President (To Win Colorado)
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(D) Kamala Harris
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
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(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) V. Archuleta
98%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
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(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Marshall Dawson
95%
5%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
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(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
50%
50%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
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(R) Lauren Boebert
(D) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
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(R) Jeff Crank
(D) River Gassen
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
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(D) Jason Crow*
(R) John Fabbricatore
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
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(D) B. Pettersen
(R) Sergei Matveyuk
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
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(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
70%↑
30%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
March 22, 2009 05:39 PM UTC
41 Comments
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I think we all understand why Rep. Markey signed on with this letter. While I truly believe that Rep. Salazar is anti-regulation on guns, I get the feeling that Markey does not really want to be anti-regulation. It is too bad that gun law is such an explosive campaign issue because if it were not, we could see Markey show us how she really feels on this.
As I said in the thread about Udall, is it really such a bad thing for pols to take the positions their constituency wants them to take? She is representing her district, right?
Another straw man (all Dems are flower children who want to take your guns and fight terrorists by having all the little children of the world hold hands and sing folk songs of peace and love) bites the dust. Not really. The righties will “stick to their guns” on this point since they don’t care about facts and, on so many issues, straw men are all they have.
But we’re a representative democracy, in which people are elected for their judgment, their expertise, and their ability to study the issues. We do not, and should not, govern by plebiscite. Sometimes, leaders have to lead rather than follow…, opinion polls.
I understand the need to make political calculations, to compromise on those issues that your constituents won’t tolerate defection on, and to move those constituents cautiously in the direction you want to move them. But, frankly, our gun culture is one of our defining social ailments, so typical of so much that is so dysfunctional about this nation that would be such a force for good in the world, if it weren’t quite so Neanderthal.
I believe in strict gun ownership restriction and limitation, but realize that that is not about to happen any time soon. I would understand if Markey, for political reasons, had to defend basic gun ownership rights, which aren’t in any danger anyway (though I’m all for repealing the second amendment, given SCOTUS’s unexpected and counter-factual interpretation of that amendment as providing an individual guarantee). Yet to cave in on the ban of AK 47 assault rifles, which have absolutely no purpose but to inflict maximal damage on a maximal number of human beings, is just too cowardly for me. Markey has declined many, many rungs in my esteem.
is hardly worth the political consequences as I haven’t seen much showing that stricter gun control reduces violent crime. If you have seen statistics showing that to be the case, Steve, I’d appreciate a link. Otherwise, why should pols go out on a limb for something that doesn’t have much demonstrable real world benefit?
local optima fallacy. Statistical studies are necessarily intranational because of the number of other intervening variables involved in cross-national studies. Given a country with no barriers to interstate trade or movement, local gun control does not succeed at taking many guns out of circulation. In fact, the absence of local gun control, especially easy availability of conceal and carry permits, may create a localized reduction in gun violence, since potential predators have more reason to fear that their prey may be armed.
But, in fact, there is a clear and powerful correlation between national gun control and lower rates of violent crime. There are exceptions: Switzerland, I believe, has few restrictions on gun ownership, but low rates of violent crime. Yet, on the whole, those countries with less access to guns tend to have less violent crime. This does not demonstrate causation, and, in fact, there are so many other variables involved that it is hard to make any conclusive causal arguments on this basis. But the evidence is strongly suggestive.
Of developed nations, America has by far the highest rate of death by violence, and by far the laxest restrictions on gun ownership. Most of the nations of Western Europe, which have strict gun regulation, have extremely low rates of death by violence. This corresponds to what should be intuitively obvious: If you actually succeed in significantly reducing the number of guns (or, more practically, the number of bullets) in circulation, it is almost inconceivable that that wouldn’t have a corresponding effect on the rates of deadly violence.
Of course, “guns don’t kill, people do.” By which logic nuclear non-proliferation should be a non-issue, since nuclear bombs don’t kill either, people do. In reality, what people do is affected by the degree of availability of the tools which make it easier to do certain things. Killing or doing serious damage to a human being is far easier with a gun than without, requires far less courage, and puts up less of an obstacle to the expression of a predatory will or momentary rage.
The total evidence, not just the intranational evidence locked within a particular context of general gun accessibility, accords with what common sense strongly suggests: Real gun control reduces gun violence, which reduces deadly violence in general.
I presume by violence you mean gun violence in particular. Of course, no guns to speak of equates to no gun violence to speak of.
Mexico had a fairly good handle on keeping guns out of the country per its laws until the drug cartels just overwhelmed their efforts. Two items I recall recently is the arrest of Texas gun shop owners for supplying guns, no questions asked. The other was an INS agent caught with a trunk full of ammo headed south. A bit of flurry in the Mexican border check and then he was released.
Wait! He was released? Might there be corruption on both sides when it comes to arms movements? Naw…….
There violence in Mexico is nothing new. And, yes, the proximity of the United States, with extremely lax gun regulation, certainly makes it harder for Mexico to enforce their gun regulations. It’s the same effect, to a lesser degree, of the intranational problem, especially when the state trying to enforce stricter regulations is a less well-functioning state (i.e., has difficulty imposing its regulations in general). And, of course, the money and influence of the drug cartels are the flip side of the Mexican governmental impotence.
And, no, I wasn’t referring particularly to gun violence, but rather to deadly violence. Stricter gun regulation might not do much to reduce domestic violence, for instance, but it will reduce the quantity of deadly violence, since it removes by far the most convenient tool for deadly violence from circulation.
The trick to effective gun regulation, of course, is regulation of rounds (bullets). Of course a black market would arise, but the illegal manufacture or illegal cross-border smuggling (probably from somewhere where they were illegally manufactured) would raise the costs enormously, and reduce the demand. And, since bullets neither grow like coca in tropical climes nor are highly addictive, the illicit bullet-smuggling industry is unlikely to be anywhere near as robust as the illicit drug-smuggling industry.
….but the impression I have is that it is a lot worse than in the past. That’s both the transborder movement and the level of arms with the cartels.
I have no proof, but I think that our level of non-gun violence is due to a lot of cultural factors. From our “conquest” of the frontier to our “action” movies to the theme of redemptive violence (see Mel Gibson) to solving issues with the military we love to do violence.
that America’s cultural love affair with violence is not limited to our love of guns, and that there is no easy fix to the problem. But it’s such a deeply embedded and deeply destructive problem that we should be dilligently looking for the soft spots where we can at least begin to attack it. Banning AK47s shouldn’t be too hard to pull off: I doubt most Americans would object to it.
Are societies more prone to violence ones that politically have lax gun control? Or is it the lax gun control that leads to the violence? Our culture is quite different from Western Europe’s and so it may just be a cultural difference.
At present there is no clear evidence that guns law make a noticable difference. I think states should continue to experiment – but at the state level so we can hopefully find some better approaches.
And I do agree with Dan that we should require some training for the more powerful weaponry.
Yes. “Just a cultural difference” begs the question: Sure, the elements of culture evolve in tandem, generally in complex feedback loops mutually reinforcing one another. To divert that evolutionary current into channels that are more conducive to human happiness means finding in-roads into that complex web of interacting factors.
American violence is a package deal: Do we have a gun culture because we are violent, or are we violent because we have a gun culture? Are we the last (one of the last?) developed nation to continue to utilize capital punishment because we are violent, or are we violent because we continue to utilize capital punishment? Which came first, the chicken of the egg?
These facets feed into each other, and escalate each other.
Your reversion to “clear evidence” is a reversion to the logical fallacy I already addressed. The nature of “clear evidence” rather than of the phenomena it is measuring sometimes dictates that. There’s also “no clear evidence” that being nice to other people marginally improves the quality of life on Earth. But I feel no need to wait for clear evidence to make that leap of faith.
This one is so blaringly obvious, it really doesn’t require clear evidence. If you take away the instrument that is most conducive to the commission of deadly violence, for which there is no substitute which requires so little strength, courage, forethought, and ability to utilize to deadly effect, then it is really a syllogistic certainty that the quantity of deadly violence will go down.
The problem with the evidence you rely on, and the policy track you favor, is that it really does nothing to control gun circulation in the United States. As long as guns can be freely bought and sold somewhere in the U.S., they can, for all intents and purposes, be freely bought and sold anywhere in the U.S. That’s what produces the artifact of “no clear evidence,” when the only clear evidence you would accept is evidence of localized gun regulation within the United States having an affect in comparison to other parts of the United States.
Well, no, because it’s ineffective, not because effective gun regulation doesn’t reduce the quantity of deadly violence committed. The evidence that does exist regarding effective gun regulation reinforces what would be phenomenally improbable not to be the case: Effective gun regulation reduces incidents of deadly violence. In fact, there is a strong correlation between those countries that have effective gun regulation and lower rates of deadly violence. If you want to dismiss that as a mere artifact of cultural differences, well, how convenient for your counter-intuitive conclusion.
In reality, the cultural differences include the commitment to regulate guns and to reduce violence. They are not exogenous variables, but rather part and parcel of what we are talking about.
We are so awash in guns it’s seems unlikely that more gun control laws are going to keep anybody who wants them from getting them. The sheer per capita number of firearms already out there in this country makes for a very different reality than in countries that have always exercised strict gun control.
It’s not that I wouldn’t like more control over the most powerful weaponry. I also would like to see fewer people ruining their lives with various drugs, including illegal prescription drugs that somehow manage to get manufactured in numbers that make them widely available on the street. So far, I don’t see much of a dent in either gun related violence or drug use and we certainly have plenty of laws restricting drugs.
I guess what I’m trying to say is I see very little relationship between the amount of grandstanding politicians do on these issues and anything that looks like concrete solutions to the problems of rampant gun violence or rampant drug use. So if Markey, in choosing her battles, doesn’t want to man the ramparts on gun control issues I really don’t have much of a problem with that. I don’t see it making much of a practical difference. That’s all.
that a true political will to change our violent culture in general, and the gun culture aspect of it in particular, cannot make a dent in the problem. As I indicated, the way to deal with the fact that we are awash in guns is to place the emphasis on eliminating the production and importation of bullets for those guns. Also, as I indicated, though a black market would arise and persist, it would be unlikely to be as robust as the drug market (for the reasons I stated), and the steep rise in prices associated with the risks of black marketing would reduce the amount of gun violence significantly.
I’m not in total disagreement that Markey’s political calculation might have been reasonable, facing a constituency that is so deeply embedded in the gun culture. But America’s love of violence is probably our most essential deep structural defect. So, if political courage is ever needed, it is needed in regard to moving the country ever more in the direction of being able to confront that deep structural problem.
a psychologist from the UK said that our lack of gun control contributed to the cause. Seriously.
The type of crimes that used to be considered part of the American Syndrome are becoming more common in Europe. Two massive school shootings in Finland, odd, violent incidents in Belgium and Norway (those since January).
In fact overall crime (granted this includes petty theft to homicide) is slightly higher in the UK, much higher in Finland specifically.
Steve’s probably right that easy access to guns exacerbates the problem, but no one is going to convince America as a whole to give up their guns. Keep in mind that the latest incident in Germany was carried out with a hunting rifle.
Btw, Switzerland has the 2nd highest suicide rate among people 15-24.
It’s just a complicated issue.
Crime Rates:
http://www.nationmaster.com/re…
http://www.guncontrol.ca/Conte…
But, as I said, cross-national statistical analyses are hard to come by, because few people consider them meaningful given the number of intervening historical and cultural variables involved. However, when a cross-national tendency exists (as it does in this case), and though intervening variables can’t be statistically controlled, the default assumption is that the intervening variables tend to “cancel each other out,” making the tendency anecdotally suggestive, if not statistically compelling.
But I’ve noticed that all the studies of strict vs lose gun control tend to show it doesn’t make much difference. The level of control changed who dies, but it doesn’t change the totals measurably.
that’s more an artifact of the kinds of studies that are statistically viable (i.e., intranational in this case), rather than the strength of the totality of the evidence (since that evidence which runs counter to your conclusion is precisely that evidence which is not reducible to meaningful statistical analysis, given the large number of uncontrollable intervening historical and cultural variables involved).
The Coloradoan story mentioned that the congresspersons said the ban was ineffective. IIRC the ban mentioned particular makes and models of firearms. All a manufacturer has to do is change one or two features, give it a new model number and voila, no longer banned. I certainly agree with people who say that military-style assault rifles have little legitimate purpose except to inflict maximum damage quickly. Then if you really want to ban them draft better legislation. I think the AR ban was feel-good legislation for representatives in big cities. While I don’t think Markey’s sig on this letter is wonderful I don’t think it is terrible either.
by Gypsy Chief
Where’s my right to own a fully operational Abrams tank?
They just won’t sell it to you.
You can get some nice older tanks here:
http://www.armyjeeps.net/armor…
Just make sure you have the proper Class III license.
I wonder what the neighbors think if it has working guns…
n/t
I have an open invitation to join a WWII re-enactment group that operates as a Wermacht anti-tank unit. They have a 37mm PaK-36 AT gun, an 81mm mortar, and a Panzerschrek (A German copy of the bazooka). They are all fully operational, and licensed as “military antiquities”, or as some call them, obsolete weapons. You can’t get a permit to fire live ammo out of the gun, and firing the Panzerschrek costs over $400 a round, when you factor in permits and such. Obviously thats a bit too expensive to do.
Have you considered crocheting?
Second Amendment does not specify the type of arms; it just says “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Given this plain language, how could the government infringe on my right to keep and bear nuclear arms? ‘Cause I’ve got some people who are pissing me off….
We can buy the silos, why not with contents?
currently it’s aimed toward Montrose, as I have intelligence to suggest that is prudent.
I am also a bit worried about the Collbran quadrant, and so have been arming the teenagers that live on that side of town as a preemptive strike force if needed.
Obama is from Chicago (or Kenya) and we all know that they hate guns in those places.
my AR-15.
what gun-toting Republican wants that?
the gun-toting Republican with the bigger gun would love that.
“I hate Ward except when he’s toting a fully automatic weapon.”
Run! Al Gore – or was it Kerry? – is going to outlaw your Bible.
Witty, poll, BTW.
Some would argue for the old standbys of 5.56mm (M-16) and 7.62mm (AK-47).
But, those in the forefront of technology would argue for:
1. 4.73x33mm bullet developed for the G11. See http://www.defensetech.org/arc…
2. 6.5mm. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6…
The real problem is not “what is the better/best” cartridge, but can we introduce a new cartridge into the logistics system.
Spend more time at http://www.defensetech.org/ and you would not ask silly questions such as this.
It’s a stupid poll to act as an ornament to the post. I got that.
Besides, why would you advocate for a closed-ejection automatic weapons system like the G11? There’s not enough statistical evidence that the entire block of propellent is consumed at firing, leaving the very real possibility that the weapon will eventually jam…
Would ever use caseless ammunition. Tinky-tinky. We don’t even know anybody who’s fired a H&K G11.
This was a choice between two, not every prototype James Bond cartridge ever made. More to the point it was really about Ward Churchill, a true 7.62×39 man if there ever was one. As you were.
I’m sorry that Rep Markey is trying to avoid a fight with the Gundamentalists on this. The Supreme Court made it pretty clear that we can have restrictions on the 2nd Amendment, and we should…esp in a time of war.
I’m in the minority of gun owners that support the Assault Weapons Ban – because like most veterans, we understand the difference in degrees of firepower. If LB or DavidThi808 want a handgun or deer rifle, that’s an acceptable firearm for the average citizen to own for whatever reason.
Now, if they want an automatic pistol with a magazine capacity over 20rounds and a self-cocking action like the H&K P7, then they need some classes and testing, along with a license before they get it. Same Same for a .50cal sniper rifle or an M249 SAW or even a M1A2 Abrams Tank…that’s because the primary deployed purpose of these weapons is COMBAT.
Not home defense or varmit shooting. Combat. If you try and roll out the argument you need a Chinese knock-off AK47 to go hunting because you’re a lousy shot, then I say go to the range and practice.
for years i’ve been puzzling over whether i’m really in the minority of gun owners or not, and i think i’m not. dedicated hunter and gunowner, but i also know very well the types of paranoid crazies that want to own heavy weaponry (some of them are in my family, others have been co-workers, colleagues, etc.) and i absolutely do not want those guys to own those weapons. I can make a legitimate case for a civilian owning vest-piercing rounds for a S&W40. I cannot make a case for a civilian owning three fully auto MP5’s.
The background check system is there to prevent people with histories of violence or mental illness from getting weapons.
…have been noticed by the system already?
More to the point, it isn’t necessarily about the unstable. Even mostly reasonable people shouldn’t have paramilitary weapons.