Posted by Kromey at 8:30pm Jul 1 '12not really. i think whatever's behind the general trend outweighs gun laws.
I think guns are irrelevant to the equation. If you go back further, you'll see crime rising and falling (peaking in the late-80s), and yet guns and gun laws have been on the same march mostly unabated throughout that whole time.
Given all of the evidence I've seen to date, my conclusion is that guns and gun laws quite simply are unrelated. Is that absolutely certain? No -- quite frankly it'd be impossible to be absolutely certain about a single variable in such a vast sea of countless variables interacting in impossibly complex ways. But at the outside worst, guns and gun laws play such a minor role that they are dwarfed by the innumerable other variables -- for example, providing education can and does put the brakes on the "death spiral" of crime-ridden neighborhoods, whereas passing anti-gun laws does not.
Which means that our time, energy, and money is far better spent focusing on those other factors.
for instance, i fail to see how it's "going after" law-abiding citizens to keep privately held guns off of elementary school grounds.
The federal "gun-free schools" law isn't restricted to the school grounds -- it prohibits guns within a quarter of a mile of school grounds! Take a good look at a map of your town, and draw that quarter-mile boundary outside of every school ground in town. You will see homes, stores, and all kinds of other places where it would be a federal crime to have a gun.
If I walk outside my apartment and turn left, I can't carry my gun; I have to turn right. It has nothing to do with going onto school grounds -- I just happen to live a quarter of a mile plus a few feet away from a high school. As do millions of other Americans. In the name of "think of the children!", we're heavily restricted in where we can walk with our guns!
it's a common fear-mongering argument. "the bad guys are always going to have guns no matter what we say! only the good people are harmed!"
It's a common sense argument. It doesn't mean guns should be totally unrestricted, but it does mean that gun laws need to consider the fact that they will overwhelmingly affect law-abiding citizens, while criminals who are ignoring other laws already won't even be phased by them.
1. you're missing the point of those laws. they're not there just to fuck with law-abiding gun owners, despite what some gun nuts believe. they're there because if a gun is found or detected it can automatically result in immediate arrest. otherwise, you've just got to sit around on your thumbs until the criminal opens fire. those laws are meant to stop crimes before they happen, instead of waiting until it does.
I'm specifically addressing the effect of the laws -- you're missing my point. Criminals break the law -- that's the very definition of the term, in fact. How are more laws going to change that?
Meanwhile, the more laws you pass against guns, the more law-abiding citizens are affected.
Want to stop crimes? So do I. But you must consider the impact to law-abiding citizens, and to the perfectly legitimate activities thereof, and weigh that against the possibility of actually stopping a crime. And even then, stop to consider the fact that guns are used to stop crimes on a daily basis, several times more often then they are used to commit them.
how about we make obtaining guns illegally far more difficult?
How do you propose to do that? That's a serious question -- the definition of a black market is that the laws are being ignored, so how do you make that more difficult?
are there options, or are we just stuck in a situation where we can expect criminals to walk around with guns all the time, and our only solution is an arms race in our communities?
Of course there are options, and the facts show that not only are we pursuing those other options, but they're working -- even while we're backing off from restricting guns! Crime happens with or without guns, and a rise in guns and reduction in gun laws does not result in the oft-predicted rise in crime or violence.
making something difficult doesn't mean your rights have been taken away, if it's possible to reasonably have access to that right.
I wonder if you would say the same thing about obstacles in front of voting, or even in front of your freedom to speak your mind...
i've suggested things like registries that actually work - similar to the registration of cars, with insurance and only certain people (dictated by the owner) allowed access to a certain gun.
you've poo-poo'd that in the past because you don't think it'll work and would be too expensive. i'd say if we as a country actually gave a damn about the bad sides to gun proliferation (eg, criminals with guns), we could make it work.
You keep ignoring the counter-arguments, and the multitude of counter-examples, to the idea that gun registries work. Yes, there are probably insurmountable obstacles in city- or state-level registries, but you can look at other nations to get an idea of well they don't work. Just take a look north -- Canada's scrapping their gun registry because it didn't work, and cost much, much more than was predicted -- money just wasted down the drain without anything to show for it. You can find examples of gun registries all over the world, and they all share one thing in common: They don't work while costing a helluva lot more than anyone anticipated.
The thing is that registering guns is a doomed failure right from the start. For starters, there's an estimated 100+ million handguns alone in the US in private hands; that doesn't even account for long guns (rifles, shotguns). Out of all of those, fewer than 0.1% will ever be used in a crime -- that's not per year, that's over the entire lifetime of the gun! So you're already looking for a very tiny needle in a massive haystack. And we haven't even gotten to the biggest hurdle of all: Over 99.99% of guns used in the commission of a crime are illegally possessed -- either stolen, or bought on the black market, or smuggled into the country from overseas; either way no part of any registry anymore.
Canada was already spending millions of dollars per year on their registry, and not only do they have fewer people, but they have a lower rate of gun ownership than the US. Their registry failed to contribute anything meaningful to any criminal investigation -- not surprising when you realize how badly the numbers are stacked against a registry's success in the first place.
I'm all for listening to a novel idea to address the multitude of shortcomings, but to date I've heard no one coming forward with any such ideas. That's why I say registries don't work -- without a novel new approach to them, all we have are examples of them failing, rather than of them working.
the only thing i was saying about that cartoon is that its statement is false. the only comparison made was an individual with a gun versus one without
Actually, you explicitly excluded victims of crime from your assertion. Given that you're far more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than you are to injure or kill yourself with a gun (hence all the stats I brought up in my last post), and that guns are used many more times to prevent crimes than to commit them, it really does not seem that that statement is false.
Now, you are right that there is a gap in my analysis -- it's comparing rates of gun accidents to those of being victimized by a crime for the entire population. It's quite probable that a gun owner is more likely to injure him/herself with a gun than a non gun owner. To my knowledge, there are no stats anywhere that divides up the population into gun owners and non gun owners, and then compares the respective groups' victimization and accident rates, however even if there were there's a significant causal relationship that would be overlooked -- often guns are bought specifically because the buyer feels threatened in some way, e.g. living in a dangerous neighborhood, or being threatened by a deranged ex, or the target of a stalker, etc. These people are both more likely to own guns -- and thus probably more likely to be involved in a gun accident -- as well as more likely to be the victims of a violent crime, and yet the gun is not the causal link, but rather a symptom of it.
Still, your point is valid, and I'll keep my eyes open for a study looking at that -- just beware, if you find such a study yourself, that the methodology could result in corrupted results if it doesn't account for external causal factors (i.e. a factor that caused both the gun ownership and the victimization).
you know why some people (eg, me) get so worked up about gun regulation? it's not because we see a plague of gun death running rampant ("some people", not "all who argue this side of the debate"), it's because it seems like no one on your side sees any shades of gray - any idea about how to curb illegal gun possession and use is automatically demonized into a plot to take away all legally owned guns.
Do you know why some people (e.g. me) get so worked up about gun rights? It's not because we see all gun control lobbyists as out to destroy the Second Amendment ("some people", not "all who argue this side of the debate"), it's because of bullshit accusations like this that we are callous, heartless bastards who don't give a shit about the victims of gun crimes, and hostile bullshit like this "no shades of grey" accusation.
If we didn't see shades of grey, then why would I (and the NRA, and numerous others) be pointing out that Loughner shouldn't have been able to buy the gun he used to shoot Giffords? Why would we acknowledge at every turn that there are some people who are simply too dangerous to be allowed to own guns? Why would the NRA have helped draft the legislation that created the NICS checks in the first place, and later helped to expand it to include mentally unstable people like Loughner (years before he shot Giffords), specifically to keep guns out of certain hands?
That is shades of grey! We don't go around demanding that everyone be able to buy a gun at the local supermarket without so much as an ID check -- let alone a federal background check -- and yet you accuse of exactly that!
Crime absolutely is a problem, and despite the accusations of oh so many on "your side" it's something we've never denied. But also a problem -- even more so, in fact -- is passing "feel-good" anti-gun laws that do nothing to address crime.
It makes you guys seem very scary, because it shows that you consider us just as dangerous as the actual criminals, and does make you look like you have no regard for our rights.
I think guns are irrelevant to the equation. If you go back further, you'll see crime rising and falling (peaking in the late-80s), and yet guns and gun laws have been on the same march mostly unabated throughout that whole time.
Given all of the evidence I've seen to date, my conclusion is that guns and gun laws quite simply are unrelated. Is that absolutely certain? No -- quite frankly it'd be impossible to be absolutely certain about a single variable in such a vast sea of countless variables interacting in impossibly complex ways. But at the outside worst, guns and gun laws play such a minor role that they are dwarfed by the innumerable other variables -- for example, providing education can and does put the brakes on the "death spiral" of crime-ridden neighborhoods, whereas passing anti-gun laws does not.
Which means that our time, energy, and money is far better spent focusing on those other factors.
for instance, i fail to see how it's "going after" law-abiding citizens to keep privately held guns off of elementary school grounds.
The federal "gun-free schools" law isn't restricted to the school grounds -- it prohibits guns within a quarter of a mile of school grounds! Take a good look at a map of your town, and draw that quarter-mile boundary outside of every school ground in town. You will see homes, stores, and all kinds of other places where it would be a federal crime to have a gun.
If I walk outside my apartment and turn left, I can't carry my gun; I have to turn right. It has nothing to do with going onto school grounds -- I just happen to live a quarter of a mile plus a few feet away from a high school. As do millions of other Americans. In the name of "think of the children!", we're heavily restricted in where we can walk with our guns!
it's a common fear-mongering argument. "the bad guys are always going to have guns no matter what we say! only the good people are harmed!"
It's a common sense argument. It doesn't mean guns should be totally unrestricted, but it does mean that gun laws need to consider the fact that they will overwhelmingly affect law-abiding citizens, while criminals who are ignoring other laws already won't even be phased by them.
1. you're missing the point of those laws. they're not there just to fuck with law-abiding gun owners, despite what some gun nuts believe. they're there because if a gun is found or detected it can automatically result in immediate arrest. otherwise, you've just got to sit around on your thumbs until the criminal opens fire. those laws are meant to stop crimes before they happen, instead of waiting until it does.
I'm specifically addressing the effect of the laws -- you're missing my point. Criminals break the law -- that's the very definition of the term, in fact. How are more laws going to change that?
Meanwhile, the more laws you pass against guns, the more law-abiding citizens are affected.
Want to stop crimes? So do I. But you must consider the impact to law-abiding citizens, and to the perfectly legitimate activities thereof, and weigh that against the possibility of actually stopping a crime. And even then, stop to consider the fact that guns are used to stop crimes on a daily basis, several times more often then they are used to commit them.
how about we make obtaining guns illegally far more difficult?
How do you propose to do that? That's a serious question -- the definition of a black market is that the laws are being ignored, so how do you make that more difficult?
are there options, or are we just stuck in a situation where we can expect criminals to walk around with guns all the time, and our only solution is an arms race in our communities?
Of course there are options, and the facts show that not only are we pursuing those other options, but they're working -- even while we're backing off from restricting guns! Crime happens with or without guns, and a rise in guns and reduction in gun laws does not result in the oft-predicted rise in crime or violence.
making something difficult doesn't mean your rights have been taken away, if it's possible to reasonably have access to that right.
I wonder if you would say the same thing about obstacles in front of voting, or even in front of your freedom to speak your mind...
i've suggested things like registries that actually work - similar to the registration of cars, with insurance and only certain people (dictated by the owner) allowed access to a certain gun.
you've poo-poo'd that in the past because you don't think it'll work and would be too expensive. i'd say if we as a country actually gave a damn about the bad sides to gun proliferation (eg, criminals with guns), we could make it work.
You keep ignoring the counter-arguments, and the multitude of counter-examples, to the idea that gun registries work. Yes, there are probably insurmountable obstacles in city- or state-level registries, but you can look at other nations to get an idea of well they don't work. Just take a look north -- Canada's scrapping their gun registry because it didn't work, and cost much, much more than was predicted -- money just wasted down the drain without anything to show for it. You can find examples of gun registries all over the world, and they all share one thing in common: They don't work while costing a helluva lot more than anyone anticipated.
The thing is that registering guns is a doomed failure right from the start. For starters, there's an estimated 100+ million handguns alone in the US in private hands; that doesn't even account for long guns (rifles, shotguns). Out of all of those, fewer than 0.1% will ever be used in a crime -- that's not per year, that's over the entire lifetime of the gun! So you're already looking for a very tiny needle in a massive haystack. And we haven't even gotten to the biggest hurdle of all: Over 99.99% of guns used in the commission of a crime are illegally possessed -- either stolen, or bought on the black market, or smuggled into the country from overseas; either way no part of any registry anymore.
Canada was already spending millions of dollars per year on their registry, and not only do they have fewer people, but they have a lower rate of gun ownership than the US. Their registry failed to contribute anything meaningful to any criminal investigation -- not surprising when you realize how badly the numbers are stacked against a registry's success in the first place.
I'm all for listening to a novel idea to address the multitude of shortcomings, but to date I've heard no one coming forward with any such ideas. That's why I say registries don't work -- without a novel new approach to them, all we have are examples of them failing, rather than of them working.
the only thing i was saying about that cartoon is that its statement is false. the only comparison made was an individual with a gun versus one without
Actually, you explicitly excluded victims of crime from your assertion. Given that you're far more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than you are to injure or kill yourself with a gun (hence all the stats I brought up in my last post), and that guns are used many more times to prevent crimes than to commit them, it really does not seem that that statement is false.
Now, you are right that there is a gap in my analysis -- it's comparing rates of gun accidents to those of being victimized by a crime for the entire population. It's quite probable that a gun owner is more likely to injure him/herself with a gun than a non gun owner. To my knowledge, there are no stats anywhere that divides up the population into gun owners and non gun owners, and then compares the respective groups' victimization and accident rates, however even if there were there's a significant causal relationship that would be overlooked -- often guns are bought specifically because the buyer feels threatened in some way, e.g. living in a dangerous neighborhood, or being threatened by a deranged ex, or the target of a stalker, etc. These people are both more likely to own guns -- and thus probably more likely to be involved in a gun accident -- as well as more likely to be the victims of a violent crime, and yet the gun is not the causal link, but rather a symptom of it.
Still, your point is valid, and I'll keep my eyes open for a study looking at that -- just beware, if you find such a study yourself, that the methodology could result in corrupted results if it doesn't account for external causal factors (i.e. a factor that caused both the gun ownership and the victimization).
you know why some people (eg, me) get so worked up about gun regulation? it's not because we see a plague of gun death running rampant ("some people", not "all who argue this side of the debate"), it's because it seems like no one on your side sees any shades of gray - any idea about how to curb illegal gun possession and use is automatically demonized into a plot to take away all legally owned guns.
Do you know why some people (e.g. me) get so worked up about gun rights? It's not because we see all gun control lobbyists as out to destroy the Second Amendment ("some people", not "all who argue this side of the debate"), it's because of bullshit accusations like this that we are callous, heartless bastards who don't give a shit about the victims of gun crimes, and hostile bullshit like this "no shades of grey" accusation.
If we didn't see shades of grey, then why would I (and the NRA, and numerous others) be pointing out that Loughner shouldn't have been able to buy the gun he used to shoot Giffords? Why would we acknowledge at every turn that there are some people who are simply too dangerous to be allowed to own guns? Why would the NRA have helped draft the legislation that created the NICS checks in the first place, and later helped to expand it to include mentally unstable people like Loughner (years before he shot Giffords), specifically to keep guns out of certain hands?
That is shades of grey! We don't go around demanding that everyone be able to buy a gun at the local supermarket without so much as an ID check -- let alone a federal background check -- and yet you accuse of exactly that!
Crime absolutely is a problem, and despite the accusations of oh so many on "your side" it's something we've never denied. But also a problem -- even more so, in fact -- is passing "feel-good" anti-gun laws that do nothing to address crime.
It makes you guys seem very scary, because it shows that you consider us just as dangerous as the actual criminals, and does make you look like you have no regard for our rights.
Re: it's a pretty picture, yes - Kromey