With gun violence down, is America arming against an imagined threat?

[Spoonman]

Ignore those 16000 gun suicides because a dozen people managed to jump off a building

Suicides don't matter. That's not at all what the whole gun controversy is about.

It's about stranger danger. We feel gravely out of control of our lives when there are crazies around ready and able to run into the school and shoot our children or run into the grocery store and shoot us.

Nobody is ever going to change laws because of suicides. That's just not where it's at.

It's the unfettered access to guns. Feel like killing the wife......a gun s handy. Feel like killing yourself.......a gun is handy. Feel like shooting up a school.....a gun is handy

It's the price we pay for a Second Amendment

there are as many guns as people in the usa. not many of those guns are doing killing though

 

[Saigon]

All of you loons seem to get hung up on numbers. One baby dies, no big deal to any of you, but if 20 babies die, you want to change the world.

Being "hung up on numbers" means understanding the big picture.

It means understanding that if 10 people die per year because of skiing accidents, that is an acceptable risk for society; whereas if 16,000 people die year by shooting themselves, then that is an unacceptable rish for society, and something needs to be done.

You do actually agree with the concept, I'm sure, it is just the issue of guns that make the concept of unacceptable risk difficult for you.

 

[hazlnut]

 

[Ragnar]

All of you loons seem to get hung up on numbers. One baby dies, no big deal to any of you, but if 20 babies die, you want to change the world.

Being "hung up on numbers" means understanding the big picture.

It means understanding that if 10 people die per year because of skiing accidents, that is an acceptable risk for society; whereas if 16,000 people die year by shooting themselves, then that is an unacceptable rish for society, and something needs to be done.

You do actually agree with the concept, I'm sure, it is just the issue of guns that make the concept of unacceptable risk difficult for you.

Something has been done. Skiing is legal while shooting yourself is not.

 

[Saigon]

Ragnar -

Making suicide illegal is likely to be a less effective way of reducing suicides than introducing decent background checks.

Unfortunately, the NRA feel that could cost them money in reduced dividends from bullet sales.

 

[Ragnar]

Ragnar -

Making suicide illegal is likely to be a less effective way of reducing suicides than introducing decent background checks.

Unfortunately, the NRA feel that could cost them money in reduced dividends from bullet sales.

I was just poking your post.

I'm OK with decent background checks, or slightly more decent background checks above and beyond the decent background checks we already have.

And not for nothing but the NRA potentially makes more money from live gun owners than dead ones. I'm not even sure the NRA owns stock in gun or ammunition makers.

But even better suicide reduction than background checks can likely be achieved by fixing the economy and even more-so by fixing health care. (each of which would require less government involvement but that's another topic all together)

 

[The Rabbi]

Ragnar -

Making suicide illegal is likely to be a less effective way of reducing suicides than introducing decent background checks.

Unfortunately, the NRA feel that could cost them money in reduced dividends from bullet sales.

What kind of background checks would eliminate suicides? For that matter, what kind of background checks would eliminate mass shootings? Most of the killers either passed a backrgound check or would have. Background checks are a joke.

 

[FA_Q2]

FA_Q2 -

Fair enough - I had remember the law change as 2003, but obviously it was 2007. My mistake. Looking at the graph it's not easy to see exactly where the line is, of course.

Laws do not magically become extremely effective six years later when they were utter failures in the meantime.

Gun laws do - because guns do not disappear from the streets overnight. It takes time for the level of gun ownership to begin to drop, whether through buy-back schemes or just lower sales of guns.

If the US implemented gun safety laws tomorrow, I would expect it to take five years for it to really start to make a difference at street level.

You can assert that all you want but your data does not back that up. There is nothing there that identifies the level of gun ownership in your cited information. Barring that, all you have is an unsupported claim. You also have to look at the fact that such is not a regular occurrence in gun control law. In Canada, that did not occur at all. Crime trends were not really affected. I will need to do dome digging if you want the data for that thought so I am not going to post it unless you ask. Chicago mirrors your example but on a different time scale but that actually mirrors US national crime rates so it can hardly be paralleled with the laws there. Australia is another example where there was no large spike in homicide rates. Your assertion that the law suddenly becomes effective is a case of making the data fit your notions, not your notions fitting the data. There is simply nothing there showing that to be true.

Further, that essentially means that you are stating the falling gun rates cause HIGHER crime and then they cause lower crime!?!?! That makes no logical sense whatsoever. There is no spike in gun ownership that I know of after the 1997 law passed so why the spike in rates? Was that because the guns rate was dropping? Then the decreased spike was also caused by decreasing ownership levels? I am finding locating a yearly account of the number of weapons in the UK somewhat difficult; perhaps you have that or know where it is? I would be very interested if you can correlate this.

Lastly, That assumption is also disproven by the fact that the 1997 law was not the first law passed. Why did none of the other laws see anything even remotely like the 1997 law that you cite? You are ignoring the past laws. You have major gun restriction laws passing in 1903, 192, 1937, 1968, 1988 and 1997. None of the ones follow your formula except the 1997 one and many of them were in direct response to other ‘massacres.’ Selectively applying this to one case and ignoring the others is not a sound position. Gun law was most likely NOT the cause of the sudden spike of the cause of the sudden drop.

I can’t fathom how you can claim the chart shows gun laws as effective when the crime rate rose for six years after the law passed

Because the spike was followed by an equally sudden drop that meant that levels of violent crime in 2013 will probably be below those of the late 1980's.

And? This is irrelevant to the conversation. The levels in 2013 are just one more year, we can already see the established trends and the sudden spike/drop in previous years. You have to connect that with actual gun laws over any other items.

I think that has to be considered effective in the long term, despite the obvious short-term problems.

I agree absolutely that there will always be other issues involved, but I don't think many factors other than laws will mean as much of a sea-change in societal patterns. Most events in society that effect crime rates will only do so for a year or two - as was possibly the case with that brief crime spike. I know at the time there was a lot of discussion about that spike, but I don't recall the issues mentioned.

I think what has to be considered is that there are more reasons that the crime had these trends and that, because the data is completely inconsistent with your supposition or any other trends, gun laws likely have no effect on crime at all (whether that be increasing or decreasing it). It seems to me that all the data points to gun laws being entirely ineffective at actually changing crime or homicide rates.

 

[yidnar]

With gun violence down, is America arming against an imagined threat?

With gun violence down, is America arming against an imagined threat?
A Pew study released Tuesday finds that Americans think gun violence has escalated when in reality it's way down from two decades ago. The violence has dropped, meanwhile, even as gun ownership has increased.


Mass shootings, frantic gun-buying, and more Americans legally carrying guns on the street all point to a country fighting a gun violence epidemic, right?

Not necessarily.

As part of a broader trend of declining crime, gun violence in America – while still high relative to other Western countries – has dropped by 49 percent from 1993 to 2011, while nonfatal gun crimes dropped by 69 percent, according to the US Justice Department.

that's because more honest legal Americans are buying the shit out of guns !!

 

[yidnar]

With gun violence down, is America arming against an imagined threat?

With gun violence down, is America arming against an imagined threat?
A Pew study released Tuesday finds that Americans think gun violence has escalated when in reality it's way down from two decades ago. The violence has dropped, meanwhile, even as gun ownership has increased.


Mass shootings, frantic gun-buying, and more Americans legally carrying guns on the street all point to a country fighting a gun violence epidemic, right?

Not necessarily.

As part of a broader trend of declining crime, gun violence in America – while still high relative to other Western countries – has dropped by 49 percent from 1993 to 2011, while nonfatal gun crimes dropped by 69 percent, according to the US Justice Department.

that's because more honest legal Americans are buying the shit out of guns !!

try to rob granny or break into someone's house and you stand a good chance of being in a gun fight !!

 

[rightwinger]

Suicides don't matter. That's not at all what the whole gun controversy is about.

It's about stranger danger. We feel gravely out of control of our lives when there are crazies around ready and able to run into the school and shoot our children or run into the grocery store and shoot us.

Nobody is ever going to change laws because of suicides. That's just not where it's at.

It's the unfettered access to guns. Feel like killing the wife......a gun s handy. Feel like killing yourself.......a gun is handy. Feel like shooting up a school.....a gun is handy

It's the price we pay for a Second Amendment

there are as many guns as people in the usa. not many of those guns are doing killing though

How profound.....

All those guns make one readily accessible for domestic violence, suicide and assault.

300 million guns and you are not concerned until there are 300 million murders?

What an ass

 

[ScienceRocks]

Suicides don't matter. That's not at all what the whole gun controversy is about.

It's about stranger danger. We feel gravely out of control of our lives when there are crazies around ready and able to run into the school and shoot our children or run into the grocery store and shoot us.

Nobody is ever going to change laws because of suicides. That's just not where it's at.

It's the unfettered access to guns. Feel like killing the wife......a gun s handy. Feel like killing yourself.......a gun is handy. Feel like shooting up a school.....a gun is handy

It's the price we pay for a Second Amendment

there are as many guns as people in the usa. not many of those guns are doing killing though

Yeah,

Most people have this thing called self control...Not so within our cities that are supposedly gun free zones. Why is this? Can you people even think about this issue critically?

 

[rightwinger]

Ragnar -

Making suicide illegal is likely to be a less effective way of reducing suicides than introducing decent background checks.

Unfortunately, the NRA feel that could cost them money in reduced dividends from bullet sales.

What kind of background checks would eliminate suicides? For that matter, what kind of background checks would eliminate mass shootings? Most of the killers either passed a backrgound check or would have. Background checks are a joke.

Background checks that show someone suffers from severe depression, or background checks that show someone is suicidal.

Recent events show that background checks that show someone is fucking crazy would help.

Just because NRA resistance has turned background checks into a farce doesn't mean they have to remain that way

 

[dilloduck]

Ragnar -

Making suicide illegal is likely to be a less effective way of reducing suicides than introducing decent background checks.

Unfortunately, the NRA feel that could cost them money in reduced dividends from bullet sales.

What kind of background checks would eliminate suicides? For that matter, what kind of background checks would eliminate mass shootings? Most of the killers either passed a backrgound check or would have. Background checks are a joke.

Background checks that show someone suffers from severe depression, or background checks that show someone is suicidal.

Recent events show that background checks that show someone is fucking crazy would help.

Just because NRA resistance has turned background checks into a farce doesn't mean they have to remain that way

Can background checks prevent people from becoming homicidal after they purchase a gun?

 

[The Rabbi]

Ragnar -

Making suicide illegal is likely to be a less effective way of reducing suicides than introducing decent background checks.

Unfortunately, the NRA feel that could cost them money in reduced dividends from bullet sales.

What kind of background checks would eliminate suicides? For that matter, what kind of background checks would eliminate mass shootings? Most of the killers either passed a backrgound check or would have. Background checks are a joke.

Background checks that show someone suffers from severe depression, or background checks that show someone is suicidal.

Recent events show that background checks that show someone is fucking crazy would help.

Just because NRA resistance has turned background checks into a farce doesn't mean they have to remain that way

What background check would have shown that Adam Lanza could not shoot his mother, steal her gun and kill people?
I think you're fuckng crazy. DOes that mean you shouldn't be able to vote either?

 

[rightwinger]

What kind of background checks would eliminate suicides? For that matter, what kind of background checks would eliminate mass shootings? Most of the killers either passed a backrgound check or would have. Background checks are a joke.

Background checks that show someone suffers from severe depression, or background checks that show someone is suicidal.

Recent events show that background checks that show someone is fucking crazy would help.

Just because NRA resistance has turned background checks into a farce doesn't mean they have to remain that way

Can background checks prevent people from becoming homicidal after they purchase a gun?

Just because you cannot prevent EVERY gun homicide doesn't mean you should not try to prevent any

 

[The Rabbi]

Background checks that show someone suffers from severe depression, or background checks that show someone is suicidal.

Recent events show that background checks that show someone is fucking crazy would help.

Just because NRA resistance has turned background checks into a farce doesn't mean they have to remain that way

Can background checks prevent people from becoming homicidal after they purchase a gun?

Just because you cannot prevent EVERY gun homicide doesn't mean you should not try to prevent any

Can you answer his question?

We already have background checks. We've had background checks for 40 years. Guess what, they don't work. They dont prevent anything.
The left is enthralled with background checks like it's some panacaea. Of course when they dont work they move right to confiscation.

 

[jon_berzerk]

Can background checks prevent people from becoming homicidal after they purchase a gun?

Just because you cannot prevent EVERY gun homicide doesn't mean you should not try to prevent any

Can you answer his question?

We already have background checks. We've had background checks for 40 years. Guess what, they don't work. They dont prevent anything.
The left is enthralled with background checks like it's some panacaea. Of course when they dont work they move right to confiscation.

will criminals use the back ground checks system

 

[boedicca]

"With gun violence down, is America arming against an imagined threat?"

Fox Butterfield, is that you?

 

[dilloduck]

Background checks that show someone suffers from severe depression, or background checks that show someone is suicidal.

Recent events show that background checks that show someone is fucking crazy would help.

Just because NRA resistance has turned background checks into a farce doesn't mean they have to remain that way

Can background checks prevent people from becoming homicidal after they purchase a gun?

Just because you cannot prevent EVERY gun homicide doesn't mean you should not try to prevent any

An attempt should be made to prevent any homicide. What if any kind of evidence do you have that additional gun control laws will do that in America ? I can answer that for you.
Zero.
Why don't you come back when you have some kind of evidence that what you propose will actually work. Isn't that the point here ? A change that works as opposed to a feel good proposal that negatively effects law abiding citizens.