Obama says it's easier to get a gun than a book.

[DanD]

Except that background checks can only be kept for 24 hours, at which point the FBI is required to destroy them. Which means the purchaser can wait 1 day, re-submit, and the FBI has no evidence.

Again, they are permitted to keep rejections.

Only if they determine that the rejection was an illegal attempt to buy a gun, rather than an honest mistake or similar (incorrect name or other information).

The ATF is also not allowed to require inventories from gun dealers, and the dealers are not required to report "lost" guns. And the ATF is not allowed to inspect a given dealer more than once a year. Which makes tracking illegal sales rather difficult. And even if they do turn up a lot of guns from a single dealer at crime scenes, they aren't allowed to use that trace data in proceedings to strip the dealer's license.

This is because they kept abusing their powers to harass gun stores with punitively expensive compliance costs.

So doing their job is harassment? I would say that keeping track of missing guns is a fairly legitimate law enforcement requirement. As is tracking back illegally used guns in order to determine where they came from, and if that source is providing them illegally.

Note additionally that the ATF is not the FBI. The FBI runs the records, not the ATF.

Background checks are FBI. Gun dealer records are ATF. Congress likes to keep them separate because it's easier to target the ATF's funding that way.

And even if they could, they aren't allowed to keep purchase records in an electronic database, so cross-referencing is essentially impossible.

A rejected request is not a purchase.

Still illegal for the ATF to keep any sort of electronic records, even on rejected requests.

So, it's not so much that current laws aren't being enforced, it's that an agency which has a budget not much larger than it was a decade ago, is restricted from enforcing them in any effective manner.

As far as whether current laws, alone, would be sufficient: estimates are that 85% of guns used in crimes change hands in a private sale at least once before they are found at a crime scene. And many of those "private" sales are from unlicensed dealers who are selling from their "collection" of several hundred weapons, all price tagged and ready for sale. The definition of a FFL dealer is extremely narrow. So no. Until we have universal background checks, current laws are not sufficient.

Please,
Homeland Security, etc have gotten buckets of money dumped on them for improving security. It's just been spent on stupid crap. Law enforcement has plenty of money to play army, so the logic that they can't afford anything is dubious.

Again, FBI is one agency, and gets some of that homeland security money. ATF is another, and doesn't. The budgets are very deliberately kept separate.

Also, your statement regarding FFLs is entirely incorrect, and such activity is blatantly illegal. If you resell two firearms for profit as a de facto dealer, and lack an FFL, enjoy prison. You can find a helpful description at https://www.atf.gov/file/100871/download. Go on, and read what the current laws actually are before deciding they are insufficient.

And the laws are exactly what I said. They are non-specific. If buying and selling of guns is your sole or major means of support, you are a dealer. If you have a collection of thousands, and you sell one or two, you are not. If you have a collection of thousands, and you sell all of them, nope, not a dealer. At least not unless the courts rule that way. And the practical fact is that the courts have been (at best) inconsistent, and plenty of people have not been convicted despite fairly significant non-licensed sales. Just because the ATF emphasizes the few cases they've won in their advice to the public doesn't mean they typically do.

Yes, not every illegal seller gets caught. Thus the aforementioned need for enforcement.

Here's a radio controlled boat with a popgun on it. Go prevent smuggling through the Gulf of Mexico.

[Tyndmyr]

Except that background checks can only be kept for 24 hours, at which point the FBI is required to destroy them. Which means the purchaser can wait 1 day, re-submit, and the FBI has no evidence.

Again, they are permitted to keep rejections.

Only if they determine that the rejection was an illegal attempt to buy a gun, rather than an honest mistake or similar (incorrect name or other information).

Which...requires enforcement.

I can buy that honest mistakes happen. I have difficulty believing that effectively zero percent of rejections are genuine, and that they are all honest mistakes and not worthy of investigation.

I mean, if that WAS the case, then background checks would be pointless entirely, right? No matter how you feel, the status quo is obviously broken.

The ATF is also not allowed to require inventories from gun dealers, and the dealers are not required to report "lost" guns. And the ATF is not allowed to inspect a given dealer more than once a year. Which makes tracking illegal sales rather difficult. And even if they do turn up a lot of guns from a single dealer at crime scenes, they aren't allowed to use that trace data in proceedings to strip the dealer's license.

This is because they kept abusing their powers to harass gun stores with punitively expensive compliance costs.

So doing their job is harassment? I would say that keeping track of missing guns is a fairly legitimate law enforcement requirement. As is tracking back illegally used guns in order to determine where they came from, and if that source is providing them illegally.[/quote]

Not law enforcement in general, the ATF specifically. Not all law enforcement is subject to the exact same requirements.

Note additionally that the ATF is not the FBI. The FBI runs the records, not the ATF.

Background checks are FBI. Gun dealer records are ATF. Congress likes to keep them separate because it's easier to target the ATF's funding that way.

So? I don't understand why you keep dragging the ATF into this. Nothing requires the ATF have additional legal powers in order for the FBI to have a higher rate of enforcement.

And even if they could, they aren't allowed to keep purchase records in an electronic database, so cross-referencing is essentially impossible.

A rejected request is not a purchase.

Still illegal for the ATF to keep any sort of electronic records, even on rejected requests.

...sweet Jesus, are you even reading? The FBI handles the requests. The FBI can and does do enforcement on rejected requests occasionally. Just very infrequently. There's no legal prohibition here. They just need to do it more often.

Why you're talking non stop about the ATF, I have no idea.

Again, FBI is one agency, and gets some of that homeland security money. ATF is another, and doesn't. The budgets are very deliberately kept separate.

...again, what the hell is the relevance?

Also, your statement regarding FFLs is entirely incorrect, and such activity is blatantly illegal. If you resell two firearms for profit as a de facto dealer, and lack an FFL, enjoy prison. You can find a helpful description at https://www.atf.gov/file/100871/download. Go on, and read what the current laws actually are before deciding they are insufficient.

And the laws are exactly what I said. They are non-specific. If buying and selling of guns is your sole or major means of support, you are a dealer. If you have a collection of thousands, and you sell one or two, you are not. If you have a collection of thousands, and you sell all of them, nope, not a dealer. At least not unless the courts rule that way. And the practical fact is that the courts have been (at best) inconsistent, and plenty of people have not been convicted despite fairly significant non-licensed sales. Just because the ATF emphasizes the few cases they've won in their advice to the public doesn't mean they typically do.

As noted in the link, if you read it, convictions have been upheld for the sale of two guns. That pretty clearly outlines that the legal limits are pretty clear, and not nearly so broad as you claimed.

Yes, it is possible for people to do illegal things anyways, and get away with it. This happens with everything. That is not sufficient proof that the laws are too lax, and need to be more draconian.

In EVERYTHING, you are innocent until the courts rule that you are not. This is called justice. Why do you hate it so?

Yes, not every illegal seller gets caught. Thus the aforementioned need for enforcement.

Here's a radio controlled boat with a popgun on it. Go prevent smuggling through the Gulf of Mexico.

Yes. Shitloads of resources have been devoted to the war on drugs. Far, far more than a radio controlled boat with a popgun, which is kind of a ridiculous strawman. This should give you an idea of how well wholesale banning works.

It's also insanely more expensive then checking in on the rejected requests. The war on drugs is a really shitty model to emulate.

[DanD]

I keep bringing up the ATF because the ATF is the agency with responsibility for enforcing the laws against the dealers in particular. So their lack of resources, the restrictions that are aimed at them, are what drive how well current laws against illegal sales are enforced.

Yes, the FBI can investigate and track guns back, but they aren't the agency that can rescind a dealer's license, or even prosecute them.

Also, there is a significant difference between "the courts determine whether you broke the law" and "the courts determine whether the law applies in this case". Yes, someone was convicted for selling two guns. Another case was thrown out when the individual had sold hundreds. A hard and fast rule on how many guns and how long they had been owned on average before sale (collectors rarely buy and then sell immediately) would be a concrete law that would make enforcement much easier.

[Tyndmyr]

I keep bringing up the ATF because the ATF is the agency with responsibility for enforcing the laws against the dealers in particular. So their lack of resources, the restrictions that are aimed at them, are what drive how well current laws against illegal sales are enforced.

Yes, the FBI can investigate and track guns back, but they aren't the agency that can rescind a dealer's license, or even prosecute them.

Also, there is a significant difference between "the courts determine whether you broke the law" and "the courts determine whether the law applies in this case". Yes, someone was convicted for selling two guns. Another case was thrown out when the individual had sold hundreds. A hard and fast rule on how many guns and how long they had been owned on average before sale (collectors rarely buy and then sell immediately) would be a concrete law that would make enforcement much easier.

The FBI and other law enforcement agencies can investigate directly. If found guilty, these sorts of laws carry hefty prison sentences. Single offenses are 5-10 years.

Who gives a shit if the license isn't revoked if the responsible parties are in jail? At that point, the license becomes invalid regardless.

Enforcement does not in any way require money or power to be thrown at the ATF. The ATF does need to update the license validity after the fact.

People who genuinely collect, and do not sell rapidly are not the problem. Nobody running a business is going to want a giant pile of stock they can't turn over for a very long period of time. Some people being found innocent is normal for pretty much any law. This isn't a flaw, it's justice. You *should* expect to find some being found innocent, and some found guilty.

[LjSpike]

I'd conclude that the most reasonable solution to these problems would be making gun purchases illegal, it'd solve school shootings, help stop terrorist attacks, and prevent many accidents.

But it's already illegal to shoot up a school or to perpetrate a terrorist attack. And making cars illegal would prevent many more accidents than making guns illegal.
Jose

Sure it would. However, what productive benefit do firearms give?
The only thing I could presume you could count as a positive for guns is that they can be a leisure activity at a shooting range or such. (I'm not taking "With guns we can defend ourselves from people with guns" as a valid point. The flaw in it is horribly obvious.)

Cars however, can help get perishable goods to a destination faster, or people to work faster. They can get injured or sick people into hospital quicker.
Along with the fact they can be a leisure activity (Racing).


Shooting up a school or perpetrating a terrorist attack should stay illegal. Yes. They are already illegal. Yes. The point is though, if they can't get the weapons to perform a shooting in the first place. It makes the crime of the actual shooting far harder to come across.
You might get more crimes, but far fewer crimes with victims being injured or killed.

[ucim]

Sure it would. However, what productive benefit do firearms give?

Freedom is about not having to justify your activities to the government. This is no small point.

Government (at least in this country, at least in theory) is accountable and subservient to the people, not the other way around. This may sound like a bit of a contradiction; after all government's purpose is to restrict a person's freedoms for the general good of the people, and enforces this by having the ultimate legitimate monopoly on the use of force. However, there is a difference between "a person" and "the people". In any given case, the government needs to be able to enforce the laws (on "a person") decided on by "the people", but if it stops there, government loses all accountability; after all it only abides by the ballot box because it permits us to vote in the first place. One hopes that the use of force (by the government) would not be necessary, but in fact, it is.

Likewise however, the use of force against the government is "the people's" only ultimate claim on accountability. "The people" need teeth against their government, otherwise the government is free to do what it wants.

Spoiler:

This is also an issue with AI government, but a much harder one to deal with. See Colossus, the Forbin Project.

If "the people" in principle cede our right to armaments, we will soon cede in practice our ultimate claim of authority over it.

"The people" are made up of lots of "persons"; you can't give a right to "the people" without also giving it to persons.

The tools of freedom are dangerous. But so is tyranny.

I'm not so paranoid that this is my reason to own a gun. But this is the ultimate reason to defend my right to own a gun.

Jose

[Chen]

But the government already restricts what arms you can use. They don't allow people to use the strong, devastating weapons that could actually be used to fight back against the government anyways. Your well regulated militia with small arms is still going to get destroyed by a single combat aircraft or tank.

What was posted above was certainly the original intent of the 2nd amendment. It doesn't seem terribly relevant nowadays though.

[ucim]

But the government already restricts what arms you can use.

Are you actually proposing this as a reason that the government should even further restrict what arms we can use?

Jose

[Chen]

Are you actually proposing this as a reason that the government should even further restrict what arms we can use?

Jose

Im saying that the argument that you need those arms to defend (or rise up) against the government is silly because the arms they currently allow you to have would be ineffective for the task. You're not going to win a fight against the military (government) with your small arms anyways, so arguing that taking away your small arms would prevent you from "fighting back" is not terribly convincing.

I am not saying they SHOULD take away your small arms. I am simply saying that part of the argument you put forth as to WHY taking away your small arms would be a problem, is not sound.

[ucim]

I am not saying they SHOULD take away your small arms.

Good. It follows then that you agree that even if I have no good reason to own guns, it should not be illegal for me to do so. In that case, the idea that guns "aren't useful" or "aren't as useful as cars" (even though they are both dangerous) is not an argument against the right to own guns. That's the argument that LjSpike made, that I was responding to.

And as for defense against the government, we are still in a "rule of law" regime, and it is not likely to flip suddenly to a full military coup. It would get there by stages, and small arms would help in one of those stages, and that helps deter that stage from happening in the first place.

Jose

[elasto]

Good. It follows then that you agree that even if I have no good reason to own guns, it should not be illegal for me to do so.

Huh?

Even if I have no good reason to own Plutonium, it should not be illegal for me to do so.
Even if I have no good reason to make an airborne AIDS virus, it should not be illegal for me to do so.

Sure, I agree with the stance that says things with no negative externalities should default to being permitted rather than banned, but widespread gun ownership has a lot of downsides for society. Stuff with lots of serious downsides should be considered on its merits, not default to being allowed.

Your logic only applies to meaningless fluff with relatively minor downsides like, I dunno, whether it should be illegal to play computer games.

[ucim]

Even if I have no good reason to own Plutonium, it should not be illegal for me to do so.

Yes.
Even if I have no good reason to own {fill-in}, it should not be illegal for me to do so, unless there is a good reason that I should not be able to own it. Note - it is the mere ownership I'm referring to. Use is a separate question.

I should be allowed to own a kitchen knife. I should not be allowed to plunge it into people's chests.

Further, when restrictions are deemed appropriate, they should be the minimum required restrictions. For example, I should not be allowed to drive a car on public roadways until I've passed a driving test.

Jose

[Alexius]

Sure it would. However, what productive benefit do firearms give?
The only thing I could presume you could count as a positive for guns is that they can be a leisure activity at a shooting range or such. (I'm not taking "With guns we can defend ourselves from people with guns" as a valid point. The flaw in it is horribly obvious.)

Hunting for food, pest control, defence against dangerous animals, *potentially* also defence against someone without a gun who is larger and stronger than you.

On the hunting argument, you could say that that is still a leisure activity as you could go to the store and buy meat (or go vegetarian). I disagree- you could just as well say that cooking for yourself (requiring the ownership of large knives) is a leisure activity as you could eat out or buy microwave meals.

While pest control methods other than guns exist, so do means of transport other than cars.

[Tyndmyr]

Good. It follows then that you agree that even if I have no good reason to own guns, it should not be illegal for me to do so.

Huh?

Even if I have no good reason to own Plutonium, it should not be illegal for me to do so.
Even if I have no good reason to make an airborne AIDS virus, it should not be illegal for me to do so.

Sure, I agree with the stance that says things with no negative externalities should default to being permitted rather than banned, but widespread gun ownership has a lot of downsides for society. Stuff with lots of serious downsides should be considered on its merits, not default to being allowed.

Your logic only applies to meaningless fluff with relatively minor downsides like, I dunno, whether it should be illegal to play computer games.

Both of those examples are ones where nice, easy, near-universally agreed upon good reasons NOT to do so apply.

Burden of proof should rest with those proposing bans. Relying on having to prove why something needs to be legal, as a general principle, results in trending toward authoritarianism. And, for the same reason, the mere existence of prior restrictions is not sufficient cause for further restrictions.

You need to convincingly demonstrate that the bans will provide some concrete benefits. Enough to outweigh any costs, and have some net benefit left over. Laws where this is the case are generally well accepted. Granted, people make measurement errors sometimes, or predict costs and benefits wrongly, but the basic principle is easy enough.

You're unlikely to convince anyone when you deny that any benefit exists. About half the households in the US wouldn't own one if they didn't think they were receiving some benefit from doing so. If you don't even understand the opposition, you'll never convince them.

Are you actually proposing this as a reason that the government should even further restrict what arms we can use?

Jose

Im saying that the argument that you need those arms to defend (or rise up) against the government is silly because the arms they currently allow you to have would be ineffective for the task. You're not going to win a fight against the military (government) with your small arms anyways, so arguing that taking away your small arms would prevent you from "fighting back" is not terribly convincing.

I am not saying they SHOULD take away your small arms. I am simply saying that part of the argument you put forth as to WHY taking away your small arms would be a problem, is not sound.

Small arms have been used successfully against invaders before. Having bigger guns is *helpful* to obtaining victory, but it's far from the only factor, and it's not a good reason to ignore all others.

I'm unaware of any successful army in recent history, however, that used NO guns.

[lorb]

[...]
Burden of proof should rest with those proposing bans. Relying on having to prove why something needs to be legal, as a general principle, results in trending toward authoritarianism. And, for the same reason, the mere existence of prior restrictions is not sufficient cause for further restrictions.

You need to convincingly demonstrate that the bans will provide some concrete benefits. Enough to outweigh any costs, and have some net benefit left over. Laws where this is the case are generally well accepted. Granted, people make measurement errors sometimes, or predict costs and benefits wrongly, but the basic principle is easy enough.
[...]

You are tangling up the proof whether the costs or benefits of guns are greater too much with the question whether they should be legal. In a democracy if a majority of the people/voters feel like guns should be banned, for whatever rational or irrational reasons, then they should be banned. The only way the minority can challenge this is if the ban violates a right they have. (Obviously second amendment comes to mind.)
There is no law that says you have a right to all things that have a net benefit.

[Tyndmyr]

Questions of legality should be derived from costs and benefits.

Irrational reasons are not a good basis for laws, and in general, society shouldn't encourage that, majority opinion or no. At one time, an amendment and majority belief protected slavery. However, that didn't make it a just principle for law.

Democracy itself is not inherently virtuous. It's only better because it produces better outcomes than other systems in practice. It's definitely still imperfect, and there are many different kinds of democracy with various pros and cons. It's unlikely that we've figured out the optimal system yet, but I think there's pretty good agreement that an irrational mob is still something to be feared, not encouraged.

[lorb]

Yes, society should not encourage irrational reasoning. The opposite even, rational reasoning should be encouraged as much as possible. What however is asking too much is to place some "burden of proof" on the majority when it decides on the legality of something. Preferably the majority is arrived at by most people having done a cost-benefit analysis, but it is not a requirement, and it shouldn't be. Isn't your own argument that by default it should be legal to own a gun even if you have no good reason to do so and it would be irrational?

[ucim]

Isn't your own argument that by default it should be legal to own a gun even if you have no good reason to do so and it would be irrational?

Freedom is about what happens when your "good reason" differs from my good reason. Because there's no absolute "good reason" to do (or not do) anything, unless you subscribe to supernatural sky-people telling us what to do (in which case, well, I subscribe to different sky-people, so now what?).

Freedom is about not needing a "good reason" to be permitted to do something. Of course, as anarchy results from not needing a good reason to prohibit doing something, and anarchy generally tends to be a Bad Thing, some stuff is prohibited based on an agreed upon "good reason" to prohibit it.

Whether the agreed-upon "good reason" is in fact a good reason depends on how well we think things through.

Jose

[Tyndmyr]

Yes, society should not encourage irrational reasoning. The opposite even, rational reasoning should be encouraged as much as possible. What however is asking too much is to place some "burden of proof" on the majority when it decides on the legality of something. Preferably the majority is arrived at by most people having done a cost-benefit analysis, but it is not a requirement, and it shouldn't be. Isn't your own argument that by default it should be legal to own a gun even if you have no good reason to do so and it would be irrational?

There's always a burden of proof. If the burden of proof is on those who wish to do something to show why they must be allowed to do it, you end up in the sort of country where much less is legal, and innocence of motive must be proved in order to gain permission to do things.

If it's on those who would ban or restrict things, then fewer things are banned or restricted. This is known as freedom.

If you wish to be rational, and also enjoy freedom, you should make decisions based on the latter criteria. This is far, far broader than just gun control.

Some things have to be banned, sure, but you should have to actually convince others, based on evidence, that it's logical to do so.

[sardia]

Both of those examples are ones where nice, easy, near-universally agreed upon good reasons NOT to do so apply.
Burden of proof should rest with those proposing bans. Relying on having to prove why something needs to be legal, as a general principle, results in trending toward authoritarianism. And, for the same reason, the mere existence of prior restrictions is not sufficient cause for further restrictions.
You need to convincingly demonstrate that the bans will provide some concrete benefits. Enough to outweigh any costs, and have some net benefit left over. Laws where this is the case are generally well accepted. Granted, people make measurement errors sometimes, or predict costs and benefits wrongly, but the basic principle is easy enough.

You're unlikely to convince anyone when you deny that any benefit exists. About half the households in the US wouldn't own one if they didn't think they were receiving some benefit from doing so. If you don't even understand the opposition, you'll never convince them.

Small arms have been used successfully against invaders before. Having bigger guns is *helpful* to obtaining victory, but it's far from the only factor, and it's not a good reason to ignore all others. I'm unaware of any successful army in recent history, however, that used NO guns.

That's pretty unfair to cutoff public funding for research to show if gun control has benefits and then demand that we show you evidence that gun control has benefits. You're gonna have to accept lower standards for evidence or wait another decade for private funding to ramp up. (alternately ramping up support for scientists to assure them their careers won't deadend if they pursue gun research.

Gandhi in India? Canada from the UK? UK from EU? It's been done, just much rarer now that governments can be more authoritarian without major repercussions.

http://www.npr.org/2016/07/12/485726439 ... tate-level

More than 20,400 pieces of gun-related legislation have been proposed following mass shooting events in the past 25 years. Of those bills, more than 3,000 have become law, according to a working paper recently released by researchers at the Harvard Business School. "It's not that nothing changes after a mass shooting," says Deepak Malhotra, one of the paper's authors. "A lot of the action on [gun control] happens across states instead of at the federal level." "If you have a Republican legislature in your state and you have a mass shooting, the net effect if you look at the actual bills that get passed is there's a significant increase in bills that loosen gun restrictions," Malhotra says. Democrat-controlled states showed no such effect. Bills that tightened gun regulations did get proposed after mass shootings, just not at a noticeably higher rate.

Interesting factoids regarding paranoia/passion for gun laws. There's been over 3000 gun laws passed (in states) after a mass shooting, public or not, Democrats don't pass more laws than they would in a normal year. Republicans, on the other hand, respond vigorously, passing many more gun laws(to loosen restrictions). This goes against conventional wisdom that Democrats are taking advantage of massacres or that the status quo hasn't changed. Those cliches only apply in gridlocked Congress at the federal level. At the state level, it's all about the GOP responding strongly to a massacre. Unfortunately the study doesn't dig into if the gun lobby is pushing these laws, or if the state officials are just trying to do something after a shooting.

[Tyndmyr]

Both of those examples are ones where nice, easy, near-universally agreed upon good reasons NOT to do so apply.
Burden of proof should rest with those proposing bans. Relying on having to prove why something needs to be legal, as a general principle, results in trending toward authoritarianism. And, for the same reason, the mere existence of prior restrictions is not sufficient cause for further restrictions.
You need to convincingly demonstrate that the bans will provide some concrete benefits. Enough to outweigh any costs, and have some net benefit left over. Laws where this is the case are generally well accepted. Granted, people make measurement errors sometimes, or predict costs and benefits wrongly, but the basic principle is easy enough.

You're unlikely to convince anyone when you deny that any benefit exists. About half the households in the US wouldn't own one if they didn't think they were receiving some benefit from doing so. If you don't even understand the opposition, you'll never convince them.

Small arms have been used successfully against invaders before. Having bigger guns is *helpful* to obtaining victory, but it's far from the only factor, and it's not a good reason to ignore all others. I'm unaware of any successful army in recent history, however, that used NO guns.

That's pretty unfair to cutoff public funding for research to show if gun control has benefits and then demand that we show you evidence that gun control has benefits. You're gonna have to accept lower standards for evidence or wait another decade for private funding to ramp up. (alternately ramping up support for scientists to assure them their careers won't deadend if they pursue gun research.

Gandhi in India? Canada from the UK? UK from EU? It's been done, just much rarer now that governments can be more authoritarian without major repercussions.

We've gone over this repeatedly. A SINGLE US agency was banned from using it's funding for advocacy. Because it was doing exactly that.

Show proof FIRST.

It's hardly fair to complain that lack of rigor is necessary when the restrictions originate from the aforementioned lack of rigor and downright partisanship. And they can still study. They just have to actually study, not advocate. Yes, they will now be watched closely for anything that spills over into advocacy. That's what happens when you screw up.

The screw-ups of the organization do not mean that the rest of us need to just accept a lack of evidence as fact.

Interesting factoids regarding paranoia/passion for gun laws. There's been over 3000 gun laws passed (in states) after a mass shooting, public or not, Democrats don't pass more laws than they would in a normal year. Republicans, on the other hand, respond vigorously, passing many more gun laws(to loosen restrictions). This goes against conventional wisdom that Democrats are taking advantage of massacres or that the status quo hasn't changed. Those cliches only apply in gridlocked Congress at the federal level. At the state level, it's all about the GOP responding strongly to a massacre. Unfortunately the study doesn't dig into if the gun lobby is pushing these laws, or if the state officials are just trying to do something after a shooting.

Uh, there's a reason for that. It's because NPR is biased as shit in this regard, and only wants to publish things that further a specific narrative. So, they're looking at passed laws, not proposed laws. They're measuring success, not attempts.

There's an obvious pattern at work here. After every massacre, gun control advocates propose gun restrictions. These stir up a massive reaction, and they fail. Said reaction results in successful backlash, further loosening gun laws. The democrats ARE attempting to take advantage, over and over again. It's just a strategy that doesn't work. Or at least, it hasn't, since the abysmal failure that was Clinton's assault weapon ban.

It's a shame the "progressive" party is locked into such traditional futility, echoing the same long-discredited arguments over and over again, with absolutely no memory of the near-identical discussion that happened last time. It's as tiresome as listening to creationists.

[DanD]

We've gone over this repeatedly. A SINGLE US agency was banned from using it's funding for advocacy. Because it was doing exactly that.

Show proof FIRST.

It's hardly fair to complain that lack of rigor is necessary when the restrictions originate from the aforementioned lack of rigor and downright partisanship. And they can still study. They just have to actually study, not advocate. Yes, they will now be watched closely for anything that spills over into advocacy. That's what happens when you screw up.

The screw-ups of the organization do not mean that the rest of us need to just accept a lack of evidence as fact.

The difference between "we won't fund you for advocacy" and "we won't fund you for results we don't like" is vanishingly small.

The "advocacy" was that they believed that gun violence in the US was a public health crisis. Because gun violence in the US is a public health crisis. Every study shows that you are more likely to die from a gun if you have access to a gun.

Yes, they may have prejudged the results of the studies they had proposed, but that was because they were basing their working hypothesis on prior studies. That doesn't mean the results of the studies would be biased, that's what the studies were for.

Even if Congress' intent was pure as the driven snow, untainted by advocacy on their side (it wasn't), it still had the effect of quashing serious public health research on the topic for decades.

[Tyndmyr]

The difference between "we won't fund you for advocacy" and "we won't fund you for results we don't like" is vanishingly small.

The "advocacy" was that they believed that gun violence in the US was a public health crisis. Because gun violence in the US is a public health crisis. Every study shows that you are more likely to die from a gun if you have access to a gun.

That's...never really been in question.

You are more likely to die to ANY factor if you have access to that factor.

That's trivial beyond belief. It can be used to justify ANYTHING as a public health crisis. It's a horrible selector.

Yes, they may have prejudged the results of the studies they had proposed, but that was because they were basing their working hypothesis on prior studies. That doesn't mean the results of the studies would be biased, that's what the studies were for.

Even if Congress' intent was pure as the driven snow, untainted by advocacy on their side (it wasn't), it still had the effect of quashing serious public health research on the topic for decades.

Congress is never unbiased. But using their failures as a metric for what standard is acceptable would be utterly horrifying for science as a whole. Science ain't perfect, but it at least aspires to seek truth, and it is correct for those who disregard truth utterly to be punished. We're not saying "they may have eventually funded something that was biased". What happened is they promised to get guns banned, hired a gun control advocate to do research, that then was horrifyingly biased(and statistically terrible)*. They blatantly fucked up about as bad as scientists can fuck up as far as getting into advocacy instead of science. They were working in concert with the Center for Gun Control to utilize public funds to support their advocacy. Yes, that gets punished.

The overall amount of studies did not decrease, so it's difficult to say that it 'quashed' it. It did affect the tone of the research, and exactly what and how stuff was researched. Of course, that's the point. Research since then has been of much better quality, and not subject to such widespread debunking.

*Kellerman, http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199310073291506

[DanD]

The difference between "we won't fund you for advocacy" and "we won't fund you for results we don't like" is vanishingly small.

The "advocacy" was that they believed that gun violence in the US was a public health crisis. Because gun violence in the US is a public health crisis. Every study shows that you are more likely to die from a gun if you have access to a gun.

That's...never really been in question.

You are more likely to die to ANY factor if you have access to that factor.

That's trivial beyond belief. It can be used to justify ANYTHING as a public health crisis. It's a horrible selector.

[

Considering that one of the major arguments for gun ownership is "protecting your family" the fact that having a gun in the house increases risk is not trivial. The common rhetoric is that a gun in the house means that you are less likely to die from home invaders (with or without guns). In practice, it does not significantly change that factor, but does significantly increase the risk of death by suicide, accident, or domestic incidents.

[Tyndmyr]

Considering that one of the major arguments for gun ownership is "protecting your family" the fact that having a gun in the house increases risk is not trivial. The common rhetoric is that a gun in the house means that you are less likely to die from home invaders (with or without guns). In practice, it does not significantly change that factor, but does significantly increase the risk of death by suicide, accident, or domestic incidents.

Clearly you're unaware of the criticisms of the study. People who opt to get a gun are often at greater risk than those who do not.

Your logic would also conclude that going to the hospital is a risk factor for death.

[sardia]

Considering that one of the major arguments for gun ownership is "protecting your family" the fact that having a gun in the house increases risk is not trivial. The common rhetoric is that a gun in the house means that you are less likely to die from home invaders (with or without guns). In practice, it does not significantly change that factor, but does significantly increase the risk of death by suicide, accident, or domestic incidents.

Clearly you're unaware of the criticisms of the study. People who opt to get a gun are often at greater risk than those who do not.
Your logic would also conclude that going to the hospital is a risk factor for death.

That would only matter if the studies didn't control for that. The Kellerman 1993 study paired up gun owners with similar residents who didn't have guns. It's still more dangerous to have a gun.
"the possibility that the association we observed is due to a third, unidentified factor. If, for example, people who keep guns in their homes are more psychologically prone to violence than people who do not, this could explain the link between gun ownership and homicide in the home. Although we examined several behavioral markers of violence and aggression and included two in our final logistic-regression model, “psychological confounding” of this sort is difficult to control for. “Psychological autopsies” have been used to control for psychological differences between adolescent victims of suicide and inpatient controls with psychiatric disorders,23,24 but we did not believe this approach was practical for a study of homicide victims and neighborhood controls. At any rate, a link between gun ownership and any psychological tendency toward violence or victimization would have to be extremely strong to account for an adjusted odds ratio of 2.7."
AKA Your reverse correlation argument is pretty shakey.
_______________

Interesting factoids regarding paranoia/passion for gun laws. There's been over 3000 gun laws passed (in states) after a mass shooting, public or not, Democrats don't pass more laws than they would in a normal year. Republicans, on the other hand, respond vigorously, passing many more gun laws(to loosen restrictions). This goes against conventional wisdom that Democrats are taking advantage of massacres or that the status quo hasn't changed. Those cliches only apply in gridlocked Congress at the federal level. At the state level, it's all about the GOP responding strongly to a massacre. Unfortunately the study doesn't dig into if the gun lobby is pushing these laws, or if the state officials are just trying to do something after a shooting.

Uh, there's a reason for that. It's because NPR is biased as shit in this regard, and only wants to publish things that further a specific narrative. So, they're looking at passed laws, not proposed laws. They're measuring success, not attempts.

There's an obvious pattern at work here. After every massacre, gun control advocates propose gun restrictions. These stir up a massive reaction, and they fail. Said reaction results in successful backlash, further loosening gun laws. The democrats ARE attempting to take advantage, over and over again. It's just a strategy that doesn't work. Or at least, it hasn't, since the abysmal failure that was Clinton's assault weapon ban.

It's a shame the "progressive" party is locked into such traditional futility, echoing the same long-discredited arguments over and over again, with absolutely no memory of the near-identical discussion that happened last time. It's as tiresome as listening to creationists.

Your argument for Democrats causing a backlash doesn't explain why Democrats aren't as responsive as Republicans to mass shootings. You don't think it's weird that a Democratically controlled state, the number of laws restricting guns passed doesn't change year to year? So even if the amount of laws proposed fluctuates due to shootings, why does the level of laws passed stay constant? Your argument at best only explains half the story.

Which arguments are discredited? Last I checked it was that gun bans full of holes were bad, and gun buybacks were bad. All the other ones weren't so much discredited as couldn't get past the trust issues. You personally said that there were plenty of beneficial changes we could do but no one in the gun faction would trust anyone to do it.

[Tyndmyr]

Considering that one of the major arguments for gun ownership is "protecting your family" the fact that having a gun in the house increases risk is not trivial. The common rhetoric is that a gun in the house means that you are less likely to die from home invaders (with or without guns). In practice, it does not significantly change that factor, but does significantly increase the risk of death by suicide, accident, or domestic incidents.

Clearly you're unaware of the criticisms of the study. People who opt to get a gun are often at greater risk than those who do not.
Your logic would also conclude that going to the hospital is a risk factor for death.

That would only matter if the studies didn't control for that. The Kellerman 1993 study paired up gun owners with similar residents who didn't have guns. It's still more dangerous to have a gun.
"the possibility that the association we observed is due to a third, unidentified factor. If, for example, people who keep guns in their homes are more psychologically prone to violence than people who do not, this could explain the link between gun ownership and homicide in the home. Although we examined several behavioral markers of violence and aggression and included two in our final logistic-regression model, “psychological confounding” of this sort is difficult to control for. “Psychological autopsies” have been used to control for psychological differences between adolescent victims of suicide and inpatient controls with psychiatric disorders,23,24 but we did not believe this approach was practical for a study of homicide victims and neighborhood controls. At any rate, a link between gun ownership and any psychological tendency toward violence or victimization would have to be extremely strong to account for an adjusted odds ratio of 2.7."
AKA Your reverse correlation argument is pretty shakey.
_______________

To explain why Kellerman's study was bullshit, I present you with the argument from...five years later Kellerman.

"A subsequent study, again by Kellermann, of fatal and non-fatal gunshot woundings, showed that only 14.2% of the shootings involving a gun whose origins were known, involved a gun kept in the home where the shooting occurred. (Kellermann, et. al. 1998. "Injuries and deaths due to firearms in the home." Journal of Trauma 45:263-267) ("The authors reported that among those 438 assaultive gunshot woundings, 49 involved a gun 'kept in the home where the shooting occurred,' 295 involved a gun brought to the scene from elsewhere, and another 94 involved a gun whose origins were not noted by the police.") (Kleck, Gary. "Can Owning a Gun Really Triple the Owner's Chances of Being Murdered?" Homicide Studies 5 <2001>.)"

Why the differing results later? Because the original study treated things as independent variables that really were not. You can't reasonably treat "history of drug use" and "arrest record" as unrelated in a country with a 'war on drugs', for instance.

You also have to expect that the "high risk" category consisting of people with arrest records, etc who are probably not legally allowed to own a gun, will have a higher rate of lying about owning a gun. This'll obviously skew their reported "risk factor" higher.

Interesting factoids regarding paranoia/passion for gun laws. There's been over 3000 gun laws passed (in states) after a mass shooting, public or not, Democrats don't pass more laws than they would in a normal year. Republicans, on the other hand, respond vigorously, passing many more gun laws(to loosen restrictions). This goes against conventional wisdom that Democrats are taking advantage of massacres or that the status quo hasn't changed. Those cliches only apply in gridlocked Congress at the federal level. At the state level, it's all about the GOP responding strongly to a massacre. Unfortunately the study doesn't dig into if the gun lobby is pushing these laws, or if the state officials are just trying to do something after a shooting.

Uh, there's a reason for that. It's because NPR is biased as shit in this regard, and only wants to publish things that further a specific narrative. So, they're looking at passed laws, not proposed laws. They're measuring success, not attempts.

There's an obvious pattern at work here. After every massacre, gun control advocates propose gun restrictions. These stir up a massive reaction, and they fail. Said reaction results in successful backlash, further loosening gun laws. The democrats ARE attempting to take advantage, over and over again. It's just a strategy that doesn't work. Or at least, it hasn't, since the abysmal failure that was Clinton's assault weapon ban.

It's a shame the "progressive" party is locked into such traditional futility, echoing the same long-discredited arguments over and over again, with absolutely no memory of the near-identical discussion that happened last time. It's as tiresome as listening to creationists.

Your argument for Democrats causing a backlash doesn't explain why Democrats aren't as responsive as Republicans to mass shootings. You don't think it's weird that a Democratically controlled state, the number of laws restricting guns passed doesn't change year to year? So even if the amount of laws proposed fluctuates due to shootings, why does the level of laws passed stay constant? Your argument at best only explains half the story.

Which arguments are discredited? Last I checked it was that gun bans full of holes were bad, and gun buybacks were bad. All the other ones weren't so much discredited as couldn't get past the trust issues. You personally said that there were plenty of beneficial changes we could do but no one in the gun faction would trust anyone to do it.

...you're still not understanding the causality involved. Democrats react to the shooting. Republicans react to Democrats.

Yes, you're correct that the magnitude is way, way different. This is because gun control demonstrations consist of a coupla dozen people hired to be there, whereas pro-gun rallies involve thousands, who coordinate extensively. The anti-gun movement is astroturf. All of it. Go, check out the organizations for yourself. Go to protests, and see both sides.

The strongest genuine anti-gun sentiments get is a casual survey answer or what not. If someone cares deeply about the issue, researches it, and pursues the truth, that person is pro gun.

It's like global warming, only with the parties flipped.