Gun shops are getting very crowded again. There's a large supermarket style one under construction in my area of coastal Florida. Prices are rising and they can't seem to keep military-looking fake 'assault rifles' on the shelves. Another catalog features a kit allowing one to bolt together two Ruger 10/22 rifles - the kind of gun some country gentleman might give his son on his 18th birthday into a two barrel, crank operated .22 rimfire Gattling gun, complete with tripod. Only $397 but you have to supply your own pair of rifles. Their website bears a headline saying they're up to a week behind on shipping orders because of massive demand.
In barber shops and hardware stores and the Sporting Goods department at the local Wal-Mart, you hear muttering and whispering about "that monkey" and they don't mean Wayne LaPierre. I heard an octogenarian friend say at dinner the other night "we don't have any freedom any more." She'd just sold her handgun from the fear that someone would steal it and murder someone and she'd be blamed. It isn't true of course, I don't think there's any way of tracing guns in Florida, but the fear is on the street and in the retirement homes and the mansions and yachts and trailer parks. That monkey is after our guns.
Yes, it's gun control time again with one side arming themselves for war and the other side howling Gun Control like ragged extras in a Frankenstein movie. The President has offered a package of measures designed to calm the hysterical on both sides and it's not likely to do that, or so I think. It's the "biggest legislative effort in a generation" says the Huffington Post, "a bold and potentially historic attempt to stem the increase in mass gun violence." Lets see what it looks like after passing through the entrails of Congress. Surely some of the proposals were pinned to the coat-tails of a tragedy like a rider on an unrelated bill: ban the armor piercing ammunition? Well it's really not that nor are the hollow points we use for hunting "Cop Killer Bullets" either. How does one argue for meaningful gun control with all that lying going on?
Really most of these inflammatory lumps of high velocity hyperbole are just that: attempts to emotionalize and to dupe the uninitiated and succeed in polarizing the attempt to do something useful. To me, much of this heated argument is corrupted by dishonest coinage, invention and the refusal by both sides to examine the axioms their arguments rely on. GUN CONTROL! and when I ask "what kind?" The expression I get from either side is the same -- I must be one of them!
Will banning the millions and millions and millions of guns and accessories now in 150 million private hands do anything? By the time anything like another loophole-ridden, designed-to-fail ban hits the streets, the number of these things buried in back yards and hidden behind paneling in basements will have doubled and the ranks of camo-clad, militiamen and survivalists and preppers will have grown further and short of a house to house search of 100 million private residences and storage lockers and bunkers, very little will be done to reduce their numbers.And nice people, ordinary people, educated people, affluent people are buying guns they would have had no interest in -- because Obama's gonna ban them. The best way to create demand is to ban something.
And if Congress does do it again, and if they suddenly disappear with a wave of the magic wand, will someone still be able to find the hardware to kill a score of innocents? Could you get drunk in 1929? Can you get stoned in 2013? Of course.
Have all the miscellaneous and ballyhooed safety regulations done anything? Mandatory trigger locks, microstamping of firing pins, loaded chamber indicator and magazine disconnect regulations? No. Has there been an increase in the murder by firearm rate as is being said? No. It's lower than it was in the 1950's. The fear is oversold. Much of what is being proposed can be no more effective in protecting school children than those stupid, yellow Baby on Board signs people put on their cars in the '70s. It's just there for the "I hate guns" people.
I'm still wondering if there has been
an increase in mass gun violence or if the handful in the last few
years is a statistical blip and the result of the unrelenting "never
forget" emotional media coverage that promotes repeat performances, but
that question will never be settled when opinions on both sides are
bolstered by selective facts, when the tenets of faith, the
proclamations of activists and politicians and lobbyists are taken as
axiomatic without question. Whatever happens, I doubt my shotgun will be confiscated, nor my Civil War pistols or my Flintlock Rifle. I'm sure I'll still be able to go to the outdoor shooting range and make holes in targets with a .22 pistol Top Shot will still be on the History Channel and the Biathlon will still be held and Sarah Palin can still hunt for moose. Floridians will still be able to shoot wild hogs and Burmese pythons and out in the bayou, they'll still be able to hunt 'gators with .22 rifles. The fear is oversold.
Whatever happens, much legislation will be designed by people who know dangerously little about firearms and in a state of near hysteria and much will be sabotaged by their opponents terrified of symbolic emasculation and little will change. No one will bother to mention or discuss or factor in the fact that gun violence is still on the decline and that the level of gun control in any particular state or city does not correlate to that decline. It's a battle of preconceived notions and it's all about irrational fear.
Increased penalties and such won't effect anyone bent on committing suicide and taking a few dozen innocents with him. Banning an auto-loader with a 15 round magazine when Abraham Lincoln's brass bound Henry repeater will fire 16 rounds in 16 seconds will not make anyone all that much safer and we'll go on banning all kinds of things to "save the children" and setting the stage for a massive Republican victory in 2016. America loves guns or we wouldn't own 300 million of them. America loves guns the way it loves trucks and football and beer and that's not going to change.
Sedentary Death Syndrome, will become more lethal than guns, automobiles, drugs, and alcohol it is predicted over the next decade. Costing over three trillion dollars in relates costs.
ReplyDeleteGoggle SdS or Sedentary Death Syndrome for more details.
Ah, being a lazy bastard hasn't killed me yet.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteSo, basically, gun sales are booming because " That monkey is after our guns."
ReplyDeleteIn 1973 a little over 50% of American households had a gun, in 2010 the number dropped to 32%.
So, America does not have a gun problem, what we have is a problem with a minority of households stockpiling weapons. Some real simple math, if we have 300 million guns floating around and only 32% of households own guns, that means that roughly every household (US census shows 114,761,000 households in 2010 with 2.61 persons per house) so that means that gives us 36,723,500 households with guns and thus 8.2 guns per household with guns. Which works out to over 3 guns per household member in a household with guns.
So, lets call it a "Branch Davidian" mentality problem and since Sandy Hook, which occurred on 12/14/12 we have seen 900 additional gun deaths!
( http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10860223)
I am sure that we have as a society worked very hard to curtail gun deaths, and your statistics prove it. But what was the cost that was paid to put more police out on the streets, to curb our freedoms, with all the new laws that allow the government to spy on us, and so on and so forth.
In light of the deficit focus due to the financial meltdown, how much more can our society budget for, borrow for, to ensure that our murder rate by guns continues to drop while at the same time allowing fewer and fewer people to own more and more guns?
DeleteWell, I think most of us have been born with two hands and so 'stockpiling' doesn't do that much good in terms of mayhem potential. I admit I have several but most are 19th century weapons that really don't fit into my secret plan for world domination. I'm an antique technology buff, for what its worth and I prefer to call those old telegraph instruments a collection than a "stockpile" or an "arsenal". Those are rather prejudicial terms and one sees them in these arguments far too often.
In a previous reply to a post I mentioned that since 2010, that number of gun-containing households has gone up sharply to nearly 50% again and that women and minorities accounted for that rise. Why? I can only speculate about the specifics, but my guess is fear. Despite statistics, people seem to be convinced that life is more dangerous as time goes on. It's substantially irrational and I'm paranoid enough to think there's method behind it.
I don't know how much that increase reflects a rising fear of crime or a rising fear that the Bogeyman Obama is going to take them or simply that Tea Party anti-government hysteria. You never used to see women at gun safety classes or shooting ranges, but of a sudden, they're there in big numbers. I took my wife shooting a few years ago -- she's not afraid of anything, has no affection for guns for their own sake, but she's hooked on shooting now and I don't get to go alone or with 'the boys' from the yacht club any more.
Bill Maher mentioned the other night that he too carries a gun. Not, he says, because he likes guns but because of "the crazies." I guess celebrities, particularly controversial ones, have a serious concern, but as he also points out, we're a country that runs on panic -- that doesn't do anything unless we're in a panic and that is kept in a state of panic by entities that make money by keeping us that way. Fear is the revenue source for the media and political entities (the NRA is to be studied for their skill at panic mongering) and fear also distracts us so that we can be exploited. Fear made David Koresh powerful and you're right about that Branch Davidian mentality and I think both sides of this argument are promoting that 'under siege' mentality. Both sides of many arguments actually, from human rights to tax policy.
But really, is there anything that generates the urge to buy something like banning it? Being banned in Boston used to be a guarantee that a book would become a best seller and the year that President Obama was inaugurated was the best year for weapons sales in decades. The "assault weapon" ban sold huge numbers of guns and magazines.
I talked about those ridiculous mega-magazines above to illustrate the point that people will buy something they'll never use and have no use for just because they fear losing the right or ability to have one. It's all about fear. American policy, American history, American culture, American economics -- it's all about fear, from the 'War on Terror' to the Fiscal cliff.
Those laws that allow the government to spy on us, to send us off to Pakistan to be tortured or to be put in a cage in Cuba? It's fear that makes us tolerate it. Paranoia strikes deep, as the song goes. Starts when you're always afraid. . .
I wouldn’t dismiss advocacy of gun control as “high velocity hyperbole.” When innocent children are massacred, and over 900 incidents of gun violence are recorded since said massacre, when an elementary school kid brings a revolver into classroom (as recently as last week), we still have a serious problem that cannot be ignored. A graph of overall murder rates sheds little light on the problem; the expiration of the assault weapon ban resulted in a significant spike in gun violence. Devils in the detail, as they say! There are devils in Relativity too: Violent gun crimes in the U.S. – up, down or sideways - are still up to 30 times greater compared with other industrialized nations. Why? Someone doesn’t want us to know; the NRA killed legislation to fund this research.
ReplyDeleteWhether or not new gun control legislation works or not is a non-issue. Traffic laws, for instance, have not stopped people from running stop signs or driving under the influence. They still do. But the message is certainly clear enough. Laws send a message about responsibility and liability and punishments for violators. Laws may not stop crime, or prevent irresponsible gun ownership, but laws set community standards and values. In my opinion, the controversy is not about fear or statistics or efficacy, but about values and responsibility which are sorely lacking right now.
We shouldn’t be arguing over apples versus oranges but over Fruitloops - like Newtown Massacre Truthers, one of whom sent death threats to parents of the dead children. This is far too offensive to be dismissed as merely “street theater.”
"Will banning the millions and millions and millions of guns and accessories now in 150 million private hands do anything?"
ReplyDeleteYour estimate of the numbers of firearms owners is off by as much as 50% according to several reputable studies.
Regardless, saying that nothing can change the situation, is a familiar axiom of those who LIKE the situation being what it is or just fear change.
This link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jul/14/crime-statistics-england-wales
is to a report that indicates that England and Wales had 551 homicides in the 2011/2012 reporting period--about the same as Phoenix, AZ, but only about 40 of them were firearms related. Guns have a lot to do with people being killed.
Octo,
ReplyDeleteI wouldn’t dismiss advocacy of gun control as “high velocity hyperbole.”
Nor would I, but I'm not talking about gun control, I'm talking about the nature of the gun control, the enforceability of that gun control and the lessons of experience. I'd like to control guns and who owns them far more than I'm satisfied to serve up another dollop of gun control and go back to sleep as we always do.
The tendency to frame things hyperbolically, to phrase things in the most inflammatory fashion, to distort facts, to invent things and repeat them endlessly in full knowledge of the inherent error is present at either extreme. I shouldn't have to keep saying over and over and over that no, no, no! machine guns are NOT legal, that these so called "assault rifles" are not what the military uses by any means. They don't "spray" bullets and that those invariably present terms of "high velocity" "high caliber" "military grade" "armor piercing" "cop killing" are almost invariably misused for no other reason than to spread fear, panic and loathing so as to promote another round of hasty and useless legislation in the hope that the public won't even read it. THAT is an NRA trick!
Demon Rum and Killer weed
unsafe at any speed.
Yellow Peril and Commie threat.
Poison Fluoride in the water,
Minorities will rape your daughter.
If we can't sell policy without chicanery and flim-flam, I want no part of it.
I have any number of photographs I can post proving that during the mistitled AWB store shelves were fully stocked with AK-47s and AR-15s and even Uzis. I have catalogs with nothing but "pre-ban" magazines in them and if anyone tells me that this reduced crime or even sales, I have to laugh. Sales reached new highs during these bans for the same reason gun shops and gun shows now have standing room only and prices have quadrupled in the last month.
My friend Tony the Deputy who makes it a point to visit all the gun shops once a week told me on Tuesday he can't get in the door even though they're largely sold out and can only place orders from the factories. Yes, that's right and the price of an AR-15 is up nearly 300% on on rumours of a ban. The NRA LOVES Barack Obama, don't kid yourself.
I'm certainly not denying that we have a higher murder rate than Europe, I'm only saying it's not escalating by leaps and bounds - or at all. I'm saying that it will always be higher in a libertarian country and always lower in a police state and that we have to choose which point of that spectrum we wish to occupy and have to choose it rationally in democratic fashion. I'm tired of being told this is an NRA trick.
I'm saying that spreading the idea that everything is going to hell in a high velocity, armor piercing fashion is the tool of extremists of every polarity. I'm saying that extremists on either side never solve anything. I'm saying that there is a middle ground being shouted down by both sides and that is more interested in pragmatic solutions and compromise. Nobody is listening to us. Nobody is listening to law enforcement or hunters or sportsmen.
I'm saying that we're not going to get very far by examining only the number of guns in private hands and trying to reduce it by fiat without examining the entire range of things that influence human behavior and whether the NRA is obfuscating that effort or not, so are the most highly motivated anti-gun organizations.
So we quibble about whether 40% or 50% of US households have a gun, or is it 47% as though that mattered and as though the number of households that report having one was an accurate number and we'll continue to argue about silly things to avoid the point that we have a problem population and we have problem behavior and we have a population that will buy something just because "the gummint" says they can't.
DC,
ReplyDeleteShall I hint that people who don't want to discuss the specifics of gun control bills or the probabilities of success are quite content with the status quo or fear change? Nah, that wouldn't be nice.
"England and Wales had 551 homicides in the 2011/2012 reporting period--about the same as Phoenix, AZ, but only about 40 of them were firearms related. Guns have a lot to do with people being killed."
Sure they do, but I'd rather look at long term figures and how the stats in Great Britain have changed since their handgun ban -- but lets not play games. The point is to arrive at fewer murders, not to sell a particular approach at the exclusion of all others. And by the way 500 people is a lot of people to be murdered.
I want to know why the Swiss have gun control that works even with all the bona fide full- auto military weapons they have.
" saying that nothing can change the situation, is a familiar axiom of those who LIKE the situation being what it is or just fear change."
That would be relevant if I had said that nothing can change, but I didn't. I said that faith based bans don't work, that the last one made things worse and that bans create markets better than they eliminate them.
I'm sure you're not posing a false syllogism, but having a beard is a familiar aspect of Jesus, you know, and I'm pretty sure you're not.
I'll say it again. I'm for looking at our past mistakes and for not repeating them. Why for instance have we been successful in banning machine guns, silencers and other things the government lists as "destructive weapons" and controlling access to explosives? How can we apply this to other weapons we can decide need more control?
I'm also for recognizing that there is no obvious majority of people who oppose legal gun ownership and see the second amendment as an indication that the government must trust us rather than we must trust them. I think we have to accept that gun lovers and gun haters and the don't give a damn about guns either way have to live with democracy and aren't going to have it all their way.
So Let's not quibble about the percentage of gun owners. It's a big one and it varies from place to place. If 47% of households have guns, ( and yes, it's up very sharply from 2010,) close enough to half the population have access to one or more, but whether it's 25% or 75%, in a country of 32f million, we have too many guns, sure, but also too many to confiscate or even to buy back, too many households to search or get warrants to search and the people most likely to have occasion for misuse are the least likely to comply voluntarily.
And those figures are guns that people voluntarily report. Nobody knows the troubles I see or the guns I own. Most of mine aren't even classified as guns by the government, although they work just fine.
But really, what about requiring proof of insurance? what about doing as we do with silencers and automatic weapons -- require a license and a tax which costs $2000 and requires a lengthy application and investigation? If you want to shoot a real automatic, there are licensed ranges where you can, but you can't take it home. Need a silencer for some reason I can't fathom? You can, but you need that special, hard to get and expensive as hell license that has to be reviewed and renewed every year. Sounds strange but it works.
Look, some of the loudest "ban it" voices just fear and hate guns of all caliber the way some people hate snakes and spiders and I've been called a creep and a nut job because I'm not afraid and I think those people aren't going to contribute to anything useful or possible and if we don't pay attention those people are going to dominate the conversation and they and the NRA extremists are going to make progress impossible. Let's not be part of that.