Will this ban be as effective as the war on drugs?
Do you see house to house searches?
You can put me down as another currently law abiding citizen who would ignore this law.
Its not just that we would refuse to hand in our guns. Many gunowners would see such a ban, even without door to door confiscation, as crossing the “line in the sand”, and requiring offensive action.
I must admit, though, it would interesting to see everyone openly carrying long guns.
As SPOOFE already noted, it was 1994, but what if it had been 1993? Lots of things happened in 1993. If you’re going to claim that the Brady Bill is solely (or even partially) responsible for that drop in violent crime rate, you’d better be prepared to back up that claim. It could just as easily be that the drop is attributable to increasingly liberal concealed-carry laws in some states.
Another public health menace that is often underreported and highly under-recognized is the everday car. No, seriously!
Check out these facts for the year 1998, collected by Mothers Against Drunk Driving:
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In 1998 alone, 41,471 people lost their lives in car collisions.
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In 1998, 599,000 people received minor injuries in speed related collisions, 72,000 persons were moderately injured and 40,000 persons received critical injuries.
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In 1998, 5,220 pedestrians and 761 bicyclists were killed on the nations highways.
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In 1998, the economic cost to society for speed related collisions was at 27.7 billion dollars
And let’s talk about the impact (no pun intended!) of cars on children! -
In 1998, drivers age 15 to 20 were involved in 7,975 fatality collisions. 3,427 of those youths were killed
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On a per population basis, drivers under age 25 had the highest rate of involvement in fatal collisions of any age group
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More that one-fifth of the traffic fatalities under the age of 16 were pedestrians
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In 1998, 21% of the 15 to 20 year age group killed were intoxicated
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Car accidents are THE leading killer of children ages 16 to 24 in this country! No joke!
Don’t you see? These “cars” (though “assault automobiles” would be a better word) are killing us at an incredible rate, PARTICULARLY children!
And all this in spite of current government controls that restrict licensing, manufacturing safety, etc, etc…
Well, this has to stop. The government needs step in and remove the automobile menace! This may not be public health issue number 1 (that would be heart disease - we’re all too stupid to figure out that eating McDonalds every day for 40 years will make us fat and cause heart attacks), but it’s high up there. Especially when it comes to THE CHILDREN!!!
We need to ban cars NOW. They have to go. There’s too much public health at stake here. Okay, okay, I know this will be unpopular with those crazies who insist that they have the right to own a car and drive it… or more deviously, those sly ones who say that what’s needed is better enforcement of existing traffic laws, and better education of drivers. But we know they’re all either rabid car nuts or on the payroll of the Big 3 automakers, who spend literally millions a year on lobbying Congress. And the car nuts probably do strange, whacko things like drag-racing and autocrossing, that no sane person would engage in. They’re obviously crazy.
But anyway, let’s start slow. We’ll ban all private ownership of cars for five years. Governments can still use trucks, as can a few private companies (mining companies, transport companies) if they are specially licensed and supervised by the government. But not private individuals.
And to be fair, if, at the end of the 5 years, traffic-related fatalities haven’t dropped dramatically, I promise I won’t ever talk about banning cars again.
So, how does that idea strike you, CityGent?
-Ben
Joe_Cool: since I got my salary reinstated to its previous level, I’m doing alllll right! The additional change in my pockets has me hap-hap-Happy!
I’d really like the back pay (the difference over the last month, about $1,000), but I’ll quit while I’m ahead.
Originally posted by moi:
I make no assertions as to the cause of this drop; I have heard several suggestions for it, many of which make sense (such as the improving economy).
BTW: the 5 day waiting period provision of the Brady Bill did not apply to states with Instant Check capabilities, of which there were 18 in '94, and has since grown. The waiting period has since expired with the advent of the National Instant Check System.
And, ironically enough, the stated intent of The Brady Bill’s 5-day waiting period was to allow CLEO’s time to adequately investigate potential purchasers of firearms, particularly handguns. At the time (fall of '93) the NRA predicted that Brady would be struck down as unconstitutional, and part of it was in '97 by SCOTUS, on 10th Amendment grounds.
When the NRA proposed the NICS in '97, HCI opposed it, stating that the 5-day waiting period was to allow people time to “cool off”; to prevent “crimes of passion”. You see, this is one of the things that puts a bug up the collective asses of gun rights advocates. The flexible, often hazy terminology, the retractions and multiple conflicting statements of purpose [of GC proposals].
The truth is much easier to remember than a pack of lies.
I’m sorry; that wasn’t a nice thing to say about HCI. I’ll apologize immediately when Rosie O’Donnel apologizes to Tom Selleck. Publicly. On her show. To his face.
NICS has gotten off to a rough start; the methods of criminal record keeping vary by state, and trying to compile a nationwide database of “disallowed persons” was a daunting task. But it is a system which has improved with time, and will probably continue to do so, as more states streamline and adopt uniform methods.
kalashnikov wrote:
There’s also the problem of finding somebody who’s willing to sell one. Since 1986, as far as I know, no new machine guns have legally entered the U.S. civilian marketplace.
True, that’s why they’re so expensive. An AR15 and an m16 are the same gun, they ought to cost about the same. Instead, the auto costs ten times as much.
If you want something common like an M16, Uzi, or Thompson, they’re not impossible to find. I live near two gun stores that sell have them, one of which, BTW, also rents them for use on their range. And there are internet forums with for sale ads.
Personally, I don’t think that there’s enough data to determine whether the Brady Bill has been effective or not. As for the article that was cited, I’d need to see a more in depth analysis. There are several questions that should be answered before we accept the conclusion. For example, what laws exactly were in place in those 18 states prior to the passage of the Brady Bill? How long had those laws been in place, and were they actually being enforced prior to 1994?
Would it really be a good idea to enact a law which makes it desirable within certain sector of society for an increase in the murder rate? It would only take a very small proportion of the gun lobby (they can’t all be responsible, law abiding citizens, can they?) to go on a murder spree for the proposal to be completely counter-productive.
For the record: I don’t like guns very much, but then I do live in the UK.
ticker: would you care to share your definition of “gun lobby” with me?
Not everyone who owns a gun, legally or otherwise, is a part of any nominal “gun lobby” ya know.
I take it you believe that most gun owners are frothing at the mouth, stroking their guns like sex objects, and just waiting for the first chance to shoot something, anything.
You, sir, do not seem to have a firm grasp of the situation.
Since we are now parking our brains at the door, I’m wondering how ticker is going to convince us that the gun-control lobby HASN’T been doing this for the last so many years.
I actually don’t have strong feelings one way or the other on the issue. My OP was more of a thought-experiment than anything.
It was kind of disappointing how soon the thread degenerated into “My rights are this…” or “I would do this…” or “Cars are just as bad as guns because…” These kinds of statements completely miss the point. I wasn’t talking about rights, or whether it’s a good idea to buy a gun, or what your friend’s personal opinion is on what percentage of registered guns are used in crimes. The purpose of the OP was to float an idea for empirically answering the question that is at the heart of the gun debate. I didn’t see many critiques of it from that standpoint (i.e. would it or would it not answer the question).
The example of Washington D.C. was particularly ill-chosen. That’s like saying “Jim eats a lot of fudge and he seems to be in pretty bad health, so fudge must be bad for you.” Since there’s no city identical to Washington D.C. except for a lack of gun control, there are no grounds to say that based on Washington D.C., gun control does or doesn’t work. There is no control, speaking experimentally.
Here is one criticism on technical grounds: If you change the gun laws, any subsequent changes in crime rates might be due to natural societal changes that would have happened anyway. A way to counteract this would be to identify two demographically very similar states (I don’t know: Pennsylvania and Michigan) and ban guns in one of them. Then compare the ensuing trends.
I think that actually the people who argue about gun control really don’t want to know the truth about how well gun control might or might not work. For one side, it’s all about constitutional rights, and for the other side, it’s all about dead teenagers. The facts might interfere with the positions each side has staked out, so nobody is interested in the facts. The same can be said for a lot of other issues, like abortion. Apparently rationality still has no place in public policy.
**
Well let me see if I can give it a try. No it really wouldn’t answer the question about guns. Those who make their living through violent means will not turn in their guns. Those who want guns and ammunition will be able to violate the law and purchase them on the black market. You even got answers from otherwise law abiding folks (I assume) who said that they would not turn in their firearms. So, again I say, no it would not work.
**
I think I’m pretty aware of what the truth is when it comes to gun control. I’m well aware that many people die from a combination of firearm related accidents, murders, or suicides every year.
I’m not really sure what facts are getting in my way. Like I said I know people die through firearm violence. But that doesn’t change my position in the issue. Should it?
Marc
Hmmmm…ok then, how about we extend the experiment to types of government? A benevolent dictatorship might work better than our clumsy democracy. Or, what if those religious types are right, and a state based on “God’s Laws” is what we really need? Why not give each of these ideas five years, and see how they work?
You might say, if we install a dictatorship, or a theocracy, it might be difficult to undo it, but then, the same argument can be made against your idea.
Actually, the primary thing we’re interested in is facts. If you go back and re-check old Gun threads, you’ll see that they quickly evolve (or devolve, in some cases) into Cite Wars.
Distinguished Gent,
I believe that your experiment would fail (gun crime would go up) because:
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Criminals would keep their guns. They would gather as many guns as they could as soon as the proposal cleared, from any source possible.
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Criminals with guns would no longer have to fear law-abiding citizens with guns. They would become bolder as their advantage of power would increase.
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As the prohibition of guns decreases their availability, the price would increase, encouraging smuggling, theft of the handguns in “custody”, and perhaps even corruption, as the incentive for bribery of officials to look the other way, as happens with drugs now, may also rise.
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Rational gun owners would not comply, reducing the data available to track the number of guns, held by now legal owners, stolen for criminal purposes. (I say this as a rational gun owner, my handgun is in a safe, with my hunting weapons, and I think the second ammendment is about the right to overthrow the government by force if it is found to be oppressive by its citizens, I don’t give a crap about “sport shooting”).
Aside from that, you left out some pretty important details of your mental exercise (can you say mental couch potato(e)?). How the ban is enacted and enforced is a critical part of the arguement. Would you propose suspending the 4th ammendment as well, so the police could do a house to house search, search your cars whenever you get stopped (oh! wait, they do that already, looking for drugs). And what about penalties. Who goes to jail, and for what. Posession of a handgun, 5 years? Confiscation of your house (oh! wait, they do that already, for drug crimes).
For a serious meandering, howzabout we put people who rob banks with guns, mug people with guns (or knives, sticks,or potato(e)s, for that matter)–violent criminals in general–in PRISON FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES. My guess is that violent crime would go down faster than in your senario.
While i’m on it, make room by de-criminalizing drugs–thereby removing the MAJOR incentive for gun crime–free up the criminal justice system to go after thugs and serial murderers (the other violent criminals), tax the sale and fund recovery projects. Oh, and legalize sex work, regulate it, tax it.
I better stop, I’m about to pop a blood vessel.
Regards
I disagree. The primary argument in favor of gun control is that eliminating firearms, especially handguns, you will make society safer. Washington has effectively eliminated handguns, and it has not by any means become a safer city. Does that mean there was full-fledged anarchy and rioting prior to the gun bans of 1976? I doubt that it has become any safer since then.
Washington is the control group. You have a city that was high in crime. You took away the guns. Crime did not decrease (I suspect that it has increased sharply, but haven’t found pre-ban statistics yet). What other major changes, other than gun control, have taken place since the bans took effect, to cause crime to increase to its current levels?
And finally, you cannot simply discount the “it’s my right” argument out of hand. It IS my right. And do you know what? No less an authority than the Constitution itself protects that right from infringement. So saying “No argument that ‘it’s my right’ is allowed” is valid. You can’t simply toy around with Constitutionally protected rights. Not even for five years.
I suggest that the thought experiment would not work because states within the United States of America cannot be properly isolated as would be necessary for some kind of scientific comparison. The problems we have in this country with gun violence are society-wide problems and no single state could solve them on its own, no matter how Draconian its GC laws. For example NY has very strict gun laws so people go to VA, which has very liberal gun laws, to buy their guns. I would guess that the same sort of thing happens in Washington DC.
Incidentally, perhaps a better analogy to this business about DC than “Jim eats a lot of fudge and he seems to be in pretty bad health, so fudge must be bad for you,” would be:
Jim ate 20 lbs of fudge a day and weighed 600 lbs. His wife (poor woman) threw out all the fudge she could find in the house and forbid him to buy more. Two months later Jim weighed 650 lbs.
From this we might conlude the following:
- The fudge was making Jim fat and his wife’s ban was effective but there is still a lot of fudge hidden in the house and Jim just hasn’t finished it all yet.
- The fudge was making Jim fat and his wife’s ban was ineffective (he has an illicit source of fudge).
- The fudge was making Jim fat and his wife’s ban was effective but Jim has substituted a worse food product (sticks of butter) for his fudge habit.
- The fudge was not what was making Jim fat (he has a glandular problem) and his wife’s ban is irrelevant.
Since any of these would seem to be valid conclusions (please correct me if I’m wrong, or I missed anything, or you think my analogy is such total BS that I’m wasting my time) it would seem that we’re back where we started with trying to design a useful experiment to test gun control.