Today's mass shooting in the US

It looks like he may have something stuffed down the back of his shorts, surely to God he's not got another gun stuck up "there" as well ...I have stopped being shocked by what folks do for thrills these days :)
 
Firearms are used defensively between 500,000 to 3,000,000 times per year.

Thats a vague statement considering what constitutes "defensively". Is that someone defending themselves from getting shot. Is that police drawing their weapons. Is that a nutter waving his gun around because someone cut him off in traffic and he felt threatened.
 
Yeah that's David Hemenway, citing himself, funded by an anti-gun group (Joyce), doesn't provide numbers, uses ridiculously tiny sample sizes.
It's really weird that you don't get reliable independent figures when IIRC the federal government is basically banned from collecting most of the useful stats on gun violence and usage. IIRC there was a law/regulation banning the CDC from doing studies into it for 20 years (and such studies tend to take years to do properly).

In other news it's looking like the keystone cops could have done a better job at protecting the students at Robb Elementary school, whilst the school seem to have done everything they could have (they sounded the alarm as soon as they received a warning call, but the murderer was inside the building within a minute of that), the police chief didn't have a radio, the "school resource officer" (aka cop in the school) didn't have keys for the school (unlike standard in many other forces) and the cops were waiting outside the class room door from about 5 minutes after the shootings.

No wonder they're using intimidation tactics on the parents* and press, there is a very very good chance many of those kids would have been alive if they'd followed the procedures put in place something like 20 years earlier, let alone the more rigorous and expanded ones required by Texas law and that they trained for only months earlier, as it's extremely likely some of those poor kids died of blood loss, let alone any shot whilst the officers were stood around.
They waited for something like an hour and it was only the border patrol ignoring the commands of the police chief that put an end to it.


*They threatened one mother with parole violations if she spoke to the press, the Judge basically said "no way" once he/she became aware of that, and praised the woman for doing what the police refused to do (she went in and got her kids out), and have called in biker gangs with links to the police to threaten press who attempt to do their jobs on public ground (I guess it's one way to try and avoid the police force being sued for another failure, as if the police did it directly they'd be facing first amendment lawsuits).
 
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Yeah that's David Hemenway, citing himself, funded by an anti-gun group (Joyce), doesn't provide numbers, uses ridiculously tiny sample sizes.

Hemenway does provide numbers, you can find them right here in the paper he authored with Azrael and Miller. The Joyce Foundation is not anti-gun, it does not call for sweeping firearm bans, and focuses mainly on the social causes of firearm violence.

Meanwhile, here's Webster and Ludwig refuting some nonsensical claims from Lott, Kleck and Gertz on defensive firearm use in the US.
 
Thats a vague statement considering what constitutes "defensively". Is that someone defending themselves from getting shot. Is that police drawing their weapons. Is that a nutter waving his gun around because someone cut him off in traffic and he felt threatened.
Yup

And can be pretty much anything someone thinks of as them using their gun "defensively", even if the threat was imagined - "i saw someone dodgy so showed them my gun, they turned away" is potentially "defensive" use of a gun, it's also someone seeing an idiot with a gun and thinking "christ, what's that nut doing, I'm going find somewhere safer to cross the road".
 
Thats a vague statement considering what constitutes "defensively". Is that someone defending themselves from getting shot. Is that police drawing their weapons. Is that a nutter waving his gun around because someone cut him off in traffic and he felt threatened.
Read through the CDC report for yourself? Draw your own conclusion.
 
No reason to have such easy access to guns. It is stupid and it contributes to these shootings time and time again.

The ONLY reason to have many of the firearms available is “because I like them”. As long as that takes precedence over the lives of their own children, nothing will change.
 
Just mandate that civilian arms are limited to revolvers, lever-action rifles, single/double-barrel shotguns, varmint rifles... basically most things technologically available pre-WW1.

Don't see why the pro-gun folk would be mad since that's the 'good times' and those are the manliest of weapons.
 
The war on normal people owning guns is the same as the war on drugs, it's not an overnight fix with how pro gun people debate about it.
It will be a decades long process, but less guns on the street every year.

In the US there will not be fewer guns on the street every year. Even if that did happen it would create a different problem, the guns would come over the border from Mexico and the criminals would be having a great old time.
 
In the US there will not be fewer guns on the street every year. Even if that did happen it would create a different problem, the guns would come over the border from Mexico and the criminals would be having a great old time.
IIRC the actual flow of the guns tends to go the other way.

Why bother risking smuggling illegal weapons across one of the most actively patrolled and checked boarders in the world, where they're looking in detail for things that are much smaller and harder to find than a gun (drugs), when you can cross a state line, go to one of the many many dodgy gun shows or shops and buy a gun that will either do what you want without any issue, or can easily be modified and not have any worries about boarder inspections.

From memory the Mexican government has actually tried suing US gun manufacturers and sellers because they can trace so many of the weapons the drug cartels are using direct to the US as there are far fewer checks on stuff leaving the US than entering it.
 
IIRC the actual flow of the guns tends to go the other way.

Why bother risking smuggling illegal weapons across one of the most actively patrolled and checked boarders in the world, where they're looking in detail for things that are much smaller and harder to find than a gun (drugs), when you can cross a state line, go to one of the many many dodgy gun shows or shops and buy a gun that will either do what you want without any issue, or can easily be modified and not have any worries about boarder inspections.

From memory the Mexican government has actually tried suing US gun manufacturers and sellers because they can trace so many of the weapons the drug cartels are using direct to the US as there are far fewer checks on stuff leaving the US than entering it.
I’m not talking about now though, I’m talking about Berry’s hypothetical situation of guns being banned and reducing numbers on the streets.
 
In the US there will not be fewer guns on the street every year. Even if that did happen it would create a different problem, the guns would come over the border from Mexico and the criminals would be having a great old time.
Are you saying that the second potential problem is greater than the current and very real problem? Because that would seem idiotic in the extreme.
 
Are you saying that the second potential problem is greater than the current and very real problem? Because that would seem idiotic in the extreme.
Not sure where you’re getting the impression that I’m saying that? Just pointing out that banning guns wouldn’t end all the problems.
 
Just mandate that civilian arms are limited to revolvers, lever-action rifles, single/double-barrel shotguns, varmint rifles... basically most things technologically available pre-WW1.

Don't see why the pro-gun folk would be mad since that's the 'good times' and those are the manliest of weapons.

Maybe just take it back to what was available at the time the 2nd Amendment was written, flintlock pistols and muskets. As Jim Jeffries said -“I like muskets, they give everybody involved a lot of time to calm down”
 
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