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Gun Control not the answer.

Scoop

.30-06
Opinion | I used to think gun control was the answer. My research told me otherwise.

Leah Libresco 10/4/2017

Editor’s note: The opinions in this article are the author’s, as published by our content partner, and do not necessarily represent the views of MSN or Microsoft.

Leah Libresco is a statistician and former newswriter at FiveThirtyEight, a data journalism site. She is the author of “Arriving at Amen.”

Before I started researching gun deaths, gun-control policy used to frustrate me. I wished the National Rifle Association would stop blocking common-sense gun-control reforms such as banning assault weapons, restricting silencers, shrinking magazine sizes and all the other measures that could make guns less deadly.

Then, my colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I’d lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence. The best ideas left standing were narrowly tailored interventions to protect subtypes of potential victims, not broad attempts to limit the lethality of guns.

I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain and Australia and concluded that they didn’t prove much about what America’s policy should be. Neither nation experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans. Mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress. And in both Australia and Britain, the gun restrictions had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths.

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When I looked at the other oft-praised policies, I found out that no gun owner walks into the store to buy an “assault weapon.” It’s an invented classification that includes any semi-automatic that has two or more features, such as a bayonet mount, a rocket-propelled grenade-launcher mount, a folding stock or a pistol grip. But guns are modular, and any hobbyist can easily add these features at home, just as if they were snapping together Legos.

As for silencers — they deserve that name only in movies, where they reduce gunfire to a soft puick puick. In real life, silencers limit hearing damage for shooters but don’t make gunfire dangerously quiet. An AR-15 with a silencer is about as loud as a jackhammer. Magazine limits were a little more promising, but a practiced shooter could still change magazines so fast as to make the limit meaningless.

As my co-workers and I kept looking at the data, it seemed less and less clear that one broad gun-control restriction could make a big difference. Two-thirds of gun deaths in the United States every year are suicides. Almost no proposed restriction would make it meaningfully harder for people with guns on hand to use them. I couldn't even answer my most desperate question: If I had a friend who had guns in his home and a history of suicide attempts, was there anything I could do that would help?

However, the next-largest set of gun deaths — 1 in 5 — were young men aged 15 to 34, killed in homicides. These men were most likely to die at the hands of other young men, often related to gang loyalties or other street violence. And the last notable group of similar deaths was the 1,700 women murdered per year, usually as the result of domestic violence. Far more people were killed in these ways than in mass-shooting incidents, but few of the popularly floated policies were tailored to serve them.

By the time we published our project, I didn’t believe in many of the interventions I’d heard politicians tout. I was still anti-gun, at least from the point of view of most gun owners, and I don’t want a gun in my home, as I think the risk outweighs the benefits. But I can’t endorse policies whose only selling point is that gun owners hate them. Policies that often seem as if they were drafted by people who have encountered guns only as a figure in a briefing book or an image on the news.

Instead, I found the most hope in more narrowly tailored interventions. Potential suicide victims, women menaced by their abusive partners and kids swept up in street vendettas are all in danger from guns, but they each require different protections.

Older men, who make up the largest share of gun suicides, need better access to people who could care for them and get them help. Women endangered by specific men need to be prioritized by police, who can enforce restraining orders prohibiting these men from buying and owning guns. Younger men at risk of violence need to be identified before they take a life or lose theirs and to be connected to mentors who can help them de-escalate conflicts.

Even the most data-driven practices, such as New Orleans’ plan to identify gang members for intervention based on previous arrests and weapons seizures, wind up more personal than most policies floated. The young men at risk can be identified by an algorithm, but they have to be disarmed one by one, personally — not en masse as though they were all interchangeable. A reduction in gun deaths is most likely to come from finding smaller chances for victories and expanding those solutions as much as possible. We save lives by focusing on a range of tactics to protect the different kinds of potential victims and reforming potential killers, not from sweeping bans focused on the guns themselves.
 
This is a good source of info to debunk most of the antis arguments.

http://www.garymauser.net/papers.html

Dr. Gary Mauser is a local (BC) university professer and has written many, many papers on the miserable failures of gun control initiatives.

He co-authored a paper with Dr. John Lott. Anyone who has done much research on gun control will have come across his name. Dr. Mauser is very passionate about his beliefs and I've had the pleasure of several email exchanges with him.

Edit: FYI - People akin to Gary Mauser including Sheldon Claire - President of the National Firearms Association here in Canada are at least once per year or more presenting at the UN on behalf of all gun owners. Not just Canadians.
 
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Gun control does work, you just have to look at it from their side. The fallacy is that gun control is there to save lives, and that is how it is sold to the public. This is probably one of tbe biggest lies they try and sell us through fear and "protecting our children".

Gun control is more about control than the gun. Criminals make up a small percentage of the overall population and they are not going to follow the rules regardless. They are also, I am guessing, more likely to vote dem if they vote at all.

What does that leave? The law abiding gun owning responsible voting American who will follow the rule of law.

Which is a greater threat to the politicians power the criminals the laws are supposed to protect us from or the law abiding American gun owner?

In that context it is working exactly as intended.
 
It's NOT about FACTS...

It's ALWAYS BEEN about AGENDA...

The Liberal Agenda...disarm the populace and make them puppets that rely on the Liberals for EVERYTHING to survive...be it health care or national security.

When those in power have us at their mercy to provide...WE will be willing to do anything they say.

But 1st and foremost...the weapons have to be controlled...rights have to be eroded...then eventually eliminated.

It's how every dictatorship takes power...eliminate resistance by making the people beholding to you and unable to fight back !!

It's what they try to do everyday...take power by dividing us and making us fight each other...there by eliminating a united front.

"Those who do not learn from history...are doomed to repeat it !!"
 
Thank you Scoop that was one of the most informative things I've ever read.

And I agree with the author completely that our Focus needs to be on human beings, and they are difficult to deal with.

It's so much easier just to melt down all the guns than to take care of people who go insane every day and try to bust up the place.

You're never going to catch everyone and you're never going to stop every problem but we could do a whole lot better; and part of that is that Society needs to quit being designed to drive people crazy. You create chaos in society when everything becomes a catch-22.

The government can't protect us from computer hackers and they can't protect us from gunmen. Americans have protected themselves since the beginning of the country and that is how it will always be if we are a free Nation.
 
Unfortunately all the lessons from the past are being erased or forgotten.

Americans have completely forgotten that we came here first to escape the English aristocracy, who commonly abused the subjects and natives as a matter of course.

Instead, we teach Americans to aspire to become them. This is because we all know that just having money alone does not make you special. I think we sell people on the idea that they can be special if they buy a McMansion and a Tesla from someone on the radio with a posh British accent.

You'd be amazed at how many subdivisions and neighborhoods around here have names from legendary haunts of the British aristocrats. There is no logical reason Americans should do this.

But it opens wallets.
 
You don't want to be British, especially if you like guns....

Strangely, 2 days after LV the British Government announced they were starting a consultation looking at .50 and "rapid firing" rifles.

In the Uk we only have 4-5 ranges where .50 BMG and other "high muzzle energy" rifles can be used, so there are only 4-500 users in the country, and they've never been used in any crimes.

The "rapid firing rifles" is worrying, as many guns (even those we can legally own) can be fired rapidly... .22 semi's, underlever and even bolt action rifles.
So far it seems they are only targeting various actions that were developed to bypass the ban on semi auto centerfire rifles... we have a couple of types that require minimal physical action to chamber a round... they're within the law, but the Government see them as a loophole.
Again, none of them have ever been used in a crime...
 
Rapid firing is relative.

Jerry Miculek can run a revolverer faster than the average and most above average guys can run a semi.

I've watched coyboy action shooters that can run all types of old "slow" actions with speed that boggles the mind.

Wording matters. Look how many here don't have a clue what the word "infringed" means.

If the gun culture was not as ingrained in America from day one, we would already be where England is. Our government has in many ways become exactly what its founders started a war to escape.
 
The title of the topic is all that needs to be said.

Gun Control is not the answer.

Yes, that was a period at the end of the prior sentence.
 
Rebublicans in congress are running scared because of the 2018 elections. Apparently the dems and news media are not the only ones that have not figured out why Trump won.
 
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