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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)

#881

Post by simon1ltd »

Gatsky wrote: post #481
jonp888 wrote: post #40

As a foreigner, I do not see it as productive to seek any explanation or expect any reaction when yet another news story like this comes along. It's clear that this is the way Americans wish to live, and it is their perogative to do so.

I have learned that some Americans consider it crucial to arm themselves in case there is a tyrannical government in the future. This seems nuts to almost everyone else in a first world country, and probably many other Americans. But these people, who are not in fact nuts or cretinous, actually believe this and consider it of paramount importance. In one sense, the point can't be argued. My view: If the US population…

Gun registration wouldn’t have done anything to stop this shooting. A legal adult with no criminal record purchased the guns in advance of his rampage. A waiting period wouldn’t have worked, and his registration would have gone through because he hadn’t done anything yet.

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

#882

Post by BobbyJo »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #804
BobbyJo wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a good test is the risk an accident poses to others. An accident with a nuke, tank or fight jet can easily kill 10's, 100's or millions. With guns, a bullet is a bullet for the most part (if we are talking about human fired calibers), an the risk any given undirected bullet poses is effectively the same. Larger magazines don't increase accident risk, while being automatic or explosive does. I.E. if you're a r…

The neighbour argument makes it sound like most people live in sparsely populated rural communities, where the danger is from the neighbouring accidently shooting you on the way back from a hunting accident. In a town, city or school or church the two guns would be completely different.

Not really. They have different penetrative properties, but the risk of a stray bullet hitting more than one person falls off exponentially over pretty short distances. The only real chance of a bullet hitting more than one person is if they are very close to each other in that moment, like a dense crowd.

I can't explain the math in great detail here, but, if we assume something like an urban residential complex, the risk of two people standing along the same line from a misfire at 30 ft is already so small that the extra risk a bullet capable of 60ft, or 120ft of travel poses (I'm using small distances because I'm assuming walls/furniture in the way) is only a fractional increase.

If you look at people being hit by strays, it actually doesn't correlate at all with caliber/magazine/etc., since most incidents are 9mm handguns being fired in urban environments.

If you consider dense crowds instead, then the extra risk can be a multiplier (say 2-5 if you're going from 9mm to .50), but I am totally fine with any gun just not being allowed at events like that assuming police are on site.

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

#883

Post by lliamander »

Thorentis wrote: post #202

I honestly think precedent and copy-cat syndrome are hugely to blame. "Shooting up a school" has just become synonymous with going on a shooting rampage. How do we go back from this? Even if we ban guns, how do we stop the determined from getting their hands on a gun so that they can shot up a school? It think it's incredibly tragic that we have gotten to the point where killing multiple primsry school aged children…

Eliminate gun free zones.

Mass shooters overwhelmingly prefer to target such locations for obvious reasons. If it becomes known that most attempted mass shooters will die an ignominious death before they achieve their goal, the incentive for copycat shooters will be gone.

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

#884

Post by nobodyistalking »

pvg wrote: post #311
elforce002 wrote: post #135

As a foreigner I find this subject very complex since the right to bear arms in on the US constitution. To change or "rewrite" the constitution trying to deal with this subject could dissolve the US. Banning guns altogether (rather improbable) will only leave law abiding citizens at the mercy of criminals. More protection in schools could be a starting point to address these awful events. I'm still in favor of law ab…

This really isn't the shape of the policy debate in the US. Nobody is seriously talking about rewriting the constitution or banning guns outright. The fundamental issue is that there's a politically powerful minority that is able to block essentially all meaningful attempts at any kind of gun regulation and they do. That's it and it's not likely to change in the short term.

> Nobody is seriously talking about rewriting the constitution or banning guns outright.

https://deadline.com/2022/05/michael-moore-repeal-second-ame... https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/texas-school-sho... https://newrepublic.com/article/166628/democrats-repeal-seco... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opinion/john-paul-stevens...

The final piece linked above is from a Supreme Court justice!

Meanwhile, in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31517777 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31517768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31514876

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

#885

Post by lliamander »

pvg wrote: post #311
elforce002 wrote: post #135

As a foreigner I find this subject very complex since the right to bear arms in on the US constitution. To change or "rewrite" the constitution trying to deal with this subject could dissolve the US. Banning guns altogether (rather improbable) will only leave law abiding citizens at the mercy of criminals. More protection in schools could be a starting point to address these awful events. I'm still in favor of law ab…

This really isn't the shape of the policy debate in the US. Nobody is seriously talking about rewriting the constitution or banning guns outright. The fundamental issue is that there's a politically powerful minority that is able to block essentially all meaningful attempts at any kind of gun regulation and they do. That's it and it's not likely to change in the short term.

> Nobody is seriously talking about rewriting the constitution or banning guns outright.

That's simply untrue.

> The fundamental issue is that there's a politically powerful minority that is able to block essentially all meaningful attempts at any kind of gun regulation and they do.

Such regulations are drafted in ignorance and have far more to do with making guns less scary to ignorant people than in actually affecting public safety.

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

#886

Post by BobbyJo »

doctoroctogon wrote: post #699
BobbyJo wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a good test is the risk an accident poses to others. An accident with a nuke, tank or fight jet can easily kill 10's, 100's or millions. With guns, a bullet is a bullet for the most part (if we are talking about human fired calibers), an the risk any given undirected bullet poses is effectively the same. Larger magazines don't increase accident risk, while being automatic or explosive does. I.E. if you're a r…

One follow up question - does risk-with-ill-intent play into your calculus at all? EG if there was a gun that had same accident risk as a revolver but you could kill 1M people with it before being stopped, should that be legal? If not, where’s the limit of risk-with-Ill-intent. A related, follow up question is your thoughts on requirements to get said items. Should background checks be required? Training?

> One follow up question - does risk-with-ill-intent play into your calculus at all?

Sure, but a couple other confounding factors enter the picture. If you assume ill-intent, then you have to also assume subversion of the law, and you then have to consider what lines not only make sense from a risk perspective, but what line make sense in feasibility and outcome as well. This is where

> A related, follow up question is your thoughts on requirements to get said items. Should background checks be required? Training?

Comes in. For the situations where ill intent was involved, and the weapons being discuss did then pose a substantially greater risk to other people, would these things make a difference? I Think the answer is yes, but not significantly. Most of these mass shooters would have passed the kinds of background checks proposed, and training would not have lessened the number killed.

Personally I like red-flag laws (provided there is a framework for recourse when someone is falsely accused to prevent them from being abused) for reducing casualties from people with ill intent. It's better from a second amendment point of view since the government isn't the entity creating barriers, and it'd better from an enforcement point of view because requirements can be fuzzier. It's much easier to substantiate "this person represents a risk to others and the community they live in feels they should not have access to guns" than it is to convict someone of a crime that would disqualify them from gun ownership broadly. I think on paper it works out better as well, as with most of these shooters, people were definitely weary of them and had reason to believe they posed a risk, but they hadn't committed any crimes, so what were they supposed to do about it?

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

#887

Post by dragonwriter »

pvg wrote: post #311
elforce002 wrote: post #135

As a foreigner I find this subject very complex since the right to bear arms in on the US constitution. To change or "rewrite" the constitution trying to deal with this subject could dissolve the US. Banning guns altogether (rather improbable) will only leave law abiding citizens at the mercy of criminals. More protection in schools could be a starting point to address these awful events. I'm still in favor of law ab…

This really isn't the shape of the policy debate in the US. Nobody is seriously talking about rewriting the constitution or banning guns outright. The fundamental issue is that there's a politically powerful minority that is able to block essentially all meaningful attempts at any kind of gun regulation and they do. That's it and it's not likely to change in the short term.

> Nobody is seriously talking about rewriting the constitution or banning guns outright.

People are talking about both, but they are on the fringes. OTOH, they are convenient for the defenders of the status quo to elevate to the level of principal alternative, because it helps deflect from the real debate, which they don't want to have.

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

#888

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

richiebful1 wrote: post #782
tablespoon wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Enforced by whom? What is the punishment if you break it? The government. We need a comprehensive set of media safety laws that prevent publication of these dangerous reports so they won't fall into the wrong hands.

In the United States, I highly doubt this would hold up in court. Forcing media to not publish about mass casualty events is antithetical to the First Amendment protection of free speech and press

We should do it with strong norms, just like with suicides. Shame them when they do it and they'll eventually stop.

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

#889

Post by elementalest »

lelanthran wrote: post #554
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.

> 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. Is it that simple? The is little correlation between stricter gun laws and fewer number of dead people: https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/27-years-recorded-crime-vict... That same link shows a slight negative correl…

As I mentioned in my other comment, the gun related deaths halved 2 years after the gun laws [1]. Furthermore, in 1996, the gun deaths per capita were 2.84, the homicides were ~650 per capita. So of course you will barely see a difference with the homicide graph. The real difference is that there have been no mass shootings for 20 years.

So yes, it really is that simple and completely obvious.

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

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

#890

Post by doctoroctogon »

BobbyJo wrote: post #886
doctoroctogon wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One follow up question - does risk-with-ill-intent play into your calculus at all? EG if there was a gun that had same accident risk as a revolver but you could kill 1M people with it before being stopped, should that be legal? If not, where’s the limit of risk-with-Ill-intent. A related, follow up question is your thoughts on requirements to get said items. Should background checks be required? Training?

> One follow up question - does risk-with-ill-intent play into your calculus at all? Sure, but a couple other confounding factors enter the picture. If you assume ill-intent, then you have to also assume subversion of the law, and you then have to consider what lines not only make sense from a risk perspective, but what line make sense in feasibility and outcome as well. This is where > A related, follow up question…

Ty again for the thoughtful answers. What are your thoughts on something like “you need 2 sponsors not immediate family to buy a gun”. Would that let almost everyone buy loners access guns?
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