November 7, 2015

With safeguards to prevent registration and allow temporary transfers, I could be OK with that.

I don't agree with criminalizing temp transfers where possession doesn't change or between cohabitants (as some of the recent proposals have done, perhaps accidentally), but could put up with UBC if it weren't registration or a stepping stone to "bigger and better things." Heck, even the NRA was fairly friendly to the general UBC concept years ago, before the "assault weapon" brouhaha yanked the rug out from under the middle ground. It could happen again.

Here in NC, we actually have UBC for all handgun sales, albeit conducted in a Jim-Crow-era manner.

November 7, 2015

Thanks! He's now 16 and has pretty much come out the other side of the surgery scene,

after 3 open-hearts and miscellany, and he now has a functionally normal circulatory system even if the geometry is strange (RV-PA conduit up the front). Our last big "scare" was in December 2012, when we almost lost him to a volvulus, of all things, and after taking care of an ileostomy for 6 weeks I am in awe of the parents who do that day and night for years and years. They patched him back up in January 2013, and since then he's done well. He might have to have another heart surgery someday when his valve wears out, but he could be 40 by then. And thank God for Medicaid.

November 7, 2015

Yes, there is a link to the rest of the data (CIUS Home, if not the banner itself).

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/cius-home

As to Alabama's placeholder, only ~46 states participate, so it is primary useful for tracking trends year to year, as the CIUS introduction clearly spells out, and you can project the overall rate very closely with a sample of 46 out of 50 states reporting. Only 2 states are listed as "limited supplemental data received" (Alabama and Illinois), so if you wish, ignore those and look at the rest, year to year; the trends are the same.

I know it is hard to accept that the most defended shibboleth of the gun control movement in the last 25 years (that rifles are the "weapons of choice of criminals" and widely used in homicide) is not supported by the facts, but if you truly want to get anywhere with regard to fighting gun violence (and hopefully all criminal violence) then you have to face that data. Most gun homicides are committed by people who are deep in the criminal culture, not the culture of lawful ownership; the weapons of choice are mostly illegal handguns, often low capacity, not small-caliber rifles; and magazine capacity restrictions are irrelevant.

November 7, 2015

Most of the killers have prior criminal records,

and they don't typically use the guns that gun control advocates are fighting to outlaw. Of the 12,000 murders reported to the FBI in 2014, less than 250 involved any type of rifle. Which makes the obsession without outlawing the most popular rifles really strange, if the goal were actually to address criminal violence; it'd be far more effective to prosecute gun violations by violent criminals and traffickers, but making empty threats against scawwy rifle owners makes for better sound bites I suppose.

November 7, 2015

Gun sales are actually doubled now vs. 20-30 years ago.

It's not just the last six months; it's a long-term trend, arguably kicked off by the ill-advised "assault weapon" law and backlash in the early '90s (thank William J. Bennett and Josh Sugarmann) and the wave of concealed carry licensure reform that resulted from that, and since circa 2008, the ban-more-guns crowd keeps pushing sales higher and higher.

Federal gun-sale background checks are a good proxy for changes in the rate (although they do not account for multiple purchases, individual sales by private citizens, purchases by carry license holders, and a few other scenarios):

https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics/reports/nics_firearm_checks_-_month_year.pdf

FWIW, I bought a new competition/HD pistol this past March, so some of us are buying guns (I am one of those eeevillll gun owners), but I have to live within my means, this economy still sucks, and I sold off about half my gun collection to pay for my son's medical needs a few years ago. A civilian AUG is next on my wish list, but hasn't been a financial priority in the 25 years I've wanted one...though if the Third Way keeps blathering about new bans, I might move it higher on the list, just because.

November 7, 2015

Ummm, the nonfatal violence stats can be found from the links I posted.

Follow them and then go to the TOC for the entire data set. If you do, you'll see that nonfatal violence also decreased for 2014, but those trends tend to track pretty closely with the homicide rate and vice versa.

IMHO, lumping suicide in with homicide as "violence" is a bit problematic, considering that if you lump murders and suicides together, the USA is a far less "violent" place than Japan, for example, and we have a comparable "violence" rate to Finland and Belgium most years. (And do you consider assisted suicide equivalent to murder?)

The FBI Uniform Crime Reports tracks violent crime, including gun violence, and Table 20 is the most comprehensive data set in existence with regard to what styles of weapons are used to kill in this country. I realize that it rather undermines the "black rifles are of the debbil" narrative, but if one is going to prioritize one's efforts, then it is certainly helpful to know that twice as many people were killed by criminals in the Chicago MSA alone as were killed by all rifles combined in the entire nation.

November 7, 2015

The full gun violence stats for 2014 are out (FBI UCR).

As always, it's helpful to compare reality with the rhetoric. The FBI murder stats for 2014:


Murder, by State and Type of Weapon, 2014 (FBI)

[font face="courier new"]Total murders...................... 11,961
Handguns............................ 5,562 (46.5%)
Firearms (type unknown)............. 2,052 (17.2%)
Clubs, rope, fire, etc.............. 1,610 (13.5%)
Knives and other cutting weapons.... 1,567 (13.1%)
Hands, fists, feet.................... 660 (5.5%)
Shotguns.............................. 262 (2.2%)
Rifles................................ 248 (2.1%) [/font]

All the gun violence categories show a slight decrease compared to 2013. Looks like the only category that increased from 2013 to 2014 was murders using blades. Here are the 2013 figures:

Murder, by State and Type of Weapon, 2013 (FBI)
[font face="courier new"] Total murders...................... 12,253
Handguns............................ 5,782 (47.2%)
Firearms (type unknown)............. 2,079 (17.0%)
Clubs, rope, fire, etc.............. 1,622 (13.2%)
Knives and other cutting weapons.... 1,490 (12.2%)
Hands, fists, feet.................... 687 (5.6%)
Shotguns.............................. 308 (2.5%)
Rifles................................ 285 (2.3%) [/font]

That continues a 20-year trend of declining gun violence, which is now roughly half of what it was in the early 1990s.

As usual, I'll point out that almost all "assault weapons" fall into the Rifles category, making them among the least misused of all weapons in the United States, despite their popularity.

November 6, 2015

Knives and clubs are used to murder four times as many people

as all rifles and all shotguns *combined*, including "assault weapons".

Murder, by State and Type of Weapon, 2014 (FBI)

[font face="courier new"]Total murders...................... 11,961
Handguns............................ 5,562 (46.5%)
Firearms (type unknown)............. 2,052 (17.2%)
Clubs, rope, fire, etc.............. 1,610 (13.5%)
Knives and other cutting weapons.... 1,567 (13.1%)
Hands, fists, feet.................... 660 (5.5%)
Shotguns.............................. 262 (2.2%)
Rifles................................ 248 (2.1%) [/font]

And the trend is *down*, not up. Down by roughly 50% since the 1990s, in fact, for all categories of gun violence, despite the fact that annual gun sales have doubled over that time period. It appears that the current approach (focusing on those who actually commit crimes, and leaving the lawful and sane alone) has coincided with dramatically less violence overall.

November 6, 2015

If you personally threaten people, you motivate them to get to the polls and vote against you.

That is true whether the issue is Santorum threatening GLBT rights or contraception, Cuccinelli equating oral sex with bestiality, or Bloomberg/McAuliffe promising to outlaw the most popular guns in Virginia homes.

I and hundreds of thousands of others have been saying this exact thing since fricking 2004, and yet the Third Way still can't keep its fingers out of that light socket. Heck, they're still trotting out the "B-b-but we support hunting!!!" mantra from the '90s, as if that were relevant in a society where 80% of gun owners are nonhunters.

Keep your fingers out of people's gun safes, people. Messing around in people's bedrooms and in their gun safes are surefire recipes for a backlash.

November 5, 2015

Considering that the murder rate has declined by half as annual gun sales doubled...

it appears to me that the "more guns, more murders" mantra is a false one. Even with the blip in 2015, we are living in one of the safest times in American history, from a homicide standpoint.