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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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No laws are going to do anything so long as there are 300 million guns floating about and more being cranked out and sold every day (as if 300 million aren't enough).
Funny how there are about the same number of automobiles as there are guns, yet we miraculously title, license and insure automobiles and license and test drivers despite overwhelming guberment bungling and incompetence.
The idea we couldn't do exactly the same thing for guns is ludicrous. Combine that with a buyback / meltdown program and making the sale and possession of whole classes of weapons with no legitimate use for the defense of the home illegal would immeasurably improve the situation.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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No laws are going to do anything so long as there are 300 million guns floating about and more being cranked out and sold every day (as if 300 million aren't enough).
Nobody has yet even started to make the case that the number of guns has ANY relevance. If anything, the sheer ridiculous number of them in circulation, coupled with the VERY low number of incidents, indicates that the number IS irrelevant.
Cut the number in half, and you will NOT get half the incidents. In fact, while the number of guns has doubled in the last decade, the incidence of homicide (including homicide by gun) is down over 40% in that same period.
Funny how there are about the same number of automobiles as there are guns, yet we miraculously title, license and insure automobiles and license and test drivers despite overwhelming guberment bungling and incompetence.
1) The bureaucracy you cite is handled at the state and local levels rather than at the federal level. That helps with efficiency a LOT.
2) You can't hide a car! You cannot fail to license/register it and drive it around for long without getting called on it. That failure is there on full-display for all to easily see.
The idea we couldn't do exactly the same thing for guns is ludicrous.
For the reasons cited above, you will NOT succeed with such an effort. Period. I'm a law-abiding citizen, but I also draw lines in the sand regarding my rights, and I WILL NOT participate in any such program. There are tens of millions more like me on this point. And that doesn't count the criminals who will laugh at your effort.
This is a non-starter because the whole idea is causally ludicrous.
Combine that with a buyback / meltdown program and making the sale and possession of whole classes of weapons with no legitimate use for the defense of the home illegal would immeasurably improve the situation.
No, sorry. It would measurably have NO effect upon the situation. Australia's buyback was forced, and no such thing is going to pass muster here. And, again, tens of millions of law-abiding citizens here will have NOTHING to do with it.
Also, the kinds of guns you'll get in even small quantities are not the ones being used by criminals to commit crimes.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Some Perspective on This Supposed "Moral Outrage"
Would you consider gun-control laws a rousing success if the number of gun-caused homicides (not suicides) was reduced to, say, the number of people dying each year by walking?
Wait! Before you go run out to look it up and then decide if the data fits with your preconceptions, ANSWER INTUITIVELY.
IS there some "national tragedy" or "national crisis" of walking deaths?
A "walking death" is typically a distracted pedestrian who walks off a cliff, into a sharp object, or otherwise damages him/herself while walking... literally walking into death. This is NOT including auto/pedestrian encounters. This is pedestrians just walking themselves into a death-dealing situation not caused by a car.
What do you think, intuitively? How much do you hear about these incidents? IS this a "national crisis" that "something just MUST be done about"?
I've compiled causes of death based upon the available data from the CDC and FBI. It's difficult to compare apples and apples on the numbers, since data is not available for all years and has end-years at different points for different causes of death.
For example, for some causes, we have data for 2014. For most, the end-year is 2012 or even 2010. For some data, even the FBI can only extrapolate an annual number from five or more years of data and divide by the number of years; literal annual data does not exist. And so on.
But the following charts show not just the top causes of death in the USA, but of note is that ALL of them are largely or entirely preventable! So, the dying that is really getting people is NOT "just wearing out by old age." People are dying BECAUSE they are doing things that we KNOW cause death, plain and simple.
So, let's break down what about 1.2 million preventable deaths per year looks like (the bars are to relative scale):
First, notice that heart disease (almost entirely preventable)and cancer (largely preventable) make up the VAST majority of the numbers of dead. The entire rest of the chart pales by comparison to the big two.
What would eliminate almost all of that death? Education about a healthy lifestyle and the WILL to conform one's lifestyle to some really basic principles. It is the mere fact that MOST people can't be bothered that is producing all that unnecessary death.
But people think of most of those columns as "passive," as though nobody is really responsible for them. NOT true, but I'll let that slide for the moment. Let's focus on the gun deaths.
First, suicides. Only half of all suicides are committed by gun. So, if you could eliminate guns from society and all of those people just gave up their efforts, you'd save some lives, but not even a blip on the chart. Of course, all those people are NOT going to give up their efforts.
Furthermore, it's not fair or accurate to think that gun-control laws of ANY sort in the USA are going to eliminate or even statistically-significantly reduce the gun-caused suicides. The vast majority of these people purchased and possess their gun legally (even according to proposed gun-control laws). So, moving Heaven and Earth, you might zero in on some of the at-risk people in advance and keep them from even getting a gun. But the numbers you would save are not big-picture statistically significant. And those people are likely to just off themselves via suffocation, as the chart shows.
More telling is that as many people die from kidney disease as kill themselves! Is THAT a "national crisis" that means we must expend MASS quantities of money and legislative effort to identify at-risk people and pay for them to make it to a nephrologist at taxpayer expense?
Be honest! Would you have intuitively imagined that kidney disease was some sort of "national crisis"?
But, you know, if somebody REALLY wants to kill themselves, it's not really the same as somebody MURDERING the person. Murder is a particularly bad way to go. That is our intuition. So, let's talk about murder.
The gun-homicide numbers are actually dropping year by year, according to the FBI, so I chose 2013's number as a sort of average for the last five years, according to the FBI's table: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/expanded-homicide-data/expanded_homicide_data_table_8_murder_victims_by_weapon_2010-2014.xls
Hmm... well, 8454 is not even CLOSE to the 12,000 or 32,000 numbers that are commonly bandied about!
And, actually, a significant number of people are murdered by knife every year.
Notice that those numbers are not even statistically significant on the chart that actually puts death into relative perspective. Only a TINY, TINY number of people are getting murdered by gun each year!
But we can reduce that number "dramatically" (relatively speaking).
The top six gun-murder cities in the USA account for 5497 of those gun-caused murders. And that was based upon the latest numbers I could find. The FBI believes that the numbers are going up in those cities, so 5497 for 2010 is actually a VERY conservative figure as a part of the 2013 total gun-murders in the USA. Instead of about 65%, the figure for the top-six in 2014 is probably closer to 70%.
So, already, if you just don't live in the top six "murder-capital" cities (respectively: LA, Chicago, NY, Phily, Houston, and Detroit), you essentially are just not going to get murdered by a gun-wielding person.
Moreover, the FBI estimates that between 60% and 80% of gun-murders in those very cities are "gang-related" rather than typical "argument" incidents.
So, sum all that up, and the results are very telling!
If you somehow stopped gang-related murders, you would immediately reduce gun-murders nationwide by AT LEAST half, bringing the number of gun-murders nationwide down to about 4200 per year.
That's ALL gun-murders, including mass-shootings.
For perspective, 5400 people WALK into death each year!
So, if you REALLY want to have a measurable effect on gun-homicides, you SHOULD focus on the causes and cures of gang-violence! THAT IS where the real problem does lie, and with that alone, you would bring gun-murders down into the "national crisis" range of WALKING DEATHS.
Now, for a final insight into relative numbers, just to REALLY put things into proper and ACCURATE perspective, I offer the same chart as above... but this time, let's include the population of the USA (again, all bars are to relative scale):
Uhh... hmmm. Yeah, it's hard to see a "national crisis" ANYWHERE on this chart.
People are dying, and MOST of that dying is entirely preventable.
But ALL causes of dying COMBINED don't even SHOW on a chart compared to the US population.
People honestly cannot get the sheer vastness of 1/3 of a BILLION people into perspective! We hear of thousands of deaths and are horrified. Yes, EACH person matters, and EACH death unfortunately affects others tragically. But ALL of that death combined isn't even a blip compared to the sheer numbers of people in this nation.
Find some PERSPECTIVE, people. DOUBLE the real gun-homicide numbers, and they are still not nationally significant AT ALL!
The MEDIA spins the facts BY putting one thing in your face, then in your face again, then again, and again and again and again!
WHY are they not reporting on the "national crisis" of walking deaths???
WHY is the POTUS not calling for some "walking list" to be compiled, so that we can identify at-risk walkers and PREVENT that utterly needless death???
Let's have some PERSPECTIVE, people, not more and more USELESS and causally-unrelated laws!
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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The majority of your response is comparing gun violence to health-related issues. Can't remember when the last time anyone's diabetes or heart attack physically injured or killed anyone else. A pointless comparison.
Also, and as you point out, major metropolitan areas have a legitimate interest in curbing gun possession and use within their jurisdictions.
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patrick compton
Trad climber
van
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patrick compton
Trad climber
van
Dec 7, 2015 - 12:07pm PT
Just bought a Sig 9mil over the weekend.
I grew up shooting small bore, and around guns. Also, I live in a sketchy area of town.
Fear mongering brainwashed gun freak.
LOL!
PS: What model btw?
PS2022
I'm used to having a proper safety, so the double action/10lb initial trigger pull is taking a bit of getting used to.
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crankster
Trad climber
No. Tahoe
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NRA = Guilty. Their supporters = Guilty.
By Richard Cohen.
Years ago, I rushed up the stairs to the Tobacco Institute in Washington and confronted the people working there: How could you? How could you lie to us about the dangers of smoking? Everyone there was smoking, I remember that, and I either referred to a mound of bodies outside the door or wanted to. Now I want to do something similar — rush to the National Rifle Association and confront Wayne LaPierre, its chief executive, and yell, “LaPierre, look what you’ve done.”
The “done” refers to San Bernardino. It refers to Planned Parenthood and Columbine and Sandy Hook. It refers to Roseburg and Chattanooga, Charleston, Fort Hood and every place of mass killing, where some crazy person, some lunatic, someone who thinks he’s got the thumbs-up from God, had the legal right to get a gun, often an assault rifle, a weapon of war, and then just shoot away — rat-a-tat-tat. Bodies everywhere. You did this, LaPierre. You and your NRA.
Oh, I know: Don’t personalize this, Cohen. If LaPierre weren’t the head of the NRA, someone else would be. Someone else would warn us about what would happen if assault weapons were banned — “jack-booted government thugs” would “break in our doors, seize our guns, destroy our property and even injure or kill us,” LaPierre once said.
Even if the NRA didn’t exist, we would still be a nation just moony over guns. If we did away with assault weapons, the day-to-day threat would still be the handgun. You can’t shove a .223- caliber assault rifle in your pocket or put it into the glove compartment of your car. Still, it was two assault rifles that were used to murder 14 people in San Bernardino. Two otherwise ordinary individuals, dressed as soldiers, went to war.
The United States’ inability to control guns has made it dizzy with incoherence. The president draped the august Oval Office around himself to give a speech in which he said nothing. Looking like a man in need of some Zoloft, Obama said he would respond to the murders in California by increasing the pressure on the Islamic State in Syria. He also mentioned that there’s no evidence that the shooters had been in touch with the Islamic State, so bombing it, while always a good idea, in this case is just beside the point.
The Republicans have an even worse idea. Realizing that they have to come up with something, the GOP is considering putting more money into mental-health programs. More money for mental health is always welcome, but just how it relates to mass murders is beyond me. Should the government troll the streets looking for people who talk to themselves? Did House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) — “mental health . . . seems to be a core problem” — notice that there was nothing untoward in the behavior of Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik? Farook had a job. The couple just had a child. They were normal, until they were not. (McCarthy, cure thyself.)
We cannot predict a homicidal act. The shooter is almost always described as a loner. Is being alone a crime? Shall we criminalize shyness? Will Donald Trump let us use his guys to round up the introverted while sweeping for Mexicans? (How’s that for synergy, Donald?)
The one thing we can do — the thing we and every other nation know how to do — is restrict gun ownership. In the past, that was not considered either un-American or unfeasible. In 1969, Milton S. Eisenhower, the former president of Johns Hopkins University, the brother of an ex-president and the very personification of a stolid Republican, recommended the confiscation of handguns. As far as I know, no one considered Eisenhower a left-wing kook.
The solution to the menace of domestic terrorism is staring us in the face. It is some sort of gun control. We cannot close down the Internet so that the Islamic State’s siren call cannot reach the susceptible. We cannot cull our population for the potentially homicidal. We cannot — we must not — monitor or surveil Muslims in general. Instead, we must look at all these incidents and see what they have in common: guns.
So, excuse me if I do personalize this crisis. It’s about guns and the NRA and chicken politicians who know right from wrong but vote wrong. It’s about common sense and taking responsibility for your actions. It’s about LaPierre and the NRA. Open the door, Wayne. See what you’ve done. See the bodies.
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johnboy
Trad climber
Can't get here from there
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Pure stupidity.
Apparently we humans have NO ability to recognize predict causal connections in advance of events. We must just stupidly wait to see how things turn out.
Actually, in REALITY, we're pretty good at figuring things out in advance. Like, we know this in advance:
1) A law that simply makes bears illegal will have ZERO effect upon the bear population. Shockingly, bears don't give a rat's tail-junction about what laws get passed.
2) Criminals intent on murder don't care AT ALL about mag-size-limit laws and have countless ways to circumvent such laws. So, such laws will have ZERO effect on criminals having large-cap magazines. And in NONE of these "high-cap" shootings were the mags even mostly depleted; the NUMBER of mags was far more significant, as the shooters frequently and rapidly dropped and replaced mags. But nobody proposes any "number of mags" laws, despite the fact that CAPACITY of mags has been shown to be irrelevant given ENOUGH mags.
3) Universal background checks WILL be circumvented, just as immigration laws are circumvented. We have ZERO evidence to suggest that black markets dry up in the face of such laws. Instead, we have AMPLE evidence to suggest that black markets are CREATED by such laws.
4) The Feds are INSANELY incompetent at processing information. So we KNOW that countless cases (as we have already seen just such cases) will slip through the cracks. Patch over cracks, and new cracks will appear. This will be whack-a-mole in which every mole that gets whacked will produce two more.
And the litany goes on and on.
A year after Colorado passed its most comprehensive slate of gun-control laws in its history, Governor Hickenlooper announced publicly and forthrightly that his signature on those laws was a mistake, that he had not been aware of the facts, that NONE of the new laws would have had the slightest effect in stopping ANY of the mass-shootings in Colorado, and that it seems highly unlikely that such laws would even have produced a reduction in casualties.
This is the Demoncratic Governor who was wooed and "convinced" by Bloomberg into selling out the state in opposition to the advice of law enforcement leaders without exception across the state. Instead, a year later, "Oops! BIG mistake. To do over again, I wouldn't sign those laws."
And, indeed. No surprise to those of us that CAN recognize obviously causally disconnected events (apparently you are not in that group), Colorado continues to have such shootings even AFTER this great slate of gun-control laws, two incidents this year.
You want more? I've got MUCH more. MANY gun-control proponent leaders across this nation ADMIT that "We really don't think these laws will have any measurable effect, but we have to start somewhere."
Yeah, in fact, we have NO evidence (except the pure speculation YOU mentioned) to think that there is any causal connection between all of the proposed laws and a reduction in gun-violence nor in the casualty lists once they happen.
But, you know, tally ho and all that. "We've gotta do SOMETHING," even if it's akin to making bears illegal.
Just keep makin' those pesky bears illegal, and eventually, since you "started somewhere," some incredibly unpredictable chain of events will result in some bear not being born that otherwise would be. And THAT very bear might have been the one to maul a group of boy scouts to death. So, "If there's some chance that some lives could be saved, then it's a 'moral outrage' if we don't TRY to DO SOMETHING!"
Oh, and while you're at it, you should impose that illegal-bear law ON law-abiding citizens.
Why? Well, because they ARE the only ones that are even going to care to try to abide by it, being law-abiding and all.
So, you could, I don't know... make it universally mandatory that every person sighting a bear must file a report to the federal government on Form 18377s-B (only 20 pages) about the details of the sighting. There will, of course, be NO follow-up on the part of federal agencies. But, at least we're DOING SOMETHING.
Dang! It just feels SO GOOD and SO righteous to be DOING SOMETHING Here
Pure denial, then smoke and mirrors of assumptions.
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philo
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 8, 2015 - 06:39am PT
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Ho Man, ain't we havin' fun now.
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overwatch
climber
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MB1 pretty much destroys you guys debate-wise. The only one close is Healye.
HDDJ does pretty good too, just my opinion, of course.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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say ed the working pakastani mule
The owner of the Riverside shooting range had two hankerchief heads shooting military style weapons getting ready to rag up and bang and concluded ed was "normal guy".
WTF? The gun world has a funny definition of normal I guess. Go on, take the money and run.
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patrick compton
Trad climber
van
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If I still need to take shoes off at the airport, these guys ^^^ need to flagged by the FBI.
The Feds dropped the ball.
FWIW, I agree with Healyje's posts. But, the reality today is that I bought a gun over the weekend, cash, no waiting period, no registration.
How is this different than buying one illegally on the street? Only that the illegal gun may have been used in a crime. I bought new at a gun show.
Gawd bless Murica.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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How the hell does anyone get into the country looking like that? He's sporting the beard of the extremists ( the no-mustache Muhammed beard ) and she's wearing a death cloak.
And they were let right in. No surprise it ended badly.
His story is he had to go all the way to Pakistan to find a wife. But look what he brought home. To California.
Maybe Trump is onto something.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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^^^^^No shet. But they didn't have ISIS tattooed on their forheads.
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10b4me
Mountain climber
Retired Climber
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If I still need to take shoes off at the airport, these guys ^^^ need to flagged by the FBI.
The Feds dropped the ball.
How do you know it wasn't a Halloween costume? (That's a joke, son)
Seriously, the PC crowd would say you are profiling.
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
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madbolter posted Some Perspective on This Supposed "Moral Outrage"
Again, this is a really specious and callow argument that does not need to be directly rebutted. The moral outrage comes from the fact that there are thousands of people who die from a completely preventable cause that we are choosing to do nothing about. There are lots of ways that people die. Rightly or wrongly we do not have equal reactions to all of them, but most of them we make some effort to mitigate. With gun violence, we seem eager to make the situation worse.
Coincidentally, I am a trauma coordinator. My job is to help make the data sets and follow the patients who get hurt. We have whole committees working on how to reduce pedestrian injury (falls). It's a huge portion of the injuries we see, primarily in the elderly. There is lots of research into it because it's a huge public health problem and a major drain on resources. There is no "moral outrage" because we are taking measures as a society to mitigate the problem. Also because these aren't "pushing" injuries, they are "falling" injuries. Again, the gun lobby has successfully blocked the CDC from doing research on gun violence and many states have banned doctors from asking their patients about gun safety. Those same doctors ask all kinds of questions about their patients' fall risk.
So why not stop with these really awful very bad arguments already? It's like watching my 8 year old try to contort a valid reason why she didn't bring a winter coat to her outdoor field trip on a 30 degree day when she doesn't want to just admit she thought her raincoat looks better. We have a problem with guns. Stop pretending we don't have a problem with guns. Because we have a problem with guns. You very bad arguments trying to distract from our very real gun problem aren't working.
MB continued Yeah, in fact, we have NO evidence (except the pure speculation YOU mentioned) to think that there is any causal connection between all of the proposed laws and a reduction in gun-violence nor in the casualty lists once they happen.
I'd love to discuss actual gun control measures that would reduce our injuries and deaths and that would still allow for reasonable private gun ownership. That's a completely achievable goal as has been demonstrated in other countries. Gun control works. NYC has an incredibly low gun violence rate because it is surrounded by states/cities with relatively strict gun laws. Chicago has a very high gun violence rate in part because it is surrounded by cities/states with very permissive gun laws. We also have a cultural problem. One in which guns are seen as a solution. Americans think people should be shot for stealing, for trespassing, for running away from police. It's absurd and it needs to change.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Here's the San Bernardino I know and some people love:
"SAN BERNARDINO: Grocery shopping ends in slaying"
http://www.pe.com/articles/shopping-788683-bernardino-grocery.html
It's good to see life getting back to normal there. Those people have been through enough.
Murder-a-week, every week. All year long. More murders in S.B. than in San Francisco and Seattle both put together despite there being only 200,000 people living in San Bernardino.
Car wash TBA
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jonnyrig
climber
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Im sure gun control would be about as ineffective in the long run as seat belt laws. No lives saved there, right?
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overwatch
climber
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I worked there doing armed security at an FHA housing project called Meadowbrook. There are some hardcore knuckleheads in San Bernardino. I wore body armor with rifle plates and carried two guns. Guess what the locals called me...two guns. Pretty on the money those deep thinkers.
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