As Mayor Barrett noted this morning prior to our regional gun violence meeting, cops don't carry large capacity magazines, used in mass shootings. We also don't need the bad guys armed with military style weapons either. The solution is not more guns or more people with guns, the answer is fewer guns and banning certain kinds of weapons and equipment. Otherwise we escalate the violence, we don't reduce it or eliminate mass shootings.
Other countries HAVE eliminated mass shootings. We can too. We are better than where we are with gun violence. Our gun culture is a massive FAIL. The states with the fewest guns and the most strict gun regulations have the least gun violence and the least gun crime.
We have a problem; the solution is NOT more guns.
"No one hunts with an assault rifle. No one needs 10 bullets to kill a deer. End the madness now!
ReplyDeleteThe tragic events of just the last few weeks in Newtown, Conn., and West Webster, N.Y., have indelibly taught us guns can cut down small children, firefighters and policemen in a moment"
-- New York Governor Andrew Cuomo in his State of the State address calling for tougher state bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines of ammunition.
New York legislators were working Wednesday behind closed doors to reach agreement on the governor's demand for tighter controls on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines. Democratic Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Republican Sen. Martin Golden agreed the closed-door talks have brought all sides to within 95 percent of a deal, which could be announced and acted on this week.
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Meanwhile in Connecticut, State Senator Beth Bye has proposed legislation that would call for a 50 percent sales tax on all ammunition, permits would be required to purchase ammunition, and the online purchase of ammunition would be prohibited saying "My constituents have been screaming to do something…now.”
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But in Minnesota, DFL Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk said at last night's Minnesota Chamber of Commerce dinner that it will be difficult to pass any restrictions on guns. "This is a state with a strong sporting tradition and a lot of gun owners who feel very strongly about it in a bipartisan way so I think it's very hard to change the current law" Bakk said.
I guess that's why the DFL did not even field a candidate against Tony Cornish last November.
Will anybody stand up to Tom Bakk ???
Does Mark Dayton have the wisdom of Andrew Cuomo ???
It must start at the state level ... nothing will be done as long as John Kline, Michele Bachmann, et al are empowered
Update : Colorado's Governor John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, said in his annual State of the State “We can learn from tragedy and make changes” ... the Governor's proposals DID NOT include a ban on assault weapons or outlawing high-capacity ammunition magazines ... just background checks ... does that make you feel any safer knowing that Steven Davis, the Vermont teacher that is now undergoing psychological evaluations after his YouTube postings and emails, was deemed by Police Chief Paul Doucette as "driven. Davis, who's wife did not know that he had purchased a AR-15 military-style rifle in April 2009, along with two high-capacity magazines and 500 rounds of ammunition, was in the process of moving his firearm to a storage locker that he had rented.
DeleteDoucette said he previously met Davis at a school function several years ago and met him again two weeks ago when Davis wanted to talk about ways to improve the community. "It just didn't seem right. With my position, I'm concerned about public safety and the safety of this community. It just didn't seem right. I just felt something was wrong with him," Doucette said. "He was on this crusade where he wanted to see improvements and it was now time for improvements. He indicated that there were some teachers that needed to be gone from the school. When he started going on about reading CIA manuals and he talked about looking into military training and things like that, I became alarmed. My staff became even more alarmed and we became concerned about the safety of the teachers at the school and the safety of the community."
The question for Governor Hickenlooper (as well as other Democrats), what good does a background check do prior to legal purchase when someone can store a AR-15 military-style rifle with two, 30-round, high-capacity magazines loaded in a storage locker ?
What IF Davis had not talked with the police at a school function ?
The recommendation for background checks is nothing new when you consider that Colorado is one of the states where ALL gun show sales ALREADY require background checks.
DeleteWe need to close all of these loopholes, that means background checks and records of gun transfers to different owners/ lessees /including gifts on ALL private transactions (as distinct from FFLs).
It also means that all states should be required to submit the names of prohibited people to the NICS data base - Colorado is actually one of the better states for compliance, post Columbine.
We need to change what weapons, magazines, and ammunition can be bought and owned. In Israel, a nation that gun guys love to point to as a gun haven, people are allowed to own one gun, and they have to demonstrate they have a need for it, like some aspect of their occupation necessitates it.
Laws about private gun ownership are similarly stringent in that other gun paradise, Switzerland, and there is virtually NO concealed or open carry there either.
"[C]ops don't carry large capacity magazines."
ReplyDeleteThis is patently untrue unless you are Only speaking of the extended Glock magazine that was used in Tuscon which is impractical to carry and the drum from Aurora, which is too unreliable for them to use.
If you see an officer carrying a semi-automatic pistol, it will have whatever the standard capacity magazine is for that type, caliber, and size of pistol. In most cases, this will be a number between 10 and 20 rounds. They carry these because it's conceivable that a multiple threat situation could require the extra rounds, and it would, therefore, be silly to force them to carry reduced capacity, 10 round magazines.
Incidentally, this is why we gun owners hate the idea of an arbitrary 10 round limit--the same logic that says that a standard capacity magazine makes sense for a cop who may have to defend himself means that the same standard capacity magazine makes sense for our defensive handguns.
Cops also, increasingly, have an AR-15 in their trunk in case they run into a situation with an active shooter. The police do not use 10 round magazines in these, they use the standard 20 or 30 round magazines that have been decreed "high capacity."
If you were to only be discussing banning non-standard, extended capacity magazines like the Tuscon and Aurora shooters used, you would probably find that gun rights proponents would be much less vociferously opposed to you, even if they didn't all jump on board the bandwagon.
I'd be happy for them if cops could find a way to carry a recoilless rifle, if that would help them against the bad guys they encounter that put their lives at risk. That was mostly said in jest, but the idea of de-escalating the levels of violence and guns is quite serious.
DeleteHaving an AR-15 in the car is not the same as carrying one on you when you are on foot patrol, or responding outside your vehicle as a cop. So, I would argue that the mayor was accurate.
There is no need for you or I or my co-bloggers as private citizens/civilians to have law enforcement of military weapons. They undergo active and continuous training for things like proficiency and safety, and appropriate occasions for use. They have to also undergo regular and routine physical and mental/psychological checks for that use. You and I don't have to have so much as the eye test required for a drivers license to get these weapons, much less a practical proficiency testing on their handling or our accuracy, or any kind of psych evaluation, or demonstrate that we are any good at determining who to shot when. A classic case demonstrating the problems with that last was the grandfather in Rochester, MN who mistakenly shot his grand daughter who was coming into the house, where she had lived with them for the past 3 months, mistaking her for a burglar.......because he forgot she was living there, when he woke up from a sound sleep. He also didn't make sure he could clearly see who was letting themselves into the house in the dark.
I have a problem with that kind of mistaken shooting happening, along with the 3 murder suicides a day we hav in this country, mostly with legally owned guns. Most mass shootings, like Sandy Hook, like Aurora, Colorado, and like the Minneapolis mass shooting at a sign company earlier this year, are with legally owned, legally purchased guns. Most mass shootings, unlike the more numerous murder/suicide shootings, use either/and a more than 30 round magazine, and an assault-style / military-style weapon.
to continue
Deletehttp://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.full
From the American Journal of Epidemiolgy
"Data from a US mortality follow-back survey were analyzed to determine whether having a firearm in the home increases the risk of a violent death in the home and whether risk varies by storage practice, type of gun, or number of guns in the home. Those persons with guns in the home were at greater risk than those without guns in the home of dying from a homicide in the home (adjusted odds ratio = 1.9, 95% confidence interval: 1.1, 3.4). They were also at greater risk of dying from a firearm homicide, but risk varied by age and whether the person was living with others at the time of death. The risk of dying from a suicide in the home was greater for males in homes with guns than for males without guns in the home (adjusted odds ratio = 10.4, 95% confidence interval: 5.8, 18.9). Persons with guns in the home were also more likely to have died from suicide committed with a firearm than from one committed by using a different method (adjusted odds ratio = 31.1, 95% confidence interval: 19.5, 49.6). Results show that regardless of storage practice, type of gun, or number of firearms in the home, having a gun in the home was associated with an increased risk of firearm homicide and firearm suicide in the home. "
Btw, that study is not an exception or an outlier; every study, every survey of studies, every field of study ranging from criminology to public health to political science/public policy to sociology finds the same pattern. We use guns against each other, against the people we know, against the people we should be seeing as our fellow Americans, far more than we use it against a home invading bad guy, etc.
As the long defunct cartoon series Pogo noted, (not to be confused with POGO the Project on Government Oversight), "We have met the enemy and he is us.".
If you can't hunt with more traditional hunting weapons, you're too crappy a shooter to be out loose in the woods, swamp, boat, or wherever you are hunting from; take up another hobby.
While you are relatively new here Fezzik, what I try to do when I write here or post information here is to be as knowledgeable as possible and as factual as possible, including going to primary sources whenever I can for real information, not pre-digested stuff being circulated in the media echo-chamber.
The reality is that people who own guns, and their family and friends, are the ones who are in danger from those weapons. How much more in danger from your own weapons being used against you compared to being used by you to defend against a violent stranger vary from 5 time more likely to kill you than help you, to 22 times more likely. That differences in multipliers tends to come from variation by state and region; there is a markedly higher number/proportion in gun deaths and injuries in lax gun restriction / pro open and concealed carry states.
The more guns, the more places with guns, the higher the number of gun deaths and gun injuries. The number of gun deaths are misleading as well, as an indicator of gun violence, because there has been a 300% increase in the number of people who are being saved after being shot, courtesy of our improvements in medicine from advances and innovations made in battlefield treatment of injuries.
So, your argument about civilians having the same defensive firearms as military and police doesn't wash. The reality is that those are the problem, not the solution. By restricting those to law enforcement and military, and getting them out of the hands of BOTH criminals and legal gun owners, we are all safer, gun owners are all safer, and we decrease gun crime and gun violence.
Fezzik,
ReplyDeleteYou appear to be pretty learned about firearms. While I commend you for your civility, I will also offer an observation. Your tone, much like the tone of many others, seems quite "professorial", in short as if you both have a. most/all of the answers and b. believe you know more about the subject at hand than the authors with whom you are interacting.
DG is an expert researcher, her ability to ferret out detail is pretty damned remarkable and has put a vast number of conservatives of all stripes "in their place" (not said pejoratively) about the facts.
Laci is an expert on guns and gun violence having both written a blog on the subject for years and as acting as counsel to many defendents thus dealing with the facts of cases.
I am a 12 year army veteran. I've fired more types of firearms than most, I have a reasonable affinity for the "fun" which shooting a weapon in fact brings (more like thrill, but let's call it fun). Furthermore, I'm, a pretty staunch defender of the idea that citizens should be allowed to arm themselves, much as Kruikshanks case said "With arms of the type in common use" quite simply because that is the way in which an irregular force (GCIII) will be constituted. I don't believe it is realistic that the US will be invaded - but that doesn't visciate the fundamental principle. In short, there are certain principles, like Habeaus Corpus, due process, freedom of assembly, confrontation of accusuers, presumption of innocence, and importantly and especially, the 14th amendment requirement that the government should have a good and proper cause to know details about it's citizens, to intrude on their liberties.
With that said, the general welfare is clearly improved when responsible gun ownership includes registration and licensure quite simply because it seeks to prevent, and does impair, illegal trading in guns. No solution will be perfect, but as a very good man I know once said, "never let perfect be the enemy of good." Oft times I see opponents of an idea say "So, you think if we do X that will totally stop all of Y." That's a specious argumentation form. Of course no solution will totally remove risk - the question is, does it help sufficiently vs. it's cost. In my opinion, a national database tracking purchases and sale of firearms is a reasonable method, we do it for cars, boats, planes, there's no reason not to for guns. I know what the 2nd Amendment says, but even the Heller and McDonald decision affirmed the right of the government to place reasonable restrictions on ownership, including reasonable recording (imho).
With respect to high capacity magazines and law enforcement. Yes, a typical semi-auto pistol carries 13-15 rounds (17 if you use an extended magazine depedning upon the calibre), but that hardly makes the police officer equivilantly armed to someone with an AR-15 variant when the perpetrator is wearing ballistic protection. A 10mm round is unlikely to penetrate body armor, a .223 round will go through the body armor of the first officer and kill the second, no problem. Further, while SOME police officers carry AR-15, this is a REACTION to their use by criminals - DG makes an excellent point here. This represents and escalation (sic), what do you supppose the next step is? Many on the right extreme advocate that they should be able to legally posess things like fully automatic weapons or even forms of light artillery (like mortars or anti-tank rifles)- if you want to defeat law enforcement, and they are now equipped with military small arms, what next? Grenades? IED's? HEAT rounds?
ReplyDeleteThe point is, the use of firearms (handguns) necessitates more powerful firearms (shotuns/rifles), more powerful firearms necessiate even more powerful.. it's not a solution, it's an arms race.
Lastly, high cap magazines, while perhaps arguable under the "of a type in common use" idea, simply are pointless. They absolutely DO make shooting lots of rounds much easier. While I don't see a ban as any sort of cure-all, it is a small step that may very well help as requiring folks to reload more often gives others time to run, police time to act, and exposes the assailant to malfunction in reloading just that much more often. I take that positive far above the very minor negative that an irregular force might be slightly less effective because they were using 10 round maganzines vs. 20. The odds of an irregular force ever being necessary, let alone the odds of such a force being military meaningful, are nearly infinitely small.
Patrick,
DeleteThanks for your reply. First, I apologize if my tone seems condescending--I don't mean to insult anyone with a tone that implies I know everything and they don't. I realize that my statement above may have come across this way. From what Dog Gone said above, it would seem that she and the speaker were intending the comment to refer to the truly extended capacity magazines which have been used in many shootings.
What I was trying to illuminate was the difference between high capacity as defined by many laws (as greater than 10 rounds) and high capacity as in extended capacity. It may well be that everyone here already understands that difference, and I guess I got a little defensive. Many of us gun rights folks get oversensitized to standard misconceptions we are confronted with repeatedly--e.g. when we hear gun show loophole we immediately think of the misconception that you can buy from an FFL at a gun show without the background check you would get at his shop--Chris Matthews just implied this as I was reading your post, and I have many non-gun owning friends who have earnestly thought this.
Similarly, I was trying to point out standard capacity for pistols because I find that pro gun control people I deal with are usually mystified as to why gun owners hate the idea of a 10 round magazine limit.
As for the doing X will not prevent all of Y argument, I try to avoid indulging in that unless I am dealing with a person who has said made such a claim. I much prefer the cost/benefit calculation you described above. The arguments I made in an earlier thread against AWB's were not that an AWB wouldn't stop all shootings, but that I thought that its costs in depriving people of defensive arms was far greater than any benefit it might create. I tried to back this up with explanations of how I could see someone with ill intent easily carrying out any of the biggest mass shootings so far with the exception of the Tuscon shooting (which is an outlier among the others).
Regarding your point about police pistols not equaling AR's, I fully understand that. My shift to talking about AR's was only meant to point out that the police did use 30 round magazines in contradiction of what I understood the speaker at the meeting to be denying. I didn't dwell on this because of the breakdown between police use of an AR and typical citizen use--police typically grab the AR out of the trunk when they need to go on the offense against an active shooter--especially if he is similarly equipped. Your every day citizen would only grab it up as a defensive weapon unless the whole world had gone pearshaped, so the argument for a citizen having standard capacity magazines for an AR is a bit different from the one I was wanting to make for citizens to have access to standard capacity pistol magazines rather than only ones with an arbitrary limit like 10 (or 7 as Cuomo has suggested, or 5 as I recently heard Bloomberg say).
As for the arms race issue, I agree that it occurs, and you point out the mechanism for it. However, I don't see limiting civilians to only 10 rounds affecting this race as criminals will always seek out more powerful weapons to outgun the cops--just look at all the illegal, full auto AK's smuggled in from God knows where. They're not that common, but they make it in, and their presence would necessitate cops having AR's even if all guns were outlawed. Unfortunately, when it comes to guns, in many ways technology has opened Pandora's box.
Finally, I have to say that you are the first person I have met who advocates for a type of gun control and yet takes the historical idea of the militia seriously. I think a discussion of the militia concept is something our country would benefit from as a return to it might save us a good deal of money and reduce the amount of military adventurism we have engaged in over the past century. If the idea of the militia and the complimentary right to arms was more respected in our society, I would not only be more comfortable with your idea regarding registration, I would say it might become necessary as a proof that the militia was properly equipped.
DeleteMy discomfort with the notion today is that there are so many people who wish to do away with private gun ownership (and I’m not accusing DG, Laci, or Penigma of this) that I think such a registry is unduly risky because it enables such people to outlaw one model after another, for suspect reasons, as they pursue their goal.
Also, so that I don’t seem like a Call of Duty weapons expert spouting off, I’m not a soldier like Patrick, or an arms procurer as Laci once was. My knowledge comes from growing up with a familiarity with guns and continuing to study and learn about them, their ammunition, and the laws governing them. I have done this both for personal interest and to help clients understand what the laws are and how to comply with them.
DeleteI carry a handgun on a daily basis as long as my work doesn’t take me to court or somewhere else where I must disarm. To be responsible doing this, I practice regularly, putting anywhere from 50-200 rounds through a gun during a practice session to ensure that my accuracy stays at an acceptable level.
I haven’t ever had the opportunity to fire any fully automatic firearms, but I have learned the operation of a large number of civilian legal arms of all classifications, learned to strip them down and reassemble them, fired them, and cleaned them.
My interest in the subject has led me to put a substantial amount of research into the function and capabilities of various types of firearms and ammunition. I don’t know everything, but I try not to spout off on things I don’t have some form of knowledge of. If I say something you think is wrong, point it out—I’m always glad to be corrected and learn the truth where I’m mistaken.
Laci has never been an 'arms procurer' as you describe it. He is a former military officer and combat veteran. He also has a long history, from his school days forward, of handling and working with firearms, including defending people in court for firearms related criminal charges.
DeleteI'm curious what kinds of clients you are advising; perhaps you share a profession?
Thanks to referrals from Laci, I've been building a very nice library of my own on the history and legal precedents of the 2nd Amendment written by legitimate history and law experts. It might be interesting to compare reading lists.
While all three of us are firearms proficient and each of us have fired a variety of kinds of firearms, but Laci and Pen have fired military weapons where I have not. This is why I tend to defer on the finer points of technical specs to my co-bloggers, while I take the areas I know best - usually in the sciences, definitely in the areas relating to animal husbandry and agriculture. (I have an upcoming post on reptile DNA found in cows you might find interesting, given the close link between birds and reptiles). My combat pistol training for cc included being able to strip down and reassemble my weapon blindfolded quickly and correctly. The proficient people with firearms are not all on your side of the argument, and frankly, many of them are less proficient than my co-bloggers and myself.
The reality is that an armed society is not a polite society, it is a society that more quickly and more frequently resorts to violence. The cold reality is that thanks to the money spent freely to buy congress members, when we see someone on the street openly or concealed carrying a firearm, we have to wonder if this is one of those legal buyers /carriers that we read about who have brandished weapons in cases of road rage, or are they negligent like the North Carolina granny who shoved her revolver between seat cushions in her car for 'safe keeping' when it was going through the car wash, allowing it to be stolen, or are they one of the former violent felons the NRA helped get back their gun rights too easily, or one of the crazy people the NRA helped to get back their gun rights too easily, or one of the drug users the NRA helped to get back their gun rights to easily, or someone who is a drunk or a domestic abuser that the NRA has helped to keep or get guns and carry rights. Or if - god forfend - you go to shop at a local Walmart, is that going to be the Walmart that this time has the once a week + gun incident in their building or in their parking lot because they attract a lot of gun carriers and gun shoppers?
The cold reality is that too many gun owners and gun carriers are neither safe, nor lawful, and that combined with military / law enforcement grade weapons is a national problem of crisis proportions.
Gun procurer?
DeleteWell, I did work in procurement contracts for the military, but they also involved far more complex and varied items than just firearms.