Rise in firearms related homicides after years of decline.

I see it as statically with in the plus and minus the range.

 

I get what you're saying and to a certain extent I agree.

The thing is if someone in a bad area buys a gun and trains extensively with it, goes to classes, learns MMA and stays in good shape they will be in a better position to respond to a lethal threat than if they did not.

Even more so if they got exterior lighting, storm proof shatter resistant glass or burglar bars an alarm, video cameras, a dog, bump proof locks, better doors and hinges/extended screws and the whole lot.

They'd stand a better chance of not getting attacked at all if they just moved to a suburban neighborhood with low crime rates and a good police dept.

Each item decreases their risk.

Location/neighborhood and not being involved in the drug trade or running with a gang most of all. People involved in criminal activity in run down/broken/failed areas are at greater risk of being murdered than those who are not and residing in nicer areas.

Owning a gun and being good with it still helps out people in bad neighborhoods, just not as much as some of the other items on the list.

 

Oh, I agree. Honestly I think these statistics could probably be very different if gun owners actually did what they're supposed to do (IMO) as responsible citizens and get good, professional, at least annual training and carry their guns regularly. Unfortunately, the vast majority get no training at all or if they do, they only get whatever their state minimum training is to get a carry permit, which in most cases is very nearly worthless. Imagine if half the gun owners in the US were attending professional training classes for handgun and fighting rifle at least once a year and practicing with those weapons at least once a month. Imagine if those people were habitually carrying a pistol. That, I think, would make an actual difference. That's not going to happen though.

 

Sure. More training would always be better.

However sometimes even an untrained individual can still be successful depending on circumstances and that individuals mindset and willingness to take the fight to them.

I've heard of cases as well as been on calls where an elderly person with no training at all has managed to kill, wound or at least drive off the person trying to victimize them. Luck was also sometimes a factor.

Are we supposed to deny people teeth and claws just because they don't train a lot?

I'd rather they did. Personally I'd rather the classes I go to to be packed instead of there being 5-10 people a pop, but I wouldn't deny people the right to self defense. I'll stick with the Constitution as originally written (I'm not saying you want to either, I'm more just saying ...).

I was more making a point that even the individual who is extremely motivated to not be victimized by violent crime would probably be better off simply moving to a better neighborhood than staying in St Louis or Baltimore or one of the other cities being the item at the top of their short list in addition to doing everything else (like buying a gun).

People who own guns as well as take all the other precautions and gather all the skill sets above who live in decent neighborhoods still get murdered, raped, robbed and assaulted, but it's a whole lot less likely.

Each layer adds something.

 

Hopefully I didn't mislead with my other posts. I'm 100% pro people owning guns and 100% against mandatory training in order to do so. I view it as being similar to voting. A person is certainly allowed to vote without educating themselves on the issues and candidates that they're voting for, and I support their right to do that. A free person should not be required to take a class or read certain things in order to vote. However, a responsible free person will educate themselves on the issues before voting, not because it's required but because it's the right thing to do. Same with gun ownership. I believe it is every able bodied American citizen's responsibility as a free person to own and become competent with a military pattern, detachable magazine fed rifle. It should not be a requirement, but it is their responsibility.

That's sort of a different subject though. The point is, having more untrained or poorly trained people with guns (which describes the vast majority of gun owners in the US) in a society does not automatically reduce the overall violent crime rate. Yes, occasionally one gets lucky, but that doesn't make it a trend. Just to be clear, it also doesn't automatically increase violent crime either, it just doesn't matter that much. Like I said before, the "gun community" has spent far too much time and energy attempting to defend gun ownership based on reductions in violent crime rates. Eventually that's going to backfire.

 

Can you explain how a law or regulation can be "unconstitutional but legal"? If a state law violates the US Constitution it is "legal" but if a local law violates a state law it is "null and void"?

BTW, WA has a preemption law, and a good state constitution (plus shall-issue CC permits, etc.). Despite that we haven't been considered a "good" firearms state for some years. Of course there is a bill in the state legislature right now to kill the preemption law (and continue to ignore the state and US Constitutions)...meantime there are any number of local laws restricting firearms.

 

Seems pretty self explanatory. Many states have blatantly unconstitutional laws on the books. Those laws are null and void in theory as well but in reality, the consequences for breaking them in most cases aren't worth it. Local regulations that violate state law however have much less severe consequences and are generally worth breaking. In fact, several people have obtained some significant payouts because they sued a city over their illegal rules and won. In addition, the courts have generally upheld state level unconstitutional laws but have not sided with cities that attempt to violate state law (with a few exceptions).

I'm aware of that. I'm not sure what your point is? You said this,

which simply isn't correct. Local laws cannot have as much impact as state laws because in the majority of cases, local laws are not upheld. They might have some impact in some cases, but nowhere near as much as state law.

 

OK, trying to keep it simple: if state laws get upheld and local laws don't then why isn't WA considered a "good" state? It (at least at present) has a gun-friendly state constitution, a preemption law, shall-issue CC, no magazine capacity limits (again, at present), silencers (or suppressors if you prefer) are legal, etc. Yet a few years back I saw us as #40 on a "best to worst" list.

Thanks for the clarification that you do agree unconstitutional laws are null and void in theory (and I agree that theory and practice are sadly divergent).

 

I couldn't really say why WA was rated the way that it was in the list you mention. This is off topic, but my guess would be that it might have something to do with the direction that WA seems to be heading. Most of those lists that I've seen have been at least partially nonsense as far as I could tell. Just someone's personal opinion. Anyway, I wasn't saying that any state with a preemption law was a "good" state. I just said that most (probably all) states that are generally considered "good" have preemption laws.

 

We're on the same page and I understood what you meant. I actually added a sentence a few mins later in parentheses to put that out there, but apparently I was too late.

I actually agree with you completely.

Yes and no. At least in my opinion.

Untrained people who are familiarized with firearms seem to do okay under certain circumstances (I.e. a break in at their homes or other situations where there's adequate response time to sort themselves out).

It's also a gateway towards carrying and hopefully further training.

 

No. If someone came out with a study showing that increasing rates of gun ownership were statistically significantly correlated with increasing rates of violent crime, it still wouldn't mean that relationship were causative and it would run counter to previous research and to the trends previously noted in this thread.

Moreover, all one would need to do is point out the millions of lives saved by the 2A preventing a tyrannical dictatorship and genocide. The 2A is not predicated on violent crime rates, nor should it be. The only point in bringing statistics up to anti-gun people is that they claim they want to pass gun control laws to reduce violent crime; not only is there no evidence to support their ideas, but there is evidence to refute them.

For example, the Annals of Epidemiology, a peer-reviewed, evidence-based medical journal, just published an article in October of 2018 studying California's "comprehensive" background check laws and found they had no effect on firearm-related homicide or suicide rates. Either in ignorance or in full defiance of this, congress introduced bills in the house (HR 8) and senate (S 42) to enact the same laws nationally just 3 months after they were (again) proven ineffective. The study even highlights how its results are in line with previous research.

 

Exactly. Statistically, governments murder far more of their people than civilians do.

True. The problem is that many (I might even venture to say most) in the firearms community think that the statistics prove that more firearms in private hands automatically reduces crime. It's easy to point to examples of places where private firearms ownership is very common and that have very low crime rates and say "look!, more guns=less crime". The flip side is also true though. It's very easy for anti gun people to find places with extremely low or almost totally non existent private firearms ownership rates that also have very low violent crime rates and point to them and say "see! no guns=less crime".

I'm not saying we should just abandon looking at statistics, but I think that people need to face reality and stop trying to justify gun ownership based on crime reduction/prevention and hunting.

 

Coming at this from a possibly entirely different perspective, this is a political issue and not a sociological issue.

For the left, the causes of gun violence are immaterial, they have a binary response to all gun crimes. If it furthers their agenda to limit the 2A, they will push it, publicize it, etc. If it does not further their agenda, they will squash it. That's it.

So, thousands of black on black gangland shooting in Chicago ... where is it in the news ? It is only in the quoted statistics where it furthers the left's agenda. Same with Suicides. How about news where legal carriers have defended themselves or their family with terminal consequences ... nothing on that either.

This issue has no, zero, nada basis in either rational thought or statistics. Only politics and public perception.

The only way to fight this as an individual is to donate your time and/or money to those organizations set up to win these fights. The NRA-ILA, SAF and GOA to name a few.

Dan Bongino, Colin Noir, Dana Loesch, to name a few are our warriors. We need to recruit more public personalities to our side and spread their views wherever we can, Facebook, etc.

Quit thinking this is a fair fight, it is not.

 

Raw data is information all right but without context it's hard to draw conclusions from it. My thoughts is that efforts towards root cause mitigation will be more effective than more firearms restrictions. Without drilling down into the causes we'll just have "a good guy with a gun" vs "guns bad".