New Books
I started digging into More Guns right away today. When I first saw it on the shelf in the Political Science section I was intruiged but I was not going to buy it. But every person I showed it to in the Bookstore laughed and, even if they weren't laughing at the book, it reminded me of people I know who would laugh at the book and assume it was either a joke or entirely irrational. Well, unfortunately for them the book is an intellectual and statistical analysis of the issue of gun control laws. In it's original form it was an article in the January 1997 issue of the Journal of Legal Studies. It is an objective discussion and looks at pertinent data involving the issue, employing, to quote the introduction, "the most comprehensive data set on crime yet assembled." So far it brings up intensely interesting issues, asks important questions, and overall should prove an educational read.
I find it interesting that a lot of people who are vehemently supportive of the strictest gun control laws are the people who have the least experience with guns. The entirety of your knowledge on guns is based in movies (read: entirely fictional depictions) and the news (which only reports when guns are used negatively; rarely, if ever, reporting positive uses of guns). Here's an excerpt from page 4 in Chapter 1:
By examining the data provided from 1979 to 1987 by the Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey, Lawrence Southwick, confirming earlier estimates by Gary Kleck, found that the probability of serious injury from an attack is 2.5 times greater for women offering no resistance than for women resisting with a gun. In contrast, the probability of women being seriously injured was almost 4 times greater when resisting without a gun than when resisting with a gun. In other words, the best advice is to resist with a gun, but if no gun is available, it is better to offer no resistance than to fight.
I also find it interesting that the areas with the highest violent crime rates (urban settings) are also the areas with the strictest gun control laws and lowest posession rate.
posted by Pirate Jimmy @ 6:49 PM
7 Comments:
At 8:42 PM,
PopStar said…
Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
At 2:10 PM,
Pirate Jimmy said…
So God is also pro 2nd Ammendment.
At 10:06 PM,
Chaka said…
On the other hand, when I read about all the Baptists shooting each other in Texas in the 1800's (history, not fictional accounts) I wonder:
Would they have settled fewer arguments with guns if not every single person had been packing?
At 10:23 PM,
Pirate Jimmy said…
The truth of the matter is there are huge numbers of tragic events on both sides of the issue.
The hypothetical questions we ask are definitely important in defining how we feel about the issue of gun control, but ultimately these stories lead us to an impasse.
My thoughts on human nature are similar to those of Hobbes' ideas in some ways. I feel that more lives are saved by the presence of a gun than are saved by the absence of a gun. But there is no conclusive data supporting this opinion. There are numerous sad/happy stories and "intuition pumps" to sway individual feelings one way or the other, but in the end these prove nothing.
I like to sum up the issue by concluding this: guns add potential to human achievement. Whether that be positive potential or negative potential depends on the individual. Some people fear the potential of man, others fear a limited man. Some people just like guns, and some people just don't like people who like guns.
At 10:31 PM,
Pirate Jimmy said…
By the way, I never ellaborated why I mentioned Hobbes in my reasoning, which is poor writing. I deleted that sentence because it did not flow and then forgot to insert a restructured sentence. I was trying to say that Hobbes believes man to be selfish and take it even further. I think that if an individual wants to kill someone, even if it is simply in an irrational fit of rage, that human will kill them with whatever tools are in their current environment. So the availability of firearms does not increase the use of violence in settling arguments. So, to answer the question "Would they have settled fewer arguments with guns if not every single person had been packing," my reply is this: Yes, fewer arguments would have been solved with guns if not every person had been "packing," but the number of deaths/injuries would not have been lessoned in the slightest. If your goal is to limit the use of guns, then removing all guns would solve the problem. However, the problem is not the use of guns but the use of violence, the onslaught of intolerance, and the epidemic we call "hate."
At 10:49 PM,
Pirate Jimmy said…
Another question that your heartbreaking story ignores is how many lives were saved by everyone "packing" in Texas in the 1800's? How much livestock would survive without the ability to defend them from carnivorous wildlife? How many people were attacked by the wildlife? How many people relied on guns to hunt for food, clothes, and/or shelter? How would the Texan defenders at the Alamo been able to hold Santa Anna off long enough for an actual Army to be raised in the North had the people not been "packing" in the 1800's?
At 11:17 PM,
Pirate Jimmy said…
Re-reading my posts above they sound harsh, but really they are simply meant to be biting. The moral of the story is that the issue is too complex to solve with anecdotal stories and hypothetical questions.
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