I believe in the United States Constitution. It has worked for more than 200 years, however, I also believe in gun control and common sense.
It is hard to read the news and see a three-year-old child find his mother’s gun in her glove box and shoot himself in the head. This should not be happening. The public is getting a hold of guns too easily and the government needs to review its legislature on the possession of firearms immediately.
To clarify, this is about gun control; laws and policies that regulate the manufacture, sale, transfer, possession or modification of firearms. This does not mean there should be no guns. There should be no humans killing other humans because they have easy access to a firearm and they do not know how to properly use it.
There have been 12 mass shootings – where 12 or more people have died – in the United States since 1949, half of them happening within the past six years, reported by TIME Magazine in September 2013.
This trend is not and never will be beneficial to the U.S. Why is it so simple to possess a firearm? Who should be allowed to carry one? Shouldn’t a background check take longer than two days? The answer is yes. Too often, firearms end up in the hands of people who are not fit to take on that responsibility and often times, this responsibility leads to unfortunate accidents.
As reported last week by Xpress, a 26-year-old SF State student was shot to death in the South of Market neighborhood after he attempted to enter the wrong floor apartment. The man who lived in the apartment had no way of knowing that the man he thought was attempting to break into his home was an innocent young man who just had a little too much to drink.
If this man did not own a gun, purchased legally or illegally, this accident could have been prevented.
Gun supporters try to say that taking away the public’s right to bear arms will create a tyranny or let a dictator, like Adolf Hitler, rule the society as a totalitarian. Again, gun control; not gun extinction. Everyone has the right to protect themselves, but when 67 percent of gun owners claim to own a gun for protection against crime, it seems that society has a paranoia to be randomly attacked.
Here’s some statistics for you. There were a reported 307 million people living in the United States as of 2009. According to firearm manufacturers, there are 300 million firearms owned by civilians, 100 million of those being handguns.
There were 16,000 murders in 2008, 67 percent of those were deaths by firearms.
Now you cannot sit there and say “well people buy them illegally.” That’s not what we are fighting for. We cannot control the black market and illegal trade, but we can control how easy it is to purchase a firearm and ammunition. It must be regulated in order for the country to feel safe.
JCM • May 16, 2014 at 4:09 pm
Those who would give up ESSENTIAL LIBERTY, to purchase a little TEMPORARY SAFETY, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
Ben Franklin
CrypticPunk • May 16, 2014 at 11:27 am
Many people would not feel safe without a gun. Not everyone lives in safe neighborhoods. Let’s take you example, instead a stupid drunk person banging on the wrong door, it could have been a gang who would rape/murder/rob the people that lived there. In that case, a gun would have saved the family.
Now the woman who left a gun where a child can use it should go to jail forever as far as I am concerned.
You can never depend on the cops to save you when you are in trouble
and by the way in most places the FBI background check takes a minute. The FFL dealer calls the FBI and the FBI tells the dealer to proceed or not proceed in usually less than a minute. You need minutes not days for a background check.
Tumbleweed • May 15, 2014 at 3:58 pm
The bad guys are going to acquire guns wherever they can and use them to commit crimes against the public. Bad things usually happen in a very short time, many times with terrible results! The cop may be as far away as ten minutes. The cops are not required to protect you from harm, but they will take a report! For the most part, your safety is your responsibility!
TexTopCat • May 15, 2014 at 2:43 pm
The case of a child finding a gun in the glove box of the car. Probably would have been prevented if the owner could legally carry and was not going to a “No Gun Zone”. One of the very most safe locations of a gun is in a good holster on your body.
TexTopCat • May 15, 2014 at 2:36 pm
“innocent young man who just had a little too much to drink.” – from the story “a little too much” is a gross understatement. If he would have succeeded the person in the apartment may be dead now and the criminal no where to be found. It does not take much sense to understand you break into some place, you may be shot. Not complicated.
TyreByter • May 15, 2014 at 1:50 pm
YOU MIGHT “FEEL” SAFE BUT YOU WILL NOT BE SAFE. MAY YOUR CHAINS REST LIGHTLY ON YOUR BACK. YOU DO NOT DESERVE FREEDOM OR SAFETY.
disqus_iulM4CIA78 • May 15, 2014 at 12:50 pm
“It must be regulated in order for the country to feel safe.”
Notice you did not say “for the country to be safe”. You said feel, because that is all these gun laws will do, make people FEEL safer.
TyrannyOfEvilMen • May 15, 2014 at 11:36 am
Every time I read one of these uninformed hysterical statistically inaccurate alarmist gun control articles written by these anti-liberty leftist fascists, I put a couple of more bucks aside for the NRA, the 2nd Amendment Foundation and GOA.
You should too.
Barry Hirsh • May 15, 2014 at 10:48 am
Get this through your head. The right to keep and bear arms is protected from infringement in writing, in the Bill of Rights in our Constitution.
You know this, we keep pointing this out, but you just refuse to accept the truth.
The Second Amendment exists to prohibit the government from doing what you advocate, to the extent that you wish it would.
It doesn’t matter if you like it or not. It is a fact.
Willbill • May 15, 2014 at 10:34 am
“It is hard to read the news and see a three-year-old child find his mother’s gun in her glove box and shoot himself in the head.”
Such indigents are rare. In fact, according to the Centers For Disease Control accidental deaths accidental firearms discharge in ages 1 – 19 was 134 in 2010, which came to less than one per day nationwide.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/FIREARM_DEATHS_AND_DEATH_RATES.pdf
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_04.pdf
“This does not mean there should be no guns. There should be no humans killing other humans because they have easy access to a firearm…”
There should be no humans killing other humans period, but we don’t live in an ideal world. We have violent criminals, and we must have a means of self-defense.
“…and they do not know how to properly use it.”
Most firearms owners know how to properly use firearms, and the number of accidental firearms deaths prove it. According to the National Vital Statistics Report, Vol. 61 No.6, in 2011 there were 851 deaths from accidental gunshot wounds which came to less than three per day nationwide in all age groups, and that is a small fraction of the 122,777 total accidental death causes.
All persons including children are far more likely to be killed in an accident by a means other than a firearm.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_06.pdf
Table 2 Page 18
“There have been 12 mass shootings – where 12 or more people have died – in the United States since 1949, half of them happening within the past six years, reported by TIME Magazine in September 2013.”
James Alan Fox, a noted anti gun criminologist states in an August 2012 editorial in the Boston Globe; “No Increase in Mass shootings”, that based on data extracted from official police reports to the FBI, shows annual incident, offender and victim tallies for gun homicides in which at least four people were murdered. Over the thirty-year time frame, an average of about 20 mass murders have occurred annually in the United States with an average death toll of about 100 per year.
Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections who has written a history of mass murders in America, said that while mass shootings rose between the 1960s and the 1990s, they actually dropped in the 2000s. And mass killings actually reached their peak in 1929, according to his data. He estimates that there were 32 in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s and 26 in the first decade of the century.
In an NPR interview on the subject of mass shootings, Jack Levin a sociologist and criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston, was asked “Are people right to believe that this kind of violence is increasing?”
Levin replied “But the truth is that there’s still about 20 mass killings every year in this country, and that has been true for decades.”
“Why is it so simple to possess a firearm?”
We have a Constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
“Shouldn’t a background check take longer than two days?”
No! A background check can be accomplished instantaneously just like a credit check.
“Too often, firearms end up in the hands of people who are not fit to take on that responsibility and often times, this responsibility leads to unfortunate accidents.”
Once again, accidents are rare.
“Everyone has the right to protect themselves, but when 67 percent of gun owners claim to own a gun for protection against crime, it seems that society has a paranoia to be randomly attacked.”
Attacks and self-defense take place every day. Criminologists have found that U.S. citizens use firearms for self-defense 2.5 million times a year, and for every life that is lost to firearms 65 lives are saved in self-defense.
In addition, the National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms, NSPOF, conducted in 1994 by the Chiltons polling firm for the Police Foundation on a research grant from the National Institute of Justice. NSPOF projected 4.7 million DGU per year by 1.5 million individuals after weighting to eliminate false positives.
Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (Northwestern) Guns and Violence Symposium, vol. 86, no. 1, 1995: 150.
Suter E. “Guns in the Medical Literature – A Failure of Peer
Review.” Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia. March 1994; 83: 133-48.
“Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms.” Research in Brief, United States Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice
Here is a recent example of a homeowner using an AR-15 to protect himself against an armed home invasion.
http://www.wral.com/homeowner-shoots-intruder-in-vance-county-break-in/13638825/
My sister is an example. When she lived in Tennessee she advocated gun control, and she stated that she supported a total ban on handguns. When she moved to Atlanta with its high rate of violent crime her views changed, and she got her firearms carry permit, took up shooting as a sport, and became an excellent marksman. In two separate incidents attackers tried to force their way into her car while she was stopped at traffic lights, and both times, she brandished her Glock pistol, and both times the attackers fled.
“There were 16,000 murders in 2008, 67 percent of those were deaths by firearms.”
Here are some inconvenient facts/statistics for you. Our right to Keep and BEAR arms have been increasingly restored over last several years and more citizens are now free to carry firearms in more places since the year 1900. Yet, homicides, including homicides with firearms, as well as all other violent crime have been decreasing since 2006. Moreover, after a dramatic increase in firearms sales and ownership after the last Presidential election including an increase in first time firearms purchases and an increase in firearms carry permits, citizen disarmament zealots and organizations predicted that there would be a corresponding increase in homicides and other violent crime. However, the U.S. homicide rate decreased from 5.0 per 100,000 in 2009 to 4.8 per 100,000 in 2010, and 4.7 per 100,000 in 2011.
In addition, two recent studies found that firearms homicides have dropped 49% since 1993.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10shrtbl08.xls
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-4
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/05/08/u-s-gun-homicides-have-dropped-since-1993-peak-report-says/
“It must be regulated in order for the country to feel safe.”
We have thousands of firearms laws and regulations on the books, and just because you feel safe doesn’t mean you are safe. With all violent crime declining we don’t need any further restrictions on our Constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
MenotYou • May 14, 2014 at 7:02 pm
“There were 16,000 murders in 2008, 67 percent of those were deaths by firearms.”
Its 2014. Why are you using statistics that are 6 years old? Why are you also using figures that are wrong? Check the FBI statistics and you will see that in 2008 there 14224 murders. In 2011 there were 12664 murders. According to Mother Jones 2013 was on track to have the lowest homicide rate in 100 years.
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/05/us-murder-rate-track-be-lowest-century
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8
So you are saying that we need more gun control to prevent drunks from getting murdered when they break into homes that are not theirs….try again.
I’m sorry the student got killed but he broke into someones home. Like you said yourself “The man who lived in the apartment had no way of knowing that the man he thought was attempting to break into his home was an innocent young man who just had a little too much to drink.” Regardless of whether or not the man was armed he would of still defended himself either with a knife, a baseball bat, or whatever else he could use.
You claim “This does not mean there should be no guns.” Well if there are guns available what would of prevented this incident from happening? You say that some people shouldn’t be allowed to own firearms. Who decides who can and who can’t? Do you give an IQ test or something? Don’t tell me their criminal background because we already have a long list of those who can not legally own a firearm. Have you read the Gun Control Act of 1968? Do you have any clue what the current gun laws are? My guess is you don’t.
schotts • May 14, 2014 at 6:08 pm
I would like to add some “facts” to the discussion.
Jordan points out that since 1949, there have been 12 mass shootings where 12 or more people have died and half of those in the last six years.
Does Ms Hunter realize that at no time in American history have we had so many laws, regulations and restrictions on guns? And that goes back six years ago. In fact, prior to 1968, a person could have a gun sent to their house by mail order, no background check, no FFL. Prior to 1934, a person could order a machine gun from Sears and have it sent to their home.
Other than gangster on gangster crime, where were the indiscriminate massacres in the 20s and 30s?
The problem with the gun control advocates, there is no limiting principle. It’s always “we need more common sense laws”. Where does it end? Is it just one more law? Maybe two more laws will do the trick? Even the half effort to create a collective effort between MAIG and Moms Demand can’t get it straight what they wan. On one hand they say just Universal Background Checks (which is a backdoor gun registration scheme) but then talk about mandatory locks, smart guns, magazine restrictions, assault weapons (political term) bans, etc. etc.
There is no limiting principle when it comes to the gun control advocates.
Abraham Collins • May 14, 2014 at 5:43 pm
The government has no right to intervene in any of the tenets of the Bill of Rights, not even the right to keep and bear arms. When you start undermining one part of the Constitution then you’ve essentially destroyed the entire document. We don’t need “permission” to exercise any of our other natural rights and we shouldn’t need permission for this one either.
Barry Hirsh • May 15, 2014 at 11:02 am
BINGO.
wireknob • May 14, 2014 at 1:20 pm
What if the drunk young man mistakenly breaking into the wrong apartment had been an armed assailant or burglar and the legal occupant of the apartment was unarmed? The guy in the apartment might be severely injured or worse, dead.
Accidents with firearms do happen, but the data indicate that there are orders of magnitude more incidents of successful self-defense with a gun than there are accidents involving a gun. So making the argument that accidental firearm deaths would be if law-abiding people didn’t have guns fails to acknowledge that far more successful firearms-related crimes would occur in that situation.
Bill of Rights Supporter • May 14, 2014 at 8:28 am
I was having trouble finding the TIME article the Arthur mentioned but failed to cite that supports the idea that half of the mass murders in the U.S. since 1949 were committed in the last 6 years.
At first, I immediately rejected this notion but wanted to understand, should it be true, why that statistic could possibly be true. The first thing I thought was unusual was the fact that 1949 was used as the starting point. I find this odd as it would exclude a significant and similar causes to our current crime drivers, and the reason why our prison population is over 1 million… and that would be the data lacks the crimes committed during the prohibition of Alcohol which is similar to our “war on drugs”.
I was going to do some quick research to see if there was a strong comparison between the time periods until I came up on … wait for it… an article from Time in September that mentions the idea that mass murders were on the rise, but only to debunk it!!
Turns out, like I had thought, that statistic is a manipulation of a ‘cut point’ and is not attributed to TIME to the level headed and always unbiased Rachel Maddow.
Here is the article for your own review… I suggest the author hyperlink it like the other citations and edit his point to be more factual, citing the proper source.
http://ideas.time.com/2013/09/18/navy-yard-whiplash-are-killings-going-up-or-down/
williamdiamon • May 14, 2014 at 8:23 am
From the period 1885 – 1901 (before gun-control, when everyone was free to carry as they choose), America’s murder rates stayed steady at about 1 person per 100,000.
Through the years of 1901 to 1995 (when gun-control became common) rates climbed to as high as 10 murders per 100,000.
In 1995 “shall issue” concealed carry began in Florida. When other States saw the resulting drop in crime and murder rates they adopted it too. Now all States have some form of concealed carry, most are “shall issue”.
This spread of Second Amendment freedom has brought the Nation’s murder rates to a 100 plus year low of 4.2 per 100,000 people. Not a bad result for 20 years of a policy some said would lead to more bloodshed.
Like the author is doing. He seems to be confusing the criminal culture with the gun culture of the common man. Perhaps if they did some actual research they would find the FBI considers between 50% and 80% of our Nation’s crime to be of gang origin. That means most of our 9,000 murders with guns are caused by the drug turf warfare in our inner cities, by gangs.
BTW, This would be the most effective way to address public safety, if that is their real concern.
Bill of Rights Supporter • May 14, 2014 at 4:19 am
By your stats, there are 300 million firearms and with 10,067 murders committed with firearms… that would be a whopping 0.000035733333333% of firearms used by murders, assuming that each murderer utilized a single fire arm ( and you wildly claim that half the mass murders in the US since ’49 have been committed in the last 6 years).
No my paranoid friend, this shouldn’t be a call to (unconstitutionally) regulate the more than 0.999964266666667% of firearms and ammunition in the hands of the lawful but to find a more effective means to control crime.