I am one of those terrible liberals who has long-since given up on gun control and mass shootings. The pro-gun sentiment in America—even if it's not a majority—is far too strong to permit any meaningful firearm legislation. Combine that with a pro-gun Supreme Court and I'm unable to see even the slim possibility of any serious regulation in the near or medium-term future. I've never been interested in pie-in-the-sky activism, which is why I don't write much about gun control and don't even think very highly of other liberals wasting their time on it.
But short of serious gun control, are there ways to rein in mass shootings, especially in schools? Yes, but they're minimally useful and all of them are fraught with problems. In this case, it's us liberals who (rightfully) resist conservative proposals because of our concerns over constitutional rights.
So that's my counsel of despair on mass shootings. For the record, though, my own personal proposal for gun regulation is to ban civilian ownership and use of (a) semi-automatic weapons and (b) magazines with a capacity greater than six rounds. This would still permit anyone to own not just a gun, but a genuinely useful gun that can kill people and animals just as well as today's weapons. The only difference is that they're inherently slower unless you're very highly trained. Permitted guns would include things like bolt-action rifles, shotguns, single-action revolvers, and so forth. The gun experts can work out the details, but basically all legal guns would require a separate human action to load a round into the chamber before firing. This wouldn't end mass shootings, but it would cut down the death toll considerably. At the same time, hunters could still hunt and suburban parents could still put guns under their pillows for self defense.
Needless to say, this won't happen. And even if it did, can you imagine how long it would take to confiscate 300 million semi-automatic firearms? The mind reels.
POSTSCRIPT: One of the things I hate most about American gun worship is that it can be kept going only by a campaign of relentless fear about crime. NRA pamphlets and PR campaigns are bursting at the seams with images and statistics designed to convince urban dads that they need plenty of guns along with constant vigilance to keep their families safe from the thugs who stalk our streets and the protesters who threaten to burn our cities down.
Life could be much more pleasant for all us—and less dangerous for many of us—if everyone could get it through their heads that America is a far, far safer place than it was 30 years ago. There's simply no need for the kind of fear that was at least moderately justified back in the '70s and '80s.
Unfortunately, there's a powerful lobby whose very existence depends on making sure everyone believes just the opposite. And they have a media megaphone in the form of Fox News that makes sure their message is spread relentlessly.
In a nutshell, I hate guns for much more than the actual damage they do on their own. But that doesn't change the fact that I can't see any effective way to change things.
Your ideal list of permitted weapons is EXACTLY what I've been advocating for a while. Make the shooter work between each shot, and it allows people to get away or fight back.
I would also triage any guns turned in. The best tenth would be turned over to the National Guard for safekeeping in Armories, just in case Emperor Xi's hordes ever get too big for their britches. The next tenth would be distributed to well-controlled, responsible gun ranges, because there IS a genuine skill in the rapid shooting of a tight pattern. And you have to allow people to get comfortable with the guns in case of an invasion.
The rest would be melted down.
*melted down into a giant 300 foot statue of a middle finger and dropped on the NRA's front lawn.
And you have to allow people to get comfortable with the guns in case of an invasion.
This isn't the 1940s.
"And you have to allow people to get comfortable with the guns in case of an invasion."
LOL! Your little pop guns will be worthless if the world's greatest military power, backed by thousands of thermonuclear warheads, is invaded. Just like the goofball argument that we need guns to overthrow the government. A bunch of ammosexual amateurs ain't gonna cut it.
America is an Insane country, that's all. The Supreme Court may actually need packing....Already, a sane country, Canada, has added substantial restrictions based not on what happened in Canada, but because they wisely saw how utterly crazy their neighbor was.
" Handgun freeze in Canada and five-round limit on magazines"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/31/handgun-freeze-in-canada-and-five-round-limit-on-magazines
See, some counties are Sane, others are Insane.
This is all fairly simple.
Best Wishes, Traveller
What, no +100's, +10's, or even +1's? It sounds too simple to be true, but when it comes to guns, this is an Insane country.
But how will the Concerned Citizens Councils ensure their posses are properly armed against the dusky menace, Robert E. Lee's Horse's Ass?
I don't recall where I read it, maybe Vox or so, but the vast, vast majority of deaths by firearm in the US are actually caused by handguns. Semi-automatics are more mediatized because of mass shootings but no, banning them will not "cut down the death toll considerably". It would be a start, that's all. Concealed carry, almost by definition of handguns, is a bigger problem. Not only in terms of deaths but also how it affects lives. The article I read gave the poignant example of not knowing whether the guy you accidentally spilled beer on is armed.
What's more, you can still have a Columbine-style mass shooting with handguns. You'll just need to take more than one with you. So you won't entirely solve the copycat problem, and kids seeking celebrity, by allowing only handguns.
Not to be pessimistic, but the problem is gun culture itself. And there is nothing in the Constitution that says that a "well regulated militia" conceals its arms.
Handguns will kill, just not as efficiently as high muzzle velocity "assault" rifle.
The shooter who attack Cathy Gifford was stopped when reloading if I recall correctly--but people without guns.
Anything that makes the mass shootings take longer means there's more time to stop it. Removing high powered rifles from the equations means cops might be more likely to intervene.
I've always thought that the whole concealed carry thing was backwards. You want to carry a gun? Fine. But you have to advertise that you're carrying, either by carrying it openly or by some other standardized notification. Maybe like those orange safety flags you used to see on bicycles. The only exceptions would be for undercover law enforcement and the like, and any violations of the provision would come with an extremely stiff penalty.
I don't recall where I read it, maybe Vox or so, but the vast, vast majority of deaths by firearm in the US are actually caused by handguns.
The vast majority of deaths by firearm in the U.S. are actually caused by semi-automatic handguns. As Kevin said, get rid of the Glocks and the Berettas. Single action revolvers only.
Then I misread the part where he wants to ban "(b) magazines with a capacity greater than six rounds". My bad. I inferred six-shooters would be allowed.
Kevin explicitly said that single action revolvers would be allowed. They generally have six chambers. "Single action" doesn't refer to the number of bullets a gun carries. It means that you have to recock the hammer after every shot. A double action revolver uses the gases ejected as the bullet fires to recock the hammer.
"Semi-automatic" means that the gun chambers a new round as a part of the firing process, so the only thing the shooter has to do is pull the trigger. Double action revolvers, automatic pistols, and semi-automatic rifles are all ways of describing a semi-automatic gun.
A gun that is not semi-automatic are single action revolvers, rifles in which you need to use a bolt or a lever to chamber a new round, or a pump action shotgun.
Double action revolver is not a gas or blowback operated feeding mechanism. Double action revolver... think mid twentieth century patrolman's revolvers, or Dirty Harry if you want to think bigger.... rotates the cartridge chamber into bore alignment and cocks the hammer over a very long mechanical trigger pull.
Double action semi-auto pistol has loaded the next round by gas or spring pressure from the prior shot, but a long mechanical trigger pull sets and releases the hammer (... or striker) to fire the gun.
Fine discussion overall, but "banning double action revolvers" is not a real thing in serious policy discussion.
I believe Kevin's proposed ban on semiautomatic guns included handguns. That's why he mentioned only single action revolvers would be permitted.
Then I don't know what a single-action revolver is. I thought revolvers per definition contained multiple chambers and that each bullet can be fired rapidly after the previous one.
That is a Double Action Revolver. Single means the gun has to be cocked to place a bullet in firing position. Pulling the trigger fires the bullet
Accuracy is severly degraded when a revolver is fired double action due to the higher trigger pull needed to cock the trigger. A semi-automatic pistol uses the recoil of the previous shot to cock the trigger for the next shot.
Double action... think Dirty Harry. Single Action.... think Tombstone. Both revolvers, one 20th century in design, one 19th century in design.
The only viable solution is easy and available to everyone: never vote for a Republican for any office from dog catcher to president, and always vote for the other candidate. Here in many so-called blue states we have much stronger commonsense gun laws and much lower gun death rates. For example, Texas has almost three times as many gun deaths per 100,000 as does Massachusetts.
Having been convinced of this sometime in the last century, I can only appeal to others to follow this rule.
The problem is that this is an Insane Country because there are so many insane voters out there.
It’s not just suburban dads. My 73-year-old mother bought a semiautomatic handgun two years ago, with a concealed carry permit, because, hands waved, something something, crime. I can guarantee it was media and peer group racial fear-mongering around the Floyd protests. The gun culture is real, but it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s misogynistic; it’s racist; it’s self-soothing. And it will take a sea change to curb.
????????????
Keep in mind that around 55% of all gun deaths are suicides, so there is some self-limitation going on among the gun nuts. They are gradually trying to eliminate themselves.
Sadly, most of the people who off themselves with a firearm probably aren't the owners so much as children, spouses, or other people who find them unsecured during a mental health crisis. But your larger point is all too correct: While mass shootings get a lot of headlines, the thousands of suicides each year in the US that succeed due to an easily-accessible firearm go largely unreported/unremarked upon.
Obits tend to skirt the issue by noting "he died suddenly."
Or, in the case of Tony Dungy, he never actually had a son, at all.
Firearm injuries are the leading cause of child and adolescent death in the U.S.
I agree with you Kevin on legislation but I think there is room for pushback on the cultural front. Imagine gun violence being specially rated in movies and television with more restrictive ratings for those that feature gun violence. A push against gun use in movie posters and advertisements. Push on a ban for billboards advertising gun shows. A push to get songs that feature gun worship off commercial radio.
I know it's not much and it does play into "the liberal as scold" meme but there is way too much "guns are cool" in American culture and a bit of pushback saying a large part of America disapproves of your love of guns and gunplay and doesn't see it as harmless might have an effect you cannot get by wasting time trying to get legislation passed.
Banning something tends to make it cooler to be honest
Your comment reads like the premise for some gun-inspired version of Footloose
So, you are not in favor of your boi J.D. ANTIVAXXX banning pornography?
Seriously, how will KKKlay Travis & David Portnoy square their GQP support with their love of boobs n' hardcorefucking?
Convincing. It’s a generational thing. People in their 20s are much less scared of each other than are people in their 50s and above. Old people need to shuffle offstage and that’s going to take a while. In the meantime, please vote, young people.
As people age they become less naïve.
Less naïve =/= more paranoid. I grant that, as I have aged, I’ve become more realistic about how difficult it is to bring about change, but I’ve also come to want more radical change than I did in my younger years!
Boomers aren't the ones committing these mass shootings. The last two mass shooters were 18 years old. I can't think of a recent mass shooting perpetrated by someone over thirty.
Las Vegas.
If we go by the definition of mass shootings as four killed, not counting the perpetrator, I think there are probably dozens or more with husbands/ boyfriends over 30 shooting wives/ girlfriends and their children relatives or new partners. They don't make the national news, but they happen.
Earlier this month, David Chou, 68, shot 6 people in a Taiwanese church in CA.
We need to rework Lee Hazlewood's "Jose" to be about mass shootings instead of bullfighting.
Doesn't explain Kyle Rittenhaus, Peyton Gendron, Salvador Ramos, or a host of others who were scared and in love with assault rifles.
Embrace something else that’s uniquely American to mitigate the uniquely American love of guns: lawsuits. Make it legal again for people to sue gun manufacturers and sellers for the damage specific guns caused. Make it legal for anyone to sue, Texas SB8 bounty hunter style, anyone else who fires a gun for $10,000. (Second Amendment says you can bear arms. It says nothing about the legality of firing those arms.) Basically, blue states need to treat guns the way red states treat abortion and (soon) contraception.
Kevin, you had some great articles on lead in water pipes and subsequent losses of IQ. It seems the NRA is devoted to reversing those efforts, in effect, deploying more lead in our environment, cutting out the loss of IQ and going right to the morgue.
Or, maybe, carrying a gun and the resulting and demonstrated arrogance is sufficient to demonstrate a loss of IQ by not having to depend on one's intelligence to resolve issues.
Requiring cops to preform regular target practice at unventilated indoor gun ranges may have contributed to unjustified police violence.
1. Hold gun manufacturers accountable for guns "lost in transit".
2. Hold gun owners accountable for how their gun is used. Require insurance.
There was a recent study that came to the conclusion that local gun buy backs are not effective. There are far too many guns on the streets--like trying to empty the ocean using a teaspoon. We need policies that will lower the number of guns on the streets--but they will take years to have an effect. Treat them like cigarettes. Tax imports and exports on weapons, use the money to pay for programs that reduce gun violence. Tax ammo to pay for the environmental damage (think birds with lead poisoning), tax guns themselves to pay for police hurt due to gun violence.
Set a price tag on gun-related deaths. Make it simple, like $5 million per death, regardless of the circumstances (even if it were legally justified). Based on each year's deaths and gun/ammo sales numbers, set the excise tax rate on all firearm and ammo sales (even private sales) to cover the total death cost. Adjust each year. The penalty for attempting to evade the tax should be extreme: 10 years in federal prison, no parole, never own a firearm again.
Re birds with lead poisoning
I believe that shotgun ammunition now may have steel shot for exactly that reason. Hunter organizations (like "Birds Unlimited"?) have done a lot for protection of wetlands and eliminating use of lead shot.
That's "Ducks Unlimited". Sorry!
That's correct. Hunters are some of the biggest conservationists.
Maybe, but at least the ones that write letters to my local paper are screaming bloody murder over having to switch to steel shot. A million times worse than being forced to wear a face mask during a pandemic!!
While endangered condors die from eating lead shot embedded in dead prey.
Create economic disincentives to make it unaffordable to indulge the gun. Require insurance. Expose manufacturers to liability in the courts. Impose restrictions on ammunition. Tax guns and ammo.
Life is cheap in America. What a tawdry and dysfunctional place.
America has devolved into a death cult.
A "pro-life" death cult, ironically.
Pre-life, even, given the Oklahoma GQP candidate for governor who believes life begins BEFORE conception.
There are two intersecting problems that make America's gun culture so toxic: 1. widespread availability of high-capacity, military-style assault weapons. No other country -- aside from clusterfucks like Somalia and Afghanistan -- simply allows its streets to be flooded with these kinds of weapons. 2. The NRA and gun industry have successfully marketed the above products to a generation of idiot man-children whom they have convinced can solve their cultural/political insecurities by stockpiling lethal weapons.
Time was a real man had a shotgun or hunting rifle for putting meat on the table and a good bourbon for enjoying afterwards. Now he has to cosplay Delta Force with $15k worth of gear and guns. (NRA: "Ca-ching!")
If you own a gun for personal protection then you have to be on constant guard and ready to use it. What a fun way to live.
A perp coming at you has a plan. You have better have a plan.
What a fun way to live.
Fortunately, I recognize that I'm a klutz who very often isn't really paying attention to the world around myself. No one in their right mind, including me, would let me carry a gun.
No one is forcing you to get a gun. You don't like the prospect of having one, no problem, don't own one.
Where do you get the idea that you have to be on "constant guard"?
If you think you need to carry a gun for protection, your environment would require you to be on constant guard.
Maybe if you're carrying one (though that is debatable too). But the original comment was about owning a gun for personal protection, not carrying it. I own a gun for personal protection but it's in my bedroom closet and I rarely think about it.
There is no reason to consider gun control impossible. The NY Times says:
"Particularly this state: In ways that have tended to be underreported, California has significantly lowered gun deaths, Dr. Garen J. Wintemute, an emergency room doctor and longtime firearm violence researcher, told me this week.
“For the last 20, maybe even 25 years — except for the two years of the pandemic, which have increased homicides and suicides across the country — our rates of firearm violence have trended downward,” said Dr. Wintemute, who directs the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, Medical Center in Sacramento. “And this has been at a time when most of the rates in the rest of the country have gone up.”
California’s rate of firearm mortality is among the nation’s lowest, with 8.5 gun deaths per 100,000 people in 2020, compared with 13.7 per 100,000 nationally and 14.2 per 100,000 in Texas, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported. And Californians are about 25 percent less likely to die in mass shootings, compared with residents of other states, according to a recent Public Policy Institute of California analysis."
Excellent info that should be reported on more. (Heck, I didn't even know it.)
We also need to remove the ban on the CDC studying gun violence and why "good people go bad."
Firearm mortality is only 5.3 per 100,000 in New York and 3.7 in Massachusetts. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/firearm.htm
Hawaii, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Connecticut also at or below 6/100,000.
Give up on regulating gun ownership? What if we gave up on civil rights? On affordable healthcare? On anything that has come to pass to expand rights and protect lives?
Don't give up. Get even madder. Make even more onerous demands. Have a movement to abolish the 2nd Amendment. You might not get your way entirely, but if the movement gathers enough steam it might scare the bejesus out of gun fetishists, and they might be more willing to compromise.
Don't give up.
You mention "gun fetishists" (whatever that means). What about the tens of millions of gun owners that are not "gun fetishists"? We're not going to agree with the 2nd amendment being abolished. That seems like a ridiculous proposal.
I'm sure those "reasonable" gun owners will have no problem registering their guns, storing them safely and taking a required gun safety course on a regular basis. Right?
How about a generous "buy back" program? Nationwide funded by DC, not possible. Then buy states and localities?
that's a good program, but i think the efficacy of voluntary buybacks is quite limited. it's the folks who are not nuts who participate and generally return the least dangerous weapons. i could also imagine that being gamed by people with large gun collections to get rid of old or unwanted guns and use the money to buy new, more dangerous ones if there are no new restrictions in place.
Six round magazines are too big. One round is the appropriate magazine capacity.
If we accept the premise (which I do not) that handguns for self-defense (i'm not sure what other use there is for a handgun) are a constitutionally protected right, I don't think 1 round is enough. From my limited experience and what I've read from experts, the vast majority of people are going to miss multiple times in a self-defense situation. A 1 round gun would be virtually useless. All that said, I think we should just ban all guns.
The problem with this argument is that all of those multiple misses result in bullets flying around randomly.
yup. which is one reason i think we should ban all guns.
Yes, which is one of the reasons why having a gun in the home for ‘protection against intruders’ is a bad idea. You care where your shots go, the intruder doesn’t.
I can't find the link at the moment, but I remember reading that the accuracy of a trained shooter drops to about 30% in an actual firefight.
yeah, and average civilian i imagine drops to something between zero and 10%. people in dangerous, stressful situations loose motor skills and this is pretty much the most stressful and dangerous possible situation (if your shooting is actually justified). and hitting someone with a handgun at any range is much harder than people who haven't tried it think even when you're just at a shooting range under zero stress.
But at this Scalia Family 24 viewing party, that accuracy rate seems much higher.
If the other guys also have guns, you're unlikely to get more than one aimed shot before you stop a bullet any way. People tend to think Hollywood; the good guys always hit what they aim at and the bad guys always miss. The real world doesn't work like that.
i imagine in most cases, both sides would miss a bunch because criminals are also not generally trained marksmen accustomed to firing a weapon under the stress of someone shooting back.
that is in most cases where you are able to successfully draw and fire your weapon, which is also very difficult.
I'm an ardent advocate of implementing meaningful (ie, standard high-income country) gun laws in the US. And I'm not as pessimistic as Kevin, although I think major action isn't happening this decade (but in the 2030s? I think it's possible).
However, one of the dirty little secrets of the gun violence situation in the US—and this dovetails somewhat with Kevin's observation regarding the decline of gun violence in America—is that getting murdered just isn't that big a statistical risk.* If we brought the overall murder rate in the US down to Western European levels perhaps (ballpark guesstimate) 10,000 lives would be saved annually. I absolutely think we should strive for his (and hopefully we'll be successful someday); but in a country the size of the United States, we can expect something like 3,000,000 deaths annually from all causes. Do the math: it's not a gigantic risk for most people (which is a big part of the reason why the political pressure to do something isn't stronger).
*Especially for Americans who aren't personally involved in criminal activity, especially if they live outside of, say, the most dangerous tenth or so of the country's postal codes.
PS—Kevin's too numerate not to know that the vast majority of gun violence in the US isn't the result of assault rifles and mass events, but rather concealable handguns. And so his proposal, if enacted, would have zero impact on something like 85% of the country's gun violence problem.
As you are correctly are pointing out is it statistically very rare people are shot to death in the USA . It’s so rare one could say it’s unlikely it will happen
“Especially for Americans who aren't personally involved in criminal activity, especially if they live outside of, say, the most dangerous tenth or so of the country's postal codes.” as you are stating
It’s so unlikely that this incident in Uvalde shouldn’t have happened and subsequently probably didn’t happen.
Go tell that to the parents…
A commandment from a Swede
"And so his proposal, if enacted, would have zero impact on something like 85% of the country's gun violence problem."
He is proposing completely banning semi-automatic weapons, which nowadays make the bulk of all handguns in circulation.
He is proposing completely banning semi-automatic weapons, which nowadays make the bulk of all handguns in circulation.
Fair point.
FWIW, though, the most common type of murder in the US—that involving concealable handguns—probably wouldn't be affected very much, because a shooter in the vast majority of cases doesn't really need a semi-automatic weapon to kill one or two people.
I guess my point was, if we could somehow miraculously end mass shooting incidents tomorrow morning, America would still be left with a rate of lethal gun violence (and indeed an overall murder rate) well above the rich country average, for the simple reason that such events account for only a modest portion (about 15% in recent years, per my calculations) of total lethal shootings.
If we want to seriously tackle gun violence, we have to do what other rich countries (or Massachusetts) have done and make firearms in general less common.
(Bus ask Kevin points out, scary headlines aside, gun violence in America overall is quite a bit less common than it was 40 years ago, so public safety in this area has actually improved quite a bit; as I wrote above, this may be an under-the-radar reason why gun control efforts haven't been more successful.)
There are subversive ways of getting conservatives to support gun regulations, by using conservative narratives and actions against them.
Push for a massive increase in open carry gun owners among African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians. White fright will follow, resulting in support for gun regulations.
Pass restrictive gun regulations at the state level, then allow citizens to sue people who are caught, at a minimum of $50,000 per violation, in civil litigation.
Push for a massive increase in open carry gun owners among African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians. White fright will follow, resulting in support for gun regulations.
Indeed, the recent high water mark of right wing advocacy for gun control coincided with the rise of the Black Panthers in the 1960s. If I recall correctly, Saint Ronnie himself (then a governor) signed gun control legislation into law during this period.
Reagan signed the Mulford Act in 1967. It prohibited the open-carry of loaded weapons. Here's a pretty good article:
"Black History Month: The Mulford Act"
"The Second Amendment Doesn’t Always Apply When Black People Carry Guns"
https://medium.com/black-history-month-365/black-history-month-the-mulford-act-9d806a04cb48
Kevin is right in that we are currently at an impasse but he is oh so wrong about just giving up. It's the same old blind spot our dear Kevin has on many things alas. For him the danger from guns is far less than other folks as a while guy in a comfortable upper class enclave. It will be a long march but we MUST begin the march, why? The white supremacist fascists are using our loose gun regulations to foster the culture of fear and violence to gain followers and to eventually take over the US by force.
We start by recognizing the danger, spell it all out in ways that break through to the general public who normally don't follow politics. The other side wants war, they want death and destruction. They don't mind dead schoolchildren, heck in many circles they want it this way as it also destroys the public school system. No more half measures or "reasonableness" the other side is counting on this, playing the stall game because it's worked so well for so many decades.
"They don't mind dead schoolchildren, heck in many circles they want it this way as it also destroys the public school system."
Please provide your source for this.
“ Writing in The Federalist on Wednesday, staff writer Jordan Boyd argued that Tuesday’s tragedy made a “somber case for homeschooling.” More specifically, Boyd singles out “government schools” as the culprit. “The same institutions that punish students for ‘misgendering’ people and hide curriculum from parents are simply not equipped to safeguard your children from harm,” wrote Boyd. ”
https://www.motherjones.com/mojo-wire/2022/05/public-school-mass-shooting-homeschooling-federalist/
And you think this person doesn't mind dead school children?
Technically you are probably correct in that person doesn’t want dead school children. But, it sure seems they might consider that acceptable collateral damage to end public education in the U.S. (arguably our public education system is one of the best things we’ve ever accomplished as a nation)
Only tangentially. Far more interested in his agenda.
Nope.
I would add that the “magazine” be non removable.
But really I agree. Nothing will happen, at least in my lifetime. There are more insane people getting elected, not fewer. Lately I’ve been wondering what would happen if the Q Anon crazies do get control and start arresting people like Bill Gates and Tom Hanks. What will we do?
And it seems so ironic that the people who hate our government the most and want to arm themselves to destroy it are the ones that are the most “patriotic”.
A quick eyeball of those crime rate charts suggests that crime rates plunge under Bill Clinton, level off under George W. Bush, starting moving down again under Obama (albeit declining more slowly than under Clinton), then start rising again under Trump.
Doesn't work that way. It started because the financial crisis killed contraband sales. Real crime adjusted for population peaked in 1982 though it remained elevated until 1994.
Less gang warfare means less deaths.
"I've never been interested in pie-in-the-sky activism..."
I don't understand this at all. How do you expect to build support? Almost everything was pie in the sky once.
Gun legislation seems very unlikely right now, but we could work to change American gun culture.
One reason we have so much death is because we have developed a gun culture that is particularly disinterested in safety. When those suburban dads put a loaded gun under the pillow, they are engaged in a very dangerous practice. People leave loaded guns lying around in their homes, in cars, in purses and backpacks. About 250,000 guns are stolen each year. Those thefts are overwhelmingly of unsecured guns.
We don't need laws to change culture. We can do that with a marketing campaign. It will take time, but we can make headway.
A culture that prioritizes safe storage of guns will make it harder for children to access them and harder for criminals to steal them. It will reduce suicides. In time it could make real gun control more possible, as people start to view safe behaviors as "normal."
Countries that have a lot of guns but few deaths, like Switzerland, have a very different gun culture than we do. The shooting stories I can tell from my circle of acquaintances would horrify the Swiss: guy shot in foot when the loaded gun he kept under his truck's driver's seat got jiggled; daycare worker shot when owner's adult son dropped the backpack holding his loaded handgun; kid shot by friend with the gun they had just found in an unlocked car; depressed young man shoots himself with gun his dad left laying around, instead of locking it up, even though everyone in the family knew the son was struggling with depression.
All of those shootings (two resulted in deaths) happened because gun owners decided that safe gun storage was unnecessary. We can convince a lot of people that safe storage is absolutely necessary. I, for one, got my mom to help me gang up on my father to force him to safely store his guns. It was a choice between guns laying around or grandkids visiting.
The Swiss likely don't have a wild west self defense fantasy culture, which is not even remotely surprising for a European country with firsthand World War experience.
I'd like to see how many verifiable instances of actual successful self defense there are - I am sure there have to be some, but I strongly suspect that its some number which, if exposed to the light, would be so small relative to other gun injuries and deaths as to make gun ownership for "personal self defense" un-justifiable.
I mean, we don't allow people to put land mines in front of their houses for the simple reason that for every one burgler blow up it would be 30,000 postal workers, 15,000 Amazon delivery driveres, 20,000 children, 100,000 cats, and 10,000 owners who forgot they put it there.
I frankly suspect that gun based personal self defense is similarly poor.
The Swiss don't have world war experience. In both world wars, they were onlookers.
"Onlookers".
One issue with the "self defense" usage of guns is that the surveys we have are self-reported usage. A lot of the mass shooting events of last weekend were likely viewed as "self defense" by the participants. But your average person may instead view them as shootouts between armed groups.
The most recent mass shooting in my city was one guy shooting at his sister's abusive ex boyfriend, and then the ex starts firing back. It happened in a crowded night club, resulting in many people shot, with one dead. I'm sure if you asked them at least one, if not both, of those guys would claim self defense. Criminals often feel the need to pull out a gun. If you are a drug dealer you may use a gun in "self defense" quite often.
Guns are pretty useless for victims of domestic violence, though. Pulling a gun on your abuser will get you tossed in jail.
Indeed. And with respect to that story if I was in charge that's not a "self defense" example regardless of what anyone claims.
The result has to be better than what would have happened if only one gun was involved: If any bystanders are injured there is no upside to whatever "self defense" was claimed.
You are correct: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15522849/
The fear of many white gun owners is not of crime itself, but of masses of non-whites swarming out of the inner cities or across the border and attacking them in their suburbs and rural towns. This is not a new fear. One of the purposes of militias in the Constitution is to put down insurrections, and by that at least some people meant slave insurrections.
So the fantasies of gun owners about protecting themselves against crime are not likely to be changed by changing their perceptions of actual crime. "Crime" is to a large extent a euphemism for feared actions by non-whites. Agitation about crime - presumed to be mostly in the non-white inner cities - is another type of dog whistle.
^^^ This. I'm in Chicagoland - the local news routinely has murder stats, car jackings, "wildings" downtown, ad nauseum. It's not just Fox News that's pushing the "crime out of control" narrative but local stations following "if it bleeds, it leads..." They have a crowded media market to compete in - of course they are going to report on stuff that people want to see (or fear to see.)
It's not only their fear of insurrections, it's a desire to have an insurrection (MAGA) if they can't get what they want by democratic means.
White gun owners?? Lazy analysis and why you don't get any where. Legal guns don't matter like 50 years ago. No demo is as armed per person as the black man. Period. Organized crime or not, most whites aren't flying around with the type of illegal weapons than them.
You simply represent the problem with analysis. If your so ignorant, you need removal from the conservation.
It's the white gun owners - and the gun manufacturers - who have the power to prevent meaningful gun restrictions. Blacks do account for a lot of gun deaths, but they are not preventing gun legislation. In taking advantage of the availability of guns, they are victims as a group.
They interviewed several gun owners from Uvalde and they all said they had to be armed to protect themselves from the "illegal aliens" swarming across the border.
American Gun Worship
The only religion that requires child sacrifices
To be honest the school shooting angle is a little disingenuous when it comes to banning guns. Makes up an almost infinitesimal portion of gun deaths
I think if we’re talking in terms of curbing gun death we should consider suicides and gang/domestic violence rather than these high profile shootings. Yeah they’re not as flashy but they literally kill 1000x times more people than mass shootings. And mostly people use semi auto handguns
Mandating people to lock their firearms in some way is the biggest thing that comes to mind. Make it harder to grab them in the heat of the moment
Well, speakers at the recent NRA convention (it is over, isn't it?) have made clear what they consider to be "FREEDOM!!"
It's huddling behind shielded walls with barricaded windows and locked doors, afraid to go out into the world, and clutching your high powered, semiautomatic rifles.
They're making "the nanny state" look better and better every day.
+1
Most handgun deaths come from suicide or Black gang violence. Handguns are a solid protective device. If anything, training Americans how to use them would have beneficial effects.
The international gun manufacturers flooded America in the 80's, which got worse in the 90's after the cold war ended.
Absence of handguns is an even solider protective device.