The Gun Issue thread

[Cujo]

Could anyone take issue with this.
So many people killed with guns every year...

Thousands of unlicensed gun shows and online dealers will be forced to conduct customer background checks for the first time in a fresh effort by Barack Obama to tackle America’s epidemic of deadly shootings.

In measures aimed at circumventing political deadlock in Congress that will inevitably set off a fierce battle in the courts, the president is due to close a loophole in the current system as well as call for greater spending on enforcement and new technology that could prevent unauthorised gun use.

“The gun lobby may be holding Congress hostage, but they can’t hold America hostage,” Obama said in a tweet that accompanied an official preview of the announcement due on Tuesday. “We can’t accept this carnage in our communities.”


The news was welcomed by gun safety campaigners, although more than a dozen separate calls for other executive actions do not appear to have made the White House draft proposal and other measures that would require congressional funding to be implemented.

“President Obama’s decision to clarify and enforce the law requiring more gun sellers to conduct background checks is an important victory for public safety and a setback for criminals and gun traffickers,” said former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, a co-founder of Everytown for Gun Safety, the main lobby group advocating stricter gun laws.

Earlier the group described the issue of closing background-check loopholes as the “centerpiece” of its hopes for Obama’s action on guns.

“It doesn’t matter where you conduct your business – from a store, at gun shows or over the internet: if you are in the business of selling firearms, you must get a license and conduct background checks,” said the White House statement.

It also called for 200 additional agents in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to be included in the 2017 federal budget, a move that would require the Republican-controlled Congress to drop its longstanding suspicion of the agency.

But a separate call for $500m in extra mental health funding may stand more chance of receiving bipartisan support as a number of Republicans have recently flagged the issue as an alternative approach to dealing with mass shootings.


The White House also plans to better join the dots between different agencies, requiring, for example, that people registered as mentally ill with the Department of Social Security have their information passed to the FBI for the purposes of background checks on gun sales.

“Some of the gaps in our country’s gun laws can only be fixed through legislation, which is why the President continues to call on Congress to pass the kind of commonsense gun safety reforms supported by a majority of the American people,” the White House said in its statement.

Speaking before a meeting with senior officials, Obama promised that sweeping new gun control measures would save lives and spare families from mass shootings.

“We have to be very clear that this is not going to solve every violent crime in this country or prevent every mass shooting and is not going to keep every gun out of the hand of a criminal,” Obama said after a meeting with attorney general Loretta Lynch to review her recommendations. “It will potentially save lives and spare families the pain and the extraordinary loss that they have suffered as a consequence of firearms getting into the hand of the wrong people,” he added.

Republicans have promised to fight such measures in the courts, a process that could take up much of the remaining year that Obama has in office.

“While we don’t yet know the details of the plan, the president is at minimum subverting the legislative branch, and potentially overturning its will,” said House speaker Paul Ryan in a statement.

“His proposals to restrict gun rights were debated by the United States Senate, and they were rejected. No president should be able to reverse legislative failure by executive fiat, not even incrementally ... This is a dangerous level of executive overreach, and the country will not stand for it.”

White House spokesman Josh Earnest confirmed on Monday that the president had made up his mind to take the actions, but insisted the measures – expected to be unveiled as soon as Tuesday – would withstand legal challenge.

“I feel confident in telling you now that what the president does announce will be the kinds of actions in which we have confidence that they are within the legal ability of the United States to carry out these actions,” he told reporters.

Campaigners who have helped draft a wishlist of up to 17 different executive actions also insisted that the flagship proposal of closing background check loopholes was within the remit of the president.

“We have no concerns whatsoever about the legality of action in this area,” added Oransky. “We think it is squarely within the power of the administration to clarify a statutory definition that is vague. This is exactly the kind of thing that the White House and DOJ are supposed to do.”

Officials hope that clarifying the so-called “engaged in the business” language in existing background check legislation will go a long way to prevent criminals and mentally ill people from buying guns through sellers who exploit a current loophole designed only for hobbyists and personal sales.

“Although it is my strong belief that for us to get our complete arm around the issues, Congress needs to act, what I asked my team to do is to see what more we could do to strengthen our enforcement and prevent guns from falling into the wrong hands,” said Obama. “To make sure that criminals, people who are mentally unstable, those who could pose a danger to themselves or others are less likely to be able to get a gun.”

The president said the measures, which may also involve attempts to arrest those who lie about failing a background check when trying to buy weapons, would have the support of the majority of law-abiding gun owners.

“I have just received back a report from attorney Lynch [and others] about some of the ideas and initiatives that they claim will make a difference,” he said. “The good news is that these are not only recommendations that are well within my legal authority and executive branch, but they are also ones that the overwhelming majority of American people – including gun owners – support.

“We have been very careful in recognising that we have a strong tradition of gun ownership in this country and that even those who possess firearms for hunting, for self-protection and other legitimate reasons, want to make sure that they don’t get into the wrong hands,” added Obama.

Obama to close background checks loophole on gun show sales | US news | The Guardianhttp://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...ing-with-lynch

[david44]

Bang tidy

[panama hat]

Doesn't go far enough by a country mile

[Cujo]

Doesn't go far enough by a country mile

No but it's a step in the right direction. Can't see how or why anyone could take issue with it bit I know some will.
Where's rick'danger'thai when you need a good argument?

[panama hat]

Can't see how or why anyone could take issue with it bit I know some will.

You're not wrong

Where's rick'danger'thai when you need a good argument?

We still have the other Rick, but he's not half the whackjob our mate 'Danger' was/is



(Rick Schoppers - in case you're reading this, your namesake was on before your time - look up some of his posts . . . and No, you're nowhere near this guy's lunacy)

[rickschoppers]

There is some interesting data here if anyone takes the time to read it.
COMPARING DEATH RATES FROM MASS PUBLIC SHOOTINGS AND MASS PUBLIC VIOLENCE IN THE US AND EUROPE

23 JUN , 2015
Screen Shot 2015-06-23 at Tuesday, June 23, 5.14 PM

1) In his address to the nation after the Charleston attack, Obama claimed: “we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency.”

Senator Harry Reid made a similar statement on June 23rd: “The United States is the only advanced country where this type of mass violence occurs. Let’s do something. We can expand, for example, background checks. … We should support not giving guns to people who are mentally ill and felons.”

This claim is simply not true. Mass public shootings – defined as four or more people killed, and not in the course of committing another crime, and not involving struggles over sovereignty. The focus on excluding shootings that do not involve other crimes (e.g., gang fights or robberies) has been used from the original research by Lott and Landes to more recently the FBI) from 2009 to the Charleston massacre (this matches the starting period for another recent study we did on US shootings and we chose that because that was the starting point that Bloomberg’s group had picked). The cases were complied doing a news search. The starting year was picked simply because it match a report the time frame from a recent Bloomberg report and when we evaluated that report it was the last year we looked at Mass Public Shootings in the US starting in 2009.

Annual Death Rate from Mass Public Shootings Europe US

Some people have defended President Obama’s statement by pointing to the word “frequency.” But, even if one puts it in terms of frequency, the president’s statement is still false, with the US ranking 9th compared to European countries.

Frequency of Mass Public Shootings

Europe mass public shooting cases

The CPRC has also collected data on the worst mass public shootings, those cases where at least 15 people were killed in the attack.

There were 16 cases where at least 15 people were killed. Out of those cases, four were in the United States, two in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom.

But the U.S. has a population four times greater than Germany’s and five times the U.K.’s, so on a per-capita basis the U.S. ranks low in comparison — actually, those two countries would have had a frequency of attacks 1.96 (Germany) and 2.46 (UK) times higher.

Small countries such as Norway, Israel and Australia may have only one major attack each, one-fourth of what the U.S. has suffered, but the US population is vastly greater. If they suffered attacks at a rate adjusted for their population, Norway, Israel and Australia would have had attacks that were respectively 16, 11, and 3 times greater than the US.

There is also the issue of what President Obama meant by “mass violence.” If you include bombings, many countries face many more bombings than the US does. Take just the bombing cases in Russia. Russia had few mass public shootings, but it suffered from numerous bomb attacks, with 1.31 mass bombing murders per million people

Russia Bombing cases



Regarding worldwide terrorism rates, the US State Department has these number for 2007 to 2011. Click on figure to enlarge.

US State Department Worldwide Attacks

2) Last Friday, Obama said: “If congress had passed some common sense gun reforms after Newtown, after a group of children had been gunned down in their own classroom. Reforms that 90% of the American people supported, we wouldn’t have prevented every act of violence, or even most, we don’t know if it would have prevented what would have happened in Charleston, but we might still have some more Americans with us.”

— There is no evidence that 90% of Americans supported the reforms that Obama was pushing. It is true that 80% to 90% of Americans say that they support background checks on “all gun buyers” (see also here and here), but that is not the same as saying that they supported universal background checks and it is not the same thing as them saying that they supported the law that Obama wanted. When asked this question people may be thinking of guns being purchased at a store and possibly a gun show, but it isn’t at all clear that they are talking about a transfer between friends (either a gift or a sale) and it is very doubtful that they are referring to transfers between family members. Surveys that specifically address the background check bill before the Senate in 2013 do not show overwhelming support. The most support that I can find for such a bill was in Washington State where initiative 594 was passed with 59% support, not 90%, and it had spending that out did the initiative’s opponents by about 33-to-1.

— None of the laws that Obama has put forward would have had any impact on either Newtown or Charleston. The Charleston killer apparently did pass a background check, and, in any case, he obtained his gun by stealing it from his Mom.

On Monday, June 22nd, President Obama made similar comments and also added: “And one of those actions we could take would be to enhance some basic commonsense gun safety laws that, by the way, the majority of gun owners support.” This claim has the same problem that Obama’s other statement has.

3) Here is another claim by Obama from last Friday: “You don’t see murder on this kind of scale, with this kind of frequency, in any other advanced nation on Earth.”

Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post has this useful discussion on an earlier similar claim by Obama.

The best proxy for “industrialized countries” is the membership of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. There are currently 34 countries in the OECD, but the agency also includes Brazil and Russia in its statistical data. (The two countries have been negotiating for membership but talks have been suspended with Russia because of the Crimea crisis.)

The OECD says the average homicide rate among the 36 countries is 4.1 per 100,000 people.

According to the 2014 data, at the top of the list is Brazil, with a homicide rate 25.5, or six times the average. Next on the list is Mexico, with a homicide rate of 23.4, followed by Russia at 12.8.

Then comes a tie for fourth place—Chile and the United States both have a homicide rate of 5.2. Estonia follows close behind with a homicide rate of 4.7. . . .

Homicide rates OECD 2011 or latest



The bigger question is the one of causation that President Obama keeps pushing and the evidence on that can be found here and here. His claim on that is also clearly wrong.
UPDATE: Politifact has discussion on fatality rates from mass public shootings, where they rank the US as the fourth highest country. Their analysis looks at data from 2000 to 2014, but it is clear that their analysis is flawed. They have a much broader definition of these attacks where they included cases where no one was killed. Still they are missing a large number of cases in foreign countries, even when one is looking cases where 4 or more people were killed.

For example for France, they claim that from 2000 to 2014 there is only one such shooting and eight people were killed in that case. They missed at least 16 deaths in just cases where four or more people have been killed.

Tours, France, Oct. 29, 2001: Four people were killed and ten wounded when a French railway worker started shooting at a busy intersection
Nanterre, France, March 27, 2002: 8 deaths, 19 injured Gunman opened fire at a town council meeting
Toulouse, France, March 19, 2012: Four shot dead at Jewish school in France

There are also other deaths that met their criteria, but I would not normally collect
Toulouse, France, March 15, 2012: Two French soldiers killed and one critically injured, other minor injuries in drive-by street shooting
For Finland
Tuusula, Finland, Nov. 7, 2007: Seven students and the principal killed at a high school
Kauhajoki, Finland, Sept. 23, 2008: Ten people shot to death at a college
Espoo, Finland, Dec. 31, 2009: five people shot to death at a mall
For Germany
Erfurt, Germany, April 26, 2002: A former student killed 17, one non-fatal injury at a secondary school.
FREISING, Germany, Feb. 19, 2002: Four people are dead
Winnenden, Germany, March 11, 2009: 15 deaths, 9 wounded

Comparing Death Rates from Mass Public Shootings and Mass Public Violence in the US and Europe - Crime Prevention Research CenterCrime Prevention Research Center

[DrB0b]

Groundhog day.

[hazz]

^^ o'dear the nra bollocks begins... and the usual uncritical chaps are lapping it up.

[Mr Earl]

^^ o'dear the nra bollocks begins... and the usual uncritical chaps are lapping it up.

You should talk with your distorted statistics.

[Mr Earl]

Groundhog day.

I'm disappointed Bob you are getting to be more like Willy every day.

[birding]

LOS ANGELES - Mass shootings from Newtown to San Bernardino are weighing ever more heavily on Americans, with signs of post-traumatic stress spreading far beyond the circle of survivors and loved ones, experts say.

Gun violence kills about 30,000 Americans every year and mass shootings -- extremely rare in most countries -- have been on the rise in the United States.


According to tracking website gunviolencearchive.org, there were 330 mass shootings in the United States last year, up from 281 in 2014. They affected nearly every part of the country, reaching into both big cities and small towns.


When you add up the dead, the wounded, emergency personnel, relatives and other loved ones close and far, these massacres have "an impact on all of us," said Merritt Schreiber, a psychology professor at the University of California, Irvine.
The searing images of the young and innocent dying before their time have become harder to escape, especially as offices, hospitals and even elementary schools have begun holding regular "active shooter" drills.


That, experts say, has led to a rise in anxiety, depression and exhaustion, all the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.



"Has America become a PTSD nation?" George Washington University psychology professor Jean Kim asks on the AlterNet website.


President Barack Obama, in announcing limited gun control measures Tuesday, wiped away tears as he remembered 20 elementary school children -- some as young as five or six -- shot dead three years ago in Newtown, Connecticut.
"We do not have to accept this carnage as the price of freedom," he said.
Obama formally unveiled a handful of executive measures intended to make it harder to buy and sell weapons.


But many Republicans immediately expressed opposition to the measures -- though Donald Trump conceded that he thought Obama's tears were sincere -- and even the president admitted that the new steps would not stop the scourge of mass shootings


Indeed, on the very first day of this year, one such event in Texas wounded four people.


- Climate of fear -
With every passing incident, images of the dead and wounded carried out on stretchers, loved ones breaking down, pictures of the killers and the dark faces of authorities permeate television screens and 24-hour news channels.
"There is an emerging scientific evidence that suggests that spending a lot of time watching this sort of incident entails anxiety for adults and children," Schreiber said.
This, specialists say, translates into hyper-vigilance, a type of permanent state of alert close to paranoia, like the fear of sitting in a restaurant with your back to the door.


The repeated cycles of violence "perpetuate fearfulness and can create these divisions between us and the others," explained Eric Bergemann, a Los Angeles psychologist.
"When those things are repeated by the media, we get more and more scared because we are continuously reminded about those things that are out of our control."
Bergemann said that the traumatized then sometimes turn their focus on perceived enemies, in order to feel like they are doing something to avert danger.
Anti-Muslim attacks have been on the rise since a Muslim couple shot 14 people to death and injured 22 others in the California city of San Bernardino last month.


The climate of fear is powerful.
Bergemann's clients tell him, "I'd like to do this event, but I'm concerned about being in a public place" because an attack could take place there, he said


- 'Kill drill' -
In many offices, employees are taught procedures to follow in case of an active shooter situation.
In one Los Angeles business building, notices repeat the sheriff department's message that you have three options during an active shooter situation: Run, hide or fight.
Many schools also hold "kill drills," where children learn how to hide in case a shooter comes onto school grounds.
"To some degree to kids who grow up like that, it's gonna be like earthquake drills, like it's normal, and that's kind of sad," said Catherine Mogil of the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior.
"This generation may end up having a higher level of anxiety or hyper-vigilance like our military kids," added Mogil, a licensed clinical psychologist.
In Roseburg, Oregon, "the whole community is on edge... kids are affected as well," said deputy fire chief Robert Bullock.
Three months ago, a mentally unstable student killed an assistant professor and eight fellow students with an assault rifle in that usually peaceful community.
Firemen, nurses and police officers are still under "a lot of post-traumatic shock," Bullock told AFP.


He pointed to "sleeping problems" and other difficulties.
"There's people, their patience is very short, some people are on an emotional roller coaster. One minute they're fine, the other, very emotional," Bullock added.
"Certain words make their hair stand up because they think they heard, 'shooting...' I don't think any of them will completely heal."


PTSD nation? US shootings inflict growing mental toll

[birding]

ATLANTA (AP) — The latest on a man with gun who held a 2-year-old boy hostage in a standoff with police in the Atlanta suburbs on Wednesday (all times local):
10 p.m.
Police say a 2-year-old boy and his father have died after the man took the child hostage during an 18-hour standoff with police in suburban Atlanta.
Police say Phillip Nguyen died Wednesday night after being shot by his father, Thy Ho, and the 43-year-old Ho died from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot


Related Stories

1. Police: 2-year-old, father die after 18-hour standoff Associated Press
2. Georgia man kills two-year-old son, self in standoff with police Reuters
3. Ohio man jailed on charges he shot 2-year-old boy in head Associated Press
4. Police: Man who held 12 inside motel room stabs himself Associated Press

[RPETER65]

^^ o'dear the nra bollocks begins... and the usual uncritical chaps are lapping it up.

And you have verified facts to back your statement?

[RPETER65]

[QUOTE=hazz;3178846]^^ o'dear the nra bollocks begins... and the usual uncritical chaps are lapping it up.[/QUOTE

Duplicate post

[DrB0b]

Groundhog day.

I'm disappointed Bob you are getting to be more like Willy every day.

<shrug>

[Cujo]

There is some interesting data here if anyone takes the time to read it.
COMPARING DEATH RATES FROM MASS PUBLIC SHOOTINGS AND MASS PUBLIC VIOLENCE IN THE US AND EUROPE

23 JUN , 2015
Screen Shot 2015-06-23 at Tuesday, June 23, 5.14 PM

1) In his address to the nation after the Charleston attack, Obama claimed: “we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency.”

Senator Harry Reid made a similar statement on June 23rd: “The United States is the only advanced country where this type of mass violence occurs. Let’s do something. We can expand, for example, background checks. … We should support not giving guns to people who are mentally ill and felons.”

This claim is simply not true. Mass public shootings – defined as four or more people killed, and not in the course of committing another crime, and not involving struggles over sovereignty. The focus on excluding shootings that do not involve other crimes (e.g., gang fights or robberies) has been used from the original research by Lott and Landes to more recently the FBI) from 2009 to the Charleston massacre (this matches the starting period for another recent study we did on US shootings and we chose that because that was the starting point that Bloomberg’s group had picked). The cases were complied doing a news search. The starting year was picked simply because it match a report the time frame from a recent Bloomberg report and when we evaluated that report it was the last year we looked at Mass Public Shootings in the US starting in 2009.

Annual Death Rate from Mass Public Shootings Europe US

Some people have defended President Obama’s statement by pointing to the word “frequency.” But, even if one puts it in terms of frequency, the president’s statement is still false, with the US ranking 9th compared to European countries.

Frequency of Mass Public Shootings

Europe mass public shooting cases

The CPRC has also collected data on the worst mass public shootings, those cases where at least 15 people were killed in the attack.

There were 16 cases where at least 15 people were killed. Out of those cases, four were in the United States, two in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom.

But the U.S. has a population four times greater than Germany’s and five times the U.K.’s, so on a per-capita basis the U.S. ranks low in comparison — actually, those two countries would have had a frequency of attacks 1.96 (Germany) and 2.46 (UK) times higher.

Small countries such as Norway, Israel and Australia may have only one major attack each, one-fourth of what the U.S. has suffered, but the US population is vastly greater. If they suffered attacks at a rate adjusted for their population, Norway, Israel and Australia would have had attacks that were respectively 16, 11, and 3 times greater than the US.

There is also the issue of what President Obama meant by “mass violence.” If you include bombings, many countries face many more bombings than the US does. Take just the bombing cases in Russia. Russia had few mass public shootings, but it suffered from numerous bomb attacks, with 1.31 mass bombing murders per million people

Russia Bombing cases



Regarding worldwide terrorism rates, the US State Department has these number for 2007 to 2011. Click on figure to enlarge.

US State Department Worldwide Attacks

2) Last Friday, Obama said: “If congress had passed some common sense gun reforms after Newtown, after a group of children had been gunned down in their own classroom. Reforms that 90% of the American people supported, we wouldn’t have prevented every act of violence, or even most, we don’t know if it would have prevented what would have happened in Charleston, but we might still have some more Americans with us.”

— There is no evidence that 90% of Americans supported the reforms that Obama was pushing. It is true that 80% to 90% of Americans say that they support background checks on “all gun buyers” (see also here and here), but that is not the same as saying that they supported universal background checks and it is not the same thing as them saying that they supported the law that Obama wanted. When asked this question people may be thinking of guns being purchased at a store and possibly a gun show, but it isn’t at all clear that they are talking about a transfer between friends (either a gift or a sale) and it is very doubtful that they are referring to transfers between family members. Surveys that specifically address the background check bill before the Senate in 2013 do not show overwhelming support. The most support that I can find for such a bill was in Washington State where initiative 594 was passed with 59% support, not 90%, and it had spending that out did the initiative’s opponents by about 33-to-1.

— None of the laws that Obama has put forward would have had any impact on either Newtown or Charleston. The Charleston killer apparently did pass a background check, and, in any case, he obtained his gun by stealing it from his Mom.

On Monday, June 22nd, President Obama made similar comments and also added: “And one of those actions we could take would be to enhance some basic commonsense gun safety laws that, by the way, the majority of gun owners support.” This claim has the same problem that Obama’s other statement has.

3) Here is another claim by Obama from last Friday: “You don’t see murder on this kind of scale, with this kind of frequency, in any other advanced nation on Earth.”

Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post has this useful discussion on an earlier similar claim by Obama.

The best proxy for “industrialized countries” is the membership of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. There are currently 34 countries in the OECD, but the agency also includes Brazil and Russia in its statistical data. (The two countries have been negotiating for membership but talks have been suspended with Russia because of the Crimea crisis.)

The OECD says the average homicide rate among the 36 countries is 4.1 per 100,000 people.

According to the 2014 data, at the top of the list is Brazil, with a homicide rate 25.5, or six times the average. Next on the list is Mexico, with a homicide rate of 23.4, followed by Russia at 12.8.

Then comes a tie for fourth place—Chile and the United States both have a homicide rate of 5.2. Estonia follows close behind with a homicide rate of 4.7. . . .

Homicide rates OECD 2011 or latest



The bigger question is the one of causation that President Obama keeps pushing and the evidence on that can be found here and here. His claim on that is also clearly wrong.
UPDATE: Politifact has discussion on fatality rates from mass public shootings, where they rank the US as the fourth highest country. Their analysis looks at data from 2000 to 2014, but it is clear that their analysis is flawed. They have a much broader definition of these attacks where they included cases where no one was killed. Still they are missing a large number of cases in foreign countries, even when one is looking cases where 4 or more people were killed.

For example for France, they claim that from 2000 to 2014 there is only one such shooting and eight people were killed in that case. They missed at least 16 deaths in just cases where four or more people have been killed.

Tours, France, Oct. 29, 2001: Four people were killed and ten wounded when a French railway worker started shooting at a busy intersection
Nanterre, France, March 27, 2002: 8 deaths, 19 injured Gunman opened fire at a town council meeting
Toulouse, France, March 19, 2012: Four shot dead at Jewish school in France

There are also other deaths that met their criteria, but I would not normally collect
Toulouse, France, March 15, 2012: Two French soldiers killed and one critically injured, other minor injuries in drive-by street shooting
For Finland
Tuusula, Finland, Nov. 7, 2007: Seven students and the principal killed at a high school
Kauhajoki, Finland, Sept. 23, 2008: Ten people shot to death at a college
Espoo, Finland, Dec. 31, 2009: five people shot to death at a mall
For Germany
Erfurt, Germany, April 26, 2002: A former student killed 17, one non-fatal injury at a secondary school.
FREISING, Germany, Feb. 19, 2002: Four people are dead
Winnenden, Germany, March 11, 2009: 15 deaths, 9 wounded

Comparing Death Rates from Mass Public Shootings and Mass Public Violence in the US and Europe - Crime Prevention Research CenterCrime Prevention Research Center

That just makes the U.S. look bad. (well, ok, not compared to Brazil, Mexico, Estonia and Russia,)

[Mr Earl]

That just makes the U.S. look bad.

Well that ain't hard is it?

How about looking for a solution to enable a cultural shift!

[RPETER65]

Flanked by families who lost loved ones to mass shootings, President Barack Obama fought back tears as he announced a unilateral push to curb crimes committed with guns and called for a renewed national “sense of urgency” on the issue.

At his press conference Tuesday, Obama outlined immediate executive actions to expand existing background checks, close loopholes, and increase mental health funding to prevent “gun violence”—all without going to Congress for legislation.

But at the same time, Obama admitted that more significant gun control “won’t happen in my presidency.” He underscored what he called the need for future congressional action and said Republican lawmakers are being “held hostage by the gun lobby.”

The Daily Signal reviewed four of the president’s key points against available data:

The Daily Signal is the multimedia news organization of The Heritage Foundation. We’ll respect your inbox and keep you informed.

Sign Up
Claim: “We are the only advanced country on Earth that sees this kind of mass violence erupt with this kind of frequency. It doesn’t happen in other advanced countries. It’s not even close.”
Obama adjusted an often made, often questioned argument that America is the only modern nation to suffer from epidemic gun violence. His current talking point is a combination of two discredited claims.

Speaking of the San Bernardino massacre, just weeks after the Nov. 13 terror attacks that left 130 dead in Paris, Obama still said “mass shootings just [don’t] happen in other countries.” That claim earned him four Pinocchios as a “whopper” of a falsehood from The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” column.

Backpedaling, the White House later said the president meant to address the frequency of shootings in the U.S. compared to other nations. Again, “Fact Checker” columnist Glenn Kessler criticized this as a likely “apples-to-oranges comparison” and gave the president two Pinocchios for “significant omissions and/or exaggerations.”

Claim: “The problem is, some gun sellers have been operating under a different set of rules. A violent felon can buy the exact same weapon over the Internet with no background check, no questions asked.”
That’s not exactly factual, according to an August 2013 report by The Washington Post. Purchasing a gun online from a federal firearms license holder or a vendor across state lines does require a background check.

To avoid a background check, a buyer would have to meet with the seller in person to purchase the firearm. As the Post notes, “that would be a private sale and federal law wouldn’t require a background check.”

Several states already require their own background checks for firearms sales—some for all guns, others only for handguns. Additionally, it’s a felony to sell guns knowingly to someone with a criminal record or history of mental health problems.

Most criminals do their illegal gun shopping on the streets, not online, research shows.

A study last year by the University of Chicago Crime Lab found that most criminals said they don’t get their weapons from gun shows or order them online, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. Instead, they buy the guns from those close to them or other criminals.

In a survey of about 100 prisoners, the lab found, 70 percent said they received guns from friends, family, and fellow gang members.

Claim: “If there’s an app that can help us find a missing tablet,” Obama said, “there’s no reason we can’t do it with a stolen gun.” Just as a child “can’t open a bottle of aspirin,” he added, a child shouldn’t be able to “pull a trigger on a gun.”
Technology to make firearms more like iPads and Tylenol bottles isn’t commercially available. None of the so-called smart guns—which require entry of a fingerprint or other biometric signal before firing—is on the market.

The earliest and leading version of the smart gun, the Armatix iP1, has been found wanting. In an exclusive performance review, a subsidiary of the National Rifle Association dismissed the weapon as “disappointing at best, and alarming at worst.”

Although the NRA’s assessment is biased, the economic component speaks for itself. The current price tag for the Armatix iP1: $1,798.

Smart gun technology would do little to affect civilian guns in circulation across the country. A 2012 Congressional Research Service report concluded that 310 million guns were in private hands in America in 2009.

During the Obama administration, however, demand for and manufacturing of firearms has only increased.

Claim: “And the constant excuses for inaction no longer do, no longer suffice. That’s why we are here today. Not to debate the last mass shooting, but to do something to prevent the next one.”
To make the case for stricter gun controls and increased background checks, the president enumerated every mass shooting from 2009 at Fort Hood, Texas, to last month in San Bernardino, Calif.

Through executive action, Obama said the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol. Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives would hire more than 200 employees to ensure “effective enforcement of gun safety laws that are already on the books.”

According to a Washington Times report, however, existing gun laws failed in most of the cases listed by Obama.

Background checks either were easily flouted or found entirely ineffective.

And none of the attackers, the Times reported, purchased his gun or guns through “the so-called gun-show loophole” that the president said he seeks to close.

The Washington signal

[Ozcol]

RP I didn't read the preceding essay but I have read enough of your posts to know it was some NRA propaganda.

[panama hat]

The Washington signal

Googled it . . . :

The Washington Signal - nothing

The Daily Signal exists, part of the Heritage Foundation and some of its other headlines are:

Conservatives Hoping to Reduce Prison Terms Say Oregon Ranchers Are a Reason Why

Gov. Scott Walker Threatens Lawsuit Over Obama’s Gun Control Orders
(Remember Walker the Dufus, who slithered out of the presidential race?

Background Checks for Guns ‘Don’t Solve the Problem,’ This House Republican Says

This GOP Congressman Is Working to Defund Obama’s Executive Gun Control Measures

Obama’s Executive Actions on Guns Are All Politics

Find Out How Your Member of Congress Voted on a Bill Repealing Obamacare

These neo-con knuckledraggers lurve their guns and hate Obama

RP I didn't read the preceding essay but I have read enough of your posts to know it was some NRA propaganda.

Wise move and a correct one

[harrybarracuda]

1.Mitch McConnell (R-KY): $1,262,189
2.Roy Blunt (R-MO): $1,433,952
3.Pat Roberts (R-KS): $1,584,153
4.Tom Cotton (R-AR): $1,968,714
5.David Perdue (R-GA): $1,997,512
6.Bill Cassidy (R-LA): $2,867,074
7.Joni Ernst (R-IA): $3,124,773
8.Cory Gardner (R-CO): $3,939,199
9.Thom Tillis (R-NC): $4,418,833

And there's more....

All courtesy of the NRA.

The NRA Gave These Senators Millions To Block Gun Laws

[RPETER65]

RP I didn't read the preceding essay but I have read enough of your posts to know it was some NRA propaganda.

You know nothing if you did not read the post.typical libtard bury head in sand, or only look straight ahead, never consider an opposing view, right.

[panama hat]

You know nothing if you did not read the post.typical libtard bury head in sand, or only look straight ahead, never consider an opposing view, right.

It's from the Heritage Foundation . . . and you speak of opposing views?

[harrybarracuda]

You know nothing if you did not read the post.typical libtard bury head in sand, or only look straight ahead, never consider an opposing view, right.

It's from the Heritage Foundation . . . and you speak of opposing views?

Another Koch sucker.

[billy the kid]

heard on a radio that more Americans die from gun shot on the streets
than all American soldiers who died going to fight in wars.