Pills or Guns (but not both)

A huge yes.

But this ties into comments made in another thread re teachers & education--How to convince people to pay for such programs.

And a huge yes for responsible gun ownership.

How would that work for kids that seem a little weird, but certainly not dangerous? And kids have a way of finding things that parents hide (I certainly did).

 

Unfortunately, the federal agency most responsible for research on injury (and death) prevention, CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, is banned from funding research on gun violence.

It can fund research on motor vehicle safety, concussions in sports, domestic violence, playground injuries, etc. just not guns because it is a "threat" to the Second Amendment.

 

Universal meaning everyone who wants to buy a gun has to do it. Without a standard or universal, ie Federal level, set of regulations, you will never see any real effect to any kind of control. If a town has rules, just drive over to the next town that doesn't have them and get access easily.

I know how guns are purchased in the US, and I think it stinks, for the most part. I don't think any gun should be unregistered, and the owner should be held responsible for any crime perpetrated with said gun. Gun shows and private sales should still have a transfer of ownership, much like cars have... I bought my first rifle with cash when I was 13. "Well regulated" is actually mentioned in the 2nd amendment. There is also no mention of anonymous ownership.

Pro-gun 'enthusiasts' keep trotting out Switzerland as an example of gun ownership keeping people safe, but neglect the huge amount of regulations to owning weapons. They track that shit.

I'm all for law abiding citizens to have guns, but I'm also for required training and registration of weapons.

 

personally as a person who is on SSRIs and owns guns i think its bull shit. but thats mo. i learned how to shoot when i was a mere kid. proally 6 or so. i was taught all the rules. but that is when it was a different time in the world. its my opinion that we as a world will never stop these types of things from happening. look at all the laws that people break.

 

Before anything I've noticed that people have slipped into referring to the stereotype of the white-male-loser. Mass shooters are actually disproportionately non-white if you consider perpetrator race in relation to the general population, and if we're going to get into potential social issues the same societal prejudices leading to the existence of that durable stereotype despite the evidence against it are themselves a core part of the problem. The people committing these shootings as a whole tend not to fit the white-male-loser stereotype.

You're simultaneously right yet wrong. When looking at overall gun violence mass shootings are a tiny fraction of the overall rate and the mentally ill maybe ~3-5% of perpetrators. However when looking at mass shootings specifically the story is very different.

Most violence is not committed by the mentally ill, and most of the mentally ill are not violent, but this very specific pattern of violence is overwhelming perpetrated by those that are mentally ill and violent.

 

As far as the "gun show loophole" and "universal background checks," let's talk mass shooters of Christmas past:

Turns out background checks don't stop precrime and the system doesn't prosecute those that they should under the current laws.

...

But if guns are illegal, how is it physically possible to obtain one!? New York City doesn't exist in a vacuum, my friend. Criminals get guns from outside the bubble of the People's Republic whereas law-abiding citizens are disarmed.

 

You were doing well until that part.

I get it. Gun advocates just can't get their heads around New York City's homicide rate. It's like a little blind spot.

 

Lets.

I agreed with you.

My opinion is that gun violence is a public health issue and the above is one small piece of a broad solution to reduce gun violence.

Research on a wide range of causes of gun violence is critical and long overdue but prevented by politics and the influence of the NRA.

 

And gun grabbers just can't get their heads around everything else, or the fact their own arguments as to why Chicago "doesn't count" can apply equally well to NYC. You can't say Chicago "doesn't count" because people can get guns outside of Chicago, and then turn right back around and insist that NYC is an example of successful gun control.

The fact is we shouldn't be comparing America to Western Europe and the Scandinavias, we should be comparing ourselves to other countries with comparable poverty, corruption, and inequality problems. Particularly if those countries also lack strong social welfare programs.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: A theory can not be itself and its opposite. Gun ownership and concealed carry have increased meteorically in the last 20 years, at the exact same time that violent crime of all kinds has fallen precipitously. Countries with higher gun ownership rates in the EU show lower crime rates, and countries with lower gun ownership rates show higher crime rates.

That is a textbook spurious correlation.

What we need to be looking at are the actual factors driving crime and violence, and overwhelmingly those are the ones I keep coming back to: Poverty, inequality, structural factors such as our incarceration culture or the "war on drugs", and our abysmal social safety net.

If the US had wages, income equality, education, criminal justice systems, and social safety nets like the Nordics do then we'd probably also have a crime rate comparable to theirs.

 

The other problem with that list of people of who bought guns with background checks is that in at least two cases the checks failed.
In the Charleston case the head of the FBI actually called people together and apologized for it not working the way it was supposed to.
We don't fund the background checks well enough.
We want them to be fast so they often miss important details.
There are laws that protect privacy about mental illness so they aren't going to show up on a background check.

 

Ten years ago, maybe. And 10 years from now the Nordic countries are barely going to be recognizable.

Immigration'd.

 

As opposed to our firm and resilient democracy which has more or less done the same thing but with the traditional protestant work ethic for efficiency and efficacy.

I trust China's claims on that about as much as I do Best Korea's. The problem is the countries that we'd want to compare to by their nature also aren't going to have the best data in the world.

 

There are parallels between different places, but they are not the same. New York and Chicago in particular are different in ways that are directly relevant to how well a gun regulation would be expected to work.

Every time I have discussed this, I have pointed out those differences. Every time I have discussed this, I have pointed out that New York's regulatory advantages are not applicable to anywhere else in America.

Of course, those things count AGAINST any other US city doing, in 2015, what New York or Chicago have done.

Anyway, US gun advocates often argue that strict gun control has made the UK a violent hellhole.

When I pointed out that the UK's murder rate is one-fourth what the US has, Shadowex3 responded that the UK's overall crime rate is actually higher than the US crime rate -- he wrote: "Violence in the US is more lethal but significantly lower overall."

I don't know whether the UK is really MORE violent than the US, perhaps it's an extraordinary claim, but let's say that the US and UK crime rates are comparable, and that crime is simply more lethal in the U.S. and less lethal in the UK.

My argument is that NYC is more like the UK than anywhere else in America. Not less crime, but less LETHAL crime.

Let's take reported murders and robberies from the FBI uniform crime reports. The ratio of robberies to murders is a rough inverse measure of the lethality of crime.

United States:
Year: Murders, Robberies (Ratio)
2002: 16,229 420,806 (25.9)
2003: 16,528 414,235 (25.1)
2004: 16,148 401,470 (24.9)
2005: 16,740 417,438 (24.9)
2006: 17,030 447,403 (26.3)
2007: 16,929 445,125 (26.3)
2008: 16,442 443,574 (27.0)
2009: 15,399 408,742 (26.5)
2010: 14,772 369,089 (25.0)
2011: 14,661 354,772 (24.2)
2012: 14,866 355,051 (23.9)
2013: 14,319 345,095 (24.1)
Average ratio: 25.3

New York City:
Year: Murders, Robberies (Ratio)
2002: 587 27,229 (46.4)
2003: 597 25,989 (43.5)
2004: 570 24,373 (42.8)
2005: 539 24,722 (45.9)
2006: 596 23,511 (39.4)
2007: 496 21,787 (43.9)
2008: 523 22,186 (42.4)
2009: 471 18,597 (39.5)
2010: 536 19,608 (36.6)
2011: 515 19,773 (38.4)
2012: 419 20,201 (48.2)
2013: 335 19,170 (57.2)
Average ratio: 43.7

So, in the United States as a whole, there's a murder for about every 25 robberies. In New York City, there's a murder for about every 44 robberies.

If the UK crime rate really is similar to the US, but the murder rate is one-fourth ours, that would suggest that there's a murder for about every 100 robberies there.

Now, I insist on this point, not because it would be reasonable or possible to extend NYC-style gun control to the whole country, but because NYC's laws are doomed. When the Supreme Court implements the absolutist interpretation of the Second Amendment, New York City will no longer be allowed to have these restrictions. It will no longer be a felony to be caught with an illegal gun, because there will be no such thing as an illegal gun.

My contention: when this happens, NYC's crime rate might not change, but the homicide death rate will go up substantially.

 

That would be an interesting hypothesis to test. Since you're holding the overall violent crime rate steady and changing only the lethality/weapons used it kind of has a built in control.

 

@Street Pattern is putting NYC up on a pedestal.

I'm imagining that NYC's crime rate might not change and that the "homicide death rate" (death-death rate?) would also remain the same. Because the availability of weapons of any type is hardly a hurdle for the dirtbags of NYC.

The death-death rate is more likely influenced by the legal risks associated with increased penalties for using particular weapons in a particular crime and the criminals' feelings on the necessity of said weapon to commit x crime.

That said, the penal system can't carry out full sentences because of extreme overcrowding thanks to our daily victories in the War on Drugs. / Sarcasm

Hard talk and tomes and research and new policies don't mean shit if you're cutting people loose in 3 years that should have done 10.

 

A very valid point well said.

 

Severity of the punishment does matter. It matters because the system is so watered down to game the overpopulation and cost that the severity thing has become like vanity sizing in jeans. If you told somebody they're doing 10 years and then they actually did 10 years, that's a thing. It's not a thing when 10 years means 2.5 and it's basically a turnstile for career foodstampers to get cheap cornbread, better healthcare than half the working class and hone their shanking technique. Bodies and cash are the heavyweights in the justice system, not all that stuff you learn in 301 classes. Yes, the perception you'll get caught and the certainty of being punished represents the psychology behind deterrence, but you can't get there unless you build up the foundation of the aforementioned severity. It has be consistently and properly severe and certain. From that reality, you get the perception and thus the deterrence.

I'm vaguely familiar with criminal justice theory and what is/isn't a deterrent to crime. Problem is nothing is ever at face value. If we're stuck in a pussy-ass liberal society that puts inmates in small boxes and feeds them high carb diets as a way of playing It's A Wonderful World, duration of incarceration and lack of amenities are it as far as the punishment block goes. Rehabilitation largely is pointless in the case of career violent offenders, especially the further you push the duration axis.

I suppose I could post the deterrence matrix/web and argue that but this masturbatory thread is about stopping mass shooters hopped up on "may experience suicidal thoughts" feel-good cocktails.

And in the specific case of mass shooters, they overwhelmingly aren't trying to get away from anything. They want a body count before they off themselves or suicide by cop.