Gun Control Thread -- (Pros and Cons) -- Aftermath of Connecticut Shooting

[crimsonaudio]

For starts, if what I am hearing is true, forty percent of gun acquisitions do not even include a background check.

OK, so what do you propose? No more private sales? And how is that accomplished - unless you include a fully retroactive gun registration (good luck enforcing that), you have some 300M firearms in circulation that will still be available for private sale. "Oh, I bought this from so-and-so before the new law went into effect."

Not trying to be difficult, just wanting an explanation the nuts and bolts - how do you make this new law effective? What are the mechanics behind it? It's easy to talk about new laws, but with comprehensively showing how they can be an effective dissuasion to crime, it's wasted effort.

How does making private firearm sales illegal make the schools any safer?

 

[Bamaro]

OK, so what do you propose? No more private sales? And how is that accomplished - unless you include a fully retroactive gun registration (good luck enforcing that), you have some 300M firearms in circulation that will still be available for private sale. "Oh, I bought this from so-and-so before the new law went into effect."

Not trying to be difficult, just wanting an explanation the nuts and bolts - how do you make this new law effective? What are the mechanics behind it? It's easy to talk about new laws, but with comprehensively showing how they can be an effective dissuasion to crime, it's wasted effort.

How does making private firearm sales illegal make the schools any safer?

Regulate private sales also.

 

[crimsonaudio]

Register private sales also.

OK, so what about the previous ~300 million firearms already in circulation? How do you deal with those?

 

[Bamaro]

OK, so what about the previous ~300 million firearms already in circulation? How do you deal with those?

Many of those 300 million are already registered. Regardless of if a gun is registered or not we could require any transfer to be regulated. If it wasn't previously registered, it would be after the transfer.

 

[buzzincuzzin]

For starts, if what I am hearing is true, forty percent of gun acquisitions do not even include a background check.

And for finishers what percentage of murders are committed by the legal registered owners of the murder weapon? This is the only number gun legislation can/will effect.

 

[crimsonaudio]

Many of those 300 million are already registered. Regardless of if a gun is registered or not we could require any transfer to be regulated. If it wasn't previously registered, it would be after the transfer.

Registered where? With whom? Few states have gun registries and there's no national gun registry, and as private sales are still perfectly legal in most every state, unless we require registration of every firearm ever purchased in the US, retroactively, there's no way you can enforce a law requiring an FFL transfer of a pre-ligislation firearm unless you catch them in the act.

So what's the solution?

Again, looking at the idea top-to-bottom, let me know what your solution is and we'll go from there. Also, please provide some data as to how many of these mass-shootings have come from privately sold firearms? Thanks.

 

[CrimsonNagus]

I would be in total support of incarcerating nerds. Society just doesn't need them.

Need more nerd control, not gun control! If you control the nerds, you control the world.


The more you tighten your grip, the more guns will slip through your fingers.

 

[cbi1972]

It is my position that Americans are too happy being fat, dumb and comfortable to trade that lifestyle for the hardships that would come with what you say is still possible by having an armed populace. That is even before my contention that should it even happen, there would be overwhelming force that would stop it before it got out of hand.

It is being fat, dumb, and comfortable that leads someone to undervalue their freedom. Being armed is not a hardship, it is a source of strength.

We’ve expanded our freedoms, sometimes let it recede. We’ve had major blots on in our history like the post-Reconstruction era in the South or the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II. It’s a rich and complex, sometimes tragic, but generally incredibly powerful and inspiring story. And yet in really not a single one of these cases has any government — state or federal — been pushed back in some moment of overreach by armed citizens or even affected in its decision-making by the knowledge of an armed citizenry.

The darkest blot on American history began with disarmament.

"I fought through the civil war and have seen men shot to pieces and slaughtered by thousands, but the Cherokee removal was the cruelest work I ever knew" -- a Georgia volunteer

 

[seebell]

Bushmaster rifle used in Newton massacre

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/16/school-shooter-adam-lanza_n_2312818.html

The massacre in Newtown is far from Bushmaster's first brush with tragedy. The company's semiautomatic rifles were used in at least four high-profile mass shootings since 1999, including a 2009 rampage that left 10 dead across southern Alabama, and a 2010 shooting spree in Virginia that killed eight people over 19 hours.

Most notoriously, a Bushmaster .223 rifle was used by the so-called Beltway snipers, John Allen Muhammed and Lee Boyd Malvo, who murdered 15 people in 2001 and 2002. In 2004, Bushmaster settled a lawsuit brought by families of the Beltway victims, which alleged that the company failed to take precautions to ensure that its guns did not fall into the hands of criminals.

 

[BamaFlum]

Bushmaster rifle used in Newton massacre

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/16/school-shooter-adam-lanza_n_2312818.html

The massacre in Newtown is far from Bushmaster's first brush with tragedy. The company's semiautomatic rifles were used in at least four high-profile mass shootings since 1999, including a 2009 rampage that left 10 dead across southern Alabama, and a 2010 shooting spree in Virginia that killed eight people over 19 hours.

Most notoriously, a Bushmaster .223 rifle was used by the so-called Beltway snipers, John Allen Muhammed and Lee Boyd Malvo, who murdered 15 people in 2001 and 2002. In 2004, Bushmaster settled a lawsuit brought by families of the Beltway victims, which alleged that the company failed to take precautions to ensure that its guns did not fall into the hands of criminals.

My goodness! Rifles have been possessed and are wreaking havoc on the populace. How on the hades is a gun maker supposed to insure certain people don't get a hold of their products?

 

[crimsonaudio]

The AR15 is a very popular rifle, but for comparison, of 8,583 people murdered via firearm in 2011 only 323 (3.7%) were killed with rifles (FBI data here).

 

[cbi1972]

My goodness! Rifles have been possessed and are wreaking havoc on the populace. How on the hades is a gun maker supposed to insure certain people don't get a hold of their products?

They're not supposed to ensure anything, they're supposed to fold under the pressure, pay up, make the victims and their lawyers richer, submit to onerous paperwork, and/or stop producing weapons.

 

[2003TIDE]

The AR15 is a very popular rifle, but for comparison, of 8,583 people murdered via firearm in 2011 only 323 (3.7%) were killed with rifles (FBI data here).

But, but, but, they look scary.

 

[Displaced Bama Fan]

Bushmaster rifle used in Newton massacre

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/16/school-shooter-adam-lanza_n_2312818.html

The massacre in Newtown is far from Bushmaster's first brush with tragedy. The company's semiautomatic rifles were used in at least four high-profile mass shootings since 1999, including a 2009 rampage that left 10 dead across southern Alabama, and a 2010 shooting spree in Virginia that killed eight people over 19 hours.

Most notoriously, a Bushmaster .223 rifle was used by the so-called Beltway snipers, John Allen Muhammed and Lee Boyd Malvo, who murdered 15 people in 2001 and 2002. In 2004, Bushmaster settled a lawsuit brought by families of the Beltway victims, which alleged that the company failed to take precautions to ensure that its guns did not fall into the hands of criminals.

Someone had to pull the trigger of the Bushmaster didn't they? It's not like it grew legs and was walking down the street firing itself.

 

[cbi1972]

Someone had to pull the trigger of the Bushmaster didn't they? It's not like it grew legs and was walking down the street firing itself.

It grew legs and walked onto my Christmas list

 

[Displaced Bama Fan]

It grew legs and walked onto my Christmas list

Mine too. Or should I say two?

 

[rizolltizide]

Need more nerd control, not gun control! If you control the nerds, you control the world.

Vive` le controle ballot.

 

[rizolltizide]

What do y'all do with those scary looking guns? Range? Tin cans? Cats?

My neighbor has one, as do a bunch of his buddies. Have no idea what they use them for other than getting drunk while they're hunting and just shooting crap.

 

[chanson78]

Registered where? With whom? Few states have gun registries and there's no national gun registry, and as private sales are still perfectly legal in most every state, unless we require registration of every firearm ever purchased in the US, retroactively, there's no way you can enforce a law requiring an FFL transfer of a pre-ligislation firearm unless you catch them in the act.

So what's the solution?

Again, looking at the idea top-to-bottom, let me know what your solution is and we'll go from there. Also, please provide some data as to how many of these mass-shootings have come from privately sold firearms? Thanks.

Playing devil's advocate here. I don't think that this would ever fly in the US but you were looking for anecdotal evidence of a plan enacted by a government that could possibly work. My issue continues to be that the standard position is "But its sooo hard! It's impossible!" yet here is some numerical evidence that one country attempted to tackle the issue and had some measure of success. (Success being fewer mass murders) Sources for the articles are at the bottom of the post.

John Howard, who served as prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007, is no one’s idea of a lefty. He was one of George W. Bush’s closest allies, enthusiastically backing the Iraq intervention, and took a hard line domestically against increased immigration and union organizing (pdf).

But one of Howard’s other lasting legacies is Australia’s gun control regime, first passed in 1996 in response to a massacre in Tasmania that left 35 dead. The law banned semiautomatic and automatic rifles and shotguns. It also instituted a mandatory buy-back program for newly banned weapons.

The country’s new gun laws prohibited private sales, required that all weapons be individually registered to their owners, and required that gun buyers present a “genuine reason” for needing each weapon at the time of the purchase. (Self-defense did not count.) In the wake of the tragedy, polls showed public support for these measures at upwards of 90 percent.

Concise list of actual measures put in place:
1. Ban semiautomatic and automatic rifles and shotguns
2. Institute mandatory buyback of now banned weapons
3. Ban private sales
4. Require all weapons be individually registered to their owners
5. Require gun owners present a genuine reason for purchase

So what have the Australian laws actually done for homicide and suicide rates? (John) Howard cites a study (pdf) by Andrew Leigh of Australian National University and Christine Neill of Wilfrid Laurier University finding that the firearm homicide rate fell by 59 percent, and the firearm suicide rate fell by 65 percent, in the decade after the law was introduced, without a parallel increase in non-firearm homicides and suicides. That provides strong circumstantial evidence for the law’s effectiveness.

The paper also estimated that buying back 3,500 guns per 100,000 people results in a 35 to 50 percent decline in the homicide rate, but because of the low number of homicides in Australia normally, this finding isn’t statistically significant.

So while there is conflicting data (the Washington Post does a good job of showing both sides, specifically that the murder rate data was too inconclusive to draw corollaries) there is one thing that is not up for debate.

But here’s the most stunning statistic. In the decade before the Port Arthur massacre, there had been 11 mass shootings in the country. There hasn’t been a single one in Australia since.

However here is an interesting point of view from an op-ed by John Howard, the face of the Australian bill.

There is more to this than merely the lobbying strength of the National Rifle Association and the proximity of the November presidential election. It is hard to believe that their reaction would have been any different if the murders in Aurora had taken place immediately after the election of either Obama or Romney. So deeply embedded is the gun culture of the US, that millions of law-abiding, Americans truly believe that it is safer to own a gun, based on the chilling logic that because there are so many guns in circulation, one's own weapon is needed for self-protection. To put it another way, the situation is so far gone there can be no turning back.

Discuss!

References:
Leftist hippy magazine
http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2012/12/16/gun_control_after_connecticut_shooting_could_australia_s_laws_provide_a.html
Slightly less leftist hippy paper but from a dirty leftitst hippy blog post on said paper
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/08/02/did-gun-control-work-in-australia/
Gun buyback study
http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/GunBuyback_Panel.pdf

 

[chanson78]

Never mind. Tmi