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Walmart shooting - El Paso

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What are your thoughts on the past where you could order a semi auto rifle via the mail by sending a check to sears, etc and get your gun in the mail with no restrictions. In such a time there was less mass shootings versus now where there are many more restrictions on weapons and there is more mass shootings.  I think that right there indicates it’s not so much a gun problem but a people problem first.  How you tackle that is the million dollar question, but taking away due process with red flag laws is a slippery slope as the government has already banned bump stocks, enacted red flag laws, and has been infringing peoples rights with a $200 NFA tax stamp for decades to get an item that takes a year to receive when you can buy a gun in 5 minutes. 

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30 minutes ago, Blacksmith311 said:

What are your thoughts on the past where you could order a semi auto rifle via the mail by sending a check to sears, etc and get your gun in the mail with no restrictions. In such a time there was less mass shootings versus now where there are many more restrictions on weapons and there is more mass shootings.  I think that right there indicates it’s not so much a gun problem but a people problem first.  How you tackle that is the million dollar question, but taking away due process with red flag laws is a slippery slope as the government has already banned bump stocks, enacted red flag laws, and has been infringing peoples rights with a $200 NFA tax stamp for decades to get an item that takes a year to receive when you can buy a gun in 5 minutes. 

I think the problem now is knowing your 15 minutes of fame is just a few trigger pulls away. Something else not contemplated in Scalia's screed.

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57 minutes ago, JoeWeber said:

I think the problem now is knowing your 15 minutes of fame is just a few trigger pulls away. Something else not contemplated in Scalia's screed.

I agree that this is probably a part of the problem, and I was incredibly proud of the NZ Prime Minister who made a statement soon after their last mass murder that the culprit would not be named or talked about for this exact reason.

 

So start there. How hard could it be to have the politicians from both parties stand together, just this once, along with the heads of mass media outlets and announce 'that we as a people will not glorify these criminals. We will not use their names for political purposes and we will not print or air their identity for ratings. We ask all people of the United States to do the same.'

Just that stance would be groundbreaking. And I suspect could never happen because there are just too many people who HAVE to be against whatever their opposition party is for. Regardless of how sensible, altruistic or obvious it was.

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14 minutes ago, yoink said:

So start there. How hard could it be to have the politicians from both parties stand together, just this once, along with the heads of mass media outlets and announce 'that we as a people will not glorify these criminals. We will not use their names for political purposes and we will not print or air their identity for ratings. We ask all people of the United States to do the same.'

Very, very hard.  Republicans really, really want to be able to claim that a shooter was a leftist to muddy the connection between Trump's support of violence and shootings.  (And yes, Democrats really want to be able to talk about white supremacists who go on shooting sprees, too.)

But let's say that politicians put the good of society above the good of their party.  (Ha!)  That still doesn't solve the problem, because Alex Jones or someone is going to hover outside the courthouse, get a picture of the guy, look him up online so he can claim "LEFTIST KILLERS TARGET INNOCENTS" (or ignore it if it's a Nazi.)  (And again, vice versa.)  And someone in the press - not the WSJ, or MSNBC, or the NYT perhaps, but Joe's News Circus or someone.  And they will do that because people will want to know, and people determine which news service makes money.

I wish there were a way to make that happen.  But with a capitalist news-source model I don't see it.

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On 8/10/2019 at 6:24 PM, billvon said:
On 8/10/2019 at 6:04 PM, yoink said:

So start there. How hard could it be to have the politicians from both parties stand together, just this once, along with the heads of mass media outlets and announce 'that we as a people will not glorify these criminals. We will not use their names for political purposes and we will not print or air their identity for ratings. We ask all people of the United States to do the same.'

Very, very hard.  Republicans really, really want to be able to claim that a shooter was a leftist to muddy the connection between Trump's support of violence and shootings.  (And yes, Democrats really want to be able to talk about white supremacists who go on shooting sprees, too.)

But let's say that politicians put the good of society above the good of their party.  (Ha!)  That still doesn't solve the problem, because Alex Jones or someone is going to hover outside the courthouse, get a picture of the guy, look him up online so he can claim "LEFTIST KILLERS TARGET INNOCENTS" (or ignore it if it's a Nazi.)  (And again, vice versa.)  And someone in the press - not the WSJ, or MSNBC, or the NYT perhaps, but Joe's News Circus or someone.  And they will do that because people will want to know, and people determine which news service makes money.

I wish there were a way to make that happen.  But with a capitalist news-source model I don't see it.

And that pretty much sums up the dynamics of it all.

The only other problem to mention is the correlation between the level of media hype and gun sales.

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17 minutes ago, skymiles said:

"Memo reveals a House Republican strategy on shootings: down play white nationalism, blame left"

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/memo-reveals-a-house-republican-strategy-on-shootings-downplay-white-nationalism-blame-left/ar-AAFU4RT

The legacy of Josef Goebbels is alive and well.

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On 8/8/2019 at 11:39 AM, kallend said:

Try picking on Memphis, Kansas City or St. Louis for a change.  They all have higher murder rates than Chicago

Murder rates in Memphis or Kansas City don't make people more dead than they are in Chicago.  However, there ARE more dead in Chicago than both Memphis and Kansas city Combined

It's not even close.

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That's why rates are used; a raw number comparison is not a good comparator for this. There are more people murdered in the USA than in Honduras, too. Does that make Honduras safer than the USA?

Chicago has issues; I don't think anyone is trying to say it doesn't. It's just not the top issues city in the US for many of the statistics used by NRA advocates (and people who are trying to use its gun laws as an indicator of crime). And when one considers the confounding conditions, such as the ready availability of guns in neighboring places (and remember, Chicago has open borders B|), it's probably like trying to tie ice cream consumption to murder rates, or prove that marijuana does, in fact, improve intellectual focus.

Wendy P.

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I'd say that Coreece is not being silly; he provides input and thoughts into discussions, rather than just parroting lines, or saying "hah!" or "yah, right!" or "that's stupid because I don't agree with it." I at least read what he says. No, I might not agree, but if I only read input I agreed with, I wouldn't learn or think as much.

Wendy P.

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1 hour ago, wmw999 said:

I'd say that Coreece is not being silly; he provides input and thoughts into discussions, rather than just parroting lines, or saying "hah!" or "yah, right!" or "that's stupid because I don't agree with it." I at least read what he says. No, I might not agree, but if I only read input I agreed with, I wouldn't learn or think as much.

Wendy P.

As you pointed out, just comparing absolute numbers rather than rates IS misleading.  The gun lobby likes to do that because it makes Chicago look bad, but by doing that the USA looks even  worse than the "shitholes" that Trump likes to talk about.

There is a good reason that crime RATES are listed in all sensible comparitive reports, from the FBI's UCR to UN's stats.

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6 hours ago, wmw999 said:

That's why rates are used; a raw number comparison is not a good comparator for this.

Of course it's not entirely fair to compare rates to raw numbers.  A long while back I criticized John for choosing either rates or raw numbers depending on which fit his narrative the best.  This was more of a play on the words "more dead," and was somewhat tongue-in-cheek.  But at the same time Chicago's 1400+ murders is a significant number, the highest for any major metropolitan area BY FAR, so yes, it does irritate/offend me a bit when Kallend seemingly tries to down play it, especially when he refuses to acknowledge ANY evidenced based prevention programs that are severely underfunded in Chicago and continue to be cut back.

 

12 hours ago, wmw999 said:

There are more people murdered in the USA than in Honduras, too. Does that make Honduras safer than the USA? 

For many people in Chicago it's a reality they face everyday, so yes.  If you're living between East Garfield and West Garfield in the figure below, Hondurus might look like a safe, affordable and attractive weekend destination - $160 round trip, $42/night.

 Do you really think it would matter to these people if you told them Chicago is "safer" than a handful of other metro areas?

Do you think they really care that millions of wealthy white people jam-packed into high-rise condos and gated communities skew the numbers and make Chicago look safer on paper?

The fact is that Chicago is segregated, with a rich world class city on one side and Chiraq on the other, so you guys can talk about  lower murder rates all you want, but it's not a reality for most of the blacks (and Hispanics) living there - and they deserve for that distinction to be recognized - which is part of the reason why I always bring up Chicago, not because of the NRA, or gun laws, or lobbying groups or whatever else.

Chicago-murders-by-neighborhood-2018.jpg

 

 

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11 minutes ago, Coreece said:

Of course it's not entirely fair to compare rates to raw numbers.  A long while back I criticized John for choosing either rates or raw numbers depending on which fit his narrative the best.  This was more of a play on the words "more dead," and was somewhat tongue-in-cheek.  But at the same time Chicago's 1400+ murders is a significant number, the highest for any major metropolitan area BY FAR, so yes, it does irritate/offend me a bit when Kallend seemingly tries to down play it, especially when he refuses to acknowledge ANY evidenced based prevention programs that are severely underfunded in Chicago and continue to be cut back.

 

For many people in Chicago it's a reality they face everyday, so yes.  If you're living between East Garfield and West Garfield in the figure below, Hondurus might look like a safe, affordable and attractive weekend destination - $160 round trip, $42/night.

 Do you really think it would matter to these people if you told them Chicago is "safer" than a handful of other metro areas?

That's a pretty silly way to look at it.

Your odds of getting killed in Chicago are a lot lower than your odds of being killed in Orleans Parish, LA for example.  And your odds of getting killed in West Garfield Park, Chicago is a lot lower than your odds of getting killed in the worst block of Compton, Los Angeles. 

In fact, to use your rationale, those people in Orleans Parish would find a much safer and more affordable vacation in Chicago - and they don't even need a passport.

All of which is why it's important to compare apples to apples, not an apple slice to a crate of them.

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18 minutes ago, billvon said:

All of which is why it's important to compare apples to apples

That's a great suggestion.  Since many major cities in the U.S are still relatively segregated with massive income gaps, how about from now on we just compare the crime rates in poor areas of one city to the poor areas of other cities?  Same with the wealthier areas.

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6 minutes ago, Coreece said:

That's a great suggestion.  Since many major cities in the U.S are still relatively segregated with massive income gaps, how about from now on we just compare the crime rates in poor areas of one city to the poor areas of other cities?  Same with the wealthier areas.

That would be great.  Unfortunately there's no way to do that.  No one segregates US cities into poor and rich areas and collects crime stats according to any fixed standards, so you won't be able to make valid comparisons.  (As an example, the poor areas of San Diego - like El Cajon - are nothing like the poor areas of Huntsville, Alabama.)

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1 hour ago, billvon said:

That would be great.  Unfortunately there's no way to do that.  No one segregates US cities into poor and rich areas and collects crime stats according to any fixed standards, so you won't be able to make valid comparisons. 

It would be nice to have a list like the one above that breaks each city down by neighborhood and has the ability to sort by crime rate, demographics, median income, median housing and any other relevant or possible contributing factors.  That way whenever someone feels like having a pissing contest about which cities are the safest and why that is, we can just whip out our stats and compare without playing games.

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3 hours ago, Coreece said:

 Do you really think it would matter to these people if you told them Chicago is "safer" than a handful of other metro areas?

Do you think they really care that millions of wealthy white people jam-packed into high-rise condos and gated communities skew the numbers and make Chicago look safer on paper?

That probably helps to highlight the difficulty in even agreeing to what we're talking about.  We're not talking about mass shootings any more but gun crime.  Soccer moms are not going to see any gun crime because they're usually not going to live in places where there is gun crime.  Murders mostly occur within the same community and many of those are between people engaged in illegal activities.  It's not dishonest to say that Chicago is safer because you can find more areas, to include gated communities and high-rise condos with secure entrances, well lit streets, etc that make it safer to live in.  Those things are a product of wealth, opportunity, and tax dollars to name just a few.

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On 8/20/2019 at 10:17 AM, kallend said:

Your intellectual dishonesty never fails to amaze me.

Excuse me, but you were the one that suggested Kansas City, despite being in a gun friendly state had a higher overall murder rate than Chicago, but if you're going to talk about gun friendliness/lax gun laws, shouldn't you be comparing  firearm homicide rates for each city?  Do you even know what they are?

The link I posted earlier shows:

Chicago - 8.1

Kansas City - 8.2

Not really the best example to make your case, is it?

(*note - these rates are based on the entire metropolitan area for each city)

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On 8/19/2019 at 7:03 PM, DJL said:

That probably helps to highlight the difficulty in even agreeing to what we're talking about.  We're not talking about mass shootings any more but gun crime.

Well Channman made a comment about Chicago mass shootings and then John changed the subject to Memphis and Kansas City murder rates.  But if you want to talk mass shootings, Chicago leads the way.  They take up an entire page in the mass shooting database that I posted earlier and are home to almost 10% of all mass shootings around the country:

-  25 mass shootings in Chicago

 - 4  in Los Angeles

-  0 in New York City, 4 in Brooklyn

- 1 in Detroit

- 2 in Kansas City

- 3 in Memphis 

St. Louis, Philadelphia and Baltimore are pretty nasty with 8-10 each.

 

On 8/19/2019 at 7:03 PM, DJL said:

Soccer moms are not going to see any gun crime because they're usually not going to live in places where there is gun crime.  Murders mostly occur within the same community and many of those are between people engaged in illegal activities.

Right, that's what I'm talking about.  If we're going to compare what cities are "safer" then these areas are segregated enough to make a clear distinction for comparison with patterns of segregation that are repeated in almost every other major city in the U.S.

 

On 8/19/2019 at 7:03 PM, DJL said:

It's not dishonest to say that Chicago is safer because you can find more areas, to include gated communities and high-rise condos with secure entrances, well lit streets, etc that make it safer to live in.  Those things are a product of wealth, opportunity, and tax dollars to name just a few.

I've spent a lot of time in downtown Chicago, sometimes months at a time.  It's world class, and not only do I feel safe while exploring the night life, I actually feel protected.  Chicago's murder rate of 24 is practically irrelevant to me when visiting because homicides are virtually non-existent in those ares, just as it is irrelevant if you were to visit the poor segregated areas where the murder rates are 2-5 times higher than that, and are in fact driving that murder rate to begin with.

This income/violence gap between these segregated areas is only getting worse.  On one side you have  strong growth with zero murders and $9 million dollar condos in Trump tower, but the city can't be bothered with adequately funding evidence-based prevention programs to help alleviate the burden to those living on the other side with murder rates of 30-80+ and per capita incomes of around 20k or so.

And I suppose the only reason John won't acknowledge such programs is because he thinks that arguing in favor of them somehow undermines the effectiveness of gun laws.

 

Anyway, here's a link to an interesting article about Chicago's crime/income gap when compared to New York and L.A:

"once again there is a key divergence seen in the Chicago data when compared to New York and Los Angeles.  While black and Latino household income levels tend to mirror gains made by white and Asian households in New York and LA, household incomes for Chicago blacks and Latinos are essentially flat compared to whites and Asians, leading to a widening gap in household incomes by race and ethnicity."

there is evidence that suggests there are correlations between high levels of poverty and high levels of crime. And it's quite clear that, in Chicago's case, especially compared to New York and Los Angeles, blacks and Latinos are not enjoying the same economic gains experienced by whites and Asians.

The legacy of segregation in Chicago leads to economic disconnection, frustration, and potentially opens avenues for violent crime to take root and expand.

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55 minutes ago, Coreece said:

And I suppose the only reason John won't acknowledge such programs is because he thinks that arguing in favor of them somehow undermines the effectiveness of gun laws.

  

I doubt John is against any evidence based program that reduces gun violence anywhere. I'll also hazard that he is happy being taxed for the purpose. Same for me. Even if I was uncertain that the results would align with my hopes I would still support the programs. But that is also how I feel about assault weapon and high capacity magazine restrictions. 

The thing is that neither approach is likely to increase gun violence in America so, if we are being completely rational, why not both? And now.
 
 

 

 

 
 

 

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46 minutes ago, JoeWeber said:
1 hour ago, Coreece said:

And I suppose the only reason John won't acknowledge such programs is because he thinks that arguing in favor of them somehow undermines the effectiveness of gun laws.

I doubt John is against any evidence based program that reduces gun violence anywhere. I'll also hazard that he is happy being taxed for the purpose. Same for me. Even if I was uncertain that the results would align with my hopes I would still support the programs. But that is also how I feel about assault weapon and high capacity magazine restrictions. 

The thing is that neither approach is likely to increase gun violence in America so, if we are being completely rational, why not both? And now.

Ask HIM. . .      

"When US homicide rates (per 100,000) reach the levels in Australia, western Europe and Scandinavia without changing gun laws, I'll acknowledge that approach works." 

 

I've already posted a link to three laws that have shown to reduce homicide rates.

I do have some reservations with universal background checks, but closing the gun show loophole seems reasonable enough.

Also, "may issue states" have an additional level of protection but I don't think the decision should be left to the sole discretion of some sheriff, but I'm not sure how it really works in those states.

I also think we can do more wrt cases of domestic violence.  It's ridiculous that a guy after being bailed out of jail for beating his wife for cheating on him can then stop into walmart on the way home and buy a gun to blow her away. I mean, I know there are other ways of getting a gun, but perhaps a restriction might give him more time to cool off.

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4 minutes ago, Coreece said:

Ask HIM. . .      

"When US homicide rates (per 100,000) reach the levels in Australia, western Europe and Scandinavia without changing gun laws, I'll acknowledge that approach works." 

 

I've already posted a link to three laws that have shown to reduce homicide rates.

I do have some reservations with universal background checks, but closing the gun show loophole seems reasonable enough.

Also, "may issue states" have an additional level of protection but I don't think the decision should be left to the sole discretion of some sheriff, but I'm not sure how it really works in those states.

I also think we can do more wrt cases of domestic violence.  It's ridiculous that a guy after being bailed out of jail for beating his wife for cheating on him can then stop into walmart on the way home and buy a gun to blow her away. I mean, I know there are other ways of getting a gun, but perhaps a restriction might give him more time to cool off.

Right. But they did change gun laws in Australia. We, unfortunately, have Heller. It's too easy to swirl down the never ending analysis worm hole with these things. If we want less gun violence then we need less of the guns that are associated with that violence. At the same time we need to get into those communities that suffer disproportionately from gun violence and do what ever we can to help. How is that wrong?

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