doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Presidential candidate supports INDIVIDUAL RKBA

I just got a letter today from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers saying they have endorsed Hillary Clinton to be the next President of the US.

Here's another source on the relationship between stricter gun laws and reduced gun violence:


http://law.bepress.com/expresso/eps/1564/

The murder rate in the United States remains over 3 times greater than in England and Wales. They have a long ways to go before they catch us . . . or we have a long ways to go before we catch them.

The point is, we need to delve into SPECIFIC differences between countries rather than touting "general propositions", whether we're talking gun laws or health care. For example, without even trying very hard, I can think of a lot of reasons why health care costs in the United States are higher and life expectancy lower than in many other countries, regardless of whether there's UHC:

Higher health care costs: Comparing the US to most similar societies (Western Europe, Canada, Australia, NZ, Japan), we eat a far less healthy diet. Epidemic of childhood obesity in the US. Significant increase in the incidence of diabetes. All pretty basic. Relative to both health care costs and life expectancy: We drive cars a lot more than they do. They walk and/or ride bikes a lot more than we do, which is a much healthier lifestyle. But gasoline is cheaper here, kids can drive at a much younger age (16--or even younger in some states with school permits), and are far more likely to have a car available to them as a teenager, thus promoting a less healthy lifestyle early in one's life. Not to mention the fact that the accident rate--with resulting serious injury and death--is much higher for our teenagers than in other countries, because those foreign kids aren't driving while our kids are. So that one's a "double whammy" on us.

And of course we all know that having cars available, with back seats, leads to a higher incidence of teen pregnancy.

I'm glad to see that Mr. Brown's post back on page 24, suggesting that stricter gun laws = lower gun homicide rates, which was originally posted as a straight, unqualified proposition, has now been carefully edited (and the Mark as Edited box carefully X-ed out to conceal the fact ) in an attempt to make it appear that he wasn't really serious. Ex post facto enlightenment is always welcome!

Don't be silly, Jack. My proposition--as you well know--is no more "straight and unqualified" than is your suggesting that universal health care always has positive outcomes. Interesting that I've yet to see you mention the country that had universal health care (and universal everything else, under govt control) before any other in all your comparisons. Just how did UHC work out in the old Soviet Union anyhow? If you cherry-pick countries--as was done in the article you referenced on gun laws and murder rates--you can certainly find some with stricter gun laws than the US but higher murder rates. Likewise, I don't believe the Soviet Union ever surpassed the United States in life expectancy, even though they had UHC for a very long time. But I'll grant you that their health care was cheaper! Thus, in neither case is the "general proposition" universally true--but you can use statistics to prove it true most of the time.

Which is why I've tried to lead us to a discussion of SPECIFICS, not general propositions. And which leads me to point out that one has to look at social, economic, and cultural factors (reference the article you posted above, Jack) relative to the SPECIFIC country in question before one buys into a "general proposition" and how it may or may not apply.

If anyone can find any suggestion in my posts that universal health care "always has positive outcomes," please copy and post a quote here. I'll even promise not to sneak back and surreptitiously change what I said!

The "gun laws = lower homicide rates" proposition was unsupportable from the start - but its author defended it tenaciously until his lame, late-in-the-game "ha ha I was just kidding" line.

The causal connection between government-provided pre- and post-natal care and infant mortality is well documented and widely acknowledged in the medical field. So are the vast differences in administration cost between government-run UHC systems and America's for-profit private health industry. So are the vast differences in prescription drug costs.

And yes, the pharmaceutical companies make good profits under UHC - they just don't make as much as they do here, where their grip on the short hairs of the ill is protected by the politicians. That is why I SPECIFICALLY posted that ObamaCare and HillaryCare universal health plans would have negative outcomes.

I don't see how there could be anything other than "positive outcomes" with a universal system in the United States. Canada's system also provides a competitive advantage in world trade and productivity, this week the country paid $10 billion (in US per capita terms $100 billion) on the national debt, and has best financial management in G7. Comparing with the old Soviet Union is silly.

Canada is looking for improvement at the European systems, particularly France. Canadians often think of themselves as "muddling through" on the big issues. That's what the US is doing now, finding a way to care for all of its citizens, bless them all. If it chooses an universal system--private, public or a mix---the tactics, specifics come later with the electorate deciding whose program it will support.

It's political poison to provide specifics of substantive issues in electoral campaigns i.e. the Democratic aspirants promising to kill or renegotiate NAFTA. As main supplier of oil and gas to the US, Canada for starters could renegotiate the deal-clincher that our oil is regarded equally as US oil.

Talk of killing NAFTA is really camouflage for getting at US-Mexico labour-market problems. It's loose talk. McCain supports free trade. He knows that American multinationals who invested in Canada on the basis of free trade---most of our Oil Patch for starters---would fight opening NAFA to the bitter end.

So do Clinton and Obama. That's why campaigns don't get into specifics.

Unsupportable? Jack, glad to see you haven't lost your sense of humor. EVERY country in the world, with a society relatively similar to our own--that would be, once more: Canada, Australia, NZ, Japan, all of Western Europe--has a murder rate far below our own. In fact, our murder rate is at least 3 times higher than in all those countries, and as much as 7 times higher than in some of them. That would be a 100% correlation between those countries (the SAME ONES you tout for superior universal health care) and the United States when it comes to murder rate. Much stricter gun laws . . . it'd only be about a 95% correlation, because a couple of them (Switzerland and Finland) do have relatively liberal gun laws along with a low murder rate. But the vast majority of them certainly do have stricter gun laws than we do.

Of course I'm more than willing to concede the SPECIFIC "social, economic and cultural factors" that differentiate the United States from those other countries--which is precisely why I do not apply the "general proposition" that stricter gun laws would reduce our murder rate to their level. You, however, seem far too willing to gloss over those specific factors, all the while advocating a NONSPECIFIC universal health care scheme for this country. You've told us you don't like Hillarycare or Obamacare, yet you've refused to tell us what UHC for the United States SHOULD look like--which makes Hillary and Obama look more honest than you are, because they're willing to subject SPECIFIC plans to the slings and arrows of review and criticism. Pretty hard to evaluate the worth of the poke, without knowing the specific nature of the pig within.

And one additional factor I did not mention, which also obviously has an impact on life expectancy in this country vs other countries: If we're murdering people at a rate 3 to 7 times higher than the countries against which we're being compared on the issue of life expectancy, then obviously our higher murder rate would have a negative impact, and is therefore one of those specific social/cultural factors one would have to consider when making any LEGITIMATE comparison.

King, you must not be listening to Clinton and Obama. They're hammering at each other on the SPECIFIC differences between their respective health care plans, and each is hammering on the other candidate about mischaracterization of their respective plans. If both of them (like Jack) simply said, "I'm in favor of (unspecific) universal health care, because it works in other countries!", then they wouldn't have anything to argue about on that issue. And if they were only addressing health care in a general fashion, Jack would have trouble determining which of them he likes better, instead of telling us that he doesn't support either of their plans. Likewise, if Jack were to get as specific as those two candidates have, then we'd all have something to evaluate.

As a user of the system, I don't what they're talking about, Larry. Every time they open their mouths, I've a question. What the Kansas City milkman thinks of it, the Lord only knows. Regards, King