Can we please just admit that maybe gun control is a good idea finally?

Yes, it was mostly just a case of, "Oh, this is something I haven't really considered before, I wonder if it even matters?"

Very possible but this is called a "Straw purchase" and is a felony offense. In fact, the FIRST question on the NCIS background check is something to the effect of: Are you purchasing this firearm for yourself? Of course people can freely lie to that question. If you answer No and they run that form, you will be immediately declined. The rest of the questions are verified against a FBI criminal database.

Purchases of preowned firearms between private parties (citizen to citizen) and those purchased at some gun shows do not require a NCIS background check* - which due to the irresponsible nature of some people, probably needs to change.
*Purchases of preowned firearms at gun shops still require a NCIS check.

Well... as long as they don't cancel Project Lazarus I guess.

You acknowledge that you're not good at arguing and you claim that you're not going to change any minds or have your mind changed.

What the fuck are you doing reading an internet politics forum, then?

Please don't take this as snark, but do you actually believe this?

Because the last I looked, it's not unchecked power because the American public still has the power to, ah, vote and create referendums.

I'VE ESCAPED THE POLITICAL CARTOON THREAD!!!!


AFTER A TRAGEDY IS NO TIME TO DISCUSS HOW TO PREVENT FURTHER TRAGEDY!!
Also:

Local statistics of firearms crimes in Scotland

Firearms act of 1997

Australia's 1996 Gun Law Reforms

Following a gun massacre in Australia in 1996, the Australian Government reformed their gun laws. In the 18 years before the reforms there were EIGHTEEN mass shootings in Australia. In the 10 years that followed (the time of this study) there were zero. There was also a marked acceleration in the decline of firearm deaths, suicides and homicides. There was an INCREASE in the number of unintentional firearm deaths (i.e, accidents).

Umm, a larger magazine and easier to reload firearm makes a very significant difference. If you disagree with that you're disagreeing with about two centuries of weapons development.

That's what I'd think, but uh the VA Tech guy did it with a couple crappy handguns. That gives me a bit of pause.

Two handguns totaling 25 rounds in battery, with him firing >170 shots in 9 minutes.

Its hard to imagine things would have been any different even if he'd only had 10 round magazines in each. He was using a .22 and a 9mm.

There's always going to be that one guy who is a gun savant or gets lucky or whatever else. A sample size of one is not really indicative of anything. One guy managing to go Rambo with a couple of crappy pistols does not mean all other mass shooters would have been able to do the same without their 'assault weapons'.

Guns don't kill people. Sons kill people. We need strong, in utero son control.

I get suspicious when I see a straight number of incidents as a testament to the high rate of something, because while 488 sounds like a lot, Chicago is also one of the most populous cities in America. So how does gun violence in Illinois compare on a per capita basis?



Among the lowest in the nation. Not as low as some other states, but lower than most.

New York has even tighter regulation than Illinois, and hey look--even lower rates of gun violence. I know you're thinking "But, Nevada!," but I'll point out that one limitation of this graphic is that having "at least one firearm law designed to protect children in place" is not a very good metric for overall gun regulation. If you look at the Brady Campaign scorecard for states, which is a much more comprehensive look at the regulations in place in each state, you'll find a much closer correlation between extent of regulation and the rate of gun crime.

There's still a slight chance I'll do actual econometrics on this over the winter break. Correlation is not enough!

My hypothesis is that handguns per capita are predictive of firearms homicides on a per-state basis. I'm pretty sure throwing in income per capita, poverty rate, and a few regional dummy variables will give me a pretty reasonable model to test that.

Even better, there were thirteen, not eighteen. It's right there in the beginning of the article you linked.

And before anyone decides to bring Australia and our gun law reforms into this again, you need to understand that while it has been very successful here, there is an enormous difference between us and the U.S in regards to this. We do not have the deeply embedded gun culture that you do in the U.S (only 5% of adults own a firearm). We don't have a second amendment that we can throw into the argument. The right to gun ownership is not guaranteed by law, and never has been. The scale of the issue is vastly different as we have less than one tenth of the population and the majority (up to 85%) actually supports gun control laws. We already had far tighter restrictions on gun ownership than the U.S before the National Firearms Agreement in 1996 (the first controls on firearms dates back to 1796). Between 1985-2000, 78% of firearm deaths were suicides. We're more likely to shoot ourselves than someone else. The list goes on. You simply can not compare the two.

Speaking of societal differences... Gun control works in Japan because whilst they do have a violent history, one that included a period where they had more firearms than any other country, they have never had a gun culture amongst the general population. I don't know why you included their suicide rate (maybe I missed something), because Japan's suicide rate has nothing to do with gun control, it's mainly due to depression, social pressures and unemployment.

The court's reasoning for striking down the trigger lock law, which required guns in homes to be kept disassembled or restricted by a trigger lock at all times, was that by only allowing non-functional guns in the home, the law prohibited a lawful use of firearms (self defense). It's important to remember that the Supreme Court only strikes down or upholds laws based on Constitutionality; it's not their job to rewrite legislation. Heller is not a blanket prohibition on laws regarding secure storage--it's just a ruling on that particular law, and the ruling explains why it was struck down. It is entirely possible that a law requiring guns to be kept in an approved locked safe, or even trigger-locked, when not on the owner's person would be enough to pass Constitutional muster. Meaning that it would be legal to carry a functional firearm in your home, it just wouldn't be legal to leave it lying around unattended.

What I mean is that there is clear precedent, both in state law and in Federal rulings, that the government has the authority to prohibit weapons that it considers to be particularly dangerous.

The takeaway is that even the Roberts court recognizes that we do not have the unlimited right to carry any sort of weapon, and that the government does have the authority to prohibit the use of weapons based on lethality. What this means, specifically, in terms of gun regulation is open to discussion. It seems likely that the court would uphold a ban on assault rifles, which have in fact been banned by the Federal government in the past. It seems unlikely that the court would uphold a ban on semiautomatic pistols. But what it definitely means is that we can ignore arguments that say that "we can't start drawing lines" on what sorts of guns people can and can't use. Because we already draw lines, and the USSC says that it's Constitutional.

Besides the fact that the previous assault weapons ban had no impact. It's a nonsense "feel good" type restriction that people that know very little about guns champion. And really what's the point - it's like a weird fantasy that you're going to be able to rush the shooter while he reloads or something, which to me smacks of magical thinking that the anti-gun control crowd do (Arm the teachers!).

To be clear, I'm not saying that the previous assault weapon ban was effective, but...

I think the idea of slower rate of fire and smaller magazines being safer is not so much about being able to rush the shooter while he's reloading, but more about giving potential victims more time to scatter. People don't just stand there when you shoot at them, and a shooter that can only get off six to ten rounds in a minute is almost certainly going to rack up a smaller body count than someone that can get off sixty to a hundred.

Seriously, I don't know how to answer that. It should be intuitively obvious that when dealing with firearms that realistically are only fatal when they strike something important, that sticking a higher capacity magazine gives you more attempt to land a killing shot before your reload, and decrease the amount of time you spend overall reloading. If you move to the extreme case to illustrate the concept: a guy with a single shot .22LR is basically not going to be dangerous to anyone unless his one shot passes between ribs and lands directly in the heart, or passes through an opening in the skull.

Hey guy: there you are arguing with two centuries of military doctrine and weapons manufacturing again.

That assault weapons ban was, yes. That does not mean that every hypothetical assault weapons legislation also is.

Obviously, I'm not suggesting reducing fire rate down to that low wouldn't have an impact. What I'm saying is that the political will to lower it down to such a level where magazine capacity makes a difference does not exist. And really, isn't technically feasible, as you'd have to basically outlaw anything that used cartridges to get down to 6-10 shots a minute.

Bullshit. It turns out that lots of smart people have come up with lots of ways to account for exactly these sorts of situations. While a naive comparison is inappropriate, you absolutely can employ methods to do cross-country comparisons.

Of course I agree, apples to oranges and all that. On the other hand there is a strong correlation between gun safety (I gotta remember to keep that up) going up and gun violence going down. You can't deny that. The same group of people who deny that are the people who look at multiple mass shootings and say "I don't see any pattern." when it's as plain as the gun in your face.
To not try anything, let alone a plan that has worked multiple times in the past simply because it might not work is madness. It's like the Global Warming debate: what if we clean up our oceans, make our air cleaner, and save resources for future generations for nothing??

I don't disagree! My question is "what would that legislation be?" Magazine capacity has no impact (unless you get into unrealistic levels here - while it might be fantastic to limit magazines to say 6 bullets, that just isn't going to happen), and the other cosmetic features of the original ban were silly (A pistol grip is okay as long you don't have a bayonet lug on it!).

"All weapons that can be used to assault people are banned."

^_-

Edit: look, there's no point taking realism into account here. The gun control debate in the US is so unbelievably far from where it needs to be that the answer to the question "what gun control legislation would be effective and politically feasible at the federal level" is obviously "none." If you want to talk about potentially effective gun control measures, might as well dream big.

You're absolutely correct in that there's very little political will for meaningful firearms safety legislation. That doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about it though!

One of the important social constructs that firearms enthusiasts hide behind is the absolute refusal to acknowledge that their preferred hobby carries a social cost. They'll throw all sorts of stuff out to muddy the waters and I suspect it's probably a form of psychological defense mechanism because who wants to admit that the price of them getting to play freely with their awesome toys is people getting killed? It's why I think research into subjects like the impact of firearm bans and whatnot are worthwhile: even if a full-out ban isn't workable, it's worth being able to state with confidence that "the presence of firearms is causing around X preventable deaths per year."

It's also becoming less clear that meaningful restrictions on firearm possession are untenable; upthread someone posted Nate Silver's analysis that attitudes toward firearms have become very politicized. The upshot is that there's potentially not as much cost to Democrats in terms of their own coalition for being aggressive on this subject.

Firearms act of 1997

Australia's 1996 Gun Law Reforms

I've still yet to hear what the nightmare scenario is for the NRA. Certain guns get banned for private ownership and BOOM government oppression? All the banned guns are just given to criminals (which only makes sense to be scared of, I mean I'm not handing my wallet over to a mugger with just a pistol ew.)?

PLUS, there was a fairly comprehensive licensing and ownership register already in place pre 1996. So the government already knew fairly accurately how many Assault Rifles were out there, and more importantly who had them. So if you didn't voluntarily surrender them (for compensation), the local police came and enquired.

I put Far Cry 3 on my Christmas wishlist this year. We exchanged gifts with my Dad early this year I got it on Sunday.

Anyway, my Dad saw some gun on TV saying that "violent video games blah blah blah" and so when he saw the cover of FC3 with a guy buried in the sand with a gun pointed at his head he was like "Why did you ask for this game? Is there something I don't know about you?" He was mostly kidding but I think he honestly doesn't know that 50% of all video games feature shooting things. From the ducks in Duck Hunt to zombies to terrists to Imperials getting an arrow to the knee...it's a lot of shooting stuff. I think he was almost convinced that people that like "violent" video games are themselves fans of violence somehow.

I think the thing I dislike second most about these tragedies (after the loss of life) is the tendency for everyone to try to move very quickly to prevent the next one. To make quick connections (video games=school shootings) or to make quick assertions of solutions (gun ban=no school shootings) I strongly believe that we often move too quickly as a society. We jump to conclusions and we're so addicted to quick action that we are conditioned to thinking that action=results.

This tragedy was horrifying but I do really hope that whatever course of action we follow is one that has an actual likelihood of preventing the next tragedy. Given that I have no intention of ever exercising my right to bear arms I would hardly be sad if I gave up some or all of it.

The one thing I can't abide however is the idea that politicians use tragedies to fool people into thinking that more laws = less tragedy. I am not convinced so far that anything being proposed (even the most drastic proposals) has any hope of preventing the next tragedy.

So mark me down as a supporter of increased gun control. And mark me down as being completely convinced it will have no effect whether we do it quickly or not. :(

Wow... really? This is why this subject should only be discussed by people that actually "know" firearms and understand them and how they work. Maybe have even shot one in recent years as opposed to (I shot my daddy's revolver when I was a kid).

You can't "slow" the rate of fire on a gun. Unless you are talking about full-auto machine guns, which are practically never used in murders/shootings in the U.S., along with requiring a lengthy (6 months?) background check with the feds, $200 tax stamp, and probably $15,000-$20,000+ to even own.

A revolver can be shot just as fast as a semi-auto AR-15 style rifle. There is no "slower" rate of fire that you speak of.

And honestly, how long do you think it takes people to reload a firearm? It takes someone like "Rambo" to reload a 9mm or .22 pistol quickly to get off multiple rounds? Do you honestly think that the Newtown shooter couldn't have done the same thing with a couple of 10round pistols? He had little to no opposition! Maybe a few adults tried to rush him, but they can be put down just as easily with a pistol. Otherwise he could just enter a classroom, off the teacher, and stand in front of the door while he takes his time shooting at the kids.

Even with a minimal amount of practice, and no exemplary skills or coordination, you can reload a pistol in a matter of seconds. Seconds! I'm talking in the low single digits here. If you had actually used guns recently you would understand this.

Do you not think these psycho paths are incapable of sitting around practicing reloading before they go off on one of their big shooting sprees? Take away the 30round magazine, and they will just carry more 15round magazines, or more 10round magazines, it really isn't that hard. And they go to a place where opposition is at it's lowest. A place where they can count on no one there to be armed to stop them. Where there won't be many adults to try and bumrush them, but plenty victims that can't put up a fight.

Also, back on revolvers. There's things called speedloaders. They probably won't make it as quick to reload as a semi-auto firearm, but a common person can still reload a revolver in the single digit seconds.

"Wow... really? This is why this subject should only be discussed by people that actually "know" firearms and understand them and how they work. Maybe have even shot one in recent years as opposed to (I shot my daddy's revolver when I was a kid)."

one of my favorite lines of reasoning from the gun nuts*. You can't talk about firearm safety unless you too are a gun nut!

*as opposed to sensible people who like guns; you don't usually see them trying to brandish their shooter cred in an attempt to shut down discussion.

eh, it's certainly made me feel much less happy with how I voted this year. If only the republicans weren't so goddamn crazy.

My real concern is this - the Dems will push this, and then get absolutely fucking destroyed at midterms, and/or 2016.

Who knows... If Nate's right, they won't get punished by their own base (which was a legitimate threat a decade or two ago). I'm pretty sure 2014 will almost entirely come down to whether or not the Democratic base gets lazy like they did in 2010 and sits out. If they show up, it'll be OK.

Good points, I guess all guns should be illegal after all, huh?

I think you're absolutely right that in and of itself this would be a great compromise variable for reducing the lethality of spree killings. But it's also really vulnerable to the grandfathering problem: either you directly criminalize a lot of stuff after the fact, or you're left with a thriving private/black market in trafficking these materials. It's one facet of the bigger "what does gun policy do about a simply unprecedented level of existing guns" in changing these norms.

Not sure it answers the question, but as a lukewarm fan of Bloomberg's public health-oriented progressivism, I think there's something to the epidemiology approach in place of the Clinton grand gesture/Obama talk to the people thing. The NRA is way ahead on this, as demonstrated in links above by its careful destruction of CDC and related efforts to address this sort of thing with science, regardless of the outcomes (presumably starting with your conclusion and fudging your data as per John Lott or, hilariously, Michael Bellesiles, would still squeak by). So I'd say the first step is to make sure funding exists for the science and get those studies done.

I was going to respond, but frankly, your insulting prattle doesn't deserve a response. I'll acknowledge that the figures that I threw out were just random numbers intended to illustrate the point, and that there is meaningful discussion to be had on this topic, but I'm not going to have it with someone that opens their argument with shit like this. Congratulations on being the first entry on my ignore list.

Really not trying to be the policy-as-horse-race-style asshole here, but of the various things Democrats are traditionally cowardly about, gun control is one of the more logical ones. The enthusiasm gap - who sits around steaming about gun control as a voting issue four months from now - has always stabilized in such a way that it's a negative issue - talking about it one way or another loses votes for Democrats.

In the more liberal environment of Canada, gun control hurt the Liberal party in rural areas in spite of it not being all that bad of a system, cost-overruns, end-user nickel-and-diming and a certain irrationality being the only real problems I'd point to. The problem was that the whole "hold gun-phobic urbanites up as the other" wedge politics shit worked pretty well outside of the cities. And that's all in one gigantic "very blue state."

The shortcoming, imo, was not aggressively countering that rhetorically and smoothing over stuff like the nickel-and-diming licensing-and-registration regime. Then again I think even the registry-burning Tory government has kept the licensing fees up at their arbitrarily pricey level, although Eric or somebody could probably say one way or the other.

It's a good question, and I'm not sure that I have an answer. It's possible that some sort of buyback program could have an effect, but it would likely be a slow process at best.

Yeah, I'd definitely agree with that.