Stupid Gun news of the day (Part 1)

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

Here it is! GunFail VII, now featuring a photo of our very own Kable.

GunFAIL VII

[elucidator]

What a cruel and vicious thing to say about someone. You don’t, by any chance, publish a newsletter?

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

I love that he is posing with two Guitar Hero fake guitars. Seems appropriate, since he appears to do a lot of fantasizing about being a hero.

[levdrakon]

And where do Mexican drug cartels get their guns? FromHoustonians who can pass background checks, of course.

Houston is the single largest source of weapons shipped to the cartels. J Dewey Webb, the ATF special agent in charge of pursuing gun trafficking in southern Texas, said the cartels are attracted by the sheer number of gun outlets in the city, which run in to the many hundreds.

“They can come to the fourth largest city in the country and buy these guns and it’s a lot harder for us to see what’s going on because they can go to a different gun dealer every day of the month and do that for months and not hit the same gun dealer,” said.

Kristen Rand, director of the Violence Policy Centre, which has made a study of weapons trafficking, said she believes that gun manufacturers and sellers are complicit.

“The gun industry is in complete denial. The gun dealers say they’re not knowingly supplying traffickers. But they are knowingly selling the cartels’ weapons of choice. If you look at some of the dealers in the border areas, all they sell are the traffickers’ weapons of choice, and then they allegedly can’t figure out how these guns are ending up in the hands of the cartels when their whole product line is targeted at that market,” she said.

Freedom!

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@YogSosoth

Yeah but we’re on a message board.

Yeah but fighting stupid with stupid is just a bad habit to get into if your a liberal, the other side has the numbers and the experience.

No need to go that far. We can simply do what I have suggested and try that out for a few decades

We’ve tried it already for a decade, what makes you think another decade or two would make a difference? You know that guns stick around for more than a few decades right/?

I find that logic to be odd, to say the least. Weren’t you just talking about how if we ban some types of guns, only criminals will have them? Now you’re saying if we license and register guns, then it won’t affect just the law-abiding, but even criminals (by drying up the access). I think you’re trying too hard to bend facts to your beliefs and it shows.

Licensing and registration would affect ALL legal guns and gun owners. An AWB would only limit the ability to buy a very tiny little slice of available guns. Thats why I think and AWB would do almost nothing to stem gun violence..

If, using your plan, we license and register guns AND you believe it will choke criminal access, that shows that you believe gun regulations do work. There is nothing in that quoted paragraph above to suggest that banning some types of weapons such as assault weapons won’t work. So if I’m reading you right, you do think banning assault weapons can choke criminal access to them, even if we only ban a few types, its just that you don’t think that the law-abiding is disproportionately affected by it, even though you admit that eventually criminals will be affected too

I don’t think and AWB would have much of an effect on access to AW by criminals unless it was coupled with confiscation. You’re not suggesting confiscation are you? The reason licensing and registration works where an WB would not is because it affects all guns not just newly purchased guns.

That is only a valid reason not to have the AWB if we assume all crimes are the same.

Don’t you think that banning certain types of weapons, ones that are arguably more dangerous due to things like capacity and rapidity of fire would mitigate the severity of gun crimes? I’m not trying to turn the world into a perfect utopia, its too hard and I would miss the violent action movies. BUT! And this is a big but, if I can reduce the instances of a Sandy Hook, or reduce each Sandy Hook’s severity, then I think that’s a good thing EVEN THOUGH criminals can still commit crimes. As long as we reduce even more the rare instances of mass slaughter by restricting certain types of guns typically used in those slaughters, or the guns that can more easily produce those slaughters, then I think we have an obligation to do so.

You won’t reduce the number of Sandy hooks with an AWB, there are too many other guns out there. The Virginia Tech shooter had two handguns.

The AWB, however flawed, isn’t designed to eliminate all gun violence. If it were, then I would agree with you in that it does nothing and is totally pointless since criminals have alternatives. But if we assume that an AWB without loopholes would ban one or more types of weapon used at Sandy Hook or Virginia Tech, then I’m all for it. That’s why I like the AWB. I don’t think it’ll prevent all gun violence, just some types, and reduce the severity of others.

An AWB has NO DISACERNIBLE EFFECT. Both becaiuse there are so many AWs already out there and because there are so many alternatives to AW to commit mass murder (see Virginia Tech).

People cannot own bombs or tanks right? Do you think, just because we cannot go on the type of rampage with legal bombs and tanks, and people can make or steal alternatives, that our rights are being hampered because we can’t go on ebay and buy bomb?

First of all, you CAN own a tank. Second of all, these things are not protected by the second amendment. Finally , the second amendment is no more absolute than the first amendment, but its also no less so.

If there is some way Hondas contribute to crimes, then even if Toyotas are an alternative, I would still ban Hondas. The less type of weapons available to criminals, the better.

It makes no difference to ban Hondas if Toyotas are freely available.

I think that trying to get rid of some types of guns does contribute to the restrictions a criminal has to obtain one, that’s why I support it. Its not my main focus, but almost everybody believes in the alternatives so there’s nothing to debate and is boring to talk about

If the administration tried to get licensing and registration today, they would get NOWHERE with it. WHY? Because they wasted too much political capital and credibility chasing an ill advised AWB. They aren’t even likely to get a comprehensive background check law, it is likely to be limited to requiring background checks at gun shows, I will likely still be able to sell guns to sketchy characters in the McDonalds parking lot without a background check as long as I don’t KNOW he is a felon.

Same argument for drugs. Doesn’t matter to me, if it should be banned because its bad, then it should be banned. We can plug up the alternatives with other regulations.

Wait, now we are saying these are bad guns? How are these guns any more bad than a Remington 750 (a semi-automatic hunting rifle)?

Its funny, with most bans, people aren’t all gung-ho about violating the law. We banned drugs but most reasonable people don’t say that’s bad because there are drug dealers out there willing to break the law, but talk about guns then ever Ma and Pa Kettle says they’ll just sell it illegally. Here’s what I believe: if we banned assault weapons then most people will eventually fall in line and not sell these types to people. Why sell illegal merchandise when you can be throw in jail too? Your scenario speaks to an anti-government anarchist’s dream, but it is not realistic. I think most dealers, if we close the loopholes, would be perfectly willing to sell only legal guns. As for the drug dealers/illegal gun sellers, there will always be some, but their existence doesn’t mean that the banned object should be legal, it just means we should throw these people in jail

And criminals would be able to kill just as many people with those legal guns.

Banning a particular subset of guns is relatively ineffective without confiscation.

I believe I’ve already mentioned it many times. My main point of contention is magazine sizes and rapidity of fire. All guns that cross a certain line of those two metrics should be banned.

Any weapon that fires more than one bullet per trigger pull is already banned. I think a magazine cap might have some effect, once again IF you confiscated all the over limit magazines already out there. In either event, your criteria doesn’t capture Assault Weapons.

Most of us don’t live in a TV show or movie where we can put perfect headshots on moving targets. In real life, I think most people will need a bunch of shots to hit the brain

I was trying to be funny. And on a slow moving target I think I could a 5 inch target at 25 feet with about 3 seconds to aim, less if it was a rifle. And I’m not a particularly crack shot.

We could do the same with assault weapons, but you said people will actively go against the law on that. I believe they won’t.

I’m assuming law abiding citizens remain law abiding.

Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen you in the political debates, you KNOW that conservatives and Republicans are fucking crazy, especially now. No one should trust what they say for a long time. Now I don’t know which DoJ report you’re referring to, if its Obama’s or not, so why don’t you give me a link and we’ll see whether or not it comes from a reliable source.

And on this issue, the other side is just as fucking crazy.

Here are a few reports and DoJ memos:

165476.pdf

www.sas.upenn.edu/jerrylee/research/aw_ban.htm

http://www.nraila.org/media/10883516/nij-gun-policy-memo.pdf

Obama is not partisan, or rather, he is the least partisan, high-profile politician of this very partisan time. Do you really think the GOP or conservatives have ANY credibility at all about anything? We just passed the Sequester deadline, something they supported, now they are calling it Obama’s Sequester. Their partisanship reduced the financial rating of our country, they pretended we didn’t fight two wars on a credit card, these guys are CRAZY. Don’t talk to me about partisanship if you’re going to give them any credibility at all, we might as well end this conversation. Obama and his DoJ is who I trust, I’m not going to read a Fox News story and think they are on the same level. Until Obama’s CDC comes out with a report on gun violence, there is just noise

If you want to end the conversation then we might as well end this conversation because there is some stupidity coming from the left on this issue. The fact that Republicans are typically wrong on everything else doesn’t mean that they are wrong on this. If you just want to believe that your side is never wrong on anything then, I don’t know what to say.

I don’t know Hemenway, I’ll have to look him up.

He runs the Harvard anti-violence center. He is very pro-gun control and he does plenty of research. My point is that the CDC is not the only possible source of research. I think its a bad idea to stifle research at the CDC but I understand what set off the desire to stifle them. Their reports did not seem objective and they were already being criticized in peer review. I don’t think the NRA ban was necessary, shame would have eventually led them to publish a more balanced report andI believe they will do so in the future.

My opponents like the NRA and the GOP are shitheaded and insane. I don’t give a damn what they think is biased, I KNOW they are biased, so their opinion means nothing.

It wasn’t just them. The CDC was criticized during peer review for presenting an argument for gun control based purely on correlation. Its the sort of argument that wouldn’t stand scrutiny in Great Debates never mind a community of scholars.

[Ca3799]

@Hentor_the_Barbarian

Here it is! GunFail VII, now featuring a photo of our very own Kable.

Daily Kos

Gah- One just cannot ‘un-see’ that.

Given the number of folks who accidentally shoot themselves every week, that guy should probably move that gun a few inches away from his most valuable penis.

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

It wasn’t just them. The CDC was criticized during peer review for presenting an argument for gun control based purely on correlation. Its the sort of argument that wouldn’t stand scrutiny in Great Debates never mind a community of scholars.

Oh, I cannot wait to see the cite for this! Please, do share this evidence!

Also DA, I’m exceptionally surprised that you endorse the Cook & Ludwig DoJ report on the NSPOF. They are quite biased in their views on defensive gun uses! Here’s some selected quotes from your cite (bolding mine):

This surprising figure is caused in part by a few respondents reporting large numbers of defensive gun uses during the year; for example, one woman reported 52!

For example, in only a small fraction of rape and robbery attempts do victims use guns in self-defense. It does not make sense, then, that the NSPOF estimate of the number of rapes in which a woman defended herself with a gun was more than the total number of rapes estimated from NCVS (exhibit 8). For other crimes listed in exhibit 8, the results are almost as absurd: the NSPOF estimate of DGU robberies is 36 percent of all NCVS-estimated robberies, while the NSPOF estimate of DGU assaults is 19 percent of all aggravated assaults. If those percentages were close to accurate, crime would be a risky business indeed!

NSPOF estimates also suggest that 130,000 criminals are wounded or killed by civilian gun defenders. That number also appears completely out of line with other, more reliable statistics on the number of gunshot cases.

In line with the theory that many DGU reports are exaggerated or falsified, we note that in some of these reports, the respondents’ answers to the followup items are not consistent with respondents’ reported DGUs. For example, of the 19 NSPOF respondents meeting the more restrictive Kleck and Gertz DGU criteria (exhibit 7), 6 indicated that the circumstance of the DGU was rape, robbery, or attack—but then responded “no” to a subsequent question: "Did the perpetrator threaten, attack, or injure you?”

Should the number of DGUs serve as a measure of the public benefit of private gun possession, even in principle? When it comes to DGUs, is more better? That is doubtful, for two kinds of reasons:

• First, people who draw their guns to defend themselves against perceived threats are not necessarily innocent victims; they may have started fights themselves or they may simply be mistaken about whether the other persons really intended to harm them. Survey interviewers must take the respondent’s word for what happened and why; a competent police investigation of the same incident would interview all parties before reaching a conclusion.
[…]
Such consequences presumably have an important effect on criminal victimization rates but are in no way reflected in the DGU count.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Hentor_the_Barbarian

Oh, I cannot wait to see the cite for this! Please, do share this evidence!

Here are some articles:

Why The Centers For Disease Control Should Not Receive Gun Research Funding

There was a very good reason for the gun violence research funding ban. Virtually all of the scores of CDC-funded firearms studies conducted since 1985 had reached conclusions favoring stricter gun control. This should have come as no surprise, given that ever since 1979, the official goal of the CDC’s parent agency, the U.S. Public Health Service, had been “…to reduce the number of handguns in private ownership”, starting with a 25% reduction by the turn of the century.”

The Problem With the 'Public Health Research on Gun Violence' That Obama...

In Reason’s April 1997 cover story, gun policy scholar Don Kates and two co-authors persuasively argued that “public health research on gun violence,” as distinct from research by criminologists, is anti-gun propaganda in pseudoscientific disguise, starting from the premise that firearms are disease vectors that need to be controlled by the government:

Contrary to [the] picture of dispassionate scientists under assault by the Neanderthal NRA and its know-nothing allies in Congress, serious scholars have been criticizing the CDC’s “public health” approach to gun research for years. In a presentation at the American Society of Criminology’s 1994 meeting, for example, University of Illinois sociologist David Bordua and epidemiologist David Cowan called the public health literature on guns “advocacy based on political beliefs rather than scientific fact.”

They found that “reports with findings not supporting the position of the journal are rarely cited,” “little is cited from the criminological or sociological field,” and the articles that are cited “are almost always by medical or public health researchers.”

Further, Bordua and Cowan said, “assumptions are presented as fact: that there is a causal association between gun ownership and the risk of violence, that this association is consistent across all demographic categories, and that additional legislation will reduce the prevalence of firearms and consequently reduce the incidence of violence.” They concluded that “*ncestuous and selective literature citations may be acceptable for political tracts, but they introduce an artificial bias into scientific publications. Stating as fact associations which may be demonstrably false is not just unscientific, it is unprincipled.” In a 1994 presentation to the Western Economics Association, State University of New York at Buffalo criminologist Lawrence Southwick compared public health firearm studies to popular articles produced by the gun lobby: “Generally the level of analysis done on each side is of a low quality. The papers published in the medical literature (which are uniformly anti-gun) are particularly poor science.”

http://www.ajc.com/news/news/cdc-politics-affected-gun-violence-research/nTZnf/

“It was mostly political junk science,” retorts Dr. Miguel Faria Jr., a former professor of neurosurgery and editor of the Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia. The CDC, he said, started from the premise “that guns were bad, had no benefits, that guns and bullets were pathogens that needed to be eradicated or at least severely restricted from the civilian population.” - See more at: http://www.ajc.com/news/news/cdc-politics-affected-gun-violence-research/nTZnf/#sthash.HR5BJ1ZE.dpuf

In 1995, Wayne LaPierre, NRA executive vice president, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “The problem that I see with what the CDC is doing is that they are not doing medicine, they’re doing politics. And they shouldn’t be doing politics.” - See more at: http://www.ajc.com/news/news/cdc-politics-affected-gun-violence-research/nTZnf/#sthash.HR5BJ1ZE.dpuf

So you can see why there was objection to CDC research where there wasn’t objection to DoJ reserach.

Also DA, I’m exceptionally surprised that you endorse the Cook & Ludwig DoJ report on the NSPOF. They are quite biased in their views on defensive gun uses! Here’s some selected quotes from your cite (bolding mine):

And yet the NRA didn’t get the DOJ research on guns shut down. Fancy that.

The fact that the DoJ is critically analyzing their own findings is not objectionable. If I were the DOJ, I would have had professional pollsters design the poll. Asking if you had had a defensive gun use in the last year and following up with a question about defensive gun use in your lifetime is bad polling. You ask the more general question first (and perhaps even throw it away), THEN you ask if they had defensive gun use in the last year. You are more likely to get an honest answer to the second one once you have cleared away some of the underbrush with the first question. However, there wasn’t a huge NRA uproar that the DoJ didn’t take these surveys at face value.

I think the CDC can do valuable research on gun violence, they bring an epidemiological perspective that criminologists and sociologists might not share but they need to get their preconceived notions out of their heads before they start their research.

[elucidator]

And they would prove this to you, how? What might they do to convince you that all such preconceived notions are vacated and absent?

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

DA, you specifically claimed that a “peer review” of the CDC waa conducted and was critical of their use of correlational analyses.

Your cites are to op ed and.blog opinion pieces that do not support your assertion.

By the way, I’ve presented at ASC multiple times. A former ASC president is a friend of mine. Friends and colleagues are epidemiologists and criminologists.

You’re spouting gibberish.

[Ethilrist]

@bup

Proverbial pants?

I guess those are the ones we all put on one leg at a time?

I thought they were the ones the Prodigal Son wore…

[ElvisL1ves]

Or the ones Plaxico Burress had his gun in while visiting the Champagne Room …

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@elucidator

And they would prove this to you, how? What might they do to convince you that all such preconceived notions are vacated and absent?

They don’t have to convince me. I think they will take pains to be more neutral to avoid undermining their own credibility.

@Hentor_the_Barbarian

DA, you specifically claimed that a “peer review” of the CDC waa conducted and was critical of their use of correlational analyses.

Your cites are to op ed and.blog opinion pieces that do not support your assertion.

By the way, I’ve presented at ASC multiple times. A former ASC president is a friend of mine. Friends and colleagues are epidemiologists and criminologists.

You’re spouting gibberish.

Well, I suppose I was using the wrong term. I was referring to professional criticism of a report AFTER it was published, not during the editorial process.

The articles cite to contemporaneous criticisms of the CDC report with specificity about the perceived bias in the report. I’m not sure what the ASC has to do with researching gun violence. BTW what is the ASC?

At least you are no longer claiming that the NRA shut down all research. Progress is a good thing. With enough time, you may develop rational views on the subject.

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

@Damuri_Ajashi

Well, I suppose I was using the wrong term. I was referring to professional criticism of a report AFTER it was published, not during the editorial process.

You made a specific claim based upon apparently nothing more than pulling shit out of your ass. Or someone else’s. It is clear you have no idea what you’re saying.

The articles cite to contemporaneous criticisms of the CDC report with specificity about the perceived bias in the report

Those are opinion pieces from people with no greater actual credibility than you yourself.

I’m not sure what the ASC has to do with researching gun violence. BTW what is the ASC?

If you don’t know what it is, how can you know whether or not it has anything to do with gun violence. It is the American Society of Criminology, dummy. It was referenced in one of your own cites.

At least you are no longer claiming that the NRA shut down all research. Progress is a good thing. With enough time, you may develop rational views on the subject.

I’m quite certain I never said they shut down all research. Do you have to resort to outright lies at this point? May as well, I suppose.

However they did stop the major portion of federal funding from going to the federal agency tasked to the study of such topics.

[elucidator]

@Damuri_Ajashi

They don’t have to convince me. I think they will take pains to be more neutral to avoid undermining their own credibility…

What does that even mean? What “pains” would you recommend? What preset conditions must be applied so that you are assured?

[Kable]

Gun-grabbers are losing the initiative:

Americans Want Gun Control, But Not Badly Enough

[elucidator]

Until the next one. It will happen, you know that, right? And again. Its like that Chinese torture with drops of water dripping onto your head. Except the water drops are bowling balls.

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

@elucidator

Until the next one. It will happen, you know that, right? And again. Its like that Chinese torture with drops of water dripping onto your head. Except the water drops are bowling balls.

You give too much credence to Kable; his cite isn’t what he purports it to be.

[Ca3799]

@Kable

Gun-grabbers are losing the initiative:

Americans Don't Want Gun Control Enough - Business Insider

I disagree. here’s a good article about the current changes occurring: McManus: Do-nothing Congress does something

[Kable]

This homeowner sounds very responsible:

http://lubbockonline.com/filed-online/2013-02-27/intruder-shot-homeowner-has-20000-bond#.UTSYw1o6WnY

Thankfully he had a gun to protect his family.