The missing voice in the gun control debates

Great Debates
1

when I hear the term “gun control” the first thing that pops in my head is furious anger from people that own guns, and are about as willing to give said guns up, as they are to set themselves on fire. I don’t think about people wanting to “abolish the second amendment” because the argument usually concedes a decent amount of gun ownership rights.

Maybe it’s some sort of media bias, but when I hear from gun control opponents, it always seems to be the same “take my 30 round assault rifles from my cold dead hands” type of extremism.

Almost every gun owner I’ve ever met was a fastidious and practical person that valued safety above all else, and taught respect and proper treatment of firearms. Why do I never hear from these people? The media? Maybe so. But you’d think if enough people with well reasoned arguments made themselves available, you might hear from one or two of them.

I think if there were a magic litmus test for anyone that might commit a crime with a gun, the NRA might support using that technology. Yet, after massacres, all you hear is “arm the people that were shot, don’t touch my 2nd amendment rights, guns don’t kill people, people do”.

I’d like for once to hear from the people that really respect marksmanship and gun handling. The type of person that wouldn’t let me have CO2 pellet gun, but rather a pump gun because it caused me to think more carefully about my shot and target. Some gun purists would see a 30 round clip as a crutch for an ineffective shooter, and an assault rifle as almost a method of cheating. People still use bows and arrows you know (very modernized versions).

I think whatever compromise we come up with is going to be between “no guns” and “some guns”. Why do we only hear from the crackpots that think that “all guns” are a constitutional right?

IMO, high-cap mags and other military features have no place in hunting, home defense, or any other real world scenario that a shotgun, rifle, or handgun couldn’t remedy. The zombie apocalypse is not real BTW.

There are plenty of people out there with a couple shotguns, a few rifles, and several handguns that could live their lives without any gun law restriction and be perfectly happy. We never hear that side though. We only hear the most paranoid from each side. Thanks media.

2

You’re trying to find a dichotomy that doesn’t exist. Usually, the “gun nuts” who are most enthusiastic about the recreational and defensive use of guns are often the ones most knowledgable in safe handling, and for that matter, often marksmanship.

The idea that people who value “safety and marksmanship” would be all for banning the standard rifleman’s firearm of the US army, still used in all sorts of marksmanship competitions, is a false premise.

Basically, there’s no divide as you suppose between people who are using their guns safely and who are skilled at marksmanship and gun nuts that own “assault weapons”. The “nuts” who really spend a lot of money and time on the hobby are the most likely people to be the best and safest shooters.

The idea that standard capacity magazines have no use in defense or other real world scenarios is bizarre and unsubstantiated.

3

Well, by and large, we’re right here, getting backed into a corner with the extremists, because our rights are being threatened just as much as theirs are.

But may I suggest that perhaps you’re not noticing us so much because, when you propose that “assault weapons” (i.e., any semiautomatic rifle) serve no purpose and ought to be banned, we hold up our hands and say “Now, wait just a moment,” and try to reason contrarily – and then you dismiss us as extremists because we’re not willing to give up our warlike weaponry? When we try to point out that assault weapons kill fewer people than stepladder accidents, or that magazine size is almost never a factor in crime (not even in most mass shootings), we often get shouted down in a stream of what feels (to us) like unreasoning hatred.

I like to think I’m one of the reasonable ones. I wouldn’t think it a violation of my rights if I had to be licensed to own firearms, especially handguns. I’d cheerfully accept a reasonable amount scrutiny and paperwork if it wasn’t onerous (and, once you have registration, there is no reason to make it onerous except to punish the law-abiding), and if it really helped make us all a bit safer. And, let’s be honest, we’re already quite safe and ought to be grateful for it.

But I will never support a ban on assault weapons, or restrictions on magazine sizes, and will fight vigorously against every proposal made, because not only would that indeed violate the rights of millions, it would be useless in achieving the goals gun control folks claim to be trying to achieve.

Does that make me an extremist? I’m on board with the idea that we should try to reduce the number of homicides in this country. I’m willing to give up a bit of convenience to help achieve that goal. But I draw the line at categorical bans or other significant infringements, especially when they’d be useless.

This may be a slight digression, but purely as a social liberal I would oppose any attempt to either develop or use such a technology for any category of crime. Pre-crime? No, thank you. The implications are too chilling, the potential for abuse too great; our liberty is worth more than any safety that could be gained by going that way.

4

The problem is most of them just don’t care. And for the most part they have their guns and side with those that support them. Radicals or not.

5

I have absolutely no desire to own something like an AR-15. That’s said, what’s a gun purist? I picture some hipster jerk at the gun range saying something like, “Yeah, that Ruger Mini-14 with its synthetic stock and 30 round magazine is an impressive piece of technology. But if you want to be a real gun enthusiast you need something like this bolt action Arisaka 99 chambered in 7.7mm. You can actually smell the sweat of the previous owners that’s seeped into the natural wood stock!”

Quite frankly, I don’t think I could care less that some gun purist would look down on me because of my choice of firearm. I favor bolt and lever action rifles but I don’t look down at people who like Mini-14s, AR-15s or those who spend thousands of dollars on bolt action rifles.

I think it’s confirmation bias on your part. We don’t only hear about the crackpots who want all guns to be legal in the same way that we don’t only hear about the crackpots who want all guns to be illegal.

First, what is a military feature? If you mean semi-automatic then I hate to be the one to burst your bubble but semi-automatic rifles and shotguns are commonly used for hunting. True, most states do limit the magazine size of rifles and shotguns used for hunting. Second, what does it matter that I could use a firearm other than the one with the high capacity magazine and “other” military features? I especially love your little dig at the end with your zombie statement. Poisoning the well, my friend. Anyone who disagrees with you is delusional, eh?

6

The problem is that what is proposed as sensible, moderate, middle-of-the-road gun control is almost always a mishmash of actually sensible, debatable, and just plain stupid.

“Too many people are dying on our nation’s highways! We need tough new laws to make our streets safe!”

(OK, sure. No one is in favor of traffic fatalities.)

“We need mandatory seat-belt laws…”

(Theoretically, an infringement on personal liberty. But, jeeze, seat-belts are so good at keeping you safer in accidents, and the actual intrusion on anyone’s liberty is so minimal.)

“A crackdown on drunk driving…”

(Absolutely! We must never go back to the days of “Had a few for the road Mr. Smith?” “Oh, yesh, oshifer!” “Well, you drive very carefully, then, Mr. Smith.” “Yesh, thank you, oshifer!” Although I do have some reservations about making, say, blood alcohol limits too draconian–the whole “throwing people in jail for having one glass of wine with dinner” thing.)

“A return to a national top speed limit–no exceptions!–of 55 miles an hour…”

(Well, I don’t really think I’m on board with that one…)

“And a ban on cars that are red or have those dumbass spoilers on them!”

(Wait, WHAT?!?)

“But that idiot who was illegally drag-racing and broadsided that school bus full of kids on their way back home from band camp one night, his car had a SPOILER on it! And it was a red car!!!”

(But that doesn’t make any sense at all!)

So–universal background checks? I could probably get on board with that (with legislation, the devil is always in the details). Limits on magazine capacity? Not real happy with that, but maybe could accept it–politics is about compromise, after all. Bans on “military-style” “assault weapons”? Stupid.

7

My barber is one of those whom the OP references. He’s an avid hunter. He favors registration (and reasonably thorough background checks) and he sees no reason whatsoever that people should need military-style assault weapons.

“I need that bazooka for hunting purposes, it not only kills the deer, it also breaks up the meat into smaller pieces AND cooks it. Much more efficient.”

The problem with the analogy with cars, seat-belts, what-have-you is that cars DO have another purpose. Their sole purpose is not just to kill people. Assault weapons have no purpose other than killing people. So analogies all fall apart before they even start.

And we DO manage to impose bans on certain types of arms. No one (I hope) would argue that nuclear weapons should be available to the general public, nor tanks, nor … So it’s just a question of where we draw the line, not a question of whether we draw a line.

First, that sounds like a faulty statistic. How many people were actually killed by stepladders last year? Let’s have a cite for something that outrageous.

But my main point is that the analogy is faulty from the get-go. For example: H-bombs have not killed ANY people. A-bombs haven’t killed any people since WWII, so there has NEVER been an instance of abuse of nuclear weapons by individuals. And yet we ban them.

8

Probably too early for 2012 figures, but a bit of historical perspective from prior years is available.

More than 187,000 Americans were treated in hospitals due to stepladder injuries in 2009. Cite

Of the 617 fatal workplace falls in the United States in 2009, 20% were falls from ladders. That makes for about 123 workplace deaths related to falls from a ladder. Cite That counts only workplace deaths.

According to the World Health Organization, the United States leads the world in ladder deaths. Each year, there are more than 164,000 emergency room-treated injuries and 300 deaths in the U.S. that are caused by falls from ladders. Cite

Now how many deaths per year are attributed to assault weapons? Let’s use the numbers from Sen Feinstein, a strong proponent of the proposed assault weapons ban.

That makes 385 assault weapons deaths over a period of about 8 years… or about 48 per year.

Looks like there are about 6 times more ladder deaths in the USA than assault weapons deaths per year based upon those numbers.

9

For an Admin on a message board that’s supposedly dedicated to fighting ignorance, your post is chock full of butt-ignorant drivel. Your folksy anecdote from your barber is your cite? And a strawman about bazookas no less?

The AR platform is highly versatile and customizable to each user; this is a consequence of its military origins. Literally millions of verterans from Vietnam to Iraq have carried, maintained, and fired an M-16, and are therefore quite conversant in the inner workings of the AR-platform rifle.

The AR platform rifle is not some fully-automatic death-spewing machine. It is a semi-automatic rifle. Period. One pull of the trigger, one round fired. Release trigger for reset, and pull again. Can someone rip off 30 shots quickly by pulling the trigger repeatedly as fast as they can? Sure. They might hit the broad side of a barn if they were standing inside of it.

Manufacturers have begun offering AR platform rifles in a multitude of calibers, many of them suitable for hunting. And they also offer lower-capacity magazines so that said hunters can be in compliance with round-limit hunting/game laws.

Field & Stream Picks the 25 Best AR-Style Rifles.

Remington, Olympic Arms, CMMG, DPMS (Panther Arms), etc, look on many different manufactuerer’s websites and you’ll see ARs and AR-variants offered in multiple calibers suitable for hunting.

ETA: Thanks, Iggy. I was about to tackle accidental deaths from ladders, but you got it in one.

10

To the OP: I’m one of the reasonable, safe gun owners you describe. And I’m angry at the foolishness at the gun control lobby because they continuously spout much the same senseless drivel as our estimable board Admin.

Stealth Potato pretty much covers it, but only brushes on the real reason lots of us are angry.

I grew up in a semi-rural town of 18,000 souls not too far away from St. Louis. There were lots of gun owners and hunters in our town. Do you know how many murders we had? Zero. It would be the talk-of-the-town for a year or more if we’d had one. We did have one accidental gun death when I was in High School, from a teenager playing with his dad’s revolver and accidentally shooting his best friend with it.

But I can’t count the number of times I turned on the evening news and heard about someone in St. Louis getting shot and murdered.

The dirty little secret is that suicides account for about 55%-60% of firearms deaths; of the remainder, the vast majority of gun homicides are committed by black youths. Check out the CDC’s stats; go ahead, it’s freely available over the internet to the pubic.

Guess where those black youths live? I’ll give you a hint: it ain’t the country, and it ain’t the 'burbs.

Now what do you think those black youths are using to commit all these murders?

I’ll give you a hint: it ain’t scary black rifles. Go look at the F.B.I.'s Crime Statistics Reports; go ahead, it’s freely available over the internet to the pubic.

Suicides: mental health issues
Organized Crime: criminal justice issue
Inner cities: war zones
Suburbs and Rural: gun crime rates look a lot more like England, which everyone wants to hold up as the “model” of gun control.

England never had the gun-crime epidemic that exploded on the U.S. Scene with the Cocaine Invasion of the 1980s. Their gun crime rate was already ridiculously low before they enacted sweeping gun bans and confiscations in reaction to the Dunblane Shooting Incident.

Their [over]reaction was akin to a man trying to kill an annoying fly buzzing around his house by loading up a 40mm anti-aircraft cannon and letting fly.

Given all of that openly available and freely accessible information, tell me, Mr. OP, why I shouldn’t be angry whenever our elected officials, with carry permits and round-the-clock armed security protecting them with gun offer up another solution that doesn’t address the problems of gun violence, but instead identifies me as the problem???

11

I just want to point out that the OP’s viewpoint has a mirror proposition. When do the pro-control people say “that’s not right”, in public, loudly? Punitive taxes proposed on ammo? A ban on semi-auto’s? All repeating arms? Handguns?

Just sayin’.

12

Semi-related, but I’d like to say I despise all of this deference to hunters as if they’re the sole legitimate users of guns. Everyone talks about how they don’t want to infringe on hunters rights when they talk about which guns they want to ban. I always wondered why. What makes hunters so special? Is their use for hunting somehow more legitimate than my use for shooting paper targets, or collecting historical firearms? Or my need to be prepared for the inevitable zombie apocalypse?*

Fuck hunters. I mean, I have no problem if they do what they do responsibly, but I’m sick of them being looked to as the default legitimate gun owning group.

Self defense is, of course, by far the most important reason for personal gun ownership. It’s not a necesary nor sole reason, of course, but it’s so much more important than every other use that I’m tired of this faux deference to hunters and sportsman as the sole arbiters of what gun ownership is acceptable or the only people with the legitimate reason to own them.

I’m pretty sure that’s a divide and conquer strategy. Attack one group while assuring another similar but seperate group that you’d never come after them the same way. Hunters, in my experience, are often assholes who do not care about the right of self defense, the second amendment, or any of that - if you tell them you’ll leave them alone, you’ll have their support. Fuck them.

  • It’s sad that I have to footnote that this isn’t serious.
13

The shift of thought that the 2nd is about hunting rights is misplaced. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1u0Byq5Qis

14

While a standard-capacity magazine is probably not legal to use while hunting protected game in most states, they’re great for things like bunny blasting, and a pistol with a standard-capacity magazine is the first choice of many individuals for home defense. Feinstein’s bill bans a whole slew of shotguns, rifles, and handguns that are quite useful in your “real world scenarios.”

If you thought you were moderate, I hate to break it to you, but you don’t appear to be a centrist on this issue. You sound like you’re clearly in the Feinstein / McCarthy camp. One of the dirty little secrets of the AWB is that “assault weapons” are used in a miniscule fraction of crimes (which is one reason we think it’s a dumb idea). Also, you probably owe Iggy something for his fine research.

15

And a hearty +1. I’m angry that we have to legitimize to our elected officials any lawfull use of a firearm in order to justify our right to keep and bear arms.

It’s not enough that I have to explain to CK Dex’s barber :rolleyes: why the AR platform is a legitimate firearm for any number of lawfull uses, or to random internet strangers, too.

Why do we have ot explain this too our elected public servants? Excuse me, our Lords and MAsters?

16

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: it’s simply a problem without a solution, at least none that would work in the USA as it is or conceivably ever will be.

Everything Ex Tank has written is 100% true. Especially this part:

How in world do you solve that?

People who are intent on taking their own lives are still going to (attempt to) accomplish it whether they have guns or not.

Make it illegal for black youths to own guns? That’s impossible for a myriad reasons logistic, legal, and political. It’s not like gang members are headin’ down to their neighborhood Walmart, filling out paperwork, getting background checks and registering their weapons, not to mention the obvious blatant racism inherent in such a ban.

Ban all firearms in all cities? Tried that and eventually found unconstitutional. Not to mention that it had little to arguably absolutely no effect on violent crime. In the decades following the DC ban, the city experienced an unprecendented level of violence and murder.

Ban all handguns? Let’s just not even go there.

Even if it were possible to pinpoint the location and owner of every single firearm in the country, they’re still out there, the vast majority of them in the possession of responsible law-abiding citizens, or at least people unlikely to use one to premeditatively murder someone.

The simple, painful truth is, as long as the guns are out there, Newtown, Columbine, Virginia Tech, that movie theater thing, etc. are going to occur every now and then, and as tragic and horrifying as those things are, frankly, aside from making all of the guns magically disappear, there’s nothing we can do about it.

BTW, this is coming from a person who doesn’t own guns, has handled and/or fired a gun only twice in his life, and doesn’t particularly care for them. If I had my druthers, I’d get rid of all of them but as I’ve outlined above, that’s just not going to happen, ever.

That said, I don’t have a problem with people who exercise their constitutional rights to own and use their guns in a lawful way, I know and am close friends with many people who own and enjoy firearms, and I’ve made my peace with the fact that things are going to remain largely just as they are and I’ll just have to mourn the tragedies as they come like we all will, and that’s that.

17

Do you even know what the definition of an “assault weapon” is? From Senator Feinstein’s newly proposed bill (PDF file):

It has nothing to do with whether these weapons are “designed to kill people”. The good old-fashioned wooden M1 Garand is just as much “designed to kill people” as the scary-looking black AR-15. The Garand shoots the big rifle bullet, while the AR-15s generally all shoot calibers like the smaller rifle round to the left. The laws about “assault weapons” are–with the exception of the magazine capacity restrictions (which could be debated and enacted entirely separately from this nonsense about “barrel shrouds” and “thumbhole stocks” if we so chose)–all about “style” and nothing about function. Why does that make any sense?

The funny thing is, back in the 90’s when the “assault weapons” concept was first proposed–I supported it, using pretty much the same lines of argument as Dex does. But then I educated myself.

18

Want to bet on that?

19

Interesting, but those deaths were not directly from the H-bombs but from the radiation. However, I stand corrected. Twenty-three people have been killed by H-bombs over the last 60 years, and yet we ban them.

Thanks for the research, Iggy, I’m astounded. However, I still argue that the analogy is faulty. Far more people own stepladders than own guns, so it’s not surprising that there are more accidents due to stepladders. I’d not be surprised if there are more injuries arising from scissors than from assault weapons, as well. The fact that “assault weapons” have not caused deaths in the hundreds of thousands, well, neither have H-bombs. We’ve probably not had a huge number of human deaths from DDT and similar insecticides, and yet we prohibit/regulate their use on foods. Etc etc. I repeat: we do draw a line in the sand about regulation of “right to bear arms”, it’s just a question of where we draw it.

And for everyone else who’s jumping on me because I don’t know the diff between an AK-17 and BQ-43: (a) you are quite right and (b) stuff it. I don’t know the diff, nor do I care to. I do not own any sort of gun. I have not studied the various proposals, nor do I want to spend my time on that. I do not think that an “assault weapon” ban goes far enough. I favor repeal (or re-definition) of the 2nd Amendment to require registration of ALL firearms. Canada, the UK, Australia, etc manage to survive with fairly strict gun control regulations, and the US murder rate (per 10,000 pop) is roughly 4 x that of Canada, the UK, or Australia.

We regulate automobiles and highway construction. We regulate the construction of buildings. We regulate pharmaceuticals and (many) foods. And by the way, we DO set standards for the construction of stepladders, too.

I have never pretended to be “moderate” on this issue. (And my role as administrator on these Message Boards is irrelevant: I am posting here as a poster, not as staff.) The OP was asking where are the gun-users who are moderates on this issue, and I cited one (my barber, who dropped out of the NRA because of their extremist position.) I do not pretend to belong to that group.

20

IOW: you’re stuffing your fingers in your ears, saying, “don’t bother me with facts, I want gun control in spite of the fact that I don’t know a damned thing about them, don’t want to, I wan’t to be like England and Canada and Australia.”

Have you considered emigration?