Observations on the nature of the debate on gun control.

[gejohnston]

48. to start with

Last edited Tue Jan 6, 2015, 12:51 AM - Edit history (1)

Guns are regulated? What do you mean by that? So what, there are plenty of laws on the books that are bad laws or are ineffective. Shouldn't they be revisited and revised if necessary? How can you say guns are regulated when you know anyone can easily buy what they want backdoor through private sales, Facebook, etc?

Yes current gun laws are bad and ineffective. For example should a single shot rifle with a 15 inch barrel be regulated more tightly than, say, an AR-15 with an 17 inch barrel? Sounds stupid right? That's current law. Since the barrel is under 16 inches, it falls under the National Firearms Act, and is regulated the same as a machine gun. It and sawed off shotguns are less regulated in Canada than here. That is one example. Even complete bans are ineffective, see Chicago and our drug laws. Can't buy guns on Facebook, and chances are you would be violating the Gun Control Act. More lies the prohibition lobby told you. Perhaps you should research legal internet sales in Canada. All gun laws are ineffective for the same reason drug laws are.

I will tentatively accept any government (CDC) study that the gun control people are allowed to have an equal input into what is studied and term defined, and are part of the study design team, and that are not influenced by politicians pulling strings (I worked for the government and know first-hand that government mangers are very sensitive to political pressure from members of Congress. My concerns: the gun lobby has ton of money and tons of influence and knows how to use both. If our positions were reversed you would (or should) be as concerned about this as I am. But bottom line: I believe laws should be designed based on evidence.

Based on evidence. The evidence is that there is no evidence any gun control law affected any crime rate anywhere in the world. the gun lobby has no such money. It is the prohibition lobby that has the money with billionaires like Bloomberg (in fact many of the oligarchs), free propaganda from the MSM. Studies should be done as the DoJ has been doing it: by qualified academics and their results submitted to peer review publications, and made public including all raw data.

Yes, all reality is complex when facts don't go your way.

or if you don't understand it.

A lot of gun violence is a result of poverty, inequality, a lack of jobs, discrimination, political corruption, etc. If we can solve this we will save lives even without any further gun laws, but none of this is likely to get solved any time soon, maybe never. You use anecdotes (biker gangs making their own guns, kindergarten teachers gunned down by a gang) to give the impression that gun laws can't prevent these incidents, so passing gun laws are futile. Yeah, so why have any laws? They'll all be broken by someone, somewhere. Really? Give up because no gun law is perfect and someone somewhere will still be shot? Too many people die of gun violence in our country. No one else has this level of injuries and deaths by gun fire. You can blame this all on drugs and gang warfare.

A lot of countries have higher murder rates than we do, all with stricter gun laws. Given that we have 30K gangs with a couple of million members, yeah that is the problem. Most of our crime are criminals killing each other. That has been well known in criminology circles for over a century. The only people who follow gun laws are the people who don't commit crimes. Those are the only people who are affected. That is why gun laws don't work. Australian bikers aren't some isolated anecdote. The Hells Angels and Mongels have been at war, shooting up Sydney streets. UK has more gun violence now than when they had no gun laws at all. Then there is Mexico, USVI, PR, Brazil, etc. Gun laws in Europe were not passed to prevent crime, because their crime rates were just as low. It was the red scare in the 1920s, land lingering laws from Fascist governments, like Italy and Spain. Criminals don't get guns from gun shows or gun stores, that was found during the Wright/Rossi study (funded by the DoJ) that showed why the Gun Control Act was ineffective.