Gun ban at Pence-featured NRA convention has Parkland students baffled. Why more guns at schools, but zero at conventions?

It doesn’t hurt to hope. Who was it that coined the phrase, ‘Hope for the best; expect the worst’?

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The solution is obvious. Install Mike Pence in every classroom!

No, wait…there might be females in those classrooms.

I’ve got it…install Mike Pence and his wife in every classroom!

You’re thinking too small. Just declare the entire United States an NRA convention (sadly already true…) and since special politicians are in attendance, the whole place must be gun-free.

I don’t have a limit, per se. I am sure there is one, but I don’t have a hard number Do you have a limit of “acceptable deaths”? Gun homicides are nearly HALF of what they were when I was in high school. So even if I had a number, the number is trending DOWN.

Twice as likely for something very rare is still very rare. .01875% is a generous estimate of the percentage of users per year who use their guns as homicides weapons (it’s even lower some years). Accidental death (which does get a few suicides lumped into them) is an incredibly small percentage of .001%. Yes, owning a gun means you have increased risk of committing suicide via a gun. But I don’t know of any law one can craft that would stop that (other than ban and turn in, which I have been assured is not the goal, only common sense laws). Especially people who have owned guns for years, decades, and only be came suicidal later. Though I concede the point there is a correlation of less gun ownership means less gun suicide (though suicide can be much higher than the US rate with out the use of guns, as seen in other countries).

I can link you to charts that show the increase number of guns scaling with the reduction in gun homicides, but I won’t because I honestly think that is more of a correlation, vs causation. I concede that the documented number of guns stopping crime shows it is fairly rare, but there is some evidence that number is much higher when you account people using guns to ward off others or to stop crime with out firing a shot. These instances often go unreported, and those that are aren’t tracked nationally, that I know of.

Still, even if they are rarely used for defense, doesn’t mean the RIGHT to defense isn’t there. Look someone in the eye and say, “In the unlikely event someone breaks in and wants to cause you and your family harm, I don’t want you to have the best tool available to defend yourself.” And shit does happen. My mom knew one of the victims of the Wichita Massacre. A friend of mine just last week had his kid’s apartment broken into by a guy with a knife (Twice! After going to a hospital for suicide watch, he was released vs arrested!). A distant cousin had her boyfriend randomly stabbed to death at a gas station. There is a near zero downside for someone preparing themselves for unlikely violence. The average gun owner who keeps them for defense, hunting, sport, or what ever is not really the problem here.

Go seek out the annual police reports of places like Chicago, St Louis, Milwaukee, and LA, and they break down who is doing the worst homicides. It is clear that if you are murdered in these higher crime areas you are most likely killed by someone you know, someone who has an arrest record, and you likely have an arrest record. It is criminals preying on criminals, and they too are often armed. They usually break down the areas with the worst crime, and you can see it is highly localized. These are the majority of homicides that should be focused on. And based on a study in Pittsburgh (which echos an older study by the Bureau of Justice), ~80% of people arrest with guns did not legally own they gun they had.

According to those above reports mentioned, the second biggest cause of homicides is domestic violence. Thus this is where you get your correlation of gun ownership and an uptick in gun homicides. So I concede that point.

So - ok - we got some numbers laid out - what LAWS are we going to craft? Are we going to scorch earth and just take them all or almost all but the must basic fire arms? Can we craft laws that focus primarily on the people DOING the actual crimes, who are already skirting laws? Certainly I think we could bolster the NICS system to make sure it is accurate and up to date. Also while domestic abuse charges can get one flagged for NICS, there often isn’t anything DONE to make sure said person still has guns at home even when there is a conviction. (I think charges can even lead to at least temporary removal of firearms, but I think that varies state to state.) I also think follow ups on NICS REJECTIONS is prudent. There are like 80,000 rejections a year. Certainly not everyone rejected should be in jail or investigated, but if one is looking for people tying to own guns who shouldn’t, well, this seems like the list of prime leads from Glengarry Glen Ross.

What other ideas do people have.

Thanks

You are losing me with your math, I haven’t even had my 2nd MT Dew. I can’t understand how you get any where NEAR “So I’m already up to nearly 1% of Americans being killed by guns.”

The number I use, which I take generally HIGHER numbers than the more recent lower numbesr to be fair:

Suicides - 22,000
Homicides - 15,000
Accidents - 800

Those numbers will flux and if you look it up, you will find more recent numbers are lower (at least in homicides and accidents, not sure on suicides).

The estimates for gun owners (or people with access to guns) is based on a Pew survey and I took the lower estimate of 80 million. So for HOMICIDES that is .01875% using their guns for homicides.

I don’t lump suicides in that number, because it is a completely different problem.

It makes since that more of legal X will mean more supply of illegal X. But it makes no sense in BLAMING the makers or user of legal X for the illegal use of X. This goes with guns, drugs, booze, computers, etc.

If we magically removed all guns tomorrow, what weapons would criminals use? Probably knives (which London is getting in the news for, as their murder rate surpassed NYC the other month, with most homicides being stabbing.) So then what - are we just going to be like, “Eh, murder rate is less, but we can’t stop people stabbing each other. That’s silly.” Or are we going to limit knives? Or clubs?

I still disagree, but at least I understand your angle.

The ACLU and the NRA isn’t perfect, but I think both of these are the best rights groups we have for their respective rights. And these groups are a CHECK against the government. Remember, the Bill or Rights isn’t GRANTING rights to the people, it is LIMITING the government from effecting (affecting?) those rights.

This just boggles the mind. As Killer Mike said in an interview, “Don’t call the president a tyrant, and then tell me I shouldn’t have guns.” (mea culpa if I forgot a word, that may be a paraphrase.)

Look, I am not one of those people waiting to fight the government and water the tree of liberty with blood. Though I AM very wary of granting the government powers and authority that can be abused. Hence I am pro crypto, anti back door, wary as fuck about the NSA and domestic spying, etc. But I don’t sincerely think America is a police state per se (that isn’t to say we don’t have problems with policing), nor am I worried (yet) that it will be come a “literally fascist country”.

But if I was. If I was like… 20%ish worried about that, you can be damn sure giving up the prime means of resistance wouldn’t be on the list of things I support. YMMV.

Thank you, though, for your reply.

Of course. From a moral standpoint, no predictably avoidable deaths are acceptable.

The benefits of gun ownership are not morally superior to preventing unnecessary murders and accidents.

Mass gun ownership is a net loss for our society.

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= 37,800 (I was using something more like 33k that I got from googling)

Number of Americans who died last year, all causes 1,989,000

37800 / 1989000 = 0.019

1.9%. That’s how you get the number, by dividing the number of deaths from guns by the number of deaths.

Even for homicides, you are getting 0.01875% per year. If you add up all the causes of death per year you’ll note it comes to a lot less than 100%. Multiply by the number of years in your life to get percentage per lifetime.

Access to guns dramatically increases suicide completion. Gun ownership is heavily correlated with suicide in state-to-state comparisons. I can’t find a simple number, but if gun owners are twice as likely to kill themselves (this is in the right ballpark) then we can attribute half of gun suicides to gun ownership.

It is not a completely different problem. It is the number one problem with having so many guns around.

It makes sense to examine the effects political policies when evaluating a group that advocates for those policies. That’s not the same as blaming individuals.

I don’t know if America is going to descend into fascism or not. I’m a dire pessimist, and I probably overestimate the odds. But if it does, the majority of the people who say they need guns to fight fascist government are going to be in posses rounding up dissidents. They will be tools of the fascists, not enemies of the fascists.

In a poll, roughly half of Republicans believe that Trump won the popular vote in 2016 and would support postponing the 2020 election if Trump said it was necessary to ensure that the election were held fairly. Given the large difference in gun ownership of Republicans vs. non-RepuDo you think gun owners were over- or underrepresented in that group?

I think mass shootings are a very serious problem that need to be addressed because of the emotional impact they have. From an epidemiological point of view they are a blip, 50 deaths here, 13 there in a country where 5500 people die a day. But if we are going to back off to a clinical or statistical perspective and point out that they kill barely a 600th of the Americans that the flu does, we have to look at gun ownership as a whole from that same perspective.

It is a fact that owning a gun is dangerous from that perspective. It is a fact that most of the risk of gun ownership is born by gun owners but some of the risk is born by the people who are around them.

The same is true of driving to and from work every day (maybe half as dangerous than owning a gun) and of smoking (maybe about five times more dangerous than owning a gun). A huge amount of that risk could be mitigated with a cultural change around responsible of gun ownership. But gun ownership in the US is not about responsibility, it’s about rights.

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I will smuggle a bomb with me when I next fly, because a good guy with a bomb can surely stop a bad guy with a bomb. In fact, lets give every passenger on a plane their own bomb!

Oops, I think I usually do 18000 for suicides. I got mixed up. But yes ~330000 is the number I use, though that does flux year to year.

I think you’re right about it accounting for the overall deaths (though this includes suicides, but it is accurate).

I still think the math is off there. You’re saying one’s chance of being Murdered or suicided by a gun is 1%? I don’t think that is accurate. It has been waaaayyy too long since I have taken Calculus or any even algebra, but if that number was accurate one would think it would be headline. Don’t you need to factor in the full population alive during those 70 years? It isn’t the same 300+ million people. You probably have, what, 3x that much of people moving in/out, dying, and being born during that time?

Yes, I conceded that point and agree there is a correlation.

You’re right it is not a completely different problem if ones solution is just “remove the guns”. That tactic one hopes to have a blanket effect. I’ve been assured that isn’t the goal, though. Honestly, it will probably effect suicide numbers greater than crime numbers, as the honest folk not using them for crime will comply.

It IS a completely different solution if ones solution is to craft some other law - licensing, waiting periods, banning certain items, etc. Laws focused on preventing illegal users from acquiring them won’t stop legal users who want to use them to kill themselves.

Man… see if I really believed this was possible right now, I would be burying stuff in the woods for later. Yes they will be tools of the fascists. If I thought that was even a possibility, I would make preparations to insure they weren’t the only ones with those tools.

I have to go do a manager meeting now. Take care.

If you don’t like my multiplying by number of years of life, the simple division of gun deaths in 2015 by all deaths in 2015 gives 1.9%. That can be faithfully extrapolated to, “assuming the ratio of gun deaths to all deaths to all deaths remains constant, the chance that a randomly chosen American’s eventual cause of death will be gun related is 1.9%.” That careful statement is the sort of thing people would summarize as “1.9% of Americans die from a gunshot” I think that second statement is misleading, but it’s only misleading because people don’t understand statistics. Misleading or not, it’s a common was that sort of statistic is described, and is just as accurate as the statement, “1 in 3 Americans die from heart disease.”

Well I can’t dispute your math. I think you convinced me to agree with what you are saying. Perhaps it is just a bit counter intuitive. Actually I have a neat fold out thing I saved years ago because I liked the graphic design, and it used graphics to show to scale the likelihood of death via what ever. Mostly cancer, heart disease, falls, etc. So it is just another way of looking at it. Stats are weird because their meaning can be hard to interpret on how they impact your life. In this stat, there is no getting out alive. Something is going to kill you. What was it?

So considering about half of gun deaths are murders, and looking the CDC fast stats there are nearly 5000 more non-gun murders (17,793), plugging in your number it is nearly a 1% chance you died via homicide - .894%

Let’s look at all suicides. There are 44,193 on the CDC fast stats (total), so that comes to 2.22%. Wow, we are over 2.5 times as likely, to take ourselves out. That’s sad.

Still, using your formula, when comparing it to more common, less sensational deaths, I think it puts the risk in some perspective. But I know, I know, stairs and ladders and cleaning chemicals aren’t made to kill people. It doesn’t make them less dangerous than they are, but we are more familiar and comfortable around that danger.

Falls - 33381, 1.678%

Poison - 47478, 2.387%

I am less concerned with changing minds, vs accurate info, and a perception of this side that better reflects reality, and not the caricature of people like Brian Kemp who I have to try to assure people is the exception, not the norm.

See, it’s things like this that make me think the NRA actually doesn’t give two floating shits about responsible gun ownership.

(Lest you think this tweet from an anti-NRA advocacy group is inaccurately claiming that the NRA supported this bill, their legislative advocacy site has a dedicated call to action for it. In fact, there seem to be NRA calls to action for this bill at every step of the legislative process.)

Some fun facts:

  • You still can’t carry guns in public buildings like the state capitol. Always weird how that exemption crops up every time…
  • The bill also amends state code to explicitly prohibit undocumented individuals from owning or carrying a firearm. Thank god they closed that loophole! Firearm free-for-alls are only for MURICANS, y’all.
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Sure, in a cold, rational, statistical sense. I’m talking about the simple, practical sense. It is likely, far too likely, that there will be a mass school shooting in the month of May. I’d wager good money on it. And I’d likely win.

I think part of the ‘problem’ is that for some reason, the norm is allowing the exceptions to represent them.

In part that’s probably just because the moderate gun-ownership supporting politician doesn’t go on air waving his piece about and doesn’t get the coverage but still…

If the majority of gun-owners are not like this guy, then why do these people still persist with their antics? They obviously think it appeals to a significant number of people.

The media also seems to present the Ted Nugents and other colorful characters because let’s face it - they cause interest, conflict, make good sound bites, and stirs the pot. People like Colion Noir make much more rational arguments. John Oliver’s (who I do like, in general) “reporting” on NRA TV, seemed to omit him in his piece, even though his shows is one of the most popular. But he isn’t saying stuff that one can make good satire against.

And then in the wild - the guy who blows off his hand, leaves a gun in the bathroom, or makes a cringy political ad is who gets featured. The kid who won his state trap shooting meet and who represents how most people used a gun that day might get a mention in the local sports section of the paper.

There IS back lash some times for stuff like that. If there was clear safety violations you will usually get scolded. If you ever post a pic with your finger on the trigger, got help you. Even in this case on a FB thread you had about half the voices say that the ad makes gun owners look like herp derp rednecks. A quarter who were sorta neutral, but worried about safety, and a quarter saying it’s a southern thing.

But I think there is also the “don’t eat your own” mentality. Personally I’d rather present a more positive, less emotional front on the issues. Several of the spokes people for the NRA (who all have the disclaimer that they don’t necessarily reflect the views, blah, blah) I think hurt the cause. I suppose there is a section of the base it appeals to, but one already has those people locked up. The issue shouldn’t be split along political lines, and gaining moderate or liberal support should be a goal. As Wanderlust has posted many times, after Trump got elected, there have been more pro 2nd Amendment leftists creating orgs and getting together to learn and train.

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Really, why would you spend time, money and words supporting and defending an organization if they didn’t represent you?

Why is it surprising that the public takes the message and spokespeople seriously, and how can we be expected to believe that nembers don’t?

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  1. Find me a large political organization you feel represents you 100%. I’ll wait. You vote Democrat? I can only assume you fully support every thing they do. Of course not. Even the often loved ACLU has critics. Obama kept Gitmo open, despite campaign promises - yadda yadda yadda.

  2. There are voices that do represent me. I keep saying Colion Noir, as he is the only person I check out with any regularity, and I agree with nearly everything he says.

  3. Despite bad representatives at times, and disagreeing with some of their ideas for solutions, their actual support of the actual laws I want passed/not passed align with my overall ideals of less government authoritarianism, more individual liberty.

I don’t have to, because I don’t give any of those organizations my money, nor do I belong to them. I also don’t “vote democrat”, I choose candidates individually.

Including his attacks on the Parkland kids?

Your and other’s willingness to overlook the overall character of the organization, the racism, extremism and bad representation doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.

When the NRA makes videos, statements, and political gestures, I’m going to take them at their word. It would be dangerous not to.

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So do you agree or disagree with their support for legislation in Oklahoma that essentially eliminates any and all requirements to demonstrate proficiency or even competency with firearms before you’re allowed to carry them, concealed or not, in public as a means of “self defense”?

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That is a good, yet hard question. Missouri has that as well now. And my home state of Kansas.

What is funny is remember when I was like 18 or so talking to a friend who just got hired as a cop (I worked with him at walmart, he was in this early 20s), asking about conceal carry. Actually I had taken to carrying a knife for protection when going to the “big city” of Wichita after hearing about what was surely an urban legend in hindsight. But that lead to asking about conceal carry of weapons and guns. At the time you couldn’t get a license in Kansas unless you were a cop, ex-cop, or some specific security type jobs, like guarding money transfers.

The conceal carry movement started in the early 90s, and it was a response to the rising crime rate (which at it’s peak was nearly twice what is is now in homicides). People wanted the same “rights” criminals were exercising. The NRA, I imagine, had a hand in this, but honestly from what I have read most of the leg work on these issues are by state based conceal carry orgs. In 25ish years the landscape moved from no-issue, to may-issue, to shall-issue, to constitutional carry in some states. so I find it interesting how fast this has changed.

So, anyway, back to your question. Honestly, I have mixed feelings about it. In the past my support for licensing has extended to USE in places other than the home. i.e. nothing is needed if you just buy one and shoot on your land, or a designated range. Hunters for ever have to go through a hunters safety course. I still remember taking mine with my dad and friend Ben Thompson. I got a perfect score on the test.

Conceal carry is one area where I am ok with rudimentary training for a license. It isn’t just for the people out there, but for the user, letting people know about the various legalities of conceal carry, the restrictions etc. Now MO actually has a CC license you an still get, and it affords you MORE rights than constitutional carry. Even though the required training is pretty basic, it is better than none, IMHO. Also IMHO if one does plan to carry regularly they need to invest in some basic to intermediate training, and self train (practice) for proficiency. (I by far had the best group in the shooting portion, getting all but one round in the orange section I was aiming at. Oh that one little guy…)

Sooo - on one hand, I would l think it is prudent to ask people to have at least a class under their belt for CC. On the other hand, I suppose making it not illegal by default to have a concealed weapon on you IS an increase in personal liberty, which I ideally support.

I think in reality, most people, everyone I know who does it, takes it very seriously. They are proficient enough to defend themselves (one of them doesn’t need a gun to do that, as he is extremely proficient in martial arts, including his native Filipino stick fighting), and take the idea they can defend with lethal force seriously. It makes one think hard about NOT putting themselves in situations where they would need it. They tend to not engage in actions which would lead to an escalation.

But we aren’t worried about those people, are we? We are worried about raging hot heads. The thing is, I am not sure them sitting through a CC class would change their minds or actions any. And keep in mind, even before this laws change, before there was CC as an option, people CC when they weren’t supposed to. Not intent on crime, but defense.

So while I am not against the licensing requirement for CC, and I am not for constitutional carry, I think from a practical level constitutional carry won’t have the negative effects some people are picturing in their heads. I know that is a wishy-washy answer, but like I said: mixed feelings.

You’re going to have to point that out to me. I have heard him disagree with their points, but not actual attacks.

And technically I haven’t been a member of the NRA for several years. It is more out of laziness than anything.

But that wasn’t the question I asked. I asked one to find a political org that you agree with 100%. Unless you started such org, you won’t find one. Even if you aren’t a democrat, can you say you have NEVER defended them? Like when someone calls Obama or Hillary a communist, for example. Ever correct them and tell them they are neo liberals? If not this example, can you think of others? If the answer really is no, then I am guessing you just don’t have political passion subject.

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