TexasCHLforum.com

This is a big deal when a self avowed gun control anti gunner looks at the data and realizes gun control doesn't work when they actually looked at the data:

Before I started researching gun deaths, gun-control policy used to frustrate me. I wished the National Rifle Association would stop blocking common-sense gun-control reforms such as banning assault weapons, restricting silencers, shrinking magazine sizes and all the other measures that could make guns less deadly.

Then, my colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I’d lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence. The best ideas left standing were narrowly tailored interventions to protect subtypes of potential victims, not broad attempts to limit the lethality of guns.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... d5075e8528

Thought I posted this from the article too:

I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain and Australia and concluded that they didn’t prove much about what America’s policy should be. Neither nation experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans. Mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress. And in both Australia and Britain, the gun restrictions had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths.

When I looked at the other oft-praised policies, I found out that no gun owner walks into the store to buy an “assault weapon.” It’s an invented classification that includes any semi-automatic that has two or more features, such as a bayonet mount, a rocket-propelled grenade-launcher mount, a folding stock or a pistol grip. But guns are modular, and any hobbyist can easily add these features at home, just as if they were snapping together Legos.

As for silencers — they deserve that name only in movies, where they reduce gunfire to a soft puick puick. In real life, silencers limit hearing damage for shooters but don’t make gunfire dangerously quiet. An AR-15 with a silencer is about as loud as a jackhammer. Magazine limits were a little more promising, but a practiced shooter could still change magazines so fast as to make the limit meaningless.

Can some other politicians and talking heads take a hint from this guy? He still says he's anti-gun and he doesn't want one in his home, and that's her right, but he concedes that the many of the oft-touted "control" measures are actually useless.

She is not the first to do this. I can't think if the name right now, but I remember probably 15 years ago or so when an academic type or researcher also came to the same conclusion, against his belief, when he researched the issue. I'll probably remember who it was about 0300 tomorrow. Everybody stand by.

ELB wrote:She is not the first to do this. I can't think if the name right now, but I remember probably 15 years ago or so when an academic type or researcher also came to the same conclusion, against his belief, when he researched the issue. I'll probably remember who it was about 0300 tomorrow. Everybody stand by.

I believe it was John Lott, he originally intended to prove that the private ownership of guns was causing the proliferation of murders, however after extensive HONEST research he found that his beliefs were wrong! That being able to defend oneself with a gun actually made the individual safer and intern society as a whole safer!

Facts don't mean much to wild eyed fanatics.

AndyC wrote:Fun article - thanks for posting :)

Have a new truncheon to use online?

very interesting.

Let me add, if more than 20,000 death per year are suicide by a firearm. How restricting lethality, accessibility or whatever gun control would help reduce suicide by a firearm? Last I checked, a single 22LR in the eye cavity is deadly enough for the suicidal to accomplish his mission. No 22LR? A gas-powered nail drive would be as deadly.

I'm genuinely surprised that this left wing newspaper would publish this article. It goes completely against what they stand for.

Look at the comments. Many leftists are not listening and cling to their ways. They still think restricting the rights of everyone is acceptable. Some also still cling to the idea that removing the 2nd Amendment and passing a few laws will remove all gun even from criminals which will never happen. A few might reevaluate their position which is the goal.

This article does reflect a lot of what I have heard and gone through in my own mind. When you look at what the end goal is, it is to reduce deaths and crime. Not "gun deaths" or "gun crime", but deaths and crime. If removing guns doesn't greatly affect the suicide rate, then gun control is not justified.........and so on and so on.

I'm not surprised by the findings. Guns and other weapons have very little bearing on homicide or suicide rates in general. To be honest, as a pro 2A guy, I will say that guns are insanely convenient death bringers, as they are easy to use and have a decent range. That is not to say that a determined person won't be able to use anything else. I'm just saying that because it's easy and convenient, guns will be a number 1 choice if available. Also, seeing as how suicides are typically done with the minimal amount of effort, keeping guns away from suicidal folks *may* actually save their lives as that may buy them more time to get help. I doubt it, though. I'm looking at California. The suicide rate by firearms have dropped for sure, but the number of people jumping off bridges or in front of trains have gone up. Funny how that works.

That aside, the number 1 issue at hand is not guns. It's culture. If culture changes so the bad guy population goes down, then homicide rates will drop. As people stop giving others reasons to be depressed, suicide rates will also drop. It's that simple. Guns have NOTHING to do with that. I think the best example I've seen is Australia vs New Zealand. The two countries are very similar in scope. More so than Aussies compared to the US or the UK. When Australia enacted their gun control, they saw a drop in violent crime rates over a period of several years. That's what the leftist are latching on. But if you look at New Zealand, they had the SAME drop, but without draconian gun control. How about that...