will be shouted down by the gun fanatics.

How's that Patriot Act working out for you?

95% of all homicide incidents have a single victim. The amount that have 6 victims is measured in per mil, not per cent, because it's so tiny.

Or Washington state?

That's probably something you've never been accused of showing.

and have never used their power to discriminate against certain groups.

historically the police have been the greatest civil rights abusers in America.

But they should be around to make sure you don't over step and become one of those abusers yourself. Good luck.

warrant-less surveillance? Just how are the police going to keep us gun owners in line without resorting to illegal methods?

They should be there to lock up those, like Zimmerman, who cross the line. You want to play with guns, then be prepared to shoot someone or be shot and then prepare to be dead or locked up, because those are your more likely options.

Neither dead nor locked up, but jutified and allowed to go on your way.

legally that is - lots of criminals carry in public. Too bad no law will ever change that.

Last edited Sat Jun 16, 2012, 02:33 PM - Edit history (1)

since laws don't stop criminals from being criminals?

why will criminals obey these laws and not others?

You need to be a little more specific.

Or some guy new to toting uses it to intimidate others, threaten a spouse, leaves the dang things where kids can get to it, becomes a Zimmerman, pulls a Stawicki or Loughnor, or worse.

For all we know, all the so-called "responsible" gun owners may be packing and the next thousand will be folks who shouldn't be allowed around a gun, much less carrying them or promoting more guns, lax laws, SYG laws under which people think that if they carry a gun they don't have to take crud of anyone.

Whatever, attitudes need to change. Since its appears the gun culture is not rational with respect to type of gun, number of guns, or where the toter chooses to carry it, then government needs to keep them well regulated.

So, just like any other object.

The rest of your post is simply unfactual hysterical hypotheticals, the same one you and your fellow travelers have been shreiking for years. Your prognostication is faulty, you should find a new gig.

laws need to be changed or altered.

And the tough people there seem to accept it, recognising it's good for society.

"Also, people need to be prevented from buying certain types of guns and too many guns. "

Oneshooter
Armed and Livin in Texas

I also suspect you'd suddenly find yourself with a lot of empty space - assuming of course that you are not one of those "law-abiding" gun folks who might not be so law-abiding if laws were tightened.

I rather doubt you actually have the ability to peer into oneshooter's gun safe from a distance.
Even if (by some chance) you were depicted in the following book:

So you want to ban muzzle loaders, single shots and hunting rifles.

WAY TO GO!!!

Looser.

Oneshooter
Armed and Livin in Texas

away with the second amendment...in addition how will you deal with the millions of guns already out there.

Plus older guns do deteriorate. Why keep adding to the pile/arsenal? Again, I'm not for totally banning ownership, just restricting the heck out of number in one's HOME.

the gun culture couldn't handle it.

...since he refuses to give up his own collection such advocacy would be hypocritical.

maintained/stored guns will last 100's of years. You can go to any gun show and see examples everyday that are 100-300 years old. Once the gun buying public gets wind that the Feds are going to slap ownership restrictions on gun owners there will be a buying spree. Instead of having 300 million guns you will have 350-400 million to deal with. As far as limiting the number of guns in a persons home, how are you going to do that? If I have a collection that contains 50 or more guns what are you going to do? confiscate them, require voluntary turn in.

All of these schemes look good on paper but are totally worthless in the real world.

Not unlike the greedy rich. All they seem to care about is themselves and their beloved, almighty guns.

Indirectly still bite the bullet and discourage something to control guns in the future, notwithstanding the "greedy".

I imagine it would drive the prices down

Society will be better in your opinion, because you don't like the idea of civilians carrying weapons.

And you want to accomplish your ideal society by banning an activity that doesn't present a threat to anyone.

It's fine that you have this goal, but it isn't progressive, and I'm going to fight against it.

I'm going to raise my children with the facts regarding guns, rather than a superstitious fear and hatred for them and the people who own them. I'll encourage my friends and neighbors to do that same.

Society, in my opinion, is not polluted by honest people taking reasonable action to protect themselves. It is polluted by violent people who prey on defenseless victims, and by arrogant people who abuse government power to keep honest people defenseless.

Guns aren't anything. Guns are inert tools. Recognizing the right to own and responsibly use guns is progressive. Bombs... eh. I haven't taken enough interest to form an opinion on explosives regulations. Off the top of my head, I'd guess they're too strictly regulated, and many of the regulations are more a revenue engine than safety protocol. I'll do my homework and maybe we'll discuss it another time.

EDIT: When I say "own and responsibly use," I mean personal carry in public, open or concealed, to be included under that heading. My ideal situation would be nationwide Constitutional carry(implemented on a state-by-state basis, not federal), until such time as it can be demonstrated to cause a problem.

is that the Zimmerman case(or your standard handful of cases) demonstrates a problem with allowing civilians to carry guns? Five or six anecdotes warrants universal civilian disarmament in public. That's as specious as saying the Columbine tragedy is a result of not allowing high schoolers to carry.

I think it is probably the opposite way around. I think very few criminals carry in public. Probably less that the so-called law abiders.

they are not the result of a criminal population constantly armed and ready to use violence? OK.

Lets remember where the shootings are concentrated - poor urban areas with high crime, drugs and gangs.

Your average criminal is a shoplifter or dime bag dope dealer. Your average violent criminal is a gang member directing his violence toward a rival gang member. So what motivates white bread America to carry guns around? Seems to me the reasons would be either wanting to emulate gang members, or confront them. Neither one is a good option. I can see no other logical reason, unless you have received some prior credible threat. Carrying a gun around will probably lead to somebody eventually getting hurt. Plus it is really bad karma. Think about it. If you ever think you have to use it, you'll probably be wrong, but still use it, in which case, the best outcome is you shoot somebody and the worst is you get shot. That's a big lose-lose situation. Just ask anyone who has shot another person.
All the rest of the justifications for carrying are hype and nonsense and disconnected from any semblance of reality.

more guns in the hands of the public has not led to the problems that concern you. A 50% drop in murders and manslaughter cases since 1992 indicates that your concerns are imaginary. I refuse to surrender a civil liberty because of your irrational fears.

Emulating a gang member? How far much further in ridiculousness will the gun control movement sink before it disappears forever?

You're still insinuating that more guns = more safety?

You gun-religionists never give up, no matter how many times your religion's tenets are debunked.

I am stating that more guns =/= more violence. Even you have to accept that fact.

A fisking is in order, methinks:

...loudly scream "SEE, THERE IS NO GLOBAL WARMING!!!!!!"

because I understand the facts and don't depend on emotion and hyperbole.

But what am I suppose to be seeing? Are you denying that more guns have not cause more violence in America?

If you are interested in some actual statistical analyses about the relationship between gun ownership and homicide, here are some links. Or you can just ignore the evidence, and keep your head buried in the sand, and insist that the fact that overall crime rates have dropped for reasons that have nothing to do with guns somehow disproves the extensive statistical data showing that more guns do in fact result in more homicide.

http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/dranove/htm/dranove/coursepages/Mgmt%20469/guns.pdf
http://home.uchicago.edu/~ludwigj/papers/JPubE_guns_2006FINAL.pdf

A fact you rather artfully elided:


http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/preliminary-annual-ucr-jan-dec-2011

...have to say about the issue.

I'm always curious about how statistically illiterate the NRA crowd really is. Are they really incapable of understanding that there are multiple factors that affect crime rates, so the fact that over a certain period of time gun sales and homicide rates moved in different directions doesn't disprove the fact that they are linked. For example, poverty rates increased in the 2000s, while crime rates dropped. Would you insist that that proves that there is no link between crime and poverty? I hope not.

Anyway, if you look at the data at a more granular level, at the state and county level, you find, as those studies did, that higher rates of gun ownership are in fact associated with higher rates of homicide, gun homicide specifically.

Which leads to an obvious question:

What makes Chicago's murder rate twice that of Houston's?

Both cities are of similar size- but Houston has far higher rates of gun ownership. I'd say poverty...

Is this really so confusing? If you look at the data in a systematic, professional way, the evidence shows that more guns lead to more homicide. If you cherry pick the data, you will always be able to find one city/state/region with more guns and less homicide than another.

I'll ask you again. Do you think the fact that poverty increased in the 2000s while crime dropped proves that poverty and crime aren't linked? If the answer is "yes", you need to get your head examined. If the answer is "no", you need to ask yourself why you jump to that exact same conclusion when "poverty" is replaced with "gun sales".

It seems to me that the only answer here is that you are ideologically rather than evidence-driven. You look at data that supports your ideology, and ignore the rest. And you aren't interested in any of the social science and statistical research, instead you substite your own cherry-picked homebrew "statistical analysis".

Or did they conform to the country as a whole? The latest study of the two you linked to was published in 2005- If they are valid, they should have shown an increase in gun crime in high gun ownership areas even after their publication dates.

A stroll through the FBI's various "Crime In The United States" reports should reveal the answer. They break down crime by stete, region, SMSA and incorporated cities, going back to the 1990s.

No one denies that there are a lot of factors that affect crime rates.

And pro-gun people around here are usually careful to note that increased firearms in circulation does not necessarily relate to decreases in crime rates.

But what we do say is that the anti-gun mantra, that "more guns equals more crime", is almost certainly false.

The FBI just released it's latest preliminary data for crime statistics, and, once again, violent crime has declined.

http://www.fbi.gov/sandiego/press-releases/2012/fbi-releases-2011-preliminary-annual-uniform-crime-report

Murder is down about 2%, and violent crime about 5%, and rapes around 6%.

This is part of a decades-long trend. Over the same period of time sales of firearms and ammunition have skyrocketed.

So the idea that increased numbers of firearms in circulation cause crime seems to me to be unfounded.

I have read that one of the biggest reasons for the decline of crime rates was the huge push to incarcerate people starting with the high crime rates in the 1990s, mostly for drug-related crimes. This had the effect of taking a huge swaths of the community and putting them behind bars during their child-bearing years. As immoral and racially-biased as this practice was and is, it did have the consequence of taking a large portion of the most economically and socially disadvantaged portion of our society - and thus the portion probably more likely to turn to crime as a way out - out of circulation. And not only were they thus not able to commit more crimes, but they weren't able to have children. Or at least, they weren't having children in their prime crime-comitting years.

In any case, I hope we can agree that violent crime has decreased since 1990 while the number of firearms in circulation have increased.

as evidenced by the equally drastic drop in gun violence, then what's your problem with the status quo? Fewer guns and less violence is what you wanted and according to your first link is exactly what you got. So since the status quo seems to be working just fine why are we fighting?

My problem with the status quo is that we have rates of gun violence that are 5-10X higher than the rest of the developed world. The number of people killed by guns each year is greater than the number of Americans that have died in 9-11, Iraq, and Afghanistan combined. Every two years, guns kill as many Americans as died in Vietnam. In fact, even in the very worst year in Vietnam, the US only lost about half as many lives as we do every year to guns.

It seems to me that gun violence is the one area where it's OK to brush of 30,000 unnecessary deaths as "seems to be working fine".

Here's an analogy. According to wikipedia, in 1968, there were 16,600 US casualties in Vietnam. Then in 1969, there were "only" 11,600. Now, imagine if you tried to argue in 1969 that "Vietnam casualties are way down from last year, everything seems to be working fine, let's just keep the war the way it is". The point is that, in both cases, we are talking about many thousands of unnecessary deaths.

and it is not 30k deaths - suicides are a separate issue.

You have some bizarre logic going. 30,000 needless deaths a year are OK because last year there were 31,000 needless deaths. To me, 30,000 needless deaths is 30,000 too many. Now, if there were some compelling reason why we should tolerate this level of death, that would be one thing.

For example, there are about 40,000 motor vehicle deaths every year. That's too many, but motor vehicles are an integral part of our society, so arguably we have reached some kind of balance between safety and transportation. But guns just aren't that important, certainly nothing like motor vehicles. And on top of that, a few basic policies like handgun registration could take a chunk out of the number of gun deaths without making much impact at all on the legitimate positive uses of guns.

Regarding suicides, the statistical evidence shows clearly that gun availability increases the rates of completed suicide, particularly among young people. This is because guns are an easy and lethal means to commit suicide.

let's talk.real numbers

Looks like the firearm deaths break down like this:
600 accidental
19,308 suicide
11,015 homicide

So the total is a bit over 30,000.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr60/nvsr60_04.pdf

gun violence is the issue.

Suicides are a public health issue addressed through better health care funding. Besides, what gun control law will stop suicides? You are not suggesting we ban private ownership of handguns and confiscate all guns in private hands? Because how do you preemptively prevent a suicidal person from using a gun?

I'm not padding any numbers. I cut and pasted them.

What you don't seem to get is that there are multiple causes for things. We could increase health care funding and also enact sane gun laws. We can end the drug war and also enact sane gun laws. It's not either-or.

Which gun laws would reduce suicide? Well, for starters, a handgun ban would obviously reduce suicides. Safe storage laws would reduce suicides. Any laws that reduce irresponsible gun ownership would have an effect of reducing suicide -- licensing and registration of handguns, for example. Waiting periods would likely reduce suicides.

good luck with that. You are pretty detached from reality if you think that such a thing will ever happen in America.

Alcohol is a huge factor in suicides - and alcohol also kill many more people then guns do. I assume you want to ban the selling of alcohol as well? Because I can't imagine you are satisfied with how slowly alcohol related deaths are falling in America.

I said that a ban on handguns would reduce suicide, which it would. But that doesn't mean I'm necessarily in favor, nor do I think it will happen in America any time soon.

To me, a handgun ban is to gun policy what single-payer is to healthcare policy. It's in effect in several other countries, and it seems to work pretty well for them, but I'm not convinced that it's either necessary or appropriate in the US. And besides, as you point out, neither has any chance of getting through congress for the forseeable future.

But that doesn't mean they aren't worthy of discussing. I hope you wouldn't be so dismissive of someone who mentioned single payer in a discussion on healthcare policy. How about someone who thinks that inheritance taxes should be 75%? What about someone who thinks there should be a tax on carbon emissions to fight global warming? Really, even the idea of cutting subsidies for oil companies doesn't have much of a chance these days. But this is a Democratic forum, where people discuss all kinds of policy ideas even if they are further left than what has a realistic chance of passing through congress.

For the record, I'm not in favor of a handgun ban. I am in favor of licensing and registration of handguns, though.

Every new post from you is a different gun lobby talking point.

Anyway, licensing and registration would have several effects. One of them is to prevent the flow of guns that is diverted from lawful gun owners to criminal gun markets. In the US, almost all guns used by criminals start out in FFLs and are originally purchased by people who passed a background check. But most of the time, the original purchaser is not the same person who uses the gun in a crime. Instead, through one of several methods -- straw purchase, private sale on the unregulated secondary market, theft, etc. -- the become diverted and end up in the hands of criminals. The registration of guns would make it much more difficult on straw purchasers and gun traffickers. It would also make it easier for police to trace guns and figure out patterns of gun trafficking. It would also encourage lawful gun owners to take more precautions about how they store their guns, and who they lend or sell their guns to.

On top of that, the world isn't neatly divided into law-abiding citizens who never break the law, and criminals who never follow any laws. Many people fall somewhere in between, and licensing and registration would cut down on irresponsible gun ownership.

It will never get popular support, we can't afford it, and there will be widespread opposition and resistance. People would never register their guns - they would just keep them out sight. Or they will sell them to every wanna-be black marketer who sees a future fortune in unregistered guns.

You last paragraph show just how out of touch with reality you are - your entire scheme depends on the cooperation of those irresponsible people you want to keep guns from. They will just say "fuck the government" and keep their guns.

So tell me - after massive popular resistance to registration and after criminalizing a huge swath of the American population, what will be your next step?

I concede that a handgun ban is not realistic, but I don't agree about registration. I'm sure some gun nuts would be strongly resistant, but the polls I've seen suggest that most gun owners actually support handgun registration. Also, if it's true that most gun owners are law-abiding, as y'all like to keep pointing out over and over, that means that most gun owners would in fact register their handguns if that was the law.

You are making the mistake of believing that all gun owners are just as extremist as you are. In fact, the people who live in constant fear that the gubmint is coming for their guns are a loud, paranoid, and small minority.

they are all going to do a 180 and support registration? And they will all fund and enforce these laws. If you ever needed proof as to how divorced from.social and political reality gun grabbers are your post is an excellent example.

How.many billions do you plan to spend on this scheme? Don't you think health is a bigger priority? It would save more lives and expanded mental health care will reduce those suicides that concern you so much.

...more guns have not cause more violence in America. It's like watching a Romney supporter trying to explain the public statements he
made while he was running for governor in Massachusetts- the backing and filling, hemming and hawing is quite amusing...

Seattle's reaction is kind of like buying a $10k snow blower because you had a massive snow storm where it hasn't snowed once in the last 25 years.

Overall it seems to give evidence to both sides. Show a definite tend in which states are SYG.

"" border="0"

from http://www.readyholster.com/blog/stand-your-ground-gun-laws-infographic

Doesn't prove a thing about guns, but it's flashy! Good to fool the gun-religionists.

Much like Columbus, I only discovered something that was already there and many knew about.

What specifically, may I ask, is in there "to fool the gun religionists"?

The probably cater to folks like this.

he was a high school kid making pen guns in his parent's basement. Do they have basements in Georgia?

Yeah that's the center of all their shootings.

Some business transactions can't be handled in civil court.

The editorial writer should go tell that joke in Olympia...

Paper realize it was written by a thundering moron?