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Short term thinking is often under-rated in business and people outside of business love to deride "quarterly thinking." Corporate cultures that manage to results and care about interim performance make sure their competitors never see the long term. Also these "quarterly profit driven companies" seem to be able to sustain long term investments like R&D--but R&D that's making progress each quarter.

The "Politician's Syllogism":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician%27s_syllogism

This is the only natural endgame of "you can't manage what you don't measure" and metrics-based results-driven accountability. Particularly when those metrics are quarterly.

It's the same short-termism you see in the sports world.

Meh, if the ensuing thread below has taught me anything, it's that one person's short-termism is another person's rational, long-term solution. So couching the argument this way tells us nothing. It just gives us another lens through which we can see the world in a way that we're already predisposed.

The alternative is clubby environments where CEOs are removed from market pressures entirely - look at the US auto industry in the 60s and 70s.

Plus you usually have to pay the old manager for his full contract.

> Desperation for action. If things are going badly, something must be done. This is something, so it must be done.

I see this in politics a lot. If things are going badly (another "mass shooting" happens), something must be done. Even if the solution is crap (ban "assault weapons") it is something, so it must be done.

Given that we cannot provide free or extremely inexpensive mental health care, or somehow get 340mil Americans not to behave like jackals and crass narcissists all the time, to actually treat each other with respect, dignity, and compassion, I do not see how banning assault weapons is a "crap" solution. Sure, other guns may still be available but at least it's something.

This is exactly what the GP is referring to. "We have to do something! This thing won't actually solve the problem but it lets me feel better because we did something, so let's do it! Pretty close to the definition of a crap solution.

It won't stop any one occurence from happening, but it likely will mitigate the damage on that occurence. It's hard to argue it's not at least a step in the right direction. But I agree it won't solve the problem at heart.

Not trying to get into an off-topic political discussion, but the AWB I'm familiar with is almost entirely cosmetic in nature and would not have prevented any of the tragedies that are often used to prop it up. There are many effective things that could be done to lessen gun violence without needlessly restricting something that has no connection to that violence. Barrel shrouds are cosmetic but they make something an assault weapon, as does a pistol grip on a shotgun (which makes it less accurate for 99.9% of users).

Comprehensive, mandatory background checks? Of course.

"This gun looks scary and is therefore dangerous?" Nonsense.

If it where purely cosmetic people would not be fighting it. Instead, there is opposition specifically because it is a meaningful, though small change.

A purely cosmetic change would be requiring all guns to be panted orange.

PS: Most people don't have tools or mechanical know how, making 'simple' changes difficult.

> If it where purely cosmetic people would not be fighting it.

Simply not true. People fought the AWB because it was largely cosmetic (not entirely). Even those in support of the bill have said many of the banned items were cosmetic.

> Soon after its passage in 1994, the gun industry made a mockery of the federal assault weapons ban, manufacturing 'post-ban' assault weapons with only slight, cosmetic differences from their banned counterparts.

From the Violence Policy Center, a pro-gun control group.

If a manufacturer can make strictly cosmetic changes to a weapon and have it be compliant, it's kind of hard to argue there was "meaningful change." That's not a loophole, that's banning a cosmetic feature and a manufacturer getting rid of that cosmetic feature.

Wrong. People are fighting it because it infringes on our constitutional rights to no benefit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre...

"Well shit dillon, they don't sell the Hi-Point-9 because it's banned, can I borrow an extra $50 so I can buy the carbine?"

People intending to commit violence (on any scale) will find a way.

Some people can pick locks, but not everyone can pick locks. Limiting dumb or lazy criminals is still useful.

Disclaimer - never owned a gun, in fact never shot a proper one. The problem, among others, is definition what is assault rifle and what not. Military laughs at this definition coming from politicians, you can perform deadly assault with pencil, bow or a brick.

Is it ammo type? (ie 5.56 or .308 - but these are also common hunting calibers). Is it magazine capacity? - this can be cheated around super easily, especially if you prepare something nefarious. Full automats aren't sold anyway. Is it shape of the weapon? Now we left the land of facts and walking in the emotional wonderland. We can do better.

It's like some voices here in Switzerland stating military home-held guns should be banned because some people commit suicide with them. Yeah, let's forget the core suicidal issue and remove the tool, that will surely stop them, right?

Guns don't kill people (and don't get sentenced for that), people pull triggers and kill other people. But that's much harder to fix, so let's find some easy scapegoat, right?

> ... you can perform deadly assault with pencil, bow or a brick.

I'm not saying we shouldn't ban certain guns, but I don't think people realize that if someone is hellbent on killing, they'll use a hatchet or a machete if they can't get a gun. We'll have fewer deaths, but much, much nastier ones.

> We'll have fewer deaths, but much, much nastier ones.

How do you quantify "nastier"? I couldn't really say.

Meanwhile, I can quantify "fewer deaths". And I'd try to achieve that first.

I don't think getting hacked to death would be as clean a kill, generally, as being shot. I've never witnessed either happen, so I could be wrong.

We don't have to use our imagination about what other weapons people might use to commit terror - Bombs and vehicles are already popular, and no less deadly.

Dead is dead. I'll take a few nasty deaths in place of lots of "clean" ones.

Dead is dead, you're correct.

Dying, however, is an altogether different thing.

I completely disagree. A stab wound or deep cut is much less grisly/nasty than a bullet in the head, or large exit wound.

Stochastically speaking, a hatchet/machete is simply less efficient (which is good in this case).

The "nastiness" of the effort may also prevent some from going forward with their assault in the first place...

Come on, you don't go to a mall with a pencil, a brick or a bow and kill 50+ people. The point of assault weapons ownership laws is to introduce friction, so getting a weapon that can go through kevlar is hard, and if you get caught, hell rains upon you.

The line must be set at some point, and of course people are going to tip toe around it, but that's not the point. And don't go Switzerland, if everybody in the US had proper training in how to use and (more important) store their weapons, and the government had an exhaustive control of every shell... Well, it would be different.

What about the mass murder weapon you drive to the mall in? We gonna ban cars the next time someone plows through the waiting line for the new shiny at 100 MPH??

Time to ban assault trucks.

People are already doing it on occasion, too. It's usually directed at specific people so far. Then there's people who kick it up a notch:

https://www.damninteresting.com/the-wrath-of-the-killdozer/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZbG9i1oGPA

> Come on, you don't go to a mall with a pencil, a brick or a bow and kill 50+ people.

Neither do folks with 'assault weapons.' More people are killed with knives than with all long guns; approximately as many are killed with fists & feet[1]. 'Assault weapons' bans are just feel-good measures.

Oh, and shells are artillery ammunition …

[1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

Not to mention that knives can stab right through kevlar...

Shells are also the common term for the ammunition used in shotguns.

> Come on, you don't go to a mall with a pencil, a brick or a bow and kill 50+ people

Has this ever happened in the history of any 1st world country? The closest we've ever come is the Orlando shooting at 49, but... the events with the highest body counts are vehicular mass murder or bombs, not guns (9/11, Nice France, Oklahoma bombing, etc.)

> Guns don't kill people (and don't get sentenced for that), people pull triggers and kill other people. But that's much harder to fix, so let's find some easy scapegoat, right?

http://www.factcheck.org/2013/02/did-the-1994-assault-weapon...

> Other studies, he said, have suggested attacks with semiautomatic guns – particularly those having large magazines – “result in more shots fired, persons hit and wounds inflicted than do attacks with other guns and magazines.” Another study of handgun attacks in Jersey City during the 1990s, he said, “estimated that incidents involving more than 10 shots fired accounted for between 4 and 5 percent of the total gunshot victims in the sample.”

> Koper, Jan. 14: So, using that as a very tentative guide, that’s high enough to suggest that eliminating or greatly reducing crimes with these magazines could produce a small reduction in shootings, likely something less than 5 percent. Now we should note that effects of this magnitude could be hard to ever measure in any very definitive way, but they nonetheless could have nontrivial, notable benefits for society. Consider, for example, at our current level of our gun violence, achieving a 1 percent reduction in fatal and non-fatal criminal shootings would prevent approximately 650 shootings annually … And, of course having these sorts of guns, and particularly magazines, less accessible to offenders could make it more difficult for them to commit the sorts of mass shootings that we’ve seen in recent years.”

It doesn't quite work that way. There is a reasonably consistent trend among studies that somewhere between 3% and 5% fewer gun deaths occur if magazines are smaller than 10 rounds. That is also more than the margin of error for such studies.

Similarly, even a 2% reduction saves ~1,300 people a year.

So pretending its a mere scapegoat is...stretching quite a bit. Now you can argue a thousand or two thousand people dying is an acceptable cost to maintaining the status quo but that isn't the argument you tried to make.

Smaller magazines provide a margin of safety of several seconds which you might actually be able to get clear and accuracy is frequently low, so that first shot after reloading is likely to miss.

Read up on the pros and cons of infantry rifles chambered for a full power or intermediate rifle cartridge. The gist of it is that in any given contact a very, very very small minority of shots hit their target therefore infantry should be equipped with something that fires the smallest, lightest cartridge that does the job so that they can carry more of them.

Magazine capacity reductions are easy to circumvent (a $30 stamp set can put a "pre-ban" date on your magazines) and most of the people doing mag dumps are either not subject to those laws (cops) or have no intention of following them in the first place (criminals).

The problem with your argument is criminals get caught on "routine" violations all the time.

http://listverse.com/2013/07/15/10-criminals-caught-thanks-t...

The other problem is someone dressed and equipped like a fully armed infantryman showing up in a mall...gets noticed. You can't stealthily carry a ton of cartridges AND have them easily accessible. You'll have to put them in a backpack or the like, changing the equation.

Yes, if they play things perfectly, you will lose every time. The reality is, most of these guys are pretty average and make numerous mistakes. The guys who play it out perfectly never get caught regardless of the law. That isn't an argument we should make murder legal.

I'm not going to respond further.

'Assault rifle' is a clearly defined concept: it refers to a select-fire rifle chambered for an intermediate cartridge (the ur-examples being 7.62x39 in the first AKs and 5.56x45 in the M16) and fed from a detachable box magazine.

'Assault weapon' is a term with no military definition, but which might have a legal definition, depending on jurisdiction. In my home state, there's no such thing as an 'assault weapon,' because we have no statute defining such a thing.

Select-fire rifles are almost impossible to come by due to the '86 ban, but intermediate cartridges and detachable box magazines are common.

An earnest legislator might try saying that an assault weapon is one that's fed by a detachable box magazine and chambered in an intermediate cartridge. Then one of their constituents will see me at the range with my FAL, which is fed from a detachable box magazine, but chambered for a full-power cartridge. Why isn't that rifle - which based on its appearance is clearly the same sort of beast as an AR or AK - banned?

So the definition expands, based on cosmetic features, or naming specific models. Both of those solutions leave loopholes by their very nature; bans on pistol grips and barrel shrouds and folding stocks and bayonet lugs are solved by manufacturing functionally-identical rifles missing those features.

So perhaps we say that any rifle fed from a detachable box magazine is an assault weapon. Then the manufacturer makes a rifle with a fixed magazine, loaded with stripper clips. So we say that any rifle with a magazine capacity greater than some arbitrary number is an assault weapon - and I'll sell you a 'magazine repair kit' to increase that capacity.

Finally, the legislator says "all autoloading rifles are assault weapons," and then the Australians buy pump-action ARs instead: https://enoughgun.com/forum/download/file.php?id=1251

I don't favor legislation restricting the purchase of firearms, but I certainly see how frustrating it must be for those who do. They earnestly want to eliminate this one evil totem of violence while leaving your grandpa in possession of his deer rifle (well, most of 'em), and we always dress up things that are allowed back into those same totems.

> Yeah, let's forget the core suicidal issue and remove the tool, that will surely stop them, right?

Making it more difficult to commit suicide reduces the incidence of suicide. People who experience suicidal impulses but recover without having had the opportunity to attempt suicide (or who recover from a failed suicide attempt) are likely to seek help with either preventing the impulse returning or addressing the underlying issue that made them vulnerable.

An assault weapons ban is something that everyone agrees with, unless they know something about guns and have seen what the ban actually looks like. Once you see the list that is banned vs the list that is not banned, you realize that it usually isn't useful (at best) and is actively problematic for some people (at worst).

Its the same problem as we have with a lot of laws in the US. It sounds like a good idea, but ultimately addresses the wrong problem.

Legislators have to take what they can get -- it's the nature of politics because you have two groups who disagree, going back and forth until they reach some solution the other guy hates, but will accept.

Creating a department that has full authority to regulate a matter is the best way to get in effective laws. But then the laws get too effective and lobbyists have to then push to have their power reduced.

> I do not see how banning assault weapons is a "crap" solution. Sure, other guns may still be available but at least it's something.

This is exactly parent post's point. Something must be done, even if it is going to have little or no discernible effect on the problem.

Banning assault weapons won't stop the next lunatic from committing a mass shooting because:

A. You can easily kill dozens of people with handguns like the VT shooter did.

B. Millions of assault weapons are already in circulation. Trying to confiscate those weapons would likely cause violence.

Not to say that an assault weapons ban would not prevent some would-be shooters from getting a more powerful firearm, but it won't reduce the incidence of these shootings and you're still going to have a lot of people dead or injured if a shooter is forced to use a handgun.

And that's assuming that mass shootings are the most important problem to be solved in terms of gun violence. Mass shootings still make up something like 1 or 2 percent of all gun homicides in the US. If we really care about people being killed by gun violence, we would focus our efforts on the vast majority of gun crime that is committed by people with prior violent felony convictions with illegal firearms. We would also take serious steps towards ending the drug war and all of the violence associated with the black market for drugs.

Spending a ton of effort and political capital on getting a law passed that has very little effect on reducing gun homicides is silly. Because when a new AWB inevitably doesn't solve the problem, it's going to be all but impossible to pass another gun control law. If Hillary Clinton wins and forces through a new assault weapons ban she will have a tough time getting re-elected and Democrats will certainly lose Congress. Why not spend that political capital on something that will actually make a measurable difference.

Also keep in mind that gun violence is down dramatically[0]. So the problem isn't really that gun violence is increasing but rather public knowledge of it has.

[0]http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/8740750

Guns are often political focus because they are high profile in the media, but there are lots of "silent killers" that are responsible for orders of magnitude more deaths per year that don't get high profile press coverage (medical malpractice, alcohol-related deaths, etc.).

Politicians aren't looking out for us, they are just trying to prop themselves up.

>we cannot provide free or extremely inexpensive mental health care, or somehow get 340mil Americans not to behave like jackals and crass narcissists all the time, to actually treat each other with respect, dignity, and compassion

Not with that attitude you can't!

>I do not see how banning assault weapons is a "crap" solution.

Sometimes you can't address a problem with an easy band-aid, and pushing as hard as you can on the difficult part of the problem is the only effective option.

Why ban assault weapons (which are hardly ever used in shootings) instead of handguns (which are by far the most common type of gun used in shootings)?

>> I see this in politics a lot.

So much so, it's even called that. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician%27s_syllogism

Congratulations on the instant derail!

The "assault weapon" ban was a stupid compromise; the UK and Australia responded to mass shootings with near-total gun bans and thereby ended the phenomenon.

America is simply not serious about gun violence, because it has a substantial pro-violence constituency. The acquittal of the Malheur occupiers is just the latest sign of that.

The UK had a mass shooting back in 2010, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbria_shootings

That's one, six years ago. Compare: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/oct/...

The UK didn't really have mass shooting incidents all that frequently even before their bans. The only two I can think of are Hungerford and Dunblane, which were spaced out over nine years. Additionally, the vast majority of the incidents on that page are not mass shootings but instead the political "four people shot" == mass shooting. The two largest "mass shootings" on that list were acts of terrorism, as we saw in France terrorists don't even need firearms to kill scores of people.

> The UK didn't really have mass shooting incidents all that frequently even before their bans.

There have been major restrictions on handgun use in the UK since 1968, well before Hungerford and Dunblane.

> but instead the political "four people shot" == mass shooting.

Are you pretending to be innumerate just to make a point? Or are you expecting me to believe you honestly can't subtract the two "acts of terrorism", just count the ones with more than five people killed, and still see that it's massively more than five times the UK number?

Here we go again.