This argument is ridiculous. One, gun crime is merely one item in your list. Two, your list has no numbers, so cannot disprove the assertion of "rarely" cited by aevans176.

No one is saying that gun owners are, as a group, completely crime-free. Various studies have shown that they are more likely to be law-abiding, but not crime-free. I could post the same list (of offences in five years in Texas) and it would be true for Democrats, pharmacists, basketball players, any large group of people. Are you really saying that someone prone to commit a crime with a gun is likely to go through a lengthy and intrusive licensing process, take a training class and be on record as having a concealed carry permit, rather than just buy a gun on the black market? That's preposterous. Drive through the tough parts of Houston, listen to the pop-pop-pop on the weekends and tell me that those are the sounds of licensed Texas concealed-carry handguns.

Of course this is garbage stats. How many were arrested for “murder” as opposed to say “non-payment of taxes” . How about as a % compared to the population? Typicall gun grabber nonsense.

In 1998 and again in 1999, the Violence Policy Center, a research organization opposed to concealed carry, released reports highlighting the numbers of Texas' concealed carry licensees who have been arrested since the law went into effect. Using Texas Department of Public Safety records

• Licensees were 5.7 times less likely to be arrested for violent offenses than the general public - 127 per 100,000 population versus 730 per 100,000.
• Licensees were 14 times less likely to be arrested for nonviolent offenses than the general public - 386 per 100,000 population versus 5,212 per 100,000.
• Further, the general public is 1.4 times more likely to be arrested for murder than licensees [see Figure I], and no licensee had been arrested for negligent manslaughter
http://www.ncpa.org/ba/ba324/ba324.html

http://www.txchia.org/artbird3.htm


John Lott has all the numbers – read if you like - http://johnrlott.tripod.com/

Nice NRA stats.

However, the bottom line is NRA policies have armed people legally -- even to the point of allowing them to carry concealed weapons -- and these armed and dangerous people went out and committed over 5000 criems in Texas alone.

Not a bright idea to arm criminals, but such is NRA policy.



What you are saying is that NRA policy to arm people is OK, even though it means many of those people will commit crimes.

Indeed, statistic show that most of the large scale gun massacres like Columbine are committed with "legal" guns.

Thus banning guns is the solution.

It works in Japan, it works in Australia, in the UK and every other advanced nation.

Right. They are COMPLETELY impartial, just like every other issue-dedicated lobby group.



Yeah, thats probably true. I have no problem with those stats. Is it is trivially easy to get guns in the US through an assortment of means: when I am suggesting gun laws (liscencing and registration) be adopted, I would also put strict laws on gun sales. As you yourself have pointed out, look at what ultra-strict gun laws have done in Switzerland.

You seem to be making things up. Switzerland has one of the highest per capital gun homicide rates in the world (third after US and Finnland). Which isn't surprising given all the guns around. Indeed, there is a complete and direct worldwide correlation between gun homicide rates and percentage of gun ownership.


http://www.guncontrol.ca/Content/international.html


Country Licensing of gun owners? Registration of firearms? Other Households with firearms (%) Gun Homicide (per 100,000) Gun Suicide (per 100,000) Total Intentional Gun Death Rate per 100,000

Japan Yes Yes Prohibits handguns with few exceptions 0.6 0.03 0.04 0.07
Singapore Yes Yes Most handguns and rifles prohibited 0.01 (795 in the country) 0.07 0.17 0.24
Taiwan N/A N/A N/A 0.15 0.12 0.27
Kuwait N/A N/A N/A 0.34 0.03 0.37
England/ Wales Yes Yes Prohibits handguns 4.0 0.07 0.33 0.4


Switzerland Yes Yes 27.2 0.46 5.74 6.2
Finland Yes Yes No prohibitions 50 0.87 5.78 6.65
USA in some states Handguns in some states Some weapons in some states 41 6.24 7.23 13.47

What I am saying is what I have said, and I don't need your help in elaborating.You have not proven one iota of your assertions. There are half a million crimes per year in Texas, and that's just the ones reported to the fbi (fbi.gov, see 2006 tables). There are 20,000,000 people in Texas. Yet, you focus on 5,000 crimes committed over five years in Texas. That's a drop in the ocean, and can easily be seen to prove that those gun owners are less likely to commit a crime.

Go find some stats that boost your argument, or withdraw your assertions about what the Texas stats prove. Your choice.

Vermillion, you shouldn't be posting after a head injury!

It's drop in the ocean except for the 5000 victims of the crimes committed by people armed by the policies that you and the NRA promote.

Let me suggest that your lack of concern for crime victims is telling and a major attribute of gun nutz.

5,000 victims in 5 years represent 0.2% of the crime victims in Texas for that time period. Why don't you have any concern for the other 99.8% of crime victims in Texas? Why don't you outlaw vehicle ownership, since statiscally at least 80-90% of those criminals had a vehicle? Don't you have any compassion? Why not outlaw shoes, since almost all criminals have shoes?

Try presenting a causal relationship and refuting the "NRA stats" which you casually dismissed. Smug, general assertions and misspellings are not an argument.

According to the CDC, 2,342 people were killed with firearms in Texas in 2004. If I'm reading the chart right, that's 10-1/2 deaths per 100,000 population. May not sound like a lot, but IMHO, it's too many.

The US had 29,569 deaths attributed to firearms in 2004. That's equivalent to the entire population of Nacogdoches (2000 census).

Here's the nifty CDC statistics generator: CDC

Thanks for that CDC link!

Of the 2,342 you listed, 1,318 were suicides (6 per 100,000). I agree that this is "too many" but really, outlawing guns is going to prevent suicidal people from offing themselves? I've read somewhere that as firearms suicide rates decline, asphixiation rates increase. Gun availability influences the method, but not the rate of suicide. Just a thought. I hate to be dispassionate about this, but really gun crime rates are pretty low considering the availability. Not to mention, no one ever seems to measure the deterrence factor of criminals vs. an armed populace.

Nice link. Thanks.

America had almost 30,000 gun related deaths last year.

The UK had 30. 30!

The UK bans guns.

America doesn't

See a pattern forming?



More disinformation. There is an obviously link between suicide rates and the availability of guns. It's obvious to anybody but a NRA partisan that guns are effective, quick, easy to use killing tools (that's what there made for, so they tend to kill the suicide more often than other means). And suicides who don't have an easy means to kill themselves in a bout of depression often reconsider. Suicides who fail at killing themselves often go on to have full lifes. Obviously the prevalence of theeffective killing machines that firearms are makes suicide easier and hence more prevalent.
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:msDNdL...us&ie=UTF-8

http://www.ajph.org/cgi/content/abstract/96/10/1752

http://www.cfc-cafc.gc.ca/pol-leg/res-eval....%20CONCLUSIONS

No. and as usual you have no link to this bogus stat.

Try real numbers:
Gun Deaths and Injuries
The following data were provided in Parliamentary Answers during 2004


Gun Deaths

Number of deaths from firearms injury - United Kingdom, 1994 to 2003

Year


Number
1994 341
1995 358
1996 254
1997 201
1998 203
1999 210
2000 204
2001 167
2002 169
2003 163
Cause of death was defined using the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision (ICD-9) codes E922, E955.0-E955.4, E965.0-E965.4, E985.0-E985.4 and E970 from 1994 to 2000 and the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) codes W32-W34, X72-X74, X93-X95, Y22-Y24 and Y35.0 from 2001 onwards.
Data for England and Wales are for deaths occurring in the calendar year (which were registered before the release of the routine annual publication). Data for Scotland and Northern Ireland are for deaths registered in the calendar year.
________________________________________
Patients admitted to hospital in England as a result of gunshot injuries

http://www.gun-control-network.org/GF07.htm

And please show me how you correlate gun deaths with “guns” outside the fact that it is the weapon of choice in the 60 + billion dollar illegal drug and gang industry in the US. In other words if GUNS cause gun crime then there should be “gun crime” in proportion to where GUNS are.

Needless to say this is not the case.




More anti-gun nonsense. Try again.

Gun suicides outnumber gun homicides. In 1999, there were 16,599 gun suicides compared to 10,828 firearm homicides (National Center for Injury Prevention and Control). Guns were the most common method of suicide (57% in 1999).
If we could magically make all guns disappear, would the number of suicides decrease? Probably not. Excerpted from Dr. Gary Kleck's, Targeting Guns: Firearms and Their Control (p 285, Walter de Gruyter, Inc., New York 1997):
The full body of relevant studies indicates that firearm availability measures are significantly and positively associated with rates of firearm suicide, but have no significant association with rates of total suicide.
Of thirteen studies, nine found a significant association between gun levels and rates of gun suicide, but only one found a significant association between gun levels and rates of total suicides. The only study to find a measure of "gun availability" significantly associated with total suicide...used a measure of gun availability known to be invalid.
This pattern of results supports the view that where guns are less common, there is complete substitution of other methods of suicide, and that, while gun levels influence the choice of suicide method, they have no effect on the number of people who die in suicides.

As further evidence that gun ownership is not correlated with total suicide rates see international violent death rate table. For example, Japan, where gun ownership is extremely low (less than 1% of households), total suicide is higher than in a high-gun ownership country like the United States.

From 1972 to 1995 the per capita gun stock in the U. S. increased by more than 50%
. Gary Kleck in Targeting Guns (p 265) comments on this huge increase: "This change might be viewed as a sort of inadvertent natural experiment, in which Americans launched a massive and unprecedented civilian armaments program, probably the largest in world history. During this same period, the U.S. suicide rate was virtually constant, fluctuating only slightly within the narrow range from 11.8 to 13.0 suicides per 100,000 population...At most...this huge increase in the gun stock might have caused a mild increase in the percentage of suicides committed with guns, which shifted from 53.3 in 1972 to 60.3 in 1994, and thus a mild corresponding increase in the gun suicide rate." (See gun supply chart).
In 1972 the suicide rate was 11.9 per 100,000. After this "arms build-up" the total suicide rate remained unchanged at 11.9 in 1995.

http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcgvsuic.html

You have to love how hard NRA partisans try to cook up statistics in their favor. But here's a couple

America had 30,000 gun death and doesn't ban guns.

The UK had 30 gun deaths and does ban guns.

See a pattern forming?

But you're saying it's 30,000 vs 300 not 30. That changes thing. That really supports your side and strengthens your case. I mean banning guns only saves lifes by a factor of 100, not 1000. Good point.

Also gun related deaths and gun ownership positively associated worldwide.
http://www.guncontrol.ca/Content/international.html

It's almost as if these tools designed to kill people actually do

Gun Deaths - United States Tops The List
The United States leads the world's richest nations in gun deaths -- murders, suicides, and accidental deaths due to guns - according to a study published April 17, 1998 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

The U.S. was first at 14.24 gun deaths per 100,000 people. Two other countries in the Americas came next. Brazil was second with 12.95, followed by Mexico with 12.69.

Japan had the lowest rate, at 0.05 gun deaths per 100,000 (1 per 2 million people). The police in Japan actively raid homes of those suspected of having weapons.

The 36 countries in the study were the richest in the World Bank's 1994 World Development Report, having the highest GNP per capita income.

The United States accounted for 45 percent of the 88,649 gun deaths reported in the study, the first comprehensive international scrutiny of gun-related deaths.

The gun-related deaths per 100,000 people in 1994 by country were as follows:

U.S.A. 14.24
Brazil 12.95
Mexico 12.69
Estonia 12.26
Argentina 8.93
Northern Ireland 6.63
Finland 6.46
Switzerland 5.31
France 5.15
Canada 4.31
Norway 3.82
Austria 3.70
Portugal 3.20
Israel 2.91
Belgium 2.90
Australia 2.65
Slovenia 2.60
Italy 2.44
New Zealand 2.38
Denmark 2.09
Sweden 1.92
Kuwait 1.84
Greece 1.29
Germany 1.24
Hungary 1.11
Ireland 0.97
Spain 0.78
Netherlands 0.70
Scotland 0.54
England and Wales 0.41
Taiwan 0.37
Singapore 0.21
Mauritius 0.19
Hong Kong 0.14
South Korea 0.12
Japan 0.05

See a pattern forming?

And of course our populations are the same etc? Come on stop joking.

And YES if more guns are available to criminals they will use them – what a surprise. So this is why I should give up my gun in the hope you will somehow magically get all the criminals to forswear the use of guns. A stupid ludicrous argument.


And gun use is similar to the suicide argument of yours I blew away. The deaths would be by other (violent) means.

How about we try enforcing the gun laws.

And naturally you duck the key question- if guns cause crime then WHY is there NO gun crime in many places with LOTS of guns in the hands of the public and LOTS of gun crime in cities like DC and NY where citizens aren’t even allowed to have guns.
Go away and get an answer or your argument is meaningless.

http://www.gunowners.org/sk0802.htm

A. Guns save more lives than they take; prevent more injuries than they inflict
* Guns used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year -- or about 6,850 times a day.1 This means that each year, firearms are used more than 80 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives.2
* Of the 2.5 million times citizens use their guns to defend themselves every year, the overwhelming majority merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers. Less than 8% of the time, a citizen will kill or wound his/her attacker.3
* As many as 200,000 women use a gun every year to defend themselves against sexual abuse.4
* Even anti-gun Clinton researchers concede that guns are used 1.5 million times annually for self-defense. According to the Clinton Justice Department, there are as many as 1.5 million cases of self-defense every year. The National Institute of Justice published this figure in 1997 as part of "Guns in America" -- a study which was authored by noted anti-gun criminologists Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig.5
* Armed citizens kill more crooks than do the police. Citizens shoot and kill at least twice as many criminals as police do every year (1,527 to 606).6 And readers of Newsweek learned that "only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The 'error rate' for the police, however, was 11 percent, more than five times as high."7
* Handguns are the weapon of choice for self-defense. Citizens use handguns to protect themselves over 1.9 million times a year.8 Many of these self-defense handguns could be labeled as "Saturday Night Specials."
B. Concealed carry laws help reduce crime
* Nationwide: one-half million self-defense uses. Every year, as many as one-half million citizens defend themselves with a firearm away from home.9
* Concealed carry laws are dropping crime rates across the country. A comprehensive national study determined in 1996 that violent crime fell after states made it legal to carry concealed firearms. The results of the study showed:
* States which passed concealed carry laws reduced their murder rate by 8.5%, rapes by 5%, aggravated assaults by 7% and robbery by 3%;10 and
* If those states not having concealed carry laws had adopted such laws in 1992, then approximately 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes, 60,000 aggravated assaults and over 11,000 robberies would have been avoided yearly.11
* Vermont: one of the safest five states in the country. In Vermont, citizens can carry a firearm without getting permission... without paying a fee... or without going through any kind of government-imposed waiting period. And yet for ten years in a row, Vermont has remained one of the top-five, safest states in the union -- having three times received the "Safest State Award."12
* Florida: concealed carry helps slash the murder rates in the state. In the fifteen years following the passage of Florida's concealed carry law in 1987, over 800,000 permits to carry firearms were issued to people in the state.13 FBI reports show that the homicide rate in Florida, which in 1987 was much higher than the national average, fell 52% during that 15-year period -- thus putting the Florida rate below the national average. 14
* Do firearms carry laws result in chaos? No. Consider the case of Florida. A citizen in the Sunshine State is far more likely to be attacked by an alligator than to be assaulted by a concealed carry holder.
1. During the first fifteen years that the Florida law was in effect, alligator attacks outpaced the number of crimes committed by carry holders by a 229 to 155 margin.
2. And even the 155 "crimes" committed by concealed carry permit holders are somewhat misleading as most of these infractions resulted from Floridians who accidentally carried their firearms into restricted areas, such as an airport.15
C. Criminals avoid armed citizens
* Kennesaw, GA. In 1982, this suburb of Atlanta passed a law requiring heads of households to keep at least one firearm in the house. The residential burglary rate subsequently dropped 89% in Kennesaw, compared to the modest 10.4% drop in Georgia as a whole.16
* Ten years later (1991), the residential burglary rate in Kennesaw was still 72% lower than it had been in 1981, before the law was passed.17
* Nationwide. Statistical comparisons with other countries show that burglars in the United States are far less apt to enter an occupied home than their foreign counterparts who live in countries where fewer civilians own firearms. Consider the following rates showing how often a homeowner is present when a burglar strikes:
* Homeowner occupancy rate in the gun control countries of Great Britain, Canada and Netherlands: 45% (average of the three countries); and,
* Homeowner occupancy rate in the United States: 12.7%.18

Rate of gun homicides in UK: 0.4 per 100K
Rate of gun homicide in US: 13.47 per 100K

Yeah, there's a joke here and it's on you. All this sturm and drang to defend the indefensible. Gun bans work to reduce gun crime. Period.

http://www.guncontrol.ca/Content/international.html

Dream on sir. The reality is gus protect the innocent and you, of course, refuse to deal with the reality that “gun” do not “cause” gun crime.

Its moot anyway because even your Dem Part is deathly afraid of this issue and all the Dems that allowed the party to take Congress are pro gun. Any fool that thinks he can get a “gun ban” passed in this country is just dreaming.

The grim reality is we allow the criminals to return to the street time and again and then we wonder why the crime rate goes up.

The NRA had the right idea with project Exile: The reality is any effort too actually enforce gun laws drops the gun crime rate dramatically. Too bad it is not used more.

Project Exile was a controversial federal program started in Richmond, Virginia in 1997. Project Exile shifted the prosecution of illegal technical gun possession offenses to federal court, where they carried a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in federal prison under the federal Gun Control Act of 1968, rather than in state court.
The program was since copied by several other cities, sometimes under other names. In Atlanta for example the program was known as FACE 5 (Firearms in Atlanta Can Equal 5 years in federal prison).
The National Rifle Association (NRA) and the Brady Campaign were both early and vocal supporters of Project Exile, as were federal and city officials who claimed that Project Exile helped to reduce firearm-related violence in Richmond by 40 percent. The NRA lobbied the U.S. Congress to help secure $2.3 million for emulation of Exile in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Camden County, New Jersey where similar firearms-related violence has plagued the communities.
Within the first year (1997-1998) Project Exile resulted in:
• 372 persons indicted for Federal gun violations.
• 440 illegally possessed guns seized.
• 300 persons arrested or held in State custody.
• 222 arrestees (more than 74 percent) held without bond.
• 247 persons convicted.
• 196 persons sentenced to an average of 55 months of imprisonment.

It's quite amazing how you're tapped into all the NRA disinformation. I'm impressed.

But the facts remain, worldwide statistic show that reducing gun ownership reduces gun homicides. Everything else is just NRA spouting the usual gibberish. As more and more gun massacres occur, almost always with "legal" guns, American will eventually join the civilized world and ban guns. Frankly supporting your gun fetish isn't worth the lives it costs.

This is by far my "favorite" statistic to use against the gun nutz sophistry.

http://www.gun-control-network.org/GF02.htm

The following data were prepared in the wake of the shooting in Erfurt, Germany, 26 April 2002.

In the 14 deadliest mass shootings committed in wealthy nations during the past 35 years:

79% of the victims were shot with lawfully held firearms (185 of 233 victims)

86% of these mass shooting (12 of 14) were committed by lawful gun owners

Many killers, like the 19-year-old who shot 16 people dead at his school in Germany, were previously law-abiding sporting shooters or pistol club members - men whose legal ownership of guns was not questioned by authorities until after the tragedy.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Deadliest Mass Shootings (10 or more dead) in Western Democracies

1966-2002



Date
Place Dead Legal status

26 Apr 2002 Erfurt, Germany 16 + 1 Legal guns, pistol club member
27 Sep 2001 Zug, Switzerland 14 + 1 Legal guns, licensed pistol owner
29 Jul 1999 Atlanta, GA, USA 12 + 1 Legal guns, no licence required
20 Apr 1999 Littleton, CO, USA 13 + 2 Not legal guns
28 Apr 1996 Port Arthur, Australia 35 Not legal guns
13 Mar 1996 Dunblane, Scotland 17 + 1 Legal guns, pistol club member
16 Oct 1991 Killeen, TX, USA 23 + 1 Legal guns, no licence required
13 Nov 1990 Aramoana, New Zealand 13 + 1 Legal guns, licensed gun owner
18 Jun 1990 Jacksonville, FL, USA 9 + 1 Legal guns, no licence required
06 Dec 1989 Montreal, Canada 14 + 1 Legal guns, no licence required
19 Aug 1987 Hungerford, England 16 + 1 Legal guns, pistol club member
20 Aug 1986 Edmond, OK, USA 14 + 1 Legal guns, no licence required
18 Jul 1984 San Ysidro, CA, USA 21 + 1 Legal guns, no licence required
01 Aug 1966 Austin, TX, USA 16 + 1 Legal guns, no licence required



Philip Alpers, Harvard Injury Control Research Center, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA.
In a study of 65 high-profile multiple-victim shootings in the United States during 40 years, 62% of handgun shootings and 71% of long gun shootings were committed with legally acquired firearms (Violence Policy Center, 2001)

Ya right your stat is another piece of garbage like this

29 Jul 1999 Atlanta, GA, USA 12 + 1 Legal guns, no licence required

And most of the others!!!!
WOW no license required so any killer who has a gun has it “legally” _ Right? WRONG if he has a record which I am positive is not part of the research done for this little anti–gun piece of junk. Was the gun legal when it was used? And what % is this of all gun deaths? Is this doo doo your best? pure trash.

And you should not have brought up Switzerland in this issue. You see everyone in that country has a gun. Every man is required to keep guns – many the fully automatic “machine guns” so hated and mislabeled in this country. AND the gun crime rate in Switzerland is equal to that in Japan where No one is allowed to have guns – you perfect “gun ban country”. So what do the Swiss do that we don’t – 3 guesses.

Guns are deeply rooted within Swiss culture - but the gun crime rate is so low that statistics are not even kept.
The country has a population of six million, but there are estimated to be at least two million publicly-owned firearms, including about 600,000 automatic rifles and 500,000 pistols.

In addition to the government-provided arms, there are few restrictions on buying weapons. Some cantons restrict the carrying of firearms - others do not.

The government even sells off surplus weaponry to the general public when new equipment is introduced.

Guns and shooting are popular national pastimes. More than 200,000 Swiss attend national annual marksmanship competitions.

But despite the wide ownership and availability of guns, violent crime is extremely rare. There are only minimal controls at public buildings and politicians rarely have police protection. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1566715.stm

Still ducking the hard question- the one no liberal gun grabber can answer with all the bogus stats in the world. Give up now.
And I have the NRA info because I am a member like millions of others. Guess I am just a “gun nut” – much like the majority of Americans.
And anytime you would like to debunk my “misinformation” – which you hav’t done yet – feel free.

So you just dream on pal about taking away our guns so that just the crooks have em. Lots of luck.

This is something like what I meant. I would also add that terrorist acts are generally obvious acts of terrorism; there is no doubt at all what the motive of the terrorists is. In addition, I might add that terrorist acts are designed to kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible, hence the preference for explosives. The incident we are discussing, as horrible as it is, does not seem to be an act of terrorism.

Well, for what its worth, I don't think I've ever framed it as an act of terrorism, but I did question the matter of jihad. Not all jihadists are terrorists, and certainly not all terrorists are jihadists.

Here is another example of the MSM deliberately? leaving out religion when it is likely (very likely in this case) relevant.

http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ar...18010/1001/NEWS

While not agreeing with Landru as I believe he is slightly overstating the case (great nickname though), your points regarding Switzerland Ted are missing a few critical fact. Yes Switzerland has guns, LOTS of guns.

And every single gun is registered, and marked with a registered seial number, every owner has a Waffenerwerbsschein or buyers permit obtained through specific government gun training and safety courses, usually provided in the military. Obtaining a gun without this extensive specialised gun training is impossible. ALL ammunition sales are registered and tracked, public carrying is illegal without a special (and rare) permit, sale of automatic or auto-convertable guns is prohibited.

Switzerland, as I stated earlier in the thread, is a fantastic example of how extensive and well policed gun registration and tight legislation can control gun violence.

How is this not a loaded question? What group doesn't seek to use a particular news story that is relevant to them to their advantage? I know of more than a few "wife at home shoots intruder" stories that are used by the "gun worshippers" to advance their cause.



This question's premise is flawed and the projected results are also off base. While the kid was muslim, he and his family were inactive "hermits" who, like other European muslims in the salt lake area, did not attend mosque and were not involved with the muslim community of salt lake. As for the projected results-there is nothing on the net that I can find from a reputable news source that claims this kid shot up the place due to "intolerance" in Utah. Everything that I find deals with his past and his possible mental problems.




The claim that this was inspired by his religion is absurd.

From the above hyperlink:






I have a hard time believing the part that I bolded. I believe it is quite the opposite. Statements like "Oh, he was a good person." or something along those lines are widely used. It occurred with theBTK killer as a model church goer and "Mr. Good guy." That kind of description also played out with TIME's warm and fuzzy interview with Timothy McVeigh The media talks to all members of a given situation. They will talk with victims, as well as a perpetrator's mother. There is nothing "dishonest" about it.



As others have said, random shootings and murder are not that unusual these days.

V
And every single gun is registered, and marked with a registered seial number, every owner has a Waffenerwerbsschein or buyers permit obtained through specific government gun training and safety courses, usually provided in the military. Obtaining a gun without this extensive specialised gun training is impossible. ALL ammunition sales are registered and tracked, public carrying is illegal without a special (and rare) permit, sale of automatic or auto-convertable guns is prohibited.

Switzerland, as I stated earlier in the thread, is a fantastic example of how extensive and well policed gun registration and tight legislation can control gun violence.


I know V i have been there and have Swiss friends.

And you think that if this is done in the US this ends gun crime?? You must be joking. The Swiss keep track of everything but with all those guns if they had anywhere near the criminal element we have here many would be stolen and used in “gun crimes”.

We do much the same in our big “gun crime” ridded cities like NY and DC. Law-abiding citizens cannot get guns, all gun sales are monitored, records kept etc. Yet the gun crime is enormous and the simple reason is 1. more criminals. and 2. A policy to not punish gun crime harshly.

Oddly enough many of the places that have the most “lax” gun laws have the lowest gun “crime” – so if you think you can blame gun crime on guns in the hands of citizens – registered or not, you will not succeed V.

Vermillion, I like your well reasoned posts, but I think you have been sucked into the NRA disinformation campaign on Switzerland. Switzerland has one of the highest gun ownership rates in the world AND one of the highest gun homicide rates. This accords with global statistics showing gun ownership is positively associated across the board with gun homicide rates.

That's hardly surprising. Put dangerous tools designed specifically to efficiently kill people into people's homes and guess what, people use them to kill people. It works like a Swiss watch.

http://www.guncontrol.ca/Content/international.html

(Switzerland gun homicide rate per 100K is 6.2, third highest in the world)



Your level of analysis is specious. Nations that ban guns have low infinitely low levels of gun crime. Period.

http://www.guncontrol.ca/Content/international.html

The point is you can't ban guns city by city, because it's easy to get guns right outside the city. It's not, as the evidence shows, easy if you ban guns nationwide.

So your example argues for a national ban, ironically enough.

I'm thinking that we have banned a few things nationally, and they seem to still be around, even though they come from other countries, not other cities. Once, our friends in Canada supplied us with fine Canadian whisky. Now, our friends in Mexico supply us with tasty sensimilla. Prostitution is mostly illegal, yet our comrades in the former Soviet bloc keep us in stock of blonde sex workers. Surely, you're not suggesting that if something is made 'illegal' it will go away? Something whose ownership right is guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, no less? What are there, 400 million guns in the US, how would you confiscate all of them? There would be a revolution among the armed populace.

You are mistaken. Even your own previous link would indicate that gun homicide rates in Switzerland are lower than France, Canada, Belgium, Australia, and a host of other countries with strict gun control laws. I'm not sure how or why you cited this source to back your argument, maybe you were reading the suicide rates and thought they were homicide rates. Read them again.Here is another.

Edited to add: I suppose I should add that concealed carry laws lowered homicide rates in Florida, but in order to obtain a license to carry I had to register the gun I would carry, show proficiency at the firing range, and take a written test. I think that is reasonable.

No, I'm not mistaken. You've confused two sets of statistics (as a result of my misstating the terms). One relating to gun murders and one relating to suicides. Intentional gun deaths (which includes both and is what I meant) is very high in Switzerland. It has 6.2 gun deaths per 100K persons That's third in the world after the US and (strangely) Finland. In comparison, Japan (which bans guns completely) has a rate of 0.07

Gun homicides are relatively low in Switzerland, though nowhere near as low as in the UK and Japan, which bans guns.

The confusion was of my own making by using homicides when I meant deaths.

http://www.guncontrol.ca/Content/international.html

If your argument is, suicide gun deaths don't matter, well, I beg to differ. The statistics indicate that the availability of guns increases the suicide rate (as Switzerland suggests), and that "replaceability" is not complete. I linked those stats earlier.

So you are saying these people would have not committed suicide if they did not have a gun?

As an aside, there is actually a lot of truth to this. There are several kinds of suicide in psychological terms, and the most common is the 'cry out'. An act of desperation from people who need assistance; these suicides normally fail partly because the attempt is half hearted. swallowing pills in a place where you will be discovered and so on. This is also the group which has th best chance of recovery with help, and being cured of suicidal tendencies. However with access to firearms, 'cry out' suicides usually suceed.

I read an excellent article on the psychiatry of suicide back when I was dating a doctor, and in fact the predominant layman idea that 'if somebody wants to kill themselves, they will' is quite false. Suicide sucess rates are in fact really low, about 30% if I recall correctly. (I'll try and remember the name of the author). The study revealed a few things of interest, suicide sucess rates are much higher for men than for women, (irrelevant to the debate, but odd) and that suicide sucess rates for firearms are about 85%, as opposed to around 30% average for non-firearm methods.

Just an aside...

Regarding the phenomenom, disputed here, of whether or not jihad is being considered or attributed as a motivation for this and similar attacks, and why it may or may not be looked at:

Terror: It looks like the Muslim teen who opened fire on shoppers in a Salt Lake City mall is yet another case of "sudden jihad syndrome," a condition in which normal-appearing American Muslims abruptly turn violent.

Taken together, this and other cases add up to an invisible jihad inside America. But don't tell that to the FBI. The politically correct bureau does everything it can to avoid recognizing the obvious Islamic factor in these heinous crimes.

...Witnesses say it was an act of coldblooded violence aimed at random victims — something otherwise known as terrorism. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Talovic attended Friday prayers at a mosque about a block from the mall.

Yet the FBI saw no religious motive, and quickly ruled out terrorism. Nor could it find anything to indicate terrorism in several other Muslim-tied cases since 9/11, including:

...• • Omeed Aziz Popal of Fremont, Calif., who police said hit and killed a bicyclist there then took his SUV on a hit-and-run spree in San Francisco, mowing down pedestrians at crosswalks and on sidewalks before police caught up with him, whereupon the Muslim called himself a "terrorist."

• A 22-year-old Muslim, Ismail Yassin Mohamed, who stole a car in Minneapolis and rammed it into other cars before stealing a van and doing the same, injuring drivers and pedestrians, while repeatedly yelling, "Die, die, die, kill, kill, kill" — all, he said, on orders from "Allah."

• A 22-year-old Iranian honors student, Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, who deliberately rammed his SUV into a crowd at the University of North Carolina to "punish the government of the United States" for invading Iraq and other Muslim nations.


Why? Because some others of his religion, who may not be unbiased in such a case, say so? We don't have the perp's explanation, and even if we did, past behavior on the part of the FBI and media make it unlikely that they'll give much support to the notion that a self-confessed domestic jihadist is, in point of fact, motivated by jihad, so 'tis less than likely they'd attribute such motivation to a dead perp.



Odd, one of his own relatives said he attended mosque frequently. After the truth came out, the Muslim Forum of Utah changed its tune...

Then, of course, we have what the words of the shooter's father:

Suljo Talovic, Father of Shooter: "Somebody got (the guns)…and maybe (they were) training him and tell(ing) him (to), ‘go shoot somebody.'"

Question: So you think that somebody influenced him maybe to do this?

Suljo Talovic: "Yeah. I think somebody."


looks like jihad

walks like jihad

kills like jihad



Gee, maybe we should ask if its jihad

Maybe we should keep guns out of the hands of jihadists and other gun nutz -- by banning guns.



This is a well researched area and the best studies conclude that if guns aren't available people do not commit suicide at the same rate and they tend to survive the attempt.

This "replacability" issue has been pretty widely studies. Most suicides are committed by on impulse by depressed people, often using drugs or alcohol. Guns are an easy way to kill oneselve. Other methods aren't. So if they don't have an easy tool for self-slaughter, in significant numbers of cases they in fact do not kill themselves.

This isn't really surprising: guns are designed to kill people efficiently. Gas ovens and razors aren't.

Actually there are numerous studies that say this incorrect. If the availability of guns increases their use in suicide then more guns should = more “successful” suicides. This seems to be not the case.

Americans launched a massive and unprecedented civilian armaments program, probably the largest in world history. During this same period, the U.S. suicide rate was virtually constant, fluctuating only slightly within the narrow range from 11.8 to 13.0 suicides per 100,000 population...At most...this huge increase in the gun stock might have caused a mild increase in the percentage of suicides committed with guns, which shifted from 53.3 in 1972 to 60.3 in 1994, and thus a mild corresponding increase in the gun suicide rate." (See gun supply chart).
In 1972 the suicide rate was 11.9 per 100,000. After this "arms build-up" the total suicide rate remained unchanged at 11.9 in 1995.


And in Canada: other methods.
Guns and suicide: possible effects of some specific legislation
CL Rich, JG Young, RC Fowler, J Wagner and NA Black
Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego.
The authors describe suicide rates in Toronto and Ontario and methods used for suicide in Toronto for 5 years before and after enactment of Canadian gun control legislation in 1978. They also present data from San Diego, Calif., where state laws attempt to limit access to guns by certain psychiatric patients. Both sets of data indicate that gun control legislation may have led to decreased use of guns by suicidal men, but the difference was apparently offset by an increase in suicide by leaping. In the case of men using guns for suicide, these data support a hypothesis of substitution of suicide method.

And in Japan the suicide rate is higher than the US and there are virtually no guns.

QUOTE

Terror: It looks like the Muslim teen who opened fire on shoppers in a Salt Lake City mall is yet another case of "sudden jihad syndrome," a condition in which normal-appearing American Muslims abruptly turn violent

.

This is an editorial, nothing in it contradicts the information that I posted, nor does it challenge in any way the FBI's findings that this was not a terrorist related activity. It's just a blow-hard piece that proves nothing. A picture of the kid in a mosque?, checks that he wrote to pay for his tithing? No radical writings or things he may have yelled during the crime? If this was religiously inspired, why didn't he leave a videotape like most suicide attackers do? Why such a lack of evidence here?



The problem with expanding the definition of "terrorism" like this is that it muddies up the issue. There are shootings and murders every day. Is that part of Osama Bin-Laden's campaign of terrorism? It is violence, not politically inspired terrorism. There is a difference, except for those who promiscuously confuse the two due to a lack of evidence to push their perspective. It would be laughable to claim that gang crime is part of this terrorist operation. It's equally laughable to claim that a kid from a hermit like family who wasn't a consistent worshipping Muslim did this for religious reasons as well. Especially given his lack of rabid faith, as evidenced by the fact that he didn't leave a last videotaped message or any writings.



So if a Mormon kills a person, he does it because of his faith? If a Jewish person kills a person, then his being dragged to a synagogue by his parents constitutes zealous faith that motivated him to do it?



You didn't provide the full picture of this, you only provided half of the information here. He has stated specifically that the violence the boy witnessed occurred during the war in Bosnia. Even that doesn't matter, we have what the guy THINKS. Guess what, there are parents who think that their kids aren't really bad, but that they are under the influence of the wrong crowd. This also proves nothing and it would take an incredible leap in logic to believe anything the father says over the FBI.



Cute, still proves nothing.