Nikolas Cruz 'remorseful' as police report claims he confessed to Florida school shooting massacre

[TheFeniX]

Just to be clear, you know LaCroix is talking about Austria, not Australia with a L? (At least I think you may be responding to him based on your referencing pump shotguns when he specifically called those out)

Yea..... Wow. Sorry bout that.

[loomer]

Incidentally, in case anyone was wondering just how full of shit this 'revolvers are semi-automatics and if you think otherwise pro-gun people think a conversation is impossible' (with its implication that pro-gun sources, as a result, don't use the same common distinction) stance of Atheos is...

The notoriously anti-Gun gun digest on the age old question: Buy a semi-automatic or a revolver?

American Rifleman: Impossible to have a conversation about guns with.

The NRA, who we all know hate guns, seem to use the same common definition.

Now for a little bit of how the guns actually work. Semi-automatic handguns work by using the force generated by firing - either recoil or gas or blowback, usually - to cycle the mechanism and eject the empty casing of the prior round, and cock the hammer or prepare the firing pin in 'hammerless' models for the next shot. The first shot usually needs a heavier trigger pull if the hammer isn't manually cocked back, but each subsequent shot has a lighter pull. This is oversimplified, but accurate to most modern semi-automatic handguns.

Revolvers don't do that last part, with very rare exceptions. You fire a revolver, whether single or double action, and the hammer isn't prepped for the next shot by the cycling of the action. With the old fashioned single action, you had to manually cock each time - which is where the badass stuff in westerns of 'fanning' a revolver comes from. With double actions, every trigger pull has that same heavier weight. By the very nature of the mechanisms, a revolver is not in fact a semi-automatic handgun except in the very loosest sense, and that's without considering the nature of magazines vs cylinders or self-ejection of casings.

One is operated more or less solely by the muscles of your hand, with some ingenious leverage and mechanisms to maximize boom per ounce of squeeze. The other is operated in part - sometimes a very large part - by the forces produced internally by the firing of the round.

[Broomstick]

I've been thinking about some of what's been discussed in this thread and hope I have my thoughts in better order.

Here's the situation: gun owners are a minority in the US. Yes, they really are - depending on which poll you look at gun owners are between 32% (General Social Survey 2014) and 42% (Gallup Poll 2015). Another poll says 36% (CBS, 2018). As we live in a democracy, any minority should be wary of the majority, who can vote restrictions on you. And since the trend since the 1990's has been fewer guns owners, but those people owning more guns, it is entirely likely that gun owners may come to be viewed as a threatening minority by the non-gun-owning majority.

We have people like Atheos, who said

The .38 revolver you are thinking of buying is semi-automatic. This is what I'm talking about. You really have no idea what guns you want to ban or why, and it makes people pissed off and think that it's impossible to have a reasonable conversation.

Except that is NOT the commonly held definition of "semi-automatic", as already mentioned by other posters in this thread. The only rationale I can think of for this verbal maneuver is an attempt to protect access to the highly powerful rifles like the AR-15 by conflating them with lower-powered guns and insisting all are alike and you can't ban one without the other. Which argument only works if you take as a starting point the right to own guns is inviolate - which, to the anti-gun side, it is not.

That just gives the anti-gun crowd a basis on which to ban ALL weapons from a revolver up to an AR-15. I'm not sure that anyone who wants to maintain civilian access to guns should use that argument because, with enough of a majority firearms certainly could be banned. There is nothing inviolate about the 2nd Amendment. We've changed the constitution 27 times, it could happen again. All it takes is a sufficient majority and will to do it.

And, in fact, there ARE marked differences between a small revolver and an AR-15 that go beyond the cosmetic. For one thing, the velocity of a bullet leaving the barrel is three times greater in an AR-15 than a handgun using a similar caliber of ammunition, which is why AR-15 bullets do so much more damage. So if you aren't happy making a distinctions between "mechanically advancing the next bullet to firing position" and "using energy captured from the previous bullet to advance the next bullet to firing position" then maybe muzzle velocity should be addressed. Dismissing limiting bullet capacity as useless is also a failing position - having to change clips does take time, whether it's a 10 bullet clip or a 50 bullet magazine or speed-loading a revolver. In every instance it is a brief interruption in the hail of bullets during which victims can attempt to reach shelter or flee. The more such interruptions (that is, the lower capacity for bullets) mean there are the fewer bullets per unit of time in a shooting incident, and potentially fewer casualties. For darn sure, larger magazines seem associated with a higher body count, and a higher muzzle velocity likewise.

The fact is many, many people in the US are getting fucking tired of mass shootings - events which are notably much less frequent everywhere else. Which makes it painfully obvious they don't have to happen. They are completely unnecessary deaths. Unlike deaths from, say, cars, which at least provide the utility of transportation. The mass shootings typically target unarmed people, people who are not involved in "gun culture". It is seen as an intrusion of "gun culture" into the non-gun society.

Because of this involvement of the unarmed, mass shootings are different than other gun deaths. Don't want to die as a gun suicide? Don't use a gun to kill yourself (actually, better yet, just don't kill yourself). Don't want to die in an accident with a gun? Don't own one and don't go places like gun ranges where they are used. Even a lot of other sort of random shootings can be avoided by simply not going into areas where gun violence is a feature i.e. "bad neighborhoods". Mass shootings, on the other hand, are perceived as intrusions into spaces that are otherwise assumed to be safe.

Small aviation survived in the US NOT by conflating single-engine (SEL) Cessnas and Pipers and other makes with passenger jets but by emphasizing the differences: the SEL's are smaller, they physically can't cause comparable damage, and pilots agreed to take steps to ensure their activities would not intrude upon or cause undue risk to the non-flying majority. If you want to retain access to guns you're going to have to acknowledge that while all guns are damn dangerous, some are even more dangerous than others.

Given current trends, the only way civilian gun owners/users are going to keep their guns in the future is NOT by conflating revolvers and hunting with the "assault" weaponry used in things like mass shootings. You are going to have to define "assault rifle" or else the majority is going to do it for you (and probably get it wrong). You are going to have to be party to this or else surrender the decision making to those you know are not adequately informed to make good decisions.

Truth is, the average person doesn't need an AR-15 with 50 round magazines for "self defense". The average person is simply not going to need to repel a multi-party assault. If you just enjoy owning and firing such a weapon just fucking admit that you enjoy it. Don't conflate it with a concealed carry pistol. Acknowledge that in the wrong hands such a thing is fucking deadly dangerous and work with the fearful to impose rational controls on who can own such a thing. Then work to ensure those rules are enforced. Is that going to be inconvenient, annoying, and perhaps even cost you some money? Yeah, it might - but it will be less inconvenient than digging in your heels until the majority decides to re-write the 2nd Amendment.

[LadyTevar]

Well said, Broomstick. Thank you for putting my thoughts on the matter forth far better than I've been able to.

[loomer]

For shits and giggles while I wait for Dominus to face up and retract his dumbass statement, let's examine the NSW provisions on firearms, as I earlier referenced my fine country's laws on semi-automatic weaponry, just to see if one of the strictest firearm control regimens around is capable of distinguishing between revolvers and semi-automatic handguns.

"(1) In this Act,
"prohibited pistol" means any of the following kinds of pistol:

(a) a pistol with a calibre of more than .38 inch,

(b) a self-loading pistol with a barrel length of less than 120 mm,

(c) a revolver with a barrel length of less than 100 mm,

but does not include any such kind of pistol that is a black powder pistol. "

Oh look. A fairly comprehensive ban on small, readily concealed or high-calibre handguns and pistols that distinguishes between revolvers and self-loading/semi-automatics (the two usually being used as synonyms in this context - note, for instance, the early use of self-loading in place of semi-automatic in a lot of detective and military fiction that gradually evolved into the current contextual and colloquial usage of semi-automatic) without difficulty. It's also not a total ban - there are still special categories of exemption with a license even for prohibited pistols (e.g. security companies), though those aren't easily available.

I know I, personally, am deeply shocked that a law can exist that can recognize distinctions between semi-automatic pistols and revolvers, and between semi-automatic pistols and semi-automatic carbines, rifles and shotguns. If we really wanted that protection, we could always use the same language demonstrated above and just make it clear that a self-loading pistol is meant, but that isn't actually going to be necessary. So long as you categorize revolvers differently from semi-automatic handguns, even if it's just like above - a slight difference in barrel length that actually comes out roughly the same when you consider the definition of barrel length for the two types of firearm - then no judge is going to read an act banning semi-automatic weaponry and go 'well obviously revolvers too', because that isn't how statutory interpretation works in the first place.

To illustrate. The law, very roughly, might say the following, offered purely to illustrate what the difference means:
No person shall possess or operate a semi-automatic weapon with a capacity greater than 5 rounds without special license; and
No person shall possess or operate a revolver with a capacity greater than 7 rounds without a special license.

If that's the sum of the law, without other exceptions or restrictions etc - again, purely to illustrate the actual process of legal reasoning involved in interpretation - then we have a clear situation. Two distinct categories of firearms have been set out. One is a semi-automatic weapon, the other is a revolver. By virtue of being distinguished from one another, a revolver cannot reasonably be interpreted to be a semi-automatic weapon for the purpose of the act unless expressly stated to be elsewhere in the act, in another act, or by amendment.

There's another principle that renders even this somewhat unnecessary. Unless otherwise defined, the usual assumption in statutory interpretation across the anglosphere is that a word should be given its ordinary meaning, except where a special contextual meaning is necessary to give effect to the law as written and intended. In the context of a ban specificially on semi-automatic rifles, the ordinary meaning of semi-automatic cannot reasonably be held to apply to a revolver given the aforementioned - and demonstrated - common distinction between semi-automatic and revolver type pistols and firearms. Having it clearly defined is always preferable, but this is just how absurd the argument of 'durr a ban on semi-autos will ban revolvers because by the strictest technical definition a revolver is a semi-automatic weapon' really is. It goes against basic principles of statutory interpretation and could be fixed completely by the tiniest change to proposed laws.

[TheFeniX]

I've been thinking about some of what's been discussed in this thread and hope I have my thoughts in better order.

Here's the situation: gun owners are a minority in the US. Yes, they really are - depending on which poll you look at gun owners are between 32% (General Social Survey 2014) and 42% (Gallup Poll 2015). Another poll says 36% (CBS, 2018). As we live in a democracy, any minority should be wary of the majority, who can vote restrictions on you. And since the trend since the 1990's has been fewer guns owners, but those people owning more guns, it is entirely likely that gun owners may come to be viewed as a threatening minority by the non-gun-owning majority.

That's still 100 million people. Well outstripping some minority populations. Even if you attributed every single gun homicide to them (which is completely unfair since most gun crime is committed with illegal weapons): you end up with a fraction of .01% of gun owners using their guns in the commission of a murder.

Meanwhile, the "could be dangerous" angle was used during the whole Superpredator fiasco. I don't equate gun owners with an actual race of people, but your justification is eerily similar to our legislature throwing an entire group of people under the bus to placate people with zero understanding of what the problem was.

EDIT: I was going to say "That's 100 million votes, while a minority, you don't want to action by comparing them to violent criminals."

Dismissing limiting bullet capacity as useless is also a failing position - having to change clips does take time, whether it's a 10 bullet clip or a 50 bullet magazine or speed-loading a revolver. In every instance it is a brief interruption in the hail of bullets during which victims can attempt to reach shelter or flee. The more such interruptions (that is, the lower capacity for bullets) mean there are the fewer bullets per unit of time in a shooting incident, and potentially fewer casualties. For darn sure, larger magazines seem associated with a higher body count, and a higher muzzle velocity likewise.

"Potentially." "Seem." You're going to have to back this up. How many people take the time to poke a head out during a lull in the shooting to check if they shooter is reloading? That just makes you more likely to get shot. Honestly, your best shot is to run WHILE he's firing since (lacking the ability for true suppresive fire) he must be aiming at someone else (not you since you'd be getting shot) and would have to switch to targeting you. Meanwhile, if he's NOT shooting, that means there also a good chance he's looking for a new target.

Small aviation survived in the US NOT by conflating single-engine (SEL) Cessnas and Pipers and other makes with passenger jets but by emphasizing the differences: the SEL's are smaller, they physically can't cause comparable damage, and pilots agreed to take steps to ensure their activities would not intrude upon or cause undue risk to the non-flying majority. If you want to retain access to guns you're going to have to acknowledge that while all guns are damn dangerous, some are even more dangerous than others.

I'm confused why this .38 revolver deal is sitting here aside the AR-15. But you want to hear something "hilarious?" Look up the most common firearm used to murder people in the U.S. It's the .38 Special revolver. At least in Chicago, but gun crime tracking in the U.S. is shit so you're got to dig around and most my links are dead.

How many AR-15s kill people? So, in theory the AR-15 is more deadly, but in practice the .38Sp has it beat hands down. And it's techincally harder to get than the AR-15 since you have to be 21 to buy a pistol.

Now, why is the .38 so popular in crime? Easy, it's cheap and an incredibly popular firearm among legal owners so they stamp out millions of them.

Given current trends, the only way civilian gun owners/users are going to keep their guns in the future is NOT by conflating revolvers and hunting with the "assault" weaponry used in things like mass shootings. You are going to have to define "assault rifle" or else the majority is going to do it for you (and probably get it wrong). You are going to have to be party to this or else surrender the decision making to those you know are not adequately informed to make good decisions.

"Assault Rifle" is a clearly defined term. Unless you meant "Assault Weapon." Assault weapon is nothing but a political classification of weapon, it has no factual basis. It's merely what a specific law-maker thinks looks scary at a given point in time.

Truth is, the average person doesn't need an AR-15 with 50 round magazines for "self defense".

Hi-Cap mags are so dangerous, Cruz didn't even both with them because the 10-round mags he used would actually fit in his duffel bag. And his model was such a piece of shit version, it jammed on him. That's what stopped his spree and made him ditch the gun and try to blend in with the crowd.

[Broomstick]

That's still 100 million people. Well outstripping some minority populations.

That's 100 million now - if the trends of the 20 years continue that number will continue to fall.

Even if you attributed every single gun homicide to them (which is completely unfair since most gun crime is committed with illegal weapons): you end up with a fraction of .01% of gun owners using their guns in the commission of a murder.

I'm not entirely sure the anti-gun crowd distinguishes between "legal owners" and "illegal owners". Certainly, those arguing for a reduction in overall gun numbers don't give a damn between legal and illegal guns, they just want fewer guns, period.

I don't equate gun owners with an actual race of people, but your justification is eerily similar to our legislature throwing an entire group of people under the bus to placate people with zero understanding of what the problem was.

Again - after 9/11 plenty were willing to throw all pilots under the bus in the name of "safety".

Look how some people in the US wet their pants over the category "Muslim"

The problem is EXACTLY people with "zero understanding of the problem" - they can vote, and they'll vote emotionally and based on their "feelings" rather than facts.

"That's 100 million votes, while a minority, you don't want to action by comparing them to violent criminals."

Hey, I'm not the one making that argument, but I've met more than one person who views a desire to own a gun as a sign of mental illness, who feel guns are evil, and so forth. Ignore their existence if you want, but they're part of the opposition.

Dismissing limiting bullet capacity as useless is also a failing position - having to change clips does take time, whether it's a 10 bullet clip or a 50 bullet magazine or speed-loading a revolver. In every instance it is a brief interruption in the hail of bullets during which victims can attempt to reach shelter or flee. The more such interruptions (that is, the lower capacity for bullets) mean there are the fewer bullets per unit of time in a shooting incident, and potentially fewer casualties. For darn sure, larger magazines seem associated with a higher body count, and a higher muzzle velocity likewise.

"Potentially." "Seem." You're going to have to back this up. How many people take the time to poke a head out during a lull in the shooting to check if they shooter is reloading? That just makes you more likely to get shot. Honestly, your best shot is to run WHILE he's firing since (lacking the ability for true suppresive fire) he must be aiming at someone else (not you since you'd be getting shot) and would have to switch to targeting you. Meanwhile, if he's NOT shooting, that means there also a good chance he's looking for a new target.

Your approaching that as someone knowledgeable about guns - the people cowering in classrooms behind the useless barriers of overturned desks have a different viewpoint. And I'm not entirely sure that your scenario and its reasoning are a match to a mass shooter situation. How carefully do these guys target individuals? Or do they just shoot at anyone they see?

One of the problems is that when you are in the middle of a mass shooting situation your ability to analyze the situation is extremely limited, and there's no way in hell you're going to have adequate information about the shooter. Is he targeting specific people or anyone he sees? Is he a good shot or a lousy one? Is he doing a systematic search of a building or do you stand a good chance of surviving if you just keep out of sight? You can't know the answers to those questions at the time.

I'm confused why this .38 revolver deal is sitting here aside the AR-15.

Largely because Atheos conflated the .38 revolver with an AR-15, saying both are semi-automatic.

But you want to hear something "hilarious?" Look up the most common firearm used to murder people in the U.S. It's the .38 Special revolver. At least in Chicago, but gun crime tracking in the U.S. is shit so you're got to dig around and most my links are dead.

How many AR-15s kill people? So, in theory the AR-15 is more deadly, but in practice the .38Sp has it beat hands down. And it's techincally harder to get than the AR-15 since you have to be 21 to buy a pistol.

Now, why is the .38 so popular in crime? Easy, it's cheap and an incredibly popular firearm among legal owners so they stamp out millions of them.

You completely missed my point about how mass shootings are different than most gun deaths.

As I said - you can avoid suicide-by-gun but not owning a gun and/or not shooting yourself with one. You can avoid gun accidents by not owning one. You can avoid the shooting gallery on the south side of Chicago by simply not going to Chicago - but mass shootings come to you, not the other way around.

If guns ONLY hurt/maimed/killed those who owned guns I don't think the rest of the public would be quite so upset about it, because then you could choose to either take the risk or not. That's not how the world works, though. Mass shootings intrude into spaces that are supposed to be gun-free (schools, for example) or places frequented by everyone (theaters, churches, malls, concerts, etc.). They are "gun culture" imposed on the "gunless culture" crowd.

Someone anti-gun who doesn't own a gun, doesn't associate with gun owners, who doesn't hunt and who avoids areas with a lot of gun crime can largely avoid getting shot - except when there's a mass shooter on the loose. Then there's nothing to protect you but luck

Given current trends, the only way civilian gun owners/users are going to keep their guns in the future is NOT by conflating revolvers and hunting with the "assault" weaponry used in things like mass shootings. You are going to have to define "assault rifle" or else the majority is going to do it for you (and probably get it wrong). You are going to have to be party to this or else surrender the decision making to those you know are not adequately informed to make good decisions.

"Assault Rifle" is a clearly defined term. Unless you meant "Assault Weapon." Assault weapon is nothing but a political classification of weapon, it has no factual basis. It's merely what a specific law-maker thinks looks scary at a given point in time.

Then the pro-gun side had damn well better sit down at the table defining "assault weapon" or the anti-gun crowd will do it for you. And I've heard it from the pro-gun side that "assault rifle" is NOT a clearly defined term and a lot of bitching about it being based on cosmetics. I'm saying if that's the case the pro-gun camp had better get involved in defining these terms clearly, without descending into minutiae, in plain language or you'll have the arguments taken away from you.

The pro-gun side are acting like they're the majority. They aren't. They're acting like the 2nd amendment can't be touched or limited. It can.

Truth is, the average person doesn't need an AR-15 with 50 round magazines for "self defense".

Hi-Cap mags are so dangerous, Cruz didn't even both with them because the 10-round mags he used would actually fit in his duffel bag. And his model was such a piece of shit version, it jammed on him. That's what stopped his spree and made him ditch the gun and try to blend in with the crowd.

Plenty of people out there willing to ban 10-round mags, too.

I suspect one difference between us is that I actually listen a bit more to the anti-gun camp. Plenty there fail to understand why someone would need more than one or two bullets, period. What, exactly, is "high capacity"? It depends on who you ask.

[Simon_Jester]

That's still 100 million people. Well outstripping some minority populations.

That's 100 million now - if the trends of the 20 years continue that number will continue to fall.

Furthermore, the incentive of the other seventy-plus percent of the population to impose restraints will rise.

A minority of 30% can be very comfortable in a population where the majority has little or no desire to restrain their liberties. if the majority suddenly has a strong incentive to do so for their personal safety, matters may change very quickly.

[TheFeniX]

I'm not entirely sure the anti-gun crowd distinguishes between "legal owners" and "illegal owners". Certainly, those arguing for a reduction in overall gun numbers don't give a damn between legal and illegal guns, they just want fewer guns, period.

Then this will do nothing but what it's always done, embolden supporters and continue to alienate moderates who may own a gun, but feel no special connection to it, but don't like people exercising legal rights safely to be targeted out as loons.

The U.S. black population is only ~12% and given the push, they can still affect change since very few people vote in this country. It will take decades of systematic dismantling of "gun culture" (shit phrase) to get down to that level. Without it, even longer since guns just don't go bad. Even if current "gun nuts" only made up 10% of the population: that's still a powerful block of voters.

There seems to be a big case of jumping the gun (pardon the phrase) as people overestimate their position like with Clinton thinking the white vote wasn't worth her time. These are dangerous positions to waste. And using your political capital to target something specific (and popular) with little expected gains is nothing but another setback for sensible gun control.

It also ignores that certain areas (states) concentrate gun owners and given the chance, they will go to task, even stupidly, to protect their rights. And I want Cruz out of office and we need every advantage we can get, so I hope they can at least stow their shit till after Nov, because Cruz doesn't need a platform here.

The problem is EXACTLY people with "zero understanding of the problem" - they can vote, and they'll vote emotionally and based on their "feelings" rather than facts.

As will the pro-gun crowd. Since we're not even really arguing here, we're just giving out versions of how we think this will play out.... cool, I can work with this.

The thing is on the Pro-gun side, they already have effective allies in the GOP and NRA. This power-base is eroding, but for unrelated reasons. However, the new conservatives (millenials) don't care so much about abortion or gay rights, they care about other social issues. Guns being one of them.

The anti-gun side has voted and I doubt that's ever been for a Republican. They vote Democrat and the Democrats have consistently dumped gun control in favor of other platforms such as gay rights, etc. And they also don't all push for bans. For example, Beto O'Rourke believes in background checks, but not banning a specific guns. Maybe he'll change if he gets elected, but we can't say for sure. Now, your other option is Ted Cruz? If O-Rourke doesn't push hard enough, is a liberal going to vote switch to a guy like Cruz? Pfft, no.

Hey, I'm not the one making that argument, but I've met more than one person who views a desire to own a gun as a sign of mental illness, who feel guns are evil, and so forth. Ignore their existence if you want, but they're part of the opposition.

Those people have always existed. This seems different, though time will tell, because moderates seem annoyed. Someone who doesn't mind guns, but respects gun owner rights is now scared about their kid being shot. But let's say the AR-15 is banned tomorrow, just throwing that out there.

This won't actually accomplish anything and people will "learn" banning X doesn't work. The ban will lapse and we'll be here again in 10 years.

Your approaching that as someone knowledgeable about guns - the people cowering in classrooms behind the useless barriers of overturned desks have a different viewpoint. And I'm not entirely sure that your scenario and its reasoning are a match to a mass shooter situation. How carefully do these guys target individuals? Or do they just shoot at anyone they see?

You can't make a judgement call here until after the fact. The Columbine Assholes picked targets which reduced the body count considerably. They walked past more than a few students taking cover without firing on them.

You completely missed my point about how mass shootings are different than most gun deaths.

No, I get your point. But let's not act like it isn't completely plausible to merely show up with 6 .38s in cheap holsters and just empty cylinders then ditch the gun on the floor and still achieve a considerable body count. Cowards also be cowards, there's nothing to stop them from fearing resistance and instead finding targets at the local elementary school as with Sandy Hook. As shitty as it sounds, you don't need much to kill toddlers as was shown in the Osaka School killings. And the Japanese had to (rightfully) look into their societal and political stance on mental illness. Though I don't know (and I doubt) anything came of it besides them just hiring security guards.

And the real difference between them is that mass shootings/killings affect "polite society." It's a place where we don't accept the very real crime of murder "should" happen. So, now we're all butthurt. I can only imagine the backlash WRT Democrat supporting minorities who find law-makers fighting things like rifles, when it's handguns that have been killing them.

So, in the next few years, if the GOP is forced to ditch the racism angle to garner support in the party for the future GOPers (because the younger U.S. conservative doesn't make race an issue), Democrats pushing to help white people and leaving poor minorities to rot is really going to bite them in the ass because many minority groups are already fairly conservative.

Then the pro-gun side had damn well better sit down at the table defining "assault weapon" or the anti-gun crowd will do it for you. And I've heard it from the pro-gun side that "assault rifle" is NOT a clearly defined term and a lot of bitching about it being based on cosmetics. I'm saying if that's the case the pro-gun camp had better get involved in defining these terms clearly, without descending into minutiae, in plain language or you'll have the arguments taken away from you.

Doubt it. Calls for action and action are two different things. Remember, out of all the crime in the 80s and 90s all we got out of it was the AWB. Democrats have stumped for Gun Control but never really gone to task over it. And when they do, they generally pay for it. Even the new Liberal(er) DNC seems prone to wait till things die down and sweep gun control under the rug.

The pro-gun side are acting like they're the majority. They aren't. They're acting like the 2nd amendment can't be touched or limited. It can.

At some point, after I'm dead, there will likely be so few gun owners for it not to even matter. But unless something only tangentially related to guns (such as tracking potentially violent offenders better) is changed: ban all the guns you want, it won't stop mass shootings, we'll just have to call them mass killings when they happen without a gun. The body counts might go down, the might go up, but they will still happen.

Plenty of people out there willing to ban 10-round mags, too.

I suspect one difference between us is that I actually listen a bit more to the anti-gun camp. Plenty there fail to understand why someone would need more than one or two bullets, period. What, exactly, is "high capacity"? It depends on who you ask.

And this is where voters get nervous. Even those who have a gun "just because" or maybe they have family that does. The government starts talking about taking and they sit back and say "well, I'm a law-abiding citizen... why should I give anything up? Why are they targeting Bill? Will they target me next?" And the legislation stalls out or just doesn't do much because the way the U.S. works.

Like with the AWB, I don't think a single gun on the "most used in the commission of a felony" list was even on their list of "scary weapons." But it's great people still try to give credit to the AWB for the crime drop.... that had started years early.

[TheFeniX]

Furthermore, the incentive of the other seventy-plus percent of the population to impose restraints will rise.

I'm enjoying the speculation and you caught me in between posts, but I want to roll with it. They'll do what? Continue to vote Democrat who stump hard for Gun Control and do little in the way of results? The Democrats who are desperate to regain control in Republican dominated states and take back Washington? They made strides here, even in Rep shitholes. Do you think they did this by pandering to the gun control crowd? Do you think they will risk their new seats in conservative strongholds over guns?

I don't. And I agree with them if they don't. I think Democrats, at least for the next several years, would be more willing to throw racial and sexual minorities under the bus (as they have in the past) rather than truly piss off gun owners. They stump because what are YOU going to do about it? Primary them out? Man, Republics are the more democratic party here. Vote GOP? Ha!

Then you'll run into, as I've already brought him up I'll bring him up againt, O'Rourke (a TEXAS Democrat) who believes in keeping guns away from criminals and the mentally ill but has always (as far as I can go back) fought for legal gun ownership. He's as likely to fight with Gun Grabbers than vote with them. And there's more than a few Democrats like that as has been pointed out to me (by TRR) as the Democrats are rarely locked in step when left to their own devices.

A minority of 30% can be very comfortable in a population where the majority has little or no desire to restrain their liberties. if the majority suddenly has a strong incentive to do so for their personal safety, matters may change very quickly.

An actioned 30%, that tends to be more politically active than most is a dangerous one to push into a corner. Voter turn-out is at all-times lows, these people can easily swing elections. The results in the longrun if you think "More Democrats = better" will be disastrous as you turn heads of an already increasingly polarized community to look at their worst fears: "They comin' fer mah guns!"

Aside from the most ardent nuts, I honestly think most Americans would just give up their guns. However, the political fallout would be considerable when you take into account all the different factors. Then you deal with a system that still won't do it's job identifying at risk people who perform these types of attacks. And more people die. But Democrats say "well, at least it's not GUN violence."

EDIT: This is provided a full ban. In the most realistic scenario, we end up protecting hunters, farmers, certain people in rural areas as they actually do need guns. So, since we don't care to spend the money to make a system that helps the mentally ill, you will still have people with access to guns, even something as simple as a pump shotgun (useful in many legitimate areas), who kill a bunch of people.

[Simon_Jester]

[sighs]

Fenix, I'm talking about a long term demographic trend. Gun ownership is not getting more popular. People who grew up terrified of school shootings, who remember the post-Columbine status quo as "the new normal" rather than "wow everyone lost their sense of humor fast with all this zero tolerance crap" are making up a larger and larger proportion of the population.

Sooner or later there is going to come a point at which a hardline "no new gun laws, no cooperation, and no negotiation, we're a swing minority so we get our way" smugness is either going to get squashed under the glacier, or move out of its way. It won't happen this year. It will not, in all probability, happen in the next ten years. But I am quite confident it will happen in the next fifty, if nothing else changes.

That's the core point here.

[Gandalf]

Do Broomstick's stats on ownership include people who may not have their name down as the owner, but are something of a stakeholder in it? For example, a household might have four people, one gun, and one owner although the gun is there to protect all.

Guns per household might be an interesting statistic.

[Simon_Jester]

On the other hand, it would tend to overshoot just as 'percent of people who own a gun' might undershoot. There are probably people out there who own guns, but whose spouses, children, or roommates kind of wish didn't. Or are at best ambivalent about the whole thing.

[MKSheppard]

Fenix, I'm talking about a long term demographic trend. Gun ownership is not getting more popular.

Anecedotal:
I know someone who drove to four different gun stores in the same day, so he could get a specific model of Heckler & Koch rifle that was in Battlefield 2: Bad Company.

Hard data -- NICS Checks

2000: 8,543,037 NICS checks in a population of 281,421,906 for 3,035.7 guns per 100K.

2010: 14,409,616 NICS checks in a population of 308,745,538 for 4,667.1 guns per 100K.

Hard Data -- Hawaii.

In Hawaii, you must be registered with police chief within 5 days of purchase or arrival to Hawaii, for rifles, shotguns and pistols and you need the permit to possess.

https://ag.hawaii.gov/cpja/files/2016/0 ... i-2015.pdf

2000: 1,211,537 population, 6,489 permits processed; 20845 guns imported/registered. 535.6 gun permits per 100,000; 3.21 guns per permit.

2010: 1,360,301 population, 12,801 permits processed, 46602 guns imported/registered. 941.0 gun permits per 100,000; 3.64 guns per permit.

Ironically, that 3~ guns per permit on average matches closely with NRA studies in 1975 for insurance purposes.

The Committee reviewed the results of a membership survey made in September 1974 primarily to ascertain interest in insurance. Of the 2.6% of the membership surveyed, 32% (802) returned the questionnaire. Of those responding, 72% indicated interest in gun damage and theft insurance. Eighty-six percent said they owned at least four guns; 34% owned more than 10 guns.

When you add 86+34 you get 120%, so members may have checked off both the "at least 4 guns" and "more than 10 guns" boxes.

Additional reasons for 3-4~ guns general is that is about the rough amount that can be stashed in a lockbox under the bed, or in a small closet safe. Not everyone can afford a giant 30-gun safe for various reasons (apartment living, etc).

[Zaune]

Anecedotal:
I know someone who drove to four different gun stores in Maryland in the same day, so he could get a specific model of Heckler & Koch rifle that was in Battlefield 2: Bad Company.

I bet it was cheaper than the number of lootboxes he'd have to buy to get hold of it in the latest BF game, too.

[MKSheppard]

What's happening is the "Elmer Fudd" hunting crowd is decreasing as a percentage of the US population, giving an impression of overt gun ownership declining:

https://wsfrprograms.fws.gov/subpages/l ... istory.pdf

https://wsfrprograms.fws.gov/subpages/l ... 042015.pdf

1970:
15,658,318 hunting license holders in a population of 203,392,031 for 7,698.58 licenses per 100K.

2000:
15,045,294 hunting license holders in a population of 281,421,906 for 5,346.17 licenses per 100K.

2010:
14,448,040 hunting license holders in a population of 308,745,538 for 4,679.59 licenses per 100K.

This also means that the NRA, etc become more aggressive, because there are less Elmer Fudds talking about "all you need is a thurty-thurty like my grandpappy for hunting, nobody needs an [insert name] to hunt." and more:



because the median age of the US population is like 36~ and hunting is a somewhat active sport; so modern sporting rifles are taking over back country hunting.

EDIT: This also means that Wayne "Vidya Games are the Debbil!" LaPierre is not long for the NRA; as the average gun owner nowadays grew up on Doom. He's still in that phase of his life where he's having fun, building a family etc, no time for political activism...but when he gets to middle age....

[Elheru Aran]

Shep, how many of those are the SAME people buying guns, though?

From the Guardian. This came out a couple years ago, but recently enough that I don't think much has changed. Bolding mine if anybody wants to just skim as it's a bit of a long article.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... hip-survey

Americans own an estimated 265m guns, more than one gun for every American adult, according to the most definitive portrait of US gun ownership in two decades. But the new survey estimates that 133m of these guns are concentrated in the hands of just 3% of American adults – a group of super-owners who have amassed an average of 17 guns each.

The unpublished Harvard/Northeastern survey result summary, obtained exclusively by the Guardian and the Trace, estimates that America’s gun stock has increased by 70m guns since 1994. At the same time, the percentage of Americans who own guns decreased slightly from 25% to 22%.

The new survey, conducted in 2015 by public health researchers from Harvard and Northeastern universities, also found that the proportion of female gun owners is increasing as fewer men own guns. These women were more likely to own a gun for self-defense than men, and more likely to own a handgun only.

Women’s focus on self-defense is part of a broader trend. Even as the US has grown dramatically safer and gun violence rates have plummeted, handguns have become a greater proportion of the country’s civilian gun stock, suggesting that self-defense is an increasingly important factor in gun ownership.

“The desire to own a gun for protection – there’s a disconnect between that and the decreasing rates of lethal violence in this country. It isn’t a response to actuarial reality,” said Matthew Miller, a Northeastern University and Harvard School of Public Health professor and one of the authors of the study.

The data suggests that American gun ownership is driven by an “increasing fearfulness”, said Dr Deborah Azrael, a Harvard School of Public Health firearms researcher and the lead author of the study. “If we hope to reduce firearm suicide, if we hope to reduce the other potential dangers of guns, my gut is, we have to speak to that fear,” she said.

The new survey also found a much higher estimate of annual gun thefts: 400,000 guns stolen per year, compared with 230,000 a year in a recent estimate from the National Crime Victimization Survey.

Phil Cook, a Duke University firearms researcher and one of the authors of a prominent 1994 study of American gun ownership, praised the new research as “a very high-quality survey”.

Unlike the more frequent gun ownership polls from Pew or the General Social Survey, “it goes beyond asking whether there’s a firearm in their household and asks how many firearms are in the household”, he said. “Without knowing the answer to the second question, it’s not possible to get a estimate of the total stock of firearms in the US.”

He noted, however, that “their estimate of the national total is lower than some would expect. It’s been commonplace to say there are 300m guns in circulation.”
The new survey’s results do line up with the broader trends of some previous surveys: even as gun sales hit records highs under Barack Obama’s administration, the total proportion of Americans who say they own guns has fallen slightly, leaving more guns in relatively fewer hands.

While there are an estimated 55 million American gun owners, most own an average of just three firearms, and nearly half own just one or two, according to the survey results.

Then there are America’s gun super-owners – an estimated 7.7 million Americans who own between eight and 140 guns.

This kind of concentrated ownership isn’t unique to guns, firearms researchers noted. Marketing experts suggest that the most devoted 20% consumers will typically account for 80% of a product’s sales.

Azrael, the lead author of the study, said there was no research on “whether owning a large number of guns is a greater risk factor than owning a few guns”.

“We know almost nothing about that,” she said.

Some gun owners responded to the study’s findings with trepidation. Bryce Towsley, a Vermont-based gun writer and the author of Prepper Guns, a firearms guide for survivalists, said he worried about how the survey would be used politically.

“They’re going to say, ‘Okay, there’s a small minority of people who have all the guns – we’re going to go after them.’”

But Azrael’s immediate reaction to the survey results, she said, was not to focus on the gun owners with dozens of weapons, but on the nearly 50% of gun owners who had just one or two. “To change their behavior with respect to guns, and the ways in which they store them, or their decision-making – we could have a really big impact on suicide,” she said.

Roughly 20,000 of America’s more than 30,000 annual gun deaths are suicides.

“I don’t know anybody who thinks or talks seriously about confiscating guns,” she said. “From a public health perspective – you don’t seize cigarettes.” But, she said, “you do try to make good science available. You do try to help people think about the risks and benefits of the behavior they choose to undertake.”

More female gun owners

Since 1994, America’s estimated total number of gun owners has grown by 10 million.

But growth in gun ownership does not seem to be keeping up with overall growth in the US population, according to the new survey. Since a previous in-depth national phone survey in 1994, the percentage of Americans who say they own guns has fallen slightly, from 25% to 22%. The drop was driven by a dramatic decrease among men. The 1994 survey found that 42% of American men described themselves as gun owners, compared with only 32% of American men in the new study.

The percentage of women who say they own guns has increased slightly from 9% in a 1994 survey to 12% today, but researchers said the increase was not meaningful. Since the 1980s, female gun ownership has fluctuated between 9% and 14% in annual surveys.

Women tend to be more supportive of gun control laws than men, and gun control advocates have focused on women, particularly mothers, as a key voting bloc to push forward what they call a “gun sense” agenda. Earlier this year, Everytown for Gun Safety, the country’s largest gun control group, launched a new campaign focused on educating single women about the need for new gun laws.

But the new survey provides support for the National Rifle Association’s assertion that the total number of female gun owners has grown in recent years, even if the percentage of women owning guns has not increased substantially. The findings also show that the gender gap in gun ownership is closing, with American women making up a larger proportion of gun owners as male gun ownership declines.

The number of women who enroll each year in the NRA’s basic pistol course almost doubled from 2011 to 2014, from about 25,000 a year to nearly 46,000 a year, according to NRA spokeswoman Catherine Mortensen.

Overall, the survey found, gun owners tended to be white, male, conservative, and live in rural areas. Thirty per cent of conservatives said they were gun owners, compared with 19% of moderates and only 14% of liberals. The strongest predictor of gun ownership was military service. 44% of veterans said they owned a firearm.

Clear racial disparities in overall gun ownership remained, with 25% of white and multi-racial Americans saying they personally owned a gun, compared with 16% of Hispanics and 14% of African Americans.

But there was essentially no disparity in gun ownership based on income level for Americans who make between $25,000 and more than $100,000 a year. Americans who made less than $25,000 a year were less likely to own guns.

The survey found that Americans who only owned handguns were much more diverse than gun owners who owned a mix of handguns and long guns, or those who only owned rifles and shotguns. Those in the “handguns only” group were more likely to be female, non-white, and live in a urban area, and less likely to have grown up in a house with a gun.

Roughly 44% of black gun owners and 37% of Hispanic gun owners said they only owned handguns, compared with 21% of non-Hispanic whites.

Cook, the Duke firearms researcher, said the demographic data on handgun-only owners was one of the most interesting findings of the study. But he said it was “kind of worrying” that women who had no previous experience with guns were buying handguns for self-defense, and that he was concerned “that puts them at greater risk” for gun accidents or thefts.

The demographics of America’s 7.7 million gun super-owners were less diverse than gun owners overall, with super-owners more likely to be male, less likely to be black or Hispanic, and more likely to own a gun for protection, researchers said. This subset of gun enthusiasts – only 14% of all gun owners – has amassed a collective 133m firearms.

Interviews with Americans who own at least 17 firearms revealed a wide range of reasons for accumulating so many guns.

Some super-owners are dedicated collectors with special rooms to display their assortment of historic firearms. Others are firearms instructors, gunsmiths, or competitive shooters, who need a variety of firearms in the course of work or competition. Some gun owners have a survivalist streak, and believe in storing up weapons, as well as food and water, in case of a disaster scenario. Others simply picked up a handgun here, a shotgun or hunting rifle there, and somehow ended up with dozens.

“Why do you need more than one pair of shoes?” said Philip van Cleave, the president of the Virginia Citizens Defense League, a gun rights group that views itself as being to the political right of the NRA. “The truth is, you don’t, but do you want more than one pair of shoes? If you going hiking, you don’t want to use that one pair of high heels.”

“Walking around the beach with shirt off and shorts … I’m probably going to use a different gun than putting on a sport coat and going out to dinner,” he said.

There is no official national count of the total number of American gun owners or how many guns they own. Many gun rights advocates are fiercely private about gun ownership.

After Sandy Hook, when a local newspaper in New York state published an interactive map with the names and addresses of gun permit owners – a matter of public record – gun owners reacted with outrage, reporters and editors received threats, and the paper reportedly hired armed security guards in response. New York state swiftly passed a law protecting the privacy of gun permit holders. Two other local papers in North Carolina and Maine were later inundated with threats after merely requesting public records of gun ownership, though they said they were not planning to publish the names of individual owners. Both papers dropped their requests, and the editor of one of the papers resigned.

The Harvard/Northeastern study is based on a survey of nearly 4,000 Americans conducted online in 2015 by a market research company, GfK, with a nationally representative panel of opt-in participants who are compensated to complete surveys on a variety of issues.

Van Cleave, the president of the Virginia Citizen’s Defense League, said he was very skeptical of the accuracy of phone surveys of gun ownership, since he believes many gun owners might not feel comfortable telling a stranger on the phone whether they are a gun owner or how many guns they own. He said his “gut feeling” was that gun owners might be a little more comfortable answering questions honestly in an anonymous online survey.

Azrael, one of the study’s authors, said she was surprised that the detailed questions on gun ownership received no pushback. “People didn’t write back to GfK and say, ‘You have no right to ask these questions.’”

“It was encouraging,” she said. “It didn’t feel fraught. It felt that we were talking about a regular consumer product.”

The new survey results mirror the trends of the annual General Social Survey, which found that household gun ownership has fallen from 50% to close to 31% since the late 1970s, and that individual gun ownership fell from 28% in 1980 to 22% in 2014.

But as with most aspects of American gun politics, the basic data on American gun ownership is hotly debated, with some gun rights supporters arguing that American gun ownership is not on the decline, and that Americans may be under-reporting their gun ownership in some surveys.

A Gallup poll last year estimated personal gun ownership at 28%, while a Pew Research Center survey put it at 31%, which would make the estimated total of American gun owners more than 75 million, compared with 55 million in the Harvard/Northeastern study.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms tracks the numbers of firearms manufactured in or imported into the United States, as well as how many background checks on gun sales licensed firearm dealers process.

Manufacturing and import records suggest that more than 360m firearms entered the US market between 1899 and 2013, the new study’s authors noted. With gun sales spiking since 2013, some estimates would put the total number of American firearms today around 400m.

However, it’s not clear how many American guns have been broken, confiscated and destroyed by the police, smuggled out of the country, or otherwise left the gun stock over the decades.

The full results of the Harvard/Northeastern gun ownership study are undergoing peer review and are slated to be published in the autumn of 2017 by the Russell Sage Foundation. While the full peer review is not complete, Azrael said, the current results have gone through an initial round of comments and revisions from a group of leading firearms researchers.

The National Rifle Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the initial findings of the survey.

Mike Bazinet, a spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearm industry’s trade association, said he would have to defer full comment until he could read the entire survey and its methodology.

But he questioned why some results of the survey were being released before the full paper was published, and said some of the results sounded implausible.

“Really? Three per cent of American gun owners own half the guns? That seems wildly off the mark. On the surface, this survey sounds like part of the ongoing effort to minimize gun ownership to make more gun control seem politically achievable,” he wrote in an e-mail.

But Gary Kleck, a Florida State University criminologist and firearms researcher, said the concentration of most guns in the hands of a relatively small proportion of gun owners was “old news”.

“It’s probably true for just about any consumer good,” he said.

TL;DR version:

--The vast majority of gun owners own three or less firearms, something like half of that only have the one gun, and most of those are handguns.

--Many of the handguns are purchased with the intent of self defense, and are frequently purchased by people potentially unaware of the necessary precautions.

--Of the small group of 'super collectors' there's no real unifying factor there as to why they have so many guns, but they have a hell of a lot (cumulatively).

Relative to Shep's post though, I return to my initial query: How many of that increase in gun purchases is simply people buying more guns for their collection? How many of them are individuals buying the one gun in their household?

[MKSheppard]

Relative to Shep's post though, I return to my initial query: How many of that increase in gun purchases is simply people buying more guns for their collection? How many of them are individuals buying the one gun in their household?

The hawaii data gives us some useful information on 2000-2010 increases per capita; since everyone has to register everything and have a permit to simply possess:

2000: 535.6 gun permits per 100,000; 3.21 guns per permit.
2010: 941.0 gun permits per 100,000; 3.64 guns per permit.

It's both an increase in gun ownership and the numbers of guns the average person owns.

NYC may be instructive; in that every gun in the city has to be registered IIRC.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/20/nyregion/20guns.html

Says that in 2011:

37,000~ handgun permits to possess
4,000~ concealed carry handgun permits.
41,164 handguns registered on permits
52,000~ rifles and shotguns registered:
93,164~ total guns registered

At 8,175,133 population of NYC in 2010; that cranks out to:

1.11 handguns on average per handgun possession permit.

Total gun ownership is about 1,139.602 guns per 100,000 in NYC.

[MKSheppard]

A 1981 New York Times article said that in 1981, about 40,000 NYCers who weren't cops or armed guards had handgun possession permits; so going from 1980 population stats:

1981 - 7,071,639 population, 40,000~ handgun permits -- 565.63 handgun owners per 100K.
2011 - 8,175,133 population, 37,000~ handgun permits -- 452.59 handgun owners per 100K.

[Simon_Jester]

Shep, I like that you're willing to post statistics that aren't just unambiguous slabs of support for the position I'd expect you to hold.

Fenix, I'm talking about a long term demographic trend. Gun ownership is not getting more popular.

Anecedotal:
I know someone who drove to four different gun stores in the same day, so he could get a specific model of Heckler & Koch rifle that was in Battlefield 2: Bad Company.

Hard data -- NICS Checks

2000: 8,543,037 NICS checks in a population of 281,421,906 for 3,035.7 guns per 100K.

2010: 14,409,616 NICS checks in a population of 308,745,538 for 4,667.1 guns per 100K.

That counts gun purchases, not ownership numbers. 2010 was during the "Obama taking my guns!" era, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if handgun purchase rates went up by 50% compared to 2000.

Hard Data -- Hawaii.

In Hawaii, you must be registered with police chief within 5 days of purchase or arrival to Hawaii, for rifles, shotguns and pistols and you need the permit to possess.

https://ag.hawaii.gov/cpja/files/2016/0 ... i-2015.pdf

2000: 1,211,537 population, 6,489 permits processed; 20845 guns imported/registered. 535.6 gun permits per 100,000; 3.21 guns per permit.

2010: 1,360,301 population, 12,801 permits processed, 46602 guns imported/registered. 941.0 gun permits per 100,000; 3.64 guns per permit.

Okay, the number of gun permits in Hawaii going up per capita (from 0.5 to 0.9% of the population) does suggest increase in gun popularity in Hawaii.

That said, gun permits mark number of people who own guns, and if per capita gun ownership in Hawaii is at most 1% of the population, and at most 1% of the population in New York...

It is non-obvious that this proves that gun ownership, or support for gun ownership, in the nation as a whole is likely to remain high as time goes on and generations pass.

[MKSheppard]

2010 was during the "Obama taking my guns!" era, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if handgun purchase rates went up by 50% compared to 2000.

There are also other factors skewing things -- under US law, the "receiver" component of a gun is considered a firearm.

Thus:



This piece of aluminum (or other material like plastic) costs $59 to $99 and is considered legally, the "firearm" component of an AR-15. To buy it, you have to pass a NICS check, thus it counts as a "firearm sale".

Many people in the gun community buy "stripped lowers" when they are on sale -- blemished lowers (with manufacturing defects) may go as low as $35~.

So when news of a ban spikes; instead of going out and buying a $800 AR-15 complete rifle; they buy eight (8) x $50 receivers to throw in a cabinet somewhere.

Because those receivers are legally a firearm, and would be "grandfathered" in any AWB -- in the early 2000s, many gun websites had lists of serial numbers that were "pre-ban"; e.g. manufactured before the AWB and thus constituted a legal receiver to build a "pre-ban" weapon on -- if a ban happens, you have eight guns you can build for yourself, or your kids and it's all legal.

That being said, only the very technically saavy or legally proficient gun owners (the 10%) know about this. The average person who hears "OMG THEY GONNA BAN THIS" won't realize this, and will buy a complete AR-15 at inflated prices.

That said, gun permits mark number of people who own guns, and if per capita gun ownership in Hawaii is at most 1% of the population, and at most 1% of the population in New York...

Legal gun permits in Hawaii and New York City is low because it's fucking hard to get them compared to the rest of the nation where permits don't exist or are a triviality (North Carolina Pistol Permits, instituted as Jim Crow Racism against Blacks, yet the NAACP wants them to remain -- basically, in the Good Old Days, a white man could walk into the sheriff's office of any county in North Carolina and get a permit right away; while a black man had to get one in his home county -- that's a simplification, but generally things were like that for a very long time.)

[MKSheppard]

That [NICS] counts gun purchases, not ownership numbers.

NICS also only counts sales to and from FFLs (Gun Stores, Sports Stores, Pawn Shops etc). Private sales across most of the country don't require them to pass through a FFL; so there's a huge resale market of transfers going unrecorded.

That said, it's the only national level data that we have that acts as an indirect insight on the rate of gun ownership that's generally reliable.

https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/nic ... h_year.pdf
https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/nic ... _state.pdf

2010 data against population census; NICS checks per 100K.

Alabama : 6,425.32 Per 100K
Alaska : 9,134.71 Per 100K
Arizona : 3,213.16 Per 100K
Arkansas : 6,542.48 Per 100K
California : 2,186.28 Per 100K
Colorado : 5,962.82 Per 100K
Connecticut : 5,014.34 Per 100K
Delaware : 2,135.70 Per 100K
District of Columbia : 58.00 Per 100K
Florida : 2,959.39 Per 100K
Georgia : 3,425.80 Per 100K
Guam : 340.11 Per 100K
Hawaii : 770.60 Per 100K
Idaho : 5,848.81 Per 100K
Illinois : 5,404.85 Per 100K
Indiana : 5,316.40 Per 100K
Iowa : 4,084.70 Per 100K
Kansas : 5,033.71 Per 100K
Kentucky : 54,833.26 Per 100K
Louisiana : 5,252.66 Per 100K
Maine : 4,950.06 Per 100K
Mariana Islands : 0.00 Per 100K <-- No NICS checks done at all!
Maryland : 1,522.68 Per 100K
Massachusetts : 1,766.93 Per 100K
Michigan : 3,513.05 Per 100K
Minnesota : 5,595.42 Per 100K
Mississippi : 5,703.80 Per 100K
Missouri : 5,816.74 Per 100K
Montana : 10,166.27 Per 100K
Nebraska : 3,181.69 Per 100K
Nevada : 3,867.56 Per 100K
New Hampshire : 6,049.44 Per 100K
New Jersey : 573.62 Per 100K
New Mexico : 5,275.98 Per 100K
New York : 1,243.47 Per 100K
North Carolina : 3,466.91 Per 100K
North Dakota : 6,965.92 Per 100K
Ohio : 3,399.32 Per 100K
Oklahoma : 6,212.92 Per 100K
Oregon : 4,802.65 Per 100K
Pennsylvania : 4,920.94 Per 100K
Puerto Rico : 216.81 Per 100K
Rhode Island : 1,405.83 Per 100K
South Carolina : 4,339.84 Per 100K
South Dakota : 7,703.59 Per 100K
Tennessee : 6,447.00 Per 100K
Texas : 3,831.15 Per 100K
Utah : 19,963.22 Per 100K
Vermont : 3,851.27 Per 100K
Virgin Islands : 1,498.05 Per 100K
Virginia : 3,990.96 Per 100K
Washington : 4,965.55 Per 100K
West Virginia : 8,578.81 Per 100K
Wisconsin : 3,418.55 Per 100K
Wyoming : 8,395.04 Per 100K
AVERAGE : 5,482.62 PER 100K

[Broomstick]

You completely missed my point about how mass shootings are different than most gun deaths.

No, I get your point. But let's not act like it isn't completely plausible to merely show up with 6 .38s in cheap holsters and just empty cylinders then ditch the gun on the floor and still achieve a considerable body count.

Then we're back to damages - you're far more likely to survive being shot with a .38 than an AR-15. Which is one reason I've had some folks try to argue me out of a .38 and into something "bigger". STOPPING POWER!!!! Sure, you can still rack up a body count with .38's but you'll get a higher number of injured vs. fatalities. Which some would see as an improvement (although not much of one).

[MKSheppard]

I have been extremely busy this last week and a half with real life shit (windstorms, ice emergency, car accident), so haven't gotten around to replying in full to Broomy yet. Here goes:

No, but I did have the ribs on my left side broken so badly that the former break sights are visible without need of x-rays, you can see where the bone is deformed even now, 40 years later, by looking at my side....That's just one assault, there were others.

Congratulations. You have a valid basis to get a Maryland Concealed Weapons Permit. Me, I'm only about 1/3 of the way there.

CONTEXT TO ABOVE: Here in Maryland, as a matter of practical realities, to get a CWP here, you have to either:

A.) Run a cash rich business (you end up with a restricted permit that only allows you to carry within your business, or when you are going to and from the bank -- naturally, you have to leave your gun outside the bank.)

B.) Be assaulted/robbed/etc repeatedly. I think 3+ times is the golden (practical) number that gets you past Maryland State Police (MSP) / or the Handgun Permit Review Board (HPRB) without resorting to appeals, lawsuits etc.

C.) Be rich/famous/politically connected. The daughter of a county executive here got her CWP in <24 hours.

NOTE REGARDING B: Recently, there's been a push by Democrats in Maryland to replace the Handgun Permit Review Board (HPRB) with a small group of Judges, because the anti-gunners are upset by the HPRB overturning Maryland State Police's denials of CCW permits to people upon appeal -- it happens enough to rustle their jimmies.

You have no right to judge me, or tell me to shut the fuck up you miserable piece of shit.

Waiting 40~ minutes for the police to arrive with a shattered bone in your spine unable to move because of the pain...and around minute 30, shortly after you start screaming for help -- any kind of help -- you suddenly get turned around sharply, and oh hey, it's the same two kids who assaulted you 30 minutes ago, and oh hey, they changed their clothing.

What's tha---

Oh hey, it's assault, round two! Now you get to lay helplessly on the ground staring into the rainy overcast after they beat the shit out of you again! Sure sucks to be you! Oh look, your boss just arrived five minutes after Assault #2, followed shortly by the cops....

...Kind of tends to alter your outlook on life and miscellaneous things.

9-1-1? Hey, good luck texting 911, the system in Southern MD then wasn't set up for text 911 and a few years later with a potential CO2 issue here in the DC burbs, the text 911 system didn't work either.

So it's call 911, and repeat yourself slowly when you hear a voice on the other end and kind of sort of pray/hope/whatever that they heard you right and show up in the right place.

You on the other hand, can keep up a running commentary on the phone with verbal support from the dispatcher as the police are on the way.

That's why I'm a bit in raging asshole mode (I freely admit it) regarding this issue.

After talking to a number of friends in real life who are long time gun owners, and trying out various guns, I decided on a .38 because I can control it, and several people whose opinions I value recommended a revolver over semi-auto for a first time gun owner.

Here's the thing -- normally, I couldn't give a shit less whether or not you go for a .45, a "wonder nine", a nuclear hand cannon (aka S&W .40), a shotgun, or a belt fed M249S Squad [Semi]Automatic Weapon at the roof of the stairs for self defense.

Whatever you feel comfortable with, etc etc and all that jazz.

My only real poke would be:

"Since you like small cartridges, have you considered the Glock 42 in .380 ACP?"

Glock 42 vs S&W .38 Spl Revolver

But following your organ grinding against AR-15s, etc etc...

[FeniX and the others jumped on this subject while I was busy elsewhere, so...apologies for the pile on re this issue]

I gotta ask you...why do you want to obtain a "Saturday Night Special" for 'defense'? There's no reason for you to buy such a junky gun with a weak cartridge that lets the manufacturer use junk pot steel because of the lower chamber pressure of .38 special vs 9mm, unless of course, you want a cheap, easily concealable throwaway gun for murder.

Moreover, I am worried about your mental state, since you are approaching senior citizen age. I think you need to be evaluated yearly on your mental competency to own such a murder weapon, because we get stories every year about senior citizens who get confused about where they are in their cars, leading to much hilarity.

See?

We can play this stupid fuck game all day long on what you "deserve" for self defense, and not on what item best fits your specialized tactical needs.

[MKSheppard]

Then we're back to damages - you're far more likely to survive being shot with a .38 than an AR-15. Which is one reason I've had some folks try to argue me out of a .38 and into something "bigger". STOPPING POWER!!!! Sure, you can still rack up a body count with .38's but you'll get a higher number of injured vs. fatalities. Which some would see as an improvement (although not much of one).

The biggest thing that has changed things over the last 25 years in pistols (besides GLOCKS) is much improved modern hollowpoint rounds, dramatically improving the stopping power of weaker calibers.

In 1990, the FBI rated both the 9mm and their (then) standard .38 Special (158-gr hollowpoint) as having 67.5% success rate; while only 10mm, .45 ACP and .357 Magnum could score above 90%. It's why the FBI went to 10mm Auto for a brief period.

But a $$$ of money was thrown at bullet research by the ammo manufacturers, and now the .38/.380 round is no longer as weak due to much improved and reliable bullet expansion.