Guns are a topical issue, and the thread in the Sanctum - while full of good discussions - also tends to get derailed with some frequency (most recently by yours truly!) So here's a thread for the polite forum. Pop in your monocle, pour a snifter of brandy and get ready to talk about guns! Just to stake out my position: I kind of like shooting guns (albeit infrequently), and I've got no idea what the appropriate policy is with regards to firearms should be. One thing I do feel very strongly about is that we should have more research on the subject. It was only recently that I learned there's not a lot of good data regarding firearms in the United States, mostly because the NRA got Congress to smack the CDC on the nose when it (the CDC) started publishing stuff the NRA didn't like, which had a chilling effect on public research into firearms. One of the President's recent executive orders seeks to change the situation. This post by Brad Plumer presents a pretty good starting point on the subject. Especially striking is a list of basic questions he cribs from Emily Badger, which seem like we really ought to be able to answer only it turns out we can't because of the aforementioned CDC-smacking. Anyway, here's the list: I'm an aspiring social scientist and a math geek so it's no surprise that I fall on the side of more data. I also think that, in general, if your approach to a social problem is to advocate against scholarly inquiry into a subject, then you're probably not playing on the side of the angels.
Pretty much. Over on qt3 Houngan offered some tortured reasoning for this stuff, and in general there seems to be an assumption on the part of the pro-gun crowd that any research would of course be biased and thus firearms would end up being cast in a more negative light. Paranoia!
The complaints I've seen from gun owners seems to stem from things like, "Because I flashed my gun at would-be thug who was totally going to rape me, the crime didn't happen, and it doesn't get recorded, and therefore the statistics won't account for that".
Yah the brandishing thing is actually tough to capture. Of course that's a stupid reason just to shut down all research. Measuring GDP is really hard too, but macro is still thriving.
Yeah. For years part of why the entire debate was so maddening to me was the tendency for it all to be dueling emotional anecdotes and a great paucity of any actual data or studies beyond basic things. Then only comparatively recently did I find out just why so much of that data is scarce. I'm wondering how much was me being just oblivious and ignorant to known factors, or if the NRA's role in pressuring the suppression of research was simply not spoken about. (I'd like to believe it was the latter to spare my own forehead more smacking.)
Not data, obviously, but The Daily Show did a good bit relevant to this question. Very short version: The ATF is comically (in a dark way) hamstrung in its ability to investigate the transfer of firearms from legal dealers to criminals, despite a study showing only a tiny number of dealers are responsible. Hence, this should be a straightforward law enforcement task, but NRA backed legislation has made this all but impossible. But really watch it because it's short and good.
Wouldn't attempted violent crimes still count as crimes? I'm thinking attempted murder, or assault in lieu of murder, assault or sexual assault in lieu of rape, etc. I'm sure there's some crimes where the attempts don't count (theft, for example, unless property was destroyed or trespassed), but we should be able to get some meaningful data anyway, right?
That always bugs me. If crimes are being thwarted and not reported it most certainly does affect crime statistics for an area. If we had enough gun data to draw a correlation between higher gun ownership and lower reported rapes that would bolster a pro-gun position. Nevermind the problems with them flashing their gun at a random black guy rapist in the first place.
(Note: I'm just playing devil's advocate, and repeating things I see in other places) These are the same people who are pretty distrustful of the police and government in general, so tend to not report on things like that. That and of course, depending on how they brandished the weapon, they could actually get themselves in trouble.
I figured as much, which is why I'm asking questions about it rather than outright attacking it :) Well presumably those law-abiding gun owners would be protected by stand your ground laws that have been implemented in about half the states across the nation, but fair point.
They manage to get death estimates out of Iraq and sexual activity estimates out of Iran and whatnot, I'm sure it's possible.
Given that the UK is always wheeled out as an example of everything that is wrong about not having guns I feel entitled to offer an opinion. I do not get the massive emphasis on the need to have a gun for home or personal "safety". Your police is better equipped than our army, hawaii PD probably has an aircraft carrier. To go out into that massive countryside and shoot the huge range of hairy, tasty things is one thing. That militia thing, if I get into history mode isn't entirely non-sensical if not quainter than the biggest castle full of guys in 16th century uniform that we can muster for your entertainment. But the day I ever feel that I need to carry a gun of any description about me while I go about my business just to feel safe is the day I'll emigrate to somewhere less insane. At least I can go to work knowing that I won't shoot my cock off. I have nothing against guns, I like them, they're fun, I used to be part of my regiment shooting team. I just don't think anyone other than me can be trusted with the damn things, you idiots have a habit of letting rounds off either deliberately or, even worse, accidentally.
Yeah, there are a number of relatively small and easy things that can be done that will have a bigger impact on things then just banning "assault weapons" (however they decide to define it this time). If they just start letting the ATF go after the bad dealers and put in the background check system for gun shows and internet sales (I don't know how exactly it can be enforced for face to face private sales) it will be a notable improvement.
I don't think we need to go Citation Needed w.r.t. Nellie's claim, which I see as being pretty uncontroversial. I know I've seen gun rights folks drag out the example of Britain repeatedly. And Nellie's post does get toward something that Ta Nahesi Coates discussed a couple of weeks ago: the degree to which the more guns everywhere position represents an antisocial rejection of one of society's basic functions: protecting citizens. Here is his initial post on the subject, he made quite a few more in the following weeks. I'll cop to the fact that Coates is one of my favorite thinkers these days. I'm generally a fairly data oriented guy (math nerd, ec major, etc), and I find that his approach - which is far more intuitive than mine - provides for a fairly useful signpost as to whether or not I'm heading in the right direction.
It doesn't need citation any more than Artificial Kid's did. But in both cases, if you feel the need to preemptively attack clearly fallacious arguments from elsewhere as a foundation for your own polemic, well-intended as it may be, it's not going to be that great as Santorum fodder and it's dead weight here. You want to make lemonade out of it, that's your call. It seems to me that Coates is overthinking some pretty low-hanging fruit there. It seems to me like Jeffrey Goldberg's been adopted as a character foil, not because his ideas are serious or interesting. There is a place for engaging popular misconceptions from a more serious direction, but this just seems like punditry with better writing. But given the direction so far, it's possible a more polite swapping of polemics was all you were looking for and I misread the intent of the thread.
It may be polemical, but given the relative dearth of data upon which to base other discussion, that's fine. It's also appropriate because in the United States firearms are as much a cultural phenomenon as they are a political issue or an area for academic inquiry; I don't see how you discuss them as such (cultural issue) without getting into polemics.
QUALIFIER: I'm not justifying guns, just quoting some rational sources that could cause some distrust of the "you can call the police" stance. One is a horrific Supreme Court case from 1981: Warren v. District of Columbia [sexual abuse/rape]. This was revisited in 2005 by the Supreme Court in Castle Rock v. Gonzales [murder/domestic violence], which affirmed that "police did not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm." As far as I can tell, the national legal precedent in the US is that the police have no legal, accountable obligation to answer your 9-1-1 call. IANAL, so if anyone has better info, please chime in.
I wasn't sure where to put this, but this thread seemed appropriate as it relates to a couple of different aspects of guns in our society. I had a long conversation this morning with a friend of mine who has a son who's graduating High School this year. Their (public) HS (of over 1,200 students) has panic buttons installed specifically for shooters as well as regular drills for responding to the shooter alarm. I don't know how common this is, but that's how their school is set up. Anyway, they just had a false alarm because someone hit the button, and her son's teacher basically freaked out and gathered everyone up in a corner in a huddle, which was apparently not the planned response. Her son said something like, "I'm not dying with you motherfuckers!" and grabbed a chair and was about to smash a window when they announced over the PA system that it was a false alarm. This is all coming from her as relayed by her son and school staff, so who knows what exactly went down, but that's the story I got. He didn't get in trouble or anything, but I think it's indicative of what we hope will happen in these situations and the reality of installing shooter alarms and expecting teaching and administrative staff to sensibly respond in what is essentially a combat environment. I don't like the idea of increased police presence in schools to take over those responsibilities, but I like liaison officers for general emergencies that would obviously include a shooting situation. Many schools already have these. I think that a general evac alarm is fine, which is what we've been doing for years for fires, but installing specific shooter alarms is asking for panic. The "give the teachers guns" idea is pretty laughable because I can't imagine that would go over any better than the shooter alarm did, possibly much worse. Ultimately I think changes do have to come from the supply end, closing loopholes and making sure the people getting guns are legally allowed to carry them. I own guns, I shoot guns, but I'm not opposed to the idea of cleaning up the amorphous blob of non-enforcement we've ended up with thanks to both the NRA and 9/11. I agree that we need more data, particularly before we start passing new laws, and I'm not keen on gut reactions that got us legislation like the Patriot Act. That said, we need the NRA out of the discussion, or at least marginalized, while we figure out where we go from here.
I also what the response would be when, inevitably, an armed teacher turned the gun on a student. I guess at that point we arm the students? That's one of the problems with the "arm everyone" line of thinking. It just turns into a reductio ad absurdum.
From the Santorum thread. There is stacks of this sort of rubbish spouted. No burglar willingly robs a house when people are home. They want your laptop and anything else you have they can flog for cash that isn't difficult to nick. I have been burgled when I was in and you've never seen two blokes who could have messed me over run so fast the second they realised I was in the house. There are loads of these sort of things spouted about the UK when it comes to the gun debate in the US but I generally agree with the Swiss guy on here, who's name escapes me, who responded to the usual tripe spouted about Switzerland. Have your own arguments but don't make shit up about us to reinforce your points. To be frank while I agreed with his sentiments I'd had a few drinks when I'd made the post above and broke my golden rule of not getting involved in discussions about the US and guns.
"Guns are use 4 times as often in self defense as in crime..." Wat. How does that even work? If you are using the gun in self-defense, it is because someone is committing a crime against you, right? So is there some huge number of unarmed criminals being foiled by law abiding gun owners on a regular basis or something?
Not all criminals, including burglars, carry guns. In fact, some intentionally don't because the legal consequences of committing a crime while carrying a gun are so much worse. They just break into places where they don't think someone is home (or awake); in those cases if someone with a gun comes along they most likely would flee.
since anecdote is all we have atm, I'll note that anecdotally a surprising (to me at least) number of the gun deaths reported on @gundeaths are "officer-involved shootings" (police officer kills suspect during commission of a crime or pursuit) and a small but not vanishingly small number are people killing burglars/robbers/family members who were acting threatening or attacking. There may be some confounding factors such as "police know wtf they are doing with their firearms and shoot to kill (correctly)" since @gundeaths only reports fatalities. I'm thinking of doing some more detailed reporting but it's kind of a big project since it would involve reading each news article to parse out details (gundeaths and the related Slate project spreadsheet just report date, city, names if available, and age)
They also seem to flee most of the time if someone without a gun comes along. But I am speaking anecdotally, rather than statistically, in this assessment; it is my experience as of the two times my house has been burgled, and the experience of most of my friends, but I don't know how the numbers actually play out. I admit, I've been rather cynical about how much gun ownership protects anyone ever since high school. Our street (not in the US) had been the victim of several robberies over the course of a few years, and finally everyone on the street chipped in and hired an armed guard. (Not an uncommon practice, there.) The next robbery involved the armed guard being held up at gunpoint, and then his gun stolen, while someone stole a car off the street. I guess we could've hired a second guard to watch the back of the first guard or something? I'm not sure how bathroom breaks would've been handled. Anyway. I think there's a certain amount of protection that can come with getting a gun, and a certain amount of danger added, both to oneself and those around the gun-owner in both cases. For me, the balance is that I am quietly uncomfortable around people I know to have guns on them, but not so much as to actively avoid them unless they're giving off other red flags.
Okay, anecdotes it is. In high school friends and I worked at a gas station that did very little busines, an old Citgo, mostly older credit card customers. It was a hang out party spot, and we had guns we used to shoot in the back room into old stacks of boxes. We were robbed at gun point one night, and there was no way we could have pulled any of the guns out of the cabinet they were in while two handguns and a sawed off shot gun were pointed at us. We were told they caught the guys a few weeks later after they had robbed a couple other gas stations.
I'll be willing to have a rational discussion about guns based on facts and figures as soon as we make it not illegal for the government to collect facts and figures about guns.. Until then, I'm just going to assume that any figure given to me by the gun lobby/gun enthusiasts was pulled out of their ass. If they want to have a rational discussion, then they should start by not undermining their position right out of the gate by outlawing the collecting of facts.
I see your point but how exactly would you find out at this point? The only way to do it would be to survey everyone and have them list their guns, and the people who have them illegally aren't going to do that. So then you end up with a list of legal gun owners, and one of the gun lobby's big issues has always been that they don't want there to be a list of who has what. Which means a chunk of the otherwise legal gun owners aren't going to answer truthfully anyway. So there we are. Now, if you want all gun dealer to keep a record and pass on statistical info about types of weapons sold and so forth, then I think you'll find plenty of people that have no problem with that. Not the irrational idiots running the NRA, but the majority of normal people who own guns.
Of course, but statistics require data and I don't see how you get good data for the reasons I mentioned.
There's already data on aspects of illegan gun trade (notably, for example, that most guns sold illegally are sold by individuals or small businesses that sell one to three guns in any given month that way, as opposed to big players) just as there's lots of data on other aspects of illegal activities (drug use, drug dealing, prostitution, etc). An industry being illegal doesn't actually prevent sound research from being done.
I just don't know if I think that's true anymore, speaking both anecdotally and from various unscientific surveys I see floated about. It's starting to look like most gun owners in America (and many who don't even own guns) are increasingly buying into the idea that any added legislation is some sort of slippery slope on the path to eventual prohibition -- especially when you start to compile data on gun owners -- and responsible and well-intentioned gun owners who would look at Obama's EO and say, "oh, most of that is good common sense to protect my hobby" are shouted down into oblivion like some sort of pariah brethren. I don't think the vocal minority is such a minority anymore, especially since the gun control narrative isn't really about guns anymore; it's become an extension of neo-colonial doctrine that is increasingly being adopted by folks who have never fired a gun in their lives.
Jesus, and I even wrote a horrible paper on neocolonialism in college so I totally know better. I was high at eight in the morning, don't judge, it's Sunday. Every day is Sunday.
