Posted on 10/03/2017 4:05:04 PM PDT by markomalley
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.
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.
When I looked at the other oft-praised policies, I found out that no gunowner walks into the store to buy an "assault weapon." It's an invented classification that includes any semi-automatic that has two or more features, such as a bayonet mount, a rocket-propelled grenade-launcher mount, a folding stock or a pistol grip. But guns are modular, and any hobbyist can easily add these features at home, just as if they were snapping together Legos.
(Excerpt) Read more at adn.com ...
Surprisingly good analysis, particularly from a leftist.
Gun control is kinda like trying to solve drunk driving by making it harder for sober people to own cars.
Same thing happened to John Lott. Useful idots need to remain uninformed or they aren’t useful anymore.
Liberty comes at a price, we know that.
We cannot presume to stop every evil and avoid creating the worse evil of tyranny over Liberty; which eventually slides down the slippery slope of one tyranny added to another until nothing exists out of our Liberty but only because it squares with some government edict, and absolutely anything can be verboten by government edict.
It is not the lack of human laws allows in evil. It is the lack of G-d in a human heart.
Considering the evidence is just not the done thing these days. I was just talking about this with one of my sons, apropos of an article that said it made sense to “protest” those with whom you disagree (but avoid violence).
Why is “protest” a reasonable response to disagreement? Wouldn’t listening, researching, and disputing - in writing and with evidence - be the thing to do?
People claim to agree on a goal: fewer murders, for example, or better educational outcomes. However, many refuse to consider the evidence about what policies are more conducive to achieving the goal.
A Conservative is a Liberal who hasn’t been shot by any of the 300 million plus guns she thinks are pointed at everybody all the time, or something like that.
I don’t care what this ninny thinks. Even if he thinks that gun control IS a solution.
They’re not taking them. Period. I know what happens next and it’s worth dying for.
so i don’t care if people think that I can or cannot have guns. I simply don’t care. My constitution, the one I was born with, doesn’t give me permission it gives me a right.
I have a right to speak my mind, I have a right to pray to whatever I want to pray too and I have a right to have a gun that can not be infringed. So I’m happy that this dork thinks I can have a gun. Thats great.
But I don’t care.
RTFAB4UP.
[Pro tip: she agrees with you]
Oh, wait. This is Free Republic. Reading the articles violates some rule or another.
I like that. Good comparison.
The more history I learn, the more I know this is true.
Very good comment.
This guy had a LOT of resources. Luckily, he, while somewhat cunning, was not smart enough to create a much larger massacre, one that would not have required a stash of firearms in a hotel room.
What is obscured by leftist data is that “gun death” statistics include suicides and self-defense killings.
Presumably suicides would find another means if a gun was not available.
In the case of self-defense, the shooter would have been the victim if he/she hadn’t been armed.
I tweeted this a couple hours ago to my congressrat after he tweeted out a video of him pontificating about th eneed for common sense gun control. I also reminded him that the massacre in Paris last year was in a state with 100% gun control.
I also posted that he was complicit in the deaths of thousands of children just today with his vote against the US House 20 week abortion ban.
I figured I would be ignored or he’d call Twitter and whine that the mean old conservative is sending him facts and I need to be suspended. Nothing yet
“RTFAB4UP.”
I did. My statement still stands.
It’s great that people approve. Luckily, I don’t give two ****s if they do or not. It’s not up for debate.
Marked for later
ping
Our Constitution confirms, in writing, our God-given rights!
And, the Constitution commits our God-given rights as the supreme laws of our land.
It is amazing what happens when emotional humans actually read and discover this funny little thing called a ‘fact’.
JoMa
There is power to be found if only you keep the masses ill- or un- informed. This is the demo_rat mantra.
JoMa
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