The Times editors - yes, the folks who recently linked to an Onion wanna-be for factual support - continue their editorializing on guns, and the issue is far too important to let tedious facts get in their way:
Despair Over Gun Deaths Is Not an Option
Apparently staying within whistling distance of reality is not an option either, although I will find one point on which we might all agree. I am skipping the grieving Newton parents of murdered schoolchildren intro:
Whether that happens, of course, depends on whether Congress is ever going to break from the gun lobby. Could there be anything less controversial than denying gun purchases to people on the terrorist watch list? Yet Republicans prefer to express concern about “due process” for gun purchasers even as they propose blanket bans on Islamic refugees.
Yes, boring old "due process" for American citizens versus the non-applicability of due process to non-US citizens abroad [Posner, Volokh, Gershman of the WSJ, Krikorian of NRO].
The Brady Law Most needed is an expansion of this law so that dealers and others now buying firearms on the Internet and at gun shows are subjected to background checks. The law has barred 2.5 million risky applicants in the last 20 years from buying guns, but it does not apply to 40 percent of total gun sales.
"40 percent"? Seriously? Before you ask, factcheckers have debunked that claim since Obama and other top Democrats began promoting it post-Newton.; Glenn Kessler resurrected it when Hillary resurrected the claim last October.
PolitFact: Mostly False
Glenn Kessler, WaPo: Three Pinocchios (on a four point scale).
FactCheck.org: No flashy scoring system, so we have to prove their nuance, although the intro contains a clue:
Editor’s note: This is one of an occasional series called “Party Lines” that will highlight misleading talking points by both parties.:
...
But with the exception of Biden, hardly anyone using the figure ever cautions that it may not be accurate, or, at the very least, that it was based on a survey of just a few hundred people in 1994, in which participants may have guessed whether they had acquired a gun that came from a licensed dealer. Instead, the number is quite often stated as fact when no one can say for certain.
These Times demand the Times, or, The Paper of (Broken) Record.
Back to the earnest editors:
Battlefield Guns and Ammunition A responsible Congress would restore the assault weapons ban and enact limits on gross ammunition clips that let shooters spray crowds of victims with up to 100-round bursts.
The burst you hear is laughter. Do they even know that semi-automatic weapons fire one shot per trigger pull, or are they having a flashback to the Imperial Storm Troopers in the Star Wars trailer?
Their own polling on that issue has gone against them, so it seems as if the Great Unwashed are figuring out just how phony the assault weapons debate is, even if the Times has not.
Now, shifting gears - here is a topic where the two parties could find common ground:
Mental Illness Services undoubtedly need to be improved for Americans with mental illnesses as a public health issue, but recalcitrant Republicans are invoking this to duck gun safety measures. They should be the first to embrace a practical law pioneered last year in California that allows concerned family members to alert a judge to issue a gun restraining order on a potState Laws Gun safety laws work in states where they are applied, even if other states are lax. Those with weak gun laws and high rates of gun ownership suffer the highest gun death rates, according to research. Alaska, where 60 percent of households have guns, had 19.5 gun deaths per 100,000 in 2013. The rate was 2.7 in Hawaii where 9.7 percent of households have arms.entially violent individual.
I don't know about the California law but it sounds like the sort of thing I have favored at cocktail parties (Yes, sometime we are not talking about real estate prices and golf scores. Inshallah). Whether Adam Lanza's mother or one of James Holmes (Aurora) associates could have/would have been able to use such a law will remain unknown.
The National Journal has more, including pushback from critics who say that, like other temporary restraining orders, the accused does not have an opportunity to participate. Those are details of the George Bernard Shaw "fixing my price" type.
And a Republican has a bill overlapping expanded mental health care access with gun violence, so there should be room for constructive debate here.
OK, back to Times-bashing:
State Laws Gun safety laws work in states where they are applied, even if other states are lax. Those with weak gun laws and high rates of gun ownership suffer the highest gun death rates, according to research. Alaska, where 60 percent of households have guns, had 19.5 gun deaths per 100,000 in 2013. The rate was 2.7 in Hawaii where 9.7 percent of households have arms.
Yeah, the South is violent, and, as usual, the Times is using "gun violence" to cover suicides as well as homicides (suicides are roughly two-thirds of total gun deaths). If the topic is mental health that seems appropriate, but the link between suicides and an assault weapons ban seems, well, unlikely - are people really firing bursts of up to 100 rounds into themselves and then bleeding out? Folks looking at gun homicide rates versus weak/strong gun laws see no correlation, which still answers little, since the laws were presumably passed to bring violence down to acceptable levels; a state with a low crime problem, e.g., Wyoming, might well not pass any gun laws.
The "according to research" link provided by the editors takes us to the Violence Policy Center, which is a step up from their recent editorial linking to a rival of The Onion. At the VPC there is no clarification of the suicide/homicide split, but they explain weak versus strong gun laws:
The VPC defined states with “weak” gun violence prevention laws as those that add little or nothing to federal law and have permissive laws governing the open or concealed carrying of firearms in public. States with “strong” gun violence prevention laws were defined as those that add significant state regulation that is absent from federal law, such as restricting access to particularly hazardous and deadly types of firearms (for example, assault weapons), setting minimum safety standards for firearms and/or requiring a permit to purchase a firearm, and restricting the open and concealed carrying of firearms in public.
Of those "strong" measures, only improved background checks might reduce suicides.
And do let me add that I glanced at the gun suicide versus all suicide rate in different countries last week. As a snippet, the gun suicide rate was 6.7 per 100,000, versus 0.15 per 100,000 in the UK. Fewer guns saves lives!
Well, that is probably true since in some case, especially younger people, the suicidal impulse is transient but guns are quick and effective. However, the overall suicide rate in the US was 13 per 100,000; in the UK it was 11.8 per 100,000.
That difference, given the differing demographics, might well be statistical noise. In any case, it is far smaller a gap than the 6.5 per 100,000 in the gun suicide case. Ross Douthat was excellent on this post-Newtown, unlike many of his media compadres.
SUICIDE, HOMICIDE, SO CONFUSING: The NY Times closed their comments after receiving 521. The editors highlighted 15, including this one, which was recommended by 106 readers. Tell me whether he understands that two-thirds of deaths attributable to "gun violence" are suicides. Then tell me why the editors elevated this comment from among more than five hundred:
narciso!
OMG! OMG! She is even worse than Marie Harf!
This is frightening that people like this are in charge. How can someone with NO credentials be put in such an important position?
Posted by: Miss Marple 2 | December 13, 2015 at 05:14 PM
How can someone with NO credentials be put in such an important position?
Birther teasing 101.
Posted by: Threadkiller | December 13, 2015 at 05:46 PM