A whole 'nother pragmatic look at gun-related violence
 

This is not a thread about gun-control laws.

Disclaimers:

1: I do not have a strong opinion either for or against "gun control" laws in the US.

2: As a child, my father was an avid target shooter and gun collector (mostly handguns, few rifles), and we often went to the range together. I owned my first rifle (a pump-action .22 rimfire) at the age of 6, and had a Junior NRA membership card and magazine subscription. I was able to handle a .44 Magnum revolver (barely) by the age of 10 or 11. My brother-in-law is a Sherrifs officer in Florida, and owns a large collection of both handguns and rifles, and when I'm down in FL for the holidays I occasionally go out shooting with him. I am reasonably competent at the range with both semiautomatic pistols and long-guns. My sister has a concealed-carry permit.

3: Despite this, I do not currently own any firearms, nor have I in a number of years; it's an expensive hobby as compared to the enjoyment I derive from it. I do not participate in firearm-related recreational activities outside the context of occasional family outings.

4: The above is disclosed for the purpose of establishing that I am not strongly biased in either direction with regard to firearm ownership or use.

As compared to many other western nations, the US is a relatively violent country. With an annual murder rate of 4.7 per 100k, a chart of murder rates by country places us in company with nations such as Kenya, Yemen, Albania, Niger and Thailand. Our murder rate is slightly higher than that of Iran, Uzbekistan, Kosovo and Egypt, and nearly 5x the average for most western European nations.
source

Illustrated graphically:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1434660113
source



In the US, handguns are used to commit more murders than every method of killing combined:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1434660113
source


Within the US, the homicide rate varies dramatically across geographical boundaries. In the southern states, the homicide rate is considerably higher than average, while in the Northeast, the rate is considerably lower:


https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1434660113


https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1434660113
source





Interestingly, the distribution of firearms within the US roughly correlates with the distribution of homicide in the US, such that geographic regions in which there is a higher rate of gun-ownership also experience a higher rate of murder:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1434660113
source



Correlation, of course, is not causation. It is, however, suggestive.

I'm not saying anything by it, but does it have anything to do with the distribution of the population?

Blacks Suffer Disproportionate Share of Firearm Homicide Deaths | Pew Research Center

The racial divide in America?s gun deaths - The Washington Post

Is it possible that this lifestyle is idealized for some dumb reason, and because of economic and social conditions these people think this is all they've got?

Or are all these stats I'm listing just the police homicide numbers?

And how many of these killings are committed by those with no permit, using illegal firearms?

If a gangbanger kills another gangbanger, the murder/shooting is recorded, but the number of gun owners doesn't change, because they are not legally allowed to have firearms, and thus not listed as a "gun owner" Yet they still have them. Making them illegal has not stopped drugs. Much less cheating on your taxes or even jaywalking. So how is it supposed to stop those already predisposed to criminal activity?

ALL attempts to change this are just hoops for the legal gun owners to jump through. Like the SAFE act in NY. Does anyone truly believe that limiting the number of rounds in a magazine curbs crime in any way?

Suggests that in areas with more gun murders people are more likely to own a gun for protection?

Joe, as a commie leftist poofter from a place that has banned gunz I propose to you to not look at this, but look at total VIOLENT CRIME, over time, and with the dates for major gun legislation changes in another tab. I assure you that you will see that no matter the country or state, there is a strong trend toward lower crime with more gun freedom and significantly higher gun crime following the tightening of gun legislation.

Dann

I'm sure that is a factor.

The geographic distribution of blacks (as a percentage of population) in the US does broadly mirror the geographic distribution of homicide:


https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1434675600
source



Unrelated to the point, but interesting, I happened to come across this map while doing research for this post:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1434675600
source

If you compare the distribution of the slave population in 1860 to the distribution of blacks in the US in 2010, you find that they are virtually identical.

Historically, the rate of immigration of free black into the US has been a tiny minority of the rate of immigration of caucasians and Asians. This is true both prior to and after abolition. The majority of blacks coming into the US during the period of slavery were, of course imported involuntarily as slaves and therefore had little say in the location in which they settled. Today, roughly 85-90% of all blacks in America are descended from these original imported slaves (source), and their patterns of residence are virtually indistinguishable from those of their slave ancestors 150 years ago.

My own family have lived in four different countries in that time. I lived in five states before turning 18, and have added seven more since (though two were duplicates from my youth.)

For some reason, blacks in the US have extremely low mobility. This broadly parallels the immobility of certain sub-groups of caucasian Americans; I think everyone can picture the family in Tennessee or West Virginia who have lived in the same home for many generations, and from which no family member had ever departed the homestead except by military service or incarceration, or of Jewish or Italian families who came to the US during the early part of the 20th century and settled into neighborhoods in the New England region in which their grandchildren still reside today... I wonder if any reliable demographic information exists which illustrates some common thread amongst the families who traversed the great plains to settle the American west during the frontier era.

Data here is hard to come by, in part because many homicides remain unsolved.

One source indicates that for all gun homicides committed in 2009 for which an arrest was made and the murder weapon identified, 88% were committed with a stolen gun. Another source indicates that in 2013, 1.6% of all firearm-involved crimes (all crimes, not just homicide) involved a gun which was legally purchased by the perpetrator.


This, however, ignores an important fact: Stolen guns had to be stolen from someone, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, they tend to be obtained by burglarizing the home or car of an individual who legally purchased the firearm.

I've oft stated here on the forum that it makes utterly no sense to me to buy a new car, and that I find it much more fiscally responsible to purchase used cars in good condition. On a few occasions, people have pointed out to me that if nobody were buying new cars that there would then be no supply of used cars for me to purchase later.

The same holds true here. If the vast majority of firearm-involved murders are committed with guns stolen from their legal owners, then removing the supply of legally-owned guns would, over time, have the effect of eliminating the supply of stolen guns.

I used to work for a guy who owned a small armory. He'd leave rifles, handguns and shotguns in a steel building on his property, in his many trucks, in desks and file cabinets. He was certainly a man with the means to protect all his property, but he had so much property he could give two shits about half of it. I remember one time the steel building did get hit, wonder whatever happened to those?

Lots of people are happy, and lots of "hippies" are pissed about this here in Kansas...

Kansas to allow concealed carry without permit or training ? RT USA

I honestly don't know how I feel about it, a good percentage of the people I know are super responsible, then there's a few like the old boss. I'm pretty sure with it being so easy to walk around with a gun a lot more go missing.

While it will be extremely time-consuming to gather this data for the US (due to the large number of states each with its own laws), it is a fascinating idea.


While I realize that static data is not precisely what you are looking for, a present-day snapshot of homicide vs. gun laws in the US demonstrates precisely the opposite.

In the chart I posted originally, Those states which have higher-than-average levels of homicide are, for the most part, the states which have the most permissive laws concerning gun ownership. This encompasses much of the southern US, obviously, but also extends to states such as Alaska, Delaware and Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, those states which have the most restrictive laws concerning gun ownership, like New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Hawaii, all tend to have average to lower-than-average rates of gun violence, despite the fact that these states also have a high level of racial, ethnic, religious and economic diversity, which are typically indicators for high rates of crime.




Of course, the US is an anomaly amongst first-world nations concerning both gun ownership and violent crime. So let's look at Canada, which has a homicide rate roughly midway between the US and the more restrictive nations of Europe, and just very slightly higher than Australia. (I also found a convenient source of data for gun-laws-vs-murder-rate for Canada over time.)

In 1977, Canada introduced fairly strict regulations (Bill C-51) on the purchase of firearms as well as ammunition, expanded search and seizure powers, and prohibited the carrying of legal weapons for the purpose of protecting property.

Between 1992 and 1994, they further implemented regulations (Bill C-17) requiring anyone wishing to purchase a firearm to undergo a background check and pass a training course, implemented strong regulations for the safe storage, handling and transportation of firearms, prohibited military-style rifles, and limited magazine capacity to 10 rounds for handguns and 5 rounds for rifles.
source

In 1995, Bill C-68 implements a national licensing system for firearms, expands licensing to include rifles and shotguns, prohibits the sale of short-barreled and small caliber handguns, and requires a license to purchase all ammunition.

Here's a chart of the overall homicide rate in Canada (all murders regardless of weapon) for the period of 1961 to 2010:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1434679314
(the footnote next to 1985 indicates that the chart does not count the 329 victims of the 1985 Air India bombing, the country's largest ever mass-murder.)
source


The rate had just begun to decline prior to the passage of the 1977 act, and continued that decline afterwards. There are a few bumps, then a sharp uptick around 1990-91, and then immediately after the 1992 passage of C-17, the rate starts to sharply decline again, and continues a pattern of overall decline to the end of the dataset in 2010. There's a very tiny uptick around 1995 which then immediately settles back into another sustained period of decline

So, quite to the contrary of what you posit, I see that in Canada, major implementations of gun-control legislation are not followed by "significant increases" in the overall homicide rate, but rather by significant decreases.

Jason, I deleted your post because:

A: I'm tired of you just posting completely and utterly irrelevant links without adding a single word of original thought, and

B: This thread is specifically NOT about President Obama fast-tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership or the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. I have no idea why you thought that was relevant conjecture here. Please limit your conspiracy theories to relevant topics.

You are banned from this thread. :D

That is indeed a problem.

It's been my personal experience that people who own large numbers of firearms tend to be more lax than average about securing them, and also tend to advertise the fact that they possess them. Think about pickup trucks with rifle racks, and signs in front of homes informing would-be trespassers that the owner of the home is armed and will shoot on sight.

I mentioned earlier how my father was an avid gun collector. There was one room in our house which was a combination study and gun-room. I would conservatively estimate that there were at least 100 handguns (ranging from historical arms to contemporary pistols of all calibers) stored there, in addition to 10 or 15 rifles. There was no alarm system on the house, no gun safes, no trigger locks, no real security of any kind. They were just stored in a pair of ordinary closets alongside their corresponding boxes of ammunition in the way that a Beverly Hills housewife might store her shoe-and-dress collection. We were never robbed, however it would have been exceedingly easy to do so.


I'm honestly not sure whether decreases in firearms regulation necessarily lead to an increase in firearm possession. It might in the most restrictive states, though in the majority of states, people who posses a strong desire to legally own a firearm will deal with the regulatory hurdles and costs involved in obtaining one. They'll complain about it, but it won't prevent them from doing it.

Aimed at joe, I said violent crime, not homicide only. And I said over time, against the legislation. It proves nothing to say the a city with strict laws has high crime, or vice versa because cause/correlation.

You have used canada only. Look all over the world. Ill get on tonight with charts for individual US states, the UK and Australia.

A quick example is the gunbuyback and major tightening of laws in australia after the port arthur massacre. That happened in 1996.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1434680043

You have to go looking for the numbers because the graphs you always see are gun crime vs time in regard to legislation. And gun crime is irrelevant. The point of banning guns for safety isnt to lower gun crime its to lower violent crime. If lowering the amount of guns people can have legally decreases gun assault but increases total assault you have gone backwards.

Also interestingly Americas homicide rate is actually lower than australias when you control for gang violence.

I certainly understand what you are saying, and I agree with the underlying premise that disarming non-criminals may, in theory, lead to an increase in violent crime under the presumption that the likelihood of lethal retaliation is decreased.

I would point out two things:

The first is that many violent criminals, particularly those who engage in common, low-level "street crime," are not especially intelligent. They have gotten to where they are in life largely due to a lack of cognitive ability, which includes the capacity to weigh the potential consequences of violent crime against the potential rewards.

Remember, there is significant overlap between this group and the group of people who respond to perceived social injustices by rioting and burning down their own neighborhoods. In particular, the perpetrator of Port Arthur had previously been assessed to have an IQ of 66, had been declared unable to function in society, and was granted a disability pension on these grounds.
source and source.

The second is that a single datapoint from one piece of legislation in one country immediately following a horrific mass-murder is by no means evidence of a trend. As a counterpoint, I found a chart detailing all major crimes in Canada from the period of 1962 to 2012, which encompasses all of the regulations which I listed a few posts ago:



https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1434681850
source

What we see here is that from 1962 to 1990, the rate of all crimes followed a steadily increasing trend, with no observable reaction to the 1977 legislation. Then, around 1991, the crime rate began to decline and continued to do so steadily, ignoring both the 1992 and 1995 legislation.

Based on this data, we can state confidently that, in Canada, increased regulation of firearms correlates strongly to a decrease in the homicide rate, and does not appear to strongly correlate to the overall crime rate.

Cool. We are in the same mindset regarding how one needs to consider the effects as a whole. Carry on.

While that's true in principle, as a practical matter it would take hundreds of years. The number of currently-legal, privately owned firearms is quite high (something like 250 million, I think), and most of them don't get fired all that often so they don't really wear out. The attrition rate is going to be very low, so if you wanted to see European kinds of levels in a person's lifetime, you'd need active confiscation.

I suspect what you'll see if you look more closely at the data is a correlation between homicide rate and poverty. In particular, if you go a city level (instead of state) and look at dense urban areas with low rates of legal gun ownership (NYC, Chicago, DC), you'll find a high crime rate, a high murder rate, and a high poverty rate.

And yes, the south has a much higher poverty level:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1434695648

--Ian

This also ignores how countries define "violent crime." If I remember correctly, and please correct me if I'm not, the UK, for instance, has a far more lax definition of violent crime than the US.

You wanna know where else the US hangs out with third world countries?

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1434714819





related charts that illustrate impact:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1434714906


https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...7162abaf94.jpg

Interesting defaulted correlation between unmarried and single (father unknown and single poor mother forever)...

A developed (depraved) society relies less on mass cults/religion/culture for the norms.

Actually, NYC has relatively low rates of crime, despite what the Batman films would lead you to believe.

In 2014, the murder rate in NYC was 4.01 per 100,000, which is below the US national average of 4.7 per 100,000. The rate of all violent crimes (murder, rape, robbery and assault) was moderately higher than the national average (461 per 100k as opposed to 385 per 100k), much of which is attributable to minor robbery of tourists, and the remainder of which mostly occurred in the outer burroughs of Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens and involved disputes involving drug transactions and gang control of territory in and around the public housing projects, a problem unique to major cities.

Notably, the rate of property crime (burglary and larceny) in NYC is roughly half the US national average; 1,879 / 100k vs 3,917 / 100k in 2006, the latest year for which I found a convenient source of comparison.

Overall, the combined crimes rate in NYC is slightly lower than the national average, and the lowest of any city in the US of 1m+ population.


NYC is notorious for having strict gun control laws. All handguns must be individually licensed, carry permits are extremely rare, and mere possession of an unlicensed handgun is a felony offense.


Of course, there was a time when NYC was a dangerous city. The period of the 1960s - 1980s saw violent crime rates vastly higher than national averages, during a period of considerable racial and political turmoil, the peak of the gang wars, and the rapid uptake of crack cocaine. Since then, effective policing tactics including stop-and-frisk, combined with other initiatives, seem to have demonstrated that highly restrictive gun laws and extremely low rates of gun ownership do not correlate with high rates of overall crime, and do weakly correlate with low rates of murder and property crime.

What do you make of this:

The majority of crime in America is not reported and the majority of reported crime does not result in an arrest and in many jurisdictions, a significant minority of crimes are not prosecuted. Thus if you reach the stage where the criminal justice system is prosecuting you for a felony, either you have done something very wrong or the system is tired of seeing you back in court.

77 percent of felony defendants have at least one prior arrest and 69 percent have multiple prior arrests. 61 percent have at least one conviction and 49 percent have multiple convictions.

35 percent of those charged with felonies have 10 or more prior arrests and another 17 percent have between 5 to 9 arrests, thus 52 percent of charged felons have been arrested and before the courts many times.

40 percent of those charged with burglary and motor vehicle theft have 10 or more arrests. 30 percent of violent offenders have 10 or more prior arrests.

Source:
Repeat Felons Dominate the Criminal Justice System?Most Convicted Felons do not Serve Time in Prison?Part One

a pragmatic look at car accidents:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1434719962

US is a very car-accident prone country, I think we should look at who we are allowing to own cars, more than one, and what size motor they can have.

Joe, you're not fooling anyone. You know perfectly well that the most effective deterrent for gun crime at a particular location is to simply make it a "Gun Free Zone". We can use schools, theaters, and church's to show what a great idea this is. You can sift through all the propaganda charts you want, we all know "Gun Free Zones" are the answer.

I would accept it axiomatic, and attribute it to a multitude of failings, most of which are social in nature. I don't see how its directly relevant to firearm ownership.

:bowrofl:

Fixed it for you.

If the vast majority of firearm-involved murders are committed with guns stolen from their legal owners, then if criminals stopped stealing legally-owned guns, this would, over time, have the effect of eliminating the supply of stolen guns.

Also true.

How can we effectively implement that?

Can you imagine a liberal politician using the same tactics to solve automobile accidents as they do gun-crime...

"Just take a look at traffic accident rates in most of Europe... they are half what ours are. We need to be more like Europe. We need to raise the minimum driving age to 18, we need weeks of drivers training, we need gas that costs 5x as much, we need engine displacement limits, we need blah blah blah"... engage career dissipation light.

You are forgetting high capacity gas tanks.

You either decrease the amount of available guns, or you decrease the incidences of theft, yes? Which do you think is easier? (not a loaded question)

Since we're using the UK, cars, and petrol as a comparative argument:

Gasoline is expensive in the UK, because of that, manufacturers and consumers alike have taken to more fuel efficient vehicles. Is that to say that everyone adores driving their Fiat Panda over a F250 Super Duty? No, but they (manufacturers AND consumers) can at least recognize the value of downsizing. It reduces congestion, it reduces pollution, and it extends fuel supplies. Collectively, it's beneficial. Some nations are better at realizing these types of benefits than others...

you have no idea what youre talking about.


fuel costs are the same throughout the world:


https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1434722929


its more expensive in those areas because of collectivists like you.

Does anyone see a correlation on these graphs? Easier to get guns; more guns to steal; what comes next?


https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1434723296




https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1434723296

I'm beginning to think you're on the spectrum. Taxes considered as well...

im trying to find once in here if anyone else has talked about WHO is commiting these crimes and why...

from your own stupid link:

impact for impact.

This graph includes accidents and suicides. There is no relation to those things and stolen guns.

The indefinite article in the thread title is killing me.

Uh oh, capitalized bold text is coming out. Such passion.

When people discuss the cost of gas, they almost invariably are referring to the total cost; the cost they pay first-hand (which I specified twice..)

Homicide rate never actually goes below pre-regulation levels though.
I don't have any fancy graphs, but the inverse your statement has not proven to be true, at least in the United States.
The expiration of the "assault weapons ban" is a pretty good example of this.
Despite the sunsetting of that bill, gun violence actually steadily decreased afterwards. This is despite the fact that gun ownership and number of firearms owned has skyrocketed in recent years.
An interesting chart from Smith and Wesson:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1434726293

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

Lots of correlation = causation going on in here.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 shit 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. :D

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.

Japan restricts vehicle motor size based on license :party:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.