Two contrasting sources (both provided by Matthew) give the same answer about the efficacy of prayer:
https://twitter.com/TheTweetOfGod/status/672174167832170496
I can’t help but think that the headline below, from yesterday’s Daily News is—perhaps unintentionally—a slap in the face of theists. It implies that either God let the shootings take place, or he’s leaving us on our own to solve the problem. Either way, it reflects a view of a god who’s neither omnipotent or omnibenevolent, though perhaps that’s a bit too much exegesis for a newspaper headline.
Today’s New York Times has two op-eds on the San Bernardino tragedy, both decrying the lack of gun control in the U.S. “The horror in San Bernardino“, the main piece (by the whole editorial board), includes this
Yet, even as grief fills communities randomly victimized by mass shootings, the sales of weapons grow ever higher. Holiday shoppers set a record for Black Friday gun sales last week. They left the Federal Bureau of Investigation processing 185,345 firearm background checks, the most ever in a single day, topping the Black Friday gun buying binge after the shooting massacre of 26 people at a school in Newtown, Conn., three years ago.
. . . Congress has allowed the domestic gun industry to use assorted loopholes to sell arsenals that are used against innocent Americans who cannot hide. Without firm action, violent criminals will keep terrorizing communities and the nation, inflicting mass death and damage across the land.
The Republicans, of course, are saying these shootings reflect a need for better mental healthcare, but that party is largely responsible for dismantling the mental-healthcare system and putting many seriously ill people back on the street. And really, the line between a disaffected shooter and someone who’s mentally ill is nebulous. You can’t define shooters like those in San Bernardino as mentally ill, because that’s simply tautological. Many people who would not fall into the mental healthcare safety net because they lack a diagnosable condition—including terrorists, those who grab a gun in a moment of anger, or those who (apparently like the California shooters) are simply plotting revenge—would not be helped by expanding our psychiatric outreach.
And those who pin the uniquely American problem of mass shootings on mental illness alone must explain why American is unique in harboring so many mentally ill people. I refuse to believe that a surfeit of such people is the root cause of these tragedies. Somewhere in there is the unconscionable “freedom” of Americans to own guns.
Of course we should give people greater access to mental healthcare, but that would mean raising taxes, which is a no-no. But one thing that’s less costly, and perhaps more efficacious, is restricting gun ownership. “Smart guns”, which can be fired only by the owner, or restricting gun ownership to hunters or members of gun clubs, would go a long way toward solving the problem. Remember that many guns used in the commission of crimes are legally owned guns that have been stolen. What we need are far fewer legally owned guns.
Nicholas Kristof’s piece, “On guns, we’re not even trying” is (at last) something he wrote that doesn’t make me cringe. He first adduces the frightening statistics:
So far this year, the United States has averaged more than one mass shooting a day, according to the ShootingTracker website, counting cases of four or more people shot. And now we have the attack on Wednesday in San Bernardino, Calif., that killed at least 14 people.
It’s too soon to know exactly what happened in San Bernardino, but just in the last four years, more people have died in the United States from guns (including suicides and accidents) than Americans have died in the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq combined. When one person dies in America every 16 minutes from a gun, we urgently need to talk about remedies.
He then proposes three solutions: universal background checks (40% of guns are legally bought without such checks), banning people under 21 from owning guns, and curbing the ability of people on the terrorism watch list to buy guns (yes, they can: more than 2,000 such weapons were bought last year.) These are minimal solutions, but don’t go far enough.
It’s unthinkable in the present political climate to envision serious restrictions on guns, but remember, it was once unthinkable to give civil rights to blacks or legal marriage to gay couples. What we need is a change in public opinion, and it’s sad that the only way that change might happen is for far more people to be murdered. And even that won’t help, for America’s in the grip of gun madness.
Kristof ends on a clever note: asking Republicans to heed their #2 god:
. . . Ronald Reagan, hailed by Republicans in every other context, favored gun regulations, including mandatory waiting periods for purchases.
“Every year, an average of 9,200 Americans are murdered by handguns,”Reagan wrote in a New York Times op-ed in 1991 backing gun restrictions. “This level of violence must be stopped.”
He added that if tighter gun regulations “were to result in a reduction of only 10 or 15 percent of those numbers (and it could be a good deal greater), it would be well worth making it the law of the land.”
Republicans, listen to your sainted leader.
The numbers adduced by Reagan have of course increased since then—they’ve tripled. Here’s a figure from PolitiFact, which gives some caveats in the associated article, but in general the numbers below are pretty close to the mark (that site adds 27 to the terrorist-caused deaths and nearly 22,000 to the total Americans killed by guns). Their ratio of Americans killed by guns to Americans killed by terrorism is 4,250 to 1. Which is the greater problem?
Finally, Grania has sent us a timeline for mass murders in the U.S., showing the nearly exponential increase over time. This is from Mother Jones, which quotes statistics from the Harvard School of Public Health:
As the article notes:
Rather than simply tallying the yearly number of mass shootings, Harvard researchers Amy Cohen, Deborah Azrael, and Matthew Miller determined that their frequency is best measured by tracking the time between each incident. This method, they explain, is most effective for detecting meaningful shifts in relatively small sets of data, such as the 69 mass shootings we documented. Their analysis of the data shows that from 1982 to 2011, mass shootings occurred every 200 days on average. Since late 2011, they found, mass shootings have occurred at triple that rate—every 64 days on average. (For more details on their analytical method, see this related piece.)
I thought this was an interesting article about mass shooting theory:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/thresholds-of-violence
Very interesting article.
Yes interesting. The internet really does have this lensing effect – for better and worse – of letting us feel like we’re in a close knit social group, which is in fact scattered across thousands of miles and sometimes decades or centuries. Some people identifying with school shooters to the point of being the ‘nth rock thrower’ is sort of the dark side of the archetypical housefrau talking about soap opera character relationships as if they are real.
I third the “interesting.”
Of course, this doesn’t explain instances like San Bernadino or the Planned Parenthood attack. Or does it?
I don’t know why the hypothesis would be limited to school mass shootings, although a clear theme might increase the likelihood that something catches on.
It’s terrifying that mass shooting has now become so normalised, that only slightly weird, boys think it’s an appropriate option for them. Kids committing suicide has a similar process; the more they think other kids are doing it, the more they think it’s a reasonable thing for them to do. IIRC a New York City initiative to dissuade kids from suicide had to change its narrative from “So many kids are committing suicide, this is terrible”, to “Not many kids commit suicide but we still want to stop them”, because the first actually caused a rise in suicide rates.
Shooting up the school is now on the list of options of any kid who thinks they have an grievance, or just wants to join the club!
The sad fact is that Republicans are, these days, largely just neb-confederates. They are far more interested in undermining government than they are in operating efficient government. Civil turmoil, like the gun chaos we’re living through, serves their purpose.
And sense that govt of any kind can not only operate efficiently and do well by The People must not happen and they will do anything to show that. By hook or by crook they will do so.
Prayer is only good for one thing, psychological consolation of the one praying and those who agree with it. Nothing else really can I detect can it serve.
Christians think we are living in a fallen world which was the excuse used by the scribes of the books that were allowed to become the Christian Bible. And a returned to the Heaven of Perfection is their wish.
The culture of the US is basically the same as other Western nations. The number of people suffering from mental illness is roughly the same. We watch similar movies, TV programmes, and play the same video games. None of us have the gun death problem the US has.
The difference between the US and the rest of us is the availability of guns and the gun culture.
It has got worse since the 2006 SCOTUS ruling.
Many USians haven’t worked out either that more legal guns means more illegal guns.
As an on-looker from the UK I can’t help wondering if there isn’t still a subconscious ‘pioneer in the wilderness’ mindset in the USA, particularly outside the big cities.
It would possibly explain the desire for ability to protect your nearest and dearest from criminals and wildlife, especially when help is so far away. It might even explain the reason for the atypically high numbers of believers – perhaps ‘God’ will help you when there’s no one else near, or the like-minded community provide support?
The “pioneers” are in the cities, the suburbs, the small town and everywhere else. Most of America has been brainwashed and suckered into thinking their whole way of life is doomed if they don’t have a gun to go with their bible.
Many of them even make that ridiculous statement that they must have a gun to protect themselves and their family from big government when it comes calling at the door. If you saw even a small bit of the civilian police forces on the streets in that California town yesterday, who could think they will protect themselves from that? Then add in the military just for laughs.
Both DiscoveredJoys and Randy Schenk’s posts are spot on I think, especially here in Texas. I know a lot of people with guns, and concealed carry licenses, and that is just their mindset. Protect hearth and home, can’t count on the govt to show up in time, and then conversely the attitude ‘they can take my gun when they pry it from my cold dead hand’ mentality.
Sorry Randy I missed a ‘c’- Schenck
I think that’s a good theory that would explain some of it.
I also think there’s a strong Hobbesian element, indicated by the way there’s always a big increase in firearms purchases after an incident.
Gun ownership (mainly hunting weapons, hand guns are rare), especially in rural areas, is pretty common here (NZ). People being shot deliberately isn’t. I don’t know why that should be, except people have a different attitude to guns.
The idea of “stand your ground” turns out to be one used a far back as the early 1800’s and even with that gun violence wasn’t that common despite what you see in US television about the Old West and so many carrying guns on the old salt trails.
From what little I know of them, the “stand your ground” laws have been a disaster. I get the impression more people get shot, and less people get prosecuted for shootings that should never have happened.
It’s a travesty. Fortunately only a few states have that ruling, I believe.
Good to know it’s not widespread.
It is amazing how many whites, and conservatives of a darker hue can successfully use it in defense. Yet when a black woman invoked it as protection from a dangerous former spouse, when she shot and missed him, it is negated.
SYG has been successful for the gun happy White Power minded amongst us. They find it ups their game considerably.
Yes! That case in Florida the one you’re talking about? That seemed to me like a clear case of self-defence even without a SYG law, but that was no good to a poor, black woman.
If that were the case, you’d think Canadians and Australians, more than Americans, would experience the same amount of gun deaths but our gun laws and gun crime are very different, even if we correct for population.
I think Heather is right – what is different is gun culture. As a Canadian, I have American friends and relatives and visit the US often enough. It is a culture that is the same yet very foreign and the foreign part to me is the weird gun culture. It is very unique and it still shocks me when I see internet conversations on unrelated forums about what gun to buy someone’s wife so that it is easy to carry yet sure to kill.
Yes, but I think the true rural types–the farmers, ranchers, etc.–are the least dangerous; and probably have the best claim to needing firearms for safety.
It can take a long time for law enforcement to get to some places!
The claim that “it has gotten worse since the 2006 SCOTUS ruling” doesn’t withstand the slightest scrutiny. All anyone need do is look up the FBI statistics on firearms-related homicides and other violent crimes in the United States to see that those crime rates have been declining for well over 20 years while at the same time gun ownership has increased. These statistics are readily available online. I’m simply amazed at how many people peddle the same myth as you.
I was talking about the attitude – there are stats (either Pew or Gallup can’t remember off the top of my head) that show that attitudes about gun ownership have become stronger since the 2006 decision. Correlation isn’t causation of course, but I think it’s a reasonable hypothesis that it had an effect on public opinion.
The fear response invoked (govt to take your guns) then the Pavlovian reaction to purchase more guns and ammo than one person needs occurs over and over with a regularity that is appalling to me. It is in fact a sales technique used with cynical abandon by the gun makers and ammunition manufacturers to widen their bottom line. Grotesque in point-of-fact.
But see Jerry’s posted time line above!
I genuinely wonder if background checks and more rules and regulation are effective because there are so many firearms in circulation already.
Duncan Black at Eschaton observed yesterday that, while he would take away all of the guns if he were our benevolent dictator, it is hard to imagine a package of rules and regulations which could realistically be implement and make any kind of dent in gun violence. It’s people’s “hearts” and minds that have to change, and now that it’s confirmed the shooters were Muslim, I’m dreading the fallout – which is sure to take us in the other direction.
If one is not hopeless, one is not paying attention …
People’s “hearts and minds” often change when they are forced to. European rulers were removing weapons from the hands of the population long before their hearts and minds changed.
It is indeed a mind set. And this is blowback from US and other countries and the kind of violence done in the Middle East for many decades. And the US creating the seeds for al Qaeda then Da’esh from it. Now the US is helping AQ to fight Da’esh. A tangle of knots soaked in blood and oil.
I’m fine with changing “hearts and minds”. But while that process is going on, let’s make weaponry harder to acquire. Deal?
How about just ammunition? The first 10 at a low price. But after you get on a list, and it is universal on how much ammo you buy versus how much you actually shoot. Though there are those who press their own ammunition. Still most do not. The more you get the more it costs. And the heavier the scrutiny.
Hey, I have an idea. Let’s find out if they are effective.
If we start regulating guns today and ostracizing right wing paranoia in about fifty years that will make a difference. My grandchildren will live in a better world and that’s the justification.
Not everything can be built on Manhattan Project or Apollo timescales, but you have to start somewhere since gun owners have no motivation to change themselves.
I think so. Its worth remembering that violent crimes are overwhelmingly committed by males aged 16-35 or so. So even if regulation does nothing to prevent current gun owners from using their weapons in the commission of crimes, over the next 10-20 years (1) those gun owners will age and become statistically less likely to be violent, and (2) up-and-coming males will have less access to guns than previous generations.
You can’t legislate states of mind. However you can create them if you have the right mix. And the brains behind Da’esh have. Not so much the US and other European powers. In psychological warfare no one dies till the ones altered get to work.
The NRA and Republicans have made it very difficult for police, the ATF and other such organizations to stop the selling of firearms to criminals, gangs, drug lords and other anti society types.
Industry pressure hides gun traces, protects dealers from public scrutiny:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/23/AR2010102302996.html
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/23/nra_a_lobby_for_criminals/
“In 2003, Congress, at the NRA’s urging, barred the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the much-maligned agency responsible for enforcing federal gun laws, from forcing dealers to conduct inventory inspections that would detect lost and stolen guns.”
How the NRA works to Rearm Criminals:
http://www.vpc.org/studies/felons.htm
” the NRA has actually worked to put guns back into criminals’ hands. Following is the saga of the federal “relief from disability” program. The NRA has worked to expand and protect this guns-for-felons program that has rearmed thousands of convicted—and often violent—felons.”
But all those things can be undone. New laws can be passed.
The NRA and Republicans have created an atmosphere that is conducive to the gun situation in America.
But it doesn’t have to stay this way. It can be fixed. Republicans are losing their constituents. They are getting old and dying. The NRA has been losing many fights in the past year, because the American people are waking up to the damage the NRA and it’s most rabid supporters do to American citizens.
It is most definitely not hopeless. What’s needed is for people to educate themselves, and speak out when they see people spouting NRA propaganda and talking points.
Then we have radicals like this and I quote:
“Over a fairly long lifetime, so far, I
have come to the sobering realization
that all that leftists, communists,
socialists, Democrats can do … all
they ever think about is killing.”
— L. Neil Smith (writer, gunsmith and inflamed with hate Libertarian)
How else can I look at that and think that this guy wants a bloody shoot out only with all those he finds murderous, meaning all of us that fit, you kill murderers in his mind. I find that just as dangerous a mind set as what motivates radicalized Muslims to retaliate against the US and other countries in trashing certain parts of the Middle East.
But he isn’t a Muslim. So he has a greater chance of doing anything he wants should he take the notion to. Maybe he will do nothing but urge others to. Who knowns?
I’m glad to read that most people who have a better understanding about this than I (I’m not American) are more hopeful, even though it’s going to be difficult. Personally, I still doubt new gun laws will be passed. Not even 20 dead children at Sandy Hook Elementary could move Congress into action.
I think they would be effective but perhaps wouldn’t move the lever as much as needed. It’s a very good start though.
Stop praying and stand up – you can see further and your hands are free for good works.
The praying position on your knees with your hands clasp is also a slave’s position hands ready to be put in irons.
On the Twitter, one Igor Volsky is retweeting politicians who offer thoughts and prayers, with a comment indicating how much the NRA contributed to that politician in the last campaign cycle, eg, “The NRA paid Rep. So-and-So $7,500 in 2014 to offer his thoughts and prayers.”
WHY IS HE SO ANGRY?! Oh, right …
Left unsaid here is that the preferred “solutions” of all of these politicians are, in order, 1. More God and prayer 2. More guns. If all of those people at that party were armed, then the shooters either wouldn’t have tried the attack or would have been stopped by a hail of devastating gun fire. Guided to it’s mark by God I suppose.
Or the statistically most likely result is that there would have been three separate shootings – one at the meeting and two in subsequent encounters after the original Christmas party.
But none of them would have been a “mass shooting” (body count >=4), so wouldn’t have made the local TV news – unless there had been no cats go missing that day.
You can’t prevent criminals from having or using guns. That is one definition of why they are called criminals. Taking gun’s away from law abiding citizens won’t stop criminals.
“You can’t prevent criminals from having or using guns.”
Sure you can. It’s done all over the world.
“Taking gun’s away from law abiding citizens won’t stop criminals.”
Many of these criminals start out as law-abiding citizens. And criminals often get access to guns that are stolen from law-abiding citizens.
But it’s not done in ‘Murica, becuz ‘Murica !
But then it is law abiding citizens who are killing people so where does that leave?
The rest of the so-called civilized world has criminals too, so tell us why they don’t have this slaughter?
The claim that other nations don’t have this slaughter is every bit as wrong as another commenters claim gun crime in the US keeps increasing. The fact that FBI statistics instantly prove that claim wrong didn’t seem to matter to him, and I’m sure studies demonstrating you are wrong won’t matter much to you, either. But I’m going to one anyway. According to a study done at SUNY-Oswego, Norway, Finland and Sweden had a higher number of mass shootings per 100,000 than the United States. Other countries outside the EU had a higher number per 100,000, but I will stick to the three I mentioned. Politifact, the most partisan of the fact-checkers, even rated Obama’s claims about mass shooting frequency as “mostly false”.
Would you mind giving us access to them? You must have their IP addresses.
You read the study wrong. The US has the highest number of mass shootings per capita in the world. Where Norway, (Finland and Switzerland (not Sweden) are ranked higher is in the number killed per shooting. That is because Norway’s single shooting (by the study’s metric) left 67 dead, Finland’s two shootings left 18 dead, and Switzerland’s single shooting killed 14. The US’s 133 shootings counted left 487 dead, leaving our kills-per-shooting ratio significantly lower.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-leads-world-in-mass-shootings-1443905359
Wow, that is quite the misread!
P.S. Politifact’s ruling on Obama’s statement was one of its less sterling moments. Obama’s statement was “This type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency.” Politic act ruled that the first sentence was untrue, which on its own it is (though I think both are rather clearly meant to be part of the same thought) and the second was judged by killings per shooting, not by frequency of shootings (which I again think was the intended meaning).
Of course there is no single, quick, solution. However, if you require the registration of all guns, and seek to take them from people who don’t ‘qualify’ then any that aren’t registered or returned render the owners criminals.
Yes guns will remain in circulation and in the hands of criminals, but so what? Statistics show that guns are useless as any form of realistic defence, and criminals are less likely to carry guns if they are not expecting others to have them.
Mr. Toscano, please cite your sources for the statistics for these two last statements.
It seems that we continue to call the police to deal with situations like yesterday’s in San Bernardino. It seems axiomatic that the police don’t consider their guns to be “useless.”
Can you cite a significant number of examples where Joe Soap citizens have successfully taken down a “shooter”?
Actually, one example might be a start.
Well, Aidan, please define “significant.” Will this do? http://controversialtimes.com/issues/constitutional-rights/12-times-mass-shootings-were-stopped-by-good-guys-with-guns/
I can wait while you move the goalposts…
Seriously, though–I merely asked Mr. Toscano to cite the statistics that he claimed to have. Wouldn’t you agree that he then has the burden of proof? If not, why not? (That’s specific query 1, which can be answered yes or no.)And if yes, then why are you making this clumsy attempt to shift the burden of proof to me? (That’s specific query 2.) Especially since I’m not making any falsifiable claims at all…
Specific query 3: is your use of the term “Joe Soap citizen” meant to distinguish civilians from the police? (If not, perhaps you can explain what you meant.)And if so (specific query 4): what is it about the two factual claims made by Mr. Toscano that you think called for making this distinction?
My apologies…the “query 1” reference should have preceded the sentence it followed.
That’s twelve times since 1998 that guns in the hands of Joe Public have protected the public from mass shootings. During that period there have been many hundreds of mass shootings, and thousands of deaths, that wouldn’t have happened if guns were less available. Police guns definitely aren’t useless (sometimes they are far too useful!), but guns in the hands of civilians usually are, at least when it comes to fighting crime. It’s obscene that there is still a debate about this in the US when so many innocents have died. Guns kill people, less guns kill less people. As others have noted all developed countries have mental illness within their populations, only the US has regular and repeated slaughter of innocent people by guns.
No, weatherjeff, that would be incorrect. There have been MANY such incidents; I noted that Aidan asked for a “significant” number (without defining it), and then said he would settle for ONE. I made a joke about moving the goalposts; thank you for taking that chore off his hands.
You then reässert Mr. Toscano’s claim that civilian guns are useless, and ALSO provide no data.
Please note that I am not making an argument against gun control; I’m not making an argument that, on balance, civilian gun ownership is a good thing; in fact, I’m not making ANY argument for or against ANYTHING. (Is that not clear?) I’m merely asking Mr. Toscano to cite the source of statistics that he claims to have, but has not produced. Is that an unfair request?
Hey Bruce, no need for CAPS mate, we’re just having a friendly discussion. I don’t believe I moved any goalposts – but please highlight where you think I did. My main point was that guns kill people and less guns kill less people, I didn’t say that civilian guns are useless; I said they are not generally effective at dealing with the bad guys. There may be many more instances of good people preventing bad guys shooting people, however I was only responding to the link you posted, which described twelve. But really, can anyone in their right mind argue that on balance the good guys with guns have prevented more damage than the bad guys with guns have caused?
Sorry, weatherjeff; I didn’t mean to shout. I suppose that, not knowing how to italicize for emphasis on WordPress, I *should* have used one of the other conventions for emphasis.
“Moving the goalposts”: Aidan asked for *one* example; you turned that into a discussion of whether (as best expressed in this, your last post): “on balance the good guys with guns have prevented more damage than the bad guys with guns have caused.”
That may be an interesting point that someone (*not* me) wishes to argue; I only wanted Mr. Toscano to cite his stats for the claims that: 1) [civilian, apparently] guns are useless; and 2)criminals are less likely to carry guns if they are not expecting others to have them.
I would still love to see these alleged stats. I’m not even suggesting that they’re completely imaginary, but I think my views on the burden of proof are entirely correct. I shouldn’t have to go looking for support for an argument made by another if they refuse to support their own argument. Am I wrong about this?
Why is this even controversial? The man said: “[S]tatistics show…” Fine. Show us your data.
Not to mention in most of the 12 examples given multiple people were killed or injured.
Krast Jayzus, John Taylor. Could you please make up your mind? And while you’re at it, drag *Mother Jones* along with you.
One of the criticisms of Mother Jones’s risible conclusion that civilian weapons aren’t a deterrent against carnage is that they don’t count it a “mass shooting” unless there are at least 4 deaths. So if a civilian stops a maniac BEFORE they get to 4…then there has been no prevention.
Now you’re saying (please correct me if I’m wrong) that there’s no prevention unless said civilian shuts things down before that point.
Well, which is it?
And just how many armed police officers can dance on the head of a pin, anyway?
Two of your examples are of professional security people (“corrections officers” and a bouncer) who happened to be in the vicinity, leaving 10 examples from 1997 to the present. Depending on whether you believe the Washington Post (355) or PBS (294) mass shootings for 2015 alone, then your 10 examples covering 18 years are not significant at the P=0.05 level. Since it is incredible that there were no mass shootings between 1997 and the start of 2015 (let’s give you almost an extra day by starting on the Date Line), then your citations constitute 0.034 or 0.028 of mass shootings. They are not a normal event.
Oh, incidentally, taking significance at the 5% level (P=0.05) is absolutely normal practice in statistics.
Only if you actually believe this nonsense.
This is “no true Scotsman” logic applied to gun laws. The “good guys with guns” trope is nonsense. A large proportion of gun crime is carried out with legally owned guns. So, clearly, there are not distinct populations of “good guys” and “bad guys”. There is just one large amorphous population of heavily armed people. Some unknown proportion of those heavily armed people get disillusioned, get angry, get drunk. In the U.S. they then have the legally-owned means to go on a shooting spree, or to shoot themselves or their families.
In other words, some unpredictable minority of “good guys with guns” TURN INTO “bad guys with guns”. Background checks is a sop, it’s never going to work well enough to predict which of the “good guys” will turn into “bad guys”.
The huge number of illegal guns in circulation makes matters extremely difficult in the short term, I accept. But the ONLY way forward, ultimately, is a massive reduction in casual gun ownership across the board. Muttering about constitutional rights doesn’t trump anything. Either the Second Amendment can be defended on it’s merits in modern society, or it should be changed.
In many cases the persons using the weapons have no crime record and have just decided for whatever reason to run amok…muckers if you will after “Stand on Zanzibar” and it is caused by unseen aspects of population density affecting certain people who literally turn into killing machines. (Based upon tests with rats that when too crowed certain members turn homicidal. It doesn’t go away after they are separated) Most of whom die. Only a few survive or give up to languish in prison for the rest of their lives.
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good – the idea is to *reduce* the number available.
Most people who commit mass murders fall under the category of law abiding citizens for the majority of their lives. That is a fact.
Here’s my theory: major restricts to gun access will mitigate mass murders. This theory is significantly correlated to facts.
At the very least they will turn to knives as happened in China last year. Not one person died in those attacks. And those who can build bombs…
The shooter in San Bernadino had no criminal record. Had no history of mental illness. Was a natural born US citizen. Had a six month old child. Bought his weapons legally.
There is simply no criteria such as ‘criminal’ or ‘mentally ill’ here on which to hang a restriction. The only way to prevent such shootings would be to remove guns from the hands of normal US citizens, because up until the shooting itself, that is exactly what he was.
Criminals with guns aren’t the problem, are they?
A goodly amount of your mass shootings were by “law abiding citizens”. Well, they were until they decided to try to shoot the shit out of everyone.
The idea of restricting gun ownership to hunters or members of gun clubs doesn’t sound very appealing to me. The first case sounds like it would mean a requirement to slaughter an arbitrary quota of wildlife to qualify, and there might even be people with no interest in killing animals who would do it anyway, just to be allowed to keep their gun.
The merit of the second suggested option, having to join a gun club, might have possibilities depending upon the nature of the gun club. I certainly wouldn’t expect any positive consequences in requiring gun owners to join the NRA!
I also question the efficacy of the “gun club” loophole. However, I believe that is the current system in Australia, and they appear to have much less of a gun crime problem than we do. Perhaps the requirements to join the clubs are very high?
Furthermore, wouldn’t these restrictions just burden poor minority folks, and not wealthy whites who can afford such clubs? Tough argument to make, that the exercise of a Constitutional right be predicated on ability to pay…
anoNY: I don’t mean to hijack this thread with this observation. I also know that many here might find me a bit cynical about this, but while I don’t practice criminal law myself, I have colleagues who are very highly regarded defense counsel, and to a man (or woman) they’ll tell you that I’m not nearly cynical enough.
The fact is that pretty much the entire Bill of Rights is predicated on your ability to pay. Moneyed folks aren’t going to jail over the simple inability to pay a traffic fine. The 6th Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel is a sick joke. And just look at the entire War on Some Drugs. Of course, it helps to be black or brown, but if you REALLY want to be screwed, what you want to be is poor.
The one thing welfare doesn’t cover is self protection.
The question of who is legally “mentally ill” for various legal purposes fluctuates with the law.
During the years Schwarzenegger was governor of CA, the definition of mental competency to stand trial was considerably narrowed. A friend of mine who is a psychiatrist made a modest percentage of his income testifying whether or not a defendant was mentally competent to be tried.
He lost much of this income when CA changed the rules.
Presumably, legal definitions of sanity in other legal contexts are also fluid.
To give your headline the Edwin Starr answer it screams out for: “absolutely nothing … good god, y’all … say it, say it, say it … “
Mr. Starr link here.
And the Boss’s cover, for you youngsters.
Prayer, what is it good for? Maryam Namazie. Her name means Mary Prayer. Sheesh, that must wind the Iranian Islamists up. x
Or to paraphrase Edwin Starr:
Prayer, (not) God, y’all
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, say it, say it, say it
Prayer, uh huh, yeah, huh
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing, listen to me
Prayer, it ain’t nothin’ but a deal breaker
Prayer, it’s got one friend and that’s the preaching faker
Oh, prayer has shattered many young man’s dreams
Made him disabled, bitter and mean
Life is much too short and precious to spend saying prayers
Prayer can’t give life it can only give it away, ooh
“It’s unthinkable in the present political climate to envision serious restrictions on guns, but remember, it was once unthinkable to give civil rights to blacks or legal marriage to gay couples.”
I used to think along the same lines but I no longer do. There is a fundamental difference between the issue of the obscenity of our gun culture and the the civil rights, women’s rights and gay rights issues; the latter are about people. Even if one was opposed to them they had black friends, a gay uncle or son or they saw the obstacles their sister and mother had to go through. It was possible to get those opposed to see the humanity behind the oppression and thereby identify with them. Or at least agree that they had no real dog in the fight but the oppressed did.
Guns are different, they are things. Things that we have fetishized and which are irrationally thought to be essential for protecting one’s self and family *against* others. In terms of changing the hearts and minds of people, that’s a whole different kettle of fish.
I have no hope that we will come to our senses on this. Days like yesterday are our new reality for the foreseeable future. We may tinker around the edges of the insanity – I could see sufficient numbers of future horrors prompting universal background checks or even closing some of the loopholes but those, while welcome, are not going to stop the carnage.
Yes, I agree.
The ONLY way to solve this problem is to make it essentially illegal for anyone to own a gun without good reason, as it is in most of the rest of the civilized world.
And, of course, it won’t be accepted in the short term. Nothing will change.
But I think promoting the idea that there is any kind of “middle ground” that will change anything does not help. Background checks really aren’t going to solve this. You can’t possibly predict which “good guy” with a legal gun will lose his temper or get drunk and go and shoot someone (or sell his gun illegally to get some cash).
I think all that anti-gun advocates can do is to lay out the two alternatives as starkly and honestly as possible, accept that nothing will change in the short term, and wait.
(1) Make gun ownership essentially illegal for all, as it is in most of the Developed world. Change the Constitution if that’s what’s required.
(2) Embrace and accept the current level of murder and carnage.
I don’t believe there’s a worthwhile middle ground. It’s a simple and stark choice. Right now, the majority of Americans clearly prefer (2). Fair enough, but let’s just knock off the idiotic prayer and hand-wringing.
For those people who are saying the gun problem in the US will never change, I offer this view from Cliff Schecter at The Daily Beast:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/11/29/the-nra-is-getting-its-ass-kicked-and-here-s-the-proof.html
Quote:
Red states are saying no to new gun nut demands, and blue states are cracking down on reckless practices.
…
Don’t take it from me, though. Listen to the NRA, whose former president called their own efforts in the states this year a “huge train wreck” in an internal memo. The gun nuts lost in 15 of 16 states where they tried to put guns on campus (no doubt to add bullet holes to the general atmosphere of co-ed merriment), including Oklahoma, Arkansas, Indiana, Georgia, South Dakota, Tennessee, South Carolina and Wyoming—all deep red states.
End Quote.
Claiming a few minor, probably temporary, legislative defeats spells the end of the NRA and its (shall I say it?) unholy grip on U.S. politics is just whistling past the graveyard.
Texas, one of the largest States in the country, added take-your-gun-to-class. I don’t see a good trend up til now.
Good news, that!
I’m just going on the news reports but that seems to be the case here. The primary attacker was a natural born US citizen, with no record of mental illness, no criminal record, who bought his equipment legally. None of the “the answer isn’t gun regulation, its….” crowd’s suggestions would have helped in this case;* the only way this person could have been prevented from getting the firearms he used would’ve been a regulation preventing run-of-the-mill citizens from owning guns.
*In fairness, I should add that the sale or requirement of smart weapons wouldn’t have helped either.
“smart guns” are a nice idea, but what are you going to do with the 300 million + guns already in existence? You can’t take them away from people, and even if they had to register their weapons, it won’t prevent the situations you listed in your post, Jerry.
You can A) register them, B) require training by owners, C) mandate annual license reviews, D) take them from people who don’t qualify.
Why is this the one thing that we are incapable of regulating? Do you drive a car?
The car analogy fails because you actually do not need to register the car or have a license in order to own a car. You only need those things to drive that car on public streets.
Thus, the analogy is that I can have a gun without restriction so long as it stays on public property.
Derp, I mean as long as it stays on private property
GBJames,
I didn’t mean to conceal my aversion to the proliferation of guns with my comment. And you’re point about the car is taken. I agree that firearms should be registered, that gun ownership should require significant training and certification, that annual licensing reviews should be conducted, etc. But even if we could legislate those changes, my question remains: what do you do with 300 million guns out there? Would you propose going door-to-door to find out who has a gun that shouldn’t? How else are you going to get all the guns currently in population accounted for?
I propose not allowing it to become 400, 500, 600 million guns out there.
I don’t propose going door to door. But over time the supply will dwindle. Owners will get older and decide to get rid of some. We should buy them back. We should make it illegal to pass them down to children without the previously described restrictions.
This isn’t rocket science. If we make it harder to acquire and keep weapons, there will be fewer of them.
Be patient. The number of guns my relatives own(ed) is close to fifty. The number they actually use today is about three to five. The number collected dust or no longer operational is the remainder.
Restrict. Wait. Implement controls when needed. Wait.
In time, most people will see that the second amendment chases the imaginary threat of a despotism that only insecure crusaders think is real.
Combine a buy-back with an amnesty. Yeah, the government would have to pay for it. It’ll never happen, thanks to the “My Taxes!!!” brigade, but I’ll bet there’d be a lot of takers.
For any serious attempt to get guns under control and have some affect on the shooting and death rate, the following would be essential:
Prohibition on the ownership and sale of hand guns.
Prohibition on all assault type weapons, similar to AK-47s AR-15s and any other type that can be rigged to full automatic.
All forms of hunting can be accomplished very well without any of these weapons.
Even rifles of all kinds are too dangerous in a densely populated state. Iowa is not densely populated and rifles are illegal to use in deer hunting. It has always been that way here and who is complaining. Yet, lots of people and hunters have rifles…big waste of money.
These are all commonsense regulations that will begin the process of reducing the slaughter. What are hand guns used for — shooting people, holding up stores in robberies. It is illegal to fire a gun in the city limits of any town or city so why should people be carrying them around.
You can take pretty much any pistol and modify it to be fully automatic, turning it into a submachine gun, if you have the tools and knowhow. So we’d pretty much have to go back to revolvers, pump/lever-action shotguns, and lever/bolt-action rifles. Not that I’m opposed to that – they should be plenty suitable for defense and hunting, while being much less suitable for offensive use.
Yes, but I’m suggesting they get rid of the hand guns period — pistols, revolvers, all of them. This is what all the kids carry and shoot each other with in mass. This is what goes off “accidentally” and kills all kinds of innocent people. It’s the preferred item for suicide. It is as convenient as a stick of gum. You can’t hit anything with it 50 feet away but it hits everything. Someone uses a rifle or shotgun and it makes big headlines but most are killed with the hand gun.
If you need a hand gun for defense you are either in a gang, a criminal or some kind of police officer or with the law. I have no problem with the police and other law officers.
If you really think you need a gun for defense in the home, get a shot gun. Most home intrusions are at night and a shotgun is many times better than a hand gun. Just going off indoors will cause most intruders to leave quickly and the fire that comes out the barrel of a shotgun at night will scare even the user.
““Every year, an average of 9,200 Americans are murdered by handguns,”Reagan wrote in a New York Times op-ed in 1991 …
The numbers adduced by Reagan have of course increased since then—they’ve tripled”
Jerry, this is easily refuted by a google search. The homicide rate in 1991 was 9.8 per 100,000, while the same rate today is much lower (4.8 in 2010). Homicide victims in 1990 numbered near 25,000, while that number dropped off to 15,000 in 2010 (even with a larger population size in the country). http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf
You are conflating homicide with suicide in your post.
As I said yesterday in a post related to this current shooting, the US need more women in power and where it matters. I believe it would move political will to make a climate for change, to counter the gun carrying machoismo that absorbs the country.
Historically the collective male elected leaders have one foot in the stirrups and refuse to fully dismount, since they clearly have done f**k all to change the steady increase in gun uptake.
I also cryptically said the US are the ‘wild west of the west’ in reference to the one sided shootouts and I stand by that.
Then you have crap for brains people like this:
Evangelist Calls On Christians To Assassinate Abortion Providers. Joshua Feuerstein.
Patheos website.
https://shar.es/1c84Ls
the body count looks stable with this kind of free speech but he should be held accountable should he get the outcomes he calling for.
Gun Control is possible. I feel sorry for the country that could put a man on the moon but cannot do something like control Gun Crime.
Here are some of the views from Down Under. We did it so can you.
http://www.betootaadvocate.com/uncategorized/australia-enjoys-another-peaceful-day-under-oppressive-gun-control-regime/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rR9IaXH1M0
Make bullets hard to get and traceable.
Too late to solve it via guns since there are 300 million US civilian guns that aren’t going away.
Why do people who vehemently oppose guns feel the need to peddle so many myths? 40% of guns are bought without background checks? Sorry, but that is complete nonsense. This statistic is every bit as bogus as the “1 in 4” campus rape claim and the study used to arrive at the conclusion was just as flawed. But don’t take my word for it:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/10/16/clintons-claim-that-40-percent-of-guns-are-sold-at-gun-shows-and-over-the-internet/
But hey, feel free to keep referencing a number obtained from a study THAT WAS DONE BEFORE BACKGROUND CHECKS WERE MANDATED. That’s as dubious as citing seat belt fatality statistics using a study that was carried out before seat belts were a common feature in cars.
And is it to much to ask for those pushing gun contr…excuse me, gun safety to actually know what they are talking about on the topic? Anyone who has visited this site and read the posts on guns will recognize all of the following:
1. Using the terms “automatic” and “semi-automatic” interchangeably. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING. An automatic weapon has not been used to commit homicide in the US in decades. The sale of automatic weapons has been tightly controlled since 1934. Those laws were tightened even more in 1986. Civilians may not own an automatic weapon manufactured prior to the passage of the 1986 law. You can’t walk into a gun store, pass a background check and walk out ten minutes later with an automatic weapon.
2. “Assault rifle” and “assault weapon” are not interchangeable terms. Assault rifle refers generally to military weapons that are either a)fully automatic or b)weapons that switch between semi-auto and auto, or burst-fire and auto. As they are capable of automatic or burst fire (ie can fire mulitple rounds, usually three, with one trigger pull) they are tightly controlled(see point 1). The term “assault weapon” is a term wholly invented by the gun control lobby(see Wikipedia for further explanation)and is used almost entirely in reference to a gun’s cosmetic features. The AR in AR-15 does not stand for “assault rifle”
3. My personal favorite: AR-15s(or other “assault weapons”)and .223 ammo are only useful for “killing a lot of people at once”. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, well over a million AR-15s have been sold in the US in the past 3 decades. According to the FBI, ALL rifles, not just AR-15s, are used to commit fewer homicides in the US than baseball bats. AR-15s are the most commonly used hunting/target rifles in the US. If they are only good for “killing a lot of people” well over a million people, or 99.99%+ of their owners, are doing it wrong. All the same arguments apply to the .223, the round used in AR-15s.
4. Banning “assault weapons” and “high capacity magazines”(another term wholly invented by gun controllers)is an effective means of curtailing gun violence. Unfortunately for those pushing this myth, we have data that leads to the opposite conclusion. “Assault weapons” and “high capacity magazines” were banned in the US from 1994-2004. Said ban had zero impact on gun crime in the United States. To use the FBIs own word, the impact of the ban was “insignificant”.
5. The terms “magazine” and “clip” are not interchangeable. Admittedly this is a minor mistake, but if gun control advocates can’t even get something this simple right, why should they be listened to at all? I won’t even get into the nonsensical term “magazine clip”.
As I stated previously, I have seen all these mistakes(and outright falsehoods used) made here on innumerable occasions. I doubt there would be as much tolerance for someone who was so sloppy in his discussion of evolution, so why should such falsehood be accepted when they are deployed during a gun control debate? And this is not a demand that the debate not take place, so please don’t try to use that one against me.
Has to be an NRA member, right? Seem to be lost in the weeds over trivial gun language.
This sounds even more challenging than Sophisticated Theology.
What’s the correct technical term for the type of gun that does NOT make it remarkably easy for angry or drunk citizens to casually kill or maim each other? That’s the kind of gun that I support, so I’d like to make sure that I use the correct terminology.
Don’t forget “ignorant” – as in the case of children who accidentally get access to guns.
A theological question: if prayer and farting are equally effective in getting a response from god, would it be equivalent to say “fart for me”?
“He then proposes three solutions: universal background checks (40% of guns are legally bought without such checks), banning people under 21 from owning guns, and curbing the ability of people on the terrorism watch list to buy guns (yes, they can: more than 2,000 such weapons were bought last year.) These are minimal solutions, but don’t go far enough.”
Of those three “solutions”, one is bolstered by a completely bogus statistic, while the other pretends it is OK to deny people there Constitutionally-protected rights because someone decided to place their names on a secret list.
Regarding the 40% claim, the Washington Post fact-checker has looked at this nonsensical assertion twice:
http://tinyurl.com/qhekqek
http://tinyurl.com/pyto3bc
The claim is garbage, and the study used to produce it is every bit as worthless as the one cited to “prove” that 1 in 4 college women are raped.
However, citing worthless studies to back asinine claims it not nearly as reprehensible as using the so-called “terrorist watch-list” to prevent American citizens from freely exercising their rights. Amazing that the same people who slammed Donald Trump for his Muslim ID plan are now pretending it is OK to ignore the Second Amendment if someone’s name is on a secret list. Whether you like it not, the Second Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights, and no amount of whining about the Heller decision, or anything else, changes that. To be placed on that list one needn’t be charged with a crime, or even formally accused of one. Criteria for placement on the list has never been revealed, and there is no appeals process if you are placed on this list. And despite all that, there are people who believe such a list can legitimately be used to deny one the free exercise of his Constitutional rights? What a joke. No one who supports such a law can ever legitimately claim to respect the Constitution or label himself a civil libertarian. Needless to say, if the free exercise any other Constitutionally protected right was so blatantly infringed, Kristof would be complaining so loudly you would be able to hear it on the moon. But since this involves the Second Amendment, who cares, right? If you don’t like the Second Amendent, work to have it repealed. Stop pretending it either doesn’t exist or that it is OK to violate it.
I just realized I used “there” instead of “their” at the beginning of my comment, so please don’t bother pointing it out.
I agree. These no-fly lists and such are punishment without trial, which should be abolished, not expanded. They can keep the lists and scrutinize the people on them more closely, but no punishment should attach until conviction in a fair trial.
Reminds me of the passage in Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions about conservation:
“The planet was being destroyed by manufacturing processes, and what was being manufactured was lousy, by and large. Then Trout made a good point, too. “Well,” he said, “I used to be a conservationist. I used to weep and wail about people shooting bald eagles with automatic shotguns from helicopters and all that, but I gave it up. There’s a river in Cleveland which is so polluted that it catches fire about once a year. That used to make me sick, but I laugh about it now. When some tanker accidently dumps its load in the ocean, and kills millions of birds and billions of fish, I say, ‘More power to Standard Oil,’ or whoever it was that dumped it.” Trout raised his arms in celebration. “‘ Up your ass with Mobil gas,’” he said.
The driver was upset by this. “You’re kidding,” he said.
“I realized,” said Trout, “that God wasn’t any conservationist, so for anybody else to be one was sacrilegious and a waste of time. You ever see one of His volcanoes or tornadoes or tidal waves? Anybody ever tell you about the Ice Ages he arranges for every half-million years? How about Dutch Elm disease? There’s a nice conservation measure for you. That’s God, not man.”
“And so it goes.”
Fatalism is an underappreciated psychological mechanism in response to such tragedy.
Just throwing out possible correlations to investigate here, but has anyone studied the obviously implied correlation between mental illness and longterm exposure to granular mixtures of saltpetre and charcoal?