My loathing of private gun ownership, of the laxity of American gun regulations, and of the NRA is no secret, but when I call for the virtual abolition of private gun ownership in the US (hunting for necessity and target shooting are possible exceptions), I get pushback. “We need to defend ourselves against the bad guys,” say the dissenters. “Given the prevalence of weapons in the U.S.,” they add, “we’re safer if we’re allowed to have our guns.”
Well, we can see how often this kind of justifiable self-defense really occurs, for it’s one of the main justifications for “concealed carry” permits in the US—including a new law allowing concealed carry on Texas college campuses. But, according to several reports, justifiable self defense is extremely rare, whether or not the weapon is concealed. A New York Times op-ed today, “The concealed-carry fantasy,” gives statistics from a new report. The Times summarizes the data:
The more that sensational gun violence afflicts the nation, the more that the myth of the vigilant citizen packing a legally permitted concealed weapon, fully prepared to stop the next mass shooter in his tracks, is promoted.
This foolhardy notion of quick-draw resistance, however, is dramatically contradicted by a research projectshowing that, since 2007, at least 763 people have been killed in 579 shootings that did not involve self-defense. Tellingly, the vast majority of these concealed-carry, licensed shooters killed themselves or others rather than taking down a perpetrator.
The death toll includes 29 masskillings of three or more people by concealed carry shooters who took 139 lives; 17 police officers shot to death, and — in the ultimate contradiction of concealed carry as a personal safety factor — 223 suicides. Compared with the 579 non-self-defense, concealed-carry shootings, there were only 21 cases in which self-defense was determined to be a factor.
And yet:
. . . A Gallup poll this month found 56 percent of Americans said the nation would be safer if more people carried concealed weapons.
In other words, American’s assertion of concealed-carry as an assurance of safety is a fantasy: it’s security theater. The proportion of killings via concealed carry that involve justifiable self-defense is just 3.6%. The other 96.4% of killings were either murders, suicides, or mistakes. That means that over 96% of the time, concealed carry leads not to the aims used to justify it, but to tragedies. And remember, these are not illegal guns, but guns properly licensed for concealed carry. Overall, the policy leads to far more deaths of innocent people than of criminals.
The study cited by the Times is from The Violence Policy Center (free pdf), which includes not just concealed-carry deaths, but all deaths from handguns. Here’s part of its summary:
Guns are rarely used to kill criminals or stop crimes.
In 2012, across the nation there were only 259 justifiable homicides involving a private citizen using a firearm reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program as detailed in its Supplementary Homicide Report (SHR). That same year, there were 8,342 criminal gun homicides tallied in the SHR. In 2012, for every justifiable homicide in the United States involving a gun, guns were used in 32 criminal homicides. 3 And this ratio, of course, does not take into account the tens of thousands of lives ended in gun suicides or unintentional shootings that year.4 This report analyzes, on both the national and state levels, the use of firearms in justifiable homicides. It also details, using the best data available on the national level, the total number of times guns are used for self-defense by the victims of both attempted and completed violent crimes and property crimes whether or not the use of the gun by the victim resulted in a fatality.
. . . The reality of self-defense gun use bears no resemblance to the exaggerated claims of the gun lobby and gun industry. The number of justifiable homicides that occur in our nation each year pale in comparison to criminal homicides, let alone gun suicides and fatal unintentional shootings. And contrary to the common stereotype promulgated by the gun lobby, those killed in justifiable homicide incidents don’t always fit the expected profile of an attack by a stranger: in 35.5 percent of the justifiable homicides that occurred in 2012 the persons shot were known to the shooter.
Now of course gun advocates will argue that guns used in homicides that are not “legally concealed” are stolen or obtained by other illegal means, but many of those guns were stolen from those who acquired them legally. No legal guns, no theft of legal guns for illegal acts. What I argue is that banning all guns will drastically stem the tide of criminal homicides in the U.S., both directly and indirectly. Here are the overall data on criminal homicides versus justifiable homicides between 2008 and 2012. Note the last row that gives their ratio, which is about forty to one:
Finally, I refer you to this site about concealed carry homicides: Concealed Carry Killers, which tracks deaths due to that policy. You can investigate for yourself; I’ll just present their conclusions:
Concealed Carry Killers is a resource maintained by the Violence Policy Center that includes hundreds of examples of non-self defense killings by private citizens with permits to carry concealed, loaded handguns in public. These incidents include homicides, suicides, mass shootings, murder-suicides, lethal attacks on law enforcement, and unintentional deaths. Only a tiny fraction of these cases are ever ruled to be in self-defense. Any homicide that is legally determined to be in self-defense is documented and removed from the Concealed Carry Killers database and the ongoing tallies.
It saddens and maddens me that we could eliminate so many killings of innocent people, prevent so many suicides, and largely halt mass murders if we’d only get rid of guns in the U.S. And yet, because we already have so many guns, people tells us that there’s no way to go back, even if we didn’t have a Second Amendment used to justify mass ownership of handguns—an amendment designed to allow states to have militias. I will never own a gun, and I feel safer without one. We’re a civilized society, or so we like to think. There must be a way to stop the madness.
Gun cult beliefs are robustly immune to evidence. No matter how much data piles up, the gun cultists continue to assert they’re gonna gun down the bad guys. Having guns is like smoking cigarettes. How long did it take to change THAT bizarre behavior?
The sad thing is that all these facts don’t change the believers minds. It is similar to religion.
Simply compare the kill rate per capita in the US and Europe and you will see a huge difference. Society would be a lot saver if nobody owns guns. If people have guns, they sooner or later will use them.
Having argued with lots of gun nuts, they have responses typical of creationists. They make up stuff. They distort facts. When all else fails they simply say they have a right to have guns as if that logic is self justifying
That’s why I agree with Alan Dershowitz. The 2nd should be repealed.
Agree. By the way the 2nd is about militia and not so much about private use. And now comes the fun part: Americans pride them self to be living in the greatest democracy in the world. Great not only as in ‘big’, but also as in ‘best’. Question: why should one protect him or herself against a government of his or her own choosing? As an European I don’t get this. 🙂
The 2d is not about private use at all, despite Scalia’s fantasy.
And it was never meant to be a protection against government. One constitutionally defined duty of the militia is to suppress insurrection, not partake in it. The whole “check against tyranny” rationale is nowhere to be found in the debates over the amendment at the time Congress created it. It is an NRA wet dream, no more.
Its found in Federalist #46. Big quote below. Now keep in mind that Madison and the others were wrong about the dangers posed by a standing, national army. They thought the US would never have one, shouldn’t have one, and that it would be dangerous to the union to have one. It turns out that with modern arms and technology, its basically impossible to defend the country without one; like healthcare or education, defense is a function it just makes a lot of sense to collectivize. Nevertheless, they did cite the hypothetical (for them, heh) dangers of a ‘federal army’ as a reason for individually armed citizens. Here’s the quote, and you’re wrong: Madison is pretty clearly saying that state militias are a check against federal tyranny.
Madison was talking about the use of state militias in opposition to a tyrannical federal government, a proposition he considered absurd, but chose to address just to shut up the anti-Federalists. (Which is the likely motive for the Second Amendment itself – to shut up those who feared the federal government would disarm the militias by simply refusing to arm them. I’m looking at you, George Mason.)
Remember, The Federalist Papers were an exercise in salesmanship. But what he was talking about was an extra-constitutional right to overthrow a tyrannical government, not a constitutional right. We obviously had exercised this common law right ourselves. But it was illegal in the eyes of the law. (The Declaration of Independence is in fact a declaration of war, after all.)
Nonetheless, the Second Amendment hadn’t even been written yet. He wasn’t discussing constitutional rights. Again, constitutions do not provide for their own destruction. Never have, never will.
I recall seeing a US citizen living in France interviewed on topics related to this. She said that in France the government feared the electorate. In the US the voters feared their government.
Exactly why that should be so (leaving aside the question of whether it is) I suspect that history has a large part to play. One question that bugs me is why other British colonies didn’t go quite the same way as the US, and the only answer I can come up with is that we benefitted from the experience between the US and Britain, in that Britain was more generous (to NSW at least) in part because of what happened with the US. Australia (and other colonies) did not have to fight a war for independence, and we’ve had no civil war.
I once heard an American comedian say that Canada earned its independence by asking nicely.
That’s right, and that’s why it took several pieces of stuff to get it done. The earliest I’d peg it is 1930 (i.e. more than 60 years after Confederation), with the Statute of Westminster, but …
America is indeed very unique in its gun culture. We usually scoff at “American exceptionalism” but here, I think there is a point. And, herein lies the problem — you can probably get people to agree to better regulations but eliminating hand guns — the weapons that probably cause the most harm — that’s a toughie in a gun culture.
I guess the long way is to make it socially unacceptable to want to carry a hand gun so in other words, change the culture, but even that is an uphill battle given that it would probably require The Leviathan to push such things and Americans don’t like their governments being all Leviathan-y and the NRA has the American government in its clutches.
I know, as a Canadian, I find the whole hand gun carrying thing weird. I’ve stumbled upon Americans talking about what hand gun would be best for their wife on unrelated online forums (car forums for instance) and I am just so shocked at the whole discussion that ensues. If you haven’t been exposed to American gun culture, you don’t recognize the scope of the problem.
I think America is exceptional in many ways, and the reasons must be many. Starting with the War of Independence and slavery, moving on through the Civil War and continuing with Prohibition. These unique events seem in some way to have caused a country where the population is uniquely easy to turn against each other (for a modern western democracy at least). I also think the sheer size of the country (over 300 million peeps) may contribute to its lack of unity.
I have five friends (or friendly acquaintances) who own guns (that I know of), three of whom are deeply opposed to the NRA and strongly advocate stricter gun laws.
One of them in particular was deeply annoyed that the NRA would not allow her to revoke a lifetime membership that she had purchased back in the 1970s. They basically told her: Once a lifetime member, always a lifetime member. We don’t undo lifetime memberships.
That sounds what you would call ‘unconstitutional’!
If you can get a de-baptism and get yourself of the (Catholoic) Church’s body count, then I’m sure that a competent lawyer can get you off the NRA’s roll of subscribers. Or, if you can’t undo the fact that you did purchase a lifetime membership, then at least require them to publish a count of people who have demanded revocation of their membership whenever the publish any claim of membership numbers.
America is a litigious society ; I wouldn’t normally advocate actually feeding a land-shark, but in this case they might be an appropriate, ermmmm, weapon.
Can you get a “concealed carry permit” for a lawyer?
I’m sure there’s a screen-play in there somewhere. Or am I underdosing on Monty Python?
Or maybe Clint Eastwood:
Well, make some lawyer’s day.
That was the speech I was trying to remember, but I’ve got a horrible cold.
She should start a movement “NRA Members For Gun Control” and watch how quickly her membership is revoked.
+1
your friend mislead you.
how to cancel a life time membership, it quite easy just send a letter, not an email, not a phone call, just a letter with your name, membership number and requesting cancellation. that’s all there is to it. they will send a letter confirming your cancellation and requesting a reason why. which is what i got when I cancled.
“As stated in the NRA Bylaws, a request to cancel a membership must be received in letter form to the NRA Director of Member Services at the address listed below on Waples Mill Rd. The NRA Bylaws also state that membership dues & fees paid to the NRA are not refundable or transferable. We are not permitted to cancel a membership per any other request than in letter form received via mail per the NRA Bylaws.
Here’s the address.
NRA Director of Member Services
11250 Waples Mill Road
Fairfax, VA 22030”
Concealed carry may not make people safer on average, but it may make an individual safer. For example, the most common cause of death by gun is suicide, but an individual could be perfectly reasonable in his conviction that he is far more likely to kill someone in self-defense than by committing suicide.
Will that individual be perfectly reasonable in his conviction that he is far more likely to kill someone in self-defense than to accidentally shoot himself (or his wife/child/neighbour)? I suspect that gun owners are like male drivers, who all believe themselves to be “above average”. I’m sure that there are a good number of “responsible” gun owners in the US, but the more prevalent guns become, the smaller will be the proportion of responsible owners. In the old days, when car ownership was a big privilege and a sign of status, car owners could be seen out every weekend, carefully washing their cars. There are no doubt still some like that, but fewer and fewer, as the car simply becomes another casual possession.
From an outsider’s perspective, the impression one has is that rationality in public life has been becoming an increasingly scarce resource in the US in the last 35 years. Given the country’s continuing massive military dominance and economic power, this trend is very frightening, especially as there is at least a possibility that your next president might be somebody who is arguably a borderline personality (Trump), completely out of touch with reality (Carson) or, despite being the only viable Republican candidate with a veneer of normality, plain dumb (Bush).
Of course, some of their political affiliates might push the world economically over the edge rather sooner by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.
Nothing to do with guns, of course, except insofar as they are all facets of the ascendancy of the irrational.
Doesn’t your comment contradicts the facts in the post and then contradict itself? Guns don’t make individuals safer because accidents are common, as shown in the reports above.
If suicide is the most common cause of death by gun then the gun owner is more likely to kill them-self than they are to kill someone else in selfdefense. The individual would not be perfectly reasonable in their conviction they are safer.
That comment was made by me, Alex Shuffell. I didn’t intend to be anonymous.
The comment does not contradict itself.
Drowning is one of the most common kinds of accidental death. I am personally extremely unlikely to die by drowning, because I never go in the water, while the vast majority of adults who die by drowning die after deliberately going into the water to swim. So I am personally much less likely than average to die by drowning, and I am aware of this fact.
In the same way, I am personally far less likely to commit suicide than people in general, and I am aware of this fact as well.
I don’t understand how your analogy is relevant.
Your comment contradicts the post because you said individuals are safer with gun, the stats say they are not.
Your comment contradicts itself because you acknowledge that gun owners are more likely to kill themselves but then say they are perfectly reasonable to think they are far more likely to kill someone else.
The analogy is completely relevant.
Stats say people in general are more likely to die of drowning than by electrocution.
Despite those stats, I am more likely to die by electrocution than by drowning.
Stats are averages. They do not apply to every individual.
The difference is in your analogy you compare two different groups, all people and then the subset you belong to, “because I never go in the water.”
In the gun comparison the statistic is derived from the group “legal gun owners” not the entire population, and the statistic is being applied to that same group, “legal gun owners.”
A relevant, perhaps, analogy would be a statistic of death by drowning derived from the group of “people who swim regularly” and then applying that statistic to an individual from the same group of “people who swim regularly.”
In that case you did not understand what I was saying. When I said an individual could reasonable, I meant an individual who has something specific about him which does not apply to the entire class, exactly in the same way that I don’t go in the water.
That assumes that individuals can accurately assess their likelihood of committing suicide.
I agree. He could be entirely reasonable. And he could also be wrong.
The statistics show that such a person is very likely wrong/fooling themselves.
This is like asking someone if they are an above-average driver. The overwhelming majority of Americans will say yes. Conclusion: we are very bad (or intentionally lie) when it comes to driving skill self-evaluation. The exact same situation is the case for gun ownership and accidental vs. self-defense shootings. Given the 10:1 ratio, anyone who says they aren’t the type to accidentally shoot themselves or others is either intentionally lying or very bad at this particular self-evaluation. Only at most 10% of such people can be telling the truth/giving an accurate assessment.
This is simply not the way statistics work. At least 90% of Americans believe in God in one way or another. So there is a 10:1 ratio. By your reasoning, at most 10% of atheists can be telling the truth when they say they don’t believe in God. We conclude that there is a 90% chance that Coyne is deluding himself.
No.
That is just not what the statistic implies, in either case.
Completely inapt comparison since one is a question of objective fact and the other is a self-evaluation of skill. “Are you more likely to accidentally shoot yourself than shoot someone in self-defense” is very much like “can you cook a good cake” or “are you an above average driver” and not at all like “does E really equal mc^2” or “is there life on Mars.”
Let’s say 50% of people can cook a good cake. That means there is a 50/50 split. That does NOT mean that 50% of intelligent people who think carefully about that question and conclude that they can, cannot cook a good cake. The careful people are not selected randomly from the whole batch.
If 100% of the cake-baking population answers that they can cook a great cake but only 10% of that population actually cooks great cakes, then about* 90% of the population is either very bad at self-evaluation of their own skills or lying. I don’t see what’s wrong or even controversial about that. So if every gun-owner thinks they are more likely to shoot a burglar than accidentally shoot someone, yet the rate of accidental shootings is 10x higher than the rate of burglar shootings, 90% of them are either bad at self-evaluation or lying.
Look, I’m not saying anything negative about gun owners specifically, this sort of very poor self-evaluation when it comes to our own negative traits is quite common. You see the exact same sort of self-deception amongst liberals (in particular) and people who consider themselves ethically good (in general) when confronted with the Milgram experiments: the results show that 90% of people will do horrible things at the order of an authority figure they consider legitimate. Yet if you ask the entire population, pretty much every single person will say they would be in the 10% of resisters. 90% of that population, then, is either very bad at self-evaluating their resistance to authority, or they’re lying about it.
*’About’ because there will be some random errors in both directions – great cooks that bake a bad test cake; bad cooks that bake a good one.
This was me. Using MS Explorer, and the issue is the site is not saving my entries in the name and email fields between one message and the next (the anonymous message was my second post in 10 minutes)
make all gun owners join a militia.
Follow the money – gun mfgrs thrive on the welfare provided by the 2nd amendment.
How to change the gun culture? Maybe DARPA could invent a powder to sprinkle on gun people that would make guns anathema to them.
No sensible solution will work…..
But a major contribution to the gun culture is the American violence culture, from wars to drones to TV to movies to corruption to government lies and more.
“make all gun owners join a militia” – what, like the standing army?! 😉
A tempting hypothesis, but demanding evidence. Much though I loathe weaponry, I consider the counter hypothesis that “[US] gun manufacturers make most of their profits from sales to US military and police, and only a minority from sales to the public” certainly requires consideration.
Getting sales or industry-level turnover figures shouldn’t be too hard. If nothing else, one might expect the gun manufacturers to have something to hand to defend themselves against charges that they profit primarily from the death and misery of [US] private citizens.
One tool that has been used to distress Big Corporations has been for interested individuals to become (small) shareholders in the appropriate companies, then table questions at AGMs which the Board have to answer.
Or you could threaten to “put a cap in the donkey” of the company president if he doesn’t give you the data. I’d suggest the shareholder technique to be more appropriate for this sort of question.
(Doesn’t America have some strange dialect usage about gun culture? My mind still boggles about the donkey.)
“[M]ake all gun owners join a militia” might not be such a bad idea, if you could leverage it to apply better tracking, accounting, and safe keeping of firearms. It might at least give enthusiasts a way of hanging onto their firearms while making them (the firearms) easier to control.
If you want to reduce firearms in the broader community you could try what we did in Oz – a buy back. No it won’t eliminate all guns, but it could usefully reduce the numbers, along with other mechanisms and policies.
Concealed carry though is just crazy IMHO.
That would be a poetic solution. At the time of the founding, militia service was more or less compulsory. And you had to own a gun. And show up for drills. When told. In the morning.
Many people just didn’t get guns, wouldn’t show up – the militia was a mess. Many didn’t buy guns just to get out of it. If you made today’s gun nuts buy the guns they were told to, and buy uniforms too, and train whenever the state said, and not when they felt like it, you might just cure the problem. Twenty-mile runs with full military kit at daybreak gets old fast.
I like it.
Guns make the weak feel strong, not being strong they probably won’t have the courage to get into a gunfight.
I don’t think “courage” is the right word. I an certainly understand, being a woman, the argument that guns are an equalizer. They make the vulnerable in society feel less vulnerable. A small woman can be just as deadly/well protected as a big man if they are using the same weaponry and have the same training.
This is the part where I really do understand why someone who is fearful would carry a gun. However, I really don’t get people carrying their guns into Walmart….I guess they feel that bad things can happen anywhere & they are right, they are just wrong in how likely the bad things can occur.
Sam Harris makes a good point that really brings in the impact of risk assessment. Even if the likelihood of something bad happening is low, the impact would be so dreadful that carrying a weapon is justified.
I identify with this argument from an emotional point of view but I still think that ultimately wondering around armed with a hand gun is a bad idea.
I don’t think “courage” is the right word. I an certainly understand, being a woman, the argument that guns are an equalizer. They make the vulnerable in society feel less vulnerable. A small woman can be just as deadly/well protected as a big man if they are using the same weaponry and have the same training.
This is the part where I really do understand why someone who is fearful would carry a gun. However, I really don’t get people carrying their guns into Walmart….I guess they feel that bad things can happen anywhere & they are right, they are just wrong in how likely the bad things can occur.
Sam Harris makes a good point that really brings in the impact of risk assessment. Even if the likelihood of something bad happening is low, the impact would be so dreadful that carrying a weapon is justified.
I identify with this argument from an emotional point of view but I still think that ultimately wondering around armed with a hand gun is a bad idea.
If insecurity is part of the problem, or at least a need to feel more secure, then perhaps it is a result of the nature of the society. If people felt safe and secure they wouldn’t feel the need to be armed.
Of course that includes having an effective and trustworthy police force, having social policies that support socially insecure groups (like poor people, and poorly educated people). I also think that belligerent foreign policies probably contribute.
In short, those sorts of policies that produce a healthier and happy society, one that is less inclined to be religious, is also inclined to be less violent.
I believe it was Goebbels who said that for a dictator to seize and hold power, he must turn the citizenry against the “Other.” Which, as we know, worked.
Here in the U.S., the problem is too many “Others.” Everyone has someone that someone else tells them they must fear, hate, persecute, whatever. We talk about the strength of the melting pot, but history records that every new ethnic group had to go through a period of being loathed by everyone, including the guys who got here just before they did.
When everything was at least run by white guys, white guys could count on the police, the military, etc. as being on their side. Now a lot of “Others” are demanding slices of the pie, and the white guys see it slipping away. And they blame that bleeding heart government for their loss of power. As well as all the blacks, the Hispanics, the Asians, whatever. Gotta get a gun and hold on to what you’ve got. Or think you deserve.
US society is more secure today than any society was 200 or probably even 100 years ago. While our crime rates are still 10x that of Europe, and I don’t mean to downplay the seriousness of police abuse, its still true that in terms of cases of murders, rapes, and other violent crimes, the 21st century is an all-time human low.
So I think Jeff gets it right here; the problem is ‘othering’ – political fearmongering that produces an artificial sense of insecurity. Because according to all the objective measures of personal security we can take, our real personal security has never been higher.
I have to warn you America – I have a concealed kinder egg & I ain’t afraid to use it!
http://momsdemandaction.org/kinder-egg/
The USA is so strange – in some ways totally free market & in others bonkers about health & regulations.
this is the only Gun Club I would join…
http://www.jeffreyleepierce.com/Site/home.html
Hahahahaha! I feel so bad ass that in Canada we can have Kinder Surprise while big bad America bans them!
Thanks PCC for this additional information. I will be sure and tag that web site for further research and info on a state by state basis.
As stated above by another comment, this is very similar to religion. Most people have their ideas and opinions set in cement, so to speak, and nothing will change it; certainly not the facts.
There is almost nothing about this issue for the pro-gun believers that is true. Starting with their interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, or the various reasons for having and carrying guns — it is all B.S.
And even worse, there is no good reason for people in this country to own and keep hand guns. They are used almost always for killing people. Even those hunters up there in Vermont or wherever, who claim that every one carries a hand gun, have nothing but lame excuses for doing so. Oh! I need it to finish off a wounded animal. Crap…you already have a gun you used to shoot the animal, use that gun.
The idea that you are going to John Wayne your way out if someone attacks you with a gun is also crap as the statistics show. You have seen too many movies and know nothing about how you would perform if someone was shooting at you. To think you know is a joke.
Even in actual battle – the first time trained soldier often does not shoot his weapon. Why? Because even with lots of real training, nothing is like the real thing when bullets start flying.
What could a city person, who grew up in the city and lived there all his life, know about hand guns or ever expect to use one? Even the average policeman never fires his gun on the job.
I doubt very much that hand guns “are used almost always for killing people.”
I think your “Even in actual battle – the first time trained soldier often does not shoot his weapon” comment is based on information from S.L.A. Marshall in his 1947 book, Men Against Fire. His assertions in that book have since been completely discredited, mainly because he made up a lot of the interviews he claimed to have had and there has been very little evidence to back it up.
It was first time soldiers that were the spearhead of the D-Day landings, purely because it was thought that their lack of understanding of the reality of war would make them “braver” and more likely to charge the enemy. Of course there are instances of some not shooting and hoping others will fight through and win, but this is from when there was National Service, with lots of conscripted soldiers, who didn’t want to be there. We also had almost no understanding of PTSD, (or shell shock as they called it), so were sending soldiers into battle who would then just mentally close down.
Having served in the military, I can assure you that the overwhelming majority of soldiers, in fully professional (and volunteer) armies, do fire their weapons, when required to.
Statistics don’t change minds of people with emotional attachments. Guns are advertised in the same way the as the lottery. Someone will win the lottery, someone will be hero, ignore the stats, it could be you. Most of us are reasonably aware of the stats but instead of listening to them and working towards earning that money or investing in better locks the advertising works up the fantasy that you’re above statistics.
We could stop the madness politically, that’s the only feasible way I can imagine. I think the all-mighty dollar could be used against the proliferation of guns.
Allow the public to sue gun manufacturers and gun dealers. (This was already tried and failed…doesn’t mean you can’t try it again.)
Make people register each gun they own and pay insurance on each gun. If one of their guns (even if stolen) is used to do harm, the insurance pays the tab. Just like in auto-insurance, accidents increase insurance rates. For many, the insurance might be too steep, so they’d have to get rid of many/all their guns.
Those are two “simple” things that can be done, but only if there is political will. Our nation is broken politically right now, and as long as it is, nothing will ever change on guns…well it could change for the worse. SCOTUS might take up a case that would allow weapons to become legal IF there are enough of them around (making the weapon common instead of rare). This could mean even weapons like RPGs could be considered legal if enough people owned them. It’s a strange case, and I don’t remember all the nuances, but the present SCOTUS sides with corporations, not people. (Oh wait, I forgot that corporations for SCOTUS are also people.)
If level headed people were in charge, if money were taken out of politics, if Republicans get voted out of power, maybe something could be done. Now is that a tall order, or what?
These “solutions” have been discussed many times, but neither would work.
It is a common misconception that gun manufacturers cannot be sued, which is false. You can sue a gun maker if your gun malfunctions, just like any other product. However, the gun maker should not be subject to suit if their product works properly, just like you cannot sue GM if you crash your car because you were texting.
Also, gun insurance is a non-starter for several reasons. 1.) no insurance company is going to be interested in insuring a person for intentional acts like shooting someone. 2.) if gun insurance were pricey, as you suggest, this would merely disarm the poor (mostly minorities) while allowing only the wealthy to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights. This would be deeply unfair.
Dr. Coyne is right, the only really fair solution is to disarm everybody equally.
You’re right, of course, and I agree that banning is the only fair solution, but that is so unreal that even forcing insurance on gun owners (the insurance “company” can be the federal government) seems an easier lift. Could you imagine the feds creating a mandatory firearm insurance department? Gun fanatics might explode. But by this time in US history, creating these kinds of restrictions or banning guns altogether might cause the next civil war. Hyperbolic? I don’t really know.
Aren’t the poorest disarmed anyway merely by virtue of the fact that guns and ammunition cost money?
If we are claiming that not being able to afford something that is a constitutional right is a violation of that person’s rights, then the logical consequence is that the government has to provide funds to cover it.
By your argument, therefore, the government must provide guns for free to anybody who can’t afford a gun, much like it does with legal counsel in a trial.
You *can* sue Ford if you crash while texting, and it will be up to the court to decide the validity of your case. You will probably lose, but you get your day in court if you want it.
In contrast, the PLCAA law prevents people getting that day in court when the subject is a shooting and a gun manufacturer. This is both blatantly unfair and unnecessary exceptionalism.
So, Mark R is right at least about that one point. You’re wrong to imply that Ford has that protection – no industry has it except the gun industry – and IMO you’re wrong to imply that such protections are warranted, because civil court proceedings is the tool society uses to determine culpability. Shutting that down is just the wrong thing to do; it basically immunizes one particular group of manufacturers from the process that all the rest of us must go through when someone perceives we have done them harm.
How about an analogy?
Fires are dangerous.
One effective technique for dealing with fires is to take a cubic metre or so of high explosives, rig up an elaborate crane mechanism, and manoeuvre the explosives into the heart of the fire. Then detonate the explosives, which will blast the flames away from the fuel and break the fuel-air-heat triangle needed to sustain fire.
I know it’s an effective technique, because I’ve seen a John Wayne movie where it worked – indeed, it was the one trick of the one-trick pony that was John Wayne’s character could do, and it worked there.
In consequence, it is obvious that all firefighters should equip themselves with large amounts of high explosives, with which they can put out fires which they may have to deal with. Imagine the spectacular effect of several pounds of RDX on a typical office paper bin fire! That’ll teach those damned molecules to mess with us!
(Of course, the dynamite on a crane technique has been superceded by a couple of mad Bulgarians, post Gulf-War-One. They just huff and puff and blow the fire out. Less dramatic, but they could do 4 fires in one day, once they had built their huffing and puffing machine. But even they check to see if they can turn the fuel supply off first, being mad Bulgarians, not totally insane Bulgarians.)
Sorry, I got distracted between thinking about the original post and typing my comment by making a coffee.
I was thinking of analogous situations where introducing something inherently dangerous would make a situation worse, but some people would promote it as being a good thing to do. Hence introducing explosives as a tool for firefighting. Occasionally they are a useful tool, but generally less spectacular methods are more effective.
For some reason your description of this technique reminded me of a dvd I saw a while ago.
It was a story of the fires in all the oil wells after the Kuwait war. Now that I am remembering it, it was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen.
There is probably more than one story about it but this one was great.
Although I believe this is your area of expertise so you probably know all about it.
Yep, that’s the one. Mad Bulgarians working for Boots & Coots (thinly veiled as the “young upstarts” in John Wayne’s “Hellfighters” movie – not actually a wildly inaccurate movie, but hollywood standards). They saw how slowly things were going, and obtained a jet engine, which they welded to the chassis of an Iraqi APC … a few jump start cables and they huffed and they puffed and the blew the fire out. Drive to next fire, huff, puff, lather rinse and repeat.
This is probably only 50% accurate, being oilfield bullshit. But that is still likely better than Hollywood’s average.
I never wanted to be a fire fighter… until now
Getting a one day or one week firefighting course as part of your employment is one of the perks. And it’s actually useful in real life, unlike getting out of an underwater helicopter.
If you can con the boss into paying for firefighting awareness (for dealing with minor fires while the big boys are getting to the site), or into getting first aiders, take it. Valuable skills.
The firefighting I could grok, wish I had, but First Aid? I got sent on first aid courses and I have certificates to prove it. Just, I have no aptitude for it. Like someone who is tone deaf who has done a musical appreciation course. So much for certificates.
My advice to anyone who might feel they have need of my services: don’t. If you are lying bleeding in the ditch and you see me approaching intent on committing First Aid, just run like hell. Or crawl, or wriggle. It might save your life.
cr
“No aptitude” – [SHRUG] But knowing enough to recognise the potential seriousness of a situation and to get help on the way is as important as patching up spurting arteries.
Doing all the courses in the world doesn’t prepare you for actually having to deal with a case when you come across one. But it happens. In my case, witnessing a couple of car crashes; someone knocked unconscious after some sort of a fight; and dealing with a heart attack ; oh, and that guy who tripped over while carrying a beer bottle and gashed his hand open. Nearly forgot that one. Quite messy. One fatality more than desirable. So far.
But you deal with what life serves you.
Gosh you live an eventful life! I’d have a go if I absolutely had to, i.e. if there was nobody else around.
Now if your car won’t start, then I’m more at home. My favourite incident was when a young chap approached me in the rapidly-emptying car park at Piha Beach to ask if there was a mechanic in Piha. (No, and not for 15 miles. And it was late Sunday afternoon). He had a Hillman Avenger and after trying everything else I narrowed it down to the rotor arm, which was cracked and shorting. As luck would have it I had a spare in my box of bits (not as huge a coincidence as might be expected, I owned a Mark 2 Cortina and I carry a few easily-replaced small bits, and 70’s English cars were fairly standardised. That’s all gone to hell since). Very satisfying when that happens.
cr
I’m capable of doing mechanicking if I need to. But grovelling around under the car, in a ditch, in the driving rain isn’t my favourite use of time.
A ditch in the rain would not be my favourite either.
The incident with the Avenger was in a car park on a pleasant summer evening.
Probably my worst experience – lying on the wet ground trying to put the steering rack back in my father’s Austin Maxi, from underneath, on a cold evening with rain pouring into my face. Had to get it done so he could go home. I’d quite forgotten that bit of horror till your comment reminded me.
cr
“American’s assertion of concealed-carry as an assurance of safety is a fantasy:”
The scenarios in which carrying a gun would be good protection seem unlikely to me.
I was held up at gunpoint about 12 years ago while washing my car at an apartment complex. I saw the kid approaching me, hands in his pockets, and nodded to him, then turned back to washing my car. Next thing I knew, he was about 10 feet from me with a gun in hand. If I had had a gun, what could I have done? Try to draw on him while he was holding a gun on me? That would have been stupid.
This was an example of using social conventions to get close to someone, whereupon it was too late to prepare for a violent encounter. I suspect that most assaults happen this way.
To be able to use a gun effectively in self-defense would require that you know someone’s intentions well in advance.
But you do!
Read your movie handbook : the guy in the black hat is the BAD guy ; the guy in the white hat is the GOOD guy.
If he’s not wearing a hat, then you can apply the same analysis to skin colour or gang colours, depending on what your local situation is.
[/sarcasm, not aimed at you, Scott]
I was impressed by the rules instituted by the author of the “Lone Ranger” radio and TV serials in the US in the 1930s; one of them was that the bad guy would never be anything other than American to avoid casting any ethnic group in a bad light. He also avoided last names for those characters for the same reason. Pretty progressive, particularly considering the time period.
Refresh my memory – what does “Tonto” mean in Spanish, again?
And “Kemosabe” in Apache … 🙂
I don’t know that one? To quote an old song, “Let me tell you, Kemosabe, that Tonto doesn’t mind” ; which always suggested a sheep-friendly interpretation of the Lone Ranger/Tonto relationship.
Apparently it means “shithead” in Apache. And of course we all know what “Tonto” means in Spanish.
Could never understand how the Lone Ranger was not shot riding around with the mask on. I guess the white hat and horse did the trick.
And interestingly, from the first TV episode (Reid being the L.R.):
Tonto: Here, guns, to kill bad men.
Reid: I’m not going to do any killing.
Tonto: You not defend yourself?
Reid: I’ll shoot if I have to. But I’ll shoot to wound, not to kill. If a man must die, it’s up to the law to decide that, not the person behind a six-shooter!
Tonto: That’s right, Kemo Sabe!
They seem to have been saner in those days.
… … yeah, saner as back in those days of the bad man’s NOTapology wherein he himself idn’t kilt off but somethin’ of his kinda important is: by way of when the handguns came in mightily handy w the faithful friends’ / shooters’ tryin’ their darnedest with “truth, justice and the American Way,” to exact same:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D9mDHPY0RA
Blue
“I’ll shoot to wound, not to kill.”
So, my shooting with a revolver is so super-accurate that I can decide exactly which bit of a moving target (that is also shooting at me) I’m going to hit.
So, the guy can die slowly of blood loss or an infected wound.
I’m not sure whether ‘saner’ is the right word, maybe ‘romanticised’ would be nearer to it.
(That was me. Would someone please shoot WP. To wound, if necessary…)
Sorry, I actually meant “saner” in the sense that the program-makers recognized that justice was to be meted out by the law, not by an individual with a gun, and that the LR would use the minimum of force necessary to get the job done – he refused to appoint himself judge, jury and executioner.
Not like so much of today’s TV/film output where the “good guy” with the gun is automatically justified in using lethal force against the “bad guy” with the gun without any due process of law. Any “Die Hard” film, for example, or just about anything with Steven Seagal.
OK, I accept the point in your first para. Those ideals are admirable. My quibble was with the authenticity of it, I still poke fun at good guys with little revolvers with 2″ barrels getting off 20 shots consecutively and hitting targets 100 yards away…
And I agree, the unnecessary violence in Die Hard or Steven Seagal (the few minutes I’ve seen of them before I find the remote) I find most distasteful. Though shooting guys with guns is less reprehensible than shooting guys without them, I cringe when that happens, even if it’s the villains doing it.
I will admit to finding some ‘action’ movies okay, most of the Bond films for instance, possibly because they are more about action and less about killing people.
cr
But, but, ‘The Virginian’ always dressed in black and wore a black hat, and he was the Good Guy! (*)
How can us ordinary folks tell who is Good and who is Bad (and who is Ugly?) if even that purveyor of historical truth, Hollywood, can not get it straight?
The Virginian was a 1960s product, wasn’t it? Damned preverted hippies.
A 1902 novel, to begin with.
Same here. I was robbed at gunpoint twice in Chicago, and in neither event would I have been able to do anything if I’d had a gun. Well, I might have been able to shoot the guy in the back as he escaped, but that’s hardly sporting. And of dubious legality.
“And of dubious legality.”
Probably just fine in Texas. 🙂
And if it isn’t, there would always be the “He needed killing” defense. Which, frankly, really should apply everywhere.
Probably fine in Florida too. Several years ago a very good friend of mine was murdered in Florida. He was standing at the front door of a house waiting for the door to be answered when he was shot in the head from inside the house, through a window next to the door. The person who murdered him got off with no crimial charges. This was shortly after new legislation, “Stand Your Ground,” had been passed. The long preexsting “Castle Doctine” probably would have been sufficient by itself. Complete bullshit.
A recent case in Minnesota (my home state): A guy shot two teenagers who were in his house to steal things. He shot them and disabled them and then went up to them an executed them (shot to the head). And he was idiotic enough to capture all this on his home video surveillance system.
He was convicted of murder.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/29/minnesota-man-guilty-murder-teenage-intruders-byron-smith
At least there is some sanity, in a few places…
cr
Time is the solution. If humanity continues to do what it does, that is, build technology systems that require advance scientific knowledge in order to innovate, succeed, and make money then both religion and the desire for gun ownership will fade away.
It is also function of competition of resources, where ‘time’ is the most important one. When the neighbors take their kids to LegoLand, the kid tells dad lets go to LegoLand, the mom says, no guns for Xmas this year…we are off to LegoLand. Guns become more and more of a peripheral commodity. Over time (generations) people will wonder what is the point. And guns, like religion, will simply fade away. No revolution. No fight for rights. Just a transition that hardly gets noticed.
My father owned >10 guns. My uncles owned >5 guns each. I own zero and my cousins have inherited maybe two that are probably never used and aging quickly. Guns might still be important to some, but they are important like Easter and Christmas are to the vast majority of Christians in this country….’true believers’ for a day.
It’s natural selection. Those without the guns live and those with the guns…bam.
Have a similar result here. I have a bunch of guns in a safe in the basement. Most were dad’s or grandparent who is long dead. What the hell I will do with them, probably scrap.
Let me guess, dad and grandpa did not die from lead poisoning. The average new hunting rifle is selling for around $1,000.00 used is going for about 50 to 75% of that. would an extra $500.00 be worth it, each. Used hand guns are selling for $200.00 to $800.00 each. If the gun is rare we are talking thousands! A friend had a .600 nitro express double gun (African elephant rifle) worth an appraised $15,000 to $20,000, he had a 9mm Luger (ww2 era) conservatively appraised at $2,500. Another friend has a Walther PP .22lr made in 1942, he has turned down a $4,000 offer. Unless you are made of money I would seriously get them appraised.
Gun owner logic works in the same way as lottery advertising. Ignore the stats, they don’t apply to you, spend the time and effort on fantasising about what could happen.
There was this article recently too–
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/10/14/people-are-getting-shot-by-toddlers-on-a-weekly-basis-this-year/
I often wonder if this isn’t also due to people wanting to hold on to their fantasies of a civil war to stop the US Govt. “taking over their state”.
Yes, there is plenty of that in there.
They forget about the weapons the the US military has. One soldier armed with a recoilless rifle could take out anyone with any size stash of small arms and ammunition.
Not to mention The 7.62 mm God(minigun, rate of fire variable from 2000 to 6000 rounds per minute).
Or an Apache helicopter that can stand off several miles away, at night, nap of the earth and kill you and all your friends without you ever even knowing it was there.
Or an AC-130 that can saturate an area the size of a football field with a slug every square inch in about 5 seconds, not to mention the larger caliber guns and canons.
Indeed. But ti would be child’s play with one platoon to take out any survivalist — if they just take the gloves off. The BATF took the big hit in Waco because they were trying to protect the lives of the non-combattants in the compound.
Well, as I leaned from Wayne LaPierre, the only thing that’ll stop a bad toddler with a gun is a good toddler with a gun….
I tend to agree wholeheartedly with the posts on this site, and I also agree here that the only true “solution” is to ban guns entirely.
However, your quote below is quite mistaken as a matter of history:
“even if we didn’t have a Second Amendment used to justify mass ownership of handguns—an amendment designed to allow states to have militias”
Prof. Akhil Amar has written a book on the Bill of Rights that includes discussion of the meaning of the Second Amendment. This section goes over the history of the drafting of this part of the Constitution and shows how the Amendment could not have been only written to allow a state militia. Furthermore, there is evidence in the Federalist Papers concerning the individual nature of the right to bear arms.
Finally, you forget the 14th Amendment, which was intended to protect the rights of Southern Blacks, among others. The Framers of the 14th Amendment were very interested in protecting the right of those former slaves to own guns, since those folks had to contend with roving bands of Klansmen.
Professor Amar’s interpretation of the Second Amendment has been convincingly disputed by numerous historians and constitutional scholars. It is a nice little “rabble rousing” piece of work, but I haven’t heard any serious constitutional scholar cite it, for any reason, for some time. It is about as considered as Sanford Levinson’s “The Embarrassing Second Amendment”, and about as respected, which is to say not much at all.
The history of the Second Amendment has been fairly well-covered for those who wish to read it, which it seems you have not. Nothing in the amendment’s creation and enactment demonstrates any concern whatsoever with an individual right to own guns. (One only “bears arms” in military service, not, say, packing heat on the mean streets of NYC.)
If the “Framers” of the 14th Amendment wished to protect freed slaves’ “right” own guns, they had a strange way of doing it, because the Second Amendment was never held to apply to the states until 2008. One can search in vain through the jurisprudence of the Second Amendment for references to such an intent on the part of the “Framers” of the Fourteenth Amendment. There’s little if anything there, and it seems unlikely that such an argument could have been missed. But more importantly, the Fourteenth Amendment cannot make the Second Amendment something it never was to begin with, and it was never intended to guarantee a personal right to own guns. It was only when Antonin Scalia decided that he really wanted it to, and foisted Heller v. D.C. on us, that we’ve been stuck with what can only be ironically termed an abortion of a decision.
“Nothing in the amendment’s creation and enactment demonstrates any concern whatsoever with an individual right to own guns.”
Do you have any sources where anyone from that period states that individuals do NOT have the right to keep arms? I have plenty of quotes from the likes of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson detailing an individual right:
“http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/quotes/arms.html”
“If the “Framers” of the 14th Amendment wished to protect freed slaves’ “right” own guns, they had a strange way of doing it, because the Second Amendment was never held to apply to the states until 2008”
You will also notice, then, how the Framers of the 14th Amendment did not propose disarming the Klansmen terrorizing the South after the war? Also, Black Codes enacted in the South specifically targeted the freed slaves’ right to keep arms. Will you argue that those Black Codes were in fact Constitutional?
“Black Codes” are unconstitutional under the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment — a right expressly set out in the Amendment’s text, as opposed to the tacit, dormant right to bear arms you claim is in the 14th, but which its text fails to mention.
“as opposed to the tacit, dormant right to bear arms you claim is in the 14th, but which its text fails to mention.”
The text also fails to mention the right to free speech, press, assembly, etc etc.
In checking your quotes, I see the usual cherry-picked and out-of-context suspects.
First, Patrick Henry and George Mason were opposed to the Constitution, and can hardly be said to be spokesmen on its intent. And the Second Amendment hadn’t even been written yet, so they weren’t talking about that. You seem to be utterly unaware of the militia clauses in Article I, and the radical change they wrought.
Henry’s “that every man be armed” quote contains quite a bit in the ellipsis, which is inserted to mislead. Henry was talking about how the new Constitution provided that Congress now had the sole power to arm the militia. Henry was pointing out that the states themselves had been unable to accomplish this (so much for everyone having a gun!), so how could Congress do it? You need to read the entire quote, as you are essentially reading propaganda now, not fact.
Madison, in Federalist 46, was talking about how, in the extremely unlikely the people would continue to elect tyrants election after election, the states could overthrow such a tyrant through the use of the state militias, captained by men of good character appointed by the governors of the individual states. He was not discussing a popular uprising. Again, beware the ellipsis, and the omission of critical text. Remember, you are taking your lessons from propagandists who don’t want you to read the entire passages.
Mason (“What is the militia?”) was talking about the fact that the Constitution provided for a militia that was NOT the whole people. Again, he was an anti-Federalist. It’s like you’re quoting Ted Cruz on the intent behind the Democratic National Party Platform.
Cooley’s quote is merely his opinion, written some 100 years after the Second Amendment was ratified, but before the advent of the National Guard, which is the modern militia. Which you’d know if you’d actually studied the matter, instead of reaching for some pro-gunner “quotes” off the Internet. And note that he does not say anything about an individual right to own guns or use them for self-defense.
“First, Patrick Henry and George Mason were opposed to the Constitution, and can hardly be said to be spokesmen on its intent. And the Second Amendment hadn’t even been written yet, so they weren’t talking about that”
But the Federalists themselves were opposed to the Bill of Rights, which they saw as redundant since the Constitution did not grant the federal government the power to, inter alia, take away guns. The Bill of Rights was created in order to pacify the likes of Patrick Henry and his Anti-Federalist cohort.
This being the case, both sides to the debate acknowledged that the federal government had no powers when it came to disarming the population.
Both sides did not acknowledge any such thing, because it wasn’t discussed. You really leap into gaps and insert whatever you wish to be so.
The Second Amendment provided that the federal government could not disarm the militia. Period. States could disarm anyone they bloody well liked, because the Second Amendment didn’t apply to them. It was expressly written to forbid the federal government from disarming the state militias. Which is why making the amendment “apply” to the states is ludicrous.
Your understanding of how the Bill of Rights came to be written is also shallow. I would suggest you study the correspondence on that very issue between Jefferson and Madison, and that’s just to start. You will find that Jefferson, the original gun nut, never spoke of any individual right to be preserved in the bill. He spoke of preserving the militia.
You absolutely fail to see that the Second Amendment was not meant to recognize any individual right because that is not what they were even talking about. And you can’t infer that because they didn’t discuss an individual right, that that means one existed. Which is the sum and substance of your entire argument. You have trotted out the same tired out-of-context quotes and irrelevant speakers. As one historian noted, if the Framers actually intended what you say, there would be a wealth of sources to back you up. There aren’t. Instead, you repeat misleading, ellipsis-laden quotes. Rather how the NRA leaves out the “well regulated militia” part of the Second Amendment. Why do you suppose they do that? Because it strengthens their argument?
“Both sides did not acknowledge any such thing, because it wasn’t discussed. ”
If they never discussed it, that means that the Constitution does not grant the federal government the ability to restrict individual gun ownership. The Anti-federalists wanted the Bill of Rights created because they thought that there needed to be more checks on the federal government’s power. Thus, at least the Anti-federalists wanted to have the powers of the federal government strictly limited.
As for the Federalists, they thought that the Bill of Rights was redundant because the federal government was not granted any powers at all in regards to what the Bill of Rights covers. Thus, the Federalists also believed that they had strictly laid down the powers of the federal government.
‘The Second Amendment provided that the federal government could not disarm the militia. Period. ”
If that was the case, why does the second clause use the term “the People” in the same way that the first amendment does?
“The Second Amendment provided that the federal government could not disarm the militia. Period. States could disarm anyone they bloody well liked, because the Second Amendment didn’t apply to them. It was expressly written to forbid the federal government from disarming the state militias.”
Considering that individual “militia” members had to report to duty with certain weapons and ammunition required of them (and that they owned personally), it would seem that the federal government disarming the militia would boil down to the federal government disarming individuals.
On a related note, your reading of the second amendment as a protection of a state’s right would merely lead to a situation where states could just get around any federal weapons ban by declaring that everyone is in the “militia”. Indeed, that is already true in many states and even at the federal level (unorganized militia).
Since I am not a gun nut and believe, as Dr. Coyne does that only a true ban would suffice to saves many lives, I acknowledge that, regardless of whether you or I am ultimately correct as a matter of history, either way the movement to ban guns nationwide would have to go repeal the second amendment.
Wow. When you veer off, you really veer off in strange directions. First, guns were not as widely held as you seem to believe. At the time of the Revolution, most privately held arms were fowling pieces.
Second, the writing of the times reflect that militia duty was widely ignored, and that many who did show up did so without proper arms. You should read the state gun censuses to get a sense of just what arms there actually were.
Third, when the British marched on Lexington and Williamsburg, they didn’t march on private homes looking for the guns. They marched on the militia armories. That’s where the guns were.
And no. If you wanted to effectively ban guns, you wouldn’t have to repeal the Second Amendment. Unless you also wanted to disarm the National Guard.
Perhaps I have disabused you of at least some of your misunderstandings, but I’m not done yet.
Quotes regarding the right to revolution do not rely on the Constitution. Constitutions do not provide for their own destruction, and ours is no exception. Or maybe you could explain how the militia, which the Constitution provides is to suppress insurrection, can constitutionally engage in it? As has been said by better writers than I, “The Constitution is not a suicide pact.” If you doubt me, perhaps you should brush up on your Lincoln.
As for early laws regarding gun regulations, you should know that, while the Pennsylvania bill of rights granted a right to bear arms, one had to swear a loyalty oath to the state first in order to exercise it. Numerous other state laws dealt with guns, including what guns could be owned and where, if anywhere, they could be carried outside the home, and for what purpose. Most states forbade men from carrying guns in “bands,” which would be bad news for the Michigan Militia. The Framers recognized the inherent police powers of the states, and their right to regulate firearms in the interest of public safety and order. They would view the positions of the modern NRA as ludicrous and dangerous, if not outright treasonous. And treason is the only crime defined in the Constitution.
Finally, with regard to Samuel Adams: The quote attributed to him came from a proposal he made during the Massachusetts ratifying convention. It didn’t pass, and it seems that he himself may have just withdrawn it. But to really understand how things worked, study Shays’ Rebellion. That was a nifty little uprising in Massachusetts by some genuinely aggrieved armed farmers, that was put down by the state militia (and which convinced Washington to attend the Constitutional Convention, which he had previously declined to do). Adams said of those rebels that anyone who defied the laws of the Republic should be put to death. Perhaps he wasn’t quite the radical he is generally thought to have been.
This stuff is all great info, but none of it really sheds any light on the second amendment.
I notice though that you still have no produced any links to framers talking about how individuals should not be allowed to own guns.
“Constitutions do not provide for their own destruction, and ours is no exception.”
Whether or not this is a true statement, having armed citizens was seen as a way to overthrow tyrants, not to erase the Constitution itself. In their talk of future potential tyranny, the founders were thinking of a despot who ignored the Constitution, and thus the revolution would be to restore that document.
Once again, I ask that you produce some evidence that any of the founders thought the people had no individual right to own a gun, which was incredibly common in their day.
Your patronizing tone is noted, by the way.
I’m sorry if you take offense. But it is difficult discussing this with someone who would rather argue above their pay grade as opposed to actually studying the issue and understanding it.
So I’ll try, vainly no doubt, to spell this out. You talk about “the Founders.” Those are not necessarily the same people as the Framers. And the Framers of the Constitution discussed many things, and some wound up opposed to it, the anti-Federalists, of whom Henry and Mason were but two. And their concern was that the states, through their militias, should be able to oppose the federal government in the event of tyranny. Remember, these are the losers of the argument, so you are really relying on the wrong people to interpret what the Constitution should do. The anti-Federalists opposed a standing army, but the Constitution provides for one. They opposed diminution of state authority, but the Constitution severely restricted the states’ powers. And they wanted state autonomy over the state militias, and the Constitution took that away. You’re arguing from a position that’s akin to France trying to dictate terms to Germany after the Occupation. The concerns you raise, as if they were agreed on by all the Framers, are the concerns of those who lost the argument, not those who won.
As for your irrelevant point about the “Founders” not believing individuals had the right to own guns is, well, irrelevant. No one ever said the Founders, or the Framers, believed any such thing. That’s beside the point of what the intent behind the Second Amendment was. They may have believed in lots of things. That doesn’t mean they thought they should be constitutional rights. It’s like me saying to you that it would be a really bad idea to buy a Chevy, and you responding “But I have a right to buy a Buick!” SO WHAT? I wasn’t talking about Buicks, or your right to own one.
I generally agree with Jerry’s sentiments on this issue. I am against the concealed carry laws.
However, I don’t think this issue is a simple one. Sam Harris has called it a “riddle” and I tend to agree with him.
I know many well-adjusted gun owners. I grew up with them. I own a gun, have trained with it, know how to use it and I keep it locked up and unloaded. (I could make it operational in less than a minute.) Mainly because my wife’s ex. has some major untreated mental health issues, loves guns and has lots of them, and is prone to bizarre behavior. He lives about a 5-minute drive away from us.
The police aren’t going to be able to help you fast enough if someone enters your home intent on harming you. It’s physics.
I hope none of you ever are in a position to feel the need for a gun.
Just to calibrate things here, my late sister lived in a really bad part of town. She socialized with very unsavory characters. one time, she called home looking for help removing some of them from her place.
It fell to my Dad and me (I was home at the time). My Dad asks me: “Should we bring guns.” And I said, absolutely not! If it’s that kind of situation, we’re calling the police. (She did not report being immediately threatened — she just wanted those guys out of there.)
I was a pretty physically intimidating guy at the time. We were able to convince the guys they needed to leave — without any violence or overt threats.
Well said. In youth, it is easy to think that having a “friend” along with you is a good idea. More people should ask themselves, “What could possibly go wrong?” And answer it honestly. When in doubt, call the cops.
As Sam Harris has noted in his article on violence, the worst decision you would ever make would be to take out a gun and shoot a teenager who was damaging your property.
Or if you were to enter someone else’s house with gun, looking for trouble (even if you think you are there to protect someone else). You would be the one causing the violence.
I oppose the “Stand Your Ground” laws. They seem perfectly opposed to civil interactions and intelligent prevention of violence to yourself. If you can run away, you damned well ought to run away, instantly.
Sam Harris notes that your first move, always, is avoidance. Prevention/avoidance is worth an amazingly large amount of cure in these situations (violence).
The “stand your ground” laws represent a further cheapening of the value of life in this country.
I seem to recall Sam being firmly put in his place by Sean Faircloth when he wrote that…
https://richarddawkins.net/2013/01/sam-harris-neglects-the-most-important-evidence-about-guns/
I continue to think it is not a simple issue.
It seems to me that Faircloth ignores the political and social barriers to banning guns in the US. Provide a plan then spin how the scenario would work out. How many Ruby Ridges would the public stand for? Not very many in my opinion. And there would be many. (I wouldn’t provide one, of course.)
I’m with Sam and many others in saying that if we could instantly remove all guns from US society, without having to physically confront the gun owners — if they could be poofed out of existence — I’d be all for it. But, unfortunately, no such scenario is possible.
The percent of “justifiable homicides” is based on reports by police. And I can tell you that “justifiable” doesn’t necessarily mean that. It can also mean, “We don’t buy it, but we can’t prove otherwise.” I actually think the 3.6% figure, even considering it’s confined to concealed carry, is probably high. Maybe not. Maybe I’ve grown too cynical.
But the fact that four of the “Concealed Carry Killers” were found incompetent to stand trial. This is an admittedly small survey due to reporting laws and data availability, so there may be more. Perhaps quite a number more. And if they were “incompetent” to stand trial, how the hell did they get concealed carry permits?
One very important point regarding “banning ” guns is that, no matter the fate of future Second Amendment jurisprudence, many state constitutions contain some form of “right to keep arms.”
State Constitutions do not bind the federal government. For instance, federal authorities can still technically arrest folks for possessing marijuana in Colarado, even though it is legal in that state.
You’re somewhat right. A state constitution cannot restrict a federal constitutional right, but it can great greater rights than the Constitution does. For example, a search may be deemed legal under the federal Fourth Amendment, but still be illegal under a state constitution’s search and seizure provision.
It’s a little trickier working the other way around. Can a state law trump a federal law? Marijuana is legal here in Colorado, but still illegal under federal law. However, the issue of the legality of certain controlled substances is not a matter of federal constitutional dimension, only a statutory one.
For example, what would happen if Utah legalized polygamy through its constitution, and the federal government made it illegal by statute?
“However, the issue of the legality of certain controlled substances is not a matter of federal constitutional dimension, only a statutory one.”
This is beside the point that the statutory “dimension” itself must be based on the Constitution, as must all federal statutes.
Furthermore, if the federal constitution included an amendment allowing the prohibition of alcohol by Congress, then Congress could chase moonshiners no matter what state constitutions said.
Being armed saved my life on two occasions. Due to some unpleasant people and situations over which I had no control I was subject to death threats. I carried a gun concealed and I might add completely illegally. Every where I went for years I watched for ambushes, unexplained watchers or anything that looked out of place . I did everything in my life with an eye toward springing an ambush on any unwary assailants.
Eventually the people who posed a threat all died as the result of bad lifestyle choices to use a euphemism
To this day friends will comment that I can occasionally cause crowds to part around me just because I seem to be incredibly hostile. Some habits are hard to break
“To this day friends will comment that I can occasionally cause crowds to part around me just because I seem to be incredibly hostile. Some habits are hard to break”
I used to be like that too. It was kind of a game when I was (much) younger. I was huge and fit and very strong. But I found that I didn’t actually like that.
I made a very conscious and concerted effort to change it and it worked, very well. The main thing is: I made a point of smiling at everyone. Smiles work amazingly well.
Nothing that you wrote explains how being armed made any difference at all.
Your are correct, he did not detail the two specific events that he implies.
Details, the first instance was when I caught a would be assailant and two accomplices climbing in a window. As it happened they were all three armed as was I. Rather than an exchange of gunfire they dropped back out to the ground and fled cursing and making threats.
The next time I was in a warehouse loading a van with some equipment when I spotted another van that I didn’t recognize rolling up. I drew my weapon and stepped behind a stack of pallets and covered them as their door slid open and they began to dismount. They froze when they realized that again I had the advantage and again fled.
There was never a case built against them as it was just my word that some jerks had been pulling guns on me. One died in a high speed chase a little bit after the warehouse incident. One was knifed in prison and another died of a heroin overdose.
Like I said, bad lifestyle choices
The important thing is what it did to me. I had a specific threat, I had an idea of where they’d be coming from and what they looked like. It made me harder than I’d been before. And I don’t mean that in a good way either. I don’t think the average concealed carrier is particularly hard but I don’t think the typical criminal is particularly competent either. Snatching an unarmed victim and shooting them in the head out in a stone quarry is one thing, gunfights are another matter entirely
Those sound like thieves, not murderers. I’d say your gun stopped a theft but its an open question whether it saved your life. I’d also say that in the first case, the theft might have been prevented with less risk of fatality all around if you had moved to another room and “drawn” your cell phone instead. Having said all that, I’m very glad you and they all came out of those situations without harm.
I’ve known a few people who have had similar experiences (I have not).
They pulled out a gun and brandished it when someone was attempting to break into their home. The would-be robber/burglar ran off.
In every case, the person who brandished the gun was very shaken by the experience — because they were frightened in retrospect by what might have happened had they actually used the gun. One of them got rid of his gun afterwards.
I completely abhor messing around with the Constitution by judicial fiat or Congressional legislation and feel any gun law preventing adult non felons as unconstitutional. Does this mean we should have no gun control laws? No. There is a way to change the Constitution, by the Amendment process. As a country we dropped the ball about the Second Amendment a long time ago. When automatic weapons were banned from general ownership, it should not have been done by legislation but by the Amendment process. That banning signalled the idea of some weapons being not acceptable to the ownership by the general citizenry and should have called for a discussion of whether the Second Amendment needed to be abolished or modified with the technology gained since the 1780’s and amending of the Constitution to reflect what the nation decided out of the National debate. The Founders were brilliant yes, but not infallible and that is why the Constitution allows for a method to change it but we do not do so? Why? My opinion is that both sides fear the consequences of opening up the Constitution to modification of one of the original Amendments would bleed over into a complete modification of the whole Bill of Rights that neither the left or right wishes.
Oh really? So I should, absent amendment, have always been allowed to have an ICBM. How about a nuclear submarine with cruise missiles? Or, how about just a tank? Fully loaded and ready to go?
All of those are weapons. And I can guarantee you that at the time of the Second Amendment, states certainly did ban certain types of weapons, with no dissent from the populace. And I doubt you could have set up your own personal cannon in your front yard without being challenged.
Read United States v. Miller, and ponder.
“And I can guarantee you that at the time of the Second Amendment, states certainly did ban certain types of weapons, with no dissent from the populace. ”
Well, duh, as you stated above, at the time of the Second Amendment, states were not bound by the Bill of Rights. Incorporation, as you are certainly well aware, only happened after the 14th Amendment.
The right to individual gun ownership was read into the Second Amendment by judicial decree over 200 years after the Bill or Rights was ratified. Is that the kind of “messing around with the Constitution by judicial fiat” you abhor?
it was not read into the Second Amendment by judicial decree over 200 years later:
James Madison, the author of the 2nd amendment read this into the 1st congressional journal:
“A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; but no person religiously scrupulous shall be compelled to bear arms.”
Justice Joseph Story was nominated by President James Madison on November 15, 1811 to the Supreme Cort served from 1811 – 1845
“Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States”,1833
On the Second Amendment:
‘The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections and domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace both from the enormous expenses with which they are attended and the facile means which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers to subvert the government or trample upon the rights of the people. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers and will generally even if these are successful the first instance enable the people to resist and triumph over them. And yet though this truth would seem so clear and the importance of a well regulated would seem so undeniable it cannot be disguised that among the American people there is a growing to any system of militia discipline and a disposition from a sense of its burthens to be rid of all regulations. How it is practicable to keep the people duly armed without some organization it is difficult to see. There is certainly no small danger that indifference may lead to disgust and disgust to contempt and thus gradually undermine all the protection intended by this clause of our national bill of rights.”
From the ratification of the bill of rights in 1789 until 12 years ago, the courts had consistently held that the Second Amendment, consistent with its text, guaranteed only a collective right to bear arms for the purpose of raising and maintaining state militias. Then, in Heller v. D.C., decided in 2003, SCOTUS overruled this line of cases and held for the first time that the Second Amendment also included an individual right to gun possession and ownership.
Nothing in Madison’s original draft of what subsequently became the Second Amendment, or in Justice Story’s constitutional commentaries, contradicts the courts’ original interpretation of the Second Amendment as applying solely to the collective rights of a militia. Indeed, they lend support to it.
the term “collective” did not refer to people until after the middle of the 19th century, before then it referred to things.
can you give a reference to this “original interpretation of the Second Amendment” by the supreme court because the earliest commentary on the second amendment was in 1792 by Trench Coxe: “As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the next article in their right to keep and bear their private arms.”–
“Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution,” Federal Gazette, June 18, 1792, at 2, col. 1
“there is no writing from 1787 to 1793 that states either the “states’ rights” or the “nihilist” thesis.” — Tench Coxe and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, 1787 – 1823
“All legal scholarship dating from the creation of the Second Amendment and extending through the first decades of the twentieth century considered the Second Amendment to guarantee an individual right.” — idbid
Why do you think Tench Coxe is an expert on the Bill of Rights? I don’t recall him even being mentioned in the congressional debates. He was very small beer in the scheme of things.
Just because a contemporary of Madison said something doesn’t mean Madison or anyone else agreed.
Otherwise, not the last part of Madison’s proposed amendment – is this something remotely to do with an individual right to own guns? No, it’s directed at militia service, a military, not individual right, concern.
Assuming you meant “ibid”, what on earth are you referring to?
You also seem to be unaware that there was very little jurisprudence on the Second Amendment at all until the 20th century. What jurisprudence there was state constitutional law about state provisions. Which led to the famous quote “One does not ‘bear arms’ against a rabbit” in a case finding against an “individual right.”
yes, it was a typo.
I am well aware that there was very little jurisprudence on the Second Amendment If you read Ken Kukec’s comment, he seems to be unaware that fact, the earliest commentary was that it was an individual right, that was Coxe. Coxe was a congressman when the second amendment was be debated. The only judicial commentary was Story’s and he under scored it as an individual right. For the next 100 years there was no concept of it being a collective right.
In Cruikshank, 1875, and Presser, 1886, the Cort did not state the second admendment was a colective right, it stated that it was a limitation on congress and the national goverment. in both cases the Cort ignored two things: article 6 claus 2 — : “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.” The Supremacy Clause. And the 14th admendment, section 1: — “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Sigh.
Look, you are again fighting above your weight. I applaud your homework, such as it is, but there is FAR more (and far less) to this than you seem to even vaguely comprehend.
After 30 years spent dealing with constitutional issues, and 20 writing about the Second Amendment, I can tell you that you have only scratched the surface. You are like many who argue on this subject – you find snippets in opinions that you like, with no regard for context, or even the use of language in the time in which the opinions (and the amendment) were written. If you wish to continue your study, I suggest you familiarize with the reasoning of the 20th century federal courts of appeals decisions. Many of them are cited in Stevens’ dissent in Heller.
I really doubt that the Supreme Court has waited all this time for you to discover they were in error. I really think they had some idea of what the Second and Fourteenth Amendments provided, and whether they applied to the states. You understand very little of the Supremacy Clause, preemption, and incorporation. And if you were at all conversant in the meat of these issues, you would not have posted the ludicrously edited and out-of-context quotes you have. Those, especially, are fish-in-a-barrel (red-herring-in-a-barrel?) issues which anyone familiar with these matters would have been embarrassed to publish.
I have neither the time nor inclination to teach you the law and constitutional interpretation. If that strikes you as a pompous appeal to authority, so be it. Auto mechanics must do the same every day.
As for Heller v. D.C., just remember that if five justices of the Supreme Court believe a silly thing, it’s still a silly thing.
The right to individual gun ownership was read into the Second Amendment by judicial decree over 200 years after the Bill of Rights was ratified. Is that the kind of “messing around with the Constitution by judicial fiat” you completely abhor?
Hmm I think various towns had pretty strong gun control laws up until the late 1800s at least. But at the same time some gun control measures were also struck down throughout the 1800s by state and federal courts. There was lots of statutory back and forth, IOW, just like today.
So I’d say that an amendment should not be required for statutory control laws, any more than an amendment is required before states can impose reasonable time/place/manner restrictions on free speech. In that respect the NRA’s current position is very extreme compared to conservative positions in the past, where they defended the individual right to own a gun as constitutional but accepted that the state could impose statutory limitations on where and how you could carry it.
Americans cling to their guns for the same reason they cling to their religion: the US is a highly dysfunctional society. Decrease income inequality and progressively everyone will become middle-class. And as they do, secularisation will follow, and the guns will be abandoned.
Would be interesting to see how religiosity of a state/demographic correlates with gun ownership. Quite certain there’s a strong positive correlation. One doesn’t beget the other — they are just symptoms of the same pathology: insecurity.
Considering that 75 to 80% of Americans have some religious affiliation you are going to find a correlation with most things and religion. 90 to 95% of convicted criminals in prison are religious. you will also find a very high correlation between prison inmates and pro gun control
The argument gun fans make is these instances of self defence are largely unreported, and only come to light when you ask gun owners. They are instances where the owner pulled his gun, or was openly wearing one, and it caused the criminal to run away, or not target them. Since the crime never happened it wasn’t reported. The numbers I hear them throw around is something like 300,000 crimes prevented annually.
If I didn’t mention it the numbers are ridiculous. Paranoia come to mind when I hear it. I imagine claims like like “a bunch of black guys were standing on the corner, and when they saw I had a gun, or I patted it, they didn’t mug me”. lol
The numbers Gary Kleck threw around were mind-numbingly impossible.
And, yeah, self-reporting? The only way to get reliable numbers. Sure.
“And, yeah, self-reporting? The only way to get reliable numbers. Sure.”
Yeah I know. I even had one gun nut claim that if people did carry guns the gun homicide rate would double, and people in the comments were agreeing with him. Just shows how immune they are to reality.
that is how most polling company work. Gallup uses a stratified sample of 1200, Dr Kleck used a sample size of 5000. in social science research self reporting is often the only way you are going to get any numbers.
Dr Kleck researched was peer reviewed by Criminologist Marvin Wolfgang, who described himself “as strong a gun-control advocate as can be found among the criminologists in this country” and whose opinion of guns was “I would eliminate all guns from the civilian population and maybe even from the police. I hate guns–ugly, nasty instruments designed to kill people” defended Kleck’s methodology, saying “What troubles me is the article by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. The reason I am troubled is that they have provided an almost clear-cut case of methodologically sound research in support of something I have theoretically opposed for years, namely, the use of a gun in defense against a criminal perpetrator”. He went on to say that the NCVS survey did not contradict the Kleck study and that “I do not like their conclusions that having a gun can be useful, but I cannot fault their methodology. They have tried earnestly to meet all objections in advance and have done exceedingly well.”
First, a criminologist doth not an expert on polling make. What are Wolfgang’s credentials?
Second, I am not going to take the time to redo previous research of my own. Google Tim Lambert and Kleck, as well as criticisms of Kleck in general. In one of his studies, if I recall correctly, he actually reached a conclusions that there was a negative number of burglaries, which seems odd. But look away, I’m not going data searching right now.
Dr. Marvin Wolfgang (1924 – 1998) American sociologist and criminologist.
Wolfgang earned the academic titles of MA (1950) and PhD (1955). Until his death in 1998 he was a professor of criminology at the University of Pennsylvania.
1964, he published “The Measurement of Delinquency”, the first study of the true impact of crime on society. 1967,”The Subculture of Violence: Towards and Integrated Theory in Criminology”, which focused on high rates of violence among blacks and the influence of a black subculture.
Wolfgang wrote over 30 books and 150 articles throughout his life. His most famous work, “Delinquency in a Birth Cohort”, was published in 1972. This book marked the beginning of large-scale studies of crime and delinquency.
Wolfgang won many awards, including the Hans Von Hentig Award from the World Society of Victimology in 1988, the Edwin Sutherland Award from the American Society of Criminology in 1989, the Beccaria Gold Medal from the German, Austrian, and Swiss Society of Criminology in 1997; in 1993, the Wolfgang Criminology Award was established in his name.
He also served on numerous national commissions, including the Presidential Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (1968–69), of which he was research director
Wolfgang spent the later years of his life showing his opposition to issues such as the death penalty and the use of a gun against a perpetrator in articles such as “We Do Not Deserve to Kill” and “A Tribute to a View I Have Opposed.”
His career was cut short by pancreatic cancer, and he died on 12 April 1998. The British Journal of Criminology stated he was “the most influential criminologist in the English-speaking world.”
None of which answers the question whether he had any expertise in polling or statistics.
Though it’s a pity he passed. Perhaps he could explain how Kleck’s figures indicate that gun owners used guns in self-defense more than 100% of the time. I always thought 100% was pretty much as high as you could go.
http://www.armedwithreason.com/debunking-the-defensive-gun-use-myth/
See also: http://www.armedwithreason.com/defensive-gun-use-gary-kleck-misfires-again/
David Hemenway does not have a degree in statistics his degrees are in economics. Hemenway has written 5 books, not one on statistical analysis and I have seen no evidence that he has ever done any actual polling.
I did find this curious, David Hemenway appeared in clothing ads in The New Yorker and New York Magazine.
while I was working for the university I had the opportunity to take just about any class I wanted. I took a class in propaganda, It did two basic thing for me: it fine tuned my bullshit meter, and it taught me not to trust any thing any one said with out me personally verifying it, and double checking. Unfortunately that class is no longer taught.
You looked on Wikipedia? That’s it?
Statistics is part of economics, and required to get into a doctoral program. It is a huge part of any economics doctoral degree. And if you’d looked, you’d see that Hemenway has been published in statistics.
But you should also look at the work of Tim Lambert (found extensively on the Internet) on guns, Lott, statistics, and particularly the Australian gun experience.
See also, the work of Jens Ludwig, Dan Black, Daniel Nagin, Philip J. Cook, for startes. And a lot has happened since Wolfgang shuffled off this mortal coil.
Finally, there is the usual problems inherent in any survey that relies upon self-reporting. To say nothing of the number of illegal “self-defense” incidents. I interviewed more than one defendant who, having attempted an armed robbery with a gun, wound up shooting the victim because the victim pulled a gun, a knife, etc. Each of these robbers claimed self-defense, which is legally impossible.
And I’m not sure why you sent me to a critique of Wikipedia. It seems you were the one who resorted to Wikipedia, else how would you find out about Hemenway having appeared in a couple of clothing ads? It doesn’t appear on his Harvard page, and I’d never heard of it until you brought it up.
However, the critique is rather lame, anyway. Defending Lott is kind of sad. I don’t have much respect for someone who impersonates a woman while trolling the Internet for opportunities to praise himself.
an addition you might want to check out:
http://doubletap.cs.umd.edu/WikipediaStudy/
I use every source of info that available. I checked the Harvard pages first. 50% response on a self-reported email survey was his best, down to 1/3 for his worst, on a pre-selected group of respondents. That throws randomized design right out the window.
Stats are required for most upper degrees.
Hemenway has the same degree that Lott has, and they have both been discredited. Yet Hemenway used Lott’s database instead of doing his own, which is kind of a scuzzy thing to do. One thing I will say for Lott, he was confident enough to publish his database.
I’ve run across Tim before, he’s an adjunct lecturer in computer graphics. I was guest lecturer for the Ed. dept. disabilities class, the one the students have to take to get their credential, specialty in psychometric testing and learning disabilities.
I did one of my internships with the probation dept., I’ve heard all the stories too.
as for the for the Australian gun buy back and prohibition, they had, if my memory serves, a 31.9% reduction in their homicide rate, while the US, during the same time, had a 31.7% reduction in our homicide rate. Not exactly what I’d call a significant difference.
I included wikipediastudy to demonstrate how easily propaganda can be propagated.
I use Wikipedia as a start on finding sources sometimes, never for anything authoritative. (I’m not implying you do.)
Comparing Australia and the U.S. is dicey on any number of fronts. However, I found that most of the misleading and false factoids regarding Australia have been bandied about mainly by the pro-gun crowd. (Or maybe it was just the more ludicrous ones.) With this year’s mass shootings, Australia has been abused by both sides, of course. I recently reread a number of studies, but I have neither the time nor the energy to duplicate that research right now. The Slate link below is pretty much on the money, though hardly an in-depth piece. Perhaps the most neglected effects are those impacting suicide rates. When guns are scarce, gun suicides go down, without a corresponding rise in non-gun suicides. The same has held true for gun homicides and non-gun homicides in Australia. Tim Lambert spent quite a bit of time straightening the record out on this some years back, though I’m not sure how much of it he’s doing now, or even where he’s blogging these days. I’ve never seen his numbers refuted. Otherwise, you might give a glance at this:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2012/12/16/gun_control_after_connecticut_shooting_could_australia_s_laws_provide_a.html
I use Wikipedia for quick and dirty, google for just quick, then my own personal library (which i have been pruning). If i really need a lot of information I’ll program a spider.
Comparing different countries and cultures is always dicey. take England, we are very different people, yes we kind of speak a similar language, but that’s about it. There is 200 years of cultural evolution between us. even the British are not a uniform people,they have as hard of a time understanding the black country dialect as we have with Louisiana Bayou Cajun. Comparing us with Japan is even worse, our cultures are diametrically opposite. japan is essentially a feudalistic culture, we altered it to a corporate orientation but didn’t change it. in most industrialized countries suicides have been coming down at about the same rate, guns or lack of guns have really had nothing to do with it. a person intent on suicide will generally succeed, and a person not intent will generally fail.
Australians lack of mass shootings has, in my opinion, two components: it caused psychic trauma to the Australian people much like 9-11 has caused Americans and the relative size of the Port Arthur attack to Australia’s population size would be like America having a mass murder of 620 people and 410 people wounded by one person in one incident.
Hell, when I was in England in my youth, I wound up in a pub between an Australian and a Cockney, and they thought I was English.
I think you’re right about Australia – Port Arthur was a bit like 9/11. (90% of the population backed the new gun laws.) One article I read pointed out that a misleading trope on the Internet was how in Victoria (population 4.5 million) the firearm homicide rate increased 300% after the law passed. In fact, it went from 7 gun homicides one year to 19 the next. (An actual increase of 171%.) Imagine if Chicago went from 7 gun homicides in one year to 19 in the next? The misleading nature of very small numbers.
One thing that the U.S. has struggled with almost from the beginning is the sense of having a lot more rights than we actually do. Americans reflexively respond with “No you don’t!” to any governmental regulation. Missing from all this is any sense of the legitimacy of government or civic duty. But in fact, the Framers (by and large) recognized the importance of government control of many things, and the inherent police powers states possessed. Many states had quite restrictive gun laws for decades, before it became some sort of received wisdom that any regulation was unconstitutional. Both before ratification and after, the state and federal governments conducted gun censuses (to determine what arms were available for the militia), thereby knowing who had guns and what guns they had. Yet we are told the Framers would never tolerate gun registration. Hey, guys, they practiced it!
Whether one likes Tim Lambert and think he “god’s gift to” straightening the record or hates him and think he is responsible for the death of thousands depends on which side of the argument you on. I think he is out of his field of expertise but I’m pro gun. his record on DDT, if you are pro environment, is good, but if you are a sub-Saharan African who’s family is suffering and dying from malaria because DDT is prohibited, then your going to hate and vilify him. http://www.fightingmalaria.org/article/1591.html
I liken him with Connie St Louis, he takes something that he has a prejudice against but doesn’t quite understand and he runs with. his hypothesis of more guns more crime can be debunked with two words Kennesaw, Georgia.
Except in Kennesaw, the crime rate didn’t really change from pre-gun law to post-gun law. Law enforcement there has stated their law was never enforced, no one checked to see if people actually did buy guns or have them. And the law had so many exemptions as to be toothless anyway. If you were opposed to gun ownership as a matter of conscience, you were exempt. And no one knew anyway.
According to the people who live there, “In fact, according to Stephenson[then-councilman ], it caused the crime rate in the city to plunge.”
Kennesaw Historical Society president Robert Jones said “following the law’s passage, the crime rate dropped 89 percent in the city, compared to the modest 10 percent drop statewide.”
“It did drop after it was passed,” he said. “After it initially dropped, it has stayed at the same low level for the past 16 years.” [ 3-14-01]
“You can’t argue with the fact that Kennesaw has the lowest crime rate of any city our size in the country,” said Church [Mayor]
As of the last time I checked the crime rate was at 79% of pre-law levels, with a population of 32,000, [pre-law was a little over 5,200]
You are quite right, the law has never been enforced, and no one has checked on compliance. The law contains no clause addressing punishment for violations, and the law has many exemptions: felons are not required to buy a gun (obviously), anyone “who conscientiously oppose maintaining firearms as a result of beliefs or religious doctrine”, the physically and mentally disabled, paupers, to name the basics.
Since no one knows who has or doesn’t have a gun, a criminal can’t tell who is or isn’t armed, a dilemma for a criminal you could almost liken to “Herd Immunity”
Everything I’ve seen says that even determining the crime rate for Kennesaw prior to 1982 is basically impossible, as reliable figures don’t exist. And whether crime went down then or not, it was going down anyway just about everywhere else. I did not find anything that suggested that there was either a precipitous drop, or that Kennesaw was some kind of outlier.
Snopes.com has items about this, and they don’t seem to confirm what you’re saying. And, as always, we are in the area of misleading very small numbers. An increase in murders from one per year to two per year is an increase of 100%. It also doesn’t mean a thing.
But it’s nice the mayor is trumpeting this. That’s what mayors are for, after all, PR.
There’s a gun nut on gocomics who regularly posts in response to the anti-gun editorial cartoons that “millions” of crimes are prevented each year by citizens with guns. Talk about having lost touch with reality!
There is a gun nut on gocomics who regularly posts, in response to anti-gun violence editorial cartoons, that “millions” of crimes are prevented each year by citizens with guns. Talk about having lost touch with reality!
I believe that’s Mr. Kleck’s doing. It’s a familiar trope.
If these statistics are accurate, and the vast number crimes prevented by concealed carry come by way of display or brandishing (as opposed to the minuscule number prevented by actual firearm discharge), let’s give them permits to carry non-functioning guns. They work as well for display and brandishing purposes, and apparently would be sufficient to accomplish over 99% of successful crime prevention.
I also wonder about the unreported incidence of concealed firearms being displayed or brandished illegally (during, say, the course of a mere verbal altercation). Do Kleck and the others offer any statistics on that?
If these statistics are accurate, one would expect Europe’s crime rate to be higher than ours because nobody brandishes guns. But its 1/10th of ours.
Not strictly relevant, but close enough to amuse me. The discussion of gun laws on this site always makes me think of Jello Biafra’s spoken word album “If evolution is outlawed, only outlaws will evolve”
When brains are outlawed, only outlaws will have brains.
It appears many Americans have an uneasy truce with a peaceful civil life.
Concealed guns is a paradoxical way of solving the problem and the post nails that fact to a freeking high mast.
The illusion of protection from others is maintained by the ownership of a gun (aided by gun totting laws, culture) and is feeding on itself.
One hungry beast it is too! I just wonder where the tipping point is…
I am a gun owner–I have an old shotgun in my closet because I live in a rural area adjacent to a medium sized city with lots of tweakers and police response times here are measured in hours and it may be necessary to convince someone not to harm me. I’m not a gun lover as I regard it the same way as the fire extinguisher in my kitchen, something that is rarely needed but no good substitutes exist if it is needed. As for handguns I see extremely little purpose for them in our society other than for trained law enforcement personnel If I were required to register my gun and prove I was competent to use it, I wouldn’t have any problem with that
“A Gallup poll this month found 56 percent of Americans said the nation would be safer if more people carried concealed weapons.”
Wrong. *I* would be safer if *I* carried a concealed weapon (and nobody else did).
(That’s probably what the poll respondents were subconsciously thinking, too).
I can’t answer for the people around me when I start blasting away with my BFG, though.
It’s a paranoid fantasy anyway, in reality I know the thing most in danger would be my feet.
cr
I wouldn’t be concerned about the number of firearms available, or even the number of concealed-carry permits, but for the American vigilante-justice mythos — fueled by the good-guys-with-guns-are-the-solution/you’ll-have-to-pry-the-gun-from-my-cold-dead-fingers/guns-are-the-first-line-of-defense-against-federal-tyranny rhetoric of the NRA and its fans. Under that mythos, those carrying guns are too quick to use them not in defense of their person, but in defense of their psyche, in response to slight or insult or the first sign of another’s aggression, in the red-hot moment when all thought of consequence has been abandoned.
I skimmed through these comments and have read many other comments on guns and deaths and stuff.
There doesn’t seem to be much, if any mention of alcohol and the misuse of this deadly force.
When it was realized that drinking and driving increased the chances of mishap, great lengths have been gone too.
In my neck of the woods drink driving is very serious and even a second offence will result in extreme penalties.
Is it even an offence to carry a gun while drinking.
I would bet real money that alcohol and guns has and does lead to unnecessary harm.
There do seem to be an inordinate number of shootings in and around — or stemming from disputes started at — gin mills.
There do seem to be an inordinate number of shootings in and around — or stemming from disputes started at — gin mills.
I love that term, “drink driving.”
Possession of a firearm while intoxicated is a crime in many, if not most, states. (I don’t know how many.) I doubt there are any laws against possession of a firearm while one is drinking but not intoxicated, but I stand to be corrected.
With thirty years in the criminal justice system, I can personally attest to many murders that would never have occurred had alcohol not been involved. Drugs, too, though there the issue was more often one of marketplace competition as opposed to killing under the influence. Though that’s hardly rare, either.
Actually, many crimes, period, would never happen were it not for alcohol.
Many crimes indeed.
And, yep we do call it “drink driving” here.
Many crimes indeed.
We really do call it “drink driving” here too.
Oh, I know.
“In my neck of the woods drink driving is very serious and even a second offence will result in extreme penalties.”
And this is because…?
Bear in mind that up to that point the drinking driver has harmed nobody. He is being punished, not for what he has done, but for what he might do. Based on the statistical increased risk of him causing harm.
Now if that argument were applied to carrying guns, there wouldn’t be many guns around.
cr
I like that point.
Yes, that’s correct. A person can go to jail for increasing their chances of doing harm, but without actually doing harm.
A gun advocate might say that driving is a privilege and gun ownership, in the US, is a right. Thanks to the constitution. It is the price of freedom, a few gun deaths.
I can’t imagine what it must be like there.
Here it is even a bit of a thing to see guns with the police they are so rare.
Having said that I must say, that from afar, it seems that a case can be made for the right of the people to bare arms.
Thank goodness the US government does not listen to the uninformed ranting of entitled ivory tower academics. I come here for the science, not the politics, Jerry.
A few days ago on this site, one poster, serenely and fairly to be sure, asked for evidence that backs up the position that legally-permitted concealed carriers increase rates of violence.
Today’s OP and references to the NYT article and the VPC statistics and documents provide that data. He has not posted once.
Besides an overwhelming personal and emotional revulsion against guns and gun violence, I find the whole “we’ll all be safer if we all have guns” argument to be as ludicrous as it is, well, ludicrous. I’m reminded of an episode of the original All in the Family, in which Archie Bunker, asked how he would prevent airplane hijackings, said the solution would be to pass out guns to all the passengers at the beginning of the flight, and collect them at the end. But, is that not the logical conclusion of the gun nuts’ position?
Rats. In my post just above, I forgot to call attention to this cartoon, which should lighten the mood just a tad.
That didn’t lighten my mood though. Self-righteous snobs. What entitles them to effectively rob the restaurant of the price of their meal through no fault of the restaurant’s?
Sorry, I’m going to have to disagree here. The price of the meal rates very little in comparison with one’s personal safety. If I knew there was someone in the building with me carrying a gun for no good reason, I’d immediately clear out, too.
Although, given the way I frequently react, I’d probably be hard pressed to stop from saying something to them like, “hey, are you clowns going to shoot me?”
“The price of the meal rates very little in comparison with one’s personal safety.”
Well in that case, pay the sodding meal on the way out. The restaurant would be quite entitled to call the cops and have you arrested, otherwise. Moral outrage doesn’t entitle anyone to cheat an innocent third party.
cr
(This time, _after_ I tried to post, I got a box that said ‘You haven’t filled in your name’ – that’s new. But it didn’t give me the opportunity to fix it…)
If you click “back” the text will still be in the comment box. You can then fill in your name and post. It’s already happened to me several times.
Hi Mark
Thanks for the suggestion, I’ve tried that but it doesn’t seem to work for me.
By the way, re-reading my previous comment it is rather strident in its criticism – I should point out that was in reaction to the rather self-righteous characters in the cartoon and absolutely not directed at you. I would not have blamed you for taking umbrage at my comment though. Thank you for not.
No. By American gunners’ logic, at the end everyone gets to keep their guns.
“I’m reminded of an episode of the original All in the Family, in which Archie Bunker…”
Off topic, but as I was reading that I was reminded of the joke about the guy who carries a bomb on a plane every time he travels. His logic “what are the odds that two bombs would be on the same plane”. Maybe it’s not all that off topic, we can call that gun fanatic logic.
Except that you left off the humorous quotation marks around the last word in your post, I fully agree.
Of course, someone needs to teach the joke’s protagonist some conditional probability! 😉
Re the hijacking prevention, why not just flood the cabin (NOT the cockpit!) with nitrous oxide for the duration of the flight. Even if they’re still conscious, any hijackers will be just too mellow to bother to go through with it.
cr
In that case, why not just dose all the passengers with Sodium Pentothal during pre-boarding, then have the flight attendants ask them as they enter the plane if they have any weapons or explosives or are planning a hijacking?
Because nitrous oxide is more enjoyable?
(And if the flying accident-waiting-to-happen ever goes down in flames, I’d much rather be high and happy than sober…)
cr
You got me convinced; nitrous oxide, it is. Flight attendant, a round of whippets for my travelling companions!
You’ve got me convinced; nitrous oxide, it is. Flight attendant, a round of whippets for my travelling companions!
That didn’t lighten my mood though. Self-righteous snobs. What entitles them to effectively rob the restaurant of the price of their meal through no fault of the restaurant’s?
cr
(If this posts twice I apologise)
And – damn! That was intended as a reply to Mark’s post of a cartoon in his reply to himself, above.
This is like trying to get out of quicksand…
cr
So, that was you. Huh; that’s the first time I think I’ve ever disagreed with you. I love the stuff you post here!
And yes, WordPress is getting really annoying…
I usually agree with your well-thought-out posts, too. But evidently not in this instance.
I DO agree about the annoyingness of WordPress at the moment, though.
cr
Sub
Professor, I have some questions. Was this study peer reviewed and what academic or professional journal published it? Who did this study? There is no researcher’s name on the study, no reputation on the line. I remember how The Tobacco Institute put out lots of “research” about how nicotine was not addictive and the tars could not cause cancer, also no researcher’s name. I also noticed the research was funded by two organizations that are very anti gun, how would you feel about a pro-tobacco research funded by Philip Morris? Would you accept that there might be a certain level of bias there? How do you feel about someone who fakes or misrepresents their data?
As opposed to the rigorous methodology employed by the gun lobby’s favorite researcher, John Lott?
an ad hominem proffered by Mr. Anonymous
I’m not sure ad hominem applies. Snarky, yes, but fair comment on a debunked “researcher.”
sooner or later every one on the planet will be debunked at some point. Hemenway has been debunked multiple times. Attack the research, fine, attack the researcher and that is the definition of an ad hominem.
I can assure you that nicotine is not addictive.
I know because I smoked 50 cigarettes a day for 30 years. (for health and taste.)
To act as devil’s advocate (as a Brit, I find the lack of gun control in the US totally mystifying): how are they counting the cases when concealed carry works for self defence?
It’s easy to count accidents, justified homicides and suicides because somebody is dead or in hospital. However, a successful self defence might involve the perpetrator of the crime merely backing off when they find out their victim is armed. Or maybe the confrontation never happens, the perp doesn’t even try to attack the victim.
it depends on who is doing the study, and who is paying for it. one researcher required that the gun had to be fired and a police report submitted before it was counted as a self defense incident. his numbers, obviously, were very low.
I see this thread diverging into the same discussion seems to recur anytime any amount of gun control (or lack thereof is proposed): What was the intent of the Founding Fathers?
Why should this matter to people on either side of the debate? Isn’t this amounting to nothing more than an argument from authority, an authority no less, who had absolutely no inkling about the type of weaponry present in the modern world? Even if we concede that we should care what their intent was, how can we possibly say what that intent would be in the 21st century?
I understand as far as the law is concerned that we have to look at precedent, but it isn’t unheard of for precedent to be reversed. The intent may have bearing on future court decisions, but it should have no bearing on the merits of the present day position on whether we should have more gun control. Madison’s intentions on whether 18th century militias could be defeated by citizenry with muskets and therefore individual gun ownership should be permitted has no more to do with today’s world than Jefferson’s intentions about whether we should own other people has to do with whether we should reinstate slavery.
The points should be discussed on their merits. Legal routes to any proposed changes is an entirely different question.
Yes but, the constitution provides a means for overruling itself.
There are technical legal reasons that a constitution is not like legal precedent. Not that I know them, but it can’t just be overruled, or overturned. It is not the same thing or the same type of thing.
I think?
Yes, the Constitution does supply a means for overruling itself and technically legal precedent which speaks to how the Constitution is applied is a separate issue from modifying the Constitution. My point is that neither of these things have anything to do with whether the right to own guns (or not) is a reasonable right to have or whether society is safer with more guns or fewer guns. Retreating to the Founding Fathers and what their intentions were seems akin to when theists simply retreat to the Bible and declare that their position is correct because the Bible says it is. There seems to be a habit in America of holding up the Constitution as a sort of sacred document in its own right. What the Constitution has to say about as issue speaks to implementing change, not to determining whether change is reasonable.
The only means by which the Constitution can be “overruled” is by amendment. What does change is how it is interpreted. A stark example is when the Supreme Court defined what was meant by “double jeopardy” one year, and then reversed itself three years later.
Wow, you have never heard of a constitutional convention I’m stunned. It is the other way the constitution can be “overruled” amended or abandoned all together.
Meanwhile in Melbourne, a guy runs amok with a meat cleaver and is reduced to throwing apples and his iPhone at people when he loses his shit. No one was hurt. Can anyone believe that things wouldn’t have been much worse if he’d been able to get his hands on a gun of any kind?
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-27/la-trobe-st-closed-as-police-negotiate-with-armed-man/6889026
If that happened in Toronto, the police would empty their clips shooting him as evidenced in this tragic story.
Yeah Diana, but at least the cop has been charged with 2nd-degree murder.
Unlike the incompetent cretins in London who murdered Eduardo de Menezes.
cr
Bugger! I meant Jean Charles de Menezes.
cr
In this case but this is one of many.
I grew up with guns. I have hunted all my life. I got my first shotgun when I was 9 years old. Gun safety was a huge part of my life, growing up: “treat every gun as if it is loaded”, “never point a gun at anything you don’t want to destroy (even if you know it is empty (see rule 1))”, “always familiarize yourself with a gun before attempting to use it (take it apart, learn all of its ins and outs)”, “never trust that someone else knows what they are doing with a gun… pay attention to where their gun is pointed, stay out of the line of fire”, etc.
All that said; there is something else that my dad always said, “Rifles and shotguns have a use in hunting, but pistols are made for only one thing: killing people.” As a result, even though he had no problem with me having guns, he never allowed me to have a handgun.
As an adult, I still have rifles and shotguns, that I use for hunting and target shooting. And I do own a handgun that was given to me as a gift… and I must admit that it is a lot of fun to take to the shooting range and shoot targets… but I don’t get the cultish behavior that comes from so many gun owners.
3 of my 5 long guns have sentimental value to me, in one way or another (1 is the gun my dad gave me when I turned 9, 1 is a gun my late grandfather gave me, 1 is a WWII Yugoslavian rifle that I got for a song), and the pistol has a bit of sentimentality, since it was a wedding gift from a favorite uncle (yes, wedding gift, my family is strange)… BUT I would be willing to part with the ones that aren’t heirlooms/collectibles, and would be willing to render non-functional the ones that are, if it came down to it… especially the handgun.
I like having the handgun, because it is fun to shoot… but I also have no interest in carrying it on a my person daily (because I don’t want the risk/responsibility that comes with that), and I also am aware of the stats that show that handguns kept in the home “for self defense” are more often used against the owner than against the intruder… so my handgun is safely locked away, except when I take it to the shooting range to destroy a few paper targets.
All of that said… the stats posted by PCC are VERY eye-opening.
I’ll be the first to admit that my reasons for owning guns are purely emotional. I like to hunt. I don’t NEED to hunt, I can get by, perfectly fine in our modern society, by shopping at the local grocery store for my sustenance. But, on the other hand, I enjoy the whole aspect of self-reliance, acquiring and preparing my own food (the same reason I keep a garden)… but, honestly, it is emotional… its because I enjoy it. Same with target shooting; it is fun, and I enjoy challenging myself to become a better and more accurate shooter… but again, it is purely because it brings me joy, emotional.
Living in Texas, I see bumper stickers, doormats, and such that read “Nothing inside is worth your life.”
I can’t but help wondering about the inverse: what, inside, is worth killing? Sure, I wouldn’t (or, at least, I assume that I wouldn’t) hesitate to kill someone to defend the life of my wife or family… but the thought of killing a person disturbs me, to no end… ending, forever, a sentient being… even thinking about it just ties my guts up in knots.
I’m going to have to do some real soul-searching (pardon the phrase… I’m a ginger after-all, obviously, I have no soul). As a gun owner (and in some ways, gun enthusiast), but not a “gun nut,” and definitely not a NRA member… I must admit that I have, by default, always fell on the side of gun rights rather than gun control… but I hadn’t ever really researched it in any meaningful way, because it just wasn’t a big deal to me. Thank you for sharing these stats. I will certainly look into them further, and adjust my opinions accordingly.
(sorry for the rambling nature of this comment. It manifested itself as a stream-of-consciousness, and I opted to leave it as-is, rather than editing it into a more structured post, since this form better demonstrates the path my thoughts took while responding to this thread)
Your dad sounds like my dad. I too grew up with guns (rifles) and was taught all the same rules as you. I’m a very good shot too. My dad is a good marksman and my great grandfather was a sniper so maybe it’s genetic.
Yeah, in our family, it wasn’t even allowable to point a toy gun at another person… Dad expected us to treat even toy guns as though they were loaded.
And on the marksmanship point… I won a few belt buckles in high school on the 4-H shooting team (trap/skeet).
Additionally, the day I purchased the WWII Yugoslavian rifle (a Mauser M48 8mm), my buddies and I went out shooting. At one point, I fired a round at the target, cycled the bolt, and caught the ejected shell casing in mid air (honestly, I have no idea what caused me to even attempt that feat, and I am STILL amazed that I accomplished it). My buddies were as amazed as I was, and one of them suggested that I throw it as far as I could, and then try to shoot it… so… I threw it as far as I could (about 25 yards), took a bead on it, and shot it. Amazingly, I hit it. I made some comment about how I approved of the accuracy of my new gun, put it away, and watched my buddies shoot… at that moment, I wasn’t about to take any chance to demonstrate that I had just had two incredible strokes of luck… I just let it ride that I really AM that good.
Ha! My parents wouldn’t even let me have toy guns. They thought it was bad to pretend to shoot people and they didn’t want something so serious reduced to play.
My dad has a nice WWII mauser as a collector gun. I shot a .22 when I was about 6 and using the scope was able to shoot the pin holding the target and quite a distance away (can’t remember it but far enough that I had to use a scope). I would have made a great sniper. I guess I’d be a decent asset in the zombie apocalypse; until then, I’ll just keep working in IT.
Nothing wrong with the rambling nature of your reply. And I appreciate your candor and open-mindedness.
Growing up outside Boston, I didn’t know anyone who’s dad had guns, and none of my friends got them when we got older. I was around them as a prosecutor in Chicago, but prosecutors were not allowed to carry. (No one was foolish enough to trust a bunch of drunken Assistant State’s Attorneys with deadly force.)
When I became a prosecutor in Colorado, it was different. Prosecutors are law enforcement officers here, with badges, and the right to carry just about whatever they want, concealed or otherwise. (Though few do, I believe.) I owned numerous handguns as a prosecutor, and later, as a judge. I trained with the local cops and the sheriff’s office. I have no guns now.
After moving here, I learned something about actual hunting, though I have never had any desire to hunt myself. But what I’d call “real” hunters are mostly good folk, with respect and love of animals. No good hunter I know ever shoots what he doesn’t use, and in the mountains, many families do rely on hunting for food. None of the hunters I know have any respect for someone who simply wants to kill something.
I don’t believe people should be absolutely barred from the possession of guns, though I believe very strongly in intensive screening, registration, and licensing. Moving here changed a lot of my attitudes about guns, but my attitude has also swung back toward the necessity for gun control. In truth, even in my gun-owning days, I favored gun control. But never an outright ban.
I agree 100% on the note of only shooting what you use. I cannot abide “trophy hunters” and/or “sport hunters” who just want to shoot something that will look good on a wall.
On a side note: I am not above shooting a coyote/dog that is harassing/killing our livestock (sheep and cattle)… but this is a fairly rare occurrence, in all honesty.
Oh..and I am starting to lean toward gun-control, myself.
I think there can be a common ground of sanity on this issue. And most gun owners I know personally are pretty disgusted with the NRA, and find gun “nuts” to be as disturbing as the rest of us.
Perhaps it’s the daily cost that I saw in Chicago, which is paid in every other big city as well. But I have no illusions that there is a quick or decisive fix for mass shooting scenarios. I think there are a hell of a lot of guns that we have to get off the streets and out of the hands of some dangerous people.
What disturbs me is the role the Internet plays for some resentful, angry men. It really ain’t helping things.
Shooting coyotes going after your livestock is sort of a cost of that business. It’s certainly not sport killing.
Though I guess the romantic in me does get upset when I hear of wolves being shot in, say, Wyoming. Even though it is really the same thing. But I sort of feel like we owe the wolf. Still, I don’t own livestock, so it’s easy for me to say!
reality bites