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Florida School Shooting

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  • Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
    I'm thinking specifically of school shootings.
    Why only school shootings?

    Comment


    • Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
      There are a number of countries with far more lenient laws regarding possession that don't have as high as an abuse rate as we do. Why do you think that is?
      Better healthcare.

      Comment


      • Originally posted by Starlight View Post


        On the subject of abortion, my country's government is currently in the process of rewriting our 40 year old abortion laws to make getting an abortion easier and more streamlined (removing the hoops to jump through that previously existed of the women having to tell two doctors that she would suffer great mental distress if she didn't get the abortion and two doctors having to sign off). Making the abortion approval process swifter should result in people getting abortions earlier in their pregnancy (the hoops were meaning an average of 25 days delay in seeking an abortion to getting one), which should mean that less women will need to have surgical abortions (operation) and more are able to have medical abortions (pill) due to getting them earlier in their pregnancy. Also women living in rural areas were finding the hoops jumping process a struggle, especially if one of the few doctors near them refused to be a party to signing off on it (which does happen occasionally), as they would then have to travel further to access care.

        I imagine the passage of this new legislation will be relatively uncontroversial, as the vast majority of people here support free access to healthcare for all and will be happy to streamline the process. People with anti-abortion views are very few and far between.
        They're not even in the majority in religion infested USA.
        “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

        Comment


        • Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
          Classic liberal bait-and-switch. They only look at gun violence, not violent crime rates in general.

          Curiously, the United States saw a similar decrease in gun violence despite an increase in gun sales at the same time Australia was banning them.

          http://thefederalist.com/2015/09/03/...n-ban-conceit/

          According to your own government's statistics, homicides have decreased, but assault and sexual assault have sharply increased, and robbery is essentially a flat line.

          https://aic.gov.au/publications/tandi/tandi359

          Although I'm curious what they mean by "homicide" since some countries keep there apparent rates down by narrowly defining the term so as not to count all homicides.
          Nevertheless, unlike the USA, the overall trend has been significantly reduced gun deaths in Australia. "The number of victims who died from gunshot wounds has decreased by 63 percent since 1989-90.

          In 2013-14, 13 percent (n=32) of homicide victims died as a result of gunshot wounds compared with 38 percent (n=95) who died from stab wounds, 24 percent (n=60) from a beating and 15 percent (n=37) from other causes".

          http://crimestats.aic.gov.au/NHMP/1_trends/
          “He felt that his whole life was a kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.” - Douglas Adams.

          Comment


          • Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
            At this point let's point out that here in the U.S. the number of firearms in private hands has gone up sharply since the election of Bill Clinton in 1992 while simultaneously the amount of gun related violence has dropped dramatically.

            [ATTACH=CONFIG]26521[/ATTACH]

            Please explain this phenomena if the availability of firearms is what causes gun-related violence.
            I'm going to assume you have no understanding of statistics given the fact that you are even asking this question, so I'll try and explain it simply...

            Most things in the world have more than one contributing factor. If you ask why there is less crime in one country than another, or one area than another, the answer is complicated because there are lots of different reasons that all play a role (socio-economic status, racial demographics, lead exposure, education levels, religious views, policing culture, etc). Some of the differences between variables might cause crime to be higher in one area than the other, and other variables might be working in the opposite direction. Sometimes the role of one variable is just much bigger and more important than the other variables, and that is often called the 'main effect' - this will be the variable that most clearly correlates with the data across the dataset. Other variables will have more minor effects and they will explain some minor variations but will not be as strong as the main effect.

            With regard to crime, the main effect is that violent crime has been going down across the Western world for decades. The reasons for this have puzzled criminologists, but the best explanation for which I have seen evidence for is that the removal of lead from petrol has lead to a reduction of lead in the bloodstream/brain and lead buildup in the brain is associated with violent behavior. This explains the main effect of the decreasing-crime data across Western countries and among US states (the various times their crime-rates started dropping correlate well with the timing of their removal of lead from petrol plus a ~20 year offset).

            So in the context of the graph you posted, the main effect regarding crime is that violent crime has been decreasing around the Western world for decades. Your graph shows a decreasing rate in a particular type of violent crime (mass gun homicides) - no surprise there since pretty much all types of violent crime have been decreasing. The other part of your graph shows that gun ownership has been increasing.

            What this basically tells us is that rates of gun ownership aren't the single strongest effect on mass gun homicide rates. Whatever is reducing violent crime levels (lead removal or somesuch) is a stronger effect, and is pulling the rate of violent murder sprees down faster than the increasing rate of gun ownership is pushing them up. From a political policy standpoint, this probably suggests that money would be better spent getting the lead out of the Flint drinking water supply (and the 100s of other areas in the US where the drinking water is lead-contaminated) than spending the same amount of money reducing gun ownership. However, the graph in no way suggests that more people owning guns is reducing crime, or that increased gun availability doesn't cause more gun crime.


            Originally posted by Sparko View Post
            When someone wants to kill a lot of people, they will find a way to do it, no matter where they are, or what weapons they have access to.
            At risk of repeating myself:

            Incident in my country:
            [He] planned to ram a car into a group of people in Christchurch and then stab them... but has since told a psychologist when it began he "decided not to hurt anybody because he did not have the means to kill enough people"...

            ..."The reason no-one was hurt was that he did not have access to knives," Lange said. But there was significant premeditation, and hostility towards non-Muslims.

            A wannabe-terrorist, who spent 5 months planning his attack, was unable to access guns and unable to access knives (I presume he means large-bladed machete-like hunting knives, as access to kitchen knives is obviously widespread, although he might mean daggers etc which are banned) and as a result could not find any way of killing enough people for him to feel an attack was worth it, so he gave up on the attack. People who would have died, did not die, because this motivated person was unable to access sufficiently lethal weapons. This account in my local paper from this week would appear to directly contradict your claim. Given the evidence are you willing to retract your claim? Or it is an ideological belief of yours that you hold on faith regardless of evidence?

            The average criminal in my country simply does not have access to firearms. Even trying to break into a house and burgle someone's firearm doesn't work, because licensed gun owners are required to have their gun in padlocked storage and the ammo locked in a separate cabinet, so if you break a window and get into the house you can't simply then walk away with a gun unless you've brought enough gear with you to cut through a potentially heavy duty padlock (and most houses, of course, don't have guns in them, so you would need to know that someone had a gun before you tried to steal it). Even the average gang member would not have access to firearms via their gang, and in lethal gang fights knives are usually the weapon used, or sometimes bow and arrows. So it is not at all surprising that the boy in the article above, plotting the terror attack, dismissed out of hand the possibility of acquiring a firearm to go on a rampage with, and instead was dwelling on the idea of using a car and a knife. As it happened, he wasn't able to access a knife of sufficient size, I'm not sure exactly why (large knives are not at all common, but they certainly do exist - I've seen one once in my life because someone I know used to have one).
            "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
            "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
            "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

            Comment


            • Originally posted by Adrift View Post
              He's proven a number of times that he's well out of touch with the citizens of his own nation
              You're delusional as always. The poll Bill the Cat linked to confirmed much of what I have been saying. Only 9% of people surveyed said they would write the law in such a way to not allow abortion at any age of the fetus.

              NZ just had an anti-abortion Prime Minister
              That statement requires a number of asterisks and caveats...
              - He was an interim PM because the previous one resigned after 8 years in office, he wasn't the leader of a party at the time of an election.
              - He openly stated that his anti-abortion personal views would have zero effect on political policy (to do otherwise would be electoral suicide - see the 9% number above)
              - In the 21st century, no person who has become PM due to an election in NZ has been anti-abortion.
              - A PM is similar to a Speaker of the House position in the US, not really the President - they can't do executive orders. If that PM had wanted to do anything to implement his anti-abortion views he'd have had to get consent from other politicians (who wouldn't have given it - see the 9% number above).

              and what's really getting Starlight all excited about the idea of new legislation is that technically abortion laws are more conservative in NZ than they are in the United States, and have been so for decades!
              This part is arguably true, and it's why the old laws are needing updating. Though I would note that the procedures are free in NZ due to government healthcare funding (well, okay there might be a $30 fee to see your local doctor to get the ball rolling on the procedure but any specialist visits or surgical procedures or hospital stays will be free and medications will be free if given in a hospital or cost $3 if not). Whereas google is telling me the average price in the US is somewhere around the $300-$500 range if done early in the pregnancy and $2000-$3000 if done late in the pregnancy. Is a couple of thousand dollar fee for an immediate and unquestioned abortion more or less restrictive than having to take a couple of weeks to see a couple of doctors for sign-off but getting those appointments and the procedure for free?
              "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
              "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
              "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

              Comment


              • Originally posted by Sparko View Post
                Because you don't have large population centers, or even a large population at all, and most of who does live there are sheep farmers.


                Actually you might be surprised to realize that the NZ population is more urban and less rural on average than the US. Only 12% of the NZ population is rural, as compared to 19% for the US, and 32% of NZ's population is concentrated in its largest city, as compared to 2.6% of the US's population being in its largest city.

                Of course the rural-urban distribution varies greatly across the US - Maine and Vermont are mostly rural populations, while California and New Jersey are almost entirely urban. The states that are most-similar to NZ in rural-urban population distribution are Maryland, New York, Connecticut, Illinois, Arizona.

                A quick browse for statistics, out of interest, isn't giving me very clear numbers on how many NZ'ers are sheep-farmers, but it looks like about 1% of NZ's total population is involved in sheep farming related work. So although sheep farming was the most common occupation during the colonial period in the mid 1800s, it's not a common occupation today. I would suspect there are many more computer programmers than sheep farmers today.
                "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                Comment


                • Originally posted by Adrift View Post
                  I was one of those teens. It wasn't really. I mean, I knew a guy who knew guys, and 7 times and out 10 I could score, but it was still a pain in the ass. It took a bit of planning. It was often sketchy as all get out, especially if you had to go into some jacked up ghetto. I remember more than a few occasions sitting on some hoodrat's couch, with shady looking people in and out, crackheads at the door, and guns on the coffee table thinking to myself "what the hell am I doing here". As a teen, buying a gun from someone would have been super freaky, and not nearly as easy as you might think. Certainly not as easy as going to my local Walmart. I know that for a fact.
                  I don't know about guns but drugs were easy to get in highschool. and I went to 3 different highschools in different parts of the world. You could just go to a party and get high or buy weed. And when I was in high school weed was pretty much as bad as it got. You could get stronger stuff like speed but there really wasn't much of a problem with heroin or cocaine.

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                    I'm going to assume you have no understanding of statistics given the fact that you are even asking this question, so I'll try and explain it simply...

                    Most things in the world have more than one contributing factor. If you ask why there is less crime in one country than another, or one area than another, the answer is complicated because there are lots of different reasons that all play a role (socio-economic status, racial demographics, lead exposure, education levels, religious views, policing culture, etc). Some of the differences between variables might cause crime to be higher in one area than the other, and other variables might be working in the opposite direction. Sometimes the role of one variable is just much bigger and more important than the other variables, and that is often called the 'main effect' - this will be the variable that most clearly correlates with the data across the dataset. Other variables will have more minor effects and they will explain some minor variations but will not be as strong as the main effect.

                    With regard to crime, the main effect is that violent crime has been going down across the Western world for decades. The reasons for this have puzzled criminologists, but the best explanation for which I have seen evidence for is that the removal of lead from petrol has lead to a reduction of lead in the bloodstream/brain and lead buildup in the brain is associated with violent behavior. This explains the main effect of the decreasing-crime data across Western countries and among US states (the various times their crime-rates started dropping correlate well with the timing of their removal of lead from petrol plus a ~20 year offset).

                    So in the context of the graph you posted, the main effect regarding crime is that violent crime has been decreasing around the Western world for decades. Your graph shows a decreasing rate in a particular type of violent crime (mass gun homicides) - no surprise there since pretty much all types of violent crime have been decreasing. The other part of your graph shows that gun ownership has been increasing.

                    What this basically tells us is that rates of gun ownership aren't the single strongest effect on mass gun homicide rates. Whatever is reducing violent crime levels (lead removal or somesuch) is a stronger effect, and is pulling the rate of violent murder sprees down faster than the increasing rate of gun ownership is pushing them up. From a political policy standpoint, this probably suggests that money would be better spent getting the lead out of the Flint drinking water supply (and the 100s of other areas in the US where the drinking water is lead-contaminated) than spending the same amount of money reducing gun ownership. However, the graph in no way suggests that more people owning guns is reducing crime, or that increased gun availability doesn't cause more gun crime.


                    At risk of repeating myself:

                    Incident in my country:
                    [He] planned to ram a car into a group of people in Christchurch and then stab them... but has since told a psychologist when it began he "decided not to hurt anybody because he did not have the means to kill enough people"...

                    ..."The reason no-one was hurt was that he did not have access to knives," Lange said. But there was significant premeditation, and hostility towards non-Muslims.

                    A wannabe-terrorist, who spent 5 months planning his attack, was unable to access guns and unable to access knives (I presume he means large-bladed machete-like hunting knives, as access to kitchen knives is obviously widespread, although he might mean daggers etc which are banned) and as a result could not find any way of killing enough people for him to feel an attack was worth it, so he gave up on the attack. People who would have died, did not die, because this motivated person was unable to access sufficiently lethal weapons. This account in my local paper from this week would appear to directly contradict your claim. Given the evidence are you willing to retract your claim? Or it is an ideological belief of yours that you hold on faith regardless of evidence?

                    The average criminal in my country simply does not have access to firearms. Even trying to break into a house and burgle someone's firearm doesn't work, because licensed gun owners are required to have their gun in padlocked storage and the ammo locked in a separate cabinet, so if you break a window and get into the house you can't simply then walk away with a gun unless you've brought enough gear with you to cut through a potentially heavy duty padlock (and most houses, of course, don't have guns in them, so you would need to know that someone had a gun before you tried to steal it). Even the average gang member would not have access to firearms via their gang, and in lethal gang fights knives are usually the weapon used, or sometimes bow and arrows. So it is not at all surprising that the boy in the article above, plotting the terror attack, dismissed out of hand the possibility of acquiring a firearm to go on a rampage with, and instead was dwelling on the idea of using a car and a knife. As it happened, he wasn't able to access a knife of sufficient size, I'm not sure exactly why (large knives are not at all common, but they certainly do exist - I've seen one once in my life because someone I know used to have one).
                    I enjoyed not reading this with my coffee this morning. Thanks.
                    The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by Tassmoron View Post
                      Nevertheless, unlike the USA, the overall trend has been significantly reduced gun deaths in Australia. "The number of victims who died from gunshot wounds has decreased by 63 percent since 1989-90.

                      In 2013-14, 13 percent (n=32) of homicide victims died as a result of gunshot wounds compared with 38 percent (n=95) who died from stab wounds, 24 percent (n=60) from a beating and 15 percent (n=37) from other causes".

                      http://crimestats.aic.gov.au/NHMP/1_trends/
                      But the overall rate of violent crime remained steady, so banning guns simply prompted criminals to use other means.

                      In other words, guns aren't the problem.
                      Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                      But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                      Than a fool in the eyes of God


                      From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by Sparko View Post
                        I don't know about guns but drugs were easy to get in highschool. and I went to 3 different highschools in different parts of the world. You could just go to a party and get high or buy weed. And when I was in high school weed was pretty much as bad as it got. You could get stronger stuff like speed but there really wasn't much of a problem with heroin or cocaine.
                        Access to drugs wasn't hard in High School. Everyone had drugs. Buying drugs from an actual dealer was often the sketchy part, especially when your regular dealer wasn't available, or was out. I don't know. That's just been my experience. Perhaps you guys just had friendlier drug dealers.

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                          You're delusional as always. The poll Bill the Cat linked to confirmed much of what I have been saying. Only 9% of people surveyed said they would write the law in such a way to not allow abortion at any age of the fetus.

                          That statement requires a number of asterisks and caveats...
                          - He was an interim PM because the previous one resigned after 8 years in office, he wasn't the leader of a party at the time of an election.
                          - He openly stated that his anti-abortion personal views would have zero effect on political policy (to do otherwise would be electoral suicide - see the 9% number above)
                          - In the 21st century, no person who has become PM due to an election in NZ has been anti-abortion.
                          - A PM is similar to a Speaker of the House position in the US, not really the President - they can't do executive orders. If that PM had wanted to do anything to implement his anti-abortion views he'd have had to get consent from other politicians (who wouldn't have given it - see the 9% number above).

                          This part is arguably true, and it's why the old laws are needing updating. Though I would note that the procedures are free in NZ due to government healthcare funding (well, okay there might be a $30 fee to see your local doctor to get the ball rolling on the procedure but any specialist visits or surgical procedures or hospital stays will be free and medications will be free if given in a hospital or cost $3 if not). Whereas google is telling me the average price in the US is somewhere around the $300-$500 range if done early in the pregnancy and $2000-$3000 if done late in the pregnancy. Is a couple of thousand dollar fee for an immediate and unquestioned abortion more or less restrictive than having to take a couple of weeks to see a couple of doctors for sign-off but getting those appointments and the procedure for free?
                          "You're delusional!....but...nothing you said was actually wrong".

                          Ok then. Don't you have me on ignore or something?

                          Comment


                          • Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
                            I enjoyed not reading this with my coffee this morning. Thanks.
                            The TL;DR is that the reduction of crime in the Western World is due to a switch to unleaded gas.

                            I mean, I agree with him on gun control, but I think the notion that lead was the reason for the rise of crime in the 20th century is a bit simplistic. It's the same reasoning some have suggested for the rise of serial murderers in the 70 and 80s...that it was largely due to eating paint chips, or what have you. I think there's way more to it than that, but whatevs.

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by Adrift View Post
                              Access to drugs wasn't hard in High School. Everyone had drugs. Buying drugs from an actual dealer was often the sketchy part, especially when your regular dealer wasn't available, or was out. I don't know. That's just been my experience. Perhaps you guys just had friendlier drug dealers.
                              Obviously not everybody is put off by a sketchy seller, otherwise the black market wouldn't exist.
                              Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                              But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                              Than a fool in the eyes of God


                              From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
                                But the overall rate of violent crime remained steady, so banning guns simply prompted criminals to use other means.

                                In other words, guns aren't the problem.
                                Do we know if there's been a reduction of lives lost when violent crimes have been committed since the buy back, or has that remained steady as well? A quick Google suggests that homicide rates are at their lowest in 25 years, but if you have evidence to the contrary I'd like to check it out.

                                Comment

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