What provision in the House bills on gun safety would have prevented any of the mass shootings in the last 20 years?
Asked by
crazyguy (
3207
)
March 25th, 2021
As usual, Congress is up in arms over the latest mass shootings.
The feeling, with Biden in the White House, is that if the Senate can take up and approve the bills, Biden will sign them.
However, before that happens, it is worth asking and answering my question: Is there any provision in either bill which would have prevented any of the mass shootings in the last 20 years? A corollary to the question is: If not, then why bother?
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151 Answers
Response moderated (Writing Standards)
You’re not really asking, but here. I did a quick Google search and found this for you. I’m not vouching for the accuracy of this article, but it seems to directly address your question by talking about types of legislation that gun-control advocates support.
@crazyguy As usual? Name one time in 27 years that Congress was sufficiently up in arms enough to pass any law to curb gun violence.
And Obama at least had the stones to try and break through the ridiculous issue. He failed, but he wasn’t weak bellied about it. Congress betrayed the country, as usual
Why bother? Because doing nothing or next to nothing doesn’t seem to be working.
Tell me, how many instances do you remember, where a mass shooting was committed using an actual machine gun? Or rocket launchers and hand grenades?
None of these are legal to own without going through some serious bureaucratic hurdles.
Imagine the situation where it was not only legal to own, but also to openly drive around in a modified Toyota Hilux, with a repurposed, and freely available on the open market, Anti Aircraft Autocannon mounted on the back.
I haven’t read what is proposed in those bills, or heard about their contents, but from the top of my head I would say that had there been freely, easily, accessible mental health care in your country, there possibly could have been a bit fewer shootings?
@Tropical_Willie Your list of shootings in England over the past 30 years that can only be counted on one hand—has not been updated since September 27th. That was SIX MONTHS AGO. There could have been hundreds of thousands since then.
I think you mixed your Englands and your USA’s.
@Tropical_Willie as a Brit I have to admit that Wikipedia’s page is missing a few Brit mass shootings.
There’s also the 2010 Whitehaven shooting and 1996 Dunblane massacre off the top of my head.
But you’re right it doesn’t happen often. The other thing to consider is that when it does happen it is usually with weapons that have a relatively low rate of fire. Look at the 2017 Las Vegas incident. Over 1000 rounds were fired in less than 10 minutes. The British army has carried out whole wars without discharging that much ammo. Mainly because we can’t afford it but still.
Okay show me the 100 of mass shootings since September 27th @Yellowdog Or ten or twenty.
You are missing something. We’re not even 13 weeks into the year and over a hundred mass shooting in USA !
You like going to funerals and think it is okay the randomly gun down people ??
Yes I know @Lightlyseared, a few missing mass shootings in the list but list includes shooting from over FORTY years ago !
@Smashley After almost every shooting that receives massive publicity, Congress does get up in arms about some sort of gun control. It happened after Sandy Hook, it happened after Orlando, and it is happening after Boulder. However, my question is: just what is in the bills that the House passed that would prevent a repeat? And, believe me, I am as anti-gun as the rest of you, probably even more so.
@flutherother If you pass a law that does next to nothing to reduce the number of guns in this country, isn’t that like doing nothing? All this noise that we generate after every mass shooting, and laws that get proposed will not stop even that shooting.
@ragingloli I am not sure if you answered my question. I am all for sensible gun control; but proposing and passing legislation with no means in it to actually reduce the number of guns in this country will not solve the problem.
@rebbel Mental health is one side of the coin. The other is easy availability of guns. People will get crazy; they do in every country. Only in this country can crazy people act out their crazed fantasies.
@Yellowdog @Lightlyseared I have not researched actual comparisons. However, it has to be clear to everybody that we have a tremendous number of mass shootings, more than one would expect in a country of under 400 million folks.
The British statistics are accurate.
I can remember when British cops didn’t even carry guns. Just batons—and whistles, and yelled, “stop”
Maybe its not politically correct, but the overwhelming majority of gun violence in the U.S.A. is gang related, or ganglike. This is a culture that doesn’t exist in significant numbers in the United Kingdom.
@Yellowdog While I agree with you that ,most gun violence in the US is gang-related, a significant chunk happens because guns are so easy to get. I remember attending a party at a respectable couple’s house. Unbeknownst to us, the couple had a somewhat rowdy son. The son invited some of his friends to the party but omitted others. Lo and behold, one of the spurned friends showed up with a gun!
You have to look at the world, England is not your only yard stick. We’ve never had a mass shooting in my country. Never by a civilian lunatic that is….We do have random shootings but that don’t even reach double figures in a year and they’re never mass….The reason is, gun licenses here are not given based on eligibility, they are given based on NECESSITY. You can be a rich and famous person here but if they don’t think you need a personal gun license, they don’t issue it. Thousands of millionaires here have tried their luck applying for a license but have failed….because the rules are very stringent. This means, very less people in my country of 1.3 billion own licensed guns. Those who own are completely vetted (even psychologically) and so, they don’t go shooting random people. Maybe it is time for you all to look the world…countries that DON’T have civilian mass shooting lunatics problems and find your solutions…
@AK
“This means, very less people in my country of 1.3 billion own licensed guns.”
Do you live in China or India?
I rarely agree with the op on anything. But this is the rare exception. If you live in a country where there are firearms sufficient to arm every man, woman and child as well as their pets, people are going to be shot accordingly. When guns accumulate to the point that any lunatic might acquire one, no law is going suppress the mass shooting. If guns were outlawed this instant, the shootings would still escalate for decades. In fact, by now, there is NO WAY to cull near term rise in mass shootings. Some decrease might be achievable in decades to come if the manufacture of weapons and particularly AMMUNITION were outlawed and draconian confiscation of weapons ruthlessly enforced. Otherwise, our pathetic and virtually nonexistent mental health policies guarantee ever growing future carnage the rule as surely as the sun will rise in the Esst.
None. “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.” No truer words were ever spoken!
@kritiper For once, I am going to be left of you. I think legislation is required, but not just to placate the citizenry until the next mass shooting.
When guns are outlawed, it won’t make a difference for generations. As with most of our problems, it’s too late for this country and as a consequence, probably for the rest of the world as well. The attempt when it comes will be equivalent to the war on drugs, with comparable results. When guns are outlawed, everyone will STILL have one. As things stand, it’s easier for the average individual to quickly avail themselves of a gun than it is a bouquet of flowers.
@Yellowdog the overwhelming majority of gun violence in the U.S.A. is gang related
No question there. The discussion here is about mass shootings. Most mass shootings have been done by young, lone white guys
@Strauss Most mass shootings have been done by young, lone white guys who are not white supremacists.
@crazyguy who are not white supremacists
No argument there. But that statement adds nothing to answer your original Q.
“lone white guys” – if only “militia” could be defined as a group of people who meet regularly and abide by agreed-upon rules then the 2nd Amendment could be used.
I’m a lone white guy, and I never shot anyone.
@Yellowdog Which proves what ? ?
We’re talking about mass shooting and you’re talking what? Not mass shootings by you.
It proves Chicken Little was right.
@Yellowdog – if you a lone white guy “having a bad day”, being in a group of law-abiding gun owners would help prevent you from going on a shooting spree. They would probably tell you to go shoot something else.
Not a one. There are already laws on the books about the hoops you have to jump through to buy a gun, to carry a gun, to sell a gun. There are laws against minors buying guns. There are laws involved in just about every aspect of gun ownership. And here’s the kicker…there a lots of laws about where a gun can be carried, against discharging firearms in many areas, and murdering people. Yet none of these laws stopped any of the shootings.
But again…let’s be completely honest about gun deaths in this country. Most are suicides. About ⅔ of gun deaths are suicides. There is a large chunk that are gang related and involve illegally obtained guns (the laws didn’t stop them). There are police shootings. There are accidental shootings. And the smallest section of all is the random shootings with the purpose of actually killing many people. In fact the country gets up in arms about those horrid AR-15’s, but there are about 10x more murders by knife than by rifle.
The entire discussion is ludicrous.
Apathy much ?
People are dying, 100 plus in just mass shooting so far this year.
I’ll quote your Trump leader, “It is what it is” and people just keep dying . . . . Pandemic, mass shooting, suicides, gangs shootings. . . .
There are over 35,000 vehicular deaths each year. The flu kills tens of thousands each year. The CDC tells us that 123 people die from suicide every day. People die every day in a thousand different ways. My point is that (a) the laws already exist and are promptly ignored so passing more laws is not the answer and (b) the number of deaths in mass shootings is relatively minute on the grand scheme of things.
If you want another opinion, I would suggest the media (and the Dems) are extremely biased and selective about their trigger points. There was a shooting in Chicago on the 15th that killed 2 and injured 13. Yet you don’t hear a peep about it because it was all gang related. Why is that…that you don’t hear this one being screamed about? Is it that the people that were killed aren’t important? Or is it that it doesn’t fit the narrative?
100 mass shootings this year is preventable !
How many thousands of mass shooting have occurred in England the last 50 years ? (They didn’t but the USA they did.)
All your points have nothing to do with stopping mass shooting only that people are dying “It is what it is . . . ” to quote someone you love.
35,000 vehicular deaths each year are preventable. And your argument that the mass shootings are preventable still doesn’t answer the question of what provisions of the house bill would have stopped them. I have already stated that there are a great number of laws already on the books that were completely ignored to do those shootings. Adding more laws isn’t the answer. They can be ignored just as easily. Meanwhile all you have is an impassioned cry that they can be stopped!! Stop being part of the problem and start being part of the solution. Or at least enter reality enough to understand that people do die.
The thing about the gun laws and gun culture in the US is that both help to put the option of shooting-up people into the minds of young adults who otherwise not choose that option. The availability and constant talk about 2nd amendment rights means the idea of guns is constantly present and being pushed. Here’s a map of gun deaths. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/firearm.htm
I’ve lived in gun oriented cities and in cities that aren’t, and by far I feel safer in the cities not full of guns and not constantly talking about guns. I completely understand the argument to own a gun to protect oneself, I support that right, but you don’t need a machine gun for that, and you don’t need to talk about your guns to all of your friends and their kids all of the time. You don’t need to post your gun on social media to brag about it or your great time at target shooting today.
Guns in a city is a snowball. Once people have them everyone feels they need to have them. It’s difficult to roll back.
So, you don’t need a direct line from stopping specific shooting events, it’s much more abstract than that. There are many many examples of people getting shot because the gun was easily available. Sometimes that’s a gun the parents owned. Why did the parents own a gun? Because everyone in the area owns guns. Just part of the culture. Government purposely tries to shift culture all of the time.
@JLeslie I agree. There a a great number of things that put the illegal use of guns into the minds of people. Many video games, movies, TV shows, songs…all glorify gun violence. The best way of dealing with gun violence, at least as I see it, is not to try passing more laws about gun ownership, but rather looking at the things that encourage gun violence. Probably more than 99.9% of all gun owners are responsible people that don’t have the urge to use their guns unless they have to or to use them only for recreational purposes. These are the same people that any gun control laws would target…the people that aren’t the problem.
A friend of mine wrote:
Once AGAIN, the gun killings issue, short version:
GOP: “Guns are not the problem, Criminals and mentally ill people are the problem.”
Dems: “Okay, let’s require a background check for every gun purchase, so we can prevent the easy purchase of guns by criminals and the mentally ill.”
GOP: “NO!! That would be a denial of our 2nd Amendment rights!”
You left out the PRIMARY “thing” that puts the “illegal use of guns into the minds of people”. And that is their ubiquity, plain and simple.
Very interesting thread. Some of the justifications are ludicrous to say the least. One of them goes to say that number of deaths due to mass shooting are ‘relatively minute’ and that people should know that they die in other ways too….commendable point, if you ignore the fact that there are countries where there are ZERO (less than minute) mass shootings. Maybe those countries should slowly induce ‘minute’ mass shootings for their own well being…..lol…
Learn from countries that don’t have mass shooting epidemics people. They’re doing something right. Put your egos aside and learn from them, even if it means copying their laws. That is how nations progress. Staying stagnant with archaic laws is a recipe for disaster….and history is witness to it. Every major civilization met its end because people were not ready to learn anymore….don’t go the same way, learn to change.
@AK Learning from other countries might be a bit harder than it seems. There are a number of contradictions there. Take Honduras for example. They rank 88th out of 178 countries world wide with the number of guns/person in the world. There are about 1.17M guns privately owned. They require a license to buy or own a firearm (all firearms) and ammunition. Limits are put on the number of firearms a person may own. Background checks are mandatory. And they have to re-apply for their licenses every 4 years. Gun ownership is not guaranteed by their constitution. Yet they have one of the highest murder rates in the world. Then we go to Switzerland. They rank 22nd out of 178 countries in the world for guns/person in the world. There are about 2.8M guns privately owned. Licenses are required for gun ownership for most firearms (there are exceptions where they aren’t required). Background checks are mandatory. They have to re-apply for their licenses every 5 years. Right to gun ownership is guaranteed by law. And they have one of the lowest murder rates in the world. Populations are similar, though with a much smaller area, Switzerland has a much higher population density. So what is the difference? On the surface, they are very similar in their approach. So what do we take away? I see that there are other factors that play into things.
As for the mass shootings being relatively minute, they are. When you look at all the gun deaths in the country each year, they are very small. Even in number of lives. But in each and every one of those mass shootings, laws were being broken. In every one. So to say “let’s pass more laws and that will stop these shootings!” is the ludicrous viewpoint here. To look at the inputs that made these people believe that it was acceptable or cool or justified to go on a shooting spree…that is the responsible tactic. How many rappers have claimed to have killed someone or sing about killing someone? Many of them, and they are glorified for it. How many movies show guns being used by both heroes and villians? Many of them. And both are made famous for it. How many video games exist where killing is the point of the game? Many of them. And not only are they considered “cool” to play, but they are targeting young people. So with a 24/7 inundation of gun violence being glorified, is it any wonder that people think it is okay or somehow acceptable to shoot a bunch of people? That they will somehow become famous because of it?
Let me throw a few names at you: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Dylann Roof. Adam Lanza. Nidal Hassan. James Holmes. Know any of these names? Columbine, Charleston, Sandy Hook, Ft. Hood, Aurora CO. All these names are well known. These people got their fame from killing a bunch of people. Now, let me toss this name out there for you: Thomas M. Lane III. No? Never heard of him? How about Chardon High School in Ohio? He was the shooter that killed 6 and injured several more. But the families of the slain came together and agreed that they did not want this guy blasted all over the news, somehow glorifying him. He faded into obscurity. He did not go on to inspire others.
The point here is that there are reasons for these shootings that have nothing to do with guns, really. The gun is the tool. The action is the crime. And in every case…EVERY ONE…a law is purposely being broken and the perpetrators don’t care. So passing more laws will not stop these shootings.
@seawulf575 Brilliant post, as always. I love the way you get facts and then direct them. I wish others would follow your example, even if the message is not to their liking.
I for one am anti-gun. Even though I am a rightist on most matters, I have chosen to be anti-gun. However, I am not in favor of more laws, each of which makes it harder to acquire guns legally. I have come to the conclusion that the real solution to the problem is voluntary reduction of the number of guns. Voluntary because the alternative will not work, no matter what Beto tells you.
@AK You have descended to the argument that zero is better than a small number when it comes to gun deaths. That is what is called a truism; it is obviously true. However, this thread tries to address a much larger problem. Picking at the edges will not help in any meaningful way.
How did Rico Marley get this amount of weaponry?
Surely some of the provisions would apply.
Wow @seawulf575 . That is an elaborate spread of information, albeit disingenuous. Mass shootings don’t happen in Honduras or Switzerland. Murders happen. Murders happen everywhere, with or without guns. Don’t try to conflate mass shooting and murders….that’s ludicrous IMO. Let’s talk about India. That’s where I’m from. We have ZERO mass shootings. I can’t give you names of people who shot others in public…because we have ZERO of them. Murders happen here. Shootings happen here but they are private or gang related. No mass shootings. Can you take away anything from that? Let me give you some pointers (which I;ve given right here too, as another answer). Gun licenses DON’T get issued here, unless there’s a compelling necessity. If the license issuer is convinced that the person needs protection that is above and beyond what’s offered by the police and private security, only then does he/she issue a gun license. A handful of supreme court judges, national politicians and billionaire business magnates manage to land a gun licence here in India. Rest assured, they don’t go on public shooting sprees. The rest of us just don’t get it. No guns for us. Which means, no guns floating in the market. Each city has ONE gun shop that sells licensed guns. Maybe two at most….. Tracking guns is easy. There is very less chance of a lunatic getting hold of a gun. So no mass shootings. If a mass thing occurs, it is only done by terrorists who infiltrate into our country from other places. Even that is few and far between. Take what lessons you want to from this example. We’re a democracy too, thriving and throbbing. We rely on armed forces and police to enforce law and order. We don’t have any plans to guard ourselves against zombie attacks or purported enemies because we KNOW that our armed forces will be there to take care of that contingency. Your country is more stable and certainly more developed than mine. It is already the strongest military power and that status is set to continue for another 100 years at least. No one will ever attack you and even if they do, it will be crushed before the threat pops up near your borders. What are you civilians guarding against man? You think you can handle a threat that your mighty army can’t? It is just an excuse. So, sorry. That elaborate number crunches doesn’t wash.
@crazyguy Zero mass shootings is the norm in many countries friend, not just mine. I understand that you are constitutionally given the right to bare arms but that was written when your country was…wild? Can I say that? you are the most developed country on earth now, man. You don’t need archaic laws. Either change them or stop clinging onto something that meant something 300 years ago.
@AK Honduras has had mass shootings. There are others and gun violence is a daily thing To claim otherwise is being disingenuous on your part. And here’s a clue: a mass shooting in this country is anything that includes 2 or more victims. And it doesn’t exclude gang related shootings.
And to put things in perspective a little for you, your disingenuous claims exclude the non-personal killings. I give you the Naxal attack in the Darbha valley and the Srinagar attack as two examples. Yes, armed terrorist groups committing mass shootings in India. But that is the sort of thing we DON’T have in this country. So maybe you need to clean up your own house on that front. Face it, mass shootings are mass shootings. And by trying to exclude some you are unwittingly proving my point. There are REASONS why shootings happen. The guns didn’t grow legs and start shooting people on their own. People obtained the guns and planned to take violent action. And that purpose…the logic that makes a person think that is okay…that is the real elephant in the room.
As for why people want to own guns in this country, I can come up with a whole list of reasons. They range from collecting to sport to personal protection to protection against tyranny. And there are some that obtain the guns illegally, getting them to commit crimes. And it is these sorts of people that build the need for personal protection.
@seawulf575 I think you’re accustomed to people plinging their likes on your pseudo theses here and maybe that’s why you’re still trying to conflate things. Like I said earlier, it doesn’t wash with people who use their brains. TERRORIST attacks are not the same as mass shootings. One group is politically motivated (right or wrong, it doesn’t matter here), trained to shoot and kill and the other group is lunatics. I don’t have to clean my house because I don’t have armed civilian lunatics running amok here. The attempt to deride ‘my house’ or the fact that mass shootings are NOT terrorist attacks, proves MY point of people not even trying to change with times. Clean my house? Why should I? My Govt does it. I am under no illusions of what I’m capable of with or without a gun…and I don’t need to either. I don’t have a house filled with armed lunatics man and that’s the point here with the question…or have you forgotten? Naxals, terrorists are not my business and I don’t plan to make it my personal business because I have an able govt and a capable army doing that. Why does that even come here into the picture. You are just throwing things in the air and hoping some would stick and rile me man…
Honest to God, the lack of cognitive discernment here is stupefying. It is flabbergasting that people would clamber through reams of digital data and research, searching for an explanation as to why the murder rate should be higher in Honduras than Switzerland. I mean, just reading this kind of stuff makes your jaw drop. What sort of data would a sensible man require to explain why gun deaths per capita in Honduras exceed those in Switzerland? If you are unable to understand the absurdity in any assumption regarding equivalence of the places, you are too hopeless for conversation.
@AK are you purposely missing the point? Terrorist attacks are exactly the same as mass shootings. Do many people die from gun fire? Huh. So what’s the difference? Are you trying to say that those killed don’t matter as much because those that shot them were better trained? Or are you trying to say that it doesn’t fit the narrative so you don’t want to talk about it? It does fit my narrative since those political motivations are just another example of something that drives them to kill many others. It makes them believe they are somehow right or okay for doing it. The same as some normal civilian that runs amok. There is something that makes them believe that they are somehow right or they will gain something from these actions. In both cases, these are the actions of mad men (or women). They are actions outside the established laws. Passing more gun control laws wouldn’t stop those terrorists, would they? There is no difference in reality. Someone takes a gun and shoots many other unarmed people. It is against the law in both cases, isn’t it? And I understand you, personally, are not going to set yourself against the terrorists. But does that stop you from calling on your government to do something about them? Or do you just not care about the lives they take?
“Terrorist attacks are exactly the same as mass shootings”
No they aren’t, they are politically motivated. Whack jobs with a semi-automatic shooting up a school in Connecticut is a mass shooting.
@JLeslie I agree 100%. How can anybody not agree with you? What you have described is exactly what has happened in the past, and will happen again, every time there is a shooting that attracts nationwide media attention.
However, thorough background checks can only protect against what a person has been, not what s/he may become. And many crazy people are good at gaming the system.
@crazyguy Nothing is ever perfect. We can only do our best.
Response moderated (Personal Attack)
The only difference, @AK , is whether a person has been radicalized by hate ( “brainwashed” ) or mentally unbalanced/ Both involve being mentally off because of changes in the brain.
The mass shooter and the terrorist both feel their actions are justified, and don’t think. They don’t usually even care about their own lives. They think of themselves as martyrs and usually wish to go out with the most casualties possible,
The origin of how they got that way is the only difference.
@JLeslie Depending on clerical people to pick up warning signs in a background check is so silly that it does not pass the smell test. I would support more draconian laws where a person has to justify his/her need for a gun, similar to many other countries. Given the Second Amendment, such laws will of course be challenged in court. However, I cannot support more of the same, because the same has not worked in the last 50 years.
@Tropical_Willie and @AK what is the real difference between a terrorist and a mass shooter? They both use a gun to kill a bunch of people. To say one reason is somehow different than another is crazy. You are purposely trying to avoid the reality of the situations. I will ask you both: is it okay to shoot innocent unarmed people? No? Okay, then let me ask: is it okay to shoot innocent unarmed people if you have a political motivation to do so? If the answer is yes, then you need to check your morals. If the answer is no, then there is no difference between the loony shooters we have had and those that call themselves terrorists.
Let me give you a couple other examples. Nidal Hassan shot a bunch of unarmed people in Ft. Hood. He claimed a political viewpoint for doing so. So by your logic, why did we count that as a mass shooting? Or Dylann Roof shooting up a church in Charleston. His rationale was that he was a white supremacist and a Neo-Nazi. Both of those are politically motivated groups. So by your reasoning, his actions would be a terrorist attack and should not be counted as a mass shooting. MANY shootings could be viewed as being politically motivated and should not be counted as mass shootings…by your reasoning. So do you want to discount them from the list? It will make the claims of mass shootings shrink significantly and would make the cries for gun control even more ludicrous.
Response moderated (Unhelpful)
This endless drivel over laws and their utility is a stupid waste of time and denial of the obvious. The conversation about guns is about a simple failure to face up to common sense. There is nothing more stupid than an inability to acknowledge the difference between a lunatic and a LUNATIC WITH A GUN. Until you are prepared to accept that there IS a difference, there is little point in you discussing guns. The next step is to acknowledge that laws or no laws, we are up to our chins in guns—ANYONE can get one. Is this true or not??? Take your time. Then, take the 2 facts, and extrapolate on the reasonable predictions for the future. What do YOU see ahead? There can be few logic problems as basic or SIMPLE as THIS one.
@stanleybmanly Yet lunatics have caused damage with knives, cars/vans/trucks, homemade bombs and any number of other ways. Take a look at the lunatics that created and carried out the “knock-out” game. Is that the action of a sane person? Yet when you take the gun out of the equation, the lunatic is still a lunatic. And they still do things to others up to and including kill them.
And the question specifically asked which provisions of the House bill on gun safety would have stopped the shootings. The answer is very simple…none of them. In every case…and even in the types of cases I listed where guns weren’t used…laws were broken. But in the gun cases, there were laws about guns illegally obtained, guns that were carried illegally, guns being used or possessed by minors, trespassing laws, assault laws, attempted murder laws, murder laws and probably dozens of others that were broken. So when a “lunatic” decides they want to hurt someone or kill someone, it doesn’t matter what the laws say. So passing more laws is just. plain. stupid. The only people you are impacting are the law abiding citizens and they aren’t the problem.
@seawulf575 I agree 100%. Yet the US is the leader in the world in terms of guns per capita, and gun killings per capita. To me, it is clear that something needs to be done. However, the typical Democratic do-nothing laws are not the answer.
@crazyguy I will agree that we lead the world in gun ownership and total number of privately owned guns in the world. Yet when it comes to Gun Homicides per capita, we are actually just about the middle of the world. I don’t usually use WaPo as a source, but in this case they were just regurgitating someone else’s table of data.
That being said, I have no problem taking action to minimize gun homicides. But passing more bogus laws is not the answer since most of the gun homicides are done by gangs and other criminal elements.
@seawulf575 Since I refuse to provide my email address to that useless rag, I could not read your link all the way. I was able to see that Mexico and Brazil top the US in gun deaths per capita. Thanks for the info.
Do you see any possibility of passing any non-bogus laws that may help in reducing gun deaths in the US?
Nope. It’s not the guns that are the problem. Countries like Norway and Switzerland have pretty good numbers of guns per capita but very little crime and gun murders. The issue is the people. No one wants to look at the “why” of the killings. What makes someone believe it is okay to break all the laws and go kill someone else? Oh we have those rare cases of Mr. coming home to find Mrs. in bed with someone else and in a fit of rage someone is killed. But those are extremely rare. Our nation has programmed people to believe guns are a way to fix your problems, that killing someone is a way to gain respect, that it somehow makes you a hero. When you get down to it, that is the attitude that leads to most of the gun homicides in this country. And no one wants to do an honest look into how we got here and what needs to change. And my guess is that there isn’t one single answer.
On the topic of mass shootings, all the data I can find shows them to be a very small portion of the gun deaths in this country. We have about 30,000 gun deaths each year. 21,000 of those are suicides. About 8000 are gang related. Another 500 for police shootings. That leaves few actual deaths left and those include accidents, the aforementioned fits of rage, as well as the “mass shootings”. In fact, everyone gets up in arms about the evil AR-15, but statistically, you are far more likely to be stabbed to death than get killed by a rifle. There are some 1000 stabbings (to death) and only something like 300 rifle deaths.
@seawulf575 What does that include in those countries? People feel safer and more cared for by the government and society? Socialized medicine. Better wages. Direct Democracy. Strict gun laws.
That argument that it is people not guns is ridiculous. Unless you can demonstrate how people can be shot WITHOUT guns, the very utterance of those words betrays a fundamental dishonesty in your argument. It isn’t people. It IS people WITH GUNS. THERE IS A DIFFERENCE. Of course the people of Switzerland and Norway have better sense than we (for now). That isn’t the point. What fks us up? I’ll give you a hint. You won’t find people in Switzerland or Norway arguing the concept of gunless shootings, or other logical inconsistencies which increasingly mark our conservative ascendancy as tragically preposterous. Frankly, we are the richest nation on the planet, but we are no longer the most advanced, nor the most civilized nation on earth. The rest of the world watched and learned from us, yet now stares along with me in disbelief at our dysfunctional disintegration. If you want to understand where we are indisputably headed regarding guns, you merely have to look at this country 150 years ago and the statistics THEN for gun deaths and mass shootings in particular. The lessons from those days taught us and the world the necessity of restricting firearms as a requirement to listing your society civilized. There are dunderheads who insist that we will be better off if we revert to frontier thinking in an era of automatic weapons and urban congestion.
This is a truly tiresome discussion. And I no longer bother to believe the acceleration in killings reversible within a generation. As I see it, there is no revoking our God given right to American stupidity. And in the national spirit of every man for himself, I shall continue my guaranteed success harvesting the profit attributable to the certainty that said rights will be vigorously exercised. Good luck to the rest of you.
Sometimes they stick around for their own amusement. Sometimes their views coincide with your own. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. What is it that all of the questions we fight over have in common? Mass shootings, immigration, drugs, abortion, even taxes for that matter? They are all—every one of them about laws and their enforceability. Give that some thought.
@stanleybmanly I find it amazing. My guns have been in my closet for years and haven’t even walked out to see the rest of the house, much less run off to shoot someone. And they don’t cast some spell on me to want to use them to go shoot someone. I’m willing to bet this condition I live with is echoed by millions of other gun owners. The guns are a tool. I could kill you with a garden hoe, but that doesn’t mean we need to pass laws controlling garden tools. It IS the people that are the key. To believe anything else is to make yourself part of the problem.
@JLeslie You can slice and dice it through any number of filters. Both Switzerland and Norway have very high costs of living, so it probably isn’t that they are rolling in the dough and the better wages are probably well offset by the outlay they have to do. But they do have governments that are of the people and for the people. And the people aren’t afraid of their governments. There are several things that add to their happiness factor. But the point is that the people have an abundance of guns available and yet they do not go around shooting each other. Their gun laws are really not much different than ours, though they execute them somewhat differently. So if the guns are readily available and guns are the problem, as many people seem to be claiming, then why aren’t they going on shooting sprees? I have put forth the idea that there are other factors that are the real problem. Why do gangs form? What do they do? If you could resolve some of the issues that result in gangs, you could eliminate a large (the largest) chunk of gun homicides in this country. But the guns themselves are not the issue.
@seawulf575 So what?! I can pick out countries, states in a America, cities in America, with huge gun ownership with a shit ton of gun violence and deaths. There are just as many examples of gun ownership and gun violence as examples of high gun ownership and very little gun violence. Cherry picking proves nothing. I am all for fixing underlying causing, Democrats have been talking about that for years. Why are there so many White Supremacists? That is gang mentality also. I would love you to fix that along with the other gang problems in the country. What do you want to do to fix it? Better schools? Psych help for families and individuals? More empathy education in K-12? How do you want to fix it?
Republicans try to say Democrat cities have the highest gun violence problems. I hate to break it to you, but those cities have high gun ownership! You keep splicing things and not looking at the whole picture.
How are you going to fix it? How are you going to stop gangs, WS groups, mass shooting?
@JLeslie @seawulf575 You both make good points.
I am not certain why Americans tend to be more ready to reach for a weapon than say the Swedes, or, for that matter, the rest of the world. I realize there are countries with higher gun deaths per capita than the US (thanks, wulfie). However, the US, given its economic prosperity and size, dwarfs all the others.
Perhaps, it is our history, perhaps it is our genes, perhaps it is the number of guns. All I know (since I have never owned a gun, or even fired one), is that when a perfectly sane person loses his/her temper, the last thing you want available to him/her is a gun.
@JLeslie Absolutely correct! All that you are saying is spot on. But you are not connecting the dots and applying it to the question. Lots of guns in one place doesn’t show a lot of gun violence and lots of guns in another does. So that fact alone should tell you that guns are not the driving force. If they were, then everywhere more guns appeared, you would have more gun homicides. And if you carry that thought to the next level and look at gun laws, you will find that some places have very strict gun laws…and lots of gun violence. And some places have less strict gun laws…and less gun violence. The answer to all of this is to get to the root of the violence. Get to the drivers of the violence…those things that make people feel it is somehow right to shoot another human being…and deal with them.
I see many things wrong in our country. I see too many families with only one parent, too many families that have both parents working all the time, and too many families where the kids are raised by friends, social media, and other inputs that aren’t instilling values or instilling completely wrong values. I see too many parents that don’t know how to parent. And some of these problems have other factors contributing including poor education, poor jobs or no jobs, and many others. But I also see that screaming to pass more gun laws is not the answer and is, at best, the cowards way of dealing with it. Look at Illinois. They have some of the strictest gun laws in the nation and have some of the highest gun deaths as well. People that choose to shoot someone else really don’t care about the laws on the books now, so passing more won’t make a whit of difference with them.
@seawulf575 – Strict gun laws in IL are no good if people can drive to the next state and buy all the guns they want. So if guns are not the problem but guns + people are, then what should we do about the people? Isn’t that like saying: dynamite is not a problem but dynamite + matches is? For that problem, we keep the matches away from the dynamite. Why don’t we do the same with people?
There should be no mystery as to why we are so far ahead in firearm homicides among first world nations. We lag among those nations in virtually every statistic you can name by which you judge the well being of people. The stress levels here are through the roof. I do know that there is something a kilter when the wealthiest nation on earth is noted for stagnant wages, declining standards of living, massive indebtedness as the reward for higher education, skyrocketing healthcare expenses as the safety net strains and infrastructure crumbles while guns proliferate beyond our ability to count let alone hide them. When you look at it, there is only ONE viable expectation involving THIS country and mass shootings. And say what you will about mass knifings or rampage killer automobiles. Any HONEST person knows where our future lies regarding gun deaths, and it will NOT be about diminishment.
@RocketGuy The problem with guns + people is the people, not the guns. As has been seen and commented on on this thread, there are countries where there are an abundance of guns, yet next to no gun homicides. It isn’t like having a gun suddenly makes you want to go on a shooting spree. There are other things at work here. THAT is what needs to be evaluated. THAT is what needs to be fixed.
You say keeping guns from people is the answer. Yet there are millions of gun owners who have never shot anyone and don’t want to shoot anyone. In fact, it is the vast majority of them….over 99.9%. So what you are suggesting is to punish the majority in a vain effort to stop the vast minority. But let’s look at something else you said to see if even that would work. IL has strict gun laws so people go to the next state to buy all the guns they want. The problem is that the people that are doing most of the killing aren’t buying guns legally. There is that contradiction again! They don’t care about the laws. It is a crime to kill someone…it is one of the harshest of penalties for that crime. Yet it doesn’t stop these people. So do you honestly believe that by passing some idiotic law that tries to say people can’t have guns or certain guns or whatever will make a whit of difference to someone that doesn’t care about the law to start with?
Apathy abounds !
Dead kids will happen (from shootings only in the US) !
@seawulf575 – hmm: machine guns are illegal and there have been no mass shootings using machine guns. Maybe that law works. Many people run red lights, which is illegal. Should we forget about having traffic lights because if penalizes the 99.9% of the law abiding citizens?
You are still not addressing how we keep guns away from people who should not have them. How are we supposed to find these people and do something with them?
@RocketGuy I think you have completely misconstrued what @seawulf575 is saying. He is basically saying that NO LAWS will ever stop criminals and other like-minded people from procuring weapons for whatever they want to do.
What you are saying is that we should do away with traffic lights because some people run red lights. If we did not have traffic lights, the harm would be rather obvious, rather fast. You end your post with a question: How do “we keep guns away from people who should not have them”? That brings me to my original question: will any provision in the new proposed laws achieve that goal?
Response moderated (Unhelpful)
There is already mass quantities of legislation. Adding even more will do nothing to solve the problem.
@kritiper Even though I tend to agree that something needs to be done, I do not see what can be done, other than forcibly taking away people’s guns. Which probably cannot be done by Republicans. Even Democrats may not have enough political power to do that.
4 more shot and killed in Orange County California. last night !
@RocketGuy Actually your red light analogy is close to being correct. Running a red light is illegal. There is already a law against it. Yet people do it anyway. So what law would you pass to keep people from running red lights? They obviously don’t care about the law concerning red lights so passing more laws wouldn’t do a thing.
However there is another aspect to your analogy. By the logic of those who want more gun laws or to take the guns away from people, the proper analogy for the red light would not be to take away the red lights, it would be to take away all cars. I mean, after all, someone broke the law so we have to punish all people, even those who have never run a red light in their lives. And if they didn’t have cars, they couldn’t break the red light law, right? And if no one was allowed to have cars, we wouldn’t have to worry about anyone running a red light ever again.
@crazyguy I think the problem is two-fold for fixing this issue. I don’t think those in charge have any clue as to what to do and I don’t think they have the courage to find out. We keep talking about “keeping the guns out of the hands of those that should not have them”. The problem there is that it is hard to tell who shouldn’t have them or why. There are some obvious examples: convicted felons for instance. But just as with the Patriot Act, any law you tried passing at this particular point in time to weed out the people that might abuse gun ownership would be turned into a political weapon. We’ve already seen things like that happen. Example: Gee, let’s turn conservative views into hate speech so it is illegal to voice them! Let’s censor them! Because we want to stop hate speech, right? It comes down to who decides and on what basis. And it would have to be exercised 100% across the board regardless of race, heritage, wealth, political party, standing in the community and any other divider currently in place. And our current political climate makes that completely impossible.
@seawulf575 The trouble with that analogy is that cars are extremely useful in daily life whereas guns have no function apart from one. You could argue that you need your car and I would believe you but if you tell me you must have a semi-automatic assault rifle I would say you don’t.
To own a car, one must have continuous registration, licensing, and insurance. Not so for guns. And how many mass killings have been committed by a crazed person in a car?
@seawulf575 @RocketGuy I think the point about registration, licensing and insurance is a good one. Is it possible to craft a law requiring annually renewable registration of guns without violating the second amendment?
@crazyguy Sure. However it is racist. The extra cost of any increased demands on gun owners hits minorities, especially blacks, harder than the rich white people. Isn’t that the argument against voter ID? The extra cost makes it racist and should not be added to one of our rights? I mean, an ID is a few dollars at most and most people already have one, but those very, very few that don’t would be excluded from voting. So, if you add registration fees, storage fees, possibly insurance fees, etc, now you are infringing on the right. You are making people buy their rights.
@flutherother but now you are telling me what my rights are and aren’t. I could see a gun as a sort of insurance policy. A last ditch insurance policy to be sure, but one that could be used to defend my family or my home. And you are telling me that isn’t good enough…it doesn’t meet your agreement so I shouldn’t be afforded that right.
Guns kill they are not an insurance policy, bad guy whacks on head and unloads magazine into . . . you !
” The extra cost of any increased demands on gun owners hits minorities, especially blacks, harder than the rich white people. Isn’t that the argument against voter ID? The extra cost makes it racist and should not be added to one of our rights? I mean, an ID is a few dollars at most and most people already have one, but those very, very few that don’t would be excluded from voting. So, if you add registration fees, storage fees, possibly insurance fees, etc, now you are infringing on the right”
. . isn’t that right out of the NRA excuses for selling more guns ? Let’s see there are almost 400,000,000 guns in USA and population is 330,000,000 !
@Tropical_Willie No, that isn’t out of the NRA at all. That is using leftist logic. Are you saying that adding cost to something that is a Constitutional right is actually okay? If so, then you shouldn’t have any problem at all with voter ID laws.
As for you numbers, SOURCES PLEASE!!!!
@Tropical_Willie But can you actually use your sources? The 400,000,000 guns is actually 357,000,000 which is not really the same. But then, you first went to Vox for your data. Bad move.
And given Vox’s calculations of 113 guns for each 100 people, the actual number is 108 per 100. But even that doesn’t say anything at all. Owning a gun doesn’t equal using a gun. And can we agree that the enormous majority of legal gun owners don’t use them to kill people? There are approximately 72M people that claim to own guns in the US. Hard to tell if this is accurate since there is no formal registry, but that would be a low number. I suspect no one would say they owned one and didn’t and I suspect there would be more that wouldn’t admit to owning them. But that will make my point even more clearly. There are about 10,000 gun homicides in the USA each year. Now, assuming all of these were legal gun owners (which the majority were not), you still end up with .014% of the gun owning population actually killed someone. So 99.986% of all gun owners are safe.
Meanwhile, what about it? Is it okay to charge someone for their Constitutional rights? You completely dodged that question.
Check the year ! date ended in 2013 with quantities increasing.
Here’s The Beacon 400 miilion ( maybe only 393 million I rounded up six million) but we produce almost 9,000,000 guns a year and most stay here.
@seawulf575 If you need an assault rifle to feel safe maybe you should move to a safer neighbourhood!
Response moderated (Personal Attack)
Response moderated
I think it would be useful to have a closer look at the conclusions wulfie draws from his statistics 2 posts up. It shows us why statistics are useless and can be downright hazardous if you are not equipped to interpret what you read. Our wulf has taken his statistics to imply that I might shoot whomever I choose, whenever I choose for whatever reason I choose, but I am not “dangerous” until the victim dies. The wounded, disfigured, maimed—the survivors—they don’t count. Don’t give us statistics on gun deaths. Let’s talk about HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE SHOT!
@seawulf575 As you know, I generally agree with you. However, on guns I disagree. My reasons for disagreeing are that guns have more killing ability than autos; yet we require no registration, licensing and insurance. I think, for our continued sanity and prosperity, we need a common-sense way of staying in sync with the second amendment, while at the same time, finding real methods of reducing the number of guns in this country.
The proposed mickey-mouse laws will by design do nothing at all while giving the politicians the one thing they crave: political cover.
@crazyguy Guns have more killing ability than autos. Yet we have as many vehicular deaths each year as gun deaths. And that includes gun deaths that are suicides. See, that’s the problem. Every time some idiot goes on a shooting spree (providing it is just a white guy killing or trying to kill a bunch of people), the same old tired rhetoric starts. I specify the white guy because you never hear the same screams about the killings on a good Chicago night. It all depends on if the killings can fit the narrative that the country is filled with gun-toting lunatics and that anyone with a gun is a danger to society. Can’t have that narrative if it is a person of color because then the abnormally high crime rates come into the discussion. Can’t have it when it is a gang related shooting because those aren’t legal guns. And you absolutely have to claim over 30,000 gun deaths each year to make it seem a huge problem even though 21,000 of those are suicides.
Maybe I look at things differently, but I look at who is killing and why to see if there is even something to fix. I don’t include the suicides since they could kill themselves in any number of ways and chose the gun only for expediency. Not to mention there is no way to predict that sort of thing. You could give solid psychological screenings that the person passed, but if their circumstances change, they could get depressed and lose all hope. There is no fixing someone that wants to kill themselves. I write off the 1000 or so police shootings since we pay those people to carry guns and they are generally protecting themselves. That leaves us with roughly 8000–9000 gun deaths each year. And the vast majority of those…probably close to 80%...are gang related shootings. Those people (a) don’t care about the law, (b) aren’t using guns they have legally purchased, and© aren’t going to follow any new laws differently than the past laws. So we are left with literally only a few hundred actual gun deaths that don’t fall into one of those three categories. And those include accidents.
So when you ask what laws could be passed to stop these killings, I don’t really see one. Even if you are just targeting the “mass shooters” you have to remember that these people, much like the gangs, don’t care about the law either. There are already many, many laws about injuring or killing people in this country.
Yes, if you could wave a magic wand and make it like all guns around the world suddenly disappear and were never invented, that would stop all the gun deaths. But that isn’t an option.
@seawulf575 Thanks for taking the time to gather up and present the numbers in an easy-to-understand manner.
Just wondering out loud, would any of the suicides be prevented if a gun was harder to come by?
@crazyguy Possibly. Hard to say. When someone gets to the point of wanting to end it all they really aren’t predictable. I knew a guy that shot himself because he found out he was going to die a very prolonged and painful death with no chance of stopping it. So the gun was expedient. It is possible that some people really don’t want to kill themselves but the gun goes off and makes the decision for them. But I have known people that hanged themselves with a coat hanger, jumped of a bridge, and took too many pills (on purpose). When a person wants to end it, they will choose whatever seems the most expedient oftentimes.
Hard to say my ass! What sort of logic is necessary to understand that there can be no shootings without guns? OF COURSE there would be fewer suicides as the effort required increases.
@stanleybmanly What to say those people that used guns wouldn’t have used a knife or pills or a rope instead? Exhaust pipe into the car? Yes, there wouldn’t be shootings if there were no guns, but would the people still be alive? THAT is hard to say.
On the flip side, if guns are so easily obtained, why aren’t more suicides done by gun? And if these people own guns but choose to jump off a building instead, what does that say? Should we make it harder to enter tall buildings?
Yes there are many exits available. But the argument that the circle in @RocketGuy ‘s link would be just as large without guns is empirically vacuous at best. Just as the probability that absent guns we would see a corresponding rise in massed knifings of school kids or massed slaughters with motor vehicles. Massed killings are by now so much the province of firearms for the SAME reason they are preferred by the army or anyone ELSE in THAT business.
@RocketGuy that is not a logical conclusion. It would greatly reduce suicide by gun, but would it really reduce suicide? Suicide is a function of depression, not gun ownership. Just because a depressed person considering suicide doesn’t have a gun doesn’t mean they won’t kill themselves. Just ask my dad. Oh wait…you can’t. He jumped off a bridge. So just because you take away one method of taking your own life, it doesn’t automatically equate to saying that life-taking wouldn’t happen.
Let’s just see about who it is that is lacking in logical conclusions. Is it your contention that casualties in combat would approximate historical norms absent firearms? How many robberies would you care to guess occur in this country at knife point?
It is much harder to kill yourself by means other than simply pulling a trigger. Many would be unsuccessful and end up in the hospital not dead. And I’ve only heard of one massed knifing, and that was in a subway not a school. Not that many people died. Massed slaughter with motor vehicles? Really? How many have you heard of? How many deaths? Guns are so much more efficient because that is what they are designed to do. Knives and cars are not designed to kill people – they are optimized for more useful functions.
Not all attempts at suicide by gun are successful, either. A fair number are not.
I would definitely do the connect-the-hose-to-the-exhaust-pipe-and-fall-asleep-in-the-car method—because I would not want to survive a botched suicide with a gun. But a botched suicide with am auto exhaust wouldn’t be so bad, and you could try it again or try something else.
@Yellowdog I agree. However, if one has the guts to stick a gun barrel in his mouth, point it up and pull the trigger, the chances of surviving are miniscule. All other methods are relatively long and allow a lot of time for second thoughts.
True—I guess that’s why I’d do it slowly.
@RocketGuy Here’s a case of a vehicle being used to kill people…specifically used to kill people. 10 people died. And here is a longer list of cases where a vehicle was used to kill people. Nice France was probably the biggest killing 80 people. It is becoming quite popular to kill people this way, apparently.
@Yellowdog A decision to end one’s life has to be harrowing. Nobody’s life is completely free of positive experiences. Therefore, I would think, once a decision is made, the person does not want time to second-guess him/herself.
@seawulf575
Well done. A list of a handful of cases over a period of 20 years.
You have more mass shootings than that in a week.
It is almost painful to watch someone attempt to wrestle under such delusions.
@seawulf575 I have lived in the US for over 50 years. I know locals to be somewhat loud (by my standards), a little cocky, but invariably kind and, in most cases, gentle. So the only explanation I can find for the number of gun crimes in this country is the number of available guns. Do you have an alternative explanation?
FINALLY a simple recognition and admission of the obvious truth. Thank you.
@ragingloli so you don’t care about people that are killed with vehicles? Interesting. Why not?
@crazyguy Again, when you break down the gun crimes, most of them are from gangs. The vast majority in fact. So start looking at why gangs form and why are they allowed to flourish. Why do kids want to join a gang…what are the conditions that make it appealing? What are the perceived benefits? Why do the gang members see killing as a good thing or at least a viable way to gain respect and control? When you start answering these questions honestly, you can start getting to the source of much of the crime. And once you find these sources, you can start dealing with the actual causes of the killings instead of just the method.
People want to try avoiding the tough questions and tough conversations. That is why they run to the idea that “it is the guns!” as the answer. It’s easier to blame guns. But that is not going to get you where you need to be in stopping the violence. The hard part is that those questions and discussions open up a whole plethora of doors that politicians don’t want to walk through. Example: One theory might be that because many gangs are involved in drug trafficking which is known to be associate with violence in many countries, they carry guns as part of those dealings. So one aspect of getting rid of the need or desire to have a gun and shoot someone might be to get tough on drug trafficking. That would include sealing the southern border like it has never been sealed before. What do you think…do politicians want to do that? No. They are willing to deal with the drugs and the crime and the human trafficking and all the other aspects of open borders rather than actually closing the borders. Or rather they are willing to let us deal with all those things.
A lot of these things tie together, as you would expect. I would suggest we look at all the sociological aspects of life in places like Switzerland and Norway to see how they manage to have so many guns with very little gun crime. What is the drug problem like in these places? What is the gang situation like? What are their illegal immigration issues like? What are their educational opportunities like? What is their divorce rate like? Look at as many different aspects of life in these places and start comparing to here.
As I said, I have owned guns for many years. I know many, many people that also own guns. And none of them have felt the urge to just start blasting away at people. And statistically they are in the majority. Almost all gun owners don’t want to use their guns to kill…hope they never will find the need to do so.
@seawulf575
So you have nothing of value to respond with. Got it.
So why aren’t the gangs killing one another in auto fights? Why bother with guns in your drive by shootings, when you already are driving a “weapon”? Where’s the need to examine Norway in comparison with us? The answer is that Norway has neither gangs nor ghettos. Norway has an up and ample social safety net and no stupid illusions that they are living in the wild West of the 1870s.
There is NOTHING complex about our shooting deaths. The quantity of guns in this country are a direct reflection of the other dystopian aspects which distinguish us. The level of dysfunction grows absolutely diabolical here, and the stupidities mount before us. It is only fitting that a place that would put Trump in office would be filled with dummies convinced they can shoot their way out of their problems
You wouldn’t know a dodge from a spaceship if one ran you over. America is a land currently defined by the dimmer bulbs in in our sockets, and one need only peruse this thread to grasp the significance of that fact. It is absolutely perplexing, the lengths people will go to in .denying what sits in front of their nose.
@stanleybmanly I couldn’t have put it better myself! America IS a land currently defined by the dimmer bulbs in our sockets….the left. And this thread is a perfect example. Thanks!
@seawulf575 This is truly a strange role for me, having to convince you, of all people, of anything. However, we already agree that the plans proposed by the inept House Democrats will not do anything to reduce the number of guns already out there. And that, I think, is essential to any kind of determination of why the US is prone to so much gun violence.
@crazyguy I love ya, for sure. I understand the argument that there are many, many guns out there and that leads to more violence. My problem is that when I look at the facts, they don’t support that conclusion. The gang related gun homicides have remained fairly steady for many years and actual gun homicides have gone down. The total number of deaths due to non-gang, non-police, non-suicide causes is really quite low. I understand, one is too many. But let’s be realistic. We are talking about less than a thousand deaths that do not include just murders but accidents as well. And as has been pointed out, the number of guns keeps going up yet the total deaths really do not. And if you compare that thousand deaths to the number of guns or owners (assume 330M and 150M respectively) you get either 0.0003% of all guns result in someone’s death (besides gangs, suicides, and police), or 0.006% of the gun owners commit an act that results in someone’s death.
When I see numbers like that, I have to conclude that looking at the guns as the problem is wrong and will not fix anything. In any random group of people, you will generally have at least a couple percent that have violent tendencies. Yet guns being used to kill people are not even at that percentage. So trying to come up with a law that will make it 100% impossible to have someone die from a gun is impossible to craft and carry out.
For the record, I exclude suicides, gangs, and police because of the ties to the law for each of them. Suicides don’t care about the laws…they just want to end it. The gun is a method but not the only one available. Gangs don’t care about laws. They don’t get their guns legally, they don’t carry them legally, and as far as I know it is against the law to threaten anyone with a gun, injure anyone with a gun, or kill anyone with a gun. But none of those laws stop them so one more law won’t do it either. And police carry guns mainly for protection of themselves and the public. When they shoot someone it is generally in one of those two arenas.
In the end, gun deaths have dropped fairly steadily for many years. I think the problem is that when someone goes nuts and shoots up some people it becomes big news and is blown way out of proportion. The entire conversation turns immediately to “how can we get rid of those evil guns!” and totally avoids the conversations that might mean something such as “what triggered this guy?” Those same questions could apply to gang violence as well, but just as with a mass shooting, no one actually wants a solution. They don’t want to take on the tough battles.
The tough battle is with the guns. And your claimed drop in shootings is more about the fact that the kid bulge in the snake of demographics has passed with the aging of the population, since people can no longer afford kids. The one thing certain is that the version of gang violence when I was a teen—the Westside Story knife fight—is no longer the standard for violence. Who bothers with a knife, when you can break the window on any parked car, reach under the driver’s seat and retrieve a weapon capable of holding off a rifle platoon? As I have stated several times here, we had our lesson on what to expect when firearms flood the country. We now refer to it as the “Wild West”, and THAT reference has nothing to do with the animals then prevalent. That was a period when the carnage rose to the point that a town could not be categorized as “civilized” minus the prohibition and even confiscation of guns. History has its uses. Why not avail yourself of them?
@seawulf575 I think I agree with you that guns are not necessarily the problem. However, I cannot se any possible objection to closing any and all loopholes for the useless background checks. Who gets hurt by having to undergo the same background check for an internet purchase that would be required for an in-store purchase? By the same token, why is Georgia up in arms about the requirement for state-issued ID’s for mail-in ballots that are already required for in-person voting?
@crazyguy I think those are fine ideas. The problem is that our elected leaders don’t stop at something as simple as asking for a background check for internet purchases. BTW, there are already things in place for internet purchases as well. I’ll get to that in a minute. The problem with something simple like that idea ends up coming up as a law that says background checks are required for all transfers of guns. That means that if I decide to sell my gun I have to pay for a background check on a proposed buyer. That would include a pawn shop even. It also means that I couldn’t will my guns to my kids since I would have to do a background check at the time of transfer. Those sorts of things have already been proposed. In other words, give a politician an inch and they want to take a mile.
As for internet purchases, I have some first hand experience here. I bought a rifle from the manufacturer over the internet. They are not legally allowed to send me the gun unless I have a FFL. They have to send it to someone with that license who then transfers it to me after meeting all appropriate state and federal requirements. When I bought mine, I had to fill out a paper that was sent to the FBI to do a background check on me. Once that was completed, only then could I pick up my purchase. That adds an extra cost to purchasing that isn’t clear when you first order the gun. It isn’t much, but the FFL holder charges a fee for handling of the gun and the paperwork.
There are loopholes that I’m not sure how you could close. For example, a convicted felon is not allowed to buy a gun. But what if I was arrested for a felony and I go out and buy a bunch of guns prior to going to court? My background check would come up clean since I was never convicted of the crime at the time of the purchase. There are things that do check on some of those things, but they are sort of after the fact. A parole officer, when he first takes on a case, will do an interview with all people living at the home of the paroled person for example. They will ask about firearms…if the parolee owns any guns, if anyone else in the house owns any guns, if they are properly locked up, etc. And they can do an inspection if they are in doubt. But that is certainly not foolproof.
@seawulf575 Thanks for all the info. Since I have never owned a gun, all the info was new to me. I would wager that the info was new to most posters on this board; however, unlike me, their minds are sealed shut!
I see nothing wrong with requiring a background check on anybody acquiring a gun, whether it is by purchase in person, or over the net, or by inheritance. I think all opposers of such sensible reforms encourage more stringent measures. The analogy with voting rights abuses is rather obvious.
You can enact all the laws you want. But once you accept the fact that the guns in this country outnumber the people, gun laws are about as useful as regulating rocks or weeds. Like laws against drugs, they are only effective in keeping the guns out of sight. Like laws against nudity, they prevent us from seeing and having .
to face up to the truth. And the TRUTH is that ANYONE in THIS country who wants a gun can lay their hands on one more readily than a fire extinguisher, fly swatter or bottle of maple syrup.
@stanleybmanly You can enact all the laws you want. But once you accept the fact that there are people out there that just don’t care about the law, gun laws are about as useful as regulating rocks or weeds.
Bryan Texas – - Six or more shot.
More people die; seems like every day !
@seawulf575 Exactly. And in the interests of TRUE democracy we must guarantee every one of those people practical access to those guns!
@seawulf575 Why can’t posters here answer the basic question I asked?
@crazyguy Are you looking for my opinion? It is because the question, being a straight-forward one, doesn’t open it up for wishy-washy answers. It requires a direct answer that can be supported by facts. When you ask many on these pages questions like that, they have a trigger in their brains that makes them re-write the question so they can answer the question they want to answer, not the one you asked.
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