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though padlet research is no longer necessary, i highly enjoy this argument. It was well thought out and properly refutes various examples used by anti-gun activists.

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Gun Control is not a policy. It's a slogan.

Each time there's a mass shooting, Democrats and members of the media (but I repeat myself) rush to the microphones and cameras to declare that this, finally, is the proper time to push Gun Control. Gun Control, in this case, is defined as literally anything that restricts gun purchases, transfers, or ownership. It is virtually never anything that will do anything to stop mass shootings.

The argument goes something like this.

Other countries do not experience anything remotely approaching the level of mass shootings we have in the United States. Those countries have heavy gun regulations. Therefore, if we impose gun regulations in the United States, the level of mass shootings will drop.

The fallacy in this argument is that the United States has a unique philosophy, history, population, and ownership level of firearms already. That means that proposed solutions must take into account those varying factors, and deal with them head-on. But Gun Control advocates refuse to do so. Instead, they merely shout "GUN CONTROL," and then defy their opponents to speak out against the slogan. They proclaim that the vast majority of Americans want more Gun Control. But that's as empty as stating that the vast majority of Americans want government spending cuts. It's not that the devil is in the details. It's that the details are the entire matter under discussion. The question with regard to spending is: which programs would you cut? And the question with Gun Control is: which people would you prevent from getting guns, and how?

The Left rarely proposes an actual piece of legislation. That's deliberate. First off, many conservatives are in favor of certain gun control proposals - even the NRA backs certain gun control proposals, particularly with regard to fully automatic machine guns and prevention of mentally ill people from obtaining weapons.

If the Left were to propose a piece of legislation, they'd have to defend it on the merits. They wouldn't be able to posture about how "everyone but those evil Second Amendment advocates agrees!" Because not everyone would agree with their proposals. In fact, most people typically haven't. Which is why Democrats, enjoying a 60-vote majority in the Senate and a wide majority in the House from 2009-2011, passed precisely zero major pieces of gun legislation - and why when Barack Obama attempted to use the Social Security Administration to seize guns from elderly people who used a proxy for their finances, even the ACLU opposed him.

All of which means that Democratic addiction to talking about Gun Control is precisely that: addiction to talking about Gun Control. It's not an addiction to recommending anything, let alone doing anything. Gun Control is an excuse for nincompoops like Tommy Vietor to tweet nonsense like this:

It makes people on the Left feel good to spout this sort of nonsense. But it doesn't forward the debate. It's not designed to do so. In fact, it's designed to inhibit conversation and prevent change.

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Gun Control Isn't A Policy. It's An Empty Slogan Designed To Label Opponents Evil.

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Gun Control is not a policy. It's a slogan. Each time there's a mass shooting, Democrats and members of the media (but I repeat myself) rush to the microphones and cameras to declare that this, finally, is the proper time to push Gun Control.

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more red flags, this time for Sandy Hook.

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more red flags, this time for Sandy Hook.

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WEDNESDAY, Nov. 7, 2018 -- As Mark Barden let go of the hand of his young son, Daniel, and the boy boarded the bus for school on the morning of Dec. 14, 2012, he had no idea it would be the last time he would see his child alive.

Hours later, the 7-year-old lost his life in the horrific mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Twenty children and six adults were killed by a mentally disturbed 20-year-old who then killed himself.

Six years later, Barden is working to prevent future horrors like the one that claimed his son, saying such tragedies are preventable if one knows the warning signs.

His group, Sandy Hook Promise, has trained more than 3.5 million youth and adults to recognize and respond to signs that a person is at risk for harming either themselves or others.

"Through that work, we've been able to prevent numerous mass shootings and dozens of suicides," Barden said.

Barden will present his program at the American Academy of Pediatrics' annual meeting in Orlando, Fla., this week.

"Think about what happened in the tragedy in Newtown, where this individual had been giving off warning signs for over a year-and-a-half, had been planning that event for over a year-and-a-half," Barden said. "I lie awake thinking about all the ways this could have been prevented."
Know the Warning Signs
Four out of five school shooters told someone about their violent plans prior to the event, according to Sandy Hook Promise.

Red flags that someone could be planning to harm themselves or others, according to the program, include:

A strong fascination or obsession with firearms or previous mass shootings.

Excessive over-reactions to minor offenses, which can signal a lack of ability to self-regulate emotions or control anger.

Trouble with their education, including a sudden drop in grades or gestures of violence toward school.

Feelings of being picked on or persecuted by others.

Extreme feelings of isolation or withdrawal.

Bragging about access to firearms.

Making overt threats of violence.

Talking about or making plans for suicide.

Suicidal thoughts and feelings are a key part of these mass shootings, said Dr. Robert Sege, a pediatrician with the Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center, in Boston.

"Many of these mass tragedy events have a suicidal element for the perpetrator," said Sege, who co-authored the AAP's firearms policy statement. "Look out for the signs of suicide -- people who stop making plans for the future, who talk about dying, who start giving away things because they won't need them anymore. Most often people who attempt suicide have given very broad hints to people in advance."

All of these warning signs are part of a threat-assessment model originally developed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the aftermath of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, which Sandy Hook Promise has adapted for elementary schools, Barden said.
Speak Up
The signs are taught in "Say Something," a Sandy Hook Promise program for middle and high school students that focuses largely on social media, Barden said.

"We have more case studies than I'd want to admit of folks who have ended up taking their life who had been talking about it on social media and left hundreds of social media impressions that everybody in their network had seen, and didn't know what to do, or didn't think it was serious, or thought they were looking for attention and didn't take action," Barden said.

A program for younger children, "Start With Hello," discusses how to recognize loners and reach out to them.

"We teach them how to tell the difference between healthy alone time and someone who is constantly marginalized," Barden said. "We teach them how to reach out to those folks in fun and comfortable ways."

The perpetrator of the Newtown tragedy, Adam Lanza, was chronically isolated, Barden noted.

"Another thing that keeps me up at night is maybe one more conversation with someone like my little Daniel, who used to reach out to kids, could have changed that entire story," Barden said.

Children who see the warning signs are encouraged to reach out to a trusted adult, he explained.
'Red Flag' Laws Save Lives
Sege said that adults can then contact their school's security officer. They also should see if they live in a state with a "red flag law," in which police can remove firearms from a person thought to be of imminent danger to themselves or others.

"The first state to enact a red flag law was Connecticut, and they've been able to show a reduction in suicide in Connecticut," Sege said. "At several of the recent mass shootings, there have been people who said they were worried about this person and they knew they had access to military-style weapons."

Sandy Hook Promise also has started an anonymous tip line available at 1-844-5-SAYNOW or www.saysomething.net.

The tips are referred to crisis centers staffed by trained professionals, Barden said.

"They don't just throw it over the wall to law enforcement. They know how to triage information and act appropriately," he said.

"In our trainings, we acknowledge that any one of these warning signs in a random situation certainly may not be a cause for concern, but if there's anything that causes concern it's better to have an unfounded tip than the other way around," Barden said. "Less than 1 percent of the tips that go to the call center are going to be anything serious or life-threatening, but for the 1 percent that might be, it's well worth it."
More information
Visit Sandy Hook Promise for more about the programs.

Copyright © 2018 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

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Recognizing mental health red flags can help prevent school shootings

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WEDNESDAY, Nov. 7, 2018 -- As Mark Barden let go of the hand of his young son, Daniel, and the boy boarded the bus for school on the morning of Dec. 14, 2012, he had no idea it would be the last time he would see his child alive.

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how sandy hook mourners push for gun control.

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how sandy hook mourners push for gun control.

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a statement i believe about gun control advocates is that their hearts are in the right place, but their heads are not. i absolutely admire that they want to push for laws that they believe could save lives everywhere, but i do not admire the means at which they push for.

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On Wednesday, February 14, as the US Senate entered a third day of deadlocked immigration talks, Sen. Chris Murphy arrived at the Capitol to call for protections for undocumented migrants brought to the country as children. "Immigrants have always fueled America's economy," he tweeted. "Dropping a history lesson on the Senate floor at 3pm."

But moments before he approached the lectern, Murphy learned that a gunman had opened fire at a high school in Parkland, Florida. The history lesson would have to wait. "As we speak, there is a horrific scene playing out at a high school in South Florida," he said gravely as he addressed his colleagues in the Senate chamber. "Turn on your television right now. You're gonna see scenes of children running for their lives."

Murphy's jaw jutted out in anger. "We are responsible for a level of mass atrocity that happens in this country with zero parallel anywhere else," he said, his voice rising. "As a parent, it scares me to death"-he jabbed his finger into the air with each word for emphasis-"that this body doesn't take seriously the safety of my children."

In the six years since the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre shook his district and left 26 dead, the Connecticut Democrat has become the most outspoken gun control advocate in Congress. He's made dozens of floor speeches on the subject, most memorably a 15-hour filibuster after the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting that killed 49 people.

For years, his pleas have been met almost entirely with inaction, even as some polls show that up to 97 percent of Americans support expanded background checks. Republicans, unwilling to risk the wrath of the National Rifle Association, have largely refused to back any real gun safety measures. Democrats have also shied away from the issue. But after Parkland, something new began. The Marjory Stoneman Douglas survivors weren't shy about blaming Congress for the slaughter of their friends. And as gun control groups found themselves inundated with thousands of new volunteers and millions of dollars in unsolicited donations, it became clear that much of the nation agreed.

Murphy-up for reelection this year and viewed as a potential White House contender -has long toiled to make gun control a viable issue on Capitol Hill. When his efforts to court bipartisan support for background checks failed after Sandy Hook, he took a different tack, deciding it would be easier to replace his opponents than to convert them-a stance that failed to capture popular support until the #NeverAgain teens came along. I met with Murphy a few times over the summer and spoke with more than 30 activists, political operatives, and congressional colleagues. It became clear that he has thrown himself into the project of turning the "Parkland effect" into a winning issue for Democrats, with a goal of flooding Capitol Hill with gun control champions and forcing Republicans to reassess their subservience to the NRA. In short, he's trying to build a Congress that will finally do something about guns.

For decades, gun control has been viewed as a third rail for Democrats. After they championed a bipartisan federal assault weapons ban back in 1994, President Bill Clinton attributed the GOP's recapture of Congress for the first time in 40 years in part to his party's sympathies for firearm restrictions. When Al Gore lost the 2000 presidential election, pundits faulted his talk of gun control for his defeat. Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean repeated that refrain in 2004, ascribing the loss of Southern and Western votes to talk of "guns, God, and gays." And in 2006, when Democrats retook Congress with freshmen representatives, they did so partly by recruiting NRA-backed candidates and Democrats who didn't discuss gun control.

"I can't tell you how hard it is to look into the eyes of the families of those little boys and girls who were killed in Sandy Hook and tell them that almost four years later, we have done nothing. Nothing at all."

Murphy was one of the latter. He defeated Nancy Johnson, a 12-term GOP incumbent in Connecticut's 5th Congressional District, by speaking against the Iraq War, not firearms. When he ran for Senate and won in 2012-a year in which the NRA backed nearly 30 Democrats at the federal level-his campaign website stated no position on guns.

That all changed on December 14, 2012. Murphy, waiting in Bridgeport for a train to take his family to see the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, was alerted to the ghastly news from Newtown. He rushed to wait with fearful parents at the Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire & Rescue station until Gov. Dannel Malloy told them that anyone still unaccounted for was dead. It was gutting to be with them, Murphy told CNN on the five-year anniversary of the massacre: "They're my age. Their kids are my kids' ages."

"It was earth-shattering, a time capsule moment from before and after," recalls one staffer who at the time had been helping Murphy transition to the Senate. "He hadn't even gotten to his new office yet," says Christian Heyne, a lobbyist for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, who met with Murphy's staff in a dank basement room in a Senate office building. "He leaned into it, he had a lot of questions. He read every book that he could, and he was bringing the right people to the table."

The "right people" were a newly mobilized assortment of activists and politicians. Gabby Giffords-one of the 2006 gun-shy Democratic House freshmen who resigned after being seriously wounded in a Tucson, Arizona, mass shooting-consulted with Murphy as she and her husband launched a new gun safety group. Joe Manchin, the moderate Democratic senator from West Virginia, teamed up with Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey to try to expand background checks. On Valentine's Day in 2013, Shannon Watts, a mother of five who on the day after Sandy Hook founded Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, brought her budding army to Capitol Hill to lobby for the Manchin-Toomey bill. (When they got to Murphy's office, his staff gave them handmade valentines.) Meanwhile, Murphy and his Connecticut colleagues worked with the Sandy Hook families to gather support for the legislation.

But after a last-minute NRA lobbying effort killed the bill, the nascent partnership lost its footing. The new national groups turned their attention to state legislatures, where they hoped gun control might be an easier sell. "Congress would be the finale, not the curtain raiser," says John Feinblatt, the president of Everytown for Gun Safety, the organization backed by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Manchin-Toomey's failure to pass stunned Murphy. "Cowardice on the Senate floor today," the senator tweeted after the vote. And over the next few years, he publicly excoriated his colleagues when mass shootings in San Bernardino, Charleston, and the nation's capital were met with no congressional action. After the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, Murphy lost his patience. "I can't tell you how hard it is to look into the eyes of the families of those little boys and girls who were killed in Sandy Hook and tell them that almost four years later, we have done nothing. Nothing at all," he said as he took the Senate floor. "I am at my wit's end."

"Here is this incredibly young, fresh, dynamic, committed person saying, 'Screw it. We're not doing what we need to do. And I'm not going to play by the rules because people are dying.'"

Thus began Murphy's viral filibuster, during which he and other Democrats held up pictures of the Newtown and Orlando victims. He drew the ire of the NRA, which claimed he'd gotten certain facts wrong, and the admiration of Hillary Clinton, who gave him a prime-time spot at the Democratic National Convention that summer. He held the floor for nearly 15 hours in an audacious display that upset Senate norms and astonished his colleagues. The Senate's history is rife with filibusters that have stood in the way of a vote, but Murphy's performance was one of the few conducted to force one-on the evergreen demand to expand background checks, and to ban gun sales to suspected terrorists. When a vote seemed likely, Murphy concluded his marathon speech with the heartbreaking recollection of Anne Marie Murphy, a classroom aide who died at Sandy Hook trying to shield six-year-old Dylan Hockley from the gunman. "It doesn't take courage to stand here on the floor of the United States Senate for two hours or six hours or 14 hours," Murphy said. "It takes courage to look into the eye of a shooter and instead of running, wrapping your arms around a six-year-old boy and accepting death." The Senate voted down both issues.

After that, Murphy became the de facto captain of the movement on Capitol Hill. "The biggest reason Chris emerged as the leader is because he took a risk," says Peter Ambler, a former Giffords congressional aide who now runs her gun control group. "Here is this incredibly young, fresh, dynamic, committed person saying, 'Screw it. We're not doing what we need to do. And I'm not going to play by the rules because people are dying.'"

The filibuster solidified Murphy's leadership and strategy. Instead of caving to criticism for politicizing tragedies, Shannon Watts says, "our feeling was: Really, the best time to talk about a shooting was right after it happened." Murphy was a good person to have on point. "He's always been marvelously articulate," says George Jepsen, the outgoing Connecticut attorney general who gave Murphy one of his first jobs in politics after college. "He can assimilate large amounts of information and talk knowledgeably about complex issues that make them accessible to the average voter." Activists say they count on his office to frame their work in a way that satisfies both the movement and congressional colleagues. "There are a lot of different players in the movement," says Kris Brown, co-president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "They've been really helpful in trying to focus strategically."

When Fred Guttenberg, who lost his daughter Jaime in the Parkland shooting, ran into Murphy in a Senate building, the senator "asked me who I'd been meeting with," Guttenberg says. Guttenberg had been having an easier time gaining traction with Democrats like Florida Sen. Bill Nelson and Rep. Ted Deutch than with Republicans like Sen. Marco Rubio. "He nicely and gently said, 'Be careful,'" Guttenberg recalls. Attempts to change Republican minds, Murphy told him, might leave Guttenberg disappointed. "He was trying to say to me, 'People are who they are. Don't lose too much sleep over trying to redirect them the way you want them to go. There are plenty of people in this town who support you. Go and build from there.'"

Murphy had also mastered social media to challenge the status quo on the politics of guns. "Guns drove Democratic and Republican turnout EQUALLY, contrary to the conventional wisdom that guns are a driver of Republican turnout only," he tweeted the day after Democrat Ralph Northam-who campaigned on requiring universal background checks and limiting handgun purchases-won the 2017 Virginia gubernatorial race.

But if Murphy was aggressive on social media, the Parkland survivors have been ferocious. "@realDonaldTrump you're a hypocrite that is owned by the NRA please prove me wrong," David Hogg, a Stoneman Douglas senior, tweeted weeks after the shooting. The nation watched as the teens turned their grief into passionate organizing. Their rallying cries to "vote them out" aligned with the conclusion Murphy reached after Manchin-Toomey failed: Ambitious gun control aims had little chance in a Congress under the sway of the NRA. For the Parkland activists, that meant it was time for voter registration and education efforts. For Murphy, it meant more Democrats were needed in office.

"We've got to narrow our focus to a half a dozen or a dozen races where we think the issue of background checks can be a decisive issue."

Less than two weeks after Parkland, Murphy convened Democratic lawmakers and major gun safety groups to catalyze change. The conversation took place at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee headquarters and included Murphy's Connecticut colleague, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, as well as California Sens. Kamala Harris and Dianne Feinstein and Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who as head of the DSCC was in charge of electing Democrats to the Senate. A number of House members also participated, including Rep. Deutch of Florida, a new member of what Murphy calls the "macabre club" of lawmakers whose constituents have experienced mass shootings. Representatives from Brady, Everytown, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, and Giffords' group, which approach the issue from different angles, attended, too.

Murphy and his colleagues wanted the gun groups to follow the Parkland teens' lead by prioritizing the midterms and not spending their newly acquired millions on state ballot initiatives, as they'd done in the 2016 cycle. "We've got to narrow our focus to a half a dozen or a dozen races where we think the issue of background checks can be a decisive issue," Murphy explained later, "which means Bloomberg and Giffords and Brady working together as much as possible."

That hasn't entirely happened. Both Giffords and Everytown aim to flip the House, but they've also thrown support behind several Republicans with gun control records that are mixed at best. Two years ago, Giffords backed Toomey in his tight reelection battle, a reward for his work on the ill-fated background-check bill after Sandy Hook.

Murphy may also dream of turning gun control into a bipartisan issue, but he has a different idea of how to do it. Where Giffords and Everytown offer carrots to inspire Republicans to sign on to modest gun control measures, Murphy prefers the stick. "If Republicans get wiped out in 2018, guns has gotta be part of their postmortem," he says. "If they get wiped, they will look at the swing districts they lost and see their fealty to the NRA as a major liability. My hope is that in 2019, a handful of Republicans say to themselves, 'If we want to survive 2020, we have to get rid of a couple of our big issue liabilities.'" So far, most Republicans are sticking to their guns, and the NRA has spent more than $2 million on the midterms to make sure they do. But Democrats seem to be getting another message-just three have received financial backing from the NRA, an almost 90 percent decline from six years ago. And for the first time since 2012, pro-gun-control election ads outnumber ads touting gun rights, according to a .

Murphy has been most encouraged by the sustained energy of the #NeverAgain teens, who spent their summer rallying massive crowds in dozens of cities on their "Road to Change" tour, generating the fanfare necessary to maintain the national media's attention. The finale was in Newtown in early August, where, under an unrelenting drizzle, hundreds gathered to rally for gun safety and register voters. Murphy sneaked backstage to offer hugs, take selfies, and reassure the young activists about their speeches.

I asked Murphy what it was like to watch an event of this scale unfold in the town where so many people had for so long sought federal action to protect other families from the grief they had endured. "This is actually pretty amazing," he told me, beaming as he surveyed the crowd, some of whom were wearing orange, the color of the gun violence prevention movement. "There's nothing like watching our movement get stronger than the gun lobby in real time. This couldn't have existed two years ago. It certainly couldn't have existed six years ago. It's pretty wild."

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Related

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The senator from Sandy Hook wants to make gun control a winning issue for Democrats

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On Wednesday, February 14, as the US Senate entered a third day of deadlocked immigration talks, Sen. Chris Murphy arrived at the Capitol to call for protections for undocumented migrants brought to the country as children. "Immigrants have always fueled America's economy," he tweeted. "Dropping a history lesson on the Senate floor at 3pm."

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how gun control would not have stopped the sandy hook shooter, who killed 26.

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how gun control would not have stopped the sandy hook shooter, who killed 26.

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lanza obtained the weapons from his mother, a legal adult. he stole them from her, and killed her. his mother (a legal adult) legally obtained legal weapons. her weapons were stolen

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In the immediate aftermath of this most recent shooting - like the ones in Aurora, at Virginia Tech, at Columbine High School - we came together in grief and asked each other how this could have happened. In conversations online and in my living room, by phone or by tweet, my friends demanded to know why this happened. The conversation turned inevitably, then divisively, to gun control.

All day yesterday, was trending on Twitter, often followed by the words "ban" and "control." Following White House Press Secretary Jay Carney's statement that "today is not the day" for a discussion of gun policies, a petition to "immediately address the issue of gun control" was created on the White House website. Within hours, it reached its goal of 25,000 (at the time of this writing, that number has reached 80,393 signatures). And politicians on both sides of the fence have upped the rhetoric.

An average of 80 people die from gun shots every day in America (including from suicides). But as an overall percentage, this number has actually been decreasing since the late 1970s. Meanwhile, perhaps surprisingly, the number of guns in America, is actually rising from around 250 million in 2000 to over 300 million today.

Mass shootings are becoming more and more common. According to a Mother Jones investigation, of the 12 deadliest shootings EVER to take place in American history, six have happened in the last six years. Most of these killers, Mother Jones reported, obtained their guns legally.

But statistics like these don't tell the whole story. In general, gun violence is decreasing, even as the states roll back their gun control laws.

Just hours before the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, Michigan's legislature approved guns in school. Kansas already has such a law. In March, Colorado joined the ranks of Oregon, Mississippi, Wisconsin and Utah when its supreme court ruled that concealed weapons were permitted on college campuses.

At least six states - Arizona, Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Ohio - allow guns in bars. Some of these states have restrictions to promote public safety. In Arizona, for example, a bar can choose to prohibit guns, but only by posting a sign that meets certain restrictions. It must: a) be next to the liquor license, b) show a firearm inside a red circle with a diagonal red line through it, and c) say "no firearms allowed pursuant to A.R.S. Section 4-229."

The guns that Adam Lanza used - two semiautomatic handguns and a semiautomatic rifle - were purchased legally and registered to his mother. But in Connecticut, the gun control laws already made his possession of any guns illegal.

According to ABC's Z. Bryon Wolf, Connecticut has one of the strictest gun control laws in the U.S. Carrying a gun onto school property is a felony there, with exceptions if the school officials gave their approval, or if a gun owner has permission to "traverse" school ground with their unloaded gun for "lawful purposes" like hunting. Clearly, that did not stop Lanza.

Connecticut law prohibits anyone under the age of 21 from owning a gun; Lanza was 20 years old. Connecticut also has a "safe storage" provision that makes it a crime if a gun is accessible to a minor; Lanza was not a minor. Rifles and shotguns can be purchased without a permit, after a two-week waiting period. Handguns, on the other hand, require a permit before either purchasing or carrying them.

But none of the restrictions applied; the guns were not Lanza's guns. Would stronger gun laws have stopped Lanza from killing his victims? Probably not; under Connecticut's gun laws, it was already illegal for him to possess a firearm.

You've probably read about the man who attacked over 20 children outside another elementary school in a Chinese village a world away from Connecticut. Unlike the attack in Newtown, there was not a single fatality; the man in China was armed with only a knife.

It just goes to show that someone who wants to kill innocents will try to do so. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't make it as hard as possible to succeed.

Already, Congress is receiving pressure to discuss stronger, new legislation. Exactly one month before Adam Lanza killed 26 people, the Congressional Research Service published a on gun control legislation. The author, a crime policy specialist who anticipated increased debate in the near future, wrote:

"Would restrictions stop attacks on public figures or thwart deranged persons or terrorists? Would household, street corner, and schoolyard disputes are less lethal if firearms were more difficult and expensive to acquire? Would more restrictive gun control policies have the unintended effect of impairing citizens' means of self-defense?"

Lanza stole his guns from his mother; the guns laws already in place did not stop him. It would be easy to simply argue that, given these facts, gun control laws make no difference against violence. But guns that can cut through three people at a time, assault weapons, semi-automatic guns should not have been so readily available, whether legally or by theft. They are not necessary for the protection of a well-off Connecticut suburb. This, Jay Carney, is a conversation that should begin today.

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Adam Lanza Wouldn't Have Been Stopped by Stricter Gun Control Laws

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In the immediate aftermath of this most recent shooting - like the ones in Aurora, at Virginia Tech, at Columbine High School - we came together in grief and asked each other how this could have happened. In conversations online and in my living room, by phone or by tweet, my friends demanded to know why this happened.

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Friday was a day of horror, heartbreak, and prayer. Despite this, some of our progressive brethren couldn't resist using the tragedy to make a case for risking lives by preventing families a means of self-protection via their Second Amendment rights. Let us have a frank discussion: Progressives believe that our Second Amendment rights are what perpetuated the horrific massacre in Sandy Hook. They believe that if firearm ownership was illegal then Adam Lanza wouldn't have murdered. They say that Americans shouldn't be able to own "assault weapons," as they call them. Where have these mass tragedies occurred? Virginia Tech. Aurora, Colorado. Schools, the majority of them. What do these locations have in common? They are designated "gun-free" zones. Are progressives unable to recognize that their gun control was already in place? Guns were already forbidden? The only solution left is "confiscation," which goes beyond what they imply by "control." I would like to hear it explained how a gun-free school zone, in a state with some of the most stringent gun control laws in the country, would have prevented the actions of a man whose intent was not following the law that day? From Glenn Reynolds in USA Today:

One of the interesting characteristics of mass shootings is that they generally occur in places where firearms are banned: malls, schools, etc. That was the finding of a famous 1999 study by John Lott of the University of Maryland and William Landes of the University of Chicago, and it appears to have been borne out by experience since then as well.

What did recent shooters like Adam Lanza, Jared Lee Loughner, and James Holmes have in common? They were disturbed young men that no law could deter from their intended destruction. Why were the warning signs ignored? All of these men were clearly troubled, all three were on medication. Loughner's warning signs went ignored. We don't yet know if Lanza's family knew he was experiencing problems or if they witnessed warning signs. Holmes was severely medicated and apparently abused his regimen. Lanza could not have legally obtained the firearms he used because it is illegal in Connecticut to purchase or possess a firearm under the age of twenty-one. Lanza was twenty. You must have a permit to purchase and carry a handgun in CT and pass a background check to merit a handgun eligibility certificate. He stole his mother's firearms. That is not a failure of gun laws, it is a failure of personal responsibility. What will more, redundant laws do when the laws already in effect fail to stop a criminal-who, by the very definition of the word, has no intention of following the law anyway? More laws for criminals to not follow? Chicago's homicides have exceed 436 this year, beating last year's figures. Pretty high for a state which previously banned guns, right? I'd like for the left to explain how it is people are dying from gun shots in Chicago when the city explicitly banned them? (The ban was overturned by a court of appeals this week but has not yet been implemented; the city has 180 days from the ruling to apply). Does the left expect criminals and mad men who already don't follow the laws on the books to suddenly become law-abiding citizens because progressives pass new anti-gun laws? I would like to know where the absence of outrage is from the left: many Sandy Hooks take place every month in Chicago, the progressive model for gun control. Can the left explain how responsible practitioners of the Second Amendment are liable for the warning signs missed by Lanza's family and professionals around him? Is the left arguing that Adam Lanza wouldn't have shot innocents had he no mental issues? A law-abiding citizen plus a firearm does not a mad gunman make. Sometimes evil doesn't even need firearms. Sometimes it's textbook terrorism. And what of the argument from the left that the protection should be left to the police? Unfortunately, the Supreme Court disagrees with you. Castle Rock vs Gonzales was a case involving a mother who sued Castle Rock, Colorado and a number of police officers for failing to protect her and her children from her estranged husband:

... the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that Gonzales had no substantive due process claim, but reversed with regard to the procedural due process claim. The court found that mandatory language in the Colorado statute regarding restraining orders created an entitlement for Gonzales to receive protective services from the police, and that she stated a claim for deprivation of procedural due process because of the failure of the police officers to arrest, or even to attempt to arrest, her husband pursuant to the order.

The Supreme Court ruled against Gonzales 7-2. If an intruder has broken into your home are you going to pray that they leave your family alone and simply call 9-1-1 with the hopes that law enforcement will save you? How long will you have before police arrive at your home, office, wherever? In Atlanta, it's 11 minutes. Nine minutes in Nashville. Quite a lot can happen in that span of time. And we know from the Supreme Court ruling that there isn't a legal obligation for anyone else to protect your life. Are you OK with those odds? You may be, but I'm not, and I will resist the urge of anyone whose goal is to erode my right to protect myself and my family. I am not willing to disarm the helpless and punish those who are law-abiding. They are the ones who fall victim to those who chose to flout the law. Guns are neither good nor bad. Motive is. Intent is. Character is. Inanimate objects have no such qualities. Let's not risk more lives by pretending that "gun control" works. Some thoughts:

Between 2008 and 2009, the FBI's preliminary numbers indicate that murders fell nationally by 10 percent and by about 8 percent in cities that have between 500,000 and 999,999 people. Washington's population is about 590,000. During that same period of time, murders in the District fell by an astounding 25 percent, dropping from 186 to 140. The city only started allowing its citizens to own handguns for defense again in late 2008.

A three-year prison term for violating a gun-free zone represents a real penalty for a law-abiding citizen. Adding three years to a criminal's sentence when he is probably already going to face multiple death penalties or life sentences for a murderous rampage is probably not going to be the penalty that stops the criminal from committing his crime. [...] Examining all the multiple-victim public shootings in the United States from 1977 to 1999 shows that on average, states that adopt right-to-carry laws experience a 60% drop in the rates at which the attacks occur, and a 78% drop in the rates at which people are killed or injured from such attacks.

Many have argued that it is the increased availability of ﬁrearms that has led to increased gun homicides, that the use of guns in the commission of violent crimes increases the likelihood of injury and lethality, or that decreased availability reduces homicide. Although many of these positions seem intuitively obvious and have shaped arguments for increased control and restrictions on ﬁrearm availability and access, the overall prevalence of handgun use in the commission of all violent crimes is relatively low. A handgun was used in approximately 9 percent of all violent offenses.

The NSC estimates that in 1995, firearm accidents accounted for 1.5% of fatal accidents. Larger percentages of fatal accidents were accounted for by motor vehicle accidents (47%), falls (13.5%), poisonings (11.4%), drowning (4.8%), fires (4.4%), and choking on an ingested object (3.0%).

The Florida Model [my emphasis]:

"Violent crime rates are highest overall in states with laws severely limiting or prohibiting the carrying of concealed firearms for self-defense". (FBI Uniform Crime Reports, 1992) The total Violent Crime Rate is 26% higher in the restrictive states (798.3 per 100,000 pop.) than in the less restrictive states (631.6 per 100,000). The Homicide Rate is 49% higher in the restrictive states (10.1 per 100,000) than in the states with less restrictive CCW laws (6.8 per 100,000). The Robbery Rate is 58% higher in the restrictive states (289.7 per 100,000) than in the less restrictive states (183.1 per 100,000). The Aggravated Assault Rate is 15% higher in the restrictive states (455.9 per 100,000) than in the less restrictive states (398.3 per 100,000). Using FBI data (1992), homicide trends in the 17 states with less restrictive CCW laws compare favorably against national trends, and almost all CCW permittees are law-abiding. Since adopting CCW (1987), Florida's homicide rate has fallen 21% while the U.S. rate has risen 12%. From start-up 10/1/87 - 2/28/94 (over 6 years) Florida issued 204,108 permits; only 17 (0.008%) were revoked because permittees later committed crimes (not necessarily violent) in which guns were present (not necessarily used). Of 14,000 CCW licensees in Oregon, only 4 (0.03%) were convicted of the criminal (not necessarily violent) use or possession of a firearm. Americans use firearms for self-defense more than 2.1 million times annually. By contrast, there are about 579,000 violent crimes committed annually with firearms of all types. Seventy percent of violent crimes are committed by 7% of criminals, including repeat offenders, many of whom the courts place on probation after conviction, and felons that are paroled before serving their full time behind bars. Two-thirds of self-protective firearms uses are with handguns. 99.9% of self-defense firearms uses do not result in fatal shootings of criminals, an important factor ignored in certain "studies" that are used to claim that guns are more often misused than used for self-protection.

Also: " Confirming: More Guns, Less Crime" " What Gun Controllers Don't Want You to Know" Additional gun control facts We hear the sad statistics, but what about the good ones? The ones where intruders are fended off by responsible gun owners? Woman Shoots Intruder Trying To Break In Woman Shoots at 2 Intruders; 1 Dead: Police Teen Mom Shoots Intruder to Protect Self And 3-Month-Old Woman Shoots At Two Intruders Breaking Into Her Home 12 Year-Old Shoots Intruder During Home Invasion Clackamas Mall Shooter Was Confonted By Concealed Carrier Woman Shoots Intruder Trying To Attack Her And Her Daughters Atlanta Grandmother Shoots Burglar Pistol-Carrying Woman Saves Shop From Gunman Concealed Carry Senior Citizen Fends Off Robbers Here is one of many repositories full of news stories detailing how firearms save lives. Remember what I said about police wait times? This woman was on the phone for ten minutes. She had to pull the trigger when the intruder broke into her home after her. The woman is upset after firing because she fears she may have hurt him-even though she feared for her life. That's compassion. Does that sound like the caricature of an out-of-control, gun wielding "RWNJ" to you? I'll also add this: it would be something if the people who cared about the children senselessly lost in the Sandy Hook massacre were as equally opposed to the senseless slaughter of innocent life that takes place every day in abortion clinics around the country. Gun control won't solve a massive erosion of values. We need soul control. We need values control. Lastly, let's compare quotes.

"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty. So let's not have any native militia or native police. German troops alone will bear the sole responsibility for the maintenance of law and order throughout the occupied Russian territories, and a system of military strong-points must be evolved to cover the entire occupied country." - Adolf Hitler

Additionally: Gun laws in Nazi Germany.

''What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?'' - Thomas Jefferson

''Congress by the power of taxation, by that of raising an army, and by their control over the militia, have the sword in one hand and the purse in the other. Shall we be safe without either? Let him candidly tell me, where and when did freedom exist, when the sword and purse were given up from the people?'' - Patrick Henry

While praying for the families who lost these precious innocents, it is important that we do not double-down on senselessness. No more tragedies.

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Gun Control Isn't The Answer. Here's Why

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Friday was a day of horror, heartbreak, and prayer. Despite this, some of our progressive brethren couldn't resist using the tragedy to make a case for risking lives by preventing families a means of self-protection via their Second Amendment rights.

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this video may be seen as controversial to some. some may say the student portrayed in this video was just your average student, with an interest in guns. however, it is strange he was reading the magazine in school and watching these videos on school, and especially strange he was making gun signs at his teacher.

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Sandy Hook Promise: Gun violence warning signs

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authorities brushed cruz off as your average depressed teenager. watch this and be amazed.

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Parkland, Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz recorded a trio of chilling cell phone videos sometime before the massacre, detailing the bloodshed he was about to unleash.

"My name is Nik and I'm going to be the next school shooter of 2018," Cruz says calmly in one of the undated videos, released Wednesday by the Broward State Attorney's Office. "My goal is at least 20 people with an AR-15. ... Location is [Marjory] Stoneman Douglas [High School] in Parkland, Florida."

"You're all going to die," he added, mimicking the sounds of gunshots.

Armed with that AR-15-style assault rifle, Cruz stormed into his former high school on Valentine's Day and carved a path of carnage through the halls, killing 17 students and staff, and wounding another 17.

He evaded cops for about an hour after the spree, but was eventually nabbed and has confessed to the attack.

His cell phone was confiscated during the arrest, and the clips it contained made public on Wednesday.

As the prosecutor's office assembles its case against the 19-year-old mass murderer, the disturbing videos may help confirm a crucial element: premeditation.

"Here's the plan. I'm going to take Uber in the afternoon before 2:40 p.m.," Cruz rambles in one clip, apparently seated on a bench. "From there, I'll go onto the school campus, walk up the stairs, load my bags, and get my AR and shooting people at the main courtyard and people will die."

Cruz indeed arrived at the school in an Uber, and opened fire just after 2:20 p.m.

"It shows premeditation," Peggy Brill, former head of the Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office, told The Miami Herald. "It wasn't a spur of the moment decision to shoot."

Cruz faces 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder in a case that gripped the nation and gave renewed fire to the gun control debate.

Cruz's wording in another clip seems to suggest it may have been filmed the day of the massacre.

"Today is the day, the day it all begins," he said. "All the kids in the school will run in fear and hide. From the wrath of my power, they will know who I am."

Cruz's haunting words paint a portrait of a rage-filled teen lashing out after a life of "seclusion and solitude."

"I hate everyone and everything," he said. "With the power of my AR, you will all know who I am."

Cruz ended the clip by proclaiming his love for a woman he identified only by her first name - and seemingly indicating that he didn't expect to survive the rampage.

"My love for you, Angie, will never go away," he said. "I hope to see you in the afterlife."

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'You're all going to die': Chilling videos show Nikolas Cruz plotting attack

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In chilling cellphone videos released Wednesday, the suspect in February's massacre at a Florida high school announcing his intention to become the next school shooter, aiming to kill at least 20 people and saying "you're all going to die ... can't wait."

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these were the red flags of the parkland killer that were reported and ignored. maybe if authorities had opened their eyes and paid attention to what was happening, this would never have happened.

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Friends, family and neighbors were worried about Nikolas Cruz. So were social workers, teachers and sheriff's deputies in two counties.

As classes at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School resumed two weeks after the shooting rampage that left 17 people dead, it is increasingly clear that Cruz, the alleged gunman, was deeply troubled.

The 19-year-old was the subject of dozens of 911 calls and at least two separate tips to the FBI. He also came to the attention of the Florida Department of Children and Families. Despite warning signs stretching back over a decade, no one intervened to stop the Valentine's Day shootings.
Many calls to the police
Cruz and his younger brother were adopted by Roger and Lynda Cruz. The family bought a sprawling house in the affluent Fort Lauderdale suburb of Parkland, Fla., in 1996. Roger, the patriarch, died when the boys were young, leaving Lynda to raise the children on her own.

When Cruz was just 10 years old, his mother called the police to the house. That call in 2008 was the first of dozens of times over the next decade she would summon law enforcement, often for help keeping her sons under control.

Sheriff's deputies were called to break up fights between Cruz and his brother. Neighbors in their community recall seeing squad cars in their driveway frequently.

At first, the problems seemed minor.

In November 2008, according to a list of service calls to the family residence released last week by the Broward Sheriff's Office, deputies responded to a report of Cruz "throwing a rock back at other juvenile."

By 2013, according to that list, the calls to the deputies began detailing more violence. In November of that year, Lynda said she was thrown against a wall because she took away an Xbox gaming system. In November 2014, deputies report Cruz used a BB gun to shoot a chicken.

By early 2016, deputies were called after a neighbor's son saw a disturbing Instagram post that seemed to suggest Cruz "planned to shoot up the school." At the time, deputies concluded that Cruz owned knives and a BB gun. They passed along that information to a school resource officerat Stoneman Douglas, but it is not clear whether any other steps were taken.

It is one of several incidents now under further investigation by the sheriff's office.

Of the 23 incidents deputies responded to at the Cruz residence, 18 of them involved Nikolas Cruz, according to the sheriff's office. The office says that "none appeared arrestable under Florida law."

At some point, money became a problem for the Cruz family. Lynda sold their Parkland home in early 2017 in a short sale.

"I saw Nikolas, and I said are you moving?" said Helen Pasciolla, a neighbor who lived across the street from the family. "And he said, 'We can't afford to live here anymore.' "

In November, Lynda died of complications from the flu. Cruz went to live briefly with a family friend, Roxanne Deschamps, outside Palm Beach, Fla.

But that situation did not work out well.

In 911 tapes released last week by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, Cruz said he got in a fight with Deschamps' son. And he talked about his mother's death.

"The thing is, I lost my mother a couple days ago. So like, I'm dealing with a bunch of things right now," Cruz said. "I kind of got mad. And I started punching walls and stuff and a kid came at me and threw me on the ground. And he kicked me out of the house."

In a separate call to 911, Deschamps told the dispatcher that she was afraid Cruz would come back to the house with a gun and that he demonstrated violent behavior in the past.

"He put the gun on the head of his brother before. So, it's not the first time. And he did that to his mom. It's not the first time he's put a gun on somebody's head," Deschamps said on the 911 recordings.

No arrests were made, according to the police report. A sheriff's deputy picked Cruz up from a nearby park and returned him to the Deschamps home.
Behavioral problems were no secret
Cruz attended Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School for a while but was expelled for "disciplinary reasons," according to Broward County Public Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie.

The Florida Department of Children and Familiesbecame involved with Cruz in late 2016 after he began cutting himself and posting images of the self-harm on Snapchat.

According to a report produced by DCF, Cruz began harming himself after a relationship ended. The report also details a range of conditions with which Cruz was diagnosed, including depression.

Ultimately, it concluded that he was "not a risk to harm himself or others."

In the aftermath of the shooting, students and faculty at Stoneman Douglas described Cruz as a loner.

Those who knew him and considered him a friend, however, were caught off guard that he could allegedly carry out such a gruesome deed.

"I can't wrap my head around it," student Ethan Trieu said. "You know, we would just talk to each other like any other friend, and I know some other people he'd talk to just fine also. And, I don't know, just seeing his name is just weird. I don't know."
So many warning signs
In addition to reports made to both the Broward and Palm Beach sheriff's offices, the FBI was also notified about Cruz.

The first tip came in September when a Mississippi bail bondsman, who also makes YouTube videos, alerted the FBI that someone left a disturbing message in the comments section of a video that read: "Im going to be a professional school shooter."

The bail bondsman, Ben Bennight, told NPR in February that he reported the comment as spam and alerted the FBI.

"I think that any responsible and mentally sound human being would take a comment like that seriously whether the person on the other end meant it or not," Bennight said.

The FBI visited the next day, but Bennight told investigators he didn't have anything to add.

The bureau received a second tip on Jan. 5, weeks before Cruz allegedly carried out the shooting at Stoneman Douglas. The caller, who the FBI said was a person close to the suspect, warned that Cruz had a "desire to kill people" and worried about "the potential of him conducting a school shooting."

Days after the shooting, the FBI saidthat "protocols were not followed" and that information should have been forwarded to the Miami field office.

Gov. Rick Scott has called on the bureau's director to resign. Over the weekend, the governor - at the urging of some state lawmakers - directed the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate local authorities' response to the Parkland shooting.

Additionally, it came to light in the days following the shooting that the school resource officer, who was an armed sheriff's deputy, did not enter the school building where the shooting took place. The officer has since resigned.

Broward Sheriff Scott Israel is investigating allegations that other deputies did not try to confront the shooter as well.

State Republicans, led by the speaker of theFlorida House, are calling on the governor to suspend Israel for what they call "malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty [or] incompetence."

Israel has rejected calls to resign.

This week, lawmakers in Florida - a state that has had a history of expanding gun rights - are taking up legislation that would ban bump stocks and raise the minimum age to purchase a rifle from 18 to 21. Another provision being considered would allow law enforcement to temporarily confiscate firearms from owners if they are deemed a threat to themselves or others.

Scott urged lawmakers to get a bill to his desk before the legislative session ends in early March.

Cruz was arrested the same day as the shooting. He has been ordered held without bond and faces 17 charges of premeditated murder.

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Parkland Shooting Suspect: A Story Of Red Flags, Ignored

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Friends, family and neighbors were worried about Nikolas Cruz. So were social workers, teachers and sheriff's deputies in two counties. As classes at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School resumed two weeks after the shooting rampage that left 17 people dead, it is increasingly clear that Cruz, the alleged gunman, was deeply troubled.

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some of these examples were interesting and some were not. for example, the example of being a loner and also possessing firearms was a tad strange. maybe this individual is just shy but enjoys his arms, and possesses no intention to harm. however, if he is a threat, these are good examples.

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this shows the support for various methods of gun control amongst both Republican and Democratic parties.

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This shows how eliminating the right to own guns will harm American citizens, and how gu

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WESTCHESTER COUNTY, N.Y. -- Charles Augusto's business had been a repeat target for violent criminals.

In 2009, four gunmen burst into Kaplan Brothers Blue Flame Corp. in Harlem, demanding cash and threatening and pistol-whipping an employee. The brazen daytime holdup mirrored a robbery at the commercial oven dealer 20 years earlier, which itself was followed by several muggings of employees off-site as they made deliveries and dropped off bank deposits.

But this time, Augusto, a 75-year-old Irvington resident, wasn't "defenseless." Fearing for his and his employee's lives, he grabbed a 12-gauge shotgun he purchased after the first robbery and fired on the gunmen, killing two and injuring two others.

"Either I'm going to kill them or they're going to kill me," Augusto recalled recently, sitting in his hilltop home near Irvington High School. "I didn't like doing that. I didn't have any choice."

By one government estimate, Americans use guns to defend themselves or thwart crimes hundreds of times a day. As gun owners and pro-gun advocacy groups say new gun-control laws in New York will swing the advantage to lawbreakers, others question whether gun ownership is an effective way for most people to protect themselves.

Alfred Grimaldi, a National Rifle Association-certified firearms instructor, said new state restrictions -- from making already stringent background checks more involved to reducing the number of bullets a gun clip can hold -- would make it tougher for individuals and business owners like Augusto to defend themselves. He doesn't much care for President Barack Obama's gun-control proposals, either.

"You can pass all the laws you want, but (civilians) are going to be at a disadvantage," Grimaldi said. "People who are inclined to violence are not going to obey a law just because you pass it."

Alfred Grimaldi of Ossining, N.Y., stands next to his firearms safe at his home on Feb. 14, 2013. He is a pro-gun advocate and a firearms instructor who believes the new gun laws will make the public less safe. (Photo: Joe Larese, The Westchester County, N.Y., Journal News)

Leah Gunn Barrett, a board member and incoming executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, said the right to self-defense must be balanced with public safety. All gun restrictions aim to track and control the flow of weapons, since even guns purchased legally can end up being used in crimes, such as the mass murder in Newtown, Conn., in December.

"With rights come responsibilities," Barrett said. "We don't want our streets, our neighborhoods, our malls, our schools turning into battlefields."

The debate goes to the heart of the Second Amendment, which guarantees an individual's right to bear arms, and whether citizens should depend on themselves or police for protection.

"The evidence doesn't indicate that having a gun is that protective. It probably makes your house less safe," said David Hemenway, a professor of health policy at Harvard School of Public Health who has studied the defensive use of guns for decades. "There is virtually no evidence that a gun is better protection than running away, calling police or using a baseball bat."

"Virtually no evidence" may be a bit strong. Gary Kleck, a criminology professor at Florida State University whose gun-use surveys are often cited by pro-gun groups, said data from the federal National Crime Victimization Survey found that individuals with guns are much less likely to be injured or suffer a loss during a robbery or assault.

"With rights come responsibilities. We don't want our streets, our neighborhoods, our malls, our schools turning into battlefields"
Leah Gunn Barrett, executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence

"With rights come responsibilities. We don't want our streets, our neighborhoods, our malls, our schools turning into battlefields"
Leah Gunn Barrett, executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence
Though 30.2 percent of all individuals involved in a robbery between 1992 and 2001 were injured, only 12.8 percent of victims possessing a firearm suffered an injury, according to a 2004 report by the Committee on Law and Justice, which reviewed Kleck's analysis. For assaults, the injury figures are 57 percent versus 28 percent for all incidents and firearms incidents, respectively.

"Tough Targets," a 2012 paper by the libertarian Cato Institute, highlighted hundreds of news reports nationwide where armed citizens thwarted criminals and determined that police departments underreport defensive gun uses because cases involving justifiable weapons use often are dropped. Kleck estimates defensive-gun-use incidents to be as high as 2.5 million a year, though the federal crime survey puts the figure just above 100,000.

"Guns in the hands of non-criminals is a social benefit," Kleck said.

Hemenway's research, including the 2000 survey "Gun use in the United States: results from two national surveys," suggests that individuals tend to overstate defensive gun uses, wrongly classifying arguments that escalate into physical altercations as self-defense. Judges who reviewed the survey results for the study's authors determined that at least half of reported defensive-use cases were probably illegal, though Hemenway and his researchers acknowledged the small sample size in the study and that they used only five judges from three states.

The issue of using guns for self-defense comes to the fore as more New Yorkers buy firearms and people become aware of the rising numbers of guns in their communities.

In December, The Journal News published an online map indicating the names and addresses of licensed handgun owners in Westchester and Rockland counties. The total number of handgun permits in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties was about 44,000 - 1 out of every 33 adults in the region - but Putnam was not represented on the map because the county clerk would not release the names and addresses of permit-holders.

The map sparked a national outcry and prompted a change in state law, allowing certain individuals to keep license information private. The map was removed last month after the law change.

Jonathan Galin, a Sloatsburg, N.Y., resident and licensed gun owner, said people rushed to buy guns before the enactment of laws they felt would limit their Second Amendment rights. However, many also were motivated by a rising number of burglaries and home invasions in recent years, he said. Burglaries rose 12 percent in Rockland from 2007 to 2010 before dipping sharply in 2011.

"I think everybody who qualifies should have a gun in their home," Galin said. "I don't know anybody who wants to break into a home knowing that person has a gun and knows how to use it."

Grimaldi said concern about new laws was well founded. Last month, state lawmakers expanded the ban on military-style weapons, barring the sale of some popular rifles and requiring those who already own such weapons to register them. Background checks now are required for all gun sales, including private transactions, and high-capacity magazines were outlawed. No magazine can hold more than seven rounds, down from 10.

"If I have seven rounds, I'm probably not going to make it if (criminals) have guns with 20 rounds," Galin said.

The Westchester County Firearm Owners Association and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association plan to sue, seeking to overturn New York's new gun laws. Neither group would comment for this article, but their notice of claim filed last month said the law "violates (plaintiffs') fundamental constitutional rights to lawfully possess, keep, bear and use firearms for self-defense and other lawful purposes."

Hemenway, author of "Private Guns, Public Health," said in all the defensive-gun-use surveys he's reviewed, any shooting that occurred lasted only a few seconds and only a few rounds were fired.

In a 2011 article in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, Hemenway says having a gun in the home increases the likelihood of shooting accidents, suicides and domestic-violence murders. It's a particular danger for children, who suffer 12 times as many gun suicides and 2 1/2 times as many gun homicides in states with high gun ownership, his analysis found.

A 2010 survey by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center found that about one-third of Americans live in a household with a gun, but a 2011 Gallup survey reports that half of Americans live in homes with guns.

Hemenway said it takes exceptional training to shoot a gun in a high-stress situation, but most people get little more than basic training on handling weapons. He added that the federal crime survey shows people successfully defended themselves with blunt objects, with home alarms, by having a dog, by running away, by calling police and by other non-lethal measures.

"Two-thirds of households in the U.S. don't have guns. People protect themselves without guns all the time," he said. "It's not like you have a gun or you're helpless."

When his life was on the line, Augusto said, he was grateful to be armed. But, despite his personal experience, Augusto said he supports some gun-control measures. He favors the ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Yet Augusto, who keeps shotguns at his home and his business, said anyone who qualifies for a gun license should be allowed to carry his or weapon at all times. Only those with carry permits can do so now.

"I think a handgun with seven bullets is enough," he said. "If you can't hit a guy with seven bullets, you should run."

But simply owning a gun does not make an individual safer, said Davide Gristina, owner of two Krav Maga locations in New York, a franchise that provides self-defense classes and firearms training in Westchester and Orange counties.

"It's not just about going to the store, buying a gun and putting it in your house. That's not even close to being a responsible firearm owner," Gristina said. "We teach them that firearms are the last resort. The only time you should resort to it is if you have no other choice and your life is at stake."

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Self defense argument at center of gun debate

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WESTCHESTER COUNTY, N.Y. -- Charles Augusto's business had been a repeat target for violent criminals. In 2009, four gunmen burst into Kaplan Brothers Blue Flame Corp. in Harlem, demanding cash and threatening and pistol-whipping an employee.

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these are some effective substitutes, in this case denying the public to know a perpetrator´s identity, to put an end to mass shootings.

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An orgy of mutual disgust now greets every mass shooting in America. Liberals despise conservatives who, they predict, will offer only insipid "thoughts and prayers" in the face of what they conceive to be preventable massacres. Conservatives scorn liberals who, they believe, will propose "feel good" gun measures that would have no effect on any mass shooting.

But there is something that we can try to prevent these horrific killings. It doesn't require legislation. It won't cost a penny. It doesn't require compromising anyone's gun rights, and it's more concrete than "see something, say something."

First, the scale of the problem. While overall gun deaths have been declining in recent years, mass shootings have been increasing. According to the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, the number of days separating mass shootings declined from an average of 200 between 1983 and 2011, to 64 since 2011. The five deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history have occurred in the past ten years. These shocking attacks have become so common that their locations and dates blur - Sutherland Springs, Blacksburg, Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, Orlando, Binghamton, Aurora, Dallas, Washington Navy Yard. The randomness of these massacres, and their quotidian locations - schools, movie theaters, concerts - amplify the horror.

Every possible cause is considered to explain the epidemic of cinematic violence: the overabundance of guns, violent video games and films, family decline, the waning influence of churches, inadequate mental-health policies. Perhaps all of these contribute, and all require long-term social reforms.

But then there is this insight: Mass killings, like viruses, seem to be contagious. It isn't news that behaviors are catching. Sociologists have long known that suicide, for example, prompts imitators, especially among the young. Researchers at Arizona State University have studied mass murders (particularly school shootings) and found that each new episode does inspire copy cats.

We also know that some of the mass shooters have expressed fascination with their predecessors. The Oregon shooter, for example, had written of another: "A man who was known by no one, is now known by everyone. . . . Seems the more people you kill, the more you're in the limelight."

The second Fort Hood shooter, weirdly enough, seemed to decry the attention paid to killers. He posted on Facebook: "These bastards have perfected their way of attacking by studying previous massacres to gain publicity and their minute of fame as a villain." He then went on to commit a mass shooting himself. An Everett, Wash., man was arrested on Wednesday after his grandparents reported to police that he was "learning from past shooters."

The sick desire for fame - even when purchased through atrocity - seems to be at work in many of these cases. Would denying them the attention they seek diminish the attraction?

The proposal is straightforward. It's outlined at NoNotoriety.com. News organizations and law enforcement officers should voluntarily limit the use of the names of mass killers. It's not possible in the Internet era to keep the names secret, but news organizations can dramatically reduce the attention a killer receives. There is no need, for example, for cable news to feature images of the accused, nor to repeat his name dozens of times within 24 hours. Newspapers should not publish the manifestos of diseased minds. Investigators can comb through his social-media rants, but the media should shun them. TV channels may get ratings by repeating the grievances of killers, but they are also providing a platform that other borderline personalities may find irresistible.

We expect our presidents to serve as national grief counselors in these moments. But it's just possible that this attention is also putting too much power into the hands of mass killers. While a presidential visit may comfort the grieving, is it worth it if it also gratifies the murderer's rage for attention - and spurs some future attention seeking monster?

Some homicidal types are motivated by political objectives. Of the 69 mass shootings since Columbine High School, four were committed by Islamic extremists, and others (the Sikh temple, Charleston) by racists. But the overwhelming majority were the work of men whose motivations probably include a lust for fame.

Perhaps this is wrong. Perhaps denying mass killers the attention they seek won't have any effect on this epidemic of violence. But what would be lost by trying?
- Mona Charen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. © 2018 Creators.com

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Don't Name Mass Shooters - Ethics & Public Policy Center

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An orgy of mutual disgust now greets every mass shooting in America. Liberals despise conservatives who, they predict, will offer only insipid "thoughts and prayers" in the face of what they conceive to be preventable massacres. Conservatives scorn liberals who, they believe, will propose "feel good" gun measures that would have no effect on any mass shooting.

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this is a well thought out argument that gun control will have positive results and impact on citizens/

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The day after the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Fla., House Speaker Paul Ryan sounded a cautious note: "I think as public policy makers, we don't just knee-jerk before we even have all of the facts and the data."

It's a common refrain from politicians opposed to strengthening gun laws: They use "lack of data" as a fig leaf for their inaction.

But there is no lack of data. Our organizations, GVPedia and the Gun Violence Archive, have amassed the relevant research, facts and data - and it all points to the need for legislative action on gun violence.

The misconception that gun violence has not been researched began with the infamous 1996 Dickey Amendment, a gun-lobby rider attached to an omnibus appropriations bill that prevents the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from using any funds "to advocate or promote gun control." At the same time, Congress cut the agency's budget by the exact amount it used to research gun violence. The message was clear.

Although the amendment dealt a significant blow to research on gun violence, it did not end it. GVPedia has collected more than 740 academic studies and papers on the subject, a majority of which were published after 1996. The best of this work, combined with detailed data on gun deaths and injuries from the Gun Violence Archive, tell a clear story about what can help stop mass shootings in America.

Following tragedies such as the killings in Parkland, Las Vegas and Sandy Hook, gun apologists are fond of saying that stricter laws wouldn't have prevented the carnage. Yet we can easily see that this claim was false in Parkland.

The shooter at Stoneman Douglas High had a long history of red flags that didn't show up in the national database but were well-known to local police. A law that would have required a gun buyer to apply for and get a permit at the discretion of law enforcement could have empowered authorities to deny the shooter access to an AR-15.

Multiple studies from researchers at Johns Hopkins University have found that such "permit to purchase" laws, which include a particularly strong background check, reduce homicides, suicides and gun trafficking. Literature reviews that examine a wide range of gun policies throughout the U.S. also consistently find that these laws save lives.

Research also shows that domestic violence restraining orders with the teeth to remove firearms from abusers reduce intimate-partner homicide. Likewise, banning high-capacity magazines would likely reduce the deadly outcome of shootings. Australia's ban and buyback of semi-automatic firearms significantly reduced gun deaths in that country.

Instead of stricter purchase and ownership rules, the gun lobby and its allies claim that a "guns everywhere" agenda will reduce violence because, as the National Rifle Assn. puts it, "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun."

Among the lobby's most prominent efforts is passing "concealed carry reciprocity" legislation. HR 38, a national reciprocity bill, passed by the House in December, is now in the Senate Judiciary Committee. It would allow a concealed-carry license from one state to apply in all states, which means that weaker standards for carrying firearms in say, Louisiana, could trump stricter regulations in California.

Recent research shows how dangerous reciprocity would be. A 2017 study in the American Journal of Public Health correlated minimally restrictive "right to carry" laws with a 6.5% increase in total homicide rates and an 8.6% higher firearm homicide rates. Another 2017 study, by John Donohue of Stanford University, found that such laws were consistently associated with increases in violent crime. These two studies are backed by earlier research also showing that minimal standards for carrying firearms bring down the rate of violent crime.

The push to get firearms into more hands is based on the false notion that defensive gun use - DGU - is widespread and effective at preventing injury. The gun lobby and its allies tout research that put the number of defensive gun uses at approximately 2.5 million a year. However, the methodology behind that figure has been called into question by David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. And, by combing through media and police reports, the Gun Violence Archive documented approximately 2,000 verified DGUs in 2017, which also casts doubt on the 2.5-million estimate. As to the efficacy of DGUs, a 2015 Hemenway study showed that using a gun in self-defense is no better at preventing injury than alternative means such as doing nothing or running away.

In reality, the best research shows what common sense tells us: More guns mean more crime and more death. Gun possession significantly increases your risk of being killed by someone you know. A gun in the home doubles your risk of homicide and triples your risk of suicide. The presence of a gun increases the lethality of domestic violence. Areas with higher gun ownership see a significant increase in burglary. And states with higher levels of gun ownership experience higher rates of firearm fatalities.

The Dickey Amendment should be overturned. We undoubtedly need more research on the public health effects of gun laws, gun ownership and gun use. But the need for more studies is no excuse for ignoring the research that already exists; it is no excuse for inaction. The best data are clear: More guns mean more carnage, and stronger gun laws save lives.

Legislation that reduces the easy availability and number of firearms is the best way to respond to mass school shootings, church shootings, domestic violence and firearm-suicide. To delay any longer is to dishonor the 17 lives lost in Parkland, and the more than 38,000 Americans killed annually by guns.
Devin Hughes is the founder of GVPedia. Mark Bryant is the executive director of Gun Violence Archive. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinionand Facebook

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Op-Ed: We have all the data we need: Stronger gun laws would save lives

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The day after the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Fla., House Speaker Paul Ryan sounded a cautious note: "I think as public policy makers, we don't just knee-jerk before we even have all of the facts and the data."

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these are some facts and statistics on gun owners and their reasons for possessing a firearm, as well as people´s beliefs on gun control.

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Guns are deeply ingrained in American society. The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives Americans the right to bear arms, and around three-in-ten American adults personally own a gun. Most of these gun owners say the right to own firearms is essential to their own personal sense of freedom.

At the same time, gun violence - from big-city murders to mass shootings - has spurred debate in Congress and state legislatures over proposals to limit Americans' access to firearms. Counting murders and suicides, nearly 40,000 people died of gun-related violence in the United States in 2017, the highest annual total in decades.

Here are seven key findings about Americans' experiences with and attitudes toward guns, drawn from recent Pew Research Center surveys and other data sources.

1 Three-in-ten American adults (30%) say they personally own a gun, and an additional 11% say they live with someone who does, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in March and April 2017. Whether or not they personally own a gun, Americans have broad exposure to firearms: Nearly half of U.S. adults (48%) grew up in a household with guns, nearly six-in-ten (59%) have friends who own guns and around seven-in-ten (72%) have fired a gun at some point in their lives - including 55% of those who have never personally owned a gun.

Among Americans who own a gun, nearly two-thirds (66%) say they own more than one, including 29% who own five or more. A large majority of gun owners (72%) own a handgun or pistol, while 62% own a rifle and 54% own a shotgun. About three-quarters of gun owners (73%) say they could never see themselves not owning a gun.

2 Protection tops the list of reasons why gun owners have a gun, according to the same survey. Two-thirds of gun owners (67%) say this as a major reason why they own a firearm. Considerably smaller shares say hunting (38%), sport shooting (30%), gun collecting (13%) or their job (8%) are major reasons. While men and women are about equally likely to cite protection (65% and 71%, respectively) as a major reason they own a gun, women are more likely than men to cite protection as the only reason (27% of women vs. 8% of men). Higher shares of male gun owners than female gun owners point to hunting (43% vs. 31%) and sport shooting (34% vs. 23%) as major reasons for gun ownership.

Regardless of whether they live in an urban, suburban or rural area, Americans are much more likely to cite protection than other considerations as a major reason for owning a gun. Rural gun owners, however, are far more likely than their urban and suburban counterparts to say hunting is a major reason why they own a firearm (48% of rural gun owners say this, compared with 34% of suburbanites and 27% of urbanites).

3 A majority of Americans say gun laws should be stricter. Nearly six-in-ten U.S. adults (57%) say gun laws should be more strict, while smaller shares say they are about right (31%) or should be less strict (11%), according to a survey conducted in September and October 2018. Yet these views differ sharply by party: Eight-in-ten Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (80%) say gun laws should be stricter while 28% of Republicans and GOP leaners say the same. For their part, Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to say gun laws are about right (52% vs. 15%) or should be less strict than they are today (20% vs. 4%).

Partisans are also deeply divided over whether it is more important to control gun ownership or protect gun rights, according to the same survey. Around three-quarters of Republicans (76%) say it's more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns than it is to control gun ownership, while just 19% of Democrats agree. That 57-percentage-point partisan gap is up from a 29-point gap in 2008.

4 Many gun policy proposals are politically divisive, but there are some on which Republicans and Democrats agree, according to the fall 2018 survey. Around nine-in-ten Republicans and Democrats (both 89%) say people with mental illnesses should be prevented from buying guns. Nearly as many in both parties (86% of Democrats and 83% of Republicans) say people on federal no-fly or watch lists should be barred from purchasing firearms. And majorities of both Democrats (91%) and Republicans (79%) favor background checks for private gun sales and sales at gun shows.

Other proposals bring out stark partisan rifts. Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to favor allowing teachers and school officials to carry guns in elementary and high schools (69% vs. 22%) and allowing people to carry concealed weapons in more places (68% vs. 26%). Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to favor banning assault-style weapons (81% vs. 50%) and high-capacity magazines (81% vs. 51%).

In addition to partisanship, gun ownership also affects Americans' views of gun policy proposals. Republicans who don't own a gun, for example, are much more likely than GOP gun owners to favor banning assault-style weapons (65% vs. 31%) and high-capacity magazines (63% vs. 35%). Among Democrats, gun owners are more than twice as likely as those who don't own a gun to favor expanded concealed carry (50% vs. 21%).

5 Americans are divided over whether restricting legal gun ownership would lead to fewer mass shootings. Debates over the nation's gun laws have often followed recent mass shootings. But Americans are split over whether legal changes would lead to fewer mass shootings, according to the fall 2018 poll. Nearly half of adults (47%) say there would be fewer mass shootings if it was harder for people to obtain guns legally, while a similar share (46%) says there would be no difference. Very few (6%) say there would be more mass shootings if it was harder for people to obtain guns legally.

Americans are also split on a related question about the potential impact that more Americans owning guns would have on crime more broadly. While 37% of U.S. adults say there would be more crime if more Americans owned guns, 33% say there would be no difference and 29% say there would be less crime.

6 Many Americans say they know someone who has been shot. A significant share of Americans (44%) say they personally know someone who has been shot, either accidentally or intentionally, according to the spring 2017 survey. A majority of black adults (57%) say this, compared with 43% of whites and 42% of Hispanics. Gun owners are more likely than non-gun owners to know someone who has been shot (51% vs. 40%).

Separately, about a quarter of Americans (23%) say someone has used a gun to threaten or intimidate them or someone in their family. There is again a racial gap: About a third of blacks (32%) say this, compared with 20% of whites. About a quarter of Hispanics (24%) say this has happened to them or their family members.

7 2017 saw more gun deaths in the U.S. than any year in decades, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The nearly 40,000 Americans who died of gun-related injuries in 2017 marked a 19% increase from 2012 and the highest annual total since the mid-1990s. The increase in gun deaths over five years included a 15% rise in suicides involving a gun and a 25% rise in murders involving a firearm. (The CDC data includes other categories as well, such as unintentional gun deaths and those involving police or other law enforcement agents.)

Taking overall population changes into account, there were 12 firearm-related deaths for every 100,000 people in 2017, a 14% increase from five years earlier. Despite the recent increase, however, the rate of gun-related deaths was considerably higher during the early and mid-1990s: In 1993, for example, there were 15.6 gun deaths per 100,000 people.
This is an update of a post originally published on Jan. 5, 2016, and written by Hannah Fingerhut, then a research analyst at Pew Research Center.
Category: 5 Facts

Topics: Gun Policy, Social Values, Violence and Society

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Guns are deeply ingrained in American society. The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives Americans the right to bear arms, and around three-in-ten American adults personally own a gun. Most of these gun owners say the right to own firearms is essential to their own personal sense of freedom.

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these are very well explained reasons gun control will not help.

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In the wake of the tragic murder of 17 innocent students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, students, educators, politicians, and activists are searching for solutions to prevent future school shootings.

As emotions morph from grief to anger to resolve, it is vitally important to supply facts so that policymakers and professionals can fashion solutions based on objective data rather than well-intended but misguided emotional fixes.

Are there ways to reduce gun violence and school shootings? Yes, but only after objectively assessing the facts and working collaboratively to fashion common-sense solutions.
Definitions:
-"Mass shooting" typically refers to mass killings perpetrated by a firearm or firearms. In 2013, Congress defined " mass killing " as "3 or more killings in a single incident."
Recommended: 5 Places World War III Could Start in 2018 Recommended: How North Korea Could Start a War Recommended: This Is What Happens if America Nuked North Korea ​
-A prominent 2017 study defined " mass public shootings " as incidents that occur in the absence of other criminal activity (such as robberies, drug deals, and gang-related turf wars) in which a gun is used to kill four or more victims at a public location.
1. Mass killings are rare, and mass public shootings are even rarer.
Mass killings are very rare , accounting for only 0.2 percent of homicides every year and approximately 1 percent of homicide victims.

-Only 12 percent of mass killings are mass public shootings. Most mass killings are familicides (murders of family members or intimate partners) and felony-related killings (such as robberies gone awry or gang-related "turf battles").

-Although there has been a slight increase in the frequency of mass public shootings over the past few years, the rates are still similar to what the United States experienced in the 1980s and early 1990s.
2. Many gun control measures are not likely to be helpful.
- Over 90 percent of public mass shootings take place in "gun-free zones" where civilians are not permitted to carry firearms.

-A complete ban on "assault weapons" will save very few lives: Six out of every 10 mass public shootings are carried out by handguns alone , while only one in 10 is committed with a rifle alone.

- The average age of mass public shooters is 34, which means that increasing the minimum age for purchasing firearms would not target the main perpetrators of mass public shootings.

-Few mass public shooters have used "high-capacity magazines," and there is no evidence that the lethality of their attacks would have been affected by delays of two to four seconds to switch magazines. In fact, some of the largest mass shootings in U.S. history were carried out with "low-capacity" weapons:

-The Virginia Tech shooter killed 32 and injured 17 with two handguns, one of which had a 10-round magazine and the other a 15-round magazine. He simply brought 19 extra magazines.

-Twenty-three people were killed and another 20 injured in a Killeen, Texas, cafeteria by a man with two 9mm handguns, capable of maximums of 15-round and 17-round magazines, respectively.

-A mentally disturbed man armed with two handguns and a shotgun shot and killed 21 people in a San Ysidro McDonald's and injured another 19. The handguns utilized 13-round and 20-round magazines, and the shotgun had a five-round capacity.
3. Public mass shooters typically have histories of mental health issues.
-According to one study, 60 percent of mass public shooters had been diagnosed with a mental disorder or had demonstrated signs of serious mental illness prior to the attack.

-A large body of research shows a statistical link between mass public killings and serious untreated psychiatric illness. The most commonly diagnosed illnesses among mass public shooters are paranoid schizophrenia and severe depression.

-It is important to remember that the vast majority of people with mental disorders do not engage in violent behaviors, and there is no empirical means of effectively identifying potential mass murderers.
4. The United States does not have an extraordinary problem with mass public shootings compared to other developed countries.
-After adjusting for population differences, many other developed countries have worse problems with mass public shootings than the United States has.

-There were 27 percent more casualties per capita from mass public shootings in the European Union than in the U.S. from 2009 to 2015.
5. Mass killers often find ways to kill even without firearms.
-Some of the worst mass killings in the United States have occurred without firearms:

-Before the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, the deadliest attack on the LGBT community in America occurred in 1973 when an arsonist killed 32 and injured 15 at the Upstairs Lounge in New Orleans.

-In 1987, a disgruntled former airline employee killed 43 people after he hijacked and intentionally crashed a passenger plane.

-In 1990, an angry ex-lover burned down the Happy Land social club where his former girlfriend worked, killing 87 others in the process.

-In 1995, 168 people were killed and more than 600 were injured by a truck bomb parked outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

-In 2017, a man in New York City killed eight and injured 11 by renting a truck and plowing down pedestrians on a Manhattan bike path.

In other countries, bombings, mass stabbings, and car attacks frequently kill more people than even the deadliest mass shootings in the United States. Consider the following:

Spain (2004) - Bombing: 192 deaths, 2,050 injuries;

Great Britain (2005) - Bombing: 52 deaths, 784 injuries;

Japan (2008) - Car ramming and stabbing: seven deaths, 10 injuries;

China (2010) - Shovel-loader: 11 deaths, 30 injuries;

China (2014) - Car ramming: six deaths, 13 injuries;

China (2014) - Mass stabbing: 31 deaths, 143 injuries;

Germany (2015) - Plane crash: 150 deaths;

Belgium (2016) - Bombing: 21 deaths, 180 injuries;

France (2016) - Car ramming: 86 deaths, 434 injuries;

Germany (2016) - Car ramming: 11 deaths, 56 injuries;

Japan (2016) - Mass stabbing: 19 deaths, 45 injuries; and

Great Britain (2017) - Bombing: 22 deaths, 250 injuries.

6. Australia did not "eliminate mass public shootings" by banning assault weapons.
-Australia did not " eliminate mass public shootings " by banning assault weapons. Mass shootings in the country were rare before the 1996 National Firearms Act, and multiple-casualty shootings still occur.

-Before 1996, firearms crimes in Australia rarely involved firearms prohibited under the National Firearms Act, suggesting that any change in firearm-related crimes or deaths was not due to the law.

-Further, Australia did not see a reduction in " mass murders ." In the years immediately following enactment of the National Firearms Act, the country experienced six mass murders in which five or more people were killed-they just were not killed with guns.
This first appeared in The Daily Signal here. Image: Creative Commons.

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6 Reasons Gun Control Will Not Solve Mass Killings

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In the wake of the tragic murder of 17 innocent students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, students, educators, politicians, and activists are searching for solutions to prevent future school shootings.

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this argument was very well executed. it explains how gun control will not work and will harm citizens.

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this may in fact be a successful way of gun control, without eliminating guns on their own.

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Guns are a part of U.S. culture. From hunting rifles to gun collections, many Americans own guns. However, public opinion polls show that 85% of gun owners and non-gun owners support gun control laws like background checks.[1] The goal of gun control is to prevent someone who wants to harm themselves or others from having easy access to a gun.

Today, 40% of gun sales do not go through a background check because they take place online, at gun shows, or through classified ads.[2] Mass shootings, like Pulse Night Club in Orlando and the 2017 country music concert in Las Vegas, have sparked disagreement about gun control laws, including background checks. Gun control is a polarizing topic, and there is debate whether strict gun control laws can prevent homicides or suicides.

Who Runs a Background Check?

Background checks on firearm purchases from a licensed dealer are required by law under the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993. A follow-up study found the Brady Bill stopped 2.1 million gun purchases between 1994 and 2014-an average of 343 purchases per day.[3] The law blocked 1 million felons, 291,000 domestic abusers, and 118,000 fugitives from purchasing a firearm.

The Brady Bill allows states to decide whether local law enforcement or the FBI will do a background check within that state. A two-year study showed that having background checks done at the local level resulted in a 27% lower rate of gun-related suicides and 22% lower rate of gun-related murders.[4] One reason for this impact could be that local law enforcement agencies have more information to help them ensure that people who want to hurt themselves or others don't get a gun. Another possibility is that states requiring background checks by local law enforcement agencies also have stricter gun control laws.

Although the Brady Bill stopped many potential crimes, there have been accounts of failure to report felons to the federal database. In November of 2017, Devin Kelley entered a church in Texas and killed 26 people. It was later learned that the Air Force failed to report Kelley, and dozens of other service members charged with serious convictions, to the federal gun background check database.[5] If Kelley had been reported, he would have been stopped from buying a gun because of his previous domestic violence conviction. The lack of reporting isn't unique to the Air Force. The Army has the worst record, with 41% of convictions unreported, while the Navy failed to report 36% of convictions, and the Air Force failed to report 14%.[6]

Other problems with the federal background check database came to light in November of 2017. Tens of thousands of individuals convicted of felonies were taken off the database in February of 2017 after the Department of Justice changed the definition of a "fugitive from justice" to apply only to those who crossed state lines.[7] It is unknown how many of the felons purged from the list subsequently bought guns.

Effective Gun Control Measures

Missouri's permit-to-purchase law is often cited by people in favor of stronger gun control. The permit-to-purchase law required that people get a permit from local law enforcement before purchasing a gun. When Missouri repealed its permit-to-purchase law in August 2007, research indicated a 55-63% increase in the firearm homicide rate per year during the four years following the repeal.[8] During the same year the law was repealed, Missouri also passed a "Stand Your Ground" law. This law allows people to use firearms in cases of self-defense without being charged for injury or homicide, and it increased the number of homicides. However, a comparison with other states with "Stand Your Ground" laws found that even when accounting for the deaths attributed to that law, the repeal of the permit-to-purchase law still caused Missouri's homicide rate to increase significantly.

Research conducted in Connecticut also found a relationship between permit-to-purchase laws and firearm homicides. In 1995, Connecticut passed a permit-to-purchase law, and over the next 10 years the state saw a 40% drop in firearm homicides.[9] There was no drop in non-firearm homicides, indicating that it was likely the permit-to-purchase law that prevented gun deaths. These studies suggest that requiring a permit before purchasing a gun could help reduce gun-related homicides.

More research is needed to conclude which policies are most effective at preventing firearm-related deaths, but as shown above, there is research that suggests that stricter gun-control laws may help. Unfortunately, there has been little expansive research on gun control in the last 20 years because Congress banned the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from conducting research on gun control as an amendment in the 1996 Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Bill.[10]

What Now?

Following mass shootings, there is often a debate about gun control. A few national policy proposals include implementing universal background checks and making assault rifles illegal.

Even when people are reported to the federal database as being ineligible to purchase a gun, there is a loophole that has weakened the law. Background checks are required when purchasing a gun from a licensed dealer, but people can buy guns online or at a gun show without undergoing a background check. This means that many felons, domestic abusers, and fugitives can avoid background check requirements and buy a gun with no questions asked.

After the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, there was a strong effort to pass legislation to close this loophole and address gun violence. The "Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act of 2013" (S. 649) was introduced in the Senate to reduce gun violence, but did not pass.[11]

In 2016, Senator Schumer introduced the "Fix Gun Checks Act of 2016" (S. 2934). The bill intended to close the background check loophole, but the Republican leadership prevented it from coming to a vote.[12]

Automatic and Semi-Automatic Assault Rifles

Another gun control issue is who should be allowed to purchase assault rifles. There are two categories of assault rifles: semi-automatic and automatic rifles (many of which are also called machine guns). The transfer of machine guns was taxed beginning in 1934 under the "National Firearms Act in an effort to discourage their use."[13] In 1986, the "Firearm Owners' Protection Act" prohibited the transfer and possession of machine guns, although exceptions were made for those who owned a machine gun before May of 1986. Currently, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives tracks the ownership and transfer of machine guns.

Semi-automatic weapons are legal in most states, but banned in California; Connecticut; Washington, DC; Massachusetts; Maryland; New Jersey; and New York. [14] Some of these firearms were banned in all states between 1994 and 2004 under the "Federal Assault Rifle Ban" passed in 1994, but this law expired and has not been reinstated.[15]

There are accessories that make semi-automatic rifles similar to automatic rifles, such as a bump stock. This device is added to the exterior of the gun to make the gun shoot much faster, giving it the capability of shooting quickly like an automatic assault rifle. In the October, 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting at a country music concert, the shooter used bump stocks to modify semi-automatic rifles so they would fire like a machine gun. Representative Carlos Curbelo (along with 27 co-sponsors from both parties) introduced a bill (H.R. 3999) to prohibit the manufacturing, possession, and transfer of devices that increase the rate of fire on semi-automatic weapons.[16] By the end of 2017, the bill had not been voted on by the House of Representatives.

Conclusions

Gun violence is a public health issue, but politics has interfered with research to determine how to reduce suicides or homicides caused by guns. Research is necessary for legislators to create effective gun control policy.
All articles are reviewed and approved by Dr. Diana Zuckerman and other senior staff.

1. Richards, S. (2015, Fall). Why background checks for gun purchases have gun-owner support. Johns Hopkins Magazine. Retrieved from https://hub.jhu.edu/magazine/2015/fall/background-checks-guns/. Accessed on Oct. 18, 2017.

2. Brady Campaign. (2017). Keep Guns Out of Criminals' Hands. Retrieved from https://www.bradycampaign.org/our-impact/campaigns/ keep-guns-out-of-criminals%E2%80%99-hands. Accessed on Oct. 18, 2017.

3. Fuson, J. (2014, Feb. 28). Brady Campaign releases a report analyzing 20 years of effective background checks. Retrieved from https://www.bradycampaign.org/inthenews/brady-campaign-releases-a-report-analyzing-20-years-of-effective-background-checks. Accessed on Oct. 18, 2017.

4. Sumner, S,. Layde, P., & Guse, C. Firearm death rates and association with level of firearm purchase background check. American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

5. Horton, A. (2017, Nov. 28). The Air Force failed to report dozens of violent service members to FBI gun databases. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2017/11/28/the-air-force-failed-to-report-dozens-of-violent-service-members-to-fbi-gun-databases/?utm_term=.5df364d79727. Accessed on Dec. 12, 2017.

6. Inspector General. US Department of Defense. (2017, Dec. 4). Evaluation of Fingerprint Card and Final Disposition Report Submissions by Military Service Law Enforcement Organizations. Retrieved from https://media.defense.gov/2017/Dec/08/2001854487/-1/-1/1/DODIG-2018-035.PDF. Accessed on Dec. 12, 2017.

7. Horwitz, S. (2017, Nov. 22). Tens of thousands with outstanding warrants purged from background check database for gun purchases. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/tens-of-thousands-with-outstanding-warrants-purged-from-background-check-database-for-gun-purchases/2017/11/22/b890643c-ced1-11e7-9d3a-bcbe2af58c3a_story.html?utm_term=.c2c1cb32f0a9. Accessed on Dec. 12, 2017.

8. Webster, D., Crifasi, C., & Vernick, J. (2013, Dec. 17). Effects of Missouri's Repeal of Its Handgun Purchaser Licensing Law on Homicides. Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260611713_Effects_of_the_Repeal_of_Missouri's_Handgun_Purchaser_Licensing_Law_on_Homicides. Accessed Oct. 18, 2017.

9. Rudolph, K., Stuart, E., Vernick, J., & Webster, D. (2015, April 6). Association between Connecticut's permit-to-purchase handgun law and homicides. Retrieved from https://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2015/connecticut-handgun-licensing-law-associated-with-40-percent-drop-in-gun-homicides.html . Accessed on Oct. 20, 2017.

10. Jamieson, C. (2013, Feb.). Gun violence research: History of the federal funding freeze. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/science/about/ psa/2013/02/gun-violence.aspx. Accessed on Oct. 20, 2017.

11. Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act of 2013, S. 649, SA 711, 113th Congress, (2013). Retrieved from https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/senate-bill/649?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22s+649%22%5D%7D&r=3. Accessed on Oct. 20, 2017.

12. Fix Gun Checks Act of 2016, S. 2934, 114th Congress. (2016). Accessed on Oct. 23, 2017. Retrieved from https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/2934?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22s+2934%22%5D%7D&r=1. Accessed on Oct. 20, 2017.

13. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. (2016, Dec. 1). National Firearms Act. Retrieved from https://www.atf.gov/rules- and-regulations/national-firearms-act. Accessed on October 23, 2017.

14. Shapiro, L., Chinoy, S., & Williams, A. (2017, June 15). How strictly are guns regulated where you live? Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/national/assault-weapons-laws/?utm_term=.0f5dfd90b7eb. Accessed on Dec. 12, 2017.

15. Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, H.R.3355, 103rd Congress. (1994). Retrieved from https://www.congress.gov/bill/103rd-congress/house-bill/3355?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22hr+3355%22%5D%7D&r=11. Accessed on Oct. 20, 2017.

16. To amend title 18, United States Code, to prohibit the manufacture, possession, or transfer of any part or combination of parts that is designed and functions to increase the rate of fire of a semiautomatic rifle but does not convert the semi-automatic rifle into a machinegun, and for other purposes, H.R.3999, 115th Congress. (2017). Retrieved from https://www.congress.gov/bill/115thcongress/housebill/3999q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22hr+3999%22% 5D%7D&r=1. Accessed on Oct. 20, 2017.

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Does Gun Control Really Work? | National Center for Health Research

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Guns are a part of U.S. culture. From hunting rifles to gun collections, many Americans own guns. However, public opinion polls show that 85% of gun owners and non-gun owners support gun control laws like background checks.[1] The goal of gun control is to prevent someone who wants to harm themselves or others from having easy access to a gun.