The Gun Control Challenge

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It would seem that it's time for a bump...

I have often maintained that I see the root of firearms violence as one of culture, rather than regulation.

The American Romance is a story of individual escapism: the pilgrim fleeing religious pluralism in England to practice Puritanism in the New World; the cowboy fleeing industrial exploitation in the East to live free in the West; the libertarian absenting himself from government control to live free on his own stakehold. The entire myth of "liberty" in the American Romance is the individual escaping from authority.

Then, that most American of artforms--the Western--coupled the myth of liberty with the romance of the gun. Perhaps nowhere else is the icon of the individual more aggressively promoted, and the gun at his side the instrument of his individualism.

Then add to that the sexualization of the firearm. Many Westerns have sexualized references to firearms--some of the earliest homoerotic imagery to get it's way past the Hayes Code censors were those of cowboys admiring their guns. And the sexual references are not limited to the homoerotic, or to the cinema.

The firearm has an iconographic status in American culture. And no legislation is going to change culture in any short order. Cultural change takes time, it takes commitment and it takes the willingness of those whose attitudes must shift. But it can be done.

The red herring of this request is that gun crimes and homicide are more serious types of crime and cannot be simply compared with 'total number of violent crimes'.

After the recent school shooting, I wonder what the direction of the gun control issue will be in America.

Soooo, you're saying that murder by gunshot is somehow different and worse than murder by knife or other implement? I'm asking for a direct comparison, murder to murder, ADW to ADW, and no one's been able to prove the efficacy of gun control in lowering violent crime. All that ever happens is weapon substitution, which is cold comfort for the victims.

Soooo, that would be a no, you need to reread what he wrote.

IF you'd read my whole quote, you'd have seen that I addressed his entire point by reminding him that I've compared comparable crimes, I'm not counting assault via gun the same as simple fistfights. But you clearly didn't.

Where did I say I was talking about your earlier quote?
I was pointing out that here you have assumed "gun crimes and homicide" to mean "gun crimes and gun homicide"

In the first and last sentence of the first quote you seem to think that murder using guns is the same as murder using knifes or high explosives. In the second quote you seem to think assault using guns is different from assault using knifes or explosives or bare hands. It not clear what 'violent crime' you consider comparable?

When comparing guns and knives, weapon substitution is good, as demonstrated by this recent addition at CNN. Knives aren't really that effective at killing people.

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/12/15/world ... ?hpt=hp_t2

Not really surprising, as it is already common knowledge that the mortality rate is much higher for gunshot wounds than for stab wounds (a quick internet search yielded a 4 to 5 times higher estimate).

One study also found that medical treatment costs for gunshot wounds are more than 10 times higher than for stab wounds.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 7597000079

A quick calculation also reveals that 22 percent of the gunshot victims in that study died, versus less than a percent of the cut/stab wound victims. I suspect the latter to be underestimated though, as "cut" likely also includes a lot of accidents. But the difference is still pronounced.