Here we have someone who claims expertise, but then demonstrates exactly the opposite. I won’t bother pointing out the flaws in the actual blog post – either you see them and get it, or you agree with the post and no amount of information will dissuade you.
See the problem? This is right after the Florida school shooting, so emotions are extremely high.
Browse the comments section. There may be a dozen or so exchanges that are interesting and useful, but nearly all of it is vitriol, accusations, and flat-out ignorance from all sides. Oh, and hate. Lots of that. Gun control advocates are now taking off the gloves and calling for full bans, either of ARs or all privately owned guns.
The GC crowd is now engaging in fully fledged lies, and some even admit it. They don’t care that they’re lying so long as they get their way. Don’t believe me? Search social media for people claiming ARs account for the majority of mass shootings. It turns out there may have been up to 13 mass shootings that involved an AR. Sounds like a lot until you realize that number stretches back 35 years, and over 300 mass shootings. That’s about 4%. And if you choose to use the rabidly anti-gun sources, it’s thousands of mass shootings, which makes the percentage really, really tiny.
They spout things like “military firepower” and “overwhelming destruction”. Also lies. The military characteristics of the AR-15 include ruggedness, reliability, and interchange of standardized parts. ARs do not have automatic or select fire. The round is underpowered for hunting, and while it’s still lethal to put into a human body, it’s not anywhere near the most powerful thing on the civilian market.
Others are crying out for removing semi-automatic weapons. Again, they just don’t have any clue what they’re talking about. Many hunting rifles are SA, nearly every modern pistol is, and even plinking guns like a .22 comes in SA. In fact, a huge number of civilian hunting and sport rifle rounds are available in multiple actions – lever, bolt, and semi-automatic. You know the pistols police carry? Semi-auto. That cute little .25 pocket pistol grandpa has in the sock drawer? Semi-auto.
Oh, and let’s go back to mass shooting weapons. Did you know that Virginia Tech was the worst mass shooting in history up to that point? It was conducted with handguns, including a .22 pistol.
The issue is ignorance. Willful, malicious, religiously held ignorance.
Truly Unpopular 
I read the article (which took me to your site). Personally I know little about guns; I target shot while a boy scout about a million years ago. I’m a liberal (my main issues are universal healthcare and education) who is generally pro-gun. Just as conservatives aren’t monolithic neither are liberals. I don’t think that the gun control crowd is monolithic. Like every subject you have extremists on both sides. Personally I see a problem and I don’t know an answer. IMO the answer isn’t banning any sort of weapon. I’m saying this just to disarm you (pun intended!). I really don’t have an answer but I’m curious as to whether you believe that there is a problem and what you think possible solutions are. Apologies if there is a link on your side or one of your comments that spells this out. Life is busy and it’s hard to read/educated yourself on every subject…but we try.
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I absolutely do believe there is a problem. Several, in fact. I think the overall violence problem needs to be broken down and addressed as distinct issues with some overlap.
Focusing just on mass shootings, including school shootings, we can start to look at things like access and motivation, which help guide intelligent decisions. But they’re only intelligent if we can show a tunable relationship, meaning there has to be something we can directly measure when we make a change.
Mass shootings in general are carried out by people who feel they’ve been wronged by society in some way (a group, government, etc). Right or wrong is not a concern; their perception of reality BECOMES their reality, and we can’t address that. What we can do is take evidence that demonstrates nearly all mass shooters plan their attacks weeks to months to years out. That tells us to focus on looking for warning signs, and put tools in place for both citizens and law enforcement to direct resources (being vague to keep on topic).
What we can’t do anything about are the “he just snapped one day” shooters. Fortunately, with evidence, we know those are incredibly rare. That should give us hope!
So what motivates a mass shooter? Punishment, most likely. I haven’t seen any studies, so this is just my current concept based on what I can find in open literature. Shooters feel a very real pain that they feel has been imposed on them by some external element, and they need to get rid of it by punishing those responsible. Again, this doesn’t have to be reality, just their perception. The reason they choose up close shooting over bombing or sniping or poison is that they want to experience the immediacy of inflicting pain on others. This is how they transfer their pain, or so they think.
So why do they kill themselves? Because they realize they aren’t giving pain away, they’re just making more. They can’t cope with it, and when they’re confronted by authority, many choose to commit suicide. I’m sure some do it to avoid their own punishment, but violent actors in the absence of true mental illness frequently become conflicted when they realize what they’ve done.
I can go on, but you’ve given me a great idea for another blog post. Thanks!
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Agree and thank you for your response. Curious about your thoughts about personal and family responsibility here. My understand is that the family that the Florida shooter was living with knew had had weapons and knew he had mental issues and thought that they had the only key the the locked gun storage, so I don’t blame them but what to do about this sort of thing isn’t simple. We had a vendor to house the other day…a piano tuner with an impeccable background/references…who out-of-the blue starting talking about how the second amendment isn’t for shooting Bambi, it’s for shooting politicians and if Trump got impeached he start by shooting subaru owners and cars with “co-exist” bumper stickers. I laughed thinking he was joking but he wasn’t laughing and seemed very angry. He asked if I was armed and I said know and he said something like “you are the first one we will shoot”. Both for self-preservation and because I don’t want to wrongly ruin his life I didn’t call any authorities. I really don’t think he’s going to act on it, but my point is that life is really a series of judgement calls and the correct answer is only clear when we replay the tape backwards after the fact.
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I replied above, but I’m not sure if it notifies you… the commenting tools don’t seem to allow for continued replies.
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If they didn’t know what was going on under their roof theres a problem there and if a child had a key to their gun safe THATS A Problem. thats their fault all these underlinging problems are with the familys not with the guns
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The simple answer for most of our problems, guns or not, is simply paying attention to the world around us. Giving some thought to small actions, being considerate, getting out of our own heads now and then. Thanks for sharing your thoughts 🙂
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Your question is spot-on: what are the responsibilities of the public to participate in its own safety? In particular, what should family/friends do, and what CAN they do? I don’t know much about the Florida shooter’s access – I’d heard he was able to purchase on his own, which points to failures in the NICS updates and FBI reporting, but that’s a different topic.
I feel there have to be layers of defense, starting with whoever notices. We can’t pass the buck when we see stuff like that, but we do have to consider personal safety like you did with the asshat piano tuner. We need options that are enabled by some legal recourse. If you feel safe telling a family member you need to lock up their guns for a while, do it (carefully) if there’s reasonable doubt in your mind. If you don’t, you should be able to go to the police and get an examiner to help. But that also comes with a responsibility not to abuse the protocols like California does. There needs to be protection for the gun owner as well.
In the absence of other factors, basic safety should include appropriately controlled storage. I’ve tried to propose a taxpayer funded outreach to enable gun owners to buy safes with a small subsidy, or even be provided one. So many people don’t even have that first-level defense. Rather than help John Gunowner buy a safe for $300, the public wants him to give up his $1000 rifle that statistically will never, ever be used in a crime. How is that rational?
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I believe a guy like that should not be a gun owner and me not be a cop caller in a situation like that i think i would infact notify the police not to be a rat but insure the safty of my self my family and my President. The unfortunate thing is the fbi dont do their job and look into things until something happens us being citizens and have this right we need to be awear and not allow the people of such to scare us but to show them you are stronger then he ! I think the regualtions we have in place are suitable. They just need to be applied to every one . I think the fact people that arent licensed to carry a firearm should not . its that simple if u wanna have the right to bare arms follow protocal. I wont give up my sencond amendment bc if someone cant handle this thats their fault but its the people around them that need to be awear the people who are gun owners need to be awear of whats in their home and WHO !
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I have grown up with guns my whole life, i have a couple, but my family has many many more. I know guns and like shooting them.
That being said, let’s look at the homicide rates in the United States and compare them to other countries. Here in the US there are 5 deaths per 100k people in the US, 3.5 of which are gun deaths (from the CDC.) To compare though, In the UK for instance, that number is .92, in France that number is 1.58, Australia is .98, and in Germany that number is .85, all significantly lower than the overall homicide rates in the United States (roughly 20% of the total number of homicides.) Thinking about it from their perspective, citizens of the United States are 316-588% more likely to be murdered than each of their respective countries.
The nations that most similarly mimic our homicide rates are Kazakhstan at 4.84, Kyrgyzstan at 5.12, and Somalia at 5.56.
Ignore the guns for a minute. That’s a sobering look, *SOMALIA* has a similar murder rate that we do.
Is this a problem for you? It is for me… If it is, then we need to figure out what we need to do to reduce this problem.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm
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Of course it’s a problem. What in my article or comments suggests otherwise? This entry has to do with knee-jerk reactions and demands that don’t address the actual problem.
We can certainly look to other countries to both set goals and to evaluate recourse, but we can not wholesale adopt their techniques. Also, if you remove four cities, just four, from the national tally, we’re on par with the countries you mention. That’s also a problem, and it’s not related to the existence of guns.
Think about that for a moment – what if our violence and murder rates were exactly the same as the countries you cite, even with guns in the mix? What then? Would people still be calling for gun control and even bans? You bet they would.
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