unregulated ownership and use of firearms in developed nations).

EDIT:  Also, I find myself oddly positioned as, in Canada, I'm actually firmly in the camp advocating for fewer restrictions on firearms than the general populace.  Heh.

[Mars]

You guys are just afraid you might lose, I bet.

Um. . . no, it's that if one doesn't know much about something, maybe one shouldn't argue about it to begin with.

I personally am liberal in many ways and generally support private ownership of firearms; but that's based of what I know to be an emotional "gut" decision.

[Nuke]

It doesn't bother me that most HLPers are liberal. What bothers me is that virtually all of the ones that are able to construct a coherent argument are liberal. And I don't care about whether conservative views are tolerated here as long as factual evidence is presented against them and these debates don't result in instaban/threadlock whenever they come up. Really, polite debates and euphemisms can get stale.

Well, it helps when conservative members don't jump in on a thread and start spewing Fox News talking points and accusing liberal members of being socialists.    Not that you do that, but we just have a habit of answering dickishness with the same.

i kinda think there is also an issue with america's left being a little right of the rest of the worlds left, so some of our democrats often get marked as republicans erroneously.

[Mustang19]

Perhaps the lesson here is to be careful declaring a win when the facts don't support it (and much as research is conflicted, the facts do not support completely unregulated ownership and use of firearms in developed nations).

Okay, I'll take your word for it. And now we're into the arena of specific firearm regulations, something which I know nothing about. But I'm curious if you have any specific studies or legislation you consider particularly significant. For instance I'm not sure if it's worth taking a few million a year out of police budgets to maintain a national firearms registry.

By that measure, the controls introduced in Canada have been an overwhelming success.

Firearm homicides per 100,000, Canada:



Now I'll agree with you that safety regulations are a good idea, but the homicide trend you described was already going on. As you can see prior to when the Firearms Act of 1995 was enacted gun homicides were trending downward anyway as were non-firearm homicides. The conclusions one draws really depend on what timescale you're looking at especially since firearm homicides spiked in the immediately following year. I really don't see the fall in firearm homicides large enough to be disaggregated from the fall in overall homicides. If anything you could say something happened in 2000 that might have had something to do with the Act that caused these rates to diverge, but that's about it.

Disingenuous argument.  Prohibiton (outright bans) always fails due to supply/demand considerations.  Regulation of a substance has more nuance.  Banning alcohol created a new category of crime; regulation of alcohol alleviated some social problems [and crime] while permitting a small criminal sector to exist around it (as it did when alcohol was unregulated, albeit in a different form).  Regulation of drugs may in fact be considerably more effective than either full prohibition or full legalization.

Okay, we've ruled out total prohibition it seems. Not to be chicken, though, but I really don't know enough about guns to say much about regulating them. Background checks to prevent recent felons and people with a history of severe psychiatric disorders from owning weapons make sense. I would not, though, be in favor of the same regulations applied to tobacco or alcohol such as excise taxes which make it more difficult for everyone to acquire guns, even for self defense purposes. Not to set up a straw man.

And regulating firearms is different from regulating cars, toasters and other products because 1) we're talking about restricting ownership, not merely the safety standards of the product and 2) this involves social factors much more complicated than the relatively easy to study technical/medical/ability factors relevant to other products. You might be able to judge if someone is able to drive a car safely, but you can't judge whether they're going to use for evil purposes or if they'll need it to defend themselves.

Perhaps the lesson here is to be careful declaring a win when the facts don't support it (and much as research is conflicted, the facts do not support completely unregulated ownership and use of firearms in developed nations).

I understand that I can drop my extreme position now that we've exited Fox News versus Colbert Report battle mode111. Still, even if regulation is warranted the cost of regulation has to be taken into account. When the proven effect of some particular regulation on homicide rates is small, you have to also ask with regard to fairly expensive policies such as the National Registry, "is enacting this law worth diverting police resources to arresting, prosecuting, and detaining violators when funds spent on additional police training and equipment could save the lives of innocents and law enforcement officers?"

[Nuke]

you really got to look at all homicides. you want to kill someone bad enough you will find a way, be it an axe, a knife, a baseball bat, a truck, or a super soaker full of gasoline and a road flare. if you exclude premeditated murder from statistics, you might see more deaths by gun, since a gun doesnt give you much time to think about what you are doing, of course the same thing can be said about swinging an axe at someones skull.

[Kopachris]

Totally missing the point and the context.

I wasn't saying the laws don't exist, I was saying that they exist for a reason.  The 'only the outlaws will have guns' and the NRA crowd tend to rally around the idea that the fewer gun laws there are, the better. I was saying that a lot of those laws exist for the same reason we have restrictions on automobiles:  because if there weren't laws regarding public safety, a lot more people would be in danger.  And a lot of the pro-Second Amendment folks out there want to see more of those laws repealed so they can fulfill their revolution fantasies and pretend that they're going to be the next Minutemen.

It was all just a response to the "cars kill more people than guns, so car should be banned" statement.

Granted, I take pro gun control arguments to the extreme (complete banning of civilian firearms), but I also take "if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" extremely literally.  That is, when I say "if guns are outlawed," I mean "if it is completely illegal for civilians to own firearms."  I don't rally around the idea that fewer gun laws are better--I'm all for making them a little more difficult to own (maybe not to carry, though), but not for banning them entirely, when, as I stated before, those who commit crimes with guns are a minority.  The rest of us are primarily target shooters or hunters, and never really expect to need to use a gun for self-defense (though we prepare anyway, just in case).  We're not out to maim or kill anyone--we're out to have some peaceful fun with stuff that goes "boom."  You said that, as drivers can go to a race track to drive fast, so too can shooters go to a gun range.  Well, most of us do.  Or we at least go to some secluded area out in the boonies (usually BLM land) where bullets aren't likely to go astray and hit anyone or anyone's property.

I've also already agreed that the "prepare for revolution" argument is nonsense because, well, there's nothing we can really do if the US government becomes more corrupt and oppressive than it already is.  The power is too widespread and people just don't care enough for any ragtag militia to have a hope of taking down one of the most powerful governments in the world (not to mention the technology).

In summary, please don't ignore my other posts when trying to twist my words against me.  At least find out my actual stance on the issue before making your own interpretation of what I say.  Thank you.

[MP-Ryan]

For instance I'm not sure if it's worth taking a few million a year out of police budgets to maintain a national firearms registry.

Nor are we, but as it happens the RCMP now administers the program anyway.

Now I'll agree with you that safety regulations are a good idea, but the homicide trend you described was already going on. As you can see prior to when the Firearms Act of 1995 was enacted gun homicides were trending downward anyway as were non-firearm homicides. The conclusions one draws really depend on what timescale you're looking at especially since firearm homicides spiked in the immediately following year. I really don't see the fall in firearm homicides large enough to be disaggregated from the fall in overall homicides. If anything you could say something happened in 2000 that might have had something to do with the Act that caused these rates to diverge, but that's about it.

Maybe I wasn't clear, but I was saying that you can't necessarily associate the correlation of rates and the Act when it comes to homicides.  Where I was speaking of success is the preventative measures introduced by the Act when it comes to accidental death/injury and suicide.  Hope that clears it up.

Okay, we've ruled out total prohibition it seems. Not to be chicken, though, but I really don't know enough about guns to say much about regulating them. Background checks to prevent recent felons and people with a history of severe psychiatric disorders from owning weapons make sense. I would not, though, be in favor of the same regulations applied to tobacco or alcohol such as excise taxes which make it more difficult for everyone to acquire guns, even for self defense purposes. Not to set up a straw man.

And regulating firearms is different from regulating cars, toasters and other products because 1) we're talking about restricting ownership, not merely the safety standards of the product and 2) this involves social factors much more complicated than the relatively easy to study technical/medical/ability factors relevant to other products. You might be able to judge if someone is able to drive a car safely, but you can't judge whether they're going to use for evil purposes or if they'll need it to defend themselves.

You can't legally drive a car without a license.  Why purchase a firearm?  The point in licensing is education, safety training, and storage training more than restricting who owns it (the background checks are flaky at best, as there are an awful lot of reports of people who passed them doing crazy things with guns).  That reduces accidents and suicides.  Like I said originally, firearms controls aren't so much about homicides as they are completely preventable deaths.  Weapons availability doesn't have all that much to do with homicides, as the vast majority of murders in developed countries are among social and/or family groups.

I understand that I can drop my extreme position now that we've exited Fox News versus Colbert Report battle mode111. Still, even if regulation is warranted the cost of regulation has to be taken into account. When the proven effect of some particular regulation on homicide rates is small, you have to also ask with regard to fairly expensive policies such as the National Registry, "is enacting this law worth diverting police resources to arresting, prosecuting, and detaining violators when funds spent on additional police training and equipment could save the lives of innocents and law enforcement officers?"

I'm not sold on registries, but licensing programs don't really cost that much (they recoup most of it in user fees), and as I said before, the measure should not be homicide rates.  It's simplistic to think that regulation of firearms is going to stunningly drop the homicide rate, because that position ignores why homicides occur.  The person most likely to kill you is your romantic partner, followed by other relatives or acquaintances; and for that matter, the majority of those are not planned but are more likely to be crimes of opportunity.  Restricting firearms ownership isn't going to change that, although it *may* make it less likely that a firearm would be used.  As an aside, the vast majority of people who commit murder are of no danger to anyone but the person they killed - high percentages of them could be released the day after and never break another law in their life.  That doesn't take into account gangs or organized crime, but they account for only a small proportion of homicides.

This focus on homicide rates is the result of a terrible debate that's been going on in the 'States for years, and isn't reflective of crime patterns as a whole.

[Mustang19]

You can't legally drive a car without a license.  Why purchase a firearm?  The point in licensing is education, safety training, and storage training more than restricting who owns it (the background checks are flaky at best, as there are an awful lot of reports of people who passed them doing crazy things with guns).  That reduces accidents and suicides.  Like I said originally, firearms controls aren't so much about homicides as they are completely preventable deaths.  Weapons availability doesn't have all that much to do with homicides, as the vast majority of murders in developed countries are among social and/or family groups.

I'm not sold on registries, but licensing programs don't really cost that much (they recoup most of it in user fees), and as I said before, the measure should not be homicide rates.  It's simplistic to think that regulation of firearms is going to stunningly drop the homicide rate, because that position ignores why homicides occur.  The person most likely to kill you is your romantic partner, followed by other relatives or acquaintances; and for that matter, the majority of those are not planned but are more likely to be crimes of opportunity.  Restricting firearms ownership isn't going to change that, although it *may* make it less likely that a firearm would be used.  As an aside, the vast majority of people who commit murder are of no danger to anyone but the person they killed - high percentages of them could be released the day after and never break another law in their life.  That doesn't take into account gangs or organized crime, but they account for only a small proportion of homicides.

This focus on homicide rates is the result of a terrible debate that's been going on in the 'States for years, and isn't reflective of crime patterns as a whole.

Those are excellent points at least for any country outside America. You see the United States is just about the only developed country where firearm homicides exceed firearm accident deaths by a huge margin. So please understand if "our" focus is a little skewed. Also I imagine that gun regulation is not nearly as much of an impassioned issue in your country given the history of this kind of thing in the United States.

But do you realize how boring this debate becomes when you transition from talking about homicide to accidents? This is not the kind of thing that makes good headline news. Therefore to most people, at least over here, when you talk about gun control you have to talk about violence. I mean, safety training and licensure? Even if you don't consider that common sense, it's an uninteresting bureaucratic discussion.

So, um... yeah. It was nice to hear your perspective. Maybe I'll have something else to talk about in the morning.