I find my emotions often as not lead the intellectual change. I'll keep arguing points I no longer have an emotional connection to far longer than is reasonable.
I don't have strong feelings about gun laws one way or the other, but I do find the debate tiresome and predictable. However, focusing on the United States as a single unit glosses over an awful lot of detail. The country's big and diverse, and regional differences are marked. Strikingly, one of the strongest correlations with gunshot deaths is the red/blue state divide.
How freakishly topical... I care more today than normally. A friend, 34 years old, bought a pistol yesterday and killed himself last night.
3: Oh god how awful. I'm so sorry, urple.
My thoughts with you and the man's family.
Oof. I'm terribly sorry to hear that, Urple.
Thanks, all. And sorry, heebie--I guess I fucked up your thread.
I've been a little surprised - in the wake of the Colorado shootings, and now again with urple's report - at the fact that I'm still capable of feeling bad about this subject. I thought I had moved on emotionally a long time ago.
The linked post is interesting, but mostly unhelpful as a guide to policy, I think. Is violence declining because of reduced gun ownership? Or is gun ownership declining because of reduced violence?
And the second sentence here doesn't seem "undoubtedly" true at all:
Thus long-term trends suggest that we are in fact currently experiencing a waning culture of guns and violence in the United States. This is undoubtedly helping to dampen the public's support for both gun control and the death penalty.
3: I care very much, for the same reason. So sorry, urple, and deepest sympathies to the family.
Wait, are you serious? Recently?
3: So sorry to hear it, man. My condolences.
OP on the gun-control laws front, shitty American gun control has implications for lives and for your country's reputation outside y'all's borders, so feel free to switch right on back intellectually.
Well, that's true. I feel very strongly that the drug-violence in Mexico is the most ghastly thing that seems to barely get discussed.
12, 14: Yikes, I had no idea. That's terrible.
Gun control laws with an eye on violence in Mexico have a different flavor than gun control laws with an eye on Aurora, CO.
No, not recently. I don't feel any less strongly about gun control than I did then, though.
20: No doubt. There's a significant slice of white America to whom one would probably have to hold one's nose and sell laws as a safety measure for American tourists just to get them to give a shit, for starters. But the point is there are always consequences to poor and spotty gun control, whatever the trends inside America.
Urple, that's so tragic; I'm so sorry to hear that!
I've thought that the answer to guns since we'll never get rid of them all is to get rid of the automatic and handguns. Everyone has to walk down the street carrying their rifle. Then we all know who has the guns and who doesn't, or at least who appears to have stuffed a very large thing down their pants.
21: I'm really sorry. That's awful.
Everyone has to walk down the street carrying their rifle.
From a professional standpoint rifles are much scarier. Way better accuracy and will sail right through Kevlar.
Some idiot I went to high school with just posted one of those things that says "Gun laws don't work because CRIMINALS DON'T OBEY THE LAW." I very much want to say, but James Holmes bought his assault weapon and ammunition completely legally. I realize that murdering people is against the law, but purchasing a weapon whose only purpose is to fucking murder a ton of people is completely legal. Why is this hard to understand?
Intellectually I'm in favor of stricter gun control.
I only get worked up over it emotionally when one of these shooting sprees occurs and the internet is suddenly flooded with gun nuts sharing their lovingly detailed Walter Mitty fantasies about how they totally would have taken the guy down if they'd been there.
Right, basement dwelling dude, you're a hero. For sure.
Some idiot I went to high school with just posted one of those things that says "Gun laws don't work because CRIMINALS DON'T OBEY THE LAW." I very much want to say, but James Holmes bought his assault weapon and ammunition completely legally. I realize that murdering people is against the law, but purchasing a weapon whose only purpose is to fucking murder a ton of people is completely legal. Why is this hard to understand?
The point is that criminal penalties have no deterrent effect whatsoever. Why is that so hard to understand?
I hope it's Walter Mitty-ism. Actually wanting to shoot into a dark, crowded theater to stop a murderer is likely to be functionally the same as having two murderers.
The point is that criminal penalties have no deterrent effect whatsoever. Why is that so hard to understand?
Well, you have to admit, it's counterintuitive view to suggest that penalties don't influence behavior. It may be true - the whole legal system may be a waste of time from a deterrence point of view - but surely you can understand how it's a bit hard to swallow.
Why is this hard to understand?
The clue is in your first sentence: "Some idiot..."
The question is, whether making it hard for sick people to acquire guns would limit the number of atrocities like this. If Holmes had had to jump through a shitload of bureaucratic hoops to get his stuff: acquire an expensive licence, get a medical certificate, register everything with the local police, etc., would he have decided to act out some other fantasy which might have caused less harm, or would he have just gone ahead and done it anyway, by hook or by crook? No way of knowing.
"Gun laws don't work because CRIMINALS DON'T OBEY THE LAW."
Every time I hear this argument, I want to point out that this argument becomes absurd when you remove the word "gun" from the sentence, yet that is essentially the argument they are making.
Same thing for the "If they outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns" stupidity. One could just as well say "If they outlaw child sex slavery, only outlaws will have child sex slaves."
A look at cross-country comparisons of criminal gun use and gun laws should dispel the notion that gun laws don't work.
get a medical certificate
I'm not crazy about giving the psychiatric community veto power on people's rights.
30: whose only purpose is to fucking murder a ton of people
That claim is false.
A look at cross-country comparisons of criminal gun use and gun laws should dispel the notion that gun laws don't work.
This is not at all obvious to me, given the huge number of other things that are impossible to tease out between red states and blue states. Isn't this the type of thing where Vermont vs. New Hampshire is a useful comparison?
I'm always amused when gun rights advocates trot out evidence that laws don't work based on some statistical analysis of tiny regions with unregulated borders within a gun saturated country.
Oh my . . . my condolences Urple and Blandings.
The question is, whether making it hard for sick people to acquire guns would limit the number of atrocities like this.
IMO Holmes is practically a textbook example of someone who's going to be damn near impossible to prevent from committing some sort of atrocity. He's smart enough to get into a top notch grad program in neuroscience, has no criminal background, didn't go around bragging about his plans to friends or on the internet, and was willing to put months into the planning.
So, gswift, which gun control laws are effective and should be more widespread, and which ones are useless?
40: I can believe city and even state gun laws are ineffective at reducing gun ownership rates amongst the criminal element. There are already a lot of guns floating around, and a quick trip across an imaginary line will supply more.
43: He sent his plan to a psychiatrist.
http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/reports-james-holmes-tried-to-warn-of-plans-1.3861336
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20614774,00.html
39: Help? What are AR-15s for? Mowing the lawn? Getting pesky oil stains out of silk?
48: I think the answer is always 'target practice'.
IMO Holmes is practically a textbook example of someone who's going to be damn near impossible to prevent from committing some sort of atrocity.
That accords with my intuition also. What isn't obvious to me is that he'd have chosen to commit an atrocity on this scale.
After all, given a sufficiently permissive set of laws, he could have done a lot more damage. It seems entirely plausible to me that if he'd been able to get a tank or a nuclear weapon, he would have used those instead.
Nuclear weapons don't kill. People kill.
I've thought that the answer to guns since we'll never get rid of them all is to get rid of the automatic and handguns.
How's the War on Drugs been working out? Really well, just like Prohibition did. Anyone think the ATF will do any better at controlling all the machine tools and steel in the USA and elsewhere?
There's a difference between building a nuke and a gun, all we will see is the creation of whole new criminal enterprises devoted to 100 year-old technology and more ATF and TSA idiots everywhere.
And the Second Amendment guarantees me a right to bear nuclear arms. You got a problem with that?
Anyone think the ATF will do any better at controlling all the machine tools and steel in the USA and elsewhere?
We don't actually have to wonder about this. Many, many countries have had a lot of success with gun control.
To suggest that gun-running is roughly the same, logistically, as drug-running shows a lack of understanding of the drug trade. And I'd be interested in seeing you make the case that Prohibition didn't deter drinking?
I am sadly aware that I am doing nothing to prove 2.1 wrong.
criminal enterprises devoted to 100 year-old technology
Is there an underground gun manufacturing industry anywhere in the world where guns are illegal? My intuition is that guns are also harder to smuggle than drugs, being heavier, bulkier, and probably less marginally profitable.
So, gswift, which gun control laws are effective and should be more widespread, and which ones are useless?
I think waiting periods and pretty much all ammo restrictions are useless. I think magazine capacity restrictions are also fairly non effective.
I do like the background check system. I think the current federal regs on full auto are a good idea and should be left in place. There's a lot of enhancements about for possession of a stolen firearm, possession of a firearm by a restricted person (convicted felon, under indictment for felony, been found mentally incompetent to stand trial on a criminal charge, etc.) and I think those are also good laws. Laws against straw purchases are also good and I think there should be more of a look at restricting bulk purchases especially in the Mexican border states. I mean, come on, you can't withdraw 10K in cash from a bank account without sending up a red flag. Some random guy wanting to buy AR-15's a half a dozen at a time should similarly be ready to answer a few questions.
Laws against shoplifting don't prevent all shoplifting. Might they prevent some? The gun people can't get anywhere close to an argument that gun laws are totally ineffective without pretending to be unfrozen cavepeople.
What isn't obvious to me is that he'd have chosen to commit an atrocity on this scale.
Maybe, but all that stuff in his apartment isn't a good sign. I think there's a good chance he just would have blown up something full of people instead.
I find Wolverines! fantasies even more obnoxious than Mitty fantasies.
Some random guy wanting to buy AR-15's a half a dozen at a time should similarly be ready to answer a few questions.
Agreed. How about waiting 24 hours after payment to get a gun?
The Republicans make women wait for 24 hours after an ultrasound before they can have an abortion. Why not the same for guns?
Also, they should have to listen to a lecture full of lies before they can pay their money and view bloody pictures.
48, 49: Plenty of people actually find target practice fun, even if they never expect to use those "skills" in real life.
Don't forget collecting. People enjoy collecting all kinds of weird stuff. Guns have plenty of technological, cultural, and historic significance. And there's a wide range of styles, which means that there will necessarily be connoisseurs.
Many, many countries have had a lot of success with gun control.
The relationship between gun laws and violent crime is much more complicated than the partisans on either side will admit, and I strongly suspect the strength of that relationship is utterly swamped by cultural factors. Americans are a bloodthirsty and violent people with a history filled to bursting with atrocities, both by private and public actors. The problem is less American gun legislation than it is Americans themselves.
That said, the culture surrounding handguns in this country is absolutely one of our dumbest and most obnoxious features.
I think I saw another one of these on 20/20 some time ago.
I won't contend the laws are totally ineffectual, i.e. lots of L.A. gangbangers aren't out on the streets 'cause they got caught with a gun and a prior felony. However, that any collection of laws would have prevented Holmes from killing a bunch of people is just wishful thinking.
62.last: The hunter safety course I took as a teen was like that, except a truthful lecture. Then we watched a video of some kid accidentally shooting another kid while hunting.
And then the instructor shot us each in the foot to reinforce the lesson.
I agree that Mexico's insane gang war is an underdiscussed tragedy. The screwy culture around guns and the prospect of misuse of any such laws by local police (say much steeper discretionary enforcement against some ethnicity) make some possible changes impractical.
I think the best immediately plausible step is effective licensing and regulation of bulk gun sellers. Like this bill that failed.
The relationship between gun laws and violent crime is much more complicated than the partisans on either side will admit, and I strongly suspect the strength of that relationship is utterly swamped by cultural factors.
I'm prepared to believe that it's a complicated matter, but you're treating culture as something that's unaffected by laws.
You hear variants on the culture argument in a lot of different contexts, especially in the South. I'm skeptical. Racism can't be changed by laws, we're told, but it seems likely to me that the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act had an impact on peoples' attitudes.
And anyway, the process of passing a law changes attitudes, too. Even if you argued that gay marriage laws haven't changed the way people relate to gay couples, attitudes have changed, and something caused that.
How about waiting 24 hours after payment to get a gun?
Doubt you'll see much in the way illicit use reduction with that one. Maybe a few less suicides with guns. Probably push some sales online.
70:
agreed. It would be done mostly just to screw with people. Just like in the example.
The Republicans make women wait for 24 hours after an ultrasound before they can have an abortion. Why not the same for guns?
Hmmm. Its interesting that abortion rights folks and gun rights folks object to waiting periods, since they don't in any way deter the acquisition of abortions or guns.
69.last : Many of the oldest people in 1990 have died, and there are young adults now who were children then.
I can't find polling to make the case either way, but by my theory of the law's impact on culture, Roe v. Wade would have increased the public's favorable view of abortion rights. That's the way I'd bet, anyway.
Unfortunately, all the polling I can find measures approval of Roe itself, and therefore doesn't precede Roe.
you're treating culture as something that's unaffected by laws
Well, no. I meant that how gun laws interact with violent crime rates (or, as a probably better metric, the overall lethality of violent crime) is going to be different in Texas than in Minnesota and, consequently, comparing the US with the UK or Switzerland or Somalia on such measures is a wildly difficult undertaking.
I guess I'm taking a very Econ 101 view of this: you make something more difficult, you get less of it - even if "less" in South Carolina would still be more than you'd get on Knifecrime Island.
The big picture seems to bear out this view - where the laws discourage efficient killing methods, the killers are less efficient. Sure, the relationship is complicated, and the magnitude of the relationship changes according to other circumstances, but I think the direction of the relationship is clear.
I expect this sort of thing is shortly going to make gun control a lot harder.
3-D printing: it's not just for ugly plastic toys any more.
I know a guy who made a 3D printed liquid oxygen/kerosene rocket engine and successfully fired it a bunch of times. Presumably if you can do that you can print barrels, though I imagine you'd still need to do some finishing of the interior bits that need to be very smooth.
78: I know where they sell big SUVs and also where they sell gasoline. If number of casualties are the question there are too many answers for laws to do much.
And it's too much to expect the fuckheads running the TV and papers to resist giving the nuts with either personal or political motives exactly what they're looking for. "Tell me, Timmy, how do you feel after seeing Lassie chopped up into cat food?"
43: I think that in general incidents like this aren't helpful in deciding what laws concerning guns we should have, but it's striking that Holmes *didn't* procure anything that wasn't already legal. He didn't try to get fully automatic weapons. So the case that I think that would need to be made is that laws that we have now prevented him from getting fully automatic weapons, but all other kinds of laws would have been ineffectual. Perhaps it could be made, but I'm skeptical that it would have had no effect; we tend to imagine these guys as dedicated masterminds who will never take the easy way out, even when their master plan includes buying only legal weapons.
43: Or maybe he was smart enough to know a full auto wouldn't be as efficient for his purposes? Granted, they're nice if you're doing another idiotic A-Team retread, or Die Hard XLVIII but not particularly otherwise.
80: Right-o. This case seems to demonstrate the efficacy of gun laws, such as they are.
32 was facetious, in case that wasn't clear.
my sympathies, urple and Mr B
"know that there are people who want you to turn to them. And everyone here has this community on top of all the other people who care about them"
it's a nice thing to say and nice to read this here, guns or something else, nice sleep is nice i imagine sometimes, everybody does, just that is not perhaps intended for the likes like me and ToS f.e if he is still out there
i'll be ok at any times of course, no real worries for fam&fs, they always urge me to come back, what are you doing all alone over there they'd ask me as if though there are no like millions of people around me, just they don't count as us, as i too of course don't count as one of those mlns
so that is very moving, the sentiment of belonging i mean
I don't have strong beliefs that most gun control laws would do much good. I do wonder about suicidally depressed people impulsively buying a gun and then killing themselves, but I'm not sure what could be done about it.
I'm inclined to think that there ought to be some sort of licensing requirement where you had to demonstrate that you understood gun safety and how to operate a gun. And you could have different licenses depending on the type of gun, in the same way that I have a license to drive a car, but I'm not allowed to drive a tractor-trailer.