The Spartans were a bunch of hicks who had one of the most repressive states in history, practiced organised rape as a substitute for marriage, enforced pederasty, and were outnumbered by a slave population they ruled by regular acts of terror and atrocity.
Get another role model.
Recently I argued with a gun rights advocate who suggested Australia dump its gun controls.
Blogger-friends tend to go quiet when I talk about this... and blogger-non-friends retreat into Right-wing talking points about the ramifications of an unarmed populace, which are invariably so much empty air.
Among my retorts was a statistic that Americans are more likely than Australians to be victims of gun violence by a factor of (nearly) ten to one. I calculated that myself based on year 2000 stats.
http://guncontrol.org.au/ updates this calculation.
It's actually eleven to one. Intentional homicides with guns: fifteen to one.
As I've said before: proportionate to population this is the equivalent of three 9/11s - every year - in number of Americans who needn't have died had they had our rates of gun violence.
In an article dated back to November 2000:
"The recently released ABS statistics show a dramatic drop in Australian gun deaths for 1998. These figures are shown below. They exhibit the same tendency to decline which was shown in the 1997 figures. The continued reduction in the number of Australians being killed by guns strongly suggests that the stricter gun laws which have been put into place throughout Australia during the 1990’s have saved many hundred’s of lives. A decade ago, in 1988, just before the stricter gun laws started to operate, 696 people died from gun wounds. Last year, 1998, there were 327 gun deaths."
"But if we have gun control then only the crooks will have guns...!" is the usual refrain.
Sorry but that justification does not work for me. The statistics are testimony to the fact that a heavily armed society suffers greater casualties.
Guns kill people. More guns achieves nothing other than killing more people. Often the wrong people.
And over 40 percent of deaths due to guns occur within families. I'm with you on this.
ReplyDeleteArguments against gun control are full of gun smoke, so to speak.
The irony of this is that I support the rights of responsible law abiding citizens to own firearms Magpie. It's mostly to protect themselves from kooks in the NRA though.
ReplyDeletetnlib,
ReplyDelete40%? That is a stunning statistic.
There are some really disturbing ones here: http://www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/guns.htm
The sources of data are in the USA, for US consumption (there's no 'foreign' bias).
I appreciate stats can be interpreted in many ways - but there is no interpreting these to mean anything other than more guns = more death.
Note the stats that apply to child deaths....
Truth,
I get the irony, and I in no way assume you are a psycho for owning a gun.
I do not necessarily want all firearms banned. But I want them licenced. Controlled.
Fair's fair.... I need a licence just to drive a car.
No fully-automatic weapons, and no firearms at all except in designated places for a legitimate purpose, like sports shooting.
The "I need to protect myself" logic is understandable - I have a hobby that's all about that discipline - but applied to uncontrolled gun ownership it loses it's validity very quickly. It completely evades the point that the uncontrolled availability of guns is what creates the climate of fear, and chains of violence, in the first place.
There is nothing immoral about wanting to protect oneself.
There is something deeply immoral, however, in that being interpreted as needing enough firearms to take out an office building.
There is something deeply immoral in letting fear rule and having the community flooded with objects that have no other purpose than to kill not just 'someone' - but dozens of 'someones'.
The rationale of gun ownership for personal security is ultimately equivalent to "I do not care enough for my community to want it to be free of threat - I just want people to be afraid of me as well".
Why stop with "myself"? I want my kids safe, their teachers safe, my neighbours safe, and the only way to do that is to limit the capacity of a single person to inflict damage. And - no thanks - I do not want them to be armed.
The only possible way to defend yourself with a gun against a gun is to shoot first, and the unpredictability of when a crime will occur will likely not permit that opportunity.
That old "Only the crooks will have guns" line...
No. The crooks can be arrested, charged, convicted and put away for mere possession. Law enforcement becomes easier.
And the NRA are not the worst of what is out there. There are militant firearms accumulators who regard the NRA is being a tool of whoever they perceive to be their 'real' enemy - whoever they might conjure that up to be.
Our views on this are virtually the same Magpie.
ReplyDeleteWell said.
Nick, ol buddy. As an American gun owner I have to agree with you on your points. They're very valid points and the statistics are hard to dispute, if not impossible.
ReplyDeleteI love to shoot at inanimate objects. I do not hunt (humans or otherwise :-). My targets are not human silhouettes, but bull’s eye targets much like a dart board, or simply cans collected at a dumpsite. It scares the hell out of me to have an assembled gun in the house, so I typically take key parts out of the weapons until I arrive where I shoot.
HOWEVER! I would give them up in a heartbeat if it meant a safer place for America. It’s horrific to read in the papers about a poor kid killed because some idiot left a loaded, unsafe weapon lying around the house, and it happens a lot here.
I can remember playing with a 12 gauge shotgun at my friend’s house, pointing it at others when the “adult” of the house grabbed it from me, chastising me, a child, screaming that the gun was loaded, calling me the idiot. At the time, I didn’t understand the consequences, but as I think back on the incident, I could easily have killed someone in my ignorance. A 12 gauge shotgun is very unforgiving one the trigger is pulled, survivors are rare.
I can’t imagine what I’d feel like the rest of my life had the horrific happened. Occasionally, when I go to the place I shoot, there are nutcases shooting the beer cans they’ve just emptied. Time for this boy to go home then.