It’s looking increasingly like the couple who killed 14 people in San Bernardino were terrorists motivated by Islamic extremism, but I don’t have the heart to bang on about that. Nor do I have the will to discuss those who—without even a perfunctory show of sorrow about the 14 lives lost and the many children left without parents—worry in public that this attack will promote “Islamophobia.” All I can do right now is remind us what really was lost in California—these lives:
. . . and to put some blame where I think it some blame lies: at lax US gun laws. According to the New York Times, these were the weapons used by the killers:
These weapons, including the two assault rifles, were obtained legally. What is the justification for those assault weapons? How can they possibly be legal? What kind of country would allow that? Only a nation under the thumb of the National Rifle Association, which sees banning these military-style weapons as the first step (God help us) in disarming Americans, Americans who shouldn’t, under the Second Amendment, be armed anyway.
Nothing will happen about gun regulation, for we have both the NRA and the Republican Party to deal with, and they love their guns. I don’t understand why these weapons are legal, and I don’t understand why the Republicans have just behaved so reprehensibly about gun control. Almost before the 14 bodies cooled, the Republicans voted against reasonable gun restrictions:
While the nation suffered through the shock of another bloody massacre, on Thursday every Senate Republican except Mark Kirk of Illinois voted against legislation to prevent people on the F.B.I.’s consolidated terrorist watchlist from purchasing guns or explosives.
The measure has been introduced repeatedly since 2007. The Government Accountability Office has documented that over years of congressional blockage, hundreds of suspected terrorists on the watchlist bought guns.
Another bill that would have expanded background checks to gun show and online firearms sales to screen out convicted felons and the mentally ill also failed on Thursday. The four Republican senators running for president — Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham — all turned up to vote against these common-sense measures.
“If you need proof that Congress is a hostage to the gun lobby, look no further than today’s vote,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, who sponsored the terror watchlist measure.
Read those paragraphs again. Seriously, why would you vote against keeping guns out of the hands of people who are not even permitted to fly? The Republicans are an odious and now a murderous party. Truly, this country is lost, and I am dispirited. All we can do is sigh and vote Democratic in the fall.
I’ll add this timely cartoon by reader Pliny the In Between, who notes that the American Legion (a veterans’ organization) in Washougal, Washington is auctioning off an AK-47 (e.g., a Kalashnikov) to raise money for programs for veterans and children. You couldn’t make that up.
Extraordinarily disheartening. Makes you wonder if the country is not doomed, at least for a while.
I sometimes wonder if I am not seeing things negatively because older men tend to do that. (But I’m only 75!) Then I see news like this…
When I first moved to the US from the UK, the gun thing kinda freaked me out (even when it was a cop who was carrying it). I remember the first time I saw one and my only thought was, “That thing is *designed* to kill people! Why would any everyday person want something whose purpose is to kill people?”.
Of course I’m more used to it now, but I’ve also heard some arguments that while not completely convincing at least do let me understand some of the pro-gun position. Some good ones are offered Sam Harris here: http://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/the-riddle-of-the-gun-revisited
I’ve never owned a gun, but everyone in my family does. It mostly seems pretty stupid to me, but driving on old state Highway 14 in Texas this summer I was reminded of why for some people it might not be so stupid. It’s empty out there. You see a house and three minutes drive later you see another house. Someone who lives in a place like is significantly on their own: there is no one who can reasonably help you, nowhere you can reasonably run. I also get it if you’re Sam Harris or Ayaan Hirsi Ali… there are people out there who actively want to kill you so your risk profile is very different from the average citizen. Or maybe if you are a business owner, an all night convenience store owner, or some other crime target where your risk profile is elevated. So I don’t begrudge people who are in such situations of having a gun. I do begrudge people who think that their right to own a gun equates to a right for gun anarchy.
What about the bombs. Were those legal?
I suspect they were being put together from readily available material. Pipe from the building materials store, gun powder from the gun shop, toy radio-controlled car, etc. etc. Apparently everything was in the beginning stages when something, perhaps something they took as a provocation or slight, set the crazies off.
I downloaded several issues of Al Qaeda’s on-line magazine Inspire not long ago, and one included the directions for making a pipe bomb just like those these killers had.
The directions were easy to follow and they could be made using easily obtainable and components. I’ve never done anything like that, and I could follow them if I had the urge. (Well, at least as much as I read of it was easy to follow – I couldn’t even be bothered reading anymore of it after two pages of the five pages of illustrated instructions.)
The article was called ‘Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom’ and was by someone who calls himself the ‘AQ Chef’. He’s a regular contributor.
Reliable detonation is harder than making the bursting charge and shrapnel/ housing. IME.
It’s very difficult to suppress information on the internet. It’s much easier to bury the good information in misinformation. From having read things like “The Anarchist’s Cookbook” long years ago, I’m fairly sure that they do a good job of converting potential “home grown terrorists” into visitors to accident and emergency, or to the morgue.
To quote the Darwin Awards, “Just Think Of it as Evolution In Action”. Along with “fortune favours the person who tries his detonation system time and time and time again without the bursting charge.”
I think you’re right. Inspire frequently has bomb-making instructions, and although they’re step-by-step and easy to follow, getting it right wouldn’t be as simple as they make it appear. The instructions include making sure you keep your powder dry, for example, but you’ll know better than me that’s easier said than done. The pipe bomb recipe used a light bulb filament to detonate the powder too, which is obviously an incredibly delicate item that could break easily stopping it working.
Hmmm, how much to say?
“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.”
As one who used to make smoke bombs and pyrotechnics when I was a student (why hello NSA!) – but in those days it didn’t immediately get you black helicopters on your lawn – I can confirm that making an explosive mixture is easy. Setting it off is fairly easy.
But making a reliable time fuse or one that will work when required, 100% of the time, and not either go off unexpectedly or fail to work at all – that is a different matter altogether.
cr
Gentlepeople, we’re starting to sound like a membrane-bounded unit of hereditary information and protoplasm and I can hear a helicopter. But that’s normal here.
I was building powerful pipe bombs when I was a young teen. It’s ridiculously easy to make them.
We were just playing around (albeit with very dangerous toys and I was lucky to come away unscathed). Unfortunately, my younger brother’s best friend wasn’t so lucky. He lost a hand (all of it).
Should they be?
“on Thursday every Senate Republican except Mark Kirk of Illinois voted against legislation to prevent people on the F.B.I.’s consolidated terrorist watchlist from purchasing guns or explosives.”
Umm…. doesn’t that make the Republicans the Soft on Terrorism Party? Why are they arming Muslim suicide bombers?
How hopeless are the Democrats at framing – that they lose elections to nut cases who vote so outrageously?
It’s effing bizarre. They rush through a law to try to block UNHCR refugees, who are safe, but vote over and over again for people deemed not safe to have guns.
If you’re interested, this is why I judge UNHCR refugees safe: http://www.heatherhastie.com/tau-ke-tenei-wiki-29-november-2015-a-new-refugee-centre-for-new-zealand/
“How hopeless are the Democrats at framing”
+1
Were there other stipulations in the bill that they were voting against?
These gun nuts are full of shit. After every one of these tragedies they come out with their song and dance about mental health but refuse funding for mental health and refuse to pass laws that would do as they claim which is to keep those with a mental illness from buying a gun. The blood is on their hands.
You cannot legally buy assault rifles in the US and those two rifles shown are not assault rifles.
“You cannot legally buy assault rifles in the US and those two rifles shown are not assault rifles.”
Fine, they aren’t assault rifles. That’s not their proper name. Split your hairs.
But from the look of them, they are killing machines, machines for killing human beings in particular.
So why is it legal to sell them in this country?
You shouldn’t be allowed to buy them because they look scary? Okay then.
No. You shouldn’t be allowed to own them because there is no justifiable reason to have one. Not. One. Damn. Reason.
Well, I take that back. I suppose there is one; to kill as many people as possible in as short a time as possible.
Isn’t this splitting bullets over a typo?
“The term assault rifle, when used in its proper context, militarily or by its specific functionality, has a generally accepted definition with the firearm manufacturing community.[1] In more casual usage, the term assault weapon is sometimes conflated or confused with the term assault rifle.[52]
In the United States “assault weapons” are usually defined in legislation as semi-automatic firearms that have certain features generally associated with military firearms, including assault rifles. …
Assault weapons legislation does not further restrict weapons capable of fully automatic fire, such as assault rifles and machine guns, which have been continuously and heavily regulated since the National Firearms Act of 1934 was passed.”
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_weapons_legislation_in_the_United_States ]
“The Federal Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) was enacted in 1994, and expired in 2004. Attempts to renew it have failed, as have attempts to pass a new ban, such as the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 (AWB 2013).”
[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_weapons_legislation_in_the_United_States ]
Pathetic. the point is there can be no possible use for them other than killing people and they are designed to be capable of killing many people in a very short time. Is that clear enough???? Scared of falling out with your gun toting buddies??
I shoot for fun and competitively with an AR-15. It is a ton of fun and it’s a use that in no way involves killing people.
How would it sound if this was edited slightly;
“I shoot for fun and competitively with an RPG. It is a ton of fun and it’s a use that in no way involves killing people.”
Would that be justification for legalizing RPGs?
If we want to go through the exercise of stroking off things that are potentially lethal from the list of things that can be privately owned then we can go pretty deep. For me AR’s are fine, RPGs are not. For you, AR’s don’t make the cut. Good luck with that. Again, there are countries out there (like mine) where this discussion isn’t even a serous talking point.
You should be able to own anything, with restrictions. I saw Mythbusters use an RPG on an episode over Thanksgiving and it was totally awesome. I didn’t see the part where they talk about how they got the RPG, or what the restrictions were, but the world would be sadder without that episode. So if you and your buddies want to open up a machine gun range, I am totally happy to accommodate that somehow. Just work with society to ensure that those guns stay on the range and not out in the city. Now if you advocate buying such guns from Wal-Mart, if you say f’k you society, well, that just means you’re not a responsible adult and I question whether you should have any gun in that case.
“Good luck with that.”
I’m under no illusions. I have no hope that things will get better in my country, thanks to people like you. Gun lovers like you have won the battle here and the rest of us will have live with the carnage that results.
I just wanted to illustrate the insane logic that underpins gun right.
You should be allowed to buy “scary looking guns”, but you should be ashamed of your vulgar tastes and desire to engage in soldier cosplay.
Clearly handguns are behind most gun deaths so spending time talking about rifles is a red herring.
If someone cares about mass shootings specifically though, then maybe it would make sense to make magazines harder to swap out for all semi-automatic guns, long or short, to limit the body count. Sure, I get it, you TOTALLY NEED at least ten shot magazines to protect your property from the home invasion, because you’re a shitty aim, the invaders are very brave, or something. But let’s face it, if you haven’t dispatched them after 10 shots you’re outnumbered or have some other issue that is going to doom you anyway. Of course, in the gun nut mind, making magazines harder to swap out is the equivalent to TYRANNY, which is how you can tell that they are a religious cult and not sober citizens protecting reasonable access to firearms for some legitimate purpose.
So, sure, correct liberals on their poor gun knowledge, then show that you’re not a cultist and make a helpful suggestion.
“soldier cosplay”
Excellent characterization.
Thanks.
On one of my trips in Texas a secondary relative told me about the “Cowboy Church” she attends. People wear jeans and cowboy boots and cowboy hats. There are bales of hay lying around on the stage. They sing cowboy themed religious music. There are even cowboy Bibles, with inspiring pictures of cowboys out on the range interspersed with the Bible text. I was blown away by this. Not that it exists. Of course it exist! I even applaud that kind of diversity of expression. What blew me away, though, was that she saw nothing silly or odd about it, that she seemed completely oblivious to the fact that those people are not cowboys, they are just playing cowboy (some of them might be, and she was in the 4H at one point, but she’s a dental assistant or some such now). She seemed to really feel that that was some kind of authentic cowboy experience. That’s when the thought struck me: all of this cowboy attire in Texas is just a kind of cowboy cosplay. It applies to a lot of things people do. And I’m fine with cosplay, just don’t get confused… you’re not really a vampire, and you’re not really a cowboy, and you are really really not a soldier.
I am a tad ignorant on this, but I suppose that means that you have to squeeze the trigger each time to fire a round. But the clip is large, and you can buy even larger clips. And correct me if I am wrong, but it is easy to modify these weapons to be fully automatic. Not that that would matter too much.
Rifles are typically carried and used because they are accurate at a long range, whereas pistols are not. But then a long-range weapon seems to undermine the argument that these are self-defense weapons, doesn’t it? I guess they are needed when you absolutely, positively, must self-defense someone from 100′ away. Reminds me of South Park’s Jimbo. “Look out, Ned, that bunny’s coming right for us!”
There is a, literally, insane logic that goes into these things so that the evil bastards at the NRA and their devotees can own these kind of weapons. A case in point – California bans weapons that have magazines that can be rapidly removed and reloaded by hand. So the gun makers came up with a bullet actuated removal system, which means you don’t technically need your hand to remove the magazine. This is called the “bullet button loophole” and is the reason why weapons like these are available in CA even with that ban in place (in addition to simply driving them over the border from AZ or NV where all sorts of insanity is not merely allowed but encouraged.
How can you defend your home/defend your all-night business/hunt deer/hobby target shoot/or soldier cosplay without rapid changing magazines?
Also, presumably the larger capacity of those sorts of weapons is justified because you might miss that deer the first 29 times, but he might still be in range for bullet #30.
***
Another crazy-yet-amusing foible in our weapons laws is that states often have laws against bayonets based on length of blade. Evidently when you’re self-defensing someone, shooting them when they’re a foot or two away from the end of the barrel is just peachy but stabbing them when they’re a foot or two away from the end of the barrel is right out.
Yes, semi-automatic means you have to press the trigger for each shot. Magazines are currently limited in size, but when such guns are used usually the perps have a whole duffle bag of magazines with them. Swapping out magazines isn’t instant, but it’s pretty fast. Fast enough that the body count is rarely limited by people’s ability to get away while he is reloading.
Most gun deaths, of course, don’t involve going through that many bullets. Most gun deaths are by handgun and it’s someone unloading < 10 bullets at close range at someone they know (including themselves). But if you're specifically trying to limit deaths in big mass shooter scenarios, a grotesque but still fairly rare way to die, then it might make sense to make magazines slower to swap out. Of course, my understanding is that is just what Stalin or Hitler would have done, so that's probably a non-starter.
It doesn’t matter what you call them, they are lightweight, accurate rifles.
From the Wikiness:
Your basic “hunting rifle” that (almost) no one is proposing getting rid of is just as deadly. The only issues there would be that it would be slightly less easy to conceal (though it would be easy to modify), and has a smaller magazine.
The magazine size is a real issue (there are speed loaders for rifles however) but not a decisive one.
Short of banning all guns, bad people will be able to access guns that can do this kind of damage.
Self defense isn’t the issue with long guns; but hunting is.
As Sam Harris has pointed out, (essentially) no one is trying to ban all hunting rifles and all hand guns. Most people are talking about the scary looking ones. Which isn’t very sensible.
His main point being that handguns are used in the vast majority of gun murders. Handguns are really the problem.
Your last statement is the important one. Hand guns are the problem and they need to go. Also the “assault” guns as well. I really don’t care if some call them rifles or weapons.
I don’t begrudge Sam Harris having a hand gun on his person. I expect he is the target of credible death threats. But I wouldn’t expect Harris, if he is a reasonable person, to object to some hoops to jump through to get that hand gun. There should be some responsibility that goes along with it, in other words.
The concealed carry people have a point in this regard. While I find comically absurd for most people to think they would be safer concealed carry, I do applaud the fact that they have to jump through some additional hoops to get to that point. If we made all gun ownership at least have as much social-responsibility built in as concealed carry permits do, that would be a big start in my mind. It would at least signal that gun people are on the side of society, not anarchy.
I doubt he’s a target of any death threats. He is an intellectual light-weight like all the New Atheists.
Notice how none of you ‘evidence-based’ types have noted the husband and wife team pledged their allegiance to Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL). Got nothing to do with that. It must be the fault of Repubs and NRA.
So that’s what passes for logic these days.
I’m one of those types, but I don’t think it’s the fault of the NRA. I think it’s the fault of the great mass of American people who want easy access to guns for anyone and everybody. Referring to “gun grabbers,” as below, or the above comment blaming ISIS, are typical of the majority of Americans. At bottom, they just want guns available anywhere and everywhere, the way they are now. (My local small-town pharmacy advertises, “guns and drugs.”)
There is no way the gov’t will be able to take away guns, whether you agree with it or not. Too late. Second, there is a ‘demographic’ issue in the U.S. that is not as pronounced in other Western countries (we know places like Switzerland have a high rate of gun ownership with little violence).
Gun restrictions would inevitably affect those who purchase guns legally. Finally, looking at how militant the police are, how authoritarian the Feds are (under both Republicans and Democrats), not to mention that law-abiding citizens who support gun ownership are viewed in such a negative light by media, gov’t, academics, leftists, etc. I too, if I was an American, would be loathe to give up my gun rights.
Quite simply there is a demographic situation that is going to get worse. Diversity and mass immigration and multiculturalism doesn’t work on a large scale. We see that today in many places as well as historically.
The issue is not access to guns. That is a diversion from the real issues.
In spite of your paranoia, “the government” is not some monolithic boogeyman that acts independently. The government is the people, and if a big majority of the people in America wanted to take away guns it would happen. As of now, that’s not the case. In the future it’s not impossible that it could be the case. And “access to guns” is not a diversion, it is the overriding issue. Less access to guns equals less gun deaths, plain and simple.
You say below that “gun control is not the solution”. That’s possibly true. Please name a solution.
I’m no fan of Harris I’m just agreeing with him, and probably you, that some people have justification for carrying guns. You have an oddly hostile manner towards people who are agreeing with you.
In any case you don’t have to be an “intellectual heavy-weight” to get death threats. You just have to be well known and unpopular. I bet Michelle Bachman gets credible death threats as well. I bet everyone on the CAIR “Islamaphobe” watch list gets death threats. Don’t you? If you don’t, then you don’t know much about Islam and Islamists, I’d say.
If you read this site any you’d see that there is no free pass given here for the culpability of Islamists and even Islam itself, so your comment just seems oddly out of place. Even if we are anti-GOP on average, most people here are pretty hostile to Islam and Islamists. That makes us allies in the fight against Islamist terror, though maybe not in the fight for gun fondling. Sure, *this* thread is focusing on gun control because it was started when it looked more like workplace shooting. There are mass shootings every day in the US. It’s just ignorant to assume that every mass shooting is from Islamists. Most aren’t. But we’re more than happy to give credit where credit is due and this shooting turns out to be another example of religious people, particularly Muslims, acting badly as their scriptures command them.
I’m glad you don’t give ‘Islamists’ a free pass. Next to impossible for anyone that pays even a bit of attention. It’s not ‘religious people’. It’s one religion.
I agree that mass shootings are not typically by Muslims. They are a fraction of the population after all.
Gun control. There are 300 million guns in the U.S. Most deaths are from handguns, predominantly in African-American communities. Many of these guns are not legally purchased.
Gun control is not the solution.
So the San Bernadino shooters brought their guns in downtown Raqqa did they. Or did they possibly buy them in America somewhere?
Ah I see. If we made guns illegal they would be unable to purchase one of the 300 million guns currently owned by Americans? Not hard to purchase illegal weapons in the U.S.
That’s a damned good reason to not go there.
Just yesterday I was sitting in a doctors’ busy waiting room, and a sweet looking old lady was sitting next to me, looking at Facebook on her phone. She laughed about something, and so I glanced here way. She leaned toward me, conspiratorially, to show me the post which was a picture of a ‘gattling pistol’, and a caption that read ‘I was not going to buy this, but I did when I learned that it would piss you off’. She remarked ‘Now I want to buy one!’
I just gave her a cold look and moved away when I could.
“…just to piss you off…”
Jeez. And the gun-nuts think this rhetoric will get their point across to non-gun-nuts? Ya, nothing could fill me with more complacency than gun-nuts showing just how contrary and confrontational they are.
The galley on the boat has a large TV (for when we need to make presentations larger than the Rec room can host). Just for entertainment, we keep a memory card in it, and play a continuous loop of crew member’s photos. The description is simple “put up some photos of what you do at home, something that makes you who you are ;why you come out here to earn your money”.
Mostly it’s the Americans who populate it – well it’s an American-owned boat (Monrovia is in America, isn’t it? A number from the Brits, Norwegians, Aussies, Namibians, Ghanaians, Nigerians, in approximately that order. I don’t think I’ve seen one from the Filipenos, despite them being the commonest single nationality on board.
– Lots of photos of children and babies.
– Skiing is popular – when it’s in the high 30s outside.
– Several people scuba diving. (I’ve not bothered with my caving photos – they’re not very meaningful or very clear.)
– One of the guys has photos of him and his wife on the night when he first met her in the pole dancing club – she was dancing with a garter belt full of notes. Well, if that what he wants to put up. It gets quite a goggle-eye from new-to-the-rig Muslims.
– Quite a number of vehicles. Motorbikes ; “muscle cars” ; a restored bus which always makes me think “Mrs Parks, get to the back of the bus!” That era, though I don’t know the model exactly.
– And one guy’s two kids. Gender indeterminate in their camouflage. Ages 8-11 ish. Each carrying a large-magazine weapon (I’m not going to get into gun nomenclature disputes) which is taller than they are, and they’re loaded with webbing and pouches shaped for carrying multiple magazines for the weapons.
Some American gun nuts wonder why America has a reputation for being full of gun nuts. Do they not consider the impression they are giving to other people?
I’ll bet one of those kids kill’t him a bar when he was only three.
Bar handed?
No, silly. With a gun. But, of course, one that’s appropriate for three-year-olds. Safety first.
I’m going to regret asking this.
Has the American gun lobby come up with child-friendly guns. Light weight, probably not a hair trigger, small charge ; blue for boys, pink with “My Little Pony-killer” sparkly bits for girls (we’re not talking about a gender-neutral target demographic here)?
I am almost afraid to Google it. Partly for the answer, and partly for the adverts they’re going to serve me for the next 6 months promoting prams and nappies.
gravelinspector-Aidan
Yes, they have. Take a look at the ‘My First Rifle’ website, with the pink rifles for the little girls.
An instance of Poe’s Law, I think.
The problem is that watch list. It’s a mess.
As I understand it, you can be on it and not know that you’re on it. You can be on it and not know why. You can be on it for some very bogus reasons (e.g. you have a name similar to that of a Bad Guy) or you could just be on there because GIGO.
Now we’re denying Constitutional rights to folks without due process.
If it wasn’t for the NRA* this would be in the PATRIOT [sic] Act.
(* – Turn head, spit on sidewalk)
I agree, the watchlist is dodgy and needs some due process added even for the flight restrictions. Can’t always pick your allies.
“What kind of country would allow that?”
Canada. I own AR’s and semi automatic pistols…
Other western countries allow law abiding citizens to own them as well…
It is my understanding that in Canada weapons like the AR-15 while legal to own they are “restricted”, which means they can only be legally fired at shooting ranges.
Yes, AR-15’s are currently classified as restricted firearms and can only be fired at an accredited gun range. As a restricted firearm it also means that they currently need to be registered and they fall under special rules in terms of storage and transportation. That said, there are plenty of firearms in the family so to speak that are non-restricted. For example a Bushmaster ACR (if the barrel is long enough) and a Robinson Arms XCR (again, if the barrel is long enough) are classified as non-restricted in Canada. I feel pretty comfortable saying that most people that frequent WEIT couldn’t tell the difference between those two firearms and an AR-15 like the one Jerry posted, and in all honesty, they’re not all that different. You can acquire them in the same calibers, capacities as an AR-15.
Yeah, the gun industry can always figure a way to slither out from under restrictions. At least in Canada you are burdened with constitutionally mandated insanity.
You don’t understand Canadian firearms laws. It had nothing to do with the gun manufacturers. The Canadian government decided that one particular class warranted a restricted classification and the other not. Canada doesn’t have the influence to get a major firearms manufacturer to design and build a gun in order to circumvent some kind of restriction or prohibition – not a major one anyway.
Perhaps if the U.S. could get the gun manufacturers to move to Canada…no, I mean far away. Very far a way.
Some definitions.
A semi-automatic weapon is one that requires one trigger pull per bullet. A fully automatic weapon fires bullets until you release the trigger. A standard weapon requires you manually load the bullet and eject the spent cartridge. These criteria are true for rifles and handguns.
The guns commonly labeled as assault rifles are just spiffed up semi-automatic rifles that are functionally no different than a semi-auto hunting rifle. They do cost about twice as much as a similar hunting rifle with the exact same capabilities.
A high capacity magazine allows the shooter to have lots of shells ready for shooting without a need to reload the weapon.
Why would any normal person need a semi-auto with a large capacity mag? As a liberal who also owns guns, I can tell you it makes a day at the range much easier; nothing more, nothing less. When I hunt, I use a standard rifle (can’t afford a spiffy assault rifle) because I figure I shouldn’t take the shot unless I’m sure I can make it count.
A person intent on doing harm could use a handgun or standard rifle with a standard magazine and do a ton of damage quickly; the scary looking rifles do make it easier to do more damage, but the differences are minor.
This is a complex issue with no simple or quick fixes. I tend to subscribe to the recommendations made by Jim Wright over at stonekettle.com. I recommend you spend some time looking at what he’s posted; he is a great writer with a well defended point of view.
It’s not that complex. If you don’t care about the number of people who are killed by guns, and most Americans don’t, then you make it easy to buy guns. Republicans in Congress vote against gun regulations because the people they represent want them to vote that way. It’s not that complex.
He’s pointing out that “assault weapons” aren’t the issue.
Run of the mill handguns and hunting rifles would be as effective for killing, within a small margin that doesn’t really matter.
I do care, I just don’t think it’s a simple problem to solve. This is a generational problem much like tobacco, alcohol, automobile deaths, and the like. There is no magic potion that’ll make this go away tomorrow. It’s going to take time to elect people to congress who are willing to head butt the NRA and get supreme court justices who can roll back some of the recent re-interpretations of the second amendment. It’s not unlike idea that the drug war can be won by putting people in jail. It didn’t work with alcohol, it’s not working with drugs, and it won’t work with guns. I wish to the FSM that I did have something magic to suggest but that just isn’t going to happen.
I don’t know that you can lump automobile deaths in as the same type of problem. It is only the same at the surface level that other countries have demonstrated that the per capita death rate from automobile accidents can be much lower and so can the per capita death rate from guns.
We can address our automobile death problem by funding infrastructure upgrades. More mass transit and improved road design are really the two major things necessary to do this. Once we have those, the underlying problem of unsafe roads and lack of transportation choices are addressed.
Guns, on the other hand, are more complex. It’s not a problem that can be solved overnight. Even if we were to somehow ban firearms, there’s no feasible method by which the hundreds of millions of guns in circulation could be removed. We need to pass stricter laws; but it’ll still take a cultural shift before the amount of guns out there can be reduced. The problem here is that Americans want their guns and they want them with no restrictions whatsoever. We can pass laws and we still have the underlying problem of all the guns being out there. The same can’t be said for transportation infrastructure.
“The problem here is that Americans want their guns and they want them with no restrictions whatsoever.”
Exactly right. If enough people feel that way, they elect representatives that ensure that things stay that way, they elect presidents who appoint SC justices who ensure things stay that way, and there you go. Things stay that way. It’s hard to see any future in the US where things will be different.
I’d argue that you can lump guns and cars into similar categories. Many auto deaths are from drunk driving. As society begins to actively work to make driving drunk seem stupid and unacceptable, deaths go down. At the same time, it is possible to improve the ‘gun infrastructure’ by making guns safer. For example, guns can be matched to one owner so a random person can’t use the weapon. I still think solving the problem is going to take years and involve changes to society, law, the guns, and ammo.
Drunk driving still has a heavy environmental influence though. To reduce drunk driving, people need easy transportation alternatives. I think most people are well aware of the risk of a DUI and often misjudge the risk, as drunk people are apt to do. When a mainstream mode of transit doesn’t involve driving yourself home, it creates a better path of least resistance for getting there.
I disagree; it’s a simple problem to solve, it just takes the will to do it and enough time. In the UK it took about a century:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_United_Kingdom#Gun_control_legislation_in_the_United_Kingdom
And now (from the same article):
“The United Kingdom has one of the lowest rates of gun homicides in the world. There were 0.05 recorded intentional homicides committed with a firearm per 100,000 inhabitants in the five years to 2011 (15 to 38 people per annum).”
I have lived on the UK mainland for 36 years, and in all that time I have seen guns perhaps a dozen times – and (with one exception: small calibre, single-shot target rifles at a university shooting range) always in the possession of specialist armed police on airport security detail during times of terrorist threats.
So I went over to stone kettle and didn’t immediately see any recommendations. Perhaps you can summarize?
Many liberals are, indeed, ignorant about firearms. It’s good that gun advocates are educating them. Now if only they’d take the next step and make a constructive suggestion. Just correcting ignorance without actually grappling with the problem comes across as a big middle finger to all of society.
Look for bang bang crazy. And really, spend a lot of time there and or like his Facebook page. The time spent is worth the investment.
Yeah… I get that from religious people all the time. Religion not make sense? Read these fifty books and it will. I don’t have time to read everything in the world that is written. I can summarize the basics of relativity or genetics in a blog comment for anyone who has questions about those things, so my feeling is that if you can’t give a summary of your views then you don’t actually have any.
Ok, the 5 cent summary, put the nra’s gun handling commandments into law,there is no such thing as a gun ‘accident’, Jim is an excellent writer with gun cred out the butt, go look up bang bang crazy, here articles are well written, passionatd, and offer real insight into the situation at hand.
Thanks! That really helps me determine if it’s worth the time, and I think it may be.
How about welding two 10ft long poles at right angles to every gun that is stored under lock and key at the range. Shouldn’t interfere much with use on the range. If you want to take them off the range, add a 20kilo weight to each end of the cross.
OK, it’d raise the skill requirements for hunting a little. But then, hunting is about the skill of the stalking, not about the kill or the orgasmic feel of unleashing fatal hell on an animal which has never done you any harm.
I don’t see any down-sides. It’d make it easy to spot people with illegal weapons too – they’d look just like foreigners without guns.
As a hunter and shooting enthusiast who thinks the first clause of the 2nd amendment is meaningful, I have no problem making it harder for me to access my guns. Require I pass an annual proficiency test, guns are kept in a locked, controlled access location, and I sign them out and in. Totally cool with that.
In which case, you’re probably not part of the problem.
Individuals, as well as police agencies, should not be recipients of military grade weaponry. The purchase of guns that shoot more than one bullet at a time should not be permitted legally for individuals and should have severe consequences if obtained illegally. These types of weapons are obviously intended for mass killing (or for people who haven’t learned to hit a target with one bullet).
The point made about restrictions on knife blade length is interesting. Also, restrictions on owning oriental style weapons such as nun chuks, etc.
As anyone who has worked in a facility that incarcerates people knows, weapons can be made of mundane materials. You just can’t kill as many people at one time.
In addition to online sources of information on weapons and bomb making, there are catalogs of military grade weaponry for the civilian public.
I should caveat my post above about bayonets to say that those rules may only apply to bayonets specifically; the rules for swords, nunchucks, etc.. are likely different because they are generally considered sporting equipment or collector/display items, not weapons. AFAIK there are basically no limitations on owning swords in the US. You can own as many as you want, any style that you want, they can be as big as you want, etc… The same goes for other ancient weapons (spears, axes, etc.). There may be legal limitations about carrying them around in public; its not a subject I’ve really explored.
I choose the pattern of my socks very carefully to express philosophical arguments – doesn’t that make it Constitutionally protected free speech? And the rock I slip into the sock is carefully selected for hardness, pointedness, and density, as well as it’s intrinsic interest as a hydrous reaction product of calc-cilicate skar reversal reactions (that’s ‘concrete’ in shorter words). So, is that sporting equipment, a collector’s item, or for display?
Those poor people. It’s so sad looking at those pictures of vital, happy looking folks, gone.
The party that brought us the Patriot Act now says suspected terrorists have the right to purchase weapons for committing terrorism.
While we’re at it, laws don’t stop thieves from stealing, murderers from murdering, extortionists from extorting, or con men from conning…let’s just legalize everything! Except for gay marriage, that law would actually work…
The USA gun culture continues to make me feel like I’m living in a twilight zone episode whenever I encounter it.
I’m on some other forums, and there are happy friendly Americans with whom I can discuss all sorts of issues.
But when another massacre happens, and lest anyone like myself opine that maybe America has a too-many-guns problem, it’s like seeing normal people suddenly turn into raving zombies – I’m immediately turned upon as a “rights-hating pinko-lefty” who will be “fought to the death before you take our guns.”
It’s just head-spinning, like watching some weird toxic gene kick into action.
If you think you have a headache from this reaction, how do you think I feel, living here.
I know from many years of seeing this “thing” get worse and worse with apparently no limit in sight that civilized society in America is basically gone.
But this gun crazy country is just one symptom of the much larger problem and that is a broken and dysfunctional government. The U.S. govt. has long since, sold out to special interests, lobby, money and more money.
People still get up in the morning, get dressed and pretend to have another day. Do not stop and think too much about the reality of it all but it is there. Some even still go out and vote but it is a waste of time. Rome took a long time to go down the hole and the British Empire took a while. We are going to beat all of them with time to spare.
I find it strange that no one is talking about the nature of the argument that apparently set the whole thing off. It seems almost to be a blackout. Does anyone have news on this point?
It is possible that anyone who might know anything is dead.
Just after I wrote the above, reported that the shooter stomped out of the party in response to colleagues kidding him about his beard. If the killer pair’s prime stimulus was workplace harassment and bulling, it think it possible to disagree with the FBI opinion that it was a “terrorist” act directed specifically against the American people or government.
The way MSM is latching on the terrorism angle makes me believe that the event, tragic as it is, is being manipulated for political ends.
They had prepared explosives with them. I’ve heard that at least one of the firearms was modified to enable it to fire in full auto (need to treat that with a grain of salt). They’ve already established a link between the woman and an ISIS bigwig. I’m not sure about the male. Again, it’s early in the investigation but this doesn’t sound like a snap decision.
Amazes me the the religious right doesn’t vote and act like Jesus. Jesus would have feed the poor, not eliminate funding for meals on wheels. He’d house homeless notstandby and watch as the housing bubble burst. He would provide jobs not give tax breaks to the rich and wait for trickle down that never comes.
I have no words. Why on earth does anyone need to own weapons like this?
Lots of things aren’t needed. I don’t need hot showers, but I love them. It’s fine by me if people want to own guns. I don’t care if they want to go out to the range and throw hand grenades for fun. I do care if they are irresponsible and refuse to submit to regulations that would reasonably assure greater public safety. If you want a hand grenade tossing hobby you should be willing to keep them in a locked box or something that only a special person can open at the range, or something… I don’t have to have the solution, I just know when someone is working with society to find a way to have dangerous things responsibly and when they are just closet anarchists giving a big middle finger to society. The U.S. gun lobby isn’t working with society, they are telling society F’ you. So, naturally, as someone who is a part of society and wants to see society succeed, I hate them. I’ll stop hating them the moment they start to sound like responsible citizens. I don’t want their guns. I don’t even want their scary looking guns. I don’t even want their machine guns. I just want them on team-society. Currently they are not.
+1
In Canada you can’t own certain guns. You can own hand guns but they are highly regulated and IMO not with the hassle. You cannot carry a hand gun and if you want to shoot it, you need to put it in a box that is locked and have a permit to take it to and from the gun range. You cannot stop and do anything else while traveling with that gun. This allows people to enjoy their hand gun while keeping it away from the public.
I own a 22 rifle. I had to submit to a check by the federal government. If you’re divorced, your spouse has to agree to you having a firearm. I think this is a bit annoying but I also get why that rule exists. I also have government ID for the permit. The only reason I have the gun is for sentimental reasons because I shot it as a kid. My dad collects some antique or historical rifles and he too has to go through all the government checks and he doesn’t use the rifles and has removed the firing pins so they are safely stored.
I went to a lecture last week by Dr Samantha Nutt who founded War Child. The global north, which is war free supplies all the weapons to the global south which is in many war zones. I guess in my view, these weapons that exist to kill other people don’t need to be made anymore and people can find other things to do that are fun.
“BCSD”
You might need to have seen the excellent Julie Walters in “Personal Services“.
How can I put this politely? The de-acronymised phrase posits an inverse relationship between the dimensions of a motorised conveyance and the owner’s external generative organ.
I would posit a similar inverse relationship between generative organs and weaponry.
So, those of us without any weaponry are…then…what exactly?
Well equipped to handle anything you need to.
I don’t think that it’s the guns, I do think it’s the culture.
There are other countries in which it is as easy, or almost as easy, to obtain semi-automatic handguns and/or rifles, and yet the per capita rate of gun crime (in particular mass shootings) is much lower. Stuart A Milc (#8) demonstrates that in Canada it is possible to own both there; and yet Canada does not have the same per capita rate of gun crime as the US. Scandinavia is another example (yes, there was Anders Breivik, but he’s hardly representative).
The US has, on average, a mass shooting per day, i.e. more than 1 per million people per year. There’s just something here, more so than in otherwise similar countries, that makes it possible for some disaffected individuals (and for a few who probably are truly mentally ill) to decide that the solution to their problems is to go out and kill a lot of people.
Making it harder to acquire guns would help, but I suspect that people such as Farook would appear sane enough that they could legally purchase them even in countries with tighter laws.
I suspect you are correct that it is more than the easy access to guns but it is still the guns. In the U.S. there are more than 300,000 people. Canada has less than California. Sweden or Denmark – more people in L.A.
Culture is much different. I saw a stat on the news tonight that 40% of the worlds guns are in the U.S. As many guns as people.
Making guns harder to get won’t get the job done. We have to make the guns that do the killing illegal and do away with them. That would be all hand guns and all assault weapons.
We don’t need to over-think this issue.
Sorry, 300 million people
I was looking at it on a per capita basis, not absolute numbers. If you define “mass shooting” as an incident in which at least 4 people are shot (not necessarily fatally), which is what the mass shooting tracker does, you see an incident per day; or, as I said, about 1 incident per million persons per year. That would mean around 5 incidents/year in Denmark, Finland, and Norway, and 10 in Sweden; 4 in New Zealand; 23 in Australia; 35 in Canada on a per capita equivalent basis. It’s not happening anywhere but the US; and it’s not *just* availability of weapons, though readier availability of weapons here very likely plays a part.
Shot and hit, or just plain shot at.
I don’t know about you, but I personally find having a gun poked in my face by someone likely to use it to be a tad disturbing, even though I’ve never actually been shot, or shot at. Yet.
Not quite true. Britain had … the taxi driver a couple of years ago in the Lakes ; the school shooting in Dunblane in the late 1980s. Hungerford in about 1982 … I may have missed some, though I do have a fairly good memory and these things do make the news for their rarity. Which is your point.
No, you have not missed any. Hungerford 1987, Dunblane 1996, Cumbria 2010. That’s it. Three in the last thirty years.
The bizarre argument I hear from people here who advocate no restrictions on firearms cite these same events. “See? You can’t get rid of guns! There were still shootings!” It’s just another case of misrepresenting the argument for gun control. No one ever says there will be zero shootings, but it doesn’t stop them from citing every single anecdote about a shooting in a gun free zone or a good guy who stopped a bad guy as if this is an all or nothing scenario (which almost nothing in life is). I can’t help but suspect the tie to similar thinking about religion and its proposed afterlife might be at play. Just remember, Jesus will help you find your car keys, but when it comes to protection, best you keep a bazooka ready to go.
submachine gun.
Christmas presents:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_submachine_guns
Great cartoon, Pliny.
Let’s not overthink this, reasonable limits on gun ownership, lethality, and owner accountability could be readily implemented without impinging on anyone’s rights to shoot a big and scary-looking gun:
1. Criminal background checks for all gun purchases or other transfers of weapon custody. End the Gun Show loophole.
2. Mandate Smart Gun functionality. For those unfamiliar, SG tech is intended to ensure that only the registered owner of a firearm is able to fire the weapon, making lost, stolen, and black-market guns essentially useless (if un-hacked).
3. Require that ammo be traceable to the purchaser. In my view, ammo sales and distribution should be as tightly controlled as the market for the weapons that sling the lead; at least there might be a paper trail to help the coroner to connect the dots.
4. Permit and fund medical/scientific research as regards gun deaths and injuries just as we do for other prominent causes of death and disability that are studied as public health hazards. The first step in addressing any public health issue is determination of the scope of the problem and then, if warranted, investigation of the etiology that gives rise to that threat.
5. Elect Democrats or other pols that view the NRA as what it is: an advocate for the domestic arms industry and whose continued influence on legislative controls is notoriously corruptive in the US Congress.
Look Ma: No one had their guns taken away and I’m confident that such measures, provided public support for their enactment, would go a very long way toward curbing the incidence of gun violence.
The picture of the Smith & Wesson handgun is incorrect. The one on the picture is a S&W 5906, while pictures from news sites shows what looks to be an SD9VE.
BTW, I am a progressive libertarian gun owner. We’re not all conservative or republican. But I will defend my rights against you gun grabbers just the same.
http://www.wired.com/2015/06/i-made-an-untraceable-ar-15-ghost-gun/
The genie is out of the bottle. Stopping gun violence will take more than bans
That is scary.
Inevitable, but scary.
In his Weekly Address, President Obama echoes Jerry’s words about the absurdity of those on the No-Fly list being able to get their hands on guns:
LinkText
Whoops, I didn’t use the html correctly above, but here is the link:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/12/05/weekly-address-we-will-not-be-terrorized