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Assault-weapons ban no guarantee mass shootings would decrease, data shows
http://www.foxnews.com ^ | December 24 2012 | FoxNews

Posted on 12/25/2012 8:59:43 AM PST by Para-Ord.45

Crime stats compiled by a Northeastern University professor, the Census Bureau and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel show the number of mass shootings since the 1980s has fluctuated annually, but without any major upward or downward trend.

Data published earlier this year showed that while the ban was in place, from 1994 to 2004, the number of mass shootings actually rose slightly during that period.

From 1985-1994, there were 173 mass shootings and 766 victims. From 1995-2004 (starting with 1995 because it was the first full year the law was in effect), there were 182 mass shootings and 830 victims.

After the ban expired, the average number of mass shootings every year continued to tick up slightly. The numbers were published over the summer in the Journal Sentinel, and counted a mass shooting as any murder where four or more people were killed at once.

(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: banglist; guncontrol; secondamendment; sourcetitlenoturl

1 posted on 12/25/2012 8:59:50 AM PST by Para-Ord.45
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To: Para-Ord.45

Of course it won’t, but, never fear, the two NY stalwarts, Bloomberg/Cuomo have offered confiscation as a solution.


2 posted on 12/25/2012 9:07:35 AM PST by izzatzo
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To: izzatzo

David Gregory’s use of a 30 round AR-15 magazine as a prop on Meet the Press to support their national banning was clearly in pre-meditated violation of the law banning their possession in the District of Columbia where his show originated.

Gregory’s act exactly proves what opponents of such restrictions have been saying: such a ban will not stop a person hell-bent on breaking the law. If Gregory is not prosecuted it also proves other commonly held beliefs about liberal government and liberal media.

Advocates of banning magazines above a certain capacity ask who needs them. Putting aside that we tread on dangerous ground when we put any Constitutional right to a test of need (for example, who really needs to trample on the American flag), the burden of proof is that the cost of such a ban will be justified by improving public safety. In an era of trillion dollar federal deficits, this raises a question of best use of finite government resources. If history is any guide, few people who already own any of the estimated 100 million such magazines in private hands can be expected to turn them in. Aren’t we better off allocating our money to improve school safety rather than fund a war on newly-outlawed firearm accessories?

I would remind people that while we are now having a “national conversation” on firearms regulations, we have yet to have a similar conversation about what changes we must make to the treatment of citizens with mental health issues, not to mention how we are going to fund any changes that we decide to make.

If we get down the road a few months on these topics and the loudest voices on the left still give the highest priority to funding the waging of a new war on firearms accessories, above funding improvements in mental health or school safety, we will know who the real ‘gun nuts’ are. And they won’t be the people with NRA bumper stickers.


3 posted on 12/25/2012 9:21:59 AM PST by theBuckwheat
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To: Para-Ord.45

It is essentially impossible for an a private individual to legally own a gun in Mexico, but the level of gun related deaths is very high and increasing. Gun control did not work in that country.

Similar thing happened in Great Britain, gun related violence spiked 40% after the citizens were forced to turn in their weapons. The trend has continued upward and other violent crimes have increased as well.

We have some property 70 miles from the Texas/Mexico border. Illegal aliens have been observed on our property as have their makeshift camping areas. Our government has armed the drug cartels in Mexico with some 2500 “assault weapons,” and has refused to defend the border with Mexico.

How long before one of those “assault weapons” shows up on our property? How are we to defend against them with inferior weapons?

In our case, the closest police officer is about an hour’s drive away, and never did respond when we called about a theft.

I grieve for the innocent children in Connecticut. I do not want my innocent grandchildren and great-grandchildren to suffer a similar slaughter on our own property.


4 posted on 12/25/2012 9:28:03 AM PST by LOC1 (Let's pick the best, not settle for a compromise.)
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To: theBuckwheat

Even a draconian law banning the existence of all hi-cap mags would not work for the reasons you mentioned, but there is one more.... Most people have no idea how easy hi-cap mags are to fabricate. I won’t provide the instructions here, but trust me, it is easy.


5 posted on 12/25/2012 9:40:05 AM PST by umgud (No Rats, No Rino's)
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To: theBuckwheat

As far as I am concerned, the advocates of more restrictions on firearms ownership have yet to even acknowledge their burden of proof of the efficacy of their proposals. That is, when we outlaw a previously-legal style of firearm and outlaw previously legal accessories to those firearms like 30 round magazines, what level of NET improvement in the public safety should we expect and at what NET cost?

The horrible Sandy Hook massacre started with the murderer shooting his own mother four times in the head while she lay in bed. So, please don’t insult my intelligence by telling me how the law would have stopped even half of the murders on that sad day. But people who propose laws also expect those laws will be enforced and enforcement costs money. They also expect that the new law will bring some concrete improvement in society.

How much money are we going to divert from, say raiding medical marjuana clinics, to hunting down people

with newly-outlawed 30 round magazines? This is not an unimportant because with our trllion dollar deficit we can only allocate so much borrowing to fund new government programs. The Sandy Hook massacre invites, we are told by the media, three “national conversations” that the media like David Gregory hopes to control. Those are on firearms regulations, school safety and treatment the mentally disturbed.

The media and politicians appear to have chosen to hold the conversation on firearms first, so that must be the most important one. But when we start to deal with school safety and mental health, those items will eventually have budget impact as surely as night follows day. If we pass changes to firearms law that must of necessity divert expensive law enforcement resources, how much of our borrowing capacity will remain to fund improvements in school safety or mental health services?

And if, based on history documented below, that few of the estimated 100 million magazines in private hands are destroyed or turned in, what level of real public safety improvement are we to get for the money we must spend to enforce the law? Is this a fool errand, or are politicians just pandering to people who see and end to the failed war on drugs and are looking to fund a new (equally fruitless) war on something else? I am beginning to think the latter is sadly true, at least in part.

from:

Gun Restrictions Have Always Bred Defiance, Black Markets
For reasons of their own, most people, in many countries, defy anti-gun laws
J.D. Tuccille | December 22, 2012

In a white paper on the results of gun control efforts around the world, Gun Control and the Reduction of the Number of Arms, Franz Csaszar, a professor of criminology at the University of Vienna, Austria, wrote,
“non-compliance with harsher gun laws is a common event.”

Dr. Csaszar estimates compliance with Australia’s 1996 ban on self-loading rifles and pump-action shotguns at 20 percent.

And even that underwhelming estimate gives the authorities the benefit of the doubt. Three years after Australia’s controversial ban was implemented, when 643,000 weapons had been surrendered, Inspector John McCoomb, the head of the state of Queensland’s Weapons Licensing Branch, told The Sunday Mail, “About 800,000 (semi-automatic and automatic) SKK and SKS weapons came in from China back in the 1980s as part of a trade deal between the Australian and Chinese governments. And it was estimated that there were 1.2 million semi-automatic Ruger 10/22s in the country. That’s about 2 million firearms of just two types in the country.”

Do the math. Two million illegal firearms of just two types, and only 643,000 guns of all types were surrendered …

The Australian Shooters Journal did its own math in a 1997 article on the “gun buyback.” Researchers for the publication pointed out that the Australian government’s own low-ball, pre-ban estimate of the number of prohibited weapons in the country yielded a compliance rate of 19 percent.

...
Csaszar points out that, after Austria prohibited pump-action shotguns in 1995, only 10,557 of the estimated 60,000 such guns in private hands were surrendered or registered.

And when Germany imposed gun registration in 1972, he says, owners complied by filing the appropriate paperwork on 3.2 million firearms. This was a bit awkward, since estimates of civilian stocks were in the 17-20 million range...

...
he high water mark of American compliance with gun control laws may have come with Illinois’s handgun registration law in the 1970s. About 25 percent of handgun owners actually complied, according to Don B. Kates, a criminologist and civil liberties attorney, writing in the December 1977 issue of Inquiry. After that, about 10 percent of “assault weapon” owners obeyed California’s registration law, says David B. Kopel, research director for Colorado’s Independence Institute, a free-market think-tank, and author of The Samurai, The Mountie, and The Cowboy, a book-length comparison of international firearms policies.

That one-in-10 estimate may have been generous. As the registration period came to a close in 1990, The New
York Times reported “only about 7,000 weapons of an estimated 300,000 in private hands in the state have been registered.”..

article link:
http://reason.com/archives/2012/12/22/gun-restrictions-have-always-bred-defian


6 posted on 12/25/2012 9:42:47 AM PST by theBuckwheat
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To: theBuckwheat

We already know who the real gun nuts are, they expose themselves almost daily, they are almost anybody who calls himself/herself a democrat, the MSM, and some of the “grand old party.”


7 posted on 12/25/2012 9:44:04 AM PST by izzatzo
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To: umgud

Make (or print) Your Own AR-15 Magazines

The push to ban standard magazines is insane. It is easier to make a 30 round magazine than it is to grow a marijuana plant. The left is pursuing an unachievable result that will not help stop mass murder.

Rifle magazines are made from plastic, steel, aluminum, or fiberglass. There are 100’s of millions of them in existence in the United States. They are easily made at home. They are just a box with a spring. If you have a few 10 round magazines it is easy to convert them into 30 round magazines. Technology has improved to the point that a person can print out functional AR-15 magazines at home.

Before that, magazines were easily made of sheet metal

A reader comment:
Do we want a “war on magazines” to go with the “war on drugs?”

http://gunwatch.blogspot.com/2012/12/make-or-print-your-own-ar-15-magazines.html


8 posted on 12/25/2012 9:45:25 AM PST by theBuckwheat
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To: Para-Ord.45

Last time I checked, it was still illegal to kill people. Those laws don’t seem to have much of an effect either.


9 posted on 12/25/2012 9:46:43 AM PST by indthkr
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To: Para-Ord.45

Go back 110 years. Harry Tracy broke out of the penitentiary and on his last run he killed 11 men,

His weapon? A 30-30 Winchester and a slow Colt .45 six shot revolver.

No assault rifles involved.

Tell me again how banning semi auto rifles will stop killings. It is what is in the mind of the killer.


10 posted on 12/25/2012 10:02:16 AM PST by Ruy Dias de Bivar (REOPEN THE CLOSED MENTAL INSTITUTIONS! Damn the ACLU!)
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To: Para-Ord.45

“No guarantee”?

Of course not.

Gun ban will not cure achne either, or small pox.

Totally unrelated concepts. No cause and effect.

Change the subject.

NRA! Get off your well funded ass and DO something!


11 posted on 12/25/2012 10:02:54 AM PST by shalom aleichem
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To: Para-Ord.45

A killer could have done as much or more damage in Newtown with a nine-round pump 12 ga loaded with OO buck than he did with a .223 AR. Reloading from a pocket full of shotgun shells would have taken seconds and the devastation of a shotgun blast would gave been just as horrible if not somehow worse.


12 posted on 12/25/2012 10:03:20 AM PST by muir_redwoods (Don't fire until you see the blue of their helmets)
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To: theBuckwheat

***Advocates of banning magazines above a certain capacity ask who needs them.****

Forty years ago, Viet Cong blacksmiths, hiding in the jungle, could take a pair of tin snips, some sheet metal and turn out a perfectly functional 30 round magazine for a captured M-16.

Do these idiots think Americans can’t do the same with power tools?

Maybe e can start selling cardboard patterns for 30-40 round magazines so people can cut out their own.


13 posted on 12/25/2012 10:06:24 AM PST by Ruy Dias de Bivar (REOPEN THE CLOSED MENTAL INSTITUTIONS! Damn the ACLU!)
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To: Para-Ord.45

The grabbers will simply say that’s why we need to go straight to full-scale confiscation.


14 posted on 12/25/2012 10:08:21 AM PST by Cyber Liberty (Obama considers the Third World morally superior to the United States.)
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To: Para-Ord.45

PLEEEEEAAAASSSE . . . . . . . . . . . . !!

STOP confusing the ignorant sheeple with FACTS!!!

(They can’t deal with it!)


15 posted on 12/25/2012 10:53:48 AM PST by DustyMoment (Congress - another name for anti-American criminals!!)
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To: Para-Ord.45
Hey Dianne -

Read this!

16 posted on 12/25/2012 11:04:00 AM PST by upchuck (America's at an awkward stage. Too late to work within the system, too early to shoot the bastards.)
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To: umgud
I won’t provide the instructions here, but trust me, it is easy.

I will. Much like the printing press, this a technology that cannot be suppressed, or, if it is, the cure is worse than the "problem".

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2972063/posts

17 posted on 12/25/2012 12:39:09 PM PST by marktwain
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To: Para-Ord.45

Note to Fox News. We already know an ‘assault weapons’ is no guarantee that shootings would decrease.
CT is one of the states that currently has an ‘assault weapons’ ban.
It protected exactly no one.


18 posted on 12/25/2012 1:14:46 PM PST by javachip
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To: Para-Ord.45

Lazar is the product of liberal policies. Mental health facilities were shut down and deemed inhumain and not condusive to a mentally ill youngsters mental development so they were medicated dumped into the “outpatient” school system where they did not fit in became more isolated which turned to frustration and then violence. We hear nothing but ban all guns when no one is talking about the governments role in metal health as well as completely ignoring the security issues put upon school administrators who are inexperienced in the security equipment and programs needed to handle these kinds of attacks. Was the mother at fault on many levels, yes! but to blame it just on guns as the fix all to the next massacre is stupidity on the highest level


19 posted on 12/25/2012 7:09:53 PM PST by ronnie raygun (Being Breitbart)
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