Posted by Kromey at 2:29pm Jul 3 '12I got to the bottom of your post and in a sleepy haze rated it a 3 without thinking. Your post is clearly deserving of a 4, and I apologize for rating you below that.
Also, in advance, I apologize if anything below seems defensive, hostile, or excessively argumentative -- I'm tired and grumpy right now, and probably shouldn't even be writing this except that I'll forget to come back to it later if I don't. I'm taking extra time writing this one to try and weed that stuff out, but if I fail: Please don't take anything below as an attack, and try to read it in the best possible light so that we don't sink into another argumentative, quasi-flamewar quagmire.
what i would really like to see first where guns are concerned would be ways of actually enforcing current gun laws. take that as an undercurrent to my position; that enforcing current laws is more important, realistically, than passing new ones.
On this we have common ground, although there are still some laws that I think need to go away -- e.g. the remaining may-issue and no-issue states should join the rest of us as shall-issue (or none required).
Definitely, though, better enforcement should be considered before new laws get passed -- without enforcement, laws have no effect whatsoever on criminals, and instead only impinge on the rights of law-abiding citizens.
i must admit, i find the order of magnitude in that statistic pretty unbelievable. but i do think that the vast majority of guns used in crime are possessed illegally.
Well, you can take up any quibbles over that stat with the ATF -- they're the ones who have made that claim, and it's based not just on crimes committed with guns, but also on crimes in which a gun was merely being carried (e.g. a purse-snatcher grabs a lady's handbag and runs, only to be collared by the cop right around the corner who then finds the concealed gun tucked in his waistband).
i'll point out the arms-race bit (used to be, in places like nyc, that muggers were usually only armed with knives and the like; after citizens started arming themselves, the criminals started carrying heavier weaponry).
Source? NYC has, since at least the first NFA in 1960-something, been one of the least gun-friendly cities in the nation, right up there with Chicago and Washington, D.C. I find it hard to swallow on just your word alone (no offense, it's not personal) that enough citizens were arming up despite some of the nation's most restrictive anti-gun laws to have any kind of significant impact on the city's criminal population.
That said, DoJ surveys year after year show that over 80% of criminals will deliberately avoid committing a crime against or even merely in the presence of someone they know to be armed; only a slightly smaller percentage (75%) will do the same if they think that someone might be armed. That's not much of an "arms race" if one side is backing down the instant the other is armed...
basically, i'd like to give law enforcement more tools to stop a gun's illegal use before it happens. simply having one on a college campus, for instance, carrying without having your permit on you, having an unregistered gun, that kind of thing. of course, illegal search and seizure would still take precedence, but i think you get the direction i'm going in. i don't see how those things would be too onerous for legal gun possession.
Because mere possession of a firearm of any kind (well, any legal kind...) is not indicative of criminal intent, nor even of threat to personal or public safety. In fact, statistically speaking, gun owners are several times less likely to commit a crime with a gun than non gun owners -- if either of us should be afraid of the other, then based on the evidence I should be scared of you!
[Caveat: That stat comes from roughly a dozen state Justice Departments (or their equivalents), specifically from states that require a license to carry a firearm (but not necessarily to own one). The stat actually says that CCW license holders are 3-4 times less likely to commit a crime with a firearm. The extrapolation above to gun owners is based on the subset of states here that also require a license to own a gun, in which there are 2-3 times as many licensed gun owners as there are licensed gun owners with CCW permits -- which still puts the entire population of gun owners no higher than the minimum threshold of non gun owners who commit crimes with guns. While there is no evidence that this stat cannot be applied to the population at large (i.e. outside of those states that require licenses merely to own, let alone into states where CCW permits are not required), neither is there any counter-evidence. This extrapolation is further bolstered by the ATF's stat on how many crime guns are not legally owned, which although it's an incredibly high percentage it doesn't say anything about other guns the criminal might legally own.
All this is to say that in locales where such a stat is known, non gun owners are far more likely to commit crimes with guns than gun owners.]
yup. the cartoon made no distinction. if it had stipulated that it was only talking about victims of violent crimes, i wouldn't have bothered with that argument. however, it only stated a broad rule; to prove it false, i only needed to show a counter-example.
That was the point I was trying to make earlier -- the cartoon didn't need to stipulate that because you're several orders of magnitude more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than you are to be involved in a firearm accident. In other words, it applies to the population at large, not some arbitrary subset. Again, though, the caveat of no known (to us, at least) stats dividing up the population into gun owners and non gun owners to draw a completely fair comparison applies, however:
Polls in recent years show gun ownership over 50% in the US (although pollsters suspect under-reporting, meaning the actual number is probably higher); if we round that down to 50% and then make the (erroneous but probably close to accurate) assumption that all gun accidents involve gun owners, that effectively doubles the gun accident rate -- and still leaves you multiple orders of magnitude more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than of a gun accident!
because it's pretty easy to see where a gun shouldn't have been allowed after the fact. responsive versus preventative.
but i know there are some gun-rights people who honestly believe background checks should be stringent enough to block those sorts of sales.
No, not responsive -- preventative. Loughner was exactly the kind of person in mind when the NRA helped expands the NICS program to include the mentally unstable, and Arizona was (is?) one of the worst offenders in terms of non-compliance with that law. Had Arizona been in full compliance, would that have stopped Loughner? Only if one of the dozens of people in a position to recognize his instability had actually reported him.
But the point that we (myself and the NRA, among others) have made all along is that there already are checks in place to stop people like Loughner buying a gun, and that enforcement, not knee-jerk "feel-good" laws, is what's needed.
you know that sets off all kinds of alarm bells, right? it's like letting the oil lobby help draft energy legislation. of course any lobby would be more than happy to help write their own legislation.
No more than it should when you see environmentalist lobbyists drafting energy legislation.
That's the thing about Washington -- lobbyists of one flavor or another are involved in almost every single bill that passes through Congress. It's patently unfair -- hypocritical, even -- to complain about the lobbyists you disagree with but turn a blind eye to e.g. the Brady Campaign (formerly the Coalition to Ban Handguns) and their contribution to pushing through Clinton's so-called "assault weapons" ban just because you happen to agree with those lobbyists' agenda.
(For the record, I think lobbyists are a necessary evil; I'd rather none of them existed, but at the same time they're the strongest way we can make our voices heard. (Admittedly not all lobbyists work for the people, but there are many -- e.g. the NRA, which despite its alleged power has a meager budget compared to other lobbyist groups -- that are grassroots organizations and work on behalf of their membership.))
...and why wasn't this in the first draft? it just didn't occur to anyone? i can't believe it was just overlooked.
Because the system was originally designed to check criminal records (hence the name -- National Instant Criminal Background Check System; admittedly the acronym falls a bit short...), and only later was it expanded to include other categories of prohibited persons (e.g. the mentally unstable).
ouch. even more so than crime?
Yes, actually. Passing ineffective laws wastes time, effort, and money that could be better used to bolster enforcement of existing laws, or to pass effective laws, both of which would have the effect of reducing crime -- instead, we either have no effect whatsoever or, in the worst case, allow crime to increase because we're spreading our limited resources too far to be effective. The old adage "If you're not part of the solution..." definitely applies here -- why contribute to the problem when simply doing nothing at all makes it no worse?
the thing is, it's mostly ineffective legislation that gets passed. politicians simply can't take on the NRA and survive.
This is a totally bogus accusation. Many of the senators and representatives who helped draft and subsequently pass -- over the NRA's strong opposition -- Clinton's so-called "assault weapons" ban are still sitting Congress. NYC's Mayor Bloomberg is one of the most vocal anti-gun politicians around, and despite being on the NRA's "hit list" for years he's survived quite well; ditto Chicago's Mayor Daly, right up until he retired, upon which Chicago elected a new mayor every bit as anti-gun as Daly was -- if not more so!
I could go on and on citing counter-examples -- like listing almost every politician in California and Illinois -- but the point is that the NRA's alleged power is nowhere near that influential. Yes, they can shift an election or two in already-gun-friendly regions, but the NRA's lobbying power is much smaller than those who fear it believe it to be.
Case in point: Obama was elected President, despite the NRA's opposition over his statements and history on gun control. And again despite the NRA's opposition, he looks on track to win re-election this year.
Also, in advance, I apologize if anything below seems defensive, hostile, or excessively argumentative -- I'm tired and grumpy right now, and probably shouldn't even be writing this except that I'll forget to come back to it later if I don't. I'm taking extra time writing this one to try and weed that stuff out, but if I fail: Please don't take anything below as an attack, and try to read it in the best possible light so that we don't sink into another argumentative, quasi-flamewar quagmire.
what i would really like to see first where guns are concerned would be ways of actually enforcing current gun laws. take that as an undercurrent to my position; that enforcing current laws is more important, realistically, than passing new ones.
On this we have common ground, although there are still some laws that I think need to go away -- e.g. the remaining may-issue and no-issue states should join the rest of us as shall-issue (or none required).
Definitely, though, better enforcement should be considered before new laws get passed -- without enforcement, laws have no effect whatsoever on criminals, and instead only impinge on the rights of law-abiding citizens.
i must admit, i find the order of magnitude in that statistic pretty unbelievable. but i do think that the vast majority of guns used in crime are possessed illegally.
Well, you can take up any quibbles over that stat with the ATF -- they're the ones who have made that claim, and it's based not just on crimes committed with guns, but also on crimes in which a gun was merely being carried (e.g. a purse-snatcher grabs a lady's handbag and runs, only to be collared by the cop right around the corner who then finds the concealed gun tucked in his waistband).
i'll point out the arms-race bit (used to be, in places like nyc, that muggers were usually only armed with knives and the like; after citizens started arming themselves, the criminals started carrying heavier weaponry).
Source? NYC has, since at least the first NFA in 1960-something, been one of the least gun-friendly cities in the nation, right up there with Chicago and Washington, D.C. I find it hard to swallow on just your word alone (no offense, it's not personal) that enough citizens were arming up despite some of the nation's most restrictive anti-gun laws to have any kind of significant impact on the city's criminal population.
That said, DoJ surveys year after year show that over 80% of criminals will deliberately avoid committing a crime against or even merely in the presence of someone they know to be armed; only a slightly smaller percentage (75%) will do the same if they think that someone might be armed. That's not much of an "arms race" if one side is backing down the instant the other is armed...
basically, i'd like to give law enforcement more tools to stop a gun's illegal use before it happens. simply having one on a college campus, for instance, carrying without having your permit on you, having an unregistered gun, that kind of thing. of course, illegal search and seizure would still take precedence, but i think you get the direction i'm going in. i don't see how those things would be too onerous for legal gun possession.
Because mere possession of a firearm of any kind (well, any legal kind...) is not indicative of criminal intent, nor even of threat to personal or public safety. In fact, statistically speaking, gun owners are several times less likely to commit a crime with a gun than non gun owners -- if either of us should be afraid of the other, then based on the evidence I should be scared of you!
[Caveat: That stat comes from roughly a dozen state Justice Departments (or their equivalents), specifically from states that require a license to carry a firearm (but not necessarily to own one). The stat actually says that CCW license holders are 3-4 times less likely to commit a crime with a firearm. The extrapolation above to gun owners is based on the subset of states here that also require a license to own a gun, in which there are 2-3 times as many licensed gun owners as there are licensed gun owners with CCW permits -- which still puts the entire population of gun owners no higher than the minimum threshold of non gun owners who commit crimes with guns. While there is no evidence that this stat cannot be applied to the population at large (i.e. outside of those states that require licenses merely to own, let alone into states where CCW permits are not required), neither is there any counter-evidence. This extrapolation is further bolstered by the ATF's stat on how many crime guns are not legally owned, which although it's an incredibly high percentage it doesn't say anything about other guns the criminal might legally own.
All this is to say that in locales where such a stat is known, non gun owners are far more likely to commit crimes with guns than gun owners.]
yup. the cartoon made no distinction. if it had stipulated that it was only talking about victims of violent crimes, i wouldn't have bothered with that argument. however, it only stated a broad rule; to prove it false, i only needed to show a counter-example.
That was the point I was trying to make earlier -- the cartoon didn't need to stipulate that because you're several orders of magnitude more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than you are to be involved in a firearm accident. In other words, it applies to the population at large, not some arbitrary subset. Again, though, the caveat of no known (to us, at least) stats dividing up the population into gun owners and non gun owners to draw a completely fair comparison applies, however:
Polls in recent years show gun ownership over 50% in the US (although pollsters suspect under-reporting, meaning the actual number is probably higher); if we round that down to 50% and then make the (erroneous but probably close to accurate) assumption that all gun accidents involve gun owners, that effectively doubles the gun accident rate -- and still leaves you multiple orders of magnitude more likely to be the victim of a violent crime than of a gun accident!
because it's pretty easy to see where a gun shouldn't have been allowed after the fact. responsive versus preventative.
but i know there are some gun-rights people who honestly believe background checks should be stringent enough to block those sorts of sales.
No, not responsive -- preventative. Loughner was exactly the kind of person in mind when the NRA helped expands the NICS program to include the mentally unstable, and Arizona was (is?) one of the worst offenders in terms of non-compliance with that law. Had Arizona been in full compliance, would that have stopped Loughner? Only if one of the dozens of people in a position to recognize his instability had actually reported him.
But the point that we (myself and the NRA, among others) have made all along is that there already are checks in place to stop people like Loughner buying a gun, and that enforcement, not knee-jerk "feel-good" laws, is what's needed.
you know that sets off all kinds of alarm bells, right? it's like letting the oil lobby help draft energy legislation. of course any lobby would be more than happy to help write their own legislation.
No more than it should when you see environmentalist lobbyists drafting energy legislation.
That's the thing about Washington -- lobbyists of one flavor or another are involved in almost every single bill that passes through Congress. It's patently unfair -- hypocritical, even -- to complain about the lobbyists you disagree with but turn a blind eye to e.g. the Brady Campaign (formerly the Coalition to Ban Handguns) and their contribution to pushing through Clinton's so-called "assault weapons" ban just because you happen to agree with those lobbyists' agenda.
(For the record, I think lobbyists are a necessary evil; I'd rather none of them existed, but at the same time they're the strongest way we can make our voices heard. (Admittedly not all lobbyists work for the people, but there are many -- e.g. the NRA, which despite its alleged power has a meager budget compared to other lobbyist groups -- that are grassroots organizations and work on behalf of their membership.))
...and why wasn't this in the first draft? it just didn't occur to anyone? i can't believe it was just overlooked.
Because the system was originally designed to check criminal records (hence the name -- National Instant Criminal Background Check System; admittedly the acronym falls a bit short...), and only later was it expanded to include other categories of prohibited persons (e.g. the mentally unstable).
ouch. even more so than crime?
Yes, actually. Passing ineffective laws wastes time, effort, and money that could be better used to bolster enforcement of existing laws, or to pass effective laws, both of which would have the effect of reducing crime -- instead, we either have no effect whatsoever or, in the worst case, allow crime to increase because we're spreading our limited resources too far to be effective. The old adage "If you're not part of the solution..." definitely applies here -- why contribute to the problem when simply doing nothing at all makes it no worse?
the thing is, it's mostly ineffective legislation that gets passed. politicians simply can't take on the NRA and survive.
This is a totally bogus accusation. Many of the senators and representatives who helped draft and subsequently pass -- over the NRA's strong opposition -- Clinton's so-called "assault weapons" ban are still sitting Congress. NYC's Mayor Bloomberg is one of the most vocal anti-gun politicians around, and despite being on the NRA's "hit list" for years he's survived quite well; ditto Chicago's Mayor Daly, right up until he retired, upon which Chicago elected a new mayor every bit as anti-gun as Daly was -- if not more so!
I could go on and on citing counter-examples -- like listing almost every politician in California and Illinois -- but the point is that the NRA's alleged power is nowhere near that influential. Yes, they can shift an election or two in already-gun-friendly regions, but the NRA's lobbying power is much smaller than those who fear it believe it to be.
Case in point: Obama was elected President, despite the NRA's opposition over his statements and history on gun control. And again despite the NRA's opposition, he looks on track to win re-election this year.
First off, an apology - Kromey