A perfect choice of words.

on easy access to lethal weapons.

First, "easy access" is an undefined, subjective term. The RKBA supporters on DU seem pretty uniform in their support for background checks and would like to see NICS made available to private sellers. So, I'm not sure what you mean by "easy access."

Second, if "easy access" makes one share in culpability then any person who drinks alcohol has just been put on the hook for the DUIs, domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse, crime, poisonings from over-indulgence and diseases associated with alcohol. Illegal drug users become responsible for the violence of drug cartels.

Third, abuse does not abolish the use. Vote stealing does not make an argument for disbanding democracy. Rush Limbaugh's drug abuse does not invalidate pain therapy.

So -- no -- 90+ million people are not guilty by association.

and you're trying to argue the small stuff. One of these days, the country will have had enough. Can't wait.

Those people were murdered by a person. The murderer's choice of weapon happen to be a gun. Guns are not magic talismans. The responsibility for the deaths is wholly on the murderer.

Compared to every other developed country? the USA's gun violence stats are off the charts. Mass shootings? They happen in Canada and Europe, but they're very rare, not routine. Murders by firearm? also very rare. The only difference, really, is in ease of access to and ready availability of firearms. There's plenty of evidence that more guns = more deaths. Waving your hands and saying "but but!" is just stupid.

But gunners know all this. They just don't give a damn.

laws with better stats. The takeaway is, guns are not the variable. These conversations about stats tend to fixate on guns but not violence as a whole because that is what fits the Controller agenda. Two-thirds of gun deaths in the US are suicides. Yet, Japan -- one of the most restrictive nations in the world -- has 19 times the suicide rate. Mexico is another gun law paradise but nobody wants their violent crime rate.

Furthermore, someone else's abuse of a right does not abrogate my rights.

Has experienced a spike in murders this year, many with knives. In fact, the number of shootings is down while the number of murders is up. Local officials are blaming the murders on the drug trade. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/dc-homicides-jump-20-percent-amid-a-surge-in-may-june/2015/06/25/2effd93c-1b37-11e5-93b7-5eddc056ad8a_story.html

You are making claims about things in the article that I didn't read.

A couple of things that the chief did say:

the US isn't an island unto itself; the homicide rate in other developed countries has always been lower than in the USA and in most is around 20% the US rate.

you said that more guns=more deaths, yet the FBI's UCR shows different,
can you explain your statement compared what the FBI's stats show?

Compared to other countries with strict gun control laws, not compared to the USA 20 years ago. (Regardless of whether there are fewer deaths per capita than there were 20 years ago, compared to every other developed country in the world the USA's rate of gun violence is off the charts to a degree that would be unacceptable to sane people.)

I am comparing the number of gun deaths in the USA and the overall murder rate to the number of gun deaths and overall murder rate in developed countries with strict gun control laws. (NB that the murder and violent crime rate in those countries has also declined over the past two decades.) This is the only comparison that's at all useful of meaningful in this context.

you said that more guns=more deaths, I pointed out that the FBI's UCR disputes that and I asked you why you persist is that falsehood.

I'm not comparing the USA now to the USA 20 years ago--and again, the murder rate and violent crime rate in other countries has decreased at a similar rate. Leaded gasoline is one potential culprit for the extremely high postwar crime rates, given lead's known neurological effects. The murder rate in other non-US developed countries was lower than in the US 20 years ago, too. (And gun ownership has not in fact dramatically increased; the number of households reporting gun ownership has been showing a steady decline for years.

there is no way to prove that firearm ownership is declining in the US, with the ongoing attempt to stigmatize gun owners, I'll wager my pension that most gun owners won't admit to an anonymous pollster that they own guns, at least I wouldn't and, how do you explain the dramatic jump in new FOID cards in IL?
Those cards are issued to new gun owners, not existing gun owners.

is that even on a site like DU, we can't even begin any conversation without the NRA toadies leaping in and derailing it.

Solid way to start a reasonable conversation.

How about pro 2A members instead of your bullshit label?

I'm with you more or less on policy, but on messaging, you just absolutely failed.

Here, try this:

I am as appalled by gun violence as you are, but I think many policies our party advocates are both ineffective and politically problematic. I want our party to come up with policy proposals that address the easy availability of handguns, which are the instruments of virtually all gun deaths. Furthermore, I wish to improve and expand the national background check system, which would close what is often called the "gun show loophole" (I don't like that name and will happily explain why if you want).

So it is big news.

The House Republicans blocked a move that would have allowed the Centers for Disease Control to study gun violence just like any other issue of public health. I guess all the talk last week in the wake of the Charleston Massacre was just . . . talk.

House Republicans probably don't think anyone will notice or there won't be a political price to be paid for knuckling under again to the NRA.

our minds were elsewhere. What a poke in the eye to the families in Charleston.

The willfully ignore all science that goes against them anyway.

According to every poll. The OP is just a path to more Republicans in Congress.

Most want limits on magazines.

There are common sense things we can do to make us safer that most Americans support.

Or any other gun massacre.

...after you're called out on your shameless lie that "The vast majority of American are opposed to further gun restrictions."


Seriously, are you actually against universal background checks?

I don't care if universal background checks are put in or not. I know they will not do what their proponents say they will do. Fantasy world stuff.

About gun restrictions:



The line favoring more restrictions is not only a minority view but the trend line is going down.

That is just not true and your graph does not support what you say. I am not building a "strawman." I am quoting you and saying you lied. When Americans are actually asked about specific gun control policies, the vast majority actually favor them:



And yes, when asked about gun control in general, thanks to the Supreme Court's insane reading of the 2nd Amendment, Americans thinks guns are enshrined in the Constitution, so they are jittery about saying laws should be more strict. Still, Democrats' views have held pretty steady. It is Republicans' insane gun fetish views that have gone off the chart and have squewed the overall figures:



We should not make public policy based on what Republicans want. They are pretty much wrong about everything. They (and you) are certainly wrong about gun control.

I guess you feel DU's TOS does not apply to you. Gun control has been a losing political position everyplace in any swing area where someone has run on it. But go ahead and run yourself or waste your time backing someone who is going to run on it. Good luck....

But I'm not sure how effective that would be.

One study found that "a number of state laws prohibiting individuals under a domestic violence restraining order from owning guns produced an overall 19 percent reduction in intimate partner homicides."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/04/03/why-expanding-background-checks-would-in-fact-reduce-gun-crime/

What are you talking about?

We need a strong universal background check that requires shrinks in every state to report you if you are being treated for mental illness that could make you dangerous to the public. And all sellers, whether brick and mortar stores, online, or gun shows, would have to be required to have the buyer clear that database before each sale.

Joshua Horwitz' Op Ed said it well:

It would be using the same databases as the background checks gun dealers use. My state has had UBCs for decades. Creating a database to track mentally ill people is a separate issue - right now medical privacy issues need to be addressed before the mental health community will endorse them. There is a legitimate concern that people will forego treatment if it meant losing the right to own guns - that is what the Army discovered while trying to treat soldiers with PTSD.

The stigma of being treated for mental illness already provides a deterrent to treatment. I do not see that fearing inability to buy guns would significantly add to that deterrent.

Regarding soldiers' not getting the PTSD treatment they need, everything I've read indicates the main reason is the soldiers' lack of ready access to treatment, not the soldiers shunning treatment.

Then they will happen. For some reason people are concern about government databases for mental health patients - for some reason the idea of the government tracking personal medical information and making it widely available is not a popular notion.

And again - the universal refers to the fact that they apply to all gun sales, not just dealer sales. Two separate issues.

Each state will have to pass a law. The mental health data bases is not a big issue right now as no one is actually proposing them.

Otherwise, it is hardly uniform or universal if it consists of a patchwork of state background checks that can be easily evaded by going to another state or going online.

That is why federal background checks are required for any gun sale that crosses state lines. But if I sell a gun in my state to another state resident then it is not a federal issue. If it was, they would have done it a long time ago.

The reason is has not been done is because of Republican resistance.

When it comes to a private citizen occasionally selling personal property to another citizen. If they did it for a living then yes it can (and is) regulated at the federal level. But an occasional sale is like me selling an old TV at a yard sale - no federal jurisdiction in the eyes of the law.

My state has them so I know they work.

The war on guns will end up just like the war on drugs, pointed almost entirely at minorities and the poor since it will be handled by the very same police who administer the drug war and all the rest of the policing in America.

Listening to people justifiably complain about police abuse who will then turn right around and argue for more power to be given to police makes my head spin.

Fix the police and then maybe we can make a dent in the violence problems in this country, giving them yet another tool to oppress minorities and the poor before they are fixed will only make things worse.

Frankly at this point I don't think it's even possible to fix the police, the problem of bigotry, violence and racism in many police departments is far too ingrained now to ever be erased.

the weapon. And that person has to have an attitude that makes him/her want to use a weapon to kill. And IMO the attitude is what makes us different than those other countries who have less violence.

We still live with the old west attitudes that made our beginnings a very violent era. We also as in Charleston have attitudes of hatred that encourage the use of weapons to kill. We also see attitudes play out in our recent wars. No one even tries diplomacy anymore and if they do there is a hew and cry that they are weak on defense. It is our attitudes that lead us to think that violence can solve everything.

Until we do something about the idea that violence can be an answer to everything we are going to have killings with whatever weapons are available.

They love, they hate, they are angry, confused. They want vengeance. They want
their standards upheld and codified in law

The big difference is that people all over the world do not have access to guns like people in the US.
It's MUCH more difficult for them to acquire a gun and use it to act on their feelings.

We have more than 330 million guns in this country. People are obsessed with them. There are more
than enough guns for every man, woman and child.

Why do we need all these guns?