My Nissan Leaf Forum

I agree, it will take time. And yes, sometimes the immediate results seem to be contrary to the goal or painful. These kind of solutions are the hardest to sell...But I think long term improvements are most of the time worth the short-term costs, because the pay-off will also be very long lasting.

The other problem is that events,, which get widespread attention, like mass shootings are rare (even in the US). It is very hard to measure, if some rare random event is actually affected by current measures. So you have to wait a long time to see any benefits there.
However, for the large number of deaths (both intended and accidental) you should see effects pretty quickly . Still don't expect the media to report it ...

If the total annual death-rate from currently ~ 30k goes down to say 25k , that would not be newsworthy, yet it would mean 5000 people would live instead of die, each year.
It always helps to picture all these people in one place.

While I think there are a few (mostly politicians) that want to exploit the emotions of the public, I think most anti-gun people are good people that want to do the right thing, but unfortunately do not fully understand how important liberty is to other folks.

Norway, that was 28 people killed, 20 children and 8 adults.

As an alternative to banning guns we could just make gun owners bear the societal costs of gun ownership.

1. Require every gun to be registered and carry $20M in liability insurance that also pays into victim's compensation fund.

2. Payments continue for 5 years in the event the gun is lost or stolen.

3. Let insurance companies decide the cost of each type of weapon.

I believe that if costs are properly applied, then the problem will be greatly reduced.
Maybe by a factor of three in just a few years...

Let's have all the owners of assault weapons collectively pay for the Newtown disaster!!

The notion that owning a gun is equivalent to "liberty" (at least in the contemporary First World) in so many minds is flabbergasting to me.

As a serious question, not a rhetorical one, someone please explain to me this linkage. I simply don't get it. Guns are all but irrelevant to my life and liberty, and nearly all imaginable iterations of them, other than the highly improbable - but statistically possible - circumstance of becoming a victim of a nightmarish headliner massacre or similar incident.

The likelihood that carrying a firearm is likely to improve my or any member of my family's chances in such an incident seems very remote to me. The notion that a firearm-bearing patriot is likely to present any serious resistance to a government bent on "taking his liberty away" (whatever that means) is laughable.

In my world, personal liberty is determined by thousands of choices more relevant than my possession of a firearm. My voting choices, for one. How few owners the FCC allows the power of media outlets to be concentrated in, for another. The amount of money that individuals (like Sheldon Adelson) are permitted to flood the political system with, through PACs and similar subterfuges. The amount of money corporations are allowed to poison the system with, through lobbying activities. The money special-interest groups like the NRA are allowed to spread among congressional representatives to corrupt and debase their integrity as true representatives of the people. The vast invasion of personal privacies commercialized, commoditized and monetized by FaceBook and its ilk. The erosion of independent bookstores by a behemoth like Amazon, and the subsequent withering of local, independent community options. Those, and many, many more, are the venues where liberty lives in my life - and where it dies.

If liberty fails to flourish at these levels - politically, economically, intellectually, socially - then it is saving the trees at the expense of the forest to cling to quaint, trivial notions of personal liberty that depend on guns to defend them. If the noblest, profoundest expressions of liberty are not honored, defended and preserved, then the diminished lives in the wake of that loss are picayune, and hardly worth the powder to defend them.

I rarely hear about incidents where guns actually protect citizens. So I did some searching around and was very surprised how often it happens.

http://gunssavelives.net/

707+
self defense stories reported since 8/30/11
MOST RECENT STORIES in the last week:

[Video] Las Vegas Resident Shoots and Kills 1 of 4 Armed Home Invaders as Infant Child Slept on Christmas eve

TX Woman Shoots and Kills Violent Ex-Boyfriend Who Broke Into Her Home & Assaulted Her

[Video] Texas Resident Shoots and Kills Suspected Burglar

If you read the stories, it is clear that a number of them might very well have ended with no lives lost if not for the presence of a gun. Just because there wasn't a prosecution of the person who shot an intruder doesn't mean it was really necessary. I would also like to know the number of people who shot family members accidentally. I have certainly seen those stories before, but don't know how frequently that happens. Here are a few quick links:

http://www.omaha.com/article/20121210/NEWS/121219970

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index. ... s_kil.html

http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/story/20068 ... shoots-son

http://www.kshb.com/dpp/news/region_kan ... g-accident

http://kidshootings.blogspot.com/2012/1 ... ts-11.html

http://www.cnycentral.com/news/story.as ... N53D3eugfw

http://www.newser.com/story/113021/dad- ... o-mom.html

http://www.todaystmj4.com/news/local/118750939.html

http://fox6now.com/2012/09/28/father-ki ... -the-area/

http://www.abc4.com/content/news/slc/st ... isDJg.cspx

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-575 ... r-burglar/

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.1116267

Well yes, it does happen often. Nice you present some number, so we can finally do a comparison:

Between 8/30/11
Positive impact of guns: 707 uses of self-defense
Negative impact of guns: ~40,000 killed in the same period

So for every successful self-defense, 56 people die. That is almost as efficient as a republican super PAC

And then: How many uses were "self-defense" or "defense of property" ? I am not aware that burglary in this country is subject to the death penalty.


Sure, thieves are scoundrels, but do they deserve to die?

But kubel - there are more (and to many other people) more important liberties than carrying a gun. The liberty of not being surrounded by guns, for example. Because even if they are in the holster, it takes a few seconds to remove them from the holster.

(And I speak as somebody who has had countless weapons pointed at me, and been sequestrated.)

Can you honestly say that you understand how important this liberty is to other folks?


The liberty of not having 12000 killed per year.

The liberty of not having a neighbor who drinks too much, and has an AR-15...

The point is that there is another side of liberty too.

Yes (I was thinking of the victims at the school), although it is over 30 per day (12000 divided by 365) every single day of the year. It is truly frightening.