7 ms·

It’s interesting that the focus is on the gun and not the situation: club, drugs, (alcohol?) In most states it’s illegal to carry a gun and drink, etc. Chance

It’s interesting that the focus is on the gun and not the situation: club, drugs, (alcohol?) In most states it’s illegal to carry a gun and drink, etc. Chances are the gun was acquired illegally, possessed illegally,etc. How do more gun control laws help here? Maybe your European friend forgot what happened in Paris a couple of years ago in a country with strict gun control laws. Gun control laws provide a false sense of security. Since you can’t put the genie back in the bottle, no gun control laws will achieve “gun safety” that people seek.

yongjik 9y ago
> Chances are the gun was acquired illegally, possessed illegally,etc. How do more gun control laws help here? You can't illegally acquire guns when there are no guns to acquire. There's a reason why muggers in Paris or Tokyo don't shoot people, and the reason is not because they are nice muggers. And "you can't put the genie back in the bottle" is kind of the opposite of "gun control laws are slippery slope toward total dictatorship" (which a lot of people seem to believe). You cannot claim both at the same time.
- GiorgioG 9y ago
  You cannot possibly believe that you can confiscate all the guns in the US. So what magic wand do you have to make them disappear?
  - yongjik 9y ago
    Why do malls have security cameras when they cannot catch all thieves? Why have a border control when you cannot catch everyone crossing it? If America gets rid of one million guns, that's one million less guns criminals can illegally obtain. This is not an all-or-nothing game. I'm sure even Japan has a few illegal guns hidden somewhere.
    - GiorgioG 9y ago
      How’s that working out for cities that have ineffective (but hey they feel good ‘cause we gotta do something!) gun buyback programs like Chicago (with super-strict gun control laws to boot)?
      - GiorgioG 9y ago
        Stop being lazy and post some logical reasons for the downvotes
    - gw 9y ago
      Your comments belie a pretty strong ignorance of American gun culture. This isn't a numbers game; there is a large portion of the population that would not comply with a confiscation program, and would resist using (you guessed it) firearms. Many of the strongest supporters of the second amendment are in the military and police. It boggles my mind that the same people who denounce involving our military in middle eastern quagmires, would propose igniting such a civil war domestically.
      - yongjik 9y ago
        This is a numbers game, and a long-term game. I'm sure there are Americans who would rather shoot a police officer than give up their guns, but I believe their numbers are dwindling. Societies change. After all, gay marriage or a black president was unthinkable only a few decades ago. Personally, I kinda see the point of having guns if you live in the middle of nowhere eighty miles from the nearest police station. So I'd say, let them keep their guns. No reason to give them more political ammunition. For the majority of Americans (by population, not area), guns make much less sense. If American cities are infested with shootings, it's not because gun control doesn't work. It's because the American government is bought out by NRA lobbyists so they don't try hard enough. It has proven be a tough battle for Americans to coerce the government into action. But, hey, nobody said fighting your government would be easy, did they?
        LyndsySimon 9y ago
  - johngruber 9y ago
    Not sure if just trolling or willful ignoring the facts. There are so many articles about how this has happened in other countries: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38365729 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38365729 Basically: - Make it much more difficult to obtain. Those with legit reasons and determination still can get them. - Make it very illegal to possess without the proper channels. This will compel people to give them up. Impose hefty fines for those not complying. Somehow magically, with just those two steps, your average illegal gun price will skyrocket while the availability will plummet, making gun usage among criminals a lot lower. No, you won't confiscate all the guns, but you don't need to. Just most of them. It won't mean 0 deaths/year, but you can expect in the mid-term that they drop dramatically.
  - jdietrich 9y ago
    >You cannot possibly believe that you can confiscate all the guns in the US. You don't need to confiscate all guns to practically eliminate gun crime. The UK didn't, we just adopted a harm reduction model, gradually controlling and then removing those weapons with the greatest risk for harm and the least legitimate use - handguns and semi-automatic centrefire rifles. It took decades, but it worked. Start with a serious federal licensing and registration system. Establish a national database with comprehensive ownership records, including private transfers; require firearm manufacturers to submit forensic samples of bullets and casings for all new firearms. Mandate firing pin microstamping. Fix the known shortcomings of the background check system. Close the gun show loophole. Instate the five-day waiting period originally proposed in the Brady Act. Require secure storage of all firearms in an approved gunsafe. Introduce mandatory safety training. Impose considerably harsher punishments for reckless or dangerous use of a licensed firearm. Once you've got all that in place, then you can start talking about buybacks, amnesties and outright bans, starting with Title II firearms. Mandate a legitimate sporting or professional justification for the purchase or transfer of any firearm. Ban large-capacity magazines, then centerfire handguns, then semi-automatic rimfire handguns, then semi-automatic rifles. After 30 or 40 years of incremental progress, you end up with a society that has a negligible number of handguns and semi-automatic rifles, while still maintaining the rights of sportsmen and farmers to own shotguns and bolt-action rifles in a properly controlled manner. You can do it, if you can muster a serious and well-funded opposition to the NRA.
    - megaman22 9y ago
      I'm litearally rolling on the floor laughing at this naivete. Shit, I grew up in the woods where the semi-auto Remington 742 woodsmaster or the 1100 shotgun wasn't any different than the Ace hardware hoe or the Rotenone or Sevin bug dust; we used both to keep the pests out of the garden that fed us. I've bought one firearm, out of a dozen, from a licensed store. Almost all are private, individual to individual sales or inherited.
    - GiorgioG 9y ago
      > Start with a serious federal licensing and registration system. Good luck getting that kind of law passed anywhere outside of NY/CA. Registration = Confiscation is a strongly held belief. See how many New Yorkers registered their AR-15 when the NY SAFE Act was passed in the middle of the night. > Close the gun show loophole. There is no loophole. Federally-licensed gun dealers must run background checks no matter where they sell their wares. Private transfers do not require background checks. > After 30 or 40 years of incremental progress What you call "progress," I call a city-slicker's fantasy paradise. I grew up in a nanny state (NY) and moved south in my mid-30s. It's refreshing to live in a place where guns are seen as tools and not as evil monsters that charge out of their locked cases and mow down innocent children all on their own without a human pulling the trigger. The sitting president (regardless of what you or I think of him) was elected on a base that believes in a different idea of progress. I voted for him stricktly because I believed he'd be largely ineffective and that he wouldn't shit all over my gun rights.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- refurb 9y ago
  You can't illegally acquire guns when there are no guns to acquire. You realize that in the case of one of the Paris attacks, the weapons were legally acquired, right? Guns aren't 100% banned in France. In fact, the French police decided to confiscate legal weapons from over 100 individuals with terrorist ties.(1) (1)https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2017-07-06/france-takes-guns-from-people-on-list-of-might-be-militants-minister https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2017-07-06/france...
  - GiorgioG 9y ago
    Actually the guns used in the 2015 Paris attacks were acquired from neighboring countries thanks to the border-control-free EU.
jdietrich 9y ago
In the UK, handguns are so difficult to get hold of that organised criminals often resort to using modified flare guns or antique duelling pistols. Suffice it so say that these are not particularly deadly or reliable weapons. There are about 50 firearm murders per year in the UK. We haven't had a single mass shooting incident since 2010. When taken seriously, gun control works. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/after-shooting-tragedies-britain-went-after-guns/2013/01/31/b94d20c0-6a15-11e2-9a0b-db931670f35d_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/after-shooting-t...
- refurb 9y ago
  The U.K. never had a serious firearms problem, at least not on the scale the US does. I think there are a lot more factors at play then gun control. For example, single shot rifles and shotguns are legal in the UK. Yet rarely used. Why is that?
  - GiorgioG 9y ago
    I think one of the problems here is how the issue is framed to begin with. Do we have a serious firearms problem or do we have a suicide problem? Two of my cousins have committed suicide by self-inflicted gunshot wound (one was an extremely successful doctor and the other an auto-factory worker.) Two-thirds of gun deaths in the US are from suicide. Bet you most of you gun-fearing folks didn't know that. "In terms of race and ethnicity, Kaplan said that 77 percent of white gun deaths in the U.S. are suicides, while less than 1 in 5 (19 percent) is a homicide. The figures are nearly opposite for African Americans, for which only 14 percent are suicides." http://luskin.ucla.edu/connection-poverty-inequality-firearm-violence/ http://luskin.ucla.edu/connection-poverty-inequality-firearm... Instead of a firearms problem, maybe we have a suicide (mental health?) problem and a poverty/inequality problem. Or maybe we have a media problem - neither the left, nor the right's propaganda machines seem interested in the real issues.
    - jdietrich 9y ago
      Suicide attempts are predominantly impulsive acts that are rarely repeated, so controlling the means of suicide is an essential component in suicide prevention. Most people who attempt suicide go from intent to action within a matter of hours, with no significant forward planning. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165032714005333 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165032714... Women are far more likely to attempt suicide, but men are far more likely to die by suicide. This disparity is explained predominantly by the choice of means - women tend to choose less effective means like poisoning and wrist-cutting, whereas men tend to choose more effective means like hanging and shooting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicide Here in the UK, acetaminophen poisoning is one of the primary means of suicide. We restricted the sale of acetaminophen to a maximum of 32 tablets in pharmacies and 16 tablets in general retailers. This led to a 43% reduction in deaths due to acetaminophen poisoning, with no commensurate increase in suicide attempts due to other means. http://www.bmj.com/CONTENT/346/BMJ.F403 http://www.bmj.com/CONTENT/346/BMJ.F403 If you're serious about suicide prevention then gun control is a vital part of the response, alongside other measures to restrict access to means of suicide and improve access to crisis care.
Broken_Hippo 9y ago
"It’s interesting that the focus is on the gun and not the situation: club, drugs, (alcohol?)" And a gun. A gun is really an important part of this, and the bit that we can have some control over, and a gun is the thing that makes this situation different in the US rather than UK or Australia. It isn't like we are going to get rid of drinking locations. If they weren't happening in public, they'd happen at people's houses. Same with alcohol - we've tried it. I won't speculate on possible drugs since we aren't quite sure about that bit, but it is unlikely we'll get rid of these things either. Without the gun, the weapons likely wouldn't have been so deadly especially if the person doesn't have proper training and control. Most likely, the weapons would be things like knives or broken bottles. Not saying they aren't deadly, just that they take a bit more work and might have more chance to live. Now I'll assume the weapon was illegal. Hey, it happens even in place with tough laws. If they are put in place correctly (see Australia, who had a similar gun culture to the US for an example), fewer people have guns. Illegal guns are harder to come by because of that. Between scarcity and increased risk in selling, prices will likely go up and the end result is that fewer criminals actually have guns because fewer criminals can afford them. Especially possible low-level drug dealers.
- dewyatt 9y ago
  Personally I'd rather be shot and killed than be stabbed in the face repeatedly with a broken bottle (and potentially live). To each his own, though.

yongjik 9y ago

> Chances are the gun was acquired illegally, possessed illegally,etc. How do more gun control laws help here? You can't illegally acquire guns when there are no guns to acquire. There's a reason why muggers in Paris or Tokyo don't shoot people, and the reason is not because they are nice muggers. And "you can't put the genie back in the bottle" is kind of the opposite of "gun control laws are slippery slope toward total dictatorship" (which a lot of people seem to believe). You cannot claim both at the same time.

GiorgioG 9y ago
You cannot possibly believe that you can confiscate all the guns in the US. So what magic wand do you have to make them disappear?
- yongjik 9y ago
  Why do malls have security cameras when they cannot catch all thieves? Why have a border control when you cannot catch everyone crossing it? If America gets rid of one million guns, that's one million less guns criminals can illegally obtain. This is not an all-or-nothing game. I'm sure even Japan has a few illegal guns hidden somewhere.
  - GiorgioG 9y ago
    How’s that working out for cities that have ineffective (but hey they feel good ‘cause we gotta do something!) gun buyback programs like Chicago (with super-strict gun control laws to boot)?
    - GiorgioG 9y ago
      Stop being lazy and post some logical reasons for the downvotes
  - gw 9y ago
    Your comments belie a pretty strong ignorance of American gun culture. This isn't a numbers game; there is a large portion of the population that would not comply with a confiscation program, and would resist using (you guessed it) firearms. Many of the strongest supporters of the second amendment are in the military and police. It boggles my mind that the same people who denounce involving our military in middle eastern quagmires, would propose igniting such a civil war domestically.
    - yongjik 9y ago
      This is a numbers game, and a long-term game. I'm sure there are Americans who would rather shoot a police officer than give up their guns, but I believe their numbers are dwindling. Societies change. After all, gay marriage or a black president was unthinkable only a few decades ago. Personally, I kinda see the point of having guns if you live in the middle of nowhere eighty miles from the nearest police station. So I'd say, let them keep their guns. No reason to give them more political ammunition. For the majority of Americans (by population, not area), guns make much less sense. If American cities are infested with shootings, it's not because gun control doesn't work. It's because the American government is bought out by NRA lobbyists so they don't try hard enough. It has proven be a tough battle for Americans to coerce the government into action. But, hey, nobody said fighting your government would be easy, did they?
      - LyndsySimon 9y ago
- johngruber 9y ago
  Not sure if just trolling or willful ignoring the facts. There are so many articles about how this has happened in other countries: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38365729 http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38365729 Basically: - Make it much more difficult to obtain. Those with legit reasons and determination still can get them. - Make it very illegal to possess without the proper channels. This will compel people to give them up. Impose hefty fines for those not complying. Somehow magically, with just those two steps, your average illegal gun price will skyrocket while the availability will plummet, making gun usage among criminals a lot lower. No, you won't confiscate all the guns, but you don't need to. Just most of them. It won't mean 0 deaths/year, but you can expect in the mid-term that they drop dramatically.
- jdietrich 9y ago
  >You cannot possibly believe that you can confiscate all the guns in the US. You don't need to confiscate all guns to practically eliminate gun crime. The UK didn't, we just adopted a harm reduction model, gradually controlling and then removing those weapons with the greatest risk for harm and the least legitimate use - handguns and semi-automatic centrefire rifles. It took decades, but it worked. Start with a serious federal licensing and registration system. Establish a national database with comprehensive ownership records, including private transfers; require firearm manufacturers to submit forensic samples of bullets and casings for all new firearms. Mandate firing pin microstamping. Fix the known shortcomings of the background check system. Close the gun show loophole. Instate the five-day waiting period originally proposed in the Brady Act. Require secure storage of all firearms in an approved gunsafe. Introduce mandatory safety training. Impose considerably harsher punishments for reckless or dangerous use of a licensed firearm. Once you've got all that in place, then you can start talking about buybacks, amnesties and outright bans, starting with Title II firearms. Mandate a legitimate sporting or professional justification for the purchase or transfer of any firearm. Ban large-capacity magazines, then centerfire handguns, then semi-automatic rimfire handguns, then semi-automatic rifles. After 30 or 40 years of incremental progress, you end up with a society that has a negligible number of handguns and semi-automatic rifles, while still maintaining the rights of sportsmen and farmers to own shotguns and bolt-action rifles in a properly controlled manner. You can do it, if you can muster a serious and well-funded opposition to the NRA.
  - megaman22 9y ago
    I'm litearally rolling on the floor laughing at this naivete. Shit, I grew up in the woods where the semi-auto Remington 742 woodsmaster or the 1100 shotgun wasn't any different than the Ace hardware hoe or the Rotenone or Sevin bug dust; we used both to keep the pests out of the garden that fed us. I've bought one firearm, out of a dozen, from a licensed store. Almost all are private, individual to individual sales or inherited.
  - GiorgioG 9y ago
    > Start with a serious federal licensing and registration system. Good luck getting that kind of law passed anywhere outside of NY/CA. Registration = Confiscation is a strongly held belief. See how many New Yorkers registered their AR-15 when the NY SAFE Act was passed in the middle of the night. > Close the gun show loophole. There is no loophole. Federally-licensed gun dealers must run background checks no matter where they sell their wares. Private transfers do not require background checks. > After 30 or 40 years of incremental progress What you call "progress," I call a city-slicker's fantasy paradise. I grew up in a nanny state (NY) and moved south in my mid-30s. It's refreshing to live in a place where guns are seen as tools and not as evil monsters that charge out of their locked cases and mow down innocent children all on their own without a human pulling the trigger. The sitting president (regardless of what you or I think of him) was elected on a base that believes in a different idea of progress. I voted for him stricktly because I believed he'd be largely ineffective and that he wouldn't shit all over my gun rights.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
refurb 9y ago
You can't illegally acquire guns when there are no guns to acquire. You realize that in the case of one of the Paris attacks, the weapons were legally acquired, right? Guns aren't 100% banned in France. In fact, the French police decided to confiscate legal weapons from over 100 individuals with terrorist ties.(1) (1)https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2017-07-06/france-takes-guns-from-people-on-list-of-might-be-militants-minister https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2017-07-06/france...
- GiorgioG 9y ago
  Actually the guns used in the 2015 Paris attacks were acquired from neighboring countries thanks to the border-control-free EU.

jdietrich 9y ago

In the UK, handguns are so difficult to get hold of that organised criminals often resort to using modified flare guns or antique duelling pistols. Suffice it so say that these are not particularly deadly or reliable weapons. There are about 50 firearm murders per year in the UK. We haven't had a single mass shooting incident since 2010. When taken seriously, gun control works. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/after-shooting-tragedies-britain-went-after-guns/2013/01/31/b94d20c0-6a15-11e2-9a0b-db931670f35d_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/after-shooting-t...

refurb 9y ago
The U.K. never had a serious firearms problem, at least not on the scale the US does. I think there are a lot more factors at play then gun control. For example, single shot rifles and shotguns are legal in the UK. Yet rarely used. Why is that?
- GiorgioG 9y ago
  I think one of the problems here is how the issue is framed to begin with. Do we have a serious firearms problem or do we have a suicide problem? Two of my cousins have committed suicide by self-inflicted gunshot wound (one was an extremely successful doctor and the other an auto-factory worker.) Two-thirds of gun deaths in the US are from suicide. Bet you most of you gun-fearing folks didn't know that. "In terms of race and ethnicity, Kaplan said that 77 percent of white gun deaths in the U.S. are suicides, while less than 1 in 5 (19 percent) is a homicide. The figures are nearly opposite for African Americans, for which only 14 percent are suicides." http://luskin.ucla.edu/connection-poverty-inequality-firearm-violence/ http://luskin.ucla.edu/connection-poverty-inequality-firearm... Instead of a firearms problem, maybe we have a suicide (mental health?) problem and a poverty/inequality problem. Or maybe we have a media problem - neither the left, nor the right's propaganda machines seem interested in the real issues.
  - jdietrich 9y ago
    Suicide attempts are predominantly impulsive acts that are rarely repeated, so controlling the means of suicide is an essential component in suicide prevention. Most people who attempt suicide go from intent to action within a matter of hours, with no significant forward planning. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165032714005333 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165032714... Women are far more likely to attempt suicide, but men are far more likely to die by suicide. This disparity is explained predominantly by the choice of means - women tend to choose less effective means like poisoning and wrist-cutting, whereas men tend to choose more effective means like hanging and shooting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicide Here in the UK, acetaminophen poisoning is one of the primary means of suicide. We restricted the sale of acetaminophen to a maximum of 32 tablets in pharmacies and 16 tablets in general retailers. This led to a 43% reduction in deaths due to acetaminophen poisoning, with no commensurate increase in suicide attempts due to other means. http://www.bmj.com/CONTENT/346/BMJ.F403 http://www.bmj.com/CONTENT/346/BMJ.F403 If you're serious about suicide prevention then gun control is a vital part of the response, alongside other measures to restrict access to means of suicide and improve access to crisis care.

Broken_Hippo 9y ago

"It’s interesting that the focus is on the gun and not the situation: club, drugs, (alcohol?)" And a gun. A gun is really an important part of this, and the bit that we can have some control over, and a gun is the thing that makes this situation different in the US rather than UK or Australia. It isn't like we are going to get rid of drinking locations. If they weren't happening in public, they'd happen at people's houses. Same with alcohol - we've tried it. I won't speculate on possible drugs since we aren't quite sure about that bit, but it is unlikely we'll get rid of these things either. Without the gun, the weapons likely wouldn't have been so deadly especially if the person doesn't have proper training and control. Most likely, the weapons would be things like knives or broken bottles. Not saying they aren't deadly, just that they take a bit more work and might have more chance to live. Now I'll assume the weapon was illegal. Hey, it happens even in place with tough laws. If they are put in place correctly (see Australia, who had a similar gun culture to the US for an example), fewer people have guns. Illegal guns are harder to come by because of that. Between scarcity and increased risk in selling, prices will likely go up and the end result is that fewer criminals actually have guns because fewer criminals can afford them. Especially possible low-level drug dealers.

dewyatt 9y ago
Personally I'd rather be shot and killed than be stabbed in the face repeatedly with a broken bottle (and potentially live). To each his own, though.