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You don't have to look far for news stories of accidental shootings.
Now I'm all for social Darwinism - But guns are a risk that some seem to live in denial over....

correct, negligence has existed since the dawn of time
the stakes are raised when negligence involves dangerous objects (pools, cars, guns, medical devices in operating rooms, etc)

not sure why you have it in your head that i am in denial of that - im not
you seem to be in denial that it is the person rather than the object

but to each his own

Granted that nothing is dangerous until misused or an accident occurs. Thermonuclear warheads are totally benign when handled properly – yet citizens are not permitted to buy them at Walmart.

GJ, do you feel that guns are as safe as any other common household item?

the classic nuclear hyperbole talking point will do nothing to further anyones argument here and i recommend we leave the ridiculous in the ridiculous category.

as to your question, other household items like clorox, candles, kitchen knives, stairways, banana peels (jk), etc?

i group inanimate objects in the same category. that doesnt negate the fact that there is danger in their use or misuse. a car is much more dangerous than a pencil eraser and i hope that it would be treated as such. in the same vein, firearms require (imo) a certain respect and care/precaution if they are to be in the household. it is a big responsibility with potentially deadly results, on a similar level to backyard pools (which i believe "kill" the most children yearly), cars, etc.

you can load your favorite pistol up, set it on the coffee table, and if no one ever touches it it will never do anything. if the kids (or an unfamiliar adult) get ahold of it and start to play with it then the results are likely to be very bad.

For the record, I did have to pass a Federal background check as did anyone else in IN.


With all due respect, you can eliminate ALL loopholes and it won't stop the criminally corrupt or " crazy person " from killing with them. How do we as a society balance this issue when we know for a fact that Legal to own gun purchasers willingly buy ( guns ) and then give or sell them to convicted criminals? It's always the law abiding citizenry that loses a little more of our freedoms to adjust for the corrupt criminals in the long run. And don't fool yourself into believing for one split second that Obummer gives two craps about people dying by the gun....he's just using it as an excuse to en-crouch further on our rights.

And to honestly answer your last Q my friend....under this POTUS and Hillary.....absolutely Nothing!!!

the reason people are against universal background checks, or at least the main one, is that it is defacto registration. a list of all guns and who bought/sold them is too powerful for a corrupt (read any) goverment to wield.

i dont think a gun is always the answer or is the answer for all people
like a car, pool, etc it is a responsibility that is not for everyone

the difference with me and obummer is i think people should be allowed to make their own decisions rather than the corrupt statists who "know" what is best for you and everyone else

Who compared a rubber to a nuclear warhead ?

Please explain to us exactly how universal background checks will lower the firearms related homocide rate. If anyone can make a coherent case showing how a background check will keep firearms out of the hands of the groups of people who are statistically reponsible for 85% of all firearm homocides, I'll be in the front of the line demanding universal background checks.

Hang on Anthony... An argument can be made that any action which would reduce the total number of guns available would have a correlating reduction in gun related homicides. (This is only logical as a reduction in the total number of guns available will increase the difficulty in illegally obtaining a gun) Some of this reduction in gun related homicides would be replaced with knife or rock related homicides but since it is harder to kill someone with these items you would see a reduction in homicides.

Now I would argue that reducing homicides is a really boring goal and no reason whatsoever to restrict gun ownership... But that's just my opinion.

There are more than 375 million privately owned firearms in the US. If someone wants a firearm they can easily be had without a background check.

Still waiting....

... Dude. The number currently in circulation is only relevant if you're suggesting that it exceeds saturation (which would mean there are more guns than there is demand for the guns... You'd see a significant price decrease at this point). I'm not even saying what the magnitude of the reduction would be, but physics suggests that you'd see a decrease. I don't think that's a reason to take away a person's right to anti-aircraft weaponry, but to make the argument that it would have no impact on gun related homicides is simply flying in the face of logic.

I don't see why everyone is so afraid to say "sure there may be a couple extra homicides a year, but that's acceptable to be able to have the right to have personal protection grenades"...

Of course your question was a dodge of Speyside's questions, Andrew.

Duck, perry, forte, lunge.....

I think the subject was how to keep firearms out of the hands of those who are suffering "diminished capacity".
Any thoughts?

It's implied.

Your assumption that "the guns" are being circulated and used in equal distributions in homicides is incorrect. Limiting the number of guns does nothing if they aren't the ones responsible for the murders. The ones responsible for the murders make up an extraordinarily small amount in relation to the whole and are in the hands of those who are hardest to take them from. So yea, I don't agree with your logic or your assertion that it "isn't complicated" or that it is linear as you are suggesting.

Anthony... I like the way you think.
Grenades! The new landmines!

Nice try to save face

You are the one saying it isn't complicated remember

It isn't. Look at it as two groups. Legally purchased guns uused in crime and illegally acquired guns used in crime. If you make it harder to legally purchase a gun, fewer people will have legally purchased them and there will be a lower chance that someone will have a gun on hand for these incidents. May only be 1% lower, but it's still lower. Additionally, with fewer legally purchased guns available, there are fewer homes or other locations to illegally steal a gun for, making it harder to illegally obtain a gun and raising the cost and risk in obtaining one, therefore reducing the number of them (even if only by 1%).

With no other changes in the system, any regulation restricting legal gun purchases will have some reduction in guns used in crime. Work it out yourself... Plot a graph... X axis is number of crimes committed by guns, y axis is the number of guns in circulation (total)... We know the current state, and we know with zero guns in circulation you will have zero gun crime. The line has to get from the one point to the other... Unless you want to argue a local maxima or a current satuated state, there will be some reduction.

Sorry bud but I don't really care about what you want and I don't think you are as smart as you seem to be suggesting you are while backhandedly calling everyone else stupid. You throw the word logically around a lot to act as if there is no other possible argument but that doesn't make it so.

Nothing against you or those who think like you but I just don't have the energy tonight to care about this argument. You keep saying "let's be honest," so let's be honest: you know nothing about me or what I think and should quit trying to paint me with your broad brush.

(Why am I doing this?!?)
You assume too much and too little in your equation all at the same time. You fail to account for murders that may be prevented by armed law abiding gun owners and are also assuming that the guns the bad guys use magically leave circulation when used or just disintegrate somehow. Further, you assume that the only way for bad guys to get guns is theft, ignoring the global economy, porous borders and illegal manufacture. Further, you fail to recognize the increased opportunity cost of being a criminal surrounded by an armed citizenry. Finally, I do not run my graphs out to infonity because I do not feel it is a realistic timeline. So no, I don't agree with your oversimplified hypothetical no matter how "logical" you think it is with your "basic concepts" and "common sense." You are making a guess based on your world view but an equally logical argument would be that, given the incredible quantity of guns in this country already, the number of gun murders would increase as the proportion of armed good guys:bad guys decreases. And guess what, neither of us has proof and neither of us is less logical.

In the midst of all these unproven hypotheticals are honest, law abiding citizens who deserve a lot better than to be left defenseless against the underbelly of this nation. Life is valuable. That is the ideal I adhere to.

You are probably a nice guy, heck, we would probably have a lot of fun over a couple beers and a smoke, but your style of argument with your endless inferences that what you are saying is so logical and obvious that only an absolute moron could disagree reminds me of every liberal news station and talking point and I want to puke.

I am sure that you will tell me how ignorant I am being despite the irrefutable facts and osmosis and the law of causality and gravitational pull and what not but I am going to leave this conversation here. I've been at this freedom thing a long time and wasting my breath isn't on tonight's agenda.

Not a riddle, you're smarter than that. Do you really believe that felons will not possess a firearm simply because there is a law prohibiting it?

Victor technically you're correct. But, you and reality are miles away. I respect the fact that as a scientist you look at things in black and white. But, like an accountant you're ignoring the intangibles. The point is that if not another firearm was sold there are still more than 375 million personally owned firearms in the US. I can assure you that you can buy an unregistered, stolen firearm within 50 pages of your front door.

How successful have laws regarding scheduled drugs been in keeping them off the streets? The same people selling illicit drugs are the ones selling guns.

Not if you shot it at your assailant when they were still 40 yards away from you. :) First strike personal defense grenades. :)

because you're a masochist... either way I appreciate your thought out response. It's more interesting than what I usually see here.


What percentage of gun related homicide do you think is prevented by armed law abiding gun owners? Remember, this number wouldn't "disappear" it would only be reduced by the amount the regulation reduced gun ownership.


the US produces approximately 3.5MM guns per year for sale within the US. Assuming the number of guns remains somewhat constant, there is a reduction of approximately 1% of the firearms annually (I don't know where they go)... If all gun sales were to magically stop, the number of guns in circulation will decrease by that amount annually (incidentally, that percentage will reduce as the number of guns in circulation goes down... ) so no I don't think that all guns will magically disappear. The model simply has a point where there are no guns... this is not the same as saying that this will be achieved.

This is a good point. Regulations will have a bigger impact on local production (3.5MM annually) and illegally obtained local guns, and a lower impact on illegally imported guns. Unfortunately, I cannot find any data on number of illegally imported guns into the US. All searches pull up illegally exported guns from the US to Mexico and Canada. I can't tell you what sort of numbers we are dealing with there, but I will agree that if US regulations removed all local production of guns, some percentage could be imported illegally.

I think you're over-estimating the ambition of a criminal. I don't have the numbers, but it seems to me that most armed crime isn't just betting on the victim being unarmed. When you burgle a home you don't just plan on the victim being unarmed, you plan on them being away, or remaining asleep. The goal isn't an armed conflict. Similarly, if you mug a victim you don't wait until they prove to be armed before pointing your gun at them. The only crime I can think of that the criminal knowingly takes a risk of the victims being armed is the robbery of businesses with multiple victims/witnesses on the presence (ie convenience stores/restaurants)....

The point isn't to make a realistic timeline. the point is to show the known endpoint. We know that if there are zero guns in the US, there will be zero gun homicides... (we simply have to accept this as fact... you cannot have guns homicide without guns.) We also know that at the current number of guns (approximately 300MM) we have 11K gun homicides annually. We know that a line has to go between those two points on a graph, covering the entire spectrum of guns available. The line can be linear, it can be a power function, exponential... it can have a local maxima, which I believe you are suggesting... but the line has to travel through the two known points.
That only would work as a local maxima. I would posit that the increased crime you believe you would see from the reduced number of armed citizens would never exceed the reduced number of homicides from reduced guns... especially when you consider there are the homicides committed by what are currently legally obtained guns....

You seem to be unwilling to read what I write... I have zero interest in leaving "honest, law abiding citizens" defenseless. This is not a joke. Let them arm themselves with whatever they can get under the sun. That doesn't absolve us from making an honest assessment of the numbers.

Don't assume I'm a nice guy. But I am a lot of fun. Unless you're homeless.

I think I said that somewhere above.