Yesterday I received an email from a good friend who wanted to know my thoughts about a group – Gun Owners for Responsible Ownership – which claims to be a group of gun owners that wants to “take the lead to promote safe gun ownership and sensible laws and regulations.”
When the NRA began to collapse following its brief honeymoon with Donald Trump, a whole bunch of gun organizations started to get some attention, most of them being groups that were more vociferous about their gun ‘rights’ than the boys from Fairfax, but there were also several groups which claimed to be interested in finding a ‘middle way’ between the pro-gun and anti-gun extremes. This group is in that latter camp.
According to their website, their commitment to the 2nd Amendment goes hand in hand with a desire to promote “gun safety” through comprehensive background checks and secure storage of guns. They also partner with the gun-research group at the University of Michigan as well as a foundation that distributes free gun locks in Oregon public schools.
Promoting academic gun research, safe storage and universal background checks happen to be priorities of all the gun-control groups. So, the fact that this group is committed to the same agenda but is made up of gun owners needs to be taken as perhaps an important straw blowing in the wind.
The only problem (and here Mike the Gun Guy™ is going to do what he usually does to piss everyone off) is that the wind happens to be blowing the wrong way. You can call safe storage and universal background checks whatever you want to call them – responsible, accountable – I don’t care. The truth is that we do not suffer from gun-violence rates that are 7 to 20 times higher (thank you David Hemenway) than any other economically-advanced country because we don’t have universal background checks or because many gun owners don’t keep their guns locked away.
We endure and suffer from more than 125,000 intentional and unintentional gun injuries every year for one, simple reason, which is that we are – ready? – the one country in the entire world which allows its residents to purchase, own and carry on their persons guns that are designed only to injure and kill human beings.
Several years ago, our friends at The Trace published an inventory of more than 9,000 guns picked up by the cops connected to crimes throughout the United States. I took the trouble to analyze this entire listing and you can download and read my analysis of the data right here.
On the other hand, if you don’t want to spend any time gorging your brain on my faultless prose, I’ll summarize this information by saying that we may own somewhere between 300 and 400 million guns, but most of those guns don’t have anything to do with gun violence at all.
I couldn’t find one, single ‘crime’ gun on this entire list manufactured by such long-time manufacturers as Remington, Mossberg, Winchester, Browning, Marlin, or Savage Arms, which together have certainly produced more than 100 million of the guns privately owned.
What are the guns that turn up again and again in the daily shootings which create our extraordinary gun-violence rates? Try Glock, Sig, Beretta, Smith & Wesson, Colt, and all the cheapie lookalike wanabees (Taurus, Kahr Arms) that are floating around.
Now, the idea that such guns are considered ‘sporting’ arms by Gun-nut Nation just because they don’t fire in full-auto mode only goes to show you how far from reality the gun debate in this country remains.
But the fact is that the gun-control groups buy into the same nonsense. They also want comprehensive background checks and safe storage of guns. The fact that there has never been one, single piece of published research which shows any connection between gun safety or background checks and gun violence rates, so what?
Matter of fact, Colorado instituted universal background checks in 2013, a year when the overall gun violence rate was 11.44. In 2019, the rate was 14.45. Gee, that’s only an increase in gun violence of 25 percent. No biggie, right?
Want to reduce gun violence? It’s very simple. Get rid of the guns which are used to commit that violence. There’s simply no other way, no matter how ‘safe’ or ‘responsible’ we hope everyone will behave with their guns.
Nov 09, 2021 @ 13:14:20
More or less agree. Except there are two ways to drastically reduce gun violence. One, get rid of the guns Michael talks about. Two, get rid of the motive to shoot each other.
Albuquerque has a population a little under a million. They are celebrating..ahem…their 100th or 101st homicide this year, an all time record. Most by gunshot. Albuquerque has poor schools, lots of drug and alcohol addiction, poverty, and a violent local subculture.
Los Alamos, with 18,000 people, has great schools, the highest per capita income in New Mexico, just about everyone has a job, and most of the population has high levels of education. Stable kid life for the kids. There has not been a gun homicide or I think, an intentional shooting, since I moved there in 2001.
NM has a preemption clause in the state constitution so gun laws are uniform around the state. Guns are everywhere in both cities. In fact, my gun club in Los Alamos has 1300 members.
Now why do you think Albuquerque has a gun violence problem and Los Alamos doesn’t?
Nov 09, 2021 @ 13:31:56
To rid violence using a gun is to abolish the 2nd Amendment.
There’s simply no other way.
Nov 09, 2021 @ 13:35:49
Oh, forgot, then take or seize ALL guns.
Nov 09, 2021 @ 15:19:29
Or reverse Heller, which claims that the 2nd amendment gives private citizens the right to bear arms in order to protect themselves. This right should be reserved for the community which should be able to decide whether an individual has the need to own and use a firearm. Only a well-regulated militia should be given this right.
Nov 09, 2021 @ 16:00:12
Sounds good. As soon as we reverse Obergefell, Brown v Board of Ed, and Roe v Wade to allow each community to decide gay marriage, segregated schools, and abortion.
If it is a right, it shouldn’t matter which community one lives in. My hunch is an erosion of rights, based on red v blue ideology, will hasten the disintegration of this republic.
Nov 09, 2021 @ 16:40:33
I guess it’s a question of what right the 2nd gives. The other decisions are based on interpretations of the post Civil war amendments.
Nov 10, 2021 @ 11:06:52
Hey, Dan. Sorry to be grumpy but these contests between red and blue states to see how tough they can make it to exercise a right gets old.
There is no enumerated right to an abortion or a gay marriage; those are as you say, rights derived from a reading of other rights. The Supremes might well have agreed that if we provided equal educational opportunities to Blacks and Whites, school segregation was OK. Fortunately, they dispensed with that mythology because it never happened. Sadly, nowadays it is the Woke People who are increasingly suggesting we might be wise to stay to our tribes based on color or whatever.
Court may still strike down Roe v Wade, which would sadden me. And, I would be shocked out of my mind if the Court completely tossed out a state’s right to license public carry. There is no historical justification for concealed carry being a part of the 2A that I know of (Saul Cornell and Adam Winkler’s work are good reads just for starters). My hunch is a much narrower ruling, as Heller was. Maybe telling NYS that Sullivan has to be less opaque. Or, remanding.
But true, until we know what the Court does, the breadth of the 2A is up in the air and in fact is defined by whatever laws exist in the fifty states and DC that have not been overturned. Heller decision only overturned the wackiest law in the land, saying a person did not have a right to a serviceable firearm in the home. I do think the 2A gives us an individual right or the Second Amendment would not have assigned the right to “the people” but to the best of my knowledge, no well-regulated militia involves concealed carry and no soldier or national guardsman goes out in the field without firearm training.
We shall see. All the best to you.
Nov 10, 2021 @ 11:17:01
Actually, from my recollection of Miller vs US, the Court reminded us that citizens eligible for the militia were to show up with arms provided by themselves and in many states, citizens were required to purchase said firearm. The 2A never, to my knowledge, suggested that citizens were to walk around with their guns all the time, i.e., unrestricted public carry. That’s the big issue here.
But I am not a Con Law professor nor do I play one on TV.
Nov 10, 2021 @ 22:19:09
Gun ownership can be harmful to society. Read more http://hi.fisip.unair.ac.id/en_GB/debat-kepemilikan-senjata-di-oleh-safril-mubah/
Nov 12, 2021 @ 00:33:58
“I couldn’t find one, single ‘crime’ gun on this entire list manufactured by such long-time manufacturers as Remington, Mossberg….”
Mike wants us to believe that nobody ever uses Shotguns to kill or commit crimes with? Lol
Took me 5 seconds to Google “murdered or robbed with a shotgun”, and found dozens… including this recent Mass Shooting down in Jolly Old England:
https://www-bbc-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-devon-58197414.amp?amp_js_v=a6&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQKKAFQArABIIACAw%3D%3D#aoh=16366945279265&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fnews%2Fuk-england-devon-58197414
Nov 12, 2021 @ 01:49:10
https://www.wkrn.com/news/man-armed-with-shotgun-robs-several-fast-food-restaurants-in-multi-county-crime-spree-off-i-40/amp/
Nov 12, 2021 @ 01:50:48
https://www.lakemchenryscanner.com/2021/10/25/2-men-1-armed-with-shotgun-allegedly-robbed-person-at-weiss-field-in-waukegan/
Nov 12, 2021 @ 01:53:36
https://amp-theolympian-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/amp.theolympian.com/news/local/crime/article252988273.html?amp_js_v=a6&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQKKAFQArABIIACAw%3D%3D#aoh=16366999386320&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theolympian.com%2Fnews%2Flocal%2Fcrime%2Farticle252988273.html
Nov 12, 2021 @ 01:54:56
….Shall I move on to “Traditional” Sporting Rifles?
Nov 12, 2021 @ 01:57:29
https://www.wilx.com/content/news/Troopers-looking-for-man-who-robbed-a-party-store-with-a-rifle-513442851.html
Nov 22, 2021 @ 23:21:43
If I know I have the right to walk on the sidewalk, and someone thinks I don’t. I don’t have a discussion. I walk on the sidewalk.
Nov 23, 2021 @ 16:56:43
By the way. My right to protect myself I don’t attempt to persuade. I state.