The Gun Control Debate Thread

[Larry]

Have we agreed that the only way to stop all of these mass murders is to take away all the guns yet?

Well, one of the gun nuts has proposed solving the problem by killing everybody. Does that count?

[Springfield]

No. We've been a little preoccupied with trying to stop as many as possible without stepping on Constitutional rights, because eliminating all mass murders is an unrealistic goal, but eliminating many/most should be very possible with reasonable (albeit complex in implementation) reforms.

I think the reforms people are talking about are only reasonable to some people. We're going to argue these points while watching the bodies pile up, I'm afraid.

Eventually were just going to have to accept that kids will be gunned down arbitrarily, with little to no recourse.

Well, one of the gun nuts has proposed solving the problem by killing everybody. Does that count?

Well, if the answer to gun violence is more guns, then I suppose it's a logical step. No? Edited October 10, 2015 by Springfield

[Bacon]

School shootings are just freedom tax. Can't keep America running without them.

Edited October 10, 2015 by Bacon

[twa]

Well, one of the gun nuts has proposed solving the problem by killing everybody. Does that count?

 

pretty sure that was a gun control nut engaging in hyperbole.

[DogofWar1]

I think the reforms people are talking about are only reasonable to some people. We're going to argue these points while watching the bodies pile up, I'm afraid.

Eventually were just going to have to accept that kids will be gunned down arbitrarily, with little to no recourse.

 

Well, yes, I think most have accepted that some kids will be gunned down arbitrarily sometimes, but not that we can't reduce the number.

 

As for arguing these points while the bodies pile up, we could put the CDC to work doing studies and allow them to fund outside studies so we'll know what solutions are the most efficient, but a certain airline along with the whole GOP is opposed to that.

[twa]

what exactly is so magical about CDC studies?

[TradeTheBeal!]

what exactly is so magical about CDC studies?

They generate data. We use data to set policy. That's in an ideal world, though. Some have been known to eschew data and just pray on it or even consult astrologers.

Edited October 10, 2015 by TryTheBeal!

[twa]

other agencies are generating data, and the CDC is free to do so as well....just not be lobbyist

[mistertim]

other agencies are generating data, and the CDC is free to do so as well....just not be lobbyist

Can you compare the specific datea between the two?

[Larry]

pretty sure that was a gun control nut engaging in hyperbole.

My mistake. I thought it was you, "engaging in hyperbole".

[Burgold]

what exactly is so magical about CDC studies?

Heck, it could be the NIH.

 

One reason for governmental science is that it used to be safer.  A corporation answers to its board and stock holders. So, the desire to generate results that please the boss are implicit and sometimes worse. How much do you trust a health study paid for by Phillip Morris on the topic of cigarettes. They'd still be claiming it was non addictive don't you know. Thank goodness for whistle blowers.

 

NIH, CDC, and other government institutions are or should be free from that kind of contamination. That's what makes what the NRA and Congressional Republicans did with the funding and the blackmail pretty disgusting. They announced that if you do science that may generate a result that we don't like we will pull the plug on you. There are very strong reasons why Republicans have earned the anti-science label and the way they attack funding and good, peer controlled, methodologically sound research is one of them.

 

You should want the CDC to be looking into this. You should want NIMH looking into this. If you think there is a mental health component to many of these shooting events why the hell are you threatening research that looks at the potential? Good research also needs to generate a baseline, that means you have to look at the whole to compare it too. The whole can be the population of the US in this case. It could be the universe of gun owners in the US. But don't pretend research is biased because it has the potential to generate uncomfortable results or touch on facts you don't want to hear.

 

Cigarette smoking is bad for you. It should not have taken decades of court losses for the public to have the information at hand. The cigarette lobby did what the NRA does.

[DogofWar1]

And here's the thing, the benefits of getting the CDC and NIH back into studies extends beyond themselves.  Independent researchers are largely reliant on federal grants to build their own studies, and the loss of public funding extends to them, as their ability to get any sort of grant funding pretty much dries up.

 

This report goes through a lot of the issues with the funding drying up.

http://libcloud.s3.amazonaws.com/9/c1/6/1017/3/access_denied.pdf

 

Some basic numbers; public funding for gun violence research is $2 million, compared to $21 million for studying headaches.  The National Institute of Justice published 32 studies on gun violence between 1993 and 1999, but has published none since 2008.  Academic publishing on firearms has dropped 60 percent.  

 

Much of our data is out of date by well over a decade, and that has a huge impact on the ability of police, the ATF, and other agencies, federal, state, and local, to be able to perform their duties to protect and serve the public.

 

The report is a cornucopia of information about how badly we've screwed ourselves by not adequately funding research on gun studies.  But there's an interesting bit from an op-ed that Jay Dickey, the Congressman who spearheaded the legislation restricting the CDC, and Dr. Mark Rosenberg, former NCIPC director, co-wrote in 2012.

 

 

On July 27, 2012, former NCIPC director Dr. Mark Rosenberg and formerCongressman Jay Dickey co-wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post. They had first met sixteen years earlier, when Congressman Dickey had interrogated Rosenberg in a House Appropriations Committee meeting, and it was Dickey’s amendment that stripped Rosenberg’s center of its funding for firearm research. Yet the two men had never stopped listening to one another — in fact, they had slowly become friends — and over time their views had shifted profoundly.

 

Gun violence is tragic, but it is not senseless, they wrote in their 2012 op-ed. “Like motor vehicle injuries, violence exists in a cause-and-effect world; things happen for predictable reasons. By studying the causes of a tragic — but not senseless — event, we can help prevent another.”

 

“We were on opposite sides of the heated battle 16 years ago,” they continued, “but we are in strong agreement now that scientific research should be conducted into preventing firearm injuries and that ways to prevent firearm deaths can be found without encroaching on the rights of legitimate gun owners.”

 

Jay Dickey remains a strong supporter of gun rights — and a lifetime member of the NRA — and still believes that gun ownership makes Americans safer. “I believe in that more strongly than Mark,” he told Mayors Against Illegal Guns in an interview, “but it’s not really relevant to trying to find a solution.”

 

“Listen to the facts: it’s like rain coming down,” he said. “It’s a constant factor in our society that we’re losing people through gun violence. Now maybe we can’t do anything about it, but we ought to at least know more about it from an objective standpoint.”

 

So to answer the question about what's so magical about CDC studies?  The answer is, at least in the realm of statistical analysis of the issue, everything.

[PeterMP]

Academic publishing on firearms has dropped 60 percent.  

 

And much of that is funded by gun or anti-gun groups, which the other side immediately dismisses (with good cause in some cases) as biased.

[twa]

Heck, it could be the NIH.

>

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Cigarette smoking is bad for you. It should not have taken decades of court losses for the public to have the information at hand. The cigarette lobby did what the NRA does.

 

I read a recent NIH gun study the other day

 

I still smoke and curse bans

[Bang]

I read a recent NIH gun study the other day

 

I still smoke and curse bans

And you still assist in burdening the rest of us with the costs associated with smokers.

And proud of it, like any welfare mooch.

 

 

~Bang

[twa]

And you still assist in burdening the rest of us with the costs associated with smokers.

And proud of it, like any welfare mooch.

 

 

~Bang

 

 

science says you are full of **** 

 

but such tripe does demonstrate why studies advocating are simply politicizing science.

 

now let's talk about your sex/social life and the costs society is burdened with

[TradeTheBeal!]

science says you are full of **** 

 

but such tripe does demonstrate why studies advocating are simply politicizing science.

 

now let's talk about your sex/social life and the costs society is burdened with

This seems a bit outta line.

[Bang]

science says you are full of **** 

 

but such tripe does demonstrate why studies advocating are simply politicizing science.

 

now let's talk about your sex/social life and the costs society is burdened with

 

Talkin' the talk.

and stumblin' down the walk.

 

 

~Bang

[twa]

This seems a bit outta line.

 

and the post I replied to?

 

just to find out where your lines are.

[Jumbo]

a couple days ago I changed the word "discuss" in the title to "dismiss" (one of those whimsical Jumbo moments) and wondered if anyone would catch it 

[Bang]

and the post I replied to?

 

just to find out where your lines are.

The post you replied to was just me registering my surprise that someone who toes the personal responsibility line so hard would allow such a personal decision to be paid for by other hard working Americans who are sicking of having to pay for the problems of others.

 

My belief in these matters is very different from yours.

If you had stones, you'd practice what you preach.

but you won't. You'll smoke, and accept the benefits of a widespread socialist system to defray the costs of your own personally induced addiction.

 

Imagine my surprise at seeing such a selfish act being laid on society's doorstep by a person who constantly espouses the opposite.

 

I don't think you'd be terribly surprised if i said i think taxes and social systems to help people are part and parcel of living in a complex society,, would you?

 

 

~Bang

a couple days ago I changed the word "discuss" in the title to "dismiss" (one of those whimsical Jumbo moments) and wondered if anyone would catch it 

 

i did my part and dismissed it in my first post.

 

But, the merry go round IS fun sometimes.

 

~Bang

[twa]

so you blame me for society's welfare despite my avoidance of it and the money taken from me in both taxes .fees and sin taxes?

 

I don't need or want govt handouts and will live and die by my choices.

 

smokers cost less since we tend to die earlier  ,whereas nanny state folk stick around to milk the tit for as long as they can suck.

 

 I'm fine with forbidding welfare to smokers,and many other choices folk make....you?

 

or you a pro-choicer

 

 

 

now if ya feel burdened to simply send me money 

[Bang]

I blame you for society's welfare?

I'm not saying anything about society at all.

 

No, just surprised you say you will live and die by your choices,, but when the time comes, you will accept the reduced costs that insurance offers you through it's socialist system... which of course is spread among everyone else.

 

 

And i'm not talking about welfare. i'm talking about willfully entering a system that is at it's core a socialist method of spreading costs among a large pool of payers so that when catastrophe happens the costs can be deferred for the individual. (and, I am assuming you had insurance before Obama made you get some.)

and the fact that comes along with that of the whole having to pay more because of the voluntary choices some make.

 

the burden on me in regards to this conversation is symbolic.

And for the record, i don't care if you smoke. Free choice, and all.. i do believe in that.

 

 

~Bang

Edited October 10, 2015 by Bang

[Larry]

Bang,

Maybe it's just me, but from out in the cheap seats, where I am, it sure looks to me like you're working real hard to attack somebody who you know very little about, other than that he smokes.

I confess, I've got a serious case of hating anybody who smokes, myself. But it looks to me like you're going even further than I would.

(And oh, BTW, just a teensy bit OT).

[twa]

ya do know smokers pay more for health ins?

 

Along with the sin tax on it paying for others health care.

 

 

not really OT Larry, it is a intrusion of liberties under the guise of greater good....backed by my tax funded scientific studies and researchers lobbying by way of asserting risk.