Not Entertainment

[ShadowHM]

First, I say this without anger, without rancor, and without malice, but if you are not a citizen of the USA, then you really have no say in the matter. And to judge the nation on the basis of extremists on either side is both insulting to the majority and wrong.

Hi Pete

And you did miss my point: that it was more than a bit over the top for kandrathe to make the statement he made about citizens of The Netherlands. I did respond with some rancor, as I did feel somewhat insulted. But no malice was intended.

[--Pete]

Hi,

And you did miss my point: that it was more than a bit over the top for kandrathe to make the statement he made about citizens of The Netherlands. I did respond with some rancor, as I did feel somewhat insulted. But no malice was intended.

Sorry, my bad (I can use that if you can use y'all ).

I thought you were making two separate points. The first, I had no disagreement with nor addition to make, so I simply did not address it. The second didn't seem connected to the first, and it was that which I addressed. Indeed, going back and looking at it again, I really don't see much more than a tenuous connection between the two.

BTW I hope you're having a good day and that your unusually high post rate is not an indicator of something bad happening. Indeed, I hope it's an indicator of something good.

--Pete

[Crusader]

Nor is allowing everyone to have guns. Why is a drug addict allowed to own a gun? Recipe for disaster if you ask me.

The reports don't say who the gun was registered to. Given all that we do know, it is quite likely that it was purchased illegally. Nevertheless if the adults were drilled as kids in gun safety, they wouldn't leave a loaded handgun sitting in plain sight with children playing nearby. Then again, they are stupid enough to get mixed up with cocaine so maybe they would.

If you want drugs, you can find drugs. If you want illegal weapons (machine guns, hand grenades, land mines), you can find them on the black market as well. As you've seen on the news... It's pretty easy to smuggle whatever you want across our southern border. They probably don't have that problem in the Netherlands, although, I'm sure even there, it is still easy enough for the criminal element to get whatever weapons they want. The difference is that people in the Netherlands accept the premise that they are the disarmed victims of crimes against their persons and property, and that gun ownership is merely for sport or hunting, not for killing people.

The philosophy of the 2nd amendment has always been to reasonably eliminate the differential in power between those that are armed, versus those who are unarmed. We give people the equal right to defend their lives, their property, and their families lives from anyone who would use illegal force to take that away from them (including a tyrannical government). Unfortunately, there is no intelligence test for reproduction, and stupid people will do stupid things with drugs, and guns, whether or not they are illegal. I would guess that she had the gun available to defend herself, which is ok. But, she endangered her child by leaving loaded weapons around, which is not ok. They might just have easily died by od'ing on her drugs laying around.

We've evolved into a culture which is loath to assign responsibility for negative outcomes to people's poor decisions. It's societies fault for permitting people to own guns, not her fault for choosing to own one, and leave it loaded where her kids can get to it.

That blog you linked to is a bit biased and in it's conclusion makes use of quite questionable math. It doesn't calculate the gun related wounded and dead in the equation, for example.

Nice link. Couple of things jump out: suicide is over 1/2 the total gun related deaths. Banning guns will probably not make much of a difference here, there still will be ropes, highway overpasses, exhaust fumes, etc. Then there's the fact that cars are much deadlier than guns. Seeing as how guns are meant to be deadly and cars aren't, maybe there's a lesson to be learned -- perhaps about drinking and driving, perhaps about actually needing to know how to drive before being issued a license, perhaps both.

I've read in other places that over half of all vehicle accidents involve some level of intoxication. It should be possible for vehicle computers to sense when someone is driving erratically, and unsafely.

The technology already exists actually, in the Netherlands we use alcohol locks for some repeat offenders. They have to blow in a pipe which measures their alcohol level before being able to start the car. Too much and it won't go. And yes, they can try getting someone else to blow, but this is a major deterrent nonetheless, field tests prove.

Hi,

And at the same time your culture clings to the 'we really really need our guns' meme, with all those differing rationale's offered, depending on who is doing the 'splaining this time.

Haven't we been around this Maypole before? Two things:

First, I say this without anger, without rancor, and without malice, but if you are not a citizen of the USA, then you really have no say in the matter. And to judge the nation on the basis of extremists on either side is both insulting to the majority and wrong.

I disagree there Pete. The USA has a democracy of sorts and in the end the majority decides. So apparently the majority of the USA wants their guns.

[Treesh]

I disagree there Pete. The USA has a democracy of sorts and in the end the majority decides. So apparently the majority of the USA wants their guns.

No, the majority of those who care enough to vote and possibly not the majority of the rest of the folks.

[--Pete]

Hi,

I disagree there Pete. The USA has a democracy of sorts and in the end the majority decides. So apparently the majority of the USA wants their guns.

It is not that simple. As I keep pointing out, the Second Amendment exists. That is a fact. To get rid of it would take another amendment. The process is governed by Article 5 of the Constitution which says in its entirety:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

So, you see, it takes 2/3 of Congress or 2/3 of the state legislatures to propose an amendment and 3/4 of the legislatures or state conventions to ratify it. Hardly simple majority. This is one of the consideration that most of the citizens of the USA and nearly everybody else is either ignorant of or choses to ignore.

If you look at the polls, then the split is typically pretty even. There are regional differences, and the numbers vary depending on how long it's been since the last school massacre, but roughly half of the population goes each way. So 2/3 and 3/4 majorities are probably pipe dreams.

--Pete

[kandrathe]

Furthermore, I am not from the Netherlands, but I would not be a 'disarmed victim' of crime - even if I had been held up at knife or gun point. Disarmed implies that somebody forced me to not own a gun. And, oddly enough, I do think that gun ownership is for hunting or target practice.

Yes, you can willingly be unarmed, but as a law abiding citizen you have no choice but to be disarmed. So, what does it matter that you choose to be disarmed, when even were you to choose the opposite, you'd still be disarmed by force. There have been a half a dozen times in my life where I was in potentially dangerous situations, where "predators" sought to victimize me. Only a couple of those times did I have the option of choosing to have a gun. But, both of them, (maybe stupidly) I chose to face them unarmed. In all of the situations I've been in, I was able to use my confidence, and powers of persuasion to get them to move on, or at least keep them occupied until law enforcement arrived. But, someday, I might just run into someone who can't be reasoned with, and who despite my powers of persuasion will be determined to cause harm. I can surrender to them, or fight to save my life, or the life of my family. I would like to have that choice.

And at the same time your culture clings to the 'we really really need our guns' meme, with all those differing rationale's offered, depending on who is doing the 'splaining this time.

Rationality isn't part of any culture, is it?

It certainly is ruled by the lowest common denominator. When society is as peaceful as your ideology, then there will be no need for these tools for killing in self defense. I would say we should start improving society from the bottom up, rather than regulating it from the top down. We share the same ideological goal, but I believe we differ in approach and methods. If only law abiding citizens possessed the guns, they would soon deteriorate from lack of use, or be dismissed as a waste of money. The problem with guns as killing tools is that they are used by the criminals, and evil forces in our society. We wouldn't transform hell into heaven by restricting the goodness of angels.

That blog you linked to is a bit biased and in it's conclusion makes use of quite questionable math. It doesn't calculate the gun related wounded and dead in the equation, for example.

Perhaps. The point of the blog was to show that the Netherlands is not without gun crime, and it is getting worse.

I've read in other places that over half of all vehicle accidents involve some level of intoxication. It should be possible for vehicle computers to sense when someone is driving erratically, and unsafely.

The technology already exists actually, in the Netherlands we use alcohol locks for some repeat offenders. They have to blow in a pipe which measures their alcohol level before being able to start the car. Too much and it won't go. And yes, they can try getting someone else to blow, but this is a major deterrent nonetheless, field tests prove.

They have it here too. But, it's not in every car and only deals with that one intoxicant. Better to have all cars computers sense recklessness, set off an alarm, slowly reduce speed, then shut off for an hour. That way, any intoxicant, road rage, feats of incompetence, or even sleep deprivation would trigger the shut down.

I disagree there Pete. The USA has a democracy of sorts and in the end the majority decides. So apparently the majority of the USA wants their guns.

In fact... In our State, we've had permits to carry hand guns for over five years with a corresponding decrease in violent crime. The US Congress is even working on legislation to enable reciprocity for states that allow carry permits. I don't have a carry permit and don't feel the need to have one, but if I worked in some of the seedy areas of town where I have in the past, I would probably get one.

[Crusader]

That blog you linked to is a bit biased and in it's conclusion makes use of quite questionable math. It doesn't calculate the gun related wounded and dead in the equation, for example.

Perhaps. The point of the blog was to show that the Netherlands is not without gun crime, and it is getting worse.

Won't deny that it's a rising problem. I just don't think that gun-related crime is higher here then in the States, relatively speaking. Problem is the amount is not measured in the same way in our respective countries, so it's hard to figure out how these our figures compare.

[kandrathe]

Won't deny that it's a rising problem. I just don't think that gun-related crime is higher here then in the States, relatively speaking. Problem is the amount is not measured in the same way in our respective countries, so it's hard to figure out how these our figures compare.

True, and true.

The other factor to consider is scale. The US crime rate is the sum of all the bad areas of all the municipalities, and there are just more bad areas in the US, and they are afflicted with more drug addiction, more gangs, more domestic violence, more racial issues, more illegal trafficking, and more poverty.

It would probably be best to choose an area of the US that is comparable to the Netherlands in population size and demographics to compare (80% white, 16 million people, ~$40K GDP per person). Probably some of the northern areas, such as near where I live would be close, although, we may have less population density. In Minnesota in 2009, there were a total of 69 (1/100K) criminal homicides in the state (a 27 year low), and 37 involved firearms. Typically, 1/4 of them are gang related, and 1/2 are related to domestic violence. In the Netherlands (2008), there were (~157) 1.11/100K people. So, the murder rate is pretty close really. I've looked and I can't find the percentage of the Dutch murders committed with firearms for comparison.

Circling back to our prior topic of the NAACP repudiating Tea Parties (and thereby Republicans)... The big push toward gun regulation began as a progressive movement to keep firearms out of the hands of black people, and later American Indians. Now, it's evolved from a progressive movement to keep guns out of the hands of the underprivileged (poor whites, blacks, Hispanics, etc.) The operative word in "Gun Control" is control. Control of the population by the elites who run our government. But, as I've said in other posts... The elitism of progressives is not limited to one particular political party. And, perhaps someday, people will wake up and demand that Teddy Roosevelt's image be scraped off of Mount Rushmore.

Robert Sherrill wrote in The Saturday Night Special, regarding the Gun Control Act of 1968, "The Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed not to control guns to but control blacks, and inasmuch as a majority of Congress did not want to do the former but were ashamed to show that their goal was the latter, the result was that they did neither. Indeed, this law, the first gun-control law passed by Congress in thirty years, was one of the grand jokes of our time."

[Jester]

It would probably be best to choose an area of the US that is comparable to the Netherlands in population size and demographics to compare (80% white, 16 million people, ~$40K GDP per person). Probably some of the northern areas, such as near where I live would be close, although, we may have less population density. In Minnesota in 2009, there were a total of 69 (1/100K) criminal homicides in the state (a 27 year low), and 37 involved firearms. Typically, 1/4 of them are gang related, and 1/2 are related to domestic violence. In the Netherlands (2008), there were (~157) 1.11/100K people. So, the murder rate is pretty close really. I've looked and I can't find the percentage of the Dutch murders committed with firearms for comparison.

Leaving aside for a minute your increasingly strange definition of "progressive", these numbers aren't quite right.

The homicide rate in The Netherlands is more like 0.92. If you take your 2008 murder number, 157, and divide by the approximate population of The Netherlands in 2008, 16.6 million, and you get a rate of 0.95 per 100k, not 1.11.

Similarly, if you take your number of 67 homicides (that seems very low - the recent historical average is more like 100, no?) in Minnesota, divided by the population of about 5.25 million, you end up with about 1.27 per 100k, not 1.0. (Edit: This is slightly wrong - 69 is the correct number, yielding a murder rate of 1.3/100k.)

You're right that these are not terribly dissimilar - both are among the safest places in the world to live. But even so, The Netherlands is safer, at least from being murdered. Your original numbers would show The Netherlands having 10% more murders per capita. By the correct numbers, the Dutch have 30% fewer.

-Jester

(That is, these numbers are correct assuming their source is correct, and that we are not comparing apples to oranges.)

[--Pete]

Hi,

. . . numbers . . .

Now, divide your calculated rates by the number of guns in each place. The inescapable conclusion is that guns are much safer in the USA than elsewhere. Which is why you can't have them and we can.

[For the challenged: the above is an example of sarcasm, and yes, you can quote it as such in English class. Especially if your teacher wears flowers in her hair.]

--Pete

[kandrathe]

Leaving aside for a minute your increasingly strange definition of "progressive", these numbers aren't quite right.

I was using Nationmaster (0.0111538 per 1,000). The Netherlands rate hovers above and below 1/100,000.

The 5.25 million number you are using for MN population was probably from the 2000 Census, whereas current projections are upwards of about 5.6 million, but somewhere around 1/100,000 seems right. I'm just citing exactly what is listed from my source, "The crime rate for homicide in 2009 was 1 per 100,000 population." on page 16.

There are still a few rough neighborhoods, where poverty, gangs, drugs, and crime are more prevalent, but generally, things are safer than they ever have been around here.

[kandrathe]

The inescapable conclusion is ...

Actually, to be fair, the inescapable conclusion is that there is no correlation between gun population and homicide rates. If you look at segments of populations around the world you will find areas with high/high, high/low, low/high, and low/low. So, what gun advocates do is grab the area with lot's of guns and low crime and say, "See! More guns = less crime.", while gun-control nuts will grab the opposites and say "See! More guns = more crime."

As wannabe social scientists, the best we can do is to show the correlations of; crime rate to poverty, poverty to drug abuse, drug abuse to crime, and crime to homicide. Guns are tools that make homicide easier. You very rarely hear about a drive by knifing. Also consider, drunkenness is a freely available substance highly linked to violent crime.

And... If gun-control people were to advocate local gun free zones for high crime areas... that actually makes sense... we don't keep gasoline in an area prone to fire. Kind of like the taming of Dodge City, and checking your guns in with the local Sheriff. Perhaps "well regulated militia" means that guns should be acceptable when securing the peace, and should be restricted from those who would use them criminally (or those areas with high crime rates). I still wouldn't want the potential victims of a violent crimes to be denied their rights of self protection.

[Jester]

I was using Nationmaster (0.0111538 per 1,000). The Netherlands rate hovers above and below 1/100,000.

Well, I was just using your numbers and dividing by the known population. Not sure how nationmaster does it, nor for what year that is. It's higher than any other statistic I've seen, although none are very high.

The 5.25 million number you are using for MN population was probably from the 2000 Census, whereas current projections are upwards of about 5.6 million, but somewhere around 1/100,000 seems right. I'm just citing exactly what is listed from my source, "The crime rate for homicide in 2009 was 1 per 100,000 population." on page 16.

They may have been rounding - precisely 1 per 100,000 is a conveniently exact number. 1.27 per 100,000 is not totally dissimilar (it would mean only 14 extra murders) but when comparing degrees of safety amongst extremely safe countries, 0.27 is quite a lot.

My Minnesota population number of 5.25 million was from Wikipedia, which apparently took their numbers from the US Census Bureau. That is what pops up when you google "minnesota population", from the same source. They give the year 2000 number as 4.9 million. I have not seen 5.6 million anywhere.

There are still a few rough neighborhoods, where poverty, gangs, drugs, and crime are more prevalent, but generally, things are safer than they ever have been around here.

True. In fact, crime almost everywhere has been decreasing steadily for a long time, in the big picture. There are occasional blips, and things like population density to account for, but in the first world, you're less likely to be murdered today than at just about any point in history.

-Jester

[kandrathe]

My Minnesota population number of 5.25 million was from Wikipedia, which apparently took their numbers from the US Census Bureau. That is what pops up when you google "minnesota population", from the same source. They give the year 2000 number as 4.9 million. I have not seen 5.6 million anywhere.

Digging around more, I find that 5.6 is probably too high. But, 5.3 to 5.4 is more likely.

[Jester]

Digging around more, I find that 5.6 is probably too high. But, 5.3 to 5.4 is more likely.

Do you have a better source than the US Census population estimate? Until I have something better, I'm going with a 2009 population of 5,266,214.

-Jester

[kandrathe]

Digging around more, I find that 5.6 is probably too high. But, 5.3 to 5.4 is more likely.

Do you have a better source than the US Census population estimate? Until I have something better, I'm going with a 2009 population of 5,266,214.

http://www.demography.state.mn.us/

[Rhydderch Hael]

I've read in other places that over half of all vehicle accidents involve some level of intoxication. It should be possible for vehicle computers to sense when someone is driving erratically, and unsafely.

Of course, the very first cars using such a feature will eventually kill its occupants, even if they weren't intoxicated.

First thing the designer of such a feature must understand, yet won't, is the possibility that the operator is driving erractically in order to avoid the drunken schmuck who is also driving erratically. Of course, the drunk is in an 1989 Escort with torn seats whilst the other is in a brand-new 2015 Magisterial which will override the panicked driver's clearly irrational maneuvers and continue straight along the intended path per GPS calculations and cold computer logic.

Of course, the 2016 model will include the fix. Which won't help the folks who demonstrated the need for such a refinement in the first place.

[Jester]

http://www.demography.state.mn.us/

That gives us 5,300,942, changing our murder rate to... 1.30 per 100,000.

(Apparently, I previously misread and miscalculated on the basis of 67, rather than 69, murders. The population difference between 5.25 and 5.3 doesn't change results.)

-Jester

[Kevin]

Of course, the very first cars using such a feature will eventually kill its occupants, even if they weren't intoxicated.

First thing the designer of such a feature must understand, yet won't, is the possibility that the operator is driving erractically in order to avoid the drunken schmuck who is also driving erratically. Of course, the drunk is in an 1989 Escort with torn seats whilst the other is in a brand-new 2015 Magisterial which will override the panicked driver's clearly irrational maneuvers and continue straight along the intended path per GPS calculations and cold computer logic.

Of course, the 2016 model will include the fix. Which won't help the folks who demonstrated the need for such a refinement in the first place.

I hope you were being sarcastic. The most likely scenario is that, like what happens with remote kill switches now, the car will pull off the road, and turn off the engine and refuse to restart for X time and / or until the breath sensing unit is re-used. Pulling off the road to avoid a drunk driver is still a very viable option and one that I personally have used successfully before.

[kandrathe]

http://www.demography.state.mn.us/

That gives us 5,300,942, changing our murder rate to... 1.30 per 100,000.(Apparently, I previously misread and miscalculated on the basis of 67, rather than 69, murders. The population difference between 5.25 and 5.3 doesn't change results.)

The more I look at the Wiki data, the more I think it is projected from prior years. The note on the NL source says, "Nieuwbeerta, Paul; Gerlof Leistra. "Moord en doodslag in Nederland, 1992–2001" (in Dutch) (PDF). Centraal bureau voor de statistiek. p. 26. http://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/menu/themas/mens...922001.htm. Retrieved 2006-12-08."

So, how do we trust the unusually low numbers reported past 2006.