First, Some Facts
Based on top indicators of socioeconomic success — income per person and average education level, for instance - The United States ranks ninth in the world, bested only by the likes of Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Iceland, Andorra, Canada and Finland. We're a big, raucous, fractious democracy. It's understandable we won't score as well on some points as smaller homogenous centralized countries like Iceland.
Those countries all also enjoy low rates of gun violence, but the U.S. has the 31st highest rate in the world: 3.85 deaths due to gun violence per 100,000 people in 2016. That was eight times higher than the rate in Canada, which had .48 deaths per 100,000 people — and 27 times higher than the one in Denmark, which had .14 deaths per 100,000. Deaths due to gun violence are rare even in many countries that are extremely poor — such as Bangladesh and Laos, which saw .16 deaths and .13 deaths respectively per 100,000 people. Prosperous Asian countries such as Singapore and Japan boast the absolute lowest rates, though the United Kingdom and Germany are in almost as good shape.
To be sure, there are quite a few countries where gun violence is a substantially larger problem than in the United States — particularly in Central America and the Caribbean. (El Salvador 40.3/100K, Venezuela 34.8 and Guatemala 26.8.) A major driver there is the large presence of gangs and drug trafficking. The gangs and drug traffickers fight amongst themselves to get more territory, and they fight the police. The bodycounts include the combatants and citizens who are caught in the crossfire.
For reference, in the Middle East the loss of life by firearm is 9.44 in Afghanistan and 4.28 in Iraq. It is 1.69 in Somalia and only 1.17 in Syria. Syria! May I repeat, it is 3.85 in the US. Gun deaths are over 25 times higher, per capita, in the US than in other high income countries.
So Many Guns
One of the most obvious differences between our nation and every other developed nation in the world is the terrific number of guns we have in private ownership. I'll probably go into who owns those guns in another blog, but there are far more guns in private hands per capita than in any other country. We possess over half of the world's privately owned guns. As of this writing we have more than twice as many gun stores in America than the world has Starbucks! Doesn't that seem excessive? I think we have more Starbucks than we need, but the deadliest thing they have, if you stay away from the food, are triple-squirt S'mores Frappucino Lattes. We can deal with that.
How did we come to have so many guns? We have a right to bear arms in our Constitution's enigmatic Amendment II. I refer to my pocket copy of The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America and it reads:
We also have the National Rifle Association lobbying at every level of government in every community nationwide. Despite all the evidence, when given the opportunity to endorse gun violence prevention measures that would for instance make women safer, the NRA consistently does the opposite, fighting to defeat legislation, for example, that would require people served with a restraining order — whether temporary or permanent — to surrender their firearms.
The 2nd Amendment was written at the time of the Minutemen. If outraged native Americans, another State, or another nation attacked a community then neighbors ran or rode to neighbors and the "able-bodied" men grabbed their single-shot musket, powder, mini-balls and long knives and gathered "in a minute" to repel the invader. Made sense then. Our fledgling nation didn't have the budget for a large standing army so they needed a Militia to defend each State and the Nation as a whole. In another place The Constitution defined the purpose of the militias was "to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasion." (Article I, Section 8, Clause 15).
That scenario is not relevant anymore. Any attack against a community should and would be stopped by local police or state police, who now sport armored vehicles, light artillery and other equipment handed down from our military. Any organized assault would also activate the FBI which has its own enhanced SWAT teams. In the unlikely event police firepower is inadequate to stop the assault each state has a National Guard complete with tanks and supersonic aircraft. God forbid that fails we have the world's best funded military that would quickly be authorized to neutralize the miscreants.
And, the only real occurrences of this type of attack in the last hundred years, with the exclusion of Pearl Harbor, have been quick, night time raids by mobs of racists against minorities, the rare riot or the government itself against citizens who've gathered together to stray a bit too far from the norm.
The Tree of Liberty
The writers of the Declaration and the Constitution were, or stood beside, people who had actively fought to overthrow their government. Not by petition and demonstration, although that was tried, but with bullets and artillery. They had killed representatives of their internationally recognized government to overthrow it and form a new government. Anyone today who thinks that is possible in America with handheld weapons is delusional.
Jefferson, who penned the Constitution, in collaboration with many other brilliant true rebels, later said in a letter to a friend, "What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is a natural manure." So, the intent of the writers of the Constitution was to keep the people well enough armed that their own government would operate in fear of its people. If we are going to follow that line of reasoning then the common American citizen should be able to at least buy fully automatic weapons, mortars, shoulder-fired surface to air missiles, grenades, mines, etc. If we're going to shed the blood of tyrants we are going to need more firepower.
One big problem we'd have today is that we can't agree upon who is a tyrant. In colonial America it was easy to gather a majority around the thought that a King in a distant land who took your taxes and ignored your pleas was the tyrant. In America today we could probably gather 25% of the population who would swear that President Obama was a tyrant and another 25% who would swear Trump is a tyrant. How many of them are willing to take those arms we're discussing and go into the streets to spill some red manure on the tree of liberty? Despite what you read on line, almost none. And, once the bleeding starts, far fewer. Everybody's a tough guy until they get punched in the mouth.
In the gun rights people's magazine of defenses for gun ownership is the claim that the first step in taking away a nation's freedoms is to take away their guns. I submit that is not true. The first step is to terrify them that if they don't quickly give away those freedoms they will be overrun by Communists or dark-skinned people. We're past that - read the Patriot Act. Every jurisdiction also has laws against "unlawful assembly" even though Article I of The Constitution says "Congress shall make no law respecting . . . the right of the people peaceably to assemble." Next will be declaring martial law. And, while we armed citizens can make it much more expensive and prolong the pain, I don't think we could stop a concentrated coup because too many of us would be on each side. We'd just be fighting in the streets. See Spain 1936 or Syria 2011.
A Militia
Going down a different track. The first line in the 2nd Amendment is "A well regulated Militia," We have that. We have the United States military in which I reluctantly but proudly served and upon which we spend well over $525 Billion per year (an average of $1,617 for every American man, woman and child). We have a standing army the founding fathers could not imagine. Not counted in that budget, already over 50% of of our discretionary spending, are billions more spent on surveillance, weapons development, etc.
If we want to talk literally about militias, each State, DC, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands has a sizable National Guard we mentioned earlier. All members of the National Guard of the United States are also members of the militia of the United States as defined by 10 U.S.C. § 246. We have large, well equipped, "well regulated militias" without civilians.
The people today who buy handguns, long guns and thousands of rounds of ammo are not a "well regulated militia." If they gather together to train as a militia both Democratic and Republican administrations will put them on watch lists, possibly infiltrate them and if necessary pursue charges for plotting against the government. It is legal, in most of the US to buy a handgun and acquire a concealed carry permit without taking the first lesson in how to safely load, carry, use or clean weapon. That is not a well regulated group.
You cannot say today's gun owners are a militia in the sense that they are a back up to the local police, state police, FBI, National Guard or our military. In the unlikely case all those are overcome by some foreign power we would fight on. We should mount a good persistent resistance, but I cannot seriously count that as an argument for having nearly as many guns in private possession as we have people. Plus, three-quarters of our military age people are not acceptable for military service. A majority of our guns are concentrated in the hands of a minority of older white guys in rural areas who are so busted up or debilitated by their jobs and medications that they can no longer even go hunting.
A Good Person with a Gun
The NRA presses the view that, "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun."
Someone on Twitter last week, after the Stoneman Douglas High School shootings said all it would have required to stop the killing was for one of those football coaches to have been packing. Someone replied, every cop who's been killed in the line of duty was armed. I would point out also that the police are trained. How much combat training would they give teachers? How often would they go to the range? Once we arm the teachers how long until someone takes a weapon from a teacher and uses it in a school?
Every month, as a member of the NRA, I receive their publication, American Rifleman. It has a page near the front called The Armed Citizen. On it they briefly describe six to ten instances where a civilian with a gun has stopped a crime. The good guy with a gun thing works sometimes when the "bad guy" waving the gun is a robber, an angry boyfriend or a bully. They see another gun and they leave. Someone shoots at them in defense and they leave or drop and bleed or die.
I am not anti-gun. I am however, not a fan of military-grade weapons and large capacity magazines in the hands of civilians, especially if we have not thoroughly vetted those civilians.
Mass shooters are often suicidal. They plan to kill themselves or are prepared to go down in a hailstorm of bullets. It would be difficult for a civilian to take out a well-prepared shooter that was not afraid to die.
If the good guy with a gun thing works a lot it should be demonstrable in careful studies. There is not as much information as you'd expect because the Congress has forbidden the CDC from studying gun deaths as they studied automobile accidents. The NRA's hold on the Congress is that tight. In 2015 researchers at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard University reported that firearm assaults were 6.8 times more common in the states with the most guns versus those with the least. Maybe those states already had more crime and so armed themselves? That's called "reverse causation." Researchers accounted for it by comparing 2001 ownership with gun crime in 2002 and 2004. States with the highest gun-ownership levels (Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, Arkansas, Arizona, West Virginia, North Dakota, Idaho, Mississippi, and Alabama) had 6.8 times the rate of firearm assaults, 2.8 times the rate of firearm homicides than states with the lowest gun-ownership levels. There are other peer reviewed studies that show more guns = more gun violence.
The Bad Guy with a Gun
We say, after the fact, that mass shooters are mentally ill. Well, yes. As a layman I would say that anyone who planned and executed mass murder was mentally ill. That seems to define a type of mental illness. However, there are many types of mental illness that do not lead to murderous violence. Depression from being abused by a violent husband, seems an example. Should we in our too well-armed society prevent that wife from also buying a weapon to defend herself from a husband who has said, "Next time I'll kill you and those brats." It seems not. Yet, a study looking at violence against women, they have protected themselves with firearms less than 1% of the time.
Rather than using "mental illness" as the basis for denial of a right to own firearms let's look for the bad guys. Once they've identified themselves by murdering multiple family members, co-workers or strangers we are often told of a trail of previous violent episodes. Sometimes they exhibited the obvious tell of torturing animals. Sometimes they've beaten their companions or children. Or, they were violent in school, their neighborhood or work. Those are the bad guys, and girls, who should not have access to guns. They should be tagged on the background check database to prevent new purchases. If they already have guns they should be forced to relinquish them. In fact, if they live in a home with guns, those guns should be surrendered.
To be able to enact such a sensible precaution we would need to require a background check on every gun purchase. No person-to-person, no family hand-me-downs and certainly no gun show exemptions. Every time a firearm is transferred to another person that person must undergo a new background check. Every ammo purchase or transfer should also go into a database that scans for those prohibited from having guns. There should be stiff penalties for ignoring those laws.
Watched a video the other night where former Minneapolis Police Chief Flynn was saying his police force was seizing guns at 406 per 100,000, almost twice the rate of Chicago and almost ten times the rate of New York. The reason was because state legislators had passed a law, written by the NRA, that only prohibited Concealed Carry Licenses to those convicted of felonies. Many career criminals repeatedly plea bargain felonies down to misdemeanors. They keep encountering cars with a drug dealer and three bodyguards and all three have CCLs. That too has to stop.
My Conclusions
The argument that we all need military type weapons to protect our government or to protect ourselves from our government is now passé. If in some distant time, we need weapons of that caliber to defend ourselves from a foreign invader, one another or our own government, they will be smuggled in through Mexico, Canada and our many shores. In the foreseeable future we are more at danger from warped individuals with access to those weapons.
The argument that only a good person with a gun stops a bad person with a gun sounds solid. But, the facts, especially in violence against women don't show that. It makes more sense that we improve the chances that only good people get guns. To that end I define bad people as those who have a history of violence and/or threats. We know that 76% of domestic homicide victims are stalked before they are murdered. Domestic violence is five times as likely to turn fatal if there is a firearm in the home. Take the guns away from those perps in the making.
Congress should reinstate funds to permit and in fact encourage the CDC, the FBI and other appropriate agencies to study gun violence, shooting of police and shootings by police. Then, with scientifically reliable data, we can make intelligent changes to our laws and our policing that will reduce gun violence.
We need to support with competitive funding and active voting those legislators at the local, state and national level who resist the NRA's agenda. Until we neutralize the NRAs bullying of our politicians we will not see intelligent change.
The Scientific American offered four steps to reducing gun violence in America. Steps that have been tried in individual States and worked well.
A much more effective defense against a corrupt government than an under-trained over-armed segment of the population is an informed and involved populace. Studying the issues and the candidates on credible sources and voting in every primary and every election is the robust defense built into The Constitution by the founders.
If you rightly feel that your voice isn't being heard then you need to use that vote to reduce the effect of money in politics.
Based on top indicators of socioeconomic success — income per person and average education level, for instance - The United States ranks ninth in the world, bested only by the likes of Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Iceland, Andorra, Canada and Finland. We're a big, raucous, fractious democracy. It's understandable we won't score as well on some points as smaller homogenous centralized countries like Iceland.
Those countries all also enjoy low rates of gun violence, but the U.S. has the 31st highest rate in the world: 3.85 deaths due to gun violence per 100,000 people in 2016. That was eight times higher than the rate in Canada, which had .48 deaths per 100,000 people — and 27 times higher than the one in Denmark, which had .14 deaths per 100,000. Deaths due to gun violence are rare even in many countries that are extremely poor — such as Bangladesh and Laos, which saw .16 deaths and .13 deaths respectively per 100,000 people. Prosperous Asian countries such as Singapore and Japan boast the absolute lowest rates, though the United Kingdom and Germany are in almost as good shape.
To be sure, there are quite a few countries where gun violence is a substantially larger problem than in the United States — particularly in Central America and the Caribbean. (El Salvador 40.3/100K, Venezuela 34.8 and Guatemala 26.8.) A major driver there is the large presence of gangs and drug trafficking. The gangs and drug traffickers fight amongst themselves to get more territory, and they fight the police. The bodycounts include the combatants and citizens who are caught in the crossfire.
For reference, in the Middle East the loss of life by firearm is 9.44 in Afghanistan and 4.28 in Iraq. It is 1.69 in Somalia and only 1.17 in Syria. Syria! May I repeat, it is 3.85 in the US. Gun deaths are over 25 times higher, per capita, in the US than in other high income countries.
So Many Guns
One of the most obvious differences between our nation and every other developed nation in the world is the terrific number of guns we have in private ownership. I'll probably go into who owns those guns in another blog, but there are far more guns in private hands per capita than in any other country. We possess over half of the world's privately owned guns. As of this writing we have more than twice as many gun stores in America than the world has Starbucks! Doesn't that seem excessive? I think we have more Starbucks than we need, but the deadliest thing they have, if you stay away from the food, are triple-squirt S'mores Frappucino Lattes. We can deal with that.
How did we come to have so many guns? We have a right to bear arms in our Constitution's enigmatic Amendment II. I refer to my pocket copy of The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America and it reads:
A well regulated Militia,
being necessary to the security of a free State,
the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,
shall not be infringed.
We also have the National Rifle Association lobbying at every level of government in every community nationwide. Despite all the evidence, when given the opportunity to endorse gun violence prevention measures that would for instance make women safer, the NRA consistently does the opposite, fighting to defeat legislation, for example, that would require people served with a restraining order — whether temporary or permanent — to surrender their firearms.
Such laws, which have been put in place in a handful of states, including California and Massachusetts, seek to remove guns from abusers at an especially volatile time: immediately after a restraining order is issued. A 2009 study published in the journal Injury Prevention found that domestic violence restraining orders that block access to firearms decreased intimate-partner homicide by 19 percent. But, we don't have them universally.
MinutemenThe 2nd Amendment was written at the time of the Minutemen. If outraged native Americans, another State, or another nation attacked a community then neighbors ran or rode to neighbors and the "able-bodied" men grabbed their single-shot musket, powder, mini-balls and long knives and gathered "in a minute" to repel the invader. Made sense then. Our fledgling nation didn't have the budget for a large standing army so they needed a Militia to defend each State and the Nation as a whole. In another place The Constitution defined the purpose of the militias was "to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasion." (Article I, Section 8, Clause 15).
That scenario is not relevant anymore. Any attack against a community should and would be stopped by local police or state police, who now sport armored vehicles, light artillery and other equipment handed down from our military. Any organized assault would also activate the FBI which has its own enhanced SWAT teams. In the unlikely event police firepower is inadequate to stop the assault each state has a National Guard complete with tanks and supersonic aircraft. God forbid that fails we have the world's best funded military that would quickly be authorized to neutralize the miscreants.
And, the only real occurrences of this type of attack in the last hundred years, with the exclusion of Pearl Harbor, have been quick, night time raids by mobs of racists against minorities, the rare riot or the government itself against citizens who've gathered together to stray a bit too far from the norm.
The Tree of Liberty
The writers of the Declaration and the Constitution were, or stood beside, people who had actively fought to overthrow their government. Not by petition and demonstration, although that was tried, but with bullets and artillery. They had killed representatives of their internationally recognized government to overthrow it and form a new government. Anyone today who thinks that is possible in America with handheld weapons is delusional.
Jefferson, who penned the Constitution, in collaboration with many other brilliant true rebels, later said in a letter to a friend, "What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is a natural manure." So, the intent of the writers of the Constitution was to keep the people well enough armed that their own government would operate in fear of its people. If we are going to follow that line of reasoning then the common American citizen should be able to at least buy fully automatic weapons, mortars, shoulder-fired surface to air missiles, grenades, mines, etc. If we're going to shed the blood of tyrants we are going to need more firepower.
One big problem we'd have today is that we can't agree upon who is a tyrant. In colonial America it was easy to gather a majority around the thought that a King in a distant land who took your taxes and ignored your pleas was the tyrant. In America today we could probably gather 25% of the population who would swear that President Obama was a tyrant and another 25% who would swear Trump is a tyrant. How many of them are willing to take those arms we're discussing and go into the streets to spill some red manure on the tree of liberty? Despite what you read on line, almost none. And, once the bleeding starts, far fewer. Everybody's a tough guy until they get punched in the mouth.
In the gun rights people's magazine of defenses for gun ownership is the claim that the first step in taking away a nation's freedoms is to take away their guns. I submit that is not true. The first step is to terrify them that if they don't quickly give away those freedoms they will be overrun by Communists or dark-skinned people. We're past that - read the Patriot Act. Every jurisdiction also has laws against "unlawful assembly" even though Article I of The Constitution says "Congress shall make no law respecting . . . the right of the people peaceably to assemble." Next will be declaring martial law. And, while we armed citizens can make it much more expensive and prolong the pain, I don't think we could stop a concentrated coup because too many of us would be on each side. We'd just be fighting in the streets. See Spain 1936 or Syria 2011.
A Militia
Going down a different track. The first line in the 2nd Amendment is "A well regulated Militia," We have that. We have the United States military in which I reluctantly but proudly served and upon which we spend well over $525 Billion per year (an average of $1,617 for every American man, woman and child). We have a standing army the founding fathers could not imagine. Not counted in that budget, already over 50% of of our discretionary spending, are billions more spent on surveillance, weapons development, etc.
If we want to talk literally about militias, each State, DC, Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands has a sizable National Guard we mentioned earlier. All members of the National Guard of the United States are also members of the militia of the United States as defined by 10 U.S.C. § 246. We have large, well equipped, "well regulated militias" without civilians.
The people today who buy handguns, long guns and thousands of rounds of ammo are not a "well regulated militia." If they gather together to train as a militia both Democratic and Republican administrations will put them on watch lists, possibly infiltrate them and if necessary pursue charges for plotting against the government. It is legal, in most of the US to buy a handgun and acquire a concealed carry permit without taking the first lesson in how to safely load, carry, use or clean weapon. That is not a well regulated group.
You cannot say today's gun owners are a militia in the sense that they are a back up to the local police, state police, FBI, National Guard or our military. In the unlikely case all those are overcome by some foreign power we would fight on. We should mount a good persistent resistance, but I cannot seriously count that as an argument for having nearly as many guns in private possession as we have people. Plus, three-quarters of our military age people are not acceptable for military service. A majority of our guns are concentrated in the hands of a minority of older white guys in rural areas who are so busted up or debilitated by their jobs and medications that they can no longer even go hunting.
A Good Person with a Gun
The NRA presses the view that, "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun."
Someone on Twitter last week, after the Stoneman Douglas High School shootings said all it would have required to stop the killing was for one of those football coaches to have been packing. Someone replied, every cop who's been killed in the line of duty was armed. I would point out also that the police are trained. How much combat training would they give teachers? How often would they go to the range? Once we arm the teachers how long until someone takes a weapon from a teacher and uses it in a school?
Every month, as a member of the NRA, I receive their publication, American Rifleman. It has a page near the front called The Armed Citizen. On it they briefly describe six to ten instances where a civilian with a gun has stopped a crime. The good guy with a gun thing works sometimes when the "bad guy" waving the gun is a robber, an angry boyfriend or a bully. They see another gun and they leave. Someone shoots at them in defense and they leave or drop and bleed or die.
I am not anti-gun. I am however, not a fan of military-grade weapons and large capacity magazines in the hands of civilians, especially if we have not thoroughly vetted those civilians.
Mass shooters are often suicidal. They plan to kill themselves or are prepared to go down in a hailstorm of bullets. It would be difficult for a civilian to take out a well-prepared shooter that was not afraid to die.
If the good guy with a gun thing works a lot it should be demonstrable in careful studies. There is not as much information as you'd expect because the Congress has forbidden the CDC from studying gun deaths as they studied automobile accidents. The NRA's hold on the Congress is that tight. In 2015 researchers at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard University reported that firearm assaults were 6.8 times more common in the states with the most guns versus those with the least. Maybe those states already had more crime and so armed themselves? That's called "reverse causation." Researchers accounted for it by comparing 2001 ownership with gun crime in 2002 and 2004. States with the highest gun-ownership levels (Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, Arkansas, Arizona, West Virginia, North Dakota, Idaho, Mississippi, and Alabama) had 6.8 times the rate of firearm assaults, 2.8 times the rate of firearm homicides than states with the lowest gun-ownership levels. There are other peer reviewed studies that show more guns = more gun violence.
The Bad Guy with a Gun
We say, after the fact, that mass shooters are mentally ill. Well, yes. As a layman I would say that anyone who planned and executed mass murder was mentally ill. That seems to define a type of mental illness. However, there are many types of mental illness that do not lead to murderous violence. Depression from being abused by a violent husband, seems an example. Should we in our too well-armed society prevent that wife from also buying a weapon to defend herself from a husband who has said, "Next time I'll kill you and those brats." It seems not. Yet, a study looking at violence against women, they have protected themselves with firearms less than 1% of the time.
Rather than using "mental illness" as the basis for denial of a right to own firearms let's look for the bad guys. Once they've identified themselves by murdering multiple family members, co-workers or strangers we are often told of a trail of previous violent episodes. Sometimes they exhibited the obvious tell of torturing animals. Sometimes they've beaten their companions or children. Or, they were violent in school, their neighborhood or work. Those are the bad guys, and girls, who should not have access to guns. They should be tagged on the background check database to prevent new purchases. If they already have guns they should be forced to relinquish them. In fact, if they live in a home with guns, those guns should be surrendered.
To be able to enact such a sensible precaution we would need to require a background check on every gun purchase. No person-to-person, no family hand-me-downs and certainly no gun show exemptions. Every time a firearm is transferred to another person that person must undergo a new background check. Every ammo purchase or transfer should also go into a database that scans for those prohibited from having guns. There should be stiff penalties for ignoring those laws.
Watched a video the other night where former Minneapolis Police Chief Flynn was saying his police force was seizing guns at 406 per 100,000, almost twice the rate of Chicago and almost ten times the rate of New York. The reason was because state legislators had passed a law, written by the NRA, that only prohibited Concealed Carry Licenses to those convicted of felonies. Many career criminals repeatedly plea bargain felonies down to misdemeanors. They keep encountering cars with a drug dealer and three bodyguards and all three have CCLs. That too has to stop.
My Conclusions
The argument that we all need military type weapons to protect our government or to protect ourselves from our government is now passé. If in some distant time, we need weapons of that caliber to defend ourselves from a foreign invader, one another or our own government, they will be smuggled in through Mexico, Canada and our many shores. In the foreseeable future we are more at danger from warped individuals with access to those weapons.
The argument that only a good person with a gun stops a bad person with a gun sounds solid. But, the facts, especially in violence against women don't show that. It makes more sense that we improve the chances that only good people get guns. To that end I define bad people as those who have a history of violence and/or threats. We know that 76% of domestic homicide victims are stalked before they are murdered. Domestic violence is five times as likely to turn fatal if there is a firearm in the home. Take the guns away from those perps in the making.
Congress should reinstate funds to permit and in fact encourage the CDC, the FBI and other appropriate agencies to study gun violence, shooting of police and shootings by police. Then, with scientifically reliable data, we can make intelligent changes to our laws and our policing that will reduce gun violence.
We need to support with competitive funding and active voting those legislators at the local, state and national level who resist the NRA's agenda. Until we neutralize the NRAs bullying of our politicians we will not see intelligent change.
The Scientific American offered four steps to reducing gun violence in America. Steps that have been tried in individual States and worked well.
- Require permits, acquired from the police in person. Reduced guns being transferred to felons by 68%. Repealing it in Missouri increased firearm homicides 25% and murder of law enforcement officers by 52%.
- Prevent those who commit violent crimes from ever buying guns. California has this law and it reduced gun violence by 30%.
- Prevent those who commit domestic violence from buying guns and force them to relinquish the guns they have. One fifth of all public mass shootings between 1999 and 2013 were precipitated in part by domestic dispute.
- Make active alcohol abusers relinquish their guns and prevent them from buying more. People arrested for DUI are four to five times more likely to commit violent crimes in the future. Controlled substance abusers are already prevented from possessing firearm by Federal law.
A much more effective defense against a corrupt government than an under-trained over-armed segment of the population is an informed and involved populace. Studying the issues and the candidates on credible sources and voting in every primary and every election is the robust defense built into The Constitution by the founders.
If you rightly feel that your voice isn't being heard then you need to use that vote to reduce the effect of money in politics.
Well I see you read some history. So did the founders. Thus the second amendment. I notice that many on the left aren't to fond of it. Much of your solution is based on facts as you see them. One, the founders didn't mean for guns to be used as they are today and couldn't foresee its ramifications. Two, there are to many guns and we don't need all of them. Three, eliminating guns from people you choose will solve the current school shooting situations. Four, we need to identify these potential suspects and stop them from buying guns. Five, the NRA is not on board with giving up second amendment rights so they need to be curtailed and eliminated from influencing politicians. Six, anyone who is a felon or violent can not own a gun. So say we do all that and more. So answer me these questions. What is stopping someone from walking into a school today and doing the same thing as this kid did but using 4 semi auto pistols with extended clips and 2 shotguns semi auto with sawed off barrels? Do you think people who are willing to kill others will follow your new gun laws? 20 years ago we still had these same guns plus lesser background checks but we didn't have these kind of shootings so what has changed? The guns or the people? After you pass all your laws and there is another shooting then what new proposals would you have? Now for the real kicker, if you decide to take away guns from law abiding citizens are you going to do it or demand law enforcement people put their lives on the line for your vision?
ReplyDeleteSince we are discussing solutions let's look at mine. One, the second amendment isn't going anywhere regardless of what happens now or in the future. If I want to buy 30 guns then I will. Why? Because I can, it's my right. Two, referencing little countries and their successes means nothing. I can pull up a little town of 100 residents that has never had a shooting but in which everyone owns a gun. Does that mean we should all own guns or is it not relevant? You gloss over the football coach having a gun. But what if he had one, lives would have been saved. So let's quit trying to take away 300 million people's rights and look at what would work. Arming administrators, some teachers and adding security personnel. Keeping all access to schools locked. Require all school police to stay on school grounds. That's a start. Your argument that a kid will wrestle a gun away from a teacher or the teacher will use it is specious. A teacher or student can bring a gun in today so that's not an issue. Harden the target like we do sporting events or concerts. Buildings do it, banks do it, gov offices do it. Why not schools? Because it's all political.
You posed a few questions and offered some opinions, thank you.
DeleteIf we ban AR’s (which I did not propose) what is stopping someone "from going into a school with four semi-auto pistols with extended clips and two sawed-off semi-auto shotguns?"
First, not a thing.
Shotguns are vicious up close. Less need to aim. But, once their eight or nine shots are gone you have to slowly reload one shell at a time.
A good pistolero can change clips fast enough that long, awkward clips don't make sense.
Four pistols and two shotguns would be an unwieldy mess to sneak into a facility and use while both chasing and fleeing.
Reliable semi-auto shotguns are much more expensive than AR-15s.
Our military encumbers most fighters, even those engaged in house-to-house combat, with an M-4 (AR-15 variant) because they are the state-of-the-art human killer.
Do I think criminals will follow current or future gun laws. No.
No where did I mention taking away the gun rights of 300 million people, so I'll ignore that.
What has changed, the guns or the people? Black guns were only owned by a few twenty years ago. They were sneered at as hunting weapons. If you can't hit your prey with a bolt action you should go home and practice. Most people saw pistols or shotguns as best for home defense. Since then, more Americans have embraced a paranoid fear of their own government and each other.
So, people have changed.
Every nation has drugs, violent nuts, violent video games and violent movies. No other nation has shootings like America. Not Russia, China, India, Brazil - all big countries, big pops, some diverse. No other nation has guns like America.
To keep their followers excited and in line, the NRA has exaggerated the threats to our lives and our rights to an irrational level. In a recent poll > 90% of Americans want better background checks - the NRA claims better background checks open the door to losing not just all gun rights, but all rights. The "slippery slope.". That, is a specious argument.
Schools are gun free zones. A teacher cannot take a gun in today. There were three armed police on the grounds in Florida.
The Coach. Every dead cop in America, and there are too many, had a gun and probably was wearing kevlar. They train. Still, they die.
If we don't pass new laws we will have more shootings in schools, churches, concerts, night clubs, movies; anywhere people gather.
That’s one of the fatal flaws in the 'arm the teachers' argument - we gather many, many places. What is to keep the next gunman from slaughtering kids with hot lead from an AR-15 at the last bus stop before school? Must we armor the busses? Arm the bus drivers? Get a vet to ride shotgun? You cannot harden a free society.
No one announces their attack. So do teachers always wear heat strapped to their hip? If the gun is locked in a cabinet the teacher has get to the cabinet, and open it when they encounter the shooter.
Does the armed teacher leave the children they have in their classroom to go out in the hall to hunt the shooter? You hear the alarm, screams and shots . Is there one shooter, or two . . . or? Are they to the right or left? If the teacher goes out will a shooter come and kill the kids they've left? Is the terrified teacher with a pistol going to stop the maniac with your semi-automatic shotgun? Will a teacher even be able to kill?
Yes, I will want more laws until wwe do not have these horrors every few days.
The US has the most guns, but States with stronger gun control laws have fewer gun deaths. Even Illinois has fewer gun deaths (60% of Chicago’s guns come from gun-happy Indiana, Mississippi and Wisconsin.)
You cannot harden a free society. Turn down the rhetoric. Keep and take guns from the violent. If they are threatening violence, being violent, or if they have a history of violence, they do not get guns. Punish those who would give them guns like you punish those who get guns in violation of the law. Everyone else, buy your thirty guns you’ll never need.
And another thing . . . ;-)
ReplyDeleteThere is a length limit to comments so I had to stop yesterday.
Yet another reason the "Arm the Teachers' idea is not sound. Shooting starts. Teacher hears deafening blasts and horrifying screams in the hallway. He tucks his students in the hardened corner of the room. Gets his pistol from the secure, fingerprint sensitive gun safe, exits the room and locks the hardened door behind him. (Already we've spent much more money than any school district has available.) Now, he's committed. No problem, seen Liam Neeson and Arnold Schwarzenegger do this many times.
Scenario 1 - Walks down hall. Shooter sees him from behind and kills him.
Scenario 2 - Walks down the hall, sees shooter. Shooter is 100 feet away. Shooter sees him. Teacher is quaking with adrenalin. Kids are running towards the teacher. Teacher can't shoot for fear of hitting kids. Shooter kills kids and teacher.
Scenario 3 - Walks down hall. Three kids run toward teacher. They duck into a doorway. Teacher backs into doorway to protect them. SWAT team comes around a corner, sees an adult with a gun in front of children. Kills teacher.
Scenario 4 - To avoid Scenario 3 we give armed teachers lime green vests that say "TEACHER". You can't keep a secret in America. Shooter knows that. Makes lime green vest that says "TEECHER." Real, armed teacher rounds a corner hesitates, and is killed.
Scenario 5 - Armed teacher stays in room and covers the door. Shooter gets through door; teacher sprays and prays. Only 10 to 20% of the teachers are to be armed. Students and teachers in other rooms? Better to keep the guns out of the hands of “bad guys” and not have the recurring problem.
Israel hires guards from private security companies. (This is what we'll do because someone can make a business of it.) The guards are paid minimum wages and, although supervised by the local police, national security force and the school's principal, are poorly trained. They have used their guns for inappropriate behaviors and one killed a utility electrician climbing over the school fence. They have added armor to their school busses. Metal detectors make sense at schools. The problem Israel often has . . . paying for the minimum wage guards. We won't pay for supplies for the kids.
No arming teachers.
Keep and take guns from the hands of the potentially violent. Those who have threatened violence, those who have been arrested for violence, those who have tortured or kill non-game animals, those who have impersonated police, those who are guilty of domestic abuse, those who have a restraining order against them. Those who are guilty of violent misdemeanors (often plea bargained down from felonies). Those on the No Fly list - Hello!!! These people should not be able to get guns. If there are guns in their homes they should be relinquished. In some cases keep them at a police department secure facility, but not where the violent person can get to them.
Always(Far)Right - buy your 30 guns. It is the right of almost every American. You may shoot them a few times to be sure you know how to use them. You're not violent. It won't matter to our nation's gun death rate. Many of the great number of US guns are concentrated in the hands of a small number of men who like guns. At the SHOT show and other gun shows you see them - many on walkers, some on scooters. Often in camo. They are not a problem. It's the few angry, confused, usually young men with an agenda. They cannot have guns.
I was thinking about someone's quote that governments are the greatest threat to personal freedom. The founding fathers wanted to stay armed so they could overthrow the government they'd just made, should it become to onerous. If we follow that line of reasoning as justification for civilians possessing military grade rifles then we need to fight for the right to full auto rifles, grenades, claymores and most importantly, surface to air shoulder-fired missiles. No fighting force can long survive, regardless of their skill and dedication, if their enemy controls the air over the battlefield.
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