Maybe we should teach gun safety in schools…
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I am indeed. And the Dicky Amendment had the effect of quashing research (or more specifically, CDC-sponsored funding for research) concerning gun violence. This is simply a fact. Even Jay Dickey himself came to regret the effect his law had on gun-violence research.
"The Dickey Amendment didn’t technically ban any federally funded gun violence research. The real blow was delivered by a succession of pusillanimous CDC directors, who decided that the safest course bureaucratically was simply to zero out the whole field.
Remarkably, that approach has continued to the present day: After the Newtown massacre of schoolchildren in 2012, President Obama issued an executive order instructing the CDC to “conduct or sponsor research into the causes of gun violence and the ways to prevent it.” But the agency has refused unless it receives a specific appropriation to cover the research. Congress played its obligatory role in acting as the NRA’s cat’s-paw by repeatedly rejecting bills to provide $10 million for the work."
So let’s dispense with the notion that the effect of the Dicky Amendment was anything but the cessation of CDC-sponsored research on gun violence.
The WISQARS database is just that–a database. It is not research, much less gun-violence research.
Is there a word for doubling down on presumptuousness?
I don’t know anything about Maine, its rates of gun ownership or gun violence. I do know that I acknowledged early on that this was a complex subject.
First can we get rid of Kardashian culture?
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I hear ya. But–and I’m loathe to admit this–I’d kinda like to keep Kim around. Because, you know.
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uggg… Courtney (Kourtney?) maybe…
I know, I know, I’m not proud of it.
Correct. You can make a bump stock with your belt. It would be impossible to define legally.
You can also make a fully auto AK with a normal AK, a drill press, a pair of pliers, a screwdriver, and less than $40 worth of otherwise-legal parts that become illegal the second you drill that magic hole in the receiver.
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A rumor about what?
May give ‘em a more widely-accepted reason to ban semi-autos. That’s my guess as to the motive of the shooter.
So ban everything but bolt action rifles, black powder, and pump action shotguns?
We can only hope!
I’m not sure I’d be even be lucid if my brother took his life. In the most regrettable possible way, thank you for sharing. God bless, man.
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If you control for suicides, violent crime is a Democrat problem. If you want to change any gun culture start there.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/263495/curse-violent-crime-democrat-run-cities-discover-networks
Hmm…I’d wager that, in addition to being Dems, the mayors of the 10 most dangerous cities are all Christians. So, does it follow that violent crime is a Christian problem?
C’mon man.
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Amen. @sunnbeaches105 and @SkyzykS, it’s hard to imagine. You’re both going forward raising the next generation. That’s incredibly admirable and hopeful. We try to give our families, our children something better. God bless.
@ addiction, I doubt if there’s a family in America that hasn’t dealt with it on some level. Talking about both addiction and mental illness it is a way to shine some light, and maybe make people feel less alone. We see people attempting to self-medicate physical or emotional pain or exorcise personal demons.
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Looks like a democracy problem to me.
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Well what “gun culture” are you after changing specifically?
Ever since the first cave man sharpened a stick humans have had a culture of arms. The Europeans named their swords and took them to worship. Japanese craftsmen meditated while making swords. There’s the marksmanship legends of robin hood and William Tell. I could go on, but you get it. It’s not unique to the US.
Early Americans took that further because weapons are necessary tools on lawless fronteirs (with their own marksmanship legends). The US was also the first nation that guaranteed that the average citizen (riff-raff) could keep arms in their homes.
Legalsteel and Powerpuff, thank you. Both were years ago, and the only reasons I keep sharing that information is in the hope that something will eventually change, and to try and get people to recognize that mental health is a significant societal issue that needs to be addressed.
For example, we can’t expect to churn soldiers through brutal combat deployment after deployment without being willing to provide the help they need. If we do that then we have 20+ soldiers die of suicide every day.
By the same token, we can’t take abused boys out of their homes, dust them off, and again hope for the best without recognizing that they need help working through their experiences. If we don’t then we end up with generations of child abuse, crime, and failure. All that is very expensive to society.
I sound like a “bleeding heart liberal” until I say something like, It’s just cheaper and easier to blame guns. Then I’m a “gun nut.”
The current Democrat vs. Republican ideological split isn’t working. But that’s a bit of another issue.
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Eddy Eagle tried that
As far as underlying reasons for gun violence and consequently the homicide rate, I’m not sure if anyone has tried to do a PCA analysis of the available macroeconomic, social and demographic variables, but if you remove obvious outliers where a single homicide propelled a specific territory up the list I can’t see an obvious correlation with variables such as population density or GDP.