America's Gun Violence

Thirty Bills Unpaid

brianlux said:

Thirty Bills Unpaid said:

brianlux said:

Ferdinand.

Very peaceful until stung by a bee.

I love that story.  I can relate.  Sting me, and I will kick and snort.  Otherwise, you will find me sniffing the flowers.

Yup.

As well... things aren't always what they seem to be.

dignin

Good for Cash. What she is saying and doing is very admirable. (my words)


Country Musicians, Stand Up to the NRA. (not my words)



https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/03/opinion/rosanne-cash-country-musicians-nra.html

PJfanwillneverleave1

Gern Blansten said:

http://www.vox.com/2014/6/11/5797892/us-world-firearm-ownership-map

Harvard researchers Daniel Hemenway and Matthew Miller examined 26 developed countries, and checked whether gun ownership correlated with murder rates. They found that "a highly significant positive correlation between total homicide rates and both proxies for gun availability." They also didn't find much evidence that a higher rate of gun murders led to lower rates of other kinds of murder (i.e., stabbings).

RYME

Again what law or laws can you pass tomorrow that will stop Crazy?  I contend that no matter how many laws you put on the books, you take guns away from all law abiding gun owners who simply want to mind their own business.
The Bad Guys by default don't obey the laws we have.  You can't rely on the government to save you from everything.
There is no legislation that can stop a Crazy guy if he is determined enough.
If guns are not handy the crazies will find another means of killing. Look at the Boston bombers. They used those explosive backpack bombs full of nails and bolts. Should we ban the sale of nails and bolts from hardware stores cuz somebody might use it in a backpack bomb?  I think a pressure cooker was involved too, so maybe we have to eliminate crock pots, no more roast beefs.
If someone breaks into your house in the middle of the night and you are totally unarmed.  What do you do?
Call 911 while hiding under the bed?
Beg the violent Criminal for mercy while you are wanting for police to show up?  When the police do show up, you then become a hostage.
Or maybe consider educating yourself on how to operate a firearm. They have good firearm handling and safety courses just for that. Learn how to operate the one you have and be accurate with it,  just have one and know how to use it just in case. Hopefully and more than likely you'll never need it.
I think at some point people need to take responsibility for their immediate safety.
But of course the Vegas-style shooting nobody could possibly be prepared for, where you have a guy up 30 floors shooting down on a crowd that's just insane.
Most of this gun violence occurs in populated areas and gun free zones. Movie theaters, schools, night clubs. People who want to kill are by default cowards so they go to where they know they'll be Little Resistance and by the time the police got there they've already been shooting for a while unfortunately.
Now if you go to a gun club where people pay money so they can shoot their rifles or do some skeet shooting, no gun violence happens at these places does it.  Why not? Because everyone at a gun club is an armed, presumably law-abiding citizens.  A person that wants to do a lot of killing isn't going to go someplace where he knows everybody is armed.

brianlux

RYME said:

Again what law or laws can you pass tomorrow that will stop Crazy?  I contend that no matter how many laws you put on the books, you take guns away from all law abiding gun owners who simply want to mind their own business.
The Bad Guys by default don't obey the laws we have.  You can't rely on the government to save you from everything.
There is no legislation that can stop a Crazy guy if he is determined enough.
If guns are not handy the crazies will find another means of killing. Look at the Boston bombers. They used those explosive backpack bombs full of nails and bolts. Should we ban the sale of nails and bolts from hardware stores cuz somebody might use it in a backpack bomb?  I think a pressure cooker was involved too, so maybe we have to eliminate crock pots, no more roast beefs.
If someone breaks into your house in the middle of the night and you are totally unarmed.  What do you do?
Call 911 while hiding under the bed?
Beg the violent Criminal for mercy while you are wanting for police to show up?  When the police do show up, you then become a hostage.
Or maybe consider educating yourself on how to operate a firearm. They have good firearm handling and safety courses just for that. Learn how to operate the one you have and be accurate with it,  just have one and know how to use it just in case. Hopefully and more than likely you'll never need it.
I think at some point people need to take responsibility for their immediate safety.
But of course the Vegas-style shooting nobody could possibly be prepared for, where you have a guy up 30 floors shooting down on a crowd that's just insane.
Most of this gun violence occurs in populated areas and gun free zones. Movie theaters, schools, night clubs. People who want to kill are by default cowards so they go to where they know they'll be Little Resistance and by the time the police got there they've already been shooting for a while unfortunately.
Now if you go to a gun club where people pay money so they can shoot their rifles or do some skeet shooting, no gun violence happens at these places does it.  Why not? Because everyone at a gun club is an armed, presumably law-abiding citizens.  A person that wants to do a lot of killing isn't going to go someplace where he knows everybody is armed.

Nobody is even suggesting you can legislate against crazy.  That's a rather weak argument, isn't it? 

As far as the rest, your arguments quickly fall apart when looking at the stats.

PJfanwillneverleave1

^^^
Nice stats.  Go Canada!

Smellyman

RYME said:

Again what law or laws can you pass tomorrow that will stop Crazy?  I contend that no matter how many laws you put on the books, you take guns away from all law abiding gun owners who simply want to mind their own business.
The Bad Guys by default don't obey the laws we have.  You can't rely on the government to save you from everything.
There is no legislation that can stop a Crazy guy if he is determined enough.
If guns are not handy the crazies will find another means of killing. Look at the Boston bombers. They used those explosive backpack bombs full of nails and bolts. Should we ban the sale of nails and bolts from hardware stores cuz somebody might use it in a backpack bomb?  I think a pressure cooker was involved too, so maybe we have to eliminate crock pots, no more roast beefs.
If someone breaks into your house in the middle of the night and you are totally unarmed.  What do you do?
Call 911 while hiding under the bed?
Beg the violent Criminal for mercy while you are wanting for police to show up?  When the police do show up, you then become a hostage.
Or maybe consider educating yourself on how to operate a firearm. They have good firearm handling and safety courses just for that. Learn how to operate the one you have and be accurate with it,  just have one and know how to use it just in case. Hopefully and more than likely you'll never need it.
I think at some point people need to take responsibility for their immediate safety.
But of course the Vegas-style shooting nobody could possibly be prepared for, where you have a guy up 30 floors shooting down on a crowd that's just insane.
Most of this gun violence occurs in populated areas and gun free zones. Movie theaters, schools, night clubs. People who want to kill are by default cowards so they go to where they know they'll be Little Resistance and by the time the police got there they've already been shooting for a while unfortunately.
Now if you go to a gun club where people pay money so they can shoot their rifles or do some skeet shooting, no gun violence happens at these places does it.  Why not? Because everyone at a gun club is an armed, presumably law-abiding citizens.  A person that wants to do a lot of killing isn't going to go someplace where he knows everybody is armed.

^^^
What living in fear looks and feels like.

mcgruff10

Smellyman said:

RYME said:

Again what law or laws can you pass tomorrow that will stop Crazy?  I contend that no matter how many laws you put on the books, you take guns away from all law abiding gun owners who simply want to mind their own business.
The Bad Guys by default don't obey the laws we have.  You can't rely on the government to save you from everything.
There is no legislation that can stop a Crazy guy if he is determined enough.
If guns are not handy the crazies will find another means of killing. Look at the Boston bombers. They used those explosive backpack bombs full of nails and bolts. Should we ban the sale of nails and bolts from hardware stores cuz somebody might use it in a backpack bomb?  I think a pressure cooker was involved too, so maybe we have to eliminate crock pots, no more roast beefs.
If someone breaks into your house in the middle of the night and you are totally unarmed.  What do you do?
Call 911 while hiding under the bed?
Beg the violent Criminal for mercy while you are wanting for police to show up?  When the police do show up, you then become a hostage.
Or maybe consider educating yourself on how to operate a firearm. They have good firearm handling and safety courses just for that. Learn how to operate the one you have and be accurate with it,  just have one and know how to use it just in case. Hopefully and more than likely you'll never need it.
I think at some point people need to take responsibility for their immediate safety.
But of course the Vegas-style shooting nobody could possibly be prepared for, where you have a guy up 30 floors shooting down on a crowd that's just insane.
Most of this gun violence occurs in populated areas and gun free zones. Movie theaters, schools, night clubs. People who want to kill are by default cowards so they go to where they know they'll be Little Resistance and by the time the police got there they've already been shooting for a while unfortunately.
Now if you go to a gun club where people pay money so they can shoot their rifles or do some skeet shooting, no gun violence happens at these places does it.  Why not? Because everyone at a gun club is an armed, presumably law-abiding citizens.  A person that wants to do a lot of killing isn't going to go someplace where he knows everybody is armed.

^^^
What living in fear looks and feels like.

I don't live in fear but i am prepared for different situations and know the world can be quite nasty if conditions are right.  I have a generator, I ve used it once.  I have fire extinguishers, never been used. I'm cpr certified, never used that either. Firearms, used for hunting but thankfully never used to defend my family. 

bootlegger10

Nails and bolts have a purpose other than a pressure cooker bomb component.  Guns only kill people.  That is their purpose.    Of course we would ban bolts and nails if their only use was to killl people.

PJPOWER

brianlux said:

RYME said:

Again what law or laws can you pass tomorrow that will stop Crazy?  I contend that no matter how

Nobody is even suggesting you can legislate against crazy.  That's a rather weak argument, isn't it? 

As far as the rest, your arguments quickly fall apart when looking at the stats.

As do most gun control arguments, if anything in this 538 article is true...?  This relates to “jumping the gun” on the legislation that many think would actually make a difference.  What is your one fix for the situation?  I want lives saved, I do not want feel good policies that everyone declares a big win and forgets about until the next mass murder, which is exactly what the Washington game is all about:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-used-to-think-gun-control-was-the-answer-my-research-told-me-otherwise/2017/10/03/d33edca6-a851-11e7-92d1-58c702d2d975_story

“Leah Libresco is a statistician and former newswriter at FiveThirtyEight, a data journalism site. She is the author of “Arriving at Amen.”

Before I started researching gun deaths, gun-control policy used to frustrate me. I wished the National Rifle Association would stop blocking common-sense gun-control reforms such as banning assault weapons, restricting silencers, shrinking magazine sizes and all the other measures that could make guns less deadly.

Then, my colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I’d lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence. The best ideas left standing were narrowly tailored interventions to protect subtypes of potential victims, not broad attempts to limit the lethality of guns.

I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain and Australia and concluded that they didn’t prove much about what America’s policy should be. Neither nation experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans. Mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress. And in both Australia and Britain, the gun restrictions had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths.

When I looked at the other oft-praised policies, I found out that no gun owner walks into the store to buy an “assault weapon.” It’s an invented classification that includes any semi-automatic that has two or more features, such as a bayonet mount, a rocket-propelled grenade-launcher mount, a folding stock or a pistol grip. But guns are modular, and any hobbyist can easily add these features at home, just as if they were snapping together Legos.

As for silencers — they deserve that name only in movies, where they reduce gunfire to a soft puick puick. In real life, silencers limit hearing damage for shooters but don’t make gunfire dangerously quiet. An AR-15 with a silencer is about as loud as a jackhammer. Magazine limits were a little more promising, but a practiced shooter could still change magazines so fast as to make the limit meaningless.

As my co-workers and I kept looking at the data, it seemed less and less clear that one broad gun-control restriction could make a big difference. Two-thirds of gun deaths in the United States every year are suicides. Almost no proposed restriction would make it meaningfully harder for people with guns on hand to use them. I couldn't even answer my most desperate question: If I had a friend who had guns in his home and a history of suicide attempts, was there anything I could do that would help?

However, the next-largest set of gun deaths — 1 in 5 — were young men aged 15 to 34, killed in homicides. These men were most likely to die at the hands of other young men, often related to gang loyalties or other street violence. And the last notable group of similar deaths was the 1,700 women murdered per year, usually as the result of domestic violence. Far more people were killed in these ways than in mass-shooting incidents, but few of the popularly floated policies were tailored to serve them.

By the time we published our project, I didn’t believe in many of the interventions I’d heard politicians tout. I was still anti-gun, at least from the point of view of most gun owners, and I don’t want a gun in my home, as I think the risk outweighs the benefits. But I can’t endorse policies whose only selling point is that gun owners hate them. Policies that often seem as if they were drafted by people who have encountered guns only as a figure in a briefing book or an image on the news.

Instead, I found the most hope in more narrowly tailored interventions. Potential suicide victims, women menaced by their abusive partners and kids swept up in street vendettas are all in danger from guns, but they each require different protections.

 Play Video 1:54

Was the Las Vegas shooting the worst in U.S. history? It depends.

While the attack on the Las Vegas strip is the deadliest in modern American history, attacks in the 19th and 20th centuries had higher death tolls. (Victoria Walker/The Washington Post)

Older men, who make up the largest shareof gun suicides, need better access to people who could care for them and get them help. Women endangered by specific men need to be prioritized by police, who can enforce restraining orders prohibiting these men from buying and owning guns. Younger men at risk of violence need to be identified before they take a life or lose theirs and to be connected to mentors who can help them de-escalate conflicts.

Even the most data-driven practices, such as New Orleans’ plan to identify gang members for intervention based on previous arrests and weapons seizures, wind up more personal than most policies floated. The young men at risk can be identified by an algorithm, but they have to be disarmed one by one, personally — not en masse as though they were all interchangeable. A reduction in gun deaths is most likely to come from finding smaller chances for victories and expanding those solutions as much as possible. We save lives by focusing on a range of tactics to protect the different kinds of potential victims and reforming potential killers, not from sweeping bans focused on the guns themselves.”

Thirty Bills Unpaid

bootlegger10 said:

Nails and bolts have a purpose other than a pressure cooker bomb component.  Guns only kill people.  That is their purpose.    Of course we would ban bolts and nails if their only use was to killl people.

Yes. Correct.

One shooter. One vantage point. A safe distance from any resistance. Over 500 dead or maimed in less than an hour. An absolutely fantastic tool for producing carnage and one anybody should be able to own! 

mace1229

brianlux said:

RYME said:

Again what law or laws can you pass tomorrow that will stop Crazy?  I contend that no matter how many laws you put on the books, you take guns away from all law abiding gun owners who simply want to mind their own business.
The Bad Guys by default don't obey the laws we have.  You can't rely on the government to save you from everything.
There is no legislation that can stop a Crazy guy if he is determined enough.
If guns are not handy the crazies will find another means of killing. Look at the Boston bombers. They used those explosive backpack bombs full of nails and bolts. Should we ban the sale of nails and bolts from hardware stores cuz somebody might use it in a backpack bomb?  I think a pressure cooker was involved too, so maybe we have to eliminate crock pots, no more roast beefs.
If someone breaks into your house in the middle of the night and you are totally unarmed.  What do you do?
Call 911 while hiding under the bed?
Beg the violent Criminal for mercy while you are wanting for police to show up?  When the police do show up, you then become a hostage.
Or maybe consider educating yourself on how to operate a firearm. They have good firearm handling and safety courses just for that. Learn how to operate the one you have and be accurate with it,  just have one and know how to use it just in case. Hopefully and more than likely you'll never need it.
I think at some point people need to take responsibility for their immediate safety.
But of course the Vegas-style shooting nobody could possibly be prepared for, where you have a guy up 30 floors shooting down on a crowd that's just insane.
Most of this gun violence occurs in populated areas and gun free zones. Movie theaters, schools, night clubs. People who want to kill are by default cowards so they go to where they know they'll be Little Resistance and by the time the police got there they've already been shooting for a while unfortunately.
Now if you go to a gun club where people pay money so they can shoot their rifles or do some skeet shooting, no gun violence happens at these places does it.  Why not? Because everyone at a gun club is an armed, presumably law-abiding citizens.  A person that wants to do a lot of killing isn't going to go someplace where he knows everybody is armed.

Nobody is even suggesting you can legislate against crazy.  That's a rather weak argument, isn't it? 

As far as the rest, your arguments quickly fall apart when looking at the stats.

Also speaks to the violent crime. The non-firearm homicide is only second to a country virtually without any guns. You can't deny the violent problem in the States. Not saying guns aren't a problem, but violence and crime in general are a problem here.

riley540

Some quick facts I’ve dug up. 

US gun homicide rate has dropped since the 80s

US Gun suicide rate has gone up since the 80s

a Mass shooting is a shooting non gang related where more than 4 people are killed. There has been less than 5 of those this year. 

US statistics on gun deaths include suicides. 

Over 90% of gun deaths are performed with hand guns, this includes suicides and gang related incidents. 

riley540

I guess after research, I don’t believe mass shootings should be the main focus. I think we should work more on suicide prevention and preventing gang growth. My home towns gang population continues to grow, and most of the fire arms in their incicdents are illegally obtained. I think focusing on these two things could bring the numbers down a lot

riley540

Just offering some realistic solutions to help bring the gun death numbers down 

tbergs

riley540 said:

Some quick facts I’ve dug up. 

US gun homicide rate has dropped since the 80s

US Gun suicide rate has gone up since the 80s

a Mass shooting is a shooting non gang related where more than 4 people are killed. There has been less than 5 of those this year. 

US statistics on gun deaths include suicides. 

Over 90% of gun deaths are performed with hand guns, this includes suicides and gang related incidents. 

You have some errors in your statistics. Only counting mass shootings where more than 4 people die is going to skew the number low and not be accurate. You have to count shootings where at least 4 people are shot. Try this data https://www.massshootingtracker.org/data

Please don't peddle false statistics about our mass shootings problem in this country. You can also read the FBI active shooter report that was compiled for 2000 - 2013, which also has some very good information.

Other then that though, yeah, gun deaths are down from their peak a few decades ago.

From Pew:

The nation’s overall gun death rate has declined 31% since 1993. This total includes homicides and suicides, in addition to a smaller number of fatal police shootings, accidental shooting deaths and those of undetermined intent. For example, in 2014 there were 464 fatal police shootings, up from 333 in 2009. (Government data on fatal police shootings are also collected and reported by the FBI, though the agency acknowledges there are discrepanciesbetween federal and local law enforcement counts.)

The rate of nonfatal gun victimizations declined in a similar way to the gun death rate, with a large drop in the 1990s – 63% between 1993 and 2000. The decline since then has been more uneven. In 2014, there were 174.8 nonfatal violent gun victimizations per 100,000 people ages 12 and older.

Despite these trends, most U.S. adults think gun crimes have increased. In our 2013 survey, more than half (56%) of Americans said the number of gun crimes had gone up compared with 20 years ago. Another 26% said the number of gun crimes had remained the same, and just 12% said gun crimes had declined.

jnimhaoileoin

brianlux said: 

RYME said:

Again what law or laws can you pass tomorrow that will stop Crazy?  I contend that no matter how many laws you put on the books, you take guns away from all law abiding gun owners who simply want to mind their own business.
The Bad Guys by default don't obey the laws we have.  You can't rely on the government to save you from everything.
There is no legislation that can stop a Crazy guy if he is determined enough.
If guns are not handy the crazies will find another means of killing. Look at the Boston bombers. They used those explosive backpack bombs full of nails and bolts. Should we ban the sale of nails and bolts from hardware stores cuz somebody might use it in a backpack bomb?  I think a pressure cooker was involved too, so maybe we have to eliminate crock pots, no more roast beefs.
If someone breaks into your house in the middle of the night and you are totally unarmed.  What do you do?
Call 911 while hiding under the bed?
Beg the violent Criminal for mercy while you are wanting for police to show up?  When the police do show up, you then become a hostage.
Or maybe consider educating yourself on how to operate a firearm. They have good firearm handling and safety courses just for that. Learn how to operate the one you have and be accurate with it,  just have one and know how to use it just in case. Hopefully and more than likely you'll never need it.
I think at some point people need to take responsibility for their immediate safety.
But of course the Vegas-style shooting nobody could possibly be prepared for, where you have a guy up 30 floors shooting down on a crowd that's just insane.
Most of this gun violence occurs in populated areas and gun free zones. Movie theaters, schools, night clubs. People who want to kill are by default cowards so they go to where they know they'll be Little Resistance and by the time the police got there they've already been shooting for a while unfortunately.
Now if you go to a gun club where people pay money so they can shoot their rifles or do some skeet shooting, no gun violence happens at these places does it.  Why not? Because everyone at a gun club is an armed, presumably law-abiding citizens.  A person that wants to do a lot of killing isn't going to go someplace where he knows everybody is armed.

Nobody is even suggesting you can legislate against crazy.  That's a rather weak argument, isn't it? 

As far as the rest, your arguments quickly fall apart when looking at the stats.

I have to question these statistics. I don't think I've ever heard of a gun suicide in Ireland and I don't know where they got their information. Also amazed our homicide rate is so much higher than UK but I guess that could be explained by our small population

mcgruff10

Doesn't the FBI define a mass shooting as more than four people getting killed?

mace1229

mcgruff10 said:

Doesn't the FBI define a mass shooting as more than four people getting killed?

I've always heard it as number of injured (presumably shot). So you can have a mass shooting with no deaths.
But I agreed with your point, mass shootings are just the tip of the problem. Those killed in a mass shooting are something like 2% of gun deaths.
That doesn't mean we don't do anything against it, I'm for regulations on assault rifles. I just don't get why its always the focus while 2 murders a day in Chicago goes ignored.

HughFreakingDillon

so if some inept dotard shot up a school with hundreds of people in it, and missed all of them, that wouldn't be classified as a mass shooting incident? bullet casings everywhere, terror reigns through the halls, but not a mass shooting. Hmmmm......