Is is still "too early" to discuss Las Vegas and gun regulations?

[homersapien 11,367]

Bump Stocks Are Back, One Month After Las Vegas Gun Massacre

The appendage that helped mow down dozens and wound hundreds at a country music concert is for sale again.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-01/bump-stocks-are-back-one-month-after-las-vegas-gun-massacre

 

[AUDub 11,147]

There is no realistic answer. Not because there is no solution. All research shows that the reason the U.S. has more gun violence is because there are an absurd amount of guns among the population. If the mom of the Sandy Hook loon didn't have guns, he couldn't have stolen hers. If guns weren't sold one aisle over from tennis rackets in Academy, the Texas loon couldn't have purchased one. So the obvious solution is to reduce the number of current guns available and restrict the sale of new guns. But that would require both a constitutional amendment and a buy back program like the kind Australia instituted. And since gun owners in this country find increasingly frequent massacres to be an acceptable trade off for the continued promiscuity of firearms, this obvious solution will not work.

So, we'll see each other back here in a few months, have the same non-conversation, and then shrug and concede our helplessness until the next one.

[homersapien 11,367]

[homersapien 11,367]

Interesting chart on this site: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html

What Explains U.S. Mass Shootings? International Comparisons Suggest an Answer

 

Beyond the Statistics

In 2013, American gun-related deaths included 21,175 suicides, 11,208 homicides and 505 deaths caused by an accidental discharge. That same year in Japan, a country with one-third America’s population, guns were involved in only 13 deaths.

This means an American is about 300 times more likely to die by gun homicide or accident than a Japanese person. America’s gun ownership rate is 150 times as high as Japan’s. That gap between 150 and 300 shows that gun ownership statistics alone do not explain what makes America different.

The United States also has some of the weakest controls over who may buy a gun and what sorts of guns may be owned.

Switzerland has the second-highest gun ownership rate of any developed country, about half that of the United States. Its gun homicide rate in 2004 was 7.7 per million people — unusually high, in keeping with the relationship between gun ownership and murders, but still a fraction of the rate in the United States.

Swiss gun laws are more stringent, setting a higher bar for securing and keeping a license, for selling guns and for the types of guns that can be owned. Such laws reflect more than just tighter restrictions. They imply a different way of thinking about guns, as something that citizens must affirmatively earn the right to own.

The Difference Is Culture

The United States is one of only three countries, along with Mexico and Guatemala, that begin with the opposite assumption: that people have an inherent right to own guns.

The main reason American regulation of gun ownership is so weak may be the fact that the trade-offs are simply given a different weight in the United States than they are anywhere else.

After Britain had a mass shooting in 1987, the country instituted strict gun control laws. So did Australia after a 1996 shooting. But the United States has repeatedly faced the same calculus and determined that relatively unregulated gun ownership is worth the cost to society.

That choice, more than any statistic or regulation, is what most sets the United States apart.

“In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate,” Dan Hodges, a British journalist, wrote in a post on Twitter two years ago, referring to the 2012 attack that killed 20 young students at an elementary school in Connecticut. “Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.”

[TitanTiger 20,472]

26 minutes ago, homersapien said:

“In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate,” Dan Hodges, a British journalist, wrote in a post on Twitter two years ago, referring to the 2012 attack that killed 20 young students at an elementary school in Connecticut. “Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.”

That's damning.

[aujeff11 6,243]

This is the real frick up: 

 

By mid-2010, Cottle was ready to start selling his device, but he first needed clearance from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. To comply with federal law, he simply needed to demonstrate that the bump stock was itself not a machine gun. In a letter to the ATF, Slide Fire argued that its product was an accessory to help people with disabilities who had difficulty firing the AR-15, a semiautomatic civilian version of the M-16 military assault rifle. The ATF’s Firearms Technology Branch ruled that the bump stock is a gun part, one that isn’t integral to the functioning of the weapon, and as such excluded it from federal firearm regulations, according to a June 7, 2010, letter from the bureau. Two years later the ATF made a similar determination in reviewing another bump stock maker’s device.

Armed with the ATF’s blessing,

[homersapien 11,367]

5 hours ago, TitanTiger said:

That's damning.

Agreed. 

Maybe I becoming a BOM (bitter old man), but my feelings for this country have become more and more conflicted. 

Considering how the firearms industry dominates the politics of gun control, I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised when legislators help pharmaceutical companies addict thousands of Americans for profit. 

 

[alexava 6,973]

I don't see the need for massive bans unless you want immediate improvement. The common sense changes we need will help future generations but we won't see any difference. You have to start somewhere. It took over 240 years to get this f---ed up. It can't be fixed overnight. 

[NolaAuTiger 3,295]

11 hours ago, Bigbens42 said:

There is no realistic answer. Not because there is no solution. All research shows that the reason the U.S. has more gun violence is because there are an absurd amount of guns among the population. If the mom of the Sandy Hook loon didn't have guns, he couldn't have stolen hers. If guns weren't sold one aisle over from tennis rackets in Academy, the Texas loon couldn't have purchased one. So the obvious solution is to reduce the number of current guns available and restrict the sale of new guns. But that would require both a constitutional amendment and a buy back program like the kind Australia instituted. And since gun owners in this country find increasingly frequent massacres to be an acceptable trade off for the continued promiscuity of firearms, this obvious solution will not work.

So, we'll see each other back here in a few months, have the same non-conversation, and then shrug and concede our helplessness until the next one.

standing on the graves of the innocent lives lost in recent tragedies in order to exploit those who differ politically from you is truly cheap. 

Other than that, I think you'd do well by watching this video:

 

[AUDub 11,147]

23 minutes ago, NolaAuTiger said:

standing on the graves of the innocent lives lost in recent tragedies in order to exploit those who differ politically from you is truly cheap. 

Other than that, I think you'd do well by watching this video:

 

Meh. I don't think mine was an unfair statement. The only real solutions to this issue require some degree of self-sacrifice on behalf of gun owners, and that group has largely been unwilling to make even the smallest of sacrifices.

[aujeff11 6,243]