You have to be alive to collect that. Think less 'British Cat burglars' and more 'armed bandits'. The state police finally stepped in when they started murdering babies. No, not joking.
Does anyone, at all, claim that tighter restrictions on guns would stop people who illegally acquire weapons from attempting to illegally acquire them? A striking strawman, that.
I might point out that many posters have been claiming that tighter laws would have prevented this incident. My counter was that no, it wouldn't have, since he also was acquiring things that are very illegal. In this case, the only difference would have been where he bought them, and how much he spent.
Basically everything you've just written says the opposite
No it doesn't.
The point I'm making is that the USA is not unique in history in having an armed population, but other nations didn't have half the level of gun crime the USA has, early 20th century Britain being a classic example.
Even when the British population was heavily armed, most of our policemen were never armed with more than a sturdy club and a whistle.
Steelmage99 wrote: "Guns don't kill people. People do." they are arguing that, if there were no guns in the US, the American people would still kill each other with the same frequency and enthusiasm.
That is quite an indictment of the American people - presented by people who proclaim themselves to be patriots.
Interestingly, in 1790 there were 462 gun deaths (murders, accidents, and suicides) at a time when the majority of the population had a firearm of some type. In 1800 there were 627. This ratio more or less continues as the population expands until about 1920. Then it explodes. Between 1920 and 2010 the number of gun deaths in the US tripled, despite the relative number of guns in the population decreased (ie fewer and fewer people owned guns).
So, here's a question then, what changed?
Growing pains, I think.
The US is still a young country working on ironing out the various wrinkles in their society - in essence figuring out what kind of society they want.
Politically and socially the country does seem to have a ways to go.
Jadenim wrote: Just caught up on this thread and I have two observations:
1) other than a couple of outliers this is the most civil and constructive gun control / US pol-REDACTED- thread I have seen in a long while, so good job everyone.
2) all of the discussion around gun control (here and elsewhere) focuses on the guns themselves, but I think a more practical place to start in tackling this problem would be with ammunition; simply put you can only get a mass shooting if you have hundreds of rounds to fire off. I would throw in the challenge to the legal gun owners here, if you're hunting, or defending your home from robbery or protecting your person, how much ammunition do you need? One magazine? Two? Less than a hundred rounds surely.
I think you raise a good point, but the answer is probably more complicated than you might realize.
If we look at your questions very narrowly, then in my (non-expert) opinion two magazines would almost always be enough for self-defense. Maybe something like 5-8 round magazines for intermediate and full-power rifles and shotguns and 12-15 round magazines for handguns and pistol caliber carbines. The second magazine is more to have a relatively quick way to fix certain magazine-related problems than for the extra rounds. I give total numbers of rounds in ranges because, like I said, I'm not expert and I don't know the exact number that would be sufficient 99% of the time. I was trying to give a high number for what is plausible. Most self-defense shootings probably have a much lower round count, and it's possible to think up scenarios where a lot more rounds would be necessary but they don't seem all that likely to me.
For hunting certain things a person would be highly unlikely to fire more than a handful of shots. For others, like small game and pests with high bag limits, it can actually be plausible to shoot quite a few rounds. Like you said though, it doesn't seem that likely to shoot more than a hundred rounds in a day except maybe in some unusual varmint/culling scenarios.
But that's just the number of rounds fired at an actual person or animal. Most rounds are never fired at anything alive, they're fired in practice. It's not that unusual to fire quite a few rounds in practice. In some classes hundreds of rounds might be fired in a day.
At what intervals do you think people should be able to buy ammo and how much should they be able to buy? My understanding is that most people who commit mass murders start thinking and planning long in advance. If a person buys a fifty-round box of ammo every other week they will have two hundred rounds in just a couple months, and that's just for one firearm. A lot of people own more than one gun. A lot of households have more than one gun owner. (Of course, there is a practical limit to how many guns a person can carry.) It is pretty easy to imagine a person accumulating hundreds of rounds in short order while only buying “practice” ammunition at a moderate rate.
While tracking who (legally) buys what ammunition might (theoretically) not be that difficult, I think you'd also have to address the stockpiling issue I mentioned above. Would people be required to turn in their spent brass? That could get pretty expensive to keep track of. It's also really easy to lose in the grass or snow or even when it just gets stepped on in the sand. It also mixes up with other people's brass at the firing range.
Would people who are going on a multi-day prarie dog hunt or class need to get a special permit to stockpile extra ammunition?
There's also the issue of recreational shooting, if you consider that a legitimate use of firearms. When .22 LR prices are reasonable I might plink a few hundred rounds on a nice afternoon. That cartridge commonly comes in boxes of hundreds of rounds as shooting a lot of shots of it is pretty normal. My family used to often go out and shoot clay pigeons on the weekends. It wasn't that unusual for us to shoot a hundred rounds of 12 gauge per person in a day (it was about the price of seeing a movie if you factored in food and drinks). Between me, my father and two brothers that four hundred rounds. Granted both .22 LR and bird shot, while definitely being no joke and nothing you want to accidentally shoot someone with, are probably some of the least effective rounds for a mass murderer to use. Maybe exceptions could be made for certain cartridges?
Shooting high round counts isn't limited to plinking with .22s and busting clays with birdshot, though. There are quite a few forms of competitive shooting where people will shoot a large number of rounds in one day. A lot of people shoot more practicing for competitions than actually in competitions. This isn't limited to shooting competitions where people shoot a lot of rounds quickly. People who are really into shooting very small targets and/or shooting at long distances will often shoot thousands of rounds a year.
There's also a financial and convenience aspect. Buying in bulk saves money. When buying a 900 round ammo can full of surplus ammunition saves you $0.08 per round compared to buying it in 20 round boxes it makes a significant difference in the end. Ammunition keeps indefinitely if stored properly, so it makes sense to buy a lot at once. It is convenient to have extra on hand as well, especially if you live in a rural place, so you don't have to run out to the store to buy it. There's also the issue of ammunition shortages (usually for stupid reasons). Having extra ammunition on hand can really help when your preferred cartridge is not available for over a year (or only available at scalper's prices).
Of course, I think a person could make a reasonable argument that recreational shooting should not be allowed if it comes at the cost of so many people being killed. Even the owning of firearms for self defense and hunting. I don't agree with that, but there is an argument to be made. If that's the case then the problems caused to firearm owners by caps on ammunition sales are largely inconsequential. However, if a person believes that a person should be able to own firearms for self-defense, hunting and/or recreation then it should be considered that meaningful limits to ammunition sales would probably cause a ton of problems for people trying to use firearms for reasonable purposes.
This isn't what you were asking, but if a person's goal was to try to ban most “modern” firearms then ammunition is actually one of the best chokepoints to go after. My understanding is that smokeless powder and primers are somewhat dangerous and difficult to make. (I personally haven't read into it past people saying not to do it, so I might be wrong). Firearms are pretty simple machines, but semi and fully-automatic weapons are somewhat dependent on having reasonably consistent and reliable ammunition. I'm not saying some criminal organizations wouldn't set up factories and start cranking it out, but it might be comparatively hard for some schmuck to make in his garage.
Wonder why people don't talk more about what truly matters here ; why that guy did this.
It's clear there is a lot of deflect from Fake News, and there is the fact president Trump himself was quite reserved on the matter while he wasn't that moderated when similar events with - let's say "browner" criminals - happened before, including at overseas.
Why did the murderer do that ? Why so many smokescreens ? Is it really how it is, now : spreading false information for personnal agendas/interests, and not caring anymore for the real reasons behind the event, even if it endangers national security once again ?
Forget about guns, guns didn't fire themselves, rent two rooms in a hotel and apparently set up this horrible tragedy in advance. It was the man behind the shooting who did that. We need to know what was the truth behind his despicable act, we can't afford to let it sink into speculations, Fake News and embarrassed silence.
The US is still a young country working on ironing out the various wrinkles in their society - in essence figuring out what kind of society they want.
Politically and socially the country does seem to have a ways to go.
My pet theory is WW1 started a trend toward desensitization to violence.
Dakka Flakka Flame wrote:
If we look at your questions very narrowly, then in my (non-expert) opinion two magazines would almost always be enough for self-defense.
Eeeeh... Depends.
Dakka Flakka Flame wrote:
A lot of people own more than one gun. A lot of households have more than one gun owner. (Of course, there is a practical limit to how many guns a person can carry.) It is pretty easy to imagine a person accumulating hundreds of rounds in short order while only buying “practice” ammunition at a moderate rate.
This also touches on the issue with a lot of people's thoughts on gun-control in the US. The sheer volume of firearms in play. Someone once said that if every US civil servant stopped doing whatever they were doing and just focused on collecting guns, it would take 25 years to disarm every American, working round the clock. And assuming that everyone just queued up and handed them in.
Forget about guns, guns didn't fire themselves, rent two rooms in a hotel and apparently set up this horrible tragedy in advance. It was the man behind the shooting who did that. We need to know what was the truth behind his despicable act, we can't afford to let it sink into speculations, Fake News and embarrassed silence.
Because since he shot himself, we'll never really know. This seems to have come totally out of the blue for the people who knew him.
There's also a financial and convenience aspect. Buying in bulk saves money. When buying a 900 round ammo can full of surplus ammunition saves you $0.08 per round compared to buying it in 20 round boxes it makes a significant difference in the end. Ammunition keeps indefinitely if stored properly, so it makes sense to buy a lot at once. It is convenient to have extra on hand as well, especially if you live in a rural place, so you don't have to run out to the store to buy it. There's also the issue of ammunition shortages (usually for stupid reasons). Having extra ammunition on hand can really help when your preferred cartridge is not available for over a year (or only available at scalper's prices).
Everything is cheaper if you buy in bulk but some things have storage or purchasing limits for a reason.
My local gun shop is required to report every "suspicious" purchase of ammo (which you can't buy unless you have a license for a gun matching the caliber) and suspicious starts at everything above a box for anyone that's not a regular. I've probably been reported a few times when I purchased my first hundreds, because cops shoot at the same range as I do and checked if I was training for some competition or ranging in the sight for the hunting season.
Oh, and a halfway decent 30-06 starts at 2$ per round, and 9mm at over 1$
But if you ask me is a price worth paying for making it harder for the wrong kind of people to get their hands on a gun. The gun shop owner tells me every day he gets shady people asking on how to buy a gun, who never come back.
You have to be alive to collect that. Think less 'British Cat burglars' and more 'armed bandits'. The state police finally stepped in when they started murdering babies. No, not joking.
I'll be keen to see the statistics that say 'tackling amed intruders with arms' is more likely to keep you alive than saying 'take what you like, I'll ring Direct Line tomorrow'.
Does anyone, at all, claim that tighter restrictions on guns would stop people who illegally acquire weapons from attempting to illegally acquire them? A striking strawman, that.
I might point out that many posters have been claiming that tighter laws would have prevented this incident. My counter was that no, it wouldn't have, since he also was acquiring things that are very illegal. In this case, the only difference would have been where he bought them, and how much he spent.
Quotes please. That said, tighter laws could well prevent incidents like this over time - long term reduced supply. That's not the same, at all, as claiming that tighter restrictions on guns would stop people who illegally acquire weapons from attempting to illegally acquire them, which was the strawman you were arguing against.
Basically everything you've just written says the opposite
No it doesn't.
The point I'm making is that the USA is not unique in history in having an armed population, but other nations didn't have half the level of gun crime the USA has, early 20th century Britain being a classic example.
Err, exactly. Giving a list of heavily armed populaces that haven't had the problems of the US supports there being something idiosyncratic about the US that leads to those problems.
Forget about guns, guns didn't fire themselves, rent two rooms in a hotel and apparently set up this horrible tragedy in advance. It was the man behind the shooting who did that. We need to know what was the truth behind his despicable act, we can't afford to let it sink into speculations, Fake News and embarrassed silence.
Because since he shot himself, we'll never really know. This seems to have come totally out of the blue for the people who knew him.
Which is why it's weird. Nothing come completely out of the blue - even when you get angry, that's because something makes you that way.
There was a reason here, it's a human who did this, not the Hand of God or Wrath of Nature.
Banning more guns won't make that reason disappear magically. As soons as there are reasons for a man to decide to do that kind of things, it will keep happening. Sure, restrictions to buy new guns will make it more difficult to gather such an arsenal, but it's not like the guns already owned by people will suddenly vanish all at once. There will still be guns to be bought and sold, and there will still be determined people to do their grim work.
Does anyone, at all, claim that tighter restrictions on guns would stop people who illegally acquire weapons from attempting to illegally acquire them? A striking strawman, that.
It should; presumably the vast majority of illegally acquired firearms were at some point illegal. It's not as if there will be many people making them at home, or smuggling them in. I suspect the most likely source of an illegal weapon is one that was bought legally and stolen/sold on. Therefore if you restrict the number of legal weapons on the market, you must also restrict the supply of illegal weapons, driving the price up if nothing else.
That said, the biggest problem seems to be mental health - the support for mental health issues in the US seems to be awful.
The US is still a young country working on ironing out the various wrinkles in their society - in essence figuring out what kind of society they want.
Politically and socially the country does seem to have a ways to go.
My pet theory is WW1 started a trend toward desensitization to violence.
Not just WW1. There was also Prohibition, which have rise to the gangsters. Followed by Hollywood making tons of gangster and cowboy movies. Kids growing up playing Cops and Robbers or Cowboys and Indians. Guns became toys, not tools. To me, that's the real problem: not that guns exist, but how we perceive them.
Banning more guns won't make that reason disappear magically...Sure, restrictions to buy new guns will make it more difficult to gather such an arsenal, but it's not like the guns already owned by people will suddenly vanish all at once.
It's really not difficult to get around that issue to a degree (with the long term in mind) with licensing - though it would require considerable (from a US perspective) regulation.
I don't get why people want guns at all. But I don't get why anyone wants a Ferrari either. And don't really care if people have either provided the chances of them harming someone else with them are controlled as much as is possible whilst still allowing people to use them.
If it was up to me:
Introduce training and testing for a license, (in addition to reasonable medical background checks).
Strict requirements for storage (safes/ammunition in separate safes) with random checks.
Have a points system for infringements that run up to lifetime bans.
No private sale other than through licensed firearms dealers. All sales to anyone without a licence results in lifetime ban for seller. All private sales not through a licensed dealer also result in lifetime ban for seller.
No, it doesn't take all the already illegal weapons away, but it stops currently legal weapons ending up moving into criminal hands. And if you really like guns, well, you can still have them.
Does anyone, at all, claim that tighter restrictions on guns would stop people who illegally acquire weapons from attempting to illegally acquire them? A striking strawman, that.
It should; presumably the vast majority of illegally acquired firearms were at some point illegal. It's not as if there will be many people making them at home, or smuggling them in. I suspect the most likely source of an illegal weapon is one that was bought legally and stolen/sold on. Therefore if you restrict the number of legal weapons on the market, you must also restrict the supply of illegal weapons, driving the price up if nothing else.
You're making a different point. Restricting the availability of legal weapons does indeed reduce the availability of illegal ones - but nobody claims that it'd stop people attempting to buy illegal weapons, which was the strawman I was tackling.
I'll be keen to see the statistics that say 'tackling armed intruders with arms' is more likely to keep you alive than saying 'take what you like, I'll ring Direct Line tomorrow'.
That would be an interesting statistic to have. The FBI, for example, tracks if persons resisted criminals in the commission of a crime, and by what means, but not if the ultimate outcome was in favor of the private person or the criminal, only if the citizen killed the criminal. So...
One interesting statistic is that California's knife and edged weapon killings tower over the rest of the country, so I might suggest that it might make killing harder to pull off, but if they want you dead badly enough to kill you, you're going to have a problem one way or another.
Quotes please. That said, tighter laws could well prevent incidents like this over time - long term reduced supply. That's not the same, at all, as claiming that tighter restrictions on guns would stop people who illegally acquire weapons from attempting to illegally acquire them, which was the strawman you were arguing against.
I'm prohibited by the mods from walls of text, so, no, not quoting every last person who's said that here, just scroll around, there's been about one per page.
I'll be keen to see the statistics that say 'tackling armed intruders with arms' is more likely to keep you alive than saying 'take what you like, I'll ring Direct Line tomorrow'.
That would be an interesting statistic to have. The FBI, for example, tracks if persons resisted criminals in the commission of a crime, and by what means, but not if the ultimate outcome was in favor of the private person or the criminal, only if the citizen killed the criminal. So...
One interesting statistic is that California's knife and edged weapon killings tower over the rest of the country, so I might suggest that it might make killing harder to pull off, but if they want you dead badly enough to kill you, you're going to have a problem one way or another.
Certainly. I live in the most violent city in Europe (at least last time I checked) and we have severe knife problems. Lots more people survive attempted murders and near-manslaughter with knives than with guns, though. We also have pretty extreme restrictions on having knifes outside of your home and you're very likely to go to jail if you get in any boher with the police and have a knife on your person.
Quotes please. That said, tighter laws could well prevent incidents like this over time - long term reduced supply. That's not the same, at all, as claiming that tighter restrictions on guns would stop people who illegally acquire weapons from attempting to illegally acquire them, which was the strawman you were arguing against.
I'm prohibited by the mods from walls of text, so, no, not quoting every last person who's said that here, just scroll around, there's been about one per page.
I've read the thread. Don't recall one. You may be reading peoples' suggestions that reducing legal supplies of arms would in turn reduce supplies of illegal arms, or that restricting arms means less people have them already when they suffer a serious mental illness or find themselves in an extreme situation that makes them do something stupid, as suggestions that outlawing something stops people who are already crinimals from doing it? It sorta feels like you have that auto-response answer ready and it got trotted out regardless of no one actually making the point to which it relates. Pretty frequent habit from both sides on the gun debate - I suppose because both sides are so used to the repetitive nature of the discussion that they just throw out all the standard lines!
@Dakka Flakka Flame I appreciate there would be complexities to ammunition limitations and, as d-USA has pointed out, does nothing to stop suicides and individual murders that account for the majority of deaths, but it would be a first step.
The reason I brought it up, was I was mulling over the differences between the UK and the USA. As DINLT pointed out, 100-years ago there was very little restriction on guns in the UK and gun ownership and attitudes were similar to present day USA AFAIK (i.e. everyone had the right to own a weapon for personal defence). We did not change overnight, there were gradual, incremental, increases in restriction, which were accompanied with changes in societal attitudes. And it was a feedback loop, the more restrictions we had, the more people expected there to be effective restrictions.
So what would be the first step for the USA? As other's have noted, "just banning guns" is politically unacceptable and practically impossible. However there is room to differentiate between reasonable and unreasonable use and quantity of ammunition seemed like a logical place where an agreement might be possible.
The other factor in my thoughts is based upon the principle behind a lot of the restrictions in UK; giving time. Time for the assailant to reconsider their actions, time for law enforcement to respond. In the theoretical scenario where ammunition sales were restricted and someone had to spend months building up the quantity they needed to launch this kind of attack, that's months where they can come to their senses, months where their loved ones can raise the alarm, months when the store owners can notice "hey, Fred is sure buying a lot of rounds, but I never see him down the range".
If everyone can be sat on thousands of rounds, ready to go at a moments notice when they snap, there is no time.
In practical terms, yes you might need a lot of ammunition when practicing at a range, but does it all need to be kept at home? Would there not be room for bonded stores at ranges and gun clubs, where people could keep their extra ammunition?
There are lots of things that could be done to reduce the immediate availability of loaded weapons, but to do so depends on the willingness of US society to accept such restrictions. The NRA has for decade run a successful campaign to push any kind of restriction beyond the pale, and US society broadly supports the current status of gun law.
The question is whether this latest and very bloody massacre has done anything to shift public opinion, and you will need to wait months or years to find that out.
1. The majority of suicides resulting from guns. Obviously, these are tragedies, but even if there were no guns in the USA, or on planet Earth, anybody who is prepared to shoot themselves would probably jump off a bridge or a cliff or use a knife or whatever. The absence of guns wouldn't change this sad statistic.
2. The USA has passed the point of no return on gun ownership IMO. I read somewhere that the USA's population is 330 million, and the estimated number of guns is also around the 330 million mark. Roughly, one gun for every American.
Even in the unlikely event the 2nd was repealed,no new guns were made, and even if there was an amnesty, and let's say 50% of guns were handed in and destroyed, that would still leave 150 million guns floating around
There would still be a gun problem.
And of course, you can never destroy the knowledge behind gun making...
1. The majority of suicides resulting from guns. Obviously, these are tragedies, but even if there were no guns in the USA, or on planet Earth, anybody who is prepared to shoot themselves would probably jump off a bridge or a cliff or use a knife or whatever. The absence of guns wouldn't change this sad statistic.
Yes it would. We bring this up every time there's a gun thread; shooting yourself is a lot deadlier (and a lot more immediate) than trying to kill yourself with a knife. If someone tries to kill him- or herself with a gun, odds are it's going to be successful. Knives, overdoses, jumping from bridges etc. are less likely to result in death and thus gives a bigger chance of someone discovering the person in question and giving them the help they need.
If knives are just as effective at killing people as guns the need for guns for self-defense goes out the window, because you might as well use a knife, right?
2. The USA has passed the point of no return on gun ownership IMO. I read somewhere that the USA's population is 330 million, and the estimated number of guns is also around the 330 million mark. Roughly, one gun for every American.
Even in the unlikely event the 2nd was repealed,no new guns were made, and even if there was an amnesty, and let's say 50% of guns were handed in and destroyed, that would still leave 150 million guns floating around
There would still be a gun problem.
And of course, you can never destroy the knowledge behind gun making...
On this I (mostly) agree. The genie is out of the bottle, as it were.
1. The majority of suicides resulting from guns. Obviously, these are tragedies, but even if there were no guns in the USA, or on planet Earth, anybody who is prepared to shoot themselves would probably jump off a bridge or a cliff or use a knife or whatever. The absence of guns wouldn't change this sad statistic.
2. The USA has passed the point of no return on gun ownership IMO. I read somewhere that the USA's population is 330 million, and the estimated number of guns is also around the 330 million mark. Roughly, one gun for every American.
Even in the unlikely event the 2nd was repealed,no new guns were made, and even if there was an amnesty, and let's say 50% of guns were handed in and destroyed, that would still leave 150 million guns floating around
There would still be a gun problem.
And of course, you can never destroy the knowledge behind gun making...
Disagree most strongly on point 1. Having known some people who have considered (and attempted at taking their own life, as well as being very close to someone who has severe bipolar disorder) there is a world of difference in how they choose to end things. A gun makes it far easier than dealing with a knife or standing in front of traffic where you have the chance to reconsider. A gun is far too quick and easy an option when most of those people could well have been turned around.
One of the statistics is that women attempt more suicides, but men complete more suicides. Guns are one of the factors driving that statistic, as men usually utilize methods that are more likely to be lethal.
1. The majority of suicides resulting from guns. Obviously, these are tragedies, but even if there were no guns in the USA, or on planet Earth, anybody who is prepared to shoot themselves would probably jump off a bridge or a cliff or use a knife or whatever. The absence of guns wouldn't change this sad statistic.
Epidemiological evidence shows that creating a barrier to the means of suicide makes impulse suicide less likely, thus reducing the overall rate.
For instance, when the UK made the sale of more than 32 paracetamol tablets in a single transaction illegal, suicide by paracetamol declined 94%. This is because the need to go out to a series of shops to buy enough pills to kill yourself imposes a pause between decision and action during which you are able to change your mind, find help, or whatever.
Similarly, a law that household pistols must be kept unloaded and locked in a safe, probably would reduce suicide in the USA. Obviously there is no way to test that, but the inference seems sound.
nfe wrote: Yeah, the 'gun availability makes no difference to suicides' argument is built on an absolute mountain of ignorance.
No it's really not. Attempts with low rate of success are chosen just for that reason. It's a subconscious defenses mechanism - those people would never have chose a gun in the first place.
nfe wrote: Yeah, the 'gun availability makes no difference to suicides' argument is built on an absolute mountain of ignorance.
No it's really not. Attempts with low rate of success are chosen just for that reason. It's a subconscious defenses mechanism - those people would never have chose a gun in the first place.
How much background do you have in the psychology of suicide, out of curioisty?
One interesting statistic is that California's knife and edged weapon killings tower over the rest of the country, so I might suggest that it might make killing harder to pull off, but if they want you dead badly enough to kill you, you're going to have a problem one way or another.
Right if they're going to kill you, having a gun is not going to stop that. You having a gun just means they just kill you and get a free gun.
nfe wrote: Yeah, the 'gun availability makes no difference to suicides' argument is built on an absolute mountain of ignorance.
No it's really not. Attempts with low rate of success are chosen just for that reason. It's a subconscious defenses mechanism - those people would never have chose a gun in the first place.
Harvard School of Public Health wrote:Reducing access to lethal means does not always reduce the overall suicide rate. For example, restricting a low-lethality method or a method infrequently used may not make a detectable difference in the suicide rate. Restricting a very low-lethality method-if it results in attempters substituting a higher-lethality method-could in fact increase the overall suicide rate. Means reduction doesn’t change the underlying suicidal impulse or necessarily reduce attempts: rather, it saves lives by reducing the lethality of attempts.
1. The majority of suicides resulting from guns. Obviously, these are tragedies, but even if there were no guns in the USA, or on planet Earth, anybody who is prepared to shoot themselves would probably jump off a bridge or a cliff or use a knife or whatever. The absence of guns wouldn't change this sad statistic.
Epidemiological evidence shows that creating a barrier to the means of suicide makes impulse suicide less likely, thus reducing the overall rate.
For instance, when the UK made the sale of more than 32 paracetamol tablets in a single transaction illegal, suicide by paracetamol declined 94%. This is because the need to go out to a series of shops to buy enough pills to kill yourself imposes a pause between decision and action during which you are able to change your mind, find help, or whatever.
Similarly, a law that household pistols must be kept unloaded and locked in a safe, probably would reduce suicide in the USA. Obviously there is no way to test that, but the inference seems sound.
Did the rate of overall suicide go down after the paracetamol was limited for sale? Absolutely useless if it didn't. You have a point about guns being in safes though - and you are in fact responsible for guns in your house if you don't properly store them. Lots of children accidentally shoot themselves or another - those deaths could be reduced heavily with such a law and it would make sense. Typically you will find that the majority of gun owners do this anyways.
I don't buy that at all, the brother knew something was up. Because he deflected and claimed his brother only owned a pistol or two and maybe a rifle.
Really? Not how I took that interview at all - and that's the first time I've seen someone interpret it that way.
I'm not saying eric knew the brother was going to go on a shooting spree, but afterwards all those weird feelings he had about his brother, the number of weapons he bought, and probably some odd comments the brother made clicked into place and he felt guilty for not seeing it sooner. hence the deflection
Kilkrazy wrote: There are lots of things that could be done to reduce the immediate availability of loaded weapons, but to do so depends on the willingness of US society to accept such restrictions. The NRA has for decade run a successful campaign to push any kind of restriction beyond the pale, and US society broadly supports the current status of gun law.
The question is whether this latest and very bloody massacre has done anything to shift public opinion, and you will need to wait months or years to find that out.
No there really isn't. We already have tens of millions of gun owners who own hundreds of millions of guns and billions of rounds of ammunition. That's not going to change. Whatever new laws that might be proposed would have fight within the existing legal framework that guarantees the right to gun ownership in the US. The NRA has about 4-4.5 million members and that's only about 5-10% of gun owners in the US, for every NRA member there are dozens of gun owners who haven't joined the NRA. That's why gun control laws don't get passed, because a majority of states have permissive gun laws and lot of gun owners and the politicians don't want to make them angry. Look around the US, the states that pass more gun control laws are the states that already have low ownership rates and heavy restrictions and even then we see new laws have toothless enforcement, are largely ignored or are weakened by losing court challenges. The majority of the states have become more permissive with gun ownership not less and no politicians are losing elections over it. This crosses party lines, Harry Reid is a Democrat that the Republican party loves to lambast and hate on but guess what, Reid gets great scores by the NRA and he works against gun control legislation because he represents Nevada, a state with permissive gun laws and lots of gun owners. Bernie Sanders is a current favorite of the Democrat party and his home state of Vermont is one of the easiest states in which you can obtain and carry a gun. Making any significant changes to gun laws in the US would take decades, multiple election cycles on the federal and state level across the country, numerous legislative efforts to repeal existing federal and state laws and replace them with new ones and somehow defuse opposition by tens of millions of gun owners who can vote and convince them to support legislation that goes against their own interests.
The US is still a young country working on ironing out the various wrinkles in their society - in essence figuring out what kind of society they want.
Politically and socially the country does seem to have a ways to go.
This one's weird, since the United States has one of the oldest governments left on Earth, in terms of composition and style. Europe got largely reset thanks to the war, while other countries have gone from monarchies to republics (or fallen apart then been reborn) ... so, while nations (like China) have stood longer, governments haven't.
The US is still a young country working on ironing out the various wrinkles in their society - in essence figuring out what kind of society they want.
Politically and socially the country does seem to have a ways to go.
This one's weird, since the United States has one of the oldest governments left on Earth, in terms of composition and style. Europe got largely reset thanks to the war, while other countries have gone from monarchies to republics (or fallen apart then been reborn) ... so, while nations (like China) have stood longer, governments haven't.
We're grandpa out here.
Always hurts my head.
I guess that makes Britain Great-Great-Great Grandpa?
Prestor Jon wrote: Making any significant changes to gun laws in the US would take decades, multiple election cycles on the federal and state level across the country, numerous legislative efforts to repeal existing federal and state laws and replace them with new ones and somehow defuse opposition by tens of millions of gun owners who can vote and convince them to support legislation that goes against their own interests.
Definitely true. It taking a while is no reason not to try, though - whilst it does make it politically unlikely in a world where most governments are quite happy to wander towards disaster as long as it's an adminitration away.
If it was up to me:
Introduce training and testing for a license, (in addition to reasonable medical background checks).
Strict requirements for storage (safes/ammunition in separate safes) with random checks.
Have a points system for infringements that run up to lifetime bans.
No private sale other than through licensed firearms dealers. All sales to anyone without a licence results in lifetime ban for seller. All private sales not through a licensed dealer also result in lifetime ban for seller.
I agree with all of that, that's pretty much how the system works here (also Scotland), with the exception that you need some vague reason for having one and you don't need one for an air weapon if you only use it at a certified range. You need to pass a test to drive a car, so why not pass a test to own a gun?
That way, you make the bar to firearm ownership "has some basic awareness of how to safely store and use a gun". Maybe allow ownership with gun stored at a range until they've been certified as having x many hours of experience, where they can then take it home.
Jadenim wrote: Just caught up on this thread and I have two observations:
1) other than a couple of outliers this is the most civil and constructive gun control / US pol-REDACTED- thread I have seen in a long while, so good job everyone.
Yeah, this thread has definitely been unusual for the subject matter.
As an avid competition shooter I would be ok with: *detailed background check, especially related to mental health. This background check has to be recertified annually. A background check includes a course on firearm safety and conflict de-escalation. *making bumpfire stocks illegal (something to actually affect the recent crisis). *making the background check go with the person. *confirmation of said background check prior to any purchase, including private sales. *locks with all purchases. *the ability to require persons who are later adjudicated mentally not fit to temporarily be required to store their weapons with a different legal holder but not in the same domicile until that mental difficulty is fixed.
In return I want: *Suppressors legal for hearing protection, as in other European countries. *Nationwide CHL. *A return of mental health's ability to involuntarily house mentally ill after apppropriate hearings. Prisons should not be where we house the mentally ill. *Elimination of USPSA courses where one has to kneel or bend over when shooting as I am too old for that gak (sorry couldn't resist).
1) A check that would be a requirement of your holding a license wouldn't be an unreasonable search or seizure.
2) I don't care, anyway.
2.1) Written constitutions are stupid.
RE: your edit - mostly seems eminently sensible. What's CHL?
If it was up to me:
Introduce training and testing for a license, (in addition to reasonable medical background checks).
Strict requirements for storage (safes/ammunition in separate safes) with random checks.
Have a points system for infringements that run up to lifetime bans.
No private sale other than through licensed firearms dealers. All sales to anyone without a licence results in lifetime ban for seller. All private sales not through a licensed dealer also result in lifetime ban for seller.
I agree with all of that, that's pretty much how the system works here (also Scotland), with the exception that you need some vague reason for having one and you don't need one for an air weapon if you only use it at a certified range. You need to pass a test to drive a car, so why not pass a test to own a gun?
That way, you make the bar to firearm ownership "has some basic awareness of how to safely store and use a gun". Maybe allow ownership with gun stored at a range until they've been certified as having x many hours of experience, where they can then take it home.
You won't get federal mandatory training requirements without changes to the constitution which isn't going to happen anytime soon. We already have numerous federal and state laws that cover firearm purchase, storage and handling that come with harsh penalties. Instead of your proposed points system our existing laws will have you in federal prison and that conviction will prevent you from ever lawfully owning a gun again once you get out. Same thing goes for unlawful sales, we already have harsher penalties than what you propose.
None of these proposals would have done anything to prevent the Las Vegas shooting. Most of them we already have and the ones we don't we can't pass without massive changes to existing laws.
1) A check that would be a requirement of your holding a license wouldn't be an unreasonable search or seizure.
2) I don't care, anyway.
2.1) Written constitutions are stupid.
If you're already resorting to "I don't care" and "written constitutions are stupid" then you really aren't bringing much to the discussion. You can deal with the reality that exists or not, but you're just wasting your time with posts like that.
1) A check that would be a requirement of your holding a license wouldn't be an unreasonable search or seizure.
Yes it would, Brit.
2) I don't care, anyway.
Thats ok, that why we don't have to eat haggis and you do.
2.1) Written constitutions are stupid
. Thats what the redcoats said when they were running from my relatives and their hunting dogs after losing the battle of New Orleans.
EDIT: CHL means "Concealed Handgun License" Its a more detailed topic than this thread. Also: I meant to add I want: * mandatory coffee and donuts available for my next match! EDIT 2: Wow if you type (racCoon) dog the filter edits it...
Do_I_Not_Like_That, I just want to say that I appreciate your reasonable and sane understanding of the United States and it's history/culture. A lot of people from around the world seem to have some really bizarre notions about what the United States is like. I wish I knew where they got some of their strange ideas.
I do hope we get some kind of motive determined in this particular shooting, because on the face of it the perpetrator seems extremely atypical.
Obviously everyone wonders why we have these mass shootings. It seems like we have some ideologically motivated ones (pulse nightclub shooting), but those aside the common thread seems to be mental illness. Perhaps we have more mental illness here than in other places, or maybe we are worse at treating it. I will say the treatment seems to normally be prescribing medication which often seems to do more harm than good.
We do unfortunately seem to have this belief that through the miracle of modern medicine everything can be cured with a pill. Seems like any treatment that requires effort or lifestyle change is often ignored, even if those would give the best results.
As an avid competition shooter I would be ok with:
*detailed background check, especially related to mental health. This background check has to be recertified annually. A background check includes a course on firearm safety and conflict de-escalation.
*making bumpfire stocks illegal (something to actually affect the recent crisis).
*making the background check go with the person.
*confirmation of said background check prior to any purchase, including private sales.
*locks with all purchases.
*the ability to require persons who are later adjudicated mentally not fit to temporarily be required to store their weapons with a different legal holder but not in the same domicile until that mental difficulty is fixed.
In return I want:
*Suppressors legal for hearing protection, as in other European countries.
*Nationwide CHL.
*A return of mental health's ability to involuntarily house mentally ill after apppropriate hearings. Prisons should not be where we house the mentally ill.
*Elimination of USPSA courses where one has to kneel or bend over when shooting as I am too old for that gak (sorry couldn't resist).
Good with everything said there except the bolded, it helps keep you in shape old man.
1. The majority of suicides resulting from guns. Obviously, these are tragedies, but even if there were no guns in the USA, or on planet Earth, anybody who is prepared to shoot themselves would probably jump off a bridge or a cliff or use a knife or whatever. The absence of guns wouldn't change this sad statistic.
Epidemiological evidence shows that creating a barrier to the means of suicide makes impulse suicide less likely, thus reducing the overall rate.
For instance, when the UK made the sale of more than 32 paracetamol tablets in a single transaction illegal, suicide by paracetamol declined 94%. This is because the need to go out to a series of shops to buy enough pills to kill yourself imposes a pause between decision and action during which you are able to change your mind, find help, or whatever.
Similarly, a law that household pistols must be kept unloaded and locked in a safe, probably would reduce suicide in the USA. Obviously there is no way to test that, but the inference seems sound.
Did the rate of overall suicide go down after the paracetamol was limited for sale? Absolutely useless if it didn't. You have a point about guns being in safes though - and you are in fact responsible for guns in your house if you don't properly store them. Lots of children accidentally shoot themselves or another - those deaths could be reduced heavily with such a law and it would make sense. Typically you will find that the majority of gun owners do this anyways.
Sometimes you see a post so special, you have to take the time to appreciate the mental gymnastics it takes to write it. Bravo good sir.
As an avid competition shooter I would be ok with:
*detailed background check, especially related to mental health. This background check has to be recertified annually. A background check includes a course on firearm safety and conflict de-escalation.
*making bumpfire stocks illegal (something to actually affect the recent crisis).
*making the background check go with the person.
*confirmation of said background check prior to any purchase, including private sales.
*locks with all purchases.
*the ability to require persons who are later adjudicated mentally not fit to temporarily be required to store their weapons with a different legal holder but not in the same domicile until that mental difficulty is fixed.
In return I want:
*Suppressors legal for hearing protection, as in other European countries.
*Nationwide CHL.
*A return of mental health's ability to involuntarily house mentally ill after apppropriate hearings. Prisons should not be where we house the mentally ill.
*Elimination of USPSA courses where one has to kneel or bend over when shooting as I am too old for that gak (sorry couldn't resist).
Good with everything said there except the bolded, it helps keep you in shape old man.
Less shape, more auto accients means any time I bend there is about a 20% chance my back or hip will go out...
It boils down to our a combination of “because we can” and “because they are fun”.
It’s a pain in the rear and expensive to own a full auto weapon, one might add.
And almost no legal 'full automatic weapons' are available on the market which is a real reason they are so expensive. You are limited to lowers made prior to 1986 I think. Even if you have ridiculous amounts of money it is difficult to find someone willing to sell one now-a-days. Which is why there have been less than a handful of crimes committed in the US with full automatic weapons in the last several decades.
I want to expand on those with some more specifics. Fully automatic weapons are highly restricted in the US: they were made a controlled item in 1934, so you need a background check, fingerprints, and a lengthy waiting period to get one - and even then, many states have a blanket ban on them. I can't own one in Iowa under any circumstance and that's not unusual. New manufacture of a machine gun for US domestic use was further restricted in 1986, so you're functionally unable to buy one made after that date, and that also caused the prices of machine guns to skyrocket - you're going to need at least $15,000 USD to get into the market for a rifle, and as Captain Jake correctly noted, it's a sellers market.
As a result virtually no civilian in the US owns a lawful machine gun. I believe there have only been 2 homicides committed with a lawful machine gun (and one of those was committed by a police officer!).
Until Las Vegas, crime with a lawful machine gun functionally did not exist. It might still not, because we do not yet know what weapon was used:
It could have been a lawful machine gun. The shooter was known to be very wealthy, and Nevada allows machine gun ownership.
It could have been a semi-auto converted to full-auto. While the law bans anything that can be "readily converted" to fully automatic, if you have access to power tools and the internet, it can be done.
It could be a lawful device to increase firing speed, such as a bump-fire stock. This is a lawful device that slides the entire front section of the gun forward and back; when you pull the gun forward with your left hand, it bounces the gun off your trigger, which means technically, it fires one round for every pull of the trigger, and is not a machine gun, legally. These devices are difficult to control, but when shooting at a mass of thousands of people tightly grouped I doubt it matters.
Frazzled wrote: *making bumpfire stocks illegal (something to actually affect the recent crisis).
I own a bumpfire stock for my AK, and I don't think they should be lawful, and to be honest since the first time I shot it, I knew it was a matter of time until someone shot up a school with one and it would then be illegal.
As an avid competition shooter I would be ok with:
*detailed background check, especially related to mental health. This background check has to be recertified annually. A background check includes a course on firearm safety and conflict de-escalation.
*making bumpfire stocks illegal (something to actually affect the recent crisis).
*making the background check go with the person.
*confirmation of said background check prior to any purchase, including private sales.
*locks with all purchases.
*the ability to require persons who are later adjudicated mentally not fit to temporarily be required to store their weapons with a different legal holder but not in the same domicile until that mental difficulty is fixed.
In return I want:
*Suppressors legal for hearing protection, as in other European countries.
*Nationwide CHL.
*A return of mental health's ability to involuntarily house mentally ill after apppropriate hearings. Prisons should not be where we house the mentally ill.
*Elimination of USPSA courses where one has to kneel or bend over when shooting as I am too old for that gak (sorry couldn't resist).
Good with everything said there except the bolded, it helps keep you in shape old man.
Less shape, more auto accients means any time I bend there is about a 20% chance my back or hip will go out...
As an avid competition shooter I would be ok with:
*detailed background check, especially related to mental health. This background check has to be recertified annually. A background check includes a course on firearm safety and conflict de-escalation.
*making bumpfire stocks illegal (something to actually affect the recent crisis).
*making the background check go with the person.
*confirmation of said background check prior to any purchase, including private sales.
*locks with all purchases.
*the ability to require persons who are later adjudicated mentally not fit to temporarily be required to store their weapons with a different legal holder but not in the same domicile until that mental difficulty is fixed.
In return I want:
*Suppressors legal for hearing protection, as in other European countries.
*Nationwide CHL.
*A return of mental health's ability to involuntarily house mentally ill after apppropriate hearings. Prisons should not be where we house the mentally ill.
*Elimination of USPSA courses where one has to kneel or bend over when shooting as I am too old for that gak (sorry couldn't resist).
Good with everything said there except the bolded, it helps keep you in shape old man.
Less shape, more auto accients means any time I bend there is about a 20% chance my back or hip will go out...
As an avid competition shooter I would be ok with:
*detailed background check, especially related to mental health. This background check has to be recertified annually. A background check includes a course on firearm safety and conflict de-escalation.
*making bumpfire stocks illegal (something to actually affect the recent crisis).
*making the background check go with the person.
*confirmation of said background check prior to any purchase, including private sales.
*locks with all purchases.
*the ability to require persons who are later adjudicated mentally not fit to temporarily be required to store their weapons with a different legal holder but not in the same domicile until that mental difficulty is fixed.
In return I want:
*Suppressors legal for hearing protection, as in other European countries.
*Nationwide CHL.
*A return of mental health's ability to involuntarily house mentally ill after apppropriate hearings. Prisons should not be where we house the mentally ill.
*Elimination of USPSA courses where one has to kneel or bend over when shooting as I am too old for that gak (sorry couldn't resist).
We're not going to create a federal database for peoples' mental health records. If you're deemed mentally unfit by a court it will show up in the NICs system and that's how it should be. You don't need to pass a mental examination to exercise a constitutionally guaranteed right. The ATF should let people run NICs checks for a nominal fee that's an easy solution. Locks are already required. The last one has several logistical obstacles along with the problem of establishing a federal standard of mental health for the exercise of protected rights. The limitations that can be imposed on the 2nd amendment would set precedent for similar limits to be imposed on any amendment.
Suppressors should be able to be purchased with a simple NICs check just like firearms. We don't need nationwide CHL, the states can keep that within their purview. I'm not opposed to a quality modern nationwide network of mental health hospitals but I don't really think that the federal govt has the ability to create and administer such a network with the competence and skill required to make it effectual.
WrentheFaceless wrote: Did see a quote making the rounds on social media, which is actually proving quite true and quite sad
Something to the effect of
"In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over."
You won NRA and gun enthusiasts, you won. Hope you enjoy your victory, the 2nd amendment is clad in stone and mortared with blood.
Your virtue signalling skills are flawless.
How is it incorrect statement? Its been decided that these mass killings are the price to pay for easy access to large quantities of guns and ammo, you won.
As an avid competition shooter I would be ok with:
*detailed background check, especially related to mental health. This background check has to be recertified annually. A background check includes a course on firearm safety and conflict de-escalation.
*making bumpfire stocks illegal (something to actually affect the recent crisis).
*making the background check go with the person.
*confirmation of said background check prior to any purchase, including private sales.
*locks with all purchases.
*the ability to require persons who are later adjudicated mentally not fit to temporarily be required to store their weapons with a different legal holder but not in the same domicile until that mental difficulty is fixed.
In return I want:
*Suppressors legal for hearing protection, as in other European countries.
*Nationwide CHL.
*A return of mental health's ability to involuntarily house mentally ill after apppropriate hearings. Prisons should not be where we house the mentally ill.
*Elimination of USPSA courses where one has to kneel or bend over when shooting as I am too old for that gak (sorry couldn't resist).
I'd be OK with all of that as well. I'd also like to see the ban on funding for gun violence research lifted.
I'd like to see a national education requirement and annual proficiency required for a concealed carry permit. You mentioned de-escalation specifically, and that seems smart. As you know but others may not, concealed carry regulations vary wildly by the state. In the state that I live in, to get my carry permit I needed to watch a 90 minute video on a youtube-like site and pass a test and a background check. The video mostly emphasized how to safely carry a gun, and where you could not in Iowa. The "test" was a 20 question multiple choice test that anyone who was not a moron could handily pass without watching the video. While I now know you can't carry a gun on a snowmobile in Iowa, there wasn't a single question regarding castle doctrine, de-escalation, or anything else about when to shoot and when not to - nothing even in that arena.
Unfortunately over the last 20 years, the NRA has made all of these things impossible. They've gone from resisting onerous legislation to functionally rejecting any legislation whatsoever, couching any gun control as an unendurable assault on the second amendment. The NRA has very much become part of the problem.
WrentheFaceless wrote: Did see a quote making the rounds on social media, which is actually proving quite true and quite sad
Something to the effect of
"In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over."
You won NRA and gun enthusiasts, you won. Hope you enjoy your victory, the 2nd amendment is clad in stone and mortared with blood.
Your virtue signalling skills are flawless.
How is it incorrect statement? Its been decided that these mass killings are the price to pay for easy access to large quantities of guns and ammo, you won.
If you want to change it, get rid of the 2nd Amendment via the normal process. Of course, you might lose a few other amendments with it, but hey won't someone think of the children! Meanwhile you can tut tut about how evil X group is to your friends and fellow virtue signallers.
WrentheFaceless wrote: Did see a quote making the rounds on social media, which is actually proving quite true and quite sad
Something to the effect of
"In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over."
You won NRA and gun enthusiasts, you won. Hope you enjoy your victory, the 2nd amendment is clad in stone and mortared with blood.
Your virtue signalling skills are flawless.
How is it incorrect statement? Its been decided that these mass killings are the price to pay for easy access to large quantities of guns and ammo, you won.
There was no effort to pass any new legislation that would have prevented the Sandy Hook shooting from happening. Connecticut passed an assault weapon registry that has been largely ignored by both law enforcement and gun owners and New York passed the SAFE Act which had portion struck down by court challenges and had a minor impact on gun control in the state anyway. What is it that you expected or desired to have occurred? If you're going to set wholly impractical and unrealistic expectations for the reaction to Sandy Hook then yeah you're going to be disappointed when those things don't happen.
Thats the thing, nothing happens, nothing has happend, nothing continues to happen
No effor because the conversation isnt allowed to even being started
"Now is not the time to talk about X" echoed over and over, its never the time to talk about it therefore nothing ever will get done since the conversation isnt allowed to exist at all.
WrentheFaceless wrote: Did see a quote making the rounds on social media, which is actually proving quite true and quite sad
Something to the effect of
"In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over."
You won NRA and gun enthusiasts, you won. Hope you enjoy your victory, the 2nd amendment is clad in stone and mortared with blood.
Not really. At best, maybe more people realized that gun control doesn't do anything to stop gun crime. It only serves to infringe on the rights of law abiding citizens.
The Sandy Hook guy killed his mom and stole her guns. Stuff that's already illegal. More laws wouldn't have done a thing.
There is a difference between saying something is acceptable and saying something is unpreventable. If someone kills his mom and steals her guns, nothing could have stopped that.
If you want to reduce crazy people shooting places up, approach it from the mental health angle. Don't approach it from the gun angle. The gun angle isn't what caused the problem in the first place, and doing that only violates the rights of innocent people. Mental health is where liberals should focus their energy, not on trampling the rights of law abiding citizens.
As an avid competition shooter I would be ok with:
*detailed background check, especially related to mental health. This background check has to be recertified annually. A background check includes a course on firearm safety and conflict de-escalation.
*making bumpfire stocks illegal (something to actually affect the recent crisis).
*making the background check go with the person.
*confirmation of said background check prior to any purchase, including private sales.
*locks with all purchases.
*the ability to require persons who are later adjudicated mentally not fit to temporarily be required to store their weapons with a different legal holder but not in the same domicile until that mental difficulty is fixed.
In return I want:
*Suppressors legal for hearing protection, as in other European countries.
*Nationwide CHL.
*A return of mental health's ability to involuntarily house mentally ill after apppropriate hearings. Prisons should not be where we house the mentally ill.
*Elimination of USPSA courses where one has to kneel or bend over when shooting as I am too old for that gak (sorry couldn't resist).
I'd be OK with all of that as well. I'd also like to see the ban on funding for gun violence research lifted.
I'd like to see a national education requirement and annual proficiency required for a concealed carry permit. You mentioned de-escalation specifically, and that seems smart. As you know but others may not, concealed carry regulations vary wildly by the state. In the state that I live in, to get my carry permit I needed to watch a 90 minute video on a youtube-like site and pass a test and a background check. The video mostly emphasized how to safely carry a gun, and where you could not in Iowa. The "test" was a 20 question multiple choice test that anyone who was not a moron could handily pass without watching the video. While I now know you can't carry a gun on a snowmobile in Iowa, there wasn't a single question regarding castle doctrine, de-escalation, or anything else about when to shoot and when not to - nothing even in that arena.
Unfortunately over the last 20 years, the NRA has made all of these things impossible. They've gone from resisting onerous legislation to functionally rejecting any legislation whatsoever, couching any gun control as an unendurable assault on the second amendment. The NRA has very much become part of the problem.
Our CHL required a twelve hour course including range test. This has more recently been substantially reduced. It was primarily about the Texas self defense laws, with some de-escalation. I would recommend a full day class on de-escalation alone, in addition to the law requirements. Now as noted I am for CHL reciprocity vs. one CHL nationwide, and also note that CHLs (at least in Texas) are almost never involved in crime. We're more law abiding than priests statistically (no joke).
Hollow wrote: Gun laws won't change in the USA because there is a strong, politically active minority in America who literally love guns more than their own children. They'd rather see the streets run red, with the blood of their fellow citizens, than admit to their addiction, their fetish, their muse. The pro gun rally, at heart, are scared. They're scared of government, of rapists and killers, of muggers and thieves. They're scared of immigrants, muslims and inner city gags. They're scared of urban centers and bears roaming rural retreats. They're homophobic, God fearing scaredy cats who cling to guns because they think they'll offer them some kind of protection when the boogeyman comes.
Not really. At best, maybe more people realized that gun control doesn't do anything to stop gun crime. It only serves to infringe on the rights of law abiding citizens.
And then there is this gem again. Why pass any law, criminals will ignore it. How am I the only one that doesnt thing this argument is completely ridiculous. Criminals ignore laws, thats what they do, should we abolish all law?
Hollow wrote: Do gun advocates think that everyone should be able to own a nuclear warhead? Should every/any body be able to buy a nuke from Walmart for a few hundred bucks?
Nukes are considered 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' and they are prohibited for civilians.
Just like the pressure bombs by that Boston massacre are considered to be WMDs... those are prohibited.
WrentheFaceless wrote: Thats the thing, nothing happens, nothing has happend, nothing continues to happen
No effor because the conversation isnt allowed to even being started
"Now is not the time to talk about X" echoed over and over, its never the time to talk about it therefore nothing ever will get done since the conversation isnt allowed to exist at all.
So the status quo remains.
That's demonstrably false. Every time there is a mass shooting it gets massive media coverage nationally and politicians always seize the opportunity to make speeches about it. It's not that we don't discuss it's that when we discuss it we find that many more people are far more accepting of the status quo then the vocal advocates for new gun control laws believe. We are also subjected to gun control proposals that are rooted in obvious ignorance of firearms and are easily proven to be ineffectual responses in regards to the goal of preventing the tragedy from recurring.
WrentheFaceless wrote: Did see a quote making the rounds on social media, which is actually proving quite true and quite sad
Something to the effect of
"In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over."
You won NRA and gun enthusiasts, you won. Hope you enjoy your victory, the 2nd amendment is clad in stone and mortared with blood.
Not really. At best, maybe more people realized that gun control doesn't do anything to stop gun crime. It only serves to infringe on the rights of law abiding citizens.
The Sandy Hook guy killed his mom and stole her guns. Stuff that's already illegal. More laws wouldn't have done a thing.
There is a difference between saying something is acceptable and saying something is unpreventable. If someone kills his mom and steals her guns, nothing could have stopped that.
If you want to reduce crazy people shooting places up, approach it from the mental health angle. Don't approach it from the gun angle. The gun angle isn't what caused the problem in the first place, and doing that only violates the rights of innocent people. Mental health is where liberals should focus their energy, not on trampling the rights of law abiding citizens.
Also note, since the Florida shooting, gun ownership by women and LGBTX has risen dramatically.
WrentheFaceless wrote: Thats the thing, nothing happens, nothing has happend, nothing continues to happen
No effor because the conversation isnt allowed to even being started
"Now is not the time to talk about X" echoed over and over, its never the time to talk about it therefore nothing ever will get done since the conversation isnt allowed to exist at all.
So the status quo remains.
That's demonstrably false. Every time there is a mass shooting it gets massive media coverage nationally and politicians always seize the opportunity to make speeches about it. It's not that we don't discuss it's that when we discuss it we find that many more people are far more accepting of the status quo then the vocal advocates for new gun control laws believe. We are also subjected to gun control proposals that are rooted in obvious ignorance of firearms and are easily proven to be ineffectual responses in regards to the goal of preventing the tragedy from recurring.
I dont believe more people are accepting of the status quo than the vocal minority that comes up, they've just kindof given up at this point after so many incidents with no real effort made or conversation started.
That and our lawmakers are pretty much ineffective and ignorate at any legislation passed, they know about as much about guns as they do about healthcare
Not really. At best, maybe more people realized that gun control doesn't do anything to stop gun crime. It only serves to infringe on the rights of law abiding citizens.
And then there is this gem again. Why pass any law, criminals will ignore it. How am I the only one that doesnt thing this argument is completely ridiculous. Criminals ignore laws, thats what they do, should we abolish all law?
I assume your goal is to reduce people getting shot. There is zero evidence that stricter gun laws do anything to reduce shootings like this. In-fact, in the US it clearly shows the opposite. Stronger laws = more gun violence. So why is it acceptable to trample on people's rights for no gain?
This particular shooting also couldn't have been stopped anywhere in the world. This guy was a multi-millionaire. No law would have been a barrier to him.
Not really. At best, maybe more people realized that gun control doesn't do anything to stop gun crime. It only serves to infringe on the rights of law abiding citizens.
And then there is this gem again. Why pass any law, criminals will ignore it. How am I the only one that doesnt thing this argument is completely ridiculous. Criminals ignore laws, thats what they do, should we abolish all law?
Because tens of millions of gun owners don't want to be subject to punitive new laws that negatively impact their lives and do nothing to prevent the mass shootings that is their supposed reason for passing the new laws. I've done nothing wrong but now I can't own my AR15 because you think it's scary, yeah that's not going to be tolerated.
Hollow wrote: Do gun advocates think that everyone should be able to own a nuclear warhead? Should every/any body be able to buy a nuke from Walmart for a few hundred bucks?
Nukes are considered 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' and they are prohibited for civilians.
Just like the pressure bombs by that Boston massacre are considered to be WMDs... those are prohibited.
Which is unconstitutional, since it infringes "the right to bear arms", yet the US as a nation is completely fine with such a ban.
Albino Squirrel wrote: Do_I_Not_Like_That, I just want to say that I appreciate your reasonable and sane understanding of the United States and it's history/culture. A lot of people from around the world seem to have some really bizarre notions about what the United States is like. I wish I knew where they got some of their strange ideas.
I do hope we get some kind of motive determined in this particular shooting, because on the face of it the perpetrator seems extremely atypical.
Obviously everyone wonders why we have these mass shootings. It seems like we have some ideologically motivated ones (pulse nightclub shooting), but those aside the common thread seems to be mental illness. Perhaps we have more mental illness here than in other places, or maybe we are worse at treating it. I will say the treatment seems to normally be prescribing medication which often seems to do more harm than good.
We do unfortunately seem to have this belief that through the miracle of modern medicine everything can be cured with a pill. Seems like any treatment that requires effort or lifestyle change is often ignored, even if those would give the best results.
Thanks for the kind words.
I'll be honest and say when I was young, I viewed the world in simple black and white terms and the gun debate was no different. As you grow older, you discover that life is a lot more complicated than simple black and white thinking.
Americans are like any other group of people on Earth: you get good people, and you get idiots and evil people. That's true of every nation and culture.
As somebody who enjoys military history, I watch American gun channels on youtube to see old muskets getting fired
In an ideal world, every American gun owner would be like Hickok45, or forgotten weapons/inrange or military arms channel. Sensible, law abiding gun owners.
And we wouldn't have a problem with guns. I suspect the vast majority of gun owners in the USA probably haven't had so much as a parking ticket in their lives.
As another example, I've met a lot of Muslims in my life, and 99% of them are good, decent, honest people, but idiots like ISIL ruin it for everybody.
There is always a small minority of people who ruin things for the rest of us, be it guns, alcohol, religion, whatever.
1) A check that would be a requirement of your holding a license wouldn't be an unreasonable search or seizure.
2) I don't care, anyway.
2.1) Written constitutions are stupid.
If you're already resorting to "I don't care" and "written constitutions are stupid" then you really aren't bringing much to the discussion. You can deal with the reality that exists or not, but you're just wasting your time with posts like that.
Resorting?
For clarity:
1) is the actual response.
2) is my being flippant because the nature of written constutions means that ambiguous statements like 'unreasonable search or seizure' hamstring entire leilsatures for decades.
2.1) see point 2.
How can you guys know that gun control will not prevent mass shootings? The US has never had strict gun control, so you can't say that.
In other countries, like Australia, I hear that mass shootings also used to be a problem, but haven't been ever since Australia introduced strict gun control laws and offered to buy back people's guns.
Iron_Captain wrote: How can you guys know that gun control will not prevent mass shootings? The US has never had strict gun control, so you can't say that. In other countries, like Australia, I hear that mass shootings also used to be a problem, but haven't been ever since Australia introduced strict gun control laws and offered to buy back people's guns.
Russia or Russians have no room to talk about gun control and its efficacy. You're why a whole bunch of us are armed.
Iron_Captain wrote: How can you guys know that gun control will not prevent mass shootings? The US has never had strict gun control, so you can't say that.
In other countries, like Australia, I hear that mass shootings also used to be a problem, but haven't been ever since Australia introduced strict gun control laws and offered to buy back people's guns.
Within the US, areas which have very strict gun control laws have the worst gun violence. Areas with few restrictions and high gun ownership have the least.
Violence in general is also correlated with poverty more than anything else. So if you truly cared about reducing violence then you should focus on poverty and mental health. Guns are basically an entirely unrelated issue.
The mental health angle is the ideal angle to approach. America has finally started to treat drug addiction as a medical condition rather than a crime, and I think the same revolution of ideas can occur in the way the public views mental health, mental illness, and violence. However, this would require adequate funding for clinical studies, new treatments, and and integration of modern ideas into the American health care system. This would require our politicians to recognize that mental illness is preventable and that there are people who are not fit to own weapons, and that tighter gun control laws are not the best way to go. I don't have a whole lot of faith in either party to own up as a whole to the issue.
Hollow wrote: Do gun advocates think that everyone should be able to own a nuclear warhead? Should every/any body be able to buy a nuke from Walmart for a few hundred bucks?
Nukes are considered 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' and they are prohibited for civilians.
Just like the pressure bombs by that Boston massacre are considered to be WMDs... those are prohibited.
Which is unconstitutional, since it infringes "the right to bear arms", yet the US as a nation is completely fine with such a ban.
The public at large is fine with such a ban because owning nuclear weapons is a practical impossibility for 99% of the people so the law just reflects an established reality. Making it illegal to own something that I can't own anyway isn't going to ruffle a lot of feathers.
Iron_Captain wrote: How can you guys know that gun control will not prevent mass shootings? The US has never had strict gun control, so you can't say that.
In other countries, like Australia, I hear that mass shootings also used to be a problem, but haven't been ever since Australia introduced strict gun control laws and offered to buy back people's guns.
Within the US, areas which have very strict gun control laws have the worst gun violence. Areas with few restrictions and high gun ownership have the least.
Violence in general is also correlated with poverty more than anything else. So if you truly cared about reducing violence then you should focus on poverty and mental health. Guns are basically an entirely unrelated issue.
Australia also doesnt have to deal with land boarders between other countries or its own differing states.
WrentheFaceless wrote: Did see a quote making the rounds on social media, which is actually proving quite true and quite sad
Something to the effect of
"In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over."
You won NRA and gun enthusiasts, you won. Hope you enjoy your victory, the 2nd amendment is clad in stone and mortared with blood.
The issue is, just as in the case of Sandy Hook and Orlando, what sort of legislation, short of confiscation, would have any impact something like this? We routinely see a rash of legislation proposed in response to events like this...but seemingly none of it actually crafted to have any effect whatsoever.
More Background checks? No-Fly-No-Buy? Paddock appears to have been clean, Lanza stole his weapons after murdering the legal owner, and Mateen was cleared as a licensed armed security guard and investigated by FBI, so probably not.
Assault Weapons Ban? At least as such have been implemented over the last 30 years, probably not, as they don't actually address the killing capability of weapons, are easily bypassed by changing things like grips or muzzle devices, and they don't catch all sorts of weapons with equivalent killing capabilities (e.g. Mini14 vs AR15, both throw the same round out with the same rate of fire at roughly the same accuracy with similar potential magazine capacities, but Mini14's are banned under no AWB that I can recall), and there's already millions of these weapons in circulation.
Locking/Storage requirements? Only possibly relevant in Lanza's case, but he lived in the home, was familiar where things were, and was clearly willing to kill and was determined to do what he did, so probably would not have had any impact.
Waiting periods? Again, Lanza stole the weapons, Paddock had these weapons for a while seemingly, and Mateen waited longer than most waiting periods anyway before going off on his spree (another day or two to match the longest waiting periods probably wouldn't have made a difference).
That's the big problem we keep running into. Everyone says "we need to do something", but then nothing they propose would actually have done squat to prevent something like this. It just becomes an excuse to push legislation for its own sake, without regards to its efficacy on the issue that spurred it.
Ultimately it boils down to this: Most proposed legislation would do nothing to stop these events. Really, as long as such weapons are available, the possibility is there and largely unchanged, and that ship has long since sailed. Thus, do we attempt to post-facto legislate and restrict things from 300 Million+ people, stuff thats not registered or tracked and are plentifully available and widespread, for something that has lotto level odds of actually occurring to any particular person? If so, on what basis can we reasonably devote the resources required for such and effort that wouldn't save dramatically more lives if devoted to healthcare and economic development and infrastructure?
Iron_Captain wrote: How can you guys know that gun control will not prevent mass shootings? The US has never had strict gun control, so you can't say that.
In other countries, like Australia, I hear that mass shootings also used to be a problem, but haven't been ever since Australia introduced strict gun control laws and offered to buy back people's guns.
Within the US, areas which have very strict gun control laws have the worst gun violence. Areas with few restrictions and high gun ownership have the least.
Violence in general is also correlated with poverty more than anything else. So if you truly cared about reducing violence then you should focus on poverty and mental health. Guns are basically an entirely unrelated issue.
Australia also doesnt have to deal with land boarders between other countries or its own differing states.
I for one blame Canada.
Don't we all, just hanging out up there waiving around its maple syrups at everyone like that.
Not really. At best, maybe more people realized that gun control doesn't do anything to stop gun crime. It only serves to infringe on the rights of law abiding citizens.
And then there is this gem again. Why pass any law, criminals will ignore it. How am I the only one that doesnt thing this argument is completely ridiculous. Criminals ignore laws, thats what they do, should we abolish all law?
I assume your goal is to reduce people getting shot. There is zero evidence that stricter gun laws do anything to reduce shootings like this. In-fact, in the US it clearly shows the opposite. Stronger laws = more gun violence. So why is it acceptable to trample on people's rights for no gain?
This particular shooting also couldn't have been stopped anywhere in the world. This guy was a multi-millionaire. No law would have been a barrier to him.
1) A check that would be a requirement of your holding a license wouldn't be an unreasonable search or seizure.
2) I don't care, anyway.
2.1) Written constitutions are stupid.
If you're already resorting to "I don't care" and "written constitutions are stupid" then you really aren't bringing much to the discussion. You can deal with the reality that exists or not, but you're just wasting your time with posts like that.
Resorting?
For clarity:
1) is the actual response.
2) is my being flippant because the nature of written constutions means that ambiguous statements like 'unreasonable search or seizure' hamstring entire leilsatures for decades.
3) see point 2.
1) is an ignorant response, being required to do something doesn't give the authorities probable cause to do random checks, it's illegal to carry weapons in NYC but stop and frisk police searches are unconstitutional, the fact that it is illegal to possess drugs or guns while walking the streets of NYC doesn't give the NYPD the right to randomly stop and search people, that kind of fishing expedition is expressly illegal in the US
2) if you're going to brush off the constraints of the parameters of the legal system and societal norms then you're not going to bring anything worthwhile to the discussion
3) flippancy doesn't hide the flaws in the response, every law is written down and it's not stupid by any definition of the term because words are how we define meaning and written laws can still be changed through legislation and can be reevaluated by subsequent judicial reviews, writing it down doesn't make it permanent or inviolate
Iron_Captain wrote: How can you guys know that gun control will not prevent mass shootings? The US has never had strict gun control, so you can't say that.
In other countries, like Australia, I hear that mass shootings also used to be a problem, but haven't been ever since Australia introduced strict gun control laws and offered to buy back people's guns.
Within the US, areas which have very strict gun control laws have the worst gun violence. Areas with few restrictions and high gun ownership have the least.
Violence in general is also correlated with poverty more than anything else. So if you truly cared about reducing violence then you should focus on poverty and mental health. Guns are basically an entirely unrelated issue.
I definitely agree that a focus on poverty and mental health would be a good strategy to reduce violence, but I don't think any area in the US can have strict gun control. What use is there in having gun control if you could just get a gun in the state next door? The point of gun control is to make it harder for people to get access to a firearm so that someone with violent intent won't be able to get one without a lot of work and proper connections, and therefore will be more likely to resort to a knife, sword or axe instead (and thus significantly reducing casualties). Gun control would only work if it was nationwide.
Iron_Captain wrote: How can you guys know that gun control will not prevent mass shootings? The US has never had strict gun control, so you can't say that.
In other countries, like Australia, I hear that mass shootings also used to be a problem, but haven't been ever since Australia introduced strict gun control laws and offered to buy back people's guns.
Russia or Russians have no room to talk about gun control and its efficacy. You're why a whole bunch of us are armed.
Not really. At best, maybe more people realized that gun control doesn't do anything to stop gun crime. It only serves to infringe on the rights of law abiding citizens.
And then there is this gem again. Why pass any law, criminals will ignore it. How am I the only one that doesnt thing this argument is completely ridiculous. Criminals ignore laws, thats what they do, should we abolish all law?
I assume your goal is to reduce people getting shot. There is zero evidence that stricter gun laws do anything to reduce shootings like this. In-fact, in the US it clearly shows the opposite. Stronger laws = more gun violence. So why is it acceptable to trample on people's rights for no gain?
This particular shooting also couldn't have been stopped anywhere in the world. This guy was a multi-millionaire. No law would have been a barrier to him.
Could of sworn the EU has a bunch of other crime related issues that dont involve guns.
WrentheFaceless wrote: So giving up and accepting the status quo because "nothing can be done" is the consensus is here?
See you guys in a year again for the same old song and dance, maybe sooner
Pretty sure the consensus is that gun control is impractical in the context of MURCIA
more that we should be focusing on actually enforcing the laws already in place, and also solve the primary source of the issue which is the people (mental health).
Iron_Captain wrote: How can you guys know that gun control will not prevent mass shootings? The US has never had strict gun control, so you can't say that.
In other countries, like Australia, I hear that mass shootings also used to be a problem, but haven't been ever since Australia introduced strict gun control laws and offered to buy back people's guns.
Within the US, areas which have very strict gun control laws have the worst gun violence. Areas with few restrictions and high gun ownership have the least.
Violence in general is also correlated with poverty more than anything else. So if you truly cared about reducing violence then you should focus on poverty and mental health. Guns are basically an entirely unrelated issue.
I definitely agree that a focus on poverty and mental health would be a good strategy to reduce violence, but I don't think any area in the US can have strict gun control. What use is there in having gun control if you could just get a gun in the state next door? The point of gun control is to make it harder for people to get access to a firearm so that someone with violent intent won't be able to get one without a lot of work and proper connections, and therefore will be more likely to resort to a knife, sword or axe instead (and thus significantly reducing casualties). Gun control would only work if it was nationwide.
Iron_Captain wrote: How can you guys know that gun control will not prevent mass shootings? The US has never had strict gun control, so you can't say that.
In other countries, like Australia, I hear that mass shootings also used to be a problem, but haven't been ever since Australia introduced strict gun control laws and offered to buy back people's guns.
Russia or Russians have no room to talk about gun control and its efficacy. You're why a whole bunch of us are armed.
I thought that was the British?
No no, thats why we drink Coffee instead of Tea. Because Freedom!
Not really. At best, maybe more people realized that gun control doesn't do anything to stop gun crime. It only serves to infringe on the rights of law abiding citizens.
And then there is this gem again. Why pass any law, criminals will ignore it. How am I the only one that doesnt thing this argument is completely ridiculous. Criminals ignore laws, thats what they do, should we abolish all law?
I assume your goal is to reduce people getting shot. There is zero evidence that stricter gun laws do anything to reduce shootings like this. In-fact, in the US it clearly shows the opposite. Stronger laws = more gun violence. So why is it acceptable to trample on people's rights for no gain?
This particular shooting also couldn't have been stopped anywhere in the world. This guy was a multi-millionaire. No law would have been a barrier to him.
Also, for any non-British dakka members who don't follow British news or affairs, I'll add the following:
Britain is no longer the heavily armed society it was pre-WW1
but has murder gone away? Sadly, no
In recent months, acid attacks have blighted the nation. Teenage gangs settle their differences with a blade, and sadly, a lot of young lives have been lost, especially in London
And of course, we have been hit by terrorist attacks this year
Personally, I'm glad the UK doesn't have an armed population like in the past, but two things worth remembering:
1. Total gun control won't stop murder.
2. Even in an armed society like the USA, not every problem can be solved with a gun.
It's a very complicated issue and a calm, and rational, evidence based approach is needed.
Sadly, especailly in the USA, the fanatics on both sides have made this impossible.
Just to weigh in my thoughts: I cannot advocate stricter gun laws because I wouldn't even know where to begin. Stricter gun safety is a better place to start. But on the other side of it, I have never understood why Americans (which I am) feel the need to have guns. If everyone has a gun (as the 2nd Amendment says is our right), then you should expect gun violence...because if everyone has a gun, it is easy for criminals to get access to them. I have also never understood the "hunting" argument. I don't want to live in a world where there are Deer so fierce that that require super powerful weapons to take down. The kinds of weapons that are often used in these kinds of shootings are rarely "hunting" weapons. Also, we (as Americans) consume WAAAAAAY too much meat in general, and meat is just about everywhere. So why do you need to go out an shoot your own?
Less guns in the world will always lead to less gun deaths. Now, I am an optimist, a pacifist, an idealist and have never owned or felt the need to own a lethal weapon, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. I understand that guns will always exist in our lifetime and "good" people have to be able to protect themselves and their loved ones. I just wish guns were not the answer.
TL;DR: Guns are bad, laws are needed, but stricter laws probably won't do jack unless we as a species can find a better way.
Iron_Captain wrote: How can you guys know that gun control will not prevent mass shootings? The US has never had strict gun control, so you can't say that.
In other countries, like Australia, I hear that mass shootings also used to be a problem, but haven't been ever since Australia introduced strict gun control laws and offered to buy back people's guns.
So, trying the old Soviet, I mean Russian trick of trying to get us to drop our defence, so the T-34s can roll in
Not really. At best, maybe more people realized that gun control doesn't do anything to stop gun crime. It only serves to infringe on the rights of law abiding citizens.
And then there is this gem again. Why pass any law, criminals will ignore it. How am I the only one that doesnt thing this argument is completely ridiculous. Criminals ignore laws, thats what they do, should we abolish all law?
I assume your goal is to reduce people getting shot. There is zero evidence that stricter gun laws do anything to reduce shootings like this. In-fact, in the US it clearly shows the opposite. Stronger laws = more gun violence. So why is it acceptable to trample on people's rights for no gain?
This particular shooting also couldn't have been stopped anywhere in the world. This guy was a multi-millionaire. No law would have been a barrier to him.
In the context of this thread. what law could of possibly stopped this from happening?
At this point the guns are the sacred cow, regulate the sale of Ammo. Guns cant shoot when they dont have ammo or if its severely restricted.
So restricting the rights of everyone, doing something that would not have stopped anything. Got it.
[/spoiler]
Again there is that strawman, why have any laws, if they just restrict the rights of citizens and criminals with ignore them.
You're the one that refuses to acknowledge the point. You claim that we should impose new gun control laws. People ask you for specific laws you want passed and point out the previously proposed laws were objectively bad in regards to putting obstacles in place to prevent future mass shootings and would infringe on law abiding citizens with minimal to no impact on stopping gun crime. Your response to people pointing out the obvious flaws in proposed gun control laws is "why have laws then?" You're be deliberately obtuse. We already have hundreds of state and federal laws that regulate guns, guns are probably the most heavily regulated thing you can own in the US. We don't need more gun laws that are woefully inept at accomplishing their stated purpose for the sole reason of doing something to assuage emotions.
Frazzled wrote: To the topic: evidently the GF is still in the Philippines. Thats interesting.
I could be wrong, and it's all speculation on my part, but I have a hunch that the GF might have walked out on the shooter, and might have been the reason that pushed him over the edge...
Grey Templar wrote: The Sandy Hook guy killed his mom and stole her guns. Stuff that's already illegal. More laws wouldn't have done a thing.
Huh? If guns were illegal, his mum wouldn't have guns for him to steal, unless you mean his mum also owned the guns illegally?
The point of gun control isn't that you can get all guns out of all the hands of all the criminals. The point of gun control is that if guns are impossible or hard to obtain legally then it will also be harder for deranged people to get their hands on them.
Clearly its soely my job now to to solve the entire gun control and mass shooting debate then? I dont have the answers, but all that I know is that what we have isnt working. Again I may give you an answer or the answer of smarter people if debate were to happen but its instantly quashed, see Vaktathi's post, counter arguments are already ready to go.
Again nothing will change because the conversation isnt allowed to happen, and when it starts, counter arguments are instant and ruthless.
TLDR: Something needs to be done, i dont know what, but shootings like this cant remain a normal thing, unless we're going to collectively as a society agree that this is an acceptable price for our rights
Grey Templar wrote: The Sandy Hook guy killed his mom and stole her guns. Stuff that's already illegal. More laws wouldn't have done a thing.
Huh? If guns were illegal, his mum wouldn't have guns for him to steal, unless you mean his mum also owned the guns illegally?
The point of gun control isn't that you can get all guns out of all the hands of all the criminals. The point of gun control is that if guns are impossible or hard to obtain legally then it will also be harder for deranged people to get their hands on them.
That swings back to the amendments. if the majority of Americans dont want the right to bear arms then there are routes they could take to remove that amendment. I do wonder what the % of people are that are in favor of doing so.
Iron_Captain wrote: How can you guys know that gun control will not prevent mass shootings? The US has never had strict gun control, so you can't say that.
In other countries, like Australia, I hear that mass shootings also used to be a problem, but haven't been ever since Australia introduced strict gun control laws and offered to buy back people's guns.
Within the US, areas which have very strict gun control laws have the worst gun violence. Areas with few restrictions and high gun ownership have the least.
The problem is that the areas with strict gun control are immediately adjacent to the areas without strict gun control, which makes the strict gun control completely and utterly stupid. Gun control can only have a tiny hope of working if, ya know, it makes guns harder to get. Not if it makes it hard for them to get in one building but the building down the street they are still easy to get.
The US is still a young country working on ironing out the various wrinkles in their society - in essence figuring out what kind of society they want.
Politically and socially the country does seem to have a ways to go.
My pet theory is WW1 started a trend toward desensitization to violence.
Maybe...
But, I doubt those stats... it was brutal for indians and blacks in late 1700's/all of 1800's/early 1900's.
Wounded Knee..
Multiple Klan mobs that killed 100-300 blacks on sight...
etc...
Dakka Flakka Flame wrote:
If we look at your questions very narrowly, then in my (non-expert) opinion two magazines would almost always be enough for self-defense.
Eeeeh... Depends.
Dakka Flakka Flame wrote:
A lot of people own more than one gun. A lot of households have more than one gun owner. (Of course, there is a practical limit to how many guns a person can carry.) It is pretty easy to imagine a person accumulating hundreds of rounds in short order while only buying “practice” ammunition at a moderate rate.
This also touches on the issue with a lot of people's thoughts on gun-control in the US. The sheer volume of firearms in play. Someone once said that if every US civil servant stopped doing whatever they were doing and just focused on collecting guns, it would take 25 years to disarm every American, working round the clock. And assuming that everyone just queued up and handed them in.
You'd need an authoritarian/militerized regime to follow orders and go door-to-door to confiscate these weapons.
Not sure if folks that are advocating this really thought this through... have we forgotten whose President now?
WrentheFaceless wrote: Clearly its soely my job now to to solve the entire gun control and mass shooting debate then? I dont have the answers, but all that I know is that what we have isnt working. Again I may give you an answer or the answer of smarter people if debate were to happen but its instantly quashed, see Vaktathi's post, counter arguments are already ready to go.
Again nothing will change because the conversation isnt allowed to happen, and when it starts, counter arguments are instant and ruthless.
TLDR: Something needs to be done, i dont know what, but shootings like this cant remain a normal thing, unless we're going to collectively as a society agree that this is an acceptable price for our rights
You're the one refusing to have the conversation. You make a point, somebody else makes a counterpoint, that's what a discussion is. If you're going to throw up your hands and declare that discussion is impossible just because somebody has a counterpoint to your proposals then yeah I guess we can't have a discussion.
We've been at that point for a while now. There's some minor changes that could probably be worked out but the sweeping changes that gun control advocates want won't be supported by gun owners and the minor changes gun owners would be ok with aren't enough to satisfy gun control advocates. We're unlikely to see public support for a complete disarming of the US anytime soon so we're only going to be able to change things by a matter of degrees. We will continue to have gun ownership in the US, shootings will continue to happen.
Hollow wrote: Do gun advocates think that everyone should be able to own a nuclear warhead? Should every/any body be able to buy a nuke from Walmart for a few hundred bucks?
Nukes are considered 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' and they are prohibited for civilians.
Just like the pressure bombs by that Boston massacre are considered to be WMDs... those are prohibited.
Which is unconstitutional, since it infringes "the right to bear arms", yet the US as a nation is completely fine with such a ban.
Maybe it is... be interesting to see how the courts would rule.
Grey Templar wrote: The Sandy Hook guy killed his mom and stole her guns. Stuff that's already illegal. More laws wouldn't have done a thing.
Huh? If guns were illegal, his mum wouldn't have guns for him to steal, unless you mean his mum also owned the guns illegally?
The point of gun control isn't that you can get all guns out of all the hands of all the criminals. The point of gun control is that if guns are impossible or hard to obtain legally then it will also be harder for deranged people to get their hands on them.
That swings back to the amendments. if the majority of Americans dont want the right to bear arms then there are routes they could take to remove that amendment. I do wonder what the % of people are that are in favor of doing so.
It'd be interesting to know. I think the statistics say roughly 1 in 4 Americans own a gun or 1 in 3 households have a gun. But obviously not all of the other 3 Americans who don't own guns are against gun ownership.
That said I wasn't really making a point about the pros and cons of gun ownership, I simply found Grey Templar's statement odd and it doesn't really make sense unless the mother's guns were also illegally owned (and even then you'd have to ask the question how she got them illegally in the first place).
I remember that Aussie comedian pointing out that while, yes, it is possible to get certain guns in Australia, to do so you'd have to go through the black market and it's unlikely that a mentally unstable kid is going to go deal with the mafia (or whoever) and pay the huge amounts of black market money in order to get that gun.
Grey Templar wrote: The Sandy Hook guy killed his mom and stole her guns. Stuff that's already illegal. More laws wouldn't have done a thing.
Huh? If guns were illegal, his mum wouldn't have guns for him to steal, unless you mean his mum also owned the guns illegally?
The point of gun control isn't that you can get all guns out of all the hands of all the criminals. The point of gun control is that if guns are impossible or hard to obtain legally then it will also be harder for deranged people to get their hands on them.
That swings back to the amendments. if the majority of Americans dont want the right to bear arms then there are routes they could take to remove that amendment. I do wonder what the % of people are that are in favor of doing so.
It'd be interesting to know. I think the statistics say roughly 1 in 4 Americans own a gun or 1 in 3 households have a gun. But obviously not all of the other 3 Americans who don't own guns are against gun ownership.
That said I wasn't really making a point about the pros and cons of gun ownership, I simply found Grey Templar's statement odd and it doesn't really make sense unless the mother's guns were also illegally owned (and even then you'd have to ask the question how she got them illegally in the first place).
I remember that Aussie comedian pointing out that while, yes, it is possible to get certain guns in Australia, to do so you'd have to go through the black market and it's unlikely that a mentally unstable kid is going to go deal with the mafia (or whoever) and pay the huge amounts of black market money in order to get that gun.
Oh.
Fairly certain that the mums guns were not illegally obtained. but the son illegally obtained them by illegally murdering his mum.
WrentheFaceless wrote: TLDR: Something needs to be done, i dont know what, but shootings like this cant remain a normal thing, unless we're going to collectively as a society agree that this is an acceptable price for our rights
But your call for "something" so far involves things that are unconstitutional or otherwise are civil rights violations. You've also ignored things that other people in this thread have stated they support, such as making bump stocks illegal since the only reason they exist is specifically to circumvent a 1986 Federal law.
Many of us on this forum don't oppose legislation for the sake of idealism. We oppose efforts that are clearly based in fear and ultimately won't do a thing to stop or even lessen these types of crimes. Would you be in favor of eliminating the First Amendment saying that the government CAN tell reporters/news agencies which stories and subject matter they can report on? Fame was a factor in some mass shootings (Columbine for example) so making sure news agencies can't spread a shooter's photo and identity would do much to mitigate that, wouldn't it?. Should this be the way of things? Can you see no unintended consequences of such a change to the Constitution?
Iron_Captain wrote: How can you guys know that gun control will not prevent mass shootings? The US has never had strict gun control, so you can't say that.
In other countries, like Australia, I hear that mass shootings also used to be a problem, but haven't been ever since Australia introduced strict gun control laws and offered to buy back people's guns.
Within the US, areas which have very strict gun control laws have the worst gun violence. Areas with few restrictions and high gun ownership have the least.
The problem is that the areas with strict gun control are immediately adjacent to the areas without strict gun control, which makes the strict gun control completely and utterly stupid. Gun control can only have a tiny hope of working if, ya know, it makes guns harder to get. Not if it makes it hard for them to get in one building but the building down the street they are still easy to get.
Chicago is a city that has some urban areas with very high rates of murder and gun violence. The city has tough gun control laws. Chicago is in the state of Illinois and the state govt in recent years has made it easier than ever to obtain a concealed carry permit in the state, more people have carry permit than ever, there has not been any negative political consequence for the politicians that made concealed carry permits more accessible, there has not been a noticeable change in Chicago's gun crime.
With Federalism you're not going to get a consensus to take guns away. New Jersey has strict gun laws and low ownership rates, Wyoming has more permissive gun laws and higher ownership rates. Those states aren't going to switch sides or agree on the issue. There's numerous states on both sides so you won't have an easy time get laws through the senate or meeting the standard to change the constitution. There's also the fact that over the last few decades we've gotten more permissive gun laws, more states offer concealed carry permits than ever before. A majority of states have gun rights protected in their state constitutions. Convincing them to suddenly flip on the issue and vote to do away with private gun ownership isn't going to happen.
When did this happen? I wasn't required to have a trigger lock when I bought my Chiappa snub nose revolver.
Nor I with my last pistol. I know CA does.
Oh, maybe it's a state thing.
Back in the late 1990s most gun manufacturers agreed to include gun locks with every new gun. It's really difficult to find a new gun being sold without one. Are guys buying new or used guns? Everything I've purchased from S&W, Springfield, Remington and Ruger have all come with locks.
Unfortunately, I agree that most of the proposed new legislation will not address the problem. The core issue that drives the amount of deaths from guns is the proliferation of guns. Until America deals with that and starts a process to limit gun proliferation, we will have this issue.
But we really need to have that discussion nationally about how many guns we want to have in circulation. Until we do that and agree that a limit is necessary, gun deaths will just continue to increase.
AdeptSister wrote: Unfortunately, I agree that most of the proposed new legislation will not address the problem. The core issue that drives the amount of deaths from guns is the proliferation of guns. Until America deals with that and starts a process to limit gun proliferation, we will have this issue.
But we really need to have that discussion nationally about how many guns we want to have in circulation. Until we do that and agree that a limit is necessary, gun deaths will just continue to increase.
Limits can be reconciled with the 2nd, right?
Can you reconcile putting a limit on the amount of free speech you can have or the amount of protection you have from illegal search and seizures or the a limit on your ability to invoke you 5th amendment right against self incrimination?
It's theoretically possible but unlikely that as a nation the US will reach a consensus that there is a limit on the number of firearms that one person can own or that there is a limit for the total number of firearms privately owned nationally.
Strange. I wasn't aware Norway had several mass shootings a year. If a mass shooting happens in Norway it is an extraordinary event (I think this was actually the only time in Norwegian history?). If it happens in the US it isn't out of the ordinary at all. It is something that happens frequently. That is the difference between gun control and no gun control. You will never be able to prevent all violence or even all mass shootings, but it likely would prevent many of them. Maybe even 60%, 80% or even 90% of all mass shootings. That would be saving hundreds of lives on a yearly basis. Wouldn't that be worth giving up your guns for? It is not like you won't be able to hunt or shoot for fun anymore. You can still get a license for a hunting rifle or visit a shooting range even in countries that have very restrictive laws on weapons such as here in the Netherlands.
Prestor Jon wrote: Unfortunately, I agree that most of the proposed new legislation will not address the problem. The core issue that drives the amount of deaths from guns is the proliferation of guns. Until America deals with that and starts a process to limit gun proliferation, we will have this issue.
But we really need to have that discussion nationally about how many guns we want to have in circulation. Until we do that and agree that a limit is necessary, gun deaths will just continue to increase.
Limits can be reconciled with the 2nd, right?
Can you reconcile putting a limit on the amount of free speech you can have or the amount of protection you have from illegal search and seizures or the a limit on your ability to invoke you 5th amendment right against self incrimination?
It's theoretically possible but unlikely that as a nation the US will reach a consensus that there is a limit on the number of firearms that one person can own or that there is a limit for the total number of firearms privately owned nationally.
apparently you can.
the president is pressuring the nfl to stop people from exercising their free speech.
he reinstated stop and frisk
Purchases at grocery stores are tracked so if you buy to much of certain cleaning supplies you get a visit from the police.
now's the time to apply that to guns, if you start amassing an arsenal you get a visit from the police. buying two guns or 3 boxes of ammo in under a week and every purchase after that should alert law enforcement to keep an eye on you and to pay you a visit.
Chicago is a city that has some urban areas with very high rates of murder and gun violence. The city has tough gun control laws. Chicago is in the state of Illinois and the state govt in recent years has made it easier than ever to obtain a concealed carry permit in the state, more people have carry permit than ever, there has not been any negative political consequence for the politicians that made concealed carry permits more accessible, there has not been a noticeable change in Chicago's gun crime.
.
odd isn't it, more guns did nothing to lower the crime rate. It's time to try the other route
Prestor Jon wrote: Unfortunately, I agree that most of the proposed new legislation will not address the problem. The core issue that drives the amount of deaths from guns is the proliferation of guns. Until America deals with that and starts a process to limit gun proliferation, we will have this issue.
But we really need to have that discussion nationally about how many guns we want to have in circulation. Until we do that and agree that a limit is necessary, gun deaths will just continue to increase.
Limits can be reconciled with the 2nd, right?
Can you reconcile putting a limit on the amount of free speech you can have or the amount of protection you have from illegal search and seizures or the a limit on your ability to invoke you 5th amendment right against self incrimination?
It's theoretically possible but unlikely that as a nation the US will reach a consensus that there is a limit on the number of firearms that one person can own or that there is a limit for the total number of firearms privately owned nationally.
apparently you can.
Not easily dude.
the president is pressuring the nfl to stop people from exercising their free speech.
He can't enforce jack gak in this regard...
he reinstated stop and frisk
Citation is needed... that makes no sense.
Purchases at grocery stores are tracked so if you buy to much of certain cleaning supplies you get a visit from the police.
Citation is needed... I've never heard of this.
now's the time to apply that to guns, if you start amassing an arsenal you get a visit from the police. buying two guns or 3 boxes of ammo in under a week and every purchase after that should alert law enforcement to keep an eye on you and to pay you a visit.
As if the po po doesn't have enough on their plate...
In the US, the gak storm of epic proportion would ignite if the po po did this.
first story I found, there's more that I know happened, just need go find them
That's very specific as ephedrine is a main component to in meth production. No normal household would purchase that many to "stock up" on this for cold remedy.
Honestly I told myself I wouldn't enter into this thread because talking with some of you is like dashing my head against a brick wall over and over again.
So I come bearing a gift since we already have a dakka bingo, we can have a mass shooting bingo chart and it'll get good use every few months or so.
first story I found, there's more that I know happened, just need go find them
That's kind of a non-story. A lot of states where meth is bad have been doing the same thing for years. I don't buy a crazy amount of ephedrine, but I probably buy some at least once a year, because I can't take a lot of other medicines because of drug interaction and it works well. "Automated" doesn't meant that they're quietly tracking it by facial tracking or credit card or anything mystical like that. "Automated" means that they're asking you for your ID, verifying it, and then they're scanning/entering your numbers into a database that throws up any red flags for the police department. They hint at that later in the article:
retailers are required to obtain names and dates of birth of those who buy medicine containing pseudoephedrine and ephedrine.
first story I found, there's more that I know happened, just need go find them
A Sudafed.
makes sense
pharmacies usually keep track of people buying too much Sudafed in the first place.
but i see nothing on other groceries or house hold goods.
help me out, what's that cleaning product they use to make drugs with. I forget the chemical and the drug made with it so it's hard to find the story
dihydrogen monoxide
but really i dont make meth so wouldnt know
it could be any number of things but i would assume as its a cleaner its probably bleach or lye. also i remember seeing some where they use lithium from batteries
help me out, what's that cleaning product they use to make drugs with. I forget the chemical and the drug made with it so it's hard to find the story
Only other thing I can think of that gets talked about regularly is anhydrous ammonia, but that's an industrial farm fertilizer (IIRC) and not a cleaning agent.
TLDR: Something needs to be done, i dont know what
That's rather the issue everyone has run into.
I dont think anyone is against discussing proposals, but none presented appear to be functional solutions once they're put into context or practical realities are applied. Thats the great conundrum everyone eventually reaches with this.
WrentheFaceless wrote: Thats the thing, nothing happens, nothing has happend, nothing continues to happen
No effor because the conversation isnt allowed to even being started
"Now is not the time to talk about X" echoed over and over, its never the time to talk about it therefore nothing ever will get done since the conversation isnt allowed to exist at all.
So the status quo remains.
That's demonstrably false. Every time there is a mass shooting it gets massive media coverage nationally and politicians always seize the opportunity to make speeches about it. It's not that we don't discuss it's that when we discuss it we find that many more people are far more accepting of the status quo then the vocal advocates for new gun control laws believe. We are also subjected to gun control proposals that are rooted in obvious ignorance of firearms and are easily proven to be ineffectual responses in regards to the goal of preventing the tragedy from recurring.
So we should stop? You are assuming that just because I cannot or politicians cannot currently come up with reasonable gun safety laws, nobody can. That is absurd and that line of thinking is pushing the divide between people. Fighting against reasonable gun safety/control dialogue with this argument is essentially pushing both sides to the extreme here. So maybe stop shooting down every single suggestion as a flat no and try to make some reasonable compromises.
I would be happy with what Frazzled suggested. Those seem like reasonable changes. I don't want to take guns away from everybody, I just want to know that the guy standing next to me with a concealed carry knows what way to point it. I want to make sure people with mental health issues do not have access to these weapons for their own safety as well as others. If there is an event where a crime occurs in front of a CC holder, I want to know he isn't going to shoot me or some innocent bystanders on accident. These are not unreasonable requests. Denying any changes flat out is bordering on zealotry. The second amendment is not a part of a holy text, it was built to be changed. To be questioned. When you shut that down, we all suffer.
Iron_Captain wrote: How can you guys know that gun control will not prevent mass shootings? The US has never had strict gun control, so you can't say that.
In other countries, like Australia, I hear that mass shootings also used to be a problem, but haven't been ever since Australia introduced strict gun control laws and offered to buy back people's guns.
Within the US, areas which have very strict gun control laws have the worst gun violence. Areas with few restrictions and high gun ownership have the least.
Violence in general is also correlated with poverty more than anything else. So if you truly cared about reducing violence then you should focus on poverty and mental health. Guns are basically an entirely unrelated issue.
That is because the areas around them have lax gun control laws, so there is really no border to guard in order to keep them out. Also, your arguments that there are no studies proving that stricter gun control laws prevent gun violence is absurd since there is a ban on studies that would be looking in to those things.
When did this happen? I wasn't required to have a trigger lock when I bought my Chiappa snub nose revolver.
If they gave you a handgun without a lock they broke the law. You sure they didn't give you a lock you could pass through the cylinder?
What law are you citing here? I guess some States like New York might have a law requiring this but most don't and there certainly isn't anything by the Fed requiring them as part of a firearm purchase.
Dreadwinter wrote: Also, your arguments that there are no studies proving that stricter gun control laws prevent gun violence is absurd since there is a ban on studies that would be looking in to those things.
There is no such ban. The CDC got their budget slapped when they were engaged in such research and improprieties developed, but outside of that there's nothing banning research on this sort of thing.
Strange. I wasn't aware Norway had several mass shootings a year.
You're moving goal posts. Your original statement was about simply about knowing that laws won't prevent mass shootings. For instance, did you know that in the USA it is actually illegal to murder people regardless of how it's done? Go to any web site with crime statistics and you'll see our murder rate is far from zero even if you erase all gun statistics. It's illegal to drive a car after you've been drinking but sure as feth if there aren't tens of thousands of drunk driving "accidents" each year. We've had several posts about certain medicine purchases being tracked yet meth is everywhere. My point is, laws don't prevent crime, they only provide a mechanism for the State to levy punishment after an incident.
Iron_Captain wrote: You will never be able to prevent all violence or even all mass shootings, but it likely would prevent many of them. Maybe even 60%, 80% or even 90% of all mass shootings. That would be saving hundreds of lives on a yearly basis. Wouldn't that be worth giving up your guns for?
Except it doesn't work. Europe has shown that a lack of guns doesn't equate to a lack of mass killings. England has had three this year alone, one of which was a bombing, but none with a gun. Given this, speculation that XX% lives would be saved is specius at best.
1) A check that would be a requirement of your holding a license wouldn't be an unreasonable search or seizure.
2) I don't care, anyway.
2.1) Written constitutions are stupid.
If you're already resorting to "I don't care" and "written constitutions are stupid" then you really aren't bringing much to the discussion. You can deal with the reality that exists or not, but you're just wasting your time with posts like that.
Resorting?
For clarity:
1) is the actual response.
2) is my being flippant because the nature of written constutions means that ambiguous statements like 'unreasonable search or seizure' hamstring entire leilsatures for decades.
3) see point 2.
1) is an ignorant response, being required to do something doesn't give the authorities probable cause to do random checks, it's illegal to carry weapons in NYC but stop and frisk police searches are unconstitutional, the fact that it is illegal to possess drugs or guns while walking the streets of NYC doesn't give the NYPD the right to randomly stop and search people, that kind of fishing expedition is expressly illegal in the US
2) if you're going to brush off the constraints of the parameters of the legal system and societal norms then you're not going to bring anything worthwhile to the discussion
3) flippancy doesn't hide the flaws in the response, every law is written down and it's not stupid by any definition of the term because words are how we define meaning and written laws can still be changed through legislation and can be reevaluated by subsequent judicial reviews, writing it down doesn't make it permanent or inviolate
Rapid phone typing sure turned into a shambles in my last post, eh?
I'm not bothering to reply further to this which because you've taken a clearly sarcastic aside absurdly seriously.
What law are you citing here? I guess some States like New York might have a law requiring this but most don't and there certainly isn't anything by the Fed requiring them as part of a firearm purchase.
18 U.S.C. § 922
The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, passed by Congress and signed by the President in 2005, requires that all handguns sold by an FFL must be accompanied by a "secure gun storage or safety device."
18 U.S.C. § 922(z)(1). A “secure gun storage or safety device” is defined under 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(34) as: (A) a device that, when installed on a firearm, is designed to prevent the firearm from being operated without first deactivating the device; (B) a device incorporated into the design of the firearm that is designed to prevent the operation of the firearm by anyone not having access to the device; or (C) a safe, gun safe, gun case, lock box, or other device that is designed to be or can be used to store a firearm and that is designed to be unlocked only by means of a key, a combination, or other similar means.
So yes, all FFL dealers are required by Federal law to include some kind of locking device with every handgun they sell.
Iron_Captain wrote: You will never be able to prevent all violence or even all mass shootings, but it likely would prevent many of them. Maybe even 60%, 80% or even 90% of all mass shootings. That would be saving hundreds of lives on a yearly basis. Wouldn't that be worth giving up your guns for?
Except it doesn't work. Europe has shown that a lack of guns doesn't equate to a lack of mass killings. England has had three this year alone, one of which was a bombing, but none with a gun. Given this, speculation that XX% lives would be saved is specius at best.
Of course, the two worst years for mass killings in the UK don't remotely compare to the US today (1973 during the worst year of the Troubles when there were well-trained, very well equipped paramilitary donkey-caves running around trying to murder people, and 1988 when other donkey-caves blew up a passenger airplane: about 350 deaths in each year). This year 49 people have died in mass killings in the UK. There is no comparison to the number of die in mass firearrms killings in the US.
I'm not saying that our comparatively (extremely) low statistics proves that guns are the root of all evil, but saying 'look at the UK, it's bad there too!' doesn't stand up to scrutiny at all.
Of course, the two worst years for mass killings in the UK don't remotely compare to the US today (1973 during the worst year of the Troubles when there were well-trained, very well equipped paramilitary donkey-caves running around trying to murder people, and 1988 when other donkey-caves blew up a passenger airplane: about 350 deaths in each year). This year 49 people have died in mass killings in the UK. There is no comparison to the number of die in mass firearrms killings in the US.
I'm not saying that our comparatively (extremely) low statistics proves that guns are the root of all evil, but saying 'look at the UK, it's bad there too!' doesn't stand up to scrutiny at all.
Of course, the two worst years for mass killings in the UK don't remotely compare to the US today (1973 during the worst year of the Troubles when there were well-trained, very well equipped paramilitary donkey-caves running around trying to murder people, and 1988 when other donkey-caves blew up a passenger airplane: about 350 deaths in each year). This year 49 people have died in mass killings in the UK. There is no comparison to the number of die in mass firearrms killings in the US.
I'm not saying that our comparatively (extremely) low statistics proves that guns are the root of all evil, but saying 'look at the UK, it's bad there too!' doesn't stand up to scrutiny at all.
The UK also has 1/5th the population of the US.
It's also a fraction per head of population. By all means do the maths. You could do it for every year and I'll wager the US sees numbers that are many times that of the UK every year all the way back to the 70s.
Galef wrote: Just to weigh in my thoughts: I cannot advocate stricter gun laws because I wouldn't even know where to begin. Stricter gun safety is a better place to start.
But on the other side of it, I have never understood why Americans (which I am) feel the need to have guns. If everyone has a gun (as the 2nd Amendment says is our right), then you should expect gun violence...because if everyone has a gun, it is easy for criminals to get access to them.
I have also never understood the "hunting" argument. I don't want to live in a world where there are Deer so fierce that that require super powerful weapons to take down. The kinds of weapons that are often used in these kinds of shootings are rarely "hunting" weapons.
Also, we (as Americans) consume WAAAAAAY too much meat in general, and meat is just about everywhere. So why do you need to go out an shoot your own?
Less guns in the world will always lead to less gun deaths. Now, I am an optimist, a pacifist, an idealist and have never owned or felt the need to own a lethal weapon, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. I understand that guns will always exist in our lifetime and "good" people have to be able to protect themselves and their loved ones.
I just wish guns were not the answer.
TL;DR: Guns are bad, laws are needed, but stricter laws probably won't do jack unless we as a species can find a better way.
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The 2nd Amendment is about the populace having the capability to resist a tyrannical government, not about dangerous 4-legged animals. A gun isn't evil, it's a tool used for good or ill by its wielder. Just like a hammer or a knife. Hypothetically, if you went camping with your wife and 4 men showed up and said they were going to have fun with the two of you would you say the pistol you have is evil then?
Around here I find it curious that the same people who want the elimination of guns for the public are the very same people who find the police a dangerous, power-hungry adversary.
Iron_Captain wrote: How can you guys know that gun control will not prevent mass shootings? The US has never had strict gun control, so you can't say that.
In other countries, like Australia, I hear that mass shootings also used to be a problem, but haven't been ever since Australia introduced strict gun control laws and offered to buy back people's guns.
Russia or Russians have no room to talk about gun control and its efficacy. You're why a whole bunch of us are armed.
So you reject the point brought up about Australia because it was presented by a Russian?
Around here I find it curious that the same people who want the elimination of guns for the public are the very same people who find the police a dangerous, power-hungry adversary.
You know, theres others solutions to the problem of Police being dangerous than killing them with guns.
amanita wrote: The 2nd Amendment is about the populace having the capability to resist a tyrannical government, not about dangerous 4-legged animals. A gun isn't evil, it's a tool used for good or ill by its wielder. Just like a hammer or a knife. Hypothetically, if you went camping with your wife and 4 men showed up and said they were going to have fun with the two of you would you say the pistol you have is evil then?
I wonder how many people are saved by having a gun in such situations, vs how many people are killed in altercations which they would have otherwise survived if guns weren't readily available?
I don't know, I haven't checked the numbers, but I'd guess at the former being much smaller than the latter.
It is an area where I think muricans tend to differ from much of the rest of the world, even if the latter number is much larger I'd guess many (most?) Americans would still want to have their guns for their protecting themselves whereas many other societies would rather have them removed for protecting the community as a whole.
Like, take the number of people killed by cops in the US, surely that number would be tiny if it weren't for the quarter of the population that is armed.
But it'd be interesting to see a poll about what the average murican does think, because obviously we only hear for the vocal ones when in reality roughly 3 quarters of you don't own guns in the first place so mustn't think they are a tremendously necessary part of life.
Iron_Captain wrote: How can you guys know that gun control will not prevent mass shootings? The US has never had strict gun control, so you can't say that. In other countries, like Australia, I hear that mass shootings also used to be a problem, but haven't been ever since Australia introduced strict gun control laws and offered to buy back people's guns.
Russia or Russians have no room to talk about gun control and its efficacy. You're why a whole bunch of us are armed.
So you reject the point brought up about Australia because it was presented by a Russian?
I would call the Australian point statistically insignificant. We didn't have a huge number of mass killings prior to guns being outlawed and we haven't had a huge number since either. If you flick through the history of mass murders in Australia a lot of them are domestic issues (people killing their families and then killing themselves) and they manage to do it with or without guns. If you only look at mass murders that were random public killing sprees, we've had so few through out history that any trends aren't going to be statistically significant.
If everyone can be sat on thousands of rounds, ready to go at a moments notice when they snap, there is no time.
In practical terms, yes you might need a lot of ammunition when practicing at a range, but does it all need to be kept at home? Would there not be room for bonded stores at ranges and gun clubs, where people could keep their extra ammunition?
In practical terms, my property (38 acres) IS my range and gun club, and the house is where I keep the guns, ammo, targets, tools and cleaning supplies. I tend to fire between 200-0ver 1000 rounds a week (if I have friends over or if the wife and daughter are shooting too).
So, yeah, there is a need for keeping the ammo on hand at the house.
Not really. At best, maybe more people realized that gun control doesn't do anything to stop gun crime. It only serves to infringe on the rights of law abiding citizens.
And then there is this gem again. Why pass any law, criminals will ignore it. How am I the only one that doesnt thing this argument is completely ridiculous. Criminals ignore laws, thats what they do, should we abolish all law?
You, and others making this argument, ignore the real issue.
If you made private ownership illegal (somehow repealed the 2nd), millions of otherwise law abiding citizens would either turn instantly into criminals or be forced to give up what had been legally owned property. When you force otherwise law abiding citizens to give up what had been a constitutionally protected right or turn outlaw, you may not get the desired effect (see Prohibition for example, and that was not even a constitutional protected right).
A law against murder does not effect anyone who does not intend to kill people. Most laws passed do not have the potential to turn millions of law abiding citizens into outlaws....
Yeah, having the grip way out on front there looks weird...until you notice the slidefire stock and suddenly it makes sense.
Dude must have had some solid practice, those things are awkward to use, both to to stay on target and to keep a proper string of fire up with, at least in my experience. That said, the dude appeared to have large numbers of the surefire casket mags too, and those arent cheap, so perhaps he did have lots of experience if he's investing in that much hardware.
It will certainly be interesting to see how stuff plays out and what they find on the weapons.
WrentheFaceless wrote: Counter to that, forcing the south to give up their legal ownership of slaves, while a bloody affair (the Civil War) was necessary to do.
Okay, first of all, that is a grossly oversimplified view of the Civil War. Secondly, your solution to gun violence is even more gun violence? wtf?
WrentheFaceless wrote: Counter to that, forcing the south to give up their legal ownership of slaves, while a bloody affair (the Civil War) was necessary to do.
Okay, first of all, that is a grossly oversimplified view of the Civil War. Secondly, your solution to gun violence is even more gun violence? wtf?
You misinterpreted the meaning, he used prohibition as an example of a time where taking something away didnt work. Grossly oversimplified yes, but taking away slavery was needed to be done, violence isnt being advocated, not calling for Civil War 2 or anything
Still, I think we should attempt to curb gun violence without resorting to shooting more Americans. Just trying to seize everyone's guns would be hugely wasteful in lives and resources and would likely not even work. The best thing to dom imo, is to try and reduce proliferation through national buy-back and tax credit programs while reducing the availability of handguns. This would take a long time but with how common firearms are in the USA no viable long-term solution would be viable without decades of hard work.
TheCustomLime wrote: Still, I think we should attempt to curb gun violence without resorting to shooting more Americans. Just trying to seize everyone's guns would be hugely wasteful in lives and resources and would likely not even work. The best thing to dom imo, is to try and reduce proliferation through national buy-back and tax credit programs while reducing the availability of handguns. This would take a long time but with how common firearms are in the USA no viable long-term solution would be viable without decades of hard work.
Only real way is to indoctrinate the next generation into being gun fearing wusses. as the older generation dies out, there will be less interest in it.
amanita wrote: The 2nd Amendment is about the populace having the capability to resist a tyrannical government, not about dangerous 4-legged animals. A gun isn't evil, it's a tool used for good or ill by its wielder. Just like a hammer or a knife. Hypothetically, if you went camping with your wife and 4 men showed up and said they were going to have fun with the two of you would you say the pistol you have is evil then?
I wonder how many people are saved by having a gun in such situations, vs how many people are killed in altercations which they would have otherwise survived if guns weren't readily available?
I don't know, I haven't checked the numbers, but I'd guess at the former being much smaller than the latter.
It is an area where I think muricans tend to differ from much of the rest of the world, even if the latter number is much larger I'd guess many (most?) Americans would still want to have their guns for their protecting themselves whereas many other societies would rather have them removed for protecting the community as a whole.
Like, take the number of people killed by cops in the US, surely that number would be tiny if it weren't for the quarter of the population that is armed.
But it'd be interesting to see a poll about what the average murican does think, because obviously we only hear for the vocal ones when in reality roughly 3 quarters of you don't own guns in the first place so mustn't think they are a tremendously necessary part of life.
The CDC report that Obama commissioned stated that between 800,000 to 1.8 million successful defensive gun uses over their study (I think it was 12 to 18 mo review).
Average murrican vote overwhelming for candidates that protects the 2nd amendment.
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WrentheFaceless wrote: Counter to that, forcing the south to give up their legal ownership of slaves, while a bloody affair (the Civil War) was necessary to do.
Do you think Civil War II: Electric Bugaboo over gun rights would be necessary too?
We have put limits on amendments before if we think it is for the public good.
Is there a disagreement that there is connection between gun deaths and the number of guns we have available? And if we had less guns, that there may be less deaths?
I know guns are special in America because we have an amendment about them. But if we really wish to have less deaths, we should really look into some type of limit. Or at least invest more in removing the illegal inventory or the ability for legal guns to get to criminals. That alone would solve so many issues in America.
In relation to the original topic: The two largest mass shootings in the US have been done with legal firearms. Should we just expect to have more in the future? What structure do we have to stop a law abiding citizen from killing innocents? Should there be a structure in place?
AdeptSister wrote: We have put limits on amendments before if we think it is for the public good.
Is there a disagreement that there is connection between gun deaths and the number of guns we have available? And if we had less guns, that there may be less deaths?
I know guns are special in America because we have an amendment about them. But if we really wish to have less deaths, we should really look into some type of limit. Or at least invest more in removing the illegal inventory or the ability for legal guns to get to criminals. That alone would solve so many issues in America.
In relation to the original topic: The two largest mass shootings in the US have been done with legal firearms. Should we just expect to have more in the future? What structure do we have to stop a law abiding citizen from killing innocents? Should there be a structure in place?
Well i guess depression would increase significantly as people have less ways of ending them selves if guns were not available. terrible but true.
Primary focus should be on solving why people go on shooting rampages instead of how they go on rampages.
Iron_Captain wrote: How can you guys know that gun control will not prevent mass shootings? The US has never had strict gun control, so you can't say that.
In other countries, like Australia, I hear that mass shootings also used to be a problem, but haven't been ever since Australia introduced strict gun control laws and offered to buy back people's guns.
Russia or Russians have no room to talk about gun control and its efficacy. You're why a whole bunch of us are armed.
So you reject the point brought up about Australia because it was presented by a Russian?
How many Mexican cartels are deeply imbedded in Australia again?
What structure do you put in place to stop something like that?
Not trying to poopoo the idea, I just have no idea what that would look like while not running into 2A compliance issues. Essentially, once you have such items in circulation, and either cant or wont remove them, what do you do to control their use without trampling on legitimate uses as well?
WrentheFaceless wrote: Counter to that, forcing the south to give up their legal ownership of slaves, while a bloody affair (the Civil War) was necessary to do.
And it literally tore the country apart. I have relatives that died in that war.
WrentheFaceless wrote: Counter to that, forcing the south to give up their legal ownership of slaves, while a bloody affair (the Civil War) was necessary to do.
And it literally tore the country apart. I have relatives that died in that war.
WrentheFaceless wrote: Counter to that, forcing the south to give up their legal ownership of slaves, while a bloody affair (the Civil War) was necessary to do.
And it literally tore the country apart. I have relatives that died in that war.
Are you volunteering?
Fraz was probably there in person.
You youngins with your rifled muskets. When I was a kid, all we had was smoothbore muskets, and we were glad to have em!
Iron_Captain wrote: How can you guys know that gun control will not prevent mass shootings? The US has never had strict gun control, so you can't say that.
In other countries, like Australia, I hear that mass shootings also used to be a problem, but haven't been ever since Australia introduced strict gun control laws and offered to buy back people's guns.
Russia or Russians have no room to talk about gun control and its efficacy. You're why a whole bunch of us are armed.
So you reject the point brought up about Australia because it was presented by a Russian?
How many Mexican cartels are deeply imbedded in Australia again?
Nice attempt at dodging the question.
I take that as a Yes. You did indeed reject the point based on who presented it.
I reject the example as Australia is a large island with limited population and little firearm usage before it. Plus Australia does not have a Bill of Rights.
WrentheFaceless wrote: Counter to that, forcing the south to give up their legal ownership of slaves, while a bloody affair (the Civil War) was necessary to do.
Okay, first of all, that is a grossly oversimplified view of the Civil War. Secondly, your solution to gun violence is even more gun violence? wtf?
The gross oversimplification of the civil war to make it solely about slavery is extremely dishonest at worst, extremely ignorant of history at best.
The unwritten right for the common man to own arms, predates the USA, predates guns themselves, and can be considered a fundamental human right to protect all other rights. People are extremely protective of it for very good reasons.
Frazzled wrote: I reject the example as Australia is a large island with limited population and little firearm usage before it. Plus Australia does not have a Bill of Rights.
No real borders ether guns to be brought in.
that and why bother with guns when you can throw huntsmen spiders as a weapon.
Frazzled wrote: I reject the example as Australia is a large island with limited population and little firearm usage before it. Plus Australia does not have a Bill of Rights.
Exactly, his premise was false Frazz...
There is always a pattern of "include only facts that which supports my pre determined outcome" when ever people want to talk about gun control.
Most evident is that every illegal use of guns will be counted as a mark "against", where every single defensive use of firearms is excluded from the evidence on the "for" side.
its like playing a game of basketball where despite sinking your ball into the net, the ref never ups your score, then loudly proclaims your opponent the winner.
Frazzled wrote: I reject the example as Australia is a large island with limited population and little firearm usage before it. Plus Australia does not have a Bill of Rights.
No real borders ether guns to be brought in.
that and why bother with guns when you can throw huntsmen spiders as a weapon.
Indeed. You're too busy dodging falling killer drop bears. Come on Nature! Seriously!?
Mexico has fabulously striingent gun laws. It does not appear to be working.
WrentheFaceless wrote: Counter to that, forcing the south to give up their legal ownership of slaves, while a bloody affair (the Civil War) was necessary to do.
Okay, first of all, that is a grossly oversimplified view of the Civil War. Secondly, your solution to gun violence is even more gun violence? wtf?
The gross oversimplification of the civil war to make it solely about slavery is extremely dishonest at worst, extremely ignorant of history at best.
The unwritten right for the common man to own arms, predates the USA, predates guns themselves, and can be considered a fundamental human right to protect all other rights. People are extremely protective of it for very good reasons.
Slavery was also an unwritten right since time immemorial (Ex. Bible) that predates guns themselves too. People were extremely protective of it. Didnt make it right.
The 2nd amendment has been put on a lofty pedestal it doesnt belong on, its no more important or less important than any other right
WrentheFaceless wrote: Counter to that, forcing the south to give up their legal ownership of slaves, while a bloody affair (the Civil War) was necessary to do.
And it literally tore the country apart. I have relatives that died in that war.
Are you volunteering?
Arent you supposed to be seceding from the Union anyways to form the Texas republic?
Sure though, as long as we fight with swords cause we're getting rid of all the guns (not really getting rid of all the guns, dont twist that)
WrentheFaceless wrote: Counter to that, forcing the south to give up their legal ownership of slaves, while a bloody affair (the Civil War) was necessary to do.
Okay, first of all, that is a grossly oversimplified view of the Civil War. Secondly, your solution to gun violence is even more gun violence? wtf?
The gross oversimplification of the civil war to make it solely about slavery is extremely dishonest at worst, extremely ignorant of history at best.
The unwritten right for the common man to own arms, predates the USA, predates guns themselves, and can be considered a fundamental human right to protect all other rights. People are extremely protective of it for very good reasons.
Slavery was also an unwritten right since time immemorial (Ex. Bible) that predates guns themselves too. People were extremely protective of it. Didnt make it right.
The 2nd amendment has been put on a lofty pedestal it doesnt belong on, its no more important or less important than any other right
WrentheFaceless wrote: Counter to that, forcing the south to give up their legal ownership of slaves, while a bloody affair (the Civil War) was necessary to do.
And it literally tore the country apart. I have relatives that died in that war.
Are you volunteering?
Arent you supposed to be seceding from the Union anyways to form the Texas republic?
Sure though, as long as we fight with swords cause we're getting rid of all the guns
Cool. Use your political energies to try to get the Amendment overturned following Constitutional procedures instead of spanking about it on the internet.
Nukes are considered 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' and they are prohibited for civilians.
Just like the pressure bombs by that Boston massacre are considered to be WMDs... those are prohibited.
There is, as far as I know, actually not one single law on the books prohibiting the ownership of a thermonuclear weapon, as the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 has been amended to allow for ownership of fissile material by private entities.. There are however material handling laws on the books for many of it's components. Several people at one point or another have built their own breeder reactors, including the Boy Scouts of America (What fething merit badge is THAT?) capable of enriching radioactive materials. The only thing you have to have to own one though is a Destructive Device permit, to cover the explosives that merge the sub-critical masses of fissile material. As far as i know, the only ICBM in private hands is the scud + launcher sold as part of the Littlefield Collection a few years back, and it's warhead is conventional.
I think its easier to whip people into a frenzy these days, but the frenzy isn't quite as crazy. I mean come on. In 1921 an entire city went to war because some folks thought some other folks were gonna kill someone. These days the worst we get is riots cause someone actually was killed XD That's sort of tamer, right
Slavery was also an unwritten right since time immemorial (Ex. Bible) that predates guns themselves too. People were extremely protective of it. Didnt make it right.
Your idea of human rights is very strange indeed then, as the endemic property of all fundamental rights is that they must be non hypocritical. If I may speak freely, then so may you, If I may own firearms, then so may you. ect
Some people fall into a pattern where "I may be free, but I deny you your freedom" "I may speak freely, but no platform for you, guns for the group I want to have them, but not for you" and for some reason think its still a human right.
As a rule, even in history, its always been very small group of people, excising their disproportionate power over others that results in slavery. Which is why in throughout all recorded history, those with swords enslaved those without, and the same is true of firearms.
Hence the saying "only slaves are barred from owning swords"(paraphrasing)
Again, the first and second amendments are written down forms of the most basic fundamental human rights we have that protect themselves and the other rights that spring from them.
That you equate "some guy wrote a law saying we can own slaves" to natural unalienable HUMAN rights is almost as scary as your attitude towards engaging your countrymen in civil war.
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Desubot wrote: You guys wanna get off this off topic slavery nonsense?
Well, i guess the thread is about an event, which is a topic long passed over as it inevitably leads into a gun control debate.
One thing about any of these events, no matter if they used a bomb, car, gun, knife, gas, whatever.
I hate seeing people focus so much on HOW these people did it rather then WHY.
Its always going to be treating the symptom, rather then the disease, its always reactionary rather then proactive.
What I want to know is why these people get to a place where they can even consider doing what they do.
WrentheFaceless wrote: You're assuming an awful lot about what I think about human rights (no i'm not pro slavery, no i'm not take away all the guns)
Only pointing out about the parallels between the two in context to US society.
There are no similarities. Gun ownership doesn't have any of the negative aspects of slavery and slavery has none of the positive attributes of gun ownership. No one is claiming that the 2nd amendment couldn't be repealed it's just incredibly unlikely to happen and there are many more obstacles to reducing gun ownership in the US than the 2nd amendment.
So he had that "Bump stock" that the news has been talking about. What is it exactly?
It's a device to simulate full-auto fire. It replaces the stock and allows the firearm to "bump" back and forth under recoil and user-applied forward pressure.
So he had that "Bump stock" that the news has been talking about. What is it exactly?
It's a device to simulate full-auto fire. It replaces the stock and allows the firearm to "bump" back and forth under recoil and user-applied forward pressure.
How close to fully automatic does it get a weapon compared to the actual fully automatic version of it? we talking within 100's of rounds per minute or 10's?
So he had that "Bump stock" that the news has been talking about. What is it exactly?
It's a device to simulate full-auto fire. It replaces the stock and allows the firearm to "bump" back and forth under recoil and user-applied forward pressure.
How close to fully automatic does it get a weapon compared to the actual fully automatic version of it? we talking within 100's of rounds per minute or 10's?
I have no experience with them, so I'll leave it to someone else to answer rate of fire technicalities. I am lead to believe that it can be erratic, however, depending on the ability of the user.
So he had that "Bump stock" that the news has been talking about. What is it exactly?
It's a device to simulate full-auto fire. It replaces the stock and allows the firearm to "bump" back and forth under recoil and user-applied forward pressure.
How close to fully automatic does it get a weapon compared to the actual fully automatic version of it? we talking within 100's of rounds per minute or 10's?
You can increase the rate of fire to be hundreds of rounds per minute but that is dependent on the ability of the user. A person would need to practice a bit to get the hang of it and get the maximum effect. The ATF has ruled that bump fire stocks are perfectly legally mainly because they have determined that:
Two of the main manufacturers of bump stocks—Bump Fire Systems and Slide Fire—have posted letters from the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which declare these devices as legal in large part because they "[have] no automatically functioning mechanical parts or springs and [perform] no automatic function when installed."
For the record, you don't need a special stock to bump fire in some poorly controlled shooting positions. The bumpfire stocks allow the weapon to be shouldered during shooting but many folks can bumpfire from the hip
So he had that "Bump stock" that the news has been talking about. What is it exactly?
It's a device to simulate full-auto fire. It replaces the stock and allows the firearm to "bump" back and forth under recoil and user-applied forward pressure.
How close to fully automatic does it get a weapon compared to the actual fully automatic version of it? we talking within 100's of rounds per minute or 10's?
You can get rates of fire that meet and exceed the actual full auto versions, but basically you're pushing forward while the gun recoils backward into a sled housing in the stock and bumping the trigger every time it does so, as a result, while you can get very high rates of fire, it's often erratic and difficult to wield and prone to malfunctions.
But, as noted, you don't *need* a stock like this to get the effect, get a light trigger and the right grip at the hip and there's a lot of guns that'll bump fire straight through a magazine quite happily. The stock just makes it work better.
Insurgency Walker wrote: For the record, you don't need a special stock to bump fire in some poorly controlled shooting positions. The bumpfire stocks allow the weapon to be shouldered during shooting but many folks can bumpfire from the hip
You can bump fire with a belt loop and your thumb.
I've hesitated to post in this section. I'm a pro-gun gun nut that owns dozens of weapons created over the course of 130 years.
I hold my right to bear arms very closely, yet I am open to some forms of weapons laws. What I find to be silly is the "Common Sense" laws many get behind. Honestly, after every major incident these "common sense" laws are brought up, and in reality they wouldn't do jack to prevent the tragedy that just happened. They are simply feel-good laws for non gun owners and total pains in the butt for those of us that do own guns.
Banning pistol grip rifles, pistols with magazines outside the grip, barrel shrouds, bayonet lugs, .50 rifles, etc. are NOT doing anything. Literally nothing at all. Stop asking for this, it simply makes you look stupid. The only thing that might work (notice the might part) are magazine size restrictions and background checks. The magazine capacity is seriously debatable.
I keep saying it over and over and over again. If you want people to do more background checks, make it free and easily accessible. Do you know how many gun owners would willingly get on board with background checks if they could simply whip out their smart phone and do it for free in 2 minutes? The only reason to limit it to FFL dealers is so that the process for transferring a weapon is too big of a hassle and makes it cost prohibitive. I honestly think that this was intentional to make owning a gun as unattractive as possible. All this does is promote hidden sales.
As a caveat to background checks, I would only be OK with them if no record was kept of the transaction. It should simply be a comparison vs a database of known criminals. No data regarding who was compared vs the list, what they purchased, frequency of purchases, etc...
I don't want anybody, especially the government, keeping records of the fact I own weapons, what kind of weapons those may be, etc...
I find that that video uses A LOT of misleading and actually contradictory statements. For instance they keep going back and forth to whether or not they are counting acts of terrorism and gang crimes. Let's not beat around the bush, San Bernadino was a terrorist act, despite this video implying it wasn't.
Also, their chart that displayed homicide rate to gun ownership rates was just wrong on so many levels. I went back and double checked using actual crime statistics. The chart I made shows two outliers, Washington DC with low guns, high murder and Louisiana with high guns, high murder. The other states are strange. The trend starts in the lower left with Hawaii, with murders rising along with gun ownership rates, but then sharply falls down (Iowa at the low end), then goes back up again (Alaska is high). It looks like there is a sweet spot for gun ownership that somehow disrupts violence without hitting some sort of critical mass for gun violence.
Is there any reason behind a bumpstock other than simulating fully auto fire? That is, in a world where people could buy fully auto weapons, would anyone ever choose a semi-auto weapon and then buy a bump stock? Or is the whole point just to bypass fully auto restrictions?
Anyhow, my quick thoughts on this. People talk about the NRA's money, but one big secret of US politics is that the NRA gives bugger all money. Last presidential cycle the NRA just a bit more than million dollars to congress critters. The reason that Republicans and a couple of Democrats will not back any gun control at all is that while an overwhelming majority support at least some limited gun reforms, almost none of them vote based on that issue. But the small minority who do oppose any new gun controls will vote on just that issue, and they will vote in primaries. It's not a money thing, it's a case of a small, motivated minority controlling an issue on the national level.
As to the greater issues - mass shootings are horrible, but they're not where the real death toll is. There's more than 10,000 gun murders every year, and another 20,000 gun suicides. If an effective control could be developed that stopped these kinds of mass shootings had been in place it might have stopped some events like Las Vegas but it wouldn't make a dent in the overall death toll from the proliferation of guns in the US. That's doesn't mean it is okay to do nothing, a law like that would have made a huge difference to 59 people in Las Vegas, but its very important to remember that the real toll is the daily shootings with pistols, not these occasional mass attacks.
As to what can be done, I don't know. No-one does. The debate on gun control is horrible on all sides. The left focuses on scary sounding weapons and challenges opponents with moral arguments 'how can you justify this awful, black gun with a bayonet stock'. The right trades in dismissive arguments based on irrelevant technical details, and spends an incredible amount of time and effort denying the simple reality that gun proliferation increases gun use, and that has fatal consequences. To move this debate forward, the left needs to come to terms with the reality that the scary looking guns are not well related to the guns that do most of the killing, and the right needs to come to terms with the reality that having so many guns in the US is a major reason that all those guns keep getting used to shoot people.
That doesn't mean there's an easy answer. But there'll never be any kind of answer or improvement until everyone involved starts to agree on the reality of the situation, and restarts the debate from there.
cuda1179 wrote: I keep saying it over and over and over again. If you want people to do more background checks, make it free and easily accessible. Do you know how many gun owners would willingly get on board with background checks if they could simply whip out their smart phone and do it for free in 2 minutes? The only reason to limit it to FFL dealers is so that the process for transferring a weapon is too big of a hassle and makes it cost prohibitive. I honestly think that this was intentional to make owning a gun as unattractive as possible. All this does is promote hidden sales.
The problem with background checks is the waiting period, and I understand that. I think it's a fair complaint. I think that can be offset with a pre-approval process, you fill in your form, it confirms you can lawfully get your hands on a gun, and then you just provide your registry number when you bought a gun. The gun owner could then run a quick check against a live registry when you bought a gun. Private sales would be the issue, and the big sticking point. I would think it would be okay to have private sales required to run a check, provided for free by police stations, municipal offices etc, but probably a lot of people would get really angry about that.
But even assuming the above system is workable and reliable (it will have a lot of issues with multiple jurisdictions feeding info in to the system), I'm not sure background checks will do that much. It seems people have settled on background checks just because there's broad support for the idea that something needs to be done, and broad agreement that nothing should be done that inconveniences gun owners too much. What's missing is an idea that background checks will actually do something useful. There's been more than 1,500 mass shootings in the US since Sandy Hook, how many would have been stopped by some kind of background check?
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cuda1179 wrote: Also, their chart that displayed homicide rate to gun ownership rates was just wrong on so many levels. I went back and double checked using actual crime statistics. The chart I made shows two outliers, Washington DC with low guns, high murder and Louisiana with high guns, high murder. The other states are strange. The trend starts in the lower left with Hawaii, with murders rising along with gun ownership rates, but then sharply falls down (Iowa at the low end), then goes back up again (Alaska is high). It looks like there is a sweet spot for gun ownership that somehow disrupts violence without hitting some sort of critical mass for gun violence.
Their numbers are correct and verified.
And no, there's no 'sweet spot'. Over time there have been a lot of studies in to this, and they basically fall in to three camps. One camp says there's no relationship, one camp says there's no relationship but the data isn't great so maybe there's a weak underlying relationship, and the last group says 'hell yeah guns reduce crime look at this incredibly stupid data mining nonsense I just invented no I don't want to put this through peer review stop suppressing me'
sebster wrote: Is there any reason behind a bumpstock other than simulating fully auto fire? That is, in a world where people could buy fully auto weapons, would anyone ever choose a semi-auto weapon and then buy a bump stock? Or is the whole point just to bypass fully auto restrictions?
sebster wrote: That's doesn't mean it is okay to do nothing, a law like that would have made a huge difference to 59 people in Las Vegas.
Not really. Nothing at all could have stopped what happened in Vegas, at least as far as gun laws are concerned. The perpetrator had the means to bypass everything.
He was very wealthy, so making guns prohibitively expensive wouldn't have stopped him. All it would accomplish is making guns and self-defense a luxury only for the wealthy, which I'm sure anybody can see the flaw in giving that to only the powerful within society.
He had no criminal background or known mental issues which would have caused him to fail a background check.
Literally nothing could have stopped what happened.
sebster wrote: That's doesn't mean it is okay to do nothing, a law like that would have made a huge difference to 59 people in Las Vegas.
Not really. Nothing at all could have stopped what happened in Vegas, at least as far as gun laws are concerned. The perpetrator had the means to bypass everything.
He was very wealthy, so making guns prohibitively expensive wouldn't have stopped him. All it would accomplish is making guns and self-defense a luxury only for the wealthy, which I'm sure anybody can see the flaw in giving that to only the powerful within society.
He had no criminal background or known mental issues which would have caused him to fail a background check.
Literally nothing could have stopped what happened.
Yeah, if he didn't have guns, he would have just been up there with his blowgun, dropping people left and right. Literally no way to stop him from having a blowgun! Check and mate, boys!
sebster wrote: That's doesn't mean it is okay to do nothing, a law like that would have made a huge difference to 59 people in Las Vegas.
Not really. Nothing at all could have stopped what happened in Vegas, at least as far as gun laws are concerned. The perpetrator had the means to bypass everything.
He was very wealthy, so making guns prohibitively expensive wouldn't have stopped him. All it would accomplish is making guns and self-defense a luxury only for the wealthy, which I'm sure anybody can see the flaw in giving that to only the powerful within society.
He had no criminal background or known mental issues which would have caused him to fail a background check.
Literally nothing could have stopped what happened.
Yeah, if he didn't have guns, he would have just been up there with his blowgun, dropping people left and right. Literally no way to stop him from having a blowgun! Check and mate, boys!
This guy could still have acquired guns if he wanted because he was rich. Legally or illegally. $ opens doors. So does having a clean record.
Or he would have loaded up one of those private planes he owned with explosives/fuel and flown into one of the hotels. They have found bomb materials at his place of residence. This guy was going to do horrible stuff regardless of any potential legislation.
cuda1179 wrote: I keep saying it over and over and over again. If you want people to do more background checks, make it free and easily accessible. Do you know how many gun owners would willingly get on board with background checks if they could simply whip out their smart phone and do it for free in 2 minutes? The only reason to limit it to FFL dealers is so that the process for transferring a weapon is too big of a hassle and makes it cost prohibitive. I honestly think that this was intentional to make owning a gun as unattractive as possible. All this does is promote hidden sales.
The problem with background checks is the waiting period, and I understand that. I think it's a fair complaint.
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cuda1179 wrote: Also, their chart that displayed homicide rate to gun ownership rates was just wrong on so many levels. I went back and double checked using actual crime statistics. The chart I made shows two outliers, Washington DC with low guns, high murder and Louisiana with high guns, high murder. The other states are strange. The trend starts in the lower left with Hawaii, with murders rising along with gun ownership rates, but then sharply falls down (Iowa at the low end), then goes back up again (Alaska is high). It looks like there is a sweet spot for gun ownership that somehow disrupts violence without hitting some sort of critical mass for gun violence.
Their numbers are correct and verified.
'
Waiting period, what's that? Even with a background check I can walk into a gun store and leave with a weapon in under 8 minutes. I've done this on my break from work.
As for the numbers that you call "correct and verified", the devil is in the details. If lower gun ownership rates lower shootings by 10 deaths, but raise stabbing deaths by 10, is there really an improvement? That's the issue. The only real metric is if overall murders go down. Which is why their charts are flawed.
sebster wrote: That's doesn't mean it is okay to do nothing, a law like that would have made a huge difference to 59 people in Las Vegas.
Not really. Nothing at all could have stopped what happened in Vegas, at least as far as gun laws are concerned. The perpetrator had the means to bypass everything.
He was very wealthy, so making guns prohibitively expensive wouldn't have stopped him. All it would accomplish is making guns and self-defense a luxury only for the wealthy, which I'm sure anybody can see the flaw in giving that to only the powerful within society.
He had no criminal background or known mental issues which would have caused him to fail a background check.
Literally nothing could have stopped what happened.
Yeah, if he didn't have guns, he would have just been up there with his blowgun, dropping people left and right. Literally no way to stop him from having a blowgun! Check and mate, boys!
This guy could still have acquired guns if he wanted because he was rich. Legally or illegally. $ opens doors. So does having a clean record.
Or he would have loaded up one of those private planes he owned with explosives/fuel and flown into one of the hotels. They have found bomb materials at his place of residence. This guy was going to do horrible stuff regardless of any potential legislation.
That is a pretty big assumption there. If he was looking to do something horrible, why wouldn't he just go with the bigger body count? Flying a plane in to a building would have done that. A bomb would have been capable of doing that. Why did he go with the gun?
sebster wrote: That's doesn't mean it is okay to do nothing, a law like that would have made a huge difference to 59 people in Las Vegas.
Not really. Nothing at all could have stopped what happened in Vegas, at least as far as gun laws are concerned. The perpetrator had the means to bypass everything.
He was very wealthy, so making guns prohibitively expensive wouldn't have stopped him. All it would accomplish is making guns and self-defense a luxury only for the wealthy, which I'm sure anybody can see the flaw in giving that to only the powerful within society.
He had no criminal background or known mental issues which would have caused him to fail a background check.
Literally nothing could have stopped what happened.
Yeah, if he didn't have guns, he would have just been up there with his blowgun, dropping people left and right. Literally no way to stop him from having a blowgun! Check and mate, boys!
This guy could still have acquired guns if he wanted because he was rich. Legally or illegally. $ opens doors. So does having a clean record.
Or he would have loaded up one of those private planes he owned with explosives/fuel and flown into one of the hotels. They have found bomb materials at his place of residence. This guy was going to do horrible stuff regardless of any potential legislation.
That is a pretty big assumption there. If he was looking to do something horrible, why wouldn't he just go with the bigger body count? Flying a plane in to a building would have done that. A bomb would have been capable of doing that. Why did he go with the gun?
Given that he had options, he went with the least personal one. Flying a plane into a building is a pretty personal act, since it will kill you immediately. Spraying down a crowd from a great distance is much less so.
There is somewhat of a scale of how personal a violent act is.
Most personal would have been flying a plane into a building(downside of not being able to see what you accomplished after the fact). Next most personal would be going down to the concert directly and shooting it up. Next would be what he actually did, shooting from a great distance indiscriminately. And finally the next least personal would be planting bombs.
It seems like this guy was trying to be fairly detached from the violence, but that wouldn't necessarily have prevented him from choosing more direct and personal means of attack. We also don't exactly know what his motivation was. Body count alone may not have been his goal.
Perhaps he was a left leaning whacko who wanted to attack "those damn trump supporting country music listening fascists and give them a taste of their own medicine!!!". At the very least, the level of planning he put into this attack shows that he was motivated and a setback like not having easy access to guns wouldn't have stopped him.
Dakka Flakka Flame wrote: Thanks for the info sebster. I also frequently go to the FBI UCR for my figures on homicide, although the last numbers I checked before today were the 2012 numbers. I haven't been keeping up with the issues of murder and firearm violence for the last few years.
I did check the FBI numbers for 2015, and like always they bring up a lot of questions. Here's the table of relationship between victim and offender on their main page for 2015:
The biggest category is "Unknown" at 47.8%, which while it is a minority of the total is big enough to put a significant asterisk next to any conclusions we try to draw from the UCR.
It's why I prefer to use earlier reports. Over time they update those figures as suspects are identified. In 2013, the year I used, the unknown category had dropped to 36%, that's not nothing but it is enough to make the other data a lot more useful.
It's also worth noting that when we look at the expanded tables "Other - not specified" are some of the larger categories in the table on relationship between victim and offender and the table on circumstances surrounding the crime. The “Other – not specified” categorizes are separate from “Unknown” and I interpret that to mean that the local authorities knew the circumstances surrounding the crime and/or knew that the victim and murderer knew each other, but failed to inform the FBI of those specific details and circumstances.
I think it means there is a relationship, but it doesn't fit in to the categories provided. They might be part of the same barbershop quartet, for instance But then I don't know, and would like to hear the response you get. Much kudos to you for going to the FBI for clarification.
The other thing that has always driven me crazy about the UCR is the relationship category of “Acquaintance” and the circumstance category of “Other argument”. Both are the largest categories in their respective areas of the tables. Acquaintance does not at first glance appear to include anyone that the person would know well, including relationships like neighbor and employer/employee. This is what I think has lead many pro-gun people to make the argument that “Acquaintance” includes criminals known to their murderers. I don't think the rest of the table bears that out, but it depends on how the FBI defines some of their terms.
Yeah, the large size of other is an issue. But anyone who takes it to mean criminals known to the victim is really, really reaching.
(I certainly hope I'm not giving the impression that I think people engaged in illegal activity being murdered is acceptable, they are still people and it is not.)
Definitely, but it is an important distinction because it changes the nature of the problem. If most murders are crime related then general actions that drive down crime will reduce the murder rate. But if most murders aren't part of other criminal acts, then there is a different problem.
There is also a lot of potential for overlap with these categories.
While I would be quite interested in how 'other' breaks down in to friends with benefits, people who knew each other in college but didn't each other much after that etc, I think for the purpose of this conversation it is enough to know that the US gun murder rate isn't driven by strangers committing crimes.
But I do think you raise an interesting point about criminals known to their attackers. Drug addicts stealing from their parents is the cliche that comes to mind.
Sorry for rambling. I also hope it doesn't seem like I'm attacking you, sebster.
You're not rambling, and I haven't felt attacked. You've raised good points.
I don't think I even disagree with you, and I think the UCR is one of our better sources, but there are some vague parts of it that drive me crazy.
It isn't perfect, but its pretty good as far as these resources go. Part of the vagueness is prob due to data collection limits, how many boxes can you supply for different relationship for people to choose from? But a lot of that could be improved if we were given better access to more detailed info.
Grey Templar wrote: Perhaps he was a left leaning whacko who wanted to attack "those damn trump supporting country music listening fascists and give them a taste of their own medicine!!!". At the very least, the level of planning he put into this attack shows that he was motivated and a setback like not having easy access to guns wouldn't have stopped him.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: The question I've always asked myself is why is this happening now? What is it about modern American society that makes this tragic events occur with greater frequency?
America has had guns since the 1600s. And yeah, you can't compare a musket to a machine gun, and yeah, there has always been gun muders since the 1600s, but it feels different, more vicious and nacisstic these days.
It feels different because time provides distance, it reduces the horror that we feel when these things happen today, it makes us forget the horror people felt at the time. But reality is that murder used to be more common than it is today.
Switzerland is a prime example of an armed nation that doesn't have half the gun crime of the USA.
What guns are owned and how they are used is a big part of the issue. Swiss people have access to guns but their use and access to ammo is strictly controlled.
To cut a long story short, this is not an American problem. I think it's a problem of human nature that needs to be solved.
Except the rest of the developed world has more or less 'solved'* it in their own countries. Through many different means, but they've all gotten to the point where murder, and murder with a gun is a fraction of the rate it is in the US.
*Really, controlled or significantly reduced is better. Solve implies getting to zero murders, which is an impossible standard.
Grey Templar wrote: Perhaps he was a left leaning whacko who wanted to attack "those damn trump supporting country music listening fascists and give them a taste of their own medicine!!!". At the very least, the level of planning he put into this attack shows that he was motivated and a setback like not having easy access to guns wouldn't have stopped him.
I am really hoping this is sarcasm.
What part?
It certainly would be silly to rule out what I mentioned as a motivation given the crazy stuff that has been going on. Of course that's politics and we can't talk about that.
Something is stopping these kinds of things happening periodically elsewhere like they are happening in US. In western countries this is uniquely US problem. Other countries HAVE solved it. There's no gun massacres so periodically that reaction is "ah once more unto the breach" like in US.
Something is stopping these kinds of things happening periodically elsewhere like they are happening in US. In western countries this is uniquely US problem. Other countries HAVE solved it. There's no gun massacres so periodically that reaction is "ah once more unto the breach" like in US.
And the civil rights loss for that is totally unacceptable.
Something is stopping these kinds of things happening periodically elsewhere like they are happening in US. In western countries this is uniquely US problem. Other countries HAVE solved it. There's no gun massacres so periodically that reaction is "ah once more unto the breach" like in US.
And the civil rights loss for that is totally unacceptable.
So, there are literally ways to stop this? You just disagree with them.
Something is stopping these kinds of things happening periodically elsewhere like they are happening in US. In western countries this is uniquely US problem. Other countries HAVE solved it. There's no gun massacres so periodically that reaction is "ah once more unto the breach" like in US.
And the civil rights loss for that is totally unacceptable.
"The senseless murder of children and adults is an acceptable price for the country to pay in order for me to keep my guns".
Thanks. I thought so, but it was helpful to have it confirmed.
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Grey Templar wrote: Not really. Nothing at all could have stopped what happened in Vegas, at least as far as gun laws are concerned. The perpetrator had the means to bypass everything.
Why are replying to my post when you didn't read it? Here's a larger block of what you replied to;
"If an effective control could be developed that stopped these kinds of mass shootings had been in place it might have stopped some events like Las Vegas but it wouldn't make a dent in the overall death toll from the proliferation of guns in the US. That's doesn't mean it is okay to do nothing, a law like that would have made a huge difference to 59 people in Las Vegas"
"If". "Might". It's right there, plain as day that I am not saying such a control exists. But then you take the next sentence, which was making an assumption that such a law might merely comment on making the effort, and you reply to that as if I had said there were laws ready to go to stop this or something.
Don't do that. It misrepresents my point, and leaves you debating with an argument of your own creation.
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cuda1179 wrote: As for the numbers that you call "correct and verified", the devil is in the details. If lower gun ownership rates lower shootings by 10 deaths, but raise stabbing deaths by 10, is there really an improvement? That's the issue. The only real metric is if overall murders go down. Which is why their charts are flawed.
You said the numbers were "wrong on so many levels", and you "went back and double checked using actual crime statistics". That sounds like you were saying the numbers were false. I was saying the numbers are correct. If you're making an argument that the numbers are right but lack context, that's something different. You're still wrong, because the 'guns get replaced by knives' argument is just horrible in all the ways, but it is a different argument.
Grey Templar wrote: At the very least, the level of planning he put into this attack shows that he was motivated and a setback like not having easy access to guns wouldn't have stopped him.
You've confusing 'we can't stop everyone from ever getting access to a means to do this' with 'it is futile to ever put any roadblocks in front of anyone trying something like this'.
Those are massively different things. I mean, you lock your door at night, yeah? That lock isn't certain to stop anyone getting in the house, it is still possible to force it open. But it does make it harder.
It's the same for putting restrictions on some firearms. It won't stop everyone buying guns for nefarious purposes, but it makes it harder, and it gives the cops a much greater chance of intercepting this stuff before it happens.
And I know this guy was rich so money wasn't an issue, but just because you have money it doesn't mean you know what the hell you are doing when it comes to dealing in the black market. Rich kids getting busted buying weed is a cliche for a reason.
cuda1179 wrote: I've hesitated to post in this section. I'm a pro-gun gun nut that owns dozens of weapons created over the course of 130 years.
I hold my right to bear arms very closely, yet I am open to some forms of weapons laws. What I find to be silly is the "Common Sense" laws many get behind. Honestly, after every major incident these "common sense" laws are brought up, and in reality they wouldn't do jack to prevent the tragedy that just happened. They are simply feel-good laws for non gun owners and total pains in the butt for those of us that do own guns.
Banning pistol grip rifles, pistols with magazines outside the grip, barrel shrouds, bayonet lugs, .50 rifles, etc. are NOT doing anything. Literally nothing at all. Stop asking for this, it simply makes you look stupid. The only thing that might work (notice the might part) are magazine size restrictions and background checks. The magazine capacity is seriously debatable.
I keep saying it over and over and over again. If you want people to do more background checks, make it free and easily accessible. Do you know how many gun owners would willingly get on board with background checks if they could simply whip out their smart phone and do it for free in 2 minutes? The only reason to limit it to FFL dealers is so that the process for transferring a weapon is too big of a hassle and makes it cost prohibitive. I honestly think that this was intentional to make owning a gun as unattractive as possible. All this does is promote hidden sales.
I don't think common sense gun laws would have stopped this shooter. By all accounts, he had the money to buy and smuggle in machine guns and mortars
American dakka members can correct me if I'm wrong, but some old machine guns still exist in the USA? You just can't buy or make them anymore?
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: The question I've always asked myself is why is this happening now? What is it about modern American society that makes this tragic events occur with greater frequency?
America has had guns since the 1600s. And yeah, you can't compare a musket to a machine gun, and yeah, there has always been gun muders since the 1600s, but it feels different, more vicious and nacisstic these days.
It feels different because time provides distance, it reduces the horror that we feel when these things happen today, it makes us forget the horror people felt at the time. But reality is that murder used to be more common than it is today.
Switzerland is a prime example of an armed nation that doesn't have half the gun crime of the USA.
What guns are owned and how they are used is a big part of the issue. Swiss people have access to guns but their use and access to ammo is strictly controlled.
To cut a long story short, this is not an American problem. I think it's a problem of human nature that needs to be solved.
Except the rest of the developed world has more or less 'solved'* it in their own countries. Through many different means, but they've all gotten to the point where murder, and murder with a gun is a fraction of the rate it is in the US.
*Really, controlled or significantly reduced is better. Solve implies getting to zero murders, which is an impossible standard.
I disagree Seb
As I said earlier, I used the example of the UK in the early 1900s for a reason. Here was a heavily armed society, a militarised society that celebrated British victories in the Boer War and the Sudan, trained school kids to use machine guns, and obviously took pride in being more powerful than anybody else with the British Empire, and yet, gun crime was never as bad compared to the modern USA. The modern USA is obviously what Britain was in the 1900s: heavily armed society, and the most powerful nation in the world right now. It's a valid comparison IMO.
And also, your average British policeman was never armed with anything more than a sturdy club, a whistle, and a notebook and pencil.
If one heavily armed society had low gun crime, and another heavily armed society has higher gun crime, then yeah, it's a human nature problem IMO. Or maybe it's American society? I don't know.
amanita wrote: The 2nd Amendment is about the populace having the capability to resist a tyrannical government, not about dangerous 4-legged animals. A gun isn't evil, it's a tool used for good or ill by its wielder. Just like a hammer or a knife. Hypothetically, if you went camping with your wife and 4 men showed up and said they were going to have fun with the two of you would you say the pistol you have is evil then?
I wonder how many people are saved by having a gun in such situations, vs how many people are killed in altercations which they would have otherwise survived if guns weren't readily available?
I don't know, I haven't checked the numbers, but I'd guess at the former being much smaller than the latter.
It is an area where I think muricans tend to differ from much of the rest of the world, even if the latter number is much larger I'd guess many (most?) Americans would still want to have their guns for their protecting themselves whereas many other societies would rather have them removed for protecting the community as a whole.
Like, take the number of people killed by cops in the US, surely that number would be tiny if it weren't for the quarter of the population that is armed.
But it'd be interesting to see a poll about what the average murican does think, because obviously we only hear for the vocal ones when in reality roughly 3 quarters of you don't own guns in the first place so mustn't think they are a tremendously necessary part of life.
The CDC report that Obama commissioned stated that between 800,000 to 1.8 million successful defensive gun uses over their study (I think it was 12 to 18 mo review).
That doesn't answer my question though. My question was how many people were "saved" by it.... I highly doubt 800,000 to 1.8 million people would have died if they weren't defending themselves with guns, you'd have to break it down better than that.
Average murrican vote overwhelming for candidates that protects the 2nd amendment.
Well candidates tend to stand on more than one thing.
A random googling tells me just over half of Americans think there should be stricter gun laws, that it's currently too easy to get guns and think that the country would be less safe if more people carried guns. About a quarter to a third think handguns should be outright banned and a third to a half reckon semi-automatic rifles should be banned.
The poll of "prevent all americans from owning guns" was pretty overwhelming, about only about 9% were in favour of that one.... but then even in countries with gun bans the laws don't stop ALL people owning guns (bolt action rifles for hunting, security peoples, etc) so that question is a bit loaded in that not even other countries with strict gun laws go so far as to ban ALL guns from EVERYONE.
It'd be interesting to see the response to a question like "do you think american gun laws should be more like Swiss gun laws?"
Personally I'm neither for nor against gun regulations. I just think a lot of the arguments are ill informed and ill considered. I think guns do cause more deaths, but to quantify how many is difficult because any comparisons can't be separated from socio-economic factors and many comparisons are statistically insignificant. The biggest negative effect of guns is probably suicide and things like domestic violence and more minor crimes turning deadly, with things like mass murders getting the attention but actually only being a tiny fraction of the picture.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote: If one heavily armed society had low gun crime, and another heavily armed society has higher gun crime, then yeah, it's a human nature problem IMO. Or maybe it's American society? I don't know.
I'd like to see a source for your claim that there was a huge number of guns in private hands in England in 1900. There were few laws, and no restrictions until 1920, I agree, but I've seen nothing to suggest Englishmen took up that opportunity to get their hands on loads of guns. And no, the story of a gun battle between a crime gang and police/the army doesn't count as proof. What's needed is some kind of figure on the number of people who owned a gun, or at least a raw figure of the number of private guns in the country at that time. I haven't seen that figure, and given I just trawled through about a half dozen really dodgy pro-gun pages looking for this, if there was some figure to show England once had loads of guns and it didn't impact their rate of gun murder, I'd love to see it.
My own suspicion is that while gun laws were lax, few people in England took advantage of that to buy a gun. The desire wasn't there, culturally. It would explain how those gun laws were able to be put in place without great disturbance - they were restricting something few people had or wanted. But I'm guessing, and if you've got some real numbers I'd love to see them and be proven incorrect.
I don't think guns are the problem. Americans are the problem.
See, in Switzerland or Finnland or even Canada there are plenty of guns. But there are no masacers. Mass shootings are (in what we call the civilised part of the world) a purely american problem.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: That doesn't answer my question though. My question was how many people were "saved" by it.... I highly doubt 800,000 to 1.8 million people would have died if they weren't defending themselves with guns, you'd have to break it down better than that.
You're right to doubt that number. For starters, the figure doesn't come from the CDC, it comes from a CDC study that says gun control and particularly defensive gun control is terribly misunderstood. It quotes the 1.8m figure as part of a range, saying studies have found 108k, and up to 1.8m, saying not only is there a wide range of surveys, but they're all unreliable for lots of different reasons. From there the usual liars in the rightwing media ran with it, claiming the CDC report said 1.8m defensive gun uses, that's now gospel and Obama and the media were suppressing the story. And then it ends up here as a CDC report.
Anyhow, as to the actual source of that 1.8m figure, it's hilariously terrible. What they did was cold call a bunch of people and ask them if they'd used a gun in the last year to stop a crime, if they said yes they asked them how many times and what type of crime they stopped. Then they took that response rate, multiplied it by the population to come up with their mega-figure of amazing crime prevention.
The problems with the method should be clear. It's an obviously political question, and the person hearing the call would know its political relevance and be tempted to lie. Not everyone is going to lie, but there's going to be a clear false positive rate. A false positive is always an issue, but it becomes a crippling issue when the rate of instance is extremely small in the first place. Let's say the 108,000 figure is accurate, that means that 0.04% of people use a gun defensively each year. If just 6 people in every 1,000 chose to lie in the survey, it would overstate the survey by 15 times, and increase the instances from 108,000 to 1.8m per year. And is anyone out there going to claim that there's no way that 6 people in every 1,000 wouldn't dare tell a lie about this?
And for what it's worth, the CBO report was actually picking a smaller range. There's similar phone studies that have given numbers up to 4.5 million defensive gun uses a year. But there's also sensible methods giving numbers down around 55,000 and some even lower than that. Exactly what the real answer is is unknown. What is known is that the phone survey method is amazingly bad, but it will always come up in these conversations because it suits a certain political narrative.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
To cut a long story short, this is not an American problem. I think it's a problem of human nature that needs to be solved.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:If one heavily armed society had low gun crime, and another heavily armed society has higher gun crime, then yeah, it's a human nature problem IMO. Or maybe it's American society? I don't know.
Your posts on this topic are very confused. I'm glad you're starting to click that one heavily armed society with a long-term extreme problem alongside a bunch of other well armed societies without it suggests that there is something specific about the society with the problem that causes it. Your previous position that it meant the opposite was very strange.
A couple people have said that US citizens overwhelmingly vote for candidates that support the 2nd Ammendment. Is this as straightforward as it suggests? Are there many cases where candidates policies are pretty much the same except on gun control where such a claim could be tested? Are their other lines across which pro-gun/pro-control politicians are also split that would make such a correlation unreliable? I'm thinking the pro-control side are likely to be more liberal socially, for example? Or am imagining a consistency that's not reality? Genuine curioisty - ike most people out the US I guess, I'm pretty up to date on general US politics and up to date on the elections that recieve considerable press overseas but I'm not very au fait with general Senatorial and Representative voting patterns.
von Hohenstein wrote: I don't think guns are the problem. Americans are the problem.
See, in Switzerland or Finnland or even Canada there are plenty of guns. But there are no masacers. Mass shootings are (in what we call the civilised part of the world) a purely american problem.
Rates of crimes in America are very close to elsewhere. They don't have higher assaults or other forms of violence. There is no evidence at all for this idea that Americans are just somehow more barbaric. It's actualyl a pretty damn incredible claim, and one with no support in the evidence.
So we have to look elsewhere for why Americans might commit more murder more often.
As to Canada Switzerland and Finland having guns but nowhere near the rate of murder, you're right that their murder rate is nothing like the US. But they still very high among developed nations. In fact, would you like a list of developed nations by gun deaths?
1) USA
2) Canada
3) Finland
4) Switzerland
5) France
So the exact four countries you picked out for having lots of guns also happen to be the four countries with the highest rates of gun deaths.
Though I will note that is gun deaths, so it includes suicides.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
To cut a long story short, this is not an American problem. I think it's a problem of human nature that needs to be solved.
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:If one heavily armed society had low gun crime, and another heavily armed society has higher gun crime, then yeah, it's a human nature problem IMO. Or maybe it's American society? I don't know.
Your posts on this topic are very confused. I'm glad you're starting to click that one heavily armed society with a long-term extreme problem alongside a bunch of other well armed societies without it suggests that there is something specific about the society with the problem that causes it. Your previous position that it meant the opposite was very strange.
A couple people have said that US citizens overwhelmingly vote for candidates that support the 2nd Ammendment. Is this as straightforward as it suggests? Are there many cases where candidates policies are pretty much the same except on gun control where such a claim could be tested? Are their other lines across which pro-gun/pro-control politicians are also split that would make such a correlation unreliable? I'm thinking the pro-control side are likely to be more liberal socially, for example? Or am imagining a consistency that's not reality? Genuine curioisty - ike most people out the US I guess, I'm pretty up to date on general US politics and up to date on the elections that recieve considerable press overseas but I'm not very au fait with general Senatorial and Representative voting patterns.
It's a complicated subject, and it's easy to get confused sometimes.
sebster wrote: The problems with the method should be clear. It's an obviously political question, and the person hearing the call would know its political relevance and be tempted to lie. Not everyone is going to lie, but there's going to be a clear false positive rate. A false positive is always an issue, but it becomes a crippling issue when the rate of instance is extremely small in the first place. Let's say the 108,000 figure is accurate, that means that 0.04% of people use a gun defensively each year. If just 6 people in every 1,000 chose to lie in the survey, it would overstate the survey by 15 times, and increase the instances from 108,000 to 1.8m per year. And is anyone out there going to claim that there's no way that 6 people in every 1,000 wouldn't dare tell a lie about this?
And for what it's worth, the CBO report was actually picking a smaller range. There's similar phone studies that have given numbers up to 4.5 million defensive gun uses a year. But there's also sensible methods giving numbers down around 55,000 and some even lower than that. Exactly what the real answer is is unknown. What is known is that the phone survey method is amazingly bad, but it will always come up in these conversations because it suits a certain political narrative.
Yeah, it goes back to what I was saying about things being statistically significant. Polling on things that have a very low occurrence are naturally on statistically shaky ground because as you say it only takes a few people lying or misrepresenting the facts to blow things wildly out of proportion.
If we take the 1.8 million number to be true, the US only has a population of 323M, so that's 1 crime prevented for every 180 people. The total number of violent crimes (murder, aggravated assault, rape and robbery) is only estimated to be 385 per 100,000.... which comes out to 1 in every 260. So we're saying crimes are prevented at a higher rate than they are committed? If that were true and you removed guns from Americans the crime rate would reach 3rd world country levels. The number is even more silly if you consider that only a quarter of Americans own guns, so for every 45 gun owners one reckons they stopped a crime with their gun?
I just find those numbers quite difficult to believe. As you say the true answer is probably a tiny fraction of that.
It's a complicated subject, and it's easy to get confused sometimes.
The topic is very complex - but if A, B, C, D's firearms statistics are the same except for D's massively higher rate of violence, it's pretty weird to conclude, without recourse to any other data, that the reason for the higher rate must be something common to all four.
I'm not sure I buy that A, B, C and D are the same, though. I don't accept that, for instance, the UK was ever armed on anything like the scale that the US is, and I think the type of arms - and the reasons for owning them - are pretty starkly different in highly-armed nations today. Switzerland is often cited, for example, and certainly has lots of guns - but guns are required for state-organised militia and everyone is formally trained. In the US, for the most part, regardless of how many people think they might need to fight off the government or stop someone murdering their kids, people have lots of guns because they like guns. That's not a bad reason - but it's definitely a different one.
Albino Squirrel wrote: Doesn't much matter. The notion that we would repeal any part of the Bill of Rights is unrealistic to say the least.
You would bring in an amendment to the constitution.
Alternatively, the Supreme Court ruling that basically allowed everyone to bear arms could be modified by the Supreme Court.
Another way forwards would be to tackle things on a state by state level.
Where there is a will there is a way. The question is how much will there might be, and whether it is swinging one way or the other. My worry is that it is swinging both ways; I mean, that pro-gun rights people and anti-gun rights people are perhaps both becoming more polarised as the issue comes up again and again.
The Constituton was written and ratified without a Bill of Rights.
The Constitution includes a process explaining how it can be amended.
That process was used to amend the Constitution to include the Bill of Rights.
That Process can be used to amend the Constitution to repeal any part of the Bill of Rights.
Well, as we know, only one amendment has ever been repealed. And a quick look at Wikipedia tells me that even then, there wasn't overwhelming support for it to be repealed.
I think there's more chance of me being made King of France than the 2nd amendment ever getting the boot.
Like I've said before, only Americans can solve American issues.
Well, it was more of a “can it be done” vs a “will it be done” kind of answer.
I still think the Bill of Rights was a mistake because it changed how the Constitution approached the role of government. The old arguments against it still make very good points.
American dakka members can correct me if I'm wrong, but some old machine guns still exist in the USA? You just can't buy or make them anymore?
Not American, but my understanding is that the law changed in about 1986 but was not applied retroactively, so guns sold before then are still completely legal. Was reading earlier, apparently there are something like a dozen completely legal M134 miniguns in civilian hands in the US. And no, they don't know who owns them - but they'd have to be rich. Um, like this shooter was. Anyone thinking Vegas got off lightly???
American dakka members can correct me if I'm wrong, but some old machine guns still exist in the USA? You just can't buy or make them anymore?
Not American, but my understanding is that the law changed in about 1986 but was not applied retroactively, so guns sold before then are still completely legal. Was reading earlier, apparently there are something like a dozen completely legal M134 miniguns in civilian hands in the US. And no, they don't know who owns them - but they'd have to be rich. Um, like this shooter was. Anyone thinking Vegas got off lightly???
I think the vast amounts of ammo needed, and the cost of that ammo, would probably stop 99% of Americans from buying a machine-gun, even if they were legal.
Yeah the article I read suggested a minigun would set you back the best part of half a million dollars, and would cost about 3000 bucks per minute of fire in ammo.
d-usa wrote: The Constituton was written and ratified without a Bill of Rights.
The Constitution includes a process explaining how it can be amended.
That process was used to amend the Constitution to include the Bill of Rights.
That Process can be used to amend the Constitution to repeal any part of the Bill of Rights.
Frazzled wrote: Anti gunners are always terrified at the prospect of following the established procedures to amend the Constitution.
I am all for going this route. Have been the whole time. I believe I have made myself clear on the subject quite a bit. The problem is that it requires a good deal of work to accomplish and we all know congress avoids work like cockroaches avoid light.
Crispy78 wrote: Yeah the article I read suggested a minigun would set you back the best part of half a million dollars, and would cost about 3000 bucks per minute of fire in ammo.
You could however buy a Gatling gun reproduction for about $16,000. That isn't even classified as a automatic, technically it's a bolt action per ATF regulations, so no class 3 permit required.
Frazzled wrote: Anti gunners are always terrified at the prospect of following the established procedures to amend the Constitution.
I am all for going this route. Have been the whole time. I believe I have made myself clear on the subject quite a bit. The problem is that it requires a good deal of work to accomplish and we all know congress avoids work like cockroaches avoid light.
We also know there is one side of the aisle that is bought and paid for in large part thanks to the NRA--so it wouldn't happen.
Pretending that "anti-gunners are terrified" of trying to use established procedures is ridiculous. You can't have established procedures function properly when half of a two-party system has been hijacked with obstructionists that work so hard to keep the other party(when they're the minority or the majority) from being able to use those procedures in good faith.
Frazzled wrote: Anti gunners are always terrified at the prospect of following the established procedures to amend the Constitution.
Why do that when they can take nibbles here and there, slowly erode the rights over time so people never really notice.
Because that way the legality can challenged and be heard before SCOTUS, and SCOTUS can make a range of decisions, including the possibility that militia doesn’t mean “everybody”.
Basically the same thing that happens with abortion every single year.
Well, the difference is that there isn't an explicitly stated right to an abortion. Heck, it's covered under a right to privacy, which itself is only implied by the 4th, 5th, and 14th amendments. In my opinion that ruling was a bit of a stretch.
As to what can be done, I don't know. No-one does. The debate on gun control is horrible on all sides. The left focuses on scary sounding weapons and challenges opponents with moral arguments 'how can you justify this awful, black gun with a bayonet stock'. The right trades in dismissive arguments based on irrelevant technical details,
I'm going to take some issue with this part of your statement, mainly for the fact that those technical details often are not necessarily irrelevant. Having the wrong kind of grip or a pinhole drilled in the wrong place or a sear that slips too easily or a barrel that's a half inch too short is the difference between being perfectly legal and a 10 year stint in club fed. You get the technical detail arguments because they matter. The technical details are a legal minefield, putting a vertical foregrip on a large pistol makes it an NFA controlled item, but an angled foregrip does not and is perfectly fine, the ATF has, in the past, issued official letters declaring pieces of string to constitute a machinegun as a result of technical details. Want to know if a rifle is legal in California? Better start learning your technical details. If the arguments sound like they're getting into weird technical details, it's because they have very real effects in law that people have to be aware of and deal with constantly.
Frazzled wrote: Anti gunners are always terrified at the prospect of following the established procedures to amend the Constitution.
Why do that when they can take nibbles here and there, slowly erode the rights over time so people never really notice.
there's already 20,000 gun laws on the books, what harm would a few more to close the gun show loop holes, and mandatory waiting periods really do?
Not selling guns to people who need a caretaker to manage their funds and run their households seems like a no brainer. Yet trump revoked that one.
Not selling guns to people on the terrorist watch list seems like another good idea, except to trump and the NRA. I get why some dakka members are against that idea, and that can easily be fixed by allowing people to contact the fbi and ask if they're on the list and provide a means to contest it.
I'm the only one saying repeal the 2nd, as I don't think americans are mature enough to handle guns anymore. everyone else just wants rational gun laws so you can't walk into a store during a lunch break and buy enough weapons to shoot up your office or yourself.
Frazzled wrote: Anti gunners are always terrified at the prospect of following the established procedures to amend the Constitution.
I am all for going this route. Have been the whole time. I believe I have made myself clear on the subject quite a bit. The problem is that it requires a good deal of work to accomplish and we all know congress avoids work like cockroaches avoid light.
We also know there is one side of the aisle that is bought and paid for in large part thanks to the NRA--so it wouldn't happen.
Pretending that "anti-gunners are terrified" of trying to use established procedures is ridiculous. You can't have established procedures function properly when half of a two-party system has been hijacked with obstructionists that work so hard to keep the other party(when they're the minority or the majority) from being able to use those procedures in good faith.
Really? You think that the only reason we haven't repealed the 2nd amendment is because of NRA lobbying money? You're going to completely dismiss the tens of millions of gun owners in states that are predominantly represented in Congress by Republicans? Even Democrats from states that have high rates of gun ownership and strong state protections for gun ownership get strong endorsements from the NRA. Harry Reid has gotten A ratings from the NRA and the Republicans love to hate on Reid. Bernie Sanders' voting record is pro gun because he represents Vermont, one of the most permissive gun ownership states in the country. There are dozens of states that have state constitutions that guarantee state residents the right to own firearms. It's not surprising at all that a majority of the states support keeping a federal constitutional amendment that is essentially the same as clauses in their own state constitutions. You really think that 5% of gun owners paying $40 in annual dues to the NRA has taken over Congress?
Frazzled wrote: Anti gunners are always terrified at the prospect of following the established procedures to amend the Constitution.
Why do that when they can take nibbles here and there, slowly erode the rights over time so people never really notice.
there's already 20,000 gun laws on the books, what harm would a few more to close the gun show loop holes, and mandatory waiting periods really do?
Not selling guns to people who need a caretaker to manage their funds and run their households seems like a no brainer. Yet trump revoked that one.
Not selling guns to people on the terrorist watch list seems like another good idea, except to trump and the NRA. I get why some dakka members are against that idea, and that can easily be fixed by allowing people to contact the fbi and ask if they're on the list and provide a means to contest it.
I'm the only one saying repeal the 2nd, as I don't think americans are mature enough to handle guns anymore. everyone else just wants rational gun laws so you can't walk into a store during a lunch break and buy enough weapons to shoot up your office or yourself.
There is no gun show loop hole to close.
There's no reason to strip constitutionally protected rights away from people because they're bad at math.
The terror watch list itself is a truly awful concept whose implementation is downright tyrannical, the whole watch list and no fly list should be done away with immediately.
Repealing the 2nd amendment would still have a large majority of gun owners in the US living in states that guarantee the right to gun ownership in their state constitutions. That dichotomy already exists in the sense that if I moved to a state like CA or NJ I would be forced to leave some or all of my firearms behind due to the state laws there.
Depressing news once again from America. Meanwhile in the gun-free / gun-controlled countries in Europe, this sort of disgrace is rare... wonder if there's like... some sort of... correlation?
Here's Jim with a pretty easy to follow (NSFW) argument: Here
Frazzled wrote: Anti gunners are always terrified at the prospect of following the established procedures to amend the Constitution.
I am all for going this route. Have been the whole time. I believe I have made myself clear on the subject quite a bit. The problem is that it requires a good deal of work to accomplish and we all know congress avoids work like cockroaches avoid light.
We also know there is one side of the aisle that is bought and paid for in large part thanks to the NRA--so it wouldn't happen.
Pretending that "anti-gunners are terrified" of trying to use established procedures is ridiculous. You can't have established procedures function properly when half of a two-party system has been hijacked with obstructionists that work so hard to keep the other party(when they're the minority or the majority) from being able to use those procedures in good faith.
Really? You think that the only reason we haven't repealed the 2nd amendment is because of NRA lobbying money? You're going to completely dismiss the tens of millions of gun owners in states that are predominantly represented in Congress by Republicans? Even Democrats from states that have high rates of gun ownership and strong state protections for gun ownership get strong endorsements from the NRA. Harry Reid has gotten A ratings from the NRA and the Republicans love to hate on Reid. Bernie Sanders' voting record is pro gun because he represents Vermont, one of the most permissive gun ownership states in the country. There are dozens of states that have state constitutions that guarantee state residents the right to own firearms. It's not surprising at all that a majority of the states support keeping a federal constitutional amendment that is essentially the same as clauses in their own state constitutions. You really think that 5% of gun owners paying $40 in annual dues to the NRA has taken over Congress?
.
You keep flinging out the number of members the NRA has as if it actually means something. The number of members a group has is irrelevant to the amount of influence that group can have. Arbys employs more people than the coal industry, but who has more political influence?
Like I said earlier, I have no interest in owning firearms
but I watch youtube gun channels to see old muskets getting fired (military history is a hobby of mine)
and two of the biggest critics of the NRA are Military Arms Channel, and the Yankee Marshall. I think the Marshall would saw off his hands before he ever joined the NRA.
And these guns are obviously pro-gun, pro-2nd.
So yeah, not every gun owner likes the NRA.
Personally, as a neutral observer, and student of American history, I don't like them either. Why? Because during the civil rights era, and back in the day when gun laws were being passed that were designed to stop African-Americans getting their hands on guns, who supported the gun laws?
As to what can be done, I don't know. No-one does. The debate on gun control is horrible on all sides. The left focuses on scary sounding weapons and challenges opponents with moral arguments 'how can you justify this awful, black gun with a bayonet stock'. The right trades in dismissive arguments based on irrelevant technical details,
I'm going to take some issue with this part of your statement, mainly for the fact that those technical details often are not necessarily irrelevant. Having the wrong kind of grip or a pinhole drilled in the wrong place or a sear that slips too easily or a barrel that's a half inch too short is the difference between being perfectly legal and a 10 year stint in club fed. You get the technical detail arguments because they matter. The technical details are a legal minefield, putting a vertical foregrip on a large pistol makes it an NFA controlled item, but an angled foregrip does not and is perfectly fine, the ATF has, in the past, issued official letters declaring pieces of string to constitute a machinegun as a result of technical details. Want to know if a rifle is legal in California? Better start learning your technical details. If the arguments sound like they're getting into weird technical details, it's because they have very real effects in law that people have to be aware of and deal with constantly.
The bizarrely specific nature of these examples is exactly why it is irrelevant, though. No one longing for gun control actually cares whether you have a vertical or angled grip but that's the kind of stuff you end up with when every attempt at altering gun regulation at all is deliberately burried in technical minutiae to avoid the intentions of the legislation. The gun lobby playing RAW rather than RAI, basically.
So Sebster is quite right, much of the debate simply revolves around one side shouting 'we must ban X tomorrow!' without really knowing what X is (usually because that's what TV called it) and the other side looking down their nose and sniffing 'actually, that's already illegal because it is technically defined by this extremely specific detail, you dullards!'. In real terms, one side knows it doesn't know what it's talking about but wants to use the scary sounding terms people know from tv and films and associate with extreme violence or the military whilst the other side knows these technicalities aren't relevant other than to pedants.
I used to think gun control was the answer. My research told me otherwise.
By Leah Libresco October 3 at 3:02 PM Leah Libresco is a statistician and former newswriter at FiveThirtyEight, a data journalism site. She is the author of “Arriving at Amen.”
Before I started researching gun deaths, gun-control policy used to frustrate me. I wished the National Rifle Association would stop blocking common-sense gun-control reforms such as banning assault weapons, restricting silencers, shrinking magazine sizes and all the other measures that could make guns less deadly.
Then, my colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I’d lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence. The best ideas left standing were narrowly tailored interventions to protect subtypes of potential victims, not broad attempts to limit the lethality of guns.
I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain and Australia and concluded that they didn’t prove much about what America’s policy should be. Neither nation experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans. Mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress. And in both Australia and Britain, the gun restrictions had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths.
When I looked at the other oft-praised policies, I found out that no gun owner walks into the store to buy an “assault weapon.” It’s an invented classification that includes any semi-automatic that has two or more features, such as a bayonet mount, a rocket-propelled grenade-launcher mount, a folding stock or a pistol grip. But guns are modular, and any hobbyist can easily add these features at home, just as if they were snapping together Legos.
As for silencers — they deserve that name only in movies, where they reduce gunfire to a soft puick puick. In real life, silencers limit hearing damage for shooters but don’t make gunfire dangerously quiet. An AR-15 with a silencer is about as loud as a jackhammer. Magazine limits were a little more promising, but a practiced shooter could still change magazines so fast as to make the limit meaningless.
As my co-workers and I kept looking at the data, it seemed less and less clear that one broad gun-control restriction could make a big difference. Two-thirds of gun deaths in the United States every year are suicides. Almost no proposed restriction would make it meaningfully harder for people with guns on hand to use them. I couldn't even answer my most desperate question: If I had a friend who had guns in his home and a history of suicide attempts, was there anything I could do that would help?
However, the next-largest set of gun deaths — 1 in 5 — were young men aged 15 to 34, killed in homicides. These men were most likely to die at the hands of other young men, often related to gang loyalties or other street violence. And the last notable group of similar deaths was the 1,700 women murdered per year, usually as the result of domestic violence. Far more people were killed in these ways than in mass-shooting incidents, but few of the popularly floated policies were tailored to serve them.
By the time we published our project, I didn’t believe in many of the interventions I’d heard politicians tout. I was still anti-gun, at least from the point of view of most gun owners, and I don’t want a gun in my home, as I think the risk outweighs the benefits. But I can’t endorse policies whose only selling point is that gun owners hate them. Policies that often seem as if they were drafted by people who have encountered guns only as a figure in a briefing book or an image on the news.
Instead, I found the most hope in more narrowly tailored interventions. Potential suicide victims, women menaced by their abusive partners and kids swept up in street vendettas are all in danger from guns, but they each require different protections.
Older men, who make up the largest share of gun suicides, need better access to people who could care for them and get them help. Women endangered by specific men need to be prioritized by police, who can enforce restraining orders prohibiting these men from buying and owning guns. Younger men at risk of violence need to be identified before they take a life or lose theirs and to be connected to mentors who can help them de-escalate conflicts.
Even the most data-driven practices, such as New Orleans’ plan to identify gang members for intervention based on previous arrests and weapons seizures, wind up more personal than most policies floated. The young men at risk can be identified by an algorithm, but they have to be disarmed one by one, personally — not en masse as though they were all interchangeable. A reduction in gun deaths is most likely to come from finding smaller chances for victories and expanding those solutions as much as possible. We save lives by focusing on a range of tactics to protect the different kinds of potential victims and reforming potential killers, not from sweeping bans focused on the guns themselves.
I'm the only one saying repeal the 2nd, as I don't think americans are mature enough to handle guns anymore.
The vast majority of gun owners have never had an accident with a firearm, let alone intentionally committed killing sprees. I think we're just fine thanks.
Personally, as a neutral observer, and student of American history, I don't like them either. Why? Because during the civil rights era, and back in the day when gun laws were being passed that were designed to stop African-Americans getting their hands on guns, who supported the gun laws?
You guessed it, the NRA.
Yes. But a bigger thing to point out is that at the time the party of gun control(for those same Racist reasons) wasn't the Republican party. Gun control has its roots in racist policies to keep black people unarmed.
Personally, as a neutral observer, and student of American history, I don't like them either. Why? Because during the civil rights era, and back in the day when gun laws were being passed that were designed to stop African-Americans getting their hands on guns, who supported the gun laws?
You guessed it, the NRA.
Yes. But a bigger thing to point out is that at the time the party of gun control(for those same Racist reasons) wasn't the Republican party. Gun control has its roots in racist policies to keep black people unarmed.
Which is only a thing to point out if you're wilfully ignoring the Southern Strategy and the political shift of the 60's like people always do. It's dishonest as hell, and you should know better.
Personally, as a neutral observer, and student of American history, I don't like them either. Why? Because during the civil rights era, and back in the day when gun laws were being passed that were designed to stop African-Americans getting their hands on guns, who supported the gun laws?
You guessed it, the NRA.
Yes. But a bigger thing to point out is that at the time the party of gun control(for those same Racist reasons) wasn't the Republican party. Gun control has its roots in racist policies to keep black people unarmed.
Which is only a thing to point out if you're wilfully ignoring the Southern Strategy and the political shift of the 60's like people always do. It's dishonest as hell, and you should know better.
I'm well aware of political shift. But the same parties are still on the same side of the aisle in terms of gun control. So it seems silly for one side to keep pushing for gun control when it was started for racist reasons, reasons which they now abhor. So why they keep pushing it? They should drop it like a hot potato, tainted fruit and all that.
I'm the only one saying repeal the 2nd, as I don't think americans are mature enough to handle guns anymore.
The vast majority of gun owners have never had an accident with a firearm, let alone intentionally committed killing sprees. I think we're just fine thanks.
I doubt that, 73,505 gun accidents a year (reported) + the 35,000 deaths is a much higher percentage than muslims who are terrorists. So maybe we should end the war on terror as it's statistically meaningless and focus on some gun control.
I'm the only one saying repeal the 2nd, as I don't think americans are mature enough to handle guns anymore.
The vast majority of gun owners have never had an accident with a firearm, let alone intentionally committed killing sprees. I think we're just fine thanks.
I doubt that, 73,505 gun accidents a year (reported) + the 35,000 deaths is a much higher percentage than muslims who are terrorists. So maybe we should end the war on terror as it's statistically meaningless and focus on some gun control.
35,000 deaths. 2/3 of which are suicides and thus have no business being included in your figure.
And even if 100% of those figures were people killing each other with guns, it would still be statistically meaningless. This is a country of 300 million people.
Violence in general is so rare in the US, gun violence specifically is also extremely rare. It's much more common than in some other countries, but in both cases it's extremely rare and statistically insignificant. Violence of all kinds has also been meteorically declining over the last 50 years.
So no, there is no Gun Problem in the US. There isn't even a violence problem. Unless you make some dishonest comparisons with utterly dissimilar countries. Then it's like saying this one place with .00003% of violence is two times as worse as a place with .000015% of violence. Technically true, but its misleading. Both places have really low rates of violence. Differences between them are like rounding errors.
I doubt that, 73,505 gun accidents a year (reported) + the 35,000 deaths is a much higher percentage than muslims who are terrorists. So maybe we should end the war on terror as it's statistically meaningless and focus on some gun control.
seen below, responsible gun owners.
See? Look at all the joy and happiness guns bring to the world, and you want to get rid of them because of some nuts out there with improperly diagnosed mental health issues.
I'm the only one saying repeal the 2nd, as I don't think americans are mature enough to handle guns anymore.
The vast majority of gun owners have never had an accident with a firearm, let alone intentionally committed killing sprees. I think we're just fine thanks.
I doubt that, 73,505 gun accidents a year (reported) + the 35,000 deaths is a much higher percentage than muslims who are terrorists. So maybe we should end the war on terror as it's statistically meaningless and focus on some gun control.
35,000 deaths. 2/3 of which are suicides and thus have no business being included in your figure.
And even if 100% of those figures were people killing each other with guns, it would still be statistically meaningless. This is a country of 300 million people.
Violence in general is so rare in the US, gun violence specifically is also extremely rare. It's much more common than in some other countries, but in both cases it's extremely rare and statistically insignificant. Violence of all kinds has also been meteorically declining over the last 50 years.
So no, there is no Gun Problem in the US. There isn't even a violence problem. Unless you make some dishonest comparisons with utterly dissimilar countries. Then it's like saying this one place with .00003% of violence is two times as worse as a place with .000015% of violence. Technically true, but its misleading. Both places have really low rates of violence. Differences between them are like rounding errors.
It is incredibly callous to call ~60 dead and ~600 wounded a "rounding error" even if it is strictly speaking true. You're essentially saying "it's so few people we shouldn't worry about it."
I suppose "one death is a tragedy but one million (or in this case 60) is merely a statistic" really is a quote some people get behind.
That's one of those articles where I can't honestly tell if I'm supposed to be laughing at the end of it.
It's like the old saying about it's not guns that kill people, but people that kill people. Problem is, we're not doing much about/for the people, either. I said it several pages ago that guns aren't the problem, but how we perceive them. And that leads to ignoring the problems people have. Someone said it in another thread about autism that we show more sympathy for a picture of an orphaned puppy seen on the internet than we do for the human beings in pain that are right in front of us.
I'm the only one saying repeal the 2nd, as I don't think americans are mature enough to handle guns anymore.
The vast majority of gun owners have never had an accident with a firearm, let alone intentionally committed killing sprees. I think we're just fine thanks.
I doubt that, 73,505 gun accidents a year (reported) + the 35,000 deaths is a much higher percentage than muslims who are terrorists. So maybe we should end the war on terror as it's statistically meaningless and focus on some gun control.
35,000 deaths. 2/3 of which are suicides and thus have no business being included in your figure.
And even if 100% of those figures were people killing each other with guns, it would still be statistically meaningless. This is a country of 300 million people.
Violence in general is so rare in the US, gun violence specifically is also extremely rare. It's much more common than in some other countries, but in both cases it's extremely rare and statistically insignificant. Violence of all kinds has also been meteorically declining over the last 50 years.
So no, there is no Gun Problem in the US. There isn't even a violence problem. Unless you make some dishonest comparisons with utterly dissimilar countries. Then it's like saying this one place with .00003% of violence is two times as worse as a place with .000015% of violence. Technically true, but its misleading. Both places have really low rates of violence. Differences between them are like rounding errors.
It is incredibly callous to call ~60 dead and ~600 wounded a "rounding error" even if it is strictly speaking true. You're essentially saying "it's so few people we shouldn't worry about it."
I suppose "one death is a tragedy but one million (or in this case 60) is merely a statistic" really is a quote some people get behind.
It can be both an irrelevant rounding error and still be incredibly sad.
We should go with the hard numbers if we are discussing legislation regarding gun control. Emotion just leads to banning weapons which cause no problems and trampling on constitutional rights, for zero gain.
If a guy jumps off a building and kills himself, it's not the buildings fault. So why is it the fault of guns and gun owners when someone commits murder?
Frazzled wrote: Anti gunners are always terrified at the prospect of following the established procedures to amend the Constitution.
I am all for going this route. Have been the whole time. I believe I have made myself clear on the subject quite a bit. The problem is that it requires a good deal of work to accomplish and we all know congress avoids work like cockroaches avoid light.
We also know there is one side of the aisle that is bought and paid for in large part thanks to the NRA--so it wouldn't happen.
Pretending that "anti-gunners are terrified" of trying to use established procedures is ridiculous. You can't have established procedures function properly when half of a two-party system has been hijacked with obstructionists that work so hard to keep the other party(when they're the minority or the majority) from being able to use those procedures in good faith.
Translation: you don't have the votes so resort to unelected judges.
Frazzled wrote: Anti gunners are always terrified at the prospect of following the established procedures to amend the Constitution.
I am all for going this route. Have been the whole time. I believe I have made myself clear on the subject quite a bit. The problem is that it requires a good deal of work to accomplish and we all know congress avoids work like cockroaches avoid light.
We also know there is one side of the aisle that is bought and paid for in large part thanks to the NRA--so it wouldn't happen.
Pretending that "anti-gunners are terrified" of trying to use established procedures is ridiculous. You can't have established procedures function properly when half of a two-party system has been hijacked with obstructionists that work so hard to keep the other party(when they're the minority or the majority) from being able to use those procedures in good faith.
Translation: you don't have the votes so resort to unelected judges.
What, as opposed to the same body of unelected judges choosing to broaden the 2nd amendment from what it used to be?
I'm the only one saying repeal the 2nd, as I don't think americans are mature enough to handle guns anymore.
The vast majority of gun owners have never had an accident with a firearm, let alone intentionally committed killing sprees. I think we're just fine thanks.
I doubt that, 73,505 gun accidents a year (reported) + the 35,000 deaths is a much higher percentage than muslims who are terrorists. So maybe we should end the war on terror as it's statistically meaningless and focus on some gun control.
35,000 deaths. 2/3 of which are suicides and thus have no business being included in your figure.
And even if 100% of those figures were people killing each other with guns, it would still be statistically meaningless. This is a country of 300 million people.
Violence in general is so rare in the US, gun violence specifically is also extremely rare. It's much more common than in some other countries, but in both cases it's extremely rare and statistically insignificant. Violence of all kinds has also been meteorically declining over the last 50 years.
So no, there is no Gun Problem in the US. There isn't even a violence problem. Unless you make some dishonest comparisons with utterly dissimilar countries. Then it's like saying this one place with .00003% of violence is two times as worse as a place with .000015% of violence. Technically true, but its misleading. Both places have really low rates of violence. Differences between them are like rounding errors.
well we also have yet to add in all the armed robberies, and all other crimes committed with a gun. and if you still find that such a meaningless small number, than you should also agree the war on terrorism is also meaningless and should stop as it hasn't stop terrorism or reduced the acts of terror to zero.
If a guy jumps off a building and kills himself, it's not the buildings fault. So why is it the fault of guns and gun owners when someone commits murder?
And that is such an incredibly small number of people who jump off buildings, yet we put fences up around the tall buildings to try and prevent people from jumping
Wulfmar wrote: Depressing news once again from America. Meanwhile in the gun-free / gun-controlled countries in Europe, this sort of disgrace is rare... wonder if there's like... some sort of... correlation?
Here's Jim with a pretty easy to follow (NSFW) argument: Here
Just so you understand something. There is no difference between the level of insanity it takes to sarin gas bomb a subway...or open fire on a crowd. Literally...this same thing happend in Paris last year. So no - there is no correlation. You have to be freaking crazy to do something like this.
I'm the only one saying repeal the 2nd, as I don't think americans are mature enough to handle guns anymore.
The vast majority of gun owners have never had an accident with a firearm, let alone intentionally committed killing sprees. I think we're just fine thanks.
I doubt that, 73,505 gun accidents a year (reported) + the 35,000 deaths is a much higher percentage than muslims who are terrorists. So maybe we should end the war on terror as it's statistically meaningless and focus on some gun control.
35,000 deaths. 2/3 of which are suicides and thus have no business being included in your figure.
And even if 100% of those figures were people killing each other with guns, it would still be statistically meaningless. This is a country of 300 million people.
Violence in general is so rare in the US, gun violence specifically is also extremely rare. It's much more common than in some other countries, but in both cases it's extremely rare and statistically insignificant. Violence of all kinds has also been meteorically declining over the last 50 years.
So no, there is no Gun Problem in the US. There isn't even a violence problem. Unless you make some dishonest comparisons with utterly dissimilar countries. Then it's like saying this one place with .00003% of violence is two times as worse as a place with .000015% of violence. Technically true, but its misleading. Both places have really low rates of violence. Differences between them are like rounding errors.
It is incredibly callous to call ~60 dead and ~600 wounded a "rounding error" even if it is strictly speaking true. You're essentially saying "it's so few people we shouldn't worry about it."
I suppose "one death is a tragedy but one million (or in this case 60) is merely a statistic" really is a quote some people get behind.
It can be both an irrelevant rounding error and still be incredibly sad.
We should go with the hard numbers if we are discussing legislation regarding gun control. Emotion just leads to banning weapons which cause no problems and trampling on constitutional rights, for zero gain.
If a guy jumps off a building and kills himself, it's not the buildings fault. So why is it the fault of guns and gun owners when someone commits murder?
If a guy jumps off a building and kills himself, it's not the fault of the buildings---but if it keeps happening from that particular building they might start closing down the observation decks to prevent it from happening again or installing other safety measures to prevent that specific building from being used for that purpose. Owners on other buildings might very well adopt those same measures as precautionary measures too.
If you can't understand why people blame firearms and the people who (knowingly or unknowingly) vote with that specific issue being such a key feature of the way they do while whining about how they need their guns to protect themselves from a "tyrannical government"? We're not going to get anywhere in this discussion and it becomes abundantly clear that you are best ignored on this matter.
Not saying that I have all the answers or am immune to criticism for my own stances with regards to firearms, mind you, but I find it absurdly hypocritical that you throw an example out of buildings being used for suicide when it's not unheard of for building owners to adopt measures after events like suicides to prevent their building from becoming associated with people committing suicide.
What, as opposed to the same body of unelected judges choosing to broaden the 2nd amendment from what it used to be?
Don't forget that the party that tends to be so critical of that "body of unelected judges" also did everything they could to prevent their opposition from seating someone, then rushed to fill it as quick as they could while whining about the same tactics they used being turned against them.
I'm the only one saying repeal the 2nd, as I don't think americans are mature enough to handle guns anymore.
The vast majority of gun owners have never had an accident with a firearm, let alone intentionally committed killing sprees. I think we're just fine thanks.
I doubt that, 73,505 gun accidents a year (reported) + the 35,000 deaths is a much higher percentage than muslims who are terrorists. So maybe we should end the war on terror as it's statistically meaningless and focus on some gun control.
35,000 deaths. 2/3 of which are suicides and thus have no business being included in your figure.
And even if 100% of those figures were people killing each other with guns, it would still be statistically meaningless. This is a country of 300 million people.
Violence in general is so rare in the US, gun violence specifically is also extremely rare. It's much more common than in some other countries, but in both cases it's extremely rare and statistically insignificant. Violence of all kinds has also been meteorically declining over the last 50 years.
So no, there is no Gun Problem in the US. There isn't even a violence problem. Unless you make some dishonest comparisons with utterly dissimilar countries. Then it's like saying this one place with .00003% of violence is two times as worse as a place with .000015% of violence. Technically true, but its misleading. Both places have really low rates of violence. Differences between them are like rounding errors.
It is incredibly callous to call ~60 dead and ~600 wounded a "rounding error" even if it is strictly speaking true. You're essentially saying "it's so few people we shouldn't worry about it."
I suppose "one death is a tragedy but one million (or in this case 60) is merely a statistic" really is a quote some people get behind.
It can be both an irrelevant rounding error and still be incredibly sad.
We should go with the hard numbers if we are discussing legislation regarding gun control. Emotion just leads to banning weapons which cause no problems and trampling on constitutional rights, for zero gain.
If a guy jumps off a building and kills himself, it's not the buildings fault. So why is it the fault of guns and gun owners when someone commits murder?
Saying "People have lives and dignity and therefore we should stop killing them." is not an appeal to emotion. It's not supposed to make you feel sad, it's supposed to be a recognition that 600 humans are more important than 600 cows, 600 trees, or 600 pennies - and yes, the right for those 600 people to live unharmed trumps any other rights.
Also, we actually do a gak load to reduce the number of people jumping off of buildings. I would say "roof control" is probably tighter than gun control in the U.S.A.. In fact, to get to the roof of my office building you need a maintenance pass, and the same has been true of most hotels I've been in. Even the "rooftop suite" is usually enclosed and doesn't actually let you up onto the roof where you could jump.
cuda1179 wrote: Well, the difference is that there isn't an explicitly stated right to an abortion.
There isn't an explicitly stated right to posses a handgun, either. The concept of a intrinsic right to own a handgun for for self-defense within the home didn't exist until 2008.
Either you have to accept we can only have laws that do literally what they say, in which case you have no right to an abortion, a firearm disconnected from military service, or a standing army, or you have to accept that we build upon those interpretations over time to extrapolate out modern meanings. You can't pick and choose when it suits you.
Some of the safety measures you reference are dispassionate risk vs. reward. It's not expensive to add a lock to a roof top door, but it prevents unauthorized entry if someone manages to get onto the rooftop. It makes it harder for anyone to come up through the building and break/steal/tamper with any of the (usually very expensive and sensitive) equipment on top of the roof. And it lets the building owner shrug if and when someone does go over the side of the building, even if they're supposed to be up there to begin with, because they get to say "Well, we took EVERY precaution" and then hand off a list of bullet points to police/insurance/lawyers. And actually doing so adds a negligible amount of extra money and cost to the operation of the building. I'd guess less than 1% if I had to wager. Most probably spend more on the branding for their signs.
It's not really comparable in amount of effort and cost versus actual reward. Even when you compare every building that has those kind of measures on them (which still isn't every building in our nation, at least; I can get on top of my three story office building today if I wanted to without a key) All this probably sounds horrible to hear someone say, but I don't see a reasonable solution that would actually FIX the issue without making it worse.
Some of the safety measures you reference are dispassionate risk vs. reward. It's not expensive to add a lock to a roof top door, but it prevents unauthorized entry if someone manages to get onto the rooftop. It makes it harder for anyone to come up through the building and break/steal/tamper with any of the (usually very expensive and sensitive) equipment on top of the roof. And it lets the building owner shrug if and when someone does go over the side of the building, even if they're supposed to be up there to begin with, because they get to say "Well, we took EVERY precaution" and then hand off a list of bullet points to police/insurance/lawyers. And actually doing so adds a negligible amount of extra money and cost to the operation of the building. I'd guess less than 1% if I had to wager. Most probably spend more on the branding for their signs.
It's not really comparable in amount of effort and cost versus actual reward. Even when you compare every building that has those kind of measures on them (which still isn't every building in our nation, at least; I can get on top of my three story office building today if I wanted to without a key) All this probably sounds horrible to hear someone say, but I don't see a reasonable solution that would actually FIX the issue without making it worse.
and considering cost & reward why have a police department if they don't stop crimes? why have a fire department if they don't stop fires?
why have the military fighting terrorists if they can't stop terrorist attacks? billions spent every day for a statistically meaningless number. magnitudes less than homicides.
It's odd the mental gymnastics people go through to discount the loss of lives so they can keep their guns. arguments that are so weird, they seem utterly ridiculous when applied anywhere else.
There's 20,000 reasonable solutions right now for gun violence, and many more reasonable ones that could be added.
cuda1179 wrote: I keep saying it over and over and over again. If you want people to do more background checks, make it free and easily accessible. Do you know how many gun owners would willingly get on board with background checks if they could simply whip out their smart phone and do it for free in 2 minutes? The only reason to limit it to FFL dealers is so that the process for transferring a weapon is too big of a hassle and makes it cost prohibitive. I honestly think that this was intentional to make owning a gun as unattractive as possible. All this does is promote hidden sales.
The problem with background checks is the waiting period, and I understand that. I think it's a fair complaint. I think that can be offset with a pre-approval process, you fill in your form, it confirms you can lawfully get your hands on a gun, and then you just provide your registry number when you bought a gun. The gun owner could then run a quick check against a live registry when you bought a gun. Private sales would be the issue, and the big sticking point. I would think it would be okay to have private sales required to run a check, provided for free by police stations, municipal offices etc, but probably a lot of people would get really angry about that.
But even assuming the above system is workable and reliable (it will have a lot of issues with multiple jurisdictions feeding info in to the system), I'm not sure background checks will do that much. It seems people have settled on background checks just because there's broad support for the idea that something needs to be done, and broad agreement that nothing should be done that inconveniences gun owners too much. What's missing is an idea that background checks will actually do something useful. There's been more than 1,500 mass shootings in the US since Sandy Hook, how many would have been stopped by some kind of background check?
Background checks are required by Federal law, that's why we have the NIC system (https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/nics) it's an electronic system, there is no wait time beyond the time it takes to pull up the website, type in the information and get the response in regards to whether or not the person has a criminal record that would prohibit him/her from owning firearms. It takes minutes at most. If members of Congress or the Federal govt really wanted every gun sale to go through a background check all they need to do is put a portal to the NIC system on the DOJ website so everyone can use it. Then you would never have a private sale without a background check because every citizen could run a NICs check in a few minutes on their smart phone. The DOJ could do that tomorrow, it wouldn't even require any legislative action by congress and it would be a measure that has the support of most gun owners and most importantly it would actually help prevent sales to bad people.
Why isn't this done? Because the dishonesty in the debate over the right to gun ownership is the same dishonesty that is found in every political issue, that the real motivation is to control people, that policy proposals are fraught with euphemisms and spin doctoring designed to make poorly constructed legislative half measures look like political victories. Instead of making the NICS more accessible to people so that more background checks can be run (something everyone supposedly wants) the proposed law is to require every firearm sale to go through a Federal Firearms Licensee (FFL) and maintain the restriction of only allowing FFLs access to NICS. That's not making it easier to run background checks that's making it more burdensome to sell a firearm and forcing purchases to go through govt controlled licensures. It's also a proposed law that has no mechanism attached to it to even measure compliance let alone enforce it.
There is federal gun ownership registry in the US and only a few states require registration of guns and those states that do don't share that information except by specific request from LEOs/etc. There is no database that could be checked that would the govt (federal, state or local) how many guns I own or what guns I own or what guns I have purchased/sold or whom I purchased/sold them from/to. Here in NC I can buy an AR15 from a complete stranger, no background check, no registration, no laws will be broken it will be a perfectly legal purchase. If my grandfather dies in PA and I drive up to PA for the funeral, put his guns in my truck and drive back to NC, no background check, no registration, no laws broken. If I lived in CA and owned a gun that was registered with the state authorities and I moved to NC I wouldn't have to pass a background check or register the gun in NC and no laws would be broken. The only firearms NC even tries (halfheartedly) to regulate are pistols. If you want to buy a pistol you have to obtain a pistol purchase permit from your county sheriff or have a concealed carry permit. If I sold a pistol to a coworker and he/she had a pistol purchase permit we would both sign and put the serial number of the pistol on it but it would only be for our personal records, to show that I didn't sell my pistol illegally and my coworker didn't possess the pistol illegally, neither the county sheriff nor any state authority would be sent a copy because there is no gun registration in NC.
FFLS (gun stores) aren't required to keep records long term either. Every gun sale through an FFL requires ATF form 4473 be filled out but those records aren't kept in any central database (state or federal) and FFLS only have to hold onto them for a set period of time. You can't walk into a gun store and find 4473 forms from 20 years ago sitting in a filing cabinet. And FFLs don't even have to use the NICS for every purchase in every state, in NC anyone with a current concealed carry permit is exempt from the NICS check.
That is the reality in many states, that nobody knows who owns guns or how many or which guns. In that situation passing a law that attempts to force people to do sales through FFLs only is impossible to enforce. If such a law were passed and then I broke that law and bought an AR15 from my neighbor how would the authorities ever know? They wouldn't. Making the NICS available to the public is the best option to increase background checks on gun purchases but since that option empowers people rather than constrains them it doesn't get proposed by Congress or enacted by the DOJ.
Which is only a thing to point out if you're wilfully ignoring the Southern Strategy and the political shift of the 60's like people always do. It's dishonest as hell, and you should know better.
People that bring up the "Southern Strategy" are also dishonest. Yes, a couple Republicans did that, but it wasn't the whole of the party. The South started to turn Republican in 1955, ten years before Republicans rammed the Civil Rights act through against Democratic opposition. That was because more industry was being introduced, not because of an appeal to racists. Also, the South didn't become a Republican majority until 1991, and I doubt it took racists 30 years to notice "racist appeal". Also, only two former democrats turned republican, so that kind of shoots down that theory.
As to what can be done, I don't know. No-one does. The debate on gun control is horrible on all sides. The left focuses on scary sounding weapons and challenges opponents with moral arguments 'how can you justify this awful, black gun with a bayonet stock'. The right trades in dismissive arguments based on irrelevant technical details,
I'm going to take some issue with this part of your statement, mainly for the fact that those technical details often are not necessarily irrelevant. Having the wrong kind of grip or a pinhole drilled in the wrong place or a sear that slips too easily or a barrel that's a half inch too short is the difference between being perfectly legal and a 10 year stint in club fed. You get the technical detail arguments because they matter. The technical details are a legal minefield, putting a vertical foregrip on a large pistol makes it an NFA controlled item, but an angled foregrip does not and is perfectly fine, the ATF has, in the past, issued official letters declaring pieces of string to constitute a machinegun as a result of technical details. Want to know if a rifle is legal in California? Better start learning your technical details. If the arguments sound like they're getting into weird technical details, it's because they have very real effects in law that people have to be aware of and deal with constantly.
The bizarrely specific nature of these examples is exactly why it is irrelevant, though. No one longing for gun control actually cares whether you have a vertical or angled grip but that's the kind of stuff you end up with when every attempt at altering gun regulation at all is deliberately burried in technical minutiae to avoid the intentions of the legislation. The gun lobby playing RAW rather than RAI, basically.
So Sebster is quite right, much of the debate simply revolves around one side shouting 'we must ban X tomorrow!' without really knowing what X is (usually because that's what TV called it) and the other side looking down their nose and sniffing 'actually, that's already illegal because it is technically defined by this extremely specific detail, you dullards!'. In real terms, one side knows it doesn't know what it's talking about but wants to use the scary sounding terms people know from tv and films and associate with extreme violence or the military whilst the other side knows these technicalities aren't relevant other than to pedants.
Nope. You're both still wrong. Vaktathi correctly pointed out that these specifics are the content of the gun control laws that gun control advocating politicians pass. They're the law. You can't deal with gun control and gun control laws by refusing to acknowledge the content of the gun control laws that are passed. It wasn't the gun lobby that decided that barrel shrouds are a key feature to "assault weapons" it was the Senators and Representatives that wanted the gun control legislation passed that chose that specific language. If the gun lobby had control over the Assault Weapons Ban it wouldn't have been passed at all. The gun lobby didn't write California's restrictions on firearms, California politicians that want gun control did and they did a horrible job of it but that's the law in CA and it's typical of what gets passed by "gun control advocates." You can't blame the gun lobby for gun control advocates being woefully ignorant of the subject they seek to address. If gun control advocates want "common sense gun laws" then they need the gun control measures they've passed and proposed to actually make common sense. It wasn't the gun lobby that told the American people that rifles that have both barrel shrouds AND bayonet lugs are too dangerous to be privately owned. You want better discussions and more progress then you need to convince the side that keeps proposing overtly ignorant laws to offer smarter legislation.
The bizarrely specific nature of these examples is exactly why it is irrelevant, though.
Theyre not all bizzarely specific. Check out the CA AWB flowchart for example, a major minefield to navigate.
No one longing for gun control actually cares whether you have a vertical or angled grip but that's the kind of stuff you end up with when every attempt at altering gun regulation at all is deliberately burried in technical minutiae to avoid the intentions of the legislation. The gun lobby playing RAW rather than RAI, basically.
grips of different angles have been a thing for centuries, thats not the gun industry playing coy, its an artefact of poorly thought out legislation resulting in awkward outcomes, and yes, the ATF does care.
Sure, sometimes the gun industry does finagle with stuff an play RAW with it, absolutely, but this is hardly the case in all instances.
So Sebster is quite right, much of the debate simply revolves around one side shouting 'we must ban X tomorrow!' without really knowing what X is (usually because that's what TV called it) and the other side looking down their nose and sniffing 'actually, that's already illegal because it is technically defined by this extremely specific detail, you dullards!'. In real terms, one side knows it doesn't know what it's talking about but wants to use the scary sounding terms people know from tv and films and associate with extreme violence or the military whilst the other side knows these technicalities aren't relevant other than to pedants.
the technicalities are relevant because they make the distinction between legal and 10 years in club fed. When we move away from them, we either get into legal jeapordy, or we get into definitions so broad as to be impractical. When you try to define "assault rifle" beyond the commonly accepted "pedantic" definition, we get stuff like the Assault Weapons bans that quickly turn into checklists of irrelevant features in an attempt at redefinition.
Yes, there is an element of pedantry to it, but that pedantry is learned and expressed because it is necessary. A hole being drilled in the wrong place can turn a legal semi auto gun into a machinegun, IWI got in trouble for this relatively recently. They imported Galil receivers with the autosear pin hole drilled. There was no auto sear, the internals would not function to provide full auto fire with an autosear even if it existed, but just having the pinhole drilled meant they had to be recalled and destroyed as illegal machineguns. That pedantry is learned because swapping commonly available parts on lego-like AR15's has different legal consequences depending on what configuration you originally bought it in despite the end products being identical. That pedantry comes out because the number of parts of a weapon that are made in the US or not if it has certain features matters, such that simply swapping a US made magazine for an Italian or Spanish or German magazine can make it illegal.
The pedantry is a product of the legal environment that can have life altering consequences for *not* being pedantic, often for things with no meaningful safety value.
Your own link places the US at number 32 and Sweden at 38, depending on sources. Comparisons between countries in this sort of statistic is always really tricky
Your own link places the US at number 32 and Sweden at 38, depending on sources. Comparisons between countries in this sort of statistic is always really tricky
I didn't even see that second list but that is an average from 1985 to 2017. The first list is 2015-2017. The US 12.6 did not change during that period but the 2015-2017 number for Sweden increased by .7 in that time period. So no very significant change.
What is important here when looking at these numbers is - gun availability does not seem to increase rate of suicide. These ofc are numbers about completed suicide. It would be interesting to see attempted suicide rate by country but I can't find the statistics.
and considering cost & reward why have a police department if they don't stop crimes? why have a fire department if they don't stop fires?
I'd argue that it's a common misperception that it is the role of the police and fire departments to prevent those things in the first place. That's a good part of the problem. If you think they do, then you should attack someone or set something on fire and see what happens.
why have the military fighting terrorists if they can't stop terrorist attacks? billions spent every day for a statistically meaningless number. magnitudes less than homicides.
Frankly, I agree with you here. My only conclusion is that the purpose of the exercise is something other than preventing terrorist attacks.
It's odd the mental gymnastics people go through to discount the loss of lives so they can keep their guns. arguments that are so weird, they seem utterly ridiculous when applied anywhere else.
There's 20,000 reasonable solutions right now for gun violence, and many more reasonable ones that could be added.
and considering cost & reward why have a police department if they don't stop crimes? why have a fire department if they don't stop fires?
I'd argue that it's a common misperception that it is the role of the police and fire departments to prevent those things in the first place. That's a good part of the problem. If you think they do, then you should attack someone or set something on fire and see what happens.
Indeed. Police and Firemen are there to deal with the aftermath of crimes and fires. At best, a policeman might get very very very lucky and catch a criminal in the act once in a blue moon while he's tooling around, but that wasn't prevention, it was fast response to a crime in progress. But Firemen certainly don't prevent fires, they just put them out once they start.
Police respond after the fact, but they also have a deterrent factor by patrolling, community interaction, and education.
Fire Departments respond after the fact, but then aspnhave a preventative factor by enforcing building codes, inspections, community interaction, and education.
and considering cost & reward why have a police department if they don't stop crimes? why have a fire department if they don't stop fires?
I'd argue that it's a common misperception that it is the role of the police and fire departments to prevent those things in the first place. That's a good part of the problem. If you think they do, then you should attack someone or set something on fire and see what happens.
Indeed. Police and Firemen are there to deal with the aftermath of crimes and fires. At best, a policeman might get very very very lucky and catch a criminal in the act once in a blue moon while he's tooling around, but that wasn't prevention, it was fast response to a crime in progress. But Firemen certainly don't prevent fires, they just put them out once they start.
Police do prevent crimes though. Just by existing people decide not to commit a crime because they might get caught.
I used to think gun control was the answer. My research told me otherwise.
By Leah Libresco October 3 at 3:02 PM Leah Libresco is a statistician and former newswriter at FiveThirtyEight, a data journalism site. She is the author of “Arriving at Amen.”
Before I started researching gun deaths, gun-control policy used to frustrate me. I wished the National Rifle Association would stop blocking common-sense gun-control reforms such as banning assault weapons, restricting silencers, shrinking magazine sizes and all the other measures that could make guns less deadly.
Then, my colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I’d lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence. The best ideas left standing were narrowly tailored interventions to protect subtypes of potential victims, not broad attempts to limit the lethality of guns.
I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain and Australia and concluded that they didn’t prove much about what America’s policy should be. Neither nation experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans. Mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress. And in both Australia and Britain, the gun restrictions had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths.
When I looked at the other oft-praised policies, I found out that no gun owner walks into the store to buy an “assault weapon.” It’s an invented classification that includes any semi-automatic that has two or more features, such as a bayonet mount, a rocket-propelled grenade-launcher mount, a folding stock or a pistol grip. But guns are modular, and any hobbyist can easily add these features at home, just as if they were snapping together Legos.
As for silencers — they deserve that name only in movies, where they reduce gunfire to a soft puick puick. In real life, silencers limit hearing damage for shooters but don’t make gunfire dangerously quiet. An AR-15 with a silencer is about as loud as a jackhammer. Magazine limits were a little more promising, but a practiced shooter could still change magazines so fast as to make the limit meaningless.
As my co-workers and I kept looking at the data, it seemed less and less clear that one broad gun-control restriction could make a big difference. Two-thirds of gun deaths in the United States every year are suicides. Almost no proposed restriction would make it meaningfully harder for people with guns on hand to use them. I couldn't even answer my most desperate question: If I had a friend who had guns in his home and a history of suicide attempts, was there anything I could do that would help?
However, the next-largest set of gun deaths — 1 in 5 — were young men aged 15 to 34, killed in homicides. These men were most likely to die at the hands of other young men, often related to gang loyalties or other street violence. And the last notable group of similar deaths was the 1,700 women murdered per year, usually as the result of domestic violence. Far more people were killed in these ways than in mass-shooting incidents, but few of the popularly floated policies were tailored to serve them.
By the time we published our project, I didn’t believe in many of the interventions I’d heard politicians tout. I was still anti-gun, at least from the point of view of most gun owners, and I don’t want a gun in my home, as I think the risk outweighs the benefits. But I can’t endorse policies whose only selling point is that gun owners hate them. Policies that often seem as if they were drafted by people who have encountered guns only as a figure in a briefing book or an image on the news.
Instead, I found the most hope in more narrowly tailored interventions. Potential suicide victims, women menaced by their abusive partners and kids swept up in street vendettas are all in danger from guns, but they each require different protections.
Older men, who make up the largest share of gun suicides, need better access to people who could care for them and get them help. Women endangered by specific men need to be prioritized by police, who can enforce restraining orders prohibiting these men from buying and owning guns. Younger men at risk of violence need to be identified before they take a life or lose theirs and to be connected to mentors who can help them de-escalate conflicts.
Even the most data-driven practices, such as New Orleans’ plan to identify gang members for intervention based on previous arrests and weapons seizures, wind up more personal than most policies floated. The young men at risk can be identified by an algorithm, but they have to be disarmed one by one, personally — not en masse as though they were all interchangeable. A reduction in gun deaths is most likely to come from finding smaller chances for victories and expanding those solutions as much as possible. We save lives by focusing on a range of tactics to protect the different kinds of potential victims and reforming potential killers, not from sweeping bans focused on the guns themselves.
Nope. You're both still wrong. Vaktathi correctly pointed out that these specifics are the content of the gun control laws that gun control advocating politicians pass. They're the law. You can't deal with gun control and gun control laws by refusing to acknowledge the content of the gun control laws that are passed. It wasn't the gun lobby that decided that barrel shrouds are a key feature to "assault weapons" it was the Senators and Representatives that wanted the gun control legislation passed that chose that specific language. If the gun lobby had control over the Assault Weapons Ban it wouldn't have been passed at all. The gun lobby didn't write California's restrictions on firearms, California politicians that want gun control did and they did a horrible job of it but that's the law in CA and it's typical of what gets passed by "gun control advocates." You can't blame the gun lobby for gun control advocates being woefully ignorant of the subject they seek to address. If gun control advocates want "common sense gun laws" then they need the gun control measures they've passed and proposed to actually make common sense. It wasn't the gun lobby that told the American people that rifles that have both barrel shrouds AND bayonet lugs are too dangerous to be privately owned. You want better discussions and more progress then you need to convince the side that keeps proposing overtly ignorant laws to offer smarter legislation.
Vaktathi wrote:
Spoiler:
the technicalities are relevant because they make the distinction between legal and 10 years in club fed. When we move away from them, we either get into legal jeapordy, or we get into definitions so broad as to be impractical. When you try to define "assault rifle" beyond the commonly accepted "pedantic" definition, we get stuff like the Assault Weapons bans that quickly turn into checklists of irrelevant features in an attempt at redefinition.
Yes, there is an element of pedantry to it, but that pedantry is learned and expressed because it is necessary. A hole being drilled in the wrong place can turn a legal semi auto gun into a machinegun, IWI got in trouble for this relatively recently. They imported Galil receivers with the autosear pin hole drilled. There was no auto sear, the internals would not function to provide full auto fire with an autosear even if it existed, but just having the pinhole drilled meant they had to be recalled and destroyed as illegal machineguns. That pedantry is learned because swapping commonly available parts on lego-like AR15's has different legal consequences depending on what configuration you originally bought it in despite the end products being identical. That pedantry comes out because the number of parts of a weapon that are made in the US or not if it has certain features matters, such that simply swapping a US made magazine for an Italian or Spanish or German magazine can make it illegal.
I'll respond to these together as they misunderstand my meaning in the same way.
I did not say that the gun industry invented particular new components to dodge legislation (I'm sure it does like every other industry, but I wouldn't know specifics). I also didn't say that small technicalities* are legally irrelevant. I don't think I implied these things either, and certainly didn't mean to. Perhaps it would be clearest to say they are ideologically irrelevant. In general terms, those who want tight restrictions on guns only see 'machine guns' or 'assault weapons' or 'shotguns' or 'pistols' or whatever. Whether a forward grip on a particular firearm is angled a few degrees this way or that is in no way crucial to them. More restrictions on guns are the end goal, it doesn't really matter whether those restrictions only effect small or even irrelevant components of a given weapon, so long as there are more. Meanwhile, the gun enthusiast may well see strict and important differences between firearms umbrella terms, and feel passionately about subddivisions within those, but they're not likely to feel that these technicalities are so ideologically fundamental that legislation should rest upon them.
Ergo, we have team A demanding restrictions on things they don't fully understand, and team B obsessing over the technical definitions of those terms. Both teams know full well that the terms themselves are totally irrelevant to the intended outcomes of legislation (RAI), but you end up with actual bills (RAW) that fail to achieve what team A wants and present team B with a bunch of daft hoops to jump through.
*or that percieved to be small technicalities, at least. Some may well make massive differences in terms of function or efficiency, for example, but they appear as minute issues relevant only to pedants to the majority of onlookers, and are almost certainly such to those who desire substantial restriction on firearms availability.
So apparently the girlfriend/room mate was picked up at LAX this morning
Still a weird situation, for all accounts the shooter was a rich old white guy, who regularly spent $10s of thousands of dollars gamblings and had no reported debts
Nukes are considered 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' and they are prohibited for civilians.
Just like the pressure bombs by that Boston massacre are considered to be WMDs... those are prohibited.
There is, as far as I know, actually not one single law on the books prohibiting the ownership of a thermonuclear weapon, as the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 has been amended to allow for ownership of fissile material by private entities.. There are however material handling laws on the books for many of it's components. Several people at one point or another have built their own breeder reactors, including the Boy Scouts of America (What fething merit badge is THAT?) capable of enriching radioactive materials. The only thing you have to have to own one though is a Destructive Device permit, to cover the explosives that merge the sub-critical masses of fissile material. As far as i know, the only ICBM in private hands is the scud + launcher sold as part of the Littlefield Collection a few years back, and it's warhead is conventional.
My bad, it's when you criminally *use it* that's prohibited 18 U.S.C. 2332A. <= same law that was used to prosecute the boster bombers.
Ergo, we have team A demanding restrictions on things they don't fully understand, and team B obsessing over the technical definitions of those terms. Both teams know full well that the terms themselves are totally irrelevant to the intended outcomes of legislation (RAI), but you end up with actual bills (RAW) that fail to achieve what team A wants and present team B with a bunch of daft hoops to jump through.
*or that percieved to be small technicalities, at least. Some may well make massive differences in terms of function or efficiency, for example, but they appear as minute issues relevant only to pedants to the majority of onlookers, and are almost certainly such to those who desire substantial restriction on firearms availability.
Sounds to me like team A Really should get their collective heads out of their caves and put some effort into research. no better way to absolutely destroy the opposition if they dont have anything to cling onto.
I’m getting pretty tired of the “guns don’t make a difference, you can kill in other ways, 9/11 didn’t use guns” posts on Facebook.
It’s the best argument in favor of getting rid of the 2nd Amendment. If guns don’t make it easier to kill people, then you don’t need guns to protect yourself from s tyrannical government.
But guns make it easier to kill people, that’s why we give them to cops and soldiers. That’s why I carry a gun, to make it as easy as possible for me to kill someone if I need to protect myself or my family.
d-usa wrote: I’m getting pretty tired of the “guns don’t make a difference, you can kill in other ways, 9/11 didn’t use guns” posts on Facebook.
It’s the best argument in favor of getting rid of the 2nd Amendment. If guns don’t make it easier to kill people, then you don’t need guns to protect yourself from s tyrannical government.
But guns make it easier to kill people, that’s why we give them to cops and soldiers. That’s why I carry a gun, to make it as easy as possible for me to kill someone if I need to protect myself or my family.
True, I dont think the guy could have killed 59 and wounded over 500 with a knife
Maybe if the knife had a " bumpstab handle" installed?
Anyway, reports are that he had "sent away" his girlfriend before this. Was he afraid she would find out what he was up to and try to stop him? If what he wanted to do was so important for him to take all these steps, then why isn't there some letter or something from him to explain it? Unless he just wanted to troll the world, he had to have had a reason, but the whole point of doing this kind of thing is lost if you keep your reasons a secret.
d-usa wrote: I’m getting pretty tired of the “guns don’t make a difference, you can kill in other ways, 9/11 didn’t use guns” posts on Facebook.
It’s the best argument in favor of getting rid of the 2nd Amendment. If guns don’t make it easier to kill people, then you don’t need guns to protect yourself from s tyrannical government.
But guns make it easier to kill people, that’s why we give them to cops and soldiers. That’s why I carry a gun, to make it as easy as possible for me to kill someone if I need to protect myself or my family.
True, I dont think the guy could have killed 59 and wounded over 500 with a knife
He could have used his planes, he could have used a bomb in a car, he could have used a lot of different things. He obviously had motivation and the funding to kill people in large numbers however he desired. And I won’t deny that.
But it’s easier to get guns and rifles and ammo than any of those options.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I think it’s just easier to handwave this event away by saying “he could have killed them any which way” than it is to admit “this is the price we pay for something that I think is really important”.
d-usa wrote: I’m getting pretty tired of the “guns don’t make a difference, you can kill in other ways, 9/11 didn’t use guns” posts on Facebook.
It’s the best argument in favor of getting rid of the 2nd Amendment. If guns don’t make it easier to kill people, then you don’t need guns to protect yourself from s tyrannical government.
But guns make it easier to kill people, that’s why we give them to cops and soldiers. That’s why I carry a gun, to make it as easy as possible for me to kill someone if I need to protect myself or my family.
True, I dont think the guy could have killed 59 and wounded over 500 with a knife
He could have used his planes, he could have used a bomb in a car, he could have used a lot of different things. He obviously had motivation and the funding to kill people in large numbers however he desired. And I won’t deny that.
But it’s easier to get guns and rifles and ammo than any of those options.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I think it’s just easier to handwave this event away by saying “he could have killed them any which way” than it is to admit “this is the price we pay for something that I think is really important”.
He certainly could of just driven into the crowed in some car. and car is really easy to get.
Anyway, reports are that he had "sent away" his girlfriend before this. Was he afraid she would find out what he was up to and try to stop him? If what he wanted to do was so important for him to take all these steps, then why isn't there some letter or something from him to explain it? Unless he just wanted to troll the world, he had to have had a reason, but the whole point of doing this kind of thing is lost if you keep your reasons a secret.
Apparently also wired $100,000 to the philipines/thailand (unsure which) while she was there right before the incident.
Anyway, reports are that he had "sent away" his girlfriend before this. Was he afraid she would find out what he was up to and try to stop him? If what he wanted to do was so important for him to take all these steps, then why isn't there some letter or something from him to explain it? Unless he just wanted to troll the world, he had to have had a reason, but the whole point of doing this kind of thing is lost if you keep your reasons a secret.
Apparently also wired $100,000 to the philipines/thailand (unsure which) while she was there right before the incident.
Anyway, reports are that he had "sent away" his girlfriend before this. Was he afraid she would find out what he was up to and try to stop him? If what he wanted to do was so important for him to take all these steps, then why isn't there some letter or something from him to explain it? Unless he just wanted to troll the world, he had to have had a reason, but the whole point of doing this kind of thing is lost if you keep your reasons a secret.
Apparently also wired $100,000 to the philipines/thailand (unsure which) while she was there right before the incident.
Sugar daddy?
According to the brother he was a multi-millionare property investor and accountant. Guy was loaded judging by his casino history.
If she's innocent and didn't know what he was planning, the money could have been a sort of "sorry about all the crap you're about to go through" gift.
Tannhauser42 wrote: If she's innocent and didn't know what he was planning, the money could have been a sort of "sorry about all the crap you're about to go through" gift.
So he is super loaded. That is interesting. I bet his autopsy reveals some kind of terminal illness. Can't save himself will all his money so he shoots up a festival to get back at the world for doing him so wrong.
With regard to the argument that the 2nd amendment is needed to fight off tyrannical governments, it's an argument I'm 50/50 on to be honest.
Twice, my country tried to kill the American nation (1776, 1812) and of course the USA had a battle for national survival in 1861, so there's some merit in saying the 2nd was needed to stop that.
But on the other hand, and this is a drum I've banged many a time before, I would argue that in many respects, the tyrannical government is already here.
As far as I'm concerned, the 4th amednment is dead, buried, and we're back home having a memorial service and awkwardly sharing anecdotes about it.
The 1st amendment is under state of constant siege, and the 5th looks like it's going the way of the 4th.
And what has the American reaction been to all this? A shrug of the shoulders.
Now, my own country is going a similar way, as ancient British rights seem to be going out the window, but nobody can seriously argue that the 2nd is an effective counter against tyranny, because nobody seems to give two hoots about their rights going up in smoke.
Frazzled wrote: Anti gunners are always terrified at the prospect of following the established procedures to amend the Constitution.
Why do that when they can take nibbles here and there, slowly erode the rights over time so people never really notice.
there's already 20,000 gun laws on the books, what harm would a few more to close the gun show loop holes, and mandatory waiting periods really do?
Gun show loop holes doesn't exist.
As for mandatory waiting periods... I'm ambivalent to that. It won't do what you think it would...
Not selling guns to people who need a caretaker to manage their funds and run their households seems like a no brainer. Yet trump revoked that one.
Trump restored due process in this case. You can still be adjudicated in front of a judge to determine if your mental illness should prohibit your from purchasing/own weapons.
Not selling guns to people on the terrorist watch list seems like another good idea, except to trump and the NRA.
Also ACLU and other prominent groups objected to this.
I get why some dakka members are against that idea, and that can easily be fixed by allowing people to contact the fbi and ask if they're on the list and provide a means to contest it.
The issue is simply that its still exceedingly difficult to get your name OFF the list. Some Congress critters found themselves on this list!
Now... the "no fly" list? We can talk about this... as long as there are robust procedures to review/clean this list up.
I'm the only one saying repeal the 2nd, as I don't think americans are mature enough to handle guns anymore. everyone else just wants rational gun laws so you can't walk into a store during a lunch break and buy enough weapons to shoot up your office or yourself.
)
But then I don't know, and would like to hear the response you get. Much kudos to you for going to the FBI for clarification.
