Gun control

khalid_sl said:

First of all, I am not Kinner. I am trying to have an honest debate with you. Fair enough, it wasn't a complete gun ban. However, they did ban all semi-automatics. So yeah, semi-automatic rimfires with 10 or fewer rounds are in circulation, and even those you have to jump through hoops for. You even have to provide a genuine reason to have an airsoft gun.


So again by your very own sources the laws in Australia were a wash pretty much on crime, even though their laws are clearly unconstitutional here. Yet you ARE for more gun regulation, unless you have changed your mind recently. You didn't advocate it in your post, but you have in the past on this thread.

I don't get it.

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You have to understand, I have guns and I respect the gun owners who are reasonable, rational, and responsible with their guns. But the arguments made by gun owners on this board do at times, frustrate me. There is no common sense. I do not back an assault weapons ban, which I have stated numerous times in the past. But that doesn't mean that all gun regulations will result in a slippery slope towards outright nullification of the 2nd amendment. For days, people griped and moaned at Obama's executive orders as a run-around that bypassed congressional oversight. Yet when the orders were revealed, much of what was in it ACTUALLY MADE SENSE. The boogey man that people feared doesn't exist, and really, never exists. So no, I don't necessarily back more gun regulations. The more accurate statement would be, I don't think all gun regulations are evil, just because they are gun regulations.

The YOU was in reference to Kinner. The point I'm trying to make is, if one cites a source, find better sources.

I'm just wondering what everyone is going to say about these reasonable restrictions when the dems win the house at the midterm and they can then push through whatever bill they want. I'm really not worried about what the government can do currently, but we do have a few people who vote dem who don't want to see more restrictions. If I lived in a place where my vote mattered I would have a hard time because of how strongly I feel about the issue.

If the dems currently had the house I know they would be pushing the AWB harder and I wonder what the people on this board who currently do not back an AWB would say then.

Zodiac_sl said:

I'm just wondering what everyone is going to say about these reasonable restrictions when the dems win the house at the midterm and they can then push through whatever bill they want. I'm really not worried about what the government can do currently, but we do have a few people who vote dem who don't want to see more restrictions. If I lived in a place where my vote mattered I would have a hard time because of how strongly I feel about the issue.

If the dems currently had the house I know they would be pushing the AWB harder and I wonder what the people on this board who currently do not back an AWB would say then.

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Simply having control still doesn't automatically guarantee that that kind of legislation would pass. The dems control the senate, so you would think that an awb would pass quickly in the senate. That hasn't happened, because there are bigger, less politically damaging fish to fry. If anything, I want to see feinstein's bill go to a vote, just to see how much support it actually has. Something tells me there are plenty of democrats in both the house AND senate that would vote nay.

Tuco_sl said:

I dunno about a come to jesus moment about gun control, but I think a lot of people learned in this thread that assault weapons account for around 3% of firearm deaths.

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I don't really like the follow-on conclusion from that, that a 3% reduction in murders would not justify the ban. A 3% drop in anything is significant. You can argue that the ban wouldn't achieve this drop and that people would use different weapons or something, and that might be true. My understanding is that almost all of these mass shootings are done with some kind of rifle that would be classified as an "assault weapon" even though we know how nebulous that term is.

chaos_sl said:

I don't really like the follow-on conclusion from that, that a 3% reduction in murders would not justify the ban. A 3% drop in anything is significant. You can argue that the ban wouldn't achieve this drop and that people would use different weapons or something, and that might be true. My understanding is that almost all of these mass shootings are done with some kind of rifle that would be classified as an "assault weapon" even though we know how nebulous that term is.

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I don't believe it does justify a ban. How important are civil liberties to you? There's a whole host of shit we could outright ban under the guise of, " It's for the children". You have to accept that there's a price for freedom. There's also a price for tyranny. We had prohibition once. Why don't we have it still?

Big Derg_sl said:

I don't believe it does justify a ban. How important are civil liberties to you? There's a whole host of shit we could outright ban under the guise of, " It's for the children". You have to accept that there's a price for freedom. There's also a price for tyranny. We had prohibition once. Why don't we have it still?

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We do, actually. And not just drugs, the government controls all manner of shit from substances to trade to how fast you can drive. The civil liberties argument rings hollow to me. An assault weapons ban isn't tyranny.

I don't support a ban, I don't want it. But if you tell me "well it is only a 3% drop..." with a straight face, as if that isn't a significant impact when it comes to the murder rate, well bro I just don't know. It is significant, and to some people even the chance at a 3% drop is worth banning one specific type of gun.

chaos_sl said:

A 3% dropin anythingis significant.....My understanding is that almost all of these mass shootings are done with some kind of rifle that would be classified as an "assault weapon" even though we know how nebulous that term is.

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Oh man. 3% isn't necessarily significant. Especially when you look at the margins of error attached to a lot of crime statistics.


In my city, the police department loves to use percentages with homicides. For example, 33 people murdered in 2011, and 31 people were murdered in 2012. The police department will trumpet that it has successfully reduced homicide by 6%!

It's worth thinking critically and calling bullshit. The police didn't have anything to do with that reduction. There were just two fewer killers across 365 days or, the victims got lucky in the ER, etc.


If you don't actually use these firearms, you probably don't understand that assault doesn't describe squat. If you want to know what an assault weapon might be, ammunition caliber and quality is about the best thing to look at, then capacity, then automation. For example, 223/556 is sold in Walmart dirt cheap -- 20 rounds of Tula for ~$5. I used quite a bit of it in my Bulgarian AK74. Outside of target shooting though, that ammunition isn't good for much civilian use. There are better calibers for outside of 100 yards, no respectable deer hunter would use it, and it would evaporate vermin. It is largely a closer-range anti-personnel round. Anyway, whether the gun is black and has a military design doesn't really matter.

Here's another thing to consider -- the latest charge of assualt weapon ban is led by politicians and police. Politicians are fairweather, and they piss themselves at the thought of what happened out in Arizona. Police just want easier and safer jobs, and they don't care about gun rights because they get all sorts of weapons privileges when they are off duty.

Lastly, if you're going to call black guns assault weapons, then police departments might as well be employing Weapons of Mass Destruction. Even the smallest of police departments has access to full auto weaponry, sniper rifles, combat shotguns, armor, explosives, tasers, drones, etc.

I'm not dogmatic about 2A rights, but I don't like that civilians are less and less dealing with police at arms length.

Right, but 3% nationwide isn't 2 people, more like 350 people.

I understand that the term "assault weapon" is really more of a scare tactic than anything, and I understand that the ban would probably be largely ineffective. Just on that particular point, the "3%" mentality I think is off base. That is significant.

chaos_sl said:

Right, but 3% nationwide isn't 2 people, more like 350 people.

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I don't know the actual number off hand, but I think the 3 percent translates into fewer than 100 actual people. From a coldly practical standpoint in a population of 300million+, some eggs are going to get broken. And to use another cliche, politics is simply closing the barn door after the horses have run out.

Chicago and Philadelphia generate far more homicides per year than any of these recent massacres.

I find it sadly ironic that Obama is from Chicago and Biden is from Delaware (its only major city Wilmington, population ~70,000, is the most murderous place per capita in the US). They had no idea how to deal with gun violence in their respective home states/cities, yet here they are on the national stage leading the gun ban charge. Someone national needs to point that out.

Itzena_sl said:

When the crime rates dropped, you mean?

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this is like the 10th time ive seen this in this thread. Someone tries to correlate gun use to deaths, then someone comes along and talks about crime. Crime does not equal deaths; they cannot be interchangeably used.

koljec_sl said:

I don't know the actual number off hand, but I think the 3 percent translates into fewer than 100 actual people. From a coldly practical standpoint in a population of 300million+, some eggs are going to get broken. And to use another cliche, politics is simply closing the barn door after the horses have run out.

Chicago and Philadelphia generate far more homicides per year than any of these recent massacres.

I find it sadly ironic that Obama is from Chicago and Biden is from Delaware (its only major city Wilmington, population ~70,000, is the most murderous place per capita in the US). They had no idea how to deal with gun violence in their respective home states/cities, yet here they are on the national stage leading the gun ban charge. Someone national needs to point that out.

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Using the 2010 homicide numbers, 3% is about400 people.

I don't agree with you that some people are just going to die. At least not with the implication that there is nothing to be done. Fuck all that. We pay all of these politicians a lot of money and they lead cushy lives and all we ask is that they work to fix shit. I'll be damned if I accept from them throwing their hands up and saying nothing can be done. Something can ALWAYS be done. Doing the right thing is what's hard. I don't want them to look at ways to bring rifle homicides down, I want them to look atallhomicides. I don't even expect them to fix it, just to look at it objectively and some up with ways we can try to address it. That's really it. Which is why stuff like the AWB kind of pisses me off, because this is presented as a solution and meanwhile the bigger issues behind a lot of this violence, like poverty or whatever the fuck was wrong with this Lanza kid, are not being addressed.

chaos_sl said:

A 3% dropin anythingis significant.....My understanding is that almost all of these mass shootings are done with some kind of rifle that would be classified as an "assault weapon" even though we know how nebulous that term is.

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Oh man. 3% isn't necessarily significant. Especially when you look at the margins of error attached to a lot of crime statistics.


In my city, the police department loves to use percentages with homicides. For example, 33 people murdered in 2011, and 31 people were murdered in 2012. The police department will trumpet that it has successfully reduced homicide by 6%!

It's worth thinking critically and calling bullshit. The police didn't have anything to do with that reduction. There were just two fewer killers across 365 days or, the victims got lucky in the ER, etc.


If you don't actually use these firearms, you probably don't understand that assault doesn't describe squat. If you want to know what an assault weapon might be, ammunition caliber and quality is about the best thing to look at, then capacity, then automation. For example, 223/556 is sold in Walmart dirt cheap -- 20 rounds of Tula for ~$5. I used quite a bit of it in my Bulgarian AK74. Outside of target shooting though, that ammunition isn't good for much civilian use. There are better calibers for outside of 100 yards, no respectable deer hunter would use it, and it would evaporate vermin. It is largely a closer-range anti-personnel round. Anyway, whether the gun is black and has a military design doesn't really matter.

Here's another thing to consider -- the latest charge of assualt weapon ban is led by politicians and police. Politicians are fairweather, and they piss themselves at the thought of what happened out in Arizona. Police just want easier and safer jobs, and they don't care about gun rights because they get all sorts of weapons privileges when they are off duty.

Lastly, if you're going to call black guns assault weapons, then police departments might as well be employing Weapons of Mass Destruction. Even the smallest of police departments has access to full auto weaponry, sniper rifles, combat shotguns, explosives, tasers, drones, etc.

Big Phoenix_sl said:

BUT WE HAVE HIGHER MURDER RATES!

Firearms ownership has only increased every single year while for the past 30 years our murder and crime rates have fallen.

guns increase, crime decreases CANT EXPLAIN THAT

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wat? According to basically every available poll I can find, gun ownership rates have fallen over a longer timeline in the U.S. Polls by bothGSS and Gallupshow rates falling, the GSS shows rates from 50% in 1970 down to 30% in 2010.

And when we trend violent crime in the US over the same time period (FBI Study), it mysteriously correlates to gun ownership percentages....

chaos_sl said:

Using the 2010 homicide numbers, 3% is about400 people.

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http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr...ime/murdermain
An estimated 14,748 persons were murdered nationwide in 2010. This was a 4.2 percent decrease from the 2009 estimate, a 14.8 percent decrease from the 2006 figure, and an 8.0 percent decrease from the 2001 estimate.

I believe you are basing that 400 number off the total number of homicides in the nation for 2010, 14,748. A very small percentage of those involved "assault" weapons.

I think the number is more like 3% of 7% of 14,748. In that case, the more accurate number is something like 30ish. In other words, .00001% of the total US population was killed by assault weapons in 2010. Even using your 400 figure doesn't change the smallness of the percentage total population.

koljec_sl said:

You are basing that number off the total number of homicides in the nation for 2010, 14,748. A very small percentage of those involved "assault" weapons.

I think the number is more like 3% of 7% of 14,748. In that case, the more accurate number is something like 30ish.

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No, the link clearly breaks out rifles and the numbers they post correspond roughly to the 3% we have been talking about. 30ish is in no way accurate. And the total was 12,996 for 2010.

chaos_sl said:

But if you tell me "well it is only a 3% drop..." with a straight face, as if that isn't a significant impact when it comes to the murder rate, well bro I just don't know. It is significant, and to some people even the chance at a 3% drop is worth banning one specific type of gun.

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It wouldn't be a 3% drop though Chaos. The mass shooters would just all use handguns. As for the argument that they wouldn't be able to kill as many people, well,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_massacre, the highest death total mass shooting in the US so far was with handguns. The Giffords shooting was also used a handgun.

Even if you could argue that handguns aren't as effective, well, the shooters would move to semi-automatic rifles without the cosmetic "tactical" features", like the mini-14 which is perfectly legal even under New York's bill.


Not that you are arguing for the AWB, but I think it is pretty clear that the AWB wouldn't have anywhere NEAR 3% effect, more like 0.

There were 32,367 vehicle related deaths in 2011. Lets outlaw cars.

khalid_sl said:

It wouldn't be a 3% drop though Chaos. The mass shooters would just all use handguns. As for the argument that they wouldn't be able to kill as many people, well,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_massacre, the highest death total mass shooting in the US so far was with handguns. The Giffords shooting was also used a handgun.

Even if you could argue that handguns aren't as effective, well, the shooters would move to semi-automatic rifles without the cosmetic "tactical" features", like the mini-14 which is perfectly legal even under New York's bill.


Not that you are arguing for the AWB, but I think it is pretty clear that the AWB wouldn't have anywhere NEAR 3% effect, more like 0.

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Some shooters might use a different weapon, some might not. It could change the nature of mass shootings somewhat, maybe lowering the the victim count. Maybe raising it too, who knows. Neither you or I know the answer to that, and just saying "Well they would all use handguns!" is not accurate.