Gun control does not work according to USA Today article

I'd like to see the original USA Today article, not a blog review of it. Would it be possible to post that please?

900F

Bloggers = bleh They don't create news or report news, just provide their opinion on the news.

I for one enjoyed reading the full article. Most people want to treat the symptoms rather than the problems. The problem with the criminal mind set is that the changes needed have to come from within. Sometimes, even seeing a close friend or family member get killed in street violence doesn't get them to want to change. I was happy to read a couple success stories.

So once again, gun laws only serve to enslave the good people, and make them easier targets for the criminals (this includes corrupt government).

12many said:

Bloggers = bleh They don't create news or report news, just provide their opinion on the news.

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How do they differ from what passes for Mainstream Journalism?

Quote:
Originally Posted by 12many
Bloggers = bleh They don't create news or report news, just provide their opinion on the news.

How do [blogs] differ from what passes for Mainstream Journalism?

Click to expand...

The difference is moot. What is news these days? No matter what outlet one chooses, he gets only what that outlet chooses to present and only in the way that outlet chooses to present it. That amounts to opinion.

The only way to even approximate being informed these days is to browse competing outlets with differing political agendas. It takes an enormous amount of time to be even marginally up to speed and have both/all sides of a story. That's why the various outlets are in such hot competition for our time and attention.

Something I have noticed: the universal background check UBC is promoted using the NIJ NSPOF National Survey on Private Ownership and use of Firearms which used a survey population of ordinary "non-institutionalized adults" and showed 40% gun acquisitions without a background check:
60% from licensed dealers who have access to the NICS check system
13% private sales of used guns
3% private swaps and trades
19% gift from family or friend
5% inhertiances
That's gun acquisitions among a sample of the law abiding.

If you want to impact illegal guns, wouldn't you want to use a survey of prison inmates, like the recent Bureau of Justice Statistics report? The survey reported by the DOJ BJS asked a large sample of state inmates where they got their guns:
13.9% Retail Sources:
8.3% Retail store
3.8% Pawnshop
1.0% Flea market
0.7% Gun show
39.6% Friends or family:
12.8% Purchase or trade
18.5% Rent or borrow
8.3% Other
39.2% Street/illegal source:
9.9% Theft or burglary
20.8% Drug dealer/street
8.4% Fence/black market
(On friends and family, the NIJ "Armed and Considered Dangerous" survey of felons noted "friends" and "family" supplying guns to felons were often criminals themselves.)

What's the best bang for your law enforcement buck? Regulating 80 million gun owners? Or investigating the ~430,000 reported gun crimes?

The difference is moot. What is news these days? No matter what outlet one chooses, he gets only what that outlet chooses to present and only in the way that outlet chooses to present it. That amounts to opinion.

Click to expand...

We certainly get a lot of opinion but there has to be some people investigating every story we read. That stuff doesn't write itself. I'd certainly like to see less opinion in news articles (which we have in abundance) but there are still real reporters out there. They are often directed by editors and edited by the same people too. Still, like the phone tapping story, a leak was made to a reporter who wrote the original story. We did get the story even if it had to come from another country.

Most news is heavily slanted but not all of it is. If it was we wouldn't know anything at all. And we do learn things eventually. Someone had to turn on the editorial view of their paper to report the IRS story and a lot of other scandals. Even the liberal papers had to report those stories.

But guns are certainly something that rarely gets fair treatment in the press for sure. Yet we wouldn't know many of the things we know without liberal papers still doing the job of journalism even when it comes to guns.

The article is worth looking up.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...un-laws-dont-curb-violence-in-camden/2113737/
Yamiche Alcindor, "New Jersey gun laws don't curb violence in Camden", USA Today, 4 Jun 2013.

This article confirms what I observed gowing up in a tough neighborhood back in the 1950s and 1960s:
* Criminals don't commit crimes because they have guns: they have guns because they commit crimes. (Statistically tho' that's 18% of criminals have guns.)
* Many get into crime out of no alternative source of income or self-respect.
* Because criminals don't respect the law, the gun laws don't touch them.
* The gun laws do place increasing burdens on law abiding citizens.
* Gun laws are the politicians' answer to the crime problem.
* Gun laws do not solve the social problems that produce a criminal subculture.

^ Carl nails it in a nutshell.