(12-17-2012 11:24 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(12-17-2012 10:56 PM)chapel hill owl Wrote:  Nicely put. Capitalism is great stuff and all, but it's just profit maximizing. It doesn't seek solutions that are both profit maximizing and sustainable. Or maximize profits and social benefits.

Which, of course, explains why life in the Soviet Union was so much better than life in the United States.

Actually, it's government that doesn't look at solutions that are both utility maximizing and sustainable. For politicians, it's what can we squeeze out of it between now and the next election. And for bureaucrats, it's all about consolidating power, with little or no regard for results.

If you look at the long term instead of the short term, profit maximization requires sustainability.

Note that I first said that "capitalism is great stuff". I think some on the right overstate how much the left wants to get rid of capitalism as opposed to simply protecting itself from its worst excesses.

"Profit maximization requires sustainability" This becomes less true as you increasingly discount the future. For instance, see the passenger pigeon, the American bison, the right whale, and the American alligator. Actually, those last three are still with us due to government intervention.

I think the bounties for killing bison were paid by the government. And mistaken government policies have caused plenty of other environmental disasters. So government is hardly blameless.

And the "capitalism" that the left wants is not exactly capitalism.

This has devolved into something silly and unproductive when we are cherry picking specific data points. Winning arguments are not built on anecdotal evidence, and that's why politics is so frustrating.

(12-17-2012 11:52 PM)chapel hill owl Wrote:  "Profit maximization requires sustainability" This becomes less true as you increasingly discount the future. For instance, see the passenger pigeon, the American bison, the right whale, and the American alligator. Actually, those last three are still with us due to government intervention.

One could make a pretty convincing argument that these resources were so rapidly depleted precisely because they were not effectively owned, and hence there was no market that could set an effective price. Otherwise, as they became scarce their price would have increased, which would have automatically both limited their consumption and spurred their conservation -- whiich sounds like the very essence of sustainability.

Then again, I'm not sure how one would devise an onwership scheme that would laoow us to effecitvely marketize conservation. But anyeone who dd would deserve a Nobel Prize.

I guess my question about things like a ban on assault weapons, or any other weapons, comes down to this.

How is it a good thing to remove such weapons from otherwise law abiding citizens, but not from criminals?

I am all for taking weapons out of the hands of those who will use them to harm other people. I'm unconvinced that taking them out of the hands of those who will not use them for that purpose is an effective or useful way to accomplish that.

(12-18-2012 08:56 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  I guess my question about things like a ban on assault weapons, or any other weapons, comes down to this.

How is it a good thing to remove such weapons from otherwise law abiding citizens, but not from criminals?

I am all for taking weapons out of the hands of those who will use them to harm other people. I'm unconvinced that taking them out of the hands of those who will not use them for that purpose is an effective or useful way to accomplish that.

Strange way to look at the situation since, as many of us have readily acknowledged, imposing a ban on anything (guns, drugs, alchohol, et al.) is NEVER going to eliminate their presence completion. However, the point of the legislation would be to dramatically reduce the risk and the frequency of such senseless mass killings by making acquisition of such assualt weapons much, much more difficult.

A couple questions back at you...

1. Why would "law abiding citizens" ever have a rational and justified need for such assault weapons or hand guns with 20/50/100 round clips?

2. Though "criminals" (street gangs) who would still likely be able to get their hands on such weapons will continue to cause bedlam on the streets of our inner cities, do you honestly think it is these "criminals" who are the ones involved in these senseless mass killings at schools, movie theatres and shopping malls?

(12-18-2012 09:10 AM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  A couple questions back at you...
1. Why would "law abiding citizens" ever have a rational and justified need for such assault weapons or hand guns with 20/50/100 round clips?
2. Though "criminals" (street gangs) who would still likely be able to get their hands on such weapons will continue to cause bedlam on the streets of our inner cities, do you honestly think it is these "criminals" who are the ones involved in these senseless mass killings at schools, movie theatres and shopping malls?

Fair enough.

1. As long as they are law abiding, what difference does it make? I have all sorts of things that I don't need, and I bet you do too. Given a choice between the risk of being one of 350 or so people killed each year with assault weapons, or the risks associated with allowing government to dictate what I need and don't need, I'll take the former all day.

2. The "criminals" are involved in far more shootings and killings of any nature and crimes of any nature than the nutcakes who do mass shootings. We have 11,000 homicides a year and 19,000 suicides. I'd rather focus on ways to make those numbers get smaller than worrying so much about the relatively tiny subset represented by nutcase mass killings. Yes they're horrible. But if we ended them completely (and I'm under no illusions that an assault weapon ban would end them, or even reduce them significantly), and in return the number of killings and other crimes committed by "criminals" stayed the same, or even went up, have we accomplished anything useful?

I'm absolutely in favor of reducing the number of gun deaths. I would favor those policies which promise the maximum reduction in number of deaths for the minimum reduction in liberty. I don't think an assault weapons ban meets that test. I would expect it to offer a minuscule reduction in deaths for a significant invasion of liberty.

You said in an earlier post something to the effect that such a ban would absolutely help without imposing material harm on gun owners (I'm paraphrasing, if that misstates your meaning, I apologize, but I don't think it does). I disagree, on both counts. I think it offers minimum help for unwarranted intrusion. I've outlined other approaches that I think would offer much more improvement for much less intrusion.

1. licensing shooters and gun owners the way we do drivers
2. ending the gun show exemption (which becomes more realistic once the licensing is in place)
3. a cooling off period for purchasing a gun
4. potentially requiring gun owners to obtain liability insurance
5. a 10-year tack on sentence for any crime using a gun

I will say that I think it is high time for gun owners and their advocacy groups to realize that something needs to be done and come up with some rational alternatives. If NRA lent its support to any of the measures above, they would pass in a heartbeat. And the result would be far more beneficial than what we'd get from an assault ban.

Otherwise we risk ending up with something irrational. Worse, when that doesn't work, what will we do next? Additional irrational responses to try to solve the problem will just lead us to what is a very real and very slippery slope.

(12-18-2012 09:38 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(12-18-2012 09:10 AM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  A couple questions back at you...
1. Why would "law abiding citizens" ever have a rational and justified need for such assault weapons or hand guns with 20/50/100 round clips?
2. Though "criminals" (street gangs) who would still likely be able to get their hands on such weapons will continue to cause bedlam on the streets of our inner cities, do you honestly think it is these "criminals" who are the ones involved in these senseless mass killings at schools, movie theatres and shopping malls?

Fair enough.

1. As long as they are law abiding, what difference does it make? I have all sorts of things that I don't need, and I bet you do too. Given a choice between the risk of being one of 350 or so people killed each year with assault weapons, or the risks associated with allowing government to dictate what I need and don't need, I'll take the former all day.

2. The "criminals" are involved in far more shootings and killings of any nature and crimes of any nature than the nutcakes who do mass shootings. We have 11,000 homicides a year and 19,000 suicides. I'd rather focus on ways to make those numbers get smaller than worrying so much about the relatively tiny subset represented by nutcase mass killings. Yes they're horrible. But if we ended them completely (and I'm under no illusions that an assault weapon ban would end them, or even reduce them significantly), and in return the number of killings and other crimes committed by "criminals" stayed the same, or even went up, have we accomplished anything useful?

I'm absolutely in favor of reducing the number of gun deaths. I would favor those policies which promise the maximum reduction in number of deaths for the minimum reduction in liberty. I don't think an assault weapons ban meets that test. I would expect it to offer a minuscule reduction in deaths for a significant invasion of liberty.

You said in an earlier post something to the effect that such a ban would absolutely help without imposing material harm on gun owners (I'm paraphrasing, if that misstates your meaning, I apologize, but I don't think it does). I disagree, on both counts. I think it offers minimum help for unwarranted intrusion. I've outlined other approaches that I think would offer much more improvement for much less intrusion.

1. licensing shooters and gun owners the way we do drivers
2. ending the gun show exemption (which becomes more realistic once the licensing is in place)
3. a cooling off period for purchasing a gun
4. potentially requiring gun owners to obtain liability insurance
5. a 10-year tack on sentence for any crime using a gun

I will say that I think it is high time for gun owners and their advocacy groups to realize that something needs to be done and come up with some rational alternatives. If NRA lent its support to any of the measures above, they would pass in a heartbeat. And the result would be far more beneficial than what we'd get from an assault ban.

Otherwise we risk ending up with something irrational. Worse, when that doesn't work, what will we do next? Additional irrational responses to try to solve the problem will just lead us to what is a very real and very slippery slope.

Again, IMO, the credility of your argument goes out the window when you call the ban of assault weaponry from law-abiding citizens as "a significant invasion of liberty". You've got to be kidding. And as others have pointed out, that "slippery slope" argument is increasingly baseless as even the most ardent, far left gun control advocates (e.g., Bloomberg) have never suggested anything but the ban on assault weaponry and semi-automatic handguns with 50/100 clip rounds.

(12-18-2012 09:47 AM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  Again, IMO, the credility of your argument goes out the window when you call the ban of assault weaponry from law-abiding citizens as "a significant invasion of liberty". You've got to be kidding.

So what is it? Is it no invasion of liberty? Is it an insignificant invasion of liberty? Can there be such a thing as an insignificant invasion of liberty?

The invasion of liberty is not necessarily the ban on assault weapons per se, but the justification that government gets to decide what you do and don't need it and therefore what you can and can't have. If you think that is not a significant invasion of liberty, the you and I must define significant or invasion or liberty differently. And on that we will just have to disagree.

And you haven't addressed my larger liberty issue. Suppose we did ban assault weapons, and the result was that mass shootings by nutcases still happened but with less frequency, and gang style executions by mobsters/drug gangs increased, with no noticeable change in total gun deaths (the result I expect). Then what? Do we recognize that the assault ban was a failure, or do we simply expand the number of things we outlaw? And if the latter, what do we do if/when that doesn't work? And if we expand bans further and further, at what point in your opinion do we have a significant invasion of liberty? You see, when I look at a law like an assault weapons ban, I look beyond what it says within the four corners of the printed page and ask, what are going to be the real consequences of this (both intended and unintended), and what is likely to be the next step. And that's what I evaluate, not what the law says but what I expect it to do.

I would guess that you care very little about these points. Your prior posts on this and other issues suggest that you are quite comfortable being told what to do by your government. I guess that you trust that government. I trust it as much as I would trust Bernie Madoff. But let me ask you, in your opinion, what would constitute a significant invasion of liberty? To what level must an invasion of liberty rise before you consider it unreasonable? How much are you willing to allow your liberty to be invaded, and for what purpose? In the context of guns or generically, either way.

(12-18-2012 09:47 AM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  And as others have pointed out, that "slippery slope" argument is increasingly baseless as even the most ardent, far left gun control advocates (e.g., Bloomberg) have never suggested anything but the ban on assault weaponry and semi-automatic handguns with 50/100 clip rounds.

That in no way makes the slippery slope argument baseless. It actually makes it more valid in a way. What are "far left gun control advocates" going to want if we ban assault rifles and it proves ineffective (as I believe it will)? Are they going to say, "Oops, we made a mistake, let's undo this," or are they going to say, "We need to ban more." For that matter, what do you expect their position to be if the ban does work? How about, "We told you so, now we need to ban more." And that's the slippery slope. It's a slippery one, not a precipitous one. And what you are citing is proof that we don't have a precipitous cliff, not that we don't have a slippery slope.

The slippery slope is like the old saying about the frog in boiling water. In that analogy, you're confusing turning up the heat all the way with turning it up gradually.

Columbine actually had an armed deputy on site...but he didn't do too much to stop anything

(12-18-2012 12:39 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  This has devolved into something silly and unproductive when we are cherry picking specific data points. Winning arguments are not built on anecdotal evidence, and that's why politics is so frustrating.

This didn't devolve to that. That's what it has been from the start.

30K vehicle deaths in a year, 10K homicides via firearms, but the argument is all about how to prevent the one high-profile tragedy that causes 20 deaths.

It seems like the goal isn't to prevent deaths, but to prevent headlines.

(12-18-2012 10:12 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(12-18-2012 09:47 AM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  Again, IMO, the credility of your argument goes out the window when you call the ban of assault weaponry from law-abiding citizens as "a significant invasion of liberty". You've got to be kidding.

So what is it? Is it no invasion of liberty? Is it an insignificant invasion of liberty? Can there be such a thing as an insignificant invasion of liberty?

The invasion of liberty is not necessarily the ban on assault weapons per se, but the justification that government gets to decide what you do and don't need it and therefore what you can and can't have. If you think that is not a significant invasion of liberty, the you and I must define significant or invasion or liberty differently. And on that we will just have to disagree.

And you haven't addressed my larger liberty issue. Suppose we did ban assault weapons, and the result was that mass shootings by nutcases still happened but with less frequency, and gang style executions by mobsters/drug gangs increased, with no noticeable change in total gun deaths (the result I expect). Then what? Do we recognize that the assault ban was a failure, or do we simply expand the number of things we outlaw? And if the latter, what do we do if/when that doesn't work? And if we expand bans further and further, at what point in your opinion do we have a significant invasion of liberty? You see, when I look at a law like an assault weapons ban, I look beyond what it says within the four corners of the printed page and ask, what are going to be the real consequences of this (both intended and unintended), and what is likely to be the next step. And that's what I evaluate, not what the law says but what I expect it to do.

I would guess that you care very little about these points. Your prior posts on this and other issues suggest that you are quite comfortable being told what to do by your government. I guess that you trust that government. I trust it as much as I would trust Bernie Madoff. But let me ask you, in your opinion, what would constitute a significant invasion of liberty? To what level must an invasion of liberty rise before you consider it unreasonable? How much are you willing to allow your liberty to be invaded, and for what purpose? In the context of guns or generically, either way.

Quite honestly, I trust the government far more than I would trust an individual citizen who felt the need or desire to purchase an assault-type weapon. Seriously.

As for the rest of your response, sorry, but we're just talking in circles if you honestly believe a ban on assault weapons is a significant invasion of one's personal liberties. What about one's right for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", which is taken away whenever such senseless killings take place. And, again, IMO, your slippery slope argument is a joke and is totally baseless since no one-- not even the most far left, most ardent gun control advocates-- have ever suggested anything more than a ban on assault-type weaponry.

(12-18-2012 10:21 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(12-18-2012 09:47 AM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  And as others have pointed out, that "slippery slope" argument is increasingly baseless as even the most ardent, far left gun control advocates (e.g., Bloomberg) have never suggested anything but the ban on assault weaponry and semi-automatic handguns with 50/100 clip rounds.

That in no way makes the slippery slope argument baseless. It actually makes it more valid in a way. What are "far left gun control advocates" going to want if we ban assault rifles and it proves ineffective (as I believe it will)? Are they going to say, "Oops, we made a mistake, let's undo this," or are they going to say, "We need to ban more." For that matter, what do you expect their position to be if the ban does work? How about, "We told you so, now we need to ban more." And that's the slippery slope. It's a slippery one, not a precipitous one. And what you are citing is proof that we don't have a precipitous cliff, not that we don't have a slippery slope.

The slippery slope is like the old saying about the frog in boiling water. In that analogy, you're confusing turning up the heat all the way with turning it up gradually.

Right, and you can use your slippery slope argument to debate the merits of any law or policy whatsoever. Why don't we go back 150 years to the wild west with no laws whatsoever.

(12-17-2012 06:06 PM)chapel hill owl Wrote:  

(12-17-2012 05:08 PM)Steven Herce Wrote:  It will be proven that the shooter in Connecticut was mentally ill just as so many other mass shooters over the years. Everytime it happens the general commentary flows along the lines of, "yes, he was mentally ill but this wouldn't have happened if he hadn't been able to get his hands on guns." Then we start down this path of which guns are OK and which aren't.

But for some reason, we don't try to outlaw bathtubs after Andrea Yates drowns her children. And, we don't make subway riders wait on the surface street until the train fully stops when some nut pushes an innocent cummuter in front of a moving train. And, we don't demand every freeway entry ramp have blow-out strips to prevent a depressed mother/father from driving her/his minivan full of kids the wrong way into traffic.

Much of the discussion rings hollow for me because buck shot from a breach load shotgun would kill a first grader just the same as a round from the biggest, baddest assault rifle. Sorry, I don't mean to sound flippant.

I don't have a clue what the solution is. I can't even offer a starting point. I would probably stop short of where Owl 69 ends in his slippery slope argument but, if you look at what he is saying and most of the rest of us, and the slippery slope is a very valid point. Owl 69 acknowledges no one needs a rocket launcher (or whatever you mentioned specifically). Others mention not wanting to infringe on hunting weapons. In our friendly message board discussion we are already headed down the proverbial slippery slope.

I am a gun owner. I don't currently, on account of having young children at home, use guns for home defense. I may one day. I may not. I would like to have that option. I can't conceive ever wanting a fully automatic assault rifle on hand but I sure want to be able to legally have something more powerful than a BB gun or, God forbid, have to defend my family with a baseball bat against an armed intruder.

You bring up some good points - some I agree with, others not so much. I'll respond to two, though. First, if this shooter was just armed with a breach loading shotgun, do you think the fatality count would be so high, especially considering he killed himself as soon as he heard first responders? Do you think there might have been even the chance of an opportunity to rush the shooter when he had to reload after every other shot? And again, none of the potential solutions people have talked about here would prevent every murder/attack. The point is to make them less likely and less deadly.

The second point I'd like to make is to push against the notion that any change to the status quo is moving down the slippery slope. That would be to argue that our current situation is optimal. And I just don't see how over 31,000 American deaths in 2009 from firearms is an optimal situation. Some here would hint that if they can't have an AR-15, suddenly our democracy would be in peril. But why can't they acknowledge the huge cost of their position? Why can't the NRA bring themselves to admit that, yes, we can manage firearms in a safer, more reasonable manner? Think of how our country has been reshaped for the last decade after 19 clowns hijacked some planes and killed 3,000 Americans on one occasion. And how we have ignored 10 times those deaths every year since. Why don't I worry about a slippery slope in this case? Because I have yet to see one poster here advocate for the banning of handguns or hunting weapons. People will always have guns in this country. The questions here are twofold: how careful should we be about who gets access to them and what level of lethality should we allow our citizenry to possess in their weapons? Could the pro-gun groups agree to a kind of policy tradeoff? They can have their AR-15's, but in exchange we need to have a strict policy of having guns registered to their owners, the owners must undergo extensive safety training, and must be periodically re-certified and re-registered every few years? Or, alternatively, we could continue with our fairly lax registration standards, but ban the most lethal of guns. (Yes, I know, all guns are lethal. I'm simply referring to the rate at which they can kill people.) But I reject that any change to the status quo is a slippery slope. And I'll take the gun rights advocates far more seriously when I see suggestions from them on dealing with gun violence that don't simply involve calling for more guns in our society.

To your first point: let's assume we enacted and enforced perfectly some set of gun control laws that made a breach loading shotgun the most powerful weapon the Connecticut shooter could get his hands on. Let's further assume that the limitations of the breach loading shotgun rendered him incapable of killing 26 people and instead he was only able to kill 6 (or 5, 4, or 2). Would our collective reaction now be "6 isn't that many people so we don't need yet stricter gun control"? I don't think the reaction would play out that way. I think we'd then argue about whether a breach loading shotgun should be legal. Hence, the slippery slope.

To your second point: honestly, I'm not educated enough about the specifics of the current status quo to even have an opinion, but I understand your points about the "gun lobby" in general. My impression from what I've read and heard from the "gun lobby" is that they feel restrictions are fine but enforcement stinks. We hear these same arguments about Medicare fraud, illegal immigration, financial regulation, etc. Again, I don't know enough about this stuff (gun control) to have an opinion but, at face value, I don't have much problem assuming there is some truth to that.

Generally, people are not willing to fight for "rights" (I'm using this term loosely) they don't care to exercise. I've certainly been guilty of it in my own life. When people with no skin in the game resign themselves to whatever change comes about they open the door for policy to be argued only by the extreme ends of the spectrum.

I'm not advocating gun control reform nor am I advocating leaving things as they are; I don't know enough about it. For me the issue is where it stops. "Don't worry, we will never mess with hunting weapons" rings hollow to me and I can understand how "don't worry, you'll always be able to defend your home" would ring hollow to others.

(12-17-2012 06:31 PM)Barrett Wrote:  Your 5 TV sets can't kill a bunch of people in the span of a few minutes.

As Chapel Hill has put much more eloquently than I could, we have to stop thinking in terms of absolutes and start thinking of policy tradeoffs and optimality--as we do with almost every other subject, including even the First Amendment (which is not absolute by any stretch of the imagination). We have to stop thinking that guns are somehow inviolate and holy and treat them like most everything else. I see people refer to guns as a tool; I get that argument. But if sledgehammers were directly involved in 31,000 deaths last year (or whatever the number was), I don't think we as a people would shy away from talking about how to tackle the sledgehammer problem. Again, to quote Chapel Hill, the situation has not reached the point of optimality, at least in my opinion.

So how do we deal with DWI and DUI? We optimal there?

(12-18-2012 10:27 AM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  Quite honestly, I trust the government far more than I would trust an individual citizen who felt the need to purchase an assault-type weapon. Seriously.

And that's a philosophical difference that I doubt either of us will ever agree with the other. And pretty much the rest of our discussion rests on that disagreement.

The common ground that I think we both share is the desire to reduce the number of gun deaths substantially. As long as the philosophical difference exists, I doubt we'll support the same approach. But we can both share the hope that something good comes out of this terrible tragedy.

(12-18-2012 10:39 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(12-18-2012 10:27 AM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  Quite honestly, I trust the government far more than I would trust an individual citizen who felt the need to purchase an assault-type weapon. Seriously.

And that's a philosophical difference that I doubt either of us will ever agree with the other. And pretty much the rest of our discussion rests on that disagreement.

The common ground that I think we both share is the desire to reduce the number of gun deaths substantially. As long as the philosophical difference exists, I doubt we'll support the same approach. But we can both share the hope that something good comes out of this terrible tragedy.

+1. I'll drink to that!

(12-18-2012 10:43 AM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  

(12-18-2012 10:39 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(12-18-2012 10:27 AM)waltgreenberg Wrote:  Quite honestly, I trust the government far more than I would trust an individual citizen who felt the need to purchase an assault-type weapon. Seriously.

And that's a philosophical difference that I doubt either of us will ever agree with the other. And pretty much the rest of our discussion rests on that disagreement.

The common ground that I think we both share is the desire to reduce the number of gun deaths substantially. As long as the philosophical difference exists, I doubt we'll support the same approach. But we can both share the hope that something good comes out of this terrible tragedy.

+1. I'll drink to that!

I think someone said in a speech at Rice that we don't shy away from challenges because they are hard.

(12-17-2012 09:05 PM)chapel hill owl Wrote:  . As for alcohol, we've tried prohibition. It didn't work.

Not arguing for prohibition, but I'm not sure it didn't work.

It did increase criminal activity, but that's because it became a crime to sell alcohol, and not everyone stopped. Instead of legal corporations selling a product, the trade was taken up by bootleggers and the mob.

I've never heard the argument made that alcoholism and DWI deaths stayed the same during prohibition. Only that crime increased and the cost of enforcement went up.

If we legalized heroin and sold it over the counter in stores, crime associated with obtaining and selling heroin would go down.

However, addiction rates and deaths would go up.