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Without trying to come off as a paranoiac, my genuine suspicion is that banning these 'scary rifles' that, by your own admission, you didn't know much about unt

by bmelton 14y ago

Without trying to come off as a paranoiac, my genuine suspicion is that banning these 'scary rifles' that, by your own admission, you didn't know much about until you performed a LOT more research than the average person is likely to ever do, that it's the first step in eventually banning more and more categories of guns until eventually, they're all banned. The other points I'd like to make that I feel are somewhat relevant is that you should very much read up on DC v Heller, which is the most recent Supreme Court decision on the matter (except for Heller II) that specifies weapons "in common use" as a protected class of weapon from government bans. I would go further to suggest that I honestly believe (though I cannot substantiate) that the AR15 is able to be categorized as 'evil' because of its use in some of these high profile, but otherwise unlikely mass shootings, but what I really think is that they're most likely being used because they are just so popular. The AR15 is the most popular rifle being sold in the United States, and has been since 1994.

sliverstorm 14y ago
In regards to your last point, it would be like saying, "The Honda Civic is the most used getaway car". What is the takeaway? The Honda Civic is the most useful car to criminals and the best getaway car, or just one of those cars that is everywhere?
- bmelton 14y ago
  That, due to its popularity, it is likely to be used in a greater-than-average commission of crimes. If we looked at drunk driving incidents, and from those, were somehow able to determine that the Honda Civic was used in a higher percentage of them than other cars, it would be a mistake to conclude that Honda Civics were in some way more appealing to drunk drivers, or that they more easily facilitated drunk driving, while excluding overall ownership on the whole. Further, much of the legislation being considered (at least in Feinstein's bill) is akin to saying "Okay, the Honda Civic is used by drunk drivers. The Honda Civic has 17" tires and cup holders. Let's ban cup holders and 17" tires. No, let's ban all cars that have some combination of 17" tires and cup holders."
goostavos 14y ago
Just a quick note on your last paragraph, because that reminded me of the other data I looked at. I don't have the exact data handy (I'm doing some before bed hacker news browsing on my tablet), but I think it was assembled by, I want to say, a site called Mother Jones..? It was a google spread sheet of some kind. Anyway, it was a table with every mass shooting in the history of the US, the number of fatalities, and the weapon types used. After I finished playing with the FBI's data, I started to wonder if the ban was not to stop the kind of day-to-day gun crime, but to prevent the mass shooting, High profile, high fatality events like the recent school shooting, or the Aurora movie theater shooting, or any similar event. So, I pulled the data from that collection, and could find absolutely no correlation between rifle involvement in a mass shooting and the number of fatalities. Our worst shooting, with (going from memory here) 33 fatalities was the Virginia tech masacre. It involved absolutely no rifles, or shotguns, just the lowly handgun. I'll have to double check all the numbers tomorrow, but if I believe that in the 10 most dealy mass shootings in our history, of the 22 or so weapons used, only 4 or 5 of the were rifles. To my number crunching, rifle usage was pretty inconsequential in the number of fatalities -- which I'll admit was pretty damn unintuitive. But that's what the data shows, so given all that information, it's tough for me to figure out a reason for the administration pushing for the ban.
- bmelton 14y ago
  I have a hard time swallowing the Mother Jones data whole, because I know on issues that I am very informed on, their data has shown to be misleading in the past. Here's a fun statistic though, since you're in the process of number crunching -- every mass shooting in the US since 1950 (except for perhaps that Gabby Gifford shooting in Arizona) has occurred in a 'gun free zone', where the shooters had the highest probability of completing their shooting sprees with the least fear of being stopped. Of those, most telling (to me at least) is the Aurora, CO shooting, because while Colorado is generally a fairly well armed state, the shooter bypassed six other theaters that were closer to his home, including the largest theater, where he could have done the most damage, in lieu of taking his gun into the one nearby theater that specifically disallowed guns from being carried inside.
  - 14y ago

by bmelton 14y ago

sliverstorm 14y ago

In regards to your last point, it would be like saying, "The Honda Civic is the most used getaway car". What is the takeaway? The Honda Civic is the most useful car to criminals and the best getaway car, or just one of those cars that is everywhere?

bmelton 14y ago
That, due to its popularity, it is likely to be used in a greater-than-average commission of crimes. If we looked at drunk driving incidents, and from those, were somehow able to determine that the Honda Civic was used in a higher percentage of them than other cars, it would be a mistake to conclude that Honda Civics were in some way more appealing to drunk drivers, or that they more easily facilitated drunk driving, while excluding overall ownership on the whole. Further, much of the legislation being considered (at least in Feinstein's bill) is akin to saying "Okay, the Honda Civic is used by drunk drivers. The Honda Civic has 17" tires and cup holders. Let's ban cup holders and 17" tires. No, let's ban all cars that have some combination of 17" tires and cup holders."

goostavos 14y ago

Just a quick note on your last paragraph, because that reminded me of the other data I looked at. I don't have the exact data handy (I'm doing some before bed hacker news browsing on my tablet), but I think it was assembled by, I want to say, a site called Mother Jones..? It was a google spread sheet of some kind. Anyway, it was a table with every mass shooting in the history of the US, the number of fatalities, and the weapon types used. After I finished playing with the FBI's data, I started to wonder if the ban was not to stop the kind of day-to-day gun crime, but to prevent the mass shooting, High profile, high fatality events like the recent school shooting, or the Aurora movie theater shooting, or any similar event. So, I pulled the data from that collection, and could find absolutely no correlation between rifle involvement in a mass shooting and the number of fatalities. Our worst shooting, with (going from memory here) 33 fatalities was the Virginia tech masacre. It involved absolutely no rifles, or shotguns, just the lowly handgun. I'll have to double check all the numbers tomorrow, but if I believe that in the 10 most dealy mass shootings in our history, of the 22 or so weapons used, only 4 or 5 of the were rifles. To my number crunching, rifle usage was pretty inconsequential in the number of fatalities -- which I'll admit was pretty damn unintuitive. But that's what the data shows, so given all that information, it's tough for me to figure out a reason for the administration pushing for the ban.

bmelton 14y ago
I have a hard time swallowing the Mother Jones data whole, because I know on issues that I am very informed on, their data has shown to be misleading in the past. Here's a fun statistic though, since you're in the process of number crunching -- every mass shooting in the US since 1950 (except for perhaps that Gabby Gifford shooting in Arizona) has occurred in a 'gun free zone', where the shooters had the highest probability of completing their shooting sprees with the least fear of being stopped. Of those, most telling (to me at least) is the Aurora, CO shooting, because while Colorado is generally a fairly well armed state, the shooter bypassed six other theaters that were closer to his home, including the largest theater, where he could have done the most damage, in lieu of taking his gun into the one nearby theater that specifically disallowed guns from being carried inside.
- 14y ago