Gun poll

[Scooter]

Given that "defend someone against crime" could mean almost anything, including circumstances when the presence of the gun made absolutely no difference or when the supposed threat was only in the imagination of the gun owner, the comparison is meaningless. To say nothing of the fact that including only gun deaths rather than also including gun injuries, which probably number in the hundreds of thousands, grossly underestimates the destructive effect of guns in comparison to their alleged defensive effect.

[Sue U]

In the small city where I work (and where I used to live), we have a homicide rate that is about 20 times the national average. Almost all of the killings are by handgun, and almost all of them are related to drugs.

So how much effect do you think that an "assault weapons" ban or a "high-capacity magazines" ban or both would have on that?

None. While I favor a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines because of course, in my opinion it's handguns that more urgently need to be addressed. Sure it's tragic and shocking -- and apparently highly motivating -- when there's a mass shooting of upper-middle-class white kids in a leafy suburb where murder "just doesn't happen." But the mundane gun murders in Camden -- not to mention the couple hundred non-fatal shootings every year -- are by handgun. Obviously, drug dealers and corner boys don't walk around carrying AR-15s with high-capacity magazines; they have handguns they can stuff in a coat pocket (or in their waistbands, if they're really stupid.)

[Lord Jim]

Okay, it's time to check the weather forecast for Hell....

I'm actually quoting Mother Jones:

"A Killing Machine": Half of All Mass Shooters Used High-Capacity Magazines

Magazines holding more than 10 rounds were used in 31 of the 62 mass shootings we investigated.

As lawmakers across the country and in the nation's capital debate possible restrictions on high-capacity magazines, one question emerges: Are these ammunition-feeding devices, which allow a shooter to fire many times without reloading, in fact commonly used by mass killers? We examined the data from Mother Jones' continuing investigation into mass shootings and found that high-capacity magazines have been used in at least 31 of the 62 cases we analyzed. A half-dozen of these crimes occurred in the last two years alone. (With some of the cases we studied, it remains unclear whether high-capacity magazines were used; for more details, jump to our data set below.)

In the shooting that injured Rep. Gabby Giffords in Tucson, Arizona, Jared Loughner emptied a 33-round magazine in 30 seconds, killing 6 and injuring 13. Inside a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, James Holmes used 40- and 100-round magazines to injure and kill an unprecedented 70 victims. At Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Adam Lanza used high-capacity magazines to fire upwards of 150 bullets as he slaughtered 20 kids and 6 adults.

"It turns a killer into a killing machine," says David Chipman, who served for 25 years as a special agent in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Outlawing high-capacity magazines won't prevent gun crimes from happening, Chipman notes, but might well reduce the carnage: "Maybe 3 kids get killed instead of 20."

With Congress undertaking a highly charged debate over firearms restrictions, many observers are skeptical that Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein's proposal to ban assault weapons will garner enough votes on Capitol Hill. But there may be momentum for mandating universal background checks on gun purchasers, and for outlawing the sale of magazines containing more than 10 rounds. A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that a majority of Americans support stricter regulation of firearms sales, and 59 percent believe that high-capacity magazines were significantly to blame in the recent spate of mass shootings.

The problem dates back to long before Newtown. In 1984, the assailant who massacred 21 at a McDonald's in San Ysidro, California, unleashed more than 200 rounds. School and workplace shootings in Stockton, California, and San Francisco in the late '80s and early '90s also involved large magazines, with an estimated 100 shots fired in each case. In 1997, a gunman in Orange, California, fired nearly 150 shots, wielding an AK-47 with a 30-round magazine three years after a federal law banned such assault weapons.

High-capacity magazines also play a role in the daily gun deaths plaguing US cities from LA to Chicago to Baltimore. "A lot of these folks who are driving in their cars and shooting out the window, they're shooting whatever is in their magazine," Chipman says. "So if it's only 10 rounds instead of 20, maybe the kid halfway down the block doesn't get hit with round 18."

The 1994 federal assault weapons ban limited magazines to 10 rounds, a threshold generally accepted by law enforcement officials and policy makers. Feinstein's bill aims to reinstate this limit, as does legislation introduced by Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. Seven states have some restrictions on high-capacity magazines; a new state law passed in New York limits magazines to no more than seven rounds.

Gun rights advocates also commonly argue that mass shooters could kill just as easily by rapidly reloading smaller magazines, and that a ban would make no difference. But such capability requires extensive training under intense conditions, according to Chipman. "Anyone who's been a cop or in the military knows that that's not something you can do unpracticed," he says.

The Tucson mass shooting is telling here in another regard: It was only after Loughner had emptied his 33-round magazine and paused to reload that bystanders were able to tackle him and end the carnage.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... -shootings

The last bit I highlighted butresses something I have said repeatedly in these discussions; a robustly enforced ban on high capacity magazines will reduce the carnage from day in day out gang banger and drive by shootings....

Regardless of how long it takes to replace the magazine, the perp in this kind of shooting will not hang around to do it because:

A. Given the nature of his targets, while he's reloading, some of them might easily start shooting back

and

B. Given that these crimes are committed in public, the longer he hangs around the more likely it is the cops will show up.

[Andrew D]

The rational meaning of "civilians use guns to defend themselves and others from crime" is that crime was attempted and that the guns were useful in defending against that crime. Inventions such as "circumstances when the presence of the gun made absolutely no difference" and "when the supposed threat was only in the imagination of the gun owner" are nothing more than attempts to wish away the evidence which one does not like.

[Scooter]

The rational meaning of "civilians use guns to defend themselves and others from crime" is that crime was attempted and that the guns were useful in defending against that crime.

A definition that is entirely in the perception of the person making the report and as such is not susceptible to any objective verification.

Unlike, say, the number of people killed or injured by firearms.

[Scooter]

Okay, it's time to check the weather forecast for Hell....

I'm actually quoting Mother Jones

You knew it was gonna happen if we continued to fuck with the ozone layer.

[Lord Jim]

The difference between the number of murders committed with firearms, and the number of times the Journal of Quantitative Criminology reports that they were used by civilians to defend themselves or others is so vast, that even if the methodology were so poor, (and there's no evidence to suggest this) that 50% of the instances represented "imagined" threats or situations where the presence of the firearms would have made "no difference" that the difference would still be a multiple in excess of 40 times over....Hell, even if that were so in two thirds of the cases, it would still be a huge multiple....

The available empirical evidence strongly suggests that this claim:

The evidence is clear that possessing a gun increases your chance of being murdered with a gun.

Is absolutely, 100% wrong.

[Lord Jim]

Okay, it's time to check the weather forecast for Hell....

I'm actually quoting Mother Jones

You knew it was gonna happen if we continued to fuck with the ozone layer.

[Scooter]

The available empirical evidence strongly suggests that this claim:

The evidence is clear that possessing a gun increases your chance of being murdered with a gun.

Is absolutely, 100% wrong.

Yes, but just because rubato made an ill considered statement doesn't mean that the comparison is in any way an accurate reflection of the actual cost/benefit of gun ownership, for reasons already stated.

[Andrew D]

If banning "high-capacity magazines" makes you feel good, then go ahead. If you think -- the absence of evidence notwithstanding -- that doing so will bring about a significant reduction in the number of firearm homicides in the US, then have at it.

Magazines holding more than 10 rounds were used in 31 of the 62 mass shootings we investigated.

Roughly 16,272 murders were committed in the United States during 2008. Of these, about 10,886 or 67% were committed with firearms

Of those 10,886 firearms murders, how many -- what percentage -- were committed during mass shootings?

High-capacity magazines also play a role in the daily gun deaths plaguing US cities from LA to Chicago to Baltimore. "A lot of these folks who are driving in their cars and shooting out the window, they're shooting whatever is in their magazine," Chipman says. "So if it's only 10 rounds instead of 20, maybe the kid halfway down the block doesn't get hit with round 18."

How many -- what percentage -- of deaths resulting from "folks who are driving in their cars and shooting out the window" involved high-capacity magazines?

It was only after Loughner had emptied his 33-round magazine and paused to reload that bystanders were able to tackle him and end the carnage.

Yes, it happens. It also happens that guns jam. It also happens that guns explode in the hands of the people firing them.

As I have said over and over and over again: I have nothing against banning "high-capacity magazines". If it makes you feel good, go right ahead.

But if your claim is that doing so will make a significant dent in the US's gun carnage, you should adduce some evidence to that effect.

And that is not mere disputatiousness on my part. There is a great deal of political resistance to measures intended to reduce the US's gun carnage. And there is only so much political capital available to expend in support of those measures.

I am simply suggesting that those of us who favor reasonable firearm restrictions for the purpose of reducing gun carnage need to pick our battles carefully: We should expend our political capital on the things which are most likely to make the most difference. And that means, in realistic terms, that if -- if -- we have to throw the "high-capacity magazines" ban and the "assault weapons" ban overboard in order to get universal background checks, then we should.

[Andrew D]

If I beat someone with a firearm, then that person has been injured by a firearm. If I beat someone to death with a firearm, then that person has been killed by a firearm.

If someone stumbles over a firearm, falls down the stairs, and is injured, then that person has been injured by a firearm. If someone stumbles over a firearm, falls down the stairs, and is killed, then that person has been killed by a firearm.

Those things could happen. But I could beat and injure or kill someone with something other than a firearm. And someone could stumble over something other than a firearm, fall down the stairs, and be injured or killed.

Therefore, the statistics concerning injuries and deaths caused by firearms are unreliable.

Those criticisms are absurd. And they are on par with Scooter's criticisms of the statistics concerning defensive uses of firearms.

[Sue U]

***
Once again:

Roughly 16,272 murders were committed in the United States during 2008. Of these, about 10,886 or 67% were committed with firearms

Based on survey data from a 2000 study published in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology,[17] U.S. civilians use guns to defend themselves and others from crime at least 989,883 times per year.[18]

http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp

I just wanted to point out that the so-called "Just Facts" site is a highly suspect source, to say the least. Apart from the fact that its operators have absolutely no education, training, experience or other background in this kind of work, and that one of them credits himself as the author of "a highly researched book evidencing factual support for the Bible across a broad array of academic disciplines," and that it is clearly driven from their admitted "conservative/libertarian viewpoint," they are either lying about the data above or don't understand what they're reading. The Journal of Quantitative Criminology study they cite for the "fact" of defensive gun use ("at least 989,883 times per year") says absolutely nothing of the sort. In actual fact, the study was an investigation of why there is such a wide divergence of reported self-defense among various surveys trying to measure it. The article concludes that the various surveys are measuring different things -- NOT that anyone's estimate is actually correct. The fact is that none of the estimates is very good.

[Sue U]

... the number of times the Journal of Quantitative Criminology reports that they were used by civilians to defend themselves ...

Exactly where did JQC report that? Or are you quoting the "Just Facts" guys, who lied about the content of the MacDowell paper in JQC?

[oldr_n_wsr]

Wonder what all of these stats would say about killing and being killed by firearms if you took out the gang factor.
Just askin'

[Sean]

There is a meaningful difference between "can't say" and "don't believe that the onus lies with me to say". I'm not the person who wants the gun. Why then should I provide the justification for having the gun?

That might fly in a society without a strong devotion to individual liberty, but free societies adhere, quite properly, to the contrary rule: The proponent of a prohibition -- any prohibition -- bears the burden of justifying the prohibition.

Oh I agree completely Andrew. The only problem is that I'm not actually talking about a prohibition, what I'm talking about is a qualification process. That shifts the onus of justification onto the applicant.

You seem to be labouring under the illusion that I would just deny everyone a gun. This is simply not true. It's just that I don't see "Because its my right as an American goddammit!" as a good reason and, let's face it, that's what it boils down to. Otherwise, nobody would feel the need to even mention the 2nd Amendment here...

[Sue U]

(Newsflash, rubato: My possessing a revolver does not entail any risk of my blowing up the neighborhood.)

However, it does entail a substantially increased risk that the revolver will be used to injure or kill a member of, or a visitor to, your household (both intentionally and unintentionally). How does that risk compare with the likelihood that the revolver will ever actually be used successfully for self defense?

The evidence on that point is in conflict. As observed above, there is evidence that it is more likely -- ninety times more likely -- that a firearm will be used to defend someone against crime than that a firearm will be used to kill someone.

Andrew, even if that 989,883 number for "defensive gun use" were correct (which it most probably isn't), you're mixing apples and oranges when no one ordered fruit salad. You can't compare the general "defend[ing] someone against crime" with the specific "a firearm ... kill[ed] someone;" the alleged would-be crimes defended against clearly could not all have been homicides. The National Crime Victimization Survey conducted by the Census Bureau and Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates the number of all defensive gun use incidents at around 100,000/year, while other academic researchers put it at somewhere between 55,000 and 85,000.

But all these numbers are counting all instances of "thwarted" burglary, robbery, rape, assault, and maybe even trespassing and general dickery. And those are the "incidents" as imagined by the survey respondents. How do they even know that without their guns they actually would have been victims of any crime at all, let alone murder? Maybe they are nervous nellies who perceive threats all around them, all the time, regardless of how real. Maybe they are braggarts who want tell about how tough they were, fending off evil-doers with their guns. Maybe their recollections are just not very good. Maybe the questions were poorly worded. But because one cannot know or measure something that never happened, these numbers are of rather little use in any event.

[Guinevere]

If banning "high-capacity magazines" makes you feel good, then go ahead. If you think -- the absence of evidence notwithstanding -- that doing so will bring about a significant reduction in the number of firearm homicides in the US, then have at it.

Magazines holding more than 10 rounds were used in 31 of the 62 mass shootings we investigated.

Roughly 16,272 murders were committed in the United States during 2008. Of these, about 10,886 or 67% were committed with firearms

Of those 10,886 firearms murders, how many -- what percentage -- were committed during mass shootings?

High-capacity magazines also play a role in the daily gun deaths plaguing US cities from LA to Chicago to Baltimore. "A lot of these folks who are driving in their cars and shooting out the window, they're shooting whatever is in their magazine," Chipman says. "So if it's only 10 rounds instead of 20, maybe the kid halfway down the block doesn't get hit with round 18."

How many -- what percentage -- of deaths resulting from "folks who are driving in their cars and shooting out the window" involved high-capacity magazines?

It was only after Loughner had emptied his 33-round magazine and paused to reload that bystanders were able to tackle him and end the carnage.

Yes, it happens. It also happens that guns jam. It also happens that guns explode in the hands of the people firing them.

As I have said over and over and over again: I have nothing against banning "high-capacity magazines". If it makes you feel good, go right ahead.

But if your claim is that doing so will make a significant dent in the US's gun carnage, you should adduce some evidence to that effect.

And that is not mere disputatiousness on my part. There is a great deal of political resistance to measures intended to reduce the US's gun carnage. And there is only so much political capital available to expend in support of those measures.

I am simply suggesting that those of us who favor reasonable firearm restrictions for the purpose of reducing gun carnage need to pick our battles carefully: We should expend our political capital on the things which are most likely to make the most difference. And that means, in realistic terms, that if -- if -- we have to throw the "high-capacity magazines" ban and the "assault weapons" ban overboard in order to get universal background checks, then we should.

Incrementalism Andrew, the most effective peaceful means of change We have to start somewhere, and if after Sandy Hook there is public support for banning assault weapons and high capacity magazines, then lets start there.

I would hope we could get decent background checks, too.

[Andrew D]

... what I'm talking about is a qualification process. That shifts the onus of justification onto the applicant.

That is a prohibition, albeit a qualified one: A person is prohibited from owning a firearm, unless he or she can provide "a damn good reason" -- presumably as assessed by the government -- for owning one.

In a free society, one which places a premium on individual liberty, the onus of justification of even a qualified prohibition falls on the person -- or government -- imposing that qualified prohibition: A person is free to own a firearm unless the government adduces "a damn good reason" for prohibiting that particular person from owning a firearm.

[Sean]

And we're back to the crux of the argument. The truth is that the gun issue has got fuck all to do with guns and everything to do with 'rights'. It's a shame that there are so many people in your country who don't seem to give a fuck how many children die as long as their precious 'rights' are protected!

[Lord Jim]

And that means, in realistic terms, that if -- if -- we have to throw the "high-capacity magazines" ban and the "assault weapons" ban overboard in order to get universal background checks, then we should.

Incrementalism Andrew, the most effective peaceful means of change We have to start somewhere

I agree with both of those statements.

The way it appears that the politics of this is shaking out, universal background checks seem to have the most realistic chance of being enacted, limits on magazine size has some chance of passing, and the assault weapons ban is pretty much a dead issue. (The biggest roadblock on that one is Harry Reid)

But doing something is better than doing nothing, and whatever package can be put together and passed, should be.