to wrap my brain around these comments.
Welcome to DU foxman007

His disrupted badly.

bye bye "Fox" man.

Correlation is not causation, Mr. President.

Carter had a way of digging deeper: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106508243

I think a lot of DUers weren't around at the time before Reagan and Clinton, to experience President Carter.

but young.

....to changes in the frequency of these events is just laughable.

And, as a distraction from the underlying, more intractable and miserable, problems in our society, it is practically criminal.

Unless we address availability of weapons AND the things that make people run amok, we're just pretending to help.

.....

Let's just be sure we're talking about the same thing: Assault Rifles. No one is talking about gun regulation about any other weapons.

Now, if I understand your position, you don't think that more assault rifles in the population is the cause of more frequency. Yet, there is a frequency occurring, so all we're debating about now is the cause. Right?

Let me point another issue that is often debated on DU: When there is a massacre that occurs with these rifles, (which is occurring more often) the first thing that is suspected is that the gunman has mental problems. It's a position that is supported by the NRA presumably because they want to put distance between their stable NRA members and someone who goes on a shooting spree.

Okay. Just for the sake of argument, let's say that the gunmen who go on shooting sprees have issues. What conclusion can be reached then? That it's too easy for people who have mental issues to get their hands on guns--and not just guns, but assault rifles which do more damage because of the higher casualty rates. In fact, this seems to be the conventional conclusion that these debates are reaching. There must be a combination of better mental health care in this country, combined with gun regulation in order to resolve this threat to the public. And it is a threat. When we can't release our children to a school without fear that they will be gunned down, we have a problem, where we didn't have one before.

It doesn't help your cause when the waters get further muddied when presumably sane people call for the death of Liberals, as Ann Coulter once did. In fact, in the days before the Gabby Gifford massacre the right-wingers were talking about mass shootings! How can people forget this? It's one of the reason that Glen Beck was practically castrated! He was one of the worst offenders. You can't hide that history. It really happened. I was scared out of my wits because I live in a very reactionary red county. Only after Gabby Gifford and the other victims of that shooting took place did the right-wingers begin to cool that conversation. But that was publicly. What are they saying in private?

At some point gun proponents have to take responsibility for pushing the envelope in this country. They talk through their guns and that kind of constant, violent conversation is setting off people who are already on the edge. It wouldn't be an issue except that guns are too readily available to them.

Numbers matter. Availability matters. Whether you're talking about alcohol, cigarettes or prescription drugs. If there isn't regulation combined with public informational messages things degrade quickly.

...I remember all the talk before the Arizona/Gabby shooting. And Sarah Palin coming out with that horrible graphic right before, and her public statement immediately after the shooting.

They are semi auto rifles nothing more nothing less. Your standard M1 Garand in .30-06 is considerably more powerful than a .223 AR15 and would have much higher casualty rates even though it only holds 8 rounds.

.223 AR15's instead of M16s.

It should be obvious if you knew even a little bit about what you are attempting to debate. Good day.

please educate us, rather than walking away angry.

The military is concerned with winning wars, and that means taking hostiles off the battlefield, and arriving AT the battlefield with as much ammo as possible.

Killing a hostile soldier on the battlefield is all well and good, one man down. Wound a man on the battlefield? Now you've taken out three, the injured soldier +2 men to carry him or her away. That's desirable to the military.

Second is endurance. A 20 rd mag loaded with .308 weighs 0.68 kg. Same 20 round mag in .223? 0.3kg. Same number of shots, weighs half as much. (Also, the rifle itself is lighter, the M-16 weighing in at 2lbs less than a Garand or US M1917.)


You also seem to be confused about the M16, given your response to the poster above. Both the M16 and the AR-15 fire precisely the same ammunition. .223 NATO (5.56mm x 45mm). To compare with the 'larger' more lethal calibers that poster mentioned, you'd want to refer to something like the M1a, which rocks 7.62×51mm NATO, or .308. The only difference between a civilian AR-15 and a military M-16, is that the AR is slightly redesigned to prevent easy modification to select-fire (post-1986), and sometimes the quality of the rifle (forged versus milled/cast).

To a civilian a casualty doesn't always translate into death. It means a person's life has been altered forever. Whether that means losing a leg or sustaining brain damage it doesn't matter. It all falls into the category of a casualty. When you add the psychological damage from witnessing these massacres the casualty rate increases.

I'm not impressed by your cold knowledge of weaponry. Not when all it takes is someone to have the desire to pull a trigger to set an entire tragic set of events in motion.

you stay far away from weapons comparisons, of which you apparently have no background.

And even though this is a less specific emotional argument, it is still wrong. The 10 year old child that was shot in the chest by the 'DC Sniper' probably prefers that John Allen used an AR-15, rather than anything firing a .308 cartridge, given that the latter would not have been survivable.

and a rifle that only has eight rounds. You go ahead and try to pass off your knowledge of cold model numbers as an excuse for an argument to protect your assault rifles from regulation. It will be the emotional response that will win the day.

You are on the wrong side of history.

The 8-shot rifle referred to by that poster (the Garand, or M1) is also semi-automatic.


I'm also missing the part where I said 'don't ban my gunz yo'. I am open to a number of gun-control measures, particularly if they are well crafted, requiring some knowledge of firearms to accomplish.

Magazines that extend past the handgrip, and are removable, being the metric that allows for high volume of fire. (High cyclic rate weapons)

You didn't join this debate as someone who was on the side of regulation. But now that you do bring it up, I expect you to use that expansive knowledge base of yours to advance the discussion in the direction of gun regulation.

For example, we both know that it's very possible that even when gun regulation takes effect and assault rifles are banned, there will be those who will know how to purchase legal weapons and turn them into assault rifles. So why don't you spend some time educating us as to what legislation you recommend that will accomplish the changes that we need to see to prevent the next tragedy from occurring?

Because they contain everything you need to build one of these firearms or extended mags from the ground up.

That was facetious. (Ok, it was true, but I meant it in a sarcastic manner)

Unfortunately, it pains me to say, the cat is mostly out of the bag here. As you saw with the 1994 CAWB, existing weapons will not be rounded up in this country under our current laws, in light of the current court interpretations of the 2nd Amendment. (In fact, being that the AR-15 is the most popular center-fire rifle in the country, the 'common use' interpretation looms large)

SO, as with the closure of the NFA registry via the Hughes Amendment in 1986, we still see NFA (fully automatic or burst capable) weapons sold, but they command much higher prices, locking the Jared Loughners of the world out of the market. You will see the same with existing 'assault weapons', but there are things that are perfectly legal that we can do, to get them out of unqualified hands and that is where the most effort should be spent.

First off, things that we know are legal, and possible:

1. Registries. We already have one, the NFA registry for select-fire weapons, instituted in 1934 (at the behest of the NRA no less).
2. Magazine capacity limits. 10 seemed to work reasonably well, in the 1994 CAWB.

There is a very interesting number to be considered: the number of crimes committed with lawfully owned NFA weapons in the last 50 years. The number is '2'. And one was committed by a police officer. That is a staggering data point. What is it about the NFA registry that keeps these firearms from being used so much? Well, let's look at what it requires:

1. $200 tax stamp. This is akin to a high per-gallon fuel tax, it drives people to consider fuel-efficient cars, a win for society. Levied against only semi-auto weapons, this will result in a lot of firearms purchasers looking at bolt actions, revolvers, shotguns, etc. Lower cyclic rate weapons.
2. Full background checks. Not a NICS go-no-go check, a REAL background check. Active search for mental health records, a gander at your former residences, active inquiry into your local law enforcement databases at the state level (possibly a fingerprint check, the CPL background check requires it, certainly, I think the NFA BC does as well).
3. Registration. You have it. It turns up at a crime scene, you have some explaining to do. Several guns you owned turn up, the authorities know damn well you are a straw purchaser, go directly to jail.
4. Periodic inspection. The BATFE can knock on your door any old time to inspect your NFA weapon. Is it still yours. Do you have possession of it. Has it been modified, etc.

SO, my first, and most comprehensive proposal is remarkably simple: Repeal the Hughes Amendment. Strike the 'no federal registry' clause of the 1986 GOPA. Extend the NFA registry downward from select-fire weapons, to all semi-autos. Give some period of time to register the weapons already in the wild, as we did when we introduced the NFA registry in 1934. Exempt revolvers, bolt-action rifles, non-semi-auto shotguns.

No more 'gun show loophole'. No more 'straw purchases'. No more lack of records bubbling up to NICS, as in Virginia Tech or Arizona/Giffords. Active discouragement of these sorts of weapons in general with the tax stamp, which can help fund the registry and possibly even enforcement. That last bit critical in the case of people who apply to purchase a firearm now, swear that they are eligible, and have a denial come back. We don't prosecute those now. The tax stamp can fund that dire need.


And then lastly, mag cap limits. Not sure we can do much about the millions in circulation (require modification? Interesting, possible) and frankly the science on whether the cap ban had any positive effect for 1994-2004 is dubious at best, BUT, said science was actively suppressed by restricting federal research dollars away from firearm issues, so I'm willing to grant the benefit of the doubt here, and say 'go for it'. 10 rounds is pretty reasonable.

Please tell me you have started a thread of your own suggesting these measures. Well explained and something all DUers should hear.

Highly support your recommendations.

First attempt was way back on DU2, and I got an earful from my fellow gun owners unfortunately. The 'extend the NFA registry downward' idea popped into my head around the first discussions after Sandy Hook Elementary, I think. I've posted it in several gun control threads since, and it seems about medium-well received.

I have one concern about it, the cost of the tax stamp. That would be extremely disliked, trying to get this sort of legislation passed. Maybe a lower dollar amount with some federal matching or something like that, because funding IS needed. Firearms of this nature already pay an 11% excise tax for habitat management and restoration, so gun owners are loathe to accept more taxes on top, and I don't want to suggest robbing that funding away from wildlife management to fund criminal investigations.

The other concern is of course, the 1986 Gun Owner Protection Act, and Hughes Amendments, both of which pretty much have to be repealed to get this to work. A nightmare battle in and of itself.

One of these nights, I'll clean it up and post it as an OP for discussion. I was considering writing a letter to the president with it as well, as I fear the legislation proposed and on the table now, is doomed to failure, for the same reasons the last AWB didn't really work as intended. And I really do desire to reduce the criminal mis-use and negligent mis-use of firearms.

Or, when you're ready to write the president, maybe you can ask the admins for permission to bring more attention to it?

that my NFA registry suggestion above would personally cost me approximately $3,400 to come into compliance with, and that is an enormous amount of money for me, so I do not make that suggestion lightly.

I do very much desire to see the malevolent mis-use of firearms restricted, and I am willing to pay in multiple forms, out of pocket cash, convenience, anonymity, to achieve that. If I'm not willing, then well, why would any other gun owner give it a go?

What do you mean by that, specifically?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/bill-clintons-over-the-top-fact-on-mass-shootings/2013/01/10/7040d61e-5b7a-11e2-9fa9-5fbdc9530eb9_blog.html

So, there's the claim in the OP's info graphic. Clinton was wrong.

"When there is a massacre that occurs with these rifles, (which is occurring more often) the first thing that is suspected is that the gunman has mental problems. It's a position that is supported by the NRA presumably because they want to put distance between their stable NRA members and someone who goes on a shooting spree.

Okay. Just for the sake of argument, let's say that the gunmen who go on shooting sprees have issues. What conclusion can be reached then? That it's too easy for people who have mental issues to get their hands on guns--and not just guns, but assault rifles which do more damage because of the higher casualty rates."

You've made three claims here.

"When there is a massacre that occurs with these rifles (which is occurring more often)"
For frequency, you can see that the 1990's was by far the highest decade for these types of killings in the WaPo article. If shootings this decade continue on the current trend, we might end up higher than that for the 2010's, however, these sorts of shootings don't tend to follow trends, so it's not exactly a safe extrapolation. You also specified 'with these rifles'. That is highly problematic.

Looking at the list of school shootings, this decade, you find this weapon used once. (Sandy Hook)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States#2010s

Expand it to all mass shootings, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers:_Americas
Now we add the Aurora theater shooting, and the new mexico shooting where a teenager killed his family.

That's three. I honestly looked, I didn't find any more, but even if I missed 5x the number I listed here, said rifles still pale in comparison to handguns of all types.

"and not just guns, but assault rifles which do more damage because of the higher casualty rates."

To be relevant I would suggest you modify that to assault weapons, which would catch pistols, such as that used on Gabby Giffords. Otherwise, this statement is just numerically wrong.

"we have a problem, where we didn't have one before."

This would require we ignore the 80's, 90's, and 2000's, and I cannot suggest a manner to repair the statement. We are currently on-track to exceed the '90's, but this is not the whole story, as I mentioned above.

I don't accept casualties. Apparently, you do.

Thanks for the contribution though.

...appeal to people with Rambo/Diehard/Matrix fantasies. It's not too surprising that some of those people with fantasies would go over the edge and decide to act them out. Of course, if they think they're all that tough, why take on kids in an elementary school? Why not, say, get on a plane and go after Hezbollah?

That is what you are saying, isn't it? You can show no way that we can actually determine which people are likely to run amok, but since you believe that that is necessary, the problem cannot be alleviated at all by doing things that logically do have a connection and maybe even a correlation -like banning high capacity magazines and assault weapons.

The rifle used at Sandy Hook Elementary was 1994 CAWB-legal. As were the magazines.
In a couple of the more 'notable' cases, like the mag used on Giffords'+ in Arizona, and the mag used at the aurora theater, they were significantly more expensive during the span of that ban, but available.
Same for one of the pistols used at Virginia tech (he had some 15 round mags, AWB limited to 10)

So, it's fairly pertinent.

Also, the initial claim was flawed.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/bill-clintons-over-the-top-fact-on-mass-shootings/2013/01/10/7040d61e-5b7a-11e2-9fa9-5fbdc9530eb9_blog.html



These issues are a lot more complex than a single data point, especially when that data is handled fast and loose.
http://factcheck.org/2013/02/did-the-1994-assault-weapons-ban-work/

I hadn't seen it.

...references "mass killings" which encompass more than mass shootings and Grant Duwe book disproves the mass shootings angle by a wide margin, this bit of propaganda can be filed along with stories about people waking up to find their kidneys missing.

could be related.

1. It could be that the attitudes that cause the killings and the attitudes that caused Congress' inability to renew or improve the assault weapons ban are the same -- widespread vague, growing anger at the changes in our society like lower wages, more competition for jobs, faster computing and overpopulation just to name a few frustrating dehumanizing changes.

2. It could be that the end of the assault weapons ban gave SOME gun-owners and gun-users a sense of power and in some cases kill-lust that they did not allow themselves to have when the ban was in force.

3. Then of course there is the possibility that the "high" that assault weapons users get, that feeling of almighty power and the ability to just wipe out a lot of people at once was not available to gun owners and users on the edge during the ban.


I'm not opposed to reasonable possession and sport with guns, but when I see the reactions of a lot of gun rights defenders on DU, I think ADDICTION in big letters. It's as if their rational minds are disengaged when it comes to guns. This does not apply to all gun owners and users, but to some who post on DU. That is where there is also a tie between the end of the assault weapons ban and the recent spate of gun deaths. When people are addicted to a substance or a sport or an interest, they really go overboard with it on occasion. The gun killings are like what happens to a dry drunk who suddenly gets a drink. There is no limit.

..But it's still a correlative, not a causal, relationship.

I agree, it's a shitty world where the rich get richer and it makes people go crazy, and it also means senseless legislation that doesn't help, and removal of safeguards that do help.

I just think it's intellectually shabby (though emotionally effective) to draw the two together as done by Bill Clinton in the pic.

that he was changing the direction of our country's behavior.

But it is definitely part of the chain of evidence.

Of course, since the NRA has paid off congress to make it illegal to spend any government money investigating gun violence, we don't have the resources to research these connections to determine how meaningful they are.

Still a verylittle girl somewhere in a not too secure filled with violence country- however history is there to teach us Carter was a good President and is a man with high integrity and someone I admire very much.

I wonder how he would do as First Gentleman?

The type of weapons available is THE difference between a murder and a mass killing. Both are horrible, but a single murder is much less horrible.

Which can be found HERE

The only way we'll win the gun debate is to make sure we have our FACTS, and not our OPINIONS.

...than mass shootings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Land_fire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_city_bombing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks

http://thinkprogress.org/gun-debate-guide/

Some common talking points can and should be easily dismissed — the idea that regulating access to guns is always unconstitutional or makes tyranny more likely, to take two examples. But not every argument against expanded gun regulation is ridiculous. There are some, based on the evidence about and history of gun use in the United States, that are worth taking more seriously. You’re likely to hear them a lot over the course of the coming debate. Here’s a list of some of the more commonly made, more serious arguments against gun regulation — and why they fail to effectively make the case against new laws:

Assault weapon” is a meangingless term. || The last assault weapons ban failed. || Assault weapons don’t kill many people. || Deaths went down after the ban expired. || How can background checks stop killings?
Are background checks unfair? || High-capacity magazines don’t assist in mass killings.
People need high-capacity magazines to defend themselves. || The ban on high-capacity magazines failed.
More guns, less crime. || Why do gun-regulating cities have more crime?


The 1994 ban, according to a Department of Justice review, also appears to have caused the percentage of crimes involving assault weapons in some major US cities to drop from 72 percent to 17 percent.
While it’s true that the same review couldn’t find support for the idea that the Assault Weapons Ban reduced crime in 2004, the authors concluded that there simply hadn’t been enough time or data to come to a strong conclusion. The more recent Mexican studies may have filled this gap.

Also, not reading FactCheck.Org could lead one to not know.

Thanks Mira

those who study mass shootings say they are not becoming more common.

"There is no pattern, there is no increase," says criminologist James Allen Fox of Boston's Northeastern University, who has been studying the subject since the 1980s, spurred by a rash of mass shootings in post offices.

The random mass shootings that get the most media attention are the rarest, Fox says. Most people who die of bullet wounds knew the identity of their killer....

Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections who has written a history of mass murders in America, said that while mass shootings rose between the 1960s and the 1990s, they actually dropped in the 2000s.

And mass killings actually reached their peak in 1929, according to his data.

He estimates that there were 32 in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s and 26 in the first decade of the century.



http://reason.com/blog/2012/12/17/are-mass-shootings-becoming-more-common

I wonder where that comes from.

That quote made me hit the fact checker too. I found this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/bill-clintons-over-the-top-fact-on-mass-shootings/2013/01/10/7040d61e-5b7a-11e2-9fa9-5fbdc9530eb9_blog.html
1900s : zero
1910s: 2
1920s: 2
1930s: 9
1940s: 8
1950s: 1
1960s: 6
1970s: 13
1980s: 32
1990s: 42
2000s: 28
2010s (three years): 14

14*3.33=46, if trends continue we'll be highest decade so far.

“Half of all mass killings in the United States have occurred since the assault weapons ban expired in 2005, half of all of them in the history of the country.”

So he wasn't talking just about shootings, for starters.

Just off the top of my head I can think of two very well known mass killings in the 20s:

St Valentine's day massacre, 1929:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Valentine%27s_Day_Massacre

Bath school disaster, 1927:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster

So when Duwe said 1929 was the peak, I assumed it had to do with the gang wars during Prohibition. The St. Valentine's Day massacre wasn't the only mass gang killing during Prohibition, so right away I question that "two" for the entire decade of the 1920's.

Here's what it actually was:

Duwe found that the prevalence of mass murders, defined as the killing of four or more people in a 24-hour period, tends to mirror that of homicide generally. The increase in mass killings during the 1960s was accompanied by a doubling in the overall murder rate after the relatively peaceful 1940s and ’50s.

In fact, Duwe found that mass murder was just as common during the 1920s and early 1930s as it is today. The difference is that then, mass murderers tended to be failed farmers who killed their families because they could no longer provide for them, then killed themselves. Their crimes embodied the despair and hopelessness of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, the sense that they and their families would be better off in the hereafter than in the here and now.

On Dec. 29, 1929, a 56-year-old tenant farmer from Vernon, Texas, named J.H. Haggard shot his five children, aged 6 to 18, in their beds as they slept. Then he killed himself. He left a note that said only, “All died. I had ruther be ded. Look in zellar...”

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/18249724/

Here's what Fox says:

Megan: I’d like to talk about how we count mass shooters, which has been a bit of an issue over the last week or so. Mother Jones had a widely cited analysis showing that mass shootings are on the rise. But you've disputed that, saying that their count is unreasonably restrictive.

James Alan Fox: Yes, that's right. If one examines the full range of cases--all shootings with at least four victims killed, the numbers have been trendless. Over the past 35 years, there has been an average of jut under 20 incidents per year. Of course, most were not as well-publicized, or as large-scale, as Sandy Hook.

I understand that Mother Jones was trying to isolate "random" massacres, but their criteria were sometimes arbitrary and not even applied consistently. For example, they wanted to limit their pool to cases involving a lone gunman, but made exceptions for two well-known school shootings (each committed by a pair of students) that they wanted to include.

Given how difficult it to accomplish the task of defining "random", I would opt for including all mass shootings. Besides, if 7 or 10 or 14 are killed in a not-so-random shooting spree, is this any less important or devastating?

I do applaud their effort to build a database that includes details on each case, but they would have been better off not limiting he pool based on questionable criteria

Megan: It seems that they were trying to control for the shootings by young men in gangs. But one question is whether they're really that different: are gang shootings purely economic? Or are they, too, often about injustice and disrespect?

James Alan Fox: Great question (and observation). Gang shootings are often about revenge, not at all distinct from someone who avenges a termination or missed promotion by shooting up his worksite.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/01/forget-what-you-ve-heard-mass-shootings-aren-t-rising-but-they-probably-aren-t-going-away.html

Second, the list you posted is not a list of *all* mass killings during those decades. It's a subset of mass killings: "an incident in which four or more victims are killed publicly with guns within 24 hours — in the workplace, schools, restaurants and other public places — excluding shootings in connection with crimes such as robbery, drugs or gangs."

So none of the prohibition gang war shootings, nor the bankrupt farmer killings, make that list. The Bath school killings don't either -- no gun.

See the report from the CT Office of Legislative Research: http://www.cga.ct.gov/2013/rpt/2013-R-0057.htm

49 shootings, of which only 8 were semi-automatic rifles that would be considered "assault weapons".

The rest were committed with handguns or a comnination of handguns and shotguns and in a couple of cases a hammer, knife, bolt action rifle or flamethrower