[awm]

The vast majority of shooters don't have the resources to cover Blackshoe's financial compensation. The fact that a lot of them end up dead (committing suicide after their shooting spree is over) or in jail (I assume murder should still be a crime? otherwise you are legalizing the killing of homeless people since the moderately wealthy could afford the fine?) doesn't help either. Financial penalties also don't act as much of a deterrent to the Adam Lanzas of the world.

The only realistic way to enforce such a rule would be to require an insurance policy for the owner of a firearm, much as we do with auto insurance. The cost of this policy will obviously depend on things like degree of arms training, any criminal record, mental health, and so forth (and probably be a lot more expensive for men than women given the gender of almost all mass shooters). However, there will still be plenty of people who try to obtain guns without paying for insurance (just as we have for automobiles). Enforcing the insurance requirement will basically require a database of all weapons that the police can cross-check against insurance company records. Realistically, we will have to go after gun sellers who don't check for insurance before making a sale, which means basically all sellers will have to report all their transactions to the government. When you put all this together it's not all that different from the policies Obama is proposing!

[TimG]

kenberg, on 2013-January-23, 09:30, said:

If a school; really needs an armed guard, it should have one. The decision should be made on a school by school basis. As far as I know, there are no armed guards at any of the schools that my grandchildren attend. It is most regrettable that some schools need them.

Around here, rural/suburban Maine, there are regular patrols of schools, but not permanent armed guards. It is common to see a sheriff's vehicle outside the high school my kids attend -- and by common I mean 4 out of 5 times I will see it parked outside the front entrance on days that I drop my kids off. There is at least one deputy at every dance or football game held at the high school (I suspect there is a maximum number of expected attendees for a special event before school policy requires a police presence -- I haven't noticed any officers at field hockey or lacrosse games).

In a neighboring town with their own police department (my town is served by the county sheriff's department) there is a specific police officer assigned to respond to calls from the middle school and high school. He is also the "Officer Friendly" that would visit schools and talk to students. I know that just last week he arrested a student who pulled a fire alarm ("false public alarm" or some such) and escorted the cuffed 7th grade student to the police station.

[mikeh]

blackshoe, on 2013-January-23, 09:04, said:

I would formulate the Golden Rule as the Wiccans do: "An' it harm none, do what thou wilt." On that basis I would have no objection to a private citizen (I think the term "common citizen" is an attempt to demean the citizenry) owning whatever weapons he or she wants, provided that anyone who does harm to another with such weapon(s) other than in self defense or defense of others pays (as in "makes reparations," not as in "goes to jail") for it. And I'm not talking about some minor fine - if you put someone in the hospital, you pay his hospital bills, and his rehab bills, and provide the equivalent to the salary he was earning before you did that until he can go back to work. If you kill someone, you take on all his legal financial obligations - pay his debts, support his family, whatever. If you go broke doing that, too bad.

This sort of response comes from conservatives (maybe more accurately, libertarians) on many topics. Specifically guns, of course, but we have similar appeals to individual 'rights' and the need for people to 'take responsibility' with US health care and social welfare systems.

These arguments are all founded on a model of human behaviour that is utterly disconnected from reality.

Guns are not a problem so long as they are not in the hands of real life humans. We are all perfectly safe so long as the humans who own the guns never:

1) get angry
2) get depressed
3) become mentally ill
4) get careless
5) allow kids to play with the guns
6) get drunk or high

or some combination of the above.

Yes, people who do some of these things are dangerous even without guns. However, when someone goes nuts with a knife, and decides to attack a school filled with unarmed teachers and kids, it is truly horrible but few, if any, die. That's exactly what happened in China concurrently with Sandy Hook...and no-one in China was killed by the assailant.

The blackshoes of the world model their view of society on a form of human who doesn't exist. They claim that those who commit gun violence are somehow 'different' and that we should be able to identify them and keep them away from guns.

Firstly, this is nuts. While some of the mass killers, and probably a good number of the one-off killers, are mentally ill at the time they committed the killings, it seems reasonable to assume that they weren't always nuts and even more reasonable to assume that many people suffering from some form of mental illness are not a hazard at all.

And it is also fairly clear that some killings happen because of short-term emotional issues. Two somewhat intoxicated people get into an argument outside or inside a nightclub. A gun gets pulled and shots are fired, perhaps (often) hitting innocent bystanders.

A husband loses his job, and faces social humiliation, and sees the gun....he commits murder-suicide...it is so much easier with a gun.

And so on.

Then add to this that very few of us are in the position of a Jobs, who could drive without a licence or insurance because his net worth was such as to make insurance redundant. In the US, in particular, when 1% of the people own a staggering percentage of wealth, and the top .1% are even more disproportionally weathly, the great bulk of the people can't possibly pay the indemnities blackshoe suggests. And forget insurance: no insurance company ever insures people against the consequences of intentional wrong-doing, so most gun violence will be done by people without available insurance.

Real life is difficult for libertarians to accept, since people don't act in the rational manner that is required for libertarianism to even come close to functioning. Personally, as a member of a species of animal that has evolved to be an interdependent social animal, I think that any philosophy that has as its main tenet a belief in the paramountcy of the individual is doomed to failure. I am part of a society and cannot function without others, and that imposes on me obligations to my fellow humans, as well as allowing me to have expectations about how they will treat me.

[mikeh]

awm, on 2013-January-23, 10:37, said:

The vast majority of shooters don't have the resources to cover Blackshoe's financial compensation. The fact that a lot of them end up dead (committing suicide after their shooting spree is over) or in jail (I assume murder should still be a crime? otherwise you are legalizing the killing of homeless people since the moderately wealthy could afford the fine?) doesn't help either. Financial penalties also don't act as much of a deterrent to the Adam Lanzas of the world.

The only realistic way to enforce such a rule would be to require an insurance policy for the owner of a firearm, much as we do with auto insurance. The cost of this policy will obviously depend on things like degree of arms training, any criminal record, mental health, and so forth (and probably be a lot more expensive for men than women given the gender of almost all mass shooters). However, there will still be plenty of people who try to obtain guns without paying for insurance (just as we have for automobiles). Enforcing the insurance requirement will basically require a database of all weapons that the police can cross-check against insurance company records. Realistically, we will have to go after gun sellers who don't check for insurance before making a sale, which means basically all sellers will have to report all their transactions to the government. When you put all this together it's not all that different from the policies Obama is proposing!

I already touched upon this in my response to blackshoe, but as an insurance lawyer, I can tell you that no insurance company would ever underwrite the peril of the insured deliberately shooting another person. Insurance law is much the same in most (perhaps all, but I don't know enough to say 'all') countries with a legal system based on the English Common Law, such as the UK, the USA, and Canada/Australia. Indeed, I have cited US cases in Canadian cases when the facts have been so unusual that there were no Canadian cases on point.

Every insurance contract I have ever seen excludes liability to indemnify the insured against the consequences of criminal acts (in fact., the exclusions are far broader than that). To insure someone against the consequences of intentional wrong-doing creates what is known as a 'moral hazard'. It either encourages or at least eliminates constraints against the doing of events that expose the insurer to liability.

There are some exceptions, of limited utility. For example, here in British Columbia, our automobile insurance entitles the victim of an accident to have access to the wrong-doer's insurance even in the event of some forms of criminal conduct...the insurer gets to sue the wrong-doer in an often futile attempt to get the money back, but the victim isn't affected by that. This is a public policy governmental decision, and I suspect it may not be universal, especially in the US.

[mike777]

I suppose if you want to pass more laws and make more stuff illegal that may reduce gun violence, at least that seems to be the operating theory. If nothing else it should put more in prison and into our justice system assuming we have the money for the courts and prisons given all the reports of letting people out of jail due to lack of money.


With over 300 million guns in the USA and that number is increasing it is amazing that gun violence is actually down.

btw the text of the Second Amendment does not create any right to bear arms.

----


MikeH post is another thread but as a Catholic I agree with his last sentence.

I am part of a society and cannot function without others, and that imposes on me obligations to my fellow humans, as well as allowing me to have expectations about how they will treat me.

[billw55]

blackshoe, on 2013-January-23, 09:04, said:

... I would have no objection to a private citizen (I think the term "common citizen" is an attempt to demean the citizenry) owning whatever weapons he or she wants ...

Well, I don't really know what to say about that. I have not met many who will come right out and say this.

[billw55]

Trinidad, on 2013-January-23, 07:49, said:

So, what does a police officer at an American high school do all day that justifies his full time presence? Is the crime rate in a population of a couple of thousand American teenagers so high that it justifies permanent supervision by a law officer?

I can envision assigning a police officer to a school, in the sense that this is the officer you turn to when the school needs one. I can see advantages of combining a police station and a school in one building. But I cannot see that a school would give a police officer a full work week.

Rik

Yes, he has enough to do. Investigating criminal issues such as possession of weapons or drugs; serving arrest warrants; and subduing violence. On top of that, his full time presence has value as deterrent.

Wherever you live that you cannot imagine a school having enough use for an officer, I rather envy you.

[Fluffy]

finalcianl punnishment and insurances could be better than not having them, but for those to apply the first thing you need is to catch the guilty guy. As Mikeh said it is impossible when he is dead, but it is also not foolproof when he is not.

Another thing that could be improved (as far as I know the laws) is the self-defence non self-defence thing. The line between them can be difuse, having an all or nothing formula leads to unfair results, not sure how to perferm it but a more progressive formula would be better IMO.

[Trinidad]

billw55, on 2013-January-23, 12:53, said:

Yes, he has enough to do. Investigating criminal issues such as possession of weapons or drugs; serving arrest warrants; and subduing violence. On top of that, his full time presence has value as deterrent.

Wherever you live that you cannot imagine a school having enough use for an officer, I rather envy you.

Feel free to envy me -I am a happy man- but I think you have it backwards. I grew up and currently live in The Netherlands, I work in Germany, my wife is from Finland. I have lived in Sweden and the USA and have spent a lot of time in France. I think that I can compare Europe to the USA. In this list of countries there is only one where there are police officers stationed in schools: the USA.

I have never seen a police officer in the school during my entire school career in The Netherlands. There once was a police officer... On the day we did our traffic exam in fifth grade. He checked in the school yard whether our bikes were in good condition and afterwards he handed out the certificates over there. (In fifth grade kids have to do a 'road test' over here.)

My kids have never seen a police officer in their school career up to now (elementary and middle school), except for one father on career day (and maybe when they did their traffic exams). I have never heard of any news that required police assistance in any of the elementary, middle or high schools where I live (an industrial town of 70,000 people). The idea of stationing a police officer in a school would be absurd.

From what I have experienced, the USA is simply much more violent than any of the other economically developed countries (excluding Israel, but there violence has a different background).

Rik

[billw55]

Trinidad, on 2013-January-23, 14:37, said:

From what I have experienced, the USA is simply much more violent than any of the other economically developed countries (excluding Israel, but there violence has a different background).

I have not traveled outside the USA, but I often read or hear something similar from others who have. I suspect it is correlated with poverty but have no hard data to back this up.

[blackshoe]

hrothgar, on 2013-January-23, 09:56, said:

Just to be clear, our current legal structure allows for both criminal and civil suits.
The system that you describe is in effect right now.

The issue isn't that liberals "will never stand for this", rather the real problem is how do you plan to collect any significant amount of money from someone who (best case scenario) is currently serving 15-20 for assault with a deadly weapon?

The only time that you see these laws used is in cases like the civil suits against OJ
The defendant needs to have very deep pockets to justify the efforts required to collect.

I am aware of the current system. I'm suggesting a different system. And you're wrong, the best case scenario is that the perpetrator of the ADW is dead, because his intended victim killed him.

That a defendant (or for that matter anyone using the legal system) needs deep pockets just shows that something is seriously wrong with the system.

[ArtK78]

You got us! Our dastardly plan to take over the US by force has been thwarted by the Second Amendment!

http://www.theonion....en-natio,30984/

[TimG]

Trinidad, on 2013-January-23, 14:37, said:

From what I have experienced, the USA is simply much more violent than any of the other economically developed countries (excluding Israel, but there violence has a different background).

The statistics I have seen recently show that the UK has the highest violent crime rate (amongst economically developed countries).

[hrothgar]

blackshoe, on 2013-January-23, 15:11, said:

I am aware of the current system. I'm suggesting a different system. And you're wrong, the best case scenario is that the perpetrator of the ADW is dead, because his intended victim killed him.

Fine. Let's work from your best case scenario.

Joe Perpetrator robs you at gun point.
You're able to get off a round and righteously kill the SOB.
Sadly, Joe fires as well, leaving you crippled for life.
Who are you collecting money from???

FWIW, I understand the point that you were trying to make.
In your idyllic paradise, you were able to cap the bastard without any negative impact to yourself at all.

I just think its kind of sad that your best case scenario is one where you get to kill someone, rather than one where you never got robbed in the first place.

[Trinidad]

blackshoe, on 2013-January-23, 15:11, said:

I am aware of the current system. I'm suggesting a different system. And you're wrong, the best case scenario is that the perpetrator of the ADW is dead, because his intended victim killed him.

If you hold such a view, you would not get a gun permit in The Netherlands...

Neither is it helping the security of a free state.

Rik

[hrothgar]

blackshoe, on 2013-January-23, 15:11, said:

That a defendant (or for that matter anyone using the legal system) needs deep pockets just shows that something is seriously wrong with the system.

Life would be so much better, if only we all lived in Forbes America

http://www.imdb.com/...u/vi2917637657/

[mikeh]

hrothgar, on 2013-January-23, 17:10, said:

Fine. Let's work from your best case scenario.

Joe Perpetrator robs you at gun point.
You're able to get off a round and righteously kill the SOB.
Sadly, Joe fires as well, leaving you crippled for life.
Who are you collecting money from???

FWIW, I understand the point that you were trying to make.
In your idyllic paradise, you were able to cap the bastard without any negative impact to yourself at all.

I just think its kind of sad that your best case scenario is one where you get to kill someone, rather than one where you never got robbed in the first place.

Reminds me of a story that a very well-known bridge professional told a long time ago. I won't name names.

He described, with apparent glee, that a Chicago area businessman had the good luck to arrive at work one day and find that an inept burglar had broken in and had got stuck somehow...I gather he was able to get into a room through a window but was unable to get back out. The owner was armed, and the burglar tried to flee once the door was open. The owner shot and killed him and avoided prosecution because he was defending his property. The pro's view was that the owner was lucky, not because he wasn't prosecuted, but because he'd been given, on arrival at his business, the opportunity for a 'free kill' and had been 'smart' enough to take advantage of it.

The notion of being able to kill people who act against you may appeal to some: frankly I think of such an attitude as sick.

It seems to me that this idyllic paradise of blackshoe is based not only on a libertarian fantasy but also on the notion, popularized in many action movies, that when bad guys shoot, they generally miss the star(s) of the show...the only 'good guys' who get killed are minor players....while the good guys hit the target with astounding frequency. Since we tend to see ourselves as the stars of our own video, we tend to assume that we'll survive even if others don't. So of course it makes perfect sense for us to be armed: then, when faced with an armed assailant, we'd do what the action heroes do...we'd pull our gun, dodge the bullets fired by the bad guy, and shoot him dead. Our bullets would never miss, never pass through our target and hit someone else, and so on.

In real life we get stories such as the one out of NY some years ago where several officers shot a man at close range, firing in excess of 40 times and hitting him maybe 5 or 6 times. Or the stories we get here in B.C., where gang-related shootouts have killed innocent bystanders while only wounding or even missing the intended targets.

Which is, again, why in my opinion the pro-gun proponents have few, if any, arguments based in reality and instead construct these edifices of idealized people and simplified situations in which everything is black or white, with few shades of grey and no moral ambivalences or complications. Reality is messy, it is complicated and it ignores our wishes....and it has a habit of biting back at those who pay it no heed. Unfortunately, when it bites back it doesn't care who gets hurt.

[blackshoe]

hrothgar, on 2013-January-23, 17:10, said:

Fine. Let's work from your best case scenario.

Joe Perpetrator robs you at gun point.
You're able to get off a round and righteously kill the SOB.
Sadly, Joe fires as well, leaving you crippled for life.
Who are you collecting money from???

FWIW, I understand the point that you were trying to make.
In your idyllic paradise, you were able to cap the bastard without any negative impact to yourself at all.

I just think its kind of sad that your best case scenario is one where you get to kill someone, rather than one where you never got robbed in the first place.

Criminals have stated, over and over again, that the possibility that a potential victim is armed gives them pause - they would much prefer to let that one alone, and go find someone safer to rob. So if I (or anyone else) am carrying, and the criminal knows it, I'm likely "never to get robbed in the first place".

You paint me as some slavering gun nut that goes around looking for excuses to to kill people. I suppose that fits your agenda.

[dwar0123]

blackshoe, on 2013-January-23, 17:36, said:

You paint me as some slavering gun nut that goes around looking for excuses to to kill people. I suppose that fits your agenda.

This painting is a self portrait and your agenda is terrifying.

[mikeh]

blackshoe, on 2013-January-23, 17:36, said:

Criminals have stated, over and over again, that the possibility that a potential victim is armed gives them pause - they would much prefer to let that one alone, and go find someone safer to rob. So if I (or anyone else) am carrying, and the criminal knows it, I'm likely "never to get robbed in the first place".

You paint me as some slavering gun nut that goes around looking for excuses to to kill people. I suppose that fits your agenda.

I am unaware of the statistics, maybe you know them better than I do.

However, the issues of gun violence go far beyond the issue of a criminal deciding to hold somebody up on the street, in order to rob him or her.

Most domestic violence cases that end in gunshots arise during or because of altercations or longer-terms problems in which resentment, bitterness, anger, jealousy, hatred, depression, substance abuse, divorce or separation, loss of access to children, etc play a role.

The killing, which is often associated with suicide but is often also accompanied by killing other family members and friends, is not prevented by knowing that the victim has access to a weapon. It is not usually an act that seems like a logical, reasoned response to a situation, although there is often an internal logic to the killer's actions. I have a little understanding of this topic since I was involved, as counsel, in an extensive inquiry into a brutal murder-suicide in which the killer killed himself, his wife, his child, and her grandparents. I heard and read from a lot of experts on this type of killing spree.

Many shootings are gang-related, with each side fully understanding the other guys routinely have access to weapons, and that indeed one incident is likely to lead to retaliation in kind, so clearly the availability of guns to the other side is a non-issue. You might argue that so what: let the gang-bangers kill themselves, but the problem is that innocents get caught in the cross-fire.

When previously law-abiding citizens get to carry weapons, and tempers flare, such people tend to lose the ability to act rationally. Road-rage can lead to killing. Arguments about a guy seen to be flirting with another guy's girlfriend in a bar can lead to punches and escalate to the pulling of a gun. People feel humiliated by others, and they pull a gun. People resent being fired or passed over for promotion, so they pull a gun. People feel threatened so they pull a gun. People feel safe and powerful because they have a gun so they push a little harder and more aggressively and thus create confrontations that would otherwise have been avoided. Recent studies showing increased gunshot killings in 'stand your ground' states seem to suggest just that.

If the only serious risk of intentional gun violence was the non-intoxicated, clear-thinking criminal deciding whether to hold up someone who might be armed, then your logic makes sense. Since it isn't, your logic doesn't. Instead, it represents the typical evasions of reality purveyed by libertarians. You concoct an imaginary reality in which your philosophy works, and you ignore anything that doesn't fit. Which means ignoring HUGE areas of reality. Well, Fox News does very well with that approach to news, so I can understand its attraction to certain kinds of thinkers.