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

(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

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I guess someone would have to. But as long as there are people who are determined to use meth, crank, whatever anyway, better at least they use them without a dozen toxic contaminants.

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.

#

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.

Re: (kind of) slipery slope

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

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

Well, the two sort of go together.

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

To a point. If it's common knowledge that anyone can, but also public knowledge that no-one actually does, then firearms may just as well be prohibited for all the suppressive effect on crime the knowledge that, hypothetically speaking, someone could will have.

Re: (kind of) slipery slope

[milktree.livejournal.com]

Obviously if you take any statement to an extreme it falls apart.

But the studies I remember reading actually compare gun laws to violent crime separately from gun ownership. There's a correlation between the laws and crime, but not ownership rates and crime.

In any case, you can't make laws that give people guns, you can only make laws that give people access to guns. (and rightly so!)

The point is that no individual has to have their own gun to benefit from the crime reducing effects of more liberal gun laws.