The FAST Approaching Gun Ban

[thombergeron]

To state the blindingly obvious yet again, a society with more guns has more gun violence:

Right-to-carry gun laws linked to increase in violent crime, Stanford research shows

[thombergeron]

Independent Journal Review’s Mike Miller outlines some of the research that has been conducted on the issue:

"some" is good way of putting it. You can always tell when someone gets 100% of their information from the gun lobby. The only "research" they're aware of is from Kleck, Lott, and Mustard.

To review, Kleck's entire academic contribution to the gun control debate was based on data that are now over 20 years old. His conclusions were completely disproven in the late 1990s.

John Lott's most significant contributions to the gun control debate were published between 1997 and 2002. He has spent much of the last decade destroying his own reputation. He has been unable to answer charges that he falsified data in his 1997 study. In the late 2000s, a series of papers and commentaries from Lott's fellow economists demonstrated that Lott's econometric models could not address the causal issues he was examining. In 2004, even Gary Kleck expressed skepticism at Lott's results. John Lott does not currently hold an academic appointment at any university or research institution.

David Mustard has not published any gun violence research at all in over 10 years.

Someone who is actually interested in an evidence-based discussion of gun violence would be familiar with names like Hemenway, Wintermute, Rivara, Ayers, Donohue.

That person would be familiar with Gary Slutkin's Cure Violence project in Chicago and its role in reducing violence there. Its hilarious, but entirely expected, that The Blaze credits this drop in gun violence to a concealed-carry law that hadn't taken effect yet, and doesn't even mention the clear success of Slutkin's community-based model in reducing gun violence in Chicago over the last decade.

Someone interested in the latest scientific findings on gun violence would know Daniel Webster's work and his analysis of SafeStreets in Baltimore. Webster has a paper coming out shortly showing that Missouri's 2007 repeal of a handgun "permit-to-purchase" law has led to a significant increase in firearm homicides in that state.

So, it looks like you have about a ton of reading to do before you can knowledgeably contribute to any discussion of gun violence in the US. Let us know how you do with that.

[martin48]

Charleston shooting - still haven't got rid of those guns yet, I see

[yodajazz]

I still say it's not about whether guns are legal or not, its the individual deciding the risks internally of keeping a gun in your home. If someone were to invade your home, you a number of things you could use in your defense. When I was robbed on the the street, if I had had a weapon, it would have immediately raised the stakes, since he got the jump on me. I'm not sure that his gun was real. Anyway, here's story this month, of a gun for protection brings death into a home.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/c...illed-31830760

Here's another toddler gun death in my state, from April:

http://time.com/3818931/shooting-ohi...nattended-gun/

[fred41]

To be fair, there are gun defense stories out there...here are just two examples from June of this year (there are more):
http://www.wbir.com/story/news/2015/...ries/71238548/

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/new...side/28675567/

[trish]

http://nyti.ms/1Psx77v

Laws, regulations and enforcement are necessitated by the fact that there will be assholes.

[Ben in LA]

Still waiting for that gun ban...2016 is almost here...

[trish]

Twenty primary school children are slaughtered and thanks to Republican foot-dragging, Congress does nothing: apparently the freedom to carry death in a holster, trumps the sanctity of life.

[martin48]

Virginia TV journalists shot: Suspect confirmed dead

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-34068541

[Ben in LA]

They'll come out of the woodwork eventually...