Why Gun Control Is Basically Dead

[Purveyor]

By Paul M. Barrett December 12, 2013

On Dec. 14, gun control advocates will mark the one-year anniversary of the Newtown elementary school massacre by gathering at events in 35 states and ringing bells. “Moms won’t be silent anymore,” says Shannon Watts. In response to Newtown, Watts started Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a grassroots organization that has become the most visible new player in the gun debate. “Something changed after Sandy Hook,” she says of the grade school where 20 children and six adults were killed in a matter of minutes by a troubled young man armed with a Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle. “We can’t unring that bell, and we will be heard. This is not the America I want for my children.”

For all her heartfelt emotion, the fight over firearms hasn’t gone well for Watts and her allies. In a humbling political defeat for President Obama, congressional Republicans last spring blocked attempts to enact new federal gun restrictions. Lawmakers had some success in a handful of states: Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, and New York toughened background-check rules and/or banned certain large-capacity weapons. In Colorado, where 12 people were killed in a mass shooting at an Aurora movie theater in 2012, the legislature instituted comprehensive background checks and limited ammunition capacity to 15 rounds per magazine.

Then came the push-back: Colorado voters so far have forced three pro-gun control state legislators from office—two in a recall backed by the National Rifle Association and a third who resigned in the face of opposition. At least 16 states—Alabama, Kansas, Maine, Oklahoma, and Virginia among them—reacted to Newtown by loosening gun restrictions in the past year. Several of the pro-gun states, including Arizona, where a 2011 shooting at a shopping mall left six people dead and then-Representative Gabrielle Giffords grievously wounded, enacted laws that exempt gun permits from public records. Viewing the nation as a whole and factoring in the expiration of the 1994-2004 federal assault weapons ban, it has become easier to acquire firearms in the U.S. in recent years.



And acquire them we have. FBI background-check data, an imprecise but revealing proxy for gun purchases, show that in 2005 fewer than 9 million checks were done. For the first 11 months of 2013, that figure rose to more than 19 million. Not every background check leads to a firearm sale, but the direction of the statistics is compellingly clear. For gun manufacturers, the trend shows up in growing revenue. Sturm Ruger (RGR), the largest publicly traded U.S. firearms maker, reported $506.4 million in sales for the first nine months of 2013, a 45 percent increase over the comparable period in 2011. Its profit rose 67 percent.

Why, even after Newtown, are gun rights on the ascendant? The starting place is violent crime rates. The push for national gun control began in earnest in the late 1960s, an era of sharply rising murder and assault rates, especially in large cities. Violence increased markedly for three decades, through 1993, providing gun skeptics with a plausible basis to argue that limiting access to firearms might help address the scourge. In December 1993, 70 percent of Americans supported stricter gun control, according to pollsters at CNN (TWX). Then, beginning in 1994, for reasons that still perplex criminologists, violent crime began to decrease, falling roughly 50 percent over the past two decades. In CNN’s most recent poll, published on Dec. 4, 49 percent of respondents supported stricter gun control, down six percentage points since January.

MORE...

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-12-12/firearm-sales-up-plus-crime-down-equals-gun-control-dead

[ileus]

1. disarming people only makes more victims...it's really that simple.

Refuse to be a victim, refuse to yield another right for fake safety.

Together we can make a difference.

Stay safe, and carry on.

[Boom Sound 416]

2. It's dead

Because people politicized a national tragedy with laws that wouldn't have prevented said tragedy.

[TheMastersNemesis]

3. Screw Both Of YOu Dead Heads

[Ranchemp.]

4. That's a really intelligent reply.

[blueridge3210]

5. For TMN? Yes that does qualify as an intelligent reply. nt

[Ranchemp.]

6. I've read his threads and posts,

and I gotta say that I agree with you.

[Eleanors38]

7. I have one disagreement with this very good article...

It was argued that guns are even easier to obtain now, post-AWB. The ban accomplished little in terms of sales for that amorphous rifle-type.

In reality, it is easier to Carry a gun due to the spread of liberalized "shall issue" permits. Only in locales like Chi & D.C. Where 2A was treated hostilely have Americans found it easier to obtain guns.

Otherwise, the article caught up with what DUers in this group have been saying for yrs.

[pipoman]

8. Because

Gun control advocates and groups continue pushing for controls which are constitutionally impossible measures knowing that actually passing laws or regulations which might solve or reduce access by criminals would relegate them to the trash bin of political movements and reduce donations to their causes..

[Lurks Often]

9. It would also force some of the anti-gun people to get real jobs

instead of drawing large salaries from the donations their groups get.