The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
The Right to Arm Bears: A [Gun Control Debate] Thread
syndalis
Getting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Products, Transition Team regular
Getting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Products, Transition Team regular
"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
The second amendment; one of the first rights we secured for ourselves as citizens in America, and the center of a rather large debate we are having at the moment.
Gun ownership is viewed as one of the most important rights by some in this country. 40% of people live in a household with a gun of some sort, there are almost as many guns as there are people, and sales of guns to citizens represents a multi-billion dollar annual business. there are fairs, shows, tours of the factories in which they are made, enthusiast clubs, militias, and a wide host of accessory companies that thrive on the existence of guns as a core part of our society. For many, being a gun owner is a core part of their identity, as much as their religion or political affiliation.
Guns also have the ability to kill a lot of people. over 30,000 people annually are killed in America by guns either via suicide, accidental discharge or homicide, with an additional 75,000 treated in our hospitals for non-fatal gunshot wounds. The overwhelming majority of these deaths occur from pistols, and are usually crimes in which a small number (1-3 people) are killed by someone with a motive.
In the past few years, our news cycle has been punctuated with random and terrible acts of gun violence on multiple victims from people who are mentally imbalanced, with in many cases no strong or obvious connection to their victims. Senator Gabby Giffords. Aurora. The Sikh Temple Shooting. The Mall Shooter. Whenever one of these happened, there was a cry for a return to the topic of gun control in this country. This was always met with the position from those amongst the NRA and other pro-gun rights advocates that the left is exploiting a tragedy to force unwanted laws on the people. The left rolled over, the news cycle changed, and things returned to the status quo, only to be disturbed by the next shooting some weeks or months later.
This pattern changed when Newtown happened.
The side interested in seeking regulations on guns in this country seemingly grew a pair, and decided that they were going to fight back against the messaging juggernaut that is the NRA. Ads with strong appeals to emotion hit the airwaves. The President and Vice President weighed in on the debate and put task forces towards coming up with solutions. The media refused to roll over. Bloomberg opened up his wallet and abused Citizens United every bit as much as Karl Rove did to primary politicians who support tough gun laws.
And because of this, the NRA ended up in a weird position for them; the defensive one, and it did not make them look good.
Right now gun control is being debated on the floor of the senate. There are a lot of ideas out there, and legislation that is being drafted will likely draw from many or all of them.
Assault Weapons Ban: Sen Feinstein has drafted a new version of the 1994 assault weapons ban, which has been split off from the main bill to be voted on separately as an amendment to the bill. The language of her proposal can be seen here. The success of her previous 1994 version is hotly debated, but it was allowed to lapse under GWB's administration, and the recent glut of mass shootings has returned conversation on this legislation to the forefront.
Extended Magazine Capacity Ban: The argument being that if a shooter has to reload multiple times to indiscriminately kill a large number of people, it opens windows of opportunity for failure, or just extra seconds for people to escape or find cover. The opposing side claims that you can quickly reload a gun, criminals will simply use illegal magazines, and it is a lot of effort to save a few extra lives compared to the inconvenience of all gun owners who hate reloading all the time at the firing range.
Universal Background Checks: The most universally lauded of all the gun control proposals. (almost) Everyone agrees that every sale of a gun should happen under the auspice of a 3rd party who handles a background check to confirm that the person seeking to buy the gun isn't a felon or someone deemed unfit to own a weapon. This background check must be done for EVERY sale or transfer, especially from sales via a private collection, aka "the gun show loophole." The NRA leadership is staunchly against it, and polls indicate anywhere from 80-90% of the population and 75% of NRA members are all for it. This should pass, and it will be interesting to see if our representation represents us or not.
Federal Registry of Guns: A long shot for sure, but there has been talk of keeping track of the journey of a gun from factory to store to owner to new owner to eventual destruction. Proponents believe that this database could be used to discover the weak links in our supply chain that allow guns to transition from legal to illegal guns, and appropriately punish those responsible. Furthermore, it will allow law enforcement to know if the home they received a domestic violence call to has gun owners inside, allowing them to be prepared for the situation at hand. People against this say that it will be very expensive and provide little in return, and that Canada tried a similar thing and gave up on it.
Enhanced Authority for Medical Professionals to Restrict Access to Guns: Wayne LaPierre recently said that crazy people should not have guns, and that we need a database of the mentally unwell that could be checked before selling a gun to them (funny, considering his stance on background checks in general). This is not an altogether bad idea, though it was worded rather callously. I feel that if a mental health professional deems someone to be a threat to themselves or others, that they already have the right to have them detained temporarily for evaluation. Anyone detained in such fashion should probably be put on a restrictive period of anywhere from 90 days to 1 year in which they cannot buy a gun. If the evaluation period uncovers serious issues that the patient will be dealing with for the rest of their life (Schizophrenia, psychosis, massive genetic-driven depression), they should probably never have the right to own a weapon capable of easily killing other people or themselves.
I know that we sometimes go off on wild tangents in here, and spend time talking about everything from swimming pools to the functional use of a clay pigeon before it has been shot, but this seems like an important conversation, one that will have a lot of news and information in the coming days, and one I hope to have some spirited debate on as we move towards whatever our future is regarding the strength of the second amendment in this country.
So.... discuss
The second amendment; one of the first rights we secured for ourselves as citizens in America, and the center of a rather large debate we are having at the moment.
Gun ownership is viewed as one of the most important rights by some in this country. 40% of people live in a household with a gun of some sort, there are almost as many guns as there are people, and sales of guns to citizens represents a multi-billion dollar annual business. there are fairs, shows, tours of the factories in which they are made, enthusiast clubs, militias, and a wide host of accessory companies that thrive on the existence of guns as a core part of our society. For many, being a gun owner is a core part of their identity, as much as their religion or political affiliation.
Guns also have the ability to kill a lot of people. over 30,000 people annually are killed in America by guns either via suicide, accidental discharge or homicide, with an additional 75,000 treated in our hospitals for non-fatal gunshot wounds. The overwhelming majority of these deaths occur from pistols, and are usually crimes in which a small number (1-3 people) are killed by someone with a motive.
In the past few years, our news cycle has been punctuated with random and terrible acts of gun violence on multiple victims from people who are mentally imbalanced, with in many cases no strong or obvious connection to their victims. Senator Gabby Giffords. Aurora. The Sikh Temple Shooting. The Mall Shooter. Whenever one of these happened, there was a cry for a return to the topic of gun control in this country. This was always met with the position from those amongst the NRA and other pro-gun rights advocates that the left is exploiting a tragedy to force unwanted laws on the people. The left rolled over, the news cycle changed, and things returned to the status quo, only to be disturbed by the next shooting some weeks or months later.
This pattern changed when Newtown happened.
The side interested in seeking regulations on guns in this country seemingly grew a pair, and decided that they were going to fight back against the messaging juggernaut that is the NRA. Ads with strong appeals to emotion hit the airwaves. The President and Vice President weighed in on the debate and put task forces towards coming up with solutions. The media refused to roll over. Bloomberg opened up his wallet and abused Citizens United every bit as much as Karl Rove did to primary politicians who support tough gun laws.
And because of this, the NRA ended up in a weird position for them; the defensive one, and it did not make them look good.
Right now gun control is being debated on the floor of the senate. There are a lot of ideas out there, and legislation that is being drafted will likely draw from many or all of them.
Assault Weapons Ban: Sen Feinstein has drafted a new version of the 1994 assault weapons ban, which has been split off from the main bill to be voted on separately as an amendment to the bill. The language of her proposal can be seen here. The success of her previous 1994 version is hotly debated, but it was allowed to lapse under GWB's administration, and the recent glut of mass shootings has returned conversation on this legislation to the forefront.
Extended Magazine Capacity Ban: The argument being that if a shooter has to reload multiple times to indiscriminately kill a large number of people, it opens windows of opportunity for failure, or just extra seconds for people to escape or find cover. The opposing side claims that you can quickly reload a gun, criminals will simply use illegal magazines, and it is a lot of effort to save a few extra lives compared to the inconvenience of all gun owners who hate reloading all the time at the firing range.
Universal Background Checks: The most universally lauded of all the gun control proposals. (almost) Everyone agrees that every sale of a gun should happen under the auspice of a 3rd party who handles a background check to confirm that the person seeking to buy the gun isn't a felon or someone deemed unfit to own a weapon. This background check must be done for EVERY sale or transfer, especially from sales via a private collection, aka "the gun show loophole." The NRA leadership is staunchly against it, and polls indicate anywhere from 80-90% of the population and 75% of NRA members are all for it. This should pass, and it will be interesting to see if our representation represents us or not.
Federal Registry of Guns: A long shot for sure, but there has been talk of keeping track of the journey of a gun from factory to store to owner to new owner to eventual destruction. Proponents believe that this database could be used to discover the weak links in our supply chain that allow guns to transition from legal to illegal guns, and appropriately punish those responsible. Furthermore, it will allow law enforcement to know if the home they received a domestic violence call to has gun owners inside, allowing them to be prepared for the situation at hand. People against this say that it will be very expensive and provide little in return, and that Canada tried a similar thing and gave up on it.
Enhanced Authority for Medical Professionals to Restrict Access to Guns: Wayne LaPierre recently said that crazy people should not have guns, and that we need a database of the mentally unwell that could be checked before selling a gun to them (funny, considering his stance on background checks in general). This is not an altogether bad idea, though it was worded rather callously. I feel that if a mental health professional deems someone to be a threat to themselves or others, that they already have the right to have them detained temporarily for evaluation. Anyone detained in such fashion should probably be put on a restrictive period of anywhere from 90 days to 1 year in which they cannot buy a gun. If the evaluation period uncovers serious issues that the patient will be dealing with for the rest of their life (Schizophrenia, psychosis, massive genetic-driven depression), they should probably never have the right to own a weapon capable of easily killing other people or themselves.
I know that we sometimes go off on wild tangents in here, and spend time talking about everything from swimming pools to the functional use of a clay pigeon before it has been shot, but this seems like an important conversation, one that will have a lot of news and information in the coming days, and one I hope to have some spirited debate on as we move towards whatever our future is regarding the strength of the second amendment in this country.
So.... discuss
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
syndalis on
+7
Posts
Extended magazine capacity ban - Yes. The scenarios in which this might have saved lives are a vanishingly small fraction of gun deaths, but there's negligible tradeoff. The arguments in favor of extended magazines are crazy pants-on-head paranoid - people talking about defending their homes from roving street gangs or crap like that. So such a ban would be a tiny win, but with nearly zero cost.
Universal background checks - Fuck yes. The gun show loophole is insane. It renders every other background check law moot.
Federal registry of guns (or any other gun registry) - No. It won't work, but it will make a whole lot of peoples' lives harder. As I've said before:
Enhanced authority for mental health professionals to restrict gun purchases (see what I did there?) - Not as certain about this one. It depends on the details of the system. In theory, I'm okay with it. But it triggers an alarm bell with me. Here's why:
The gun lobby shifted their rhetoric from a hobby and hunting paradigm to a personal safety paradigm during the 1970 and 1980s; I could go into the cultural reasons why they did this, but it's not important. In 1960, the NRA's rag, American Rifleman, was mostly about sport hunting and hobby shooting. By the 1990, they were publishing stories about people using guns to defend themselves from home invaders, and running articles on how to stay cool in a firefight.
This focus on personal safety required the NRA to capitalize on fear; they had to set up a strawman Other, a shadowy invader preparing to rape your homes and burgle your wives. There was a racial dog-whistle component to that; it was often implied, if not stated outright, that the people coming for you were black, Mexican, Russian, Chinese, or Islamic.
Well, that doesn't work so well anymore. After OKC and Columbine, a lot of folks started to notice - hey, these really dangerous psychopaths are all white dudes. Despite that, the NRA was able to ride the visage of Colin Ferguson for a long-ass time, and later 9/11 put the fear of Allah in the American gun owner. But as more and more of these massacres happen, it becomes more apparent that you can't tell a dangerous criminal just by looking at him, and then Trayvon Martin got shot and it put that problem in stark relief.
So who is the scary Other we have to defend against? Rhetorical sidestep - it's crazy people! They could be white or black or any color of the rainbow, but what unites them in common is mental illnesssssss ooooOOOooooooooh spooky. You have people like Alex Jones reminding his listeners at every opportunity that the Aurora shooter was on SSRIs. (Never mind that blaming a mass murder on SSRIs prescribed by a psychiatrist is a bit like blaming a heart attack death on the CPR administered by a paramedic.)
Consequently, I'm a bit wary about laws that threaten to stigmatize the mentally ill. The proposal would require that medical/mental health declarations of unfit-to-own-a-gun go into a database that ties into the National Instant Check System (NICS).
I want to know - what else is done with that data? Is it erased after a period of time?
Once a database like that is created, there will be the temptation to use it more. Somebody with schizophrenia molests a kid, then all of a sudden there will be cries to deny anybody on the mentally ill registry any job that involves children. Yes, that's a slippery slope argument, but like Eugene Volokh, I think sometimes we have to take the slippery slope into account.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I find your stance on the gun registry... interesting.
If a hit and run occurred, and witnesses saw what looked like a red camaro from the 60s or 70s drive off... we would hit the database to see who owns a car matching the make and model in the area, and investigate off of that info.
Why is it okay with cars, but taboo with guns?
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I feel this is a misinterpretation of what a federal gun registry is actually meant to do (although it sounds like your argument is geared towards that being a popular misconception). As I understand it it's less about using it in tandem with ballistics databases to solve shootings and more about using it as a dataset to study the movement of guns from one purchaser to the next, information which at present we know very little about. (Not only do we have the gun show loophole, but the ATF is largely unable to do even basic things like inspect a gun seller's inventory to see if anything has gone missing.) Although individual cops might use the registry to determine whether or not somebody they're encountering is likely to be armed (say, during a routine traffic stop), the most important benefit to policing is a greater understanding of how guns are bought, sold, transferred, and eventually end up being used in a crime.
This is also one of those measures (like universal background checks and storage/education requirements) that it's in the pro-gun side's interest to compromise on. Each of them is likely to help prevent gun crime and accidental shootings, and the more of those that we prevent using these minimally-invasive regulations, the less the left will be interested in greater restrictions on everybody. You guys would do well for yourselves to support some inconvenience in the hopes of solving or mitigating the problem of gun violence; working with us to help us draft specific, less-invasive, and more effective regulation is going to be better for your cause in the long run than trying to keep your finger in the dyke forever.
1. Registry is created.
2. Law abiding gun owners register all their guns
3. Government outlaws guns
4. Government uses registry to confiscate guns
5. All "real Americans" are rounded up and sent off to the FEMA camps, all because they allowed a registry.
Edit: Feral's post brings up some interesting arguments, and does not use the crazy NRA scare tactics. I wrote my post originally without reading all of Feral's
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I guess the final straw was after Newtown, when they tried to play both the "blame mentally ill people" and "blame video games" cards at the same time.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
I don't think anyone supporting gun rights would describe the position in that way. And then you're not even touching on the faction that sees government intrusion on rights of this kind as an absolute last resort option, as opposed to the go-to option it currently is.
Past that, there's the slippery slope problem. It's extremely difficult to make any compromise with people who see any compromise as a stepping stone for yet more compromise. In this case, such a scenario is not hypothetical. It leaves anyone open to a few more restrictions in a very tricky place, considering how proponents of gun legislation have (on multiple occasions) stated that these initial restrictions are merely stepping stones.
Slippery Slope is a logical fallacy for a reason. We should not restrict our options just because the NRA uses it as an argument.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
It's a not a fallacy if it's true. Just... you know.. saying. If the opposition outright states they're going to use whatever gains they get as stepping stones, the only logical move is to not give them anything.
Because guns aren't cars and car:gun analogies are almost always poop?
I'm pretty sure I addressed this in my post, anyway. But let me reiterate.
If the best match you could come up with from the DMV registry is "red camaro from the 60s or 70s," then DMV registration would be a waste of time and money. Forensic analysis with guns aren't even quite that accurate, it's more like "American non-Mopar muscle car" than "red Camaro."
Comparing cars and guns is already comparing apples and oranges. Comparing a witness account of a color and make of a car against forensic bullet analysis is comparing apples and dildos.
But with cars, a witness to an accident has a pretty good chance of getting the license number, or at least a fair chunk of it. There aren't exactly a lot of victims who come out of armed robberies with an eidetic memory of the gun's serial number.
An FFL holder is already required by law to keep a complete inventory log of every firearm that enters or leaves his possession. This is called an "Acquisitions & Dispositions Record" or just 'bound book' for short. (http://www.atf.gov/files/publications/download/p/atf-p-5300-15.pdf) This is in addition to the ATF forms that an FFL holder must fill out for each firearm that passes through his hands.
I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that the ATF can't inspect a firearms dealer for missing inventory because, well, yes they can. The ATF can walk in to any FFL holder's place of business during business hours and demand to see their A&Ds and cross-reference them with on-premises inventory and the FFL holder is required to comply.
Sure, he could falsify that logbook, but he could also decline to update an electronic federal database, too. So I'm not seeing what problem a federal database supposedly solves.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
With regards to mental health flags, I don't think it's at all unreasonable to say "if you're going to add personal health information to a centralized database, we (the public at large and the individuals affected) need to have very stringent legal protection against the misuse of that information."
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
We also need to be very careful how we determine how someone gets put in such a database if we do go that route.
In general, I'm open to a lot of ideas when it comes to the gun debate, short of an outright ban, or on making gun ownership so expensive and inconvenient that it may as well be a ban.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
You can't hide a rifle. No sane person is going to escalate a fight with a person with an AR-15 strapped to his back. If you enter practically any store with a rifle or shotgun on full display people are going to know your intentions right away.
This is unrealistic but it would prevent a metric fuck ton of deaths. Hell it's even a lot harder to accidentally or "accidentally" shoot someone with a rifle.
I would also accept gigantic taxes on bullets to pay for better mental health coverage in this country. The lack of beds at mental health facilities is alarming and a nationwide epidemic.
No, no. Nobody is suggesting that witnesses identify the serial number of a gun. Guns are often discarded after a crime, and once we have it in hand, we can read the serial number and in an ideal world plug it into a database that tells us who made it, who sold it, who bought it, who they passed it off to, and that person's DMV records.
Currently every one of those inquiries are separate processes involving individual phone calls or physical interviews. This is dumb.
I apologize, I conflated two important issues: the ATF isn't allowed to do more than one inspection a year (which sounds like it can't be unscheduled, either), and they're also not able to require stores to keep an actual inventory. (NPR)
Take your local DMV, add a firearms registration system. You've already got the framework in place, all it would take a small increase in data capacity and the hiring of a few people (something easily facilitated by licensing costs, say 10 bucks). Bam, registry done using existing facilities to mitigate cost.
Probably throw in some ammo control as well by limiting how many rounds you can buy at any one time. For example, buy as many as you want to use at the range, but you can only take one magazine worth home with you.
I'm sure that would be unpopular in America, but that's because you haven't seen my advertising campaign where everyone who wants huge magazines gets mocked for needing so many bullets to kill something and being to much of a pussy to get in close and use their bayonet.
With a registry, it's important to have accurate expectations of it's purpose and what it can / can't do. If it's only tracking serial numbers to lead back to dealers / straw buyers, the fact that it's not magically solving murders like on 'CSI' shouldn't be a factor against a registry. In general, I think that the existence registry in and of itself creates a chilling effect on the 'conversion' of legal guns to illegal guns. I also think a registry is necessary to make other legislation (like Universal Background Checks) truly effective and prevent those laws from inconveniancing legitimate owners while criminals do whatever they want.
I do think there are legitimate concerns about the cost of the program, enforcement, and privacy / security concerns that should be weighed against the expected benefits. I definitely think that full access to the registry (with personal identifying information) should be restricted to law enforcement and other legitimate government purposes.
I also want to note that for law abiding gun owners, a Federal Registry is literally no additional inconvenience, as it's the difference between saving and deleting the record from the background checks that already take place.
I personally believe that Universal Background Checks + Federal Registry + better mandatory reporting by doctors (and States to NICS) would address a large number of the problems with gun violence as the 'easy' supply of guns on the streets dries up.
It hasn't been proven to work.
When it comes to legislation you cannot rely on "common sense" or anecdotal evidence. This is the same type of fallacy that leads people to think that everyone on welfare is also a drug user. In order for any of the methods suggested thus far to be rational, you need to have solid evidence that these bans and restrictions will result in a solid decrease in crime. Not gun crime, but crime in general. Outlawing whatever type of guns you wish accomplishes precisely nothing if you can't show that it leads to a reduction in the overall crime rate, and not just the crime rate as it relates to guns. And as far of the facts of the matter go, statistics show that gun control measures don't work. At all. At least, not in America.
Compound that with the problems with the methodology of the gun control movement; proposing sweeping legislation to close a gun show loophole that encompasses less than ten percent of sales that actually take place at the show, fear mongering in the wake of tragedies, constantly appealing to blind emotion instead of statistical evidence, and there's very little actual motivation to support gun control measures as it stands. Simply put, we've no proof they'll work, and the people putting forward the plans aren't doing so in a trustworthy manner.
For a show to be any kind of success I am assuming thousands of guns change hands there.
Congrats; that one gun show just introduced hundreds (if not thousands) of guns to people without any form of background check, that can easily be sold to the street for more money than the person spent at the gun show, and can be used in crimes without any way of know where the gun came from.
10% of all sales at a gun show is a damning statistic, not a support for doing nothing.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Everything is a damning statistic, because we are talking about interactions that happen on a national level. It's not a question of whether or not the current laws work entirely, it's whether or not the new ones will do what they claim to well enough to make the expenditure worth it. And quite frankly, most people who speak of death-by-firearm and gun crime have absolutely no idea about the actual logistics behind it all.
For instance, do you know that more than half of the people who die by fire arms in the united states are suicides? We literally have more people with psychological disorders killing themselves than we have people with other psychological disorders killing other people.
Yes, we have covered that ground extensively. Suicide by firearm is something we should seek to reduce as well.
What you are doing (whether you know it or not) is a fairly standard tactic of slicing the overarcing problem into a bunch of small piles.
"It's not 30,000 homicides a year, its 16,000 suicides, 3,000 accidental and 11,000 homicides."
"It's not every gun at the gun show, just 10% of them."
"3,000 kids don't die by guns a year because gang members get counted in the kids statistic."
Every such statement like this seeks to diminish the problem, or compartmentalize the problems in such a way that solving one of them seems like too much effort to put in for such a small thing.
What's funny is that many of these proposals out there (enforced background checks, closing the gun show loophole, a registry, enhanced mental health screening, requirements for gun storage and safety in the home) would tackle many of these smaller problems all at the same time. Because they aren't a bunch of unrelated issues - guns are the connective tissue that tie them all together.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Tackle being the key word. Not solve. A key issue you've yet to address is the actual effectiveness of what you propose. How much do you think the accidental death rates involving guns would go down if the government was in charge of mandating household safety in regards to firearms? How much do you think that kind of operation would cost?
The over arcing problem is not "guns." It's a similar thread, but it's not the driving force behind the narrative of each of these problems. With the suicides, the problem is depression, not guns. With accidental deaths, it's incompetence, not guns. You're focusing to much on the fact that guns are present in each of these individual problems, and treating them as if they are the source of said problems.
Guns aren't the font of all problems; they are a force multiplier.
Hunters prefer guns over rocks or bows and arrows (most of the time at least) because guns are effective, fast, and powerful.
Spree killers will choose a gun over a knife because you are far more likely to be a spree killer with a gun, and more likely to be "that asshole who injured 14 people" if you use a knife.
People will kill themselves with a bottle of jack and a handful or two of Vicodin in the absence of a gun, but they are given precious time to regret their decision and puke it out, or be found by a friend and get their stomach pumped / put on activated charcoal, etc... as I so politely said in the other thread, you can't puke up a bullet after you pulled the trigger.
Guns do not cause the problems, but they make the problems so much worse because of their presence.
So, are you opposed to any of the proposals currently on the floor? To mandating better security in the home (which obviously won't be enforced by random searches and seizures, but will be punishable if a crime is committed and it is discovered they were negligent in the storage of their guns)? What about the background check that 90% of Americans want to see happen? Are you satisfied with where guns are at in society right now?
edit: also, you have to realize that taking a stance of "you can't fix X because of Y" or "we should fix Y first before looking at X" When Y (in this case, depression or man's desire to commit violence) are problems at the root of the human condition, and X is something other countries have managed to mitigate rather nicely, is a goosey way of dealing with the current problems we face.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I kinda like the registry, because it gives us a way of knowing when guns are stolen, and sold or imported illegally. I don't really understand how universal background checks make a difference, if there is no way of preventing legal guns from becoming illegal guns, or a way a way to track straw purchases.
There's some states that require a bullet and casing fire from every gun sold. This is a convoluted process with no value, as any sort of alteration, or even heavy usage, will change the marks left by the gun. That's dumb and bad and pointless. Knowing that Jim Bob has been buying 5 guns a week for the last years, well... that's something that might be useful, and which universal background checks alone won't do anything to prevent.
Unless the bound books are digital and remotely accessible at pretty much any time, or if background check requests are recorded and tracked, I don't see these as effective methods of preventing/detecting straw purchases. If we are going to do either one of them, we've created a defacto gun registry.
Most of these issues were already discussed in the 110 pages of the 2nd Amendment thread Tube closed yesterday...you should go read up on it...but we'll cover this quickly.
Nobody thinks we will wave a wand and all problems with guns will magically go away. On a national level, we are talking about percents.
If having every gun locked in a safe / trigger locked with ammo separate reduces suicides by a few percent due to lack of availability, you're talking about a couple hundred people a year that haven't committed suicide.
If requiring mandatory training on gun safety reduces accidents by a few percent, you're talking dozens or hundreds of people a year that haven't died in gun accidents, and several times that who weren't injured by those same accidents.
If the number of guns in the hands of criminals is reduced by a few percent, that's hundreds or even thousands of people who haven't died in crimes. Hundreds or thousands of families that haven't suffered a loss. Thousands of hours and millions of dollars in police and medical services that don't need to be spent caring for, investigating, and prosecuting shooters.
Everything is a matter of degree, and nothing is going to happen overnight. There is real proof that gun control does work and it does reduce crime. Australia is a perfect experiment as the number of gun homicides have dropped to a third of what they were before stringent gun control laws were put into effect. Total homicides have dropped by a third to half of what they were prior to gun control.
Yes, guns are the problem.
If you go by suicide studies and statistics, removing quick methods of suicide decreases the rate. So yes, in the case of suicide and probably a LOT of petty crime, access to guns is not the only problem, but they are indeed a huge fucking part of it.
Gun show loophole needs to be closed though, real bad.
This is a great example of what happens in these threads.
syndalis: The lack of background checks at gun shows allow persons to avoid a background check when purchasing a gun. If we close this loophole, then more people will be subject to background checks when they purchase guns.
Rsyk: No law can prevent criminals from getting guns, and most gun deaths are suicides anyway.
syndalis: Your bringing up suicides is a way of dividing up "gun deaths" to try and bla bla
Rsyk: Accidental gun deaths bla bla
And we never get to the original fucking point of syndalis' post: Increasing background checks.
So, here's my question to Rsyk: Are you opposed to background checks? Not suicide. Not "no law can prevent all crime". Not "accidental shooting". Not "effectiveness of legislation". Not any other fucking obfuscation of the conversation.
Background checks at gun shows: Go.
Right. The background check requirement, and shutting down any operation that sells guns without a background check, is a first step. It HAS to eventually be followed by a registry to really secure that only law abiding citizens get guns moving forward, and those found to be supplying the criminal element get punished.
That registry should be ONLY accessible to law enforcement (police, ATF, FBI) and the CDC. Full stop.
the CDC can then take data samples that have been anonymized ("43 year old white male earning 45-65k a year in zip code 10034" is fine, but "P. Tucker 6/22/80" is absolutely not) and grant access to those samples to research bodies for study of the effects of guns on society. Research we sorely need.
Anyone breaching the privacy of the data, like that newspaper in new york did with the conceal carry permit holders, should be a criminal act.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
I'm opposed to all proposals currently on the floor because none of them are proven to work. Mandating better security in the home by way of increasing the punishment should something happen won't work, because increasing the sentence on crimes after they've commit hasn't worked. The three strikes law doesn't work, the death penalty doesn't work, even increasing the mandatory sentence on on crimes commit with firearms didn't work.
You're vastly overestimating the number of Americans who think that way, and even so, most of them don't know the methods of the background checks currently in place. They just want more because they figure that more laws will translate to less crime.
No, I'm not satisfied with the current state of guns in society because the majority of people don't have any idea what effect they have on society. They think that there's some major correlation between the presence of guns and crime, and that by getting rid of one they'll make the other better. Were that the case, places like Kennesaw, GA would be in situations so much worse than they are now.
If you won't bother to look up Kennesaw, you can look up Sweden instead. They have a similar policy when it comes to gun control.
The argument about Universal Background Checks without a registry - promoted by a number of pro-gun people in here - is that most gun sellers want to abide by the law. They won't break the law, but they also won't be inconvenienced (and in many cases lack a simple method) to verify if the purchaser can legally own guns.
By mandating Universal Background Checks and providing a method where private sellers can easily verify the purchaser's status, the vast majority of private sellers will comply with the law. This reduces the number of people providing guns to criminals / mentally ill / other forbidden purchasers to people who are willfully breaking the law.
The pool of people willfully breaking the law is now small enough that it can be addressed in other ways. Regular investigation, criminals rolling on suppliers, or sting operations, for example. Although it WOULD be easier to catch those people with a Federal Gun Registry, now the 'plausible deniability' defense is gone, and instead of searching for a needle in a haystack it's simply a matter of proving intent or negligence.
Note: I'm pro-gun control, but I agree and think this is a legitimate argument. I don't think most gun owners want to break the law, but most also won't go out of their way unless it's mandated.
EDIT2 - I also don't think that Federal Registries necessarily follow Universal Background Checks. They definitely make enforcement / prosecution easier, but Universal Background Checks in and of themselves are a major step forward.
Because it is very difficult to prove an absence. If an individual is prevented from obtaining a gun, and so that individual was unable to carry out a shooting spree, we cannot point to the non-existent shooting spree and proclaim, "See? Gun control works because this shooting spree did not happen." Or, we could, but it would be a very silly sort of argument: Yesterday there were no school shootings, so gun control works!
Demanding proof of universal negatives is a very disingenuous way to debate. We can assess historical data, and track trends in gun violence with respect to gun legislation, but those will be, at best, correlations. Because we're stuck doing all of this inductively, and talk of prevention is talk of absences, lack, non-being.
So, yes. We cannot prove that gun laws prevented a mass shooting yesterday.
But that is not an argument against gun legislation. It is simply a description of how proof works.
You're right, it is hard to prove an absence. It is not hard to prove a reduction.
We are not talking about specific events, we are talking about large scale statistics that are easy to track. You don't have to find an instance where a school shooting that would have occurred didn't. You have to find an instance where an implementation of gun control policies translated to an actual reduction in crime rates.
No _J_, we can point to gun control laws and prove they work. At least, to any extent that anything can be proven.
In places, say 'Australia', or even 'The United States', significant decreases in crime such as homicide (in general and gun homicide) followed gun control legislation. Australia's homicide rate got cut by a third to half following strict legislation, and America's drops significantly following implementation of the 'Brady Bill'.
There are simply no other factors that could account for the rapid and unprecedented changes - especially in Australia, but also in the US.
Gun control works. It's not magic, but gun control reduces gun crime, and it also reduces crime in general.
EDIT - Rysk - the statistics you say don't exist are below.
http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/australia
Following the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, Australia implemented strict gun control laws. Gun homicides (and homicides in general) dropped rapidly, and no explanation other than gun control can account for any significant portion the decrease.
Come back when you want to talk about facts, not bullshit.
I kinda fail to see how this does anything for someone living in Detroit, who drive out to the country every week to buy guns to sell to criminals they personally know. A registry makes that not very possible.
Sweden?
http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/sweden
Gladly, I will play this game.
In Sweden, civilians are not allowed to possess automatic firearms, firearms disguised as other objects, and armour-piercing, incendiary and expanding ammunition. Private possession of fully automatic weapons is prohibited. Private possession of semi-automatic assault weapons is permitted only with special authorization. Private possession of handguns (pistols and revolvers) is permitted under licence, in some cases, but not for the protection of person or property.
In Sweden, the law requires that a record of the acquisition, possession and transfer of each privately held firearm be retained in an official register. Furthermore, licensed firearm dealers are required to keep a record of each firearm or ammunition purchase, sale or transfer on behalf of a regulating authority. Licensed gun makers are required to keep a record of each firearm produced, for inspection by a regulating authority. State agencies are required to maintain records of the storage and movement of all firearms and ammunition under their control.
And finally, Sweden has written specifications for the lawful safe storage of private firearms and ammunition by licensed gun owners, and they include written specifications for the lawful safe storage of firearms and ammunition while in transit.
So they have laws on safe storage in the home, a registry of all guns from manufacture to store to owner, ammo sales are tracked, pistol sales are restricted heavily, require a license, and are NOT sold for personal protection's sake. Oh, and consequently, they experience 1/10th of the gun deaths per capita America does.
In other words, fuck yes give me Sweden's system. I will take Sweden every goddamned day of the week and twice on Sunday over what we have here.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Australia is not an analogue for America. It's population is condensed into relatively tight areas, making very strict control over fire arms much more feasible. This would be like comparing the black market in Britain's Ring of Steel to the backwoods of Colorado. You've changed the setting, background, and logistics of the argument entirely.
Also, I would suggest you don't insult in a debate. It invalidates everything you say afterward.
It's not always a logical fallaccyyyyy, especially in this case when, as has been pointed out, the anti-gun side has been super clear that their eventual goal is to enact a total ban.
How do we determine actual reductions?
If you look at this Daily Kos page with lots of nifty charts about gun violence you see a bunch of numbers. But what do those numbers mean? The number of gun deaths in 2011 was 31,672. In 1993, 39,595. Does that indicate an actual reduction from 1993 to 2011? Well, presumably there are plenty of factors not included on those charts that makes a simple comparison of numbers difficult. Maybe we need to filter out suicides. Maybe we need to look at percentages, rather than raw numbers, in order to factor in the growth of population. Do we have to compare year-to-year and establish a downward trend for each year? Or can we accept spikes both upwards and downwards. When did significant gun legislation pass, when was it enforced, where did it have impacts?
All of that is irrelevant, because we're talking about prevention. There is no data for non-existent gun violence. There is no data of school shootings that did not happen, school shootings that were prevented. We have absolutely no data for that.
If we couch this debate as beholden to proof of gun violence that happens, then we are biasing the debate by only looking at gun violence that was not prevented, deaths that still happened despite gun legislation. To actually prove a reduction in gun violence we would need to include data of counter-factual gun crimes, shooting deaths that would have happened if not for gun legislation.
It could be the case that gun violence has decreased significantly over the years, because the number of potential shootings has been reduced. But, again, we have no evidence for potential shootings.