Gun control anyone (again)

[Thailandnotes]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/.../?tid=pm_pop_b

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Gun control anyone (again)

We live, let’s imagine, in a city where children are dying of a ravaging infection. The good news is that its cause is well understood and its cure, an antibiotic, easily at hand. The bad news is that our city council has been taken over by a faith-healing cult that will go to any lengths to keep the antibiotic from the kids. Some citizens would doubtless point out meekly that faith healing has an ancient history in our city, and we must regard the faith healers with respect—to do otherwise would show a lack of respect for their freedom to faith-heal. (The faith healers’ proposition is that if there were a faith healer praying in every kindergarten the kids wouldn’t get infections in the first place.) A few Tartuffes would see the children writhe and heave in pain and then wring their hands in self-congratulatory piety and wonder why a good God would send such a terrible affliction on the innocent—surely he must have a plan! Most of us—every sane person in the city, actually—would tell the faith healers to go to hell, put off worrying about the Problem of Evil till Friday or Saturday or Sunday, and do everything we could to get as much penicillin to the kids as quickly we could.

We do live in such a city. Five thousand seven hundred and forty children and teens died from gunfire in the United States, just in 2008 and 2009. Twenty more, including Olivia Engel, who was seven, and Jesse Lewis, who was six, were killed just last week. Some reports say their bodies weren’t shown to their grief-stricken parents to identify them; just their pictures. The overwhelming majority of those children would have been saved with effective gun control. We know that this is so, because, in societies that have effective gun control, children rarely, rarely, rarely die of gunshots. Let’s worry tomorrow about the problem of Evil. Let’s worry more about making sure that when the Problem of Evil appears in a first-grade classroom, it is armed with a penknife.

There are complex, hand-wringing-worthy problems in our social life: deficits and debts and climate change. Gun violence, and the work of eliminating gun massacres in schools and movie houses and the like, is not one of them. Gun control works on gun violence as surely as antibiotics do on bacterial infections. In Scotland, after Dunblane, in Australia, after Tasmania, in Canada, after the Montreal massacre—in each case the necessary laws were passed to make gun-owning hard, and in each case… well, you will note the absence of massacre-condolence speeches made by the Prime Ministers of Canada and Australia, in comparison with our own President.

The laws differ from place to place. In some jurisdictions, like Scotland, it is essentially impossible to own a gun; in others, like Canada, it is merely very, very difficult. The precise legislation that makes gun-owning hard in a certain sense doesn’t really matter—and that should give hope to all of those who feel that, with several hundred million guns in private hands, there’s no point in trying to make America a gun-sane country.

As I wrote last January, the central insight of the modern study of criminal violence is that all crime—even the horrific violent crimes of assault and rape—is at some level opportunistic. Building a low annoying wall against them is almost as effective as building a high impenetrable one. This is the key concept of Franklin Zimring’s amazing work on crime in New York; everyone said that, given the social pressures, the slum pathologies, the profits to be made in drug dealing, the ascending levels of despair, that there was no hope of changing the ever-growing cycle of violence. The right wing insisted that this generation of predators would give way to a new generation of super-predators.

What the New York Police Department found out, through empirical experience and better organization, was that making crime even a little bit harder made it much, much rarer. This is undeniably true of property crime, and common sense and evidence tells you that this is also true even of crimes committed by crazy people (to use the plain English the subject deserves). Those who hold themselves together enough to be capable of killing anyone are subject to the same rules of opportunity as sane people. Even madmen need opportunities to display their madness, and behave in different ways depending on the possibilities at hand. Demand an extraordinary degree of determination and organization from someone intent on committing a violent act, and the odds that the violent act will take place are radically reduced, in many cases to zero.

Look at the Harvard social scientist David Hemenway’s work on gun violence to see how simple it is; the phrase “more guns = more homicide” tolls through it like a grim bell. The more guns there are in a country, the more gun murders and massacres of children there will be. Even within this gun-crazy country, states with strong gun laws have fewer gun murders (and suicides and accidental killings) than states without them. (Hemenway is also the scientist who has shown that the inflated figure of guns used in self-defense every year, running even to a million or two million, is a pure fantasy, even though it’s still cited by pro-gun enthusiasts. Those hundreds of thousands intruders shot by gun owners left no records in emergency wards or morgues; indeed, left no evidentiary trace behind. This is because they did not exist.) Hemenway has discovered, as he explained in this interview with Harvard Magazine, that what is usually presented as a case of self-defense with guns is, in the real world, almost invariably a story about an escalating quarrel. “How often might you appropriately use a gun in self-defense?” Hemenway asks rhetorically. “Answer: zero to once in a lifetime. How about inappropriately—because you were tired, afraid, or drunk in a confrontational situation? There are lots and lots of chances.”

So don’t listen to those who, seeing twenty dead six- and seven-year-olds in ten minutes, their bodies riddled with bullets designed to rip apart bone and organ, say that this is impossibly hard, or even particularly complex, problem. It’s a very easy one. Summoning the political will to make it happen may be hard. But there’s no doubt or ambiguity about what needs to be done, nor that, if it is done, it will work. One would have to believe that Americans are somehow uniquely evil or depraved to think that the same forces that work on the rest of the planet won’t work here. It’s always hard to summon up political will for change, no matter how beneficial the change may obviously be. Summoning the political will to make automobiles safe was difficult; so was summoning the political will to limit and then effectively ban cigarettes from public places. At some point, we will become a gun-safe, and then a gun-sane, and finally a gun-free society. It’s closer than you think. (I’m grateful to my colleague Jeffrey Toobin for showing so well that the idea that the Second Amendment assures individual possession of guns, so far from being deeply rooted in American law, is in truth a new and bizarre reading, one that would have shocked even Warren Burger.)

Gun control is not a panacea, any more than penicillin was. Some violence will always go on. What gun control is good at is controlling guns. Gun control will eliminate gun massacres in America as surely as antibiotics eliminate bacterial infections. As I wrote last week, those who oppose it have made a moral choice: that they would rather have gun massacres of children continue rather than surrender whatever idea of freedom or pleasure they find wrapped up in owning guns or seeing guns owned—just as the faith healers would rather watch the children die than accept the reality of scientific medicine. This is a moral choice; many faith healers make it to this day, and not just in thought experiments. But it is absurd to shake our heads sapiently and say we can’t possibly know what would have saved the lives of Olivia and Jesse.

On gun violence and how to end it, the facts are all in, the evidence is clear, the truth there for all who care to know it—indeed, a global consensus is in place, which, in disbelief and now in disgust, the planet waits for us to us to join. Those who fight against gun control, actively or passively, with a shrug of helplessness, are dooming more kids to horrible deaths and more parents to unspeakable grief just as surely as are those who fight against pediatric medicine or childhood vaccination. It’s really, and inarguably, just as simple as that.

[vt]

Re: Gun control anyone (again)

Hitler had gun control too:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...hen-p-halbrook

Far more children died because of "gun control" by a repressive government than by the all the senseless violence we see in ghettos and unfortunate mental cases.

We need to keep guns from mentally deranged and criminals, but citizens have the right to protect themselves from crime and radical governments.

[Verrocchio]

Re: Gun control anyone (again)

Hitler had gun control too:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...hen-p-halbrook

Far more children died because of "gun control" by a repressive government than by the all the senseless violence we see in ghettos and unfortunate mental cases.

We need to keep guns from mentally deranged and criminals, but citizens have the right to protect themselves from crime and radical governments.

Could we talk about who we mean when we say "citizen?" Would your definition include deranged individuals such as Adam Lanza (Sandy Hook, CT) and Dylann Roof (Charleston, SC)?

[shiny!]

Re: Gun control anyone (again)

Gun control is not a panacea, any more than penicillin was. Some violence will always go on. What gun control is good at is controlling guns. Gun control will eliminate gun massacres in America as surely as antibiotics eliminate bacterial infections. ...

Gun control is terrible at controlling guns, except in the sense of keeping them out of the hands of responsible, law-abiding citizens. Criminals being, you know, criminals, do not abide by gun control laws. When England banned gun ownership for law-abiding citizens, home burglaries went down but violent, armed home invasions went up! Why? Because the robbers no longer feared coming face-to-face with an armed householder.

On gun violence and how to end it, the facts are all in, the evidence is clear, the truth there for all who care to know it ...

They are and it is, but it's not what you've been lead to believe. Remember, "There are lies, damned lies and statistics."

Excerpts from Gun Facts - Children and Guns:

Myth: If [gun control] saves the life of one child, it is worth it

Fact: Firearms in private hands are used an estimated 2.5 million times (or 6,849 times each day) each year to prevent crime; 40 this includes rapes, aggravated assaults, and kidnapping. (In the vast majority of these cases the gun is never fired; just wielding it is usually enough to make the criminal flee. -shiny!) The number of innocent children protected by firearm owning parents far outweighs the number of children harmed.

Myth: 13 children are killed each day by guns

Fact: Adults included – This "statistic" includes "children" up to age 19 or 24, depending on the source. 1 Since most violent crime is committed by males ages 16-24, the "13 child" number includes adult gang members dying during criminal activity. The proper definition of 'child' is a person between birth and puberty (typically 13-14 years old) and in 2013 only 1 child was killed on an average day nationwide, or about 0.02 children per state per day.

Fact: Suicides are included – 26% of child firearm deaths are suicides. Hence, the "13 child" statistic includes these suicides. 4

Fact: 1,446 children die per year in transportation accidents. 5

Fact: Parental neglect and abuse account for 80% of all child deaths (1,274) which dwarfs gun deaths. 6

Fact: For contrast: 1,917 children die each day from malaria 7 around the world and 15 men, women, and children per day are murdered by a convicted felon in government supervised parole/probation programs in the U.S. 8

Fact: Over an eight year period, in states without "right to carry" laws, there were 15 school shootings; however, in states that allow citizens to carry guns, there was only one.

Fact: Non-firearm juvenile violent crime rate in the U.S. is twice that of 25 other industrialized western nations. The non-firearm infant-homicide rate in the U.S. is 3.5 times higher. 19 Thus we have a violence problem – not a "gun" problem.

Fact: Non-firearm related homicides of children out-rank firearm related homicides by children almost 5-to-1 20

Myth: More children are hurt with guns than by any other means

Fact: Barely more than 1% of all unintentional deaths for children in the U.S. between ages 0-14 are from firearms. 30

Fact: Children are 12 times more likely to die in an automobile accident than from gun-related homicides or legal interventions (being shot by a police officer, for example) if they are age 0-14. For the group 0-24 years old (which bends the definition of "child" quite a bit), the rate is still 8.6 times higher for cars. 32

Fact: In 2001, there were only 72 accidental firearm deaths for children under age 15, as opposed to over 2,100 children who drowned (29 times as many drowning deaths as firearm deaths). 33

Fact: Boys who own legal firearms have much lower rates of delinquency and drug use than non-owners of guns. 35

Fact: The non-gun homicide rate of children in the U.S. is more than twice as high as in other western countries. And eight times as many children die from non-gun violent acts than from gun crimes. 36 This indicates that the problem is violence, not guns.

Fact: 82% of homicides of children age 13 and under were committed without a gun. 39

a global consensus is in place, which, in disbelief and now in disgust, the planet waits for us to us to join.

This is a "bandwagon" propaganda technique. In the immortal words of wise mothers everywhere, "just because your friends are jumping off a cliff doesn't mean you should do it, too."

Those who fight against gun control, actively or passively, with a shrug of helplessness, are dooming more kids to horrible deaths and more parents to unspeakable grief just as surely as are those who fight against pediatric medicine or childhood vaccination.

Using card-stacked data, gun control advocates can demonize legal gun owners all they want but it doesn't make them right. It just makes them very effective at propaganda.

It’s really, and inarguably, just as simple as that.

No, it really, really isn't! Oversimplification of complex problems leads to failed solutions and serious unintended consequences. When you properly identify the real causes of violence (it isn't guns), the solutions are anything BUT simple!

Switzerland has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the world with one of the lowest violent crime rates in the world. Why? Because they have a peaceful culture. Compared to Switzerland, the USA has a violent culture. Violence, not guns, is the problem. What is causing all this violence?

1. Massive use of mind-altering medications known to cause violent, destructive and self-destructive behavior. Almost-if-not-every mass shooter in recent decades was taking antidepressants or some other drug known to cause "snapping," including Adam Lanza and Dylann Roof. This is the elephant in the living room that is never addressed in gun violence discussions. Why? Because Big Pharma pays Big Advertising Bucks to media outlets.

Antidepressants Are a Prescription for Mass Shootings

Before the late nineteen eighties, mass shootings and acts of senseless violence were relatively unheard of. Prozac, the most well known SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) antidepressant, was not yet on the market. When Prozac did arrive, it was marketed as a panacea for depression which resulted in huge profits for its manufacturer Eli Lilly. Of course other drug companies had to create their own cash cow and followed suit by marketing their own SSRI antidepressants.

Subsequently, mass shootings and other violent incidents started to be reported. More often than not, the common denominator was that the shooters were on an antidepressant, or withdrawing from one. This is not about an isolated incident or two but numerous shootings. The question is, during the past twenty years is the use of antidepressants here a coincidence or a causation?

There have been too many mass shootings for it just to be a coincidence. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed twelve students and a teacher at Columbine High School. Eric was on Luvox, an antidepressant. The Virginia Tech shooter killed thirty-two people and he was on an antidepressant. While withdrawing from Prozac, Kip Kinkel murdered his mother and stepmother. He then shot twenty-two classmates and killed two. Jason Hoffman wounded five at his high school while he was on Effexor, also an antidepressant. James Holmes opened fire in a Colorado movie theater this past summer and killed twelve people and wounded fifty-eight. He was under the care of a psychiatrist but no information has been released as to what drug he must have been on.

Psychiatrists generally will tell you that these people were mentally ill and they weren’t treated in time or didn’t get enough help to prevent the tragedy. However, Dr. Peter Breggin, who is a psychiatrist, stated that depression rarely leads to violence and that it’s only since the SSRI’s came on the market that such mass shootings have taken place.

In a study of thirty-one drugs that are disproportionately linked to reports of violence toward others, five of the top ten are antidepressants. These are Prozac, Paxil, Luvox, Effexor and Pristiq. Two other drugs that are for treating ADHD are also in the top ten which means these are being given to children who could then become violent. One could conclude from this study alone that antidepressants cause both suicidal thoughts and violent behavior. This is a prescription for mass shootings. ...

Breggin's abstract: Suicidality, Violence, and Mania Caused by Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors: A Review and Analysis

More:
35 School shooters/school related violence committed by those under the influence of psychiatric drugs

Every mass shooting over last 20 years has one thing in common... and it's not guns

2. The War on Drugs. Most "children" killed by guns are gangsters up to the age of 24 with criminal records, killed in the commission of a crime, or innocent bystanders. Most of those crimes are turf wars related to the illegal drug trade.

The solution? Legalize drugs. Make marijuana available OTC and harder drugs available via prescription, and prosecute the daylights out of anyone who drives while under the influence. Use the tax revenues from legal drug sales to pay for more drug addiction treatment programs. Watch gang turf battles and shootings go down. Watch armed robberies to get drug money go down.

4. Violence in media and entertainment. Stressed, overworked parents use TV and video games as a babysitter, exposing their children to an all-pervasive glorification of violence. This leads to a gross desensitization to violence. People used to be horrified by violence. Now they think it's funny.

3. Societal Breakdown. We've become a narcissistic society. Fewer parents are modeling and teaching civilized behavior to their children. Good manners, common courtesy, concern for others, civic duty... these things are the glue that hold a society together in times of stress. It only takes a couple of generations for that knowledge to be lost on a societal level. Schools are no substitute for good parenting.

None of these problems has a simple solution. Gun control is an oversimplistic solution that appeals to emotions rather than facts.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Gun control anyone (again)

The OP article assumes gun control is effective.

Quite often it is not.

Take Chicago for instance.

The State of Illinois is the only state in the nation with no provision for private citizens to carry guns legally in public.

Yet 7400 firearms seized in 2014(well over double NYC), over 20 per day on average.

"At some point, we will become a gun-safe, and then a gun-sane, and finally a gun-free society. It’s closer than you think."

It's delusional madness to actually believe it could happen even on the most optimistic of days.

-----

Australia suffered from the Port Arthur massacre in 1996(which was possibly a copycat crime of the Dunblane massacre).

Australia immediately implemented strict gun control. 20 years later, Australia still has it's share of firearms related crime including in the commission of terror attacks(Lindt cafe) as well as bikie and lebanese gang shootings.

If one simply looks at the known record of firearms importation into Australia that are now on the banned/destroyed list and compare it with the records of those actually destroyed it doesn't take a rocket scientist to determine that in Australia is that firearms crime is still a problem in Australia but now circa 1 million or so otherwise Australian citizens/families are unconvicted felons due to possession of illegal firearms.

Too bad citizens(in this case citizen/soldiers) can't be trusted by their government to store issue service rifles and ammunition at home as has happened in Switzerland, which has exceptionally high firearms ownership and quite low firearms crime.

-----

Ultimately, while I have great sympathy for those who have suffered from violence(firearms related or otherwise), I can't help but continue to notice the massive levels of ignorance by the public and what can only be described as obfuscation by media and politicians around the purpose of the 2nd Amendment.

The 2nd Amendment is not about personal protection, hunting, or target shooting.

The 2nd Amendment is about the deterrence of tyranny. Unfortunately, the Constitutional Law professor in the White House strangely fails to mention that particular purpose/role of the 2nd Amendment.

It is a check/balance tool for citizenry as much as the Executive/Legislative/Judicial branches of government.

-----

What leaves me scratching my head about America and firearms crime is the seeming inability to bring the lawsuit lottery into play.

Why haven't gun control advocates pushed for a high minimum level of "duty of care" on the part of firearms owners?

Where's the negligence civil lawsuits?

Where's the attractive nuisance civil lawsuits?

-----

Trying to separate Americans from their firearms will be about as successful as trying to separate Chechens from their firearms.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Gun control anyone (again)

1. Massive use of mind-altering medications known to cause violent, destructive and self-destructive behavior. Almost-if-not-every mass shooter in recent decades was taking antidepressants or some other drug known to cause "snapping," including Adam Lanza and Dylann Roof. This is the elephant in the living room that is never addressed in gun violence discussions. Why? Because Big Pharma pays Big Advertising Bucks to media outlets.

I know some folks in the US suffering from PTS and being prescribed clusters of different pharmaceuticals with results covering the full range of awesome to potentially dangerous resulting in significant revamp under other carers.

2. The War on Drugs. Most "children" killed by guns are gangsters up to the age of 24 with criminal records, killed in the commission of a crime, or innocent bystanders. Most of those crimes are turf wars related to the illegal drug trade.

The solution? Legalize drugs. Make marijuana available OTC and harder drugs available via prescription, and prosecute the daylights out of anyone who drives while under the influence. Use the tax revenues from legal drug sales to pay for more drug addiction treatment programs. Watch gang turf battles and shootings go down. Watch armed robberies to get drug money go down.

The US is facing nothing short of a narcoinsurgency on it's southern border, fueled by massive illegal drug revenue. It makes organized crime that exploded during Prohibition look like playground politics in comparison.
While I agree that the War on Drugs has been a dismal failure, even if drugs were legalized today, tomorrow we would have a War on Human Trafficking, War on XXXX as the cartels(illicit networks) will simply shift their business model to develop new income streams(same as in the US post Prohibition).

4. Violence in media and entertainment. Stressed, overworked parents use TV and video games as a babysitter, exposing their children to an all-pervasive glorification of violence. This leads to a gross desensitization to violence. People used to be horrified by violence. Now they think it's funny.

There's not much worse in terms of hypocrisy as that seen with celebrities who derive their income portraying violence on TV/film and then bemoaning ad nauseam about gun violence in the real world(in between filming gun violence of course).

3. Societal Breakdown. We've become a narcissistic society. Fewer parents are modeling and teaching civilized behavior to their children. Good manners, common courtesy, concern for others, civic duty... these things are the glue that hold a society together in times of stress. It only takes a couple of generations for that knowledge to be lost on a societal level. Schools are no substitute for good parenting.

None of these problems has a simple solution. Gun control is an oversimplistic solution that appeals to emotions rather than facts.

I think part of the problem is relative population density as well(correlation if not causation).

[vt]

Re: Gun control anyone (again)

"Would your definition include deranged individuals such as Adam Lanza (Sandy Hook, CT) and Dylann Roof (Charleston, SC)?"

These two and other serial killers are mentally deranged. Neither should have been allowed to be anywhere near a gun.

[Woodsman]

Re: Gun control anyone (again)

Gun control is...

to liberals what climate change is to conservatives. We closed that forum some time ago, as I recall.

[Thailandnotes]

Re: Gun control anyone (again)

to liberals what climate change is conservatives. We closed that forum some time ago, as I recall.

You could reduce the amount of robberies with guns, the amount of gun suicides, and certainly the amount of "go postal" episodes, easily. That pope has a lot of nerve.

[lektrode]

Re: Gun control anyone (again)

what cant be denied is that 90% of 'gun violence' is the inner city/ghetto crowd shooting at EACH OTHER.

and THIS is what the gun 'control' advocates would prefer NOT to focus on.

same reason why the US irradiates and gropes grandmothers at the TSA checkpoints vs focusing on the REAL perps =
all in the name of politikal korrectness

[Woodsman]

Re: Gun control anyone (again)

You could reduce the amount of robberies with guns, the amount of gun suicides, and certainly the amount of "go postal" episodes, easily. That pope has a lot of nerve.

Maybe, but not significantly and certainly not enough to offset the loss of liberty, the increase in heavy-handed enforcement activity, etc. Genie is out of the bottle. I can't recall the number but we've something like 1 gun for every man, woman and child in the US. That's a multi-century supply assuming no new guns are manufactured for private use. It also assumes no new guns entering as a result of black market activity, smuggling and illegal manufacturing.

I think there are common sense laws we can enact that will help limit bad effects. I think many of those are already in place with varying degrees of success. I don't think the existing pro and anti orgs care a whit about solving the problem and want to maintain the current level of conflict. And I think the state will do whatever is politically popular, efficacy or liberties be damned.

Gun control is dead end here in the US; a non-starter. Seriously, if you want to mobilize a mass movement of right (and far right) wing conservatives, go ahead with a mass gun ban or similar move. The GOP is just salivating for the Dems to do just that. If Obama's term is any indication, they're not going to bite.

[Raz]

Re: Gun control anyone (again)

what can't be denied is that 90% of 'gun violence' is the inner city/ghetto crowd shooting at each other.

and this is what the gun 'control' advocates would prefer not to focus on.

same reason why the us irradiates and gropes grandmothers at the tsa checkpoints vs focusing on the real perps =
all in the name of politikal korrectness

+1. ;_tu;_y

[BK]

Re: Gun control anyone (again)

What is it they say.... the most dangerous animal on planet.....the human.

Did we forget the numerous clever ways people kill - grab the guns and the killings will stop? I have bridge to sell you.

Did we forget about Timothy McVeigh, 9/11 , Jonestown, Boston terrorists, Pilot on prescription psycho drugs crashing plane, 1993 bombing World Trade Center, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster

Imagine a world where only police, government employees, and politically connected have access to guns.

[Techdread]

Re: Gun control anyone (again)

What is it they say.... the most dangerous animal on planet.....the human.

Did we forget the numerous clever ways people kill - grab the guns and the killings will stop? I have bridge to sell you.

Did we forget about Timothy McVeigh, 9/11 , Jonestown, Boston terrorists, Pilot on prescription psycho drugs crashing plane, 1993 bombing World Trade Center, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster

Imagine a world where only police, government employees, and politically connected have access to guns.

Or imagine a world where every citizen has access to a gun.
America has twice the murder rate of any comparable country you export guns and violence to your central and southern counterparts.
There will be a time when you grow up as a society and understand that society evolve, what was true for one time is not the best way to carry on the future but boy is America slow to change.