Ballistic "Fingerprinting"

[steve1 5]

Kallend,
I agree the United States is a violent place. To blame it all on our right to own guns, is plain bull shit! There are many other factors that enter into that equasion. Steve1

[kallend 1,625]

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Just out of curiosity do the #'s you are quoting account for population differences/densities?
Would this change the statistics any? (if they were not already accounted for)

The numbers come from the US Dept of Justice site and the UK Home Office site, and account for population differences.

I would not trust any data that came from an advocacy group, on either side of the argument. On the whole, I believe the US and UK governments are reliable sources.

So, once again, how does the murder rate in Houston or Dallas compare with that in London, Ottawa or Sydney? They are all large cities with an English speaking population that share a similar culture in most respects?

[wmw999 2,123]

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Kallend,
I agree the United States is a violent place. To blame it all on our right to own guns, is plain bull shit! There are many other factors that enter into that equasion. Steve1

Not to put words on his keyboard, but I don't think he is blaming it all on gun ownership. He's indicating that easy gun ownership appears to be a factor. At the very least, there's a pretty significant correlation. While correlation doesn't necessarily prove causality, it's an indicator.
Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[happythoughts 0]

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Kallend,
I agree the United States is a violent place. To blame it all on our right to own guns, is plain bull shit! There are many other factors that enter into that equasion. Steve1

My uncle was with the DC Park Police (the guys on horseback, etc) during the
last 60's, early 70's. There was marchs (read riots) against the VN war, poverty, racism,... blah blah. They all ended up with people looting and turning over cars and burning them. Just a violent place. The mayor was convicted of doing crack, ok? Burning cars and stabbing people didn't involve guns.
Houston may be more violent than Ottawa. There are probably more stabbings in DC than Ottawa, it's not the knives fault.
During the LA riots, the Koreans didn't get their stores burnt until they ran out of ammo. Rioters and gang-bangers are just criminals. The Koreans weren't.
If the Koreans had dropped the first 4, good example. Looting? Bad idea now.
The US is a more violent place. Yes, it is in the culture. Guns may be the tool, but they are not the problem. Criminals and violent people are.
In the South, guns are part of the solution. No LA-style riots here.

[steve1 5]

Wendy,
I agree this is a factor, but there are a lot of bigger ones. Number one in my opinion is, that many children aren't being raised properly much of the time. They grow up to be angry adults, if they live that long. I think it is a disgrace the way many kids are brought up in the U.S. Many of them have no one in their life who gives them love and acceptance. This is a basic ingredient that everyone needs to turn out right. Without it they are going to grow up angry and violent. Our prison system is full of people who grew up in a home filled with neglect and abuse.

I also think TV, movies, music, video games etc. are filled with way too much violence. The TV set is raising many kids when they get home from school. Is it any wonder kids are learning the wrong values.

The courts are another factor. How many violent criminals are being released from prisons and put back on the streets, with little more than a slap on the wrist. I think anyone who commits a violent crime should receive a stiff penalty, rather than given one more chance.

Many countries are less violent than the U.S. I think a lot of that has to do with the way kids grow up and the culture they live in. Sure we have a high standard of living here in the U.S., but many parents are really dropping the ball in how they are raising their kids.

Don't get me wrong, I still love my country even though it isn't perfect. I feel fortunate to enjoy all the freedoms we have. Gun ownership is one I don't want to give up. Most of the gun laws on the books now are stealing that freedom away and are doing little to stop violent crime.

There are probably many other factors that I haven't mentioned. I just think that violence in America stems from a lot more than the availability of guns. Steve1

[kallend 1,625]

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Kallend,
I agree the United States is a violent place. To blame it all on our right to
own guns, is plain bull shit! There are many other factors that enter into
that equasion. Steve1

I don't think I've blamed anything on anything. What I have done is point out some bogus statistics and ask some questions that many of you don't want to think about.

I really have nothing against gun owners. I just wish you'd be honest and say "I like my gun because it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling/feeling of power/whatever" rather than coming up with these ridiculous rationalizations that just don't stand up to careful analysis.

[steve1 5]

Kallend,
If it looks like bull shit, and smells like bull shit, it's probably bull shit. Maybe you can analize that carefully. Steve1

[kallend 1,625]

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Kallend,
If it looks like bull shit, and smells like bull shit, it's probably bull shit. Maybe you can analize that carefully. Steve1

I take it that you have no further intelligent comments.

[fasterfaller 0]

Ballistic fingerprinting is very easy to fool especially on a rifle . Just cut the chamber off , re-chamber and re-thread it and the "ballistic fingerprint " is changed .

[steve1 5]

Kallend,
Probably not. I'd rather jump with you than argue. Best of luck. Steve1

[kallend 1,625]

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Ballistic fingerprinting is very easy to fool especially on a rifle . Just cut the chamber off , re-chamber and re-thread it and the "ballistic fingerprint " is changed .

It's even easier to put false license plates on a car, but no one suggests that licensing cars is a bad idea.

[kmcguffee 0]

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Just cut the chamber off , re-chamber and re-thread it and the "ballistic fingerprint " is changed

That is easy? Compare that with unscrew four bolts and place another license plate on.

"Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do." Ben Franklin

[fasterfaller 0]

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Just cut the chamber off , re-chamber and re-thread it and the "ballistic fingerprint " is changed

That is easy? Compare that with unscrew four bolts and place another license plate on.

It is very easy , but only if you have a lathe .

[billvon 2,400]

>It is a little like taking a sample of every baby's DNA so that crime
> scene evidence can be tied to a name. I oppose that, too. The basic
> implication of both policies is that everyone is a potential criminal,
> and this small invasion of privacy will allow us to better determine
> which potential criminals have become actual criminals.

I would be against that too, but I think there's a difference between invasion of someone's person and invasion of someone's weapon. We hold personal rights in very high regard in this country, and I think that's a good thing. Tools do not have the same rights. As long as the ability to obtain a weapon is not compromised by the above mentioned (i.e. accurate and cheap) ballistic fingerprinting, I don't think that any personal rights (or second amendment rights) have been violated. Since there is no prohibition against it, it just becomes a question of - will it do more good than harm? In this case, I suspect it would.

[billvon 2,400]

>Besides, what part of shall not be infringed do you guys not
>understand?

The second amendment guarantees the right for most citizens to bear arms. It does not guarantee the right to bear anonymous arms, nor does it allow everyone to bear arms (i.e. in most cases convicted felons can not own handguns.) As long as the basic right is not infringed, our legislature is free to decide how to best implement measures to protect the general welfare of their constituency.

[bmcd308 0]

>>does the murder rate in Houston or Dallas compare with that in London, Ottawa or Sydney? They are all large cities with an English speaking population that share a similar culture in most respects? <<

Actually, they don't. The US has a much less homogeneous population than those other countries, and as much as we (and some other countries) celebrate our diversity, I remember from poli sci class in college (impossible to quote source, and I recognize that makes it impossible to evaluate and/or refute, but it does kind of make sense) that both property crimes and violent crimes tend to be positively correlated to diverstiy of population across countries (i.e., the US is not an anomaly) despite the fact that both property crimes and violent crimes are likely to have perpetrators of the same ethnicity. There was a name for this effect, but the test was over 10 years ago, and I have forgotten it. One of the criminology majors here might be able to cough it out.

BMcD...

----------------------------------
www.jumpelvis.com

[Kennedy 0]

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Police have been confiscating weapons on a regular basis ie arrests, search warrants, etc. That is what I am talking about by too broad.

Perhaps this is the source of agitation. I and others have been refering to confiscation of entire classes of firearms [e.g.California 1990s.] This does not include taking a single gun from a single person. This reference to "confiscation" is about taking firearms from people who have not committed crimes. They may not even have fired the gun, but it was taken because is was suddenly outlawed.

An example of registration preceeding [and leading to] confiscation? bmcd308 provided a few, but I have another in mind. In California, after some terrible incident or other, they passed a law requiring everyone owning a certain type of rifle to register it with the state or face prosecution. The rifle owners were PROMISED up one side and down the other that this would not lead to confiscation.

Well, one more terrible incident down the road, California passed a resolution outlawing ownership of said rifles. Every law-abiding citizen who had cooperated and registered? Police came to their houses and demanded the rifles be turned over? Refusal? Led to ATF agent showing up en masse threatening a raid.

witty subliminal message
Guard your honor, let your reputation fall where it will, and outlast the bastards.
1*

[Kennedy 0]

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And the reason is that anyone wanting a gun in DC can drive less than 10 miles and buy one in Virginia with almost no restrictions, then drive back again, so the DC laws are unenforcible and meaningless.

Really? No restrictions? Minors can buy them? Felons can buy them? Mental incompetents can buy them? They don't do background checks? They don't have 10 day waiting periods for long guns? There isn't a one handgun a month law? There aren't around a thousand applicable statutes covering buying a gun in Virginia?

[hint, all the questions have affirmative answers]

Wow, so what do YOU call restrictions?

witty subliminal message
Guard your honor, let your reputation fall where it will, and outlast the bastards.
1*

[jfields 0]

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The second amendment guarantees the right for most citizens to bear arms. It does not guarantee the right to bear anonymous arms, nor does it allow everyone to bear arms (i.e. in most cases convicted felons can not own handguns.)

Bill,

I don't even see that the second amendment guarantees the right for most citizens to bear arms. I went through that way earlier in the thread, including the court cases and Supreme Court opinions substantiating the view. However, I agree that even the most conservative court interpretations still don't mention anything about guaranteed anonymity. I have yet to see any valid documentation supporting that concept. It honestly perplexes me why there is such an objection to it.

[Kennedy 0]

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Not to put words on his keyboard, but I don't think he is blaming it all on gun ownership. He's indicating that easy gun ownership appears to be a factor. At the very least, there's a pretty significant correlation. While correlation doesn't necessarily prove causality, it's an indicator.

Ok, so there are more storks in the city than the country. And there are more babies in the city than in the country. Storks must bring babies. No, they must be an indicator?

Is there easy gun ownership in London? If you say yes, I'll cry. All comparisons aside, there are lots of murders and bad acts in London,but no easy access to guns, right? So guns are a tool, not a cause, right? Bad acts happen for many reasons. But they happen for REASONS. Guns are tools, not reasons.

witty subliminal message
Guard your honor, let your reputation fall where it will, and outlast the bastards.
1*

[billvon 2,400]

>So guns are a tool, not a cause, right? Bad acts happen for many
>reasons. But they happen for REASONS. Guns are tools, not reasons.

I agree; however, many gun advocates take the opposite approach and claim that gun ownership reduces crime, rather than claiming there's little correlation between gun ownership and crime.

[AggieDave 6]

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I agree; however, many gun advocates take the opposite approach and claim that gun ownership reduces crime, rather than claiming there's little correlation between gun ownership and crime.

Then why is it that violent crime dropped so dramatically in the mid/late 1990s in Texas after CCW laws were passed?

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[Kennedy 0]

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I agree; however, many gun advocates take the opposite approach and claim that gun ownership reduces crime, rather than claiming there's little correlation between gun ownership and crime.

Hammers aren't the reason nails get hit. A broken roof is [or a thousand other good reasons]. If hammers were outlawed, we see a decline in home upkeep [and some other good things]. Tools do a job.

Guns in the hands of law abiding citizens scare the bejeezus out of thugs. And if thugs stay away from somewhere or are afraid to be thugs somewhere, that somewhere gets lower crime. That is one job guns can do. Remove the tools to complete the job, the ability to do the job, and you remove the choice.

I'm not saying keeping hammers available keeps everybody's roof in good shape, but it gives them the ability to keep their roof in good shape. Take away the hammer and you take away the best way to keep a roof. Take away a gun, and you take away the best way to keep yourself safe.

Guns are a little different than hammers in that if just some people have them, thugs are still scared shitless because they don't know which citizens are packing. A roof isn't as picky.

witty subliminal message
Guard your honor, let your reputation fall where it will, and outlast the bastards.
1*

[billvon 2,400]

>Guns in the hands of law abiding citizens scare the bejeezus out of
> thugs. And if thugs stay away from somewhere or are afraid to be
> thugs somewhere, that somewhere gets lower crime. That is one job
> guns can do.

Exactly. And guns in the hands of thugs scare the bejeezus out of law abiding citizens. If law abiding citizens stay away from areas that have a lot of armed thugs, then that somewhere gets higher crime - you see this all the time in inner cities, where areas frequented by drive-by shooters are abandoned by the law-abiding citizens who once lived there. That's another job guns can do.

There are two sides to the gun ownership issue, as listed above. As our constitution calls it out as a right, I lean towards the 'allow guns' side, but I think examples exist where widespread gun ownership can both encourage crime in an area (i.e. more guns equal easier gun availability for thugs, and when many thugs own guns the law-abiding citizens leave) and discourage crime in an area (i.e. thugs are afraid of an armed homeowner.)

This discussion is primarily over whether more requirements on gun identification is a good or bad thing; I think it's a good thing as long as it does not interfere with the right to own one. It helps solve crimes without preventing you or I from owning a gun.

>Take away a gun, and you take away the best way to keep yourself
>safe.

I think that's a mistake to assume. A homeowner who relies on a gun, rather than the security of his home, his good judgement in choosing a place to live, and attention to prevention of crime (i.e. light timers) is foolish, and is a lot more likely to get himself killed than an unarmed homeowner with good judgement, good home security and attentiveness to crime prevention.

However, that is not an argument against second amendment rights, just an argument against a sort of weak justification for gun ownership. Own a gun for whatever reason you choose, but please do not claim it is the primary reason homeowners are safe in their homes.

[kallend 1,625]

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Guns in the hands of law abiding citizens scare the bejeezus out of thugs. And if thugs stay away from somewhere or are afraid to be thugs somewhere, that somewhere gets lower crime.

Trouble is that every single felon started out as a law abiding citizen. It only takes a fraction of a second to transform.