In the recent mass shootings at Gilroy, California, El Paso and Dayton a combined total of 36 people were killed and 64 injured, although not all the injuries were gunshot wounds.
As a result, there has been the usual outcry for universal background checks and a ban on assault style weapons and high-capacity magazines.
The Brady Center estimates that every day, 310 people are shot in the United States. About a third of those are killed and more than 200 are wounded by gunfire. There are about 60 suicides among those killed.
If you take away the suicides that leaves 250 people shot daily otherwise. Of, course there are also people who are shot accidentally. Brady estimates 90 are shot unintentionally. So, if you take away the suicides and accidental (unintentional) shootings, that leaves about 160 people that are intentionally shot every day in this country.
Although Brady is an anti-gun organization, there is no reason to think that its statistics are much off mark. And because they are so commonplace, the non-mass shootings receive hardly a blip in the media.
Many of the intentional shootings take place in the minority communities of such cities as Chicago, St. Louis, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Houston and other urban centers. When you take away domestic murders, that leaves us with deadly shootings committed by robbers, burglars and gangbangers, all of which belong in prison. And you can bet that whenever these shooters are caught, they will have had a lengthy arrest record.
There are about 200,000 gang members in this country and many of them are armed with pistols and a significant number with AK-47s. Every day, the gang members are shooting at each other over turf control or in retaliation for a perceived wrong or for having been shot at by a rival gang. If it were not for the fact that the gangbangers are piss-poor shots, the daily gunshot death toll would be much higher.
Former NY mayor Michael Bloomberg has been on an anti-gun crusade – he calls it gun safety – since he left office at the end of 2013. Bloomberg and Bill Clinton both claim that during the assault weapons ban, thee were fewer mass shootings than after the ban expired.
Congress enacted the 10-year Assault Weapons Ban (AWB) in 1994 In the wake of earlier mass shootings in Stockton, California and Killeen, Texas. AWB prohibited the “manufacture, transfer, and possession” of 118 firearm models and all magazines holding over 10 rounds. The law did not apply to weapons and magazines owned before the ban went into effect. When the ban took effect, there were around a million assault rifles in private citizen hands and an estimated 25 million guns were equipped with high capacity magazines. AWB was not renewed when it expired in 2004.
PolitiFact cited several studies which bring into question the effectiveness of AWB. Philip Cook at Duke University said: “Violence rates were quite volatile during that period [prior to the ban] generally for reasons that had nothing to do with gun regulation. That doesn’t mean that the ban was ineffective — only that we don’t know and probably cannot determine the answer given that the outcome of interest (mass shootings) is so rare.”
PolitiFact also reports that in a 2018 article, RAND economist Rosanna Smart reviewed two studies on the impact of the ban. She said strictly in terms of statistical methods, the results were “inconclusive.” Although one report did find that state-level bans were effective at reducing mass shooting death rates.
While Bloomberg and Clinton are probably right when they claim there were fewer mass shootings during the ban, they are nevertheless exaggerating the effectiveness of the ban.
On October 1, 2017. Stephen Paddock killed 58 people and wounded 422 concert goers at a Las Vegas outdoor music festival. Paddock had an arsenal of 14 AR-15s, all of which were equipped with bumper stocks and twelve of which had 100-round drum magazines. He had stashed the weapons in two rooms on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Hotel from which he shot at the concert goers below. It was the deadliest mass shooting committed by one gunman in the history of this country.
But the Las Vegas shooting was an anomaly. Most mass shootings result in far fewer deaths.
Assault weapon bans and universal background checks are not going to prevent some nutjob from shooting at a group of innocent people, although they may reduce the number of those shootings slightly.
What we need is criminal control, not gun control. Gun control impacts only law-abiding citizens.
If we could lock up the gang members who possess firearms there would be far, far fewer daily shootings as well as a very significant reduction in the number of the nation’s 200,000 gang members. Make no mistake about it, the gangbangers are criminals, regardless of their age.
Those 15 and 16-year-old gangbangers are dangerous criminals, not merely children in need of supervision, and they need to be locked up. One of Chicago’s most notorious gangbangers was Gakirah Barnes, a girl who made her first kill in 2011 at age 14 and is credited with up to 20 gangland deaths before she herself was gunned down at age 17.
When the gangbangers are arrested, they are usually found to have a lengthy arrest record, but if they are juveniles, they are treated with kid gloves. And unless they killed someone, the adult gangbangers are often just put on probation.
If we can get the gangbangers and other gun-toting criminals off of the streets and into the prisons where they belong, we won’t need gun control.
We need to pass a law that prohibits probation for and requires the incarceration of any gang member who is in possession of a firearm and anyone who commits a crime while armed with a gun. By locking these criminals up, we will reduce the number of daily shootings significantly. Then most shootings will result from domestic disputes.
Unfortunately, such laws will never see the light of day because of their disproportionate impact on minorities and because they would run counter to prison reform which calls for the emptying of the nation’s prisons.
California has the most gun control laws of any state, including a ban on assault weapons, but that did not prevent the Gilroy shooting. Short of disarming every private citizen, we will continue to see the occasional mass shooting by some nutjob. But without criminal control, the far larger number of 160 or so people shot every day by burglars, robbers and gangbangers will continue to plague us.
Bob Walsh says
So few people are killed with “semi-automatic assault rifles” (a meaningless phrase from a technical perspective) that there isn’t even a category for it in the uniform report system. If the mere presence of firearms caused deaths my front yard would be hip-deep in corpses. It isn’t.
This “gun control” hysteria comes essentially from two directions. One of them is people who honestly, for whatever reason, fear guns and believe that guns are the problem. They are idiots, but they really believe it. The other is people who want to control every aspect of your lives and are fully aware that armed citizens are less likely to be dependent upon the government for their personal safety. They don’t like that. “They” want “us” as dependent on the G as possible. And as unable to resist, should it become necessary, as possible.
I would refer to the Battle of Memphis, Tennessee and the Battle of Hays Pond (South Carolina, I think. Google them) for those who need relatively recent references for what happens when the defacto (Hays Pond) or dejure (Memphis) government decides to shit on the people and the people are in a position to forcefully resist.
Gun control has nothing to do with controlling guns, and has nothing to do with controlling crime. It has to do with controlling the actions of honest, law abiding citizens. Criminals are not going to obey the law. That’s why we call them criminals.
Joseph C Mannina says
Take a look at the Bonus March in Washington DC after World War 1; this is the type of thing that will happen when the people are not armed. President Hoover ordered the Army, lead by Douglas MacArthur and His Lt’s Dwight Eisenhower and George Patton to Breakup the Shanty towns that had been built near the current location of the Mall by returning Veterans of World War 1. The Veterans were there demanding to be paid the Bonus ($300.00) they were promised for their service during World War I. They were not Armed and as a result, several HUNDRED were killed.
Compare that with the Athens TN battle that took place just after the End of World War II. The Athens City and County Governments were totally CORRUPT and the returning Veterans were not going to put up with any more RIGGED Elections. They demanded a recount of the ballots and when the Officials would not comply, the Battle started. It did not last very long; when it ended, NEW Elections were held and the Old Guard went to JAIL. The NEW Election results were upheld by the State of Tennessee and a New City and County Government was formed.
Trey Rusk says
Criminal control is the answer. If you want to stop gun violence, concentrate LE efforts on the violence prone urban areas without political correctness. That means cracking down on gang homicides and black on black murders. BLM will march and politicians will scream about the official oppression of minorities but the gun violence will be deterred.
It’s not going to happen. In fact, it’s going to get worse because the cops have all but stopped being pro-active. Who can blame them? Just ask Darren Wilson, the Ferguson cop who was in fear of his life and shot Michael Brown. Darren Wilson was cleared of any wrong doing by the state and the feds. The city was afraid so they sacrificed a police officer in an attempt to stop riots. Officer Wilson quit at the request of the city. A statue was erected for the criminal Michael Brown. There have been several other instances of similar biased cases toward police officers who did their job correctly. I don’t think the police ever be effective crime fighters in urban areas again.
The sad thing is that there are good people that live in these high crime areas. The drugs and guns will continue to be smuggled in because a gang banger can stand on a corner and make $1000 a day selling weed to white kids coming in from the suburbs.
Criminal control? That’s become a joke. Crime is the urban economy.
howie katz says
UPDATE August 15, 2019
Here are two examples of criminal control, or rather the sickening absence of it
Aaron Luther, who died in a lengthy shootout with Riverside, California police and sheriff’s deputies after killing one and wounding two CHP officers has a long arrest record dating back to the late 1980s in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. According to NBC, Luther has a history of violent crime dating back at least 25 years. In the 1990s, he was sent to prison for trying to smuggle a deadly weapon into a California jail. In1994 he was convicted of second-degree murder and burglary. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison, but was paroled after 10 years. After just three years on parole, Luther was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon. He was also found guilty of domestic violence in 2013. Luther’s record also includes convictions for stalking, unlawful possession of a firearm, assault and battery, and additional domestic violence cases.
Maurice Hill, the Philadelphia shooter who wounded six cops, also has a long arrest record which began in 2001 when he was 18 and was arrested with a gun that had an altered serial number. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, he’s been arrested about a dozen times since turning 18, and convicted six times on charges that involved illegal possession of guns, drug dealing, and aggravated assault. In 2008, he was convicted of escaping, fleeing from police, and resisting arrest. Along the way, he beat criminal charges on everything from kidnapping to attempted murder. Hill was convicted of perjury in 2013 and sentenced to seven years of probation, which he was caught violating three times, twice by committing new crimes. Hill was busted again in October 2014 on charges of drug possession and false imprisonment. Hill has been in and out of prison; the longest sentence handed him came in 2010, when a federal judge gave him a 55-month term for federal firearms violations after he was caught with a Smith & Wesson .357 and later a Taurus PT .45 semiautomatic.
Both Luther and Hill should have been kept off the streets until they were so feeble that they wouldn’t be able to harm a fly. But because we have hardly any criminal control, one police officer was killed and eight others wounded by these two dirtbags.
And this is how gun control works in California which has the nation’s most restrictive gun laws, including a ban on assault weapons. Instead of keeping Luther and other gun-toting criminals locked up, the state is taking its frustration over mass shootings out on its law-abiding citizens.
Meanwhile in Philadelphia, instead of calling for changes in the law that will keep dangerous criminals locked up, city and state officials along with members of congress are demanding that assault weapons be banned. Just as in California, they are going after law-abiding citizens rather than the criminals.
Bill says
The ‘AWB” was a joke. AR’s were still sold, and still sold with standard 30 rd. magazines. The only difference was, those ban period AR’s were sold with fixed, not collapsible stocks, with no fixed foregrip, no bayonet lugs, and no flash suppressors. AK’s were still imported, but the imported guns had their bayonet lugs ground off and were sold with 10 round magazines and no flash suppressors. That’s it. Same guns, readily available, and AR and AK full sized magazines were still plentiful and sold openly and legally. AWB was a joke.
But let’s look at the “close the gun show loophole” nonsense. What this would really do is deny immigrants and people of color, people who the left tells us don’t have ID, their rights to buy guns. Since white supremacist violence is the biggest threat in America today, is this really what we want to do, deny people of color and immigrants their right to defend themselves against all those teeming hordes of violent white supremacists who are on every corner?
Closing the ‘gun show loophole’ is clearly racist and designed to disarm people of color and immigrants.