Right, arm's bared...

[classicdrogn]

http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/6071/armsbared.jpg

Permission is hereby granted to disseminate this image, so long as it remains unaltered except for scaling within legible size, in any format or medium.

Edit for link to not break page width and allegedly wittier title
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Black Aeronaut]

Personally, I wouldn't mind if reasonable limits were placed on what all a person can own.

Honestly, I'm a lot more concerned about how the hell someone gets this deranged without someone noticing rather than how many guns he got his hands on. After all, if it wasn't guns then all he had to do was get a U-Haul and load it with ANFO and a remote triggered detonator. And don't forget that there's been some particularly nasty incidents that have occurred in other countries that did not involve guns. Japan in particular jumps to mind, where a deranged man used a box-truck to run down people in a square and then went on to stab a few more with a knife.

Simply put, taking the guns away is not going to make people like this go away. They'll simply find more creative ways to make their feelings known, and it's going to be a lot more impersonal and indiscriminate than a bullet from a gun.

[robkelk]

That amendment was supposed to be about maintaining readiness for a militia.

How many gun owners in the USA are part of a National Guard or other militia?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[ECSNorway]

Let's nip that right in the bud.

There are basically four levels of defense forces in this country:

1) The regular Federal armed forces - US Army, US Navy, etc.

2) The National Guard. Each state maintains their own ground and air forces. Some still maintain naval forces as well (altho in some cases merely token or for nostalgia).

3) Both of the above maintain organized Reserve forces, which technically qualify as an Organized Militia.

4) All adult males between the ages of 17 and 45, with certain exceptions.

Note that this is not a dictionary based definition. This definition is based on current United States Federal law.

(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.

(b) The classes of the militia are—

(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and

(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

The Second Amendment does not at any point say that you need to be a member of the militia to bear arms. It simply says that militia requires the right to bear arms to be unrestricted. Full stop.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Dartz]

Congress also has the right to levy taxes, and the like...

Nice rifle you have there.... now then, to do anything with that that involves taking it outside your home, here's the tax required. Oh, and insurance just in case you do have to shoot someone.... to pay for medical bills, funeral bills and legal costs. And if you don't have the right paperwork... it hurts. Insurance is a nice kicker, because honest enthusiasts with approved training and secure storage will pay lower rates. Like car insurance really.

The same principals apply to another potentially lethal weapon parked in everyone's drive. Here, they seize your car if you're caught in a public place and your paperwork is out of date, then fine you. Taxes can drive behaviour far better than forbidding something outright. Forbidding something makes it desireable. While things that are merely taxed are still attainable, just out of reach by way of cost.

And quite frankly.... what about everyone elses right not to be shot while peacefully going about their daily business? Or for that matter, shot by a paranoid trigger happy police force. Our firearms laws are anally retentive and outdated - for obvious reasons, they were written when the state was subject to an armed insurgency - but it also means I'm not going to be shot by a cop making a mistake. Our police, with the exception of one major unit, are pretty much entirely unnarmed.

Finally. The good thing about constitutions? They can be changed.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[robkelk]

Let's nip that right in the bud.

Let's not.

Answer the question, please.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[classicdrogn]

As well as the legal definition quoted above, the local gun club (which meets next door to me, though the range is elsewhere) has 'Militia' in the name, and turns out to march in the Memorial Day parade. I don't expect many of the militias at the time of the founding did much more in peacetime. So, count a good dozen for starts, Rob.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Morganite]

As far as the image size goes, could you maybe do something about it here and now? A link to the image instead of embedding it maybe? It breaks the board format pretty badly over here.

Response to issue itself will be forthcoming when sleep has been had.

-Morgan.

[SilverFang01]

A tax on ammunition, say 7% with proceeds going to education and mental health services.

[Morganite]

Let's not.

Answer the question, please.

Unless I'm misunderstanding the bit of legal code he quoted, he did give you an answer. "Most of the men between 17 and 45 years old, plus various others."

But there's another question - "Is this actually more relevant to the discussion than the price of fresh strawberries on Saturn?"

As far as I can tell, there's two basic classes interpretations of the second amendment fit into. Either "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," is viewed as a modifier to "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.", or it's an explanation of it.

I, personally, favored something more like the latter, since I felt that the order of operations worked better that way. One acquires the Arms, one learns how to use them, then and only then is one qualified to join the Militia. Also it seemed to make more sense grammatically to consider the second part to stand on it's own. (Although I'm not sure why that comma is in there.)

There's also going back to the text of Madison's preemptive proposal, which evolved into the Bill of Rights.

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed, and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country: but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person."

Which seems pretty straightforward to me.

So, moving on. We obviously want events like this to not happen. What sort of gun laws aid in this goal?

John R. Lott Jr. and William M. Landes published a paper titled Multiple Victim Public Shootings in 2000 exploring this question. This site actually lets you download and read the whole thing, and it's pretty interesting stuff. Highlights include:

Overall, we find that states without right-to-carry laws had more deaths and injuries from multiple shootings per year (both in absolute numbers and on a per capita basis) during the 1977 to 1997 period. Note also that the number of states with right-to-carry laws increased from 8 to 31 and the percentage of the U.S. population in these states rose from 8.5 to 50 percent in this period. Yet, states without right-to-carry laws still account for the large majority (often around 90 percent) of deaths and injuries.

The other gun related law variables generally produce no consistent significant impact on mass shootings. One exception is the impact of laws limiting a purchaser to no more than one-gun-a month. All the estimates imply that limitations on purchases increase multiple shootings, though the statistical significance of this variable is driven solely by its impact on the number of injuries. The point estimates on the waiting period variables are not consistent. In some equations, a longer waiting period increases the risk of mass public shootings, in others it decreases the risk, and in only one equation is the variable statistically significant. A safe storage law has no significant effect in any equation. The imposition of additional penalties for using a gun in a crime significantly reduces the number of murders, but the impact on injuries and the number of attacks is statistically insignificant. Nor were any of the joint F-tests on the gun control variables statistically significant. In sum, there is no evidence that these laws systematically reduce multiple shootings.

The new regressions shown in Section B clearly show that the states with the fewest gun free zones have the greatest reductions killings, injuries, and attacks. Each one point increase in the index is associated with about a two percent further reduction in these crimes and all the estimates are statistically significant at least at the one percent level. All the other variables are very similar to what is reported in Section A.

While the recent rash of public school shootings during the 1997-99 school largely took place after the period of our study, these incidents raise questions about the unintentional consequences of laws. All the public school shootings took place after a 1995 federal law banned guns (including permitted concealed handguns) within a thousand feet of a school. The possibility exists that attempts to outlaw guns from schools, no matter how well meaning, may have produced perverse effects. It is interesting to note that during the 1977 to 1995 period, 15 shootings took place in schools in states without right-to-carry laws and only one took place in a state with this type of law. There were 19 deaths and 97 injuries in states without the law, while there was one death and two injuries in states with the law.

The National Review spoke with Lott recently, who noted some things about more recent incidents.

He noted that the Aurora shooter, who killed twelve people earlier this year, had a choice of seven movie theaters that were showing the Batman movie he was obsessed with. All were within a 20-minute drive of his home. The Cinemark Theater the killer ultimately chose wasn’t the closest, but it was the only one that posted signs saying it banned concealed handguns carried by law-abiding individuals. All of the other theaters allowed the approximately 4 percent of Colorado adults who have a concealed-handgun permit to enter with their weapons.

And then there's this.

Lott offers a final damning statistic: "With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns."

The conclusion is pretty simple. Take guns away from the law-abiding, you create convenient victims. This suggests a couple obvious courses of action. One, stop doing the things that make the problem worse. Like Oklahoma, where a bill is going to be introduced that would allow teachers and administrators to carry arms. That may still leave Oklahoma as one of the most heavily restricted states in terms of gun-free zones, but it's a start.

Other, take the things that work and do more of them. Gun permit applications have soared in the Twin Cities area. And that's a start. But we need more states to pass right-to-carry laws. More guns in the hands of the law-abiding means a higher chance of someone being in the position to stop an attack.

(There's an interesting footnote in that paper about two school shootings that happened in 1997. The shooters in both were stopped by armed civilians nearby long before police arrived, but almost no news coverage mentioned that they had a gun when they did so...)

-Morgan.

[robkelk]

Let's not.

Answer the question, please.

Unless I'm misunderstanding the bit of legal code he quoted, he did give you an answer. "Most of the men between 17 and 45 years old, plus various others."

...

That's how many are eligible to become members. I asked how many are members.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Morganite]

Well, that's the part I'm not all that sure about. Because it sure sounds like those aren't requirements to be eligible, but that if you meet the requirements, you are automatically a member.

Which is really kind of weird. But then, that would be why it's called "unorganized".

-Morgan.

[ECSNorway]

Let's not.

Answer the question, please.

Unless I'm misunderstanding the bit of legal code he quoted, he did give you an answer. "Most of the men between 17 and 45 years old, plus various others."

...

That's how many are eligible to become members. I asked how many are members.

Incorrect.

You assume facts not in evidence, specifically, that absence of a declaration of membership in a militia is evidence of lack of membership in same.

I will again quote the relevant federal law:

The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.

Nowhere in there does it say you have to "join" a militia. You -are- a member of the national militia already. 
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[robkelk]

I'm not, because I'm Canadian.

So, every male citizen of the USA between 17 and 45 are in the militia. Second question: how many of them are active in the militia?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[ECSNorway]

I'm not, because I'm Canadian.

Ok, I'll grant you that much.

So, every male citizen of the USA between 17 and 45 are in the militia. Second question: how many of them are active in the militia?

What relevance does this have to the discussion?
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Jorlem]

I wonder if the reasons for some of those statistics might be because it might be harder for someone who shouldn't have a gun to acquire one, instead of being because other people with guns defend against the 'bad guys' with guns. That is to say, the presence of a legal method to acquire guns diminishes the black market in an area, and so long as the screening methods catch at least some (not all, sadly/obviously, but some) of the people who shouldn't have guns, then it would be more difficult (though not impossible) for those people to get guns anyway, as there would be less black market demand for them.

Also, could some of it possibly be psychological? I'm just speculating here, but if someone owns an illegal gun, then they are already breaking the law, and it might be easier to make a mental leap to doing other illegal things, but if the gun was legally acquired, that boost wouldn't be there.
-----
Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.

[khagler]

That's possible, but I think it's more because the people who assemble the statistics don't count it until a certain number of people are shot. It actually _does_ happen that occasionally someone will try to shoot a bunch of people in a public place where people _are_ allowed to defend themselves, but when that happens they're stopped before they can kill enough people for it to count as a "mass shooting." For example, there was an incident just recently in a mall in Oregon where some nut started shooting, but after hitting two people he saw that one of the mall-goers had drawn a pistol and was aiming at him, at which point he shot himself--so it doesn't count. Naturally, those events don't get even remotely as much coverage, as they don't satisfy the mass media's bloodlust or political agendas.

And of course, you're still in more danger of being struck by lightning.

[Morganite]

Well, the first question would be, do things like right-to-carry laws diminish the black market for guns? I'm not sure how large of a section of the market that would actually be.

I don't remember if the study actually said that there was a greater effect on mass shootings than there was on violent crimes against individuals, but there was a side note about how statistically speaking the mass shooter is far more likely to face armed opposition than the individual-targeting criminal. Which makes me think that the effects you're suggesting would probably have more impact on the latter than the former, and if there is a discrepancy that could explain it.

Another possible psychological factor is that acquiring a gun legally tends to require proof of some kind of training, which is likely to make people take it more seriously than if they'd just handed someone $xyz in a back alley and that were the end of it.

I'm not really sure what kind of information you'd need to seek out to test any of these ideas though! Of course, for practical purposes, while it's helpful to know why the laws work, what's most important is that they do.

-Morgan.

[classicdrogn]

I have long thought that a unit on firearms safety and airsoft target shooting should be part of federal education standards, to reduce accidental shootings and to ... demystify, I guess, guns. It's no longer 'cool' to pack heat, it's something you had to learn about as homework and describe what mechanically makes stuffing a saturday night special in your waistband with a round in the chamber stupid. It would also make getting a liscence for lawful carry once of age easier, in line w/the study citedabove.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[classicdrogn]

I've only done a superficial search, does anyone know of a study of shooting statistics in Britain after they made it all but impossible to own a pistol legally?
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[robkelk]

I'm not, because I'm Canadian.

Ok, I'll grant you that much.

So, every male citizen of the USA between 17 and 45 are in the militia. Second question: how many of them are active in the militia?

What relevance does this have to the discussion?

That doesn't answer my question.

But I'll answer yours despite you not answering mine: I'm trying to understand.

So... How many of them are active in the militia?
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Morganite]

See, once again, fresh strawberries on Saturn.

I have no particular objection to answering this question, although I have no idea where one would look for that sort of information. (Especially since the term "militia" seems to have become unfortunately popular with kooks.) But since the second amendment protects the rights of people who *aren't* in militias to bear arms as well, why does it matter?

And if you think the first part of that last sentence is wrong (or should be wrong), then how about presenting your case for it? Then there might be a point to the exercise.

Or, if that's *not* the point of you asking the question, then could you explain what is? Because it's not the above then I seriously do not know what you're driving at here.

@ClassicDrogn re firearms training for everyone: Yesssssssss.

-Morgan.

[ECSNorway]

Just to clarify, Rob, how are you defining "active"?

Armed and capable of fighting?

Actively participating in training with other members of the militia?

Enrolled in the National Guard or Reserves?

All of the above are possible levels of "active", and since I don't know where you're drawing the line, it's impossible to answer your question.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Rod.H]

CD, just cursory looking at a search on The Guardian website on Gun crime + UK news brings up 1467 articles at least 121 of them produced in the last year with probably 30 odd articles related to that shooting of British citizens in France -an incident that's probably an intel agency op, a terror group cleaning house or something else- most of the other articles for the year cover organized crime/gangs with guns, targeted shootings, the murders of three police officers, the murder of an Indian student, gun smuggling, a black gansta murdering two Brits on a US jolly, the sentencing of a gang that shot up a store last year severely wounding a kid, some pieces on gun ownership stats and a murder-suicide performed by a mentally unstable individual who'd got their guns back after appealing a removal order the police imposed on them a number or years previously.

As for the statistics, I think trying the Home Office http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/science-re ... ics/crime/ might be a start. Which it is for Homicides, Firearm Offences and Intimate Violence 2010/11: Supplementary Volume 2 to Crime in England and Wales 2010/11. It's interesting reading the stats, like for incidents involving handguns almost 80% of them never resulted in a discharge.

And Rob take the recorded numbers of that population demographic subtract from that the members of the US Armed Forces (including cadet & reservists), law enforcement, gun owners, the Amish, Montana Militiamen and prisoners and you'll get the rough numbers of just who's not in the militia. Plus from that you can get an idea of just how much the Armed Forces could be boosted by if a draft occurred - or more likely hindered due to the requirements of training and equipping all of them.

[classicdrogn]

Oh it's not hard at all to find data, I was hoping someone'd done an analysis of it as for that study in the US. I don't remember enough of my Statistical Arithmatic course to do it properly myself even if I had the patience to go through those thousands of data points, and it would take careful consideration to decide exactly what sorting criteria to use and interpret the results to get something balanced and meaningful, rather than making the numbers say what I'd want to hear. I didn't take PolSci 8)
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows