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N.Y. Times shocker on 'assault weapons' ban


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Copy and pasted from The NY Times, with a link .

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/sunday-review/the-assault-weapon-myth.html?_r=0

 

The Assault Weapon Myth

By LOIS BECKETT

SEPT. 12, 2014
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CreditCleon Peterson

OVER the past two decades, the majority of Americans in a country deeply divided over gun control have coalesced behind a single proposition: The sale of assault weapons should be banned.

That idea was one of the pillars of the Obama administration’s plan to curb gun violence, and it remains popular with the public. In a poll last December, 59 percent of likely voters said they favor a ban.

But in the 10 years since the previous ban lapsed, even gun control advocates acknowledge a larger truth: The law that barred the sale of assault weapons from 1994 to 2004 made little difference.

It turns out that big, scary military rifles don’t kill the vast majority of the 11,000 Americans murdered with guns each year. Little handguns do.

In 2012, only 322 people were murdered with any kind of rifle, F.B.I. data shows.

The continuing focus on assault weapons stems from the media’s obsessive focus on mass shootings, which disproportionately involve weapons like the AR-15, a civilian version of the military M16 rifle. This, in turn, obscures some grim truths about who is really dying from gunshots.

Annually, 5,000 to 6,000 black men are murdered with guns. Black men amount to only 6 percent of the population. Yet of the 30 Americans on average shot to death each day, half are black males.

It was much the same in the early 1990s when Democrats created and then banned a category of guns they called “assault weapons.” America was then suffering from a spike in gun crime and it seemed like a problem threatening everyone. Gun murders each year had been climbing: 11,000, then 13,000, then 17,000.

Democrats decided to push for a ban of what seemed like the most dangerous guns in America: assault weapons, which were presented by the media as the gun of choice for drug dealers and criminals, and which many in law enforcement wanted to get off the streets.

This politically defined category of guns — a selection of rifles, shotguns and handguns with “military-style” features — only figured in about 2 percent of gun crimes nationwide before the ban.

Handguns were used in more than 80 percent of murders each year, but gun control advocates had failed to interest enough of the public in a handgun ban. Handguns were the weapons most likely to kill you, but they were associated by the public with self-defense. (In 2008, the Supreme Court said there was a constitutional right to keep a loaded handgun at home for self-defense.)

Banning sales of military-style weapons resonated with both legislators and the public: Civilians did not need to own guns designed for use in war zones.

On Sept. 13, 1994, President Bill Clinton signed an assault weapons ban into law. It barred the manufacture and sale of new guns with military features and magazines holding more than 10 rounds. But the law allowed those who already owned these guns — an estimated 1.5 million of them — to keep their weapons.

The policy proved costly. Mr. Clinton blamed the ban for Democratic losses in 1994. Crime fell, but when the ban expired, a detailed study found no proof that it had contributed to the decline.

The ban did reduce the number of assault weapons recovered by local police, to 1 percent from roughly 2 percent.

“Should it be renewed, the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement,” a Department of Justice-funded evaluation concluded.

Still, the majority of Americans continued to support a ban on assault weapons.

One reason: The use of these weapons may be rare over all, but they’re used frequently in the gun violence that gets the most media coverage, mass shootings.

The criminologist James Alan Fox at Northeastern University estimates that there have been an average of 100 victims killed each year in mass shootings over the past three decades. That’s less than 1 percent of gun homicide victims.

But these acts of violence in schools and movie theaters have come to define the problem of gun violence in America.

Most Americans do not know that gun homicides have decreased by 49 percent since 1993 as violent crime also fell, though rates of gun homicide in the United States are still much higher than those in other developed nations. A Pew survey conducted after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., found that 56 percent of Americans believed wrongly that the rate of gun crime was higher than it was 20 years ago.

Even as homicide rates have held steady or declined for most Americans over the last decade, for black men the rate has sometimes risen. But it took a handful of mass shootings in 2012 to put gun control back on Congress’s agenda.

AFTER Sandy Hook, President Obama introduced an initiative to reduce gun violence. He laid out a litany of tragedies: the children of Newtown, the moviegoers of Aurora, Colo. But he did not mention gun violence among black men.

To be fair, the president’s first legislative priority after Sandy Hook was universal background checks, a measure that might have shrunk the market for illegal guns used in many urban shootings. But Republicans in Congress killed that effort. The next proposal on his list was reinstating and “strengthening” bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. It also went nowhere.

“We spent a whole bunch of time and a whole bunch of political capital yelling and screaming about assault weapons,” Mayor Mitchell J. Landrieu of New Orleans said. He called it a “zero sum political fight about a symbolic weapon.”

Mr. Landrieu and Mayor Michael A. Nutter of Philadelphia are founders of Cities United, a network of mayors trying to prevent the deaths of young black men. “This is not just a gun issue, this is an unemployment issue, it’s a poverty issue, it’s a family issue, it’s a culture of violence issue,” Mr. Landrieu said.

More than 20 years of research funded by the Justice Department has found that programs to target high-risk people or places, rather than targeting certain kinds of guns, can reduce gun violence.

David M. Kennedy, the director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, argues that the issue of gun violence can seem enormous and intractable without first addressing poverty or drugs. A closer look at the social networks of neighborhoods most afflicted, he says, often shows that only a small number of men drive most of the violence. Identify them and change their behavior, and it’s possible to have an immediate impact.

Working with Professor Kennedy, and building on successes in other cities, New Orleans is now identifying the young men most at risk and intervening to help them get jobs. How well this strategy will work in the long term remains to be seen.

But it’s an approach based on an honest assessment of the real numbers.

 
 

 

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But, if you could save just one life.

 

The glaring fact they don't mention is that the tyrants have all these statistics, yet they still come after our weapons.

 

Which leads to the real question. Why go after these weapons when the crime rate will not be measurably affected?

 

Is it perhaps that these are the best weapons for defending against tyranny?

 

Good to see some factual reporting in the times for a change any way.

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I see some 2A supporters feeling elated over this, but there is a clear motive here, and it will probably be seen expanding through the media in the coming months.

 

Look at some of the author's other works, and you'll see where I'm going with this: http://www.propublica.org/site/author/lois_beckett

 

Why Do Democrats Keep Trying to Ban Guns That Look Scary, Not the Guns That Kill the Most People?

 

On the twentieth anniversary of the assault weapons ban, a look at why politicians and the public support a policy that showed no evidence of saving lives.

 

Why Gun Control Groups Have Moved Away from an Assault Weapons Ban

 

A decade after the ban expired, gun control groups say that focusing on other policies will save more American lives.

In other words, expect to see the narrative move back to what it was in the heyday of the Brady group: background checks, heavily regulating or even attempting to ban sales of handguns, and continuing to push for "smart gun" tech being mandated on new pistols.

 

These people NEVER give up, they only shift tactics and adjust their rhetoric.

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I have to agree with mancat, but still a good article. My only real complaint is in the comment about America having a higher rate of shootings than other developed countries. In comparison to say, England or Australia, I'm sure this is correct. But I remember reading an article a few years ago that gave the percentages and yes, they do have fewer shootings, but their assaults with knives were something like 3x anything in America. He didn't really give the whole picture

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I have to agree with mancat, but still a good article. My only real complaint is in the comment about America having a higher rate of shootings than other developed countries. In comparison to say, England or Australia, I'm sure this is correct. But I remember reading an article a few years ago that gave the percentages and yes, they do have fewer shootings, but their assaults with knives were something like 3x anything in America. He didn't really give the whole picture

And nine times higher rape per 100k of population. WhIch by the way increased 400% after the gun control legislation was implemented. Violent crime is categorized differently than " gun crime " for these zealots.

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I too agree with Mancat, I had basically the exact same thoughts when I read it the other day. I think the guy is just trying to tell his friends "Hey Stupid" go after the hand guns cause the rifles aint really the problem. I don't trust any of them, we all know what motivates these communists.....

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I see some 2A supporters feeling elated over this, but there is a clear motive here, and it will probably be seen expanding through the media in the coming months.

Look at some of the author's other works, and you'll see where I'm going with this: http://www.propublica.org/site/author/lois_beckett

Why Do Democrats Keep Trying to Ban Guns That Look Scary, Not the Guns That Kill the Most People?

On the twentieth anniversary of the assault weapons ban, a look at why politicians and the public support a policy that showed no evidence of saving lives.

Why Gun Control Groups Have Moved Away from an Assault Weapons Ban

A decade after the ban expired, gun control groups say that focusing on other policies will save more American lives.

In other words, expect to see the narrative move back to what it was in the heyday of the Brady group: background checks, heavily regulating or even attempting to ban sales of handguns, and continuing to push for "smart gun" tech being mandated on new pistols.

These people NEVER give up, they only shift tactics and adjust their rhetoric.

  

I too agree with Mancat, I had basically the exact same thoughts when I read it the other day. I think the guy is just trying to tell his friends "Hey Stupid" go after the hand guns cause the rifles aint really the problem. I don't trust any of them, we all know what motivates these communists.....

I hope this is true. It's just the poison pill needed to wake up the side-liners.

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I too agree with Mancat, I had basically the exact same thoughts when I read it the other day. I think the guy is just trying to tell his friends "Hey Stupid" go after the hand guns cause the rifles aint really the problem. I don't trust any of them, we all know what motivates these communists.....

.... and going after the handguns is in essence going after CCW.

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"Working with Professor Kennedy, and building on successes in other cities, New Orleans is now identifying the young men most at risk and intervening to help them get jobs. How well this strategy will work in the long term remains to be seen."

 

Quick... find them jobs before they kill again!

Everybody drop what you're doing and find some way to make these violent people happy!

 

what.gif

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As much as I distrust the NY Times I didn't get the impression this was meant to imply that handguns should be the next target. He did acknowledge that gun homicides overall are down, quoted sources that said it may be better to address the underlying causes of gun violence, and basically said the gun grabbers are deceitful, inept, and politically motivated. I understand being wary, but this is pretty damning of gun control in general.

Edited by DogMan
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"Working with Professor Kennedy, and building on successes in other cities, New Orleans is now identifying the young men most at risk and intervening to help them get jobs. How well this strategy will work in the long term remains to be seen."

 

Quick... find them jobs before they kill again!

Everybody drop what you're doing and find some way to make these violent people happy!

 

what.gif

 

What jobs? For people whose primary skillets are built on a foundation of shooting and stabbing each other, there aren't any jobs except shitty service sector jobs. Even then, the question begging to be answered is "why are they out of jail in the first place?"

 

Used to be that a young man in these communities could walk into an average factory, or other manufacturing facility, and have a job in a day - even if it was sweeping up the production floor and cleaning toilets. OH it's so dirty! Who cares? Unlike service jobs, there is direct upward mobility in manufacturing and trades, as long as you're willing to learn the trade..

 

They could have, oh my god... They could have even worked on a plantation, but they might have to survive the horror of working alongside whites.

 

Now, this shit is all automated, gone to China, Vietnam, Mexico, etc. Nothing left but flipping burgers and selling cell phones.

 

When do you ever hear the poverty advocate groups openly saying "gee, maybe our current trade deficit is something we should look at, to bring manufacturing back here, and pay these people a good basic wage." Building a career that pays well and allows one to have a steady income and provide for a family puts those people out of a job, once the welfare recipient has finally worked himself out of the hole.

Edited by mancat
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All true mancat, but my point was that the libs think we should somehow appease these violent offenders by giving them yet more taxpayer benefits. Their solution is to baby and coddle them so they don't act out.

 

There are plenty of jobless poor people in the world who don't go shooting, robbing, and raping to get what they want.

 

On a positive note (and to get back on topic), at least the libs are starting to realize the solution is not to take guns away from the whole populace just because hood rats are shooting each other every day. At least they are starting to see a need to address the problem directly in the hood where the problem really lies.

 

Of course, that is if we are to take this article at face value that they "really have seen the light".

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As Rush Limbaugh has said many times, "It's all smoke and mirrors". They want you to see something and continue their deception while working under cover to further their agenda. In our case it is assaulting the 2nd again and even with statistics to back the failure of gun control, liberals, dems and some republicans won't quit until we resemble England, Australia and many other castrated countries. Even if that was achieved, it wouldn't end with guns. History shows and I've said it before, you have to disarm the people to dominate them. If paranoia betrays me, check out any dictator and how they achieved their end means. I am not planning any massacres. I don't want to rule the world. I don't want hundreds, thousands, or millions to think like myself. The senseless murder sprees of recent years, schools, public places and houses of worship all had warning signs, some subtle, some blatant. The ones who received these signs chose to ignore, dismiss or were undereducated to recognize them. A favorable news item for firearms owners by a media giant like the Times has me on the border of orange and red. I am as suspicious of their intent to report good news for gun owners as I would if Chuck Schumer decided to join JPFO or the NRA. Makes for good reading, not trust.

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