This video about guns and murder is chock full to the tippy top brim with facts and such. 26 puny minutes will increase your knowledge.
Very interesting indeed. This topic involves so many variables and facts that you can't really state an opinion without showing bias, as each one of those variables and facts have their own weight( be it defending or be it supporting gun control), so I'll abstain from picking a side, at least for now.
Just started watching the video. If 62% of gun deaths are suicide, 35% are homicide, what are the other 3%? Accidental deaths?
I agree. But alienating is NOT a bad word. The truth causes liars to have migraines. And this planet is full of lying liars getting filthy rich. Sounds right. I don't have time to look it up now.
But most of the one's that feel like they deserve the title, don't feel the need to use it. Whereas those that know that they are not anything like democracies, will try to plaster over it with 'the democratic republic of...'. Just as with the word 'truth': Anyone who believes they are putting together a solid argument or really discovering some insight wouldn't use the word. I mean, they wouldn't use the word for other reasons too -- because they are probably smart enough to realise that there is a limit to their understanding and that there is always the possibility of being wrong. Which i suppose is why the world has not been enlightened by such titles as: THE TRUTH about the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection General Relativity - THE TRUTH about Geometric Gravitation! THE TRUE Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy But you do get it used pretty liberally by both religious leaders and by internet crackpots - i.e. people who don't have a clue what they're talking about and deep down know it, but still want to appeal for those looking for easy answers to prop up their position.
Trying to find the truth is now bad, apparently. Using the word "truth" is now bad too, I guess. Philosophy is supposed to be the search for truth. Some people sure create such nitpicky rules. I will not comply. Knowledge and liberty FTW. I know. Truth is the only path worth pursuing. And that quest will, with 100% certainty, cause much angst amongst fellow human beings. Stagnation is preferred by the vast majority, sadly. Innovators push against a veritable sierra of lackadaisicality. It has always been so. My hope is that such mundane thinking will NOT be our fate, as a species, for infinity. Edit: Anyone have concrete material on the details discussed in the OP, or will we continue to discuss minutiae???
Part of knowledge is knowing your limitations - to know what you don't know. There is story told by Plato (I think) where the oracle at Delphi proclaims 'Socrates is the wisest of all the Greeks', to which Socrates disagrees, saying that he knows nothing at all. He then sets out to question all those considered to by wise men, and in doing so realises how he is wiser than all of them because where they pretend knowledge of everything but really know nothing, he knows one thing - his own ignorance. So if you are serious about gaining knowledge of the world then I'd recommend taking Socrates approach and accept that you (and me) are pretty ignorant of almost everything. Politics, economics, human behaviour, the natural world; these are incredibly complicated and interconnected subjects. Nobody alive knows what is the right path for sure - we make guesses based on all sorts of things, our life experience, the opinions of people around us, the culture we grew up in, as well as (occasionally) some historical evidence (and even more occasionally) some analytical thought. But just as with Socrates and the 'wise men', when someone offers you a box full of stuff marked 'truth' then you can be sure it's really a box full of bullshit.
I was in agreement until the last sentence. Stating that one believes a specific something to be "truth" does NOT make it a lie. I want to know as much 100% truth as possible, even though I don't actually expect to ever 100% know any one topic perfectly. If I or you or Obama or Sun Tzu or Serena Williams or Billy Bob or a hot female ninja or... waited around and refused to take a stand on anything until knowledge was 100% perfect, nothing good would ever get done. Nope. I refuse to accept that as the standard that must be met before action can be taken. Stand for something, or fall for anything. Keep the noggin open, so that as new info arrives one can adapt/adjust/survive/thrive. Peace out man.
Right so instead of saying, 'here's the truth' say, 'here is something closer to the truth than anything you got'.
Here is something that might contain 0.1% more truth than the last book you read on a certain topic. But in no way am I trying to offend you with the possibility of more knowledge.
CRIME in the United States 2013 Expanded Homicide Data Table 6 https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/u...f_vicitm_by_race_and_sex_of_offender_2013.xls May 06, 2013 Recently, several major news outlets have invoked images of the Sandy Hook or Aurora massacres and cited that each year 30,000 Americans die from “gun-related deaths” or “gun violence.” The truth is that two-thirds of these deaths are self-inflicted suicides that do not have any true connection to either mass-murder shootings (which make up a fraction of 1% of homicides), or "regular," non-mass shootings (which make up the vast majority of homicides). Suicide is a genuine public-health issue that should demand our collective attention, but its causes are wholly different from those of crime. As such, any policy that might have an impact on suicide is likely to be very different from policies meant to address crime and homicide. We ought to be honest about keeping crime data separate from suicides. The CDC's Non-Vital Statistics Report from, 2009 (Tables 10 and 18) reported 31,347 total firearm deaths in 2009, but of those, 18,735 were suicide by firearm deaths. There were 554 deaths from “accidental discharge of firearms.” The CDC statistics are very similar for 2010, showing “Intentional self-harm (suicide) by discharge of firearms" resulting in 19,392 deaths out of a total of 38,364 suicide deaths (table 10, p.23). Technically, this is an increase of 657 suicide deaths from 2009 to 2010. Homicides are another story. FBI statics reported in the Uniform Crime Reports show firearm homicide deaths average about 8-9,000 per year. Homicides have come down a little since 2000, but have been cut in half since 1992. This includes both the raw number of homicides (24,526 in 1993 to 12,664 in 2011) and the rate per 100,000 people (9.5 per 100,000 to 4.7 per 100,000). Suicide is a big problem by itself — the tenth-largest cause of death in the U.S. on the CDC list. However, let's be honest about our facts and figures and report data that is relevant to gun control when talking gun control. Likewise, let's be honest by using words that don't imply violence done to others. http://mic.com/articles/38391/gun-control-2013-suicide-stats-are-irrelevant-to-gun-control-policy
out of curiosity, are there similar stats for the most frequent forms of suicide? it's my assumption that gunshot takes #1 and outstrips the next few pretty decently (i don't even know what they'd be. maybe car, structure, pill, and bleed-out?), but i don't know if that's accurate. if it is accurate, might the case be arguable that gun policy should take suicide into account, given the (assumed) high gun-related death rate
Type of suicide was mentioned in the video I provided, in the OP. In summation, preferred type of suicide is different from country to country. FBI has all kinds of statistics r/t crime in America. I just added one link, in the hopes that a substantive conversation would spring up.
