I’m curious about those stats too, but the gun violence stats are useful in refuting the assertions of some that the availability and ubiquity of guns have nothing to do with gun violence.
I understand that people determined to kill themselves will do so regardless of method or tools available. But presumably there are some folks who hit bottom or otherwise feel moments of suicidal ideation and might not kill themselves if there weren’t a very easy method nearby.
No idea whether this would be a handful or a significant amount of US suicides.
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I understand that people determined to kill themselves will do so regardless of method or tools available. But presumably there are some folks who hit bottom or otherwise feel moments of suicidal ideation and might not kill themselves if there weren’t a very easy method nearby.
No idea whether this would be a handful or a significant amount of US suicides.
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Well, one thing you could do (which I don’t believe would be a very close analogue, but might get you a ball park feel) is to look at countries that used to have wider gun ownership and then severely restricted it. You can look at suicide rates before, during and after…immediately after and after a decade or so if there is data.
Who gives a shit about gun homicide rates? Why do they matter? Shouldn’t we be comparing plain old homicide rates? I mean you can use this sort of cherrypicking to do all sorts of silly things.
We’ve been here pretty much all along. The US has had elevated rates of homicide since the end of industrial revolution at least relative to the UK. Maybe it is guns, maybe its culture, maybe its any one of a number of reasons but its hardly a recent phenomenon that occurred after America became a first world developed nation.
We have a pretty good idea based on how many guns are manufactured in the US and how many are imported (that pretty much leave just the guns left in inventories and guns that are either smuggled in or made at home).
They do no such thing. There is a law that prevents the CDC from advocating for gun control but that is not the same as preventing the compilation of statistics. For reasons that are not widely know, they have chosen to back off on gun research, but gun research is not prohibited, just advocating gun control. In fact the FBI and DOJ keeps all manner of statistics on guns.
People don’t choose their suicide method by accident.
The most common method of suicide in Korea is poisoning. They don’t overdose on tylenol or taking sleeping pills, they straight up poison themselves using things like rat poison and they achieve a suicide completion rate MUCH higher than suicide by poison rates in the USA.
I think everyone agrees that there are some homicides that would only be assaults in the absence of the legal private ownership of guns. How large do you think that number is? How many murders committed by legal gun owners would have been prevented if we they could not legally own a gun (but might still be able to procure one illegally).
How many lives do you think are saved because of the legal private ownership of guns? Surely the number is not zero, is it?
Thanks, man. That post goes some way in encouraging me that there might be some reasonable folk out there willing to work towards (what I consider) reasonable solutions.
I used to be really anti-gun, but as I’ve said around her before, over the past 10-15 years I’ve shifted on that. And I support peoples’ desire to collect, entertain themselves, protect themselves, and otherwise exercise their rights in a manner that does not harm others. Heck, it was only during W’s presidency and the Patriot Act bullshit, that I began to have some sympathy for the fear of jack-booted government thugs bursting thru the door. My main concern is privacy - and all I’ve got is a penumbra! If I wish the rights I feel important to be respected, I have to respect folk who at least have an accepted interpretation of an amendment in their favor.
But I really have trouble understanding folk who think they should have unlimited numbers of unregistered firearms, and the right to carry them in public. But how to get past the damn 2d amendment?
I’m also a little confused, tho. You suggest folk shouldn’t want everything all at once, but you wouldn’t support slippery slopes. That’s a mighty fine line, ain’t it? how do you distinguish between reasonable steps and the beginning of a slippery slope? And where do you anticipate it ending up?
The problem I have is even minor initial steps seem to be BS. Is a gun highpowered, or just mean-looking? 22s and hunting rifles can still kill people dead.
There is plenty we can do to reduce gun violence but as long as the gun control lobby doesn’t understand that “guns don’t kill people do” they will be focusing on the wrong thing and effectively vilifying all gun owners (including a shitload of Democrats). Don’t control guns, control who can have a gun. license them and register them and while its not a perfect watertight system we can significantly reduce the flow of new guns into the hands of people we think are more likely to become “bad guys with guns”
The problem is availability rather than raw quantity. There’s no need to confiscate guns already in responsible hands, just tighten background checks, and prosecute illegal gun sales.
Such gun control would be no panacea. Criminals would still find ways to get guns, though with greater difficulty; persons with marginal mental health might still pass checks, though with greater difficulty. However a favorable trend could emerge, without confiscation.
The prevalance of public carrying of guns contributes to much gun violence. According to gun enthusiasts their primary needs are (a) sport and hobby, (b) home defense, (c) keeping the weapons on hand for the day when a “Manchurian candidate” is elected President, corrupts the army, and initiates a pogrom. None of these needs require public carry of the weapon. (I think most sensible gun enthusiasts would agree it’s better to hand over a $100 wallet to a mugger than to inititiate a gun battle.)
The idea that the army of a democracy like the U.S. would become corrupt and need to be fought by private citizens may seem unlikely. But something like that did happen at Kent State University in 1970. My question for gun rights advocates is: Should the Kent State students have been armed and fought the military?
You may not like our form of government but SCOTUS tells us what the law is. If we think they are wrong we must change the law. Good luck on getting 2/3rds of each chamber of congress and 3/4ths of the states to follow your lead.
Its got a pretty strict gun control regime. If they cannot or will not enforce their gun control laws then who will?
Semi-automatic firearms fire no faster than revolvers. Should we ban those too?
They are misleading you. I don’t know how many times we have to do this but here is the NRA form 990 (tax disclosure form for non-profits detailing origin of funds and uses of funds).
175 million of the 290 million it receives are from member dues.
~15 million from licensing (use of the NRA logo to sell stuff).
~ 25 million from advertising in the NRA publications.
~100 million from contributions gifts and grants.
So where the do you get the notion that “more than half of its operating budget is made up of straight contributions from gun manufacturers?”
You do realize that the board of directors are elected by the membership right? Only a tiny sliver of the NRA membership ever bothers to vote but there is an election process. They are not appointed by the gun industry.
Then your statement becomes meaningless. You know they are criminals because they have committed a crime not because t5hey keep a gun in their house.
That was pretty unclear. I could say there are 300 million guns floating around in the USA and I think people would know what I meant.
Who says that? The availability of guns certainly makes using a gun for violence more possible. I don’t see how it could be any other way. But how much of that gun violence would have occurred anyway but using a different method? At least some of it right?
Guns are not the only easy method but yes I agree there simply must be some number of people who would not successfully commit suicide if there wasn’t a gun around.
I don’t know either but when I see a murder rate that is significantly higher than other comparable nations and I see a suicide rate that is very average, I am inclined to overlook the suicide angle. The obvious problem is our high murder rate. Sure we have lots of mass shootings but it is such a tiny percentage of the murders that focusing on them seems like you’re wagging the dog.
I’m not sure if your a, b, and c is meant to be in order, but the overwhelming reason for ownership is for personal protection. The need for personal protection doesn’t end when you step out of the house and can only be served by public carry.
I don’t understand. Don’t you supposedly need to pass some kind of a check, and have a FOID to buy a gun/ammo?
I just posted some thoughts over in the IMHO gun control thread. Won’t repeat them all here. But they kinda address some of the concerns raised by septimus. But I’m sure I’m full of shit, and those ideas would have as little impact and as little chance of happening as anything else…
Amend the constitution, else you don’t get past the 2nd amendment. That’s as it should be.
NY SAFE law required registration and the people of NY told the state to pound sand. Their rate of non-compliance is unsurprisingly large. When LA passed a ban on standard capacity magazines, guess how many were turned in…zero.
Gun control advocates would do well to understand that there are many in their ranks that want to outright ban guns, or subsets of guns. As long as that is true, registration will be a non-starter. If gun control advocates could go 50 years without proposing a ban, maybe people would be more open to registration. Until then, it’s easy to understand the desire for unregistered firearms.
I would love if the left campaigned on registration. They’d lose, hard.
I’m in favor of closing the gun show loophole (such that all gun sales are subject to background checks), and having better communication between various federal agencies such that if anyone (like the San Bernadino shooters) who intelligence agencies are aware have been in contact with foreign extremists buys a gun (and therefore goes through a background check), some sort of alarm goes off and this can be looked into. Since the Farouk couple purchased handguns themselves, something like this may have prevented or mitigated that shooting.
I’m also in favor of eliminating special legal protections that only apply to gun manufacturers.
This is the NRA, which is the subject of the article.
It includes ILA.
If you look under Part 9 (IX) there is a line item for the ILA.
The PAC is run separately and I can’t figure out where the money comes from but I know they hit up the members for donations every election cycle. With that said, the NRA PAC doesn’t throw around a whole lot of money by DC standards.