Blood is on the NRA's hands

[BringBackFergy]

The Shooting Tracker:

 

"Welcome to the mass shooting tracker, as featured by CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, The Economist and more."

 

"Here at the Mass Shooting Tracker, we count the number of people shot rather than the number people killed because, "shooting" means "people shot"." (This sounds like a really gimmicky radio spot)

 

"Maintaining a list like this also punches a hole in the NRA argument that if mass shootings are televised, more mass shootings will occur via copycats. In fact, many of these shootings do not receive more than a day's worth of local coverage. Yet mass shootings continue to occur anyway. We actually think mass shootings should receive morepublicity, not less."

 

Everyone has an agenda.

[Alaska Darin]

Well, it is on page 14, though I know the vast majority of those posts are probably insults

 

Rob, I am not going to step into the gun discussion here. As mentioned above, wrong forum for brainstorming.

In other words, you're a lot like the original poster. You literally bring nothing to the table except a veiled attempt at condescension.

[Gene Frenkle]

Out of curiosity, what would it take for all of you gun enthusiasts and freedom defenders to concede that increased background checks and stricter gun laws are needed? Serious question.

[BringBackFergy]

http://themanterialist.com/2014/02/28/the-kitty-generation/

 

LAGrant - There is no counseling, coddling, or caressing Islamoterrorists, pissed off husbands or mental defects...they will kill with whatever weapons they have at their disposal. The sooner you realize this, the sooner you will appreciate the fact that you have a Constitutional right to protect yourself. If one or two of the folks who were killed in San Bernardino had a concealed pistol, they may have reduced the number of people killed or shot (or whatever neat little statistical box you wish to put them in). The fact that so many "youngins" are now being taught to sympathize and coddle those who are radical muslims with the hope that they will be spared life or injury speaks to the pussification of your generation (I assume you are in your early to mid twenties). Do you honestly think you can reason with these scum? Are you going to hold your hands up and say "Wait Wait....I'm with you...I'm a good guy...shoot that NRA member over there". You'll get a bullet in your head before you ever hear him (or her) laugh at you.

 

Wake up Skippy - The only person who can protect you from violent death is not the Government, it's not your Facebook postings or your Twitter followers. It's you! You have to defend yourself, and your wife, children, and property.

[MarkAF43]

Out of curiosity, what would it take for all of you gun enthusiasts and freedom defenders to concede that increased background checks and stricter gun laws are needed? Serious question.

 

 

Personally I don't think the debate is so much being focused on the stricter gun laws, but like I asked the OP, this individual bought the pistols they had legally. So how would stricter gun laws change this when they followed the protocol to get them? Maybe there are some who don't want the increased background checks and stricter gun laws, but putting them on the books doesn't realistically make it more difficult to get guns.

 

 

Let me ask this. How far into someone's background do we go? Do we look and go, well Timmy in 3rd grade drew a picture of a gun, pointed it at kids and went pew pew pew you're dead. Do we not allow him a gun 20 years later? Also, the laws mean nothing if the parties involved aren't enforcing them. You can have a law that says I need to do XYZ to sell a gun. Well if I do X and the person says I'll throw an extra 5K at me to complete the transaction, is every gun seller going to follow the letter of the law? They're in business to make money and not everyone is honest. So realistically it doesn't solve the problems, but it may help some of the cases.

 

Also, a background check and stricter laws cannot predict future behavior. He passed a check to get the handguns, they couldn't predict this would happen in the future. So how can we ensure once they are sold legally and following the letter of the law that something won't happen in that persons life to make them do something like this? You can't.

[Gene Frenkle]

Personally I don't think the debate is so much being focused on the stricter gun laws, but like I asked the OP, this individual bought the pistols they had legally. So how would stricter gun laws change this when they followed the protocol to get them? Maybe there are some who don't want the increased background checks and stricter gun laws, but putting them on the books doesn't realistically make it more difficult to get guns.

 

 

Let me ask this. How far into someone's background do we go? Do we look and go, well Timmy in 3rd grade drew a picture of a gun, pointed it at kids and went pew pew pew you're dead. Do we not allow him a gun 20 years later? Also, the laws mean nothing if the parties involved aren't enforcing them. You can have a law that says I need to do XYZ to sell a gun. Well if I do X and the person says I'll throw an extra 5K at me to complete the transaction, is every gun seller going to follow the letter of the law? They're in business to make money and not everyone is honest. So realistically it doesn't solve the problems, but it may help some of the cases.

 

Also, a background check and stricter laws cannot predict future behavior. He passed a check to get the handguns, they couldn't predict this would happen in the future. So how can we ensure once they are sold legally and following the letter of the law that something won't happen in that persons life to make them do something like this? You can't.

Note, I did not propose that stricter gun laws or increased background checks would help solve the problem.

 

I'm asking what it would take for you all to change your position.

[Rob's House]

Out of curiosity, what would it take for all of you gun enthusiasts and freedom defenders to concede that increased background checks and stricter gun laws are needed? Serious question.

I'd want to know what gun laws you were proposing and what evidence there was to suggest they would deliver the desired results and I'd want to consider the likelihood of unintended consequences.

[MarkAF43]

Note, I did not propose that stricter gun laws or increased background checks would help solve the problem.

 

I'm asking what it would take for you all to change your position.

 

 

My apologies, I wasn't implying you directly. I was just pointing out that even if we change the laws, how does it help if the processes are being followed as they are now? My only counter to what you're asking in your post is if they will truly make a difference. If there is a solution it needs to be something with teeth, not a paper solution to appease the many people who are crying for reform.

[Gene Frenkle]

It feels to me like too many people on both sides are dug in to their position, with no room for rationality. The GOP blocks government funding for studies into the effectiveness of various proposed measures, while Democrats pander to raw emotions after each such incident. Even if potentially effective measures are coceived of, people will still reject implementation based on ideology. We're going about this the wrong way, but what else is new...

[B-Man]

The Left’s Cynical Gun-Control Reflex

by Charles C.W. Cooke

Before we knew a single thing about the perpetrators of the abomination in San Bernardino, solutions were being thrown across the Internet with abandon. The answers to this latest problem were obvious: Americans just needed to “stand up to the NRA”; to agree to “common sense” firearms legislation; and to implement the trio of gun-control “reforms” that President Obama so dearly covets. Those who offered prayers in lieu of knee-jerk calls for authority were deemed to be callous or cynical or dumb. Never mind that none of the details were known. Never mind that we had no motive, no weapon, no suspects. Never mind that, California being what it is, it was eminently possible that all of the proposals under discussion were already in the law. This was a golden propaganda opportunity, not to be passed up.

 

For implicit in every pro-gun-control argument is the assumption that all Americans secretly agree with the need for the president’s favored reforms but that a small majority is just too recalcitrant – or, perhaps, evil – to admit it. It is for this reason that so many debates on the merits of stricter regulation proceed from the premise that gun control obviously works, rather than from the presumption that we do not really know what we should do. This is a shame.

Not only is there conflicting evidence about whether new laws do any good at all (my view: they don’t), but the hackneyed “more guns, more crime!” arguments that we hear repeated ad nauseam are pretty much absurd on their face. Over the past 25 years, Americans have bought more than 100 million new guns, and most of the 50 states have liberalized the laws that govern their purchase, possession, and use. And what has happened to the “gun-murder” rate? It’s been cut in half. (The crime rate has also dropped precipitously.)

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/427978/liberal-gun-control-cynicism-mass-shootings

 

[BringBackFergy]

 

The Left’s Cynical Gun-Control Reflex

by Charles C.W. Cooke

Before we knew a single thing about the perpetrators of the abomination in San Bernardino, solutions were being thrown across the Internet with abandon. The answers to this latest problem were obvious: Americans just needed to “stand up to the NRA”; to agree to “common sense” firearms legislation; and to implement the trio of gun-control “reforms” that President Obama so dearly covets. Those who offered prayers in lieu of knee-jerk calls for authority were deemed to be callous or cynical or dumb. Never mind that none of the details were known. Never mind that we had no motive, no weapon, no suspects. Never mind that, California being what it is, it was eminently possible that all of the proposals under discussion were already in the law. This was a golden propaganda opportunity, not to be passed up.

 

For implicit in every pro-gun-control argument is the assumption that all Americans secretly agree with the need for the president’s favored reforms but that a small majority is just too recalcitrant – or, perhaps, evil – to admit it. It is for this reason that so many debates on the merits of stricter regulation proceed from the premise that gun control obviously works, rather than from the presumption that we do not really know what we should do. This is a shame.

Not only is there conflicting evidence about whether new laws do any good at all (my view: they don’t), but the hackneyed “more guns, more crime!” arguments that we hear repeated ad nauseam are pretty much absurd on their face. Over the past 25 years, Americans have bought more than 100 million new guns, and most of the 50 states have liberalized the laws that govern their purchase, possession, and use. And what has happened to the “gun-murder” rate? It’s been cut in half. (The crime rate has also dropped precipitously.)

 

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/427978/liberal-gun-control-cynicism-mass-shootings

 

 

Wait... What? I thought The Shooting Tracker proved we are on the verge of seeing showdowns at high noon on Main Street America?? What is this craziness you speak of?

[GG]

It feels to me like too many people on both sides are dug in to their position, with no room for rationality. The GOP blocks government funding for studies into the effectiveness of various proposed measures, while Democrats pander to raw emotions after each such incident. Even if potentially effective measures are coceived of, people will still reject implementation based on ideology. We're going about this the wrong way, but what else is new...

 

And you hit on a big reason for the stalemate. Negotiations are best accomplished when you can trust your trading partner. But over the generations, the liberals have devolved into a group that's driven more by emotion than by effectiveness. In that case, the end of the negotiation remains a moving target. So while you may perceive the NRA to be intransigent to what may be reasonable proposals, from their standpoint, they know the reasonable proposals aren't the end point, but a start. If they had confidence that the liberals will accept the reasonable changes and then end the discussion, they probably would come to some kind of an agreement.

 

But that's not the case as evidenced in this thread.

 

Because we're starting with a problem of gun violence. And most reasonable people would agree that gun violence is bad. But the disagreement comes in which part of gun violence should be addressed to be most effective. Liberals think that by going after the gun part will get them there. Conservatives think that by going after the violence part will get them there.

 

Empirical evidence suggests that tackling the violence part would be far more effective. But that would also mean that liberals and their media mouthpieces would have to admit that much of what they've been preaching over the last two generations has been awfully wrong.

Edited December 4, 2015 by GG

[BringBackFergy]

 

And you hit on a big reason for the stalemate. Negotiations are best accomplished when you can trust your trading partner. But over the generations, the liberals have devolved into a group that's driven more by emotion than by effectiveness. In that case, the end of the negotiation remains a moving target. So while you may perceive the NRA to be intransigent to what may be reasonable proposals, from their standpoint, they know the reasonable proposals aren't the end point, but a start. If they had confidence that the liberals will accept the reasonable changes and then end the discussion, they probably would come to some kind of an agreement.

 

But that's not the case as evidenced in this thread.

 

Because we're starting with a problem of gun violence. And most reasonable people would agree that gun violence is bad. But the disagreement comes in which part of gun violence should be adressed to bew most effective. Liberals think that by going after the gun part will get them there. Conservatives think that by going after the violence part will get them there.

 

Empirical evidence suggests that tackling the violence part would be far more effective. But that would also mean that much of what liberals and their media mouthpieces would have to admit that what they've been preaching over the last two generations has been awfully wrong.

Well said.

[Azalin]

It feels to me like too many people on both sides are dug in to their position, with no room for rationality. The GOP blocks government funding for studies into the effectiveness of various proposed measures, while Democrats pander to raw emotions after each such incident. Even if potentially effective measures are coceived of, people will still reject implementation based on ideology. We're going about this the wrong way, but what else is new...

 

I'm perfectly willing to listen to any specific ideas from the gun-control crowd, but I never hear anything from them aside from 'we need to do something' or 'NRA bad'.

[B-Man]

Wait... What? I thought The Shooting Tracker proved we are on the verge of seeing showdowns at high noon on Main Street America?? What is this craziness you speak of?

 

 

 

The Media’s Inflated ‘Mass Shootings’ Count Is Wildly Misleading

by Ian Tuttle

On Wednesday, as police continued the hunt for the murderers of 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., mainstream media outlets noted with alarm that “mass shootings” were outpacing the calendar. San Bernardino’s massacre was the 355th “mass shooting” — in 336 days. The Washington Post’s Wonkblog even provided a dramatic graphic: (At link)

The numbers are provocative — and, unsurprisingly, misleading.

The source of the much-publicized data is the “Mass Shooting Tracker” at shootingtracker.com, a crowdsourced page that defines a “mass shooting” as any in which “four or more people are shot in one event, or related series of events, likely without a cooling off period.” Victims might include the gunman; the data is based on news reports.

 

{snip}

“Excluding those that occurred in connection with criminal activity such as robbery, drug dealing, and organized crime, there were 116 mass public shootings during the twentieth century” (emphasis mine). The Congressional Research Service reported 317 mass shootings between 1999 and 2013, only 66 of which qualified under their criteria as mass public shootings.

This disaggregation of the data makes clear the problem with the Mass Shooting Tracker’s chronicle: It fails to distinguish between the various types of mass shootings, of which some are more amenable to public-policy responses than others. Under the Tracker’s broad definition, crimes are lumped together that have nothing in common — except for the use of firearms, and a certain number of victims.

Consider the mass shooting that took place in Platte, S.D., on September 17, and left six people dead. It is, by death toll, one of the eight deadliest shootings of 2015. Why, then, did few people hear about it? Because the victims were the wife and four children of Scott Westerhuis, who police believed murdered them, then committed suicide. This was a tragedy. But it was also a wildly different circumstance than what transpired in Aurora, Colo., or Newtown, Conn.

Likewise, the mass shooting that caused the most injuries this year was the gunfight that took place between two biker gangs in Waco, Texas, in May. That was a heinous crime. But, again, it was very different from the targeted assault on Virginia Tech in 2007.

The Mass Shooting Tracker obfuscates the variety of circumstances that give rise to gun violence in the United States — and uses that misleading data to push a political point. On Wednesday, mainstream media outlets and politicians indulged in exactly the same behavior. Whatever policy prescriptions may exist to curtail gun violence in the United States, they ought to be based on an accurate assessment of the problem, not on data slyly misinterpreted by those with partisan purposes.

 

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/427985/media-mass-shootings-count-misleading

 

 

 

[IDBillzFan]

 

I'm perfectly willing to listen to any specific ideas from the gun-control crowd, but I never hear anything from them aside from 'we need to do something' or 'NRA bad'.

 

Yep. They also have a consistent dialogue-ending habit of providing data and facts that are simply untrue (i.e. 'these types of shootings just don't ever happen in other countries)'.

 

They keep spewing the same lies, same misinformation, in hopes that the listener will just tire of having a conversation with a brick and walk away.

 

To a SoProg, that's victory.

[keepthefaith]

 

I'm perfectly willing to listen to any specific ideas from the gun-control crowd, but I never hear anything from them aside from 'we need to do something' or 'NRA bad'.

I'm with you.

[Tiberius]

Four or more people shot isn't a mass shooting? Ok, call it simply a time when four or more people are shot. That happens more than once a day that four or more people are shot in a single incident. Though some think that's not a mass shooting, we can all agree its really bad.

[drinkTHEkoolaid]

Apparently there is new info coming out that the wife pledged allegiance to ISIS before their terrorist massacre.

[BringBackFergy]

Apparently there is new info coming out that the wife pledged allegiance to ISIS before their terrorist massacre.

Is this news? I would have been shocked if she pledged allegiance to Billy Graham.