C’mon, it’s time for gun control
And don’t say that it won’t make a difference because crazies will always be able to get a gun. We’re not going to eliminate gun deaths, any more than we have eliminated auto accidents. But if we could reduce gun deaths by one-third, that would be 10,000 lives saved annually…
The tragedy isn’t one school shooting, it’s the unceasing toll across our country. More Americans die in gun homicides and suicides in six months than have died in the last 25 years in every terrorist attack and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.
So what can we do? A starting point would be to limit gun purchases to one a month, to curb gun traffickers. Likewise, we should restrict the sale of high-capacity magazines so that a shooter can’t kill as many people without reloading.
We should impose a universal background check for gun buyers, even with private sales. Let’s make serial numbers more difficult to erase, and back California in its effort to require that new handguns imprint a microstamp on each shell so that it can be traced back to a particular gun.
Blowback
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What makes this so hard to believe? Deaths from terrorist attack, along American war deaths, pale in comparison to a lot of causes of death here in America. Why shouldn’t gun homicide (and suicide, which is what’s dragging this number up so high)?
ernesto on December 17, 2012 at 5:15 PM
Right, they will only kill X number of people before reloading. So what exactly is that magic number, and what do we do with the dude who is practiced at quick reloads?
Bishop on December 17, 2012 at 5:15 PM
And do you really think that the feasibility of invading America was ruined, not by the gigantic oceans separating us, but our level of gun ownership, which at the time paled in comparison to today?
ernesto on December 17, 2012 at 5:15 PM
Because none of them would have stopped Lanza … or any other person gone nutty intent on killing.
Why is the left’s answer to everything to take away more rights from people?
darwin on December 17, 2012 at 5:18 PM
We don’t trust you leftist not to butcher your fellow citizens by the millions.
Bill Ayers mentor to President Barack Obama…
sharrukin on December 17, 2012 at 5:18 PM
So we’re clear: gun ownership prevented none of those incidents.
ernesto on December 17, 2012 at 5:13 PM
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No, the reason they didn’t succeed (in sucessfully invading America) is that Americans had weapons.
LincolntheHun on December 17, 2012 at 5:19 PM
They wouldn’t lower the death rate. Accidental death rates are much lower than they used to be, and as a percent of guns owned it, if rounded off, it would be zero.
Making them more expensive denies poor people the right to armed self-defense. I thought you libs were all about hatin’ on the
12%, and helping out the poor.juliesa on December 17, 2012 at 5:20 PM
If we’re stuck with one, which would you prefer: amnesty or AWB?
El_Terrible on December 17, 2012 at 5:21 PM
It’s already been demonstrated that the US is a severe outlier when it comes to gun deaths. If, through the use of the aforementioned policies (neither of which involve taking anyone’s guns away) that rate can be brought down, more in line with the rest of the OECD, would that be terrible? You’d still be able to own and use all the guns and ammo you’d ever want. Even it saves, say, 10% of the lives of those people who die from guns (of which 500 a year die completely accidentally, more than most countries total) why should we refuse out of hand?
ernesto on December 17, 2012 at 5:21 PM
Citation certainly needed for that claim.
ernesto on December 17, 2012 at 5:22 PM
Because the hardcore of the Left believe they will have a privileged position of power over us non-believers.
Their beliefs depend on a omnipotent state not in individual freedom.
chimney sweep on December 17, 2012 at 5:23 PM
Last time I bought a gun, I had to fill out forms and they did a background check on me. So…done?
cptacek on December 17, 2012 at 5:24 PM
You haven’t said how they will reduce gun deaths. For instance … microstamping ammo does nothing but give killers a chance to frame someone else and allow the government to track your purchases. Plus, I still want to know why everything they left does or proposes takes more rights away from people.
darwin on December 17, 2012 at 5:26 PM
When a reaction is so incredibly predictable as this one, isn’t it self-evident that your solution is not new or “progressive”?
Lost in Jersey on December 17, 2012 at 5:26 PM
Where has that been demonstrated?
The Canadian rate is 1.6 while the White American rate is 1.5. The gun culture seems to be a minority problem which votes overwhelmingly Democratic. Its almost as if socialist policies in those communities and the broken family structure gives rise to extreme violence?
sharrukin on December 17, 2012 at 5:29 PM
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For what the War of 1812?
That people had guns?
That Tony Blair apologized?
That there were two World Wars?
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Try wikipedia, and ask for your money back from every history class you ever took.
LincolntheHun on December 17, 2012 at 5:29 PM
right back at you. anyone that doesn’t think Romney is in favor of gun control hasn’t been paying attention. Romney would be itching to sign gun control passed by a rep house and a dem senate and call it bipartisianship at its best and show how he and only he can break the gridlock of DC.
There was very little difference between Romney and Obama just a matter of degrees. Romney agreed with 80% of Obama’s agenda. So take your liberal loving Mittfanboy fantasy and shove it.
unseen on December 17, 2012 at 5:30 PM
I was unaware that there was any doubt as to which firearms shot the bullets in Connecticut, Virginia Tech, Columbine, Aurora, and others. Or in the case of multiple firearms being used by the same mass shooter, does it matter whether it was fired from the right or left handgun? Are these bullet-imprinting, serial number anti-tampering, and purchase-limiting technology you speak of going to prevent any bullets from entering the body of a victim? Will it prevent the trigger from being pulled? Will it judge whether the target is a victim or an agressor and refuse to ignite the primer if it decides it’s the wrong target?
James on December 17, 2012 at 5:31 PM
How long does he think it takes to reload a pistol……… in a gun free zone?
Dongemaharu on December 17, 2012 at 5:31 PM
Most of those places have banned or greatly restricted guns since the beginning since most do not have a tradition of freedom for their citizens that pre-dates mass produced guns. People just don’t have the guns – a situation that is impossible here. The horse has left the barn.
Not coincidentally, they’ve had many mega-death government led genocides in those countries too.
Fewer small scale shoot-ups, sure. More ditches full of millions of dead bodies – you bethca. Isn’t progressism grand.
forest on December 17, 2012 at 5:31 PM
We must wear a seat belt? Who says oh the govenrment. just one mor estupid liberal law. Try driving at night without headlights you don’t go very far. The only reason you have to fill out forms to buy a car is so the government gets a cut of the sale in taxes.
unseen on December 17, 2012 at 5:35 PM
Fazman on December 17, 2012 at 5:36 PM
I predict that in a week people will be talking about something else the liberal dreams of disarming the population will die stillborn and nothing will change and gun free zones will still be target rich environments.
unseen on December 17, 2012 at 5:39 PM
I grew up the son of a police officer about 20 minutes from Newtown, in Fairfield County, and there guns a-plenty in the house. I started out shooting BB and pellet guns as a young kid…was taught safety tips, etc. In my mid-teens I was shooting my own 30-30 given to my by my grandfather, and since then I’ve shot quite a few different guns. Conn. laws might be strict compared to most states…but that doesn’t mean there are any fewer guns in any fewer households.
I’m flat-out pro gun rights…I’m an NRA member. The most important thing any gun owner can do is either keep it on you at all times, find a really good hiding place, or best yet…lock ‘em up. Seems these tragedies with guns involved, the killer used stolen weapons from someone else.
All the gun restrictive legislation won’t work, period. Again, ask Norway how that turned out.
JetBoy on December 17, 2012 at 5:46 PM
I sorry to have to cut this response short, things to do now. I’ll confine this to the problem that spurred this conversation Sandy Hill. Why Kristoff is adding all deaths by firearms, inlcuding legal intervention and suicide is beyond me and makes me think he’s selling preconceived but irrelevant solutions and needs big numbers to make it seem worthwhile. For example, none of the proposals will do a darn thing to lower suicides and there were only about 8,500 homicides in the US in 2011, IIRC, so the 10K reduction is the result of the bait and switch big number generator.
Anyway, that off my chest, it’s pretty simply from the Sandy Hill gun component of the problem: Eliminate school gun-free zones. now that doesn’t mean kids, parents, anyone can enter freely with a firearm, but it shouldn’t include depriving school officials from having a firearm for use as a fallback position in case it is needed. And just eliminating the knowledge that schools won’t have the option of defending against an attack, may achieve the 30% reduction Kristof finds an appealing goal. Actually having one at Sandy Hill, might have easily achieved that 30% reduction mainly because having one allows someone to run to the source of the problem rather than running for a phone to call 9/11 and those crucial seconds are extremely important.
I want to focus on addressing the specific problem, right now, not Kristof’s global problem. This would be easy to do.
Of course there is the mental health angle of the problem but I haven’t found the time, nor have the minimum information I feel I need to opine on it.
Is that a sufficient answer/response, whether you agree with it or not?
Dusty on December 17, 2012 at 5:53 PM
Here’s a link to a discussion of gun deaths in the US that I just found, for what it is worth. It’s short but I haven’t read it all nor used the link to the CDC webpage yet, as I was looking for something else.
Gotta go.
Dusty on December 17, 2012 at 5:58 PM
[Fazman on December 17, 2012 at 5:36 PM]
Well that’s because Kristof is using deaths, not homicides. Deaths includes suicides and legal interventions. He’s using a combination of bait and switch and obfuscation of the problem to get a big number for selling his irrelevant and useless proposals. Maybe 10 people – mass murderers, all — need large capacity magazines to commit suicide and not having one available isn’t going to deter their suicide nor the murders they chalk up just prior to it. Neither do we need microstamped casings to figure out who used the gun to kill kids at Sandy Hill.
Dusty on December 17, 2012 at 6:08 PM
Nice, but she probably served in the military (or still does as a reservist) and has been trained to carry that weapon.
The dullards in the education system here would probably shoot themselves accidentally.
Dack Thrombosis on December 17, 2012 at 6:35 PM
I thought Ernesto was leaving the country. Paradise awaits! Get going!
Dack Thrombosis on December 17, 2012 at 6:37 PM
Well, maybe they could also be persuaded to take a training course in weapons. It’s not that hard.
sharrukin on December 17, 2012 at 6:44 PM
AWB is signed in 1994.
Murder rate per 100,000 inhabitants:
1994: 9.0
1995: 8.2
1996: 7.4
1997: 6.8
1998: 6.3
1999: 5.7
2000: 5.5
2001: 5.6
2002: 5.6
2003: 5.7
2004: 5.5
AWB expired in 2004.
Murder rate per 100,000 inhabitants:
2005: 5.6
2006: 5.7
2007: 5.6
2008: 5.4
2009: 5.0
2010: 4.8
2011: 4.7
The murder rate peaked at 10.2 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1980.
CCW laws:
In 1986: 1 state was UNRESTRICTED; 8 had SHALL issue; 26 had MAY issue; and 15 had NO issue.
In 1987: 1 UNRESTRICTED; 9 SHALL Issue; 24 MAY Issue; and 16 NO Issue.
In 1990: 1 UNRESTRICTED; 15 SHALL Issue; 20 MAY Issue; and 14 NO Issue.
In 1994: 1 UNRESTRICTED; 20 SHALL Issue; 17 MAY Issue; and 12 NO Issue.
In 1998: 1 UNRESTRICTED; 30 SHALL Issue; 17 MAY Issue; and 7 NO Issue.
In 2002: 1 UNRESTRICTED; 31 SHALL Issue; 11 MAY Issue; and 7 NO Issue.
In 2009: 2 UNRESTRICTED; 37 SHALL Issue; 9 MAY Issue; and 2 NO Issue.
In 2011: 4 UNRESTRICTED; 37 SHALL Issue; 8 MAY Issue; and 1 NO Issue (Illinois’ ban has just been struck down by the Appellate Court).
The murder rate has been falling in correlation to the the increase of CCW. I wonder why???? Hmmmmm….
The AWB or CCW Laws: Which Has Had More Of An Impact On The Murder Rate?
Ban Guns, Increase Gun Crime!
Resist We Much on December 17, 2012 at 6:54 PM
With apologies to AP and Cap’n Ed …
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I left a severely edited version of the following comment at Kristof’s blog. It seems that comments must be made at his blog, not where he leaves his scribbling. Perhaps his editors wish to avoid public butt-beatings by mere commenters on the main NYT site. FWIW, the 1500 character count is misleading; there is also a line count, so I had to delete several paragraphs from my load.
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I’ve checked a couple of times. I doubt my comment will appear, but I saved a screenshot of what K’s blog accepted, so there is no question the words that I posted.
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Someone moderates the comments for abuse. I’m guessing an intern.
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To the Intern, who must decide whether or not my comment gets posted or not: If my comment is at least questionable, or even if it isn’t, risk your job and point K and his editors here, to respond to my long version.
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Avenging Disco Godfather on December 17, 2012 at 8:22 PM
Yeah, we should expect people like you to be adults when it comes to regulating guns when you can’t even be adults when it comes to the truth. Which state, city, county, territory, or whatever in this country doesn’t have gun regulations?
xblade on December 17, 2012 at 8:58 PM
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