Almost never talked about: the fact that many gun related crimes are committed by someone under 21

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Aim1

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So-called assault weapons are used in less than .0175% (if I’m correct) of homicides. Handguns are used in a most gun-related homicide and crimes. In most places you have to be 18 years to purchase a rifle or shotgun and 21 years old to purchase a handgun.

Almost all of the gun-related homicides in the United States are not mass-shootings, school shootings, workplace shootings, or terrorism related. Those shootings get the spotlight but they are far rarer than your everyday gun related homicide such as robbery, murder, assault, domestic, gang related, and others which make up the majority of your gun related homocides.

For many of the gun related crimes in large cities like Baltimore, Detroit, New York, and Chicago it is gang related and what no one talks about is the fact that most of the perpetrators are under 21 years old. You have many 13-19 year olds comitting murders with guns. Some are younger and some are older. But a vast majority are under 21.

What does that mean?

It means that these perpetrators can’t even own or purchase a handgun.

It means all of these gun laws, the so-called “gun show loophole”, background checks, background check improvements, raising the age to 21 for rifles, mental health checks, and all of the rest of them mean nothing since not only are these perpetrators already obtaining these weapons illegally through straw purchases, backs of car trunks in alleys, from burglaries, robberies, etc, they couldn’t even purchase them or own them in the first place. They aren’t going to walk into a gun store and ask to purchase a pistol. If a 13 year old walked into a Cabelas and attempted to purchase a pistol, I’m sure the employee would turn them away and most likely notify the authorities.


I’d like one commentator on a major news stations say:

“All of these proposed gun laws will have no effect on a large percentage of the gun related homicides because not only are these perpetrators obtaining these guns illegally in the first place, they couldn’t own or purchase them legally since they are not 21 years old and are underage. So they would never go through a mental health check, background check, or any other type of check because as soon as they attempted to buy one legally the salesperson would stop them since they are not old enough to purchase or own a handgun and thus the sale would be stopped and no background checks of any kind would be completed or even attempted!

So no matter what ‘checks’ you make, they aren’t going to go through them.”


Handgun purchase and background check laws aren’t going to affect someone who isn’t allowed to purchase a handgun in the first place but is intent on getting one.

The age to own a handgun could be 50 years old and the homicide rate in Chicago, Detroit, and Baltimore would not change at all.
 
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For many of the gun related crimes in large cities like Baltimore, Detroit, New York, and Chicago it is gang related and what no one talks about is the fact that most of the perpetrators are under 21 years old. You have many 13-19 year olds committing murders with guns. Some are younger and some are older. But a vast majority are under 21.
Exactly. And likewise, the victims are the same age as the perpetrators. They are gang members and drug dealers, whether they happen to be victims or perpetrators. They are all part of the same subculture.

These are the statistics that the antigunners use to boost the numbers of "children" that are victims of gun violence. I'm sorry, but a teenage drug dealer is not a "child" in the way that we normally think of a "child."
Almost all of the gun-related homicides in the United States are not mass-shootings, school shootings, workplace shootings, or terrorism related. Those shootings get the spotlight but they are far rarer then your everyday gun related homicide such as robbery, murder, assault, domestic, gang related, and others which make up the majority of your gun related homocides.
Average middle-class people are not worried about inner-city violence, because they generally don't go to those places. But school shootings, terrorism, and random mass shootings touch a nerve with the middle class because they can visualize themselves being caught up in such situations (even though they are highly unlikely to be).
 
Back when Mark Moritz was doing a column in American Handgunner, before he finished law school, he put forth the 93% rule. In places like L.A. 93% of shootouts result in a net gain to the community, both (all) combatants are criminals so it doesn't matter which gets shot.

Which is ultimately why virtually no one cares about a place like Chicago, as one example, and everyone seemingly cares about, just as the most recent example, Parkland. Bring the violence to white, middle class America and that gets peoples’ attention.

I say this as someone who really does care about the humans located wherever they are.
 
Look at the manhunt that is currently going on right now at Central Michigan University.

19 year old student shot his parents in his dorm room. Killed them both. His father was a cop.

We don’t know what type of firearm he used is yet, but I suspect it’s a pistol, maybe even his dads duty weapon.

If it is a pistol, the shooter wouldn’t legally be able to purchase it. So if they raised the age of handgun purchase to 21 years old (it already is) like they want to do to rifles, a new age limit law wouldn’t have stopped this shooting. And the shooter would have been in violation of possessing a pistol while underage. That fact that the current age to legally own a handgun is 21 years old didn’t stop this shooter.

If we raised the age to owning all guns to 50 years old it wouldn’t have stopped this shooting either.
 
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I said this in another thread, but I believe it's relevant here too. If a person can lay down his/her life in the military at the age of 18 but can't legally purchase a firearm, then we've got something severely wrong with our value system. If they want to raise the age for firearm purchase to 21, the only ethical thing to do would be raise the age for military service to the same thing. You can't ask people to die for rights that they're denied from exercising.

(I feel the same way about the drinking age, by the way. However, I think the penalties for drunk driving need to be a lot higher, like immediate and permanent revocation of driving privileges. Rights come with responsibilities.)
 
Some gang initiations require robbery of firearms from homes, which in turn no doubt bypass many conventional means of fencing stolen property and wind up being sold at a high price on the black market to many of the perpetrators discussed by the OP. Again we are back to making legislation to combat criminals, as if that will make them stop. All this in light of "fast and furious" as well.

Until we can control our border (MS13, and other criminals coming over), have tougher sentencing and not provide cable, personal computers, meals, fitness centers, climate controlled jail cells and the like to our criminals, and have our families strive to have a greater moral character in the home we will continue to have gang on gang violence, armed robberies, etc.
 
Increased penalties can have unintended consequences. Massachusetts increased penalty for DUI; jail time is now punishable up to 30 months for first offense.
As a result of federal law 8 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), this means that anyone convicted of DUI in Massachusetts is now prohibited person and has lost right to possess a firearm.
 
Increased penalties can have unintended consequences. Massachusetts increased penalty for DUI; jail time is now punishable up to 30 months for first offense.
As a result of federal law 8 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), this means that anyone convicted of DUI in Massachusetts is now prohibited person and has lost right to possess a firearm.
I don't favor increased jail time -- just a permanent loss of driver's license. Seriously. Let the jail time come later if they're caught drunk again, driving without a license.

Driving drunk is one of the most irresponsible things a person can do. If they want to talk about a menace to public safety, it doesn't get any more real than that one.
 
Indeed, the key fallacy of so-called gun control laws is that such laws do not in fact control guns. They just disarm law-abiding citizens, while people bent on violence find firearms readily available.

If gun control zealots had any respect for veracity, they would have acknowledged this long ago.
 
The AR-15 was introduced to the civilian market in 1963. In the 55 years since that time, there have been 120 people that have been mass shooters. Of that number exactly one has been under 21 and used a legally acquired AR-15 or clone. The one is Nikolas Cruz. The only other person that used an AR-15 without stealing it was Tyler Peterson, a Forest County (WI) sheriff's deputy. He used a department-issued AR-15 to kill five people and wound another before killing himself in a private residence in Crandon, Wisconsin. That was in 2007.

From 1963 to 2000, AR-15s were used in three out of 50 mass shootings. In the first decade of the 21st Century, they were used five times in 23 shootings. Since 2011, there have been 47 mass shootings. Twenty of them involved an AR-15 with 16 of those events occurring since 2015 (there have been 28 mass shootings since 2015). Only the most recent involved a shooter under 21 with a legally purchased AR. There are 12.7 million young Americans in the 18-20 age group.

Considering that the average estimate of the number of AR-15s owned by civilians, including law enforcement officers, comes to about 7.5 million, the percentage of these rifles used in mass shootings is vanishingly small - about 0.0004%.

I wonder why none of the gun-control fans ever bring up these numbers? It's not like they are hard to find.

I guess it's because they spoil the heck out of their arguments and prove their hysteria and hype are driven only by their agenda and the desire to attract suckers.
 
I said this in another thread, but I believe it's relevant here too. If a person can lay down his/her life in the military at the age of 18 but can't legally purchase a firearm, then we've got something severely wrong with our value system. If they want to raise the age for firearm purchase to 21, the only ethical thing to do would be raise the age for military service to the same thing. You can't ask people to die for rights that they're denied from exercising.
I don't see this argument as particularly relevant. A person in the military is acting under orders, and is severely limited in what he can do with a gun. A person outside the military is entirely a free agent. Yes, an 18-year-old in the military is issued a gun, but he can't carry it around like a civilian. He has supervised possession, much like a teenager in the civilian world using his parents' guns under their supervision. It's entirely logical that a person be 21 before purchasing a handgun on his own. (I was 22 when I bought my first handgun, a 1911, and I was 23 when I bought my first AR-15. I didn't feel particularly deprived for having had to wait. Actually, the biggest constraint was having to scrape up the money. I didn't have a lot of disposable income at the time.)
 
To be fair it's a lot easier for Johnny gangbanger to buy a gun on the black market than some kid in suburbia.

With that being said, most of these school Shooters had access to firearms already anyways, so denying them the right to purchase a firearm wouldn't really make a lot of difference. I guess the argument would be that then they can't go out and buy an evil AR-15, but as we have seen in the Virginia Tech shooting, high-capacity handguns are more than capable tools for such a heinous act. I think a lot of people forget that even in the Columbine masacre, most of the killings were done with shotguns.

Most gun owners own a semi-automatic pistol or a shotgu/thread
 
Aim1 writes:

That fact that the current age to legally own a handgun is 21 years old didn’t stop this shooter.

To be clear, there is no Federal law against someone owning, or even purchasing, a handgun while under the age of 21. They just cannot purchase one from a licensed dealer. Being in ownership of one gifted to, or purchased privately by, the owner, is lawful.
 
AlexanderA writes:

It's entirely logical that a person be 21 before purchasing a handgun on his own.
(I assume you're saying it's logical that someone be required to be 21, correct?)

Do tell, how so?

Why not 22? Why not 25?

Why not 20?
 
Aim1 writes:



To be clear, there is no Federal law against someone owning, or even purchasing, a handgun while under the age of 21. They just cannot purchase one from a licensed dealer. Being in ownership of one gifted to, or purchased privately by, the owner, is lawful.


Ah, yes. I didn’t think they could buy one or own one. I was wrong there.
 
The current savory ingredients for more gun control: children, middle-class suburbia (predominately white), AR-15 “assault-style” weapons with high capacity magazines, race (if white), background check loopholes, age (if under 21), and the NRA.

The offensive, discarded ingredients are race (if not white), gang-related, location (if inter-city), citizen status, gun free zones, mental health, and failure of local police/FBI.

Next, you build the narrative using only the savory ingredients and then flood the airways with “journalists” and talking-heads spouting the outcry with impunity. Timing is critical. The message must be delivered during and immediately after the tragedy to optimize the grief and to prevent facts from getting in the way.

The “something must be done” crowd has done an effective job of eroding our 2nd Amendment right.
 
18 year olds can carry concealed handguns, without a permit, outside city limits, in Idaho,

IDAHO CODE 18-3302
Anyone (Resident/Non-Resident) over 18 years of age can carry a concealed handgun outside the
confines of any city.
 
I don't see this argument as particularly relevant. A person in the military is acting under orders, and is severely limited in what he can do with a gun. A person outside the military is entirely a free agent. Yes, an 18-year-old in the military is issued a gun, but he can't carry it around like a civilian. He has supervised possession, much like a teenager in the civilian world using his parents' guns under their supervision. It's entirely logical that a person be 21 before purchasing a handgun on his own. (I was 22 when I bought my first handgun, a 1911, and I was 23 when I bought my first AR-15. I didn't feel particularly deprived for having had to wait. Actually, the biggest constraint was having to scrape up the money. I didn't have a lot of disposable income at the time.)

How do orders “severely limit” a person in the military? Is that the same way laws severely limit a civilian? An evil person with with a weapon in their hands don’t care about orders or laws. The life and death of hundreds of people at a time are placed in the hands of 18 year old military personnel everyday. Lot more control over death and responsibility than any 21 year old civilian.

What kind of “supervised possession” do you envision? Have you served in the military? In a war zone? I usually just shake my head and move on but I’m flabbergasted with this one.
 
A person in the military is acting under orders, and is severely limited in what he can do with a gun. A person outside the military is entirely a free agent. Yes, an 18-year-old in the military is issued a gun, but he can't carry it around like a civilian. He has supervised possession, much like a teenager in the civilian world using his parents' guns under their supervision.
I think you're missing the point. It has nothing to do with whether their possession is supervised or not. It's about what we expect of our military. I think it's unethical and immoral to ask people to put their lives on the line in service of a society that is denying them the full rights of a citizen.
 
If a person can lay down his/her life in the military at the age of 18 but can't legally purchase a firearm, then we've got something severely wrong with our value system.

There is a different side to this.

How are our 18 y/o meant to develop rifles skills needed in military service?

The Army is already having trouble with enlistees who have never thrown a ball of any kind. They do not do well on the grenade range. To the point that the Army is dropping the need to qualify on the greanade range as a requirement to pass Basic. This was largely doen as too much time by too many cadre waas being spent having to teach 18 y/o "catch." Playing Call to Duty was not cutting it.

So, let's raise the "AR" age to 21. We'll just have to only take enlistees with 4H or Scouting backgrounds that have rifle education. Or, we have to make Basic a 26 week course, and puh back ending the kids to their "A" schools. Or, perhaps, we drop rifle training altogether and reserve that for only specialist troops like paratroops, Rangers, and the like. Yeah, that makes sense.
 
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