Barack Obama: Dealing with Gun Violence

[jefferson_dem]

Run time: 01:22 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HQTtEXiGuE   Posted on YouTube: July 13, 2007 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: July 15, 2007 By DU Member: jefferson_dem Views on DU: 1828

 
Barack Obama speaks about how he would deal with Gun violence in America at the NAACP Democratic Candidate Forum in Detroit, Michigan on 7/12/7. He picked up this theme in Chicago (see story below).


***

Obama attacks violence in Chicago

By John McCormick
Tribune staff reporter

July 15, 2007, 2:27 PM CDT

Speaking to a Sunday congregation in Chicago, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama used often-fiery rhetoric to mourn the city's recent spate of gun violence and challenged the government, the gun lobby and the public to do more to stop it.

"Our playgrounds have become battlegrounds. Our streets have become cemeteries. Our schools have become places to mourn the ones we've lost," Obama told a standing-room-only congregation at Vernon Park Church of God on Chicago's Far South Side.

The Illinois Democrat recounted how 32 Chicago public schoolchildren were killed during the last school year, and noted that two more teens were shot in the past week in a South Side schoolyard.

"The violence is unacceptable, and it's got to stop," he said.

...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-obamagunsjul16,1,4478667,print.story?ctrack=2&cset=true

[benEzra]

1. According to the FBI, Illinois had 448 murders in 2005...

According to the FBI, Illinois had 448 murders in 2005. All rifles combined accounted for only 4 of them, which is why fighting to ban the most popular civilian rifles in America is a bit wrongheaded--particularly since half of gun owners are Dems and indies.

Rifles are not a crime problem in the United States and never have been.

Otherwise a very good speech, IMO.


----------------
Dems and the Gun Issue - Now What? (written in 2004, largely vindicated in 2006, IMO). Background on the gun issue for non-gunnies, i.e. "Why Hunting Is Irrelevant to the Gun Issue."

Why people pushing rifle bans are stuck in the 1970's.

[Deep13]

2. Didn't read the print article because I'm not registered.

The video speech seems right-on to me. I especially agree with treating Black, urban crime victims with as much priority as white, suburban ones.

Still, it is important to put numbers into perspective with the whole population and with other forms of danger.

I know Obama is on the record in favor of reinstating the so-called Assault Weapons Ban which has expired. Under the AWB, civilians are punished as criminals even if the firearms in question are never used in a crime and are kept away from irresponsible people such as children. Several of my firearms would be illegal under the AWB and I have never even hinted at using them in anger. One the other hand, if the Blackwater SS goons come for me, I won't make it easy on them.

Stopping all violence is not possible. To do so would create more governmental violence in terms of arrests, police-caused injury and death and imprisonment. I'm simply not willing to live in a police state. (It is bad enough that I cannot even walk in the woods without tresspassing.)

[zanne]

4. May I ask why you own them?

You say you have assault weapons, but don't plan to use them. I'm curious now; why do you have them? Is it a matter of principle for you?

[Deep13]

6. I didn't say I have assault weapons.

I said I have firearms that would be illegal under the AWB. If point of fact, the AWB grandfathered existing units. "Assault weapon" is a term invented by politicians as a general description of basically gun they don't like. An "assault rifle" on the other hand is a relatively short, high-capacity, rugged, automatic rifle chambered for a widely available, short military rifle cartridge. The best known examples are AKs and M16s. They do not include long military rifles like the M1 Garand or either sub-machine guns or pistol-caliber carbines (both of which use pistol ammunition).

I do use them at the target range. My favorite all around firearm is a revolver which were not effected by the AWB because it holds only seven shots. I generally disfavor automatics (actually semi-automatic since they only shoot once for each trigger pull) because they are difficult to clean. Still, 9mm Parabellum is the most numerous, ubiquitious and, therefore, cheapest cartridge on Earth except for 0.22 rimfire. It is also extremely accurate at the target range. For that reason I also have a Beretta 90-Two with 17-round magazines. Since the AWB put a 10-round limit on magazines, these would have been illegal to buy new a few years ago. The other automatics I have are a target grade Ruger 0.22 and a rare, nickle-plated 0.380 Beretta model 84F with walnut grips and 13-rd. magazines. I hardly use either of them because they get so filthy. 0.380 and 0.22 are each much dirtier that 9mm.

Nothing I have can possibly be considered a machine gun. My only centerfire long gun is pistol caliber Marlin old-west style carbine. Each round must be cycled by hand and the cartidges load one at a time with no detachable magazine. I have one automatic carbine in 0.22 that I never use because--yup you guessed it--filth city.

Ultimately, I have them because I like them. There are specific reasons for that, but they are pretty subjective. Also, since bans only apply to people who do not commit crimes, I do not want to be deprived of a means to protect myself or my wife if someone I sent to prison gets out and figures out where I live or if things get so bad the town really does become lawless or if Bush sends his Blackwater goons to round up the godless, Unamerican, liberal terrorists.

[russ1943]

8. AWB term was/is marketing strategy by American firearms Industry

The term assault weapon wasn’t created by those politicians or gun control organizations that wanted (and still want) to ban them.

Joseph P. Tartaro the Executive Editor of Gun Week Magazine and president of The Second Amendment Foundation, (a pioneer in innovative defense of the right to keep and bear arms). A prominent leader of the right to bear arms movement, has acknowledged that the idea of calling semi-automatic versions of military small arms "'assault weapons" did not, I repeat, NOT originate with either anti-gun activists, media or politicians. It was a marketing strategy by importers, manufacturers, wholesalers and dealers in the American firearms industry to stimulate and market sales of selected "exotica"--firearms which did not have a traditional appearance. The fact that even some of the semi-automatic versions of the military-style firearms retained their bayonet lugs, extended pistol grips, "banana-clip" magazines, folding stocks and even threading for silencers and muzzle brakes has been used to erroneously define "assault weapons." But these design features were part of the Walter Mittyesque "romance" of what some like to call "ugly guns."

http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/Tartaro1.htm

[Deep13]

12. Huh. How about that.

It is still pretty non-specific, but an interesting point nevertheless.

[benEzra]

18. Did you see Tartaro's "citation" for that claim?

Did you see his "citation" for that claim?

(10) See SHOTGUN NEWS and other firearms publications beginning in the early 1980s.

Shotgun News, at the time, was a tabloid-format weekly of mostly classified ads posted by individual gunsmiths/collectors or mom-and-pop businesses--and he can't even seem to cite an instance ("see half a decade's worth of WEEKLY classified ads, or maybe some other magazine, but trust me on this"). Maybe he recollected accurately, and maybe he didn't, but it looks like he pulled the citation out of his head, and if he's a lawyer you'd think he'd own a copy of the MLA Style Guide.

He wrote that article in 1995; Josh Sugarmann had already been popularizing the term in the gun-ban literature for nearly a decade by that point. Color me skeptical.

Another passage from his article contradicts much of what he implied in the other cite:

First, the term "assault weapon" is erroneously applied. Assault weapons are by military procurement definition "selective, fire (full auto continuous or burst fire plus autoloading) arms of sub caliber." Since fully automatic and selective firearms have been severely restricted, taxed and licensed--and owners screened by local and federal law enforcement--since 1934, real assault weapons have been strictly regulated by federal as well as state laws for sixty years. The firearms which are targeted by recent laws and current legislative proposals are mostly semi-automatic (requiring a single trigger pull for each shot) or, in the case of the Street-Sweeper type shotgun, functional revolvers. They are indistinguishable in operation from other semi-automatic firearms used for self-defense, pest and vermin control, sport hunting and recreational shooting since the turn of the century.

He contradicts himself here, and also conflates the term "assault weapon" with "assault rifle" (Sturmgehwer); the definition he cites is the DOD definition of assault rifle. And the National Firearms Act restricts assault rifles, not "assault weapons."

It was Sugarmann's 1988 pamphlet that popularized the term, though it is possible he lifted it from an obscure antecedent. I had personally never heard it until it was used by the proponents of a ban circa 1989. The fact remains though that in 2007, "assault weapon" is a term used to demonize popular civilian rifles with handgrips that stick out, or firearms that exceed 6 or 10 rounds capacity.

I also noticed this gem:

The ballistic data for the .30-06 and M1 carbine cartridges, the .45 ACP used in World War II and Korea, and the .308 (7.62 X 39) M-14 individual infantry arm used by some units in Vietnam are substantially more powerful than the 5.56mm (.223) U.S. small arms cartridge of the M16 or 5.45 X 39mm Soviet Russian cartridge fired in current AK47 military small arms and their semi-automatic civilian derivatives.

Now, he's right that a .30-06 (now the most popular deer caliber in America) is twice as powerful as the little .223 Remington. But .45 ACP is a pistol cartridge, even further down the power spectrum; .30 carbine is also less powerful. The M14 was 7.62x51, aka .308 Winchester and similar to .30-06; 7.62x39 (.30 Russian short) is a much lower-powered round used in AK-47's, civilian AK lookalikes, SKS's, Ruger Mini Thirty's, and such, and is similar to .30-30 Winchester. 5.45x39 is the AK-74 cartridge, not that of the AK-47. In short, he apparently isn't terribly familiar with firearms, and appears to be talking out of his posterior.

[benEzra]

17. I know this was addressed to Deep13, but I hope you don't mind me jumping in as well.

I'm curious now; why do you have them? Is it a matter of principle for you?

I know this was addressed to Deep13, but I hope you don't mind me jumping in as well.

I bought my SAR-1 in 2003 (it's a 2002 model, ban-era) as an all-around target/fun/utility rifle.

It's been my favorite target rifle since I've had it, and I have recently taken up competitive shooting with it. It's also a fine defensive carbine, so when I'm home, it often sits in the safe with a magazine in.



Its virtues? Legendary reliability, accurate enough, economical to shoot, and only has to be cleaned every thousand rounds or so. I like the functional appearance and the ergonomics, it's mechanically interesting, it doesn't kick much, I can hunt with it if I ever take up that pastime, it's rugged enough to last for centuries, and I could actually afford it and a good collimator sight when we were buried under my son's medical bills.

My wife owns a SKS (a 1952 Tula, fairly rare) because it is interesting, collectible, well made, and historical, it was a steal at $99, and she knew it wouldn't kick much. Russian history has always interested her.

My first rifle was a Ruger mini-14, which is also an "assault weapon" under H.R.1022, but I recently sold it to save up for a Rock River LAR-15 (which will be much more accurate than the Ruger).

[JD_23]

3. Clueless?

Mr Obama comes off as a smart man..But he is so far off when it comes to guns it's unreal. He wants to permanently reinstate the assault weapon ban (bad idea) when like the other poster noted rifles were used in crimes a whole 4 times in Illinois.I thought the Democrats understood gun control was a losing issue and would lay off this time around (guess not).The guns aren't the reason for the violence plaguing large cities around the country.It's the rampant poverty,illicit drug trade and lack of parental influence that are far bigger reasons.
I will say as a law abiding gun owner..I'm so tired of politicians on both sides of the aisle treating law abiding citizens like criminals.We have over 20,000 laws on the books right now concerning guns.We just need to enforce those better instead of making new ones.

[zanne]

5. We get upset about guns because we read newspapers

We have violent crimes in our communities and at least 90% of them are gun-related. Senator Obama is not "far off" when it comes to guns. The tide is turning and people are beginning to realize that we can't have a civilized society when people are walking around with assault weapons.

[Deep13]

7. 90%?

I'm sorry, but that is simply not true. Never believe newspapers where if it bleeds it leads. The great majority of the violent offenses that come across my desk in the DA's felony office and almost all of the murders are done with improvised weapons. This does not include violence that amounts to a misdemeanor since a different office handles that. (Obviously, all gun violence crimes are felonies.) Now some of the crimes involve gun specifications, but either were not violent or the gun was not part of the violence. In one case a drug-addict daughter had her BF bludgeon her elderly father to death so they could steal his birding guns and sell them for drug money. In another, drug runners were found to be armed even though there was no violence. (They were afraid of their delivery contact, not the police.)

If a gun is used in a crime, it is almost impossible to get away from it. The defendant will have GSR that cannot easily be washed off. The gun can be matched to the bullet. If there is no gun, which is usually the case, then the defendant has to invent a story about where it went. Stolen? Why no police report? Sold it? To whom? I do favor closing the gun-show loophole that allows unregulated purchases. Gun crimes are almost always done with cheap handguns that most shooting enthusiasts stay away from. Here in Ohio we have a company called High Point that makes $100 handguns. They are absolute crap, but they can kill someone once.

"...we can't have a civilized society when people are walking around with assault weapons."

Even cops? Since most service pistols are "assault weapons" because of high capacity, does that mean you thing they should not walk around with them? A person does not become a model citizen because he puts on a blue suit. In fact, the authority usually makes a person a bit pushy. In fact, rates of violent crime among police officers is higher than the general population.
Police officers may have training, but very little of it is devoted to firearm use. Cops come to the range regularly to re-certify and most shoot like crap. One example that drives this whole point home is when people from New Orleans were escaping from Katrina over the only bridge by cops from the neighboring town who threatened to shoot them if they didn't turn around. They were made to return to life-threatening situation because the cops of that white-bread town did not want to be inconvenienced.

If civilized=helpless, then I am happy to be a barbarian. Civilization is overrated. It seems to be synonymous with slavery, enforced povery, oppression of the body and control of the mind. I'm not one of these people who think the govt. should not do anything except maintain the military. Still, I know better than to depend on them for my personal safety. Requiring citizens to be unarmed is requiring them to be victims. I find that to be reprehensible. Progress comes by empowering ordinary people, not by giving their rights to the state.

[russ1943]

9. 68% in 2005

Okay it's not 90% but year after year fully two thirds of the over 10,000 homicides in this country are committed with firearms.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/tables/guncrimetab.htm

[Deep13]

11. Those are not percentages.

Those are rates of per 100,000. You need to move the decimal three places to the left for the percentage. Also, it does not say whether these are convictions, complaints by victims, surveys or indictments. Also, it only includes felonies. Most violent crimes are misdemeanors like simple assault.

[russ1943]

14. "Those" ARE PERCENTAGES, LOOK AGAIN

The link I provided has two tables.

The first one shows the number and rate of total firearm crime; murders with firearms, robberies with firearms and aggravated assaults with firearms.

The second table shows the number and percent of murders, robberies and aggravated assaults in which firearms were used from 1973 to 2005.

I know what rates are, how to calculate them and how to do percentages, thank you.

[zanne]

10. That's Obama's position on guns

He wants enforcement of laws already on the books. He's not looking to ban guns.

[benEzra]

16. He said we need a new ban on "assault weapons"

He said we need a new ban on "assault weapons", i.e. the most popular civilian target rifles in America, and half the guns in our family's gun safe.

I have no problem whatsoever with enforcing the laws currently on the books. There are even some new laws I'd be OK with. But not new bans like H.R.1022.

[zanne]

19. So you want to pick and choose?

And who will choose--the Gun Owners of America?

[benEzra]

20. Choose what?

So you want to pick and choose?

And who will choose--the Gun Owners of America?

Choose what?

I would certainly like candidates to not ban half our guns, yes. Richardson is there, Edwards is moving firmly in that direction, Clinton has been on board the "assault weapon" bait-and-switch in the past but may not be idealogically committed to it (on pragmatic grounds, the ban makes no sense; the guns affected are both very popular and rarely misused). I knew Obama had talked about banning self-loaders back in the '90s, but hoped he would have moved on.

No, I don't like GOA. There's a reason why of America's 80 million gun owners and 30+ million "assault weapon" owners (broadly defined a la H.R.1022), only about 100,000 belong to GOA. That doesn't mean I'm OK with having my guns banned, though.

The "assault weapon" bait-and-switch was a bad idea in '94. It's an even worse idea now, IMHO.

[Perry Logan]

13. You're repeating long-debunked memes; most Americans want more gun control

from "The Progressive Majority: Why a Conservative America is a Myth"
http://mediamatters.org/progmaj/report

There is a vivid disconnect between politics and public opinion on guns. Gun control is considered by some Democrats to be a "third-rail" issue they should fear to approach. Even after the terrifying tragedy at Virginia Tech, many cautioned against any legislative action on gun control.40

Typical of major news outlets, the San Francisco Chronicle reported it this way:

The Virginia Tech campus massacre may reignite a national debate over gun control, but with an election year looming and a powerful gun lobby geared for battle, Democrats probably will be reluctant to push such a divisive issue that could threaten their control of Congress and effort to win back the White House.

"Democrats tend to be worried about their electoral prospects with the gun-owning public,'' said Bob Levy, a senior fellow and constitutional scholar with the conservative CATO Institute, a Washington think tank. "They haven't been particularly vocal, because they understand that people in this country want their guns.''41

This conventional wisdom assumes broad American opposition to the regulation of firearms. This is simply not the case. Although there are important regional variations and millions of Americans who like to hunt, most Americans support reasonable restrictions. For instance, a 2006 Gallup poll revealed that 56 percent of people wanted laws governing the sale of firearms to be made more stringent. In recent years, most polling on gun control produces similar results: Majorities of Americans favor at least some regulation of firearms, particularly handguns, as the data below demonstrate. The recently expired assault weapons ban was overwhelmingly supported by the public.

[bedpanartist]

15. Where is the War on Drugs in this conversation?

that seems to be the leading cause of gun death in our community, War on Drug related deaths by handguns.

[Robb]

21. I remember that was the whisper after Columbine

...that a lot of white kids were shot up all at once, but how many black ones died one at a time that year?

Bold to bring it up.

I think if he defined "assault weapons" as "weapons used in assaults" he and I would probably be on the same page. Of course, that largely means cheap-ass black market handguns.