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Smart Guns To Stop Mass Killings
New submitter Bugs42 writes "CNN.com has an opinion piece on the possibility of cramming guns full of computers and sensors to disable them in certain buildings or around children. The author, in true mainstream media fashion, completely fails to see any possible technical problems with this. Quoting: 'How might this work? Start with locational "self-awareness." Guns should know where they are and if another gun is nearby. Global positioning systems can meet most of the need, refining a gun's location to the building level, even within buildings. Control of the gun would remain in the hand of the person carrying it, but the ability to fire multiple shots in crowded areas or when no other guns are present would be limited by software that understands where the gun is being used. Guns should also be designed to sense where they are being aimed. Artificial vision and optical sensing technology can be adapted from military and medical communities. Sensory data can be used by built-in software to disable firing if the gun is pointed at a child or someone holding a child."
Quite possibly the dumbest article I've ever seen.
I'm sure all this technology will make a huge difference for the millions of guns already in circulation in the US.
How about just filling them with air instead of bullets?
So next time I want to murder a guy who has a gun, I have to kidnap a baby first to disable his weapon? Come on, people, I'm on a schedule. These guys aren't going to whack themselves.
... a black market for guns that don't have these features should it ever come to pass.
How are we supposed to secure a free state if the tyrant can wirelessly disable our arms?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Stop giving them tons of media attention and "high scores".
Stop giving other crazy people incentives of guaranteed posthumous fame.
crazy dynamite monkey
1) Can you develop such a complex system that works in the practical world (ie, it's cost effective and reliable)?
2) Can you develop a system in such a way that it can't be removed or bypassed?
The gun is a fairly simple machine. I can't think of a way to prevent the removal of such a complex system. And if the argument is going to be "it'll be legally mandated that all guns have this," you run into the same problem that gun control laws run into right now. Criminals - especially those who are planning on committing multiple murders and probably killing themselves in the process - really don't give a crap about following the law.
Sensory data can be used by built-in software to disable firing if the gun is pointed at a child
What do I do if I'm being assaulted by a dwarf?
If we're really going to solve this problem, guns should have captcha-like technology, determining that the wielder retains the capacity for empathy before he can fire it.
As soon as he removes the safety, the gun should pose a simple question, such as "You're in a desert, walking along in the sand, when all of a sudden you look down and see a tortoise. You reach down and you flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping. Why is that?"
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
The government must fear pissing off its citizens. Guns are power. Do you want only the military and the police to have power? Society works best when all types of power are distributed and not concentrated in just a few areas or restricted to just a few people or groups.
I sure wouldn't want the government or military to be able to turn off our weapons, and I sure don't support laws that say only the military and police can have the most powerful weapons. That puts the balance of power away from the people.
Knowledge is like ignorance.. too much can be just as bad as not enough.
This invites massive logistical issues that only expand if you take malfunctions and deliberate hacking into account. All because we live in a country where paranoia about gun rights trumps taking rational action to reduce gun deaths.
Arguments about the second amendment used to revolve around whether guns keep us free. These days, however, they're all about whether guns keep us safe. Something significant has already been lost, even if we still have the right to bear arms.
As soon as this idea runs up against gun-industry profits, it dies.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
If you know a way to stop somebody with equal effectiveness in a way that is less likely to kill them, I'm all ears.
That seems to be the big hurtle. Most of the solutions in the whole non-deadly weapon scene look like jokes which might work in a very lucky circumstance. They range from guns that shoot sticky glue like substances to paintball guns that fire balls of pepper. No sane person is going to bet their life on something like that.
Taser is as close as we have come I think. They get a lot of grief from being over used, but as an alternative to a gun, they are pretty damn effective. I'd rather the officer tackle me than taze me, but I'd rather him taze me than shoot me..
Apparently "shock sticks" were also extremely effective.. but the public backlash was so intense they had to lose them.
So my thought is to go non-lethal or less-lethal or whatever the term is. With all the technology we have, why do we still need to kill someone to stop them.
You assume the purpose of shooting somebody is to kill them. That is not true. The purpose of shooting somebody is to stop them from doing what they are doing. It has been found that multiple bullets to the chest is the most reliable way of doing that. Whether that kills the person is not the point. If you know a way to stop somebody with equal effectiveness in a way that is less likely to kill them, I'm all ears.
When you point and shoot a gun you ALWAYS assume you will kill whatever your targeting. Never the other way around.
Literally - please!
Every one of these psychos was mentally ill and on psychotropic drugs.
Columbine mass-killer Eric Harris was taking Luvox – like Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor and many others, a modern and widely prescribed type of antidepressant drug called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs.
Patrick Purdy went on a schoolyard shooting rampage in Stockton, Calif., in 1989, which became the catalyst for the original legislative frenzy to ban “semiautomatic assault weapons” in California and the nation. The 25-year-old Purdy, who murdered five children and wounded 30, had been on Amitriptyline, an antidepressant, as well as the antipsychotic drug Thorazine.
Kip Kinkel, 15, murdered his parents in 1998 and the next day went to his school, Thurston High in Springfield, Ore., and opened fire on his classmates, killing two and wounding 22 others. He had been prescribed both Prozac and Ritalin.
more here: http://www.wnd.com/2013/01/the-giant-gaping-hole-in-sandy-hook-reporting/
"The public is growing increasingly confused by how we treat the mentally ill. More and more, the mentally ill are showing up in the streets, badly in need of help. Incidents of illness-driven violence are reported regularly, incidents which common sense tells us could easily have been avoided. And this is just the visible tip of the greater tragedy - of many more sufferers deteriorating in the shadows and, often, committing suicide." http://www.northshoreschizophrenia.org/Uncivil_Liberties.htm
The bottom line is we need to identify these people before they snap and get them off the streets and into treatment, not take guns away from law abiding citizens.
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Our rights aren't based upon the needs of the average person.
Does the average person own a printing press?
Does the average person need to worry about being railroaded by the police?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
There's a reason many countries treat non-lethal weapons the same as firearms, instead of allowing citizens to own them. A robber might hesitate to fire a gun at someone, he's much more likely to threaten. But with a non-lethal weapon, his best course of action is to use it pre-emptively and zap away. Robbers, burglars, rapists and pranksters of the more evil sort are going to love reliable and widely available non-lethal weaponry.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
You do understand that laws don't work by magic, right?
It is a lot more complicated than that.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
GPS spoofing has been done before.
Criminal spoofs GPS of local area with their own transmitters, making all the police guns think they're in the whitehouse or some other 'safe zone'.
Criminal has 'old fashioned' gun and shoots police who are powerless to fire back.
The anti-firearms hysteria needs to stop. This reminds me of when Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray, so a bunch of dead stingrays started showing up everywhere because people suddenly thought of them as being too dangerous to have around. Yeah, firearms can kill people. So can a bunch of other things.
There are three times as many automobile related fatalities each year as firearms related fatalities:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/01/05/Federal-Gov-Annual-Auto-Related-Deaths-Three-Times-Higher-Than-Gun-Related-Deaths
Even better, there are more people killed with hammers and clubs than with firearms:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/01/03/FBI-More-People-Killed-With-Hammers-and-Clubs-Each-Year-Than-With-Rifles
So why the fuck are we going after people who own firearms?
First they came for the NRA,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't an NRA member.
(Yeah, I invoked Godwin's Law, so what.)
Also, in Afghanistan it is not unheard of for "enemy combatants" (we can't call them terrorists anymore) to carry kids while they are on the battlefield, either for the purpose of preventing themselves from being shot at, or propaganda ("Look at these baby killers! They must die in the name of allah!") That goes to show you what people are capable of. If firearms were disabled in a similar manner in domestic situations, only it happened automatically, I imagine that would come home as well.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
I greatly enjoy target shooting with my PS90, AR15's and even my 10/22 and there is absolutely no reason to not have 50, 30 and 10 round magazines for these to appease someone like you is afraid of law abiding citizens and inanimate objects.
-- Slashdot, making the Left look conservative since 1997.
Shooting once or twice is still enough to make being a burglar or robber a quite unhealthy business in average (if you believe in the self-defense shit).
This sentence here by itself is enough to show that you don't really know much about guns or their usage or effectiveness. That makes it less surprising that you hate them so much.
When was the last time any private individual actually used 10,000 bullets effectively to do damage?
The VAST majority of killings take place using cheap handguns, and if you're OK with home-made bullets, then you're OK will all the bullets any small-time (or even mass) killer will need.
Even the worst shootings have only actually used on the order of 100 bullets, I easily use triple that in a single trip to the range.
You're smart person is going to look pretty dumb when he encounters and angry dumb person with a gun and a motive.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Rather than having guns that ware smart, we should have smart bullets that will only kill bad people. After being fired the smart bullet will immediately ascertain the worst person within range using a sophisticated algorithm weighing criminal history, internet searches, and music preference, and impact that person right in the face, piercing any face armor up to 2 inches of hardened steel, and igniting it's incendiary and high explosive payloads.
It is logically impossible that there is not at least one bad person nearby, because a room full of only good people would never fire a gun. It's logic.
The fact that the most likely target of a smart bullet is yourself, this will greatly reduce the number of shootings. The only trick is to get people to abandon regular bullets. I know, we could make people with regular bullets at the top priority of the smart bullet hit list algorithm! There will a violent but short war between the "smarties" and the "norms", but *then* there will be reduced shootings.
http://12160.info/page/gun-owning-mother-protects-kids-from-intruder-another-story-you-w
Note she fired 6 times, hit him 5, and he ran off when she bluffed about having more ammunition.
The reason we subjugate ourselves to law is to better procure justice. If law does not accomplish this purpose then it m
Nothing related to guns can ever be considered "smart", since guns are for weak and fearful.
Smart people never own guns, because smart people know guns are more harmful than they are helpful.
Smart people do not make broad generalizations that are misleading and mostly incorrect.
Thanks for confirming that you're a complete moron.
So we have GPS enabled guns that won't fire multiple shots with fast reload if there are no other similarly equipped guns in the area. Clever. I don't think anyone could defeat that except by, say, carrying two guns. Just as an example.
The first is bullet IDs -- you pack the propellant with very small ID tagged glitter. Bullet fires, glitter covers the ground. Crime scene people carry equipment to find and trace the ID numbers. This has been proof-of-concepted years ago.
The second is tracking for ammo sales. You buy ammo? It gets logged, every damn bullet.
The third is liability for your ammo. If you own ammo, you are liable for the results. Regular gun owners get an ammo safe, which is cheap and sensible precaution in any case. If you're a trafficker? You now have a problem.
Important to note: ammo has a shelf life of a few years. Within a decade, culpability for gun crimes could be much more transparent.
...two for every soldier. We can work out the details of the contract later. I just need to get a promise from you that you will be creating manufacturing plants set up in no less than 6 states with senators on the armed services committee and we'll have someone contact you about the paperwork.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Only the ignorant think that gun controls don't reduce the possiblity of a sick minded disturbed person from killing.
The Australian example:
1996, introduction of strict gun controls: 0.57 per 100,000
2012, current gun homicide rate: 0.17 per 100,000
(source: http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/australia)
If you were to pull your head out of the sand, you might also note that the related drop in the overall homicide numbers over the same period (299 down to 219 = 70) is entirely accounted for by the corresponding drop in guns homicides over the same period (104 down to 30 = 74)
Using your definition you have just insulted every single Law Enforcement Officer, member of the military, private armed security who own guns for their jobs. Do you really think there aren't smart people in those fields?
Guns are tools, nothing more, nothing less. People like you are the ones acting from fear and ignorance and are a threat to the future of the United States.
-- Slashdot, making the Left look conservative since 1997.
The average person does own (or could easily buy) a computer and a printer, which is pretty much a printing press. It's actually better than a printing press, at least as they existed a hundred years ago.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
because smart people know guns are more harmful than they are helpful.
Maybe for stupids with no training. As a former Marine, I can tell you my having a gun is more helpful. I know when to use it, and when not to use it. I have restraint, situational awareness, compassion, and the determination to use it when necessary. I can retain my weapon when someone tries to take it and I have it well secured when not in use. Plenty of smart people own guns, unless you are defining smart people as people who agree with you.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
You assume the purpose of shooting somebody is to kill them. That is not true. The purpose of shooting somebody is to stop them from doing what they are doing.
So nobody has ever been shot during a mugging, break-in, carjacking or other crime? The Beltway sniper attacks in DC were to stop people from driving, buying gas and all the other things they were doing when they were shot? The Sandy Hook shootings were to stop the children from coloring or reciting ABCs?
Making a blanket statement like the one you just made is ridiculous. Every person who shoots another person has a motive, but there are many motives other than "I had to stop him."
I don't really care about guns. I don't ever want to own one, but it doesn't bother me if other people own one either because I don't assume that people around me are all potential mass murderers.
What worries me about gun control is the idea that the government wants to control ownership of a piece of metal that anybody can fabricate in a day in their home and to which there are lots of lethal alternatives. I wonder what the principle there is supposed to be. Are we going to outlaw everything that person A can use to kill person B? Where are we going to stop? Are we going to make files and drills illegal because they could be used to manufacture guns? What's going to happen with 3D printers? And if government can throw people in jail for something as silly as merely carrying a piece of metal that's shaped a particular way, what are the arguments against government controlling how we have sex or whether women can have abortions? Control of what we see, record, eat and get high on already seems to be considered normal by everybody.
Let's try and turn this back. Liberals live up to their name and give in on gun control and taxation, and conservatives realize the small non-intrusive government they keep talking about and give in on abortion and restrictive marriage, and both agree to loosen up drugs and copyrights.
As a bonus, we'll kill less people!
What's so great about that? All the global warming threads on /. -- nerds seem to agree that Earth is over-populated... then what, turn around and whine about some gang-bangers getting shot over drug deals here and there?
Guns in inner cities are population control. Heck, let's even give them more!
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
Why do you need more than 3 bullets ?
Because it often takes way more than three bullets to disable even an unarmed attacker, never mind an armed one, or several of them. Most of the bullets will miss, especially when fired under stress. Most of those that hit will miss vital organs and fail to stop the attacker. Even some of those that hit vital organs still won't stop them immediately.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
When you point and shoot a gun you ALWAYS assume you will kill whatever your targeting. Never the other way around.
No, that doesn't mean the same thing. These sorts of considerations come into play before firing the weapon. Once you have made up your mind to fire, it is completely irrelevant whether the shot kills -- only that it stops the threat. By pulling the trigger, you have decided that it is acceptable if the target is killed, but killing the target is not the objective.
You assume the purpose of shooting somebody is to kill them. That is not true. The purpose of shooting somebody is to stop them from doing what they are doing.
In cases like the recent mass shooting, what the school children were doing was living. The gun man decided he wanted to stop them from living.
Let's not pretend that the purpose of guns is not for killing. They are a tool and that is their purpose. You can kill a person or an animal to stop an action but that is the purpose of the person, not the tool. If you fire a gun at a person your expectation is that you will kill. There is an intentionality to firearms. Firearms are a weapon and the purpose of a weapon is to kill.
Smart people never own guns, because smart people know guns are more harmful than they are helpful
Given your ignorance on this topic you are hardly qualified to discuss what smart people know.
While having an accessible loaded gun around the house does in fact increase one's risk, having an unloaded locked up gun around the house does not. Smart people tend to go with the later option.
I think the problem is that if something is "less lethal" like a taser, there is a risk that people would use it in cases where they really don't need to. You'll find a lot of cases where authorities have used tasers on small children or old ladies because they think that they aren't supposed to kill people. Cases where they would have never once thought of taking out their gun they end up tasing people. Tasers are fine if you only use them where a gun was the only other alternative. But it seems like in a lot of cases, tasers are used as an alternative to the nightstick or pepper spray, which isn't such a good idea. Any of these weapons which are promoted as non-lethal will probably end up used as such.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Why do you need more than 3 bullets ? I ask you nicely. please reply.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhard_Goetz
One victim four attackers
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
1) Guns should also be fitted with an electronic device which reads minds to ascertain whether the carrier intends to fire it for good or bad reasons. "Good" and "bad" can be decided by a live, crowdsourced twitter feed of the gun-carrier's thoughts. If bad intent is identified, a speaker on the gun's handle will begin reading responsive tweets, attempting to persuade the carrier not to fire (these responses will also be crowdsourced for appropriateness and effectiveness). At the same time, a special wireless network will alert emergency personnel of the carrier's location and mental state.
2) All guns should be fitted with miniaturized versions of TSA body scanners which will scan all passersby to determine whether they are carrying guns whose safety features are disabled.
3) All guns should be fitted with a voice-recognition system which is able to analyze the screams of shooting victims and disable the gun if they are determined to be children.
4) Finally, guns should be fitted with an electronic device which can summon Jesus Christ and a his angels to heal the injured, resurrect the dead, and reverse time in the event of a shooting.
It's cute how people think stuff like this would work.
Black markets don't only trade in illegal goods.
In Soviet Russia (ha!) and similar environments, if anyone wanted to know the real value of any good or product, they checked the black market prices.
No, the US has *not* always been like any other system of government. The fact that we're on Slashdot having this damn discussion proves it. No, we're not perfect in the US -- there are bits of tyranny lurking around, but to say that we're the same as the Chinese or the Cubans or the Soviets or Mugabe's Zimbabwe? Ludicrous; the fact that you think that the US is just as tyrannical as these real tyrannies says something pretty sad.
There is that statistic about the accessible loaded gun creating a risk for its owner, but I wonder if it decreases the risk (of crime victimization generally) of its owner's neighbor? I imagine that a whole block of armed people will have less crime than a block of unarmed people.
Surely all the crazy people that go on rampages do it for the fame. It has nothing to do with their mental health.
It works better as a joke, because making your own bullets is pretty easy to do (pretty much trivially so if you have the equipment, which isn't hard to get).
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
The only lack of intelligence is on your part.
Let's say you're a 75 year old woman, weigh maybe 90 pounds. You live alone. you don't walk or sleep so good anymore. You live down town in a major city in the south. A 300 pound thug breaks into your home. By the way he's a convicted rapist.
What do you do?
If you own a gun, you shoot him, just as my grandmother did a year ago.
Guns are for the weak? Yes, in the sense that they enable a frail old women like my grandmother to stand up to someone 3x her size, and survive. Nothing else would have enabled her to do that.
Guns are for the fearful? Yes, in the sense that she was afraid of dying and did not desire to do so.
Smart people never own guns? I guess you believe that there's a real world analogy to the charisma score in D&D talking your way out of harmful situations with someone intent on doing you bodily harm?
Guns are more harmful than helpful? Only to the criminal that illegally entered her house in the middle of the night. What is she supposed to do, try to reason with him? Hope the cops can get there faster than he can cross the house?
A gun is the equaliser that allows a tiny old lady to defend herself against someone 3x her size.
You are an absolute fool for saying what you did.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Seems to me the problem starts when an individual who is clearly under mental duress demonstrates or vocalizes the need to harm someone -- and nobody does anything about it. The-wait-and-see attitude for dealing with mentally unstable people is problematic on many levels. No amount of technology is going to stop that person from using some other means because their Judge Dredd gun isn't firing. I'm not saying that incarcerating people for making heated threats is the answer either, just pointing out the flawed logic in TFA.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
He was incarcerated and killed for his beliefs. Funny how all those pro-gun people who trot out the "we need to defend ourselves agaisnt the government" revile Mcveigh rather than actually look up to him for doing exactly what they claim they need their guns for!
Wow, this is truly one of the stupidest things I have ever read in my life. Timothy McVeigh was incarcerated and "killed" (as you put it) for murdering 168 innocent people. He was not defending himself or his beliefs. He was not engaged in combat. He just drove a bomb up and killed them. That is not something people should "look up to him" for. I would assume you're a troll if you had posted AC. Since you logged in, perhaps you are just crazy?
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Everyone, repeat after me: "Technological solutions to social problems are doomed to failure."
You want to stop school shootings, here's what you do:
1) Vastly improve the mental health system. The number of deranged gunmen slaughtering kids is directly proportional to the number of deranged psychopaths.
2) Fix the media's obsession with violent tragedies. Half of them are only doing it because they'll get fame (or at least infamy) for doing so. I'm not advocating a total Herostratus solution, but do we really need to have weeks of constant news coverage for every single one of these?
3) Fix the school system. A lot of the things that would improve education overall (less focus on rote learning, stop keeping everyone generalists until college, smaller schools with a lower teacher/student ratio, etc) would also reduce student stress immensely.
4) And yeah, we could probably stand to lower gun proliferation a bit. It wouldn't have affected any of the school shootings I can recall, but it would reduce general gun violence, which isn't a bad thing. I think the laws we have right now are fine, or even too restrictive, but certain cultural biases towards prolific gun ownership could stand a change.
are you sure you wanted to do that? click yes or no
And when you are defending yourself against an armed assailant, this gives a very literal meaning to "blue screen of death".
I would say that guns do have a peacefull purpose.
The very fact that a populace is armed means the government remains relatively peaceful torwads that population. It is when the populace is unarmed, that tyranical governments do their worst. That doesn't mean that it will always happen, but there is nothing to stop it if you are unarmed.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
Maybe for stupids with no training. As a former Marine, I can tell you my having a gun is more helpful. I know when to use it, and when not to use it. I have restraint, situational awareness, compassion, and the determination to use it when necessary. I can retain my weapon when someone tries to take it and I have it well secured when not in use. Plenty of smart people own guns, unless you are defining smart people as people who agree with you.
The problem, as ever, is that people who have none of those qualities that you have and who are mentally unbalanced or professional criminals can very easily get a hold of guns. Smart people know that we are never going to reduce gun violence unless we start filtering out the nutters and criminals right at the source, i.e. the gun shop or any other place where you can legally buy guns and start making it mandatory for gun owners to undergo serious training before getting to own a gun. Smart people also know that even if we do this will take a loooooong time for things to change. Stuffing guns full of sensors that deactivate them in the vicinity of schools won't help either since there are way to many legacy weapons with no such sensors and safety devices in circulation already. The USA has already created a situation where there are so many firearms in circulation and they are so easy to obtain in ways the police is powerless to monitor that no amount of legislating, policing, training or educational efforts by gun clubs/owners-associations will ever be really effective at keeping guns out of the hands of nutters and criminals unless, as I stated before, these measures are given a take a long time to take effect (not years, decades). Gun control works in Europe because it has been in place for many, many decades and the bar to owning a gun is so high you have to quite motivated to complete the process of getting a weapons license... especially one for a pistol. The byproduct of the European approach is that the vast majority of gun owners are people like you, well trained, responsible, mentally stable and not likely to treat a gun frivolously.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Charge $5000 for a bullet
The whole problem is economic: gun owners/makers shift the cost of fatalities/injuries to the general public. If they paid into an insurance fund that paid millions to victims, there'd be a lot less complaining.
who are mentally unbalanced or professional criminals can very easily get a hold of guns.
...and gasoline, gunpowder, plans for explosives, and many other cheap and legal means to kill people. Solving gun violence doesn't solve violence. I agree in general that more stringent rules for purchasing guns and being issued concealed carry permits would not be a bad thing. I don't think the required changes are likely to be made, but perhaps that is another argument. Looking at myself, not only do I have military training (as do millions of Americans), but I have had 4 concealed carry permits issued in 2 different states which means 4 background checks. I have a security clearance, and have had 3 intense background checks done, every 5 years. I have undergone a psychological test in order to work in a particularly sensitive unit. I have undergone a polygraph, during which they asked me questions to determine if I was a spy, a saboteur, and or a terrorist. I passed. I think I can be trusted to carry a gun at this point, and even carry one into a school. (I also think I can be trusted to carry a knife on a plane since the govt is convinced I am not a terrorist, but that is yet another argument). There are millions of Americans who have military or law enforcement training, security clearances, and clean backgrounds. I have heard some say, here and elsewhere, that only police should be able to buy guns, and I think that there are plenty of people like me that are in effect trustable, and at least these people should be able to have guns. I think that teachers that meet similar criteria (there are plenty of former military teachers) should be able to carry a concealed pistol to school. Allowing trusted citizens to carry pistols into schools, sporting events, etc (as well as allowing them to carry non-firearm weapons on planes) would help curb some of these types of rampage shootings where someone is able to kill multiple unarmed people.
On a separate note, I think America's very recent history of having a revolution and a dangerous frontier has made the personal firearm a part of our culture. So while much of Europe enjoys lower murder rates and fewer guns, our culture is just different and solutions that worked for Europe may not work for the US.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
That's the kind of story I'd like to see a link to, but let's assume it's true.
If your grandmother has a gun in her house, she's more likely to use it to kill herself, or another innocent party, as she is to use it to defend herself.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/opinion/at-the-er-bearing-witness-to-gun-violence.html
At the E.R., Bearing Witness to Gun Violence
By DAVID H. NEWMAN
Published: January 1, 2013
I do not know exactly what measures should be taken to reduce gun violence like this. But I know that most homicides and suicides in America are carried out with guns. Research suggests that homes with a gun are two to three times more likely to experience a firearm death than homes without guns, and that members of the household are 18 times more likely to be the victim than intruders.
Emergency rooms are themselves volatile environments, not immune to violence. Over the last decade, a quarter of gun crimes in American E.R.’s were committed with guns wrested from armed guards.
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.long
Guns in the Home and Risk of a Violent Death in the Home: Findings from a National Study
Linda L. Dahlberg, Robin M. Ikeda and Marcie-jo Kresnow
Those persons with guns in the home were at greater risk than those without guns in the home of dying from a homicide in the home (adjusted odds ratio = 1.9, 95% confidence interval: 1.1, 3.4).
The risk of dying from a suicide in the home was greater for males in homes with guns than for males without guns in the home (adjusted odds ratio = 10.4, 95% confidence interval: 5.8, 18.9). regardless of storage practice, type of gun, or number of firearms in the home, having a gun in the home was associated with an increased risk of firearm homicide and firearm suicide in the home.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199310073291506
Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home
Arthur L. Kellermann, Frederick P. Rivara, Norman B. Rushforth, Joyce G. Banton, Donald T. Reay, Jerry T. Francisco, Ana B. Locci, Janice Prodzinski, Bela B. Hackman, and Grant Somes
N Engl J Med 1993; 329:1084-1091
October 7, 1993
DOI: 10.1056/NEJM199310073291506
Rather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3713749
N Engl J Med. 1986 Jun 12;314(24):1557-60.
Protection or peril? An analysis of firearm-related deaths in the home.
Kellermann AL, Reay DT.
Only 2 of these 398 deaths (0.5 percent) involved an intruder shot during attempted entry. Seven persons (1.8 percent) were killed in self-defense. For every case of self-protection homicide involving a firearm kept in the home, there were 1.3 accidental deaths, 4.6 criminal homicides, and 37 suicides involving firearms. Hand-guns were used in 70.5 percent of these deaths.
http://www.annemergmed.com/article/S0196-0644(12)01408-4/abstract
Annals of Emergency Medicine
Volume 60, Issue 6 , Pages 790-798.e1, December 2012
Hospital-Based Shootings in the United States: 2000 to 2011
Gabor D. Kelen, Christina L. Catlett, Joshua G. Kubit, Yu-Hsiang Hsieh
In 23% of shootings within the ED, the weapon was a security officer's gun taken by the perpetrator.
What most pro-gun people don't tend to consider is that when everyone has guns, it's more likely that someone will lose their cool and fire one in anger at someone else. Or just be a dick and use one to commit crimes.
Switzerland proves otherwise. They have universal conscription and have hundreds of thousands of genuine fully automatic assault rifles in private homes. Plus they also have hundreds of thousands of so called "assault weapons", semi-auto and capable of accepting military high capacity magazines, in private homes as well. However given universal conscription the gun owners have had proper training in safe handling, the guns are stored locked and the owners have had a background check.
I grew up in a part of the U.S. where hunting and firearms ownership was fairly common. A region with town populations generally in the low tens of thousands, a few over a hundred thousand. Our per capita crime rate involving firearms was low, far lower than more urban regions where firearms were banned or severely restricted.
Its not the guns. Its the lack of training, proper storage and background checks that seem to be the problem.
Its funny that you use the phrase "pro-gun". It seems that people familiar with firearms tend to support private ownership of firearms, even those that choose not to own one themselves. While those unfamiliar with firearms tends to be against private ownership. Familiar as in having gone shooting to some small extent at some point in their lives. Unfamiliar as in what they "know" they "learned" from the mass media, TV and movies. What does that tell you?
Again, just to be clear. Private ownership is one thing, however I think both the pro and anti sides generally agree that safety training, safe storage and background checks are all good things.
How about you show me where it says "only firearms that the Government chooses to allow the people to own." Also consider that that the Constitution and Bill of Rights were written in a manner that made it clear that if the documents didn't specifically limit something, then there were no restrictions.
I greatly enjoy target shooting with my PS90, AR15's and even my 10/22 and there is absolutely no reason to not have 50, 30 and 10 round magazines for these to appease someone like you is afraid of law abiding citizens and inanimate objects.
The Constitution doesn't specifically restrict air pollution, because that wasn't around to be restricted in 1789. But the Courts nonetheless allowed the Clean Air Act. The government has quite a few powers to do things in 2012 that it did not have in 1789.
Nobody's afraid of you as a law-abiding citizen. What scares us shitless is that you have friends and family who know where your firearms are. Nancy Lamza was you. She was as responsible as you are. She was a good person. But due to the fact she had the same hobby as you she was shot, and her son took out 20 first-graders for reasons that are still unclear. If she'd been a LARPer instead she probably still would have died (most LARPers have real, or at least real-looking, swords in their homes), but it's entirely possible those kids would have lived.
That's why I'd love it if your hobby was banned.
The only lack of intelligence is on your part.
Let's say you're a 75 year old woman, weigh maybe 90 pounds. You live alone. you don't walk or sleep so good anymore. You live down town in a major city in the south. A 300 pound thug breaks into your home. By the way he's a convicted rapist.
Out of interest, how come he wasn't armed?
Do you have a news story backing your claim up?
Let's say you're a 75 year old woman, weigh maybe 90 pounds. You live alone. you don't walk or sleep so good anymore. You live down town in a major city in the south. A 300 pound thug breaks into your home. By the way he's a convicted rapist.
It's funny because a very noisy, home invasion type crime such is this is the only scenario to my mind where the right to keep a gun in your home is any use.
The problem is that it hardly ever happens in the manner you describe. What actually happens is that the guy knocks on the door, old lady answers it and is then taken by surprise and subdued. As she was surprised a gun would only help if she was carrying it in her hand and only if she could keep some distance between her and her attacker which is unlikely.
This to my mind is always the problem with the idea of guns as a method of preventing crime: criminals generally prefer to rob you on the quiet when you are out or to ambush you in such a way that nothing you can do (even if you are carrying a gun) will help you or put them at any risk.
Guns are not really much of an advantage in a hand to hand combat scenario. They only really come into their own when at ranges greater than a few feet.
I would be interested to know whether the amount of crimes they prevent actually balance the number of car jackings they make much easier (without a gun in your hand convincing someone not to just run you over would strike me as difficult) .
I dont read
Just like the driver with seatbelts who gets stuck in a burning car, the man who finds out at the wrong time he is allergic to latex in condoms, or the patient who gets a vaccine develops the disease because the virus in the vaccine batch was not really dead after all.
Not owning a gun makes you safer . You may feel safer with a gun because you think you are in control, just like people feel safer in their cars but not in aeroplanes (even though last year only over 30,000 people died on cars in the US, none in airliners AFAIK).
The whole picture includes you having a gun during a serious depression and killing yourself over a moment of desperation, your children finding the gun the one time you left it loaded, you discovering you are a sleepwalker the day you shoot your wife in your dreams, and that angry dumb person with a gun (who might have been satisfied by robbing you) that turns out to be a faster shot than you are, and leaves you in a pool of blood.
Are you always less safe with a gun? No, in some limited cases it makes sense, such as when going in areas with aggressive wildlife (e.g. polar bears). In some occasions even in normal, civilian life it might be advantageous to have a gun to scare a casual would-be thief. But on average, all things considered, statistics shows that it is a safer decision not to have a gun around.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
While at it, an adjacent memorial could list those whose lives were saved by armed defenders.
>
Last century but one, this was tried with printers' ink.
Supreme Court ruled that you couldn't infringe a Constitutional Right via onerous taxation....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
the problem you and everyone else seems to be misled on is that the idea that removing guns will somehow stop violence. The anti-gun crowd ONLY want to quote statistics on gun violence and not overall violent crimes. The per-capita statistics on overall violence is still very high when you don't pick out some meaningless statistic as the instrument used to commit the crime. By the same logic I could say that we should ban the import of British cars in the USA because the number of drunk driving incidents involving British cars in England are astronomically high; and here, where there are fewer British cars, there are almost no drunk driving incidents where those cars are involved. Its a useless statistic that does nothing to address the real problem associated with drunk driving.
The truth is, getting rid of the gun does nothing to stop someone from committing a violent crime no more than banning straws keeps you from drinking your soda. When Hamas blows up a city bus in Tel-Aviv they manage to kill 20 people without so much as firing a single bullet. They make their bombs out of grocery store items including table sugar. There is nothing you can do to stop a determined crazy person hell-bent on mass homicide. They will research how to make bombs or whatever alternative solution they choose to carry out their plan. In China, back in October, a person went into a school and killed 6 or 7 kids with an Axe. Its not like 6yr olds can put up such a fight that making due with some other weapon wouldn't do enough carnage. The same psycho could rush in and hack the teacher to death first, before he/she had any warning, leaving you with a classroom of 20 or so terrified children unable to defend themselves. In theory, a sick individual could lock the door and kill them slowly, one at a time, hacking them to pieces before the cops could arrive and break down the door.
http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/usa/top-15-causes-of-death
Total homicide is way down at #15. Meanwhile, lung disease caused primarily by cigarettes, is #4. And there are a few other interesting things to note as well if you poke around there, like diabetes and heart disease don't line up at all.
...and gasoline, gunpowder, plans for explosives, and many other cheap and legal means to kill people. Solving gun violence doesn't solve violence.
I agree in general that more stringent rules for purchasing guns and being issued concealed carry permits would not be a bad thing. I don't think the required changes are likely to be made, but perhaps that is another argument. Looking at myself, not only do I have military training (as do millions of Americans), but I have had 4 concealed carry permits issued in 2 different states which means 4 background checks. I have a security clearance, and have had 3 intense background checks done, every 5 years. I have undergone a psychological test in order to work in a particularly sensitive unit. I have undergone a polygraph, during which they asked me questions to determine if I was a spy, a saboteur, and or a terrorist. I passed. I think I can be trusted to carry a gun at this point, and even carry one into a school. (I also think I can be trusted to carry a knife on a plane since the govt is convinced I am not a terrorist, but that is yet another argument). There are millions of Americans who have military or law enforcement training, security clearances, and clean backgrounds. I have heard some say, here and elsewhere, that only police should be able to buy guns, and I think that there are plenty of people like me that are in effect trustable, and at least these people should be able to have guns. I think that teachers that meet similar criteria (there are plenty of former military teachers) should be able to carry a concealed pistol to school. Allowing trusted citizens to carry pistols into schools, sporting events, etc (as well as allowing them to carry non-firearm weapons on planes) would help curb some of these types of rampage shootings where someone is able to kill multiple unarmed people.
Ok, firstly guns are much more convenient and easy way of killing than any of the methods you mentioned. Building a bomb takes time and skill, stabbing somebody means getting close and it's risky because your victim might be able to defeat you in close combat. Guns are easy to draw in the heat of the moment and the odds of your victim being armed with a concealed gun are relatively slim so guns are way higher on my priority list than bomb components, anarchist handbooks, gasoline or even knives. Regarding your statement that teachers should be armed with guns... say that out loud and listen to yourself say it. I don't not live in a country where this is necessary, I would not want to live in a country were arming teachers is necessary and if it has become necessary to arm primary school teachers in the US with firearms that is quite frankly a very, very sad state of affairs.
On a separate note, I think America's very recent history of having a revolution and a dangerous frontier has made the personal firearm a part of our culture. So while much of Europe enjoys lower murder rates and fewer guns, our culture is just different and solutions that worked for Europe may not work for the US.
I have heard this argument before and I don't buy it, you Americans have not cornered the market on fighting tyranny. Your history of revolution dates back to the 18th century, and I am not quite sure why people in New York or LA today would need similarly easy access to guns as people did during the 19th century on the American frontier. Also keep in mind that Europe was devastated within living memory by WWI, I know people who fought the Nazis and people who fought for them. My (German) grandparents witnessed firestorms that killed tens of thousands of people in hours, room to room combat in the house they lived in, my grandmother's neighbor was dragged out of her apartment and summarily executed by the SD in 1945 after some Quisling fingered her for listening to British radio broadcasts. After WWI and WWII Europe was awash with millions of military grade small arms and yet we normalized the situ
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I don't not live in a country where this is necessary, I would not want to live in a country were arming teachers is necessary and if it has become necessary to arm primary school teachers in the US with firearms that is quite frankly a very, very sad state of affairs.
The alternative is mandating everyone in a school be completely unarmed, and we have horrific school shootings where nobody is able to stop them. I want there to be no violence of any kind. But since that isn't going to happen, let's pick from one of the realistic alternatives. Unarmed and helpless schools, or trusted teachers with pistols. If there is another realistic alternative, i'm all ears.
I have heard this argument before and I don't buy it, you Americans have not cornered the market on fighting tyranny.
And yet America has a love and fascination with firearms unequaled in the developed world. Do you have an alternative explanation?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Not owning a gun makes you safer .
Ah, the Lippmann study rears it's head.
Hint: There is one time that people in the gun culture believe it is not merely moral, but sometimes morally required, to lie. That is when someone asks you about whether you have/what guns you have, in an inappropriate context and/or when they're not entitled to the information. An example of such a context is when you're in a doctor's office or emergency room being treated for something NOT related to an injury resulting from your own firearm.
The right answer to such questions is "no", unless it's obvious (like from an accidental self-inflicted wound) the answer must be "yes" - but with details withheld.
Such reporting bias invalidates studies dependent on questioning the subjects. (And how else can you obtain the information?) Authors of similar studies in the past (notably Kellerman, author of the debunked study behind the "43 times more likely" meme) have actually repudiated and withdrawn their own work once things like this were pointed out.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Sorry. What you're looking at is someone contorting statistics to try and prove a point.
That's like saying "100% of people who've never flown have never died in an airplane crash".
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
FYI Modern militaries don't "charge at each other". And military guns still have bayonets and soldiers still have combat knives. Most death in combat comes from indirect fire, a.k.a.: not from an assault rifle or pistol. Also, if guns are the cause of so much violence, why hasn't the crime rate in the UK dropped since the banning of guns? Why has the crime rate in the US dropped during the same time period without the use of draconian gun laws? In fact it has dropped since the assault weapons ban expired. All of this seems to contradict the idea that guns cause violence.
You may not like this becuase it doesn't fit your little world view, but millions of people defend themselves each year with guns. This is a recent example of a mom who saved herself and her children from god knows what - with a gun.
The truth of the matter is that people cause violence. It's not a coincidence that all of the recent mass shootings in every country have been the result of mentally unstable people. Banning guns does nothing but put the guns in the hands of criminals and removes them from the hands of people who would otherwise protect themselves from the same criminals who are going to have guns no matter what the law says. People, who want to ban guns in good faith, are ignorant and have the blood of innocents on their hands.
""For every case of self-protection homicide involving a firearm kept in the home, there were 1.3 accidental deaths, 4.6 criminal homicides, and 37 suicides involving firearms.""
Exactly. I have guns to defend myself against many things, but the ultimate reason for owning a gun is so that if I lose my faculties to Alzheimer's, or some other form of dementia, in one of my lucid moments I can use one of those guns to end my misery. I'm sorry, I won't live like that, and I don't trust the medical profession to help me "die with dignity".
http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdguse.html
Also, read the book More Guns Less Crime, by Professor John Lott.
Statistics aside, I have the moral right and duty to protect myself from unwarranted aggression. This right was recognized in the middle ages as existing independently of any government, and was codified in the English Bill of rights, which was one source of inspiration for our own Second Amendment. That a gun helps me in that effort is indisputable.
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. -- Daniel Webster
This is a good point. Pouring lead bullets is pretty trivial and people have been doing that for centuries. But modern cartridges need brass shells which aren't that trivial to manufacture (which is why reloaders are called "reloaders" and not "people who make cartridges from scratch"), and neither are the primers, which use small charges of high explosive.
Making your own ammunition isn't that hard if you're making ammo for a black powder rifle, but for a modern rifle or handgun it's not.
So self protection doesn't count if the attacker is shot but lives? Or if the defender fires but misses and the attacker runs away before the defender fires again? Or if the defender pulls the gun and points at the attacker, who discovers he has a pressing engagement elsewhere before the defender pulls the trigger?
According to the FBI, 300,000 people defended themselves with guns - not millions. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/guns.cfm
Gun related crime in the UK has fallen http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8153392.stm
The ratio of gun crime to population in the UK is 0.0001. In the US it is 0.0011.
So, with easy access to guns and culture of gun ownership means that you are 10 times as likely to be involved with a gun crime in the US, even though you have a gun to defend yourself.
By all means, defend Gun ownership on the moral grounds of your US constitution, defend it on cultural grounds, or how you wish to own a gun, or how you want to rise up to overthrow your government. Don't defend in any way by claiming it makes the world a safer place, because that, sir, is bollocks.
Deliberately engaging in an act that foreseeably results in the death of another person is murder, even if your subjective intent is not to kill that person. For example, if you are deer hunting, and you see a marvelous buck, but some other hunter happens to be standing between you and the deer, and you decide to shoot anyway because you really, really want those antlers on your wall, you're guilty of murder. It doesn't matter that you were indifferent to whether the other hunter lived or died.
Whatever McVeigh's imaginary persecutions were, the fact is that he deliberately blew up a building, knowing it was full of people, not one of which was an immediate threat to him or his safety. You don't get to do that and be a hero. The guy was just evil.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
how you want to rise up to overthrow your government.
I wish they'd get on and do it.
Free speech zones are a known fact, but now there's NRA members against the first amendment, with people calling for Piers Morgan to be hung, drawn and quartered for disagreeing with them
It seems that the 4th amendment has been thrown out with the TSA
Refusing to answer questions about yourself results in being tasered, as Steven Anderson found out. That knocks out the 5th and 8th
José Padilla didn't exactly get his speedy trial guaranteed under the 6th ammendment. The 10th seems meaningless too, from the war on drugs to obamacare, to federal highway funding.
I suppose the 3rd amendment is still rock solid, although given the amount of hysteria the media whips up in favour of American soldiers I expect that if the government wanted it, they could find enough rooms to quarter the entire army. Anyone not offering up their daughter's bed would be ostracised as anti-america
Why doesn't the NRA defend all the freedoms enshrined by the bill of rights?
Also, read the book More Guns Less Crime, by Professor John Lott.
Why? There are as many studies rejecting his findings than there are supporting it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Guns,_Less_Crime#Controversy
Funny, though, that 90% of the supporting study references are from a single source - the Journal of Law and Economics, October 2001. I guess it must have been rather difficult finding supporting studies. Opposing studies, however, are found from Yale Law, Stanford Law, Georgetown University, University of Chicago and various journals.
So it doesn't sound like a worthwhile read.
You may not like this becuase it doesn't fit your little world view, but millions of people defend themselves each year with guns. This is a recent example of a mom who saved herself and her children from god knows what - with a gun.
While the woman and her children were definitely in a situation where they would feel threatened there was no mention in the article that the intruder intended to do them bodily harm. Cornered in the attic? I doubt he was hunting them down, remember he had checked the house several times, both by knocking and ringing the bell, to make sure nobody was home. He was robbing them and when he opened the attic closet he was immediately shot. If the intruder had had a weapon or in some way was threatening bodily harm then you can be sure that the digitaljournal (what is digital about guns?) would have included it and probably close to the top as it would have been much more sensational and brought in more readers / clicks. "Cornered" seems to be the best they could get away with but is obviously biased. It's quite the anti-climax to a sensational story, in the end the intruder was sentenced only to burglary. At least you admit that nobody seems to know know what she saved themselves from, "god knows what."
Less *is* more.