[jr2]

Yeah, no, people have a tendency to just dismiss links I think.  If it's right there, you can read it, or if you skip it, and the conversation after it is interesting enough, you can go back and read it.  At least, I like it when you guys copy the text over.  Much easier.

Yeah, I dumped it here cause I wanted to see your opinions, like I said.  Especially seeing how this discussion is pretty civil.

[MP-Ryan]

I read your **** when you post it.  So, yeah.  I actually want to see if MP-Ryan will dissect it.  I like reading reasonable back-and-forth.  It's mentally stimulating.  I think there are others here who also enjoy this. 

I read that when it was first published, thoroughly dissected it for another forum back then, and have no desire to take it apart point-by-point again.

That said, I have posted a number of things in this thread that thoroughly debunk a great deal of that opinion piece already.  Anyone who wants to do so can go back and read them.  Notably, the author engages a number of politicized fallacies when he talks about banning guns and the regulatory regimes of other countries, and neglects to examine a number of the statistics showing the variation in firearms-related injuries and deaths in various countries with different legal frameworks.  Furthermore, he acknowledges none of the peer-reviewed research on the subject and instead engages in folksy "Common-sense" analysis, which is a term I hear from 'conservative' friends of mine in the US who are notorious for invoking it when they run out of meaningful sources and academic citations.

What people such as that author never acknowledge, constantly deflect, and frankly don't want to discuss is the hard-and-fast numbers:  the numbers that show the United States as a whole has an epidemic of violence around firearms that is due largely to the confluence of the following factors which are not nearly as pronounced in its comparator nations, namely:
1.  Lax and/or piecemeal regulation of firearms.
2.  Historical cultural attitude toward firearms (2nd amendment).
3.  Highly diverse population.
4.  Large marginalized population in rigid socially and economically immobile classes.
5.  Poor public support for funding of mental health services.

The NRA and their ilk are absolutely correct that firearms are not evil.  Firearms are tools.  Unfortunately, in the United States firearms are an altogether easily-available tool that allow people to commit extreme violence with ease based on a number of causal factors.  If all democracies - nevermind just the US - could meaningfully address and mitigate those causal factors, you could put a firearm in the hands of every man, woman, and child.  Unfortunately, a number of political factors in the US in particular make meaningful progress in those areas of policy difficult if not impossible.  The result is that deaths and injuries due to illegal, improper, or unsafe use in the US are astronomically greater than any comparator nation.  I previously provided a citation for this.

Once again, in the event it was not clear earlier - I am a firearms enthusiast.  I do not believe in the "ban guns" paradigm, and it infuriates me that "ban guns" is always the way pro-firearms advocates want to frame their counter-arguments.  There are a hell of a lot of very reasonable and very effective changes that can be made to firearms regulation in the United States that fall well short of banning guns that would put a serious dent in the injury and fatality numbers.  Unfortunately, it seems the vocal crowd wants to talk about the merits of the "Ban Guns! vs 2nd AMENDMENT!" debate, which is entirely a false construction explicitly designed to ensure nothing is ever done about this issue.

At this point, I'd love to see a social experiment - every government in the US should simultaneously repeal every piece of firearms-and-weapons-regulating legislation in the entire country.  At this point, I think it's the only course of action that might inject some sense in this absolutely moronic debate.

[Nakura]

I won't lie, I suspect most of the self-defence and ~resisting tyranny~ scenarios proposed by gun nuts are more juvenile power fantasies than anything particularly relevant to the real world.

Bingo.

The whole thing is just a power fantasy held by predominantly white men who are upset about their steadily decreasing privileges as a political class. First you fantasise about defending your home from invaders, and invent all sorts of fantastic scenarios in which you will use your guns to save the day. Next you get a CCW permit and walk around fantasising about the time you'll be able to stop a spree shooter in his tracks, or save a young damsel from being raped. Finally, you buy a bunch of semi-auto civvie variants of military carbines and some STANAG mags, and fantasise about overthrowing the government with your militia buddies and installing a new government 'for the people' or whatever tortured interpretation of founding father rhetoric you choose to use.

Yes, let's just denounce all gun owners as "crazy lunatics" because they refuse to be easy victims. Another brilliant deduction from the "women should tell rapists that they're on their period and throw up on themselves" camp.

And because what you just mentioned has happened so many times in the past 237 years, right?

[MP-Ryan]

Another brilliant deduction from the "women should tell rapists that they're on their period and throw up on themselves" camp.

And because what you just mentioned has happened so many times in the past 237 years, right?

wtf is this

[Nakura]

I read your **** when you post it.  So, yeah.  I actually want to see if MP-Ryan will dissect it.  I like reading reasonable back-and-forth.  It's mentally stimulating.  I think there are others here who also enjoy this. 

I read that when it was first published, thoroughly dissected it for another forum back then, and have no desire to take it apart point-by-point again.

That said, I have posted a number of things in this thread that thoroughly debunk a great deal of that opinion piece already.  Anyone who wants to do so can go back and read them.  Notably, the author engages a number of politicized fallacies when he talks about banning guns and the regulatory regimes of other countries, and neglects to examine a number of the statistics showing the variation in firearms-related injuries and deaths in various countries with different legal frameworks.  Furthermore, he acknowledges none of the peer-reviewed research on the subject and instead engages in folksy "Common-sense" analysis, which is a term I hear from 'conservative' friends of mine in the US who are notorious for invoking it when they run out of meaningful sources and academic citations.

What people such as that author never acknowledge, constantly deflect, and frankly don't want to discuss is the hard-and-fast numbers:  the numbers that show the United States as a whole has an epidemic of violence around firearms that is due largely to the confluence of the following factors which are not nearly as pronounced in its comparator nations, namely:
1.  Lax and/or piecemeal regulation of firearms.
2.  Historical cultural attitude toward firearms (2nd amendment).
3.  Highly diverse population.
4.  Large marginalized population in rigid socially and economically immobile classes.
5.  Poor public support for funding of mental health services.

The NRA and their ilk are absolutely correct that firearms are not evil.  Firearms are tools.  Unfortunately, in the United States firearms are an altogether easily-available tool that allow people to commit extreme violence with ease based on a number of causal factors.  If all democracies - nevermind just the US - could meaningfully address and mitigate those causal factors, you could put a firearm in the hands of every man, woman, and child.  Unfortunately, a number of political factors in the US in particular make meaningful progress in those areas of policy difficult if not impossible.  The result is that deaths and injuries due to illegal, improper, or unsafe use in the US are astronomically greater than any comparator nation.  I previously provided a citation for this.

Once again, in the event it was not clear earlier - I am a firearms enthusiast.  I do not believe in the "ban guns" paradigm, and it infuriates me that "ban guns" is always the way pro-firearms advocates want to frame their counter-arguments.  There are a hell of a lot of very reasonable and very effective changes that can be made to firearms regulation in the United States that fall well short of banning guns that would put a serious dent in the injury and fatality numbers.  Unfortunately, it seems the vocal crowd wants to talk about the merits of the "Ban Guns! vs 2nd AMENDMENT!" debate, which is entirely a false construction explicitly designed to ensure nothing is ever done about this issue.

At this point, I'd love to see a social experiment - every government in the US should simultaneously repeal every piece of firearms-and-weapons-regulating legislation in the entire country.  At this point, I think it's the only course of action that might inject some sense in this absolutely moronic debate.

Except for the fact that, you know, the gun rights side won the argument. Gun laws are the loosest they've been in decades and gun ownership is the highest it's been in 30 years, all the while crime rates are plummeting. And as we've been over, even strict "non-ban" regulation increases homicide rates; take for instance the Gun Control Act of 1967 in the United Kingdom, which instituted strict licensing and registration for firearms, while leading to higher homicide rates.

You keep saying "the NRA does this, the NRA does that," it's not the NRA that is framing the discussion in terms of "gun ban vs Second Amendment." It's the gungrabbers that are doing that, and yes, that includes President Obama. The gungrabbers don't want firearms regulations, because they HATE guns. They view gun owners as a disease, they think of them as being no different from the "God hates fags" and "pro-life" crowd. They don't care about stopping criminals, they care about stopping law abiding gun owners, because it goes against their ideology of "guns are bad." The NRA and gun owners are arguing predominately to keep what they have. Sure, it would be nice to get a few more gun laws repealed, such as the ban on campus carry and the ban on machineguns, but overall, we just want to keep the rights we have now.

Also, how does supporting the Second Amendment (viewing firearms ownership as a right/responsibility) cause higher crime rates? That makes no sense whatsoever and is not supported by facts. Plenty of other countries view firearms ownership as a right and/or responsibility and they have extremely low crime rates (Switzerland for instance). If anything, having a responsible, armed populace lowers crime, as we've seen.

[watsisname]

Yeah, no, people have a tendency to just dismiss links I think.  If it's right there, you can read it, or if you skip it, and the conversation after it is interesting enough, you can go back and read it.

I absolutely refuse to read paragraphs upon paragraphs of text that were simply copied and pasted from somewhere else, even if it is on a topic that is of great interest to me or I agree with, because it is abhorrently lazy of the poster.  I also feel the exact same way if someone simply makes a link without writing any of their own words about it.  (And I've called people out for doing this crap in the past).

A better way to do it is to write your own material and then use your link as a reference or as extra supporting material, perhaps with a few quoted lines to provide substance.  Or if you want to talk about the source itself then mention/link it, talk about what it says, and quote some important lines.  If people are interested in checking out your source more thoroughly, they will do so.  I will always check a link if it is provided in that kind of framework.

[Nakura]

Another brilliant deduction from the "women should tell rapists that they're on their period and throw up on themselves" camp.

And because what you just mentioned has happened so many times in the past 237 years, right?

wtf is this

Even you should be disappointed in Hoover, given that he just accused gun owners of being psychopaths and wannabe-superheroes.

Little does he know that gun control started in the United States as an attempt by Democrats to prevent former slaves from defending themselves against the KKK and lynchers. Or in the United Kingdom as an attempt to keep the working class subjugated.

[Phantom Hoover]

I'm not even going to ask for citations on that, because you have more than burnt through that goodwill by now. Hey Nakura what happened to guns having nothing whatsoever to do with suicide rates? Or concealed carry totally reducing homicide rates? How about actually having the humility to acknowledge when your talking points get demolished rather than seguing onto the next little package of blank assertions and linkspam?

[MP-Ryan]

Except for the fact that, you know, the gun rights side won the argument. Gun laws are the loosest they've been in decades and gun ownership is the highest it's been in 30 years, all the while crime rates are plummeting. And as we've been over, even strict "non-ban" regulation increases homicide rates; take for instance the Gun Control Act of 1967 in the United Kingdom, which instituted strict licensing and registration for firearms, while leading to higher homicide rates.

The homicide rate has fallen in every democracy in the last 30 years, regardless of changes to firearm laws.  Injury and deaths of all kinds related to firearms have fallen in every country that has enacted tougher firearms controls.  Homicide rates in the UK today are not higher than they were 30 years ago.  The death rate by firearm in the United States is significantly higher than its comparators, all of whom have more stringent firearms laws.  Furthermore, homicide rates also have a statistically significant correlation with the availability of firearms. You are demonstrating classic correlation/causation fallacy when you say homicide rates are now lower, gun ownership is higher, and regulation is lower.  None of these factors is directly causal to the others; all of them have changed in every democracy; and all at them have changed at different rates.

You keep saying "the NRA does this, the NRA does that," it's not the NRA that is framing the discussion in terms of "gun ban vs Second Amendment." It's the gungrabbers that are doing that, and yes, that includes President Obama. The gungrabbers don't want firearms regulations, because they HATE guns. They view gun owners as a disease, they think of them as being no different from the "God hates fags" and "pro-life" crowd. They don't care about stopping criminals, they care about stopping law abiding gun owners, because it goes against their ideology of "guns are bad." The NRA and gun owners are arguing predominately to keep what they have. Sure, it would be nice to get a few more gun laws repealed, such as the ban on campus carry and the ban on machineguns, but overall, we just want to keep the rights we have now.

This entire paragraph is ideological and has not one scrap of evidence associated with it.  Furthermore, the common arguments against firearms controls from the NRA-side - such as the piece jr2 posted - virtually always talk about firearms bans.

Also, how does supporting the Second Amendment (viewing firearms ownership as a right/responsibility) cause higher crime rates? That makes no sense whatsoever and is not supported by facts. Plenty of other countries view firearms ownership as a right and/or responsibility and they have extremely low crime rates (Switzerland for instance). If anything, having a responsible, armed populace lowers crime, as we've seen.

I invite you to do a little research on Switzerland, actually, because it's gun laws are not what you obviously think they are.  The notion of the 2nd Amendment has prevented the United States from ever implementing effective regulation of firearms on a nation-wide basis and it is piecemeal firearms regulation that results in so many of the problems you have as compared to other nations that do it nationally - I previously provided reasons why in this thread, and am not repeating them.

I have noticed a disturbing trend in this thread - every time peer-reviewed statistics are posted, they are rapidly ignored.  This is unacceptable.  Please respond and explain precisely how your position can be reconciled with the NCBI studies linked in this thread, both of which I re-linked in this post.  Your posts have always been thinly-veiled conservative/gun-lobby talking points; now we are going to talk about actual data from actual studies with actual scientifically-derived methodologies instead.  I expect any future sources you include to conform to those parameters.  If you make a claim, I will now expect a citation to a reputable source.  If you don't, I will highlight that claim and ask for a source.  I will not respond to unsourced claims beyond that.    If following these reasonable rules of rational debate does not appeal to you, please indicate that and cease making claims without credible sourcing behind them.  You lost any benefit of the doubt you had from me on page 7 with the bull**** claims about the CDC.

[MP-Ryan]

Another brilliant deduction from the "women should tell rapists that they're on their period and throw up on themselves" camp.

And because what you just mentioned has happened so many times in the past 237 years, right?

wtf is this

Even you should be disappointed in Hoover, given that he just accused gun owners of being psychopaths and wannabe-superheroes.

Little does he know that gun control started in the United States as an attempt by Democrats to prevent former slaves from defending themselves against the KKK and lynchers. Or in the United Kingdom as an attempt to keep the working class subjugated.

Citations required.

[Nakura]

I'm not even going to ask for citations on that, because you have more than burnt through that goodwill by now. Hey Nakura what happened to guns having nothing whatsoever to do with suicide rates? Or concealed carry totally reducing homicide rates? How about actually having the humility to acknowledge when your talking points get demolished rather than seguing onto the next little package of blank assertions and linkspam?

Talking points?

The only thing I said that was wrong, was that the CDC "ruled," which it doesn't. A more accurate statement would be that the CDC "came to the conclusion that," not "ruled that." This was a grammatical error, however, not a flaw with my empirical data or logic. Concealed carry has been proven to reduce homicide rates, as cited by the CDC and countless independent studies. Even the studies conducted by the gun control lobby show that at the very worst, concealed carry has no noticeable affect on crime.

What MP-Ryan refused to point out in his link, is that the decision the NRC released 10 years ago regarding self-defense wasn't unanimous. There was dissent in favor of concealed carry lowering crime rates. The NAP study admitted that there wasn't enough data to draw a conclusion, and a further study was released in 2013 by the CDC, which I linked too on page one. In addition, studies show that 'Stand Your Ground' laws have led to a 9% drop in homicide and an 11% drop in overall violent crime.

[Phantom Hoover]

Oh look, you segued into the next little package of blank assertions and linkspam!

[MP-Ryan]

I'm not even going to ask for citations on that, because you have more than burnt through that goodwill by now. Hey Nakura what happened to guns having nothing whatsoever to do with suicide rates? Or concealed carry totally reducing homicide rates? How about actually having the humility to acknowledge when your talking points get demolished rather than seguing onto the next little package of blank assertions and linkspam?

Talking points?

The only thing I said that was wrong, was that the CDC "ruled," which it doesn't. A more accurate statement would be that the CDC "came to the conclusion that," not "ruled that." This was a grammatical error, however, not a flaw with my empirical data or logic. Concealed carry has been proven to reduce homicide rates, as cited by the CDC and countless independent studies. Even the studies conducted by the gun control lobby show that at the very worst, concealed carry has no noticeable affect on crime.

What MP-Ryan refused to point out in his link, is that the decision the NRC released 10 years ago regarding self-defense wasn't unanimous. There was dissent in favor of concealed carry lowering crime rates. The NAP study admitted that there wasn't enough data to draw a conclusion, and a further study was released in 2013 by the CDC, which I linked too on page one. In addition, studies show that 'Stand Your Ground' laws have led to a 9% drop in homicide and an 11% drop in overall violent crime.

Concealed carry may CORRELATE with lower crime rates, but it certainly doesn't cause it.  I'm dubious about that claim too, as your source is an interview with John Lott and not state or federal statistics departments, which I assume you will look up and post immediately after reading this.  And I'm not sure what link you're referring to or what I refused to point out.  And your other link about dissent - there is always dissent on criminal law policy - again references the work of Lott.  Lott is an economist.  He is not a statistician.  He is not a criminologist.  He is not a lawyer.  His work is not all peer-reviewed.  The gun lobby loves to try citing the man for all these reasons.  His research is biased to a political objective.  Find some actual statistics from an actual research institution.

[The E]

The homicide rate has fallen in every democracy in the last 30 years, regardless of changes to firearm laws.  Injury and deaths of all kinds related to firearms have fallen in every country that has enacted tougher firearms controls.  Homicide rates in the UK today are not higher than they were 30 years ago.  The death rate by firearm in the United States is significantly higher than its comparators, all of whom have more stringent firearms laws.  Furthermore, homicide rates also have a statistically significant correlation with the availability of firearms. You are demonstrating classic correlation/causation fallacy when you say homicide rates are now lower, gun ownership is higher, and regulation is lower.  None of these factors is directly causal to the others; all of them have changed in every democracy; and all at them have changed at different rates.

Nakura: Please respond to these points.

On a general note, this topic is on the verge of being closed. It is increasingly apparent that both sides of the debate have given up on trying to convince the other and are just repeating points ad nauseum; this is not what we call "constructive" around here.

I am pretty sure that the possibility for reasonable, enlightening debate on this topic exists, but this thread isn't it.

[Nakura]

Another brilliant deduction from the "women should tell rapists that they're on their period and throw up on themselves" camp.

And because what you just mentioned has happened so many times in the past 237 years, right?

wtf is this

Even you should be disappointed in Hoover, given that he just accused gun owners of being psychopaths and wannabe-superheroes.

Little does he know that gun control started in the United States as an attempt by Democrats to prevent former slaves from defending themselves against the KKK and lynchers. Or in the United Kingdom as an attempt to keep the working class subjugated.

Citations required.

For the United Kingdom:

As World War I came to a conclusion, the labor strife of the pre−war period again reared its head, with one additional ingredient in the caustic stew: Communism. An August 1917 "Memorandum by Professor E. V. Arnold of Bangor University" was circulated to the Cabinet at the request of Lord Milner, warning of "Labour in Revolt." Professor Arnold warned of a movement of younger workers that did not follow the trade union leaders. Professor Arnold's "Labour in Revolt" described a doctrinaire revolutionary Marxist movement. While the words "Communist" and "Bolshevik" never appear in Arnold's memorandum, his language leaves no doubt that he was describing this movement. Arnold also carefully distinguished this movement from the Labour Party itself.

In addition to the Communist workers, an additional faction became a recurring concern of the Government: soldiers. In September 1917, Lord Curzon circulated to his fellow Cabinet ministers a letter from the Bishop of Oxford, warning of "Alleged Disaffection Existing Among British Troops at Home." The Bishop's letter warned that hunger, low pay, and a refusal to allow leave caused British soldiers to secretly put up a placard "to say that they were going to imitate the Russian soldiers" and that they engaged in "open sedition in speech."

The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, late in 1917, certainly added fuel to the fire of fear in the Cabinet. As World War I dragged to a close, conditions in Britain created increasingly serious strikes. The strike by the London police force on August 30, 1918 was one of the most frightening such industrial actions of the time. Out of a force of 19,000 policemen, 10,000 failed to show up for work. Lloyd George later claimed Britain "was closer to Bolshevism that day than at any other time since." Sir Basil Thomson, Scotland Yard's Director of Intelligence, wrote in late 1918 that "England would be spared the full horrors of Bolshevism" yet also believed that the nation could be severely damaged by "serious labour disturbances, carried on with the sympathy of the Police." Thomson also believed that "serious labour disturbances" were beyond the control of the police in big cities.

Immediately after the war, a wave of Communist revolutionary actions took place on the continent. In North America, a series of disturbances and strikes were widely interpreted as evidence of Communist subversion. These events created increasing levels of fear within the Cabinet and the British intelligence service. One report passed up the chain of command in early 1919 with an approving cover note asserted:
I now find myself convinced that in England Bolschevism [sic] must be faced and grappled with, the efforts of the International Jews of Russia combated and their agents eliminated from the United Kingdom. Unless some serious consideration is given to the matter, I believe that there will be some sort of Revolution in this country and that before 12 months are past...

The events of early 1919 seemed to confirm these fears of Communist revolution. A general strike in Glasgow
led to the raising of the red flag over city hall. The Glasgow Herald called it a first step toward Bolshevism, and the Secretary of State for Scotland called it a Bolshevik rising. The army was mobilized, but the police restored order without the military's assistance. In retrospect, the general strike in Glasgow was not the first step of revolution, but it is certainly understandable that the intelligence service, the Cabinet, and the king, misread it as such.

The concern about revolutionary violence appears to have motivated similar firearms control laws in the
Dominions. In Canada, the Winnipeg General Strike in May 1919 led to violence. Thomson's "Report on Revolutionary Organizations in the United Kingdom," January 22, 1920, described it as: not an industrial dispute but really an attempt to overthrow the constitutional government and to replace it by a form of Soviet Government planned and fashioned by the Industrial Workers of the World.

The "alien scum" were blamed for the labor strife. In response, the Canadian Parliament passed a law in 1920 requiring a permit for anyone to possess any gun. The Canadian Parliament repealed the permit requirement for Canadian citizens for rifles and shotguns (though not for handguns) in 1921.

New Zealand adopted a mandatory firearms registration law in 1920 because returning servicemen had brought pistols and automatic weapons back to New Zealand. "Revolution had occurred in Russia and there was a fear that large scale industrial demonstrations or even riot could occur here." At least one scholar claims that Australia's gun control laws, adopted on a state−by−state basis during the period 1921−32, were adopted for similar reasons.

How should the British government respond to these fears? There were differing proposals within the Cabinet. On February 27, 1919, Cabinet Secretary Thomas Jones wrote to Sir Maurice Hankey about the increasing problem of labor strife, and told how several Cabinet ministers responded to his proposals to defuse the concerns of the working classes with social policy changes. According to Jones, his proposal drew "rather long faces" from several Cabinet ministers: "It was blank nonsense to talk of a bagatelle like [sterling]71,000,000 −− a cheap insurance against Bolshevism."

Crisis after crisis increased the Cabinet's fears of revolution. When the Triple Alliance of miners, railway workers, and transport workers demanded higher wages and shorter hours in February 1919, Prime Minister Lloyd George appealed to patriotism, asserting that the government would fall if they called a general strike: I feel bound to tell you that in our opinion we are at your mercy. The Army is disaffected and cannot be relied upon... In these circumstances, if you carry out your threat and strike, then you will defeat us.

Throughout 1919, fear of revolution rose and fell, depending on the events of the moment, but the undercurrent of fear never went away. The Cabinet's Strike Committee responded to a railroad strike on September 26, 1919 with orders to the army to secure railroads and power stations against sabotage. The Committee also concluded that a "Citizen Guard" was now necessary to deal with the danger of a general strike. Though the Cabinet abandoned the Citizen Guard plans when the railroad strike was settled on October 5, 1919, this proposal −− and the fears it represented −− reappeared in 1920. (Perhaps indicative of the Cabinet's belief in the power of armed civilians, the British government reacted with anger at a 1920 plan by the Soviet government to impose a "civic militia" of armed Polish workers on defeated Poland, for the apparent purpose of bringing about a Communist coup.)

As 1920 opened, the Cabinet's fear of Communist revolution was again on the rise. The January 7, 1920 report "The Labour Situation" from the Ministry of Labour warns of a leftist newspaper that: announces an attempt is to be made within the next few months to overthrow democratic government and to set up some form of `Soviet' rule, by means of a "general strike," and anticipates that this strike will be accompanied by an upheaval in Ireland.

The workers were also described as increasingly unwilling to listen to labor union leaders, with the more radical labor newspapers distinguishing between "reactionary Trade Union officials" and radical parts of "political Labour." Director of Intelligence Thomson's January 9, 1920 "Report of Revolutionary Organisations in the United Kingdom" warned that while miners were losing faith in the strike as a tool for achieving their ends, "There is abundant evidence that the great mass of Labour is drifting steadily to the Left."

Cabinet Secretary Sir Maurice Hankey's letter of January 17, 1920, to Jones discusses a Cabinet
meeting about: the industrial situation. C.I.G.S. [Chief of the Imperial General Staff] also is positively in a state of dreadful nerves on the subject. Churchill is the only one who is sane on this subject... From a meeting yesterday evening I came away with my head fairly reeling. I felt I had been in Bedlam. Red revolution and blood and war at home and abroad!

While many of Thomson's intelligence reports seem to fit into the concern about Communist revolution, others suggest that he did not consider this a likely occurrence −− unlike the Cabinet ministers. Thomson's "Report on Revolutionary Organizations in the United Kingdom" of January 22, 1920, acknowledged that reports were circulating in London "that a revolution is to be expected within the next two months." But Thomson's report also insisted "the minority that would like to see a sudden and violent revolution is ridiculously small." Instead, his concern was about "The flow of Bolshevik propaganda, which is very ably written, will inevitably be greatly increased when trade is opened with Russia..." Thomson proposed new legislation instead to deal with such propaganda; he worried more about the pen than the sword.

Read more: http://dvc.org.uk/dunblane/clayton_1.pdf

As for the US it's well-documented everywhere. Here's a pretty comprehensive and well-sourced study on gun control being used to suppress freed slaves: http://www.guncite.com/journals/cd-reg.html

[MP-Ryan]

I am pretty sure that the possibility for reasonable, enlightening debate on this topic exists, but this thread isn't it.

I'm not.  I've done this on a half-dozen forums in the last dozen years, and none of them have been particularly reasoned or enlightening.  I'm not sure why I thought this one may be any different.  I gave up when the peer-reviewed data was posted and promptly ignored.  Now I'd just like Nakura to provide a substantive response.

[MP-Ryan]

Read more: http://dvc.org.uk/dunblane/clayton_1.pdf

Who is Clayton Cramer, and why should I care about what he says or what a site set up by some random guy on the Dunblane massacre say?  I am getting exceedingly tired of asking for reputable sources.  I can go find some random guy on the Internet that says guns are the spawn of Satan - that doesn't make it credible.

As for the US it's well-documented everywhere. Here's a pretty comprehensive and well-sourced study on gun control being used to suppress freed slaves: http://www.guncite.com/journals/cd-reg.html

While my head explodes at the fact you've pulled it from Guncite, the analysis is at least from reputable authors it seems, so that's a plus.  It makes for an interesting argument; but recognize that it is an argument and - like most history - it's an interpretation based on facts, not a fact unto itself.  Good reading, though, and seems to carry some academic validity at least in how its constructed.

[Phantom Hoover]

This thread would, I suspect, have evolved much faster had people pressed Nakura on the first few points he started arguing about, like gun control in Australia.

[Nakura]

I'm not even going to ask for citations on that, because you have more than burnt through that goodwill by now. Hey Nakura what happened to guns having nothing whatsoever to do with suicide rates? Or concealed carry totally reducing homicide rates? How about actually having the humility to acknowledge when your talking points get demolished rather than seguing onto the next little package of blank assertions and linkspam?

Talking points?

The only thing I said that was wrong, was that the CDC "ruled," which it doesn't. A more accurate statement would be that the CDC "came to the conclusion that," not "ruled that." This was a grammatical error, however, not a flaw with my empirical data or logic. Concealed carry has been proven to reduce homicide rates, as cited by the CDC and countless independent studies. Even the studies conducted by the gun control lobby show that at the very worst, concealed carry has no noticeable affect on crime.

What MP-Ryan refused to point out in his link, is that the decision the NRC released 10 years ago regarding self-defense wasn't unanimous. There was dissent in favor of concealed carry lowering crime rates. The NAP study admitted that there wasn't enough data to draw a conclusion, and a further study was released in 2013 by the CDC, which I linked too on page one. In addition, studies show that 'Stand Your Ground' laws have led to a 9% drop in homicide and an 11% drop in overall violent crime.

Concealed carry may CORRELATE with lower crime rates, but it certainly doesn't cause it.  I'm dubious about that claim too, as your source is an interview with John Lott and not state or federal statistics departments, which I assume you will look up and post immediately after reading this.  And I'm not sure what link you're referring to or what I refused to point out.  And your other link about dissent - there is always dissent on criminal law policy - again references the work of Lott.  Lott is an economist.  He is not a statistician.  He is not a criminologist.  He is not a lawyer.  His work is not all peer-reviewed.  The gun lobby loves to try citing the man for all these reasons.  His research is biased to a political objective.  Find some actual statistics from an actual research institution.

There is no way to measure the effect of any crime, only to correlate it. The same goes for the affect of economic factors on crime, it's all just correlation, because there are an infinite number of factors that can affect the data. John Lott is generally considered to be one of the foremost firearms statistics expert in the world, having quite literally wrote the book on firearms statistics. Unfortunately, it seems that he is the only person who has actually studied the affects of stand-your-ground laws on crime. Seeing as he mentioned it in his book, we'd have to find the citation in the appendix or ask him. I don't own the book though.

[deathfun]

I WILL be criminally liable for breaking a half-dozen Canadian laws concerning firearms use/storage/safety/possession/transport if I don't have a very good explanation of why I was carrying a loaded handgun, which is probably where you're getting confused.

Just because I'm curious, what good explanation would pass in that circumstance?
Because I can't think of any good excuse why you have a loaded handgun in your pocket and you're Joe from Accounting

I know the point you're trying to make, but you're saying it really poorly.  To clear this up:

Yeah
I know
Never said I was intelligent