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Gun Violence and Gun Control Megathread

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Okay, fun with spreadsheets.

I'm using just the Wikipedia data, so the usual caveats apply.

First question - does the gun ownership rate directly impact the per capita gun murder rate?

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I'd say no.

Second question - do states with a high gun murder rate also have a high non-gun murder rate?

VsmUXkY.png


I'd say there's a correlation. Rather interesting - in states where you're more likely to be killed by a firearm, you're also more likely to be killed by non-firearm means.

Third question - what about population density? Do states with a higher population density have a higher gun or non-gun murder rate? (For this one, I threw out the District of Columbia - it was the wildcard and was compressing the chart far too much)

YgOYB3J.png


Now that's not what I expected. There may be a slight correlation between population density and the murder rate, but it's rather weak if it exists.

I'd love to 3D graph this, with the axis being murder rate (gun and non-gun), population density, and gun ownership rates. But alas, the program I'm using doesn't support that.

(By the way, someone may want to doublecheck these charts - first time I used this particular program for graphing).
 
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ok that's interesting.

so, the lack of correlation in the first does not support my assertion that you are more likely to be hurt if you own a gun, nor does it support the assertion that gun ownership makes you safer.

thanks eedub. good work, mate. :)
 
Escher's Waterfall said:
Is there a US state that prohibits gun ownership? None comes to mind.
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Prohibition in the sense of any type of gun restriction, be it based upon criminal/psychological health reasons, or magazine capacity/gun characteristic's, or how easy it is to obtain a gun in a short time frame. On a state by state basis.

I'd wager, that the more (relatively) restrictive controls on gun ownership/possession are, the higher rate of gun related crime there is.

Why?

Because people with the intention to use a gun for criminal activities (excluding the statistically irrelevant mass shooting deaths), generally obtain those guns through not so legal methods. Probably because they don't want a record to exist that that particular firearm belongs to them, and could link them to the crime they commit.

Thus my theory that more restrictive gun legislation does nothing to stop the proliferation and deaths associated with firearms, all it does is drive the market underground, where theres no background checks, and ends up doing more damage than it attempts to prevent, as does every example of prohibition any person can summon up.

And when i say statistically irrelevant, i mean in the context of # of violent gun deaths, in relation to the miniscule fraction of which are associated with mass shootings. You also might want to factor in if police were involved in the shootings, as well as legitimate defensive usage of firearms.

Say you can't draw comparisions between drug/gun restriction, or other types of prohibtion, but all i see is the more you try and control them, the greater the incentive for a black market to exist. A black market that ALWAYS does more harm/damage to society than would a legally regulated market.

And i consider prohibition of convicted felons from owning firearms, a violation of their rights. Recitivist violent gun crime felons mabey, but those are usually the ones who stay in prision for a LONG time, if not the rest of their lives.

Even felons, so long as they don't have a criminal history in a certain timeframe (i'm not going to throw out an arbitrary # here) should be allowed to own a firearm for their own defense. At least in their home, CC permits should be a bit more restrictive as well, but not off the table for ex-cons.
 
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Since the Ft Hood shooting (shooter) thread is archived, here is the update for the story.

Fort Hood Shooter Nidal Hasan Gets Death Penalty
Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people in a shooting rampage at Ft. Hood, was unanimously sentenced to death today by a jury of military officers.

A sentence of death was all but inevitable for Hasan, a Muslim American who represented himself during the court martial and whose own standby lawyers accused him of cooperating with the prosecution to hasten his "martyrdom."

"He is a criminal. He is a cold-blooded murderer," prosecutor Col. Mike Mulligan said today, according to the Associated Press. "This is not his gift to God. This is his debt to society. This is the cost of his murderous rampage."

Last week, Hasan was found guilty on all counts, including 13 charges of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder.

In one of the few statements he made to the court, he described himself as a "mujahedeen," or Muslim holy warrior and never denied shooting unarmed soldiers and bystanders.
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Hi BL,

Crazy times, indeed.

Cousin has been in the fleet (first in the Baltic Fleet, now in the Northern; nuke sub) for over 20 yrs. Let me tell you, this $_*t is real. They (U.S., primarily) have an end goal and they are pushing hard towards it, come hell or high water. We all know (well, many of us) that it's all about the oil and gas and related pipelines, but those MSM streamers are doing such a good job conditioning us as to what it is really all about - "Oh the humanity!".

Why has specifically one nation been continuously barraged with End of Civilisation programming for the past few decades? I mean, now, in the internet age, that prepper influence has spread, but the primary focus has always remained the same - U.S.A.

Zombie flicks, One Second After type books, V, Falling Skies, Under The Dome, Comet Doom, Sun Doom, Nibiru Doom. The flood of conditioning is unimaginably immense. It is an outright assault on the psyche. All to what end?

The Gun Confiscation heated issue. Look at the real results so far. Gun sales have exploded. The people are arming themselves - *have* armed themselves - and so is the government with all those multi-million round purchases. If the government really wanted to curtail sales as quickly and fervently as they implied, they would have done it at the source - manufacturing, POS (point of sale, not the other "pos"). The U.S. is now the most publicly prepped nation on Earth. I say "publicly", just because of the public awareness/hype here; other countries, cities, villages are much better prepped, as they've practically lived their entire lives in prepper style, fending for themselves from what mostly nature provides.

The people are prepping; the government is prepping. Think about it for a minute and see if you don't come to the same conclusion that it all started with America and that's where it is all concentrated. Is that where it will all end?

Now here is the ominous part.

What if all of this prepping conditioning was by design? There is a very real possibility of the current conflict in Syria escalating to WWIII (we are waaaaaay overdue). If it does, there is guaranteed to be a preemptive nuclear strike. This is the #1 strategy in every nuclear power's War Manual - high altitude detonation to severely cripple or disable that country's electr(on)ic networks.

It's one of a handful of extreme scenarios, I know, but when were we here before? Yeltsin, during one of his drunken stupors, and... Cuba (and Cuba).

We are now armed with minions of internet armchair generals who write beautiful walls of text on-line (if allowed; if not too woo woo), but who hardly make a dent where it counts, in real life. I'm not asking you to put your neck on the line and be the outspoken chicken little to be dragged onto the sacrificial chopping block. Just open your mind and be alert... and get really good at reading people. They don't have smileys in real life conversations, so get to know real life human communication again. Not the "Hey, did you see that awesome game last night?!", but stuff that matters. The human values, the real humanity, not the "Alas, the humanity" bellowing from your TV's CNN feed.

A reluctant, but strong suggestion for the mods and admins: keep politics and religion separate. In less than a year, you'll be glad you did. See, I'm not all doom and gloom; I am projecting "life" a year from now. ;)

Get to know your neighbours. People, these days, don't know a single neighbour, yet have 1000s of friends on FB.

I wrote some time ago that BL should be thinking of a backup to the .ru, for a rainy day; that there would come a time when RU would be cracking down on venues they had let lie before. I make this call again. Depending on which side of this we come out on, it's a good idea to have a polar opposite backup. If it *is* a polar opposite, you want to keep politics and religion separate.

Peace, love and peanut butter & honey sandwiches.

<3

P.S. I will likely be gone for another "while", so please don't take as an insult my lack of response in the mean time. Ta!

P.P.S. Ison. BL really needs to cash in (politically) on this. Astronomy group, telescopes, BL, MAPS. Missing a golden opportunity, if you're not already up on it, guys. Forget marches and "awareness" festivals and conventions. Attach your message to a freely available global event and you have better exposure than money could buy. Make videos, write blogs, reference expert/amateur BL astronomers/scientists. Get out there! Straddle science, stay away from politics (for now, in public and referencing BL). Peace.
 
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Since the fort hood shooter got the death penalty, you know even more ppl are going to be looking to buy an fnh 5.7 (the gun used in the attack, got a ton of publicity as being "a hand held assault rifle" when really you can buy a pistol that actually fires a big ass 308 rifle round, this one however fires a 5.7x28mm cart with a mag that can hold 30rds, and they make steel penatrator rds that will go through level IIIa body armour, tho you cant buy them like at walmart or anything. They are great guns, super accurate. The rounds do not go thru body armor except for the ones designed too. This gun will be demonized even more and maybe even they will try and ban the gun...who knows in this country anymore. Last time i checked guns dont kill ppl, ppl kill ppl.
 
Droppersneck said:
I just got me a new pellet gun for small game hunting while hippy style camping across the west next spring. Figure I can shoot some squirrels for calories along the way. Might carry my 45 while I am traveling but not sure if cali has reciprocity with my permit.
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What is the highest caliber pellet gun you can get in the US? I've only used the .177's but i know you can get the .22 air rifles. I just haven't seen one since i was a kid.
 
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The one I got is a .177 which is good enough to kill small game without buying c02. I think you could get whatever you want in the US or at least in the south.
paranoid android said:
What is the highest caliber pellet gun you can get in the US? I've only used the .177's but i know you can get the .22 air rifles. I just haven't seen one since i was a kid.
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^ Meh i think id rather just go with a .22 rifle. People literally have stockpiles of .22LR ammo around here so you hardly even have to buy it. Well it might cost you a few cases of beer but that's it. I just never liked pellet guns for anything other then shooting bottles off fences as nobody hunts squirrels here (we get the small brown and cute ones :( ) and your hardly going to hunt a rabbit or even a grouse with a pellet gun.

One thing that did turn me off pellet guns was their habit of bouncing quiet far if they didn't say break a wine bottle but instead skipped off it and broke a window over 50 feet away :!
 
paranoid android said:
^ Meh i think id rather just go with a .22 rifle. People literally have stockpiles of .22LR ammo around here so you hardly even have to buy it. Well it might cost you a few cases of beer but that's it. I just never liked pellet guns for anything other then shooting bottles off fences as nobody hunts squirrels here (we get the small brown and cute ones :( ) and your hardly going to hunt a rabbit or even a grouse with a pellet gun.

One thing that did turn me off pellet guns was their habit of bouncing quiet far if they didn't say break a wine bottle but instead skipped off it and broke a window over 50 feet away :!
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I have a bad ass 22 with a scope BUT I am very proficient with the old pump master and getting small game. The only reason I will use it is b/c at most of the state parks I will be going to hunting is prohibited. I will be eating what ever I kill though.
 
SA said:
And yet gun sales are up... and no one is confiscating them yet (en masse). Hmmm...

What are you guys and gals getting armed for?
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These people won't stop until the public is disarmed. It won't happen next week but with the culture shift in the states with many having been brought up having never fired a gun they have little understanding of how they work, thus they are baited into agreeing with leftist a to have their rights stripped.
 
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