School Shooting in Parkland, Florida

uncleoswald wrote: »

Wait, I'm confused, I thought the majority of gun owners supported background checks? Coming to the table in agreement on that but not budging further is not compromise, it's the opposite.

Oh, I see where you are coming from. From that perspective you are correct. From the perspective of the overall continuum of regulatory structure, however, any move towards one end inherently involves a move away from the other. Salami tactics, as it were, unless there is something coming back the other way as a quid pro quo: It's a bit like the DACA/Wall thing. Almost everyone wants the Dreamers to get DACA protections or extensions, but it's still being used as a bargaining chip because if it's just given away, what leverage is there for any movement the other direction? A compromise in this context would be the Firearms Owner Protection Act of 1986. Everybody gained something. Gun owners received immunity when traveling through anti-gun states. Anti-gun folks got a ban on the import or creation of new machine guns to private citizens, and prohibition all firearms on those convicted of domestic violence. Industry got a protectionist law requiring that a number of parts of all firearms sold be manufactured in the US. We have generally gotten away from that. I would expect that if Congress takes up another bill now, for example, that in order to get the improvements in the system, the giveaway the anti-gun folks will be asked for is National CCW reciprocity.

Sorry I'm not really following this point and obviously don't know the ins and outs. But if there is a way to bypass the background checks than that is a fault in the system and not the idea itself? Work to improve the system.

I'm not sure I follow now. As it currently stands, a private party transaction sale can be a case of "I just met you at the range. You like my rifle, and offer me $500 for it. I take the money, hand you the rifle. We walk to our cars, drive away, and never see each other again." This is perfectly legal in many states, subject to criteria such as how many times you can do this, and there is no way for the ATF/DOJ etc to know that the transaction occurred. Same issue if it's a craigslist advert to meet in the Walmart shopping center, etc.

The voted-upon proposal mandates that when the decision to trade firearm for money is made, the two parties would then agree to drive to the local firearms dealer (during business hours) and conduct the transaction there, with the dealer doing the check, paperwork etc. There would be no way of knowing if the two parties failed to do this, no matter what the law says. Similarly, with the Coburn proposal, there would be no way of knowing that the two parties failed to check with NICS at the range/walmart lot etc. In both cases, non-compliance is purely at the discretion of the two parties involved, and enforcement can only happen if one of the two parties is an undercover police officer doing a random sting. Given this, there is additional disincentive to conduce the background check if you are forced to go somewhere else and then pay money, instead of simply providing the ability to do it yourself, immediately. (Or, in other words, there is more likely to be voluntary compliance with the low-impact method than the higher impact method).

See this isn't really a very unreasonable mandate, and the fact that it soured support suggest those people weren't very committed to the cause to begin with. Again it's just feet dragging on a topic they claim to support.

You may not recognise much a distinction between the idea of a background check, and records-keeping, but it is quite a strong distinction in the minds of a lot of conservatives. They see absolutely no reason why supporting background checks should correlate with supporting records-keeping, folks can be totally supportive of the one and adamantly against the other.

Are we talking a database again? The bill in question didn't ask for a database so the point is moot. And for the record I'd only propose a database of new guns sold so no need to retroactively chase owners.

In this case, yes. The point is to demonstrate the strong dislike that many firearms owners have for the concept, and the very strong level of distrust that they have that registration will not eventually lead to confiscation. Numbers of that level are not indications of 'whackjobs', it's indication that there is a very severe lack of understanding of concerns of a demographic of otherwise law-abiding and peaceful citizens. From NPR last week: https://www.npr.org/2018/01/31/581879702/in-new-york-gun-owners-balk-at-new-handgun-database

Anyone who took out a handgun license in New York before 2013 — the year the state passed a landmark gun control law — had to contact state police by Jan. 31 or risk criminal charges. That's caused a real backlash, particularly among rural gun owners, who don't entirely trust their state's intentions. [...] A lot of gun owners are angry. While they can agree that so-called "bad guys" shouldn't have access to weapons, some fear that New York is trying to turn them into those bad guys.

What good would a database of new guns sold only be? How about home manufactured firearms? (Not as rare as you might imagine. Blocks of partially machined aluminium are sold with jigs that you drill out in your workshop at home to create AR receivers. Example, https://www.80percentarms.com/products/easy-jig-gen-2-combined-ar-15-and-308-jig?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI6YqhiLys2QIVD3R-Ch3QUgmcEAAYASAAEgIeXfD_BwE . To build my FAL, I borrowed my ex-inlaw’s machine shop. And the current level of 3D printing is such that printed firearms capable of surviving a few thousand rounds, enough for a mass murder or two, have been made and proven. That technology is only getting better over time).

As a hypothetical I'd be pretty confident that if all guns were removed from the hands of ordinary citizens, the lives saved from accidental deaths, domestic violence incidents and suicide would far outweigh those currently saved from defensive situations using guns.

Also what constitutes a "defensive situation"? I know the idea of confronting an intruder in your home is practically romanticised in the US but it's not always the safest or most sensible option. A Harverd study found that "The likelihood of injury when there was a self-defense gun use (10.9%) was basically identical to the likelihood of injury when the victim took no action at all (11.0%),"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091743515001188

It's a fair question to hypothesise, though involves counterfactuals. We know that in 2015, there were some 325 justifiable homicides by private citizens. CDC indicates that there were 461 accidental deaths by firearm. (Out of 136,000 accidental deaths by injury. We're very good at killing ourselves). So in terms of raw deaths caused, your immediate point is valid. However, a firearm need not be discharged to be effective in the self defense environment.

Quoting the CDC-sponsored study from 2013. http://www.ncdsv.org/images/IOM-NRC_Priorities-for-Research-to-reduce-the-threat-of-firearm-related-violence_2013.pdf

Defensive uses of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence, although the exact number remains disputed (Cook and Ludwig, 1996; Kleck, 2001a). Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year (Kleck, 2001a), in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008 (BJS, 2010). [...]A different issue is whether defensive uses of guns, however numerous or rare they may be, are effective in preventing injury to the gunwielding crime victim. Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was “used” by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.

Unfortunately, the article you cite seems to be behind a pay wall, so I can't offer an explanation as to why the two seem to be in contradiction to each other. Of course, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics, and one can often cite competing assessments at each other in these sorts of arguments.

BattleCorp wrote: »

It is a mental health issue. Normal people who own guns don't go shooting up schools.

There are semi auto rifles in lots of countries and they don't have the problems that the US has.

I'd say it's a mental health and guns issue. There are plenty of people with mental health issues in other countries too but they don't have the same problems as the US.