Bernie Sanders has a lot of things going for him, but one of them is not gun control. He’s historically tiptoed around that issue, voting against the Brady Bill and background checks. (His excuse is that he was elected to represent the gun-loving people of Vermont.) But, according to the Washington Post, he, along with other Democrats, is at least coming around to the view that yes, guns do kill people.
After years of deadly mass shootings across the country, and with President Obama voicing deep frustration with inaction by Republicans in Congress, the Democratic candidates led by Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed in a debate here Tuesday night to toughen restrictions on gun owners and gun manufacturers.
. . . In a sign of how potent this issue has become among Democratic primary voters, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) — who represents a rural state with a rich hunting tradition — has shifted position after past Senate votes in favor of gun rights. He now says he supports a comprehensive approach that includes expanding background checks for gun purchases, eliminating what is commonly known as the gun-show loophole and addressing the scourge of mental illness.
Here’s the exchange between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders on gun control in the Democratic debate.
Note that Sanders doesn’t mention the NRA, but decries gun-show loopholes (good position) and mentions the “mental health” issue. But he avoided the Elephant in the Room: the National Rifle Association. Clinton, however, courageously stood up against the NRA, one of America’s most powerful lobbies:
“We have to look at the fact that we lose 90 people a day from gun violence,” Clinton said at the CNN event. “This has gone on too long, and it’s time the entire country stood up against the NRA.”
For that she aroused the NRAs ire, and, believe me, they’ll go after her big time:
“The only problem with the Democrats’ anti-Second Amendment strategy is that the vast majority of Americans disagree with them on this issue,” NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said.
Well, Presidents aren’t just supposed to slavishly follow the will of the people; they’re also supposed to lead. That’s why they’re called “leaders”. The NRA is, as usual, threatening people who favor any restrictions on guns.
Grover Norquist, a conservative activist who is on the NRA’s board, went so far as to predict Democrats would “now lose the presidency” for speaking out on guns.
“When they start to say that people with guns are the problem, that they don’t trust people with guns, and that people with guns are somehow connected to mass murders, that’s what turns voters off,” Norquist said.
Norquist’s statement is a lie; of course “people with guns” are surely connected with mass murders! Who else commits them? But I’d go further and say that we’d have fewer mass murders if we severely tightened restrictions on gun ownership; in fact, I favor the British style of stringent gun control.
The Post sees a political calculus behind Democrats’ new emphasis on gun control (Obama, when running, largely avoided the issue):
Arkadi Gerney, who focuses on gun safety at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, said that “leading Democrats today feel that being for strong laws on issues like background checks is a winner in general elections and an absolute necessity in primaries.”
Clinton’s ardent pitch on guns fits in with her overall campaign strategy. Rather than putting an emphasis on winning over moderate voters or demographic groups such as “NASCAR dads,” Clinton is doubling down on the coalition that propelled Obama into the White House: African Americans, Latinos and women, especially those in the suburbs in swing states such as Virginia and Ohio. Many of those voters support bolstering gun restrictions.
Well, regardless of whether this is a strongly held political position or simply electoral calculus, I don’t care. All I care is that whichever Democrat gets elected—and I’m betting Clinton will—actually then DOES something about the issue as President. She may fail, and probably will fail, but I want her to try. If she doesn’t, I’ll be deeply disappointed.
p.s. If you doubt that more guns lead to more homicides, have a look at these studies.
h/t: Diane G
More guns leads to more gun violence? Who knew?
Geez, next thing you know we’ll be hearing that living organisms that leave more descendants will have their genetic makeup more prominently represented in future generations.
All kinds of crazy ideas going around nowadays…
As noted in the other thread, Vermont is an outlier almost any way you choose to look at it. Were the state of gun affairs in Vermont the norm nationwide, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
That leaves Sanders in a bit of a pickle…as a Senator, it was his obligation to protect the best interests of the citizens of his state — a state in which guns are basically just farm implements. But nationwide, guns are a serious threat to public health and safety, and he’s now looking to transition from regional to national leadership.
b&
I have not followed his issue that closely, but it had seemed to me that he could navigate it with the stance that gun ownership for hunting and sport is a different thing from owning automatics.
Could you elaborate a little on what makes Vermont unusual. I know that I don’t know enough about the social-political geography of the US to have any more than a vague idea of what could be grounds for a difference.
More than a few revolutions have been started with “farm implements”. Some of them can be bloody dangerous. On a light note, Frankenstein and Igor are justly concerned about peasants wielding pitchforks. Less laughingly, I’ve a friend who lost an arm to trying to clear a jam in a crop-mangling machine of some sort. Very good at chewing fingers and fore-arms too. And practically every year in the UK we have a multiple fatality from the deadly “slurry pit” – I keep my ears open for such events every time I know that the Safety Officer is planning to do a week on “confined space entry” – there is always a recent case of someone overcome by “fumes” in a slurry pit (probably hydrogen sulphide, not that it really matters), someone watching goes in to help and is over come, then someone else goes in … and very often the deceased are closely related. It’s a depressingly frequent occurrence. Which is why I look up the most recent case to bolster the SO’s presentation.
How different is Vermont? It allows anyone to carry a gun without a permit, concealed or open. It is a very permissive state. Even the NRA would rate Vermont as more gun-friendly than all of the southern states. The only state that scores higher in gun-friendliness is Arizona.
“Could you elaborate a little on what makes Vermont unusual.”
For starters, it’s smaller and more homogeneous than many of the other states. It has a strong rural heritage and commitment to the traditional town hall meeting form of self-government. It elected a Democratic Socialist senator, for chrissakes!
There are certain people who should not be permitted to own a gun. There are certain types of guns that citizens should not be able to buy and certain kinds of ammunition as well. That said, and with the hope that stricter gun controls would reduce deaths by guns, there should be reasonable restrictions. However, people who want to kill others will find ways of doing so with or without a gun.
I don’t know the percentage of legally owned guns used by their legal owners to kill vs. killings with stolen guns. It seems to me that stolen guns are a major problem. It also seems to me that purveyors of military weaponry to civilians should be restricted, however unlikely that is to happen. After all, business is business.
Guns make death easy — so easy that death can be a thing of impulse, carried out on a whim.
If you’re truly committed to death, you don’t need a gun. This is true. But wouldn’t you rather live in a world without the casual access to death that guns provide?
Chris Rock makes the point quite well.
b&
“Guns make death easy”
Just think about the numbers of people who die every day from guns. Clinton mentioned 90 people a day. The number killed in mass shootings that make the news are relatively puny compared to the rest. The vast majority do not involve mass murder. These deaths include a lot of suicides (which, I suspect, are often impulsive acts), drug crimes, and family murders. These likely would not happen if the guns were not sitting there in the drawer or in the glove compartment.
And not a small number of children accidentally shooting themselves or others.
What proportion of stolen guns were originally legally owned? Fewer guns in houses being burgled means fewer guns becoming stolen guns.
No not necessarily. They may go to sleep and wake up with a changed mind. And even if they don’t, trying without a gun they may be less successful, either failing where they would otherwise succeed or killing less people.
Guns make killing easier. They make killing at range possible. Those reasons are why we give guns to our soldiers. If guns didn’t make killing easier, we wouldn’t bother giving them to our soldiers. Taking guns out of the hands of the mentally ill or criminally violent makes it harder for them to kill people (including themselves).
arg this was me. Apologies for the anonymous post.
This is definitely a pretty brave position, no matter the calculus behind it.
I choose to believe that like the movement toward gay rights, that there will one day be a broad consensus movement toward more stringent gun control. I am not sure if there is such a movement just yet.
Here is my worry: Although very brave, what if this turns to be a difference maker in the election? What if the republicans mobilize and win the election b/c of this? Then we are screwed not just on gun control but on many other things.
Clinton has had an “F” rating from the NRA since 2006, so I doubt her new statements will significantly change the amount of votes she gets.
I think as long as her or whatever Dem gets the not sticks with gun conttrol, and doesn’t argue for removing/changing the 2nd amendment to be a non-individual right, they’ll be okay. Again, not saying they’ll pick up votes with this position, just saying they probably won’t lose any votes they would’ve otherwise had.
Guns don’t kill people; people kill people!
Guns merely enable people to:
1. Kill more people
2. Kill people more quickly
3. Kill people at greater distances
4. Kill people with less risk to themselves
5. Kill people more anonymously
6. Kill people without physically touching or even seeing them
And let us not forget the gun’s sub-lethal utility in wounding, terrorizing and controlling greater numbers of people more efficiently.
Sub
In fact, Bernie DID mention the NRA, noting that the organization has given him a D- rating in response to those policies he advocates, like ending the gun show loophole and tightening background checks. It’s worth noting, too, that Vermont has the least restrictive firearms regulations in the country (virtually none), and, while almost half the households in Vermont contain firearms, and while Vermonters may carry and display firearms whenever they want, they don’t carry except when hunting; what’s more, the rates of gun-related crime in the state are the lowest in the nation.
The largest city in Vermont is Burlington. It has a population of about 42,000. Compare that to most states which have a few very large cities, and you can see the difference in gun crime. Where people are crammed together you are going to have more interaction. Some percentage of those interactions are going to be disagreements that escalate toward violence.
Sure, that’s true, Vermont is the most rural state, after Maine, and it’s exceptionally homogeneous as well. Yet the levels poverty and drug abuse here are high. Nonetheless, on the whole, while firearms ownership is high, Vermonters are prudent–and as gun owners they support more effective nation-wide (or state by state) restrictions and a ban on assault weapons, for example.
I’ll just take a guess on this but do not have the stats — My guess is that all those guns the people in Vermont have “for hunting” as is stated here are not hand guns. People do not go hunting with hand guns. Only idiots would go hunting with hand guns but I would also bet that most of the killing of humans is with hand guns.
Most Vermonters (like me) who own long guns also own handguns as well (revolvers, generally, I believe), for target-shooting and dispatching wounded game or dying farm animals. Many Vermonters also collect. But there are very few fetishists here.
Hunters who are after big game here, deer, moose, or bear, carry a high-powered rifle but also wear a sidearm/ Even fishermen often carry what’s called a kit gun in their tackle box, usually a .22.
Fetishists, in my mind are paranoid, apartment-dwelling urbanites, or suburbanites addicted to Faux News. Rural small-towners are not in that club.
Just to back up your bet with numbers, 97% of gun killings are done with handguns in the USA. Handguns are the real problem, not long guns.
Thank you Adam, and if we bet a little further it is likely that accidental shootings are in that same percentage as well. Why? Because the hand gun is way more dangerous than the so-called long guns.
I was at a town hall meeting for Clinton a couple of days ago and she talked extensively, and rather passionately, about gun control. I’ve been ambivalent toward Clinton since Sanders came on the scene, but I’m proud of her for taking that stance.
Widespread gun ownership for home protection, or for protection while out and about, translates to the tragedies that we read about every day. Lets say every 3rd or 4th household has at least one gun. Every one of these is lawfully owned. This seems to be the case around my neighborhood. But spread over a large area, over millions of people, situations do arise and some of these people, or their kids, get in over their heads. And there are guns handy.
In some of those houses there is a kid who is bullied at school. And a few of those kids crack under the strain.
Some of the guns in those houses are owned by a person who was, they believe, wrongly fired from work. And some of those angry people go back to their former employer for revenge.
In some of those houses a kid wants to show a friend their gun. Their parents keep it locked (they think), but the kid has figured out how to get it long ago. This is very very common (it happened to my son when he was playing at a friends’ house). Among the ‘responsible gun owners’ are plenty of such owners who do not know that their child, who was easy to control at 3 or 4 years of age, is now a lot smarter at 11 or 12. All kids like to show off and impress other kids. They play with the gun. They point it. But the gun is loaded.
A young man gets into the habit of carrying their gun when they go out with friends for protection. But he gets into a fight and the man with the gun is losing.
Every one of these gun owners would pass the litmus test for being permitted to own a gun, or to even carry a gun with the right permits and training. But. Things. Happen. So the common arguments that we just need to restrict the guns to the responsible people is a bunch of b.s., I think. More guns (and I do not mean hunting rifles) means more tragedies. No amount of screening or training will remove that slow creep of unintended consequences.
“but the kid has figured out how to get it long ago”
Yeah, my dad kept his in the bedroom closet in a box on the second shelf. I pulled it out once or twice to show a friend. I don’t remember if I ever handled it. He also had his old Army 45 in the drawer in the dresser.
I grew up in a rural region of Pennsylvania. Nearly every family had a rifle or shotgun or both for hunting. But the ones I knew about were kept unloaded and well out of reach of children. As far as I knew, no ten year old playing with a loaded pistol (stupid people apparently do keep those around sometimes) shot his/her younger sibling. I knew from a young age that the first thing you do when you pick up a gun is open the action and make sure there are no cartridges in it — and never point it at anyone, even if you’re sure it’s empty.
It may be that stupid people who don’t know much about guns and really aren’t too careful about what they’re doing with guns are a big part of the problem. But we certainly have a major problem with guns now in this country and it’s way past time we ought to figure out how to deal with it.
Agree 100% with this. And you would be surprised how many people are killed with guns that were empty. Favorite saying is- I thought the gun was empty or I didn’t know is was loaded.
Just such an incident happened at the gym I use about 2 years ago. A trainer at the gym brought his loaded .45 semiauto pistol into the gym to show it off to a client. That was the 1st bone headed mistake.
The two men want into a small office. The gun owner showed the other man the gun. The other man wanted to hold the gun so the gun owner removed the clip and handed him the gun. 2nd bone headed mistake.
During the course of playing with the gun that the clip had been removed from the gun owner pulled the trigger. The round traveled through a wall, through the front and back of a locker, into an adjacent room, through the left thigh of the man who owns the gym, creasing his right thigh, just as he is walking out of the room.
The gun owner removed the clip but didn’t think to remove the round from the chamber. One wonders WTF business a gun enthusiast has keeping their pistol loaded and with a round chambered. And then bringing that weapon to a gym to show it off to a friend. Fantasy role playing is what it amounts to. A high price to pay for these people to get their FRP on.
The correct safety procedure I believe is to carefully look down the barrel before pulling the trigger. That way nobody else gets killed. 😉
cr
You jest…but that’s actually pointing to the reason why the gun manufacturers are deathly afraid of liability lawsuits.
It wouldn’t be much of an engineering challenge to design a gun such that it was obvious when it was in a condition such that pulling the trigger would cause it to fire. Such an obvious safety measure would have saved the lives of all those killed by accidental discharges. Were it not for the legal immunity of the gun manufacturers, every accidental discharge would be accompanied by a lawsuit over the design, manufacture, and sale of a lethally-defective product.
Imagine a folding ladder that could be set up in a way that it wasn’t obvious that it was unlocked and therefore could collapse. It wouldn’t take long for the lawsuits to follow, would it? Why should guns be treated any differently?
b&
Maybe Bernie has read the definitive book on the subject is “More Guns, Less Crime”, by John C. Lott, PhD.
Evidence shows that states with the tightest gun restrictions have higher gun crime rates than states with less restrictive policies. Chicago would be a good place to start.
Lott’s book is only definitive if you happen to like his position. He’s a gun rights advocate, so hardly objective.
I don’t know the extent of his argument, but on the face of it, it’s ludicrous to claim that a gun in the hands of every citizen would produce a better society. In fact, a great part of what makes the modern world so safe today is that the capacity for violence has been removed from the hands of individuals and assigned to the government. States where vigilante justice reigns are the most violent on earth.
Refuting Lott’s data is relatively unimportant. Guns flow readily across internal political boundaries in the US, so it’s hard to imagine that any gun control efforts are particularly effective. Arguably, better data can be had by looking at other nations that have strong gun control laws.
What immediately comes to my mind is the assumption of cause and effect. If the correlation is valid, what is the cause and what is the effect? Places like Chicago have major problems with guns because of the nature and demography of the society. A large underclass, rust bowl unemployed populations for one. Thus, crime is high to begin with. Gun control laws are an attempt to deal with the problem. They are not necessarily eliminating the problem, but a more unbiased study would be required to determine whether the laws were a benefit.
Lott’s book is only “definitive” is your definition of “definitive” is “dubious analysis that ends up with provably wrong statistics.”
The book has been debunked so often it’s getting embarrassing. To Lott.
I think the conversation about guns and the 2nd amendment needs to be reframed. It really should be about gun licensing not about the control of personal property. An auto and its driver are licensed for the public good and nobody complains. In fact Congress could make a law that makes driving a car illegal. Why not? It would save more lives than making guns illegal. Of course, this will never happen because the car culture is much more poweful than the gun culture. People want to feel safe so a gun and shooter license is within the realm of probability and doesn’t run afoul of the Constitution.
I’m not really understanding the logic of comparing cars with guns. Sure lots of people are killed with cars even though we spend tons of money to make them safer, but the car is a necessity for most of us. If not for the car we would all be on horseback again. If not for the gun we would all breath a little easier.
The analogy makes sense to me. Let’s license gun owners and require them to carry insurance on each gun they own, just as we do cars. These measures would require registration, though, and that would be the major obstacle. Even so, it seems the most reasonably workable path to take. Yet that in turn would require publicly financed elections because as long as so many reps are beholden to the firearms industry (or afraid of earning
their enmity), they will not effectively represent to voters.
If we were to do what you suggest “just as done with cars”, then guns would need no license or insurance so long as they were only used on private property. Basically, nothing required to own a gun or carry a gun (anywhere, really) unless you “use” it (i.e. fire it).
First, most people breath easier when they have a gun, which is why gun sales have gone thru the roof. Second, the current car culture is certainly not necessary. We could do very well with electric cars that go 40mph and save many lives. Third, both cars and guns are personal property and just recall how important property was for Locke and the founders.
Right and wrong.
The car analogy is perfectly good in respect of licensing. You don’t let people drive cars anonymously, they have to (a) demonstrate that they can drive them competently – hence drivers licence and (b) their car has to be registered and identifiable and, in many states, insured. Thus the hazard that cars pose is controlled in the public interest.
Why this should not be the case with guns baffles me.
It is a false analogy in respect of necessity. In most of western society a car is at least a vast convenience and often a necessity, without which ones enjoyment of life can be seriously impaired.** This is rarely the case for a gun.
** I say this as a firm believer in public transport, which I use round town as often as possible. But I still need the car for shopping and recreation. Whether the car is a pissy little electric car or a 400HP Ferrari is irrelevant to the licensing issue, though 40mph would be pathetically inadequate on a long journey as would the range and recharge time of current electric cars.
cr
Ah, but this is precisely where the real con begins. The imminently sensible idea that owning a gun should carry with it some level of responsibly, and that the state has some duty to ensure that people exercise that responsibility, makes sense to almost everyone who wants to use guns for: hunting, killing varmints on the farm, target/sport shooting, or personal protection. No one who wants to use guns for these purposes and these purposes alone should care much if they have to get a license to own their gun, or if there is some small insurance fee to go with it. I mean, they might care some, but not with the passion you see. People don’t shout each other down over the need to have auto insurance, but they go apoplectic over the smallest gun regulation. Why this is is not baffling at all, however. It flows naturally from the con we are all living through now, the con that the government (our government!) is our mortal enemy.
The log-jam in sensible gun regulation is the idea that there is another legitimate use of guns besides hunting, personal protection, and entertainment: to resist a “tyrannical” government. This is the real change in gun culture since the tin-foil hats took over the NRA, putting “fighting the government” up there with “hunting” as a legitimate use for guns. IF you buy that premise, then of course you wouldn’t give the government information on your guns any more than we’d send Al Queda or ISIS a list of our soldiers and where they live. That is essentially what we are dealing with here, a major political party that has been captured by the idea that people are, more or less, in a state of war with their own government, or might be at any moment. The “government as enemy” meme has captured a lot of people and replaced in their mind the idea I was taught as a child: the government IS the people, an idea which makes nonsense of ‘resisting the government’ so long as votes are counted and elections honored. I think many people feel the idea of needing your anonymous cache of guns to “resist tyranny” is too silly to engage in debate, like stooping down to argue with someone about whether space aliens secretly control our elections. Perhaps, but all of my gun-loving friends fall back on this idea, even my Ph.D. holding gun loving friends. Sure, they say, if it were only safety and crime we’re talking about then requiring licenses and insurance and registration for guns would be a fine idea, but we’re talking about fighting tyranny, about the thin line between freedom and autocracy, and that overrides pedestrian concerns like crime and suicides. They say this with a straight face too. So while all the talk about what would be reasonable is nice I think you may be wasting your breath until the paranoid and very anti-democratic “I need guns to resist tyranny” meme is defused. I’m not sure how to do that, but I think that is the fulcrum on which this all turns.
I’m not entirely sure that stated reason is the genuine one, if only because the response to this alleged government conspiracy is underwhelming. Never mind that the government’s military have armoured jeeps, tanks, drones, choppers, warships, submarines, and goodness knows how many nuclear missiles at their disposal; their soldiers have the more versatile and effective range of firearms, grenades, rocket launchers, body armour, and – this is the important bit – rigorous training on how to use said equipment tactically. Even if everyone in your town had an unlimited number of automatic weapons at their disposal, you’re simply not going to win against those odds.
I don’t think this has anything to do with genuine anti-government paranoia. It looks more like a talismanic and delusional game of ideological showing off. “We will prove we are superior to the government by pushing it out of our lives and doing things however the heck we want to do them, and guns happen to be the symbol du jour.”
You may be right. It is very clear that this “resist tyranny” trope is a pure fantasy and a kind of empty chest thumping, after all there was no uprising when Snowden’s revelations came out, not even a tiny one by the farthest right fringe. Still, my friends do a convincing act that on some level they really do believe this trope. Or, at least, they believe it in the sense that it’s what they tell themselves about why they can’t abide registration, insurance, and other very mild requirements on gun ownership. They do not seem to be deploying this argument cynically in order to prop up their concerns that they might have to be a little more responsible, or (gasp) lose some toys at some point in the future.
In this sense they have much in common with anti-abortion advocates. My mom posted a Facebook meme recently that equated abortion with slavery and the holocaust. Obviously, on one level my mom can’t possibly really believe this. Would she sit by while the ovens burned and merely post a Facebook meme? If they’d free prisoners from the concentration camps and spare them the gas chamber if you’d take them home with you, wouldn’t you go down and take one? Where are the anti-abortion Schindler’s? Where are the pro-life people lining up outside abortion clinics, lawyers in tow, waiting to “save a person” from the horrible fate of abortion? They are mostly nowhere, because they don’t really believe what they are saying. On the other hand, they kind of do really believe it. My mom is completely unaware of her own obvious inconsistencies on this point. On some level she does feel like there is a holocaust going on, she can get sad and teary over it, but she has isolated that feeling from her daily life, from any need to do anything about it except vote for nut jobs and post Facebook memes.
I think the “fight tyranny” trope exists in a similar place in gun nuts minds, as something they sincerely believe during the moments when they are thinking about it, but which they do not allow out of that little mental compartment because they know, intuitively, that it’d wreck their life if they did. It’s a sincere, but sealed off, belief.
Something like that. I think it’s an interesting bit of psychology, and I do think that psychology is an important part of the dynamic.
“most people breath easier when they have a gun”
Maybe in America, Afghanistan and parts of the Middle East, but I don’t think this applies for the vast majority of humans in the rest of the world.
I’ll just throw in one more angle on the gun issue in regard to the all powerful NRA, who has most all in Congress scared silly.
If we had complete and total public financing of our federal elections no one would be afraid of the NRA or any other lobby because they would no longer be relevant. They would most likely be out of business. This is just one of the problems that could be worked if we had this. So instead of getting all worked up about the misunderstood second amendment, we should be working on passing another one about campaign financing with public money.
Exactly.
There’s an organization pushing to get money out of politics via a constitutional amendment. Knowing that Congress would never vote for it, they’re pursuing it at the state level. (Either Congress or the states can amend the constitution.) In just a couple years, they’ve gotten the amendment passed in about 5 states, I think. If you want to support them, they’re at http://www.wolf-pac.com.
Adam, the problem I would have with their Amendment is that it’s not specific enough. If you are going to go to all the trouble, it has to go all the way. They want to overturn the latest bad court decisions and limit donations but that just leaves the door open for future corruption and the same old mess. The Amendment must simply spell out full and total public financed campaigns and no private money at all. Not your own money either. Every candidate will be on equal footing with a specific amount of $$ and nothing more.
The closest you’ll probably ever get to that solution for the next 15 years is Bernie Sanders.
I couldn’t agree more, Randy. Unfortunately I think the 1% lobby is even more unassailable than the NRA.
Yes. Will say just one more thing and then shut up. As Adam says above, there are only two ways to get to the Amendment. One has never been tried and the other is hard. I think it has to be the people thing, demanding action by the congress or else. Even with all the new methods of communication it would be very hard but…unless we in the U.S. get money out of our politics, we are done. The lobbies, which is big business has bought our representatives so voting is a joke. That means the system is broken totally. The kind of public money I’m talking about means no private money at all. Trump could not use one penny of his money and no outside money at all. Just what the tax payers give to each candidate. K Street would be wiped out.
I actually prefer the British system, whereby each candidate for MP is limited to a set amount for campaigning (last I knew 1000 pounds, though that was some time ago).
Here, the problem would be not the Second Amendment, but the First.
Imagine there’s no handguns
It’s easy if you try.
Guns don’t get killed- people do.
It seems to me the NRA’s implicit message is “Guns are good, therefore any restriction on their ownership is bad”. Which they couple with a paranoid ‘thin edge of the wedge’ argument.
Surely any responsible gun owner, like a licensed driver, should be in favour of limiting gun ownership to people who have demonstrated their competence and worthiness to own a gun (which of course everybody feels they are). Sensible gun laws are not a threat to them.
Howcome the NRA has been able to shift the grounds of argument to their own insane ground?
cr
They worked at it, without serious opposition, for 30+ years.
I remember the last time a Clinton challenged the NRA and passed a comprehensive gun control law. The Brady Bill (a.k.a. the assault weapons ban: AWB) may have cost the democrats control of congress and the rise of Newt Gingrich and people of his ilk. When Bill Clinton became president, the dems had controlled congress for decades, but after the AWB, they lost control of congress for more than a decade. Except for a few years of democratic control in the 2000s, congress has been a GOP institution since.
True power is in congress (as it should be in a representative democracy), the president has less power than we think. And any attempts by a Democratic president to curtail gun rights will lead people to vote more GOPs into office. Both Clinton and Obama had a tough time getting anything done when they face a GOP congress, imagine if Clinton or Sanders were to fight the NRA, we could end up with the GOP having a 2/3 majority. And no bill will ever pass or a liberal judge be appointed to the SCOTUS. It is a recipe for failure.
We shall see if indeed the dems can really effectively challenge the NRA. I am a progressive but I am also a gun owner (but not an NRA member). I will support the NRA because the other side is much too gun-grabby for my taste.
“curtail gun rights will lead people to vote more GOPs into office.”
All of this assumes that public opinion is immutable. Do you seriously suggest that the country surrender government to the NRA?
Public opinion can be changed, but it does require that people stand up and make a case that it should change. Risky? Absolutely.
I’m a gun owner too, but I’d happily surrender it, if necessary, in exchange for comprehensive national gun control laws.
Public opinion can change. When Sandy Hook happened, support for gun control jumped to 90%, but it went down to 40% shortly after. Gun control has no real staying power with the electorate.
The NRA only has sway on gun issues. They make no pronouncements on the economy, climate change, LGBTQ issues, etc. It’s a silly argument really. It’s like saying we’re surrendering the government to the ACLU whenever we support candidates that are pro-civil rights and may be card-carrying members.
As for your personal situation, you can surrender your guns even without a new law. What’s stopping you? If you have the courage of your conviction, you will do so without prodding by the government.
“If you have the courage of your conviction, you will do so without prodding by the government.”
I’m startled whenever someone advances this suggestion, because it’s such a non sequitur. Perhaps the temptation to accuse someone of hypocrisy is too tempting to pass up?
My conviction is that we need to pull millions of guns from circulation, not that it’s wrong or immoral for any one person in particular to own a gun.
“It’s like saying we’re surrendering the government to the ACLU whenever we support candidates that are pro-civil rights”
No, it’s not like that. For you to construct an analogous argument, you’d have to speak of say, white supremacists surrendering to the ACLU.
Yet you are still clinging to your gun.You only have the courage of your conviction if it is convenient, which is not real courage. You said you would surrender your own guns if the government enacts national gun control, read your own post, so what is stopping you from preempting the government and surrendering it beforehand? Do you support LGBT rights only after the SCOTUS ruled for gay marriage? Isn’t that hypocrisy? It is laughable that you would then come up with that retort you just did.
My analogy is apt. The government is generally supportive of some of the positions of the ACLU. Is the government surrendering to the ACLU? Again, you are introducing red herrings.
And until you surrender your guns to a government buyback program, you have shown your hypocrisy, and I will no longer continue this conversation.
Conviction without courage, is that the fashion with slacktivists?
“so what is stopping you from preempting the government and surrendering it beforehand?”
This is a very silly line of reasoning. There is no value in getting rid of my gun; there is value in getting rid of millions of guns.
Speaking of red herrings, you’ve moved this from a public policy discussion to a personal one. I’m disengaging.
Yes that is a complete red herring by Dan. It would only apply to you, Scott, if there was some significant gain to be accomplished by your surrendering your gun. Say if there was a national campaign with some political traction to hand in guns, something like that. Otherwise such a gesture would represent a cost to you (I presume you don’t really wish to surrender your gun right at the moment) for zero return; it would be pointless.
cr
LOL! This argument is so asinine that it only deserves a LOL.
The same arguments were made about “no smoking” laws in Canada. Many restaurants and bars were OK with the idea BUT only if all their competition were forced to follow suit.
The ANTI-“No Smoking” lobby would say – “Nothing is stopping you from going smoke-free already, so why do you want the government to force other businesses to go smoke free?”
Obviously, even a bar owner who hated smoking, might go out of business or suffer a financial loss, if they stuck their neck out and went “no smoking” before an across the board mandated “No Smoking” law.
Passing laws that are both beneficial for society as a whole and that balance the game is part of what governments are FOR.
I hear this a lot about taxes too: “If you think the government needs more money, nothing is stopping you from sending them some.”
Of course, the same can be said of any government function. “If you want to fight the Nazis and Japan, nothing is stopping you from buying a plane ticket and a gun and going over there”. Basically it’s an argument against government, period. Which is just a LOL.
“All of this assumes that public opinion is immutable.”
And this is the important point. While I’m delighted with Clinton’s stand, I see it more as that of the canny politician who senses the time is finally right than as a brave stand against implacable tradition.
Yeah, she’s pretty cautious, just as Obama was on the gay marriage thing. Of course, there’s really not much she can do about it as President. It will be interesting to see how much air time it gets after she gets the nomination. Dems have an Etch-a-sketch too.
😀
I suspect, though, that the Republican opponent will hardly allow her (should she prevail) to avoid the issue. Would be great if such a conversation would bestir more Dems to go to the polls.
True. It would be interesting to see what the polls would say about gun rights if people thought there was a real possibility that something could succeed.
I do wonder, though, what’s legally possible now, given the last SC rulings on the subject. Assault rifle bans and gun show loophole closing seem like futile gestures.
I see I’m conversing with as great a pessimist as I am…
😉
They lost after Clinton seriously tackled the deficit and raised some taxes. It wasn’t the AWB.
Ironically, he also balanced the budget a few years later.
The Brady Bill did a lot more than just enact background checks though, and Bernie Sanders’ actual reason for voting against it, according to him, was not his representation of Vermont but the unpalatable riders he said had been attached to the bill. I’m not sure of the details, though. Reading a summary of the bill, it sounds reasonable to me, but I haven’t read the full text.
People also criticize him for voting against liability for gun manufacturers and gun shops in the case that a gun is used to commit a crime. His vote in that case seems completely reasonable to me. Why should a gun manufacturer should be held liable for what a person does with a gun? (There are already laws against selling to known or suspected criminals.) It’s not fair to hold them liable, and it’s out of line with both common sense and liability law in other areas. You can’t hold an auto manufacturer liable for a person’s bad driving, etc.
It’s a complicated story, but the upshot is that manufacturers knew they were shipping arms in numbers out of all proportion to demand, knowing that many illegal and straw sales were going on. They knew the guns had to be getting into otherwise-illegal hands, and built and shipped them anyway. They were far from innocent.
I’m sure gun manufacturers are aware that a percentage of them will be used in crime, just as blank CD/DVD manufacturers are aware that some percentage of them will be used for copyright infringement. But unless they have knowledge about the intentions of a specific buyer, there’s no reason to hold the manufacturer accountable for what that buyer does. (There are already laws against negligent gun sales when there is reason to suspect a buyer.)
A simple example. You are a gun manufacturer. You know how many of your guns go to what outlets. One store, you know, based on sales records, demographics, licensing, etc., will likely sell, if lucky, about 100 of your guns. They order a 1,000. They sell them.
You don’t know something’s up? This is how ATF and the cops made cases against gun stores. There was simply no way those stores were selling that many guns to legal purchasers.
AIUI just from the Dem debate, the reason Clinton et al. opposed the liability rule is because no other industry has that. Manufacture a ladder, you can get sued if someone uses it incorrcctly or dangerously. Manufacture a car, same thing. Manufacture anything but a gun, same thing. Manufacture a gun, and you are immune from suit. This seems fundamentally unfair and unequal.
Now, we can argue the pros and cons of not being able to sue a manufacturer for some individual citizens’ reckless use of their product. But I hope we can agree that there is no good reason to single out one particular industry and give it extra special bonus protection against civil suits.
“Manufacture a car, same thing. ”
Huh? There are tens of thousands of auto deaths in America every year, and hundreds of thousands of fender-benders. Where are all of these lawsuits against GM you suggest are happening?
GM is only sued if their car has a defect. If I ram someone with my Buick they don’t sue GM.
You *CAN* sue them. Whether you are successful or not is another question, but you can have your day in court if you really want it. That’s the issue; whether you can have your day in court. Not whether you will be successful – that depends on the particulars of every case.
I don’t see any reason why the gun manufacturing industry should be the sole exception to generally applied law. Either protect legally immunize none or legally immunize them all.
I’ve always thought it quite inconsistent for a victim of a shooting to sue the gun maker.
Most of these product-liability suits are because of an alleged defect in the product. The car’s electronic throttle jammed open or similar.
I would have thought the only valid suit against a gun manufacturer would be by the user if it jammed or the barrel blew up or something. It’s not a defect in the gun if it kills the victim, it’s supposed to do that. That proves it’s working properly. If the thing was sold legally by the manufacturer, I don’t see he can be liable for its misuse further down the line.
(Similarly some of those suits against auto makers for not having built in some safety feature that only became current later, seem to me to be unfounded).
Equally, I don’t think the manufacturer of a ladder should be able to be sued if someone misuses it. I do agree the gun industry shouldn’t be privileged with special exemption in this regard.
Where it should be held liable, and trampled on with big boots, is when it tries to increase its market by creating public paranoia and meddling in politics, or where it knows its products are going to be used illegally and sells them anyway. All of which the gun industry is guilty of up to its neck.
cr
But I’d being willing to bet that if a 14 year old unlicensed kid walked into a Buick dealer, plunked down $30,000 in cash and then proceeded to run down several pedestrians, there’d minimally be a trial, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Buick were found negligent.
Asking a business to ensure that they are selling their product (especially products that are dangerous or can be misused) to people who understand how to use the product competently seems reasonable. Gun dealers have no such obligation.
Why would Buick be found negligent (unless they owned the dealership)?
An analogy would be a pharmacy selling prescription drugs to random buyers. Would the pharmacist or the drug manufacturer be liable?
Really it’s only the person at point-of-sale who has any control over who it’s sold to.
And I agree gun dealers should have that obligation.
cr
In the United States at least, that would be because of vicarious liability.
The same principle applies to a scenario where say a pizza delivery man arrives at your house and robs you. You can be damned sure that the company will get sued for that.
I will clarify my point though that my previous scenario was assuming Buick owned the dealership. Were it an independent dealer, they would certainly be sued if an employee sold a car to an unlicensed driver and I’m guessing it would be upheld. Likely, the manufacturer wouldn’t be held liable in a scenario like that since they’ve already sold the vehicles to a distributor.
We have often discussed how a more equitable state with better healthcare and less poverty will lead to lower religiosity in the USA as it has in other countries. It will also lead to lower crime rates (people commit less crime when they have enough to eat and a place to stay). After which continued tightening of gun laws will face less opposition as people cease to feel that they need the sort of self defense a gun represents.
“more equitable state with better healthcare and less poverty”
If taken far enough there might not be a need or any gun control laws.
Isn’t something like that what is going on with Vermont and Switzerland, the gun-dense places that gun nuts always want us to look at, but not too closely!
Crime has been dropping dramatically for years, despite the lack of health care reform or significant inroads on poverty. The spread of weapons is due to political gamesmanship that simultaneously promotes widespread paranoia about government and “the Other” (in this case, immigrants). It is not due to poverty or soaring crime rates. It is due to a false sense of insecurity.
+1
Paranoia. The GOP has been captured by it.
True, the news media revel in creating a false sense of danger. The western world is a very safe place.
To clarify the situation in the UK: the ownership of hunting rifles and shotguns is legal, provided that one has a licence. This may be granted on broadly three conditions: a genuine reason for having a gun (hobbies included), a check that one is a fit and proper person, and the provision of sufficiently secure storage for the gun and ammunition. Police checks are rigorous. Handguns are banned, except for a couple of very minor and specific exceptions.
As for that NRA argument “where guns are banned, only criminals have guns”, the penalties for mere illegal possession of a gun, let alone the use of a gun in furtherance of another crime, are so severe that even “professional” criminals rarely carry guns.
Which means that most police don’t carry guns, which means that you are much less likely to be shot by the police.
We the people of the United Sates… the constitution is the highest law of the US, the president has sworn an oath to the constitution, to protect and defend it. The president is specifically excluded by the constitution in the process of amending the constitution. He is to have no part in it. He is not allowed to alter, modify, or interpret the constitution. Congress, only, has the power to suggest amendments. It is the states and the people who amend the constitution.
Actually presidents are to follow the will of the people. The president is an elected administrator; he is not the king, not the ruler and certainly not the leader of this country. The leader of the country has always been the people. It is the will of the people that rule this country through the constitution.
The 2008 election was won by 7 percentage points. The 2012 election was won by 4 percentage points. The 2000 election was won by a negative one half percentage point and 5 Electoral votes.
Gallup’s polling in 2010 that found that 31% of Americans identified as Democrats (tying a 22-year low), 29% as Republicans, and 38% as independents. The next election is truly on “a knifes edge”.
In 1980, the NRA climbed in bed with Ronald Reagan, by doing so it lost 1/3 of its membership, gun owning democrats. I was one of those gun owning democrats. One million members resigned or did not renew their membership.
Forty-seven percent of American adults currently report that they have a gun in their home or elsewhere on their property. 40% of democrats say they have a gun in the home. (Gallup 2011) The Democratic Party need to come to terms that a far larger percentage of democrats own guns than the party wants to believe.
The British style gun control may reduce homicides by guns but it has not reduced the overall homicide rate. In 1900 the reported homicide rate was about 1 per 100,000 this was before there was any gun restriction, the current reported homicide with all the gun control in place is about 1 per 100,000. Has British style gun control reduced Britons homicide rate? No.
As for the rest of crime control in Briton, you might want to read this http://www.theftprotect.co.uk/library/justice/Crime%20Of%20The%20Century%20A%20Chilling%20Look2011.pdf
“We count and report crimes based on initial data. The Brits count and report crimes based on the outcome of the investigation and trial.” I went to the British Home Office web site to confirm this and there it was. They double book, one for potential crimes and one for convicted crimes. “In the US, the count of people murdered kept by the FBI is pretty darned straightforward. Got a body, not natural causes, not suicide? Must be murder of one sort or another. Count it.” That’s a difference! If we counted murder the exact way the Brits count murder, our murder rate involving guns is 1.43 per 100,000. Check the facts yourself, percent of murders not solved about 62%, conviction rate for murders brought to trial about 50%. That results in about 19% of all murders end in a conviction.
In doing my research I found another anomaly: Briton is a modern developed industrial country with good health care just like us, but their death rate is 9.34 per 1,000 (ranked at 60), our death rate is 8.15 per 1,000 (ranked at 93).
I have looked at some of those studies and some of the studies you didn’t mention, and have found problems with them. The JAMA reported study, you know the one that said “90% of America wants expanded background checks”, I ask you, when has 90% of Americans agreed on anything? Even after 9-11, we didn’t get 90% of America to display the flag. I down loaded and read the study and found they selected their data. In other words, a non-randomized design.
The 4 studies you linked to all have one name in common David Hemenway Ph.D., Professor of Health Policy. He has a very public prejudice against the public’s possession of guns. This would imply a high possibility for researcher bias.
1. “Where there are more guns there is more homicide (literature review).” The question I have: who chose the literature to be reviewed?
2. “Across high-income nations, more guns = more homicide.” Cherry picking years and demographics to reach a desired conclusion doesn’t equal a trustworthy study. omitted-variable bias.
3. “Across states, more guns = more homicide” Quoted from the study: “At the state level, published data on reported household gun ownership are available for only a nonrandom sample of 21 states.” The proxy used is also a problem as we both know correlation does not necessarily equal causality.
4. “Across states, more guns = more homicide (2)” my understanding this study used Dr. Lott data, but the data was re-coded to show different results.
How much veracity would you give a study on the sociological implications of coding abnormalities of chromosome position Xq28 conducted by a PhD in accounting? Dr Hemenway is not a psychologist, not a sociologist, and not a criminologist. Dr Hemenway is an economist.
Hemenway, “How to find nothing”, Journal of Public Health Policy (2009) 30, 260–268: “A common axiom in social science research is that a test that fails to reject the null hypothesis should not automatically lead the researchers to accept the null hypothesis.” In all my study of psychology, and my 6 years working at the university as a psychometrist, I have never heard this axiom.
Hemenway, ibid “Hypothesis testing can be misused and misinterpreted in various ways. It is, for example, possible to reach an incorrect conclusion, such as finding an effect that is not actually there (for example, incorrectly rejecting the null hypothesis) because of problems of design, measurement, modeling, and so on. This paper discusses the opposite problem – not finding an actual effect, and worse, then claiming that not being able to reject the null hypothesis shows there is no effect.” (type 1 and type 2 errors in stats.) Is this possible in 1, 2, or even 3 studies? Sure, there is always the possibility, but what is the probability of these types of errors occurring in 51 studies conducted by independent researchers? 1994 Clinton requested CDC research of 51 studies could not find sufficient evidence that US gun control laws were effective.
“Britain” : a nation, i.e. the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
“Briton” : an individual, an inhabitant of Britain
sorry, typo/auto correct I was referring to England and Wales
Regardless, I am not quite sure what your point is, unless it is “there is still violence and murder in Britain, despite their strict gun control, therefore we must have as many guns as we want in America”. That seems a non-sequitur to me.
Nevertheless, in the UK, we do not have thirty thousand gunshot deaths (whether violent, accidental or suicidal) per year; we do not have mass shootings (“mass” defined as four or more people injured or killed) happening almost every day; we do not have the police (except in one or two highly controversial incidents) shooting down unarmed men on the streets; we do not have five-year-old boys killing their two-year-old sisters with rifles given to them by their parents on their fourth birthdays; nor do we have six-year-old boys killing their three-year-old brothers with loaded revolvers that they have found on top of the refrigerator.
Here mere possession of a prohibited firearm (which includes virtually all handguns) results in a ten-year prison sentence; for manufacture, sale or transfer of such it is life imprisonment. Guns are rare.
Yet in America (where in most states one can apparently not drink a beer until the age of twenty-one) “responsible” parents put lethal weapons into the hands of children too young even to be able to tell the time.
But I do not believe you will ever solve your gun problems in America, nor do I think that our model would help you: you have a gun culture, we do not.
The point seems to have gone over your head, so I will spell it out for you. Your homicide rate has not appreciably changed (hovered around 1 per 100,000) for 115 years despite all your gun control laws and the removal of most guns from your country. That would suggest to anyone who actually looks at the facts that all your anti-gun/gun control laws have been and are ineffectual, impotent, futile, and not worth a damn. For your non-sequitur, understand this: We Americans don’t give a rat’s ass if you have guns or not! What we do care about, is constantly being compared to a country that cheats on its statistics. We consider it hypocritical.
You have a greater death rate than we do. Why is that? I mean, with all the shootings, all the violence, all the suicides, the cops killing an average of a 1000 people/year, all the drugs and the gangs, we should have a much higher (at least 4 times by your country’s statistics) over all death rate. Why don’t we? That not a rhetorical question. Why Don’t We?
According to the CDC the number of children killed accidentally with guns, in 2011, younger than age 13 was 51. A friend, earlier this month was trying to prove that more preschoolers get “shot dead each year (82 in 2013) than police officers are in the line of duty (27 in 2013”, I thought his number was a little high, but I went with it and ran the statistics with another comparison, preschoolers, children under the age of 5, and backyard swimming pools. Backyard swimming pools accidentally kill an average of 257 preschoolers every year (same CDC stats). if you compare the number of households that have guns to the number of households with swimming pools by their death rates:
1 death (under the age of 5) per 33,074 households with pools
1 death (under the age of 5) per 625,000 households with guns
1 death (under the age of 5) per 4,500,000 guns in the general population
the chances of a preschooler drowning in a backyard pool is 19 times higher than accidentally being killed with a bullet in a household with a gun and 136 times higher than accidentally being killed with a gun in general.
Yes, I find it curious how your laws work. Here is an example:
“Kathleen Woodward, 64, reported the loss of the vintage pistol after her home was ransacked by a thief who escaped with the gun along with other stolen property.
But while he ended up being jailed for just six months, Mrs Woodward could be sentenced to five years for possession of the firearm.
Mrs Woodward, whose late husband was a gun collector, returned to the house to find it ransacked and when she reported the theft immediately told police that among the property stolen was a handgun which sparked a major operation to find the weapon.
The thief who stole the gun which was inside a cash box, Guy Whitelaw, was later jailed for five years after admitting illegal possession of the prohibited weapon, although his sentence was quashed on appeal.
Parliament has laid down that a minimum of five years imprisonment be imposed for such an offence, unless exceptional circumstances can be shown. Whitelaw (29) later had his jail term cut to six months resulting in his immediate release.”
Here is the link if your interested: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9086833/Widow-faces-jail-for-possession-of-late-husbands-illegal-pistol-after-it-was-stolen-during-burglary.html
I will say, crime sure does pay for the career criminals in your country, 6 months for B&E, grand theft and position of a firearm with ammunition. If you want, we can send you a whole lot of them (criminals), I’m sure they would just Love England.
I’s not exactly true, yes a parent can put a “lethal weapons into the hands of” a child, to teach the child safe gun handling, so that accidents don’t happen, and how to properly use a gun, if the need should ever arise. It also alleviates the curiosity and “forbidden fruit” aspect about guns. But children under the age of 18 cannot buy or own a gun; in some states, must have permission from their parents in writing to use a gun, and they cannot buy a handgun until age 21.
We put our daughter in swimming when she was 2, to prevent drowning, I put her in martial arts when she turned 4, and started teaching her Kenjutsu before she was 5. Her kindergarten teacher remarked that she was the only kid in the class that would “sit on the carpet and listen” and wondered how we accomplished it. When she went across country on the 8th grade east coast trip, I taught her Dim Mak strikes before she went. In other words, I didn’t have to worry about her.
Just an FYI, a parent can serve any alcoholic beverage to their child in their home at any age, the child cannot buy it until they are 21 in most states.
About a third to a half of America doesn’t believe we have a “gun problem” we believe we have a self discipline and a violence problem. If we can solve that the “gun problem” will evaporate on its own.
I do not know why the UK’s death rate (from all causes, note, not just violence) is some 15% higher than the US’s, but there are many factors involved, and I don’t have the time to track down and compare all of them (e.g. differential survival rates for ovarian cancer against deaths from falling down stairs).
But according to UN figures (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate) the intentional homicide rate in the USA is 4.7 per 100,000 per year, as opposed to 1.0 for the UK; and according to
http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/cause-of-death/violence/by-country/ the death rate by violence is 5.56 for the USA as opposed to 0.63 for the UK.
So why are you Yanks five times more likely to kill each other than we Brits? That’s not a rhetorical question. Why Are You? Could it perhaps be the easy availability of tools designed specifically for killing?
—
‘a parent can put a “lethal weapons into the hands of” a child, to teach the child safe gun handling, so that accidents don’t happen’
Yes, that really worked well here, didn’t it?
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/01/us/kentucky-accidential-shooting/
As opposed to not giving a four-year old a rifle, I suppose.
“and how to properly use a gun, if the need should ever arise.”
Again, this is where we differ: in this country we do not consider there to be a *need* for guns (apart from shotguns or rifles for farmers or hunters) – I can not imagine any even remotely-likely situation in which I would benefit from the possession of a gun and the ability to shoot someone. And if we are swapping personal anecdotes as evidence, well, in 2006 I got home one evening to find my house had been burgled – it seems most likely that it was kids, as all they took were two (replica – not sharp, not weapons) swords which were souvenirs of a business trip to Japan. If I had been there, with a gun, would I have shot them? Blown them away, like ‘Dirty Harry’ on the streets of San Francisco? Don’t be silly. The loss of the souvenirs was annoying, but hardly worth killing someone over. Would you kill kids for breaking into your house? Does human life really mean so little to you that you would point a gun at someone and actually squeeze the trigger? If not, what’s the point of having the gun?
—
As for the Woodward case, yes, that appears strange – but then judges and courts are human, and can make bad decisions, just like anyone else. You do not think that the American justice system is perfect either, do you? There has never been even one case of a American criminal getting off lightly?
—
“When she went across country on the 8th grade east coast trip, I taught her Dim Mak strikes before she went.”
It must be terrible to live in this paranoid world of fear where you think that every stranger is your enemy and that you and your children need guns and martial arts to defend yourselves. I remember a school trip to Holland when I was young, and my parents felt no need to teach me lethal blows before I went – nor did I need them while I was there.
Is your country really that dangerous – or is it just a perceived risk that does not correspond to reality?
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“About a third to a half of America doesn’t believe we have a “gun problem” we believe we have a self discipline and a violence problem”
Just as an alcoholic does not believe that he has a drink problem. But what do the other half to two-thirds believe?
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You also have a problem with the use of guns by the police.
From The Economist (http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/08/armed-police):
“In 2012, according to data compiled by the FBI, 410 Americans were “justifiably” killed by police — 409 with guns. That figure may well be an underestimate. Not only is it limited to the number of people who were shot while committing a crime, but also reporting the data is voluntary.
In 2013, in total, British police officers actually fired their weapons three times. The number of people fatally shot was zero. In 2012 the figure was just one. Even after adjusting for the smaller size of Britain’s population, British citizens are around 100 times less likely to be shot by a police officer than Americans. Between 2010 and 2014 the police force of one small American city, Albuquerque in New Mexico, shot and killed 23 civilians; seven times more than the number of Brits killed by all of England and Wales’s 43 forces during the same period.”
A telling comment from that site:
“UK police are trained to de-escalate, to intervene and resolve, to sort things out. US police are trained to round everyone up and haul them away for later questioning, intervention etc. In the UK thus we see more calming at an incident; in the US, more provocation. I have seen UK police literally say, “Hello, hello, what do we have here” and US police say, “Everyone, hands out where I can see them; down on the ground with your arms outstretched in front of you.” Violence, access to firearms etc all yes – but the policing approaches are significant contributors.”
Oh, and the two police officers who attended my burglary advised me to install a burglar alarm and window blinds – not (even “off the record”) to get weapons.
—
By the way, I am not claiming that things are perfect in the UK: we do have a problem with knives amongst youths – but at least knives are far less lethal than guns, we do recognize it as a problem, and we take action to reduce it (e.g. educational programmes in schools, knife amnesties, targeted stop-and-search).
And here’s how UK police deal with assailants with knives:
http://thedailybanter.com/2014/08/uk-police-stop-someone-knife/
Zero fatalities.
—
Regretfully, I must decline your kind offer of a “whole lot” of your criminals. I would rather put up with a very occasional burglary by an unarmed British criminal than have an influx of American ones who think that carrying lethal weapons is normal. But thank you all the same, it was a generous gesture.
“Yes, that really worked well here, didn’t it?
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/01/us/kentucky-accidential-shooting/ ”
From that link:
“Riddle said she is devastated, but comforted knowing that her [2-year-old] granddaughter is in a better place.
“It was God’s will. It was her time to go, I guess,” she told WLEX. “I just know she’s in heaven right now and I know she’s in good hands with the Lord.”
So that’s all right, then.
cr
And the fact that Jesus didn’t bother to call 9-1-1 during this shooting either confirms it all the more…
You might want to re-examine your sources data, death rate by violence and ask yourself, does it or does it not include homicide. We yanks include homicide as our death rate by violence; in fact, someone who dies by violence is a homicide. I’m guessing you Brits don’t?
So why are we 4.7 times more likely to kill each other? On the whole we are not.
First when we find a body and it’s not a natural death, not suicide we call it a homicide right then and there. You guys book it as a potential homicide and only book it as a homicide when you have a conviction. If you never get a conviction it never gets booked as a homicide. That difference between us elevates our rate and depresses your rate, as I said before if we treated our homicides exactly the same as yours our rate would be around 1.43 per 100,000, still, higher than your reported rate.
We also have some 33,000 gangs in the US. We have the bloods, the crips, latin kings, sureños, american mafia, aryan nations, mexican mafia, KKK, just to name a few of the major players, most are split along racial lines and they like to battle and kill each other over turf wars. Everyone knows the cops don’t care about these killings, it’s just reducing the rank of the killers, druggies and other criminals. These gangs congregate in areas like Detroit, Chicago, LA, New York, Oakland, areas that have the most gun restrictions, where their targets are easy victims.
Areas that have high legal gun ownership have low crime and homicide rates. This town is part of Atlanta metro: http://www.wnd.com/2007/04/41196/ 90 to 95% of the households have a gun.
Jerry considers my post to long, so here is a piece
“Yes, that really worked well here, didn’t it?”
Life is not perfect. Drown proofing doesn’t mean a kid can’t still drown, it just reduces the chances. These parents did a poor job of supervising and teaching gun safety. Personally the mother should be charged with negligent homicide for leaving a child that age unsupervised. When I was teaching my daughter how to handle knives, she was never unsupervised.
Do an image Google on Eddie Eagle. https://www.google.com/search?q=eddie+eagle&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0CDUQsARqFQoTCPz81tz61MgCFYQ3iAod038KTQ&biw=1280&bih=638
Then look up who developed and promotes it.
Here is the opposite situation of an 11 year old defending his 7 year old sister from a home invation.
http://freedomoutpost.com/2015/09/11-year-old-protects-sister-shoots-kills-home-invader/
In what sense did they “climb in bed with Reagan”? Do you agree with the NRA’s positions? If so, why would you break with them? If not, what positions the NRA takes do you disagree with?
“climb in bed with Reagan” is a colloquialism. in 1980 the NRA publicly endorsed a candidate for president, Reagan. It was the first time the NRA had done this. Sure the NRA had ranked candidates before but it had never endorsed one. I experienced what Reagan did to Calif. during his governorship, and, adamantly, did not support him.
For the most part, I agree with the NRA position on guns. I do not agree with the right wing politics and religiosity that has invaded the NRA. I also do not agree with the left wing politics that has invaded the Democratic Party.
I cannot be bothered to respond to such a mass of misinformation, heavily based on what is clearly a biased source. However, I will point out one of your abuses of statistics, as I suspect that it sets a standard by which to judge the rest of your rant.
Prior to the abolition of the death penalty for murder, cases of unlawful killing in which there were mitigating circumstances tended to be prosecuted as manslaughter, because of the risk that a sympathetic jury would refuse to find the accused guilty of a capital offence. With the abolition of the death penalty, the murder rate promptly doubled, with the increase entirely caused by all murders now being properly prosecuted. Your comparison of murder rates before and after is not, therefore, comparing like with like. The rate before abolition should be approximately doubled to be fair.
The death penalty is not really an issue in this state. Yes we do have it, but it hasn’t been used in years and has been declared unconstitutional by a federal circuit court.
There has been no doubling of our conviction rate. Our process for jury selection minimizes the probability for an anti-death penalty jury. For capital or serious cased we have a two part trial. We have determination of guilt phase and a sentencing phase. If a not guilty verdict is given, the trial is over. If a guilty verdict is given, the jury is generally dismissed and a new jury is selected for the penalty phase. I have served on the determination phase, and have managed to avoid the penalty phase. We also can determine a reduced level of guilt, from 1st degree with special circumstances down to involuntary manslaughter, all considered a homicide conviction.
I don’t know how the UK selects a jury, but this is a quick synopsis for this state:
“You and others called for jury duty will be taken into a courtroom. Names will be randomly drawn to take a seat in the jury box. Those not called will remain in the hallway or courtroom.” Depending the number called(about 150+).
“The judge will state the names of the parties in the case, the names of the lawyers who will represent them, and describe what the case is about.”
“Next the judge and the attorneys will question each of the people in the jury box to find out if you can be fair and impartial in the case.” The judge may excuse a potential juror at any time for any reason at this point.
“One of the attorneys may ‘challenge you for cause.’ This means that the attorney will ask the judge to excuse you from the jury for a specific legal reason. Each lawyer has an unlimited number of challenges for cause.” I have been challenged for cause more than once, psych. training, law enforcement involvement/ probation dept., family, victim of a crime, prior membership in NRA, and gun owner.
“Each attorney also has the right to a certain number of peremptory challenges. That is, the attorney may ask that you be excused without giving any reason at all. The lawyer is merely exercising a right given by law.”
“Regardless of whether or not you are selected, you are asked NOT to discuss the case outside of the courtroom.”
Personally, I really don’t care what you wish to believe.
“We lose 90 people a day to gun violence”
How many of the people shooting the 90 people per day are registered and law-abiding gun owners (NRA members)?
The NRA is used as this bogeyman, when the vast majority of gun deaths in the country are done by illegally obtained guns and by criminals who dont care about democratic ‘gun control’.
Sam Harris has a very good and balanced piece on gun ownership and policy on his website that doesnt go for the democrat/socialist NRA bogeyman scare tactic.
I like Sam’s article, it’s one of my favorite takes on the subject; however, what he’s proposing (licensing with stringency akin to getting a pilot’s license) would place him in stark opposition to the NRA.
“How many of the people shooting the 90 people per day are registered and law-abiding gun owners (NRA members)?”
I would say practically 0 (none)
I think the problem with this debate is that the pro-gun lobby (and by this I mean the contingent of people who are for absolutely no gun restrictions) manages to frame the proposition for any gun control at all to be the hysterical ramblings of delusional people. You’ll see comments like, “Look, Georgia just instituted open carry in churches, there’s no wild west shootouts going on, “Texas just approved concealed carry on campus, there’s no mass shootings or maniacs running around committing multiple homicides…”
It is always framed as a hysteria that such things as uncontrolled shootouts, mass shootings, or just run of the mill single homicides will now be very likely. The problem is, that even taking Clinton’s 90 people a day at face value, the odds of being shot is far from anything approaching likely, never mind very likely. 90 people out of 300,000,000 is a 1 in 3.333 million chance and that chance is quite a bit lower for many demographics. Even taken over an average 75 year lifespan, that amounts to a 1 in 122 risk of dying by gunshot. What we’re proposing is a way to reduce something that’s 1 in 3 million down to something that’s maybe 1 in 300 million or less (ideally 0, though that is highly unlikely to ever occur). So we’re talking a change that you can measure in orders of magnitude but we’re dealing with very small odds to begin with on an individual basis.
It is true that there are no cases of wild west type shootouts due to a large portion of the population being armed when a shooter opens fire and this simply underscores the points above. The odds of this happening are not high even if you arm everyone, but they are orders of magnitude higher than they would be if we attempted to prevent crazy people from having guns and infinitely higher than they are in a place where not enough people have access to guns to make such a thing happen in the first place. People are very bad at math and risk assessment to begin with and they’re even worse when it comes to applying their anecdotal experience to population risk. I think this entire argument also applies to transportation safety in the United States where we also are woefully behind Europe in terms of being injured or killed while traveling.
For Europeans it is a incomprehensible that a civilized nation like the US can have
such primitive standpoints when it comes to gun control. Bernie Sanders’ voters
in Vermont must be able to distinguish between guns used for hunting and guns used
for other reasons. Can he?
Illegal guns are a problem everywhere, at least having them and using them is punishable
by law.
Mona Eliasson
Uppsala, Swden
________________________________ Från: Why Evolution Is True Skickat: den 18 oktober 2015 21:00 Till: Mona Eliasson Ämne: [New post] Democrats go for gun control
whyevolutionistrue posted: “Bernie Sanders has a lot of things going for him, but one of them is not gun control. He’s historically tiptoed around that issue, voting against the Brady Bill and background checks. (His excuse is that he was elected to represent the gun-loving people o”