I guess this is what passes for gun journalism at the AP these days...

[benEzra]

The story is a "OMG the sky is falling" hit piece on civilian AK lookalikes, with a few jabs at AR-15's and other small-caliber rifles thrown in. The photo below pretty much sums up the entire article as far as egregious factual errors go.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080326/ap_on_re_us/ak47s

(No, that's not an AK-47, civilian or otherwise. It is an AR-15 type rifle, either a police issue patrol rifle or a civilian carbine.)



From the article:

Bullets fired by AK-47s travel at a higher velocity than those from many other weapons, and can do grievous damage to the body.

Egregious error that could have been avoided by a five-minute Google search. The AK is a LOW velocity rifle. From the Remington ballistics page:

Rifle Caliber....................Velocity

7.62x39mm (AK).........................122 grain bullet at 2350 ft/sec
.......................................154 grain bullet at 2000 ft/sec
.30-30 Winchester (1800's vintage).....150 grain bullet at 2390 ft/sec
.243 Winchester (deer rifle)...........100 grain bullet at 2960 ft/sec
.270 Winchester (deer rifle)...........130 grain bullet at 3060 ft/sec
.......................................150 grain bullet at 2850 ft/sec
.308 Winchester (deer/target rifle)....150 grain bullet at 2820 ft/sec
.......................................180 grain bullet at 2620 ft/sec
.30-06 (deer/elk rifle)................125 grain bullet at 3140 ft/sec
.......................................180 grain bullet at 2700 ft/sec
.......................................55 grain bullet at 4080 ft/sec
.300 Remington Ultra Mag (deer/elk)....150 grain bullet at 3450 ft/sec
.......................................180 grain bullet at 3250 ft/sec

Often they have enough energy to pass clear through.

Sigh. Rifle kinetic energy chart:

Weapon....................................... Kinetic Energy
AR-15 (.223 Remington/5.56x45mm)................1,275 ft-lb
AK-47 lookalike (7.62x39mm).....................1,495 ft-lb
.30-30 Winchester (1800's design deer rifle)....1,902 ft-lb
.243 Winchester.................................1,946 ft-lb
.308 Winchester.................................2,670 ft-lb
.270 Winchester.................................2,702 ft-lb
.50 Beowulf.....................................2,878 ft-lb
.30-06 (most popular deer rifle)................2,900 ft-lb
.444 Marlin.....................................2,942 ft-lb
.300 Remington Ultra Mag........................3,682 ft-lb
.375 Holland & Holland..........................4,230 ft-lb
.338 Lapua......................................4,830 ft-lb
.375 Remington Ultra Mag........................5,073 ft-lb
.416 Remington Magnum...........................5,115 ft-lb
.408 CheyTac....................................8,298 ft-lb
.416 Barrett....................................9,380 ft-lb
.585 Nyati.....................................10,130 ft-lb
.700 Nitro Express.............................11,150 ft-lb
.50 BMG........................................13,971 ft-lb

Yes, the 7.62x39mm round does delineate one end of the centerfire rifle power spectrum. But it's the low end.

Since 1993, the year before the ban took affect, ATF has recorded a more than sevenfold increase in 7.62x39mm guns — which includes the original Russian-made AK-47 and a variety of copycats from around the world. The number of AK-type guns rose from 1,140 in 1993 to 8,547 last year.

It also includes the SKS, the most popular centerfire rifle in the United States, as well as the Ruger Mini Thirty deer rifle. It does NOT include "the original Russian-made AK-47," as those weapons are NFA Title 2/Class III restricted, are not sold on the civilian market, and are regulated under an entirely different set of laws.

Since 2005, the first full year after the ban's expiration, ATF has recorded an 11 percent increase in such tracings.
ATF says the increases in the first half of the 1990s are partly the result of wider usage of its weapons database by local law enforcement agencies. But after that point, the numbers reflect a real increase in tracings of AK-type guns, the agency acknowledged.

The numbers corroborate what police chiefs around the country have been saying: AKs and other so-called assault weapons are terrorizing their communities and endangering their officers.

Except that rifle crime did not increase in 2005 or 2006; it actually decreased slightly, although the change was not statistically significant. One other salient fact that could have been mentioned, but was not, is that the 1994 Feinstein law did not actually ban any guns, so AK's did not become any more available in 2005 than they were already in 1998 or 2002.

They're reflected in the growing number of police forces equipping their officers with higher-powered guns to match the bad guys' firepower.... Days before the ambush, Miami Police Chief John Timoney agreed to let patrol officers carry assault rifles to help counter the use of such weapons by criminals. ... For years, only SWAT teams and the like carried AR-15s or similarly powerful weapons. But police forces nationwide have increased their firepower to match the criminals' arsenal — not only in urban areas such as Miami and Los Angeles, but in Waterloo, Iowa, Stillwater, Okla., Danbury, Conn., and Merced, Calif.

Except that police forces are not "equipping their officers with higher-powered guns."

They have, however, been replacing the traditional 12-guage (.729 caliber) patrol shotgun with small-caliber patrol rifles, because the rifles pose less risk to bystanders from stray shot and ricochet, allow more precise shot placement, offer much greater effective range (hence more versatility), and are easier for small-statured officers to shoot well because they are LESS POWERFUL than 12-gauge shotguns. This shift has been in progress since the mid-1990's and has little to do with "countering the use of such weapons by criminals." Nor is it just a handful of departments; there is now a well-established consensus nationwide that small-caliber patrol rifles are safer and more versatile than use of big-bore patrol shotguns.

This consensus, and the resulting shift toward small-caliber rifles, is well over a decade old. For example, see
Roberts G.K., "Law Enforcement General Purpose Shoulder Fired Weapons: the Wounding Effects of 5.56mm/.223 Carbines Compared with 12 ga. Shotguns and Pistol Caliber Weapons Using 10% Ordnance Gelatin as a Tissue Simulant, Police Marksman, Jul/Aug 1998, pp. 38-45.

"INTRODUCTION

"Until recently, the 12 gauge shotgun has remained the universally accepted shoulder fired weapon for United States law enforcement use, despite the shotgun's limitations as a general purpose weapon--short effective range, imprecise accuracy, downrange hazard to bystanders, small ammunition capacity, slow reloading, and harsh recoil. While 12 gauge shotguns still have a valid law enforcement role, especially to deliver specialized munitions and possibly in close quarters combat (CQB), recent recognition of the shotgun's significant limitations as a general purpose weapon have prompted many American law enforcement agencies to begin adopting the more versatile semi-automatic carbine for general purpose use.(12) Semi-automatic carbines offer more accuracy, less recoil, greater effective range, faster reloading, and a larger ammunition capacity than the traditional shotgun.
...
"Less well known is that 5.56mm/.223 rifle ammunition is also ideally suited for law enforcement general purpose use in semi-automatic carbines.(5,6). It offers superb accuracy coupled with low recoil, and is far more effective at incapacitating violent aggressors than the pistol cartridges utilized in submachineguns and some semi-automatic carbines.
...

"CONCLUSION

"A 5.56mm/.223 semi-automatic carbine with a minimum of a 14.5" to 16.5" barrel may be the most effective and versatile weapon for use in law enforcement. When used with effective ammunition, the 5.56mm/.223 carbine simultaneously offers both greater effective range and less potential downrange hazard to bystanders than a 12 ga. shotgun, handgun, pistol caliber carbine, or SMG , as well as far greater potential to incapacitate a violent criminal than any handgun, pistol caliber carbine, or SMG.
...
The routine issuing of 5.56mm/.223 semi-automatic carbines for general purpose use to all law enforcement officers would significantly enhance officer safety, increase police effectiveness, and decrease dangers to innocent bystanders in all situations requiring the use of firearms."

That was the law enforcement consensus in 1998, but the trend goes back much further; the NYPD Stakeout Unit used the M1 carbine (comparable to the AR-15) at least as far back as 1968-1973, FBI agents used carbines and rifles in the early 20th century, and law enforcement use of the lever-action Winchester carbine in .30-30 Winchester (a ballistic twin of the AK-47) goes back to the 1800's. A few minutes' research would have revealed that.

On Thursday, Sept. 13, Jose Somohano, a 37-year-old officer with the Miami-Dade Police, was cut down during a traffic stop in suburban Miami by a man with an AK-type weapon. Three other officers — armed, like Somohano, with just handguns — were wounded, one of them suffering a bullet wound the size of a grapefruit in her leg.

That incident was tragic. But one detail the article conveniently leaves out is that the rifle used in that murder (a Chinese MAK-90 carbine) was imported nearly two decades ago, had nothing to do with the expiration of the 1994 Feinstein non-ban, hasn't been imported for over 15 years, and would not have even considered an "assault weapon" under the 1994 Feinstein law.

On Friday, Sept. 14, along the Tigris River outside Baghdad, an alleged Shiite extremist linked to roadside bombings was taken into custody with his AK-47s and grenades. In Afghanistan, in villages south of Kabul, troops arrested three suspected Taliban militants and confiscated their weapons, including their AKs. And in Sydney, Australia, a former soldier pleaded guilty to gunning down a photographer with an AK in a contract killing.

With AK-47-type guns used in wars and insurrections all over the world, some 250,000 people are said to be killed by such weapons each year, and more than 75 million are believed to be in existence. In Iraq alone, congressional investigators estimate 110,000 AKs bought by the U.S. for security forces there cannot be accounted for.

All of which is a red herring, since those weapons are all restricted to police/military/government use only in the United States, and have absolutely nothing to do with U.S. street crime.

Knockoffs of the AK can be bought from legitimate gun dealers for as little as $300, and are also available on the street. Original Russian-made models are more expensive. Normal ammo clips hold 30 rounds, but higher-capacity ones are also available.

"Original Russian-made models are more expensive." No kidding. A vintage Russian-made, milled-receiver AK-47, which is NFA Title 2/Class III restricted, is among the rarest of collectible firearms in the United States; if you obtained Federal authorization to possess one, you'd probably pay between $20,000 and $50,000.

Non-automatic civilian AK derivatives run between $300 or so and $1000, depending on the model. Mine (Romanian SAR-1) was $379.00 plus tax in 2003.

Most of the AKs on American streets are semiautomatic, meaning they fire as fast as the gunman can squeeze the trigger. Fully automatic ones, common on the battlefield, require just one pull of the trigger to release a burst of fire.

That is technically true; kudos for getting one right. But "as fast as the gunman can squeeze the trigger" is perhaps not the most objective way of saying "they fire at the same rate as an ordinary civilian pistol or self-loading rifle."

A 2004 study by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence concluded the U.S. ban on AKs and other guns was successful, saying in the five years before its passage, assault weapons made up 4.82 percent of ATF crime gun traces, compared with 1.61 percent between 1995 and 2003.

Since AK's were never banned, this phrasing is a load of crap. What the Bradyites did, of course, was to exclude traces of ban-era "assault weapons" from the "assault weapon" category to create a fake drop in traces, to make it look like the non-ban was doing something.

Many politicians, police chiefs and gun control advocates point to the expiration of the assault weapons ban as a reason for the spread of the guns. But many others argue the law was so riddled with loopholes that it had little effect.

Well, since the "assault weapons ban" didn't ban ANY guns, it's obvious that it wouldn't have had any effect on the already minuscule proportion of crimes that are committed with rifles. I don't know that you can call that a "loophole," though.

Context, on rifle crime:

2005 data:
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/data/table_20.html
Total murders............................14,860.....100.00%
Handguns..................................7,543......50.76%
Other weapons (non firearm, non edged)....1,954......13.15%
Edged weapons.............................1,914......12.88%
Firearms (type unknown)...................1,598......10.75%
Shotguns....................................517.......3.48%
Hands, fists, feet, etc.....................892.......6.00%
Rifles......................................442.......2.97%

2006 data:
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2006/data/table_20.html
Total murders............................14,990.....100.00%
Handguns..................................7,795......52.00%
Other weapons (non firearm, non edged)....2,158......14.40%
Edged weapons.............................1,822......12.15%
Firearms (type unknown)...................1,465.......9.77%
Shotguns....................................481.......3.21%
Hands, fists, feet, etc.....................833.......5.56%
Rifles......................................436.......2.91%

And that's for all rifles combined, not just rifles with modern styling.

Sigh. If you Google "sedensky AK-47" you'll find dozens of articles he's written using the same factoids. I tried to email him, but he has no email address for comments/corrections. I guess there's a reason for that.

[Ordr]

1. This fear-mongering bullshit is the Dem version of the terror alert level.

[benEzra]

3. Actually, the Brady Campaign is a repub group.

Ignorance on the gun issue cuts across party lines.

[krispos42]

2. To summarize...

The types of rifles used in crime are shifting, the number of rifle crimes is not.

It's a demographic shift.

<shrug>

I'll bet more students in urban schools are Mexican-born or are first-generation Americans of Mexican decent. Doesn't mean that there are more students in the urban schools.



And regarding the "penetration" issue... My .22 pistol with a 3" barrel will shoot through one side of a 55-gallon steel drum, and that sheet metal is a fair bit heavier than used on vehicles. My .22 rifle will shoot through BOTH sides of a 55-gallon steel drum.

That's with maybe 80 ft-lbs of energy from the pistol, and 140 ft-lbs of energy from the rifle. The AK rounds are ten times as powerful, deer rifle rounds are 20 times as powerful.

[benEzra]

4. I'm not even sure that the article demonstrates that.

If you toss all the fearmongering, what remains is that the BATFE traced more 7.62x39mm rifles in 2005/2006 than they did in 2004.

That could to some extent simply reflect Von Restorff type bias in the trace data. There was so much fearmongering about AK's in 2004-2005 that an officer might be more likely to run a trace on an AK than, say, a Jennings 9mm or a 20-year-old .38.

Some of the shift in trace data is probably real, and reflects the types of rifles that this generation owns, as you point out. I wouldn't be surprised if you started to see some shotgun crime substituted with rifles as well (since the rifle/shotgun ownership ratio is shifting more toward the rifle side), but I wouldn't expect the total to go up much.

[virginia mountainman]

5. What a great post Ben!! (K&R)!

Their is no excuse for lieing like they did in that article.

[Hangingon]

29. Amen! Good catch Ben

[beevul]

6. Of course, and the usual suspects treat it as the gospel...N/T

[WWFZD]

7. A doff of the cap to you ben

You put a lot of effort into that excellent post.
Of course the antis will think you even more insane than they already do but those of us who inhabit the realm of reality will appreciate it.
Since it's New Orleans why don't they just release the stormtroopers to kick down the citizens doors and confiscate the things? If they're lucky they might pick up a few rusty .38's from grandmotherly types using them to protect meager possessions and overweight housepets. Life sure does move at a different pace in the crescent city.

[Will E Orwontee]

8. And the local papers run with the ball . . .

Great post.

The print edition of yesterday's (3/27) Philadelphia Daily News carried just the photo and a short caption; the editorializing header above the photo read, "SUPREME COURT, TAKE NOTE."

[Herman74]

9. 10,000 people MURDERED EACH YEAR BY GUNS, as seen in Ben Ezra's data

Not that the gun-nuts give a damn, assuaging their own paranoia being more important to them than the lives of others. Compare the murder rates of the U.S. with say Japan or the U.K. There's no comparison, the carnage here is FAR higher.

Does Ben Ezra have anything against AK-47s? The exact same arguments that the gun-nuts use defending the legality of pistols in this country could just as well apply to AK-47s and machine guns, right??? Indeed, given that the 2nd Amendment's "well-regulated militia" would have much more use for a machine gun than some stupid puny little derringer, the gun-nuts would undoubtedly argue in favor of everybody being able to own an AK-47 or machine gun, right gun-nuts????

Ben Ezra evidently believes that carnage wrought by rifles is minuscule. I disagree. And if he hadn't been murdered by a rifle, this anti-violence Nobel Peace Laureate would undoubtedly disagree too:



As would this former President of the United States:



Given that they don't give a damn, the gun-nuts aren't going to do a damn thing to stop the yearly carnage; it's up to us progressives to fight them and to fight for sane gun control.

[WWFZD]

10. As would this former President of the United States:

That would be a pic of "assault weapon" owning former president JFK, not that the paranoid, freedom hating, authoritarian, regressive gun grabbers care about honesty. The end justifies the means right? Spoken like a true right-winger, just like the originators of gun control.
10,000 murdered? In a free society of 300 million. Oh well, I take greater odds than that when I get in my car to go work everyday. That's exactly what I said - oh well, as in so it goes, so be it.
And MLK? If I had lived in his time and had his color skin I would probably have had his disregard for the constitution that the racist majority didn't apply to me as well.
And when the SC gets done with this case we, us ordinary poor folk, might might be able to own a machine gun with minimal govt interference. Better stock up on Depends undergarments now gun grabbers.

[Herman74]

14. Yep, the same JFK SHOT DEAD by a rifle (or at least one rifle).

Do you give a damn? That's got to sting doesn't it? And speaking of "honesty" (or lack thereof), I never indicated that JFK never owned a gun, did I now?

And would you classify the people of England as "paranoid, freedom hating, authoritarian, regressive"? YES OR NO??? Gun homicide rates (2000) U.S.: 2.97, England& Wales: 0.12. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence THAT IS TO SAY, THE GUN HOMICIDE RATE IN THE US IS 25 TIMES HIGHER THAN THAT FOR ENGLAND, WHERE ONE CAN'T LEGALLY BUY A GUN FOR "SELF-DEFENSE"!!!

"And when the SC gets done with this case we, us ordinary poor folk, might might be able to own a machine gun with minimal govt interference." -- WWFZD

Yep, ever since that good friend of the gun-nuts, George W. Bush, was able to put "Machine Gun Sammy" Alito on the U.S. Supreme Court. Tragically, some long for the days of Al Capone again. But these people are not progressive.

Oh, but there is a fine example of a person who I think we can all agree is IN FACT "paranoid, freedom hating, authoritarian, regressive"



Some people choose to stand with Dick Cheney and the NRA. The true progressive opposes them both, valuing above all, human life.

[benEzra]

20. There do seem to be some worrying tendencies over there among the ruling class...

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2002/11/56152

http://www.art-for-a-change.com/News/eyes.htm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/10/15/npatrol15.xml

[krispos42]

21. In 2002, Massachusettes outlawed ownership of black automobiles...

and prohibited the driving of black-painted autos on state roads and highways. Since this has happened, deaths and injuries related to black-painted automobiles has plummeted to record lows. The governor of Massachusettes, upon release of the most recent statistics, proclaimed "Massachusettes' streets are safer without these black vehicles of death prowling about", and is planning on making the success of this law an integral part of his re-election campaign.

Critics of the law note that total automotives injuries and deaths are unchanged, and the governor's law merely redistributed the numbers onto other car colors.

The govneror lashed out at the critics in a sharply worded statement, accusing them of "being in the pockets of the paint industry" and asking why they "support the ownership of stealthy, black-painted cars that are exceptionally well-suited to criminal mischief such as drunk driving".

The governor also noted that nearly all black-car-related deaths and injuries result from out-of-state drivers illegally brining their wrongly-colored cars into his state, and denounced the legislatures of New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont for not following Massachusettes' lead on this issue. "The blood of Massachusettes' citizens run in the streets because of their lax laws. In fact, they don't even check to see if a black car sold in one of those states is being bought by a Massachusettes resident. Illegal black cars are flooding out state, and they won't lift a finger to help us."













In case you missed the point above, I'll post this instead



Now, tell me again how wonderful it is that less than five dozen people were killed by firearms in the UK last year?

[WWFZD]

23. Some people choose to stand with Dick Cheney and the NRA.

And proud of it. I stand with the NRA on almost all of their 2A issues. And on this issue I'm proud to stand with Dick Cheney, well not literally. I don't want to be anywhere in the vicinity where he's handling firearms. As for the "conservatives" on the SC I'm reserving my judgment until June when they rule on the Heller case. But I anticipate standing with them as well.

"And would you classify the people of England as "paranoid, freedom hating, authoritarian, regressive"? YES OR NO??? "
On this issue, by way of their elected leadership, YES!

[Herman74]

26. PROUD TO STAND WITH DICK CHENEY????

NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS did I think I would ever hear such a declaration at Democratic Underground. Maybe at rightwingnews.com or freerepublic.com, but not at DU.

[Dimensio0]

28. I am curious.

Would you rather proudly stand with George W. Bush, who has offically taken a position opposite Dick Cheney regarding private firearms ownership rights?

[WWFZD]

31. No

And double NO.

[sergeiAK]

33. delete

self-delete, reply to wrong post

[WWFZD]

30. Check back in another million

Maybe you'll see another post that will blow your mind.
PROUD, PROUD, PROUD to stand next to Dick, on this issue. Git'em Dicky boy.

[bossy22]

37. be careful what you wish for

cause this statement can go both ways
The true progressive opposes them both, valuing above all, human life.

sounds like something a Pro-lifer would say doesnt it?

[gorfle]

51. Here is how I would classify them...

And would you classify the people of England as "paranoid, freedom hating, authoritarian, regressive"? YES OR NO??? Gun homicide rates (2000) U.S.: 2.97, England& Wales: 0.12. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence THAT IS TO SAY, THE GUN HOMICIDE RATE IN THE US IS 25 TIMES HIGHER THAN THAT FOR ENGLAND, WHERE ONE CAN'T LEGALLY BUY A GUN FOR "SELF-DEFENSE"!!!

I would classify them as enjoying their freedoms at the whim of their government with no recourse should their government decide to impose a tyranny upon them.

[beevul]

11. Posts like yours are the reason we gun owners are winning.

"Not that the gun-nuts give a damn, assuaging their own paranoia being more important to them than the lives of others."

Yes, we "gun nuts" - which I assume is anyone that disagrees with you - don't give a damn about anyones lives, because the choice at hand is to "assuaging our own paranoia" versus let others live...NOT.

"Does Ben Ezra have anything against AK-47s? The exact same arguments that the gun-nuts use defending the legality of pistols in this country could just as well apply to AK-47s and machine guns, right??? Indeed, given that the 2nd Amendment's "well-regulated militia" would have much more use for a machine gun than some stupid puny little derringer, the gun-nuts would undoubtedly argue in favor of everybody being able to own an AK-47 or machine gun, right gun-nuts????"

Quite an impressive display of ignorance, my hat is off to you. Say hi to Republican Helmke for us all. And BTW, an ak-47 IS a machinegun.

"Ben Ezra evidently believes that carnage wrought by rifles is minuscule. I disagree."

Well then I guess you disagree with the FBI too. I do wonder who should anyone listen to... Benezra whos credentials are not in question and who has verifiable facts that back up his position, or you who come here ranting and raving and full of venemous hyperbolie, with nary a relivant fact to show...

Tough choice there...Not.

We 280+ million people that own firearms are keeping them, thanks...

[Herman74]

15. Posts like yours show why America is losing...

...losing children and other living creatures to gun violence.

"Say hi to Republican Helmke" -- beevul

Who the hell is this "Helmke"??? You can say "hi" to this fellow, who just like you, doesn't favor gun control:



I oppose reactionaries like Dick Cheney and the NRA. How about you, dear reader?

"Well then I guess you disagree with the FBI too." -- beevul

"We 280+ million people that own firearms are keeping them" -- beevul

The FBI doesn't offer an opinion on what it considers to be "minuscule" or not. I will. I consider this to be minuscule: 3 gun-homicides per 10,000,000 in Japan (http://www.allcountries.org/gun_deaths_by_country.html). If that rate were applied to the 300,000,000 population that is the U.S., that would work out to around 90 gun-homicides, which is SUBSTANTIALLY BELOW the 400+ number of homicides in the U.S. due to RIFLES ALONE.

The Japanese are able to get by without guns, beevul, but, alas, you can't.

[benEzra]

18. We're heading in the right direction, pretty much...

and that is still true despite a recent uptick in criminal violence relating to the abandonment of the Community Policing model (the "Homeland Security" model of policing doesn't work so well in real life, IMO), the economic downturn, and social stresses resulting from the Iraq war.

[beevul]

24. Nonsense,

"Posts like yours show why America is losing...losing children and other living creatures to gun violence."

FYI, I have 2 human children, and several non-human children. Where I live, the coyotes come around NIGHTLY to see if my non-human children are outside, because they think my non-human children might be good eating:





If you had your way, I would be unable to keep my property coyote free, and quite likely I would lose one of our precious babies to a coyote. But I suppose that wouldn't matter a lick to you.









"The FBI doesn't offer an opinion on what it considers to be "minuscule" or not. I will. I consider this to be minuscule: 3 gun-homicides per 10,000,000 in Japan (http://www.allcountries.org/gun_deaths_by_country.html ). If that rate were applied to the 300,000,000 population that is the U.S., that would work out to around 90 gun-homicides, which is SUBSTANTIALLY BELOW the 400+ number of homicides in the U.S. due to RIFLES ALONE."

Yes...those wonderfully progressive japanese...

"TOKYO (AP) -- Japan's national police, facing allegations that officers regularly squeeze confessions from suspects with abuse, issued guidelines for the first time Thursday setting limits on how far they can go in questioning sessions.

The rules, contained in a 10-page report, follow recent high-profile cases that uncovered heavy-handed police tactics. One innocent man served two years in prison for rape after police pressured him into falsely confessing.

Despite the national attention, many of the new guidelines were basic: during questioning, police cannot touch suspects, threaten them, keep them in a fixed posture, verbally abuse them or offer them favors in return for expressions of guilt.

The rules took aim at a favorite police method: the lengthy questioning session. Police will now be limited to eight hours at a time, and overnight interrogations - aimed at breaking the suspect with exhaustion - were banned."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3154040

And don't those folks still take fleets of ships and hunt whales?

Swell bunch you use for an example there, but theyre A-ok by you as long as they ban those guns...Swell playmates ya got there bub.


"The Japanese are able to get by without guns, beevul, but, alas, you can't."


Nope. I have a bonafide need for mine. Whats your point?


"Who the hell is this "Helmke"???"


Hahahahahahaha<breath>Hahahahahahaa<breaths>Hahahahahaha. Paul helmke happens to be a republican gun grabber, and also the president of that scummy old brady campain. But you knew that.



Like I said, We 280+ million people that own firearms are keeping them.

[Herman74]

25. My playmates and your playmates

"Swell bunch you use for an example there, but theyre A-ok by you as long as they ban those guns...Swell playmates ya got there bub." -- beevul

Hey, at least they didn't invade Iraq, unlike say, the friend to gunlovers everywhere, Dick Cheney.
(And Japan signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol, unlike the U.S.).

"Paul helmke happens to be a republican gun grabber, and also the president of that scummy old brady campain . But you knew that." -- beevul

Uh, no, I didn't.

[beevul]

27. Hahahahaha

"Hey, at least they didn't invade Iraq, unlike say, the friend to gunlovers everywhere, Dick Cheney."


You and yours, that pushed for the banning of the most popular rifles in America, and pushed gun owners away from voting Democratic...that demonize gun owners...you are all AT LEAST as responsible for enabling those that chose to invade iraq, as the gun owners that voted for them because of you. The fact of the matter, is that republicans like cheney have people like you that hate guns and demonize gun owners to thank for helping to make possible everything they do.


Thats on you. Theres no spinning it away, no hiding from it, and no denying it. And everyone thats not closing thier eyes and sticking thier fingers in thier ears and shouting LA LA LA knows it.

[gorfle]

52. And consequently...

The Japanese are able to get by without guns, beevul, but, alas, you can't.

And consequently, the Japanese enjoy freedom at the whim of their government.

Our founding fathers were highly skeptical of this sort of arrangement, which is why they enumerated our right to bear arms in our Constitution.

[Redneck Socialist]

12. Ummmm, most folks can own a machine gun now...

providing they can pass the background check and have the cake to afford one.

[radioburning]

44. Well, that's not actually 100% correct...

Most states don't allow fully automatic weapons, and the states that do usually require a significant amount hoops to jump through, and more than a little bit of cash...

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[benEzra]

16. Pennsylvania murder statistics:

10,000 people MURDERED EACH YEAR BY GUNS, as seen in Ben Ezra's data

Not that the gun-nuts give a damn, assuaging their own paranoia being more important to them than the lives of others. Compare the murder rates of the U.S. with say Japan or the U.K. There's no comparison, the carnage here is FAR higher.

And VERY few of those involve rifles. You're in Pennsylvania, right? Here are the latest FBI stats for Pennsylvania:

Pennsylvania (FBI Uniform Crime Reports 2006, Table 20, Murder, by State and Type of Weapon):

Total murders...............................719.....100.00%
Handguns....................................474......65.92%
Other weapons (non firearm, non edged).......87......12.10%
Firearms (type unknown)......................55.......7.65%
Edged weapons................................51.......7.09%
Hands, fists, feet, etc......................27.......3.76%
Rifles.......................................14.......1.95%
Shotguns.....................................11.......1.53%

All rifles put together account for roughly half as many murders as shoes and bare hands, and only a quarter of the number committed with knives. Tell me again how small-caliber rifles are such a crime problem...

Does Ben Ezra have anything against AK-47s? The exact same arguments that the gun-nuts use defending the legality of pistols in this country could just as well apply to AK-47s and machine guns, right??? Indeed, given that the 2nd Amendment's "well-regulated militia" would have much more use for a machine gun than some stupid puny little derringer, the gun-nuts would undoubtedly argue in favor of everybody being able to own an AK-47 or machine gun, right gun-nuts????

You've been spun, I think.

The article I discussed in the OP isn't talking about actual AK-47's, which are VERY tightly controlled in this country (and I'm OK with that); it's talking about non-automatic civilian rifles, some of which look, but do not function, like AK-47's. I own one, and shoot recreationally and competitively (IPSC/USPSA) with it.

Ben Ezra evidently believes that carnage wrought by rifles is minuscule.

Statistically speaking, it is. Considering that twice as many people are murdered annually by shoes and bare hands, never mind knives and clubs.

I disagree. And if he hadn't been murdered by a rifle, this anti-violence Nobel Peace Laureate would undoubtedly disagree too:

As would this former President of the United States:

JFK was one of those evil "assault weapon" owners that the repubs at the Brady Campaign like to demonize...

Both of those heroes were murdered by people using bolt-action rifles. Are you seriously proposing to outlaw deer rifles, or did you invoke those murders just to score rhetorical points?

Given that they don't give a damn, the gun-nuts aren't going to do a damn thing to stop the yearly carnage; it's up to us progressives to fight them and to fight for sane gun control.

And outlawing the lawful and responsible ownership of the most popular target rifles in America is a "sane" approach to the problem of criminal handgun use?

Here's a sane, progressive approach: take a more intelligent approach to the War on Non-Approved Herbs, and stop making the business so profitable (decriminalizing cannabinoids and devoting those resources to treatment programs for the hard drugs would be a good start; the lessons of alcohol Prohibition have apparently been forgotten), address the related problems inner-city blight, economic hopelessness, education, and mental health care; and if you want to look at gun-related issues, focus on CRIMINAL possession and use, rather than attacking lawful and responsible ownership.

[Herman74]

34. I'm not as parochial as you might think.

"The article I discussed in the OP isn't talking about actual AK-47's, which are VERY tightly controlled in this country (and I'm OK with that)...(emphasis added)" -- Ben Ezra

Well then, the exact same arguments that you apply to "being okay" with AK-47s being tightly controlled you could apply to favor handguns and rifles being tightly controlled. After all, an AK-47 would be more effective in a "well-regulated militia" than would a stupid petty little derringer or a slow-firing rifle, right??

"Statistically speaking, it is ." -- Ben Ezra

Let's see here. at more than 400 murdered by rifle per year say multiplied by 25 years, we're talking more than 10,000 dead people, right??? Far more than the 3,000 deaths (after a quarter-century of terrorism) that led to the Iraq war. You want to know what is TRULY minuscule, Ben Ezra??? It's the amount of people murdered by ALL guns in Japan. What is it, 25 to 40 per year for the entire country???

"Both of those heroes were murdered by people using bolt-action rifles. Are you seriously proposing to outlaw deer rifles, or did you invoke those murders just to score rhetorical points?" -- Ben Ezra

Let's see here, two choices: do I favor allowing Martin Luther King, Jr. to die just so animal-killers can get their jollies killing deer? Martin Luther King, Jr., or the killers? King or the killers? Hmm. I think I'll go with allowing Martin Luther King, Jr. to live, how about you, Ben Ezra??? Or are you going to refuse to answer???

"And outlawing the lawful and responsible ownership of the most popular target rifles in America is a 'sane' approach to the problem of criminal handgun use?" -- Ben Ezra

I go my whole life without engaging in any target practice, yet (strange though it may seem to you) I get by. Large proportions of people throughout the world get by without target practice. Target practice invariably leads to pollution, doesn't it? Or do the gun nuts locate the bullets they've fired and retrieve them? Do the guns they use emit no gun-smoke? And are the bullets the gun-nuts are leaving on the ground made out of toxic lead?

"Here's a sane, progressive approach: take a more intelligent approach to the War on Non-Approved Herbs, and stop making the business so profitable (decriminalizing cannabinoids and devoting those resources to treatment programs for the hard drugs would be a good start; the lessons of alcohol Prohibition have apparently been forgotten), address the related problems inner-city blight, economic hopelessness, education, and mental health care; and if you want to look at gun-related issues, focus on CRIMINAL possession and use, rather than attacking lawful and responsible ownership." -- Ben Ezra

You can do both. You can do all those nice things that Ben Ezra listed AND you can make it harder for people to own guns. Consider countries which have attempted to do what Ben Ezra recommends to some extent or other. Consider Holland. Consider the U.K. Consider Japan. Consider Sweden. Each with a fraction of the gun-ownership rate of the U.S., each with a fraction of the gun-homicide rate of the U.S. Ben Ezra's approach acts as if sociological reasons alone dictate gun-homicide rates (e.g., some poor fellow needing money 'cause he had none, and with the robbery having gone awry, someone getting shot). But SOME MURDERERS ARE JUST PLAIN DERANGED, they are NOT BORN WITH A TATTOO indicating that they're deranged, and indeed, often their spouses or other loved ones DON'T EVEN KNOW THAT THEY'RE DERANGED.

And if no one had guns, deranged, psychotic people wouldn't have guns. Simple, isn't it???

[beevul]

35. So you say...

"Well then, the exact same arguments that you apply to "being okay" with AK-47s being tightly controlled you could apply to favor handguns and rifles being tightly controlled. After all, an AK-47 would be more effective in a "well-regulated militia" than would a stupid petty little derringer or a slow-firing rifle, right??"

How exactly do you propose to apply this? And how are you going to enforce it?

"Let's see here. at more than 400 murdered by rifle per year say multiplied by 25 years, we're talking more than 10,000 dead people, right??? Far more than the 3,000 deaths (after a quarter-century of terrorism) that led to the Iraq war. You want to know what is TRULY minuscule, Ben Ezra??? It's the amount of people murdered by ALL guns in Japan. What is it, 25 to 40 per year for the entire country???"

Are you losing perspective? The perspective that the great majority of firearms in America, AND the great majority of people that own them, will never be involved in the wrongful killing of anyone?

Just like the majority of people that drink alcoholic beverages will never drink themselves to death, or cause the death of another through the use of alcohol.

Do you deny that?

If its STRICTLY about deaths there are bigger fish to fry.

If its about deaths but your willing to take things into consideration, then you have to take into consideration that the majority of guns and the people that own them are simply not ever involved in the killing of anyone.


And if you are willing to take things into consideration for things like...say...alcohol related deaths, but not willing to where firearms are concerned, you obviously have an axe to grind that goes beyond simple deaths or to what degree something causes death through misuse.

If that describes you, why should anyone listen to one word out of your mouth?

"I go my whole life without engaging in any target practice, yet (strange though it may seem to you) I get by. Large proportions of people throughout the world get by without target practice. Target practice invariably leads to pollution, doesn't it? Or do the gun nuts locate the bullets they've fired and retrieve them? Do the guns they use emit no gun-smoke? And are the bullets the gun-nuts are leaving on the ground made out of toxic lead?"


I go my whole life without skydiving, bungee jumping or extreme downhill skiing, yet, I get by, and so do large proportions of people throughout the world. I suppose I could also get by without target practicing, sex other than in the missionary position, books other than those you approve of...but life simply isn't a necessetarian concept, at least to most people.

And, a large portion of target practice rounds are caught in the traps of target ranges, skeet and trap using steel shot rather than lead being more mainstream, the environmental issue isn't quite what you make of it.

"You can do both. You can do all those nice things that Ben Ezra listed AND you can make it harder for people to own guns. Consider countries which have attempted to do what Ben Ezra recommends to some extent or other. Consider Holland. Consider the U.K. Consider Japan. Consider Sweden. Each with a fraction of the gun-ownership rate of the U.S., each with a fraction of the gun-homicide rate of the U.S. Ben Ezra's approach acts as if sociological reasons alone dictate gun-homicide rates (e.g., some poor fellow needing money 'cause he had none, and with the robbery having gone awry, someone getting shot). But SOME MURDERERS ARE JUST PLAIN DERANGED, they are NOT BORN WITH A TATTOO indicating that they're deranged, and indeed, often their spouses or other loved ones DON'T EVEN KNOW THAT THEY'RE DERANGED.

And if no one had guns, deranged, psychotic people wouldn't have guns. Simple, isn't it???"


Suppose you adress just the start of what you're saying here.

How are you going to sell this to gun owners at large? How are you going to get this past thier voting power? Making it harder to own guns, is what your proposing. What do you propose to do about the 80+million people that already own the 280 million plus guns in the united states?

If you can't answer those questions, whats the point of even discussing it any farther?

[Herman74]

41. Well, you start with...

...requiring all guns to be registered. Extensive gun removal from the U.S. is a slow process, and will take time, gun registration being the first step. Then you start raising the taxes on both guns and bullets, especially bullets. You use the money raised through the increased taxation to offset some of the damage done by guns (e.g., victim's compensation funds). Eventually over much time you can reach the point where the manufacture and sale of bullets is outlawed. You initiate programs of gun-buybacks, then you take the guns bought and melt them down into something more useful. You employ the Dutch requirement that all guns be kept in safes. You make it legally possible for people to own other, less lethal means of self-defense, such as pepper spray and perhaps even tasers, which aren't anywhere near as lethal as guns.

You're aided by the fact that hunting is dying off in this country. Less and less people are experiencing the Dick-Cheney bloodlust. With time (perhaps 50 to 200 years), you can eventually outlaw handguns altogether, and very tightly control the usage of rifles (as they do in Japan).

After all this is successfully done, the country should realize Japanese rates of gun homicide (i.e., about 100 firearm homicides per year, rather than 10,000).

[SteveM]

45. You might like this right-winger's position...

"Ultimately, a civilized society must disarm its citizenry... The assault weapon ban is a purely symbolic move whose real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation" -- Charles Krauthammer, "Disarm the Citizenry," Washington Post, April 5, 1996.

You ought to check up on William Bennett, the arch-right winger who favors prohibition of drugs and guns (when he isn't tossing dice and smoking tobacco). Then there's Albert Gonzalez and his 'no fly, no buy' proposals, but I figure you know about that one.

Wanna "stand with" those guys?

[gorfle]

54. Hah, there it is!

Well, you start with...requiring all guns to be registered. Extensive gun removal from the U.S. is a slow process, and will take time, gun registration being the first step.

Everyone out there who has ever wondered why pro-RKBA folks are against a "reasonable" measure like firearm registration need only read the above sentence. This is why I will never comply with any firearm registration attempt.

You initiate programs of gun-buybacks, then you take the guns bought and melt them down into something more useful.

There are something like 250 million firearms in the United States.

If we assume an average value of $300, you are looking at a total value of 75,000,000,000. That's 75 BILLION dollars. And this is undoubtedly a low value, as most of my firearms probably are around $800 in value, and a couple are around $5000 in value. If we assume an average value of $800, you are looking at a total value of 200 BILLION dollars of private property.

To put this in perspective, this is over ten times the 2007 budget of NASA.

Do you really think the government is going to embark on such an expensive project? Now I suppose your solution will be to offer substantially less than the market value when buying "back" these firearms.

Do you really think that 80 million firearm owners are going to tolerate this?

You're aided by the fact that hunting is dying off in this country. Less and less people are experiencing the Dick-Cheney bloodlust. With time (perhaps 50 to 200 years), you can eventually outlaw handguns altogether, and very tightly control the usage of rifles (as they do in Japan).

You are right in that most firearm owners don't hunt. I don't think it's an issue of blood lust so much as the fact that hunting is more and more becoming a pastime of the rich and elite.

After all this is successfully done, the country should realize Japanese rates of gun homicide (i.e., about 100 firearm homicides per year, rather than 10,000).

As was pointed out, if all you are interested in is the overall number of deaths, there are many bigger fish to fry than firearm deaths. But if you are interested in recognizing the rate of firearm murder relative to the number of firearm owners you will see that 10,000 firearm murders each year means 99.99% of all firearm owners don't commit murders each year.

[benEzra]

36. Thoughts...

Well then, the exact same arguments that you apply to "being okay" with AK-47s being tightly controlled you could apply to favor handguns and rifles being tightly controlled. After all, an AK-47 would be more effective in a "well-regulated militia" than would a stupid petty little derringer or a slow-firing rifle, right??

So, since you are OK with restrictions on child porn, you must have absolutely no problem with government censorship of political commentary, right? And since you are OK with restrictions on certain religious practices (sacrifices, polygamy), you must be OK with total state control of all religious expression?

Your argument is specious. That's not how constitutional jurisprudence works.

"Statistically speaking, it is ." -- Ben Ezra

Let's see here. at more than 400 murdered by rifle per year say multiplied by 25 years, we're talking more than 10,000 dead people, right??? Far more than the 3,000 deaths (after a quarter-century of terrorism) that led to the Iraq war.

Hmmm. In the same 25-year period, alcohol killed 2.5 MILLION people, according to the CDC (100,000 per year), or at least 200 times as many as were murdered using rifles. Are you ready to bring back alcohol prohibition? Or are you just throwing numbers around to back up your own prejudices?

We live in a nation of 300 million people. Rifle murders are almost a one-in-a-million event in this country. That is a pretty good definition of "scarce."

"Both of those heroes were murdered by people using bolt-action rifles. Are you seriously proposing to outlaw deer rifles, or did you invoke those murders just to score rhetorical points?" -- Ben Ezra

Let's see here, two choices: do I favor allowing Martin Luther King, Jr. to die just so animal-killers can get their jollies killing deer? Martin Luther King, Jr., or the killers? King or the killers? Hmm. I think I'll go with allowing Martin Luther King, Jr. to live, how about you, Ben Ezra??? Or are you going to refuse to answer???

If you seriously think outlawing hunting wouldn't be absolute political suicide, you are WAY out of touch.

"And outlawing the lawful and responsible ownership of the most popular target rifles in America is a 'sane' approach to the problem of criminal handgun use?" -- Ben Ezra

I go my whole life without engaging in any target practice, yet (strange though it may seem to you) I get by. Large proportions of people throughout the world get by without target practice. Target practice invariably leads to pollution, doesn't it? Or do the gun nuts locate the bullets they've fired and retrieve them? Do the guns they use emit no gun-smoke? And are the bullets the gun-nuts are leaving on the ground made out of toxic lead?

Spent bullets fired at shooting ranges are generally recycled. The combustion end products of smokeless powder (nitrocellulose/nitroglycerin/nitroguanidine) are nitrogen, water, and carbon dioxide, in negligible amounts.

I go my whole life without engaging in a lot of behaviors that I would never attempt to ban. But, more to the point, between 65 and 80 MILLION people of voting age lawfully own guns in this country; gun owners register to vote at higher rates than the population at large, and of those registered, half are Dems and indies.

Merely raising prices on replacement magazines for civilian pistols, and requiring minor cosmetic changes to popular small-caliber rifles, cost the House AND Senate in 1994 and unseated the sitting House Speaker for the first time since the Civil War. Care to speculate on how an actual ban would go over?

Answer: It wouldn't. And the party that even began to try it would be out on its ear so fast it would make your head spin.

"Here's a sane, progressive approach: take a more intelligent approach to the War on Non-Approved Herbs, and stop making the business so profitable (decriminalizing cannabinoids and devoting those resources to treatment programs for the hard drugs would be a good start; the lessons of alcohol Prohibition have apparently been forgotten), address the related problems inner-city blight, economic hopelessness, education, and mental health care; and if you want to look at gun-related issues, focus on CRIMINAL possession and use, rather than attacking lawful and responsible ownership." -- Ben Ezra

You can do both. You can do all those nice things that Ben Ezra listed AND you can make it harder for people to own guns.

No, you can't; in this country, they are mutually exclusive. Because if you try to ban lawfully owned guns, you WILL be kicked out of office.

Even if you could make it harder to LEGALLY own guns, given this country's experience with all forms of prohibition, you cannot make it significantly harder to get them illegally. Right now, illegal heroin is more widely available, cheaper, and easier to get than legal prescription opiates, even though it has been banned for 80 years. If you outlaw guns and drive legitimate gun commerce underground, the de facto result would be fewer controls on gun availability, not more.

We own guns in this country, overwhelmingly lawfully and responsibly. We're keeping them. You can accept that fact, or you can go down in flames rejecting it, but the fact stands.

And if no one had guns, deranged, psychotic people wouldn't have guns. Simple, isn't it???

"Guns are banned" does not equal "Nobody has guns," particularly in this country. All cannabinoids are completely banned (Schedule I) and have been for many decades, and the ban is enforced with police and surveillance tactics that push the limits of what is acceptable in a modern civilized society. Yet pot is easier to get than pipe tobacco in most jurisdictions.

There are ~300 million guns in private hands in this country. They are not going away. I'm willing to work with you on narrowly focused proposals to address their MIS-use, and more broadly on creating a supportive and empowering society, but stay the hell out of our family's gun safe.



----------------------
The Conservative Roots of U.S. Gun Control

Thoughts on Gun Ownership

Dems and the Gun Issue - Now What? (written in '04, largely vindicated in '06, IMO)

[Herman74]

42. More thoughts

"Your argument is specious. That's not how constitutional jurisprudence works." -- Ben Ezra

It may well work that way now, now that the gun-nuts have successfully gotten "Machine Gun Sammy" Alito onto the Supreme Court.

"If you seriously think outlawing hunting wouldn't be absolute political suicide, you are WAY out of touch." -- Ben Ezra

I think in terms of the long-term, as ridding society of noxious elements like guns will take time. Hunting is slowly fading out of the picture, and with time, the number of hunters should become small enough that we the notion of "political suicide" would seem ridiculous.

"Spent bullets fired at shooting ranges are generally recycled." -- Ben Ezra

Trouble is for you that not all target practice takes place at shooting ranges, does it now? And do the hunters pick up the bullets they leave behind? What is the composition of these bullets, is it lead???

"Merely raising prices on replacement magazines for civilian pistols, and requiring minor cosmetic changes to popular small-caliber rifles, cost the House AND Senate in 1994" -- Ben Ezra

Bogus, undefended argument that assumes only one factor affects political outcomes.

"No, you can't; in this country, they are mutually exclusive. Because if you try to ban lawfully owned guns, you WILL be kicked out of office." -- Ben Ezra

Same type of argument, that change will always be resisted, was undoubtedly used to defend at earlier points in this country's history both slavery and the disenfranchisement of women. Didn't the slave-owning Thomas Jefferson himself say that he wasn't prepared to allow women the right to vote, and thought that most of his countrymen felt the same way? The true progressive NEVER defends a clearly inadequate status quo, the true progressive fights for the change that brings about a better world. Consider the words of this guy murdered by a gun (or perhaps even more than one gun):

"Some men see things as they are and ask 'Why?' I dream things that never were and ask, 'Why not?'" -- Robert F. Kennedy

The gun-lovers look at the vastly lower rates of gun-ownership and the vastly lower rates of gun-homicide in the U.K., in Holland, in Japan, in Sweden, in much of the rest of Western Europe, and feebly throw their hands in the air, declaring "It's impossible for us to obtain those lower gun-homicide rates, there are just too many guns in society!!" How utterly lame. You're not going to get the lower gun-ownership rates unless you start taking the first steps, and accept the fact that ridding American society of guns will take decades, if not centuries. I for one take that first step, by rubbing the noses of the gun-lovers into the bloody carnage they willfully accept, until their faces are red.

[Irreverend IX]

57. "murdered by a gun"

When will you antis quit ascribing free will to inanimate objects?

[iverglas]

58. Tell it to Mary Rosh

http://www.lewrockwell.com/lott/lott16.html

New York City's Latest Anti-Gun Follies
by John R. Lott, Jr.

... The NYPD doesn't even collect information on how many murders are committed by people with a registered gun, as opposed to by a gun obtained illegally.

And that one didn't even make sense ... how many murders are committed by people by a gun obtained legally ...


Maybe it's okay when a bunch o' gun-heads do it, and the inanimate objects in question are doing good deeds:

http://www.2asisters.org/press/pressrelease/press1.htm

... women from across the country who represent the 2.5 million people whose lives are saved by guns every year.

Clever little buggers, those inanimate objects, aren't they?

[Irreverend IX]

59. Why am I supposed to give a shit...

About something John Lott or the 2nd Amendment Sisters wrote? They make grammatical mistakes like anyone else. But anti-RKBA communications are full of "murdered by guns" language. There's a "Guns murdered x number of people" poster on the front page of the Brady Campaign site, and I doubt it's for a lack of people informing them of their error. Like "the Democrat party", "murdered by guns" is obviously not an error, but a dishonest attempt at psychological manipulation.

[iverglas]

60. well I give up!

Why would anyone here give a shit about posters at the Brady Campaign website??

You were addressing a DU member who wrote:

Consider the words of this guy murdered by a gun (or perhaps even more than one gun): ...

and it just kinda seems to me that if you don't give a shit about John Lott's or the Second Amendment Sisters' incorrect use of prepositions, one has to wonder why you care so passionately about someone here at DU making the same grammatical mistake.

If you're saying this:

Like "the Democrat party", "murdered by guns" is obviously not an error, but a dishonest attempt at psychological manipulation.

about the DU member, make yourself plain.

If you aren't saying that about the DU member, then you're just wasting everybody's time with pointless grammatical complaints.

[Irreverend IX]

61. You brought up two grammatical errors.

Firearm animism is a rhetorical device that has been used by anti-gunners for years, far beyond the scope of a few grammatical errors. In the John Lott article, he refers to people murdered "by a gun," so in that case he's actually reinforcing the animist distortion, probably out of sheer stupidity. "Murdered by guns" is not just a random mistake, but something anti-gunners have been deliberately repeating for years in order to poison the well of firearms policy debate. Anyone who keeps referring to people "killed by a gun" after being corrected is no more intellectually honest than a person who makes references to the "Democrat party."

Bringing up grammatical errors by John Lott and the 2A Sisters is really reaching. I know you're an honest person, as you've taken such pains to reiterate here, so I'm puzzled to see you leap to the defense of people employing a dishonest turn of phrase long after they should have known better.

[krispos42]

62. Even more thoughts

I think in terms of the long-term, as ridding society of noxious elements like guns will take time. Hunting is slowly fading out of the picture, and with time, the number of hunters should become small enough that we the notion of "political suicide" would seem ridiculous.

Most gun owners are not hunters. In fact, the vast majority of gun owners are not hunters.

It may well work that way now, now that the gun-nuts have successfully gotten "Machine Gun Sammy" Alito onto the Supreme Court.

He was put in for his pro-corporate views and his history of support fascist idealology. Guns didn't enter into it.

Trouble is for you that not all target practice takes place at shooting ranges, does it now? And do the hunters pick up the bullets they leave behind? What is the composition of these bullets, is it lead???

Yup, lead. Unless you're hunting migratory waterfowl, then you have to use something else.

Bogus, undefended argument that assumes only one factor affects political outcomes.

Any major political change has multiple causes. In this particular case, the 1994 law was a major one. While the political change was probably inevitable, there is no doubt that the 1994 law made the losses far worse and therefore making it harder to fight back against the change. If the 1994 law hadn't been passed, the Republican majority would have been significantly slimmer. If the GOP majority had been slimmer, Clinton probably wouldn't have been impeached. If Clinton hadn't been impeached, then either Gore would have won enough in 2000 so that Bush couldn't steal it, OR impeaching Bush would be possible because the concept of impeachment wouldn't have been soiled by partisan politics.

Same type of argument, that change will always be resisted, was undoubtedly used to defend at earlier points in this country's history both slavery and the disenfranchisement of women.

Yet what you are proposing is not more freedom for Americans, but less.

The gun-lovers look at the vastly lower rates of gun-ownership and the vastly lower rates of gun-homicide in the U.K., in Holland, in Japan, in Sweden, in much of the rest of Western Europe, and feebly throw their hands in the air, declaring "It's impossible for us to obtain those lower gun-homicide rates, there are just too many guns in society!!"

1. You use "gun homicides", not total homicides. The UK's homicide rate is at historic highs, yet their GUN homicide rate is at historic lows. Lowering the "gun homicide" rate is in no way an indicator of an improvement in public safety or crime.

2. Our non-gun homicide rate is, by and large, as high as Western Europe's TOTAL homicide rate. The problems we're having are societal, political, and systematic and are leading to more crimes and criminals. You are trying to take away the one type of tool used in crime while not addressing the motivations to commit crime. We could save far more lives and stop far more crime much sooner than "decades, if not centuries" by having a sane drug-legalization policy or universal single-payer health care.

3. From about 1995 to about 2002, our crime and homicide rates plummeted by about 50% while the numbers and types of civilian-owned guns in the United States remained virtually unchanged.

[gorfle]

53. And also...

And if no one had guns, deranged, psychotic people wouldn't have guns. Simple, isn't it???

If no one has guns, they are at the mercy of anyone who does, like their government.

This is precisely the situation our founding fathers did not want The People to be in.

[krispos42]

17. How many of those would be alive if guns were banned.

Give me an estimate.

[Will E Orwontee]

19. A good question . . .

krospos wrote:

"How many of those would be alive if guns were banned."

And a follow-up question would be, "of those, how many don't we miss?" I don't shed one tear for well perforated gang banging, drug dealing scum and in the vast majority of locales if you are not engaged in gang or drug activity your chances of being murdered are about equal to being struck by lightning. . .

[krispos42]

22. The question still stands.

You are apparantly of the opinion that if guns were make illegal, or had significantly tighter restrictions on type and ownership, the number of people killed with guns would decrease.

Assuming that the number of people killed with guns decreased, what percentage of that former total would have been killed by "other" instead?

And would it affect the total number of people killed?

[radioburning]

48. Well, here's some numbers to think about...

According to the U.S. Center For Disease Control(CDC), 29 thousand people die from guns annually in America every year. Of those 29 thousand 40% are men over 40 committing suicide. Let's say that leaves 18,000 who didn't choose to end their own lives. Let's conservatively say that 3,000 of those are shot by police while committing crime. That leaves 15,00 killed in crimes, accidents, etc.(of those 15,000, 5% are committed with so called assault wepons) To put it in perspective, cigarettes kill 465,000 to 475,000 on average every year, according to the CDC. 350,000 to 365,000 from lack of exercise and poor diet. 85,000 from alcohol abuse. 35,000 from reactions to prescription drugs. Roughly 6,000 die from slipping in their bathtubs or bad reactions to aspirin every year.
I'm sorry, what was your point again?

[krispos42]

49. Trust me, I know the numbers

16,000 murders a year in this country, 11,000 by guns. Non-homicide gun deaths: 18,000 suicides, about 750 accidents, 360 justifiable homicides by police, 175 justifiable homicides by citizens.

I'm in the Gungeon on a regular basis, so I have to have my facts more or less lined up... :-)

Nobody can seem to tell me how many lives we'll save by banning guns, or at least clamping down very harshly on them a la Canada or the UK.

Doubtless we'll have fewer GUN deaths. Britian's GUN DEATH rate is at historic lows. And yet...

[Irreverend IX]

38. Amusing that you should post JFK...

That's him on the left. He was quite fond of shooting and he owned one of the first AR-15 rifles (the rifle in the OP photo is an AR-15). Before the 1980s culture wars, there were lots of pro-gun Dems, including Hubert Humphrey and Eleanor Roosevelt, who packed a revolver during her days as a civil rights activist when the KKK put a bounty on her head.

Also, knock it off with the anti-gun animism. No one has ever been "murdered by a gun." You really like to ignore that people are responsible for those killings, don't you? "People murdered by guns" is right up there with the "Clear Skies Act," "Healthy Forests Initiative" and "Why do you hate America so much?" when it comes to dishonest political rhetoric.

[Herman74]

39. Well, two can show photographs of JFK...

...and if you go here:

http://www.jfklancer.com/photos/autopsy_slideshow/index.html

You can see JFK after he was SHOT DEAD BY A RIFLE. Care to take a look, you're not too afraid, are you? Or perhaps you don't like it when gun-lovers have their noses rubbed into the carnage that guns cause???

And I suppose you're going to give us instead the classic, feeble NRA mantra: "Guns don't kill people, people kill people"???

[benEzra]

40. Bolt-action rifles are even legal in the UK, for crying out loud...

(yes, that's in England)


(same Brit with a gun, that was a UK record FWIW)

and even the Bradyites aren't trying to ban those (Sarah Brady herself bought one for her son fairly recently, in a military caliber no less.) More people die in swimming pools annually than are murdered by rifles.

You are completely out of touch with the reality in this country. Dems and indies OWN GUNS in this country, and we're keeping them.




----------------------
The Conservative Roots of U.S. Gun Control

Thoughts on Gun Ownership

Dems and the Gun Issue - Now What? (written in '04, largely vindicated in '06, IMO)

[WWFZD]

56. Holy crap, the Brits own automatic assault weapons?

Look at the size of that scope, and a green stock? What kind of psycho would paint a gun lime green? Think of all the dead children!
Impressive group though.

[SteveM]

46. Hey! Do you know who won the shooting match with JFK?...

It wasn't Kennedy or Gore Vidal, it was (envelope, please) Tennessee Williams!

BTW, wasn't it JFK who as a senator sponsored protectionist legislation to shield domestic gun manufacturers from foreign competition? (Note: Massachusetts was at the time home to many gun manufacturers.)

[radioburning]

47. Easy on the "Gun Nuts" talk, ok?

According to the Center For Disease Control annual tally of deaths in the U.S., more people die from reactions to their prescription medicine than from gun shots. Almost three times as many people die from alcohol abuse. More than 10 times as many people die each year due to lack of exercise and poor diet. And yet the only thing people are passionate about banning is guns. Even worse is the desire to ban so called "assault weapons", which only account for 5% of gun deaths per year in the U.S. By the way, the largest majority of gun deaths per year(40%)belongs to men over 40 committing suicide. More people die from car accidents every year than guns. Does anybody try to ban cars? 100 people die from too many cheeseburgers and marathon sessions of World of Warcraft, and nothing happens. Somebody gets shot with a gun and politicians are on a podium holding a rifle Schwarzeneggar would use in a movie.
For the hundreds of thousands of Americans who love to go to the shooting range, enjoy the aesthetics and machinery in the manufacture of guns, the challenge of hitting a bullseye from 300 yards, it gets really frustrating to be called "psychos", "nuts", and "violent" on a regular basis. Calling someone a gun nut is equally offensive as a redneck calling a painter an "art fag". Both are just derogatory terms thrown at someone when you don't understand their point of view.
Hitler, Mussolini, and Stallin all seized privately owned weapons as soon as they had the power to do so. I know your heart is in the right place, but as soon as you start controlling peoples lives you're getting another step closer to Orwell's 1984. Gun control laws do not stop criminals from using guns for crime. Just like drug laws don't stop people from selling and using drugs.
Go to a shooting range. You might actually enjoy it. Then you might also understand how it feels when someone thinks you are violent, criminal, or crazy now...

[gorfle]

50. And so is the amount of freedom available.

Not that the gun-nuts give a damn, assuaging their own paranoia being more important to them than the lives of others. Compare the murder rates of the U.S. with say Japan or the U.K. There's no comparison, the carnage here is FAR higher.

And correspondingly, the rate of firearm ownership is much higher, and so is the ability to resist oppression if necessary.

Does Ben Ezra have anything against AK-47s? The exact same arguments that the gun-nuts use defending the legality of pistols in this country could just as well apply to AK-47s and machine guns, right??? Indeed, given that the 2nd Amendment's "well-regulated militia" would have much more use for a machine gun than some stupid puny little derringer, the gun-nuts would undoubtedly argue in favor of everybody being able to own an AK-47 or machine gun, right gun-nuts????

I believe most folks are comfortable with the level of restrictions currently in place for fully automatic firearms. I don't believe you would see much impact on crime if they were as accessible as any other firearm though. Firstly, they are very expensive to shoot. My 30-round civilian AK-47 holds about $6 worth of ammunition, and if it could fire full-auto it would go through that in about 3 seconds of sustained fire. Secondly, firearms fired in fully automatic mode are not terribly accurate. Machine guns are typically used for suppression of enemy positions - it forces them, out of prudent fear, to "keep their heads down". If you wanted to walk into a typical classroom with 30 bullets and kill the most number of people you'd have far more success with a pistol with two 15-round magazines than you ever would spraying the room with a machine gun.

Ben Ezra evidently believes that carnage wrought by rifles is minuscule. I disagree.

Well, you're wrong. There are some 80,000,000 firearm owners in this country. With only 10,000 of them committing murders by firearm every year, that means that only .012% of them are committing murders with their firearms. That means the other 99.99% of firearm owners aren't committing murders every year.

Since all rifles , including "assault weapons", account for less than 500 murders every year - 20 times less than the total number of murders, odds are that the percentage of rifle-owning firearm owners who commit murders is far, far, far less.

it's up to us progressives to fight them and to fight for sane gun control.

Yeah, and that strategy has been a real election-winner for us progressives, too.

[MaryCeleste]

32. I complained to the AP about the errors in the article and suggested if they want to be considered

more than bloggers with a title, they need to get their facts straight.

[iverglas]

55. oh no, Mary!

We hardly knew ye.

They drop like flies, don't they?

[radioburning]

43. Great Post.

And you wonder why the conservatives are alway yelling about the media having a liberal bias...