Gun death solutions from the firearms community?

[chipcom]

So far most of what I've seen here is chest pounding and excuses why we should just accept the status quo and do nothing. Really? REALLY?

It's not rocket surgery. If one cannot be trusted to own a firearm due to mental health issues, then they cannot be trusted to be in roaming around in public unsupervised...period. If one is mentally healthy enough be a free member of society, then they are healthy enough to own a firearm. Foolproof? Of course not, but if you want foolproof you shouldn't be living in a free society.

 

[chipcom]

Free people do not need permission, licenses, background checks or classes to exercise their basic human right to the means of self-defense of their choosing.

Hardliner...maybe...but as already noted, the death toll have involved not only people I know, it has involved my children.

If I could go back in time and exchange my "hardline" stance for my son's life...I would not. The freedom of the many outweighs the tragedies of the few.

 

[chipcom]

So, the problem is in the human heart, one that is inclined to wickedness.

This is the attitude that I refuse to adopt. In a free society all people are considered to be responsible and law-abiding until their actions prove otherwise.

This notion that we are all evil by default, unless we prove otherwise to some government or clergy is ludicrous and not why Jesus gave his mortal life for us.

 

[buck460XVR]

He's not being cruel, insensitive, or heartless. He's being clear and giving you a logical estimate of the strategic position we're all in.

You claimed "they will make changes for us, legally." He's pointing out that, even at the height of the most emotionally wrenching mass murder in recent memory, "they" tried and failed to do what you're claiming they'll do.

That was their high water mark. They expended the political capitol they had to spend and it fell short of overcoming our strength in resisting. It is highly unlikely they'll find any way to drum up that much political will again in the foreseeable future.

We all pray they never have another mass murder of young children to promote their anti-gun ideals. If anti gun support was graphed out, I'm sure we would see sharp peaks at times of school shootings and then slowly descending into valleys between. The increase in furor presently amidst recent shootings clearly shows us another peak in the graph, altho not as high as after Sandy Hook. This does not man we should not attempt to help with finding a solution to school shootings and other mass murders involving firearms. Just the opposite. Another tragedy like Sandy Hook or worse could become the "high water" flood that breaks the dam for antis and allows them to get severe legislation. To sit back and sneer, "yep, Sandy Hook wasn't bad enough to take our rights away!" is not a guarantee something worse won't be either.

 

[stonecutter2]

This is the attitude that I refuse to adopt. In a free society all people are considered to be responsible and law-abiding until their actions prove otherwise.

This notion that we are all evil by default, unless we prove otherwise to some government or clergy is ludicrous and not why Jesus gave his mortal life for us.

Man, this is a serious debate topic right here.

Are people inherently evil?

We'll never come to a concensus regarding that!

 

[barnbwt]

Or are people both good and evil until their actions are revealed to the world, a-la Shroedinger's Cat? And does it even matter since actions are all we have to go on?

TCB

 

[berettaprofessor]

Or are people both good and evil until their actions are revealed to the world, a-la Shroedinger's Cat?

That there's a new hypothesis; Barnbwt's Duality.

 

[chipcom]

Man, this is a serious debate topic right here.

Are people inherently evil?

We'll never come to a concensus regarding that!

I think if you read the writings of our founders...there was obvious consensus, otherwise the Declaration of Independence and later our Constitution would not have been written as they were.

 

[chipcom]

Or are people both good and evil until their actions are revealed to the world, a-la Shroedinger's Cat? And does it even matter since actions are all we have to go on?

I agree that we have the capacity for both good an evil...but in a free society one is assumed to be good until his/her actions prove otherwise. The reverse is true in societies that are not truly free.

 

[vamo]

I would argue that with freedom comes danger, there is no solution that will drastically reduce firearm deaths tomorrow. I cringe every time I see those on our side scream that improving our mental health system would prevent any mass shooting. In a country of 300 million people a certain percentage are just going to predisposed to violence, and in a 24hr news cycle very rare incidents are going to be covered as if they are part of an ongoing crisis. I think of random shootings similar to how I think of shark attacks, tragic and scary, but much more unlikely to kill me than common everyday objects I interact with on a daily basis.

 

[chipcom]

I would argue that with freedom comes danger, there is no solution that will drastically reduce firearm deaths tomorrow.

Freedom is not pretty, safe or orderly. If a nice, neat, safe society is what one desires, there are plenty of not-so-free societies that will offer those illusions...in exchange for one's freedom.

Sheep have a nice, safe, orderly existence...but even they are not safe from the wolves and coyotes.

 

[stonecutter2]

I think if you read the writings of our founders...there was obvious consensus, otherwise the Declaration of Independence and later our Constitution would not have been written as they were.

I would argue that they didn't form a concensus regarding all men being inherently evil, but instead that certainly some men are, or are corrupted, as such our rights had to be illustrated, defined and agreed upon.

 

[goon]

There is some evidence that even a small obstacle like having ammunition stored separately or having a lock on a gun could discourage suicide (no, I'm tired and it's late and I'm not looking it up). But even then, the problem is bigger than the gun. Like others, I don't know what to do about the root causes. I also have no idea how to deal with the inner city violence that needlessly claims so many lives. I haven't the slightest clue. I just know that those acts aren't because of the 100 million plus people who own guns and don't harm anyone with them.

 

[denton]

Someone asked if defunding CDC research into connections between firearms and deaths indicated that we are afraid of the results. My response was that probably all we need to know is already in John Lott's book.

Then, along came a link to a Harvard study on the same issue, http://www.beliefnet.com/News/Articles/Harvard-University-Study-Reveals-Astonishing-Link.aspx?p=1. It's well worth your attention.

A couple of pearls from the study:

The popular assertion that the United States has the industrialized world’s highest murder rate, says the Harvard study, is a throwback to the Cold War when Russian murder rates were nearly four times higher than American rates. In a strategic disinformation campaign, the U.S. was painted worldwide as a gunslinging nightmare of street violence – far worse than what was going on in Russia. The line was repeated so many times that many believed it to be true. Now, many still do.

In 2004, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences released an evaluation from its review of existing research. After reviewing 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications and its own original empirical research, it failed to identify any gun control that had reduced violent crime, suicide, or gun accidents, note Kates and Mauser.

In the late 1990s, England moved from stringent controls to a complete ban of all handguns and many types of long guns. Hundreds of thousands of guns were confiscated from those owners law-abiding enough to turn them in to authorities.” But crime increased instead of decreasing.

Ignoring these realities, gun control advocates have cited England, as the cradle of our liberties, as “a nation made so peaceful by strict gun control that its police did not even need to carry guns,” write Kates and Mauser. “The United States, it was argued, could attain such a desirable situation by radically reducing gun ownership, preferably by banning and confiscating handguns.” Somehow, it goes unreported that “despite constant and substantially increasing gun ownership, the United States saw progressive and dramatic reductions in criminal violence,” write Kates and Mauser. “On the other hand, the same time period in the United Kingdom saw a constant and dramatic increase in violent crime to which England’s response was ever-more drastic gun control. Nevertheless, criminal violence rampantly increased so that by 2000 England surpassed the United States to become one of the developed world’s most violence-ridden nations.

“Where have the worst school shootings occurred?” writes John Lott. “Contrary to public perception, Western Europe. The very worst occurred in a school in Erfurt, Germany in 2002, where 18 were killed. The second worst took place in Dunblane, Scotland in 1996, where 16 kindergarteners and their teacher were shot. The third worst high school attack, with 15 murdered, happened in Winnenden, Germany.” The fourth worst? Columbine.

Despite the very strict ban on guns in the UK, the overall rate of violent crime in the UK is about 4 times higher than it is in the United States. In one recent year, there were 2,034 violent crimes per 100,000 people in the UK. In the United States, there were only 466 violent crimes per 100,000 people during that same year. ... The UK has approximately 125 percent more rape victims per 100,000 people each year than the United States does. The UK has approximately 133 percent more assault victims per 100,000 people each year than the United States does. UK has the fourth highest burglary rate in the EU. The UK has the second highest overall crime rate in the EU.

The answer to the question, what should we do to reduce violence, seems to be to encourage law abiding people to have more guns.

 

[Vern Humphrey]

Here are a few:

1. Mass killers seek out soft targets. HARDEN them! Abolish "gun free zones" so wherever a killer goes, there is a good chance someone will shoot back.

2. Impress on teachers that they are responsible for their students' safety -- and train them to use firearms.

3. Start protesting Black-on-Black crime. Fight against gangs and drug dealers in the inner cities.

4. Make the Public School system WORK so kids can get real jobs when they graduate.

5. Institute policies that REWARD, not PUNISH men for staying with their families and being fathers to their kids.

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Someone asked if defunding CDC research into connections between firearms and deaths indicated that we are afraid of the results.

I just wanted to clarify that CDC is not prevented from researching gun violence and has in fact issued several studies relating to that subject even under the current administration. The CDC is only prevented by law from "advocating for gun control" which is just one of several dozen restrictions on the CDC designed to eliminate ethical conflicts.

The other side routinely accuses the NRA of defunding CDC research into gun violence, so I just wanted to make sure people understood that issue.

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

Thanks...I didn't know the actual restriction by law. Everything I ever read referenced funding with respect to the CDC, not being prevented from advocating gun control.

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

For anybody who is interested, the specific statutory language re: CDC, CDC's interpretation of it, and other restrictions on CDC due to the Anti-Lobbying Act are discussed in this post: http://www.thehighroad.org/showpost.php?p=9404629&postcount=160

 

[jamesjames]

When an active shooter event happens, many say we must “do something”. But the only arrow in our quiver, the only tool in our toolbox, seems to be more gun laws.

There are already a lot of gun laws on the books. But they never seem to be enough, because all it takes is one more shooting to prove that existing gun laws don’t work. So of course, we need more gun laws. Only the new gun laws will be “common sense” gun laws, and they will definitely work next time.


Gun laws are so 20th century when it comes to 21st century problems. Tommy guns and sawed-off shotguns were restricted in the 1930s because of the Roaring ’20s. We tried “gun control” in 1968 after political assassinations and race riots. We tried banning “assault weapons” in 1994 after Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Oklahoma City. We’ve enacted criminal background checks, waiting periods, and limited magazine capacity.

None of this has had much of an impact on crime, while placing increasing burdens on law-abiding gun owners.

Violent crime has been decreasing steadily for the last 20 years. That is due to our aging demographics, and does not correlate to more gun laws. Places with restrictive gun laws, such as Chicago, Baltimore and Los Angeles, have higher rates of violent crime than places with less restrictive gun laws. Meantime, the number of guns in the U.S. has doubled in the last 20 years.

With more guns and less violent crime, there does not seem to be any valid argument for more gun laws. Since enacting gun laws has proven time and again to be ineffective against violent crime, we need different solutions — ones that don’t cast so wide a net to catch so very few fish.

With mass shootings, the problem seems to lie with the rare young man, who makes plans and posts them on social media. We know how to do threat assessment for this type of shooter. We are doing it in the war on terror. Do we pass sweeping gun laws that negatively affect all gun owners in hopes of stopping a few bad people? Or do we target the people who are putting their profiles out there for us to see and intercept?

What we need is a 21st century, technology-based, threat assessment and intervention approach to potential active shooters. The National Security Agency, other agencies and private-sector businesses are already using sophisticated algorithms to comb the Internet and identify potential terrorists using email and social media.

Mass-shooters are just another kind of terrorist with a defined profile: alienated young males who are interested in guns and previous mass shootings. They crave the notoriety they would receive from media coverage of their crimes. They are unemployed, unmarried, childless and have few connections to the community. They telegraph their intentions on social media to get needed feedback from peers in advance of their crime. They post plans, pictures, and manifestos.

This is the realm of computer science, not politics. We don’t need more gun laws to catch these guys. Instead of alienating the law-abiding gun community, why not focus on these disaffected individuals and intervene to stop them before they strike? Most threat assessment folks will tell you how effective this can be.

There are people who will bristle at this proposal. They will say that guns are the problem, and that all we need to do is eliminate or heavily restrict guns in this country. Others will say that using intelligence resources and methods to intervene in a potential shooter’s plans is an invasion of privacy, a violation of the First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution, which protect the freedom of speech and prohibit unreasonable search and seizure. This is the discussion we should be having. This is where we can make a difference.


Politicians and citizens groups are calling for a “common sense” solution. Here is a modest proposal, one that may head off polarizing politics going into the next national election. Doesn’t this seem like a better solution than the cycles of ineffective legislation of the past 80 years?

Will politicians seize this opportunity and take credit for doing the right thing by enacting focused threat assessment protocols? Or will we be subjected to another round of ineffective, feel-good legislation?

 

[chipcom]

When an active shooter event happens, many say we must “do something”. But the only arrow in our quiver, the only tool in our toolbox, seems to be more gun laws.

There are already a lot of gun laws on the books. But they never seem to be enough, because all it takes is one more shooting to prove that existing gun laws don’t work. So of course, we need more gun laws. Only the new gun laws will be “common sense” gun laws, and they will definitely work next time.


Gun laws are so 20th century when it comes to 21st century problems. Tommy guns and sawed-off shotguns were restricted in the 1930s because of the Roaring ’20s. We tried “gun control” in 1968 after political assassinations and race riots. We tried banning “assault weapons” in 1994 after Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Oklahoma City. We’ve enacted criminal background checks, waiting periods, and limited magazine capacity.

None of this has had much of an impact on crime, while placing increasing burdens on law-abiding gun owners.

Violent crime has been decreasing steadily for the last 20 years. That is due to our aging demographics, and does not correlate to more gun laws. Places with restrictive gun laws, such as Chicago, Baltimore and Los Angeles, have higher rates of violent crime than places with less restrictive gun laws. Meantime, the number of guns in the U.S. has doubled in the last 20 years.

With more guns and less violent crime, there does not seem to be any valid argument for more gun laws. Since enacting gun laws has proven time and again to be ineffective against violent crime, we need different solutions — ones that don’t cast so wide a net to catch so very few fish.

With mass shootings, the problem seems to lie with the rare young man, who makes plans and posts them on social media. We know how to do threat assessment for this type of shooter. We are doing it in the war on terror. Do we pass sweeping gun laws that negatively affect all gun owners in hopes of stopping a few bad people? Or do we target the people who are putting their profiles out there for us to see and intercept?

What we need is a 21st century, technology-based, threat assessment and intervention approach to potential active shooters. The National Security Agency, other agencies and private-sector businesses are already using sophisticated algorithms to comb the Internet and identify potential terrorists using email and social media.

Mass-shooters are just another kind of terrorist with a defined profile: alienated young males who are interested in guns and previous mass shootings. They crave the notoriety they would receive from media coverage of their crimes. They are unemployed, unmarried, childless and have few connections to the community. They telegraph their intentions on social media to get needed feedback from peers in advance of their crime. They post plans, pictures, and manifestos.

This is the realm of computer science, not politics. We don’t need more gun laws to catch these guys. Instead of alienating the law-abiding gun community, why not focus on these disaffected individuals and intervene to stop them before they strike? Most threat assessment folks will tell you how effective this can be.

There are people who will bristle at this proposal. They will say that guns are the problem, and that all we need to do is eliminate or heavily restrict guns in this country. Others will say that using intelligence resources and methods to intervene in a potential shooter’s plans is an invasion of privacy, a violation of the First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution, which protect the freedom of speech and prohibit unreasonable search and seizure. This is the discussion we should be having. This is where we can make a difference.


Politicians and citizens groups are calling for a “common sense” solution. Here is a modest proposal, one that may head off polarizing politics going into the next national election. Doesn’t this seem like a better solution than the cycles of ineffective legislation of the past 80 years?

Will politicians seize this opportunity and take credit for doing the right thing by enacting focused threat assessment protocols? Or will we be subjected to another round of ineffective, feel-good legislation?

No, they'll pretty much opt for doing what they always do, promising a different result, "this time".

 

[RetiredUSNChief]

What we need is a 21st century, technology-based, threat assessment and intervention approach to potential active shooters. The National Security Agency, other agencies and private-sector businesses are already using sophisticated algorithms to comb the Internet and identify potential terrorists using email and social media.

Soooo...we need an indepth, totally invasive, 100% government monitoring of each and every citizen, visitor, legal and illegal alien in the United States?

Because that's what this would take.

 

[jrdolall]

Guaranteed to work.

Get rid of every single gun in the USA and gun violence will decrease. Sure, some will sneak across the borders but that will be a minimal number and we can deal with that.

Incarcerate every violent criminal for life and total violence, including gun violence, will decrease. Armed robbery, assault, domestic violence, put them all in jail for life.

Institutionalize every person judged to be in some way mentally impaired, depression included, and violence will go down. Three years ago I went through some calamitous family tragedies that came close to putting me out of commission for a while. My doctor strongly recommended that I go on antidepressant medications but I refused because, IMO, I was supposed to be depressed after what I had been through.

Short of those, and probably a few more, measures there is not a lot that can be done. crazy/impaired people do crazy things. Not all of those can be predicted. People get hammered drunk and try to drive. People get mad and beat up their spouse. People get mad and shoot up a school.

In the United States we have this little thing called a Constitution that specifically addresses firearm ownership. Without that pesky little document we would be down to bolt action rifles and double barrel shotguns.

 

[barnbwt]

"Tommy guns and sawed-off shotguns were restricted in the 1930s because of the Roaring ’20s."

Wrong. Machineguns, short rifles/shotguns, and very nearly pistols were banned due to federal paranoia over the Bonus Army riots, involving armed vets camping out at the US Capital demanding their back pay. That's what lit the fire under everyone to 'do something' about these guns in congress. IIRC, the famous Valentines Day Massacre was the catalyst.* "Crime control" was simply a convenient excuse, which fooled everyone in America, which until that time hadn't really been exposed to such creatures as anti-gunners & their tricks.

Oh yeah, and silencers were banned to prevent poaching on federal & private land by depression-struck Americans who were quite literally starving to death (meanwhile, federal agents were sent hither to kill cattle & pour petroleum on the carcasses, and sieze & destroy entire crop yields, all in the name of 'preserving prices' for large, politically-connected agricultural interests, who were going bankrupt in a market where there was no money)

So, in light of these desperate times ("a bunch of scary vets made us wet ourselves because they wanted back pay, and now the whole nation is out of money!") they turned to New York State for inspiration, found in the Sullivan Act. An insanely immoral, racist, and (at that time) illegal prohibition on all sorts of things pertaining to guns, for the purpose of disarming newly arrived immigrants, and anyone else who wasn't friends with the mayor's political enforcers. The Sullivan the act was named for, just so happened to be quite literally one of the most disgraceful men ever to walk the Earth; an objectively corrupt and sleazy Tammany political operative, who ultimately fell to syphilitic insanity (which he was suffering from during his oversight of the Act, mind you) and was confined to a bedlam for a while before 'escaping' and ending up dead on the train tracks. American gun control was literally borne from the diseased mind of a notorious mobster.

There are some things in this world, which truly are examples of original sin that never fully washes clean, and American gun control is definitely one of them. And that's completely apart from the philosophical aspects of the issue.

"What we need is a 21st century, technology-based, threat assessment and intervention approach to potential active shooters. The National Security Agency, other agencies and private-sector businesses are already using sophisticated algorithms to comb the Internet and identify potential terrorists using email and social media."
Thank you George Borewell, for that clunky endorsement of omniscient, unblinking, totalitarian information gathering to be aimed at gun owners and political dissidents, specifically. :banghead:

"CITIZEN. YOU HAVE EXCEEDED THE ACCEPTABLE NUMBER OF FIREARMS FOR PERSONAL POSSESSION. WE ARE INTERVENING OUT OF CONCERN YOU ARE PLANNING A MASSACRE." When people are seriously speaking of defining the purchase of 50 or whatever number of guns in a year as being legally indefensible for an individual (and requiring an FFL), you know this is the exact type of future enforcement vehicle they are aiming for. Zero tolerance, zero intelligence, one size fits all pre-crime law enforcement.

TCB

*A massacre involving men 'dressed as' cops, in a city where cops were veritable employees of the gangster empires themselves

 

[hso]

http://www.nap.edu/read/18319/chapter/1

Here are some key findings from the CDC report, “Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence,” released in June:

1. Armed citizens are less likely to be injured by an attacker:
“Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.”

2. Defensive uses of guns are common:
“Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year…in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.”

3. Mass shootings and accidental firearm deaths account for a small fraction of gun-related deaths, and both are declining:
“The number of public mass shootings of the type that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School accounted for a very small fraction of all firearm-related deaths. Since 1983 there have been 78 events in which 4 or more individuals were killed by a single perpetrator in 1 day in the United States, resulting in 547 victims and 476 injured persons.” The report also notes, “Unintentional firearm-related deaths have steadily declined during the past century. The number of unintentional deaths due to firearm-related incidents accounted for less than 1 percent of all unintentional fatalities in 2010.”

4. “Interventions” (i.e, gun control) such as background checks, so-called assault rifle bans and gun-free zones produce “mixed” results:
“Whether gun restrictions reduce firearm-related violence is an unresolved issue.” The report could not conclude whether “passage of right-to-carry laws decrease or increase violence crime.”

5. Gun buyback/turn-in programs are “ineffective” in reducing crime:
“There is empirical evidence that gun turn in programs are ineffective, as noted in the 2005 NRC study Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. For example, in 2009, an estimated 310 million guns were available to civilians in the United States (Krouse, 2012), but gun buy-back programs typically recover less than 1,000 guns (NRC, 2005). On the local level, buy-backs may increase awareness of firearm violence. However, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for example, guns recovered in the buy-back were not the same guns as those most often used in homicides and suicides (Kuhn et al., 2002).”

6. Stolen guns and retail/gun show purchases account for very little crime:
“More recent prisoner surveys suggest that stolen guns account for only a small percentage of guns used by convicted criminals. … According to a 1997 survey of inmates, approximately 70 percent of the guns used or possess by criminals at the time of their arrest came from family or friends, drug dealers, street purchases, or the underground market.”

7. The vast majority of gun-related deaths are not homicides, but suicides:
“Between the years 2000-2010 firearm-related suicides significantly outnumbered homicides for all age groups, annually accounting for 61 percent of the more than 335,600 people who died from firearms related violence in the United States.”

Why No One Has Heard This
Given the CDC’s prior track record on guns, you may be surprised by the extent with which the new research refutes some of the anti-gun movement’s deepest convictions.

What are opponents of the Second Amendment doing about the new data? Perhaps predictably, they’re ignoring it. President Obama, Michael Bloomberg and the Brady Campaign remain silent. Most suspicious of all, the various media outlets that so eagerly anticipated the CDC research are looking the other way as well. One must wonder how media coverage of the CDC report may have differed, had the research more closely fit an anti-gun narrative.

Even worse, the few mainstream journalists who did report the CDC’s findings chose to cherry-pick from the data. Most, like NBC News, reported exclusively on the finding that gun suicides are up. Largely lost in that discussion is the fact that the overall rate of suicide—regardless of whether a gun is involved or not—is also up.

Others seized upon the CDC’s finding that, “The U.S. rate of firearm-related homicide is higher than that of any other industrialized country: 19.5 times higher than the rates in other high-income countries.” However, as noted by the Las Vegas Guardian Express, if figures are excluded from such anti-gun bastions as Illinois, California, New Jersey and Washington, D.C., “The homicide rate in the United States would be in line with any other country.”

The CDC report is overall a blow to the Obama Administration’s unconstitutional agenda. It largely supports the Second Amendment, and contradicts common anti-gun arguments. Unfortunately, mainstream media failed to get the story they were hoping for, and their silence on the matter is a screaming illustration of their underlying agenda.

We first have to have a broad and pervasive problem to be motivated to search for solutions to the problem. We have a very high rate of homicides in this country, but to treat a country the size of the US spanning a continent, composed of distinctive regional differences, populated by one of the most diverse populations on the planet is folly. Looking for the concentrations of violence, the unique problems each concentration has and then working on ROOT CAUSE solutions for those clusters of violence makes far more sense than a "one size fits none" approach.

 

[AStone]

^ I'll read this tmw.