Statistically a person is highly unlikely to be involved in a violent crime.So you're saying you should have mandatory bullet-proof vest laws?
Statistically a person is also highly unlikely to be involved in an automobile accident, but in (at least most; I'm not sure about all) states in the US, wearing seatbelts is mandatory.
Statistically a person is highly unlikely to be involved in a violent crime.I am not sure that either of those things are true, actually. At least, in my circle of friends and family members, lots of people have been in car accidents and have been victims of violent crime. But it's also sort of irrelevent, because seatbelts aren't really analogous to guns, in terms of the risks they present, the training they require to use properly, and the degree of protection they offer.
Statistically a person is also highly unlikely to be involved in an automobile accident, but in (at least most; I'm not sure about all) states in the US, wearing seatbelts is mandatory.
That said, I give a lot more weight to the anti-gun arguments made by people directly affected by gun violence than I do those made by people who are privileged enough to live in a neighborhood that has low crime and decent police response. These are economic features, though, not gun control ones.Hmm. What do you make of the fact that attitudes towards gun control are corrolated with race, with white non-Hispanic Americans supporting gun rights at much higher rates than black and Latino Americans? Or the fact that people who make less than $30,000 a year are much more likely than those who make more than $30,000 a year to support gun control?
The following are dangerous per se: blackjack, billy, standclub, sandbag, bludgeon, nunchaku sticks, throwing stars, sling shot, slung shot, any instrument which impels a missile by compressed air, spring or other means, any weapon in which loaded or blank cartridges areposted by desjardins at 1:59 PM on August 2, 2011 [1 favorite]
used, crossknuckles, knuckles of any metal, barbed or blade type arrowhead, bowie knife, dirk knife, dirk, dagger, switch blade knife or any knife which has a blade that may be drawn without the necessity of contact with the blade itself or is automatically opened by pressure on the handle or some other part of the knife and is commonly known as a switch blade knife, straight-edge razor or any other knife having a blade 3 inches or longer.
It shall be unlawful for any person to go armed with a dangerous weapon other than a firearm within the city, unless such dangerous weapon is secured or enclosed in a case designed to prevent unauthorized access to the weaponposted by desjardins at 2:16 PM on August 2, 2011
"Everybody else is inventing these stories in their head that are vanishingly unlikely. The stranger who is coming to murder or rape or kidnap their children. These strangers do not exist."People here may not know their Chicago-area geography, so I'll point out that this incident, in which the woman was not hurt, occurred in a very wealthy suburb north of Chicago. Here's Redeye's weekly Chicago homicide toll for the next week:
Here, you're completely mistaken. This happened just recently up here (70-Year-Old Woman Bound With Duct Tape In Lake Forest Home Invasion).
VictimsThat's one week, and not a particularly exceptional week. There were the same number of homicides in Chicago the week before.
July 19
– Theodore Thomas, a 18 year old black male, caused by a gunshot in Englewood.
July 19
– Philon Watson, a 20 year old black male, caused by a gunshot in Ashburn.
July 17
– Marcus London, a 19 year old black male, caused by a gunshot in Greater Grand Crossing.
July 16
– Aiki Muhammad, a 17 year old black male, caused by a gunshot in Englewood.
July 16
– Lorenzo Beasley, a 25 year old black male, caused by a gunshot in Washington Park.
July 16
– Tony McCoy, a 20 year old black male, caused by a gunshot in Kenwood.
July 16
– Stanley Washington, a 28 year old black male, caused by a gunshot in Humboldt Park.
July 15
– Dawn Scott, a 37 year old black female, caused by a gunshot in South Chicago.
July 15
– Trevon Randolph, a 23 year old black male, caused by a gunshot in Washington Heights.
July 14
– Gartania Prince, a 24 year old black male, caused by a gunshot in Englewood.
July 14
– Walter Brown, a 30 year old black male, caused by a gunshot in West Englewood.
July 13
– Dante McKinney, a 21 year old black male, caused by a gunshot in Burnside.
July 13
– Dante Lawrence, a 30 year old black male, caused by a gunshot in Fuller Park.
I'd be interested to know how many people who feel that a pocket knife or pipe wrench would do in a pinch are men and how many are women.That poll I linked to before showed that women are much, much more likely to support gun control than men are. I think that the idea that you'll use a gun to protect yourself is mostly a male fantasy. I also think that women tend to be more aware that the primary threats to us are people we know and often care about and that these threats may not present themselves in ways that would easily be solved with a gun. I mean, your ex-husband and children's father shows up at your door screaming threats. You're scared, but you're hoping you can get him to calm down. You pull your gun and tell him to back off. He screams at you that he's going to kill you and lunges for you. Do you actually shoot him? How are you going to explain to your children that you shot their father? How likely are the police and courts to buy your self-defense explanation? How do you even know for sure that he was going to hurt you in a way that justified that amount of force?
I'd still be interested to know this, though, since it comes up in every gun thread.
I would beg to differ that this woman wasn't hurt. I bet she spends years recovering from something like this.I bet she'd have been pretty traumatized if she'd shot and killed someone, too, though.
Yeah, she sounds all broken up about shooting someone.That's not the same person. The woman in Lake Forest was not raped and did not shoot her attacker. She was tied up while robbers stole jewelry and electronics. And I would submit that killing someone would be more traumatic than being tied up while someone stole stuff, as traumatic as that would be.
All it takes is training. Whether one is ok with taking that step and what that entails, yes, is something else.It is not "something else." It is the whole point. Women are not likely to be protected by guns for many reasons, but one of them is because we are likely to be victimized by people who we would not be willing to shoot.
But I can hook you up with some Israeli sharpshooters who would be happy to elucidate what women are capable of in using firearms.I am not disputing whether women are capable of using weapons. I am disputing that carrying a gun would make us safer.
In the U.S., the proportion of murder victims who knew their assailants to victims killed by strangers is about 3-to-1. (Source: U.S. Department of Justice) but men are mostly likely to be assaulted by a stranger.I'm not sure I'm following you here. Are you agreeing with me? For women, the proportion of murder victims who know their assailants is probably even higher than 3 to 1. Hell, most things that I've read say that fully a third of all female murder victims are killed by their husband or boyfriend.
64% of women who are raped know their attackers. The majority sure. Still that leaves ... carry the one .... 36% who are raped by strangers. Over 1/3. Not an insignificant amount.First of all, that's an awfully specific number for something that is notoriously difficult to measure. Acquaintance rape is significantly under-reported, and estimates of how common it is are always going to be estimates. I'm not sure how you could get a number as specific as 64%, and in fact it seems like one of those stats that is deliberately made specific to seem credible.
Almost all the shootings you cited were listed as gang-related or were obviously so. Unless people step out of cars and randomly shoot other people in some homage to surrealism.Yeah, you know what? I don't care whether they were gang related. I know this isn't what you were trying to say, but it sometimes feels like asshole suburbanites like to point out that violence in Chicago is gang-related because that's an effective way of blaming the victims and minimizing the horror of urban gun violence. It's not true that all gun violence in Chicago is gang-related, and it's definitely not true that every person killed in gang-related violence is in a gang. But it shouldn't matter.
Chicago was doing quite well there for a while.Chicago still is doing really well. The murder rate for 2010 was the lowest it's been in 45 years. It's just that doing really well by Chicago standards is still an utter tragedy. I agree that the underlying causes of gun violence in big cities are social and that the solutions need to be social. It's not lost on me, though, that the same suburban and rural people who oppose gun control also generally oppose the kind of policies that could address the root causes of urban gun violence. And in the meantime, living in a gun-saturated society exacerbates the problem. It may not be the root cause, but it makes the effects massively worse.
« Older In the mid 1990s, comedian/actress Margaret Cho st... | Patrick Bateman's New York... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by WinnipegDragon at 6:53 AM on August 2, 2011 [44 favorites]