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"Among the study's limitations, Iwama notes that the data collected from the FBI was not complete because of changes in reporting practices. In addition, the percentage of firearms licenses, which she used as a proxy for gun ownership, represents neither a perfect measure of gun owners nor an accurate count of the number of firearms available by county. Finally, the small size of the study's sample hindered the author's ability to examine patterns across different counties in the state."
Doesn't sound _that_ convincingly rigorous.
>Doesn't sound that convincingly rigorous.
It can't really be rigorous no matter how hard you try or how good the researcher's intentions are.
The elephant in the room here when studying gun laws is that they're pretty much exclusively used to gain bargaining leverage for plea deals and never actually make it to a courtroom because the state is scared of drawing federal ire on appeal so they don't really make it into statistics.
Regardless of where you stand on gun control it seems like a fool's errand to measure the efficacy of something that's intended to be enforced in an informal manner behind closed doors between prosecutors and lawyers ("plead guilty to the DUI and we'll forget about that pistol in your car") deferentially applicable in the first place (vs something like murder or speeding where being rich don't make you more capable of doing those things within the letter of the law) and can't be enforced at scale.
That said, if all you want is to establish correlation between "law passed" and "crime reduced" it's easy to validate/disporve that such correlation exists.
My biggest problem with these is extrapolating this is when these results get extrapolated to the entire country. The biggest issue IMO is states have a limited ability to control the actual number of guns in their state because state borders in the US are explicitly porous by law where a country's borders are much more controlled.
I'll grant you that US interstate borders are mostly imaginary lines, with zero control... But our national borders aren't nearly as controlled as people seem to think.
The United States imports nearly all of the cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin, and fentanyl that we consume, and the quantities we consume are _vast_. Even with the COVID related border restrictions, all of those drugs are at record-low street prices, and record-high purity. That generally means they are being imported with ease, and with a low percentage of lost product along the way.
This trend has been growing consistently since the passage of NAFTA in the 1990s, which had massive economic benefits, but also rendered the US/Mexico and US/Canada borders quite porous. Commercial trucks carry massive quantities of cargo into the US, every day. We've never bothered to devote enough border control resources to subject them nearly the same level of scrutiny as pre-NAFTA trucking. Nobody wants to pay for the infrastructure, manpower, or shipping delays.
I live in Southern California, and drive ~10-12 hours a week on highways. Anecdotally, about 10-20% of our truck traffic is plated/registered in a Mexican state, not a US state. Many of these trucks are visibly used for local deliveries... I believe there are some state & federal DOT rules to discourage this, but it doesn't seem like anyone is really enforcing them.
Anyway, my point is that our national land borders are hardly effective, and that the situation is _by design_ according to our current national priorities.
They're not perfect but they're much harder to pass items through compared to the non existent state borders. Also guns are quite a bit harder to make than drugs to the point where if the public market was completely cut off there would be several components that would be extremely difficult to replace on a home or illegal manufacturing basis. There are 3D print gun designs out there but they're largely replacing just the receiver body which is the restricted component in most gun control regimes. Rifled barrels and bolts are the real pain point for 3D printed guns atm, there's a few designs like the Liberator that are entirely printed but they're mostly single shot limited use items.
"Also guns are quite a bit harder to make than drugs..."
This statement is so broad as to be completely meaningless. "Guns" and "drugs" are both vast categories containing elements of _wildly_ varying complexity. So this depends entirely on which drugs and which guns you're talking about.
Alcohol and single-shot pipe shotguns are stupidly trivial... Anyone with YouTube and some patience can figure it out. Meanwhile, making MDMA and AR-15s require a considerable investment in equipment and skills. Alcohol is far easier to make than an AR-15--and MDMA is far harder to make than a shotgun.
FTR, I have personally made both a pipe shotgun and alcohol from scratch. Super fun projects... Neither one should cost you more than $10 at the hardware store, and a half-day in the garage.
I should have known to be more precise, I meant guns other than single shot barely-guns like hardware store pipe shotguns. Those barely show up even in heavily gun controlled countries because they're so fiddly and slow to use and reload they're not that useful compared to a knife.
The 2014 act that the paper is referencing didn't really do that much to tighten gun laws in MA. It cleaned up some convoluted language, reorganized some of the law enforcement, changed licensing requirements to be simpler, added some mental health support for public schools, required firearm transactions to be recorded online instead of with paper forms, and made FIDs (the non-carry type of license) "may issue" instead of "shall issue".
It was mostly a "clean up" bill, rather than a "tightening" bill. So I'm not sure anybody expected a clear inverse correlation with violent crime in the state.
>and made FIDs (the non-carry type of license) "may issue" instead of "shall issue".
Looking at the current SCOTUS docket they're probably regretting that right about now.
New York is holding all the regret in that case. They could have bailed early on but really thought they had it.
It was too late when they offered the permit to the defendant.
Now it goes to SCOTUS and while I wouldn’t make bets, it sure does seem like HI, CT, MA, CA are going to lose may-issue and will have to issue permits to legally able people according to thing about “bearing” those arms.
Historically SCOUTS waits for states to diverge in law (which they very much have here) and then smacks whosoever on the wrong side of history. Seems like 4/5ths of states are happy with some form of "own and carry what you want in private get a license to do it in public". I suspect any decision will require the outlier states to make significant movement toward that standard.
> re going to lose may-issue and will have to issue permits to legally able people according to thing about “bearing” those arms.
Ultimately, if these states don't like the second amendment they should just amend it.
Adding context, it’s also worth noting that Massachusetts is a pretty small, narrow state. Anyone who wanted to get a gun can easily go over the border.
Right next door is New Hampshire. A state with “live free or die” as it’s motto, and includes things like Walmart-sized liquor stores at the state border to take advantage of their dramatically lower liquor taxes. New Hampshire also has some of the most permissive gun laws in the country.
To begin with wasn't the legislation _intended_ to have more of an effect on political behavior than the behavior of criminals?
Technology as Pandora’s box.
Of course, there is already an endless number of guns on people hands and basements. The fact that the US is the rich country with the highest murder rate is all the proof one needs that tighter gun laws make for a safer place.
> all the proof one needs that tighter gun laws make for a safer place.
You can look at Australia in 1997 for good proof of this.
They banned most guns in 97, almost doubled police per capita, and crime fell. Less guns, less crime, there are definitely no examples where that is not true. Done. Proven. Full stop. Do not continue reading.
_Please pay no attention that during 97 crime had already been falling in Australia. That crime also dropped in the USA over the same time period but by a greater rate with no exceptional increase in police per capita. All this despite record gun sales in the USA._
Explain to me how guns deaths can be up when guns are difficult to obtain?
Fact: gun deaths are reduced when there are less guns in circulation.
The entire rest of the world outside of the exceptional USA is proof that yes, if there is a political will to reduce the amount of guns in circulation, there are, in fact, less guns in circulation. Your entire argument hinges around the notion that large numbers of illegal guns are inevitable, which is really only true if
1) you live in or next to the worlds largest arms manufacturer and exporter
2)you live in a failed state or war zone in which your nation is the target of arms sales.
Let’s please not say up is down and black is white.
Chicago would beg to differ. And New York.
When everyone is armed, people are very polite to one another.
What's interesting with the gun "debate" is that all the focus is on legal weapons (and law abiding citizens).
Now, try asking a gun-control activist what's the proportion of crimes committed with legal weapons vs illegal weapons and, well, good luck getting a straight answer.
Well, I suppose you can examine gun crime statistics in the rest of the world and see that the US gun death numbers per capita cause of death are higher than anywhere except failed states and war zones. Do I need to cite this obvious state of affairs? I can if this part is really in doubt.
Control is largely possible where there is a political will, case in point being Australia and their rather sudden shift and it’s rather obvious results. Deaths from all guns, legal and otherwise, are down, due to concerted efforts to remove guns from circulation.
I propose that groups like the NRA have fetishized an absurd interpretation of the second amendment.
Here is the second amendment in its entirety:
“ A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”
This in no way establishes a uncontrollable right for every citizen to own an arm. The phrase “well regulated militia” can be argued to death but there is no denying the well regulated part.
We live in a time where fancy legal experts and corrupt Supreme Court justices feel inclined to ignore the literal text of our constitution and insist upon erudite legal interpretations that make a mockery of language itself. That some dare to call themselves conservative is a slap in the face to our heritage.
What to say, legalese was always intended first and foremost as clear precise language, not as a gatekeeper hurdle or occupational shibboleth.
> We live in a time where fancy legal experts and corrupt Supreme Court justices feel inclined to ignore the literal text of our constitution and insist upon erudite legal interpretations that make a mockery of language itself. That some dare to call themselves conservative is a slap in the face to our heritage.
Hear, hear! Anyone with a lick of sense can see that, although the Second Amendment literally says "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed", only an NRA stooge could torture those words into meaning _the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed_. Why can't they get in line, and King's English with some respect?
The real, common sense approach is to recognize that the prefatory phrase "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State", clearly indicates that the people have no right to keep and bear _weapons of war_. Can you imagine? And the words 'well regulated' clearly mean that the work of "ensuring the security of a free state" should occur under the watchful eye of the State! You see the founders, always suspicious of the people, wanted to ensure that the State had the means to alter or abolish them, should they become destructive to their true purpose, which is paying taxes. Hence the militias.
Sometimes I lie awake at night, staring at the ceiling and saying the prefatory phrase aloud to myself, again and again. If I do it for long enough, the syllables begin to meld together, and words and their meanings mix and change, and at those times the one, true meaning of the Second Amendment becomes clear--it's clearly all about hunting.
Any other interpretation is a slap in the face to our heritage!
Also, did Australia's gun laws really work? You say there were "rather obvious results", but then, the US also saw a huge reduction in gun crime in the 90s. Most western nations did!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...
> Well, I suppose you can examine gun crime statistics in the rest of the world and see that the US gun death numbers per capita cause of death are higher than anywhere except failed states and war zones. Do I need to cite this obvious state of affairs? I can if this part is really in doubt.
Interestingly, some of the most violent countries are in South America. Where on earth is the largest diaspora of southern American people located outside of southern America?
> Control is largely possible where there is a political will, case in point being Australia and their rather sudden shift and it’s rather obvious results. Deaths from all guns, legal and otherwise, are down, due to concerted efforts to remove guns from circulation.
Why did the US see the same crime rate drop in the same period despite doing nothing?
> What to say, legalese was always intended first and foremost as clear precise language, not as a gatekeeper hurdle or occupational shibboleth.
Indeed. "Shall not be infringed" is clearly understood in plain English.
I think "shall not be infringed" is about as clear as it gets.
That's because it's an impossible question to answer - all guns are "illegal" once they're used for a crime, and it's next to impossible to identify when a gun becomes "illegal" before the crime is committed.
However, the Chicago Police Department put out a comprehensive study of guns recovered from crimes between 2013 and 2016 and released the details here :
https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/city/depts/mayor/Press%2...
There are some interesting data points in there, like more than half of the 7k guns recovered each year originated out of state and the biggest sources in state are outside county/city that has stricter gun laws. I believe the top three of the stores listed are under indictment or being sued right now. That suggests illegal guns are being sourced from places where it is easier to buy them, which shouldn't be shocking.
Another interesting data point is that more than 90% of the guns they traced back to FFL dealers were the only gun they purchased, which suggests that straw purchasers are using new people to buy the guns each time. That goes against any kind of notion that a registry of purchasers would do any good.
And more important point is that the "time to crime" was under three years for around 60% of guns they recovered. That means any policy that affects the sourcing of guns will have a pretty short turn around as illegal guns don't seem to have a long street life.
When told that _“gun control can’t work because guns are available in other states”_… I have never received an answer as to _“what state heroin, fentynal, cocaine, meth are legal in?”_.
There may be a good answer, I’m not necessarily seeking it here. I just debate why blaming the gun is so important to a political ideology when blaming the shooter seems only selectively important.
Seems like a wedge issue that everyone is happy to maintain just to keep it for distraction.
The answer is straightforward, it's "no state." (Well, Fentanyl is legal by prescription.) I'm guessing there's some point you're trying to make with that question, but I'm not sure what it is.
I don't think anyone 'blames' guns, they aren't moral agents. But they are extremely easy-to-use and effective ways of killing people.
cocaine is also technically legal by prescription as well
The point is that prohibition has never worked. It creates a black market that borders and distances do not solve.
It always goes back to talismanism. The gun itself is the problem, not the shooter. This is fake and the real reasons are always just one thing, control.
The poor attempt at renaming gun control to gun safety is illustrated that not one “gun safety” group has ever put on a gun safety program. They all push for prohibition in one way or another.
