Braineack

iTrader: (62)

I just realized I misread your statement, becuase of that, i argued this.

Ziggo

Lots of correlation = causation going on in here.

Monk

iTrader: (3)

Referring to this?
I'm not claiming that an increase in gun ownership is the cause of reduced gun violence, but I am saying that regulations in the US have not had any appreciable effect on crime.

mgeoffriau

iTrader: (7)

Well, of course there's lots of arguments based on correlation...there's not a whole lot of ways to evaluate this:

1. Arguing from first principles (human rights, value of human life, right to self defense, etc.)
2. Arguing from correlation of observed results

Ziggo

You need to understand the mechanism by which the corellation results in causation. Not just theories.

I am not speaking of one particular post, it's all over the place.

If a*x+b*y+c*z = total homocides, where x, y and z are causes of homocides and a, b and c are how important they are. Changing one variable in the equation and looking at the result without controlling for every other one is just bunk. Maybe they are interdependent, we just don't know. Relating Canada's drop in crime to restrictions ignores the broad reduction in crime seen in the 90s, not just isolated to canada as one example.

Arguing that the assult weapon ban not impacting crime as a justification for not having gun control is another. When you look at the total crimes committed with assault weapons before, during and after the ban you realize that they were never a problem to begin with.

TheBigChill

The graphics and statistics shown in both of the recent gun related threads show, in my mind, enough of a correlation between those states in which have lenient gun laws and abnormally high gun related deaths per capita, where we should take notice and start asking some important questions. Socioeconomic factors certainly need to be factored in as well, but that's for a different thread.

I mean, come on. The South is known for it's more lenient gun laws, and to nobody's surprise, many of those same states have exceedingly high gun-related deaths. Again, we've determined that these crimes which constitute the total count are largely composed of crimes committed with illegal weapons, but there are also tons of statistics which you can overlay in order to help one find both causes and solutions; like the staggering number of legal guns that are stolen each year from legal owners. Lenient gun laws = more guns owned = a larger availability of guns to steal. I don't think that's far-fetched at all, and I think sometimes Occams Razor needs to be utilized a bit more confidently.

Ziggo

But it also correlates with poverty, race, and average temperature, as well as any other number of things. Should we add additonal restrictions on minorities, maybe fix the poverty issue? Maybe causing another ice age would be a good thing for crime.

How can you just pick one factor to hang your hat on and make a cause? What about all the **** that goes down in chicago and DC? Wtf is going on in wyoming, which has the highest percentage of gun ownership of any state, no carry restrictions and very lenient gun laws, ranks in the top 10 for fewest deaths?

My opinion, because guns are scary. "Assault" weapons more so, which is how that ban got passed, with absolutely no basis in any kind of rational data.

samnavy

iTrader: (7)

You've dove head-first down the rabbit hole. Only a small fraction of guns used in crimes come directly from "being stolen"... PBS did a report on this a few years back and the data is frequently refreshed and not in dispute.

Most guns used in crimes come from straw purchases or crooked FFL's. The problem is that the ATF is orders-of-magnitude underfunded and lacks the resources to investigate more than a few percent of incidents. Plus they're busy running drugs to the cartels. Combine that with the fact that the current President has zero interest in empowering the ATF to solve gun crimes that might actually do some good, and the last guy he let run the ATF was just killing time until he could go work for the NFL.

But wait, why would the President intentionally sabotage the ATF? That's not true, he really cares about the issue!!! OK you right-wing nut job, let's hear the crazy conspiracy theory you came up with!

Just like in another post... the goal of the anti-gun forces is not to solve gun crimes, it's to get rid of all guns. I will reference the Brady Campaign, MDA, Everytown, Violence Policy Center, and a few others... the end-goal is the complete disarmament of civilians in this country... always has been. Getting rid of gun-crime in way that lets the good guys keep their guns is not in the cards.

This is the guy who founded what is now the Brady Campaign:
In July 1976, Shields estimated that it would take seven to ten years for NCCH to reach the goal of "total control of handguns in the United States." He said: "The first problem is to slow down the increasing number of handguns being produced and sold in this country. The second is to get handguns registered. And the final problem is to make the possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition - except for the military, policemen, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors - totally illegal."

1995, Diane Feinstein in an interview over the 1994 AWB:
“If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States, for an outright ban, picking up everyone of them Mr. and Mrs. America, turn ‘em all in. I would have done it.”

From John Lott:
A fellow professor with Barack Obama at the University of Chicago in the 1990s told radio host Laura Ingraham last week that the man who would become president once insisted, “People shouldn’t be allowed to own guns.”
“I knew Obama at the University of Chicago,” Lott told Ingraham. “We both taught there at the same time for about four years, and I talked to him about guns. I know what his views are on that.

“The first time I ever met him, I went, introduced myself, he said, ‘Oh, you’re the gun guy,’” Lott recalled. “He said to me, ‘I don’t believe people should be able to own guns.’”

Ingraham stopped the interview to clarify that Obama wasn’t talking about criminals owning guns but everyday citizens.
“No, it was very clear,” Lott said. “He said, ‘I don’t believe people should be able to own guns.

nitrodann

I thought this was covered enough on page 1.

Gun related deaths dont matter. Total violent crime should be the goal of gun restrictions. Stop referencing gun related violent crime, its just not relevant.

fooger03

iTrader: (2)

Regarding gun laws in canada:

Have we considered that instituting new gun laws restricting the purchase of new guns makes in-circulation guns more valuable to their owners? I have to think that if I'm a gun guy and I have 5 guns, and then the government tells me that it's illegal or near impossible to buy new guns, then suddenly I'm going to protect my 5 guns far better than I had previously. New security methods make it more difficult for theives to steal guns in the first place, which drastically increases the prices of guns on the black market. If I'm a criminal with a piece, I'm damn sure not going to sell it to someone else without an enormous mark-up on it, making it more difficult for a would-be impulse assassin to get a gun to make a dead guy.

Economically speaking, stricter gun laws then should make it more difficult for criminals to get guns, and should also make those guns a much higher-value commodity.

With that being said, I'm a pro-gun guy, and I'm against anything that makes it harder for me to get a gun. I'm offended that suppressors are still regulated. Suppressors don't kill people, drugs do.

I actually think the most appropriate solution to violent crimes in the U.S. is elevating the economic status of our lowest income families and individuals. As a republican, I am strongly against the current monetary handouts, but I have recently come up with a method of "elevating society". A post for another thread someday.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

I've actually been doing a fair bit of research on this exact phenomenon over the past few days, and I've come to the conclusion that the data is, in fact, in dispute.

I've found numerous sources which state authoritatively that no definitive, uniform records exist which track the source of firearms used in crimes. I did come across the PBS transcript which you cited (it was from the show Frontline, and claimed 10-15%), however I've also come across anecdotal reports from detectives which, in their individual small samples of cases, put the percentage of firearms either directly stolen or purchased after having been stolen at 85-90%.

There's this report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics which claims that, among surveyed prison inmates who possessed a gun, roughly 40% of the guns reported had been directly stolen and an additional 40% had been obtained from friends or family (which I presume is your straw purchase argument), bearing in mind that a criminal obtaining a gun "from family or a friend" does not preclude that gun having previously been stolen from its original owner.

This report indicates that among juvenile offenders, more than 50% had stolen a gun at least once in their lives and 24% had stolen their most recently obtained handgun. The report also noted "that theft and burglary were the original, not always the proximate, source of many guns acquired by the juveniles." (my emphasis, to address the quote from the PBS report about "directly being stolen." If I steal a gun from my neighbor's home, then sell it to Braineack in exchange for crack, and then he gives it to Hustler in exchange for a blow-job, and then Hustler accidentally drops it in the toilet at a gay bar in Temecula, and then Savington pulls it out of the toilet and shoots Jason Cuadra with it, Jason was still shot with a stolen gun.)

This BJS report gives us a reasonably accurate count of the number of incidents of firearm theft in the US; it's varied from 150,000 to 300,000 thefts per year for the period of 1994-2010, and that's just the number of incidents of theft- 40% of these cases involved the theft of more than one gun, but count as just a single incident of theft. So we know that theft of firearms from private owners represents a huge source of illegal firearms in the US.


Given the scarcity of data, and the wild variations among reports which seem credible aside from their contradictory nature, it's completely reasonable to dispute any source which claims to give a definitive answer to the question of what percentage of guns used in criminal acts are stolen, regardless of how high or low that number is.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

I look forward to that thread.

Heck, if I could figure out how to motivate my own employees to work I'd be a happy man, nevermind 20% of the population of the US.

Savington

iTrader: (31)

Why is "fixing the poverty" issue lumped in there? Poor people kill each other a lot with guns. If you make them less poor, they would probably kill each other a lot less.

Savington

iTrader: (31)

Japan restricts vehicle motor size based on license

rleete

iTrader: (21)

With regards to stolen guns: if you are a person supplying guns to criminals, either through straw purchases or simply as a fence, don't you think it's easier to tell the cops that the guns were stolen, vs. telling them you sold a known felon a weapon?

Seems to me (and I have absolutely no data to back it up) that this is much more common that the statistics would lead you to believe. There are far too many illegal guns out there than simple burglary would account for.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

See my earlier post. Simple burglary accounts for several hundred thousand guns each year changing hands in the US, which is many orders of magnitude higher than the number of incidents of gun-related violence committed.

The number of guns obtained each year by burglary in the US alone is high enough to account for every single act of gun-related violence in the entire world, including acts of war.

rleete

iTrader: (21)

Yeah, and I'm saying I'm not buying that.

"Gee, officer, I got broken into last night. They just happened to find the 12 cheap handguns I purchased last week. I guess it's a good thing I insured them."

I'm saying it's a way for the shady people to transfer guns without paperwork.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Understood.

Personally, I have a hard time comprehending this sort of thing- buying a gun legally under false pretense, reselling it off-record to an individual with likely nefarious intention, and then informing the police of this fact, to say nothing of piling insurance fraud on top of that.

"Gee, Mr. Leete, you sure seem to lose an awful lot of guns..."

It also doesn't jive with the relatively high rate of incarcerated felons who self-report having directly stolen firearms as opposed to purchasing them through a strawman transaction.


Still, presuppose that it's true. How would one address this problem, in light of the fact that strong criminal penalties already exist and are apparently not of great effectiveness. It would seem that your argument for addressing this problem would have to entail either greater regulatory control on legal gun purchases or a reduction (perhaps by manufacturing quota) on the number of new gun manufactured and imported in the US. Creating artificial scarcity of new guns would greatly increase their cost on both the primary and secondary markets, and strong background investigations on new gun purchasers followed by periodic searches to verify continued ownership would strongly disincentivize non-felonious individuals from facilitating such transactions.

good2go

iTrader: (2)

Apparently, the straw purchase phenomenon is all too common, at least if the public service ads from the ATF which I've been hearing a lot (several times a day!) on the radio recently are any indication: http://www.dontlie.org/audio/sample1-english.mp3

rleete

iTrader: (21)

Well, once again, that's sort of taking the criminals' word for it. If Freddy the felon were to rat out the straw purchaser, it would screw everyone. "That neighborhood gun guy, Mr. Perez, keeps buying guns and letting us buy them under the table." You know damn well Freddy is getting shanked in the shower room, and Mr. Perez is going to have to do a lot of explaining to those friendly agents with letters after their names.

So, how do we stop all this? No idea. At least not any practical ones.

But instead of reasonable discussions, all we gun guys get is more regulation, less availability, higher prices and lots of angry word on the internet. The gun grabbers have made few concessions that weren't outright orders from supreme courts due to unconstitutional laws or statutes.