"It's a logical thing to say gunphobia like yours is a mental illness, and not a valid political position."
Now, I don't want you to get offended, or butthurt. You've thrown out some weak insults so far, so I hope you can handle a few stronger ones in return. I don't want to hurt your fragile leftist narcissistic ego. I don't want you to shatter like glass and cry foul and beg for me to be banned, as lefties tend to do when confronted with facts. So please, watch some nice little cartoons that will help you understand more about the real world." - quotes from yourself.
Your point, so far, could be summarized as "Concessions to the 2nd Amendment are a violation of my constitutional rights and representative of greater authoritarian bends" and yet it has taken you 3 or so posts of incoherent typing to explain that. You've not offered any evidence, statistics, any suggestions of real policy to amend the USA's gun violence issue other than firearm regulation. I don't even agree with the Democrats on their version of gun regulation, but that doesn't matter because talking to you is akin to interacting with an MMO NPC. You just spout pre-prepared lines, insults and assumptions because I am "Hostile" designation.
Your post is full of rambling shit, again, so let's just cut to the meat.
Full disclaimer: I am not an advocate of gun abolition nor do I support policies such as buybacks or broad, misaligned "Assault Weapon Bans", for a variety of reasosn but competence as policies is basically the top. I have no inherent ideological opposition to guns and when I return to Florida next year (was meant to be this year) I intend on buying some. I do tend to sit with the evidence, however.
Australia is a complicated case in that violence and suicides
in general were on a decline. Academic studies have been conducted since, however, and come to interesting conclusions. Firstly, the correlation and assumptions regarding firearms deaths and the post-1979 decline are pretty fishy. Most when arguing this point cite 1979 as the beginning date, when 1979 was in fact compartively anomalously high in gun deaths compared to the years prior to and after it. When compared to a much more fair and long-term analysis, going back to earlier years, the NFA ban can be seen to still significantly mark a sharp decline in gun violence compared to projections of what it would have continued as. Similarly, these studies also projected that if Australian gun violence had continued along the projection wagered by some, there still would have been
16 mass shootings between 1996 and February of 2018, when in reality with the NFA Ban, there were
0 mass shootings. The conclusion of the major studies seems to be that because of Australia's violent crime and suicides declining in general you cannot hard-lock the decline in death as the sole responsibility of the legislation, however there
is strong evidence to suggest that it was extremely important anyway. Namely that
the decline rate of firearm homicides and suicides at the least doubled after the institution of the NFA. The largest drops in firearm deaths were amongst the weapon types that were regulated in the ban. Finally, it was also concluded that it is
patently incorrect to attribute the absence of mass shootings to the relative decline prior to 1996.
Source(s):
https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-con...4/2012/10/bulletins_australia_spring_2011.pdf
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.7326/M18-0503
I'm currently living in the UK, and have been for a few years now. I am also a semi-regular clay-pigeon shotgun shooter here. As someone else in the thread said, this portrayal simply isn't at all true to the lived experience of majority people in the UK and the image of this country as painted by American conservatives is a completely absurd fantasy. However, that being said, I will provide you with some hard evidence. So firstly, let's deal with the statistical tidbit you posited about post-ban death rates. This is a popularly cited argument, from a study commissioned from the assuredly unbiased Countryside Alliance's Campaign for Shooting. Much like the Australian example, this is a nuanced situation that is deliberately confused and conflated by people for the sake of their arguments. Firstly, violent crime in the UK had (has) been on a slow and statistically consistent uptick for decades prior to any gun regulation although we did have a sharp decline for a decade between 2006-2016. However, this comes with many asteriks, particularly with relevance to your argument. Firstly, I would argue that there is no causation in this instance between the Firearms Ban and the original commissioned study was a case of bad data. This is supported by a study contemporary to the time (King's College London's Centre for Defence Studies, July 2001 which concluded there was no such causation) but I would posit the following in support as well if that's not enough. The first is that the same kind of spike and decline is experienced throughout this stretch of British history with no relevant markers, the homicide rates for 1990-2000 look about the same as that to 1970-1980, in particular 1977-1979 shows a sharper rise than 1998-2000 and yet there is no gun legislation at that time, suggesting along with the aforementioned study rejecting causation that the spikes in homicide within England are related to other issues. Namely economic or policing. I'd urge you to look into the numerous debates and scandalous issues regarding austerity, cuts to police funding and ability and how they have directly affected the country, but that's not relevant to this argument. Similarly, outside of England and Wales, within Scotland gun homicides dropped 80% following the ban. We can piece this together with the Australian example to get a bit of a better picture about the impact of the policies, no?
Secondly, since you seem to want to compare the United States and the United Kingdom. Let's do that.
According to the UNODC from both Homicides and Homicides by Firearms:
- You are 5x more likely to be victim of a homicide in the United States than the UK, a rate of about 5 per 100,000 vs 1 per 100,000
- In the list of all countries ranked from most homicidal to least, the United States ranks 94 whilst the United Kingdom ranks 175, making the US one of the most homicidal countries in the western "First World"
- 73% of all homicides in the United States of America are committed by firearms, whereas this is only 3% in England and Wales
Now, it goes without saying that the amount of deaths in the past decade resulting from massacres of some kind (Including terrorism like the Manchester Bombing or the London Bridge knife attack) are absolutely dwarfed by the amount of massacre-related deaths in the United States. Even the Las Vegas 2017 mass shooting by Stephen Paddock
alone killed more people than have died in Britain from massacres over the period of a decade. This is less relevant than the above statistics due to these stats not being relative to the size of the country, but the point still stands.
Sources:
UNODC Homicide Statistics
UNODC Homicide by Firearm Statistics
"Homicide in England and Wales" by the Office of National Statistics
This is entirely irrelevant to the argument we're having, but also you are literally proving yourself wrong by citing Japan. Japan has incredibly low rates of crime, and also extremely stringent gun regulation. Congratulations.
Because comparing the failed policies and mass-deaths of totalitarian regimes or failed states to a contemporary first world liberal democracy like the United States is completely absurd and makes the US seem pathetic if you really feel the need to compare them, but I'm betting you're going to do that anyway.
I agree and I think it is a strong guiding principle, however the US Constitution was not intended as a holy static document, it was intended to be developed and amended. Unlike with principles such as speech, the context surrounding firearms has changed so unimaginably both in technology, comparison to the armaments of the government and culturally/socially that the legislation itself has become outdated when taken literally or stringently. In the same way that the Tenth Amendment is a complete and utter far cry from the literal interpretaiton, but across the aisle amongst both Republicans and Democrats nobody is troubled by the US not being a total confederation of bickering states anymore. The Tenth Amendment still reinforces the principles of federalism and state individuality but the literal interpretation has been instead replaced by more pragmatic contemporary legislation/approaches. I would urge the same for the 2nd Amendment. It doesn't need repeal and the principle is good, but it arguably requires legislative treatment to allow it to function successfully and without active detriment to the people of the USA. The 1st Amendment has proven exclusively beneficial and its counterparts around the rest of the western world show the same. The same cannot be said of the 10th or the 2nd Amendment, for example. The main difference is that the former has been adapted. Firearm regulation and the 2nd Amendment are far from the only cause of gun violence, and the larger systemic socio-economic issues creating poverty and lack of mental health support are also weeds that must be whacked, but being a Republican you don't actually give a shit about that part.
If there were an amendment about the government not being able to impede the ownership and travel of citizens via horse, carriage or ship to prevent the gov. cutting off travel or isolating the populace, I'd still be very much for driving licenses and driving tests in the modern day.
Literally inventing strawmen to attack.
Well not only are you literally doing what I thought you would, i.e comparing a failed third world state to the US for the sake of argument, but you're also showing your ignorance. Venezuela is not a liberal state. You do not know what liberal means, at all. Venezuela is a failing, socialist state. A state that was not well run to begin with, and its incompetence only accelerated by socialist policies. On that, we won't disagree. I'm a liberal, not a fucking socialist.
Comparing the situation in a failing socialist state to the United States and the policy arguments on-going, policy arguments which have already been settled in other, less homicidal first world countries. Come on now.
I think it says enough that you also seem to have immediately pivoted to another topic when you've been pressed. You are proving yourself over and over completely worthless to talk with, though I should have guessed that from the Brony avatar.
