Your article is not very helpful as it points out a number of flaws in your assertion. Mostly that data concerning legally or illegally purchased weapons is mostly not there:
“… that it’s possible to buy a gun illegally from a gun store. You can use a fake ID or employ a straw purchaser (someone who can pass a background check who buys the weapon on your behalf).”
“Furthermore, just because the rest of the people interviewed didn’t purchase a gun at a gun store doesn’t mean they acquired it illegally.”
“The problem is that only a very small fraction of gun crimes result in the recovery of the weapon or in any other way allow us to determine how the gun was acquired by the person who committed the crime”
“A retail purchase might not have been legal and a gift from a family member might not be illegal.”
Plus none of that addresses how weapons end up in the illegal commerce stream to begin with. Which is mostly legal purchases going to illegal transfers. Illegal firearms in this country aren’t generally smuggled in. They are bought at gun stores and sold off to others. Usually reported as “stolen”. In fact the US is a major illegal firearms exporter.
Not only does your link not say what you think it does since the result was basically inconclusive based on lack of full evidence, but you even phrased the scenario in question differently. You referenced “crimes…committed by legal gun owners” but the referenced source talks about legal guns, not legal gun owners. A child isn’t a legal gun owner if their parent owns a gun, but if the child kills themselves or someone else with their parents’ gun, it was a “legal gun.”
I really think handguns are the issue in these “responsible gun owners” shooting themselves/spouses/children/etc. People who own handguns usually have them handy “in case”. That means the guns are loaded and easily accessible. Pissed off? Reach into the nightstand and start shooting. Also, they’re relatively easy to conceal, making them handy for overreacting in public.
Whereas rifles and shotguns are generally not just laying around loaded and ready to go. Unless you’re in a war zone. Or out hunting.
So, despite Orlando, or Sandy Hook, or any of the recent mass shootings, I think if we really want to curb gun violence, it would be more useful to ban the sale of handguns to civilians than to get all excited about semi-automatic rifles which look like assault rifles.
And really, the second amendment isn’t talking about pistols. Also, if you’re going to “prevent tyranny” with firearms, you’re not going to do it with Glocks and S&W J-Frames.
There’s this weird, persistent obsession I see with the government trying its best to “seize” or “take” guns from people, and the assumption that what gun control advocates (and liberals in general) want to do is use mass shootings as an excuse to take guns from people.
I think it’s a calculated fear-tactic that the NRA uses to get the gun-loving masses to oppose pretty much all gun control.
EVERY gun control proposition is just a step onto the slippery slope that will allow the Democratic boogieman of the day to take ALL OUR GUNS to clear the way to turn the country into a socialistic satan-loving LGBT police state.
Well, the article you cite rates the claim as “half true” which is only true if you are an optimist.
But also, the article is about crimes committed while in the possession of guns, or people who were arrested from crimes while they were carrying guns. I have no doubt that the majority of guns used in robberies are obtained illegally. Robbery is rarely the results of an escalation of an emotional situation. Your original claim was that almost all gun crime related deaths are performed with illegal weapons. This article doesn’t even begin to address that.
The problem that guns cause is when they allow a person to act rashly on emotional impulses that would otherwise have not resulted in death or serious injury. So you are going to see tragic headlines like the one we are discussing now, where a mother killed her daughters because she had access to easy lethal force at hand.
I don’t think we have any reason to believe that gun control would reduce robberies. So overall, you’ve presented us with a half-true reason to believe something that I personally wouldn’t have been likely to argue with anyway.
Why not SPECIFICALLY declare a legal and functional difference between the two and destroy whatever cottage mod industry that exists to crossover?
There’s a lot of disinformation, so coming to an agreement on what someone can use and what is something used primarily for murdering multiple humans in a crowd slash shitty, terrible hunters.
None of this is impossible to imagine. But this is exactly the sort of gun education that’s taught like abstinence education in the US.
[quote=“Mangochin, post:225, topic:80545, full:true”]
Your article is not very helpful as it points out a number of flaws in your assertion. Mostly that data concerning legally or illegally purchased weapons is mostly not there:[/quote]
Maybe try actually reading it… It points out several flaws but generally accepts that the intent of the claim is true and says that we could use more data on the issue. It’s pretty clear to me that data is the enemy of creating support for strong gun control measures as people don’t want to face the true problems.
Of course, I doubt the point of divisive politics is to actually achieve anything with legislation…so beyond random internet discussion, I won’t be giving it much attention and I’ll just avoid voting for anyone that makes gun control a part of their platform. I see no reason to endorse politicians that aren’t going to focus on bigger picture items. Democrats turn me off with gun control pandering. Republicans turn me off with abortion antics. We get an erosion of rights no matter which poison we pick and none of them seem very interested in making progress on the big problems we face.
This thisthis. I mean, I’m also for a semi-automatic weapons ban, but I gotta believe that handguns by far rack up the highest body count each year in the U.S.
At the very least, private ownership of a handgun should require a special license whose approval process includes extremely stringent provisions—in short, you’d need to prove you have a damn good, verifiable reason for owning one.
It’s not an either/or thing. We DO spend money on everything you listed. All the time. Billions and billions and billions. Even though often the initiatives aren’t 100% effective, or may have to be fine tuned, or not show results immediately. We try.
Why not do the same for serious gun control initiatives?
I’ll poke in and say that mandatory insurance would help.
Got a single barrel shotgun? That’s cheap to insure.
Got a AR-15? That’ll cost a fortune to insure.
I’m sure actuaries could chart out some numbers that correlate between the likelihood of nastiness happening around a given type of gun. Kinda like car insurance companies do with high-theft models and whatever.
“We could use more date on the issue” puts assertions such as yours on very shaky ground, bordering on misinformation.
"It’s pretty clear to me that data is the enemy of creating support for strong gun control measures as people don’t want to face the true problems. "
As you just said you could use more data on the issue, then claims that data supports your view would just be an exaggeration or outright false. Either you have the data or don’t.
The problem is that the overwhelming majority of anti-gun control arguments are complete and utter bullshit. You have people promoting irresponsible behavior, unwilling to consider even the most basic form of regulations and engage in “Turner Diaries” level fantasy mongering about how their piddly penis substitutes can fend off government actions. On the last point, let me point out that the government is far better armed and trained than your average gun toting yahoo is going to be. If they want your guns, they would already have taken them.
What makes it worse is how the most ridiculous arguments make all gun owners look like idiots. I own several firearms and say with pride the NRA does not represent my interests in the least. If anything their stance has made it easier to promote gun bans and discount anything remotely sane coming from gun owners.
Indeed.
Much like cars, people with terrible histories would become unable to acquire insurance. And with the coupled checks as part of that (proving you know what you’re doing with a gun, safe storing, etc…) there could be some restraint for the folks (like this lady) that shouldn’t have had them in the first place.
Because this is the U.S.A., banning handguns is, itself, probably undoable. At least if you allow rifles and shotguns, you can say that it doesn’t infringe on the 2nd Amendment.
Besides, I think the AR-15 concerns are a red herring. It’s a semiautomatic rifle. AR-15s are not the only semiautomatic rifles available, and again, despite the mass shootings with AR-15s, statistically more people are dying from handguns than from semiautomatic rifles in the U.S.
Hey, this is just my impression, buuut I’m pretty sure most people mean to ban all semi-auto rifles, not just the AR-15… and some even went so far as to say that no matter the tech, it would be reasonable to ban all rifles that can fire more than a given number of rounds in a given time frame.
[quote=“Daneyul, post:235, topic:80545, full:true”]
It’s not an either/or thing. We DO spend money on everything you listed. [/quote]
That is misleading. Money that is designated towards one thing is not available to be used for another. Every penny the government spends on gun control is a penny that can’t be spent on better roads, education, funding research, healthcare, ect. It very much is an either/or thing. Resources are inherently finite. Government has to make effective choices about how to spend those resources. I argue they could be much better spent elsewhere, considering the resources we already utilize for gun control. When you vote for a politician that will spend their time pushing for gun control, they doing so instead of pushing for something else you might also want. I see gun control as a pit of minimal return on investment. The major argument behind stricter gun control is ‘saving lives’. Shouldn’t we invest in what is likely to save the most lives per dollar spent?
[quote=“Humbabella, post:229, topic:80545, full:true”]
Robbery is rarely the results of an escalation of an emotional situation. Your original claim was that almost all gun crime related deaths are preformed with illegal weapons. This article doesn’t even begin to address that.[/quote]
I think it’s reasonable to assume that the fraction of illegal gun use in murders is similar to the fraction illegal gun use in gun crime overall.
I don’t recall the exact legal term, but there is a term used for “well, you shouldn’t have been there in the first place.” I was on a jury where we had to determine the outcome of a cop that hit a kid on a bike, with the ability to say that it was 80% the fault of the cop and 20% of the kid who shouldn’t have been there.
So, while you can be wrong to be on their trampoline they can also be wrong to have left it unsecured for anyone to access. Which reminds me, I might want to lock the back fence to prevent kids from getting into the treehouse when we go on vacation. Thanks!
