We live, let’s imagine, in a city where children are dying of a ravaging infection.

[kpete]

We live, let’s imagine, in a city where children are dying of a ravaging infection. The good news is that its cause is well understood and its cure, an antibiotic, easily at hand. The bad news is that our city council has been taken over by a faith-healing cult that will go to any lengths to keep the antibiotic from the kids. Some citizens would doubtless point out meekly that faith healing has an ancient history in our city, and we must regard the faith healers with respect—to do otherwise would show a lack of respect for their freedom to faith-heal. (The faith healers’ proposition is that if there were a faith healer praying in every kindergarten the kids wouldn’t get infections in the first place.) A few Tartuffes would see the children writhe and heave in pain and then wring their hands in self-congratulatory piety and wonder why a good God would send such a terrible affliction on the innocent—surely he must have a plan! Most of us—every sane person in the city, actually—would tell the faith healers to go to hell, put off worrying about the Problem of Evil till Friday or Saturday or Sunday, and do everything we could to get as much penicillin to the kids as quickly we could.


The rest
http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-simple-truth-about-gun-control?intcid=mod-most-popular

[Nuclear Unicorn]

1. Stupid analogy is stupid.

Infections act on their own and any contact spreads the infection. Guns require human agency and 350 million guns in civilian hands has not resulted in 350 million "infections."

Does the author of this stupid analogy intend to affect regimes for eradication as we would for an infection or does the author imagine the infection to be self-extinguishing?

[DetlefK]

3. This isn't about the infection but how people would react to the problem.

Should we really heal those kids? This infection has been around forever, it's a way of life. Mandatory vaccination would destroy the age-old freedom to make your own life-and-death decisions.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

4. Vaccination is not analogous to confiscation.

It would be analogous to vaccinating people against 350 million germs that will never trouble them and may be beneficial while employing a vaccine the actual killer germs are immune to.

[DetlefK]

5. You are implying that only illegally obtained guns kill people.

Answer me this: In a country where gun-production, gun-sales, gun-registry and gun-possession are regulated, where could somebody illegally obtain a gun?

Black market? Might as well be an FBI-sting.

Stealing? From whom? First you would have to find somebody who owns a gun before you can steal it.

The number of illegal guns would drop.



And if you say that there more causes of violent death than just guns, you might as well say that it's futile to vaccinate your kid against a deadly disease because the vaccine won't protect it from car-accidents.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

7. Congratulations. You've solved the black market pharmaceutical industry.

Or maybe not.

[Logical]

13. Lol, you make no sense here. Nt

[DetlefK]

16. Btw, can you get me some Cocaine or Marijuana? Or a piece of radioactive material?

Oops, I forgot:
While it once was normal to consume your red wine with a pinch of Cocaine, it is now outlawed.
While it once was legal to consume Marijuana, it is now regulated.
While it was considered "the latest medical treatment", in the early 20th century, to use the power of radioactivity for all sorts of bodily ailments, possession of radioactive materials is nowadays somehow regulated.

[sarisataka]

22. Cocaine-

give me half an hour, I could get some. Marijuana, 10 minutes. Radioactive material, I can go downstairs. My compass had radioactive warning labels because it uses tritium for illumination.

So what is your point?

[Nuclear Unicorn]

27. "Btw, can you get me some Cocaine or Marijuana?"

I know a guy.

[ryan_cats]

25. Interesting

Interesting that you would bring up the fast and furious program under whose justice department?

Especially so soon after Paul Walker's death.

[Bluenorthwest]

2. I don't have to imagine. Right now, today, millions of people are being forbidden tools and

education to prevent disease transmission in viral hot spots. Faith based leaders forbid the use of condoms in places where thousand of people die every day from AIDS leaving behind millions of orphans, then those faith leaders travel the world and lecture others to be wary of 'threats to the family' like people wanting to get married.

This is a spoken by Dorine, the maid in Tartuffe:

"Those who have greatest cause for guilt and shame
Are quickest to besmirch a neighbor's name.
By talking up their neighbor's indiscretions
They seek to camouflage their own transgressions"

[DetlefK]

6. Because gay-marriage confuses kids. It CONFUSES them!

Other things that confuse kids include:
- Where did that coin behind my ear come from?
- Why can't I have ice-cream for dinner?
- Why do I have to go to bed?



The correct answers are: 1. Magic. 2. Because I said so. 3. Because I said so.

[beevul]

8. False premise.

... its cause is well understood and its cure, an antibiotic, easily at hand...

The 'cure' for gun violence, is hotly debated, and wildly disagreed on.

The 'cause', even more widely disagreed on.

Like the people that thought black cats 'caused' problems, people also think guns 'cause' problems.

[Logical]

14. You dont really see these mass shootings as a problem IMO, reading....

Your posts are really enlightning.

[beevul]

15. What part of any of my posts implies that in any way?

No part.

You aren't living up to your screen name.

[Logical]

17. So what is your solution to stopping them. Cant wait!!! Nt

[beevul]

18. Me?

I'd focus on gun misuse as the problem that it is, and acknowledge that the great majority of gun owners, people like you, are not the problem.

Whats yours?

[Logical]

19. Lol, your soltion is to tell the mass shooters not to do that? Brilliant! Nt

[beevul]

20. Keep your words in your own mouth, thanks.

Whats your vaunted solution?

[Logical]

31. I am not stupid enough to say there is not a gun issue in this country. Are you? nt

[beevul]

32. Define exactly what you mean by 'gun issue'.

I see a problem with a tenth of a percent of gun owners committing gun violence.

I also see the other 99.9 percent (including you) that has no such lack of self control.

[Logical]

34. Your sig line says it all. What a joke. nt

[beevul]

35. My sig?

You mean this:

99.9 percent of gun owners do not shoot or kill anyone. Focus on the .1 percent who misuse guns, and leave the rest of us who don't, and our guns, the hell alone. Member of the 99.9 percent.

Are you implying that its not true that 99.9 percent of gun owners don't commit gun violence? Or that its a joke?

Its easily verifiable.

[Logical]

36. "Leave us alone" is whining like a baby when no one has ever touched your guns. Wow, you sound....

like a NRA talking point. Bet you are a NRA member but maybe I am wrong.

[beevul]

37. I haven't been an nra member for over 20 years.

"Leave us alone" is whining like a baby when no one has ever touched your guns.

It wasn't for lack of trying.

Wow, you sound like a NRA talking point.

Focusing on the problem as it exists where it exists, without stepping on the toes of those who aren't the problem, is an nra talking point?

Thats funny, because doing so is basic problem solving 101 when it comes to pretty much everything other than guns.

[sarisataka]

9. And if guns were pathogens

it might work. However they are not so the analogy fails from the start.

If fact it was such an invalid assumption that has cause many doctors to turn away from gun control 'studies' that treat guns as disease.

Reading the article I found an interesting soundbite:

How often might you appropriately use a gun in self-defense?” Hemenway asks rhetorically. “Answer: zero to once in a lifetime.

So we can mathematically determine how many DGUs would we expect to occur in a year:
US population- 319 million
Average lifespan (US)- 78 years
Expected times to appropriately use a gun in self-defense- 0-1 avg .5
Coefficient accounting for rate of firearms ownership .3
We get the equation- population/life expectancy*self defense*ownership= expected legitimate DGU per year.

Putting in the numbers 319,000,000/78*.5*.3 gives a result of 613,461 expected appropriate DGUs per year.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

11. You're assuming that half of the population

uses firearms in self defense once in a lifetime. But what if instead of half it's one thousandth of one percent? Then you have 6 DGUs instead of 600,000.

[sarisataka]

12. Incorrect

I included the .3 factor to account for the fact that only one third of the population or so owns or has access to firearms (I rounded down). So it is only half of that subset that would use a firearm defensively- using Dr. Hemenway's 0-1 scale. If Hemenway said the expectation was one in one thousand people, I would have factored that in.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

23. Wrong. Only a third of the population COULD

use firearms "defensively". Why assume that half of that one-third does, rather than one thousandth of one percent? Hemenway's zero-one interval includes both your assumed one-half and my assumed .001 percent.

It would help if there were a sharp definition of "defensive gun use", rather than the muddle that the NRA's favorite sociologist, Gary Kleck, has made of so called DGU.

[sarisataka]

30. Yes, could

and when estimating a total that is dependent on a variable range it is logical to use the midpoint of the variable range. That is a good reason to go with one half rather than .00001.

Is there a reason, besides not liking the estimated result, that you would choose an extremely low number?

We could put in other factors (note I am not a statistician and am getting these from the internet) but I find the ranges of being a victim of violent crime in one's lifetime to range from 40% (on a pro-gun site) to 83% (1987 DoJ report)

If we fudge that into the estimate of 613,461, we get a range of 245,384 to 509,172. The average of those being 377,278.

[ryan_cats]

10. Why

Why should I care about children not my own?

[Fumesucker]

21. Your child may need help from a stranger's hand one day

[ryan_cats]

24. My kids

My kids if I was foolish and selfish enough to have them, would be taught to never talk to strangers.

[Fumesucker]

28. Strangers aren't the greatest danger to your child

http://www.newswise.com/articles/in-child-sexual-abuse-strangers-aren-t-the-greatest-danger

Newswise — Parents generally teach their children about “stranger danger” from an early age, telling them not to talk to, walk with or take gifts or candy from strangers. But statistics show danger often lurks closer to home. According to numbers provided by the National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, the vast majority of children who are sexually abused are abused by someone they know – most often a family member, an adult the family trusts or, in some instances, another child.

Interesting that you think children stay young forever, my youngest grandchild will be driving next year...

[ryan_cats]

33. Oh don't you

Oh don't you worry. I plan on abandoning them only at the orphanage or workhouse that meets my high standards.

[Eleanors38]

26. Still flogging the public health model: Prohibitionist cure is Prohibitionism.

If this model were truly applied to accidental childhood deaths, many common household products, fixtures and water sources would be banned before guns.

[Maedhros]

29. While I sympathize with your intentions, I must take issue with your premise.

The cause of mass shootings is not as well understood, and the cure is not as easily at hand, as you surmise. The problem is a tangled morass of psychology, media exposure, cultural pressure and weapon access. Truly addressing the problem requires a thoughtful approach, not just easy answers.

I do agree with your analogy of 2nd Amendment Warriors as faith healers, because I have long believed that to many Americans guns are a fetish - not in the 'kink' sense, but in a spiritual sense:

Fetish: an inanimate object worshiped for its supposed magical powers or because it is considered to be inhabited by a spirit.

Not all gun owners fall into the "2nd Amendment Warrior" category that I am using as a pejorative. I am referring to the especially rabid breed of gun proponents, who view their gun(s) as a physical embodiment of their freedom, and any attempt to regulate gun ownership a direct assault on their personal liberty. The gun is imbued with the "spirit" or "power" of Freedom, and thus is sacred. No rational discussion can be had with these people.

[Straw Man]

38. The fundamental flaw is this:

The good news is that its cause is well understood and its cure, an antibiotic, easily at hand.

Really? The question of why young people decide to pick up a gun and kill as many random strangers as they can is "well understood"? By whom? Whoever you are, please enlighten us.

If you think "Because gunz!" is the answer, then you truly have no inkling of the depth of the problems this country is facing.

[aikoaiko]

39. I liked Gopnik when he writes about Paris.

When he writes about guns he's a just a ranting moron.