What does it take?

[PeterAit]

I sometimes despair that half of the population has IQ lower than average.

That is not true.

[PeterAit]

Except, Bart, the overwhelming majority of crime and incidents are caused by IILEGAL guns, thus nothing to do with gun laws.

And this is why most guns do not need to be just illegal, but they need to be truly unavailable. Not in gun shops, not at gun shows, not in private sales. It's true that the criminal or fanatic or terrorist will circumvent any gun laws, but if the mass murder weapon they want cannot be found, legally or illegally, then the shootings cannot take place.

[Richowens]

, then the shootings cannot take place.

 They'll just make a bomb. If some SOB wants to injure someone bad enough, they will find a way.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

And then there are those who think gun policies have nothing to do with it ...
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/07/stocks-surge-for-makers-of-guns-body-cams-in-aftermath-of-cop-killings/

So the public's knee-jerk reaction is predicted to increase the stock-pile of guns, so even more accidents can happen, and Police officers will be faced with more armed members of the public. Things will only get worse.

Cheers,
Bart

[Manoli]

... the overwhelming majority of crime and incidents are caused by IILEGAL guns, thus nothing to do with gun laws.

Come on, Slobodan, don't be shy - source ?
 

[Tarnash]

The correlation between the `availability' of firearms and the incidence of harm caused by their `misuse' seems inescapable.  Controlling the types of firearms in private ownership; who may own/access them and how and where they can legally be carried and/or used seems like a complete `no-brainer' to, I believe, the vast majority of people.  However, it is, or should be, for the people of the US to decide how much risk and/or harm they are willing to tolerate in order to protect a particular interpretation/understanding of the  right conferred by the second amendment.  If there were to be a national referendum in the US asking whether people would accept reasonable controls around ownership/possession of firearms; What do you believe the outcome would be?

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Come on, Slobodan, don't be shy - source ?

Do your own googling.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Chris Rock has a public service announcement on how (not) to deal with the police:

https://youtu.be/uj0mtxXEGE8

[Manoli]

Do your own googling.

I, unlike you, did.
Unsubstantiated propaganda, without statistical corroboration, is not fact.

https://interactive.guim.co.uk/charts/embed/mar/2016-03-11T12:33:28.html

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I, unlike you, did.
Unsubstantiated propaganda, without statistical corroboration, is not fact.

And here are some statistics:
More police officers die on the job in states with more guns
Now that would presumably mean legally owned guns, given that they used statistics on gun ownership.

The Washington Post site tells a bit more about the legal/illegal issue:
Some more interesting observations (vast majority of homicides is with legally owned guns):
Here.

Just some of the first links Google turned up, I cannot tell how valid the sources are.

Cheers,
Bart

[RSL]

And this is why most guns do not need to be just illegal, but they need to be truly unavailable. Not in gun shops, not at gun shows, not in private sales. It's true that the criminal or fanatic or terrorist will circumvent any gun laws, but if the mass murder weapon they want cannot be found, legally or illegally, then the shootings cannot take place.

This whole discussion is absurd to the point of asininity, but this one probably takes the cake. Sorry to have to say that Peter. How, exactly, would you get this done? How would we find all the guns? Do you really believe people would line up to turn them in? Are you suggesting we not arm the cops with guns? Maybe nightsticks? Knives? If murderers can't get guns they'll get something else. There are a lot of ways to skin this cat. It's easy, for instance, to make a bomb in your kitchen. Unfortunately murderers will always murder. A better solution would be to change human nature. You'd have about as much luck with that as you'd have eliminating all guns.

[Manoli]

Hi Bart,

As most of us know, the legal/illegal issue is nothing but a red herring - the real issues are the gun laws and availability of weaponry, particularly military grade weaponry. Japan, with the lowest gun homicides, is a country where ' As of 2011, legal gun ownership stood at 271,000, according to police records, in a country of 127 million people.' The USA, unsurprisingly, doesn't compare favourably.

Manoli

[RSL]

One thing that pops out of your comment, Manoli, is that Japan is an integrated society. If you go to Japan you'll be tolerated but you'll never become a part of the society itself. Same is true with most Asian countries, certainly the ones I've spent years in. For the most part Scandinavian countries also enjoy quite integrated societies. To a lesser extent, and quickly becoming lesser, are European countries. The United States probably has the least integrated society on the planet, and the past seven years have worked to make us even less integrated. It would be interesting for somebody to do a Thesis on the relationship between societal integration and the murder rate. I suspect there's a correlation. Correlation isn't causation, but it's not too hard to see what the causation is.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

That is not true.

You just proved my point.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

NYT: "... at least 722 nonself-defense deaths since 2007 were attributable to individuals with legal permits to carry concealed weapons."

722 over nine years!?

Wow!

That's about 90 per year, or, as we say in Chicago: Monday morning.

Thanks for confirming my point, Manoli.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

I, unlike you, did...

I see you mastered Google basics. An advance course would teach you to google, say,  "legal vs. illegal guns" (the subject of my post), not just "gun homicides" as you apparently did.

[Manoli]

One thing that pops out of your comment, Manoli, is that Japan is an integrated society. If you go to Japan you'll be tolerated but you'll never become a part of the society itself. [..] Correlation isn't causation, but it's not too hard to see what the causation is.

Russ,

Thank you for that - a valid point, though I'm not at all convinced that that explains the extreme disparity in the gun crime figures.

M

[Manoli]

Wow!

Duh!
The relevant part of the quote was

Concealed carry by citizens has been a soaring phenomenon as states liberalize laws in the name of lowering crime that allow more permits and easier gun access in public places, even schools, churches and restaurants.  There is no central tally of the effects, with states often barring release of concealed-carry data and Congress hewing to the gun lobby’s opposition to research on guns’ effects on public health."

Goodnight, Slobodan.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Thanks for the rather sensible post, Tarnash.

Allow me a few comments:

The correlation between the `availability' of firearms and the incidence of harm caused by their `misuse' seems inescapable.

True, but that is a truism. Just like saying that availability of cars and harm caused by their misuse (e.g., driving drunk, distracted, speeding, etc.) are correlated. Of course they are. Or availability of (cheap) food and obesity. Yet nobody is calling for a ban on McDonald's (yet).

...  Controlling the types of firearms in private ownership; who may own/access them and how and where they can legally be carried and/or used seems like a complete `no-brainer' to, I believe, the vast majority of people.

Which is already the case in the U.S.

... However, it is, or should be, for the people of the US to decide how much risk and/or harm they are willing to tolerate in order to protect a particular interpretation/understanding of the  right conferred by the second amendment.

Amen!

Instead we have arm-chair social warriors, with only cursory knowledge of the U.S., pontificating. Especially those coming from countries the population of which can fit a postage stamp.

...  If there were to be a national referendum in the US asking whether people would accept reasonable controls around ownership/possession of firearms; What do you believe the outcome would be?

As I said, reasonable controls already exist here. Whether they could be fine-tuned is a different discussion. What the request for a tighter "gun control" often means is confiscation of guns. In which case, my impression is that a majority of Americans would flatly reject it in a referendum.

[pegelli]

As I said, reasonable controls already exist here. Whether they could be fine-tuned is a different discussion. What the request for a tighter "gun control" often means is confiscation of guns. In which case, my impression is that a majority of Americans would flatly reject it in a referendum.

..as recently as last December, 54 Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would have denied convicted felons, the mentally ill and anyone on a terrorist watch list ( 'a person of interest' in FBI terminology) the legal right to buy weapons and explosives. Those Republicans included all four recent Rep Presidential nominee candidates Rubio, Cruz, Paul and Graham. They also blocked a bill which would have allowed for expanded background checks.

In my mind the above would represent a reasonable "fine tuning", but was rejected by politicians who want us to believe (as they are being fed and catered by the gun lobby) that these measures take away guns from reasonable people. Now who is the populist in that debate?

But I agree, some form of gun control will not make all of these crimes go away but might lower their probability. They will also lower the probability for a police officer killing a person they stopped in a car, ask for their license and then shoot him because he's moving his hand to his back pocket.