"Your dead kids don't trump my Constitutional rights"

[wolfpup]

A number of comments have been made about the drop in general crime rate, and also questions raised about whether lower gun homicides in other countries might be due to factors other than gun control.

First of all the drop in general crime rate is a fairly universal phenomenon not unique to the US but pretty common across the western industrialized world. Whether it’s due to changing demographics like aging baby boomers or something else, it’s not particularly helpful in discussing gun violence.

The issue of unrelated factors in other countries can be addressed with statistics like these – and my apologies if I’ve posted this before, I can’t remember. But a typical factoid I’ve mentioned elsewhere – and I stress that this is typical in the sense that it looks much the same for other years – looks like this:

In a comparison of U.S. gun homicides to other industrialized countries, in 1998 (the most recent year for which this data was compiled at the time), handguns murdered:

• 373 people in Germany
• 151 people in Canada
• 57 people in Australia
• 19 people in Japan
• 54 people in England and Wales, and
• 11,789 people in the United States

When you have a number that is so mind-bogglingly totally-off-the-chart high, you can pretty much forget about extraneous factors and really have to recognize that there is obviously an incredibly huge systemic problem, and one would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to not recognize what that problem is. There is such a huge number of guns in the US that it’s a veritable flood – there were a number of news stories recently about guns being found just lying around in public places. Just about everyone and anyone can have one, two, or a dozen, including mentally deranged individuals. Meaningful controls are pretty much non-existent; the NRA goes apoplectic if someone even suggests limits on high-capacity magazines. Handguns, which are virtually prohibited in most other nations, are as common as cell phones.

And how about children being killed by guns? Where are all the anti-abortion conservatives who claim they care so much about kids that they lobby to “protect the unborn”, yet kids are being massacred by guns at a rate equally off the chart compared to other countries:

To compare patterns and the impact of violent deaths among children in the United States and other industrialized countries, CDC analyzed data on childhood homicide, suicide, and firearm-related death in the United States and 25 other industrialized countries.

The overall firearm-related death rate among U.S. children aged less than 15 years was nearly 12 times higher than among children in the other 25 countries combined (1.66 compared with 0.14). The firearm-related homicide rate in the United States was nearly 16 times higher than that in all of the other countries combined (0.94 compared with 0.06); the firearm-related suicide rate was nearly 11 times higher (0.32 compared with 0.03); and the unintentional firearm-related death rate was nine times higher (0.36 compared with 0.04).

Another fact: A gun in the home increases the risk of homicide of a household member by 3 times and the risk of suicide by 5 times compared to homes where no gun is present. [Kellerman AL, Rivara FP, Somes G, et al. “Suicide in the Home in Relation to Gun Ownership.” NEJM. 1992; 327(7):467-472)] The reason for the increased suicide risk is that guns are a quick and easy and readily available method for someone to kill himself, and even more importantly, unlike other methods they are almost always fatal.

Rebecca Peters, a Johns Hopkins University fellow specializing in gun violence, has been quoted as saying that “If you have a country saturated with guns – available to people when they are intoxicated, angry or depressed – it’s not unusual guns will be used more often. This has to be treated as a public health emergency.”

Sadly, gun control advocacy today is a lost voice in the wilderness. The NRA pretty much calls the shots, so to speak, and their solution to any problem is to give everyone even more guns.

[epbrown01]

@wolfpup

In a comparison of U.S. gun homicides to other industrialized countries, in 1998 (the most recent year for which this data was compiled at the time), handguns murdered:

• 373 people in Germany
• 151 people in Canada
• 57 people in Australia
• 19 people in Japan
• 54 people in England and Wales, and
• 11,789 people in the United States

When you have a number that is so mind-bogglingly totally-off-the-chart high, you can pretty much forget about extraneous factors and really have to recognize that there is obviously an incredibly huge systemic problem, and one would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to not recognize what that problem is.

The above stats are misleading because they focus solely on guns as cause of death in murders and don’t account for size of population. As of 2012, the US murder rate per 100,000 people is 4.8, compared to 3.2 for all of Europe (likely hurt most by Russia’s 9.7), 3.2 for all of Asia and 6.9 planet-wide. The US is worse than some, better than others, and better than average worldwide. So the huge, systemic problem would be…?

[PhillyGuy]

@epbrown01

As of 2012, the US murder rate per 100,000 people is 4.8, compared to 3.2 for all of Europe (likely hurt most by Russia’s 9.7), 3.2 for all of Asia and 6.9 planet-wide. The US is worse than some, better than others, and better than average worldwide. So the huge, systemic problem would be…?

There is a strong relationship between poverty and violence. So the point of comparison should not between the US and Mexico, or the US and Russia, but between the US and other countries with high per capita income. Do that, and we do look terrible.

[epbrown01]

@PhillyGuy

There is a strong relationship between poverty and violence. So the point of comparison should not between the US and Mexico, or the US and Russia, but between the US and other countries with high per capita income. Do that, and we do look terrible.

Terrible as in 200x more murders, as the gun-only stats implied? Nope.

I’d say that given the country’s size and the prevalence of violence in poverty-stricken urban areas (Detroit’s rate is 27, for instance), the argument could be made that the core problem is economics and race, rather than guns.

[PhillyGuy]

@obbn

Owning a firearm is a huge responsibility, one that I and the majority like me take very seriously.

You wrote a good and respectful post, and I believe what you wrote above.

@obbn

I have many friends and neighbors who own firearms and every single one that I know if safe, sane and takes the responsibly of owning a firearm seriously.

Could be, although evaluating sanity is, to say the least, tricky.

And I’ll bet that if you have good rapport with the children of those friends and neighbors, and ask them, privately, if they know how to get to a gun in their family home, or in the home of a relative, most of them will say they do have, at times, access to a gun. This isn’t to say they are at greatest risk. Children are actually less likely to turn suicidal or homicidal than are adults.

@obbn

But the issue runs much deeper than the mere ownership of firearms.

That’s where I disagree. Now, I’m not a complete pacifist, and I don’t want my neighborhood overrun by deer. So I’m not saying that guns must go. But I do think that a large portion of the violent death problem, maybe half, is due to the mere ownership of guns.

@obbn

I don’t know what the answer is, but I’m sure if we all work together instead of arguing with each other we can come up with a solution that ensures our safety without depriving good, caring and responsible people the enjoyment of their firearms.

In the spirit of not arguing, I’ll give you this much. I’m skeptical that safe low gun ownership countries got that way because of gun control. Perhaps low gun ownership rates came first.

@obbn

If that were to ever happen then I have failed as a gun owner and I would deserve any punishment that would come my way.

No, as you describe it, it would be an accident. Spending my tax dollars to lock up people for accidents is dreadful for themselves and for their innocent family, as well as being a waste of my tax dollars (not least because you would then stop paying taxes!).

We’ve already got the world’s highest incarceration rate, and close to the world’s highest gun ownership rate. Both indicate a society with too much reliance on force to overcome social problems.

[PhillyGuy]

@epbrown01

I’d say that given the country’s size and the prevalence of violence in poverty-stricken urban areas (Detroit’s rate is 27, for instance), the argument could be made that the core problem is economics and race, rather than guns.

Where do you think the gun death rate is higher, the District of Columbia, or Wyoming?

Answer: The armed camp of Wyoming:

Deaths Due to Injury by Firearms per 100,000 Population | KFF

It certainly is true that the most dangerous areas of D.C. are more violent than Wyoming as a whole. But, although I don’t know much about Wyoming, I’m sure the gun deaths there are also concentrated in impoverished areas.

Just as impoverished countries are more violent, so are impoverished areas of countries. The US has Louisiana (more gun death than even Wyoming, and most of it down there is homicide), and France has les banlieues.

Picking out a little corner of the US and comparing it to the whole of other similarly diverse nations might not be your strongest debating tactic here

[Bone]

@Czarcasm

There is a definite implication given herethat gun homicides have decreased steadily from 1993 until the present day. I had not known that that had actually plateaued at the turn of the century.

@Marley23

It’s not even implied, it’s flat-out stated. But JXJohns has agreed that gun death rates dropped from 1993 to around 2000 and have stayed about the same since then.

Here’s the total figures for firearm homicides:

In the United States, annual firearm homicides total

2011: 11,101
2010: 11,078
2009: 11,493
2008: 12,179
2007: 12,632
2006: 12,791
2004: 11,624
2003: 11,920
2002: 11,829
2001: 11,348
2000: 10,801
1999: 10,828
1998: 9,257

Per capita amouts:

In the United States, the annual rate of firearm homicide per 100,000 population is

2011: 3.6
2010: 3.59
2009: 3.75
2008: 4.01
2007: 4.19
2006: 4.29
2005: 4.18
2004: 3.97
2003: 4.11
2002: 4.11
2001: 3.98
2000: 3.84
1999: 3.88
1998: 3.37
1993: 7.07

This link showsthe data in more graph form, which does show that around 2000 things started to level off, though there have been downward movement since then:

Nearly all the decline in the firearm homicide rate took place in the 1990s; the downward trend stopped in 2001 and resumed slowly in 2007. The victimization rate for other gun crimes plunged in the 1990s, then declined more slowly from 2000 to 2008. The rate appears to be higher in 2011 compared with 2008, but the increase is not statistically significant. Violent non-fatal crime victimization overall also dropped in the 1990s before declining more slowly from 2000 to 2010, then ticked up in 2011.

Keep in mind, this is happening at the same time that firearm laws in the US have been becoming more permissive overall. It does not indicate that the relaxing of restrictions has caused these declines, however it is evidence that relaxing of these restrictions has not increased overall firearm homicides.

@wolfpup

The issue of unrelated factors in other countries can be addressed with statistics like these – and my apologies if I’ve posted this before, I can’t remember. But a typical factoid I’ve mentioned elsewhere – and I stress that this is typical in the sense that it looks much the same for other years – looks like this:

In a comparison of U.S. gun homicides to other industrialized countries, in 1998 (the most recent year for which this data was compiled at the time), handguns murdered:

• 373 people in Germany
• 151 people in Canada
• 57 people in Australia
• 19 people in Japan
• 54 people in England and Wales, and
• 11,789 people in the United States

(my bold in the first part)

Nothing can be addressed with statistics like these. Total numbers are meaningless without at a minimum accounting for different population size. Even then, different demographics and history create meaningful differences for the purposes of comparisons. In any case, I really couldn’t care less about what happens in other countries with regard to their crime rates and their firearm laws. This thread is about the constitutional rights of the people in the United States, and whether or not the victims of firearm violence trump those rights.

Meaningful controls are pretty much non-existent; the NRA goes apoplectic if someone even suggests limits on high-capacity magazines.

What is a high capacity magazine, and what is a standard capacity magazine? What characteristics are used to determine which is which? One of the more common tools of gun control advocates is creating meaningless terms to demonize a particular subset of guns. So called ‘assault weapons’ and now ‘high capacity magazines’. Semi-automatic rifles somehow become ‘assault weapons’ if certain aesthetic items are added, according to the federal 1994 assault weapon ban. Now, the standard size of a magazine is being called ‘high capacity’ when in reality the vast majority of semi-automatic firearms use magazines that gun control advocates would label as ‘high capacity’. In reality, thee are the standard size. This is independent of any argument for or against limiting what the size of a magazine should be - it’s simply to point out the same tactic of mislabeling as an effort to make it seem like something different than it is.

Another fact: A gun in the home increases the risk of homicide of a household member by 3 times and the risk of suicide by 5 times compared to homes where no gun is present. [Kellerman AL, Rivara FP, Somes G, et al. “Suicide in the Home in Relation to Gun Ownership.” NEJM. 1992; 327(7):467-472)]

I’ve seen this repeated on this board multiple times, and I’m sure it will come up again. The study that produced this conclusion is unreliable at best. Not only was the figure used in the study actually 2.7 times…it’s based on poor data.
[ul]
[li]It wasn’t peer reviewed[/li][li]Raw data was never released, and summary data was released only years after the initial study[/li][li]disproportionate demographic mix (65% of subjects were black)[/li][li]test group not representative of general population (52.7% of Kellerman’s subjects had a family member with an arrest record ƒ31.3% had a history of drug abuse)[/li][li]did not consider if homicide was committed with gun at the residence or one that was introduced by person committing the homicide[/li][li]small data set, control group not matched to test group (3 counties examined for test group, control group not necessarily matched for comparison purposes[/li][/ul]
If the same level of skepticism was applied to agenda based research like that from Kellerman as is directed at research that shows DGU, it would at least be consistent. The NRA is a more reliable cite than Kellerman. His ‘research’ funded by the CDC contributed to the conclusion that the CDC was biased and the prohibition on their gun control advocacy.

[epbrown01]

@PhillyGuy

Picking out a little corner of the US and comparing it to the whole of other similarly diverse nations might not be your strongest debating tactic here

I dunno, it seems to me we’re making the same point. Other countries tar the entire country with the same brush as far as gun homicides when the US has states larger than many similar countries. People see America as an amalgam of big cities, when the bulk of Americans live in suburbs or bucolic rural areas.

And the urban areas are a large part of why the US has it’s attitude about guns. People outside the country see the 4.8/100k rate and think we’re 5x worse than England. What the white middle class sees is a much lower rate (probably European levels) and “gosh darn it, those cities are awful!” The outcry against guns starts up again when gun violence impacts middle class whites, like the Rodgers shooting precipitated all the talk now. The same number of brown people will get shot on a typical summer weekend in Kansas City, Chicago, Philly, Oakland, or D.C. and the country collectively shrugs and shakes their heads. A tragedy if Isla Vista, a statistic everywhere else.

And gun control wouldn’t stop that violence, since most of it’s based on a drug economy. Legalizing drugs would wipe that almost completely out and likely cut gun-related homicides in the US by half or more by reducing them in the worst areas of the country, putting the US ccloser to par with economically similar countries, even with the same amount of guns on the street.

Because the real solution will always be the same - eliminate the causes for violence, rather than the means. This is policy change, something that could actually be accomplished with tangible results, unlike trying to predict when a spoiled horny white kid will go off the rails. It would improve the quality of life for much of the country’s citizens. Just not any that the country happens to care about.

[PhillyGuy]

@epbrown01

I dunno, it seems to me we’re making the same point.

I missed that.

You first picked one outlier in the US – Detroit – while ignoring that other countries also have crime hotspots.

You also ignored the US having states, without big cities, that also have high violent death rates and/or high homicide rates. For example, Alabama and Mississippi have higher homicide rates than Las Vegas and New York City.

Is there more violent death in Detroit than in, taken as a whole, the rest of Michigan? Yes. Does this do anything to explain why the US has more people dying from shooting, and violence generally, than other nations with comparable average per capital income? No.

@epbrown01

People see America as an amalgam of big cities, when the bulk of Americans live in suburbs or bucolic rural areas. And the urban areas are a large part of why the US has it’s attitude about guns. People outside the country see the 4.8/100k rate and think we’re 5x worse than England.

You mean, suburbs like Chester Pennsylvania (population 34,000) and East St. Louis (population 27,000)? Didn’t think so.

As for the bucolic rural areas: Just like with cities and suburbs, shooting and homicide and suicide rates vary tremendously between different US areas. And much of that is because there are a lot fewer guns in, say, safe rural western Massachusetts than in dangerous rural eastern Kentucky.

@epbrown01

And gun control wouldn’t stop that violence, since most of it’s based on a drug economy.

This is speculative. East Asia countries with Western per capita incomes (Taiwan, Singapore, Japan) combine drug laws at least as strict as ours with generally lower rates of violent death, and far less homicide. Perhaps looser drug laws would reduce violence in almost all high income countries. But that has nothing to do with whether gun ownership enhances, or harms, safety.

The only place I can think of where the hardest drugs were completely legalized is China when the western powers forced it through with the unequal treaties. You can read how that worked out. Maybe it would work out better in richer nations. I don’t know, and you don’t know. Politically, it’s pretty much of a non-starter; AFAIK, all countries now have laws against the hardest drugs.

If all drugs were legalized, perhaps gang members would find other ways to make quick money, dispute turf, and develop homicidal anger. Compare such speculation to the solid public health evidence on the dangers of guns.

While I’m not a big fan of solving social problem with more and more laws, gun control seems fairly effective in New York City and adjacent areas (New Jersey, Connecticut, and up into Rhode Island and Massachusetts). To some extent, however, this may have just resulted in gun lovers moving to other states, like where I live. While I don’t want to stop what is working for my New York City friends, I also suspect that you can’t really force people to give up their guns. That’s why I’m more for the public health approach successfully taken with tobacco, such as warning labels on the boxes.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@PhillyGuy

The way to do this is to never sell your guns, and to put in your will that they be turned over to the police for destruction. Otherwise, your guns, if of high quality and well-maintained, will pass down from generation to generation until someone is hurt.

Or I could leave my guns to people who aren’t mentally unstable.

@wolfpup

Another fact: A gun in the home increases the risk of homicide of a household member by 3 times and the risk of suicide by 5 times compared to homes where no gun is present.

I don’t think those statistics are as simple as they may seem. Having a history of domestic violence in the home increases your chance of a violent death in the home by a factor of 20. I wonder how that homicide stat would be affected if we excised homes with a history of Domestic violence (perhaps greater restrictions on wifebeaters are called for).

Also if you want to cite the higher murder rate in the USA compared to other industrialized nations, how would you explain our absolutely average suicide rate among industrialized nations despite having a gozillion guns floating around. Shouldn’t all those extra guns result in much higher suicide rates if what you are implying is true?

@PhillyGuy

There is a strong relationship between poverty and violence. So the point of comparison should not between the US and Mexico, or the US and Russia, but between the US and other countries with high per capita income. Do that, and we do look terrible.

I agree it is hard to look compare America to comparably advanced countries and not notice our high murder rate. It is also hard to ignore that most of those murders are committed by people whoa re not legally allowed to have guns.If you can come up with some law that will get the guns away from the criminals (even at the cost of eliminating private gun ownership), then there might be a point to be made regarding more gun control but I’m not sure that the cost of legal gun ownership trumps the benefits of legal gun ownership.

@PhillyGuy

Where do you think the gun death rate is higher, the District of Columbia, or Wyoming?

Answer: The armed camp of Wyoming:

Deaths Due to Injury by Firearms per 100,000 Population | KFF

Where do you think the murder rate is higher (a lot of suicides in Wyoming).

It certainly is true that the most dangerous areas of D.C. are more violent than Wyoming as a whole. But, although I don’t know much about Wyoming, I’m sure the gun deaths there are also concentrated in impoverished areas.

Just as impoverished countries are more violent, so are impoverished areas of countries. The US has Louisiana (more gun death than even Wyoming, and most of it down there is homicide), and France has les banlieues.

Wyoming has a pretty low murder rate. Their suicide rate is pretty high.

Picking out a little corner of the US and comparing it to the whole of other similarly diverse nations might not be your strongest debating tactic here

I’m not sure that you can even really compare states against each other. But there is no real correlation between gun ownership and general murder rates when you do, is there?

IIRC, researchers approximate gun ownership rates by looking at the percentage of suicides that are committed with guns. Does this mean (or imply) that the presence of guns does not affect the suicide rate so much as it affects the method of suicide.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@Bone

Keep in mind, this is happening at the same time that firearm laws in the US have been becoming more permissive overall. It does not indicate that the relaxing of restrictions has caused these declines, however it is evidence that relaxing of these restrictions has not increased overall firearm homicides.

At the very least it indicates that during this period that relaxing restrictions did not increase firearm violence enough to overcome other factors. I wish we could get a good bead on how many firearm murders are committed by legal gun owners.

Kellerman…His ‘research’ funded by the CDC contributed to the conclusion that the CDC was biased and the prohibition on their gun control advocacy.

Ayup.

Arthur Kellermann - Wikipedia.

Heck it turns out that living alone increases the risk of being murdered more than having a gun. Renting your home significantly increased the odds of being murdered significantly more than owning a gun.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@PhillyGuy

This is speculative. East Asia countries with Western per capita incomes (Taiwan, Singapore, Japan) combine drug laws at least as strict as ours with generally lower rates of violent death, and far less homicide. Perhaps looser drug laws would reduce violence in almost all high income countries. But that has nothing to do with whether gun ownership enhances, or harms, safety.

Well, even kellerman seems to think that drug use increases the risk of being murdered significantly more than having a gun does.

[adaher]

@Chihuahua

All rights are subject to reasonable limitations. The problem is that people disagree on the definition of “reasonable.”

But the courts do not. The concept is called “strict scrutiny”:

1. It must further a compelling government interest
2. It must be narrowly tailored to achieve that compelling interest
3. There must be no less restrictive means to achieve the interest that do not infringe on the rights in question

Strict scrutiny

Any law restricting constitutional rights must survive this standard. the reason gun laws would probably not achieve this standard is because frankly they just don’t work. IN order to trade liberty for security, you need to actually get that security.

[Scumpup]

Joe the Plumber is an obnoxious douche, but he has a point. The price of personal freedoms is frequently paid in lives. This is true of cars, alcohol, swimming pools, guns, and a pant-load of other things. The Usual Suspects on both sides have trotted out the same arguments. Did anybody change his mind? No? We all do things for which other people pay the price every day.

[Damuri_Ajashi]

@adaher

But the courts do not. The concept is called “strict scrutiny”:

1. It must further a compelling government interest
2. It must be narrowly tailored to achieve that compelling interest
3. There must be no less restrictive means to achieve the interest that do not infringe on the rights in question

Strict scrutiny - Wikipedia

Any law restricting constitutional rights must survive this standard. the reason gun laws would probably not achieve this standard is because frankly they just don’t work. IN order to trade liberty for security, you need to actually get that security.

I don’t think strict scrutiny is applied to all constitutional rights. For example free speech rights.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@adaher

Any law restricting constitutional rights must survive this standard.

This is wrong. Any law restricting fundamental rights must survive this standard, but not all constitutional rights are fundamental. Voting rights and free speech, for example, are subject to strict scrutiny only in certain circumstances. In any event, strict scrutiny is not really concerned with whether a means of achieving a compelling interest is effective. It is only concerned with whether it is the least restrictive method available.

[Bone]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

This is wrong. Any law restricting fundamental rights must survive this standard, but not all constitutional rights are fundamental. Voting rights and free speech, for example, are subject to strict scrutiny only in certain circumstances. In any event, strict scrutiny is not really concerned with whether a means of achieving a compelling interest is effective. It is only concerned with whether it is the least restrictive method available.

Agree. Even further, even if the right is fundamental, the law must implicate the core of the right to be subject to strict scrutiny.

[Marley23]

@Scumpup

The price of personal freedoms is frequently paid in lives.

But the price is not fixed.

[Czarcasm]

@Marley23

But the price is not fixed.

And it’s usually someone else that picks up the tab.

[Scumpup]

Unless you two are really remarkable, possibly even unique, people, you engage in behaviors that in some way harm others every day. They are paying the price for you on those choices that you made. They are your “someone else.”