On 7/11/2014 2:11 AM, jps wrote:
On Fri, 11 Jul 2014 00:40:45 -0400, wrote:
On Thu, 10 Jul 2014 20:02:33 -0700, jps wrote:
The vast majority are suicides, somewhere around 17 - 19,000 a year.
Murders are around 11,000 a year.
So you think if there were no guns, there would be no suicides?
Just look at Japan, one of your ideal countries. No guns and a much
higher suicide rate than the US.
The more you drill down on the numbers, the worse your case gets.
I have pointed out Australia many times. They got rid of most of their
guns and it had very little effect of on the slope of their murder
rate.
Well, we certainly did shift real quick there, eh? Went from 31,000
gun deaths a year coming out of my ass to, wouldn't it happen anyway?
And you're dead wrong about Australia, they've virtually eliminated
mass shootings from their society.
My point is, if guns make a country safer, we should be the safest
****ing country on the planet. They don't and we're not.
Greg said that getting rid of most of their guns has had little effect
on the slope of the murder rate in Australia.
Your rebuttal was that Australia has virtually eliminated mass shootings.
If both statements are true, the elimination of guns has had little
effect on Australia's murder rate. I think that was his point.
One thing that is totally ignored in this great gun debate is the
cultural and ethnic diversity of the United States compared to any other
country on the planet. It has both positive and negative ramifications
on our society. The "Great Melting Pot" isn't utopia.
Guns don't create racial intolerance, conflicts based on religious
beliefs, conflicts of cultural or ethnic traditions or the inner city
gang wars that Wayne accurately points out represents the vast majority
of gun related deaths. Personally I also think that the slow shredding
of unifying traditions that have been challenged by groups focused only
on their belief system serves to further polarize the country and puts
an emphasis on our cultural, religious and ethnic diversity as we slide
into a "progressive" liberal never-never land. We are slowly removing
the measuring sticks of our societal structure that includes the good
with the bad and replacing it with a free-for-all "anything goes"
mentality that is increasingly based on an entitlement philosophy.
So, going back to guns. They are not the *reason* for our problems.