Gun Control Proposals

[James Madison]

Interesting blogpost on the history of gun control and the NRA in the US.

Great info!


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[RavenSky]

I really really really need to stop reading this book in public, but it is the only reading time I have during the week...

A few choice passages so far that I think would be good for this discussion:

By allowing for the exclusion of relevant cases for a variety of arbitrary reasons, we are further compounding the problem of better understanding mass shootings. The reality is that the more criteria we utilize, the higher the risk of subjective and flawed examination.

It's the mass violence itself that matters most. Not the number of shooters. Not the precise location or setting. Not the motive. Variables beyond the number of victims and the nature of their injuries are indisputably arbitrary. While they're useful for categorizing acts of violence for purposes of uncovering patterns, they shouldn't necessarily be employed to exclude shootings from analysis.

A mass shooting is just that; a shooting. It's not necessarily a mass murder. Conflating mass shootings and mass murders leads to a discounting of the vast majority of multiple-casualty gun attacks; attacks like the Simon Bolivar and Mother's Day Parade shootings. Similarly, insisting that mass shootings are only perpetrated by a lone gunman, occur only in public, or involve only instances when force is not a means to another nefarious end is dubious. Yet this is exactly what many definitions dictate.

The easiest way to assure that such arbitrary practices are avoided— to end the controversy as Tryon Edwards proposed— is to streamline the concept of mass shooting. In this vein, I propose we adopt a simpler, more useful definition that, as of late, has started to come into favor with some of the nation's leading media outlets: a mass shooting is any violent attack that results in four or more individuals incurring gunshot wounds. It doesn't matter if there's one gunman or several gunmen. It doesn't need to occur in public. And it can be for any reason whatsoever. It only needs to result in multiple casualties. This approach is commonsensical and fair. As long as four or more people are struck by gunfire, it's a mass shooting.

Such analytical breakdowns can— and should— be applied to the study of mass shootings as well. This would allow us to discern differences between “lone wolf” and “wolf pack” rampages, for example, without dismissing one or the other type of event. The same holds for every other factor that is frequently employed to classify mass shootings: victims, motive, location, time frame, and weapon( s), just to name a few.

Definition of a Mass Shooting: Any violent attack that results in four or more individuals incurring gunshot wounds.

Categories of Mass Shooting:
1. Nonfatal Mass shootings in which no one dies.
2. Fatal Mass shootings in which at least one victim dies.
3. High-Fatality / Gun Massacre Mass shootings in which six or more victims die.

Klarevas, Louis. Rampage Nation: Securing America from Mass Shootings (Kindle Locations 616-620). Prometheus Books. Kindle Edition.


Thoughts?

 

[SimpleDon]

Gun Control Proposals

I'd like to discuss ideas for and targeted problems to be addressed by gun control proposals.

If you'd like to talk about slippery slopes, go (to) elsewhere. If you'd like to say NRA talking points about arming more people, go elsewhere.

This thread is for meaningful discussion of possible proposals and why and how they would work.
I am looking for productive discussion among people who want things to work.
I would love to hear from people who understand the law, statistics and psychology and where things could be tightened up. I tried browsing the web for gun control proposals, but I really don't see anything comprehensive, and I don't see it in a soothing table format with targeted action. So I'm creating one.

When I look at the problem of gun control legislation, I see that different problems have different solutions. My brain likes to bucket things and divide the issues into workable groups, so that's how I'll start. I haven't decided on the best table order for this, so I may change it and repost it later in the thread. But here's my start.

What are your thoughts? Additional legislative proposals? What additional rows or columns would you add? What comments or statistics would you add?

Problem	Legislative Solution	How it works	Impact	Drawbacks Limitations
Criminal handgun crime	Real databases, real background checks, real audits of sellers with heavy penalties for missing guns or straw sales, audits of those with many guns, citations for losing or having your gun stolen without a report	stops the flow of thousands of cheap unreported handguns into crime areas	200,000+ criminal guns per year	some may object to the audit portion
Suicide and Accident deaths	biometrics, citation for lack of securing, insurance, waiting periods and background checks	Make the guns unfirable except by owner, and when it does happen you will pay hard.	20,000 deaths per year	some fear that biometrics might prevent them from being a hero
Mass Shootings	Ban rapid fire weapons and rigs to make rapid fire	they will have to find another way - more difficult, and can't kill as many people	20+ per year	Rednecks can't kill toilets in their woods for fun while drunk

We only have one problem. There are too many guns in the country.

And no, no other country has more guns per capita than the US, 112.8 guns per person. What is even scarier is that the gun owning population in the US has been dropping while the number of guns per capita has been increasing.

We don't have more mental illness in the US than other countries have, we just have too many guns available to arm our anti-social mentally ill.

We don't have more crime than other countries have, we just have too many guns available to arm our criminals.

Too many guns make the problems of crime and mental illness much more serious than they otherwise would be. Guns increase the damage from both.

Gun nuts are obsessed with two arguments that repeatedly come up in these discussions about the excessive amount of guns in the US and all of the death the guns cause.

But ... but I need my guns for self-defense

No, you don't. If you have a gun for protection you are much more likely to shoot an innocent bystander or a member of your own then you are a criminal who threatens your life. You are anywhere from three times to eight times more likely to shoot a member of your family than to shoot or to scare off someone who breaks into your house while you are there.

This idea that you could wake up and some seconds later make a good, rational life and death decision is preposterous. Not only that you have to make a difficult shot either in the dark or entering a brightly lit room from the darkness with your eyes dilated. You probably have a semi-automatic pistol in your hand that you have put fewer than one hundred rounds through. You probably don't know how to properly clear a jammed round from the gun. You have no good idea of the penetration potential is of the combination of the pistol and the ammunition, but that is okay because you don't which of the walls back up to your or your neighbor's children's bedrooms.

Show

The only weapon that is reasonable to use for home defense is a 12 gauge shotgun loaded first up with at least two non-lethal rounds. After that, you can have "police" or "tactical" loaded shotgun shells with a reduced charge of gunpowder to push the buckshot, to reduce penetration and recoil. A 9 mm round hits with about 350 ft-lbs of force which is no match for the 4000+ ft-lbs from a shotgun. And don't be fooled by the name of non-lethal rounds for a shotgun, at the distances involved inside a home the rounds can kill if you hit center mass. The use of them is only suggested to give you a spark of humanity in the certain civil suit after you kill your neighbor's son who entered the wrong home by mistake because he was drunk.

I have been firing shotguns all of my life and recommend a Mossberg model 930 (not a Remington 870, pump action, what most police use) semi-automatic shotgun (you need to keep firing if you are injured) with a full stock (no one is man enough to aim and fire a pistol grip shotgun accurately), a tactical light mounted on the forestock (you need to identify who you are shooting) and with ghost ring sights (yes, you have to aim a shotgun). People will try to talk you out of each of these, don't let them.

If you can't handle the recoil from a 12 gauge shotgun drop down to a 20 gauge that reduces the recoil to about 60% of the 12 gauge. Plan on spending ten hours with a certified instructor and a hundred hours practicing loading, including breech-loading, and firing the weapon, before you consider using it as a defense weapon. Hopefully, in the middle of all of this, someone will have talked you out of this idea.

But ... but if the government takes all of my guns how can I stand to oppose the tyranny of the government?

Where to start with this double delusion?

No, you wouldn't oppose the government with your Glock against their M1 Abrams tanks and their ability to concentrate air power. And the closest we have come to a tyrannical government is now when the gun-loving voters of America elected the most authoritarian president in our history, Donald Trump. If you don't want a tyrannical government don't vote for want-a-be tyrants.

============== § ==============​

The absurd Heller decision of the Supreme Court in 2008, which tossed away the first part of the 2nd amendment as meaningless verbiage in a document noted for the complete lack of meaningless verbiage, converted a right for the states into an individual right. But even this right-wing wet dream allows us ways to control the sale of firearms to individuals.

The most potent of which is through taxation, by taxing those weapons and the ammunition that is the most dangerous. We could pass a tax on the purchase or even on the continued ownership of military type weapons like the AR-15. It shouldn't be hard to pass a tax of say $1500 added on to the purchase price of an AR-15 and a tax of $1 a round for the .227 ammunition for them, the money to be used to support the hardening of security for the schools.

The otherwise poorly thought out decision also allows us to require the registration of firearms for both newly purchased weapons and the existing weapons in private hands as well as the ammunition purchased for them.

We could also require insurance for the sellers and manufacturers of such weapons against the surety of intentional or unintentional injuries. The ever-reliable and fair insurance companies would set the rates competitively depending on how they view the risks of the different weapons and owners/shooters.

 

[James Madison]

I really really really need to stop reading this book in public, but it is the only reading time I have during the week...

A few choice passages so far that I think would be good for this discussion:

A mass shooting is just that; a shooting. It's not necessarily a mass murder. Conflating mass shootings and mass murders leads to a discounting of the vast majority of multiple-casualty gun attacks; attacks like the Simon Bolivar and Mother's Day Parade shootings. Similarly, insisting that mass shootings are only perpetrated by a lone gunman, occur only in public, or involve only instances when force is not a means to another nefarious end is dubious. Yet this is exactly what many definitions dictate.

The easiest way to assure that such arbitrary practices are avoided— to end the controversy as Tryon Edwards proposed— is to streamline the concept of mass shooting. In this vein, I propose we adopt a simpler, more useful definition that, as of late, has started to come into favor with some of the nation's leading media outlets: a mass shooting is any violent attack that results in four or more individuals incurring gunshot wounds. It doesn't matter if there's one gunman or several gunmen. It doesn't need to occur in public. And it can be for any reason whatsoever. It only needs to result in multiple casualties. This approach is commonsensical and fair. As long as four or more people are struck by gunfire, it's a mass shooting.

Such analytical breakdowns can— and should— be applied to the study of mass shootings as well. This would allow us to discern differences between “lone wolf” and “wolf pack” rampages, for example, without dismissing one or the other type of event. The same holds for every other factor that is frequently employed to classify mass shootings: victims, motive, location, time frame, and weapon( s), just to name a few.

Definition of a Mass Shooting: Any violent attack that results in four or more individuals incurring gunshot wounds.

Categories of Mass Shooting:
1. Nonfatal Mass shootings in which no one dies.
2. Fatal Mass shootings in which at least one victim dies.
3. High-Fatality / Gun Massacre Mass shootings in which six or more victims die.

Klarevas, Louis. Rampage Nation: Securing America from Mass Shootings (Kindle Locations 616-620). Prometheus Books. Kindle Edition.


Thoughts?

Difficult really to disagree with his meanings and or the logic he espoused to defend his meaning and criticize other more narrow definitions. I’d only disagree with him on some nuances but overall, I generally agree with his definitions.




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[Loren Pechtel]

How about a country that does gun rules right:

https://gunculture2point0.wordpress.com/2018/03/26/interesting-take-on-the-path-forward-on-guns/

 

[Treedbear]

And yes, that can and should include banning certain types of guns for general civilian use just like we ban certain types of automobiles for general civilian use. There is a concept of "street legal" for automobiles that can be driven on public streets. Yes, auto manufactures and enthusiasts are constantly pushing the line... the Mercedes-AMG hypercar is the AR-15 of automobiles. But at least that thing is so expensive almost no one can buy it.

(Maybe that is a clue for the AR-15's. You want one? Fine, no problem. It will cost you $300,000,000 [emoji3] [emoji3] )

The plain old handgun is responsible for far more crime than the AR-15 and it's ilk.

Perhaps but the AR-15 has more lethal potential than handguns in general and this is a result of the fact the AR-15 shares the design and many features of automatic rifles designed for use in armed conflict by the military, the most significant difference being one is automatic and the other is semiautomatic.

Elixir had some good data in a post demonstrating the increased lethal potential of the caliber of bullet used with those rifles from most handguns, such as the Glock.

Those two points, but not the only two points, form the basis for advocating a ban AR-15 style rifles.

Those arguments are rather persuasive.

Those two points have nothing to do with involvement in crime or rate of use in the commission of crimes. So, your rebuttal with the specific data point you cited isn’t a satisfactory rebuttal.

I agree, and it answers the question I had many posts back asking what makes the AR-15 style (and I've learned that it usually refers to a "style" of weapon) desireable to so many gun enthusiasts. Someone said it was because it simply looks like a military assault rifle. I think that has something to do with it. But before they shell out the $600 to $1000 to buy one they probably get to testshoot it at a range. From the descriptions given about the damage done by their bullets on a human body along with the low recoil and accurate rapid fire capability I can only imagine there's a huge smile the person gets after firing it the first time. It must be an awesome feeling of power. A masterful piece of human engineering. A thing of beauty in the gun world. They just sell themselves. Now, you conflate that with the idea that the government is out to take away one of your constitutional rights and package it as a way you, one man or woman, can stand for justice against all that is morally wrong with the world and it's marketing nirvana.

I see the banning of AR-15 style rifles as the cause of this movement, as was rightly emphazised during the speeches at the March for Our Lives rally. It is completely unacceptable to make it available for any purpose because of the pure carnage it is meant to inflict on the human body. And even if it's completely irrelevant to the goal of reducing mass killings, it needs to be done because it challenges the hegemony that the NRA holds over our democratic form of government. And it symbolizes the further dehumanization of our society.

So, I just hope that Mr Madison can suggest some precedent for how such principled legislation can be proposed for this specific category of guns so as not to run afoul of the 2nd Amendment.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Just from the outside looking in, here's a thought; overturn the Dickey Amendment.

Until some proper research and facts are presented, you're never going to win an argument against someone who believes cars are a dangerous as firearms, rifles that have a higher rate of fire than a K-98 are not to be considered military, if you don't own a gun you will be raped and murdered by next Thursday and your AR-15 will protect you against a government sanctioned M-1 Abrams assault on your house. Gun nuts belief in Fantasyville is stronger than any argument involving common fucking sense. You're going to need facts, and that requires research.

I had to do some research on the Dickey Amendment to find out what it actually said and to cut through the BS that exists about it.

To start with, nobody has been banned from anything, in the way we typically think of government bans. No law prohibits private citizens, universities, private foundations, or state governments from conducting studies of the subject. The 'ban' in question applies only to the federal government's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This amendment was attached to the funding of the CDC and provided just this one restriction: 'None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.'

Hardly the strict ban people seem to think it is.

 

[Elixir]

Hardly the strict ban people seem to think it is.

'None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.'

So - what is the rationale for this ban restriction?
The effect was that the entire culture at CDC was afraid to do research into ways to mitigate gun violence - as intended by the NRA.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Just from the outside looking in, here's a thought; overturn the Dickey Amendment.

Until some proper research and facts are presented, you're never going to win an argument against someone who believes cars are a dangerous as firearms, rifles that have a higher rate of fire than a K-98 are not to be considered military, if you don't own a gun you will be raped and murdered by next Thursday and your AR-15 will protect you against a government sanctioned M-1 Abrams assault on your house. Gun nuts belief in Fantasyville is stronger than any argument involving common fucking sense. You're going to need facts, and that requires research.

I had to do some research on the Dickey Amendment to find out what it actually said and to cut through the BS that exists about it.

To start with, nobody has been banned from anything, in the way we typically think of government bans. No law prohibits private citizens, universities, private foundations, or state governments from conducting studies of the subject. The 'ban' in question applies only to the federal government's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This amendment was attached to the funding of the CDC and provided just this one restriction: 'None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.'

Hardly the strict ban people seem to think it is.

The CDC is banned from researching it. Getting the information regarding gun deaths across the country is somewhat difficult, with many deaths each year. The Federal Government is actually efficient in such tasks. The Republicans banned the organization best at this sort of thing to research such a thing.

Nothing to see here. The Libertarian has given it his blessing.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

So, because the CDC can't use the funds to advocate or promote gun control, nobody in the world is allowed to do research that would advocate or promote gun control. I understand.

 

[Elixir]

So, because the CDC can't use the funds to advocate or promote gun control, nobody in the world is allowed to do research that would advocate or promote gun control. I understand.

It should be a government function, for reasons already iterated. But you're okay with the NRA suppressing such research because it their suppression takes a form that doesn't literally meet your definition of "ban".

Conservo-libertarian stupidity in action...

So I get a negative rep from Jason, for abbreviating "Conservo-libertarian" to "Conservo-lib"
And he still can't address my point.

That's okay Jason - I edited it for you, and won't return the negative rep, since you obviously can't afford it....