Gun policy and associated lies

[snousle]

I cannot believe how much flap there has been over twenty murders in a country that experiences more than a thousand times that many every year. All because they were clustered in one place, with one perpetrator. All else being equal, is it not prereferable to have twenty children murdered by one madman, than twenty children murdered by twenty madmen? That, at least, is nineteen fewer madmen to contend with.

Unfortunately the media pile-on is not the result of any particular decision, its more like the weather, the confluence of many forces that are beyond human control. The story is not the murders; the story is the story, and the murders are incidental to that. As with 9-11, the reaction to the tragedy is far, far, far more tragic than the tragedy itself. It's like a national autoimmune disease, in which the whole country attacks and injures itself, in a way that is grossly disproportionate to the original assault.

What grates at me most, though, is the poor quality of reporting and discourse, which leaves me wondering whether to add to the manure pile or just ignore it. I think, though, that there is one thing worth saying, and saying very, very loudly:

Anyone who claims that there is a clear relationship between gun control policy and violence is a liar.

This applies to both the conventional liberal and conservative positions. This is a subject that has been studied out the wazoo, and the only consistent result has been that there is no consistent result. This applies not to imaginary scenarios, such as magically teleporting all guns into outer space, but to actions that can be plausibly and realistically carried out, such as mandating gun registration or passing concealed carry laws. Thanks to state level implementation of many different policies, there have been many natural experiments from which we can draw conclusions, and those conclusions are all over the map. Their inconsistency proves their unreliability. Unfortunately, discussion on the subject have been dominated by fabricated statistics that don't bear even a few minutes of scrutiny, and outright fantasies that don't even offer enough substance for critical analysis in the first place.

Never have I seen a subject that has revealed so much willful ignorance and cherry picking as this one. If there is a silver lining to all this, it's that nothing that is done in this area is really going to matter. Even if Obama makes it a priority, Congress has the opposite priority. Even if laws are passed, the demographics of gun ownership will change slowly, if at all. And if the demographics of gun ownership change, the effect on violent crime - which, incidentally, has been steeply decreasing for more than a decade - will probably not change in its unpredictable and always-surprising course. And if by some miracle it did, we would never even know it. The whole thing is just a giant waste of oxygen.

Comments

[danthered.livejournal.com]

I don't necessarily agree with you that nothing can practicably or effectively be done, but I do very much agree with you on the bizarre and tragic reflexive self-mutilation the US so reliably does. 9/11 was an unmitigated success for its perpetrators and their supporters; look at what the US has spent and sacrificed and done to itself in futile pursuit of "security"! 3,000 people died at the World Trade Center in 2001. More than an order of magnitude more than the WTC toll died that same year in American traffic, but that's just business as usual. More than two orders of magnitude more than the WTC toll died that same year in America from tobacco, but that's just freedom and libertee and adult choices.

Umwhut?!!

[snousle.livejournal.com]

Even more pointedly, the TSA has killed far more Americans than terrorists have. Just a small incentive to drive instead of fly is deadly at a massive scale. But since these are "statistical" deaths, and you can't point to any SPECIFIC people who the TSA has killed, they don't count for nothin'.

As everyone knows, statistical analysis is just a liberal conspiracy.

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

One can argue that the other industrialized nations that have both stricter gun laws and a tiny fraction of our per capita level of gun violence also have cultural factors that play into that - but it is unquestionably, irrefutably the case that we both have ridiculously lax gun laws AND the highest rate of civilian gun deaths and maimings in the industrialized world. I do not think these two facts are completely unrelated.

A conservative case for an assault weapons ban

[snousle.livejournal.com]

And it is also true that Stone Age tribes have male homicide rates approaching 50 percent. The entirety of technological, legal and social history can land a country anywhere on the spectrum of violence. That is not the same as the set of options available to the US through law or policy. The US cannot even remotely turn itself into Norway, so I really question whether, in the absence of a time machine, the US can learn much in the way of useful lessons from the rest of the world.

Although from what I have read, there are certain aspects of the high rate of violent crime in the UK that might suggest directions the US should NOT take.

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

We can at least stop making it worse. I've never encountered anyone that could provide a more cogent, rational explanation for why they would need a high speed semi-auto weapon with a massive magazine than "Well... I want one, they're fun!" Given that they enable mass murder, I think those people's right to live exceeds in importance someone else's right to "fun."

I am aware that there's "semi-auto" and then there's "semi-auto" - various weapons have different round-to-round cycle times, and perhaps that could be part of what defines a weapon that can be purchased by a civilian and which could not. I'm fully behind the idea that there's absolutely NO civilian justification for a magazine of more than 10 or 11 bullets, period and full stop. Ban them viciously, buy them back and melt 'em down - and anyone found manufacturing them illegally, lock 'em up for life. No, I'm not kidding.

It's long, LONG past time we stop coddling the gun fetishists and their insane conspiracy bullshit about how if we license gun owners and register guns we're going to be taken over by black helicopters full of UN troops.

I'm under no illusion that changing the bat-fuck insane gun culture in this country (see Bushmaster's "Man card" crap, for example) will be easy or quick or that we would ever be where a vastly different culture (e.g., Japan) is on this issue. But the fact it's difficult and will take time is not a justification to avoid making what progress we can, as we can.

[snousle.livejournal.com]

What is this "making it worse" of which you speak? Again, violent crime has been decreasing across the board for a decade. Whatever is being done or not being done, it is unquestionably making things better. Dramatic mass murder in this style is not even a blip against this enormous, overwhelmingly important trend. We could have a Columbine every week on top of current crime rates, and we STILL would not touch the murder rate of the mid '90s. So really, it's hard to know what you are even talking about when you say "making it worse". Given our general ignorance of what is going on in the first place, the most prudent course of action would be to do nothing and hope that current trends continue.

(Incidentally, a remarkable and plausible hypothesis of why things are getting better has to do with the elimination of lead in gasoline. Not sure if its true, but it's illustrative of how off base the current gun control debate might be.)

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

So you find something bizarre about wanting to get rid of the "dramatic mass murders" in addition to keeping the general decrease in violent crime?!

When I say "making it worse" I'm referring to continuing to permit the sales of weapons and ammo magazines that no civilian has any rational need for and which clearly make mass murder far easier for someone inclined to commit it.

Need I point out that the dickhead who shot up Gabrielle Giffords' constituent outreach event was only finally tackled and stopped when his oversized magazines ran dry and he had to pause shooting to try and switch to full ones? Why should we not want to provide that window of opportunity after fewer rounds, and thus more often?

The line between civilian arms and military arms has to be drawn somewhere - and all I'm saying is that it would be prudent to draw that line a bit more narrowly than we have been, no matter how loud the gun fetishists scream about how they're being castrated.

[snousle.livejournal.com]

Again, there is no clear link between the availability of assault weapons and overall homicide rates. Feel free to prove me wrong, but youre going to need actual data from some sort of natural experiment or controlled study. The increase in weapons availability and the concurrent decrease in overall mortality makes arguing for a causal relationship running contrary to that correlation very difficult. Anecdotes and speculation certainly are not sufficient. Maybe, as is the case with pornography and sexual assault, there is even a substitution effect; maybe merely owning a deadly weapon is a substitute for actual killing. That is at least as plausible as the relationship you are assuming here.

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

I've clearly not been talking about "overall homicide rates" when I specifically and repeatedly use terms like "mass murder."

Did you just not understand that I'm primarily talking here about stopping hideous MASS MURDERS of which we've had multiple examples committed with high-speed lead sprayers with mass murder magazines this year, or are you intentionally avoiding a direct response?

[snousle.livejournal.com]

I consider a single death by mass murder to be morally equivalent, and in some ways less socially costly, than a single death caused by an isolated homicide. The dramatic and mediagenic nature of these incidents does not move me in the slightest. I stated this very clearly in the first paragraph of the post.

Stopping mass murders at the expense of increasing overall homicide rates would be overtly immoral. Mass murders are an insignificant fraction of the overall homicide rate, and the risk of this immoral side effect seems very large if we focus on them instead of more routine forms of mortality. Therefore I consider them unworthy of serious attention unto themselves, although their secondary effects can be a considerable problem. It's not at all clear to me if your own attitude is of positive or negative influence in that regard.

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

Your assumption that removing a fairly small subset of available firearms (that would make it more difficult to kill many people in a short period of time) would have the paradoxical effect of increasing the overal gun murder rate is something I think you need to have some proof might occur. We've seen in Australia where they haven't had that paradoxical effect from their gun law changes in 1996 - but they have NOT had any mass shootings - not one - since making that change in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre.

Considering we can't really have a controlled experiment here in the USA - the experience of jurisdictions with strong gun control laws adjacent to ones with relatively lax gun laws (e.g., Washington DC and Virginia) shows that would be difficult at best and is likely impossible - it seems that despite your dismissal of the experience of other nations, that's pretty much the only source of practical experience with other approaches to the problem.

Part of my argument is from utility, which you repeatedly refuse to address. I doubt anyone goes hunting with an AR-15, unless their idea of "hunting" is to turn small game into ragged gobbets. I may not have picked up a love of hunting from my father, but I could not help but learn some of the basic ideas - such as it being ideal to put the animal down as quickly as possible with as few shots as possible so as to maximize the edible meat - in addition to being as merciful as possible.

As I have said - I'm unaware of any practical use for a weapon such as was used in the recent tragedy in Connecticut other that that - murdering people - that could not be just as well served by a firearm less ideal for mass murder. Other than your idea that somehow a nut-case might not actually use it because he's got it ... do you know of any?

Addendum: if you want something more scholarly on the Australian experience than the link above - http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/10/5/280.full

[snousle.livejournal.com]

The whole point of this post is that there is no proof of anything. I repeat, that is THE WHOLE POINT. You are making a supposition based on anecdotal accounts of rare incidents, I merely offer a counter supposition that happens to align more easily with aggregate trends.

If you are going to advocate interference with a long lasting downward trend in violence by imposing new laws, it's you that shoulders the burden of proof that those laws are likely to work. We already know from drug and alcohol prohibition that trying to constrain a basic human desire more often than not has side effects that are worse than the original problem. The assault rifle issue may look narrow and arcane, and it might have remained that way had it not been turned into an ideological litmus test. Now, people acquire them BECAUSE of the threatened ban. Yes, it's perverse, but its also reality.

Whatever has transpired over the past decade in the US is "working" more than any deliberate effort, ever, and we don't even know why. On the other hand, its not clear that the Australian approach worked at all; even if you accept the notion that it was responsible for eliminating mass murder, if the overall homicide rate is not measurably affected, who the hell cares? Oh right, people who are swayed more by mediagenic drama than by actual human welfare, i.e. nearly evryone. (sigh.) Go read the Wikipedia article on gun politics in Australia and you will see just how equivocal the results of that legislation were. I suppose it would be in bad taste to actually advocate for more mass murder, but it would be no more irrational or destructive than reactions that are considered socially acceptable today.

I don't care what the stated utility is of assault rifles. I know a number of people that choose to own them, and they all have their own reasons, but none of them are things you're going to talk them out of. I'm perfectly happy to accept the proposition that every single one of them is deluded, since it makes no difference what their rationale is given that it is sincerely and defiantly maintained. These guns embody a simple and common technology that cannot be contained, a cat that cannot be put back into the bag. I have already explained why, given existing American gun culture and ownership levels, you can't just legislate them out of existence, and you are the one who has repeatedly refused to engage with the reality of that situation. There may exist effective approaches to gun control, but focusing on this one class of weapon is, as far as I know, unsupportable under quantitative cost benefit analysis. Which is the only class of argument I take seriously.

[equinas.livejournal.com]

Actually, if you want "scholarly", I suggest you read the Harvard study on global and domestic gun control outcomes, and the Landes & Lott study on the only law proven to reduce crime, sourced for you below:

Kates, B., and Mauser (heh), G. (2010). Would banning firearms reduce murder and suicide? A review of international and some domestic evidence. Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, 30(2), 649-694. Retrieved from http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf.

Lott, J. R., & Landes, W. M. (2000). Multiple Victim Public Shootings. Yale School Of Management's Legal Scholarship Network, 1. Retrieved from http://www.thevrwc.org/JohnLott.pdf

P.S.: Australia's model is inapplicable to the U.S. Irrelevant, in fact.

[snousle.livejournal.com]

I will read these articles when I have time. However, I will mention that this is a situation where if there is no associated critique available - and I'll look for it - I would not be too swayed by single sources. The field is so charged that the bar for accepting conclusions is necessarily raised and you have to dig a lot deeper before taking any single source seriously.

If this does indeed constitute a clear relationship, I'm ready to be convinced on this particular point, but again since mass murders are relatively rare things it's not clear how much this should influence policy even if it were.

In the meanwhile, I was kind of disturbed by efforts to suppress firearms research and was thinking of posting about this article as well.

[snousle.livejournal.com]

I also want to mention that I have spent quite a lot of time downloading tables of state by state violent crime rates over time, and relating them to the dates of passage of concealed carry laws in those states so as to see what is going on for myself, and ask if there are any discernible relationships. I have done this in particular for claims made by people here on LJ. It gets REAL boring, because it's clear that for overall violent crime rates, there is no discernible change in the figures related to the passage of those laws. Ever! It's just all over the map. So of course you can pick certain states and make "true" claims that sound impressive just by picking outlier cases. The thing that irks me is that some people making these claims aren't smart enough to do even that, they just make shit up and figure nobody will call them on it.

[barbarian-rat.livejournal.com]

This was a very interesting exchange. Snousle, you make some very good points.

Some things come to mind that have not been addressed, because they are only indirectly connected to the point you made in your initial post.
So, it you have the energy, I'm wondering what you think of:

My understanding is that people who own assault weapons don't use them for hunting, but to be on more equal footing should a political revolution arise such as it did in 1776.

Addressing mental illness, not only in getting them more medical help, but their access to weapons.

My understanding is that currently vendors at gun shows do not have to follow the same reporting regulations as a retail gun shop does.

In the 80s much of the murder rate was connected with the cocaine wars and black people were the main victims. Recent mass murders involved mostly white people. That, I think, is one reason there is such a reaction to these mass murders. It similar to missing children, attractive white girls receive much more media attention, and probably police attention too, than a black girl, attractive or not.

[snousle.livejournal.com]

Yes, there are a lot of people who think that they need weapons for a future war against the federal government. Tactically, the situation is hopeless, and for the most part I think they are crazy, but I do think that the existence of these weapons is of strategic value if you honestly believe such a war is imminent. Even if losing is guaranteed, making the war vastly more costly could theoretically discourage it from happening, sort of like the case with strategic nuclear weapons.

Addressing mental illness is a great idea; much hay has been made over the dramatic rise in incarceration rates, but if you look at the total fraction of institutionalized adults in the US, the curve is nearly flat. They merely moved people from insane asylums to prisons. Needless to say, asylums are much safer and less expensive.

Correct, gun shows are relatively unregulated. Transfers between relatives are even less regulated.

A major argument against my "public health" style viewpoint, i.e. weighting all deaths equally, is that indeed, not all homicides are equal. I agree that if it's just gangbangers killing each other. well, maybe there's a silver lining there. A self-correcting problem, you might say. But that is very glib and callous and I don't really look at it that way in practice. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, you can't really make unequal weighting like that a basis for policy, at least not explicitly. So of course while cute white children of rich parents count 100x more than violent ghetto teens, as far as public outrage is concerned, you have to pretend to disregard that at some level.

[barbarian-rat.livejournal.com]

Thanks. It's very much how I see things.

[equinas.livejournal.com]

This is not "some people". The Founders did not write the 2nd amendment for hunting, sport-shooting, or even self-defense. They wrote it so the that the "government fears the people". Thomas Jefferson: "When people fear the government, there is tyranny; when government fears the people, there is liberty."

They knew, and had witnessed first hand, what happens when government is allowed to disarm its people. They knew what happens when government is left unchecked. History is replete with examples of governments which began benevolently and became genocidal dictatorships, and they all disarmed their people first. Those who think this isn't a possibility and have given up their weapons now can only rely on the precious hope that their government never targets them, because they can no longer defend themselves. I'm not willing to do that.

When the 2nd amendment was written, yeah, there were only muskets and muzzle-loaders. Irrelevant argument, because the people were equally armed as the government. The 2nd amendment was made to evolve so that the people can arm themselves equivalently to the government, and that provides a deterrent. It's already been curbed with the restriction of automatic weapons, more erosion (such as an assault weapons ban) only weakens the people in their ability to deter their government from abuse.

I hope I never have to resist governmental abuse with weapons. But my ability to have them helps keep that hope alive.

[h0gwash.livejournal.com]

Ultimately, gun control is kind of an optional thing so I don't think there's much story there. Sir! May I remind you that discharging a weapon within the city limits is illegal!

I think the real staying power of the story is the actively nihilistic psychosis which has happened on both coasts and the midwest.

The New Economy of simultaneously prolonged high unemployment for some and very long work hours for many others has trapped most Americans in a prolonged state of heavy emotional stress. We don't know where the fulcrum between normalcy and psychosis lies and we are afraid we will or someone we are supporting will be driven mad.

[equinas.livejournal.com]

I love how you call it an auto-immune disorder for the country to attack itself when this kind of thing happens. That is a perfect analogy.