13 Crows...

dloosely:

craytonc:

The media is just carrying water for Obama. For anyone to believe that this man will do anything positive in light of the Second Ammendment is sad. For him, the only ones who should have firearms are cops and soldiers. And why not, he’s surrounded by them (his entire street blocked off, anyone entering it needing to be stopped and searched). So how about those of us who might need to protect ourself? I guess “Hope and Change” doesn’t cover that.

I know you’re very pro-gun, and i respect that. Gun control has never been an issue that i’m extremely passionate about, so i’m not trying to start a fight. But maybe you can explain a few things to me. You’ve probably seen the quote from Obama that Southpol posted in response to your post, but i’ll post it again for anybody who didn’t get to read it:

Q: You said recently, “I have no intention of taking away folks’ guns.” But you support the D.C. handgun ban, and you’ve said that it’s constitutional. How do you reconcile those two positions?

A: Because I think we have two conflicting traditions in this country. I think it’s important for us to recognize that we’ve got a tradition of handgun ownership and gun ownership generally. And a lot of law-abiding citizens use it for hunting, for sportsmanship, and for protecting their families. We also have a violence on the streets that is the result of illegal handgun usage. And so I think there is nothing wrong with a community saying we are going to take those illegal handguns off the streets. And cracking down on the various loopholes that exist in terms of background checks for children, the mentally ill. We can have reasonable, thoughtful gun control measure that I think respect the Second Amendment and people’s traditions.

[ontheissues]

Now i’m sure you don’t really believe anything Obama says, so let’s pretend that quote didn’t come from him. Let’s say it came from me. What about that position do you object to? Gun violence is a huge problem in major urban areas and something needs to be done, but i don’t see why a solution inherently has to infringe upon your right to protect your family.

Here’s a hypothetical situation: Back in 2000, Obama supported a law that would limit gun purchases to one a month which didn’t end up passing. Let’s say a law was proposed that would limit gun purchases to two a month, and it had the potential to lower gun violence by 35% (it’s hypothetical, so just go with it). Could you get behind a law like that, even begrudgingly? Sure, technically speaking it would hamper a person looking to keep his family safe, but only in the sense that it would take a little longer to purchase enough guns so you were never more than an arms length away from one in your house. At the same time, a 35% drop is pretty substantial. Would you be willing to wait a little longer to buy another gun if it meant that less people were getting killed?

I guess my real question is, as a gun owner, are there any measures for dealing with the flood of guns on the streets that you could actually support?

The problem with any gun legislation, is that it only affects those who are law-abiding in the first place. Criminals don’t care about gun control laws. They’re also not purchasing guns through legal channels. So limited sales of firearms is not going to affect gun violence, there is no correlation to a drop in gun violence.

The honest truth about gun violence is that most gun violence is caused by a small minority of repeat offenders. One California study found that 3.8% of a group of males born in 1956 were responsible for 55.5% of all serious felonies. On top of that, 75-80% of murder arrestees have prior arrests for a violent (including non-fatal) felony or burglary. On average they have four felony arrests and one felony conviction.

Half of all murders are committed by people on “conditional release.” 81% of all homicide defendants had an arrest record, 67% had a felony arrest record, 70% had a conviction record, and 54% had a felony conviction record.

Some more thoughts on firearm availability for normal citizens: “…a detailed study of the major surveys completed in the past 20 years or more provides no evidence of any relationship between the total number of legally held firearms in society and the rate of armed crime. Nor is there a relationship between the severity of controls imposed in various countries or the mass of bureaucracy involved with many control systems with the apparent ease of access to firearms by criminals and terrorists.”

The real problem here is that our legal system is flawed, and we are releasing way to many violent offenders back onto the streets, where they prove to be habitual criminals.

Not only that, but there are also the facts that Gun Control legislation has not been proven to reduce crime in any way. First, the U.S. government “found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws or combinations of laws reviewed on violent outcomes.” Not only that, but it might do the reverse. Most gun control laws in the United States have been written since 1968m yet the murder rate rose during the 70s, 80s, and early 90s. Specific case, in 1976 Washington D.C. enacted one of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. The city’s murder rate rose 134% through 1996 while the national murder rate dropped 2%.

And gun control laws are generally not enforced much anyway. During the Clinton administration, federal prosecutions of gun-related crimes dropped more than 44%. Of 3,353 prohibited individuals who obtained firearms, the Clinton administration only investigated 110 (3.3%) of them. Some of the reasons listed for not prosecuting known gun criminals include “minimal federal interest” and “DOJ/U.S. Attorney policy”/

Asking me what I would support? Less restrictive gun control laws. In those states with less restrictive laws, crime on general drops. Nationwide Concealed Carry Shall-Issue laws. Removal of “No Firearms” zones, which do nothing but tell the criminals where they will be safe to do crime. Harder jail time laws for violent crime. Stricter probation requirements.

As far as the Obama quote, it’s not so much that I don’t believe a word he says. It’s that I believe his record. It’s politically convenient to say the words, but as recently as the Heller decision, he has consistently voted anti-Second Amendment.

(All figures come from Gun Facts 5.0)

I respect your opinions as well, and are glad you invited me to a discussion of the issue. I hope that you can see where I’m coming from, and please feel free if you have any other further questions or points.

Thanks!