Gun Control - Now Discussing Tucson Shooting

The Second Amendment of the Constitution of the USA states:

According to the General Social Survey 44% have a gun in the home, and the Supreme Court recently heard the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, in which they clarified that the Second Amendment is an individual right, and not dependent on membership in a militia.

However, guns are often tied to crime, and according to the Center for Disease Control, around 12,000 die each year as a result of gun homocides, and another 16,000 die from suicides using guns. Further, one quarter of commercial robberies involve a gun.


As a start to the topic, what are your basic feelings on gun control, either in the U.S. in particular or in other countries?
This topic is likely to pick up subtopics as it goes on to provide focus for the discussion, but for now is relatively open to survey the terrain.

 

Considering people started offing eachother with swords in England once guns were banned...

Also, 44% of people in the United States is just about 150 million or so. 28,000 suicides/homicides amongst that 150 million...? Talk about blaming the majority for the minority.

 

Though it is of interest I don't see why suicide via guns are important for this as someone who wants to kill themselves will just find another way and a statistic will come from that. This does not apply as much to homicide as we are then talking about removing a tool for robberies and such making them far more difficult.

When Mike Huckabee was running for Prez he mentioned that he wanted more guns in the hands of people so they could defend themselves and are not helpless. Now this is ultimately a means of escalating gun fights but there is a point not to be ignored. I could counter it with the idea that if guns were made difficult to get for everyone then you might not have much to worry about. But what if your mugger is not someone you can physically handle and they flat out tell you they are gonna hurt you? Martial arts? What if there are 5 of them? 10?

One side says outlaw all guns. One side says not over my dead body. The answer may lie as it always does, somewhere in between. There is no one perfect answer. I do lean towards the removal of guns from all hands and crimes would diminish, but they would not vanish. Would those crimes diminish to a level that it acceptable and what exactly is acceptable?

 

Though it is of interest I don't see why suicide via guns are important for this as someone who wants to kill themselves will just find another way and a statistic will come from that.

We've discussed this many times in the past, but this is simply not accurate. People in general are very bad at committing suicide and often don't really want to kill themselves, or want to kill themselves momentarily and only succeed when intervention (either their own or someone else's) doesn't come in time.

Having a gun in the house improves the odds of a successful suicide. Having a gun handy allows people to act effectively on a momentary suicidal impulse.

Obviously, there are people who will kill themselves regardless. I'm not arguing that guns make people kill themselves. But a dispassionate, objective look at the facts shows clearly that an available gun is an easy opportunity for someone who's suicidal and lowers the chances of intervention.

That's also not necessarily an argument for banning guns. But people should not allow their second amendment enthusiasm to trump common sense. Do you have a family member who's suffering from clinical depression? Maybe you should consider removing any guns from your home. Etc.

 

Okay, we need a tap-finger-againt-forehead smiley. That's just really dumb. I mean, I could understand if a person wants to go hunting or track shooting, but to have the government start promoting it? Only in America...

Something has been invented against muggers. It's called police. If there's too much mugging going on, there's something wrong with the police force, not with the amount of guns in the public's hands...

 

As crazy as it sounds that was Huckabee's view. Chris Matthews kept asking him flat out if he wanted more guns in people's hands and rather than just flat out say yes he made a longer, nicer sounding answer of yes.

 

The problem with that is that the police are inherently reactive. They don't prevent crime so much as they clean up afterwards and chase the ones who did it.

The police simply can't be everywhere at once. In fact, in a couple of court cases in the US (I can get the citations later for you), it has been held that the police don't actually have a responsibility to respond to every incident, or in a timely manner. As a result, primary responsibility for self-defense has to lie with the individual, not the police.

Kimball Kinnison

 

The problem with that is that the police are inherently reactive. They don't prevent crime so much as they clean up afterwards and chase the ones who did it.

The police simply can't be everywhere at once. In fact, in a couple of court cases in the US (I can get the citations later for you), it has been held that the police don't actually have a responsibility to respond to every incident, or in a timely manner. As a result, primary responsibility for self-defense has to lie with the individual, not the police.

That's an anarchist's agrument though, done up in different words. As in political anarchy: just trust that everyone will do what's right, and those that don't have obviously screwed up and deserve what they get. No in-betweens.

Self-defense relying on the individual pre-supposes that every individual is going to take the right actions. THere's big gaping holes here for individuals that are not properly educated, not properly taught, not of the proper temperment, not in proper health, etc. All sorts of logic problems.

In other words, all individuals who don't fall into the right categories -- whether or not those who fall into those right categories end up being the majority or not -- are either screwed, or have free reign to screw someone else before the police can respond... to which they have no responsibility for anyway.

 

Aside from the political debate that's going on here, I just don't see gun control as having much practical effect. Not in the "If people don't have guns, they'll kill eachother with whatever else comes to hand" sense, but more in the way that gun control is actually dealing actual problems that lead to crime; Okay, so you take away guns. It doesn't make neighborhoods less crummy (feel free to visit Compton/Watts/etc ), it just makes them a potentially less deadly environment, where people still have no hope at a future, and that's what leads to crime, IMO.

This might be stretching abit, but in the law-enforcement aspect of the Iraq occupation, gun control isn't a leading priority, because it was accepted that finding all weapons was a practical impossibility. Limits were imposed on what an individual could own, but that was mostly used as a way of identifying insurgents v. regular people; additionally; it was policy that all households could possess one rifle with a fully loaded magazine, to allow people to defend themselves in the event of AQI deciding they wanted to murder them (a quite likely possibility, obviously ).

That being said, our 2nd Amendment does provide for individual ownership of firearms, as the SC recently decided, and I think the statistics cited in the first post demonstrate that the vast majority demonstrate responsible firearms ownership.

 

I'd say its not presuming that all people will act responsibly, but that it gives the law-abiding individual greater control of the situations they're in. I'd rather be able to do what I can to tip the scales in favour of my safety than rely on the police, which, in cases of emergency, have taken upwards of an hour to respond to situations where I've called them. (I've a friend that had to call police once over a situation, the police never arrived, and on a later call, found out that according to police records they'd had so there was no chance they'd be coming again unless my friend had called back)

I mean, there's plenty of ways for people to mess other people up beyond guns. Two weeks ago I watched a guy who was in no physical state to be driving hit a truck head on while he was driving around 40 miles an hour. He'd been reported as a drunk driver about 10 minutes earlier, someone was on the phone with the police from that point on describing where he was, and the guy drove past a police car minutes before the accident. The police were informed of the problem BEFORE the accident, had the chance to intercede BEFORE the accident, and failed to do so. Thankfully, there were no injuries.

 

I'd say its not presuming that all people will act responsibly, but that it gives the law-abiding individual greater control of the situations they're in. I'd rather be able to do what I can to tip the scales in favour of my safety than rely on the police, which, in cases of emergency, have taken upwards of an hour to respond to situations where I've called them.

And if you can take those steps without endangering others as much as anyone would in your position, I'd support that.

The problem is that... to parahrase Harrison Ford... "You can live this stuff George, but you can't legislate it."

Meaning let's say yeah, you can take steps to protect yourself. You don't want the law to hold you back.

Sure: but if we start legislating by your standard and taking out stuff that would otherwise protect you in ways you don't think you need, what happens to my brother-in-law? (well he's not my brother-in-law, but might be in a few years).

Here's a guy with a genetic illness... I forget the name of it, it's a big one... but essentially his legs haven't grown in pace with the rest of his body. He can't walk because they cant' support his weight. He's not paralysed per se, and was able to walk fine enough when very young. But now he relies on a wheelchair as much as a parapalygic.

Now, how's this guy going to live up to what your standard of self-defense can be? Anyone who threatens him has a clear advantage. I'm not sure he can reliably holster anything onto his wheelchair that won't be awkward to pull out.

If we start working by a standard of non-disabled people, this does not spell good news for him.

 

Actually, you would be surprised what you can carry when you're in a wheelchair. My coworker (who sold me my handgun, and has been helping me with my AK-47) is planning to introduce me to one of his best friends, who happens to be confined to a wheelchair and works for the NRA. He has a CCW (Concealed Carry Weapons permit), and almost always has two guns accessible on his person.

However, the biggest problem with your argument is that you are trying to legislate general principles on the basis of the boundary conditions. By that, I mean that you can't define everyone's right to self-defense based on the exception to the rule. For your example, because he is disabled, no matter what happens, unless you give him a 24/7 police guard, he will always be at a significant disadvantage at defending himself, even with a gun.

The only logical way to deal with the issue is to start from the generic case and then deal with any exceptions that would come along. The generic gun owner isn't some criminal looking to perform a string of muggings, nor is he planning the heist of the century. He is a law abiding citizen who respects the lethal power that a gun represents. The vast majority of guns will never be used to attack or injure someone. Of those that are, not all injuries will be unjustified. Some will be fully justifiable as self defense.

Yes, there will be accidents, no matter how careful you ask people to be. It's the same way with cars. Yes, there will be some people who misuse guns, but that is true no matter what you are discussing. Just because someone else misuses their guns doesn't mean that I should be denied the right to keep mine. The only person who has ever been hurt by my guns is me - and that was just because I cut my finger while cleaning them. The only way that they are any sort of danger to anyone is if those people present a real danger to me.

Kimball Kinnison

 

I would tend to agree here. I think such a logical hurdle pops up when one emotionalizes any issue.

I mean, at the basic level, someone in a wheelchair would be at a disadvantage with many physical activities. For example, such a person might not be able to get to a fire extinguisher as effectively as someone who isn't in a wheelchair. Does this mean that such a person should never keep a fire extinguisher in their home based on that single factor? Because the bottom line is that people can use their mind to overcome all sorts of disadvantages, and even turn them into advantages.

Like KK, I know someone who is in a wheelchair and who also carries a pistol. He's a retired police officer who comes in to do his mandatory firearm qualification every year. (he wasn't put in the wheelchair by anything police related-it was a boating accident after he retired.)

I think with him, it isn't so much that he needs to carry a pistol, but it represents a symbol that he had for most of his life. A practice which is given to every other retired officer. I also think there's also a feeling of "he may never need it, but it's good to have just in case." I know he has a cross draw holster that isn't affected by his sitting down position in the wheelchair, and is just as secure as any other holster. Should he give up on carrying a handgun just because he is in a wheelchair, or is it ok that he adapted to where it doesn't really factor in?

Now, his might be a unique case because of his retired officer status, but a firearm is just a tool, and I think this is why other examples might apply just as well.

 

KK: I think my emphasis was on the police, and the needs for them and other societal rules based on "the mean" or "the rule". I wasn't talking about in this case on preventive laws on the individual -- although that's another important matter -- I was talking about resources not being provided becuase the "rule case" does not need them.

Consider: Lowie (since he's where this sort of begins) says "well I can handle myself in this and this way, so I only need X amount of police protection. And so I should only need to spend X amount of taxes on police protection."

Well ok -- but person in the wheelchair... or if you like, another case of particular disability... needs Y level of police protection, and needs Lowie to spend at level Y. And in many cases this fictional person would need Lowie to pay Y when they themselves can only afford a lower level (maybe even X).

So what's done in this case? Because most people can prove they don't need a resource does that mean it should not be provided for? And many will provide an argument not to have it: after all they're not seeing the benefit. But to do otherwise would mean forcing someone without Lowie's capacity to protect themselves to operate at Lowie's capacity... frankly speaking, in the best possible case, work harder for the same thing.

EDIT: Actually you were responding to my much earlier point. I'll get to that in another post later somtime.

 

Except I don't think Lowie was talking about not providing for other services at all, I'd say his point was more in line with a concept of the "hierarchy of the individual." Perhaps it represents the common ground for this topic?

Let's go back to the other examples. Does the fact that municipalities provide for firefighter services preclude anyone from keeping a fire extinguisher or smoke alarm in their home? Does the fact that a paramedic can respond to a traffic crash mean that no one has to wear their seat belt before an accident? Anyone would answer "no" to both those questions. In the broad sense, both these examples illustrate why the argument of " the police exist so the individual has no need to protect themselves" is a rather poor one in relation to gun control.

Returning to Lowie's point, none of these ideas exist as "either/or" choices. Someone who keeps a fire extinguisher under their sink has a greater variety of options available to them depending on the situation. Sometimes it might be best for the person to just get out of the house and wait for the fire department. Other times, the person might be able to put out a small fire on their own. Most times, I bet a combination of all the options will be involved, with the extinguisher being used for an immediate emergency while the fire engine responds. The person who has no extinguisher at all has only a single option available to them.

Of course, insert "firearm" and some parallels immediately take shape. Granted, a firearm has a different nature than a fire extinguisher, but a gun is no more sinister on its own and vice versa. And with anything, education and knowledge comes into play. Even if a person has an extinguisher, they shouldn't play with matches, and if a person has a gun, it doesn't make them Rambo Jr.

 

"Something you'd like" isn't the same as a policy proposal. Gun rights proponents often want more people to have more guns, to make it harder for gun rights to be infringed.

Actually, I'd say it overstates the effectiveness of gun control. Namely, teh "take away guns" part works fine with ordinary citizens, but doesn't substantially affect the thugs who commit crimes. Most guns used by criminals are already illegally owned. Handguns were illegal in Washington, DC for decades, but people still had them all the time. Even if the police wanted to, they wouldn't be able to search every building in a city for guns. It'd be legally and physically unfeasible.

 

The government should be promoting it. We The People are the government. Are We The People really afraid that We The People aren't responsible enough to handle the knowledge? Nevermind the fact that the Militia is the people and it isn't a bad thing to be able to call up a large number of trained people in an emergency, be it invasion, civil insurrection, or natural disaster. It takes time to call up the National Guard or State Police and move them from one end of the state to where they are needed.

The police show up after the fact. Unless you want a police officer on every single street corner and in ever room of every house, there simply won't be a way to prevent crime. When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

 

The thing I've never truly understood whenever the Second Amendment is discussed is how the discussion automatically focuses on self defence as a means of replacing/supplementing the role of the police. My reading of the Second Amendment is that the right to bear arms is for the purpose of maintaining a well regulated "militia" being necessary to the security of a "free state". I understand this to essentially ensure that the people will have the right to bear arms against a tyrannical government so as to avoid a Saddam type regime which kept the right to bear arms with the government. Where does the right to bear arms for self defence even fit into this clause? I realise that the Supreme Court in Heller clearly made this connection but I really can't figure out how. It seems completely at odds with the wording and intent of the Second Amendment.

 

What the heck. I'm having trouble sleeping anyways.

There are a few different principles to take into account here.

First of all, when you talk about "the security of a free State", there are many different types of security for a free State. One type is security against invasion. Another is security against a tyrannical government. Yet another one is security of the citizens within the free State.

If the citizens of a state are not able to defend themselves against immediate threats, then ultimately how free can that state be? How secure is that state? As stated before, the police aren't really able to do much to prevent crimes from happening. They mostly only enter the picture after the crime is committed and then try to catch the perpetrator. How can the police protect me, when they aren't called until after I'm attacked and/or killed by a criminal? How can I, as a citizen of that state, be considered secure if the state can't offer any real "protection" until after the crime is committed? If the citizens cannot be kept secure, then how can the state itself be considered secure?

Kimball Kinnison

 

This was posted at the time of the Virginia Tech shootings and I thought it was worth sharing here.

The two issues that always arise with shootings such as this, definetly the school shootings such as last week's tragedy as well as Columbine, Paducha, ect is the control of weapons particularly those used in these incidents and whether film and video games have an influence. Now the issue of gun control, on the one hand all the military rifles, all the high powered type of stuff you can get, people don't need this sort of thing. What legal reason can the same rifles and sub machine guns used by people such as SWAT teams, special forces, the people who are trained specifically to kill and to use force to enforce the law, what legal reason can people outside those organisations have for owning or wanting to own such a weapon? On the other hand the ideas surrounding gun control is all wrong. I find it ironic that if someone else had a gun then they could have stopped Seung-Hui Cho before it got anywhere near where it did, but outside of that people look at something like the Port Arthur massecre that occured eleven years ago and they banned automatic rifles, in light of the Virginia Tech shooting they want to ban Glock handguns because that was the weapon used. You don't need a Styer AUG or 18 autofire to commit a shooting, you can achieve the same result with a revolver or a bolt action rifle or a single shot Derringer you have to reload after each shot. Much of the reason for this comes from the panic people have in these situations, in just about every instance like this people have been trained almost too well to be completely scarred and they, rightfully I might add react with panic. The issue lies in how easy it is to obtain guns and this is a war on two or three fronts. One, there is the right to bear arms and it is a right that should stand, the issue lies in whether or not specific weapons should be made avalible. Now this might sound contradictory to the notion that gun control is wrong by banning certain weapons, but the issue with that is the belief that if weapon X was banned then the problem would go away. The larger issue is how avalible guns are. Rather than allow everyone to have guns as has been proposed if guns were a lot harder to access then there wouldn't be the problems we face with guns. Now this leads to the second point in restricted guns finding their way into the hands of criminals. The black market is rife with the types of weapons people simply shouldn't have and is an issue that must be addressed. The third point lies in whether or not certain people should be allowed to have guns. Seung-Hui Cho appeared normal by all accounts but the signs were there. The disturbing writing, setting fire to his dorm, posing like the characters in violent films, which I'll get to in a minute. These type of things are what's known as having form, in that it delves into the type of character these people are. Someone like Seung-Hui Cho could easily commit the crimes given his mental state. The same goes for other mentally ill people, such as how dangerous it would be for someone who is suffering from depression, or maybe show leniancy and push the case to them attempting suicide, to own a gun. In this case, as well as the cases of incidents like Columbine and Paducha the people felt they had to take revenge for the torments they suffered, and very much power grows from the barrel of a gun. Not only would these incidents have been averted if people like the Trenchcoat Mafia hadn't been able to get their hands on guns as I said but a fourth point is to look at the causes of these rampages. Why did Seung-Hui Cho kill all these people before killing himself? Because he thought he was bullied and singled out. Why did Columbine happen? Because the perpetrators blamed others, they set out to right the wrongs they felt they suffered. It's no excuse, less than no excuse in the case of Columbine as going by their videos they wanted to do it because, well, because they could, because they thought it would be great fun to

 

Have we considered promoting non-lethal ammunition for self-defense purposes? Rubber bullets? Rounds loaded with rock salt instead of metal? Yes, there would still be a chance of killing the target, but it would be greatly reduced, would it not?

Aside from that, there's the obvious joke: Gun control means using both hands.

 

Actually, those would be even more dangerous in most self-defense situations. Bear with me and I will illustrate why.

There is an ongoing debate among those who choose to concealed carry about what is the "best" self-defense round or caliber for a gun. Some people prefer the common 9mm, while others choose .40 S&W, and even more prefer .45 ACP. (I tend to prefer the latter, but it may not be best for everyone.) I even know one person who won't use anything less than a .50 for self protection.

Why is there so much debate? Because when someone is attacking you, you want to stop them, not just slow them down or enrage them. That's actually one of the things that led to the development of the Colt 1911 .45 handgun that the military used for over 75 years. During the Spanish-American War, the army had trouble in the Philippines because the standard-issue .38 sidearms were not sufficient to stop attacking natives who were made extremely drunk, drugged, and worked into a religious frenzy before attacking. The Colt was designed with the idea that 1-2 shots would drop a person in their tracks. In the trenches of WWI, it did exactly that, saving many soldiers' lives. There have been many recorded incidents where it has required many, many shots from a 9mm to stop someone who was attacking, often because they were on some drug like PCP that made them not notice their injuries as well.

Now, if an actual bullet wound from a 9mm isn't necessarily reliable to stop someone who is attacking, why on earth would anyone expect that a rubber bullet would be more effective or safer? I do not understand the squeamishness associated with the use of lethal force. I'm sorry, but if I am in a situation where someone is attempting to cause bodily harm to me or someone else, to the point that it requires lethal force to stop them, then they have given up their right to protect their own life. I will not place their life as more important than my own, or that of my family or friends, or even innocent bystanders.

In the wise words of Malcolm Reynolds, "If someone tries to kill you, you kill them right back." That doesn't mean that I seek out opportunities to shoot or kill someone, but rather that I am prepared to use lethal force to protect myself or my family. After all, how many people here would rather let their daughter or wife get raped rather than kill the person trying to attack and rape them? How many people would rather let someone kill their husband, son, parent, sibling, etc, rather than kill their attacker in self defense?

It's regrettable when and if it comes to that, but it is simply the best option available. If you are trying to attack, assault, or kill someone, then quite simply, your life is forfeit and of less importance or value than that of the person you are attacking, assaulting, or trying to kill. That is the consequence of your choice and actions.

Kimball Kinnison

 

Basically that's it. All these plans for non lethal weaponry are wonderful ideas, but what if it doesn't stop them. Kimball's right, there was this one guy back in the eighties who was straight out of The Terminator, he took five, six, seven shots from a .38 revolver and kept coming. And while I might have said about restricted military weapons never being allowed to have the opportunity to fall into the wrong hands, the basic truth is that even guns which are designed to kill do not always do the job they're meant to do, so we keep pushing for higher and higher calibres, bigger and bigger guns. That's why the military commonly uses rifles as opposed to 9mm machine guns, that's why the police force use hollow points, because they maim and kill. I remember Nimrod, the SAS operation back in 1980 with the embassy siege. People bemoaned the brutality of the operatives. The sad fact is they have to be brutal in order to stop the oxygen thieves, it really is a matter of kill or be killed.

 

Gun control is one of those issues that encompases a lot of things and is a very ambiguous term. It has a lot of sub-issues and some of them are more legitimate than others. People always make the debate outlawing guns vs. not outlawing guns, but in reality, almost nobody wants to outlaw all, or even most guns.

I can understand people would be opposed to completely banning certain types of guns, though (aside from AK-47s or something like that). I can sympathize with that and understand where they're coming from. What I've never understand is why are people to opposed to doing two really obvious no-brainer things: a. full background checks and b. gun registration. Why anybody would be opposed to something that simple boggles my mind and represents the irrationality of some pro-gun advocates. There is no reason why we should take the chance of letting convicted criminals access guns so you don't have to wait a week or two to get your gun. Talk about "protecting America" and being tough on criminals, you'd think Republicans would be more worried about known criminals in this country killing innocent people every day than the infinitely small number of terrorists in the world attacking us once every 30 years. There is no reason why you can't wait two freakin' weeks to get a gun. That's absurd; selfishness and immaturity in the extreme. The gun registration thing is equally baffling to me. Completely irrational.

Now, I don't know how many anti-gun control people are against those things, but I've heard people make the argument before, and those two things in particular have always especially irritated me, more than the debate over hand guns, the Second Amendment, etc.

 

It's like this: someone who advocates taking away all guns regardless of whether they are used as a form of self defense is a moron. Someone who has to have a gun now, without any form of screening or background check, is probably a bigger one.