An evidentiary look at the firearms issue, challenges...

[Humanist_Activist]

I'll say right off the bat that I come into this debate with my own biases, and of course they are always right, because they are mine. But on a more serious note, I wasn't raised around guns, didn't even know we had one in the house(inherited Mauser K-98 rifle) until I was 18 or 19 years old. It was in storage in the attic for a long time, locked in a case with a trigger lock. My mom was a city girl, my dad didn't really go hunting, so guns weren't really a part of life at home at all.

So I will say that I didn't really fear guns, nor do I really hold an attachment to them. For a while, about 17 years ago, I even sold them, working Sporting Goods at Wal Mart. Quite familiar with the instant background check system, the shortcomings of it and how idiotic some customers are. Interesting story time, called the system(mostly automated), got a live person, and they told me to try to find a way to delay the guy from buying the Mossberg he wanted.

So I did my best, demonstrating every feature of the home defender model, sometimes twice. Next thing I know, a few cops show up and arrest him, that was interesting, if not a little scary. Not sure if what I did or what the guy on the other end of the line did was ethical or legal, but whatever. Wal Mart, at least the location I was working at, only sold rifles and shotguns, usually bolt action or pump.

Generally speaking, I really don't care about gun ownership unless there is a demonstrated risk to society at large. If, for example, gun ownership, and high rates of gun ownership, have been demonstrated to reduce crime rates, then great, show the evidence for that. If, however, there is no correlation or demonstrated link, then perhaps we should reexamine the utility of gun ownership itself.

Now, a couple of things, one is I'm constantly annoyed by gun control advocates who demonstrate a myopia towards guns, they seem mostly interested in restricting the ownership of "assault" rifles, while not really demonstrating why we should do so for larger society. I will say that thankfully, crimes such as the mass shooting in Orlando are relatively rare, and in general, homicides committed from rifles(of any sort) only takes up a fraction of homicides in this country. Same for shotguns.

Now, this doesn't mean that rifles should be completely unregulated, instant background checks, national registries, magazine restrictions to about 10 rounds, further restricting semi-auto and fully-auto gun ownership all seem reasonable. However, hardly anyone really talks about handgun ownership restriction. I'm not likely to be robbed by someone who is carrying a 30.06, but 1911, sure. I may date myself with some of these references, lol.

Rifles and shotguns have many utilities, hunting, target shooting, etc. Even home defense(reference above) etc. I'm not really interested in restricting ownership of said guns from the general public. It seems unnecessarily restrictive.

Handguns, on the other hand, are another thing entirely. I would be hard pressed to find a way to justify why the general public should have access to handguns given current evidence. The issue is that we need to do a cost-benefit analysis on gun usage in this country, try to have as many controls as possible, but, unfortunately, it appears this is very difficult to do.

For example, on the Benefit side, a lot of people cite Kleck and others on Defensive Gun Use, but there are two problems with this, first, the estimates on the survey results vary drastically, from up to 2.5 million DGUs done annually to as few as 60 thousand or so. The high estimate means there are a lot more DGUs done than violent crime in that same year. Seems rather unrealistic. Even the low end of around 60 thousand DGUs a year relies on self reporting on surveys, which can be unreliable. Unfortunately, not a whole lot of resources are invested into this issue, when it should. It seems reasonable to conclude that, at best, the idea that DGUs are effective is inconclusive.

At this time, much of the evidence is pointing to gun accessibility appearing to be a leading risk factor in becoming a victim of gun crime or being able to complete a suicide. This is important, guns generally don't cause crimes, but they appear to increase the lethality of assaults by a large factor. This seems rather simple, it takes a lot more effort to kill someone without a gun than with one. Same goes for yourself as well, people are much more likely to succeed in taking their own life using a gun compared to other methods. Even worse, this isn't by a small factor, it can't simply disappear into statistical noise.

Given the evidence so far, I would say a reasonable response would be to reexamine handgun ownership, distribution and manufacturing to the general public entirely, increase and allow funding to aid in hopefully coming up with a medical and scientific consensus on the issue, one way or the other, etc. In the meantime, we should find ways to close loopholes on background checks, create a national registry for firearms, magazine restrictions, etc.

[guillaumeb]

1. An honest attempt to be reasonable. Nice essay.

And studies can be commissioned and statistics can be manipulated to "prove" contradictory things.

[Humanist_Activist]

2. True, another common tactic is comparing apples to oranges...

or ignoring the differences.

An example from a previous thread was comparing homicides by gun with DGUs, saying that even the low estimate means that there are a lot more uses of guns from DGUs than from homicides, which, if the surveys are accurate, is true. However, what it fails to mention is whether the DGUs were against people also armed with guns who would have at least attempted to murder the DGU user. Compared to all crimes against persons, DGU is used about 1 to 2% of the time against all violent crimes against persons. That makes it far less impressive.

[Old Codger]

3. Common sense gun control

Would be an ideal situation, really deep,thorough background checks are the ideal situation and stringent laws as to accessibility around homes.Added to real meaningful training to requirements to own handguns... I do in fact own guns and have a concealed carry permit, I also have many years of training and practice in all phases of safety in handling weapons...

You did the right thing holding that guy til he could be arrested for attempting to buy a gun. Assuming he was either a convicted felon or had been adjudicated as mentally unbalanced and had a record as such or possibly domestic violence... Many years ago I held a federal sellers license in Cal. and although several potential buyers were denied the sale I never heard of any arrests so they seem to be getting better at enforcing existing laws..

[Straw Man]

4. To clarify ...

Many years ago I held a federal sellers license in Cal. and although several potential buyers were denied the sale I never heard of any arrests so they seem to be getting better at enforcing existing laws..

Generally arrests aren't made based on NICS denials, despite the crime of lying on the Form 4473. The NICS operator just says proceed, deny, or delay. The only follow-up would be for a delay, which would have to be resolved, after further investigation, to a proceed or deny.

My guess is that there was a fugitive warrant or some other red flag on the individual who was attempting to buy the shotgun.

[Humanist_Activist]

5. Yeah, not sure about what happened on their end...

Just told it was a denial and please delay him from leaving if possible. Also told me to take note of what he looked like and was wearing, sounds like an open warrant, but don't know if their system sees that.

Most of the time, we would get delays or immediate approval, that was the only outright denial I recall. Most of the delays were related to the person being law enforcement or something related, at least that's what one guy claimed when we told him about the delay. Usually get a call in a day or so approving the sale.

[Old Codger]

7. Most likely

Possibly a felon attempting to buy a gun, that is a felony right there and they can and do press charges from what I am told...Much more so than years ago..

[Humanist_Activist]

6. To be honest, I feel this issue demonstrates a generational gap in gun ownership that....

may take care of itself over time. Its been losing popularity in the United States, odd as that sounds. The majority of households haven't had firearms in them since the 1970s or so, and the huge explosion of guns in circulation or owned is because of gun owners owning multiple firearms, rather than gun sellers gaining more customers.

In addition, most gun owners are rural, while their kids are moving to suburban and urban environments where gun ownership is much less popular. Most gun owners are white, while the country itself is becoming less white, with the lowest ownership rates among Latinos and African Americans.

Probably, in the next 20 years or so, the political climate may change enough to have meaningful gun control.

[jmg257]

8. The general public gets access to handguns because they want them for self-defense.

You do not need to justify them, as they are well-justified in their minds (especially I assume those who have used them in DGU).

That's A LOT of people - the number is climbing, and with everything going on in the US/world, that trend is not likely to change soon - and most do not see themselves as the problem.

With the 2nd amendment, and recent interpretations of it by the USSC, it is reasonable to think it will be EXTREMELY hard to get anything substantial changed.

New Study: Over 12.8 million concealed handgun permits, last year saw by far the largest increase ever in the number of permits
16 Jul , 2015

Since President Obama’s election the number of concealed handgun permits has soared, growing from 4.6 million in 2007 to over 12.8 million this year. Among the findings in our report:
•The number of concealed handgun permits is increasing at an ever- increasing rate. Over the past year, 1.7 million additional new permits have been issued – a 15.4% increase in just one single year. This is the largest ever single-year increase in the number of concealed handgun permits.
•5.2% of the total adult population has a permit.
•Five states now have more than 10% of their adult population with concealed handgun permits.
•In ten states, a permit is no longer required to carry in all or virtually all ofthe state. This is a major reason why legal carrying handguns is growing somuch faster than the number of permits.
•Since 2007, permits for women has increased by 270% and for men by 156%. Over that period, there was a 178% increase in total permits.
•Some evidence suggests that permit holding by minorities is increasing more than twice as fast as for whites.

[Humanist_Activist]

9. That's perception, not necessarily reality, it hasn't been demonstrated that DGU use has increased..

certainly wouldn't make sense with falling gun ownership percentages. Note, its been estimated that about 31 to 41 percent of households possess firearms.

While CC permits are rising, the question is two-fold, first is, does it actually serve to protect the holder, and second, does it reduce violent crime? It would be interesting correlations to study, in addition to whether an increased percentage of CC holders also leads to increased DGUs.

[jmg257]

10. Handgun ownership is increasing - THAT'S what has to be dealt with.

Americans choose handguns - and that makes banning them extremely difficult (per USSC).


DGU #s always seem hard to nail - lots of studies on that. Many people who carry likely aren't worried about reducing crime rates, just reducing crime against THEM. And it does happen, and that's what they care about.

Studies like you mention about crime rates etc. exist. It just depends who you want to believe.


Regardless, crime rates go up, crime rates go down, but the number of guns has increased steadily - especially the last 10 years or so, so other factors seem to have much greater impact (IMO).

When in so many locations, less then 1% of the population - often known to LE - is responsible for 70-80% of the gun crime, there may be other ways to solve the problem.

[Humanist_Activist]

11. The percentage of the population that owns guns has been decreasing, more handguns are being...

purchased, but usually by people that already own other firearms. There are about 300 million guns in this country, and about 80-100 million gun owners, give or take.

I actually linked to some of those studies in my OP, as far as usage of DGUs, and some seem wildly exaggerated and others more realistic. Problem is that federal funding is very restricted on trying to study gun ownership and CC possession as a public health issue.

There are multiple factors into what causes crime, but generally speaking, that's not the object of this thread. Guns generally don't cause crime, they just escalate it to much more dangerous levels. Guns make it a hell of alot easier to kill yourself and others.

[jmg257]

12. The # pistol permits are increasing drastically - 1 per person. And those numbers are

available for only some of those states that require permits (i.e no NY). Numbers are increasing in states like VT etc. too.

Record number of permits, record number of gun sales, are not all repeat buyers. I bet there are more like 400 million+ guns, we've been adding +/-20million a year for quite a few years now.

Again - with Millions of pistol permit holders, and well over 100+million handguns.

"Since President Obama’s election the number of concealed handgun permits has soared, growing from 4.6 million in 2007 to over 12.8 million this year. "


"Guns generally don't cause crime, they just escalate it to much more dangerous levels. Guns make it a hell of alot easier to kill yourself and others."

Agreed. (Although hopefully me killing myself by choice won't influence others' right to self-defense).

[jmg257]

13. I wish I could find it - I am so sure there was a DOJ study under Clinton/Reno saying there

were 234,000 DGU annually back then. But I could never relocate it.

I figure its in the 100,000-200,000+ range.