A Repository of Reliable Sources & Citations

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JimDandy

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Spats McGee's Note: JimDandy started this thread to be a central repository for links to reliable sources for statistics, argument, articles,and the like. If you have links that you often use in looking up those kinds of things, and they are from reliable sources, post them here. Links that lead to unsupported, obviously ridiculous or otherwise "wildhair" claims will be unceremoniously deleted from this thread. My thanks to JimDandy for starting this thread.
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When you're making a point, and need to prove it.

Origins of Crime Guns
PBS article touting Straw Puchases, and Corrupt FFL's as primary sources, trickling down to then illegal marketplaces, thefts, and family/friends.

Most common types of Crime Guns:
DOJ Justice Programs study on what guns are commonly used in crime.

FBI Uniform Crime Report with Census data for a per capita look at homicide by firearm, with comparisons for three most common restrictive firearms laws- AWB, May Issue and/or Carry Ban, and Permit to Purchase AKA FOID:

2010 UCR, Census and Wikiepedia Laws by state merged into one spreadsheet- with sources footnoted.

Edit if others want to include more, and one of the experts wants to include a post with a quick run down of the Scrutiny available.. this is all stuff I've had to come back here and search in other posts for.
 
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An infogram showing the money the Joyce Foundation receives and farms money out to various groups (thanks to Mack59):

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5f/JoyceFoundationGunControlFundingR1.png

OpenSecrets, a good site for checking who donates to a cause and who receives money from one:

http://www.opensecrets.org/

PopVox, a site that aggregates information on proposed bills and presents it in a clear fashion:

http://www.popvox.com/blog/2013/issue-spotlight-firearms-113th/

Why the Gun Is Civilization, a very good essay from our own Marko Kloos:

http://munchkinwrangler.wordpress.com/2007/03/23/why-the-gun-is-civilization/

The Violence Policy Center memo in which they admit that they've lost the battle to ban handguns, and that they should invent and subsequently ban a new category of firearms called "assault weapons:"

http://www.vpc.org/studies/awaconc.htm

FBI:

Uniform Crime Statistics

Active Shooter Incidents in the United States in 2016 and 2017

Snopes. Yes, Snopes. It's a good tool for debunking some of the rumor-mongering out there:

http://snopes.com/
 
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United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939) Gives us All Males capable of acting in concert for the common defense is the militia, and as they are expected to bring their own arms when called, those weapons protected are those in common use at the time.

District of Columbia v. Heller 554 U.S. 570 (2008) Which holds: RKBA is Individual and not Collective- AND - Protects arms in the common use for lawful purposes.

McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 3025 (2010) Incorporates the Second Amendment to the States. The States may not infringe the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
 
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1. Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, "Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun", 86 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 1, 1995. Available at http://www.guncite.com/gcdgklec.html.

This is a well known study by Gary Kleck, Florida State University criminologist.

2. National Research Council (2004). Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press. Available at http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10881&page=R1

A CNN article says about this literature review from the National Academy of Sciences, "Researchers could not identify a single [gun] regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents." http://articles.cnn.com/2011-01-18/...-regulations-gun-related-crimes?_s=PM:OPINION

I don't pretend to have read, much less understand, all of the above.
 
HAYNES v. UNITED STATES, 390 U.S. 85 (1968) -- A 1968 SCOTUS case holding that "a proper claim of the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination provides a full defense to prosecutions either for failure to register a firearm under [26 U.S.C.] 5841 or for possession of an unregistered firearm under [26 U.S.C.] 5851." In other words, prohibited persons in illegal possession of firearms cannot be convicted of failing to register firearms, or possession of unregistered firearms, where such is required, on the basis that requiring registration by those in illegal possession would violate such persons' Fifth Amendment rights.
 
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FactCheck.org is a great, unbiased site that's currently giving a lot of attention to claims about guns, "statistics" about gun deaths, etc. Their home page has several relevant articles. In a box in the upper right corner, there's this, for example:
Ask FactCheck

Q: Is it true that 85 percent of all the children killed by guns in the world are killed in the United States?

A: No. This statistic, misused by the husband of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, refers to a study of 23 high-income countries in 2003 that made up less than 14 percent of the world’s population.​
Just an excerpt from a longer, and very thorough, article.

They also have have an entire section devoted to "Gun Rhetoric vs. Gun Facts."
http://factcheck.org/2012/12/gun-rhetoric-vs-gun-facts/

They give both sides equal treatment, as far as I can tell.
 
So, after reading something similar in another blog and posting about this a couple times in some other threads, I figured I'd just throw this up with sources to quell some confusion about the DHS ammo buy recently.

Firstly, according to infowars.com the DHS has a contract for 1.4 billion rounds of ammo. Let me start by saying this is not true. The real excerpt from the synopsis states:

“The Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC), Glynco, Georgia anticipates awarding multiple award indefinite delivery and indefinite quantity (IDIQ) firm fixed price (FFP) contracts for commercial leaded training ammunition (CLTA) of various calibers for law enforcement officer firearms training courses at the following FLETC facilities Glynco, GA, Artesia, NM, Cheltenham, MD and Charleston, SC and to other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies. The Government guarantees a minimum of 1,000 rounds per year on each resultant contract. Contracts will be for a base year and four (4) 12 month option periods,”
Click to expand...

So, they (FLETC, of which DHS is the parent organization) haven't even bought the ammo yet. They have only pitched contracts to do so. These contracts have no definitive quantity, so it is pure speculation that they may actually be for 1.4 billion rounds. Also, they are for a period of time spanning 5 years (optional for contract). That smells like someone is trying to stretch connections just a little too far to me.

Let's pretend for a second that 1.4 billion is the real number and an ammo manufacturer might actually be able to meet their quota for the various calibers (.38, 9mm, .40s&w, .45acp, 5.56, and 7.62 according to the synopsis posted by infowars.com) desired by the DHS in a single year instantly (1.4 billion rounds divided by 5 years equals 280 million rounds a year).

280 million rounds a year is a lot of friggin' ammo, right? Wrong. The DHS has a little over 240k employees and of them, 130k tote around firearms. That comes out to a grand total of about 2150 per armed federal agent. Still think that's a lot? Well lets take a look at their training and testing regiment.

Now, unfortunately, the FLETC official training site does not list the amount of ammunition they use for their classes, but most of them run between 3-7 days (for new guys, there are courses a few months long) with what seems to be a full days worth of work in every day. If we were to compare this to a civilian class where 1000 rounds for a 4 day class is common place, we begin to see something form: reason.

If an employee went to train just twice a year, they would be running slim on ammo. Furthermore, this purchase is not inconsistent with the DHS contracts that we have seen in the past. Also, it is important to note that while FLETC is indeed a part of DHS, it does not only train DHS affiliates. It also trains state and local cops!

I'll let you draw your own conclusions, but I figured you all might like to know the facts.

Just a reminder, there is misinformation on all sides of a debate. Don't be a victim of assumption; research the facts for yourself.



Sources:
http://www.infowars.com/dhs-to-purchase-another-750-million-rounds-of-ammo/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/16/ammunition-shortage/1919321/

http://www.fletc.gov/training

http://www.dhs.gov/
 
I was thinking more about this today and decided to add onto it.

Many of you also know that the SSA (Social Security Administration) has bought 174k of hollow point ammunition. According to our good friends at infowars.com, that's enough to kill 174k Americans and hollow point rounds are not used for target practice.

Unlike the DHS/FLETC ammo purchase, this actually was for physical product (i.e. not a contract). Unfortunately, the argument that they will be used to quell riots and / or combat American citizens in a post economic collapse aftermath degrades very quickly upon finding out that the agency has 295 gun carrying agents.

Let's turn to the math corner again. 174,000 rounds divided by 295 agents equals about 590 rounds per agent. If you refer to my previous post, you see that this is a lot less than the amount of ammo to agent ratio I gave to the DHS.

Now for the argument that hollow points aren't used for target practice. The 295 agents that the SSA employs actually do make arrests: 589 arrests in 2011. When they are out and about, they are carrying hollow point ammunition just like the police force.

Also, after asking around a little, I discovered that both the DHS and SSA agents along with a few other federal agencies and police departments DO use hollow point ammunition for training and qualification. While it is not required to use hollow points by all agencies for target practice there is still a substantial amount of hollow points used in practice and qualification.

In addition to that, the FLETC facility uses hollow point ammunition for training and qualifications done there.



Sources:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/04/us/social-security-bullets

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/04/social-security-bullet-purchase_n_1854121.html

http://ivn.us/2012/08/19/rand-paul-tweets-about-hollow-point-bullet-purchases/
 
Here are some more good articles and studies. Some of them were referred to in other threads, and I tried to credit them appropriately when I could locate where they were. Some good stuff here.

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b4179775#page/i/mode/1up


THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS: REPORT OF THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, UNITED STATES SENATE, NINETY-SEVENTH CONGRESS, SECOND SESSION, FEBRUARY 1982

A copiously annotated legal history of the Second Amendment.

*****

www.justice.gov/olc/secondamendment2.pdf

WHETHER THE SECOND AMENDMENT SECURES AN INDIVIDUAL RIGHT The Second Amendment secures a right of individuals generally, not a right of States or a right restricted to persons serving in militias. MEMORANDUM OPINION FOR THE ATTORNEY GENERAL, August 24, 2004

Another well documented examination of the right codified by the S.A.

*****

www.cato.org/guns-and-self-defense

This provides reports of defensive gun uses across the US, or by state (via the available pull-down). It isn't comprehensive, but it is illustrative.


*****

From “Very good article on AWB written by a Democrat!” , opened by stormin1155
thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=510420

kontradictions.wordpress.com/...-ill-tell-you/

Well written essay by a self-professed Democrat

larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/an-opinion-on-gun-control/posted by Al Norris

Well written essay by a well-respected firearms and tactics instructor

www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-riddle-of-the-gunposted by Al Norris

A “fairly well balanced” argument from a professed liberal. (And Al, he does actually mention the S.A., about 7 or 8 paragraphs from the end of the article. :))

******

www.nationalreview.com/articles/336637/cops-schools-eliana-johnson

Article pointing out that some of the loudest Democratic critics of armed security in schools today were in fact for it when it was proposed by Clinton in 1995.

*****

www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm

The comprehensive literature review published by the CDC, October 3, 2003.

“The Task Force found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws or combinations of laws reviewed on violent outcomes. (Note that insufficient evidence to determine effectiveness should not be interpreted as evidence of ineffectiveness.)”

*****

www.sas.upenn.edu/jerrylee/research/aw_final2004.pdf

Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003, Koper, et al, July 2004, DOJ

The DOJ assesses the effect of the Clinton AWB.

*****

www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf

"Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide? A Review of International and Some Domestic Evidence" by Don Kates and Gary Mauser. Harvard J Law Public Policy 2003; 30:649-694.

Harvard study that reveals there is no correlation between the numbers of firearms in a society and the violence in that society.

*****

www.jpands.org/vol13no2/deakins.pdf

“Guns, Truth, Medicine, and the Constitution” by Jacob Deakins, M.D.

Good source for further reading, this article describes and debunks many gun-control arguments.

*****

www.associatedgunclubs.org/legislative/general_interest/Homicide%20&%20Handguns%20USA-Canada%20-%20JHU%20Study.pdf

“Homicide and the prevalence of handguns: Canada and the United States, 1976 to 1986”, Brandon Centerwall, American J Epidemiology1991;134:
1245-1260

Well regarded study that shows gun laws don’t decrease violence... Americans and Canadians kill each other at the same rate. Americans use guns more often, but Canadians make use of other, equally lethal weapons.

“If you are surprised by our findings, so are we. We did not begin this research with any intent to “exonerate” handguns, but there it is—a negative finding, to be sure, but a negative finding is nevertheless a positive contribution. It directs us where not to aim our public health resources.”

*****

Connecticut Law Review, Vol. 42, No. 2, pp. 515-584, December 2009

“Pretend 'Gun-Free' School Zones: A Deadly Legal Fiction”, David Kopel,
Independence Institute; Denver University - Sturm College of Law, April 16, 2009

A well annotated article laying out a thorough refutation of arguments against campus carry, including a number of solid statistics that debunk the wild fantasies of the Brady Bunch, among others. A good read.
 
I thought of one more:

Municode -- This is one of the publishers of municipal codes and ordinances. Not every city or state has their codes available, but it's usually a good starting point.
 
This is my favorite article against gun control I've ever read. It's a little old (from right after the recent national defeat of new gun control proposals). It's by a liberal democrat, the same liberal democrat who wrote the article on why not to renew the assault weapons ban.

http://kontradictions.wordpress.com/2013/04/20/dear-democratic-gun-control-lobby-how-to-get-better/

He makes some great arguments and presents them in a very convincing way. And being that he comes from a similar political persuasion as many gun control supporters, I think he's much more likely to convince some of them to see things our way.
 
The CDC provides this statistical gem.

Ask people if the think there's an epidemic of firearms homicides in America.

Ask them if there's an epidemic of infants dying in America today.

Point out the CDC reported an infant mortality rate of 6.15 per 1000 live births. 615 per 100,000 Firearms homicides are less than 1% of that rate.

Pulling snippets from Table 10's cause of death by age and then the (All ages) category combinations-

Assault (homicide) by discharge of firearms
(*U01.4,X93-X95) (All) 11,078

Intentional self-harm (suicide) by discharge of
firearms (X72-X74) 19,392

Accidental discharge of firearms (W32-W34) 606

Intentional self-harm (suicide) by other and
unspecified means and their sequelae
(*U03,X60-X71,X75-X84,Y87.0) 18,972

Drug-induced deaths 40,393

Injury(They mean death) by firearms 31,672

Motor vehicle accidents 35,332

Pneumonia (J12-J18) 49,597

Septicemia (A40-A41) 34,812

Diabetes mellitus (E10-E14) 69,071

Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis (K70,K73-K74) 31,903

Renal failure (N17-N19) 44,362

Falls (W00-W19) 26,009


And their rates per 100,000 people-

Assault (homicide) by discharge of firearms
(*U01.4,X93-X95) 3.6

Drug-induced deaths4,5 13.1

Alcohol-induced deaths4,6 8.3

Injury by firearms 10.3

Motor vehicle accidents (V02-V04,V09.0,V09.2,
V12-V14,V19.0-V19.2,V19.4-V19.6,V20-V79,
V80.3-V80.5,V81.0-V81.1,V82.0-V82.1,V83-
V86,V87.0-V87.8,V88.0-V88.8,V89.0,V89.2) 11.4

Influenza and pneumonia (J09-J18) 16.2

Diabetes mellitus (E10-E14) 22.4

Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (C82-C85) 6.6

Leukemia (C91-C95) 7.3

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) disease
(B20-B24) 2.7

That one I like too. HIV is 2.7. Firearms Homicide is 3.6.
 
Browsing The Truth About Guns I found a link to an interesting article (similar to this one in post 11, supra) written by Jane Orient, MD, called ““Gun Violence” as a Public Health Issue: a Physician’s Response” .

Dr. Orient takes on the pseudo-scientific, anti-gun advocacy that is widely prevalent in organized medicine today, and effectively Orients (sorry...:o) the reader to their specious claims of scientific objectivity. Her commentary, citing 51 sources, updates a surprisingly similar (but even more heavily annotated, with over 200 sources) paper by Don Kates, PhD, written in 1990, wherein Dr. Kates defines the medical establishment’s “science” as Sagecraft (it is a truly devastating attack on their credibility).

I find pieces like these to be particularly valuable additions to our arsenal of counterarguments, as the anti’s like to trot out their “experts”, and prop them up as credible evidence against our “experts”. In the battle for public opinion, two experts arguing often tend to “cancel each other out”, opening the door to more emotional, non-rational messages.

Plus, as a “non-expert”, picking apart and debunking a bona-fide professional (with their claim to authority) in a discussion with another layman can be challenging, and will often devolve into "he-said-she-said" type standoffs.

In these papers, two of them from members of the medical profession, no less, (and Don Kates, who really is in an academic class all by himself) these professionals methodically take their counterparts “research” apart, step by step, and conclusively reveal them to be nothing more than veiled propaganda. And, in so doing, they show how to convincingly debunk the pseudo-science in our own day-to-day conversations about Second Amendment science.

Very good reads.
 
According to The most recent (2010) census report There are 308,745,538 people in the United States. Of which, 23.5% are under 18. This leaves 236,190,336.57 over the age of 18, and barring individual prohibitions (i.e. drugs, criminal records, mental health which would not germane as you'll see in the next link) eligible to own firearms.

Gallup's Self Reported Gun Ownership Poll 34% of people, and 47% of households report owning a firearm. That is approximately 80,304,714.4338 gun owners in the United States.

The CDC reported: All firearm deaths-Number of deaths: 31,672. This number includes suicide, homicide, and accidental deaths.

Assuming a worst case scenario that all those deaths are the result of one firearms owner, i.e. no firearm owner was responsible for more than one fatality which we know isn't the case- the percentage of firearms owners responsible for these instances of "irresponsible ownership" is .03943977% Even rounding up (to 0.04%), it's less than one half of one percent.

What does this mean? It means if we were talking about an NFL stadium seating 60,000 people, Just over 1.14 people per week would be thrown out for being drunk and disorderly (Assuming the stadium was packed every week, even the away games, and bye week)

According to CNN There are 7,700,000 registered voters in Ohio, of whom 5,387,690 (or 69.97%)voted. The Ohio Secretary of State believed at least 625 instances of irregularity occured. That's 0.01% so far.

While I am loathe to make a comparison of a privilege and a right, cars, driving and drunk driving often crops up in these discussions. According to the Federal Highway Administration there were 210 million licensed drivers in 2010. According to The FBI in UCR Table 29 1,412,223 people (or .6% - a rate about FIVE TIMES as high as those pesky irresponsible firearms owners when allowing for more drivers) were arrested for driving under the influence.
 
The FBI lists the US Homicide rate at about 3.05 per 100,000 in 2010 (Last year with Census Data) This list of Cancer facts and figures from the ACCO website has the childhood cancer mortality rate at 2.2 per 100,000.

Every time I've ever seen people talk about childhood cancer, they've described it as rare. When you hear anti-gun folks talk about firearms violence they almost always describe it as epidemic.
 
Ooh, research links!

http://www.atf.gov/statistics/index.html - ATF Firearms trace data and US manufacturing data.

http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/index.html - US CDC Wisqars death and injury statistics query tool

http://www.bjs.gov/ - US Bureau of Justice Statistics - Corrections, Courts, Crimes, including the National Crime Victimization Survey

https://www.ncjrs.gov/ National Criminal Justice Reference Service; this is the vehicle through which a lot of US Gov't funded research gets published

http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/ - University of Albany's Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics

http://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezashr/ - a specialized Easy Access to FBI Supplemental Homicide reports (since homicide stats seem to be interesting to many people)

http://www.ussc.gov/ United States Sentencing Commission (Fixed - thx, Mr McGee!)
 
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