The Thread Where We Discuss Guns and Gun Control

[Sommerswerd]

Ok, well, then, thanks for correcting me and I won't worry about it

Edit - just as an aside - I wonder how many issues we could break down this way and realize that aside from having fun on an off topic forum, they really are much smaller issues than the media conflates them to be.

As an aside, I'm glad that you're willing to soften your stance on trans women competing in womens sports. If you've shifted from "skeptical/wary/opposed" to something more like "don't care/not a big enough deal to oppose" or similar... which, it seems like you are, at least based on what you're saying... I'll take it. That's certainly progress.

But returning to the thread topic... that shift, in-and-of-itself, seems, at least partly a result of what you've repeatedly stated, that the gun-control issue is a "dying hill" issue for you. So much so, that for example, in this case, you were willing to rethink and/or reassess your you position on another issue to establish logical consistency/intellectual integrity with your position on guns. In other words, the defensibility of your position on guns/gun control is important enough to you, for you to actually change your position on other controversial issues, in the interest of defending your gun-control position. FTR, I don't think that kind of outlook/dedication to the gun-control/2nd Amendment issue is unusual on the part of gun-rights advocates.

Why that is notable to me, is it underscores part of why I regard the gun-control issue as a losing issue for Democrats. Gun ownership, gun rights, 2nd Amendment interpretation are a single issue voter matter, or something single issue voter adjacent, for a substantial number of folks, and I'm just not convinced that pushing something like a repeal of the 2nd Amendment would motivate more otherwise inactive Democratic voters than it would motivate otherwise inactive Republican voters, or alternatively, persuade voters to switch sides to protect their perceived gun rights.

@Lexicus I think you've previously said you disagree with me on this, I would actually like to read some good articles/opinions on the topic if you happen to know any offhand.

 

[AmazonQueen]

You wouldn't know from the absolute nonsense talked about Australian gun regulation by American pro gun campaigners but there's several million firearms in civilian possession here. There's just like, actual laws about the types, licensing, storage and handling.

Over 150000 firearm certificates and over 500000 shotgun certificates in 2022 in the UK.

 

[Lexicus]

@Lexicus I think you've previously said you disagree with me on this, I would actually like to read some good articles/opinions on the topic if you happen to know any offhand.

I largely agree with you on the politics of it, but I think we have an obligation to try to reduce these deaths however we can.

There is majority support for gun regulations that don't come close to abolishing the second amendment. But our counter-majoritatian political institutions don't do a good job of translating that into political action.

 

[JPetroski]

In other words, the defensibility of your position on guns/gun control is important enough to you, for you to actually change your position on other controversial issues, in the interest of defending your gun-control position.

I didn't change my mind on one topic in the interest of defending another so much as I changed it because you're right--it's an insignificant irregularity being blown out of proportion by the media to keep us bickering and divided. Thanks for helping me realize that. I believe you are an attorney. I am in Claims. Neither one of us has the luxury of ignoring new information in our careers. I trust you'd agree that's a really great way to have a case blow up on you.

 

[JPetroski]

There is majority support for gun regulations that don't come close to abolishing the second amendment. But our counter-majoritatian political institutions don't do a good job of translating that into political action.

If you were king, what would your regulations be? Just curious where the common ground would be.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

avoided answering all 3 of the questions I previously posed.

oops my bad. here you go

So those

so

Are they studies that support this?

it's not easy to prove a negative, but that is also not where the burden of proof is placed. the concept in play is restricting ownership of property...in fact property that is otherwise guaranteed by the top law of the land. this demands a good reason to do it, "strict scrutiny" as the courts call it. not "we want to do something because of a tragedy so let's implement policy that maybe might do something if we cherry pick data over the course of decades" (best i can tell, there were way more than 57 mass shootings in the periods mentioned by most definitions, how does that change the data?).

If access to guns is not the issue, then what is the reason for countries such as Australia and the UK where access to guns is much stricter then the USA for having much fewer mass shootings then the USA (even allowing for population differences)?

good question. as i've posted in the past, there does not appear to be a linear relationship between % gun ownership and homicide rate, let alone mass shooting rate. swiss don't spam mass shootings either. mass shootings aren't uniquely american, but a gunman targeting random people does seem unusually high frequency in america. even uk/australia/etc would predict more mass shootings in their respective countries if we were to project % gun ownership into mass shooter rate. it doesn't seem predictive. at least, not by itself.

we can start by looking at the mass shooters, and figuring out which factors are predictive of a mass shooter. i suspect these factors aren't obvious, or we'd know them already. but there's a major hard-on to try to align data to gun control as if it somehow meaningfully addresses the problem. comically (in a sad way), even the article you cite points out that these same "gun control states" didn't have improvement to homicides generally and in some cases they got worse. given mass shootings are a tiny % of homicides generally, any uptick in homicides generally makes it questionable whether the policy saved lives at all, even in an absolute, hindsight-is-20/20 sense. especially because if you pull up a list of them, a decent % of mass shooter incidents wind up being cut short by someone else with a gun. usually police, but sometimes citizens instead.

mass shootings use rifles more than most gun crime, but even among this group, a chunk of them do not. thus it seems more fruitful to identify what's leading to mass shooters choosing to be mass shooters. that is the route where you might find more security, without sacrificing peoples' rights and spending a ton of extra money on policy with minimal to no benefit.

Edit - I guess you indirectly answered the first question about the Goshen 2023 shooting, though without directly addressing it. Though your reason for the exclusion of mass shootings at houses at least partly due to them not being random target does ask the question what should be considered a random target? For example most school shootings are not truly random, but are done by active or former students.

by "target" i mean person/people shot. a guy who shoots his entire family (4+ people), and only his family, tends to have some clear motivation for who specifically is targeted. when you get a person shooting children at a school, they are usually not hunting specific children. same for when a guy fires into movie theater. there's no clear/specific homicide target there. their aim is to kill as many people in that area as possible. or maybe types of people.

most home shootings that kill 4+ are not like that. they are usually some type of crime gone bad (drug deal, gang violence, armed robbery etc) or the worst kind of domestic violence. it is very rare that a person w/o a grudge against very specific people will go to a house and start spraying down targets. they instead pick places with way more people, like night clubs, movie theaters, schools, churches, etc. i admit columbine is something of a grey area; they had particular types of students they disliked. but from what i remember, they were more than willing to extend the murder spree beyond those groups.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I largely agree with you on the politics of it, but I think we have an obligation to try to reduce these deaths however we can.

There is majority support for gun regulations that don't come close to abolishing the second amendment. But our counter-majoritatian political institutions don't do a good job of translating that into political action.

One consideration, is that the vicious circle will keep coming around back to the fact that the 2nd Amendment, particularly as it will be interpreted by the currently composed SCOTUS, arguably allows very little gun regulations, at least in the variety which would impact the gun related deaths that folks are the most concerned about.

With that in mind, meaningful gun-control legislation, up to and including repealing the 2nd Amendment does not seem to be within the scope of "however we can".

If the ideological environment among voters ever shifted enough to reach a point where a Congress had been elected into office that could achieve a supermajority in favor of repealing the 2nd Amendment, the country would already have gone so deep into various gun control measures that repeal of the 2nd Amendment might ironically be unnecessary.

 

[choxorn]

i admit columbine is something of a grey area; they had particular types of students they disliked. but from what i remember, they were more than willing to extend the murder spree beyond those groups.

I mean to some extent yes but not really, their original plan involved setting off bombs and just killing as many people as possible, both among the students and staff and among any emergency responders. Their planted bombs just didn't go off. Really, reading their motivations and admiration for Timothy McVeigh (they also at first tried to do their attack on the anniversary of the OKC bombing and just pushed it off by a day), what they were intending was more like a full-on domestic terrorism incident.

On another note, some of the pro-gun rhetoric argues for "good guys with guns" and that having armed guards at schools would stop shootings. Columbine did in fact have an armed police officer at the time, and he got into a shootout with Harris and Klebold at the start of their attack, and it did absolutely nothing to prevent them from killing 13 other people. Later on, they also exchanged some gunfire with the SWAT teams responding to the shooting (which you can even hear in some of the news footage from it).

 

[EgonSpengler]

One consideration, is that the vicious circle will keep coming around back to the fact that the 2nd Amendment, particularly as it will be interpreted by the currently composed SCOTUS, arguably allows very little gun regulations, at least in the variety which would impact the gun related deaths that folks are the most concerned about.

With that in mind, meaningful gun-control legislation, up to and including repealing the 2nd Amendment does not seem to be within the scope of "however we can".

If the ideological environment among voters ever shifted enough to reach a point where a Congress had been elected into office that could achieve a supermajority in favor of repealing the 2nd Amendment, the country would already have gone so deep into various gun control measures that repeal of the 2nd Amendment might ironically be unnecessary.

I agree. Nothing much can happen as long as the gun proponents have the 2nd Amendment, and the 2nd Amendment will never be repealed. I am still hoping that Mitch McConnell gets hit by a truck for his refusal to do his duty and consider President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, and I am only slightly less angry at the Democratic Party for not raising Unholy Hell over it. They let it go, I think because they were so confident that Hilary Clinton would win the election and then she'd get to nominate a justice. F all of them.

I'm pretty sure all we're going to get, one massacre after another, is scenes like this one, between congressmen Jamaal Bowman of New York and Thomas Massie of Kentucky:

Bowman, and everyone like him, just sound like the teachers in Peanuts. The 2nd Amendment's not going anywhere, and Gorsuch, Kavanagh, and Barrett will probably be Supreme Court justices for the rest of my life (as will Jackson and Kagan, fwiw). Barring something unexpected, President Biden won't get to nominate anyone, even if he wins a 2nd term. If the American people are true to form, they'll elect a Republican in 2028, if not in 2024, and then re-elect him in 2032. I imagine Thomas might retire, to allow another conservative justice to be nominated. Alito and Roberts are only a little younger, so they could also choose to retire in, like, 2030 or 2032. Sotomayor will be 86 in 2036, which could well be the next opportunity for a Democratic President to nominate a new justice. Jamaal Bowman is only 46; if he remains in Congress, and he keeps up this level of passion, maybe he can get something done when he's 65 or 70.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Don't you ever get tired?

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/worl...31&cvid=7a524b97da0e4891894c0287bfecac27&ei=9

Shooter had purchased 7 guns legally. Why does anybody need 7 guns?

The country always convulses in pain when mass school shootings occur, especially the elementary school ones. (UK calls them primary schools?)

The locked doors didn't matter @0:52 which had too much glass.

3 little kids and 3 adults died , along with the shooter two days ago.


There is a pretty huge protest going on at the state capital in Tennessee.

This is the craziest thing to happen in Nashville since 2020 when that guy blew up a whole street downtown after warning everyone to run away.

Spoiler :

 

[Birdjaguar]

usa has had semi-auto rifles capable of mass shooting since before anyone here was born. unless you were alive before ww2, the capability gap isn't even that large. maybe the uptick in mass shootings of this nature is just a base rate thing; more people means more of every good/bad event happening.

Fully automatic guns were banned in the 1930s. After WW2, until 1976 guns were all about hunting and sports shooting and the NRA was apolitical. The NRA took up politics in 1976 over hand gun control laws and the GOP choose to make the 2nd amendment an election issue, It wasn't until Clinton took office and banned assault rifles (for 10 years 1994-2004) that the gun industry and NRA began to heavily promote gun ownership beyond hunting and sport shooting. Gun ownership became a political issue and was pushed hard by the GOP and its allies. In post WW2 America hand guns were a crime issue and gun control laws were passed as a way to control crime. As soon as the GOP and NRA saw it as a way to collect votes it became a constitutional issue and a way to raise money.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I agree. Nothing much can happen as long as the gun proponents have the 2nd Amendment, and the 2nd Amendment will never be repealed. I am still hoping that Mitch McConnell gets hit by a truck for his refusal to do his duty and consider President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, and I am only slightly less angry at the Democratic Party for not raising Unholy Hell over it. They let it go, I think because they were so confident that Hilary Clinton would win the election and then she'd get to nominate a justice. F all of them.

I'm pretty sure all we're going to get, one massacre after another, is scenes like this one, between congressmen Jamaal Bowman of New York and Thomas Massie of Kentucky:

What the Republican Congressman (Massie) was trying to say to the Democratic one (Bowman), is that schools that allow/have armed teachers don't have school shootings... at least not yet.

First, I actually wonder whether this is even true. It's certainly the case that school shootings have happened in schools that had armed police or "resource officers" on site. Second, assuming that it is true, which it might be, one thing at play here is what I was discussing with @JPetroski, ie school shootings are relatively "rare"* at least compared to the number of schools in the US, so adding the additional variable of "school allows/has armed faculty/teachers" just decreases the probability by default, as the addition of additional variables tends to do. So the statistic that Massie is citing, seems misleading at best, as its more about correlation, as a function of how probabilities ordinarily work, than any causation related to the armament of the teachers.

*one thing we haven't discussed yet is the frequency of school shootings in the US vis-a-vis other similarly developed countries and how that factors in to the consideration of how rare they are.

Bowman, and everyone like him, just sound like the teachers in Peanuts. The 2nd Amendment's not going anywhere, and Gorsuch, Kavanagh, and Barrett will probably be Supreme Court justices for the rest of my life (as will Jackson and Kagan, fwiw). Barring something unexpected, President Biden won't get to nominate anyone, even if he wins a 2nd term. If the American people are true to form, they'll elect a Republican in 2028, if not in 2024, and then re-elect him in 2032. I imagine Thomas might retire, to allow another conservative justice to be nominated. Alito and Roberts are only a little younger, so they could also choose to retire in, like, 2030 or 2032. Sotomayor will be 86 in 2036, which could well be the next opportunity for a Democratic President to nominate a new justice. Jamaal Bowman is only 46; if he remains in Congress, and he keeps up this level of passion, maybe he can get something done when he's 65 or 70.

By the time he is 65-70, the "passion" will be all burned out... he will likely have been converted to the status quo and the mundane rat race of seeking re-election at all costs, and/or setting himself up for a lucrative consulting/lobbying position when he retires.

 

[Akka]

Is it even worth getting into? You've been on these forums since 2001. You know what I'm going to say, and you probably disagree with it and think it's silly

Well, that would cover about 90 % of all OT discussion, yet we still have them popping up again and again

From what I've gathered all these years, it seems that the crux of the importance of guns is really about a cultural value put on their access. My feeling is that it is part of the ethos of "self-reliance/self-made-man" that is a core of the US identity (kinda the same root as the capitalist/anti-socialist leaning where people are expected to manage their life themselves). Basically, that it's much more a cultural artifact related to identity, than anything coming out of actual utilitarian/pragmatism, and that it's the reason it weights more than the amount of violence it enables in society.
Also probably one of the main reason why the USA have so much more gun violence than many other countries which have relatively comparable amount of civilian guns.

But that is all my own analysis of what I've seen and heard about the subject. I'm still curious about why you consider access to gun important in itself. It might be ideological, cultural, a matter of principles or many other things.

 

[Snowygerry]

Psychological more likely - if you own 16 military grade rifles, you might be tempted to think one or a few of them should be able to solve your problems.

 

[AmazonQueen]

There aren't really any comparable countries to the USA. It has almost twice as many guns per capita as the next highest country which is the atypical Falkland Islands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country

 

[Snowygerry]

Curious to see Belgium neatly in between Mexico and Afghanistan there, so that's estimated, legal civilian firearms I imagine ?

 

[AmazonQueen]

Curious to see Belgium neatly in between Mexico and Afghanistan there, so that's estimated, legal civilian firearms I imagine ?

It includes estimates for illegal firearms.

 

[Snowygerry]

Then it may be a tad on the low side imho.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Pew Research Center, 22 June 2017 - "America’s Complex Relationship With Guns"

One big difference between the US and other countries is the number of handguns, and I believe handguns account for most of the violence in this country.

By the look of it, many Americans seem to feel that they are in near-constant danger that requires quick access to lethal force. Perhaps this constant sense of unease is what separates Americans from people in other countries. As mentioned above, the sense that a person has of needing a gun for protection seems like it has to be a product of the proliferation of guns, at least in part, so there's a vicious cycle there. My sense is that if we could wave a magic wand and reduce American ownership of handguns, the remaining population who own long guns for hunting or sport shooting might resemble other, similar countries, like Canada, France, or Finland. iirc, Switzerland has a relatively high rate of gun ownership, and almost none of them are handguns (~5%, I think I read somewhere?). Reducing the numbers of handguns would likely reduce the number of homicides and suicides (the latter, dramatically so).

 

[EgonSpengler]

There aren't really any comparable countries to the USA. It has almost twice as many guns per capita as the next highest country which is the atypical Falkland Islands.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country

American civilians own over 393 million guns. That is three times as many guns as the combined stockpile of the world's armed forces.