Gun Control

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I would say this is just a thought after reading about Australia's gun legislation and also thinking about our current situation.
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I provided two links showing that Australia's gun legislation did nothing useful. Few of the "efficient" "military" weapons were actually turned in. They're still in circulation. The 1996 NFA didn't really do anything for gun crime.

You're operating on feelings, and that's a horrible impetus for major social policy, especially one that would turn thousands, if not millions, of law-abiding citizens into felons and do little to address the supposed inspiration for that policy.
 
Justin T.,
I believe:
The reason firearms are utilized is an empowering fantasy. It creates a situation where they will be in absolute control for a period of time, at least in the fantasy. That is part of the reason any sort of challenge to the shooter usually causes them to shut down.
I am really fearful that if access to firearms is limited it will push the crazies to concentrate on other devices which can be far more devastating. I was going to send you a PM as to how UAVs could be used in some situations to much more devastating effect without any more skill or money, but you don't accept PMs or e-mails. Like another poster I won't post such ideas publicly. A well educated person spending years of their life, all of their savings, and be willing to die in the event; is very difficult to stop and could be much much worse.
ONe can still download explosive manufacturing guides on the internet.
 
I think as it stands, if the government wants to try new restrictions I certainly would not oppose it. I also understand that possibly they won't and maybe because of some of the reasons you stated that is the right move.

John W,

I find that to be a fascinating theory. I wondered myself, do you think that its possible that these crazies that do this stuff are psychologically inspired more by these "black" rifles or assault weapons or whatever you want to call them. I think it could easily be true. Compare these say to Browning BAR or Remington 750 thats seems it would be less psychologically inspiring. I certainly think fantasy has a lot to do with this.

As far as PM's go, I didnt know they were off. I'll look at my settings.
 
Since we cannot own Browning BARs easily, that is irrelevant. There is a claim in the literature that EBRs may prime actual aggression. That is debated. There are negative findings and some of the positive findings only demonstrated short-lived responses.

We do know that gun appearance can influence juries in some circumstances. However, recall that we have had rampages with nice guns also. It is hard to separate out the effects of availability. If you could buy a BAR - why do you think that is nice?

I do have to suggest that you are just throwing out gun ban suggestions as that is your core principle.
 
I think the scary thing about mass shootings, and the heart breaking thing, is that they happen to completely innocent people enjoying a completely innocent event.
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.........

So does a drunk driver hitting a school bus.......that type of similar event happens every day

Current deaths from the fires in CA stand at 40 and will continue to climb - this was entirely preventable had folks done what was needed prior to the fire - both at the homeowner and state level - where's your outrage?

Compared to all of the other things that cause huge losses of life here and elsewhere, mass shootings are WAY down on that list. Where's your outrage about the hundreds of deaths in Chicago's ethnic neighborhoods every year? (Of course, were is the outrage from certain preachers and other groups?) Banning/confiscation of guns from law-abiding people does nothing to stop these types of events.
 
Justin, by now - isn't it clear that you don't know what you are talking about from an evidential base? You are just going on moral panic without reference to what is actually known about the issue.

If you want to ban and confiscate all the guns, you suggest to prevent their use, just say so and justify the costs and violations of rights that you would suspend.

You personally could start by using your own finances to buy back semi guns at an attractive price. Get your friends and neighbors to contribute. I see no reason for my tax money to contribute to your crusade. You can raise the needed billions on a Go Fund Me page.

You are correct that if all guns disappear no one would be shot. If all knives disappear, no one would be stabbed. BTW, the UK has draconian knife laws - do you support them?

The major gun violence is not from EBRs but from smaller handguns, BTW. The causality for that violence is most likely due to the destruction of opportunity for segments of our society caused by the elimination of good jobs for working class folks. Lots of literature on that. Stable economic societies eliminate the major types of violence we see here.

Again, if you only offer moral panic - you are not convincing at all.
 
I am really fearful that if access to firearms is limited it will push the crazies to concentrate on other devices which can be far more devastating.
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Maybe we should have a waiting period for pressure cookers.
 
Justin, while the concept of a gun free society has its attraction from a safety standpoint, you are a bit too late. If you could go back 240 years and convince our founding fathers that an armed citizenry was a bad idea you might get your wish, but having just won their liberty because of armed citizens I suspect you would have a hard time of it.

In any case, we have been an armed society for centuries now and there are currently over 300 million guns in circulation in the USA, many if not most of which are semi-automatics. Concepts are easy, but practical solutions are not. Since laws only affect law abiding citizens, attempts at banning firearms will only swing the balance of power to the non law abiding criminals, gangs, drug addicts, terrorists, fanatics, and sick people. If you can figure out a way to take all of their guns away first, I might let you have mine, but somehow I don't see them lining up at the local police station to turn in their already illegal weapons. Until then I need my guns to protect my family from them, and semi-automatics are the best protection, especially from multiple bad guys.

It is unfortunate that some people abuse their right to self-protection with firearms and hurt others, but that is not unique to guns. Banning the tool is the wrong approach. Steps in the right direction might be more efficient detection of twisted minds, better enforcement of existing laws and tougher sentences to keep people who use guns in crimes off the street. Wish I had a cleaner, simpler, easier solution, but this is a complex problem that doesn't lend itself to knee-jerk emotional reactions.
 
I think as it stands, if the government wants to try new restrictions I certainly would not oppose it.
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Sure. So, if those restrictions turn out to be failures, do they get repealed? Do the people who had to surrender lawfully-owned property have it returned to them?

Because that's what the whole raft of post-Las Vegas proposals will be: failures. All that stuff has been tried before, some on the state level and some on the federal level, and supporters can point to no verifiable evidence that it's done one bit of good.
 
It is unfortunate that some people abuse their right to self-protection with firearms and hurt others, but that is not unique to guns. Banning the tool is the wrong approach. Steps in the right direction might be more efficient detection of twisted minds, better enforcement of existing laws and tougher sentences to keep people who use guns in crimes off the street. Wish I had a cleaner, simpler, easier solution, but this is a complex problem that doesn't lend itself to knee-jerk emotional reactio
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As a diversion, I might disagree somewhat and turn to something I said before. I think we see two types of gun crimes.

1. Crimes of passion, suicide by cop, etc. All driven by some emotional cause. There will always be such and I think unaffected by gun laws - unless we had total confiscation by a totalitarian enforcement process.

Better detection of the small percent of mentally ill people might help. That several states did not correctly or promptly report to the NICS system has been found in some cases. Overall, though we do not have the tech to find those prone to such unless they have already committed violent acts. The only reliable predictor of violent acts is past violent acts. Well researched.

IIRC, and I would have to dig for the reference, the gun crime rate among middle to higher SES in the USA and Canada was very similar and flat for many years. Relatively stable populations so we just see crimes of passion and the small number of mental illness prone to violence.

2. The major increase in gun crime came with the drug wars in the 70's. It was driven by economic turf disputes and the revenge cycle among gangs. The reason for that was the destruction of communities by loss of economic opportunity. That causes family disruption and turning towards drugs. Been pretty well researched. The loss of jobs - well, look overseas and the loss of US manufacturing. Our inability to provide good jobs for average folks is a problem.

Law enforcement is a band-aid for #2. Gun crimes have dropped overall but we see pockets of intense gun crime correlated with lack of opportunity and its concomitant social disruption.
 
On a side note, I think it's great I could come here with this and not be name called or verbally assaulted. It shows a level of intelligence and respect you wouldn't get on twitter or Facebook.
 
I would love to make mass shootings of innocents go away. From all current evidence, it appears that the LV shooter come into possession of his firearms legally and decided to use them hurt innocents.

I see the issue as a balance scale (or teeter-totter) type scenario:
Side 1: Restrict firearms to the point that they can't possibly be used to hurt a large group of people ever. Extreme examples: Only allow private citizens access to revolvers, single-shot firearms and muzzle-loaders. This might be possible in a world that ignore both logistics (some but not all examples given above) and historical precedent (I like to point to the escalating gun violence in Brazil despite outright ban and no historical gun culture).

Side 2: the base requirement for a government to determine outcomes is for that government to restrict choices. Additionally, a government can collect intelligence on citizen behavior to restrict freedom of action as well. How far down this road do you want to go? And before you start working on the mental calculus, you need to recognize that you are giving the government a set of tools that could be turned against ANY right or any group.
NOW how far down this road do you want to go?

Among other reasons, the U.S. constitution/Bill of Rights are special because their adoption was the world's first "post-modern" form of law. The framers recognized that "the government" was simply a social construct which the general mass of citizens should be able to remove (up to and including removal by force if necessary), should that government began functioning in a coercive manner towards its own citizenry. The 2nd amendment is crucial to the the function of of government and the roll of citizenship. If no one buys a firearm, fine. If everyone chooses not to vote, fine. But if the government moves to abolish the availability of the types of firearms necessary to remove it, that should send alarm bells off the same way that it would if the government moved to restrict voting.

If this sounds extreme, recognize that the frames put this extreme power into the hands of the general citizenry by choice. Much has been made about the moral depravity of the founding fathers for holding slaves. While recognizing this, I would also point out that b/c so many of the founders WERE slave holders, they also knew what it took to keep a population in slavery and they didn't want to be on the other end of that pointy stick. There's a historical wisdom at work here that surpasses easy "I'm good/you're bad" labeling that passes as a "history lesson" in so many modern classrooms.

I accept the limits of law. I also accept that the law should have limits. I also accept that free will will also lead to bad outcomes. Tragedy happens. I wish they wouldn't (I realize that sounds trite and uncaring on the surface), and I"m sorry for your losses. The Greeks wrote many plays capturing how the failings of the individual often brought ruin on themselves as well as their entire community. They were also trying to understand these types of happenings.
 
Justin,
Guns are used to prevent more crime than there are murders by guns each year. The lowest number I have heard is that 500,000 people use a gun to prevent a crime each year. i am sure that more than 1% of those guns are semi-automatics. If you take guns out of the picture you are left with the violence. In countries where guns are all but banned the violent crime rate goes up not down. We have slightly lower violent crime rate than England and their gun crime is on the rise while ours has been dropping.

Yes once in a while we have a mass shooting (more than four dead in a single crime) but if you look at Chicago you will find as many killed each month. The gun is not at fault. The accessories are not at fault. Only the violent individual is at fault. Cure the violence and the gun violence disappears. Cure the violent and the whole violent crime concern is gone. More people are killed in the USA by beating with hands and feet than are killed with all rifles which represents the small percentage of events where the AR15 is used.
Banning guns is not the answer because guns are not the problem. The problem is two fold:
1. Violence is nurtured in the USA by the instant fame it allows.
2. We can't prosecute the offender because he killed himself and we have the "NEED" to do something.
In the UK a couple of years ago knife violence was extremely high so they talked about banning knives. Kitchen knives were the tool used most often so they were considering banning them. The use of Cricket bats could have gone up and then they would have to decide whether to ban Cricket bats - that would have affected their popular past-time and angered a lot of people.
If we blame the tool used we will never solve the problem. Only by focusing on the problem (violence) will we ever find a solution.
 
Only by focusing on the problem (violence) will we ever find a solution.
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Violence isn't the problem. It is merely the result of all of the underlying causes, many of which are intertwined with one another.
 
If a gun control supporter tells me they want to ban handguns, I'll disagree with them, but I won't necessarily think they're being irrational. After all, handguns account for a vast majority of gun deaths. But when someone says they want to ban "assault weapons" but not handguns, they're being either ignorant or irrational. Or they're just playing politics.

The made-up legal category of "assault weapons" contains some of the most practical and sensible firearms a person can own, like the AR-15. At the same time, all rifles (not just "assault weapons") account for a vast minority of all gun death, including gun deaths from mass shootings.

Justin, this is an honest question and I'd appreciate an answer: Why don't you advocate a ban on handguns? They are involved in far more gun deaths of all kinds than any other type of firearm (including mass shootings), and they're less practical for sporting use than something like an AR-15.
 
doofus47 said:
But if the government moves to abolish the availability of the types of firearms necessary to remove it, that should send alarm bells off the same way that it would if the government moved to restrict voting.
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Among the most anti-gun states, there probably isn't too much more in the way of anti-gun shenanigans to inflict on the state citizenry. What worries me the most is having it inflicted also on the other states via the Federal Government.
 
Theohazard,

I feel like it's the efficiency. I know assault rifle is kinda a bogus made up classification. I would say it all comes down to high capacity, rate of fire and somewhat range.

I'm not as afraid of handguns because I feel like I'm less susceptible to handgun violence because of my place in this world. Healthy relationship, avoid bad neighborhoods, etc. However I feel like at this point one never knows if and when they will fall victim to the next mass shooting where 20, 30, 50+ people are gunned down with relative ease because the tool they are using makes it that easy.
 
There's no question that mass killings and pervasive violence have a corrosive effect on our culture. It is also true that disarming law-abiding citizens will not stop the violence.

Making semi-automatic weapons and magazines holding over a few rounds illegal will impact my ability keep and bear arms sufficient for personal protection and as a deterrent to tyranny. When fighting for your life not having to reload often might be the difference between living and dying. It will not stop a determined, organized attacker who doesn't care if he lives or dies from killing multiple innocent victims. How many people could have been killed if the Las Vegas shooter had carefully targeted individuals using several scoped bolt action rifles? How about lever actions?

The mass killings and violence are symptomatic of the economic, racial and political division pandemic in our nation. Taking my guns won't fix that.
 
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