Gun Control Debate #3

[rsd1200]

No I’m not sure. I just don’t know how you ban one particular model without banning them all.

Also, IMO, what will happen is they will see that a ban of one style of gun didn’t work. When the next mass shooting happens and a different type of gun is used, the anti-gun people will be calling for another ban of that particular firearm.

Jumping off of your post, and slightly o/t, but, my s/o stopped at the gun shop a couple days ago and when he got home, he said that the store was packed, and semis were flying off the shelves. One guy told him that he'd never really thought much about buying one but with all the banning firearms talk, he was thinking of purchasing one. Same happened with bump stocks. Our shop that we normally frequent, had one. It sat on the shelf forever. The Vegas shooting happened and everyone wanted one just to mess with and see what it would do. If folks want to shoot machine guns go to a machine gun shoot. So, as you say, if the semis are banned, when the next shooting occurs, there will be another run to the gun shop and even more firearms on the street, b/c of the banning talk (from both sides).

 

[rsd1200]

I personally despise parents that torture & abuse children physically. Although their crimes don’t often involve a gun, those offenders should not be allowed a gun. I really can’t stand those that commit identity theft and financial scams on the elderly......point being....we don’t get to cherry-pick which law we personally feel more strongly about. A felon is a felon & they cant legally own a gun.


I’m all for tightening up our system of who can obtain a gun legally. I would call for a **broader** base of those who would be legally restricted from owning a gun. But with that, we should enact stiffer penalties for felons and criminals caught in the act of a crime with a gun. Impose stricter gun running illegal sales sentences and prison time also.

I’d even approve of mental health checks for those applying for a gun. I’d up the age of purchase to 21. I’m all for a central reporting agency for those mentally ill (domestic situations & threatening persons) with mandatory investigations and possible confiscations.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree at this point. It is against my faith to despise anyone, but, I want to focus energy on violent offenders. Not folks who screwed up, paid their debt to society, and are not violent. And yes, if a felon gets their record expunged, they can own a gun according to the ATF (my post #827)

 

[MaryG12]

The double standard problem.


After Parkland, even idle school threats get tough response


Fifteen students in one Florida school district are facing felony charges and prison time for making alleged threats since the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre. Meanwhile, an autistic Minnesota high school student whose alleged threat led to a six-hour lockdown is in juvenile court and has received an outpouring of sympathy.


http://www.mysuncoast.com/ap/after-...cle_1d80e89a-1fe9-11e8-bff1-0323a7d104a2.html


.................................................

This is a serious problem. There really should not be any exceptions if we as a society truly believe in equal treatment.

 

[human]

I get that it "seems" that "gun violence" should be a public health matter for government funded health organizations to study. Would you agree that engagement in criminal behavior, and mental health issues that lead to violence are public health matters? "Gun violence" is such an overly broad term that drawing specific conclusions really isn't possible when only "correlated" with gun ownership. Gun violence occurs both in defensive postures, and aggressive postures, as well as accidental, and suicidal. All of those categories have to be broken out into appropriately constructed studies, rather than focusing on the "tool" as the "cause".

Stripping funding from the CDC for overly broad and poorly conceived/ constructed studies of “gun violence” IMO is a good thing. Nothing at all prevents OTHER privately funded groups or institutions from studying CRIME, or “gun control”, or “gun violence”. The problem with “gun violence” studies is that the CDC was straying into “studying” gun OWNERS, and drawing conclusions that were, at best, correlation, and then making LEAPS of statistically massaged logic into promoting those insufficiently supported correlations as CAUSATION. That is using propagandized and manipulated statistics to make political inferences under the guise of “science”.

No matter which political ideology currently holds power, or is occupying the White House, we cannot allow, encourage, or promote our publicly funded governmental organizations to conduct research to further a specific political ideology, as a means to incite rash policy changes. (Such as "guns are bad" or "gun owners are dangerous".) That strays dangerously into puppeteering qualities of banana republics, as well as arguably being pseudo science. (Like: "Some gun owners are under the sign of sagittarius, and guns are used in suicides and crimes, therefore sagitarrians cause suicides and gun crimes.")

Anyone can do a study on whatever they like. We put the brakes on governmental funding to private pharmaceutical companies that manipulated and massaged their scientific studies to ensure their drugs always performed positively in studies, and these same pharm companies actively avoided, or abandoned, or ignored, any data that was not encouraging for their products. That didn’t mean “no one” could do studies on those drugs, but it did mean that we would not use tax dollars to support thinly veiled “marketing studies” on every new drug pharmaceutical companies developed.

Similarly, research on “guns” has devolved into research on gun owners as the source problem. The CDC doesn’t study stabbings by attempting to quantify and correlate knife ownership as the cause. The CDC doesn’t study DUI deaths by correlating car ownership as the cause.

It a chicken and egg argument. Those with anti gun ideologies believe the root cause of all gun deaths is the TOOL, the gun. Gun rights ideologies believe the gun is a tool, and that gun deaths have many CAUSES that should be addressed. Flawed studies start with a CONCLUSION (not just an observation), and work backwards to construct their study to illuminate what they have already determined.

A CDC study before the Dickey amendment speciously concluded that gun OWNERS were the “problem”. That study has been cited by politicians and commenters over and over and over—without even slightly conceding that the study itself may not have any supporting evidence in the literature, may have been poorly designed, drew inappropriate causation conclusions, or may have had significant bias. That is a huge issue, because gun ownership is lawful, and is not simply a privilege—but a right protected within the constitution. Propagandized, weakly designed, weakly supported studies should not be funded by public dollars, or used to promote political change.

The “public health” issue that needs serious and longitudinal study is the antisocial actions of people who commit crimes, and the problems of those with mental health issues who commit crimes. That is where the CDC and NIH should be concentrating their research efforts. Root causes, and not tools.

Private groups, or private individuals, with an activist agenda, like the SPLC or the NRA, are free to conduct any research they want.

There are dozens/ hundreds of commentaries on the Dickey amendment, both for and against. Here is one that is sort of balanced:

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/02/gun-violence-public-health/553430/

So instead of having non biased studies of drugs and chemicals, the manufacturers do the studies themselves. They pay the scientists. It truly is laughable.

Why study the people who do the gun crimes? There is no reason ?

 

[human]

But that’s exactly what some people here are suggesting by saying that an AR-15 is way more dangerous than any other gun just because of the damage the bullet does to a person’s body. A bolt action rifle that uses the same exact 223 Remington cartridge will do the exact same damage as an AR-15. There’s nothing special about an AR-15 other than the high rate of fire.

How many bullets can an unmodified 22 shoot?

 

[human]

The double standard problem.


After Parkland, even idle school threats get tough response


Fifteen students in one Florida school district are facing felony charges and prison time for making alleged threats since the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre. Meanwhile, an autistic Minnesota high school student whose alleged threat led to a six-hour lockdown is in juvenile court and has received an outpouring of sympathy.


http://www.mysuncoast.com/ap/after-...cle_1d80e89a-1fe9-11e8-bff1-0323a7d104a2.html


.................................................

This is a serious problem. There really should not be any exceptions if we as a society truly believe in equal treatment.

I am really curious about the student in MN. Where he lives is incredibly expensive and has all kinds of extremely wealthy people. Influential people.

Of course, maybe there is someone of low or average imcome living there. I have no way of knowing.

 

[human]

I've been looking for a study, graph, chart, *whatever*, on the numbers for "justifiable vs unjustifiable" gun deaths......ain't happening!

I want to see gun deaths in the USA that represent "innocent victims", ie, NOT criminals, gangs killing each other, police killing criminals, non-criminal citizens killing criminals. "Innocent victims" would not include people who are engaging in criminal activity, ie., drug use, prostitution, auto and other theft, organized crime, etc., etc. Gun deaths with suicides omitted, whether by cop or self inflicted.


A person (non-criminal) sitting in their living room watching TV and they get shot by an intruder.
A law abiding citizen walking down a street hit by a drive by.
School shootings.
Public gathering shootings.
Deadly armed robberies.
Domestic abuse.
THAT'S the numbers I'd like to see.

Break it down to "You live by the sword, you die by the sword". If you're involved in the criminal element, is your death considered "unjustified"? I'd say the individual put themself in a dangerous situation to begin with. It might not be "unjustified", but it surely wasn't unpredicted.

Put suicide in the same category........if you look at the warnings on the bulk of antidepressants, what does it say? "May cause suicidal thoughts or actions". Regardless if it's preventable or not.......that's a choice, whether you're in your right mind or not, I'd place that on lack of mental health care, not gun control.
Lack of gun safety/precaution. A person doesn't store their firearms properly and a gun accidentally goes off when found by a child, visitor ect. Same category. That's human stupidity.

LE shot in the line of duty.........delete their fatalities too. That's a by product of their job description.

I would really like to see how many innocent, law abiding citizens are shot and killed by no fault of their own.

I'm really getting tired of statistics that play towards the cause of whatever the group is that's putting the numbers out, ie., race, social economics, mental health, fear mongering, pro and anti firearm, etc., etc.

I'm kinda getting tired of comparisons to other countries also.........the US is unique in it's cultural melting pot, it is unlike any other country, good or bad. It's foundation was "freedom from oppression" so there's a bit of paranoia that runs through it's underbelly.

Can anyone find that info? "Google" is definitely NOT my friend on this........

I must respond to this. As a person who has had a friend whose son committed suicide, everything possible was done. He received treatment, hospitalization,

His parents are the best ever. I do not have enough superlatives for them. A close loving family with extended family members that are fabulous.

Yet, their son committed suicide.

 

[rsd1200]

I must respond to this. As a person who has had a friend whose son committed suicide, everything possible was done. He received treatment, hospitalization,

His parents are the best ever. I do not have enough superlatives for them. A close loving family with extended family members that are fabulous.

Yet, their son committed suicide.

My grandchild's father took his life at 22. Had never owned a firearm. Bought a shotgun from a guy in his building. His then gf, walked in w/their newborn, and discovered him. My daughter had walked in on one attempt that required no firearm and got supervised visits shortly afterward, for their child. A friend's father committed suicide, no one saw it coming. My friend committed suicide in front of her family, just walked in, and put a gun in her mouth. A friend's brother did as well, and she still grieves. My spouse's father took his life, no one saw it coming. An acquaintance's 15 y/o (no firearm involved). They knew she was sad but not suicidal. I could go on but I'll stop there. The survivors never really heal from it. think lots of folks contemplate it, just never quite get that far.

 

[human]

BBM. Way too many categories of gun deaths to make correlations in this article, IMO. Just throw everything in the sink and cherry pick your conclusions.

This is typical of an overly broad investigative report that erroneously draws specific conclusions from limited data.

Suicides are very sad, of course, but these are a very unique category of gun deaths. People who are determined to commit suicide will use available methods, whether guns are available or not. Limit access to guns, and those determined to die will find another way. Drive off a cliff or bridge, drive into a wall, overdose, hanging, etc. We aren't going to make a significant dent in suicides by restricting guns, IMO. (Except by those who promote propaganda or junk science that would write studies showing that fewer guns = fewer gun suicides.)

Removing access to guns doesn't make people magically mentally healthy, nor does it remove suicidal impulses. Again, blaming the tool used to express the underlying problem. That's a consistent theme in "gun control" discussions.

The very labeling of this thread as "gun control" has created a rather biased foundation for our discussions here, and leaves anyone who doesn't support all measures for "gun control" in a position of defensiveness. (Apologies to Tricia for the criticism, while also acknowledging that Tricia has done a very good job here allowing polite expressions of opposing opinions.) Anyway, titles of discussions like "gun control" presupposes, IMO, that all gun control is good. That leaves those of us who are not entirely "anti-gun" or "take away all the guns" in a position where we have to defend, defend, defend-- rather than categorizing crimes, brains storming and problem solving the underlying causes. It presupposes that the gun is the cause, and must be controlled.

A better title might have been "School shootings and how to prevent them", "accidental shootings of children and how to prevent them", "suicides by firearm and how to prevent them", "mass shootings and how to prevent them" etc.

This article talks about different data, some from Minnesota. Certainly, the medical field in Minnesota supports the Mayo Clinic findings?

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/08/well/live/after-a-suicide-attempt-the-risk-of-another-try.html

Now a new study reveals just how lethal suicide attempts, as a risk factor for completed suicide, are. The study, led by Dr. J. Michael Bostwick, a psychiatrist at the Mayo Clinic, tracked all first suicide attempts in one county in Minnesota that occurred between January 1986 and December 2007 and recorded all the deaths by suicide for up to 25 years thereafter. Eighty-one of the 1,490 people who attempted suicide, or 5.4 percent, died by suicide, 48 of them in their first attempt. The findings were reported in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

When all who succeeded in killing themselves were counted, including those who died in their first attempt, the fatality rate among suicide attempters was nearly 59 percent higher than had been previously reported.

“No one had included people who died on their first recorded attempt, so it’s not in the medical literature,” Dr. Bostwick explained in an interview. “That almost two-thirds end up at the medical coroner after a first attempt is astounding. We need to rethink how we look at the data and the phenomenon of suicide. We need to know more and do more for those who will complete suicide before they get to us for any kind of help.”

The study also showed that the odds of successfully committing suicide are 140 times greater when a gun is used than for any other method. Dr. Bostwick said that most suicide attempts are “impulsive acts, and it’s critical to prevent access to tools that make impulsive attempts more deadly.

“Suicide attempters often have second thoughts, but when a method like a gun works so effectively, there’s no opportunity to reconsider,” he said.

 

[rsd1200]

Hm. By OP’s logic and yours, however, it does make it more difficult, which is part of the point.

Leaving a car running with the keys in it makes it easy for a car thief to be a car thief, even though auto theft is illegal, and the owner of the car isn’t culpable for the theft. (But that’s also part of what insurance is for.)

Similarly, turning off the vehicle, locking it and taking the keys away is a proven deterrent and reduces car burglary and auto theft.

Reducing access is a proven deterrent. Most criminals are opportunists, imo. We can’t stop all crime, regardless of the laws. That’s a given, imo.

But reduction measures free up law enforcement to focus on the worst offenders, too. It makes sense, yeah?

Yes, part of the reason for creating laws with consequences is to deter crime. It’s also to punish and hold folks accountable when they do break the law. That’s called justice; law and order.

If you leave your car running, and it's unattended, (say you are warming it and run back inside), in Kentucky, that's illegal.

 

[bluesneakers]

No I’m not sure. I just don’t know how you ban one particular model without banning them all.

Also, IMO, what will happen is they will see that a ban of one style of gun didn’t work. When the next mass shooting happens and a different type of gun is used, the anti-gun people will be calling for another ban of that particular firearm.

And what if they call for another ban then? The argument that at some point in the future someone might call for a ban on different weapons doesn't hold up as a defense against banning assault rifles. The assault weapons ban worked, and it didn't lead to a nationwide gun-grab the way some predicted.

 

[flourish]

If you leave your car running, and it's unattended, (say you are warming it and run back inside), in Kentucky, that's illegal.

Even if you're using one of those newfangled remotes I'm so jealous of where you can start your vehicle from afar?

 

[bluesneakers]

If you leave your car running, and it's unattended, (say you are warming it and run back inside), in Kentucky, that's illegal.

I know it gets cold in Kentucky. That's just cruel.

 

[MaryG12]

If you leave your car running, and it's unattended, (say you are warming it and run back inside), in Kentucky, that's illegal.

Is that if the car is in the garage, or driveway, or both?

Yeah I know, common sense says if you're going to warm up your car make sure it's outside not in a garage........

 

[rsd1200]

Even if you're using one of those newfangled remotes I'm so jealous of where you can start your vehicle from afar?

Idk, I have vehicles that I can start and run, while locked, and I don't even leave them running unattended. I turn on the seat warmers. One will even stop after it gets out of range of my key fob.

My friend had finished gassing hers up, started it, and then saw a friend and stepped outside her car to speak to her. A man ran up, shoved her aside, and took off with her car! She was only about two feet from the door! The cop gave her a stern warning but, since there was no harm to anyone, he let her off w/only the warning.

http://www.mikeschaferlaw.com/blog/leaving-car-to-warm-up-is-illegal-in-kentucky.cfm

 

[MaryG12]

My grandchild's father took his life at 22. Had never owned a firearm. Bought a shotgun from a guy in his building. His then gf, walked in w/their newborn, and discovered him. My daughter had walked in on one attempt that required no firearm and got supervised visits shortly afterward, for their child. A friend's father committed suicide, no one saw it coming. My friend committed suicide in front of her family, just walked in, and put a gun in her mouth. A friend's brother did as well, and she still grieves. My spouse's father took his life, no one saw it coming. An acquaintance's 15 y/o (no firearm involved). They knew she was sad but not suicidal. I could go on but I'll stop there. The survivors never really heal from it. think lots of folks contemplate it, just never quite get that far.

So sorry for your shocking losses.

I've been trying to hold off on what I am about to post for the longest time but it may as well come out now due to the subject matter:

Many many years ago (late 1970's) one of my distant relatives, 16/17 years old, accidentally totaled his father's car. His father was on the strict side, and before the father could find out and punish him - the boy shot himself.

I was quite young at the time, and I never heard where the boy got the gun from. I do remember things were pretty quiet in the family - his and mine - at the time.

 

[KaaBoom]

Planty of kids being shot in UK with no guns mostly gang related

Source?

 

[ATasteOfHoney]

So instead of having non biased studies of drugs and chemicals, the manufacturers do the studies themselves. They pay the scientists. It truly is laughable.

Why study the people who do the gun crimes? There is no reason ?

I vaguely remember back in my college days reading gun stats from the FBI or DOJ. Anyone search for those?

 

[ATasteOfHoney]

I think we'll have to agree to disagree at this point. It is against my faith to despise anyone, but, I want to focus energy on violent offenders. Not folks who screwed up, paid their debt to society, and are not violent. And yes, if a felon gets their record expunged, they can own a gun according to the ATF (my post #827)

Not every State has the same expungement laws, so no....not every State can a convicted felon ever own a gun. Per your example in FL, a convicted embezzlement felon cannot get their record expunged.

And yes, we will have to agree to disagree on allowing a convicted felon to own a gun. I don’t want them to & I certainly don’t despise them either.

 

[KaaBoom]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...nt-crime-senior-officers-criticised-ignoring/

Britain hit by surge in violent crime: senior officers criticised for ignoring basics as gun and knife offences soar

12 APRIL 2017 • 11:34PM
Britain is in the grip of a sudden surge in violent crime, Scotland Yard warned yesterday, amid criticism of senior officers.

Following years of decline in gun and knife crime, the Metropolitan 
Police reported a leap in recorded 
offences in the capital, with gun crime rising by 42 per cent year on year and knife crime up by 24 per cent.

Sex offences, robberies and assaults also increased.

Figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that knife crime was up by 11 per cent to more than 30,000 and gun crime had risen by 7 per cent to more than 5,400 recorded incidents.

Gun crime in the UK: 5,400
Gun crime in the US: 414,562

Gun Violence _ National Institute of Justice