The Shifting Sands Of The Gun Controller Argument
BY Herschel Smith
3 years, 6 months ago
Background checks. More. Give us background checks.
A record number of gun sales along with the disruption to normal life by the coronavirus pandemic have contributed to a 25% surge in homicides and non-suicide-related shootings in 2020, according to a gun control advocacy group.
“What we know is the year will be remembered for two conflicting, compounding public health crises — COVID-19 and gWith more guns being purchased and trafficked than ever, Suplina is calling for a nationwide mandate on background checks, “so that gun traffickers and criminals don’t go shopping across state lines.”un violence,” said Nick Suplina, the managing director for law and policy of Everytown for Gun Safety.
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With more guns being purchased and trafficked than ever, Suplina is calling for a nationwide mandate on background checks, “so that gun traffickers and criminals don’t go shopping across state lines.”
Oops. Maybe they didn’t get the memo.
After a shooting in America gets national attention, the debate usually centers around a few gun control measures, particularly universal background checks and an assault weapons ban. That’s what happened after the April mass shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis — with President Joe Biden calling on Congress to pass both measures.
But if America wants to make a real dent in gun violence, it might want to consider another approach: requiring a license to buy and own a firearm.
For one, the evidence on the effects of universal background checks and assault weapons bans is pretty weak. Several studies in recent years have found that universal background checks, at least on their own, don’t seem to have a big effect on gun deaths. Similarly, the research on assault weapons bans, including the national ban that Biden helped pass in 1994, found they have little effect on gun violence, largely because the vast majority of such violence is committed with handguns.
But there’s some solid evidence that a license system reduces gun deaths. A 2018 study from researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that universal background checks alone correlated with more gun homicides in urban counties, while license systems were associated with fewer gun homicides. Other studies have similarly found that license requirements lead to fewer gun deaths.
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In Massachusetts, one of the few states with a license system, obtaining a permit requires going through a multi-step process involving interviews with police, background checks, a gun safety training course, and more. Even if a person passes all of that, the local police chief can deny an application anyway. That creates more points at which an applicant can be identified as too dangerous to own a gun; it makes getting and owning a gun harder.
Whatever one makes of all of this, the evidence strongly suggests the license requirement works. Massachusetts, for one, has the lowest rate of gun deaths in the country.
Don’t give us background checks – they don’t work. Give us license requirements. Oops. Maybe they didn’t get the memo.
Mass shootings in Massachusetts increased to eight in 2020 from five the year before, while nationally mass shootings jumped nearly 50% during a pandemic with crippling unemployment, violent protests and idle youth.
In 2020, Massachusetts reported eight mass shootings that killed five and injured 33. A year earlier, the state had five mass shootings that killed seven and injured 17.
Among Massachusetts’s deadliest shootings last year was one Dec. 26 in Lynn that killed one and injured five.
Or the other memo. Gun owning Wyoming is much safer than Massachusetts.
They just want to control you. They want to disarm you and make you subjects of the globalist power system. All of the arguments aren’t really intended to be logical or consistent.
On May 26, 2021 at 8:10 am, Frank Clarke said:
Let us posit that in a world without guns there would be no deaths by gunshot. The obvious question is: “so what?”
Do they think eliminating guns would magically eliminate murder? Or suicide? The only thing ‘eliminating guns’ would accomplish is to render the weak prey for the strong, the peaceful prey to the warrior, and the single prey to the gang. Realize what they’re suggesting here: a return to the Middle Ages where armored thugs in the pay of the local strongman pillaged the countryside of its wealth, its maidens of their virtue, and its peasants of their lives.
And they call themselves ‘civilized’?
On May 26, 2021 at 11:17 am, Longbow said:
Quote:
“…the arguments aren’t really intended to be logical or consistent.”
One must remember, when observing a leftist, in his own mind he is being perfectly consistent. He is pursuing the program, the plan, the revolution. If a tactic works (advances the cause), he uses it. If it no longer works, he discards it.
It matters not that what he says this week contradicts what he said last week. Tactics MUST inevitably shift. Your confusion, while still arguing the leftist talking points from last week, while he has already shifted, is exactly what he wants.
He keeps throwing hand grenades, and you keep dancing.
It is always and ONLY about control, his control over you. It is difficult for a sane and rational man to comprehend that the Marxist revolutionary can be that diabolical.
When one finally grasps it, one fully understands, and one’s resolve hardens like iron.
As was said on WRSA, take communist for a helicopter ride and he’ll fly for half an hour. Throw a communist from a helicopter, and he’ll fly for the rest of his life.
On May 26, 2021 at 7:22 pm, Arthur Sido said:
The reason gun ownership in Wyoming is safer than Massachusetts is because of demographics. Nothing more complicated than that.