Gun control

[Chas]

That wholly owned subsidiary of the NRA...the supreme court...overturned settled case law in 2008 to rule that Washington, DC could not ban handguns. They have made the situation so much worse.

Can you substantiate that? What became worse?

[Zazzy]

<sigh...> I don't really know the answer to this. I mean, I remember playing cops and robbers with the neighborhood kids when I was little, and we all pretended we had guns and shot at everything in sight. But they were just our fingers, or some silly toy -- and we did know the difference. In my household, we grew up with loaded guns leaned in out-of-the-way corners. We knew not to touch them -- period.

I personally do not remember playing like this, but it was along time ago. I mostly played fairies straight out of LOTR- I was a weird kid.

It is disturbing that the research cited in the article shows that so many kids (boys, usually), even with gun safety training, will play with a gun.

I don't know how to address this, either. I think it would help if both sides would start to honestly address it without anger and false rhetoric.

We made huge inroads into discouraging people from smoking by educating them as to the terrible dangers of it as well as making it socially uncomfortable. Might we do something similar with the gun culture? I think if it is approached in a reasonable way, there are gains to be made. Just a thought. It's a big problem, and the prongs of solution are multitude.

This is a good, and encouraging, point. Things can change very fast culturally if the right message is found. We should keep trying to frame it correctly, I guess.

I don't reflexively blame the gun.

It's more complicated than that for me, and I think for you, too. It's blaming a whole culture that doesn't THINK about these things, or teach parents to think about them without getting hysterical.

I'd be interested to hear your further thoughts on this. I guess what I was trying to say is, I'm less concerned with the method chosen to facilitate a suicide than I am with the underlying reason why so many feel the need to kill themselves in the first place. But that's another whole discussion.

I think we just can't talk about it reasonably. I'm 42, and this is the first reasonable conversation- in life OR on the internet- I've ever had about it with a gun owner. Everyone is convinced the other person is lying, or an idiot, and it goes nowhere from the beginning. Scary stats are reasons to panic, on either side. We don't THINK; we just react. And some of that is understandable when we are talking about dead children. But we still are almost never communicating honestly.

And you're probably right that the suicide discussion is tangential.

Even if it was all made illegal tomorrow, you'd never get those folks to surrender those arms.

That scares me. Not that I think guns will be made illegal- they won't- but that such violence is always around the corner.

The knee-jerk resistance to background checks, etc., seems to come from a highly emotional place rather than one of reason.

So you have not heard good, reasonable arguments, even through the emotion, from the others? Or is it really as crazy as it appears?

Thank you. In general, I support gun control and virtually all of what it hopes to accomplish. I do draw the line when anti-gun folks call for the elimination of all guns in all possible situations.

Well, this is nonsense, and almost everybody knows it. I guess it is enough to shut down communication, although that's a shame.

One more question: If Obama called you tomorrow and put you in charge of the task force to propose practical gun control, what would that proposal look like?

[Rahul]

What I don't understand is the mindset of "Criminals will have guns so we need guns to protect us from them." Rather than trying to take guns out of the hands of criminals (which if we'd have more effective background checks it help, but they oppose that as well), they think that it's better to arm everyone. So they're focused on winning a shootout rather than avoiding a shootout in the first place. Which leads to them bringing up ridiculous suggestions like making sure every teacher is armed.

Well here's the issue. In a perfect world type scenario is different than in the real world. We can't avoid the "shootouts".

There are what, around 200 million registered guns in the US? No telling how many additional guns other than that.

So do we make it more difficult to buy guns or certain guns? Ok, what about the 200 million plus already here? Do we confiscate those from law abiding citizens? We wouldn't even know who owns what with a heck of a lot of them. Anyone can sell their gun to anyone else with no paperwork. I bought a rifle over twenty years ago from a guy with no paperwork being involved. The government wouldn't know I owned it.

There is NO WAY the United States can cleanse all guns out of the country. Even if we could magically make all existing guns in the US today disappear, how are we going to keep guns from coming in?

We can't keep drugs from being smuggled into the US. We can't keep illegal immigrants out. How on earth could we keep guns out of our borders?

We can't.

So no matter what laws are passed, guns are going to be in the US. Making guns more difficult for law abiding citizens to possess is only going to reduce the number of law abiding citizens with guns. It's not going to keep guns out of the hands of criminals.

It would be great if we could make all guns on the planet go away. World peace would be great too. Unfortunately neither of these things are going to happen.

We can bicker over gun laws or what if ideas about a perfect world, but it's not going to change the fact that we CAN'T get rid of guns. They're already here to stay. Laws aren't going to change that.

[Doubting Thomas]

Unfortunately that is a problem. I don't advocate total gun control, but I do advocate sensible regulation, better background checks, and keeping guns out of the hands of mentally disturbed individuals. Everything the NRA seems to be against.

[Rahul]

Unfortunately that is a problem. I don't advocate total gun control, but I do advocate sensible regulation, better background checks, and keeping guns out of the hands of mentally disturbed individuals. Everything the NRA seems to be against.

I can agree with that. The NRA is rather rabid in its goals.

[Chas]

Unfortunately that is a problem. I don't advocate total gun control, but I do advocate sensible regulation, better background checks, and keeping guns out of the hands of mentally disturbed individuals. Everything the NRA seems to be against.

No, the NRA isn't against those goals. The NRA is against the really ludicrous means that have been proposed.

Many of the proposals are not rational or are disingenuous.

[Zazzy]

Many of the proposals are not rational or are disingenuous.

Could you elaborate on this for me, Chas? Research is difficult because of all the shrieking on both sides.

[Chas]

Many of the proposals are not rational or are disingenuous.

Could you elaborate on this for me, Chas? Research is difficult because of all the shrieking on both sides.

My quick answer is "Assault Weapon Ban". A bunch of firearms were classified with this invented scare term based mostly on appearance.

Many firearms that were much more deadly were not on the banned list, but they didn't have some non-functional feature that made them 'evil'.

The reaction from gun owners is that there is either gross ignorance or a hidden agenda in these laws.

(A) any of the firearms, or copies or duplicates of the firearms in any caliber, known as--

`(i) Norinco, Mitchell, and Poly Technologies Avtomat Kalashnikovs (all models);

`(ii) Action Arms Israeli Military Industries UZI and Galil;

`(iii) Beretta Ar70 (SC-70);

`(iv) Colt AR-15;

`(v) Fabrique National FN/FAL, FN/LAR, and FNC;

`(vi) SWD M-10, M-11, M-11/9, and M-12;

`(vii) Steyr AUG;

`(viii) INTRATEC TEC-9, TEC-DC9 and TEC-22; and

`(ix) revolving cylinder shotguns, such as (or similar to) the Street Sweeper and Striker 12;

`(B) a semiautomatic rifle that has an ability to accept a detachable magazine and has at least 2 of--

`(i) a folding or telescoping stock;

`(ii) a pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon;

`(iii) a bayonet mount;

`(iv) a flash suppressor or threaded barrel designed to accommodate a flash suppressor; and

`(v) a grenade launcher;

`© a semiautomatic pistol that has an ability to accept a detachable magazine and has at least 2 of--

`(i) an ammunition magazine that attaches to the pistol outside of the pistol grip;

`(ii) a threaded barrel capable of accepting a barrel extender, flash suppressor, forward handgrip, or silencer;

`(iii) a shroud that is attached to, or partially or completely encircles, the barrel and that permits the shooter to hold the firearm with the nontrigger hand without being burned;

`(iv) a manufactured weight of 50 ounces or more when the pistol is unloaded; and

`(v) a semiautomatic version of an automatic firearm; and

`(D) a semiautomatic shotgun that has at least 2 of--

`(i) a folding or telescoping stock;

`(ii) a pistol grip that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon;

`(iii) a fixed magazine capacity in excess of 5 rounds; and

`(iv) an ability to accept a detachable magazine.'.

[TheBeardedDude]

Chas and I (along with some others) have debated gun control before. Here is some additional information and a couple of other articles.


http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/the-...r-problem/

I got the issue the other day and I am moving through the above article as well as this one that talks about "The Sandy Hook Effect."

I'll start with the former article first.


Mr. Hillshafer makes a lot of good points in his article, and highlights a couple of key issues that surround the gun issues and mass murders in particular. Some of his observations I found most interesting are (and I'll keep it brief as you can read his article yourself):
"While the killer occasionally died at the hands of an angry mob (1%), rarely did an armed civilian kill an attacker (0% in the U.S., 1 recorded incident in Israel where an armed student killed an attacker), and unarmed heroic civilians who charge the attacker frequently got killed."

That's not really all that surprising for the most part. The bit I found interesting was the underlined portion. A civilian stopping a mass murder with a weapon by shooting and killing them is nonexistent in the US. There was however the Gabrielle Gifford's incident where he highlights this:
"For example, Joe Zamudio20 was legally carrying a concealed handgun in Arizona one day when he heard gunshots. He ran toward the gunfire and saw a man with a handgun in a malfunction condition on top of another man, shouting, “I’ll kill you, you motherf****r. I’ll kill you.” Leaving his weapon in the holster Zamudio grabbed the man’s wrist and instructed him to put down the weapon, which he did. The man was Roger Sulzgeber, who in addition to retired Army Colonel Bill Badger and Patricia Maisch,21, 22 saved many lives by tackling Jared Loughner after Loughner’s weapon malfunctioned approximately one minute20, 23 after opening fire."

Mr Zamudio had a gun on him and helped restrain Loughner, but never need take it from his holster. The point here (as he makes further along too) is that proper training and assessment of the situation can prevent unnecessary use of a firearm and unnecessary loss of life or injury.

The concept is simple, people carrying a concealed weapon should have training like that of police. I don't mean the physical aspect, but the assessing of situations so as to prevent escalation of incident. This is further highlighted by several other stats. Chiefly:
"A recent study by Cheng Cheng and Mark Hoekstra at Texas A&M University indicates that an extra 600 homicides occur in the U.S. each year because of these laws.25, 26 Why might this be? Of the 13,756 homicides counted in the 2009 FBI27 Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) data, 3,368 (24.4%) were started because of “Other Arguments” (an argument not over money or property). This is more than all the 2,051 (14.9%) “Felony Homicides”28 and 1,495 (10.9%) “Non-Felony Homicides”29 (excluding “Other Arguments” listed above and the 1,996 or 14.5% of “Non-Felony Not Specified”). That means that alcohol, drugs, prostitution, and gangs combined killed fewer people than arguments did in the U.S. in 2009. The only category with more homicides is “Unknown,” which could mean unsolved, solved enough for the detectives to get an arrest and move on to the next case, or fully solved but poorly documented (Figures 11 and 12)."

This is interesting and important because the most gun deaths on a yearly basis, are easily preventable if the people implementing the use of the gun had used their fists instead of their weapon in the argument. Or better still, not escalated the argument to such a point in the first place.

In the end, Mr. Hillshafer makes several suggestions that include changes in age of acquisition of gun, age for full liability of a gun, surrogates for those underage to be held accountable too, insurance, training, and better mental healthcare. I'm down with that.



Now, that second article I linked in my previous post, this one written by Micheal Shermer. I enjoyed this article too and found it to be quite similar to the previous one. This article is a bit more geared towards looking at the longer term trends and the longer term causes of the decline in violence in society. It doesn't really end with any measures specifically addressing gun control, but does asses that gun control is one of the measures that need be implemented to bring about some necessary changes to continue the trend of decreasing violence. Specifically, he supports the legislation put forth by Carolyn McCarthy saying that "...The High Capacity Ammunition Feeding Device Act, and it would prohibit magazines that hold more than 10 bullets (the maximum now is 100).46 That seems reasonable to me, and hunters who claim otherwise can give their game a more sporting chance of escape— if you can’t nail them in 10 rounds they deserve to live."

I tend to agree with him on this. I disagree however when he says that the US is too dissimilar from Australia for the measures they took to be effective here however. I agree with the objections he has as to our differences when he says "The population is much smaller and more homogeneous, and the number of guns already in circulation is orders of magnitude smaller, and the “gun culture” there is nothing like it is in America." I just don't think these are significant enough to generate a substantial difference. And the latter point about the gun culture, is a reflection of the issue that is at hand. One I think that will change in the coming decades. If only because weapons themselves will become more and more obsolete if technology continues to advance as it is. I mean to say that, wars in the future may be fought largely in cyberspace and protection will become less about caliber and more about information security. In very much the same way that the invention of a teleporter would make cars obsolete. But, I digress.

I think Shermer hits the nail pretty squarely on the head at the end when he outlines a few bullet points as to how to reduce violence further. These are:
"-The rule of law and property rights.
-Economic stability through a secure and trustworthy banking and monetary system.
-A reliable infrastructure and the freedom to move about the country.
-Freedom of speech, the press, and association.
-Mass education.
-Protection of civil liberties.
-A robust military for protection of our liberties from attacks by other states.
-A potent police for protection from attacks by other people within the state.
-A viable legislative system for establishing fair and just laws.
-An effective judicial system for the equitable enforcement of those fair and just laws.59"

Within these, I think the message of amending gun laws is obvious and straightforward and coupled with the previous article, a good move towards reducing violence.

That is, not only improving the military and police, but ensuring that those that keep guns for personal defense are not only properly trained with how to use the weapon but also WHEN.

---

And I made a blog post related to a video my YEC conservative Republican father-in-law sent me.

The article itself and the link to it

Mark Twain once said "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Twain is someone I greatly admire but this one of the few times his short quotes fails him. It is certainly true that people use statistics to mislead, manipulate, and...well...lie. But the point is that if you know what to look for and question what is being put in front of you, it is possible to tease out the reliable numbers from the subjective interpretation. The statistics don't lie, the people using them do.

I have pondered how to best present this argument and I realized it might be best to do it with this video on gun rights. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pla...oa98FHuaU0

I'll start off by saying that whatever your opinions and views are on this issue, the point is to analyze what he is saying and how. You can make up your own mind as whether or not to amend our current set of laws, but using arguments like those he makes are going to put you in a position of being a manipulative and dishonest individual arguing partial truths so as to further an agenda.

So, here are the basic points of what I have found wrong with what he is saying.

First off, he starts off with points I can agree with. That there are other factors that must be considered, but he digresses quickly.


Comparing 2 years, rather than trends. He compares 1992 and present. Only comparing 2 years worth of data is misleading because crime rates can spike and drop on a year to year basis. What matters is the overall trend over the course of several years. There is a reason no one just looks at 2 years worth of data when making comparisons between other countries and between states. The same is true for comparing other sets of data like temperature and climate in the climate change debate. If you only compare averages, maxes and mins for 2 years of your choosing, you could make an argument for no change, decreasing temperatures, increasing temperaures or indeed anything you want. The point is the trend itself that exists more than just on a year to year basis.


Metropolitan areas are high concentration areas of people where crime rates should be expected to be higher. It is not just gun violence and it is not just the US where this is the case. Or indeed only modern times.

This is for 2 reasons-Increased frequency of people means more opportunity. There are more people alive today with Parkinson's than in 1900 because there are more people alive. Basically what I am saying is that when there is more opportunity, there are more occurences of some rare thing. If you only go out into the forest for an hour looking for a rare species, you may never see it. But if you set up a camera and leave it out for a year, your chances increase exponentially.-Poverty level. Low-income areas are also larger in Metropolitan areas.-Disparity between incomes. In rural areas, there are fewer high-income families and fewer low-income families. It is more of a middleground and is also connected to-Overall wealth of the area and price of basic commodities. Basically, your money goes farther in rural areas than in metropolitan areas. $20,000 in New York City is really low income and not feasible to live off of because of the price of commodities like gas, milk, bread, transportation,rent, etc. But in rural areas (like where I grew up in TN), the price of these commodities is lower. Getting a cheap car is pretty easy. Wal-Marts are frequent. And living off of $20,000 is much more reasonable (rent is ridiculously low in areas like that whereas you may not be able to find an apartment in New York for $20,000 a year)
The "true trouble spots" when looking at a neighborhood by neighborhood basis is also not surprising. Bet it is highest in low income areas. And there are more of those in metropolitan areas. These are ignored by everyone because there is no quick fix for them. It can only come from improvement of those areas from within. Basically what I am saying is they need better access to better education.

"Who is working on improving that." That is why people want universal healthcare in the US. Reducing the cost of basic commodities is highly valuable to these communities and improving the quality of the education can have a big impact too.

How do you improve the lives of the lowest income portion of the population? Man that's a tough question. I have already said education twice, but what else could you do? I don't know the answer to that.

Can you even do it in the short-term? Quick-fixes rarely work for any extended period of time, and we need long-term fixes.

Education is key. Improve education overall and you improve the ability for these people to get jobs that are not blue-collar. The white-collar jobs are more stable, pay better, and have better benefits.

I don't know of anyone that has said the US has a lower crime rate than England. He is cherry-picking what he is saying here and building a bit of a straw-man.

The murder rate is still lower in the UK. He seems to want to dismiss this. Isn't that what he is criticizing everyone else of? He is not giving a suggestion as to why their murder rate is lower, but I have a guess I will get to in a second.

Gun crime is lower. I think this is what most people are saying instead of just crime overall.
Yes, the UK has more violent crime, but that may be due to something I have already mentioned, and that is:The UK has fewer metropolitan areas, but it also has a lower population and...
Percent of Americans living in Urban and suburban areas = 82%
Percent of UK residents living in urban and suburban areas = 90%http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/...ing-cities

Crime occurs in metropolitan areas at a higher perceived rate than rural areas (something he said too) and more UK citizens live in metropolitan areas, so it would be expected for crime rates to be higher, irregardless of gun laws. But murder rate is lower even though that too should be higher in metropolitan areas. So, the UK seems to have that figured out. Basically, less access to instruments of death means lower murder rates. So the total number of metropolitan areas is not what is important, he is cherry picking again.
Crime rates in European nations have dropped too over a similar time frame. That means that the global economy is likely a major contributor, so nothing happening in the US is unique as far as dropping crime rates.

Gun crime has gone up 4-fold since they amended their gun laws, but that is a false positive in a way. It is true that those numbers have gone up, but they have gone up in the same way you would expect to see crime rates go up because you hire more cops. There is not really more crime, just more people getting caught. Think of it like this, you live on a road where the speed limit is and has been 35 mph for as long as anyone can remember and then one day, it is changed to 15 mph. Are the number of speeding tickets going to increase or decrease? They will increase because the restictions have been tightened making it easier to be considered in violation of the law and you have a generation of people who are not comfortable with the recent chances yet.

Another part of the puzzle that needs to be addressed is the frequency of mass shootings. The US is a statistical anomaly there too with a rate higher than other European nations.

Yes, the politicians have an agenda. So do the politicians on the pro-gun side. The point is that it is important to look through that agenda. I don't have cable. I don't watch the pundits. I would have been right on his side pretty much right up to the Newtown incident. Having a kid and being an hour away from something like that will quickly change your perception of such issues.

When has the media been honest about anything anyways? They over simplify on pretty much every issue because the people watching are not smart enough to understand all of the metrics.

He cherry picks data at the very end of his own video, committing something he is accusing everyone else of. He uses 2011 only, not the 2000's or some longer period of time. Using one years worth of data is misleading (again). He also only uses rifles in homicides. The point is not just that rifles are a problem.

Solving violent crime? Who is under the delusion that they can solve violent crime? Better education can help, but it won't eliminate it. He is building a pretty big straw-man here. I don't know of anyone who is saying that better gun laws will cause violent crime rates to drop, but if murder rates drop and mass shootings drop, that will be a huge step forward.

Basically, he makes all the same mistakes he is accusing everyone else of. None of his arguments actually support less or no gun restriction. The US does not have a crime rate or murder rate that implies more guns equals less crime. So, what exactly is he trying to say? It can't hurt to have this many guns and this few laws? The mass shooting statistics and murder rate say otherwise.



So perhaps Twain would have been better off having said that there are three different ways of lying: saying nothing, telling an untruth, and telling only the partial truth. This last part is concurrent with statistics in his original quote.

[Zazzy]

Thanks, BD. It will take me a while to get through all of this, but I appreciate it.