Among 23 developed countries, 80% of all gun deaths occurred in the U.S. How could this be?

MPR News Staff October 1, 2015, 8:37 PM Oct 1, 2015

"We are the only advanced country in the world that sees these mass shootings every few months" —@POTUS #UCCShooting http://t.co/8sheX2R0wI

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) October 1, 2015

There are more deaths from guns in the U.S. than deaths from all U.S. wars. pic.twitter.com/PhneQtv8Hi

— AJ+ (@ajplus) October 2, 2015

There have been more mass shootings this year than days. #UCCShooting is just one more (10/1) http://t.co/AaQHS4arll pic.twitter.com/cUpToJJzFV

— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) October 2, 2015

Putting the U.S. gun problem in perspective. #UCCShooting pic.twitter.com/UaKjnLjMsa

— AJ+ (@ajplus) October 1, 2015

Today’s Question: Among 23 developed countries, 80% of all gun deaths occurred in the U.S. How could this be?

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MPR News Staff

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Gary F

If you take out the largest cities with the most gun control(Chicago, Wash DC, NYC, Baltimore, LA) we drop dramatically on that list.

kevins

Interesting Gary. Don’t forget to take out the town near lake Minnetonka where a dad took a 12 gauge and killed his wife and children last month. And don’t forget to take out the farm property west of Sioux Falls where another dad took his 12 gauge and killed his wife and children two weeks later. I’m not sure if those places had gun control, but I think it doesn’t matter much.
- John Dilligaf
  
  What proposed “common sense” gun control law would have been able to prevent either of these tragic occurrences?

boygeezer

Seriously??? We’re a nation that’s awash in guns, has a huge paucity of reasonable and effective gun regulations, and an entertainment corpocracy that glorifies violence with its gun-centric movies and video games. If you’re looking for American Exceptionalism, we’re exceptionally good at being the outlier among nations with our love of all things guns.

Gordon near Two Harbors

The easy (and wrong) answer would be to blame the problem on the number of guns out there. More likely, it is the largely the result of the drug economy–mostly in poor urban areas, but also in many rural areas–that occurs where there are nearly zero economic opportunities. Desperate people do crazy things.

Add to that the idea of personal entitlement/importance that many Americans have (why else would anyone shoot their spouse and kids, when they could just kill themselves?).

Lastly, there has been an outright refusal to do extensive background checks on folks who buy guns, and to SEVERELY penalize folks who commit gun crimes. How many repeat offenders are out there? Tens of thousands. It’s a matter of common sense to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill.

JohnXD45

Throughout my career in law enforcement, I never arrested a legal CCW licensed person for a gun relared crime. It is a farce that Obama uses a tragedy the same day to move his agenda, but as his Progressive adviser says, Never Let a Crisis got to Waste.
The real problem goes back to the 70’s when we couldn’t keep the deranged in treatment , residing in controlled county farms for the seriously mentally ill. Now these people sleep on the streets of the liberal run cities, they use the sidewalks for their toilets and are exposed to criminal attacks. Restrictive gun laws in liberal cities have the highest gun related crimes and sexual assault rates. Gang land shootings are the chief cause of the death rate in these liberal cities. We have MS-13 vicious gangsters roaming our streets, most are illegal and nothing is done to round them up because of fear of ACLU suits of so called civil rights violations.
Excepting the Islamist jihadist, most mass shootings are from untreated psychiatric cases. That is the way of the liberal agenda? Some compassion that is.
The rest of the hundreds of shootings are from gangs. Obama has done nothing to see that our current gun laws are enforced. Seven years a go we starting seeing more criminals back on the street within 6 months after using a gun to rob a 7-11 store.

Gordon near Two Harbors

I’m not sure that Obama has the power to force judges and prosecutors across the country to prevent plea-bargaining. That’s how criminals get away with crimes. As I recall, the gang problems really got bad during the Reagan and Bush administrations, but nothing changed then or now to solve the problem.

In my view, nothing will change until economic opportunities start to occur in the core cities and poor rural areas (bad crime there, too, and they ain’t liberals…), certain non-violent drug crimes are treated leniently, and penalties for the truly violent are severe and non-negotiable.

JohnXD45

Obama is the most derisive president I have seen in the past 50 years as he uses the recent shooting by a jihadist crazed 26 year old to garner public support for more gun controls. Heck, he doesn’t enforce the laws we now have.
He should read this:

“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
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

Gordon near Two Harbors

Listen, I own guns, as do all of my neighbors and most of my relatives. I support the 2nd Amendment. But it is completely delusional to believe that the idea that citizen-owned firearms could prevent the modern military from “conquering” the public. It would be no contest at all.

This is the 21st Century–not the 18th.

Of course, it is also delusional to think that the US military would ever do such a thing, because our system of government makes it damn near impossible for a dictator to take power.

Yanotha Twangai

The only way America will ever be ruled by a dictator is if its conquered from the outside. If anyone inside government would try to become a dictator, too many people would simply refuse to go along. Guns wouldn’t be necessary. Guns didn’t bring down the Berlin Wall or cause the collapse of global communism in the early 90s. Those events were caused by the refusal of soldiers to fire on civilians who refused to go along with it any more.

KTN

Hey, you know that under the repressive reign of terror by the President, gun rights (at the federal level)have been expanded, not contracted right. What you say, that’s crazy talk. The scary black man, who may or may not be a Muslim, and most certainly is not a citizen has done nothing to help us hapless gun owners.
Well that is wrong.
About a month after his first inauguration he signed legislation that allowed you (and others afraid of the woodland chipmunk) the legal right to carry a firearm in National Parks. These millions of acres which were previously off limits to carrying guns, are now open – and that my friend is an expansion, no matter how hard you try to spin otherwise.
Here’s the bill – https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/111/hr627/text
relevant section 512.
This pretty much puts that narrative of the Pres coming to take your guns into so much blather.

John Dilligaf

Complex problems require quick and futile solutions.

Yanotha Twangai

We have 80% of the guns?

John Dilligaf

Putting the U.S. suicide by hanging problem in perspective.

JANEDOE

TRUTH HURTS THE UNITED STTES NEEDS TO BAND ASSAULT WEAPONS. TRUTH HURTS FOKES.

Hunter

to Janedoe: What makes a gun an assault weapon??? Does it matter since 99% are not automatic”machine guns”, the type as the military can use?

As the record show from the FBI data, over 95% of mass shootings_ 4 or more shot, maybe not dead but shot, are from gangs and jihadists. Remember the Ft Hood shooting from a radical jihadist? It took how long for the president to admit it was NOT a work place violence act. Now we have that same head in the sand president doing this!
The Obama administration has joined with the United
Nations to create a global police force to fight “extremism” in cities
across the globe, including the US. This recent development is taking
President Obama’s Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) policies to a
global level.
Unfortunately,
MN leadership has not only signed up to become one of the three model
cities for President Obama’s Countering Violent Extremism policies that
has become in essence a social service program for wannabe Islamic
jihadi terrorists, but also they have signed up to become part of the
President’s Strong Cities Network that commits our local law enforcement
to this global police force initiative.

Please, go to the links provided and read about this very grave development.

First,
go to the Department of Justice’s website for the announcement of the
initiative. At the bottom of the Department of Justice page you’ll see a
link to Strong City Networks.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/launch-strong-cities-network-strengthen-community-resilience-against-violent-extremism

Minneapolis is listed as a participant of the Strong Cities Network: http://strongcitiesnetwork.org/

Explore the Strong City Networks website. You will find their objectives:
– A commitment from its members to address violent extremism in all of its forms.

– A recognition that violent extremism and prevention efforts should not
be associated with any particular religion, nationality or ethnic
group. (Therefore, Islamic jihad cannot be recognized and addressed.

– A commitment from its members to work in partnership with local
communities, on an inclusive, collaborative, and non-discriminatory
basis and in compliance with international human rights standards.
(Whose definition of international human rights? The Cairo Declaration
of Human Rights as prescribed by Islamic Sharia law?????

You’ll also find:
The Strong Cities Network is run by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue
(ISD), a London-based ‘think-and-do’ tank with a long-standing track
record of working to prevent violent extremism across all forms.

Explore the Institute for Strategic Dialogue website. There you will see a heavy emphasis about Far Right Extremism and Intolerance. (That’s you and me folks, if you are a conservative.)

Kris Anne Hall articulates the gravity of this development: http://noisyroom.net/blog/2015/10/01/us-attorney-general-us-cities-join-un-to-create-global-police-force-intiative/

Pamela Geller’s has notable comments about this development also: http://pamelageller.com/2015/10/obama-administration-and-un-announce-global-police-force-to-fight-extremism.html/

Read more about CVE at Unconstrained Analytics: http://unconstrainedanalytics.org/report-exploiting-ignorance-in-the-post-subversion-phase/

This
initiative is an attack on our sovereignty and an assault on our liberty. Since when does our President have the power to hand over our sovereignty to the UN? What’s next? confiscate all guns from law abiding citizens? How many cops do you have beside you every day to protect you? I have one, its called Smith &Wesson.
M1BeMine

If our President won’t enforce the already present gun laws ( ignore his AG’s work with Fast and Furious gun running scandal that led him to be held in Contempt of Congress for withholding the investigation) then how could we expect him to enforce new pot laws if passed? The way he spoke today at the news conference on the economy and Russia taking over as a world leader, taking Crimea, propping up Syria and Iran, wow_ one would think he is stoned every day! Maybe he could sit down with Putin and share a joint to discuss ISIS over tea and organic cookies_ so embarrassed I had ever voted for him in 2008- then again I may have had pot brownies for lunch that day :0 Yeah sure_ lets legalize pot use, no harm done for the sheep that vote when stoned. baaaaaaa.
- Gordon near Two Harbors
  
  So, you think the US could have stopped the Russians from retaking their historic lands in the Crimea? How? Let me get the popcorn, because this will be a good read…
  - M1BeMine
    
    Gordon_ a history lesson: The USA persuaded Ukraine to give up nuclear arms in exchange, spelled out clearly, that the USA would protect them from other country aggression. But with our pantie waist president, of course the USA could not stop Putin. The world cringes as the USA turned another blind eye to their role. Wait til Christmas when even more US generals resign or are fired by Obama, as he has done many times for their speaking out on his lack of policy dealing with ISIL.
    Obama finds it easier to start a “conversation” on gun control with few specifics than he does to act like a real leader. No countries trust his word anymore_ that is the truth, its all over the world news. He would rather count the rounds allowed in one handgun magazine than count the hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians massacred because he couldn’t keep his word-red line or persuade Iraq to have the US keep a residual force to maintain the stability. Obama said, in 2008, ” Iraq is stable, and Al Queda is on the run” He smokes too much pot.
    - Gordon near Two Harbors
      
      The question remains: How do you physically stop Russia from reclaiming the Crimea? Remember, we were in a COLD war with those folks for over 40 years. Both sides knew that a direct military confrontation would be an escalating bloodbath.
Guest

The comments on this article seriously call into question my faith in humanity. How about actually looking at the hard data and reflecting on what might be causing this trend? The U.S. is not some special snowflake of a country and this trend of gun-related deaths is not happening in other advanced countries. I guess that might be too much to ask and people would rather post an anti-Obama rant that suits their personal narrative.
PaulJ

Maybe per-capita statistics are not useful when comparing a continental country to small European countries.
- Bluesman1950
  
  How else would you compare, other than per capita?
Nightowl

What is happening is outrageous. The President is right. And he’s doing the right thing to keep going on TV to tell us whenever these things happen.

This kid had no mental illness diagnosis or criminal background, so background checks wouldn’t have stopped this. He had 13 guns, all legally purchased. Six were at the college, and he had a flak jacket. All of that is in MPR’s article today:
http://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/10/02/oregon-shootings

The problem is the person with an undiagnosed mental illness who can walk in to any gun shop and buy semi-automatic rifles with large clips. At the very least, we should reduce the clip size to just 2 or 3 in case you really need that second or third shot on a windy day to get your deer.

Reopening state hospitals, suggested below, isn’t going to happen and probably wouldn’t have caught this kid anyway.
Yanotha Twangai

I’d want to know more about those statistics. In particular, what percent of the combined population of those 23 countries live in the U.S.? (If we have 80% of that population, then 80% of the gun deaths would not be remarkable.) Also relevant is what percent of the total homicides and suicides (not just those with guns involved) happen in the U.S. (If other countries have as many homicides per capita as we do, but just not with guns, that would be interesting to know.) I suspect there would still be a correlation between the abundance of guns and the magnitude of the problem if those factors were included, but probably not as much as if the question were limited to just gun violence.
Sue de Nim

I don’t see the point of asking questions like this any more. No matter how obvious the correlation between gun proliferation and violence, the gun rights fundamentalists, being true believers in their cause and thoroughly blinded by confirmation bias, will figure out a way to question the validity of the argument. That became obvious after the Sandy Hook shootings, when Wayne LaPierre basically said that the solution to the problem of gun violence is to get more guns into the hands of more people.

Do more guns correlate with more gun violence? Well, they say, that must be violence that would happen by other means if guns weren’t available.

Do more guns correlate with more overall violence? Well, they say, more guns in the hands of “law abiding citizens” would mean people would be able to defend themselves against non-gun violence.

Australia’s success with gun control didn’t really happen, they say. And even if gun control succeeds in reducing gun violence, that just means people will use messier and more painful means to kill each other.

Do gun manufacturers have a perverse incentive to advocate for more permissive gun laws, since more gun violence will mean more people will want guns to defend themselves? No, they say, more gun violence will mean more people will want gun control, and it’s the threat of gun control that prompts people to buy guns before they’re outlawed.

I’ve encountered each one of these objections in previous rounds of this debate. The ability of gun rights fundamentalists to delude themselves with such mental gymnastics is utterly amazing. What they continue to not get is this: While it’s true that if guns were entirely outlawed, only outlaws would have guns, it’s also true that if guns are not adequately controlled, all the outlaws will have guns.
- Yanotha Twangai
  
  I think that’s actually their strategy, to keep clouding the issue and digging in their heels until those who favor sensible gun control simply give up. Sadly, it’s working.
- henrybowman
  
  Because prohibition laws WORK! That’s why we won the “War on Drugs” in record time, and haven’t had a drug problem since. (Please let me know if there is some state I’m unaware of where crack and meth are legal, which is supplying all the “good” states.) And, of course, don’t get me started on the unparalleled success of alcohol Prohibition.
  
  We not only SAY that violent crime is up in countries that have instituted gun bans, we can prove it. Now, if you don’t want to believe the proof, you’re welcome to continue to delude YOURself.
  - Sue de Nim
    
    Thanks for illustrating my point. By the way, are you saying guns are like an addictive drug? Interesting thought…..
    - henrybowman
      
      Thanks for illustrating your lack of logic, Sue. “Two things that are prohibited must be similar to each other.” Socrates, go take a flying leap.
      - Sue de Nim
        
        So, if they’re not similar, then your analogy doesn’t apply, does it?
      - henrybowman
        
        Yeah, an “imaginary anti-gun radical” like these guys.
        
        http://www.gunscholar.org/gunban.htm
        
        You seem to assume that the anti-rights bus route ends at the stop where you get off. It doesn’t.
        
        And the last line of your posting was read, and summarily dismissed as a pipe dream for the ignorant. All history teaches us that there is no way to “adequately control” anything out of the hands of criminals. My point (which you still wilfully avoid understanding) is that even absolute prohibition bans haven’t kept other items — like alcohol, drugs, or Bibles (in other countries) out of the hands of criminals (who are sometimes “criminals” only in that they possess these items).
        
        Expecting anything short of incarceration to keep guns and violent criminals apart is the logic of a fool — and criminals have been able to get guns even while in prison, despite the absolute best we can do. When your “adequate controls” fail, instead of repealing them as the useless shams they are, you will insist on futilely adding to them until you ride that bus to the end of the line. (Seen the “knife ban” calls from England?)
      - Sue de Nim
        
        You’re demonstrating the truth of the aphorism:
        Reasoning with the unreasonable is a fools errand.
      - henrybowman
        
        Yes, now that you mention it, I see that I have been. Thank you for pointing that out. I won’t bother to do it any more.
      - Sue de Nim
        
        I trust readers can judge for themselves which of us is being unreasonable.
Lindyhop

Maybe we should ask listeners exactly what changes need to be done on gun laws vs. generic rants by too many who think guns kill vs. people kill. A machete, a knife thrown, a baseball bat _ unless you are a Navy SEAL or ten times bigger than the criminal, you will wish you knew how to use a gun to defend yourself or others.
Wouldn’t it be fun to see a list of how many women have used a gun to stop a rapist or burglar in the past year? Or what about a list of the number of how many were attacked and killed because they had no defense in the home?

Is there any current gun law that could have prevented this tragic school shooting?
- kevins
  
  I like and appreciate your call for more information about gun violence, but I think that congress has prohibited government agencies such as the CDC from investigating gun violence in America. So much for more information.
  - henrybowman
    
    Because, of course, the government is the ONLY source of research in the United States.
    
    To ask people like John Lott and Gary Kleck to write books on this very issue would be unthinkable, as would relying on the Harvard Journal of Law to run studies by Don Kates or Gary Mauser showing that “no evidence to suggest that the availability of guns contributes to higher murder rates anywhere in the world.”
    
    And why would anyone expect an organization like the National Academy of Sciences to bother ever to voluntarily publish a 328-page report detailing exactly how they could “find no evidence to support the conclusion that government restrictions on firearms reduces gun crime, gun violence and gun accidents”?
    
    No — for absolutely unbiased, unpoliticized information on this topic, we need to rely solely on the CDC, whose directors have made such open-minded statements as, ” “We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like what we did with cigarettes… now it is deadly, dirty, and banned.”
    
    Yeah, that’s the ticket.
    - kevins
      
      Thanks for the feedback, but the point was that congress politicized gun violence issues years ago not by legislating in a way that would enable more information, but rather less. No one minds government agencies conducting epidemiological studies of diabetes or ebola, but gun violence can’t even be on the table for the same scrutiny, not because it isn’t a worthy and important source of ill in America, but because of politics. Sad for us.
      - henrybowman
        
        No — congress saw a historical, endemic, one-sided bias in all the studies coming out of a particular agency and stopped it the only way they could, by their power of the purse. As I took pains to mention, the congressional prohibition hardly stifles ALL research into the issue, only specific government research.
        
        Keep in mind that the Bill of Rights protects us from things the government would very much like to do, but is forbidden to do. That being the case, yes, we VERY MUCH mind government agencies spending our tax money to generate political, self-serving “research” propaganda outlining why one or the other of those rights should be curtailed or removed. They’re not on the table.
      - kevins
        
        “All” of the studies were biased? Sure, its all propaganda and meant to curtail our rights…edgy, trust less, and difficult to believe your position on CDC research activities. I hope all remains well with you.
      - henrybowman
        
        Oh, you doubt this? Easy enough to refute me, then… cite a CDC study on the topic that opposed additional curtailments, and I will stand corrected. I’ll be waiting.
      - Yanotha Twangai
        
        The thing is, it’s not just the CDC. The way the law is worded, any research organization that studies gun violence scientifically risks losing federal funding for anything else it does, but only if the results of such a study support gun control, so it not only stifles research, it biases whatever research does happen.
      - henrybowman
        
        That’s a novel claim. I’m sure you can back it up with a citation.
      - Yanotha Twangai
        
        That document is 750 pages long. I’m not going to slog through the whole thing to find what you’re referring to. However, the author of that amendment talked about it on Morning Edition today, which is where I got my information:
        
        http://www.npr.org/2015/10/09/447098666/ex-rep-dickey-regrets-restrictive-law-on-gun-violence-research
      - henrybowman
        
        So you’re too lazy to do the work from original sources, instead relying on the media-produced recollections of a self-serving politician (who actually admits in the interview you cite that he “doesn’t know why” his law stopped general research, no doubt because that’s not what his law required), but you want your opinion treated on a par with people who can actually cite factual data.
        
        Let me help you. It’s on page 244. If you had simply searched the document for “Centers for Disease Control,” you could have found it without whining.
      - Yanotha Twangai
        
        I don’t know how that politician could be called “self-serving,” since he’s retired. (There’s a long tradition of politicians who, after they retire, drop their ideological rigidity and become remarkably reasonable; he’s one of them.) He’s a gun rights supporter who, like me, thinks there should be reasonable controls, and he sees now that an unintended consequence of his amendment was to cut off all federal funding to all research into gun control. Why did it do that? Apparently researchers have been afraid that any research they do, if it demonstrates any kind of social benefit for gun control, will result in their federal funds being cut off. How did it get interpreted that way? All it takes is one researcher called to testify at a congressional hearing, or threatened with it, and they’re all intimidated. So the question is, if you’re so confident that research will support your opinion, would you support a repeal of this provision, given that it has in fact stifled research?
      - henrybowman
        
        I’m confident that UNBIASED research would support my opinion. I’m equally confident that CDC research would not be unbiased, and the CDC has nothing else to blame but the paper trail that they themselves generated.
      - Yanotha Twangai
        
        Research on this topic that would be perceived as unbiased is virtually impossible, since extremists on both sides are too blinded by confirmation bias. If something came out that people on each side say is biased toward the other side, that would be a good sign that it’s probably fair.
Hunter

I think the reason we have so many shootings is because we don’t have stricter laws on sentencing for criminals that use a gun or any weapon. The other reason is that we handle so many gang members with kid gloves after they are caught with illegal guns. The third reason is we sugar coat the number of illegals that roam free after being deported and return to commit more crimes ( Kate’s Law_ refused by most Democrats by the way. So shameful) And the liberal media, Hollywood, is well known for loving to glorify gun violence in most movies even at the PG-13 rating_ we desensitize the weak minded teens with such trash movies. Most of the mainstream media ignores too often the role of Islamist jihadists among us. The media, even MPR, refused to acknowledge that the shooter killed Christians. Obama called the Ft. Hood shooting massacre a ‘work place violence’ event_ shameful liberal political correctness gone awry.

Lets break down the College shooting event and see how it could have been prevented or minimized. We had a school of 3,000 students in a gun free zone with one unarmed security guard for the whole campus. The shooter was stopped by what? a new gun control law. The guns were legally bought. The shooter was stopped after over 9 minutes of carnage thanks to a cop with a gun. Had there been even one student in the first classroom with a concealed carry gun, the shooter would not have been able to kill so many. What about limiting high capacity guns? would a limit on the magazine to 5, 4, or even 2 rounds matter? It takes a well practiced person to reload a semi-auto pistol in under 2 seconds. A revolver takes twice as long and that’s with using speed strips.
What if the shooter came in with a machete as did the slime Islamist jihadist in the UK, beheading a soldier in the street. The soldier was unarmed. Obama refuses to allow our service men to carry a gun when in uniform and on home soil. He orders our kids into war but doesn’t let them protect themselves when home?
Think about it_ the only new gun law should be the usual NCIC check for all sales at local gun shows and a mandatory 10 years prison for committing a crime with a gun.
Lastly_ tell Obama to get his AG to work and sweep the cities for illegal gang bangers, tatoo their forehead as a criminal and then deport them. If they sneak back in_ 10 years federal prison.
- Yanotha Twangai
  
  You say, “the only new gun law should be the usual NCIC check for all sales at
  local gun shows….” The trouble is, the 2nd Amendment absolutists oppose even that, which is why Congress couldn’t pass it last time they tried.
  - Hunter
    
    Obama and the dems controlled the House and senate for his first two years..so why didn’t he want that new law passed on gun show sales?
    Yup.
    - Yanotha Twangai
      
      You seem to think Obama wields a lot more power over his party than he actually does. I know it flies in the face of your pet conspiracy theories, but Obama is not a dictator. Even when the Dems controlled both houses, including a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, the gun lobby still had enough sway to block anything they didn’t like, including universal background checks. Obama’s support for them was irrelevant. That’s because there are enough single-issue voters who reflexively oppose any controls on guns, while gun control advocates are typically more independent and don’t vote as a bloc.
- David P.
  
  FYI -The DoD policy of not allowing soldiers to be armed while on base or leave was implemented in 1992, when George H W Bush was CiC.
  - Yanotha Twangai
    
    Correct. And the rationale behind that move was that the military is for fighting enemies of the country, not Americans at home. Think about it. What message would it send if American soldiers went around in their full battle rattle on base and in the community? If you think the conspiracy theories are bad now, just imagine if our military started looking like an occupying force at home.
    - David P.
      
      Agreed. Yet there are commenters that blame President Obama that US military are not armed at home, as if having the military on guard at home is some sort of solution. Of course, these same commenters typically have a well-revised history to draw from and blame Obama and anyone to the left of their position for all that us wrong in their world.
Hunter

Gun free zones are criminal free killing zones. Our President has round the clock armed guards and rightfully so. The average cop response time in major cities is over 12 minutes.
The wolves always got their fill at the sheep farm when the farmer is asleep and his sheepdog is tied up…easy pickings for the wolves and no posted sign of ” Canine Free Zone” will prevent their killing of sheep. Gun Free Zones are the biggest stupid thing ever created by the Progressives and they simply won’t admit it. I bet they’d change their mind if they had to have endured being at the Mumbai, India shopping mall killing sprees by armed jihad Islamists. Not one shopper could defend themselves…This is the same thing at most of our MN Gun Free Zone schools_ they have one community officer in some buildings with over 2,000 students..how is that a good way of keeping our kids safe at school?
- kevins
  
  Progressives created Gun Free Zones? Really?
- David P.
  
  The community college in Oregon was NOT a gun-free zone. Nor were the locations of many of the other mass shootings.
  - Hunter
    
    Every school, the churches and every shopping mall and even Ft Hood where our soldiers can’t carry weapons, these are Gun free zones where mass shootings have happened.
    - David P.
      
      I agree that putting a “Gun Free Zone” sign up doesn’t stop a psycho with a gun. Nor does it invite one.
      Over the past 30 years there have been 62 mass shootings in the US.
      43 ended in suicide. Those shooters were not looking out for their own safety.
      32 were committed by somebody associated with the facility where the shooting took place. They did not select their target because of a sign. They selected their target because they were fired from their job or pissed off and crazy.
      49 of the 62 shooters acquired their guns in accordance with current gun laws.
      Twice the “good guy with a gun” shot an innocent person, someone who was running from the shooter.
      There are zero incidents were the shooter was stopped by a “good guy with a gun”, other than a police officer.
      When there was an armed guard at a facility, they were typically the first one to be shot.
      To those who argue that we can prevent this sort of tragedy by simply having more armed citizens, there is no empirical evidence to support such a claim. The fact is we have the most heavily armed citizenry going about their daily business in the world. We also have the highest percentage of innocents getting shot of any 1st world country in the world.
      Advocating to put more guns in the hands of more people, and encouraging more people to carry more guns in more places – that is not a solution, that is making a bad situation worse.
      - Andrew Rothman
        
        http://abcnews.go.com/US/florida-man-71-shoots-alleged-robbers-internet-cafe/story?id=16800859
      - Andrew Rothman
        
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Colorado_YWAM_and_New_Life_shootings
      - Andrew Rothman
        
        http://www.goupstate.com/article/20120325/ARTICLES/120329781/1112
      - Andrew Rothman
        
        5 (more) TIMES CONCEALED CARRY HOLDERS STOPPED MASS SHOOTINGS
        
        http://www.inquisitr.com/2470324/5-times-concealed-carry-holders-stopped-mass-shootings/
  - John Dilligaf
    
    Umpqua Community College
    
    Student Code of Conduct
    
    Page 5 of 12
    
    721.3 Student Misconduct
    
    The following actions and/or behaviors are the types of misconduct for which students may be subject to disciplinary action. These prohibitions are not designed to define misconduct in all-inclusive terms and in no way should this be considered an exhaustive list:
    …
    Possession or use, without written authorization, of firearms, explosives, dangerous chemicals, substances, or any other weapons or destructive devices that are designed to or readily capable of causing physical injury, on College premises, at College-sponsored or supervised functions or at functions sponsored or participated in by the College.
    
    …
    (source – https://web.archive.org/web/20150317085529/http://umpqua.edu/resources-and-services/academic/student-code-of-conduct?showall=&start=4)
Sue de Nim

If the gun rights fundamentalists are correct and guns aren’t the problem but people are, then we have an even harder question to wrestle with: What is it about American society that produces mass-killing monsters more than other countries do? And until we’re willing to be honest about that and fix that problem, why do we continue to make it so easy for the monsters we’re creating to get the weapons they wind up using?
- Hunter
  
  Nope_ American society does NOT produce mass-killing monsters more than other countries do. The greatest number of Mass killing beheading monsters of children and innocents come not from the USA but from the Muslims of countries of traditional Islam, e.g., Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi, IRAN and Somalia.
  - Sue de Nim
    
    The countries you list are not producing mass murderers; the delusional ideology of militant Islam is, so those countries are not the ones we should be comparing ourselves to. Rather, compare the USA to other mature democracies, such as those in Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia, etc. Compared to those, we don’t look so good.
    - henrybowman
      
      In the same way that the plural of anecdote is not data, cherry-picking your comparisons is not statistics.
      - Yanotha Twangai
        
        You don’t think it’s better to compare our rates of mass murder to countries that we’re more similar to than ones we’re very different from? Read the top of the page: “Among 23 developed countries….”
      - Sue de Nim
        
        Mr. Twangai is right. If you want to study the effect of gun control (or any other public policy) on a country, you get better information if you compare countries that are more similar, so it’s more likely that any difference is correlated with the issue in question. (Basic critical thinking; why does this need to be explained?)
      - henrybowman
        
        Basically, because it’s wrong. Comparing different countries is always going to get you nonsense results, because “more similar” is always a subjective interpretation, too often informed by the results the researcher hopes to obtain. What is more rigorous is to perform a longitudinal study of the same country, state, county, or similar area, before and after a change in gun control laws, which corrects for all the innumerable differences in culture, law, social tensions, and history. And when you do that, you discover that changes that relax gun restrictions are correlated with a reduction in violent crime (or at worst no change), while heavier restrictions result in the converse. (Note I said “violent crime,” not “gun crime,” which is an artificial metric with no intrinsic meaning.)
        
        For details on this approach, see http://crimeresearch.org/2013/12/murder-and-homicide-rates-before-and-after-gun-bans/
      - Sue de Nim
        
        Longitudinal studies have similar problems, because things other than what you’re trying to study change within a country as well. It’s a basic problem with social science research that it’s hard to control for just one variable. The fact is, for reasons no one has been able to pin down convincingly, violent crime was falling in this country well before you gun rights fundamentalists started rolling back gun controls, so any study you cite that correlates relaxed gun restrictions with less violent crime is dubious at best. (There I go again, trying to reason with the unreasonable.)
      - henrybowman
        
        Statisticians handle that problem every day, its not rocket science. In the case of the US, you simply measure the relative increase or decrease between polities that relax laws on gun ownership and carry, and polities that do nothing or further restrict them. And the result:
        
        “the states that have experienced the biggest drops in murder and violent crime also just happen to be the states that have experienced the biggest increases in concealed carry permits.”
        
        http://legalinsurrection.com/2015/07/concealed-carry-its-booming/
        
        You know, you gun-control types would be a refreshing comedy routine if you weren’t so socially destructive. Every time anyone proposes loosening any gun restriction, hoplophobes boil out of the woodwork, predicting Dodge City, Blood In The Streets, and Death Over Fender Benders. And the amazing thing is, they have a perfect 100% record of being 100% wrong.
        
        They were wrong about concealed carry (“the Gunshine State”). They were wrong about the expiration of the so-called “assault weapons ban” (“guns that are only good for one thing: killing the most people in the shortest time!”) They were wrong about guns on campuses in Utah (“asking for trouble!”) They were wrong about firearms in National Parks (“putting the safety of visitors at risk!”) And they are wrong now about refusing to eliminate “phony gun-free zones” that are nothing but government-established hunting preserves for mass murderers.
        
        The real wonder is that anybody bothers to listen to you panic-mongers anymore. But I guess it’s still true that there’s a new sucker born every minute.
      - Sue de Nim
        
        “Gun-control types” are “socially destructive”? You’re the one whose avatar image is a bomb with a lit fuse.
Hunter

What is it about American society that creates these shootings???
A: Crazy people, some autistic, and the young angry men that stay angry as they have been taught their whole lives that they are a victim and so they don’t need to take responsibility to improve their life. Who does this? Start with the media and Hollywood movies. Take a look at how the mostly liberal media does stories to fan the flames of racism victimization or the myth of the war on women or made up repressive voting rights because some can’t take the time to get their ass off the couch to get an I.D. to vote or how about every state college in CA and NY now have this innane rule that students have to give a recorded consent between each other before having a romantic moment..and by doing so, they hand over their right to being innocent until proven guilty and leave it in the hands of school autocrats..amazing!
Stop the victimhood crap is a start_ but wait_ even this week, Hillary Clinton has to rely upon telling everyone hey are all victims if they work a full day on their feet or didn’t enough food stamps if they are illegal immigrants, all said in her campaign speeches…so pathetic that she thinks so many DNC voters are so low functioning to fall for that tactic…and that crap contributes to the mentality we see in gangs and disturbed shooters.
- Yanotha Twangai
  
  Is it the liberals’ fault that a white supremasist opened fire at in a Bible study group at a predominantly black church? Most of these mass shooters are young white men, hardly people who have been taught to see themselves as victims (at least, not taught that by “liberals”), but a demographic group that typically sees themselves as captains of their own destiny. I write as someone who used to be a young white man (“ya know, that one guy”) whose hair and beard are now gray, so I know whereof I speak. The only people who ever urged me to think of myself as a victim were ultra-conservatives trying to convince me I suffered from reverse racism. It was pure baloney.
  
  And then, as usual, your comment digresses into an off-topic rant.
PhillipDrees

Hunter could be right on some things. After all, should we listen to President Obama’s speech saying he will politicize more gun control when those words are coming from the guy who said ISIS is the JV team? Lets face it, ISIS and Assad in Syria have killed at least 285,000 and caused the greatest refugee crisis since WWII.
The Syrian citizens couldn’t stand up to Assad’s death reign anymore than Germans could stand against Hitler because those governments took away the right to own guns. But Obama wants to talk politics on gun control in the USA instead of acting like a leader.
Mayor Guilliano in NYC brought down gang shootings drastically with enacting Stop and Frisk. and getting judges to do their duty for sentencing. Today, the NYC murder rate is up 24% or more and homeless are everywhere, pooping on the streets and subways.. Time to get real folks and smell the coffee on what is most important today.
- Yanotha Twangai
  
  The 1986 “People Power” revolution in the Philippines, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the various “Color Revolutions” in the former Soviet and eastern bloc states, along with the Arab Spring (even though that hasn’t turned out so well) all happened despite citizens not having access to or using guns. All it took was a critical mass of citizens deciding to stop being intimidated, trusting in the humanity of the soldiers with guns not to shoot. It didn’t work in Syria, because the faction that controlled the military harbored too much hatred for other factions. It couldn’t have worked in Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan or Stalinist Russia, because citizens in those countries believed that the soldiers would obey orders to shoot.
  
  That’s why I am totally unworried about gun control in America being a prelude to tyranny. No tyrant could order the American military to attack masses of American civilians on American soil and expect to be obeyed. To think otherwise is just paranoid.
  - Sue de Nim
    
    Another example is the end of apartheid in South Africa.
  - Dana King
    
    That’s because you’re obviously wholly ignorant of history, not to mention the tyranny visited upon American’s on a daily basis by all levels of govt. It must hurt to be that stupid.
    
    What you citizen disarmament advocates cannot grasp is that the Supreme Court has ruled multiple times that the police have ZERO responsibility to protect you. None. If you call 911 they don’t have to come and if you get robbed, raped, or killed the police cannot be held responsible. They also added that your safety is up to YOU 100% of the time. YOU are welcome to give up your rights and be a potential victim, but YOU have NO right to demand I do the same.
    
    You cannot have my guns. Your move. How many of us do you intend to kill to get to your progressive-communist society? And I suppose you’ll be at the front of the line when the door kicking begins, right? Or is that part supposed to be done by other people? You’ll still have blood on your hands whether or not you participate in the door kicking and gun confiscation.
    
    I repeat myself. I will not comply with ANY MORE infringements on that which shall not be infringed. YOUR MOVE.
    - Yanotha Twangai
      
      My “move”? What, you think I’m playing a zero-sum game?
      
      If you’d let down your guard and listen instead of being so anxiously reactive, you might learn something. Read what I’ve posted. At no point did I advocate “disarmament” or “gun confiscation.” What I favor are reasonable measures to restrict access to guns for people who shouldn’t have them, more legal liability for negligent gun owners whose guns get stolen and used to commit crimes, and stiffer penalties for straw purchasers. Quite simply, if you don’t favor such things as universal background checks, you effectively favor having more guns in the hands of more criminals and crazy people.
      
      Nor have I ever been in favor of a “progressive-communist society”; the fact that you inferred that clearly demonstrates that you’re reacting, not listening. A mind is like a parachute. It works best when open.
Bill

The overwhelming evidence points to the signal largest common factor in all of these incidents is the fact that all of the perpetrators were either actively taking powerful psychotropic drugs or had been at some point in the immediate past before they committed their crimes

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/039752_mass_shootings_psychiatric_drugs_antidepressants.html#ixzz3ncG3RjXn
- kevins
  
  and they were male, and white, and young, and armed with firearms, and alienated, and angry, and……
- Sue de Nim
  
  That article confuses cause and effect. To the extent there’s a correlation between the taking of those medicines and mass shootings, it’s because both are the result of mental illness. Most collisions of cars with deer happen when the car’s headlights are on, not because driving with headlights on causes deer hits, but because darkness causes both the turning on of headlights and an increase in the risk of hitting deer. You’d be more likely to hit a deer if you don’t have your headlights on when you need them, and you’d be more likely to get violent if you have untreated mental illness or are being treated with the wrong meds. (This is basic critical thinking, folks. The fact that this even needs to be explained is sad testimony to a failure of our educational system.)
  
  Those who make the argument put forth in that article are being extremely irresponsible. We’ve been making slow progress on destigmatizing mental illness over the last few decades. The last thing we want is for people to avoid seeking help because they’re afraid of being put under scrutiny as a potential mass murderer. If people come to believe that psychiatric meds are causing violence, things will only get worse, because fewer people who need them will get them.
  
  Also, that article was first published by an organization with an axe to grind (gun rights fundamentalism) and republished by another organization with another axe to grind (the naturalism ideology, a superstitious fear of all things artificial), neither of which is a reliable source.
- Yanotha Twangai
  
  According to that article, most of those perpetrators were not in fact taking “powerful phychotropic drugs” but relatively mild antidepressants, when they clearly were suffering from something worse than mere clinical depression. If we had a better health care system in this country (a topic for another day, but the folks who oppose gun control also tend to oppose health care reform that learns from the positive experiences of countries like Canada, France, the UK, Australia, and the rest of the industrialized world), those people might have been getting the more powerful antipsychotic meds they clearly needed.
barnums animals

274 days 294 “mass shootings”
Take Chicago out and your left with?
- Martha P
  
  The Fed stats show Chicago is the real mass shooting capital with over 1,987 shootings this year so far, and about 22%? died and so why doesn’t our President get Congress to fix the problem in Chicago? I never hear him say what exactly he would want to see changed to make a difference..Does he not have a policy in mind to change things or is he all talk and no action? Kinda like he was with his ignoring Syria that resulted in 250,000 civilians wiped out? If he can’t give Chicago some Federal help to round up gangs and take their guns and deport the illegal ones during his first two years, when he controlled the House so how can we expect him to follow through on anything other than inviting the leader of oppressive China for a steak dinner and then inviting a muslim wise ass kid who set the school up with a stupid rebuilt digital clock from Radio Shack, all to play on the false victim discrim card of Muslims..wow, will some not stoop any lower to spin their narrative for the media?
  - Yanotha Twangai
    
    Off-topic rant…..
  - barnums animals
    
    agreed
polaris 550

Bet, not one of the murder’s ever bought a hunting license, or belongs to any hunting , or gun owning group. If you want to stop/greatly halt this maddness, we need to clamp down on the internet. That is where these people feed and learn.
webcelt

Not a hard question. All other developed countries have the same problems we do, with the one difference being the sheer quantity of guns. Why can’t we admit the obvious?
Gary F

Queen Hillary now says she’ll “Close the gun show loophole, whether Congress want to do it or not”. Seems to me most of the mass shooting were people who passed NICS background checks. This isn’t a power grab is it?