All Things Second Amendment

Stripe

Teenage Adaptive Ninja Turtle
LIFETIME MEMBER
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The kind of weapons you want banned are so few and far in between that where they are already banned, it makes no difference simply because they are not the most commonly used weapon.

Again, I point to the fact that handguns are the most commonly used in crime, and those numbers are already through the roof.

This is exactly right. Town leverages the emotional weight of mass murder events to justify banning weapons used in those, so it's only reasonable to expect that if he were to get his way, handguns would be next.

Meanwhile, liberty and justice get trodden into the floor.
 

Town Heretic

Out of Order
Hall of Fame
I had written up a response to much of this, and then lost it due to it being removed from my phone's clipboard. But there are a few things I want to address...
I've addressed this repeatedly, but once again then...sure we could fundamentally change a system, and address a number of contributing factors and hope for a different outcome we think would come from it. Or we could simply do what we've already done to a lesser extent, to some good effect, extend without that larger effort a reasoned protection with examples abounding that the effort will be fruitful.


If we had a proper justice system,
We do. For all its flaws there's no better one on earth and it's not going to be fundamentally changed. So proposing any solution to mass violence that begins, "Let's start by doing that," is, however well intentioned, a de facto vote for the unacceptable status quo.

The kind of weapons you want banned are so few and far in between that where they are already banned, it makes no difference simply because they are not the most commonly used weapon.
That's completely untrue. There are millions of semi-automatic weapons already in this country. And thank God we don't have more nuts or purely evil men scratching that particular itch, but we've had enough of them, too many of them to justify leaving that weapon, distinguished only by its ability to create a full room at the morgue, at ending populations of church and mosque goers, at transforming schools into memorials.

And the impact of stronger gun laws (that, to remind everyone) work in tandem with taking those weapons out of the system will absolutely have an impact of violence, which is why every other nation with stronger laws is demonstrably safer for it, and why the safest states in our nation have the strongest laws relating.

Again, I point to the fact that handguns are the most commonly used in crime, and those numbers are already through the roof.
May I remind you, again, that my measures aren't aimed at reducing every sort of crime in which pistols are used, though as many of those are semi-automatic and/or obtain some of their efficacy for evil by virtue of large magazines, the measures I propose would impact them as well.


WHEREAS if you make it so that people don't WANT to do a thing,
See: the war on drugs. You can't know if or how that's actually possible, though trying to convince people that any good thing is in their own best interest is never a bad idea.

But in this case, it's better to do the thing that will accomplish the desired end than to talk about doing the thing you can only argue would while requiring a thing that is so far outside what people would allow or want as to be little more than a hypothetical.

Except that that is exactly what you're doing now. Advocating the ban of certain weapons because one man used them to commit a crime.
I don't see how "except" enters into it given what you quoted, but I'm advocating against a class of weapons because, over a long stretch of time, we've seen that where they are in the stream of commerce horror follows, AND because what those weapons can legally do can be done without weapons that invite that horror.

I won't point out the fact that there has to be multiple laws against murder means they are all inefficient
Good, because you'd be wrong. We don't have multiple laws against murder. We have laws that recognize not all murders are the same. And we have laws that distinguish between murder and unintended death that flows from an act but still bears consequence.

, but what I will say is that the punishments given by our laws are ineffective because they are not painful enough to the one committing the crime.
You want a slippery slope toward justifying torture, there it lies.

There aren't definitive studies on the efficacy of capital punishment.

But stronger laws? That's both doable and has a fairly proven track record.

Locking people up like animals is inhumane (and if you were to lock any animal up for years on end, the animal rights advocacy groups would be all over you for animal abuse, yet somehow it's ok to do it to humans...). Restitution, corporal punishment, and the death penalty are appropriate for punishing even criminals.
Couldn't disagree with you more, but that's a different thread.

I asked a friend of mine about this to get their perspective. Here is what they said:


We shouldn't waste our time opposing slavery, because it's not going to end.
John the Baptist shouldn't oppose Herod because he's not going to change.
We shouldn't oppose the godless schools because they're not going to change.
We shouldn't oppose abortion, because it's not going to stop.
Etc. a thousand times over.



Which would have been a good response except that the argument isn't over combating any evil, but over both the efficacy in approach of what will work in that effort and what is reasonably possible as a response to it.

So, Town, while I agree that it is easy to not advocate something that will not happen anytime soon, that by no means is a good reason to not advocate it at all.
I'm not trying to dissuade anyone from advocacy. I'm simply noting what can be done now and why that should be done now.

Don't be apathetic. Don't be discouraged. Don't be fearful. Don't be lazy.
I'm not.

Don't do evil that good might come of it.
I don't.

Advocate what is right, no matter the consequences.
I am.

Again, don't do evil, that good might come of it.
There's no evil in my proposition and no virtue in the possession of weapons distinguished in function only by their ability to accomplish an unlawful task. These weapons are, in their nature, an enticement for the unstable or the evil in men.

Do right, and risk the consequences.
It is right, just, and good to make an evil thing less likely to happen. Just so. Oppose the NRA and the angry voices of their constituency.

 

Idolater

"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
Rather, when you sit in dismissive judgment on an approach without actually ever getting around to invalidating it, you are neither establishing your position as a fit judge nor actually managing what you wave an off hand at.
Agreed, if such a one does not subsequently follow their hand, which I did do.
In the sense that you believe it to be practically without value, I suppose. Otherwise, no.
In the sense that it was factual. If you mean by this my estimation of the value of the study is that it is practically without which, then yes I did make that case rather persuasively. It was a practically useless study, showing the biggest factor in explaining the greater number of people proportionally murdered in mass murders instead of just as individuals, is what year it was. That shows a statistically significant upward trend, which I never denied wasn't very important, but the study itself did nothing to explain the trend, beyond confirming that it is there.

It's a very important thing that it's there, and for that I suppose the study can be at least commended for that. But that was ancillary to what the authors of the study are trying to argue, which is that we should 'bring back' an "AWB," which their study does nothing to support.

So in as much as they published results, they are to be commended, but only by the accident of publishing something important, which they themselves overlooked in trying to argue unsuccessfully due to poor statistical reasoning their political view, which is entirely unsupported by any of their doctoral degrees, even if their statistics were sound.
There you swerve from the objective into the subjective valuation, but I'll come back to this in a bit.
And having already implicitly acknowledged this, I supported by claim with valid reasons. You act like I'm just stating opinions.
That would be the independent variable.
Right. The one independent variable was whether or not the "AWB" was in force, or not. Binary. 1 or 0. On or off.

It's always perfectly fine, mind you, to analyze data like this with just one variable, that's totally fine, perfectly OK. But when the explained variance of that one factor is such a low number that you don't even both to in the abstract explicate what it is, and instead offer that the year explains over a third of the variance (which is fine, for one factor to explain this much variance, but as I said, we're really hoping for models that explain something like 90% of the variance in the response; this is aside from the fact that 'year' is just not an actionable variable---it's 'independent' only because it's on the right side of the analysis, while the response is on the left), and leave out how much variance "AWB" specifically explains, we know through inference that "AWB" explained very little of it; much less than a third of it, iow.
The dependent variable being fatalities by gun.
I thought that it was all murders, not just homicides by gun, and I also thought that it was not just 'fatalities' but intentional homicides that they were looking at, but I could have missed it.

I don't want to say that I 'don't care about suicide,' because I do care very much about it as a personal tragedy, but I do not care about suicide as it might concern an idea regarding gun control, as I do not think that suicides ought to inform laws regarding rights. If anything, we have a right to not have one of our kin commit suicide, and I support things that discourage it, but not gun control.
For those following along, the intercept can be thought of as a constant and is the expected mean value of Y when all X = 0. X is the predictor. If X never equals 0 then it's meaningless, since its only the expected mean value of Y.
Then by your own admission, it's not meaningless at all in this particular case, which is why I mentioned it. Whether the "AWB" is or is not in force, the 'expected mean value' of annual murders in the US is in the neighborhood of 15000.
Miniscule is a subjective term.
'Miniscule' isn't a term at all before this thread. If you mean "minuscule," then again, I addressed that it was 'subjective,' and I supported my contention.
It's statistically significant
So another word here about statistical significance.

Before we even talk about 'coefficients,' let's just talk about statistical significance. We don't need to mention coefficients at all, and just deal with the p-value.

The p-value, when comparing two sets of data with each other, is the chance /probability that they are random wrt each other.

It's like flipping a coin forty times, and comparing the heads and tails of the first 20 flips, with the final 20 flips. The result will be that the p-value is higher than 0.05, which means that conventional statistics rejects the theory that they are correlated. There is a chance that the p-value will be 0.05, but it's a 0.05 chance that it will be 0.05. So in this unlikely case, the analysis will give us a false positive, saying that these two data sets are correlated, even though we know that they are not.

This goes to the understanding that statistics themselves are never the last word on any matter, we also need experts to weigh in on the logic that explains the statistics, when the statistics suggest a correlation. Statisticians provide raw material to subject matter experts.

When statistics do not deny the null hypothesis, then statistics provide useful and actionable information without any experts weighing in. It is when statistics show a correlation that then this information is submitted to experts for interpretation.

In this case, where the independent variable /factor is "AWB," we need experts to interpret exactly what this means, because it being a law, we are putting a lot of faith in that it being in force, or not being in force, influences the behavior of mass murderers.
and the outcome is a contributing argument for making the laws.
It is certainly not that. Before anything is done a much better study must be undertaken, unless this study is that study, and they analyzed factors that statistics ruled out, and if we know that, then that is valuable information, to know which factors positively do not affect their chosen response variable. If they did not cast a very wide net before performing their regression, then that must be done before I would agree with any change, especially in the direction of more gun control, instead of less.

I've already made the case that we two disagree on what The Right to Bear Arms actually means, and while anything like another "AWB" does not conflict with your meaning of the Right, it does conflict with mine, and for me there must be a much stronger case to make more gun control laws before I could consider the effort anything but wrongheaded, mainly because it directly conflicts with what I mean by The Right to Bear Arms, to say nothing of this particular study's conclusion being very weakly supported.
Though remember, I'm calling for models resembling our European cousins and those are much more encompassing
I know. The federal "AWB" that the study in question concerns, was about features of AR and AK patterns (etc.) and magazine capacity, and also did not involve any confiscation /compulsory buybacks. It was a spectacularly ignorant law.
, and the data much more compelling than this problematic side bar.
It is not. Statistically what you've done is select a subpopulation according to a nebulous set of conditions, that could instead be included in a more expansive analysis through the inclusion of a variety of binary independent variables. Based on what I recall you saying, you would include binary factors such as 'democracy,' 'European,' 'Western,' etc., each of which being either a 1 or a 0, and then they would all be combined into a single model, that wouldn't exclude any countries for which we have the same data. This would avoid your 'cherry picking' error entirely and produce a far more robust statistical model to explain your chosen response variable.

I focus on the one response variable that to me means the most, and that's murder. To me, if there are 10 times more murders in country B than in country A, even if all country A's murders are mass murders, country A is still far safer than country B. But from what I'm reading you say, you'd rather have more individual murders, just so long as we avoid mass murders, and I disagree with your values there.
Per 10,000 people.
Percent is percent.
I deny that's insignificant. And I think you would too, if pressed on the point of what we're actually talking about in terms of outcome and how that translates over larger populations.
If we weren't running headlong into what to me is blatant and flagrant infringement of The Right to Bear Arms (my meaning, not yours), then I could at least sympathize, but I cannot do so given the circumstances and all of them.
Okay. I can accept it, but it was oddly placed and seemed more a part of an overkill in establishing credibility for an easy dismissal that I still reject as an established conclusion, supra.
'Supra' seems more a part of an overkill in establishing credibility for an easy dismissal that I still reject as an established conclusion.
Now that was a neat rhetorical trick, the inference in copy/paste. I did supplement my approach, but if I'm talking about an abstract, the best way to present it clearly is to set it out, not spend time rewriting it and risk missing or mistatting something of importance. As someone familiar with the application of statistics to a number of models, but not someone who does this regularly or has a particular distinction within that field of study, it seemed the prudent course of action.
It was fine for you to copy-and-paste the abstract of the study, and it was fine for me to poke holes in it too.
We may need a harder and longer look at the full study.
Because I could analyze their same data myself, I personally would just want to see that data. As I said, if there are factors that they did include in their study, but that were ruled out, then that too would be valuable information for everybody to see.

There's something else worth mentioning here, and that is the notion of 'degrees of freedom' in a statistical analysis, and mainly I think it could boil down to this: You 'buy' degrees of freedom with more response data, and you 'spend' them by including more independent variables in the analysis. This study appears to use 37 data points in the response, which limits the number of independent factors that can be analyzed to something less than that number. I cannot recall how many are needed as a bare minimum, but it's safe to say the limit is something like 34. That's not just the independent variables themselves, but every possible transformation done to them also, meaning that if you include a square term that's another degree of freedom 'spent,' and the same for every interaction term; each additional one 'spends' another degree of freedom.

If you have just for example three independent variables (A, B, C), that's three degrees of freedom. If you include every interaction term also (AB, BC, AC, ABC), that's four more degrees of freedom, so just the three factors alone in such an analysis would 'spend' seven degrees of freedom, in a factorial model. Adding a fourth factor D would increase one more degree of freedom for D's main effects, plus another seven for the additional interaction terms (AD, BD, CD, ABD, BCD, ACD, ABCD), increasing the degrees of freedom required to 15 with just four independent factors in a factorial analysis.

A fifth factor would throw out a full factorial as possible, because it would require in total more than the 34 degrees of freedom that the 37 response data points offer.

So all that's to say that it's better to have more response data to perform an analysis that captures all possible factors. I would go further back in time than this study's analysis, instead of artificially trying to show an equal number of years before and since the "AWB," because the results would be more meaningful. The regression handles binary factors just fine, no matter how far back in time we go. Along the way, we could include other factors to help explain if possible the murder rate better than this study does.
You don't really need more data if you have enough to establish the significance from data mined pre and post and the variance during.
I would argue that you do, if you're not trying to hide something. What's the harm in starting back in 1917, for instance, or at least sometime before 1981? If the "AWB" is actually explanatory, the more data would only make the case stronger.

What I think we would see, in starting the analysis back closer to 1917 (100 years being a nice round number), is that, when including a binary factor like "organized crime related," that this factor would explain a lot of the variance back during Prohibition, due to the rum running criminal syndicates and cartels. A concerted effort to stop these people (via e.g. 'the untouchables') reduced mass murders, but also we repealed Prohibition, and made the National Firearms Act (NFA) around that same period, and again, each of these factors could easily be included in an analysis offering up more degrees of freedom.

I'd be very interested to see how the NFA affected murder rate. Along with this factor, we could include whether the murder in question involved an NFA weapon, to add more insight into the effectiveness of the NFA in keeping us safer, if any.
I concede you appear to have a real grasp of the topic and one that, so far as I can tell at present, is more broadly developed than my own. It's fun to read. Doesn't alter your concession or my points, but if you want to keep doing this I'm game to keep reading it in relation to the additional consideration you indicate you want to give the larger issue.


That was a very creative bit of writing, but no. It's on par with suggesting that were we to look over time at highway fatalities involving cars where the occupants were not required to wear seat belts, looked at that same data during a prolonged period where the law required the use of seat belts (we could factor non-compliance) and later looked at data after those laws were overturned and saw a lowering of fatalities during the time of the laws and a rise in fatalities once the laws were repealed, that something about seat belts led to the surge of fatalities, instead of the independent variable, the absence of those laws.
To be a good parallel, we would have to further imagine that all along, independent of the seat belt law, the number of driving fatalities was steadily rising, and that this trend overwhelms any effect due to the seat belt law, which by comparison explains much less than the general upward trend itself does. As far as I can tell from the abstract of the study in question, there is a statistically significant upward trend in the proportion of murders due to mass murder, that the "AWB" hardly influenced at all. It means there's a much more powerful factor operating than the "AWB" /seat belt law.

Also in keeping with this being a better parallel, the penalty must be similar. Not wearing a seat belt is a ticketable offense, a civil violation not a criminal one. An "AWB" would involve prison terms.

Also for lack of a better place to mention it, even if we decide that this study's result is actionable, we are only justified in reinstating the exact same law, since it is invalid statistical reasoning to use a model to support making a change that is not measured by the model. iow, what you want to do, is take this study's conclusion, and use it to justify a different "AWB" than the study's model actually measured. That is wholly invalid. It's like seeing that an apple a day keeps the doctor away, and then using that to make a law forcing us to eat oranges, thinking, "Close enough." Not close enough. Not statistically.
And in saying it step from the objective to the subjective, and I'd argue that you wouldn't find it insignificant were those still walking about members of your family or others you know and value.
No. That's incorrect. If my kin were murdered by a suicidal mass murderer using an array of assault weapons, I still would not support gun control. Suicidal mass murderers (and the other varieties also) harden my conviction that gun control is essentially unjust.

It is subjective, I grant you that, but my opinion would be if possible even more in support of us just obeying the Second Amendment, if my own kin were victims.
That is, in hybridizing your response you accidentally shed an essential humanity that is at the foundation of caring about the point at all. And in that sphere all human life is significant. The avoidance of dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries in a given year is a compelling public good.
Ceteris paribus, I agree with you. But all other things are not equal, namely the difference between what you mean by The Right to Bear Arms, and what I mean by The Right to Bear Arms. And while I'm sure that you also found your view in the appreciation for innocent lives being preserved, I do too. It is never just for an innocent person to be outgunned by their attempted murderer. Never. It is flagrantly infringing, not their right to bear arms, but their right to live, to make laws that increase the chance that innocent people will be outgunned by their attempted murderer.
No, it's more an addition to an easier and straight forward notice of rates of mass shootings, violence and homicides and how in those states and nations with the strongest gun laws the lowest levels of those undesirable elements occurs, predictably.
As mentioned, I value minimizing murders above all, and wrt murders, what you say here is not true. You continue to resist the fact that wrt murders, our great state of New Hampshire is among the safest places in the whole world, including those Western democratic cousins you allude to, and NH also has perhaps the least gun control in the whole world too. And it's also surrounded by states with similarly weak gun laws.
But yes, it is an argument. There's just a better, stronger one to be made and for stronger action.
I disagree with you, and you don't have the statistics to back up your view either. It's just a view.
A full examination of the study seems reasonable at this point to get at a number of points/concerns you raise that seem completely valid to me, though none of them seem set to nullify the conclusion or your acknowledgement of it, if indirectly.
Let me insert here something that's worth mentioning at some point, and that's comparing mass murders according to their legal definition, which includes attempted murder as equal to murder.

Wikipedia's probably good enough for the point.

Braddock killed 58 people but there were also 422 people injured from gunfire, so just prima facie that's actually 480 murders (422 attempted) he committed. By comparison, the next nine most deadly mass shootings in the US were 102 for the Pulse shooting, 49 at Virginia Tech, 28 at Sandy Hook, 46 in Sutherland Springs, 50 at "Luby's" (1991), 40 at "San Ysidro" (1984), 48 at UT (1966), 34 at Stoneham Douglas, and 46 at Fort Hood. Those nine added together were 443 actual (fatalities) and attempted murders, so it's right to see that horrific crime of Braddock as something categorically different from everything else. It was roughly ten times worse than everything except for the Pulse, it was 'only' 4-5 times as bad as that.
I'll see how easy it is to snag the thing in full and if I can I'll throw a copy your way.
If you do, I will examine it.
Not bad. I'm enjoying it, largely for your approach to it.


A safer citizenry would entail those less imperiled by gun violence and the corresponding rates of violence. And when we look at the data across generations now, every society with stronger gun laws does a better job of making their citizenry safer.
No, that's completely false. Brazil, Honduras, Guatemala, Jamaica, and the list isn't even close to complete there, are way more dangerous than the US. Many of the migrants knocking on our southern border's door are fleeing just those countries, all of them with far stricter gun control than the US has---as I mentioned previously, if you just take civilian gun ownership as a metric for the inverse of strong gun laws, no other country on the earth even approaches the US, and yet there are over 100 countries with higher murder rates, and some of the worst ones are around ten times the US murder rate, even with far less than 10% as many civilian owned guns as in the US.

In addition, I've calculated that if black men in the US would only murder proportionally to their proportion of the population, the murder rate in the US would drop by 30%, making our country even safer, even with the gobs of civilian owned guns floating around.
The stronger the laws the better the outcome, but even the weakest of our cousins in that regard do a great deal better than we manage, just as our states (if to a lesser extent) with stronger gun laws our perform states with the weakest.
I found five whole states with 'weak' gun laws and excellent (low) murder rates.
This isn't about the number of guns, though you can make an argument on the point. It's about the kinds of guns, aids, and public responsibility.
I know that. But it's not Not about the number of guns either. According to your view there should never be countries where civilian gun ownership of any kind is extremely low, and murder rate extremely high, and yet there are numerous examples of this very thing. It would be one thing if there were just one, or a small handful of countries that defied your supposed 'rule,' but there are numerous, which just reasonably challenges that it is a rule at all.

As mentioned, writ large, the number of guns of all types in civilian hands by country, shows a statistically insignificant inverse relation with murders. Since it's statistically insignificant, the justified conclusion is that, within the range of the analysis (all the way from zero guns on the one side, and 120 guns on the other, per 100 people), having more guns in civilian hands will not increase murder rates, and having zero guns in civilian hands will not lower it either.
My argument from the beginning is that we can retain the right, but that we have created a class of affordable weapons largely if not entirely distinguished by their ability to kill a great many people in a very small window of responsive time and that if we address those weapons, and couple that with mandatory gun safety courses and the elimination of certain aids that help those and other guns in the infliction of that sudden potential for mass killings, the ease of it, we can save a great many lives that we've seen lost in parks, churches, etc.
The data doesn't support it. The data supports that the more people with more guns, will not increase murders, and everybody having no guns, will not lower murders either.

Now, statistics aside, here is another possible way to fix our broken politics on this matter. I've already said that, we should amend the Constitution if we can, to revise what We the People mean by, that The Right to Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed, so that we aren't biting our nails hoping the Supreme Court agrees with our own view, and voting for presidents based purely on this one factor (which types of judges the president will nominate for future S. Ct. justices).

I propose that we amend the Constitution first, to increase the burden for confirming a S. Ct. justice instead, to a super majority of both houses, rather than a simple majority. Whenever a super majority is required for change, it tends to stabilize things. This will rule out judges that are in any way extreme from sitting on the highest court. And it might be easier to achieve the super majority required to amend the Constitution with such an effort, instead of getting into the details of the Second Amendment.

I still believe that in the long run, we are better off obeying our Bill of Rights, and if we don't like the Bill of Rights, then we should change our Bill of Rights, instead of making laws that flagrantly violate it, but since changing the Bill of Rights seems unlikely anytime in the foreseeable future (short of some massive disaster that shocks one side or the other into capitulation---this would be a very bad case that I do not wish for), I suggest raising the bar for confirming S. Ct. justices instead.

And all that aside, we do agree on at least one thing. Neither of us wants to see anymore mass murders, ceteris paribus. Neither of us ever wants to see again something like Braddock. Your solution to Braddock and mine are certainly wildly different, but we do both want the same outcome here. Whereas your attempt is to ban the weaponry that he used, mine is about preserving the right of the rest of us to arm ourselves at least similarly to (if not better than) how he armed himself. Mine also requires that We the People take more individual responsibility to take care of ourselves, and our kin, and our neighbors and other innocent (of capital crimes) people.

It would certainly be nice if we only dealt with reasonable people, but the reality is that sometimes people just 'lose it,' whether it's explainable through a physiological problem or not, and your attempt involves trying to prevent these people from being armed too well to begin with, and mine involves civilians being free to be better armed instead, to deter yes, but primarily to actively defend against a mass murderer (suicidal or otherwise).

In the case of Braddock, I would have preferred to see maybe dozens of innocent people in that crowd armed with rifles that could shoot back at his perch. Would it have been more chaotic, with bullets zipping back and forth instead all just in one direction, sure. Would it have involved innocent people in that hotel getting hit and killed by accident, sure. But would it have resulted in fewer fatalities? We can't know. But my guess is yes. 58 dead, and 422 wounded from bullets (480 casualties not including those injured by other means), is what we had, with nobody in that crowd shooting back. I think it would have been better had some people in the crowd been able to return fire. And they simply could not have done that with handguns, but only with rifles, due to the range involved. Handguns can shoot bullets that far, but only by 'lobbing' them (ballistically), and by the time they would have got to Braddock (in the unlikely event that they actually got to exactly his room) they wouldn't even be going fast enough to disable him.
 

Town Heretic

Out of Order
Hall of Fame
Agreed, if such a one does not subsequently follow their hand, which I did do.
I'd say that when you stepped into the "practically" you stepped into the subjective. And then we're back to Sodom and Gomorrah and wondering how many lives are sufficient to do a thing.

That shows a statistically significant upward trend, which I never denied wasn't very important, but the study itself did nothing to explain the trend, beyond confirming that it is there.
As I've noted long ago and repeated from time to time, it's always within the realm of possibility that what we observe in nations and states where stronger gun laws are found and compared to those without them or with lesser versions, are the product of a mind boggling coincidence. But reason argues against it.

I couldn't get my hands on the larger study and data without an expense I wasn't willing to incur, so we're left with a bare bones reflection of a larger truth, that where you find stronger gun laws you find fewer gun related murders. I was hoping for an academic portal, but apparently these days a great deal of what would be helpful isn't freely given.

I appreciate your critique of what was available, however, and read it with interest. I wish we had the particulars on it, but such is life.

I've already made the case that we two disagree on what The Right to Bear Arms actually means
The way I've approached it is that there is a right and then there is the exercise of it. We may not, as it stands, deny any Constitutionally guaranteed right. But we may limit the exercise of it from necessity, as rights and people exercising them interact and conflict. That is, a great deal of the law is found in balancing these forces in exercise.

, and while anything like another "AWB" does not conflict with your meaning of the Right, it does conflict with mine, and for me there must be a much stronger case to make more gun control laws before I could consider the effort anything but wrongheaded, mainly because it directly conflicts with what I mean by The Right to Bear Arms, to say nothing of this particular study's conclusion being very weakly supported.
Weak support is still support and the study was never meant as more than an illustration of a larger principle that can be observed and which I have noted repeatedly regarding the safety of the public from mass shooting events.

I know. The federal "AWB" that the study in question concerns, was about features of AR and AK patterns (etc.) and magazine capacity, and also did not involve any confiscation /compulsory buybacks. It was a spectacularly ignorant law.
I'm not arguing for the adoption of it, but for the adoption of any of a number of models already demonstrating their efficacy within similar states to our own, with similar populations and freedoms.

I focus on the one response variable that to me means the most, and that's murder. To me, if there are 10 times more murders in country B than in country A, even if all country A's murders are mass murders, country A is still far safer than country B. But from what I'm reading you say, you'd rather have more individual murders, just so long as we avoid mass murders, and I disagree with your values there.
No, the murder rates in the countries I noted are lower as well. We aren't simply shifting one sort of homicide to another. That is, you don't find 10 fewer murders by gun in France, but 10 more murders by vehicle or knife. That said, my principle reason for opposing semi and fully automatic weapons is there efficacy in creating the opportunity for large scale murder, which we've experienced too many times since these weapons began to find serious purchase in the market place.


'Supra' seems more a part of an overkill in establishing credibility for an easy dismissal that I still reject as an established conclusion.
Subjectively all manner of things may seem to mean whatever is reasonable to the person filtering the information, but it's really just my way of noting a reluctance to repeat an answer given without compelling reason to, especially as I've given it within the body of the writing where you find that note.

It was fine for you to copy-and-paste the abstract of the study, and it was fine for me to poke holes in it too.
But you didn't poke holes in what I meant for it to do. And without a bit more data most of what can be argued against it is speculative in nature.


Because I could analyze their same data myself, I personally would just want to see that data. As I said, if there are factors that they did include in their study, but that were ruled out, then that too would be valuable information for everybody to see.
I'd like to have seen it in full myself, but I wasn't going to pay them for the privilege, and it being a matter more of curiosity than impact...

I would argue that you do, if you're not trying to hide something. What's the harm in starting back in 1917, for instance, or at least sometime before 1981? If the "AWB" is actually explanatory, the more data would only make the case stronger.
Having looked at a lot of data over the years relating, I don't know how far back we can reproduce the same sort of numbers/data reliably and I suspect that's in play.

Also in keeping with this being a better parallel, the penalty must be similar. Not wearing a seat belt is a ticketable offense, a civil violation not a criminal one. An "AWB" would involve prison terms.
No, driving offenses are criminal offenses. Civil matters are prosecuted by the individual, or can be had where the state is a party, as in land cases, but one that without a number of factors also being present is likely to end with only a fine.

Also for lack of a better place to mention it, even if we decide that this study's result is actionable, we are only justified in reinstating the exact same law,
You could say we'd be bound to only recognize that efficacy and that any extension beyond or variation of would impede it and throw its value out of the window, but I'd argue against it, that what you're seeing is a principle supported by reason and illustrated, however weakly, by the study.

No. That's incorrect. If my kin were murdered by a suicidal mass murderer using an array of assault weapons, I still would not support gun control.
I'd say when people speak in the abstract the term "insignificant" tends to be easier to come by and support than it does when we apply it to matters of moment, as with the lives of children. So we may find preventing the loss of a thousand lives insignificant in relation to the impact of that on a rate calculated on populations with hundreds of millions of lives in play. But I think it is inarguably significant in a human way, and as we value or should.

Suicidal mass murderers (and the other varieties also) harden my conviction that gun control is essentially unjust.
Then I think you're conviction is subject to some idea of principle that impairs your consideration, given that where the laws I support and restraints I argue for are found dramatically fewer of those murders occur.

It is flagrantly infringing, not their right to bear arms, but their right to live, to make laws that increase the chance that innocent people will be outgunned by their attempted murderer.
In none of the models I note have the rights of the people to make laws been abridged and innocent people are demonstrably safer than they are without those laws.

No, that's completely false. Brazil, Honduras, Guatemala, Jamaica, and the list isn't even close to complete there, are way more dangerous than the US.
See, this is why I use supra more often than shorthand. I have repeatedly proffered the context for my argument and none of those countries fall within it. I have used Western Industrial Democracies ad nauseam, and because they are our close cousins in every serious sense of the word, having marked similarities in law, traditions, and populations. So it's either supra or if I leave off a word one of you may suddenly, apparently, has amnesia on the point and I'm into this sort of sidebar.

In addition, I've calculated that if black men in the US would only murder proportionally to their proportion of the population, the murder rate in the US would drop by 30%, making our country even safer, even with the gobs of civilian owned guns floating around.
This is where statistics need to meet larger reason in context. Where you find concentrations of poverty you find concentrations of violence. Blacks are disproportionately poor and found in those circumstances. Else, you'll find yourself making silly arguments, that melanin or geography carry violence in them.

I found five whole states with 'weak' gun laws and excellent (low) murder rate
If you'd looked for states with the strongest gun laws and highest murder rates you wouldn't have found a single example. But every state that was among the worst had weak gun laws.The rule is not the outlier or exception.

I know that. But it's not Not about the number of guns either.
I've literally never had number of guns as a part of my argument. Own as many as suits you, provided they aren't semi or fully automatic and that you don't couple them with large magazines, bump stocks, or speed loaders. And provided you're willing to register them and be certified as having understood their safe operation.

According to your view there should never be countries where civilian gun ownership of any kind is extremely low, and murder rate extremely high,
No, that doesn't follow anything I've set out. Now if you had a set of nations with markedly similar characteristics, from law to populations, and looked for the rule, you should find that those with stronger gun laws had safer populations, were less likely to experience mass murder by gun than those with weak laws. That I've said and noted in looking at the very thing.

That's why I isolated my argument on Western Industrial Democracies when considering our own course. They are our close cousins and we can examine the impact of their laws with some assurance of reproduction, have in fact experienced a milder version of it within our own nation and among states, though you will always have outliers and usually observable reasons for them.

As mentioned, writ large, the number of guns of all types in civilian hands by country, shows a statistically insignificant inverse relation with murders.
Can't really, because thanks to the efforts of lobbying groups we rarely have more than a speculative idea of how many guns are in how many hands. You want that figure to be meaningful you'll need registration of guns, so we can distinguish between ten guys in Dakota hoarding a lot of guns for various reasons (from serious collection to end of civilization paranoia) and the idea of who owns what and how it is distributed across populations to what effect.

It's one reason I've never treated that as something meaningful, either for or against the argument I advance.

The data doesn't support it. The data supports that the more people with more guns, will not increase murders, and everybody having no guns, will not lower murders either.
There's good reason to doubt the data, or note my problems with it, supra. Even Stripe would say if you take away all of the cars we'll have fewer highway fatalities.

I propose that we amend the Constitution first, to increase the burden for confirming a S. Ct. justice instead, to a super majority of both houses, rather than a simple majority. Whenever a super majority is required for change, it tends to stabilize things. This will rule out judges that are in any way extreme from sitting on the highest court. And it might be easier to achieve the super majority required to amend the Constitution with such an effort, instead of getting into the details of the Second Amendment.
I actually like the idea, though I'm not sure it's doable, in which case we have Court with no members and lose a check in the balance of powers. Or, we'd have to tie a lot of penalty and insistence in it, then have some alternative it the threshold wasn't reached. And I'd like the candidate to be provided not by the president, but by representatives from the Bar Association, divided by political lines and with a similar mandate in their designation of a list of acceptable candidates who the president would choose from, so we avoid a few underqualified and embarrassing nominees.

And all that aside, we do agree on at least one thing. Neither of us wants to see anymore mass murders, ceteris paribus. Neither of us ever wants to see again something like Braddock. Your solution to Braddock and mine are certainly wildly different, but we do both want the same outcome here.
Agreed. And to be clear, as mistaken as I find your approach, I don't doubt your intent or the sincerity of your conviction.

Whereas your attempt is to ban the weaponry that he used, mine is about preserving the right of the rest of us to arm ourselves at least similarly to (if not better than) how he armed himself.
Reminds me of the old quote, an eye for an eye until the whole world is blind. Or in this case, more likely wounded or dead.

Mine also requires that We the People take more individual responsibility to take care of ourselves, and our kin, and our neighbors and other innocent (of capital crimes) people.
To me that's a wild west mentality that invites disaster given the weapons you'd allow. Else, I have no problem with people defending themselves or their property with any of the weapons I support.

I think we have strong reason to understand that in adopting some hybrid of the models available to examine we can effectively impact the likelihood of accomplishing our shared goal of public safety while, honestly, only impacting a particular exercise that is relatively new to us, and revert to the rule of use wherein we all managed to preserve property, life, recreation, hunting, and the full exercise of our right without them.


In the case of Braddock, I would have preferred to see maybe dozens of innocent people in that crowd armed with rifles that could shoot back at his perch.
I suspect, as someone who has been under fire and had a gun pointed at me, that it's more likely that a lot of additional innocent people would have been killed by a combination of mistake and adrenaline. No, I think it's better to remove those weapons from the stream of commerce. Buy them back, let attrition take the rest. And avoid that nut having the easy possession of a weapon capable of it and the horror that attended his impulse.
 

Lon

Well-known member
No idea why it seems that way to you. It's not hard to distinguish between a machine gun and a shotgun, or between a gun designed in a way that makes it ideal for wholesale slaughter and what isn't.
Uhgg, now you've got me trying to decide if my demise will be rattling with bullets or a shotgun blast.... I guess I'm with you, the shotgun would have me not really knowing it afterwards....


Here's how I see it. The right is to bear arms, not every sort of arm, not bazookas or rpgs, etc. And as I noted to someone a bit ago, this particular sort of weapon is relatively new on the scene, wasn't present at all when the Founders framed the right and found the weapons of their day sufficient to meet it.

So, to repeat a part of my position voiced prior: The ease with which they facilitate that outcome set against a utility easily met by weapons that don't, should lead honest, decent, and reasonable men to oppose them.

Isn't this saying those tens of millions that own them aren't reasonable or decent? :think:

You do have a flare for political activism, but I think I see why it often comes back and bites you. This sound a bit extreme to me.
You'll have to forgive me, I often think you are cut from the same cloth as a moderate, but you definitely like to stir the pot and stoke the fire~!


It's found in the right itself. The rest is an argument about exercise, from what weapons are too dangerous to permit, to what practices are (like shooting into the air or over someone else's property).
Or whatever imagined need for defense. I just don't know. I WOULD like to see one in the hand of one who'd take out a terrorist. Likely? Not since that last ones in a truck rack. Just not practical in the city. Maybe just a country gun then?


That's what we're talking about.
Well, yeah, and the floor. That's why I came into thread. I need convincing. I'm not really opposed one way or the other but it reminds me of a bill here in WA to stop bear-hunting. The folks in the city, with absolutely no idea, whatsoever, got to vote. Fish and Game, farmers, woodsmen, and those who hunt should have decided this law. There was another time the vote was over deer and because city people didn't want Bambi dead, many thousands died the next winter. The deer population boom also caused other plant eaters to starve to death too. Point: We sometimes only see our own part of our corner of the world. So, yes, I'm wanting to see another's corner or two in thread so of course I want to know between an AK-47 and a tank and everything in between. I'm not sure this thread will be able to deliver on 'all things' but certainly 'a lot of things.'


I have from the beginning made it clear that I'm speaking to civilian use and ownership, those things introduced into the regular stream of commerce. I want the police to have maximum firepower, just as I expect them to have serious training and oversight in their use. Soldiers likewise, along with tanks and aircraft carriers that I also wouldn't want to see in the hands of a private citizen.
Yes, but I'm also talking about these, having them at home as well. Call it 'homework.' Is the need there? You can certainly argue "no" but again, there are tens of millions of these weapons. There are definitely not tens of millions nor even a million, nor even a thousand used in crimes. I'm trying to see your side, and then will give my attention to the rebuttal as well. It is a place for each to make a good point before I go vote.


No, there's no argument on that point, least of all from me.
With a semi-automatic? The only place I can see a need, is if the bad-guy already has one. Of the few that are ever used, it might be a great idea if the other ten million have the same weapon capability. Granted, one or two of them have been heinously irresponsible if they allowed their disturbed teen access.

Sure. And we should have a buy back program to begin with. A lot of people will turn them in by that means for a few easy reasons I've noted talking to someone around here. If you can't take it to a shooting range, can't use it without criminal penalty attaching, why keep it? Most likely won't. There may be some functional accommodation for pure collectors, relating to guns that can be displayed, but rendered incapable of use.

Attrition will take care of the rest. If you can't manufacture or sell them, you can't replace them.
Many crimes are performed with knives as well but I don't want to ban knives at this time (I kind of need them for cooking).


That's right. But this isn't an argument aimed at solving all crime. It's particularly aimed at making the most horrific less likely. And it does that everywhere it's in place.
It's ONE answer. Is it the ONLY answer? That's what I have to be convinced of... :think:

Sure. They're the easiest to conceal and they're lethal enough to do most of what you'd want to do with a weapon, legally or not.
So ban those too? Okay, I'm seeing some of your ceiling, but what's next? Nerf cars? I'm not saying all murderers are brilliant, but won't those kinds of kids that shot up Columbine, grab a car, or a bulldozer, next? Is taking away 160 million semi-automatic weapons for the two that will end up killing, the answer? Will it really stop these 6 or 10 kids and mentally ill from 'figuring it out?' When the news begins looking at the kid who dropped a wire into a lake, or the mentally unstable violent man that ran a bus over the fair, or the bomb at the Boston Marathon occurs, do we take away ALL buses, ALL electric, and ALL fertilizer? Should we figure out fertilizer that cannot be used in bombs? Cars that automatically shut off when blood hits it?


I think it's just a numbers game. Population plus number of available weapons and cost for them. In 1980 there were 226 million people living in the US. In 1990, 250 million. In 2000, 282 million. In 2015, 321 million. Now couple that serious uptick in population with a serious escalation of weapons affordability and availability and you have your answer. It's not a different context, it's numbers.
Perhaps, but the police officer making this presentation said the media was 'teaching' people how to do it, and do it better. He had statistics to back it up.
The majority of the worst mass shootings of the past decade have seen one of that sort of weapon, generally known under the AR designation, involved.
As far as the rifle attacks, yes, but the vast majority of attacks are done with handguns.
 

Stripe

Teenage Adaptive Ninja Turtle
LIFETIME MEMBER
Hall of Fame
I WOULD like to see one in the hand of one who'd take out a terrorist. Likely? Not since that last ones in a truck rack. Just not practical in the city. Maybe just a country gun then?

Mass murderers target gun-free zones.

Men who are willing and ready to protect people have to become criminals to do so.

The video I posted of the NRA instructor who took on a shooter had to run to the scene — a government-designated gun-free zone.

If just one man in the church had been willing to ignore the regulations that infringe on the right to bear arms, dozens could have been saved.
 

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
Uhgg, now you've got me trying to decide if my demise will be rattling with bullets or a shotgun blast.... I guess I'm with you, the shotgun would have me not really knowing it afterwards....



[/COLOR]Isn't this saying those tens of millions that own them aren't reasonable or decent? :think:

You do have a flare for political activism, but I think I see why it often comes back and bites you. This sound a bit extreme to me.
You'll have to forgive me, I often think you are cut from the same cloth as a moderate, but you definitely like to stir the pot and stoke the fire~!



Or whatever imagined need for defense. I just don't know. I WOULD like to see one in the hand of one who'd take out a terrorist. Likely? Not since that last ones in a truck rack. Just not practical in the city. Maybe just a country gun then?


Well, yeah, and the floor. That's why I came into thread. I need convincing. I'm not really opposed one way or the other but it reminds me of a bill here in WA to stop bear-hunting. The folks in the city, with absolutely no idea, whatsoever, got to vote. Fish and Game, farmers, woodsmen, and those who hunt should have decided this law. There was another time the vote was over deer and because city people didn't want Bambi dead, many thousands died the next winter. The deer population boom also caused other plant eaters to starve to death too. Point: We sometimes only see our own part of our corner of the world. So, yes, I'm wanting to see another's corner or two in thread so of course I want to know between an AK-47 and a tank and everything in between. I'm not sure this thread will be able to deliver on 'all things' but certainly 'a lot of things.'


Yes, but I'm also talking about these, having them at home as well. Call it 'homework.' Is the need there? You can certainly argue "no" but again, there are tens of millions of these weapons. There are definitely not tens of millions nor even a million, nor even a thousand used in crimes. I'm trying to see your side, and then will give my attention to the rebuttal as well. It is a place for each to make a good point before I go vote.



With a semi-automatic? The only place I can see a need, is if the bad-guy already has one. Of the few that are ever used, it might be a great idea if the other ten million have the same weapon capability. Granted, one or two of them have been heinously irresponsible if they allowed their disturbed teen access.


Many crimes are performed with knives as well but I don't want to ban knives at this time (I kind of need them for cooking).



It's ONE answer. Is it the ONLY answer? That's what I have to be convinced of... :think:

So ban those too? Okay, I'm seeing some of your ceiling, but what's next? Nerf cars? I'm not saying all murderers are brilliant, but won't those kinds of kids that shot up Columbine, grab a car, or a bulldozer, next? Is taking away 160 million semi-automatic weapons for the two that will end up killing, the answer? Will it really stop these 6 or 10 kids and mentally ill from 'figuring it out?' When the news begins looking at the kid who dropped a wire into a lake, or the mentally unstable violent man that ran a bus over the fair, or the bomb at the Boston Marathon occurs, do we take away ALL buses, ALL electric, and ALL fertilizer? Should we figure out fertilizer that cannot be used in bombs? Cars that automatically shut off when blood hits it?


Perhaps, but the police officer making this presentation said the media was 'teaching' people how to do it, and do it better. He had statistics to back it up.

As far as the rifle attacks, yes, but the vast majority of attacks are done with handguns.

And once again I would remind everyone here that the most effective mass murderers in America used box cutters
 

Town Heretic

Out of Order
Hall of Fame
]Isn't this saying those tens of millions that own them aren't reasonable or decent? :think:
No, it's saying that as much as they love their quiet enjoyment of that tank, it's not worth the damage and death that some other doofus will use it to produce and that the good news is every single thing a person could want to do with a tank other than matching that particular can be done with another vehicle.

You do have a flare for political activism, but I think I see why it often comes back and bites you.
Bites me how? People differing? That's going to happen regardless.

This sound a bit extreme to me.
I don't know why. Now if I'd said, "We should get rid of all guns. Then, as with Stripes note on cars, we could eliminate the problem all together." That would be extreme. Or if I said, instead, "We should own any weapon we want, including bazookas." That would be extreme. But I happen to believe that the right can exist in a civil society and actually accomplish a few things that are healthy for us, from hunting and recreation to personal protection, if not unfettered from any sense of cost/benefit analysis.

All I'm against is a fairly new entry into the popular end of the gun pool that's more trouble than it's worth.

You'll have to forgive me, I often think you are cut from the same cloth as a moderate, but you definitely like to stir the pot and stoke the fire~!
On gun control, I think I have more in common with most Americans than I do with extremists from either end of the spectrum, where you find, "Any gun I want" and "No guns," as the expression of a rigid approach.


Or whatever imagined need for defense. I just don't know. I WOULD like to see one in the hand of one who'd take out a terrorist. Likely? Not since that last ones in a truck rack. Just not practical in the city. Maybe just a country gun then?
Unless you think the wild west is a good bet to establish a safer society anywhere (and I think I can argue you out of that notion) then leave it with law enforcement. Or, get an AR and find a field. Set some targets up at the far end where you'll shoot. Have a buddy with a bullhorn standing at your back and start walking toward them. At some random point he should start yelling, "BANGBANGBANGBANG..." and keep yelling it. Then you should sprint at top speed for forty yards toward your targets. At the end of that time try to shoot a red one set among other targets in white to get a feel of how your body is responding to the adrenaline. Ideally you should start shooting the second you complete your dash.

Now you'll be expecting trouble, so your response won't be pure, and the target situation can be fluid, but at least you'll start to get an idea about the difficulty involved.


Well, yeah, and the floor. That's why I came into thread. I need convincing. I'm not really opposed one way or the other but it reminds me of a bill here in WA to stop bear-hunting. The folks in the city, with absolutely no idea, whatsoever, got to vote. Fish and Game, farmers, woodsmen, and those who hunt should have decided this law. There was another time the vote was over deer and because city people didn't want Bambi dead, many thousands died the next winter. The deer population boom also caused other plant eaters to starve to death too. Point: We sometimes only see our own part of our corner of the world. So, yes, I'm wanting to see another's corner or two in thread so of course I want to know between an AK-47 and a tank and everything in between. I'm not sure this thread will be able to deliver on 'all things' but certainly 'a lot of things.'
To me it's an obvious get. In the last decade, most of the mass shootings have been accomplished with this sort of weapon in the mix and contributing heavily to the fatalities. As I've said before, repeatedly, the only thing this gun can do that another gun can't is kill a lot of people in a very small window of time. If we can protect the right that was served before this weapon was introduced and take away that disproportionately advantageous to a killing field weapon it's a win without any real loss. Unless you value the idea of owning it over the demonstrated cost to human life.

Yes, but I'm also talking about these, having them at home as well.
That would be up to the police to set policy.

but again, there are tens of millions of these weapons. There are definitely not tens of millions nor even a million, nor even a thousand used in crimes. I'm trying to see your side, and then will give my attention to the rebuttal as well. It is a place for each to make a good point before I go vote.
How many people own the gun, a thing we can't know because the NRA fights attempts to register weapons, isn't material to me. There are only three points that are.
1. The right to bear arms can be met without these weapons.
2. These weapons by design have a capacity to kill a great many people in a very short amount of time, meaning that the likelihood remains that whenever anyone decides to use them as an instrument of mass murder a lot of people are likely to die before they're stopped.
3. A lot of innocent people, children, parishioners, concert goers, ect. will be placed at risk for no better reason than, "I want to own this weapon," if the status quo remains.

With a semi-automatic? The only place I can see a need, is if the bad-guy already has one.
It doesn't follow that your weapon choice makes mine less effective, unless we're having a "who can shoot the most bullets?" contest. In fact, one way my grandfather made me a better shot was by damaging the ejector on my first shotgun, so that I had to remove the spent casing manually. I learned to hit and kill with my first shot.

Of the few that are ever used, it might be a great idea if the other ten million have the same weapon capability.
That's the status quo. That will produce more schoolyard graveyards. How many mass murders has that weapon prevented?

Many crimes are performed with knives as well but I don't want to ban knives at this time (I kind of need them for cooking).
A couple of easy answers then. First, we can't ban knives, by which I mean we can't meaningfully impact their production even without serious manufacturing support. Second, the closer parallel would be outlawing a particular knife like instrument, like a disguised sword that could be brought into play quickly, but it's still a weak parallel, because of the degree of damage we're talking about.

So it really isn't like outlawing knives or anything else. The gun is unique in its capacity and the ease with which it can be hidden and introduced into areas of dense population for effect.

It's ONE answer. Is it the ONLY answer? That's what I have to be convinced of...
No it isn't the only answer, it's the most effective answer. And we have examples to make that case, most recently Australia, that had 13 mass shootings in about as many years, said no to these weapons and since have had none of them in over twenty years. Now we could simply mandate registration and safety courses and make its possession subject to mental health evaluations where the police have reasonable cause to suspect instability, give them the license to check on gun stockpiling made known through registration, a few things like that would help, might help a great deal. As I said, there are a number of models in play when you look across the pond. But the most effective is the ban and given we don't need these guns to do anything else with that can't be done without them, I'd rather take the road more efficacious.

So ban those too?
I've been pretty clear on where I see the rational line in the sand in terms of weapons. It's not a domino waiting to fall because the defining characteristic is unique.

Is taking away 160 million semi-automatic weapons for the two that will end up killing, the answer?
It depends on what you value more.

Will it really stop these 6 or 10 kids and mentally ill from 'figuring it out?'
Largely, yes, because the gun is a unique instrument that doesn't have an easy replacement with its efficacy that requires so little expense or expertise.

When the news begins looking at the kid who dropped a wire into a lake, or the mentally unstable violent man that ran a bus over the fair, or the bomb at the Boston Marathon occurs, do we take away ALL buses, ALL electric, and ALL fertilizer? Should we figure out fertilizer that cannot be used in bombs? Cars that automatically shut off when blood hits it?
I don't believe the response to a preventable evil is to say our inability to perfect protection from it is an argument against the effort that will, inarguably, save human lives. When we had Timothy's bombing we didn't shrug and say, "Well, it's fertilizer, what are you going to do about that?" Instead we started tracking purchases, especially larger ones, and making an effort to impede future home grown terrorists on the point.

When a few evil men hijacked planes and drove them into the World Trade Center we didn't respond with a shrug, we made efforts to make our skies, pilots, and passengers safer from their efforts. And we can't afford the absence of transportation, but we are taking measures to make it safer from error or intent. Otherwise, see my knife answer.

Perhaps, but the police officer making this presentation said the media was 'teaching' people how to do it, and do it better. He had statistics to back it up.
Maybe. So do we restrain speech? And where do we draw the line between instruction and simple reporting?

As far as the rifle attacks, yes, but the vast majority of attacks are done with handguns.
A lot of handguns are semi-automatic and holding large magazines too, Lon. And if you recall, I'd rather see an end to semi-automatic weapons in the hands of anyone who isn't in uniform. But that's a larger argument (not the clips or speed loaders, but semi automatics all together) and with limited clips they're not going to pose the same danger to the broader public as the AR. With easy modification the AR is a machine gun.
 
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Stripe

Teenage Adaptive Ninja Turtle
LIFETIME MEMBER
Hall of Fame
I don't know why. Now if I'd said, "We should get rid of all guns. Then, as with Stripes note on cars, we could eliminate the problem all together."

Do you intentionally misread everything?

Your agenda is to ban specific types of weapons. You use data from nations that do not have those kinds of guns to support your case.

When you ban the weapons you want banned, they cannot be used.
 

Town Heretic

Out of Order
Hall of Fame
Do you intentionally misread everything?
Do you miswrite everything? :think:

Your agenda is to ban specific types of weapons. You use data from nations that do not have those kinds of guns to support your case.
To demonstrate that in otherwise similar populations and legal frameworks, where those weapons have been banned, there is an observable impact on gun violence and deaths. Much safer societies. And those nations have other guns, just as I want our right to bear arms preserved here.

Then stop arguing with me. :up:
Mostly have and will.

:e4e:
 

Lon

Well-known member
!

!

No, it's saying that as much as they love their quiet enjoyment of that tank, it's not worth the damage and death that some other doofus will use it to produce and that the good news is every single thing a person could want to do with a tank other than matching that particular can be done with another vehicle.


Bites me how? People differing? That's going to happen regardless.


I don't know why. Now if I'd said, "We should get rid of all guns. Then, as with Stripes note on cars, we could eliminate the problem all together." That would be extreme. Or if I said, instead, "We should own any weapon we want, including bazookas." That would be extreme. But I happen to believe that the right can exist in a civil society and actually accomplish a few things that are healthy for us, from hunting and recreation to personal protection, if not unfettered from any sense of cost/benefit analysis.

All I'm against is a fairly new entry into the popular end of the gun pool that's more trouble than it's worth.


On gun control, I think I have more in common with most Americans than I do with extremists from either end of the spectrum, where you find, "Any gun I want" and "No guns," as the expression of a rigid approach.

This all had to do with 'reasonable' and 'decent.' I think sometimes you leap before you look. There is a good bit of empathetic humor in all my observations BUT I do think your wording might make up a good bit of your friction dialogue on TOL (not all of it certainly).

Unless you think the wild west is a good bet to establish a safer society anywhere (and I think I can argue you out of that notion) then leave it with law enforcement. Or, get an AR and find a field. Set some targets up at the far end where you'll shoot. Have a buddy with a bullhorn standing at your back and start walking toward them. At some random point he should start yelling, "BANGBANGBANGBANG..." and keep yelling it. Then you should sprint at top speed for forty yards toward your targets. At the end of that time try to shoot a red one set among other targets in white to get a feel of how your body is responding to the adrenaline. Ideally you should start shooting the second you complete your dash.

Now you'll be expecting trouble, so your response won't be pure, and the target situation can be fluid, but at least you'll start to get an idea about the difficulty involved.
Not me, but I recognize for most. These wouldn't want the AK. If it ever comes to this, just in case, I would. It's not for everybody, but I'd argue it certainly can be for somebody.



To me it's an obvious get. In the last decade, most of the mass shootings have been accomplished with this sort of weapon in the mix and contributing heavily to the fatalities. As I've said before, repeatedly, the only thing this gun can do that another gun can't is kill a lot of people in a very small window of time. If we can protect the right that was served before this weapon was introduced and take away that disproportionately advantageous to a killing field weapon it's a win without any real loss. Unless you value the idea of owning it over the demonstrated cost to human life.
Yes, along with box cutters and airplanes, pistols and cars, and fertilizer :(

Your's is one idea, and it is a good one, but the only one?


How many people own the gun, a thing we can't know because the NRA fights attempts to register weapons, isn't material to me. There are only three points that are.
1. The right to bear arms can be met without these weapons.
2. These weapons by design have a capacity to kill a great many people in a very short amount of time, meaning that the likelihood remains that whenever anyone decides to use them as an instrument of mass murder a lot of people are likely to die before they're stopped.
3. A lot of innocent people, children, parishioners, concert goers, ect. will be placed at risk for no better reason than, "I want to own this weapon," if the status quo remains.
When I was a kid, you could go to army surplus and get these, missile-launcher tubes, and a few other odd items. I don't mind restrictions on some of these, nor a greater accountability. Would you want a restriction on all semi-automatic weapons of any kind?


It doesn't follow that your weapon choice makes mine less effective, unless we're having a "who can shoot the most bullets?" contest. In fact, one way my grandfather made me a better shot was by damaging the ejector on my first shotgun, so that I had to remove the spent casing manually. I learned to hit and kill with my first shot.
I'm a much better shot with bullets than the shotgun. I can hop a can 7 out of 9 shots with a pistol at 15 paces (about 40-45 feet). I'm not bad with a bow either. I have a harder time hitting a clay or duck with a shotgun.


That's the status quo. That will produce more schoolyard graveyards. How many mass murders has that weapon prevented?
More than you'd think and a few with other good defense reasons. Perhaps, being better shots, 'we' don't need them? I don't know. Of all the people I know personally who own them, not one is irresponsible with them. The numbers do show that there are certainly a percentage that aren't responsible.

A couple of easy answers then. First, we can't ban knives, by which I mean we can't meaningfully impact their production even without serious manufacturing support. Second, the closer parallel would be outlawing a particular knife like instrument, like a disguised sword that could be brought into play quickly, but it's still a weak parallel, because of the degree of damage we're talking about.
As doser said, a set of box knives were used to take airplanes, and those to destroy many lives. We did up protection but not box knives. That's why I'm saying 'banning box-cutters' is but one option. The other is costly, but it seems to be working.

So it really isn't like outlawing knives or anything else. The gun is unique in its capacity and the ease with which it can be hidden and introduced into areas of dense population for effect.
And box cutters, bombs, airplanes, and cars. In WA, laws are being written to keep guns out of the 'wrong' hands, rather than just 'hands.' I'm not sure if that's the answer either. It is one answer. The problem with trial and error is policy written is difficult to go back against.


No it isn't the only answer, it's the most effective answer. And we have examples to make that case, most recently Australia, that had 13 mass shootings in about as many years, said no to these weapons and since have had none of them in over twenty years. Now we could simply mandate registration and safety courses and make its possession subject to mental health evaluations where the police have reasonable cause to suspect instability, give them the license to check on gun stockpiling made known through registration, a few things like that would help, might help a great deal. As I said, there are a number of models in play when you look across the pond. But the most effective is the ban and given we don't need these guns to do anything else with that can't be done without them, I'd rather take the road more efficacious.
There was a ban on these guns at one time as a kind of experiment.


I've been pretty clear on where I see the rational line in the sand in terms of weapons. It's not a domino waiting to fall because the defining characteristic is unique.
If we follow reason, shouldn't we be banning semi-automatic handguns first?


It depends on what you value more.
No, that's not right. This is another one of those debate tactics that gets you into it on TOL. "Value" isn't on the questioning table here. It is marginalizing. I'd suggest everyone in this thread have the right kind of values at least in principle. By this kind of reasoning, we should ban all guns according to 'what we value more.' You'd have to argue with/for me whether we need ANY gun according to the greater value of human life, or that we should be driving cars, for that matter. Automobiles still kill more people than guns or boxcutters will:
"It depends on what 'we' value more."


Largely, yes, because the gun is a unique instrument that doesn't have an easy replacement with its efficacy that requires so little expense or expertise.
But how did these kids get them in the first place? Wasn't it/isn't it still negligent and/or criminal parents? As soon as any kid figures out something else, the news will begin teaching the next generation 'how to do it' and 'how to do it better.'


II don't believe the response to a preventable evil is to say our inability to perfect protection from it is an argument against the effort that will, inarguably, save human lives. When we had Timothy's bombing we didn't shrug and say, "Well, it's fertilizer, what are you going to do about that?" Instead we started tracking purchases, especially larger ones, and making an effort to impede future home grown terrorists on the point.
B-I-N-G-O. ONE option would have been - "ban fertilizer." Another is to 'track it.' That's what I'm saying too: Banning the AR isn't the ONLY option. It might have worked for Australia (still reading pros and cons), but it is yet only ONE option. If there is a better and more effective one, then that better and more effective one should be employed, especially if it solves the AR-ownership problem.

IWhen a few evil men hijacked planes and drove them into the World Trade Center we didn't respond with a shrug, we made efforts to make our skies, pilots, and passengers safer from their efforts. And we can't afford the absence of transportation, but we are taking measures to make it safer from error or intent. Otherwise, see my knife answer.
Right! We didn't 'ban' boxcutters, nor airplanes. That was only ONE option, and we found other ones that weren't so invasive (nor impossible to implement - read that ban experiment and what we learned again).


IMaybe. So do we restrain speech? And where do we draw the line between instruction and simple reporting?
It used to be, news agencies (and all television) had advisory boards and censors. They were self-regulating. All they need is the value and integrity to do so again, but we have to do something to that one rogue company that is more into $ than responsible reporting. That's what caused the downfall in the first place.


IA lot of handguns are semi-automatic and holding large magazines too, Lon. And if you recall, I'd rather see an end to semi-automatic weapons in the hands of anyone who isn't in uniform. But that's a larger argument (not the clips or speed loaders, but semi automatics all together) and with limited clips they're not going to pose the same danger to the broader public as the AR. With easy modification the AR is a machine gun.
This is where the thread serves, I think. It doesn't have to be only ONE answer. We all want what works. Your 'values, decent, and sensible' comments don't have to ONLY end one way. The decent, sensible and valuable may disagree with the ONE way and choose a different 'decent, valuable, and sensible' solution. :e4e:
 

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
I use my 22 for varmint control, often at night, often in the treetops. In those conditions, I can knock a porcupine or raccoon out of a tree, but not reliably kill it. And if i had to take my eyes off it to chamber another round, chances are good it would crawl away in the dark, injured.

Much better to keep eyes on it and have a second shot (and a third) automatically loaded, ready to shoot.

I can't imagine why anybody with any real experience with guns would want anything else.
 

Idolater

"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
'The British are coming!' meant, 'The British are coming For the Guns!'

;)
This is the most important philosophical dispute going on in the world right now. Between headlines, we stew on our world, and we've been stewing. I called out recently, that if we count attempted murder as murder, then S. Braddock (not his real name) is far and away, categorically, the worse thing done by any individual with a gun in this country. I could be missing something obvious, but afaik that statement is a fact.

Columbine: 34
Aurora theater: 82
Pulse nightclub: 102
Braddock: 480

Braddock thought it through; how he (a suicidal mass murderer) was going to 'go out,' taking as many innocent people with him as possible.

Money was relatively no object. Braddock paid for an expensive hotel room hundreds of feet in the air, within range of the fish barrel. Braddock had more ammunition than needed, and he didn't run out.

Braddock hit 480 people with bullets, which are tiny little pieces of dense metal that go real fast, so fast that you can't see them. They go into and through humans.

Braddock was shooting bullets into a fish barrel; where the venue was the barrel, and the people were the fish.

=
America is an experiment, and the world is watching us. Our sister Western countries including South Korea and Japan, have already removed assault weapons from their civilians. What are replicas of real military weapons, disabled versions of the real thing.

My position is that the right to bear arms is absolute, inalienable, inviolable, inherent, natural. It's incorporeal, and it's as real as (the similarly incorporeal) death. It means that when your life is imperiled, as Town Heretic's life has been, having been fired upon personally, that you have the authority and authorization to bear any arm in defense of yourself. It's a facet of the right to life, and a richer expression of the right to self defense.

btw, everybody possesses the right to bear arms, all poc, lgbt etc., women, migrants, ex-cons, Satanists, et al.; there is no difference.

And I believe that such a right must be recognized, affirmed, protected, defended, etc., in order that laws are just. If laws permit the right to bear arms to be infringed, then they are bad laws, and our Constitution says specifically that we are not to infringe the right to bear arms.

We need to figure this out, and this is the most important philosophical conflict in the world right now, the history of the human race depends largely upon what we can do here in the US right now, in this generation.

I suggest that we generate enough political will to amend the Constitution. We either should change the Bill of Rights to be more precise, or we should be more specific, or we should interpret it again. If we can't do that, then we should examine raising the bar for confirming Supreme Court justices in order to stabilize gun policy. In the meantime, we have to obey our law. It says 'shall not be infringed.' So I'll vote NRA every election because there aren't any other laws where we are so systematically and complacently and wantonly disregarding the Bill of Rights as we are wrt gun control and gun law.

The First Amendment says 'press,' so it's not the same thing, but the Second Amendment doesn't even mention any particular gun, or weapon; it just says "arms." Before guns, swords and clubs and crossbows were arms. The right to bear arms means those things too.

And through direct analogy it's also probable that the framers would agree that "arms" means prima facie the guns that British troops carried, and today those British troops carry service rifles and service carbines, and semiautomatic handguns, both fed by detachable magazines with up to around 20 rounds capacity for the latter, and up to around 30 for the former.

If writing could kill. You write a certain sentence, and whoever reads it dies. You are supposed to only write that sentence in self defense. A typewriter is like an assault weapon, and a word processor is like a service rifle, and a PC wirelessly connected to a dozen different printers is like a S.A.W., 'squad automatic weapon'---which is a really nice word processor.

You can write the sentence with a pencil or pen, and that would be sufficient to exercise the right.​

Anyway that's why this thread's here. This is the most important thing in the world. Guns are the most important thing in the world. If we don't figure out guns, we're not going to figure out anything, because the rate of suicidal mass murders done with guns, is accelerating.
 

Town Heretic

Out of Order
Hall of Fame
This all had to do with 'reasonable' and 'decent.' I think sometimes you leap before you look. There is a good bit of empathetic humor in all my observations BUT I do think your wording might make up a good bit of your friction dialogue on TOL (not all of it certainly).
I think sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but if you aren't of the mind to see it, then it's a lit stick being waved at you to no good end...maybe.

Yes, along with box cutters and airplanes, pistols and cars, and fertilizer :(
Well, you can't really do with any of those what one man in a hotel room managed to do with his AR in a brief span of time. Maybe if you understand how to use the fertilizer to make a bomb, then can transport it without being caught and have enough expertise to set it off when you mean to, but even then the damage you do will be up to a lot of factors that are harder to control. And there's something in the psychology of it too. People who use knives want to be up close and it tends to be personal. Or they're substituting weapons. But it takes a different sort of person to do that, even among killers. And it opens the attacker to being thwarted or killed without accomplishing any of his aim.

Since the last massacre in Australia, where they also have cars, box cutters, and fertilizer, they haven't seen a rash of bombings, cuttings, airplane crashes, etc. taking the place of guns. Makes sense. It's so much easier to just buy a gun, some bullets, and drive to a spot where you see a lot of people, or to the church or mosque where the particular people you hate are found. That sort of thing.

Your's is one idea, and it is a good one, but the only one?
Well, my idea has a number of expressions with one fundamental truth attached, where it is found people are safer. So there may be any number of ideas, but is there a best idea? My argument is that the data says yes, there is.

When I was a kid, you could go to army surplus and get these, missile-launcher tubes, and a few other odd items. I don't mind restrictions on some of these, nor a greater accountability. Would you want a restriction on all semi-automatic weapons of any kind?
Yes. I said that in my last, at the end, and several times before to others. But even simply putting an end to ARs would help, along with registration, safety courses, and the banning of aids like bump stocks and speed loaders. The better course is to ban semi-automatic weapons.

I'm a much better shot with bullets than the shotgun. I can hop a can 7 out of 9 shots with a pistol at 15 paces (about 40-45 feet). I'm not bad with a bow either. I have a harder time hitting a clay or duck with a shotgun.
It's not the weapon then, it's what you're shooting at. Try a paper target at relative distance and see. And that's before we get to the psychological advantages of using the weapon for home defense. Or, as Range365 put it:

"Handguns are hip, but a home defense shotgun, kept clean and handy, and paired with the right home defense shotgun ammo is the best tool to defend your family and property.

A shotgun’s superiority has little to do with its deadly pellet spread or the menacing sound it makes when its action is racked (more on that later). Rather, it’s about accuracy and control. If you’ve ever shot a handgun, you know how easy it is to miss your target. Combine a short sight radius with a single grip and the pressure of a life-or-death situation, and it becomes easier to understand that about 75 percent of all bullets fired by trained police miss their mark.

Conversely, a shotgun offers four points of contact to steady and guide an easier-to-aim barrel. And then there’s its terminal energy. In each typical shotshell of 00 Buck, there are nine pellets that combine to deliver roughly 1500 ft.-lbs. of energy to the target—or four times the energy of a .45 ACP bullet fired from a Model 1911 pistol. Factor in five to nine shells capable of being fired in rapid succession, and what you have is one of the most formidable arms for home defense ever conceived..." LINK

a set of box knives were used to take airplanes
So we made the doors more secure and upped the ante on martials. But box cutters aren't designed to kill people. In fact, they're not a very efficient instrument in that regard. They can paralyze people who have no reason to believe more than their safety is in question, a thing they could control by complying, they likely believed.

We did up protection but not box knives.
Again, box knives aren't designed to kill, aren't easily used to that purpose, and aren't really an instrument we can meaningfully ban, or one that you'll see someone kill a few dozen people with in a couple of minutes.

That's why I'm saying 'banning box-cutters' is but one option. The other is costly, but it seems to be working.
But it really isn't an option, because it wasn't purposed to that end and there were many alternatives that could have been as effective. That is, all seeming options/choices aren't equal to the task, again.

There was a ban on these guns at one time as a kind of experiment.
Sort of...I posted a study on it. It wasn't what I'm calling for and it didn't last long, but it happened. And it saved lives.

If we follow reason, shouldn't we be banning semi-automatic handguns first?
I'm in favor of simply banning semi-automatic weapons as a class. But the conversation at some point was largely about mass murder events and if you want to end those the quickest route is banning the AR, along with large magazines.

No, that's not right.
It's entirely right. If you understand that banning these things will make children safer and choose not to then you are making a value statement.

I'd suggest everyone in this thread have the right kind of values at least in principle.
This isn't about a set of values. It's about how and what we value.

By this kind of reasoning, we should ban all guns according to 'what we value more.'
No, because all guns aren't capable of unleashing this sort of horror, and I've said from the outset that we're talking about a cost/benefit analysis. I believe that without an armed citizenry you would have more death, not less. Because there is a point to self defense that is legitimate. But it is not a point that legitimately extends to a weapon only distinguished by its ability to kill a great many people in a very short order of time. Again, all things aren't necessarily equal.

But how did these kids get them in the first place? Wasn't it/isn't it still negligent and/or criminal parents? As soon as any kid figures out something else, the news will begin teaching the next generation 'how to do it' and 'how to do it better.'
The kids who do that have larger mental health issues. Charles Manson thought he was being instructed by the Beetles in a song.

B-I-N-G-O. ONE option would have been - "ban fertilizer."
Not unless you want to kill a great many more people who would be without food. But, again, it's not really a matter of can we think of some alternative, but can we think of one that is equal or superior in impact? Not that I know of or see supported in working models.

It might have worked for Australia (still reading pros and cons)
It objectively did work for Australia, if the point was to end Port Arthur like mass shootings. Thirteen in less than two decades before the laws and none in over twenty since.

, but it is yet only ONE option.
In the sense that Australia could have chosen, instead, to have a, "Say 'Meh' to Murder" musical that toured the country. That would have been another choice. A pointless one that wouldn't have impacted the death toll negatively and may instead have raised it (a lot of people with weapons might really hate musical theater). So having choices isn't the same as having good or roughly equal choices in terms of efficacy.

I've noted that in Europe there are a number of models. In a few countries you can, with a great deal of red tape, still own semi-automatics. But that difficulty tends to mean few do and it's essentially just a way to do, to a lesser extent, what I'm arguing for. And it's less effective.

If there is a better and more effective one, then that better and more effective one should be employed, especially if it solves the AR-ownership problem.
The problem is in the gun itself, the potential in its design. The solution is as obvious as it is effective everywhere it's found.
 

Idolater

"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
It doesn't follow that your weapon choice makes mine less effective, unless we're having a "who can shoot the most bullets?" contest. In fact, one way my grandfather made me a better shot was by damaging the ejector on my first shotgun, so that I had to remove the spent casing manually. I learned to hit and kill with my first shot.
So the danger in such an anecdote is that to the uninformed, it seems to indicate that the best policy is to practice shooting enough so that you can always just shoot once to accomplish what needs to be done.

Sounds reasonable enough.

What the uninformed would fail to consider is that criminals don't always operate as individuals. Sometimes they work together. Also sometimes it's not a single coyote threatening your kin; sometimes it's a flock /herd /pack /murder of them.

Also, if this seemingly reasonable policy held water, then at least one military on the earth you would think would implement it, and that's not true.

Recall that most armed forces around the world are professionals who work with weaponry. In contrast to Town's implication that the best policy is to practice enough to ensure 'one shot kills,' and to then only bear arms capable of only single /non-rapidly repeating shots, all the professional militaries in the world instead outfit their troops with service rifles and service carbines, each capable of, with the flip of a selector switch, going from semiautomatic to full auto.

Troops practice shooting, just as Town and Town's grandfather's notion suggests that we should do, and even still, they are entrusted with service rifles and service carbines, and not single-shot, or bolt-action weaponry. Shotguns are similarly not standard issue, but only used for special operations. Even in close-quarters, troops use their carbines (carbines are rifles but with shorter barrels) and not shotguns. They use handguns only when they can't use their rifle.

There are troops who are found to be exceptionally good shots. If Town or Town's grandfather were troops, perhaps they would rise to the top and be similarly recognized for their sharp shooting. When a military can afford the luxury of taking some excellent shots out of regular duty, to serve special purposes, then it certainly makes sense to give them guns that are particularly suited to that endeavor.

Those guns are big caliber bolt action rifles. One of the biggest of them are chambered in the venerable .50 BMG rifle round, the ".50" stands for the inches diameter of the bullet, in this case a half-inch wide. It's a big round, capable of not only penetrating any kind of 'body armor' but also some regular armor, and it goes through things like a car door, like a hot knife through butter. They are also capable of hitting people from as far away as a mile. The longest confirmed kill by a military sniper that I'm aware of, is far longer than from a mile away, and it was with a big caliber rifle.

And then there's artillery. My own personal (opinion) view is that the best way to train with guns is to imagine them like miniature artillery pieces. For the uninformed, artillery's philosophy is to bombard targets with rounds, until the targets are disabled or destroyed (as a tragic counter-example, part of the reason Omaha Beach was such a horror, was because the naval artillery didn't successfully disable all the German armaments, like it did on the other beaches on D-Day). This is how we should train with our guns, not exclusively 'shooting' for perfection, without a reasonable 'plan B.' Of course you want a 'one shot kill' when the time comes, but in the likely and probable case that your first shot misses, then that is why standard issue military small arms are detachable magazine fed selective fire rifles or carbines, and those magazines hold at least 20 rounds each, and troops are regular outfitted with eight or 10 of them also, in case they need more ammunition than just 20 or 30 rounds.

So in sum, it's absolutely commendable and a good idea to practice shooting accurately. 'One shot kills' are absolutely the gold standard and a worthy goal in training. And it's also wise to also practice shooting repeatedly at targets, and then also at different targets, all the same time, so that you know that if the time comes when this is needed, you have prepared yourself to be the best possible 'neighbor' (Lk10:36KJV) that you can be---for if the time comes.


Hunting.
Hunting is a recreation, or for food. In hunting, it's absolutely critical to be able to fell your one target with one shot, because the tumult from that one round will send your prey scattering, and you won't be able to get off another quality shot quickly enough to hit a fleeing animal. It's also ethical to place that one shot right through the creature's heart to eliminate /minimize its suffering.

When your life in imperiled, you don't have the luxury of such a standard. You need to be able to fire more rounds. It's your life that's at stake, or the life of your kin that's at stake. It's not a hunter siting in an elk or a rabbit.

The closest thing to hunting that occurs in military operation is sharp shooting snipers, situated relatively far away from targets who aren't thinking they're being targeted. If this was all that ever occurred during armed conflict with small arms, then standard issue would be sniper rifles, which are identical in operation to hunting rifles.
 

Idolater

"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
"Handguns are hip, but a home defense shotgun, kept clean and handy, and paired with the right home defense shotgun ammo is the best tool to defend your family and property.

A shotgun’s superiority has little to do with its deadly pellet spread or the menacing sound it makes when its action is racked (more on that later). Rather, it’s about accuracy and control. If you’ve ever shot a handgun, you know how easy it is to miss your target. Combine a short sight radius with a single grip and the pressure of a life-or-death situation, and it becomes easier to understand that about 75 percent of all bullets fired by trained police miss their mark.

Conversely, a shotgun offers four points of contact to steady and guide an easier-to-aim barrel. And then there’s its terminal energy. In each typical shotshell of 00 Buck, there are nine pellets that combine to deliver roughly 1500 ft.-lbs. of energy to the target—or four times the energy of a .45 ACP bullet fired from a Model 1911 pistol. Factor in five to nine shells capable of being fired in rapid succession, and what you have is one of the most formidable arms for home defense ever conceived..." LINK
That's one opinion, and it's far from an authoritative one, and it also conflicts with what troops actually do in similar close quarters situations, when the weaponry judged generally best is still a service carbine like the American M4, with a shorter barrel for better navigating close quarters than the M16 (the American service rifle). A criminal intruder in your home would be an example of 'close quarters.'

Pump action shotguns are about as "rapid succession" as a bolt action rifle. So what does the last line mean "five to nine shells capable of being fired in rapid succession," if it doesn't mean semiautomatic shotguns? And Town, you would ban those, correct?

Shotguns are better than no guns though---that's a fact.
 
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