Interesting Pro-Gun Control Article

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Bartholomew Roberts

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There is a NSFW / not-child-friendly section heading in the initial link!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...nging-the-conversation-hillary-clinton-reform

This article is part of a five part series from The Guardian on how wonderful gun control is; but it is interesting because it is a little schizophrenic. Even as the author celebrates Hillary attacking the NRA and the House sit-in, even as she celebrates the Dem platform on gun control, she acknowledges the platform being pushed is the same old plan from almost 30 years ago and that is has had no success in that time frame. In the meantime, there is new research showing effective ways to reduce gun violence that wouldn't provoke the NRA and require little more than funding to implement.

It is worth a read to anyone interested in the debate and not a bad article to share with people from the other side of the debate as it highlights common areas of interest. It also shows that the Dems may be more interested in the political side than the problem-solving side.

ETA: Language warning. They quote a Dem staffer in one of the subheadings and it is not language Art's grammaw would approve of.
 
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Interesting piece, just read #4. I've seen presentations of the city anti-violence programs that were successful.

I was surprised at touch at:

researcher Chris Koper suggested, might be a 1% reduction in shootings, or 650 fewer people shot per year. That effect would only begin to be seen after many years, once the US’s existing stock of large capacity magazines is used up.
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He was one of the researchers demonstrating that the AWB is ineffective because of existing stocks. I don't know how you get a realistic estimate of when higher capacity magazines are used up. They are rather sturdy. Although, he did say the effect was rather small.
 
This quote from article 5 has a lot of truth in it.
"Researchers have found that most urban gun violence is driven by very small networks of extremely high-risk men – and that focusing prevention efforts on those men can reduce gang-related violence by a third or more. There’s clear evidence that the best way to reduce violence is to zero in on the places and the people most at risk of contributing to violence – not whole “bad” neighborhoods, not whole generations of young black men in hoodies, but particular addresses, particular street corners, the one or two percent of high-risk young men who are actually driving the violence and putting everyone around them in danger. "

One of the things Clinton did right so to speak in regards to his "gun/crime" control was put boots on the grounds so to speak. Lots of cops were hired and put on beats in higher risk areas. This arguably had a real effect on crime.

I am not advocating all of minority/race X Y or Z is bad should be targeted by any means as that is far far from the case but the reality is there are known hotbeds of crime and the only way to drive it down is by ACTIVE aggressive policing of those areas.

The problem with combating "gun deaths" is we wait for the deaths part. We should be aggressively running down shots fired calls, assaults and any other violent type crimes and nipping the perpetrators in the bud before they graduate up or get "lucky" enough to actually kill somebody.

Focusing on high profile mass events, although horrific and depressing in every way, is simply not going to do anything for the majority of real violence/crime as they are statistically insignificant events. (PLEASE UNDERSTAND WHEN I SAY STATISTICALLY INSIGNIFICANT I SAY SO CLINICALLY AND NOT IN ANY WAY TO MINIMIZE THE HORROR AND INDIVIDUAL LOSS THEY BRING ABOUT. THEY ARE NOT INSIGNIFICANT IN ANY WAY TO THE FAMILIES NOR SHOULD THEY BE. ) I just feel that in order to combat real everyday death and violence we need to focus on the everyday violent criminal first and foremost.
 
From the article:
“What was said to us by the White House was, there’s really no support nationally to address the issue of urban violence,” Rev Charles Harrison, a pastor from Indianapolis said. “The support was to address the issue of gun violence that affected suburban areas – schools where white kids were killed.”
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That's it in a nutshell. A community activist from Chicago once in the bully pulpit has done nothing to help the communities that truly needs assistance. You have to wonder, TV tears aside, whether he ever really cared.

I think from now on when I hear people say "gun violence," I'm going to reply "Do you mean 'urban violence'?" Reverend Harrison is a voice from the front line, not a marketing sloganeer, saying that everyone is ignoring where the majority of the carnage is happening.
 
Glenn E. Meyer said:
[The 1% reduction in shootings] would only begin to be seen after many years, once the US’s existing stock of large capacity magazines is used up.
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[Koper] was one of the researchers demonstrating that the AWB is ineffective because of existing stocks. I don't know how you get a realistic estimate of when higher capacity magazines are used up. They are rather sturdy. Although, he did say the effect was rather small.
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I also zeroed in on this seemingly absurd statement, but it occurs to me that it could reflect imprecise wording, possibly a misunderstanding by the journalist – "used up" not in the sense of being worn out or broken, but rather in the sense of being largely unavailable because the lawful supply is small.
 
cslinger said:
I just feel that in order to combat real everyday death and violence we need to focus on the everyday violent criminal first and foremost.
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AND suicides.

One of the first things that caught my attention about this article is the refreshingly frank discussion of suicide. I think that BOTH sides of the U.S. gun debate have a tendency to sweep this issue under the rug for self-serving reasons, although the reasons on the gun-control side are more cynical (it keeps the body count up, and detailed discussion would lead to the obvious conclusion that AWB-type laws do absolutely nothing to mitigate the problem, as suicide only requires one shot).
 
I was puzzled by the "use up the supply of magazines" comment as well. A magazine is essentially a metal or plastic box with a spring in it. "Many years" is quite an understatement on how long it would take for them to be "used up" even assuming no maintenance or repair.

And when you look at existing stocks of magazines? I couldn't give you every >10rd magazine in my house right now if you were paying me a million dollars per magazine and I was actively and eagerly cooperating. That's like telling me "Give me every paper clip in your house." I can only imagine what that looks like on a nationwide basis.
 
I'm happy to see the Guardian taking this on, and I intend to share this series widely with my anti-gun friends and acquaintances. The Guardian is one of the very few remaining mainstream news outlets which is still interested in facts and in presenting complex issues in an honest way.
 
The problem will never be solved if you don't take the first step and correctly identify the problem. The problem isn't 'gun violence'.

Over 60%, nearly 2/3 of 'gun deaths' are suicides. That's a mental health problem, not a gun violence problem. I'm gonna guess that most of the remaining 'gun deaths' are caused by inner-city thugs. That's a socio-economic problem.

And I'm going to roll these lone wolf/ISIS shootings into the socio-economic category. These young men come from middle east countries with weak economies, poor outlook for jobs and careers, and have nothing to lose.

Quit calling it a gun violence problem.
 
2ndsojourn said:
Over 60%, nearly 2/3 of 'gun deaths' are suicides. That's a mental health problem, not a gun violence problem.
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Perhaps, but IMHO a little more community outreach wouldn't hurt, as it could help counter the constant narrative that the "gun lobby has blood on their hands / is obsessed with violence / doesn't care about people's lives" etc.

Note that the Guardian articles discuss the gun-rights community positively with regards to the topic of suicides. As stated in my previous post, IMHO the gun-control side cynically exploits gun suicides for political gain, so we have little to lose here.
2ndsojourn said:
...I'm going to roll these lone wolf/ISIS shootings into the socio-economic category. These young men come from middle east countries with weak economies, poor outlook for jobs and careers, and have nothing to lose.
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This may be true of run-of-the-mill Daesh recruits fighting in Syria, but Omar Mateen, Nidal Hasan, Rizwan Farook (the male San Berdoo shooter), and Elton Simpson, Nadir Soofi, and Abdul Kareem (the Curtis Culwell Center attack conspirators) were all born and raised in the USA. Only Tashfeen Malik—Farook's wife—was from the Middle East, and evidence suggests that she didn't move to the USA solely or primarily to participate in the attack. IOW none of the known ( or highly probable) radical jihadist shooters traveled to the USA from their home in the Middle East to conduct an attack, so this explanation doesn't wash.
 
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That effect would only begin to be seen after many years, once the US’s existing stock of large capacity magazines is used up.
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I've seen this argument before...let's see...where was it? Oh, yeah. The "study" that Dianne Feinstein used to support her 2013 AWB 2.0.

Either she didn't read the study, or she didn't expect people to read the study. It used the word inconclusive quite a bit, and it ended with a similar conclusion. Essentially, a ban would have to be nearly total, it would have to involve confiscation (or, "buybacks"), and it would take generations before the hardware wore down from abuse or neglect before we'd see any real benefit.

And this is ultimately the endpoint for gun control. It's all or nothing, or it doesn't work. Pushing for incremental or categorical bans, or adding hurdles like background checks won't do anything. If we're to be honest, the approach of restricting or reducing the supply of guns will only work if it is nearly total.

So, the next time you hear, "we're not coming for your guns," the response is, "then you're not doing it right."
 
I have yet to wear out a gun that I owned. I did turn a couple of m16 barrels white while in the army.

I also babied a worn out enfield mag for several years.
 
Those in favor of more gun control fall into one or more of three groups: the ignorant who have no idea that we already have laws on the books to prevent gun violence to the extent that law is able to do so; the intellectually lazy who whose analysis does not go beyond, crimes with guns, guns bad, ban guns; and the intellectually dishonest, who know all of the above and still advocate for stricter controls on responsible, law-abiding citizens’ access to firearms.
http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf

Gun controls generally have the effect of increasing the incidence of violent crime.
 
One of the things Clinton did right so to speak in regards to his "gun/crime" control was put boots on the grounds so to speak. Lots of cops were hired and put on beats in higher risk areas. This arguably had a real effect on crime.
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Now balance this with the Lautenberg amendment, which took lots of armed cops OFF the streets. Some of them left law enforcement, the rest wound up on desks, as they could no longer legally be armed.

I certainly agree that targeting the individuals committing the crimes would be the more effective than blanket laws (such as gun control) that only affect the people already obeying the law.
 
This quote from article 5 has a lot of truth in it.
"Researchers have found that most urban gun violence is driven by very small networks of extremely high-risk men – and that focusing prevention efforts on those men can reduce gang-related violence by a third or more. There’s clear evidence that the best way to reduce violence is to zero in on the places and the people most at risk of contributing to violence – not whole “bad” neighborhoods, not whole generations of young black men in hoodies, but particular addresses, particular street corners, the one or two percent of high-risk young men who are actually driving the violence and putting everyone around them in danger. "
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Baltimore study 2007: 97% of cleared case homicide perpetrators, and even more to the point, 91% of all homicide victims, have criminal arrest records. Studies in new Orleans indicated something on the order of 70% of victims being felons or persons with 5 or more arrests.

The media attack our side for shutting down CDC giveaways to crank pro-gun control studies, but these studies in "victim precipitated homicide" or risk elevation from criminal behavior, were stifled when "community pressure" ended several programs of police collecting and making available raw data on arrest records proportion even of anonymized homicide victims.

Now to me, an 18 or eve 30 year old who grew up in challenging, abusive, violent childhood, and has a couple of arrests, does not have a life less valuable than anyone else. But by noting risk behavior of smokers and their proportion within lung cancer rates does not mean one would be saying smokers lives are less valuable. The fact is the consequence in the majority of cases is correlated with risk taking behavior.

This issue of the subset of the population with repeat criminal behavior being an acute risk group, driving the majority of killing -- and being most of the victims too -- just as smokers are for cancer, is intentionally ignored by gun control advocacy researchers. Why? Because controlling for that in studies would invert a lot of their claimed results. They insist the entire population is a random and similar data set, when in fact that "assumption of random sample " is clearly at the root of all their junk science.

For example the of repeated hypothesis and conclusion that owning a firearm makes it more likely someone in a household will be criminal violence victim. In fact, if you control for households with prior criminals who are the possessors of an (illegal) gun, the remaining "armed" household show a lower risk of violence occurring than homes with no firearms.

And this goes to the vast majority of cases of homicide of children as well. Last year I took a look at dchomicidwatch compilation of homicide victims and looked at those 12 and under killed (by knife, gun, strangulation, beating, all) in the home the prior three years. With one exceptions of children killed by its mother (not with a firearm) all of them, every one, were killed by a prior criminal domiciled in the home, or visiting the home as a relative or dating partner of the mother, or another woman in home. Even accidental firearm death appears to be in the great majority illegal guns owned by criminals in a home.

Supporters of the Second amendment need to insist that any studies or data presentations in the media, academic or popular, include controls or acknowledgement of those risk factors. Also do not fall for the red herring that you are valuing those lives less, use the analogy of smoking, criminal behavior like smoking, it is what is behind the vast majority of lethal violence and ignoring it is as specious as ignoring smoking as a risk factor in lung cancer
 
For example the of repeated hypothesis and conclusion that owning a firearm makes it more likely someone in a household will be criminal violence victim.
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They'll also frame the argument as "a gun is more likely to kill a member of your household than a criminal" by ignoring non-fatal defensive gun uses ("Lie there on the floor til the cops get here or I'll shoot you") and including suicides of mostly elderly white men to imply that the mere presence of a gun will escalate some normal family disagreement to homicide.
 
and including suicides
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Yeah, I have looked at the studies on increased risk of guns in the household very closely. They show problems with the peer review process. There are actually peer review passed ones that don't even use suicide by all means. That is egregious. Less obvious but also clearly bad use of statistics are many that fail to control for age/health status/rural/agricultural/suburban/urban and other known risk factors in sucide.

Finally with suicide, there is another issue known and well documented in focused suicide research but either not understood or intentionally, and dishonestly, ignored by "gun violence epidemiology" experts: massive misclassification of suicide as accident -- especially suicide by means other than gunshot or self hanging.

In short commit suicide by self hanging or firearm, and even absent a suicide note, or other affirmative proof, and you will be classified as a suicide. Do it driving into a tree, falling from a window, falling into train tracks, in a garage with CO, with legal or illegal drugs, or several other methods, and absent affirmative proof of intent you will be misclassified as an accident.
This creates a false elevated proportion of gunshot proportion in suicide. and this false elevated proportion is most acute where? In places, countries, states, and homes with more gun access and less non-gun misclassified as accident.

In 2007 after a decade of self congratulations for decreasing suicide in Australia a number of peer reviewed studies were done there which concluded NO drop in suicide whatsoever. About half of the reduced gun suicide moved immediately to other means ruled suicide, and the other half moved to means that were often suicide but misclassified as accident.
 
Guns do not aggravate suicide rates. For example Japan where guns are virtually banned, the suicide rate is about double that of the suicide rate in the U.S.
 
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