Here is a state-by-state listing of laws stating weapons restrictions when it comes to the mentally ill. If you look at states like Alabama
it is easy to note the extreme vagueness(How unsound a mind, and who makes the determination) and compare it places like The District of Columbia
, then note the dozens of variations among the rest: it is a hodgepodge of little-understood laws, that need to be consolidated, clarified and enforced.
Those aren’t synonyms, so a “general point” that includes any/all of those words is impossible.
They’re all negative effects. Is that a generic enough descriptor for you?
Does the “negative effect” of gun laws such as those in Canada or the UK rise to a significant level of harm? If so, what is the demonstrable level of harm to individuals and/or population?
Are you asking me that pointing out that the US does some things much differently than other countries is ‘pleading for American exceptionalism’, well…I guess. I am not making any sort of case that the right to bear arms (I always love the imagery of a dude in a bear arm cloak or something :p) is some universal human right. Clearly, it’s not, in that clearly many countries don’t allow most citizens to have firearms or any other type in some cases. Perhaps others are arguing that, but I’m not. You asked me earlier what people in other countries who don’t allow for gun ownership but do so anyway are, and I said their are criminals, because in their country it’s illegal. This isn’t talking about ‘American exceptionalism’ so much as reality…different countries have different rules, laws, norms and mores.
I’m really not sure what you are getting at. Just like I don’t live in those other countries and have no say in what they do or don’t do, folks who live in other countries clearly don’t live here either, so their view on this subject is, perhaps academically interesting but of no real concern, to me at least. They don’t live here. They don’t vote here. They don’t pay taxes here. And they don’t really get a say in how we do what we do. You, being an American (presumably), do, even if we disagree on this or other things. I don’t accept some sort of international standard or norm wrt gun law…or knife law…or tobacco law…or alcohol law…or even large double cheese burger, trough sized coke and extra fries law. Sure, there are some minimum standards we should abide by, but the bar on that is VERY low. Just check out some of the shit the CCP does to the Chinese people sometime to see how low that bar is.
For purposes of this thread, yes.
And as to the second part?..
If you’re asking for commentary / discussion on Canada and/or the UK’s gun laws in this thread, it’s not really the right place for that. If there’s some specific policy they’ve implemented that you think merits consideration, given the guidelines in the OP, please propose it. The “demonstrable level of harm” would depend on the specifics of the proposal. If ammunition normally costs $0.30 per round and your proposal raises the price to $0.33, multiplied over the billions of rounds of ammunition purchased each year by law-abiding gun owners, it’s a significant cost. If it used to take people buying guns an average of 30 minutes to complete the transaction, and your proposal would now make it take 90, that extra hour of time, again multiplied across the tens of millions of gun purchases each year, is a fairly substantial imposition on law-abiding gun owners’ time. If previously gun owners could choose between any of 1,000 different models of guns, and your proposal would limit that choice to 500 or 100, that’s a significant negative effect on gun owners. Do those examples clarify the concept sufficiently for you?
Since the phrase “gun control” itself seems to have a negative impact with some gun owners, I can’t see how any proposed laws involving actual gun control can pass muster.
I suppose you could reduce fees, but this isn’t really about money is it? To keep guns out of the criminals, psychotics, and children requires honest upright citizens to have to do some paperwork.
The phrase “gun control” is not the issue. The actual effects of the legislation are. If Congress were to re-label the “Hearing Protection Act” as “Gun Control Act of 2019” and pass it, gun owners and RKBA activists would celebrate. OTOH, if you were to label a bill “Firearm Freedom for All” and its actual effect were to substantially restrict the range of options gun owners could choose from when purchasing a firearm, they would not be celebrating, in spite of the happy-sounding name.
It does, thanks. It helps me understand where you’re coming from with respect to what you consider to be “harmful” or “burdensome”. I’ll leave it for others to decide for themselves whether those bars are sufficiently satisfied.
What about the links I gave for laws regulating gun ownership for the mentally ill? Which(if any) of those listed do you favor, and would you support a more unified approach?
The more unified approach is the federal standard of “adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution” (for which there’s a fairly significant amount of case law and other supporting rules and guidance that clarify). That could probably be clarified further (e.g. I think the appropriate standard is something along the lines of AZ’s “Has been found to constitute a danger to himself or herself or others pursuant to court order…”), and I wouldn’t mind if all states adopted that standard to unify their approach rather than adding their own individual list of mental health disqualifiers to it. I’d also like to see more mechanisms codified into law for people to have their rights restored who were once suffering from mental illness but have recovered and gone on to live productive and healthy lives, and are no longer a danger to themselves or others. I recognize that historically reporting this data to the appropriate federal authorities has not been consistently good, and I’d likely support efforts to improve accuracy.
I speak for myself, and I am not claiming to speak for anyone else, but I think that I can articulate the position of many.
The goal of us “gun grabbers” is simple. We want to see fewer people injured or killed due to the irresponsible or criminal use of firearms. The reason for this goal is that we want to see fewer people injured or killed as an overall goal. The reason for this is that we generally want people to be happier, healthier and more productive.
Given the goals as stated, it would be extremely counterproductive to outright outlaw guns, and then go violently round them all up. It may reach the nominative goal of “getting the guns off the streets”, but it would not reach the goal of making people happier, healthier, and more productive.
The goal of reducing gun death and injury has a few categories.
Accidental. Kid or irresponsible adult uses a gun in an unsafe manner, resulting in the death or injury of themself or another.
Criminal. During or as a crime, a criminal uses a gun to injure or kill another.
Suicide. During a brief moment of despair or depression, a person uses a gun with the intent of causing their own death, causing either death or injury.
Self defense. In the process of defending oneself from a real or perceived threat, uses a gun to kill or injure another.
So, the goal of gun legislation should be to ensure that guns are only in the hands of responsible, law abiding, and mentally stable people, this would reduce the amount of violence in all of those categories.
I believe that most of these can be significantly improved simply by keeping track of our guns better.
It’s an almost everyday occurrence that some toddler gets ahold of a gun and shoots themselves or another. And that’s the ones that make the news. The toddlers who don’t pull the trigger, or do but don’t hit anyone, are less likely to make it in the news. That means that there are far too many people out there using their couch cushions as a gun safe, which is a bad idea even when there are not children around. Not that adults are not capable of making fatal mistakes as well.
Criminals also get these guns largely due to poor securing. You can buy a gun on the black market for far less than you can in a gun store, as long as you don’t mind knowing that it is stolen and was traded for drugs. Gun owners who do not take responsibility for securing their guns are a major part of this supply.
As far as suicide goes, I do believe that suicide should be a right, but I would also be against selling Lotto ticket/poison pill combo packs at the convenience store. Because of the number of guns in society, people feel the need to get a gun to use for protection. I mean, I’ve got two dogs, and though I’m working my way into my 40’s, I can still hold my own in a fight. I am fairly confident in my ability to defend my home from those who would want to do me ill… unless they have a gun. If they have a gun, then I kinda think that I need one too. So, as the chances that the random burglar is armed goes up, so does my calculus that I need a gun to defend myself. If I have a gun, then the momentary lapse of judgement and feeling of despair is easy to translate into opening the nightstand and pulling a trigger rather than getting up to face another day. If I don’t have a gun, then I just think about it, and then get up and face the day. I know that the suicide figure gets tossed by gun advocates in these debates, and often nefarious motives are attributed to those who bring it up, but I do see gun suicide as a problem that can be reduced.
Finally, self defense. You have every right to self defense, as do cops and anyone else that is in danger. The problem is, is that with so many criminals having access to guns, it’s hard to take a chance. If it is rare that a criminal has a gun, then you have no reason to shoot someone out of fear that they will shoot you. If it is as common as it is that criminals have guns, then it starts making sense to shoot at things that you perceive as a threat.
So, my proposal is actually simple, a registry and buy back. You have a gun, you register it, and as part of the registration, you sign an affidavit saying that you have properly secured you guns. No one is going to come look at them. If you do not want to go to the bother of securing your guns, you can sell them to the police. If you want to sell some of your guns, but keep and register others, you can do that too.
If you transfer a gun, then you should make a record of that transfer. I would recommend updating the govt about it, but as long as you have the valid paperwork, there is no hurry. Just keep in mind that if it comes up in connection with a crime, then you may be inconvenienced when LEO come to ask you about your gun.
To transfer a gun, you must first make sure that they are eligible. I can think of many ways of doing this, but the easiest is that you can pre-pass the background check. For instance, if you have a valid CCW, then you have passed a background check already, and are eligible.
If a gun is stolen, you should report this to the police as soon as possible. If they are properly stored, then it will be very obvious that they are stolen, as your gun safe has been destroyed by the effort of getting it open. Report this to the police, and when they see that you were doing your due diligence, they will thank you, and I actually have no problem with them then offering you a pro-rated buy back for your lost guns.
Enforcement: Pretty lax, honestly. Unless you are manufacturing, modifying, or selling guns illegally, there will be no active investigation in trying to “retrieve” unregistered guns. If you have an encounter with a cop for another reason, and they find an unregistered gun on you, in your house or car, then they will confiscate it, and give you a fine(I like the idea that the fine would be the buyback value, but I’m not tied to that). If you are using that gun as part of a crime, however, obviously the consequences would be a bit more severe. OTOH, illegal activities with the guns, including sales and modifications, would have increased enforcement.
If your unregistered, unsecured gun is used in an irresponsible manner, however, there may be consequences greater than just a fine.
The only other things that I would add would be to tighten up CCW requirements a bit, as is, the class, in Ohio at least, is a joke. I would require that CCW training for any public carry, and carrying of a rifle in public would require that you have a valid hunting permit relevant to the gun you are carrying, and that you are in or near an area where such hunting is allowed. Guns properly secured in your car would not be considered to be in public.
The point of this is that, because guns are just so easy to get, they are all over the place. It would not take all that much of people doing a better job keeping track of their guns, and suddenly the guns in the blackmarket start drying up, and becoming more expensive. If I’m a junky, I can use a $30 gun that I got from my drug dealer (who traded it for drugs from some other junky that stole it from your house) to hold up a store to steal for my next fix. If I need to pay $1000 for the gun, then I’m much less likely to have one. I don’t think it would require tightening the flow to the black market all that much to make prices skyrocket, and I know that they will not be as prevalent in the hands of criminals if the prices were much higher.
I consider this to be a very slight imposition on gun owners and advocates that will result in a substantial reduction in gun injury and death. I do not see how it interferes with a responsible law abiding person from procuring guns for self defense or recreation.
If we wanted to stop all gun violence and death, then that would indeed require draconian measures, and have some rather unfortunate side effects, but just like having cars, we are talking harm reduction here, not a complete elimination.
Those are great goals. But the problem is that they end up clouded behind attempts to ban “assault weapons” and certain rifles, which statistically are involved in accidental shootings, criminal acts, suicides, and self-defense are far cry less than handguns.
And then there’s the desire to ban “high capacity magazines” which are irrelevant in accidental shootings, suicides, and home defense. And while they might be relevant in criminal activity, look at the statistics. On average, fewer than four rounds are fired in a criminal assault involving firearms. Only four rounds? So what does it matter if a magazine holds 30 rounds or 15 rounds or 10 rounds?
Unfortunately, most gun control proposals do not focus on facts or statistics. And they don’t try to tailor the control to the actual mechanism of injury. Instead, they go after things that are popular to attack, like assault weapons and magazines, because they probably don’t even care about getting a useful law passed. They probably just want to keep the dialogue going so that they can get votes and donations.
Let’s start there. This is a good point, and something I think we’d all agree on preventing. What law can we propose to prevent this? Laws already exist that make it illegal to store a firearm where a child can access it. Yet, you’re right, there are still kids being harmed this way. How do we prevent it? Increase punishment? Probably not. That doesn’t seem to work with anything. Increase prosecutions? Maybe. It seems like a lot of the times, the family isn’t prosecuted. Perhaps it’s because someone feels they’ve suffered enough. How about this: Make these kinds of shootings strict liability crimes, like statutory rape. That way, the prosecution doesn’t have to waste time proving that the method of storing the firearm was unsafe. Rewrite the law, at the federal level, that states it is illegal for a child to possess, even temporarily, a firearm within a home or dwelling. This is a strict liability offense, punishable by 10 years in prison and or a fine of up to $250,000. Then, you make prosecution mandatory, and create a minimum sentencing guideline of no less than 3 years in federal prison.
There’s not debate in court about weather the person took reasonable efforts to keep the gun out of the reach of the child or store it in a safe manner. The fact that a round was fired inside a home by a child, suggests–by itself–that the weapon was not stored safe enough, regardless of method. And the fact that the round was fired, means that the child possessed a firearm in a home, and therefore a crime has been committed. The owner of that firearm goes to prison.
Maybe a law requiring proper storage to prevent theft? Kind of like the current law that requires proper storage to keep the firearm away from kids. So, not a draconian as the new law I proposed above, but create a law similar to our current one that says everyone must store firearms in a manner to prevent theft. The problem with that, is this would discourage people from reporting the theft of their guns for fear of prosecution. So… I’ve got nothing. I think your overall gun control proposal mostly addresses this issue, though I’ll discuss it separately below.
I think the suicide issue is not a gun issue. People who want to kill themselves are going to do it. We’re never going to solve that by focusing on guns, even if we had a magic button that removed every firearm from the country. To often people pride themselves on how they’ve reduced “suicides by firearm” but the actual rates and numbers of total suicides didn’t change a bit.
I think you miss the point here. Firearms for self-defense are not only for use against an armed attacker. They are for use against any attacker capable and intent on committing a forceable felony against your person, causing great bodily harm or death. Firearms are the great equalizer. Not just for the “old lady” cliche, but any smaller, weaker person. Such people should not have to fear their attacker or fear for their safety. They should not have to wait for law enforcement to come rescue them. If the attacker is big and strong, or if the attacker has a knife or a bat (more popular for criminals than firearms, and causing more deaths than firearms by the way), then a person can and rightly should, use a firearm in self-defense. So, even if we had a magic button that took all firearms away from every criminal, this would not be a reason to limit law-abiding people from owning firearms for self-defense. Criminals can still be dangerous without having guns.
First, I hate the idea of gun buybacks–at least, how they are currently done. And I don’t quite understand your proposed buyback program where the government pays someone for their stolen firearm?
As for the registry, the biggest hurdle in passing such a law involves the paranoia associated with the government having a list of firearms or firearm owners. I wonder if there would be some kind of way to use block-chain, crypto technology to keep a registry that allowed firearm transfers to be tracked, and only allowed transfer to authorized people, but without anyone able to pull up a complete list. Something like that would satisfy more opponents of registries (not all, but more).
I think it is a great idea to have a system that readily identifies people who are legally allowed to purchase firearms versus those who are not. A universal background check, as it is being proposed, isn’t a terribly good system. It doesn’t address abuse of the system (people using it as a general background check service) or the costs associated with increasing the staffing and infrastructure to the NCIC, etc.
I think something like Illinois’s FOID card might be the way to go. Anyone with a FOID card can legally buy firearms and ammunition. BUT, the card (and the list of card holders) should not be issued or maintained by the government. I’d propose allowing the NRA or the CMP to be the holders of the list. And specifically adding text to the Bill that forbids the federal or state government from ever asking to be provided with the list for any reason. I’d support a gun registry that also worked the same way. Let the NRA or CMP handle it. That way, they can’t complain about the government having the information. And they can charge a fee for the service and the cards.
Registration is handled once per transaction and never expires. FOID cards are valid for 6 months. A person does not need a valid NRA-FOID card to possess a firearm or purchase ammunition (after all, the firearm registration will have his/her name on it). But if someone wants to buy a firearm or purchase some more ammunition, then their NRA-FOID card should be valid. Private sellers cannot transfer to someone without a valid NRA-FOID card. They can get transfer the firearm right away as long as the person’s NFOID is valid, and then they have like 10 days or something to report the transfer (online or by mail), and 30 to 90 days later, the new owner gets the registration. In the meantime, the bill of sale or something is enough. I don’t know, I’m just kind of thinking of this as I type. But I like where it’s headed…
What do you guys think?
I think maybe have the NRA handle the owners, and the CMP handles the firearms. If the NRA refuses to play, then allow any private organization for the chance to compete for the contract. I’m sure, once the government says “This is happening. Either you get to be the sole protector of the valuable list of legal firearm owners in the country, or someone else will”, then I think they will do it.
This would be laughably wrong, if dead people were something to laugh about. Check the chart here for a study of how removing one kind of suicide method impacted overall suicides.
The purchase of firearms is handled at the federal level, though. States can make things more restrictive, but they can’t make them less restrictive. Well, Alaska would argue differently, but that’s a completely different debate. Anyway, it’s relevant to look at what the federal government says about restrictions pertaining to mental health. I think the vagueness of legislation from some of the states is simply because there is no need to draft another law on top of the current federal law.
But, I agree that this is one area that needs to better “consolidated, clarified and enforced”. The same way there are standardized Federal forms for purchasing firearms, there should be a standardized Federal form for reporting the adjudication or determination of mental defectiveness or commitment to a mental institution. Currently, the ATF says the following people cannot legally possess a firearm:
So, pass a law that codifies and identifies every “lawful authority”, and make the reporting mandatory. Formalize and simplify the reporting process. Every mental institution should have a stack of ATF Forms for the reporting of those who are committed for reasons other than observation or voluntary admission. Failure to report results in loss of license. Every court, board, commission, or lawful authority should have these forms and understand the reporting requirement. Also, it would be a good idea to update regulations governing HIPAA to ensure there is no legal backlash from that end.
Laughably wrong? Did you read the entire paper? Your link goes directly to the England-Wales chart. Convenient for your argument. But, the Scotland Chart shows something completely different. It shows the number of non-CO suicides rose enough to create an overall rise in total suicides, despite the fall in CO suicides. That chart would support my hypothesis. Interesting, right? That the subject is nuanced and not completely researched or understood, such that neither hypothesis is “laughably wrong”? I could be right. Or you could be right. There is likely evidence to support both claims. I’d also look at suicide rates in places like South Korea, that have almost twice the rate of suicides despite the lack of readily available suicides. I’d also like to see the chart you linked to carried over for another decade or so. My guess is that the effect you noted is only short term, and that in a couple years, the non-CO suicide rates eventually rise enough to fill the gap. I think in the United States, if all guns were banned, there would probably be a similar effect where, for the first 5-10 years, overall suicide rates would decrease along with the reduction of firearm suicides, but then after that 5 years or so, the non-firearm suicides would rise enough to compensate. Without treating the mental health issue associated with all suicides, I don’t think the reduction of firearms will have a lasting effect on the suicide rates in America.
What did the authors of your study say about the discrepancy in the two charts? I wonder if they claimed one of the charts was “laughably wrong”?
(Underlying and bolding for emphasis is mine)
They are not as convinced of your conclusion as you are. I thank you for linking to the study, though. It was an interesting read.