Understanding guns in the USA: A fresh look

[greypanther]

If you take your statement there to its extreme, it's the old "Well, banning knives doesn't stop knife crime entirely, so why bother?" thing that I for one totally disagree with.

That was the point I was trying to make, obviously failed, again. All the new restrictive laws against knife carry have made no impact whatsover on knife crime, in fact it has increased even though the politicians are " doing so much " to prevent it!

It certainly has made it more difficult for people who use knives for legitimate reasons and with the new laws about to happen, will cost jobs.

[pjknibbs]

That was the point I was trying to make, obviously failed, again. All the new restrictive laws against knife carry have made no impact whatsover on knife crime, in fact it has increased even though the politicians are " doing so much " to prevent it!

Correlation does not equal causation. If you can prove that introducing these knife bans is the *reason* knife crime has increased, then yes, I will be right with you in suggesting the bans are useless. If you can't prove that, then I have to ask, what would the position be without the bans? We might be in an even worse position as far as knife crime is concerned!

[Usenko]

Visual pairings are important. Showing a scary thing and then telling people you're preventing that scary thing, no matter if it's really significant or not, makes people think you're actually... preventing scary things.

There was an interesting gun-related example of this in Australia a while back.

A Turkish company wanted to sell its shotguns in Australia. So they put together a video showing their shotguns being fired. The clever trick was that the lever-action shotgun which would actually be legal in Australia was snuck into a lot of footage of semi-automatic shotguns being fired. The implication being that "our shotguns are FAST!"

Ironically, the anti-gun lobby in Australia seized on this ad, which rapidly turned into an own-goal for the company marketing the shotguns. They demanded that the government not "water down" the legislation so as to allow these weapons to be imported. In fact, they were perfectly conventional weapons, covered by current legislation, and to prevent their importation the law would actually have needed to change. So in a sense the reality was the opposite of anti-gun activists' beliefs.

[Morkonan]

... So in a sense the reality was the opposite of anti-gun activists' beliefs.

People who have really, deeply, aligned themselves with some sort of group that gives them a huge feeling of self-righteousness somehow, always, run afoul of "gotcha" moments. How many "Facebook Crews" jump into action over fake ads and comedy sketches, thinking them to be just the "Perfect War" they've been waiting all this time for?

"That's a perfect situation where we can show the rest of the Universe how great we are!"

..

"Oh... it was a fake."

"BUT WE WERE SO AWESOME, WEREN'T WE? YAY US!!!"

[mrbadger]

It certainly has made it more difficult for people who use knives for legitimate reasons and with the new laws about to happen, will cost jobs.

Yes, my local Butcher's job will become much harder to do, and I'll find it so difficult carving roasts with these restrictive laws in place. Not to mention buttering bread after that recent headline. No doubt they'll be cracking down on those evil butter knives too.

[greypanther]

Yes, thank you mrbadger, you have finally prodded home a lesson I should have learnt last July.

Conversation such as this, in places like this, are truly an exercise in futility, no one ever seems to change their minds, or even give a little, which seems odd to me, because mine certainly has since the start of this thread. ( Never mind all the other very many similar ones here... )

Be well mrbadger, or at least as well as the universe allows.