re: Gun Control Discussion

He called a mac10 an assault rifle

quote:

---

To easy for mentally ill people to buy a gun

---

I agree. Unfortunately it's such a slippery slope nothing can nor will be done to fix that. It's impossible.

I used to think gun control was the answer. My research told me otherwise.


Warning: Author is former 538 writer and this article appears in WaPo.

Highlights:

quote:

---

Before I started researching gun deaths, gun-control policy used to frustrate me. I wished the National Rifle Association would stop blocking common-sense gun-control reforms such as banning assault weapons, restricting silencers, shrinking magazine sizes and all the other measures that could make guns less deadly.

Then, my colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I’d lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence. The best ideas left standing were narrowly tailored interventions to protect subtypes of potential victims, not broad attempts to limit the lethality of guns.

---

quote:

---

I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain and Australia and concluded that they didn’t prove much about what America’s policy should be. Neither nation experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans. Mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress. And in both Australia and Britain, the gun restrictions had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths.

---

quote:

---

As my co-workers and I kept looking at the data, it seemed less and less clear that one broad gun-control restriction could make a big difference. Two-thirds of gun deaths in the United States every year are suicides. Almost no proposed restriction would make it meaningfully harder for people with guns on hand to use them.

---

quote:

---

However, the next-largest set of gun deaths — 1 in 5 — were young men aged 15 to 34, killed in homicides. These men were most likely to die at the hands of other young men, often related to gang loyalties or other street violence. And the last notable group of similar deaths was the 1,700 women murdered per year, usually as the result of domestic violence. Far more people were killed in these ways than in mass-shooting incidents, but few of the popularly floated policies were tailored to serve them.

---

quote:

---

A reduction in gun deaths is most likely to come from finding smaller chances for victories and expanding those solutions as much as possible. We save lives by focusing on a range of tactics to protect the different kinds of potential victims and reforming potential killers, not from sweeping bans focused on the guns themselves.

---

It is unfortunate that articles like this and logical approaches to reducing gun violence/deaths are swept aside for emotional rhetoric that never addresses the root problems. Screw the media and politicians.

quote:

---

passed a law making it easier for mentally ill people to buy guns

---

Wanna have this debate? Let's do it mon frere.

Okay. Mental illness.

How does one determine whom is mentally capable to own a firearm? Mental health is an ever fluctuating thing. It isn't static. One day you can be on top of the world, the next, crippling depression can set in.

So, Billy wants a gun. But new laws say he has to get a psych evaluation done. Okay. So what does billy do?

Billy has to go to a psychiatrist. But wait! Some psychiatrist will be anti gun and some won't.. So he goes to a pro gun psychiatrist and gets his test done.

Ohhhh poor billy couldn't find a right wing psychiatrist. So what does billy do? He LIES. He doesn't talk about how his layoff affected him. Or his divorce. Or how a tax increase has him paycheck to paycheck. He keeps it all bottled inside so he can get his gun to go hunting.

Oh but wait... Poor billy still ended up failing his test due to a proactive psychiatrist who is staunchly anti-gun saying he's mentally ill.... So now what? When will Billy be able to own a gun (after all, mental health isn't static and changes. He won't be depressed forever)

Will billy be banned for a year? 2? 5? 10? Forever?

You see, all in all, while it sounds good in theory, it will change absolutely NOTHING.

quote:

---

involuntarily committed to a facility.

---

You realize I can call the police, tell them you told me you have a gun and are going to kill yourself, that they will come to your house and drag you to the psych ward against your will.... Right?

So only rich people and drug dealers would have guns? Sounds about right.

quote:

---

To easy for mentally ill people to buy a gun

---

Indeed. We should ban the mentally ill.

You'd be OK with the government deciding who is/is not mentally ill, then deporting them, right?

lets ban everything that can kill someone

quote:

---

However I think one common sense solution would be to ban firearm ownership from people who have been involuntarily committed to a facility. This would at least keep guns out of the hands of some psychotic people.

---

That's already a Federal law you raging incompetent. Why don't you go somewhere else on the Internet and spend a few days educating yourself before starting more worthless threads and idiotic posts?