Another Mass Shooting – Where’s the Outrage?

Very true it can be. I was just trying to go for an average, which IIRC is somewhere in the week or two range. Not always completely current on the rate, it’s kinda fluid.

All of which leads back to the profit margins in distribution of “controlled substances”. We did the Prohibition nonsense once, just like today it accomplished nothing save for making bad guys really well-funded, and creating useless government jobs. Oh, and lots of folks were killed to get that money.

Ok, that makes sense. Thanks.

I agree with you – the problems US faces are ver different animal to what Australia does. The ‘Muslim’ problem you speak of is not unknown here but event ifyou are right we have bombs not guns to worry about.

Here is an article from one of our main newspapers that is probably representative of how a majority of aussies feel about the issue.

http://www.smh.com.au/business/comment-and-analysis/president-obama-was-wrong-australia-is-not-like-the-us-20151002-gjztja.html

I will stop preaching now – you guys are masters of your own destinies. I recognize that there is a real distance between us on this issue and I respect that you will deal with it on your own terms. Mainly I was saying that please – don’t tell lies about other countries, to try and justify your own position.

Steve, Thank you for your replay. Americas so called diversity is the root cause of or social turmoil. Historically, countries with monolithic populations and very few minorities have had very little crime and social upheaval. Battling subculture within the society undermine everything. If you take nonwhite crime out of the FBI crime stats you will find that the US is the safest place in the world.

Now western europe is having to deal with what we have and it won’t be pretty. Sooner or later they will actually have to admit they have a problem and force the police to public honest crime stats which they don’t do now.

Fair argument – Like you I was brought up in a farming area and learned to hunt and I personally like guns and believe that responsible gun owners are of benefit to society.

I am really interested in the practical answers to this problem. It’s celar that the US already has far too many guns and no political will to ever remove from the populace. Is the answer then to move to an open carry society – like Robert Heinlein proposed in Beyond this Horizon? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_This_Horizon .

Are even more guns and a better educated society the answer? I am really interested in the solutions that you think might work.

You are asking for a lot; I’m not sure I can satisfy your appetite.

The first thing to recognize is that almost everybody – not all, just very nearly all – people in our culture do not inflict violence on one-another. You will get the picture when you come to grips with the fact that 40 of our States have Right-to-Carry and there has been no blood-bath. Incidents where a permit holder (or 2A-able person in a Constitutional-Carry State) has committed an unexcused homicide (i.e., other than in self-defense) are really really rare. Somehow, you have to let-go of the fantasy that carry is going to lead to any noticeable increase in homicide.

The second is to recognize that the overwhelming majority of homicide is Black-on-Black. The perpetrators generally have a rap sheet of increasingly serious and violent crime. These perpetrators are simply NOT going to be impeded – even slightly – by gun-controls.

A third factor is that you must recognize that you can’t make any substantial change in the stock of arms in civilian hands in America without running a real risk of provoking a new civil war. You need not hazard a guess as to the outcome; the death and destruction would be overwhelming. GunPolicy.org reports the US Armed forces has 2.7 million firearms; police 1.15 million. Civilians have 310 million. Others estimate this figure to be 360 million.

Because our military follows an up-or-out policy there are far more veterans than active-duty soldiers. Even the disabled can teach. By in large, this group is not comprised of happy-campers; you might say they are pretty pissed-off. They have sons; and daughters. Did I mention that they were trained by the most sophisticated military in the world? But, I suppose it doesn’t really matter so long as there is no civil war.

Gun-control in America is nearly entirely focused on “point-of-sale”. That is, the fantasy of intervening in the gun market at the point where a lawful seller transfers a gun to a prohibited-person. This is just one moment in time. How do you successfully capture this moment? How do you avoid determined attempts to evade the effort to control this moment?

Gun control at point-of-sale is like trying to plug the holes in a sieve. Choke-off one hole and the others will provide alternative routes. How do you stop straw-buying? Trafficking? Cottage industry? Smuggling? Theft? You have to stop them ALL; not just reduce the flow through one or a few channels.

To make a gun in the US is PERFECTLY LEGAL! All the parts are available – mail-order – from internet providers; with one notable exception: the frame/receiver. There is an active competitive market in what we call “80% receivers” for AR-15 rifles/pistols. These, like all the other parts, are available mail-order. With a few simple tools and a modicum of craftsmanship anyone can complete the final 20% of fabrication and – have himself a gun for which there is NO record. All, of course, perfectly legal if you are not a prohibited-person. How do you regulate this cottage industry?

Try regulating the fabrication of parts? Used CNC machine tools are now available for under $10,000. Such machines are ubiquitous. (Manual machine tools are sold for scrap or even given away.) The only fly in the ointment is rifling a barrel. This is tough; why, the technique was really worked-out only a couple hundred years ago. PITA; but where there is a will, there’s a way. Oh, by the way, for a sub-machine gun or shotgun there is no need to rifle the barrel.

If you could stop cottage industry, how do you stop smuggling? Our President has no intention of controlling our borders. Neither party in Congress has any intention of controlling our borders. The US exports enormous numbers of guns to Mexico, Central and South America. From there, they can be easily smuggled back into the US the same way drugs are smuggled.

As long as America retains an open primary market in guns nothing stops straw-buying; except, of course, for a willingness to enforce the straw-buying law. But, our criminal justice system refuses to enforce the straw-buying law. Any attempt to enforce this law will result in routine reporting of lost or stolen guns.

If you want to keep guns out of the hands of prohibited persons you will have to enforce felon-in-posession and armed-robbery laws. But there is very little interest in our criminal justice system in enforcing these laws. Probation, short sentences, parole. We need to ration prison cells to really serious criminals, like small-time drug dealers, property-crime criminals and murderers. But even these have to be paroled to make space for new prisoners.

Do you want to know what would have to change? Read:
– Losing Legitimacy by LaFree
– American Homicide by Roth
– Citizen-Protectors: the everyday politics of guns in an age of decline by Carlson

Are you a Progressive? If so, you won’t be happy after reading these books. The independent variables driving violence are not-intuitive. You might find them counter-intuitive. They don’t conform well to the Progressive agenda. I’m not encouraged. It’s not that the solutions are beyond the control of a society; rather, it’s that our (American) society will not implement the necessary changes. It’s not the 2A, nor any other enumerated right that stands in the way. It’s simply that – with a couple of possible exceptions – the apparent solutions are not politically correct; and, therefore doomed.

If you sense ambivalence in our Congress to implement gun control, consider this. Throughout the ill-fated attempt at the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, Congress continued its heartfelt support of the Civilian Marksmanship Program, affectionately CMP. This private corporation was chartered by Congress; i.e., its articles of incorporation were prescribed by statute. Congress graces the CMP with a subsidy requiring the Army to turn-over surplus semiautomatic rifles to the CMP for FREE. CMP refurbishes them and sells them to the public in several stores, and by mail-order to 45 States. You might wonder how CMP can carry on in apparent non-compliance with the Gun Control Act of ’68; the answer is very simple. CMP is exempt from this law. Oh, by the way. I hasten to explain that CMP doesn’t sell “Assault Rifles” (3 shots, 1 kill); just “Battle Rifles” (1-shot, 3 kills).

Oh, by the way, estimates of compliance in Connecticut and New York States’ AWBs are 5%. We will not comply! Have a nice day.

Wow – fantastic reply – I will take your invitation to do some further reading.

Thank you very much!

You are welcome.
After the downer you get from these books, you might turn to the book “The Better Angles of our Nature”. The author takes a very long term look at social evolution and points out that the trend is toward less violence. He also points to some influences that seem to have driven down our propensity toward violence.

You must, of course, bear in mind that in a relatively large nation there are lots of mini-cultures. When you look at national statistics you get a blended view of all of these mini-cultures; but it doesn’t tell you anything about those mini-culture(s) that contribute to the statistics.

FBI statistics give us some insight; e.g., that Black-on-Black violence contributes most of the homicide incidents. Indian-on-Indian rates are even higher; but don’t have much impact. Hispanic-on-Hispanic are lower, and contribute to the statistics. And, of course, the white population also has a tranche of violent criminals.

After our Civil War the Republican party proposed the 14A in great part to allow illiterate freedmen the same right to arms as their white murderers. Then, our Supreme Court decided “never mind” and put Blacks, Southern-European Immigrants, Catholics etc. in the back-of-the-bus. In the great spirit of egalitarianism, our elites have decided that we should all be disarmed; excepting, of course, men of means and their guards.

It took the great explosion in crime from about 1970 – 1990 for our State Legislatures to gradually wake-up and realize that leaving the criminals armed and the law-abing dis-armed wasn’t working very well. So, one-by-one or a few each year, they bestowed upon us our Constitutional Right to bear arms; now, about 40 States. None have looked-back; none have retreated on Right-to-Carry. That leaves 10 States and DC that still defy the Constitution. What to make of this? Which faction of our society is crazy? Which is correct? The faction that recognized the error of it’s ways and began to honor the Constitution? Or, the faction that stubbornly insists on defying the Constitution?

Tragically, the expanding exercise of Right-to-Carry is apt to reduce some crimes such as armed-robbery and assault; however, I don’t think it’s apt to move the needle a lot on homicide. The bulk of the homicide statistics are Black-on-Black; and, these victims and perpetrators alike most do NOT qualify to carry legally. Apart from a culture change in this mini-culture, what will reduce the US homicide rate by an appreciable amount?

What do you think might work? Bigger GFZ signs? Putting tax-payers in jail because they defy a BC law when lending a gun to a buddy?

I strongly recommend that you google the story of Shaneen Allen of Philadelphia. Her case illustrates what the gun-controllers in America (specifically NJ) want to do with law-abiding taxpayers who dare to defend ourselves. Tell me what you think after you have read her story.

Steve, I looked at the Wikipedia article on Beyond This Horizon. Didn’t see much that interested me. The author of a novel is entitled to imagine any world he likes; I doubt that what he envisions does a lot to inform the discussion.

We have a greatly developed myth of the Old West; our American frontier in the last quarter of the 19th century. It is, naturally, mostly myth. Developed by script writers of cowboy and Indian TV series on which I was raised. I found them great entertainment as a child; but I never took them to be any more factual than the cartoons I watched on Saturday mornings.

You might find the book “Gunfighters Highwaymen & Vigilantes – Violence on the Frontier” by McGrath a more illuminating title. Basically, he found that life in the very WORST frontier towns was relatively peaceful for women, children and upstanding men of the community. Single men shot it out with one another in saloons; but, then, the loss to civilization from these deaths is subject to personal opinion.

Another title (expensive, I’ll warn you) is “Concealed Weapon Laws of the Early Republic – Dueling, Southern Violence and Moral Reform” by Cramer. His study leads him to conclude that America’s concealed weapon laws most likely arose out of the attempts to ban dueling. Arguably, dueling was a nasty business; and, just as arguably, it was a formalized ritual affair that included opportunity for safety-valves to vent anger before the ritual of violence actually exploded. Southern legislators feared that if their efforts to get rid of dueling were successful (which they were, eventually) the same passions would emerge in spontaneous drawing of concealed weapons. An amazing exercise of second-ordered thinking. Imagine, a legislator being capable of thinking beyond the first stage of his own actions and anticipating counter-actions! What Cramer found – spontaneous pulling of concealed weapons to avenge an affront – in the early 1800s might have a lot to do with Black-on-Black violence in the late 20th and 21st Century.

And if obama had a son he would have looked just like the oregon shooter.

OK , I agree , I just wanted to go with consistency , didn’t want to confuse ‘ Modern Man ‘.

You are absolved:-)