USCe student shot dead last night in 2nd Amendment lesson

Thanks. I can't figure out how to do that any longer

 

Why haven’t you gotten rid of your gun? Start the movement. Turn your in to the cops.
I also agree idiots shouldn’t have guns. I have long advocated for a tiered licensed system. Mandatory training.
I will not say that this homeowner was an idiot. I don’t know the details. As far as I can tell no one here does.
If we want to protect young people and innocents from gun violence let’s start finding ways to curb the gang violence across our nation. Let’s start finding ways to change a culture that believes if you are disrespected you HAVE to retaliate with violence. Let’s start holding parent responsible for damage, murder, anything their child does.

 

I think what you say is incomplete. We have an exorbitant amount of violence of all kinds. Yesterday a few miles from my house a guy attacked a Tim Horton’s restaurant. They had gotten his girlfriends order wrong and so he showed up with a hammer and smashed out the glass door.

He then went inside the restaurant and started smashing things with the hammer. He raised the hammer to hit a girl that worked there when a customer, who had a concealed carry pistol, pulled out the pistol and waved it at the perpetrator. The guy lowered the hammer and left.

In that case the gun might’ve saved a life or prevented severe injury. The bigger issue is we have developed a culture where people think they can take out their anger violently anytime they’re upset.

Guns have existed here from before we were a country. The last couple decades have seen an acceleration not only of gun violence, but of all kinds of violence. We need to get to the root of all violence in our culture and change it.

 

I find this to be a fallacy. Perhaps it will be named for me 1 day. What you suggest is a first best solution. In many (probably most) cases they are not feasible. First best solutions are almost always theoretical. I can't really think of a single social ill that we've constructed a first best sol for. imperfect info, incomplete info & unobservable variables render virtually all 1st best sols infeasible.

 

Where do you get this idea that violent crime has accelerated in recent decades? The fact is that violent crime has dropped substantially over the past 25 years.


There was a spike in 2020, likely due to people feeling isolated. Otherwise, it's been dropping.


Gun murders, otoh have increased precipitously over the last decade.

 

And forgive me, but I have doubts about your anecdote. It's the kind of story that gets passed around and elaborated upon . . . the story of a hero, this one who just happens to have performed heroic duty with a gun. Maybe you have a story you can link.

The U.S. undeniably has a major gun violence problem.

 

Not sure exactly what is the fallacy, and what I wrote. Then you may be right about solutions. But over the last few decades, we have created a culture where everyone is a victim. Where if someone is disrespected, they must react strongly. We have to change the culture.

 

I'll see your decades & give you centuries.



but, for context read this
https://www.vrc.crim.cam.ac.uk/syst...nuel-eisner-historical-trends-in-violence.pdf

 

thanks for the vacuous platitudes. they seem real actionable

 

I accept your data, however, we might be talking about two different things. As it says in the footnotes, those are crimes that are reported. Also what is not included in the chart is what fueled the violence.

When I was a kid you would never hear of someone taking a hammer and going in and smashing up a fast food restaurant. When I was a kid, you never heard of someone going into a school or a church or a nightclub and shooting it up. Those things, if they did happen, were extremely rare.

 

the fallacy is that things can be solved by solving their root causes. EX: Economists know (& it is easy to demonstrate) that paying people for their effort makes everyone better off vs. paying them for their performance, but no one is paid for their effort b/c we cannot observe it.

 

Obviously those data do not include Chicago.

 

I don’t deal in anecdotes. It was on the television news tonight.

Hammer-wielding suspect breaks door, threatens area Tim Hortons employee, report says

 

I always appreciate your economic insights. In this case, are you saying that if the root cause of gun violence is too many guns in our country, that removing or reducing the number of guns will not solve the problem?

 

You are projecting your own life experience to generalization. I don't think you can "yeah, but" the data. Are you assuming that only reported violent crime is falling, but all of the secret covert violent crimes make up for the diff, constituting a net increase? Violent crime in the U.S. drops because society evolves and resources improve.
And I respectfully disagree with your point about the hammer during your childhood (see first sentence). There were violent criminals back in your day. Thankfully, you were insulated from it.

Finally, your notion about shooting up nightclubs and churches supports my point. The U.S. has a terrible gun violence problem.

 

nope. I am saying that social/economic problems can almost never be solved via root causes. B/C we cannot observe the root causes even when we know what they are. You're question is nonsense. By def, if guns were the root cause eliminating them would solve the problem. If killers were born with KILLER on their foreheads, we'd be in pretty good shape.

But, don't knock 2nd best solutions. If you had a bowl of decorative rocks on your coffee table & your 4 yo kept throwing them at you, your wife, your 2 yo....what's the first thing you'd do?

As cowboys are wont to say about first best solutions, it ain't a first best solution, but it'll damn sure do til' one shows up.

 

Thanks. That's an anecdote, btw. I will retract my doubt about the "good guy with a gun" and appreciate you posting the story. I must, however, note one detail from the story:
"The employee reported that the suspect raised the hammer at her as if to strike her while she was behind the counter. She then went to the office area." This doesn't exactly reflect your re-telling of the story, which might just have been elaborated.

 

I was in a strange situation a few years back, when I heard banging on my door at 1:30 a.m. I have a glass security door in front of my front door, so I opened the front door and talked through the security door. There were three college-aged guys and one college-aged girl standing out there. The three guys were looking and acting really hostile, shouting at me. The girl was hysterical. They insisted that they had tracked the girl's younger brother (by his cell phone) to my house, and they demanded the right to search my house. I said hell, no, you're not searching my house. Call the police if you want someone to search the house. Then I told them that the accuracy of the cell phone tracking software is only good to about 50 feet, and her brother's cell phone could in the neighbor's house, and the neighbor had college-aged kids. I told them to lose the attitude, because the neighbor is a former cop and will probably point a gun at them if they go shouting like crazy people. Some people don't think before they act.