just make the bullets more expensive

NerblyBear wrote:The risk of longer sentences wouldn't cause you to hesitate?

Dude, I'm about to shoot you. Do you think I care if you threaten me with an additional eighteen months?

NerblyBear wrote:The gun laws didn't prevent those specific deaths from occurring, but, again, I can always reply: Maybe the lack of any gun laws would have led to even more such incidents.

Maybe there's a magic cow somewhere with teats that squirt bourbon.

Alright. You've convinced me.

But the question still remains, "How can we reduce gun violence?" The answer seems to be that we should work on improving the economic conditions of the poor so that they aren't tempted to turn to a life of crime. You must agree with me that this will have a palpable effect.

NerblyBear wrote:Alright. You've convinced me.

But the question still remains, "How can we reduce gun violence?"

Gun violence goes down when crime goes down. Stop focusing on the guns. The guns hardly matter at all. Crime goes up and down, currently it is down. Occasionally there will be guns involved. Big deal.

Basically, stop freaking out about guns.

steve wrote:

NerblyBear wrote:Are you against laws prohibiting the carrying of a concealed weapon?

I think they have no effect on someone who wants to carry a concealed firearm and commit crimes with it. He is presumably the target of the law, and since it doesn't affect him, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter either to him or me. I guess it allows you to send him to jail for longer when he eventually does commit a crime, so okay, whatever. If punishment is your bag, then put that in it. Me, I don't care.

Let's not pretend that the only way a person can be injured or killed with a firearm is in association with committing a crime.

steve wrote:

NerblyBear wrote:But if you're also against the existence of the present laws, and are in favor of complete free flow of fire-arms (no questions asked), you need to imagine the results of such a situation....As a consequence, more violent deaths will occur. Period.

What do you say to the empirical evidence that shows this to be untrue? The NRA, with whom it pains me to agree, touted several academic studies of urban areas with liberal carry laws and those with strict ones, including those who re-liberalized once-restrictive carry laws. Places that have liberalized carry laws have not seen an increase in shootings. Most have seen them decline. In Montana when I was living there, carrying a sidearm was perfectly legal as long as it wasn't concealed, and nobody got shot.

It seems people have lost their shit out in Montana since you left, since Montana ranked 9th out of 50 in firearms deaths per capita in 2003. That per capita death rate is approximately 50% higher than the national average.

In 2002, Montana ranked 13th out of 50 in Firearms Death Rate per capita.

"In 1999, Montana was below the national rates in the rate of deaths due to heart disease and cancer but was above the national rate in the rate of deaths due to firearms." That's from a Department of Health and Human Services report listed here.

This evidence directly contradicts what you have stated above.

The CDC doesn't seem to have any ancedotal evidence in their reports, so maybe we should just take your word for it.

eephour wrote:just make the bullets more expensive

chris rock!

Speaking of guns in Montana a guy from my high school who lives out there survived a love triangle related kidnapping/shooting because he was armed with a handgun and was able to shoot his way out of the situation. If he had been in Chicago he would have been most likely unarmed and now possibly dead.

http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2007/01/20/bnews/br36.txt

steve wrote: Stop focusing on the guns. The guns hardly matter at all.

Problem gun users are problem brain users. We need gun control as much as we need brain control. If you don't want to submit to a police state / nanny state, we must never doubt the long term abilities of the good brain users to survive the bad brain users, and we must not overreact to the spectacular losses we will suffer along the way, like Columbine or Colin Ferguson. Some good people will always lose their lives to gun violence, but like Steve says, this is not a result of lax laws as much as it is the result of very determined bad brains, as well as a regrettable byproduct of our still relatively free society. Free society has a price.

clocker bob wrote: this is not a result of lax laws as much as it is the result of very determined bad brains.

I know their later material was questionable, but do we really need to pin this on them, too?