I agree with audiolover’s statement in the context that easy access to guns is a relative statement. The Canadian’s have almost more guns per capita than the US, but their murder rate is the same as the UK, statistically insignificant. There are many cities in this country where possession of a firearm is illegal for anyone, yet have some of the highest murder rates per capita in the country.
In SentientMeat’s post re mystical removal of firearms from this country, I will say that yes, the murder rate in the US would fall, but would still remain significantly higher in this country vice the UK. It is not psycopathic behavior, but I think a more cultural thing. “Don’t tread on me” and all that.
Is this not the same arguement used to defend Americans’ right to eat whatever they want. The consequence is an obese population with the related health problems. Whilst you may fight for your right to own and carry a weapon, does the common good not suffer? Are people so obsessed with their own rights and opinions that they don’t care about their neighbour that the sense of community is lost, carrying with it many other issues. Whilst there must be pockets of brilliant community togetherness, I see this defence of individual ‘rights’ and fear of governmental control as the root of many societal problems in the US.
BTW I’m not saying that my country or other countries are perfect.
ALL freedom comes at a price, SM. No exceptions. The freedom of speech allows for someone to spread lies about you, and to lure innocents into cults which do murder (as cat pointed out, without guns).
The freedom against self-incrimination frees hundreds of criminals who would have been punished if we could force them to confess. Freedom isn’t free, paradoxically.
In the US today this same debate is going on. Some people want to ban guns, others do not. Each side claims a majority. At least the gun ban side is using lies and subterfuge to try to achieve this goal, so I don’t believe their numbers, either. Whereas according to the statistics you posted seventeen hundred + people died from firearm assault (these are not divided into murder/manslaughter/self-defense, BTW,) the US is also willing to commit its military forces in wars. I don’t have our current numbers for Iraq, and I don’t want to know, really, but during Vietnam, in 8 years we lost over 52,000. An average of some 6500 a year.
I posted my take on why the US has a lot of murders. It’s the liberal culture. We are ultra permissive, and this is fed by Hollywood, which literally glorifies killing in all of its forms. No one responded to that. Either you have me set to “Ignore” or you didn’t take it seriously. Well, I didn’t write it like a straight scientist, I was a bit flippant, but the subject was serious - dead serious. Pun intended.
I can’t cross post, and the argument there and the argument here is just the same argument (I wish we could merge the threads, we have virtually the same argument going on in three threads!).
It may be possible to slowly remove guns from the US. And it may be happening in a small way. It won’t happen without putting more restrictions on honest gun owners.
Part of the problem that I and other gun owners see is that legislators that have no idea what they are talking about are trying to pass laws, or have passed laws that do nothing more than inconvenience honest gun owners.
The AWB laws. Including the magazine limit. Few, if any anti-gun people know how quick and easy it is to reload with a new magazine. The few nutjobs, that this is supposed to protect us from seem to have LOTS of magazines.
I don’t have a semi-auto pistol. But If I did, I’ll take as many rounds as the manufacture of the pistol can fit in it, thank you very much.
And Kennedy against the .30 30. A mid-sized hunting round. Not nearly as powerful or as popular as the .30 06 or the .308. There are MILLIONS of these rifles.
I also see it in the SDMB. Folks don’t know the difference between a semi-auto and full. Many don’t understand that just about any run of the mill hunting round is ‘armor piercing’. I’m also glad that people come to the SDMB to learn.
I asked this question before. Didn’t Chicago pass a law that made gun registration mandatory, and then stop registering guns? Does anyone know the poop on this. I come here to learn as well.
I hate the terms anti-gun and pro-gun. I never thought of myself as pro-gun. I have them. I use them.
My understanding is that Chicago requires registration of all guns and will not issue new registrations for handguns. Other guns are allowable.
Other municipalities also focus on handguns. In Illinois several townships have ordinances against handgun ownership.
The reasoning, agree or disagree, is based on a dismissal of the utility of defensive gun use coupled with a recognition that handguns are associated with more gun deaths than most other sorts of guns. Both by being used during arguments and by way of getting into the hands of criminals.
Of course the reality is that no local ordinance is useful in the least, since we have very fluid borders between townships and states within the US borders. Any set of laws will only be as effective as its most liberal link. If a strawman can purchase a dozen at a time in Texas, say, and the market for illegal weapons exists on the street corners of Chicago’s West side, then guns will get there. State laws need to be unified or be ineffective.
Snake,
Obviously you know that not all irresponsible gun owners are criminal. Some are just stupid, just like some nongunowners. And the rest of your comment is a red herring not worthy of response.
I did not ignore your post, Snake, I merely questioned how ‘culture’ can cause deaths rather than wounds. I assure you that British culture is just as ‘permissive’.
And I’ll ask you as I asked catsix - what do you think of audiolover’s bold statement? How would you rebut him?
The US is so diverse that I really don’t thing that blanket legislation is going to work. Heck, most States are too diverse for this to work.
Background checks? Fine. Waiting periods are O.K. too. Limit the number of guns that can be bought at once? Maybe. Might help cut down on straw man purchases. Registration? Don’t like it. There are two many people that would like to remove all the guns. The AWB? Let it go away, it’s pointless.
What type of legislation could be enacted countrywide that would be fair and applicable for all the different types of gun owners?
Not in my book. They have absolutely no effect on crime, but they do deprive a citizen of their property for up to a week with absolutely no justification. It used to be that it took a week to complete the background check, and that’s why there was a waiting period. Now that there is NICS, there is no reason to have a waiting period.
Why should someone who’s buying more than one firearm at a time be automatically considered guilty of a crime (passing them illegally to prohibited persons) and denied the sale?
Reciprocity for concealed carry in all 50 states, as it currently exists for driver’s licenses. Other than that, more laws are not about to make me happier.
Yes catsix it has been made very clear that you do not believe that laws are the answer. You prefer to deal with gun violence by touting a gun around with you and feel that leaving a weapon unsecured in your house or car is an okay thing to do. If it is stolen and used in a crime, that’s no responsibility of yours. No benefit to society, no matter how large, would be worth any infringement upon your percieved rights, no matter how small. A discussion of how to get maximal benfits to society while minimizing the infringements upon legal gun owners rights and privleges is a non-starter with you. We know that already.
Enipla, obviously I have some very particular ideas, some of which you might find appealing but some of which you would object to. But I think we can agree that my local township (Oak Park IL) being a gun-free zone, is a silly little pr ploy to satisfy our population of liberals, with about as much effect as our being a “nuclear-free zone”. Since handguns can be purchased legally throughout surrounding areas, and since diverted legal handguns are readily available through the illegal market in all regions at this time, it accomplishes nothing.
My thoughts:
[ol]
[li]Redirect some of the monies used to prosecute The Drug War to prosecuting a war on diverted guns. Sting operations to catch corrupt dealers and strawmen. Punishment as fully allowable in the law. [/li][li]Registration of all guns and all transfers of guns, whether sold at a dealer or a gun show or privately. No exceptions. This line of defense is only as good as its weakest link. Any weapon used in a crime must be able to have its history traced easily and the party who dropped the ball in allowing its diversion must be identified. If the ball had been dropped because they failed to excercise reasonable cautions (they were negligent), then they should be civilly liable for damges incurred during the course of a crime committed with that weapon.[/li][li]Mandatory secure storage of a gun within a residence. Obviously making this a law merely sets up an expectation of legal gun owner behavior. It presumes that most gun owners will comply with a law that they are aware of, even though the only means of enforcement is after the fact (ie an unsecured weapon is stolen and used in a crime or left where a child gets a hold of it and kills someone.)[/li][li]Working with those who do know guns, which admittedly is not me, on deciding whether any particular weapons, or groups of weapons, which have such a great potential for harm compared to their reasonable use by legal gun owners, that they should be banned in this country entirely. From what I understand, most of these were already illegal before the AWB ever came to be. It can be reasonaly debated whether particular sorts of handguns belong in this group, but such a debate would need to include an honest participation by those who know the individual weapons much better than I. I am not sure whether or not any weapons currently legal meet this threshold or not, since I am not a gun expert.[/li][li]Trying to understand and alter the root causes of violent crime in our culture. In this regard I do not believe that violent entertainment is a main factor. I think that the subject is complex and would deserve a thread of its own, or two, and would still be without resolution even then. But clearly the attempt needs to be made to really understand, rather than resort to simplistic jingoistic stock answers.[/li][/ol]
Unfortunately I am very pessimistic that any of these will ever occur. Just the nature of the politics involved.
I’ve already stated numerous times that I support enforcing laws that levy stiff penalties against those who use firearms to commit crimes, that I support the NICs system, Project Exile, and the current BATF procedures for all FFL sales of firearms. I keep a firearm in my house that is loaded, yes. I also lock and deadbolt my doors.
I would never and have never left a loaded firearm in a car. I comply with the concealed carry laws of my state, which mean that if I am in my vehicle with a concealed firearm it is on my person.
So it’s my fault if someone breaks into my home which I have gone to reasonable lengths to keep secured and steals a firearm? Don’t think so.
SentientMeat suggested banning all firearms in the wild-assed hope that the murder rate would drop significantly with no proof that it would. How on earth is that ‘minimizing the infringement upon legal gun owner’s rights’ while getting ‘maximal benefits to society’?
Historically, registration has always been followed by confiscation. I will not, because of that, support this tactic.
What do you consider ‘secure storage’?
Talk of banning ‘Saturday Night Specials’ has always centered on the price of the firearm, and unfairly restrict the rights of those who can afford a $250 Ruger but not a $600 Glock. It screams that ‘only the rich’ should have firearms.
This is a good example of why we should abandon these three concurrent threads on guns, agree on what we want to argue and START A NEW, MORE RELEVENT THREAD!
As to audiolover…
He makes some good points, and some apt cultural references, but his answer is overly simplistic. Sure, if all guns suddenly went away, or if laws were enacted to make our gun laws identical the the UK, sure, the number of gun killings would go down. But I doubt that would be anywhere close to the UK rate, because there are too many other factors involved. The legality and/or number of guns is only one of more than several dozen factors that impact the firearm death rate in the US. Banning guns would have disappointing results, and once done would never be undone, even if the rate changes only 2%. So what do we call that, ‘strawman?’
But you are also leaving out the important fact that most police homocides are done with handguns, as well as FBI and other law enforcement uses, which jacks up the statistics significantly.
Also that most self-defence homocides are done with handguns. Both of these legitimate hangun use.
Hey, I propose we take the argument from Guns are for Cowards?, Gun + Fear = Freedom? and What weapons are banned under the Assault Weapons ban? and tie them all together in this new thread:
[QUOTE=DSeid]
[li]Registration of all guns and all transfers of guns, whether sold at a dealer or a gun show or privately. No exceptions. This line of defense is only as good as its weakest link. Any weapon used in a crime must be able to have its history traced easily and the party who dropped the ball in allowing its diversion must be identified. If the ball had been dropped because they failed to excercise reasonable cautions (they were negligent), then they should be civilly liable for damges incurred during the course of a crime committed with that weapon…[/li][/QUOTE]
Tell me how this would reduce crime? Do you think criminals often leave the gun behind at the scene of the crime? They either drop it in the “East River” or stash it.
Gun registration seem to have two purposes- to harrass or arrrest legal law abiding gun owners, or (mostly in in nitemares, I’ll concede) make "door to door’ gun confiscation easy.
BF,
Your links are appreciated. It seems to my read that costs of Canada’s registration program have been quite high mainly due to attempts by protesting gun owners to flummox the system. I don’t know what point that makes.
I clearly stated that privacy rights take precedence so that enforcement of any “secure storage” mandate is by way of law abiding citizens being law abiding, and after the fact.
catsix,
I’d be open to discussion regarding what would constitute secure storage. A locked gun safe, while not impervious, seems sufficient to me. I am sorry that I overgeneralized your position to that of others in past threads. Mea culpa.
Irrational fear of confiscation, along with that of banning seems to be an issue here. It aint gonna happen in this country.
The point for all of this is to reduce gun diversions, pure and simple. Punishing after the fact does little. Project Exile, Eddie Eagle, and so on, are just as much empty PR ploys as the AWB. You need to keep guns, especially handguns, out of criminal hands. It can be done without preventing legitimate responsible gun ownership.
BTW, I was merely relaying the argument, not making it, Snake. But I highly doubt that a significant proportion of yearly handgun deaths are police homicides or appropriate defensive gun use by a legal gun owner. (Again Kleck does not inform as this question.)
The guns all begin as legal guns. How do they get diverted to the illegal market? Corrupt dealers. Strawman purchases. The relatively underregulated secondary market. Theft. If you only block one they’ll go to another. You have to block all of these in an effective manner at the same time in order to hope to have an effect. Therefore all points 1 through 3 are requisite simultaneously. Greater punishment is not the answer if you do not catch them. Removing corrupt dealers and strawman purchases will only drive gun theft up if not coupled with more secure storage.
Guns used in crimes are indeed recovered all the time, Dr. Deth.
Unfortunately, I’ve found no statistics that break down into perpetrators. I’ve been trackking gun deaths in my own town, and fully 50% of them are police shootings! In town I’m sure it’s different, but until we have then statisics, we are handicapped.