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 is that person going to fire? If he has no visible identification and is pointing a gun at you, how do you know not to fire at him, as well?
Model immigrants, except for the whole "they raised a homicidal psychopath" thing...
I wasn't going to respond to Sebastian because I knew if I did I would just be accused of being another pansy assed cowardly liberal. But Sebastian's comment is actually one of the reasons I detest concealed carry laws. The last thing we need in a situation like this is every civilian in earshot or with a police scanner rushing to the scene trying to save the day. All it will do is add to the confusion of an already completely chaotic situation. What do you think will happen to Sebastian when the SWAT team rounds the corner and encounters Sebastian with his gun drawn?
From all indications, his age, the description of his behavior, the downward spiral, there is a very good chance that he was suffering from schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a serious disease that is every bit as real as cancer, heart disease, or diabetes. It is not his parents' fault and if he suffered from this debilitating disease, he is not even responsible for his own actions.
I don't even remotely see how this case shows that promise's fraudulence. The police declined to file for any orders or restrictions, as did the institution.
So without the filings, this person would have waited 3 days, and gone back to get his gun. It seems like institutional failure to me that the police didn't file any information that would have been raised on an any type of background check
The POS apparently waited a little over a month between purchases. How would a 3 day period deter that?
Waiting periods basically ensure you see the lines that formed in LA during the Rodney King riots. Looters on your block? Sorry, we'll get back to you on that shotgun in two weeks.....
Can you provide some links or references to your post at 4.18.2007 2:40pm?
those weren't RIOTS
those were "social justice uprisings"
:l
He waited long enough to overcome Virginia's one gun a month. Waiting periods don't deter people intent to commit these kinds of acts.
So let me explain what is meant by "substantial return fire". You shoot until the threat has stopped. I am confident in my ability to make hits at reasonable distances, and I know what the limits of my aim are. Once you've neutralized the threat, you check for other threats, then holster the weapon. Yes, there is a risk that someone could shoot you mistaking you for another shooter. I think it's a small risk, but it's there. But in 8 or so incidents that we've been able to recall over at SayUncle, it's never happened.
The problem I have with most of you who fear armed citizens is that you assume police officers are immune from the same problems. They are not. If you trust police officers to walk around armed you should trust license holders too.
What are the chances that SWAT is going to enter the building just as Sebastian draws his gun? It could happen, but relative to the far higher risk that the shooter kills Sebastian and a dozen others, that's an acceptable risk.
As usual, the anti-gunners can come up with nothing but "what-ifs." What if even a couple of students had been armed? At the very least this scumbag would have been distracted, enabling others to escape. At best, he'd have been killed early on. Throw in a couple of accidental police shootings of good samaritans and the body count is still significantly lower. Not to mention that said good samaritans will be able to receive immediate medical treatment, unlike the corpses over which the gunman stands.
The waiting period (five days, not three) was never because it provided more extensive background checks. The waiting period went away because DOJ computerized their background check--and even today, a small number of people don't get an instant background check, because a more detailed check is required.
The real problem was that NICS didn't get any information about Cho's hospitalization. That's the real issue, not the length of the waiting period.
And what in the world makes you think that this would be the case? The goal is to allow victims to defend themselves and others. I don't know about others, but most people who have carried a gun are not at all interested in going looking for trouble--quite the opposite.
Bad news for J.F. Thomas: Death Wish was not a documentary.
It would be interesting to find a relatively dispassionate study of gun-related crimes by holders of concealed carry weapons permits. The statistic I'd most like to see is a comparison of the rates of crimes committed with concealable weapons (i.e., handguns), committed outside the home (to exclude domestic incidents) by holders of concealed carry permit holders relative to those without such permits.
I suspect that even the minimal screening and training of concealed carry permit holders produces a group far, far, less likely to commit crimes with handguns than a group composed of those without such permits.
But such a study would pose such a serious threat to gun control proponents that I suspect they'd try to prevent it from being performed, and bury and/or discredit it after publication.
You might want to actually get some training, so that you don't make silly statements like this. My training was at the Sonoma County Sheriff's training facility. My instructor was the department's firearms instructor, a deputy sheriff. We were taught to make careful, aimed fire (typically one to two shots per second) until the bad guy fell to the ground or dropped his weapon. Reload if necessary and continue firing.
The fact is that handgun calibers vary in effectiveness quite dramatically, and there is enormous variation in how rapidly gunshots will disable. Some people get put to the ground by a single .22 bullet; others are still trying to kill after 10 or more 9mm bullets. Being drunk or intoxicated can often aggravate this problem.
Many of the states that adopted shall issue laws after 1990 had mandatory reporting requirements for permits revoked because of crimes or mental health problems. I can't immediately point you to any of these reports, but I've read them over the years; the number is trivial, and most of those whose permits were revoked were for non-violent offenses, such as drunk driving, drug possession, or the like. Even those convicted of violent crimes seldom committed them with guns.
Then that is the angle to use in attacking "gun-free" zones - concealed carry permit holders are not a threat to anyone but criminals, period.
Any organization that bans the carrying of firearms in their facilities may be sued for uncapped damaged in civil court should any violent crimes be committed in said facilities.
In short, if you ban people from protecting themselves, you must provide protection or open yourself to liability. It would have to be an Amendment otherwise the various government agencies would simply exempt themselves.
Definitely, but that's not why gun control advocates push for gun-free zones. It is about moral superiority over the barbarians who are prepared to use guns to defend themselves.
Violence Policy Center tried for a long time to claim that the reason so few carry permit holders were getting revoked in Texas was because they were so good at committing serious crimes without being caught. No, seriously, they claimed that permit holders were committing murders, but just not getting caught. It didn't occur to them that maybe you can make a pretty good prediction of someone's likelihood of committing murder based on previous behavior.
I still believe the Manadatory Bowie knofe would be more effective. Have passengers select them from bins when getting on the plans - and drop them off on the other end. Frequent Flyers could get ivory handled ones....
Hijackers would have trouble making their risk/success calculations...
If universities want to be "gun-free" then they need to be serious about this, and require metal detectors coming in.
If safety is not the objective of gun-free zones, then slam their proponents about creating free predation zones.
Dunno about other studies, and some of the variables you mention, but Florida Department of Justice shows a crime rate 0f 0.02% for concealed permit holders.
While most Americans who support gun control (including, in many cases, passing laws that have been on the books for decades) honestly are looking for safety. But the fanatics who lead the gun control movement aren't concerned about safety. Many of them, in unguarded moments, will admit that they consider killing in self-defense to be the equivalent of killing during a robbery--both are equally evil to them, and they want to abolish all private violence. (They don't object to government violence, of course, otherwise gun control laws would be only suggestions.)
WHOI,
Exactly. The same applies to the first amendment. Many people are more than willing to sacrifice free speech when the issue is 'hate speech,' because they are concerned about delicate listeners being offended and rampaging. They can't wait to sacrifice speech freedom to avoid cartoon riots.
I'm interested only in gun-related crime. I suspect the holders of concealed carry permits are more likely, rather than less likely, than the general public to open cigarette packs without breaking the federal tax seal.
SWAT will yell at Sebastian to drop his weapon. Sebastian, being a law abiding citizen, complies.
The Shooter, being bat-shit insane, does not.
But if I'm at the scene of a mass shooting, and I'm the only one around who can do something about it, I think I have a moral obligation to do something. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I knew I ran, and dozens of people died because it took several minutes for the police to arrive.
So do those of you who hate the idea of people carrying weapons think beating a hasty retreat is preferable to actively returning fire? Is being a victim of the attacker more noble? If it was your family in the killer's line of fire, would you prefer me to wait for the police to show up and do something? If you really would, I have to admit I can't grok at all where you're coming from.
It sounds like the people you mention are akin to the fuzzy-headed pacifist wanna-be's described here:
It's not about fearing armed citizens -- or believing the police are immune from similar problems. It's about establishing a suitable balance between risk and benefit. Tens of thousands of armed citizens every day to react to once in 40 year event (with no assurance they will actually reduce the casualties and a good probability they will cause some additional injuries -- civilians are human too) is a very poor return.
Add to that the increased confusion they present if there is an incident and it's not a positive benefit.
Again, I (for one) am ambivalent when it comes to CCW's, but the "standard scenario" is a one-on-one confrontation between a perp and the CCW-holder and even there we are already seeing "oops" situations under the newer, less restrictive justified shooting rules. Again, the effect on overall crime seems to be lost in the background noise -- no "blood running in the streets" and no panacea for ending crime.
"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."
Imagine if this kind of argument were used on the other side: "you can kill someone invading your home just as easily with a knife or other weapon." It's just not true. You can kill them considerably less easily, with a higher failure rate. So a ban or registration could well have some effect.
There's a similar problem with arguments like Prof. Volokh's "no point in banning handguns, because you can just cut down a long gun with a hacksaw." Okay. But you might not realize that that can be done without ruining the guns effectiveness, or you might really want a cool-looking handgun, or you might be really incompetent with tools; and in the time it takes you to get around the difficulty you could get cold feet, or better medication, or arrested. Obviously a handgun ban won't eliminate murder altogether; the claim (which I'm not saying has been proven) is that it will make at least some murders more difficult, and therefore less likely to be carried through successfully.
even remotely honest,then those enlightened countries who pass such laws should see murder rates drop through the floor when within a year or 2 of passing the bans....Right?Yep. Longitudinal and cross-national data is ideal, but the data on firearm circulation is apparently very hard to collect, as Kleck has noted. K Parker: what's the source on gun availability (i.e., guns per capita)? I have trouble finding much data on it at all. And I didn't say the correspondence was simple; it is complex, and that's one reason why it is hard to tease out the causal from the spurious connections.
The ideal critical case-study is a country with
1) a firearm homicide rate similar to the US and
2) similar national gun-control regulations to the US
adopting European-style gun control laws, all else being equal (e.g., no major economic downturn or upturn, per capita gun rates controlled for): its firearm homicide rate should drop and, if the firearm rampage killing reduction is the goal, the frequency of those, however defined, should drop. (This assumes no outliers - e.g., Attica-like events occur the year after). The counterpart case-study would be the country with European-style regulation and homicide rates switching to the US-style regulation. Again, controlling for other variables, its homicide rate should rise.
On the first case, the closest case I know is Australia's post-1996 changes but the Australian homicide rate was already very low, so is not the ideal case. Australian homicide rates (NHMP data) did drop from a 1990-95 avg. of 1.93 to a 1997-2001 avg. of 1.72, but such a modest improvement could be readily explained by shifts in other variables. On the 2nd type, I don't know what Russian gun control was like during the Soviet era but it was presumably strict, but the political and economic changes in Russia pre and post Communism are so dramatic that the comparsion violates the ceteris paribus condition.
In short, we have lousy data.
The "standard scenario" is that criminals think twice about breaking into an occupied house, robbing a open store, or carjacking, because there is a least a chance the person he is look to go after is armed.
"Again, the effect on overall crime seems to be lost in the background noise -- no "blood running in the streets" and no panacea for ending crime."
I'll let Dr. Cramer clarify that statement but I'd point out that none of that matters. I have a natural right to self-defense that is ennumerated in the 2nd Amendment. I need no statistics to justify that.
Hey Clayton, you still rewriting John Adams quotes so
turns into ""arms in the hands of citizens [may] be used at individual discretion"." (see here for yours) and Guncite for the original and refutation.
There's a difference between what I posted and your response At the least, your response is irrelevant to my comment, But I choose to give you the bnefit of the doubt and say it's a confirmation on evaluating the situation and the use of controlled fire. It ain't the number of rounds you throw down range, but their effectives that matters.
As for shooting and then reloading if necessary -- if you have to reload to bring down one shooter in a mass shooting situation (the one Sebastian postulated), I'd rather take my chances with one shooter over two, thanks...
If you don't know the difference between someone shooting at you, and someone shooting near but not at you, I'm sure you can find some volunteers willing to help you out, and incidentally win your Darwin Award, aka "Chlorinating the Gene Pool".
So if you're accepting that police are subject to the same strengths and weaknesses of ordinary folks, then putting more police on the streets should also be a detriment to public safety, wouldn't it be?
More likely, Sebastian (or any civilian) truns in the direction from which the call came, firearm ready to take on a new threat and the last lesson tat individual learns (if he lives long enough to learn it) is the meaning of "substantial return fire."
I'm not picking on Sebastian at all. Blame adrenaline if you must. But the lesson from NYPD experiences (and others) is that too often the training doesn't hold when the real shooting starts (and, in many cases, even before -- hence the "oops" shootings by civilians.)
Ryan Waxx wrote: "And I'm afraid YOU have your facts wrong, olivier. Germany is WHAT percentage the size of America? That's flunking the basic honesty test."
How is it related to the size? I assume you meant the population? The Americans are about 300 millions, and the Germans 80 millions. It's a 3-4 ratio, not a 18 ratio.
Even if you relate it to the size, America still leads the game in numbers of gun-related homicides per 100,000 people.
Noops wrote: "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."
Maybe so, but what are the odds in 2007, that the democratically elected US government will turn into a Nazi-type regime? And what protection would the Second Amendment give you anyway? Aren't you more concerned by the current mass killings committed by simple civilians?
dwlawson wrote: "I don't want to be a European. My ancestors didn't found this country to be Europeans."
I can picture you as a proud American, wrapped in an American flag with "America the beautiful" in the background, crying, "I don't want to be a European!" Don't worry, this is not contagious.
Humans automatically revert to training when the real shooting starts. That's why you train, and train, and train some more. It's people without training who do stupid stuff. I assure you, the NYPD follows the doctrine that officers revert to training, and training is the only thing that does hold when the shooting starts. The NYPD has some of the best training standards anywhere.
I mean, the idea is a little ridiculous on its face. Why train at all if it jut goes out the window?
So, while I don't even much care about the swat versus Sebastian argument, you are WAY off base on that one.
You shoot until the threat has ceased. No more, no less. Sometimes that takes multiple hits. Handguns are poor fight stoppers. Even if you shoot someone through the heart, it can take several seconds for them to stop fighting and lose consciousness. The only shot that will drop a person dead instantly is a head shot, and those are tough to make, and I wouldn't even try in a stress situation unless I was very close. People getting hit with pistol rounds and falling over dead is hollywood. It happens in the real world, but someone taking 10 hits from a pistol and still fighting also happens, especially someone who is quite intent on dying themselves.
More likely, Sebastian (or any civilian) truns in the direction from which the call came, firearm ready to take on a new threat and the last lesson tat individual learns (if he lives long enough to learn it) is the meaning of "substantial return fire."
It's OK to use me as an example. I invited that on myself when I threw it out there. I'd like to think my training is better than that. But you're right that no one knows how they will react when bullets start flying, not even police and soldiers, who also sometimes do the wrong thing.
Considerable evidence indicates that stressful life events cause or trigger schizophrenia. Childhood experiences of abuse or trauma have also been implicated as risk factors for a diagnosis of schizophrenia later in life.
Evidence is also consistent that negative attitudes towards individuals with (or with a risk of developing) schizophrenia can have a significant adverse impact. In particular, critical comments, hostility, authoritarian and intrusive or controlling attitudes (termed 'high expressed emotion' by researchers) from family members have been found to correlate with a higher risk of relapse in schizophrenia across cultures. It is not clear whether such attitudes play a causal role in the onset of schizophrenia, although those diagnosed in this way may claim it to be the primary causal factor.
In short, it could easily have been "bad parenting" of one sort or another.
That's funny, I bet a lot of people in Europe thought said things like, "What are the odds that in enlightened europe..."
As to protection, I think it's significant. The estimates range, but there are supposedly 200+ million guns in this country. It's not just protection, it's deterrent. The only way to really find out if it works is to eliminate them. I don't think the people of this country want to take that risk.
I'm not in any way mitigating the heinous nature of this crime, but look at history of how many of their own citizens governments have killed in "enlightened" modern nations in the last 100 years. So, while I'm concerned about these killings, I would say I'm less fearful of them than I am of government killings. Especially since our own government has already moving from the enlightened "2007" society a bit towards some scary policies: Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus changes, domestic spying, signing statements, unitary executive, etc.
Noops
If one believes that only reason for police on the streets is to shoot shooters, that might be a plausible response. But there are a number of other things police accomplish (ever hear of the "blue light effect"? Police in marked cars deter more speeders than police in unmarked cars -- even accepting that those in unmarked catch more speeders.)
But that is not what you originally said. You originally said "no mass shooter is going to pull something like this off within earshot of me without having to deal with substantial return fire" and attributed it to "machismo" or "insane thinking", not some moral calling. So don't get all upset when use pansy liberals get a little put off because you want to get all Rambo and go charging up the hill every time you hear an engine back fire, because that's how you originally phrased it.
But the second (or next) round doesn't "expedite" the demise. It's actually an insurance round, because you don't know what the first (or previous) round accomplished.
And my information is that it is more the size/nature of the round than the weapon from which it is followed. The .45 caliber round was developed because smaller rounds had a weaker "stopping" effect (the injured had a better chance of keeping coming).
As someone who "went thru the drill" in the military, I understand the propensity to keep firing until you are sure you accomplished your objective. But as a rational civilian sitting in the saftey of my own home, I am aware that each round fired, especially "in the fog of war", increases the risk causing collateral damage (talk about euphimisms).
You're certainly have a point, which is why it's important to know what's behind your target when shooting. It's certainly possible to get tunnel vision and miss someone in your line of fire, it's certainly possible to miss, but again, the same can be said of anyone shooting a firearm in a stress situation.
I wasn't attempting to suggest I thought it was machismo, or insane. I was attempting to suggest that you, my opponents, would make that argument, and your Rambo assertion, and the speculation that would run, guns drawn, toward the sound of any loud bang, certainly seems to show the contempt you have for people who choose to bear the responsibility for their own security.
I do believe I have a moral responsibility, as someone who is competent at operating a firearm, if I'm the only one in the area who can do something about it, to act. I don't consider that Rambo, I consider that a duty. Believe me, if the police area in the area, or they show up very quickly, I'm letting them deal with it. They typically wear body armor. I don't. They will probably show up with rifles. I won't. I have no desire at all to be the hero, but I'll take care of business if I have to.
Not all, but several major media outlets used this crime to promote the notion that viewers can see enough via cellphone videos and careless opinions (from people whose claim to fame is that they never met the guy). Some gave us only rumors rather than confirmed forensics.
Meaning no disrespect to the injured and grieving — but hypothetically — what if an indecent rush to broadcast led to a bystander mis-identified as the murderer (or, what if a second murderer escaped after faking Cho's suicide)? All I mean is: the more stunning the crime, the more important to be sure. Gun-Free Zone clearly wouldn't guarantee no one else on campus was carrying, or no accomplice agreed to meet in that hallway.
NY Times, Washington Post, etc. stake their corporate reputations on the Lone Nut/Senseless Rampage theory. But, hypothetically, a similar crime could be a suicide hitman, or a complete frame-up — e.g., a cold-blooded professional staging a cover crime blamed on a student.
Hypothetically, a young man using college computers, trying to write like Stephen King might be gullible, manipulated, or set up by someone who talked him into buying the weapons. Investigators who are suddenly in unprecedented situations shouldn't suffer pressure to wrap it up instantly.
We see major news media create psycho-profiles for "who would do this kind of thing?" apparently so they will have those ideas in stock as they run around putting quotes into the mouths of ventriloquist-dummy interviewees (who may be in physical shock, or may just be star-struck and wanting a moment in the spotlight).
We should reject the journalistic trend to summarize allegedly similar events and get the public ready to assume "another Columbine" (whenever news writers don't know what happened yet). That news trend has potential to obstruct investigations of future crimes.
If reporters analyses weren't bad enough, Washington Post's message boards yesterday promised a copy editor would rewrite all comments (which, again, does risk distortions). This morning they opted for authenticity, featuring hours-long, childish graffiti feuds, including a bunch of test messages.
It was a shooting. If the only guilty man is already dead, we're in no hurry now to convict him. If more than one criminal — or any other peculiar angle of this crime — needs discovery, then tidal waves of worldwide gossip don't help.
We risk inadvertently rehearsing millions of people into thinking they already know from TV what all attacks are like. A lockdown-capability in every public building wouldn't help if the main attack was to be gases pumped through the ventilation system once no one could leave. "Jump out the window" seems to be gaining popularity, possibly a lot more than that strategy deserves, but each situation could be different.
Those heroes who defended as best they could against an unseen, unknown attacker deserve the dignity of full, honest reports.
Actually, that wouldn't be effective at all. Those people are all known and there aren't very many of them. It would not be hard for an attacker to kill the few people with guns first or wait until they are not around.
I live in a suburban town that has an occasional late night C-Store hold-up and occasional burglary. The only two "violent" crimes (I not counting the hold-ups because, while there was the possibility of violence, none occurred and the perps were long gone before the police even notified) and I don't know why we have all our police carrying side arms -- except as a cultural issue. That said, I suppose as responders directed to crime situations, the likelihood that they will actually have need of their firearms is greater than the probability that a typical citizen will have need of his/hers. Interestingly, the only firearm-related death in town was the teen-aged *son* of a police officer (for the local metro area) who accidentally shot and killed his friend with his father's service firearm. For leaving gun where son could get at it (locked box, but son had been given combo, the father lost his permit and, as a result, his job.
Perhaps the best comparison would be with "meter maids" -- who have parking meter violation ticketing authority, but are not entitled to carry sidearms. I don't know.
umm...no. that's not exactly true. the statistics are inherently skewed to give an undercount of crimes by CHL holders. It ignores repeat offenses. Once a person is convicted of a serious enough crime their CHL is revoked and any subsequent crimes of that person would be listed under the column for non-CHL holders. To determine if CHL holders are really more responsible than non-CHL holders you would have to define your two populations at the outset of the study and then not alter the populations during the study. For example you would have to compare crimes committed by CHL holders against crimes committed by non-CHL holders, both as of some predetermined period of time, for a predetermined number of years. This may very prove that CHL holders are more (or less) responsible than the average joe, but you analysis proves nothing of the sort.
Sorry -- but when 3 NYPD cops pour 50 shots into an unarmed bachelor celebrating his last night of pre-marital freedom, that isn't training kicking in.
Training improves the odds. At the least it teaches what procedures *should* be followed. repeated, they can supplant the time spent reasoning with quick response. But adrenaline also supplants reasoning with instinct -- and not necessarily the best instinct....
Ok, I don't own a flag, but picture whatever you choose.
We came to this country to found a society free of European style oppression. If you convert the New World into the Old World, where is the New New World for us to emigrate to?
I'm no Dick Cheney fan (being a flaming liberal, myself), but here was an experienced shooter who knew better -- but had that same problem (tunnel vision) with the excitement but not the stress (unless someone knows of a quail shooting back).
Point is, it happens -- to folks who "should know better". I'm not blaming him, per se. It comes with the territory.
But we have to recognize it happens and weigh that into the balance. To get back to my original argument, the possibility of it happening by any of the thousands of folks we'd want to see armed every day, for the chance of lessening a once in 40 year occurance is, IMO, an over-reaction.
I quoted it accurately from a secondary source that was obviously wrong. I notice that you had to go back to a paper that I wrote as an undergraduate to find something to pick on.
It depends on whether the killer is using cover from which to fire, doesn't it? Or if he is wearing body armor (as happened in the North Hollywood bank robbery a few years ago).
Yes, it is far better to let the killer just mow everyone down, isn't it? Much safer.
Sure--except that the bottleneck is generally staff to prosecute criminals and prisons to hold them. In addition, police officers, for some odd reason, are much less often vicitims of crime than the rest of us. Police officers have a murder rate about 1/10th of the general population. Gee, I wonder why? Maybe it is because if anyone is crazy enough to attack them, they might get shot?
So, since there are now millions of civilians in America who carry guns pretty regularly--you should have hundreds of such incidents to point to. Right?
I am sure that there are such incidents--but you can't even come up with a dozen of them, can you?
According to liberals, we're already halfway there! "Bush=Hitler" and the rest of the crap that passes for intelligent conversation in universities here.
Take a look at what happened in Eastern Europe. A fair number of Jews survived because they were in villages or towns that fought back, and gave at least part of the population a chance to escape. Even where they failed (as in the Warsaw Ghetto), they tied up forces that might have been killing Jews elsehwere.
I'm concerned about it, and it appears that this incident has exposed a significant hole in the current background check law. But I'm not prepared to risk doing a Eurogenocide in a generation by disarming law-abiding adults.
Except how do you know which are which? There are a lot of students on campuses who are as old, or older than the faculty or staff. I will admit that there is a real possibility that someone like Cho might start by shooting the professor--or he might go into the classroom, and discover that his previous dirty work has everyone waiting for him, and the professor kills him first.
If it doesn't work--how is it any worse than leaving them all defenseless?
You overrate your importance. Actually, I heard of you looking for the origins of the misquote, not vice versa. You aren't that important. True, you took it from Halbrook's "That Every Man Be Armed". And seem have missed his more scholarly "To Keep and Bear Their Private Arms" where he made the opposite claim you do, based on the same quote:
But in one sense you are, indeed, too modest. That "undergraduate mistake" was repeated when your article was printed in the NRA's American Rifleman in February 1992 and enetered the lexicon of NRA misquotes distributed and reproduced ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
Again, the topic is a mass shooting like the one at VT, not some bank robbers in North Hollywood whose semi-automatic weapons had been (illegally) modified to fire full automatic.
One common supposition about LE versus non-LE incidents of shooting the wrong person involves the fact that very often LE is arriving on the scene after an incident is in progress, whereas the average person walking down the street is going to understand pretty quickly if he's being assaulted. (Any competent firearm self-defense class will touch upon this issue, and advise extreme caution when intervening in third-party situations for this very reason.) But no, I don't know any actual sources on this question.
And regarding the stats you found, I tried to make it clear I wasn't commenting on "all firearm deaths" but rather--in the specific context of Washington's lack of any training requirement for CCW licenses--on the kinds of shootings that might be the result of poor training. (Fwiw, NJ and WA overall homicide rates aren't the far apart, with NJ's being higher than WA's in most recent years.)
Tom H.,
Ask and you shall (almost) receive. A number of folks have already replied with more detailed statistics, but I think this study that compares arrest rates between CHL holders and the general population is very telling, and helps quantify Clayton Cramer's very apt concluding remark ("this is an astonishingly responsible population.")
You've got an unfounded assumption there - that the legal use of their skills would involve pulling the trigger.
The only time I ever felt a need for my gun, I just pulled back my coat and rested my hand on it, without drawing it from the holster. The two "gentlemen" approaching me in that otherwise empty parking lot suddenly decided that they had someplace else they wanted to be.
And I wouldn't have had to worry about my accuracy. It seems that things like this happen when there's no one else around.
But you do raise an interesting point. People (Teachers?) carrying with the intent to stop a mass murder in a crowded school probably want/need more intense training. Probably at a higher level than the police if you think about it. I wouldn't want them shooting in a crowd either.
I'm not saying they could be, I'm saying they ARE. The recidivism rates are below and they are not insignificant.
"Recidivism
* Of the 272,111 persons released from prisons in 15 States in 1994, an estimated 67.5% were rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within 3 years, 46.9% were reconvicted, and 25.4% resentenced to prison for a new crime.
* The 272,111 offenders discharged in 1994 accounted for nearly 4,877,000 arrest charges over their recorded careers.
* Within 3 years of release, 2.5% of released rapists were rearrested for another rape, and 1.2% of those who had served time for homicide were arrested for a new homicide.
* Sex offenders were less likely than non-sex offenders to be rearrested for any offense –– 43 percent of sex offenders versus 68 percent of non-sex offenders.
* Sex offenders were about four times more likely than non-sex offenders to be arrested for another sex crime after their discharge from prison –– 5.3 percent of sex offenders versus 1.3 percent of non-sex offenders."
from: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/crimoff.htm#recidivism
As has been pointed out by many other people, mass killers such as this one usually have some affiliation with the school. As such he is likely to know who the teachers, RAs or other authority figures are. He may even know which ones are armed. Since in any given class there is usually only one prof or TA or in any given building or floor there is only one RA (my undergrad school had one per floor, my med school has one per building), it is not difficult to recognize who are teachers and TAs. This is even easier to do on K-12 school campuses for reason that you alluded to. Also if he never changes rooms he never has to worry about the prof in the next room waiting for him. If the killer uses a pistol, there will be no advanced warning until he pulls it out and starts shooting.
To the various points about shooter confusion - "wouldn't it make it worse to have the general public with a gun in hand when SWAT shows up" - we actually have an interesting data set. In the last 4 mass shootings stopped by a CCW holder, none of the incidents lead to innocent casualties beyond the victims of the shooter. Those incidents are:
Trolley Square Mall Utah
Appalachian Law School in Grundy Virginia
High School in Pearl Mississippi
Edinboro Pennsylvania shortly after Pearl.
Objective evidence indicates that the armed citizen ends the situation far quicker than the police can respond.
As to the argument that we have nothing to fear from the government holding a monopoly on force, I'd point out the not insignificant role that firearms ownership played defending blacks and white civil rights workers in the South during the 1960s. It may not be the "King George" example, but having your local sheriff allow (or help) the Klan attack you is a problem only 50 years old. I'd suggest the book "Deacons for Defense and Justice" for people interested in the role that private firearms ownership (and use) had on a recent tyrannical American government.
As to my comment about "pre-emption" early in this thread I'd like to elaborate. I think we need a law that states that all state laws are pre-empted that deny concealed carry and that any private property open to the public that does not allow licensed CCW holders to carry creates a presumption of liability for death or injury of any person on that property.
-Gene
Clayton E Cramer wrote: "Take a look at what happened in Eastern Europe. A fair number of Jews survived because they were in villages or towns that fought back, and gave at least part of the population a chance to escape. Even where they failed (as in the Warsaw Ghetto), they tied up forces that might have been killing Jews elsehwere."
Call me a dreamer, but I think that electing the right people is more likely to guarantee civil liberties than accumulating weapons in the eventuality of a government-led oppression.
Although I have a lot of respect for those civilians who resisted the Nazis (two of my uncles were among them), the fact is that, at the end of the day it's the intervention of the US and Allies on the west and of the Red Army on the east that defeated Hitler.
What strikes me, and apparently many other Europeans, is the lack of trust American people seem to have in their government, and the constant state of war America seems to be involved in. I view the misguided invasion of Irak and all the past military policies in Latin America as tightly linked to the gun control issue, in the sense that many Americans seem to live in a culture of war and armed conflict. A pretty good book on this topic is "Why do people hate America?" It is obviously politically biased, but nevertheless contains undeniable facts about the culture of violence and the widespread paranoia cultivated by the media and some politicians in the USA.
I personally aspire to live in a society where devices specifically designed to kill other human beings are nowhere to be found, and I don't think that making guns widely available is to go in the right direction.
"Aren't you more concerned by the current mass killings committed by simple civilians?
I'm concerned about it, and it appears that this incident has exposed a significant hole in the current background check law. But I'm not prepared to risk doing a Eurogenocide in a generation by disarming law-abiding adults."
The problem here is that "law-abiding adults" cannot be trusted. Some can too easily turn into criminals once they own a gun. How often do innocent people get shot by "law-abiding adults" by accident, by mistake, because of road rage, or just because those "law-abiding citizens" suddenly loose it and decide to go postal? More than 60% of guns involved in violence in the USA were acquired perfectly legally, which means that the "significant hole in background check" that you mention is more like a bottomless abyss...
dwlawson wrote: "We came to this country to found a society free of European style oppression. If you convert the New World into the Old World, where is the New New World for us to emigrate to?"
European style oppression? I don't know about that. After 10 years in America, I'm back in Europe and I don't feel particularly oppressed here.
I don't want you to convert the "New World" into the "Old World". Just take the best of what Europe has (such as gun control, and universal healthcare), and combine it to the best you have (strong economy, freedom of investment, cultural diversity). It seems to me that when it comes to guns, America actually is the Old World.
And this same law is preventing my law abiding sister and brother-in-law who live in Rochester from buying a handgun to protect their own home. (It requires references from FIVE people). The vast majority of guns that are sold to citizens will never be used in a crime. Drug dealers and career criminals have NO problem getting guns in the US or in ANY country. The whole point of many of these purchase laws is to make purchase of a gun so difficult that only the wealthy and the connected can persist and manage to acquire one.
No they don't actually. Guns are inanimate pieces of metal and do not have a personality or influence of their own. They don't turn their owners into homicidal maniacs.
Very seldom.
After living ten years in America, it seems to me that you didn't understand it very well. Perhaps you lived in one of the bubbles that are all too common here.
No shit? You're quite smart, buddy! Did you find that one on your own, or does the NRA also gives special courses for people like you? Of course, guns do have an influence on their owners. They gave them a sense of power and security. They are not just inanimate objects, by the way. They are also inanimate objects designed to kill other human beings. In that sense, purchasing a gun is the first step toward physical violence. Beside, you are trying to make me say what I didn't say, and that doesn't fly with me. Read my email again, if you can read, and maybe you will grasp my point.
How often do innocent people get shot by "law-abiding adults" by accident, by mistake, because of road rage, or just because those "law-abiding citizens" suddenly loose it and decide to go postal?
Very seldom.
Really? Mass-shootings happened at least 17 times in the last 25 years, including 4 times in US school since 1998, all at the hand of very disturbed but nonetheless "law-abiding" citizens in possession of a legally acquired firearm. Oh, and it will happen again, and again, and again...
After living ten years in America, it seems to me that you didn't understand it very well. Perhaps you lived in one of the bubbles that are all too common here.
As long as it seems like that to YOU, that's OK with me. The fact is that my wife, daughter, in-laws, and most friends are Americans and don't live in a bubble. Because my opinion diverges from yours doesn't mean that I don't understand your country. I could very well be an American citizen and disagree with you. A lot of Americans actually disagree with you, by the way. So, keep your xenophobia for yourself (xenophobia = hatred of foreigners).
Considering there are over 250 million guns in the U.S. and probably less than 30 managed to magically turn their owners into homicidal murderers on Monday, I think you may be overestimating their power.
In general, all they do is give you a sense of weight on your belt.
Actually, I think that when you compare the government generated body count (170 million by reasonable estimates), vs the individual, we're much more trustworthy.
I think there's a strong argument to be made that governments should have their gun rights removed. They can't be trusted nearly as well as the average person:
from DEATH BY GOVERNMENT: (R.J. Rummel 1994)
128,168,000 VICTIMS: THE DEKA-MEGAMURDERERS
4. 61,911,000 Murdered: The Soviet Gulag State
5. 35,236,000 Murdered: The Communist Chinese Ant Hill
6. 20,946,000 Murdered: The Nazi Genocide State
7. 10,214,000 Murdered: The Depraved Nationalist Regime
19,178,000 VICTIMS: THE LESSER MEGA-MURDERERS
8. 5,964,000 Murdered: Japan's Savage Military
9. 2,035,000 Murdered: The Khmer Rouge Hell State
10. 1,883,000 Murdered: Turkey's Genocidal Purges
11. 1,670,000 Murdered: The Vietnamese War State
12. 1,585,000 Murdered: Poland's Ethnic Cleansing
I think there's a strong argument to be made that governments should have their gun rights removed. They can't be trusted nearly as well as the average person:
from DEATH BY GOVERNMENT: (R.J. Rummel 1994)
128,168,000 VICTIMS: THE DEKA-MEGAMURDERERS
4. 61,911,000 Murdered: The Soviet Gulag State
5. 35,236,000 Murdered: The Communist Chinese Ant Hill
6. 20,946,000 Murdered: The Nazi Genocide State
7. 10,214,000 Murdered: The Depraved Nationalist Regime
19,178,000 VICTIMS: THE LESSER MEGA-MURDERERS
8. 5,964,000 Murdered: Japan's Savage Military
9. 2,035,000 Murdered: The Khmer Rouge Hell State
10. 1,883,000 Murdered: Turkey's Genocidal Purges
11. 1,670,000 Murdered: The Vietnamese War State
12. 1,585,000 Murdered: Poland's Ethnic Cleansing"
Yeah. A whole army can kill more people than one guy. I would have thought so. I still don't get the point of owning a gun. Why don't you ask for having nuclear missiles available at your favorite store? That would make you feel more complete, since you need a weapon to feel like an accomplished human being.
I think there's a strong argument to be made that governments should have their gun rights removed. They can't be trusted nearly as well as the average person:
from DEATH BY GOVERNMENT: (R.J. Rummel 1994)
128,168,000 VICTIMS: THE DEKA-MEGAMURDERERS
4. 61,911,000 Murdered: The Soviet Gulag State
5. 35,236,000 Murdered: The Communist Chinese Ant Hill
6. 20,946,000 Murdered: The Nazi Genocide State
7. 10,214,000 Murdered: The Depraved Nationalist Regime
19,178,000 VICTIMS: THE LESSER MEGA-MURDERERS
8. 5,964,000 Murdered: Japan's Savage Military
9. 2,035,000 Murdered: The Khmer Rouge Hell State
10. 1,883,000 Murdered: Turkey's Genocidal Purges
11. 1,670,000 Murdered: The Vietnamese War State
12. 1,585,000 Murdered: Poland's Ethnic Cleansing"
The funny thing, you see, is that these genocides and massacres were actually committed by armed, law-abiding citizens like you.
Do you read the news about Irak? Everybody has a gun over there. That makes the country so much safer.
I think there's a strong argument to be made that governments should have their gun rights removed. They can't be trusted nearly as well as the average person:
from DEATH BY GOVERNMENT: (R.J. Rummel 1994)
128,168,000 VICTIMS: THE DEKA-MEGAMURDERERS
4. 61,911,000 Murdered: The Soviet Gulag State
5. 35,236,000 Murdered: The Communist Chinese Ant Hill
6. 20,946,000 Murdered: The Nazi Genocide State
7. 10,214,000 Murdered: The Depraved Nationalist Regime
19,178,000 VICTIMS: THE LESSER MEGA-MURDERERS
8. 5,964,000 Murdered: Japan's Savage Military
9. 2,035,000 Murdered: The Khmer Rouge Hell State
10. 1,883,000 Murdered: Turkey's Genocidal Purges
11. 1,670,000 Murdered: The Vietnamese War State
12. 1,585,000 Murdered: Poland's Ethnic Cleansing"
The funny thing, you see, is that these genocides and massacres were actually committed by armed, law-abiding citizens like you.
Do you read the news about Irak? Everybody has a gun over there. That makes the country so much safer.
I'm not sure which shootings your are talking about, but most of the ones I'm thinking of (Columbine, Pearl, Edinboro, Oregon, California), none of the murderers were legally armed.
In addition, since it it illegal to take a gun onto school grounds, technically none of the shooters were "law-abiding". And in none of the cases is there any indication that the actual posession of the firearm triggered the rampage. Most actually acquired the gun after it was decided to do the killings.
Again, let me note I'm ambivalent on CCW permitting. Your example (those on scene at the outset versus late arriving LEO's) makes perfect sense when it comes to reasons why the LEO (or any late arrival or even any non-involved party) is more likely to shoot the "wrong party" - although I'd think there are precious few situations where, by the time the police arrive, there is anyone left to be disarmed at all -- especially when there are armed non-perps involved (although we did have one incident locally where the perp discarded his weapon and passed through the police cordon as an escaped hostage -- some hours later, another hostage was able to free himself and inform the police there was no perp left within the cordon, for what that story is worth besides a laugh.)
I understand. I'm not sure it's possible to locate data at that level, and WISGARS (which is now back up) indicates there are too few accidental deaths (the figure I intended to use) in either state to provide a statistically meaningful result regarding rates of accidental firearm deaths. NJ has one "bad" year between 1999 and 2004 (the years available in the data set I used) that skews it's figures and Washington, because of it's sparser population, tends to jump around with it's rates. That said, NJ has an average accidental firearm death rate of .15/100000 and Washington has a rate of .14/100000 over the six years available. The national average was .26/100000 and Vermont, with no permitting required at all, was .33, so I'm not sure this data set is worth diddly when it comes to "proving" anything -- and certainly the Washington-NJ comparison is not. Now, if I wanted to cherry pick, I could compare NJ to its neighbor, PA. NJ's 15 to PA's .23. But that is just as meaningless in terms of drawing any overall conclusions. (My actual one is that, with PA as a more rural state, has more guns per capita and is therefore more likley to have a higher gun accident rate. But then, if I cmpare PA and WA, it's back to the drawing boards....)
Not at all.
First, every time one presents a gun (I won't even say "draws it") one has to be prepared the follow the path to actually having to use it -- a decision that must be made before even presenting the weapon. But even beyond that, one has to decide if even presenting it increases the chances of escalation or not. Is evasion a better option than even the chance of escalation? Is having the security of having a weapon making me safer or more reckless -- more ready to chance an escalation that was avoidable in the first place? Am I really interpreting the "signs" correctly in the first place?
Too many of us (not all, but too many) have a trace of machismo. Backing down or being afraid (often we mistake being concerned for being afraid) is not the path that maintains our sense of self. What sane person responds to "Want to step outside and settle this?" by stepping outside?
Yet too often that is what happens. (Note this isn't a "gun issue," per se and I've had a number of folks insist that, because I chose not to own a firearm, I'm the type who would cringe in cowardice as my wife was attacked by a home invader. Aside for the fact I'm a widower, so that isn't probable, I have a teenaged son who can be reckless [as opposed to "wreckless"] and I have no serious probability of home invasion -- we've had burglars in town but in every case they have been fleers, not fighters when discovered -- even by old men in pj's rubbing the sleep from their eyes [not me -- a neighbor heard a noise and turned on his back deck light, expecting to find a racoon or deer].)
If a well trained SWAT team spends hours and hours learning how to enter a room and acquire and pacify a target in a crowd -- while fully protected themselves, I don't see a professor investing the effort to become equipped to handle the same task. It may a gross over-generalization, but I don't see academics as the ones most likely to seek that kind of training. Developing computer modeling techniques for analyzing it, yes. But doing it, no.... :)
(As for RA's, forget it. Drinking is enough of a problem on campus. Add firearms and it becomes a terrible idea....)
"(As for RA's, forget it. Drinking is enough of a problem on campus. Add firearms and it becomes a terrible idea....)"
Yet those same RAs, properly licensed, can carry a weapon on streets full of bars, yet there is no carnage.
What, exactly, happens on campus that turns these law-abiding men into crazed lunatics?
Well, in the case my RA's, it was me.
My first RA was Art Torres, now chairman of the California Democratic Party. He still remembers the time I snuck a dog into his room when he was gone for the weekend, and gave it an immense amount of water, salami, etc., and no litter box.
For my second RA, my roommate and I snuck a wire into his room carrying a signal from my roommate's ham radio, and connected it to his stereo speakers, which my electronically gifted roommate set up with a remote so he could turn them on from our room. We waited until our RA got his girlfriend in there making appropriate noises, then we blasted 'em with teletype signals. She let out a pretty decent scream.
You don't wanna' know what I did to my last RA, who is now general counsel for a major California Department. I have arranged for his staff, on the day of his retirement, to fill his office with all the toilet stall partitions from all the restrooms in his building. He'll remember the incident and perhaps think of me.
fees
background check
The variances seem to be:
registration of fireare to be carried
training
bond
There's probably more, but that's what I recall off the top of my head. As an example, in Georgia, where I have had a CCW for over 10 years, there is no training requirement. Fee, have to be clean of felonies, drug misdemeanors, domestic violence misdemeanors and never been committed against your will for mental instability. It's non-discretionary (shall-issue) so the Probate judge in your county of residence just plugs and chugs. They do take your fingerprints and both the GBI and FBI get copies (I asked).
There is already federal carry. It is open to federal law enforcement, federal attorneys, federal judges, and legislators who use the "honorary federal deputy marshall" loophole. A separate piece of legislation extended that to all sworn LEOs, regardless of juridiction and even carries it to honorably discharged or retired LEOs. It's got me thinking of volunteering for a reserve unit.
Trolley Square: The person credited with "taking down" the perp was not a CCW holder — he was an off duty cop. (I'm not sure about Salt Lake City or Ogden, but in NYC, officers are never "off duty" and are expected to carry a sidearm at all times — even when they are "off the clock." regardless, in this case it is reasonable to argue that further shootings were averted.
Appalachian Law School in Grundy Virginia: Again, LEO's (two active and one former officer) were involved in subduing the perp — who surrendered (ditched his firearm on command) when approached as he was leaving — it is reasonable to presume that the shooting was over at this point, at any rate.)
High School in Pearl Mississippi: This was definitely a CCW holder (and assistant principal). The perp was leaving the school at the time (although some stories allege — without attribution — he was on his way to another school at the time, so any preventative effect is, at best, arguable.
Edinboro Pennsylvania shortly after Pearl: A fleeing perp pursued by a gun owner (Not a CCW holder — and armed with a shotgun, not a hand gun)
Conclusions: In only one of the four cases were shots even fired after the "interceptor(s)" arrived and in two of those, the "interceptors" were, themselves police officers rather than CCW holders (and, in only one, was the interceptor a CCW holder). Further, none of the cases seem to involve the police arriving while the incident was underway (there is some difference in the press accounts about whether police officers were involved in the Trolley Square "interception" or arrived afterwards — although the later [and probably more accurate] stories attribute the interception solely to the off duty officer).
I'm not sure how these incidents demonstrate anything regarding the question they set out to answer: "[W]ouldn't it make it worse to have the general public with a gun in hand when SWAT shows up"....
BY that same logic, any such property that *does* permit CCW has the same presumption of liability for any shootings that do occur. Fair enough? I didn;'t think you'd think so.... :(
That one is silly enough I almost ignored it -- but I guess I have too much time on my hands, today....
1) Given where RA's live (in dorms on gun-free campuses), I supect you could on the fingers of no hands the number that have CCW's in the first place (and the fewer still -- yes, that's a negative number) who actually have firearms in the dorms)
2) If they are going into to town to get drunk -- and are responsible enough to even own a firearm in the first place, clearly they don't bring their gun to town, son. They leave their gun at home. But home is the dorm (home is where the gun is?) and if we expect them to be part of a response to any shooting, they don't get to schedule when that shooting will occur.
Your the one with the strawman. If we are talking letting RA have a weapon on campus, they would also have CC permits.
2) If they are going into to town to get drunk -- and are responsible enough to even own a firearm in the first place, clearly they don't bring their gun to town, son. They leave their gun at home. But home is the dorm (home is where the gun is?) and if we expect them to be part of a response to any shooting, they don't get to schedule when that shooting will occur.
Who said anything about getting drunk? All you said is that RAs with guns and alcohol don't mix. Since men of that age all over the country own weapons, have permits, and presumably live in places that have alcohol my question stands. What is so magical about a campus that would make shootings more likely?
"There was more carnage in the hallway. Kevin Granata had heard the commotion in his third-floor office and ran downstairs. He was a military veteran, very protective of his students. He was gunned down trying to confront the shooter."
Protective, veteran (trained), unbelievably brave. But unarmed. Do I know he would have definitely had a gun, no. But it is a crime to remove that decision from a person.
In each case cited, the firearms that were readily available were there before on duty police made it to the scene (and were of dubious procedural legality due to private property restrictions in place at those locations or schools.)
My comment about pre-emption/liability shift was not intended to be fair. It was intended to create costs for private owners of property open to the public who disarmed their visitors who would otherwise be legally armed. There is no harm caused to individuals by the private property owners who are open to the public and don't restrict firearms possession on their property. The risk profile to the individual is the same as the public sidewalk in that state.
-Gene
Where getting offtrack (and I guess I'm nitpicking, given the thrust of the discussion, but Utah law permits a police officer to carry a concealed firearm without a CCW and without limit as to time or place). There is a more relevant detail here (vis-a-vis an unidentiied armed individual when the police arrive).
[That's 5 days after the event and probably time to gather accurate information.]
This discription, by the way, notes that, while Hammond exchanged fire with the perp (Sulejman Talovic) before the arrival of the police, it wasn't until the arrival of 4 SLC police that the five officers were able to terminate the incident (by terminating the perp).
The Edinboro incident, while a school function (an 8th grade dance) was at a private banquet hall and interceptor was an outsider who heard the shots, grabbed his shot gun and came running, intercepting the perp away from the banquet hall.
IN the Appalachian Law School incident, the law school is a free standing law school (an old junior high school) and the only armed individual (one of the off duty police) went to his car to get his firearm (and vest). The article does not state where the car was (on or off school property) so I won't say with certainty there was no technical violation of the law, but that might seem to be an equally plausible explaination.
That leaves only the Pewrl case where the Asst. Priciple's weapon was likely to have been on school grounds in technical violation of the law.
But, as i noted, all that is somewhat tangential. The more immediate discussion is about these cases as examples of the efficacy of having armed civilians as a deterrent/response to these events in the first place. I these cases, the only evidence I can find to support such an argument is that, in the case of Trolley square, one can at least argue that the presence of an armed individual on site *did,* in fact, reduce the number of casualties before the police arrived (also relevant was that it was the one case of the four, where otherwise identifying the perp for later apprehension, if he had departed, might have been more difficult -- although it would seem clear he had no intention of departing before the police arrived). In all the other cases (as well as Virginia Tech case) the perp was known to a number of witnesses.
AS for the more general argument, I'd suggest that none of the cases real say anything about the efficacy of CCW's (or armed civilians).
First, examining the benefits in four specific incidents (even had there been such benefit in all four incidents) says nothing about alternative scenarios and effects. Afterall, those of the perps that were of legal age could have been CCW-holders themselves (in the four cases you cited, admittedly that would have been only the Appalachia law school shooting) and, while checks on CCW holders are better than nothing, they are anything but conclusive -- as some folks have been fond of pointing out over the last two days, the perp at VT followed all the laws (even the one gun a month law -- although I'm still curious about the reports that the serial numbers were filed off the guns he had) until he appeared on campus with a firearm. Would have been better to say he followed all the laws (even after arriving on campus), until he opened fire?
In addition, since it it illegal to take a gun onto school grounds, technically none of the shooters were "law-abiding". And in none of the cases is there any indication that the actual posession of the firearm triggered the rampage. Most actually acquired the gun after it was decided to do the killings."
My point is that the VT killer got his gun legally, according to the guy who sold it to him. So, technically he was abiding to the law at the time he purchased his gun, whatever his criminal intent was. Guns certainly don't turn people into killing machines. However, you cannot predict for what purpose the owner of a legally-acquired gun may end up using his weapon.
A study of 65 high-profile multiple-victim shootings in the US during 40 years showed that 62% of handgun violence and 71% of long gun shootings were committed with legally acquired firearms (Violence Policy Center, 2001) from the link below:
http://www.gun-control-network.org/