[lbo-talk] Collective idiocy....

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Wed Dec 19 10:54:34 PST 2012


How would a gun control law be enforced, given the current number of guns in private hands?

Would there be a nationwide home search program?

(I personally would just as soon see fewer guns scattered about, but that is irrelevant to the problem of enforcement.)

Carrol


> -----Original Message-----
> From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> On Behalf Of Joshua Morey
> Sent: Wednesday, December 19, 2012 12:31 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Collective idiocy....
>
> On Dec 19, 2012 11:48 AM, "Wojtek S" <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Jordan: "You're so sure that more guns = more crime"
> >
> > [WS:] You said that, not me. I said more guns = more gun related
> > deaths, everything else being equal...
>
> A very simple - perhaps oversimplified - question: let's pretend there
were
> in the united states a fraction - say one half (1/10th even?) - of the
guns
> currently present - how would that have prevented any of the recent
> shooting tragedies, all other factors remaining exactly the same? I am not
> saying it can't be so but I must confess that I am skeptical and I would
> like to know how that would work.
>
> it really seems like you (Wojtek, but not him alone) are suggesting that
> the simple possession of firearms somehow changes a person...no?
>
> I am genuinely curious and trying to sort my thoughts out on the matter. I
> have owned guns since I was a child (I bought my first gun, a
semiautomatic
> .22, when I was 13) and I use them a lot (exclusively for hunting, to be
> clear), but I guess I am not seeing how this makes me more likely to go on
> a shooting spree than anybody else on the lbo list. Granted, this is a
> dreaded anecdote, but I am struggling to understand how a gun, through any
> inherent quality it possesses, makes me characteristically more likely to
> kill somebody than I would be if I did not have a gun*; it seems to me
that
> the relative potential to kill is cultivated by other factors. But I am
far
> from settled on the matter, I recognize the limitations of anecdotal data,
> and I have appreciated the debate.
>
> *god forbid, it seems to me that if I (or anybody else) were to kill
> somebody, it would most likely be with a vehicle in an accident (the US
> murder rate - by all means - was apprx 4.7/100,000 [low relative to
> historical data from the US] in 2011 while the vehicle death rate was
> 1/10,000). Furthermore, and I think we all can agree on this (maybe), it
> would be much easier to take the sanctimonious cries for gun control more
> seriously if those demanding it would weep as bitterly for Afghan,
> Palestinian, or Iraqi children killed by our own public institutions (or
> with their complicity) as they did for the children in CT. Okay, maybe
that
> was harsh...
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