Posts by Bart Janssen
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Danielle,
You know how I feel about essentialism, Bart.
Fair call. But the fundamental biological differences between those with and without high levels of testosterone are clear. If you want to modulate testosterone driven behaviour you must acknowledge it is real.
That is not to say you can't modify that behaviour but approaching it from the perspective that boys and girls are the same in this regard is a quick path to failure.
Flip side of it, ignoring the possibility of female violence is also unrealistic.
Bearing all that in mind, making it illegal for men to own guns or be in the possession of guns would be and effective if completely impractical solution that of course does not address the core problem you identified.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
I am asserting that the fact that the second amendment doesn’t define arms is not a basis for concluding that the Congress can do whatever it wants.
My point is simply that because the definition of "arms" clearly includes some weapons and excludes others then Congress et al could enact a gun control law that excluded semi automatic weapons from 2nd amendment protection. Very similar to several such laws that already exist in several states. Such a law would be challenged of course and eventually find its way to the supremem court where based on previous decisions it would probably stand.
Hence it is not true to say the 2nd amendment prevents Congress et al from enacting gun control laws.
Note this is the kind of argument you get in Texas. It is a complete distraction from the point.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Graeme Edgeler,
Your understanding on US Constitutional law is mistaken. It simply doesn’t work like that.
This first amendment doesn’t define speech, but that doesn’t mean that the Congress is empowered to say that flag-burning is not speech and therefore not protected.
No. It isn't mistaken. Congress et al can and has at various times defined what reasonably constitutes "arms". Nobody in the US is allowed to own an attack helicopter fully loaded with all the weaponry, they are not "arms" for a well regulated militia.
Such a law could be challenged and eventually the supreme court would rule on it. Since in this case the supreme court has already ruled that numerous state laws controlling guns are legal it is fairly safe to say that congress et al could enact gun control laws that would not breach the second amendment.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Russell Brown,
here’s the DATA
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/01/the-geography-of-gun-deaths/69354/
And while correlation is not causation who the F cares when an action like forcing people to use gun safe will reduce (directly or indirectly) gun deaths.
One really interesting part of that data is there is no significant correlation between mental health (difficult to measure) and gun deaths.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Danielle,
Why are these shooters pretty much always dudes?
Testosterone. The same wonderful hormone that allows me to reach the top shelf and take the lids of jars also cause my brain to consider violence as a reasonable action.
It takes a lot of work to defeat that hormone.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Tom Semmens,
The only way a gun ban of any sort could be imposed by the US Federal government is by amending the constitution ...
That is not true. The 2nd amendment does not define "arms". It would relatively little political effort to make handguns and semiautomatic weapons of any sort illegal. Leaving hunting rifles and single action shotguns as the only legal "arms".
The whole point of the 2nd amendment is to allow a regulated militia to exist to defend against a corrupt government. One could argue quite logically that such a militia should have access to armoured vehicles and helicopter gunships and surface to air missiles since the expectation is the militia would have to fight against the (corrupt) government armed forces (hey they might need tac nukes too). Since the "regulated militia" does not have access to such silly weaponry there is no reason to allow them access to handguns (pointless in any uprising against a government anyway) and semiautomatic weapons (also pretty much useless against artillary and air power c.f. Syria).
Again it is worth noting that many states already have strong restrictions on the "arms" you can bear. Those restrictions have stood up against NRA lawyers in court.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
Someone must have graphed
Here ya go
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/01/the-geography-of-gun-deaths/69354/
Note the strong negative correlation between trigger locks assault,weapon bans and safe gun storage rules versus gun deaths.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to James Caygill,
Societies can and do change – including the US.
Also worth noting each state in the US has different laws. So it's easy to have really different gun laws. That allows some states to "trial" more rigorous gun laws and demonstrate that the end of the world didn't immediately occur.
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Hard News: Cultures and violence, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
I will concede that this latest incident is probably as much a failure of mental health systems as gun control systems.
There are two parts to that.
First yes the violence was probably a failure of healthcare, something every country struggles with.
Second the fact that access to guns was so easy meant he could kill so many so quickly.
Guns make it incredibly easy to kill, so what might have been an act of violence becomes an act of murder.
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I'm not sure I believe the US is inherently more violent. But I just don't know. My experiences living in Texas, California and Arizona showed me that sometimes certain groups in the US can have extreme views. Because of the size of the country it's fairly easy for a whole town to develop extreme views on what is normal and right. Anyone who disagrees can move away.
What I do know is the data shows that the access to guns and handguns in particular, means that when violence does occur it is likely to be lethal.
What the data also shows is that, like NZ, in most cases the violence is either self-directed or directed at ones family. The NIH has done comparisons between US and Canadian cities and concluded that owning a gun, particularly a handgun, is an enormous health risk to you and your family.
Where there is a huge cultural difference between NZ and the US is around the concepts of freedom. For many Americans there is an unquestioning association between freedom and gun ownership. In some of the places I lived it was a concept that could not be questioned. It was like trying to explain that the sky is blue to someone who insists it is green.
But there are very many Americans who hold what we would think are perfectly normal and reasonable attitudes to violence and guns. It is a big diverse country and it is difficult to generalise.
Circular rambling comment is circular and rambling.