The biometric idea won't fly because it introduces another failure point; your gun failing to operate correctly in a life and death situation is, as you might expect, a worrisome idea. We could of course try these smart guns in some big city police force ... and you will get massive resistance from the beat cops, and for the same good reason.
The lost/stolen gun report idea is odd because the police don't do jack about these reports now.
A simpler idea which I would think (hope) would be supported by sizable elements of the left and the right is to enforce the laws we already have.
For example, a GAO report in 2017 found that for NICS denials (that is, felons and other ineligible people trying to buy guns), there were 112,000 NICS denials, only 12,700 investigations, and only ... TWELVE (12) prosecutions. That is, 0.09% of the investigations resulted in prosecution.
Interesting. I'm relatively new to these data sets. Generally I've been following global homicide trends over time and looking to see if the relatively peaceful in the middle 20th century followed by the 1965-1980 peek homicide rates followed by the gradual rate decline up until, say the last decade were affected by gun ownership rates. Apparently not.
I'd like to see information like this where we also look at homicide and suicide holistically WRT firearms and/or other civil liberties. Not just gun homicide and gun suicide but all forms. Developed places with fewer civil liberties are IMHO sadder places and potentially more people are killed as a result of more rules than are saved. Japan and Russia being two big outliers in the suicide department.
Could we be creating mass murderers including mass shooters by increasing pressure on some demographic or another? What did we do to the Hispanic and African American populations to cause such a dramatic spike in self inflicted violent crime post civil rights era?
Thanks for the posting. I'll enjoy following rational discussion of difficult topics.
I like the idea of smart guns however, is there a way to make existing guns smart? With so many already in circulation how would policies mandating smart guns prevent/significantly reduce homicide especially in those states mentioned (Maryland, Illinois, New Jersey, and Louisiana)? Criminals would just continue the circulation of "dumb" guns in the black market. I am not sure how it would lead to reduced suicide by gun either - just shoot yourself with a gun you own.
I do think it would reduce accidental shootings and that would be great. The overall idea seems good but I just can't see how it could actually be implemented/significantly beneficial.
Besides geography, there are significant demographic differences between homicide and suicide in the US: blacks commit homicide at some 6x the rate of whites, while whites commit suicide at 2x the rate of blacks. Both homicide and suicide are disproportionately (hugely, in the case of homicide) male problems. 90 years ago, when the murder rate peaked, blacks were not responsible, so the driving factor is not genetic. School shootings were also rare. What changed? Do the *motivations* of murder matter?
All these issues and more are discussed at length in my book with Dan O'Flaherty, link above. They don't invalidate the points made in this much more narrowly focused post.
Interesting article, but I saw no homicide data for blacks prior to 1950. I can offer a few possibilities:
-Environmental lead: Some interesting correlations were shown in a pair of Mother Jones articles.
-Honor culture: US blacks acquired the Scotch-Irish redneck culture, which includes defending one’s honor rather than turning disputes over to third parties.
-Drug Prohibition: The author devotes little attention to Drug Prohibition, just one short dismissive paragraph about drugs and gangs. Even assuming that drug gangs are directly responsible for a small portion of homicide, they exert (I assert) a huge impact on the environment and culture, including maintaining the violent honor culture. Drug Prohibition is a huge factor in the mass incarceration (directly for 15% of arrests and incarcerations, much more indirectly) that deprives many children of fathers, and it exerts numerous other well-known malign influences.
Maybe The Wire has given me an inaccurate picture, but I consider it a documentary:
The “enforce existing laws on the books” argument is just so tired and useless.
The example used was a straw man argument no one is making - background checks aren’t meant to initiate prosecution - their meant to vet and the current laws are woefully ill-equipped to handle our current gun situation. There are sensible things like raising the age of ownership and making the penalties associated with owning an unregistered weapon or failing to report a stolen one prohibitively expensive.
Polls show people are significantly behind these measures when presented. But there’s a gun lobby that will make sure the amount of potential customers never drops.
Why is it "tired and useless"? Are the current laws are being enforced effectively? This 2016 US Department of Justice study reports 90% of firearms used in the commission of a crime were obtained illegally, 0.8% from gun shows.
The biometric idea won't fly because it introduces another failure point; your gun failing to operate correctly in a life and death situation is, as you might expect, a worrisome idea. We could of course try these smart guns in some big city police force ... and you will get massive resistance from the beat cops, and for the same good reason.
The lost/stolen gun report idea is odd because the police don't do jack about these reports now.
A simpler idea which I would think (hope) would be supported by sizable elements of the left and the right is to enforce the laws we already have.
For example, a GAO report in 2017 found that for NICS denials (that is, felons and other ineligible people trying to buy guns), there were 112,000 NICS denials, only 12,700 investigations, and only ... TWELVE (12) prosecutions. That is, 0.09% of the investigations resulted in prosecution.
Interesting. I'm relatively new to these data sets. Generally I've been following global homicide trends over time and looking to see if the relatively peaceful in the middle 20th century followed by the 1965-1980 peek homicide rates followed by the gradual rate decline up until, say the last decade were affected by gun ownership rates. Apparently not.
I'd like to see information like this where we also look at homicide and suicide holistically WRT firearms and/or other civil liberties. Not just gun homicide and gun suicide but all forms. Developed places with fewer civil liberties are IMHO sadder places and potentially more people are killed as a result of more rules than are saved. Japan and Russia being two big outliers in the suicide department.
Could we be creating mass murderers including mass shooters by increasing pressure on some demographic or another? What did we do to the Hispanic and African American populations to cause such a dramatic spike in self inflicted violent crime post civil rights era?
Thanks for the posting. I'll enjoy following rational discussion of difficult topics.
I like the idea of smart guns however, is there a way to make existing guns smart? With so many already in circulation how would policies mandating smart guns prevent/significantly reduce homicide especially in those states mentioned (Maryland, Illinois, New Jersey, and Louisiana)? Criminals would just continue the circulation of "dumb" guns in the black market. I am not sure how it would lead to reduced suicide by gun either - just shoot yourself with a gun you own.
I do think it would reduce accidental shootings and that would be great. The overall idea seems good but I just can't see how it could actually be implemented/significantly beneficial.
Besides geography, there are significant demographic differences between homicide and suicide in the US: blacks commit homicide at some 6x the rate of whites, while whites commit suicide at 2x the rate of blacks. Both homicide and suicide are disproportionately (hugely, in the case of homicide) male problems. 90 years ago, when the murder rate peaked, blacks were not responsible, so the driving factor is not genetic. School shootings were also rare. What changed? Do the *motivations* of murder matter?
All these issues and more are discussed at length in my book with Dan O'Flaherty, link above. They don't invalidate the points made in this much more narrowly focused post.
Interesting article, but I saw no homicide data for blacks prior to 1950. I can offer a few possibilities:
-Environmental lead: Some interesting correlations were shown in a pair of Mother Jones articles.
-Honor culture: US blacks acquired the Scotch-Irish redneck culture, which includes defending one’s honor rather than turning disputes over to third parties.
-Drug Prohibition: The author devotes little attention to Drug Prohibition, just one short dismissive paragraph about drugs and gangs. Even assuming that drug gangs are directly responsible for a small portion of homicide, they exert (I assert) a huge impact on the environment and culture, including maintaining the violent honor culture. Drug Prohibition is a huge factor in the mass incarceration (directly for 15% of arrests and incarcerations, much more indirectly) that deprives many children of fathers, and it exerts numerous other well-known malign influences.
Maybe The Wire has given me an inaccurate picture, but I consider it a documentary:
https://qz.com/371393/video-president-obama-interviews-david-simon-creator-of-the-great-us-series-the-wire/
This documentary about Chicago schools and gangs supported it:
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/487/harper-high-school-part-one
BTW, I'm perfectly willing to accept genetic explanations, but they are too easy, convenient, and attractive--they should not be considered first.
The “enforce existing laws on the books” argument is just so tired and useless.
The example used was a straw man argument no one is making - background checks aren’t meant to initiate prosecution - their meant to vet and the current laws are woefully ill-equipped to handle our current gun situation. There are sensible things like raising the age of ownership and making the penalties associated with owning an unregistered weapon or failing to report a stolen one prohibitively expensive.
Polls show people are significantly behind these measures when presented. But there’s a gun lobby that will make sure the amount of potential customers never drops.
Why is it "tired and useless"? Are the current laws are being enforced effectively? This 2016 US Department of Justice study reports 90% of firearms used in the commission of a crime were obtained illegally, 0.8% from gun shows.
https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/suficspi16.pdf
If we can't enforce the laws we have, I'm not optimistic that additional one's will have any impact on the people most likely to use them.
This person doesn’t even know what a straw man argument is.