Furthermore, making the manufacture and sale of certain classes of firearms wholly illegal would undoubtedly effect criminals (as it would all people) who wanted to purchase that gun. Lower supply means higher price which means fewer able to afford the cost and lower buy-in. Any criminal (although, really, if they are only just trying to get the weapon they would probably only be a potential criminal at this point, and thus law-abiding until they carry through with the crime they need the weapon for) that wants that weapon would have a harder time of it, and many of them would not be able to get it at all.

“Criminals” are just people who break the law, nothing more, nothing less. Law abiding gun owners become criminals every day. Any gun owner who has purchased an illegal weapon is already a criminal. You selfish “soft on crime” types sicken me a bit, where you think every criminal that has the same criminal impulses you do should get off because you have the same criminal urges. (That’s how this typecasting and othering you seem so proficient in works, right?)

For many America’s that’s no longer the norm.  In an urban area cops are usually close by and usually respond very very quickly to thing deemed serious.  I had a friend who woke up to the sound of someone trying to pick the lock of her apartment. She said she waited in terror for a long minute before she heard the cops suddenly break down the doors to her apartment building.

Anyway, most people get shot with handguns either they own, or one that a criminal stole from someone that owned it legally.  Stand to reason, reduce the number of handguns and you’ll cut deaths.  Handguns in particular are a problem because they can be concealed and thus are ideal for criminals to carry.

If I want to make a study about safety features in automobiles, do I ignore available data from NASCAR races, just because they are professional drivers in a professional race car?  Make a separate column for NASCAR, sure, but don’t ignore applicable data.

If I want to make a study about food and kitchen safety, do I throw out all data available from restaurants because that involves professional chefs, waiters, and dishwashers?  Again, make a separate column, but don’t ignore applicable data.

It’s a matter of odds – is calling the police likely to make things better, or worse? In my experience, there’s a lot of variables. Sure, if you are calling to help your white, male, calm-headed, respectful, sober, non-depressed, non-handicapped, fairly compliant with authority friend with some potential outside threat, maybe that’s overwhelmingly a good choice. But how well do you know the person you are trying to help? How sure are you there’s an actual problem the police could help with? If there isn’t, how sure are you there won’t be any complications? How much better an option is calling the police than some alternative such as (in this case) going there yourself (since you would be far more likely to identify the potential victim successfully and be able to quickly diffuse any misunderstanding, what with the two of you knowing each other).

What ARE the benefits? Will they get there too late to help if it IS an emergency, but soon enough to cause problems if it isn’t? Maybe it’s not the best idea to get them involved at all, then.

Calling the police is like going in for surgery. There are definite rewards if needed, but it’s silly to act is if it isn’t always going to involve an element of risk of complications. Sometimes the risk of a false positive is enough to opt against the surgery and in favour of some other treatment that might be less risky, but have a lower chance of success if the problem is real (In this case, traveling to her house himself to check on her).

Not every surgery has complications. But even if most surgeries don’t, that doesn’t mean surgery is necessarily the best option for a /suspicion/. And it’s the same with the police.

Edit:
I should probably add that showing up at someone’s house with a loaded gun in hand and ready to fire is probably significantly more likely to have a poorer outcome than calling the police though.

I’m bummed that the comment I replied to got deleted. It was silly and illogical, but not necessarily offensive. There are still people trying to equate the right to own guns with the right to marry. These people need to see how their logic is flawed and learn from it.

“My mind is made up; don’t confuse me with facts.”

00 buck penetrates walls more than a soft-point or hollow-point .223, which tends to shatter into pieces as it passes through drywall.  This is the kind of thing that the gun nuts like testing all the time because it means shooting at stuff, photographing it, and posting it on the Internet.

Fair enough.  But you have to expect to get some flack from the rest of the world for embracing that other peculiar institution – gun ownership.

To make an analogy, if Mexico had a constitutional right to easily purchase explosives, and easy access to such explosives meant that criminals easily purchased them, and moreover, that there was a small but steady stream of explosives into the US that resulted in a number of dead Americans, you could expect much the same sort of annoyance at the cultural practices of Mexico.

Under such circumstances, even Americans that believed each country has rights to own laws would probably be ticked off at Americans having to die in order… well, in order so that Mexicans could kill more of themselves??  That doesn’t even make sense.  Everyone loses!

To Canadians who don’t have an emotional attachment to gun ownership that makes it worth 10,000+ lives a year (plus another 10,000 additional successful suicides), it can seem like Canadians must die in order so that more Americans can die.  Lose–lose, and perhaps somewhat annoying.

I had the police show up at my place expecting trouble because some idiot placed a fake panic call to them. But even though they thought there was a good chance they were walking into a shooting situation, and were obviously not real comfortable, they played it remarkably well — they asked my permission to search the place rather than jumping direct to insisting, they were firm but polite about interviewing me, and as soon as it became obvious that there was no problem they apologized and left.

Of course it helps that I didn’t hit _them_ with a bad attitude. If you act like an ass and/or like someone who has something to hide, they’re going to respond and that’s entirely appropriate. If you work with them everything goes much more smoothly.

Yes, there are parts of the US where the police department, or specific officers, are problems. But that really is the exception, NOT the rule. Remember, anecdotal evidence tends to be inherently biased because it’s the unusual and/or problematic cases that get talked about.

That seems substantially at odds from reality.  The law of supply and demand are fairly immutable.  Remove most of the supply, and prices go up, decreasing demand.  Of course, some secondary sources will come in, but pretending that a few illegal machine shop can match the production power of the US small arms industry is, to be charitable, stretching it.

Also, as might be expected, alcohol consumption plunged about 70% during prohibition, then gradually recovered to 60-70% of pre-prohibition levels.  A solution doesn’t have to be perfect to produce a lot fewer deaths.

(Personally, the whole assault-rifle thing is theater.  You want to save American lives (not just middle-class white American lives in mass-shootings)?  Ban handguns.  Period.  The long guns are hardly on the radar when it comes to Americans killing each other.

Note, if one wants to claim that the right to self-defense is worth 100,000 American lives over the last decade alone (especially given that they tend to be poor and minority), go right ahead.  At least that’s principled.  (After all, I’d say that the right to drive is worth 30,000 Americans lives a year.)

Regarding good data: If we decide to ignore gun use by the police, then we are simply cherry-picking, as if wearing blue clothing and a shield creates some magical barrier against statistics.  I want better stats, but I don’t want to to see a good chunk of data thrown out because a citizen was using his gun as part of his employment.

The only explanation I can adduce is they are so cowed by the constant and unremitting irrationality and aggressiveness of the gun owners, they mentally say, “They want it so much. Gun owning doesn’t really affect or apply to us, the non-gun owning. Let’s just let them have their fun.”

But why shouldn’t people be clear where they stand?  Seems like a virtue to me.

I can tell you’ve never been to Canada or other countries where carrying a gun around casually just doesn’t happen. Yes, probably only the criminals have guns here, but not every criminal is running around shooting as many people as possible. Getting shot is such an improbability here that it doesn’t cross our minds to need a gun.

A shotgun works equally well for home defense, target shooting, skeet, varmint and pest control, large and small game, etc. and uses a variety of easily obtainable ammunition and is easily repaired and cared for using parts and supplies from nearly any hunting or shooting supply.

I don’t usually agree with Joe Biden, but this time he’s right.  A Remington 870 is a generally purpose killing tool well worth having around the house, and a military carbine is overly specialized and expensive.  If you’ve already got one and the armed forces have trained you in its use (like my friend Mimi – Hi, Meemers!) maybe that’s reasonable, but there’s really no good reason to go spend money on a handgun or assault rifle.  Shotguns are far more useful.

I’m guessing I have a different opinion on how advisable it is to let everyone who wants one get their own UAV.