I see no mechanism by which those laws would reduce mass shootings. A mass shooter would simply ignore them.
The other policies you mention may be more relevant, but it goes to show how easy it is to conflate various kinds of harm and what laws might prevent it.
I think gun owners would be much more receptive to regulation if they felt people were genuinely trying to separate narrow and effective laws from broad infringements that annoy many and accomplish little. But it's hard to get past the "more guns laws the better" mentality that is so wodespread.
On virtue of how many shootings have begun "without warning", the cultural context in canada versus the us is quite different. The expectation of actions when you see a firearm is very different in these two countries!
- in the US, someone with an openly carried firearm may be transporting it or any number of innocent use cases
- in Canada, someone with an openly carried firearm is already committing a crime. And, that crime is generally of no personal benefit to them^, which is a huge warning sign. They are likely not considering the law in their actions.
If I saw a person with a gun in the US, I would quickly walk away. If I saw a person with a gun in Canada, I would run.
>gun owners would be much more receptive to regulation if they felt people were genuinely trying to separate narrow and effective laws from broad infringements that annoy many and accomplish little
Gun owners consistently misrepresent and come up with inconsistent interpretations of any gun control. The bar is never high enough, the logic never sound enough. The "broad infringements" proposed are never, and will never be, good enough. I find your statement to be a bit disingenuous in that regard.
^ while protest is a valid case imo, protesting by (for example) carrying a gun onto a school campus, grocery store, or movie theater is quite different than in a park with other protestors. Context matters, even here!
Maybe sometimes, but there's also gun laws like in California that affect large populations of gun owners. I don't think they're making their dissatisfaction and confusion with the gun laws up. Owning a gun in the US isn't very simple; different states have wildly different laws you have to observe, and those are in effect at airports as well.
I don't think it's wise to say, "they just don't understand" to the people who actually have to live with the laws.
As a gun owner, I do think there's reasonable forms of gun control. I don't mind having my background checked or paying a tax stamp. I don't mind psychological evaluations or closing gun show loopholes. Restricting guns, ammo, attachments, magazine sizes etc are not effective forms of gun control imo.
Of course restricting magazines and accessories is not effective. They're only brought into the argument by people who don't want effective gun control.
But restricting guns and ammo is absolutely effective. The UK has a sixtieth of the rate of gun deaths compared to the US. And the UK is no paragon. Its rate is much higher than it should be, in my view, because a lot of gun crime is gang related so does not get the attention it deserves. A more reasonable rate would be closer to Japan's which is about a quarter of the UK's. Much lower and you likely start requiring genuinely authoritarian regimes such as Singapore or HK.
The US could absolutely get to saner gun crime and homicide levels if there was any real will to do so but there isn't. Of course it wouldn't happen overnight but it doesn't have to.
The real problem, in my opinion, is that the US is so de-sensitised to extreme violence that they can never have the equivalent of the collective traumatisation that the UK had after Dunblane. That was the spur we needed to put rational gun laws in place. The balance in the US is so far out of kilter that the seesaw is buried in concrete. Even biblical massacres of innocents can't shift it. So very very sad.
Why?
And the argument of "it's too hard because of the volume already sold" doesn't wash.
Is your rebuttal that there are laws?
>"they just don't understand" to the people who actually have to live with the laws
No, I just don't care. Guns should be a utility.
>As a gun owner
So, I guess my question to you is: aside from home defense (which surely requires a limited amount of rounds) and practice (which can be done by a range selling and enforcing no carry out of rounds, like in many other countries), what is your daily use case for firearms?
2.) Gun owners defined as "people who own guns" have actually quite high support for regulations. There is strong lobby and minority that does not support them, but they dont represent all or even most people who own guns.
I don’t think this is that difficult. Don’t bring a gun to an airport. If you must for transport, arrange for a professional to do it for you. If you can’t afford that, you don’t have a good reason to travel with a firearm.
Gun control advocates consistently fail to understand the things they are attempting to regulate, and fail to provide rational justifications for how their restrictions would actually promote public safety.
The poster to whom I replied was discussing concealed carry and transport in a car.
Your reply to me is nonsensical. If someone is intent on harm, they are unlikely to broadcast it with open carry.
> I think gun owners would be much more receptive to regulation if they felt people were genuinely trying to separate narrow and effective laws from broad infringements that annoy many and accomplish little.
From both positions, I’d favor regulation that explicitly aims to limit gun possession as much as legally possible. The problem with “more gun laws the better” is everyone knows it’s bullshit that accomplishes nothing, no one benefits, and every terrible incentive is incentivized.
They should come for the guns and get as many as possible, with as much solid legal theory backing it as they can. They’re never going to convince the fringe, but they’ll convince the vast majority of people who agree with regulation that they mean it and intend to be effective. Anything short of that is political theater.
Take a cold hard look at the institutions that fail children so spectacularly that they create mass murderers at a historically unprecedented rate.
Just looking at the number of guns is very shortsighted and makes it sound you're focusing on "punishing sinful people" instead of making reasoned policy decision.
Belgium:
"Until 2006, Belgium had surprisingly lax gun control laws. After a man shot two innocent people, however, the nation become increasingly concerned with the illegal flow of firearms. The 2006 legislation requires gun permits to be renewed more frequently and sought to prevent the impulsive purchase of guns by requiring prospective gun owners to go through a three-month process which includes an extensive police screening. Six years later, in 2012, the European Union passed regulation aimed at interrupting the transportation of guns across borders by requiring exporters to obtain a special license.
Today in Belgium, it's not easy to own any type of gun, unless it's a rifle or shotgun. The nation prohibits the private possession of fully automatic weapons, and permits ownership of semi-automatic weapons only in certain case scenarios. Furthermore, the private possession of handguns is only allowed after obtaining special permission from the government. In the country, long guns, such as rifles and shot guns, are the only guns not prohibited by the state. According to GunPolicy.org, these regulations categorize Belgium as a country that has "restrictive" gun control laws."
https://www.bustle.com/articles/149385-what-are-brussels-gun...
Czech Republic:
"The most recent statistics show that on a per-capita basis Czechs own about one-tenth the number of guns Americans.... Still, owning a gun in the Czech Republic isn't so easy. Permits are for 10 years and are reviewed after five years. People have to pass a written and practical test, as well as a medical check that includes mental health, and a clean criminal record...
Mass shootings are rare in the Czech Republic, but not unknown. In 2019, seven people plus the gunman were killed in Ostrava, and in 2015, eight people plus the gunman were killed in Uherský Brod. There was also a case in 2009 with four victims plus the gunman."
https://www.expats.cz/czech-news/article/how-does-gun-owners...
Also, use of gun in self-defense is way less permissive then in USA. The stuff that pass as self defense in USA simply would not in Czech - you truly have to have no other choice.
And yet, there does seem to be a strong correlation between “countries with stricter gun control laws” and “countries that have low rates of gun-related deaths and homicides”.
Canada has between 6-8X fewer gun fatalities per capita compared to the United States - both homicides and unintentional/accidental gun death rates are much lower. [1]
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm...
Finding and fixing the causes of these is a much harder problem. NYC did a lot under Giuliani in Bloomberg to lower their crime in murder rate, but those have started rising again. Chicago hasn't done anything to fix their crime problem in the last 30+ years.
Dealing with gangs and mental health should be topics we are looking at.
Btw: getting rid of guns doesn't stop mass casualty events. The number one mass casualty event in the United States was done with box cutters. The number three was a van full of fertilizer. (The number 2 was a collection of many different weapons and methods)
Edit: if you want to read a good study about mass shootings in the US and their potential causes and statistics around them, check out this: https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/public-mass-shootings-da...
I don't like the argument that relies on separating out gun crime from other crime to show how you get more gun crime when you have more guns. That's like saying you get more drownings in places that have more residential pools.
It's perfectly correct but only serves to further an anti-gun (or anti-pool) argument.
What I, personally, care about and what matters to the voting population, is whether we are safer in a place where the citizens are legally armed (or not, as the case may be).
Separating the crime into different buckets just to show larger numbers is intellectually dishonest.
Mass shootings are much, much rarer than home invasion and resulting rape, murder or serious assault, and as such deserve a proportionate response.
Let's be honest, if burglars decide to break into your house while you are in it they are not doing so to simply take your stuff. If they wanted your stuff they'd break in when the house was empty.
This scenario is much more frequent than the mass shooting scenario.
Guess which one scares voters more.
Why don’t we talk separately about “murders” vs “suicide” vs “justifiable homicide”? Each of those terms is fairly clearly defined in most people’s minds (maybe the last one a little less so), and then we could focus on the different mitigation that might be needed for each. I feel conflating them doesn’t actually help move the discussion forward given how different they are. On a moral basis, I think the situation where a law enforcement officer killed the recent texas school shooter is very different from that of that shooter who murdered innocents. So when people conflate such very different things by using terms like “gun deaths”, it makes many gun owners like myself suspicious that people are not arguing in good faith. Or am I missing something? Is there some benefit to doing so that isn’t just political?
“In 2016, for every justifiable homicide in the United States involving a gun, guns were used in 37 criminal homicides”
If you care about working together with your fellow citizens who think differently than you do, you'll pursue such laws and push back on laws that have a bad relative effectiveness.
For instance, did you know that, in California, you cannot buy a new model of a pistol? The most recent model you can get, from a roster that diminishes every year, is from 2013. Why? By what mechanism is that effective? For the same level of annoyance to gun owners, surely there is something more effective? Therefore gun control activists should oppose and overturn that law.
But they don't, because either they are ignorant or because they are more interested in winning than working together.
I'd like to point out that any Peaceful Gun Owner is capable of becoming violent in the future, for a multitude of reasons that can be undetectable at the time of purchase. This is why I find any policy that attempts to "weed out" certain people to be inherently pointless. The only thing that would work is to repeal the 2nd amendment, but that's never going to happen.
Hint: it causes, over time, gun ownership to decrease. People will not be tempted by that brand new Sig Sauer ad they saw to buy a gun at Walmart for the fun of it. Keeping only older guns accessible means that these guns break over time, and lowers the amount of freely accessible guns. Roster diminishing means that fewer people buy fewer guns.
Is there something more effective ? Sure, complete bans. Unfortunately, that would go against gun nuts like you that argue that having a .50 antimaterial rifle at home is important because MUH FREEDOMS.
If the guns are illegal, they aren't as easy to get. They aren't in everyone's home. If you break in somewhere to steal a gun, you'll not get a handgun. You know, because most folks aren't willing to hold onto an illegal gun. You aren't going to go to a gun show and buy an illegal gun because those folks don't want the shows shut down.
Which does mean that you'll have to go to the black market. The thing about the black market: If something is harder to come by, you'll be charged more. Same if the penalty is higher. You could see this in the drug market: LSD was generally more expensive than weed. (Still probably is, but I really don't know how pot legalisation has affected black market prices).
If guns are harder to get, there is less chance that a mass shooter will be able to get one. Could it mean that they use other means?
Sure they could. But realistically, those options don't always have the same effect. You could build a bomb, maybe. If you can get the supplies and knowledge to do it. Most options available to the average person, though, aren't going to be as deadly as guns and in general, won't kill so many people in such a short span of time and so many simply aren't as lethal.
In this, it is much like suicides. When gun laws are more strict, fewer people choose guns for a suicide. They choose different methods, though, and most of these are less lethal - which overall means that death by suicide goes down.
For a decent comparison, check Australia, which used to have a similar gun culture.
That was not in the list of policies I quoted. The policies mentioned had to do with concealed carry and transport.
Your reply is based on a misread.
In other words, it should be obvious that regulations in one city do not hamper interstate trade - or heck, they likely don't hamper intrastate trade either, but I don't have any examples in my head about that specifically.
Also while impossible to prove, I think the numbers would be even higher in the city without the control in place.
People use them for mass shootings, but they also use pistols, and there's not a huge difference in the outcome.
Your proposed law would have very low effectiveness, but impact millions (maybe tens of millions) people who want to buy rifles.
Maybe you don't care about those people, but maybe that's part of the problem? They are fellow citizens, they can vote, and they have rights. And they know you don't care about them and they will resist your proposals because they don't trust you.
You can turn that around and say that they should care more about you, and maybe they should. But at some point, we have to communicate, because we (collectively) aren't making good policy any more.
School shooters are usually teenagers with easy access to a gun at home. They don't have a criminal history or ties to the underworld, they're loners. It's really a question of whether dad has a concealable firearm. In Canada, they do not.
And that's what happened in the past. It's almost as if criminals were... not following the law!
