Marie Cocco: Guns and the Link We Won’t Admit

[marmar]

from Truthdig:



Guns and the Link We Won’t Admit

Posted on Jun 15, 2009
By Marie Cocco


There are without a doubt links among the extremists who have murdered three Pittsburgh police officers, gunned down a doctor who performed abortions in Wichita, killed a new Army recruit and wounded another in Arkansas and brought a demented hatred of Jews and blacks to bear in last week’s shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

These are all connected to the bloodshed in April at a community center in Binghamton, N.Y., where a distraught Vietnamese immigrant killed 13 people and then shot himself. And this horror is, in turn, linked to mass murders in such distant places as a North Carolina nursing home and a comfortable residential enclave in California’s Silicon Valley.

We are enduring a spring of slaughter.

After each dreadful crime we search for clues to the violence as if it were a discrete and disconnected event. It is the sour economy. Or the election of the nation’s first black president, unhinging the haters on the right. Or a mental illness that has gone untreated, if not altogether unnoticed, until it finds its expression in blood.

It is all of the above, but all of the above conveniently misses the most obvious point.

We have decided to let just about anyone have a gun. And we allow a system to flourish in which even those who are supposed to be barred from having weapons—James W. von Brunn, the alleged shooter at the Holocaust museum fits this category—are able to obtain them with ease. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090615_guns_and_the_link_we_wont_admit/

[geckosfeet]

1. The 2nd amendment applies to criminally insane people as well.

BWAAWWWWW HAWWW HAWWW.

When anyone proposes a solution it is 'shot' down with an endless list of excuses.

The first excuse out of the bag is "Enforce the laws that are on the books" even as gun owners clandestinely wheel and deal guns without regard to those very laws.

I agree - enforce the laws on the books. The responsibility is on the gun owners. If they break the law, they are as guilty as the person who pulls the trigger.

[MercutioATC]

2. "Clandestinely wheel and deal guns"???

Perhaps you could explain that?

[geckosfeet]

10. I could. But I don't think I want to.

[benEzra]

3. The Bill of Rights do not apply to those adjudicated mentally incompetent

as you well know. Nor do they apply to convicted felons, who lose their rights upon conviction.

It is a Federal felony for someone who is "criminally insane" to possess a gun, and there is a judicial process already in place to determine whether someone is mentally competent.

[geckosfeet]

9. Yeah. Splain to me how the killer got his gun?

[benEzra]

14. Probably bought it 50 years ago, legally. The gun was 80 to 100 years old.

But if he wanted to buy another, he could get it the same way people buy cannabis or heroin, the black market. Although I suspect he used that particular gun because it was one he had decades of practice using.

[TheWraith]

5. That's not even remotely accurate.

The original editorial is simply wrong: there are many restriction on who can own a gun. You can't own one if you've ever been convicted of a felony, or a violent misdemeanor. You can't own one if you've been adjudicated mentally incompetant, or if you've been judged a danger to yourself or others. You can't buy a gun if you're not a legal resident of that state. You can't buy a gun if you've been dishonorably discharged from the armed forces. You can't buy a gun if both it and you don't meet the specific state laws in your area.

[geckosfeet]

8. Oh my! The museum killer was convicted of a felony but he had a gun!

Howdy doody did that happen?

This is what I am saying - enforce the laws on the books. The cops can't do it alone.

All I hear from you guys is rhetorical bullshit and reasons why it can't be done.

[TheWraith]

13. Actually, that's what WE'RE saying.

Enforce laws on the books. This guy was not legally allowed to own, carry, or even touch that gun and ammo. We didn't have to pass a special law banning neo-Nazis from owning dangerous pump-action bullet-spraying weapons. The fact that this guy had a gun was a failure of enforcement, not a sign for the need of another law.

[NickB79]

16. The museum killer used a 100-yr old .22-cal squirrel rifle

He very well could have purchased it as a teenager in the 1930's before becoming a convicted felon, and simply kept it in his closet, or left it with a friend or family member.

It's plausible that a law could be written to cover a situation like this, but I can't think of one that wouldn't require no-knock search warrants and other flagrant abuses of civil liberties :shrug:

[DonP]

4. Ah, another "know nothing" editorial

"Obtain them with ease"? WTF?

The police still have no idea how von Brunn got his century old .22 squirrel gun, but Marie knows he got it "with ease". Nice detective work Sherlock, you beat the FBI to the facts it seems.

Another article written by someone, that I'd bet a weeks pay, has never been in a gun store in their life and has no idea what is involved in legally buying a gun. She knows nothing about the laws that apply or the clearances required, but everyone is entitled to an opinion, regardless of how ill informed.

There's an expert opinion we can all respect.

She trots out a series of instances connected by the common thread of a gun involved. Most of the guns involved in these crimes were purchased illegally by people not permitted by the laws we already passed to possess one.

Seeking a Utopia is a nice pastime but I'm not sure it's good or smart national policy.

We get it Marie, "Guns Bad - Ill Informed Editorial Writers Good".

[benEzra]

7. It's just as possible von Brunn purchased the squirrel gun legally 70 years ago.

It was 80 to 100 years old, and he's 88 himself.

[geckosfeet]

11. Another critic with no solutions. You people are a dime a dozen.

[benEzra]

12. Addressing poverty and improving the social safety net

which cut the murder rate almost in half from the early 1980's to now, suggests that focusing on education and the economy, helping working families, improving access to health care and mental health care, and promoting civility, tolerance, and respect are worthwhile.

Last year (2008), fewer police officers were shot in the line of duty than any prior year since *1956*, and the murder rate is still near historic lows.

The Carrie Nation/"let's crucify responsible gun owners" approach that gets faithfully trotted out every time there's a widely reported shooting is wrongheaded and counterproductive. The "freedom OR safety" dichotomy is almost always a false one, and addressing the root causes of violent crime does work, whereas Prohibition approaches in this country have a very bad track record.

[DonP]

15. At a dime a dozen we are a bargain

Finding people like you, with no facts to support their "feelings", are about half that price.

And I might add, getting much harder to find as the pendulum swings farther and farther from more gun control every week.

[subcomhd]

6. DU and Guns

"If liberals interpreted the Second Amendment the way they interpret the rest of the Bill of Rights, there would be law professors arguing that gun ownership is mandatory."
Michael Kinsley

[Mrs. Ted Nancy]

17. The Assault Weapons Ban

was enacted in 1994. The murder rate reached a peak 21,610 in 1995. It declined to its lowest level (in recent years) to around 15,500 in 2000.

It went up to a little over 16,000 in 2001 and was fairly constant. The assault weapons ban expired in 2004. The murder rate has increased since 2004.

Robberies decreased every year from 1995 to 2004. Since then it has increased by about 10%.

I'm not saying that there is a causal relationship between the ban on assault weapons and increased crime. Obviously, there are numerous other factors to consider, but, there is a correlation there that should
be considered.

This link lists the data from 1960-2007. It's easier to decipher than the DOJ statistics.

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

[DonP]

18. Ummmm, why?

Since less than 3% of all crimes involve a rifle of any kind, let along a so called "assault weapon", why would you even think that a ban had any impact on crime, which is now at it's lowest rate in over two decades? The ban expired almost 5 years ago. Crime with rifles of any kind are still rare enough that they almost always make the news.

The most commonly used firearm in crime is still the .38/,357 revolver. It's cheap, easy to hide and can be rented on almost any street corner in high crime areas.

Please explain why banning the most popular US target rifle, the AR-15, from having a bayonet lug or an adjustable stock will reduce crime?

[X_Digger]

19. You need to expand your data set and use rates, not raw incidents..

Here are some charts I put together with UCR data 1960-2007 + preliminary 2008 data from http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/08aprelim/table_1.html

Very few of the peaks and troughs correlate in time to gun control legislation, but some do correlate to putting more cops on the street (ie, '94, '80).

[benEzra]

20. Umm, sales of "assault weapons" doubled or tripled during the AWB...

as the AWB banned zero guns, and the murder rate is now lower than it was in 2004 even though sales of modern-looking rifles have continued to increase. No surprise, since rifles are consistently among the least misused of all firearms (only 3% of murders involve any type of rifle).

[X_Digger]

21. AR-15 sales 1986-2001

This graph is taken from the DoJ study on the AWB effectiveness-

(Notice the spike ahead of CA's '89-90 regulation as well as the '94 federal "ban".)



eta: (screenshot from http://www.sas.upenn.edu/jerrylee/research/aw_final2004.pdf)