I have seen the future.

Yeah, 'cause I totally want to be caught in the crossfire because a bunch of semi-trained yahoos have Die Hard fantasies and think they'll actually know what to do when the shooting starts.

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torrain.livejournal.com

What you said.

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Man, that happens all the time here in Dallas since 1996. We passed the right to carry law, and a million Texans went out and got their concealed carry permits. Since then, it's been one wild-west shootout after another. Our firearm-related deaths have gone way up, and our crime rate has skyrocketed compared to the national average.

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Why yes, everyone in Dallas is sane and responsible and should have a gun! (http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/031308dnmetjump.4879fa8d.html)

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What the fuck has that got to do with a goddamned thing here?

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If the training and licensing requirements for a CC permit weren't a joke, I wouldn't have nearly so much of a problem. For instance, Arizona's requirement is an eight-hour class. Fuck that. Eight hours of solid range time, not sitting in a classroom reading power point slides, is about a tenth as long as it takes to get someone to reliably make proper shoot/no shoot decisions.

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Yes, and this is why (contrary to my earlier lies) the twelve years since the CC law passed, our crime ratehas PLUMMETED compared to the national average and all gun-related crimes are WAY down.

Take your alarmist, hypothetical anti-gun rhetoric and shove it up your asses. You can imagine all you like. I've lived in a concealed-carry state (where people HEAVILY carry guns) for over a decade, and any argument you guys have has been made-up bullshit so far.

Live the reality and we'll talk.

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A comment on improving CC training is "alarmist, hypothetical anti-gun rhetoric?"

At any rate: cite. Preferably with a study that at least shows correlation.

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I'm frankly sick and tired of doing so. I'm not hand-feeding anyone this anymore - I've had to do so the last five times I discussed firearms, and I'm sick of it. Sick of it, you hear? Google the following terms:
Conceal Carry
Texas
1996

A comment on improving CC training is "alarmist, hypothetical anti-gun rhetoric?"

You say you have a problem with the "joke" that is CC Licensing. So far it's worked just fine for us. Your "problem" is more made-up malarkey.

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A cursory glance at Texas crime statistics, looking only at murder rates, shows that 1996 was near the bottom of a sharp decrease that began in 1991. The trend holds when adjusted per capita, based on quick-n-dirty graphing in Excel.

I'll compare other crime statistics, both within Texas and nationally, and test for significance later.

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If the crime rate has dropped, how much more significance do you need? If guns in the hands of civilians result in worse crime, shouldn't the Texas Crime rate have AT LEAST stayed the same, if not increased drastically?

IT KEPT DROPPING.

Sorry if I seem vehement about this one, but as a responsible gun owner I'm sick to fucking death of legislation being voted on based on only conjecture and ignorance among the populace. I'm sick of being stereotyped as (obviously) a crazed murderer waiting to happen just because I own guns. I'm especially sick of the anti-gun crowd taking shit WAY out of context or making up lies, then pointing at my side of the street and saying "LOOK AT THE PEOPLE WITH MURDER TOOLS!"

That's precisely what happened here. NOWHERE in that story does that woman advocate guns for 5-year-olds. Instead, RIGHT NEAR THE BEGINNING, the article states that she wants to arm the teachers who are over 21 on campuses. Kind of a diff, don't you think?

It especially shocks me because this is the first time I've seen the ol' Weaselking vomit up this kind of idiotic horseshit. I'll still invite him to my birthday party and stuff, but I do expect better.

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If the crime rate has dropped, how much more significance do you need? If guns in the hands of civilians result in worse crime, shouldn't the Texas Crime rate have AT LEAST stayed the same, if not increased drastically?

IT KEPT DROPPING.

That's not how statistics work. One needs to eliminate the possibility of chance, and that can't be done by eyeballing, especially with small effects like those in the Texas numbers. There was a minor drop from 96-97, a tiny increase from 97-98, and then it wavers up and down with no obvious trend through 06.

I'll test for correlation, since that's easy to do, but causation is damn near impossible to prove. I expect the numbers will end up supporting the null hypothesis, that the presence of guns have no detectable effect on crime the crime rate, one way or another. The people who are going to commit gun crime are largely unconcerned with legal formalities like "licensure."

I do believe, and this is why I object to lax gun regulation, that increased firearms ownership has an effect on the "tragic results of being an idiot" rate.

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And this is where all debate about causation v. correlation and logic stop, from my end of the argument:

You can feel that way all you like! That's the beauty of America right now! You can live in your little restricted (Hunting Only) License to Carry state and whinge about how fewer restrictions on conceal carry licenses equal TEH HORRORZ. Go ahead! It's your right!

Just as it's my right to live in a state where all conjecture has been pushed aside and this is how we actually fucking live. Not theory, not empty rhetoric. One out of every sixteen people I pass on the street carries a loaded firearm.

You stated: Yeah, 'cause I totally want to be caught in the crossfire because a bunch of semi-trained yahoos have Die Hard fantasies and think they'll actually know what to do when the shooting starts.

I stated that I live in a place where for twelve years, this has yet to come to pass. Even though we pretty much give out CC permits like candy, we didn't turn into the wild west. If anything, we got nicer.

YAY!

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You challenged me to go to the numbers. I did. They did not immediately support your claim, so now you are as much relying on "feeling" as I am.

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Actually, that goalpost has been moved: He's no longer claiming that CC reduces crime, only that it does not increase crime.

And the stats *do* seem to support that latter claim.

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Heh, I missed that. I thought we were still arguing no effect vs. deterrent effect.

Anyway. I want to throw Texas up against the rest of the US, and also against Canada, as well as the null, and see how the crime rates compare across the interval in question. And here I thought I was just taking that statistics course to avoid having to take PDEs! Woo!

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Go ahead. We're bigger than the rest of you.

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Is that regional chauvinism or a reminder to normalize? If the latter, duh.

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I fail to see why the two are mutually exclusive.

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You know, that's one of the things that always makes me laugh about Americans and size issues.

Everyone says "Texas is big!" and "Things are bigger in Texas", and "I'm from Texas so penis must be HUGE!".

Texas is big for a US state.

But you have to go all the way down the list to *Alberta* before you find a Canadian province of *similar* smallness, and only New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island aren't in the same class.

Texas is medium-sized, leaning towards small.

(And yes, I know, Texas is roughly the same size as France. France is a teeny little country, too.)

It just always makes me laugh.

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Yes, but to be fair, nobody lives in Alberta, right? Unless you count Eskimos, and the last time I checked, you didn't.

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No, that's Manitoba. Alberta is where we keep our Texans.

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#1: That's a pure murder rate. That doesn't explain anything about how many people got shot, whether in a crime, in self-defense, accidentally, etc.
#2: It was going down long before the law, it kept going down after the law, and you're seriously arguing it's *because of* the law?

NOWHERE in that story does that woman advocate guns for 5-year-olds. Instead, RIGHT NEAR THE BEGINNING, the article states that she wants to arm the teachers who are over 21 on campuses. Kind of a diff, don't you think?

A slight one, putting her *not quite* in the same idiotic headspace as Glenn Beck, James Hart, and the NRA, all of whom have explicitly argued in favour of arming *elementary school students*.

It's an easy thing to miss.

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Look, this isn't advanced trigonometry. I'm not trying to fib or bend the facts.

- The crime rate in Texas was dropping.
- In 1996, a law was passed that allows the populace (non-felon, non-insane) to carry concealed firearms. HORDES of people signed up over the next 3 years, and have continued to do so at this time.
- If guns in the hands of the public are such a terrible thing, and cause people to commit crimes, wouldn't our crime rate have STOPPED its downward trend? Or at least lined up with the national average over the next ten years? After all, we put all those evil guns in the hands of citizenry who ONLY had to go through a CC license course.
- But no, instead our violent crime rate CONTINUED to slide WELL BELOW the national average. That includes crimes committed with firearms.

I cannot put it any more plainly. Guns + Populace != Wild West.

A slight one, putting her *not quite* in the same idiotic headspace as Glenn Beck, James Hart, and the NRA, all of whom have explicitly argued in favour of arming *elementary school students*.

You're saying that giving guns to trained adults is the same as giving them to children?

HAVE YOU THE BRAIN WORMS?

It's an easy thing to miss.

Line you quoted out of context in this post: "I feel like our kindergartners are sitting there like sitting ducks,"

Lines in the article stating her actual position:
The lawmaker, State Senator Karen S. Johnson, has sponsored a bill, which the Senate Judiciary Committee approved last week, that would allow people with a concealed weapons permit — limited to those 21 and older here — to carry their firearms at public colleges and universities.
-
Ms. Johnson, a Republican from Mesa, said she believed that the recent carnage at Northern Illinois University could have been prevented or limited if an armed student or professor had intercepted the gunman.
-
Emphasis mine: She initially wanted her bill to cover all public schools, kindergarten and up, but other lawmakers convinced her it stood a better chance of passing if it were limited to higher education.

Sure, it's easy to miss if you're a raving gun-hater. And you just want to skim an article. And even if, after that, you can't actually find anything in it to support your crazy-assed fabrication, so you just make something up.

Dude, you were wrong. You did not read the article. It says absolutely NOTHING about arming children. Admit it and move on.

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I already admitted this woman isn't aiming to arm children, the way a bunch of other people are and have been in the past. And I even said that it was my mistake, my bad, easy to miss *given how many similar proposals that DO aim to arm children* come out every year, and how many more have cropped up in the last year specifically.

And I never claimed that guns + populace = wild west. I said that guns + idiots = IDIOTS WITH GUNS HOLY CRAP, and I said that children, which includes many university students, are by definition idiots who should not have guns in an uncontrolled environment.

I'm all for your right to have a gun, as long as you know how to use it safely. I own a fucking gun[1]. I'm still of the opinion that the majority of people *should not* have guns because *they can't be trusted with them*, and that putting guns
A) in the hands of students
and
B) in the hands of people who are surrounded by students
is a *bad idea*.

[1]: Technically. It hasn't been fired in 10 years and isn't actually in my house, but that's because I gave up shooting as a hobby a long time ago.

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atlasimpure.livejournal.com

Not to mention the sniper back in the 70s who got pinned down in his sniping tower due to the rate of returned fire from civilians at street level.

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jackoutofthebox.livejournal.com

Ok, so let's say that only one in one thousand students has a nervous breakdown or hates breaking up with his girlfriend and ends up bringing a gun to school. Now we've made it easier for 5,000 kids to have guns. We've just upped the ratio to 5 instead of 1. Good Job.

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Who's talking about arming 5-year-olds?

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FTFA: Arizona State Senator Karen S. Johnson is.

"She initially wanted her bill to cover all public schools, kindergarten and up,"

"I feel like our kindergartners are sitting there like sitting ducks,"

And, really, she's from a LONG line of people who've argued that the best way to stop bullying in schools is to give every child a concealed handgun. It's not a new argument that she's putting forth, here.

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Funny. Un non-rabid gun owners can tell, just looking at the article, that she means arming the teachers.

Not the students.

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So, how many people here actually read the article?

Weaselking, put your hand down.

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torrain.livejournal.com

*raises hand*

You may actually have had much much better experience with people being rational when discussing what they'd do if they had a gun in X situation than I have.

(Also with teachers and students coping well with stressful situations.)

Guns make me... not nervous, exactly. But I am never *not* aware of the fact that they kill people, and that they are never unloaded.

And I am not comfortable with the idea that an eight-hour course and a mail-in application[1] is enough for anyone to carry a gun on a campus. Nor would I be comfortable with the idea that it was enough for any teacher, janitor, or secretary to carry a gun around small children.

Unfair of me to characterize everyone with a gun as a yahoo? Sure.

Unfair of me to call someone who's had an eight-hour course on handling that thing that blows bits of people to smithereens "semi-trained"? I don't think so.

Unfair of me to assume that *someone* is going to be a yahoo, and handle the situation badly? Again, I don't think so. Give me a couple of days, and I'll try and regain the sunny optimism that allows me to take a different view.
---
[1] And yes, I am a language snob, and the fact that they misspell "application" on the Arizona Department of Public Safety page really unnerves me.

(deleted comment)

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torrain.livejournal.com

> That said, prehaps the hall monitors should be packing heat.

Surely. How else can they defend themselves against the desperate folk who deal in black market hallway passes?

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aimisdirty.livejournal.com

I take it that all of the anti-gun people on here who assume that police officers have sufficient training have been to a live-fire range, shot with LEO's, and seen the 'standards' that they're subjected to in order to 'qualify' with their pistols. Right?

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