Not sure exactly what point you’re trying to make here. The article you linked shows a graph that shows homicide rates greater in years after the gun ban than in 1996 (like 1999 and 2002, which is the point I was making. And, as previously noted, the US has always had a homicide rate greater than many countries, regardless of gun laws. However, the US homicide rate has seen a very dramatic decline since the mid 1990s as well. Maybe not as big a drop as Australia, but a very significant drop for the US.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

Here's what I know: Short of total confiscation, there is no law that will prevent the next mass shooting. According to the Washington Post, in 2015 there were an estimated 357 million firearms in the United States. No way law-abiding gun owners are going to turn in every gun they own, even if the law said they had to... and I'm not sure, given the Second Amendment, that the law could even do that, short of amending the Constitution to eliminate or rewrite 2A. Short of that, there'd be a civil war and wholesale bloodshed if federal officials and law enforcement (forget the military, including the National Guard, because they're not going to turn their guns on US citizens in this regard) tried to march into every home and grab all the guns.

Now, if there were some sort of law that could prevent such tragedies, I'd say sign me up immediately and I'll even bug my Congressperson to get it passed. And despite Dan's idea of the cultural zeitgeist about guns turning soon, I honestly don't see that happening anytime in the foreseeable future, to tell the truth. I know guns, and I know gun owners and our gun culture. I think a shooting like this is as likely to INCREASE support for gun ownership as it is to decrease such support, for the simple reason that people like having various means of self-defense, the gun being the primary instrument of that condition.

One interesting stat that I came across proposes that the percentage of gun ownership has declined significantly over the last 35 years while the number of mass shootings seem to be on the rise. It seems more gun owners own more more guns than ever before, but there are fewer gun owners in total.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

If this isn’t ban worthy material, I’d personally like to know why. There are lots of opinions on both sides of this debate, and most of it has been pretty cordial. This, on the other hand, is a pretty despicable post.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

Halvard has some sort of political immunity. Not sure why.

Reduce sales of ammo... Can't shoot a blank gun

OK, so how much ammunition should a person be "allowed" to purchase per year?

I’m with you on this. Isn’t it ironic this fucking asshole has managed to get others banned?

Vile piece of shit, indeed.

I think Mr. Halvard is Lieutenant Dan's alter ego. It's the only explanation. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

https://ballotpedia.org/...n_Magazine_Ban_(2016)

As offensive as Halvard's post was i don't think he/she/it should be banned. He posts seldom and now has revealed himself to be the vile piece of shit that he is. We don't need safe spaces here.

Our gun confiscating website owner will probably not kick H to the curb even tho he was quick to do so with some others

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Steve

I don’t disagree, but your last sentence hits upon my point...if this is a place where folks get banned for over the top, vile posts, then there should some level of detectable consistency. If Harvard is allowed to get away with this sort of thing, it may be reasonable to conclude that bans are at least somewhat politically biased.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

The areas with more open gun laws, and less overall restriction, have lower crime rates... That fact sort of discredits your statements doesn't it?

Someone remind me again why the Forge and Duffy are banned....what a despicable human being Halvard is. Steves comment on him being a vile piece of shit is spot on.

Now, now. Let's all put down the pitchforks and flaming torches, boys. Y'all are better'n that. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

My point is to not dismiss the program because it didn't immediately tank homicides. From your own link, in 2002 Australia additionally restricted firearms, and it dropped, so you've got conflicting data there. The trend is down, the trend is down faster than the US despite coming from a much lower number (hypothesis: it's easier to what Australia did not actually being what people are positioning the buyback to be (it wasn't a complete gun ban, and only reduced private ownership by ~20%, from your own link again). I'm not making any strong claims here in support of anything, but the "it did nothing" arguments are just not true.

You cited the US's drop in the 90's despite no new gun laws? 1993-Brady? 1994-AWB (expired in 2004, notice the jump back up?)...

I have no idea what the effect of every type of gun control is, but I'm certainly not about to write them off as having no effect given the data we have. Do I know what sort of gun control I want? No, but I also don't want people knee-jerking their opinion or basing it off of bad data.

Should Dan go [further] down that road then this website just turns into a DU echo chamber and Kay will have to find another place to spread her 'truth' each day!

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Steve

Just so I understand your argument...if homicide rates go up after a gun control law has gone into effect (such as what happened in Australia), that doesn’t mean that the gun control laws didn’t work; but if they did go down after a law went into place, then that is taken as evidence that they did work? I’m not sure you can have it both ways.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

I don’t particularly care whether or not Harvard gets banned. What would interest me is an explanation as to why his post isn’t ban worthy (assuming that is the case), and folks like Forge, Windy, Duffy, and Yahey are gone.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

No it doesn't, but you don't care. Overall crime rates has little to do with lone mass shootings. Never mind that particular statistic depends overwhelmingly on very small pockets of high crime. Without those, it falls apart. Again, you don't care about either those points. Carry on, thoughts and prayers!

so tell us what 'common sense gun control' you'd propose to deal with these lone mass shootings you're so careful to single out?

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Steve

Firearm death rates in the United States by state
wikipedia

1234567891011121314151617181920212223242526272829303132333435363738394041424344454647484950StateRateHawaii2.71Massachusetts3.18New York4.39Connecticut4.48Rhode Island5.33New Jersey5.69New Hampshire7.03Minnesota7.88California7.89Iowa8.19Illinois8.67Nebraska8.99Washington9.07South Dakota9.47Maryland9.75Wisconsin9.93Vermont10.37Virginia10.46Texas10.50Delaware10.80Ohio11.14Pennsylvania11.36Kansas11.44Utah11.69Colorado11.75Oregon11.76Maine11.89North Dakota11.89Michigan12.03North Carolina12.42Florida12.49Georgia12.63Indiana13.04Idaho14.08Kentucky14.15Nevada14.16Arizona14.20Missouri14.56West Virginia15.10South Carolina15.60New Mexico15.63Tennessee15.86Oklahoma16.41Arkansas16.93Montana16.94Wyoming17.51Mississippi17.55Alabama17.79Louisiana19.15Alaska19.59

Raw numbers skew the answer too much to be useful. "Firearm deaths" is not the same as firearm homicides, and really not the same as non drug related firearm homicides against innocent people.

Try again.

Here are a few weird things about the shooter and the shooting. He packed a scary black rifle, a gas mask and lots of ammunition, apparently, and then took an Uber to the high school. The Uber driver somehow saw nothing amiss. The shooter then shot several people outside the school, then went inside, pulled a fire alarm then killed around 14 students who emptied out of their classrooms and into the halls.

Then, he put down his weapon and otherwise ditched anything that might indicate he was the shooter and left with the mass of students fleeing the building, with no one the wiser. Once outside the school's boundaries he went to a Subway and from there to a McDonald's, where police arrested him without incident well after he ended his kill spree. I'm stunned, quite frankly, that the shooter encountered so little opposition from before his mass murder until police arrested him.

Also, the high school appears to have had a guard but it's still unknown whether he was armed or not. Plus, the guard didn't "encounter" the shooter during the event, who appears to have ranged between the first and third floors as he shot students. The absence of an encounter by the guard seems strange. But if one guard isn't enough for a school, hire two. Or three or whatever it takes.

The mass murderer was apparently as loony as a bedbug, too. Every student who's been interviewed about the shooter and who knew him says that he was, variously, "off"or "crazy" and that they knew he'd be the one to shoot up the school. The mental health aspect of this tragedy remains to be explored. It looks like the shooter was telegraphing his intentions as clear as day, though.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

You make a good point, sir.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

No, that was your point, only you only looked at one buyback and declared it didn't work for a couple years after. My point is that you have to assess things with not-bad data, such as non-population adjusted homicide figures.

Again, you cited both 2002 and the mid 90's as pivot points of homicide trends for Aus/US but failed to mention the additional firearm restrictions passed at those exact times. Do you think those restrictions had an effect? Do you think the lapsing of the AWB in 2004 affected the homicide rate in the US?

And again, I'm not making claims that they did or did not, I'm merely asking people to not discount that they *could* have an effect based on bad data. e.g. have an open mind, that's all.