Actually we do exactly that. Hemophilus influenza type B (Hib), for example, used to colonize many noses and caused menigitis or other serious disease in a very few. We have immunized the general population against it and virtually eliminated carriage and thus Hib disease. We have treated an entire generation against a germ to protect relatively few. Of course an epidemiologist would weigh the cost of intervention vs the benefits. (S)he would try to especially prevent transmission of the vector to those at greatest risk of having it become a disease state (in the case of Hib focusing on immunizing the youngest; in the case of guns interrupting the steps of guns getting into criminal hands). Logically, focusing resources on preventing that exposure is most cost effective, when possible.
catsix,
Would The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms be too biased for you? They state that gun shows are the second leading source of illegal guns (after corrupt licensed dealers).
I read your cite, and quite honestly, nothing in any of the gun show sections indictates that the ‘diversion’ or ‘trafficking’ was definitely an illegal sale to a prohibited person. So, they don’t exactly state what you say they state. They say that unlicensed citizen to citizen sales (which they call ‘diversions’) are second highest at gun shows, then they start slipping in that some of those were later used in felonies. It looks like trickery.
On the contrary, what was stated more than once is that the ATF has no way of knowing where those firearms ended up, whether the buyer was legal or not.
Their investigation methods, and the methods by which they determined if a sale they fully admit they cannot trace was illegal are not published. They also seem to be accounting any illegal activity with a gun show if that firearm ever in its life passed through a gun show.
Seems as if someone did some voodoo on the numbers.
Uh, yes. That’s why I was complimenting him on it. I respect his lack of extremism, even if we still come to different conclusions.
catsix,
Reread pg 17. of the BATF report.
a) both federally licensed and unlicensed sellers at gun shows. (which I believe you said was a “bullshit” claim.)
b) “the access to anonymous sales and large numbers of secondhand firearms makes gun shows attractive to criminals”
c) “prohibited persons, such as convicted felons and juveniles, do personally buy firearms at gun shows”
d) “firearms that were illegally diverted at or through gun shows were recovered in subsequent crimes, including homicide and robbery in more than a third of gun show investigations”
But of course the movement to close the gun show loophole and to require backgroud checks at gun shows is a liberal tactic to ban all guns. Just look who its sponsors are. I mean McCain, Lieberman. Damn bleeding heart gun banners. Next stop stormtroopers confiscating your shotguns. That’s why they want them all registered, so they know where to send the stormtroopers.:rolleyes:
Damn, I hate pdf files, can’t cut and paste.
To select text click on the “Text Select Tool” (the icon on the PDF toolbar that’s a capital “T” with a dotted square next to it), then click and drag as you would in a word document or web page. To copy the selected text, click on the “Copy” icon (Ctrl-C won’t work, and neither will the copy and paste tools on the menu of your web browser, as opposed to the PDF icons on the lower toolbar). The “Copy” icon is the icon on the PDF toolbar that looks like two sheets of paper on top of each other, with the top sheet offset below and to the right of the bottom sheet. (Actually, the “Text Select Tool” is pretty much selected by default, unless you’ve clicked on another PDF icon, such as the “Zoom In Tool”, which is the one that looks like a little magnifying glass.)
Once the text has been copied, it should be in your clipboard, and can be pasted into documents, “Submit Reply” boxes, etc. with Ctrl-V (or the “Paste” item on the “Edit” menu, if you prefer).
(Some of that is assuming that you’re using Internet Explorer, which you may not be; however, the PDF file-specfic commands–the selecting and copying of text–should pretty much work no matter what platform you’re on, that being the point of PDF files in the first place.)
DSeid: your cite notwithstanding, I was given the impression from the FBI (IIRC) several years ago that about 60% of the guns “hitting the streets” came from home thefts. Hence my willingness to bend a bit where some form of mandatory storage is concerned.
But don’t go putting me too high on a pedestal; what catsix says here
I wish I’d said half as well from the beginning of this thread. If I were a serious anti-gun person, and was doing research of the type Dr. Hemenway has (supposedly) done, I wouldn’t let myself be associated with Sarah Brady. In fact, I wouldn’t waste a decent gob of spit in her eye, however much I may be tempted.
She’s a liar born and bred, and her deceitfulness infects her entire organization and every one associated with the anti-gun movement that relies upon her methods and “data.”
Dr. Hemenway’s attempt to focus once again on instrumentality instead of human motives and causes for violence once again illustrates that the anti-gun movement doesn’t give a good goddamned about people killing people; just so long as we’re not doing it with guns, I’d be willing to bet that they wouldn’t give a flying fuck if our murder rate was ten times higher than it is now.
Ask yourself this: How come you never hear a single squeak from Brady & Co. about our non-firearm homicide rate (it still tops most of the rest of the world by a comfortable margin). Why are they targeting established, reputable firearms manufacturers with frivolous lawsuits when manufactures have little direct control over how their firearms are sold to the public?
If an individual firearm is defective somehow in its design, and the manufacturer was remiss in correcting this defect and therefore liable, then fine; sue that manufacturer. But you don’t sue an entire industry for a product that does exactly what it is designed to do. You don’t allege “conspiracy theories” against the entire industry because of one bad apple (like Intratec) just to see how long it takes the entire industry to go bankrupt because you don’t like their product.
They hate guns. Period. And removing them from society, either one-at-a-time or in droves, is their end-game. Have no doubt about it.
First off, thank you MEB for the useful education!
ExTank,
Sorry that my praise was premature. Ad hominem is one of the great rhetorical fallacies. Let us assume that Sarah Brady is a born and bred liar with an agenda. That does not mean that she cannot be promoting an idea with merit or stating something that is factual. (Heck, even George W. Bush and Clinton might occasionally say something that isn’t false.) It may mean that some other source will contradict her and her reputation (in your eyes) will make you more likely to believe the other source than her in case of such conflict. In this case the BATF supports the claims. And catsix is just mistaken. Hey it happens to the best of us.
As to why not go after non-gun weapons. In my first post I discussed the need to change the environment that fosters violence. To do the epidemiologic equivilent of draining the swamp. Availability of weapons is only one factor in the equation. It is certainly true that there are countries with more guns and less murder and visa versa. Economic conditions. The Drug War… A host of other factors dramatically influence the rate of violent crime in a society, guns or no guns. Tight control or loose. But guns, particularly guns in the hands of criminals, amplify the effects. Two thirds of US homicides are committed with guns. A gun allows a violent intent to be more likely to kill, and more likely to kill more than one person. A gun makes it easier to kill, both out of the efficiency of its design and as a psychological effect of distancing the murderer from the victim. It is very costly if not impossible to do too much too fast to alter those root societal causes. But if the criminals only had knives our murder rate would be drastically reduced.
BATF says that stolen guns (from licensed dealers and homes together) accounted for less than half as many of the illegal guns as did gun shows, and that corrupt licensed dealers were number one. So your source may have been overstating the case. I still think that mandatory storage is a reasonable suggestion that is only a slight cost to most gun owners. Certainly it would be expected to increase as a source if other easier sources, like gun shows and corrupt dealers, dried up.
If we assume that we are doing what we can on a societal level to decrease violence in general then number one should be making enforcement of current laws and catching corrupt dealers a higher priority. The current penalties are pretty mild though: five years max for being a strawman or corrupt dealer without clear proof of knowledge that the guns would be used for criminal purpose or that the buyer is prohibited from legally buying a gun; ten with proof of such knowledge and intent. Still, an investment in enforcement and stricter penalties would be most useful.
Second up is closing the gun show loophole.
Third is mandatory secure storage. With the knowledge that this a relative term. But you at least want to make them work for it. And bonus to decrease the accidental child deaths. Gravy. Again, I believe that most legal owners would comply just on the basis of signing that they would upon purchase.
Banning handguns could certainly be effective (“Virtually every crime gun in the United States starts off as a legal firearm”) but such would not eliminate violence, only reduce its technologic amplification, and such would be an undue limitation upon those who currently have a legal right and desire to own such weapons. A more middle ground is possible and desirable.
I don’t think that you have an accurate impression of ‘unlicensed sellers’ at gun shows. These are not people who set up a booth and are selling dozens of firearms. I’ve been to a lot of gun shows in a lot of states, and I’ve never seen a state where that was legal.
Unproven opinion. The threat of going to prison for selling someone a frearm when you didn’t know they were prohibited makes it very, very unattractive to people like me to be selling firearms to folks we don’t know.
Stated after the author of the report admits that the ATF can’t track what happened to these firearms due to the ‘anonymous’ nature of their sale.
This doesn’t exactly prove what the ATF says it does. If they can prove that said firearm was ever sold in an citizen to citizen deal at a gun show, it still doesn’t prove that specific sale to be the point at which the gun entered the illegal market or the hands of a criminal. All they’re saying here is that to the best of their speculation, firearms later involved in crimes had at some point in their lifetimes been through a gun show.
If I meet up with one of the guys from my sportsmen’s club at the Pittsburgh firearms expo and I sell him a shotgun, and that shotgun is later stolen from his home and then used in a crime, the ATF counts that into your ‘statistic’ because that firearm had previously been sold at a gun show.
It’s dishonest and not accurate, especially after they say it’s nearly impossible to track these firearms. They’d write that into the report as me having sold the firearm illegally to the criminal. More ammo for Sarah Brady.
There is no gun show loophole. The term was invented by notorious gun grabbers Charles Schumer, Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer and Sarah Brady.
Historically this is exactly what has happened. Registration has created a very convenient list for the government to use when they decide that it is time for confiscation. Germany circa 1933 is a very notable example.
How come so many areas in the US have such a high rate of firearms ownership and such a low rate of firearms crime? Areas like Washington and Greene County Pennsylvania, the entire state of Vermont, etc?
catsix, precisely because handguns are only one part of the equation. And not the largest part, but one that can be influenced with relatively moderate cost (although obviously you’d disagree), whereas other things (like a heavily prosecuted Drug War and poverty) are much more difficult targets.
BTW, your paranoia performance plays into the hands of the gun control extremists. They’d like nothing more than to marginalize the gun rights crowd as a bunch of paranoid yahoos who care nothing about the effects of guns on the rest of society because they need to be prepared for stormtrooper invasion.
Of course most of the public doesn’t much care about most of the gun deaths or about public health unless they believe it effects them personally. That is why the assault weapon ban gets so much more airplay than does the gun show loophole (yes, I’ll go with McCain and Lieberman on this one) even though assault weapons are not the most common weapon used in gun homicides. This lack of concern for most gun deaths is simple to understand: most gun deaths are associated with poverty and occur in areas of high crime, and are not too common in a nice middle class neighborhood. Those are deaths of “them”, the “others”. Ah, but the crazy with the assault weapon. He could get “me”. Remember that Washington sniper and how everyone was crazed, afraid to go to Washington DC, afraid to go out if they were there. The sniper murders were actually less than 5% of Washington’s typical annual murder rate that people ignored all the time. An assault weapon ban and the gun rights folk arguing against it is good play to the middle class even though the actual benefit of the ban is small: they percieve it as a risk to themselves and have a hard time understanding why banning them significantly infringes upon a legitimate gun owner’s rights. You do not hunt with an assault weapon; you do not ward off your boogeyman home invader with one. Maybe you join a militia with one. Good press for the Sarah Brady side of the fence.
Pointing out Sarah Brady, Diane Feinstein (‘If I could’ve gotten 51 votes in the Senate, Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them all in…’), Charles Schumer, and Barbara Boxer’s true motivations is not ‘paranoia’, it’s honesty. HCI, VPC, and those Senators I listed have stated that they wish to ban all guns, and that the only way to do it is little by little.
There is no such technical category as ‘assault weapon’. The term ‘assault weapon’ is used by Brady, Boxer, Schumer, Feinstein and others to refer to ‘any firearm that looks scary.’
And the rest of that murder rate is almost exclusive to those involved in gang and illegal drug activity. The general public does not face the same risk from that type of violent crime that they do from a serial killer who strikes in broad daylight in public places against random targets.
A quick look at the facts of the ‘assault weapon ban’ indicates that it sought to ban guns that have scary-looking cosmetic features. There is no benefit whatsoever to banning a bayonet lug. When’s the last time someone got bayonetted to death in a bank robbery in the US? On the other hand, banning such firerams as the Colt AR-15 impacted the ability of midwestern ranchers to protect their cattle herds and significantly impacts their livelihood in a very negative way.
[quote]
You do not hunt with an assault weapon; you do not ward off your boogeyman home invader with one. Maybe you join a militia with one. Good press for the Sarah Brady side of the fence.
[quote]
Maybe you don’t hunt with one, but a Colt AR-15 or it’s sister gun the Ruger Mini-14 are probably the most effective prairie dog and groundhog guns I’ve ever touched. As for what I defend my home with, whatever firearm is closest when I need one, whether that be my Browning pump 12 guage or my AK-47.
The ‘Sarah Brady side of the fence’ does not understand firearms, nor the uses for them. The only thing they understand is fear. They are afraid of people like me, and they have no reason to be.
Absolutely wrong. You’re saying that the shopkeeper can’t restrain the shoplifter, that someone who is being attacked shouldn’t resist. You’re saying that we shouldn’t join in a Hue And Cry.
You keep an eye on your neighbour’s house when they go on holiday, don’t you?
I do not think that you understand what I am trying to say here.
Your comments as to the “true motivations” of gun control legislation did not provoke the paranoi comment. That merely earns ad hominem. I can agree that banning is an excessive response but see that some improvements in regulation are needed.
The paranoia was earned for your fears that any regulation is a likely prelude to using the registration list for confiscation by the stormtroopers.
“How come so many areas in the US have such a high rate of firearms ownership and such a low rate of firearms crime?” is “what the fuck” I am talking about whaen I answer “because handguns are only one part of the equation. And not the largest part”.
You do realize that I (partly) agree with you on the “assault weapon” ban. At least as far that they are weapons that are banned because they scare people but that the ban actually accomplishes little from a public health perspective. But the NRA fighting against it accomplishes something tactically for the gun control side politically, precisely because these weapons are so scary to the general public. It gets the general public seeing the NRA as people who want to keep them scared so that they can shot prairie dogs with major firepower and thus more likely to dismiss them as extremist in future debates.
As to debating the conclusions of the BATF. No, I do not think that they are being “dishonest” here. Their conclusions all seem to follow reasonably to me.
When someone is barred, due to having a criminal record or for whatever reason, from buying a gun legally, this doesn’t mean that they are actually barred from buying a gun. It just means that they’re barred from buying a gun legally. If they can’t buy a gun legally, they’ll buy one illegally. From the black market. Where the gun will probably cost more. Naturally, they’d prefer to buy the gun legally, to avoid the higher cost of a black market gun. And to avoid the trouble of trying to find their first choice as to make and model on the black market. Much easier to just walk into a store that can be relied upon to carry exactly what you want.
Background checks, rules about what kinds of gun are and are not legal to own, ect – to me, this all seems like a pointless waste of time and resources. None of this actually prevents anyone from obtaining a gun. All it accomplishes is to make them go to the extra trouble and expense of buying from the black market.
Okay, he’s a banner. I’m not. I think we do have the constitutional right to bear arms. And I think our gun control laws are ineffective and futile. But I do like the public health approch, regardless of who is behind it and what their motives may be. I think it might actually accomplish a reduction in accidental gun deaths and injuries.
Since when is it ad hominem to point out what Sarah Brady and others on her side of the fence have stated themselves as their goal? There are even those in the government who want an outright ban on handguns:
And they don’t necessarily want to ban rifles, just the ammunition for them:
He wants to ban one of the most popular deer hunting rounds in the United States, but of course it’s only ad hominem if i call that a desire to effectively ‘ban guns’.
As for the esteemed Dr. Hemenway and his association with the Harvard School of Public Health, take a look at this:
I think they’re dishonest because in one sentence they bemoan gun shows due to their inability to determine what happens to a firearm sold from citizen to citizen, and in another sentence they claim to know exactly what happens to that firearm: that it gets sold to a criminal. Their methodology for determining that gun shows are the source of so many illegal firearms is unpublished, hence I do not trust the statement that they are.
Cite stating that illegally purchased firearms on the black market cost more than those purchased legally? A stolen Glock bought from the trunk of a car is unlikely to cost the $500-600 that a new one purchased at a store would.
It is for me, but it’s also a lot more expensive. Course, I’m one of those law-abiding people who plays by the rules and jumps through the hoops that the Feds and the Staties have laid out.
You’re either saying that we should dump background checks at stores and sell firearms to anyone who shows up because ‘They’ll get one anyway. If not from this store, the black market.’ or you’re saying that the only way to keep guns out of the hands of criminals is if nobody owns guns at all (because they could get stolen and/or resold later).
No doubt accidental gun deaths of children are an extreamly small percentage of all gun deaths. But why look only at deaths? How about the percentage of accidental gun deaths and injuries of children? And how about the percentage of accidental gun deaths and injuries by as well as of children? (That is, cases where a child accidently shoots an adult.)
I supose the percentage would still be quite small. But I don’t see that as a reason not to try to prevent these events. I don’t see why a public health approch would be obligated to ignore these deaths and injuries in favor of an effort to keep handguns out of the hands of criminals. As I’ve been saying, I think efforts to to keep guns of any sort out of the hands of criminals is just so much tilting at windmills. But a public health approch to reducing accidental gun deaths and injuries might actually have the effect of reducing those deaths and injuries.
By the way, Hazel, I most certainly did not type the line you attributed to me. I would never have supported ‘safe storage legislation’, nor would I support regulating all gun sales from private owner to private owner with a background check.
You really think I want to have to go pay an FFL holder to broker a sale for me so that I can sell dadsix my side-by-side 16 gauge?
In the entire state of Colorado between 1990 and 1998 there were exactly eight accidental firearms deaths of children 0 to 10 years old. Six deaths were recorded in the 11 - 12 year old range, and twelve for ages 13 - 15. Twenty three deaths occured in the 16 - 19 year old age range (and calling 18 and 19 year olds ‘children’ is a generous stretch). The total for that eight year period is forty nine, with 26 deaths occurring in the 0 - 15 years old age range.
In comparison, there were 38 deaths in the same 9 year peroid from bicycle accidents, 39 from fire or burns, and 122 from drowning for the same age group. *
Maybe Hemenway ought to be crusading agaings swimming pools and bicycles.
This is what really irks gun owners, Hazel. It’s that we’ve got one of the lowest accident and accidental death rates out there, especially among kids who are dying over 4.5 times as often by drowning, and yet firearms are the constant focus of places like the Harvard School of Publich Health, where the Dean admittedly hates them and doesn’t see why anyone should own one.
You keep trying to debate with people who are not here and with positions that no one here espouses. Brady isn’t here. No one here wants to confiscate your weapons.
As stated, I agree with you that child deaths from accidental firearm injuries are small (child deaths, which includes adolescent deaths, from intentional injuries are another matter entirely). The best case scenerio for lives saved by guns protecting an individual during a home invasion is also small.
Sure hazel, if there was an easy way to prevent that small rate of mortality and significant morbidity from accidental injuries that did not significantly infringe upon legal gun owners rights, then I’d say go for it … but since the benefit is small (from a public health perspective) only a similarly small cost would be justified. (Unless you take the position that a single life is priceless, etc.) Mandatory secure storage seems small enough (and has other benefits to the more significant issue of easy availability of illegal guns). But preventing all accidental deaths would not make a big dent in the public health problem associated with firearms.
While you see reducing the easy availability of illegal guns as “tilting at windmills” I see the effort as far less Quixiotic. It is doable and fairly little cost can have significant benefits. Crackdown on corrupt licensed dealers. Sting operations, whatever it takes within the law. Reduce the ability of criminals to divert weapons previously bought legally - closing the gun show loophole is one move in this direction. Mandatory secure home storage to prevent theft from becoming a more significant source of weapons.
None of which will make violence disappear because guns are not the cause of the violence. But will have a significant positive effect on reducing it, all else being equal.