Leaping all the way to the extreme, a complete ban of private gun ownership (and ammo purchasing) in this country would have clear and obvious positive effects on the number of murders and suicides - much, much later. There would be little to no immediate positive effect, but after a few dozen years when all the ammo in the wild mostly runs out we might finally be able to reach the crime levels of actual civilized countries.
I’d be all for it, because I don’t like murder and suicide, but the first step would be to amend away the second amendment, and by the time we have the demographics in government to do that we’ll have achieved world peace anyway.
If we are to have Gun Control legislation, the everyday gun violence is definitely what to concentrate on preventing. Over the last 20 years, there have been 541 people killed in mass shootings that killed 5 or more people, or about 27 per year. From an epidemiological standpoint this is a drop in the bucket compared to the average of around 11 thousand violent gun deaths, 20 thousand suicides and hundreds of accidental deaths that occur every year. These rare sensational shootings are what everyone gets up in arms (no pun intended) about gun control, but the day to day events are what they should be designed to handle.
The upside of L&R is that firearms will be less likely diverted through straw purchases which is a high source of illegal guns. Criminal prosecution may be easier, and there could be a deterrent effect. It would be possible to remove guns from people who become prohibited. It would provide a lot more data available to be studied. There’s probably more, but those are some of the big ones.
The downside of L&R is the potential misuse of the information. Some people don’t like gun owners, so the information could be used to discriminate, or confiscate. At some point if the amount or type of firearm owned crosses a line where folks think there isn’t a justifiable need, then other restrictions could be imposed. Making ownership a suspect class would carry with it strict scrutiny in line with other suspect class analysis and defeats that, and doing so by constitutional amendment gives the protection more heft than one that could simply be repealed by a simple majority. Still, information existing means there is potential for misuse by intention or by accident. The keepers of that information should be incented to protect it, without the typical qualified immunity that comes with the role of LEOs or government officials acting in their official capacity. Criminal penalties could do that. Civil penalties for damages would provide some sore of recompense for that misuse. Holding leadership accountable with civil and criminal penalties like we do with SOX would also incent creating a culture where the information is protected.
It gives all the good stuff associated with L&R, and mitigates the bad stuff.
Maybe it would be good to study gun violence with an eye to understanding what is or is not effective at reducing it. To that end, how about starting by repealing the Dickey Amendment?
Beyond forcing gun owners to carry insurance (which might be hard to enforce), how about building the negative externalities of gun violence into the cost of guns and/or ammunition with taxes? I know the majority of gun deaths are suicides, but at least 10,000/year are homicides (no idea how many injuries). At perhaps $2 million/life, that’s about $20 billion/year. This (5-year-old article from CSMonitor) had a figure for federal background checks of 16.5 million in 2012. So a $1000 tax per gun would nearly cover the annual cost. Of course, that assumes a fairly inelastic demand–presumably that kind of tax would reduce the number of guns sold (or create a black market). Or tax ammunition–I’d even favor a lower or zero tax for ammunition purchased and used at shooting ranges. If corporations and rich individuals can use their market power to increase the reach and volume of their 1st Amendment speech rights, I don’t see why reducing 2nd Amendment exercise through market disincentives should be that problematic.
Thanks for the response. I would assume that L&R would be accomplished via government databases, and when such government data has been hacked, there seem to be no civil or criminal penalties. What civil or criminal penalties do you foresee would be available if the ATF database that held L&R information was hacked and the information released to the public?
I think one of the problems is that there is no trust or respect on either side of the debate. Because of this we are not doing what we should be doing and people are dying because of it. The anti-gun guys think the gun guys want to distribute assault weapons like condoms. The gun guys think the anti-gun guys want to take all guns away. Period.
I think the debate needs to focus on combat weapons. A handgun, or a hunting rifle or a target rifle or a shotgun have many legitimate uses. They can be abused and people can die. yes. The numbers though are pretty low. It will be hard to get a dozen people with handguns or hunting rifles. They are going to run away. There is going to be a response. The sad fact is that for better or worse we as a society have come to terms with the concept that the things that we like and find useful can also be dangerous and kill a handful of people. Cars, knives, chainsaws, all kinds of heavy equipment, drunk people, etc etc.
Assault weapons on the other hand are different. They really don’t have a legitimate use beyond being good at killing large numbers of people. They take the number of potential victims from a handful to a big number.
So, automatic and assault weapons and those capable of being turned into them need to be banned outright except for military and police. You can’t have hand grenades, land mines, mortars, bazookas or nerve gas, and you shouldn’t be allowed to have military grade weapons that are good for killing masses of people at a time. Our society is not should not be ok with that kind of risk/return the way we should be with cars, handguns, bolt action rifles, etc.
I think we should cut all the other crap. You want a silencer? Fine with me. You want a handgun? Fine with me? You want a rifle? Fine with me. You better not be a felon, you better have it registered and licensed and renewed, and you need to buy insurance for it the way you do with a car. The risk may be something that is something that is acceptable to society but that doesn’t mean society should pay for it. Your car can kill people. It needs to be insured. Guns are no different.
This is where people will ask you what an “Assault weapon” is. After you answer, they will ask you to point out the difference between what you describe as an assault weapon and a hunting rifle. So, be prepared for that.
Whenever people spout the “but then only criminals will have guns” line, I reply, “So, why don’t we just eliminate all laws, because after all, criminals don’t care about them.” :smack: I usually get called a libtard or something along those lines, 'cos after all, aren’t we ammosexuals the safest people on earth?
With all due respect, nonsense. Gun violence in the US is so many orders of magnitude above the rest of the world (most of which have low gun ownership) that any “trends” of this sort are statistical noise. If this negative correlation were actually true, gun violence would be zero by now.
No only would there be no short term positive effect there would be significant negative effects. It would confirm all the worst fears of some very paranoid individuals who are heavily armed. While law abiding citizens such as me would easily give up guns, there are thousands if not tens of thousands of people who would not comply. These people would have to be forcibly disarmed. Sending out police to forcibly disarm heavily armed people who are good with guns and know the police are coming is a recipe for disaster. The body count would be in the hundreds at least.
Then there would be the people who would hide their guns instead of turning them in. These guns would massively go up in value. We can’t keep illegal immigrants from crossing our border and so smuggling guns into the US would be much easier to do. We can’t keep illegal drugs out of the country and we have had decades of practice at that. If people really wanted guns and ammo they could still get them just as people who are motivated enough can get any drug they want. The entire effort would just mean law abiding people would be disarmed and anyone who wanted a gun would still be able to get them. All at a cost of billions of dollars, and hundreds if not thousands of lives.
As someone who grew up in the U.K., I find the gun culture here really uncomfortable. But the majority of American people seem to favor unrestricted gun ownership, and so be it.
I know that there are some places with high levels of gun ownership where this doesn’t happen. But for whatever reason, the structure of U.S. society seems prone to generating the kind of disaffected individuals who will do this, and unless you make it extremely difficult for ordinary citizens to obtain weapons, this will continue. The only way to stop it decisively is simply to abolish the 2nd Amendment, and change to a U.K. model where there is no constitutional right to arm yourself, and you have to demonstrate some compelling reason to own anything other than a shotgun.
So long as U.S. public opinion favors the right for ordinary citizens to be armed, this will continue. There is really no point in hand-wringing, and making preposterous suggestions that the problem is with mental health care. If you want a society awash with guns, you just have to accept that some proportion of those heavily armed people will be unbalanced, and own the consequences.
Just as with healthcare, there are many other civilized societies in the world that show you a different (and in my opinion, far better) way to run a society. But it’s your choice.
This is because in most cases the laws are targeting the behavior itself, not another behavior that is believed to precipitate that behavior. No one should care if law abiding people have guns since they are only going to use them for legitimate reasons, hunting, sport shooting, home defense, the guns we want are in the hands of criminals. However, the nature of criminals is that the ignore laws. Thus since now they have a monopoly on guns the criminals now have more power and the law abiding have less.
Only if you ignore South America. Honduras is the country that has the highest gun death rate in the world with a rate that is six times the US rate. They have fewer guns per capita than the UK and around 5.5% of guns per capita as the US.
I look at gun control not as a means of limiting an individual behavior per se, but mainly as an important first step in pushing back on gun culture and the antisocial attitudes that track with this culture.
When tobacco was unregulated, it’s not a coincidence that more people smoked. By having a hands-off stance, the government sent the tacit message that tobacco products weren’t harmful enough to warrant constraining and that people’s freedom to do what they want overrode any public health and safety concerns. Couple this with media portrayals of smoking as cool and sexy and you had the makings of a culture that didn’t just permit tobacco abuse, but encouraged it. Even when it affected non-smokers through second-hand inhalation, social mores made it taboo for non-smokers to do anything about it. It took regulation to facilitate a cultural shift so that, for example, non-smoking areas could become the default, rather than the exception. It took regulation to get people to see smoking as not only an unnecessary expense, but also a major health hazard. Smokers also bear a stigma they used to not have, due to anti-smoking messaging sponsored by the government. Tobacco abuse is on the decline because of that, and along with that, the health conditions associated with smoking.
Guns are really no different. People keep “abusing” guns because something in our culture enables it. The more we shy away from regulating guns, the more entrenched this culture becomes.
If the Vegas shooter only had one gun instead of the kajillion he had, his physical ability to kill all those people would have been the same. But it says something about his mindset that he had a kajillion guns, right? Like, what’s up with that? Did having all of these guns in his possession fuel his homicidal ideations by making him feel unstoppable? I also have to wonder if a guy with antisocial tendencies feels more tempted to use a gun unlawfully when surrounded by guns vs. having only one gun. Sort of like how you’re more likely to binge if you go to a buffet rather order off a menu.
Perhaps limiting gun owners to purchasing only one registered weapon every 5 years would be effective in keeping gun nuts from “binging” like this. I would be in favor of that plus universal background checks and taxation.
