How More Americans Carry Firearms Would Reduce Mass Shooting

[thegreekdog]

I guess my entire point here is that unless someone (and by "someone" I mean someone in Congress or the executive branch) is seriously putting forward a 100% gun ban, there is no point in arguing about gun control.

I don't agree that we should be thinking about this in black and white terms. We must be utilitarian.

Imagine that we could come up with a law that didn't ban all guns but, say, 50% of them. Now, this would have some effect on the criminals being able to purchase the guns in question; it might not make it impossible but it would be significantly harder. In some cases, but not all, this would deter violence. Maybe you could reduce the number of gun deaths by 20% (completely for the sake of argument). I don't think it's rational to say that this is a bad policy simply because some criminals can still get the banned guns.

I'm really not sure why people aren't getting this. It is currently illegal for criminals to purchase firearms. It is also illegal for people to sell criminals firearms. There are required background checks to ensure that criminals aren't buying firearms. It is illegal in some places (maybe everywhere) for strawman purchases, with the strawman being imprisoned.

Passing a law banning some guns, let's say all rifles (assault, single shot, whatever... I'm not a gun guy)... what does that do? Does that prevent gun deaths? It certainly will prevent gun deaths from rifles, but not from handguns or shotguns. How would you classify "50% of guns?" The only way I could possibly see that working is to limit the number of guns able to be owned in the United States. In other words, passing a law that says only 200,000 guns of any and all varieties may exist at one time in the United States.

Here is the latest example (I've bolded the relevant portions):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_A ... eapons_Ban

The Task Force on Community Preventive Services, an independent, non-federal task force, examined an assortment of firearms laws, including the AWB, and found "insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws reviewed for preventing violence."[25] A 2004 critical review of firearms research by a National Research Council committee said that an academic study of the assault weapon ban "did not reveal any clear impacts on gun violence outcomes." The committee noted that the study's authors said the guns were used criminally with relative rarity before the ban and that its maximum potential effect on gun violence outcomes would be very small.[26]

In 2004, a research report submitted to the United States Department of Justice and the National Institute of Justice found that should the ban be renewed, its effects on gun violence would likely be small, and perhaps too small for reliable measurement, because rifles in general, including rifles referred to as "assault rifles" or "assault weapons", are rarely used in gun crimes.[27] That study by Christopher S. Koper, Daniel J. Woods, and Jeffrey A. Roth of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology, University of Pennsylvania found no statistically significant evidence that either the assault weapons ban or the ban on magazines holding more than 10 rounds had reduced gun murders. However, they concluded that it was "premature to make definitive assessments of the ban's impact on gun crime," and argue that if the ban had been in effect for more than nine years, benefits might have begun to appear.[27]

Research by John Lott found no impact of these bans on violent crime rates,[28] but provided evidence that the bans may have reduced the number of gun shows by over 20 percent.[29] Koper, Woods, and Roth studies focus on gun murders, while Lott's look at murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assaults. Unlike their work, Lott's research accounted for state assault weapon bans and 12 other different types of gun control laws.

The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence examined the impact of the Assault Weapons Ban in its 2004 report, On Target: The Impact of the 1994 Federal Assault Weapon Act. Examining 1.4 million guns involved in crime, "in the five-year period before enactment of the Federal Assault Weapons Act (1990-1994), assault weapons named in the Act constituted 4.82% of the crime gun traces ATF conducted nationwide. Since the law’s enactment, however, these assault weapons have made up only 1.61% of the guns ATF has traced to crime. Page 10 of the Brady report, however, adds that "an evaluation of copycat weapons is necessary". Including "copycat weapons", the report concluded that "in the post-ban period, the same group of guns has constituted 3.1% of ATF traces, a decline of 45%."[30] A spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) stated that he "can in no way vouch for the validity" of the report.[31]

By the way, that law was supported by former presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush.

[Metsfanmax]

I guess my entire point here is that unless someone (and by "someone" I mean someone in Congress or the executive branch) is seriously putting forward a 100% gun ban, there is no point in arguing about gun control.

I don't agree that we should be thinking about this in black and white terms. We must be utilitarian.

Imagine that we could come up with a law that didn't ban all guns but, say, 50% of them. Now, this would have some effect on the criminals being able to purchase the guns in question; it might not make it impossible but it would be significantly harder. In some cases, but not all, this would deter violence. Maybe you could reduce the number of gun deaths by 20% (completely for the sake of argument). I don't think it's rational to say that this is a bad policy simply because some criminals can still get the banned guns.

I'm really not sure why people aren't getting this.

Well I'm not sure why basic economic reasoning eludes people when discussing gun control, so let's call it even.

It is currently illegal for criminals to purchase firearms. It is also illegal for people to sell criminals firearms. There are required background checks to ensure that criminals aren't buying firearms. It is illegal in some places (maybe everywhere) for strawman purchases, with the strawman being imprisoned.

Passing a law banning some guns, let's say all rifles (assault, single shot, whatever... I'm not a gun guy)... what does that do? Does that prevent gun deaths?

Yes, of course it will prevent some gun deaths. The supply of guns will go down, causing the price to go up and demand to fall accordingly. This will prevent a lot of deaths if for no other reason than making suicides less likely, being that those are most often incidents of passion made possibly by easy and quick access to a gun inside your home. Furthermore the average killing capability of a gun that someone does own will diminish.

It certainly will prevent gun deaths from rifles, but not from handguns or shotguns.

Are you discriminating in the types of deaths that you would like to prevent? Do rifle deaths matter less to you than handgun deaths?

How would you classify "50% of guns?" The only way I could possibly see that working is to limit the number of guns able to be owned in the United States. In other words, passing a law that says only 200,000 guns of any and all varieties may exist at one time in the United States.

I literally meant it in the sense of, do some combination of actions that reduces the number of guns owned by half. Probably with a combination of restrictions on gun purchases/manufacture and a buyback program for previously owned guns.

This wasn't meant to express how you would go about doing so, it was a hypothetical.

(We can discuss actual legislation like the AWB if you want, but the point here is to first establish that there could be a legitimate reason to want to limit the gun supply without removing all guns. You need to agree to that before we can proceed to that higher level of discussion.)

[GabonX]

You guys that advocate banning guns to promote safety should take a look at Mexico.

[Phatscotty]

Condense the entire gun control debate into this

Armed psycho enters group A of 50 people, none of which are carrying guns, none of which can defend themselves
Armed psycho enters group B of 50 people, all of which are carrying guns, all of them can defend themselves

Which group fares the best?

[Metsfanmax]

Condense the entire gun control debate into this

Armed psycho enters group A of 50 people, none of which are carrying guns, none of which can defend themselves
Armed psycho enters group B of 50 people, all of which are carrying guns, all of them can defend themselves

Which group fares the best?

Are you asking which group fares the best during the incident with the armed psycho, or which group fares better at every other point in their lives?

[MagnusGreeol]

- I'm in favor of group B, There are more people who aren't phycopàths then there are phycopàths. The world will always have a percentage that have it in their brain and are willing to commit such terrible acts, whether it be with a gun a knife or whatever, If you have it in you to kill, and want to kill, then with or without a gun, you can kill. Bad people do bad things.

\MGM/♎

[thegreekdog]

I guess my entire point here is that unless someone (and by "someone" I mean someone in Congress or the executive branch) is seriously putting forward a 100% gun ban, there is no point in arguing about gun control.

I don't agree that we should be thinking about this in black and white terms. We must be utilitarian.

Imagine that we could come up with a law that didn't ban all guns but, say, 50% of them. Now, this would have some effect on the criminals being able to purchase the guns in question; it might not make it impossible but it would be significantly harder. In some cases, but not all, this would deter violence. Maybe you could reduce the number of gun deaths by 20% (completely for the sake of argument). I don't think it's rational to say that this is a bad policy simply because some criminals can still get the banned guns.

I'm really not sure why people aren't getting this.

Well I'm not sure why basic economic reasoning eludes people when discussing gun control, so let's call it even.

It is currently illegal for criminals to purchase firearms. It is also illegal for people to sell criminals firearms. There are required background checks to ensure that criminals aren't buying firearms. It is illegal in some places (maybe everywhere) for strawman purchases, with the strawman being imprisoned.

Passing a law banning some guns, let's say all rifles (assault, single shot, whatever... I'm not a gun guy)... what does that do? Does that prevent gun deaths?

Yes, of course it will prevent some gun deaths. The supply of guns will go down, causing the price to go up and demand to fall accordingly. This will prevent a lot of deaths if for no other reason than making suicides less likely, being that those are most often incidents of passion made possibly by easy and quick access to a gun inside your home. Furthermore the average killing capability of a gun that someone does own will diminish.

It certainly will prevent gun deaths from rifles, but not from handguns or shotguns.

Are you discriminating in the types of deaths that you would like to prevent? Do rifle deaths matter less to you than handgun deaths?

How would you classify "50% of guns?" The only way I could possibly see that working is to limit the number of guns able to be owned in the United States. In other words, passing a law that says only 200,000 guns of any and all varieties may exist at one time in the United States.

I literally meant it in the sense of, do some combination of actions that reduces the number of guns owned by half. Probably with a combination of restrictions on gun purchases/manufacture and a buyback program for previously owned guns.

This wasn't meant to express how you would go about doing so, it was a hypothetical.

(We can discuss actual legislation like the AWB if you want, but the point here is to first establish that there could be a legitimate reason to want to limit the gun supply without removing all guns. You need to agree to that before we can proceed to that higher level of discussion.)

So, based on your parenthetical you've decided to use your "common sense" as opposed to data to make your argument? Is this a new thing for you?

Your idea in bold does not seem to be realistically proposed by anyone in power. Perhaps that is my point. In my novice politics fan opinion, I will roughly classify gun deaths as accidental, suicide, personal crime (e.g. killing a spouse), supportive of other crimes (e.g. gang violence, usage in other crimes), mass shootings. These gun deaths all have different reasons behind them with the common element being the use of guns. I believe data shows that most of those crimes are committed with handguns, the kinds of guns no one is trying to ban. Let's say we try to restrict gun ownership by restricting the manufacture of firearms (e.g. no guns can be manufactured or imported for X years) and have a voluntary buyback program. Even if this kind of legislation is realistic (it's not), what kind of data would support that this would reduce gun crimes?

This is neither here nor there, but I bet politicians on both sides of the aisle could get on board with trying to solve the "different reasons" behind gun crimes as opposed to the implement itself. I wish there was gun violence per capita data for the United States from 1783 to 2015. I guess we'd have to cross reference with the number of guns in circulation, but I wonder whether gun violence is worse now than it was in any other point in US history and if so, why? I thought about this in the context of John Brown's raid in in the 1850s.

[thegreekdog]

You guys that advocate banning guns to promote safety should take a look at Mexico.

Yeah, because Mexico is the same in all other ways as the United States.

[Metsfanmax]

So, based on your parenthetical you've decided to use your "common sense" as opposed to data to make your argument? Is this a new thing for you?

No, my point was that your argument seems to reduce to "politicians won't do the thing you want to do, so expect a watered down version of what you want to actually get through Congress." Which is fine, but it's basically a universal constant when discussing federal legislation, and isn't really a salient point specific to gun control discussions. If your point is that the gun control policies I actually want won't happen, fine, but then stop there and don't continue arguing. And since you've already made this point several times, and everyone is (correctly) ignoring it, I don't see why you keep going.

As for data, I obviously can't predict exactly what would happen with a 50% reduction in the number of guns, but if you want an idea, consider:



Death rates seem to be more or less proportional to number of guns in the population. That is certainly very suggestive that a substantial drop in guns would result in a substantial drop in gun deaths. If your hypothesis were correct, we should expect basically a flat line until we get close to zero guns owned, which is not what the data support. Of course, since your whole argument was basically based on the prediction that criminals' access to guns would always be constant and not any actual data of your own, this is not surprising.

[Metsfanmax]

It's really not possible for everyone to build a nuclear weapon. Most people would have no idea where to even begin. I have advanced training in physics and it would still take me many years to figure out how to build even a crude one.

But once I do it, you can trust me, I'm not one of those mentally unstable atomic bomb owners. Don't restrict my rights to build an a-bomb for defensive purposes just because some crazy guy wants to use one to kill a bunch of people in a city.

I know you're using irony here, but in a totally unironic way I completely agree with your points in this post.

There is certainly something to be said for the idea that if a man can build a nuclear weapon, he should be allowed to keep it. Kind of an honor thing.

[Dukasaur]

It's really not possible for everyone to build a nuclear weapon. Most people would have no idea where to even begin. I have advanced training in physics and it would still take me many years to figure out how to build even a crude one.

But once I do it, you can trust me, I'm not one of those mentally unstable atomic bomb owners. Don't restrict my rights to build an a-bomb for defensive purposes just because some crazy guy wants to use one to kill a bunch of people in a city.

I know you're using irony here, but in a totally unironic way I completely agree with your points in this post.

There is certainly something to be said for the idea that if a man can build a nuclear weapon, he should be allowed to keep it. Kind of an honor thing.

[Metsfanmax]

It's really not possible for everyone to build a nuclear weapon. Most people would have no idea where to even begin. I have advanced training in physics and it would still take me many years to figure out how to build even a crude one.

But once I do it, you can trust me, I'm not one of those mentally unstable atomic bomb owners. Don't restrict my rights to build an a-bomb for defensive purposes just because some crazy guy wants to use one to kill a bunch of people in a city.

I know you're using irony here, but in a totally unironic way I completely agree with your points in this post.

There is certainly something to be said for the idea that if a man can build a nuclear weapon, he should be allowed to keep it. Kind of an honor thing.

Only a Canadian could be proud that his country sent like one guy to Los Alamos and the guy managed to kill himself.

[notyou2]

Hey Phatty. How about we place guns strategically behind glass (like fire axes and whatnot) in all public buildings, and they can be accessed in times of strife.

[KoolBak]

[PLAYER57832]

Wondered where my post had gone, then I realized there are 2 almost identically named threads here, with similar discussions.

Well I'm not sure why basic economic reasoning eludes people when discussing gun control

Because not everything is described by economics. Economics is really just one measure of how and why people behave. Important, but there is much more to why people do as they do than profit motives, etc. (aka that's why freekonomics work)

Economics and other human behavioral factors are no doubt going to be part of any solution, but the biggest point is we need more data in order to use those factors intelligently. If you want to make decisions about wheat production, it helps if you understand where and why it grows, not just that people buy it for bread.

[PLAYER57832]

Hey Phatty. How about we place guns strategically behind glass (like fire axes and whatnot) in all public buildings, and they can be accessed in times of strife.

Isn't that pretty much what security guards/police do?

[GabonX]

You guys that advocate banning guns to promote safety should take a look at Mexico.

Yeah, because Mexico is the same in all other ways as the United States.

It is in the only one that matters in regards to this conversation, ie of criminals having guns.

[/]

I think that if more people were educated on how to act in a crisis, we would prevent more deaths, and if they were competent rather than trigger happy, they could ultimately deter most mass shootings in America.

The question is, would deterring mass shootings ultimately result in less loss of life?

We can draw conclusions of mass shooters, they are unstable, often fanatical in their views, and usually death seekers deeply unsatisfied with living. They want to feel powerful and in control, which they achieve in the easiest and post obvious way, by grabbing a gun and shooting wildly into a crowd. This makes sense in their warped minds because they think the same as we do "They are unarmed, harmless, easy to pick off." If instead we made a show that we are all armed and vigilant, what would happen? It's not so easy to so brazenly pick everyone off, so if an easy run and gun isn't an option, they turn to the next option.

The alternative is one we are familiar with, it's the go to method for areas like the Middle East and Europe where guns aren't an easy option. IEDs, suicide vests; cause all the damage at once without any room for reaction. This method is proven and capable of killing and injuring hundreds or thousands in a moment. A couple of idiots with pressure cookers and some home depot supplies and almost 300 people required hospitalizations at the Boston bombings. IEDs kill more American soldiers than any other sort of attack, and they're armed to the teeth, heavily trained, and actively on the lookout for such methods.

So perhaps we're about in a good middle area right now with guns; vigilant enough to quickly react, but not too vigilant to keep nutjobs from getting too cocky so they ultimately don't stop and plan things out.

Rather we should focus more on the sociological aspects of prevention to really level things out.

[tzor]

Ironically the same principle applies with nukes. The best way to defend yourself from a nuke is to have a nuke of your own.

This is actually an incorrect statement. Only when all sides agree to the principle of MAD does this work. All it takes is one madman to have a nuke and there is nothing you can do to defend yourself.

[notyou2]

The whole point here is you shouldn't have to:
- educate people on how to respond during a mass shooting
- hire security guards
- have gun free spaces
- have guns behind glass
- etc
- etc
- etc

[Dukasaur]

The whole point here is you shouldn't have to:
- educate people on how to respond during a mass shooting
- hire security guards
- have gun free spaces
- have guns behind glass
- etc
- etc
- etc

You shouldn't be on your knees in you own driveway, desperately begging a gang of Tonton Macoutes with machetes not to hack you to pieces. If we lived in a just and good universe, these things would never happen. But we don't. We live in an evil and corrupt universe, where evil will always triumph, so it's not a question of closing our eyes and pretending these things aren't real. It's a question of knowing they are horribly real, and deciding what you will do when you are faced with one.

[thegreekdog]

So, based on your parenthetical you've decided to use your "common sense" as opposed to data to make your argument? Is this a new thing for you?

No, my point was that your argument seems to reduce to "politicians won't do the thing you want to do, so expect a watered down version of what you want to actually get through Congress." Which is fine, but it's basically a universal constant when discussing federal legislation, and isn't really a salient point specific to gun control discussions. If your point is that the gun control policies I actually want won't happen, fine, but then stop there and don't continue arguing. And since you've already made this point several times, and everyone is (correctly) ignoring it, I don't see why you keep going.

As for data, I obviously can't predict exactly what would happen with a 50% reduction in the number of guns, but if you want an idea, consider:



Death rates seem to be more or less proportional to number of guns in the population. That is certainly very suggestive that a substantial drop in guns would result in a substantial drop in gun deaths. If your hypothesis were correct, we should expect basically a flat line until we get close to zero guns owned, which is not what the data support. Of course, since your whole argument was basically based on the prediction that criminals' access to guns would always be constant and not any actual data of your own, this is not surprising.

I don't and have never disagreed with what you've posted. Again, though, there are no proposals to reduce the number of guns in the United States. Further, the data we do have in the United States shows that the Assault Weapons Ban didn't actually reduce the amount of gun violence. I suspect that's because most gun violence is committed using handguns.

[Metsfanmax]

Yes, if I were going to enact federal gun legislation, it would be targeted squarely at handguns and not at rifles.

[Phatscotty]

Condense the entire gun control debate into this

Armed psycho enters group A of 50 people, none of which are carrying guns, none of which can defend themselves
Armed psycho enters group B of 50 people, all of which are carrying guns, all of them can defend themselves

Which group fares the best?

Are you asking which group fares the best during the incident with the armed psycho, or which group fares better at every other point in their lives?

In a thread about reducing mass shootings, survey says! The incident! If they can't defend themselves during the time of the incident, then there really isn't any future life beyond the point of the incident. Unless you mean innocent victims who lose limbs, go blind, have brain injuries, or are paralyzed for the rest of their lives, I think they tend to fare worse for the rest of their lives, and perhaps even regret not having a gun at the time of the incident for the rest of their lives.