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Obviously this is really anecdotal, but right near my job is a sporting goods store that sells firearms. In the 8 years I've worked there, they've gotten broken into after hours and had firearms stolen 5 times. I think at some point, they become partially responsible for all those guns that walked. I don't really have a solution, just an observation.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Smacks wrote:
My point is, lawfully owned guns can be stolen and so become unlawfully owned guns. Obviously it's difficult to find accurate statistics on this, but a quick browse around on google suggest a fair sized portion of criminals acquire their guns by stealing them (often from friends and family).

So what is your solution?

Do I need to have a solution? I'm just trying to look at the problem.

Ideally, I would like to reduce the number of people who choose to turn to crime in the first place. I think things like better eduction, higher standards of living, more social mobility, reducing the poverty gap, better mental health care, more rights for tennants etc, etc... Would all help to reduce crime.

There are probably a lot of ways to make guns more secure. Maybe in the future we could have the Judge Dredd style finger printing. I've also seen combination locks of various types that prevent the gun being used (maybe not good for a quick draw), but worth thinking about.

Of course, another solution is not have guns kept in homes where they can be stolen in the first place. Obviously that's not one you're going to like

 Ouze wrote:
Obviously this is really anecdotal, but right near my job is a sporting goods store that sells firearms. In the 8 years I've worked there, they've gotten broken into after hours and had firearms stolen 5 times. I think at some point, they become partially responsible for all those guns that walked. I don't really have a solution, just an observation.

Anecdotal too but I live near several sports stores that have all guns locked up, and trigger locks in place. None have been broken into. Same with the gun store near by.
So out of 8 years, or 2920days, there have been 5 break ins. That is 0.17% of the time the store has existed in those 8 years. How does that compare to similar stores? At what point do they become responsible? How are they responsible? Were their actions negligent?


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 Smacks wrote:
Do I need to have a solution? I'm just trying to look at the problem.

Ideally, I would like to reduce the number of people who choose to turn to crime in the first place. I think things like better eduction, higher standards of living, more social mobility, reducing the poverty gap, better mental health care, more rights for tennants etc, etc... Would all help to reduce crime.

You can do all that without interfering with a person's lawful right to bear arms

 Smacks wrote:
There are probably a lot of ways to make guns more secure. Maybe in the future we could have the Judge Dredd style finger printing. I've also seen combination locks with prevent the gun being used (maybe not good for a quick draw), but worth thinking about.

You're assuming that people don't take precautions storing their firearms

 Smacks wrote:
Of course, another solution is not have guns kept in homes where they can be stolen in the first place. Obviously that's not one you're going to like

So to prevent a small number of thefts of guns we're going to affect millions of law abiding citizens? Of course that will be objected to, it's like making it harder for sober people to own a car because of drink drivers.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
You're assuming that people don't take precautions storing their firearms

I know that some do, and there is pressure for people to be more educated about that, which is good. Obviously some don't. Perhaps if at least 'owning' a trigger lock was a legal requirement then more people would use them.

 Smacks wrote:
Of course, another solution is not have guns kept in homes where they can be stolen in the first place. Obviously that's not one you're going to like

So to prevent a small number of thefts of guns we're going to affect millions of law abiding citizens? Of course that will be objected to, it's like making it harder for sober people to own a car because of drink drivers.

 Asherian Command wrote:
I would look at freakeconomics and some other correlational studies. I mean there is a likely cause that there was a drop of crime because of either school being more widely accessible or that there are more aboritions.

The Freakonomics abortion theory is, well, extremely silly. If nothing else, it relies on the assumption that people only start attempting petty crime when they turn 18.

That's kind of the thing with Freakonomics - you have to take it all with a heaping dose of salt, think about it and look up the claimed sources, because while there are good and original ideas in there, there's also plenty of stuff that's very silly and some that's simply fictitious.

 Smacks wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
You're assuming that people don't take precautions storing their firearms

I know that some do, and there is pressure for people to be more educated about that, which is good. Obviously some don't. Perhaps if at least 'owning' a trigger lock was a legal requirement then more people would use them.

Will having breathalyzer technology in a vehicle be mandated too?

 Smacks wrote:
Well you have to weigh it up. Only a very small number of guns ever get used in defense as well. If 10% get stolen and used by criminals, and 2% get used in preventing crimes then that would give me pause for thought.

That omits every other reason why people own firearms.
You have already stated your opposition to firearms, so lets not even pretend you'd pause.

 sebster wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:
I would look at freakeconomics and some other correlational studies. I mean there is a likely cause that there was a drop of crime because of either school being more widely accessible or that there are more aboritions.

The Freakonomics abortion theory is, well, extremely silly. If nothing else, it relies on the assumption that people only start attempting petty crime when they turn 18.

That's kind of the thing with Freakonomics - you have to take it all with a heaping dose of salt, think about it and look up the claimed sources, because while there are good and original ideas in there, there's also plenty of stuff that's very silly and some that's simply fictitious.

Like most correalational studies you have take it with a dose of salt.

Like during the summer there are more homicides, but ice cream sales go up. So see ice cream causes people to go on murder sprees? SEE ISN'T THAT COMPLETELY POSSIBLE.

Hint:

Nope, its a correlation study, not an actual truth, ice cream just tastes good in the hot sun, murdering people during the summer is because people get really moody due to heat.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
Got that? We have our own unique issues that lead to the gun violence in the states. We have a flourishing drug trade, disenfranchisement of minorities and so on. These issues may be present in the UK but they are more pronounced here. Not only that, but the solution to gun violence over there won't work here. Just outlawing them won't solve gun violence. It's sort of a "Once the genie is out of the bottle issue". We need a different solution if we really want to cut down on the shootings. Perhaps one outside of gun control.

This is the same crap that comes up in every gun thread.

Look - the US is not unique in having a drug problem. I mean, you honestly think that the rest of the developed world doesn't use cocaine and heroin, and doesn't have very profitable black markets in those products that criminals are willing to kill to be part of?

Nor are disenfranchised minorites a uniquely American thing.

And even if any of that were true then you'd still have the issue that gang violence is actually a really small proportion of overall homicide in the US.

Seriously, having a mass saturation of weapons designed to kill people really does lead to a spike in people using those weapons to kill people. That doesn't mean those guns ought to be banned, because banning guns isn't necessarily going to reduce their numbers, and nor does something being harmful for population health automatically mean it has to be banned (alcohol kills way more people, for instance). But there is nothing to be gained by being ignorant about the effect mass gun saturation has on the murder rate.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Will having breathalyzer technology in a vehicle be mandated too?

That's not the same. The same would be: a free breathalyzer with every vehicle. No one says you have to use it, there is no harm in having it right?

That omits every other reason why people own firearms.
You have already stated your opposition to firearms, so lets not even pretend you'd pause.

I said I would be willing to discuss this openly and reserve judgement, and I am. I am also not opposed to firearms, I am opposed to the damage they do when they fall into the wrong hands (the same is true for cars actually).

With regards to 'other reason' to own a gun. We agreed that people have the right to defend themselves. I hope we can agree that that right comes at a price, which is that we seem to have to tolerate a certain number of accidents and the occasional spree killing (which I will concede is dramatic but rare). However reasons such as 'sport' don't warrant such a high cost, and there are plenty of alternatives.

 Ouze wrote:
I too can find no citation to indicate he actually ever said that, and the one guy who claims he did has a a pretty... morally flexible history.

And yet it will still get passed around the gun rights movement as if it were fact because, well, you know, intellectual dishonesty and all that.

Anyway, murders have been sliding in Chicago for a long time well before concealed carry was permitted.

Yeah, though the OP was talking about thefts and the like, while your graph is only murders. I did post a link on the first page that showed total crime, though, and the trend matches very much with the murder trend you showed - considerable decline starting in the late 80s/early 90s.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
Obviously this is really anecdotal, but right near my job is a sporting goods store that sells firearms. In the 8 years I've worked there, they've gotten broken into after hours and had firearms stolen 5 times. I think at some point, they become partially responsible for all those guns that walked. I don't really have a solution, just an observation.

Anecdotal too but I live near several sports stores that have all guns locked up, and trigger locks in place. None have been broken into. Same with the gun store near by.
So out of 8 years, or 2920days, there have been 5 break ins. That is 0.17% of the time the store has existed in those 8 years. How does that compare to similar stores? At what point do they become responsible? How are they responsible? Were their actions negligent?

By that logic, Operation Fast & Furious is no big deal, right? The Obama administration has been running things for approx 2,100 days now, and they only lost guns on one of those days. That like only 0.05%, man, so who cares?

 Asherian Command wrote:
Like most correalational studies you have take it with a dose of salt.

Not to mention correlational studies trying to pinpoint tie a legal change to a social event 18 years later, by people working outside of their area of expertise.

Nope, its a correlation study, not an actual truth, ice cream just tastes good in the hot sun, murdering people during the summer is because people get really moody due to heat.

Interestingly enough, while that phenomenon has been observed across multiple countries, it's effect is independant of the heat of the summer - that is to say it doesn't get even more severe when there's a particularly hot summers, nor decrease during more mild summers.

And while murder is at its peak in the summer months, property crimes are actually at their highest in the winter months. So you're more likely to be mugged in winter, and murdered in summer.

This has led to speculation that it isn't the heat but the number of daylight hours that drives the phenomenon. In winter there's more dark hours, and so more opportunities for break & enter and muggings and the like. And in summer the greater daylight means you're more likely to go out of the house and spend time with other people, which gives you more chance of getting pissed and killing one of them (the greater alcohol drunk in summer doesn't help).

This is supported by the observation that the murder rate is much higher on weekends, with Saturday the most murderous day.

 sebster wrote:
I did post a link on the first page that showed total crime, though, and the trend matches very much with the murder trend you showed - considerable decline starting in the late 80s/early 90s.

That's also true for NYC - I was a kid there during the huge crack epidemic of the 80s. Gun laws haven't changed significantly there at all; it's still nearly impossible to legally get a pistol there - probably unconstitutionally so. Yet there you are.

 sebster wrote:
Interestingly enough, while that phenomenon has been observed across multiple countries, it's effect is independant of the heat of the summer - that is to say it doesn't get even more severe when there's a particularly hot summers, nor decrease during more mild summers.

And while murder is at its peak in the summer months, property crimes are actually at their highest in the winter months. So you're more likely to be mugged in winter, and murdered in summer.

This has led to speculation that it isn't the heat but the number of daylight hours that drives the phenomenon. In winter there's more dark hours, and so more opportunities for break & enter and muggings and the like. And in summer the greater daylight means you're more likely to go out of the house and spend time with other people, which gives you more chance of getting pissed and killing one of them (the greater alcohol drunk in summer doesn't help).

This is supported by the observation that the murder rate is much higher on weekends, with Saturday the most murderous day.

This whole topic has been worth it for that one glorious tidbit!
Exalted for being fascinating.

 whembly wrote:
I highlighted the pertinent part...

You can have an fully automatic rifle (what's an assault rifle again?) provided that you have a Class 3 license as defined by The National Firearms Act.

An assault rifle is an actual style of weapon. It is defined as using an intermediate cartridge and having select fire. The Wehrmacht's Stg 44 was the first such weapon, deployed in WWII and rapidly copied by other militaries (though I read an interesting argument that the design only influenced Warsaw Pact countries, the US actually developed their own assault rifle through evolution of the M1 Carbine, which had its own select fire variant used in WWII).


Anyhow, the term I think you meant to use was 'assault weapon'. That's the gibberish term championed by the Brady campaign that attempted to use a tick list of random scary gun elements like bayonet stocks and scopes to try and ban... something. I don't think anyone really figured out exactly what it was they were actually trying to get off the streets.

But 'assault rifle' is a real thing.


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 daedalus wrote:
I'll bite on the original question: Because they're fun as hell to shoot. That's why we need them.

That's one of a very few honest, good things said in this thread.

Its also an extremely good answer to that question.

I mean, why do we need guns when they kill several thousand people a year - because they're awesome fun.

Same argument applies to alcohol, by the way. Why do we need to drink when it kills 80,000 people a year - because it's awesome fun.

At some point simple fun triumphs over population health & safety. Exactly where that point is for each thing is up for debate constantly, of course, but the central argument is always how much value it is vs how much harm it causes.

I'm late to the party, but did the people who wrote the article at the beginning of this topic actually check their facts?

Sorry if this has been mentioned before, but except for the recent spike in murder (which is still on an overall downward trend), Violent crime in Chicago has been on a slow decline across the board for years now.

Check the chart at the bottom of this page:
http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Chicago-Illinois.html
Almost every metric for crime has been decreasing for over a decade.

I'm actually quite in favor of concealed carry, but the article is a really shoddy piece of journalism, and it's the kind of thing that weakens the case for concealed carry because of the number of holes in it. Wait for more permits to be issued (it just started, for heavens sakes) and some actual peer reviewed studies to come out before jumping to conclusions.

In time, concealed carry might prove to impact the crime rate (some places it does and some it doesn.t) but a couple of anecdotes and a desire for it to be so, doesn't demonstrate causality.

 Breotan wrote:
And does getting it back really make up for the period of time it was taken away for no good reason?

No, but it does mean the comic's argument that those things were taken and never returned is, to put it bluntly, complete and total bs.

Gun rights in the US aren't in steady erosion, but rather are in a constant state of flux. Right now you're witnessing a massive increase in the right to carry a firearm on your person. To think that expansion is captured in the narrative of a steadily decreasing cake is flying rodent gak, bonkers, the work of the delusional.

Which is why, basically, the cake narrative is nonsense.

What actually works is the image of a kids bedroom. Because these are two very, very immature kids they have had to draw a line across the centre of the room. On one side little Jonny pro-gun has toys with labels like 'minimal background checks' and 'expanded magazine capacity'. On the other side of the room little Danny anti-gun has toys like 'no automatics'. Every so often one of these two little gaks will try and scoot over to the other kid's side and pinch something, there'll be a tremendous fight that generally is just embarrassing for everyone, and when the dust settles maybe one or two toys have swapped sides. For instance, in the current fight we're seeing CCW move over to Jonny pro-gun's side, while at the same time Jonny pro-gun has stopped Danny anti-gun from pinching the 'minimum background checks' toy.


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 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
So what is your solution?

It's bs to demand that a statement of fact must come with a pre-built solution or we can just ignore that fact.

 Smacks wrote:

That's not the same. The same would be: a free breathalyzer with every vehicle. No one says you have to use it, there is no harm in having it right?.

Every firearm I've ever purchased has come with a gunlock.

They make their way straight to the garbage bin because they're pretty worthless.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 sebster wrote:


An assault rifle is an actual style of weapon. It is defined as using an intermediate cartridge and having select fire. The Wehrmacht's Stg 44 was the first such weapon, deployed in WWII and rapidly copied by other militaries (though I read an interesting argument that the design only influenced Warsaw Pact countries, the US actually developed their own assault rifle through evolution of the M1 Carbine, which had its own select fire variant used in WWII).


Anyhow, the term I think you meant to use was 'assault weapon'. That's the gibberish term championed by the Brady campaign that attempted to use a tick list of random scary gun elements like bayonet stocks and scopes to try and ban... something. I don't think anyone really figured out exactly what it was they were actually trying to get off the streets.

But 'assault rifle' is a real thing.
.

Sadly, as you said, the phrase has been entirely bastardized and reappropriated by those that are afraid firearms to describe your standard AR-10/15 style rifle, which aside from its appearance, is in no way, shape, or form different than a hunting rifle.

 Ouze wrote:
That's also true for NYC - I was a kid there during the huge crack epidemic of the 80s. Gun laws haven't changed significantly there at all; it's still nearly impossible to legally get a pistol there - probably unconstitutionally so. Yet there you are.

Something I also mentioned on the first page I saw a thing recently about the 90%+ drop in car theft in NYC and used that to make the point about US cities in general seeing a similar drop in crime.

What's interesting is that there's a really clear case that some of the big right wing arguments of that period - more police powers, harsher sentencing... actually looked to have worked really well (along with a bunch of other stuff). But now they're just ignoring that in order to make it all about guns.

Of course, what's also interesting is that it seems like both sides of politics have pretty much ignored the drop in crime entirely. I mean, the increase in crime in the 80s was constantly a topic of concern, but the much steeper decline in crime barely rates a mention. It's really quite odd.


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 Smacks wrote:
This whole topic has been worth it for that one glorious tidbit!
Exalted for being fascinating.

Cool

Additionally, the magazine capacity argument anti-gun advocates are so hell bent on is a little silly. Someone familiar with their firearm can swap out a magazine in about two seconds.

In most three gun comps shooters carry about 4 magazine are their sidearm and 3-4 for their rifle.

If were being honest, were actually lucky in the US all the idiots that have been responsible for mass shootings aren't shooters. If they were the death tolls would be MUCH higher.

 cincydooley wrote:
Sadly, as you said, the phrase has been entirely bastardized and reappropriated by those that are afraid firearms to describe your standard AR-10/15 style rifle, which aside from its appearance, is in no way, shape, or form different than a hunting rifle.

Yeah, and that one's pretty much the fault of the vacuous anti-gun lobby, who seem to show almost no interest at all in how guns actually work. They don't understand that while an AR-15 might look the same as an M4 carbine, the inner workings are completely different. And more frustratingly, they seem to show no interest in actually learning how differently the two weapons operate. Never mind learning that neither weapon is responsible for much gun violence.

I mean, it's a long time since the Brady bill, and they seem to have learnt nothing.

Pro-gun lobby?

 cincydooley wrote:
Additionally, the magazine capacity argument anti-gun advocates are so hell bent on is a little silly. Someone familiar with their firearm can swap out a magazine in about two seconds.

In most three gun comps shooters carry about 4 magazine are their sidearm and 3-4 for their rifle.

Yep, and not only is magazine change not that much of a factor, such weapons aren't much of a factor in the gun homicide count. Pistol do about 75% of the killing.

But everyone fixates on the mass shootings, because they're the ones that make the news.


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 cincydooley wrote:
Pro-gun lobby?

Sorry, edited.

 cincydooley wrote:

 Smacks wrote:

That's not the same. The same would be: a free breathalyzer with every vehicle. No one says you have to use it, there is no harm in having it right?.

Every firearm I've ever purchased has come with a gunlock.

They make their way straight to the garbage bin because they're pretty worthless.

Yeah... After more reading, apparently they are a legal requirement in some states for home storage. It was honestly my least favourite method of securing guns. Owning guns for self defense is one thing. But owning guns for self defense that you can't access when you need: seems self defeating, and self defeating things are stupid.

The Judge Dredd thing would be cool... Seems like the least feasible solution though.

We have gotten some gun-rights that we haven't had before, so can the cake guy get some cake pops or something?

I've never gotten a trigger lock with any gun I've bought, although one of them has a lockable hammer. That's right, there's a little proprietary screw thing you can use to actually lock the hammer so the gun can't be shot, a feature I literally can't imagine anyone wanting.

My HD firearm is stored in one of these with the magazine out. I could probably store it ready to go, but the wife prefers that I not. But like I said, it takes about a second for me to slap the magazine in and ready it.

I know a lot of people prefer shotguns for HD, but They're a little harder to store and load for HD. It's negligible for me, but again, the wife knows how to load and ready the Sig and is more comfortable with it.

 Ouze wrote:
By that logic, Operation Fast & Furious is no big deal, right? The Obama administration has been running things for approx 2,100 days now, and they only lost guns on one of those days. That like only 0.05%, man, so who cares?

Absolutely, but only if you ignore the rest of that quote; "How does that compare to similar stores? At what point do they become responsible? How are they responsible? Were their actions negligent? "

 Asherian Command wrote:
Can you commit mass murder with a baseball bat or chemicals? No You can't. No matter what way you approach it, .
commit mass murder with chemicals?
No You can't.

Are you kidding me?

 sebster wrote:
Gun rights in the US aren't in steady erosion, but rather are in a constant state of flux.

Should "a constant state of flux" be the norm for a civil right?