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U.S. Politics 2017 (split fm US Election: 2016)
- Thread starter Rifleman62
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"Bump stocks" are selling like hotcakes,
https://www.google.ca/search?q=%22bump+stock%22+sales&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-CA%3AIE-Address&rlz=1I7GGHP_en-GBCA592&dcr=0&source=lnt&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A10%2F1%2F2017%2Ccd_max%3A&tbm=
https://www.google.ca/search?q=%22bump+stock%22+sales&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-CA%3AIE-Address&rlz=1I7GGHP_en-GBCA592&dcr=0&source=lnt&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A10%2F1%2F2017%2Ccd_max%3A&tbm=
kkwd said:
Yes.
Private ownership of firearms tends to deter criminal activity. Concealed Carry policies tend to deter it even more.
Compare the private firearms ownership and carry laws in Vermont ("Constitutional Carry", or no concealed carry permit required for those with clean criminal records and who have not been determined through due process to be mentally unfit) and Chicago, Washington DC, and other places with very restrictive laws and huge drug gang problems. The difference in homicide rates is huge.
Bird_Gunner45 said:
And a low-life in France still killed more people with a truck.
Murderers are not fazed by gun control laws. Or murder laws.
Trucks. Airliners and boxcutters. Crude bombs.
The whole concept of "gun control" is an abysmal failure as a public safety measure. The only people rendered more safe by "gun control" are criminals. The only people who obey such nonsense are those who are not a threat to anybody.
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FJAG said:
Ruger Mini-14 was the weapon of choice used at the Montreal Massacre.
"AK-47. The very best there is. When you absolutely, positively got to kill every m-f in the room, accept no substitutes."
Purely anecdotal, but in almost 37 years on the job in a big city, the overwhelming percentage of shootings they sent us to were suicides.
Jarnhamar
Army.ca Myth
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FJAG said:
I've read a pistol grip and telescoping stock makes something an assault weapon. Scary stuff
So let's say 5 million ARs, and 20 million ak47s?
Total estimate of guns in the US is 300 million. All those guns and about 11'000 murders with firearms a year (8000-9000 of which are pistols).
FJAG
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Jarnhamar said:I've read a pistol grip and telescoping stock makes something an assault weapon. Scary stuff
So let's say 5 million ARs, and ,0 million ak47s?
Total estimate of guns in the US is 300 million. All those guns and about 11'000 murders with firearms a year (8000-9000 of which are pistols).
Wikipedia actually gives a pretty fair explanation as to what the characteristics of an assault rifle are and then in section 3 discusses the distinction between assault rifle and the rather artificial term assault weapon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_rifle
:cheers:
If it's semiautomatic only, it is not an "assault rifle", and "assault weapon" is an undefined term bandied about by gun-grabbers.
There are about 300 million, give or take a few dozen million on either side, privately-owned firearms of all types in the US. Slightly over 30,000, or 0.0001%, are involved in fatal shootings annually, and that includes suicides and justifiable homicides. A shade under two-thirds of those deaths are suicides, and suicide is means-independent.
The overall US suicide rate is slightly less than the overall Canadian suicide rate.
Around 600 or so deaths are accidents - and well below the rate of motor vehicle accidents, drownings, and falls (more lives would be saved by banning backyard pools; nobody needs a pool).
About eighty percent of firearms-related homicides are gang related, or about 8000 annually. The rest, a little over 2000, represent "regular" homicides, including about 250 police-related and justifiable homicides.
Avoid ghettoes, cars, pools, and ladders in the US and you're pretty safe.
And if you're still worried about being shot, avoid places with "no guns allowed" signs at their entrances. Those are the places that mass murderers seek out.
There are about 300 million, give or take a few dozen million on either side, privately-owned firearms of all types in the US. Slightly over 30,000, or 0.0001%, are involved in fatal shootings annually, and that includes suicides and justifiable homicides. A shade under two-thirds of those deaths are suicides, and suicide is means-independent.
The overall US suicide rate is slightly less than the overall Canadian suicide rate.
Around 600 or so deaths are accidents - and well below the rate of motor vehicle accidents, drownings, and falls (more lives would be saved by banning backyard pools; nobody needs a pool).
About eighty percent of firearms-related homicides are gang related, or about 8000 annually. The rest, a little over 2000, represent "regular" homicides, including about 250 police-related and justifiable homicides.
Avoid ghettoes, cars, pools, and ladders in the US and you're pretty safe.
And if you're still worried about being shot, avoid places with "no guns allowed" signs at their entrances. Those are the places that mass murderers seek out.
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Loachman said:
I guess if you dont take into account almost every single piece of evidence that shows the lower gun violence rates in countries with some level of gun control vs. the US. Americans are 10 x more likely to be killed by a gun than in other developed countries. Gun related murder rate is 25 x higher. Americans aged 15-24 are 49 times more likely to be killed by a gun than the other 22 developed nations. If the US was in the MIDDLE EAST it would have the second highest gun violence in the region behind Iraq but higher than Palestine, Yemen, Libya, and Iran. Like 3.5 x higher than Iran.
Concealed carry- The states with the largest conceal carry are Florida (1.7 million), Pennsylvania (1.275 million), Texas (1.2 million), and Georgia (979,000). In Alabama, 20.79% of the adult population have a permit.
States with lowest violent crime rates? Vermont (no permits) and Maine (42,000). Wyoming (31,000) was third best followed by Virginia (429,000). Where do the 4 largest permit holding states fall? Florida (5th highest, 540.5/100,000), Pennsylvania (27thk, 314.1/100,000), Texas (15th, 405.9/100,000), and Georgia (20th, 377.3/100,000). Alabama, which by the argument of "conceal carry makes places safer" should be the safest in the US, sits at 12th most dangerous with a violent crime rate of 427.4/100,000.
Lets then compare these rates to other nations. The US sits 99th in the world in violent crime rate (42.01/1000), sandwiched between Turkmenistan and Georgia. Nations with better rates than the US include Iraq at 130, (20.66), Canada at 142 (16.23), UK at 157 (11.68), and Iceland at 190 (3.14).
But those are just facts
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-u-s-gun-deaths-compare-to-other-countries/
http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/12/07/458815891/the-u-s-is-a-world-leader-in-gun-deaths
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Jarnhamar
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Vermont possibly has a low crime rate (the lowest I believe?) because you don't actually need a permit in order to carry a gun, openly or concealed. You can do both.
From the wick.
Like Vermont, one doesn't need an actual permit in order to carry a concealed gun in Maine or Wyoming. It would appear states with the lowest violent crime also have the most permissive gun laws.
Interesting to note Canadian citizens can conceal carry a handgun in Vermont too.
From the wick.
Like Vermont, one doesn't need an actual permit in order to carry a concealed gun in Maine or Wyoming. It would appear states with the lowest violent crime also have the most permissive gun laws.
Interesting to note Canadian citizens can conceal carry a handgun in Vermont too.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-used-to-think-gun-control-was-the-answer-my-research-told-me-otherwise/2017/10/03/d33edca6-a851-11e7-92d1-58c702d2d975_story.html?utm_term=.855186945e7d
Opinions: I used to think gun control was the answer. My research told me otherwise.- By Leah Libresco - 3 Oct 17
Leah Libresco is a statistician and former newswriter at FiveThirtyEight, a data journalism site. She is the author of “Arriving at Amen.”
Before I started researching gun deaths, gun-control policy used to frustrate me. I wished the National Rifle Association would stop blocking common-sense gun-control reforms such as banning assault weapons, restricting silencers, shrinking magazine sizes and all the other measures that could make guns less deadly.
Then, my colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I’d lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence. The best ideas left standing were narrowly tailored interventions to protect subtypes of potential victims, not broad attempts to limit the lethality of guns.
I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain and Australia and concluded that they didn’t prove much about what America’s policy should be. Neither nation experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans. Mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress. And in both Australia and Britain, the gun restrictions had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths.
When I looked at the other oft-praised policies, I found out that no gun owner walks into the store to buy an “assault weapon.” It’s an invented classification that includes any semi-automatic that has two or more features, such as a bayonet mount, a rocket-propelled grenade-launcher mount, a folding stock or a pistol grip. But guns are modular, and any hobbyist can easily add these features at home, just as if they were snapping together Legos.
As for silencers — they deserve that name only in movies, where they reduce gunfire to a soft puick puick. In real life, silencers limit hearing damage for shooters but don’t make gunfire dangerously quiet. An AR-15 with a silencer is about as loud as a jackhammer. Magazine limits were a little more promising, but a practiced shooter could still change magazines so fast as to make the limit meaningless.
As my co-workers and I kept looking at the data, it seemed less and less clear that one broad gun-control restriction could make a big difference. Two-thirds of gun deaths in the United States every year are suicides. Almost no proposed restriction would make it meaningfully harder for people with guns on hand to use them. I couldn't even answer my most desperate question: If I had a friend who had guns in his home and a history of suicide attempts, was there anything I could do that would help?
However, the next-largest set of gun deaths — 1 in 5 — were young men aged 15 to 34, killed in homicides. These men were most likely to die at the hands of other young men, often related to gang loyalties or other street violence. And the last notable group of similar deaths was the 1,700 women murdered per year, usually as the result of domestic violence. Far more people were killed in these ways than in mass-shooting incidents, but few of the popularly floated policies were tailored to serve them.
By the time we published our project, I didn’t believe in many of the interventions I’d heard politicians tout. I was still anti-gun, at least from the point of view of most gun owners, and I don’t want a gun in my home, as I think the risk outweighs the benefits. But I can’t endorse policies whose only selling point is that gun owners hate them. Policies that often seem as if they were drafted by people who have encountered guns only as a figure in a briefing book or an image on the news.
Instead, I found the most hope in more narrowly tailored interventions. Potential suicide victims, women menaced by their abusive partners and kids swept up in street vendettas are all in danger from guns, but they each require different protections.
Older men, who make up the largest share of gun suicides, need better access to people who could care for them and get them help. Women endangered by specific men need to be prioritized by police, who can enforce restraining orders prohibiting these men from buying and owning guns. Younger men at risk of violence need to be identified before they take a life or lose theirs and to be connected to mentors who can help them de-escalate conflicts.
Even the most data-driven practices, such as New Orleans’ plan to identify gang members for intervention based on previous arrests and weapons seizures, wind up more personal than most policies floated. The young men at risk can be identified by an algorithm, but they have to be disarmed one by one, personally — not en masse as though they were all interchangeable. A reduction in gun deaths is most likely to come from finding smaller chances for victories and expanding those solutions as much as possible. We save lives by focusing on a range of tactics to protect the different kinds of potential victims and reforming potential killers, not from sweeping bans focused on the guns themselves.
Opinions: I used to think gun control was the answer. My research told me otherwise.- By Leah Libresco - 3 Oct 17
Leah Libresco is a statistician and former newswriter at FiveThirtyEight, a data journalism site. She is the author of “Arriving at Amen.”
Before I started researching gun deaths, gun-control policy used to frustrate me. I wished the National Rifle Association would stop blocking common-sense gun-control reforms such as banning assault weapons, restricting silencers, shrinking magazine sizes and all the other measures that could make guns less deadly.
Then, my colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I’d lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence. The best ideas left standing were narrowly tailored interventions to protect subtypes of potential victims, not broad attempts to limit the lethality of guns.
I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain and Australia and concluded that they didn’t prove much about what America’s policy should be. Neither nation experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans. Mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress. And in both Australia and Britain, the gun restrictions had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths.
When I looked at the other oft-praised policies, I found out that no gun owner walks into the store to buy an “assault weapon.” It’s an invented classification that includes any semi-automatic that has two or more features, such as a bayonet mount, a rocket-propelled grenade-launcher mount, a folding stock or a pistol grip. But guns are modular, and any hobbyist can easily add these features at home, just as if they were snapping together Legos.
As for silencers — they deserve that name only in movies, where they reduce gunfire to a soft puick puick. In real life, silencers limit hearing damage for shooters but don’t make gunfire dangerously quiet. An AR-15 with a silencer is about as loud as a jackhammer. Magazine limits were a little more promising, but a practiced shooter could still change magazines so fast as to make the limit meaningless.
As my co-workers and I kept looking at the data, it seemed less and less clear that one broad gun-control restriction could make a big difference. Two-thirds of gun deaths in the United States every year are suicides. Almost no proposed restriction would make it meaningfully harder for people with guns on hand to use them. I couldn't even answer my most desperate question: If I had a friend who had guns in his home and a history of suicide attempts, was there anything I could do that would help?
However, the next-largest set of gun deaths — 1 in 5 — were young men aged 15 to 34, killed in homicides. These men were most likely to die at the hands of other young men, often related to gang loyalties or other street violence. And the last notable group of similar deaths was the 1,700 women murdered per year, usually as the result of domestic violence. Far more people were killed in these ways than in mass-shooting incidents, but few of the popularly floated policies were tailored to serve them.
By the time we published our project, I didn’t believe in many of the interventions I’d heard politicians tout. I was still anti-gun, at least from the point of view of most gun owners, and I don’t want a gun in my home, as I think the risk outweighs the benefits. But I can’t endorse policies whose only selling point is that gun owners hate them. Policies that often seem as if they were drafted by people who have encountered guns only as a figure in a briefing book or an image on the news.
Instead, I found the most hope in more narrowly tailored interventions. Potential suicide victims, women menaced by their abusive partners and kids swept up in street vendettas are all in danger from guns, but they each require different protections.
Older men, who make up the largest share of gun suicides, need better access to people who could care for them and get them help. Women endangered by specific men need to be prioritized by police, who can enforce restraining orders prohibiting these men from buying and owning guns. Younger men at risk of violence need to be identified before they take a life or lose theirs and to be connected to mentors who can help them de-escalate conflicts.
Even the most data-driven practices, such as New Orleans’ plan to identify gang members for intervention based on previous arrests and weapons seizures, wind up more personal than most policies floated. The young men at risk can be identified by an algorithm, but they have to be disarmed one by one, personally — not en masse as though they were all interchangeable. A reduction in gun deaths is most likely to come from finding smaller chances for victories and expanding those solutions as much as possible. We save lives by focusing on a range of tactics to protect the different kinds of potential victims and reforming potential killers, not from sweeping bans focused on the guns themselves.
The latter is a good article.
The author still talks about "gun deaths", though, which, again, is a construct of gun-grabbers.
Ultimately, the means of violent death (and injury), is irrelevant. One should look at total deaths by all means rather than those perpetrated with a single type of implement. Gun grabbers refuse to do so. They consistently focus on deaths involving firearms only, and ignore all other methods and implements used to kill. They are happy if they see a reduction of "gun deaths", even if overall murder and suicide rates remain the same or even increase.
Dead is dead, whether that death is caused with a firearm, a knife, a baseball bat, bare hands, or by any other method.
While it is true that firearms are the weapons used in many domestic deaths, very few violent men actually need one to terrorize, brutalize, and ultimately kill their wives. They are larger and stronger and more aggressive.
Money wasted on expensive and futile "gun control" schemes would be better spent on mental health and suicide prevention programmes, women's shelters, and employment-oriented education and athletic programmes for youth.
Violence is caused not by weapons - and almost anything can be used as a weapon - but by human failings, desperation, hopelessness, and, sometimes, just plain evil.
The author still talks about "gun deaths", though, which, again, is a construct of gun-grabbers.
Ultimately, the means of violent death (and injury), is irrelevant. One should look at total deaths by all means rather than those perpetrated with a single type of implement. Gun grabbers refuse to do so. They consistently focus on deaths involving firearms only, and ignore all other methods and implements used to kill. They are happy if they see a reduction of "gun deaths", even if overall murder and suicide rates remain the same or even increase.
Dead is dead, whether that death is caused with a firearm, a knife, a baseball bat, bare hands, or by any other method.
While it is true that firearms are the weapons used in many domestic deaths, very few violent men actually need one to terrorize, brutalize, and ultimately kill their wives. They are larger and stronger and more aggressive.
Money wasted on expensive and futile "gun control" schemes would be better spent on mental health and suicide prevention programmes, women's shelters, and employment-oriented education and athletic programmes for youth.
Violence is caused not by weapons - and almost anything can be used as a weapon - but by human failings, desperation, hopelessness, and, sometimes, just plain evil.
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Loachman said:
So you are ignoring all the evidence that shows the violent crime rates and gun murders being exponentially higher in the US than any other western nation (and a large amount of non-western nations) but agree with an opinion piece?
Since opinion pieces are the source de jour, here's one from a guy in the shootings:
"My biggest regret is that I stubbornly didn’t realize it (need for gun control) until my brothers on the road and myself were threatened by it,” he wrote. “We are unbelievably fortunate to not be among the number of victims killed or seriously wounded by this maniac.”
http://ew.com/music/2017/10/02/caleb-keeter-josh-abbott-band-gun-control-las-vegas/
At some point, people will see that having no controls on guns has a correlation with the constant and increasingly deadly mass shootings and someone will have the courage to do something about it. One guy tried to sneak explosives onto an airplane so they brought in 3D scanners and increased airport security. Crazy people continually use semi-automatic weapons but the same people refuse to acknowledge that there's a correlation. Guns are not the sole reason these events occur. However, it is clearly a part of the problem.
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Loachman said:
I'm not a gun expert. But, these gun threads remind me of some scenes I personally experienced.
Funny how considerate of others people can be. I told a nicely dressed lady down in the subway she was being unfair to us. Just because she felt like jumping, my partner and I would have crawl under the train and get filthy. That she was not thinking about us. She actually apologised! hahaha
When I asked her the usual question of "why?", she said because nobody smiled at her that day.
We had a cigarette with her, cracked a couple of lame jokes, and mumbled the usual line about life being worth living. Said she would think about what we had said.
Would we have had that conversation if she had a gun in her apartment? I don't know.
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mariomike said:
What about a knife? Tylenol? A window or balcony? Open rafter beam with some rope? A gun is just a tool to achieve a means, much like the subway train. Someone who is suicidal is going to pick a means to do it, and if a gun's not available they'll just pick something else.
Canada's suicide rate is slightly lower than the US, and our predominate method of suicide is suffocation (normally hanging) which could be attributed to draconian firearm laws. The US has a slightly higher overall rate and nearly 50% of suicides are firearm (although huge gender bias 56% male 31% female) again likely due to availability. If you crack down on handguns people will find another way to do it, but the aim of "reducing violent firearm deaths" is achieved, yet the suicide rate is likely unchanged.
http://lostallhope.com/suicide-statistics/us-methods-suicide
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/82-624-x/2012001/article/11696-eng.htm
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PuckChaser said:
The evaluation of suicide in terms of gun control is more in relation to proximity/availability of the method. When someone is truly suicidal than the method of suicide is irrelevant as the decision is already made. However, unlike other methods of suicide such as pills, slitting wrists, etc the gun takes away any sort of availability for someone on the edge to seek help before death. Moreover, the means of suicide does matter. Often, people, males statistically speaking, use firearms as they see it as being "quick" and tend to be more rash about the decision to kill themselves than reflective. Females use firearms less as they are generally more reflective of their decision. So, keeping the means to make a rash decision out of peoples hands does in fact improve their ability to seek help. Many people who commit suicide in public are really looking for a last chance to change their minds so can more easily be talked out of it since that's the desired outcome. Someone who has made a rash decision (and since suicide is high amongst teens rash decision rationale is indefinitely a factor) has some means of rescue in most means of suicide. Guns, not so much.
Harvard university studies have also indicated a direct correlation between teen suicide and gun availability for the reasons noted above.
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-ownership-and-use/
As an anecdote, I have been seen two people who have committed suicide, both by shotgun against a wood pile, one being a nephew. In the first case, the reason was because of depression and was certainly pre-meditated and nothing would have changed that fact. The second was due to a breakup. This person got depressed, found an unlocked shotgun, and put it in their mouth. Would the second case have happened had he not have had easy access to a shotgun? I honestly dont believe so.
Colin Parkinson
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Bird gunner the US overall homicide rate and suicide rates are not exceptional, in fact France's suicide rate is higher and lets not talk about South Korea and Japan both which have strict gun control.
Plus those homicides listed include "justified homicides" which are legitimate self defense and police shootings.
Take a look at US homicides rates at the county level and you quickly realize the majority are the result of social issues the politicians have failed to address for the last 25 years. Blaming guns has been the red herring to avoid difficult conversations involving specific groups and cultures which lead to those clusters of homicides.
If people want to sit down and talk about how to reduce mass attacks, without starting out with gun control, but analyzing all of them and finding common issues, then you make progress. I would like the CDC to do a serious and deep study of the link of anti-depressant drugs and mass attacks, either to support that theory or remove it from the table.
Plus those homicides listed include "justified homicides" which are legitimate self defense and police shootings.
Take a look at US homicides rates at the county level and you quickly realize the majority are the result of social issues the politicians have failed to address for the last 25 years. Blaming guns has been the red herring to avoid difficult conversations involving specific groups and cultures which lead to those clusters of homicides.
If people want to sit down and talk about how to reduce mass attacks, without starting out with gun control, but analyzing all of them and finding common issues, then you make progress. I would like the CDC to do a serious and deep study of the link of anti-depressant drugs and mass attacks, either to support that theory or remove it from the table.
Bird_Gunner45 said:
Areas with large numbers of backyard swimming pools tend to have more drownings, too. Correlation does not equal causation.
Statistics without context can be very misleading, and countries often define criminal data differently.
The UK, at one point, did not include terrorism deaths (Northern Ireland) in with its homicide numbers.
Japan has a very low murder rate, but a very high suicide rate. Firearms owners often point to the lack of lawful private firearm ownership there to prove that high rates of firearms ownership have no bearing on suicide. Japan's cultural differences account for some of that - they have a different view of suicide than we do - but police culture apparently influences their statistics a lot as well. Failing to solve a crime is dishonourable, so an unknown number of homicides are asserted to be suicides instead - even Clintonesque ones like multiple blows to the head and several gunshots in the back.
Cultural differences, and some other factors, are discussed at https://mises.org/blog/few-gun-laws-new-hampshire-safer-canada.
There is a story behind every number, and relying on numbers alone can lead to false conclusions.
US society has many imperfections, many/most of which stem from its history. The effects of their Civil War are still being felt, and the effects of slavery and lingering racial discrimination will continue to cause problems for generations. Racial policies have helped to drive breakdown of families and gang activity, which is why a disproportionate number of crimes are committed by young black men, whose victims are usually other young black men. This violence is no more inherent in blacks than whites; it is an effect of their environment and imposed history.
Latino gangs are another problem. Decent careers are almost impossible for illegal immigrants. Those that find employment are largely limited to low-paying menial jobs. Latino youth, like their black counterparts, increasingly turn to more adventurous gang activities.
One-quarter of all "gun deaths" (including suicide, which accounts for almost two thirds) result from gang activity. Eighty percent of homicides are gang-related.
Those other countries listed do not have the gang culture that plagues the US, and have other cultural differences as well.
The gang problem is extremely difficult to fix. Nobody knows how to even begin, or how to fund it.
Decent job opportunities and education would help a lot, along with a safe and secure environment in which those can flourish. The recent spike in homicides, after a three-decade decline (even as firearms acquisition and ownership rates shot up), shows what happens when police avoid certain neighbourhoods, or drive by suspicious but not blatantly-obvious criminal activity, due to anti-police activities of Black Lives Matter and inflammatory comments from politicians such as the previous president. This reduction of active policing is known as the "Ferguson Effect". This spike is not happening evenly across the US, but in a handful of cities - and within those cities, certain neighbourhoods. The rest of the country continues to see reductions.
Bird_Gunner45 said:
Coincidentally, the prime gang age group, and the majority of those killed would be black.
No amount of "gun control" will fix that. Banning semi-automatic rifles with pistol grips or bayonet lugs or collapsible stocks or flash suppressors will not affect those numbers. Banning bump stocks will not affect those numbers. Banning standard-capacity magazines will not affect those numbers. Blaming the NRA (which, in reality, is nothing more than almost five million US citizens concerned about their constitutionally-guaranteed rights and who rarely abuse them) will not affect those numbers. Secure and safe environments, provided by effective policing and court systems, decent education, especially career-oriented training, and opportunities for normal personal growth will, eventually.
That's a lot harder, and more expensive, though, than yelling at the NRA and/or banning something new after every shooting.
Politicians are usually far more interested in appearing to do something than actually achieving something positive, however. In the case of gangs, though, it's hard to blame them. Skim through https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/2011-national-gang-threat-assessment. Yes, it's six years old, but it's the last one that I bookmarked. And, if anything's changed, it's likely for the worse.
And then there's http://www.gunfacts.info/blog/the-other-1/
Bird_Gunner45 said:
Methinks that you misunderstand the meaning of "no permit".
The laws surrounding concealed and open carry vary from state-to-state, and are sometimes more restrictive in individual cities within those states. Some states require those seeking to carry concealed weapons to undergo training courses in order to get a permit. Some states require background checks only. Some states only issue permits at police discretion regardless of qualification. Some states issue permits to anybody qualified.
And a growing number of states do not require their citizens to take a course or get a permit in order to exercise a constitutionally-guaranteed right, hence the term "constitutional carry. Do not mistake "no permit required" for "permits will not be issued".
http://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-myths/concealed-carry/
Now compare the murder and violent crime rates of those large cities that severely limit, if not outright prevent, the ability of their citizens to carry, or even acquire, firearms with more permissive jurisdictions. It is those cities that suffer from gang-driven violence while preventing honest and productive citizens from adequately defending themselves that drive the US national rates up, while almost gang-free, carry-what-you-want-how-you-want-where-you-want, constitutional-carry places like Vermont enjoy the very low crime rates that you quote.
Bird_Gunner45 said:
See the Mises article that I posted above. There are many factors that influence these numbers, and if anybody would rather live in Iraq than the US, well...
I've driven up and down the eastern US, and halfway across the northern US, many, many times and only once felt uncomfortable (wrong exit from the Interstate in Chicago pre-GPS, and asking for directions was clearly not advisable). I'd not likely go for even a much shorter drive in Iraq, at least not unarmed, unarmoured, and unaccompanied. How about you?
http://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-myths/guns-in-other-countries/
Bird_Gunner45 said:
US crime is not homogenous, and I am quite comfortable in those areas of the US that I have travelled and/or frequent, including night-time. I have been less comfortable in parts of my home country - England, especially at night. I have the luxury, however, of picking which areas that I travel and which I avoid, and the sense to know the difference.
I am not uncomfortable in states with solid concealed- or open-carry laws at all. I actually feel safer among armed citizens.
And a well-researched "opinion piece" compared to numbers out of context? You betcha.
Bird_Gunner45 said:
Anecdotal and emotional rather than logical, and different individuals will respond differently. I'd be pissed in a situation where neither I nor other people could return fire but merely await death.
Here's another anecdote to show a different reaction: "The law had been campaigned for by Suzanna Hupp, who was present at the massacre where both of her parents were killed. She later testified that she would have liked to have had her gun during it, but said, "it was a hundred feet away in my car" (she had feared that if she was caught carrying it she might lose her chiropractor's license).[15] She testified across the country in support of concealed handgun laws, and was elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1996. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luby%27s_shooting for more.
Hupp lost her parents that afternoon and gained the spotlight when she told the media she was not mad at Hennard. Instead she blamed the Texas Legislature for not allowing her to lawfully bring her gun into a restaurant.
In 1996, she won District 54 in the Texas House of Representatives, representing Bell, Burnet and Lampasas counties for five terms. She did not seek a sixth term and now tours the country advocating against gun control.
"I still get angry when I think about it," said Hupp. "I'm now married to the guy that was my boyfriend at the time. We have two children, and I'm saddened by the fact that they haven't gotten the chance to meet their grandparents." See http://kdhnews.com/news/survivors-reflect-on-oct-luby-s-shooting/article_e2660bfc-d24a-5566-a65f-a67a9fe6365b.html for more.
And a small selection of her Youtube appearances:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwadYRL_vVg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NfXQtp7JeM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiF_gO769Lk
Bird_Gunner45 said:
No controls? There are about twenty thousand "gun control" laws in the US. Perhaps they are still just one short.
Or, perhaps, some should be eliminated as Suzanna Gratia Hupp helped to do in her case.
But what would you suggest, that has not been tried, unsuccessfully, before? Insanity has been defined as repeating the same thing multiple times and expecting different results.
Bird_Gunner45 said:
It's more than one guy and more than just explosives.
And the quoted security measures are at least as much for show as anything, as they can be circumvented by anyone with brains and determination.
The Israelis managed to eliminate hijacking on El Al without those things. They pioneered Sky Marshals and actively profiled passengers. Many western security people pat down grandmothers and pre-pubescent children to avoid the appearance of profiling (also known as "threat assessment").
And, again, eliminate guns, and there are still trucks and still vulnerable potential killzones.
http://www.gunfacts.info/gun-control-myths/miscellaneous-gun-control-information/#BCS
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