All-purpose gun legislation thread

Politics and religion
4869

In those exact words? No. But Timex, Tim, and Shiva who have, for various reasons, espoused positions to essentially refute any attempt to zoom out the picture from that one incident. Who insist that the discussion remain fixed on this one specific scenario.

Now whether they truly believe that greater gun ownership reduces negative outcomes, or merely feel that preventing this one specific bad outcome justifies the dozens or hundreds of other bad outcomes from greater gun ownership? In the end the difference is one of degree, not kind. It is politicizing the anecdote to prevent rational analysis. The same type of thing that 2nd ammendment maximalists carp about when a Sandy Hook incident occurs, and the anti gun forces use that as justification to push some form of gun control. It is literally the same arguments, just from opposing perspectives.

Because when you focus on the narrow incident and use it to either drive, or deflect, broader policy discussion the net effect is you are arguing for more gun ownership, as @arrendek points out

So ultimately the distinction between genuinely feeling greater gun ownership makes you safer, or merely that this incident justifies the greater risk, is not a distinction I care about. The end result is the same, either way.

Demanding we grapple with the individual anecdote, either pro or anti gun, is a horrible rhetorical stance. It is the type of narrow minded focus that leads to bad decisions, and bad policy. Anecdotes can be useful in these types of discussions, but as adornments on a scaffolding built of more thoughtful and analytical arguments. Its how we wind up with poorly worded assault weapons bans, that @ShivaX is right to decry as pointless. It is how we wind up with a political climate toxic to dealing with the underlying issues.

No, but you either wildly misrepresent what others say, or go on about how there is nothing to be done. Which is a wee bit frustrating. Being contrarian for contrarian’s sake, is how it feels. And if that is not your intent, I apologize.

4870

The funny thing is I just realized how much it sounds like the neocons thinking that if democracy is good enough for the developed world, then the Middle East should get it good and hard as well! ASAP!

4871

Are you arguing that there is no causation, only correlation?

4872

And people should really click through that google search. It’s sobering to say the least. It’s just a month of what can happen, and only when it actually gets reported.

Compared to the every 6 months or so story of “man stops bad guy intruders dead” which everyone cheers.

Round and round we go.

4873

Nah, I’m totally in favor of reasonable increases in gun control. I don’t even own a firearm myself right now, so I’m not some kind of gun nut.

I just resist the idea of saying that the problem in this most recent case, is that the guy had a gun and was able to defend himself and his property. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was 3 criminals trying to rob him.

4874

In case there is any doubt from anyone here, do not put me in that pile. It’s a tragedy all around but if someone broke into my house with intent to harm me and my family and I had the means, I would kill them. There is no scenario where I wouldn’t.

4875

To be fair, that’s just what passes through your news filter. The NRA publishes stories monthly in its magazine. (I’m not arguing the point you’re trying to make, I just didn’t want you to sound so uninformed.)

I’m frankly surprised the mainstream media even pushed this. I guess the body count makes it noteworthy.

4876

I think there’s no doubt that gun control would lead to a better overall big-picture outcome.

But I can’t help but think I’d change sides if 3 guys with knives broke into my house. I would agree to gun safety and training, certification, anything, just put that Glock in my hands.

4877

No animosity here, should I change it from every 6 months to every 1 month?

As far as I can tell, around here the local news reports every shooting (that isn’t gang related or stuffed in the “ghetto”). I don’t think they’d let such “juicy” stories go unreported.

4878

This is a perfectly understandable and reasonable feeling. I would do the same. Unfortunately when a gun is the planned defense for this sort of invasion, it sometimes ends up killing those family members one way or another. And everyone says they would never ever leave their gun in an accessible location but somehow the deaths keep happening.

4879

Which this guy just won* the gun ownership lottery, because that’s essentially how the home defense argument breaks down. There are a few winners**, most people are out their money to no benefit, but a few really big losers***.

But, like I’ve said, arguing from anecdote is the wrong way to go here. This case can reasonably be used to say ‘gun ownership improved this specific outcome’. Whether there was another, better, outcome available is disputable, but ultimately unknowable here.Could there have been another better option were the gun not so easily accessible? Yes. Could the gun ownership here have resulted in another, worse, outcome? Also plausible.

But I reject the notion, however, that America is so distinct from other western nations with stricter gun laws. Differences, maybe, but many similarities. And there are cases where nations have toughened gun laws, and we see the changes.

We also have cases where the gun laws have been relaxed in the US, and how that changes things. You know the jump in gun violence in Chicago and several other inner cities? Note there was also a Supreme Court case a few years ago that curbed the ability of states and cities to have more restrictive gun laws. I do not believe that is incidental in the rise in shootings in Chicago, for example.

*at least as much as getting home invaded and having to kill 3 people is winning. Which on the scale of that to beat up and robbed, to dead, it is. but it’s not really a win you’re happy to have.
**who win by losing the ‘don’t get broken in to’ lottery
***the analogy breaks down a bit here. Repeatedly buying too many lottery tickets to the point of financial hardship is no where near as serious as accidentally having you, or a family member shot and killed through accident or negligence

4880

Yeah, I suggested that exact point upthread.

4881

Then I completely agree with you :D

4882

Strangely, I probably would NOT be able to do that, because I’ve actually pulled a gun on someone and could have actually shot them had the realization that it was a mistake not dawned on me. It sobered my thoughts on self defense, quite a bit. I know that’s anecdotal, but it’s not that much different from other situations in which the death of a person, or possibility thereof, falls upon a decision someone made. You rethink that decision quite a bit after the event.

4883

You can safely assume that is never my intent, in all cases.

I just know the way we’re approaching the gun control subject does not work. I expect to see zero change in this area in my lifetime if for no other reason is we keep trying to tackle it the same way that hasn’t worked since before I was alive and expecting different results. I am well aware of the fact, for example, of how many people have gun accidents compared to those who are supposedly saved by having a gun ready when something bad was about to happen. I also know the stats on children… because we seem to have a lot of irresponsible gun owners out there, even at gun ranges.

4884

I’m, sadly, of this opinion as well. To be honest, I cannot think of a way to make things better that will have a resounding effect, short of methods to take guns away, period. And there is a part of me that feels that shouldn’t be the only means to fix things anyway.

Playing with the bill of rights is no small task. Nesrie, I’m inclined to agree with you, we will be long gone from this place before anything happens. Short of our country failing under the leadership of Lord Cheetoh.

4885

Yeah, sitting here on my office chair, I hope I would not shoot first if it’s a lone intruder and a relatively stable situation. I’m weighing the risk of someone getting the jump on me vs. having to deal with the post-traumatic stress, at least the difference in stress between having my home invaded and having to shoot someone over it.

If the guy’s on drugs or there are 3 of them, it might be harder to reason with them.

No idea how I’d actually react in real life. Fortunately, odds are I’ll never have to find out.

4886

That’s only because getting a gun from Indiana into Chicago is as easy as tossing in the trunk of a car and driving half an hour.

DC had the toughest gun laws in the nation and some of the worst gun crime for ages. It doesn’t work because we don’t live in a totalitarian police state. Unless you’re setting up check points along state and city borders what laws you pass don’t mean much. If Chicago could legally make all guns illegal (which was basically what DC did and prompted Parker and Heller) they’d still have gun crime because criminals are… criminals. They’d just have someone in Indiana or Wisconsin drive some guns in for them and that’s not even counting other black market methods.

I mean technically gun crime in DC has dropped since Heller. That doesn’t mean much of anything other than local gun laws seem to have no real relation to gun violence. DC was terrible for it for decades while having the strictest gun laws in the nation (it was effectively illegal to own a handgun from 1977-2007 and during that period their homicide rate was astronomical for most of it).

4887

Because it points to my stupidity and also how easily things can not be what they seem, I’ll share. My story involves me at home one evening. I was in a room in the house where I did not hear my doorbell, nor knocking at my door. Specifically in my master bathroom in the shower.

As I got out of the shower I hear my back door being opened and a ruckus from that area as well. I yell and hear nothing, then more commotion from someone in my house. Thinking the worst, I grabbed a handgun I keep in my dresser, because, you know, I thought that was something I wanted to do, “just in case.”

With nothing but a towel around me and a handgun I come out of my bedroom forcefully, gun drawn and pointed forward. As I round a corner through my house towards my back door I notice, literally five feet away, my neighbor, holding my dog. She screams like a banshee and starts rapidly saying a bunch of things that took me what felt like a long while to understand. I lowered my gun and set it down, but regardless she was very shaken by the situation. I had left my dog on a tie-down behind the house. He had gotten off of it as it had broken. She saw him running around and grabbed him. Trying to be neighborly, if somewhat dense, she had knocked on my door, rung the doorbell, then just opened it and was trying to herd my dog inside and get what was left of the leash/tie-down off of him. At the time, I knew her only somewhat in passing, like things sometimes are with neighbors.

I scared the shit out both her and myself. One stupid mistake and I could have accidentally shot her. I shoot semi-decently. At the range I specifically practice things at short and medium ranges, for the very reason I thought was happening, a home invasion. It was a .45 caliber handgun. Chances are it would have been life threatening if not fatal to her if I would have shot at her. I still think about that. She doesn’t speak to me much, I don’t blame her.

I no longer keep that handgun in my dresser, loaded. Maybe one day I will again, maybe not. But it caused me pause to think about things a bit differently.

4888

And the lovely Congress effectively making research into the causes and effective remedies for gun crime impossible through barring research. So we don’t have reliable measures, or any studies of academic rigor to see what possible options are effective at reducing gun crime.

And you are spot on about the variance in gun laws. Indiana has some of the least restrictive on the books, and that absolutely has an impact on the efficacy of anything in Chicago. Which points to the obvious fact that anything would require some form of Federal level policy.

And, yeah, things are complicated. The models are very noisy, and there has been a 20 year down swing, with localized upswings in the last 2-3 years. But all that aside would you accept the notion that easier access to guns increases gun ownership? At a purely baseline level the more convenient, easier, and also therefore likely cheaper, guns are to get, the more likely they are to enter circulation? So even though Indiana has, effectively, useless gun control the very fact it was another state (directly bordering the city at points though it may) would have some supressive effect? But we ultimately don’t know, because no federal agencies, or group that receives federal funds (thus any universities), can directly study this.

So, yeah, its hard to state what effect the Supreme Court case had. And the effects may not be uniform. It is plausible to think the ruling would make guns somewhat easier (though as noted it wasn’t a very hard task before), therefore have some effect that correlates with increased gun violence. Because Heller was expanded by McDonald, as Chicago had fought the ruling by saying it was only applied to Federal Enclaves. And post McDonald we see the gun crime reductions that Chicago had seen for 20 years taper off, then reverse dramatically. Is it possible there is more at play? Almost certainly! Is it possible those rulings created a feedback with those other factors to increase gun violence? I find this likely.

And there is a lot more than simply gun access to violent crimes, obviously. concentrated and generational poverty is one of the strongest factors, and pretty obvious too. Broken Windows Policing, lack of opportunities in areas increasing recidivism, and a while host of other issues have huge effects, and are why even though DC’s strict gun laws existed, it had higher crime rates than Wyoming or Indiana. Things don’t exist in a vacuum.

Gun control, access, etc. are but one piece in a puzzle, but an important one.