I'm not sure how many oppose certain measures of control, not banning them altogether, or amending the constitution. You are aware there are other options?
I'm not sure how many oppose certain measures of control, not banning them altogether, or amending the constitution. You are aware there are other options?
Why shouldn't assault weapons be in the hands of civilians? (BTW, this is not really an assault rifle, those are illegal for civilian use in the US; the AR-15 et al fall in a weird 'grey area' that was covered by the 1994-2004 law.) You can't just say it's because they have no good purpose. Plenty of legal things have no good purpose that can harm the owner and others - cigarettes, alcohol, etc. Banning those would be a mistake, not because it won't save lives, but because the rights issues and undesirable consequences are significant. It's also devilishly hard to distinguish between 'assault weapon' and 'hunting rifle' - some of the rules allow for the conversion from a (previously illegal) assault weapon into a (perfectly innocuous) hunting rifle and back in a few minutes. (Also, who's a 'civilian'? Plenty of people in Switzerland and Israel have assault rifles at home even though they're not active duty soldiers, and it doesn't seem to be a particular temptation to go shooting up a movie theater. For that matter, it really does matter how many people die from assault weapons. One set of data (for ~10k annual homicides) showed that 'rifles', without distinction between assault or not, were responsible for 4% of the murders - handguns about 75%. Sure, we should try to limit those 400-odd deaths, but don't you think the other 7500 are the more real societal concern?)Originally Posted by Kazuha Vinland
Look, I've said multiple times in this thread that I'm not opposed to curbs on assault rifle ownership in principle. And it might help a little bit. But the real scourge of gun violence in this country has very little to do with assault rifles, and everything to do with handguns - which Alexander and people in this thread seem to exempt from their 'ban the guns' talk. If we really take his argument at face value - that we should ban assault weapons to reduce the number of gun-related deaths in this country - then we should be looking elsewhere for an actual solution.
The solution may involve some stricter regime of gun control, agreed. (See? I agree with you!) Yet most of the solution will be found in changing the way our society views and interacts with guns, not by finding a scapegoat technology and pretending that will solve the problem.
The options are somewhat limited due to the 2nd amendment, it's interpretation, and the fact that MANY Americans are leery of more gun laws (when existing ones don't seem to work as intended)
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Sure, as soon as one bee starts mass-killing in movie theaters.
Not a bad idea. The guy apparently tried to join a shooting range/club, but his phone message was so bizarre the manager said no one should accept his application, until he had met face-to-face.
If assault rifles, or military grade weapons (and tactical gear, or massive amounts of ammunition) are going to be "legal", they DO need better regulations and oversight.
It's insane that some states still allow instant-check gun licenses.....but voters have a 30 day waiting period, and need to show birth certificates and/or gov't issued ID to register to vote. It's crazy that some states still allow anyone to buy assault rifles at gun shows....but new drivers need learner's permits, road-time experience, road-tests and written tests to get a driver's license.
Our priorities are fucked up.
I believe there's a safeguard against that. I'm not sure of the specifics but I believe that once a person purchases a gun, they have to wait a certain number of days (I believe 3) before than can obtain it so as to prevent a "heat of passion" crime. It's certainly no help if that person already owns a gun obviously but I feel it's better to have that sort of regulation than not have it at all.
Relevant to the conversation as a whole, I don't think assault rifles should be the point here. People who buy assault rifles are either terrorists, maniacs or sportsman. I tend to think that most terrorists wouldn't attempt to violently attack from the inside of the country and that most assault rifle owners use their guns for sport anyways. I have a friend who has many assault rifles but he's extremely careful with and how he uses them.
As for banning guns, I think this is completely ridiculous. It may have worked if crime wasn't so wide-spread but we have to remember that South American drug cartels and crime organizations operate everywhere in the U.S. and bring guns in illegally every day. If guns are banned, the only people who will own them are the ones who were going to commit crime anyways and gun laws aren't going to stop them. We also have to remember that many of the deaths through arms are a result of inner city crime and organized crime organizations which often aren't specified in the statistics. We should be more focused on eliminating crime organizations and educating poorer areas on possibilities outside of the ghetto.
Praise the man who seeks the truth, but run from the one who has found it.
What are your thoughts on the means of actually changing your (IMO diseased, others obviously disagree) culture/society? As allergic as many Americans are to gun control, 'indoctrination' by the schooling system is also viewed with suspicion, and we know what folks with Lewkowski's political views think of 'liberal college' education. It also seems unlikely that the entertainment industry (or news 'reporting', for that matter) will spontaneously become less inclusive toward violence, and I can't think of a good way of legislating their behaviour, either. I suppose one could legislate against depictions of violence with the same level of paranoia your broadcasters must treat sexuality, but I suspect this too would result in a back-lash from society.
What's more, the motto of Something Awful seems to ring true in this case; correlation obviously isn't causation, but all of our (as in, Finnish) ideologically fueled mass killers have had extensive dealings with Internet communities that accepted their deranged ideas and encouraged them. As long as crazies can create their own echo chambers online, how do you stop the crazy?
I don't disagree with you that culture is the root of the problem here, but I simply can't envision ways of altering it effectively.
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Maybe we can monitor forums the way we monitor twitter and facebook
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Given the tendency towards paranoia among the gun-nuts, they'd probably find each other somewhere deep in TOR or what have you, where systematic monitoring is even more problematic than on your old-fashioned www.
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Nessie, there are two separate issues here. There's the nuts (a la Breivik) who are going to be able to do stuff regardless of laws and broader society, yes. And that's a very challenging issue that largely is one for law enforcement and decent monitoring. To be honest, these nuts happen sporadically in all sorts of Western countries, and I'm unconvinced any change in society is likely to really address the issue. But the vast majority of gun-related homicides are not those nuts, they are crimes of passion, or economic crimes, or gang-related crimes. These can be changed IMO by changing the way people view and interact with guns on a fundamental level.
I think that what you call 'indoctrination' is not a bad idea. It worked pretty well for smoking, it can work here (despite the prevalence of smoking in Hollywood, mind you). Also, smart regulation (rather than criminalization) is the way to go IMO wrt various classes of problematic guns (i.e. handguns). Tighten up the rules about getting a gun license, have better enforcement on people who evade this system, provide better monitoring of gun sales, etc. IMO none of this violates second amendment or other concerns, but it does allow us to pinpoint potential problems ahead of time. Hell, another solution might be to heavily tax the sale of firearms (or, better yet, ammunition) - also worked for cigarettes.
Nothing is perfect, and there are underlying reasons why the US is a more violent society than other Western nations that have nothing to do with guns. But it would probably be a very good start.
Last edited by wiggin; 07-25-2012 at 07:39 AM.
Sounds like a guild.
This is Europe, there's always the theoretical possibility of getting them charged with discrimination and then fining them. Moreover, in Sweden, such clubs often agree to behave a certain way in order to get govt. funding. I dunno if it's the same in Dutchieland however
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Btw, re. this whole "guns don't kill people; people kill people" business, would any of you be okay with measures to prevent people from killing people?
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
We already have those...like anything else...they fail occasionaly
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Around 9000 times per year?
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
In a nation of 311,600,000 people? Sure.
Yes?
Actually that's not actually very fair (and IIRC US murders are higher than 9k/year; that's close to the value for gun-related murders, but total murders are closer to 15k I think). On a per capita basis, we have an alarmingly high murder rate compared to other rich nations of laws. Obviously this is unacceptable; the only question is how to best reduce it.
I don't actually disagree, though the correlation between the number of firearms in private hands and a corresponding increase in the overall murder rate is nonexistent. There is a problem with violence in this country, but I don't believe that the problem can be demonstrably linked to firearm ownership.
EDIT
I'm also dubious about GGT's apparent claim that the sky is falling. Murder rates are as low as they've been in 50 years, and violent crime rates as low as they've been in 40 years. To say we need to have a serious talk about gun control when the homicide rates are lower now, and the number of privately held firearms (included the dreaded "assault rifle") has skyrocketed seems somewhat disingenuous.
That isn't to necessarily credit the drop in violent crime in this country to the increased number and availability of firearms, just to poke a hole in GGT's notion that gun crime, or crime in general is somehow getting worse, and that now is the time for serious talk.
Last edited by Enoch the Red; 07-25-2012 at 03:08 AM.
One of the editorial pieces I read in the Guardian (so take it as you will
During the nineties - those in favour of more gun control compared to those against it were at about a 50:50 split across the States as a whole. It was during this time that Clinton made limited inroads on bringing about gun control, with the Brady Bill and the Assault Weapons Ban (which a Republican House later overturned)
More recent findings put the split at 2:1 against gun control. The reasoning put forward in the piece was that fear of crime increases during times of recession; ergo, more people want guns.
And I'm not sure that the call for gun control actually increases during these mass shootings. It seems the NRA gun nuts become as vocal as the gun control advocates at such times. Clinton pushed for further gun control regulation after Columbine in 1996, but to no avail with a Republican House opposed.
So. A deadly combination of an anti-regulation, pro-gun majority drowning out a pro-regulation pro-gun control minority means that tragedies like this will remain a regular feature.
And so it seems ...
Aurora shooting: Colorado gun sales up after cinema killings
The number of people seeking to buy guns in Colorado has soared since last week's mass shooting in the US state's town of Aurora, say law officials.
In the three days after the shooting, applications for the background checks needed to buy a gun legally were up 43% on the previous week.
People are also picking up more guns, as there is worry that they will not be able to soon due to the immediate reaction of We need a serious discussion about guns now.
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I suspect a 'derpa derpa people are getting shot out there must buy more guns!' reaction is the more likely reaction here, but there y'go.
Well, this will be an interesting real world testbed of both our views. Let's see if there is a marked increase in gun crime in Aurora a year from now. I'm guessing it's something you are expecting to see, and something I'm fairly confident will not happen.
As a fairly meaningless aside, speaking of various Weltanschauung, you've convinced me many gun-owners in the US are responsible, level-headed people who understand the ramifications of their gun-ownership and act accordingly. I honestly do not expect a statistically significant rash of gun crime in Aurora, as I suspect most people who recently acquired a gun intend to use them lawfully; criminally minded individuals, in my understanding, tend to eschew the formal processes for gun ownership and simply purchase black market fire-arms.
What I'm struggling with, internally, is the combination of the ideas of mostly level-headed gun-owners and the American obsession, if we can call it that, with violence in general. I can't really articulate these thoughts much better than this as, once again, I'm lacking data and operating on poorly founded conceptions.
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Simply spoken, the only viable solution is to not take the plant by its root, but to change the ecosystem so that it gradually dies out. Manipulate the people's minds by adding taxes and making it generally less available, rather than removing firearms point blank so that there will be a massive riot. We can all handle some grumpy old man going "I can't even afford a scarce rounds for my saloon rifle", but we can't handle a mass breakout with the firearms already in circulation.
Tomorrow is like an empty canvas that extends endlessly, what should I sketch on it?
What's this we business, paleface?
That means quite a bit to me Nessus, thank you. What I can speak to is the fact that all of my close friends who also carry firearms feel a similar burden and responsibility that comes with gun ownership. I can't say for certain how accurately they could be used as a synecdoche for all CCW permit holders in the United States, but most every interaction that I have had with other gun owners has shown them to have a similar respect and appreciation of the potential dangers that can result from the improper handling and use of firearms. Anecdotal evidence being what it is I'm not sure just what that's worth, but that has been my experience.
Last edited by Enoch the Red; 07-26-2012 at 03:48 AM.
http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2012/0...united-states/
Always interesting to see how perception matches up with reality.
Hope is the denial of reality
Interesting article. I wish it would try to account for 1. the regional changes in gun-control laws over the past few decades and 2. the near-total lack of gun-ownership data from certain states.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Not ALL of our violence problems need to be linked to firearm ownership, just the violence that DOES involve firearms.
Excuse me? The sky is falling claim is coming from the NRA (the Obama administration is gonna take your guns away and undo the 2nd Amendment!!) and those who buy into that propaganda (by running out and buying guns after an incident like Aurora).I'm also dubious about GGT's apparent claim that the sky is falling. Murder rates are as low as they've been in 50 years, and violent crime rates as low as they've been in 40 years. To say we need to have a serious talk about gun control when the homicide rates are lower now, and the number of privately held firearms (included the dreaded "assault rifle") has skyrocketed seems somewhat disingenuous.
That isn't to necessarily credit the drop in violent crime in this country to the increased number and availability of firearms, just to poke a hole in GGT's notion that gun crime, or crime in general is somehow getting worse, and that now is the time for serious talk.
My "notion" is that "gun control" needs to be re-evaluated, seriously. The topic comes up after every mass killing, but nothing changes. Bills are introduced that never pass, because of polarized politics. Saint Reagan supported the Brady Bill, Romney passed laws outlawing assault rifles, even the NRA once advocated for reasonable and responsible "gun control" laws, including background checks. But nowadays any mention of "gun control" puts certain people into a paranoid tizzy....
Loopholes like buying at gun shows, background checks that don't necessarily access complete databases, our fractured mental health system < http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/us...pagewanted=all >, 50 states with 50 sets of rules that can conflict, semi-automatic weapons and multiple-round ammunition clips, military grade items (whose sole purpose is to kill as many people possible) that don't belong in civilian hands, etc.
Overall *murder* rates include the untracked/unmeasurable effects of advanced medical technology and science; better equipped EMS vehicles and response times, coordinated disaster planning, cutting edge surgery techniques --- Rep. Gifford's point-blank head shot would have likely left her dead back in the 70's, and Aurora's death toll would have been higher, too.
Overall *crime rates* didn't matter in Norway, when ONE crazy guy with guns managed to kill a lot of people in ONE incident. Did you think they were chicken little the sky is falling when having a serious look at what the hell happened, and preventative measures for the future?
A link from within the article's comment section:
http://crookedtimber.org/2012/07/22/...es/#more-25302
Trends in assault deaths by state, region, race. Note the chart comparing US to OECD.
The correlation between gun-control laws and incidents of gun violence is pretty weak. Lets take as two examples, Washington state and the state of California. Both west coast US states. Washington has some of the most lax gun laws in the country - if you're not a criminal and don't currently reside in a mental institution, you can get any gun not federally restricted and a concealed carry permit. You don't even need a permit unless you plan to concealed carry, and those are granted to anyone who asks. Only the first sale of handguns is tracked, and it is a "Stand Your Ground" state. California, on the other hand, has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, with strict regulations on what firearms are allowed to be sold or owned, mandatory paperwork to be filled out and coursework to be completed to get one, thorough background checks that can easily be failed, strict tracking, and in many jurisdictions concealed carry permits are technically allowable but not issued in practice.
So, one of the strictest gun laws in the country versus one of the most lax - how do they stack up? California has one of the highest incident rates of gun violence in the country, nearly double the national average. Washington has one of the lower incident rates in the country, about 2/3 the national average. California has nearly three times the gun violence per capita that Washington does (4.95 per 100k, vs. 1.74 per 100k), despite much stricter gun control laws.
This shouldn't be taken to mean that lax gun laws lead to less gun violence. Correlation still doesn't equal causation. But it does show that you don't even have correlation for the opposite. It's still possible that stricter gun laws could have an impact, but it should be clear that it's not a primary influencer of rates of gun violence.
(Also, I believe the trend over the past decade that rates have been falling is for weaker gun laws, not stricter ones, but I'm not sure how to verify)
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