The Honorable Gabrielle Giffords and a Stance on Gun Control [37]
79
A Brief Comment on the Shooting
Politicians of all stripes have been the target of threats by people unhappy with their brand of politics or decisions that they have made. The vast majority of the threats are ultimately harmless, but you never know which ones aren't. The problem is, you can't run scared and stay holed up in your office but you can't afford the kind of security presidents have. So you take your chances.
I believe that the break-ins to the offices of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the other Arizona Democratic supporters of health care reform are the result of politically motivated violence from high scale Right-wing Authoritarian followers. That kind of action is well within the scope of RWA behavior. I do not believe that to be true in Jared Lee Loughner's attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords however. He was a registered Independent, a loner, railed against government in general, and didn't appear to support a particular cause. He seems to have mentally deteriorated rapidly over the last few years. It just seems unlikely that he had what would be a normal political motivation for assassination.
He did buy the 9mm Glock he used legally from an Arizona gun shop. He also abought a high capacity ammunition magazine legally as well. This enabled him to shoot 20 people of whom, amazingly, only six died. In 2003, this size of massacre would not have happened because high capacity magazines were illegal. The NRA and the gun lobby won its battle to stop the prohibition against the sale of high capacity magazines from being renewed in 2004. The killer also brought the gun to the Congress on the Corner event legally as well ... concealed even though he didn't have a permit. For Arizona, you see, specifically passed a law ensuring a permit is not required to carry a concealed weapon. In fact, there is legisation moving forward in Arizona to let students bring concealed weapons onto school grounds! How wonderful is that???
Ironically, one of the bystanders who was carrying a concealed weapon was interviewed on CNN and he related that he thought about using his weapon to bring down Laughner but thought better of it. His reasoning? He knew that most people around him and in cars nearby probably had guns as well and if he pulled his out, they would take him as a second shooter and take his life. So he did nothing.
In comments to another hub, I believe it was CMerritt who asked me to offer my thoughts on gun control, so, with the above preamble I will attempt to do so.
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Let's Start With Some Statistics (Sorry)
ALL else being equal, objects and substances are controlled or prohibited by society when they have the capacity, when misused, to do harm to society. This is simple common sense that all societies practice, except in America. In America, an exception is made for certain forms of pistols and rifles (guns, for short). When used for the purpose for which they were designed, guns are deadly; they definitely harm society. The fact that they can be used for other purposes is not material. Guns are designed to be lethal, plain and simple. Simple logic, therefore, demands that guns be controlled or prohibited entirely to protect society from misuse by humans.
In America, there has been a two hundred year long battle over how guns will be controlled. In normal circumstances, this should be a simple debate but our founding fathers decided to make things interesting for the generations to follow by including the following somewhat ambiguous words in the Bill of Rights or, more specifically, the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. To wit:
"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"
And the debate was on.
The statistics clearly show that easy access to guns means more homicides. The Center for Gun Violence produced these 2007 statistics:
RANK
| STATE
| % GUNS IN HOMES
| GUN DEATHS/100,000
|
|---|---|---|---|
1
| LOUISIANA
| 45.6
| 19.87
|
2
| MISSISSIPPI
| 54.3
| 18.32
|
3
| ALASKA
| 60.6
| 17.62
|
4
| ALABAMA
| 57.2
| 17.55
|
5
| NEVADA
| 31.5
| 16.21
|
46
| NEW YORK
| 18.1
| 5.07
|
47
| CONNETICUT
| 16.2
| 4.27
|
48
| MASSACHUSETTES
| 12.8
| 3.63
|
49
| RHODE ISLAND
| 13.3
| 3.51
|
50
| HAWAII
| 9.7
| 2.82
|
[Authors Note - (Once a long, long time ago, 1971 I think, one of my concentrations was statistics, so if you were wondering why ...) The numbers presented come from data produce from two primary sources. The homicide statistics were produced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Center for Injury Control and Prevention. Their data comes from various National Vital Statistics Reports. One report, Volume 58, Number 1, August 19, 2009, that I looked at verified the number of homicides, 17,520, in 2007 of which 12,129 were by guns that were cited in the data that I used. The % Guns in Home figures came from a Pediatrics article presenting the results from a study titled "Prevalence of Household Firearms and Firearm-Storage Practices in the 50 States and the District of Columbia: Findings From the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, 2002". The method used to derive its statistics was: "We analyzed data from the 2002 cross-sectional BehavioralRisk Factor Surveillance System survey of 240735 adults fromrandomly selected households with telephones in the 50 statesand the District of Columbia."
With State population figures, the % Guns in Home by State data, the total number of homicides by states data, and the total homicides by gun by State data, the rest is simple arithmetic. The table above is one of the more simple, straight forward statistical tables you come across. The distinction between the top of the chart and the bottom of the chart is dramatic.]
The link between easy access to guns and high rates of homicide by gun doesn't get any clearer than this, at least to a statistician. You have the five states with the highest percentage of guns in the home AND the least strict gun laws having the five highest rates of homicide by gun in the nation in 2007. As a counterpoint, you have the five states with the lowest percentage of guns in the home AND with some of the strictest gun laws in the nation having five lowest homicide by gun rates in the nation in 2007.
Reasonable people should be swayed by this, and this alone, that the case to control, even prohibit gun ownership, is compelling. Right-wing Authoritarians, on the other hand, who make up a significant portion of the gun lobby will believe the data is false, that it can't be true or they will simply ignore it because it doesn't conform to their version of reality. This, however, isn't the end of the story.
Before going on, I want to pile on a bit and toss in a few more statistics.
- The rate of firearm deaths among kids under age 15 is almost 12 times higher in the United States than in 25 other industrialized countries combined. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
- American kids are 16 times more likely to be murdered with a gun, 11 times more likely to commit suicide with a gun, and nine times more likely to die from a firearm accident than children in 25 other industrialized countries combined. (Centers for Disease Control)
- American children are more at risk from firearms than the children of any other industrialized nation. In one year, firearms killed no children in Japan, 19 in Great Britain, 57 in Germany, 109 in France, 153 in Canada, and 5,285 in the United States. (Centers for Disease Control)
- AND THE SLAUGHTER GOES ON!!
OK, done with the statistics.
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"Guns Don't Kill People, People Kill People"
The case, as I say, IS compelling for outright prohibition of gun ownership, but it isn't overwhelming, at least for me as it is for many. You also have this small problem of the Second Amendment. What is overwhelmingly called for though is Regulation! But first an editorial on one of the stupidest, knee-jerk arguements so commonly used in defense of gun rights - "guns don't kill people, people kill people".
Besides the Second Amendment, the most widely used catch-phrase "argument" is that "guns don't kill people, people kill people" as if that really carries logical weight. Well it doesn't. It just leaves its utterer open to such slanderous charges that the gun lobby supports pedophiles. WHAT??? Well yes, at least based on the logic the gun lobby wants everybody to buy into!
The pedophile can argue with just as much authority as the gun lobby spokesperson that "pornographic drawings of children don't hurt children, people hurt children". Bull pucky! Pornographic drawings of children do hurt children in just the same way that guns hurt people ... and children. There is no logical difference between the two arguments. All that was done was to substitute the phrase "pornographic drawings of children" (a noun) for the word "guns" (also a noun) and "Hurt Children" for (Kill People). The meaning of sentence didn't change, just the objects it was referring to.
Such horrible drawings do hurt children, in and of themselves, that is why such drawings are illegal to possess. Who of the gun lobby says that people should be allowed to possess such drawings? None, I bet, unless the happen to be pedophiles as well. In the same manner, guns do hurt people, in and of themselves, that is why this argument is so specious.
I am not claiming that people shouldn't be able to own guns. All I am saying is there is no logical reason, beyond the Second Amendment, why the State or the Federal government can't regulate the ownership, including prohibition, of firearms. Said another way, the Second Amendment and subsequent Supreme Court rulings are the ONLY things stopping government at any level from prohibiting ownership of certain types of firearms.
Regulate But Don't Prohibit
TObe blunt about it, those states with loose gun laws are aiding and abetting in the murder of their own citizens. I don't see how any reasonable, intelligent person can come to any other conclusion after review the above table. The easier it is to get guns, the more guns there are in circulation per capita, then it clearly follows that there WILL be more deaths by gun per capita, period! Why is that true, be cause the statistics confirm the reverse. The more strict the gun laws, the less guns there are per capita and it follows that there IS less deaths by gun per capita, period. Unless you are an RWA, it is undeniable. If you are an RWA then 1+1 = 3, if that is what you believe to be true.
How can the legislature of Louisiana live with themselves knowing that if they only enacted the same gun regulations of say, New York they might achieve a 70% reduction in their rate of death by gun?? The fact that they don't and they know that they could is criminal in my mind. Is it yours?
As you have probably figured out by now, I am not against reasonable gun ownership for sports shooting or even self-protection. My personal feeling is that the latter reason puts more innocent people in harms way than it protects, but what do I know. I don't own any weapons of any sort once I gave up my M-16 the Army lent me.
What I do propose is a heavy dose of regulation and owner responsibility along with some tough love . It breaks down like this:
- A person may own virtually any type of weapon that is not prohibited by military necessity
- The place of storage, place of use, method of transportation, and amount of security depends on the type of weapon.
- Except for personal non-automatic handguns and non-automatic rifles, all weapons must be stored at a state authorized/supervised storage facility located at the site where they will be fired for sport.
- Personal non-automatic handguns and non-automatic rifles will be stored, unloaded, in state approved storage containers.
- All weapons will be registered with the State and proof of possession be provided annually
- Owners of any weapon will be STRICTLY liable for any damage, injury, or death of person or animal caused by any weapon registered to him or her. The only waiver from this liability is through theft if it can be proved the weapon was properly secured in an approved container or storage facility or through recorded resale where title has been properly transferred.
- Purchasing a weapon will require proof of citizenship similar to qualifying for a drivers license and a five business day waiting period for a thorough background check from a state registered gun dealer. The purchaser will have to go to a local city, county, state, or federal office to pick up a notice of clean background to authorize the gun dealer to release the weapon.
- Only clips or magazines of the smallest available sizes may be purchased
- No specialized ammunition that is incendiary, is designed to defeat armour, or is designed to do extraordinary damage upon penetration may be sold.
- There would be no limit on the number of weapons that could be purchased at any one time.
- The use of a gun in a crime becomes a federal crime, in addition to being a state crime, if the gun can be proven to have been manufactured outside of the state it was used to commit the crime.
None of these provisions inhibit the ownership of a weapons; in fact it expands on them. The Supreme Court is clear in it's interpretation of the Second Amendment; no Federal, State, or local law or ordanence may prohibit or effectively prohibit US citizens from possessing and using certain firearms. The Court is equally clear on two other points:
- Their ruling does not cover all weapons but is primarily limited to personal firearms.
- Their ruling does not prohibit the Federal, State, or local governemtns from reasonably regulating the ownership of personal firearms
I don't believe any of my proposals violate either of those two points. It does restrict where the most dangerous of the weapons can be stored and used but aren't they being bought just for target shooting? It does make the owners VERY responsible for the safekeeping of their weapons; much more so than it is today and I think that is key. I am not too worried about not limiting the quantity because there is enough oversight where that ought to raise some red flags if an army is being outfitted.
I know I am going to get a lot, and I mean a lot, of howls and screams from the gun lobbiests on these ideas. But all I can say to them is I hope you don't live in those top five states because you have a reasonable chance of getting shot by one of your buddies. Wasn't Dick Cheney shooting in Louisiana?
Gun Debate Corner
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Links To Related Sites
- Gun violence in the United States by state - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Article and Statistics on Gun, Knife, and Other Methods of Homicide - What does the 2nd Amendment have to do with gun cont...
The Legislature in Montana is taking center stage in a 218 year old debate about gun control. Ironically, the bill passed in Montana and the intent behind it is the first instance in my lifetime where the... - % of Guns in Home vs Rate of Death by Guns
- Second Amendment to the United States Constitution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wikipedia article on the Second Amendment
CommentsLoading...
This was seriously one of the worst arguments against gun ownership I have ever heard...Fire arm prohibition... really? I guess this quack needs to open a history book and read up on how well prohibition has worked..Only if you want more gun violence would you support gun prohibition.I was going to make many points on how this person is dead wrong and how their logic is extremely flawed...comparing guns to child pornography.. just goes to show how desperate to support their illogical opinion they are. What it all comes down to is that this person wants security over freedom and doesn't understand how you cannot have both.
Thank you for your polite comment, @tim, but humor me; show me where, in your precious Second Amendment, that it speaks to registering or not registering handguns and rifles, let alone machine guns, mortars, anti-tank rockets and any other weapon you care to attribute to the Second Amendment covering. I assume you approve of citizens being able to possess and use unregistered atomic bombs, given the broad interpretation you can give to the word "Arms" contained in the Amendment.
BTW, keep in mind that the Supreme Law of the Land provides a vehicle such that if the People so ordain it, the Second Amendment can be modified, or repealed outright, via another Constitutional amendment.
Absolutely the most pointless and retarded argument for "gun control". As you stated, the USA has a law, the Constitution. All other ideas purported here as good common sense ideas etc etc violate the second amendment. The Constitution also provides freedom of speech. So you get to keep your opinion and we get to keep our guns. God bless America!
Thank you for stopping by and commenting, Workhorse, especially with an opposing view, regardless of how rudely stated, just so long as it is not vulger.
First, which war did you stand a fight in? Mine was as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, where I volunteered to go to when the Army was about to send me to Germany.
Second, you apparently didn't read my hub thoroughly. If I am not mistaken, nowhere in the hub did I say I was against possessing most weapons, which your whole response was centered around, if fact, I said just the opposite, I am for most weapon ownership; instead, you should have responded to my main thesis, "weapons need to be regulated closely", just like other dangerous things like automobiles are.
Third, besides being a warrior in one life, I was a statistician in another, go figure. I am well aware of how different segments within a group "can" distort the result, but that depends entirely on the result being sought. In my case, all I am looking at are variations of rates of gun deaths by state and then comparing them to the degree of gun regulation that state has made into law. For your opposition to be valid regarding the skewing of the results, the states would have to vary significantly as to the proportion of criminals in its boundaries; if the proportions are roughly the same, then criminal population size is mute. In addition, when the actual proportion of criminals is small when compared to the total population, then your assertion becomes simply wrong.
Third, you are correct in saying "it stands to reason that death rates are higher when more law-abiding citizens are allowed to carry weapons." Absolutely. But, that wasn't what the data was showing, given that all states allow law-abiding citizens to carry weapons. Since all states allow it, your statement has no value, vis-a-vis by hub. What the data I present does show is that the states regulate weapons less, have a higher death rate than states who regulate weapons more; a point which you didn't address.
It would useful if you presented information comparing rates of deaths by guns countries that ban guns entirely when compared to the US as well as rates of deaths caused by criminals in those countries vs America and how they break down by class of weapon.
Stands to reason that deaths will be higher where law abiding citizens are allowed to carry weapons, why don't you back out the number of criminals that were in those statistics, ie. legal gun use. Additionally, statistical omissions like no CA / TX are generally because they don't support the premise argued, intellectual dishonesty. The whole pedophile rant was ignorant, Let's try another noun Elephants don't kill people, people kill people. Using your crazed logic all cars would be taken off the highways because they kill indiscriminately infants, children, adults you name the group and by the the tens of thousands a year. Also people miss use their autos so they can't be trusted with cars ban immediately. Cars are more accessible too so prohibit them, how absurd. Let's not forget evil alcohol, that ban solved the problem, everybody obeyed the law of course.
I will tell you something, I stood with a banned weapon at the gates of hell to defend your freedom in service to my country and still do today, and by God if I want to protect my family with that same weapon why is that your concern, all I have ever done is protect you. Oh that is right because some of you I protected are stupid, to bad for me and my family.
I appologize if I was some what rude but the apathy in the presentation above is offensive to me, and endangers my freedom.
Mr Esoteric
Thanks for the detailed reply.
I agree that we need others to jump into this discussion. That lack of participation from the entire hub population is really a global problem of apathy on important issues.
BTW you neglected CA.
Thanks
Hopefully some other readers will jump in to the discussion besides the five of us. You are so correct in turning a questioning eye to any statistical presentation and make the presenter support their numbers/methods. In terms of methodology, however, ultimately one must take some producers of data and surveys as correct on their face. These would be organizations who have proven themselves to be relatively unbiased and rigorous in their data collection techniques, and methodologies. For, these would include such organizations as Gallup, the CDC, the major news organizations, etc. It doesn't include such organizations who have a dog in the fight such as the one I use here, the Center on Gun Violence. So I looked behind their numbers and find they are based on CDC surveys and a well known professional publication, "Pediatics". That gives a much higher level of comfort.
Now to the rest of your comment. (We are talking about both state and federal regulations. Some states have regulations only because the feds make them.) In this comment and the ones before, you make reference to the trees within the forest. You have brought up the impact of gangs, counties, morons, untrained police, cities, and many other demographics. All of these things are important in answering certain questions that concern the details of the problem but don't really bare (bear?) on the hypothesis I am putting forward.
I assert that those states which don't control the acquisition and possesstion of weapons as strictly as other states will experience higher death rates per 100,000 population due to guns regardless of the reason they died by gun. All I care about is that a gun was used to kill another human being. If my assertion can be proven to be true, then logic says public policy ought to changed in favor of increasing the regulation of weapons more toward those states who experience lower death rates. It is simple as that. You end up with less people dead due to gunfire whether it be by accident, gangs, bad cops, or whatever.
Now, having said all of that, I guess I need to cover one assumption I haven't talked much about that the table doesn't show directly. That is catagorizing a state as being liberal or strict regarding gun laws. Now for many states, that is simple common sense. Alaska is liberal and New York is strict. More people by far per 100,000 die in Alaska due to gunshot wounds than in New York. (Alaska does have a lower homicide rate by gun than New York even though it's overall homicide rate is higher.) I don't think anybody would disagree that the states in the bottom five regulate guns much more strictly than those in the top five. Common sense bares this out as do the % Guns in Homes statistic. It stands to reason that the easier it is to acquire guns, the higher the percentage of the population that will own guns.
So, regardless of the answers that might be obtained from the questions you ask, the answer to the assertion won't change because all of those questions are susumened in the overarching inquiry ... except one.
Your last question hits the nail on the head; as gun deaths go down, do other forms of homicide go up. (Thank your for that because I got to do some math I haven't done for several years.) I took some information from some other statistics I had (see the Wikipedia link I put in the Related Links section) that had information on number of homicides (a subset of deaths) by gun, knife, and other reason, by state. The result of my number crunching is that if you look at the top 25 states ranked by rate of gun homicides per 100,000 (3.13 to 10.13) you see that the rates of homicide for All Other Causes ranges from a low of 1.51 homicides/100,000 to a high of 2.66 with an outlier of 4.44 (New Mexico). Compare that with the bottom 25 states (.43 to 3.01) that have rates for All Other Causes between a low of .64/100,000 and a high of 2.27 with an outlier of 3.04 (Alaska). There was no descernible pattern to the rate per 100,000 for All Other Causes among the states in either group. Taken together, this tells me the rates of All Other Causes of homicide do not appear to increase as the rate per 100,000 of gun homicides declines.
Mr Esoteric
I am all for regulation to exclude the criminals and the morons, but I still can't make a straignt line in your conclusion of regulation versus deaths. These are different states with different cultures, and therefore apples and oranges.
Are we talking about federal regulations, and or state regulations on gun control.
The stats not only don't register CA but also TX and AZ where concealed weapons are allowed, if not encouraged. Californina has been the scence of many shootings by gangs, and morons, as well as not too well trained police.
As you can tell I am not a fan of pure statistics, and my initial reaction is to challenge them.
I would first include all non lethal shootings to compare with the gun deaths. I would also like to see the demographics of the counties and cities where these gun incidents took place.
Then compare them against the other weapons that caused injury or death.
For example, when the gun deaths or injuries went down did other weapon incidents go up, down or stay the same?
Thanks
You are welcome OpinionDuck and real dialogue is wonderful because it brings out great questions like yours and CMerritt's and hopefully rational responses.
Remember, my stand is not against gun ownership. My stand is for strong gun regulation which is what my statistics support. The table I present, and others I viewed show basically the same thing, is "rank ordered". The numbers on the left is the rank which is ordered by the rate of gun deaths per 100,000 population in that state. The national averge, btw, is 10.34 and CA ranks 33 at 8.93 gun deaths per 100,000. What I presented was the top and bottom 5 out of the 50 states. The other 40 States, which you can get to from the link I provided under Related Links, are ordered in between these two extremes.
So I have to repete, we have 50 data points which clearly show the following is true: the more guns are regulated, the fewer deaths by guns. This is why I am in favor of strong regulation of guns. I think I will expand a bit more my reasoning in the body of the hub.
CMerritt - You might find the Wikipedia article on how the Second Amendment came to be and the battle to define it once it was ratified very interesting. It is amazing how many ways those simple sounding words can be turned, even by their creators, in trying to derive its meaning. That said, early on it was clear that the Federal goverment was prohibited from prohibiting personal gun ownership. It still can outlaw machine guns and the like. What most of the fight is what can the States do. Here, the Conservatives have to step away of their principals and support Federal domination over the States, by demanding the Supreme Court apply the Bill of Rights, a document intended to limit the role of the Federal government and its existance is the ONLY reason we have a United States today, to the States and force the States and local governments not to prohibit gun ownership as well. (Boy, can I create a sentence or what!) Anti-Federalists must be turning over in their graves over this ironic turn of events, lol.
I am sorry you reject my counterpoint of how dangerous guns are to children to the point of how safe they make carriers of guns feel or actually be. A positive benefit was being given so all I was doing was presenting a worse negative consequence and asking, all else being equal, which carries more weight. If my proposals we fully implemented, in time the number of children killing each other by accident, I believe, would drop dramatically. It is an unfortunate fact of life that you can't stop people from being fools, which they are in unbelievable numbers, but you certainly can take that fact into account in your decision making.
Mr. Estoic, I really do appreciate your classy approach to debate and your Hub, it has sparked my interest to research this subject even further. Only one comment that stuck with me as I read this this morning was regarding children who have been killed due to guns in the home. It is this type of senerio's that feed into the "law making" business that offends me on many levels. Though I have deep sorrow everytime I hear of such a tragedy, I tire of laws being made to protect the "stupid" if you will. ANYONE who has an ounce of brains, that owns firearms, knows all of the precautions to prevent these horrid events from happening in the first place. I am tired of loosing freedoms at the cost of morons.
As far as the Constitution, I really don't see any ambiguity in it's intent.
"the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"
It is quite clear. I have no problem with laws (as you presented) to prevent those who have "lost" their privileges and rights due to federal crimes or those who have been declared "mentally unstable". But to the rest of the health, law abiding citizens, they should be able to obtain firearms of their choice without interference. If such firearms are then misused, then severe penalties should be in place to take proper action.
Mr. Esoteric
Thanks for adding more information on the statistics.
I appreciate your attempt to respond to my comments, but I guess I fall into that category of unreasonable people.
I cannot conclude from those statistics that guns should not owned by law abiding citizens.
The use of a limited number of diverse states is like comparing dollars to donuts. California is not included in that list and there over 37 million people and it is the home of the driveby and freeway shooters.
The bigger question is how many of those gun deaths wee committed with legally owned guns and those of illegal possessed ones.
In other words if we had taken all the legal guns away what would those death statistics look like?
How many accidental shootings versus intentional shooting were there?
How many people in those stats were intended victims, how many were collateral damage, and how many of them were shot and killed while having their own gun either in use or ready?
These are all factors that are not present in the stats.
In intentional killings it is truly the person that is doing the killing and the gun is just the means.
There really are a lot of sick people in this country and in the world and guns are just one of many means that they can use to kill and wound other people. The focus should be one them and not the tools.
Gun control is a red herring to distract and look like something is being done about crime, but it is an ineffective method IMO.
There are no statistic to support a one to one correlation with gun control and the number of homicides. The bad guys are always going to have and use guns, and it is no more expensive to get illegal guns than it is to get illegal drugs, or illegal sex.
As for the Constitution there is no prohibition in possessing or owning a gun. There are a lot of laws on the misuse of guns but not in the constitution,
Thanks for the dialogue.
Unfortunately, CMerritt, only the first two points, citizenship and background, are covered by the States and only because the Federal government is making some of them do it. The backgound check, in many cases is rushed, so the sale can be the same or the next day. I have to wonder how much information regarding mental state is in an FBI instant background check; I suspect not much. Even limited to those three items, how each is implemented varies widely from state to state and that is why you see such a dramatic difference in the table. The States at the top of my chart simply prefer not to enforce the rules energetically while those at the bottom of the list do. The rest of my suggestions aren't implemented anywhere, as far as I know, especially the concept of "strict liability", which is pretty harsh if you lost your weapon through carelessness.
As to the Supreme Court simply upholding the Constitution, it is quite that simple, as I found out in my research. There was quite a bit of back and forth debate with many revisions of the version of the amendment that finally made it into the Bill of Rights. In fact, the version that made it into the Bill is really legal, technically. It seems the House inserted the words "to the security of" in place of the word "for" in the phrase "... militia being necessary for a free State ...", which was the version the Senate sent, without sending it back to the Senate to vote on again! The letters that circulated amongst all those involved showed clear differences of opinion. Then you have the issue of semantics that had to be considered. The Court had to take all of this into account before deciding what the writers of the Amendment really had in mind.
I will grant you that there have been cases of crimes prevented, possibly even murder, because the victim was carrying if you will grant me the fact that a few children are killed month in and month out because they or their sibling or friend found a loaded gun laying around and died as a result. The question each person must answer for themselves is which carries the greater weight, preventing a crime against your person or preventing children from killing each other by accident due to gross negligence of some adult; maybe the one who is carrying to protect themselves. I know which side I come down on.
OpinionDuck - I added some words regarding the statistics up in the main body if you care to look. I also added your thought on training, I missed that. You probably already read my comment to CMerritt on concealed weopons. I didn't say I am against it, but I sure can't use it as an arguement for the net positive benefits of hand guns. To me, having guns in the hands of humans will always have a net negative benefit.
I am of several minds regarding the police. As a rule of thumb, I don't trust the police anymore. I do believe their motivation is honorable when they join but it soon becomes corrupted. Now, ask me if I really blame them and I would have to tell you that I must really ponder that. They do not have an easy job and the public generally treats them like s... it rhymes with merde. I will need to write a hub. What I can tell you though is I have no respect for the District Attorneys. I think they, as a group, make the principals behind our Constitution a joke. They would be more comfortable practicing their profession in a country that does not have freedoms. That way they don't have to live with being hypocrites.
I didn't forget you HS: I agree with all you said except I think it will be awhile yet before I will stop being surprised by Sarah Palin, lol. As I was commenting to CMerritt, the intrigue behind the formulation of the 2nd Amendment is quite involved. I was rather surprised. Here is the URL to the Wikipedia article I got my info from. I only skimmed it but must go back and read it through. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_t
if we merely left those you described below:
- Prove they are a citizen
- Prove they are truly law-abiding
- Have no record of mental instability
- Except strict responsibility for owning a device whose sole, original purpose is to kill other humans
- Agree to follow safekeeping regulations
Which is pretty much already in place...I am in agreement.
The Supreme Court is merely upholding the Constitution...exactly what they are suppose to do.
Something else to consider, how many crimes were thwarted because of folks who was able to utilize their guns and chased off would be “killers/robbers”? We do not hear about these, many people never report these incidents to the police, and even if they did, our media has a tendency not to make a big deal out these type of events.
but they do happen, and NRA has hundreds of testamonies of such people.
Mr. Esoteric
Not what I said, I said that only law abiding citizens should be able to apply for them, and then they can go through the investigation process, and a required training course on gun safety.
This is much like getting a Driver License or a Liguor License.
That is basically what your opinion is in the second comment.
Again none of this would have helped to stop a random act of violence like the one in Tucson.
We also have terrorists getting real close in this country, and they are not using guns, they are using bombs. I believe bombs trump guns. With bombs you only have to get close to the target.
I have known several women that keep small caliber guns in their purse for personal protection.
Any thoughts on that?
You also didn't comment on my statement on bad shootings by the police.
Thanks
Thanks
Excellent comprehensive Hub as always Myesoteric. It is unfortunate that the founding fathers worded the 2nd amendment so ambiguously. As a result, the NRA and other gunsupporters are always going to have the upper hand on the constitutional argument. I agree with you that it leaves a lot of room to sensibly regulate which the NRA fights at every turn. I cannot add anything to your list of regulations. They all make sense and I would be thrilled if they just started implemently a few of them. The Supreme Court is way off currently on this. I also believe legislatures who regulate this via legislation should be more careful in their wording and avoid language banning all guns. That will be struck down every time. Unfortunately in this political climate even with this massacre, gun control is fighting upstream against a mighty current. Thank you for this great Hub which may get the ball rolling on this. Maybe we need to put gun control in our "crosshairs". Sorry I couldn't resist a shot at Sarah Palin. I just saw her 8 minute statement regarding Tucson and I am outraged against her even more. I didn't think that was possible.
While I am cooling my heels in the Drs office, let me expand a bit on my last comment. I am not opposed to law-abiding citizens from possessing and using guns. What I do propose is that it be well regulated in order to save lives. All I am suggesting is that the law-abiding citizen:
- Prove they are a citizen
- Prove they are truly law-abiding
- Have no record of mental instability
- Except strict responsibility for owning a device whose sole, original purpose is to kill other humans
- Agree to follow safekeeping regulations
- Periodically prove they still possess the gun
Is that too much to ask?
Thanks once more OpinionDuck. Ok, let's go down your line of reasoning for a moment, leaving then 2nd Amendment out of the equation because it doesn't bear on this logic.
The essence of what you suggest is that it is OK for any law abiding citizen to possess any object without restriction and use it so long it's use is not illegal. Have I got that right or are there exceptions? I will await your response before proceeding.
As to your question: It depends, lol. If the gun laws of the country are changed to match those of say Japan or England, then yes we would have a safer society in time. If the gun laws remained unchanged, then no, having all law abiding citizens turn in their guns would not make society safer, but then I am not advocating that.
I will answer your statistics question when I get back to my computer, this my iPad.
Tony missed my point completely.
It doesn't matter whether something is made to kill or not if it can kill. The difference is who is using the gun or the vehicle or the knife.
The goal should be to try to keep the people that a criminal or reckless from getting the guns or driving the vehicles, and not to punish the law abiding citizens.
BTW, you can kill more people faster with a vehicle than with even an automatic weapon. Also in the 911 attack no guns were used.
I agree with CMerritt.
We can't pro0tect against random acts of violence. It is like when we have 99.99999% of airline passengers go through invasive and degrading security processes to protect against a few bad guys.
There are many more windows into airport security than just the airline passengers.
The bottom line is what are we doing to disarm the known bad guys? Like the gangbangers, the drug cartels and the "criminals"? The answer is very little, in the border area of Arizona, the police and the border patrol are outgunned by the drug gangs.
Here is the big question, Do you think that we would be safer if every honest law abiding citizen would turn in all their guns? I say law abiding citizens because there is no way that the criminals or criminals to be would turn in their guns. So at the end the law abiding citizens would be disarmed and at the mercy of the bad guys that would get guns.
Should we take all the guns away from the police because many of them have shown reckless and deadly results in using their weapons doing their job.
The biggest misuse of guns by the police was during the SLA Patty Hurst incident when they thought they had the SLA trapped in a house. And in the course of several hours they fired, I believe in excess of fifteen thousand rounds, and no one got hurt.
I am sorry if I don't understand your point.
I disagree with your last comment.
As I have said statistics are made to be useful to anyone that uses them, they however do give enough details to make them valid.
Four out of five doctors endorse drug A. Why not 80 out of one hundred, or 800 out of a thousand.
Do we know what questions these five doctors were asked, and how they answered them.
Did they ask more doctors and selected five from them.
Do we know what kind of doctors that were asksed and did they have experience with other drugs that competed with drug A.
There are so many other questions that we don't know about this survey, but we really do need to know the answers before we validate the 4 out 5 doctors statistic.
Thanks
Hi CMerritt, Thanks for your comments as always! I was wondering when DC was going to brought up. It certainly did have the most stringent gun laws in the US until it lost it's case in the Supreme Court. I think it's new law is being challenged now as well. That said, DC and, for that matter, MD have the unfortunate situation of being in direct proximity with Virginia; one of the most gun friendly states in the Union. Every day the bad guys are going from DC and MD to VA gun stores and gun shows and buying up dozens of guns at a time and taking them back. VA's ID
checks, when I lived there were minimal and background checks were nonexistent. That has
changed somewhat today but not a whole lot. There is at least an instant background check the
federal government requires over the very loud objections of the gun lobby. So yes, it is not
surprising to me or anyone else who lives there that the DC area has been known as the murder capital of the world.
I hadn't heard about Laughner's repeated arrests but for whatever reason he passed the instant background check. That is why I am.in favor of a more extensive check. You are also right that if he wanted to kill Congresswoman Gifford's, he would have found a way to do it and maybe a few more with her but I doubt the size of the massacre that took place.
But that is not really the point. Nor is it the point that violent crime, and maybe even crime with
the use of a gun, may be at an all time low. The real point, don't you see, is what the stats
clearly show - the stricter the gun laws, the less deaths per capita by the use of guns. To translate that to your comments, if those state with more liberal gun laws adopted the set of gun laws used by New York state ( not city), then violent crime and death by crime would be at even lower rates than they are now. Wouldn't you agree?
For arguments sake, gun Laws or no gun laws, if Loughner wanted to commit the crimes he did, he could by a 9mm Glock off of the streets. Same as drugs. Those who wish to utilize a particular weapon for a particular crime are wise enough to obtain this weapon vie the black market is needed. Also, he could have just as easily carried three or four hand guns with eight rounds and done as much damage.
The real problem here is, Loughner had been arrested reportedly several times. Why had the AZ authorities not been made aware of this? Maybe the sales of this gun could have been halted if we had better record keeping.
Also for arguments sake is that gun ownership has risen to an all-time high while violent crimes has fell to a 35-year low. coinsidence?
One more thing to add while I am on it, Wasington DC has a 31.2 deaths per 100,000 (#1 in the Nation) with firearms, and they have some of the most stringent gun control laws in the land. (mostly uncostitutional too)
your statement "easy access to guns means more homicides" may not be all so true.
Also, many of those state that have higher amount of guns, also are states where hunting is more prevalent, which may or may not be a factor, I really don't know.
just putting my two cents worth in here.
Thanks OpinionDuck and Tonymac for your opinions and comments. Tonymac covered some of my response in terms of the difference between guns and cars plus adding a new one I should have thought of (new hub coming).
In addition, I would agree with your comparison to alcohol prohibition if I were endorsing the prohibition of guns. It would be unenforcable. As to the statistics, unless they were falsified they are pretty damning in their simplicity and clarity. Death by gun is death by gun; the reason for the death is not material. A statistic I didn't report is that the percentage of homicides by gun goes down as the rate of total homicides go down. For States above the median, the average looks to be around 65% of all homicides (a subset of deaths) were caused by guns while those States with homicide rates below the median homicide rate per 100,000, the rate looks to be around 45% (these were eyeballed). It isn't a coincidense that most of the States below the median are States with stricter gun laws and those above it have more liberal (ironic isn't it?) gun laws.
You are certainly correct that Loughner could have used a knife or hammer on Congresswoman Giffords, he seemed intent enough to be that personal, but he couldn't have gotten to the other 19 victems; only a gun with a high capacity magazine alowed him to do that.
The position that OpinionDuck takes on the argument about guns not killing is not logical. Guns are designed to kill, that's what they are for. There is really no other purpose for which a gun is used. A killing by a gun is not usually "accidental" - that is what the gun is for, so except in the relatively rare instances of a gun going off "accidentally" death by gun is always purposeful. Car deaths are accidental - cars are not designed to kill (in fact much effort is taken in the design and building of cars to make it less likely that they will kill) and so when someone is killed by a car that is really accidental. We don't buy a car to kill people or other animals. But what do we buy guns for? We can dress it up in fancy terms like "self-defence" or "sport" but in the end it comes down to killing.
Guns also contribute to a culture of violence and make killing easier and for some, more glamorous.
Thanks for sharing this.
Love and peace
Tony
Mr. Esoteric
I have to totally disagree with you here.
Gun control won't work any better than Alcohol Prohition.
You didn't separate gun possession by good people and the bad guys.
You also didn't separate gun deaths by their cause, whether they were accidental or criminal.
Statistics can be manipulated by the person using the statistic. The raw data with all of its details and particulars is the only way to make a real valid conclusion.
Gun control can be done at the same level as driving, you need to meet the requirements for getting the license.
It doesn't mean anything that the car wasn't designed to be lethat, but the fact is a car can be lethal, and it probably causes more deaths than gun.
But we don't stop driving cars because of its lethal capability.
In Tucson Rep. Gifford could have just a easily been attacked and wounded or killed with a knife, or even a hammer or other tool because of the close range of the attack. Yes, it would have been difficult to stab that many people but I am sure several could have been attacked.
Your example of pornography is not valid because there is no precise definition of pornography.
Some of the most dangerous people with guns are the police, as they have needlessly contributed to many bad shootings.
Sorry but that is my opinion.
My Esoteric Hub Author 11 days ago
Thanks for stopping by, reading, and commenting, Jesse. I am curious though, where in my hub do I state that I am against gun ownership? I don't recall having said that, since I am not against it in the first place.
All that the hub made a case for was 1) the "less" guns are "regulated" in any given state, the higher the incident of people being killed by guns per 100,000 population and 2) guns should be more regulated than they are, a lot more regulated.