Smart gun laws

[jvquarterback]

Absolutely. I'll wait for you or Mars to give me one example of a good that the government yielded to private markets that has decreased in volume produced. Airplanes, telephones, you name it, when the government gets out of any business, options improve tremendously. And somehow even the poorest of the poor in Africa can afford their $30 smartphones.

do you mean like hospitals, railroads and the US Mail?

Write me back when the government leaves those to private businesses. Even with government subsidies, surgery centers charge significantly less for better care than hospitals, private railroads still thrive, and believe it or not there is a lot more communication these days facilitated by private email servers at google than were sent in the history of the US Mail at a fraction of the price.

Surgery centers provide significantly less services than hospitals. Surgery centers clearly as you say "decreased in volume produced".

You say that private railroads "thrive." If by "thrive" you mean we have no non-government commuter rail travel (outside of the Disneyland Railroad) and that we have fewer actual rail companies than we did 50 years ago we may agree on that point. However, your original statement was that government getting out of a business increases "options improve tremendously" In the rail business that is simply not true.

And google was not able to deliver a package for me to my son on his mission. But it was awfully nice of me to take a picture of my Christmas gift that I bought him and then email that picture to him of his gift. I also had him sign his driver's license renewal and then googled it over to the DMV for him. There are other options for parcel and letter delivery all of which cost more and were no more efficient.

This kind of reminds me of the time in a debate when the girl debating the other side started presenting my side of the argument. You realize the government subsidizes all of those things, right? And I asked you to present things the government stopped subsidizing?

All of those things would be better performed in private markets than by the government. And in large measure already are better provided by competitors to the government despite enormous government subsidies.

The same goes for education. Private schools are twice as safe,if not more so. Kids perform better at private school despite similar socioeconomic class. And private schools cost a lot less money to run than government schools.

[ABYUFAN]

[And I asked you to present things the government stopped subsidizing?

You actually never asked that, but at least I'm a girl who makes your arguments for you... Can I make you a sandwich too?

Let's focus on railroads. Those started out privately owned - yes or no?

Those at their beginning were not subsidized yes or no?

Through time, they needed government protection whether through bankruptcy laws or subsidies yes or no?

Now your argument is that if the government were to step out of the process, the railroads would magically be better off because the private market that failed them before wouldn't do so again?

[BoiseBYU]

One cannot reasonably argue that private schools are safer merely because they are private. A whole host of variables would need to be controlled first to do that and I have not seen studies that have done that. Correlation is not the same as causation (see below)

http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

(I have half a mind to think there IS a correlation between Nicholas Cage movies and pool drownings...but that's just me And what is up with Norway and train collisions?!?

[Mars]

There would be less school shootings in America if we just made all of our students go to school in different countries.

[BoiseBYU]

There would be less school shootings in America if we just made all of our students go to school in different countries.

And made them pay for it!

[hawkwing]

Interesting comments from the prophet today on gun laws.

“I know your hearts are heavy as is mine as we contemplate those ruthless killings in Florida this last week. I think of Alaina Petty, 14-year-old Latter-day Saint, her life snuffed out by that sniper’s bullet…. you and others to say, ‘how could God allow things like that to happen?’ Well, God allows us to have our agency, and men have passed laws that allow guns to go to people who shouldn’t have them.”

http://fox13now.com/2018/02/23/lds-chur ... have-them/

[BroncoBot]

No argument from me.
http://www.politifact.com/new-hampshire ... enator-ke/

If the USA wants to get tough about gun laws, follow through on the ones we currently have.

in short 80k ppl attempted to buy guns and were denied. 44 were ever prosecuted. Most of these lied about their past in order to even have a background check run. This is already a crime.

Not that this will help much of anything. The black market, will provide any gun to nearly anyone for the right price.

[BoiseBYU]

No argument from me.
http://www.politifact.com/new-hampshire ... enator-ke/

If the USA wants to get tough about gun laws, follow through on the ones we currently have.

in short 80k ppl attempted to buy guns and were denied. 44 were ever prosecuted. Most of these lied about their past in order to even have a background check run. This is already a crime.

Not that this will help much of anything. The black market, will provide any gun to nearly anyone for the right price.

Agreed. There are many pieces to this puzzle that need attending to. The status quo must end.

[SpiffCoug]

The same goes for education. Private schools are twice as safe,if not more so. Kids perform better at private school despite similar socioeconomic class. And private schools cost a lot less money to run than government schools.

But why are they twice as safe? You, in a previous post, said that private schools basically dismiss those problem students. Because they are able to get rid of problem students and let the public schools "handle" those issues.

[jvquarterback]

[And I asked you to present things the government stopped subsidizing?

You actually never asked that ...

I'll wait for you or Mars to give me one example of a good that the government yielded to private markets that has decreased in volume produced. Airplanes, telephones, you name it, when the government gets out of any business, options improve tremendously.

Let's focus on railroads. Those started out privately owned - yes or no?

Those at their beginning were not subsidized yes or no?

Through time, they needed government protection whether through bankruptcy laws or subsidies yes or no?

Now your argument is that if the government were to step out of the process, the railroads would magically be better off because the private market that failed them before wouldn't do so again?

These data are readily available.
We're getting a little off point so if you want to debate any of this feel free to open another thread but here are the answers to your questions.
1. Yes and no. The 1862 Railroad Act created the Union Pacific, making it the first federally-created corporation since the Bank of the United States. It wasn't until the 1890s that the first transcontinental private railroad was created.
2. Yes and no. The UP, CP, NP and others were subsidized through government loans and land grants. The Great Northern Railway and others weren't.
3. No. They were granted subsidies but they weren't needed. In fact, the Great Northern Railway (a private railway) was built after the previously subsidized St Paul/Northern Pacific Railway, collapsed despite enormous government subsidies.
4. No. It isn't magic. Markets efficiently direct the way businesses spend money. If they make poor decisions they are punished by the market and they go out of business. Not so for government owned (schools) or subsidized (railways) businesses. They continue to operate despite failure after failure.

Now if you want to debate any specific railroad we'd have to decide which one you're talking about and I'd do it in another thread. But do you really think the private markets failed the railroads? That might be the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard when the complete opposite is true. The private markets provided the most efficient transportation of people and goods (that was by ship mostly and continued to be by ship even after the railroads were created). Railroads were and are not efficient in the many cases of government run train services. Privately run railroads are safer than government run railroads as well (you can look at the numbers in Sweden and Britain recently and the whole of the world back when there were private and government train services running side by side).

Education is the same. In many cases there is too much education in areas where none is supported by private markets. I'm sure we can all look back on our own experiences for that, not to mention the worthless degrees so many people get. And yes some students would be kicked out of schools entirely (that happens today if you weren't aware) though likely more rarely than happens now. But real education, just like transportation, communication and every other good would improve in quality, safety, and volume if we got the government out of the industry. And the data support this to a greater degree than the data support any sort of gun control, which, once again is my point.