7 dead, 7 wounded in Santa Barbara shooting rampage

[MisterCreosote]

I actually think it would be hilarious if we had just one day of legislating everything according to social media outrage.

 

[Big Circus]

 

[doctorquant]

Well, first they'd ask you to prove that there are 10s of thousands of deaths that would be prevented by restricting gun ownershpi

Bingo.

Was looking for a link, but I can't find it. There was a peer-reviewed study in the American Journal of Public Health that covered 30 years and all 50 states and said for each percentage point increase in gun ownership correlates to a 0.9 percent increase in the firearm homicide rate. Here's the abstract:

http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2013.301409?journalCode=ajph

Going to the Germany example I cited earlier, it has 4 million legal gun owners and up to 25 million guns on the streets. It averages 903 firearm homicides per year among a population of 80.5 million, or 1.10 per 100,000 residents.

http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/germany

In the U.S., I can't find how many legal gun owners there are, but there are upwards of 300 million guns on the streets. It averages slightly less than 32,000 firearm homicides per year among a population of 307 million, or 10.3 per 100,000 residents.

http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/united-states

Those numbers are about right, but keep in mind that more than 60% of firearm homicides are suicides (another 3% are accidents).

Even if the U.S. adopted Germany's strict controls -- which has never been (and likely never will be) seriously contemplated -- and the rate dropped to Germany's levels, that'd still be more than 3,400 firearm homicides a year.

The point being that "commonsense laws" blah, blah aren't really going to lead to tens of thousands of fewer dead Americans.

 

[MisterCreosote]

Those numbers are about right, but keep in mind that more than 60% of firearm homicides are suicides (another 3% are accidents).

Even if the U.S. adopted Germany's strict controls -- which has never been (and likely never will be) seriously contemplated -- and the rate dropped to Germany's levels, that'd still be more than 3,400 firearm homicides a year.

Sorry, I went back and subbed "firearm deaths" sted "firearm homicides."

Still, I think most reasonable people would say those controls are worth the drop in deaths.

It's not like people wouldn't still be able to own guns. And, granted, there's a certain amount of subjectivity and centralized power involved in Germany's laws, but the biggest difference is the licensure requirement on the perspective gun owner to prove necessity.

I'd take just that right now. But even that has no chance of passing here.

 

[LongTimeListener]

The only thing that would change gun laws in any significant way is a complete reinterpretation of the Second Amendment -- which would be the correct interpretation, as the "well regulated militia" part seems to have been dropped out of the conversation entirely over the last 50 years. But that is obviously never going to happen. So the answer is, there is no answer. There are just too many cowboys in the culture and too much lobbying money behind them, so we're just going to have to accept a certain amount of fear and randomness, because money talks.

It is sad and humorous, though, that a Cliven Bundy situation happens and these dumbasses actually believe they stood up and stared down the big bad gubmint, failing to understand that they all would have been vapor if the government so chose and that all their guns would mean nothing if this oppressive regime they are guarding against actually existed.

 

[RickStain]

The solution is to have this argument every single time until slowly, inexorbaly the gun nuttery is filtered out of our society.

 

[old_tony]

There is one thing all shootings have in common, but amazingly that's the one thing we can't talk about.

Yes. If we could ever actually talk about the persons pulling the triggers, we'd get much further along in solving this.

 

[RickStain]

There is one thing all shootings have in common, but amazingly that's the one thing we can't talk about.

Yes. If we could ever actually talk about the persons pulling the triggers, we'd get much further along in solving this.

The same person pulled the trigger in all of them?

I bet it was a black guy.

 

[doctorquant]

Hey, you said gun-rights people don't think that way. I offered you a very prominent one (just ask him!) who made it very clear that he does.

If Joe the Plumber is "a very prominent" gun-rights person who's representative of that population, well ... Let's just say that I can't wait for the opportunity to bring to some other discussion some quotes from, say, Cynthia McKinney or Alan Grayson. All's fair, right?

 

[Big Circus]

Hey, you said gun-rights people don't think that way. I offered you a very prominent one (just ask him!) who made it very clear that he does.

If Joe the Plumber is "a very prominent" gun-rights person who's representative of that population, well ... Let's just say that I can't wait for the opportunity to bring to some other discussion some quotes from, say, Cynthia McKinney or Alan Grayson. All's fair, right?

If someone argues that left-wingers don't have an opinion that McKinney or Grayson have gone on record as having, yes, go for it.

 

[outofplace]

...

If there was a push to limit the freedoms of the press in light of these shootings, what would the journalists here say in defense of the First Amendment?

What would you say about a law that made it illegal to publish, or otherwise publicize, the name, image, writings, and recordings, of the perpetrators of mass murder?

Would you go along with such a measure, in an effort to reduce mass killings, or would you argue that your rights aren't "trumped" by the effort to reduce shootings?

That is one of the worst comparisons ever made on this website, which is truly impressive.

Actually, B_S holds all spots on the SportsJournalists.com Top 10 Bad Comparison list (he's got 49 of the top 50, as well). YF doesn't even make a comparison here.

You cannot directly kill somebody with reporting.

To pull a page from your playbook, perhaps go back and read what he wrote. At that point, if you pass the quiz, your assignment will be to look up the word "comparison" in the dictionary.

He is comparing the right to own a gun to the right to report the news.More importantly, he is comparing the ability to kill with a gun to the ability to kill with reporting.

I'm sorry if you are too dense to grasp the concepts.

Edited for clarification.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

Because people are going to want, and need to know if these killers are just lone nut jobs or part of a wider reason why they happen.

Hypothetically speaking, say the media doesn't provide publicity to, let's say, four mass killings in a year. Wouldn't people want to know if they are frustrated virgins, terrorists or anti-government whack jobs?

That couldn't be done with my proposed restrictions in place?

What if you were allowed to characterize, but not publish the writings and recordings?

We've seen this, right?

Did any mainstream news organizations show Daniel Pearl's murder? We know what happened, but we didn't need to see it.

Would you be wiling to accept the media's characterization of what someone says, or would you like to see evidence?

As is, there are all sorts of conspiracy theories and media blaming going on now. If you got what you wished for, we'd be hearing about even more media "coverups".