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Subject: FYI- did u know 28 Americans die daily due to gun violence
Necromancer    3/31/2009 2:41:30 AM
Gun control overdue!!!
 
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warpig       4/25/2009 9:36:59 PM
Not that I consider this an acceptable concept to begin with regardless of any effiicacy thereof, but licensing, registering, and limiting purchase numbers accomplishes basically zippo regarding the firearms in the hands of criminals unless it somehow is useful in the process of actually separating criminals from their already-possessed unlicensed, unregistered, and however-obtained firearms, and keeping them separate.
 
Now I admit I'm not sure this actually is a proper solution, as I have never really researched it for myself, but I suspect it certainly would have a greater impact on reducing the effects of crime than any gun control measure would:  How about we just enforce the federal law that has existed for something like 15-20 years (or more?), and actually impose the required mandatory minimum 5 years in prison added onto any conviction of any crime that involves the use of a firearm?  Combine that with a three strikes you're out approach for violent felonies, and the crime rate would plummet by default.  I do caveat that by saying something seems improper to me about a fedeerally-imposed sentence on convictions under state laws, and it would make sense to me if that extra penalty is therefore only applicable to federal convictions (and of course part of me dislikes the idea of most "crimes" as currently defined under *federal* law). However, states could certainly adopt similar measures if desired.
 
 
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Aussiegunneragain    Warpig   4/26/2009 3:08:51 AM

Not that I consider this an acceptable concept to begin with regardless of any effiicacy thereof, but licensing, registering, and limiting purchase numbers accomplishes basically zippo regarding the firearms in the hands of criminals unless it somehow is useful in the process of actually separating criminals from their already-possessed unlicensed, unregistered, and however-obtained firearms, and keeping them separate.

Now I admit I'm not sure this actually is a proper solution, as I have never really researched it for myself, but I suspect it certainly would have a greater impact on reducing the effects of crime than any gun control measure would:  How about we just enforce the federal law that has existed for something like 15-20 years (or more?), and actually impose the required mandatory minimum 5 years in prison added onto any conviction of any crime that involves the use of a firearm?  Combine that with a three strikes you're out approach for violent felonies, and the crime rate would plummet by default.  I do caveat that by saying something seems improper to me about a fedeerally-imposed sentence on convictions under state laws, and it would make sense to me if that extra penalty is therefore only applicable to federal convictions (and of course part of me dislikes the idea of most "crimes" as currently defined under *federal* law). However, states could certainly adopt similar measures if desired. 


I agree that appropriate law enforcement and sentancing measures are needed to get illegal guns out of the community. However, while enforcing the law that you outline might get some violent criminals out of the community, the problem is that  the authorities have to wait for them to commit a crime with a firearm in order to do anything. A proper, nationally applied licensing and registration regime would allow police to take guns off criminals at any time that they become aware that they have them and for the courts to punish them for possessing unregistered weapons, complementing zero tolerance policing approaches. It would gradually get the weapons out of the communty and would make it more difficult given that they wouldn't be able to get them from the next state. This research article shows how licencing an registration can work to reduce the number of guns owned by criminals.
 

"Results—In cities located in states with both mandatory registration and licensing systems (five cities), a mean of 33.7% of crime guns were first sold by in-state gun dealers, compared with 72.7% in cities that had either registration or licensing but not both (seven cities), and 84.2% in cities without registration or licensing (13 cites). Little of the difference between cities with both licensing and registration and cities with neither licensing nor registration was explained by potential confounders. The share of the population near a city that resides in a neighboring state without licensing or registration laws was negatively associated with the outcome.

Conclusion—States with registration and licensing systems appear to do a better job than other states of keeping guns initially sold within the state from being recovered in crimes. Proximity to states without these laws, however, may limit their impact."


 
 
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Aussiegunneragain    Warpig   4/26/2009 3:11:21 AM

Not that I consider this an acceptable concept to begin with regardless of any effiicacy thereof, but licensing, registering, and limiting purchase numbers accomplishes basically zippo regarding the firearms in the hands of criminals unless it somehow is useful in the process of actually separating criminals from their already-possessed unlicensed, unregistered, and however-obtained firearms, and keeping them separate.

Now I admit I'm not sure this actually is a proper solution, as I have never really researched it for myself, but I suspect it certainly would have a greater impact on reducing the effects of crime than any gun control measure would:  How about we just enforce the federal law that has existed for something like 15-20 years (or more?), and actually impose the required mandatory minimum 5 years in prison added onto any conviction of any crime that involves the use of a firearm?  Combine that with a three strikes you're out approach for violent felonies, and the crime rate would plummet by default.  I do caveat that by saying something seems improper to me about a fedeerally-imposed sentence on convictions under state laws, and it would make sense to me if that extra penalty is therefore only applicable to federal convictions (and of course part of me dislikes the idea of most "crimes" as currently defined under *federal* law). However, states could certainly adopt similar measures if desired. 


I agree that appropriate law enforcement and sentancing measures are needed to get illegal guns out of the community. However, while enforcing the law that you outline might get some violent criminals out of the community, the problem is that  the authorities have to wait for them to commit a crime with a firearm in order to do anything. A proper, nationally applied licensing and registration regime would allow police to take guns off criminals at any time that they become aware that they have them and for the courts to punish them for possessing unregistered weapons, complementing zero tolerance policing approaches. It would gradually get the weapons out of the community and would make it more difficult for criminals to get them given that they wouldn't be able to get them from the next state. This research article shows how licencing an registration can work to reduce the number of guns owned by criminals.
 

"Results—In cities located in states with both mandatory registration and licensing systems (five cities), a mean of 33.7% of crime guns were first sold by in-state gun dealers, compared with 72.7% in cities that had either registration or licensing but not both (seven cities), and 84.2% in cities without registration or licensing (13 cites). Little of the difference between cities with both licensing and registration and cities with neither licensing nor registration was explained by potential confounders. The share of the population near a city that resides in a neighboring state without licensing or registration laws was negatively associated with the outcome.

Conclusion—States with registration and licensing systems appear to do a better job than other states of keeping guns initially sold within the state from being recovered in crimes. Proximity to states without these laws, however, may limit their impact."
 
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PowerPointRanger    In comparison   4/26/2009 4:08:58 AM
About 3,700 deaths occur in the US every day from "safe", legal abortions.
 
Compared to 28 from guns.
 
 To be fair, gun violence in the US doesn't even make the top 10 causes of deaths in the US. Given that gun ownership is a right in the US (as plainly stated in the Constitution and affirmed by the Supreme Court) and abortion has an admittedly dubious legal and constitutional basis, perhaps we ought to be look at banning plenty of other things first.
 
 
 
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buzzard       4/26/2009 11:38:22 AM
I agree that appropriate law enforcement and sentancing measures are needed to get illegal guns out of the community. However, while enforcing the law that you outline might get some violent criminals out of the community, the problem is that  the authorities have to wait for them to commit a crime with a firearm in order to do anything. A proper, nationally applied licensing and registration regime would allow police to take guns off criminals at any time that they become aware that they have them and for the courts to punish them for possessing unregistered weapons, complementing zero tolerance policing approaches. It would gradually get the weapons out of the community and would make it more difficult for criminals to get them given that they wouldn't be able to get them from the next state. This research article shows how licencing an registration can work to reduce the number of guns owned by criminals.
 
 There are quite a number of foibles here.
 
 In the U.S. you can't simply stop someone and search them arbitrarily (unless it is an airport, but don't get me started on that nonsense). As such, it doesn't matter what new gun control scheme you propose, you will still need to wait for a criminal to commit a crime before you can arrest them for having the firearm (or have already committed a felony at some time in the past which I suppose is restating the above). As it is already illegal for a convicted felon to own a gun, I'm not exactly sure what you expect to accomplish with licensing and registration. If a felon has a gun, it is illegal, this doesn't require a DB of guns to understand or enforce. It requires a DB of criminal records, which every cop car in this country is already tied into and can access in seconds. If you have cause to apprehend them (or even to suspect they are carrying a gun), you check their background, and if they have a felony and are carrying a gun, voila, they get slammer time.
 
Also, you have to get over the myth of interstate transfers being the big source of guns. While I don't doubt guns cross state lines, it is not as if a felon from State A can simply go into State B and buy a gun without a hitch. Things don't work that way. You pretty much can only buy guns in your state of residence. That is on the form you fill out with every purchase. If you apply on the form with any state other than the one you are in, they just won't sell it to you. Though in any case, say you did decide that you wanted to buy a gun in State B, even if they did sell to outside residents- we still have a national background check DB which you need to pass when you purchase a firearm. It doesn't matter what state you are in, your criminal record for the whole country is always available.
 
And to get you past your smarmy nonsense about the NRA, they are the ones that pushed for the above electronic background check. The NRA is not a trade organization. Gun manufacturer trade organizations do exist and are separate. The NRA is primarily an organization dedicated to the promotion of the shooting sports. They do this mostly through organization of competitions, by promoting training, and by extensive offering of firearms safety information. To be quite honest their lobbying is really a side note, no matter how much they get vilified in the press. They might be a convenient boogeyman, but they don't actually advocate arming everyone, felons included. As I said to the other fellow from down under, get over Hollywood. 
 
Let me put this bluntly, licensing and registration only serve one purpose. Control of law abiding citizens. Criminals will experience nothing different whatsoever in the face of such a schema. It is already illegal for them to own such arms, and they can already be arrested for possession of such (oh, and BTW the NRA was very vigorous in supporting tight enforcement of such laws against felons possessing weapons, and worked closely with the feds on expanding such enforcement programs).  Licensing and registration merely make it easier for the State to confiscate any guns in the eventuality that they decide to outlaw some of them.
 
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warpig       4/26/2009 11:52:08 AM


I agree that appropriate law enforcement and sentancing measures are needed to get illegal guns out of the community. However, while enforcing the law that you outline might get some violent criminals out of the community, the problem is that  the authorities have to wait for them to commit a crime with a firearm in order to do anything. A proper, nationally applied licensing and registration regime would allow police to take guns off criminals at any time that they become aware that they have them and for the courts to punish them for possessing unregistered weapons, complementing zero tolerance policing approaches. It would gradually get the weapons out of the community and would make it more difficult for criminals to get them given that they wouldn't be able to get them from the next state. This research article shows how licencing an registration can work to reduce the number of guns owned by criminals.


1.  Considering the high recidivism rate among violent criminals and the high precentage of violent crime committed by recidivists, removing the recidivists from society should accomplish a great deal toward reducing violent crime (which all stats show has been significantly dropping over the last decade-plus already).
2.  Authorities can already take guns off of criminals anytime they become aware they have them, and the courts can already punish them merely for having weapons (whether registered or not) to the extent that "criminals" is defined as convicted felons, as it is already illegal for convicted felons to ever be in possession of a firearm.  Furthermore, there is already court decision precedent that criminals are not required to register their firearms precisely because of this fact, due to their right to avoid self-incrimination.  Even with a registration law in effect, the criminals (i.e., convicted felons) would be exempt by definition, and thus would be the only group not punishable for disobeying any such law!
 
3.  Tougher measures to ensure firearms are not sold to criminals (i.e., convicted felons) merely means that they would have to get their guns though other means.  This proposal is not yet demonstrated to have any ultimate effect (again, not that that would particularly matter to me anyway, as it is already invalid for Constitutionally-related reasons to begin with) until it can be shown that the criminals can not find other effectual means to still end up obtaining a firearm.

 
 
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enter_space_disco       4/26/2009 12:18:32 PM
Buzzard
Let's examine my quote taken from an article.
"In 2004, the last year for which statistics are available, guns were used in the murders of 1285 children and another 120 were killed in firearm accidents. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention says the rate of firearm deaths of children under 15 is almost 12 times greater in the US than in 25 other industrialised nations."  h**p://www.smh.com.au/news/wor... The first sentence does not give an age range. The reporter does not quote an age range, but from the website you quoted, h**p://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/n... , the age range used by him seems to be 0 to 18 years. Homicide with firearm from the CDC website is 1291, and accidents come out to 121. The CDC website gives a proviso that it's figures might not correspond to figures used by other authorities, and that it's figures are adjusted yearly. "During 1989-1995, annual counts of deaths prepared by some States differ from those of NCHS. Differences between State and NCHS counts are generally concentrated among selected causes of death, principally Symptoms, signs, and ill-defined conditions (ICD-9 Nos. 780-799) and external causes (homicides, suicides and unintentional injuries). These differences occurred mainly because NCHS did not receive changes resulting from amended records. Affected States are as follows: Alaska, 1989-1995; Alabama, 1991-1992; Hawaii, 1991; New Jersey, 1991-1993." h**p://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/osp/a... On the same page , "Updates to the data presented on these pages will occur annually". (The CDC website uses data tapes provided by the NHCS)
The author may have been using an earlier version of statistics from the same website, or from another authority, but the differences in the figures are neither here nor there.
 
As you have said, "For the U.S. in 2004, the total number of firearm related deaths of children ages 0-15 is 565. Of these, there were 73 accidental deaths." This seems to support the argument in the second sentence from the artice I mentioned. "The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention says the rate of firearm deaths of children under 15 is almost 12 times greater in the US than in 25 other industrialised nations" . This is cited from h**p://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/PDF/rr... page 11, (page 13 of 24 on pdf reader).
 
 
Also from this link "Despite claims by the National Rifle Association that guns protect the owners from crime, the Johns Hopkins University's Centre for Gun Policy and Research found that in households with guns, the murder of a family member is three times more likely than in homes without guns. Also, the risk of a suicide of a family member increased by about five times in homes with guns." [From h**p://www.smh.com.au/news/wor... ]
 
 You actually should be more careful citing that source. They've been debunked repeatedly in the past for extremely poor methodology. Their approach to analysis is to look at the murder rate for people with firearms in their house without any measure of controls for other circumstances. Why is this important? Well let's think about this. If I live in a crime ridden neighborhood, I will probably be inclined to buy a gun to protect myself. Did the authors of the study correct the analysis on the basis of the crime rates? No. Did they correct on the basis of whether the murder victim was in the process of committing a criminal act (crack house, meth lab, etc)? No.They simply took a sampling of murder victims and checked to see if their had been a gun in the house. They didn't even correct by checking to see what the percentage of gun ownership was in that neighborhood. Say you have a bad neighborhood where everyone owns a gun for self protection. Will it come as a shocker that a murder victim will have a gun in their house? Maybe for you, but not for the rational.
 
I have looked at the paper from the John Hopkins University h**p://www.jhsph.edu
 
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RockyMTNClimber    Aga reply, John Lott, Australia, and UK   4/26/2009 12:24:59 PM
Of course you must dismiss the statistical trends that resulted with the Australian and UK gun bans. In order to carry your argument you must not look to measurable facts and data. Instead you must create a "religion" of reason. If we restrict the debate to factual before and after effects of these policies we see a consistent sociological reaction. Disarming honest, law abiding citizens  creates an environment where criminals can easily prey upon their victims. This is universally supported by the observed crime rates in Australia, UK, and the USA. Your policy has been tried and its sociological effects are known.
 
John Lott: I have posted for you research and peer reviewed materials. His research stands the test of time and although many people subscribe to the "religion" of gun control, they have had no success in refuting his data analysis. In fact one major paper actually ended up finding errors in his assumptions that made the effect of his conclusions even more dramatic. It is easy to simply post on a blog that "others have been critical" and not be able to document specific cases where he is wrong. In order to do it with credibility is a completely different thing.
 
To summarize, we know what happened when Australia and UK banned guns. We know what happened when the US liberalized the ownership and possession of guns. We also can compare jurisdictions within the USA where guns effectively remain banned today. All of that data points US inescapably to the conclusion that gun control does not work.
 
Check Six
 
Rocky
 
 
 
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RockyMTNClimber    Disco reply   4/26/2009 12:34:46 PM
They may have gone up for various reasons. In Australia we went through a recent period of gang related murders. Gansters were going down like flies, and the police caught up with the rest. Some crims may have hidden away guns which were used in a last hurrah of violence.
 
Thank you for your reply. Like Aga, you must ignore the data and push on with what I describe as a "religion" of reason. We have seen in Australia it took a decade to return to the previous homicide rate trend. Many hundreds of your countrymen suffered directly as a result of this policy. At the very least it had no effect in the homicide rate so the policy amounts to seizing private property for no tangible positive result. IMV it takes an incredible leap of logic to say that that spike, exactly coinciding with the banning of guns, did not represent cause and effect. Plus, Australia saw increases in gun crimes in as well that took years to return to the normal trend lines.
 
Check Six
 
Rocky
 
 
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Aussiegunneragain    Buzzard and Warpig   4/26/2009 12:35:21 PM
Buzzard,
 
Try pulling your head out of the sand on the NRA. I've dealt with lobbiests from various industries over the years and many undertake services other than lobbying, but at the end of the day they are there to protect their paycheck by protecting that of their members. This mob are no different and if you look at their list of sponsors below you will see whose interests they are representing.
 
NRA-Corporate-Sponsors-2009.gif
 
 
As for the rest of your arguments I could argue them point by point but the most important thing to note is that virtually all of the domestically produced guns that the criminals are getting originated from a legal source. This means that they can be stopped at that source or in transit from it by appropriate and well-enforced regulation. The article that I posted suggests that registration of firearms is effective in reducing firearms ownership by criminals, but if you have a better idea then by all means feel free to share it. I'd note that just saying existing laws will do clearly doesn't cut it though because crooks don't seem to have any trouble getting guns in the US at the moment.
 
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