Or you could do something, achieve little, and lose much. If the goal is harm reduction by body count, rifles of all kinds are very, very far down on the list of preventable deaths.
If the goal is making people feel like they did something, then yes, all kinds of gun control laws will help the US.
Sure. I’ll concede that the destructive potential of an AR15 exceeds that of a sword. But maybe that 1 in 20 million guy had some kind of sword fantasy he was living out, and that’s what drove him to that particular choice of weapon.
We sure seem to have a lot of people in the US who use rifles to carry out spree killings, going all the way back to the infamous clock tower shooter. We also seem to have a lot of rifles, and I’m sure there is a connection there.
It is also obvious that the destructive aims of these people vary, and their motivations are very difficult to understand, especially when they often end up dead shortly after everyone found out that they are one of the 1 in 20 million. Do they aim to kill as many people as they can but only if they get to use a rifle? Maybe some do, but I’m not about to underestimate the creativity and willingness to follow through of people who you don’t know are murderers until they suddenly are.
It is impossible to know and impossible to measure. I’m not ready to dramatically change firearms laws that seem to me to be in a pretty good place right now overall on a hope and prayer that these exceedingly rare and difficult to understand events will somehow play out on a different scale.
Lose much? Achieve little? I wouldn’t call saved lives little even if the amount isn’t massive.
Don’t we work on a lot of things that aren’t as high as heart disease though? Why would we not do something simply because it doesn’t kill as much as cancer? And the public clearly thinks something should be done. And we clearly have an issue that a lot of other countries in the most developed parts don’t have.
Nope. His “manifesto” stated that he wanted to kill as many immigrants as possible. As he couldn’t get a gun license in Sweden due to - oh the horror - a very rigorous vetting process, he had to settle for a sword. Many lives were probably saved.
Where are the mass poisonings then? Home made bombs? Why aren’t the crazies in other countries going on killing sprees using new and innovative methods and tools?
Why seatbelts then? Why the creation of the TSA?
Okay. Let’s go with this and use 2018 data and VERY loose definition of multiple victim public shootings. Most of this would be best classified as “gang” violence. Also note the rarity of “big ones” in a country of 300 million people.
What laws do you propose, how might you see them implemented and how many of these lives do you think would have been saved?
We can then go over the “lose much” part of whatever it is you may be proposing. Economic, social, political, and we can’t forget to count the more frequent defensive uses of whatever category of firearms you might like to see restricted. It think it is fair to consider those events as well.
I can come back to this later but I’m going to have to be gone for a bit. I’m not forgetting the defensive uses and I agree that’s a good point. What I don’t agree with is “I need to be able to buy something that can shoot tons of bullets quickly without reloading because what if the bad guys have that?!?” Why do we act like to defend ourselves we need massive amounts of firearms? God damn whatever happened to “Ive got a shotgun for intruders.”
It would seem like a logical place to start would be with guns that have the ability to kill a lot of people really quickly. Yes I realize these weapons already exist. Yes I realize not everyone would turn them in with buyback programs. Yes this might not have a massive short term impact or even long term one. Yes I realize the devil may be in the details but I haven’t heard real good arguments about the need to own these. They don’t seem to fit into hunting or personal defense unless we’re being nuts. And I’m not discounting “it’s my right to do whatever the fuck so if I want to own grenades I own grenades” but think that leaves the conversation nowhere to go. Which is fine if that’s what you believe.
But I got to go but I will leave you with a question. What 2 or 3 things would you do if you had unlimited power that you think would have an effect on lowering gun deaths even if the number was low? And please god don’t say get rid of violent video games. Do you think any common sense laws could be created that may help? For simplicity’s sake federal.
I don’t by any means claim to be an expert on any of this. Honestly it’s not a topic I really care too much about to know all the details of (not that I don’t think it’s a big issue merely that it doesn’t interest me to study/read a bunch of arguments on). It just seems to me like the status quo isn’t working. And the majority of Americans agree.
If a problem is created then there has to be a solution.
You don’t see these types of acts in Western Europe. Contrary to popular belief, you can buy guns there. What are they doing right and what are we doing wrong?
Can’t argue that
Yes you do.
Always a good question to ask, as is the opposite. I’d be happy to hear your ideas on this.
Well for starters I’d challenge you to find a single gunfight survivor who will go on record saying “I had too much ammunition in my gun”. You can find many examples of bad outcomes from people not having enough ammunition to stay in the fight. Cops tend to have the best documentation, but they aren’t the only examples. The only way to know if you have enough ammunition is to get in a gunfight and see what happens. 15 rounds in a handgun doesn’t mean 15 attackers fended off. Far from it, if actual shooting events are to teach us anything.
I don’t think anyone is advocating quantity over quality when it comes to personal defense. The general line of advice I received was to pick a firearm you were comfortable with and train the hell out of it. Of course, guns are things and people tend to accumulate things, especially when they find them interesting or useful. I’m no different.
I’d be hard-pressed to spell more than a two or maybe three letter word with my arsenal, but I could probably figure out how to do a “Trump” photo of my own if you loosened the rules and let me use my Red Ryder, Nerf guns and squirt guns to complete the picture. Each of my firearms has a specific application, and I plan on adding more. As far as things to piss your money away on go, firearms are one of the better bets when it comes to holding their value. Seems to me like a perfectly sensible thing to collect. Nefarious intent is not at all necessary.
I’m a big motherfucker who is stronger than the overwhelming majority of men on the planet. I’ve never understood why certain calibers or platforms are considered more manly than others, let alone why certain classes of firearms are broadly considered better than others. I prefer an AR15 for my home defense long gun because of it’s low recoil and comparatively low power per individual round. Capacity is a factor, but so is my ability to control the weapon and deliver shots on target. This is due to good design of the overall platform and the dramatically lower power of an individual .223/556 round vs a 12 gauge load. You also have hearing damage to consider. A .223 is loud, but a 12 gauge is LOUD.
I also find the ballistic characteristics of a .223 to be less risky in my living situation, which involves close neighbors. The round and especially the ammunition I’ve selected will dump much of it’s lethal energy into whatever it first comes into contact with, like a person or wall. There are 12 gauge loads that can behave similarly, but they lose effectiveness in stopping a threat. 00 buck shot, which is one of the go-to rounds, will retain much more of it’s energy going through something like wooden walls. You’re also firing 9 or more bullets at a time with a shotgun, and you’re accountable for where each of them go.
I’m not anti-shotgun, it’s just not what I choose for my situation. It is also worth noting that I just like shooting a .223 a lot more than a shotgun, so training is more enjoyable. I’ve enjoyed shooting since I got my Red Ryder at age 10. I could shoot that thing all day. I didn’t shoot for much of my adult life, but I now find that I can shoot an AR-15 all day. Some may disagree, but putting 600 rounds through a 12 gauge in an afternoon doesn’t sound like an enjoyable training session to me.
Almost all of them do. They’re guns. They’re dangerous. You can also carry more than one on you at a time. Going back to your shotgun scenario, it’s entirely possible that some mass shootings that used AR15’s might have had higher fatalities if a shotgun or multiple powerful weapons with lower capacity were brought to the fight. You can, after all, get two, three or even four shotguns for the price of a decent AR15. Maybe the number of people shot is lower, but a close range wound from a 12 gauge can be thoroughly devastating in a way that a single projectile from a .223 caliber rifle cannot match. Is it a good outcome if 10 fewer people are shot but 3 more people die? These are the intangible and immeasurable alternatives we should still try to consider, in my opinion.
Need has very little to do with it. You don’t need something until you’re in a situation where you do. The devil is, in fact, in the details here. What are you talking about when you say “these”? AR15’s? All semi-automatic rifles? What about magazine capacity? Well, when you consider that a magazine is just a box with springs, it seems pretty silly to believe that you can somehow prevent people from making their own boxes with springs. This is technology from a distant era we’re talking about here. 200 year-old machine shop technology and modern 3D printers, now quite numerous, have many answers to the black market supply problem if boxes with springs manage to get banned.
I believe a complete ban on all firearms and a rigorously-enforced confiscation program with very steep penalties for non-compliance could have the effect you’re after. I’m not sure it would lower violent deaths, but I’d be confident that gun deaths would decrease in the USA. I’ve never seen any data that show a dramatic decline in violent crime after any landmark gun legislation. Even places like the UK and Australia simply carried on being peaceful, just as they were prior to the landmark legislation. No major declines were experienced, and they followed the same general crime trends over the decades that we have here in the USA, namely a period of gradual decline from the 70’s going all the way up at least 5 years ago, which is the last time I immersed myself in this subject and sought out any kind of real data. My state of Maine is among the most peaceful corners of the world, yet we have almost no gun laws at the state level. If you suddenly banned everything and somehow confiscated it all, I don’t think the state would break bad. We’d probably carry on being a peaceful people, just like the UK did.
If such measures were implemented, I suspect violent crime would rise, like it has recently in London, but it would probably lower deaths from guns. If lowering gun deaths is your singular objective, I believe it will require very draconian measures and severe roll-backs on our rights as citizens.
Well the Devil is in the details here too. I suspect you’ll get a dramatically different responses if you asked people’s opinions on specific details of a policy and the implications of that policy vs. asking a simple question like “Do you support universal background checks?”
I hope you found my perspective helpful on understanding why some people might have reservations about this legislation or be opposed to it entirely.
Probably. Possibly. No way to know. Sweden isn’t the USA. How do you propose that the USA might get to Sweden’s level of firearm availability, so that our 1 in 20 million people might be guided to edged weapons for their multiple victim massacres?
Well I gave a few examples already and so did you. The most prolific rampage killer in European history on the page you linked took place in the 16th century. Sure, guns are the obvious choice for an aspiring mass murderer, but all you need to do is look at the actual events to see that body counts in the high single digits and low double digits are “common” whenever these events take place in almost any country.
Good questions. Why not ban swimming pools and beaches without a government-certified lifeguard? Surely many fatalities could be avoided. Thousands of people die from avoidable drownings each year in the USA. What about cars that can travel over the speed limit? Such capabilities only inspire recklessness and lead to tragic outcomes. Nobody needs a motorcycle either. 7 motorcyclists died in a single collision event several weeks ago in my neighboring state. They didn’t need to be out on those death machines. If only someone had stopped them by making it illegal, it never would have happened.
We already have a TSA for firearms. It is called the ATF.
1960 - 2017 crime stats
Massive reductions during most of your lifetimes
Apologize in advance that I can’t address a bunch. It’s late and I have to take my daughter to enroll tomorrow.
Perhaps but we’re talking about vs mass shooters. If buyback programs, time, etc limited the rounds the average person could spit out in a short time you wouldn’t need them yourself. What we’re talking about would hopefully over reduce the ability to get those type of weapons or at least have a lot of them gone. How often is someone prepared to have to defend against 15 attackers? If you have 15 people trying to kill you then damn you might just be fucked.
Yes but some are much much more effective than others. If I’m a single shooter in a mall and I have to reload, grab a different gun, anything that is going to take time. Time for someone else to get a shot on me. Time for cops to arrive. Time for people to run away. Time to be rushed.
Completely and I’ll try to get back to more of it tomorrow. And I understand the reservations and I’m not a get all the guns guy in the least bit. But we can either do something or we can just do nothing. I’m hard pressed to believe the latter is correct.
Me neither. I’d be talking about federal level laws though. I don’t think state laws matter a whole lot. If Kansas banned everything tomorrow it would be a short drive to get whatever I wanted.
I think the difference here is that if I drive a motorcycle I’m largely the risk because of this decision. When you choose to get on that “death machine” it’s highly unlikely going to lead to a bunch of other people’s deaths.
Since this has turned into a gun violence discussion, I think one of the unique aspects of American culture that has a direct effect on the propensity for mass violence is our overall extreme self-reliance. I mean this is the sense that “I’m not going to look for help from anybody but me” attitude. Americans have always had a propensity towards this, and while admirable in many ways it is not healthy when communities disintegrate.
For much of our history close knit communities accompanied the self-reliant ethos, and held in check its baser, darker aspects. Effectively it acted as a brake for accelerating depression driven violence. As true communities, family units, and civility as a whole drop we are left with the “attention economy”, but with no solid REAL deep connections to secure our minds.
We are hard wired to seek community. Being “on a mission” (no matter how admirable the cause) but without any deep ties outside of a screen is a recipe for disaster.
Combine this missing piece with the 24/7 inundation on our phones, and now 24/7 bullying available online and the feeling that literally everyone else is having the perfect life (because all you see is heavily curated and filtered Instagram), and it’s a breeding ground for depression, resentment, and despair. Inevitably that turns violent in some. More than I think we would believe, but not all of them go full crazy
Tocqueville in his epic chronicle of Democracy in America writes some very significant warnings about how the American experiment could end (though not in so many words), which are related to some of these things.
If I was suddenly all powerful I would immediately connect people with what they’re hardwired for.
I didn’t want it to turn into a gun discussion but damn if I didn’t help 
I could not agree more with this. We’re more connected than ever but not in a true sense. We just have the means to see more. And the impacts are huge and we may not understand them fully enough anytime soon. My wife and I have a rule when we are out together that we don’t bring our phones out unless we truly need them. We realized we were ignoring each other. We’ve done that the last two years whenever we go out to eat or anything.
Passenger (acoustic artist) had a great line on a song.
“We’re scared of drowning, flying, and shooters but we’re all slowly dying in front of fucking computers.”
That is fucking brilliant. Completely agree. Unfortunately the first death is the soul in this sort of pseudo isolation. Tocqueville effect in full display (as conditions improve so does frustration).
We need people. Like real people face to face
I’m weird. I like punk rock, gangster rap, and acoustic guitar songs like this. And the Ac/dc Metallica’s of the world.
I believe the New Zealand shooter was an Aussie.
Whichever side you fall on, one thing we could all push for that I believe would make a big difference would be to fix the background check system, NICS. The system is there, I think we all agree that people with a history of violence, or certain mental illnesses should not be allowed to purchase firearms, and theoretically they are already prohibited from doing so. But some states, or entities do a shitty job of reporting. I’ve read that some states report less that 80% of violent felons to NICS.
TheTexas Church shooter had a history of violence towards his family and commanding officers while he was in the Airforce, but it was not reported to NICS. Was anyone held accountable for this? If people aren’t doing their job and reporting data to NICS, the system cannot work.
We should also spend more on mental health in the education system in general. As part of that, a child who has a history of violent outbursts, or even making violent threats should have a permanent record that is reported to NICS when they turn 18. I’m not suggesting that a 7 year old be reported for saying he’s going to burn down the school. But a 15 year old who says such things repeatedly in school and on social media is a more serious matter. Whatever privacy laws are in effect there could be amended, and due process could still be observed.