After the eighth school shooting in seven weeks – some gun control proposals

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So you believe this is only affecting some Americans? That this gene makes certain Americans more criminal and violent but doesn't effect all other humans on the planet?

So you believe the reason that the gun related death rate in the US is so high is not because of ease of access to guns but because Americans (and only them) are more affected by such genes?

How is the ‘trash’ making more trash?

And you don’t seem to be supporting any ideas to alleviate such issues much beyond encouraging gun ownership which as has been show is likely to make things worse rather than better.

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Firearm-related deaths rate per 100,000 population.

US –2011 10.3

Canada : 2.22

England and Wales – 0.22

France - 3.00

Germany – 1.10

Luxembourg - 2.02

Switzerland - 3.04

Homicides by any method per 100.000

US - 2011: 5.1

Canada : 1.6

England and Wales – 0.93

France : 1.2

Germany 0.8

Luxembourg 0.8

Switzerland 0.57

Gun related homicides per 100,000

US 2011: 3.6

Canada : 0.51

England and Wales 0.06

France - 0.22

Germany - 0.2

Luxembourg 0.62

Switzerland 0.16


So what would seem the more rational, that the high levels of homicides and gun related deaths in the US were connected to ease of access to guns or that Americans are more criminally minded and violent than other humans being in comparable countries?

 

Concerning magazine capacity, there's nothing stopping anyone from carrying several of them, or several handguns.

Concerning the distinction between an assault rifle and an assault weapon, you're referring to one as an assault weapon because it is both semiautomatic and automatic, and then you refer to one that is only semiautomatic as an assault weapon. So what you're really saying is that all semiautomatic weapons are assault weapons.

Silencers are not as silent as you might believe. They would offer no advantage to a murderer or mass shooter. Neither does a reduction in muzzle flash do anything to benefit a murderer or mass shooter.

As far as your assurance that affixing a pistol-grip to a rifle and sawing off the barrel would be in violation of the law, do you really think that a murderer or mass shooter is going to care about that?

 

Remember the "gay gene" and the "God gene"? There was "some science" behind those, too--research done by the same researcher, Dean Hamer, at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, found a statistically significant correlation between the gentic region Xq28 and male homosexual behavior.Subsequent studies confirmed a significant link, but the pheneomenon of homosexual behavior is a complex product of the interaction of genetic and biological variables lending little support to the contention that people are "born that way". Likewise, Hamer found that some of us are born with genes that predispose us to spirituality or "self-transcendence", measured by a scale testing feelings of "self-forgetfulness", being connected to a larger world, and "mysticism" (belief in unprovable things). The genetic culprit was a variant of VMAT2, a monoamine transporter responsible for regulating the flow of neurotransmitter fluids, including dopamine, which psychologist Shermer characterizes as "the belief drug". NIH director and distinguished geneticist Dr. Francis Collins, said Hamer's book might better be entitled: "The Identification of a Gene Variant Which, While Not Yet Subjected to a Replication Study, May Contribute About One Percent or Less of a Parameter Called Self-Transcendence on a Personality Test". The finding is interesting, but doesn't get us far in understanding religious behavior. We have reason to be skeptical about the "warrior gene" theory for similar reasons.
Do the MAOA and CDH13 'human warrior genes' make violent criminals—and what should society do? | Genetic Literacy Project
Neuroprediction and Crime — NOVA | PBS
http://web.its.auckland.ac.nz/ojs.review.mai.ac.nz/index.php/MR/article/viewFile/252/264
Does the MAOA gene help explain why blacks are more violent than whites and Asians?
https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-dispel-the-“black-people-violent-gene”-theory

 

Well of course the environment matters. If someone is gay, and they are born and raised in a strict heterosexual, staunchly fundamental christian home, school and community, they likely will not act upon that desire for the fears of the consequences. There are more than a few examples of gay men and women who marry into a conventional marriage to satisfy the social pressures they live in to gain reward and acceptance for doing the right thing. They are still gay. They may or may not act upon that fact.

If you are raised in a strict religious home and you don't have the religion gene, you are probably still be going to church and forced to believe that you will love GOD. Later when you are free, you will abandon that belief. It does not reside within you to think your are "not right" by not believing in a GOD. For those with the gene, they will never feel "right" unless they believe in GOD.

If someone that has the alcoholic gene never drinks alcohol, that gene never activates.

If someone has the warrior gene it does not mean they are automatically violent. It just means that given a favorable environment, they are more likely to take on a more violent means at resolving it.

Again don't miss the point made that the warrior gene is a combined outcome of a perceived environment that causes its host to respond to this gene.

From your very own provided link above:

HBD & Crime:

"Between 1976 and 2005, blacks averaged 13 percent of the US population but committed 59 percent of felony homicides." Source: DOJ

Black people are 50x more likely than whites to carry the MAO-A "violence" gene. [Source]


This does not imply that if you are black that you have this gene, or that if you do, you will be violent. It merely uses facts to relate to genetic traits. I personally know of no black people I'm around that are violent, have a history of violence, or can't resolve problems peacefully. But I do not know their genetic make-up either.

 

Of course it's access to guns. To argue against that is to not believe in math

 

I posted my response prematurely by hitting the post button while I was working on the final draft. So more to the point, with specific reference to the "warrior gene": Technically, this gene doesn't exist. The "warrior gene" is rally an allele (variant) of the MAOA gene (MAOA-L) that regulates the formation of neruotransmitters.. The theory made its appearance in a 1993 study of a notoriously violent Dutch family which exhibited the genetic variant. Note, for future reference: they were DUTCH!! (as in white). The tendency was confirmed in a 2010 study of very white Finns. A 2007 New Zealand study found higher levels in Maori men than in whites, leading to a heated controversy over possible racial linkage. At this point it should be noted that: (1) the great majority of people with the genetic variant do not exhibit violence; and (2) most people who exhibit violence do not have the variant. About a third of the human population has the variant. Blacks have a higher percentage (58%) than whites (34%), but Hispanics have a lower percentage (29%), and Chinese and Taiwanese (61%) have a higher percentage than blacks. It should also be noted that the Germans who started World War II and killed 6 million Jews in the Holocaust and made such a big deal about race were white, and that Malawi, a poor, overwhelmingly black African country has a homicide rate of 1.8 per100,000 people--way, way lower than ours. Other genetically linked hormones, notably testosterone, are also statistically correlated with homicidal violence, although most of us guys are harmless, and nonviolent aggressiveness may have advantages in the business world. Back in the '70s and '80s, there was fascination with reported correlations between the extra male (XYY) chromosome and violence, but further study showed that to be insignificant. A history of abuse and alcohol and amphetamines were found to be important intervening variables affecting the expression of the so-called "warrior gene".

I think scientists should continue these studies, although some worry about feeding into racism and eugenics. But we should be aware of the dangers: over-hyping by the media, ready embrace by people seeking simple biological solutions to our problems while denying social complexities, and the difficulty of lay people unused to complicated, sophisticated explanations, making sense of them.

 

There's a march tomorrow. I think it's nation-wide, but there are supposedly kids from Parkland in D.C. today.

 

Dude you don't have to point out to me that they were Dutch. It was stumped on the board by a mod to not spew pages of data from links. Post the links. I am pretty comfortable I understand the definitions of genetics and the definitions within. One of the main reasons I chose it, was because it was discovered in a WHITE RACE to avoid the fact that it was not meant to be an attempt to target the Black Race. It was discovered, and as it was studied, racial trends are recorded. This is not, nor never was an attempt, for scientist to target a race in the research. But by the time it can be discussed as factual it will be about being racist and therefore discredited. Kind of like here.

There are violent whites that may have this gene where other whites don't. It could account for that "problem" white population.

I am a firm believer that football players with CTE are changed humans that would not have done the things before CTE than they do after.

Sickle Cell Anemia is called a "Black Condition". It is a genetic variant that causes it. Yet its found in whites as well as other races just in much smaller percentages. Splitting hairs to try and avoid the overwhelming evidence doesn't really do much to convince anyone that the outcome is wrong or faulty. Except in American Politics.

Look athletes are athletes due to genetic advantage. If that advantage tends towards one particular race. We aren't racist when we say White Men Can't Jump. Genetically they don't by trend.

Trying to explain the definition of a variant to you or particularly me, doesn't really have anything to do with the outcome.

And since you pointed out Testosterone (thank God it wasn't me that started it), take a look at what race has higher Testosterone levels.

 

Since there's a lot of focus on magazine size, anyone who wants to can go online and purchase as many large capacity magazines as they want. Anyone who wants them already has them. And if you outlaw them, then the price simply goes up on the black market. Beyond that, anyone who wants to commit murder will simply use as many handguns as necessary to get the desired effect.

And what do you propose is a good number of rounds to sell to a person who is into target practice? And what's to stop them from using that number of rounds to murder someone? And again, beyond that, anyone who wants a large supply of ammo probably already has it.

And yes I know that an assault weapon can fire in both semi and auto mode. But you're still calling a semiautomatic weapon an assault weapon. You need to explain the difference.

The advantage of a silencer to a murderer is negligible. How many shootings are you aware of in which a silencer was used?

When I told you that murderers don't care about the law, it was in response to you telling me that affixing a pistol-grip and sawing off the barrel of a gun is prohibited by law. I think you understand what my point was. Also, we're talking about murderers. Do you actually believe that a law against sawing off a barrel of a rifle and affixing a pistol-grip to it is going to make a murderer think twice?

 

If the punishment for being found guilty was death or removal of penis and testicles, yeah probably gonna make them think twice. If not, they only get away with it once. Either way suits me fine.

 

I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to provide a list of murders accomplished with an assault weapon, and then we'll see if there is any justification for banning them. Also, I'm going to have to ask you to tell me the difference between a weapon and a rifle. You haven't been at all clear about that.

As far as your idea of restricting the numbers of rounds I can buy, that's never going to happen. There's over 300,000,000 guns in the U.S. If you believe that such a measure has a snowball's chance in hell of coming about, then you overestimate those gun owners' willingness to be treated like children. According to the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs, it is estimated that 32 to 50 percent of homicides are preceded by alcohol consumption by the perpetrator. So now that you have been told that the number of murders could be reduced by one third or more, what do you think about limiting the amount of alcohol Americans can purchase in a given timeframe?

My point about silencers stands. Some people want them to--guess what--quiet their gun. What I find disturbing is that if you, and others like you, decide that they're not useful enough, then no one can have them. And I'll assume you couldn't find any examples of murders being done with silencers on their gun.

 

Didn't stop me.

Raised Catholic and been chasing girls since I was 14

 

Guess I'll have to narrow this down. Was my semiautomatic Ruger rifle with a ten-shot magazine an assault weapon? If so, why? If not, why?

And yeah, I have looked into the use of rifles in homicides. Turns out that handguns are used more than rifles . . . a LOT more in fact . . . by a margin of at least ten to one. I'm surprised you didn't know that. Hell, shotguns were used more than rifles. Do you support a ban on shotguns? Didn't think so.

And here's what the ATF has to say about silencers:


In an internal memo leaked to the Washington Post last week, ATF Associate Deputy Director Ronald Turk argued that silencers should be deregulated due to the low rate at which they are used in crimes. Currently silencers are regulated by the restrictive National Firearms Act, which also regulates machine guns.

"Consistent with this low number of prosecution referrals, silencers are very rarely used in criminal shootings," Turk wrote. "Given the lack of criminality associated with silencers, it is reasonable to conclude that they should not be viewed as a threat to public safety necessitating [National Firearms Act] classification, and should be considered for reclassification under the [Gun Control Act]."

And Wikipedia reports that, in Pennsylvania, you can purchase up to 192 ounce of beer from a retailer. Other investigators reported that you can walk out and back in again to repeat the process. But the point here is that you support a limitation on the amount of alcohol an individual may purchase in the interest of reducing homicides. Do you have any other recommendations?