Ah yes, the old personal ownership of nuclear weapons argument, as if that were the same thing and relevant to this discussion.
Note, in my comment above when I state "an inanimate object", I am referring to a gun. For you to take that statement and expand it to an extreme such as nuclear weapons is rather childish on your part.
Since we've started into childish manner of discussion, are you suggesting then that someone has used a nuclear weapon to commit suicide and therefore we should help prevent suicides by banning all nuclear weapons? Or are you suggesting that the banning of personal ownership of nuclear weapons is justified because too many people can easily commit suicide with them? I'm just trying to understand your stance as it pertains to this discussion.
Now, as for your question. No, I do not see the government restricting access to nuclear weapons as a disgusting abuse of power. To make your argument on a far more sane and realistic point, I do not disagree with the government restricting access to fully automatic weaponry either.
How do I justify what you probably see as a clear hypocrisy? Easy, because it's not. The government is fully within its rights to restrict access to things it deems too dangerous to the nation's people as a whole. If someone can convince me that personal ownership of handguns is a danger to the nation's people as a whole, I would likely change my stance. I just don't see that happening anytime soon.
So, do you actually have a comment about my position that it is a disgusting use of power for the government to restrict a person's access to an inanimate object, in this case a gun since you are having troubles following along, because of how another individual may or may not use the same inanimate object on themselves without harm to another person? Or shall we continue with comparing childish extremes?
Because if that's your stance, we really need to take a hard look at the inanimate objects we interact with on a daily basis.
By the way, we today have access to all kinds of things that a hundred years ago people would be shocked we have such easy access to. There is a good chance that personal ownership of nuclear weapons, depending on your definition I suppose, will be a strong possibility sometime in the future. Most likely well beyond our lifespans, which is probably a good thing.
I apologize for my harsh tone here, but this is yet another pet peeve of mine that often comes up needlessly in discussions such as this.
This is Hacker News -- you are expected not to be sloppy with your argumentation here. If you say "inanimate object" rather than gun, then we're going to assume you are making a more general statement and react accordingly. I cannot read your mind, so please do not assume I (or anyone else) knows your precise opinion on gun control without being precise with your words.
Well, I guess I'm at fault for assuming that people would follow that I was referring to the object that was the center of the discussion at hand. I should have guessed that someone would take such a simple concept and expand it to every single object in the known universe.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
You used a rhetorical flourish that made your argument sound more extreme than you intended, and it backfired when someone called you out on it. Rather than write a reply dripping with sarcasm and contempt, perhaps you should meditate on this incident as your personal failure to be a clear and effective writer.
Well, since we're discussing opinions here, it is of my opinion that it is your reading comprehension that's lacking. But you shouldn't take it as a personal failure, it happens to everyone from time to time.
When there is an ongoing discussion about an object then one is fully capable of referring to that object without literally naming that object each and every time it is mentioned.
My way: I am holding a stapler. The object in my hand is red. I use it to excess, wasting staples. The boss wants to restrict everyone's usage of staplers because of my waste. I don't think the boss should restrict your usage of an object because of my inefficient usage of the same object.
Your way: I am holding a stapler. The stapler in my hand is red. I use the stapler to excess, wasting staples. The boss wants to restrict everyone's usage of staplers because of my waste. I don't think the boss should restrict your usage of a stapler because of my inefficient usage of a stapler.
That's a stupid way to construct a discussion. But if it makes you happy.
If you take my statement and remove it from the context of the discussion then sure, you are quite correct. But it is not correct to quote that statement as to somehow proving your point by removing it from the context of the discussion.
I did not fail in using a rhetorical flourish to make an argument. I used a simple statement to prove my point that you apparently either failed to follow or attempted to use as a "gotcha!" moment. I'm leaning towards you thinking you had an excellent gotcha moment but alas, I think you protest too much.
By the way, your expanding my statement to include nuclear weapons to totally blow the discussion out of proportion and out of reality was the joke of my office yesterday. Many people thank you for the chuckles you provided.
The difference between the office example and the gun example is that the generalized version would actually make sense in the office example (for example, here is Derek Sivers bringing a similar argument up: https://sivers.org/punish ). If you were my coworker saying the generalized version to me in an office, I would have interpreted you as having the generalized opinion. Of course, since I agree, I wouldn't have raised a counterexample, and you would have walked away thinking I agreed with what you meant instead of what you said. Language is tricky like that.
Both examples are the same thing within the discussion that each was a part of. During any of the discussion of this thread, I don't see generalized opinions, the discussion was very direct in discussing one topic: firearms used for suicide. You were the one to attempt to generalize my statement by taking it outside the context of the discussion.
If I had walked up to you and made my statement without any context whatsoever then you would be absolutely correct, which I said before.
Thanks for the link, it supports my argument quite well that punishing all for the actions of an individual is not always the correct course of action. It actually goes beyond what I was saying since I was only speaking of restricting someone based on what another person does to themselves.
You are dealing in really generic platitudes that do not have any basis in fact.
> In 2005, 75% of the 10,100 homicides committed using firearms in the United States were committed using handguns, compared to 4% with rifles, 5% with shotguns, and the rest with unspecified firearms.[48] The likelihood that a death will result is significantly increased when either the victim or the attacker has a firearm.[49] For example, the mortality rate for gunshot wounds to the heart is 84%, compared to 30% for people who sustain stab wounds to the heart.[50]
The statistics on this issue are stacked pretty highly in favor of gun control. If part of the social contract for living in the United States means that we have to contend with the threat of gun violence, then so be it. However, we should not pretend that the number of guns currently in our society somehow makes us safer or more advanced or anything like that.
Switching from suicides to homicides doesn't really help the case for gun control.
That page's neutrality on the subject is also under dispute. You should read the comments about that, they are interesting.
If we're talking homicides, does that include legal homicides as well as the illegal kind? If it does then the number is misleading. Since homicide is defined as a person killing another person then many shootings are listed as homicides but are not considered crimes. A police officer shooting someone attempting to kill a person is considered a homicide. A woman shooting her rapist to defend herself is considered a homicide. It depends on how the data was collected and labeled.
If you dig a bit deeper into the statistics you will find many places with tough gun control laws that have high rates of gun murders. You can also find examples of low gun ownership with low gun murders. The thing is you cannot look at the US as a whole with stats like that, the stats can vary wildly from state to state if you break it down that way. It is not as simple as saying guns bad, gun control good.
If one is willing to do so, break down homicides by race in each state and you often see interesting numbers. But I'm sure that's racist to suggest such things...
If you dig deeper into state statistics you may find that the majority of some of the states with the highest gun murders also happen to have high levels of gang activity. Look at Chicago in recent years. I wouldn't consider the entire state of Illinois as a crime-ridden state with murders in the street every day just because of Chicago's problems. You can find such findings on the Wikipedia page you linked. If one were to remove gun crimes committed in low-income urban areas, the number gets cut roughly in half. Heck, it wasn't that long ago that Washington D.C., where Congress can run things almost as strict as they want, was the murder capitol of the country.
How come that most gun control advocates use AR style rifles as their go-to evil gun example when the stats show almost no gun murders happen with that type of weapon? Because of mass shootings that get immediate national news coverage, it has become a tool to prey upon the emotions of people to further their agenda. If they were serious about helping people through gun control they would try to do something in Chicago where tough gun control has failed people for years. But they don't because mass shootings is where the news is and that's where the people who need to grandstand go to push their agenda. They often push an agenda that wouldn't have prevented the tragedy that they are taking advantage of in the first place.
You also can't compare homicide statistics internationally because often times it's an apples-to-oranges comparison. It's my understanding that in some countries a homicide may not listed as a murder, or whatever crime, until someone has been convicted. If that's the case then numbers can't be compared with the US where normally a non-accidental death caused by another human being is considered a homicide, regardless of court findings. Even then, it could vary from state to state.
Plus, this type of attitude is just attempting to treat a symptom instead of facing the social issues that cause such symptoms. If only the guns would go away then everything would somehow be okay.
That's an interesting stat on the shot/stabbing to the heart, but also rather expected. But it's just a rather specific statistic that almost sort of supports one-side of an argument. For instance, right before that statement it is speaking in terms of victim and assailant, such as your attacker deciding to shoot you specifically in the heart while being mugged. It's an attempt at an emotional response without discussing the problem as a whole.
Finally, the last I heard is that our crime statistics show a downward trend in violent crimes despite any real national level gun control legislation. By the way people talk you would think every American is constantly on edge waiting for someone to shoot them, which for the vast majority of America is simply not true. As discussed elsewhere in this thread, you are more likely to shoot yourself than be shot by someone else.
Do you have any scientific studies to back up any of the claims you have made here? For someone lamenting the appeals to emotion of strict gun control advocates, there is a striking lack of evidence supporting your position.
Much of the information I described is listed on the very page on Wikipedia linked above. If you dig a bit further on Wikipedia you can find the stats on a state-by-state basis. I believe at one point there was a breakdown by race on Wikipedia at one time but I'm unable to find it now.
The FBI's own crime statistics can be rather enlightening if one were to drill down into the numbers instead of looking at the nation as a whole.
The problems with gun control studies are the same as with climate change studies, there are always accusations of bias on both sides. I suggest everyone read studies that purport to show the truth as presented by both sides and decide for yourselves.
Note, in my comment above when I state "an inanimate object", I am referring to a gun. For you to take that statement and expand it to an extreme such as nuclear weapons is rather childish on your part.
Since we've started into childish manner of discussion, are you suggesting then that someone has used a nuclear weapon to commit suicide and therefore we should help prevent suicides by banning all nuclear weapons? Or are you suggesting that the banning of personal ownership of nuclear weapons is justified because too many people can easily commit suicide with them? I'm just trying to understand your stance as it pertains to this discussion.
Now, as for your question. No, I do not see the government restricting access to nuclear weapons as a disgusting abuse of power. To make your argument on a far more sane and realistic point, I do not disagree with the government restricting access to fully automatic weaponry either.
How do I justify what you probably see as a clear hypocrisy? Easy, because it's not. The government is fully within its rights to restrict access to things it deems too dangerous to the nation's people as a whole. If someone can convince me that personal ownership of handguns is a danger to the nation's people as a whole, I would likely change my stance. I just don't see that happening anytime soon.
So, do you actually have a comment about my position that it is a disgusting use of power for the government to restrict a person's access to an inanimate object, in this case a gun since you are having troubles following along, because of how another individual may or may not use the same inanimate object on themselves without harm to another person? Or shall we continue with comparing childish extremes?
Because if that's your stance, we really need to take a hard look at the inanimate objects we interact with on a daily basis.
By the way, we today have access to all kinds of things that a hundred years ago people would be shocked we have such easy access to. There is a good chance that personal ownership of nuclear weapons, depending on your definition I suppose, will be a strong possibility sometime in the future. Most likely well beyond our lifespans, which is probably a good thing.
I apologize for my harsh tone here, but this is yet another pet peeve of mine that often comes up needlessly in discussions such as this.