Gun control: "insufficient evidence to determine effectiveness" sez CDC

Great Debates
121

What keeps honest people honest? Door locks and consequences for breaking and entering. Neither of which will stop a theif who wants what you have from attempting to burglerize your home.

Even if we banned ALL guns… you can make guns. Some people do, as a hobby. If we banned all legitimate guns we’d still have guns churned out in basements (like illegal drug labs) and smuggled in from other places (like drugs).

Last summer, my landlord was working at our building doing maintenance when someone started rummaging through the back of his pickup. Landlord confronted the guy, strong words were exchanged, and the stranger threatened to kick my landlord’s backside. Landlord told him he might want to think twice about starting something, opened his jacket to show he had a gun, and went about his business. The stranger then called the cops to say this crazy white guy was running around waving a gun and threatening people. Cops showed up. Landlord said yes, he had a gun, showed his license, gave the cops his personal information. The cops went back to their car, checked up on the landlord, found he was a good, solid citizen. Then they went and had a little conversation with the guy who had been scrounging in the landlord’s truck. Turns out he was a convicted felon, was armed (couple knives), and was currently wanted for strong-arm robbery. Apparently, Mr. Bad Guy had not been able to obtain a gun for his theivery, decided not to take on the armed landlord, and in that case a gun did not “escalate” the situation. Did it prevent a robbery? How do you prove a negative? But is sure made the Bad Guy back down in a hurry, even though the gun never left the holster.

This week in the next city over, a woman was kidnapped at gunpoint by a stalker. Apparently, the guy had developed a “romantic attachment” to her and had been harassing her and her family. She had tried to avoid him, discourage him, gotten a court order of protection from him… but he wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. So he kidnapped her, and for two hours held a gun to her head saying he was sorry he had to kill her, but he just couldn’t allow her to be with any other man. He and an accomplice were driving her to where they intended to kill her and presumably dispose of her body when the Bad Guy got distracted for a moment. At which point she pulls out her own gun and shoots him in the face. She is alive and unharmed. He, amazingly enough, is also still alive but will not be bothering her for a long while, if ever.

For the life of me, I can’t see where depriving the good guys of guns in these situations would have improved matters.

State laws always vary - and we have limited Federal government. There are areas of law where the Feds have no jurisdiction due to the way our government is constructed. The Second Ammendment to the Constitution is seen to limit the government’s ability to prevent the general population from owning firearms and other weapons. That’s written into the basic foundation of our government. The only way to change it is to ammend the Constitution - never an easy process.

Define “tough” legislation. A law must be enforceable, among other things. If you could come up with a system that actually would keep guns out of the hands of Bad Guys I might be for it.

The other problem is that you can’t always spot the Bad Guys before they become Bad Guys. There is a first time for every person who commits a crime - they might be a good citizen until, say, they reach the age of 45 and somthing prompts them to break the law. So… do you treat everyone as a potential and/or actual criminal by restricting and limiting them from day one? Or do you recognize that the vast majority of people have no desire or motiviation to commit crimes and only punish those who actually do wrong?

Nope. It’s not just “America and drugs”. Out in the rural areas you have crushing poverty and drug use, too - and firearms available. But you don’t have people shooting each other down in the streets.

Where America has a gun violence problem is in impoverished, densely inhabited, inner-urban areas with drug trafficking. It’s the combination of factors, not any one - or even any two - of them that causes the problem. As an effective solution, you might forbid population densities over a certain level - but that is impractical in the inner core of a city. And folks living in high-class high-rises in, say, the Chicago Loop would protest that THEY hadn’t done anything wrong, why should THEY have to move?

More of the same gun control we have now will not benefit anyone - because the laws are not effective nor are they uniformly enforced. There’s an old joke that “gun control” means hitting your target, but there’s also an element of truth to that. If you want to control guns - to whatever degree - you have to actually do it, not just pass laws that are circumvented. You have to “hit the target” of coming up with an effective system to accomplish your goal. Passing more laws that don’t do the job is missing the mark.

Why would civilian gun owners need “combat” training?

Actually, a lot of civilian gun owners are ex-military or ex-law enforcement - they got firearm training (yes, in “combat” training) as part of their job. Funny - a lot of ex-military choose not to own guns, too (my father learned to carry and shoot when in the military, but my family never owned guns. We just never felt a need to). Which is the point of having a choice - you don’t have to own a gun, but if you are a responsible adult you have the option to do so, so long as you do so in a responsible manner.

A lot of the folks in my area who own guns own them for hunting purposes. A hunter doesn’t want or need “combat” training, he needs to know how to hunt. Other own for personal defense - such as the two examples I gave earlier. They don’t need “combat” training either - they need to know the proper manner in which to use (and not use) a firearm for personal defense. And then there are the target shooters - who don’t need “combat” training either.

A gun is a tool. There’s an old saying about using the right tool for the right job. You don’t hunt deer with a handgun. You don’t carry an elephant gun for personal self-defense. A legitimate gun owner has a specific use in mind for his or her weapon and presumably chooses accordingly and gets the proper training and practice to use that tool safely and efficiently. Or maybe the person in question is a collector of weaponry - as opposed to say, cars or old farm implements or postage stamps. As long as they take the proper care to make sure their collection is secure and safe I have no quarrel with that, either.

122

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that rapists are just “looking for a good time” without permission. Some women who are raped do not live to tell about it.

123

I won’t ask for a cite here, but I will quibble with the wording: Armed American women report just about the lowest rape victimization rate of any women anywhere in the world. We hope that the reports are indicative of the experience, but as with many sex crimes, reporting is not always 100%.

I won’t muddy my quibble by trying to declare whether armed American women report rapes more or less frequently than unarmed American women.

Anyway, carry on.

FISH

124

http://www.paxtonquigley.com/women_against_predators.html

“Organizations who have relied on (her) expertise include Westec Security, Beverly Hills Country Club, Beverly Hills Real Estate Board, Los Angeles Women in Business, Prudential Realty, Cedars Sinai Hospital, and City of Hope. (She) was Yoko Ono’s bodyguard, security consultant to many high-profile individuals, and have taught self-defense and shooting to a stellar list of Hollywood actresses who understandably — so as not to tip their hand to nuts and stalkers — do not want to be named.”

http://www.paxtonquigley.com/paxton_seminars.html

"Investor’s Business Daily - Page One
Get Tough On Crime With Safety Courses
"… Arguably the most aggressive course is Personal Protection Strategies, offered by Paxton Quigley Enterprises in Beverly Hills, Calif. It’s a daylong course, for $150 plus a $24 range fee, that teaches women and couples how to use handguns and nonlethal sprays. If you don’t have your own weapon, you’re supplied with a Smith & Wesson gun for the day. Classes are limited to 20 participants.
"Quigley is also promoting a line of personal protection products through a catalog called Nobody’s Fool, Nobody’s Victim (800-800-1011) which is heavily laced with advice from her two books Armed and Female and Not an Easy Target.
"Quigley switched from actively being anti-gun to promoting gun ownership after driving a friend who had been raped to the hospital in 1986. Since 1990, she has taught gun safety to more than 5,000 women.
“It’s been an awakening as more and more women are coming to view guns as a deterrent,” she said. “Those who are traditionally anti-gun tend to be big-city dwellers with a liberal background. But once confronted with a violent incident, their viewpoint often changes just like mine did.
“I also get women who realize that although their husbands have guns in the house, they wouldn’t know how to use them if the occasion arose.”
Quigley makes no apologies for her aggressive approach to self-defense. “If more women owned handguns and that fact were publicized, rapes would go down in this country,” she said.”

125

Um… Susanann, there is a big difference between “self-defense training” and “combat training”.

Self-defense is… well, it’s defensive. You don’t carry the fight to the enemy - you fight only when you need to and only to the extent necessary. Sometimes, regrettably, the “extent necessary” might be your enemy’s death, but you certainly keep open to the idea of less-than-lethal force.

Combat training, however, is when you carry the fight to people who have not yet attacked you, and you ARE intent on killing them, not just merely defending yourself.

Self-defense includes such tactics as discouraging an attacker, using the environment (such as crowds) to avoid the use of force, and only as a last resort shooting (or stabbing or spraying or whatever) another human being. Combat means you look for people to shoot at, you shoot at them, and you keep shooting until they are dead, or you are out of ammo, or YOU are killed, or something else intervenes to bring and end to the fighting.

A self defense instructor is NOT teaching “combat”, although fighting techniques are taught. So, although I feel civilians can and should be taught self-defense, I’m not sure that “combat training” is something most gun owners really care to pursue. I might be wrong on this, since I haven’t interviewed EVERY gun owner on the planet, but at least in my neck of the woods nobody is particularly interested in shooting other human beings as a hobby.

126

:: cough, cough ::: Dependes on which ones Broom ------ Bawhahahahaha :smiley:

127

Everytime this comes up, pro-gunners always conveniently overlook the fact that gun control works in Britain, Japan, Germany, France, the Netherlands…

I suppose the NRA’s arm-a-toddler campaign takes up far too much time to allow any objective thought about gun policy.

128

“Arm-a-toddler?”
Thank you for your well thought out and informative post. If there were more helpful posters like yourself, the SDMB would be a better place.

Testy

129

Arm-a-toddler… thats a good one. Any other enlightening remarks on the subject?

How about you elaborate on how gun control “works” in those countries you mentioned… Maybe a description of what “works” means to you.

130

I guess it depends on what you mean by “works”, and whether or not you were a nazi or a jew living there during the 1940’s.

or…

do mean it “works” because while the crime and gun violence in America is declining, in Britain with its prohibition on guns crime and murder with guns are increasing very fast?

Gun crime spreads ‘like a cancer’ across Britain

As the number of weapons on the streets grows and shootings become the norm, gun law is back at the top of the political agenda

Tony Thompson
Sunday October 5, 2003
The Observer

Last year saw a record 35 per cent jump in gun crimes, which means there are now, on average, 30 incidents each day. There were almost 10,000 incidents involving firearms recorded in England and Wales and, although the largest increases were in metropolitan areas, the figures showed use of handguns was also growing in rural communities. Overall, handguns were used in almost half of these incidents.

Handgun crime has soared past levels last seen before the Dunblane massacre of 1996 and the ban on ownership of handguns introduced the year after Thomas Hamilton, an amateur shooting enthusiast, shot dead 16 schoolchildren, their teacher and himself in the Perthshire town.

It was hoped the measure would reduce the number of handguns available to criminals. Now handgun crime is at its highest since 1993.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml;$sessionid$LI2ZLJQDDSRMPQFIQMFSFGGAVCBQ0IV0?view=HOME&grid=P13&menuId=-1&menuItemId=-1&_requestid=57009

Gun crime spreads ‘like a cancer’ across Britain
The Observer/Guardian Unlimited ^ | 5 October 2003 | Tony Thompson

Few people paid much attention when, late last month, Shabir Hussain and his friend Mohammed Shabir were jailed for 11 years at Birmingham Crown Court. Working with rudimentary tools in the basements of their homes, the pair had set themselves up as armourers to the local underworld, converting blank firing pistols into lethal weapons.

They produced more than 170 guns and sold them to gangs from Bristol to Manchester.

According to the Association of Chief Police Officers, gun crime is ‘growing like a cancer’ and spreading to smaller communities.

Hundreds of similar gun factories have been set up in homes across the country and detectives admit guns are being put on the streets more quickly than they can take them off. For the past 12 months police in Nottingham have been running Operation Stealth, an anti-firearms initiative. The team has made more than 580 arrests and recovered 160 weapons, 10 fewer than the Birmingham duo produced in a quarter of the time. The murder rate in Nottinghamshire has almost doubled. ‘We’re getting the right information,’ says Assistant Chief Constable Peter Ditchett, ‘but we’re just not getting enough of it.’

As well as being converted from air guns and blank firing weapons, handguns are being imported from eastern Europe and beyond. A good quality semi-automatic handgun can be bought on the streets of London for as little as £200.

New laws that make carrying a firearm an offence with a mandatory five-year sentence have won little favour with officers on the street. Because of that, they feel they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by carrying a gun. They carry them just for the hell of it.’

Notorious underworld figure Joey Pyle agrees. ‘In the old days, during the time of the Krays and the Richardsons, people didn’t go around with guns on them all the time. You only got tooled up if you were out on a bit of work. That’s all changed now. For a lot of people out there, having a gun is little more than a fashion accessory.’

‘These guns are in the hands of the whole community. Guns are everywhere and they are being used by everyone.’