Gun Control & RKBA
Related: About this forumCharleston Church Shooting: Obama's 'Hopeless' Push For Gun Control
Another shooting, another sombre statement by President Barack Obama and another call for gun control.
But this time was different - and so was much of the response from conservatives.
"At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries," Mr Obama said on Thursday morning.
He continued: "I say that recognising the politics in this town foreclose a lot of those avenues right now. But it would be wrong for us not to acknowledge it. And at some point it's going to be important for the American people to come to grips with it, and for us to be able to shift how we think about the issue of gun violence collectively."
At some point - as in not today, not tomorrow and probably not anytime soon.
And that's the reality of gun control in this country. As Mr Obama clearly understands, if a person can walk into a school, murder 20 children and public policy on this issue doesn't change - as happened in the 2012 Newtown, Connecticut attack - it's just not going to change.
The best he can hope
MORE...
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33159820
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virginia mountainman
(5,046 posts)Charlie Hebdo shooting.......Well that did happen 6 months ago, must have forgot.
Duckhunter935
(16,974 posts)virginia mountainman
(5,046 posts)
NaturalHigh
(12,778 posts)
jimmy the one
(2,708 posts)Obama taken out of context: "At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries,"
Va mtn man: Hmm, first thing that jumped to mind.... Charlie Hebdo shooting.......Well that did happen 6 months ago, must have forgot.
Obama, in fuller context: "This type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn't happen in other places with this kind of frequency."
So va mtn man uses a clipped and out of context quote for his unwarranted derision of Obama.
Shame va mtn man, shame. Man up & apologize, or I'll sic burt Reynolds on you.
Duckhunter - reply to va mtn man above: Oops, not facts
Sorta right, 'NOT FACTS', but they weren't aimed at mtn man; Duckhunter makes an undereducated remark, having been sucked into mtn man's abyss.
Man up both of youse, apologize for your derision & lack of preparation.
beevul
(12,194 posts)Our ruling
Obama said after the church shootings in Charleston that "this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency."
The data shows that it clearly happens in other countries, and in at least three of them, there’s evidence that the rate of killings in mass-shooting events occurred at a higher per-capita rate than in the United States between 2000 and 2014. The only partial support for Obama’s claim is that the per-capita gun-incident fatality rate in the United States does rank in the top one-third of the list of 11 countries studied. On balance, we rate the claim Mostly False.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jun/22/barack-obama/barack-obama-correct-mass-killings-dont-happen-oth/
Maybe its time for you to 'man up' and apologize for your derision & lack of preparation.
jimmy the one
(2,708 posts)beevul: Maybe its time for you to 'man up' and apologize for your derision & lack of preparation
I read politifact almost every time I log on, so this is not a revelation.
Obama: "this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency."
Politifact: .. the second part of Obama’s claim -- that "it doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency" -- isn’t entirely off-base.
Which was the point of my criticism of va mtn man, that he took Obama out of context by clipping the 'frequency' part. I was not disputing when mtn man said it happened in other countries, but he left an invalid impression that Obama had said something completely off base. Va mtn man as well as duck hunter still need to retract & apologize to our democrat president, for misrepresenting what Obama had said in full context.
Beevul again demonstrates his anti democrat bigotry when it comes to gun control, by backing up mtn man & DH in criticizing Obama. I think your days here on DU are numbered, beevul, hopefully it won't be long till you join coke machine, ex cop law student & all those other former rightwing gun troll posters.
Politifact compared to 11 other countries. There are over 25 western industrialized countries of the 186 countries in the world, so Obama was not 'off base', just caught on a technicality.
politifact: We compared mass shooting incidents across countries is to calculate the number of victims per capita -- that is, adjusted for the country’s total population size.
Calculating it this way shows the United States in the upper half of the list of 11 countries, ranking higher than Australia, Canada, China, England, France, Germany and Mexico.
Still, the U.S. doesn’t rank No. 1. At 0.15 mass shooting fatalities per 100,000 people, the U.S. had a lower rate than Norway (1.3 per 100,000), Finland (0.34 per 100,000) and Switzerland (1.7 per 100,000).
We’ll note that all of these countries had one or two particularly big attacks and have relatively small populations, which have pushed up their per-capita rates. In Norway, that single attack in 2011 left 67 dead by gunfire. Finland had two attacks, one that killed eight and one that killed 10. And Switzerland had one incident that killed 14.
politifact addendum: .. frequency could refer to the incidents of mass shootings, not deaths as we examined. Looking at Obama's claim by incident, the United States has a higher rate of incidents than Finland, Norway and Switzerland. We agree that there is no preferred comparison and each is valid, and we've changed some language in this article to reflect that.
Matrosov
(1,098 posts)Sadly, mass shootings are simply good business for Colt and Smith & Wesson, because if any Democratic politician even thinks the words "gun control," the gun manufacturers are seeing their products fly off the shelves.
Unless Democrats become serious about ending private gun ownership in this country once and for all, they might as well stay quiet on the subject.
pablo_marmol
(2,375 posts)As if there is a snowball's chance in hell of that ever happening.
Matrosov
(1,098 posts)Sadly, Democrats generally have no idea how to approach the subject of gun elimination in an intelligent matter. They only care when there is a mass shooting in the news, and then they only care in wanting to ban assault rifles and high-capacity magazines.
At least this time they made some progress in getting rid of Confederate flags. It won't help with the +30,000 annual gun deaths, but it's a step in the right direction for the country as a whole.
But for the time being, there's no end in sight to the NRA and Tactical Tier 1 Operators, aka gun nuts, pumping out superior propaganda and keeping the tools of murder legal.
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)Matrosov
(1,098 posts)If you'd told me 20 years ago, there'd be a time where most of America accepted same-sex marriage, I'd told you that you were nuts.
If you'd told me even 5 years ago, there'd be a time where we fought against Confederate symbolism the same way we do today, I'd told you that you were nuts.
The moral? Never forget "Hope and Change." Maybe in another 50 years from now, we'll still be buying guns like they were slices of bread, and maybe we'd still measure annual gun deaths in the tens of thousands. Or maybe in another 50 years from now, we'll have stopped all this foolishness and realized that the Second Amendment kills many more people than it protects.
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)How would you go about it? While you're thinking about it, recall how well *this* turned out:
There are a rather well-written book and Ken Burns miniseries about what went wrong during
that attempt to 'improve' society:
http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition/
Matrosov
(1,098 posts)You can go out in the woods of North Carolina and cook yourself up a batch of moonshine. Trying to cook yourself up a batch of Glocks and Remington is much more difficult.
Furthermore, the average person has a far greater interest in consuming alcohol than in getting their hands on firearms.
Shamash
(597 posts)There are web sites dedicated expressly to the topic of 3D-printed firearms. The technology is improving on seemingly a monthly basis. A metal-capable 3D printer that is $100,000 right now and has been used to make a reliable and fully functional semi-auto pistol? How cheap will it be in 10 years? 20? The original laser printers were about $2,500 and that is in terms of early 1980's dollars. Now they are $50. That's a real-world example of at least a 50-fold price drop.
What exactly do you intend to do when someone with a laptop and a $2,000 additive laser sintering 3D printer is able to download plans for a gun and print it overnight? Are you going to look at the advancements and cost reductions in tech over your lifetime and pretend this is not a possibility? Are you going to make the unrealistically optimistic assumption that such people could not just as easily circumvent an ammunition ban? Claim that we'll be able to stop this with some sort of magic-infused chip in the 3D printers?
The "gun genie" has been out of the bottle for centuries and shows no signs of climbing back in because you looked disapprovingly down your nose at him. You seem unable to accept the historical consequences of banning anything that there is significant demand for. Just look at Prohibition and the War on Drugs in the United States.
If you want to reduce gun violence, you need to change the way people view each other. Might I suggest starting with a little more tolerance for and a little less coercion against people who have different lifestyles than your own and are causing you no harm? If the Roberts court can do that, I suppose there is hope for you as well.
Probably true. But with 80 million gun owners out there who by definition had an interest in getting their hands on a firearm and 67 million new firearms bought since 2008, the number of people interested in getting their hands on guns is still "a hell of a lot", even if does not equal the number of people interested in buying booze. And by basic economics, supply rises to meet demand.
You would do far better to work on the "demand" side rather than the "supply" side.
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)Perhaps by
groups of gun owners.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025433755
Protip: It's been tried before- and failed...
pablo_marmol
(2,375 posts)There's an oxymoronic phrase if ever there was one. Given that "gun elimination" if completely impossible, how does one go about it "intelligently"?
I guess in the sick, immoral minds of some, older citizens and women don't deserve a defense against young, tough criminals.
Matrosov
(1,098 posts)So how many more older citizens and women are putting a bullet between the eyes of young, tough criminals than young, tough criminals are murdering older citizens and raping women?
I've heard the estimates - in some cases, hundreds of thousands a year - but the problem is that these estimates are based on extrapolating statistics from a limited and sketchy set of information.
Shamash
(597 posts)Last I checked, the estimates you are pooh-poohing came from the CDC and a hand-picked panel of experts on the topic of firearm violence. After looking with a professional eye at all the data available on the subject and its reliability, from estimates they considered unrealistically low to unrealistically high, they came up with their figure.
Which you are discounting.
Which leaves only a few possibilities:
1) You've been holding out on us and have personal qualifications and access to data superior to the CDC and all its experts combined. By all means governor, please continue.
2) The "limited and sketchy" information available would be equally "limited and sketchy" at showing that very few such self-defense incidents are happening, making your criticism useless and setting you up to be the person described in comment #13.
pablo_marmol
(2,375 posts)LOL -- coming from a member of the crowd that does nothing but appeal to emotion! And of course you have no numbers to offer, since for people like you the facts are self-evident and no homework is required.
I noticed that you dodged the issue of the feasibility of getting rid of guns. No surprise there.
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)Reposted in full to illustrate the mindset, and also in case of sudden self-deletion
The pertinent bit is about 2/3rds of the way down:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025433755
Twenty years ago was the last time Congress passed a major piece of gun control legislation, the so-called Assault Weapons Ban that was mostly symbolic and did next to nothing to curb gun violence. Several Columbines and Sandy Hooks and hundreds of thousands of gun deaths later, there is still no new meaningful legislation on the horizon, and guns continue to kill over 30,000 Americans a year.
The NRA receives a great deal of credit for preventing Congress from passing new legislation or even encouraging states to weaken their gun control laws, and while the NRA should by no means be underestimated, in reality most of the responsibility actually falls on control advocates failing to organize themselves better and understanding the real issues related to firearms better.
For example, control advocates are too focused on "sensible" legislation when it is becoming increasingly clear that a total weapons ban should be the real goal. Any other sort of gun control does not work. As the NRA points out correctly, someone who has no issues with killing another person isn't going to worry about violating so-called gun-free zones. Restrictions on magazine capacities are pointless when most shootings involve only one or two victims and mass shootings comprise a tiny amount of the incidents. Assault weapon bans are equally pointless when rifles are involved in a tiny amount of the incidents. Background checks are overrated, when some criminals have no previous record, convicted felons can steal their weapons or make straw purchases, and very few people are ever excluded due to mental incompetence.
But where the NRA is completely wrong is in its suggesting that the best way to deal with gun violence is with more gun violence. That's as ludicrous as suggesting lung cancer patients should smoke more and hope their tumors consequently develop tumors of their own and die. Following their logic, and considering firearms are easily accessible for most Americans, we already should have fewer firearm deaths than places like Germany and Norway. Yet the firearm-related death rate in the US is six times higher than in Norway and ten times higher than in Germany, and gun-related murders play a much less significant role in their rates than in that of the US.
Let's examine some of the other failures...
Control advocates often do not understand gun culture
There is a tendency to lump gun owners all into one group, yet different people own guns for different reasons. The hunter who takes his bolt-action rifle and shotgun out of the safe only when it is deer or duck season isn't the same as the survivalist who keeps pistols and assault rifles around in case their SHTF fantasies come true.
The collector whose main worry is the condition and rarity of his guns and who may never take them shooting isn't the same as the plinker who might go through several hundred rounds during a trip to the local shooting range.
Understanding these differences is important when it comes to debating RKBA advocates, so that control advocates can better tailor their arguments to their audience, and it is also important to take advantage of natural divisions that exist between these various groups of gun owners.
Control advocates often do not understand firearms
Which is more dangerous, an AR15 or a Ruger 10/22? Show control advocates a picture of both and many will point to the AR15, citing how it looks like the M16 used by the military. Someone familiar with the Assault Weapons Ban might also point to the AR15 and explains that it meets the definition of the 1994 legislation. Yet in reality, both are semi-automatic rifles capable of accepting high-capacity magazines and of firing as quickly as the shooter can pull the trigger.
The 1994 Assault Weapons Ban is actually a good example with the lack of understanding many control advocates have of firearms. To meet the definition, a rifle has to accept a detachable magazine and in addition have at least two of the following features: a flash suppressor, a bayonet mount, a grenade launcher mount, a pistol grip, a telecoping stock. What does that actually accomplish? Nothing.
A flash suppressor is meant to help with the visibility of the shooter, not to make the shooter less visible, and can easily be replaced with a muzzle brake. A pistol grip exists for ergonomic reasons, not to make the weapon deadlier, and can easily be replaced with a thumbhole stock. A telescoping stock also exists for ergnomic reasons, not to make the weapon more concealable, and can easily be replaced a fixed stock.
In fact, control advocates focus too much on assault weapons. AR15s and Kalashnikovs may look scary and make it easier to evoke an emotional response in people, but rifles in general are rarely involved in gun deaths. Handguns are overwhelmingly the culprit. This lack of understanding many control advocates have then has them deem some weapons more accetable others and has them waste time and resources focus on weapons and gun features that really make no difference in the greater picture.
Control advocates often approach the Second Amendment the wrong way
"Repeal the Second Amendment!" is a common cry. Easier said than done. Modifying the Constitution requires the approval of two-thirds of Congress in addition to approval of 38 states. Another way would be for two-thirds of the states to hold a Constitutional Convention and for 38 states to then approve the changes. Furthermore, the Second Amendment only applies to firearm laws, not to the legality of firearms themselves. Even without the Second Amendment, and without a federal ban, states could still consider gun ownership to be perfectly legal.
But there is no doubt the Second Amendment is used by many RKBA advocates as automatic justification for gun ownership and for the relaxing of gun laws, and it is therefore worthwhile to explore the Second Amendment more deeply.
RKBA advocates already offer ample ammunition when they explain that the purpose of the Second Amedment is NOT to protect firearm ownership for the sake of hunting, recreational shooting, or self-defense, but to protect it for the sake of the citizens being able to fight and overthrow a tyrannical government. Nevermind that it sounds both treasonous and preposterous to suggest the US government and military would one day turn against the common American citizen like in, say, North Korea. It is also preposterous to suggest that handguns and rifles would make for good tools against Abrams tanks and B52 bombers.
Perhaps more important is the question whether the Second Amendment is even meant to protect against the US government, and if it wasn't actually meant for the US government to call upon armed and well-regulated militias to protect the country in the event of another invasion by Great Britain or another country trying to take advantage of the United States' fragile state in the late 18th century. It would certainly benefit control advocates to begin vocally framing the Second Amendment in this manner.
Some evidence that this is the true purpose of the Second Amendment is the fact that using the Second Amendment to justify gun ownership is a fairly recent phenomenon. Contrary to what RKBA advocates might tell you when they romanticize the Wild West, many cities in western states and territories actually had strict regulations on who was allowed to carry or even keep a gun within city limits. For example, the famous 1881 shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone took place because Wyatt Earp and others wanted to enforce the town's gun laws and disarm a group of outlaw cowboys.
We have also had several important pieces of gun control legislation be passed by Congress over the past 80 years that have restricted gun ownership in meaningful ways and yet were not found to be unconstitutional. Examples are the 1934 National Firearms Act, the 1968 Gun Control Act, and the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act that actually bans the transfer of machine guns manufactured after 1986. All thisimplies that either the right to individual gun ownership is not absolute or that the Second Amendment does not cover individual ownership anyway and is in reality meant for well-regulated militias.
Control advocates often fail to explore alternative means to limiting or eliminating gun ownership
As previously mentioned, repealing the Second Amendment is not only extremely difficult but it would also not automatically outlaw gun ownership. There is also of course the question as to what constitutes the correct interpretation. Furthermore, focusing too much on specific weapons or gun features is useless at best and distracting at worst.
In liu of being able to institute a full ban in the nearby future, perhaps control advocates should then explore alternative means of reducing gun ownership, by focusing less on the legability of firearms and more on their availability.
Why is it that fully automatic machine guns are so very rarely involved in gun deaths in the US these days? Because they are available to a select few people who have the financial means to afford them. For this we have the 1934 National Firearms and 1986 Firearm Owners Protection act to thank.
The 1934 law imposed a $200 tax on the transfer of machine guns, required all transfers be recorded into a registry, and forced potential owners to first seek the approval of the BATF before being able to have a machine gun transfered to them. The 1986 law, despite being meant to control how intrusive the BATF could be with gun owners and dealers, prohibited the transfer of machine guns manufactured after 1986. This then meant there was to be a finite supply of machine guns for private ownership, and consequently machine guns became cost prohibitive for all but a minority of gun owners.
It would be worthwhile for control advocates to explore similar options in regard to firearms in general. Preventing private citizens from purchasing any and all firearms manufactured after a certain year and combining that with tax and registration requirement would go a long way toward drastically reducing gun ownership. In turn, this would also help shrink the influence of the gun culture in the country and make an eventual outright ban easier to implement.
Control advocates need to reframe gun ownership as a public health issue
RKBA advocates often point out that you're more likely to die in a motor vehicle accident than a shooting. While it is true that cars are still involved in more deaths than guns, gun deaths are projected to overtake car deaths within the next year or two.
Control advocates need to start pushing to make the topic of gun ownership one of public safety. Banning cars would be catastrophic for our society, and consequently we've decided to work on making them safer. On the other hand, banning guns would help save most of those 30,000 lives that are lost to guns annually, and there'd be no appreciable economic downside to banning guns. More studies are needed to help provide concrete evidence for control advocates to use to show how much the presence of guns in our homes, communities, and country, puts us in danger.
There is also an environmental factor at work, as most bullets contain lead and other hazardous materials. Pushing for all ammunition to be "green" would help increase the price of ammo, which in turn would have somewhat of an effect on ownership. The more the bullets cost, the less desirable gun ownership is for the average person.
Control advocates need to focus less on mass shootings
While mass shootings are tragic and help to push the subject of gun violence to the front of our national dialogue, the number of victims of mass shootings is very low compared to the nearly 100 gun deaths that occur in the US every single day.
Aside from taking away focus from the larger problem of gun violence that does not involve mass shootings, this obsession with mass shootings also causes control advocates to focus too much on things like assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, which play a role in some of the mass shootings but have little to do with your average, every-day gun crimes and gun deaths.
Perhaps most importantly, focusing too much on mass shootings means many control advocates are politically active only when there is a mass shooting in the media. This is perhaps the biggest failure of control advocates as a whole.
On the other hand, RKBA advocates keep steady pressure on their elected officials to thwart new attemts at control legislation and to keep relaxing the existing gun laws on the books. Control advocates can't respond to this adequately if they are active only part of the time.
Until control advocates can match the numbers, the organization, and the intensity of the NRA and other RKBA advocates, there'll be more Columbines and Sandy Hooks and hundreds of thousands of gun deaths in our future.
pablo_marmol
(2,375 posts)Trying to figure out what caused this post to be hidden, since foolishness in-and-of-itself wouldn't warrant it.
Control advocates need to reframe gun ownership as a public health issue.
#1 -- Hardly an original idea
#2 -- One of the devious strategies that galvanizes RKBA advocates in opposition, hence is doomed from the get-go
Odd combination of level-headedness and dizzying silliness in this post, with more failure than I'm willing to deal with here late this evening.
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)the band leader
(139 posts)Actual gun violence deaths are closer to 11,000 annualy and are largely secondary to a crime problem and a drug problem, not a gun problem. so which side is pumping out the propaganda again?
