US gun culture is 'corrupting the world,' Australia ex-deputy PM says after Okla. slaying

[DanTex]

99. Umm, yes, I take issue with the sources cited.

Like I pointed out, it is an article written by libertarian ideologues, published in a non-peer-reviewed journal. Beyond that, even if that article were correct, it doesn't say that 70% of murderers are prior felons, it says they have criminal records, which includes, for example, being arrested for possession of marijuana. These are the kinds of distinctions that people like yourself, who are at odds with the bulk of legitimate published science, like to ignore, in order to present misleading, pseudo-scientific cases. I invite you to examine some of the legitimate published research on the subject, but I doubt you'll take me up on it.

As far as attacking other DUers, remember, you are the one accusing gun control advocates (a group which includes most DUers and most Democrats) of being "culture warriors" and exhibiting "animosity towards populations", so obviously you are the one doing the attacking here. And what are you attacking us for? For believing that the facts, statistics, and peer-reviewed studies on gun violence are not actually some ivory tower conspiracy against rural conservatives. Per you, the only way to not be a "culture warrior" is to ignore the evidence and instead read (and believe) some right-wing diatribes posted on "guncite".

Anyway, you are free to ignore the statistical evidence and the criminological and epidemiological studies, and pretend that guns have nothing to do with homicide rate in the US being several times higher than in the rest of the developed world (even though our rates of robbery, assault, general violent crime are not out of the ordinary range). You are also free to believe that global warming is a hoax, and that evolution is a lie from the pit of hell. I have seen enough ignorance and denialism that nothing you come up with will really surprise me.

But at least you might understand that the people who disagree with you actually disagree with you on the substance of the issues, rather than being motivated by some kind of interpersonal hatred. I mean, there are plenty of other "culture" issues that liberals could go to war about, but you don't see anyone calling for restrictions on, say NASCAR races. Why? Because NASCAR doesn't kill 30,000 people every year.