who wants to go to school with classmates packing heat [link]
My son did. A second-grader brought gun to school because she wanted to be more popular. Oh, and her mother was a cop. Eight years ago, my coworker’s baby boy was shot dead by another kid at his baby-sitter’s house. I see one or two pro-gun comments here. I want to know their take on this and what solutions they have. Respectful dialogue appreciated. I have no intention of derailing this thread. [link]
Fret not about derailing that thread, kind Shodan-san. I have felt sick ever since I read your comment and I think this discussion about guns is relevant and necessary. I can’t even imagine what you felt like as a parent, when you discovered that your precious baby was at school with another child who had naively brought such danger with her. As for what happened to your co-worker, that must be every gun-owning parents’ nightmare.
I once ended a relationship with someone which had some “promise” (i.e. an Orthodox Malayalee etc etc) because he insisted on keeping guns in his home. Even if he had children. I just think the potential for tragedy is too high when you mix the two; not everyone is always as careful as we all should be and children are inherently curious and often, quite clever. He wouldn’t compromise and neither would I. That’s how strongly I feel about the issue– and I know many of you have passionate views on it, too.
One of you had this to say, on the same thread:
I wouldn’t call myself pro-gun but I can’t go as far as saying “ban guns”.
I’m uncomfortable with laws that make it easy to obtain guns, getting them at the local superstore, Kmart Walmart etc is what makes me uncomfortable. I’d prefer to see stricter laws and federal laws to govern the right to bear arms and a person who wants to take up arms and it could be in a lot of different capacities, not always law enforcement, would have to go thru stringent regulations and requirements and training in order to qualify for it. [link]
What do the rest of you think? Several of you are so respectful, you are worried about derailing the original VT thread with this nascent discussion, so I thought I’d open a space for your dialogue here.
::
And one final brown angle to a post on guns in America; PSUBrown wrote in to ask if Andrew Arulanandam, the Public Affairs Director of the NRA was desi. When Abhi played provocateur and wrote about the “potential” need for gun ownership post-Katrina, this question came up in our comments section and the consensus was that he might be of Sri Lankan origin, but there was no confirmation. Other mutineers have asked me about this in the last 24 hours, so if one of you knows more about Mr. Arulanandam, speak up and enlighten us. And if you will permit me to end this post on a slightly lighter note, I put that question to you, our wise crowd because I’m sure one of you is related to or dated him; all Mutineers are two degrees apart, except for this notable mystery woman. 🙂
You’re right. it’s contextual, groups like the Michigan Militia still operate under that same [false] context. I don’t recall any mention of guns or firearms, probably because at that time it was assumed it did mean shotgun, or rifle, or whatever was considered the “arms” for the common man.
But if its contextual, then it certainly is open to revision based on current context, so the way I see it, calling for a complete ban on guns does not act in contravention of the Constitution. (Whether or not it’s usefull in reducing violent crime, school shootings, etc… is another matter altogether)
Just look at the following 2 Amendments:
3rd : No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
4th : The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
If the 2,3,4 amendment are looked at as a whole, it’s clear that its purpose was to curtail government from directly infringing on the individual’s physical safety.
MYTH: Guns don’t kill.
TRUTH:Guns make it easier to kill people. A study done by the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence reported that a victim is about five times more likely to survive if an attacker is armed with a knife rather than a gun (source). Guns simply make it easier to kill. Furthermore, The International Crime Victim Survey concluded that there is a correlation between gun ownership and an increase in both homicide and suicide. “The present study, based on a sample of eighteen countries, confirms the result of previous work based on the 14 countries surveyed during the first International Crime Survey. Substantial correlations were found between gun ownership and gun-related as well as total homicide and suicide rates. Widespread gun ownership has not been found to reduce the likelihood of fatal events committed with other means. Thus, people do not turn to knives and other potententially lethal weapons less often when more guns are available, but more guns usually means more victims of homicide and suicide.”
http://www.guninformation.org/
Massacres like the VTech one are relatively rare and account for a very small percentage of gun related homicides and suicides.. not to speak of non-homicidal violent crimes.
But the constitution was built with the foresight that people and societies would evolve and change and hence the interpretations as well as the applications. Changes need to be made and societies change, slavery, women’s right to vote etc are all examples. Look at something as simple as Freedom of Speech which for that day was about being able to speak up against government or anyone without retribution, is today a much larger debate and used to argue a case for the Rush Limbaughs and Don Imus’s of the world.
Avi on April 18, 2007 10:08 AM · Direct link Some statistics that I just looked up at NationMaster
Murder with Fire Arms
1 South Africa: 31,918
2 Colombia: 21,898
3 Thailand: 20,032
4 United States: 8,259
5 Mexico: 3,589
6 Zimbabwe: 598
7 Germany: 384
8 Belarus: 331
9 Czech Republic: 213
Only 8,259 in the United States? I can understand the high figures for Colombia but not for Thailand and South Africa.
Look at something as simple as Freedom of Speech which for that day was about being able to speak up against government or anyone without retribution, is today a much larger debate and used to argue a case for the Rush Limbaughs and Don Imus’s of the world.
Uh, actually Freedom of Speech is still about being able to speak up against government. The First Amendment only applies as to the government. You cannot speak up against private individuals without retribution (in the form of suits for defamation/slander/libel, or at the risk of losing your job, etc).
The Don Imus issue has nothing to do with free speech, because there was never any attempt to censor him by a government agency (although I believe there were calls in public to get the FCC involved).
But the constitution was built with the foresight that people and societies would evolve and change and hence the interpretations as well as the applications
I honestly don’t believe the Framers of the Constitution were taking societal evolution into account. They just wanted to make sure they would never have to deal with government tyranny (which probably meant George III) again.
I think they did to some degree, why even have provisions for amendments then?
I think they did to some degree, why even have provisions for amendments then?
Ok. I concede they did, but only “to some degree.”
And with that, I’m done. I have gotten almost no work done in the last two days!
South Africa is notoriously violent. Too many persistent social inequities etc. I am surprised by Thailand, but there is a large amount of narcotics trafficking near Burma and insurrection near Malaysia that might explain this. There’s something wrong about this list….how does Russia not make the list ? If it only takes 200 deaths to make the list than surely India should be on it as well.
Back on topic…I believe that people have the right to protect themselves, but I don’t understand the NRA’s “slippery slope” arguments against waiting periods and evaluations. My extended family in rural Tamil Nadu had guns, it was a necessity at one point when the police were useless and there was a wave of home invasions resulting in part from refugee kids who had grown inured to violence growing up in SL. I hate guns personally, I’m surprised that so many young liberal types enjoy going to the range for leisure. I’ve never owned a gun, but I live in a safe area of my city and have no one to protect. The conundrum is that people who have a households with kids to protect place their kids at risk by having a gun in the first place
Even the supposed elite Secret Service is no exception…
White House Secret Service officer shoots colleagues April 18, 2007
Two Secret Service officers were injured on Tuesday after a gun held by another Secret Service officer accidentally fired inside the White House gate, according to a spokesman, Darrin Blackford. link
And as regards locking up guns, perhaps these Keystone Kops need to enforce that rule themselves:
We’re worried about criminals getting conventional guns when the law enforcement agencies are unable to secure their own machine guns and military grade armor piercing ammunition. They need to clean up their own house before anything else.
I’m usually just a reader here at SM, but here goes. I really want to recommend “The Gift of Fear” by Gavin de Becker as a resource for better understanding violence in American society, as well as how to protect yourself and the people you care about (no gun required.) See http://www.gavindebecker.com for more info, there are also posts in the guestbook there about the VT shooting.
So India has a murder rate very similar to America’s despite gun ownership being vastly lower. Almost all the murders in India are committed without firearms. Can you imagine how much worse it would be if Indians were as well armed as americans, colombians and south africans?
Probably the only reason the Untouchables of India were so successfully repressed and humiliated for so very long was because they weren’t allowed to arm themselves.
A few things I’d like to point out:
Justice Department statistics on murders with firearms do not make distinctions between the grandmother murdered by heartless criminals while she sleeps and the criminal who was shot in the execution of said crime.
Concealed handguns as a deterrence does not work solely by pulling out the gun. Studies have shown that areas with concealed carry laws have a lower incidence of personal crime (attacks on a person) and an increase in property crime (attacks on property when someone is not there). Economists theorize this is because criminals recognize the greater danger they face by attacking people who might be carrying a gun.
Point two aside, carrying guns was not a matter of protecting us against other people, but of protecting us from our government. The Founding Fathers recognized that all people need to have the ability to defend themselves against tyranny. Having an armed citizenry was seen as the last stand for liberty.
I am a staunch supporter of gun rights, even in the face of tragedies like the one at Virginia Tech, because I do truly believe that despite the evils that can be wrought with guns, the people, the individual, needs to have access to the tools that keep them free.
I’ll exit the soap box now. Thanks for reading.
“There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order” – Ed Howdershelt
mannlicher-carcano. the name has stuck with me since early childhood. i picked it up during the long sad days of late november, 1963. friends, loved ones, everything seemed to just shut down. except congress. the television coverage of grief stricken members hashing out the details in plans to create restrictions on sales of military weapons thru the mail – to, say, the mentally unstable – as a public safety issue of the first order, was my momentary distraction. i remember a cried-out man standing at a dais, swaying, swinging at air, while reading mail order gun offers (each one more overwrought than the last, in the macho-man style of “argosy”) out of the want ads, distraught that lee harvey oswald had only to pop a money order into an envelope and wait a few weeks for his shiny new mannlicher-carcano…
there seemed to be a communal “across the board” sense amongst the weak, the powerful, and “people like us,” that legislation would follow as a matter of course. those members of congress who viewed any and all restrictions as an intolerable precedent-setting threat to their “way of life,” kept silent for the time being (wisely): so that a majority of americans were, at the time, entirely unaware such folk existed.
but they didn’t go away – they organized into the wealthiest, most intractable special interest lobby ever to infect american government. with an unmatched record of success in thwarting the will of police org’s re many issues (inc. even dum-dums, aka “cop killer” bullets) and the general public in poll after poll, the magnitude of NRA influence and effectiveness can hardly be overstated.
watching tv reports over the last few days i’ve learned that the VT shooter’s creative writing prof begged him to submit to counseling and – his depression and ob-com attraction to violence was so glaring – she took the drastic step of reporting him to police; many of his classmates viewed him as a “when”, not an “if,” disaster in progress; he was a suspect in a campus arson incident; and that virginia has laws designed to keep guns out of such hands.
as required by law, the shooter was subjected to a background check prior to purchasing a glock 9mm (a common police weapon – not for game hunting), a bullet-proof vest, and a .38 (another non-hunter), with a waiting period of 30 days between the gun sales. although extensive psych testing is required for police cadets in virginia, no psych test is involved to own police weaponry (whether the answer to, “why do you want to carry a gun?” on your job app is “it’s not for me, it’s for the characters in a dream i keep having”).
so how goes the battle to “create restrictions on sales of military weapons thru the mail – to, say, the mentally unstable – as a public safety issue of the first order,” versus the NRA’s de facto “more guns = more freedom” position? progress is best demonstrated, i think, in knowing that the state of virginia’s background check system covering all gun sales is so rigorous that – as in this most recent case – it took all of 10 minutes to complete.
10 minutes…
today feels a lot like late november, 1963. all the sadness is there…none of the shock.
(the identical level of rigor noted above also applies to those seeking a plentiful supply of military weapons such as the popular & readily available AK47s & UZI’s, which are restricted in certain states only by the quantity an individual may purchase per month).
Against a govt. run amock, right? But said govt. has already banned assault rifles? So,what use the rest of the tools?
And, while we are at it, lets arm every Iraqi citizen agains future Saddams.
Aren’t they already armed???
Okay, I have to respond to this.
I get your point that the percentage of gun owning households does not necessarily correlate with high crime. But you yourself has acknowledged that a country’s particular social ills are more indicative of its safety. So, we should also assume that America’s social ills are what makes it unsafe. Therefore, until America’s social problems are solved, why not ban guns as a short term solution? Obviously, it won’t be a total solution, but considering how often and how easily people get shot, then there’s no way such a ban could be a bad thing? If we reduce even a quarter of gun-related deaths, that would be a wonderful thing.
Frankly, I couldn’t care less about small towns with one murder per generation. Because this overall issue involves the deaths of innocent people, it cannot be framed by other arguments so easily. If there was ever something that needed intervention, it’s guns and other instruments designed to kill.
I’d go even further, to say, if even a single life is saved by a complete ban on private gun ownership, it’s worth it. It’s irrelevant how many people have to give up their hobby of hunting.
Australia and the U.K. have near total bans on private gun ownership. You can google around to see how well that has worked…
Funny, I did just that, and I came up with this government report from Australia.
And this government report from Britain.
Both reports say that, after an initial spike after the gun ban’s implementation, crimes with a firearm have been going DOWN for several consecutive years.
Were you trying to make a point?
Are you sure about that ? From wikipedia’s page on the subject : The rise in UK gun crime is a long term trend that is apparently unaffected by the state of UK firearms legislation. [20] Before the 1997 ban, handguns were only held by 0.1% of the population,[21] and while the number of crimes involving firearms in England and Wales increased from 13,874 in 1998/99 to 24,070 in 2002/03, they remained relatively static at 24,094 in 2003/04, and have since fallen to 21,521 in 2005/06. link
The UK gun crime rate is still 55% higher today than it was in 1998/99.
An excerpt from one of the cited articles[20] in the Wikipedia article:
And as regards the idea that gun bans help decrease crime rate, how would you then explain the U.S Dept Of Justice’s statistics of dramatic declines in most crimes over the past decade without any sweeping gun bans (including gun related crime)link: ?
After peaking in 1993, the number of gun crimes reported to police declined and then stabilized at levels last seen in 1988.
Compare the US crime rate decline with the rise in crime in the UK with the bans. Interesting.
Banning guns is not quite the panacea for the ills of society as many people seem to think.
The question is.. did it rise as a direct result of the weapons ban, or would it have risen even more without it. My point still stands, if a single life is saved, or I’ll even amend it to say, if the net life is increased as because of the ban. (That is, lets say the ban results in 3 more killings, but 10 lives are spared) It’s worth it.
Society changing, misunderstood rural folk, or even stereotyping, evil moustache-twisting, ivy-league educated, urban dwelling, hunters can do without their hobby of shooting up animals if it means a single human life is spared. Go collect stamps or something.
Sure, while we’re about it, let’s bring back prohibition too, will save all those lives killed in drunken crashes on the freeway… Oh wait, they already tried prohibition I think.
Then you’ll have all those deaths from infected paper cuts caused by handling all those stamps unsafely. Maybe you would like to ban those too.
Wait. It’s not “Guns kill people” or “People kill People”, it’s “Guns let crazy people kill lots and lots of people”.
Let’s prevent people from going crazy.
Let’s find people that are going crazy, and get them help, and if needed, put them away till they’re better.
Let’s keep guns from crazy people (implementation needs some thought)
Let’s bring back good manners, and promote acceptance – not just tolerance, of difference, so there’s one less reason for people to go crazy.
Let’s also work on getting every willing and able person fulfilling and reasonably well-paying work, while we are at 1-4.
I think we should do nothing.
These type of shootings are rare and its not like Cho is part of some greater fascist or communist movement with access to WMDs that may threaten our freedom and thus trigger a debate about reasonable restrictions to our civil liberties.
My heart goes out to the victims, but the overblown coverage masks the fact that in the whole sceme of things, this was no big deal.
A few saved lives are not worth more laws.
Or, implement a designated shooter system. If people get their jollies by getting their gun off, let them do it in a controlled environment. I said private gun ownership should be banned if it saves a single life.
Sure, if there’s an easier way to mail letters, and if you can provide substantial data that stamps kill. My point is, private gun ownership has a little upside (a bunch of rednecks get to shoot at animals) and a huge potential downside.
I wonder if your opinion would be the same if were close to those effected. Sometime’s it’s these “rare” events that shed light to a long standing problems in society, and all it takes is one person, motivated enough to start the change.
The inverse: it’s worth having innocent dead people in order to maintain fewer laws.
I don’t know why people are talking about outlawing guns when it is so clear that if banned, they would still be available through the underground economy, just as so many other things that are banned are currently available. In fact, they are already available right now to those whom current law prohibits from owning firearms. In any case that is a supply side solution, and it would clearly fail. Let’s address the demand side instead, by working to get people to use the guns they do have less or not at all.
Of course, except in acquiring things that are illegal, one risks another layer of scrutiny, it may be inconsequential for someone bent on breaking the law anyway (by say, going on a murderous rampage) But, like I said, if a single life is spared, I see it as worthwhile.