What percent of private guns are used for bad purposes? How does that number compare to those used for good purposes, like hunting as you mentioned, but also recreational and sport target shooting, self defense, etc?
So it’s like prohibition after a generation? How many crimes to cigarettes thwart in a year?
I’m glad to hear that because there are literally millions of “assault weapons” already in circulation.
The present administration is actively attempting to infringe on the right of the people to bear arms. One would think that, if the health, happiness, and well-being of the population were the motivating factors here, that the thrust of the new policies would be aimed at handguns, since they are responsible for ten times the number of deaths in this country than long guns. According to CNN, 72% of gun homicides are committed by handguns, with only 4% the result of rifle fire, and only a small percentage of those were assault rifles.
On the other hand, rifles are by far the preferred military weapon. The Revolutionary war was not won with pistols, but with muskets. On first glance, the Government appears to be less concerned with the safety of its citizens, and more fearful for it’s own security.
I don’t think the government is afraid for its security, I think the Democrats have let their loony fringe take over the debate for them on the gun control issue.
Assault weapons have been responsible of fewer than 400 of the almost 250,000 gun deaths since the AWB expired (according to Dianne Feinstein). There is no evidence that anywhere close to 400 deaths would have been avoided if we had managed to somehow totally eliminate every assault weapon in the whole world.
If the gun control crowd were run by rational people, they would be looking for real solutions to gun violence and not this retarded fetish with scary looking guns.
If you try to remove weapons from the hands of mostly law-abiding individuals, some of them might give up their law-abiding status, and shoot back. So this is not the way to combat homicide. I’m sympathetic to moderate gun control measures, but to have a substantial impact on homicide and suicide, people will have to give up guns voluntarily. My main point isn’t that we need to grab guns, but that we need to recognize households with guns are more dangerous than those without. It should be treated as a public heath issue.
Except when near end of life, I’m just as much against suicide as homicide. Both are likely to be impulsive actions, later regretted when unsuccessful. So, when possible, I look at the correlation with violent death of all kinds. In most – not all – cultures, suicide is more common that homicide. So, to me, this is important:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/files/2012/08/australia_suicides.jpg
As is this:
And this:
http://www.finlay-online.org/FILE/20110120114656684.pdf
I’ve noticed that people on the internet sometimes say people who don’t agree with them are idiots. It gets old. We wouldn’t be discussing this if all the evidence went the same way.
You mean in #28? When you provided an abstract written by people from an advocacy group? As I noted in #30, I need the whole article to comment. So I emailed the advocacy group on Saturday, asking for the whole article while referencing this thread. They haven’t gotten back to me, even though their web sites says they’ll send a copy if you email. They could be on vacation. Or it could be they only want to sent their article to people who are liable to agree.
Using the time I might have spent reading their article if that had sent it, I just found a link to a critique of the unavailable full Baker and McPhedran study, written by what seems like a good no-ax-to-grind source:
http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/GunBuyback.pdf
Yes, it is quite easy to say that they will not give them back and fight back..but can you show anyplace where that happened when they banned and collected guns?
Those gun owners tend to be very law abiding folk and just go along with the ban or maybe not turn them in but they are not half cocked like you claim.
1st link, bunk the drop started BEFORE the ban and did not increase nor decrease it’s trend after the ban. That is why that chart starts at the ban and not before, that doesn’t fit the post’s political stance.
2nd link, irrelevent as you did say suicide is a bigger issue than homicide, but that link only covers firearm deaths, and does not demonstrate that without guns suicides wouldn’t be completed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate
Show me a pattern in that list for firearm ownership.
In page 242 of your third link they even ADMIT this, that while the firearm rate is higher in the US it is lower than those other countries if you look at the rate OVERALL.
So you just provided data that disproved your own claim. If your primary motivation is to reduce suicide gun bans are not the solution.
But I assume you did read that before posting it right? Or are suicide deaths more tragic if they are completed with a firearm in your view?
Also note that your second graphic is also effected by poor elderly people, who commit suicide to avoid the nursing home and/or extended hospital stays. But the right to die debate is another thread.
See what happens when you go through with a persons personal DNR request?
Eric Holder today stated he was for banning “military style weapons” yet those weapons are used so rarely and to no greater effect than other firearms. The AWB was DIRECTLY related to the D’s losing power in the 90’s and was NOT effective at reducing crime or murders at all. So yes, that is idiotic.
Back to real examples of bans. Almost all of the linked studies here have claimed the AU ban had no effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Australia#Research
But that doesn’t matter, you are the one who wants to ban things…yet you have given NO evidence that it will do any good.
I’ll read your last URL but in skimming over they don’t seem to explain why there was no change in the trend.
[QUOTE=Damuri Ajashi;16072836******]
I don’t think the government is afraid for its security******, I think the Democrats have let their loony fringe take over the debate for them on the gun control issue.
Assault weapons have been responsible of fewer than 400 of the almost 250,000 gun deaths since the AWB expired (according to Dianne Feinstein). There is no evidence that anywhere close to 400 deaths would have been avoided if we had managed to somehow totally eliminate every assault weapon in the whole world.
If the gun control crowd were run by rational people, they would be looking for real solutions to gun violence and not this retarded fetish with scary looking guns.
[/QUOTE]
I disagree with the bolded part … I agree with the underlined part.
That’s pretty good considering.
In the history of Scotland, there was some back and forth between rebellions and disarming acts. That one caused the other, I won’t say for sure, on account of not knowing much about Scottish history. But I can say that there are an large number of Americans on the internet saying they would fight back before their guns were confiscated. And a lot of them are of Scottish descent, or at least come from areas (the South and West) where a lot of the people are of Scottish origin. I haven’t gotten to read it, but here is a well-reviewed book that partly deals with the continuing Scottish influence in American life:
It may not help my side to admit this, but a declining gun culture tends to result in gun control laws, and visa versa. So you would expect things to start getting better even before a law was passed, and passing the law (if moderate enough to avoid much backlash) will help a decline in gun ownership to continue. That’s consistent with what you yourself say happened in Australia.
The news stories I read about sold-out US gun stores are troubling, so things may be getting worse here. But at least until the last couple years, US gun ownership was in decline. It could be the modest declines in gun ownership will cause mild gun control laws to be passed, creating what, to me, would be a virtuous circle.
The greater ease and case fatality rate of gun suicide over other means is both so obvious and so well proven that I can’t take this too seriously. But feel free to peruse links I have provided, on the question, over the past month or two in gun threads on this board.
I want to reduce all sorts of violent death.
As best as I can tell, that second graphic is this one. If so, I’d point out that the US state with the highest gun ownership rate and also the highest gun death rate, Alaska, is tied for having the fourth youngest population. And if you look at page 11 here, you’ll see that few Alaskan suicides are elderly.
So, despite there have been dozens of peaceful confiscations, in the UK, Australia, Germany and the USA…but you will come up with some history you claim to not even completely understand?
No this is all worse than opinion…it is all dogma. You oversimplify number, ignore other numbers and then admit for you it is all about a culture war. You may convince the choir but you need to sell it to the moderates(on this issue) like me.
So guess what…if the rate goes down without the ban or a reduction in guns…the guns weren’t the cause 
If you are going to claim that dreaming about gun bans reduces suicide and murder…you are going to need to provide a cite.
Yet you can’t provide ANY evidence that reducing the number of guns reduces the effective suicide rate. What do places with very very liberal gun laws like Switzerland have such a lower level then highly restrictive places like France?
Your are making guesses, you are going on “hunch” and you are wrong. Pills are gaining popularity and are quite final, the device used to commit suicide is just as open to cultural norms and fads as anything else.
Special pleading there…Or do you not realize that MASSIVE amount of poverty and issues in the native population in Alaska. But you sure do like to cherry pick
http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/ser-7-3-213.pdf
You are looking a a few pictures and cherry picking the ones that fit your narrative but that is all confirmation bias. None of that matters at all until you can show a causative relationship.
It should be pretty simple, you claim the pure presence of guns in the lawful possession of the general population causes more deaths and that by removing them will cause deaths to go down.
Show that is true, show that among similar demographic areas or in the same demographic area where there has been a ban you can observe changes in the death/suicide rates in effect.
[QUOTE=Muffin]
Conclusions and Relevance: A higher number of firearm laws in a state are associated with a lower rate of firearm fatalities in the state, overall and for suicides and homicides individually. As our study could not determine cause-and-effect relationships, further studies are necessary to define the nature of this association.
[/quote]
You would think from reading that quote that the researchers found that more gun control laws led to both less suicides and less homicides. But if you read the paper (which is sitting on my coffee table) will see they found a significant difference only for suicides.
It’s funny how you have to read the paper real close to figure that out.
I look at guns more the way most Americans look at cigarettes – a public health issue to be talked about and regulated, but not to the point of a ban. Being age 57, I’ve been able to notice that as people smoke less, people who don’t smoke increasingly find smoking to be disgusting. And then their representatives pass laws. While morality should mostly be about greatest good for the greatest number, there is a place there for collective expression of of our opposition to unnecessary death. I don’t have a tremendous problem with declining smoking leading to putting an expression of our feelings about cigarettes on the package leading to more smoking decline. And I don’t have a problem with limiting the amount of nicotine in a cigarette – or number of bullets in a magazine.
You seem unwilling to accept a yes on the question of opposition to gun confiscation because I am opposed for the wrong reason. So be it. Hopefully we never will find out whether Americans threatening murder in event of a gun confiscation are believable.
Re your comments about Alaska:
The US chart shows strong correlation between gun ownership and gun death, state by state. For every one of the states fitting the trend line – and that’s pretty much all of them except if you treat the District of Columbia as a state – you could probably come up with some similar special stories. But why the trend line in the first place?
If I pointed to Australia, where, unlike in the US, the Capital Territory does fit the anti-gun trend line perfectly, you’d probably tell me how that’s because, well – I leave it you to tell me how Canberra is unique. Every place is unique. Some places are so unique – District of Columbia, Russia – they go off the chart. Most places do not.
I look at guns more the way most Americans look at cigarettes – a public health issue to be talked about and regulated, but not to the point of a ban. Being age 57, I’ve been able to notice that as people smoke less, people who don’t smoke increasingly find smoking to be disgusting.* And then their representatives pass laws. While morality should mostly be about greatest good for the greatest number, there is a place there for collective expression of of our opposition to unnecessary death. I don’t have a tremendous problem with declining smoking leading to putting an expression of our feelings about cigarettes on the package leading to more smoking decline. And I don’t have a problem with limiting the amount of nicotine in a cigarette – or number of bullets in a magazine.
You seem unwilling to accept a yes on the question of opposition to gun confiscation because I am opposed for the wrong reason. So be it. Hopefully we never will find out whether Americans threatening murder in event of a gun confiscation are believable.
Re your comments about Alaska:
The US chart shows strong correlation between gun ownership and gun death, state by state. For every one of the states fitting the trend line – and that’s pretty much all of them except if you treat the District of Columbia as a state – you could probably come up with some similar special stories. But why the trend line in the first place?
If I pointed to Australia, where, unlike in the US, the Capital Territory does fit the anti-gun trend line perfectly, you’d probably tell me how that’s because, well – I leave it you to tell me how Canberra is unique. Every place is unique. Some places are so unique – District of Columbia, Russia – they go off the chart. Most places do not.
Once again, only looking at “gun deaths” if you care about preventing suicide is a strawman. The ONLY reaon that chart limits it to gun deaths is to cook the number to fit a belief. Hanging increased in australia and the break in suicides more correlates with the suicide prevention programs the country implimented in the 90’s it was not magiclly reduced years before firearms legislation which was driven purely by a tragic massicure.
But once again if you are claiming that there was some cultural change that made people give up guns you should be able to show that the drop in ownership related to a drop in DEATHS.
Note that there was no knee in the murder rate trend in Australia nore was there a knee in the suicide rate trend. The suicide rate is still low despite the fact that now there are MORE legal guns in the country than at the time of the buy back. So your unsubstantiated claims once again are not born out by reality.
The fact that you are going to plainly hand wave away demographic and socioeconomic data about the serious issues with suicide in Alaska among the native population shows me you only really care about suicide as a topic when it relates to your irrational fear about guns. Why waste political capitol and time on a solution that does little to nothing to save lives?
Passing an ineffective “assult weapons ban” will cost us an elections, republicans to not tend to fund public health, suicide prevention programs etc…
It is a grosslly oversimplified idea that baning guns will solve all these problems and there is no evidence that it will solve any.
They’re mostly full of shit.
We’ve had gun confiscations in several states in the US without the sort of reaction you are talking about. In fact these confiscations are the rally cry among gun nuts against registration because they were preceded by registration.
The ridiculous over reach by Feinstein and company caused the panic buying at gun stores. I would be willing to bet that there are more gun owners today than there were before Newton and the talk of banning things.
Like my local gun store owner told me a few weeks ago: Feinstein may hate guns but she must LOVE gun store owners. Both his profit margin and his sales volume are waaaay up.
The NRA has also experienced a spike in membership.
Gun shows are so packed these days its almost unpleasant to attend.
Ammunition is chronically sold out.
The waiting times at gun ranges around here are way up.
Just as Republican efforts to suppress votes in Ohio and Florida resulted in HIGHER voter turnout among the targetted groups, trying to take away our rights for no good reason is going to elicit a reaction.
If the greatest good for the greatest number of people included a randomly chosen (but still more likely to be poor and minority) human sacrifice once a year, would you support that?
Thank you for putting a fine point on the “guns in defense of liberty” argument.
Hello,
Firstly, I must apologise to PhillyGuy for the delay in responding to his request (no conspiracy…just some very frustrating IT issues!). Due to copyright restrictions I cannot post a copy of the paper here, but am happy to send copies to anyone who wants one.
Secondly, without wishing to intrude on the lively debate you have been having, I note that my affiliations have been raised. This is absolutely fine, and I believe that it is important for authors of any study in this field to be open about who they are and disclose any relevant affiliations. However, while my own affiliations are well known, I must highlight that most of the studies from Australia that are “favourable” to our gun laws come from people with a long history of affiliation with anti-gun lobbying, or, while not necessarily on the public record as anti-gun lobbyists, nonetheless have demonstrated links with those lobby groups.
Something I have often cautioned is that scrutiny should be applied equally to all research. This has not always happened in Australia (or elsewhere). Unfortunately, over my years working in this field, I have collected a wide range of material demonstrating publication bias (favouring research that finds “positive” results of gun laws), censorship of dissenting views, and active efforts to silence open and honest debate about the impact of Australia’s gun laws.
I hope you do not consider it inappropriate of me to post the following links, where you can gain a general overview of some examples of this, access other relevant information, and draw your own conclusions. I have also included links to some other Australian studies that you may find useful (and which, to the very best of my knowledge, are written by people who have no connections with any firearm-related organisations).
http://www.sportingshootermag.com.au/news/academics-guns-and-the-silencing-of-debate
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1540791
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12882416
http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/7/52?fmt_view=mobile
I hope you find this material helpful.
Thanks Samara! So what do you think Phillyguy?
Although I got an A in statistics, that was 35 years ago, and I don’t understand all the mathematics in the McPhedran and Baker papers. But I’ll do my best, as perhaps will others.
I’m responding to this March 2 link after now reading the full article you linked to, for which I wish to thank Dr. McPhedran. I also read both articles by McPhedran/Baker critics, along with Dr. McPhedran’s refutations. Her links make this easy to find.
Australia required people to turn in previously legal guns. Except perhaps at the gun owner’s death, I am against this. I don’t think Drs. McPhedran and Baker’s methods have the power to show that other suicide prevention methods are more cost beneficial for Australia, but they could be right there*. They have at least shown that Australian politicians’ claim of the benefit from the confiscation are overstated. And since the gun culture in the US is stronger, grabbing American guns would be a lot more expensive and dangerous than it was in Australia.
But as for “it reduces firearm suicides but it doesn’t reduce the rate overall” – I don’t buy that. Even the scholars who are relatively friendly to McPhedran and Baker fail to go for that one:
Also note the main point of my last link – gun ownership is strongly associated with violent death.
In a democracy, if gun ownership declines, the law will tend to become less friendly to firearms. This makes is quite difficult to tease out the effect of voluntary disarmament from the government pushing along the process. My main point is that gun ownership is like smoking. I believe in letting people smoke. I also believe they should be enouraged not to. And it won’t hurt to put on a maximum nicotine content (a bit analogous to maximum magazine size). And the best disarmament is, like smoking cessation, voluntary.
As readers of today’s New York Times know, voluntary disarmament is, in the US, underway:
So your argument is that suicide by hanging was on its way up already and not affected by the gun ban and suicide by gun was on its way down already and was not affected by the gun bans? So how does that strengthen your argument that the gun ban lessened suicides?
Smoking can’t protect you from violent crime the way gun ownership can though, can it?
Your 2013 paper stops collecting data in 2010, missing the recent uptick in gun ownership, particularly among women, easterners, and democrats.
Wasn’t someone saying something about selection bias?
I never said that. My argument is that gun ownership is dangerous and should by reduced by voluntary disarmament. Government should regulate firearms manufacturing and transfers, not confiscate what you already have.
The Times reporters would likely have been glad to report that the right wing is turning the US into an armed camp if that was the case. They did report on the Gallup Poll showing a gun ownership increase. And they properly gave the contrary General Social Survey much more emphasis because of its larger sample size and reputation for a high quality expensive methodology, including face-to-face interviews.
Not mentioned by the Times, but Gallup seems to have oversampled Republicans in the last Presidential election. I’m not suggesting they always go that way. In the 2008 presidential election, Gallup overshot, almost as badly, in the other direction. I am suggesting that the General Social Survey has a better reputation among sampling experts.
Anecdotally, sure, there are more stories of violent crime being stopped by the homeowner having a gun than by acting like a cool Joe camel. But when it comes to objective evidence, in the real world, where the bad guy is liable to draw first, both smoking and gun ownership are risky.
What happened in Australia was a test for the thesis that guns make law-abiding people safer. The government bought back 20 percent of guns in newly illegal categories. It strains credulity that criminals were giving back their most effective guns. By the pro-gun theory, Australia should now be overrun with violent criminals who can outgun ordinary citizens. Except that it never happened. The same evidence Drs. McPhedran and Baker used to show the violent death decline didn’t substantially accelerate with gun confiscation also shows that fewer lawfully owned guns don’t strip away protection. The reason is that guns in the house don’t protect; they are a risk factor.