Gun laws not enforced

[FoghornLeghorn]

On the other hand.........

http://www.thinklikeacop.org/guncontrol.html

(Excerpted)

There are 30,000 gun related deaths per year by firearms. That is, 0.000000925% of the population die from gun related actions each year. Statistically speaking, this is insignificant!

What is never told, however, is a breakdown of those 30,000 deaths, to put them in perspective as compared to other causes of death:

• 65% of those deaths are by suicide which would never be prevented by gun laws
• 15% are by law enforcement in the line of duty and justified
• 17% are through criminal activity, gang and drug related or mentally ill persons – gun violence
• 3% are accidental discharge deaths

So technically, "gun violence" is not 30,000 annually, but drops to 5,100. Still too many? Well, first, how are those deaths spanned across the nation?

480 homicides (9.4%) were in Chicago

344 homicides (6.7%) were in Baltimore

333 homicides (6.5%) were in Detroit

119 homicides (2.3%) were in Washington D.C. (a 54% increase over prior years)

So basically, 25% of all gun crime happens in just 4 cities. All 4 of those cities have strict gun laws, so it is not the lack of law that is the root cause.

So here are some other causes of deaths per year:

40,000 plus die from a drug overdose (Drugs are outlawed and controlled)

36,000 people die each year from the flu, far exceeding the criminal gun deaths

34,000 people die each year in traffic fatalities (exceeding gun deaths even if you include suicide)

Now for the big numbers:

- 200,000+ people die each year (and growing) from preventable medical errors. (Imagine this, you are safer in Chicago than when in a hospital, but cameras and videotaping medical procedures are outlawed?)

- 710,000 people die per year from heart disease. That's 142 times more people than die by guns.

 

[Aguila Blanca]

They were, by virtue of being under-age. An 18-year-old friend named Robyn Anderson bought the guns for them at a gun show. She was never prosecuted.

That's a different can of worms. Someone who is a prohibited person is prohibited from even picking up an unloaded firearm. Those two weren't in that category. The fact that they obtained their firearms through a straw purchase means they broke some laws (as did the buyer), but it was already against the law. No new laws or "enhanced" background checks would have made any difference.

 

[Aguila Blanca]

So basically, 25% of all gun crime happens in just 4 cities. All 4 of those cities have strict gun laws, so it is not the lack of law that is the root cause.

Devil's advocate view -- if laws that restrict fundamental civil rights have to be narrowly tailored to achive the desired result without unduly burdening the practice of the right (I think that's close to the way the Supreme Court looks at these matters), then apparently new anti-gun laws should apply only in Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, and Washington DC.

 

[seanc]

Here's a new law I'll get behind: Truth in sentencing.

When they get serious about making gun law violators serve their entire sentence and we still have a problem, then I'll listen to new legislation ideas. Otherwise, they're just posing next to dead bodies.

 

[ghbucky]

I have concerns about red flag laws, but the fastest way to convince me that they work would be to enforce them and stop shootings like the one in question.

How would you ever know if a red flag law stopped a shooting? There is no way to ever verify if a red flag law prevented anything, or just infringed on an otherwise law-abiding citizen's rights.

[edit] The only way I know of to verify if someone actually intends to carry through with something or is just sort of thinking about it is when they actually start shooting. THEN they are carrying out an illegal act.

Thinking about it, or even talking about it, isn't illegal.

 

[44 AMP]

Thinking about it, or even talking about it, isn't illegal.

Actually, it can be...

Check out what has been done under "conspiracy" statutes.

Part of the people are obsessed with the idea that if they can get rid of guns, they will get rid of violence. For them, I recommend they set up their cot in any major prison (where there are no guns except in the guards hands) and see how safe they feel.

Another, and a large part of the people somehow believe that we can, or should be able to read minds, and that, somehow, we fail when we do not prevent that which we cannot see and cannot know about.

We cannot see inside people's heads to know what they are thinking. The most we can possibly do is based on what those people show us, and what they say, and guess what folks, people LIE!!!

There was a case not all that long ago, cops were called, and did a "wellness check" (mental health check) and found the individual sane, stable, rational, polite and apparently just fine. They left, no doubt feelng the guy was ok and not a threat.

THE NEXT DAY (or possibly the day after that, I forget...) that guy shot several people, stabbed several other and drove his car over some more people. And the reason he gave was his frustration/depression over not being able to find a girlfriend...

The mind of man is as trackless as a bog at midnight, and thinking we can see where a person's path is leading, correctly and without fail, is just delusional thinking.

Yet this is what some are demanding, and its what we are told is being offered with various gun control laws.

 

[Nathan]

I live in central Illinois)

Murder....in Chicago, I read, most inner city murders don’t have a suspect, let alone a conviction.

Background checks...There are databases the NICS check is trying to check. States compliance was awful the last time I checked. Basically, what your name is being checked against is a hollow database. Maybe states should be forced to comply or lose something??

A mass shooting is an incident involving multiple victims of gun violence. There is no widely accepted definition of the term mass shooting. The United States' FBI follows the Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012 definition for active shooter incidents and mass killings (defined by the law as three or more people) in public places. Based on this, it is generally agreed that a mass shooting is whenever three or more people are shot (injured or killed), not including the shooters.[1]

Different media outlets and research groups use different definitions for the term "mass shooting" For example, crime violence research group Gun Violence Archive defines a "mass shooting" as "four or more shot (injured or killed) in a single incident, at the same general time and location, not including the shooter," differentiating between mass shooting and mass murder.[2]

The United States' Congressional Research Service acknowledges that there is not a broadly accepted definition and defines a "public mass shooting"[3] as an event where someone selects four or more people and shoots them with firearms in an indiscriminate manner, echoing the FBI's definition of the term "mass murder", but adding the indiscriminate factor.[4]

Mass Shooting....Right now, the definition seems to be when “more than 1 affluent white person is killed.” I forget the published definition, but Chicago would hit it every night. Why aren’t those reported? or the ones in Baltimore? Etc....

 

[ghbucky]

One thing the continually crops up with these mass shooters is a history of mental illness, and yet there is never a discussion about how we address what is, to me at least, clearly a crisis in mental health care.

I saw a heart breaking local news coverage in Cincinnati some years ago where a clearly affluent woman had been begging for help with her child. On camera, she said he is violent and she had no doubt that he was going to end up murdering someone and she could not get anything done about it.

There are people that are clearly violent and have no place in society, but they are simply left to try to find their way in society until they eventually succumb to their impulses.

 

[44 AMP]

There are people that are clearly violent and have no place in society, but they are simply left to try to find their way in society until they eventually succumb to their impulses.

No doubt in that, its been true as long as we have had societies.

Now, here's the rub, you cannot (and probably should not) lock someone up, or burn them for being a witch without PROOF and that proof only exists AFTER they have done something bad or really, really bad.

IF/when we fail to follow that basic rule, the one that says innocent until proven guilty, then we fall to the level of the middle ages witch hunts, Nazis and Communists "disappearing" people based on their neighbors rumors, or McCarthyism hunting suspected communist agents (and in the wrong places) based on unfounded accusations.

There are established legal steps for getting people legally declared dangerous, unfit, not competent, etc. IF an individual does not meet those standards, the govt cannot, should not, and does not lock them up. They have the same rights as the rest of us. ALL our rights.

The downside to the system is that someone who does not meet the requirements to be committed TODAY can and sometimes does go out and commit evil, tommorrow. OR next week or a year from now...

And to further complicat matters, what is the "dangerous" mental attitude??? Standards have changed over time, and possibly might change again. "Mental illness" is a brush as broad as a continent, and with as many variations.

There are still people alive who remember when actual medical textbooks listed homosexuality as a mental illness. Back then, "everybody" (except homosexuals) "knew" that was right and the correct thing.

Today, most people think differently.

What are we going to think, tomorrow???

 

[FlyFish]

There are 30,000 gun related deaths per year by firearms. That is, 0.000000925% of the population die from gun related actions each year. Statistically speaking, this is insignificant!

I don't disagree with the larger points being made in the article cited, but just in the interest of mathematical accuracy, 30,000 in a population of 330 million is .009%.

 

[Scorch]

Food for thought- When police arrest an offender, the firearms offense is typically one of the first ones to be plea bargained away by the prosecutors because any defense attorney wants to get rid of it to show he is doing his job, and the offender is very eager to get potential penalties off the table. Prosecutors want to keep people out of prison becasue prisons are crowded. Everybody's happy, right? Except that it defeats the point of stricter laws since they will never be enforced anyway.

And about those 30,000 death annually- closer to 40,000, but 2/3 of them are suicides, and 25% of them are gang related. If you really want to see a big impact on gun deaths, address those two areas. Trump was trying to go after gangs, but you still need to address the suicides.

 

[44 AMP]

... but you still need to address the suicides.

Pardon my apparent callous indifference, but why??

Not looking to start an argument over the morality of suicide, just wondering why/how would gun control laws be of any use.

 

[KyJim]

Thinking about it, or even talking about it, isn't illegal.

Actually, it can be...

Check out what has been done under "conspiracy" statutes.

I respectfully disagree. Every conspiracy statute I have seen requires one of the conspirators to take an action in furtherance of the conspiracy. This operative portion of one of the federal conspiracy statutes is one example:

If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. . . .

18 U.S.C. §  371.

I will have to admit that I am a bit concerned that mentioning or even thinking about something improper might soon lead to a criminal charge in this woke society in which we now live.

 

[Aguila Blanca]

I respectfully disagree. Every conspiracy statute I have seen requires one of the conspirators to take an action in furtherance of the conspiracy. This operative portion of one of the federal conspiracy statutes is one example:

The other problem is that you could talk about it, and if someone who was part of the conversation subsequently decides to act on it (even unilaterally) ... bang! You're up for Conspiracy. After all, it was YOUR idea ...

 

[Scorch]

Pardon my apparent callous indifference, but why??

I don't think it's callous indifference, I think it's more like "If they don't care, I don't care", but that's another topic.

By addressing the suicides I meant that someone has to take them out of the total firearms deaths talking points. And not so much the suicides themselves, but why they are being addressed as "gun deaths" when in that case the fact that there was a firearm involved was simply timing or convenience. If you are trying to look at gun homicides (gangs or police or private citizens killing someone), then leave out the people whoo killed themselves. But it's a big number, so anti-gunners want it in there for shock value.

I think in analyzing things like cause and effect, the Pareto principle is a valuable tool. It separates a lot of the garbage and lets you see what's going on in all that mess.

 

[Aguila Blanca]

Scorch has a valid point, but the fact remains that a death by firearm is a death by firearm. However, the raw statistic doesn't address the fact that people who want to commit suicide WILL find a way, and guns are only one of the tools available to them.

I had a friend and co-worker who committed suicide many years ago by parking his pickup truck across an Amtrak main line, in a cut with a blind curve where the engineer could not possibly have seen the truck in time to slow the train.

My ex mother-in-law tried by turning on the gas oven but not lighting it.

My adopted daughter went off the deep end when her grandmother died. She has made six attempts that I know of. Five were drug overdoses; the sixth was trying to jump out a sixth story window.

Other people drive their cars off cliffs or into bridge abutments.

Guns don't cause suicides.

 

[ghbucky]

Geez AB, I'm sorry about all of that. That is awful.

 

[44 AMP]

By addressing the suicides I meant that someone has to take them out of the total firearms deaths talking points.

Thank you Scorch, for clearing that up. I agree, those numbers should not be used as part of the argument for gun control.

Some time back, there was a gun control group calling themselves "Handgun Control Inc." (they call themselves something else today) published some alarming statistics about "death of a child due to a handgun".

After a while, a "defector" within their group released the details of how they got the number.

First, everyone under the age of 25 was counted as a "child".
Next, they counted all deaths, no matter the weapon, as due to a handgun.
Then they counted accidents, suicides, criminal acts, including gang on gang shootings, and also included all those shot by the police in the course of their duty.

They added all those up and presented the number to the public with a false and grossly misleading title. And, even after their methodology was debunked, they kept on using the figure and so did the mainstream media.

Seems those people are still doing something quite similar today.

 

[Scorch]

Yes, Handgun Control, Inc became the Brady Foundation, IIRC, after Jim Brady was paraded around in a wheelchair after being shot by John Hinckley during the Reagan assasination attempt in 1981. And yes, their numbers were grossly inflated and their definition of a "child" included adults. But the number is big and shocking and very emotionally charged since it includes "children" (some of whom were involved in criminal activities and were shot by authorities). But it's their story, and they're stickin to it.

It's kind of like the "mass shootings" numbers bandied about. Since there is no agreed-upon definition, any time there are 3 or more "victims", it can considered a mass shooting, whether the "victims" are harmed or not. E.g., firing a handgun at someone where at least 4 people present (including the shooter) and 3 are "victims" of assault with a deadly weapon could be a "mass shooting" whether or not the "victims" were struck by a bullet or not. I know, to me that's not a "mass shooting". The definition the AG came up with is 3 or more people injured in one incident.

 

[pcxxxx42]

At least half a dozen states have legalized marijuana since then, and we've had a massive spike in gun purchases.

If memory serves, the wording regarding drugs on the 4473 is "addicted." How many get addicted to marijuana?