You expected more from me?  Great, why should I care exactly? You can keep these sort of mind game comments to yourself I don't have any interest in it.

OK, now for some corrections in your data assumptions.  My graph does not say that 10% of shootings are nonfatal.  My graph says that 10% of violent crimes involve a gun, it says it explicitly on the top of the graph: "Percent of violent crimes involving a firearm", not ambiguous at all. The part that confused you I think was the "percent of all violent nonfatal incidents", which is saying that the graph is showing the percentage of violent nonfatal incidents involving a gun. I would love to have a graph showing the fatal aspect if one can be located.

Also if you don't mind your table could be improved a bit, the labels for each column so people can understand the full context of what you're highlighting would be very hepful. 

First:

"Barter shop and flea market fit in with that exact statistic. A no-background check."

As far as I can tell this is actually wrong where it pertains to pawn shops. 

"You can't have a felony. You can't have a misdemeanor of domestic violence. You can't have been adjudicated for being mentally defective," explains West Side Pawn manager Susan Sherrod.

The same goes for any federally licensed store that sells guns. They all run background checks with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation for potential gun owners.

They use a government issued ID card to verify the information they are given is correct before submitting FYI. This is in Tennessee so I can't confirm that this is true nationwide, but I think it warrants looking into further. I was able to find some similar news stories in a few other states as well where they discuss forms being filled out and checked with a database but this was certainly the most explicit one.

Up to this point I had actually assumed pawn shops had to do background checks and I was unclear on whether flea markets did or not.  If your argument rests on this idea that 3.8% of guns are sold at pawn shops, 1% from flea markets, and 0.7% from gun shows and that these sources don't do background checks then we should be absolutely sure that the assertion that they don't do background checks is correct.

It seems that at least part of the 3.8% does in fact do background checks.

Now to address this:

"Do you even have a point? You try to disprove my contention about gun shows (which is actually being considered for national law and so why I used it as an example) and then prove it at the same time. thanks "

If you actually read my post you would know that I do in fact have a point and it was made extremely clear for those willing to read it.  I didn't "try" to disprove your contention about gun shows, I did disprove your contention.  Gun shows are an insignificant factor because only 10% of nonfatal violent crimes involve firearms and of ALL prison inmates arrested with a gun only 0.7% of them got them from a gun show. The important bit being that 0.7% figure. It's incongruent with reality because you're targeting the smallest contributing factor to the problem.  (As I said though I'm in favor of background checks at all locations, and while I'm not in favor of it I would not object to a 48 hour waiting period provided the extra time was being utlized for an in-depth background check).

The point I'm making is that the vast majority of guns used in crimes are obtained through undground channels that are not on the up and up.  When over 50% of guns used in crimes are obtained in this way it should be painfully obvious that baring down with harsher gun control laws will simply cause an adjustment in strategies for criminals looking to get guns.  Harsh gun control laws don't stop the criminals they stop the law-abiders because they are the only ones who actually follow laws by the very definition of the term.

Next point:

"People are getting guns way too easily."

Criminals are getting guns too easily, law abiding citizens are about right.  I don't know how you can miss the contradiction of your arguments.  You say that the criminals are finding ways to purchase guns from sources where no background check is required to circumvent the system but you don't seem to think this would continue once every legal channel has these checks? You think they will simply give up since they can't get the guns they plan to use to break the law with legally?

You seem to recognize that it is the determined individuals who have a gun and a will to kill people who are going to be the most successful but you fail to recognize that it is exactly these people who are not going to be impacted by the simple inconvenience of tighter gun control laws because they are the type of people who know where and how to get black market guns.

Tell me if I'm wrong on your views there, but that is what I've gained from your posts thus far.

Finally:

"That, according to this data I provided, gun control laws have resulted in fewer gun crimes."

Simply showing reduced numbers does not make your case, you need to line up gun control law changes with the numbers and show how and where each law effected the numbers.

Now since you didn't address this I'll repost it:

"The simple fact is that the 2nd amendment states pretty plainly that we have the right to keep and bear arms and that right shall not be infringed.  The language is extremely explicit, and despite that people try to cloud the issue with a bunch of irrelevant non-sense about what harm guns are capable of. 

Well guess what, nobody is arguing that they are dangerous weapons... yes guns are good at killing people, they are designed to inflict damage at the whim of their wielder.  In the hands of the wrong people they can cause a lot of harm, particularly someone who is well trained and dedicated to his actions.  Stating this makes a good case for guns as effective weapons (and well trained soldiers as well).  This does not make a case for stripping a constitutionally protected right from the vast majority of people who do not abuse their rights. 

Your entire argument is to allow the minority to dictate through irrational and/or radical actions (that are illegal and already have laws to address those issues).  Your argument is that somehow the threat of this irrational minority is sufficient reason to deprive the majority who do not abuse the 2nd amendment."

Do you have a response to this? 

PS - I do my best to address all of your points so please take the time to return the favor.

This is a debate, if you're not willing to participate and convince people then step out without asserting that you're correct and implying that we are to simple or daft to understand.  A simple "I don't have the free time to invest and I think we should agree to disagree for now" will do just fine. If everyone else can make their case and back it up I don't see why you should be any different...

Next:

"I know all about correlation and the variables and this is one of the most credible sources.
So far we have looked at two
one showing that countries with higher gun control have fewer murders.
The second one is this one showing gun crime going down as gun control increases."

You never made your case for this correlation, you showed reduced violence numbers and then asserted that it was caused by gun control laws.  This is not a factual case, this is an opinion.

Next:

"It IS a very complicated subject, but in this scenario it is much better to err on the cautious side than the other way around. At one point it was pretty much legal to murder people.
There are so many horror stories involving guns, and sometimes you really have to think about what is actually happening behind the scenes."

I agree that it is complicated but this appeal to the precautionary principle is an extremely nebulous and insubstantial argument.  In what specific ways should we err on the cautious side? By removing guns altogether?  By getting rid of gun sales at pawn shops, flea markets, and gun shows?  There is no way to respond to this effectively without specifics and indeed the entire argument is boiled down to essentially saying "I didn't completely prove my case so everyone assume I'm right based on the assumption that by assuming I'm right we are in fact erring on the side of caution.  You have to prove that gun control is effective before you can assert it is the safe way to proceed for the precautionary principle.  There is plenty of studies both sides on this issue.

Next:

"My GF's sister's old boyfriend from Colorado was a serial cat murderer (they found out later). He was a normal kid, but really fucked her up mentally. She got a call from the government recently saying that he had applied for a job as a border police and they wanted a recommendation.

People like this exist. The way gun laws are in this country actually makes murder legal in many many instances.
Some time ago a man saw two guys breaking into someone's house. He went over there with a shotgun, without calling the cops beforehand, and killed them both. This is not right. Even by religious standards, noone is allowed to take the life of another."

As I stated previously, there are people out there in the world who are capable and determined, but this does not constitute a justification for removing the rights of the majority to deal with the potential threats of an extreme minority. 

As for the "makes murder legal" bit, I think you need to expound on that argument if you want to assert something like that.  You're probably referring to self-defense, but I'll let you explain.

As for your religion argument I must admit this line of reasoning seems extremely irrelevant to me, but if you want to pursue it we should find out which religions this actually is and is not true for.

Finally:

"A 7 year old shot himself in the face recently at a gun show when he was shooting an uzi!!
This kind of thing needs to end"

Gun accidents happen just like car accidents and are equally tragic. But it is safety features and parenting that are the real answers, not legislation.

Not to make light of a serious issue but rather an intermission, before the next chapter.

Every time someone types "the right to BARE arms", the image of a skinny dude ripping off his shirt sleeves and preparing to fight pops into my head.

Well I'm glad I NEVER do that

Believe me, if you had done that, you wouldn't have been the the only one.

 If you are a psych major at any credible school you should know why your arguement is bullshit then. You state that stricter gone control causes lower gun crimes because the are correlated. Correlation does not, and cannot prove causation. That is day one intro to psych information. No matter how strong the correlation there is no way to use it to prove causation. It simply cannot be done. There are too many other variables in the picture to confound the data.?You would need experimentation to prove causation.

Sqrl said:

OK, now for some corrections in your data assumptions.  My graph does not say that 10% of shootings are fatal (nonfatal is what I said).  My graph says that 10% of violent crimes involve a gun, it says it explicitly on the top of the graph: "Percent of violent crimes involving a firearm", not ambiguous at all.
This is on the bureau of justice statistics firearms website theat i found from googling your graph's title.
After 1996, less than 10% of nonfatal violent crimes involved firearm. It also says so just under neath "percent of violent....."

Also if you don't mind your table could be improved a bit, the labels for each column so people can understand the full context of what you're highlighting would be very hepful. 

First:

"Barter shop and flea market fit in with that exact statistic. A no-background check."

As far as I can tell this is actually wrong where it pertains to pawn shops. 

"You can't have a felony. You can't have a misdemeanor of domestic violence. You can't have been adjudicated for being mentally defective," explains West Side Pawn manager Susan Sherrod.

So you can have committed crimes? Just not a felony.

The same goes for any federally licensed store that sells guns. They all run background checks with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation for potential gun owners.

They use a government issued ID card to verify the information they are given is correct before submitting FYI. This is in Tennessee so I can't confirm that this is true nationwide, but I think it warrants looking into further. I was able to find some similar news stories in a few other states as well where they discuss forms being filled out and checked with a database but this was certainly the most explicit one.

Up to this point I had actually assumed pawn shops had to do background checks and I was unclear on whether flea markets did or not.  If your argument rests on this idea that 3.8% of guns are sold at pawn shops, 1% from flea markets, and 0.7% from gun shows and that these sources don't do background checks then we should be absolutely sure that the assertion that they don't do background checks is correct.

It seems that at least part of the 3.8% does in fact do background checks.

I did not know that pawn shops were required to background check to sell guns. Sorry for not knowing this ahead of time, however, it is not completely certain that all pawn shops and the like do background checks, and I'm sure that the number for that is relocated to the "illegal sources" subset.

Also from the bureau site:

• a flea market or gun show for fewer than 2%
• a retail store or pawnshop for about 12%
• family, friends, a street buy, or an illegal source for 80%

As you can see the numbers on this site total those in the close to 15% range.

Now to address this:

"Do you even have a point? You try to disprove my contention about gun shows (which is actually being considered for national law and so why I used it as an example) and then prove it at the same time. thanks "

If you actually read my post you would know that I do in fact have a point and it was made extremely clear for those willing to read it.  I didn't "try" to disprove your contention about gun shows, I did disprove your contention.  Gun shows are an insignificant factor because only 10% of violent crimes involve firearms and of ALL prison inmates arrested with a gun only 0.7% of them got them from a gun show. 

My point here was that the stats you were looking at were flawed because they treated "possession" as three related categories instead of 3 separate ones. Because of this, there is bound to be overlap of one gun or another. For example, some were obtained through theft and fencing, those guns are stolen from owners, and those owners buy them at a store. Because of this overlap, it makes those purchasing number smaller.

That is why I said you "tried"

In short, I meant that you set out to disprove the gun-convention venue but then provided statistics for all the other sources that are just as easy to buy the guns.

And that is why I said you proved it. I'm understand if I didn't explain myself as clearly as I could have.

Lastly, I said gun show, but to be fair, I didn't mean simply gun-show purchases. The term that is very extensively used is called the "gun-show loophole", and actually addresses any private transfers, not just the ones at gun shows. In this country you are still allowed to transfer a gun to another person, even without a background check of that person. That is a little off-putting, to say the least.

The point I'm making is that the vast majority of guns used in crimes are obtained through undground channels that are not on the up and up.  When over 50% of guns are obtained in this way it should be painfully obvious that baring down with harsher gun control laws will simply cause an adjustment in strategies for criminals looking to get guns.  Harsh gun control laws don't stop the criminals they stop the common folks.

Gun control isn't just about obtaining guns, it's about how you use them, store them, and the like. If such a huge number of guns are getting stolen from private homes, don't you think there should be some kind of repurcussion for the owner? The truth is, there isn't much. In fact, it is quite possible to say that someone broke in and stole your gun and tv and such and receive money for the transaction, because there is not much that can be done to prove you wrong.

Next point:

"People are getting guns way too easily."

Criminals are getting guns too easily, law abiding citizens are about right.  I don't know how you can miss the contradiction of your arguments. 

What contradiction? A person can get a gun in 20 minutes like you said. How is that difficult? Criminals are just stealing those guns and a) using them first hand b) selling them illegally, which makes up the third complete half of your own chart

You say that the criminals are finding ways to purchase guns from sources where no background check is required to circumvent the system but you don't seem to think this would continue once every legal channel has these checks? You think they will simply give up since they can't get the guns they plan to use to break the law with legally?

No, they won't give up of course. But it will be harder to obtain. Higher costs, less pervasive. How is that wrong? Even if there was one less gun on the streets as a result, how do I become the bad guy in this argument? This is slightly absurd.

You seem to recognize that it is the determined individuals who have a gun and a will to kill people who are going to be the most successful but you fail to recognize that it is exactly these people who are not going to be impacted by the simple inconvenience of tighter gun control laws because they are the type of people who know where and how to get black market guns.

blackmarket guns stolen from homes who easily got guns and don't treat them with the kind of respect that guns deserve. If I had a gun, and I do plan on getting one one day, I would keep it in a hidden safe with an easy way for me, but not others, to open. I would not keep that lying around, definitely not sir. But once the masses, and that's the problem here, that the masses have guns, people are going to find them under pillows, in shoeboxes, between the mattresses, because people are scared to wake up in the middle of the night, to an intruder. It's pathetic, just start locking your bedroom doors, and there you have time to open a safe.

Tell me if I'm wrong on your views there, but that is what I've gained from your posts thus far.

I'm sorry, I really don't explain myself enough because I expect people to simply believe me.

Finally:

"That, according to this data I provided, gun control laws have resulted in fewer gun crimes."

Simply showing reduced numbers does not make your case, you need to line up gun control law changes with the numbers and show how and where each law effected the numbers.

Now since you didn't address this I'll repost it:

"The simple fact is that the 2nd amendment states pretty plainly that we have the right to keep and bare arms and that right shall not be infringed.  The language is extremely explicit, and despite that people try to cloud the issue with a bunch of irrelevant non-sense about what harm guns are capable of. 

Well guess what, nobody is arguing that they are dangerous weapons... yes guns are good at killing people, they are designed to inflict damage at the whim of their wielder.  In the hands of the wrong people they can cause a lot of harm, particularly someone who is well trained and dedicated to his actions.  Stating this makes a good case for guns as effective weapons (and well trained soldiers as well).  This does not make a case for stripping a constitutionally protected right from the vast majority of people who do not abuse their rights. 

Your entire argument is to allow the minority to dictate through irrational and/or radical actions (that are illegal and already have laws to address those issues).  Your argument is that somehow the threat of this irrational minority is sufficient reason to deprive the majority who do not abuse the 2nd amendment."

It is apparent that guns are being treated by owners as a right instead of a privilage. American citizens are not entitled to casual ownership of a deadly weapon. The right to bear arms has always been subject to interpretation and is not explicit. The current interpretations are that the 2nd amendment is for individual use, and the other interpretation is that militia made up of citizens are allowed to operate. Needless to say, the country was a very different place at that time, and having weapons was important to national independence. Of course, the government wanted any invader to encounter swift resistance, and also it was a way to combat an overpowering government.

Times have changed, obviously. Like you said, well trained and dedicated weapon owners can be extremely dangerous. At this point, the average citizen will be shot about 12 times before they can even aim at a military force. In the old days, the army WAS those average citizens, so it made more sense. Though that's another discussion. This reliance on a few hundred years old document would be similar to using the Bible in place of a judge. On top of that, the NRA holds a lot of sway and there is a lot of money involved in the government for the free use of firearms.

I do believe that less guns will actually increase crime, but I think that the guns that are out there should be regulated in a better way. However, regulations, such as a proposed "thumb print" lock, are "inconvenient" and would lead to lower sales, so obviously this will never become law.

I think guns are useful. But sometimes you (not specifically you) gun owners treat them like

Do you have a response to this? 

PS - I do my best to address all of your points so please take the time to return the favor.

To tie this all together, those graphs actually start when the Brady Act was passed and enacted in feb 1994 which required a background check on all gun purchases, possibly the biggest piece of gun control legislation in recent history.

A couple loopholes exist though. If the check is not actually done within 3 days now, the sale is allowed to continue, even if the check has not occurred.

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