Our role as the gun community

[physics]

I think we can all agree that gun violence is a problem. Many people are murdered every year by people with guns.

This is, naturally, not the fault of the gun, but of the person using it. Now, many legislators have tried to ban guns because of this, which are not only unconstitutional (Thank you Heller), but obviously not the correct answer.

It is quite obvious that the U.S. is not a society in which traditional gun control is effective, nor is any other that I know of besides possibly Japan. Taking away guns makes only the criminals have guns, as we all know.

My point here is that the anti-gun crowd has had a try at reducing gun violence, and has been, as far as I know, horribly unsuccessful. Now, with the Heller ruling, it appears that we may be the ones to determine how all this plays out.

My question is thus: What would you do to reduce gun violence or even just violence in general? Now, I'd like to keep some restrictions on this in that I can just see many replies saying something to the effect of "shall not be infringed". I agree, this is a great GOAL, but at this time I don't feel that it is realistic.

So aside from overturning NFA or anything along those lines, what would we, the gun community propose to do about lowering gun violence (or even just violence in general)? Because damn sure we've seen what the antis think is the solution and I don't want any of that.

Keep in mind that I am looking more along the lines of crime/violence reduction rather than infringement. Feel free to bring in philosophy.

 

[TallPine]

End the War on Drugs.

 

[rbernie]

I think we can all agree that gun violence is a problem. Many people are murdered every year by people with guns.

I do NOT agree that gun violence is a problem. I believe that humans predating upon each other is a problem.

The tools that they choose to use is irrelevant. The fact that we have predators in our midst is highly relevant.

Reduce the number of predators, and the problem diminishes. Reduce the profit from predation, and the problem diminishes.

Approach the issue from the perspective of the tool, and you wind up down the rabbit hole.

 

[Professor Gun]

1) Enforce current laws that pertain to use of a gun in the commission of a violent crime. Anyone using a gun in a violent crime goes to jail and does not plea bargain out.

2) Allow any law-abiding citizen who wishes to carry a handgun concealed or open to do so providing they meet the criteria of no felony history, no history of involuntary commitment, no history of substance addiction. Provide these people training at minimal cost. Once they complete the training they can carry ANYWHERE.

3) Pass a form of the "castle doctrine" at State and Federal levels protecting law-abiding citizens from legal and civil penalties if they are involved in a legitimate shooting of someone in the process of committing a felony.

 

[tigre]

A one-step plan for reducing crime

End the War on Drugs.

Seriously. That would not only reduce all forms of drug- and gang-related crime, but our justice system could actually focus on the remaining violent criminals. What a concept.

 

[A. Manifesto]

Automatic life sentence with no parole if you are convicted of shooting someone while you are in the process of commiting another criminal act.

 

[mordechaianiliewicz]

Yeah, yeah. This all sounds good, but truth be told, most crime is caused by two things: poverty, and broken homes.
As TallPine said, you end the war on drugs, you take away alot of the incentive of many such folks to kill each other because the money they chase will dry up.
As for how to fix problems of poverty and broken homes..... that's a long one well outside the scope of THR, and subject to heated debate, but as you could probably guess, I think the fedgov should have nothing to do with the answers.
As much as I support having guns myself, and having "castle doctrine" and having CCW be as open and libertine as possible etc. etc. I also understand such things are for decent people to protect themselves.
Most of the street crime we hear about, fear, and the police fight is bad people killing bad people, and it's tough to break the patterns that create those bad people.

 

[Gadget]

"Reduce the number of predators, and the problem diminishes. Reduce the profit from predation, and the problem diminishes.

I somewhat agree from a different perspective. Reduce the number of prey and the problem diminishes.

 

[Titan6]

Tallpine has a good point.

Other than that I would say most problems are well beyond simple social engineering. Improving education for example would likely lower crime but how to resolve that problem has been an issue since the founding of the country.

 

[rbernie]

Reduce the number of prey and the problem diminishes.

I prefer to think that self-defense on the part of the prey results in a reduction of the number of predators.

 

[Cosmoline]

I think we can all agree that gun violence is a problem.

I don't agree at all. "Gun violence" is a construct of the anti-gun media and anti-gun legislators. In the real world the problem is CRIMINALS who assault, mug, rob and kill using a wide array of tools. You must target those who use violence for their own criminal ends rather than getting hung up on whether they use fists, sticks, rocks, knives, guns or cars. People are the problem. Particular people, usually known as trouble by many others long before the cops get to them. To solve the problem you need to target those who use criminal violence and destroy them. Whether that's done with prison time or a weapon used in defense is not the important point.

 

[Standing Wolf]

...what would we, the gun community propose to do...

I'm a member of the civil rights community, not the gun community.

 

[Titan6]

Continuing in Cosmoline's train of logic, even violence itself is not the problem. It is merely to what end that the violence is applied that entails the problem. Yet when violence is often reported the violence itself is focused upon rather than the cause or reason behind it. So long as that is the focus there will be no change.

 

[Seancass]

Just make all guns illegal. Sure, there'd be a little time where there'd be objection. Still some criminals would hang on to guns, but they'd be weeded out fairly quickly by shoot-on-sight policies. After that, it'd be all good.

 

[RP88]

the obvious answer to violence of any kind is to not tolerate it at all. But, sadly, a guy can commit double armed robbery - which should get him as much as 16-20 years in prison - then get sentenced to four years, but released in 18 months.

My solution? Any violent or intentionally life-threatening act - such as arson, robbery, maiming, rape/sexual assault, etc. - should carry a minimum sentence of ten years without any possibility of parole or early release. If a weapon of any kind is used, then that sentenced should be extended an additional mandatory five years. Maybe even more.

I mean, seriously: if violence is such a public health concern/plague on our culture/horrible problem, then why is our justice system so willing to cut deals with these disgusting sons of b----es?

Remember watching the old Westerns where one bank robbery got someone legally hanged by the neck? we should bring some of that mentality back.

 

[Soybomb]

Why is the "gun community" responsible? Guns aren't the cause of crime and yet shooters are supposed to be somehow fix the socio-economic conditions that lead to crime? We're just along for the ride. Certainly try to improve the world but being a gun owner isn't relevant.

 

[belus]

This is a hard problem. I don't think I have the expertise, and I definitely don't have the time or energy, to fully develop my ideas right now. I need to re-read the suggestions in the book I link to below.
To top it all off, I haven't even seriously sat down to develop ideas about how to prevent the motive yet. I'm suspicious that some of it is related to perceived inequalities or frustration at a lack of opportunity as crime seems inversely related to the strength of the economy...

Anyways, you can read what I started to develop before I became overwhelmed below.

My question is thus: What would you do to reduce violent crime*?

*my change. Let's give him full credit and not take issue with the wording of the question.
I like this question...so I'll try and provide a serious answer (something we should try and come up with to respond to gun-control advocates with). I'll try and keep opinion and judgment to the footnotes.

Assumptions I'm aware I've made:
Crime committed with a weapon only has two necessary conditions: You need a person willing and able to commit the crime, and they need to have access to a weapon.

Since I'm not a psychologist or sociologist, I'm going to deal exclusively with the access to a weapon part. How do we keep people willing to do violence from having access to weapons?

Some people like gun control because access to most complex things which the layperson cannot improvise (such as guns) can be easily and severely limited. However, access to simple things (e.g. knives, molotov cocktails) is really only guaranteed through cooperation and the existence of cheaper or less dangerous substitutes. [footnote 1]

One problem with a total prohibition of complex weapons is that it focuses all desire for weapons on those which cannot be monitored (see England). At this point you're really stuck having no control or information about who obtains instruments capable of being used for violence, or why they are obtained.

A total prohibition seems to provide a false sense of security too. You haven't removed the mugger - there are probably more of them now that the risk of doing business is less. This needs to be compensated for and is historically done with more police officers, surveillance, stricter penalties, and other police state measures.

But a total prohibition is ludicrous so long as the 2A is recognized as an individual right. So now guns exist in our society, and thanks to Heller, anyone not specifically disqualified can have one.

Thus we turn to partial prohibitions of the tools of violence. We're explicitly allowed to prevent felons from owning a gun for example. However many felons, and most violent predators, are able to obtain one within hours of release through private purchases from friends and family. (see Armed and Considered Dangerous: A Survey of Felons and their Firearms)


... I need to think about this more. I don't think making private sales illegal is a viable solution. The question of how you allow one part of the population access while excluding another part, when they both intermingle and form close relationships, is not something I can answer yet.



[footnote 1] - It's often brought up that knives are much less dangerous in the hands of criminals than guns. I think this is true. We would not have had school shootings if the perpetrators had not had guns. However, I speculate that some would have become school bombings, or bomb threats. Probably more bomb threats than actual attacks though, so I think on the balance we'd have lost fewer lives.

 

[Dave R]

My insightful comment:

The gun problem IS the drug problem.

Think about it. Take gang violence and drug-related gun crimes out of the equation, and what do you have left? Not much of a problem.

 

[cjanak]

What would you do to reduce gun violence or even just violence in general?​

I don't think we know a whole heck of a lot about what causes violent crime, but the data I've seen suggests the following may be important factors:

1) Single parent families appear strongly related to violent crime. I haven't a clue how to approach this problem from a policy perspective.
2) Teenage unemployment appears strongly related to violent crime. Don't raise the minimum wage or put other labor restrictions that will disadvantage inexperienced workers such as teenagers.
3) General economic conditions (as measured by income) also appear to impact violent crime rates, especially among relatively uneducated males. Pro-growth policies might help reduce violent crime rates.

Increased police presence and more prisons seem to have little effect in reducing violent crime.

 

[physics]

Why is the "gun community" responsible?

Because they want to take our guns away, and to them, the constitution is not a good enough reason to keep them. Thus, for us to come out against gun violence puts us in a different category, the "responsible gun owner". We also know about guns, and freedom in general. That is what I'm getting at, not infringing our rights, but stopping this plague of "stupid-human" violence.

I don't agree at all. "Gun violence" is a construct of the anti-gun media and anti-gun legislators. In the real world the problem is CRIMINALS who assault, mug, rob and kill using a wide array of tools. You must target those who use violence for their own criminal ends rather than getting hung up on whether they use fists, sticks, rocks, knives, guns or cars. People are the problem. Particular people, usually known as trouble by many others long before the cops get to them. To solve the problem you need to target those who use criminal violence and destroy them. Whether that's done with prison time or a weapon used in defense is not the important point.

I understand what you are saying, and am trying to say the same thing, for the most part.

If you read the next line of mine after your quote, it says:

This is, naturally, not the fault of the gun, but of the person using it.

Sorry, I'm not so eloquent, but I think we are saying the same thing, except I think it is important how we deter the criminal, because there is a problem with people dieing, from the criminal use of guns.

Continuing in Cosmoline's train of logic, even violence itself is not the problem. It is merely to what end that the violence is applied that entails the problem. Yet when violence is often reported the violence itself is focused upon rather than the cause or reason behind it. So long as that is the focus there will be no change.

That is an interesting thought, but should there be some kind of justification of the reasoning behind violence? By looking at why someone did something, aren't you somewhat justifying it in their mind, because that is why they did it, to spread some kind of message. I don't think there are very many good reasons for violence.

I also agree that the War on Drugs plays a part in this.

 

[physics]

The question of how you allow one part of the population access while excluding another part, when they both intermingle and form close relationships, is not something I can answer yet.

That pretty much sums up part of my question. Thanks!

 

[belus]

If you're exceptionally curious, physics, I suggest you buy that study I linked to. It's about $6 shipped, maybe $7.

The authors interviewed over 1000 (I think about 1200) prison inmates about the nature of their crimes, how often they use weapons, how they got them, why they chose them... very fascinating stuff.

One of the Amazon reviews is

Intending to build the case for comprehensive federal gun restrictions, the Carter administration handed out a major gun control research grant to sociology Professor James D. Wright, and his colleagues Peter Rossi and Kathleen Daly. Wright was already on record as favoring much stricter controls, and he and his colleagues were recognized as among sociology's brightest stars. Rossi, a University of Massachusetts professor, would later become President of the American Sociology Association. Wright, who formerly served as Director of the Social and Demographic Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, now teaches at Tulane. Daly was a relatively young scholar at the time, but she has since gone on to win the Hindelang Prize from the American Society of Criminology. The Hindelang Prize is awarded for the most significant contribution to criminology in a three-year period. Daly is the most recent winner, for her studies of women's issues. Anyway, Wright, Rossi, and Daly were asked to survey the state of research regarding the efficacy of gun control, presumably to show that gun control worked, and America needed more of it. But when Wright, Rossi, and Daly produced their report for the National Institute of Justice, they delivered a document quite different from the one they had expected to write. Carefully reviewing all existing research to date, the three scholars found no persuasive scholarly evidence that America's 20,000 gun control laws had reduced criminal violence. For example, the federal Gun Control Act of 1968, which banned most interstate gun sales, had no discernible impact on the criminal acquisition of guns from other states. Washington, D.C.'s 1977 ban on the ownership of handguns which had not already been registered in the District was not linked to any reduction in gun crime in the District. Even Detroit's law providing mandatory sentences for felonies committed with a gun was found to have no effect on gun crime patterns, in part because judges would often reduce the sentence for the underlying offense in order to balance out the mandatory two-year extra sentence for use of a gun. The Wright/Rossi/Daly team exploded scores of other gun control myths. They discussed the data showing that gun owners-rather then being a violent, aberrant group of nuts-were at least as psychologically stable and morally sound as the rest of the population. Polls claiming to show that a large majority of the population favored "more gun control" were debunked as being the product of biased questions, and of the fact that most people have no idea how strict gun laws already are. As the scholars frankly admitted, they had started out their research as gun control advocates, and had been forced to change their minds by a careful review of the evidence.

 

[RancidSumo]

I don't agree that legalizing all drugs would help at all and if you lived here you would agree. Meth causes more crime here then you can imagine. It seriously screws people up.

I think that the best thing we could do would be to keep violent criminals locked up and if they can't be rehibilitated, then don't keep them alive leaching off tax dollars.

 

[bobbarker]

you will NEVER stop gun violence. It is Human Nature to kill. You can argue with me if you want to, but, look back to the Neanderthal era. Neanderthal's killed off the Cro-Magnon people. Why? Was it becase they were in their Hunting area, self defense? No! It was because they were different. Over the years, our violence and desire to kill has evolved from bashing each other's heads with clubs, all the way to guns. And guess what? When we get something else. Blasters, or lightsabers, or whatever comes next, we'll kill each other with those. You can't eliminate violence. All you can do, is arm the innocent law abiding populace, so that they can defend themselves against the bad guys.

 

[MT GUNNY]

Among Some of the good points already posted, I have one not mentioned that (I think) is a root cause of all listed.

Parenting, The lack of it..