I wonder how many murders or especially suicides are committed in this country.....impulsively.....spur of the moment..... just because the immediate means to do so ( firearm ) is readily available in the household and known to be available by the victim. Knowing a lethal firearm is at arm's length almost like that depressed person is always staring at a hanging noose in the room with a chair under it and trying to resist the dark urges that person is at inner war with. I know firearm related suicides are not always committed because of the firearm......some depressed people who are hellbent on suicide will find the way anyway but still......a gun to head is a one time event......over and done with no second chance like pills etc. You wouldn't let a severely depressed person spend a day out visiting the Golden Gate bridge....enjoying the view but that same person coexists in a household sometimes with a loaded gun.
Last time I checked there weren't any laws forbidding any person from taking a stroll on the GG bridge. BUT APPARENTLY THERE SHOULD BE! :roll: Terry, You keep hitting the nail on the head when you say there are too many guns in the hands of those that SHOULD NOT HAVE THEM. No one in Washington is attempting to stem this tide. Backround checks might catch the mentally disturbed (and that's a good thing), but there will be no checks of street thugs that buy them from the trunk of a car. They need to make commission of a crime with a gun into a Federal offense with very strict penalties, and no probation. That probably wouldn't deter the thugs, but it might eventually remove them from the equation.
In looking up stats on suicides in America I came across a profound statement....."mentally disturbed people seeking to murder other people often are not seeking medical help to prevent them from doing so whereas people thinking of suicide do seek that help". Hmmmm.... in other words to say about mass shootings that hey.....it's just a mental health issue and not a gun issue doesn't necessarily fly. FYI.....suicides by firearm is far and away the most popular choice of the depressed with firearms causing over 50% of the suicide deaths in America with the second choice hanging somewhere around 22% of all suicide deaths. Without firerams being readily available would there just be a crapload of hangings? People jumping off bridges or in front of oncoming trains? Or perhaps....just perhaps.... would some of these gun exposed depressed....a significant number possibly..... seek more help for their mental depression issues and live to see another day?
God forbid you should ever think to look it up before just theorizing and placing blame... 2011 both England and the US had similar suicide rates...both around 12 per 100,000. http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/subnational-health4/suicides-in-the-united-kingdom/2011/stb-suicide-bulletin.html http://www.afsp.org/index.cfm?page_id=04ea1254-bd31-1fa3-c549d77e6ca6aa37 Indeed the methodology is different due to the difficulty in getting a firearm in England. http://lostallhope.com/suicide-statistics/england-wales-methods-suicide The worldwide suicide rate is fairly close to what it is in the United States.
Stu, You could read that as people are more dpressed and likely to commit suicide in the UK than in the U.S......but the availability of loaded firearms at arms length in U.S. households makes up the difference.
Scott, In my estimation it will do a number of positive things to make it more difficult for those unworthy to obtain a weapon....will it make it impossible? No. Will it remove all weapons from those hands? No. Will it make it more difficult, thereby reducing the supply? I don't think there is any question about that and that is a positive step.....92% of people surveyed - incl 85% NRA houselods - are supportive of such a measure and the only meaningful impediment is the NRA. Stu, Tom, the "radical" or "extreme" statement was used to describe those that oppose universal background checks. If 85% of the membership is supportive of the measure and 15% are opposed, I don't think using the term extreme to describe their position of the 15% is unreasonable. It certainly isn't "mainstream" and clearly is not representative of the vast majority of their membership that pays their dues and funds their operations....if you guys are opposed to universal background checks, then I don't think it unreasonable to characterize your views as extreme or well outside the mainstream...it is what it is Stu, re: to use the 1997 handgun ban as the starting point to consider the effectiveness of UK gun control measure is a little disingenuous. In truth the UK began a licensing practice in 1903 and by 1968 the regulatory framework included both licensing and background checks for all weapons prior to the 97 Act. The best measure in my view is to compare gun deaths.... Our gun murder rate is 40x that of the UK. There are 10,000 or so gun murders in the US annually -v- 50 or so in the UK. There are almost twice as many children under the age of 18 murdered by guns in each and every one of our largest cities (using LA data) alone as there are all gun murders, of all ages in the entirety of England and Wales . In the last 22 years there have been over 1100 cops shot to death in the US compared to 10 in the UK. A murder rate of law enforcement officers in the US over 110X that of the UK....and their cops don't carry guns. While I agree that there may be societal factors (uncertain what they may be tho) that play a role in our country, the data is compelling to me that the vast discrepancies in results must be a function of much more than societal factors and I have to believe that their regulatory framework of licensing and background checks (established well before the handgun ban) must play a material role in their success at reducing the massive societal cost of gun violence. There really is nothing more for me to comment here but to be clear and and for the record, 1) I do not want to be the UK, 2) do not want to "disarm" the public, 3) do not want to repeal or repudiate the second amendment and 3) would not be supportive of a handgun ban nor the entirety of the strict framework of controls that exist in the UK. I do believe that we can make progress within the context of our constitution, it can make a meaningful difference and should act because the rate at which we as a society are slaughtering our own - especially our children - and incurring staggering societal costs for no apparent or material benefit is shameful in my opinion
Societal factors, unique to our shores, that could account for the entirety or even a majority of the vast disparity....truly, I am at a loss, but always willing to learn.
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/1-4-million-gang-members-and-more-pour-into-the-united-states-every-single-day
Gangs and gang violence are not unique to our shores......inner cities are tough all over and rampant with gang-related violence. Is it conceivable that there are differences in the level of gang-related violence and it may account for some small measure of the delta in murder rates, sure perhaps.....is it 40 fold? Not a snowballs chance.....
Gun murders is 40X....even the overall murder rate at 3-4X the difference in our standing amongst all developed countries is statistically immense (i.e., several std devs - our defense is giving up 83 points a game) and the point remains valid. I have not seen evidence that the difference is "going lower every year", but I'm always interested in see more data
I am an admitted number junkie, I was curious and the market just closed.....here is the data that I found 2000 England/Wales = 1.45 murders per 100,000 United States = 5.5 murders per 100,000 Diff= 3.8X 2011 England/Wales = 1.13 murders per 100,000 United States = 5.2 murders per 100,000 Diff = 4.6X Yes, our total murder rate is declining, but so too is the murder rate of UK/Wales and indeed appears that the relative gap is widening. Data is sourced from our CDC and their Home Office, Crime Section
I think this is where you and I differ greatly. I'm not against background checks, but I fail to see how they will: A) Change the difficulty for a "criminal" to get a weapon illegally. They already go around the system with no trouble at all. B) Reduce the number of weapons available on the black market. If another pistol wasn't made from today on, there would be ample supply of used guns to reach the black market for years, and probably decades. There are MILLIONS of them out there already...
You are playing cherry picking games. I can do that also. Since 1991 our homicide rate has dropped from 9.9 to 6.1 per 100,000. The graph shows a steady decline...perhaps leveling off. It has continued to decrease, though, after the end of the graph (to your 2011 figure, above, of 5.2)...nearly cut in half. http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/youthviolence/stats_at-a_glance/hr_trends.html England's has gone up and down, over the same time frame....but it is nonetheless about the same or higher than it was in 1991. So yeah, you can get technical about my saying "every single year" and cherry pick one 12 month period...but if you plot the mean of the graph it trends downward and continues to go down...and my point still stands...and the trend still continues. Will it probably bottom out? Yeah...but I bet that it hasn't yet.
Fair enough Scott. My reasoning is pretty straightforward here, I think(?). They "go around the system with no trouble at all" because there is a massive hole in the system in the form of the "gun show" loophole where an estimated one million or so guns change hands annually with no background check required at all. Mr. Unworthy can acquire a weapon on his own simply on the honor system....with a required background check as a deterrent, the entirety of that supply will either a) no longer be available to him directly, b) make it more difficult and potentially costly for he and/or others to acquire and/or supply.......in my view it will be a meaningful impediment and the supply of weapons in the hands of the unworthy must necessarily decline. How much is uncertain, but it will be greater than zero and if supplemented by a more robust database and a registration and licensing framework it could be material in my view. Stu, my good buddy.....I'm not trying to "cherry pick" any damn thing. You are seeing ghosts and misinterpreting my intentions. I reasoned that the beginning of the past decade and most recent data was a reasonable, convenient and available set of data. Period, end of story. In your analysis, you are comparing apples and grapes. On the one hand you link a chart with the US trends in murder rates and compare it to trends in the overall number of homicides in the UK. Different data sets....and the optics don't allow a fair nor relevant comparison in my opinion. Your point is well taken that the US murder rate has declined substantially since 1991. In the relevant time frame, from its peak in 91, our rate declined dramatically till bottoming in 2000 at 5.9 (per 100,000). Since 2000, with the exception of the spike in 2001, the rate had been flat through 2007 with now 3 consecutive years (2008-10) of declines not shown on the chart...the rate now stands at 5.3. Overall, since 91 our rate has declined by 46.5%, the vast majority (90%) of which occurred from 1991 to 2000. Since 2000, our rate has declined by 10% and from the spike in 2001 to present, a decline of 25%. Using the same data for the UK/Wales, they showed essentially no change from 91 till 2000 staying essentially flat at 1.24. In 2000, our rate was 4.8X the rate of the UK. Subsequent to 2000, similar to the pattern of our own experience, their rate spiked in 2003 at 1.77. Since 2003, their rate has show a gradual decline to 1.09 in 2010 and now stands at 0.98 for 2012. Overall, their rate declined 11% 1991-2010, essentially flat till 2000 and a 12% decline since 2000. From their spike in 2003 till present, their rate declined by 38%. Most recent comparable data, 2010, shows our rate at 4.9X the rate of the UK. All told, comparing apples to apples, we made up a substantial amount of ground from 1991-2000 but our rate of improvement has since slowed materially and our relative standing has not improved -v- the UK since 2000. If anything since 2000, the UK has seen marginally better improvements. In my estimation, without a more effective legislative framework, I can see no possible means by which we can close the vast gulf that separates us from the rest of the developed world in the senseless slaughter of our own citizens, most of whom are children or young men and incurring massive societal costs in the process for absolutely no material benefit. Each and every day in our country, 8 children will be murdered with a weapon in the hands of somebody unworthy of its possession. For a society as great as our own, that is simply inexcusable to me and we as a intelligent and compassionate society must be compelled to act for the betterment of our nation and to secure the kind of future for the next generation for which we are rightly obligated to provide. I offer the above not as a gotcha, but rather in an honest effort to help put together a set of facts about which reasonable men can agree and discuss and from which one can form rational opinions and take appropriate actions..... Sorry to be so long winded.....time for me to get off the campaign trail. I know I keep "threatening" to do so, but I don't see that I have anymore to add on this topic other than responding to the legislation as it grinds through the process. You all know where I stand and why.....
Not sure how that is apples to oranges (comparing trends in homicide rates in the US to trends in murder rates in England) nor how it is any different from the data you quoted previously only you chose to just look at one year. Our children are slaughtering themselves in gang activity and that is one place where we should be looking at harder to see what we can do. Keeping guns out of their hands would certainly save lives, but they are not using modern sporting rifles or 30 round magazines and they are not buying their guns at gun shows. Regarding gun shows; I am not opposed to universal background requirements; yet that, too is kind of a straw man. It is being sold to folks that all these guns are passing through gun shows without background checks. From what I can tell the vast majority of guns sold at gun shows are sold by licensed firearms dealers who are, indeed, required to do a background check. Anyone who sells more than 6 firearms per year has to be licensed and thus do the background checks, even at gun shows. The Department of Justice did a study that found that less than 2 % of guns used by criminals came from gun shows. The majority came from black market sales, friends, stolen weapons, other criminals, etc.
Stu, anyone that sells more than 6 guns per year does not have to be licensed themselves as long as the gun is sold and transferred througn a FFL holder. As a collector, I can buy and sell as many guns as I want to, if I sell more than 6 of them, the transfer of any over those 6 must go through a FFl holder. I have sold to people without going through a background check. However, I require that they present both a Texas Drivers license and a CHL showing the same address as the DL. This proves to me that the background check has been done. If I walk into Academy Sports and lay my DL and CHL on the counter, I still have to fill out the ATF form 4473, but they do not have to call in the background check because of my CHL.
But if you are selling to a buyer through an FFL holder are they not obligated to run the background check on the buyer (unless they also have a CHL)? In Ohio we have to go through the background check, even though the CCW permit assures that you've already had one.
Absolutely! That is why you can sell more than 6. Those go through the ATF process, including background check, unless they have a CHL (alread had background check). Anyone that gets one of my firearms has had the ATF poking into their background within the last 5 years (5 year renewal on CHL).