I’ve been watching our opponents work themselves up over the whole mass shooting in Brazil, and beating the cause of gun control. The problem is that if that incident says anything, it’s that strict gun control laws don’t stop this kind of thing. Brazil completely prohibits semi-automatic rifles. Pistols must be a caliber of no greater than .38 Special. Handguns are strictly licensed and registered. Owners must be 25 years old or older. There are limits on how many guns you may own. You can see a summary of Brazilian laws here.
Yet to some this means we need to try more gun control here. Brazil’s laws are a gun control advocates dream. They are well beyond anything that would be politically achievable in the United States. But yet we must still try something. Because if we do, the unicorns will fart a few more rainbows and surely less people are going to die by gunfire. Take their word for it. Ignore the fact that there’s no evidence it works.
Both guns were revolvers: one in .32 and the other in .38 special. Menezes bought them illegally from two felons.
PS: Gonna steal your Brazilian Gun Laws link for a future blog entry.
Has anybody seen much on this other international shooting story?
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/04/11/general-eu-netherlands-mall-shooting_8401501.html
The early report that I heard on this shooting in the Netherlands was that the shooter opened fire with an automatic firearm on a crowd of people in a shopping mall, but I also realize that the media sometimes confuses automatic firearms with semi-automatic firearms. Like Brazil and most of Europe, the Netherlands is also a nation which already has really strict gun laws.
The Brazil incident, and the more recent one in the Netherlands, say exactly the opposite of what you tried to spin it into. Mass shootings which are commonplace in the States, happen rarely in these other places. You’re shootin’ yourself in the foot with that argument, S.
“Because if we do, the unicorns will fart a few more rainbows and surely less people are going to die by gunfire.”
Yeah, and ignore those beatings, stabbings, clubbings, and Official Police Brutalities behind the curtain…guns are the *only* way to kill effectively!
“You’re shootin’ yourself in the foot with that argument, S.”
Mikeb302000, in order to make this claim believable, you’ll have to do several things:
— first, you need to show that the frequency of mass shootings per 100,000 in the population really is that much bigger in the US than in other countries;
— second, you’ll have to convince us that the likely very small numbers are really statistically significant;
— third, that the differences in these numbers are the results of gun laws, and not how we treat our mentally ill, etc; and
— fourth, that whenever these mass shootings occur, they are done by (mostly) legal guns.
This last point is a real sticking point to me. I’m even willing to give you leeway here: if the gunman accessed the guns from a trusted, legal source (such as the person’s parents), I would count such access “legal”, even if the person should not have had the gun. But you DO NOT get to claim that gun control works, when, in the Brazilian incident, gunman allegedly obtained the guns he used illegally. The entire PREMISE of gun control is that by making guns illegal, evildoers will not have access to guns–thus, if an evildoer BREAKS THE LAW to get guns, gun control, by definition, FAILS.
Well, you DO get to claim that gun control works, but we are under no obligation to believe you when you do make that claim.
Here’s an interesting quote from an article about the recent mall shooting in the Netherlands:
“Gun permits are difficult to obtain, but illegal automatic weapons and ammunition are frequently seized during drug busts.” (http://dailylocal.com/articles/2011/04/09/news/doc4da0a90f3bce8363661549.txt?viewmode=3)
Wow, illegal automatic weapons being possessed by drug dealers in the land of tulips and windmills – who would have thought? Also, isn’t the Netherlands supposedly where they don’t have much drug-related crime, all because people can freely buy and sell pot in certain parts of Amsterdam?
What alpheus said, mike.
You assert that mass shootings are “commonplace”.
Do you perhaps confuse “well publicized” with “common”?
(They seem to happen once or twice a year in eg. Germany – which has a population just over 1/4 that of the US.
So for an equal rate with the Krauts, we’d need four to eight a year.
Despite media frenzies, it sure seems like we don’t have a lot more than that.
Which feeds right back in to “gun control doesn’t seem to stop mass shootings” – which it, er, doesn’t seem to.
[Note that for both the German rate and the US rate I am talking only about “mass shootings” where someone goes on a rampage; neither set includes gang battles or the like, though Brazilian data certainly suggests that stricter gun control has no effect at all on gang gun violence – I’ve seen pictures of captured Bren guns in Brazil!
In the US, where you can legally buy a machinegun with a background check and a giant pile of cash, the use of such weapons by criminals remains very infrequent, somehow.
Must be the gun control?])
I see that mikeb302000 is Trolling again. Tam and Breda have the lowdown on him, if anyone’s interested. Anyway, the day we start to use Latin American Gun Laws as our Model is the day I man the Barricades. By the way, isn’t it funny that Brazil is now Governed by the former head of a Communist Terrorist Cell? I thought life was all Milk and Honey in those People’s Republics.
I notice the media hasn’t given much ink to the Islamic connection to this incident in Brazil either.
Hank, The media would not dare touch that angle. And you will not hear the members on NOW interject ether even though the guy and a sick hatred for women and stated it over and over.
No, nobody will. Besides, MikeB knows who are the ones responsible for the Rio Massacre: The NRA and the Gun Stores that sell illegal weapons to the Brazilians….
Too much of a stretch? ;)
Apheus,
I think you’re conveniently leaving out something. ALL guns start out legal, unless you want to quibble over zip guns and those manufactured in the cellar of some clandestine gunsmith. ALL guns in criminal hands got there in one of three ways. 1. theft, 2, straw purchase, 3, private sale.
In most cases, regardless of which one of the three ways it happened, the last legal gun owner fucked up in some way. That makes those individuals partly responsible. The rest of you are dirty too because you oppose simple legislation, aimed at the law abiding, I grant you, which would prevent much of this.
A recent bombing in a Minsk railway station killed 12 and wounded 100. You don’t need guns for effect. Just ask Timothy McVeigh and the Bath school bomber.
I hate to say this but Cho, scumbag that he is, didn’t even come close.
mikeb302000 is a paid United Nations employee, based in Rome; paid to stir up controversy as part of the United Nation’s desire to undermine the 2nd Amendment in the U.S.. He is supposedly working for the ‘World Food Programme’, a relief arm of the UN, but do you ever see any posts on his blog mentioning starving children? His ‘food’ is bullshit; his methodology is to put out a dozen posts a day to capture the g00gle and other search engine’s key words involving guns and gun rights.
He is an agent provocateur, nothing more.
It’s best you not link him; and better to delete his comments, to foil his attempts to gain a larger search engine profile.
Just my suggestion, FWIW.
“ALL guns start out legal, unless you want to quibble over zip guns and those manufactured in the cellar of some clandestine gunsmith.”
Check out some of the “clandestine gunsmith” production firearms that mikeb302000 would dismiss as “zip guns” in this YouTube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGVianQJsmQ
I have also read that crudely-made Kalashnikov rifles have been produced in other third-world regions of both Africa and Southeast Asia, and I could totally see that happening, too. Being that firearms are based on know-how and technology that dates back some 800+ years, no amount of laws being passed in any single country, or policies enacted by the uber-corrupt and inept United Nations, is ever going to change this reality.
mikeb302000 is a paid United Nations employee, based in Rome; paid to stir up controversy as part of the United Nation’s desire to undermine the 2nd Amendment in the U.S.
Those food program people really have it in for the Second Amendment. He also knows where Jimmy Hoffa is buried. Don’t let him tell you otherwise.
MikeB is correct that home made guns are the exception rather than the rule in most parts of the world. Where he fails is believing you can stop straw purchases and still have firearms remain legal. Thefts will never be stopped. And the only reason most guns source to the legal market is because there is a legal market. They make really good knockoffs in the tribal regions of Pakistan because they have no other source for arms. If they can do it with minimal modern machine equipment, imagine what criminals here will do with CNC machines, 3D printers, and other advanced machine tools.
Mikeb302000, I second Sebastian’s Comment #17: guns are easy to make, so you shouldn’t dismiss that as one of the ways that criminals can get illegal guns. They are also easy to smuggle, but you didn’t bring that up.
And do you know what? All of that doesn’t matter! The entire PURPOSE of gun laws is to keep guns out of the hands of people who do harm. Thus, when a gun is obtained illegally, it is IPSO FACTO a failure of gun laws.
Gun laws are SUPPOSED to stop mass shootings and murders, darn it! If a mass shooting or murder occurs with an illegal gun, then it has FAILED. It DOESN’T MATTER if some legal person “failed” at some point–this is just a potential failure point of gun laws.
Need I point out that handguns are illegal in Great Britain, except for police officers? Yet handgun crime has increased since the ban.
Need I point out that all sorts of weapons are illegal in Mexico, yet are STILL used by drug lords? And what is a major legal source of these illegal guns? The MEXICAN ARMY AND POLICE–the VERY PEOPLE you want to have guns!
You can’t win, Mike, unless you ban guns from GOVERNMENT AGENTS as well as citizens, and THEN ban the machines that can be used to MAKE them.
Alpheus, Here’s an example of our problem in communication. I read Sebastian’s comment no. 17 and noticed that he said home-made guns are the exception rather than the rule, he even prefaced that with “Mikeb is correct.”
When you read it apparently you got something else out of it.
Sebastian, I already told you how straw purchasing can be eliminated. You remember my ideas about guns being registered to the person who buys them and they have to renew that registration by producing the gun in three months and yearly thereafter. That would just about do it, wouldn’t you say?
About theft, you’re right it’ll always take it’s toll. But what if gun owners where held responsible for the safe storage of their guns? What if that had serious explainin’ to do every time they reported a gun stolen, or when the next yearly registration renewal came around. I’ll bet we’d see a big decrease in stolen guns tour de suite.
You never seem to offer any solution to any possible government abuse or risk of confiscation – which is why we aren’t taking you seriously.
Plus you cannot even pass the “Jews in the Attic” test so why bother?
Sebastian, I already told you how straw purchasing can be eliminated. You remember my ideas about guns being registered to the person who buys them and they have to renew that registration by producing the gun in three months and yearly thereafter. That would just about do it, wouldn’t you say?
And how do you enforce that? There are millions of guns in this country. Would the massive police force you would need to enforce that be better spend catching criminals rather than processing paperwork and doing inspections? There are huge scale problems with this proposal.
About theft, you’re right it’ll always take it’s toll. But what if gun owners where held responsible for the safe storage of their guns? What if that had serious explainin’ to do every time they reported a gun stolen, or when the next yearly registration renewal came around. I’ll bet we’d see a big decrease in stolen guns tour de suite.
Guns are still stolen in countries that do this. How much can you punish a victim of theft? And Heller is an obstacle to many safe storage requirements, though the extent of that isn’t clear.
There’s also the problem that once you start placing a lot of restrictions on guns, a lot of people are going to drop out of formal gun ownership and keep guns unlawfully.
Not to mention crooked ATF agents and cops…
It’s interesting how the solution is always more government doing more intervention to try and stop the same criminals it already can’t stop.
(If we could, as Sebastian points out, afford to run a “check 300 million guns every year” scheme we could afford to do better real law enforcement.
Given that there’s barely money for cops on the beat now, what do you think is the most effective way to, uh, actually reduce crime?
That is the goal, right? Reducing crime (especially crime involving guns, what with the killing and all), not getting rid of guns for the sake of disarming the populace?
Given the porosity of borders and ease of smuggling (and theft and “loss” from police!), you could confiscate every legally owned firearm in America tomorrow and you’d have armed criminals by next week (cf Britain).
And then, oddly, that huge stack of laws related to “registration” would do no good at all.
Even without the ludicrous aspect of punishing people for being robbed, your “plan” falls apart.
Fortunately for us, it has zero chance of success, because its obvious failings are, well, obvious.)
How about we get Israel to stop shipping guns illegally for their own profit all around the world. They use the profits to fund their oppression of Palestine. It sickens me.