Vigilante

[Blind groper]

Hermit

One of the keys to determining cause and effect is a delayed reaction. When factor A is cause, and factor B is effect, factor A will precede B.

In this case the removal of guns happened before the reduction in suicides. This is exactly characteristic of a cause and effect relationship. You can argue about what delay period is credible, but cause must come before effect.

To Seth.
Re your constant theme about criminals having guns when law abiding people give them up.

The answer is no.
This is shown by every developed nation that gave up guns. The number of guns held by criminals also diminished, and did so dramatically. The classic is the extreme case of the Yakusa in Japan. As you probably know, the Yakusa is the Japanese equivalent of Triads, or the Mafia. The Yakusa do not use guns. Or if they do, it is very, very rarely.

When law abiding people give up guns, as is shown by the history of many developed nations, criminals follow suit.

In the USA, you are bound on a very nasty wheel. When law abiding people get more guns, so do criminals. When criminals gets more guns, so does everyone else. You live with this illusion that guns bring security when all the solid evidence shows the opposite.

To get criminals to give up guns, simply make those guns almost impossible to obtain for everyone. This has already happened in NZ, Australia, Japan, Britain, etc. etc.

[Seth]

And completely ignored by BG is the simple fact that when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns, and that when the public is disarmed by government policy, there's no one present in the moment to even try to put a stop to the killing, as was the case in the Port Arthur shootings, where it took something like six HOURS for an armed response squad to show up. There is also substantial empirical evidence that mass shooters seek out venues where firearms are prohibited to patrons...like schools, movie theaters (no gun policy in Aurora), shopping malls (pretty much all of them prohibit concealed carry) and churches...except for the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, where an armed citizen (Jeanne Assam) working as a volunteer security guard, along with another armed civilian, prevented a heavily-armed mass killer from gaining access to the church where more than a thousand people were worshiping at the time. And then there's the sterling response of the Arapaho County Sheriff's Department school resource officer Deputy James Englert, who responded as trained to an active shooter and, by all accounts, prevented the shooter from killing more than one person through an immediate aggressive tactical response that caused the incident to come to an end within 80 seconds. Had he not been there, there's no telling how long the killing would have gone on because the shooter (who shall remain nameless) had more than a hundred rounds of shotgun ammunition and gasoline bombs in his possession when he shot himself. In the deputy's absence however, an armed parent or teacher could have produced the same quick end to the shooting spree.

But not under BG's agenda. No, he would rather leave all schoolchildren as helpless targets just to realize his impossible goal of disarming everyone.

Did you notice an upturn in massacres, murders and manslaughters in Australia since the 1996 gun control legislation and accompanying gun buy-back scheme that nobody else has? If so, would you please point us in the direction of any evidence for it? If you can't do that, STFU already.

Cherry picking. I've already cited an uptick in violent crime overall, a significant one. That there have been no school massacres yet does not preclude the potential. The point I'm making is that by disarming virtually anyone who could possibly respond effectively in the short amount of time available to stop or delay a mass shooting...at a school or anywhere else...the Australian government is increasing the probability of high body counts, not reducing it.

This is based on the fact that despite the ban, banned semi-automatic weapons and ammunition, military-style semi-automatic and indeed fully-automatic military-issue weapons still exist in Australia. I guarantee you there are more such caches.

That being the case, it's only a matter time before some nutter acquires such weaponry (maybe by stealing it from the Australian Navy) and decides to perpetrate another Port Arthur, at which point as many or more people will die because, once again, nobody but the deranged shooter has a gun with which to fight back.

By the way, the largest mass murder in US history was perpetrated with a glass bottle filled with gasoline and a match, not a gun. This of course excludes the terrorist attack of 9/11, which was perpetrated with box cutters and aircraft.

[Hermit]

In this case the removal of guns happened before the reduction in suicides. This is exactly characteristic of a cause and effect relationship. You can argue about what delay period is credible, but cause must come before effect.

Yes, and I am arguing about the length of the delay. You claim that "it makes sense, especially considering the timing" that it was the removal of guns that is responsible for the drop in suicides. Think about it; Does it take two years for the bullets from guns that were removed before the end of 1997 to finally reach their intended targets or do you have an alternative explanation for why the suicide rate staid above the pre-gun control levels of 1992-1996?

[Blind groper]

Hermit

You are assuming that the date of the gun control laws was the date at which all those guns magically disappeared. It takes time for these things to happen.

The fact is that, after the new gun laws, two changes happened to suicides.
1. The percentage of suicides carried out with guns dropped dramatically.
2. The total number of suicides dropped, though not as dramatically.

There may have been other reasons for the total suicide drop, but the removal of guns would certainly have been a major factor.

[Hermit]

And completely ignored by BG is the simple fact that when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns, and that when the public is disarmed by government policy, there's no one present in the moment to even try to put a stop to the killing, as was the case in the Port Arthur shootings, where it took something like six HOURS for an armed response squad to show up. There is also substantial empirical evidence that mass shooters seek out venues where firearms are prohibited to patrons...like schools, movie theaters (no gun policy in Aurora), shopping malls (pretty much all of them prohibit concealed carry) and churches...except for the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, where an armed citizen (Jeanne Assam) working as a volunteer security guard, along with another armed civilian, prevented a heavily-armed mass killer from gaining access to the church where more than a thousand people were worshiping at the time. And then there's the sterling response of the Arapaho County Sheriff's Department school resource officer Deputy James Englert, who responded as trained to an active shooter and, by all accounts, prevented the shooter from killing more than one person through an immediate aggressive tactical response that caused the incident to come to an end within 80 seconds. Had he not been there, there's no telling how long the killing would have gone on because the shooter (who shall remain nameless) had more than a hundred rounds of shotgun ammunition and gasoline bombs in his possession when he shot himself. In the deputy's absence however, an armed parent or teacher could have produced the same quick end to the shooting spree.

But not under BG's agenda. No, he would rather leave all schoolchildren as helpless targets just to realize his impossible goal of disarming everyone.

Did you notice an upturn in massacres, murders and manslaughters in Australia since the 1996 gun control legislation and accompanying gun buy-back scheme that nobody else has? If so, would you please point us in the direction of any evidence for it? If you can't do that, STFU already.

Cherry picking. I've already cited an uptick in violent crime overall, a significant one. That there have been no school massacres yet does not preclude the potential.

Potential, eh? Undoubtedly, it's there. Meanwhile, we've had zero massacres in the eight years since strict gun control was implemented, compared to 13 in 18 years before, and the post gun control homicide rates have dropped well below of those pertaining before its implementation. On the available evidence it does not seem that fewer guns resulted in "schoolchildren as helpless targets", but don't let me stop you from shifting the goal posts.

[Hermit]

You are assuming that the date of the gun control laws was the date at which all those guns magically disappeared. It takes time for these things to happen.

The fact is that, after the new gun laws, two changes happened to suicides.
1. The percentage of suicides carried out with guns dropped dramatically.
2. The total number of suicides dropped, though not as dramatically.

There may have been other reasons for the total suicide drop, but the removal of guns would certainly have been a major factor.

No, I am not assuming that the date of the gun control laws was the date at which all those guns magically disappeared. I am telling you that the gun buyback scheme was done and dusted well before the end of 1997, and that the total number of suicides stayed above pre-buyback levels for two years beyond the time the buyback scheme was active. Did that escape your attention, or are you merely being bloody-minded now?

[Blind groper]

T

When it comes to social change, two years is nothing.

[Hermit]

When it comes to social change, two years is nothing.

You claimed that taking guns out of circulation caused suicide rates to drop, and I gave you evidence that those rates remained higher for more than two years after their removal was done than the rates in the four years preceding it. If your assertion is right then the only way to explain it is to claim that the bullets from the removed guns took two years+ to reach their target. What is so difficult to understand about that?

[JimC]

When it comes to social change, two years is nothing.

You claimed that taking guns out of circulation caused suicide rates to drop, and I gave you evidence that those rates remained higher for more than two years after their removal was done than the rates in the four years preceding it. If your assertion is right then the only way to explain it is to claim that the bullets from the removed guns took two years+ to reach their target. What is so difficult to understand about that?

The guns did't go out of circulation immediately - a lot came in in dribs and drabs. Doesn't completely support BG, I know, but it could be a factor...

[Hermit]

When it comes to social change, two years is nothing.

You claimed that taking guns out of circulation caused suicide rates to drop, and I gave you evidence that those rates remained higher for more than two years after their removal was done than the rates in the four years preceding it. If your assertion is right then the only way to explain it is to claim that the bullets from the removed guns took two years+ to reach their target. What is so difficult to understand about that?

The guns did't go out of circulation immediately - a lot came in in dribs and drabs. Doesn't completely support BG, I know, but it could be a factor...

The gun buyback scheme started on 1 October 1996 and concluded on 30 September 1997. Suicide rates did not drop below 1992-1997 levels until 2000.

[Seth]

On the available evidence it does not seem that fewer guns resulted in "schoolchildren as helpless targets", but don't let me stop you from shifting the goal posts.

On what available evidence? Does the fact that an event has not happened in X amount of time have any effect on whether or not that event will happen ever? Of course not. If you were to say that the gun ban makes it more difficult for a deranged person to acquire a firearm with which to commit a mass murder I would agree with you, but then the question becomes how much more difficult and what are the unintended consequences of removing those guns from society? The most important of those unintended consequences is that disarming the general public is worse than useless in responding to and stopping (and perhaps preventing) such attacks. It guarantees more casualties and gives the shooter more time to kill people when it is only the police, and in the idiotic places like the UK...and evidently rural Australia...where those police officers who ARE around go around unarmed as well, as we saw in the Port Arthur shooting.

It's a simple fact that the more guns there are in the hands of law-abiding responsible citizens who are capable of and prepared to use them at need, the more likely it is that one or more of these armed citizens will be in a position to intervene in a potential mass shooting and put a stop to it, or delay it, giving others time to escape and take cover. This fact is undeniable.

The only argument BG can make to this simple fact is the specious argument that civilians never use their lawfully-carried firearms in self-defense, which is patently and provably untrue. What the general objection to an armed citizenry consists of is simple mistrust, ignorance and paranoia on the part of hoplophobes who think that every gun is as bad as the worst gun when in truth guns are neither good nor bad, the people who wield them are. And the only real effective solution to a bad person with a gun who intends to shoot people is a good person with a gun willing to put themselves at risk to prevent the bad person from doing so. This may be in the personal of the police, and that's a good thing if and when it happens, but the other simple fact is that the police can't be everywhere at once, and therefore in the critical moments (seconds, not minutes) of time when a mass shooting gets underway the police will almost never be on-scene or in a position to do anything at all to protect innocent civilians. Only other civilians who are adequately armed and who are trained and prepared to respond will have even the slightest chance of turning the tide in the first sixty to 180 seconds, which is typically how long it takes for mass shooters to do what they came to do. It took the Port Arthur killer some 90 seconds or so to kill 20 people and wound 12 more.

The Port Arthur massacre lasted for an entire day precisely because there was NO ONE, including the police on duty, who had any kind of firearm with which to try to end the massacre until more than eight hours after it started. Oh, wait, there WAS one guy, a service station attendant who tried to use his bolt-action rifle but by the time he was able to get the ammunition for it (which was required to be locked up separate from the rifle) and load it the shooter had moved on.

In the US, when danger is moments away the police are only minutes away. In Australia when danger is moments away the police are only eight hours away. Fucknuts.

And this isn't goalpost shifting it's ALWAYS been the most important argument I've made. It doesn't matter how many statistical arguments someone trots out because the right to life and effective self-defense is not subject to infringement based on statistical analysis of crime rates or suicides. The right to self-defense is universal and absolute, and the right to be effectively armed to deal with violent attacks is just as universal and absolute because no matter what the crime statistics tell us, the probability that an individual who is violently attacked will be the victim of a violent attack is 100 percent. Because that person's right to be armed for effective self-defense is universal and absolute, it is utterly immoral, not to mention stupid beyond all understanding, to disarm that victim based on idiotic notions that doing so will make that victim safer. It won't.

And since it is utterly impossible to tell ahead of time which individuals in any society will become the victim of a violent attack, it is therefore morally repulsive to disarm ANYONE on the specious notion that doing so will make society a safer place. This sort of arrogant weighting of individual's lives completely discounts and ignores the fact that each and every single individual on the face of the earth has an absolute and unassailable right to defend themselves against violence that no person, group or government has any right or authority whatsoever to interfere with, particularly not by reducing the individual to the status of a disposable statistic by disarming him based on fallacious statistical analyses of violent crime.

This is not and never, ever has been about the statistical analysis of crime. That is just a red-herring diversion used by hoplophobic gun banners who don't give a flying fuck about suicides, murders, handgun murders, violent crime or anything except their paranoid and irrational fear of guns who are willing to make some number of individuals into "acceptable losses" in their quest to purge society of guns.

Fuck them. I'm not a statistic and will not be reduced to a statistic by fucknuts who don't understand that my right to defend myself shall not be infringed by anybody, ever, to any degree at all. And that applies equally to every single individual human being on the planet.

[Hermit]

On the available evidence it does not seem that fewer guns resulted in "schoolchildren as helpless targets", but don't let me stop you from shifting the goal posts.

On what available evidence?

1. Zero massacres in the eight years since strict gun control was implemented, compared to 13 in 18 years before
2. Post gun control homicide rates have dropped well below of those pertaining before its implementation

Are you blind, Seth?

[JimC]

On the available evidence it does not seem that fewer guns resulted in "schoolchildren as helpless targets", but don't let me stop you from shifting the goal posts.

On what available evidence?

1. Zero massacres in the eight years since strict gun control was implemented, compared to 13 in 18 years before
2. Post gun control homicide rates have dropped well below of those pertaining before its implementation

Are you blind, Seth?

And I was forced to sell my collection of guns, possibly preventing a gin-fuelled rampage of epic proportions...

PS - I'd bought most of them second hand - with the gun buy-back, I made a tidy little profit!

[Blind groper]

Seth continues to ignore the simple fact that the only developed nation with easy access to guns, and widespread gun ownership, is also the only one with the kind of problem that he can use to rationalise the need for guns to use in self defense.

Quite simply, in all other developed nations guns are tightly restricted, and in all of those countries you do not need a gun for self defense. And in all those countries, the murder rate is massively lower than the USA.

Not only that, but there is a clear cut correlation between how many guns exist, and how many murders are committed.

In my country, guns are tighly controlled. Ditto Australia. And we have no need for guns for self defense. I have been threatened by other people on assorted occasions, and have always used my voice to get out. I have never even had to raise my fist. Guns are not needed.

Seth also makes a big fuss about criminals having guns in our more peaceful societies. True, a few do. But the number of times criminals use guns to harm others is a tiny fraction of the number of times they do that in the USA. When there are few guns in civilians hands due to tight gun control, there are few in criminal hands, and the criminals are much more reluctant to use them. Tight gun control means a much safer society.

In my country we have 25% of the population from people who recently had a stone age, tribal, and very violent society. Meaning Maori and Pacific Islander. They are still much more violent than whites, as shown by the prison population. However, they do not have guns, and our murder rate in one fifth of the USA on a per capita basis.

Seth will argue that the high murder rate is due to people of African descent. Well, Seth, NZ has twice the percentage in its population of people from violent tribal societies, and one fifth of the murder rate.

Gun ownership is not, of course, the only reason for this disparity. The other major difference is a culture of vigilanteeism in the USA. Seth is a perfect example of this undesirable behaviour pattern, with is insistance on carrying weapons to defend himself instead of relying on the police. It is that willingness to get violent that leads to tragedy.

[Seth]

On the available evidence it does not seem that fewer guns resulted in "schoolchildren as helpless targets", but don't let me stop you from shifting the goal posts.

On what available evidence?

1. Zero massacres in the eight years since strict gun control was implemented, compared to 13 in 18 years before
2. Post gun control homicide rates have dropped well below of those pertaining before its implementation

Are you blind, Seth?

You don't get it. On what evidence does Hermit (or you) deny that schoolchildren (and everyone else) in Australia are now helpless targets? Irrespective of the probability of a mass shooting the fact remains that when (not if) a mass shooting occurs, everyone in Australia is LESS SAFE because FEWER law-abiding citizens (pretty much zero) are lawfully armed and therefore FEWER armed persons will be in a position to defend against the next mass shooter, or guy with a bottle of gasoline and a match, or machete-wielding nutter trying to cut soldier's heads off. Like the idiots in the UK they will stand there like the dumb sheeple they are and shoot cellphone photos of the rampage rather than shooting the rampaging killer...at least until the killer turns his weapons on them.

Had the service station clerk in Port Arthur had a loaded shotgun or loaded AR-15 SP-1 or for crying out loud a box of ammunition proximate to his hunting rifle things might have gone differently. If even one person in the diner had been carrying a legal handgun, the death toll might have been substantially reduced. If the POLICE had been armed with handguns and patrol rifles in their vehicles and station, things might have gone much differently.

But instead the idiots in Australia made the fatal mistake of thinking that barring law-abiding citizens and their own police from keeping and bearing arms makes them safer. It's pretty fucking obvious that it didn't make the Port Arthur victims safer, it made them helpless unarmed victims to be slaughtered at the killer's leisure. And it won't make the next batch of victims any safer either. Not to mention that it only further endangers everyone in society by rendering them helpless against other violent crimes, as demonstrated by the 42% increase in violent crime experienced since the gun ban.

But you don't care how many people are victimized because they have been disarmed and denied any effective defense against violent crime. All you care about is using specious and fallacious cherry-picked arguments to try to bolster your gun-banning agenda that flows from a pathological fear of guns.