Gun-rights supporters want us to simply shrug our shoulders and say, oh well, what can you do?Dozens of firearms have been taken in a series of burglaries this month in the northeastern Liberty County community of Tarkington Prairie, officials said.
Two men are being sought for questioning in the 13 break-ins. No one was home during the burglaries, Liberty County Sheriff's Office Capt. Rex Evans said.
Nearly 100 firearms - from hunting rifles, shotguns, pistols and handguns - have been taken.
Here we're not talking about some remote ranch on hundreds of acres where you keep guns in glass racks, Gunsmoke-style. We're talking about the city of Houston. Is it too much to require safe storage of weapons in the home? Is that a terrible infringement on peoples' rights?
Apparently so, in Houston they blame only the thieves and ask the gun owners nicely to be more careful.
Evans urged gun owners to secure their weapons.What's your opinion? Why are gun owners so reluctant to be truly responsible with their guns? These genius break-in artists spent an average of ONE MINUTE per home in order to take away six or eight guns from each. How difficult would it be to prevent something like that?
Please leave a comment.
MikeB: “We're talking about the city of Houston. Is it too much to require safe storage of weapons in the home? Is that a terrible infringement on peoples' rights?”
ReplyDeleteYes it is. Because it will amount to total prohibition for some people. Requiring an urban dweller to install a $2000 bolt to the floor safe in a studio apartment to hold one $200 shotgun means they won’t get to exercise their gun rights.
TS, if you cannot afford to store a firearm safely, you shouldn't get to own a firearm.
ReplyDeleteIf you cannot maintain anything that is a danger to others safely, then you should not own that either, be it real estate or something else.
Or........are you suggesting that the government ought to buy firearms for those who cannot afford to buy them for themselves as well? Because if you would argue that poverty that prevents someone from buying a firearm in the first place is a violation of their 2nd amendment rights, then clearly we should even that playing field.
OR, if you can't afford to buy a firearm, and you can't afford to store it safely, then you don't get to have one. You have the right to own one, just not the capability to exercise that right as you might wish.
Or.........is that too much socialism for you?
I was going to say there is no such thing as gun rights, but that only applies to the Second Amendment which is supposed to protect us from standing armies.
ReplyDeleteSome States grant gun rights in their constitutions--a safe should be part of that right.
Guns and safes should be provided free of charge to those who can't afford them by charging a tax on those who can--the same way that fines were imposed on those who missed muster days.
Those fines paid for the arms for the indigent militia members.
So, there's a precedent set for providing arms to the indigent.
Dog gone: “are you suggesting that the government ought to buy firearms for those who cannot afford to buy them for themselves as well?”
ReplyDeleteNo. I am ok with fair market. There are plenty of cheap safe functioning guns available unless the government makes them unaffordable through taxes, licensing, registration fees, misc “we hate guns” fees, or safe storage requirements that increase the cost of entry into gun ownership by orders of magnitude. It is not just a matter of cost. Sometimes it is space. If you live in a studio apartment, where can you put a full sized safe? What if your lease forbids you from drilling into walls or floors for mounting? In short, anti-theft safe storage laws will amount to total prohibition for millions of people, and that is unacceptable- particularly when we are talking about someone else’s criminal behavior.
And what exactly meets your definition of safe storage? I have no doubt that gun control advocates will keep changing their mind, but what qualifies as proper theft prevention to you as of right now? Are you willing to talk about what you do to prevent your gun(s) from getting stolen? What I particularly don’t like is the idea of universal applications that may not be the best for everyone’s situation. For storage of a handgun, why is it assumed that a safe that tells a burglar “hey, I have something valuable” is better than a good hiding place?
Cause the criminals know where the good hiding places are!
ReplyDeleteThat's their business, Their job, Their expertise, their speciality, and The tools of their trade.
If you can't afford a safe, you can't afford a gun--cause you won't be "safe" with it for long.
Nothing like having your own gun used against you.
Anyway, aren't stolen guns the ones that criminals use?
Laci: “Cause the criminals know where the good hiding places are! That's their business, Their job, Their expertise, their speciality, and The tools of their trade.”
ReplyDeleteExactly. And they know how to cut open safes too.
Oh dear, maybe burglar alarms are a better choice.
ReplyDeleteTS, I worked in the home office claims division of one of the largest insurance companies in the world for a number of years.
ReplyDeleteI can assure you with some degree of confidence that the number of instances safes are cut open is fairly minimal.
So if you are positing that it is a waste of time to lock up guns, I challenge you to document that safes are not effective means of securing valuables and weapons.
Because any kind of safe being opened forcibly or by trickery or gadgetry is in fact damn rare. Safes are a very effective way to secure weapons.
But a burglar alarm is still a better choice for home protection than a gun.
ReplyDeleteDog gone: “So if you are positing that it is a waste of time to lock up guns, I challenge you to document that safes are not effective means of securing valuables and weapons.”
ReplyDeleteDidn’t say that. What I want is for it to be a choice, not a blanket government mandate that may not be the best solution for some people- and surely will amount to prohibition for millions of people. That is the part that CAN NOT be allowed.
Dog gone: “Because any kind of safe being opened forcibly or by trickery or gadgetry is in fact damn rare.”
Until everyone stores their gun in a safe- then it will be frequent. Criminals are resourceful and they will get what they want even if they have to put a gun to your head and scream “open the goddamned safe or I’ll blow your brains out!” As you know, gun proliferation is tremendous in this country, and as we keep saying a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions of guns are used for crimes. They will ALWAYS be able to take what they need to fill the criminal demand. That is why gun control is hopeless. It would take a century of total bans and confiscations just to get to the point where criminals would begin to turn to other countries to supplement their supply of weapons.
Are you willing to talk about the type of safe you have dog gone? If you don’t I understand.
Can you talk about what specifically constitutes safe storage from theft in your mind? What about alarms, window bars, cameras? Does a metal box with a lock on it suffice? What grade of steel? Should a purposely built gun room with no windows and reinforced steel doors be required?
I also encourage you to think outside “the safe” and consider the unintended consequences. Obviously these laws come with punishments for failure to comply. So the victim of a gun theft might be a criminal as well as the thief. Who is going to report that their guns were stolen only to have the cops come arrest them, throw them in jail, and ruin their life? Even if you thought you were in compliance, it obviously wasn’t good enough so you are still subject to prosecution. Maybe it is best to keep the victims victims so that they’ll cooperate with police in obtaining serial numbers and prints and hopefully catch the thief before someone gets shot. How does that sound?
Hey, let's just make it real easy for criminals to get guns!
ReplyDeleteI think that's a brilliant idea!
More guns, more crime!
There are numerous ways to keep guns safe. Every time someone makes it more difficult to find a weapon while searching, every time that weapon is less accessible, or takes longer to acquire is a probability that the thief WON'T leave with it.
ReplyDeleteTS and RedAz et al would have no required security for weapons, which leads to more, not fewer weapons stolen from legal owners falling into the hands of illegal gun owners.
Their reasoning is that if there is no impediment that is 100% secure, then we should do nothing.
Here's an idea TS, Red Az, if we can't guarantee you or your loved one 100% that we can cure a cancer from which you might suffer, how about we don't do anything at all, make no effort to cure it, even if the effort might be 5%, or 50%, or 90% successful. No? You will take the improved chances over no chance?
Good one - just like securing guns.
Dog gone, what of the unintended consequences of which I spoke? Please address that. Is this no concern of yours?
ReplyDeleteAlso, I still don’t know what degree of security it is you demand. The mere act of locking ones doors makes it “harder” for a thief to steal property, but it is obviously unacceptable to you. Here, I’ll make it real easy for you and make a quick list of various levels of anti-theft storage. The thing is no matter how much you can do, you can always do more. You tell me what number you find acceptable:
1) Pad lock on a wooded cabinet.
2) Lock on a metal strong box.
3) Locking metal strong box that is chained to a piece of furniture.
4) Locking metal strong box that is bolted to the wall studs.
5) Locking metal strong box that is bolted to a concrete wall or floor.
6) Combination or biometric safe.
7) Combination or biometric safe that is too big/heavy to carry (it is pretty silly to just have one handgun in there, so don’t complain when everyone stocks up their arsenal).
8) Combination or biometric safe bolted to a concrete floor.
9) Higher-end version of no.8 with thicker stronger steel, etc. No matter how much you spend, you can always spend more to get better quality.
10) no.9 except designed by British high school students to be “the perfect safe”.
11) Purposely built gun room with no windows and reinforced steel doors with an improved safe inside bolted to the floor.
12) A vault.
13) Secret entrance that leads to a vault 100ft underground.
As we talked about before, are means of securing the whole house also acceptable? If it is just as hard for a burglar to get into the whole house as you envisioned, then storing them openly should be ok (from a theft perspective):
1)Locks on doors.
2)Dead bolts on doors.
3)Bars on the windows.
4)Reinforced steel doors.
5)Alarm system.
6)Fence with razor wire around the property.
7)Attack dogs on the premise.
8)24 hour security guards on premise.
9)24 hour armed security guards on premise.
10)Using an underground military bunker as a domicile.
TS, I think every community should set their standards based on their exposure to this kind of crime, gun theft.
ReplyDeleteBut if you wanted to know what level I think is desirable, it would be requiring trigger locks, and number 4 in your list, a secured permanently attached lockable container.
TS writes
" What I want is for it to be a choice, not a blanket government mandate that may not be the best solution for some people- and surely will amount to prohibition for millions of people. That is the part that CAN NOT be allowed."
No, TS,so long as the rest of us are harmed by the frequent theft of large numbers of guns - as is the case in this country - then the balancing of people being secured from that harm occurring needs to be balanced against people having guns just because they want to, but without fulfilling their responsiblity of
keeping those guns secure.
I'll give you an alternative TS; if someone fails to keep their gun secure and that gun is use in a crime, or found in the posession of a criminal, then the original gun owner who failed to keep the weapon secure does the same time as the criminal.
No?
Sorry, but if someone can't keep their weapon secure, or won't, they should not be allowed to own one because they cannot do so safely. When you provide a voluntary system that reduces the number of firearms in the hands of criminals to the point where this is not a problem any longer, we can talk about changing that requirement.
What metric should we use to determine when that point is reached? How about the same gun violence stats per capita that they have in similar countries in Europe - the UK, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands..... and Canada, Australia, New Zealand.
Until you can provide an alternative TS, a voluntary alternative, the level of gun violence in this country IS the rational justification for such a requirement being mandatory.
YOUR way doesn't work. Simple, bottom line, reasonable.
But I hope you did smile at the high schoool students video. It leaves open lots of possibilities for someone to inexpensibly fashion their own quite secure safe. If very bright high school students can do it, either create one yourself, or hire a high school geek. It rather comes down to....are you smarter than a fifth grader, or in this case 10-12th grader?
I might believe that the true motive is to make it harder for thieves to get guns, but gun control is actively pushing for policies that make it easier from other angles:
ReplyDelete1) They want registration. When a list exists of every model of gun and exactly who has them it could fall into the wrong hands creating a thieves shopping list (note: I don’t think this is very likely).
2) However, Mike and others want the above to be public information. That’s nuts! It turns the unlikely into an absolute certainty. No one can claim to be interested in reducing gun thefts and support such a thing with a straight face.
3) Gun control actively works against self-defense in the home. Like it or not, getting shot is a serious deterrent to home invasions. Does it make you feel better if a burglar doesn’t get shot but steals 12 guns that end up killing three people? Since you cited England, look at their burglary rate compared to ours (admittedly examining just these two counties does not show a correlation- we’d have to look at more than that).
4) You say give them what they want. So if someone breaks into my home, I should say, “I have guns- please take them and go.” And when they kill someone with it, you say I should do time for murder. Lovely.
Dog gone: “if someone fails to keep their gun secure and that gun is use in a crime, or found in the posession of a criminal, then the original gun owner who failed to keep the weapon secure does the same time as the criminal. No?”
Not just no, hell no (you are making me really regret registering my guns right about now…)
Dog gone: “But if you wanted to know what level I think is desirable, it would be requiring trigger locks, and number 4 in your list, a secured permanently attached lockable container.”
Trigger locks won’t do squat against theft. They are not anti-theft devices. Regarding no.4, you won’t complain when thieves cut through the dry wall and 2x4s in about 2 minutes? You won’t demand better storage? They failed to keep their gun secure, so do they still go to prison? Some little old lady who has a revolver buried in a shoe box in the attic should go find it, and mount it to a wall in a strong box. When a thief breaks in, it is the first thing he sees and pries it off the wall with the crowbar he just used for entry… And she goes to jail… See what I mean about blanket requirements? Even if it is communities setting the standards, they can’t possibly know what is best for any given household. A gun under the bed in a studio apartment on the 15th floor of a luxury apartment building with security cameras and a guard on duty is more secure than a gun in a 800lb safe in the garage of a single family home in the same neighborhood. But the first one is just a gun under the bed to you, and shows a lack of responsibility. Besides, people living in rented apartments most likely can’t drill those kinds of holes into the wall. It amounts to sweeping prohibition, and it won’t fly no matter how much balance you think it yields. If you want to talk balance, then you’ll also need proof. If your policies won’t reduce gun violence and it disarms millions of people- then it has got to go.
Dog gone: “What metric should we use to determine when that point is reached? How about the same gun violence stats per capita that they have in similar countries in Europe - the UK, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands..... and Canada, Australia, New Zealand.”
The metric can’t be gun violence- it has to be all violence and all murder (which is what we both want to see lower, so we should be able to agree on that). Otherwise the easiest way to reduce gun violence is to reduce guns- and your policies certainly are trying to reduce guns.
Dog gone: “It leaves open lots of possibilities for someone to inexpensibly fashion their own quite secure safe.”
Can I make it out of Plexiglas like they did?
Lock 'em up and keep 'em safe, TS, or lose 'em. Your choice.
ReplyDeleteMike, What does “lock ‘em up” mean to you? Can you point out which number qualifies in your mind (from my post to dog gone)? I can assure you my guns are locked up, but whatever I do isn’t good enough so long as they were stolen so I should go to jail. Is that about right?
ReplyDeleteYou are looking at it too simplistically. You say somewhere, sometime a thief will be thwarted by your safe storage policy- and lives will be saved. You are not looking at the big picture. The demand is still there. Therefore thieves will do what it takes to meet that demand (even if that means returning to the same site with a Sawzall). Or it simply means hitting more houses (putting more families in danger) to get the guns they need. And the guns are out there. There are so many that they will never have to try too much harder to get them. If it ever becomes so difficult because of highly secure safes, then we will see more violence (like the example I gave of the thief putting a gun to the owner’s head). Don’t you wish they’d rather take property than a life?
Once again, I ask you to consider my points about unintended consequences. How does that mesh with your theory of “it we make it a little harder it will save lives” when there are negative effects working against it? Much like how drug dealers don’t call the cops when their stash is stolen, don’t expect gun owners to call the cops either.
Simplified: you want to “make it harder for thieves to steal guns”. If it becomes harder, one of two things will happen. 1) they will give the same amount of effort and get fewer guns or 2) they will try harder and get he same amount of guns. Which one follows the principle of supply and demand? So maybe you succeed in the goal of “making it harder”, but that doesn’t mean you reduced gun violence- you only made thieves work harder. But you also put innocent people in prison (for being a victim of theft) and made gun ownership so onerous that it was denied to millions of people- some of which needed it to defend themselves. Additionally you made police work a lot harder because more and more theft victims don’t call the cops. That is a losing outcome.
I have never fallen into your “bad laws be damned” crowd. But I am telling you right now, I will never call the cops so they can haul me off to jail because my guns were stolen. You deal with the fallout of your bad policies.
13 burglaries, nearly 100 firearms.
ReplyDeleteNot a single, 20 Ga Shotgun or two, stolen from a poor person's home.
Don't most people that own multiple weapons usually own high quality weapons?
How did the burglars pick their targets--throwing darts at a street level map? I suspect that there's a little more going on here than is being reported by the police.
Seems likely to me that somebody made a list of locals who have/had lots of guns. That information could be compiled by hanging out at the range or hunt club and paying attention while folks brag--not that I'm saying that's the case, just looking at one scenario.
Some guys I lived with back in 1973 were hunters. They kept about a half dozen shotguns and rifles in their bedroom closets. One early Sunday morning after a late night party broke up we all went down to a 24Hr diner for breakfast. When we got back home an hour and a half later, the front door was damaged and wide open. There were albums and stereo equipment strewn about the living room and all of the guns were missing.
The cops came to take a report, immediately smelling the pot that had been smoked in that house for the last six months. They looked around and one of them picked up a beer can with pencil and said "Who drinks Miller High Life.". I had no idea who that might be, the brothers I shared the place with did.
After the cops left they called a very crazy and violent acquaintance and he readily admitted to having kicked in the door and, finding no one home decided to make the thing "
"look like a robbery".
One of the brothers said, "Well, it WAS a fucking robbery.". The upshot was that they got their guns back--no apology, no restitution for damages--and kept their mouths shut.
Just a guess, but I suspect that absent the beer can evidence they would never have seen their guns again.
Fast cars, vicious dogs and guns--if you can't control them or keep track of them you shouldn't have them.
Gee, TS, you are making a good argument that owning guns isn't the best idea if you want to keep your family safe.
ReplyDeleteOn my first tour of Northern Ireland, I would ask the locals about having guns for protection. Their reaction was pretty much unanimous that it was a bad idea since it made you a target for people who would steal them.
That was when I began to question the wisdom of having a gun for protection.
You are addding fuel to the fire.
Why have a gun for proection if a thief is going to make every effort to steal it?
TS, what I wrote, satirically, was that if you insisted on owning guns but could not or chose not to secure them THEN if they were stolen because of your negligence you should go to jail, just like the other criminals, for making the crime with those weapons possible.
ReplyDeleteYou wrote:"I can assure you my guns are locked up, but whatever I do isn’t good enough so long as they were stolen so I should go to jail. Is that about right?"
So, NO, that is not about right. These are weapons, dangerous weapons. If you do not secure them properly, and YOUR actions are responsible for harm to someone else, personal or property, YOU should assume your share of that responsiblity.
Instead TS, you are arguing for what you describe as a right without any accountability, responsiblity or liability.
THAT doesn't work.
And so far, YOU haven't addressed that issue. YOU haven't explained how it happens to be that those countries which have the hightest number of firearms ALSO have the highest number of incidents of gun violence, including fatalities.
Either assume the full responsiblity for ownership of a weapon - including securing it sufficiently that it is not stolen, OR DON'T HAVE ONE.
Because YOUR rights end at the tip of someone else's nose, and those other people, as represented by a long number of years of cumulative statistics, are being harmed; their choices, their rights, their lives and bodies and their property, are ALL being violated by YOUR choices and the choices of people who advocate for your position of zero responsiblity.
You can't have it both ways. You have the right, you have the responsiblity that goes with it, that respects the rights of others as well.
Democommie wrote:
ReplyDelete"Fast cars, vicious dogs and guns--if you can't control them or keep track of them you shouldn't have them."
Amen. I would add one's offspring to that list, LOL!
TS wrote:"Simplified: you want to “make it harder for thieves to steal guns”. If it becomes harder, one of two things will happen."
ReplyDeleteNo, TS, pretty much the two things which will happen are:
1. there will be fewer guns in the hands of criminals because they won't be getting them from stealing;
2. fewer people will be shot by criminals with guns.
You try to make the unwarranted, unjustified and unsupportable argument that criminals will always succeed somehow. That is not a valid position.
Criminals are not omnipotent, not omniscient, and usually not very bright. They CAN be stopped, and they should be stopped, and there are better ways of stopping them than arming every man woman and child on the street.
Your argument is nothing but mindless hysteria. Try something more rational; you'll feel better.
Laci: “Why have a gun for proection if a thief is going to make every effort to steal it?”
ReplyDeleteIt is still highly unlikely. MikeB has conditioned me to believe that I might as well protect myself from meteor strikes if I am going to protect myself from a home invasion. Funny how all your cries of “your paranoid” turn into “your irresponsible” to suit your agenda. But as I pointed out- the criminal world only needs a tiny slice of the gun action to do their damage. And that will always be available to them- though it is not likely any individual becomes a gun theft victim.
Here is the likely reality: I’ll go through the rest of my life enjoying recreational shooting without hurting anyone or having any guns stolen. I doubt I will go through live without being the victim of another violent crime, but most likely it will be outside the home and I won’t be armed- so I hope it goes well for me.
You all can believe that guns will be more likely to be used against you, and you don’t have to buy one. I encourage you not to if you believe this tripe. To follow that logic, you’d also have to believe it is detriment to officers to carry a gun. Since the vast majority of you stop short of saying that, we can see it is more agenda driven to fool people out of ownership. People who don’t fall for anti-gun propaganda think for themselves, and feel confident that in a life or death violent encounter- they would rather have a gun in their hand than not. You don’t get to make that choice for me.
Dog gone: “what I wrote, satirically, was that if you insisted on owning guns but could not or chose not to secure them THEN if they were stolen because of your negligence you should go to jail, just like the other criminals, for making the crime with those weapons possible.”
First off, what is “my negligence”? I do believe guns can be stolen out of negligence, but we probably have far different views on that. If I was returning home from the range and set gun onto of the roof of my car while unloading other items- then left them there parked on the street all night- that would be pretty negligent.
As for “making crime possible”, how does that not apply to any victim just for being at the wrong place at the wrong time? These are strong anti-civil liberty comments, that are quite disturbing.
Dog gone: “And so far, YOU haven't addressed that issue. YOU haven't explained how it happens to be that those countries which have the hightest number of firearms ALSO have the highest number of incidents of gun violence, including fatalities.”
ReplyDeleteSomeday you and I need to have a sitdown where I convince you to drop the “gun death” BS and focus on three things: Suicide rates, murder rates, and violent crime rates. Then we can have a meaningful discussion. But I think it is going to take some time and it is a wholly different topic than gun theft. I believe you are rational enough to focus on this measure- after all guns are the best tool to kill your self or kill others, so the prevalence of guns should lead to higher suicide and murder rates to prove your point, not? Actually, we already tackled suicide earlier- do you want to just focus on murder and violent crime to salvage some points?
Dog gone: “Criminals are not omnipotent, not omniscient, and usually not very bright. They CAN be stopped, and they should be stopped”
Yet I easily showed you that they can saw through the drywall and 2x4s to pull the case off the wall. Don’t think that if every home has such measure this won’t be a common occurrence. It was responsible storage, until it wasn’t.
How about finally addressing the unintended consequences? You make theft easily by granting near immunity for gun thieves. They know all they need is to get a gun from the heist and the cops won’t be called. Talk about making their job easier. Since this is the fourth time I am bringing this up, am I to assume you have no good answer for this problem?
What about the large scale disarmament of renters who can’t meet you demands in their dwelling? If you believe Arthur Kellerman, renters are 4.4 times more likely to be murdered, so they need protection more than home owners.
You all can believe that guns will be more likely to be used against you, and you don’t have to buy one. I encourage you not to if you believe this tripe. To follow that logic, you’d also have to believe it is detriment to officers to carry a gun.
ReplyDeleteIt is, but because of the amount of firearms on the street in the US the police need to have firearms to perform their duties.
Police have to work to prevent criminals from grabbing their guns and train in weapon retention techniques. I know several police officers who have had their guns taken from them or someone attempted to take them from the officer.
The police have better protection against civil and criminal liability if they use their firearms improperly, but they can still face legal liability.
SO, yes, it is a detriment to the police, but there is a Risk-benefit trade-off that says it's better for the US police to be armed at this time.
Please note that British Police are not armed, and the British prefer it that way.
And we have far less gun violence than the US.
TS, you can try to spin it any way you like.
ReplyDeleteThe kind of theft that Democommie described is far too common. Leaving a firearm in a closet where it is known to many people is negligent.
Not locking up a firearm so that it cannot be stolen is negligent.
Not locking up a firearm so that it can easily be used against you is negligent.
How much security might be needed to secure a firearm is something that will vary by location and risk exposure, and is dependent on many factors, including location and whether or not you have alarms, etc.
But the bottom line is, suicide or homicide, or any other kind of crime you care to list, we in the U.S. have more of it PER CAPITA than is the case in other countries with fewer guns.
Those guns are NOT making us safer, because if they were, those numbers would be lower, on a par with those other countries. And you have NO answer for this other than more guns. We've been adding guns for decades; the rate of gun violence has not decreased. Not in any ONE single category.
So it makes sense to argue for more stringent restrictions on gun purchases, including secure storage.
Becaues until you can show me that we are not simply passing all the guns that are illegal into the hands of criminals under our current system, all guns which start out as legal purchases apparently, then you haven't adequately addressed that question.
I don't find it plausible that we can't substantially stop criminals from successfully stealing guns. Gun theft of the existing guns does not occur in other countries the way it occurs here. So clearly it IS possible to reduce, to elminate very nearly, putting guns into the hands of the bad guys.
That is not penalizing the poor gun owner victim of theft. That is making gun owners, fans of gun sport, part of the solution instead of part of the problem.
If that means that guns are more expensive to own, too bad. If someone wants one badly enough they will earn the money for a firearm, including making enough and saving enough to store it securely. What I suspect that will mean is that those who don't really care that much won't buy guns and will instead spend money on something they want more for that discretionary income.
That is also likely to translate into fewer, more serious gun owners who take every aspect of gun ownership more seriously - including keeping them out of the hands of criminals.
You posit TS that we cannot stop criminals from getting guns. That is clearly not true; other countries have far far fewer instances of crimes and violence using guns. We may not be able to prevent every theft of a firearm, but we can prevent many, even most of them.
IF we choose to do so. You TS apparently don't. You'd rather see cheap and numerous guns, at the cost of having higher incidences of gun violence. That is a bad tradeoff, it is poor public policy, it is bad security, it is stupid and ill considered.
You TS are obsessed with the notion that we are all at risk if we don't have guns - not true. That the only solution to every imagined rather than real problem is guns and more guns - not true. And that we mustn't do anything to change the status quo......because why? Because it is working so well?
It is NOT. Wake up and smell the coffee.
I forgot to add that Soldiers in Northern Ireland would wrap on end of their rifles sling to their wrist.
ReplyDeleteThat was done in case someone tried to grab the weapon.
TS, my opinion is that if you can't fight to keep your weapon, you probably shouldn't be carrying one.
Dog gone: “How much security might be needed to secure a firearm is something that will vary by location and risk exposure, and is dependent on many factors, including location and whether or not you have alarms, etc.”
ReplyDeleteWe are in total agreement here. And this is why government can’t stick their nose in punishing people who don’t meet some blanket requirement thought up by gun controllers as the best way to store a weapon.
Dog gone: “But the bottom line is, suicide or homicide, or any other kind of crime you care to list, we in the U.S. have more of it PER CAPITA than is the case in other countries with fewer guns.”
Show me. You haven’t done it yet. Instead you have used “gun deaths” or “gun violence” tied to gun ownership. Remember, we have already tackled suicide, and the numbers did not turn out like you thought:
http://mikeb302000.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-gun-violence-from-legal-guns.html
Dog gone: “We've been adding guns for decades; the rate of gun violence has not decreased. Not in any ONE single category.”
That is simply not true. Murder rates have been going down over the past 20 years, and so have murders by firearm.
Dog gone: “You posit TS that we cannot stop criminals from getting guns. That is clearly not true; other countries have far far fewer instances of crimes and violence using guns.”
Because they have been stopping their citizens from getting guns. Pointing out that criminals in the UK don’t steal as many guns glosses over the fact the UK citizens don’t have many guns to steal. We don’t want to be like the UK.
The isn’t just about poor people by the way- though your tactics will clearly infringe on them more. It is about urban dwellers as well, even the upper middle class who don’t have space or the permission to drill into their walls and floors, and thorwing money at it doesn't solve it.
Dog gone, do you think this is a valid metric for our discussions: compare gun ownership rates to murder rates of every country where data is available? Simple, clear, to the point. Can you come up with any reason why this metric is not valuable for connecting lethal weapons to lethality?
ReplyDeleteTS:
ReplyDelete"The level of gun ownership world-wide is directly related to murder and suicide rates and specifically to the level of death by gunfire."
International Correlation between gun ownership and rates of homicide and suicide.' Professor Martin Killias, May 1993.
and this chart.
The level of gun ownership world-wide is directly related to murder and suicide rates and specifically to the level of death by gunfire.
ReplyDeleteI’d love to see the data on this. What I know is that he looked at 18 countries (I’d really like to see something more comprehensive than that), and that it was done in 1993- which was about the peak of USA’s murder problem. Luckily for us, the good professor kept working. Check out the abstract for his 2001 study in which he confirms my opinion:
Interestingly, no significant correlations with toal [sic] suicide or homicide rates were found, leaving open the question of possible substitution effects.
http://www.guncite.com/gun-control-killias-abstract.html
I did some more digging in the chart that you provided. That in itself isn’t very interesting, but there is a link to the IANSA gunpolicy.org website. That has a lot of the data that I am looking for (provided by a gun control organization)- estimates for ownership as well as total homicide rate (murder would be better, but I’ll take what I can get). The problem is it is not compiled into a nice little graph to show correlation. They have date on roughly 200 countries, so it will take some serious mining to pull and compile that data. Maybe sometime I might work on it… Who knows what it will yield, but I’d have to guess the odds favor my position- otherwise IANSA would have done it for me.
TS, let's start with the correlation in the U.S.
ReplyDeletehttp://penigma.blogspot.com/2011/01/more-guns-do-not-equal-fewer-murders.html
and then there is this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.lcav.org/statistics-polling/gun_violence_statistics.asp#13
and there is this:
ReplyDeletehttp://washingtonceasefire.org/resource-center/international-and-domestic-statistics-compared
and:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/index.html
"1. Guns and homicide (literature review).
We performed a review of the academic literature on the effects of gun availability on homicide rates.
Major findings: A broad array of evidence indicates that gun availability is a risk factor for homicide, both in the United States and across high-income countries. Case-control studies, ecological time-series and cross-sectional studies indicate that in homes, cities, states and regions in the US, where there are more guns, both men and women are at higher risk for homicide, particularly firearm homicide." and
"2. Guns availability and homicide rates across nations.
We analyzed the relationship between homicide and gun availability using data from 26 developed countries from the early 1990s.
Major findings: Across developed countries, where guns are more available, there are more homicides. These results often hold even when the United States is excluded."
and
" 7-8. Guns and suicide (literature review).
We performed reviews of the academic literature on the effects of gun availability on suicide rates.
Major findings: The preponderance of current evidence indicates that gun availability is a risk factor for youth suicide in the United States. The evidence that gun availability increases the suicide rates of adults is credible, but is currently less compelling. Most of the disaggregate findings of particular studies (e.g. handguns are more of a risk factor than long guns, guns stored unlocked pose a greater risk than guns stored locked) are suggestive but not yet well established.
Publication: Miller, Matt; Hemenway, David. "The Relationship between Firearms and Suicide: A Review of the Literature." Aggression and Violent Behavior: A Review Journal. 1999; 4:59-75."
and
"17. Summary of the literature on guns and suicide.
This commentary summarized the literature that shows that firearms in the home increase the likelihood of completed suicide, and argued for increased involvement of physicians in recognizing and helping to reduce the problem.
Publication: Miller, Matthew; Hemenway, David. Guns and suicide in the United States. The New England Journal of Medicine. 2008; 359:989-991. "
and
"18. Gun availability and state unintentional firearm death rates
We analyzed data for 50 states over 19 years to investigate the relationship between gun prevalence and accidental gun deaths across different age groups.
Major findings: For every age group, where there are more guns there are more accidental deaths. The mortality rate was 7 times higher in the four states with the most guns compared to the four states with the fewest guns."
and
19. Firearm storage and unintentional firearm death across U.S. states
We analyzed data from the 2002 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System that asked questions about guns and gun storage in the home, combined with information on deaths from the National Center for Health Statistics.
Major findings: Both firearm prevalence AND questionable storage practices (i.e. storing firearms loaded and unlocked) were associated with higher rates of unintentional firearm deaths. "
same source as previously:
ReplyDelete"20. Gun availability and deaths to children.
We analyzed the relationship between firearm availability and unintentional gun death, homicide and suicide for 5-14 year olds across the 50 states over a ten year period.
Major findings: Children in states with many guns have elevated rates of unintentional gun deaths, suicide and homicide. The state rates of non-firearm suicide and non-firearm homicide among children are not related to firearm availability. "
and
"21. Gun versus non-gun suicide by children
We analyzed data from the Arizona Childhood Fatality Review Team comparing youth gun suicide with suicide by other means.
Major findings: Children who use a firearm to commit suicide have fewer identifiable risk factors for suicide, such as expressing suicidal thoughts. Gun suicides appear more impulsive and spontaneous than suicide by other means."
and
"23. Gun availability and deaths to women.
We analyzed the relationship between firearm availability and unintentional gun death, homicide and suicide for women across the 50 states over a ten year period.
Major findings: Women in states with many guns have elevated rates of unintentional gun deaths, suicides and homicide, particularly firearm suicides and firearm homicides."
and
"24. Gun availability and homicides of women across nations.
We analyzed the relationship between gun availability and homicides of women with data from 25 high income countries.
Major findings: Across developed nations, where gun are more available, there are more homicides of women. The United States has the most firearms and U.S. women have far more likely to be homicide victims than women in other developed countries."
Does that break it down enough for you TS, that there are strong correlations between gun violence and the presence/possession of firearms? That this is consistent across groups, be it comparisons between countries and states, homicides, suicides, accidental gun deaths, etc.?
TS, going back to this one for a moment, "but whatever I do isn’t good enough so long as they were stolen so I should go to jail. Is that about right?"
ReplyDeleteI'd like to say this. You're putting words in my mouth I did not say. Someone who takes reasonable precautions against theft would never be accused of laxity by me. Under the pillow and locking the front door is not good enough. Locked up in some kind of gun safe while your out, and a thief comes in and has enough time to thwart your security system, you've done nothing wrong, in my view.
"You all can believe that guns will be more likely to be used against you, and you don’t have to buy one."
ReplyDeleteWe don't have to "believe" it as in taking it on faith. The numbers back up the assertion.
"I’d love to see the data on this. What I know is that he looked at 18 countries (I’d really like to see something more comprehensive than that),"
something from John Lott, perhaps?
Here's the deal, TS. In this country the NRA is the 800 pound uparmed gorilla who will denounce anyone who suggests that their propaganda is based on a lot of specious, apochryphal, anecdotal and non-peer reviewed source material and "data". In the U.S. they can bully the pols and, to some extent, the general public into silent acquiesence for fear of looking "unamerican" if they protest.
In the rest of the world the NRA is considered to be something of a curiousity by many and a dangerously demagogic cabal by others. The amount of scholarship by people who have NOTHING TO GAIN, FINANCIALLY by taking a stance opposing the free flow of dangerous weaponry through society far outweighs anything that the shills for the NRA offer by way of counter-argument.
Dog gone, of the four sources you listed the first three are all comparing “gun deaths”, which is specifically not following the metric of gun ownership to murder rates that we discussed. Only the Hemenway studies attempt to broach tying guns to homicide rates (again, he should have used murder so that justifiable homicides are not working against gun ownership).
ReplyDeleteI feel this thread is too stale to go into a lot of details on Hemenway, but are you confident that his conclusions bear out in the raw data? We should expect to see a correlation between gun ownership and murder rates across every state in the union, or every country where data is available for the international level.
Democommie: “something from John Lott, perhaps?”
Democommie, you seem to forget that I am not a big fan of John Lott, as I have never quoted him, and we have discussed him many times here on this blog. You seem to be arguing against an idea, rather than a person. It could be that you are that this so much, you just can’t keep it all straight, which is fine, but it is not helping your stance.
I propose this to you and Dog gone for a future discussion: let’s throw out “research” by biased individuals like Lott, Kleck, Hemenway, and Kellerman who use their statistical skills to massage data to their liking using grant money from Joyce, or the draw of selling books to pro-gun folks. Since there have always been two sides to these studies, and we all know about the “lies that can be done with statistics” by “controlling” for variables- let’s just cancel them out and examine the raw numbers. Gun ownership vs. Murder. By looking at every state in the union or every country where data is available we won’t need to worry so much about controlling for all these external factors. If there is a correlation, it will show itself by using as much data as we possibly can. Now, it is not foolproof, but it is a good stating point. Obstacles are that gun ownership is always an estimate, and murder rate in other countries can be grossly underreported depending on the country (which only helps you). So do you have any sources that you trust that shows correlation of these raw numbers?
Yes, we do.
ReplyDeleteTry this in particular, this chart
It’s all “gun deaths”, Laci. Not murder rates. And you think I am the one with comprehension issues?
ReplyDeleteLCAV is pleased to announce the publication of Gun Laws Matter: A Comparison of State Firearms Laws and Statistics, a new brochure that analyzes and compares firearms laws and statistics in all 50 states. States were ranked from 1 to 50 based on 25 different policy areas. The brochure provides a map that displays each state’s rank and whether the state’s gun death rate is above or below the national average. The brochure explains that many of the states with the strongest gun laws also have the lowest gun death rates and vice versa. For example, the 10 states with the strongest gun laws are California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island and Florida. More than half of these states are in the bottom ten states for gun death rates. The brochure also lists the ten best and worst states for rates of gun deaths, gun ownership and crime gun exports (in addition to gun laws); best and worst practices and which states have implemented them; and details the laws in the state with the strongest gun laws (California), and the weakest (Arizona).
It's all gun deaths not murder rates?
ReplyDeleteWell, if you want to parse it, this link oughta help.
http://wisqars.cdc.gov:8080/nvdrs/nvdrsDisplay.jsp
What I always see as a bit jarring is the number of people who airily dismiss other people's stats without offering a differing set, based on peer reviewed hypotheses or solid empirical data.
TS:
You want me throw out all of the people that you cite in your latest post? That will still leave dozens, if not hundreds, of studies done in countries around the world re: availability of guns and the violence that is committed with them.
TS, it's tryng to come up with accurate statistics for that.
ReplyDeleteThe pro-gun side doesn't want them out there: hence defunding for CDC such as AR-13: Prohibition on Use of CDC Funds for Certain Gun Control Activities.
Anyway, the statistics that are out there shoot down your position, TS.
I should also add in that I concur with Democommie's comment.
ReplyDeleteDemocommie: “What I always see as a bit jarring is the number of people who airily dismiss other people's stats without offering a differing set, based on peer reviewed hypotheses or solid empirical data.”
ReplyDeleteI’ll offer a different set. What I want to see is a correlation between gun ownership (and or strength of gun laws) with total murder and total suicide rates. Don’t you think that is relevant and completely reasonable? It is certainly more relevant than tying the use of a product to availability of that product- which I would always expect to have some type of correlation. I mean, you can’t have a gun death without a gun. Likewise, you can’t have a DGU without a gun (that is what the G stands for after all). I know we differ on guns, but let’s look at a topic that we can probably both agree on- like vaccinations or airbags in cars. It would be quite pointless to come up with a table that correlates the rate of vaccines that certain counties give vs. the “death by vaccine” rates. Or correlating percentage of cars equipped with airbags with “death by airbag” stats. Your same methods can be used to show how bad airbags and vaccines are. The variable that we are trying to examine is murder. It is suicide. That is the amount of people dying needlessly. And guns make both of that easier, right, so don’t be afraid of the results.
Democommie: “You want me throw out all of the people that you cite in your latest post? That will still leave dozens, if not hundreds, of studies done in countries around the world re: availability of guns and the violence that is committed with them.”
So What. Read my comments above (or the six other times in this thread alone where I tried to explain the difference between murder and “gun death”). We don’t need to do a “study”. A simple correlation between guns and the end results that we are trying to control for will suffice. That is fewer people committing murder- fewer people committing suicide.
Laci: “Anyway, the statistics that are out there shoot down your position, TS.”
Then where are they? My position is a correlation between gun ownership and murder rates. You say “yeah, I have that!” and you give me a link to LCAV correlating gun ownership to “gun deaths”- AGAIN (after repeatedly saying in the thread how that is NOT what I am looking for). So why didn’t LCAV list the murder rates and suicide rates of all the states in their table? Because they didn’t, I am going to have to do it for them. I’ll go to Democommie’s wisqars link (or FBI UCR) and enter that data in the table. We’ll still use LCAV’s gun ownership data so you can’t claim this to be pro-gun bias. That is the piece of data that is estimated and can be varied enough to skew results, but the gun control side will trust their numbers, right? Don’t expect this right away, because it is going to take some time- but I am sure Dog Gone will say something in the future about how “TS can’t explain how countries that don’t have guns don’t use guns”, or something along those lines and we can revisit this conversation. Why don’t you three do the same data entry on your own and we can compare results? It will be fun.
OK, the WISQARs site doesn't do all 50 states.
ReplyDeleteYou fail to address the fact that CDC and other Public Health Organisations in the US are banned from doing "pro-gun control" studies.
Why? Because your side knows that they back up our assertions.
But you want all deaths--why not? Why stop with just murders and suicides?
I think those studies have been provided to you, but you like to discount things that disagree with your worldview, TS, even if they are based on peer reviewed hypotheses or solid empirical data.
More people die from old age and disease than guns, but so what?
Now, you are just getting idiotic--you want to deflect the fact that what studies we do provide because we are able to provide them shoot down your assertion.
Why don't YOU provide some studies that back up your assertion instead of your usual asking for material and then saying what we provide you doesn't meet your criteria.
Laci: “OK, the WISQARs site doesn't do all 50 states.”
ReplyDeleteHmmm, I see that. Unified Crime Report it is. Is this a trustworthy source of information to you?
http://www.ucrdatatool.gov/Search/Crime/State/StatebyState.cfm
Laci: “You fail to address the fact that CDC and other Public Health Organisations in the US are banned from doing "pro-gun control" studies.”
What are you Jade, now? I should address things that we haven’t been talking about? If you want to provide some information on this topic for a future post, I’ll be happy to look at it and address it. If it is about not wasting taxpayer money linking guns to gun deaths (like has been done a thousand times before), then I am all for it. Legitimate studies are fine. Also, it shouldn’t be about “banning” as you called it, but simply not funding a ridiculous proposal. Joyce can fund whatever they want, and we’ll just have to rebut it.
Laci: “I think those studies have been provided to you”
You “think” they have? Where and when? A correlation between gun ownership and murder rates- that is what I asked for. It is not a study. It doesn’t need to be studied, it is just a correlation. Incidentally, this has been provided by gun rights groups, but they can’t be trusted. So where is yours?
Laci: “More people die from old age and disease than guns, but so what? Now, you are just getting idiotic—“
Are you arguing with yourself???
Laci: “Why don't YOU provide some studies that back up your assertion instead of your usual asking for material and then saying what we provide you doesn't meet your criteria.”
I said I am willing to compile the data myself to show what the correlation is. Do you want to do it with me?
If someone steals a gun and comits a crime, the gun owner should be held responsible as well. How can people say they are 'responsible gun owners' if they don't protect them?
ReplyDelete