Oldskeptic wrote:

Alan C wrote:

willhud9 wrote:

laklak wrote:Well, you might need that, but I certainly don't. I'm quite happy to keep and bear. Invalidating the 2nd for individuals would reverse over a century of SCOTUS rulings, which is not something they like to do, nor with the current composition of the court something they are likely to do. Regulate, yes. Ban "assault weapons", possibly. Deny individuals the right to keep and bear arms - not a snowball's chance in hell.

It doesn't though.

Bolt action firearms and the like are not cause for much concern as they are not used frequently for crime. No one is saying they cannot have a gun, but the nonsense that they need urban paramilitary firearms due to the 2nd is not true.

Everytime there is a mass shooting people throw the statistics that knives and clubs kill more than the AR-15 per year. Sure. That is statistically true, but the AR-15 is the gun of choice for these mass shooters. Why? Because it is simple to use, is impersonal, and can do a lot of devastation quickly.

Chemically made bombs are more often than not duds in the planning. Knife attacks can be lived through and are not quite as effective. If these other methods were so easy as well to the AR-15 why choose the expensive gun and ammo route?

Furthermore, it was not over a century of SCOTUS rulings that would be overturned but only several decades worth. Big difference.

Wouldn't have been so easy to kill 17 schoolkids with a knife I'd imagine or the 58 in Vegas.

Ted Bundy killed at least 30 people with clubs and knives. Timothy McVeigh killed 168 using gardening supplies.

Julia Followback Resister ❄️
‏

@Tumderest
Mar 8
More
A 44 year old man w/ severe mental issue attacked a high school in the Netherlands yesterday

Since he didn’t have access to guns, he brought knives & was scared away by students throwing their backpacks at him

No guns, no shooting, NO DEATH.
The man is now getting help.

Alan C wrote:Wouldn't have been so easy to kill 17 schoolkids with a knife I'd imagine or the 58 in Vegas.

Cito di Pense wrote: If social problems were easy to solve by waving one's hands at them, social problems would rapidly become a thing of the past, and religion would then have fewer evils at which to wave its hands.

Sendraks wrote:

Cito di Pense wrote: If social problems were easy to solve by waving one's hands at them, social problems would rapidly become a thing of the past, and religion would then have fewer evils at which to wave its hands.

And even the Jedi couldn't solve all social problems by waving their hands.

fisherman wrote:I have read that the NRA has successfully prevented public money being spent on the statistical gathering of gun related deaths.

Does this negatively affect the analysis of gun crime being viewed as a public health issue?

laklak wrote:Regulate, yes. Ban "assault weapons", possibly.

Warren Dew wrote:

laklak wrote:Regulate, yes. Ban "assault weapons", possibly.

My own state of Massachusetts did this in 1998. Our murder and robbery rates have been rising steadily ever since.

Warren Dew wrote:

laklak wrote:Regulate, yes. Ban "assault weapons", possibly.

My own state of Massachusetts did this in 1998. Our murder and robbery rates have been rising steadily ever since.

Warren Dew wrote:Their latest comprehensive review, in 2013, for example, concluded among other things that substantial numbers of crimes are prevented by guns; it estimated defensive gun uses in the US at between 500,000 and 3 million per year.

Perhaps that's why the US has so much lower a violent crime rate than, say, the UK and Germany.

OlivierK wrote:

Warren Dew wrote:

laklak wrote:Regulate, yes. Ban "assault weapons", possibly.

My own state of Massachusetts did this in 1998. Our murder and robbery rates have been rising steadily ever since.

Yes, that's right. MA's homicide rate per 100,000 population has spiraled from 2.0 in 1998 to a whopping 2.0 in 2016.

And robbery has risen steadily from a troubling rate of 96.6 per 100,000 in 1998 to an out of control 78.8 in 2016.

And worse, Massachusetts Boasts Lowest Gun Death Rate in the Nation.

It's a fucking crisis, to be sure.

Edit: ninja'd by Piper.

The_Piper wrote:

Warren Dew wrote:

laklak wrote:Regulate, yes. Ban "assault weapons", possibly.

My own state of Massachusetts did this in 1998. Our murder and robbery rates have been rising steadily ever since.

Uhh, we have the internet too.
The murder rate in 2016 was identical to 1998, up slightly from 2015. The robbery rate is lower than in 1998.
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/macrime.htm
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/01/12/homicides-massachusetts-slightly-from/X2jelMzSQ7QDTlSVNH5wvN/story.html

Warren Dew wrote:

The_Piper wrote:

Warren Dew wrote:

laklak wrote:Regulate, yes. Ban "assault weapons", possibly.

My own state of Massachusetts did this in 1998. Our murder and robbery rates have been rising steadily ever since.

Uhh, we have the internet too.
The murder rate in 2016 was identical to 1998, up slightly from 2015. The robbery rate is lower than in 1998.
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/macrime.htm
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/01/12/homicides-massachusetts-slightly-from/X2jelMzSQ7QDTlSVNH5wvN/story.html

Interesting. I was looking at a graph through 2011, by which time the Massachusetts murder rate was about 50% higher than it was in 1998. It appears that it has subsequently fallen back to its 1998 levels.

It's still the case that the murder rate rose steadily for a decade after the gun control laws were passed, but perhaps that just shows how before and after analyses are flawed. I'd be interested in other theories for why it rose and then fell.

Cito di Pense wrote:

OlivierK wrote:

Warren Dew wrote:

laklak wrote:Regulate, yes. Ban "assault weapons", possibly.

My own state of Massachusetts did this in 1998. Our murder and robbery rates have been rising steadily ever since.

Yes, that's right. MA's homicide rate per 100,000 population has spiraled from 2.0 in 1998 to a whopping 2.0 in 2016.

And robbery has risen steadily from a troubling rate of 96.6 per 100,000 in 1998 to an out of control 78.8 in 2016.

And worse, Massachusetts Boasts Lowest Gun Death Rate in the Nation.

It's a fucking crisis, to be sure.

Edit: ninja'd by Piper.

Beautiful posts, to both you and Piper. I can't argue against gun control any more effectively than I can against interstate commerce and racketeering. It would be great to know which state had the lowest gun death rate before Massachusetts passed its gun control legislation. It's a key part of the puzzle, and it is still missing. Massachusetts is a candidate for the most rational state in the US, because of Harvard and MIT (and Worcester Poly). California has Stanford and Caltech, but a completely different set of problems. If Massachusetts was next door to California, its problems would be more like California's. If California was in the northeast, it would not have nearly as many earthquakes and wildfires. I'm rambling now, but hellwithit, I'm on a roll.

. It would be great to know which state had the lowest gun death rate before Massachusetts passed its gun control legislation. It's a key part of the puzzle, and it is still missing

The_Piper wrote:No love for Tufts or Suffolk? BC, Bu?

Warren Dew wrote:

fisherman wrote:I have read that the NRA has successfully prevented public money being spent on the statistical gathering of gun related deaths.

Does this negatively affect the analysis of gun crime being viewed as a public health issue?

No, because that's not what actually happened.

What happened was that the Center for Disease Control was prohibited from spending money advocating gun control. They can still gather statistics evaluating guns from a public health standpoint.

OlivierK wrote:

Warren Dew wrote:Their latest comprehensive review, in 2013, for example, concluded among other things that substantial numbers of crimes are prevented by guns; it estimated defensive gun uses in the US at between 500,000 and 3 million per year.

Perhaps that's why the US has so much lower a violent crime rate than, say, the UK and Germany.

Or perhaps it's because the US only counts aggravated assault and aggravated sexual assault as violent crimes, whereas other jurisdictions count all assaults and sexual crimes. Just saying.

Cito di Pense wrote:

The_Piper wrote:No love for Tufts or Suffolk? BC, Bu?

Nor Radcliffe nor Wellesley. Hotbeds of feminism, as you well know. Hotbeds of feminism. Let your imagination run wild. I've known ladies from Marblehead, Needham and Cohasset, if you know what I mean, all of them feminists.