Off-Topic Posts from Gun Control Series Q2 -- Is legally owning a gun correlated to different likelihood...

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Sy Borg
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Off-Topic Posts from Gun Control Series Q2 -- Is legally owning a gun correlated to different likelihood...

Post by Sy Borg »

I do not see this as a philosophical question. What is the data regarding gun owners and violent crime?

Also, it's not valid to consider dynamics that involve the collective as if only pertaining to individuals, eg. one person littering doesn't matter, but if the habit is widespread then that creates issues. By the same taken, a person legally owning a gun means very little - what happens when most of the population owns guns?

The higher the percentage of gun ownership, the higher the chance of guns being kept by the unstable and it also provides greater cover through numbers for those who keep guns for criminal purposes.
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Re: Gun Control Series Q2 -- Is legally owning a gun correlated to different likelihood of committing violent crime?

Post by LuckyR »

Greta wrote: March 21st, 2019, 4:40 pm I do not see this as a philosophical question. What is the data regarding gun owners and violent crime?

Also, it's not valid to consider dynamics that involve the collective as if only pertaining to individuals, eg. one person littering doesn't matter, but if the habit is widespread then that creates issues. By the same taken, a person legally owning a gun means very little - what happens when most of the population owns guns?

The higher the percentage of gun ownership, the higher the chance of guns being kept by the unstable and it also provides greater cover through numbers for those who keep guns for criminal purposes.
Why violent crime, why not gun crime? Violent crime is too easy of a hurdle, since violent offenders can't legally own guns, 100% of reoffenses by felons would be placed in the legal non gun ownership category.
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Re: Gun Control Series Q2 -- Is legally owning a gun correlated to different likelihood of committing violent crime?

Post by GE Morton »

Greta wrote: March 21st, 2019, 4:40 pm I do not see this as a philosophical question.
It is, if the data cited (in support of any position) has been produced by a logically flawed methodology.
Also, it's not valid to consider dynamics that involve the collective as if only pertaining to individuals, eg. one person littering doesn't matter, but if the habit is widespread then that creates issues. By the same taken, a person legally owning a gun means very little - what happens when most of the population owns guns?

The higher the percentage of gun ownership, the higher the chance of guns being kept by the unstable and it also provides greater cover through numbers for those who keep guns for criminal purposes.
It is surely true that, ceteris paribus, there will be more gun crimes if guns are readily available. E.g., if no guns existed in the US there would be no gun crimes. As long as most people can legally own guns, criminals will be able to get their hands on them (some by stealing them, but mostly via the black market).

That ceteris paribus condition is the rub, however. Homicide rates do not correlate with gun ownership rates, either by state in the US or internationally by country (see the link above). Hence guns cannot be the "causes" of crime. But if guns are available persons with criminal propensities or intentions will make use of them (and as long as they exist in a country they will be available to criminals).
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OFF TOPIC POSTS FROM Gun Control Series Q2 -- Is legally owning a gun correlated to different likelihood...

Post by Jan Sand »

There are many ways to kill people but if the tool to kill people is easy to use and is easy to use to kill a large number of people with relatively no opposition then people who use this tool will do so. That a large number of people with guns are not deranged enough to kill lots of people is no guarantee that a small number of people who are deranged and have access to guns will not injure a horrifying number of random victims. That is the problem.
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Re: Gun Control Series Q2 -- Is legally owning a gun correlated to different likelihood of committing violent crime?

Post by LuckyR »

Jan Sand wrote: March 22nd, 2019, 1:19 am There are many ways to kill people but if the tool to kill people is easy to use and is easy to use to kill a large number of people with relatively no opposition then people who use this tool will do so. That a large number of people with guns are not deranged enough to kill lots of people is no guarantee that a small number of people who are deranged and have access to guns will not injure a horrifying number of random victims. That is the problem.
Dude, did you read the OP? This isn't about guns, it's specifically about legal gun ownership (vs non ownership) in a society awash in guns whether you choose to own one or not.
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Re: Gun Control Series Q2 -- Is legally owning a gun correlated to different likelihood of committing violent crime?

Post by Jan Sand »

Dude, if you can divorce the persistent annual horror out of legal or illegal ownership of guns and the misery of seeing your kids dead out of legal gun ownership, you are beyond both my understanding and my compassion.
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Re: Gun Control Series Q2 -- Is legally owning a gun correlated to different likelihood of committing violent crime?

Post by GE Morton »

Jan Sand wrote: March 22nd, 2019, 1:59 am Only once in the history of nuclear weapons has a couple of atomic bombs been used to kill many thousands of defenseless civilians to no purpose since Japan had already offered to surrender.
That is incorrect. While the Japanese had secretly approached the Soviets (with whom they had a non-aggression pact) to explore and mediate the possibilities for a negotiated peace, they made no surrender offer. But the Soviets had already pledged to the Allies to enter the war against Japan 90 days after the war ended in Europe, and that Japanese overture went nowhere.

However, the Soviet declaration of war against Japan (exactly 90 days after VE day, as promised), was also a major factor in Japan's decision to surrender, although in his surrender speech Emperor Hirohito cited only the wish to avoid further atomic bombings as prompting his decision.

(Off-topic, I know, but misinformation needs to be corrected).
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Re: OFF TOPIC POSTS FROM Gun Control Series Q2 -- Is legally owning a gun correlated to different likelihood...

Post by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes »

Greta, LuckyR, GE Morton, and Jan Sand,

I removed the above posts as off-topic.

They were removed from the topic Gun Control Series Q2 -- Is legally owning a gun correlated to different likelihood of committing violent crime?

Whenever posting on the forums, please try very hard to stay on-topic.

If you see a forum topic, but want to talk about something else instead (even if tangentially related) then simply make a new forum topic to discuss that other thing.

If you see an off-topic post, please do not reply it. If you see a post that is mostly off-topic but has some on-topic content, do not reply to it.

Please use the report button to report off-topic posts. Do not reply to them. The Forum Rules instruct one to not reply to rule-breaking posts which includes posts that are off-topic or mostly off-topic.

This was only one question is a series of questions about gun control. So I'm sure many of the comments above will be on-topic in one of the other questions about gun control.
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Re: Off-Topic Posts from Gun Control Series Q2 -- Is legally owning a gun correlated to different likelihood...

Post by Sy Borg »

How noting the lack of philosophy in the OP is off-topic is beyond me, Scott.

If you made a mistake in presenting a political topic as philosophical, and I think you did, then a philosophical response would be to counter the critique rather than to sideline and ignore it.
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Re: Off-Topic Posts from Gun Control Series Q2 -- Is legally owning a gun correlated to different likelihood...

Post by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes »

Had it just been the first paragraph I would have left, though I think even that was slightly off-topic for reasons explain.

However, it was more the other two paragraphs that I feel were off-topic and as such did and would have continued to derail the topic further and further as seen above. Here are two initial off-topic paragraphs:
Greta wrote:Also, it's not valid to consider dynamics that involve the collective as if only pertaining to individuals, eg. one person littering doesn't matter, but if the habit is widespread then that creates issues. By the same taken, a person legally owning a gun means very little - what happens when most of the population owns guns?

The higher the percentage of gun ownership, the higher the chance of guns being kept by the unstable and it also provides greater cover through numbers for those who keep guns for criminal purposes.
Keep in mind question was: Is legally owning a gun correlated to different likelihood of committing violent crime?

Keep in mind it is only one question in a series. So interesting off-topic comments there might be on-topic in a different question in the series.

For those wanting to discuss (1) whether or not gun ownership should be legal, or (2) discuss what things, factors, or types of stats should be considered in determining the legality of gun ownership, then those are completely separate topics that likely will come up later in the series. One is also free to start their own forum topic about such a topic. Neither of those things were the forum topic in question.

The question was the question. The question was not what would be valid to do with the answer to the question. The question was not whether the answer to the question will be useful for some purpose not.
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Re: Off-Topic Posts from Gun Control Series Q2 -- Is legally owning a gun correlated to different likelihood...

Post by Sy Borg »

Is gun ownership correlated with various crimes? Ask a demographer, not a philosopher.
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Re: Off-Topic Posts from Gun Control Series Q2 -- Is legally owning a gun correlated to different likelihood...

Post by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes »

Greta wrote: March 23rd, 2019, 5:32 pm Is gun ownership correlated with various crimes? Ask a demographer, not a philosopher.
Indeed, the special gun control topic series is designed to start off with very simplistic uncontroversial questions that should result in minimal debate and move gradually to more complicated and more philosophical questions.
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Re: Off-Topic Posts from Gun Control Series Q2 -- Is legally owning a gun correlated to different likelihood...

Post by Sy Borg »

Scott wrote: March 26th, 2019, 10:23 am
Greta wrote: March 23rd, 2019, 5:32 pm Is gun ownership correlated with various crimes? Ask a demographer, not a philosopher.
Indeed, the special gun control topic series is designed to start off with very simplistic uncontroversial questions that should result in minimal debate and move gradually to more complicated and more philosophical questions.
The stats on this issue belonged in the OP, otherwise it's an invitation to do speak without knowledge, ie. not philosophical.

The only important figure here is comparing murder stats of comparable nations. How's the US's murder rate as compared with comparable western countries? To what extent does the US history of slavery contribute? What of the contribution of inequality in the US is increasingly making the nation look demographically more like a Communist state than a western democracy?

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... aps-charts

The US does have special circumstances - through slavery in the past and corruption and extreme inequality in the present - as compared with other western democracies. These differences have been overplayed skilfully by the NRA (which is funded by arms companies) to blind people from the obvious fact that, the more people who own weapons of murder, the more people will die.

I always get a good laugh when people try to explain that, if everyone had a lethal weapons, then the M.A.D. principle will keep people behaving - as if in any time in the world's history that whole societies operated as rational agents. If that's the case then the US should not only have a lower shootings per capita rate than wiser nations, but a vastly lower shooting rate. Rather, it has by far the highest rate.

All of this is extremely well known and obvious but one cannot cut through entrenched corruption - and that is what's happening between the media, the NRA, arms companies and the political class (and now they are working to undermine Australia's gun laws to open up more markets - basically trading lives for profit and influence).
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Re: Off-Topic Posts from Gun Control Series Q2 -- Is legally owning a gun correlated to different likelihood...

Post by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes »

How's the US's murder rate as compared with comparable western countries? To what extent does the US history of slavery contribute? What of the contribution of inequality in the US is increasingly making the nation look demographically more like a Communist state than a western democracy?
Those are interesting questions that will likely be on-topic in response to later questions in the gun control series.

The scope of Q2 is so extremely narrow and simplistic that to me those above questions are not relevant to answering Q2 versus later question in the series.

Your questions are much more interesting and philosophical than Q2. That itself helps explain why they are not on-topic in Q2.
My entire political philosophy summed up in one tweet.

"The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master."

I believe spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline) manifests as bravery, confidence, grace, honesty, love, and inner peace.
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Re: Off-Topic Posts from Gun Control Series Q2 -- Is legally owning a gun correlated to different likelihood...

Post by LuckyR »

Greta wrote: March 26th, 2019, 5:30 pm
Scott wrote: March 26th, 2019, 10:23 am

Indeed, the special gun control topic series is designed to start off with very simplistic uncontroversial questions that should result in minimal debate and move gradually to more complicated and more philosophical questions.
The stats on this issue belonged in the OP, otherwise it's an invitation to do speak without knowledge, ie. not philosophical.

The only important figure here is comparing murder stats of comparable nations. How's the US's murder rate as compared with comparable western countries? To what extent does the US history of slavery contribute? What of the contribution of inequality in the US is increasingly making the nation look demographically more like a Communist state than a western democracy?

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... aps-charts

The US does have special circumstances - through slavery in the past and corruption and extreme inequality in the present - as compared with other western democracies. These differences have been overplayed skilfully by the NRA (which is funded by arms companies) to blind people from the obvious fact that, the more people who own weapons of murder, the more people will die.

I always get a good laugh when people try to explain that, if everyone had a lethal weapons, then the M.A.D. principle will keep people behaving - as if in any time in the world's history that whole societies operated as rational agents. If that's the case then the US should not only have a lower shootings per capita rate than wiser nations, but a vastly lower shooting rate. Rather, it has by far the highest rate.

All of this is extremely well known and obvious but one cannot cut through entrenched corruption - and that is what's happening between the media, the NRA, arms companies and the political class (and now they are working to undermine Australia's gun laws to open up more markets - basically trading lives for profit and influence).
Your post has many truisms within it but sort of haphazardly skips about (from topic to topic). For example, comparing the data from countries with very few guns to the US is only helpful to countries with very few guns (Australia?) to help them decide to continue to have very few guns. It does nothing for the US since guns essentially last forever and the number of guns is so incredibly high that even if no new guns entered the market, there would be too many guns for over a century.

While many choose to argue about the issue of legal guns turning into illegal guns and increasing crime, in my experience that is not a convincing argument to the responsible gun owner who won't illegally sell his weapon, is highly unlikely to be burgled and is at extremely low risk of committing a gun crime, personally. In addition, the statistical reality is that the increased risk of gun ownership for a significant number of legal gun owners lies in gun accidents and increased lethality of suicide (which I won't argue here is either a good or bad thing), not through murder/crime.

Lastly, the reason most folks discuss gun ownership today has little to do with the actual majority of morbidity of guns, instead it is headline grabbing mass shootings, that are a tiny fraction of the damage that guns do. Of course middle class, white kids dying at school freaks out voters while shootings of the economically disadvantaged in inner city slums nets no coverage, yet is a much larger problem.
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