FBI director calls lack of data on police shootings "ridiculous," "embarrassing"

During prohibition, it was much harder (and more expensive) to get beer (or liquor), and more liquor than beer was consumed at a considerably higher price. One outcome was significantly lower alcohol consumption and all that that means (lower deaths by cirrhosis, lower city drunkenness arrests).

If we take prohibition as an analogy, then sure, a dedicated criminal will still be able to get guns. However, a casual street-level criminal is going to have to work harder to get them because they're no longer available in the mall or from the pawn shop, and he's going to have to pay ten times as much to get one from Benny in the pool hall. That'll significantly reduce the number of guns out there, and that is what creates the environment and the expectation that results in cops shooting civilians.

Hasn't and won't in the foreseeable future come up for 5-6th, 8th, and 10-11th circuits. So with the score currently 1-4 at the appellate level and 0-4 with the Supremes, I don't find the Federal legal situation at all encouraging, since there's no state that forbids all unloaded movements of guns, I don't see much wiggle room for your "in some capacity".

Did that happen to Australia? I see no evidence for it.

If not, why don't we use the same mandatory buy-back approach that Australia did?

Quoting from Wikipedia, "Gun control generally refers to laws or policies that regulate the manufacture, sale, transfer, possession, modification, or use of firearms." This is general agreement with how others use.

For example, this more policy-oriented survey of small gun laws in different countries ( http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/A-Yearbook/201... ) breaks the regulations down into:

> "how states regulate the firearm ... what types of firearms civilians may be authorized to possess and which states keep centralized records of firearms in civilian hands", "how states regulate the civilian user, including the criteria used to determine eligibility to possess a firearm, how the licensing process works, and whether states permit private sales of firearms", and "how states regulate the use of civilian firearms, including the extent to which states require a reason to possess a firearm and the conditions that apply to firearm ownership."

I see nothing particularly ambiguous in how the term is used for you to call for a need for the us, the hoi polloi, to help you understand it better.

Gun control laws fall on a spectrum. Typically people say "we need more gun control" to mean that the laws should be more restrictive on what is allowed, while "we need less gun control" means the laws should less restrictive.

Wikipedia explains the phrase "elephant in the room" well:

> The term refers to a question, problem, solution, or controversial issue which is obvious to everyone who knows about the situation, but which is deliberately ignored because to do otherwise would cause great embarrassment, or trigger arguments or is simply taboo. The idiom can imply a value judgment that the issue ought to be discussed openly, or it can simply be an acknowledgment that the issue is there and not going to go away by itself.

> The term is often used to describe an issue that involves a social taboo, such as race, religion, or even suicide. This idiomatic phrase is applicable when a subject is emotionally charged; and the people who might have spoken up decide that it is probably best avoided.[8]

The phrase "Gun control is the elephant in this particular room" refers to the top-comment's list of "tangentially relevant facts". One inference is that the stricter gun control laws of Germany mean that fewer people have guns, so police are less likely to use methods which presume the civilians are both armed and likely to response with a gunfight.

However, saying that directly brings in well-worn nearly deadlocked arguments about changes to gun control laws, Second Amendment, etc. Hence, the top-comment's indirect reference, which avoids discussing gun laws by talking about possible effects - hence, the topic of gun control is "the elephant in the room" that is being avoided, for reasons Wikipedia illuminated.

Note that "I am simply asking a question." is often used by people who are derisively said to be "JAQing off". In order to avoid that accusation, I suggest you do some research first, rather than ask Wikipedia-level questions. You say that people do not define it; what is wrong with the definition from Wikipedia? Is it incompatible with how most people use the term?

In terms of law, case law is critical here, to my knowledge only Texas allows that, after a verbal warning. And like e.g. Oklahoma, I expect judges to eventually nullify that.

His/her life matters, so you can't take it even if it means defending your own.

(Obviously sarcasm, but that's the thought process of these people)

History has shown repeatedly that humans are prone to emotional responses. And people that were otherwise law abiding right until a moment of anger now have easy hip-level access to a 'thing' to act out their anger.

Take the case a couple years ago of the retired cop that shot a guy in the movie theatre during previews for throwing popcorn at him. (Guy called his baby sitter during previews, the retired cop yelled at him to be quiet, guy threw some popcorn back at the cop, retired cop shoots guy dead) If this retired cop, who was a law-abiding citizen his whole life and was professionally trained in firearm safety and usage couldn't control his anger during an argument about a guy using his cell phone, I don't see how the average American can be trusted.

And speaking of guns in movie theatres, there's the case of the guy who accidentally dropped his handgun under his seat during a kids movie and then left. Luckily the ushers found it and not a kid. Guy had the nerve to go back to the theatre and demand it back.

I don't see how the average American can be trusted to keep their gun safe.

As long as once the threshold of lethal force is reached, all lethal force in reply until the threat is over is legitimate.

Midway through it's now almost total ban on guns the U.K. made self-defense with more force than being used on you illegal, first in the courts in the '50s and then by law in the '60s. Outlawing effective self-defense then makes it that much easier to outlaw guns altogether.

It may well be that some paramilitaries are more efficient than others, but their incentives are by definition always stacked against community building, and in favor of adversarial enforcement.

I didn't quite enjoy this dismissive tone, so I'll be more pedantic than usual. The study you cited is interesting but it's not the end all of gun control discussion. It's barely even the beginning.

First, it considers Brady scores at a state level to try to find correlation. Gun control legislation might be at a state-level but that's a nonsensical level of granularity. My concerns are about my neighborhoods, poverty, and guns. Not the state of California as a whole with over 35 million people.

Second, from the article you cited:

> Perhaps even controlling for those factors, there will be other missing factors that are hard to control for — for instance, maybe as the crime rate increases, calls for gun controls increase, so high crime causes more gun restrictions, or maybe calls for more freedom to defend oneself increase, so high crime causes fewer gun restrictions (e.g., liberalized concealed-carry licensing rules). And of course when small changes in the model yield substantial changes in results (e.g., if you calculate the state gun scores differently, the results will likely be different), you know how little you should credit the output. Figuring out the actual effect of government actions, whether gun laws, changed policing rules, drug laws, or anything else, is devilishly difficult.

is a succinct summary of why this comparison study is meaningless. It's a good retort to someone who says that gun control leads to fewer deaths but it has so many caveats and such imprecise applicability that the only useful take away point is that at a state-level with some gun-control scoring pattern (viz. the Brady Campaign scores) discounting ALL other factors, gun-related deaths are not correlated to gun control.

Accidental gun deaths are not remotely interesting compared to murder and suicide.

... did you just blame the ukrainian genocide under stalin on a lack of guns?

Insurance might come into play in such a world, if people were made liable for (at least some) misuse of guns registered to them (the at least some means that I would hope such a thing would only really come into play if actual negligence were involved).

> Sure, go ahead if you want a 2nd Civil War, we know our 20th Century history. Never again are not empty words to us.

That sort of sentiment and posturing is very core of what is wrong with the "gun-ownership" movement.

Do you really think if the government wanted to put down a rebellion (or whatever you are ominously alluding to) your paltry weapons would really make a difference? The "suicide by cop" statistic would increment and things would carry on.

There really needs to be a change on how easy it is to procure fire-arms in the US. That shouldn't be up for debate or sidelining through traditionalist arguments. We have a problem today where people are actually getting murdered. So, your rhetoric is pretty empty and over-used.

Given what I have read about most guns used in crimes originating through straw buyers or stolen guns, I think substantial penalties for people who don't properly transfer guns if they wind up being used illegally would be the most effective way to reduce gun related violence. This, of course, would require a system of registration and proper transfer documentation, like we have for cars.

This, along with secure storage requirements, I think could do a lot. I agree accidents aren't that big an issue when compared to intentional violence, I assume secure storage would substantially help with this along with suicide. I'd also be in favor of severe penalties for not using secure storage.

In terms of new technology that could improve safety, fingerprint readers and id stamped ammo would help with both violence and safety.

Insurance could play an important role. If you pass a test, get your refresher training and have proper storage you'd pay a low rate. If you have an accident or have a gun stolen insurance could pay part of your penalty but your rate should go up enormously.

> ... non-starter in an environment where the people proposing these measures continuously demonstrate their bad will.

Continuously demonstrate bad will? 10s of thousands die yearly and even modest proposals are dismissed with hysteria like:

> Registration? Sure, go ahead if you want a 2nd Civil War, we know our 20th Century history. Never again are not empty words to us.

Seriously, this is into "UN black helicopter", "Obama is an Al-Qaeda member" territory.

Parent, that is, myself, does not oppose on those grounds, as I explained in reply to you. I don't think it's constructive to imply that in a reply to another without replying to me.

And come to think of it, I don't want to have to explain to the state every time I fire one of my firearms. Especially seeing as how I've done that over ten thousand times without, you know, actually shooting anybody.

I would hope you could see the potential for abuse, for a chilling effect on good things like practicing with your firearms for proficiency.