Hey, for the record, I think it's pathetic to mark the occasion of a man's death by offering nothing more than funny comments about his politics, as though those political issues where you disagreed with him were the scope of his entire life. I think human beings usually have value beyond their politics.
This wasn't a monster, this was a guy who believed in something and fought for it.
I don't mind that; I don't think he was a shatterer of lives or anything. Guns are part of this country and many, many good people shared his views. It's not as if he was on a street corner giving pistols to gang members or something.
How quick we are to cry foul when this happens to someone "on our side" -- for example, the number Fox news did when Kurt Vonnegut died. How easy we do the same thing to someone "on the other side".
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posted
I met him and his wife several years ago. He seemed very old and frail and, I believe, has been ill for quite some time. His wife is a lovely person.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: That you even called it the meeting in Columbine, Orincoro, leads me to believe your source is probably Michael Moore's flick.
Yes. I was tempted to admit that at the beginning, because I'm a) not going to do any research b) aware that Moore is not any more tasteful- and it's been some time since I saw the film.
I'm still not a fan of Heston. In fact I have a better example. I was made to watch a video of a late term abortion while I was in high school. He was the narrator.
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quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: Most corporations face fairly strict rules concerning their annual meetings, including requirements to have them and notice requirements.
Is there a requirement that you brandish a rifle and say "from my cold dead hands," not too long after a bus load of school kids are shot in a city nearby with guns that are available partly through the efforts of your organization?
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quote:Is there a requirement that you brandish a rifle and say "from my cold dead hands," not too long after a bus load of school kids are shot in a city nearby with guns that are available partly through the efforts of your organization?
Are you saying he did that in the meeting in Denver at issue here?
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quote:Is there a requirement that you brandish a rifle and say "from my cold dead hands," not too long after a bus load of school kids are shot in a city nearby with guns that are available partly through the efforts of your organization?
Since you've admitted your source is a partisan propaganda hack, perhaps you should look into the situation a bit more deeply before casting aspersions.
And as for the late-term abortion video...well, maybe Charlton Heston had some reason for standing in opposition to late-term abortions.
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posted
I am not aware that Heston was a nut. I am aware that he was a strong supporter of the NRA. I am also aware that Michael Moore's movie was a pretty gross distortion of reality. I wish I still had a link to that thorough debunking site someone linked to back when the movie was relatively new.
Incidentally, the Onion went there.Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:I wish I still had a link to that thorough debunking site someone linked to back when the movie was relatively new.
You know, it's funny. There are so many people here who simply dismiss Moore, having not seen Bowling for Columbine, because someone put up a website "debunking" his movie.
Here's Moore's response:
quote: So, a whole host of gun lobby groups and individual gun nuts have put up websites where the smears on me range from the pre-adolescent (I'm a "crapweasel," and a "fat ******* piece of ****") to Orwellian-style venom ("Michael Moore hates America!").
I have mostly ignored this silliness. But a few weeks ago, this lunatic crap hit the mainstream fan. CNN actually put some guy on a show saying that my film contains "so many falsehoods, one after the other, after the other, after the other." They introduced him as a "critic" and "research director" of the "Independence Institute." He seemed mighty impressive.
Except they failed to tell their viewers who he really was: a contributing editor of Gun Week Magazine.
As to what Bowling for Columbine said or edited together about Heston, and where the NRA held there meeting: IT'S IRRELEVANT. Heston himself admitted in his speech that THE MAYOR OF DENVER ASKED HIM NOT TO COME and spent the entire speech explaining that he had actively chosen to ignore the request.
If you'd seen the movie, you'd know that the "cleverly edited" sequence that seems to show Heston making the "from my cold dead hands" speech was never presented as though it came from the Denver meeting. It was presented as examples of the the kind of things Heston had said. Nothing more.
quote:perhaps you should look into the situation a bit more deeply before casting aspersions.
quote:As to what Bowling for Columbine said or edited together about Heston, and where the NRA held there meeting: IT'S IRRELEVANT.
That's the stupidest thing I've heard today, and there's less than an hour in the day left. It's irrelevant whether or not the footage was edited to make Heston look bad?
Well, that sure puts me in my place!
quote:It was presented as examples of the the kind of things Heston had said. Nothing more.
This is a load of bunk, Glenn. I've seen three Moore films to date, and yes, obviously the film does not come right out and say, "This is a speech from Charlton Heston right in front of Columbine High School." The thing that makes Moore a crapweasel isn't that he does that, because that would be just plain stupid. But the juxtaposition, the timing, and the use of Columbine relating to Heston? Nothing other than deliberate.
posted
Charleton Heston was a liberal Democrat early in his life. He participated in civil rights marches, and took stands on civil rights issues when most national leaders were too often waffling and hedging their bets. Later in life, like Ronald Reagan, his politics became much more conservative. His advocacy of gun ownership and defending the second amendment were only a small part of his conservative politics. Again like Reagan, he seemed to be an embodiment of the saying that if you are not liberal when you are young, you have no heart, but if you are not conservative when you become older, then you have no brain.
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
I find Columbine to be a fairly entertaining and enlightening film my only issue is that placement of the "History of America" cartoon right after the interview with Trey Marker/Matt Stone implying they made it. All and all while I would never consider his films scholarly documentaries they are however documentaries in the dramatized entertaining sense as alot of people will not sit through a real documentary unless you pay them or make it a mandatory requirement.
Farehnheit 9/11 was also entertaining and interesting however to me showed more of Moores darkside inregards to how far held go to make a point and very distastefully at that (weeping mother scene... ) I consider it a "low point".
Sicko restored my faith in Moore as a filmaker of top notch class, tact, patriotism, informative, entertaining, self inflicted sarcasm all there, an extremely eye opening experience cemeting in my mind that I will never EVER seek to voluntarily live in the states unless I am making 6 figured.
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quote:If you'd seen the movie, you'd know that the "cleverly edited" sequence that seems to show Heston making the "from my cold dead hands" speech was never presented as though it came from the Denver meeting. It was presented as examples of the the kind of things Heston had said. Nothing more.
Yet we have at least one person condemning (seemingly) a guy who just died for making that statement in Denver.
I'm not laying that blame at Moore's feet. I'm simply pointing out that some unjustified criticism has been sent Heston's way based on an inaccurate understanding of the facts.
quote:As to what Bowling for Columbine said or edited together about Heston, and where the NRA held there meeting: IT'S IRRELEVANT. Heston himself admitted in his speech that THE MAYOR OF DENVER ASKED HIM NOT TO COME and spent the entire speech explaining that he had actively chosen to ignore the request.
Yep. And criticism of the NRA for not giving into political pressure on this subject is misplaced. In fact it's ridiculous.
Had Giuliani asked Muslims to cancel a national convention in the aftermath of 9/11 I would expect outrage, and that would be proper.
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quote:It's irrelevant whether or not the footage was edited to make Heston look bad?
Your statement about about whether the footage was edited to look bad is as much a strawman as the argument that Moore claimed that the meeting was in Columbine. Heston's speech in Denver was not edited. The other video montage does "make Heston look bad" but that's not the statement you are responding to.
You said:
quote:That you even called it the meeting in Columbine, Orincoro, leads me to believe your source is probably Michael Moore's flick
You're wrong. Moore's flick never claimed that the meeting was in Columbine, and it would have undermined Moore's use of Heston's speech if he had, because the speech in question was all about why Heston chose to ignore the Mayor of DENVER's request.
quote:Had Giuliani asked Muslims to cancel a national convention in the aftermath of 9/11 I would expect outrage, and that would be proper.
A national convention of Muslims, sure. A national convention of an Arab pro-weapons lobby group? Not so much.
quote:Yep. And criticism of the NRA for not giving into political pressure on this subject is misplaced. In fact it's ridiculous.
If Heston had spoken about the tragedy in Columbine, offered support, and made an effort to be sensitive to the needs of the families of those who had been killed, he could have mollified the effect of ignoring the Mayor's request. But he didn't. His speech was ridiculous.
quote:Yet we have at least one person condemning (seemingly) a guy who just died for making that statement in Denver.
Whether he just died or not is also irrelevant. "You mustn't speak ill of the dead" is BS. And this apparently brought on because the "from my cold dead hands" line is funny only because he's dead. Don't get me wrong, I have respect for Heston as an actor, and for the work he did in the civil rights movement. And in all honesty, I think he would thought it was funny to use the line. He certainly wasn't above satirizing his own cause. See SNL video above.
Moore has been classified (on this forum at any rate) as an automatic "out" for anyone who uses any argument that is even similar to something Moore has said. It's like another form of Godwin's Law. Just because there are websites that claim to debunk his movie doesn't mean that his movies have been debunked. Most of the claims on those websites are strawman arguments.
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Except he wasn't wrong. That was Orincoro's only source.
Rakeesh didn't say that Moore said that the meeting was in Columbine. He said that Orincoro's mistake made him think that his source was the movie, probably because, either due to design or incompetence, a lot of people who know about the Denver meeting from that movie seem to regularly get the facts wrong.
It's clear Rakeesh thinks this is from design, and I don't particularly blame him.
Either way, Rakeesh drew an accurate conclusion from Orincoro's post, so your incorrect to say Rakeesh was wrong. At best, you can say he leaped to a correct conclusion from incomplete evidence.
quote:If Heston had spoken about the tragedy in Columbine, offered support, and made an effort to be sensitive to the needs of the families of those who had been killed, he could have mollified the effect of ignoring the Mayor's request. But he didn't. His speech was ridiculous.
The mayor's request was ridiculous.
quote:Whether he just died or not is also irrelevant. "You mustn't speak ill of the dead" is BS. And this apparently brought on because the "from my cold dead hands" line is funny only because he's dead.
Orincoro condemned him for making the remark at the meeting in Denver after the Columbine incident. It wasn't about being funny - it was about condemning Heston for when and where he made the remark.
And the when and where were wrong.
quote:Moore has been classified (on this forum at any rate) as an automatic "out" for anyone who uses any argument that is even similar to something Moore has said.
This is absolutely irrelevant to everything I've posted in this thread. In fact, you're using other, bad attacks on Moore as an automatic "out" for someone who condemned Heston based on an erroneous understanding of what happened in Denver after Columbine.
I didn't criticize anyone for making the "cold dead hands" remark. I criticized someone who attacked Heston using incorrect details about the Columbine aftermath. When corrected, he defended his initial attack with ANOTHER error. He admitted he had done no research into the matter.
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quote:Is there a requirement that you brandish a rifle and say "from my cold dead hands," not too long after a bus load of school kids are shot in a city nearby with guns that are available partly through the efforts of your organization?
Are you saying he did that in the meeting in Denver at issue here?
Correct me if this was not the case, but yes I am under the impression that he did.
Also, is the NRA a corporation? Do these rules really apply in this case?
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quote:Originally posted by Dagonee: [QB] I'm not laying that blame at Moore's feet. I'm simply pointing out that some unjustified criticism has been sent Heston's way based on an inaccurate understanding of the facts. /QB]
I'm willing to stand corrected. I am not interested enough to do the research. Personally, I feel it would be enough that he was an NRA president to cast aspersion upon him, but that is my opinion.
Ah yes, and there was the awful abortion video. Now you can't tell me that his narration of a late term abortion video detailing the anatomy of a full term fetus was edited together from dialog he did for "Planet of the Apes." I cast aspersion upon him for creating a video I had to sit through in a 10th grade morality class. Talk about a taste sensation.
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quote:Personally, I feel it would be enough that he was an NRA president to cast aspersion upon him, but that is my opinion.
Which is honestly what I thought was the foundation of the criticism in the first place. We could've saved a lot of discussion if you'd just said so from the start, you know.
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quote:Correct me if this was not the case, but yes I am under the impression that he did.
He did not make that statement at the meeting in Denver that we have been discussing. The clip in the movie was from another event, I believe years before.
quote:Also, is the NRA a corporation? Do these rules really apply in this case?
At least in 1979, the NRA was a NY nonprofit corporation required to hold annual meetings. I've no reason to think that's changed.
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Except he wasn't wrong. That was Orincoro's only source.
He was wrong that Moore's movie was the source of the belief that Heston made the cold dead hands comment during the Denver speech, because Moore's movie doesn't make that claim. This is why jurors aren't allowed to read the paper or talk about the case. There is too much crosstalk and misinformation. While Orincoro may be willing to "admit" that the movie was his only source, I'd be willing to bet that his memory of the movie is colored by the repeated claims made to "debunk" items in Moore's movie that were never there. I'm sure you'll disagree, but it's not provable either way.
quote:The mayor's request was ridiculous.
Your opinion. I'm also really curious: Why do you think it was ridiculous to ask a pro-weapon lobby group not to promote their agenda in an area that was grieving from the effects of an attack involving large numbers of weapons that were too easy to acquire?
quote:It wasn't about being funny - it was about condemning Heston for when and where he made the remark.
My comment wasn't directed in response to the condemning Heston part, merely the general tenor of this thread that the fact that he had just died apparently made makes it "in poor taste" to tell a joke.
quote:This is absolutely irrelevant to everything I've posted in this thread. In fact, you're using other, bad attacks on Moore as an automatic "out" for someone who condemned Heston based on an erroneous understanding of what happened in Denver after Columbine.
Who says my comment must be relevant to your comment? My entry into this thread was predicated on the fact that Moore is being used as a red herring/Strawman argument any time someone makes a comment that can be associated with Moore. And that goes back well before this thread, to the so called debunking websites, and the numerous times Moore's arguments have been dismissed out of hand simply because they came from Moore. It's a point that I feel long overdue in making.
Actually that's not true. My entry into this thread was to bring up a movie that I haven't seen mentioned in the media response to his death. While I barely remember the movie, I do remember enjoying it, and I also liked "I Am Legend," so I thought it might make an interesting topic of discussion.
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quote:Originally posted by Glenn Arnold: While Orincoro may be willing to "admit" that the movie was his only source, I'd be willing to bet that his memory of the movie is colored by the repeated claims made to "debunk" items in Moore's movie that were never there. I'm sure you'll disagree, but it's not provable either way.
I don't actually remember reading anything about the movie at all. I don't think I checked out any debunking websites. Although I may have, and I certainly have had plenty of cross chatter about it. It's been some years since the movie was made, and I was in 8th grade when the shooting actually happened.
None of this either way is likely to change how I feel about Heston anyway. No one is going to deny that he adamantly supported gun ownership later in life, and that's something I disagree with deeply. I still believe that people like those who run the NRA are morally responsible for the consequences of their advocacy of gun ownership. I understand that few if any of them intend for children to get a hold of guns, and none are trying to create a society where school shootings happen. But they defend the right to own guns, and though their efforts have met with success in many ways, the necessary concomitant dedication to safety has fallen short of protecting schools from gun violence.
That, and I just don't know that I trust anyone who thinks owning a lot of guns is a good idea.
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quote:I still believe that people like those who run the NRA are morally responsible for the consequences of their advocacy of gun ownership.
Which isn't much, really. There's no putting the tech back in the bag. You can't get rid of guns or gun violence in America without banning them entirely and waiting decades at least, and that would go down maybe half as well as .. um, Prohibition.
At worst, the consequences that you can match a causative NRA link to are a handful in number, related to less-than-intelligent pro-gun lobby. But you can't point to school shootings as a gestalt 'consequence' of the existence of organized pro-gun advocacy.
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posted
That's silly, of course of I can. If there were no pro gun advocates, there wouldn't be shootings.
I love the logic though, that "you can't get rid of guns or gun violence in America without banning them entirely."
You could greatly reduce the future incidences of gun violence by sharply limiting the availability of guns, and yes, banning assault weapons. Crazy I know, but I think it could have an effect.
BTW, prohibition didn't work for nearly the opposite reason. It was a movement led by a powerful minority. The pro-gun lobby is a disproportionately represented minority. Gun owners are still a minority- they are certainly a smaller group than drinkers are. If you just want to talk about especially dangerous weapons, like assault rifles, semi-automatics, or any gun that has no legitimate uses other than "defense," or in the military, the group we're talking about is a small minority.
One of the basic reasons Prohibition didn't work, setting aside any argument about how it was enforced or why it was enacted, was that there was an overwhelming demand for alcohol. As soon as there was a law against it, making it became even more profitable. I'm not sure, although maybe someone with a keener knowledge of the gun industry can step in to correct me, but I don't think that given a prohibition on assault weapons, there would be enough of a black market to sustain continued proliferation. The numbers would go down, whereas in prohibition days, drinking may have actually increased.
I know that even now many assault-type weapons are restricted, banned, or in other ways prevented from being made or sold. If we don't, as a country, believe that limiting or severely taxing, or even banning something will work, then why do we do it? Why are drugs illegal? Certainly plenty of drugs are sold. I personally believe that in each case you must weigh the outcomes of your decisions, and decide if acting will help anyone. I think in the case of guns, more limitation has been proven in other countries to have a major effect on gun violence.
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: At worst, the consequences that you can match a causative NRA link to are a handful in number, related to less-than-intelligent pro-gun lobby. But you can't point to school shootings as a gestalt 'consequence' of the existence of organized pro-gun advocacy.
On the contrary, I believe many of the weapons purchased in the specific case of the Columbine shooting were bought at gun shows. No pro-gun community = no gun shows. There is not a directly line of causation, but there is are manifold tie-ins with pro-gun advocacy in situations of gun violence.
Edit: Even as I say this, I am thinking that what I find most important in this whole argument is not the law. Unfortunately we do often break the gun controversy down to a matter of rights and duties, constitutional and personal. As the NRA lobbies for an interpretation of the law that they favor, the response, and often a losing one, is for anti-gun groups to fight on the same plane. Unfortunately for their case, it is much easier to defend a right than to assail that right- Americans like to uphold their rights, and always feel that more liberty is better.
What we should be doing, as advocates against guns, (if you are one) is really trying to effect the public consciousness and hope that people will of their own accord, decide that guns are not worth the trouble. I think the obvious problem is going to be that there is really no telling someone who has a shotgun propped behind the door that the world would be better if that shotgun was not there. That particular shotgun would have no effect if it just sat there, if it was the only one, if it were used properly at all times and kept from the reach of children. It might actually have a positive effect in any one case. But totaling up the gun deaths in America, and looking at where we stand in comparison with other countries, we know that this best case scenario is just not happening. It doesn't have to do with any other argument you could care to make, we simply have a lot of people being killed with or by guns, and we can see that in our country, this is more of a problem than in others.
If we had 10 times the traffic accidents as compared to the percentage another similarly developed country was having, we'd be very interested in seeing why that was, and if any part of that lifestyle was adaptable to our own. Why do we seem to have this attitude towards so many things, like health care, guns, obesity, problems in education, where we refuse to see that other countries that are doing a better job are offering us examples to follow. We certainly don't lead in everything. And yet any example of another way of doing things invites ridicule, as if we had never and will never live in a country that is or was or will be any different.
quote:The numbers would go down, whereas in prohibition days, drinking may have actually increased.
Drinking went down substantially during prohibition, but the crime associated with the liquor trade was on a scale similar to today's drug trade.
quote:I don't think that given a prohibition on assault weapons, there would be enough of a black market to sustain continued proliferation
This issue isn't assault weapons, it's handguns. And yes, there would be a substantial black market. The gun industry is huge, gun owners are willing to spend large sums, and guns can be smuggled at least as easily as drugs.
But really, the issue isn't the guns at all, which is the point Moore was making in Bowling for Columbine. The U.S. gun crime rate is totally disproportional to the rate of gun ownership. Canada has more guns per capita than the U.S., but their gun crime rate is radically lower. Moore's conclusion is that the U.S. is mired in a mentality of fear, brought about largely (but not entirely) by the news media, but also by the NRA, which spreads fear that we will be victimized if we don't have a gun to protect ourselves.
If we can't cure that problem, we won't be able to convince people not to demand guns.
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posted
Can you double-check your numbers for gun ownership?
quote: The United States has 90 guns for every 100 citizens, making it the most heavily armed society in the world, a report released on Tuesday said.
U.S. citizens own 270 million of the world's 875 million known firearms, according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies.
...
On a per-capita basis, Yemen had the second most heavily armed citizenry behind the United States, with 61 guns per 100 people, followed by Finland with 56, Switzerland with 46, Iraq with 39 and Serbia with 38.
France, Canada, Sweden, Austria and Germany were next, each with about 30 guns per 100 people, while many poorer countries often associated with violence ranked much lower. Nigeria, for instance, had just one gun per 100 people.
posted
I may have misremembered the issue on gun ownership. The point was that gun crime is much higher here, even in proportion to the number of guns.
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posted
Unfortunately, this is quite possibly true.
quote: In a study issued on Monday, the federal agency notes that Canadian gun-control laws have been stiffened in recent decades and gun registration has been made compulsory, but it draws no conclusions about the cause of the falling death toll. ... In a cross-border comparison for the year 2000, Statistics Canada says the risk of firearms death was more than three times as great for American males as for Canadian males and seven times as great for American females as for Canadian females.
Because more of the U.S. deaths were homicides (as opposed to suicides or accidental deaths), the U.S. rate of gun homicide was nearly eight times Canada's, the agency says.
posted
"Canada has more guns per capita than the U.S., but their gun crime rate is radically lower. Moore's conclusion is..."
...based on the premise that there is no difference between rifles and handguns. Now how often do you hear of a convenience store being robbed by a man wielding a rifle?
In the category of crimes against property, the most commonly reported is gun theft; approaching 50% of the total in cities such as Phoenix. Not saying that such burglaries are categorized as gun crimes. Just that I have no information which would lead me to believe that they aren't.
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quote:Originally posted by Glenn Arnold: But really, the issue isn't the guns at all, which is the point Moore was making in Bowling for Columbine. The U.S. gun crime rate is totally disproportional to the rate of gun ownership. Canada has more guns per capita than the U.S., but their gun crime rate is radically lower. Moore's conclusion is that the U.S. is mired in a mentality of fear, brought about largely (but not entirely) by the news media, but also by the NRA, which spreads fear that we will be victimized if we don't have a gun to protect ourselves.
If we can't cure that problem, we won't be able to convince people not to demand guns.
While I agree with this, I must point out that the very obvious point that occurred to me when I watched the film was that Canada is among the largest countries in the world, and their population density, when you account for only the areas that are significantly populated, is much lower than ours. There is also, I believe, a larger middle class, but I am not sure about that. It seems to me there are some basic factors other than political that account for some of the difference.
But those factors are certainly connected to Moore's "Culture of Fear," anyway.
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The article doesn't specifically say what the civilian owned, non-military or police gun rates were for the U.S. It cited those numbers separately for other countries, and it skirted the U.S. numbers weirdly. It says at first that the U.S. has 90 guns per person, but then goes on to say that india is second in civilian ownership (4 guns per person) but then goes on to say that Yemen is second with (61 per 100). So it has ranked both countries as number 2, but in two categories, and the U.S. as number one, but what is the number of non-military weapons?
This leads me to believe that the U.S. guns (90 out of 100) statistic is including the military.
Edit: Ah yes, the India statistic is second in TOTAL guns, trailing 270 million to 46 million.
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: Unfortunately, this is quite possibly true.
quote: In a study issued on Monday, the federal agency notes that Canadian gun-control laws have been stiffened in recent decades and gun registration has been made compulsory, but it draws no conclusions about the cause of the falling death toll. ... In a cross-border comparison for the year 2000, Statistics Canada says the risk of firearms death was more than three times as great for American males as for Canadian males and seven times as great for American females as for Canadian females.
Because more of the U.S. deaths were homicides (as opposed to suicides or accidental deaths), the U.S. rate of gun homicide was nearly eight times Canada's, the agency says.
I would like to see those numbers explored a little more, especially broken down among regional, economic and racial lines. I would also like to know how factors such as drug laws are affecting the violent crime rates in specific areas, and having to do with guns. Canada couldn't possibly spend more money on drug interdiction than the U.S. does, and I wonder if there is a significant correlation between drug enforcement/ drug laws, and gun violence.
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quote:Originally posted by aspectre: In the category of crimes against property, the most commonly reported is gun theft; approaching 50% of the total in cities such as Phoenix. Not saying that such burglaries are categorized as gun crimes. Just that I have no information which would lead me to believe that they aren't.
I wouldn't assume that they are- that would seem unlikely, because reports on this subject are, I hope, interested in conveying useful information- gun theft is a separate but related problem.
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quote:and guns can be smuggled at least as easily as drugs.
Sweet jumpin' coke-mules, I hope not. Can you imagine trying to swallow that baggy? Much less recover it.
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posted
Gun theft is a separate crime, or a distinct aggravating factor of larceny, in many states. It also qualifies a gun crime for many states' sentencing enhancements and career offender provisions. So there are reasons within the legal system for including those numbers.
I have no idea if they were included or not.
Edit: and it would be useful to have breakout statistics between violent gun offenses, possession during another crime offenses, possession/registration/carry offenses, and property offenses where the property happens to be a gun.
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quote:Originally posted by aspectre: "Canada has more guns per capita than the U.S., but their gun crime rate is radically lower. Moore's conclusion is..."
...based on the premise that there is no difference between rifles and handguns. Now how often do you hear of a convenience store being robbed by a man wielding a rifle?
It happens, and it's not uncommon. But it's certainly true that the vast majority of armed robberies involve handguns.
I had statistics on this in another thread, I might dredge them up.
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: The article doesn't specifically say what the civilian owned, non-military or police gun rates were for the U.S. It cited those numbers separately for other countries
Er, no. All numbers cited are specifically cited as civilian, India included.
quote: India had the world's second-largest civilian gun arsenal, with an estimated 46 million firearms outside law enforcement and the military, though this represented just four guns per 100 people there.
quote:... but then goes on to say that india is second in civilian ownership (4 guns per person) but then goes on to say that Yemen is second with (61 per 100). So it has ranked both countries as number 2, but in two categories, and the U.S. as number one, but what is the number of non-military weapons?
Erm, India is second largest in *absolute* numbers, but low ranked per capita. Yemen is the second largest *per capita.* Two different categories, neither are military. America just happens to be the largest both per capita and absolute.
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: I would like to see those numbers explored a little more, especially broken down among regional, economic and racial lines ...
Sure, hit StatsCan. Its the source for the second news article and a offers a plethora of free information for each of your various desires. You just have to reach out and grab it Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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But do those statistics take into account people who own multiple guns? It doesn't mean 90 people out of a 100 own guns - because one person may own 20 of them. Gun collectors can have dozens of guns. I know someone with more than 100.
Heck there are probably two dozen in my house - and my husband is not really a "collector" he just inherited quite a few from his grandfather and father upon their deaths.
We keep them locked in a gun safe, and probably don't own ammunition for the vast majority of them.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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They're called "per capita" statistics for a reason. You're looking for "per household" statistics, also freely available on StatsCan Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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Actually, he's not looking for per household statistics. He's looking for percentage of people who own one or more guns.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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Perhaps, I don't know for sure what they want. It is *precisely* this ambiguity that means that they should probably do their own research because only they know precisely what they are looking for. The best I can do is point the way to useful sources.
My initial input was only intended to correct a statement that of Glenn's that I personally knew to be wrong. My continued input was to correct Orincoro's misreading of my example. I did not really intend on getting drawn into the larger debate or to research everyone's hunches for them.
My initial presentation of the sources was with one concise sentence for *a reason*, although I've wrecked that now Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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quote:Sweet jumpin' coke-mules, I hope not. Can you imagine trying to swallow that baggy? Much less recover it.
Yeah, I gues that would be tough. On the other hand, provided the gun has no gunpowder residue (it's brand new), dogs wouldn't be able to snif for guns the way they do for drugs. As it is, there's a pretty huge gun trafficking problem all over the world. Making guns illegal in the U.S. would just enlarge that slightly.
I think it was Pat Moynihan who suggested that the solution to the gun problem was not to limit gun sales, but to limit bullet sales. Or bullet production. Reminds me of a line from V for Vendetta.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote: As it is, there's a pretty huge gun trafficking problem all over the world. Making guns illegal in the U.S. would just enlarge that slightly.
Maybe, maybe not. A lot of the illegal gun traffic in the world involves taking guns that are legal in the US, from the US to places where they are not legal. The US is to the gun trafficing what Columbia is to the cocaine trafficing.
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: They're called "per capita" statistics for a reason. You're looking for "per household" statistics, also freely available on StatsCan
I'm sorry to take umbrage, but I don't think you get to be snarky having introduced the existance of Statscan the post before this one. I'll look at it, I promise. Don't assume I knew about it and was just being lazy. I mean, I was being lazy, but I still didn't know about it. Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:The US is to the gun trafficing what Columbia is to the cocaine trafficing.
And I guess the Russian Kalashnikov is like heroin from Afganistan. Italy makes a lot of handguns, and so does Germany. And don't forget Uzis from Israel.
Yes, the U.S. is big in gun trafficking. But we don't have the whole market sewn up.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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Yeah, the gun smuggling issue from the States is controversial up here.
quote: ... Unnerving enough, you'd think, to make weapons smuggling a major diplomatic issue between Canada and the United States. The connection between the gun supply in the U.S. and the criminal element in Canada is, after all, well accepted, if not well measured. In 2004, Canadian police asked the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to trace 1,135 guns seized during criminal investigations -- guns they were pretty sure originated in the U.S. This year, they're on pace to top that number, says Mark Curtin, the ATF's attaché at the U.S. embassy in Ottawa, and while he's forbidden by law from disclosing the success rate of the traces, he says gun issues represent about 80 per cent of his office's work these days. A good thing, too: according to the RCMP-led National Weapons Enforcement Support Team, a unit formed to combat gun smuggling, fully 94 per cent of crime guns they seized on Vancouver streets in 2003 came from the U.S., while other studies suggest one out of two handguns recovered in Canadian crime are smuggled into the country.
...
Why then, is gun smuggling not a top-line subject in the ongoing negotiations to strengthen border controls? If Washington complains of terrorist cells operating north of the border, or hydroponic pot pouring southward, surely Canada has a legitimate gripe about U.S. guns endangering its police and creating a lethal environment in its cities. Where is the quid pro quo?
The answer, of course, lies in the elephant-and-mouse imbalance that has always defined Canada-U.S. relations. While the U.S. leans heavily on Ottawa to harmonize its immigration screening and border security to weed out terrorists, Canada must focus on protecting its $680-billion trade relationship with the U.S., and has little leverage for its own demands. "This would be very hard to get on any kind of binational agenda," says Reginald Stuart, an expert in Canada-U.S. relations at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax. "There's just no constituency in the United States to support it at a federal level."
On the bright side, maybe we can get some compromises put in place as "quid pro quo" for reopening NAFTA when either Clinton or Obama win the election.
Orincoro: Sorry. Actually, for Dagonee and yourself, that remark was intended for Belle. I only mention it because Dagonee referred to a "he" and you thought that the snark was intended for you. Doesn't change much except that I'll note its a friendly snark Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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