Obama's executive actions on gun control

[TheSanityAnnex]

That's what they've been working on for 7 years? :lol

[vy65]

Cuck pres crying for :cry the children :cry

[baseline bum]

What did Pres Porch Monkey do?

[TheSanityAnnex]

What did Pres Porch Monkey do?

Besides crying? Nothing.

None of these executive actions do anything to curb gun violence.

[CosmicCowboy]

Just more rules that only effect ordinary law abiding citizens.

Lets face it...shooting people is REALLY against the law. If they are willing to break THAT ONE a simple gun violation isn't shit.

[DMX7]

Cuck pres crying for :cry the children :cry

Yeah, what loser for caring about the kids like those at Sandy Hook...

[DMX7]

Just more rules that only effect ordinary law abiding citizens.

Lets face it...shooting people is REALLY against the law. If they are willing to break THAT ONE a simple gun violation isn't shit.

The kind of people who want to murder someone aren't going to follow the law, so why not make murder legal too?

[rmt]

Where were the tears for the San Bernadino victims? Why doesn't he put more of his passion and effort toward fighting ISIS instead of gun control?

[CosmicCowboy]

The kind of people who want to murder someone aren't going to follow the law, so why not make murder legal too?

That is pretty self evident. With a murder there is clearly a victim. With a gun purchase there is no victim.

[CosmicCowboy]

Lets just hope Obama never watches "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre". I'll be damned if I will register my chain saw.

[DMX7]

That is pretty self evident. With a murder there is clearly a victim. With a gun purchase there is no victim.

Except the person who gets shot with the gun.

[DMX7]

Lets just hope Obama never watches "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre". I'll be damned if I will register my chain saw.

lol, where is this even coming from? Sandy Hook was real... maybe you've watched too many movies and can't tell the difference anymore.

[boutons_deux]

Just more rules that only effect ordinary law abiding citizens.

Lets face it...shooting people is REALLY against the law. If they are willing to break THAT ONE a simple gun violation isn't shit.

the problem is You Gun Fellatin People have flooded the country with 300M guns, making them super easy to obtain, legally or illegally.

tipping point passed in the gun flooding of America, which is fucked by You People and unfuckable. There's no way to mop all the illegal guns You People have allowed.

[CosmicCowboy]

the problem is You Gun Fellatin People have flooded the country with 300M guns, making them super easy to obtain, legally or illegally.

tipping point passed in the gun flooding of America, which is fucked by You People and unfuckable. There's no way to mop all the illegal guns You People have allowed.

good point. So why fuck with legal gun owners with more unnecessary regulations that only law abiding citizens abide by?

[TheSanityAnnex]

the problem is You Gun Fellatin People have flooded the country with 300M guns, making them super easy to obtain, legally or illegally.

tipping point passed in the gun flooding of America, which is fucked by You People and unfuckable. There's no way to mop all the illegal guns You People have allowed.

Yet the gun homicide rate is the lowest it's been in two decades

[boutons_deux]

Yet the gun homicide rate is the lowest it's been in two decades

still miles higher than any other industrial country. bullshit comparison, a huge disaster is a now little small disaster.

[TheSanityAnnex]

still miles higher than any other industrial country. bullshit comparison, a huge disaster is a now little small disaster.

Find me an industrial country with the same race demographics as the United States

[TheSanityAnnex]

For a good laugh check out the comments section of the ATF's facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/HQATF/?fref=ts

[clambake]

lol, where is this even coming from? Sandy Hook was real... maybe you've watched too many movies and can't tell the difference anymore.

that wasn't a movie. it was a bizarro documentary.


also.......i got a kickass echo chainsaw. works flawlessly.

[CosmicCowboy]

that wasn't a movie. it was a bizarro documentary.


also.......i got a kickass echo chainsaw. works flawlessly.

I've always been a stihl guy but have heard echo is makin some really good stuff these days.

[clambake]

the echo is stellar. make the change on your next purchase. you will not regret.

[Koolaid_Man]

These gun Lobbyists are all wacko birds....just bat shit nut folks....Obama is right....he's dealing with a racists do nothing Congress...its just gonna take some extremist Muslim shooting up the NRA HQ and killing a bunch of hicks before they want to see a change..they're all selfish disgusting bastards in my humble opinion....

[Koolaid_Man]

Find me an industrial country with the same race demographics as the United States


:lol admitting you're fearful of other races....pathetic ....if not then why bring the bullshit up..defelect much?

[spurraider21]

Except the person who gets shot with the gun.
the person who gets shot is a victim of a shooting, not a purchase transaction

[Bender]

Except the person who gets shot with the gun.

my guns have never shot anybody. I guess mine are well-behaved.

[ElNono]

When do y'all have to turn in your guns?

[ElNono]

On a serious note, none of you thought all of this was political? :lol

[TeyshaBlue]

Nothing but politics.

[TheSanityAnnex]

:lol admitting you're fearful of other races....pathetic ....if not then why bring the bullshit up..defelect much?

He wanted to compare us to other industrial countries. I asked him to find another industrial country with a certain demographic comprising only 8% of the population commuting 50% of the murders....comprehend much?

[Koolaid_Man]

He wanted to compare us to other industrial countries. I asked him to find another industrial country with a certain demographic comprising only 8% of the population commuting 50% of the murders....comprehend much?

Listen bro you're not smarter than me..... I saw what He typed and I read your response.....if you question comprehension perhaps you should start with a well thought out and clear request....don't ask a question in your mind and fail to commit it to "ink" we don't read minds....

Capish ?

[djohn2oo8]

There has always been gun control dating back to.the colonial days. Don't know why people are bleeding out the rectum about it now. Only crazy motherfucks make this issue about "taking their guns away"

[DMX7]

my guns have never shot anybody. I guess mine are well-behaved.

lol, we should let John Doe have nuclear weapons because they have never killed any body. They are well behaved. Besides, no one is trying to take your guns away.

[DMX7]

Only crazy motherfucks make this issue about "taking their guns away"

Guns are all we got. :cry

[TheSanityAnnex]

Listen bro you're not smarter than me..... I saw what He typed and I read your response.....if you question comprehension perhaps you should start with a well thought out and clear request....don't ask a question in your mind and fail to commit it to "ink" we don't read minds....

Capish ?
You read what he typed, read what I typed, and then came to the conclusion I'm fearful of other races? :lol Smarter

[rmt]

So, if something happens to my husband, I'm gonna have to become a licensed gun dealer to sell all these guns in my closet? Or only sell one per year? LOL - this is dumb.

[boutons_deux]

Barry talked about the gun lobby, but he should have mentioned the Repug whores who have been corrupted by the gun lobby.

[CosmicCowboy]

Barry talked about the gun lobby, but he should have mentioned the Repug whores who have been corrupted by the gun lobby.

Democrats didn't do shit about new gun regulations when they controlled the House, Senate, and the Presidency because they KNEW the majority of the voters wouldn't support them. You honestly think it's only Republicans that care about gun rights?

[Bender]

lol, we should let John Doe have nuclear weapons because they have never killed any body. They are well behaved. Besides, no one is trying to take your guns away.

I've had guns my entire adult life, and I'm not against reasonable gun control, and no normal person would think that people should have bazookas, nukes, and any other military stuff. And I don't think anyone is trying to take my guns away either, at least yet.

I just don't like being lumped into the "guns kill", "gun owners are psychos" thing.

[boutons_deux]

I just don't like being lumped into the "guns kill", "gun owners are psychos" thing.

do you anything to stand up to the gun psychos and gun terrorists? ia there any organization of "non pscyho" gun owners? that would find their dicks stiff enough to stand up to NRA/GOA/etc/gun-industry?

[boutons_deux]

There was, however, one missing element in the Republican’s pushback.

At no point yesterday did any Republican candidates or lawmakers point to anything specific in the president’s policy that they found objectionable. Not one measure, not one idea, not one initiative, not one paragraph, nothing.

Marco Rubio said (https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/684445940472664064) Obama’s approach “undermines” the Second Amendment, but he didn’t (and couldn’t) say how.

Carly Fiorina said (https://twitter.com/CarlyFiorina/status/684398163923439616) the president’s incremental changes to implementing current law are “lawless,” but she offered nothing in the way of substantiation.

This isn’t just about pointing and laughing at the inanity of criticisms so painfully foolish that Republican voters ought to feel insulted. It’s not even about the degree to which yesterday helped prove why policy debates are effectively impossible in D.C. right now.

Rather, the broader point here is that Republicans have abandoned the pretense of seriousness.

The dirty little secret, which went largely unmentioned yesterday, is that GOP officials simply couldn’t find any specific problems with the White House’s plan, so they screamed bloody murder just for the sake of doing so.
The lobbying arm of the National Rifle Association, for crying out loud, was willing to say on the record (http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/obama-goes-around-gop-takes-new-steps-prevent-gun-deaths) in reference to Obama and his team, “They’re not really doing anything.” Republicans understood this, but they had to break with the NRA, go through the motions, and throw a tantrum anyway, because in their minds, that’s what the political circumstances require.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-missing-piece-the-gops-anti-obama-pitch-guns?cid=sm_fb_maddow

Fuck Repugs and Fuck Repug voters

[Spurminator]

So, any specific problems with the proposal? I've seen reactions that it's just political pandering that won't amount to any reasonable change but it's also a gross infringement of the Second Amendment.

So which is it?

[boutons_deux]

Obama Continues to Stubbornly Link Gun Violence with Gun

WASHINGTON — Republican Presidential candidates ripped President Obama on Tuesday for what they called his stubborn insistence on linking gun violence with guns.

In campaign stops across Iowa and New Hampshire, the G.O.P. hopefuls pounded the President for irrationally concluding that guns have played a role in the nation’s epidemic of mass shootings.

“How any reasonable person could look at gun violence and say that guns are involved is beyond me,” said Texas Senator Ted Cruz. “And yet, somehow, President Obama always finds a way.”

“I would very much like to have a conversation about gun violence, as President Obama has said he wants to have,” said Florida Senator Marco Rubio. “But as long as he keeps falling back on this tired, unproven connection between gun violence and guns, there’s just no point.”

The former Hewlett-Packard C.E.O. Carly Fiorina said that Obama’s persistent linking of gun violence with guns was “sad but not surprising, from a man who believes that people’s health can be improved by access to health care.”

“He isn’t thinking straight,” she said.

Of all the candidates, though, the retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson was perhaps the most scathing in his assessment of the President’s remarks. “Even if every gun in the world suddenly disappeared, there would still be gun violence,” he said.

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/obama-continues-to-stubbornly-link-gun-violence-with-guns?mbid=nl_010616%20Borowitz%20Newsletter%20(1)&CNDID=16733151&spMailingID=8405432&spUserID=MjczNzc0Njk0NDAS1&spJobID=840621955&spReportId=ODQwNjIxOTU1S0 (http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/obama-continues-to-stubbornly-link-gun-violence-with-guns?mbid=nl_010616%20Borowitz%20Newsletter%20(1)&CNDID=16733151&spMailingID=8405432&spUserID=MjczNzc0Njk0NDAS1&spJobID=840621955&spReportId=ODQwNjIxOTU1S0)

[boutons_deux]

a gross infringement of the Second Amendment.

background checks, sellers to be licensed don't infringe even the sicko gun fellators' perverted 2nd Amendment.

[TheSanityAnnex]

So, any specific problems with the proposal? I've seen reactions that it's just political pandering that won't amount to any reasonable change but it's also a gross infringement of the Second Amendment.

So which is it?

The problem with the proposal is it doesn't do anything to reduce gun violence. The "loopholes" they reference closing are insignificant and some just plain false. Most of the things proposed are already laws on the books, and there was a small change to trusts and NFA items.

[CosmicCowboy]

Obama Continues to Stubbornly Link Gun Violence with Gun

WASHINGTON — Republican Presidential candidates ripped President Obama on Tuesday for what they called his stubborn insistence on linking gun violence with guns.

In campaign stops across Iowa and New Hampshire, the G.O.P. hopefuls pounded the President for irrationally concluding that guns have played a role in the nation’s epidemic of mass shootings.

“How any reasonable person could look at gun violence and say that guns are involved is beyond me,” said Texas Senator Ted Cruz. “And yet, somehow, President Obama always finds a way.”

“I would very much like to have a conversation about gun violence, as President Obama has said he wants to have,” said Florida Senator Marco Rubio. “But as long as he keeps falling back on this tired, unproven connection between gun violence and guns, there’s just no point.”

The former Hewlett-Packard C.E.O. Carly Fiorina said that Obama’s persistent linking of gun violence with guns was “sad but not surprising, from a man who believes that people’s health can be improved by access to health care.”

“He isn’t thinking straight,” she said.

Of all the candidates, though, the retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson was perhaps the most scathing in his assessment of the President’s remarks. “Even if every gun in the world suddenly disappeared, there would still be gun violence,” he said.

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/obama-continues-to-stubbornly-link-gun-violence-with-guns?mbid=nl_010616%20Borowitz%20Newsletter%20(1)&CNDID=16733151&spMailingID=8405432&spUserID=MjczNzc0Njk0NDAS1&spJobID=840621955&spReportId=ODQwNjIxOTU1S0 (http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/obama-continues-to-stubbornly-link-gun-violence-with-guns?mbid=nl_010616%20Borowitz%20Newsletter%20(1)&CNDID=16733151&spMailingID=8405432&spUserID=MjczNzc0Njk0NDAS1&spJobID=840621955&spReportId=ODQwNjIxOTU1S0)




Fuck off Boo.

You know those aren't real quotes.

Why don't you quit being such a pussy and link your unfunny "humor" site in the same font as your quote?

[TheSanityAnnex]

America's mass shooting capital isn't somewhere out west where you can get a gun at the corner store. It's in Obama's own hometown.

Chicago is America's mass shooting capital. There were over 400 shootings with more than one victim. In 95 of those shootings, 3 or more people were shot.

2,995 people were shot in Chicago last year. Shootings were up, way up, in Baltimore. With an assist from Al Sharpton and #BlackLivesMatter, Baltimore beat out Detroit. But Detroit is still in the running. Chicago, Baltimore and Detroit all have something in common, they're all run by the party of gun control which somehow can't seem to manage to control the criminals who have the guns.

The murder rate in Washington, D.C., home of the progressive boys and girls who can solve it all, is up 54%. The capital of the national bureaucracy has also been the country's murder capital.

These cities are the heartland of America’s real gun culture. It isn’t the bitter gun-and-bible clingers in McCain and Romney territory who are racking up a more horrifying annual kill rate than Al Qaeda; it’s Obama’s own voting base.

Gun violence is at its worst in the cities that Obama won in 2012. Places like New Orleans, Memphis, Birmingham, St. Louis, Kansas City and Philly. The Democrats are blaming Republicans for the crimes of their own voters.

Chicago, where Obama delivered his victory speech, has homicide numbers that match all of Japan and are higher than Spain, Poland and pre-war Syria. If Chicago gets any worse, it will find itself passing the number of murders for the entire country of Canada.

Chicago’s murder rate of 15.09 per 100,000 people looks nothing like the American 4.2 rate, but it does look like the murder rates in failed countries like Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe. To achieve Chicago’s murder rate, African countries usually have to experience a bloody genocidal civil war.

But Chicago isn’t even all that unique. Or the worst case scenario. That would be St. Louis with 50 murders for 100,000 people. If St Louis were a country, it would have the 4th highest murder rate in the world, beating out Jamaica, El Salvador and Rwanda.

Obama won St. Louis 82 to 16 percent.

New Orleans lags behind with a 39.6 murder rate. Louisiana went red for Romney 58 to 40, but Orleans Parish went blue for Obama 80 to 17. Obama won both St. Louis and Baltimore by comfortable margins. He won Detroit’s Wayne County 73 to 26.

Homicide rates like these show that something is broken, but it isn’t broken among Republican voters rushing to stock up on rifles every time Obama begins threatening their right to buy them; it’s broken among Obama’s base.

Any serious conversation about gun violence and gun culture has to begin at home; in Chicago, in Baltimore, in New York City, in Los Angeles and in Washington, D.C.

Voting for Obama does not make people innately homicidal. Just look at Seattle. So what is happening in Chicago to drive it to the gates of hell?

A breakdown of the Chicago killing fields shows that 83% of those murdered in Chicago in one year had criminal records. In Philly, it’s 75%. In Milwaukee it’s 77% percent. In New Orleans, it’s 64%. In Baltimore, it’s 91%. Many were felons who had served time. And as many as 80% of the homicides were gang related.

Chicago’s problem isn’t guns; it’s gangs. Gun control efforts in Chicago or any other major city are doomed because gangs represent organized crime networks which stretch down to Mexico. And Democrats pander to those gangs because it helps them get elected. That's why Federal gun prosecutions in Chicago dropped sharply under Obama. It's why he has set free drug dealers and gang members to deal and kill while convening town halls on gun violence.

America’s murder rate isn’t the work of the suburban and rural homeowners who shop for guns at sporting goods stores and at gun shows, and whom the media profiles after every shooting, but by the gangs embedded in urban areas controlled by Democrats. The gangs who drive up America’s murder rate look nothing like the occasional mentally ill suburban white kid who goes off his medication and decides to shoot up a school. Lanza, like most serial killers, is a media aberration, not the norm.

National murder statistics show that blacks are far more likely to be killers than whites and they are also far more likely to be killed. The single largest cause of homicides is the argument. 4th on the list is juvenile gang activity with 676 murders, which combined with various flavors of gangland killings takes us nearly to the 1,000 mark. America has more gangland murders than Sierra Leone, Eritrea and Puerto Rico have murders.

Our national murder rate is not some incomprehensible mystery that can only be attributed to the inanimate tools, the steel, brass and wood that do the work. It is largely the work of adult males from age 18 to 39 with criminal records killing other males of that same age and criminal past.

If this were going on in Rwanda, El Salvador or Sierra Leone, we would have no trouble knowing what to make of it, and silly pearl-clutching nonsense about gun control would never even come up. But this is Chicago, it’s Baltimore, it’s Philly and NOLA; and so we refuse to see that our major cities are in the same boat as some of the worst trouble spots in the world.

Lanza and Newtown are comforting aberrations. They allow us to take refuge in the fantasy that homicides in America are the work of the occasional serial killer practicing his dark art in one of those perfect small towns that always show up in murder mysteries or Stephen King novels. They fool us into thinking that there is something American about our murder rate that can be traced to hunting season, patriotism and bad mothers.

But go to Chicago or Baltimore. Go where the killings really happen and the illusion comes apart.

There is a war going on in America between gangs of young men who bear an uncanny resemblance to their counterparts in Sierra Leone or El Salvador. They live like them, they fight for control of the streets like them and they kill like them.

America’s horrific murder rate is a result of the transformation of major American cities into Sierra Leone, Somalia, Rwanda and El Salvador. Gun violence largely consists of criminals killing criminals.

As David Kennedy, the head of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control, put it, "The majority of homicide victims have extensive criminal histories. This is simply the way that the world of criminal homicide works. It's a fact.”

America is, on a county by county basis, not a violent country, just as it, on a county by county basis, did not vote for Obama. It is being dragged down by broken cities full of broken families whose mayors would like to trash the Bill of Rights for the entire country in the vain hope that national gun control will save their cities, even though gun control is likely to be as much help to Chicago or New Orleans as the War on Drugs.

Obama’s pretense that there needs to be a national conversation about rural American gun owners is a dishonest and cynical ploy that distracts attention from the real problem that he and politicians like him have sat on for generations.

America does not have a gun problem. Its problem is in the broken culture of cities administered by Democrats. We do not need to have a conversation about gun violence. We need to have a conversation about Chicago. We need to have a conversation about what the Democrats have done to our cities.
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

[ChumpDumper]

America's mass shooting capital isn't somewhere out west where you can get a gun at the corner store. It's in Obama's own hometown.

Chicago is America's mass shooting capital. There were over 400 shootings with more than one victim. In 95 of those shootings, 3 or more people were shot.

2,995 people were shot in Chicago last year. Shootings were up, way up, in Baltimore. With an assist from Al Sharpton and #BlackLivesMatter, Baltimore beat out Detroit. But Detroit is still in the running. Chicago, Baltimore and Detroit all have something in common, they're all run by the party of gun control which somehow can't seem to manage to control the criminals who have the guns.

The murder rate in Washington, D.C., home of the progressive boys and girls who can solve it all, is up 54%. The capital of the national bureaucracy has also been the country's murder capital.

These cities are the heartland of America’s real gun culture. It isn’t the bitter gun-and-bible clingers in McCain and Romney territory who are racking up a more horrifying annual kill rate than Al Qaeda; it’s Obama’s own voting base.

Gun violence is at its worst in the cities that Obama won in 2012. Places like New Orleans, Memphis, Birmingham, St. Louis, Kansas City and Philly. The Democrats are blaming Republicans for the crimes of their own voters.

Chicago, where Obama delivered his victory speech, has homicide numbers that match all of Japan and are higher than Spain, Poland and pre-war Syria. If Chicago gets any worse, it will find itself passing the number of murders for the entire country of Canada.

Chicago’s murder rate of 15.09 per 100,000 people looks nothing like the American 4.2 rate, but it does look like the murder rates in failed countries like Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe. To achieve Chicago’s murder rate, African countries usually have to experience a bloody genocidal civil war.

But Chicago isn’t even all that unique. Or the worst case scenario. That would be St. Louis with 50 murders for 100,000 people. If St Louis were a country, it would have the 4th highest murder rate in the world, beating out Jamaica, El Salvador and Rwanda.

Obama won St. Louis 82 to 16 percent.

New Orleans lags behind with a 39.6 murder rate. Louisiana went red for Romney 58 to 40, but Orleans Parish went blue for Obama 80 to 17. Obama won both St. Louis and Baltimore by comfortable margins. He won Detroit’s Wayne County 73 to 26.

Homicide rates like these show that something is broken, but it isn’t broken among Republican voters rushing to stock up on rifles every time Obama begins threatening their right to buy them; it’s broken among Obama’s base.

Any serious conversation about gun violence and gun culture has to begin at home; in Chicago, in Baltimore, in New York City, in Los Angeles and in Washington, D.C.

Voting for Obama does not make people innately homicidal. Just look at Seattle. So what is happening in Chicago to drive it to the gates of hell?

A breakdown of the Chicago killing fields shows that 83% of those murdered in Chicago in one year had criminal records. In Philly, it’s 75%. In Milwaukee it’s 77% percent. In New Orleans, it’s 64%. In Baltimore, it’s 91%. Many were felons who had served time. And as many as 80% of the homicides were gang related.

Chicago’s problem isn’t guns; it’s gangs. Gun control efforts in Chicago or any other major city are doomed because gangs represent organized crime networks which stretch down to Mexico. And Democrats pander to those gangs because it helps them get elected. That's why Federal gun prosecutions in Chicago dropped sharply under Obama. It's why he has set free drug dealers and gang members to deal and kill while convening town halls on gun violence.

America’s murder rate isn’t the work of the suburban and rural homeowners who shop for guns at sporting goods stores and at gun shows, and whom the media profiles after every shooting, but by the gangs embedded in urban areas controlled by Democrats. The gangs who drive up America’s murder rate look nothing like the occasional mentally ill suburban white kid who goes off his medication and decides to shoot up a school. Lanza, like most serial killers, is a media aberration, not the norm.

National murder statistics show that blacks are far more likely to be killers than whites and they are also far more likely to be killed. The single largest cause of homicides is the argument. 4th on the list is juvenile gang activity with 676 murders, which combined with various flavors of gangland killings takes us nearly to the 1,000 mark. America has more gangland murders than Sierra Leone, Eritrea and Puerto Rico have murders.

Our national murder rate is not some incomprehensible mystery that can only be attributed to the inanimate tools, the steel, brass and wood that do the work. It is largely the work of adult males from age 18 to 39 with criminal records killing other males of that same age and criminal past.

If this were going on in Rwanda, El Salvador or Sierra Leone, we would have no trouble knowing what to make of it, and silly pearl-clutching nonsense about gun control would never even come up. But this is Chicago, it’s Baltimore, it’s Philly and NOLA; and so we refuse to see that our major cities are in the same boat as some of the worst trouble spots in the world.

Lanza and Newtown are comforting aberrations. They allow us to take refuge in the fantasy that homicides in America are the work of the occasional serial killer practicing his dark art in one of those perfect small towns that always show up in murder mysteries or Stephen King novels. They fool us into thinking that there is something American about our murder rate that can be traced to hunting season, patriotism and bad mothers.

But go to Chicago or Baltimore. Go where the killings really happen and the illusion comes apart.

There is a war going on in America between gangs of young men who bear an uncanny resemblance to their counterparts in Sierra Leone or El Salvador. They live like them, they fight for control of the streets like them and they kill like them.

America’s horrific murder rate is a result of the transformation of major American cities into Sierra Leone, Somalia, Rwanda and El Salvador. Gun violence largely consists of criminals killing criminals.

As David Kennedy, the head of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control, put it, "The majority of homicide victims have extensive criminal histories. This is simply the way that the world of criminal homicide works. It's a fact.”

America is, on a county by county basis, not a violent country, just as it, on a county by county basis, did not vote for Obama. It is being dragged down by broken cities full of broken families whose mayors would like to trash the Bill of Rights for the entire country in the vain hope that national gun control will save their cities, even though gun control is likely to be as much help to Chicago or New Orleans as the War on Drugs.

Obama’s pretense that there needs to be a national conversation about rural American gun owners is a dishonest and cynical ploy that distracts attention from the real problem that he and politicians like him have sat on for generations.

America does not have a gun problem. Its problem is in the broken culture of cities administered by Democrats. We do not need to have a conversation about gun violence. We need to have a conversation about Chicago. We need to have a conversation about what the Democrats have done to our cities.
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/:cryWe need to blame Democrats for everything!:cry

[mrsmaalox]

Where were the tears for the San Bernadino victims? Why doesn't he put more of his passion and effort toward fighting ISIS instead of gun control?

Probably with your "thoughts and prayers"

[mrsmaalox]

I've had guns my entire adult life, and I'm not against reasonable gun control, and no normal person would think that people should have bazookas, nukes, and any other military stuff. And I don't think anyone is trying to take my guns away either, at least yet.

I just don't like being lumped into the "guns kill", "gun owners are psychos" thing.

You sound like me. I too am a gun owner not against reasonable gun control but because I verbalize that I am lumped into the "wants to ban guns psycho" thing. I think all reasonable people realize that the solution is somewhere between those 2 extremes, but the extremes yell the loudest as evidenced in this forum.

[TeyshaBlue]

America's mass shooting capital isn't somewhere out west where you can get a gun at the corner store. It's in Obama's own hometown.

Chicago is America's mass shooting capital. There were over 400 shootings with more than one victim. In 95 of those shootings, 3 or more people were shot.

2,995 people were shot in Chicago last year. Shootings were up, way up, in Baltimore. With an assist from Al Sharpton and #BlackLivesMatter, Baltimore beat out Detroit. But Detroit is still in the running. Chicago, Baltimore and Detroit all have something in common, they're all run by the party of gun control which somehow can't seem to manage to control the criminals who have the guns.

The murder rate in Washington, D.C., home of the progressive boys and girls who can solve it all, is up 54%. The capital of the national bureaucracy has also been the country's murder capital.

These cities are the heartland of America’s real gun culture. It isn’t the bitter gun-and-bible clingers in McCain and Romney territory who are racking up a more horrifying annual kill rate than Al Qaeda; it’s Obama’s own voting base.

Gun violence is at its worst in the cities that Obama won in 2012. Places like New Orleans, Memphis, Birmingham, St. Louis, Kansas City and Philly. The Democrats are blaming Republicans for the crimes of their own voters.

Chicago, where Obama delivered his victory speech, has homicide numbers that match all of Japan and are higher than Spain, Poland and pre-war Syria. If Chicago gets any worse, it will find itself passing the number of murders for the entire country of Canada.

Chicago’s murder rate of 15.09 per 100,000 people looks nothing like the American 4.2 rate, but it does look like the murder rates in failed countries like Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe. To achieve Chicago’s murder rate, African countries usually have to experience a bloody genocidal civil war.

But Chicago isn’t even all that unique. Or the worst case scenario. That would be St. Louis with 50 murders for 100,000 people. If St Louis were a country, it would have the 4th highest murder rate in the world, beating out Jamaica, El Salvador and Rwanda.

Obama won St. Louis 82 to 16 percent.

New Orleans lags behind with a 39.6 murder rate. Louisiana went red for Romney 58 to 40, but Orleans Parish went blue for Obama 80 to 17. Obama won both St. Louis and Baltimore by comfortable margins. He won Detroit’s Wayne County 73 to 26.

Homicide rates like these show that something is broken, but it isn’t broken among Republican voters rushing to stock up on rifles every time Obama begins threatening their right to buy them; it’s broken among Obama’s base.

Any serious conversation about gun violence and gun culture has to begin at home; in Chicago, in Baltimore, in New York City, in Los Angeles and in Washington, D.C.

Voting for Obama does not make people innately homicidal. Just look at Seattle. So what is happening in Chicago to drive it to the gates of hell?

A breakdown of the Chicago killing fields shows that 83% of those murdered in Chicago in one year had criminal records. In Philly, it’s 75%. In Milwaukee it’s 77% percent. In New Orleans, it’s 64%. In Baltimore, it’s 91%. Many were felons who had served time. And as many as 80% of the homicides were gang related.

Chicago’s problem isn’t guns; it’s gangs. Gun control efforts in Chicago or any other major city are doomed because gangs represent organized crime networks which stretch down to Mexico. And Democrats pander to those gangs because it helps them get elected. That's why Federal gun prosecutions in Chicago dropped sharply under Obama. It's why he has set free drug dealers and gang members to deal and kill while convening town halls on gun violence.

America’s murder rate isn’t the work of the suburban and rural homeowners who shop for guns at sporting goods stores and at gun shows, and whom the media profiles after every shooting, but by the gangs embedded in urban areas controlled by Democrats. The gangs who drive up America’s murder rate look nothing like the occasional mentally ill suburban white kid who goes off his medication and decides to shoot up a school. Lanza, like most serial killers, is a media aberration, not the norm.

National murder statistics show that blacks are far more likely to be killers than whites and they are also far more likely to be killed. The single largest cause of homicides is the argument. 4th on the list is juvenile gang activity with 676 murders, which combined with various flavors of gangland killings takes us nearly to the 1,000 mark. America has more gangland murders than Sierra Leone, Eritrea and Puerto Rico have murders.

Our national murder rate is not some incomprehensible mystery that can only be attributed to the inanimate tools, the steel, brass and wood that do the work. It is largely the work of adult males from age 18 to 39 with criminal records killing other males of that same age and criminal past.

If this were going on in Rwanda, El Salvador or Sierra Leone, we would have no trouble knowing what to make of it, and silly pearl-clutching nonsense about gun control would never even come up. But this is Chicago, it’s Baltimore, it’s Philly and NOLA; and so we refuse to see that our major cities are in the same boat as some of the worst trouble spots in the world.

Lanza and Newtown are comforting aberrations. They allow us to take refuge in the fantasy that homicides in America are the work of the occasional serial killer practicing his dark art in one of those perfect small towns that always show up in murder mysteries or Stephen King novels. They fool us into thinking that there is something American about our murder rate that can be traced to hunting season, patriotism and bad mothers.

But go to Chicago or Baltimore. Go where the killings really happen and the illusion comes apart.

There is a war going on in America between gangs of young men who bear an uncanny resemblance to their counterparts in Sierra Leone or El Salvador. They live like them, they fight for control of the streets like them and they kill like them.

America’s horrific murder rate is a result of the transformation of major American cities into Sierra Leone, Somalia, Rwanda and El Salvador. Gun violence largely consists of criminals killing criminals.

As David Kennedy, the head of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control, put it, "The majority of homicide victims have extensive criminal histories. This is simply the way that the world of criminal homicide works. It's a fact.”

America is, on a county by county basis, not a violent country, just as it, on a county by county basis, did not vote for Obama. It is being dragged down by broken cities full of broken families whose mayors would like to trash the Bill of Rights for the entire country in the vain hope that national gun control will save their cities, even though gun control is likely to be as much help to Chicago or New Orleans as the War on Drugs.

Obama’s pretense that there needs to be a national conversation about rural American gun owners is a dishonest and cynical ploy that distracts attention from the real problem that he and politicians like him have sat on for generations.

America does not have a gun problem. Its problem is in the broken culture of cities administered by Democrats. We do not need to have a conversation about gun violence. We need to have a conversation about Chicago. We need to have a conversation about what the Democrats have done to our cities.
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

Aside from the asinine notion that this is, somehow a governance issue (Its not), there are some decent points made here.

[CosmicCowboy]

Aside from the asinine notion that this is, somehow a governance issue (Its not), there are some decent points made here.

X2

[TheSanityAnnex]

:cryWe need to blame Democrats for everything!:cry

excellent rebuttal

[TheSanityAnnex]

You sound like me. I too am a gun owner not against reasonable gun control but because I verbalize that I am lumped into the "wants to ban guns psycho" thing. I think all reasonable people realize that the solution is somewhere between those 2 extremes, but the extremes yell the loudest as evidenced in this forum.

I don't think I've ever seen a single gun owner in here oppose background checks.

[mrsmaalox]

I don't think I've ever seen a single gun owner in here oppose background checks.

Then why all the butthurt about this? :lol

[TheSanityAnnex]

Then why all the butthurt about this? :lol

Where's this butthurt you speak of? It sure isn't in this thread.

[mrsmaalox]

Where's this butthurt you speak of? It sure isn't in this thread.

Well if all gun owners are fine with background measures I'd think this thread would invite them to stumble in, shrug, mumble "cool" and be on their way. But from the first post it was clearly just an invitation to ridicule and snark and nitpick. That kinda seems like butthurt to me.

[TheSanityAnnex]

Well if all gun owners are fine with background measures I'd think this thread would invite them to stumble in, shrug, mumble "cool" and be on their way. But from the first post it was clearly just an invitation to ridicule and snark and nitpick. That kinda seems like butthurt to me.

You have an odd definition of butthurt. This administration worked on this years and basically did nothing to curb gun violence, it was pretty pathetic.

[mrsmaalox]

You have an odd definition of butthurt. This administration worked on this years and basically did nothing to curb gun violence, it was pretty pathetic.
You are absolutely sure not a single innocent life will be saved by this? That not one weapon will be kept out of a criminals hands?

[boutons_deux]

Fuck off Boo.

You know those aren't real quotes.

Why don't you quit being such a pussy and link your unfunny "humor" site in the same font as your quote?

CC, so butthurt.

[boutons_deux]

You have an odd definition of butthurt. This administration worked on this years and basically did nothing to curb gun violence, it was pretty pathetic.

it "does nothing"? so why are Repug assholes calling it unConstitutional, lawless, etc, etc? and they plan to block even this "nothing" by defunding, etc, etc.

[TheSanityAnnex]

You are absolutely sure not a single innocent life will be saved by this? That not one weapon will be kept out of a criminals hands?

I'm sure it will save a single innocent life. Hearing Obama say that yesterday did make me chuckle. If he was so concerned with just a single life I don't see how he's fine risking another single life by bringing in Syrian refugees that will most surely slip in at least one terrorist.

[boutons_deux]

A Supermajority of Likely 2016 Voters Support Obama’s Executive Actions on Guns

A supermajority of voters – 73 percent – support “an executive action by President Obama that would require anyone who sells a large number of guns per year to become a licensed gun dealer and require background checks on all of their gun sales, including those sold online or at gun shows,”

with a 53-percent majority saying they strongly support such action

and only 25 percent opposing it.

A majority of Republicans support an executive action on background checks.

Despite their disagreement with the President on other policy issues, a 56 percent majority of self-ascribed Republicans support a potential executive action.

Nearly two-thirds of gun owners also support a potential executive action.

Sixty-four percent of gun owners and 56 percent of voters who are favorably disposed toward the National Rifle Association also support a potential executive action.


Support among key groups like independents in presidential battleground states is high.

As noted above, 70 percent of voters in the presidential battleground support a potential executive action,

including 68 percent of independent voters,

76 percent of independent women,

77 percent of non-college women and

72 percent of mothers.

Among young voters support jumps to 90 percent.

Support for potential executive action reflects the national consensus on the need for stronger gun laws.

A 60-percent majority believes the laws covering the sale of guns should be made stronger while just 7 percent believe they should be weakened.

http://www.politicususa.com/2016/01/06/supermajority-2016-voters-support-president-obamas-proposed-executive-actions-guns.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+politicususa%2FfJAl+%28Politi cus+USA+%29

More proof that the Repug whores vote as purchased by their NRA/BigGun donors, not as their base wishes.

[mrsmaalox]

I'm sure it will save a single innocent life. Hearing Obama say that yesterday did make me chuckle. If he was so concerned with just a single life I don't see how he's fine risking another single life by bringing in Syrian refugees that will most surely slip in at least one terrorist. But as long as the terrorist that slips in with the refugees isn't on the No Fly list, the background checks you are so fond of could be an added preventive measure to keep them from taking any lives also. It could help in both instances, you cant deflect with the "but he's fine letting terrorists in" argument.

[TheSanityAnnex]

But as long as the terrorist that slips in with the refugees isn't on the No Fly list, the background checks you are so fond of could be an added preventive measure to keep them from taking any lives also. It could help in both instances, you cant deflect with the "but he's fine letting terrorists in" argument.
I'm a bit confused can you clarify

[mrsmaalox]

I'm a bit confused can you clarify The same controls that keep the guns out of our criminals hands will help to keep the guns out of the hands of the terrorist who slips in with the refugees. Unless they are on the No Fly list :lol

Edit---also, did this order fix that No Fly list thing?

[TheSanityAnnex]

The same controls that keep the guns out of our criminals hands will help to keep the guns out of the hands of the terrorist who slips in with the refugees. Unless they are on the No Fly list :lol

Edit---also, did this order fix that No Fly list thing?
The same controls that keep the guns out of criminals hands :lol how's that working out? Nothing addressed the no-fly list as it needs a complete overhaul and is unconstitutional.

[mrsmaalox]

The same controls that keep the guns out of criminals hands :lol how's that working out? Nothing addressed the no-fly list as it needs a complete overhaul and is unconstitutional.
Duh its not, thats why these steps are being taken. And it will take many many small steps over many many years, as it took a couple of hundred years to get to where we are today. All reasonable people know that there is not one action that will solve all gun violence in one step, so ridiculing [i]any[/] action for not doing that is pretty dumb.

[TheSanityAnnex]

Duh its not, thats why these steps are being taken. And it will take many many small steps over many many years, as it took a couple of hundred years to get to where we are today. All reasonable people know that there is not one action that will solve all gun violence in one step, so ridiculing [i]any[/] action for not doing that is pretty dumb.
What steps though? Nothing is really changing if you already understand the laws that are in place. This was a move by the Democrats in an election year that accomplishes nothing of significance, except to give their base an illusion of increased safety.

[CosmicCowboy]

I think the opposition is not to the specifics, but rather falls under the "camel nose under the tent" fear. It is new regulations that will have nothing to do with stopping crime.

[Clipper Nation]

Yeah, what loser for caring about the kids like those at Sandy Hook...
Where are all those crocodile tears for the kids who die as a result of his bombing campaigns in the Middle East?

He doesn't give a fuck about those kids, he just wants to bring us another step closer to confiscation.

[Spurminator]

Where's this butthurt you speak of? It sure isn't in this thread.

NRA.com
FoxNews.com
Breitbart.com
AR15.com
Stormfront.com
GregAbbott.com

(I don't know if these are actual web addresses, but there is most certainly butthurt on the gun lobby side.)

[TheSanityAnnex]

A Supermajority of Likely 2016 Voters Support Obama’s Executive Actions on Guns

A supermajority of voters – 73 percent – support “an executive action by President Obama that would require anyone who sells a large number of guns per year to become a licensed gun dealer and require background checks on all of their gun sales, including those sold online or at gun shows,”

with a 53-percent majority saying they strongly support such action

and only 25 percent opposing it.

A majority of Republicans support an executive action on background checks.

Despite their disagreement with the President on other policy issues, a 56 percent majority of self-ascribed Republicans support a potential executive action.

Nearly two-thirds of gun owners also support a potential executive action.

Sixty-four percent of gun owners and 56 percent of voters who are favorably disposed toward the National Rifle Association also support a potential executive action.


Support among key groups like independents in presidential battleground states is high.

As noted above, 70 percent of voters in the presidential battleground support a potential executive action,

including 68 percent of independent voters,

76 percent of independent women,

77 percent of non-college women and

72 percent of mothers.

Among young voters support jumps to 90 percent.

Support for potential executive action reflects the national consensus on the need for stronger gun laws.

A 60-percent majority believes the laws covering the sale of guns should be made stronger while just 7 percent believe they should be weakened.

http://www.politicususa.com/2016/01/06/supermajority-2016-voters-support-president-obamas-proposed-executive-actions-guns.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+politicususa%2FfJAl+%28Politi cus+USA+%29

More proof that the Repug whores vote as purchased by their NRA/BigGun donors, not as their base wishes.



:lol

http://www.cnn.com/partners/ios/pages/poll/


POLL OF THE DAY

Do you support expanded background checks for gun buyers?

http://dazfoe7f6de09.cloudfront.net/PqTwvs6RoG4zuEhO108j_160103101747-guns-in-america-story-top.png



Yes 41.7%
41.7%


Not sure 2.7%
2.7%


No 55.6%
55.6%

113147 total votes

Not a scientific survey

CNN to host Obama town hall on guns in America (http://www.cnn.com/specials/us/guns)

[hater]

:lmao gun fellators crying cause now they gotta show ID at gun shows :cry :cry

Faggots :lol

[TheSanityAnnex]

:lmao gun fellators crying cause now they gotta show ID at gun shows :cry :cry

Faggots :lol

Easy to spot those who don't read the thread and just post to post.

[mrsmaalox]

What steps though? Nothing is really changing if you already understand the laws that are in place. This was a move by the Democrats in an election year that accomplishes nothing of significance, except to give their base an illusion of increased safety.
Just the simplest things of increasing FBI staff by 50% for background checks and tightening some loopholes are a change and a step. You keep saying nothing changes. As far as the outcome, we dont really know what it will accomplish do we? I could say everything will be solved but thats as silly as saying nothing will be solved. I understand that for law abiding gun owners, nothing changes. Those are not the people changes need to be made for.

[mrsmaalox]

I think the opposition is not to the specifics, but rather falls under the "camel nose under the tent" fear. It is new regulations that will have nothing to do with stopping crime.

If it stops one crime, is that stopping crime?

[CosmicCowboy]

Just the simplest things of increasing FBI staff by 50% for background checks and tightening some loopholes are a change and a step. You keep saying nothing changes. As far as the outcome, we dont really know what it will accomplish do we? I could say everything will be solved but thats as silly as saying nothing will be solved. I understand that for law abiding gun owners, nothing changes. Those are not the people changes need to be made for.

It really depends how they define the number of transactions and what steps had to be taken. If I wanted to give my son-in-law (who is a cop and would pass with flying colors) a couple of guns and I had to transfer them through a FFL and pay a $25 each transfer fee it would really be an inconvenience and piss me off.

[TheSanityAnnex]

Just the simplest things of increasing FBI staff by 50% for background checks and tightening some loopholes are a change and a step. You keep saying nothing changes. As far as the outcome, we dont really know what it will accomplish do we? I could say everything will be solved but thats as silly as saying nothing will be solved. I understand that for law abiding gun owners, nothing changes. Those are not the people changes need to be made for.

I never said nothing will be solved I said these executive actions will be insignificant in reducing gun violence.

[mrsmaalox]

It really depends how they define the number of transactions and what steps had to be taken. If I wanted to give my son-in-law (who is a cop and would pass with flying colors) a couple of guns and I had to transfer them through a FFL and pay a $25 each transfer fee it would really be an inconvenience and piss me off.

I understand that. But the scenario I'm thinking of is one I've seen play out a couple of times with friends. Responsible, legal gun owners get strapped for cash. I was taught by my dad that you NEVER sell your guns or musical instruments, but everyone knows guns sell quickly and easily. Without the FFL transfer and fee you have no control over who you innocently sell your gun to. Criminals count on that. Its not foolproof but Id sleep a little better at night knowing my gun had a sl. smaller chance of being used in a crime. I think this one may actually plug one of the million+1 holes that are the seive of gun violence in this country.

[boutons_deux]

Fox Host's Absurd Claim About Obama's Tears During Gun Speech

http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/story_image/public/story_images/fox_on_tears_150105a1-800x430.jpg

Fox News host Andrea Tantaros suggested on Tuesday President Barack Obama had used a “raw onion” to produce fake tears for shooting victims during his press conference on gun violence.

“What was really upsetting was the tears that he wiped away again and again,” Francis opined. “You want that for — I mean, we feel frighten about what’s going on with ISIS. And he can’t pull that kind of passion for anything about this.”

http://www.alternet.org/media/fox-hosts-absurd-claim-about-obamas-tears-during-gun-speech?akid=13855.187590.b7MaTP&rd=1&src=newsletter1048519&t=16

:lol Fox's pig sty of dumb bitches as shitty as Fox viewers

[mrsmaalox]

Anyway Im just here today because I have a mountain of holiday laundry to do and its boring as shit :lol I certainly have no solutions but I'm not going to crap on any gun legislation that lets folks keep their legal guns. My only real gun violence/control issue is guns in hands of kids. If only there was legislation that would give mandatory jail time to any adult who leaves a gun, legal or not, unattended where a kid can get it and shoot himself or his baby brother, I'd be happy. Those are not "accidents" and that irresponsible adult has not suffered enough. If that could happen, I'd be fine if nothing else ever changes. Too da loo! :toast

[TheSanityAnnex]

I understand that. But the scenario I'm thinking of is one I've seen play out a couple of times with friends. Responsible, legal gun owners get strapped for cash. I was taught by my dad that you NEVER sell your guns or musical instruments, but everyone knows guns sell quickly and easily. Without the FFL transfer and fee you have no control over who you innocently sell your gun to. Criminals count on that. Its not foolproof but Id sleep a little better at night knowing my gun had a sl. smaller chance of being used in a crime. I think this one may actually plug one of the million+1 holes that are the seive of gun violence in this country.How do you not have control over who you sell your gun to?

[TheSanityAnnex]

Anyway Im just here today because I have a mountain of holiday laundry to do and its boring as shit :lol I certainly have no solutions but I'm not going to crap on any gun legislation that lets folks keep their legal guns. My only real gun violence/control issue is guns in hands of kids. If only there was legislation that would give mandatory jail time to any adult who leaves a gun, legal or not, unattended where a kid can get it and shoot himself or his baby brother, I'd be happy. Those are not "accidents" and that irresponsible adult has not suffered enough. If that could happen, I'd be fine if nothing else ever changes. Too da loo! :toast

Agreed on the kid stuff. Shocking how often it happens.

[Spurminator]

Do guns operate on a sort of "title" system like cars do? Transfer of ownership, etc. Nothing's foolproof, but wouldn't that solve a lot of the issues with unregulated sale?

[CosmicCowboy]

Do guns operate on a sort of "title" system like cars do? Transfer of ownership, etc. Nothing's foolproof, but wouldn't that solve a lot of the issues with unregulated sale?

Short answer is they have a serial number but no title. Technically even if a purchaser buys a legal gun and goes through the background check with the federal government, the federal government is prohibited by law from keeping records of the gun or the purchaser.

Now whether ATF etc. is abiding by that law is another question entirely.

[Blizzardwizard]

:lmao gun fellators crying cause now they gotta show ID at gun shows :cry :cry

Faggots :lol

:lol


"But muh constitutional rights :cry"

:lol

[ChumpDumper]

excellent rebuttalExplain to me how Democrats pander to gang members to get the gang member vote.

[Spurminator]

Short answer is they have a serial number but no title. Technically even if a purchaser buys a legal gun and goes through the background check with the federal government, the federal government is prohibited by law from keeping records of the gun or the purchaser.

Now whether ATF etc. is abiding by that law is another question entirely.

As is whether that should even be a law.

[TheSanityAnnex]

Explain to me how Democrats pander to gang members to get the gang member vote.
There is no need for me to explain that because it was a stupid comment by the author and was literally five sentences out of the entire thing.

"Chicago’s problem isn’t guns; it’s gangs. Gun control efforts in Chicago or any other major city are doomed because gangs represent organized crime networks which stretch down to Mexico. And Democrats pander to those gangs because it helps them get elected. That's why Federal gun prosecutions in Chicago dropped sharply under Obama. It's why he has set free drug dealers and gang members to deal and kill while convening town halls on gun violence."

Any other problems with the article?

[ChumpDumper]

There is no need for me to explain that because it was a stupid comment by the author and was literally five sentences out of the entire thing.

"Chicago’s problem isn’t guns; it’s gangs. Gun control efforts in Chicago or any other major city are doomed because gangs represent organized crime networks which stretch down to Mexico. And Democrats pander to those gangs because it helps them get elected. That's why Federal gun prosecutions in Chicago dropped sharply under Obama. It's why he has set free drug dealers and gang members to deal and kill while convening town halls on gun violence."

Any other problems with the article?It was stupid enough to make me dismiss the entire article.

Sorry.

[TeyshaBlue]

It was stupid enough to make me dismiss the entire article.

Sorry.

That was a mistake. The article makes some fair points.

[ChumpDumper]

That was a mistake. The article makes some fair points.Maybe. A claim like that is a deal breaker for me.

[TheSanityAnnex]

That was a mistake. The article makes some fair points.
He didn't dismiss it and he sees the fair points, he just doesn't want to admit it or discuss it.

[Winehole23]

I think the opposition is not to the specifics, but rather falls under the "camel nose under the tent" fear. It is new regulations that will have nothing to do with stopping crime.Canard. Death by firearms is a public health problem, not a pure law and order problem. It's reasonable for administrative steps to be taken to meliorate the threat to life and livelihood.

[Winehole23]

it's dishonest to pretend that the riskiness of firearms is restricted to bad guys. it isn't.

[boutons_deux]

it's dishonest to pretend that the riskiness of firearms is restricted to bad guys. it isn't.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_for_Disease_Control_and_Prevention), in 2013, firearms were used in

84,258 nonfatal injuries (26.65 per 100,000 U.S. citizens) [2] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States#cite_note-2) and

11,208 deaths by homicide (3.5 per 100,000),[3] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States#cite_note-3)

21,175 by suicide with a firearm,[4] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States#cite_note-cdc.gov-4)

505 deaths due to accidental discharge of a firearm,[4] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States#cite_note-cdc.gov-4) and

281 deaths due to firearms-use with "undetermined intent"[5] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States#cite_note-5) for a total of

33,169 deaths related to firearms (excluding firearm deaths due to legal intervention).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States

Since Obama took office, about 225K deaths by guns.

Above numbers are just for deaths. Figure injuries from firearms are 10x greater, and some of those injuries are serious, permanently disabling.

[boutons_deux]

Paul Ryan captures what’s wrong with the gun debate

One of the more unusual reactions to President Obama’s new measures on gun policy came from (http://www.speaker.gov/press-release/president-obamas-executive-order-guns-undermines-liberty)House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). For example, the congressional leader condemned an “executive order” from the White House that doesn’t exist.

But more important was this quote in reference to the president: “His words and actions amount to a form of intimidation that undermines liberty.”

It’s hard not to get the impression that Ryan seems intimidated by the wrong things. Is the Republican leader alarmed by the routinization of deadly mass-shootings? No, what Paul Ryan finds intimidating is presidential rhetoric about background checks. What an odd thing to say.

Part of the problem for the House Speaker is that he may not be fully on board with his own talking points. The Huffington Post had a good catch (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/paul-ryan-gun-background-checks_568aec6ee4b0b958f65c9135?l877gb9) earlier this week.


House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) criticized President Barack Obama on Monday for planning to use his executive authority to implement gun control measures.

But take Obama out of the equation, and Ryan is just fine with tighter background checks on gun sales – the very thing Obama is expected to focus on – and with a president taking executive actions on major policy issues.


As recently as 2013, the Wisconsin lawmaker told (https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TtQj1bF3dAY) the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinelefforts to close theso-called gun-show loophole are “reasonable” and “obvious.” Ryan added that the issue arose on Capitol Hill shortly after his first election. “At the time I remember thinking, ‘You know, there is a loophole here. We should address that,’” he said.

This week, however, the GOP leader said (https://politicalwire.com/2016/01/06/paul-ryan-then-and-now/), “There is no loophole…. This is a distraction.”
Keep in mind, that interview isn’t from some point in the distant past. It was the year before, in 2012, that Ryan was on his party’s national ticket as the Republican vice presidential nominee.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/paul-ryan-captures-whats-wrong-the-gun-debate?cid=sm_fb_maddow

[CosmicCowboy]

Paul Ryan captures what’s wrong with the gun debate

One of the more unusual reactions to President Obama’s new measures on gun policy came from (http://www.speaker.gov/press-release/president-obamas-executive-order-guns-undermines-liberty)House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). For example, the congressional leader condemned an “executive order” from the White House that doesn’t exist.

But more important was this quote in reference to the president: “His words and actions amount to a form of intimidation that undermines liberty.”

It’s hard not to get the impression that Ryan seems intimidated by the wrong things. Is the Republican leader alarmed by the routinization of deadly mass-shootings? No, what Paul Ryan finds intimidating is presidential rhetoric about background checks. What an odd thing to say.

Part of the problem for the House Speaker is that he may not be fully on board with his own talking points. The Huffington Post had a good catch (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/paul-ryan-gun-background-checks_568aec6ee4b0b958f65c9135?l877gb9) earlier this week.


House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) criticized President Barack Obama on Monday for planning to use his executive authority to implement gun control measures.

But take Obama out of the equation, and Ryan is just fine with tighter background checks on gun sales – the very thing Obama is expected to focus on – and with a president taking executive actions on major policy issues.


As recently as 2013, the Wisconsin lawmaker told (https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=TtQj1bF3dAY) the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinelefforts to close theso-called gun-show loophole are “reasonable” and “obvious.” Ryan added that the issue arose on Capitol Hill shortly after his first election. “At the time I remember thinking, ‘You know, there is a loophole here. We should address that,’” he said.

This week, however, the GOP leader said (https://politicalwire.com/2016/01/06/paul-ryan-then-and-now/), “There is no loophole…. This is a distraction.”
Keep in mind, that interview isn’t from some point in the distant past. It was the year before, in 2012, that Ryan was on his party’s national ticket as the Republican vice presidential nominee.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/paul-ryan-captures-whats-wrong-the-gun-debate?cid=sm_fb_maddow




I guess rachel thinks we are all as dumb as Boutons.

For practical purposes an Executive Memorandum carries the same weight as an Executive Order, it's just not given a number or published in the Federal Register.

His press secretaries love to say Obama has used Executive Orders less than previous Presidents while assuming we are too stupid to understand that he is doing the same thing by issuing more Memoranda than previous Presidents.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/12/16/obama-presidential-memoranda-executive-orders/20191805/

[boutons_deux]

I guess rachel thinks we are all as dumb as Boutons.

For practical purposes an Executive Memorandum carries the same weight as an Executive Order, it's just not given a number or published in the Federal Register.

His press secretaries love to say Obama has used Executive Orders less than previous Presidents while assuming we are too stupid to understand that he is doing the same thing by issuing more Memoranda than previous Presidents.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/12/16/obama-presidential-memoranda-executive-orders/20191805/

try to stay on topic, ankle biter

the article wasn't about Obama's order, but about slimebag Ryan flip flopping on the loopholes.

[CosmicCowboy]

try to stay on topic, ankle biter

the article wasn't about Obama's order, but about slimebag Ryan flip flopping on the loopholes.

Did you read your article? It was the very first sentence.

[Winehole23]

Firearms related injuries and deaths are a statistically significant public health problem in the US, not strictly related to crime. Administrative remedies to this are good government.

[boutons_deux]

[QUOTE=TheSanityAnnex;8355942]:lol

http://www.cnn.com/partners/ios/pages/poll/

:lol

Poll: Americans supportive but skeptical on Obama's gun action

The American public is broadly supportive of the executive actions issued by President Barack Obama this week (http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/07/politics/obama-executive-action-gun-control-town-hall/index.html) aimed at increasing the reach of federal background checks for gun purchases and improving enforcement of existing laws.

However, less than half say that these changes will be effective at reducing gun-related deaths, and most say they oppose the way Obama made these changes.

A new CNN/ORC poll (http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/07/politics/obama-guns-executive-action-poll-results/index.html) finds

67% say they favor the changes Obama announced, and

32% oppose them.

Support for the executive actions, designed to expand background checks to cover more gun purchases made online or at gun shows and to make it easier for the FBI to complete background checks efficiently, comes across party lines, with

majorities of Democrats (85%),
independents (65%) and
Republicans (51%) in favor of them.

Majorities back the measures across most demographic groups, in fact, including

57% of gun owners and
56% of rural residents.

Those who strongly favor the changes outnumber those who are strongly opposed by about a 2-to-1 margin: 43% say they are strongly in favor, 21% strongly opposed.

Support for the measures lags a bit behind the level of support most polling finds for expanded background checks generally. A Quinnipiac University poll in December found that 89% of Americans favored "a law requiring background checks on people buying guns at gun shows or online."

The changes announced by the President do not go that far, however, narrowing what has been called "the gun-show loophole" without closing it entirely.
Skepticism about the effectiveness of the executive actions is widespread.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/07/politics/poll-obama-gun-action/index.html

no catalog/mail order, no online gun selling AT ALL

all gun purchases face-to-face with photo ID of purchaser and b/g check with no "timeout" if b/g check is slow.

govt's right to regulate guns "shall not be infringed"

[boutons_deux]

Repugs! Repug MISgovernance! Slave states! :lol

GOP rep: censure Obama over gun policy


Staunch gun rights advocate Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-MS) introduced a resolution on Wednesday to “censure and condemn” President Barack Obama over his newly announced executive actions on gun control.

“For seven years, the President has gradually expanded his powers through executive overreach,” the Mississippi lawmaker wrote in a statement published on his website. “His actions this week to take away the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens is just the latest, if not most egregious, violation of the separation of powers found in the United States Constitution.”


The congressman’s statement is online here (http://palazzo.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=398772), but it does not include any explanation of why Obama’s executive actions on gun policy – actions the NRA said do not actually do anything (http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/obama-goes-around-gop-takes-new-steps-prevent-gun-deaths) of significance – “take away” anyone’s constitutional rights.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/gop-rep-censure-obama-over-gun-policy?cid=sm_fb_maddow

[CosmicCowboy]

Firearms related injuries and deaths are a statistically significant public health problem in the US, not strictly related to crime. Administrative remedies to this are good government.

OK, I get that your position is that guns are bad, but how will increasing background checks reduce suicides or gun related accidents?

[boutons_deux]

OK, I get that your position is that guns are bad, but how will increasing background checks reduce suicides or gun related accidents?

guns aren't bad, PEOPLE are bad. NRA sez so.

[boutons_deux]

http://www.nationalmemo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/8502433530_64d4ac8166_z-668x501.jpg


damn, you dickless gun fellators are some real dumbshits

[hater]

Wait. I can legally buy 200 guns at a gun show with just cash???

:lol this country is great. Where can I have links to upcoming gun shows? :)

[CosmicCowboy]

Wait. I can legally buy 200 guns at a gun show with just cash???

:lol this country is great. Where can I have links to upcoming gun shows? :)

Here ya go.

http://www.saxetshows.com/

[boutons_deux]

Obama Mocks 'Conspiracy' That He's Coming For Your Guns

President Barack Obama mocked conspiracy theorists and tore into the National Rifle Association for pushing "imaginary fiction," as he described his plans to tighten gun control rules as modest first steps toward tackling gun violence in America.

In a prime-time, televised town hall meeting Thursday, Obama fielded tough questions from high-profile gun control opponents and supporters alike, often answering with sympathy and without confrontation as he tried to reassure Americans there is a middle ground on a fiercely divisive issue.

But Obama didn't hold back when asked by CNN moderator Anderson Cooper about the notion that the federal government — and Obama in particular — wants to seize all firearms as a precursor to imposing martial law. He blamed that notion on the NRA and like-minded groups that convince its members that "somebody's going to come grab your guns."

"Yes, that is a conspiracy," Obama said. "I'm only going to be here for another year. When would I have started on this enterprise?" Obama defended his support for the constitutional right to gun ownership while arguing it was consistent with his efforts to curb mass shootings. He said the NRA refused to acknowledge the government's responsibility to make legal products safer, citing seatbelts and child-proof medicine bottles as examples.

, Obama accused the NRA of refusing to participate in the town hall despite having its headquarters nearby.

"Since this is a main reason they exist, you'd think that they'd be prepared to have a debate with the president," Obama said

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/barack-obama-mocks-gun-control-conspiracy

Give 'em HELL, Barry.

dickless NRA (white) chickenshits didn't even show up to debate their hated n!gg@. :lol

whitehouse.gov should post a list of all the Congress members on the NRA/GOA/etc/gun-industry contribution list and their history of votes on all gun issues.

[boutons_deux]

Poll: Republicans Would Rather Actually Be Shot by Gun Than Agree with Obama

WASHINGTON — A day after President Obama held a nationally televised town hall about guns in America, a new poll shows that a majority of Republicans would rather actually be shot by a firearm than agree with him.

In an indication of the challenges facing the President in persuading Republicans, those surveyed named a wide variety of specific guns that they would choose to be personally shot by rather than seeing eye to eye with Obama.

When asked to state their preference, forty-three per cent stated “handgun,” twenty-seven per cent replied “shotgun,” twenty-one per cent responded “assault rifle,” while only two per cent named “agreeing with Obama.”

The poll results are reminiscent of a poll taken last month about climate change, in which a majority of Republicans said they would rather see their habitat destroyed by rising sea levels than agree with President Obama.

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/poll-republicans-would-rather-actually-be-shot-by-gun-than-agree-with-obama?mbid=nl_010816%20Borowitz%20Newsletter%20(1)&CNDID=16733151&spMailingID=8413645&spUserID=MjczNzc0Njk0NDAS1&spJobID=840874667&spReportId=ODQwODc0NjY3S0 (http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/poll-republicans-would-rather-actually-be-shot-by-gun-than-agree-with-obama?mbid=nl_010816%20Borowitz%20Newsletter%20(1)&CNDID=16733151&spMailingID=8413645&spUserID=MjczNzc0Njk0NDAS1&spJobID=840874667&spReportId=ODQwODc0NjY3S0)

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Firearms related injuries and deaths are a statistically significant public health problem in the US, not strictly related to crime. Administrative remedies to this are good government.

I see you argument and how they ignore it. The intellectual bravery you're up against is astounding.

You must love CC obviously disingenuous restatement of this argument into "YOUR PUTTING GUNS ON TRIAL" NRA rhetoric.

[CosmicCowboy]

Bravery for completely ducking a direct question? :lmao

Fuzzy, you are such a tool...

[SpursforSix]

Here ya go.

http://www.saxetshows.com/

That's just one promoter. Here's a better list for Texas.

https://gunshowtrader.com/gunshows/texas/

Also, the Tulsa show which might be the biggest.

http://www.tulsaarmsshow.com/home.html

[DMX7]

He doesn't give a fuck about those kids, he just wants to bring us another step closer to confiscation.

LOL conspiracy theorist.

[boutons_deux]

Fox Host's Absurd Claim About Obama's Tears During Gun Speech

http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/story_image/public/story_images/fox_on_tears_150105a1-800x430.jpg

Fox News host Andrea Tantaros suggested on Tuesday President Barack Obama had used a “raw onion” to produce fake tears for shooting victims during his press conference on gun violence.

“What was really upsetting was the tears that he wiped away again and again,” Francis opined. “You want that for — I mean, we feel frighten about what’s going on with ISIS. And he can’t pull that kind of passion for anything about this.”

http://www.alternet.org/media/fox-hosts-absurd-claim-about-obamas-tears-during-gun-speech?akid=13855.187590.b7MaTP&rd=1&src=newsletter1048519&t=16

:lol Fox's pig sty of dumb bitches as shitty as Fox viewers




As for those who believe the president manufactured tears to manipulate his audience, perhaps a few of them could be rehabilitated if they read what Joshua Dubois wrote in The President’s Devotional (http://voxpopulisphere.com/2015/12/11/10733/) two years ago about Obama’s visit to Sandy Hook just two days after the slayings there left that community raw.


I went downstairs to greet President Obama when he arrived, and I provided an overview of the situation. “Two families per classroom ... The first is ... and their child was ... The second is ... and their child was ... We’ll tell you the rest as you go.”

The president took a deep breath and steeled himself, and went into the first classroom. And what happened next I’ll never forget.

Person after person received an engulfing hug from our commander in chief. He’d say, “Tell me about your son. ... Tell me about your daughter,” and then hold pictures of the lost beloved as their parents described favorite foods, television shows, and the sound of their laughter.

For the younger siblings of those who had passed away—many of them two, three, or four years old, too young to understand it all—the president would grab them and toss them, laughing, up into the air, and then hand them a box of White House M&M’s, which were always kept close at hand. In each room, I saw his eyes water, but he did not break.

And then the entire scene would repeat—for hours. Over and over and over again, through well over a hundred relatives of the fallen, each one equally broken, wrecked by the loss.

After each classroom, we would go back into those fluorescent hallways and walk through the names of the coming families, and then the president would dive back in, like a soldier returning to a tour of duty in a worthy but wearing war.

We spent what felt like a lifetime in those classrooms, and every single person received the same tender treatment. The same hugs. The same looks, directly in their eyes. The same sincere offer of support and prayer.

The staff did the preparation work, but the comfort and healing were all on President Obama. I remember worrying about the toll it was taking on him. And of course, even a president’s comfort was woefully inadequate for these families in the face of this particularly unspeakable loss. But it became some small measure of love, on a weekend when evil reigned.


http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/1/7/1467201/-Another-Obama-dissing-Republican-proves-he-has-manure-for-brains-and-a-stone-for-a-heart?detail=email

[Winehole23]

OK, I get that your position is that guns are bad, but how will increasing background checks reduce suicides or gun related accidents?Makes it a little harder for people to get guns. Duh.

[Winehole23]

My position isn't that guns are bad. It's that they're dangerous and ought to be better regulated.

Do you disagree that guns are dangerous?

[Winehole23]

Are you ok with keeping guns out of the hands of crazy people and people with rap sheets?

Why or why not?

[Bender]

guns aren't bad, PEOPLE are bad. NRA sez so.

people don't kill people, guns do!

something must be wrong with all of mine :(

[boutons_deux]

one of the many huge lies from the NRA/BigGun propaganda machine is to whine about THE problem is mentally ill people.

[CosmicCowboy]

one of the many huge lies from the NRA/BigGun propaganda machine is to whine about THE problem is mentally ill people.

I agree that Boo shouldn't be able to buy a gun.

[Winehole23]

why not?

because he disagrees with you?

[Winehole23]

why shouldn't boo have the right to protect his home and his life like every other law abiding citizen?

[Winehole23]

merely because you dislike him?

[Winehole23]

don't get me wrong, I don't like him either, but I don't think he ought to be deprived of normal rights and privileges on that account.

do you?

[Winehole23]

background check for boo, but not for anybody else?

where do you stand on this , CC?

[boutons_deux]

give CC a pass, he's so bitchslapped into inanity by The Great Boutons

[TeyshaBlue]

why shouldn't boo have the right to protect his home and his life like every other law abiding citizen?

Shoulda been blue tbh.

[CosmicCowboy]

Shoulda been blue tbh.

this

a joke @ Boo being insane.

[sickdsm]

Not a joke. 5.seconds after talking to him one=would realize he's unstable.

[boutons_deux]

Not a joke. 5.seconds after talking to him one=would realize he's unstable.

You Lie

what's unstable is the extreme rightwing nut fabrication built on VRWC/billionaire $Bs.

Even the Repugs are wondering if their fucked party is approaching instability, cracking up.

[TheSanityAnnex]

You Lie

what's unstable is the extreme rightwing nut fabrication built on VRWC/billionaire $Bs.

Even the Repugs are wondering if their fucked party is approaching instability, cracking up.do you truly believe you are mentally stable enough to own a firearm? I wouldn't even take you to the range with me for fear of being Chris Kyle'd.

[boutons_deux]

do you truly believe you are mentally stable enough to own a firearm? I wouldn't even take you to the range with me for fear of being Chris Kyle'd.

TSA is a full-fledged member of the The Great Boutons royal butt hurt club.

Bitch slapping you gun fellators, rightwingnuts, Christian Taliban repeatedly, daily, for years is great fun, and extremely. Y'all got NOTHING to offer, you politicians have done nothing good for USA and LOTS of damage, diseases, deaths, poverty, etc.

Unstable, moi? :lol really really weak shit, but it's a good as you can manage.

TB :lol can come up only with ADA 25 fucking years ago as a positive Repug contribution, which of course is totally offset by Iraq, Afghanistan, economic mismanagement, job destruction, donut holes, Medicare Advantage, increased abortions, accelerating inequality, austerity, etc, etc! :lol

[TheSanityAnnex]

Bitch slapping you gun fellators
:lol you'll run from this like you did the first time

"There is a gun for roughly every man, woman, and child in America," President Barack Obama proclaimed after the October mass shooting that killed 10 at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. "So how can you, with a straight face, make the argument that more guns will make us safer? We know that states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths. So the notion that gun laws don't work—or just will make it harder for law-abiding citizens and criminals will still get their guns—is not borne out by the evidence."

In this single brief statement, Obama tidily listed the major questions bedeviling social science research about guns—while also embodying the biggest problem with the way we process and apply that research. The president's ironclad confidence in the conclusiveness of the science, and therefore the desirability of "common-sense gun safety laws," is echoed widely with every new mass shooting, from academia to the popular press to that guy you knew from high school on Facebook.

In April 2015, the Harvard gun-violence researcher David Hemenway took to the pages of the Los Angeles Times to declare in a headline: "There's scientific consensus on guns—and the NRA won't like it." Hemenway insisted that researchers have definitively established "that a gun in the home makes it a more dangerous place to be...that guns are not used in self-defense far more often than they are used in crime...and that the change to more permissive gun carrying laws has not reduced crime rates." He concludes: "There is consensus that strong gun laws reduce homicide."

But the science is a lot less certain than that. What we really know about the costs and benefits of private gun ownership and the efficacy of gun laws is far more fragile than what Hemenway and the president would have us believe.

More guns do not necessarily mean more homicides. More gun laws do not necessarily mean less gun crime. Finding good science is hard enough; finding good social science on a topic so fraught with politics is nigh impossible. The facts then become even more muddled as the conclusions of those less-than-ironclad academic studies cycle through the press and social media in a massive game of telephone. Despite the confident assertions of the gun controllers and decades of research, we still know astonishingly little about how guns actually function in society and almost nothing at all about whether gun control policies actually work as promised.

Do More Guns Mean More Homicides?

"More Americans have died from guns in the United States since 1968 than on battlefields of all the wars in American history," New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote on August 26, 2015, just after the grisly on-air murder of two television journalists in Virginia. It's a startling fact, and true.

But do the number of guns in circulation correlate with the number of gun deaths? Start by looking at the category of gun death that propels all gun policy discussion: homicides. (Gun suicides, discussed further below, are a separate matter whose frequent conflation with gun crime introduces much confusion into the debate.)

In 1994 Americans owned around 192 million guns, according to the U.S. Justice Department's National Institute of Justice. Today, that figure is somewhere between 245 and 328 million, though as Philip J. Cook and Kristin A. Goss in their thorough 2014 book The Gun Debate: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press) wisely concluded, "the bottom line is that no one knows how many firearms are in private hands in the United States." Still, we have reason to believe gun prevalence likely surpassed the one-gun-per-adult mark early in President Barack Obama's first term, according to a 2012 Congressional Research Service report that relied on sales and import data.

Yet during that same period, per-capita gun murders have been cut almost in half.

One could argue that the relevant number is not the number of guns, but the number of people with access to guns. That figure is also ambiguous. A Gallup poll in 2014 found 42 percent of households claiming to own a gun, which Gallup reports is "similar to the average reported to Gallup over the past decade." But those looking for a smaller number, to downplay the significance of guns in American life, can rely on the door-to-door General Social Survey, which reported in 2014 that only 31 percent of households have guns, down 11 percentage points from 1993's 42 percent. There is no singular theory to explain that discrepancy or to be sure which one is closer to correct—though some doubt, especially as gun ownership continues to be so politically contentious, that people always reliably report the weapons they own to a stranger literally at their door.

The gun murder rate in 1993 was 7.0 per 100,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. (Those reports rely on death certificate reporting, and they tend to show higher numbers than the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting program, though both trend the same.) In 2000 the gun murder rate per 100,000 was 3.8. By 2013, the rate was even lower, at 3.5, though there was a slight upswing in the mid-00s.

This simple point—that America is awash with more guns than ever before, yet we are killing each other with guns at a far lower rate than when we had far fewer guns—undermines the narrative that there is a straightforward, causal relationship between increased gun prevalence and gun homicide. Even if you fall back on the conclusion that it's just a small number of owners stockpiling more and more guns, it's hard to escape noticing that even these hoarders seem to be harming fewer and fewer people with their weapons, casting doubt on the proposition that gun ownership is a political crisis demanding action.

In the face of these trend lines—way more guns, way fewer gun murders—how can politicians such as Obama and Hillary Clinton so successfully capitalize on the panic that follows each high profile shooting? Partly because Americans haven't caught on to the crime drop. A 2013 Pew Research Poll found 56 percent of respondents thought that gun crime had gone up over the past 20 years, and only 12 percent were aware it had declined.

Do Gun Laws Stop Gun Crimes?

The same week Kristof's column came out, National Journal attracted major media attention with a showy piece of research and analysis headlined "The States With The Most Gun Laws See The Fewest Gun-Related Deaths." The subhead lamented: "But there's still little appetite to talk about more restrictions."

Critics quickly noted that the Journal's Libby Isenstein had included suicides among "gun-related deaths" and suicide-irrelevant policies such as stand-your-ground laws among its tally of "gun laws." That meant that high-suicide, low-homicide states such as Wyoming, Alaska, and Idaho were taken to task for their liberal carry-permit policies. Worse, several of the states with what the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence considers terribly lax gun laws were dropped from Isenstein's data set because their murder rates were too low!

Another of National Journal's mistakes is a common one in gun science: The paper didn't look at gun statistics in the context of overall violent crime, a much more relevant measure to the policy debate. After all, if less gun crime doesn't mean less crime overall—if criminals simply substitute other weapons or means when guns are less available—the benefit of the relevant gun laws is thrown into doubt. When Thomas Firey of the Cato Institute ran regressions of Isenstein's study with slightly different specifications and considering all violent crime, each of her effects either disappeared or reversed.
Another recent well-publicized study trying to assert a positive connection between gun laws and public safety was a 2013 JAMA Internal Medicine article by the Harvard pediatrics professor Eric W. Fleegler and his colleagues, called "Firearm Legislation and Firearm-Related Fatalities in the United States." It offered a mostly static comparison of the toughness of state gun laws (as rated by the gun control lobbyists at the Brady Center) with gun deaths from 2007 to 2010.

"States with strictest firearm laws have lowest rates of gun deaths," a Boston Globe headline then announced. But once again, if you take the simple, obvious step of separating out suicides from murders, the correlations that buttress the supposed causations disappear. As John Hinderaker headlined his reaction at the Power Line blog, "New Study Finds Firearm Laws Do Nothing to Prevent Homicides."

Among other anomalies in Fleegler's research, Hinderaker pointed out that it didn't include Washington, D.C., with its strict gun laws and frequent homicides. If just one weak-gun-law state, Louisiana, were taken out of the equation, "the remaining nine lowest-regulation states have an average gun homicide rate of 2.8 per 100,000, which is 12.5% less than the average of the ten states with the strictest gun control laws," he found.

Public health researcher Garen Wintemute, who advocates stronger gun laws, assessed the spate of gun-law studies during an October interview with Slate and found it wanting: "There have been studies that have essentially toted up the number of laws various states have on the books and examined the association between the number of laws and rates of firearm death," said Wintemute, who is a medical doctor and researcher at the University of California, Davis. "That's really bad science, and it shouldn't inform policymaking."

Wintemute thinks the factor such studies don't adequately consider is the number of people in a state who have guns to begin with, which is generally not known or even well-estimated on levels smaller than national, though researchers have used proxies from subscribers to certain gun-related magazines (http://viglink.pgpartner.com/rd.php?r=32013&m=1388200029&q=n&rdgt=1452087392&it=1452519392&et=1452692192&priceret=1399.00&pg=~~3&k=9f09d835fe0c595450b73c2f891fdf8d&source=feed&url=http%3A%2F%2Frd%2Ebizrate%2Ecom%2Frd%3Ft%3Dhtt p%253A%252F%252Fwww%2Eopticsplanet%2Ecom%252Fsafar iland%2Dmagazine%2Ddoubler%2D100%2Dpack%2Dfor%2Eht ml%253Futm%5Fsource%253Dcse%2526utm%5Fmedium%253Dc pc%2526utm%5Fcampaign%253Dconnexity%26mid%3D32913% 26cat%5Fid%3D12150125%26atom%3D10468%26prod%5Fid%3 D%26oid%3D6168728784%26pos%3D1%26b%5Fid%3D18%26bid %5Ftype%3D10%26bamt%3Dd01d11c2abe783c3%26cobrand%3 D106%26ppr%3D4ae268c3cec2e11d%26mpid%3DDS%2DWS%2D7 742%2D215%2D2%2D100%26rf%3Dafp%26af%5Fassettype%5F id%3D12%26af%5Fcreative%5Fid%3D2932%26af%5Fid%3D61 3705%26af%5Fplacement%5Fid%3D1&st=feed&mt=~~~~~~~~n~~~)and percentages of suicides committed with guns to make educated guesses. "Perhaps these laws decrease mortality by decreasing firearm ownership, in which case firearm ownership mediates the association," Wintemute wrote in a 2013 JAMA Internal Medicine paper. "But perhaps, and more plausibly, these laws are more readily enacted in states where the prevalence of firearm ownership is low—there will be less opposition to them—and firearm ownership confounds the association."

What About Suicides?

Removing suicides from "gun deaths" is a basic step for assessing whether a gun regulation is producing its proposed effect, which in most cases is to reduce the number and severity of gun murders. But what do gun suicide rates tell us on their own?

Chiefly, that a gun is a very efficient means of killing yourself. According to the CDC's National Vital Statistics System, 21,175 Americans committed suicide with firearms in 2013, more than twice as many as used the next most popular suicide method, suffocation. There were nearly twice as many gun suicides that year as gun homicides.

Gun owners are more than three times as likely to commit suicide as non-gun owners, according to a 2014 Annals of Internal Medicine meta-analysis by Andrew Anglemyer and his colleagues. They looked at 14 previous observational studies regarding suicide from 1988 to 2005, statistically re-analyzing them all together. They found that the studies (with one exception) indicated that the people who committed suicide (whether with a gun or not) were more likely, usually far more likely, to own guns than the control group of people with similar characteristics who did not kill themselves. This does not, however, allow us to conclude that the gun's presence caused the suicide, since it's always possible that those more likely to be suicidal are more likely to want to own guns.

A 2002 study by Mark Duggan, now an economist at Stanford University, seems to endorse that conclusion, writing that "much of the positive relationship between firearms ownership and suicide is driven by selection—individuals with above average suicidal tendencies are more likely to own a gun and to live in areas with relatively many gun owners."

The U.S. currently ranks 47th in total suicide rates among nations according to World Health Organization (WHO) calculations, and 11th among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development nations. But our firearm suicide rates are among the highest in the world, likely behind only Uruguay. Nations with far tougher gun laws and far lower known prevalences of gun ownership, such as Japan, India, and Korea, have far higher overall suicide rates. This suggests that the percentage of firearms in America leads us to have more firearm suicides, but not necessarily more suicides overall.

Of the 56 nations for which the WHO felt it had accurate reported method data, hanging remained the most popular means of death, accounting for over 40 percent of suicides in 35 of them. At least one study—"Small Arms Mortality: Access to Firearms and Lethal Violence," by Mark Konty and Brian Schaefer, published in 2012 in the journal Sociological Spectrum—used "nation-level...data from the Small Arms Survey and the World Health Organization's measures of mortality" to "examine whether rates of small arm ownership have a positive effect on rates of homicide and suicide." Their conclusion: "Contrary to the opportunity model, the accessibility of firearms does not produce more homicide or suicide when other known factors are controlled for."

Still, evidence from the Anglemyer meta-analysis suggests that policies like waiting periods, trigger locks, or other "safe storage" requirements might prevent some suicides by inserting at least a little extra time to think things through.

Is Having a Gun in the Home Inherently Deadly?

The idea that keeping a gun in the home puts owners and their families at elevated risk first rose to prominence in a 1993 New England Journal of Medicine article by Arthur Kellermann and his colleagues. "Although firearms are often kept in homes for personal protection," they concluded, "this study shows that the practice is counterproductive."

The study has many flaws. In addition to the predictable failure to establish causality, there's a more glaring irregularity: Slightly less than half of the murders Kellermann studied were actually committed with a gun (substantially less than the national average in 1993 of around 71 percent). And even in those cases he failed to establish that the gun owners were killed with their own guns. If even a small percentage of them weren't, given that more than half of the murders were not committed with guns, the causal relevance of the harmed being gun owners is far less clear. (The study found that even more dangerous risks than having a gun at home included living alone, using drugs, or being a renter.)

[TheSanityAnnex]

A 2013 literature review in the journal Aggression and Violent Behavior, written by the University of Utrecht psychologist Wolfgang Stroebe, starts with Kellermann but rejects the idea that firearm possession is "a primary cause of either suicide or homicide." However, he writes, "since guns are more effective means for [actually killing someone] than poison or other weapons, the rate of firearm possession can be expected to be positively related to overall rates of suicide and homicide." But even then we can't be sure of causality, since guns might be the choice of people with more serious lethal intent, against themselves or others, to begin with.

Stroebe notes that the two major post-Kellermann studies most often used to demonstrate an association between gun ownership and risk of homicide shared one of Kellermann's fatal flaws: They offer no information about whether the gun used to kill the gun owners was their own. And despite Kellermann's finding that living alone was very risky, one of the follow-ups, a 2004 study by Linda Dahlberg and colleagues, found that it was only those with roommates who faced a higher risk of a specifically gun-related homicide.
Public health—long associated with the prevention of communicable diseases—got into the gun social science game with a vengeance in the 1990s. These scholars commonly viewed weapons as nothing more than vectors for harm; leading lights, such as a professor at Harvard's School of Public Health, could happily declare: "I hate guns and cannot imagine why anybody would want to own one. If I had my way, guns for sport would be registered, and all other guns would be banned." The CDC earlier in 1987 published a study openly recommending confiscating guns in the name of public health.

Public health scholars have continued to research from a place of hostility to firearms. An October 2015 special issue of the journal Preventive Medicine dedicated to guns began with an editorial that praised the role the public health movement played in spreading vaccines and reducing tobacco use, then cut to the quick: "It is the editorial position of this journal that there is one overtly visible and low-hanging fruit left in the tree, one that has surprisingly eluded concerted action from public health: gun violence prevention." Alas, there is an obstacle: the "peculiar proclivity that much of the American population has with firearms."

That proclivity is indeed vast. In addition to those owning guns for reasons of self-defense, there is the massive recreational component. A 2011 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service survey found that "13.7 million people, 6% of the U.S. population 16 years old and older, went hunting." The National Sporting Goods Association says there were at least 20 million recreational target shooters in the U.S. as of 2014.

Less quantifiable, but still quite real, are the sense of self-fulfillment and identity that guns and gun culture bring to Americans, the same way any other recreation from surfing to sailing to car culture does. Attempts to scientifically demonstrate the "social costs" of guns—for example, a 2006 Journal of Public Economics paper called "The Social Costs of Gun Ownership," by Duke's Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig (then of Georgetown)—typically don't rigorously address these benefits.

While most of the articles in the Preventive Medicine issue were standard anti-gun material, one piece perhaps inadvertently undermined a popular argument for expanding background checks. "Sources of Guns to Dangerous People: What We Learn By Asking Them," by Philip Cook and colleagues, surveyed a set of jailed criminals in Cook County, Illinois. It found that they "obtain most of their guns from their social network of personal connections. Rarely is the proximate source either direct purchase from a gun store, or theft." So the go-to remedy for gun control advocates seeking to limit homicides might not have much impact on actual gun criminals.

How Often Are Guns Used Defensively?

One of the most powerful narratives gun advocates have on their side is the image of a woman pulling a handgun out of her clutch to prevent a rape, or a man cocking a shotgun (http://viglink.pgpartner.com/rd.php?r=31737&m=1922571048&q=n&rdgt=1452087301&it=1452519301&et=1452692101&priceret=299.95&pg=~~3&k=18e735f9239c1d2f98d9e62e7dea91bd&source=feed&url=http%3A%2F%2Frd%2Ebizrate%2Ecom%2Frd%3Ft%3Dhtt p%253A%252F%252Fwww%2Eofferedby%2Enet%252Fsilver%2 52Frdm%2Ecfm%253Ftrkid%253D23375S1237847970%26mid% 3D54381%26cat%5Fid%3D12150125%26atom%3D10468%26pro d%5Fid%3D%26oid%3D6598994493%26pos%3D1%26b%5Fid%3D 18%26bid%5Ftype%3D0%26bamt%3Da5fedf14fd8fec0d%26co brand%3D106%26ppr%3D3aae2e7fe275c4ce%26mpid%3DG124 %2D965%2DNOSZ%26rf%3Dafp%26af%5Fassettype%5Fid%3D1 2%26af%5Fcreative%5Fid%3D2932%26af%5Fid%3D613705%2 6af%5Fplacement%5Fid%3D1&st=feed&mt=~~~~~~~~n~~~)at a burglar to defend his family.

Many social scientists who research this issue of "defensive gun use" (DGUs) say such scenarios are vanishingly rare, arguing that owning a gun is more likely to lead to harm for the owner than be his or her savior in a pinch.

There are no even halfway thorough documentations of every such event in America. They are not all going to end up reported in the media or to the police. The FBI and the CDC will have no reason to record or learn about the vast majority of times a crime was prevented by the potential victim being armed. So our best estimates come from surveys.

The survey work most famous for establishing a large number of DGUs—as many as 2.5 million a year—was conducted in 1993 by the Florida State University criminologists Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. Kleck says they found 222 bonafide DGUs directly via a randomized anonymous nationwide telephone survey of around 5,000 people. The defender had to "state a specific crime they thought was being committed" and to have actually made use of the weapon, even if just threateningly or by "verbally referring to the gun." Kleck insists the surveyors were scrupulous about eliminating any responses that seemed sketchy or questionable or didn't hold up under scrutiny.

Extrapolating from their results, Kleck and Gertz concluded that 2.2 to 2.5 million DGUs happened in the U.S. each year. In a 2001 edition of his book Armed, Kleck wrote that "there are now at least nineteen professional surveys, seventeen of them national in scope, that indicate huge numbers of defensive gun uses in the U.S." The one that most closely matched Kleck's methods, though the sample size was only half and the surveyors were not experienced with crime surveys, was 1994's National Survey of the Private Ownership of Firearms. It was sponsored by the U.S. Justice Department and found even more, when explicitly limiting them to ones that met the same criteria as Kleck's study—4.7 million (though the research write-up contains some details that may make you wonder about the accuracy of the reports, including one woman who reported 52 separate DGUs in a year).

The major outlier in the other direction, nearly always relied on for those downplaying the defensive benefits of guns, is the Bureau of Justice Statistics' National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), a nationally representative telephone survey, which tends to find less than 70,000 DGUs per year.

In the October 2015 special issue on "gun violence prevention," Preventive Medicine featured the latest and most thorough attempt to treat the NCVS as the gold standard for measuring defensive gun usage. The study, by Harvard's Hemenway and Sara J. Solnick of the University of Vermont, broke down the characteristics of the small number of DGUs recorded by the NCVS from 2007 to 2011. The authors found, among other things, that "Of the 127 incidents in which victims used a gun in self-defense, they were injured after they used a gun in 4.1% of the incidents. Running away and calling the police were associated with a reduced likelihood of injury after taking action; self-defense gun use was not." That sounds not so great, but Hemenway went on to explain that "attacking or threatening the perpetrator with a gun had no significant effect on the likelihood of the victim being injured after taking self-protective action," since slightly more people who tried non-firearm means of defending themselves were injured. Thus, for those who place value on self-defense and resistance over running, the use of a weapon doesn't seem too bad comparatively; Hemenway found that 55.9 percent of victims who took any kind of protective action lost property, but only 38.5 percent of people who used a gun in self-defense did.

Kleck thinks the National Crime Victimization Survey disagrees so much with his own survey because NCVS researchers aren't looking for DGUs, or even asking about them in so many words. The survey merely asks those who said "yes" to having been a crime victim whether they "did or tried to do" something about it. (You might not consider yourself a "victim" of a crime you have successfully prevented.) Kleck surmises that people might be reluctant to admit to possibly criminal action on their own part (especially since the vast majority of crime victimizations occurred outside the home, where the legality of gun possession might be questionable) to a government surveyor after they've given their name and address. And as he argued in a Politico article in February 2015, experienced surveyors in criminology are sure that "survey respondents underreport (1) crime victimization experiences, (2) gun ownership and (3) their own illegal behavior."

The social science quest for the One True DGU Number is interesting but ultimately irrelevant to those living out those specific stories, who would doubtless be perplexed to hear they shouldn't have the capacity to defend themselves with a gun because an insufficiently impressive number of other citizens had done the same. Even if the facts gleaned from gun social science were unfailingly accurate, that wouldn't make such policy decisions purely scientific.

Could More Guns Mean Less Crime?

The most well-known proponent of the idea that widespread private gun ownership might reduce the rates of violent crime is John Lott, a law and economics professor who has held positions at Yale, UCLA, and the University of Chicago, and who now works as an independent scholar with an organization he runs called the Crime Prevention Research Center. In 1998 Lott published the controversial book More Guns, Less Crime (University of Chicago Press), which was updated with a third edition in 2010. Lott's main argument is that pro-gun policies, such as shall-issue right-to-carry (RTC) laws, tend to lower most crime rates against person and property.
Violent crime has been going down in America in the era when right to carry has spread, but social science is more complicated than simply pointing to two quantities moving in opposite directions.

The most obvious and important fact in modern criminology—the huge decline in crime rates that started a quarter century ago—still lacks anything approaching a universally agreed-upon set of explanations. That fact should help contextualize the picayune and arcane level of argumentation over variables accounted for, specific data sets consulted, and number of different specifications tested when scholars try to buttress or refute Lott's thesis.

The range of contentious issues involved in Lott's techniques were summed up pretty thoroughly in a sympathetic but critical review of the third** edition in Regulation. The economist Stan Liebowitz of the University of Texas at Dallas wrote: "Should county level data or state level data be used? Should all counties (or states) be given equal weight? What control variables should be included in the regression? What violent crime categories should be used? How should counties that have zero crimes in a category, such as murder, be treated? How much time after passage of a law is enough to determine the effect of RTC laws? What is the appropriate time period for the analysis?"

Lott tried to demonstrate that on the county level, violent crime trends showed signs of improvement in counties that had or passed RTC laws compared to counties that had not, among other things checking both mean crime rates and the slope of crime rates before and after RTC passage. He attempted to control for many handfuls of other variables that might affect crime rates—indeed, some researchers accused him of accounting for too many variables, while others slammed him for failing to account for other factors, like conviction rates or length of prison sentences.

Trying to prove Lott wrong quickly became a cottage industry for others interested in the nexus of guns and public safety. The back-and-forths were so extensive that the latest edition of Lott's book is nearly twice as long, with his reactions to his critics.






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#3 (http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=255979&p=8358517&viewfull=1#post8358517)

[TheSanityAnnex]

The U.S. National Research Council (NRC), inspired in part by the Lott debate, assessed the state of the gun controversy in 2004's Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review. The council concluded Lott had not fully proved that RTC laws lowered crime significantly; it also denied that the laws had provably increased crime. "Answers to some of the most pressing questions cannot be addressed with existing data and research methods," study authors Charles F. Wellford, John V. Pepper, and Carol V. Petrie wrote, "because of the limitations of existing data and methods, [existing findings] do not credibly demonstrate a causal relationship between the ownership of firearms and the causes or prevention of criminal violence." That statement is perhaps the most important for people trying to use social science to make gun policy to remember, and there is no strong reason to believe the past decade of research has made it obsolete.

Lott has maintained for years that, even if his critics were right about his positive effects not being robust enough, if you are contemplating for public policy considerations whether expanded RTC is a good, bad, or neutral idea, no one had yet demonstrated that RTC laws made any relevant crime or safety outcome worse.

Then, in 2011, Abhay Aneja, John Donohue, and Alexandria Zhang came out with "The Impact of Right-to-Carry Laws and the NRC Report: Lessons for the Empirical Evaluation of Law and Policy," a paper in the American Law and Economics Review. Working at a very high level of statistical sophistication and running their data through a huge variety of different specifications and assumptions, the authors concluded that "aggravated assault rises when RTC laws are adopted. For every other crime category, there is little or no indication of any consistent RTC impact on crime." (While this kind of social science is always working with subtle attempts to figure out how much more certain quantities might have changed had things been different, it's worth noting that while the number of states with "shall issue" or unrestricted carry permit laws has more than doubled since 1991, aggravated assault rates overall have fallen by 44 percent since 1995.)

The study is suffused with an advanced sense of caution. As the authors write in a 2014 update of that study, "we show how fragile panel data evidence can be, and how a number of issues must be carefully considered when relying on these methods to study politically and socially explosive topics with direct policy implications." They stress "the difficulties in ascertaining the causal effects of legal interventions, and the dangers that exist when policy-makers can simply pick their preferred study from among a wide array of conflicting estimates." And "a wide array of conflicting estimates" is definitely what confronts anyone wading into the social science related to guns and gun laws.

Researchers can and should try to go beyond mere binaries about laws existing or not existing when making subtle assessments of causation. Lott, for example, gets as granular as he can when studying RTC laws, considering not just whether they exist or not, but how easy it is to actually obtain a permit where it's legal to do so. If it's more expensive and time-consuming to get one even in a "shall issue" state, that will likely blunt the law's causal effects at least somewhat.

Along the way, Lott has tried to compile the number of permit holders nationally. He figures the total is 12.8 million, up from 4.6 million as recently as 2007. And now six** states allow so-called "constitutional carry" without a permit, creating a pretty much uncountable body of potential RTC practitioners. We still don't know how many people with gun permits actually carry their weapons, and we have no idea about the end of the causal chain of speculations about how such laws affect crime: what potential criminals believe about how many citizens are carrying guns.

Do 'Common-Sense Gun Laws' Work?

At the top of the list of "common-sense gun safety laws" is expanding background checks beyond the current requirements for federally licensed dealers. The underlying belief here is that the various classes of federally prohibited gun owners, such as felons or those adjudicated mentally ill or known to be drug addicts, should never be able to use "loopholes" such as buying from a private citizen to get a gun (even though the vast majority of all those categories of people would never misuse a weapon).

An April 2015 study by Daniel Webster and three colleagues for the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research earned positive press for claiming that the tougher laws Connecticut passed in 1995 (requiring a background check and a permit for any gun purchase from any source) lowered the state's gun murder rate by 40 percent.

Since Connecticut and most of the rest of the country were all enjoying huge murder reductions in the years after that law went into effect, the researchers couldn't meaningfully compare what happened in Connecticut with what happened in the rest of the country. They needed to compare Connecticut's post-law results to what they think would have happened with gun murders in the state had the law not passed. So they created a statistical model of a "synthetic Connecticut" that was 72 percent comprised of Rhode Island, based in essence on the principle that past results would guarantee future performance, since in the past Rhode Island's murder rates and changes tended to match Connecticut's. Then they compared the two states from 1996-2005. The results? "Connecticut Handgun Licensing Law Associated With 40 Percent Drop in Gun Homicides" blared the Johns Hopkins press release headline.

Rhode Island's murder rate went up unusually after 1997 (the researchers don't speculate on why that might have been), thus creating some "extra" murders (presuming that choices to murder in Rhode Island would have for some reason created a proportional number of choices to murder in Connecticut) that we can credit Connecticut with having evaded thanks to the more stringent gun law.

But what happens when you extend the analytic period beyond the arbitrary cutoff date of 2005? From 2005 to 2012, Connecticut's gun murders per 100,000 people increased 66 percent, from 2.05 to 3.41, while Rhode Island's went down 20 percent, from 1.83 to 1.45. It seems quite premature to take Webster and his team's counterfactual guess about expected murder rates over one 10-year period as establishing any reliable causal knowledge about the effects of tougher gun purchasing laws. Yet that study was used to help buttress a proposed federal law the week it went public, trying to pressure other states into following Connecticut's lead on background checks and permits, given what we now "know" about how life-saving that move had been.

Webster and his colleagues produced a similar but more rigorous study in 2014. It involved actual counts and not assumptions about what might have happened in a counterfactual, and it didn't stop looking at forward data at the most convenient time for its conclusions. This study tried to prove that Missouri's 2007 repeal of its "permit to purchase" law led to a 16 percent increase in murder rates there. Lots of other factors were controlled for, and the numbers indeed showed higher murder rates compared to the U.S. average at the time after the permit law was repealed.
It's tricky to credit the permit-to-purchase repeal with causing that rise, because in the four years prior to eliminating the law, Missouri's murder rates had already gone up 15 percent while the national one had stayed essentially the same. This suggests that unaccounted factors influenced Missouri's rising murder rate both before and after the law changed.

Even if both studies had been flawless, seeing one thing happening in one place over a limited time is usually not sufficient to establish a scientifically valid causal relationship that policy makers can confidently expect to see replicated elsewhere. Aaron Brown, the chief risk manager at AQR Capital Management and a statistician with interest in gun issues, has lamented that the overarching problem with most of these attempts to learn what effect any element of gun prevalence or gun laws has on any real-world outcome is that there simply aren't enough varied data to be sure of anything.

There's another very likely step between "law exists" and "law changes behavior" that most gun social science doesn't, and likely really can't, account for. After Webster's Connecticut study appeared, I asked him: Since you are presuming a strong causal effect from the law's existence, how did you account for how stringently or effectively the law is enforced? If people continued to blithely sell weapons without background checks or permits, that would blunt the notion the law would have such a strong effect on gun murder rates.

Webster's emailed reply: "Virtually no studies of gun control law take enforcement into account because data are lacking and we don't really know the degree to which deterrence (people not wanting to violate the law) is a function of levels of enforcement." Unknowables shadow the causal chain in nearly all social science involving any law's effects on behavior.

Elusive Knowledge

The Duke economist Philip J. Cook put the knowledge problem well in a 2006 Journal of Policy Analysis and Management article. "Policy analysts are trained to critique evaluation evidence, pointing out potential flaws," Cook and co-author Jens Ludwig wrote, "but are perhaps not so well prepared to judge whether the preponderance of the evidence points in one direction or another."

In other words, the most convincing element of any gun study tends to be the part where one scientist is explaining why another one's causal conclusions don't hold up. The parts where they claim strong or definite policy-relevant causal knowledge tend to be much more questionable.

Cook and Ludwig, in their aforementioned 2006 paper "The Social Costs of Gun Ownership," look at this loose link between scientific knowledge and policy differently. They grant that perhaps we're asking more of science than it can give to the policy debate. But that shouldn't stop us from using it to promote more gun law interventions, they maintain. "Suppose [a certain intervention] implies the treatment reduces gun crime by 25% but the p-value on this point estimate is just .15, short of the conventional .05 cutoff," they wrote. "Any academic referee worth her salt would reject a paper submitted for scientific publication that claimed this intervention 'worked.'"

But, Cook and Ludwig wonder, are those scientific standards too rigorous for statecraft? "Would that referee really want to live in a jurisdiction where this evidence persuaded policymakers that they should not adopt the new treatment, but rather stick with the status quo?"

As Harvard's Hemenway explained to me, the confidence intervals of the social sciences in colloquial terms demand a belief that the chances are 19 to 1, or at worst 10 to 1, for you being right about your conclusion before you accept it as provisionally verified. Hemenway also believes, given the good he thinks can come from legal interventions about guns, that we don't need to be that certain we are right for policy work.

But that's easier to accept if you don't value any particular benefits to relatively unrestricted private gun ownership—scientific, constitutional, or just personal. Some researchers, particularly in the public health field, act as if there were no values to balance on the other side of the policy goal of making it harder for people to get guns.

Whether you consider the associations and causations supposedly demonstrated by gun-related social sciences to be proven beyond whatever level of doubt you see as appropriate, applying those stipulated facts to policy questions can never itself be a purely mathematical or scientific process. It's politics all the way down, and that politics is less informed by rigorous and certain knowledge than President Obama thinks.

[boutons_deux]

simple truth, few words: More guns equals more gun violence

[TheSanityAnnex]

simple truth, few words: More guns equals more gun violence
Simple refutation: more guns in America than ever before and gun violence still on the decline.

[TheSanityAnnex]

simple truth, few words: More guns equals more gun violence
Do you ever tire of bitch slapping yourself?

But do the number of guns in circulation correlate with the number of gun deaths? Start by looking at the category of gun death that propels all gun policy discussion: homicides. (Gun suicides, discussed further below, are a separate matter whose frequent conflation with gun crime introduces much confusion into the debate.)

In 1994 Americans owned around 192 million guns, according to the U.S. Justice Department's National Institute of Justice. Today, that figure is somewhere between 245 and 328 million, though as Philip J. Cook and Kristin A. Goss in their thorough 2014 book The Gun Debate: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press) wisely concluded, "the bottom line is that no one knows how many firearms are in private hands in the United States." Still, we have reason to believe gun prevalence likely surpassed the one-gun-per-adult mark early in President Barack Obama's first term, according to a 2012 Congressional Research Service report that relied on sales and import data.

Yet during that same period, per-capita gun murders have been cut almost in half.

One could argue that the relevant number is not the number of guns, but the number of people with access to guns. That figure is also ambiguous. A Gallup poll in 2014 found 42 percent of households claiming to own a gun, which Gallup reports is "similar to the average reported to Gallup over the past decade." But those looking for a smaller number, to downplay the significance of guns in American life, can rely on the door-to-door General Social Survey, which reported in 2014 that only 31 percent of households have guns, down 11 percentage points from 1993's 42 percent. There is no singular theory to explain that discrepancy or to be sure which one is closer to correct—though some doubt, especially as gun ownership continues to be so politically contentious, that people always reliably report the weapons they own to a stranger literally at their door.

The gun murder rate in 1993 was 7.0 per 100,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. (Those reports rely on death certificate reporting, and they tend to show higher numbers than the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting program, though both trend the same.) In 2000 the gun murder rate per 100,000 was 3.8. By 2013, the rate was even lower, at 3.5, though there was a slight upswing in the mid-00s.

This simple point—that America is awash with more guns than ever before, yet we are killing each other with guns at a far lower rate than when we had far fewer guns—undermines the narrative that there is a straightforward, causal relationship between increased gun prevalence and gun homicide. Even if you fall back on the conclusion that it's just a small number of owners stockpiling more and more guns, it's hard to escape noticing that even these hoarders seem to be harming fewer and fewer people with their weapons, casting doubt on the proposition that gun ownership is a political crisis demanding action.

[TeyshaBlue]

TB can come up only with ADA 25 fucking years ago as a positive Repug contribution, which of course is totally offset by Iraq, Afghanistan, economic mismanagement, job destruction, donut holes, Medicare Advantage, increased abortions, accelerating inequality, austerity, etc, etc! :lol
Rent free.

[boutons_deux]

Simple refutation: more guns in America than ever before and gun violence still on the decline.

you're total obsessed with gun bullshit.

inclining, declining, USA's gun violence, bloodshed far exceeds that of any other industrial country. so, GFY

[Winehole23]

this

a joke @ Boo being insane.if Obama's executive orders keep more handguns out of the hands of psychologically unstable people (like boutons,) that isn't a net plus in your book?

[TheSanityAnnex]

you're total obsessed with gun bullshit.

inclining, declining, USA's gun violence, bloodshed far exceeds that of any other industrial country. so, GFY

Stop posting lies and I'll stop calling out your bullshit.

[TheSanityAnnex]

if Obama's executive orders keep more handguns out of the hands of psychologically unstable people (like boutons,) that isn't a net plus in your book?
Actions, not orders.

Keeping guns out of the hands of the boutons of the world is a net plus, but the impact will be insignificant. The #1 cause of gun homicides is gang violence, address the root of that and you'll see significant decreases in gun homicides. It can be done and has been done, but it takes an extreme commitment and a lot of time and resources from community leaders, pastors, and police. I posted an article on some project, can't think of the name right now, and the success they had was incredible.

[CosmicCowboy]

if Obama's executive orders keep more handguns out of the hands of psychologically unstable people (like boutons,) that isn't a net plus in your book?

I guess it depends on the threshold. Mental illness isn't like hepatitis where you can do a blood test. Lets take veterans for example. A very small minority of soldiers treated for PTSD are actually a danger to the public or themselves. If they knew they would lose their right to own firearms for seeking treatment and choose to be silent instead and not get treatment, is that a good thing?

[boutons_deux]

"The #1 cause of gun homicides is gang violence"

:lol and what if the USA had made guns so hard to get, the gangs would be gunless? :lol

even the fucking cops lose 1000s, 10Ks?, of their own fucking guns :lol

USA is inundated with GUNS FOR PROFIT, not because of the 2nd Amendment

[TheSanityAnnex]

"The #1 cause of gun homicides is gang violence"

:lol and what if the USA had made guns so hard to get, the gangs would be gunless? :lol

even the fucking cops lose 1000s, 10Ks?, of their own fucking guns :lol

USA is inundated with GUNS FOR PROFIT, not because of the 2nd Amendment


Revisionist what ifs solve nothing.

[boutons_deux]

Revisionist what ifs solve nothing.

placing the blame and blood on the hands of you perps.

I've said America is past the tipping point on guns. The public health disaster all y'all gun fellators caused is unending, beyond remediation. Death by gun is basic to The American Way of Life.

[TheSanityAnnex]

placing the blame and blood on the hands of you perps.

I've said America is past the tipping point on guns. The public health disaster all y'all gun fellators caused is unending, beyond remediation. Death by gun is basic to The American Way of Life.:lol you blame peaceful avid enthusiasts instead of the violent 8% of the population accounting for 50% of the murders. We are past the tipping point of guns in circulation, no shit. The guns don't shoot on their own, a person is held responsible for pulling the trigger, not the NRA, not white people, not gun fell store etc. Millions and millions of people own guns and do not use them to kill other people. Your blame and excuses are pathetic and they lead me to believe you really don't give a shit about all the young black men that are killed each year by a gun. In all your years of spamming your anti gun rhetoric you certainly haven't come up a meaningful way to stop it. You are a fucking fraud.