Can we just ban the manufacture of guns? From stats it looks like there are roughly 112 guns per person. 112 guns per person means that everyone in the US can have a gun if they want one. There is no need to manufacture more so thus it won't run afoul of the 2nd to ban the manufacture.
The US military might have something to say about that
I am sure that the US military has more than enough guns at this point. If we really need them, they can just get them from the "well-regulated" militias.
Ban the manufacture of guns, and seize them from private citizens?
I uhhh, don't think that will work.
We wouldn't be seizing them from private citizens, we'd just draft them. Afterall, isn't that the purpose of the 2nd?
That is not the purpose of the second amendment whatsoever.
Would they not be providing "security of a free state" as part of "a well-regulated militia?" If the 2nd isn't for providing security of a free state through well-regulated militias then what is it for?
Preventing the government from infringing on the right of the people to keep & bear arms.
No. There vast majority of evidence suggests that regulations will have significant impact on spree killings. The amount of evidence is so vast as to suggest the opposite is laughable.
It's worked literally everywhere else that has tried it. Literally it has not failed once. We are the only nation in the world where this kind of thing regularly happens and the only consistent difference is that here is super easy to get a lot of guns capable of killing loads of people in a short period of time.
Stats people will stop you there. Spree killings are rare enough everywhere else that data is limited.
That is not the purpose of the second amendment whatsoever.
Would they not be providing "security of a free state" as part of "a well-regulated militia?" If the 2nd isn't for providing security of a free state through well-regulated militias then what is it for?
The text of the second amendment is this:
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.
There is a common explanation floating around the internet that helps people who do not grasp what the second amendment is expressing, simply by replacing guns with something else:
A well balanced breakfast, being necessary to the start of a healthy day, the right of the people to keep and eat food, shall not be infringed.
Who is being guaranteed the right to food? Is breakfast being guaranteed the right, or are the people? Are you only guaranteed the right to food if you are eating it during breakfast?
No. There vast majority of evidence suggests that regulations will have significant impact on spree killings. The amount of evidence is so vast as to suggest the opposite is laughable.
It's worked literally everywhere else that has tried it. Literally it has not failed once. We are the only nation in the world where this kind of thing regularly happens and the only consistent difference is that here is super easy to get a lot of guns capable of killing loads of people in a short period of time.
Stats people will stop you there. Spree killings are rare enough everywhere else that data is limited.
Incorrect.
Reference. I am a stats person
Excellent. Please give your opinion on these articles from 538:
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
No. There vast majority of evidence suggests that regulations will have significant impact on spree killings. The amount of evidence is so vast as to suggest the opposite is laughable.
It's worked literally everywhere else that has tried it. Literally it has not failed once. We are the only nation in the world where this kind of thing regularly happens and the only consistent difference is that here is super easy to get a lot of guns capable of killing loads of people in a short period of time.
Stats people will stop you there. Spree killings are rare enough everywhere else that data is limited.
Incorrect.
Reference. I am a stats person
Excellent. Please give your opinion on these articles from 538:
Did Australia and Great Britain’s reforms prevent mass shootings? It’s hard to say, simply because mass shootings are relatively rare. In the post-buyback period, Great Britain has had one massacre with guns while Australia has had none. It’s hard to calculate how many would have been expected without a ban. Australia looks more successful in this regard, because it had more frequent mass shootings before the ban (averaging about two mass shootings every three years from 1979 to 1996.3) Mass shootings in Great Britain, prior to the ban, were rarer. Prior to 1996, there hadn’t been a widely covered mass shooting in Britain since 1987.
Australia went from a dozen in a 20 year period to zero in the subsequent 20 year period, you can't just pretend that's normal variance, no matter how much they handwave about it being difficult to calculate and impossible to know how many guns weren't removed by the bans or who had them
The best that they can say is that it is inconclusive whether the Australian laws reduced overall gun violence because other homicide/suicide was reduced even more, however the paper quoted points out that this may be because of increasing rapidity and effectiveness of medical treatment, with guns being generally much more fatal the bans may have caused that to keep with with non-firearm stats
As for the UK, it's only had 3 mass shootings in the last 50+ years (and a couple attempts that didn't kill multiple people) and the UK as a whole only has ~50 gun homicides annually anyway for one of the lowest rates in the world, it's probably not possible to determine any reduction with a starting rate that low. The UK has an overall gun violence rate of 2% of the US rate. That alone points out the overall effectiveness of a ban
Also:
Smuggling in illegal guns is harder in places like Australia and Great Britain because they don’t have land borders
The US is the source of all these guns! They get smuggled OUT
That is not the purpose of the second amendment whatsoever.
Would they not be providing "security of a free state" as part of "a well-regulated militia?" If the 2nd isn't for providing security of a free state through well-regulated militias then what is it for?
The text of the second amendment is this:
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.
There is a common explanation floating around the internet that helps people who do not grasp what the second amendment is expressing, simply by replacing guns with something else:
A well balanced breakfast, being necessary to the start of a healthy day, the right of the people to keep and eat food, shall not be infringed.
Who is being guaranteed the right to food? Is breakfast being guaranteed the right, or are the people? Are you only guaranteed the right to food if you are eating it during breakfast?
A Militia is an organization of people. A breakfast is an organization of food. To then say "breakfast can't be guaranteed food! This is silly! Ergo, the first half of the second amendment is meaningless!" is... I don't know. Intentionally obtuse? The only purpose of this exercise seems to be to muddy the waters.
Similies are like cars, you see...
Garthor on
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
No. There vast majority of evidence suggests that regulations will have significant impact on spree killings. The amount of evidence is so vast as to suggest the opposite is laughable.
It's worked literally everywhere else that has tried it. Literally it has not failed once. We are the only nation in the world where this kind of thing regularly happens and the only consistent difference is that here is super easy to get a lot of guns capable of killing loads of people in a short period of time.
Stats people will stop you there. Spree killings are rare enough everywhere else that data is limited.
Incorrect.
Reference. I am a stats person
Excellent. Please give your opinion on these articles from 538:
Reference: I am a stats person who literally analyzes violent crime for a living.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
No. There vast majority of evidence suggests that regulations will have significant impact on spree killings. The amount of evidence is so vast as to suggest the opposite is laughable.
It's worked literally everywhere else that has tried it. Literally it has not failed once. We are the only nation in the world where this kind of thing regularly happens and the only consistent difference is that here is super easy to get a lot of guns capable of killing loads of people in a short period of time.
Stats people will stop you there. Spree killings are rare enough everywhere else that data is limited.
Incorrect.
Reference. I am a stats person
Excellent. Please give your opinion on these articles from 538:
Did Australia and Great Britain’s reforms prevent mass shootings? It’s hard to say, simply because mass shootings are relatively rare. In the post-buyback period, Great Britain has had one massacre with guns while Australia has had none. It’s hard to calculate how many would have been expected without a ban. Australia looks more successful in this regard, because it had more frequent mass shootings before the ban (averaging about two mass shootings every three years from 1979 to 1996.3) Mass shootings in Great Britain, prior to the ban, were rarer. Prior to 1996, there hadn’t been a widely covered mass shooting in Britain since 1987.
Australia went from a dozen in a 20 year period to zero in the subsequent 20 year period, you can't just pretend that's normal variance, no matter how much they handwave about it being difficult to calculate and impossible to know how many guns weren't removed by the bans or who had them
The best that they can say is that it is inconclusive whether the Australian laws reduced overall gun violence because other homicide/suicide was reduced even more, however the paper quoted points out that this may be because of increasing rapidity and effectiveness of medical treatment, with guns being generally much more fatal the bans may have caused that to keep with with non-firearm stats
And the politician behind that was conservative to boot. He got huge backlash, which included death threats to his family IIRC. There's an article about what happened to him earlier in the thread.
No. There vast majority of evidence suggests that regulations will have significant impact on spree killings. The amount of evidence is so vast as to suggest the opposite is laughable.
It's worked literally everywhere else that has tried it. Literally it has not failed once. We are the only nation in the world where this kind of thing regularly happens and the only consistent difference is that here is super easy to get a lot of guns capable of killing loads of people in a short period of time.
Stats people will stop you there. Spree killings are rare enough everywhere else that data is limited.
Incorrect.
Reference. I am a stats person
Excellent. Please give your opinion on these articles from 538:
Did Australia and Great Britain’s reforms prevent mass shootings? It’s hard to say, simply because mass shootings are relatively rare. In the post-buyback period, Great Britain has had one massacre with guns while Australia has had none. It’s hard to calculate how many would have been expected without a ban. Australia looks more successful in this regard, because it had more frequent mass shootings before the ban (averaging about two mass shootings every three years from 1979 to 1996.3) Mass shootings in Great Britain, prior to the ban, were rarer. Prior to 1996, there hadn’t been a widely covered mass shooting in Britain since 1987.
Australia went from a dozen in a 20 year period to zero in the subsequent 20 year period, you can't just pretend that's normal variance, no matter how much they handwave about it being difficult to calculate and impossible to know how many guns weren't removed by the bans or who had them
The best that they can say is that it is inconclusive whether the Australian laws reduced overall gun violence because other homicide/suicide was reduced even more, however the paper quoted points out that this may be because of increasing rapidity and effectiveness of medical treatment, with guns being generally much more fatal the bans may have caused that to keep with with non-firearm stats
As for the UK, it's only had 3 mass shootings in the last 50+ years (and a couple attempts that didn't kill multiple people) and the UK as a whole only has ~50 gun homicides annually anyway for one of the lowest rates in the world, it's probably not possible to determine any reduction with a starting rate that low. The UK has an overall gun violence rate of 2% of the US rate. That alone points out the overall effectiveness of a ban
Also:
Smuggling in illegal guns is harder in places like Australia and Great Britain because they don’t have land borders
The US is the source of all these guns! They get smuggled OUT
I would like to know more about the math behind 12 shootings in 20 years to 0 shootings in 20 years since the article does seem to handwave it. I can't reject any change due to variation without knowing what is the norm. I assume that gathering the change in mass shooting rates in each western sovereign nation per an arbitrary unit of time would be one way of doing it, and then just see if Australia's confidence interval crosses the threshold. I wonder if this has already been done.
Regardless, this just points to how much of a gun violence research goldmine the US is. We can answer questions to a level of granularity other countries cannot, so we should test bunches of laws and see the effects.
I really wish America worked that way. A bunch of temporary experimental laws used as preliminary data to prove their own need for permanence.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
(I will note that I support the kind of regulations that other countries have put forth regarding gun ownership and registration, but not because there is strong evidence that it would specifically prevent mass violence events.)
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
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daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
While it might not be possible to prevent spree killings with legislation, I do think it's quite possible to make spree killers less efficient via things like limiting magazine sizes and the like. The other thing that would probably help lower overall gun deaths is tightening up on handgun ownership. Specifically I'm talking about tieing handgun owners to their gun and making them responsible for them in the same way that a parent is responsible for their kid. You get a pistol and that puppy is fingerprinted, that fingerprint is tied to your name, and it's your responsibility to keep track of it and keep it safe. If it's stolen, it's on you to report it missing to the police ASAP, have that be something that you can do using 911 or the like. Losing your handgun is going to go on your record, and if you keep losing them there's going to be a cutoff because you're either a freaking idiot who shouldn't be trusted with something as dangerous as a gun or you're straw purchasing. Similar scrutiny should be given to dealers and shops that have a few too many guns going missing or that end up at crime scenes. We're willing to hold bartenders liable if they serve minors or someone who is wasted, I've no problems trying to construct something similar (perhaps not criminal liability, that might be hard to prove, but loss of license should definitely be on the table) for gun shops that don't seem to be taking their responsibilities seriously.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
No. There vast majority of evidence suggests that regulations will have significant impact on spree killings. The amount of evidence is so vast as to suggest the opposite is laughable.
It's worked literally everywhere else that has tried it. Literally it has not failed once. We are the only nation in the world where this kind of thing regularly happens and the only consistent difference is that here is super easy to get a lot of guns capable of killing loads of people in a short period of time.
Stats people will stop you there. Spree killings are rare enough everywhere else that data is limited.
Incorrect.
Reference. I am a stats person
Excellent. Please give your opinion on these articles from 538:
The first one is shit. It neither understand the point of a null hypothesis nor does in understand that we can look at the changes in rates. The change in rate of decline was statistically significant... which is far far beyond the evidence which should be required in order to accept the hypothesis that gun regulations reduce gun violence. It also misunderstands the knowledge base on suicides as an example, suggesting that the non-substitution of firearms suicides to other types is evidence that the ban didn't work... instead of evidence that it did... which it is.
I also might question its sources (which are news articles) because some seem to claim unverifiable information. As an example they quote the total number of gun crime at 24k ish for 2004... yet the total number of firearm violations in that year was around 3k...maybe it's a reporting type issue or maybe they're full of shit.
That is likely given that it intentional mischaracterises the studies it does site, picking the intentionally non-commital language which is typical instead of actually looking at the data (which is pretty firm). Though to be fair the study itself has some issues (two tailed p-values for a single sided test! No! Bad!*)
The second one is irrelevant. It offers no evidence on the effectiveness of gun regulations.
*indeed the entire study meets the significance requirement by far with the proper one sided p-value
That is not the purpose of the second amendment whatsoever.
Would they not be providing "security of a free state" as part of "a well-regulated militia?" If the 2nd isn't for providing security of a free state through well-regulated militias then what is it for?
The text of the second amendment is this:
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.
There is a common explanation floating around the internet that helps people who do not grasp what the second amendment is expressing, simply by replacing guns with something else:
A well balanced breakfast, being necessary to the start of a healthy day, the right of the people to keep and eat food, shall not be infringed.
Who is being guaranteed the right to food? Is breakfast being guaranteed the right, or are the people? Are you only guaranteed the right to food if you are eating it during breakfast?
"An enchanted forest, being the one and only true home of the enchanted democracy pixies, the right of the people to poop on your lawn, shall not be infringed"
Would be a more appropriate example. The entire amendment in garbage. It is the only one which feels the need for a justification and the justification is garbage. So don't pretend that it makes sense by converting it to food and eating. Because guns are not to security of a free State as food is to eating.
Also, on the subject of the wording of the 2nd, for the current interpretation of it as pushed by the NRA to be true you'd need to accept that the founding fathers codified an oxymoron into law.
The critical failure of the individual ownership interpretation of the 2nd Amendment is that allowing people to keep and bear arms with as few restrictions as there are is making our free state less secure, not more.
I am relatively sure that large spree killings are rare enough that while they tend to spark reasonable gun laws, the payoff isn't really reducing those spree killings so much as just not having a vast number of guns and therefore a vast number of gun deaths.
The problem is that large spree killings are the only things remarkable enough to spark discussion about gun control. We've beaten this to death in this thread, I think.
Ultimately, the routine violence that we have normalized as background noise is the TRUE reason for gun control. But we are incapable of having any sort of conversation about it without NRA-supporters collapsing into apoplectic fits.
Spree killings are different from gang violence in that it's usually a bunch of white people getting killed while in an apparently perfectly safe location, like a gig, nightclub or school. Gang violence generally kills minorities and you can avoid it by not going to bad areas. Spree killings shake us out of our complacency because it could be us.
Spree killings are different from gang violence in that it's usually a bunch of white people getting killed while in an apparently perfectly safe location, like a gig, nightclub or school. Gang violence generally kills minorities and you can avoid it by not going to bad areas. Spree killings shake us out of our complacency because it could be us.
I hadn't thought of it like this before, but yeah, you're absolutely right about this. It brings the violence "home" for white people.
Is gang violence that large a chuck of gun related deaths?
I'd assume there was more people killing friends/neighbors/family members either in a fit of rage, or by accident.
Is gang violence that large a chuck of gun related deaths?
I'd assume there was more people killing friends/neighbors/family members either in a fit of rage, or by accident.
Well, to start with, 60% of gun-related deaths are suicides.
Are guns more likely to result in a "successful" suicide?
Or said another way, if access to guns "in the moment" is hard, are people more likely to survive or not attempt suicide?
Intuitively it seems to me that rigging up a rope or chugging some pills gives you more time to think and requires more effort than reaching for the gun and squeezing.
Are guns more likely to result in a "successful" suicide?
Or said another way, if access to guns "in the moment" is hard, are people more likely to survive or not attempt suicide?
Intuitively it seems to me that rigging up a rope or chugging some pills gives you more time to think and requires more effort than reaching for the gun and squeezing.
60% is insane.
Yes.
They are easy, quick and effortless form of suicide that give no time to seek help or change your mind.
They are also relatively painless, so people are less likely to balk away due to fear of pain.
Most other forms of suicide require either time to take effect, or time to set up (or both), giving the one attempting it time to change their mind and seek help, or others to interfere with the attempt.
Guns just make killing people easy, be it others or yourself.
Are guns more likely to result in a "successful" suicide?
Or said another way, if access to guns "in the moment" is hard, are people more likely to survive or not attempt suicide?
Intuitively it seems to me that rigging up a rope or chugging some pills gives you more time to think and requires more effort than reaching for the gun and squeezing.
60% is insane.
Yes. They've shown this with several studies. The most often cited one was that removing the gas ovens that allowed people to kill themselves not only reduced death by that particular method, but drastically dropped suicide overall. Suicide is usually not a long term planned activity, it is a short term bad decision. Removing easily accessible methods of suicide has been documented several times to lower suicide rates.
What is this I don't even.
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AstaerethIn the belly of the beastRegistered Userregular
Actually I think I recall hearing that main reason guns are more likely to result in a successful suicide is that guns are simply better killing tools. You’re less likely to survive a gunshot to the head than you are an intentional overdose or whatever, so the failure rate of gun attempts ends up much lower than the failure rate of other types of attempts.
Are guns more likely to result in a "successful" suicide?
Or said another way, if access to guns "in the moment" is hard, are people more likely to survive or not attempt suicide?
Intuitively it seems to me that rigging up a rope or chugging some pills gives you more time to think and requires more effort than reaching for the gun and squeezing.
60% is insane.
Yes. They've shown this with several studies. The most often cited one was that removing the gas ovens that allowed people to kill themselves not only reduced death by that particular method, but drastically dropped suicide overall. Suicide is usually not a long term planned activity, it is a short term bad decision. Removing easily accessible methods of suicide has been documented several times to lower suicide rates.
that's switching from coal gas to natural gas(which didn't contain carbon monoxide), not removing gas all together. but the fact still stands that making suicide less easy decreases the number of suicides
Are guns more likely to result in a "successful" suicide?
Or said another way, if access to guns "in the moment" is hard, are people more likely to survive or not attempt suicide?
Intuitively it seems to me that rigging up a rope or chugging some pills gives you more time to think and requires more effort than reaching for the gun and squeezing.
60% is insane.
Yes. They've shown this with several studies. The most often cited one was that removing the gas ovens that allowed people to kill themselves not only reduced death by that particular method, but drastically dropped suicide overall. Suicide is usually not a long term planned activity, it is a short term bad decision. Removing easily accessible methods of suicide has been documented several times to lower suicide rates.
that's switching from coal gas to natural gas(which didn't contain carbon monoxide), not removing gas all together. but the fact still stands that making suicide less easy decreases the number of suicides
It's sort of classic behavioral economics. If you want people to do more of a thing, make the thing easier. If you want people to do less of a thing, make the thing harder. This is why it should be very easy to vote but very hard to obtain a firearm.
Are guns more likely to result in a "successful" suicide?
Or said another way, if access to guns "in the moment" is hard, are people more likely to survive or not attempt suicide?
Intuitively it seems to me that rigging up a rope or chugging some pills gives you more time to think and requires more effort than reaching for the gun and squeezing.
60% is insane.
Yes. They've shown this with several studies. The most often cited one was that removing the gas ovens that allowed people to kill themselves not only reduced death by that particular method, but drastically dropped suicide overall. Suicide is usually not a long term planned activity, it is a short term bad decision. Removing easily accessible methods of suicide has been documented several times to lower suicide rates.
that's switching from coal gas to natural gas(which didn't contain carbon monoxide), not removing gas all together. but the fact still stands that making suicide less easy decreases the number of suicides
It's sort of classic behavioral economics. If you want people to do more of a thing, make the thing easier. If you want people to do less of a thing, make the thing harder. This is why it should be very easy to vote but very hard to obtain a firearm.
That is simply classical micro-economics; decreasing incidence when costs increase is rational.
Behavioral tends to look at the situations where rationality fails. Like being able to elicit two prices for the same good. Higher when the good "belongs" to the person than when not. As an easy example.
That is not the purpose of the second amendment whatsoever.
Would they not be providing "security of a free state" as part of "a well-regulated militia?" If the 2nd isn't for providing security of a free state through well-regulated militias then what is it for?
The text of the second amendment is this:
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.
There is a common explanation floating around the internet that helps people who do not grasp what the second amendment is expressing, simply by replacing guns with something else:
A well balanced breakfast, being necessary to the start of a healthy day, the right of the people to keep and eat food, shall not be infringed.
Who is being guaranteed the right to food? Is breakfast being guaranteed the right, or are the people? Are you only guaranteed the right to food if you are eating it during breakfast?
So, you created a sentence that had the trappings of the 2nd amendment without in anyway mirroring it. Now, here is a more accurate sentence:
A well-informed electorate, being necessary for the efficient running the government, the right of the people to keep and read books, shall not be infringed.
Books are a tool used by the electorate to aid in running the government. Arms are a tool used by the militia to provide security for the free state. The sentence starts with a well-functioning organization of people who use a tool followed by an overall goal said organization can accomplish for the people in said organization using said tool and then followed by said tool said organization needs to accomplish said goal for the people. No tool = no well-functioning organization = no accomplished goal. No books = no well-informed populace = no efficient government. No arms = no well-regulated militia = no secure state. Breakfast is not an organization of people, nor can it eat food.
So, you created a sentence that had the trappings of the 2nd amendment without in anyway mirroring it. Now, here is a more accurate sentence:
A well-informed electorate, being necessary for the efficient running the government, the right of the people to keep and read books, shall not be infringed.
Books are a tool used by the electorate to aid in running the government. Arms are a tool used by the militia to provide security for the free state. The sentence starts with a well-functioning organization of people who use a tool followed by an overall goal said organization can accomplish for the people in said organization using said tool and then followed by said tool said organization needs to accomplish said goal for the people. No tool = no well-functioning organization = no accomplished goal. No books = no well-informed populace = no efficient government. No arms = no well-regulated militia = no secure state. Breakfast is not an organization of people, nor can it eat food.
These are not necessarily the same thing in practice, since books aren't made to be weapons and used against the state or innocent people. This happens regularly with firearms.
Another important caveat is how are we categorizing "well organized" and "militia"? Because I don't think the Founders would be have been keen on the guns used by the Bundy militia during the BLM standoff. Or how individuals like that getting their hands on weapons to be used against the state so casually with no accountability, before or afterward. The 2nd amendment and lack of sufficient gun regulation allowed such an incident to occur, and they are not alone.
Lack of regulation's cascade effect also make it easier for criminals, and gangs to purchase and get guns in larger numbers and higher quality than they should have access to. Not to mention the flow of guns to the cartels in Mexico.
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
Are guns more likely to result in a "successful" suicide?
Or said another way, if access to guns "in the moment" is hard, are people more likely to survive or not attempt suicide?
Intuitively it seems to me that rigging up a rope or chugging some pills gives you more time to think and requires more effort than reaching for the gun and squeezing.
60% is insane.
Yes. They've shown this with several studies. The most often cited one was that removing the gas ovens that allowed people to kill themselves not only reduced death by that particular method, but drastically dropped suicide overall. Suicide is usually not a long term planned activity, it is a short term bad decision. Removing easily accessible methods of suicide has been documented several times to lower suicide rates.
Another factor that plays into this to some extent is that some suicides are more cry-for-help-like than others. If you're not really sold on the whole suicide thing, you're more likely to do something like take a bunch of sleeping pills in a place where there's a good chance someone might find you before you die. You're sort of rolling the dice on the actual dying bit.
If you're going with a firearm, you're pretty damned sold on wanting to end it all.
There's also a gender effect - males (or at least male youths, but I believe this holds for adults, too) are more likely to use firearms, while females are more likely to go with a "gentler" method. Hanging, pills, etc.
But yeah, a lot of it is just that it's harder to fail at suicide when guns are involved. It takes no thought, no planning, and no skill. There are frighteningly few steps between "I want to die" and actually shooting yourself.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
I'm not really onboard of that "cry for help" excuse.
Sure some might be (possibly even a majority), but making the claim as a sweeping statement trivializes the suicide attempt, and i worry people might be telling themselves that "it was just a cry for help" to make themselves feel better when someone close to them attempted to kill themselves.
Every attempted suicide should be treated as serious, honest effort to kill oneself.
That is not the purpose of the second amendment whatsoever.
Would they not be providing "security of a free state" as part of "a well-regulated militia?" If the 2nd isn't for providing security of a free state through well-regulated militias then what is it for?
The text of the second amendment is this:
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.
There is a common explanation floating around the internet that helps people who do not grasp what the second amendment is expressing, simply by replacing guns with something else:
A well balanced breakfast, being necessary to the start of a healthy day, the right of the people to keep and eat food, shall not be infringed.
Who is being guaranteed the right to food? Is breakfast being guaranteed the right, or are the people? Are you only guaranteed the right to food if you are eating it during breakfast?
This is a really dumb analogy. Why are you even bringing up breakfast if it's not relevant? Why did you include it?
Your framing here is an attempt to claim the opening clause as an example rather then, you know, the key point. But why include an example? That's not how you write a legal document.
It's like having an amendment that says "The ability to masturbate without being glared at by the people around you, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to own property and put a structure on it with walls shall not be infringed." The immediate question is why they even brought up jerking your gherking in the first place? The only answers are either it's a key clause in the statement or the people writing it are idiots with a weird obsession with masturbation.
If the first part didn't matter, it wouldn't be there. Either that or the guys who wrote it are morons.
Are guns more likely to result in a "successful" suicide?
Or said another way, if access to guns "in the moment" is hard, are people more likely to survive or not attempt suicide?
Intuitively it seems to me that rigging up a rope or chugging some pills gives you more time to think and requires more effort than reaching for the gun and squeezing.
60% is insane.
Yes. They've shown this with several studies. The most often cited one was that removing the gas ovens that allowed people to kill themselves not only reduced death by that particular method, but drastically dropped suicide overall. Suicide is usually not a long term planned activity, it is a short term bad decision. Removing easily accessible methods of suicide has been documented several times to lower suicide rates.
Another factor that plays into this to some extent is that some suicides are more cry-for-help-like than others. If you're not really sold on the whole suicide thing, you're more likely to do something like take a bunch of sleeping pills in a place where there's a good chance someone might find you before you die. You're sort of rolling the dice on the actual dying bit.
If you're going with a firearm, you're pretty damned sold on wanting to end it all.
There's also a gender effect - males (or at least male youths, but I believe this holds for adults, too) are more likely to use firearms, while females are more likely to go with a "gentler" method. Hanging, pills, etc.
But yeah, a lot of it is just that it's harder to fail at suicide when guns are involved. It takes no thought, no planning, and no skill. There are frighteningly few steps between "I want to die" and actually shooting yourself.
Well... not really. Guns are more effective because they're easier but very few people think a lot about ensuring they're going to die. It's not hard to ensure you will die by taking pills... but it may require going to the store and buying
more.
They use what is on hand. Which is to say that guns are more effective because they're on hand and complete, not necessarily because they're particularly effective.
As an example: jumping off a high place is probably the most guaranteed method of killing yourself. But people who are dissuaded from jumping off bridges by railings don't substitute for other methods. And people largely are dissuaded by railings. Jumping suicides are rare in general simply because few people live close enough to a high structure and the act of traveling there will dissuade people.
Aside: I am not actually sure there even is a gender effect except insomuch as males are more likely to have access to firearms. Males kill themselves with firearms around 60% of suicides. Females around 30%. Men own roughly 3 times the weapons that women do (75% of ownership is male)
I am also willing to bet that General rope/mechanical competency* explains a lot of the hanging deaths as well. Though actually getting enough quality data to test this is never going to happen.
*this is not to say women are less capable but rather fewer have training
This gist of this is a quote from a John Hopkins professor and the first part is something to ignore but the second is not. Men and women attempt in roughly equal numbers from jumping off high objects.
Jumping is a good thing to look at in terms of testing a lethality or messinecss bias because there is no access bias between men and women. If there were either a lethality or mesinessnbias then you would expect men to jump more often than women. But you don't.
I would be willing to bet that there is zero lethality or messiness bias at all. Women are less suicidal because they tend to have access to fewer lethal methods. This reduces the potential instances where a spontaneous suicidal action could occur which reduces the total number of suicides.
Are guns more likely to result in a "successful" suicide?
Or said another way, if access to guns "in the moment" is hard, are people more likely to survive or not attempt suicide?
Intuitively it seems to me that rigging up a rope or chugging some pills gives you more time to think and requires more effort than reaching for the gun and squeezing.
60% is insane.
Yes. They've shown this with several studies. The most often cited one was that removing the gas ovens that allowed people to kill themselves not only reduced death by that particular method, but drastically dropped suicide overall. Suicide is usually not a long term planned activity, it is a short term bad decision. Removing easily accessible methods of suicide has been documented several times to lower suicide rates.
Another factor that plays into this to some extent is that some suicides are more cry-for-help-like than others. If you're not really sold on the whole suicide thing, you're more likely to do something like take a bunch of sleeping pills in a place where there's a good chance someone might find you before you die. You're sort of rolling the dice on the actual dying bit.
If you're going with a firearm, you're pretty damned sold on wanting to end it all.
There's also a gender effect - males (or at least male youths, but I believe this holds for adults, too) are more likely to use firearms, while females are more likely to go with a "gentler" method. Hanging, pills, etc.
But yeah, a lot of it is just that it's harder to fail at suicide when guns are involved. It takes no thought, no planning, and no skill. There are frighteningly few steps between "I want to die" and actually shooting yourself.
Well... not really. Guns are more effective because they're easier but very few people think a lot about ensuring they're going to die. It's not hard to ensure you will die by taking pills... but it may require going to the store and buying
more.
They use what is on hand. Which is to say that guns are more effective because they're on hand and complete, not necessarily because they're particularly effective.
As an example: jumping off a high place is probably the most guaranteed method of killing yourself. But people who are dissuaded from jumping off bridges by railings don't substitute for other methods. And people largely are dissuaded by railings. Jumping suicides are rare in general simply because few people live close enough to a high structure and the act of traveling there will dissuade people.
Aside: I am not actually sure there even is a gender effect except insomuch as males are more likely to have access to firearms. Males kill themselves with firearms around 60% of suicides. Females around 30%. Men own roughly 3 times the weapons that women do (75% of ownership is male)
I am also willing to bet that General rope/mechanical competency* explains a lot of the hanging deaths as well. Though actually getting enough quality data to test this is never going to happen.
*this is not to say women are less capable but rather fewer have training
This gist of this is a quote from a John Hopkins professor and the first part is something to ignore but the second is not. Men and women attempt in roughly equal numbers from jumping off high objects.
Jumping is a good thing to look at in terms of testing a lethality or messinecss bias because there is no access bias between men and women. If there were either a lethality or mesinessnbias then you would expect men to jump more often than women. But you don't.
I would be willing to bet that there is zero lethality or messiness bias at all. Women are less suicidal because they tend to have access to fewer lethal methods. This reduces the potential instances where a spontaneous suicidal action could occur which reduces the total number of suicides.
This is an interesting statistic, but, USA has more guns than people, but most people don't own guns.
How much of the gun ownership is men owning multiple guns v women owning multiple guns?
There is a battle going on in the U.S. over the development and sale of so-called "smart guns" — handguns that proponents say should improve safety and lower suicide rates because they can only be fired by owners.
Gun-store owners say there is no market for such guns and that they have never had a single customer inquiry. In addition, some owners say, smart guns are too expensive, or the technology does not exist.
"I do not personally have any objections to having a gun that only operates when the owner fires it," says Nick Newman, 48, who for 20 years has owned Cherokee Firearms in Springfield, Mo. "But that is kind of like saying I would prefer flying my car to work."
National organizations like the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and the American Association of Suicidology support further development of smart guns and believe such firearms are ready to be brought to market.
***
The main opponent is the National Rifle Association. But it will not speak. The Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader left six messages on the phone and with a secretary over two weeks for the one spokesman designated to talk to the media, Andrew Arulanandam, in the national office in Virginia. He did not respond. Eventually, the newspaper requested someone — anyone — to send a statement on the group's position on smart guns. The organization did not reply.
Donald Sebastian has a doctorate in chemical engineering and is the senior vice president for research at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He has researched smart-gun technology since 1999. The NRA is the leading obstacle to bringing a smart gun to market, he says. And some would say, according to Sebastian, the NRA has legitimate concerns about a 2002 New Jersey law.
That law states that once there is a proven and reliable smart-gun technology — as determined by the New Jersey attorney general — that within three years all new model handguns sold in New Jersey must incorporate it. But in addition — and this is where the debate enters a Catch 22 loop — before the New Jersey attorney general will even make that determination, the smart gun must first be commercially available in the U.S. In other words, a gun cannot be deemed a "smart gun" until a licensed dealer is willing to sell it.
Sebastian says the NRA sees that mandate as a weakening of the Second Amendment and has used its influence to keep smart guns from consumers.
"The mandate in the law has become an impediment and we can't get out of this endless loop," he says. "For 15 years this debate has been going on."
Currently, there is not a gun dealer in the U.S. willing to offer a smart gun for sale. A company called Armatix, based in Germany with an office in California, this year had two gun dealers — one in Maryland and one in California — ready to offer its .22-caliber handgun. The safety measure is a stopwatch worn on the wrist that sends a radio transmission, with a range of 10 inches, to the gun. The radio transmission enables the gun to fire.
The company promoted the breakthrough, and the national media jumped on the news. As a result, the two gun-shop owners were thrust into the eye of a national storm. They caught overwhelming criticism from gun owners and Second Amendment proponents. Both backed down and decided not to sell the gun.
"I won't touch it again," says Andy Raymond, 34, who owns Engage Armament in Rockville, Md. He had agreed to sell the gun simply because he thought he could pick up a few more customers. But his life changed when Armatix put him front and center in a media campaign.
***
"I just wanted to do things quietly," he says. "But Armatix said, 'Let's put this guy in front of the microphone.' "
Soon after a story appeared in the Washington Post, he says, he received 4,000 hostile phone calls and emails.
One caller, he says, threatened to burn down his gun shop if he sold the smart gun. Another told Raymond that he was going "to get what he deserved."
"I told them that if they touch my girlfriend or touch my dog I'm going to kill them," he says.
"I thought people would be reasonable about it," he says. He had thought there might be a new market for people who were not traditional gun buyers.
People weren't reasonable, he says. But not one of his critics identified himself as being from the NRA.
"The NRA did not do anything," he says. Yet, it irritates him when people do not think for themselves.
Raymond doesn't understand the logic of gun rights supporters who oppose bringing any particular gun to market.
"How is that any different than the people who want to ban all guns?" he asks.
Brent Ball, 40, owns 417 Guns in Springfield. He is not fond of smart guns.
"I think it is the stupidest thing ever made," he says. "Nobody who is a gun person will ever ask for that. The only people pushing for this are the anti-gun people."
What would happen, he asks, if you pull your gun during a home invasion and you have a radio-transmitting band on your left wrist and you are shot in the left shoulder and can't fire the gun?
It is a mistake, he says, to rely on electronics and batteries to determine if a gun will fire in a crisis.
"What happens if we put computer chips in all these guns and Obama pushes a button and all these guns go down?" he asks.
According to Newman, with Cherokee Firearms, the technology behind smart guns — if and when it becomes a reality — will drastically hike the cost to $10,000 to $20,000 per gun.
Sebastian, the New Jersey researcher, says that's not accurate.
"That's the party line," he says. "It's just not true. I can guarantee you that it won't double the cost of a gun."
I remember that. A gun seller withdrew product due to death threats because state law said the first smart gun sold would mandate smart guns
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
And when the person who made the law proposed they'd revise the law to not mandate smartguns, NRA and co flipped her a bird and kept on attacking the smart gun.
According to Newman, with Cherokee Firearms, the technology behind smart guns — if and when it becomes a reality — will drastically hike the cost to $10,000 to $20,000 per gun.
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Preventing the government from infringing on the right of the people to keep & bear arms.
Incorrect.
Reference. I am a stats person
The text of the second amendment is this:
There is a common explanation floating around the internet that helps people who do not grasp what the second amendment is expressing, simply by replacing guns with something else:
Who is being guaranteed the right to food? Is breakfast being guaranteed the right, or are the people? Are you only guaranteed the right to food if you are eating it during breakfast?
Excellent. Please give your opinion on these articles from 538:
Looking abroad for ways to reduce the number of shootings in America doesn’t offer easy solutions.
Mass Shootings Are A Bad Way To Understand Gun Violence.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Australia went from a dozen in a 20 year period to zero in the subsequent 20 year period, you can't just pretend that's normal variance, no matter how much they handwave about it being difficult to calculate and impossible to know how many guns weren't removed by the bans or who had them
The best that they can say is that it is inconclusive whether the Australian laws reduced overall gun violence because other homicide/suicide was reduced even more, however the paper quoted points out that this may be because of increasing rapidity and effectiveness of medical treatment, with guns being generally much more fatal the bans may have caused that to keep with with non-firearm stats
As for the UK, it's only had 3 mass shootings in the last 50+ years (and a couple attempts that didn't kill multiple people) and the UK as a whole only has ~50 gun homicides annually anyway for one of the lowest rates in the world, it's probably not possible to determine any reduction with a starting rate that low. The UK has an overall gun violence rate of 2% of the US rate. That alone points out the overall effectiveness of a ban
Also:
The US is the source of all these guns! They get smuggled OUT
A Militia is an organization of people. A breakfast is an organization of food. To then say "breakfast can't be guaranteed food! This is silly! Ergo, the first half of the second amendment is meaningless!" is... I don't know. Intentionally obtuse? The only purpose of this exercise seems to be to muddy the waters.
Similies are like cars, you see...
My opinion is that I agree with those articles.
Reference: I am a stats person who literally analyzes violent crime for a living.
And the politician behind that was conservative to boot. He got huge backlash, which included death threats to his family IIRC. There's an article about what happened to him earlier in the thread.
I would like to know more about the math behind 12 shootings in 20 years to 0 shootings in 20 years since the article does seem to handwave it. I can't reject any change due to variation without knowing what is the norm. I assume that gathering the change in mass shooting rates in each western sovereign nation per an arbitrary unit of time would be one way of doing it, and then just see if Australia's confidence interval crosses the threshold. I wonder if this has already been done.
Regardless, this just points to how much of a gun violence research goldmine the US is. We can answer questions to a level of granularity other countries cannot, so we should test bunches of laws and see the effects.
I really wish America worked that way. A bunch of temporary experimental laws used as preliminary data to prove their own need for permanence.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
The first one is shit. It neither understand the point of a null hypothesis nor does in understand that we can look at the changes in rates. The change in rate of decline was statistically significant... which is far far beyond the evidence which should be required in order to accept the hypothesis that gun regulations reduce gun violence. It also misunderstands the knowledge base on suicides as an example, suggesting that the non-substitution of firearms suicides to other types is evidence that the ban didn't work... instead of evidence that it did... which it is.
I also might question its sources (which are news articles) because some seem to claim unverifiable information. As an example they quote the total number of gun crime at 24k ish for 2004... yet the total number of firearm violations in that year was around 3k...maybe it's a reporting type issue or maybe they're full of shit.
That is likely given that it intentional mischaracterises the studies it does site, picking the intentionally non-commital language which is typical instead of actually looking at the data (which is pretty firm). Though to be fair the study itself has some issues (two tailed p-values for a single sided test! No! Bad!*)
The second one is irrelevant. It offers no evidence on the effectiveness of gun regulations.
*indeed the entire study meets the significance requirement by far with the proper one sided p-value
"An enchanted forest, being the one and only true home of the enchanted democracy pixies, the right of the people to poop on your lawn, shall not be infringed"
Would be a more appropriate example. The entire amendment in garbage. It is the only one which feels the need for a justification and the justification is garbage. So don't pretend that it makes sense by converting it to food and eating. Because guns are not to security of a free State as food is to eating.
Ultimately, the routine violence that we have normalized as background noise is the TRUE reason for gun control. But we are incapable of having any sort of conversation about it without NRA-supporters collapsing into apoplectic fits.
I hadn't thought of it like this before, but yeah, you're absolutely right about this. It brings the violence "home" for white people.
I'd assume there was more people killing friends/neighbors/family members either in a fit of rage, or by accident.
Well, to start with, 60% of gun-related deaths are suicides.
But even if you look only at homicides, the answer is still no. A little bit of googling turns up a BJS study concluding that gang violence accounted for 6% of all homicides as of 2008 (and 92% of gang homicides are gun homicides), while gun homicides in general accounted for about two-thirds of all homicides
only about 10% of gun homicides - and 3% of gun deaths overall - are gang-related.
Or said another way, if access to guns "in the moment" is hard, are people more likely to survive or not attempt suicide?
Intuitively it seems to me that rigging up a rope or chugging some pills gives you more time to think and requires more effort than reaching for the gun and squeezing.
60% is insane.
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They are easy, quick and effortless form of suicide that give no time to seek help or change your mind.
They are also relatively painless, so people are less likely to balk away due to fear of pain.
Most other forms of suicide require either time to take effect, or time to set up (or both), giving the one attempting it time to change their mind and seek help, or others to interfere with the attempt.
Guns just make killing people easy, be it others or yourself.
Yes. They've shown this with several studies. The most often cited one was that removing the gas ovens that allowed people to kill themselves not only reduced death by that particular method, but drastically dropped suicide overall. Suicide is usually not a long term planned activity, it is a short term bad decision. Removing easily accessible methods of suicide has been documented several times to lower suicide rates.
that's switching from coal gas to natural gas(which didn't contain carbon monoxide), not removing gas all together. but the fact still stands that making suicide less easy decreases the number of suicides
It's sort of classic behavioral economics. If you want people to do more of a thing, make the thing easier. If you want people to do less of a thing, make the thing harder. This is why it should be very easy to vote but very hard to obtain a firearm.
That is simply classical micro-economics; decreasing incidence when costs increase is rational.
Behavioral tends to look at the situations where rationality fails. Like being able to elicit two prices for the same good. Higher when the good "belongs" to the person than when not. As an easy example.
So, you created a sentence that had the trappings of the 2nd amendment without in anyway mirroring it. Now, here is a more accurate sentence:
A well-informed electorate, being necessary for the efficient running the government, the right of the people to keep and read books, shall not be infringed.
Books are a tool used by the electorate to aid in running the government. Arms are a tool used by the militia to provide security for the free state. The sentence starts with a well-functioning organization of people who use a tool followed by an overall goal said organization can accomplish for the people in said organization using said tool and then followed by said tool said organization needs to accomplish said goal for the people. No tool = no well-functioning organization = no accomplished goal. No books = no well-informed populace = no efficient government. No arms = no well-regulated militia = no secure state. Breakfast is not an organization of people, nor can it eat food.
These are not necessarily the same thing in practice, since books aren't made to be weapons and used against the state or innocent people. This happens regularly with firearms.
Another important caveat is how are we categorizing "well organized" and "militia"? Because I don't think the Founders would be have been keen on the guns used by the Bundy militia during the BLM standoff. Or how individuals like that getting their hands on weapons to be used against the state so casually with no accountability, before or afterward. The 2nd amendment and lack of sufficient gun regulation allowed such an incident to occur, and they are not alone.
Lack of regulation's cascade effect also make it easier for criminals, and gangs to purchase and get guns in larger numbers and higher quality than they should have access to. Not to mention the flow of guns to the cartels in Mexico.
Another factor that plays into this to some extent is that some suicides are more cry-for-help-like than others. If you're not really sold on the whole suicide thing, you're more likely to do something like take a bunch of sleeping pills in a place where there's a good chance someone might find you before you die. You're sort of rolling the dice on the actual dying bit.
If you're going with a firearm, you're pretty damned sold on wanting to end it all.
There's also a gender effect - males (or at least male youths, but I believe this holds for adults, too) are more likely to use firearms, while females are more likely to go with a "gentler" method. Hanging, pills, etc.
But yeah, a lot of it is just that it's harder to fail at suicide when guns are involved. It takes no thought, no planning, and no skill. There are frighteningly few steps between "I want to die" and actually shooting yourself.
Sure some might be (possibly even a majority), but making the claim as a sweeping statement trivializes the suicide attempt, and i worry people might be telling themselves that "it was just a cry for help" to make themselves feel better when someone close to them attempted to kill themselves.
Every attempted suicide should be treated as serious, honest effort to kill oneself.
This is a really dumb analogy. Why are you even bringing up breakfast if it's not relevant? Why did you include it?
Your framing here is an attempt to claim the opening clause as an example rather then, you know, the key point. But why include an example? That's not how you write a legal document.
It's like having an amendment that says "The ability to masturbate without being glared at by the people around you, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to own property and put a structure on it with walls shall not be infringed." The immediate question is why they even brought up jerking your gherking in the first place? The only answers are either it's a key clause in the statement or the people writing it are idiots with a weird obsession with masturbation.
If the first part didn't matter, it wouldn't be there. Either that or the guys who wrote it are morons.
Well... not really. Guns are more effective because they're easier but very few people think a lot about ensuring they're going to die. It's not hard to ensure you will die by taking pills... but it may require going to the store and buying
more.
They use what is on hand. Which is to say that guns are more effective because they're on hand and complete, not necessarily because they're particularly effective.
As an example: jumping off a high place is probably the most guaranteed method of killing yourself. But people who are dissuaded from jumping off bridges by railings don't substitute for other methods. And people largely are dissuaded by railings. Jumping suicides are rare in general simply because few people live close enough to a high structure and the act of traveling there will dissuade people.
Aside: I am not actually sure there even is a gender effect except insomuch as males are more likely to have access to firearms. Males kill themselves with firearms around 60% of suicides. Females around 30%. Men own roughly 3 times the weapons that women do (75% of ownership is male)
I am also willing to bet that General rope/mechanical competency* explains a lot of the hanging deaths as well. Though actually getting enough quality data to test this is never going to happen.
*this is not to say women are less capable but rather fewer have training
Fake edit: while this is a shitty cite I don't have a better one ATM (searching on phone is annoying)http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/story?id=5294404&page=1
This gist of this is a quote from a John Hopkins professor and the first part is something to ignore but the second is not. Men and women attempt in roughly equal numbers from jumping off high objects.
Jumping is a good thing to look at in terms of testing a lethality or messinecss bias because there is no access bias between men and women. If there were either a lethality or mesinessnbias then you would expect men to jump more often than women. But you don't.
I would be willing to bet that there is zero lethality or messiness bias at all. Women are less suicidal because they tend to have access to fewer lethal methods. This reduces the potential instances where a spontaneous suicidal action could occur which reduces the total number of suicides.
How much of the gun ownership is men owning multiple guns v women owning multiple guns?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/03/proponents-smart-guns-nra-obstacle/13551659/
Gun-store owners say there is no market for such guns and that they have never had a single customer inquiry. In addition, some owners say, smart guns are too expensive, or the technology does not exist.
"I do not personally have any objections to having a gun that only operates when the owner fires it," says Nick Newman, 48, who for 20 years has owned Cherokee Firearms in Springfield, Mo. "But that is kind of like saying I would prefer flying my car to work."
National organizations like the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and the American Association of Suicidology support further development of smart guns and believe such firearms are ready to be brought to market.
***
The main opponent is the National Rifle Association. But it will not speak. The Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader left six messages on the phone and with a secretary over two weeks for the one spokesman designated to talk to the media, Andrew Arulanandam, in the national office in Virginia. He did not respond. Eventually, the newspaper requested someone — anyone — to send a statement on the group's position on smart guns. The organization did not reply.
Donald Sebastian has a doctorate in chemical engineering and is the senior vice president for research at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He has researched smart-gun technology since 1999. The NRA is the leading obstacle to bringing a smart gun to market, he says. And some would say, according to Sebastian, the NRA has legitimate concerns about a 2002 New Jersey law.
That law states that once there is a proven and reliable smart-gun technology — as determined by the New Jersey attorney general — that within three years all new model handguns sold in New Jersey must incorporate it. But in addition — and this is where the debate enters a Catch 22 loop — before the New Jersey attorney general will even make that determination, the smart gun must first be commercially available in the U.S. In other words, a gun cannot be deemed a "smart gun" until a licensed dealer is willing to sell it.
Sebastian says the NRA sees that mandate as a weakening of the Second Amendment and has used its influence to keep smart guns from consumers.
"The mandate in the law has become an impediment and we can't get out of this endless loop," he says. "For 15 years this debate has been going on."
Currently, there is not a gun dealer in the U.S. willing to offer a smart gun for sale. A company called Armatix, based in Germany with an office in California, this year had two gun dealers — one in Maryland and one in California — ready to offer its .22-caliber handgun. The safety measure is a stopwatch worn on the wrist that sends a radio transmission, with a range of 10 inches, to the gun. The radio transmission enables the gun to fire.
The company promoted the breakthrough, and the national media jumped on the news. As a result, the two gun-shop owners were thrust into the eye of a national storm. They caught overwhelming criticism from gun owners and Second Amendment proponents. Both backed down and decided not to sell the gun.
"I won't touch it again," says Andy Raymond, 34, who owns Engage Armament in Rockville, Md. He had agreed to sell the gun simply because he thought he could pick up a few more customers. But his life changed when Armatix put him front and center in a media campaign.
***
"I just wanted to do things quietly," he says. "But Armatix said, 'Let's put this guy in front of the microphone.' "
Soon after a story appeared in the Washington Post, he says, he received 4,000 hostile phone calls and emails.
One caller, he says, threatened to burn down his gun shop if he sold the smart gun. Another told Raymond that he was going "to get what he deserved."
"I told them that if they touch my girlfriend or touch my dog I'm going to kill them," he says.
"I thought people would be reasonable about it," he says. He had thought there might be a new market for people who were not traditional gun buyers.
People weren't reasonable, he says. But not one of his critics identified himself as being from the NRA.
"The NRA did not do anything," he says. Yet, it irritates him when people do not think for themselves.
Raymond doesn't understand the logic of gun rights supporters who oppose bringing any particular gun to market.
"How is that any different than the people who want to ban all guns?" he asks.
Brent Ball, 40, owns 417 Guns in Springfield. He is not fond of smart guns.
"I think it is the stupidest thing ever made," he says. "Nobody who is a gun person will ever ask for that. The only people pushing for this are the anti-gun people."
What would happen, he asks, if you pull your gun during a home invasion and you have a radio-transmitting band on your left wrist and you are shot in the left shoulder and can't fire the gun?
It is a mistake, he says, to rely on electronics and batteries to determine if a gun will fire in a crisis.
"What happens if we put computer chips in all these guns and Obama pushes a button and all these guns go down?" he asks.
According to Newman, with Cherokee Firearms, the technology behind smart guns — if and when it becomes a reality — will drastically hike the cost to $10,000 to $20,000 per gun.
Sebastian, the New Jersey researcher, says that's not accurate.
"That's the party line," he says. "It's just not true. I can guarantee you that it won't double the cost of a gun."
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Compared to a banana. Which cost what? Like $10?
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)