USA Politics (redux)

[Herman]

Oh, ok. So because of Jan.6, it's okay if people burn down the Supreme Court or the Justice's homes. So it's not a problem then.

Nobody's burning down the Supreme Court.

They are demonstrating in front of that building, that's all.

[Karl Henning]

greg should take several deep breaths before posting. He may still wind up gibbering, but at least there will have been the attempt to supply the brain with oxygen.

[MusicTurner]

By far most suicides in Romania are committed by shooting themselves but then again it's mostly policemen and military personnel, ie persons with easy, rather unrestricted access to guns.

A cousin of mine attempted suicide twice: first by cutting his veins, second by ingurgitating a huge amount of drugs. Both attempts were unsuccesfull. He eventually died of amygdalian cancer.

I think hanging is the most common here, but haven't read much about it. Of course, one will hear various, unusual stories related to it, such as a woman jumping out from our famous Round Tower, or a man drinking large quantities of alcohol on his wife's grave, in a frosty night. But the metropolitan train ones affect everyone in their daily life too, since the train system goes down.

[Jo498]

Actually, beside Anna Karenina I neither know, or heard of, any other person who commited suicide by jumping in front of a train.

I travelled a considerable amount by train in Germany around 2010-13 and delays are quite frequent because of suicides. (Although I think I was usually indirectly affected, i.e. not in the hitting train but in another one behind that had than take a different route because the suicide spot is blocked for hours.) They have a euphemism or don't say anything, so in principle it could also be an accident or an animal. But I think it's almost always suicides.

Besides Anna Karenina, there were a few rather famous ones, 10 or 15 years ago some elderly entrepreneur of a locally well known company (gone broke or in dire straits) and most prominent about two years ago a financial minister of Hesse (who was in line to become the next Ministerpräsident (governor) of the state). The last might have been because he had panicked that some financial scandal of a few years ago might deepen and/or the Covid outbreak.
(The most spectacular but unproven probable suicide was another disgraced politician, Möllemann, who died skydiving...)

[Florestan]

I think hanging is the most common here, but haven't read much about it. Of course, one will hear various, unusual stories related to it, such as a woman jumping out from our famous Round Tower, or a man drinking large quantities of alcohol on his wife's grave, in a frosty night. But the metropolitan train ones affect everyone in their daily life too, since the train system goes down.

The most gruelsome suicide in Romania which I know of involved a man driving his car full speed, lights off, on the other way lane of the highway. He killed himself and a family of five. This I cannot understand for the life of me (pun): if you want to kill yourself, there are many ways to do it without taking other people's life.

[MusicTurner]

The most gruelsome suicide in Romania which I know of involved a man driving his car full speed, lights off, on the other way lane of the highway. He killed himself and a family of five. This I cannot understand for the life of me (pun): if you want to kill yourself, there are many ways to do it without taking other people's life.

Yes, in most cases, it tends to be a man doing that, I think.

[Madiel]

Which only proves my point: if Australian gun laws, though being much stricter than the USA gun laws, cannot prevent suicidal people from killing themselves mostly with a gun, yet gun mass killing in Australia are far fewer than in the USA, then the whole point of gun control is to prevent a nutjob from killing other people, not to prevent suicides. Heck, killing other people is a criminal offense, suicide is not.

Um, you totally missed the point. It does prevent people from killing themselves with a gun. Because fewer people get hold of a gun.

If 10 people try to kill themselves with a gun each year and 9 succeed, that's still a much smaller number than 500 people trying each year and 450 succeeding despite a 90% success rate in both cases. It's the difference between 9 deaths and 450 deaths. The other 490 people who either switched methods or didn't try at all have a better chance of surviving.

Dying from Covid isn't a criminal offence either, and yet we still tried to cut the number of people dying from Covid, before vaccines were around, by reducing the number of people catching Covid. Did we cut the PERCENTAGE OF INFECTED PEOPLE WHO DIED? Probably not much. Did we cut the NUMBER OF INFECTED PEOPLE? Yes.

[Madiel]

By far most suicides in Romania are committed by shooting themselves but then again it's mostly policemen and military personnel, ie persons with easy, rather unrestricted access to guns.

A cousin of mine attempted suicide twice: first by cutting his veins, second by ingurgitating a huge amount of drugs. Both attempts were unsuccesfull. He eventually died of amygdalian cancer.

See? You're denying my points and then making them for me. You've literally just stated that there are more successful suicide attempts when guns are easily accessible.

We reduced access to guns. The number of suicides went down.

You also tried to tell me earlier that cutting yourself is an efficient method of suicide. Yet here you are with personal knowledge that it's less efficient than shooting.

[Fëanor]

The report you linked to is nearly 20 years old and the data stops 20 years ago.

Which means it doesn't cover the majority of the period since the first law change, and even less of the period since the second law change, and who knows what other changes have happened since.

Also... the USA has had plenty of urbanisation, so do you just subscribe to the idea that Americans are innately psychos?

Well that report was 2005, not recent, but more than a decade after the strictest laws were introduced.  As for what has changed since, I know because I am a Canadian gun owner.

There has been a recent increase in the use by criminals in major urban areas, especially by gangs.  Most of these guns do not come from legal sources, (i.e. by theft or "straw purchase" the latter being much rarer in Canada than the USA).  Organized crime including gangs get their guns my smuggling in from the USA.

Assault rifles were retroactively banned in Canada about a year-and-a-half ago but so far the government has issued no instruction for the surrender of those guns.  Presently owners my keep the guns but can't be legal used as before, e.g. taken to a range to shoot targets.  The government also promised financial compensation to owners but has done nothing about that either..

A few weeks ago the government announced they will make a law to the make illegal the import, sale, purchase, and transfer of handguns.  Owners may keep their guns and shoot them at certified ranges but may not dispose of the except to surrender them to police.  Note that this means that financial value of owners' guns is effectively confiscated without compensation.

[Madiel]

They don't get money if they surrender the gun to police? Okay, interesting.

[Herman]

Actually, beside Anna Karenina I neither know, or heard of, any other person who commited suicide by jumping in front of a train.

These things are not published in the papers, because of copycat behavior.

However, people jump in front of trains quite often, unfortunately.

This is not something to discuss lightly.

[Jo498]

Dying from Covid isn't a criminal offence either, and yet we still tried to cut the number of people dying from Covid, before vaccines were around, by reducing the number of people catching Covid. Did we cut the PERCENTAGE OF INFECTED PEOPLE WHO DIED? Probably not much. Did we cut the NUMBER OF INFECTED PEOPLE? Yes.

Yes, and in all these cases (also smoking, drinking, speed limits etc.) it is far from obvious if certain measures are justified because some reduction of lives lost or not because of the restraints in liberty for the 70%, 90% or so affected negatively by the prohibition (or by the general loss of a liberty to make one's own choices). A speed limit of 50 km/h on the freeway would certainly result in fewer deaths from traffic accidents. But most people would agree that it would also largely defeat the purpose of freeways.

If one goes by numbers, one of the most efficient measures for longer, more healthy lives in many Western countries would be a thoroughly paternalist treatment of overweight people and the food industry because of all the health and life lost because of obesity. But for good (liberty) and probably some not so good (food lobby) reasons, we don't do this.

(Again, I personally share the European puzzlement at the liberal gun laws; if it was up to me, I'd have no problem at all to forbid any ownership except for hunting/sports shooting and even have background checks etc. for the latter. But there is no straightforward argument from possible loss of lives to (what are perceived as) severe restrictions of liberty.)

[Madiel]

Yes, and in all these cases (also smoking, drinking, speed limits etc.) it is far from obvious if certain measures are justified because some reduction of lives lost or not because of the restraints in liberty for the 70%, 90% or so affected negatively by the prohibition (or by the general loss of a liberty to make one's own choices). A speed limit of 50 km/h on the freeway would certainly result in fewer deaths from traffic accidents. But most people would agree that it would also largely defeat the purpose of freeways.

If one goes by numbers, one of the most efficient measures for longer, more healthy lives in many Western countries would be a thoroughly paternalist treatment of overweight people and the food industry because of all the health and life lost because of obesity. But for good (liberty) and probably some not so good (food lobby) reasons, we don't do this.

(Again, I personally share the European puzzlement at the liberal gun laws; if it was up to me, I'd have no problem at all to forbid any ownership except for hunting/sports shooting and even have background checks etc. for the latter. But there is no straightforward argument from possible loss of lives to (what are perceived as) severe restrictions of liberty.)

Agreed, it's necessary to have a cost benefit analysis.

But for guns, the analysis isn't very hard in situations where the claimed benefit of a gun is false. That's where I started: when guns are supposedly kept in America for self-defence, only 1 in 23 uses of the gun actually ends up being for that purpose.

Having a gun in your house doesn't protect you from violence, it actually significantly increases your own risk of being shot.

So it's not a case like the ones you mentioned where it's necessary to weigh up real trade-offs. Guns are simply really, REALLY useless at the same time as being dangerous.

I'm not talking about situations like hunting. But a huge number of the guns in America are owned by people who have been completely conned into believing the gun is for "protection", when all the data says the exact opposite.

[Madiel]

I note that Australia has banned tanning beds, which is a similar situation: they're advertised as providing a safer tan than going out in the sun, when the science shows they are MORE dangerous.

No-one needs the "right" to a product that claims to improve your safety but actually does the exact opposite.

The fact that the Supreme Court struck down a law, over a century old, that said "you need to explain why you need a gun" is basically a complete rejection of evidence-based risk analysis. If those judges believe that a person has the right to carry a gun for protection, it would have been good for them to engage with the research that says a gun DOESN'T protect in these situations.

The 2nd Amendment has a purpose built into it, and yet they completely ignore purpose.

[Fëanor]

They don't get money if they surrender the gun to police? Okay, interesting.

In Canada, as it stands, no compensation is paid on surrender of a firearm.

[Fëanor]

Agreed, it's necessary to have a cost benefit analysis.

But for guns, the analysis isn't very hard in situations where the claimed benefit of a gun is false. That's where I started: when guns are supposedly kept in America for self-defence, only 1 in 23 uses of the gun actually ends up being for that purpose.

Having a gun in your house doesn't protect you from violence, it actually significantly increases your own risk of being shot.

So it's not a case like the ones you mentioned where it's necessary to weigh up real trade-offs. Guns are simply really, REALLY useless at the same time as being dangerous.

I'm not talking about situations like hunting. But a huge number of the guns in America are owned by people who have been completely conned into believing the gun is for "protection", when all the data says the exact opposite.

I'd like to reemphasize that in Canada laws were pretty much along these lines even before recent changes, i.e.

• Previous and new users much have a license that is only granted after an extensive background check -- note that there is no talk in the USA of a US Federal req't of licensing, only background checks
• A prospective owner in Canada must state his reason for wanting a gun:  permitted reasons are hunting, (including farm varmint control), target shooting, and collecting (which requires special storage req'ts and possible inspections of premises) -- self-protection is NOT a recognized a reason for gun ownership in Canada as it is in the USA
• All handguns and (most) assault-style rifles must be registered to the current owner.

I point out that requirements in Canada as of 1995 far exceeds anything even proposed in the USA;  there are recent restrictions that go much further.

A "gun culture" in the USA exists that really doesn't exist almost any other country, and then, of course, there is the 2nd Amendment.

[Madiel]

I'd like to reemphasize that in Canada laws were pretty much along these lines even before recent changes, i.e.

• Previous and new users much have a license that is only granted after an extensive background check -- note that there is no talk in the USA of a US Federal req't of licensing, only background checks
• A prospective owner in Canada must state his reason for wanting a gun:  permitted reasons are hunting, (including farm varmint control), target shooting, and collecting (which requires special storage req'ts and possible inspections of premises) -- self-protection is NOT a recognized a reason for gun ownership in Canada as it is in the USA
• All handguns and (most) assault-style rifles must be registered to the current owner.

I point out that requirements in Canada as of 1995 far exceeds anything even proposed in the USA;  there are recent restrictions that go much further.

A "gun culture" in the USA exists that really doesn't exist almost any other country, and then, of course, there is the 2nd Amendment.

It sounds like your laws have been similar to Australian ones in many respects.

[LKB]

You kind of lost me there - possibly even others ...?

Don't tell me, nobody here understands Trafalmadorian???. 

Actually, l dozed off while apparently touching my phone, sorry for any confusion.

[MusicTurner]

Don't tell me, nobody here understands Trafalmadorian???. 

Actually, l dozed off while apparently touching my phone, sorry for any confusion.

Ok, it has been explained then   

[milk]

greg should take several deep breaths before posting. He may still wind up gibbering, but at least there will have been the attempt to supply the brain with oxygen.

That seems like overly insulting/demeaning language.