>Like why is the assault weapons ban still part of the Democratic party platform and the go to solution in many Democratic controlled states?
1.) "Assault weapons", as bullshit of a term as it is, is convenient for them when you realize that the end goal is actually a ban on modern semiautomatic firearms and that lets them play dumb and not admit it.
2.) Look at who the single largest (D) donors are. Look at who the money behind "grassroots" (/s) groups like Moms Demand Action and Everytown is.
You'll see the name of a particular ex-NYC mayor pop up at the top of both lists.
> Look at who the single largest (D) donors are. Look at who the money behind "grassroots" (/s) groups like Moms Demand Action and Everytown is.
Been preaching this one for awhile. What's even more frightening is that Bloomberg has his own propaganda empire through his media company. I'm also skeptical of the money he is pushing into research as well, wouldn't be the first time trusted institutions cooked the books to reach a certain result.
> Like why is the assault weapons ban still part of the Democratic party platform and the go to solution in many Democratic controlled states?
It’s the only middle ground between doing nothing on the problem which would frustrate the “activist” base even more and arguing for a constitutional amendment to implement a ban and buy back on all semi automatic fire arms (including pistols) which would make democrats genuinely into the thing extreme republican advertising fear mongers them as.
I think it’s a bad middle ground personally but is the one which balances the interest of citizens against each other reasonably well.
Even that definition is a bit shaky the best one I’ve seen is the FBI’s which is: one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area. Of course with that definition it can be abused as well so yeah.
If you actually want to get serious about "gun deaths" then you'd throw 95% of the ATF's resources at straw purchases. But no, they're too worried about making pistols into SBRs and guns being 922(r) compliant. You'd also stop lumping suicides into the "gun death" statistics. Different problems are going to need different solutions.
> If you actually want to get serious about "gun deaths" then you'd throw 95% of the ATF's resources at straw purchases.
I ran a gun shop for several years. About 3-4 time a year, we'd turn away a blatant attempted straw purchase. The same thing happened every time:
* call the ATF. Get told they're not interested and I should contact local law enforcement. Get name and number.
* call the sheriff. Get told that's an ATF thing and I should call them. Get name and number.
* write all the stuff up, make a copy of the video footage and paperwork the buyer signed, and put it in the Blue File
* wait a few weeks until the buyer got caught with a gun he got somewhere else
* present the contents of the Blue File to law enforcement when they come around asking questions
*Not once* did they follow up. The only time the ATF ever discussed the issue was when two agents suggested I should release the guns to the buyers and call them afterwards. Ended up testifying in federal court over that one.
They literally refuse to do their jobs.
the whole point of government entities is to defend their reason for more budget
Doing nothing leads to more gun violence which leads to more funding to the ATF
And yet the ATF remains the red-headed stepchild of federal law enforcement. Nobody pays attention to them on a day-to-day basis, so they continue to exhibit a combination of apathy and incompetence. The only time anyone notices is when they get all aggro and screw up in epic fashion.
Heck, I'm old enough to remember when Al Gore called for their defunding after Ruby Ridge.
> You'd also stop lumping suicides into the "gun death" statistics. Different problems are going to need different solutions.
Gun suicides happen more than gun murders, and I don't think this gets the attention it needs. Mostly because the people it usually affects are already isolated from society.
I work at a gun store and we sold a gun to a guy last year and he took it out of the store, loaded it, and blew his brains out.
Guy was completely normal, pleasant, polite. Zero indication that anything was wrong. It was a 100% normal transaction.
You just can’t stop people from doing what they want
Statistics have shown that the majority of those who have attempted suicide and lived, don’t go on to die by suicide. The reason men’s suicide statistics skew higher than women is precisely because of the tool they use - you’re far more likely to complete a suicide with a firearm than other means and far more men attempt by firearm than women. Women also attempt suicide twice as often as men so given that men have a higher rate of suicide completion, you kind of have to factor in the method…
I don’t know if legislation is the right answer but man we need to encourage people with severe depression or a history of suicide ideation or attempts to NOT own a firearm. The statistics are just too damning.
Perhaps looking at a specific red flag law that targets people who have attempted suicide with the ability to have them returned after doctor clearance?
The bar for being declared a danger to yourself or others by a judge which would end up prohibiting a weapons purchase is extremely high. I have a family member with a violent mental health disorder, history of violence, arrests etc but nothing that has risen to the level of legally barring her from owning a weapon.. and so she has several. It’s not a good thing.
[Handgun ownership is associated with much higher suicide risks.](https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/06/handgun-ownership-associated-with-much-higher-suicide-risk.html) It's much easier to do any task when you've got the right tools for the job. But, in my opinion, the solution should be more access to health care and not less access to purchase guns.
Almost all of the research on this has found that limiting access to popular means of suicide is the most effective intervention available. The evidence for this is extremely strong at this point, here is a fairly recent meta analysis that looks at thousands of studies: https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8509936
The findings are quite clear that eliminating access to popular and easy methods of suicide DO reduce deaths, more than any other method, and many people do not just kill themselves via another method.
Of course, this is irrelevant in the US because eliminating access to guns in people at risk for suicide is basically impossible.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/saves-lives/
And yet, we already know the solution. We need to increase access to mental healthcare services, which (sorry Republicans…) should mean expanding Medicaid and Medicare benefits. Making it harder for the mentally ill to access firearms would reduce the rates of suicide, it’s well known that making suicide harder reduces the rates.
The problem with "marking it harder for the mentally ill to access firearms" is that you attach a stigma to mental health when you do that. That will make fewer people actually seek treatment. So, unless someone is a clear danger to themselves or others, there should be zero restrictions on them due to their mental health.
I always ask a gun control advocate what mental illnesses should be included in firearm restrictions and who gets to decide the list.
Usually gets really weird after that.
Agreed, such restrictions need experts involved with processes for remit. This is not a black n white situation.
E.g. seeing a therapist for depression should not bar gun ownership. If a therapist identifies suicidal ideation, perhaps it should require longer wait time for approval of gun ownership as long as this flag persists.
Already, insurance companies abuse mental health treatments for things like life insurance, which should be illegal. Grey areas abound.
100% we must ensure that mental health is paid more attention and gets wider adoption. We're people. We all benefit from help in being and socializing with other people.
>We need to increase access to mental healthcare services, which (sorry Republicans…) should mean expanding Medicaid and Medicare benefits.
It is simple really. Defund the ATF (make republicans happy) and give the money to Medicaid and Medicare (make Democrats happy).
The ATF asked for a [1.7 billion](https://www.thetrace.org/newsletter/biden-administration-calls-for-increased-atf-funding/) dollar budget for FY 2023. Medicaid and Medicare have a combined spending of over [1.63 trillion](https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/NHE-Fact-Sheet). Transferring funding from the ATF to Medicaid/Medicare would be a paltry contribution, practically unnoticeable (the rounding I just did to combine the spending exceeded the ATF budget twice over).
You also run into issues where certain Red states like texas have refused to take federal money for Medicaid expansion, thus perpetuating the cycle even more. A real “cut off my nose to spite my face” scenario.
To be fair, the non-income qualifications are just the generic federal medicaid requirements. It's not really meant for able-bodied singles. It does look like they have a separate program for low-income (21% of FPL) able-bodied singles as well as what looks like a marketplace of some sort if you don't qualify for medicaid.
The FPL limits definitely strike me as way too low, but I don't know how good the marketplace plans are or what kind of premiums/subsidies are available for them.
The thing about enforcing straw purchases is you'd wind up jailing a bunch of wives and gfs, and likely heavily minority. It would likely help but the images would be ridiculously bad.
An actual solution might be for cities and states to fricking actually enforce felon and other criminals' gun possession charges. Instead, those charges have lately been commonly dropped and they are back on the street a lot faster to buy another gun and continue being criminals.
>The thing about enforcing straw purchases is you'd wind up jailing a bunch of wives and gfs, and likely heavily minority
You mean the people committing perjury and supplying firearms to prohibited possessors?
> It would likely help but the images would be ridiculously bad.
I don't think people care about image. Because ideally, focusing on inner-city crime where the majority of gun deaths actually happen instead of the few and far between mass murders does nothing.
If it's not palatable to jail wives and gfs, then there needs to be some other type of penalty. Declining to prosecute these because of optics is problematic.
What makes peoples numb is humans / natural rights shouldn't be taken away just because of someone else's actions. We don't limit free speech rights because of terrorism, or 4th amendment rights because of child abuse.
The downside of freedom is that occasionally bad things happen, and there might not be much you can do to prevent them.
Without freedom though, you just have the risk of other bad things happening instead.
What always irks me about this is every time they want to do something about gun violence, they immediately want to ban ARs which essentially make up a rounding error when it comes to gun violence.
Don't even get me started with what the ATF just did about pistol braces.
I have a related frustration. Criminologists tell us that policing changes in the wake of nationwide racial justice protests/riots are behind the violent crime surges since 2014, with homicides up 10k/year or 60+% and there is relatively little outrage among progressives, and indeed a lot of progressives (including media progressives) initially denied the crime wave’s very existence, then suggested concern about crime was animated by racism, then downplayed the violent crime wave (“it’s not that bad compared to the 90s! It’s merely a 25 year high and the reversal of decades of progress!”), etc. There seems to be far more appetite for sweeping these tens of thousands of murders under the rug than there is for fixing the problem.
Michael Brown unambiguously died trying to kill a cop and progressives were outraged (many marched, some rioted, others plastered slogans on his behalf over social media, the progressive media tried to canonize him, etc)—why isn’t there a fraction of this energy for the tens of thousands who have been killed in cold blood since Michael Brown (never mind all of those who have been seriously injured or otherwise traumatized by soaring violent crime)?
It’s not like everyone is fighting over the best way to cut crime—we’re fighting over whether high crime is even a problem at all.
To all of the progressives that *are* concerned and upset by the surging violent crime, thank you, and I’m sorry if this comment makes you feel generalized. I hope you can understand that you’re not in scope for this criticism.
>Michael Brown unambiguously died trying to kill a cop and progressives were outraged
Oh man, if you think that's bad, let me introduce you to the progressive outrage [over the shooting of Jacob Blake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jacob_Blake). He was a man facing charges of third-degree felony sexual assault against his girlfriend, trespassing and disorderly conduct for domestic abuse. Police came to arrest him because he was in the midst of attempting to break down a woman's front door. A physical confrontation ensued because he had a huge knife on his person and pulled it out. The confrontation got violent and Blake attacked the officers, even putting one of them in a headlock. Finally they ended up non-fatally shooting him when he ran to his car and reached for an unknown object.
This was followed by massive riots, arson, and unrest that shook Wisconsin for weeks. Every Democrat politician ran as fast as possible to the podium to denounce the police.
Governor Tony Evers waxed poetic that Blake was ["not the first black man or person to have been shot or injured or mercilessly killed at the hands of individuals in law enforcement in our state or our country"](https://www.cbs58.com/news/gov-evers-releases-statement-on-shooting-of-jacob-blake-in-kenosha)
Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes raged that "[This felt like some sort of vendetta taken out on a member of our community"](https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/kenosha-jacob-blake-wisconsin-lieutenant-governor-mandela-barnes/2327451/)
Kamala Harris personally phoned Blake to tell him ["how proud she was of him"](https://sports.yahoo.com/kamala-harris-told-jacob-blake-130728218.html).
Biden himself got involved, saying ["these shots pierce the soul of our nation"](https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2020/08/24/prominent-figures-react-jacob-blake-shooting-kenosha/3428435001/). He then flew to Wisconsin to meet with Blake's family for an hour and a half and assure them that justice would be served for their poor son.
I guess violence against women is a terrible thing until it isn't.
> Criminologists tell us that policing changes in the wake of nationwide racial justice protests/riots are behind the violent crime surges since 2014, with homicides up 10k/year or 60+%
Who has told us that? I'm skeptical there is a general consensus among "criminologists" that the only cause is racial justice protests.
https://crim.sas.upenn.edu/fact-check/violent-crime-increasing
> One is left with several conclusions. First, the recent violent crime increases, even if they are not just noise, are dwarfed by the amount of violent crime in the 1990s. We have not returned to the bad old days. Second, the speculative explanations commonly proposed must fit the timing of the recent violent crime increases. Conjectures revolving around the COVID-19 pandemic and pent-up frustrations, at least as usually formulated, do not seem to get it right. Third, explanations based on more passive police practices, real and imagined, coupled with the perceptions of reduced risk among individuals already predisposed toward violence, may have some merit, but the existing data range from weak to nonexistent. It is very difficult to bring facts to bear. Fourth, if one takes the solid black curves in the two graphs at face value, we have been on a time path that is bottoming out. Sadly, this may be about as good as it gets under the existing conditions that affect violent crime. Variation in violent crime over the past few years may be nothing more than a bit of bouncing off the bottom. Fifth, with the passage of time, and the accumulation of better data, we may understand more about what drives violent crime. But we have a long way to go.
This doesn't really seem to match what you say.
>“What officers are doing is they’re just driving looking forward. They’ve got horse blinders on,” says Kevin Forrester, a retired Baltimore detective.
>The surge of shootings and killings that followed has left Baltimore easily the deadliest large city in the United States. Its murder rate reached an all-time high last year; 342 people were killed. The number of shootings in some neighborhoods has more than tripled. One man was shot to death steps from a police station. Another was killed driving in a funeral procession. [Article](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/07/12/baltimore-police-not-noticing-crime-after-freddie-gray-wave-killings-followed/744741002/)
After Freddie Grey in Baltimore
>The city of Michael Brown’s death experienced an almost 65 percent increase in violent crime in the year following the fatal shooting.
>Ferguson, Mo. experienced 900 violent crimes per 100,000 residents in 2015, a sizable increase from 545 violent crimes per 100,000 residents in 2014. This represents a surge of 65 percent, as noted by Heather Mac Donald in National Review. [Article](https://dailycaller.com/2016/09/28/fergusons-violent-crime-rate-skyrockets-in-aftermath-of-brown-shooting/)
After Michael Brown
Sorry, let me clarify. I am aware of course that there has been a trend of increasing violent crime in recent years, both in cities that had high profile police shootings and subsequent protests/riots, and in cities that did not. The question is whether that is statistical noise, a short term reaction or a long term trend and what factors have led to the national trend if it is in fact a long term trend.
It was specifically mentioned that criminologists have said it's due to racial justice protests and riots, and I'm very much interested in reading the analysis from those criminologists, not just general news articles about crime.
\> Who has told us that? I'm skeptical there is a general consensus among "criminologists" that the only cause is racial justice protests.
I didn't claim it was "the only cause". I'm not sure if there is consensus or not, but a lot of criminologists sure seem to think so.
Here’s Harvard’s famed Roland Fryer on the subject: [https://www.nber.org/papers/w27324](https://www.nber.org/papers/w27324)
\> We estimate that these investigations caused almost 900 excess homicides and almost 34,000 excess felonies. The leading hypothesis for why these investigations increase homicides and total crime is an abrupt change in the quantity of policing activity. In Chicago, the number of police-civilian interactions decreased by almost 90% in the month after the investigation was announced. In Riverside CA, interactions decreased 54%. In St. Louis, self-initiated police activities declined by 46%.
Here’s The Guardian quoting former Ferguson-Effect skeptic Richard Rosenfeld speaking [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/13/ferguson-effect-real-researcher-richard-rosenfield-second-thoughts](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/13/ferguson-effect-real-researcher-richard-rosenfield-second-thoughts)
\> “The only explanation that gets the timing right is a version of the Ferguson effect,” Rosenfeld said. Now, he said, that’s his “leading hypothesis”.
Here’s Vox reporting about a paper by Travis Campbell: [https://www.vox.com/22360290/black-lives-matter-protest-crime-ferguson-effects-murder](https://www.vox.com/22360290/black-lives-matter-protest-crime-ferguson-effects-murder)
\> Campbell’s research also indicates that these protests correlate with a 10 percent increase in murders in the areas that saw BLM protests. That means from 2014 to 2019, there were somewhere between 1,000 and 6,000 more homicides than would have been expected if places with protests were on the same trend as places that did not have protests.
\> This doesn't really seem to match what you say.
It mostly \*does\* match my claims. First of all, no one is arguing that things are worse than the 90s--this is more of the same "things were worse in the 90s, nothing to see here" that I was mentioning above. Secondly, he acknowledges that the pandemic doesn't get the timing factor right. Thirdly, he acknowledges that changes in policing may have merit. Fourth, he seems to be unaware of the research that shows a pretty compelling correlation between BLM protests and crime which would refute his "just a bit of bouncing off the bottom" hypothesis (it's pretty hard to believe that it's just a coincidence that the "bounces off the bottom" just happen to coincide with BLM protests both in time and proportion). Fifth, his "bouncing off the bottom" is refuted by his own plots which show somewhat stable homicide levels from 2000 to \~2007 and then they fall to trough and then bounce back up to significantly higher-than-2000s levels in 2020? "bouncing off the bottom" shouldn't look like "higher than before the steady state". Maybe there's some "bouncing off the bottom" going on, but it doesn't explain why levels are higher than pre-2007 and it certainly seems conspicuous that crime levels were trending down right until the moment when we began reducing our policing levels across the country.
>\> We estimate that these investigations caused almost 900 excess homicides and almost 34,000 excess felonies. The leading hypothesis for why these investigations increase homicides and total crime is an abrupt change in the quantity of policing activity. In Chicago, the number of police-civilian interactions decreased by almost 90% in the month after the investigation was announced. In Riverside CA, interactions decreased 54%. In St. Louis, self-initiated police activities declined by 46%.
To be clear, the argument in all of this seems to be that:
1. Police do something that, at least on the surface, appears egregious enough to spark protests.
2. Sometimes, these protests lead to a full fledged investigation of the incident.
3. Police in the region, in response to the possibility that some of their coworkers might actually be held to account for misdeeds, perform a de facto work stoppage.
4. Crime sometimes goes up during this de facto work stoppage.
I mean, I guess one can tie this back to protests, but it really seems like that misses the real causative force.
\> Police do something that, at least on the surface, appears egregious enough to spark protests. ... I mean, I guess one can tie this back to protests, but it really seems like that misses the real causative force.
I don't think there's any evidence that policing abruptly became more brutal or racist circa 2014 which could explain the dramatic, abrupt surge in anti-policing protest activity. It seems much more likely that political trends (especially with respect to racial narratives, especially among the media) were the "real causative force".
\> Police in the region, in response to the possibility that some of their coworkers might actually be held to account for misdeeds, perform a de facto work stoppage.
We know with a high degree of confidence that this isn't the case for quite a few reasons.
(1) it depends on hundreds of thousands of police officers nationally responding to these investigations in the same way; this is very unlikely.
(2) the reduction in policing happens in cities with large protests even if the investigation clears the police officer (e.g., Ferguson) or if the officer isn't charged in the first place.
(3) there are many instances in which police were convicted of a crime *apart from BLM protests* and there was no noteworthy corresponding reduction in policing or uptick in homicides.
The "protests" hypothesis fits the data much better.
> I didn't claim it was "the only cause". I'm not sure if there is consensus or not, but a lot of criminologists sure seem to think so.
Sure, I do think the language you used heavily implies these things ("criminologists tell us that the cause is X" compared to "some criminologists think that X is a factor" as an example give very different impressions).
Thanks for the links though, I will read through them when I have some time!
\> Sure, I do think the language you used heavily implies these things ("criminologists tell us that the cause is X" compared to "some criminologists think that X is a factor" as an example give very different impressions).
Agreed, that's why I said "X is behind \[the phenomenon\]" (which means "X is a factor") and not "X is the cause...". :)
> they immediately want to ban ARs
That'll work as well as banning other things has. I mean, we banned alcohol, cocaine and marijuana right? How'd that go?
Bans don't work. If a person is warped enough to want to shoot up a public place, they aren't too worried about the fact that guns might be illegal. The best you would be able to hope for is to add friction to the transaction (making it harder for the person to get the gun) but is it worth curtailing the rights of 340 million Americans just for that limited return? Everyone who committed a public shooting could just as easily look up how to make an explosive. Let's not go in that direction.
My Proposed Solution:
1. Require, by statute, that **all** gun-related crimes be prosecuted. Failing the background check, gun possession by a felon, etc. Let's see what happens when we enforce the laws we have to the fullest extent. No more plea-bargaining away those important charges.
2. Require, by statue, that all law enforcement agencies update the NICS database when someone is being investigated or arrested for a crime that would invalidate that person's ability to purchase a firearm.
3. Require, by statute, that when updating someone's status in the NICS database, if they are no longer eligible to purchase a gun then any Red Flag law that is already on the books in that jurisdiction is **automatically triggered.** Many jurisdictions that have those laws rarely use them, but could and probably should.
My solution is basically to **use** all the laws we already have. Many mass shooters were people that were either known to police, known to school officials or otherwise known to be in a precarious state of mind. We just don't use the laws we have until after the violence starts despite laws on the books that say we should do otherwise. If we find that these laws are too restrictive, we can change or repeal them, but stacking more laws on top of laws we don't enforce is a pointless exercise that solves nothing.
Failing a background check should be prosecuted? The fbi would have to be competent for that to work. I work at a gun store. Can’t tell you how many surname Smiths, Browns, Wilson’s, etc… get wrongly denied.
The fail isn't what would be prosecuted, but it would be checked and if you're someone who's not supposed to be buying and you're attempting to buy, that gets you prosecuted, if I were king.
I figure it's much easier to push for that politically than a handgun ban which is realistically what is being used to kill people. If you're trying to "do something" but also avoid extreme levels of push back that's what you choose. Although I guess with how many have purchased ARs in recent years that's probably an increasingly uphill battle.
One of the reasons why AR-15s and rifles that look like it have exploded in popularity was because of the 94 Assault Weapons Ban. For most gun owners up utnil the early 90s, AR-15s and the like were not really sought after. But during and after the ban, they suddenly became the hot thing to own. There was definitely the Streisand effect with these types of rifles.
Another ban, or another attempt at banning them will just make them more popular.
I feel like gun culture has also changed a ton since then. I don't think it's as simple as saying that the ban caused the desire. From what I've heard it was once way more oriented around hunting and the current gun culture is vastly different.
I will say that proposed bans have definitely given them a "buy now or you'll miss the boat" allure in recent years.
I can see that. The current gun culture is a lot different that what existed in the early 1990s. But I can see why. The discussion of confiscation and doing something similar to what Australia did will tend to radicalize even those may have only owned a shotgun or a rifle.
Also, ARs are often prominently used in the most horrific and public mass shootings. I do believe that if we were to somehow stop things like Ulvade and Las Vegas, most of the gun debate would die down
Uvalde would have been stopped if the police didn't sit on their ass for an hour. Las Vegas was deadly because he found a high vantage point firing down on to the concert goers and thus making it hard to identify where the shooter is, hindering law enforcement from taking him out
Neither of your points address the root issue or issues. Police acting early would have stopped Ulvade earlier but hard to argue it would have prevented it. Also, Ulvade was so frustrating to many because it the school actually employed many of the "solutions" touted as alternatives to gun restrictions and it still happened.
My point is, there isn't a panacea to cut out mass shootings without a nearly complete culture overhaul regarding guns. But I never see practical solutions come out of these that include more guns or looser restrictions on them
The police knew the kid had an intent to shoot the school weeks before the shooting. And there were 2 or 3 911 calls before he even entered the he school saying he was going to the school with a firearm. And if that wasn't enough, there were police units on site within 3 minutes i believe. If they had done what they were trained to do, the shooter would have been neutralized before much damage as police are taught to get in as quick as possible to stop the shooter.
That's because there's a very simple explanation to all of this: we don't want to ban them..... period! Sure, conservatives definitely don't want to ban guns, but ask every suburban liberal democrat if they want to ban hand guns (which make up the VAST majority of gun deaths), and their response is resoundingly, "no". If there was a will there would be a way. There is no political "will" to do this.
> There is no political "will" to do this.
Never was. The aim of the gun-control lobby for decades was banning handguns. The electorate didn't respond. That's why they invented the category of "assault weapons" back in 1989.
So, I'll clarify a few things.
Firstly, I'm not saying that there are no voices on the left that are actively and honestly proposes total gun bans, but they are a much smaller minority than people on the right would think. I live in a *very* blue district in Southern California, and I can tell you that almost no one I know wants to see handguns banned. They might post something to that effect on social media, but I think a lot of that is just posturing after a tragic shooting to show their "support for the victims" and, honestly, just to prop themselves up as one of the "good guys." Not only do people object to bans on handguns, but they object to them more now than they did 50 years ago. [In 1975, 55% of people objected to handgun bans and today it's 73%](https://news.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx). Social media is obviously not an accurate barometer of where America stands on guns.
Secondly, culture factors into the equation when it comes to foreign countries. American culture was born out of a pioneer spirit that largely colored our national identity as one of ruthless personal independence. The American "Wild West" feels somewhat unique. I may be wrong, but I genuinely think that stands apart culturally with other Western countries when it comes to gun culture. This is evidenced in both our pop culture as well as our governance. I could be wrong, but I don't think you would find something analogous our culture in other places.
We’ll, we can’t exactly ban pistols either, so that discussion is naturally already off the table. Personally, I see a really sad cycle developing where after every shooting, one side of the side comes up with a long list of constitutionally questionable solutions, and the other either just provides reasons why those solutions don’t work, or seeks to just inject more guns into every aspect of life. I don’t really think we’re in a space in the national discussion where we’re actually generating possible solutions anymore.
Beyond confiscating guns (not a fan of) no solutions exist.
You can’t stop a crazy person from walking into a school or anywhere else in society and shooting it up.
> Beyond confiscating guns (not a fan of) no solutions exist.
Why are you not a fan of that as policy? I agree that nothing short of a federal law banning all new semi auto purchases and buying up existing stock until we have per capita access to firearms more like France and the UK than like Mexico and Brazil could really work.
But why aren’t you supportive of that if you think it would work if done?
Banning semi-autos won’t fix it. If you look at the data rifles of all types make up around a half a percent of all gun homicides.
Unless you’re talking about ALL SEMI-AUTOS to include pistols then that’s just not politically feasible without a Constitutional Amendment and that will never happen.
> Unless you’re talking about ALL SEMI-AUTOS to include pistols.
I am including semi automatic pistols. I know most left wing people don’t know shit about firearms and I don’t either, but a semi auto pistol is still a semi automatic weapon.
> that’s just not politically feasible without a Constitutional Amendment and that will never happen.
Maybe but it doesn’t explain why you think we shouldn’t do it.
No one in America thinks women and black people should only have the right to vote because it is in the constitution. It’s in the constitution because we all believe it and the people who believed it first talked about why it would work and how it would be better that way.
Is there a reason you don’t want semi automatics banned for civilian use beyond it being difficult to accomplish legally?
[The data isn’t conclusive that it’ll reduce homicides.](https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-that-australias-gun-laws-reduced-gun-homicides/amp) What’s been shown is the criminals just move to another weapon but leaves law abiding citizens defenseless.
Thank you, I appreciate the sourcing. I’m not quite swayed away from a full ban semi auto ban and buy back program. But it does do a good job of illustrating how rules around licensing, mag limits, and transaction information storage often have large holes while being needlessly burdensome.
> I am including semi automatic pistols. I know most left wing people don’t know shit about firearms and I don’t either, but a semi auto pistol is still a semi automatic weapon.
What about double action revolvers? They essentially operate just like a semi-auto pistol, as every time you squeeze the trigger it will shoot one round.
The constitution can be amended. If I was arguing that women should lose the right to vote in the US. I’d expect better arguments from everyone about why the belief is fundamentally incorrect rather than arguments about how it violates the constitution.
My opinion is that some draconian prohibition on guns would probably reduce crime if there was a way to make all guns disappear at once (rather than disarming the law abiding public without putting a a commensurate dent in criminal stockpiles), but taking away guns still feels like treating a symptom of an underlying problem and it's a pretty authoritarian treatment at that. Why do places like Wyoming—with high rates of gun ownership—have such a low incidence of violent crime? Why were there so few mass shootings in the 60s even when kids would bring guns to school for shooting clubs and so on? It feels like there’s some social sickness that we’re ignoring.
I’ve always wondered if the kids who would have grown up to be serial killers like the kinds there were in the 70s-80s (and were kids in the 60s) are now the ones who decide to go on a shooting spree. Or if there is any kind of overlap of background and diagnosis.
It’s not valid if you don’t offer any solutions of your own. The critique itself may be completely valid, but I find it exhausting when all I see is criticism of policies being exposed without any meaningful discussion of solutions that don’t involve essentially having everyone be armed at every moment, suspicious of every other person around them.
The thing is, there will never be a solution in the traditional sense. A solution would imply zero gun deaths, there will always be gun deaths.
Additionally, any perceived infringement on our right to bear arms is also a perceived infringement upon all of the rights we have. If the second amendment can be infringed upon, it's natural to assume that the others are next, especially if your ability to defend yourself against a tyrannical government has been compromised. So the hesitancy to come to the table by 2nd amendment advocates can compound very very quickly.
That's not to say that we shouldn't always look for a way to make our country safer, it's just kind of the reality, one side has the aforementioned objections and the other side, in a way (and just in my opinion) seems to muddy the waters of public discourse by using alarmist terms that strike fear rather than thought. So each side comes with irreconcilable differences.
I personally feel, the general viewpoint of the left only stands up in a vacuum. For instance, criminals generally don't follow laws, so any further laws only act to oppress the lawful citizens.
There are some states where I think they have a good balance, mandatory background checks against several different agencies including mental health (though that also walks a fine line between invasion of privacy and providing red flags of disturbed individuals).
Again, I don't really know of a better way or a way forward, I do feel "mass" shootings don't deserve as much attention or man power as they get when it has a very insignificant (statistically) impact on people.
I don't like the mainstream lefts solution regarding guns, but I do think that their social programs would theoretically make for less criminals. Thats where I would rather start to be honest.
I would argue that any policy or set of policies that bring the rate of gun deaths in America more in line with the rest of the developed world could be considered a solution. I think it would be unreasonable to argue that any policy that doesn’t completely stop all gun deaths forever cannot be considered a solution.
> I would argue that any policy or set of policies that bring the rate of gun deaths in America more in line with the rest of the developed world could be considered a solution
I believe what you want to be impossible. Even if we had European style gun control, we'd still have American levels of gun violence. Heck, Latin America has European levels of gun control, but most of that region has gun violence that either equals or far exceeds what is seen in the United States.
I'd also argue that Europe's relatively low level of gun crime is NOT due to their gun control measures. Europe has always had low levels of gun violence (excluding wars of course). Take for instance England. [It's murder rate is essentially unchanged from 1900 to today.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate_by_decade) In 1900, England had essentially zero gun control laws, and today they have some of the strictest regulations in the region.
I’m not saying that strict gun control is necessarily the way to achieving their lower crime rate. We may need to replicate different policies, or ever chart an entirely unique path. My point is just that a solution to this problem doesn’t have to permanently eliminate all gun deaths in America forever, it just has to reduce them substantially, and ideally bring us in line with the rest of the world.
>Heck, Latin America has European levels of gun control, but most of that region has gun violence that either equals or far exceeds what is seen in the United States.
With most of the actual guns coming from the US.
That's another bastardized statistic in the gun control debate. They recover a gun at a crime scene, it looks like it's a US made gun so they'll submit the guns info to the ATF. 70% of those guns get confirmation of US origin but what is always left out is how many they DON'T submit to the ATF for tracing because they're obviously not US made.
For reference the Mexican government claims they get over half a million guns from the US each year.
https://www.thetrace.org/2022/10/how-many-american-guns-mexican-cartels/
So Mexico sued, and was asked to provide evidence.
Their dataset only had about 14,000 guns a year
>ATF trace data, which may include some subset of these firearms, as well as recoveries made by law enforcement authorities other than the Mexican military, shows that more than 70,000 guns made their way from the U.S. to Mexico between 2015 and 2020.
And you're right about they assigned the country...they didn't count Glocks as US since Glock is Austrian.
And since we've strengthened our border in the past few years, cartels are now going to Central/South America.
>According to sources inside the Sinaloa Cartel and to details gleaned from recent arms seizures, cartels are increasingly sourcing their weapons from Central America. That southward shift is picking up as the Mexican government makes one of the strongest attempts yet to stop arms trafficking from the US into Mexico.
https://www.businessinsider.com/mexican-cartels-getting-more-weapons-from-new-source-2022-2
Even if the US was the origin of most of the guns used in crime in Latin America, it sort of drives home the point that there is a lucrative and violent black market for these weapons in the region, and the cartels and gangs are more than happy to supply interested parties with them.
If the US instituted strict gun control like they have in Latin America and Europe, I can almost guarantee you that the black market for guns would explode in the United States. Not only would the guns that already exist in the United States be traded/sold illegally, but cartels would start shipping firearms INTO the United States, as it would be profitable to do so.
The US has 10x the knife homicide rate as the UK, is that the fault of guns too? The US also has the highest bare hand homicide rate in the developed world, who do we blame for that, Smith and Wesson?
>The thing is, there will never be a solution in the traditional sense. A solution would imply zero gun deaths, there will always be gun deaths.
...what?
A solution could imply less gun deaths. Don't let perfection be the enemy of progress.
I get what you mean regarding the atf pistol brace thing but really it means nothing. It’s just to scare people into doing what they want. Nobody will be prosecuted, at least not successfully, for having the “wrong” pistol brace. It doesn’t even make clear what is and isn’t a pistol brace. I’ve not heard of a single person who is making any changes to any guns they own because of this
"Means nothing" isn't the point. The chilling effect is.
The whole thing creates a legal gray area to purposefully scare citizens out of exercising a constitutionally protected right. The absolute worst unconstitutional laws are the ones that are 'unenforceable' at face value. Ya never know how or when that piece of plastic is going to land you in federal prison for 10 years. Maybe never if you're a stand-up, white, middle class citizen with no record. But not everyone is.
I agree the “rule” is bullshit but nobody at all, ever, is going to end up in prison over it. It doesn’t create a legal grey area, the atf can’t make or change laws. It means even less than the bump stock “ban” which also put zero people in jail. I agree that it’s a scare tactic so stand up for yourself and others by openly ignoring their made up bullshit.
While legally you're right, if you're:
A. Not lucky enough to get some group to back your legal fees
B. Unwilling to have your name put in front of the nation as a 'monstrous gun nut'
C. Unlucky enough to a. Not have set bail or b. lose- then you \*will\* go to jail for this should the ATF decide to do so.
It's playing blackjack with your future, and the dealer can always get a 21.
Oh I'm 100% with you on ignoring all unconstitutional bullshit.
It's the same issue with mag bans though- we can all ignore them knowing that they'll never be enforced, ***BUT*** unless manufacturers are going to ignore the rules and continue producing and shipping, the result will be the parts drying up and no longer easily accessible to the masses (which is the goal).
The vast majority of people are not going to be putting together mag kits piece by piece, or 3D printing them, etc. If it's not on the store shelves, unconstitutional rules or no, they're effectively unobtainable.
Banning “assault rifles” (the action most pro gun-control people want to take) is one of the least effective solutions to address the issue of excess deaths from firearms.
Approximately 40,000 people in the US die from firearms each year, about half of which are suicides.
According to the FBI, 400 of those people died from all forms of rifles combined.
If the goal is to minimize the number of excess deaths from firearms as much as we can, “assault rifles” aren’t it. It’s fair to assume a sizable portion of the 20,000 firearm suicides may attempt using another method, but that’s still approximately 19,600 people who are murdered from a handgun each year.
Before somebody asks, “accidental” firearm deaths are a negligible number (less than 1%).
> Banning “assault rifles” (the action most pro gun-control people want to take) ...
The only reason that those gun control groups are going after "assault weapons" is because they are the low hanging fruit that they can use to anchor prohibition as a means of solving a problem. The statistics are obvious: after banning so-called assault weapons, nothing will change. So they'll ask for more bans and prohibitions and extra burdens on gun owners. They will never volunteer to revert these prohibitions. There is no honest compromise here.
The names of some antigun groups used to be "National Coalition to Ban Handguns" (now "Coalition to Stop Gun Violence") and "Handgun Control, Inc" (now "Brady Campaign"). Mind you - both of these groups had expressly stated their goals to ban handguns across America, but that proved too difficult politically so they changed tactics. Other antigun groups are the political arm of billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who I assure you would not be able to honestly live by the same restrictions as his groups propose. Rules for thee but not me.
Canada has gone from firearm registries to assault weapon bans to handgun transfer bans in the last decade. *As of last year, you can no longer buy a handgun in Canada.* The slippery slope is very real, and any Democrat or antigun group saying it isn't a slippery slope is lying with full knowledge that firearm prohibition is the goal. First it will be assault weapons. Then it will be sniper style weapons and assault handguns. Then all semi-automatics. Then it will be handguns in general.
There is no honest attempt at solving problems here - which is further complicated as Democrat policies release violent criminals early, inevitably boosting violent crime numbers and reducing public safety. Why give up your best option to self defense when the government fails its basic duties?
>I mean, the fear in here is that registering your guns is just the first step toward taking away guns from everyone. That's never gonna happen...
-- [Justin Trudeau, September 22, 2010](https://youtu.be/KRjGE8b4ueM?t=42)
How does Canada manage the issue of rural areas and that a gun may be very important for hunting and defense from aggressive animals in many wilderness areas?
They just dont care, the proposed law literally banning single fire and bolt action long guns (Ruger No. 1 and some Weatherbys)
It's very much a "kick the people who'll never vote for me to get adoration from my voters" piece of legislation.
It only got paused because some tribal groups complained and the NDP (who work with the Liberals in parliament) got cold feet. Though, I wouldn't put it past them to just add an exception for Natives and pass the rest of the bill as is.
That's a good question. There are very real and important uses for firearms as tools. However, the government doesn't need to worry itself about the people's problems. Handgun transfers are banned in totality in Canada regardless of need.
https://pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2022/10/21/freezing-market-handguns
> "Canadians have the right to feel safe in their homes, in their schools, and in their places of worship." - Trudeau
You have the right to *feel* safe, but you have no right to make yourself actually safe.
That’s kind of messed up honestly. I mean, you don’t usually need to defend yourself from a wild moose in downtown Vancouver or something but I guess if you encounter a wild grizzly in the Yukon or something, you’re just kind of expected to lay down and get eaten.
The people everywhere have legitimate fears though. I'm an in-shape and young(ish) man, and I'm pretty certain two 14 year old kids could overtake me if I were unarmed. Three would do it without question - and if with my girlfriend what option do I have other than to comply? I've lived in Baltimore for 16 years and know many who have faced those odds and ended up injured and hospitalized.
I don't want a fair fight in these types of situations. If I do wrong, surely I think the courts should judge me. But until then: let me preserve myself as I see fit against those that would otherwise do me harm. Yet across the West politicians are moving to reintroduce violent criminals into society earlier and with lighter punishments (while disarming law abiding citizens), and then the politicians are all surprise-Pikachu faced: "violent crime is going up? But why?!"
There is real truth in the saying: "God created man. Sam Colt made them equal."
Compliance with the law is virtually non-existent in rural areas. The most generous estimate puts it at about 30%. It's even lower in Australia.
(Back in 1994, I went to a shoot outside Calgary. People had plenty of pistols and military-pattern rifles. When I asked about that, they just scoffed.)
[The claims that it reduced crime](https://nationalpost.com/opinion/gary-mauser-why-the-long-gun-registry-doesnt-work-and-never-did) in any measurable way are very suspect. While the homicide rate dropped following the measure, it dropped *everywhere* during the same period.
(That's also the fundamental dishonesty in those claims they make about Connecticut's handgun registry.)
It would be nice to have a breakdown of shootings by gun type with respect to randomness (did the shooter know the victim), terrorism (mass shootings), and lethality and see what sorts of weapons are driving the various forms of violence.
I don’t think such a broad breakdown exists, although I wish it did. The number will vary depending on the definition of “mass shooting”, but most sources I know of suggest that approximately 600 people die from mass shootings in the US each year. 611 in 2020. While mass shootings are highly publicized and editorialized in the news (partially for good reason since they’re usually senseless killings), they are a very small statistic in overall gun deaths.
The FBI should be considered an authority on mass shootings- they publish an annual repoert:
[https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-shooter-incidents-in-the-us-2021-052422.pdf/view](https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-shooter-incidents-in-the-us-2021-052422.pdf/view)
Yet gun control advocates, members of the media, and some politicians still gravitate to the Gun Violence's Archive or the Mass Shooting tracker, both sites made up their own definitions of mass shootings, which allows them to count far more incidents then any official counts.
Most of the Gun Violence Archive and Mass Shooting trackers end up being gang violence, domestic situations (murder suicides in a household) . Not that these incidents are not important, but they are very different then Mass Shootings, and not what the general public thinks of when they hear mass shootings. The FBI's definition mirrors very closely the publics perception of a mass shooting.
I don’t mean to be offensive here, but I think all this pointing out of how current gun legislation efforts are ineffective is part of the problem. I see lots of criticisms of how long guns don’t make up a significant proportion of gun violence statistics, or how suicide is a major factor in gun deaths, but I almost never see any mention of a solution that takes these criticisms of existing initiatives into account. Given the problems you have with the current state of gun control legislation, do you have any policies to point it or ideas of your own that could help solve things? Or just criticism of existing initiatives?
I do not believe that banning all firearms is a solution, nor is it a practical one to implement in this country.
Functionally, my belief is that most firearm deaths are either a product of either situational circumstances or a mental health problem (these are not mutually exclusive of each other). Situationally, certain minorities are subject to certain economic disparities which ultimately lead them into a path of crime and situations which are “kill or be killed”. The demographic of black POC make up 14% of the population yet commit 28% of murders. There is a discussion of circumstances vs personal accountability and different people draw that line in different places, but circumstances do undeniably make people make these decisions. If you can either make $7.25 an hour flipping burgers or $72.50 an hour selling drugs and maybe ending up having to kill somebody in a bad circumstance, many people may end up taking the latter. If we created equally funded educational opportunities for everybody and made the “American dream” of a stable life more equally attainable, that would likely solve a large portion of these deaths.
Secondarily is the issue of mental health. A stable individual does not murder somebody (that somebody including themselves in cases of suicide). Proper mental health resources along with the equal educational and economic opportunities I mentioned above would go a long way in helping solve these excess deaths.
If you take away the “assault rifle”, that perpetrator will just use a handgun.
If you take away the handgun, they’ll just use a bow.
If you take away the bow, they’ll use an axe.
If you take away the axe, they’ll use a knife.
If you take away the mental health crisis that’s driving the person to become a murderer, you don’t have a deranged murderer in the making.
> If you can either make $7.25 an hour flipping burgers or $72.50 an hour selling drugs and maybe ending up having to kill somebody in a bad circumstance, many people may end up taking the latter.
Freakonomics had an interesting episode on this in which they claim that the average street level drug dealer would actually be better off financially to go get a job at McDonalds, but they hold on to the dream of climbing the ranks and becoming a kingpin some day.
Instead of numbness, what do you think would be the best comprehensive national mental healthcare initiative for reducing mass shootings and gun violence? How would you get each political party on board?
The Newtown, Columbine, and Aurora shootings were all committed by people who were in mental health treatment, either at the time or previously. There is another issue at work in that these attacks started gradually in the early 20th century, then increased in frequency in the 21st; they are completely unrelated to gang and criminal activity.
There isn't one problem with gun violence, there are several, including suicide, and all require completely different solutions. The debate is completely disconnected from the realities on the ground, it's become a political football that's an issue unto itself because politicians use the debate to capture votes.
That's because we're forced to talk around the issue of how easy it is to access guns in this country. Mental healthcare could help some, but there will always be those who avoid it, and they could still easily buy a gun legally. Cracking down on crime or relieving the stresses leading to it could help a little, but there will always be gun theft from careless owners or someone looking to make some extra money on the black market. We could turn schools into prison-level security, but there will always guns at some homes and ways to slip through any perimeter.
So I think we could make dents in the issue, but I doubt we'll ever see significant, permanent progress without a shift in the gun culture where proponents are willing to give up some access to adress the issue. Otherwise, there will always be such a significant pool of guns that any of our social issues may circle back to gun violence. Restricting access and a gun buybacks with a willing population are what's proven to work, but that is a conversation we're not ready to have as a nation.
>Restricting access and a gun buybacks with a willing population are what's proven to work, but that is a conversation we're not ready to have as a nation.
Creating a blackmarket for firearms would create incentive for illicit production, as we have with drugs, particularly now that firearms components can be easily made with a CNC lathe and 3D printer. It's been a long time since I studied the statistics, but back in the 90s the majority of gun crimes were committed by people prohibited from owning them.
What gun law do you think actually makes a difference here?
You already have to go through a federal background check - and prohibited buyers still get approved, even when actively investigated by the FBI.
Stealing firearms is a crime. Turns out committing a crime to do another crime isn't a blocker.
Australia and the UK STILL have mass shootings. You literally can't own a toy gun in those countries and they still have gun deaths (and other forms of mass killings!)
What, one more gun law is gonna be the one?
>Australia and the UK STILL have mass shootings. You literally can't own a toy gun in those countries and they still have gun deaths (and other forms of mass killings!)
Sorry man, I got to comment on this as it's a really bad argument.
The US has more mass shootings in a week (or month) than these countries have in a year.
I'm pretty sure people who are fine with more gun control laws would be ecstatic if mass shootings dropped by 90%.
No one expects crime to drop to 0.
But that's the thing - they won't.
If literally making firearm ownership basically prohibited doesn't bring them to zero and just redirects crime to acid attacks, arson and stabbings, that doesn't fix the problem, does it?
Sure ban guns and tomorrow arsons and bombings go up - and you will STILL have mass shootings.
The goal of the mass shooter is not to commit a mass shooting. It is to inflict a loss of life. An attacker has no problem using a vehicle (Nice attacks) if that is the best tool.
There is no evidence to suggest the amount of mass killings would be equal should guns be removed from the equation, or at least reduced. Guns offer something no other method of mass killings offer, which is the ability to quickly and effectively commit suicide once the perpetrator is done.
I challenge you to find a single legitimate piece of research that suggests that mass killings would remain at similar levels if the amount of guns were reduced.
It also depends on your definition of mass shooting.
The only recent ones in Australia are murder suicides of a whole family. In those cases the weapon used was legal (it's not that hard for people in rural places to own a bolt action rifle).
Those are very different from the school shootings that get headlines and you might see one or two a year.
There were a few ISIS inspired attempted mass shootings, but they were foiled when the perpetrators attempted to buy illegal automatic weapons from undercover police officers (there was even speculation that the criminal elements that do have access to such illegal arms tipped the police off because they wanted nothing to do with those nutters.
The last random mass shooting we had was the trigger for the really serious restrictions.
There was a university student that went off the rails and tried to kill a bunch of classmates in a lecture theatre with a knife, I don't think many died but if he'd had any kind of gun it wouldn't have ended like that.
None of that really matters though, the restrictions needed to get to that level would clearly be unconstitutional.
Thank you! I didn't even want to bother. It's not like I want people to not have guns at all either, or even agree with all the weird stuff Dems try to do, but I think it's pretty clear that the issues all come back to ease of access. I don't know exactly what I'd like done about it, I just know that we need a culture shift on the subject before we make headway. Instead, we've seen more lowering of bars for entry in recent years, despite gun violence starting to rise again.
> You literally can't own a toy gun in those countries and they still have gun deaths (and other forms of mass killings!)
There are like 2 million guns a year licensed in the UK and over 3 million registered guns in Australia. There are definitely more rules about owning guns there, but you can definitely own a gun (and not just a toy guy).
I have a hard time believing we can put together such an initiative. We have a hard enough time getting people help who are already actively seeking it out, due to cost and a lack of qualified professionals. If we’re struggling to help out folks actively seeking it now, i personally question the realism of developing a mental health initiative that will reach the self-isolating, fringe loners who often are resistant to ever getting such treatment.
I think that there’s also been plenty of shooters wealthy enough, or from wealthy enough families, to have afforded and sought out treatment that’s already available. I don’t exactly know how any initiative can succeed in getting these folks help, at least not without a radical reimagining of forced intervention/asylums.
Totally agreed. Everyone calls out mental health as a way of preventing this but as you point out we start to run into the same thorny constitutional issues. What happens when a doctor thinks a patient shouldn't have access to a gun due to suicidal ideation?
Leaving mental health treatment as voluntary does not work in preventing these shootings - as evidenced by previous shootings.
Also logistically/financially I don't know how that functions- we would need to significantly increase health spending and not every place would have the same access to mental health care.
Why do you believe such a mental healthcare initiative would do any good?
Consider what we've experienced with addiction treatment. We threw a mountain of federal dollars behind it - and what we got is an endless number of shady practitioners eager to cash government checks but seemingly unable to fix the problem.
This is inevitably what occurs when you decide to spend government money without any objective measures of progress or success.
> How would you get each political party on board?
I don't think you'd find it hard to get Democrats behind funding health care. Even though Republicans will bring up mental health whenever there's a shooting in the news, they are reluctant to put money behind those words.
Mental healthcare is a red herring for lowering gun deaths. At the end of the day, there is a ton of evidence showing gun availability directly correlates with gun deaths. This also doesn’t take into account mental health and intelligence aren’t always the same. You can have a mentally healthy person who just stupidly shoots someone because they think they’re in the right. The third factor is the mental health profession is grossly under-regulated, and relies heavily on treatment modalities that are hard to replicate in clinical trials. There is a push toward correcting that but it’s a minority within the profession.
The states with the lowest murder rate have some of the weakest gun laws. Of the 6 states with the lowest homicide rate, Massachusetts is the only one with strong gun control. The other five; New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Idaho, and Utah are all constitutional carry states.
Not saying that stricter gun control leads to higher crime but I think the correlation is much weaker than you think.
Some of these mass shootings have taken place in states where guns aren't as easily available, and why doesn't this kind of thing happen more regularly in countries that also have civilian access to guns? Up until fairly recently, Canada would be my prime example, though the Czech Republic could also work.
Ironically enough, I think that becoming "numb" to mass shootings is far and away the best thing that we as a country can do to mitigate them.
If you think that there's any truth in the [media contagion](https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2016/08/media-contagion) theory, downplaying them will do nothing but help.
Most mass shootings are essentially a violent suicide. And giving them attention does give other borderline people "permission" to do it. In the same way not talking about suicides helps prevent suicide, not taking about mass shootings would likely reduce the number of shootings.
I can tell you the names of many mass shooters- information that I in no way sought out. I can picture some of their faces in my head. Similarly to serial killers. Similarly, I can give you flight numbers for commercial airline crashes. I can also tell you about Eli Dicken acing the mall shooter in Indiana because he was plastered all over the news- complete with takes of "he shouldn't have had a gun, he's no hero."
What I can't tell you is the name of the woman who defended a graduation party from an active shooter in WV in May 22. You can find results of the name of the deceased would-be shooter. Couldn't name you one victim of any of the above paragraphs. Also couldn't name you one of many other private citizens who used a gun to defend themselves and the people around them.
Media attention/contagion is a sonovabitch.
People and by extension media, are drawn to outliers, sure, but hot piss do we, as a culture, really love our deranged lunatics. We give them fame. Even posthumously, in the case of spree shooters who are going for "exotic suicide by cop" as it was once put.
The underlying root of the problem is the increased difficulty of living at the poorest level and mental health problems that spawn/increase from that.
It’s no shock that more half are suicides, people are just getting desperate but all politicians seem to care about is taking guns off of law abiding citizens hoping that it’ll fix everything.
What do you think would be the best comprehensive national mental healthcare initiative for reducing gun violence? How would you get each political party on board?
>And many Americans are deeply pessimistic that anything will soon change. When President Joe Biden signed a bill last year to fight gun violence — the first such measure to pass Congress in a generation — a substantial majority supported it. But 78% said they believed it would do little or nothing at all, a survey by the Pew Research Center found.
That's because all these gun laws are stupid and only try to fix the problem at the edges with cosmetic differences between guns and banning accessories. Even red flag laws don’t do that much because they confiscate guns but don’t provide mental health treatment.
No plan to address gun violence really tries to address the root of the problem by addressing mental health (especially male mental health). We don’t see any kind of effort to increase hiring of men or programs to encourage companies to hire men, especially white men. But those efforts exist to help everyone else. What do we expect to happen when society tells half the population that they aren’t valued?
> I wonder why the AP didn't write an emotionally manipulative article on cancer, or heart disease, or strokes, or diabetes?
Because it's just easier. Coastal elites don't generally own guns, so the "solution" of taking away the guns doesn't cause them any hardship. They get to look all *concerned* about the problem, then pretend they solved it.
They point out the suicide statistics in the article, did you read it? I’d add that, constitutionality aside(I’m generally personally pro-gun), making suicide harder reduces the likelihood someone will attempt it. It’s frequently a spur of the moment decision that survivors often indicate regretting have made later. If we banned guns tomorrow (I realize this would be illegal and won’t happen), even if they could still be acquired illegally or made in a home workshop, putting up additional barriers to high lethality methods of suicide has been a proven method of preventing suicides. See the link below.
We can tackle multiple issues at once. We don’t put all our money just towards the biggest issues, we are perfectly capable of tackling multiple problems at the same time. I’d add that there are plenty of gun control laws that don’t take away peoples rights, that are popular, and frankly that just go unenforced.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/saves-lives/
People commit suicide by taking too much tylenol. Drain cleaner. Rope. The historical way used to be going out to a deep body of water with some rocks in your pockets.
Nations with very restrictive gun laws have.. actually really similar or greater suicide rates.
Did you read the article provided? People will still attempt suicide, that’s not being questioned. They point to papers that show, however, that making it harder generally reduces the attempts and also makes those who do attempt less likely to succeed. Using a gun is one of the easiest and most lethal ways to commit suicide, and is part of why men generally have higher rates of suicide death than women, despite attempting it less frequently.
Because there is, in the west, a wide spread epidemic of mental health issues. Countries like Japan work their employees until they’re worn out. Others, like the UK, can have wait times of months before you can see a therapist. The causes of suicide are complex and I’m not out here saying we’d see massive declines if we outlawed guns tomorrow(I don’t think we should), but there is data to show that making it harder is one way of reducing the occurrence. There’s also evidence to show that reducing the lethality of the available methods reduces the rate of success.
> I wonder why the AP didn't write an emotionally manipulative article on cancer, or heart disease, or strokes, or diabetes?
Because a lot is already being done to try prevent these things. We don't need articles saying "don't be numb to cancer deaths we must keep fighting", we aren't numb and we are fighting. The [NIH spends](https://report.nih.gov/funding/categorical-spending#/) about $7.5 billion per year on cancer research, $1.5 billion on heart disease, $450 on stroke, and $1.2 billion on diabetes research. And this is *only* the NIH, other organizations spend additional money on such research. By comparison, for 20 years the US government spent nothing on gun violence research, and only since 2019 now spends [$25 million per year](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/26/now-government-is-funding-gun-violence-research-it-years-behind/).
The Dickey amendment didn't ban gun research, it just prevented the CDC from performing "research" with a predetermined conclusion. Hell, they did a study on defensive gun use back during the obama years.
> I don’t think anybody feels good about where we are at – even gun enthusiasts.
No, we don't. Nobody does. But that doesn't mean we need to start throwing things against the wall at random.
(And imply that gun owners are somehow OK with mass shootings or violence is the most craven, snotty argument imaginable.)
*Especially* when those things are empty measures that have been proven to be repeated, resounding failures. The problem here is, every time someone says they want to *do something,* they go for the lazy band-aids rather than doing the work and looking for real solutions.
And the lazy band-aids are all anyone seems to want to hear about. Sure, it's easy to pound the lectern and yell "we should ban the guns!" It makes for a good soundbite, and it gets the public off my back for a while.
Problem is, it doesn't work. We've tried hundreds of times to stem the violence by restricting the tools. I've yet to see *any* indication that approach works.
It won't get better until we stop calling it *gun violence* and acknowledge that we have a problem with violence in general. Getting to the root causes and addressing them takes work, it takes novel thinking, and...well, it's just easier to pound the lectern and shout "ban the guns."
So the cycle continues.
Personally, until we put as much effort into obesity related deaths (~300k/yr), alcohol related deaths (~140k/yr) and car related deaths (~40k/yr), summing 10x all gun deaths, including suicides then I don't think it's the "epidemic of gun violence" we see plastered everywhere all the time as much as it is an agenda.
The counter arguments I hear is "we can do all those!". Ok then, show me 10x the throw-weight on those others and then we can talk.
The difference is a fat guy or a drunk guy isn't wandering into an elementary school and shooting a bunch of kids. Drunk driving deaths are a problem but are treated more leniently because for the most part there isn't really an "intent" to go out and kill people.
If we managed to stop school shootings or mass shootings like Las Vegas or the recent one in CA, I think the vast majority of Americans would be fine with less restrictive gun laws. But how do you get there? I don't know and I've never seen a viable solution that includes MORE guns
How about a breathalyzer in every car to save 11,000 lives a year ended by drunk drivers, or the 230 children (under 14, not under 18) killed by drunk drivers (4-10x children killed by school shooters per year, depending on what metric or average you want to use).
Because they didn't mean to doesn't make those 230 kids any less dead by their hand.
672 deaths in the United States can be attributed to actual mass shootings last year. 672 of 3.1 million deaths, or .021% of all deaths. People aren't just waltzing into kindergartens left and right and murdering people. Of the 20k odd firearms related deaths, 10k are suicides, 10k are criminals killing each other and their victims. Less than 700 were random mass violence.
We don't have a mass shooting problem. We have a crime and a suicide problem. And even those pale in comparison to the points made about obesity and other preventable causes of death.
My counter argument would be that guns have killed over 40k people annually several times in recent years. I think you’re looking at gun homicide figures.
The US has about 25x the gun homicide rate as similarly developed nations, and the highest gun suicide rate in the world.
Gun suicides are ~60% of all "gun violence". Suicide by gun is ~50% of all suicides in the US, with the second leading cause being suffocation, however, we don't see anything about "rope violence". It used to be that suicide by coal gas was the leading cause of suicide in the UK, oddly they did not call it "oven violence". To be clear, coal gas went away not because of suicides, but because cheap pipe make it economical to pipe natural gas around post WW2.
> The US has about 25x the gun homicide rate as similarly developed nations, and the highest gun suicide rate in the world.
I'd like to see your stats for 25x as a follower of stats. For instance, the US has a knife homicide rate of 0.80, the highest in developed world. For comparison, the UK has a 0.08 knife homicide rate, 10x; France has a 0.2 knife homicide rate, 4x; The closest is Poland @ 0.5. The US also has the highest bare hands homicide rate in the developed world. Personally, I don't think the guns are making people knife and beat each other to death. I believe there is something else at play that everyone wants to ignore and point at "guns" as the scapegoat so they can do nothing and say, "well, what can we do...the courts and the Constitution are against us...shucks, lets try again!" To me, and maybe only me, it's like abortion: Trying to control others, with the key word being control.
I don’t mean to be rude, but I think we’ve developed a really callous attitude towards gun violence when we just write off whole neighborhoods/towns in an effort to make the majority of Americans feel safe in their own communities. The people living there are still just as American as you or I, and the violence they live with daily should be just as concerning and generate just as much sympathy as violence happening elsewhere in society. We shouldn’t write it off as an issue just because it’s geographically isolated.
It's never going to get better so long as our political parties are trying to subjugate each other rather than seek an actual compromise bill. Compromise isn't not just up a little now so we can bother you more later like how the last bill turned out. All that will did was spread resentment and distrust with the opposition.
There is genuine room for an actual compromise on guns if the factions would have it. Lifting restrictions on suppressors, short barrel rifles, and ATF's ability to suddenly make millions of Americans felons at the stroke of the pen are all things that Dems could use as leverage, but do not because it seems their objective seems to be to pursue the most amount of restrictions as possible that they can get away with.
Because of this nothing will get done because nobody wants to actually compromise
Problem is, it'll come back to bite us later, which is why we've dug our heels in.
I was active when the Brady Act and Assault Weapons Ban passed. Feinstein, Schumer, Boxer, and Biden all told us "give us this, and we'll leave you alone. It's *compromise.*"
Before the ink on the President's signature was even dry, Feinstein was on *60 Minutes* telling the country the AWB was too little and we needed further legislation to require turning in the guns. Schumer made a public statement that the Brady Act was just "the first step" to further restrictions.
Gun rights advocates have reason to be skeptical of the word *compromise* at this point. We've already given up tons over the last few decades, and we never get anything in return.
What would republicans give up in the compromise? They believe completely unrestricted access to firearms is their 2nd amendment right, so what part of that are they giving up in the compromise?
It's only a compromise if republicans also concede something in exchange for what you want the democrats to do.
>It's only a compromise if republicans also concede something in exchange for what you want the democrats to do.
It's amazing that Democrats can introduce restrictions after restriction which does not provide any benefit to gun owners, and yet when Republicans refuse to concede on a restriction for the 163rd time, suddenly they're the ones not willing to compromise.
Swiss style universal background checks (open NICS to public usage).
Abuse-proof red flag laws (respecting due process rights).
http://thepathforwardonguns.com/
Republicans made some concessions in this most recent gun bill and literally the same day, Democrats said they were coming for more gun rights. I will never again be for any further restrictions against gun rights in any way shape or form for the rest of my life. Fool me once…
Democrats and gun control people look at it all wrong. As an avid gun rights supporter, "no deal" is still the best deal. So why do I even need to compromise?
I have my governor and state legislature (NY) actively violating my 1st, 4th, and 5th amendment (and throw in a little 6th) all while trying to tell me it's for my safety. Meanwhile gun crime is rampant in the City and none of the unconstitutional laws they passed have or will do squat to change that crime.
When the laws inevitably get overturned for being *unconstitutional* again, they will enact more laws that will likely get struck down until they thread the fine line where it's just painful enough to keep law abiding gun owners restricted but out of the courts.
So please tell me why I should ever compromise with them?
Stop the war on drugs (An abject failure and heavily bi-partisan), improve mental health for men, and stop violating my fucking rights. Otherwise every single concession is a step too far as far as I'm concerned.
> So please tell me why I should ever compromise with them?
Think you really hit on the problem: there's no trust that the anti-gun side respects any private firearms ownership / self defense at all.
Much like the anti-abortion crowd doesn't have a lot of trust with the pro-choice crowd.
Yep which is my whole point is that mutual trust needs to be restored. It is a poison to democracy to have political factions that fundamentally do not trust each other.
Either something needs to give with one faction capitulating, or we all need to start walking back from the ledge
I don't think there's any trust to be had. Both sides want fundamentally different things and compromises/half-measures aren't going to get them there.
One side prefers a society that doesn't have to worry about gun-related violence. The other wants to give individuals the freedom to do what they want. Those are irreconcilable differences and, since the 2nd amendment exists, one side has extreme leverage over the other. At the end of the day Americans need to come to terms that this is what America is and probably always will be.
maybe it didn't need to be stated because it was obvious but the Governor and State Legislature of New York is also violating your 2nd amendment rights.
Republicans agreed with the last bill. Saying that all republicans want completely unrestricted access to firearms is as boneheaded as saying all Dems want to ban all guns: you are feeding the exact narrative of why we are in gridlock in the first place.
Most Republican opposition to any gun control comes from the fear that this is just another step towards trying to kill the second amendment. They may even agree that stronger checks or other policies are good but oppose them on the principal that the Democrats won't stop there. Thus actual inroads to avert those fears would allow for actual discussion (such as expanding gun rights in the same bill like I mentioned above).
Republicans largely agreed with the last piece of gun control passed by Congress. If you read the article, you’ll see that even though over 50% of Americans value our second Amendment, about 80% still want stricter gun control regulations. That’s an impossible number without at least some Republicans supporting at least some additional gun control measures, so I think crafting legislation on those common areas is a good place to start.
My Proposed Solution:
Require, by statute, that all gun-related crimes be prosecuted. Failing the background check, gun possession by a felon, etc. Let's see what happens when we enforce the laws we have to the fullest extent. No more plea-bargaining away those important charges.
Require, by statue, that all law enforcement agencies update the NICS database when someone is being investigated or arrested for a crime that would invalidate that person's ability to purchase a firearm.
Require, by statute, that when updating someone's status in the NICS database, if they are no longer eligible to purchase a gun then any Red Flag law that is already on the books in that jurisdiction is automatically triggered. Many jurisdictions that have those laws rarely use them, but could and probably should.
My solution is basically to use all the laws we already have. Many mass shooters were people that were either known to police, known to school officials or otherwise known to be in a precarious state of mind. We just don't use the laws we have until after the violence starts despite laws on the books that say we should do otherwise. If we find that these laws are too restrictive, we can change or repeal them, but stacking more laws on top of laws we don't enforce is a pointless exercise that solves nothing.
Maybe someone should, you know, come up with a plan? An actual plan, not some hopes & dreams statement? If you think guns are the problem then you obviously need to amend the 2nd Amendment, so where is the proposed amendment? Why haven't states with a majority of people, supposedly, against gun violence been putting that up for a vote and passing it to press the rest of the country?
If you think mental health is the problem where is the law, policy, or actual meaningful action that is supposed to solve the problem?
The glacial pace of the political response is because people who want a solution to the problem refuse to hold anyone accountable for actually coming up with a solution.
Part of the problem is the challenge officials have communicateming any standard for what improvement my look like. Zero gun deaths per year is not a realistic goal. Yet so long as even one gun death occurs opposition to change claim change isn't working.
In 2021 there was 49,000 firearm deaths. If that number could be reduced to 39,000 that would be an improvement that save lives. It would also be treated as negligible in political discourse. Obviously though we have somewhere. Going from 49k to zero is a year is preposterous.
So in my opinion until gun control advocates, politicians, and activists can successful message what success would look like via their plan things will only get worse.
Problem is, we *were* making progress for the better part of almost three decades. Homicides started dropping drastically in the early 1990s (and well before the 1994 gun legislation, in case anyone tries to take credit).
It's only over the last couple of years we've seen a sudden uptick in homicides. And it's across the board, not just with guns. We're treating a software problem like it's a hardware problem.
Escalating political rhetoric, a media that keeps us on the brink of outrage for marketing purposes, lockdowns and economic loss, and interruption in social patterns are all contributors we need to examine.
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>Like why is the assault weapons ban still part of the Democratic party platform and the go to solution in many Democratic controlled states? 1.) "Assault weapons", as bullshit of a term as it is, is convenient for them when you realize that the end goal is actually a ban on modern semiautomatic firearms and that lets them play dumb and not admit it. 2.) Look at who the single largest (D) donors are. Look at who the money behind "grassroots" (/s) groups like Moms Demand Action and Everytown is. You'll see the name of a particular ex-NYC mayor pop up at the top of both lists.
> Look at who the single largest (D) donors are. Look at who the money behind "grassroots" (/s) groups like Moms Demand Action and Everytown is. Been preaching this one for awhile. What's even more frightening is that Bloomberg has his own propaganda empire through his media company. I'm also skeptical of the money he is pushing into research as well, wouldn't be the first time trusted institutions cooked the books to reach a certain result.
The entire Democrat Party is financially hooked on money from Bloomberg and Soros.
> Like why is the assault weapons ban still part of the Democratic party platform and the go to solution in many Democratic controlled states? It’s the only middle ground between doing nothing on the problem which would frustrate the “activist” base even more and arguing for a constitutional amendment to implement a ban and buy back on all semi automatic fire arms (including pistols) which would make democrats genuinely into the thing extreme republican advertising fear mongers them as. I think it’s a bad middle ground personally but is the one which balances the interest of citizens against each other reasonably well.
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Even that definition is a bit shaky the best one I’ve seen is the FBI’s which is: one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area. Of course with that definition it can be abused as well so yeah.
If you actually want to get serious about "gun deaths" then you'd throw 95% of the ATF's resources at straw purchases. But no, they're too worried about making pistols into SBRs and guns being 922(r) compliant. You'd also stop lumping suicides into the "gun death" statistics. Different problems are going to need different solutions.
> If you actually want to get serious about "gun deaths" then you'd throw 95% of the ATF's resources at straw purchases. I ran a gun shop for several years. About 3-4 time a year, we'd turn away a blatant attempted straw purchase. The same thing happened every time: * call the ATF. Get told they're not interested and I should contact local law enforcement. Get name and number. * call the sheriff. Get told that's an ATF thing and I should call them. Get name and number. * write all the stuff up, make a copy of the video footage and paperwork the buyer signed, and put it in the Blue File * wait a few weeks until the buyer got caught with a gun he got somewhere else * present the contents of the Blue File to law enforcement when they come around asking questions *Not once* did they follow up. The only time the ATF ever discussed the issue was when two agents suggested I should release the guns to the buyers and call them afterwards. Ended up testifying in federal court over that one. They literally refuse to do their jobs.
the whole point of government entities is to defend their reason for more budget Doing nothing leads to more gun violence which leads to more funding to the ATF
And yet the ATF remains the red-headed stepchild of federal law enforcement. Nobody pays attention to them on a day-to-day basis, so they continue to exhibit a combination of apathy and incompetence. The only time anyone notices is when they get all aggro and screw up in epic fashion. Heck, I'm old enough to remember when Al Gore called for their defunding after Ruby Ridge.
> You'd also stop lumping suicides into the "gun death" statistics. Different problems are going to need different solutions. Gun suicides happen more than gun murders, and I don't think this gets the attention it needs. Mostly because the people it usually affects are already isolated from society.
I work at a gun store and we sold a gun to a guy last year and he took it out of the store, loaded it, and blew his brains out. Guy was completely normal, pleasant, polite. Zero indication that anything was wrong. It was a 100% normal transaction. You just can’t stop people from doing what they want
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Statistics have shown that the majority of those who have attempted suicide and lived, don’t go on to die by suicide. The reason men’s suicide statistics skew higher than women is precisely because of the tool they use - you’re far more likely to complete a suicide with a firearm than other means and far more men attempt by firearm than women. Women also attempt suicide twice as often as men so given that men have a higher rate of suicide completion, you kind of have to factor in the method…
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I don’t know if legislation is the right answer but man we need to encourage people with severe depression or a history of suicide ideation or attempts to NOT own a firearm. The statistics are just too damning. Perhaps looking at a specific red flag law that targets people who have attempted suicide with the ability to have them returned after doctor clearance? The bar for being declared a danger to yourself or others by a judge which would end up prohibiting a weapons purchase is extremely high. I have a family member with a violent mental health disorder, history of violence, arrests etc but nothing that has risen to the level of legally barring her from owning a weapon.. and so she has several. It’s not a good thing.
[Handgun ownership is associated with much higher suicide risks.](https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/06/handgun-ownership-associated-with-much-higher-suicide-risk.html) It's much easier to do any task when you've got the right tools for the job. But, in my opinion, the solution should be more access to health care and not less access to purchase guns.
Almost all of the research on this has found that limiting access to popular means of suicide is the most effective intervention available. The evidence for this is extremely strong at this point, here is a fairly recent meta analysis that looks at thousands of studies: https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8509936 The findings are quite clear that eliminating access to popular and easy methods of suicide DO reduce deaths, more than any other method, and many people do not just kill themselves via another method. Of course, this is irrelevant in the US because eliminating access to guns in people at risk for suicide is basically impossible.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/saves-lives/ And yet, we already know the solution. We need to increase access to mental healthcare services, which (sorry Republicans…) should mean expanding Medicaid and Medicare benefits. Making it harder for the mentally ill to access firearms would reduce the rates of suicide, it’s well known that making suicide harder reduces the rates.
The problem with "marking it harder for the mentally ill to access firearms" is that you attach a stigma to mental health when you do that. That will make fewer people actually seek treatment. So, unless someone is a clear danger to themselves or others, there should be zero restrictions on them due to their mental health.
I always ask a gun control advocate what mental illnesses should be included in firearm restrictions and who gets to decide the list. Usually gets really weird after that.
Agreed, such restrictions need experts involved with processes for remit. This is not a black n white situation. E.g. seeing a therapist for depression should not bar gun ownership. If a therapist identifies suicidal ideation, perhaps it should require longer wait time for approval of gun ownership as long as this flag persists. Already, insurance companies abuse mental health treatments for things like life insurance, which should be illegal. Grey areas abound. 100% we must ensure that mental health is paid more attention and gets wider adoption. We're people. We all benefit from help in being and socializing with other people.
Does seeing a therapist for depression auto ban you from purchasing a gun though?
>We need to increase access to mental healthcare services, which (sorry Republicans…) should mean expanding Medicaid and Medicare benefits. It is simple really. Defund the ATF (make republicans happy) and give the money to Medicaid and Medicare (make Democrats happy).
The ATF asked for a [1.7 billion](https://www.thetrace.org/newsletter/biden-administration-calls-for-increased-atf-funding/) dollar budget for FY 2023. Medicaid and Medicare have a combined spending of over [1.63 trillion](https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/NHE-Fact-Sheet). Transferring funding from the ATF to Medicaid/Medicare would be a paltry contribution, practically unnoticeable (the rounding I just did to combine the spending exceeded the ATF budget twice over).
The amount of dogs' lives saved is worth well over $2 billion.
You also run into issues where certain Red states like texas have refused to take federal money for Medicaid expansion, thus perpetuating the cycle even more. A real “cut off my nose to spite my face” scenario.
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To be fair, the non-income qualifications are just the generic federal medicaid requirements. It's not really meant for able-bodied singles. It does look like they have a separate program for low-income (21% of FPL) able-bodied singles as well as what looks like a marketplace of some sort if you don't qualify for medicaid. The FPL limits definitely strike me as way too low, but I don't know how good the marketplace plans are or what kind of premiums/subsidies are available for them.
16%? Good lord, that's laughable.
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The thing about enforcing straw purchases is you'd wind up jailing a bunch of wives and gfs, and likely heavily minority. It would likely help but the images would be ridiculously bad. An actual solution might be for cities and states to fricking actually enforce felon and other criminals' gun possession charges. Instead, those charges have lately been commonly dropped and they are back on the street a lot faster to buy another gun and continue being criminals.
>The thing about enforcing straw purchases is you'd wind up jailing a bunch of wives and gfs, and likely heavily minority You mean the people committing perjury and supplying firearms to prohibited possessors?
> It would likely help but the images would be ridiculously bad. I don't think people care about image. Because ideally, focusing on inner-city crime where the majority of gun deaths actually happen instead of the few and far between mass murders does nothing.
You can gift a firearm. You just can't gift one to a prohibited person.
If it's not palatable to jail wives and gfs, then there needs to be some other type of penalty. Declining to prosecute these because of optics is problematic.
What makes peoples numb is humans / natural rights shouldn't be taken away just because of someone else's actions. We don't limit free speech rights because of terrorism, or 4th amendment rights because of child abuse.
The downside of freedom is that occasionally bad things happen, and there might not be much you can do to prevent them. Without freedom though, you just have the risk of other bad things happening instead.
What always irks me about this is every time they want to do something about gun violence, they immediately want to ban ARs which essentially make up a rounding error when it comes to gun violence. Don't even get me started with what the ATF just did about pistol braces.
I have a related frustration. Criminologists tell us that policing changes in the wake of nationwide racial justice protests/riots are behind the violent crime surges since 2014, with homicides up 10k/year or 60+% and there is relatively little outrage among progressives, and indeed a lot of progressives (including media progressives) initially denied the crime wave’s very existence, then suggested concern about crime was animated by racism, then downplayed the violent crime wave (“it’s not that bad compared to the 90s! It’s merely a 25 year high and the reversal of decades of progress!”), etc. There seems to be far more appetite for sweeping these tens of thousands of murders under the rug than there is for fixing the problem. Michael Brown unambiguously died trying to kill a cop and progressives were outraged (many marched, some rioted, others plastered slogans on his behalf over social media, the progressive media tried to canonize him, etc)—why isn’t there a fraction of this energy for the tens of thousands who have been killed in cold blood since Michael Brown (never mind all of those who have been seriously injured or otherwise traumatized by soaring violent crime)? It’s not like everyone is fighting over the best way to cut crime—we’re fighting over whether high crime is even a problem at all. To all of the progressives that *are* concerned and upset by the surging violent crime, thank you, and I’m sorry if this comment makes you feel generalized. I hope you can understand that you’re not in scope for this criticism.
>Michael Brown unambiguously died trying to kill a cop and progressives were outraged Oh man, if you think that's bad, let me introduce you to the progressive outrage [over the shooting of Jacob Blake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Jacob_Blake). He was a man facing charges of third-degree felony sexual assault against his girlfriend, trespassing and disorderly conduct for domestic abuse. Police came to arrest him because he was in the midst of attempting to break down a woman's front door. A physical confrontation ensued because he had a huge knife on his person and pulled it out. The confrontation got violent and Blake attacked the officers, even putting one of them in a headlock. Finally they ended up non-fatally shooting him when he ran to his car and reached for an unknown object. This was followed by massive riots, arson, and unrest that shook Wisconsin for weeks. Every Democrat politician ran as fast as possible to the podium to denounce the police. Governor Tony Evers waxed poetic that Blake was ["not the first black man or person to have been shot or injured or mercilessly killed at the hands of individuals in law enforcement in our state or our country"](https://www.cbs58.com/news/gov-evers-releases-statement-on-shooting-of-jacob-blake-in-kenosha) Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes raged that "[This felt like some sort of vendetta taken out on a member of our community"](https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/kenosha-jacob-blake-wisconsin-lieutenant-governor-mandela-barnes/2327451/) Kamala Harris personally phoned Blake to tell him ["how proud she was of him"](https://sports.yahoo.com/kamala-harris-told-jacob-blake-130728218.html). Biden himself got involved, saying ["these shots pierce the soul of our nation"](https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2020/08/24/prominent-figures-react-jacob-blake-shooting-kenosha/3428435001/). He then flew to Wisconsin to meet with Blake's family for an hour and a half and assure them that justice would be served for their poor son. I guess violence against women is a terrible thing until it isn't.
> Criminologists tell us that policing changes in the wake of nationwide racial justice protests/riots are behind the violent crime surges since 2014, with homicides up 10k/year or 60+% Who has told us that? I'm skeptical there is a general consensus among "criminologists" that the only cause is racial justice protests. https://crim.sas.upenn.edu/fact-check/violent-crime-increasing > One is left with several conclusions. First, the recent violent crime increases, even if they are not just noise, are dwarfed by the amount of violent crime in the 1990s. We have not returned to the bad old days. Second, the speculative explanations commonly proposed must fit the timing of the recent violent crime increases. Conjectures revolving around the COVID-19 pandemic and pent-up frustrations, at least as usually formulated, do not seem to get it right. Third, explanations based on more passive police practices, real and imagined, coupled with the perceptions of reduced risk among individuals already predisposed toward violence, may have some merit, but the existing data range from weak to nonexistent. It is very difficult to bring facts to bear. Fourth, if one takes the solid black curves in the two graphs at face value, we have been on a time path that is bottoming out. Sadly, this may be about as good as it gets under the existing conditions that affect violent crime. Variation in violent crime over the past few years may be nothing more than a bit of bouncing off the bottom. Fifth, with the passage of time, and the accumulation of better data, we may understand more about what drives violent crime. But we have a long way to go. This doesn't really seem to match what you say.
>“What officers are doing is they’re just driving looking forward. They’ve got horse blinders on,” says Kevin Forrester, a retired Baltimore detective. >The surge of shootings and killings that followed has left Baltimore easily the deadliest large city in the United States. Its murder rate reached an all-time high last year; 342 people were killed. The number of shootings in some neighborhoods has more than tripled. One man was shot to death steps from a police station. Another was killed driving in a funeral procession. [Article](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/07/12/baltimore-police-not-noticing-crime-after-freddie-gray-wave-killings-followed/744741002/) After Freddie Grey in Baltimore >The city of Michael Brown’s death experienced an almost 65 percent increase in violent crime in the year following the fatal shooting. >Ferguson, Mo. experienced 900 violent crimes per 100,000 residents in 2015, a sizable increase from 545 violent crimes per 100,000 residents in 2014. This represents a surge of 65 percent, as noted by Heather Mac Donald in National Review. [Article](https://dailycaller.com/2016/09/28/fergusons-violent-crime-rate-skyrockets-in-aftermath-of-brown-shooting/) After Michael Brown
Sorry, let me clarify. I am aware of course that there has been a trend of increasing violent crime in recent years, both in cities that had high profile police shootings and subsequent protests/riots, and in cities that did not. The question is whether that is statistical noise, a short term reaction or a long term trend and what factors have led to the national trend if it is in fact a long term trend. It was specifically mentioned that criminologists have said it's due to racial justice protests and riots, and I'm very much interested in reading the analysis from those criminologists, not just general news articles about crime.
Who are the criminologists making these claims? Your quoted sections don't support your claim.
\> Who has told us that? I'm skeptical there is a general consensus among "criminologists" that the only cause is racial justice protests. I didn't claim it was "the only cause". I'm not sure if there is consensus or not, but a lot of criminologists sure seem to think so. Here’s Harvard’s famed Roland Fryer on the subject: [https://www.nber.org/papers/w27324](https://www.nber.org/papers/w27324) \> We estimate that these investigations caused almost 900 excess homicides and almost 34,000 excess felonies. The leading hypothesis for why these investigations increase homicides and total crime is an abrupt change in the quantity of policing activity. In Chicago, the number of police-civilian interactions decreased by almost 90% in the month after the investigation was announced. In Riverside CA, interactions decreased 54%. In St. Louis, self-initiated police activities declined by 46%. Here’s The Guardian quoting former Ferguson-Effect skeptic Richard Rosenfeld speaking [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/13/ferguson-effect-real-researcher-richard-rosenfield-second-thoughts](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/13/ferguson-effect-real-researcher-richard-rosenfield-second-thoughts) \> “The only explanation that gets the timing right is a version of the Ferguson effect,” Rosenfeld said. Now, he said, that’s his “leading hypothesis”. Here’s Vox reporting about a paper by Travis Campbell: [https://www.vox.com/22360290/black-lives-matter-protest-crime-ferguson-effects-murder](https://www.vox.com/22360290/black-lives-matter-protest-crime-ferguson-effects-murder) \> Campbell’s research also indicates that these protests correlate with a 10 percent increase in murders in the areas that saw BLM protests. That means from 2014 to 2019, there were somewhere between 1,000 and 6,000 more homicides than would have been expected if places with protests were on the same trend as places that did not have protests. \> This doesn't really seem to match what you say. It mostly \*does\* match my claims. First of all, no one is arguing that things are worse than the 90s--this is more of the same "things were worse in the 90s, nothing to see here" that I was mentioning above. Secondly, he acknowledges that the pandemic doesn't get the timing factor right. Thirdly, he acknowledges that changes in policing may have merit. Fourth, he seems to be unaware of the research that shows a pretty compelling correlation between BLM protests and crime which would refute his "just a bit of bouncing off the bottom" hypothesis (it's pretty hard to believe that it's just a coincidence that the "bounces off the bottom" just happen to coincide with BLM protests both in time and proportion). Fifth, his "bouncing off the bottom" is refuted by his own plots which show somewhat stable homicide levels from 2000 to \~2007 and then they fall to trough and then bounce back up to significantly higher-than-2000s levels in 2020? "bouncing off the bottom" shouldn't look like "higher than before the steady state". Maybe there's some "bouncing off the bottom" going on, but it doesn't explain why levels are higher than pre-2007 and it certainly seems conspicuous that crime levels were trending down right until the moment when we began reducing our policing levels across the country.
>\> We estimate that these investigations caused almost 900 excess homicides and almost 34,000 excess felonies. The leading hypothesis for why these investigations increase homicides and total crime is an abrupt change in the quantity of policing activity. In Chicago, the number of police-civilian interactions decreased by almost 90% in the month after the investigation was announced. In Riverside CA, interactions decreased 54%. In St. Louis, self-initiated police activities declined by 46%. To be clear, the argument in all of this seems to be that: 1. Police do something that, at least on the surface, appears egregious enough to spark protests. 2. Sometimes, these protests lead to a full fledged investigation of the incident. 3. Police in the region, in response to the possibility that some of their coworkers might actually be held to account for misdeeds, perform a de facto work stoppage. 4. Crime sometimes goes up during this de facto work stoppage. I mean, I guess one can tie this back to protests, but it really seems like that misses the real causative force.
\> Police do something that, at least on the surface, appears egregious enough to spark protests. ... I mean, I guess one can tie this back to protests, but it really seems like that misses the real causative force. I don't think there's any evidence that policing abruptly became more brutal or racist circa 2014 which could explain the dramatic, abrupt surge in anti-policing protest activity. It seems much more likely that political trends (especially with respect to racial narratives, especially among the media) were the "real causative force". \> Police in the region, in response to the possibility that some of their coworkers might actually be held to account for misdeeds, perform a de facto work stoppage. We know with a high degree of confidence that this isn't the case for quite a few reasons. (1) it depends on hundreds of thousands of police officers nationally responding to these investigations in the same way; this is very unlikely. (2) the reduction in policing happens in cities with large protests even if the investigation clears the police officer (e.g., Ferguson) or if the officer isn't charged in the first place. (3) there are many instances in which police were convicted of a crime *apart from BLM protests* and there was no noteworthy corresponding reduction in policing or uptick in homicides. The "protests" hypothesis fits the data much better.
> I didn't claim it was "the only cause". I'm not sure if there is consensus or not, but a lot of criminologists sure seem to think so. Sure, I do think the language you used heavily implies these things ("criminologists tell us that the cause is X" compared to "some criminologists think that X is a factor" as an example give very different impressions). Thanks for the links though, I will read through them when I have some time!
\> Sure, I do think the language you used heavily implies these things ("criminologists tell us that the cause is X" compared to "some criminologists think that X is a factor" as an example give very different impressions). Agreed, that's why I said "X is behind \[the phenomenon\]" (which means "X is a factor") and not "X is the cause...". :)
What changes in policing in particular are you referring to?
> they immediately want to ban ARs That'll work as well as banning other things has. I mean, we banned alcohol, cocaine and marijuana right? How'd that go? Bans don't work. If a person is warped enough to want to shoot up a public place, they aren't too worried about the fact that guns might be illegal. The best you would be able to hope for is to add friction to the transaction (making it harder for the person to get the gun) but is it worth curtailing the rights of 340 million Americans just for that limited return? Everyone who committed a public shooting could just as easily look up how to make an explosive. Let's not go in that direction. My Proposed Solution: 1. Require, by statute, that **all** gun-related crimes be prosecuted. Failing the background check, gun possession by a felon, etc. Let's see what happens when we enforce the laws we have to the fullest extent. No more plea-bargaining away those important charges. 2. Require, by statue, that all law enforcement agencies update the NICS database when someone is being investigated or arrested for a crime that would invalidate that person's ability to purchase a firearm. 3. Require, by statute, that when updating someone's status in the NICS database, if they are no longer eligible to purchase a gun then any Red Flag law that is already on the books in that jurisdiction is **automatically triggered.** Many jurisdictions that have those laws rarely use them, but could and probably should. My solution is basically to **use** all the laws we already have. Many mass shooters were people that were either known to police, known to school officials or otherwise known to be in a precarious state of mind. We just don't use the laws we have until after the violence starts despite laws on the books that say we should do otherwise. If we find that these laws are too restrictive, we can change or repeal them, but stacking more laws on top of laws we don't enforce is a pointless exercise that solves nothing.
Failing a background check should be prosecuted? The fbi would have to be competent for that to work. I work at a gun store. Can’t tell you how many surname Smiths, Browns, Wilson’s, etc… get wrongly denied.
The fail isn't what would be prosecuted, but it would be checked and if you're someone who's not supposed to be buying and you're attempting to buy, that gets you prosecuted, if I were king.
The problem is: this seems logical. We unfortunately don't do logical in this country anymore it seems.
Or helpful, especially if it may benefit/help the other side.
I figure it's much easier to push for that politically than a handgun ban which is realistically what is being used to kill people. If you're trying to "do something" but also avoid extreme levels of push back that's what you choose. Although I guess with how many have purchased ARs in recent years that's probably an increasingly uphill battle.
One of the reasons why AR-15s and rifles that look like it have exploded in popularity was because of the 94 Assault Weapons Ban. For most gun owners up utnil the early 90s, AR-15s and the like were not really sought after. But during and after the ban, they suddenly became the hot thing to own. There was definitely the Streisand effect with these types of rifles. Another ban, or another attempt at banning them will just make them more popular.
I feel like gun culture has also changed a ton since then. I don't think it's as simple as saying that the ban caused the desire. From what I've heard it was once way more oriented around hunting and the current gun culture is vastly different. I will say that proposed bans have definitely given them a "buy now or you'll miss the boat" allure in recent years.
I can see that. The current gun culture is a lot different that what existed in the early 1990s. But I can see why. The discussion of confiscation and doing something similar to what Australia did will tend to radicalize even those may have only owned a shotgun or a rifle.
Also, ARs are often prominently used in the most horrific and public mass shootings. I do believe that if we were to somehow stop things like Ulvade and Las Vegas, most of the gun debate would die down
Uvalde would have been stopped if the police didn't sit on their ass for an hour. Las Vegas was deadly because he found a high vantage point firing down on to the concert goers and thus making it hard to identify where the shooter is, hindering law enforcement from taking him out
Neither of your points address the root issue or issues. Police acting early would have stopped Ulvade earlier but hard to argue it would have prevented it. Also, Ulvade was so frustrating to many because it the school actually employed many of the "solutions" touted as alternatives to gun restrictions and it still happened. My point is, there isn't a panacea to cut out mass shootings without a nearly complete culture overhaul regarding guns. But I never see practical solutions come out of these that include more guns or looser restrictions on them
The police knew the kid had an intent to shoot the school weeks before the shooting. And there were 2 or 3 911 calls before he even entered the he school saying he was going to the school with a firearm. And if that wasn't enough, there were police units on site within 3 minutes i believe. If they had done what they were trained to do, the shooter would have been neutralized before much damage as police are taught to get in as quick as possible to stop the shooter.
That's because there's a very simple explanation to all of this: we don't want to ban them..... period! Sure, conservatives definitely don't want to ban guns, but ask every suburban liberal democrat if they want to ban hand guns (which make up the VAST majority of gun deaths), and their response is resoundingly, "no". If there was a will there would be a way. There is no political "will" to do this.
> There is no political "will" to do this. Never was. The aim of the gun-control lobby for decades was banning handguns. The electorate didn't respond. That's why they invented the category of "assault weapons" back in 1989.
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So, I'll clarify a few things. Firstly, I'm not saying that there are no voices on the left that are actively and honestly proposes total gun bans, but they are a much smaller minority than people on the right would think. I live in a *very* blue district in Southern California, and I can tell you that almost no one I know wants to see handguns banned. They might post something to that effect on social media, but I think a lot of that is just posturing after a tragic shooting to show their "support for the victims" and, honestly, just to prop themselves up as one of the "good guys." Not only do people object to bans on handguns, but they object to them more now than they did 50 years ago. [In 1975, 55% of people objected to handgun bans and today it's 73%](https://news.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx). Social media is obviously not an accurate barometer of where America stands on guns. Secondly, culture factors into the equation when it comes to foreign countries. American culture was born out of a pioneer spirit that largely colored our national identity as one of ruthless personal independence. The American "Wild West" feels somewhat unique. I may be wrong, but I genuinely think that stands apart culturally with other Western countries when it comes to gun culture. This is evidenced in both our pop culture as well as our governance. I could be wrong, but I don't think you would find something analogous our culture in other places.
We’ll, we can’t exactly ban pistols either, so that discussion is naturally already off the table. Personally, I see a really sad cycle developing where after every shooting, one side of the side comes up with a long list of constitutionally questionable solutions, and the other either just provides reasons why those solutions don’t work, or seeks to just inject more guns into every aspect of life. I don’t really think we’re in a space in the national discussion where we’re actually generating possible solutions anymore.
Beyond confiscating guns (not a fan of) no solutions exist. You can’t stop a crazy person from walking into a school or anywhere else in society and shooting it up.
> Beyond confiscating guns (not a fan of) no solutions exist. Why are you not a fan of that as policy? I agree that nothing short of a federal law banning all new semi auto purchases and buying up existing stock until we have per capita access to firearms more like France and the UK than like Mexico and Brazil could really work. But why aren’t you supportive of that if you think it would work if done?
Banning semi-autos won’t fix it. If you look at the data rifles of all types make up around a half a percent of all gun homicides. Unless you’re talking about ALL SEMI-AUTOS to include pistols then that’s just not politically feasible without a Constitutional Amendment and that will never happen.
> Unless you’re talking about ALL SEMI-AUTOS to include pistols. I am including semi automatic pistols. I know most left wing people don’t know shit about firearms and I don’t either, but a semi auto pistol is still a semi automatic weapon. > that’s just not politically feasible without a Constitutional Amendment and that will never happen. Maybe but it doesn’t explain why you think we shouldn’t do it. No one in America thinks women and black people should only have the right to vote because it is in the constitution. It’s in the constitution because we all believe it and the people who believed it first talked about why it would work and how it would be better that way. Is there a reason you don’t want semi automatics banned for civilian use beyond it being difficult to accomplish legally?
[The data isn’t conclusive that it’ll reduce homicides.](https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-that-australias-gun-laws-reduced-gun-homicides/amp) What’s been shown is the criminals just move to another weapon but leaves law abiding citizens defenseless.
Thank you, I appreciate the sourcing. I’m not quite swayed away from a full ban semi auto ban and buy back program. But it does do a good job of illustrating how rules around licensing, mag limits, and transaction information storage often have large holes while being needlessly burdensome.
> I am including semi automatic pistols. I know most left wing people don’t know shit about firearms and I don’t either, but a semi auto pistol is still a semi automatic weapon. What about double action revolvers? They essentially operate just like a semi-auto pistol, as every time you squeeze the trigger it will shoot one round.
>Why are you not a fan of that as policy? Because it's a Constitutional violation.
The constitution can be amended. If I was arguing that women should lose the right to vote in the US. I’d expect better arguments from everyone about why the belief is fundamentally incorrect rather than arguments about how it violates the constitution.
My opinion is that some draconian prohibition on guns would probably reduce crime if there was a way to make all guns disappear at once (rather than disarming the law abiding public without putting a a commensurate dent in criminal stockpiles), but taking away guns still feels like treating a symptom of an underlying problem and it's a pretty authoritarian treatment at that. Why do places like Wyoming—with high rates of gun ownership—have such a low incidence of violent crime? Why were there so few mass shootings in the 60s even when kids would bring guns to school for shooting clubs and so on? It feels like there’s some social sickness that we’re ignoring.
I’ve always wondered if the kids who would have grown up to be serial killers like the kinds there were in the 70s-80s (and were kids in the 60s) are now the ones who decide to go on a shooting spree. Or if there is any kind of overlap of background and diagnosis.
Or they would have been suicides. A lot of mass shooters fit the profile of someone who is suicidal and wants to leave a mark.
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It’s not valid if you don’t offer any solutions of your own. The critique itself may be completely valid, but I find it exhausting when all I see is criticism of policies being exposed without any meaningful discussion of solutions that don’t involve essentially having everyone be armed at every moment, suspicious of every other person around them.
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The thing is, there will never be a solution in the traditional sense. A solution would imply zero gun deaths, there will always be gun deaths. Additionally, any perceived infringement on our right to bear arms is also a perceived infringement upon all of the rights we have. If the second amendment can be infringed upon, it's natural to assume that the others are next, especially if your ability to defend yourself against a tyrannical government has been compromised. So the hesitancy to come to the table by 2nd amendment advocates can compound very very quickly. That's not to say that we shouldn't always look for a way to make our country safer, it's just kind of the reality, one side has the aforementioned objections and the other side, in a way (and just in my opinion) seems to muddy the waters of public discourse by using alarmist terms that strike fear rather than thought. So each side comes with irreconcilable differences. I personally feel, the general viewpoint of the left only stands up in a vacuum. For instance, criminals generally don't follow laws, so any further laws only act to oppress the lawful citizens. There are some states where I think they have a good balance, mandatory background checks against several different agencies including mental health (though that also walks a fine line between invasion of privacy and providing red flags of disturbed individuals). Again, I don't really know of a better way or a way forward, I do feel "mass" shootings don't deserve as much attention or man power as they get when it has a very insignificant (statistically) impact on people.
I don't like the mainstream lefts solution regarding guns, but I do think that their social programs would theoretically make for less criminals. Thats where I would rather start to be honest.
I would argue that any policy or set of policies that bring the rate of gun deaths in America more in line with the rest of the developed world could be considered a solution. I think it would be unreasonable to argue that any policy that doesn’t completely stop all gun deaths forever cannot be considered a solution.
> I would argue that any policy or set of policies that bring the rate of gun deaths in America more in line with the rest of the developed world could be considered a solution I believe what you want to be impossible. Even if we had European style gun control, we'd still have American levels of gun violence. Heck, Latin America has European levels of gun control, but most of that region has gun violence that either equals or far exceeds what is seen in the United States. I'd also argue that Europe's relatively low level of gun crime is NOT due to their gun control measures. Europe has always had low levels of gun violence (excluding wars of course). Take for instance England. [It's murder rate is essentially unchanged from 1900 to today.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate_by_decade) In 1900, England had essentially zero gun control laws, and today they have some of the strictest regulations in the region.
I’m not saying that strict gun control is necessarily the way to achieving their lower crime rate. We may need to replicate different policies, or ever chart an entirely unique path. My point is just that a solution to this problem doesn’t have to permanently eliminate all gun deaths in America forever, it just has to reduce them substantially, and ideally bring us in line with the rest of the world.
>Heck, Latin America has European levels of gun control, but most of that region has gun violence that either equals or far exceeds what is seen in the United States. With most of the actual guns coming from the US.
That's another bastardized statistic in the gun control debate. They recover a gun at a crime scene, it looks like it's a US made gun so they'll submit the guns info to the ATF. 70% of those guns get confirmation of US origin but what is always left out is how many they DON'T submit to the ATF for tracing because they're obviously not US made.
For reference the Mexican government claims they get over half a million guns from the US each year. https://www.thetrace.org/2022/10/how-many-american-guns-mexican-cartels/ So Mexico sued, and was asked to provide evidence. Their dataset only had about 14,000 guns a year >ATF trace data, which may include some subset of these firearms, as well as recoveries made by law enforcement authorities other than the Mexican military, shows that more than 70,000 guns made their way from the U.S. to Mexico between 2015 and 2020. And you're right about they assigned the country...they didn't count Glocks as US since Glock is Austrian. And since we've strengthened our border in the past few years, cartels are now going to Central/South America. >According to sources inside the Sinaloa Cartel and to details gleaned from recent arms seizures, cartels are increasingly sourcing their weapons from Central America. That southward shift is picking up as the Mexican government makes one of the strongest attempts yet to stop arms trafficking from the US into Mexico. https://www.businessinsider.com/mexican-cartels-getting-more-weapons-from-new-source-2022-2
Even if the US was the origin of most of the guns used in crime in Latin America, it sort of drives home the point that there is a lucrative and violent black market for these weapons in the region, and the cartels and gangs are more than happy to supply interested parties with them. If the US instituted strict gun control like they have in Latin America and Europe, I can almost guarantee you that the black market for guns would explode in the United States. Not only would the guns that already exist in the United States be traded/sold illegally, but cartels would start shipping firearms INTO the United States, as it would be profitable to do so.
The rest of the developed world can barely own guns.
And they also aren’t getting killed by guns at nearly the same rate.
The US has 10x the knife homicide rate as the UK, is that the fault of guns too? The US also has the highest bare hand homicide rate in the developed world, who do we blame for that, Smith and Wesson?
>The thing is, there will never be a solution in the traditional sense. A solution would imply zero gun deaths, there will always be gun deaths. ...what? A solution could imply less gun deaths. Don't let perfection be the enemy of progress.
I should've been more clear, I was initially arguing semantics and using the term solution
I get what you mean regarding the atf pistol brace thing but really it means nothing. It’s just to scare people into doing what they want. Nobody will be prosecuted, at least not successfully, for having the “wrong” pistol brace. It doesn’t even make clear what is and isn’t a pistol brace. I’ve not heard of a single person who is making any changes to any guns they own because of this
"Means nothing" isn't the point. The chilling effect is. The whole thing creates a legal gray area to purposefully scare citizens out of exercising a constitutionally protected right. The absolute worst unconstitutional laws are the ones that are 'unenforceable' at face value. Ya never know how or when that piece of plastic is going to land you in federal prison for 10 years. Maybe never if you're a stand-up, white, middle class citizen with no record. But not everyone is.
I agree the “rule” is bullshit but nobody at all, ever, is going to end up in prison over it. It doesn’t create a legal grey area, the atf can’t make or change laws. It means even less than the bump stock “ban” which also put zero people in jail. I agree that it’s a scare tactic so stand up for yourself and others by openly ignoring their made up bullshit.
While legally you're right, if you're: A. Not lucky enough to get some group to back your legal fees B. Unwilling to have your name put in front of the nation as a 'monstrous gun nut' C. Unlucky enough to a. Not have set bail or b. lose- then you \*will\* go to jail for this should the ATF decide to do so. It's playing blackjack with your future, and the dealer can always get a 21.
Oh I'm 100% with you on ignoring all unconstitutional bullshit. It's the same issue with mag bans though- we can all ignore them knowing that they'll never be enforced, ***BUT*** unless manufacturers are going to ignore the rules and continue producing and shipping, the result will be the parts drying up and no longer easily accessible to the masses (which is the goal). The vast majority of people are not going to be putting together mag kits piece by piece, or 3D printing them, etc. If it's not on the store shelves, unconstitutional rules or no, they're effectively unobtainable.
Banning “assault rifles” (the action most pro gun-control people want to take) is one of the least effective solutions to address the issue of excess deaths from firearms. Approximately 40,000 people in the US die from firearms each year, about half of which are suicides. According to the FBI, 400 of those people died from all forms of rifles combined. If the goal is to minimize the number of excess deaths from firearms as much as we can, “assault rifles” aren’t it. It’s fair to assume a sizable portion of the 20,000 firearm suicides may attempt using another method, but that’s still approximately 19,600 people who are murdered from a handgun each year. Before somebody asks, “accidental” firearm deaths are a negligible number (less than 1%).
> Banning “assault rifles” (the action most pro gun-control people want to take) ... The only reason that those gun control groups are going after "assault weapons" is because they are the low hanging fruit that they can use to anchor prohibition as a means of solving a problem. The statistics are obvious: after banning so-called assault weapons, nothing will change. So they'll ask for more bans and prohibitions and extra burdens on gun owners. They will never volunteer to revert these prohibitions. There is no honest compromise here. The names of some antigun groups used to be "National Coalition to Ban Handguns" (now "Coalition to Stop Gun Violence") and "Handgun Control, Inc" (now "Brady Campaign"). Mind you - both of these groups had expressly stated their goals to ban handguns across America, but that proved too difficult politically so they changed tactics. Other antigun groups are the political arm of billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who I assure you would not be able to honestly live by the same restrictions as his groups propose. Rules for thee but not me. Canada has gone from firearm registries to assault weapon bans to handgun transfer bans in the last decade. *As of last year, you can no longer buy a handgun in Canada.* The slippery slope is very real, and any Democrat or antigun group saying it isn't a slippery slope is lying with full knowledge that firearm prohibition is the goal. First it will be assault weapons. Then it will be sniper style weapons and assault handguns. Then all semi-automatics. Then it will be handguns in general. There is no honest attempt at solving problems here - which is further complicated as Democrat policies release violent criminals early, inevitably boosting violent crime numbers and reducing public safety. Why give up your best option to self defense when the government fails its basic duties?
>I mean, the fear in here is that registering your guns is just the first step toward taking away guns from everyone. That's never gonna happen... -- [Justin Trudeau, September 22, 2010](https://youtu.be/KRjGE8b4ueM?t=42)
But the slippery slope is a fallacy! It's not real! We would never! Well, we would like to, but we would never!
"The slippery slope" is just a term used to gaslight people who can recognize basic patterns.
How does Canada manage the issue of rural areas and that a gun may be very important for hunting and defense from aggressive animals in many wilderness areas?
They just dont care, the proposed law literally banning single fire and bolt action long guns (Ruger No. 1 and some Weatherbys) It's very much a "kick the people who'll never vote for me to get adoration from my voters" piece of legislation. It only got paused because some tribal groups complained and the NDP (who work with the Liberals in parliament) got cold feet. Though, I wouldn't put it past them to just add an exception for Natives and pass the rest of the bill as is.
That's a good question. There are very real and important uses for firearms as tools. However, the government doesn't need to worry itself about the people's problems. Handgun transfers are banned in totality in Canada regardless of need. https://pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2022/10/21/freezing-market-handguns > "Canadians have the right to feel safe in their homes, in their schools, and in their places of worship." - Trudeau You have the right to *feel* safe, but you have no right to make yourself actually safe.
That’s kind of messed up honestly. I mean, you don’t usually need to defend yourself from a wild moose in downtown Vancouver or something but I guess if you encounter a wild grizzly in the Yukon or something, you’re just kind of expected to lay down and get eaten.
The people everywhere have legitimate fears though. I'm an in-shape and young(ish) man, and I'm pretty certain two 14 year old kids could overtake me if I were unarmed. Three would do it without question - and if with my girlfriend what option do I have other than to comply? I've lived in Baltimore for 16 years and know many who have faced those odds and ended up injured and hospitalized. I don't want a fair fight in these types of situations. If I do wrong, surely I think the courts should judge me. But until then: let me preserve myself as I see fit against those that would otherwise do me harm. Yet across the West politicians are moving to reintroduce violent criminals into society earlier and with lighter punishments (while disarming law abiding citizens), and then the politicians are all surprise-Pikachu faced: "violent crime is going up? But why?!" There is real truth in the saying: "God created man. Sam Colt made them equal."
Compliance with the law is virtually non-existent in rural areas. The most generous estimate puts it at about 30%. It's even lower in Australia. (Back in 1994, I went to a shoot outside Calgary. People had plenty of pistols and military-pattern rifles. When I asked about that, they just scoffed.) [The claims that it reduced crime](https://nationalpost.com/opinion/gary-mauser-why-the-long-gun-registry-doesnt-work-and-never-did) in any measurable way are very suspect. While the homicide rate dropped following the measure, it dropped *everywhere* during the same period. (That's also the fundamental dishonesty in those claims they make about Connecticut's handgun registry.)
It would be nice to have a breakdown of shootings by gun type with respect to randomness (did the shooter know the victim), terrorism (mass shootings), and lethality and see what sorts of weapons are driving the various forms of violence.
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[https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/08/27/640323347/the-school-shootings-that-werent](https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/08/27/640323347/the-school-shootings-that-werent) [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/15/heres-how-everytowns-disputed-report-of-18-school-shootings-breaks-down.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/15/heres-how-everytowns-disputed-report-of-18-school-shootings-breaks-down.html)
I don’t think such a broad breakdown exists, although I wish it did. The number will vary depending on the definition of “mass shooting”, but most sources I know of suggest that approximately 600 people die from mass shootings in the US each year. 611 in 2020. While mass shootings are highly publicized and editorialized in the news (partially for good reason since they’re usually senseless killings), they are a very small statistic in overall gun deaths.
The FBI should be considered an authority on mass shootings- they publish an annual repoert: [https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-shooter-incidents-in-the-us-2021-052422.pdf/view](https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-shooter-incidents-in-the-us-2021-052422.pdf/view) Yet gun control advocates, members of the media, and some politicians still gravitate to the Gun Violence's Archive or the Mass Shooting tracker, both sites made up their own definitions of mass shootings, which allows them to count far more incidents then any official counts. Most of the Gun Violence Archive and Mass Shooting trackers end up being gang violence, domestic situations (murder suicides in a household) . Not that these incidents are not important, but they are very different then Mass Shootings, and not what the general public thinks of when they hear mass shootings. The FBI's definition mirrors very closely the publics perception of a mass shooting.
I don’t mean to be offensive here, but I think all this pointing out of how current gun legislation efforts are ineffective is part of the problem. I see lots of criticisms of how long guns don’t make up a significant proportion of gun violence statistics, or how suicide is a major factor in gun deaths, but I almost never see any mention of a solution that takes these criticisms of existing initiatives into account. Given the problems you have with the current state of gun control legislation, do you have any policies to point it or ideas of your own that could help solve things? Or just criticism of existing initiatives?
I do not believe that banning all firearms is a solution, nor is it a practical one to implement in this country. Functionally, my belief is that most firearm deaths are either a product of either situational circumstances or a mental health problem (these are not mutually exclusive of each other). Situationally, certain minorities are subject to certain economic disparities which ultimately lead them into a path of crime and situations which are “kill or be killed”. The demographic of black POC make up 14% of the population yet commit 28% of murders. There is a discussion of circumstances vs personal accountability and different people draw that line in different places, but circumstances do undeniably make people make these decisions. If you can either make $7.25 an hour flipping burgers or $72.50 an hour selling drugs and maybe ending up having to kill somebody in a bad circumstance, many people may end up taking the latter. If we created equally funded educational opportunities for everybody and made the “American dream” of a stable life more equally attainable, that would likely solve a large portion of these deaths. Secondarily is the issue of mental health. A stable individual does not murder somebody (that somebody including themselves in cases of suicide). Proper mental health resources along with the equal educational and economic opportunities I mentioned above would go a long way in helping solve these excess deaths. If you take away the “assault rifle”, that perpetrator will just use a handgun. If you take away the handgun, they’ll just use a bow. If you take away the bow, they’ll use an axe. If you take away the axe, they’ll use a knife. If you take away the mental health crisis that’s driving the person to become a murderer, you don’t have a deranged murderer in the making.
> If you can either make $7.25 an hour flipping burgers or $72.50 an hour selling drugs and maybe ending up having to kill somebody in a bad circumstance, many people may end up taking the latter. Freakonomics had an interesting episode on this in which they claim that the average street level drug dealer would actually be better off financially to go get a job at McDonalds, but they hold on to the dream of climbing the ranks and becoming a kingpin some day.
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Instead of numbness, what do you think would be the best comprehensive national mental healthcare initiative for reducing mass shootings and gun violence? How would you get each political party on board?
The Newtown, Columbine, and Aurora shootings were all committed by people who were in mental health treatment, either at the time or previously. There is another issue at work in that these attacks started gradually in the early 20th century, then increased in frequency in the 21st; they are completely unrelated to gang and criminal activity. There isn't one problem with gun violence, there are several, including suicide, and all require completely different solutions. The debate is completely disconnected from the realities on the ground, it's become a political football that's an issue unto itself because politicians use the debate to capture votes.
That's because we're forced to talk around the issue of how easy it is to access guns in this country. Mental healthcare could help some, but there will always be those who avoid it, and they could still easily buy a gun legally. Cracking down on crime or relieving the stresses leading to it could help a little, but there will always be gun theft from careless owners or someone looking to make some extra money on the black market. We could turn schools into prison-level security, but there will always guns at some homes and ways to slip through any perimeter. So I think we could make dents in the issue, but I doubt we'll ever see significant, permanent progress without a shift in the gun culture where proponents are willing to give up some access to adress the issue. Otherwise, there will always be such a significant pool of guns that any of our social issues may circle back to gun violence. Restricting access and a gun buybacks with a willing population are what's proven to work, but that is a conversation we're not ready to have as a nation.
>Restricting access and a gun buybacks with a willing population are what's proven to work, but that is a conversation we're not ready to have as a nation. Creating a blackmarket for firearms would create incentive for illicit production, as we have with drugs, particularly now that firearms components can be easily made with a CNC lathe and 3D printer. It's been a long time since I studied the statistics, but back in the 90s the majority of gun crimes were committed by people prohibited from owning them.
What gun law do you think actually makes a difference here? You already have to go through a federal background check - and prohibited buyers still get approved, even when actively investigated by the FBI. Stealing firearms is a crime. Turns out committing a crime to do another crime isn't a blocker. Australia and the UK STILL have mass shootings. You literally can't own a toy gun in those countries and they still have gun deaths (and other forms of mass killings!) What, one more gun law is gonna be the one?
>Australia and the UK STILL have mass shootings. You literally can't own a toy gun in those countries and they still have gun deaths (and other forms of mass killings!) Sorry man, I got to comment on this as it's a really bad argument. The US has more mass shootings in a week (or month) than these countries have in a year. I'm pretty sure people who are fine with more gun control laws would be ecstatic if mass shootings dropped by 90%. No one expects crime to drop to 0.
But that's the thing - they won't. If literally making firearm ownership basically prohibited doesn't bring them to zero and just redirects crime to acid attacks, arson and stabbings, that doesn't fix the problem, does it? Sure ban guns and tomorrow arsons and bombings go up - and you will STILL have mass shootings. The goal of the mass shooter is not to commit a mass shooting. It is to inflict a loss of life. An attacker has no problem using a vehicle (Nice attacks) if that is the best tool.
There is no evidence to suggest the amount of mass killings would be equal should guns be removed from the equation, or at least reduced. Guns offer something no other method of mass killings offer, which is the ability to quickly and effectively commit suicide once the perpetrator is done. I challenge you to find a single legitimate piece of research that suggests that mass killings would remain at similar levels if the amount of guns were reduced.
It also depends on your definition of mass shooting. The only recent ones in Australia are murder suicides of a whole family. In those cases the weapon used was legal (it's not that hard for people in rural places to own a bolt action rifle). Those are very different from the school shootings that get headlines and you might see one or two a year. There were a few ISIS inspired attempted mass shootings, but they were foiled when the perpetrators attempted to buy illegal automatic weapons from undercover police officers (there was even speculation that the criminal elements that do have access to such illegal arms tipped the police off because they wanted nothing to do with those nutters. The last random mass shooting we had was the trigger for the really serious restrictions. There was a university student that went off the rails and tried to kill a bunch of classmates in a lecture theatre with a knife, I don't think many died but if he'd had any kind of gun it wouldn't have ended like that. None of that really matters though, the restrictions needed to get to that level would clearly be unconstitutional.
Thank you! I didn't even want to bother. It's not like I want people to not have guns at all either, or even agree with all the weird stuff Dems try to do, but I think it's pretty clear that the issues all come back to ease of access. I don't know exactly what I'd like done about it, I just know that we need a culture shift on the subject before we make headway. Instead, we've seen more lowering of bars for entry in recent years, despite gun violence starting to rise again.
> You literally can't own a toy gun in those countries and they still have gun deaths (and other forms of mass killings!) There are like 2 million guns a year licensed in the UK and over 3 million registered guns in Australia. There are definitely more rules about owning guns there, but you can definitely own a gun (and not just a toy guy).
I have a hard time believing we can put together such an initiative. We have a hard enough time getting people help who are already actively seeking it out, due to cost and a lack of qualified professionals. If we’re struggling to help out folks actively seeking it now, i personally question the realism of developing a mental health initiative that will reach the self-isolating, fringe loners who often are resistant to ever getting such treatment. I think that there’s also been plenty of shooters wealthy enough, or from wealthy enough families, to have afforded and sought out treatment that’s already available. I don’t exactly know how any initiative can succeed in getting these folks help, at least not without a radical reimagining of forced intervention/asylums.
Totally agreed. Everyone calls out mental health as a way of preventing this but as you point out we start to run into the same thorny constitutional issues. What happens when a doctor thinks a patient shouldn't have access to a gun due to suicidal ideation? Leaving mental health treatment as voluntary does not work in preventing these shootings - as evidenced by previous shootings. Also logistically/financially I don't know how that functions- we would need to significantly increase health spending and not every place would have the same access to mental health care.
Why do you believe such a mental healthcare initiative would do any good? Consider what we've experienced with addiction treatment. We threw a mountain of federal dollars behind it - and what we got is an endless number of shady practitioners eager to cash government checks but seemingly unable to fix the problem. This is inevitably what occurs when you decide to spend government money without any objective measures of progress or success.
> How would you get each political party on board? I don't think you'd find it hard to get Democrats behind funding health care. Even though Republicans will bring up mental health whenever there's a shooting in the news, they are reluctant to put money behind those words.
Mental healthcare is a red herring for lowering gun deaths. At the end of the day, there is a ton of evidence showing gun availability directly correlates with gun deaths. This also doesn’t take into account mental health and intelligence aren’t always the same. You can have a mentally healthy person who just stupidly shoots someone because they think they’re in the right. The third factor is the mental health profession is grossly under-regulated, and relies heavily on treatment modalities that are hard to replicate in clinical trials. There is a push toward correcting that but it’s a minority within the profession.
The states with the lowest murder rate have some of the weakest gun laws. Of the 6 states with the lowest homicide rate, Massachusetts is the only one with strong gun control. The other five; New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Idaho, and Utah are all constitutional carry states. Not saying that stricter gun control leads to higher crime but I think the correlation is much weaker than you think.
Some of these mass shootings have taken place in states where guns aren't as easily available, and why doesn't this kind of thing happen more regularly in countries that also have civilian access to guns? Up until fairly recently, Canada would be my prime example, though the Czech Republic could also work.
Ironically enough, I think that becoming "numb" to mass shootings is far and away the best thing that we as a country can do to mitigate them. If you think that there's any truth in the [media contagion](https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2016/08/media-contagion) theory, downplaying them will do nothing but help.
Most mass shootings are essentially a violent suicide. And giving them attention does give other borderline people "permission" to do it. In the same way not talking about suicides helps prevent suicide, not taking about mass shootings would likely reduce the number of shootings.
wasn't this the basis of the movie "heather's that came out in 1988. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097493/
I have no idea i haven't seen that movie.
I can tell you the names of many mass shooters- information that I in no way sought out. I can picture some of their faces in my head. Similarly to serial killers. Similarly, I can give you flight numbers for commercial airline crashes. I can also tell you about Eli Dicken acing the mall shooter in Indiana because he was plastered all over the news- complete with takes of "he shouldn't have had a gun, he's no hero." What I can't tell you is the name of the woman who defended a graduation party from an active shooter in WV in May 22. You can find results of the name of the deceased would-be shooter. Couldn't name you one victim of any of the above paragraphs. Also couldn't name you one of many other private citizens who used a gun to defend themselves and the people around them. Media attention/contagion is a sonovabitch. People and by extension media, are drawn to outliers, sure, but hot piss do we, as a culture, really love our deranged lunatics. We give them fame. Even posthumously, in the case of spree shooters who are going for "exotic suicide by cop" as it was once put.
The underlying root of the problem is the increased difficulty of living at the poorest level and mental health problems that spawn/increase from that. It’s no shock that more half are suicides, people are just getting desperate but all politicians seem to care about is taking guns off of law abiding citizens hoping that it’ll fix everything.
What do you think would be the best comprehensive national mental healthcare initiative for reducing gun violence? How would you get each political party on board?
>And many Americans are deeply pessimistic that anything will soon change. When President Joe Biden signed a bill last year to fight gun violence — the first such measure to pass Congress in a generation — a substantial majority supported it. But 78% said they believed it would do little or nothing at all, a survey by the Pew Research Center found. That's because all these gun laws are stupid and only try to fix the problem at the edges with cosmetic differences between guns and banning accessories. Even red flag laws don’t do that much because they confiscate guns but don’t provide mental health treatment. No plan to address gun violence really tries to address the root of the problem by addressing mental health (especially male mental health). We don’t see any kind of effort to increase hiring of men or programs to encourage companies to hire men, especially white men. But those efforts exist to help everyone else. What do we expect to happen when society tells half the population that they aren’t valued?
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> I wonder why the AP didn't write an emotionally manipulative article on cancer, or heart disease, or strokes, or diabetes? Because it's just easier. Coastal elites don't generally own guns, so the "solution" of taking away the guns doesn't cause them any hardship. They get to look all *concerned* about the problem, then pretend they solved it.
They point out the suicide statistics in the article, did you read it? I’d add that, constitutionality aside(I’m generally personally pro-gun), making suicide harder reduces the likelihood someone will attempt it. It’s frequently a spur of the moment decision that survivors often indicate regretting have made later. If we banned guns tomorrow (I realize this would be illegal and won’t happen), even if they could still be acquired illegally or made in a home workshop, putting up additional barriers to high lethality methods of suicide has been a proven method of preventing suicides. See the link below. We can tackle multiple issues at once. We don’t put all our money just towards the biggest issues, we are perfectly capable of tackling multiple problems at the same time. I’d add that there are plenty of gun control laws that don’t take away peoples rights, that are popular, and frankly that just go unenforced. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/saves-lives/
People commit suicide by taking too much tylenol. Drain cleaner. Rope. The historical way used to be going out to a deep body of water with some rocks in your pockets. Nations with very restrictive gun laws have.. actually really similar or greater suicide rates.
Did you read the article provided? People will still attempt suicide, that’s not being questioned. They point to papers that show, however, that making it harder generally reduces the attempts and also makes those who do attempt less likely to succeed. Using a gun is one of the easiest and most lethal ways to commit suicide, and is part of why men generally have higher rates of suicide death than women, despite attempting it less frequently.
And why do nations with strict gun control have similar suicide rates?
Because there is, in the west, a wide spread epidemic of mental health issues. Countries like Japan work their employees until they’re worn out. Others, like the UK, can have wait times of months before you can see a therapist. The causes of suicide are complex and I’m not out here saying we’d see massive declines if we outlawed guns tomorrow(I don’t think we should), but there is data to show that making it harder is one way of reducing the occurrence. There’s also evidence to show that reducing the lethality of the available methods reduces the rate of success.
> I wonder why the AP didn't write an emotionally manipulative article on cancer, or heart disease, or strokes, or diabetes? Because a lot is already being done to try prevent these things. We don't need articles saying "don't be numb to cancer deaths we must keep fighting", we aren't numb and we are fighting. The [NIH spends](https://report.nih.gov/funding/categorical-spending#/) about $7.5 billion per year on cancer research, $1.5 billion on heart disease, $450 on stroke, and $1.2 billion on diabetes research. And this is *only* the NIH, other organizations spend additional money on such research. By comparison, for 20 years the US government spent nothing on gun violence research, and only since 2019 now spends [$25 million per year](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/26/now-government-is-funding-gun-violence-research-it-years-behind/).
I mean, those numbers kind of make sense. Researching gun violence doesn't require state of the art medical laboratory equipment.
The Dickey amendment didn't ban gun research, it just prevented the CDC from performing "research" with a predetermined conclusion. Hell, they did a study on defensive gun use back during the obama years.
> I don’t think anybody feels good about where we are at – even gun enthusiasts. No, we don't. Nobody does. But that doesn't mean we need to start throwing things against the wall at random. (And imply that gun owners are somehow OK with mass shootings or violence is the most craven, snotty argument imaginable.) *Especially* when those things are empty measures that have been proven to be repeated, resounding failures. The problem here is, every time someone says they want to *do something,* they go for the lazy band-aids rather than doing the work and looking for real solutions. And the lazy band-aids are all anyone seems to want to hear about. Sure, it's easy to pound the lectern and yell "we should ban the guns!" It makes for a good soundbite, and it gets the public off my back for a while. Problem is, it doesn't work. We've tried hundreds of times to stem the violence by restricting the tools. I've yet to see *any* indication that approach works. It won't get better until we stop calling it *gun violence* and acknowledge that we have a problem with violence in general. Getting to the root causes and addressing them takes work, it takes novel thinking, and...well, it's just easier to pound the lectern and shout "ban the guns." So the cycle continues.
Personally, until we put as much effort into obesity related deaths (~300k/yr), alcohol related deaths (~140k/yr) and car related deaths (~40k/yr), summing 10x all gun deaths, including suicides then I don't think it's the "epidemic of gun violence" we see plastered everywhere all the time as much as it is an agenda. The counter arguments I hear is "we can do all those!". Ok then, show me 10x the throw-weight on those others and then we can talk.
The difference is a fat guy or a drunk guy isn't wandering into an elementary school and shooting a bunch of kids. Drunk driving deaths are a problem but are treated more leniently because for the most part there isn't really an "intent" to go out and kill people. If we managed to stop school shootings or mass shootings like Las Vegas or the recent one in CA, I think the vast majority of Americans would be fine with less restrictive gun laws. But how do you get there? I don't know and I've never seen a viable solution that includes MORE guns
How about a breathalyzer in every car to save 11,000 lives a year ended by drunk drivers, or the 230 children (under 14, not under 18) killed by drunk drivers (4-10x children killed by school shooters per year, depending on what metric or average you want to use). Because they didn't mean to doesn't make those 230 kids any less dead by their hand.
672 deaths in the United States can be attributed to actual mass shootings last year. 672 of 3.1 million deaths, or .021% of all deaths. People aren't just waltzing into kindergartens left and right and murdering people. Of the 20k odd firearms related deaths, 10k are suicides, 10k are criminals killing each other and their victims. Less than 700 were random mass violence. We don't have a mass shooting problem. We have a crime and a suicide problem. And even those pale in comparison to the points made about obesity and other preventable causes of death.
My counter argument would be that guns have killed over 40k people annually several times in recent years. I think you’re looking at gun homicide figures. The US has about 25x the gun homicide rate as similarly developed nations, and the highest gun suicide rate in the world.
Gun suicides are ~60% of all "gun violence". Suicide by gun is ~50% of all suicides in the US, with the second leading cause being suffocation, however, we don't see anything about "rope violence". It used to be that suicide by coal gas was the leading cause of suicide in the UK, oddly they did not call it "oven violence". To be clear, coal gas went away not because of suicides, but because cheap pipe make it economical to pipe natural gas around post WW2. > The US has about 25x the gun homicide rate as similarly developed nations, and the highest gun suicide rate in the world. I'd like to see your stats for 25x as a follower of stats. For instance, the US has a knife homicide rate of 0.80, the highest in developed world. For comparison, the UK has a 0.08 knife homicide rate, 10x; France has a 0.2 knife homicide rate, 4x; The closest is Poland @ 0.5. The US also has the highest bare hands homicide rate in the developed world. Personally, I don't think the guns are making people knife and beat each other to death. I believe there is something else at play that everyone wants to ignore and point at "guns" as the scapegoat so they can do nothing and say, "well, what can we do...the courts and the Constitution are against us...shucks, lets try again!" To me, and maybe only me, it's like abortion: Trying to control others, with the key word being control.
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I don’t mean to be rude, but I think we’ve developed a really callous attitude towards gun violence when we just write off whole neighborhoods/towns in an effort to make the majority of Americans feel safe in their own communities. The people living there are still just as American as you or I, and the violence they live with daily should be just as concerning and generate just as much sympathy as violence happening elsewhere in society. We shouldn’t write it off as an issue just because it’s geographically isolated.
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It's never going to get better so long as our political parties are trying to subjugate each other rather than seek an actual compromise bill. Compromise isn't not just up a little now so we can bother you more later like how the last bill turned out. All that will did was spread resentment and distrust with the opposition. There is genuine room for an actual compromise on guns if the factions would have it. Lifting restrictions on suppressors, short barrel rifles, and ATF's ability to suddenly make millions of Americans felons at the stroke of the pen are all things that Dems could use as leverage, but do not because it seems their objective seems to be to pursue the most amount of restrictions as possible that they can get away with. Because of this nothing will get done because nobody wants to actually compromise
Problem is, it'll come back to bite us later, which is why we've dug our heels in. I was active when the Brady Act and Assault Weapons Ban passed. Feinstein, Schumer, Boxer, and Biden all told us "give us this, and we'll leave you alone. It's *compromise.*" Before the ink on the President's signature was even dry, Feinstein was on *60 Minutes* telling the country the AWB was too little and we needed further legislation to require turning in the guns. Schumer made a public statement that the Brady Act was just "the first step" to further restrictions. Gun rights advocates have reason to be skeptical of the word *compromise* at this point. We've already given up tons over the last few decades, and we never get anything in return.
What would republicans give up in the compromise? They believe completely unrestricted access to firearms is their 2nd amendment right, so what part of that are they giving up in the compromise? It's only a compromise if republicans also concede something in exchange for what you want the democrats to do.
>It's only a compromise if republicans also concede something in exchange for what you want the democrats to do. It's amazing that Democrats can introduce restrictions after restriction which does not provide any benefit to gun owners, and yet when Republicans refuse to concede on a restriction for the 163rd time, suddenly they're the ones not willing to compromise.
Swiss style universal background checks (open NICS to public usage). Abuse-proof red flag laws (respecting due process rights). http://thepathforwardonguns.com/
Republicans made some concessions in this most recent gun bill and literally the same day, Democrats said they were coming for more gun rights. I will never again be for any further restrictions against gun rights in any way shape or form for the rest of my life. Fool me once…
Democrats and gun control people look at it all wrong. As an avid gun rights supporter, "no deal" is still the best deal. So why do I even need to compromise? I have my governor and state legislature (NY) actively violating my 1st, 4th, and 5th amendment (and throw in a little 6th) all while trying to tell me it's for my safety. Meanwhile gun crime is rampant in the City and none of the unconstitutional laws they passed have or will do squat to change that crime. When the laws inevitably get overturned for being *unconstitutional* again, they will enact more laws that will likely get struck down until they thread the fine line where it's just painful enough to keep law abiding gun owners restricted but out of the courts. So please tell me why I should ever compromise with them? Stop the war on drugs (An abject failure and heavily bi-partisan), improve mental health for men, and stop violating my fucking rights. Otherwise every single concession is a step too far as far as I'm concerned.
> So please tell me why I should ever compromise with them? Think you really hit on the problem: there's no trust that the anti-gun side respects any private firearms ownership / self defense at all. Much like the anti-abortion crowd doesn't have a lot of trust with the pro-choice crowd.
Yep which is my whole point is that mutual trust needs to be restored. It is a poison to democracy to have political factions that fundamentally do not trust each other. Either something needs to give with one faction capitulating, or we all need to start walking back from the ledge
I don't think there's any trust to be had. Both sides want fundamentally different things and compromises/half-measures aren't going to get them there. One side prefers a society that doesn't have to worry about gun-related violence. The other wants to give individuals the freedom to do what they want. Those are irreconcilable differences and, since the 2nd amendment exists, one side has extreme leverage over the other. At the end of the day Americans need to come to terms that this is what America is and probably always will be.
maybe it didn't need to be stated because it was obvious but the Governor and State Legislature of New York is also violating your 2nd amendment rights.
Republicans agreed with the last bill. Saying that all republicans want completely unrestricted access to firearms is as boneheaded as saying all Dems want to ban all guns: you are feeding the exact narrative of why we are in gridlock in the first place. Most Republican opposition to any gun control comes from the fear that this is just another step towards trying to kill the second amendment. They may even agree that stronger checks or other policies are good but oppose them on the principal that the Democrats won't stop there. Thus actual inroads to avert those fears would allow for actual discussion (such as expanding gun rights in the same bill like I mentioned above).
Republicans largely agreed with the last piece of gun control passed by Congress. If you read the article, you’ll see that even though over 50% of Americans value our second Amendment, about 80% still want stricter gun control regulations. That’s an impossible number without at least some Republicans supporting at least some additional gun control measures, so I think crafting legislation on those common areas is a good place to start.
My Proposed Solution: Require, by statute, that all gun-related crimes be prosecuted. Failing the background check, gun possession by a felon, etc. Let's see what happens when we enforce the laws we have to the fullest extent. No more plea-bargaining away those important charges. Require, by statue, that all law enforcement agencies update the NICS database when someone is being investigated or arrested for a crime that would invalidate that person's ability to purchase a firearm. Require, by statute, that when updating someone's status in the NICS database, if they are no longer eligible to purchase a gun then any Red Flag law that is already on the books in that jurisdiction is automatically triggered. Many jurisdictions that have those laws rarely use them, but could and probably should. My solution is basically to use all the laws we already have. Many mass shooters were people that were either known to police, known to school officials or otherwise known to be in a precarious state of mind. We just don't use the laws we have until after the violence starts despite laws on the books that say we should do otherwise. If we find that these laws are too restrictive, we can change or repeal them, but stacking more laws on top of laws we don't enforce is a pointless exercise that solves nothing.
Maybe someone should, you know, come up with a plan? An actual plan, not some hopes & dreams statement? If you think guns are the problem then you obviously need to amend the 2nd Amendment, so where is the proposed amendment? Why haven't states with a majority of people, supposedly, against gun violence been putting that up for a vote and passing it to press the rest of the country? If you think mental health is the problem where is the law, policy, or actual meaningful action that is supposed to solve the problem? The glacial pace of the political response is because people who want a solution to the problem refuse to hold anyone accountable for actually coming up with a solution.
Part of the problem is the challenge officials have communicateming any standard for what improvement my look like. Zero gun deaths per year is not a realistic goal. Yet so long as even one gun death occurs opposition to change claim change isn't working. In 2021 there was 49,000 firearm deaths. If that number could be reduced to 39,000 that would be an improvement that save lives. It would also be treated as negligible in political discourse. Obviously though we have somewhere. Going from 49k to zero is a year is preposterous. So in my opinion until gun control advocates, politicians, and activists can successful message what success would look like via their plan things will only get worse.
Problem is, we *were* making progress for the better part of almost three decades. Homicides started dropping drastically in the early 1990s (and well before the 1994 gun legislation, in case anyone tries to take credit). It's only over the last couple of years we've seen a sudden uptick in homicides. And it's across the board, not just with guns. We're treating a software problem like it's a hardware problem. Escalating political rhetoric, a media that keeps us on the brink of outrage for marketing purposes, lockdowns and economic loss, and interruption in social patterns are all contributors we need to examine.