ChiGoose

Correct. Here are the numbers as of 2019 (the most recent FBI crime data I could pull up) Gary, Indiana has a population of 75,000 and had 57 homicides in 2019 (FBI data table for Indiana) for a homicide rate of 76 homicides per 100,000 people. Chicago has a population of 2,707,064 and had 492 homicides in 2019 (FBI data table for Illinois) for a homicide rate of 18 homicides per 100,000 people. Gary, Indiana has a much higher homicide rate than Chicago and that violence gets exported to Chicago through guns moving into the city. Chicago gets all of the national headlines because the sheer total is large due to the size of the population. But depending how you define "city" (in terms of population and boundaries), Chicago is far from the most deadly city in the US. Here's one listing from last year that has Chicago in 10th, with a homicide rate that's a little more than 1/3rd the rate of St. Louis: https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-city-rankings/cities-with-most-murders

I'd have to disagree here. Living here in Chicago, around 60% of the guns used for crimes here were obtained outside of the state. Illinois and Chicago can put in whatever stringent gun laws they want but people can drive a couple miles out of the city to Gary, Indiana, load up on guns and bring them into Chicago. Despite this, Indiana is not acting to reduce the gun trafficking nor enacting stricter controls on gun sales. If we don't take a comprehensive approach across the country, we will continue to have problems with people obtaining guns in less restrictive states and bringing them into more restrictive states to circumvent the laws.

That's the kind of high powered legal team that can come in to defend you for a traffic ticket and accidentally get you the death penalty.

Some of the same politicians saying teachers are harming kids with CRT and grooming them for pedophiles also argue that we should give the teachers guns. Doesn't make much sense to me. I think not having guns in a classroom is definitely preferable to asking our teachers to do everything they are currently doing AND carry firearms. I think your second point here is important but often gets overlooked. We cannot stop every mad person from acting on their desire for violence. However, we can work to reduce the lethality of them doing so. A country in which there is easy and affordable access to mental health resources AND strong checks against who can own firearms and how they are stored is a country that would see fewer mass casualty events than we have today. Ideally, it would reduce suicides as well. If someone wants to kill a bunch of people but can't get a firearm, they can still do a lot of damage with something like the aforementioned hammer. But you're not going to have mass hammering death events every day like we do with guns right now. I also doubt 19 cops would be too scared to go into a classroom that had a madman with a hammer instead of one with a gun. Also, if someone wants to commit suicide but they cannot get a firearm, they will have to try something less lethal, increasing the odds that they survive the attempt and don't end up killing themselves.

...because that's not the main cause for gun violence?

Red flag laws are a relatively new development, so only ~9 states currently have them. I would expect we see more states enact them in the coming years. Also, not all red flag laws are equal. New York has one but it clearly failed to prevent the Buffalo shooting despite the gunman having previously been reported for threatening violence. When enacting a red flag law, states should look to see what has and has not worked with similar laws in other states to make their laws better.

I think this "us vs them" talk is not only problematic in that it does not facilitate actual discussion, but it's also dangerous because it drives us to our own sides and leads to demonizing anyone who doesn't agree with us as "them." It also allows for us to take any member of the "them" group and ascribe their belief to everyone in that group even if the group as a whole does not agree. A good example of this is the mask mandate claim here. I have not seen anyone in a position of authority advocating that we require everyone be masked forever. I am sure there are some people somewhere who have expressed that belief, but it is not a mainstream position of the Left. However, by making this claim, we can simply smear anyone on the other side as being unreasonable and dismiss anything they have to say. It would be like taking the words of an extremist on the Right and saying everyone on the Right is a neo-nazi white supremacist ("They want to disadvantage minorities. They believe being white is superior..." etc). It's not true. There are some that may express that view but that's not the actual policy of the Right. But I could make that claim, point to someone who fits that profile and feel like I've made my point that my group is superior to their group. Not only does it not get us anywhere, but it actually pushes us apart and makes things worse. Let's be better than this.

Do those factors correlate with firearm deaths? Do we have data on that? Just a quick look shows we have only a slightly higher rate of single parent household than the UK (https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2019/12/12/religion-and-living-arrangements-around-the-world/ ), but the UK does not have a similar rate of firearm deaths.

If this was true, we would see the same rate of gun deaths in peer countries, but we don't. So, it's either: The availability / accessibility of guns; or Americans are inherently inferior to people like Canadians and the British I really don't think it's the latter...

The NRA used to actually propose gun control legislation because as the experts on guns, they knew what laws would be effective for preventing guns from getting in the wrong hands while maintaining the ability for upstanding citizens to safely own firearms. Now that the NRA exists solely as the lobbying arm of gun manufacturers, we no longer have a large organization of firearm experts lobbying for safe gun laws. Which means that if we ever get to a boiling point and the country actually decides to do *something* about the insane number of gun deaths, those laws will likely be written by people who lack the expertise to make them as effective as they can be. I'm not convinced banning the AR-15 will do a whole lot since there are plenty of other semi-automatic rifles out there, but if we get to a point where Congress actually passes something, I'd bet an AR-15 ban would be part of that. The fact that most gun deaths are suicides I think underscores even more that we need effective firearm legislation. Most people who survive a suicide attempt do not end up dying of suicide. They end up moving on and leading a normal life. And most methods of suicide attempts (pills, cutting, etc) are far more likely to fail than succeed. But somebody who attempts suicide with a gun is about 90% certain to die. If they did not have access to that weapon in that brief moment, they more likely than not would not have died. Better laws around simple things like gun storage and red flag laws would likely go a long way here. And I completely agree that we should focus more on handguns. We talk more about rifles because they are used in the kinds of shootings that make the headlines, but the overwhelming majority of gun deaths are by handgun. I would be in favor of handguns being far more regulated / restricted than rifles.

I find it interesting that your comparing specifically to AR-15s and rifles instead of guns in general. I'm not entirely sure what your point is. Personally, I think ~45,000 people dying from guns in the US every year to be bad and would like us to do something about it. Since other countries don't have the same rate of firearm deaths, it should be possible to reduce the deaths here.

So about 1% of the people who die by guns in the US each year?

There are anecdotes and there is data. How many people are killed by hammers every year? How lethal are hammers? As in, if someone decides to kill someone with a hammer, how likely are they to succeed?

If it was true that legislation could not reduce gun violence, we would see these problems in other peer countries. But we don’t. They have the same problems we do with mental health, schools having doors, etc. But they don’t have the shootings we do. Not even close. So it’s clear that *something* can be done to reduce gun deaths but some people would rather pretend otherwise.

They promote themselves as reformed GOP activists who have seen the error of their ways and are truly working to defeat Trumpism. So there’s like a 10% chance that’s actually true.

If they’re not careful, they might give a patient the wrong shot…

FYI: there’s like a 90% chance that The Lincoln Project is just a giant grift. They occasionally do some cool stuff but most of their work is targeted at Lefty Twitter so that people will give them money for more cool ads that won’t do much.

I will be there. Section 524, Row 5. I balked a bit at the price, but my wife (a Bears fan) talked me into it.

It is truly amazing that Hillary Clinton is so powerful that she controls all of Washington DC, the Democratic Party, the FBI, the Deep State, and other governments agencies to be named later. And she used that power to her advantage by coming up with a master plan to lose an election to a game show host who somehow managed to bankrupt multiple casinos.

Hi. Democrat here. I would like to keep the guns out of the hands of the criminals and the insane. I would also be in favor of spending more money on mental health. I'm fine with upstanding citizens owning guns. Most of my family are gun owners.

1. More funding to help people with mental illness would be great 2. Mental illness is not the root cause of these shootings. Other rich countries have people with mental illness but they don't have the rate of mass shootings that we do.

At the request of @DRsGhost, I read the executive summary of the IG's report on Crossfire Hurricane. Here are my main takeaways: 1. The IG confirms that the FBI investigation into Russia was started when a friendly foreign government informed the FBI that Trump advisor George Papadopoulos told them that Russia had contacted him claiming to have damaging information on Clinton. Mueller stated that this is how it all started and the IG confirmed it. The FBI was not made aware of the Steele Dossier until weeks after the investigation started. The IG confirmed that the opening of the investigation was properly predicated and in compliance with FBI policies and guidelines. So can we finally stop with these claims that it was started by Clinton or the Steele Dossier? 2. The Carter Page FISA applications were incredibly flawed While the IG found that the applications for FISA surveillance on Carter Page were not politically motivated, it also found that they omitted relevant information that should have been disclosed to the judge. FBI policy requires that the factual claims in a warrant are vetted by investigators but the Crossfire Hurricane team did not run them by Steele's handler before submitting the application. The handler told the IG that they would not have agreed to some of the statements on the applications. Between the first application and the subsequent renewals, the IG found 17 separate issues with the applications. 3. Bruce Ohr's actions likely did not violate FBI policy, but those policies should be updated. Ohr was not required to inform senior staff or his supervisors that he was communicating with Steele but he probably should have anyway. Ohr was also not required to disclose that his wife had previously done contracting work with FusionGPS, but it would have been better if he did disclose this. In both instances, the IG suggests the FBI update its policies to close these potential gaps. 4. Bottom Line: Why do people think this vindicates Trump? After reading the report summary, I'm struggling to understand why Trump supporters find this to be some smoking gun that disproves the Mueller investigation. It actually confirms that the Steele Dossier was not the cause of the FBI's Russia investigation. The problems with Page's FISA applications are certainly serious but they do not invalidate what was discovered and most of the Mueller report deals with issues with the Trump campaign's contacts with Russia that do not involve Page. If you go so far as to throw out all of the Carter Page information, the Mueller report is still a damning document. It also makes me confused why we have this long thread about the Sussman trial as if it was going to unravel a big conspiracy. The IG confirms that the Russia investigation was ongoing prior to Sussman meeting with the FBI. So even if Sussman had been found guilty and even if everything in the Steele Dossier had been thrown into the garbage immediately when it was handed over to the FBI, we would still have heaps of evidence of Russian contact with the Trump campaign from the already ongoing investigation. From what I can tell, the IG report may lead to reforms with the FISA process, which would be great, but this report does almost nothing to invalidate the overall findings of the Russia investigation.

Sounds good. I’ve got a bit on my plate at the moment but should be able to get back to you in a day or two. Every Democrat I know wishes the party was as clever as you claim they are.

I have not. It's fairly long, but I'll read it if you read the Mueller Report. I'll even do a book report if you'd like.

O Brother Where Art Thou is an excellent movie. Though I suppose it's more Coen Brothers than it is a typical Clooney movie despite him playing the lead. I've answered this several times: the Democratic Party and its leadership is profoundly incompetent.