Good guy with gun kills a teen returning an airsoft gun to sporting goods store

Okay, so do the experiment in South America. Hand a bunch of people guns and separate them off from a group of people without guns. Which one do you think would have a higher death rate due to violence? Essentially, the only way to avoid the obvious conclusion is to purposefully design the experiment to be contaminated with confounding variables.

 

That’s the point. The bell can’t be unrung and society isn’t a curated sample.

 

Do you think all 17 year Olds are the same? 17 year old 5'6" 150 ln scholar student never been in a fist fight is mot same as 6' , 199 lb 17 year old dropout neighborhood thug that thrives in violent environments and culture

Your understanding is incorrect. If you are trying to get away from someone and your home is near, you don't hide in the darkness and pounce and assault the person you are trying to get away from.

What would you think if your neighborhood patrol followed and reported on an unfamiliar teenage or young adult male moving through your neighborhood after a series of thefts in the neighborhood? Your framing of the event and refusal to recognize TVs documented history shows your bias. One guy, a homeowner fed up with theft and destruction in his neighborhood tracks a young adult male new to the area and gets physically attacked by young adult male. Neighborhood watchman defends himself from attack. That's what this is. All it has ever been. TV continues home instead of hiding and ambushing him and this never happens. TV chose to hide, anbush, physically assault a person. He played a stupid game and won a stupid prize.

I've followed and reported similar things, thankfully I wasn't attacked. Two led to dui's, one burglary arrest, one Trespassing charge, and a couple of times they never found the individual or vehicle. Does that make me some strange guy that deserves to have someone hide in wait and attack me and attempt to bash my head in?

 

Of course it isn't. But if you are looking for the effects of a component, that is how you find it. By doing experiments to control other issues. I suspect that nobody really thinks guns diminish the number of violent deaths. It just sounds better for people that want guns for their own psychological benefit, want to place the externality of a lot of death on others as they pursue those psychological goals, and don't really view themselves as the types to do just that.

 

All this stuff you typed is largely meaningless. Trayvon wasn’t the thief Zimmerman was allegedly looking for and has no responsibility to follow any of Zimmerman’s orders or comply with anything he asked him to do.

And what does unfamiliar teenager even mean? Did Zimmerman know every kid in the neighborhood? Zimmerman was actually the strange person lurking around causing trouble at night, not Trayvon.

 

You literally could run the exact same scenario with cars. You'd probably find more deaths with cars than without. Doesn't mean the cars cause the deaths. Nor does it mean everyone who wants a car can be reduced to a single seemingly less legitimate reason that can be easily dismissed by those who don't see value in having a car. It comes down to you don't see guns as having personal utility to you or those closest to you such that you place value on having that utility present in your life, thus you have no qualms with reducing the right because you think the cost is too great.

Heck, you could probably argue that you'd have less death in a control group where you restricted free speech or practice of religion compared to one where you didn't. Heck, plenty of atheists/agnostics actually make that exact argument and would like to significantly restrict or abolish all practice of religion. Why is your position superior?

 

The jury had a difficult job, and I respect their decision, particularly given that only one of two people involved was alive to tell his side. Few points here though.

Martin was listed by the autopsy doctor as weighing 158, so Zimmerman had nearly 30 pounds on him at the time of arrest. While he apparently wasn't very good at it, Zimmerman did have some MMA training and purportedly wanted to be a cop. I don't believe either of them had criminal convictions, but Zimmerman did have some run-ins with the law before (and after) he killed Martin.

Zimmerman was arrested in 2005 for resisting an officer with violence. Those charges were dropped and he was allowed to go into an alcohol education program. In August of 2005, Zimmerman's former fiancee got a restraining order entered against him (I read that the court granted his request for one against her, too). After Zimmerman killed Martin, he had multiple interactions with law enforcement in which he was arrested and charged for violence against different women. Those charges were later dropped as well.

Zimmerman would later go on to make money signing paintings of the Confederate Battle Flag. His Twitter posts included calling Obama a baboon, promoting his killing of Martin, and sharing topless pictures of an ex while also doxxing her and making a slur about Muslims. It's been reported that Zimmerman sold the gun he used to kill Martin for up to a quarter million dollars. Lastly, the HOA reportedly paid as much as a million dollars to Martin's family to settle the civil litigation filed against the HOA.

Not defending anything Martin did, but Zimmerman's actions have not been representative of a well-adjusted man who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time on one occasion. Some might even call him a "thug."

 

If you only look at deaths caused by car accident, probably. But I would suspect that wouldn't actually work. The inability to transport a person quickly would likely cause a lot more death. No cars, you have a heart attack 15 miles from a hospital, and you are much more likely to die.

The value of a car is to move quickly. The value of a gun is to kill people efficiently.

The issue isn't the extent of the cost: it is who pays the cost. If gun owners would internalize their externality, I would have no issue. Instead, a gun owner's utility is partially paid for by increased risk to others. And gun owners refuse to internalize that externality.

So, for example, if there was an insurance payout to somebody for being violently killed by a gun obtained either via theft (which can often be attributed to negligence), private sale, or through the actions of the gun owner, I'd be okay with that.

Unlikely. Countries with more free speech tend to have lower death rates due to increased economic performance and due to the fact that speech serves as a substitute for violence. Certainly not true for guns.

My position is superior because it does not make other people pay for my choices. I want people to pay for their own choices and stop pawning off the risks that they cause on others. There are two ways that this can be done: first, you could utilize insurance as I outlined above. Second, we could have laws to limit grey markets and theft and to affirmatively prove that an individual gun owner is of low risk to utilize that gun on me. The first is more free market. The latter is more government control. Honestly, as long as we begin the process of limiting how much non-gun owners are expected to pay for gun owners utility via increased risks, I am okay with either.

 

Ok, so what if we restricted cars to use exclusively by government agents? Roads sure would be less crowded getting that heart attack patient to the hospital, and much safer for the ambulance.

The value of a car is to transport things from point A to point B under mechanical power. How quickly is up to the user. The constitutionally protected value of a gun is in causing others to not harm you either through significant harm to them or the threat of significant harm. Often (but not always) that means death. There are other benefits to each, but those are the primary ones.

Not true. Many have concealed carry insurance, homeowners insurance, or umbrella policies that pay out in the event of a harm against a third party. Insurance cannot, however, cover criminal acts and likely none of the above types of insurance would actually pay out in the event of some dipshit barney fife wannabe killing a kid with a BB gun like this.

That said, passing a law forcing insurance to carry does not mean people will obtain insurance and stop carrying, especially those doing so dangerously and/or illegally. Look at the car insurance situation here in Florida. Way too many uninsured drivers and underinsured drivers result in everyone else bearing the impact of that in the form of our own premiums.

There is a legal remedy, though: sue the person in court and obtain a judgement against any assets they have. It's not perfect but it is what it is.

We're not talking countries. We're talking experiment populations. People tend to behave differently in society than in experiment sample groups

People with assets who need to carry a gun will insure themselves. People without assets (those at greatest risk of needing a gun) generally won't insure themselves and are at the greatest risk of needing a gun.

 

Unlikely that you would be able to build roads then. You are assuming that roads are naturally occurring for some reason. Also, car ownership has been shown to lower all cause medical mortality. That is because not everybody calls an ambulance for all events with a likelihood of mortality.

People don't go at walking speed in their cars. They utilize cars to go faster than a horse or walking when moving people or things.

That is how you internalize the cost. You make people carry insurance that pays out if somebody does something like this. The insurance isn't about replacing the gun. It is about dealing with the damage done by your ownership of a gun in terms of risk to others.

And then, perhaps, people forced to pay more because of that behavior would stop backing policies to make it easier to do that. It is about aligning incentives here.

It is not only imperfect, it is largely impossible. Thus, why insurance is a much better option.

I see no reason why a lack of free speech in an experimental condition that is basically just go live life without free speech would not behave the same way as those not in an experiment. However, any differences should be handled by the control.

Then, they could have the gun confiscated and have to face criminal charges for owning an illegal gun.

Owning a gun should include paying the price of the externality of doing so. You shouldn't get to free load that risk off on others.

 

Zimmerman was definitely a thug with a reputation and he continued his thuggish antics that night he decided to follow a 17 year old kid around. Then like the coward he is, he used his firearm when the kid started beating his ass for being a creepy stalker. Some ammosexual nerds, like Zimmerman and the gun-loving loser this thread is about, just don’t know how to #MindYourBusiness