Any chance for a reasonable discussion about guns?

93EXCivic said:

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

One shooting. We have had over 300 mass shootings this year...

The vast majority of which are gang and drug violence usually by repeat offenders that were caught/released. But once again we are cherry picking information to push a viewpoint.

These got glossed over for the Highland Park shooter but happens on a regular basis. 68 people shot, 8 killed in chicago on July 4 weekend and that was down from last year. But that kind of crime isn't what brings in the $$ and press. 

In reply to bobzilla :

Yes most of them are gang and drug related but even ignoring gang and drug related shootings we have had far far more shootings then Japan.

In reply to 93EXCivic :

Completely different culture, laws, rules and access to firearms. I understand WHY you continue to try compare apples to bar bells. It suits the narrative you want to push. I get it. But it's not helpful to any sort of discussion. 

In reply to bobzilla :

Why can't we look at other nations as a way to improve out own? Take the good things and make a better nation.

93EXCivic said:

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

One shooting. We have had over 300 mass shootings this year...

To be fair Japan has now matched the number of gun deaths they had in all of last year, and it's only July!

bobzilla said:

In reply to 93EXCivic :

Completely different culture, laws, rules and access to firearms. I understand WHY you continue to try compare apples to bar bells. It suits the narrative you want to push. I get it. But it's not helpful to any sort of discussion. 

Benchmarking and using data from others is valid...  

it's how business and science works. 

Fueled by Caffeine said:

bobzilla said:

In reply to 93EXCivic :

Completely different culture, laws, rules and access to firearms. I understand WHY you continue to try compare apples to bar bells. It suits the narrative you want to push. I get it. But it's not helpful to any sort of discussion. 

Benchmarking and using data from others is valid...  

it's how business and science works. 

Exactly.

93EXCivic said:

In reply to bobzilla :

Why can't we look at other nations as a way to improve out own? Take the good things and make a better nation.

Certainly you can, but I am not sure what you can learn from Japan that has any reasonable use.

Japan is estimated to have about 0.25 gun per person in Japan, the US about 120 guns per person in the US, which is of course 500 times the number. 

If the lesson is: reduce the number of guns massively, and gun deaths will be less common.  That seems pretty obvious, and also so wildly unlikely to happen in the US, it's effectively worthless.  Even if you could magically make all gun illegal to own in the US today, there would still be a massive number of guns in circulation for many, many, many years (mostly in the hands of the worst people of course).

A far better practical "lesson" to learn would be from countries with a good number of guns that have fewer gun deaths (if there is such a thing).

For me, as someone who is not "camped" on either "side" really, probably the most practical concept that I have seen in this thread, considering the limitation involved, is the idea of prosecuting the living HELL out of people doing illegal things with guns.  Be that either illegal ownership, or other criminal activity.  Even this of course has a rather big potential hitch, that I am sure would come up.... (pretty sure I can't even mention it without causing issues)

In reply to aircooled :

Japan also has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, if not the highest.  There is a lot of societal pressure to conform and excel.

They may have very low gun deaths (IIRC to buy a pistol, you must join a club, and get an application, which only about 100 are accepted every year, and even then the pistol may not leave the club's premises)  but this does not translate to roses and sunshine.

It is literally the answer to Archie Bunker's famous line in the vein of "Would you be happier if they was pushed out of windows?"

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

I am certainly not saying Japan is perfect. They have plenty of problems. Originally my response was to the comment about the fact the former PM was shot in Japan.

No country is perfect and anyone who says otherwise is selling something

In reply to 93EXCivic :

Of course no country is perfect, and anybody selling anything as perfect is selling something.  But it highlights that people who want out will get out, no matter what their options are.  If you separated suicides from firearm deaths, removing guns will not stop them, they would just choose different methods.

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

In reply to 93EXCivic :

Of course no country is perfect, and anybody selling anything as perfect is selling something.  But it highlights that people who want out will get out, no matter what their options are.  If you separated suicides from firearm deaths, removing guns will not stop them, they would just choose different methods.

For some I think that's true, but not all. When I was in high school my best friend committed suicide. He showed no warning signs, had no mental illness. He came home late from a party with beer on his breath. He got into a nasty fight with his parents. He went to his room and killed himself with a gun. Of course hes not around to tell us his side of things, but I think it was an impulse thing, and I think if he didn't have access to a gun that night he would still be alive. 

That's the problem with guns, they just make killing so convenient. 

aircooled said:

A far better practical "lesson" to learn would be from countries with a good number of guns that have fewer gun deaths (if there is such a thing).

The US has about 2x as many guns per person as any other country, but the best examples might be Switzerland and Canada. They both have relatively high gun-to-person ratios by non-US standards, but then they both have pretty restrictive gun control laws, especially Switzerland.

The good news is that gun ownership inequality in the US is also high - there isn't at least one gun in every American home, there are a few gun hoarders with 20ft containers full of guns in the backyard driving up the average:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/19/us-gun-ownership-survey

Maybe it's not all good news though, because it means that the US' spectacular gun death numbers aren't so explainable by the number of guns in the country...

A gun buyback program could reduce the number of guns floating around, and better controls on gun sales could keep them from ending up in the wrong hands. Again, tried and proven solutions, should they be desired...

In reply to 93EXCivic :

In reply to bobzilla :

Why can't we look at other nations as a way to improve out own? Take the good things and make a better nation.

That sounds like a good idea, but only if you look at the other nation in totality. It's easy to pick one aspect and conclude that it works for them, without realizing all of the other differences that influence the outcome. In the Japanese example, it's easy to just say that they have strict gun laws and very little gun crime and assume that must be the solution. But that would be way overly simplistic. For example, they also have a vastly different criminal justice system. If you go to trial in Japan- which would not be a jury trial- it's pretty much a forgone conclusion that you are guilty. 99% conviction rate. And for those 1% that were found not guilty, there is evidence that the judge's careers are negatively affected by not guilty verdicts. Basically the prosecutor determines who is guilty pre trial the the court just confirms it. Try to implement that in America and the 2nd Amendment debates would look trivial. 

In reply to Boost_Crazy :

I agree culturally Japan is extremely different to the US but I don't know that I agree that we can dismiss things out of hand just because of that. Personally I have found people are more alike then different. But even discounting Japan, Australia, England and New Zealand aren't that different at least in my experience.

Boost_Crazy said:

In reply to 93EXCivic :

In reply to bobzilla :

Why can't we look at other nations as a way to improve out own? Take the good things and make a better nation.

That sounds like a good idea, but only if you look at the other nation in totality. It's easy to pick one aspect and conclude that it works for them, without realizing all of the other differences that influence the outcome. In the Japanese example, it's easy to just say that they have strict gun laws and very little gun crime and assume that must be the solution. But that would be way overly simplistic. For example, they also have a vastly different criminal justice system. If you go to trial in Japan- which would not be a jury trial- it's pretty much a forgone conclusion that you are guilty. 99% conviction rate. And for those 1% that were found not guilty, there is evidence that the judge's careers are negatively affected by not guilty verdicts. Basically the prosecutor determines who is guilty pre trial the the court just confirms it. Try to implement that in America and the 2nd Amendment debates would look trivial. 

The other side of that is that prosecutors will not press charges unless they are 100% sure that they have an airtight case, to prevent anybody from losing face.  So, many crimes go unprosecuted. They won't just arrest and let the courts sort it out.  If they followed that strategy in the US there would be far fewer people being prosecuted and far fewer trials.

It is my understanding that the idea of Japan being low crime etc. is partly due to cultural mores, and partly due to yakuza acting in a way as low level enforcers, so the police do not get involved.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

The other side of that is that prosecutors will not press charges unless they are 100% sure that they have an airtight case, to prevent anybody from losing face.  So, many crimes go unprosecuted. They won't just arrest and let the courts sort it out.  If they followed that strategy in the US there would be far fewer people being prosecuted and far fewer trials.

It is my understanding that the idea of Japan being low crime etc. is partly due to cultural mores, and partly due to yakuza acting in a way as low level enforcers, so the police do not get involved.

The other side of that is that prosecutors will not press charges unless they are 100% sure that they have an airtight case, to prevent anybody from losing face.  So, many crimes go unprosecuted. They won't just arrest and let the courts sort it out.  If they followed that strategy in the US there would be far fewer people being prosecuted and far fewer trials.

It is my understanding that the idea of Japan being low crime etc. is partly due to cultural mores, and partly due to yakuza acting in a way as low level enforcers, so the police do not get involved.

Yes, I thought I covered that when I said said that the prosecutor determines who is guilty, which is effectively their system. 

So, to summarize- organized crime keeps much of the lower level crime in check. I'm sure they have fair and judicial methods. Past that, the prosecutor gets to decide which cases to try- with the expectation that pretty much every case tried will return a guilty verdict. Not by a jury, but by a singular judge that can question the accused and witnesses themselves. And if they fail to reach a guilty verdict, it could affect their career. 
 

No thanks, I'll keep our flawed system of justice even if we doubled the gun deaths. 
 

We would definitely have less trials, but not for the reasons you think. In our system, a person is deemed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. By 12 jurors, with the requirement that all 12 strangers agree that the person is guilty. To everyone reading this, if you ever get the opportunity to serve on a jury, serve. It is eye opening. Could we reduce crime, and gun crime in particular, if we convicted more people? Sure we could! We let all kinds of guilty people go free under our system. Such is the trade off for putting so much emphasis on not convicting the innocent. 

Rather than lowering our standards and locking more people up- likely many innocent- how about we just keep the ones found guilty in prison for their full sentences? 

In reply to Boost_Crazy :

The way it was described to me was crazy things like, if they had a traffic camera do its job and they found that the license plate did not match the car, they would simply throw the picture/citation away rather than look into why a vehicle had falsified plates.  They could not be 100% certain what was going on, so they would ignore it rather than investigate.

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

That really comes back to the lack of training and funding of investigators and police. Not enough manpower makes it harder to do the job thoroughly. There's a lot of "that's not my job" mentality as well. 

In reply to GameboyRMH :

Keep in mind most firearm owners are leary of giving out information to strangers. I would not trust these polls to be all that accurate IMO. YMMV, IANAL, BBQ, BLT

gearheadmb said:

That's the problem with guns, they just make killing so convenient. 

They also make stopping the threat easier as well. 

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

So much of these discussions about what prosecutors do and don't do seem to be based on the idea they have unlimited budgets and manpower.  They do not. So while I will not disagree there are often politics involved in whether or not a questionable case gets advanced, there is also the simple economics of their situation: When you have limited resources, you have to pick and chose where to spend them.

bobzilla said:

gearheadmb said:

That's the problem with guns, they just make killing so convenient. 

They also make stopping the threat easier as well. 

Statistically. There is no threat.  It's made up to sell you guns. 
 

buut heart disease is kills 20x people as guns per year in this country.  That's a bigger threat.  Now to the treadmills!!!

cars kill less people than guns are they a threat?

Ian F (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

So much of these discussions about what prosecutors do and don't do seem to be based on the idea they have unlimited budgets and manpower.  They do not. So while I will not disagree there are often politics involved in whether or not a questionable case gets advanced, there is also the simple economics of their situation: When you have limited resources, you have to pick and chose where to spend them.

Oh, I don't disagree.  This also meshes with not wanting to lose face/not wanting to cause a judge to lose face.  If you can do that AND meet your budget, sounds like a win all around, doesn't it?

Fueled by Caffeine said:

bobzilla said:

In reply to 93EXCivic :

Completely different culture, laws, rules and access to firearms. I understand WHY you continue to try compare apples to bar bells. It suits the narrative you want to push. I get it. But it's not helpful to any sort of discussion. 

Benchmarking and using data from others is valid...  

it's how business and science works. 

I agree. Sort of.

There is nothing wrong with benchmarking data, but when it's done in a non-controlled environment, it may not give meaningful results. 
 

US vs Japan. It's possible (and probable) that fewer guns means less gun violence. 
 

It's also possible that cultural differences are the primary cause.  For example, Japan is a culture of rule-followers. The US is a culture of rule-breakers.  That's just who we are. We may be quite similar in our human desires and rights, but we are not similar in our cultural norms and expectations and actions.
 

There are multiple possible causes for the difference in the gun violence stats. It's most likely that the complete explanation for the difference has to do with multiple things. And there is no way to know what the primary cause is without a more scientific study in a controlled environment. 
 

So no. I don't agree that benchmarking the data is necessarily valid without an understanding of the causes behind the data. It MIGHT be "science", or it might be bias pushing an agenda. We can't assume we know why the data is different, we only know it is.