Gun death solutions from the firearms community?

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HammsBeer

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Many threads here rip apart recent "feel good" legislation attempts, and rightfully so as they will accomplish nothing but direct or defacto gun registration and later confiscation of legally obtained weapons from lawful citizens. Mag limits, gun bans based on cosmetic features, and unenforceable universal background checks do nothing to effect the underlying root cause of deaths by firearms. What I don't see much of are realistic solutions from the gun community, the people that know firearm technology and the current laws best, that could stem the 30,000 deaths by firearms each year.

Considering that 2/3 of those are suicides, what can we do to intervene and get that person the help they need before they get to that point of desperation and pick up a gun? I think many of these are otherwise normal people who develop short term chemical imbalance or situational depression, but fearing a loss of gun ownership keep it hidden until it boils over.
Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, and is a topic that seems many are unwilling to touch.

A large portion of the remaining 1/3 are gang on gang shootings using weapons obtained through straw buyers or theft, and the courts often go lightly on gun conviction sentencing or drop it all together in plea deals. How do we keep more weapons from reaching the gangs and get the remaining ones out of their hands?

And what can be done about stopping high profile shootings involving multiple victims? I honestly think the mass media hype following each one is a major contributing factor, and I'm also realistic enough to know that a large majority of the population simply will not carry a weapon, either due to personal beliefs, workplace restrictions, or local/state restrictions.
So how can the public at large be protected (either directly or indirectly) if they simply will not be armed?

Many (apparently not all) agree something needs to be done about these three separate problems, but nobody seems to know how. We can expose clearly ignorant legislators and show the foolish misdirection of many proposed gun restrictions, but unless we pull our heads out of the sand and come up with some real solutions while keeping our rights intact, things will never improve and we will always be on the defensive against anti-gun restrictions that accomplish nothing, or even make things worse. Please post what you think will help curb each of these issues...
 
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The 2A in the constitution wasn't contingent on future crime rates or emotional responses to events. Everything else is just chatter and is moot.
 
HammsBeer said:
What I don't see much of are realistic solutions from the gun community, the people that know firearm technology and the current laws best, that could stem the 30,000 deaths by firearms each year.
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You probably don't see solutions from the "gun" community because the solutions need to come from experts who understand the psychology of why those events occur.

The gun community can tell you many detailed things about guns and the safe operation of them...but gun experts may not be sociologists, psychiatrists, or psychologists...all of whom are probably the best source for understanding the myriad reasons that some human beings feel compelled to harm or prey upon other human beings.

In other words, I can tell you how the killers gun works...but I have no idea how his brain works.
 
It occurs that you really ought to accept the reality of the human condition......people have ALWAYS done each other in...in one form or another, ranging from the odd bone tool to today's far more sophisticated hardware..and no law nor social policy can change that.

Oft quoted, but truly apt is that the fault is "not in our stars, but in ourselves". The nature of man is what it is, accept that and you begin to realize the futility of trying to get answers where there really aren't any.

Take the gun and the knife substitutes..........suicides: take a close look at mostly gun free Japan..............and on and on and on..........we truly are the son's of Cain!
 
I think HammsBeer's question is reasonable and deserves consideration.

When serious issues plague a community, people need to step up and brainstorm potential solutions. Some will work, some will not. But with no brainstorming, nothing will happen.

My question is, can this community act responsibly and have a reasoned and respectful conversation about this issue without immediately attacking the effort?
 
You appear to have fallen for the anti's rhetoric, that IT'S THE EVIL GUN'S FAULT.

Two-thirds of deaths by firearms in this country are suicides (you say - I don't know where you got your statistics from, but I'll accept them). How can we keep the guns out of the hands of these poor depressed suicidal loons?

Well, if you take their guns away, they will take poison, or slit their wrists, or run a hose from the car exhaust into the passenger compartment, or stick their heads in the oven, or hang themselves, or jump in front of a train...

According to this little graph, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Japan#/media/File:Suicide-deaths-per-100000-trend.jpg in 2005, the suicide rate in the US was around seven per 100,000 population. And we got lots of guns. Japan, on t'other hand, has almost no guns, their rate was twenty per 100,000 population. If taking the guns away from the suicide risks will prevent suicide, howcome Japan's rate is three times ours?

Then you say that most of the other one-third is gangbangers killing each other, and HOW CAN WE KEEP THE GUNS OUT OF THE HANDS OF THE GANGBANGERS?

If we take their guns away, they will kill each other with knives and rocks and baseball bats and run-'em-down-with-cars and molotov cocktails.

If you want to kill someone, whether yourself or someone else, the availability of lack thereof of a gun is not going to prevent you. If you WANT to kill someone, you will find a way.
 
If we take their guns away, they will kill each other with knives and rocks and baseball bats and run-'em-down-with-cars and molotov cocktails.
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I'd rather see a ban on baseball bats, cars and m'cocktails than guns.
 
I don't know if this is the reason behind Modified Browning's comment, but whenever I see someone say

WE ALL KNOW

WE ALL AGREE

EVERYONE KNOWS THAT

or anything else that implies that ALL OF US REASONABLE PEOPLE know the correct thing to do, it just raises my hackles.

"We all agree"? I musta been at work the day you came by my house and asked my opinion.

Suicides? If they really want to do it, we ain't gonna stop 'em.

Gangbangers? Heck yeah, let 'em shoot each other. We need to find a way to stop them from shooting up innocents, but if the Crips and the Bloods went at each other, and wiped each other out, it would not bother me in the least.
 
The very premise of the OP is flawed. There is nothing to blame but human nature. All else is trying to shift blame from our own nature onto something else. Millions live in hard economic circumstance and do not turn to crime or violence. Millions have lived with emotional distress and not taken it out on others. How many are part of a minority demographic and manage to not take it out on the majority? Nobody wants to name the root issue because it requires personal responsibility and accountability for our own actions.
 
If I read correctly, the premise is that, despite all the laws on the books and resources available, we are somehow to be held responsible for the behavior of others.
 
I read it differently. I don't see the OP assigning responsibility to gun owners,
but asking us to think bigger than we have before -- brainstorming potential ideas
that could help reduce violence by insane people with guns.

That does NOT say that gun owners are insane, but speaks to the reality that insane people own guns.
(E.g., Hitler was insane, and much brainstorming along with a lot of war stopped him.)

But it's too late for me to articulate that tonight after IPA.

I'll be back ..
 
There is no fix. Sorry. The variables that contribute to the suicide and crime rates are so many and so varied.

I reject the notion that "we need to have a national discussion" about any of this. For one, until a significantly higher percentage of the general population can name all 3 branches of fedgov and recognize that congress is both the house and senate, I don't give two pieces of excrement what the "average person" or "majority" think or want. They're idiots, barely qualified to manage their personal affairs, let alone make or influence public policy.

Secondly, even if half of average Americans weren't borderline retarded, were capable of intelligible discourse on the matter, there is still no cure that isn't ultimately worse than the disease.
 
Yes people have always and will always kill (others or themselves) for a myriad of reasons. I'm not blaming the gun, and I'm not blaming us gun owners either. It's just a tool like a hammer or shovel, and I'm a freedom loving person who wants to keep my guaranteed rights and do what's best for society. I'm definitely not asking for gun bans or additional hoops to jump through when buying a gun.

But when there is legislation stripping a person of their right to firearms because they sought treatment for depression 10 years ago and have no issues now, it send the wrong message. When someone currently suffering fears that they might lose their gun rights forever if they seek treatment, it prevents them from getting the help in the first place. We need protection for someone's rights when they do the right thing and seek treatment, not punish them for it.

When courts are lax in enforcement of punishments for gun possession by gang felons, or punishing straw buyers or those who lie on a 4473, it makes a mockery of the law. The law is a joke in their eyes; making the courts really crack down hard on those laws that we already have might make a dent.

When the media spends days or weeks covering a shooter who clearly planned the attack to gain notoriety, it emboldens other fringe disenfranchised societal outcasts to make a name for themselves in the most horrific ways. Media is often mute about suicides because they know it can cause copycat suicides. Why should mass shootings be any different?

The anti's are throwing all sorts of bad stuff at the wall, and if we have nothing in response except a shrug of our shoulders and the typical chest pounding and "2A shall not be infringed" stance, it makes us look complacent and unfeeling to the issues. Why not brain storm some ideas to curb each issue WHILE fighting to retain our rights? I'm not asking for more gun laws, and we're not going to fix everything or make the issues disappear completely, but I've hinted in this response some things we could do to help curb these issues.
 
I don't give two pieces of excrement what the "average person" or "majority" think or want. They're idiots, barely qualified to manage their personal affairs, let alone make or influence public policy.
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I'd hardly call the membership of THR "average people" or "majority". :rolleyes:
 
I'd hardly call the membership of THR "average people" or "majority". :rolleyes:
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Yet apparently the reading comprehension is lacking. Note the verbiage of the first sentence, upon which the one you contest the validity of is predicated.
 
The first sentence of what?
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Really??? The paragraph. Let's try again:

I reject the notion that "we need to have a national discussion" about any of this. For one, until a significantly higher percentage of the general population can name all 3 branches of fedgov and recognize that congress is both the house and senate, I don't give two pieces of excrement what the "average person" or "majority" think or want. They're idiots, barely qualified to manage their personal affairs, let alone make or influence public policy.
 
What I don't see much of are realistic solutions from the gun community, the people that know firearm technology and the current laws best, that could stem the 30,000 deaths by firearms each year.
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Well, in the first place, let's take a critical look at that number before we start trying to develop a plan.

About 2/3 of those deaths are suicides as you point out. I'm not convinced that this is a firearm problem. I don't see any benefit in a person committing suicide with an overdose of Tylenol, by inhaling carbon monoxide, or by jumping off a bridge vs. using a firearm. Some argue that firearms are a more effective suicide method than some of the other approaches and argue that suicide rates could be reduced by cutting off access to firearms. I don't believe that premise is true in general. Ok, I'm going to make a statement that is a generalization. I know it's not true universally and I'm sure there are exceptions. That said, from what I can see, people who are serious about suicide tend to pick serious methods and tend to get the job done. On the other hand, people who primarily want attention tend to pick methods that will get them attention but that aren't nearly as likely to kill them. There are plenty of very sure ways to kill yourself without a gun if that's your goal--which means that restricting firearm access isn't going to significantly reduce suicide rates, in my opinion.

That leaves about a third that are ruled "homicides".

Of those, 20% to 25% are not criminal homicides. Those would be citizens or police officers killing someone in self-defense with a firearm. Not really something gun owners are going to see as a problem.

So the actual number is something like 8,000-9,000 criminal homicides involving firearms annually.
 
Here's just one idea that could potentially keep some guns out of known gangs or felon's hands:

How about a hotline in each state for private sellers that you can enter a prospective buyers name and a couple identifiers such as state ID number and date of birth, and they tell you if they are prohibited or not to buy a gun. No gun information required, no confirmation if the exchange actually happened, no traveling to an FFL, no fees. I would actually prefer an instant check system like that for private party transactions without relying on "gut instinct". I could see the minor cost of such a system even being funded by the state public safety committee, or the federal tax already imposed on all new gun sales.

And yes, people who are really intent on committing suicide will choose a really effective means to do so. But if they know they are not banned for life from owning guns if they get treatment, you may get some of them to actually seek out help. Will it stop all suicides, absolutely not, but it could help a few, which is better than none.
 
This has been suggested by many people for a long time. I'm not against a voluntary check system such as you propose. But why haven't we seen govt implement it yet? Because the government has no control over a voluntary system used at the discretion of the people. Any and all attempt at "gun control" is merely a guise for power grabbing. No power to take, no program implemented.
 
I think many of these are otherwise normal people who develop short term chemical imbalance or situational depression, but fearing a loss of gun ownership keep it hidden until it boils over.
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Interesting opinion but I have yet to figure out what a normal person is , and I also have not seen evidence that supports the premise that our most talked about (so called mass) shootings are being conducted by any one other than known mentaly unstable persons.

The data seems to indicated that many of our criminal shootings are done by criminals against criminals.

No matter the cause of a person using a firearm to kill another person or themselves there is no way around the fact that guns are only a tool of choice to do so.

It is also fact that crime is not the leading cause of premature death by any stretch of the imagination. Or to put it another way ,if ones goal is to save lives the focus should be on the highest causes of early demise, and there are many that come before violence commited with a firearm.

The target of many government anti's is not the reduction of deaths, but the illimination of firearms. The purpose of which is control of a potential threat to their power over the masses.

There are also many anti's who are simply misinformed , and or to lazy to put effort into thinking beyond what the talking heads on the TV screen are feeding them.

The media is not putting out the fact that violent crime has been on the decrease for a long time now. They are not telling the truth, they are simply expressing the propaganda of those that own them.

The issues that need to be focused on are criminals, and insane members of society.

I could go on and on with other talking points of this subject, but I've already taken up enough air for now.
 
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