heywood on 6/6/2016 at 14:49
Quote Posted by Starker
Also, this doesn't mean that it's a bad idea to try to keep an eye on the guns that are out there or regulate their use. You don't let just about anyone drive a car, why would you let just about anyone use a gun? At least you should try to enforce that they know how to operate one and don't use it drunk.
In the US, the legal difference is that there is a Constitutionally protected right to own a firearm, but there is no such right to drive a car on public roads. Although sometimes I think there should be a right to drive, since it is so fundamental to life in the US outside of a major city. Also because revoking a person's driver license is used unjustly as a punishment for a lot of crimes not related to driving, e.g. drug possession.
Quote Posted by bjack
Yesterday, I went into a local Big5 sporting goods store to look at shot gun shells. I struck up a conversation with the counter guy about the possible new law that will require a background check to buy ammo. He was against the measure, but then said that if someone covered in seriously psycho/sick tattoos comes into his store and wants to buy 9mm rounds, he has to sell them. If someone comes in that looks like a maniac, he has to serve them. A background check would be nice in those cases. It would also be nice in cases where the buyer is obviously disturbed. In addition, it would remove the stigma associated with, "well, he looked like an ISIS supporter..."
Well, of course the shop owner cannot discriminate based on how somebody looks, and neither could a background check.
Since we require a background check for the purchase of a firearm, it sounds logical to require it for purchasing ammo too. But purchasing a gun is not something most gun owners do frequently, so waiting up to 3 days for the background check is not an unreasonable burden. On the other hand, many/most gun owners purchase ammo every time they shoot, so requiring a similar on the spot background check is not practical. Licensing would be the only practical option, and that effectively changes gun ownership from a right into a privilege much like driving.
For example, Massachusetts licenses firearm owners. You need a Firearms Identification (FID) card to own long guns of capacity <10 and to buy ammo, and you need a Class A License to Carry to own handguns or large capacity long guns. There's a long list of things which statutorily disqualify you from being eligible for either a FID or LTC. For example, if you have a past conviction for minor marijuana possession in another state then you are ineligible, even though it has been decriminalized in Massachusetts. And suppose you're a hunter with an FID card and you get a first offense misdemeanor DUI conviction, you lose your FID and the local police confiscate your guns. On top of that your local police chief has wide latitude to declare you "unsuitable".
Quote Posted by scumble
I don't think I was trying to make a point about what should be done about terrorism or gun control, it was an observation on the emotive nature of rare catastrophies, and that boring causes of death might actually add up to make more suffering, with equally dodgy policies surrounding them and not much attention on them.
There's an element of political pressure to be seen to do something about guns in the wake of a mass shooting. Similarly the government has to be seen to be doing something about terrorism.
I don't want to get into the question of how much government action has actually led to increases in the amount of terrorist activity, I'm thinking about what actually happens rather than taking political messages as they come out. Are resources sensibly allocated or just thrown at the most obvious cause for scoring political points?
The amount of effort, energy, and resources we spend on fighting terrorism is way, way, way, way out of proportion with the actual threat. Here in the US, we spend hundreds of billions a year directly and indirectly fighting terrorism and live with government surveillance, secrecy, and restricted freedoms to counter a threat that is absolutely minuscule outside of 4 countries (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria). And yet our Congress has been busy bickering over a 1 billion for the Zika virus which arrived here just in time for mosquito season. Our whole response to terrorism really pisses me off, but further ranting is probably best left to another thread.
Quote Posted by Starker
For the US as a whole, the largest source of illegal weapons is the sale of legal weapons. All but a small fraction of guns confiscated from criminals have once been sold legally. Like in Chicago, there are a lot of straw purchases, where the weapon is bought by a girlfriend or someone like that, often with no or very small consequences to the buyer.
The lesson to take away from this is that Chicago's gun laws simply don't work. Not because gun control cannot and will not work, but because Chicago's gun laws are a joke.
This would be more accurate: The largest source of illegal weapons is the illegal sale of legal weapons. I read some time back that the largest source of guns on the black market is federally licensed dealers who are complicit in illegal trafficking. Straw purchases add to that, theft adds to it, and as Tony pointed out so does cross-border smuggling.
Your point about Chicago doesn't make a lot of sense. Chicago had a handgun ban for nearly 30 years, 1982-2010, no permits and no sales of handguns at all. That didn't stop Chicago from having consistently one of the highest murder rates with handguns being largely the weapon of choice. Same thing in Washington D.C. The lesson to take away from this is that localized gun restrictions don't prevent gun crime. Unless you're an island and can search everyone coming in, criminals will be able to get guns as easily as in any other place with which you share an open border.
Vivian on 6/6/2016 at 15:05
Quote Posted by heywood
In the US, the legal difference is that there is a Constitutionally protected right to own a firearm, but there is no such right to drive a car on public roads.
This often seems a bit of a circular argument - having existing legislation about something does not justify it? Martin Shkreli was entirely legally entitled to do all the shit he did (IF he actually exists and isn't some kind of marketing campaign for an as-yet unannounced Wu-Tang/Bill Murray caper movie), but that doesn't mean what he did was cool. Having the right to bear arms doesn't really count as an argument for bearing arms, it's just stating (repeatedly, more often that than not) that you have the right to bear them. It's like asking if the ploughmans sandwich is good and just being told that the cafe has a legal right to sell it to you. Uh, cool?
Starker on 6/6/2016 at 15:31
Quote Posted by heywood
Your point about Chicago doesn't make a lot of sense. Chicago had a handgun ban for nearly 30 years, 1982-2010, no permits and no sales of handguns at all. That didn't stop Chicago from having consistently one of the highest murder rates with handguns being largely the weapon of choice. Same thing in Washington D.C. The lesson to take away from this is that localized gun restrictions don't prevent gun crime. Unless you're an island and can search everyone coming in, criminals will be able to get guns as easily as in any other place with which you share an open border.
Exactly, a gun ban doesn't make a lick of difference when all that means is that you just have to drive outside of the city to buy them and no significant consequences follow. Reportedly, gang members would receive harsher punishments from their leaders for losing their weapon than they would from the courts for having one.
My point is that this doesn't prove that gun control doesn't work, it proves that ineffective gun laws are ineffective.
catbarf on 6/6/2016 at 16:01
Quote Posted by Starker
I'm very surprised about the all or nothing attitude. Would you at least agree that if there are less guns available and they are harder to get then there will be less crimes committed with a gun and less accidents? Isn't the statistical advantage not worth pursuing if it meant less people dying?
I think part of what he meant is that the statistical advantage is extremely hard to quantify, and part is that people have the attitude that any acts of violence are too much. In England and Australia, homicides and other gun-related crimes actually spiked following widespread gun confiscation in the late-90s- England's homicide rate actually (
http://crimeresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/UK-Firearm-Homicide-Rate.png) peaked five years after the 1997 handgun ban. It's very hard to quantify the effects of gun control because they're difficult to separate from other social and political factors at work, and then there's a question of short-term effects versus long-term effects.
Then, even if you can show a statistical correlation, people aren't really swayed by statistics, they're swayed by events. Every time we experience a terrorist attack, people say that clearly more action needs to be taken to prevent terrorism. The implication is that if
any acts of terrorism occur, clearly we aren't doing enough- we never look at an attack and say 'our security is good enough, things like this are bound to happen once in a while'. Similarly with guns, any time there's a mass shooting there will be people saying the restrictions clearly aren't enough, regardless of what restrictions have already been put in place or what the statistics look like compared to yesteryear, so ultimately nothing short of a blanket ban will satisfy them. Incremental gun control steps may have quantifiable results, but in public discourse the argument of 'we have experienced a decline in homicides over the past decade, but these things will still happen, our laws are good enough' loses out to 'fifteen people are dead, we have to do something' every single time.
Even in 'cold dead hands' US-of-A, guns have been steadily and increasingly restricted nationwide, from the 1934 NFA to the 1968 GCA to the Hughes Amendment to the closing of the machine gun registry. High-profile events lead to increased restrictions which are never relaxed, leading many gun owners to fight tooth and nail against any new laws because they see it as one step closer to total confiscation. I don't think characterizing it as 'all or nothing' is inaccurate because that's pretty much how the debate plays out. One side wants incremental restriction until guns are gone for good, and the other opposes all new laws, no matter how reasonable, because they see those laws as stepping stones. There may be a lot of people in the middle, but their voices aren't the loudest.
catbarf on 6/6/2016 at 16:15
Quote Posted by Starker
My point is that this doesn't prove that gun control doesn't work, it proves that ineffective gun laws are ineffective.
I agree entirely. As I said earlier in this thread, it's already illegal to purchase a weapon that would be illegal in your place of residence, it's illegal to purchase a weapon on behalf of someone who can't pass a background check,
and it's illegal for a gun dealer to knowingly allow either of these, but the laws have been laxly enforced by the federal justice system so it's happening every day. It's to the point where (
https://www.thetrace.org/2015/08/straw-purchases-law-atf-gun/) states are starting to pass their own laws because the federal government isn't doing enough.
As a gun owner I'm not opposed to further regulation, I just really wish we could focus on enforcing existing laws and addressing the statistical sources of firearms used in crime, rather than going after emotionally-charged bogeymen like assault weapons and 'high-capacity' magazines. Keeping guns out of the hands of those who we already know shouldn't have them ought to be more important than finding cosmetic features to ban.
catbarf on 6/6/2016 at 16:33
Absolutely, that much is indisputable. But we also have a very high rate of non-gun-related violence as well, implying that there's a lot more than just guns at work. And, most importantly, while it's safe to say that all guns vanishing overnight would dramatically reduce our homicide rate, we are unfortunately stuck with trying to pass legislation that by nature will disproportionately affect law-abiding gun owners, and without knowing in advance what sort of impact it will have on the illegal use of guns. Like I said before, both England and Australia experienced an
increase in homicide rate following their firearm bans/confiscation, before resuming roughly the same downward trend they had before the bans. So how do we interpret that? Do we say that the bans led to an increase in crime due to that spike? Do we say they had no effect, since after the spike the crime rates started to fall like before? Do we say they reduced crime, because that downward trend didn't level out? And that's not even touching on comparisons with countries where crime rates rose after bans, such as Jamaica or Mexico, which might unfortunately be closer socially to the US than the US is to the UK.
Trying to pull any sort of useful conclusion out of gun crime stats always strikes me as an exercise in pareidolia. It's just too easy to cherry-pick for effect.
Starker on 6/6/2016 at 16:35
Yeah, I know. I had to look into crime statistics myself a few years ago for reasons so stupid it still makes my head hurt when I think about it (hint: it has to do with video games).
I found that publicly available stats are often not all that useful, though. What you really want is stuff like police databases and research by real criminologists that really go into the nitty-gritty details.
heywood on 6/6/2016 at 21:10
A big problem is finding researchers who are believed to be impartial by both sides and who are willing to do the research, and another big problem is funding it. Gun rights are kind of like abortion rights in that it's a black or white issue, with few people on the fence. Generally speaking, the only people who want to study it are those who already have a preferred outcome/agenda and the same goes for those who want to fund it.
Pyrian on 6/6/2016 at 22:03
It's one thing for studies to have biases, it's quite another to pass laws preventing data collection.
