Nightline on Obama, gun control

[unixronin]

Nightline broadcast a good and pretty balanced segment last night, discussing Barak Obama's gun control position and the massive gun buying rush that's going on across the US now by people concerned that if they don't buy them now, they won't be able to.

Particular points to note:

• The customer who keeps repeating to the reporter, "Never mind Obama's words, look at his actions."¹
• The gunshop owner reporting Obama supporters coming into his store wearing their Obama buttons, who just voted for him but are still afraid he'll ban guns.

[1]  You might have seen me say this once or twice.  Assuming you've been paying attention.

Comments

[laurarey.livejournal.com]

So, unixronin, this isn't meant to start any kind of an argument, but I have a question for you that comes from genuine lack of knowledge. I've read your postings on guns. I can understand the position that restricting the purchase of semi-automatic guns infringes on a person's rights. However, why would someone need a semi-automatic? Surely not for hunting...?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Before I answer that, let me ask you a question: What is your understanding of what "semi-automatic" means, and what if anything makes it special?

[laurarey.livejournal.com]

Well, your question itself was highly educational.....as it caused me to do a bit of research. I, like many people, had an incorrect definition. So, let me rephrase my original question. Why would someone need a gun that will reload automatically after each shot? (Or am I still missing the definition?) It seems that it sort of negates the "sporting" aspect of hunting. (Thus says the person who has never hunted an animal, owned a gun, or fired one.) What would people use them for?

[lonewolf545.livejournal.com]

What if you need a quick second shot? Not to mention, hunting isn't the only sport using firearms, I shoot highpower rifle competition in the service rifle category, which means I'm restricted to an M1 Garand, M1A/M14, or AR15/M16 in "as issued" configuration. A total AW ban would completely destroy my sport (people shot with grandfathered firearms before, and they changed the rules to allow rifles without flash suppressors). Not to mention, not all hunting is "sport hunting". A farmer protecting his livestock from coyotes wants multiple shots quickly.

Plus there's self-defense. And you can bet people on the border with Mexico are wanting multiple shots quickly, did you see the firearms the Mexican police confiscated yesterday? There's an open war on our southwest border, whether people realize it or not, and it's NOT staying on the Mexican side.

[laurarey.livejournal.com]

I could certainly see that having multiple rounds available when fending off coyotes or other predators would be very helpful. Certainly my father's family had to kill many rattle snakes on their ranch and I personally would not want to piss off a rattler by only grazing it with one shot...and then have to stop and reload.

Sorry, I don't keep up with events on the Mexican border. It didn't make the news up here in Toronto. However, and again, I'm not meaning to start any kind of flame war with this, I do think that dealing with the underlying issues of uneven prosperity in the world would go a long way toward easing tensions between, for example, the U.S. and Mexico.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

most of the things that make "evil black rifles" all kinds of scary, are simple modern innovations. some of the so called "assault rifles" are hardly "military grade", or "sniper rifles", or "omg evil".

semi-auto is just ... convenient. it's useful. it's reliable. it's probably in my mind, safer.

the alternative are gun designs that are fairly old, and for the most part, not made anymore, afaik. sure, you can get some, but a lot of the things made today are semi-automatic.

it's like trying to buy a vehicle that doesn't have an automatic transmission in it - you have to go out of your way, and MOST people WANT the convenience/etc.

putting a SCOPE on a BB gun, pretty much makes it an assault weapon, by some definitions. petty silly. most of the tactics the ban-gun folx go for is FUD based on exploiting what people think they know. a glock pistol, modern polymer framed device, is basically banned in MA (afaik) because it's evil. go figure - they're very simple, cheap, and good pistols - they're not assault items. yet...

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[fruitylips.livejournal.com]

I have a bolt action deer rifle with a nice scope on it. It was, according to the plate in the stock, given to my grandfather by a business men's club in Austin in recognition for something or other back in the 50s.

I'm constantly surprised that no one's thought to designate it as a sniper rifle.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

OK. I started working on this, then realized I was going to have to split it for length because LiveJournal will only allow 4300 characters in a comment, then realized it was growing to the point where I was going to have to split it into a ridiculous number of parts. So I've made it a separate post.

A short answer to your question is that for many purposes, a semi-automatic pistol can be more compact than a revolver of equivalent firepower, and in general a semi-automatic pistol or rifle can be easier to learn to shoot well than other comparable repeating arms. In addition, it is very much easier to build a semi-automatic pistol or rifle with a large ammunition capacity than it is to do so with, for example, a revolver or a lever-action rifle. (It is perfectly feasible to build a bolt-action rifle having a large-capacity magazine, but in practice it has never to my knowledge been done because no-one has managed to come up with a good reason to do so.)

These factors make them extremely good police duty sidearms or personal protection weapons. Semi-automatics have also become popular for many types of target shooting, as there is less disturbance to the shooter between shots than with many other types of repeating action (again, this returns to "easier to learn to shoot well"), although the most exacting precision target shooters still use almost exclusively bolt-action or single-shot rifles.

(Also see lonewolf545's excellent short answer, above.)


The long answer involves a fairly involved discussion of the ways in which semi-automatic firearms differ from other repeating firearms, and the ways in which they are the same. You can find that post here. (http://unixronin.livejournal.com/609834.html)

[skellington.livejournal.com]

I'll let unixronin follow up on the subject of semi-automatics, but there's another underlying assumption you're missing.

It is a person's right AND responsibility to provide for their own self defense. The government (at any level) has no responsibility nor ability to arrest people before they commit crimes. (Imagine how big of a mess we'd have if the government started locking up people because they claimed they were ABOUT to commit a crime..)

So as a constitutional matter, (and a common law right to self defense going back to Roman times), the primary purpose of a firearm is self defense. It is not to participate in recreation (either sport shooting or hunting).

A semi-automatic, or a revolver, is much more suitable for self defense than a single-shot pistol or break action shotgun.

[laurarey.livejournal.com]

(Sorry, original reply was mis-posted.)

That's an interesting point. It opens the whole can of worms about who gets to define "self defense". Do you use the government's definition or define it according to your own perspective?

I can see how a semi-automatic would be more suitable (and convenient) for self defense purposes.

[lonewolf545.livejournal.com]

The law generally defines "self-defense" as whether a "reasonable person" would believe they were in danger of life or limb, or was defending the life or limb of a third party. Texas is the only state that allows lethal force in defense of property that I'm aware of (although a number of states have a "castle doctrine" under which intruders in your home are presumed to have the intent and capability of doing you harm).

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Does not Georgia consider arson to be a "heinous crime" justifying you in using deadly force? It did the last time I checked....

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

No. Not for hunting. For having an effective tool for the defence of the country against enemies foreign and domestic.

Though, I will be using my semi-auto variant AK-47 or FAL for hunting wild boar this upcoming season. If one is unlucky, one can sometimes gain the attention of an entire herd of wild bacon-on-the-hoof, rather than just the unfortunate gent you've selected for dinner duties. Since those guys have tusks which are quite capable of ripping a person up rather viciously, it's nice to have more discouragement on tap.

Though, there are still limits. NM law, for instance, limits semi-autos used for hunting to a 5 round magazine restriction.

[rbos.livejournal.com]

My own answer would be, to have them in case the government goes too far. An armed populace is one that the government must reckon with carefully.

I'm Canadian, and very much in favour of gun control: a violent society is not one I want to live in. However the path the USA has chosen is to arm the populace aggressively in order to curb internal and external threats.

I don't think that's unreasonable.

[laurarey.livejournal.com]

I'm actually a citizen of both countries, but live in Canada. My husband commented last night that he finds if fascinating that Canadians own more guns per capita than the U.S. (many of which aren't registered), yet we have fewer gun crimes (percentage wise) than the U.S.

Living in Toronto, I do favour handgun control.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Which once again reinforces the point that it isn't a gun problem, it's a social problem. Israel, Finland and Switzerland also have higher rates of firearm ownership than the US. The UK has had lower-than-US firearms ownership throughout most or all of the 20th Century, and has also had lower crime rates; but the crime rate exploded when drug gangs reached the UK in earnest.

(kind of) slipery slope

[milktree.livejournal.com]

I'm going to side-step the somewhat technical question about semi-auto guns and go to another question: Why restrict them?

Or, another way to ask a leading question that (I hope) gets to the same point:

Why do you need the internet for your free speech? What's wrong with the USPS, soap boxes in the town square, and buying ad space in the newspaper? Would it be reasonable to outlaw bulk emails? (emails to lists or with more than three people on the "To:" line, for instance) The answer is an absolute "NO!"

That's not the same thing as saying "you should be able to say anything at any time." (e.g.: "Fire!" in a theater). Restrictions on speech should have overwhelmingly compelling reasons, not just "That's too effective" or "we don't like what you say" or "we don't like your accent"

I realize that's a somewhat inflammatory way of saying it, but the fundamental issue is about constitutional rights. You don't restrict them without very very good reason.

Re: (kind of) slipery slope

[laurarey.livejournal.com]

I agree that it is a slippery slope. Why would I restrict them? Well, I'm not entirely sure I would. However, I have very little faith in most people's ability to control their emotions. And, angry, out of control people with guns are more likely to shoot someone then those same people without guns. Two weeks ago a man at a bar two blocks from my house got pissed off with someone, pulled out a semi-automatic and wounded four people and killed an innocent bystander in the space of seconds. So, I suppose I've been thinking about it a bit more recently.

I am curious though why police officers must go through so much firearms training and must document every time they draw their weapon, yet we don't require private citizens who own guns to go through an equal amount of training (and successfully pass some sort of test). It seems like a no-brainer to me.

I personally don't believe that an armed populace is a safer one.

Re: (kind of) slipery slope

[fruitylips.livejournal.com]

The reason is the same as why we require judges and lawyers (agents of the Court) to go through certifications and no people who represent themselves. Police officers are acting as agents of the State. We, the people, require that the State justify itself when it uses violence against people (with mixed results, of course.).

On a purely practical level, I wouldn't even object to firearms certification if it hadn't been habitually used as a method for de facto banning guns. Places that require these things often never offer the classes or make them so restricted that almost no one can take them.

Think of it as analogous to a literacy test to vote. Obviously having only people can show that they can read the ballot would be a good thing. I don't think there's any way that you could design such a test today without getting completely derailed by the past uses of the practice.

Re: (kind of) slipery slope

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I read about that incident. But I also remember the incident when an angry woman in her 40s deliberately drove her car at speed into a line of random people waiting at a bus stop in Los Angeles. And I remember the incident in my home town in England in 1978 or so, when a man robbed a shopgirl of the pouch in which she was carrying the day's takings to the bank, several hundred yards from the store, by the crude and simple expedient of bashing her skull in with a hammer.

Honestly, the expectation of stopping crime via gun control is based on the assumption that a thug who would commit a violent crime with a gun is incapable of committing the same crime with a knife or a baseball bat. Gun control also neglects that it is not a one-sided question: There are approximately 8,000 to 10,000 actual criminal homicides with firearms in an average year in the US (and, sadly, almost 20,000 suicides); but in that same average year, various estimates place the number of times citizens use firearms to defend themselves from crimes at anywhere from 1.5 million tomes to 5 million. (That lower 1.5 million times estimate was one developed, and reluctantly conceded, by the very anti-gun Clinton justice department. Most estimates cluster around 4 to 4.5 million.) In more than 90% of those incidents, no shots are actually fired; even so, armed citizens in the US lawfully shoot and kill twice as many felons each year as the police do.


Truthfully, the single biggest thing that could be done to reduce crime in the US is to decriminalize drug use and make safe, clean, pure supplies of drugs available at clinics at manufacturing cost (with a proviso that you'd better not be caught consuming them in public). It would eliminate the profitability of the drug trade, which would eliminate the incentive to bring the stuff into the US illegally. Bam, no more drug gangs. Drug use would probably drop, because with no profit to be made, there's no incentive for pushers to hook new buyers. Massive amounts of money and police resources would be freed up to deal with other issues. Hospitals would have less overdoses to deal with, and hospitalizations from tainted drugs would all but vanish. Garage meth labs (with their associated fires, explosions and toxic cleanup issues) would become a thing of the past - if you can't make any money selling the stuff, why bother? Prison overcrowding would end, and we could go back to using prisons to keep actually dangerous criminals off the streets.

If EVERYONE did it, the drug cartels out of Medellin and Cali would collapse.

People would still use drugs, of course. But I think left to themselves, that would tend to become a self-limiting problem.

Re: (kind of) slipery slope

[laurarey.livejournal.com]

I agree with legalizing drugs, but I doubt that will ever happen in the U.S. I wonder what that would mean for the pharmaceutical companies? Would they start making meth?

Re: (kind of) slipery slope

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

knives, sticks/pans/rocks, and broken bottles are more likely (at a guess statistically too) to be used than a gun - instantly at hand, and used widely - also deadly. even a car. road rage. bad stuff.

some angry person i recall from months ago killed some and hurts dozens of people because he threw his car, on purpose into a crowd. that's murder with a deadly weapon. let's ban cars. more recently, a feeble old man "lost it" and just drove through a street fair. oops. licensed driver.

if more people had been armed, that guy might have gotten off fewer shots before being killed himself by a licensed holder. was the shooter licensed? sober? insane? mmm. the devil in the details. let's say he didn't have a semi-automatic, just a revolver. ideally, he could've shot 6 people before going for a reload. the type of gun, once again, shouldn't matter. it's the crime, not the tool.

police have to have more training, because statistically, they're more likly to shoot themselves, or others, than the bad guy, so they need to document this for the lawyers ;) no. it's not a joke. a lot of private citizens are BETTER than (most of) the police at shooting, because they WANT to do it, pay for it with their own time and money. sure, there's a couple few cops who are sharpshooters, but not most of them.

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Re: (kind of) slipery slope

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

The reason NYPD changed its rules to forbid officers from attempting to shoot fleeing felons was because of a study of NYPD shootings in the 60s-70s. the study found the typical level of NYPD marksmanship to be so bad that on average, an NYPD officer shooting at a fleeing felon was something like 60% more likely to hit an innocent bystander than to hit his target.

perspicuity's point about your recent local shooting is on the mark, too. As I recall, the drunk fired five shots. The fact he used a semi-automatic is irrelevant; he could have done the same with any revolver in the world without having to stop to reload.

The real tragedy of the shooting is that he was such a wretched shot he couldn't even hit his target at arms' length, and the woman he actually killed did nothing but be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I have a friend who is a shooting and personal protection instructor in Los Angeles, who has on several occasions seriously suggested offering free training to gangbangers, on the principle that if they could actually shoot, they might kill more of each other and less innocent bystanders.

Re: (kind of) slipery slope

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Oh, I forgot to add ... many states DO require citizens who wish to carry firearms in public to undergo equivalent training and testing to police officers. But many police officers don't train nearly as much as you might think. When the City of Los Angeles hired former (fired) Philadelphia police chief Bernie Philips (if memory serves) as Los Angeles police chief, LAPD had to issue him a civilian concealed carry permit (the first one they'd issued other than to a celebrity in over 20 years) in order for him to carry the duty sidearm that LAPD regulations required he carry, because he was unable to qualify with it under LAPD standards. Many police officers only do the minimum range practice each month required by regulations (typically 100 rounds a month), while many civilian shooters spend several hours a week at the range practising. It is a SHORT range session in which I fire only 100 rounds; when I go to the range, I typically fire anywhere from 50 to 200 rounds each through each of several different pistols, and depending on the range, I may have brought a rifle or shotgun as well.

In San Jose, California, the CCW qualification test is based on the San Jose PD pistol qualification test. I saw several people shooting qualification on various of my trips to the Metcalfe Road county range, and asked the overseeing officer the test requirements. Honestly, and this isn't meant as bragging, I could almost have qualified with my eyes shut. And I don't consider myself an expert.

Re: (kind of) slipery slope

[milktree.livejournal.com]

There have been a bunch of studies that show that an armed populous isn't what makes people safer, but rather that fewer restrictions on legal access to guns does.

Which is to say, the actual rate of armed citizens isn't particularly important, but there's a high correlation between restriction on gun rights and violent crime.

When the "bad guys" don't know who has guns and who doesn't, (because it's easy for law abiding folks to get them) violent crime goes down.

Public safety is related to gun access, not gun ownership.

Obviously this doesn't apply to individuals, but it absolutely does to populations.