Jovan Belcher and Gun Control

[KI4MVP]

Where is this 88.82 number coming from?

That is total guns in the country divided by the number of people.

 

[chrisrich91]

That is total guns in the country divided by the number of people.

Oh, so it's a misleading and completely worthless number. Gotcha

 

[ChicagoCavFan]

http://www.gallup.com/poll/150353/self-reported-gun-ownership-highest-1993.aspx

 

[kosis]

Any info yet on why Belcher might have done this?

 

[Otsego Mar]

KI, thank you for your posts. Unfortunately, it appears that you are out of your element on this topic. You make it clear that you are not in favor guns.

 

[MalTalm]

Not to be crass, but even by going off the numbers listed by KI in support of gun control, one thing stands out:

As of now, 3 people in 100,000 are victims of homicide due to gun-related death. Or roughly .003% of the population each year.
The US homicide rate per 100,000 people is somewhere between .0056% and .0059% of the population each year.

There are quite a few interesting things to note in there. Right now in America, half of our homicides are gun related, while half are not. The percentage of people dying due to gun use is incredibly low, and it would be interesting to extrapolate just how far the homicide rate might drop even in a gun-free world. How many people who murdered with guns would have found other ways to kill their victim if they didn't have a gun at their disposal? We can debate it a great deal, but the number won't be 0. Also, how many homicide victims were involved in criminal activity at the time of their shooting? IE drug-related or robbery. Again, I don't have the data, but I would expect it to be at least 50%.

The numbers just aren't damning. We make a big deal about crime on the national news, but this is actually a very safe country for most people to live in. The death rates just aren't that high nationally. Now, there is no doubt that life in the streets of Washington DC are more dangerous than those in rural North Carolina, but it seems that guns are being used as the straw man. The real issue behind crime and homicide is poverty, poor education, and unemployment or poor employment. We raise the standard of living for the lower class, we will see a decline in criminal activity. It's been working for the past 20 years.

 

[davedugan43]

This isn't, in my opinion, a gun control issue in the first place. I believe, from the evidence that has been presented to me, that Jovan Belcher was severely depressed, and planned on taking his own life anyway. His girlfriend's murder was an additional act that, yes, was very selfish and unnecessary. Leaving a 3 month-old child parentless is a horrible act of violence and stupidity. Despite the depression I believe Belcher clearly suffered from, if his initial intention WAS to kill his girlfriend, then he had many ways to do so. If a professional athlete wants a gun, chances are, he will be able to acquire one.

Coming from someone who is severely clinically depressed and has had many of the same thoughts that Belcher likely had, I can honestly say that I believe this isn't an issue of his planning to kill Kassandra Perkins and then, out of panic, kill himself at Arrowhead. I believe it's the other way around. Bottom line for me is: I don't believe it's a gun control issue. I believe it's a depression issue.

 

[The Oi]

The rate of private gun ownership per 100 people
United States 88.82
United Kingdom is 6.72

The annual rate of firearm homicide per 100,000 population
United States 2.98
United Kingdom 0.03

the non firearm murder rate is roughly the same between the two countries

That is total guns in the country divided by the number of people.

The way you presented this statistic suggests that almost 9/10 people in the US are gun owners. I mean...just logically, I'd dismiss this as being ridiculous. If you're dividing the amount of people in the United States by the amount of guns, you're using an extremely misleading statistic. The large majority of guns in this country, I'd venture a guess, are owned by the same people. As in...gun collectors and hunters who never commit gun related crimes. Maybe if you wanted to provide a rate of how many hunters or self-proclaimed "collectors" have committed gun crimes...perhaps that would be useful to indicate the danger of those two groups of people.

But dividing the amount of people in the country by the amount of guns to suggest 90% of people in America are gun owners is ridiculous. And comparing it to Britain because they're "most similar" doesn't really make sense to me either. Similar how? English speaking? Culturally?

Each gun-related crime would have a constellation of factors attached to it (personality of the gun owner, previous threats, other weapons owned, how it was obtained) that should be considered to evaluate whether disallowing guns or further restricting them would reduce crime in the United States and more specifically, the crime in question. Analyzing whether the gun crime was gang related, committed by a gun collector, attached to a mass murder, accidental, etc etc would be much more helpful. Not dividing people in the US by the total amount of guns that have been purchased here.

You should know better than that and I think you probably do.

 

[KI4MVP]

The way you presented this statistic suggests that almost 9/10 people in the US are gun owners. I mean...just logically, I'd dismiss this as being ridiculous. If you're dividing the amount of people in the United States by the amount of guns, you're using an extremely misleading statistic. The large majority of guns in this country, I'd venture a guess, are owned by the same people. As in...gun collectors and hunters who never commit gun related crimes. Maybe if you wanted to provide a rate of how many hunters or self-proclaimed "collectors" have committed gun crimes...perhaps that would be useful to indicate the danger of those two groups of people.

But dividing the amount of people in the country by the amount of guns to suggest 90% of people in America are gun owners is ridiculous. And comparing it to Britain because they're "most similar" doesn't really make sense to me either. Similar how? English speaking? Culturally?

Each gun-related crime would have a constellation of factors attached to it (personality of the gun owner, previous threats, other weapons owned, how it was obtained) that should be considered to evaluate whether disallowing guns or further restricting them would reduce crime in the United States and more specifically, the crime in question. Analyzing whether the gun crime was gang related, committed by a gun collector, attached to a mass murder, accidental, etc etc would be much more helpful. Not dividing people in the US by the total amount of guns that have been purchased here.

You should know better than that and I think you probably do.

I found the stat and didn't look into it's meaning until the question was asked. But pretty much the same thing can be said about the UK version of the stat, that people owning guns are likely to own more than one, so the actual percentage there is lower too.

Similar culturally except for the gun issue. Do you have a better suggestion for a comparable country where there is strict gun control?

 

[KI4MVP]

This isn't, in my opinion, a gun control issue in the first place. I believe, from the evidence that has been presented to me, that Jovan Belcher was severely depressed, and planned on taking his own life anyway. His girlfriend's murder was an additional act that, yes, was very selfish and unnecessary. Leaving a 3 month-old child parentless is a horrible act of violence and stupidity. Despite the depression I believe Belcher clearly suffered from, if his initial intention WAS to kill his girlfriend, then he had many ways to do so. If a professional athlete wants a gun, chances are, he will be able to acquire one.

Coming from someone who is severely clinically depressed and has had many of the same thoughts that Belcher likely had, I can honestly say that I believe this isn't an issue of his planning to kill Kassandra Perkins and then, out of panic, kill himself at Arrowhead. I believe it's the other way around. Bottom line for me is: I don't believe it's a gun control issue. I believe it's a depression issue.

if he didn't have a gun, his girlfriend very likely wouldn't be dead.

 

[Otsego Mar]

if he didn't have a gun, his girlfriend very likely wouldn't be dead.

This statement is extremely short-sighted..ignorant, even.

 

[Maximus]

But if someone has the drive and desire to commit murder or mass murder, no amount of control is going to stop them from getting the weapons needed to do it.

3D Printer technology is improving at a geometric rate. Prices of 3D printers are also falling. A decade from now I would imagine a lot of homes will have 3D printers. It will be interesting to see the impact 3D printers have on certain businesses. People will start making things they need at home if the price of the printer material/composites are cheaper than the product they are trying to make. You can make basically anything that you can find a CAD drawing of or that you can scan. You can make a lower receiver for a gun(the only regulated part) with a 3D printer...probably in under an hour.

I guess my main point is, that the time is coming where people will be able to print themselves a glock or two while they are watching a cavs game.




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[KI4MVP]

KI, thank you for your posts. Unfortunately, it appears that you are out of your element on this topic. You make it clear that you are not in favor guns.

out of my element because i think it's a bad idea to make it easier for people to kill other people, which results in avoidable deaths? How many things like the Jovan Belcher incident or the dark knight rises theater massacre or the Virginia Tech shootings could be avoided if guns weren't so pervasive in our society. Delonte West in his mad motorcycle incident didn't get arrested because he was driving with all of those weapons, he got arrested because he was in the wrong state. People made jokes about the Arenas/Crittenton gun incident, now Crittenton is awaiting trial for murder. And the person he killed wasn't the person he intended to shoot.

 

[MalTalm]

out of my element because i think it's a bad idea to make it easier for people to kill other people, which results in avoidable deaths? How many things like the Jovan Belcher incident or the dark knight rises theater massacre or the Virginia Tech shootings could be avoided if guns weren't so pervasive in our society. Delonte West in his mad motorcycle incident didn't get arrested because he was driving with all of those weapons, he got arrested because he was in the wrong state. People made jokes about the Arenas/Crittenton gun incident, now Crittenton is awaiting trial for murder. And the person he killed wasn't the person he intended to shoot.

But you left out things like the Oklahoma City Bombing; an act of terrorism done without the utilization of firearms. The death of Jovan Belcher's girlfriend is certainly a debatable one in the gun control argument. If Jovan didn't have a gun, would he have killed her? He was certainly big enough to have choked her to death, or he could have used a knife, bat, etc. But it's certainly possible she may have been wounded and not killed. However, the examples such as the dark knight incident or VT shootings are poor ones. In those cases, people set out with a premeditated desire to kill many people. You don't need guns for that. It was the medium they operated by, but taking guns out of society won't prevent murderous acts from people such as those when they intend to kill people.

I still think that the number of homicides in this country is ridiculously low, and we're debating a topic which simply isn't a serious problem in our society.

 

[The Oi]

I found the stat and didn't look into it's meaning until the question was asked. But pretty much the same thing can be said about the UK version of the stat, that people owning guns are likely to own more than one, so the actual percentage there is lower too.

:chuckles:


Come on now...get outta here with that crap. There's absolutely no way you believe that being this imprecise in a statistical argument is going to get us anywhere. "Didn't look into it's meaning" + "PRETTY MUCH the same thing," + "LIKELY to own more than one" = "ACTUAL percentage?"

No chance you believe that. I'm done arguing against that statistic because I'm going to assume you know the flaw in it and that anyone else that read your posts does as well. Your other statements bear a lot more weight anyways.

Similar culturally except for the gun issue.

Similar culturally how? Similar cuisine? Similar language? Similar classes? Similar health care system? What exactly is similar about the two countries that we can correlate with gun crime in some fashion?

Do you have a better suggestion for a comparable country where there is strict gun control?

My suggestion is not to compare to other countries at all. On the surface, comparing two different countries laws seems to make sense, but in many cases is just an argument in futility. We're talking about different constitutions, different cultures, different crime rates, etc, etc. Sure, it seems like you could just say, "Country A has gun law Z" and "Country B has gun law Y" and thus Country A's gun gun crime rate is lesser because Gun Law Z is stricter than Gun Law Y and thus there are fewer gun crimes. People compare legalities in different countries because it seems like an easy way to make things black and white. But that's just not how people- namely criminals- work. People do not operate in black and white. They operate based on how and where they were raised and what they were taught.

I think the best comparisons could be made internally- that is- within the United States. You're better off comparing socio-economic factors as they relate to gun crimes. Are gun crimes in the United States committed more often in urban areas or rural areas? By hispanics, whites, blacks, asians, etc? By the poor or the rich? By gangs or individuals? By the mentally ill or the perfectly sane? Drug related or not tied to drugs? Accidental or intentional?

You need to look at who is committing the crimes and why. If it's tied more to socio-economics than national cultures, then you need to look into the groups of people that are committing the crimes and evaluating whether laws are going to change their behavior. In this case, I believe your argument is that the behavior we want to change is gun ownership. My argument is that the behavior we want to change is killing people with a gun.

My concern is that the people committing these gun crimes are going to commit the crimes anyway and will find a means to commit it because of a flaw inherent to them, not in the system.

if he didn't have a gun, his girlfriend very likely wouldn't be dead.

Probably true. But if he wanted his girlfriend dead...he'd have gotten a gun. If he hadn't have been an inherently flawed human being, his girlfriend very likely wouldn't be dead either.