A New York Times editorial about the Virginia Tech mass murder states, "What is needed, urgently, is stronger controls over the lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage and such unbearable loss." My question, now that we have a little more information about the criminal (though I stress far from complete information): What stronger controls over weapons would likely have stopped him from committing the murders, or even led him to kill fewer people?
Note that I'm not asking what controls would have prohibited him from doing something. Murder law, and for that matter the gun control law that banned firearms from campus, already prohibited him from committing mass murder. That didn't seem to help. I'm curious what "stronger controls" would likely have stopped a would-be mass murderer from killing, or at least killing as many.
My first thought is that this is the consequence, not of conscious ~bias~, but rather of a group of writers completely unfamiliar with firearms, except, as their state's laws insure, in the hands of criminals or those with a disproportionate need for them.
"in which an unstable or criminally minded individual had no trouble arming himself and harming defenseless people."
It seems to me that we should be strengthening nationwide CCW privileges with reciprocity and federal pre-emption of "gun free zones." Those steps would decrease the number of defenseless people he could harm.
In fact it would at least have a chance of a non zero positive impact in a future event. It may even be a potential deterrent to these events (though I haven't been persuaded that the relevant research is statistically significant no matter how anecdotally persuasive it is.)
-Gene
As far as crazy technical measures you could require that all (non-police) weapons respond to an RF disabling field which would prevent them from firing. This field could be broadcast inside campus buildings. Alternatively you could require that all guns make a radio and GPS report whenever they fire which allows the police to remotely disable the gun and any guns in the area.
Still I think this is a bit of a silly academic exercise because as has already been pointed out on this blog there is no good reason to infer general policy from rare incidents like this.
I can imagine that there are people who only have mild problems where it could be unfair. But, perhaps it might make sense that someone on psychiatric drugs would need a mental health check before purchasing a firearm.
Of course we have the benefit of hindsight. Even this may not have been enough.
Uhh, no one will ever run into the problem of not enough defenseless people to kill. Even if we are every other person in the nation that's still plenty of defenseless people.
Besides, given the context here that is just about how bad it is to kill them. Do you really think that it becomes less bad to shoot these students if they happen to have guns in their bag? It might end up reducing the number shot but it's just as bad to shoot them.
People are trying to solve the problem of Evil with tactics better to suited to tax-collection (in the case of legislative steps) or to finding your lost car keys (with all the gadgetry).
Then again, I'm personally quite pleased to be living in a country where I wouldn't even know where to begin to look if I wanted to buy a gun to shoot up the university with.
When it comes to the US, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. It's always been a gun crazy country, and you couldn't take peoples' guns away if you tried. (Prohibition, etc.) The only thing to do is for the authorities to take the long term approach (not likely, I know) and start by cutting the supply of new guns. Allow fewer to be produced/imported, levy taxes on them similar to the taxes on other "bad goods", etc. Obviously, there comes a point where such regulation becomes so intrusive that it violates the people's 2nd amendment rights, but that is a different issue.
nzherald
I think the gun control laws worked about as well as could be expected. Of the 20,000 plus people on the campus, only one guy was armed. Hard to figure how to do better than that. You know of any other laws which have that level of compliance?
For some reason, even though the suggested law would clearly be 'worth trying' (a standard rationale of the Left), no 'anti gun violence' paper has ever published it.
Same goes for US Postal workers. Give them all M-16s so they'll be ready when another worker goes "postal".
And each and every American should have an M-16 at home and in their car. The better to protect themselves from criminals with guns.
This is the only way law abiding Americans can maintain law and order.
Why not F-16s or tanks? Sarcasm aside, Margate, try thinking back to the shooting a couple years ago at Appalachian Law School a short distance from VA Tech. It was two ARMED (with their concealed carry handguns) students who stopped the shooter from killing more students and staff. Armed defense works in practice, daily. There is no evidence to support the view that handgun prohibition works. Alcohol prohibition did not work. Drug prohibition is not working. In fact, each of those two contributed to the slaughter of human life.
It has been reported that the VT assassin had taken anti-depressant medication in the past and VT faculty were aware of his depression. Apparently one of his course assignments, which he read aloud in class, suggested that he wanted to kill particualr students in that classroom. If you were a gun dealer, would any of the above information give you pause? Should federal/state law prohibit the sale of firearms to individuals with a history of latent mental issues? Assuming both firearm sales were legitimately done, the issue of hidden or seething rage in my view is something that deserves the most attention.
I did not suggest that gun dealers are required to review the creative writing of prospective gun owners.
Forgive me for the lack of sources on this point, but allow me to offer this: a collegue of mine called me several months ago and he told me how difficult it was for him to purchase a firearm in state of New York. In his particular county, which I believe was Rochester, the chief of police requires a prospective gun owner to present written references/approval of several neighbors (I believe it was between 8-10, but I'm not certain) within a certain geographical area of one's residence. Assuming Virginia law required this, would the purchase have been approved? If the law required interviewing employers, co-workers, classmates, and/or teachers, would that Glock have been sold?
But to answer Prof. Volokh's challenge, I'd think a law that required two co-signers for a gun purchase, giving them a little liability if the buyer uses the gun in a crime, might help, at least in this case where Mr. Cho seems to have had no friends at all. It's sort of a take-off on "friends don't let friends drive drunk". "Friends don't let angry people get efficient means of venting anger."
BTW, there was a recent study on suicide--a very high percentage of suicide attempts using guns succeed, a very low percentage of attempts using drugs succeed.
Here's one that might have worked: A requirement that any firearm purchase by an enrolled student be reported to the school. Or that all firearm purchases be recorded in a database available to schools so they can check if their residents are buying guns.
Yes, I would have problems with such a law due to privacy concerns, and yes it may well have driven the purchase underground - either to a gun show (where rules about background checks and paperwork are routinely flouted) or to the illegal black market.
Anyway, the best way to prevent events like this is better mental health screening and counseling in our universities - easy to say, very hard to implement. If gun control (or anti gun control) is your hammer, this problem looks like a nail. It doesn't look like a nail to me. Which isn't to say that there aren't any nails, just that this isn't one.
RAs? I take it you haven't been on a college campus recently...
That is the most creative, insightful thing I've seen written on the subject of gun control for twenty years. Good work.
Well, I certainly don't want to ban pickups. But I am a strong supporter of the idea that pickups be licensed and insured, and that pickup truck drivers have a drivers license and have gone through some form of driver training and testing.
Same with guns. Granted, the licensing and insurance process would not have stopped either the VT shooting or the Texan who drove his pickup into a Luby's cafeteria. That's why neither extrordinary event should drive the legislative process.
Back to Eugene's original question, here's another thing that might have stopped the shooting: compulsory liability insurance for every firearm - I don't know what this would cost per year, but if it was $500 a weapon the shooter would be looking at an additional G to obtain his two pistols and that might have been enough to put the brakes on things. Or not - speculation is just that.
That's a wonderful idea. If overtly stripping a right from the citizens won't pass constitutional muster, surely just jacking the price of that right up to where only rich people can actually exercise it is ok, right?
And while we're at it, we can bring back poll taxes, too!
And who says the left doesn't respect our freedoms?
It's not about gun control, it's about making changes so that these sorts of people are not created by whatever gets to them, and if they are there are pathways where they could be helped. From all accounts this guy was tagged as being emotionally off. We need to ask how he could have been helped and how we can reach those in a similar place much more than we need to ask how to control guns. Someone emotionally that warped will act out on their craziness, and gun laws won't impede them. We need to address the core issues, and that's not about guns. Guns are only the tool in this case. This guy needed psychological help months ago, not gun laws.
And that is so effective in stemming the deathtoll on the highways, isn't it? Vehicles are licensed and insured and the drivers are trained and licensed, but it doesn't stop the carnage, does it?
Compared to the alternative, it certainly helps. If you insist on a 100% solution, you'll never find one. Do you seriously advocate repealing no-fault insurance laws, drivers licenses, speed limits, traffic lights, etc.?
Why do these discussions always degenerate into a childish insistance that any public policy initiative that's not perfect must be bad?
No one said that banning people who aren't rich from exercising their second-amendment rights was 'not perfect'. It is, however a UNCONSTITUTIONAL method of removing rights(again, see the poll taxes example). Forgive me for assuming that unconstitutionality was a concern of readers of a law blog.
The problem here is that not all suicide attempts are equal. A distinct majority of suicide attempts are by females, while the opposite is true for suicide successes. Why? Because a lot of the females aren't really trying to kill themselves, but rather just to appear to be trying to kill themselves. Not that some of those attempts don't work, but rather, a lot of those may be screw ups.
So, yes, if you want to have a very good chance that your suicide attempt will work, then, by all means, use a gun. And if all you are doing is crying for help with your suicide attempt, then use drugs. But banning guns is a silly way to reduce suicides. Around here, I know of a couple tall bridges that would work just fine. And you can always sit in your running car in your garage with its doors closed.
That is not to say that you can't kill yourself with drugs with fair certainty, but rather, that is a lot harder than with a gun. A friend of mine managed to do so with codeine. Apparently, if you take too much, you throw it up too quickly, and too little, it isn't fatal. But this person had been engaged to a PharmD and worked in a hospital, so knew this, and dosed appropriately. Added, this person would have frozen to death if the codeine had not been effective.
Second, while I don't support a ban on private ownership of handguns, Eugene's claim that individuals would just go to long guns (with or without hacksaws) strikes me as a reach. Even cut down, a long gun cannot be concealed as easily, because of the stock. Once could, I suppose cut that, as well, but handling a (former) long gun with no stock and a shortened barrel would be awkward, at best.
Third, the idea of *more* guns on campuses is just plain silly. The number of armed civilians on each of the campuses all the time just waiting for an event that occurs rarely is more likely to create problems than solve them. Campus shooters don't use campuses because they are soft targets; they use them because that's where they feel aggrieved. We don't see hardened criminals debating whether to attack a police station or school and then pick the school, because there are fewer guns there. We see students shooting up their own schools. As a side bar on this issue, the last thing police responding to a shooting need is to have to distinguish between the shooter and any number of other folks running around with guns.
Frankly, I don't have an answer in our society. Demythifying firearms might help us move from the types of all or nothing solutions proposed by both ends of the spectrum to seeking better solutions, but I don't have a lot of faith there is a solution, even then. It may be that we're a society with a strong tendency to resort to violence and, with the means already out there in such profusion, we have to accept that there really is no answer.
Correlation error. Homicidal maniacs tend to exhibit Trait X does not mean that everyone who exhibits Trait X is a homicidal maniac.
I strongly believe both issues are linked, not separate. In a society where guns are glorified, and the mythical hero is a Marlboro-type cowboy or a Marine with a big gun, any troubled kid in search of a self-image will go for a gun. Psychological help doesn't exclude tighter control over guns, or changes in the obsolete US constitution, like the preposterous right to bear a weapon. Don't forget that this guy bought his 2 guns absolutely legally. If such weapons were not available in stores, he might have tried the same with a knife, as it so often happens in the UK, where such mass-murders are exceptional. I wonder how many more Virginia Tech massacres are needed until gun-fetichists surrender to this evidence.
How does licensing and registering vehicles "help" keep accidents down?
But my point is that you cannot in any way, legislate away incidents like this.
On what do you base that statement?
Or if the profs were armed, he might have been gunned down himself in mid-spree. How many more Virginia Tech massacres are needed until anti-gun-fetishists surrender to this evidence?
Despite the knife bans. Oh, wait, you didn't want me to mention the UK knife bans?
Ryan: > No one said that banning people who aren't rich from exercising their second-amendment rights was 'not perfect'.
I wasn't responding to you, Ryan. I was responding to someone who panned the automotive laws in our country as ineffective. That point is childish. Yours is not.
Your point about pricing it out of reach of ordinary people is one for which I have much sympathy. OTOH, if someone elects to engage in activies (i.e. owning a gun) that have a societal cost it is not unreasonable to ask that person to pay his share. Insurance is the usual way to spread out costs and risks, and it's actually worked well for automobiles. Why not guns?
That way, you don't have to arm huge numbers of individuals, but an unarmed crowd has another recourse beyond cowering behind desks or blocking doors available. It has the additional advantage of being nonlethal and unlikely to cause blue on blue fatalities.
The supporting legal argument could be that if you want to override your states CCW laws for your campus / hospital / government office, then you are legally responsible to provide a means of non-lethal resistance to the population that makes themselves vulnerable in your domain. Either that, or you are responsible to have visible security personnel in all such venues (that show up PDQ).
there are TONS of cops on antidepressants who obviously can carry a gun fwiw, let alone civilians. and cops have higher standards in regards to mental fitness than civilians do (cops have to pass MMPI, etc. whereas citizens just have to be "not crazy" essentially)
you can't take away somebody's civil right (gun ownership) or career (cop) because of mental illness. you have to prove a lot more than merely the existence of depression or the taking of anti-depressants.
i find it hilarious that in many other blogs (democraticunderground.com etc.) that the same people that would be fighting for EVERY SINGLE other right for mentally ill people think that merely cause the guy wrote some disturbing essays, that his right to possess should have been rescinded
No. M16s are unusually expensive because of the usual MILSPEC issues, and the NATO 5.56 isn't all that good for stopping power. Plus it's heavy and clumsy as a day to day weapon; it's like carrying a three foot long purse.
Issue the good old 1911A1 ACP 45 caliber pistol, and I think you're on to something.
I don't think a hand-gun/machine pistol ban would have stopped this massacre, but that doesn't mean that regulation (from mere licensing and registration to a ban) does not reduce the massacre rate. Volokh's question is unfair: what would have stopped the massacre is unknowable; what would reduce the likelihood of massacres in general is knowable. As olivier points out, other industrialized states with extensive regulation have lower firearm homicide rates and possibly rampage killing rates (say 5+ homicides in one incident). We should discount those rates for gun possession levels (how many guns, legal and illegal, are in circulation to avoid endogenizing the regulatory effect's on gunownership). If the lower rates remain, then there is a good argument for burdensome regulations as means to reduce rampage killings and high homicide rates.
The argument in favor of gun-control regulation would be that regulatory hurdles increase the likelihood that would-be rampage killers (who often plan and prepare methodically) would be less able to acquire the more deadly means or would be arrested on other charges in their attempt. If Cho tried to illegaly purchase a banned gun and banned ammunition, he might have been caught (and might not have). We don't have speed limits to stop speeding but to reduce it.
Of course, from what we know of US rampage killings most of the adults (18+) have sought or had friends or family seek mental health counseling and had trouble getting it. Many depressives report difficulty getting help even when they have suicidal thoughts. The better rampage killing prevention strategy would be to improve mental health care services, not ban handguns.
The carry-concealed argument has flaws too. Imagine the fratricide potential if dozens of people start running around with guns during such a shooting.
They don't want the government looking at their library cards no matter what, but they are perfectly fine with the government taking away their 2nd Ammendment rights, in fact, they are perfectly willing to surrender them.
There are also substantial social benefits to the private ownership of guns. Before we can fairly talk of insurance against risks, we must also look on the other side of the ledger and consider those benefits. If we do the accounting fairly, we may well discover that legal gun owners deserve a subsidy.
Including the ones, like Switzerland, in which gun ownership is effectively universal.
Here's a creative thought: maybe, since we know that these kinds of mass killings also occur in places like South Korea and Germany, where gun control is both stringent and onerous, and we know that gun violence has increased in the UK when guns were severely restricted, and we also know that places like Switzerland with lots of guns don't seem to have the problem, maybe, just maybe, we don't actually have any evidence that the problem is connected with guns at all?
VT has 25000 students on campus, perhaps 1500 teachers (professors and instructors) and heaven knows how many administrative and custodial staff -- as well as it's own police department. They are spread across 100+ buildings (this from VT's web site. To have a "defender" available to react in a timely manner would have require several hundred armed individuals on VT campus 24/7 to react to an event that has occurred on two university campuses in the past 40+ years (UTexas and Virginia Tech). Extend that coverage across all universities and colleges and you'd end up with tens of thousands of individuals carrying arms every day over 40+ years (even that isn't accurate, since it sets the range at the first and last actual occurance, if there are 40 years between such incidents, the more appropriate time duration would be 80 years). If only one of those individuals was involved in a fatal incident (out of mistaken zeal, anger or accident) per year, you'd have as many fatalities as have occurred in the two incidents whose effects you are trying to diminish. (and it's dubious that, even then, had there been individuals at UTexas, they could have lessened the Whitman carnage).
Note also that the "civilian" has to be able to identify the appropriate target -- which means that the individual has to be caught with gun in hand to be identified. This will only occur after some number of casualties have already occurred and the number of casualties prevented are only those which would have occurred *after* the perpetrator was deactivated. (How's that for a euphemism?)
Note I include only UT and VT because, while there have been other incidents, they have been at focussed targets and the shooting took place in a short time period, not allowing for a reaction from outside the immediate location.
Captial idea, clem. I don't mind licensing of gun owners one bit IF the license is truly like a driver's license.
For example, my Utah's driver's license is honored by all 50 states and allows me to drive my car on any public road anywhere in the US, including places such as Chicago, New York, and Washington, DC. I don't have to register my car as soon as I enter a different state, and as long as I'm just visiting and obeying all traffic laws I don't have to let the local police know I'm even there.
Plus, I don't need a driver's license to buy a car, just to drive one on public roads. If I wanted to, I could buy a car, park it in my garage and not register it -- as long as it stayed on my property, it wouldn't be any of the government's business.
And let's not forget I can buy a car on the internet from a private citizen, drive to another state, and pick it up without being required to show any form of ID whatsoever.
So, if your proposing to license guns exactly as you license cars, then I'm all for it. But I suspect like most gun control advocates, you're simply proposing yet another way to hassle gun owners.
The example I point to is Kennasaw, GA (northwest of Atlanta) where town law mandates the possession of a firearm in each household. This fact is widely broadcast in the community.
It is unreasonable to place undue burdens on the exercise of a right. Sending the exercisee a bill is usually seen as unreasonable.
Yearly elections are certainly more costly than the occasional school shooting. And yet poll taxes are struck down as an undue burden.
The fact is, the only mechanism of insurance that might have actually prevented this tragedy would have been the additional cost. You yourself said:
That's not 'shared costs'. That's explicitly trying to limit people who can exercise the right by legislatively jacking up the price. And if you tried to submit a bill that admitted that that was your goal, it would not survive judicial review by even the most liberal of judges. That's why sugar-coating the ban with phrases like 'share the cost'
The MAJORITY of rights have a societal cost - just think of how many ways we could have stopped this guy by ignoring search and seizure rights, for example. Or jailing all people who appear mentally ill. Therefore simply pointing out that rights have a cost cannot be considered a justification for removing them unless the exerciser pays 'insurance'.
I don't recall the G9 protesters being required to insure their protest rallies. You don't think that their rampages have a societal cost?
That's an awfully big assumption there, and merely an exercise in speculation. Your argument is exactly the same as opponents of concealed carry the past decade. They all predicted carnage as fender-benders turn into gunfights. Yet that didn't happen.
All of the people who would have been carrying that day already carry, without incident. What is it on a college campus that would cause them to act different?
...Right?
i've carried for 20 years, and nobody would know i carry, except for the one time that i had to use it an off-duty capacity.
people who live in cities like seattle (very very anti-gun) would be TERRIFIED to have a lot of gun totin' people around them, but that is exactly what there is. lots of people carrying guns concealed.
if people really knew how many people were routinely carrying guns w/o incident, it would not be as scary to them
I think it would be much less likely that classrooms of young adults that have had military training would react so passively to a lone shooter. And if one or two of them were packing so much the better.
More, please. Bans have consequences, too.
Which is a load of BS. Licensed dealers at gun shows are required to go through all the same checks and procedures they follow in the normal course of business. And if they were inclined not to do so, trying to circumvent the law in front of hundreds or thousands of people (including lots of cops at every gun _I've_ ever attended) would be bone stupid.
PRIVATE transactions between two ordinary citizens are a different matter--and that's the case whether they're at a gun show or sitting at someone's kitchen table. And it always has been different. The "gun show loophole" being so casually implied here is a lie.
But one policy change that would significantly reduce the risk of this type of crime would be to do away with the asinine concept of "gun free" zones. The people who commit these atrocities may be crazy but they aren't stupid; they understand perfectly that if you want to kill the greatest number of people with the least effort, you ought to go after dis-armed victims.
The University administrators &politicians who disarmed these students/faculty/employees and then failed to protect them have blood on their hands, as do the editors of the New York Times.
Mike Rosenberg,May I emphasize that saying "is more likely to" is just a less fancy way of saying "here's my unfounded conjecture"? Instead of just hypothesizing, why not compare the number of accidental, spur-of-the-moment, and misidentified-target shootings in Washington State (which has a shall-issue permit system with absolutely no training requirement) to one of your gun-control paradises like New Jersey. (Hint: we come of looking pretty good.) I think that comparison is a valid proxy for what would happen if students at VTI were allowed to concealed-carry. Remember, it's only students who are 21 and have passed the permit process that would qualify (which is why I think my state comparison is meaningful.)
c. l. ball, what's more to the point than olivier's cherry-picked stats is this: there is not a simple correspondence between gun availability and either homicide or suicide rates in industrialized countries; the rates are all over the map.
Dr. Scott, before the present festivities in the Middle East dried up the supply, one could argue that gun-owners did enjoy a bit of a subsidy in the form of cheap surplus ammo.
btw, as a (former) graduate student, i was prohibited by college policy (not law) from carrying on school grounds here.
i carried my handgun concealed anyway. i was willing to accept expulsion/suspension (although i would have challenged it in court) vs. be forced to give up my right to self-defense.
Who said anything about the legislature setting the price?
My (ahem) modest proposal is to require liability insurance on weapons - it would be up to the actuaries to determine what this would cost. If guns are as benign as some say they are (i.e. the vast majority of firearms are never used to shoot anyone) then this insurance should be cheap. If posession of a gun on the premises actualy decreases the burglary chances it should result in a reduction of your homeowners premium, just like smoke detectors. I doubt that this is the case, but who am I to tell the actuaries how to crunch the numbers.
The $500 figure that I pulled out of my posterior is sheer speculation, and I thought I flagged it as such. If that figure prevailed it might have stopped Cho. "Or not - speculation is just that."
If I wanted to price it out of reach, I would simply propose a $100,000 annual license fee per firearm and leave it at that. That's not what I'm saying. Neither is anybody else that I've heard.
I don’t think this is answer is the one that the New York Times wants. But speaking of the Times, how about making the Times carry a warning label on the front page in big block letters that reading this paper could be detrimental to a person’s intellectual health. From the famous KC Johnson blog Durham in Wonderland:
I'm much more interested in the subtle details surrounding this case...
1) The killer was on medication to treat his mental ills.
2) The pharmacy on campus is not open on weekends.
3) The killer's rampage happened on a Monday.
I'd be interested in knowing if he was out of medication and was forced to wait until Monday to get it. VT could do well in manning that pharmacy 7-days a week. It might be the "quick fix" that everyone seems to be looking for.
-Riskable
http://riskable.com
"Women don't want to hear that they're pretty. They want to hear that their air is alluring and that they're clever with complementary configurations."
Well, yes. I'm not some kind of welfare ideologue that thinks the government should provide firearms and ammunition to the populace free of charge. Of course it costs money to buy and maintain a firearm and that cost should be borne by the individual. Do you feel differently?
The insurance idea merely completes the "total cost of ownership" equation.
With:
?
Your explicitly stated goal was to stop the shooting by making the purchaser unable to buy the weapon. That is a repugnant argument to anyone who cares anything at all about rights. Do not now pretend that the increased cost is merely a fortunate side-effect of insuring it.
You ARE advocating the legislature set the price, with insurance companies as the proxy. Do you think that if the government subcontracted out searches and seizures it would suddenly become legal?
just as the government should not be required to provide everybody pens and internet connections so they can exercise their first amendment rights
Please try to stay consistent - I know its hard...
PRIVATE transactions between two ordinary citizens are a different matter--and that's the case whether they're at a gun show or sitting at someone's kitchen table.
This is correct. What you fail to mention is that about 40% of gun sales are between "ordinary citizens" rather than licensed dealers. (cite) This is a loophole in the background check rules large enough to drive a truck full of fertilizer and fuel oil through.
I'm not sure what percentage of sales at gun shows are via non-licensed vs. licensed dealers. Do you have a figure?
The point is that it's very easy to legally obtain a gun without a background check.
I'm afraid you get your facts wrong. In the 25 past years, 18 mass shootings occurred in the US (including 5 in US schools since 1998) against 1 in Germany (in a school in 2002), and 1 in Korea (1982). Switzerland, which you wrongly believe is immune of this kind of tragedies, saw a mass-shooting in 2001, which left 11 people dead in the parliament of Zug.
I hope you get the connection.
Yes. There is no connection between gun ownership and mass shootings.
No. My explicitly stated goal was to answer Eugene's question: What stronger controls over weapons would likely have stopped him from committing the murders?
Exactly. And you suggested that if the weapon was more expensive, that might have prevented the murder.
How many times do I have to quote your own words right back to you? You can't spin your way out of this, because you are already on the record.
Nah, it's not a big assumption at all.
I'm sure there are some folks who claimed that "blood would be running the streets" -- just as there are some who see CCW as the end-all and be-all to solving our "crime problem". Both are wrong. As Gary Kleck (no gun grabber he) noted in response to John Lott's "study", in all probablity CCW didn't reduce crime -- because studies showed that there was no significant increase in the number of "law abiding" people carrying after obtaining a license than there were before. Besides, one a year is hardly blood running in the streets -- any more than 32 such deaths
As for rage shootings, we see it many times a year (and yes, there are millions of guns available in the general population, bot merely tens of thousands) -- primarily in domestic disputes, but also in escalating brawls. And we see incidents of students at Halloween and real estate appraisers being killed in cases of mistaken interpretation of their intent. These single shootings don't get a helluva lot of attention by the general population -- they're one day stories and local ones at that (unless a wife shoots her preacher-husband). But there are 1000's of such incidents each year (1500 resulting from accidents alone). Even Bob Barr and Dick Cheney and FBI agents in New Jersey and police in NYC and members of the military forget the basic rules of gun safety and target acquisition sometimes. You expect RA's and those ivory tower elitists to do better when they are a potentially lethal situation?
It isn't like you could google "zipgun" and go to www.thehomegunsmith.com and get instructions on what you need from home depot to make your own gun and/.or ammunition with easy to follow instructions and pdf documentation.
This will really work, we can just get the genie back in the bottle. And for our next trick, we'll unscramble eggs.
Hmm, it looks like a repeal of the 2nd amendment would require a repeal of the first amendment so you can stop any distribution of the means to make guns, ammunition, etc.
We may have to burn certain books in libraries that have this sort of information, purge parts of the internet, etc. then the final step. But book burning, censorship, and severe restrictions on speech is a crucial step for removing all guns from society. Which will surely be a net good.
I'll take my stay in an uneducation-camp for unlearning illegal knowledge properly, and then the gun ban can really go well. I mean, losing knowledge that should only be possessed by the Government (who we all love and trust) isn't a great hardship.
Big Brother is my friend.
Those kinds of murders can be done as easily with a knife or other weapon... and a ban, or registration, etc would have absolutely no effect on that.
Ok. So we agree that there is a loophole in background checks. We seem to disagree about the extent to which this loophole is exercised at gun shows vs. other venues.
Do you have a figure about what percentage of gun show sales are through licensed dealers? Does it really matter?
Not to mention the fact that Germany had one fairly large incidence of government related mass killings (this statement is not intended to be imflamatory or offensive, just illustrative), which is exactly the type of tyranny our Second Amendment was, in part, designed to help prevent.
No doubt this was a tragedy...but genocide? Please. This in no way compares to, say, the Holocaust.
Though it is very saddening for me to note the murder of a Holocaust survivor by this punk. I was inspired by his heroism in saving the lives of his students.
I believe I can buy a pickup for use on my private property and not have it registered in any way nor would I need a driver's license to operate the pickup on my private property.
But as a resident of Chicago, I can't own or operate a handgun on my private property.
Also, I don't recall the Right to Keep and Operate Pickups mentioned in the Bill of Rights. (being sarcastic, I suppose the 9th covers it).
I also was incredibly inspired and touched by Liviu Librescu's actions. It deeply bothers me that someone like this should survive something so terrible, to be gunned down later in such a heinous way.
I don't want to be a European. My ancestors didn't found this country to be Europeans.
Teach our citizens to stop cowering in fear!
On one hand, I noted earlier in one of my posts that was a problem (reference to the NYPD and military).
On the other, I'm not at all sure it's true that they have a worse record -- nor am I sure how to tell, since there is little or no way to determine the denominator in the ratios -- for either group.
On the third hand, (what can I say? This one takes three hands) remember that the police are (supposedly) trained to select targets under stress. If their record is poor, how good can the record be for those who lack at least equivalent training? Long ago, I enjoyed plinking. Got pretty good on the standard NRA bulls-eye taregts with a bolt action .22. But I wasn't shooting at anything that might be shooting back. Later, I did military service (2 years -- there was a draft back then) and we trained against guys in black pjs (that'll give you some idea how long ago, if the draft comment didn't). Amazing how fast I could empty a clip -- even with the rifle set on semi, at a sound that signified nothing. I did my service in Germany and, on occasion, we'd have guard duty at an ammo dump in the German woods. One night we heard six shots (we had six rounds in our clips. I have no idea why six, but that was what we had). This time, someone (not I) had fired live rounds at a sound. Investigation the next day showed hoof marks at the fence -- and no blood (or wild pig carcass).
Sometimes, under stress, we forget our training -- if we've ever had it -- and the idea that someone may shoot back can be stress inducing for the military and the police. Imagine how stress inducing it can be for a "civilian".
It appears that 32 people paid the ultimate cost for this disarmament.
I see no good solution for the Virginia Tech tragedy. The main lesson I draw is that maybe we should keep guns out of the hands of the seriously mentally ill and violently inclined who live among us. But, I don't know how we can screen such people predictably. The comment about better immigration screening seems unfounded, at least in this circumstance. The killer came to the US 15 years ago, as n 8 year old boy. His parents by all accounts are model immigrants whom any country would be glad to have. So, I doubt any heightened screening of resident aliens would have caught the killer.
I never said anything about reducing crime, so almost your entire post is a strawman. I'm pointing out that your fear of armed people on campus is completly unfounded because these people are already armed and we see that concealed carriers are almost never involved in crime.
You can fear law-abiding citizens with guns, I'll fear the criminal with one.
The only related statistic that I could find is in the 1989 edition of the Journal of Quantitative Criminology which has study showing:
Likelihood of an innocent bystander being shot in a police involved shooting: 11%
Likelihood of an innocent bystander being shot in a civilian involved shooting: 2%
I don't have better info for std dev. and it's almost 20 years old. Some training doctrine has changed.
NYPD has over 35k officers
making literally tens of thousands of felony arrest, suspicious contacts etc. in short period of time
a VERY VERY small # of those are "bad shoots". statistically speaking, they have a very low officer involved shooting rate, and a very low "bad shoot rate " as well
when you are making scores of thousands of felony arrests a year, and hundreds of thousands of contacts etc. per year, you need to keep those #'s in mind before stating that NYPD has any tendency to shoot the wrong person.
Have you communicated this to your elected representatives? Did you mention airport security and the TSA when you did?
1. Metal detectors at all campus entrances. Extremely expensive and intrusive but could make such an incidence less likely on campus.
2. DC style bans on guns and ammunition in all of US. Would take years to have any effect at all and then incomplete. Also, would severely curtail all the positive uses of guns.
As to a policy I would actually support:
3. Arming teachers or students. Maybe extra requirements beyond concealed carry.
Actually (and surprising to me), in 2002, New Jersey had 3.2 firearm deaths per 100,000 and Washington (State) had 9.2 -- almost three times as many. That's from *all* causes (and NJ has the Sopranos, Washington State does not) and sourced at statehealthfacts.org.
I tried for a better (and more striated) source, but CDC's WISQARS Injury Mortality Reports, 1999 - 2004 is down at the moment.
You're assumption that police have proper training, and therefore civilians who don't might be worse is a poor one. There are a host of ancillaries that don't allow for conclusions here:
Cops often DO NOT get the training they really need for high stress scenarios. You would be shocked how easy the DPSS qualification in Oregon is. On top of that, even the ones who do, don't often continue to do so. Shooting, especially in high stress environments, is a perishable skill (it's also related to physiology and fitness vis-a-vis stress reactions). Many police only do the minimum to qualify on an annual basis. Many police see shooting/weapons handling/tactical training and doctrine the same way they see paperwork, a necessarily evil part of their jobs.
On top of that, to get this type of training, they often have to pay out of their own pockets to attend small-arms and tactical academies (ditto for ammunition), and police aren't exactly the highest paid bunch around.
I have done considerable formal training (which I've had to pay for). I do it every year, and practice a lot. I did find personally that I reacted worse in force-on-force training scenarios when I was unfit because my physiological responses (blood pressure etc) were exaggerated. I've talked to many others who've had the same experience. I admit, anecdotal though. So I now workout every day. Some police stay fit, some don't.
I've trained alongside military, local police, and federal agents in formal environments and passed the Oregon DPSS course under much tougher conditions than actual police are required to do. At least on an anecdotal level, I can say that you're assumptions are incorrect about police training.
That doesn't mean they're entirely incorrect. There are plenty of agencies that give good training, and plenty of agents and officers that do get it on there own. There are also loads of civilians in these courses (usually the majority in my experience). Maybe because it's a hobby and interest to many civilians, they shoot, practice, and train more than police who see it as necessary part of their jobs. Maybe not. This is all anecdotal, but I think some of your base assumptions are incorrect.
Hector Escudero 96 victims
Julio Gonzales 87 victims
Guns weren't used, so these folks aren't much remembered.
cops are, on the whole, pretty mediocre shots
citizens are, ime, about the same, or maybe even a little better (those that bother to get CCW's)
I'm not making a "big deal" of "single person shootings". If anything, I'm suggesting that mass shootings proportionately attract more attention than single person shootings. If April 16 was a "normal" day -- more folks died from single person shootings (deliberate and accidental) than died at VT. How many incidents can you cite?
On knife attacks, they tend to result in lower mortality rates than gun attacks (Frank Zimring, analyzing the nature of wounds from both and concluded it wasn't a matter of degree of intent to kill).
Finally I haven't argued "pro-restriction" at all -- in fact, I've noted I have no solution and, in fact, I think there is none (that has to do with guns, anyway).
No mass shooter is going to pull something like this off within earshot of me without having to deal with substantial return fire.
At that point, if he doesn't wish to become quickly dead or incapacitated, he will have to concentrate all his attention on me, at which point he needs to be either a) lucky or b) a much better shot than me. I wouldn't bet on b, and even if he's a, he's most likely going to take a few hits himself.
Call it machismo, insane thinking, or whatever you want. But I don't think anyone has a right to remove the choice from someone, to not go gentle into that good night. To me this has always been about letting people choose how they provide for their own personal security, and this recent incident is just a tragic example of how the system can fail to protect those it often demands rely on it. No thanks.
Fair enough (including unquoted portion of your post) -- which is why I said "(supposedly)".
That there tend to more "civilians" in the programs than LEO's isn't surprising -- there are more civilians with guns than there are LEO's. But what bothers me most is the requirement for CCWs in states that have more stringent requirements (defined as the ability to prove one can usually hit what one aims at on a target range) do not require testing under stress -- presumably the only time such individuals would be called on to use their skills legally. That many LEO's have inadequate training is not a positive reason to expand the number of situations where civilians without the training may be called on to take action.
Please note that I'm ambivalent on CCWs in general. The best data tends to show they have no noticeable effect on crime either way (i.e., what effect they have is, at most, insignificant compared to other factors). I suspect this is because, as Gary Kleck, notes, the arrival of CCW permitting hasn't changed the frequency with which individuals carry -- only the legality for those who carry, regardless.
The reason my suggestions (if you want replace handgun by any sort of gun) aren't very compelling is because I just think it's silly to make gun policy in relation to this sort of action.
In particular one should really be worried about the general run of the mill gun crime one sees. This sort of gun crime wouldn't be touched by laws about psychological screening or the like. I was just throwing out answers to your question because you seemed to be skeptical there could be any law that would have prevented this situation.
IMO, statements like that don't help the cause. "Substantial return fire" is the sign of a wild shooter. If you can't hit your target with a well placed shot, "Substantial return fire" is more likely to add to the casualty count than reduce it.
Not that it doesn't happen, even by police. NYPD has at least two incidents where officers provided "substantial return fire" -- even without being fired upon (both victims were unarmed).
But we don't need more folks blasting away. Suppose another "you" arrives as you are returning "substantial fire". At whom