Reply #37: Well, that recited all the usual gun control tropes

[Euromutt]

I apologize in advance if I come off as a little brusque, especially compared to GreenStormCloud, but I'm just a little tired of seeing these tropes recycled over and over.

The Gun Control Advocates are not trying to deprive hunters and target shooters of their sports, nor are they trying to deprive people who simply collect guns like others collect stamps, or whatever, of their collection, nor am I referring to security personnel, police officers, or those serving in the military who are authorized to carry guns.

I'm not a hunter, nor a collector, and I don't shoot competitively; I keep firearms primarily for defending myself and my family against anyone who would do us harm, and I notice that keeping firearms for defending one's life and limb is not listed in your list of disclaimers. Oddly, private security guards are included, meaning that use of lethal force by corporate employees to protect property would be fine, but the use of lethal force by private citizens to protect their lives or those of their loved ones would not. You might want to think that one through a little more.

Most murders are crimes of passion that occur among people who know each other; in the home, in barrooms, on street corners or even in parking lots, among family, friends and/or acquaintances.

That's simply not true. Criminological evidence indicates that around 90% of homicides are committed by people with a prior history of violent (usually criminal) behavior. A large segment of perpetrators--and, to a slightly lesser extent, victims--of homicides in America are involved in the illegal drugs trade, either business disputes or the settling of personal disputes in the brutal manner to which they've become accustomed.

Insofar that homicides occur within a household, they are generally the culmination of an escalating pattern of domestic violence. It's practically unheard of for someone to "just snap," no matter how widespread that notion is. There are always warning signs, and we're actually a lot better at identifying them than we think.

All too often, people who know each other get into nasty arguments, which turn deadly when firearms are present. Some people will say "Oh, I can control myself", but, in reality, they don't really know what they'd do until that bridge is actually crossed and they're faced with such a situation. All too often, it's far too easy, in a fit of anger, to just simply pick up a gun and fire it at someone in anger, resulting in a death or permanent maiming.

That's a widely held perception, but does it stand up to scrutiny?
Here's a question: has it ever occurred to you (or someone in your presence) that you (or tat other person) were seized by such a violent rage that you've flown at the person you were angry at in a serious attempt to inflict grievous bodily harm, or even death, on that person? Has this ever occurred in a house containing, say, some kitchen knives, a baseball bat or hockey stick, perhaps a hatchet for chopping firewood, or maybe some TV tray tables? (For disputes in establishments serving alcohol, substitute broken glasses, glass bottles, bar stools, pool cues, et al. for the aforementioned kitchen knives, baseball bats, etc.) If so, did you (or the person you witnessed) seize/retrieve any such item and attempt to use it on the offending individual?

If you've never acted on the urge to grab an implement capable of inflicting fatal trauma and use it on someone else, why do you think it would happen "all too often" to somebody else? See, it shouldn't make a difference to the intent whether the implement in question is a knife, bat, hatchet, etc. or a firearm. If you're emotionally unstable enough to grab a gun and shoot the person you're upset at, why wouldn't you grab a knife, bat, etc.? And if you're not emotionally unstable enough to grab a knife, bat, etc. or attack someone with your bare hands, why would you behave any differently (all other things being equal) just because there was a firearm in the house? Or even on your hip?

The United States has the highest rate of murder by handguns per capita in the Western Hemisphere, because there's so little gun control present.

First off, I strongly suspect that's not true, given that the Brazilian homicide rate is over 4 times that of the United States (25.7/100,000 against 5.7/100,000 in 2006), and that of Jamaica even higher (~49/100,000 in 2006); both countries are plagued by high levels of drug trafficking, and drug traffickers have a nasty tendency to get hold of firearms as readily as they get hold of drugs. According to a UN report published in 2005, over half a million Brazilians were killed with firearms between 1979 and 2003, and gunshot wounds were the leading cause of death among persons under 25 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4628813.stm). That latter point is saying something in a developing nation, I might point out.

But even if were true, why focus on the handgun homicide rate, to the exclusion of other methods? You see, the American non-gun homicide rate is higher than the overall homicide rate of most western European countries, which is a strong indication that there's something in the American socio-cultural makeup that's simply more homicidal than that of western European countries. That being the case, there's little reason to believe that, even if we could magic away all the guns in the United States, the homicide rate wouldn't drop by 2/3 (likely, a fair amount of "method substitution" would occur), and even if it did, it would still be a lot higher than that of most western European countries.

At the same time, the Russian Federation, to cite one example, has pretty tight gun control laws, and doesn't allow private citizens to purchase handguns at all; nevertheless, according to official figures, the Russian homicide rate is more than triple that of the United States (16.5/100,00 against 5.4/100,000 in 2008), and that's the most favorable ratio since the late 1980s.

Put together, this strongly indicates that availability of firearms isn't what causes people to commit homicide. At most, it makes it the method of choice if it's available.

The same applies where suicide is concerned: while firearms are indubitably the most popular method of suicide in the United States, the American suicide rate is by no means remarkable, being exceeded by France, Germany, Sweden, Japan and (again) Russia, to name five notable examples (all of which have tighter restrictions on private firearms ownership than any U.S. jurisdiction). Evidently, Americans don't kill themselves more often than others because they have firearms available; rather, when they choose to kill themselves, they use firearms because they can. In the rest of the world, self-strangulation (mostly by hanging) is the most common form of suicide.

Contrary to popular belief among many gun-rights advocates, most handguns DON'T end up getting used in self-defense, but are more often than not, used to kill other people in homicides.

While it's true that the overwhelming majority of handguns are never actually used in a "defensive gun use" (DGU), the idea that more handguns are used to commit homicides than to commit DGUs is not supported by the available evidence. Several studies in the 1990s estimated that the number of DGUs by private citizens might range from ~900,000 to ~2.5 million annually. The highest number of firearm homicides in one year ever recorded was 17,075 (of which 13,981 involved handguns), in 1993 (http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/tables/weaponstab.cfm). If even the most conservative estimate of DGUs (which was conducted by David Hemenway, a public health researcher with a pronounced anti-gun agenda) was off by an order of magnitude, the number of firearms used in DGUs would still have been almost six times the number of firearms use to commit homicides. (Note that a DGU includes situations where the defender drove the assailant to flight or surrender by merely using the gun to threaten the assailant, even if no shots were fired.)

The prevalance of guns, which often come in illegally, or by mail order make this an even more deadly situation, <...>

Italics mine. It's been illegal to sell firearms by mail order since the entry into force of the Gun Control Act of 1968! You can, at most, order a firearm to be delivered to a licensed gun dealer (a "Federal Firearms Licensee" or "FFL") in your state of residence, who will then formally sell the firearm to you, after completing the attendant paperwork, running a background check, observing any waiting periods, etc.

A) Gun dealers should be required to engage in extensive screening and background checks, <...> and deny people with histories of mental illness, emotional instability, substance and alcohol abuse and anger management issues access when such people's names come up on a gun dealer's computer screen.

That's more or less been the case since 1993. The GCA of 1968 made it a felony to knowingly sell a firearm to someone with a felony conviction, who had been adjudicated "mentally deficient," or is an illicit user of or addicted to a controlled substances, and this was expanded in 1997 to include individuals convicted of a misdemeanor offense of domestic violence, or subject to a restraining order pertaining to "an intimate partner or child of such intimate partner." Since 1993, FFLs have been required to contact the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) to request a background check on each prospective purchaser, to ensure that said individual is not prohibited from purchasing a firearm.

When lamenting the absence of certain legislation, it's a good idea to check in advance that said legislation does in fact not exist.

And what the hell is the point of waiting periods, except as some knee-jerk feel-good law? If I can sustain the desire to kill someone long enough to drive to the gun store, select a firearm, fill out the ATF form 4473 (not easy to do when you're agitated), wait for the FFL to get an approval from NICS and drive back to my starting point, in what universe will I not be able to sustain that desire to kill for five or fifteen or however many days the waiting period is?
And if I'm that enraged that I want to kill someone right now, why would I go through the rigmarole of buying a firearm when I could walk to my kitchen and grab one of the four 8-10" chef's knives hanging conveniently on a magnetic bar on the wall?