Skeptomania - Paranormal / UFOs, etc.

thomoore

I found your forums doing a search last night and noticed that you had a thread about Rodney King and the RKBA. That thread started with a post of an article from scragged.com. I thought the comments were well thought out, so I 'm posting another article from scragged. They have a number of posts about the RKBA which you can find via their cloud search. This is the article:

http://www.scragged.com/articles/show-your-handgun-not-your-id.aspx

Government employees check your ID before you get on a plane. The
government tells us that's why nobody has taken an aircraft since 9-11,
but that's a typical self-serving government lie.

How often do we read about people smuggling something onto an airplane
to test the system? If a bunch of kids can sneak toy guns onto
airplanes, terrorists can sneak real guns onto airplanes. Bad guys
can get good IDs. It's so easy to get a fraudulent ID that Reader's
Digest* had an article about people who couldn't drive bribing
inspectors to get licenses to drive 18-wheelers.

Fake IDs are so easy to get that checking IDs does nothing for
security. Government claiming credit is a lie, so why hasn't there
been another hijacking? The reason nobody has hijacked an airliner
since 9-11 is that the dynamic changed. It used to be that if someone
kidnapped a plane full of passengers, the terrorists might kill 1 or 2
but most passengers would live. Now we're being kidnapped to ride
shotgun on a suicide mission. It will take heavy weapons to take over
a plane full of 150 people who have nothing to lose. Anybody who
messes with a pilot will get mobbed.

Inspecting IDs is a waste of time and money, but it's ideal from the
bureaucratic point of view because it doesn't solve the problem. If
someone wants to take an airplane, it's simple to get weapons on
board. The agency will say, "We asked for money and you wouldn't give
us enough. We'll take care of it, but you'll have to double our
budget." Bureaucracies have a motto, "Never solve the problem;
there's more budget to be had from making it worse."

If we're serious about stopping terrorism, the solution is in the
Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, "A well regulated Militia,
being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the
people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Terrorists can attack any time and place they choose. We can't hire
enough cops to protect every vulnerable point. We put guards on
planes, but so few that terrorists can pretty much ignore them. What
if we armed the people? Thousands of citizens learned how to use
weapons in the military. A lot of them had security clearances. If
we asked them to carry guns to protect us, they'd jump at it. They'd
even pay for their own weapons and training.

I don't know how many armed citizens we'd have walking around, but we
have a lot more potentially-armed civilians than we have sky marshals.
If asking well-trained ex-military to fight terrorists isn't a good
reason for a "well-regulated militia," I don't know what is. The
entire program could be managed by the National Guard.

The bureaucracy would hate that. It wouldn't cost much money, it
wouldn't create jobs, and it would solve the problem. That's death
from the bureaucratic point of view.

After 9-11, Congress passed a law saying that licensed pilots could
carry guns. That would work, but since it would solve the problem,
bureaucrats dragged their feet putting licensing procedures in place.
Bureaucrats always prefer expensive "solutions" which won't work to
something cheap that will work.

* - Reader's Digest, July 2007, "License to Kill," p 37--39.

In 2006, the U.S. Dept. of Transportation identified 15,000 "suspect"
license holders in 27 states. p 37. The feds found that illegals can
get driving skills certified for $500-$1,500. Given that the 9-11 team
spent just over $1 million planning for 911, buying IDs is nothing.

Yaish · Intel Chief

Good points. Politicians are the epitome of the Quote "...full of sound and fury, signifying nothing..."
They want to talk, sound good, get some sound bites, and ultimately not be held accountable for anything of substance. Why, if they did something it just might piss someone off!

A well armed society truly IS a polite society. Recently the Brady group graded states on their gun policy, with more restrictive gun control getting a higher score.
Across the board the states with the "best" gun control had the highest crime rates in the nation. The states with the least gun control had violent crime rates well below the national average.
Unfortunately it's tough to track stats on things that didn't happen. We know from criminals own mouths that they don't want to go up against an armed victim, and usually even when a gun is brandished they would rather flee the scene than engage in a shoot out.
Like any other predator, criminals go after the weak and defenseless. They don't want a fight, they don't want a challenge. When more citizens are armed and willing to defend themselves violent crime takes a nose-dive.

Gren · God Of Oreos

"Across the board the states with the "best" gun control had the highest crime rates in the nation. The states with the least gun control had violent crime rates well below the national average. "

Speaking as a 'purist' skeptic and my personal pro-gun support aside, it could be that states with the highest violent crime rates become those which legislate the most gun control laws, a possible correlation error. There's probably data on that somewhere.

Nonetheless, most of the data I've seen indicates that gun control laws do not affect violent crime rates.

Gun control laws are only outwardly enacted to affect crime - they are enacted to assuage voter fear of criminals.

GSpoon

there is data that shows that after the tougher gun laws have been established, ever several years after (DC with over 20 years of a hand gun band) the crime rates have not declined and in many cases increased (DC).

You can argue that areas with high crime rates were more likely to seek firearm restrictions and youwould be correct. To say that those restrictions had no effect in decreasing the crime rate would also be correct.

Yaish · Intel Chief

I believe Florida also showed a reduction in violent crimes, especially rape and mugging after they enacted Castle Doctrine in the state.

GSpoon

there was also a study done a few years back that showed states and counties that passed CCW laws had a reduction in violent crime

there is also the study by kleck that shows that guns are two times more likely to be used to stop a crime than to commit one.