How many of the guns used by people in Chicago to murder black people were “registered”?
How many of the people who used a gun to kill a black person in Chicago had a permit for their gun?
Probably none. What is your point?
How many of the guns used by people in Chicago to murder black people were “registered”?
How many of the people who used a gun to kill a black person in Chicago had a permit for their gun?Probably none. What is your point?
______________________________________________________________________
While Chicago has some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the country, people continue to be slaughtered by gun violence.
More Gun control laws will only get more law abiding citizens killed.
According to an AP report just now, an Illinois sheriff's deputy gunned down, & state police on the lookout for three armed & dangerous men on the loose in the Chicago area
it's the contagiousness of these crimes that's so scary -- it's unleashing a sickness in our society
[Edited on 9/1/2015 by Stephen]
It's a fact that people without guns commit significantly less gun-related crimes than those who do own guns.
No doubt. This simple fact seems to elude the majority of Americans. More laws, or even trying to enforce the laws currently on the books will not make a difference. We as a nation appear good with what is going on now and appear willing to tolerate the collateral damage necessary for us not to change anything. Therefor, nothing will change.
Number of smoking related deaths per year: 480,000
Number of homicides by guns: <20,000 (2013 the number was closer to 16,000)
Cigarettes are 25x more lethal than firearms.
These are facts not opinions
how many of those 480,000 killed a random innocent non-smoker? What a silly analogy.
While Chicago has some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the country, people continue to be slaughtered by gun violence.
More Gun control laws will only get more law abiding citizens killed.
You are trying to align the gang-related homicides in major cities to the random innocent victims, which is not right. Everyone agrees that no gun control law will prevent criminals from getting guns and killing other criminals. Gun control is not about stopping street thugs that choose a life of crime - it's about protecting random law-abiding citizens from deranged individuals.
Sadly, it's not news anymore when a cop is randomly executed. I pray for them and their families. It's hard to imagine someone with loved ones that oppose tougher gun control. It's unfathomable to me....to have children who go to the mall, to the movies, to a sporting event, and not see the increasing danger of a mass shooting where your child might be. And to reject tougher gun laws that MAY prevent it from happening? Just unreal to me.
how many of those 480,000 killed a random innocent non-smoker? What a silly analogy.
While Chicago has some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the country, people continue to be slaughtered by gun violence.
More Gun control laws will only get more law abiding citizens killed.
You are trying to align the gang-related homicides in major cities to the random innocent victims, which is not right. Everyone agrees that no gun control law will prevent criminals from getting guns and killing other criminals. Gun control is not about stopping street thugs that choose a life of crime - it's about protecting random law-abiding citizens from deranged individuals.
___________________________________________________________________
So where is the proposed gun control legislation to “protecting random law-abiding citizens from deranged individuals”?
How do you intend to take the guns away from the deranged individuals?
Which politician has offered such legislation?
Certainly nothing is from the Obama administration.
Leadership matters and we have a void in leadership from the person elected to provide it.
So where is the proposed gun control legislation to “protecting random law-abiding citizens from deranged individuals”?
How do you intend to take the guns away from the deranged individuals?
Which politician has offered such legislation?
Certainly nothing is from the Obama administration.Leadership matters and we have a void in leadership from the person elected to provide it.
I actually agree with you on this one. Obama did a lot of smooth talking, hopeful promises, and didn't act on the gun control issue. I will give all you conservatives that one.
Like you said earlier, we don't need new legislation - just leadership that will fix the problems within our mental health and criminal background systems. But if any new law is necessary, I'd like to see the same type of tests and registrations as driving. The exams would cover safety and mental intuitions. I agree that no politician is stepping up to the plate - very sad.
And we can't take any guns away from anyone, but we surely can prevent some bad apples from purchasing one so darn easily.
Kathleen Murphy has rosy memory of NRA's past support for background checks
By Sean Gorman on Monday, November 24th, 2014 at 3:01 p.m.
Fairfax County voters next month will replace Republican Del. Barbara Comstock, who won the 10th District congressional seat this fall.
Democrat Kathleen Murphy recently launched a bid for the seat Comstock will leave in the state legislature. In a three-page platform, Murphy calls for "reasonable" gun regulations and explains her position in personal terms. "I lost my brother to gun violence," she wrote. "Two gunmen robbed and murdered him. He was the father of five young children..."
Murphy said she wants to close the "gun show loophole" through which people can buy guns from private gun sellers without a background check. She suggested that even the National Rifle Association could back that proposal.
"The NRA supported background checks after the tragedy of 9-11," she wrote on her website.
We wondered if Murphy’s statement was correct. After we asked, Morgan Finkelstein, spokeswoman for the Democratic Party of Virginia, told us Murphy made a mistake. The candidate had meant to say the NRA supported background checks after the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Co. that killed 13. That was two years before the World Trade Center attack.
Murphy promptly took down the statement from her website. A few days later, she replaced it with the statement, "The NRA supported background checks after the tragedy at Columbine High School."
Rather than haggle over when the NRA might have supported background checks, we decided to examine the key issue raised by Murphy: Did the NRA ever support background checks?
Our colleagues at PolitiFact national looked at similar claims that were made last year by President Barack Obama and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The statements were based on congressional testimony by NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre on May 27, 1999 -- five weeks after the Columbine shootings.
"We think it’s reasonable to provide mandatory instant criminal background checks for every sale at every gun show. No loopholes anywhere for anyone," LaPierre told the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Crime. "That means closing the Hinckley loophole so the records of those adjudicated mentally ill are in the system. This isn’t new, or a change of position, or a concession. I’ve been on the record on this point consistently, from our national meeting in Denver, to paid national ads and positions papers, to news interviews and press appearances."
At the time, Congress was considering legislation to expand background checks. LaPierre outlined a series of proposals that the NRA found "reasonable," including "instant background checks."
But the crux of his testimony was that he found provisions of the legislation unreasonable, such as the way the bill defined a gun show, how it allowed a three-business day period for background checks of potential gun buyers, and that the instant background check system didn’t destroy records of guns sales immediately.
The NRA eventually backed a substitute proposal that would have expanded background checks. The bill extended the requirement, which affected only licensed firearm dealers, to individuals selling their personally-owned weapons at gun shows.
But in return for closing the loophole, the NRA-backed bill shortened the time for completing background checks to 24 hours. That led to the death of the bill, with opponents saying the 24-hour deadline would drastically weaken the checks.
The Washington Post Fact Checker wrote last year that the NRA’s background check proposal was so limited that many control advocates concluded it was a "sham."
LaPierre’s testimony came up again last year amid the gun control debate that unfolded after shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Conn. that killed 26.
In a January 2013 interview, CNN Anchor Anderson Cooper read LaPierre’s testimony and asked Sandy Froman, an NRA board member, whether the group had changed its mind on background checks.
"Yes, the NRA has changed its position, and the reason it changed its position is because the system doesn’t work. The (National Instant Criminal Background Check) system is not working now. We have to get that working before we can add any more checks to that system. It’s already overburdened," Froman said. "Let’s get it working. Let’s make sure that the 23 states that aren’t reporting the names of people who are mentally ill and have violent tendencies, let’s get those reported and into the system and then we can take a look."
Our ruling
Murphy said the NRA once supported background checks.
It’s correct that LaPierre, the group’s executive director, did testify after the 1999 Columbine tragedy that the NRA supported "mandatory instant criminal background checks for every sale."
But Murphy’s version of that event is rosy. There were caveats to LaPierre’s statement and many gun control advocates later that year would accuse the NRA of scuttling legislation to expand background tests.
So Murphy’s statement is accurate, but needs more information. We rate it Mostly True.
Thank you Sang for posting an old article. Here's something a little newer:
www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2015/08/05/no-2-senate-republican-proposing-gun-background-check-bill
You will notice that Democrats are opposing the bill.
Number of smoking related deaths per year: 480,000
Number of homicides by guns: <20,000 (2013 the number was closer to 16,000)
Cigarettes are 25x more lethal than firearms.
These are facts not opinions
Exactly. Cigarettes should be banned everywhere as they are in most places now. Of course, smoking cigs is a choice. Being shot down as a 3rd grader in school is not.
Thank you Sang for posting an old article. Here's something a little newer:
www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2015/08/05/no-2-senate-republican-proposing-gun-background-check-billYou will notice that Democrats are opposing the bill.
You'll also notice, in your article:
'The bill's background check provisions are far weaker than Senate legislation that Republicans and the NRA killed two years ago; that legislation would have required the checks for firearms bought at gun shows and online. Cornyn has an A-plus voting rating from the NRA, which has long impeded gun restrictions in Congress but has backed some efforts to make it harder for mentally ill people to purchase weapons.'
I remember very well the attacks on Sarah Palin and her "targetting" langauge.
Politicians get attacked for pretty much everything they say and do. Nothing inconsistent about that.
We need to be consistent here. Is that possible?
Based on what I see from you, no.
Really now. But others are consistent. Got it.
So sad that some see this as political, rather than basic human morality. If you tie this to Obama, or any politician, you are not anywhere close to helping anything, and only create more problems that we don't need around this particular issue.
Did you feel that way when Obama and company tied the Gabby Giffords shooting to Sarah Palin and the right? Just want to be consistent here.
Exactly where did Obama himself tie that shooting to Sarah Palin and the right? Even the folks at Fox News gave him high praise for the speech at the memorial service.
If it wasn't Obama himself it was his minions in the party. All of that stuff emanates from him. We all know that and we all remember what was said. Obama has a tendency to give these high minded speeches and then let go with the snide asides and inuendos under the able as if one negates the other. It doesn't.
Dougrhon - yes, tying the AZ shooting to any politician is foolish.
A dressed and armed police officer was just executed at a gas station in Houston, and some here still don't see the need for tougher gun control.
Question: What should the officer have done differently to prevent this? Honest question looking for a sincere answer from the pro-gun crowd.
I see a need for tougher gun ENFORCEMENT. The vast majority of guns (though not all) used in crimes, particularly involving law enforcement, are illegal. The cities used to have powerful proactive anti-gun units that swept these guns right off the streets. That seems to be retreating int he face of concerns that these succesful police methods are racist.
Muleman, I'll answer your questions:
Criminals cannot be stopped from gun crimes. It's too easy to get a gun on the street, so if you choose a life of crime for a living, no gun laws will prevent that.
But these mass shootings are different from gang shootings because many of them are committed in a fit of rage or mental illness. The big difference between the 2 is that the passage of time is proven to be a deterrent to irrational thinking. That's why we "sleep on it" when faced with an important decision.
By creating new gun control laws that make it a longer and more thorough process, we create the possibility of either identifying an applicant to be mentally ill, or we can create that valuable passage of time that might change a persons mind - not a full proof plan, but could very likely prevent a couple shootings - and if we prevent one, is t it worth it?
I chose to answer your questions even though you never answered mine. You might want to learn some better communication skills.
Again I favor reasonable gun regulation. Now in answer to this statement:
"Criminals cannot be stopped from gun crimes. It's too easy to get a gun on the street, so if you choose a life of crime for a living, no gun laws will prevent that. "
That is simply wrong. All you need to do is take a look at the crime stats of New York City from 1994-20012 to see how dramatically gun crime was reduced. It's all about good policing.
Regarding your second point. Every life lost is a tragedy. Unless all guns are confiscated and nobody allowed to own them at all (which I would guess many on the left would favor even repealing the 2d amendment all together) there is no way to stop an individual nut with no record from getting hold of a gun. The key to stop people like this, to the extent they can be stopped is better mental health care. Unfortunately in a country of 300 million people, crazy things are going to happen. Not everything can be stopped. I mean you could stop all car accidents by banning cars but that would be counter-productive no?
how many of those 480,000 killed a random innocent non-smoker? What a silly analogy.
While Chicago has some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the country, people continue to be slaughtered by gun violence.
More Gun control laws will only get more law abiding citizens killed.
You are trying to align the gang-related homicides in major cities to the random innocent victims, which is not right. Everyone agrees that no gun control law will prevent criminals from getting guns and killing other criminals. Gun control is not about stopping street thugs that choose a life of crime - it's about protecting random law-abiding citizens from deranged individuals.
Not everyone agrees with that. Many on the left oppose police actions that actually DID reduce gun viiolence dramatically while demanding more laws that would only affect law abiding citizens.
So sad that some see this as political, rather than basic human morality. If you tie this to Obama, or any politician, you are not anywhere close to helping anything, and only create more problems that we don't need around this particular issue.
Did you feel that way when Obama and company tied the Gabby Giffords shooting to Sarah Palin and the right? Just want to be consistent here.
Exactly where did Obama himself tie that shooting to Sarah Palin and the right? Even the folks at Fox News gave him high praise for the speech at the memorial service.
If it wasn't Obama himself it was his minions in the party.
Ah, I see.
A lot of people on the right went out of their way to paint Loughner as a member of the liberal left, but I know you're good with that.
Again I favor reasonable gun regulation. Now in answer to this statement:
"Criminals cannot be stopped from gun crimes. It's too easy to get a gun on the street, so if you choose a life of crime for a living, no gun laws will prevent that. "
That is simply wrong. All you need to do is take a look at the crime stats of New York City from 1994-20012 to see how dramatically gun crime was reduced. It's all about good policing.
Regarding your second point. Every life lost is a tragedy. Unless all guns are confiscated and nobody allowed to own them at all (which I would guess many on the left would favor even repealing the 2d amendment all together) there is no way to stop an individual nut with no record from getting hold of a gun. The key to stop people like this, to the extent they can be stopped is better mental health care. Unfortunately in a country of 300 million people, crazy things are going to happen. Not everything can be stopped. I mean you could stop all car accidents by banning cars but that would be counter-productive no?
I realize the stop and frisk policies produced stats that show declines in gun crime, but the point remains - a thug will get his gun. And yes, the liberals who ended the stop and frisk project were foolish. I'm actually very conservative when it comes to the political correct movement - I hate it, and I think it makes us weaker.
To be honest, I don't see a need to step up any efforts to reduce gang life. It is what it is. We should continue to combat it the way we always have been. If someone makes the conscious choice to join a gang - yes, it's a tragedy when they die, but our efforts and focus should be on protecting innocent law-abiding citizens. Personally, it's not a priority of mine because they made a choice.
Your driving analogy is perfect. We would never ban cars, just like we shouldn't ban guns. But I fully support classroom training, written exams, a physical demonstration, and license renewal/mental every four years if you want to be a gun-owner. That would be a great start.
Thank you Sang for posting an old article. Here's something a little newer:
www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2015/08/05/no-2-senate-republican-proposing-gun-background-check-billYou will notice that Democrats are opposing the bill.
You'll also notice, in your article:
'The bill's background check provisions are far weaker than Senate legislation that Republicans and the NRA killed two years ago; that legislation would have required the checks for firearms bought at gun shows and online. Cornyn has an A-plus voting rating from the NRA, which has long impeded gun restrictions in Congress but has backed some efforts to make it harder for mentally ill people to purchase weapons.'
Excuse me for asking this question, but when you buy a firearm at a gun show-when do you not have to undergo a background check? I've bought several at gun shows and have always had to go through the NCIC check. For the online purchases, they have to be sent through a FFL dealer and they have to do a NCIC check on you before they can transfer the firearm to you.
The only time you don't have to go through the NCIC check is when you are purchasing a firearm from an individual, not a company.
So what extra background checks are you talking about?
I was referring to Mule's comments about the NRA supporting background checks and mental health checks.......
Known as the "gun show loophole," most states do not require background checks for firearms purchased at gun shows from private individuals -- federal law only requires licensed dealers to conduct checks.
Under the Gun Control Act of 1968, federal law clearly defined private sellers as anyone who sold no more than four firearms per year. But the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act lifted that restriction and loosely defined private sellers as people who do not rely on gun sales as the principal way of obtaining their livelihood.
Some states have opted to go further than federal law by requiring background checks at gun shows for any gun transaction, federal license or not. Five states, most recently Colorado and Connecticut, mandate universal background checks, an even more stringent standard that imposes background checks on almost all gun purchases, including over the Internet.
Even in states that do not require background checks of private vendors, the venue hosting the event may require it as a matter of policy. In other cases, private vendors may opt to have a third-party licensed dealer run a background check even though it may not be required by law.
Last Updated: August 2015
Pew Research Center:
April 24, 2014
Although a measure to expand background checks on gun sales failed in the Senate last year, Americans who live in a household where they or someone else is an NRA member overwhelmingly favored the idea of making private gun sales and sales at gun shows subject to such checks. About three-quarters (74%) backed these expanded checks compared with 26% who opposed them.
Pew Research Center:
April 24, 2014Although a measure to expand background checks on gun sales failed in the Senate last year, Americans who live in a household where they or someone else is an NRA member overwhelmingly favored the idea of making private gun sales and sales at gun shows subject to such checks. About three-quarters (74%) backed these expanded checks compared with 26% who opposed them.
Yet the NRA opposes them. Go figure.
Gun control is not the answer
By LZ Granderson, CNN
Updated 7:36 AM ET, Wed September 18, 2013
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/17/opinion/granderson-gun-control-fail/index.html
Story highlights
• LZ Granderson: We're hearing more knee-jerk rhetoric about gun-control measures
• More gun-control measures are unrealistic and won't prevent the carnage, he says
• Granderson: Many different factors lead to gun violence
Another day, another mass shooting in America.
More blood, more tears, more knee-jerk rhetoric about finding a solution for a bunch of different problems.
Those who knew Aaron Alexis -- the shooter who killed 12 and injured eight more at the Washington Navy Yard this week -- said he was a quiet, shy man.
At one point he was studying Buddhism and meditated often.
A little more digging, and we find he had several gun-related arrests and a pattern of misconduct in the Navy, but he was honorably discharged.
Pieces of a puzzle we may never fully put together.
But the fact that there is still so much we don't know about Alexis -- or the motive behind the shootings -- won't detour gun-control advocates from lumping his story in with that of Adam Lanza, the man police say is responsible for the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, along with the victims from gang- and drug-related shootings.
This is why after the tears have dried and the blood washes away, little, if anything, will change.
And because gun-control advocates so often try to cobble together every distinct narrative involving guns into a one-size-fits-all conversation, they are as much to blame for this merry-go-round as the gun lobbyists against whom they fight.
Gun shops are illegal in Chicago.
Opinion: What could have prevented carnage?
The city has bans on both assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. And yet each week people continue to die in the streets from gunshot wounds.
This conundrum is just one example why making note that more Americans have died from gun violence here at home since Newtown than in the nine years fighting a war in Iraq is the kind of factoid that grabs our attention but undermines the true goal: curtailing the violence.
Not all deaths involving guns are the same -- therefore trying to address each incident from the same point of view is futile. Until we learn more about Alexis -- the events leading up to the shootings and the motive -- the tragedy in Washington should not be used as catalyst for a conversation about gun control.
Instead, we should mourn and wait for more information.
Far too often assumptions surrounding the details of tragedies such as the one in Washington are made, and well-intentioned stances fall apart when additional facts come to light.
The guns James Holmes was charged with using in Aurora were purchased legally. Beyond the presence of a gun, the crimes committed in the movie theater are not at all similar to what happens in the streets of our large cities. And each time a politician or gun-control advocate tries to use these two very different examples interchangeably, the entire conversation and argument are compromised.
This happened after Newtown.
It happened after Aurora.
And it will keep continue to happen until the advocates accept that ridding the country of guns is a hopeless -- and unconstitutional mission -- and that the real goal should be addressing the factors that lead to the various forms of gun violence: factors such as poverty, mental health and failing schools.
Last month the nation breathed a sigh of relief after Antoinette Tuff, a bookkeeper in an elementary school in suburban Atlanta, prevented a man with an AK-47-type weapon and nearly 500 rounds of ammunition from hurting anyone.
It was not the time to talk generally about gun violence in this country. It was the time to discuss specifics such as cuts to mental health and its impact on services, given that the suspect, 20-year-old Michael Brandon Hill, has a long history of mental disorders. Hill's storyline is similar to that of Lanza, and there are questions whether Holmes, the admitted shooter in the Aurora movie theater, is insane.
Public debates with Wayne LaPierre and attacks on the National Rifle Association have proven to be an ineffective way to prevent gun violence. In the wake of the Washington Navy Yard killings, perhaps a new strategy, one that doesn't involve playing on the nation's emotions or challenging the relevance of the Second Amendment, should be employed. That's not saying the NRA has won -- in fact, I think LaPierre should step down because each time he opens his mouth, he steps in it -- but at the end of the day the organization is more of an agitator than the enemy.
There is no one enemy.
Thus there is no one solution.
Because like it or not, the folks spraying our cities with bullets are not NRA members or legal gun owners. And despite the tendency to tie it all together, they have nothing to do with the Adam Lanzas of the world.
And it's too early to know how Alexis fits in the conversation.
According to a count by USA Today, more than 900 people have been killed in mass shootings since 2006. The thousands of other victims of gun violence over the past seven years died from many different circumstances, requiring different conversations.
This is why gun-control advocates need to abandon the routine of using mass shootings to turn law-abiding citizens into social pariahs and instead focus on something that could work.
Again I favor reasonable gun regulation. Now in answer to this statement:
"Criminals cannot be stopped from gun crimes. It's too easy to get a gun on the street, so if you choose a life of crime for a living, no gun laws will prevent that. "
That is simply wrong. All you need to do is take a look at the crime stats of New York City from 1994-20012 to see how dramatically gun crime was reduced. It's all about good policing.
Regarding your second point. Every life lost is a tragedy. Unless all guns are confiscated and nobody allowed to own them at all (which I would guess many on the left would favor even repealing the 2d amendment all together) there is no way to stop an individual nut with no record from getting hold of a gun. The key to stop people like this, to the extent they can be stopped is better mental health care. Unfortunately in a country of 300 million people, crazy things are going to happen. Not everything can be stopped. I mean you could stop all car accidents by banning cars but that would be counter-productive no?
I realize the stop and frisk policies produced stats that show declines in gun crime, but the point remains - a thug will get his gun. And yes, the liberals who ended the stop and frisk project were foolish. I'm actually very conservative when it comes to the political correct movement - I hate it, and I think it makes us weaker.
To be honest, I don't see a need to step up any efforts to reduce gang life. It is what it is. We should continue to combat it the way we always have been. If someone makes the conscious choice to join a gang - yes, it's a tragedy when they die, but our efforts and focus should be on protecting innocent law-abiding citizens. Personally, it's not a priority of mine because they made a choice.
Your driving analogy is perfect. We would never ban cars, just like we shouldn't ban guns. But I fully support classroom training, written exams, a physical demonstration, and license renewal/mental every four years if you want to be a gun-owner. That would be a great start.
I support those things as well because they would prevent accidents first and foremost. And yes a professional criminal will get a gun. But what the police work does is it convinces criminals that it is wiser not to walk around the streets carrying guns, it is wise to not commit their crimes with guns. This has the effect of dramatically reducing deaths by guns. If the left truly wanted to reduce deaths by guns they would be hyper focused on this because this is where most innocent victims of gun violence are. And the vast majority of them are minorities as well. Guliani is frequently attacked as a racist or something but the policies he supported probably saved 10,000 black lives.
