Gun laws and control

[Vyn]

I have a question. It will be at the end of my setup.

When I was growing up, the concern was "Saturday Night Specials" that crooks would buy to facilitate their crook endeavors.

Otherwise, firearms were not a concern. In high school, anyone who drove a truck generally had a gun rack, with guns in them. If you didn't drive a truck, you'd have them in your trunk or backseat. We'd sometimes go hunting before school. Nobody cared or was concerned.

Being kids, there'd sometimes be fighting. No one even thought about using a weapon, certainly not a firearm.

Today, there are grammar school kids that get expelled from school for so much as eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in such a way that it briefly resembles a pistol (until the next bite is taken).

What happened over the past 50 years in the USA?

[Typhon]

^^^^^^
Tough to explain.  Having never had children myself, I have paid very little attention to the changes in society in the thinking amongst teenagers and children.  But you are right about how different it was years ago.  I definitely did my share of fighting when I was in grammar and middle school.  I never really started anything, but if anyone picked on me or tried to bully me, I would always give them a fight instead of backing down.  However, we always fought with our fists.  You would be considered a coward if you used any type of weapon, even just a knife.  Today, using a weapon has become the norm.  I don't know why.

[Typhon]

Banning those guns is irrelevant.

Why?

They kill the least number of people.

The fact of the matter is that the country with the highest death rate per million people from mass public shootings from 2009 to 2015 is NORWAY. 

If that's a fact, we did have one incident that's pulling the stats. Overall there's very little gun violence at all here.

If there is very little gun violence there, then it is because there are very few people there, not guns.

[Typhon]

^^^^^^
The fact of the matter is that the country with the highest death rate per million people from mass public shootings from 2009 to 2015 is NORWAY. 

This is a good example of a statement that is true but misleading.

Generally, statistics only work with high numbers. You know, if Person A rolls 2 dices 2 times in her entire life, and the results are "4" and "3 respectively", while Person B rolls 2 dices a Million times and her average result is "7", it would be statistically correct yet totally insignificant to say that that Person B's average result is twice as high as Person A's average result. Accordingly, since mass shootings are a relatively rare type of crime (especially in a country like Norway), statistics about them can be extremely misleading. That's one reason why I think that limiting a discussion of gun control to mass shootings is a very bad idea. Murders in general happen MUCH more frequently than mass shootings, so statistics about murder rates are much more likely to yield meaningful results.

This is all correct, but I must clear up a few points:

1st - I was talking about mass shootings because that's the only time there is an uproar to limit guns , even though they are responsible for the fewest gun deaths.

2nd - I know a mass shooting is extremely rare in Norway, but they are extremely rare in almost every country.

3rd - "dice" is 2 or more.  It is the plural.  The singular is die.  So you can roll a pair of dice or roll just 1 die. (no disrespect intended, just wanted you to know)

[Sabbabbath]

If there is very little gun violence there, then it is because there are very few people there, not guns.

Typhon, I guess you missed some posts above: It has already been established that what was compared between the US and Norway wasn't absolute NUMBERS of murders but murder RATES. Yes, of course there are much less people murdered in Norway than in the US because Norway is smaller, but that's simply not what we were discussing about. Murder rates are murders per year per 100,000 inhabitants. Thus, in Norway, about 0.6 murders happen per year per 100,000 inhabitants; in the USA it is about 5 per year per 100,000 (2011 was an exception because of the Breivik mass shooting).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/oct/10/world-murder-rate-unodc

So, no: the difference in murder rates canNOT be explained by the difference in the size of the populations.

P.s.: Thanks for correcting me on the "dice" issue, it's appreciated. 

P.p.s.: Once again I have to say I find it amazing that we can have this kind of discussion without any bullying, evangelising, bragging or patronising going on. 

[Billy Underdog]

They kill the least number of people.

They still kill, though.

If there is very little gun violence there, then it is because there are very few people there, not guns.

Actually there's alot of guns relative to people here, but it's also pretty striktly controlled who get's them. That isn't to say that criminals don't get them. But for various reasons there's less crime here too, relative to the population. Keep repeating that there's few people here is a very poor argument...

[Typhon]

If there is very little gun violence there, then it is because there are very few people there, not guns.

Actually there's alot of guns relative to people here, but it's also pretty striktly controlled who get's them. That isn't to say that criminals don't get them. But for various reasons there's less crime here too, relative to the population. Keep repeating that there's few people here is a very poor argument...

But you are making my point.  Less guns does not mean less crime.

[Sabbabbath]

But you are making my point.  Less guns does not mean less crime.

In my understanding, Bill's suggestion in the beginning of this thread was not to reduce the number of guns, but to make access to them more difficult. Countries where that is the case, like Norway, Germany and Australia, have MUCH lower murder rates than the USA.

I knew WW2 and Germany would pop up as an example when i wrote that about the U.S., but balancing the 5-6 yrs WW2 went on against the fact that the U.S. have more or less been in a continuous war since then, and since WW1 up till now more often than not having interfered in conflicts that's stricktly none of their business, i know which way my scale tip, regardless of death tolls.

I think that's a mistake. The relatively short period in which the Nazis ruled, mass-murdered and fought their wars is not at all an indicator that their war crimes are any less serious than those of the US. Quite the contrary - it shows the Nazis' huge efficiancy and effectiveness in killing: they murdered (and tortured) such an inconceivably high number of people IN SUCH A SMALL PERIOD OF TIME, plus they made it very clear they intended to go on like that. Just imagine they hadn't been defeated and would have continued to kill at a similar rate. And that's not far-fetched: e.g. had the German Reich not made some of the many mistakes it did (luckily) make regarding war strategy and decisions, it could have won the war against the USSR; thus the Germans would have been able to kill ALL Jews and Roma living in Europe and the territory of the USSR and also continue the enforcement of their "Hunger Plan" <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan>, thus starving even many more Millions of Slavs to death than they already did; I don't even want to start imagining all the other horrors that the resulting world Reich of Germany would have brought to humanity.

Even without thinking through that scenario, it makes no sense at all to ignore death tolls when ranking war crimes. Demanding to not REDUCE judgement on war crimes to counting death tolls is one thing. Demanding that death tolls should be IGNORED is a very different thing. You would have to give very good reasons for such a peculiar claim.

Please note that none of this does imply that you should not talk about the USA's (or any other nation's) politics of war and its victims. What I am criticising is solely your statemant that the USA are "the biggest warcriminals the last century and a half". Not only would 99% of German Neonazis wholeheartedly agree with that claim (which is in most cases a pretty good indicator that a claim is false), but it is simply unfounded. 

[Zzzptm]

What happened over the past 50 years in the USA?

This really is a good question, and I think it's a question we have to ask.

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

These do not include incidents of criminal activity in which there were 4 or more casualties, such as gang firefights, drug deals gone bad, or the like.

I sorted by date. Weapons used are predominantly handguns and semi-automatic longarms.

The first one, The Camden Shootings, was done by a person judged criminally insane. Next was the 1966 UT Tower shootings, with Charles Whitman posthumously judged criminally insane. Next three major ones are in the 1980s, then 4 of the top 20 in the 1990s, five in the 2000s, and nine in the current decade.

Those are just the major ones... https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/ has data from 1982 forward, with links to CSV and other formats of the data. It is very detailed and well worth studying to see how things changed over time, if they did.

Of the 97 mass shootings recorded, 8 were in the 80s, 23 in the 90s, 20 in the 2000s, and 46(!) in the current decade. 3 involved female shooters. 52 had prior signs of mental health issues. If males with prior signs of mental health issues were not allowed to possess or access firearms, 51 of those 97 mass shootings might not have happened.

Remember - we know we can't eliminate them, but the question is how to *reduce* them. So there's one school of thought about reducing total number of guns, and another about improving mental health services. A note on that last one... I've got a friend whose son is constantly in and out of psych wards because the most his insurance will allow is a 2-week voluntary commitment. Once that young man turns 26, he's off my friend's insurance and, unless he's a ward of the state, is at risk of being a danger to himself and others. The argument for better mental health resources quickly turns to better health resources - and that quickly leads to universal health care considerations.

29 of 97 mass shootings were performed by persons who did not obtain weapons legally, where it is unknown if the weapons were legally obtained, if the legal status of the weapons used is TBD, or, in the case of the Texas First Baptist Church Massacre, the weapons were obtained after a failure of the background check process. The other 68 mass shootings were performed with legally-obtained weapons.

57 of the mass shootings were performed by whites. 16 by blacks - who make up 13% of the US population - and 7 by Hispanics - another 13% of the US population. Proportionally, though, Asians are over-represented with their 7 mass shooters.

Overwhelmingly, semiautomatic handguns were the weapons used for mass shootings. Lynyrd Skynyrd was right, it seems. Although assault rifles and semiautomatic rifles figure prominently in the most severe mass shootings, the semiautomatic handguns are used most frequently. If you are a "reduce gun availability" proponent, you will likely want to include those things in your attentions.

To be sure, the highest total casualties result from shootings involving assault and semiautomatic rifles, as those weapons are designed to maximize injuries, rather than fatalities.

Only 4 shootings involved solely shotguns and 23 shootings (including those 4) included a shotgun as one of the weapons used.

For 64 of the mass shootings, we know where the weapons were obtained. 5 of them involved weapons stolen from relatives. 3 involved weapons stolen from individuals, including one from a police officer. 2 were with issued weapons, 3 were purchased from individuals or gifts, and one was assembled from component parts. The other 50 were purchased at gun stores, gun websites, gun shows, or sporting goods stores.

16 were done in California, 10 in Florida, 8 in Texas. 4 in New York, which surprised me for a state with that large of a population.

The other 59 break out so: 6 in Washington state, 6 in Colorado, 4 in Wisconsin, 3 in Penn., 3 in Conn., 2 each in Nevada, Ohio, Michigan, Oregon, South Carolina, Minnesota, Georgia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Illinois. All other states have one or zero mass shootings since 1982. 16 states have not had any, including many sparsely populated states such as Wyoming and Alaska. Densely populated states not on the list include New Jersey and Rhode Island.

[Zzzptm]

Continuing with a quest to answer Vyn's question, I found this: http://www.norc.org/PDFs/GSS%20Reports/GSS_Trends%20in%20Gun%20Ownership_US_1972-2014.pdf

Peak gun ownership rates were actually 1977-1980. Current gun ownership rates are down considerably since then, which means that the guns owned in the USA are concentrated in proportionally fewer households than 40 years ago. The number of adults living in a household with guns was 51% in the late 70s, and is around 32% today.

About 30% of all adults owned a gun in 1985. That number is around 22% today. Part of this decline is attributed to a decline in the popularity of hunting.

Whites are more likely to own guns, and those with higher incomes are more likely to own guns. Rural households are more likely to own guns than urban households.

By age, younger people are now much less likely to own guns than older people: it used to be more evenly distributed across ages.

[Typhon]

^^^^^^
More evidence that the problem is NOT the number of guns out there. 

[Zzzptm]

^^^^^^
More evidence that the problem is NOT the number of guns out there. 

I was thinking along those lines... I want to pull numbers on the number of gun stores / dealers per (x) cohort in the USA, as compared to the same rate in other nations. It may be the general availability of such weapons, given that most shootings were done with legally obtained firearms.

[Zzzptm]

Also a question of weapon types: after a school shooting in the UK in 1996, that nation banned ownership of all semiautomatic weapons as well as pump-action shotguns. As noted above, the UK now has an incredibly low rate of death per 100K individuals due to firearms. That semiautomatic ban was followed by a ban of all handguns.

I would note also that the rate of firearm usage in criminal activity in the UK is today roughly half of what it was in 1990. And a note on criminal firearm usage in the UK: most of those are imported, and had been imported, and were typically outside the typical network of gun owners/dealers. The ban on firearms basically denied them as weapons to the hobbyist killers, as it were, as opposed to the professional ones. These bans also reduce the use of firearms in suicides, accidents, domestic disputes, and so forth. Since 1996, there was only one mass shooting in the UK, which happened in 2010.

In Japan, only two people were killed by guns in 2006. In 2007, there were 22 total gun fatalities and that kicked off a national debate on increasing the severity of their already-draconian gun laws. To be sure, Japanese culture is quite different from America, but they do have very low rates of death due to guns, very low gun ownership rates, and an intentionally frustrating process to apply for a shotgun permit that is designed to keep all but the most determined from getting a shotgun.

The Port Howard shooting in Australia resulted in PM John Howard asking two weeks later to make major changes to Australian gun ownership. To quote from the article I will cite below, "There have been no mass shootings in the 20 years since Port Arthur; in the 20 years before the massacre there had been 13."

Germany actually has a per-person ownership rate similar to the 5-to-1 I noted above for US persons that own firearms. Police there estimate, however, that in addition to about 5 million legal weapons, there are another 20 million illegal weapons. There, in 2002, a former student returned to his school with a weapon and a massacre resulted. Germany then enacted a law that required anyone under 25 to be certified by a psychiatric exam, which includes attention to anger management and personality evaluation. Persons over 25 involved in certain types of incidents, such as drunk driving, also must go through that examination to be permitted to purchase or retain firearms. In 2008, Germany added a condition that inherited guns had to have a blocking mechanism that makes them for show only.

A school shooting in 2009 by a person who obtained weapons from his parents' collection led to further restrictions. It is now harder to own multiple weapons in Germany, all legal weapons are in a national database, and police may execute unannounced spot checks on weapons stored in homes to verify that they are properly stored.

Above items from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/15/so-america-this-is-how-you-do-gun-control

[Zzzptm]

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/how-do-u-s-gun-laws-compare-to-other-countries

^ Now looking there.

The USA has 5% of the world's population and an estimated 35-50% of the world's legally owned firearms.

Comparing US laws to other nations... the tl;dr of the above article...

Canada: bans on high-capacity magazines, semiautomatic weapons are "restricted" but not prohibited.

Australia: bans on semiautomatic weapons, persons desiring to purchase a weapon must demonstrate a need for the weapon. Needs can include target shooting and sport.

Israel: civilian ownership of weapons is highly restrictive. Most adults, however, get to put their hands on assault rifles when they do reservist duty, which is compulsory.

UK: semiautomatic weapons banned, nearly all handguns banned.

Norway: a mass shooting in 2011 was used by gun control opponents in the USA to point out that Norway's rather strict controls do not prevent mass shootings, but there were also those who argued that Norway's laws did not go far enough. No significant changes in the wake of the 2011 shooting.

I have not read through all the material at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_of_gun_laws_by_nation , but include the link because it may prove pertinent for the discussion here.

[Sabbabbath]

^^^^^^
More evidence that the problem is NOT the number of guns out there. 

Honestly, Typh, do you have ANY interest in reducing violent crime at all? And if yes, what's your suggestion? All you have been contributing to this thread is the repeated claim that the number of guns is not the problem. You have totally ignored my post where I pointed out that the number is NOT what most people in this threat are talking about and that, instead, we are talking about measures that would restrict the ACCESS to guns. People here have already presented numerous pieces of evidence for the claim that that would indeed help to reduce the number of murders. Don't you care? I don't understand that. I thought we were having a constructive discussion here.