San Bernardino

Oh, for fuck's sake. You don't. So let's just leave the status quo, since it's working so well.

 

Again ...

"It’s not clear what policy, if any, could have prevented the killings in San Bernardino. Not every shooting is preventable. But we’re not even trying."

 

You can't stop criminals from breaking laws. You can make it harder for them to do it. Massachusetts has firearm homicides, but our percentage is relatively lower because possession laws are relatively strict. Perfect can't be the enemy of better.
BTW, the state with the highest number of federal background checks for firearm purchases this year is Kentucky, with almost twice (a little less than 3 million versus a little more than 1.5 million) than runner-up California, which of course has about seven times the population.

 

If you really wanted to actually do something, you'd limit gun ownership to three per person, require liability insurance, require training and "check-ups" on mental and physical fitness (like drivers licenses) every few years, penalties for unsafe gun incidents (kids getting shot by a gun left lying around), limit ammunition sales. None of this stuff would pass, but I'm pretty sure it would make a difference. You might also increase the penalties for people providing guns to those who don't have the required training and certification.

 

There are well over 150 peer nations we could consult, I guess.

 

Personal liability for damage done by firearms would IMO do the most. It wouldn't stop most murders, but some, and would surely reduce accidental deaths and the significant number of firearms that get stolen.

 

Sure it would make a difference. But I don't think we even need to go that far ... yet. We CAN still leave the law-abiding owners alone and make changes that will help. Starting with improving/strengthening background checks and improving/linking databases. And closing any loopholes, such as personal sales.

 

LA Times reporting that while Mr. Farook had stopped attending services at local mosque about a year ago, one of his victims was a regular.

 

And from the column I linked earlier, this statistic is just mind-boggling.

What we should focus on is curbing access to guns among people who present the greatest risk. An imperative first step is universal background checks to acquire a gun. New Harvard research suggests that about 40 percent of guns in America are acquired without a background check — which is just unconscionable.

The study cited, which references an ongoing project.
http://www.thetrace.org/2015/10/private-sale-loophole-background-check-harvard-research/

Azrael was not ready to provide specific numbers, as the research is still being readied for formal release, and those figures will merit thorough examination once they are made public. But here’s how she says the numbers stack up about how Americans acquire their firearms.

• Roughly 70 percent: Gun owners who purchased their most recent gun.
• Roughly 30 percent: Gun owners who did not purchase their most recent gun, instead obtaining it through a transfer (i.e., a gift, an inheritance, a swap between friends).
• Zeroing in on the population of gun buyers, about 34 percent did not go through a background check.
• Among the gun owners who got their firearms through a transfer, roughly two-thirds did not go through a background check.

Add it up, and it works out to:

• Roughly 60 percent: the share of gun owners surveyed who did go through a background check when they obtained (through sale or transfer) their latest gun.
• Roughly 40 percent: the share of gun owners who did not.

 

This is interesting (to me, anyway):

What gun control advocates don’t understand about gun owners

 

"Yes, that would make it worse, but we HAD TO DO SOMETHING!"

Kinda like how Obamacare is working out.

 

Also, here's a Washington Post column fact-checking the President's assertion that these kinds of mass shootings don't happen in any other country:

Fact check: Obama claim that ‘I say this every time we’ve got one of these mass shootings; this just doesn’t happen in other countries.’