The 2nd Amendment and Gun Control

[RZ1029]

I'm loathe to make a percentage guess, but I'd say as much as 35% of the US military has had little to no experience with a firearm beyond basic training. We have about as many pencil pushes and desk jockeys as we do combat soldiers. Not to mention the Air Force's recent expansion into the cyber realm.

 

But that's a big derailment of topic, so time to pull the train back onto the tracks.

 

 

 

As of 2009, the United States has a population of 307 million people.

 

Based on production data from firearm manufacturers, there are roughly 300 million firearms owned by civilians in the United States as of 2010. Of these, about 100 million are handguns.

 

So that's about a firearm per individual. However, only about 42% of people asked said they had a firearm in their house, which means the average gun owner owns two firearms.

 

A 1993 nationwide survey of 4,977 households found that over the previous five years, at least 0.5% of households had members who had used a gun for defense during a situation in which they thought someone "almost certainly would have been killed" if they "had not used a gun for protection." Applied to the U.S. population, this amounts to 162,000 such incidents per year. This figure excludes all "military service, police work, or work as a security guard.

 

Based on survey data from the U.S. Department of Justice, roughly 5,340,000 violent crimes were committed in the United States during 2008. These include simple/aggravated assaults, robberies, sexual assaults, rapes, and murders. Of these, about 436,000 or 8% were committed by offenders visibly armed with a gun.

 

Based on survey data from a 2000 study published in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology, U.S. civilians use guns to defend themselves and others from crime at least 989,883 times per year.

 

A 1982 survey of male felons in 11 state prisons dispersed across the U.S. found:

• 34% had been "scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed victim"
  
• 40% had decided not to commit a crime because they "knew or believed that the victim was carrying a gun"
  
• 69% personally knew other criminals who had been "scared off, shot at, wounded, or captured by an armed victim"
  

 

Unfortunately the last bit of data is very old, but I couldn't find anything more recent.

 

http://www.justfacts.com/images/guncontrol/dc.jpg

 

All of this data is courtesy of http://www.justfacts.com/guncontrol.asp and all the data I pulled I also checked the sources to make sure this wasn't just a lot of bull.

Edited December 28, 2010 by RZ1029

[ginnyfizz]

Great, Marharth. You don't see the point of hunting. Well, venison, grouse and pheasant, as well as ducks and geese, are pretty damned tasty. And hunting for fun? Wasn't always done with guns. But since you brought up the subject, most of what you would call hunting for fun is or was vermin controlling. You can't shoot corbies (that's corvines, rooks, crows, ravens) out of a tree with a footling little pistol. Corbies are a well known agricultural pest over here, both as far as arable and sheep farmers are concerned, and so are foxes for the sheep and poultry farmers. And believe me you need a long barrelled firearm to bag the little so and so's with. That's how I trained my aim with a shotgun - not on clays.

 

In your gun control scenario, as RZ1029 put it "By your definition, I would buy a gun, it would come home, and go straight into a safe. I'd never learn to shoot it, I'd not even know how it works, probably, because it's illegal for anyone to take it out and try it." And that is the ludicrous situation that you propose, only worse because you say people should only be allowed a handgun. Even in the UK, despite locking guns in a safe when not in use, we can take our shotguns and rifles out to pop vermin as well as game. (But we can't have handguns at all unless we are a licensed slaughterer.)

 

Am just envisioning the destruction that a single fox rampant can do in a chicken run. Then imagining the scene when, under the Maharth form of gun control, he brings his family too because we can't thin them out with our trusty 20 bores...

[Aurielius]

@marharth

Yep, 500k military means that many more bodies to scavenge for a uniform my size. I'd rather have 500,000 crazies that probably have rarely/never seen combat than 100,000 combat veterans.

What? How is the military not trained in combat?

 

I am not sure if people are understanding what I am saying... I am saying since the military currently has over 1 million people in it, during a situation of a revolution around half would leave. The half that didn't leave would probably be fairly crazy due to the fact there is a revolution going on and they are still supporting their government.

To put it politely, your perception of the Military mind to say the least is flawed. You are definitely barking up the wrong tree if that is where you think support for your revolution is coming from.

Edited December 28, 2010 by Aurielius

[marharth]

Great, Marharth. You don't see the point of hunting. Well, venison, grouse and pheasant, as well as ducks and geese, are pretty damned tasty. And hunting for fun? Wasn't always done with guns. But since you brought up the subject, most of what you would call hunting for fun is or was vermin controlling. You can't shoot corbies (that's corvines, rooks, crows, ravens) out of a tree with a footling little pistol. Corbies are a well known agricultural pest over here, both as far as arable and sheep farmers are concerned, and so are foxes for the sheep and poultry farmers. And believe me you need a long barrelled firearm to bag the little so and so's with. That's how I trained my aim with a shotgun - not on clays.

 

In your gun control scenario, as RZ1029 put it "By your definition, I would buy a gun, it would come home, and go straight into a safe. I'd never learn to shoot it, I'd not even know how it works, probably, because it's illegal for anyone to take it out and try it." And that is the ludicrous situation that you propose, only worse because you say people should only be allowed a handgun. Even in the UK, despite locking guns in a safe when not in use, we can take our shotguns and rifles out to pop vermin as well as game. (But we can't have handguns at all unless we are a licensed slaughterer.)

 

Am just envisioning the destruction that a single fox rampant can do in a chicken run. Then imagining the scene when, under the Maharth form of gun control, he brings his family too because we can't thin them out with our trusty 20 bores...

Re read my posts, that's not what I said at all. I said I don't like when people hunt and kill for no reason, if your doing it to control animals that are dangerous or doing it for food or materials of course its OK.

 

I also made clear you would be allowed to practice with them, that was a mistake and I shouldn't of left that out.

 

Also at the data, the murder rates are spiked around 1994, which is when Bill Clinton passed a massive gun control act.

[RZ1029]

You are correct, the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban. Which actually doesn't ban true 'assault' rifles. It targeted firearms of the semi-automatic nature with large magazines. (25+, I think)

[ginnyfizz]

Marharth,what you think is hunting and killing for no reason is almost never just that, so you are misguided. What you actually said was

 

"By hunting for fun I mean hunting things just to kill them, and not using what you killed for anything."

 

That is what shooting for pest control is about. You don't use the crows that you shoot, although you might conceivably use a fox pelt. Your restrictive gun control scenario would make both sporting and pest control shooting nigh on impossible.

[marharth]

As you said before you don't have to use guns for pest control...

 

I pretty much lost the debate though, so carry on without me lol.

[ginnyfizz]

Actually it's either guns or poison them, they banned hunting live quarry with dogs here. That's why I said "hunting for fun" wasn't always done with guns. And hence my interest in the legitimate use of guns and the control and licensing thereof, since we now have no alternative. I wouldn't put it past the RSPCA to prosecute someone for ratting with terriers, so back to the guns or poison option. Just trying to give my perspective on why I believe that self defence is only one angle to consider in the debate - that may be what was thought about in the Second Amendment, but any attempt to narrow that down and restrict the ownership of guns in the US would get you in a crazy situation like we have here.

[WrathOfDeadguy]

I found this article a while back... it focuses on gun control in the UK and how it was implemented. It brings up one point I consider to be particularly interesting- the lack of a unified, national-level gun rights advocacy organization capable of bringing legal and political pressure to bear against the government. As much as individual gun owners in the US may not agree with everything the NRA does, its influence and value to the ongoing 2A struggle can't be denied.

 

Lacking that, basically, the UK's smaller shooting and hunting clubs focused on the preservation of firearms specific to their niche- competitive shooters to target rifles and pistols, hunters to hunting rifles and shotguns, and so forth- which allowed the government to take a divide-and-conquer approach to gun control. Gun owners didn't start organizing on a larger scale in the UK until after most of their rights had been stripped away.

 

In the US, we can see the (attempted) beginnings of this with so-called "assault weapons" bans which target very specific types of semi-automatic firearms. One could even argue that the existing restrictions on fully automatic, sawn-off, and suppressed firearms was the actual beginning of that process- the National Fireamrs Act was passed with the specific intention of giving prohibition-era law enforcement a firepower edge against organized crime (which oddly refused to be outgunned despite the NFA and didn't go into decline until prohibition ended... and the NFA didn't). The 1994 AWB, which expired in 2004, is a very rare case of gun laws becoming more restrictive and then loosening again without the Supreme Court getting involved.

 

 

Here's another interesting essay, this one about human psychology and instinct with regards to violence. The gist of it is that the "violent nature" of humanity is a myth, and that humans in fact will instinctively shy away from harmful levels of violence, favoring blows to non-vital areas (like other species do when play-fighting or establishing dominance). This being the case, 'human nature' would thus be a misinterpretation of ordinary animal behavior, not a predisposition to maim and kill. That relates to gun rights issues in that, since humans are not creatures of violence by nature, allowing people to arm themselves will not result in a rise in violent offenses.

 

I agree completely with that last one, by the way. In my entire life, the number of people I've known who enjoy and actively seek out violent confrontations I could count on one hand. If those sorts of people tend to flock together, well, then they do- but people by and large don't want to hurt others any more than they want to be hurt- that is to say, not at all.

 

Guns are insurance against the small percentage of people who have no such inhibitions- and as ginnyfizz pointed out, also a valuable means of controlling pests (especially in places where humans have driven off or killed all of the natural predators- where it becomes our responsibility to maintain the balance we've upset) and putting food on the table. Yes, there are people who hunt purely for sport, but unless over-hunting is threatening to ruin an ecosystem then they provide a valuable service in preventing overpopulation of species that no longer have natural predators. Overpopulation of pest and prey species can do as much damage to the environment as human encroachment, and alternative methods (such as administering poisons or contraceptives) have proven ineffective.

 

Also... on the point of using poisons in place of guns to control pests, one way or another you're killing the pest. Trap-and-release just relocates the problem. It might be worth mentioning that more kids die from accidentally poisoning themselves with common pesticides and household chemicals than die from accidents involving guns. Could be because many such chemicals actually do require specialized training and equipment to use safely, while all you really have to do with guns is not point them in an unsafe direction. Ammo is lots cheaper than most poisons, too, and has the added virtue of not killing anything other than the pest you want to get rid of- a bullet won't, for instance, spread and linger and ultimately kill off other wildlife wandering through the area.

 

So, basically, people are not generally inclined to do violence to each other, guns are useful tools as well as defensive weapons, and just because the government isn't after all guns right now doesn't mean that they won't work towards that ultimate goal.

[neoxyooj]

Actually... AP rounds are VERY common among shooters with vintage weapons. I have a M1 with about 1500 (ish) rounds of 'AP' ammo. It's not classified as armor piercing by the ATF, but it's a 30-06 round that is capable of piercing most body armors used today. They're really easy to identify because they are black tipped bullets. You run into them a lot at gun shows with older guys who bought up some military surplus some time around/after Vietnam, and sometimes still today. The US over-prepares extremely well and had millions upon millions of rounds of ammunition for a now-obsolete battle rifle.

 

EDIT:

@marharth

Yep, 500k military means that many more bodies to scavenge for a uniform my size. I'd rather have 500,000 crazies that probably have rarely/never seen combat than 100,000 combat veterans.

 

very true, but i shoulda been clearer in regards to the types of ammunition that most gunners do have. i will agree with you that anything that is "high velocity" are AP (example: .223, 7.62x39, .308, etc); however, many people who owns handguns don't have access to AP ammunition for their handgun, especially in states and cities which ban it.

 

love this thread though. keep it up!

Edited December 28, 2010 by neoxyooj