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Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

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Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#511

Post by YATA2 »

taeric wrote: post #118
bifrost wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are suggesting is illegal. Its illegal to license a right. We shouldn't penalize the hundreds of millions of legal gun owners in the US because we're unable to catch psychopaths before they kill people.

This feels silly. Explosives are general arms for an armed service. Good luck stockpiling c4. Or having a military vehicle. Cannons that can shoot depleted uranium? Surface to air missiles? All arms that would be needed to fend off a real threat. So the idea that guns are special is idiotic. You can already get in trouble for using a gun with too many rounds when bird hunting. Is that actually illegal?

Those are considered destructive devices, not arms, and are regulated totally differently. They are by definition not considered "arms".

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#512

Post by lliamander »

tshaddox wrote: post #368
calvinmorrison wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the solution really is obvious. Well, from a programmers perspective - it's all about what you are optimizing for. We can end all car related deaths as well by outlawing all automotive vehicles. We can eliminate or curb most sexual diseases by regimenting who one can have sex with. We can end homelessness, by quartering local vagrants in the homes of the citizenry. Solutions are easy. Side effects are less so. If w…

If I was a civilian in a large scale war between the United States government and its civilian population I’m pretty sure I would rather the civilians have access to cars than to guns if it was one or the other.

A conventional war between civilians armed with small arms against the full United States military is a completely unrealistic scenario for what armed resistance would actually look like.

More realistic scenarios, based on historical examples, include:

1. Armed resistance of local or federal authorities/law enforcement (e.g. Battle of Athens, Bundy Standoff)

2. Guerrilla warfare against a superior military force (e.g. Afghanistan)

3. Full civil war between the states (would probably look something like Russia-Ukraine war happening right now)

In the first two scenarios small arms are absolutely effective. In the third scenario, access to more advanced weapons and logistics would be split between the factions (and possibly supplemented by outside forces).

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#513

Post by chmod600 »

jeffbee wrote: post #429
chmod600 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Where many U.S. states permit concealed carry of handguns, handguns are virtually illegal to carry in Canada. Transporting them from your home to the range is legal, but they must be unloaded, locked, and permits are required for the transport." I see no mechanism by which those laws would reduce mass shootings. A mass shooter would simply ignore them. The other policies you mention may be more relevant, but it goes…

Rifles with detachable magazines, or internal magazines with more than 5 rounds, should be as hard to purchase as machine guns. That's narrow enough for me.

Long guns (rifles and shotguns) account for something like 2% of gun-involved homicides.

People use them for mass shootings, but they also use pistols, and there's not a huge difference in the outcome.

Your proposed law would have very low effectiveness, but impact millions (maybe tens of millions) people who want to buy rifles.

Maybe you don't care about those people, but maybe that's part of the problem? They are fellow citizens, they can vote, and they have rights. And they know you don't care about them and they will resist your proposals because they don't trust you.

You can turn that around and say that they should care more about you, and maybe they should. But at some point, we have to communicate, because we (collectively) aren't making good policy any more.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#514

Post by themacguffinman »

merek wrote: post #432
calvinmorrison wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the solution really is obvious. Well, from a programmers perspective - it's all about what you are optimizing for. We can end all car related deaths as well by outlawing all automotive vehicles. We can eliminate or curb most sexual diseases by regimenting who one can have sex with. We can end homelessness, by quartering local vagrants in the homes of the citizenry. Solutions are easy. Side effects are less so. If w…

Well, from a different programmer's perspective, ideal scenarios ("ending" or "eliminating" bad things) are rarely a reality. We can reduce car related deaths by regulating automotive vehicles and driving behavior. Speed limits, seatbelts, max BAC... We can reduce sexual diseases by educating people on safe practice. We can reduce homelessness through welfare systems. And based on the experiences in virtually every o…

But why stop there? Why not ban cars completely? That will reduce car deaths even further.

We can reduce sexual diseases even further by regulating who you can have sex with. If you've ever had or transmitted an STI, you're on a permanent banlist. You can obtain a license by proving you have no history of reckless behavior and have a clean record of health.

We can also reduce homelessness even further by finding every homeless person and forcing them into a government house. Homelessness is a travesty that must be reduced as much as possible, isn't it?

Hey, there aren't any ideal scenarios but we can reduce it further, can't we?

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#515

Post by elementalest »

quantumwannabe wrote: post #377
elementalest wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. When compared to places like Australia, where guns are highly regulated and barely anyone owns a gun, such that there have been no mass shootings for 35 years, the solution really is obvious.

That is blatantly not true. There have been several mass shootings in Australia such as the 2002 Monash University shooting and the 2014 Sydney hostage crisis since Port Arthur, which inspired the modern Australian gun control system. Port Arthur was also 25 years ago, not 35. Australia also only had a handful of mass shootings before Port Arthur; mass shootings have never been a major issue in Australia. https://en.…

Yep, my mistake its 25 years, not 35. Though the difference doesn't negate the point that its been decades since a gun related massacre.

That linked source is for all massacres, most of which are not gun related and have If you look at [1], when the Australian gun laws came into effect, a year later the per capita number of gun related deaths halved. 25 years later and its halved again and the trend continues downwards. For reference the US numbers are here [2]. What is interesting is that when comparing the number of firearm possession per capita between the US and Australia, the US has roughly 10 times more guns [3]. Based on [1] and [2] the US has roughly 10 times the number of gun related deaths per capita. The reason why Australia has historically had less problems than the US with gun violence is that even at Australia's peak, it had 5 times fewer guns [4] than the US [5] did per capita.

[1] https://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/10/rate_of_a...

[2] https://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/194/rate_of_...

[3] https://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compare/10/rate_of_civili...

[4] https://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/10/rate_of_c...

[5] https://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/194/rate_of_...

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#516

Post by DeathArrow »

People say that gun owning should be restricted. But are the mass shootings done by people who have a gun permit and legally bought the guns?

Also, forbidding guns, doesn't change people minds. If someone has a psychiatric condition he can drive a large truck into the crowd, light up a crowded building or event try to poison a water reservoir, destroy a dam, derail a train, make a bomb using gasoline, fertilizer and sugar.

I wonder how well the number of untreated mental health issues in US corelates with mass shootings and other mass killings.

Maybe the biggest factor of people dying in mass murders is not gun control, but the fact that there are some people who reach that deranged state of mind in which they think it's ok to kill others.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#517

Post by tshaddox »

simon1ltd wrote: post #375
softcactus wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is part of why a sensible discussion cannot be had. "Shall not be infringed" has become axiomatic to many gun owners. Disclaimer: I am a gun owner. I like guns very much. Here's the 2A in full: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." I am not a historian but I believe that this quote from James Madison in…

Except the National Guard are actually part of the Army, Navy and Air Force. "The National Guard is a state-based military force that becomes part of the reserve components of the United States Army and the United States Air Force when activated for federal missions." It may be organized by state, but it's a federal force. The 2A exists to give people tools to fight the government (or support it), it's not a gun feti…

Presumably in any situation where individually owned firearms were helpful in resisting the United States military, some significant portion of national guard members would also say “no thanks” when activated. After all, the United States military can already conscript individuals, so any hope of individual firearms being useful for resistance obvious assumes that individuals would say “no thanks” to conscription.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#518

Post by watwut »

beloch wrote: post #83

Canada is the U.S.'s neighbour and is probably closer, culturally, than any other nation. Gun ownership is also high in Canada. In terms of guns per capita, the U.S. is #1 by a long shot, but Canada is #7 [1]. In Canada, guns owned per capita is one third of what it is in the U.S.. Canada also has mass shootings. The annual deaths from mass shootings per capita in Canada is 0.032, which is about one third that of the…

> gun owners would be much more receptive to regulation if they felt people were genuinely trying to separate narrow and effective laws from broad infringements that annoy many and accomplish little

Actually, there were polls based on which gun owners support gun regulation a lot more then one would say. There is subgroup of gun owners represented by NRA who dont - but they dont represent average gun owner.

The support for gun regulation is quite high in general public.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#519

Post by DeathArrow »

librish wrote: post #89

It's time we start legislating based on empirical evidence instead of lofty ideals. Yes, if everyone was responsible perhaps it would be OK for all of us to own firearms. But so many people are utterly irresponsible, and guns make that irresponsibility lethal. People should safely store their fire-arms, but they don't and guns get stolen and sold illegally, or used by their teenage child. People shouldn't point a gun…

Before fire arms being invented people took other's lives with knives, swords or clubs. Or poison. Or bare hands. What makes you think that not owning a gun will make people less murderous?

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#520

Post by watwut »

kodah wrote: post #463
charles_kaw wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I see no mechanism by which those laws would reduce mass shootings. A mass shooter would simply ignore them. On virtue of how many shootings have begun "without warning", the cultural context in canada versus the us is quite different. The expectation of actions when you see a firearm is very different in these two countries! - in the US, someone with an openly carried firearm may be transporting it or any number of…

> Gun owners consistently misrepresent and come up with inconsistent interpretations of any gun control. Maybe sometimes, but there's also gun laws like in California that affect large populations of gun owners. I don't think they're making their dissatisfaction and confusion with the gun laws up. Owning a gun in the US isn't very simple; different states have wildly different laws you have to observe, and those are…

1.) No sometimes, looking at those debate basically always.

2.) Gun owners defined as "people who own guns" have actually quite high support for regulations. There is strong lobby and minority that does not support them, but they dont represent all or even most people who own guns.

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