Questions for gun control advocates, part 1 [View all]

[Shamash]

Answers should be intelligent, rational, liberal, consistently applied and supportable by objective data if required. Please label your comment with the number of the question you are responding to. Feel free to link to this post if you need someone to answer one of the questions in a different comment thread. If the moderator for the RKBA group thinks this is worth permalinking, by all means do so.

Note: It is assumed that your answer represents the maximum level of intelligence, knowledge and common sense you can bring to bear on the subject.
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#1
This is a picture of an M1 carbine, a magazine-fed semi-auto rifle capable of using high-capacity magazines, which can be had with a folding stock, bayonet lug, pistol grip and flash hider, making it by all popular definitions an “assault rifle". It has been available to civilians since 1945, and required no background check or license or even ID to purchase in an era (circa 1950) where the per capita firearm murder rate was the same or lower than it is today (circa 2010).

Question: If you feel that this sort of weapon should be banned, list all other technologies freely available to civilians with no restriction in 1945 that you deem too dangerous to be allowed for any civilian to own today, despite there being no evidence of increased harm due to the civilian ownership of that technology?
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#2
Magazine limits are a popular topic for gun control advocates, but there is far from universal agreement on what a proper limit should be and why. New York’s SAFE Act had a 7-round limit, Connecticut’s Act Concerning Gun Violence Prevention and Children’s Safety had a 10-round limit, while Colorado has a 15-round limit.

Question: If you think there is a specific value appropriate for a magazine limit, can you explain why X shots held is a reasonable limit and X+1 should be a crime? In addition, since opinions on this vary, explain how gun control advocates with different values of X from yours are either too lenient (allowing in your opinion a criminally dangerous level of ammunition) or too restrictive (criminalizing what you feel is a reasonable level of ammunition).
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#3
The NRA has an annual revenue of 348 million dollars (2013) (for comparison, Goldman-Sachs had a revenue in 2014 of 40 billion dollars). Of this 348 million dollars in yearly NRA revenue, approximately 15 million dollars (less than 5%) comes from firearm manufacturers and dealers (assuming the linked figures from the Violence Policy Center are accurate and evenly divided over the 6 year period listed), a figure which includes both direct contributions from industry and indirect contributions like advertising in NRA publications.

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Question: To what extent is the NRA "funded by the gun industry” and if you have commented in the past on NRA funding sources, have your comments been accurate?
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#4
Here are some fatality rates per 100,000 people at risk in that category:

boy’s softball: 2.89 fatalities per 100,000 players
boy’s water polo: 1.06 fatalities per 100,000 players
boy’s gymnastics: .95 fatalities per 100,000 players
boy’s football: .81 fatalities per 100,000 players
boy’s lacrosse: .80 fatalities per 100,000 players
boy’s basketball: .76 fatalities per 100,000 players
boy’s ice hockey: .48 fatalities per 100,000 players
boy’s soccer: .45 fatalities per 100,000 players
boy’s high school cross-country: .36 fatalities per 100,000 players
firearm accidents, all children,: .15 fatalities per 100,000 children
ages 5 through 19

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Question: For any group of 100,000 boys, which is more likely to result in a fatal accident, having a gun in the house or letting them play school sports?
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#5
This is a picture of a Browning Longtrac Hunter, a rifle with a 3-shot removable magazine, that costs about $2000.



This is a picture of the Hammerli SP 20, an Olympic-grade (as in “actually used by Olympic competitors&quot target pistol in the world’s least powerful caliber (.22 rimfire), with a 5-shot removable magazine, that has a base price of about $2000.



No company in the world makes high-capacity magazines or any military-type accessory for either of these weapons. However, according to the Connecticut Act Concerning Gun Violence Prevention and Children’s Safety, both of these are currently “assault weapons” (as defined in section 53-202) whose unauthorized sale in Connecticut is a Class C felony meriting a mandatory minimum jail sentence of two years.

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Question: Do you feel that the definition of “assault weapon” under Connecticut law was made intelligently and with due consideration of what an “assault weapon” actually is? Explain why or why not.
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#6
In the Gallup poll for May 6, 2015 on the question of “What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?”, guns were not in the top 30 items, and were considered less than one-tenth as important as terrorism, healthcare or immigration. Since 1990, the percentage of people who think gun laws should be made more strict has dropped by a third, and in that same period the number of people who think gun laws should be made less strict has doubled.


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Question: Is the American public clamoring for stricter gun control? Explain why or why not.
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#7
A stranger calls you on the phone and asks if you have in your home a specific type of easily portable item with a high black market value.



Question: How do you answer, and does this answer reflect your prior statements about the significance of telephone polls about how many people own firearms?
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#8
Gallup polling a week after the failed Senate vote for universal background checks (2013) showed that 65% of the public wanted the background checks to pass. Gallup polling in 2004 showed that 64% of people did not want marijuana to be legalized. Gallup polling in 1996 showed that 68% of people did not want same sex marriages to be legal. Gallup polling in 1978 showed that 64% of the public did not want mixed race marriages to be legal.

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Question: Should public opinion be considered as a valid measure for promoting the merits of restricting the conduct of individuals whose behavior you disapprove of but who are not actually doing anything harmful?
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#9
Individuals in a society have rights and privileges. The Supreme Court, the Democratic Party platform and President Obama have stated that firearms ownership is a “right”, and thus has the legal standing of anything else held as a “right”. Things that are held as rights by either the Constitution or Supreme Court decision:

• a woman’s reproductive choice
• voting
• trial by jury
• free speech
• privacy
• firearm ownership

Question: Is something legally defined as a "right" one which you must affirmatively prove you have a "need" for to a potentially adversarial bureaucracy before you are allowed to exercise it? And does your answer reflect a standard you would trust a conservative-led government with?
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#10
According to FBI statistics, the least likely type of firearm murder is a mass murder, the least likely type of shooting incident is one in which 10 or more shots are fired and the least likely type of firearm to be used in a murder is a rifle.

Question: If you wanted to enact firearm bans or restrictions statistically guaranteed to have the smallest possible effect in curtailing firearm murders, what type of firearm(s) would you insist on banning or restricting? How does this answer correlate with your own stated views on what should be banned or restricted?