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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBrian Klaas: It's the Guns.
https://brianklaas.substack.com/p/its-the-gunsDec 12, 2022
America is the only rich democracy that features the routine mass slaughter of its citizens with guns. Why does this happen? The data show a really clear picture: It's the guns. Yes, it's that simple. [snip]
With guns, gun violence, and mass shootings, the United States is in a dystopian league of its own. But whenever I write about guns, I get the same bad-faith arguments shot back at me by American gun advocates who are, perhaps, unaware of just how extreme, and just how unusual Americas gun culture is relative to the rest of the rich, democratic world.
The satirical newspaper The Onion nailed this dynamic with one of its all-time great headlines.
Ive decided to write a comprehensive guide to understanding Americas gun extremism, engaging with all the main, spurious arguments, showing the truth with proper evidence and data. Its my hope that this can be your go-to guide to defeating bad arguments being made about Americas gun cultureand that you can share this article with others, perhaps to help persuade them that the United States needs to fix its broken gun culture. [more]
With guns, gun violence, and mass shootings, the United States is in a dystopian league of its own. But whenever I write about guns, I get the same bad-faith arguments shot back at me by American gun advocates who are, perhaps, unaware of just how extreme, and just how unusual Americas gun culture is relative to the rest of the rich, democratic world.
The satirical newspaper The Onion nailed this dynamic with one of its all-time great headlines.
No Way to Prevent This, Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
Ive decided to write a comprehensive guide to understanding Americas gun extremism, engaging with all the main, spurious arguments, showing the truth with proper evidence and data. Its my hope that this can be your go-to guide to defeating bad arguments being made about Americas gun cultureand that you can share this article with others, perhaps to help persuade them that the United States needs to fix its broken gun culture. [more]
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Brian Klaas: It's the Guns. (Original Post)
crickets
Mar 2023
OP
True. Given their votes in Congress, they don't want to address either issue. (eta)
crickets
Mar 2023
#2
Skittles
(153,150 posts)1. it is sickening when repukes say it is a "mental health" issue
as if they care about mental health issues any more than they care about gun slaughters
crickets
(25,963 posts)2. True. Given their votes in Congress, they don't want to address either issue. (eta)
Stop blaming mental illness for mass shootings
Its about the guns
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/9/16618472/mental-illness-gun-homicide-mass-shootings
But the convenient cries of mental health after mass shootings are worse than hypocritical. Theyre factually wrong and stigmatizing to millions of completely nonviolent Americans living with severe mental illness.
Abbott is wrong: the share of Americas violence problem (excluding suicide) that is explainable by diseases like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder is tiny. If you were to suddenly cure schizophrenia, bipolar, and depression overnight, violent crime in the US would fall by only 4 percent, according to an estimate from Duke University professor Jeffrey Swanson, a sociologist and psychiatric epidemiologist who studies the relationship between violence and mental illness.
People with mental illness are people, and the vast majority arent any more of a risk than anyone else, Swanson says.
That doesnt mean, he says, that we cant do more to identify people at risk of committing gun violence and prevent them from getting guns particularly if they are a danger to themselves or others. But portraying mass shootings as a mental health problem misrepresents the evidence.
Abbott is wrong: the share of Americas violence problem (excluding suicide) that is explainable by diseases like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder is tiny. If you were to suddenly cure schizophrenia, bipolar, and depression overnight, violent crime in the US would fall by only 4 percent, according to an estimate from Duke University professor Jeffrey Swanson, a sociologist and psychiatric epidemiologist who studies the relationship between violence and mental illness.
People with mental illness are people, and the vast majority arent any more of a risk than anyone else, Swanson says.
That doesnt mean, he says, that we cant do more to identify people at risk of committing gun violence and prevent them from getting guns particularly if they are a danger to themselves or others. But portraying mass shootings as a mental health problem misrepresents the evidence.
crickets
(25,963 posts)3. The world thinks America's gun laws are crazy -- and they're right
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/08/05/world-thinks-americas-gun-laws-are-crazy-theyre-right/
No paywall: https://archive.ph/vVB25
No paywall: https://archive.ph/vVB25
The United States, home to around 4 percent of the worlds population, accounts for nearly half the civilian-owned guns in the world.
But it isnt just the number of guns; its also what kind of guns and ammunition are legal and how you buy them. The shooter in Dayton, Ohio, who killed nine people in less than a minute, legally ordered his AR-15-style assault rifle online. He also bought a double drum magazine, allowing him to fire 100 rounds in the span of a matter of seconds without reloading. In most other developed countries, such semiautomatic assault-style weapons and ammunition magazines are banned. There are also several more hurdles to clear before buying a gun in every other developed country compared to the United States.
And yet, despite the relentless body counts piling up in movie theaters, food festivals, Walmarts, schools, synagogues, churches, offices, hospitals, bars and nightclubs, the Republican-controlled Senate refuses to even vote on a common-sense measure: requiring universal background checks before all gun purchases, without any loopholes. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is blocking a vote on that bill, even though 92 percent of Americans support that reform, including 89 percent of Republicans.
Will that measure prevent every gun death in the United States? Clearly not. But that reform, along with others such as reintroducing the ban on assault-style weapons, banning large-capacity magazines such as the one used in Dayton, and requiring gun safety training would go a long way in reducing deaths. We should also consider requiring licenses from those who wish to own a firearm as well as some form of reference system (such as the character references required in Canada or some form of mental health evaluation as is used in Germany, Austria, India, Brazil, Israel and Japan). A recent international study that examined the entire body of research on gun legislation found convincing evidence that gun safety legislation reduces gun-related deaths.
But it isnt just the number of guns; its also what kind of guns and ammunition are legal and how you buy them. The shooter in Dayton, Ohio, who killed nine people in less than a minute, legally ordered his AR-15-style assault rifle online. He also bought a double drum magazine, allowing him to fire 100 rounds in the span of a matter of seconds without reloading. In most other developed countries, such semiautomatic assault-style weapons and ammunition magazines are banned. There are also several more hurdles to clear before buying a gun in every other developed country compared to the United States.
And yet, despite the relentless body counts piling up in movie theaters, food festivals, Walmarts, schools, synagogues, churches, offices, hospitals, bars and nightclubs, the Republican-controlled Senate refuses to even vote on a common-sense measure: requiring universal background checks before all gun purchases, without any loopholes. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is blocking a vote on that bill, even though 92 percent of Americans support that reform, including 89 percent of Republicans.
Will that measure prevent every gun death in the United States? Clearly not. But that reform, along with others such as reintroducing the ban on assault-style weapons, banning large-capacity magazines such as the one used in Dayton, and requiring gun safety training would go a long way in reducing deaths. We should also consider requiring licenses from those who wish to own a firearm as well as some form of reference system (such as the character references required in Canada or some form of mental health evaluation as is used in Germany, Austria, India, Brazil, Israel and Japan). A recent international study that examined the entire body of research on gun legislation found convincing evidence that gun safety legislation reduces gun-related deaths.
crickets
(25,963 posts)4. The ATF's Nonsensical Non-Searchable Gun Databases, Explained (1 of 2 related articles)
https://www.thetrace.org/2016/08/atf-non-searchable-databases/
The 1968 Gun Control Act gave the ATF authority to regulate federally licensed gun dealers. In 1978, the ATF tried to make dealers report most sales each quarter. The National Rifle Association and other groups denounced the plan, and lobbied to kill the reporting requirement. Congress did as the gun lobby requested, blocking the quarterly report proposal and reducing the ATFs budget by $5 million: the amount the agency had sought to update its computer capacity. [snip]
The war on searchable technology continued. In 1986, Congress enacted the Firearms Protection Act, which bans the ATF from creating a registry of guns, gun owners or gun sales.
Congress also put a rider barring the agency from consolidation or centralization of gun dealers records in every spending bill affecting the agency from 1979 through 2011, then made the prohibition permanent, under law.
First comes keyword searches, and the next thing you know, you have national gun registries.
That, at least, is the rationale for the law that prevents the ATF from creating a searchable system. Gun rights groups argue that once the government has a list of firearms, it could use that list to confiscate weapons from private citizens.
The war on searchable technology continued. In 1986, Congress enacted the Firearms Protection Act, which bans the ATF from creating a registry of guns, gun owners or gun sales.
Congress also put a rider barring the agency from consolidation or centralization of gun dealers records in every spending bill affecting the agency from 1979 through 2011, then made the prohibition permanent, under law.
First comes keyword searches, and the next thing you know, you have national gun registries.
That, at least, is the rationale for the law that prevents the ATF from creating a searchable system. Gun rights groups argue that once the government has a list of firearms, it could use that list to confiscate weapons from private citizens.
crickets
(25,963 posts)5. How the NRA Hobbled the ATF (2 of 2 related articles)
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/02/atf-gun-laws-nra/
Former ATF Director Stephen E. Higgins and others intimately familiar with the agencys history say the root of the problem is that ATF has no political constituency, no one invested in seeing it succeed and willing to stand up against those determined to see it fail. The success of ATFs critics in reining in its authority is nowhere more evident than in the bureaus appropriation statute, which is two pages long, devotes 11 lines to describing the agencys budget and the remaining 76 lines to proscriptions on its powers. Many of these riders, as theyre known, go to the agencys most basic investigative functions. Two of the riders effectively ban consolidation and computerization of records. One limits access and use of crime gun trace data, while another undermines the credibility of whatever trace data are released. One rider overturns ATF efforts to ban the import of large-capacity shotguns, which the agency found had no sporting purposes. Another overturned an ATF regulation to limit the import of dangerous weapons under a law originally designed to protect collectors of curios and relics. [snip]
According to Cox, the most important of the ATF riders is a prohibition on creating or maintaining a database of gun owners or guns, which the NRA and other gun-rights advocates say could be used by a tyrannical government to confiscate firearms. The rider, which dates back to 1978, was a response to President Carters attempt to create a national registry of handguns. A related rider, dating to 1997, bars the government from creating an electronic database of the names of gun purchasers contained in 597 million gun sale records from 700,000 out-of-business dealers. (Those dealers are required by law to turn their records over to the ATF.) In addition, a 1986 law, the Firearm Owners Protection Act, explicitly forbids the government from creating a database of gun owners. [snip]
Today, gun sale records are kept at 60,000 separate locations by the nations 60,000 federal firearms licensees (FFLs). With a centralized database, an ATF agent in possession of a gun found at a crime scene could simply plug the guns serial number into a computer and identify the name of the dealer who sold the weapon, along with the name of the first purchaser. Without a database, agents must often embark on a Rube Goldberg-style odyssey, contacting the guns manufacturer or a guns importer who will direct the agent either to a middleman who sold the weapon to a dealer or to the dealer himself, who can identify the first buyer. Dealers are required to keep records of each firearm transaction. Frequently, however, the records are on paper, and dealers cant locate particular ones quickly. At the same time, there is no law requiring consolidation of wholesale weapon transfersthose sales by the manufacturer or middlemanwhich means ATF inspectors have no way of knowing whether a dealers ledgers accurately represent all of the guns he has bought or if he is illegally selling guns off the books.
One gun database that works
Joseph Vince, a former ATF special agent and now a partner at Crime Gun Solutions, a consulting firm, says solving gun crimes is all about gathering information and having the tools to make sense out of it. He says US gun laws often make that work far more difficult. People talk about 9/11 and not connecting the dots; but when we talk about gun laws, were taking the dots off the paper. Vince says concerns that a centralized database of guns and gun owners will lead to gun confiscation have been disproved by 80 years of history with the National Firearms Act, a 1934 law that requires citizens who own machine guns, short-barrel shotguns and certain other highly dangerous weapons to register them with the federal government. Owners of NFA firearms, as they are known, are fingerprinted, photographed and subjected to an FBI background check, and the serial numbers of their guns are kept in a federal database, whose contents, Vince says, have never been divulged outside of a legitimate law enforcement inquiry. Most important, these weapons are rarely used to commit crimes. The NFA has effectively removed these guns from the criminal marketplace.
According to Cox, the most important of the ATF riders is a prohibition on creating or maintaining a database of gun owners or guns, which the NRA and other gun-rights advocates say could be used by a tyrannical government to confiscate firearms. The rider, which dates back to 1978, was a response to President Carters attempt to create a national registry of handguns. A related rider, dating to 1997, bars the government from creating an electronic database of the names of gun purchasers contained in 597 million gun sale records from 700,000 out-of-business dealers. (Those dealers are required by law to turn their records over to the ATF.) In addition, a 1986 law, the Firearm Owners Protection Act, explicitly forbids the government from creating a database of gun owners. [snip]
Today, gun sale records are kept at 60,000 separate locations by the nations 60,000 federal firearms licensees (FFLs). With a centralized database, an ATF agent in possession of a gun found at a crime scene could simply plug the guns serial number into a computer and identify the name of the dealer who sold the weapon, along with the name of the first purchaser. Without a database, agents must often embark on a Rube Goldberg-style odyssey, contacting the guns manufacturer or a guns importer who will direct the agent either to a middleman who sold the weapon to a dealer or to the dealer himself, who can identify the first buyer. Dealers are required to keep records of each firearm transaction. Frequently, however, the records are on paper, and dealers cant locate particular ones quickly. At the same time, there is no law requiring consolidation of wholesale weapon transfersthose sales by the manufacturer or middlemanwhich means ATF inspectors have no way of knowing whether a dealers ledgers accurately represent all of the guns he has bought or if he is illegally selling guns off the books.
One gun database that works
Joseph Vince, a former ATF special agent and now a partner at Crime Gun Solutions, a consulting firm, says solving gun crimes is all about gathering information and having the tools to make sense out of it. He says US gun laws often make that work far more difficult. People talk about 9/11 and not connecting the dots; but when we talk about gun laws, were taking the dots off the paper. Vince says concerns that a centralized database of guns and gun owners will lead to gun confiscation have been disproved by 80 years of history with the National Firearms Act, a 1934 law that requires citizens who own machine guns, short-barrel shotguns and certain other highly dangerous weapons to register them with the federal government. Owners of NFA firearms, as they are known, are fingerprinted, photographed and subjected to an FBI background check, and the serial numbers of their guns are kept in a federal database, whose contents, Vince says, have never been divulged outside of a legitimate law enforcement inquiry. Most important, these weapons are rarely used to commit crimes. The NFA has effectively removed these guns from the criminal marketplace.