I've been meaning to start a thread on this topic, but I haven't had time to do the work I had in mind for the OP, re: citing some data about gun deaths/violence and so on. I'll get to that soon, unless someone else does first (please, thank you )

However, in the wake of yet another mass shooting in Virginia Beach, I ran across this biting commentary on gun culture by... David Frum?! (A former W. Bush speechwriter)

I'm afraid Frum is probably underestimating the GOP here, even if he's right about the NRA. Anyway, it's interesting to see this perspective from him, so I thought I'd share it.

no way to prevent this, says only nation where this happens.jpeg

Last I checked, a few weeks ago, a trend is for the gun lobby and supporters to willingly regulate armed teachers in ways they won’t regulate themselves.

The only way i see these discussions being remotely productive is to divide it to two categories. The first is what should the rules/regulations ideally be. The second is dealing with the fact that there is already as many guns a people in circulation.

You can come up with a hypothetical and reasonable perspective on gun regulation but that probably won't resolve the issue of millions of guns already in circulation.

If you haven't listened to the podcast episode The Riddle of the Gun by Sam Harris (who's had David Frum on his show at least once), I'd recommend you listen to it. My thoughts align with his.

And if you're going to dredge up a bunch of data, see if you can find stats on how many crimes have been thwarted by guns. I saw some stat to the effect that the number of instances where an attempted rape/robbery/assault was prevented by the would-be victim using a gun was many times higher than the number of instances a person fired a gun in the act of a crime. I saw it on some right-wing site, and it may have been completely made up, but assessing the benefits of crime prevention that guns bring is crucial to a discussion on guns, and I think it's a something most people overlook when they're decrying the proliferation of guns in the US.

US should follow what Australia did in 1996. Simple.

Where are we in the US political cycle? Is it "everything's fine" or "now's not the time to politicise a tragedy"?

Yes, I think that's a reasonable approach. "Where do we want to go and how do we get there?"

Re: millions of guns in circulation -- in the hypothetical where the 2nd amendment is overturned and much stricter regulations on guns are put into place, I think bundy already pretty much suggested the answer:

That is, a mandatory buyback program.

I'll have to look. My guess is that it's probably very difficult to reliably measure something like that, but it would be interesting.

As a statement of my priors, I am skeptical that the number of crimes thwarted by guns can be high enough to justify the social costs of our current gun policies. I'm generally one for lots of data and very complex analyses, and I'm sure that gun control policy is subject to plenty of complexity. But it's also hard for me to get past charts like this:


(from Vox)

Or the obvious contrast between events like the shooting in Virginia Beach and stories I see from time to time about someone going on a knifing spree in the UK (with far fewer injuries/fatalities).

It's hard for me to imagine the benefits of our laws and culture with regard to guns justify the apparent costs.

Gun control to what extent? Banning all guns for all American's? Banning assault rifles?

Take what we have in the UK. Rifles and shotguns can be legally owned with a licence providing that you can demonstrate to the police both the need for them and that you have proper storage (separate locked containers for the gun and ammo).

How far away does that sound from reasonable?

^ So AR15's legal but handguns not legal? I thought that was the opposite of what most gun control advocate's want...?

Also, what about the millions and millions of guns already in circulation in the US?

ban assault style rifles, magazines over 7-10 capacity, require 8-12 hours of safety training PER year with registration requiring disclosure of how the gun is safely stored, longer waiting periods for better background checks. also take a stance on opening gun owners up to liability for crimes/deaths committed with their weapons if they weren't stored safely


the actual future is going to have to be bio-metric guns. the NRA types are ofcourse saying that is science fiction, but every cellphone has a finger print scanner on it now days, and the for the "cutting" edge ones fingerprint scanning is already old tech that they dont use anymore.

several states already have laws on the books that all guns sold must be bio-metric "safe" guns as soon as those guns are available, so gun manufactures are dragging their feet.

once they are available you just do a tiered buy back over the span of 5 or so years going from a reasonable price, to confiscate on sight and a fine.

Biometric scanning seems extremely reasonable.

I'd have been more clear but my ignorance of guns is showing. Rifles for sport, but I think even the Olympics required special rules to be brought in to allow for them.

OP, why do we care about mass shooting as opposed to all gun deaths? Is there a reason we should be valuing the lives of people who are killed in mass shootings more than those shot alone?

The same can be said about handgun deaths vs rifle deaths vs bomb deaths.

I'm not wedded to the opinion that mass shootings are particularly more important than overall gun deaths. It was just an occasion that prompted the thread.

I do think someone could plausibly argue that the threat of mass violence in contexts like schools and public markets has an impact on people's sense of well-being and safety that is qualitatively different from suicides by gun, though. I don't think it's immediately incoherent to care about that.

But I don't think my opinions about gun control policy draw really sharp distinctions. Mass shootings are just powerful examples of some of the costs of our gun policies.

Pretty far from our standards of reasonable:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/243797/...-gun-laws.aspx
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
61% of Americans favor stricter gun control, down from 67% in March
87% of Democrats, 31% of Republicans support tougher gun laws
28% of Americans support a handgun ban

I don't think reasonable and popular are equivalent metrics, personally. I mean the political infeasibility is relevant (cf. Juan's post) but infeasible and unreasonable are definitely not the same thing.

I agree with you in a technical sense. And while the NRA et al provide some reasons for people to argue with, I think this is more of an emotional issue with people that doesn’t quite map out to reason. So people appeal to 2A and various justifications associated with it, but they’re really saying, “I don’t wanna and I don’t wanna talk about it anymore,” or something to that effect.

28% is higher than I would've guessed tbf. But I wasn't asking the question expecting people to go along with it, rather it was to offer something of a baseline from the other end of the spectrum.

Somewhat ironically, support for a handgun ban over here was much higher in the past:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1645/guns.aspx
Do you think there should or should not be a law that would ban the possession of handguns, except by the police and other authorized persons?

1959 Jul 23-28 - Yes, should be: 60%

^^ all of this sounds pretty good to me.

I guess we'll forget about today's incident rather quickly, but this photo just seems so iconic to me



file under "gun culture" I guess.

tfw bundy is the voice of reason.