8 ms·

Why Most Gun Laws Aren’t Backed Up by Evidence

22 points by bryan0 4y ago

bediger4000 4y ago
Choice of headline is interesting.
arghandugh 4y ago
The idea that “getting shot in the head” is a mysterious phenomenon that needs intense sociological research is so utterly fucking insane that it’s hard to breathe. It’s the guns. It’s the guns. It’s the guns. The phenomena exists because the object exists and is sold in every town in America for reasons that range from the deranged to the sinister.
- Jimmc414 4y ago
  Murder predates projectile weapons.
  - happymellon 4y ago
    Projectile weapons certainly increase its volume though.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - wrycoder 4y ago
      God created men, and Sam Colt made them equal. Let’s say you are a fifty year old woman. Just try defending yourself without a gun.
      - arghandugh 4y ago
        Let’s say your child is shot to death at school. Why didn’t you arm them? Why didn’t your five year old have a handgun? Why didn’t your child know how to shoot to kill? Guns are the great equalizer, you know.
        wrycoder 4y ago
        I know you're just jerking me around, but to answer your question: An infant isn't capable of handling any weapon. At around the age of twelve, children, if accustomed to guns, are capable of defending themselves, and have done so, both in the pioneer days and currently. But, we don't allow children to be armed in school, because not all children are emotionally mature. That's why we set age limits on legal firearm ownership. We depend on the school staff and facilities to keep them safe and we expect that children will be civilized by their families and their schooling to respect authority. Sadly, that is not always the case, especially in the last few decades. Using a gun in self defense is a last resort. Lawful gun owners are very reluctant to do so, because they understand the responsibility and ramifications of doing that.
        arghandugh 4y ago
        I’m not jerking you around, I’m telling you point-blank that your solution to this problem is the actual problem itself. You have created a utter fucking nightmare world, and now you want to fix it with more nightmares. Fuck you. Fuck your guns. Fuck your lawful gun ownership culture. Fuck you.
        happymellon 4y ago
        > Using a gun in self defense is a last resort. Lawful gun owners are very reluctant to do so, because they understand the responsibility and ramifications of doing that. Found the person who not only didn't read the article, but is essentially summed up by it.
        wrycoder 4y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States_by_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta... VT and NH, with triple the gun ownership of CA, have one half of the CA gun murder rate. NH and VT are constitutional carry states, with gun laws consistent with the US Constitution. CA is heavily regulated. How do you account for this?
      - happymellon 4y ago
        Ah, and this is why they don't have mass shootings in the USA, only other countries because Americans are all well armed! Oh wait...
        wrycoder 4y ago
        You do know that the “mass shootings” are almost always done in locations where citizens with legal pistols are not allowed to carry them, i.e. gun-free zones? And when there are armed citizens present, the shooters are usually quickly stopped?
- Georgelemental 4y ago
  > The idea that “getting shot in the head” is a mysterious phenomenon that needs intense sociological research is so utterly fucking insane that it’s hard to breathe. > It’s the shooters. It’s the shooters. It’s the shooters. The phenomenon exists because the criminals exist and are not imprisoned in every town in America for reasons that range from the deranged to the sinister. Did I do it right?
  - sorethescore 4y ago
    That’s nice, but what are they shooting? Peas? Water? I’m curious.
    - Georgelemental 4y ago
      > That's nice, but who is doing the shooting? Dogs? Potted plants? I'm curious. We could do this all day.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - makerofthings 4y ago
    In the uk, we realised it was the people and not the guns. We also saw that you can’t stop people being unreliable and dangerous, but we can get rid of the guns. We did, and we’re better for it.
    - stuckinhell 4y ago
      The UK is island nation with controlled borders. America is the size of continental Europe. In America a rocket launcher was found near a elementary school in California. Rocket Launchers are highly illegal. We have a massive amount of illegal weapons coming from south of the border. That's Obama had a big scandal called the fast and furious (https://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/obama-relents-in-fight-over-fast-and-furious-documents-221741 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/obama-relents-in-figh...). The illegal guns they sold the cartel were coming back over the border and being used in crimes.
- dokem 4y ago
  Guns are not complex devices. Making them illegal does not make them go away. People are not hard to kill and if you want to do a lot of damage it’s hard to beat a can of gasoline or a U-haul. Find something else to cry about.
  - happymellon 4y ago
    The article talks about the irrational conversations that gun ownership has in the USA. You can't study it. By banning any observation no one can prove whether the majority of shootings come from the gun owner or someone who stole the gun. As such the negative "making them illegal does not make them go away" also cannot be proved by you.
  - vlovich123 4y ago
    That’s neither here nor there. Legislation certainly can change the amount of guns available. Compare Canada or Australia which too had similar gun cultures prior to legislation. Sure it doesn’t get rid of all guns. No one is claiming that it would but that’s an unreasonable bar that’s only set by critics. Even countries with strict gun control still have guns. However gun deaths are more rare because the penalty associated with even holding a gun illicitly are quite high, so in practice the number of guns floating around is lower and their use is really constrained (mainly because the cost of acquiring a gun is higher). Sure, the US has way more private gun ownership than other countries when they took steps towards effective legislation. It’ll take longer for any meaningful legislation to take effect, and only if it’s a national thing to mitigate cross-border transport. And SCOTUSes current ideological bent and strange 2nd amendment interpretation further complicates things at all levels. For what it’s worth the 2nd amendment seems to only ever have been interpreted about national regulations of formal state militias (eg the state’s National guard, police, etc). The reinterpretation in Heller to mean protection of private ownership is both recent (2008) and quite strange. A significantly worse decision than whatever Roe got wrong in legal theory and one that had strict social harm vs Roe which actually at least had positive social outcomes.
    - dokem 4y ago
      You are willfully misinterpreting 2a. Police and national guard are not militias. 'The people' does not mean the state. This is not a recent interpretation. The bill of rights outlines citizen's rights not the state. Obviously the state can have weapons. If you are a US citizen you have some learning to do.
- throwayyy479087 4y ago
  New Hampshire and Vermont and Montana have murder and gun ownership rates that refute this. It’s a hard topic.
  - ParksNet 4y ago
    Its an easy topic: demographics.
    - drekipus 4y ago
      That's the dirty topic that no one wants to address in the gun debate.
      - arghandugh 4y ago
        How dare you play coy and cute? The entire fantasy and brand promise of guns is that you (white) will be able to confront nonwhites with deadly force. It’s all vile racism on top, on bottom, and in the interior. Fuck right off with this dogwhistle bullshit.
        drekipus 4y ago
        I'm saying it's a dirty topic, precisely because of responses like yours. That might be your brand promise but it's not mine. Who said I'm white?
    - red-iron-pine 4y ago
      you're burying the lede. tell us what those demographics are.
- twretgfsd 4y ago
  i own guns, somehow they still havent managed to walk around on their own and start shooting people
  - krapp 4y ago
    Oh hey look, it's the bad faith green account. We've all been waiting for you to show up. It wouldn't be a political thread on Hacker News without you.
- 908B64B197 4y ago
  Let me see if I get it right "It’s the trucks. It’s the trucks. It’s the trucks. The phenomena exists because the object exists and is sold in every town in America for reasons that range from the deranged to the sinister." In foreign countries without second amendment rights criminals just ram trucks into people instead. Since no guns are involved, these don't get reported as "mass shootings", not that it would bring any comfort to the victims and their families [0] [1] [2]. In all seriousness, this isn't Harry Potter where the wand "speaks" to the wizard. An inanimate object won't "convince" someone to commit a crime. Focusing on the human shooting the gun would yield much better results. But say "mental health" and watch everyone suddenly go very silent and ignore the issue. Much easier to blame the evil inanimate object! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Berlin_truck_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Berlin_truck_attack [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Toronto_van_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Toronto_van_attack
DanielVZ 4y ago
> Even the authors of the Rand report say lawmakers should still be putting policies aimed at preventing gun violence into practice now — regardless of what the science does or doesn’t say.
albatross13 4y ago
Thanks for reminding me, I need to go clean my 9mms lol!
mint2 4y ago
That headline is horrendous — but it’s also clickbait so obviously they went with it over better ones. Actual article point: “ doesn’t mean other gun laws don’t work — just that the research proving it doesn’t yet exist. Scientists I spoke to saw it as an “absence of evidence” problem, stemming from long-standing, intentional roadblocks in the path of gun violence research.”
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  Isn't this by definition a problem all new legislation is facing. We can't have good evidence whether something new works before it's tried. (and arguably even after a new policy has been introduced, it's pretty hard)
snovymgodym 4y ago
The biggest problem about US gun laws is that they are written in an extremely "all-or-nothing" fashion. There are a bunch of European countries where you can own modern semi-auto rifles and handguns privately, and they don't have the homicide/suicide rates of the US. The thing is that almost every other country in the world handles private firearms ownership through a combination of: 1. Categorizing firearms on objective criteria, and grouping weapons on what is essentially a risk basis. So manual-action rifles and shotguns might be category A, semi-auto long guns with fixed magazines and revolvers might be category B, semi-auto weapons with detachable magazines might be category C, and so on. 2. Having a tiered licensing system that gates private access to firearms based on which category they fall into. In a fair number of European countries, the basic firearms license is obtainable basically as long as you're an adult citizen without a criminal history who can pass a basic psychological evaluation. The categories and licenses actually vary a ton between countries. Some are quite permissive (e.g. Czechia, Switzerland) and some are very restrictive (e.g Romania). In the US it's totally different. There is no license for owning a firearm, there is simply legal eligibility (are you an adult, not a drug addict, not a felon, not convicted of domestic violence, etc). As a US citizen, owning firearms operates on a sort of "benefit of the doubt" system where you have the right to own them by default. That's basically the opposite of every other country. Also, under federal law there is no legal difference between a single-shot .22 and an AR15. The only category based restriction is that handguns can't be sold to under-21s. The only weapons which are meaninfully treated differently are machine guns, "destructive devices" (explosives, launchers, and certain shotguns for some reason), silencers/suppressors, and "short-barreled" rifles & shotguns (defined as having a barrel length under 16 or 18 inches respectively). The thing is, that even these special categories of firearms do not have any advanced legal requirements for ownership beyond those of normal firearms, but they have to be registered and require additional paperwork and processing time to transfer ownership. On the state level, there are some laws that introduce a license system, some laws that try to restrict certain categories of firearms or magazines, and other things of that nature. There doesn't seem to be much evidence that state-level gun laws are very effective in reducing gun crime. But across the US you have states with every combination of high/low crime and lax/permissive gun laws. It seems like any meaningful change will have to take place on the federal level. I think the best thing the US could do for everyone is move to a tiered-license system for all firearms. As a part of this, we could get rid of the arbitrary NFA classifications which might help bring support from the pro-gun side. I think this is ultimately wishful thinking however, because I don't think this kind of system would be allowed under the current interpretation of the 2nd amendment.
LorenPechtel 4y ago
Of course we don't have evidence. Neither side wants good evidence. It's a battle of ideology, not facts. The gun banners don't want it because most criminals don't have legal guns in the first place. Nothing you can do short of disarming society will have much effect on the criminals and most of them don't want to admit that's their actual objective. The gun nuts don't want it, either, because it will show some benefits of gun regulations (for example, locking up guns around kids helps.)
- smeagull 4y ago
  data in that sense can't tell you what to do at all.
- andromeduck 4y ago
  Pro gun positions are largely philosophical IMO.
  - mansion7 4y ago
    Until/unless you live in an area that you need one. The same areas that disarm the populace also tend to hamstring police and have crime friendly DAs, a recipe for a class of sheep to be preyed upon.
e_i_pi_2 4y ago
I feel like it's confusing to talk about gun deaths and focus on homicides when the biggest contributor to gun deaths (in the US at least) is suicide. As far as I've seen the biggest thing to prevent suicide is delaying and eventually the feeling generally passes. Owning a gun just puts you at a higher risk of killing yourself, and the chances of using it to defend yourself are so slim it doesn't seem worth it to me
- TAKEMYMONEY 4y ago
  Homicides are a huge chunk of gun deaths in the US > 54% of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides, while 43% were murders https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/02/03/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/02/03/what-the-da...
- TexanFeller 4y ago
  I feel it's wrong to try to prevent an adult from committing suicide by legal means. My body my choice and all that, and if you don't control your own life and body are you really free? The government should try to prevent suicides by improving peoples' lives so they'll want to stay alive.
  - fragmede 4y ago
    What's the government going to do to prevent someone from feeling low when they're laid off, their wife leaves them, and takes the dog? I mean, sure, if that's worth killing yourself over then there should be legal methods to seek alternate relief (which Oregon and do Canada provide). But having a gun in that momentary low after killing a 30-rack of beer because they're so distraught seems like a great way to lose some really great people.
- fragmede 4y ago
  You must live in a nice, gentrified neighborhood where the rich white people live. My house has never been broken into either; definitely not while I'm inside, so thankfully I do too. Not everyone is so lucky, unfortunately, so I would caution against assuming that everyone lives in such a neighborhood.
manv1 4y ago
It's telling that gun ownership is so controversial that the Founding Fathers explicitly wrote in that guns were allowed...along with freedom of speech, religion, and assembly, and a bunch of restrictions on what the government could do to you. Here people are, hundreds of years later, still trying to ban gun. Go figure.
- krapp 4y ago
  Yes, and of course the Founding Fathers were always in agreement and always right about everything, and nothing they ever said or believed should ever be questioned. And the government that wrote the Second Amendment certainly never supported any gun control laws, restrictions or bans at all. Never question the narrative. Keep buying guns and keep loving freedom.
- SomeHacker44 4y ago
  Guns were allowed only in service of militia duties.
  - Vecr 4y ago
    Not by current (post 2008, and disagreed on much before that) supreme court interpretation, where the whole part about the free state and militia are a goal statement. Even if you take the militia thing to mean what you think it means, all free (i.e. non-slave/imprisoned) men between the ages of 17/18 and thirty-something would be part of the unorganized militia and required or encouraged to own a gun and other military equipment (like a rucksack, powder, ball, etc.), ready to form up in the case of unrest, invasion, tyranny, etc. I think it was actually 17-36, but don't quote me on that. It would be annoying for SCOTUS to deal with due to problems with women and the draft (congress, are you going to sort that out?), but in theory it could be workable.
derstander 4y ago
In reading through this comment section, I think that it’s an interesting microcosm that accurately reflects broader American society. And this ostensibly more rational than average group can’t have this conversation without getting heated, so it’s no wonder that our gun laws aren’t evidence-based. On one side, we have people that are livid that literal children are being murdered - and in schools. And on the other side we have people furious that a right bound up in the fabric of the founding of the country is under threat. And you know what? Both these sides are right. Children are literally dying in schools. And a foundational right is under threat. I (of course) don’t have the answer to this or even how to hash it out. In some sense, I don’t think the argument is over facts themselves, I think the disagreement is about the axioms underneath everything. There are some that have the position that it’s not acceptable that one child die to guns. And if someone has personally lost a child to gun violence, can you blame them? Their axiom is no child can die from guns - the right to life, liberty, etc. And on the other side, if the primary reasoning behind 2A is discouraging or actively fighting tyranny, why shouldn’t they have a fully automatic machine gun? Why not even more capable weapons than that? Their axiom is that tyranny must not take root here. Rights are often in tension — definitely in this case. But I don’t really see productive conversations happening along these lines: both sides are too entrenched.

22 points by bryan0 4y ago

Choice of headline is interesting.

The idea that “getting shot in the head” is a mysterious phenomenon that needs intense sociological research is so utterly fucking insane that it’s hard to breathe. It’s the guns. It’s the guns. It’s the guns. The phenomena exists because the object exists and is sold in every town in America for reasons that range from the deranged to the sinister.

Jimmc414 4y ago
Murder predates projectile weapons.
- happymellon 4y ago
  Projectile weapons certainly increase its volume though.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - wrycoder 4y ago
    God created men, and Sam Colt made them equal. Let’s say you are a fifty year old woman. Just try defending yourself without a gun.
    - arghandugh 4y ago
      Let’s say your child is shot to death at school. Why didn’t you arm them? Why didn’t your five year old have a handgun? Why didn’t your child know how to shoot to kill? Guns are the great equalizer, you know.
      - wrycoder 4y ago
        I know you're just jerking me around, but to answer your question: An infant isn't capable of handling any weapon. At around the age of twelve, children, if accustomed to guns, are capable of defending themselves, and have done so, both in the pioneer days and currently. But, we don't allow children to be armed in school, because not all children are emotionally mature. That's why we set age limits on legal firearm ownership. We depend on the school staff and facilities to keep them safe and we expect that children will be civilized by their families and their schooling to respect authority. Sadly, that is not always the case, especially in the last few decades. Using a gun in self defense is a last resort. Lawful gun owners are very reluctant to do so, because they understand the responsibility and ramifications of doing that.
        arghandugh 4y ago
        I’m not jerking you around, I’m telling you point-blank that your solution to this problem is the actual problem itself. You have created a utter fucking nightmare world, and now you want to fix it with more nightmares. Fuck you. Fuck your guns. Fuck your lawful gun ownership culture. Fuck you.
        happymellon 4y ago
        > Using a gun in self defense is a last resort. Lawful gun owners are very reluctant to do so, because they understand the responsibility and ramifications of doing that. Found the person who not only didn't read the article, but is essentially summed up by it.
        wrycoder 4y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States_by_state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta... VT and NH, with triple the gun ownership of CA, have one half of the CA gun murder rate. NH and VT are constitutional carry states, with gun laws consistent with the US Constitution. CA is heavily regulated. How do you account for this?
    - happymellon 4y ago
      Ah, and this is why they don't have mass shootings in the USA, only other countries because Americans are all well armed! Oh wait...
      - wrycoder 4y ago
        You do know that the “mass shootings” are almost always done in locations where citizens with legal pistols are not allowed to carry them, i.e. gun-free zones? And when there are armed citizens present, the shooters are usually quickly stopped?
Georgelemental 4y ago
> The idea that “getting shot in the head” is a mysterious phenomenon that needs intense sociological research is so utterly fucking insane that it’s hard to breathe. > It’s the shooters. It’s the shooters. It’s the shooters. The phenomenon exists because the criminals exist and are not imprisoned in every town in America for reasons that range from the deranged to the sinister. Did I do it right?
- sorethescore 4y ago
  That’s nice, but what are they shooting? Peas? Water? I’m curious.
  - Georgelemental 4y ago
    > That's nice, but who is doing the shooting? Dogs? Potted plants? I'm curious. We could do this all day.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- makerofthings 4y ago
  In the uk, we realised it was the people and not the guns. We also saw that you can’t stop people being unreliable and dangerous, but we can get rid of the guns. We did, and we’re better for it.
  - stuckinhell 4y ago
    The UK is island nation with controlled borders. America is the size of continental Europe. In America a rocket launcher was found near a elementary school in California. Rocket Launchers are highly illegal. We have a massive amount of illegal weapons coming from south of the border. That's Obama had a big scandal called the fast and furious (https://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/obama-relents-in-fight-over-fast-and-furious-documents-221741 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/obama-relents-in-figh...). The illegal guns they sold the cartel were coming back over the border and being used in crimes.
dokem 4y ago
Guns are not complex devices. Making them illegal does not make them go away. People are not hard to kill and if you want to do a lot of damage it’s hard to beat a can of gasoline or a U-haul. Find something else to cry about.
- happymellon 4y ago
  The article talks about the irrational conversations that gun ownership has in the USA. You can't study it. By banning any observation no one can prove whether the majority of shootings come from the gun owner or someone who stole the gun. As such the negative "making them illegal does not make them go away" also cannot be proved by you.
- vlovich123 4y ago
  That’s neither here nor there. Legislation certainly can change the amount of guns available. Compare Canada or Australia which too had similar gun cultures prior to legislation. Sure it doesn’t get rid of all guns. No one is claiming that it would but that’s an unreasonable bar that’s only set by critics. Even countries with strict gun control still have guns. However gun deaths are more rare because the penalty associated with even holding a gun illicitly are quite high, so in practice the number of guns floating around is lower and their use is really constrained (mainly because the cost of acquiring a gun is higher). Sure, the US has way more private gun ownership than other countries when they took steps towards effective legislation. It’ll take longer for any meaningful legislation to take effect, and only if it’s a national thing to mitigate cross-border transport. And SCOTUSes current ideological bent and strange 2nd amendment interpretation further complicates things at all levels. For what it’s worth the 2nd amendment seems to only ever have been interpreted about national regulations of formal state militias (eg the state’s National guard, police, etc). The reinterpretation in Heller to mean protection of private ownership is both recent (2008) and quite strange. A significantly worse decision than whatever Roe got wrong in legal theory and one that had strict social harm vs Roe which actually at least had positive social outcomes.
  - dokem 4y ago
    You are willfully misinterpreting 2a. Police and national guard are not militias. 'The people' does not mean the state. This is not a recent interpretation. The bill of rights outlines citizen's rights not the state. Obviously the state can have weapons. If you are a US citizen you have some learning to do.
throwayyy479087 4y ago
New Hampshire and Vermont and Montana have murder and gun ownership rates that refute this. It’s a hard topic.
- ParksNet 4y ago
  Its an easy topic: demographics.
  - drekipus 4y ago
    That's the dirty topic that no one wants to address in the gun debate.
    - arghandugh 4y ago
      How dare you play coy and cute? The entire fantasy and brand promise of guns is that you (white) will be able to confront nonwhites with deadly force. It’s all vile racism on top, on bottom, and in the interior. Fuck right off with this dogwhistle bullshit.
      - drekipus 4y ago
        I'm saying it's a dirty topic, precisely because of responses like yours. That might be your brand promise but it's not mine. Who said I'm white?
  - red-iron-pine 4y ago
    you're burying the lede. tell us what those demographics are.
twretgfsd 4y ago
i own guns, somehow they still havent managed to walk around on their own and start shooting people
- krapp 4y ago
  Oh hey look, it's the bad faith green account. We've all been waiting for you to show up. It wouldn't be a political thread on Hacker News without you.
908B64B197 4y ago
Let me see if I get it right "It’s the trucks. It’s the trucks. It’s the trucks. The phenomena exists because the object exists and is sold in every town in America for reasons that range from the deranged to the sinister." In foreign countries without second amendment rights criminals just ram trucks into people instead. Since no guns are involved, these don't get reported as "mass shootings", not that it would bring any comfort to the victims and their families [0] [1] [2]. In all seriousness, this isn't Harry Potter where the wand "speaks" to the wizard. An inanimate object won't "convince" someone to commit a crime. Focusing on the human shooting the gun would yield much better results. But say "mental health" and watch everyone suddenly go very silent and ignore the issue. Much easier to blame the evil inanimate object! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Berlin_truck_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Berlin_truck_attack [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Toronto_van_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Toronto_van_attack

DanielVZ 4y ago

> Even the authors of the Rand report say lawmakers should still be putting policies aimed at preventing gun violence into practice now — regardless of what the science does or doesn’t say.

albatross13 4y ago

Thanks for reminding me, I need to go clean my 9mms lol!

mint2 4y ago

That headline is horrendous — but it’s also clickbait so obviously they went with it over better ones. Actual article point: “ doesn’t mean other gun laws don’t work — just that the research proving it doesn’t yet exist. Scientists I spoke to saw it as an “absence of evidence” problem, stemming from long-standing, intentional roadblocks in the path of gun violence research.”

marginalia_nu 4y ago
Isn't this by definition a problem all new legislation is facing. We can't have good evidence whether something new works before it's tried. (and arguably even after a new policy has been introduced, it's pretty hard)

snovymgodym 4y ago

The biggest problem about US gun laws is that they are written in an extremely "all-or-nothing" fashion. There are a bunch of European countries where you can own modern semi-auto rifles and handguns privately, and they don't have the homicide/suicide rates of the US. The thing is that almost every other country in the world handles private firearms ownership through a combination of: 1. Categorizing firearms on objective criteria, and grouping weapons on what is essentially a risk basis. So manual-action rifles and shotguns might be category A, semi-auto long guns with fixed magazines and revolvers might be category B, semi-auto weapons with detachable magazines might be category C, and so on. 2. Having a tiered licensing system that gates private access to firearms based on which category they fall into. In a fair number of European countries, the basic firearms license is obtainable basically as long as you're an adult citizen without a criminal history who can pass a basic psychological evaluation. The categories and licenses actually vary a ton between countries. Some are quite permissive (e.g. Czechia, Switzerland) and some are very restrictive (e.g Romania). In the US it's totally different. There is no license for owning a firearm, there is simply legal eligibility (are you an adult, not a drug addict, not a felon, not convicted of domestic violence, etc). As a US citizen, owning firearms operates on a sort of "benefit of the doubt" system where you have the right to own them by default. That's basically the opposite of every other country. Also, under federal law there is no legal difference between a single-shot .22 and an AR15. The only category based restriction is that handguns can't be sold to under-21s. The only weapons which are meaninfully treated differently are machine guns, "destructive devices" (explosives, launchers, and certain shotguns for some reason), silencers/suppressors, and "short-barreled" rifles & shotguns (defined as having a barrel length under 16 or 18 inches respectively). The thing is, that even these special categories of firearms do not have any advanced legal requirements for ownership beyond those of normal firearms, but they have to be registered and require additional paperwork and processing time to transfer ownership. On the state level, there are some laws that introduce a license system, some laws that try to restrict certain categories of firearms or magazines, and other things of that nature. There doesn't seem to be much evidence that state-level gun laws are very effective in reducing gun crime. But across the US you have states with every combination of high/low crime and lax/permissive gun laws. It seems like any meaningful change will have to take place on the federal level. I think the best thing the US could do for everyone is move to a tiered-license system for all firearms. As a part of this, we could get rid of the arbitrary NFA classifications which might help bring support from the pro-gun side. I think this is ultimately wishful thinking however, because I don't think this kind of system would be allowed under the current interpretation of the 2nd amendment.

LorenPechtel 4y ago

Of course we don't have evidence. Neither side wants good evidence. It's a battle of ideology, not facts. The gun banners don't want it because most criminals don't have legal guns in the first place. Nothing you can do short of disarming society will have much effect on the criminals and most of them don't want to admit that's their actual objective. The gun nuts don't want it, either, because it will show some benefits of gun regulations (for example, locking up guns around kids helps.)

smeagull 4y ago
data in that sense can't tell you what to do at all.
andromeduck 4y ago
Pro gun positions are largely philosophical IMO.
- mansion7 4y ago
  Until/unless you live in an area that you need one. The same areas that disarm the populace also tend to hamstring police and have crime friendly DAs, a recipe for a class of sheep to be preyed upon.

e_i_pi_2 4y ago

I feel like it's confusing to talk about gun deaths and focus on homicides when the biggest contributor to gun deaths (in the US at least) is suicide. As far as I've seen the biggest thing to prevent suicide is delaying and eventually the feeling generally passes. Owning a gun just puts you at a higher risk of killing yourself, and the chances of using it to defend yourself are so slim it doesn't seem worth it to me

TAKEMYMONEY 4y ago
Homicides are a huge chunk of gun deaths in the US > 54% of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides, while 43% were murders https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/02/03/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/02/03/what-the-da...
TexanFeller 4y ago
I feel it's wrong to try to prevent an adult from committing suicide by legal means. My body my choice and all that, and if you don't control your own life and body are you really free? The government should try to prevent suicides by improving peoples' lives so they'll want to stay alive.
- fragmede 4y ago
  What's the government going to do to prevent someone from feeling low when they're laid off, their wife leaves them, and takes the dog? I mean, sure, if that's worth killing yourself over then there should be legal methods to seek alternate relief (which Oregon and do Canada provide). But having a gun in that momentary low after killing a 30-rack of beer because they're so distraught seems like a great way to lose some really great people.
fragmede 4y ago
You must live in a nice, gentrified neighborhood where the rich white people live. My house has never been broken into either; definitely not while I'm inside, so thankfully I do too. Not everyone is so lucky, unfortunately, so I would caution against assuming that everyone lives in such a neighborhood.

manv1 4y ago

It's telling that gun ownership is so controversial that the Founding Fathers explicitly wrote in that guns were allowed...along with freedom of speech, religion, and assembly, and a bunch of restrictions on what the government could do to you. Here people are, hundreds of years later, still trying to ban gun. Go figure.

krapp 4y ago
Yes, and of course the Founding Fathers were always in agreement and always right about everything, and nothing they ever said or believed should ever be questioned. And the government that wrote the Second Amendment certainly never supported any gun control laws, restrictions or bans at all. Never question the narrative. Keep buying guns and keep loving freedom.
SomeHacker44 4y ago
Guns were allowed only in service of militia duties.
- Vecr 4y ago
  Not by current (post 2008, and disagreed on much before that) supreme court interpretation, where the whole part about the free state and militia are a goal statement. Even if you take the militia thing to mean what you think it means, all free (i.e. non-slave/imprisoned) men between the ages of 17/18 and thirty-something would be part of the unorganized militia and required or encouraged to own a gun and other military equipment (like a rucksack, powder, ball, etc.), ready to form up in the case of unrest, invasion, tyranny, etc. I think it was actually 17-36, but don't quote me on that. It would be annoying for SCOTUS to deal with due to problems with women and the draft (congress, are you going to sort that out?), but in theory it could be workable.

derstander 4y ago

In reading through this comment section, I think that it’s an interesting microcosm that accurately reflects broader American society. And this ostensibly more rational than average group can’t have this conversation without getting heated, so it’s no wonder that our gun laws aren’t evidence-based. On one side, we have people that are livid that literal children are being murdered - and in schools. And on the other side we have people furious that a right bound up in the fabric of the founding of the country is under threat. And you know what? Both these sides are right. Children are literally dying in schools. And a foundational right is under threat. I (of course) don’t have the answer to this or even how to hash it out. In some sense, I don’t think the argument is over facts themselves, I think the disagreement is about the axioms underneath everything. There are some that have the position that it’s not acceptable that one child die to guns. And if someone has personally lost a child to gun violence, can you blame them? Their axiom is no child can die from guns - the right to life, liberty, etc. And on the other side, if the primary reasoning behind 2A is discouraging or actively fighting tyranny, why shouldn’t they have a fully automatic machine gun? Why not even more capable weapons than that? Their axiom is that tyranny must not take root here. Rights are often in tension — definitely in this case. But I don’t really see productive conversations happening along these lines: both sides are too entrenched.