Would you support an asbolute ban on all guns?

[johnd5050]

I used to live in Chicago and work in Detroit. These issues are relegated to certain neighbourhoods. Never had a gun and never had a problem even when I used to go to those neighborhoods once in a while.

Today's environment is different. I visit DC and it is not enjoyable anymore. Drive by shooting, street robberies, smash and grab, car jackings etc.
Unfortunately a law abiding citizen cannot carry a gun in DC, that privilege is reserved for the thugs.

 

[krealtarron]

Today's environment is different. I visit DC and it is not enjoyable anymore. Drive by shooting, street robberies, smash and grab, car jackings etc.
Unfortunately a law abiding citizen cannot carry a gun in DC, that privilege is reserved for the thugs.

I lived in Chicago until 5 years ago. So it was recent. How likely are you to face a drive by shooting or a street robbery or a car jacking? Very very very unlikely if we are being honest.

 

[cunning linguist]

The process of how to USE a gun has absolutely zilch to do with the social issue of crime, mass shootings and proliferation of weapons.

There is no knowledge of ballistics required to say that rifles should be banned, or certain calibers of firearms should be banned because there is an observable and demonstrable issue with certain calibers of guns being used in every mass shooting.

Knowledge of acquiring a firearm is not required in order to advocate for stricter background checks or screening, because there is a demonstrable and observable issue with perps using legally procured firearms to shoot up kids in schools.

In short, the knowledge of the topics you are bringing up is irrelevant to a discussion on the social issue of gun proliferation, mass shootings and gun related crime, that is otherwise not present in other developed nations, where restrictions similar to the ones that are being proposed, were imposed.

Criminal use of guns is irrelevant to the discussion of responsible ownership, demonstrated by the overwhelming majority of them not committing crimes with them.

If you plan on banning a particular cartridge, you better be informed and make a good argument if you want to be taken seriously. As an example, look at all the disinformation surrounding the 5.56/.223 cartridges making them sound like these deadly cartridges which liquefy organs or decapitate 6 year olds, when in reality, they are one of the weakest centrefire rifle cartridges.

Or the recent demonization of semiautomatic actions, equating them to fully automatic firearms.

My problem is that gun control proponents thrive on spreading disinformation amongst the willfully ignorant to push their agenda.

Information matters.

 

[Adamxx]

Is South Africa Next?
South Africa has recently embraced gun confiscation. According to The Citizen, the Constitutional Court of South Africa ordered the confiscation of about 300,000 firearms on June 7, 2018. To say political tension in South Africa is mounting would be an understatement.

Since ending apartheid, South Africa has embarked on a troubling route of economic statism. To make matters worse, the South African government is currently pursuing land redistribution in order to address so-called racial injustices.

Although politicians from the African National Congress (ANC) party have recently backed down from ramming land confiscation legislation into law, there is no telling what could be in store for South Africans now that gun confiscation has been activated.

It would be a mistake to believe South Africa’s gun confiscation ordinance was a random occurrence; it’s the logical conclusion of South Africa’s current gun control framework. The genesis of this troubling development began with the passage of the Firearms Control Act of 2000, which features an extensive system of gun registration.

It’s easy for anti-gun entities to identify gun owners and confiscate their firearms in the long-run when they have their information on the books. With the wrong political actors in power, yesterday's “common-sense” gun control could be tomorrow's vehicle for gun confiscation.

Time will tell if South Africa will descend down the path of tyranny, but its gun control experiment may prove to be fatal should the country take a turn for the worse.

Gun control may not have a path dependency toward tyranny. However, gun confiscation is an egregious form of gun control that allows authoritarians to steamroll their subjects at will. The way gun confiscation enhances the consolidation of state power is undeniable. A disarmed populace is simply no match for a repressive apparatus that has a monopoly on the use of force.

Gun rights might not guarantee victory against tyrants, but being deprived of them all but guarantees submission.

“so-called racial injustices.” That piece says a lot , and I thought you had some reasonable points.

 

[johnd5050]

I lived in Chicago until 5 years ago. So it was recent. How likely are you to face a drive by shooting or a street robbery or a car jacking? Very very very unlikely if we are being honest.

In downtown DC it is very likely

 

[krealtarron]

Criminal use of guns is irrelevant to the discussion of responsible ownership, demonstrated by the overwhelming majority of them not committing crimes with them.

If you plan on banning a particular cartridge, you better be informed and make a good argument if you want to be taken seriously. As an example, look at all the disinformation surrounding the 5.56/.223 cartridges making them sound like these deadly cartridges which liquefy organs or decapitate 6 year olds, when in reality, they are one of the weakest centrefire rifle cartridges.

Or the recent demonization of semiautomatic actions, equating them to fully automatic firearms.

My problem is that gun control proponents thrive on spreading disinformation amongst the willfully ignorant to push their agenda.

Information matters.

Illegally acquired weapons are irrelevant to the discussion. Criminal use of LEGALLY procured firearms most definitely is relevant because that shows that there are fundamental and severe deficiencies in the laws, the psyche and the narratives surrounding gun culture.

I do think the 5.56/.223 cartridges need to be summarily banned. Are they really weak? Then why have they been used repeatedly in mass shootings and why have they killed people? Why is that particular caliber used as standard issue by the US army? The fact that they are relatively weak compared to other bigger calibers has nothing to do with the fact that they are deadly and that they are used widely in mass shootings. Infact I think all rifle calibers and rifles themselves should be banned. Semi automatic weapons can be converted to shoot much faster with bump stocks and what not.

While you accuse gun control proponents of spreading disinformation, you yourself are spreading disinformation that the 5.56/.223 cartridges are "weak". They are most definitely not weak. They are deadly. They are used by the military for good reasons.

I am not a gun control proponent either. I am a gun ban proponent, rifles, handguns, shotguns - all should be banned and confiscated. Guns should be a privilege in civilized society, not a right.

 

[krealtarron]

In downtown DC it is very likely

Yet here you are, never been shot.

 

[Ceiling Cat]

but what if you don't count criminals on criminals violence and only look at civilian victims?

Criminals on criminals violence means they are in possession of weapons. If a criminal is in need of money, what is to stop him from using the weapon to obtain money from innocent citizens buy threat or robbery. The old style mafia and higher biker types are hiding in the cracks and holes because LE are targeting them for prosecution. The king rats and roaches are offering territory to the lower skumola. Criminals on criminals violence occurs when the lower skumola does not pay tribute to the king rats and roaches, or when there is a territory dispute between lower vermin.

 

[Leimonis]

Criminals on criminals violence means they are in possession of weapons. If a criminal is in need of money, what is to stop him from using the weapon to obtain money from innocent citizens buy threat or robbery. The old style mafia and higher biker types are hiding in the cracks and holes because LE are targeting them for prosecution. The king rats and roaches are offering territory to the lower skumola. Criminals on criminals violence occurs when the lower skumola does not pay tribute to the king rats and roaches, or when there is a territory dispute between lower vermin.

I’m not sure why you feel the need to explain this to me. What I meant to say, was that general statistic takes into account criminal on criminal violence while a civilian usually doesn’t give a shit about that and is only worried about becoming a victim of crime themselves. I. e. for all I know out of a hundred murders in Chicago 97 are criminal on the criminal.

 

[Adamxx]

Several excellent items have been shared and like most causes of violence or deaths, there is no silver bullet. And good dialogue is certainly essential.

Regarding our neighbours (US), numbers indicate that death by guns, are much much lower than those from automobiles or obesity.

There are other root causes which need to be looked at, that motivate behaviour which cause us to inflict suffering to others or ourselves.

 

[K Douglas]

Law abiding citizens are not having to defend themselves from criminals even today as in 99.99% of cases they do not come into contact with them and even when they do, put themselves in a position where they have to rely on their guns to defend themselves. So it is a non issue.

That is patently false. Particularly in the U.S. where millions of law abiding citizens exercise their 2nd Amendment rights every year defending themselves or their property.

 

[krealtarron]

That is patently false. Particularly in the U.S. where millions of law abiding citizens exercise their 2nd Amendment rights every year defending themselves or their property.

That is not true. Give me data if you can support that fact.

 

[tylerdurdan98]

The laws we have are fine, I'm a responsible gun owner and hunter. Almost every shooting is done with illegal guns smuggled from the states. The Libs need to stop going after legal owners and focus on the borders and gang activity. Mine are locked in a vault and taken to the range or field during various hunting seasons..

 

[K Douglas]

That is not true. Give me data if you can support that fact.

This links a study commissioned by the Obama administration in 2013. Its estimated annually that between 500,000 and 3,000,000 Americans use their gun in self defense.

Front Page Featured | MRCTV

www.cnsnews.com

 

[DinkleMouse]

If you plan on banning a particular cartridge, you better be informed and make a good argument if you want to be taken seriously. As an example, look at all the disinformation surrounding the 5.56/.223 cartridges making them sound like these deadly cartridges which liquefy organs or decapitate 6 year olds, when in reality, they are one of the weakest centrefire rifle cartridges.

My problem is that gun control proponents thrive on spreading disinformation amongst the willfully ignorant to push their agenda.

Information matters.

Speaking of misinformation... How are you defining "weak"?

I'm a veteran and am very familiar with the damage caused by the the C77 ball ammo. Hydrostatic shock, fragmentation, cavitation... The entry wounds might be small, but the exits are heinous. Ask veterans the have seen them. The rounds are designed to penetrate and then lose energy quickly. But energy doesn't disappear into nothing; it's gotta be transferred and that energy is spent tearing up everything it comes across. Especially given the design which is intended to fragment even against relatively soft tissue at average impact velocities. That fragmentation, when combined with the yawing of the spitzer shape, means it will leave far worse wounds than larger "more powerful" (to use your words) ammunition might.

C77 against body armour, especially outside 100 meters may pose a problem, but we're not really talking about going up against body armour. We're taking about civilian against civilian; soft targets.

It's not a "weak" round, it's a "small" round. Where a 7.62 will make a gaping in and out, a 5.56 will make a small in and a gaping out, with far more internal damage, and God forbid it hits bone on the way through and fragments more or bounces around. I've seen it referred to as "devastatingly overpowering at close range" by ammunition vendors when people say they're concerned it's too small for personal defense.

But hey, don't take my word for it. Google around.

Effects of 5.56 on human flesh *graphic description*

www.survivalistboards.com

 

[tylerdurdan98]

Banning firearms and confiscating existing ones will most definitely bring down gun violence. Especially mass shootings as is evidenced in other countries where similar measures have been taken.

And Columbine? Okay. What about Uvalde? Where the officers were armed but hung back and did jack shit for an hour, while the shooting was going on? This conclusion that disarming street police officers will result in Columbine is therefore an incorrect conclusion. I am advocating for guns being banned first for the civilian population and then for the police. Heck it does not matter if police are not disarmed, but its essential that civilians not be allowed to have guns at the very least.

You do realize the majority of gun crimes are committed by unlicensed criminals with illegal guns from the states. The mass shooting in NS , all those guns came from the US , Maine to be exact. Average Joe hunter like myself aren't going out with our deer rifles causing chaos.

 

[DinkleMouse]

This links a study commissioned by the Obama administration in 2013. Its estimated annually that between 500,000 and 3,000,000 Americans use their gun in self defense.

Front Page Featured | MRCTV

www.cnsnews.com

Tell me you haven't read the study without telling me you haven't read the study.

It was titled "Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence". It was not a study into gun violence, it was a study into what the research priorities should be in order to effectively study gun violence.

That study was quoting earlier surveys in 4-6 States. There's a reason the CDC didn't publish the results from those surveys back in the 90s when they were initially taken, and the CDC study actually uses those numbers to show how wide the gap is, from inexact, unscientific surveys, to argue that this should be one of the properties in research. The study actually even says, "and this is a sufficiently important question that it merits additional, careful exploration." It even posits that the number of offensive gun uses and number of deaths may far exceed any good that comes from defensive uses.

In other words, the study you're quoting from does not support your position not was it ever intended to address the questions you're trying to use it to answer.

 

[DinkleMouse]

You do realize the majority of gun crimes are committed by unlicensed criminals with illegal guns from the states. The mass shooting in NS , all those guns came from the US , Maine to be exact. Average Joe hunter like myself aren't going out with our deer rifles causing chaos.

100% our first problem is thet America needs to get over it's gun fetish. Until that happens, the easy accessibility of guns and the lack of accountability/tracking handguns specifically means we will always have a crapton coming across the border illegally. Sadly their fetish seems to be getting worse, not better. And the amount of misinformation being spread (like constantly misquoting the CDC study or the misinformation around dictators and gun bans, both mentioned in this thread) just helps keep it going.

 

[cunning linguist]

Speaking of misinformation... How are you defining "weak"?

I'm a veteran and am very familiar with the damage caused by the the C77 ball ammo. Hydrostatic shock, fragmentation, cavitation... The entry wounds might be small, but the exits are heinous. Ask veterans the have seen them. The rounds are designed to penetrate and then lose energy quickly. But energy doesn't disappear into nothing; it's gotta be transferred and that energy is spent tearing up everything it comes across. Especially given the design which is intended to fragment even against relatively soft tissue at average impact velocities. That fragmentation, when combined with the yawing of the spitzer shape, means it will leave far worse wounds than larger "more powerful" (to use your words) ammunition might.

C77 against body armour, especially outside 100 meters may pose a problem, but we're not really talking about going up against body armour. We're taking about civilian against civilian; soft targets.

It's not a "weak" round, it's a "small" round. Where a 7.62 will make a gaping in and out, a 5.56 will make a small in and a gaping out, with far more internal damage, and God forbid it hits bone on the way through and fragments more or bounces around. I've seen it referred to as "devastatingly overpowering at close range" by ammunition vendors when people say they're concerned it's too small for personal defense.

But hey, don't take my word for it. Google around.

Effects of 5.56 on human flesh *graphic description*

www.survivalistboards.com

Weak as in it's at the low end of centrefire rifle cartridges, so much so that it's not legal to hunt big game with it, virtually anywhere on the continent.

When the US army and ally countries standardized and arguably downgraded from 7.62 to 5.56, there was a slew of complains from front line grunts about 5.56 being a wounding cartridge.

Body armour? Guess what .223 has in common with virtually every other centrefire cartridge? It will penetrate level III-A soft armour but like you were saying, soft targets, so it doesn't really matter, as we saw in Tennessee with a pistol calibre carbine or Virginia Tech with pistols.

Ban ARs (which will accomplish nothing, but let's not forget that rifle shootings make up a single digit percentage of gun crime statistics) and criminals will find a substitute and the screeching protectionists will seek to ban that as well.

 

[K Douglas]

Tell me you haven't read the study without telling me you haven't read the study.

It was titled "Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence". It was not a study into gun violence, it was a study into what the research priorities should be in order to effectively study gun violence.

That study was quoting earlier surveys in 4-6 States. There's a reason the CDC didn't publish the results from those surveys back in the 90s when they were initially taken, and the CDC study actually uses those numbers to show how wide the gap is, from inexact, unscientific surveys, to argue that this should be one of the properties in research. The study actually even says, "and this is a sufficiently important question that it merits additional, careful exploration." It even posits that the number of offensive gun uses and number of deaths may far exceed any good that comes from defensive uses.

In other words, the study you're quoting from does not support your position not was it ever intended to address the questions you're trying to use it to answer.

Text from the study

Defensive Use of Guns

Defensive use of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence, although the exact number remains disputed (Cook and Ludwig, 1996; Kleck, 2001a). Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million (Kleck, 2001a), in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008 (BJS, 2010). On the other hand, some scholars point to a radically lower estimate of only 108,000 annual defensive uses based on the National Crime Victimization Survey (Cook et al., 1997). The variation in these numbers remains a controversy in the field. The estimate of 3 million defensive uses per year is based on an extrapolation from a small number of responses taken from more than 19 national surveys. The former estimate of 108,000 is difficult to interpret because respondents were not asked specifically about defensive gun use.

A different issue is whether defensive uses of guns, however numerous or rare they may be, are effective in preventing injury to the gun-wielding crime victim. Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual

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Suggested Citation:"Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence." Institute of Medicine. 2013. Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18319.×

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defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was “used” by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies (Kleck, 1988; Kleck and DeLone, 1993; Southwick, 2000; Tark and Kleck, 2004). Effectiveness of defensive tactics, however, is likely to vary across types of victims, types of offenders, and circumstances of the crime, so further research is needed both to explore these contingencies and to confirm or discount earlier findings.

Even when defensive use of guns is effective in averting death or injury for the gun user in cases of crime, it is still possible that keeping a gun in the home or carrying a gun in public—concealed or open carry—may have a different net effect on the rate of injury. For example, if gun ownership raises the risk of suicide, homicide, or the use of weapons by those who invade the homes of gun owners, this could cancel or outweigh the beneficial effects of defensive gun use (Kellermann et al., 1992, 1993, 1995). Although some early studies were published that relate to this issue, they were not conclusive, and this is a sufficiently important question that it merits additional, careful exploration.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2013. Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/18319.