Mass shooting: At Least 11 Shot At Gilroy Garlic Festival

[OldLady]

There is nothing crazy about deleting an amendment which is outdated and no longer applies to our society.

The need for the right to keep and bear arms applies today as it did in 1791; the protections provided for it by the 2nd are FAR more necessary now than ever in our history.

No, you just want to keep your guns. It's lucky for you that a powerful organization like the NRA comes up with all these snazzy arguments for you.

 

[iceberg]

Yes.....if you don't hand over your Constitutionally protected gun you will now be a felon.....never having used it for a crime....you will now be a criminal. That is as fascist as it gets.......which is why we don't trust people like you....

It is not "fascist." It is sane.

again - you went from simply wanting the violence to stop to now calling it "sane" we get rid of the 2nd amendment.

this is why we can't have nice things.

Your comment makes no sense to me. There is nothing crazy about deleting an amendment which is outdated and no longer applies to our society.

There is if you do it right after saying you are not coming for guns.

? I still don't understand what connection you're making that is so damning. But okay.

1. No we are not coming for your guns
2. Let's do away with the 2nd amendment.

Nothing more I can say.

 

[Slade3200]

Thanks for sharing... how do you feel about background checks?

To show I am willing to compromise....

I can live with the current background check system, no universal background check.....and the system should simply be a pass/fail, with no permanent record kept....and we can already to this.....you simply submit your name, if it comes back as a criminal or on the nutcase list...fail.....no registration of every single gun owner to do that...we register actual criminals instead. We can already do it.....

Why do you oppose universal? Wouldn’t that be more efficient and effective?

No.....criminals get past current, Federally mandated background checks by using straw buyers, people who have clean records who can pass the background check....usually relatives or friends, most likely girlfriends, baby mommas, grandmothers, mothers, and a lot of the time they are under threat of physical violence....and as actual research shows, criminals don't like private sales for guns because they don't know if the stranger they are buying the gun from is an undercover police officer.....

Mass shooter's first crime is the mass shooting, so they have clean records which is why they can pass any background check either current or universal.

The only reason to have universal background checks, since they wouldn't do anything to stop either criminals or mass shooters....is to come back later and demand universal gun registration....that is the real goal. The anti-gunners demand universal background checks knowing they won't stop criminals or mass shooters. Then, when criminals and mass shooters keep getting guns because of the reasons above, they come back and say....see, in order for UBCs to work, we need to register all the guns, otherwise we can't know who originally owned the guns in the first place.

They want universal gun registration because that is the last thing they need to ban guns and confiscate them when they get the political power to enact those steps. How do we know this? Because of Germany, Britain, Australia, Canada, various states in the U.S. who first registered rifles and then banned them.....New York, and other cities......

Then, Universal Background checks are also aimed at normal gun owners...how?

Gun Control Won't Stop Crime

“Universal” Background Checks
Part of the genius of the Bloomberg gun control system is how it creates prohibitions indirectly. Bloomberg’s so-called “universal” background check scheme is a prime example. These bills are never just about having background checks on the private sales of firearms. That aspect is the part that the public is told about. Yet when you read the Bloomberg laws, you find that checks on private sales are the tip of a very large iceberg of gun prohibition.

First, the bills criminalize a vast amount of innocent activity. Suppose you are an nra Certified Instructor teaching an introductory safety class. Under your supervision, students will handle a variety of unloaded firearms. They will learn how different guns have different safeties, and they will learn the safe way to hand a firearm to another person. But thanks to Bloomberg, these classroom firearm lessons are now illegal in Washington state, unless the class takes place at a shooting range.

It’s now also illegal to lend a gun to your friend, so that you can shoot together at a range on your own property. Or to lend a firearm for a week to your neighbor who is being stalked.

Under the Bloomberg system, gun loans are generally forbidden, unless the gun owner and the borrower both go to a gun store first. The store must process the loan as if the store were selling the gun out of its inventory.

Then, when your friend wants to return your gun to you, both of you must go to the gun store again. This time, the store will process that transaction as if you were buying the gun from the store’s inventory. For both the loan and the return of the gun, you will have to pay whatever fees the store charges, and whatever fees the government might charge.

The gun store will have to keep a permanent record of you, your friend and the gun, including the gun’s serial number. Depending on the state or city, the government might also keep a permanent record.

In other words, the “background check” law is really a law to expand gun registration—and registration lists are used for confiscation.

Consider New York City. In 1967, violent crime in the city was out of control. So the City Council and Mayor John Lindsay required registration of all long guns. The criminals, obviously, did not comply. Thanks to the 1911 Sullivan Act, New York City already had established registration lists for handgun owners.

Then, in 1991, the City Council decided that many lawfully registered firearms were now illegal “assault weapons.” The New York Police Department used the registration lists to ensure that the guns were either surrendered to the government or moved out of the city. When he was mayor of New York City, Bloomberg did the same, after the “assault weapon” law was expanded to cover any rifle or shotgun with an ammunition capacity greater than five rounds.

In Australia and Great Britain—which are often cited as models for the U.S. to follow—registration lists were used for gun confiscation. In Great Britain, this included all handguns; in Australia, handguns over .38 caliber. Both countries banned all semi-automatic or pump-action long guns.

Most American jurisdictions don’t have a comprehensive gun registration system. But even if your state legislature has outlawed gun registration, firearm stores must keep records. Those records could be harvested for future confiscations.

Under the Bloomberg system, the store’s list would include not just the guns that the store actually sold, but all the guns (and their owners) that the store processed, for friends or relatives borrowing guns.

So if those people ca

Wow, that whole straw buyer process sounds pretty intense. Surely you wouldn’t assume that every criminal who wanted a gun would have the will and the resources to do all that. Right? Some, yes, I’m sure they would, but that process alone sounds like it would detour a good percentage of criminals from getting guns. Also, what about the mentally ill who you agree shouldn’t be carrying. Wouldn’t universal
Background checks and an improved system help identify more of those individuals?

no----if a person really wants to kill ------he will find a way------that's why they are called "criminals"

Agreed, but that doesn’t apply to everybody and every situation

 

[M14 Shooter]

I answered this in the part that you cut out.
"The variable that this doesn't account for is time. As time has passed in those 26 years, I assume the norms have changed or law enforcement has improved, or something culturally has happened to reduce those homicides.

I see. You assume -something- explains how the dramatic decline of gun-related murders, concurrent with a wholesale in the number of guns does not negate your argument.
SOLID reasoning there.

In short, I think it's an extraneous variable and I know we'll disagree on that.

You;re arguing more guns = more gun murders.
The wholesale increase in the number of guns is as far from extraneous to your argument as you can get.

So, again:
Explain the 50% drop in US gun-related homicides 1993-2014, while the number of guns increased 22% over the same period.

 

[M14 Shooter]

There is nothing crazy about deleting an amendment which is outdated and no longer applies to our society.

The need for the right to keep and bear arms applies today as it did in 1791; the protections provided for it by the 2nd are FAR more necessary now than ever in our history.

No, you just want to keep your guns.

Of course - I know what happens to people like me when people like you take them away.
Thus: the protections provided for it by the 2nd are FAR more necessary now than ever in our history

When you repeal the 2nd, let me know.

 

[2aguy]

So why not just be honest and say you want to ban all semiautomatic rifles?

All that accept a magazine.

I have a semi-automatic shotgun. Plugged to 3 but could hold 5.

No reason to ban magazine fed weapons whatsoever because 99.9999% of them are never used to commit any crime

What are they used for that requires a detachable magazine that could not be accomplished without a built in, limited size magazine.

Doesn't matter. What matters is how they are actually used now and 99.999% magazine fed firearms will never be used to commit any crimes.

The fact that a minuscule fraction of people will use a gun for violence is not reason enough to put restrictions on everyone

It does matter.

To ban something that leads to mass killings that has no other use is a nobrainer.

So what can't to do with a built in smaller magazine that you can do with a detachable larger magazine?



.

There are 18 million of these rifles....12 were used to commit mass public shootings...if you want to ban 18 million rifles because 12 were used to commit a crime you are irrational...

93 people were killed in those 12 mass shootings....

Pools killed over 3,500

Cars over 38,000

knives kill over 1,500 every year...according to your logic, we need to ban all of them.

 

[OldLady]

It is not "fascist." It is sane.

again - you went from simply wanting the violence to stop to now calling it "sane" we get rid of the 2nd amendment.

this is why we can't have nice things.

Your comment makes no sense to me. There is nothing crazy about deleting an amendment which is outdated and no longer applies to our society.

There is if you do it right after saying you are not coming for guns.

? I still don't understand what connection you're making that is so damning. But okay.

1. No we are not coming for your guns
2. Let's do away with the 2nd amendment.

Nothing more I can say.

You are oversimplifying and you know it. If the Second Amendment is going to be used as a roadblock toward effective regulation of guns in this country, then it needs to go. If people were willing to accept restrictions on the types of guns and ammunition they could own, the Second wouldn't need to go. But people are not willing to be reasonable in the name of public safety.

 

[danielpalos]

you keep saying "military style" as if that means shit or can really be defined.

They've had the shit defined out of them. What it boils down to is a semi automatic rifle that will take large capacity removable magazines. It's not rocket science except to gun nuts at their most obtuse.

Yes...it is science.....magazine capacity has no bearing on deaths and injuries in mass public shootings....

Gilroy, rifle.....3.

From Mother Jones list of mass public shootings......

US mass shootings, 1982-2019: Data from Mother Jones’ investigation


Shotgun

Russian Polyteknic shooting....20
#13.......5 dead
#25.......3
#47.......12
#113...8

#103...revolver....8

These are shotguns and revolver mass public shootings.....it isn't the magazine...it is the gun free zone that allows a shooter to be unmolested when he is killing people, who isn't stopped until someone else points a gun at him.

These issues would be less common and less catastrophic, with more well regulated militia ensuring the security of our free State.

 

[2aguy]

So why not just be honest and say you want to ban all semiautomatic rifles?

All that accept a magazine.

I have a semi-automatic shotgun. Plugged to 3 but could hold 5.

Yes....and a 5 shot shotgun was used to murder 20 people in Russia, 12 people at the D.C Naval yard....so according to your logic it too needs to be banned.

How many if those people had a AR-15?

In Gilroy? 3 SKS rifle shooter stopped by someone with a gun.

SKS rifle used by the Bernie Bro at the Republican baseball practice...0 killed...stopped by people at the scene with guns......

20 killed in Russia with a pump action shotgun.

12 killed at the Navy Yard with a pump action shotgun

32 killed at Virginia Tech with 2 pistols

24 killed in Luby's Cafe with 2 pistols.

In Gilroy, in DC Not "someone" but a trained police officer.

What the **** makes you think trained law enforcement carrying a gun is the same as one of you whackjobs carrying a gun? You have little training on handing the weapon and no training of a shooter situation.

Yet another one opf yiour srtyupud asrgumebts.

In actual research on normal people with guns stopping mass shooters, they are 94% effective against them... Normal people, not cops or soldiers...

Armed Citizens Are Successful 94% Of The Time At Active Shooter Events [FBI]

Of all the active shooter events there were 33 at which an armed citizen was present. Of those, Armed Citizens were successful at stopping the Active shooter 75.8% of the time (25 incidents) and were successful in reducing the loss of life in an additional 18.2% (6) of incidents. In only 2 of the 33 incidents (6.1%) was the Armed Citizen(s) not helpful in any way in stopping the active shooter or reducing the loss of life.

Thus the headline of our report that Armed Citizens Are Successful 94% Of The Time At Active Shooter Events.


In the 2 incidents at which the armed citizen “failed” to stop or slow the active shooter, one is the previously mentioned incident with hunters. The other is an incident in which the CCWer was shot in the back in a Las Vegas Walmart when he failed to identify that there were 2 Active Shooters involved in the attack. He neglected to identify the one that shot him in the back while he was trying to ambush the other perpetrator.

We also decided to look at the breakdown of events that took place in gun free zones and the relative death toll from events in gun free zones vs non-gun-free zones.

Of the 283 incidents in our data pool, we were unable to identify if the event took place in a gun-free zone in a large number (41%) of the events. Most of the events took place at a business, church, home, or other places at which as a rule of law it is not a gun free zone but potentially could have been declared one by the property owner. Without any information in the FBI study or any indication one way or the other from the news reports, we have indicated that event with a question mark.

If you look at all of the Active Shooter events (pie chart on the top) you see that for those which we have the information, almost twice as many took place in gun free zones than not; but realistically the vast majority of those for which we have no information (indicated as ?) are probably NOT gun free zones.

If you isolate just the events at which 8 or more people were killed the data paints a different picture (pie chart on the bottom). In these incidents, 77.8% took place in a gun-free zone suggesting that gun free zones lead to a higher death rate vs active shooter events in general

=====

One of the final metrics we thought was important to consider is the potential tendency for armed citizens to injure or kill innocent people in their attempt to “save the day.” A common point in political discussions is to point out the lack of training of most armed citizens and the decrease in safety inherent in their presence during violent encounters.

As you can see below, however, at the 33 incidents at which Armed Citizens were present, there were zero situations at which the Armed Citizen injured or killed an innocent person. It never happened.

 

[2aguy]

Your point has been brought up before. The theory by anti-gun activists is that regardless of those other factors......More Guns = More Gun crime. That is where they hang their hat.

So.....the point they miss, and I think you miss....is that over those 26 years.....whether or not normal people owning guns was a factor in reducing gun crime.....

More Guns in the hands of law abiding people did not increase the gun crime rates...

So over that 26 years.....more Americans own and actually carry guns....17.25 million Americans from about 4 million actually being able to legally carry guns.....and the gun crime rates went still went down.

So the core theory is wrong....More Guns did not = More gun crime.

Now, it is true that various factors made the murder rate go down, more police, smarter police tactics and so on.......but that isn't their argument or their point.......

Also, for one thing........if you are being attacked, and you use a gun to stop the attack....that crime didn't happen to you....

Then, I have actual research from various researchers who state that there is a correlation to decreases in interpersonal crime when more people own and carry guns...for example, there are more home invasions in Britain than here in the U.S....why? When researchers ask criminals in prison, they state they go into empty houses in the U.S. because they don't want to get shot. In Britain, the criminals don't care about people being home, because they don't have guns...and since they don't have guns, they can be tied up and questioned about where their belongings are...

I don't think I got a clear answer so I'll keep this one short and more direct.

I don't want to discuss the 26 year time period, which I consider an extraneous variable.

Removing that variable from the discussion, it's a fact that states with more gun ownership have more gun homicides. Why is that?

It's not even a low correlation. It's a moderate to high correlation. Very distinct.

That is not a fact....

The reason you want to ignore the 26 year period is because it shows that the claim that more guns = more gun crime did not come true...over 26 years of actual experience....gun murder down 49%, gun crime down 75%, violent crime down 72%....which wouldn't have happened if more guns = more gun crime......

You Know Less Than You Think About Guns

Do Gun Laws Stop Gun Crimes?

The same week Kristof's column came out, National Journal attracted major media attention with a showy piece of research and analysis headlined "The States With The Most Gun Laws See The Fewest Gun-Related Deaths." The subhead lamented: "But there's still little appetite to talk about more restrictions."

Critics quickly noted that the Journal's Libby Isenstein had included suicides among "gun-related deaths" and suicide-irrelevant policies such as stand-your-ground laws among its tally of "gun laws." That meant that high-suicide, low-homicide states such as Wyoming, Alaska, and Idaho were taken to task for their liberal carry-permit policies. Worse, several of the states with what the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence considers terribly lax gun laws were dropped from Isenstein's data set because their murder rates were too low!

Another of National Journal's mistakes is a common one in gun science: The paper didn't look at gun statistics in the context of overall violent crime, a much more relevant measure to the policy debate. After all, if less gun crime doesn't mean less crime overall—if criminals simply substitute other weapons or means when guns are less available—the benefit of the relevant gun laws is thrown into doubt. When Thomas Firey of the Cato Institute ran regressions of Isenstein's study with slightly different specifications and considering all violent crime, each of her effects either disappeared or reversed.

Another recent well-publicized study trying to assert a positive connection between gun laws and public safety was a 2013 JAMA Internal Medicine article by the Harvard pediatrics professor Eric W. Fleegler and his colleagues, called "Firearm Legislation and Firearm-Related Fatalities in the United States." It offered a mostly static comparison of the toughness of state gun laws (as rated by the gun control lobbyists at the Brady Center) with gun deaths from 2007 to 2010.

"States with strictest firearm laws have lowest rates of gun deaths," a Boston Globeheadline then announced. But once again, if you take the simple, obvious step of separating out suicides from murders, the correlations that buttress the supposed causations disappear. As John Hinderaker headlined his reaction at the Power Line blog, "New Study Finds Firearm Laws Do Nothing to Prevent Homicides."

Among other anomalies in Fleegler's research, Hinderaker pointed out that it didn't include Washington, D.C., with its strict gun laws and frequent homicides. If just one weak-gun-law state, Louisiana, were taken out of the equation, "the remaining nine lowest-regulation states have an average gun homicide rate of 2.8 per 100,000, which is 12.5% less than the average of the ten states with the strictest gun control laws," he found.

October interview with Slate and found it wanting: "There have been studies that have essentially toted up the number of laws various states have on the books and examined the association between the number of laws and rates of firearm death," said Wintemute, who is a medical doctor and researcher at the University of California, Davis. "That's really bad science, and it shouldn't inform policymaking."

Wintemute thinks the factor such studies don't adequately consider is the number of people in a state who have guns to begin with, which is generally not known or even well-estimated on levels smaller than national, though researchers have used proxies from subscribers to certain gun-related magazines and percentages of suicides committed with guns to make educated guesses. "Perhaps these laws decrease mortality by decreasing firearm ownership, in which case firearm ownership mediates the association," Wintemute wrote in a 2013 JAMA Internal Medicine paper. "But perhaps, and more plausibly, these laws are more readily enacted in states where the prevalence of firearm ownership is low—there will be less opposition to them—and firearm ownership confounds the association."

------

Would Cracking Down on Guns in the U.S. Really Reduce Violence? , by Robert VerBruggen, National Review

There is actually no simple correlation between states’ homicide rates and their gun-ownership rates or gun laws.
This has been shown numerous times, by different people, using different data sets.

A year ago, I took state gun-ownership levels reported by the Washington Post (based on a Centers for Disease Control survey) and compared them with murder rates from the FBI: no correlation.

The legal scholar Eugene Volokh has compared states’ gun laws (as rated by the anti-gun Brady Campaign) with their murder rates: no correlation.

David Freddoso of the Washington Examiner, a former National Review reporter, failed to find a correlation even between gun ownership in a state and gun murders specifically, an approach that sets aside the issue of whether gun availability has an effect on non-gun crime. (Guns can deter unarmed criminals, for instance, and criminals without guns may simply switch to other weapons.)


, I recently redid my analysis with a few tweaks. Instead of relying on a single year of survey data, I averaged three years. (The CDC survey, the best available for state-level numbers, included data on gun ownership only in 2001, 2002, and 2004. Those were the years I looked at.)

And instead of comparing CDC data with murder rates from a different agency, I relied on the CDC’s own estimates of death by assault in those years. Again: no correlation.

------

Left-leaning media outlets, from Mother Jones to National Journal, get around this absence of correlation by reporting numbers on “gun deaths” rather than gun homicides or homicides in general.
More than 60 percent of gun deaths nationally are suicides, and places with higher gun ownership typically see a higher percentage of their suicides committed with a gun.
Focusing on the number of gun deaths practically guarantees a finding that guns and violence go together. While it may be true that public policy should also seek to reduce suicide, it is homicide — often a dramatic mass killing — that usually prompts the media and politicians to call for gun control, and it is homicide that most influences people as they consider supporting measures to take away their fellow citizens’ access to guns.
There are large gaps among the states when it comes to homicide, with rates ranging all the way from about two to twelve per 100,000 in 2013, the most recent year of data available from the CDC. These disparities show that it’s not just guns that cause the United States to have, on average, a higher rate of homicide than other developed countries do. Not only is there no correlation between gun ownership and overall homicide within a state, but there is a strong correlation between gun homicide and non-gun homicide — suggesting that they spring from similar causes, and that some states are simply more violent than others. A closer look at demographic and geographic patterns provides some clues as to why this is.

 

[M14 Shooter]

You are oversimplifying and you know it. If the Second Amendment is going to be used as a roadblock toward effective regulation of guns in this country, then it needs to go.

Stop whining on USMB, get off your rump, and amend the Constitution.

If people were willing to accept restrictions on the types of guns and ammunition they could own...

Why on God's green earth would we let anti-gun loons define how we're "allowed" to exercise our rights?

 

[XponentialChaos]

I answered this in the part that you cut out.
"The variable that this doesn't account for is time. As time has passed in those 26 years, I assume the norms have changed or law enforcement has improved, or something culturally has happened to reduce those homicides.

I see. You assume -something- explains how the dramatic decline of gun-related murders, concurrent with a wholesale in the number of guns does not negate your argument.
SOLID reasoning there.

In short, I think it's an extraneous variable and I know we'll disagree on that.

You;re arguing more guns = more gun murders.
The wholesale increase in the number of guns is as far from extraneous to your argument as you can get.

So, again:
Explain the 50% drop in US gun-related homicides 1993-2014, while the number of guns increased 22% over the same period.

I already explained the drop. I think it's due to the societal norms that have changed over time, either due to law enforcement or cultural changes. We may be able to find data for that, but in general, I think that statement would be difficult to prove or disprove.

So instead, I just removed that variable from the data to see what the link is. And if you know anything about statistics, you would know that less variables removes the noise.

Comparing gun owner percentage to gun-related homicides without the "noise" of societal changes over time, there is a distinct upward correlation. More guns = more deaths.

 

[M14 Shooter]

I already explained the drop. I think it's due to the societal norms that have changed over time, either due to law enforcement or cultural changes. We may be able to find data for that, but in general, I think that statement would be difficult to prove or disprove.

Yes. You assume -something- explains how the dramatic decline of gun-related murders, concurrent with a wholesale in the number of guns does not negate your argument.
That is -you- cannot explain away something that negates your premise, and you know it.
Thus
Your premise, negated..

Comparing gun owner percentage to gun-related homicides without the "noise" of societal changes over time, there is a distinct upward correlation. More guns = more deaths.

You mean, when you take away the inconvenient fact the number of guns has increased while the number of homicides has decreased, more guns = more gun homicides.

 

[XponentialChaos]

Your point has been brought up before. The theory by anti-gun activists is that regardless of those other factors......More Guns = More Gun crime. That is where they hang their hat.

So.....the point they miss, and I think you miss....is that over those 26 years.....whether or not normal people owning guns was a factor in reducing gun crime.....

More Guns in the hands of law abiding people did not increase the gun crime rates...

So over that 26 years.....more Americans own and actually carry guns....17.25 million Americans from about 4 million actually being able to legally carry guns.....and the gun crime rates went still went down.

So the core theory is wrong....More Guns did not = More gun crime.

Now, it is true that various factors made the murder rate go down, more police, smarter police tactics and so on.......but that isn't their argument or their point.......

Also, for one thing........if you are being attacked, and you use a gun to stop the attack....that crime didn't happen to you....

Then, I have actual research from various researchers who state that there is a correlation to decreases in interpersonal crime when more people own and carry guns...for example, there are more home invasions in Britain than here in the U.S....why? When researchers ask criminals in prison, they state they go into empty houses in the U.S. because they don't want to get shot. In Britain, the criminals don't care about people being home, because they don't have guns...and since they don't have guns, they can be tied up and questioned about where their belongings are...

I don't think I got a clear answer so I'll keep this one short and more direct.

I don't want to discuss the 26 year time period, which I consider an extraneous variable.

Removing that variable from the discussion, it's a fact that states with more gun ownership have more gun homicides. Why is that?

It's not even a low correlation. It's a moderate to high correlation. Very distinct.

That is not a fact....

The reason you want to ignore the 26 year period is because it shows that the claim that more guns = more gun crime did not come true...over 26 years of actual experience....gun murder down 49%, gun crime down 75%, violent crime down 72%....which wouldn't have happened if more guns = more gun crime......

You Know Less Than You Think About Guns

Do Gun Laws Stop Gun Crimes?

The same week Kristof's column came out, National Journal attracted major media attention with a showy piece of research and analysis headlined "The States With The Most Gun Laws See The Fewest Gun-Related Deaths." The subhead lamented: "But there's still little appetite to talk about more restrictions."

Critics quickly noted that the Journal's Libby Isenstein had included suicides among "gun-related deaths" and suicide-irrelevant policies such as stand-your-ground laws among its tally of "gun laws." That meant that high-suicide, low-homicide states such as Wyoming, Alaska, and Idaho were taken to task for their liberal carry-permit policies. Worse, several of the states with what the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence considers terribly lax gun laws were dropped from Isenstein's data set because their murder rates were too low!

Another of National Journal's mistakes is a common one in gun science: The paper didn't look at gun statistics in the context of overall violent crime, a much more relevant measure to the policy debate. After all, if less gun crime doesn't mean less crime overall—if criminals simply substitute other weapons or means when guns are less available—the benefit of the relevant gun laws is thrown into doubt. When Thomas Firey of the Cato Institute ran regressions of Isenstein's study with slightly different specifications and considering all violent crime, each of her effects either disappeared or reversed.

Another recent well-publicized study trying to assert a positive connection between gun laws and public safety was a 2013 JAMA Internal Medicine article by the Harvard pediatrics professor Eric W. Fleegler and his colleagues, called "Firearm Legislation and Firearm-Related Fatalities in the United States." It offered a mostly static comparison of the toughness of state gun laws (as rated by the gun control lobbyists at the Brady Center) with gun deaths from 2007 to 2010.

"States with strictest firearm laws have lowest rates of gun deaths," a Boston Globeheadline then announced. But once again, if you take the simple, obvious step of separating out suicides from murders, the correlations that buttress the supposed causations disappear. As John Hinderaker headlined his reaction at the Power Line blog, "New Study Finds Firearm Laws Do Nothing to Prevent Homicides."

Among other anomalies in Fleegler's research, Hinderaker pointed out that it didn't include Washington, D.C., with its strict gun laws and frequent homicides. If just one weak-gun-law state, Louisiana, were taken out of the equation, "the remaining nine lowest-regulation states have an average gun homicide rate of 2.8 per 100,000, which is 12.5% less than the average of the ten states with the strictest gun control laws," he found.

October interview with Slate and found it wanting: "There have been studies that have essentially toted up the number of laws various states have on the books and examined the association between the number of laws and rates of firearm death," said Wintemute, who is a medical doctor and researcher at the University of California, Davis. "That's really bad science, and it shouldn't inform policymaking."

Wintemute thinks the factor such studies don't adequately consider is the number of people in a state who have guns to begin with, which is generally not known or even well-estimated on levels smaller than national, though researchers have used proxies from subscribers to certain gun-related magazines and percentages of suicides committed with guns to make educated guesses. "Perhaps these laws decrease mortality by decreasing firearm ownership, in which case firearm ownership mediates the association," Wintemute wrote in a 2013 JAMA Internal Medicine paper. "But perhaps, and more plausibly, these laws are more readily enacted in states where the prevalence of firearm ownership is low—there will be less opposition to them—and firearm ownership confounds the association."

------

Would Cracking Down on Guns in the U.S. Really Reduce Violence? , by Robert VerBruggen, National Review

There is actually no simple correlation between states’ homicide rates and their gun-ownership rates or gun laws.
This has been shown numerous times, by different people, using different data sets.

A year ago, I took state gun-ownership levels reported by the Washington Post (based on a Centers for Disease Control survey) and compared them with murder rates from the FBI: no correlation.

The legal scholar Eugene Volokh has compared states’ gun laws (as rated by the anti-gun Brady Campaign) with their murder rates: no correlation.

David Freddoso of the Washington Examiner, a former National Review reporter, failed to find a correlation even between gun ownership in a state and gun murders specifically, an approach that sets aside the issue of whether gun availability has an effect on non-gun crime. (Guns can deter unarmed criminals, for instance, and criminals without guns may simply switch to other weapons.)


, I recently redid my analysis with a few tweaks. Instead of relying on a single year of survey data, I averaged three years. (The CDC survey, the best available for state-level numbers, included data on gun ownership only in 2001, 2002, and 2004. Those were the years I looked at.)

And instead of comparing CDC data with murder rates from a different agency, I relied on the CDC’s own estimates of death by assault in those years. Again: no correlation.

------

Left-leaning media outlets, from Mother Jones to National Journal, get around this absence of correlation by reporting numbers on “gun deaths” rather than gun homicides or homicides in general.
More than 60 percent of gun deaths nationally are suicides, and places with higher gun ownership typically see a higher percentage of their suicides committed with a gun.
Focusing on the number of gun deaths practically guarantees a finding that guns and violence go together. While it may be true that public policy should also seek to reduce suicide, it is homicide — often a dramatic mass killing — that usually prompts the media and politicians to call for gun control, and it is homicide that most influences people as they consider supporting measures to take away their fellow citizens’ access to guns.
There are large gaps among the states when it comes to homicide, with rates ranging all the way from about two to twelve per 100,000 in 2013, the most recent year of data available from the CDC. These disparities show that it’s not just guns that cause the United States to have, on average, a higher rate of homicide than other developed countries do. Not only is there no correlation between gun ownership and overall homicide within a state, but there is a strong correlation between gun homicide and non-gun homicide — suggesting that they spring from similar causes, and that some states are simply more violent than others. A closer look at demographic and geographic patterns provides some clues as to why this is.

It is a fact. I ran the numbers myself. Give me Pearson's correlation coefficient for the numbers and tell me what you come up with. I'm getting 0.698.

Once again, you're giving me a block of text regarding gun crime. I'm not talking about gun crime so I don't see the use in posting or reading those links.

I'm specifically talking about the connection between gun ownership rate vs gun homicides.

 

[2aguy]

Other researchers have done the same thing and found the opposite....and then you get into the chicken and egg problem.....

Are more people getting legal guns, which are different from criminals getting guns, because of the violent crime...or is gun ownership driving up the gun crime rate....

You have to think, that coming from your thought, that normal people having guns, means they are then using those guns for crime....which doesn't make any sense. Criminals drive the gun crime rate, not normal people.

Here are papers that show that concealed carry permits actually help reduce crime.....not by huge amounts, but they do lower the crime rate....interpersonal crimes...

http://crimeresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Bartley-Cohen-Economic-Inquiry-1998.pdf


The Effect of Concealed Weapons Laws: An Extreme Bound Analysis by William Alan Bartley and Mark A Cohen, published in Economic Inquiry, April 1998 (Copy available here)

.....we find strong support for the hypothesis that the right-to-carry laws are associated with a decrease in the trend in violent crime rates.....

Paper........CCW does not increase police deaths...

http://crimeresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Mustard-JLE-Polic-Deaths-Gun-Control.pdf

This paper uses state-level data from 1984–96 to examine how right-to-carry laws and waiting periods affect the felonious deaths of police. Some people oppose concealed weapons carry laws because they believe these laws jeopardize law enforcement officials, who risk their lives to protect the citizenry. This paper strongly rejects this contention. States that allowed law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons had a slightly higher likelihood of having a felonious police death and slightly higher police death rates prior to the law. After enactment of the right-to-carry laws, states exhibit a reduced likelihood of having a felonious police death rate and slightly lower rates of police deaths. States that implement waiting periods have slightly lower felonious police death rates both before and after the law. Allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons does not endanger the lives of officers and may help reduce their risk of being killed

========

http://johnrlott.tripod.com/tideman.pdf


Does the Right to Carry Concealed Handguns Deter Countable Crimes? Only a Count Analysis Can Say By FLORENZ PLASSMANN AND T. NICOLAUS TIDEMAN, Journal of Law and Economics, October 2001

However, for all three crime categories the levels in years 2 and 3 after adoption of a right-to-carry law are significantly below the levels in the years before the adoption of the law, which suggests that there is generally a deterrent effect and that it takes about 1 year for this effect to emerge.

=======

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/323313

Testing for the Effects of Concealed Weapons Laws: Specification Errors and Robustness*




Carlisle E. Moody
College of William and Mary
Overall, right‐to‐carry concealed weapons laws tend to reduce violent crime. The effect on property crime is more uncertain. I find evidence that these laws also reduce burglary.
====
http://crimeresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Helland-Tabarrok-Placebo-Laws.pdf
Using Placebo Laws to Test “More Guns, Less Crime”∗ Eric Helland and Alexander Tabarrok

We also find, however, that the cross equation restrictions implied by the Lott-Mustard theory are supported.
-----
Surprisingly, therefore, we conclude that there is considerable support for the hypothesis that shall-issue laws cause criminals to substitute away from crimes against persons and towards crimes against property.
===========
http://johnrlott.tripod.com/Maltz.pdf

Right-to-Carry Concealed Weapon Laws and Homicide in Large U.S. Counties: The Effect on Weapon Types, Victim Characteristics, and Victim-Offender Relationships By DAVID E. OLSON AND MICHAEL D. MALTZ, Journal of Law and Economics, October 2001

Our results indicated that the direction of effect of the shall-issue law on total SHR homicide rates was similar to that obtained by Lott and Mustard, although the magnitude of the effect was somewhat smaller and was statistically significant at the 7 percent level. In our analysis, which included only counties with a 1977 population of 100,000 or more, laws allowing for concealed weapons were associated with a 6.52 percent reduction in total homicides (Table 2). By comparison, Lott and Mustard found the concealed weapon dummy variable to be associated with a 7.65 percent reduction in total homicides across all counties and a 9 percent reduction in homicides when only large counties (populations of 100,000 or more) were included.43

===============

This one shows the benefits, in the billions of CCW laws...

http://johnrlott.tripod.com/Plassmann_Whitley.pdf

COMMENTS Confirming ìMore Guns, Less Crimeî Florenz Plassmann* & John Whitley**

CONCLUSION Analyzing county-level data for the entire United States from 1977 to 2000, we find annual reductions in murder rates between 1.5% and 2.3% for each additional year that a right-to-carry law is in effect. For the first five years that such a law is in effect, the total benefit from reduced crimes usually ranges between about $2 and $3 billion per year. The results are very similar to earlier estimates using county-level data from 1977 to 1996. We appreciate the continuing effort that Ayres and Donohue have made in discussing the impact of right-to-carry laws on crime rates. Yet we believe that both the new evidence provided by them as well as our new results show consistently that right-to-carry laws reduce crime and save lives. Unfortunately, a few simple mistakes lead Ayres and Donohue to incorrectly claim that crime rates significantly increase after right-to-carry laws are initially adopted and to misinterpret the significance of their own estimates that examined the year-to-year impact of the law.

=============

http://crimeresearch.org/wp-content...An-Exercise-in-Replication.proof_.revised.pdf

~ The Impact of Right-to-Carry Laws on Crime: An Exercise in Replication1

Carlisle E. Moody College of William and Mary - Department of Economics, Virginia 23187, U.S.A. E-mail: cemood@wm.edu Thomas B. Marvell Justec Research, Virginia 23185, U.S.A. Paul R. Zimmerman U.S. Federal Trade Commission - Bureau of Economics, Washington, D.C., U.S.A. Fasil Alemante College of William and Mary, Virginia 23187, U.S.A.


Abstract: In an article published in 2011, Aneja, Donohue and Zhang found that shall-issue or right-to-carry (RTC) concealed weapons laws have no effect on any crime except for a positive effect on assault. This paper reports a replication of their basic findings and some corresponding robustness checks, which reveal a serious omitted variable problem. Once corrected for omitted variables, the most robust result, confirmed using both county and state data, is that RTC laws significantly reduce murder. There is no robust, consistent evidence that RTC laws have any significant effect on other violent crimes, including assault. There is some weak evidence that RTC laws increase robbery and assault while decreasing rape. Given that the victim costs of murder and rape are much higher than the costs of robbery and assault, the evidence shows that RTC laws are socially beneficial.

=======

States with lower guns = higher murder....and assault weapon ban pointless..

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13504851.2013.854294

An examination of the effects of concealed weapons laws and assault weapons bans on state-level murder rates
Mark Gius

Abstract
The purpose of the present study is to determine the effects of state-level assault weapons bans and concealed weapons laws on state-level murder rates. Using data for the period 1980 to 2009 and controlling for state and year fixed effects, the results of the present study suggest that states with restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons had higher gun-related murder rates than other states. It was also found that assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level. These results suggest that restrictive concealed weapons laws may cause an increase in gun-related murders at the state level. The results of this study are consistent with some prior research in this area, most notably Lott and Mustard (1997).





Taking apart ayre and donahue one....




“The Debate on Shall-Issue Laws” by Carlisle e. Moody and Thomas B. Marvell, published in Econ Journal Watch, volume 5, number 3, September 2008 It is also available here..



Abstract
“Shall-issue” laws require authorities to issue concealed-weapons permits to anyone who applies, unless the applicant has a criminal record or a history of mental illness. A large number of studies indicate that shall-issue laws reduce crime. Only one study, an influential paper in the Stanford Law Review (2003) by Ian Ayres and John J. Donohue iii, implies that these laws lead to an increase in crime. We apply an improved version of the Ayres and Donohue method to a more extensive data set. Our analysis, as well as Ayres and Donohue’s when projected beyond a five-year span, indicates that shall-issue laws decrease crime and the costs of crime. Purists in statistical analysis object with some cause to some of methods employed both by Ayres and Donohue and by us. But our paper upgrades Ayres and Donohue, so, until the next study comes along, our paper should neutralize Ayres and Donohue’s “more guns, more crime” conclusion.

Summary and Conclusion Many articles have been published finding that shall-issue laws reduce crime. Only one article, by Ayres and Donohue who employ a model that combines a dummy variable with a post-law trend, claims to find that shall-issue laws increase crime. However, the only way that they can produce the result that shall-issue laws increase crime is to confine the span of analysis to five years. We show, using their own estimates, that if they had extended their analysis by one more year, they would have concluded that these laws reduce crime. Since most states with shallissue laws have had these laws on the books for more than five years, and the law will presumably remain on the books for some time, the only relevant analysis extends beyond five years. We extend their analysis by adding three more years of data, control for the effects of crack cocaine, control for dynamic effects, and correct the standard errors for clustering. We find that there is an initial increase in crime due to passage of the shall-issue law that is dwarfed over time by the decrease in crime associated with the post-law trend. These results are very similar to those of Ayres and Donohue, properly interpreted. The modified Ayres and Donohue model finds that shall-issue laws significantly reduce murder and burglary across all the adopting states. These laws appear to significantly increase assault, and have no net effect on rape, robbery, larceny, or auto theft. However, in the long run only the trend coefficients matter. We estimate a net benefit of $450 million per year as a result of the passage of these laws. We also estimate that, up through 2000, there was a cumulative overall net benefit of these laws of $28 billion since their passage. We think that there is credible statistical evidence that these laws lower the costs of crime. But at the very least, the present study should neutralize any “more guns, more crime” thinking based on Ayres and Donohue’s work in the Stanford Law Review. We acknowledge that, especially in light of the methodological issues of the literature in general, the magnitudes derived from our analysis of crime statistics and the supposed costs of crime might be dwarfed by other considerations in judging the policy issue. Some might contend that allowing individuals to carry a concealed weapon is a moral or cultural bad. Others might contend that greater liberty is a moral or cultural good. All we are confident in saying is that the evidence, such as it is, seems to support the hypothesis that the shall-issue law is generally beneficial with respect to its overall long run effect on crime.

Whoa, that's a lot of text for something I didn't say. I didn't say anything about gun crime rate. I'm specifically linking gun ownership rate to homicides.

It's a fact that these two measures have a moderate to high positive correlation.

Then you have this.....

Notes on the Harvard Injury Control Research Center page on Homicide - Crime Prevention Research Center

The discussion below primarily focuses on a couple problems that are observed over and over again in many public health studies: either they use purely cross-section data or the studies with panel data, which follow many different places over time, fails to use the proper controls that are used in normal academic empirical research.



Across states, more guns = more homicide

Rates of Household Firearm Ownership and Homicide Across US Regions and States, 1988–1997


American Journal of Public Health, December 2002, Vol 92, No. 12

Very basic control variables that they have used in other papers are not used here: No fixed effects for state and year. There is a big benefit to using so-called panel data, where you can more accurately account for differences in crime rates across states or over time. This method is called “fixed effects.” Ask any academic who deals with this type of data, and they will tell you that these are basic controls that all papers in this area account for.

A couple of simple examples show why other studies on crime take into account these factors

Take the differences across places. Many people point out that the UK has both a lower gun ownership rate and a lower homicide rate than the US. Some use this to claim that gun control causes crime rates to fall. But the homicide rate actually went up by 50 percent in the eight years after the 1997 handgun ban went into effect. The homicide rate was still lower than that in the US, but there were lots of reasons it was lower to begin with, not the handgun ban.

The same point applies over time. Suppose a state passes a gun control law at the same time that crime rates are rising nationally. It would be a mistake to attribute the overall increase in national crime rates to the law that got passed. To account for that concern, researchers normally see whether the increase in crime rate for the state that had the change is greater or less than the overall national change.

There are many other strange things about these public health studies. For example, it isn’t obvious why one would want to use homicides, which includes justifiable homicides, and not murders. One expects that were people have guns they might be more likely to have defensive guns uses.
--------
Across states, more guns = more homicide

State-level homicide victimization rates in the US in relation to survey measures of household firearm ownership, 2001–2003

Matthew Miller, David Hemenway, Deborah Azrael

Social Science & Medicine 64 (2007) 656–664

Again purely cross-sectional estimates, not panel data, with all the problems just noted. Very difficult to account for differences across countries.

 

[2aguy]

again - you went from simply wanting the violence to stop to now calling it "sane" we get rid of the 2nd amendment.

this is why we can't have nice things.

Your comment makes no sense to me. There is nothing crazy about deleting an amendment which is outdated and no longer applies to our society.

There is if you do it right after saying you are not coming for guns.

? I still don't understand what connection you're making that is so damning. But okay.

1. No we are not coming for your guns
2. Let's do away with the 2nd amendment.

Nothing more I can say.

You are oversimplifying and you know it. If the Second Amendment is going to be used as a roadblock toward effective regulation of guns in this country, then it needs to go. If people were willing to accept restrictions on the types of guns and ammunition they could own, the Second wouldn't need to go. But people are not willing to be reasonable in the name of public safety.

What blocking of regulations?

It is already against the law to use a gun in a crime, if you do you can be arrested.

It is already against the law to buy, own or carry a gun as a felon....you will be arrested.

It is already against the law to knowingly sell a gun to a felon...you will be arrested.

Nothing you propose would do anything you say it would do, so why would we want to do it?

And could you explain why you are so admiring of "Gun Registration?" What is it about that word that tickles your fancy so much...since it doesn't do anything you say it does?

 

[Slade3200]

Thanks for sharing... how do you feel about background checks?

To show I am willing to compromise....

I can live with the current background check system, no universal background check.....and the system should simply be a pass/fail, with no permanent record kept....and we can already to this.....you simply submit your name, if it comes back as a criminal or on the nutcase list...fail.....no registration of every single gun owner to do that...we register actual criminals instead. We can already do it.....

Why do you oppose universal? Wouldn’t that be more efficient and effective?

No.....criminals get past current, Federally mandated background checks by using straw buyers, people who have clean records who can pass the background check....usually relatives or friends, most likely girlfriends, baby mommas, grandmothers, mothers, and a lot of the time they are under threat of physical violence....and as actual research shows, criminals don't like private sales for guns because they don't know if the stranger they are buying the gun from is an undercover police officer.....

Mass shooter's first crime is the mass shooting, so they have clean records which is why they can pass any background check either current or universal.

The only reason to have universal background checks, since they wouldn't do anything to stop either criminals or mass shooters....is to come back later and demand universal gun registration....that is the real goal. The anti-gunners demand universal background checks knowing they won't stop criminals or mass shooters. Then, when criminals and mass shooters keep getting guns because of the reasons above, they come back and say....see, in order for UBCs to work, we need to register all the guns, otherwise we can't know who originally owned the guns in the first place.

They want universal gun registration because that is the last thing they need to ban guns and confiscate them when they get the political power to enact those steps. How do we know this? Because of Germany, Britain, Australia, Canada, various states in the U.S. who first registered rifles and then banned them.....New York, and other cities......

Then, Universal Background checks are also aimed at normal gun owners...how?

Gun Control Won't Stop Crime

“Universal” Background Checks
Part of the genius of the Bloomberg gun control system is how it creates prohibitions indirectly. Bloomberg’s so-called “universal” background check scheme is a prime example. These bills are never just about having background checks on the private sales of firearms. That aspect is the part that the public is told about. Yet when you read the Bloomberg laws, you find that checks on private sales are the tip of a very large iceberg of gun prohibition.

First, the bills criminalize a vast amount of innocent activity. Suppose you are an nra Certified Instructor teaching an introductory safety class. Under your supervision, students will handle a variety of unloaded firearms. They will learn how different guns have different safeties, and they will learn the safe way to hand a firearm to another person. But thanks to Bloomberg, these classroom firearm lessons are now illegal in Washington state, unless the class takes place at a shooting range.

It’s now also illegal to lend a gun to your friend, so that you can shoot together at a range on your own property. Or to lend a firearm for a week to your neighbor who is being stalked.

Under the Bloomberg system, gun loans are generally forbidden, unless the gun owner and the borrower both go to a gun store first. The store must process the loan as if the store were selling the gun out of its inventory.

Then, when your friend wants to return your gun to you, both of you must go to the gun store again. This time, the store will process that transaction as if you were buying the gun from the store’s inventory. For both the loan and the return of the gun, you will have to pay whatever fees the store charges, and whatever fees the government might charge.

The gun store will have to keep a permanent record of you, your friend and the gun, including the gun’s serial number. Depending on the state or city, the government might also keep a permanent record.

In other words, the “background check” law is really a law to expand gun registration—and registration lists are used for confiscation.

Consider New York City. In 1967, violent crime in the city was out of control. So the City Council and Mayor John Lindsay required registration of all long guns. The criminals, obviously, did not comply. Thanks to the 1911 Sullivan Act, New York City already had established registration lists for handgun owners.

Then, in 1991, the City Council decided that many lawfully registered firearms were now illegal “assault weapons.” The New York Police Department used the registration lists to ensure that the guns were either surrendered to the government or moved out of the city. When he was mayor of New York City, Bloomberg did the same, after the “assault weapon” law was expanded to cover any rifle or shotgun with an ammunition capacity greater than five rounds.

In Australia and Great Britain—which are often cited as models for the U.S. to follow—registration lists were used for gun confiscation. In Great Britain, this included all handguns; in Australia, handguns over .38 caliber. Both countries banned all semi-automatic or pump-action long guns.

Most American jurisdictions don’t have a comprehensive gun registration system. But even if your state legislature has outlawed gun registration, firearm stores must keep records. Those records could be harvested for future confiscations.

Under the Bloomberg system, the store’s list would include not just the guns that the store actually sold, but all the guns (and their owners) that the store processed, for friends or relatives borrowing guns.

So if those people ca

Wow, that whole straw buyer process sounds pretty intense. Surely you wouldn’t assume that every criminal who wanted a gun would have the will and the resources to do all that. Right? Some, yes, I’m sure they would, but that process alone sounds like it would detour a good percentage of criminals from getting guns. Also, what about the mentally ill who you agree shouldn’t be carrying. Wouldn’t universal
Background checks and an improved system help identify more of those individuals?

Again...you register the individual who can't buy guns, not all gun owners, there is no need. And if the straw buyer process was so difficult, the criminals wouldn't use it as one of their main sources for illegal guns....friends and family are a major source for illegal guns....and again, the baby mommas and grandmothers buying the guns for their boyfriend and grandson criminals often do it under threats........

Mass shooters rarely use straw buyers because they can already pass current background checks, which means they can use regular gun stores. They have no criminal records...for example...the Pulse Night Club shooter passed a criminal background check for his job as a security guard....he passed a current, federally mandated background check for each gun he bought, he was under covert FBI surveillance for a year, he was given a complete FBI criminal investigation as well, and he was interviewed by the FBI 2 times.....he passed all of it even though someone reported him as a possible terrorist....then he went on to attack the night club.

Criminals use straw buyers or steal their guns.....bypassing both current Federal background checks, and if they wanted to buy a gun from a private individual, their straw buyer could buy the gun from those sources too...since they can pass background checks.

Besides...from actual research, criminals do not like to use unknown, private sellers......they are too afraid the sellers might be police.

Besides....it is already against the law to use a gun in a crime...if you do we can already arrest you. It is already against the law for a felon to buy, own or carry a gun.....if they are caught they can already be arrested.

We have all the laws we need to reduce gun crime...the problem isn't that we don't have enough laws, the problem is that judges give bail to repeat gun offenders, prosecutors plea bargain away the gun charge, and politicians reduce sentences for gun offenders because they think the criminal justice system is unfair..

That is where the gun violence problem comes from...not John and Jane citizen having a gun for self defense.

The focus on banning guns is a waste of time. The focus needs to be on keeping the known, repeat gun offenders in prison.

Japan keeps their criminals from using guns with a life sentence for any crime involving a gun....that is how you actually dry up gun crime. Here? You have felons, with repeat arrests for illegal gun possession getting personal recognizance bonds, walking out of the court room in a matter of days, going out and shooting people.....that is our problem...

Here are the reasons we have a gun problem in our big cities...if any of these criminals were refused bond for repeat gun violations, and then, when convicted were sentenced to 30 years to life for using a gun, even for armed robbery where they didn't fire the weapon.....criminals would stop using guns for crime. The gangs would start using gullible 15 year olds to commit their murders, but the majority of gun crime would dry up....

Look at the following stories...the facts and reality of lax enforcement.......if you kept these guys in jail, you wouldn't have gun violence....

Top cop laments violence as 66 shot, 5 fatally, over long Fourth of July weekend


Between last Wednesday and Friday, 42 people were charged with felony gun-related offenses, he said, but only 15 remain in custody.


That lack of accountability for gun offenders has damaged the Police Department’s relationship with the communities most beset by violence, Johnson said, making victims of crimes less likely to cooperate with officers.
-----
“It’s not about mass incarceration. It’s not about having quotas. But when somebody has a demonstrated track record of being a violent gun offender, that should say something to the judges who are making decisions about bail. They shouldn’t be out on the street,” Lightfoot said. “We can’t keep our communities safe if people just keep cycling through the system because what that says to them is, I can do whatever I want, I can carry whatever I want, I can shoot up a crowd and I’m going to be back on the street. How does that make sense? It doesn’t.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/07/criminal_justice_reform_comes_home_to_roost.html
=======

CWB Chicago: You Be The Judge: We give you the case details. You try to guess their bail amount.

McKay was sentenced to four years for robbery in 2008; two years for aggravated unlawful use of a weapon (firearm) in 2010; seven years for being a felon in possession of a weapon (firearm) in 2012; and three years for possession of fentanyl in 2016.
-----
For McKay, who has two gun convictions and a robbery conviction, Willis set bail at….$5,000. McKay will need to put down a 10% deposit of $500 to go free. Willis also ordered him to go on electronic monitoring if he is released.

Some details that Willis did not know:
• McKay’s 2008 robbery conviction involved an armed carjacking. Prosecutors reduced the charge to “ordinary” robbery as part of a plea deal.• In 2012, McKay’s second gun case also included allegations that he fired the weapon. Prosecutors dropped the weapon discharge count and seven other weapons charges in a plea deal.• The 2016 drug possession charge started as allegations of manufacture-delivery of fentanyl, but, again, prosecutors pleaded that down to possession.

========


Under DA Krasner, more gun-possession cases get court diversionary program

In June 2018, Maalik Jackson-Wallace was arrested on a Frankford street and charged with carrying a concealed gun without a license and a gram of marijuana. It was his first arrest.

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office recommended the Frankford man for a court diversionary program called Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition (ARD) that put him on two years’ probation. His record could have been expunged if he had successfully completed the program.

But Jackson-Wallace, 24, was arrested again on gun-possession charges in March in Bridesburg. He was released from jail after a judge granted a defense motion for unsecured bail. And on June 13, he was arrested a third time — charged with murder in a shooting two days earlier in Frankford that killed a 26-year-old man.

Jackson-Wallace’s case has been cited by some on social media as an example of how they say District Attorney Larry Krasner’s policies are too lenient and lead to gun violence.



In fact, statistics obtained from the DA’s Office show that in 2018, Krasner’s first year in office, 78 gun-possession cases were placed in the ARD program — compared with just 12 such diversions in gun-possession cases the previous year, 11 in 2016, 14 in 2015. and 10 in 2014.

============

Officials Address 'Vicious Cycle' Of I-Bond Violations After Violent Weekend

Many of the gun offenders arrested by Chicago police over the weekend walked out of jail on bond, without having to pay a dime.

As of Monday morning, 19 people had been arrested on gun-related charges. By Monday afternoon, 11 were back on the street, some with prior gun offenses.

“We know who a lot of these people are,” Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson said. “And how do we know that? Because we keep arresting them over and over and over and over and over again. And it’s just a vicious cycle.”

In a tweet Sunday night, a Chicago police spokesperson criticized the practice of letting gun offenders out on Individual Recognizance Bonds or “I-Bonds.”
-----

The tweet said, in part, “Letting gun offenders out on I-Bonds shows there is absolutely no repercussion for carrying illegal guns In Chicago.”
-----
In a statement, an office representative said since the beginning of this year, 72% of gun related cases received monetary bail or no bond.
==================
http://www.cwbchicago.com/2019/05/man-connected-to-whitney-young-high.html

The man who is charged with driving the carjacked SUV of a Whitney Young High School teacher this week is on probation for possessing a handgun—a probation term that was cut in half just three weeks ago by a Cook County judge.

The CPD arrest report that documents the capture of Nicholas Williams on Tuesday says cops and federal agents found Williams “in possession” of a loaded 9-millimeter handgun with a defaced serial number. But, a source with knowledge of the case told CWBChicago tonight that the gun was “ditched” and weapons charges could not be approved.

The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to an after-hours email seeking comment.

Court records show that in Aug. 2017 Williams was charged with felony unlawful use of a weapon for allegedly carrying a handgun in the front of his waistband during a traffic stop on the West Side. Police said in a report that the gun had been reported stolen one month earlier.

A grand jury returned a 12 felony count true bill against Williams. But the Cook County State’s Attorney dropped all charges on May 3, 2018.

Five months after that case was dropped, Williams was charged with a new set of eight weapons felonies for allegedly carrying a handgun in the front of his waistband while riding his bike on the West Side.

----

Last month, Judge Maria Kuriakos-Ciesil sentenced Williams to two year’s probation, 30 hours of community service and 175 days time served in the case.

His attorneys asked for a reduced sentence and, on April 29th, Kuriakos-Ciesil granted the motion by reducing Williams’ punishment to one year of TASC probation and 30 hours of community service.

-------------------------
14 year old shot two men, released without bond or home confinement...


Cook County, IL: 14-Year-Old Charged With Shooting Two, Freed Without Supervision - The Truth About Guns

Welcome to Cook County, Illinois, where crime often has no meaningful consequences. Between a State’s Attorney’s Office reluctant to file charges and judges who mollycoddles defendants, Chicagoland has become the modern Wild West.

Case in point: a 14-year-old who (reportedly) shot and tried to kill two in a nice uptown neighborhood was released by a judge Friday to his parent with no bond – not even electronic home monitoring.


The Cook County judge claims the police failed to bring this suspected would-be gang killer (pictured above, right) in front of a judge quickly enough. So the judge, in order to penalize the police, released the kid without conditions other than to report to court next week.

Of course, the judge is really only penalizing the community as the accused certainly missed his calling as a choir boy.

The police, on the other hand, said they had concerns about the young man’s safety. Police released images of the suspects to the media in an effort to identify them and the media published them.

The Chicago mainstream media refer to the accused as a “boy.” Even though this “boy”reportedly shot one man in the back, abdomen, buttocks and groin and the other in the head.
===========

16 year old shooter released on 10,000 bond.....Cuomo's Raise the age bill for family court let this shooter go free on bail...

Case Of 16-Year-Old Accused Of Shooting Up Bronx Street Prompts Criticism Of NY's Raise The Age Law
Bronx Supreme Court Justice John Collins made Garcia’s release contingent on either $10,000 bail or $25,000 bond, he made bail and he was freed.

As The New York Post explains, “The law already guarantees that he can’t be held in a jail that also houses adults — and if convicted, his sentencing judge would have to take his age into account.”
--------
On Monday, prosecutor Daniel Defilippi indicated he would try to stop the case from being transferred to Family Court. Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, referring to the case as a “prime example” of the problems with the Raise the Age bill, said, “One of the things we brought up during debate was how this encourages gang recruitment. Gangs can recruit young people to do dirty work because they won’t be treated the same when caught.
------
Residents of the neighborhood acknowledged that the neighborhood has become a frightening place to live; one said, “We don’t go out. We don’t go to the park. I keep my kids in the house. We’re scared.” Another commented, “People don’t feel safe. People shooting in the street like that? No one is safe.” A third commented of the young girl, “She is lucky. Like an angel is watching over her because she was really close.”

I’m glad you like to add info to back up your statements but you really gotta work on being more concise. It will yield a much better conversation

 

[OldLady]

Less than a third of Americans own a gun. But that's still 100 million, and the average would be that each of them owns three or four. Of course, many own more than that and many own only one, like a handgun for personal protection when out in the city or a shotgun in the closet for when varmints hit the yard.

The danger of so many guns is that when one of those 100 million people has a really bad nasty day or goes a little off the wall mentally, all that person has to do is grab the gun and start shooting. That doesn't even take into account pissed off teenagers who feel "dissed" by a FB post or who are challenged to kill a rival gang member to be a big "man." It plays out every day in domestics, in the streets, and we haven't even mentioned criminals who shoot people for hire and use guns to hold up stores etc.
All those guns, for all those reasons, need to be much more strictly limited and handed out much more cautiously.

 

[2aguy]

Your point has been brought up before. The theory by anti-gun activists is that regardless of those other factors......More Guns = More Gun crime. That is where they hang their hat.

So.....the point they miss, and I think you miss....is that over those 26 years.....whether or not normal people owning guns was a factor in reducing gun crime.....

More Guns in the hands of law abiding people did not increase the gun crime rates...

So over that 26 years.....more Americans own and actually carry guns....17.25 million Americans from about 4 million actually being able to legally carry guns.....and the gun crime rates went still went down.

So the core theory is wrong....More Guns did not = More gun crime.

Now, it is true that various factors made the murder rate go down, more police, smarter police tactics and so on.......but that isn't their argument or their point.......

Also, for one thing........if you are being attacked, and you use a gun to stop the attack....that crime didn't happen to you....

Then, I have actual research from various researchers who state that there is a correlation to decreases in interpersonal crime when more people own and carry guns...for example, there are more home invasions in Britain than here in the U.S....why? When researchers ask criminals in prison, they state they go into empty houses in the U.S. because they don't want to get shot. In Britain, the criminals don't care about people being home, because they don't have guns...and since they don't have guns, they can be tied up and questioned about where their belongings are...

I don't think I got a clear answer so I'll keep this one short and more direct.

I don't want to discuss the 26 year time period, which I consider an extraneous variable.

Removing that variable from the discussion, it's a fact that states with more gun ownership have more gun homicides. Why is that?

It's not even a low correlation. It's a moderate to high correlation. Very distinct.

See post #1464.....

 

[2aguy]

To show I am willing to compromise....

I can live with the current background check system, no universal background check.....and the system should simply be a pass/fail, with no permanent record kept....and we can already to this.....you simply submit your name, if it comes back as a criminal or on the nutcase list...fail.....no registration of every single gun owner to do that...we register actual criminals instead. We can already do it.....

Why do you oppose universal? Wouldn’t that be more efficient and effective?

No.....criminals get past current, Federally mandated background checks by using straw buyers, people who have clean records who can pass the background check....usually relatives or friends, most likely girlfriends, baby mommas, grandmothers, mothers, and a lot of the time they are under threat of physical violence....and as actual research shows, criminals don't like private sales for guns because they don't know if the stranger they are buying the gun from is an undercover police officer.....

Mass shooter's first crime is the mass shooting, so they have clean records which is why they can pass any background check either current or universal.

The only reason to have universal background checks, since they wouldn't do anything to stop either criminals or mass shooters....is to come back later and demand universal gun registration....that is the real goal. The anti-gunners demand universal background checks knowing they won't stop criminals or mass shooters. Then, when criminals and mass shooters keep getting guns because of the reasons above, they come back and say....see, in order for UBCs to work, we need to register all the guns, otherwise we can't know who originally owned the guns in the first place.

They want universal gun registration because that is the last thing they need to ban guns and confiscate them when they get the political power to enact those steps. How do we know this? Because of Germany, Britain, Australia, Canada, various states in the U.S. who first registered rifles and then banned them.....New York, and other cities......

Then, Universal Background checks are also aimed at normal gun owners...how?

Gun Control Won't Stop Crime

“Universal” Background Checks
Part of the genius of the Bloomberg gun control system is how it creates prohibitions indirectly. Bloomberg’s so-called “universal” background check scheme is a prime example. These bills are never just about having background checks on the private sales of firearms. That aspect is the part that the public is told about. Yet when you read the Bloomberg laws, you find that checks on private sales are the tip of a very large iceberg of gun prohibition.

First, the bills criminalize a vast amount of innocent activity. Suppose you are an nra Certified Instructor teaching an introductory safety class. Under your supervision, students will handle a variety of unloaded firearms. They will learn how different guns have different safeties, and they will learn the safe way to hand a firearm to another person. But thanks to Bloomberg, these classroom firearm lessons are now illegal in Washington state, unless the class takes place at a shooting range.

It’s now also illegal to lend a gun to your friend, so that you can shoot together at a range on your own property. Or to lend a firearm for a week to your neighbor who is being stalked.

Under the Bloomberg system, gun loans are generally forbidden, unless the gun owner and the borrower both go to a gun store first. The store must process the loan as if the store were selling the gun out of its inventory.

Then, when your friend wants to return your gun to you, both of you must go to the gun store again. This time, the store will process that transaction as if you were buying the gun from the store’s inventory. For both the loan and the return of the gun, you will have to pay whatever fees the store charges, and whatever fees the government might charge.

The gun store will have to keep a permanent record of you, your friend and the gun, including the gun’s serial number. Depending on the state or city, the government might also keep a permanent record.

In other words, the “background check” law is really a law to expand gun registration—and registration lists are used for confiscation.

Consider New York City. In 1967, violent crime in the city was out of control. So the City Council and Mayor John Lindsay required registration of all long guns. The criminals, obviously, did not comply. Thanks to the 1911 Sullivan Act, New York City already had established registration lists for handgun owners.

Then, in 1991, the City Council decided that many lawfully registered firearms were now illegal “assault weapons.” The New York Police Department used the registration lists to ensure that the guns were either surrendered to the government or moved out of the city. When he was mayor of New York City, Bloomberg did the same, after the “assault weapon” law was expanded to cover any rifle or shotgun with an ammunition capacity greater than five rounds.

In Australia and Great Britain—which are often cited as models for the U.S. to follow—registration lists were used for gun confiscation. In Great Britain, this included all handguns; in Australia, handguns over .38 caliber. Both countries banned all semi-automatic or pump-action long guns.

Most American jurisdictions don’t have a comprehensive gun registration system. But even if your state legislature has outlawed gun registration, firearm stores must keep records. Those records could be harvested for future confiscations.

Under the Bloomberg system, the store’s list would include not just the guns that the store actually sold, but all the guns (and their owners) that the store processed, for friends or relatives borrowing guns.

So if those people ca

Wow, that whole straw buyer process sounds pretty intense. Surely you wouldn’t assume that every criminal who wanted a gun would have the will and the resources to do all that. Right? Some, yes, I’m sure they would, but that process alone sounds like it would detour a good percentage of criminals from getting guns. Also, what about the mentally ill who you agree shouldn’t be carrying. Wouldn’t universal
Background checks and an improved system help identify more of those individuals?

Again...you register the individual who can't buy guns, not all gun owners, there is no need. And if the straw buyer process was so difficult, the criminals wouldn't use it as one of their main sources for illegal guns....friends and family are a major source for illegal guns....and again, the baby mommas and grandmothers buying the guns for their boyfriend and grandson criminals often do it under threats........

Mass shooters rarely use straw buyers because they can already pass current background checks, which means they can use regular gun stores. They have no criminal records...for example...the Pulse Night Club shooter passed a criminal background check for his job as a security guard....he passed a current, federally mandated background check for each gun he bought, he was under covert FBI surveillance for a year, he was given a complete FBI criminal investigation as well, and he was interviewed by the FBI 2 times.....he passed all of it even though someone reported him as a possible terrorist....then he went on to attack the night club.

Criminals use straw buyers or steal their guns.....bypassing both current Federal background checks, and if they wanted to buy a gun from a private individual, their straw buyer could buy the gun from those sources too...since they can pass background checks.

Besides...from actual research, criminals do not like to use unknown, private sellers......they are too afraid the sellers might be police.

Besides....it is already against the law to use a gun in a crime...if you do we can already arrest you. It is already against the law for a felon to buy, own or carry a gun.....if they are caught they can already be arrested.

We have all the laws we need to reduce gun crime...the problem isn't that we don't have enough laws, the problem is that judges give bail to repeat gun offenders, prosecutors plea bargain away the gun charge, and politicians reduce sentences for gun offenders because they think the criminal justice system is unfair..

That is where the gun violence problem comes from...not John and Jane citizen having a gun for self defense.

The focus on banning guns is a waste of time. The focus needs to be on keeping the known, repeat gun offenders in prison.

Japan keeps their criminals from using guns with a life sentence for any crime involving a gun....that is how you actually dry up gun crime. Here? You have felons, with repeat arrests for illegal gun possession getting personal recognizance bonds, walking out of the court room in a matter of days, going out and shooting people.....that is our problem...

Here are the reasons we have a gun problem in our big cities...if any of these criminals were refused bond for repeat gun violations, and then, when convicted were sentenced to 30 years to life for using a gun, even for armed robbery where they didn't fire the weapon.....criminals would stop using guns for crime. The gangs would start using gullible 15 year olds to commit their murders, but the majority of gun crime would dry up....

Look at the following stories...the facts and reality of lax enforcement.......if you kept these guys in jail, you wouldn't have gun violence....

Top cop laments violence as 66 shot, 5 fatally, over long Fourth of July weekend


Between last Wednesday and Friday, 42 people were charged with felony gun-related offenses, he said, but only 15 remain in custody.


That lack of accountability for gun offenders has damaged the Police Department’s relationship with the communities most beset by violence, Johnson said, making victims of crimes less likely to cooperate with officers.
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“It’s not about mass incarceration. It’s not about having quotas. But when somebody has a demonstrated track record of being a violent gun offender, that should say something to the judges who are making decisions about bail. They shouldn’t be out on the street,” Lightfoot said. “We can’t keep our communities safe if people just keep cycling through the system because what that says to them is, I can do whatever I want, I can carry whatever I want, I can shoot up a crowd and I’m going to be back on the street. How does that make sense? It doesn’t.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/07/criminal_justice_reform_comes_home_to_roost.html
=======

CWB Chicago: You Be The Judge: We give you the case details. You try to guess their bail amount.

McKay was sentenced to four years for robbery in 2008; two years for aggravated unlawful use of a weapon (firearm) in 2010; seven years for being a felon in possession of a weapon (firearm) in 2012; and three years for possession of fentanyl in 2016.
-----
For McKay, who has two gun convictions and a robbery conviction, Willis set bail at….$5,000. McKay will need to put down a 10% deposit of $500 to go free. Willis also ordered him to go on electronic monitoring if he is released.

Some details that Willis did not know:
• McKay’s 2008 robbery conviction involved an armed carjacking. Prosecutors reduced the charge to “ordinary” robbery as part of a plea deal.• In 2012, McKay’s second gun case also included allegations that he fired the weapon. Prosecutors dropped the weapon discharge count and seven other weapons charges in a plea deal.• The 2016 drug possession charge started as allegations of manufacture-delivery of fentanyl, but, again, prosecutors pleaded that down to possession.

========


Under DA Krasner, more gun-possession cases get court diversionary program

In June 2018, Maalik Jackson-Wallace was arrested on a Frankford street and charged with carrying a concealed gun without a license and a gram of marijuana. It was his first arrest.

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office recommended the Frankford man for a court diversionary program called Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition (ARD) that put him on two years’ probation. His record could have been expunged if he had successfully completed the program.

But Jackson-Wallace, 24, was arrested again on gun-possession charges in March in Bridesburg. He was released from jail after a judge granted a defense motion for unsecured bail. And on June 13, he was arrested a third time — charged with murder in a shooting two days earlier in Frankford that killed a 26-year-old man.

Jackson-Wallace’s case has been cited by some on social media as an example of how they say District Attorney Larry Krasner’s policies are too lenient and lead to gun violence.



In fact, statistics obtained from the DA’s Office show that in 2018, Krasner’s first year in office, 78 gun-possession cases were placed in the ARD program — compared with just 12 such diversions in gun-possession cases the previous year, 11 in 2016, 14 in 2015. and 10 in 2014.

============

Officials Address 'Vicious Cycle' Of I-Bond Violations After Violent Weekend

Many of the gun offenders arrested by Chicago police over the weekend walked out of jail on bond, without having to pay a dime.

As of Monday morning, 19 people had been arrested on gun-related charges. By Monday afternoon, 11 were back on the street, some with prior gun offenses.

“We know who a lot of these people are,” Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson said. “And how do we know that? Because we keep arresting them over and over and over and over and over again. And it’s just a vicious cycle.”

In a tweet Sunday night, a Chicago police spokesperson criticized the practice of letting gun offenders out on Individual Recognizance Bonds or “I-Bonds.”
-----

The tweet said, in part, “Letting gun offenders out on I-Bonds shows there is absolutely no repercussion for carrying illegal guns In Chicago.”
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In a statement, an office representative said since the beginning of this year, 72% of gun related cases received monetary bail or no bond.
==================
http://www.cwbchicago.com/2019/05/man-connected-to-whitney-young-high.html

The man who is charged with driving the carjacked SUV of a Whitney Young High School teacher this week is on probation for possessing a handgun—a probation term that was cut in half just three weeks ago by a Cook County judge.

The CPD arrest report that documents the capture of Nicholas Williams on Tuesday says cops and federal agents found Williams “in possession” of a loaded 9-millimeter handgun with a defaced serial number. But, a source with knowledge of the case told CWBChicago tonight that the gun was “ditched” and weapons charges could not be approved.

The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to an after-hours email seeking comment.

Court records show that in Aug. 2017 Williams was charged with felony unlawful use of a weapon for allegedly carrying a handgun in the front of his waistband during a traffic stop on the West Side. Police said in a report that the gun had been reported stolen one month earlier.

A grand jury returned a 12 felony count true bill against Williams. But the Cook County State’s Attorney dropped all charges on May 3, 2018.

Five months after that case was dropped, Williams was charged with a new set of eight weapons felonies for allegedly carrying a handgun in the front of his waistband while riding his bike on the West Side.

----

Last month, Judge Maria Kuriakos-Ciesil sentenced Williams to two year’s probation, 30 hours of community service and 175 days time served in the case.

His attorneys asked for a reduced sentence and, on April 29th, Kuriakos-Ciesil granted the motion by reducing Williams’ punishment to one year of TASC probation and 30 hours of community service.

-------------------------
14 year old shot two men, released without bond or home confinement...


Cook County, IL: 14-Year-Old Charged With Shooting Two, Freed Without Supervision - The Truth About Guns

Welcome to Cook County, Illinois, where crime often has no meaningful consequences. Between a State’s Attorney’s Office reluctant to file charges and judges who mollycoddles defendants, Chicagoland has become the modern Wild West.

Case in point: a 14-year-old who (reportedly) shot and tried to kill two in a nice uptown neighborhood was released by a judge Friday to his parent with no bond – not even electronic home monitoring.


The Cook County judge claims the police failed to bring this suspected would-be gang killer (pictured above, right) in front of a judge quickly enough. So the judge, in order to penalize the police, released the kid without conditions other than to report to court next week.

Of course, the judge is really only penalizing the community as the accused certainly missed his calling as a choir boy.

The police, on the other hand, said they had concerns about the young man’s safety. Police released images of the suspects to the media in an effort to identify them and the media published them.

The Chicago mainstream media refer to the accused as a “boy.” Even though this “boy”reportedly shot one man in the back, abdomen, buttocks and groin and the other in the head.
===========

16 year old shooter released on 10,000 bond.....Cuomo's Raise the age bill for family court let this shooter go free on bail...

Case Of 16-Year-Old Accused Of Shooting Up Bronx Street Prompts Criticism Of NY's Raise The Age Law
Bronx Supreme Court Justice John Collins made Garcia’s release contingent on either $10,000 bail or $25,000 bond, he made bail and he was freed.

As The New York Post explains, “The law already guarantees that he can’t be held in a jail that also houses adults — and if convicted, his sentencing judge would have to take his age into account.”
--------
On Monday, prosecutor Daniel Defilippi indicated he would try to stop the case from being transferred to Family Court. Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, referring to the case as a “prime example” of the problems with the Raise the Age bill, said, “One of the things we brought up during debate was how this encourages gang recruitment. Gangs can recruit young people to do dirty work because they won’t be treated the same when caught.
------
Residents of the neighborhood acknowledged that the neighborhood has become a frightening place to live; one said, “We don’t go out. We don’t go to the park. I keep my kids in the house. We’re scared.” Another commented, “People don’t feel safe. People shooting in the street like that? No one is safe.” A third commented of the young girl, “She is lucky. Like an angel is watching over her because she was really close.”

I’m glad you like to add info to back up your statements but you really gotta work on being more concise. It will yield a much better conversation

You want to know why we have gun crime....I gave you all the information you need to understand that it isn't gun owners....it is the constant releasing of violent gun offenders back into the public......