Guns don't kill people ....

[henry quirk]

"On a purely logistical level the idea of removing all guns from all but a qualified few, in a country as large and legislatively fragmented as the US seems an exercise in futility."

Oh, it would (again) be a long, bloody, expensive process, but, as I think on it, *confiscation could work.









*not only by way of directly seizing guns, but also by way of raising the requirements for ownership, possession, and use to inhuman levels; by making manufacturers, sellers, importers, etc. jump through impossible hoops; by -- in the manner of 'hate crimes' -- appending awful penalties to crimes where a gun was even present; and on and on. Only after it's nigh-impossible to have a gun and be legal does the legit door-to-door confiscation need to happen.

And, of course, the most successful tactic is simply redirecting the herd toward 'gun = bad'...change the nation's heart (so to speak) and mass voluntary disarming follows (in in drips and drabs, certainly, over the long haul, but disarmed is disarmed, yes?).

It won't happen in a year, or five, or even ten, but over a twenty year frame, with the application of incremental change, America would be gun-free.

I, of course, will never see that having been shot down for refusing to hand over my Stoeger and shells...small price to pay, I guess, for utopia...*shrug*

[henry quirk]

I can't hear the audio...what wise course does he suggest?

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by henry quirk

I can't hear the audio...what wise course does he suggest?

Here's a link to the vid at YouTube, Henry, maybe it'll work better for ya.

It's more detailed than this, but, one of his ideas is to stop glorifying the killer in the news. To let the poor miserable fuck die the way he lived, invisibly. Everybody knows the killer's name, it's repeated in the news ad nauseam, but no one ever remembers the guy who stopped him. No more "They'll remember my name forever!"-type thing.

Guy makes some other good points, too.

[Gravdigr]

Chew on this, too. Y'all.





More of the infographic, with sources, here.

[DanaC]

Gun free isn't the goal. The UK isn't gun free. Don't expect it ever will be. Wouldn't want it to be. They're a tool, they have their place. I just dont think that place is in the bedroom, the kitchen, the classroom or the restaurant. I also don't think it is necessarily healthy for a society for huge swathes of it to be routinely armed to the teeeth and ready for action.

There should be restrictions in place on the number and power of the guns available to buy for private use and controls on how they are stored and used.

You aren't allowed to drive a car on public roads without a driving licence and appropriate insurance. I don't see why firearms training and licences can't be a requirement for gun ownership. And I don't see why it would be unreasonable to expect that someone wishing to accrue a collection of firearms as a hobby or interest should have to observe certain safety protocols. Nor do I think it is unreasonable to register sales of guns. In order to make it easier to track firearms which have made their way into black market or criminal fraternity.

None of that would require anybody to come and take away your Stoeger and shells

[henry quirk]

"Gun free isn't the goal."

Not there, perhaps.

#

"You aren't allowed to drive a car on public roads without a driving licence and appropriate insurance."

Not about 'allow' but about 'catch me if you can'.

#

"I don't see why firearms training and licences can't be a requirement for gun ownership."

Hey, I'm all for that!

I, of course, decline to participate

[henry quirk]

Not at first, no.

See the law in New York.

One year to register.

Imagine that federalized.

Me: not doin' it.

[DanaC]

*ahem*

Yesterday, a conservative friend of mine posted on Facebook that gun crime numbers in the UK have gone through the roof since the government banned guns. Of course they didn't ban all guns, but that's beside the point. It took some pushing to find out his source. It came from Jim Hoft's blog on the site of the libertarian magazine Human Events. The Human Events blog post was, in turn, a block quote of a column on the far right site Townhall by News Editor Katie Pavlich. The quote my friend gave began with this:

Since NBC sportscaster Bob Costas gave us an anti-gun lecture two weeks ago during Sunday Night Football, we've heard a lot from progressives like Juan Williams, Bob Beckel and anti-gun advocacy groups about how countries in Europe with strict gun control laws don’t have problems with gun crime. We've also heard the reason the United States has a "gun crime problem" is because we allow citizens to own handguns however, the numbers on violent crime committed using a gun tell a different story.
That's Pavlich's introduction to a block quote from the British conservative tabloid, The Daily Mail. Here's the key part of the Mail's article:

The Government's latest crime figures were condemned as "truly terrible" by the Tories today as it emerged that gun crime in England and Wales soared by 35% last year.

Criminals used handguns in 46% more offences, Home Office statistics revealed.

Firearms were used in 9,974 recorded crimes in the 12 months to last April, up from 7,362.

It was the fourth consecutive year to see a rise and there were more than 2,200 more gun crimes last year than the previous peak in 1993.

Figures showed the number of crimes involving handguns had more than doubled since the post-Dunblane massacre ban on the weapons, from 2,636 in 1997-1998 to 5,871.
That sounds pretty bad, doesn't it? That sure blows a hole in the liberals' argument that fewer guns make us safer. Not only does it not make us safer, it makes us less safe. When guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns! And, for some reason, fewer guns seems to make criminals more likely to use theirs. So, why aren't we hearing about this on the news? Yes, I know the mainstream media is run by anti-American liberals, but why aren't we hearing about on Fox or talk radio? Could it be that it's complete BS? Yes, it could. If Pavlich had bothered to look at the top of the page on the Mail article, she would have noticed that the article was published on January 10, 2003, Those "Government's latest crime figures" refer to the 2001/2 reporting year. The figures are over ten years old.

Locating the correct figures and making sense of them took some work. When I did find them, this is what my crunching revealed. The British reporting figures are for England and Wales only. Northern Ireland is omitted because they are a special problem. Scotland has a different legal system, so the the definitions of crimes don't match up with those of its two southern neighbors. In the England and Wales statistics, total gun crimes includes air guns and fake guns. I eliminated air guns, which made up about half of the total gun crimes statistic. For the first two years below, fake guns were not separated out. The real gun figure should be a couple hundred smaller. The Daily Mail article includes fake guns in its figures.

In 1996, the year of the Dunblane massacre, there were 6063 gun crimes in the UK (that includes fake guns).

In 1997, the year they phased in the new law outlawing handguns, the number went down to 4904, a 17% drop in one year.

In 1998, they separated fake guns from the real gun statistics.

In 2000/1, the number of gun crimes was up to 6683. That's the first number the Daily Mail article mentions. It's a huge increase. The UK was in the midst of an epidemic of drug-gang violence at the time.

In 2001/2, the second year in the Daily Mail article, the number had gone up to 8778, however, this number was inflated by some changes in definitions and reporting. In any case, everyone agrees that it was an increase over the year before.

Beginning in 2003, the numbers started going down and have continued ever since.

In 2010/1, the last year for which figures are available, the number had dropped to 5411. That's about ten percent lower than in the year of the Dunblane massacre. For comparison, in that year, the US had over 300,000 gun crimes.

These figures do not support the popular conservative argument that more guns equals less crime. Even if there was a rough correlation, it's naive to think that that one variable is the only factor determining how much crime we have. Correlation does not necessarily equal causation.

PS: At some some point, Pavlich did find out that the Mail article is extremely out of date and admitted it (Hoft has not). Rather than simply say "oops" and move on, she went hunting for different statistics to support her argument. The Mail came to her rescue with a 2009 article referencing the 2007/8 figures. I guess five year-old figures are better than ten year-old figures.

The latest Government figures show that the total number of firearm offences in England and Wales has increased from 5,209 in 1998/99 to 9,865 last year--a rise of 89 per cent.
I went back to my sources to figure out what the hell they're talking about. Both Mail articles used figures that included fake guns. My figures for real guns are 4643 in 1998/99 and 7403 for 2007/8. That's a 62% increase--big, but it's not 89%. That increase needs to be taken in the context of a six year trend of gun crimes decreasing and that the newer number uses methods that result in higher numbers than the earlier figure.

That's all fine and dandy, but what explains the difference between 89% and 62%. Here's something I missed my first time through. After the handgun ban went into effect, fake gun crime increased. In 1998/99 there were 566 fake gun crimes and in 2007/8 there were 2562, well over four times as many. The lesson here is that when guns are outlawed, outlaws will use toys.

http://johnmckay.blogspot.co.uk/2013...=1358551084069

[Gravdigr]

The lesson here is that when guns are outlawed, outlaws will use toys.

Those motherfuckers will die with a toy in their hand, then, if they bring that shit to my house.

[Gravdigr]

...outlaws will use toys.

...Goddamn.

[Gravdigr]

Also, in America if you take a toy pistol (fake gun) into a bank, and say "Gimme money!", guess what you get charged with?

Armed robbery. No different from a 'real' gun.

I think.

[orthodoc]

You're right. If you use a fake gun in a crime it's charged as if the gun were real. Taking the fake guns out of the crime stats was a dishonest manipulation.

[Pico and ME]

So is claiming that 88.8% of the USA's population owns guns and that number is what is reducing crime in America compared to Great Britain. So is not owning up to the different ways the governments in both countries report crime. If Grav's site source has its base statistic wrong, how can anything else it is saying have any real merit?

[Pete Zicato]

In the US – population 311.5 million (1) – there were an estimated 13,756 murders in 2009 (2), a rate of about 5.0 per 100,000 (3). Of these 9,203 were carried out with a firearm.

In the UK – population 56.1 million (4) – there were an estimated 550 murders in 2011-12 (5), a rate of about 1.4 per 100,000. Of these 39 were carried out with a firearm (6).

From here:
http://fleshisgrass.wordpress.com/20...eapon-updated/

Yes. The years of measurement are different, but I think the numbers tell the story.

[orthodoc]

My point was that in the article quoted, the author was dishonest in taking statistics and pulling data out of them in order to change the results to what he wanted. I didn't comment on anything else.

I don't care what the politics of an author are; I do care whether the numbers are honestly reported and correct. I realize that both sides manipulate numbers, but I was only commenting on the article at hand. This author was dishonest. Admittedly, he was upfront about his dishonesty.