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

[Livnthedream]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-used-to-think-gun-control-was-the-answer-my-research-told-me-otherwise

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 gun owner 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.

As for silencers — they deserve that name only in movies, where they reduce gunfire to a soft puick puick. In real life, silencers limit hearing damage for shooters but don’t make gunfire dangerously quiet. An AR-15 with a silencer is about as loud as a jackhammer. Magazine limits were a little more promising, but a practiced shooter could still change magazines so fast as to make the limit meaningless.

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. I couldn't even answer my most desperate question: If I had a friend who had guns in his home and a history of suicide attempts, was there anything I could do that would help?

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.

By the time we published our project, I didn’t believe in many of the interventions I’d heard politicians tout. I was still anti-gun, at least from the point of view of most gun owners, and I don’t want a gun in my home, as I think the risk outweighs the benefits. But I can’t endorse policies whose only selling point is that gun owners hate them. Policies that often seem as if they were drafted by people who have encountered guns only as a figure in a briefing book or an image on the news.

Instead, I found the most hope in more narrowly tailored interventions. Potential suicide victims, women menaced by their abusive partners and kids swept up in street vendettas are all in danger from guns, but they each require different protections.

Older men, who make up the largest share of gun suicides, need better access to people who could care for them and get them help. Women endangered by specific men need to be prioritized by police, who can enforce restraining orders prohibiting these men from buying and owning guns. Younger men at risk of violence need to be identified before they take a life or lose theirs and to be connected to mentors who can help them de-escalate conflicts.

Even the most data-driven practices, such as New Orleans’ plan to identify gang members for intervention based on previous arrests and weapons seizures, wind up more personal than most policies floated. The young men at risk can be identified by an algorithm, but they have to be disarmed one by one, personally — not en masse as though they were all interchangeable. 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.

[Dmitro]

Very intelligent analysis

[Zeta333]

Its almost like parroting"it worked in australia it should work here to" was as pointless as much with some sense said it was.

[Acidbaron]

If you don't accept research for it, you also can't nitpick research against it. Either you accept studies that are vetted or you don't.

And i doubt this "personal research article" is more than a feel good piece, based on speculations and assumptions.

The reality is, even if gun control came in the US the problem of gun violence is an issue that created over decades of political unwillingness to act and that can only be undone by decades of political policies willing to act on it. I believe even if we look at australia it also took years to a decade for it to change the landscape and their problems were relatively small compared to the US.

Anyhow, i don't know why people make such a big deal out of it, Americans by now must already accept nothing is going to change anytime soon and that americans in general have to accept the reality is that the chance of themselves or their loved ones getting shot is a situation they have to keep in mind at all times. So this whole counter gun control culture is beyond me, there is hardly the need for more propaganda, that side won long ago.

Maybe when a whole town gets murdered out, including babies, puppies and kittens the "good guy with a gun" argument will finally be debunked before that i really don't see anything happening.

[Livnthedream]

And i doubt this "personal research article" is more than a feel good piece, based on speculations and assumptions.

Try actually clicking through to the article where there are plenty of links to her research. Seeing as so much of it is from Five-Thirty-Eight it is at least *decent*.

[Surfd]

Very intelligent analysis

Not really. It's a bullshit manipulation of statistics to attempt to prove a point.

I mean, straight off the bat, pretty much the entire assertion in the article about guns and Australia can be written off as complete hogwash.

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.

Really? BULLSHIT. These were the gun massacres in the 9 years prior to gun control in Australia:

Hoddle Street massacre 9 August 1987 - A Spree shooting by Julian Knight
Canley Vale Huynh family murders 10 October 1987 - Rampage killing by John Tran, who shot dead 5 members of a family
Queen Street massacre 8 December 1987 - A spree shooting/murder–suicide by Frank Vitkovic
Oenpelli shootings 25 September 1988 - Rampage killing by Dennis Rostron, six members of his family at a remote Arnhem Land outstation in Oenpelli
Surry Hills shootings 30 August 1990 - A spree shooting by Paul Anthony Evers who killed 5 people and injured 7 with a 12 gauge pump-action shotgun at a public housing precinct in Surry Hills before surrendering to police.
Strathfield massacre 17 August 1991 - A spree shooting/murder–suicide by Wade Frankum (I remember this one well, as I knew that shopping mall)
Central Coast massacre 27 October 1992 - A spree shooting by Malcolm George Baker
Cangai siege March 1993 - Leonard Leabeater, Robert Steele and Raymond Bassett went on a nine-day rampage resulting in their taking hostages in a siege in a farmhouse at Hanging Rock Station in Cangai
Hillcrest murders 25 January 1996 - Rampage killing by Peter May, who shot dead six members of his family before killing himself
Port Arthur massacre 28 April 1996 - A spree shooting by Martin Bryant, killing 35

Conservative right-wing Prime Minister John Howard then said fuck this, made most guns illegal, and had the government buy everyone's outlawed guns. Nowadays, other than holstered on a cop or a security guard, most people in Australia never encounter a gun.

The mass killings with guns quite literally CEASE at that point in Australian history. The handful of massacres in the last 21 years came from arson attacks, family stabbings, drownings, etc.

But appearantly going from about one mass shooting a year for 9 years in a row to NONE for the next twenty is somehow "not clear evidence".......
The fuck?

And in both Australia and Britain, the gun restrictions had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths.

Yep. That 2/3rds drop off rate on gun related suicides strikes me as terribly ambiguous......

[Acidbaron]

Try actually clicking through to the article where there are plenty of links to her research. Seeing as so much of it is from Five-Thirty-Eight it is at least *decent*.

It might be so, but i think you are missing the point of my post for a large part. I acknowledge that short term gun control will not create a change anything, long term it will and while i'm just pulling numbers out of the air since you need to get the guns out of circulation, what in the US will need to happen first with certain types of guns, creating a legal grace period to have them and hand them in, which of a lot will still remain in circulation. You also have the problem in the US of those doing the collecting will be local police forces what without doubt won't go hard after people and won't be motivated what brings in the issue of Police in general in the US and it be so decentralized in terms of power.

Even there exceptions have to be made since i can fully understand the need of having a weapon if your location is more rural and not unknow to wildlife, although even there is something on top of that you need to change people opinions about guns and the whole gun culture and that's me being real quick about the subject here, since you can further talk about all the complications and practical difficulties, so in short i am saying i don't get this whole "they are going to take your guns!" fear mongering for two reasons.

Even if gun control came today, it's going to take a generation for it to have a significant impact, a generation of politicians in power all staring in the same direction and considering the whole mess that is US politics today where one side undoes the other side their policies every time it changes it is highly unlikely to near impossible.

So again i don't get this pieces for gun owner ship and i certainly don't get the whole fear mongering about the feds coming to take your guns. It turns a complicated debate and process into kiddy talk honestly.

[Livnthedream]

Conservative right-wing Prime Minister John Howard then said fuck this, made most guns illegal, and had the government buy everyone's outlawed guns. Nowadays, other than holstered on a cop or a security guard, most people in Australia never encounter a gun.

Which is why Australia ranks 21st in the world for gun ownership. At 25 per 100 residents. How does it feel to repeatedly be this ignorant? Why do you continue to sling shit with half assed arguments fueled by fear?

Even if gun control came today, it's going to take a generation for it to have a significant impact

You mean just like what happened with the last gun control push that seemingly did nothing and continues to get howled at? It is almost like 'appeasement' doesn't work with emotional arguments. Which is why this repeatedly needs to be distanced from it and moved to evidence. Evidence does not back any of the assertions being made. There are reasonable arguments being made, but not by the people in these threads and certainly not by clickbait media. I am tired of stupidity acting in the place of policy.

[Flurryfang]

Can't we just agree, that the US is fucked and that they just have to live with the gun-situation? Nothing can stop people from wanting to kill each other and apperantly the people of US just really want to kill each other, sometimes on mass.

[Mormolyce]

This is a straight up regurgitation of every right wing talking point on gun control, with "I used to think" used to convince the gullible that they are being presented with a balanced opinion.

Its almost like parroting"it worked in australia it should work here to" was as pointless as much with some sense said it was.

Kind of like how this "op ed" piece is word for word parroting the NRA line on "silencers" to defend the awkwardly timed relaxing of those restrictions?

As for silencers — they deserve that name only in movies, where they reduce gunfire to a soft puick puick. In real life, silencers limit hearing damage for shooters but don’t make gunfire dangerously quiet. An AR-15 with a silencer is about as loud as a jackhammer. Magazine limits were a little more promising, but a practiced shooter could still change magazines so fast as to make the limit meaningless.

P.S. It didn't just "work in Australia". It's just you that has this problem. It's just you that has a massive gun lobby and the Second Amendment. Not a coincidence.

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Which is why Australia ranks 21st in the world for gun ownership. At 25 per 100 residents. How does it feel to repeatedly be this ignorant? Why do you continue to sling shit with half assed arguments fueled by fear?

For the record, I live in Australia and to the best of my recollection have never seen a gun in person other than those carried by a police officer. Except once when I was a child, and I went to a farm owned by my uncle who used a rifle to shoot rabbits.

It really is very rare to own guns here. I know one person who has a license.

But please, keep calling other people ignorant.

[Livnthedream]

For the record, I live in Australia and to the best of my recollection have never seen a gun in person other than those carried by a police officer. Except once when I was a child, and I went to a farm owned by my uncle who used a rifle to shoot rabbits.

It really is very rare to own guns here. I know one person who has a license.

But please, keep calling other people ignorant.

"I haven't seen it, so it doesn't exist!"

For the record, I live in the US and can report a similar life experience. Even though the US has 118 to 100 ownership rate. It is almost like your anecdote is utterly useless.

[Puri]

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.

I lol'd. The idea is not to make guns "less deadly", but to simply ban them as it is the case in pretty much every other country.
But let's face it, it will never happen because of their constitution that was written in a completely different situation for a completely different society.
And even if there would be a divine intervention and there was a complete ban, there are so many firearms circulating that the gun crimes (and the reaction to it, like trigger happy police) would remain a problem for generations to come.

[Draco-Onis]

I lol'd. The idea is not to make guns "less deadly", but to simply ban them as it is the case in pretty much every other country.
But let's face it, it will never happen because of their constitution that was written in a completely different situation for a completely different society.
And even if there would be a divine intervention and there was a complete ban, there are so many firearms circulating that the gun crimes (and the reaction to it, like trigger happy police) would remain a problem for generations to come.

There are countries with guns in circulation where the situation is nowhere near as bad as the US. I don't think we should ban guns but that doesn't mean we should continue with the current situation and do nothing, we have been doing nothing and look at what we have in terms of stats. Also of course it will take generations we have been doing pretty much nothing for generations, you don't change things overnight when the problem has been neglected for so long.

[Livnthedream]

that doesn't mean we should continue with the current situation and do nothing

Outside of some lunatic fringe, I have seen no one say do nothing. I have seen quite a bit of people making ludicrous suggestions, and people objecting to them, and then being strawmanned as "do nothing".

[Dezerte]

One broad gun control law is not the answer for the US. US already has gun control, but it needs to be tightened up (e.g. require gun licenses) and close the loop holes (e.g. illegal firearms/modifications in one state are legal in another) in it.

But other than that I think the US's problem is their gun culture/fetishism which a law won't really do much for. That's going to require some skillful social engineering.

[Draco-Onis]

Outside of some lunatic fringe, I have seen no one say do nothing. I have seen quite a bit of people making ludicrous suggestions, and people objecting to them, and then being strawmanned as "do nothing".

Let me point this out there are a wide range of policies in Washington that have the support of 80% of republicans and democrats when polled. The vast majority of gun owners are reasonable and law bidding people so your article is so bad it is a joke. If you want to be neutral on the issue you should have picked something better, the reason those policies never make it out of committee is because the NRA owns a lot democrats and republicans.

[Puri]

There are countries with guns in circulation where the situation is nowhere near as bad as the US.

You're right, but since the situation is just as bad as it is it also would call for a drastic change to have a significant improvement.

[Acidbaron]

You mean just like what happened with the last gun control push that seemingly did nothing and continues to get howled at? It is almost like 'appeasement' doesn't work with emotional arguments. Which is why this repeatedly needs to be distanced from it and moved to evidence. Evidence does not back any of the assertions being made. There are reasonable arguments being made, but not by the people in these threads and certainly not by clickbait media. I am tired of stupidity acting in the place of policy.

The media on either side, articles like this on either side none of this contribute to the debate. If you don't realize this by now you're merely consumed by bias on this subject, since what you presented is not much more than a clickbait article merely targeted at the other party that takes pulls conclusions and finds the proof of those conclusions after wards, what is not how things are done.

In any case to my recollection there hasn't been an actual push for anything in decades, at least nothing that actual made it far enough in politics for things to get done. As i pointed out already the problem with all this is, if you want change on this front it is going to take decades to achieve, decades to convince one camp to take it slowly and decades to convince the other side steps do work, and convincing this is an effort that needs to be constantly renewed.

I simply don't see it happening as both sides shoot down a reasonable debate, one can argue one does it more than the other based on where you stand but that's all irrelevant and the media in either case aren't helping as your media is for a large part nothing more than echo chambers for either side. Since like most things in your society numbers matter, views matter not the quality of the product presented and you won't get a lot of views if you challenge your base their believes.

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There are countries with guns in circulation where the situation is nowhere near as bad as the US. I don't think we should ban guns but that doesn't mean we should continue with the current situation and do nothing, we have been doing nothing and look at what we have in terms of stats. Also of course it will take generations we have been doing pretty much nothing for generations, you don't change things overnight when the problem has been neglected for so long.

The difference, and Belgium has been used as an example as well since yes there are a lot guns here and it is not that hard to obtain a gun here. Legally or illegally (the problem is ammunition but that's another debate) Is that when something bad happens, the political class and population form a large agreement outside a few gun lobbyists and salesmen that harder regulation needs to happen.

So every time something bad happens as politics is reactionary, things change and gun violence tones down.

Is there a chance where i am from that i get shot due to the high criminality rates? Certainly, would i feel more safer having a gun on my legally? certainly. Would it be far more likely to have been shot if majority was allowed to carry a gun? Hell fucking yes.

And for some reason that last question is what some americans struggle with, at least from my perspective.

[shadowmouse]

<grabs popcorn>

So, what are y'all really discussing that needed yet another thread on top of the existing gun control thread and the Vegas thread which seems to have largely become another gun control thread?

[dlhak]

You want people to stop "mentally ill" dudes killing thousands of people, stop selling guns, you're going around a simple problem made complex by gun sellers.