Guns: More Harm than Good - Obviously

NCBI

Firearm Ownership and Violent Crime in the U.S.: An Ecologic Study.

Monuteaux MC1, Lee LK2, Hemenway D3, Mannix R2, Fleegler EW2.

Author information

Abstract

INTRODUCTION:

Although some view the ownership of firearms as a deterrent to crime, the relationship between population-level firearm ownership rates and violent criminal perpetration is unclear. The purpose of this study is to test the association between state-level firearm ownership and violent crime.

METHODS:

State-level rates of household firearm ownership and annual rates of criminal acts from 2001, 2002, and 2004 were analyzed in 2014. Firearm ownership rates were taken from a national survey and crime data were taken from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reports. Rates of criminal behavior were estimated as a function of household gun ownership using negative binomial regression models, controlling for several demographic factors.

RESULTS:

Higher levels of firearm ownership were associated with higher levels of firearm assault and firearm robbery. There was also a significant association between firearm ownership and firearm homicide, as well as overall homicide.

CONCLUSIONS:

The findings do not support the hypothesis that higher population firearm ownership rates reduce firearm-associated criminal perpetration. On the contrary, evidence shows that states with higher levels of firearm ownership have an increased risk for violent crimes perpetrated with a firearm. Public health stakeholders should consider the outcomes associated with private firearm ownership.

Obama’s Plan to Take Guns from Seniors and the Disabled

DC Clothesline

Like clockwork, gun control advocates always make a big push for their agenda after every mass shooting. The recent shootings in Charleston and Chattanooga are no different. Due to our government’s failure to keep firearms out of the hands of mass shooters, PresidentObama has since called for tighter background checks. But this time he wants to utilize the information tied to Social Security beneficiaries.

Basically, those who are incapable of managing their own affairs wouldn’t be allowed to buy a firearm. The new policy would use the same strategy employed by the VA to report certain veterans to the background check system. They take note of anyone who has assigned a fiduciary to manage their pension when they’re not competent enough to do it themselves. The biggest problem with this strategy, is how broad it is. Having memory loss or a brain injury would be enough keep you from buying a gun, even though those conditions are not useful for identifying someone who is crazy or malicious. Imagine if you suffered an injury that prevents you from speaking or writing. It would make sense for you to ask someone else to help you out with your financial affairs, but that might also be enough to prevent you from owning a firearm.

Indy's Answer

Guns in China

East Asian News and Politics

The gun control blog Mikeb323000 has done an excellent job over the years documenting the dangers associated with firearms, both in the hands of legal and illegal gun owners, as well as the police.  

While the recent rise in death by cops in America seems to be rising, like the killing of an unarmed black teen in Ferguson Missouri, an article from the Washington Post highlights at least in America the police are held more accountable than in China. 

Invoking the threat of terrorism, Chinese police for the first time in years have started carrying guns and, with little training, using them.

The fatal effects have rippled across the country, reaching even this tiny mountain village.

The truth

YOUR children aren't as important as Their guns:

Given the studies out there that say a gun in the home is more likely to cause risk to someone in the home, they also don't really care about their children either.

Liberals Fire Guns for the First Time

Tick, Tock, Glock

One of the problems with the gun violence debate is that it tries to be scientific in how it presents the issue.  That works well if you just want to go by numbers.  But numbers don't always get the point across.

The "pro-gun" side has used emotion (fear) to get its point across for ages.

The blog "Thoughts at Large" came up with a really great post, Tick, Tock, Gloc, which poins out how the numbers play out:

According to the Brady Campaign, on average, for the five most recently available years for which statistics are available, every day in America there are:

291 people in America are shot (including 52 children (ages 0-19)

87 people die from gun violence:

32 are murdered (including 6 children)

51 kill themselves (including 2 children)

2 die unintentionally

1 is killed by police intervention

1, intent unknown

205 are shot and survive:

148 shot in an assault (including 34 children)

10 survive a suicide attempt (including 1 child)

45 are shot unintentionally (including 9 children)

2 are shot in a police intervention

 If we take these numbers and divide them equally over the course of a day, this is an average day in America.

The rest of the blog does a good job of how this plays out in reality.

Now repeat this, every day, until enough of us demand a better society.

"If they find it, they will play with it."

A new gun safety ad is out there for the "if they find it, they will play with it" crowd:



I have to wonder if this was inspired by this:

Loaded Language: The Gun Metaphors that Pervade our Everyday Slang

The Washington Post

Sometimes it’s the offhand remark that’s the most telling. Indeed, the way we Americans casually, often unthinkingly, incorporate gun metaphors into our everyday slang says a lot about how deeply embedded guns are in our culture and our politics, and how difficult it is to control or extract them. Consider this list, presented as bullet points — which are themselves so conventional, so central to the typography of mind-numbing PowerPoint presentations, that you can forget what their shape represents.

● Bite the bullet: Meaning to power through something unpleasant, the term comes from the practice of providing wounded soldiers a bullet to clench their teeth on while they underwent surgery without anesthetic. British writer Rudyard Kipling is thought to have been the first to use the expression figuratively. His 1891 novel “The Light That Failed”includes this line: “Bite on the bullet, old man, and don’t let them think you’re afraid.” These days, people are more likely to bite the bullet if they have to accept an unpleasant truth. And politicians are often urged to bite the bullet and compromise — suggesting that coming together to pass legislation is as painful as amputation while fully sentient.

Nelson Mandela's Gun

CNN

As a young freedom fighter, Nelson Mandela stepped out of a farmhouse hideout in South Africa, took 20 strides and dug a hole on the sprawling land. He leaned over, put in a semiautomatic pistol and 200 rounds of ammunition, and carefully put a khaki uniform over them. After covering them with heaps of soil, he sauntered back into his rural hideout in northern Johannesburg -- hoping to retrieve them soon.

He never got a chance to fire a shot with the Makarov pistol. A few weeks after he buried it at the farm in Rivonia, he was hurled into prison for the next 27 years. That was in 1962, and the whereabouts of the gun -- now estimated at $3 million -- remain a mystery, said Nicholas Wolpe, the chief executive of Liliesleaf Farm, the former hideout now converted into a museum.

A scramble to find the gun has sparked a frenzy among collectors, historians and Mandela fans. 'It's interesting how we came to find out about the gun," Wolpe said. "Mandela visited Liliesleaf in 2003, and as we were walking around, he turned to me and asked, 'By the way, did you find my gun?"

Wolpe said he was stunned. "I turned to him and said, 'Gun, what gun?' " Mandela then asked him to pinpoint where the main kitchen once stood. "He then made a 45-degree angle and said, '20 paces from here, I buried a gun,' " Wolpe said.

During the visit, the two tried to retrace his steps using the paces as a guide, but the farm had undergone some changes, making it hard to determine the original location of the kitchen with certainty.

The Mother of all Swiss Army Knives

Guns dot com

With over 100 tools, including a .22-caliber revolver, this 19th century multi-tool really is the “mother of all Swiss Army knives.”

Made in Germany in 1880 for JS Holler & Co’s cutlery store in New York City, this 3.5-inch wide and 9-inch long multi-tool was way ahead of its time, predating the Swiss Army knife by 11 years. It also predates the bottle cap by 12 years, meaning if you had one today, you’d have to find another way to crack open a beer.

Owned by the Smithsonian Institution and displayed at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Wyoming, this clever contraption would have made any cowboy the king of the corral. But according to the Smithsonian website, this mega-multi-tool wasn’t actually meant to be carried.

“Knives like this were made exclusively for exhibition to highlight the cutlers’ art,” the website reads. “They were so difficult to make they were only attempted by the most notable firms with the most talented artisans. They could be seen at various fairs and industrial expositions during the 19th century.”

Guns make Us Safer - Oklahoma Style

More test results

Prof. Simon Chapman's Over Our Dead Bodies: Port Arthur and the Fight for Gun Control - Australia's last gun massacre is now a free E-book

Prof. Simon Chapman's Over Our Dead Bodies: Port Arthur and the Fight for Gun Control - Australia's last gun massacre is now a free E-book and available at the following link:

http://bit.ly/YZtHQ2

I strongly suggest that anyone who is involved in the US gun violence/gun control movement read this book.  Australia's political climate surrounding this issue at the time of the Port Arthur Massacre was eerily similar to that of the US, yet the Australians were able to cut through the non-sense and enact serious and effective gun control laws.

This is a valuable lesson for people who want to see similar laws in the US.

This book is really about the workings of the media, the use of lobbying, and the skills of advocacy. So pick a day when you are tired of dealing with the aftermath of ignored public health issues and read this ripping yarn, arm yourself with the tools it offers, and be ready to go into battle.

An Explanation of the Term "Gun Porn"

Penigma

The urban dictionary refers to gun porn as the fetish images of guns lit like porn models (no gender or orientation specified), or as exaggerated gore and violence in the portrayal of guns. The way I'm using the term here it is the connection between guns and the sexuality of guys who aren't getting any - or not what they want, and their desire for firearms to make them feel manly and powerful, and therefore appealing to women who want them with guns but not without them.

True Believers in a Firearms Fantasy

 Philly Burbs

Apart from religion, more Americans appear to be nuts on the subject of guns than all other topics. The National Rifle Association has raised and spent millions in recent years peddling scare stories about President Obama’s secret plan to abolish the Second Amendment, confiscate everybody’s deer rifles and set up a gun-free dictatorship.

Newtown conspiracy theories are only incrementally madder spinoffs of the NRA’s master narrative. Yet its leaders are treated as VIPs in newsrooms and TV studios. Why?

To believers, guns have become fetish objects in American popular culture, having magical potency. Witness Bushmaster Firearms’ advertising its .223 caliber AR-15 --Newtown killer Adam Lanza’s weapon — with the slogan: “Consider your Man Card reissued.”

Viagra ads are more subtle.

Hence conversations with gun cultists tend to be conducted in the dualistic, all-or-nothing terms of fundamentalist theology. Although polls have shown that large majorities of gun owners favor measures such as improved background checks to make it harder for criminals and severely mentally ill people to acquire deadly weapons, cultists see all such legislation in apocalyptic terms. Any regulation amounts to total confiscation.

Guns in Schools

via TYWKIWDBI

This was the cover of The New Yorker twenty years ago (September 1993).

The Golden Gun

From MSN via Penigma

Break out your "Man With the Golden Gun" references. A gold-plated AK-47 assault rifle — encrusted with jewels, intricately tooled, signed by its designer and complete with two silver magazines — has been seized along with a cache of other weapons and ammunition in a police raid on a ranch in Honduras. Authorities believe the glinty gun, valued at $50,000, may belong to traffickers associated with the Malverde drug gang. But the weapon's provenance apparently isn't keeping the local police chief from expressing his aesthetic appreciation: "It's an exclusive design and a fine carving," he told the BBC.

If Only Lincoln Had a Gun

Commenting on Pro-Gun Blogs

via Criminal Wisdom, a picture that reminds me of what happens when I comment on a pro-gun blog.