Monday, May 20, 2013

Gun Control Works

In 1934, The National Firearms Act was passed which was aimed at regulating  machine guns, sawed-off shotguns, silencers, and other firearms used by criminals.  The NFA required that all machine guns were  to be registered.  Additionally, all people who wanted to own these items were to be fingerprinted and submitted to an extensive and time-consuming—this was long before the Internet— background check; and local Law Enforcement was also required to give permission for ownership.
The NFA is relevant to the current debate because it is a strong and comprehensive gun-control law. But the NRA continually argues that gun-control laws are ineffective. This loudly declared claim has also given rise to their widely proclaimed slogan: WHEN GUNS ARE OUTLAWED, ONLY OUTLAWS WILL HAVE GUNS...

But here are the numbers. Machine gun use in crimes now is negligible. ATF data from 1994 reveals that machine guns accounted for less than 0.1 percent of all guns traced to crime in that year. In 2000, forty-six cities conducted a comprehensive tracing of their crime guns, and they found in only twelve cities that machine guns constituted 0.1 percent of their crime guns. In Las Vegas alone the number was higher; there, machine guns made up 0.5 percent of all crime guns.
Even the "pro-gun" side concedes that these laws have been effective.

17 comments:

  1. Full auto guns have never been common. The Tommy gun was too expensive for ordinary folks, for example. Besides, Americans have learned to be suspicious of government in the years since 1934. At that time, and for several decades afterward, government was seen as Uncle Sam. Now, many people see government as Big Brother.

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  2. Alright, you pathetic wannabe lawyer and a limey pinko bastard, I have had it with you and your recent anti-American screeds against the people of this nation. Just because you are too pathetic to climb the basement stairs into the real world (and not your World of Warcraft and your diet of cool aid and cheetos) doesn't mean we should put up with your hating of the world because you suck.


    I don’t expect you civilians to understand the situation. But bear with me and I’ll see if I can pound it into you soft skulls.With the decay of society and the rotting away of the moral fiber of our country this world is getting more and more dangerous and down right mean. Who do you think protects you from the scum of this society??? The cops, the FBI, the army???Guess again, it’s the guys guarding your companies, your banks, your schools, your homes, your supermarkets, and yes smartass, even your malls. What good are the cops going to be if a shooter shows up at your workplace??? How about your kid’s school, remember Columbine? I’ll tell you what the cops will do, call the SWAT team and screw around trying to locate the front door for 30 minutes, while you or your children are shot down like prairie dogs at a drunken machinegun shoot. We are on site, when the cops are cruising around handing out speeding tickets or harassing prostitutes. We risk our lives so you can go home to mommy at the end of the day and this is the respect we get??? Hell, I’d call some of us “heroes”, but I’m sure most of you juveniles don’t understand the meaning of such a Distinguished word. So go play Rainbow Six and frag some “tangos”, and tell your mommy to bring you some milk and cookies. Meanwhile, my ass is one the line so your fat butt can go to the mall and pick up the latest copy of “Computer Gaming Monthly” without getting jumped and sodomized in the mall bathroom.

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    1. Who are "you?" Who exactly is providing all that protection? Are you talking about concealed carry folks? Or is it gun owners in general?

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    2. Mikeb, it's either Gecko45 or someone pretending to be him. Look at what he says. He's the brave mall cop who defends our ass virginity.

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  3. Laci,

    You claim that the small percentage of machine guns used in crime are because of strict registration and control of access. Yet there seem to be similar percentages of the percentage of crimes using an "assault weapon". Plus throw in the fact that in most states are treated like other firearms, and there are a lot more of them. Yet, the gun control folk seem to treat assault weapons as a dire threat. This seems rather disingenous.

    "In 2000, forty-six cities conducted a comprehensive tracing of their crime guns, and they found in only twelve cities that machine guns constituted 0.1 percent of their crime guns. In Las Vegas alone the number was higher; there, machine guns made up 0.5 percent of all crime guns."

    The problem--"assault weapons" were tied to less than .012 percent of overall deaths in America in recent years (2011). And the 1994 "Assault Weapons Ban" (AWB) had a demonstrably small impact on overall crime in our country.
    http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/01/18/Assault-Weapons-Tied-To-Less-Than-012-Percent-Of-Deaths-In-2011

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    1. It seems quite reasonable to me that the rarity of fully-automatic weapons in the news is directly due to the heavy restrictions on them. As Laci said, gun control works.

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    2. Did you read either of Sarge's or my comment in detail? He said that so-called assault weapons--in other words, semiautomatic rifles that are the wrong color or come with the wrong accessories--are also rarely used in crime. I pointed out other reasons.

      But to quote Jeff Cooper, if my enemies are armed, I hope they come with full-auto guns. A burst of lead may be a good way to get yourself across the street in a war zone, but it doesn't have much application in the civilian world. That being said, the laws regarding such weapons are silly and need to be repealed, though there are more important things to deal with at present.

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    3. My point was that there was statistically little difference between the heavily regulated item, and the less regulated item. I just noticed though that I'm mistaken in my assertion. They perventages arent similar. I missed the extra zero in the data for assault weapon crimes, so in actuality, the percentage of uses of assault weapons is lower.
      One challenge is that when you track statistics of something that has a very low occurance, such as crimes committed with assault weapons, or machine guns, a small change in the raw data can result in a big change in results.
      Crimes committed by both of these types of weapons is in reality, infrequent.

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  4. Mike, look at the rarity of fully-automatic weapons in civilian hands in general. Is that your goal?

    Regarding the title of this post, we have to define what “works” means in “gun control works”. If the goal is saving lives, then the measure of success must have something to do with human life and death. If the goal is disarmament (or some degree thereof), then it would be relevant to use the above measure.

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    1. Are you really asking me what my goal is, after all we've been through?

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    2. Well Mike, sometimes you really hard to read. I have said it before, I think that you are more pro gun than anti at times with some of the things you post.

      Your goals change all the time by saying one thing then another. So asking at times because clarification is often needed.

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    3. I, for one, am clear on what your goal is, Mikeb.

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    4. No, but I am saying using that metric as a measure of success is not consistent with your purported goal. It about lives, right? So success must be measured in human life, not how much the product is used (which implies that reducing the use of the product was the end goal).

      It's a little clearer when we look back the the "assault weapon" debate of 2004. You guys said "it worked" by claiming fewer "assault weapons" showed up at crime scenes. Nevermind the dishonestly that you guys also claimed manufactures exploited loopholes by making single feature guns which were not counted as "assault weapons" in those traces because they technically weren't... Anyway, the argument fton our side was that there is nothing special or extra lethal about these guns. So even saying fewer criminals have them doesn't change the fact that it is a pointless ban. It shows that the goal was the ban- not the lives.

      It would be like banning red cars and then claiming success because fewer red cars were involved in accidents.

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    5. By the way, Mike, you have been crystal clear that you have a goal of massive reduction of gun ownership (it stands at 50% now). So is that you end goal, or is your end goal to save lives? Understanding the difference and what quantifies "success" is my point.

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    6. My "official goal" has not changed since I posted it a while ago.

      http://mikeb302000.blogspot.it/2011/08/my-official-goal.html

      The "tremendous results" I mentioned are obviously lives saved.

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    7. But since you've been shown time and again that gun control doesn't translate to lives saved, those "tremendous" results must be civilian disarmament.

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    8. And laci's post here says the NFA "worked" without mentioning a single thing about lives.

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