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<eno>'s avatar

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.

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Ian Jefferson's avatar

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.

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