KQED Perspectives: Gun Control

[curtisfong]

You'll never get the liberal media to understand (or admit) the difference between causation and correlation. It's just that simple.

Scared of guns + more guns = More scared of more guns.

Again, the "liberal" media simply reports what LEO wants them to.

If it bleeds, it leads. And unless they do exactly what LEO wants them to do, they don't get the juicy details to the stories that bleed.

The "liberal" media has a business to run. They don't give a crap about your partisanship, unless it helps them with ratings.

[vantec08]

Gun grabbers are easy to understand if you believe that human life is so sacred that it's better to not resist a criminal, even if the odds are 100:1 that you will die anyway, because that 1% chance of you living is better than the 0% chance that the criminal will live if you shoot him.

I think it's a ridiculous argument mainly because the criminal made the choice to introduce the possibility of death and deserves no sympathy from me. But that's how gun grabbers think, and given that attitude, they are not as loony as they seem. They really do think that if there are no legal guns, even if criminals still have guns, they won't feel as inclined to use them, and there will be fewer deaths.

They will accept grievous injury or death because the poor dear might have had a less-than-perfect childhood.

[Librarian]

I can't say there would be a similiar increase in likelihood of gun-related deaths from more owners. But logically, I see no reason why the chance would go down. So simple math tells us that more guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens would equate to more deaths. Again, it's simple percentages. If 0.7% (number taken from CDC querry) of deaths were caused by some sort of accident with a firearm, then increasing the amount of gun owners by 10% means means a 10% increase in total deaths due to accidents alone.

But in fact, it doesn't work that way.

The number of gun in civilian hands goes up every year - see ATF: http://www.atf.gov/statistics/afmer/. (That does not mean the number of gun OWNERS increases, though I believe that number is increasing as well - 'who owns the guns?' is the classic unanswered question in gun control discussions.) Guns don't usually rot, run away, or get 'used up'.

But look at CDC WISQARS data http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/index.html. The number of criminal deaths from firearm use go up and down, even though the number of guns only goes up, and the number of accidental deaths goes steadily down.

[Swiss]

Any chance a well-spoken head honcho from CGF might do their own Perspectives on KQED?

[tkjr]

Pro 2A posters on that page made well thought out arguments

[mrdd]

All organisms have a nature given right to self defense. Why should humans be any different?

[Drivedabizness]

I tried to give Les a kinder response but the more I wrote the harder it got.

[Arisaka]

Librarian is awesome.

[Mulay El Raisuli]

Your statement that "America is a place where the person holding the gun ultimately wins the argument" is true. Where you're wrong is your implication and apparent belief that there's some other place where that isn't true.

I don't often quote Chairman Mao -- he's responsible for the deaths of more human beings than all but a handful of people in the whole of recorded history -- but one doesn't become the leader of the most populous nation on earth without having at least some grasp of politics, power, and the human condition. One of his famous maxims is that "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun". He goes on to exhort his cadres to always remember that the reason his party is able to to exert control over the country is precisely because his party commands the gun. "All things grow out of the barrel of a gun."

Both you and Chairman Mao are absolutely right: the unpleasant truth is that every human society, America included, is a place where people who have the means to wield physical force have power over those who do not. This is true at the immediate, personal level, as when faced with an intruder in one's home, but it's also true for a society as a whole. Alongside the more immediate, personal considerations of defending self, home, and family, an important but less-discussed goal of the firearm rights movement is to retain this fundamental basis of political power where it belongs, in the hands of the people, not for us today who live in a relatively peaceful, stable democracy that is generally respectful of fundamental rights, but for future generations and whatever issues they may face.

Mr. Bloch, if you would not have the people wielding that power, then whom?

VERY well presented.

A construction project manager? Ok, now the rant makes perfect sense.

What exactly is that?


The Raisuli

[SanPedroShooter]

I went back and forth with him a little bit. He is more rational than most in my opinion. Maybe I dont really understand what his point is. Just what is he suggesting?

I still say he doesnt have a full grasp of the issue.

[lomalinda]

From Les' Linked In page:

"Les Bloch has written four novels, newspaper and magazine articles, as well as the flagship effort Tolietry From A to Z for BM Publishing."

Toiletry article...For BM publishing?

LOL