Newtown shooting and gun control

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KCMax
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Re: Newtown shooting and gun control

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Re: Newtown shooting and gun control

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mean wrote:Right. So, we can conclude that banning assault rifles may or may not have influenced, but likely was coincidental to, an overall drop in violent crime. It may or may not have, but is somewhat more likely to have, effected a decrease in "mass shootings". That "mass shootings" have skyrocketed since the ban ended could be correlated to the lifting of the ban, but it is unclear what percentage of said mass shootings were committed with previously banned weapons. If every "mass shooting" since 2004 was committed with a previously banned weapon, that would certainly be suggestive, but I would still have to wonder how much non-ban factors such as increased political divisiveness, increased stridency and paranoia among the gun-nutters and survivalists, increasing lack of civility in political discourse, and various other things play into it.

Should a new ban go into effect, and "mass shootings" continue to "skyrocket" (or plummet) I suppose we'll have a clearer answer.
None of this is really what I was getting at by posting that NYT article though. I think our earlier discussion already made clear that you and I are on essentially the same page re: the assault weapons ban itself, that renewing it alone is unlikely to make a dent in the rate of gun crimes (maybe it'll reduce mass shootings, maybe it won't -- it would be nice if it did, but these are a drop in the bucket of overall gun violence anyway and so any reduction will probably not be significant enough to be reflected in overall crime rates*). But I stand by my earlier argument that it's a necessary first step, something that can help nudge the country toward acceptance of more sweeping restrictions later on, and the NYT stats are meant to illustrate that such restrictions may in fact be much more effective than the assault weapons ban alone (eg if they restricted access to the sorts of guns that actually are frequently used to commit crimes, ie handguns).

To be fair, I think all your earlier posts about how a ban wouldn't be effective were specifically about an assault weapons ban, not something farther-reaching, so you're just still sticking to the actual topic (evaluating the effect of the assault weapons ban on overall gun violence/crime rates) and I'm guilty of topic-shifting a little bit here. I posted the NYT article because you typically hear how generally ineffective the assault weapons ban was and it sounds like it was actually every bit as effective as our legislators allowed it to be. This is probably a stronger point if it's made in response to the old tautology "if you criminalize guns, only criminals will have guns!" which nobody (to the best of my memory) has actually invoked in this thread. I just thought the stats were interesting and somewhat relevant here even despite the absence of that particular line of argument.

(*to the extent that, say, a hundred more people survive in a given year because of x number of mass shootings that didn't take place, and this is, in our hypothetical, due to the assault weapons ban, I think the ban is great legislation, but given the sheer number of shooting deaths in the US each year, a hundred fewer won't have a statistically significant impact on the total national murder rate; this is unfortunate because it will probably reinforce the idea that the ban doesn't really do anything, when really it should be evidence that we're on the right track but haven't gone nearly far enough)
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Re: Newtown shooting and gun control

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phuqueue wrote:None of this is really what I was getting at by posting that NYT article though. I think our earlier discussion already made clear that you and I are on essentially the same page re: the assault weapons ban itself, that renewing it alone is unlikely to make a dent in the rate of gun crimes (maybe it'll reduce mass shootings, maybe it won't -- it would be nice if it did, but these are a drop in the bucket of overall gun violence anyway and so any reduction will probably not be significant enough to be reflected in overall crime rates*).
Agreed.
phuqueue wrote:But I stand by my earlier argument that it's a necessary first step, something that can help nudge the country toward acceptance of more sweeping restrictions later on, and the NYT stats are meant to illustrate that such restrictions may in fact be much more effective than the assault weapons ban alone (eg if they restricted access to the sorts of guns that actually are frequently used to commit crimes, ie handguns).
And this, again, is where we diverge. While I do agree that (eventually) ultimately banning or at least very heavily regulating most or all private firearm ownership would be an effective way to curb gun violence, I'm still not convinced it's the best plan in the short term for a variety of reasons. I'll not expound upon all of them here (I'm sure I've done plenty of expounding in previous posts). Instead I'll just say I don't think it's politically feasible, and I don't think it will ever be feasible in this country, whether or not this particular piece of legislation passes. It's starting to look like even the legislation in question may not be feasible, although we'll find out soon enough.
phuqueue wrote:I think the ban is great legislation, but given the sheer number of shooting deaths in the US each year, a hundred fewer won't have a statistically significant impact on the total national murder rate; this is unfortunate because it will probably reinforce the idea that the ban doesn't really do anything, when really it should be evidence that we're on the right track but haven't gone nearly far enough)
We can certainly agree that the assault weapons ban doesn't go far enough in terms of its effect on the rate of gun violence. I said very plainly earlier that if you want to end gun violence, you've got to repeal the second amendment. I know that isn't politically feasible right now (and I don't believe it ever will be), I'm just saying, that's what you're going to need to do.

What concerns me is that even if we could repeal the second amendment tomorrow, it wouldn't really address the problem. Guns don't make people walk into a school and kill 20 kids. They help facilitate this kind of behavior in a way that other weapons can't, to be sure, but I don't think anyone with a desire to engage in mass slaughter of his or her fellow man is going to be deterred by his ability or lack of ability to acquire guns, or high capacity magazines, or anything else.

Of course, if a madman with a knife (see, China) stabs a bunch of kids, their probability of survival is higher. No question. But I think it would be far more effective to determine and address why some people--particularly in this country!--are compelled to do such things. Focusing almost exclusively on the guns rather than addressing the root cause of whatever psychosis is at play here takes the sights off the target (if I may) to a significant degree. I don't want madmen attempting mass killings in schools, or movie theaters, or anywhere else, with a gun, or a knife, or a sharpened banana, even if victims of sharpened-banana attacks have a very low mortality rate.
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Re: Newtown shooting and gun control

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mean wrote:
phuqueue wrote:But I stand by my earlier argument that it's a necessary first step, something that can help nudge the country toward acceptance of more sweeping restrictions later on, and the NYT stats are meant to illustrate that such restrictions may in fact be much more effective than the assault weapons ban alone (eg if they restricted access to the sorts of guns that actually are frequently used to commit crimes, ie handguns).
And this, again, is where we diverge. While I do agree that (eventually) ultimately banning or at least very heavily regulating most or all private firearm ownership would be an effective way to curb gun violence, I'm still not convinced it's the best plan in the short term for a variety of reasons. I'll not expound upon all of them here (I'm sure I've done plenty of expounding in previous posts). Instead I'll just say I don't think it's politically feasible, and I don't think it will ever be feasible in this country, whether or not this particular piece of legislation passes. It's starting to look like even the legislation in question may not be feasible, although we'll find out soon enough.
While any sort of ban, even a watered down assault weapons ban, is going to face stiff political resistance, I'm not sure what the better plan is. I'm not convinced there is a good plan in the short term, but you can still work toward something in the longer term.
phuqueue wrote:I think the ban is great legislation, but given the sheer number of shooting deaths in the US each year, a hundred fewer won't have a statistically significant impact on the total national murder rate; this is unfortunate because it will probably reinforce the idea that the ban doesn't really do anything, when really it should be evidence that we're on the right track but haven't gone nearly far enough)
We can certainly agree that the assault weapons ban doesn't go far enough in terms of its effect on the rate of gun violence. I said very plainly earlier that if you want to end gun violence, you've got to repeal the second amendment. I know that isn't politically feasible right now (and I don't believe it ever will be), I'm just saying, that's what you're going to need to do.

What concerns me is that even if we could repeal the second amendment tomorrow, it wouldn't really address the problem. Guns don't make people walk into a school and kill 20 kids. They help facilitate this kind of behavior in a way that other weapons can't, to be sure, but I don't think anyone with a desire to engage in mass slaughter of his or her fellow man is going to be deterred by his ability or lack of ability to acquire guns, or high capacity magazines, or anything else.

Of course, if a madman with a knife (see, China) stabs a bunch of kids, their probability of survival is higher. No question. But I think it would be far more effective to determine and address why some people--particularly in this country!--are compelled to do such things. Focusing almost exclusively on the guns rather than addressing the root cause of whatever psychosis is at play here takes the sights off the target (if I may) to a significant degree. I don't want madmen attempting mass killings in schools, or movie theaters, or anywhere else, with a gun, or a knife, or a sharpened banana, even if victims of sharpened-banana attacks have a very low mortality rate.
I don't wholly disagree, but I think the focus on mental health puts too much emphasis on mass shootings, which are horrific but also only a tiny faction of total gun deaths. You probably do have to suffer from some kind of psychosis to pick up a weapon and go on a killing spree, but you absolutely don't need any kind of psychological issue to commit one of the ~14,000 "generic" murders that occur every year (more than 9500 of which are committed with firearms).

Restricting access to guns is not a one-stop panacea, and if my focus on guns has made it seem as though I believe otherwise, it's only because this thread is specifically titled "gun control," not "crime reduction." America has a crime problem in general, for sure, and tackling the gun problem will only make it more difficult to commit violent crimes, it won't remove the actual root of the criminal impulse. But the sort of sweeping socioeconomic reforms that would be needed to reshape our country are not exactly any more feasible in the short term than dramatic gun control legislation, and I'm not sure how feasible they are in the long term either. A few of the big factors in my mind include our rapidly expanding economic inequality, our backward urban design, and our tattered social safety net (an actual crime scholar could no doubt rattle off a list of many more), and there's far less consensus toward addressing any of these problems than there is toward at least basic gun control. When the problem requires a multi-pronged approach, I just don't see the point in refusing what you can get just because you can't get everything. If you can get an assault weapons ban and it might make mass shootings less common (as the WaPo article suggests it might) and it might make later, stronger restrictions more politically palatable and in the meantime it basically imposes zero cost on society (what is the social cost of banning assault weapons? This is a legitimate, not rhetorical, question because nobody really talks about it in any realistic terms -- ie ignoring the NRA's "assault on freedom" bullshit -- and I don't see what we really stand to lose, so I assume there is zero cost here, which may not be correct), you've only solved 1% of the problem, but that's better than nothing, especially for those people, even if it's only a relative few, who will never even know that the assault weapons ban saved their lives.
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Re: Newtown shooting and gun control

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MO HB 633 Summary:
Specifies that any member of the general assembly who proposes legislation that further restricts an individual's right to bear arms will be guilty of a class D felony.
http://www.house.mo.gov/BillSummaryPrn. ... &style=new

I'm sure there won't be any 1st Amendment problems with this. :shock:
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Re: Newtown shooting and gun control

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chaglang wrote:MO HB 633 Summary:
Specifies that any member of the general assembly who proposes legislation that further restricts an individual's right to bear arms will be guilty of a class D felony.
http://www.house.mo.gov/BillSummaryPrn. ... &style=new

I'm sure there won't be any 1st Amendment problems with this. :shock:
2nd Amendment > 1st Amendment

2 is more than 1. Its simply math dummy.
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Re: Newtown shooting and gun control

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Interesting article about the seemingly obvious, yet never mentioned contradiction among mainstream Republicans (certainly not libertarians though) that (a) gun rights are paramount so citizens can protect themselves against government tyranny; and (b) we must continue to increase funding for the military so they can maintain their military might.

Great Gun Gobbledygook: The Paradox of Second Amendment Hardliners
Rubio and Palin want the populace to be able to arm itself with assault rifles. But they want the government armed with F-35s. When President Obama discovers his inner tyrant, it won't be a fair fight.
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Re: Newtown shooting and gun control

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I don't think it's that they don't see the military as part of government so much as there is a pretty much unspoken sense that the military, or at least enough of it to make a difference, is on their side. That may even be true, I don't know. Certainly the military seems to skew fairly conservative from my completely anecdotal perspective.
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Re: Newtown shooting and gun control

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mean wrote:I don't think it's that they don't see the military as part of government so much as there is a pretty much unspoken sense that the military, or at least enough of it to make a difference, is on their side. That may even be true, I don't know. Certainly the military seems to skew fairly conservative from my completely anecdotal perspective.
Then what do they need the guns to protect themselves against? Obama knows kung-fu?
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Re: Newtown shooting and gun control

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mean wrote:I don't think it's that they don't see the military as part of government so much as there is a pretty much unspoken sense that the military, or at least enough of it to make a difference, is on their side. That may even be true, I don't know. Certainly the military seems to skew fairly conservative from my completely anecdotal perspective.
The military is actually a pretty representative cross section of America.
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Re: Newtown shooting and gun control

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KCMax wrote:
mean wrote:I don't think it's that they don't see the military as part of government so much as there is a pretty much unspoken sense that the military, or at least enough of it to make a difference, is on their side. That may even be true, I don't know. Certainly the military seems to skew fairly conservative from my completely anecdotal perspective.
Then what do they need the guns to protect themselves against? Obama knows kung-fu?
The military that isn't on their side?
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Re: Newtown shooting and gun control

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Re: Newtown shooting and gun control

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Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) announce bi-partisan deal on expanded background checks for gun shows and Internet sales. Machin is easily the most fervent gun's rights supporters among Democrats, and IIRC he got a 99% rating from the NRA. Toomey is also one of the top rated Senators by the NRA.

http://www.rollcall.com/news/gop_faces_ ... 858-1.html
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Re: Newtown shooting and gun control

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Background check bill fails to pass Senate

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/s ... ml?hp=t1_3
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Re: Newtown shooting and gun control

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The problem is that the NRA isn't stupid, and they know that even what appears to be common-sense legislation are actually steps, in the agendas of some, toward wider gun control. As much has been admitted here and elsewhere. First come the concession that the measures being proposed would not really do much, and those are followed by the admission that they would just be a first step toward increasingly stricter regulations. "But, nobody is talking about taking away your guns!" kind of rings hollow in light of that. Ok, what *are* they talking about, then? What is the endgame?
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Re: Newtown shooting and gun control

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mean wrote:The problem is that the NRA isn't stupid, and they know that even what appears to be common-sense legislation are actually steps, in the agendas of some, toward wider gun control. As much has been admitted here and elsewhere. First come the concession that the measures being proposed would not really do much, and those are followed by the admission that they would just be a first step toward increasingly stricter regulations. "But, nobody is talking about taking away your guns!" kind of rings hollow in light of that. Ok, what *are* they talking about, then? What is the endgame?
Please. The NRA would have fought this tooth and nail even if everyone said that background checks are all they want. They're the most powerful lobbyists in America due largely to shamelessly stoking irrational apacolyptic fantasies.

Edit: Remember that the NRA opposed background checks in December, before any legislation had been proposed.
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Re: Newtown shooting and gun control

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mean wrote:The problem is that the NRA isn't stupid, and they know that even what appears to be common-sense legislation are actually steps, in the agendas of some, toward wider gun control. As much has been admitted here and elsewhere. First come the concession that the measures being proposed would not really do much, and those are followed by the admission that they would just be a first step toward increasingly stricter regulations. "But, nobody is talking about taking away your guns!" kind of rings hollow in light of that. Ok, what *are* they talking about, then? What is the endgame?
How is this taking guns away? It seems like just a better way to enforce already existing gun laws.

I don't think it does enough, but that doesn't mean it does nothing.
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Re: Newtown shooting and gun control

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Logically, any lobbyist organization powerful enough to stop any gun legislation would be more than powerful enough to prevent the government from taking people's guns. Standard disclaimer: logic, wingnuts, etc.
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Re: Newtown shooting and gun control

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Re: Newtown shooting and gun control

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Knives and guns are not analogous for plenty of quite obvious reasons so let's not get into an especially stupid argument about this.
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