With the one-note chorus in full song, we are again treated to the phrase "the easy availability of guns", with the subtext being that if guns were somehow less easily available, Things Like This wouldn't happen.
I've said it before and I'm going to say it again: Never in the history of our republic have guns been more difficult to purchase. Prior to 1968 they could be purchased through the mail. Between 1968 and 1993, all you needed to do was sign a form, in pink crayon if you felt like it, saying you weren't a junkie, commie spy, or crazy, and you took your gun home with no questions asked. The background check didn't appear until the passage of the Brady Law in 1993.
Name a mass shooting that occurred before 1968. How many between 1969 and 1993? How about 1994 and beyond? Folks, whatever the causative variable is here, it is not the ease of purchasing a firearm. If you want to play the statistics game, mass shootings in this country have trended upwards in lockstep with the difficulty of purchasing firearms. Am I suggesting that is the cause? No, but it makes every bit as much sense (or not) as the old "easy availability of guns" saw. Go find another bus to ride, because this one isn't going to your stop.
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15 comments:
I wish guns were easily available. How nice would it be to pick up an Uzi from Walmart on your way home?
Actually, their catchphrase is usually correct, I think, but the same folks using it aren't likely to believe that almost any gun is easily available, anywhere on Earth at virtually any time, for cash, letter of the law or not.
Dolts, one and all.
Guns were a lot cheaper and more available back then.
I remember when I bought my '03A3 at sixteen years old; I paid $46 and some change, and took it home.
"Name a mass shooting that occurred before 1968."
I don't disagree with your main point, most honored and respected Ms. Tamara, but for historical accuracy:
Charles Whitman was 1966 (and that's worth a discussion by itself: the APD deputizing people with deer rifles to return fire on the tower, etc.)
There was also Howard Unruh (Camden, New Jersey, 1949).
(Those are actually the only two I can turn up, in the US, prior to 1968. There was also one in Japan in 1938, but that apparently invovled both a rifle and swords. And Jack Graham used dynamite, of course.)
I didn't say that none occurred, merely pointing out that almost all the big scary ones everyone remembers took place in spite of increasingly strict gun laws.
I probably could have phrased that better, though...
T.
b&n: That's simply not true!
I mean, while a gun is probably available (nearly) anywhere, anytime, for cash, given the connections, any gun is a different matter.
Last I checked the black market wasn't overrun with, say, SIG AMTs, or Mauser Schnellfeuers, eh?
Semantics aside, The Lady has hit the nail on the head. New gun laws have nearly NO EFFECT on crime committed with a gun. Period.
Case in point: Virginia Tech. That campus is a "gun-free zone."
Well, almost.
tweaker
"Name a mass shooting that occurred before 1968."
Well, Stainles stole my thunder on that one-- there were some, but it's notable that Charles Whitman did most of his killng with a pump shotgun and a bolt action rifle-- not much of a winner for the "high capacity magazines cause mass shootings" crowd. (There were also the murders that he committed with the bowie knife...)
St. Valentines Day Massacre comes to mind, too-- but that was gangland stuff, and bears more resemblence to war crime.
Oh, and Stainles? I've given the Tower shooting some study, and haven't ever turned up evidence of the citizen riflemen being "deputized"; they just did it. Alan Crum (UT co-op employee who helped storm the tower with a borrowed M1 carbine) was the only one I've heard of being deputized.
Check this article:
http://www.officer.com/article/article.jsp?siteSection=25&id=35799
I wish that I had caught all of the Paula Zahn panel that had Dr. Hupps and some anti-gun violence for balance. I only got to hear the last minute to have to listen to the anti-gun wonder wench list off that these massacres only happen in states with loose gun control laws. If there ever was a time you would like to reach thru the screen...
Joe R.
stuart,
Calm down. I'm on the same side of the argument that you are on.
I simply don't agree that there is anything preventative about any of this crap that is being harped about when it comes to laws that supposedly "restrict" purchases.
It's all just a silly concoction to make a bunch of stupid people fell better about themselves; that they are "doing something" about the "crime problem" that we don't have, most especially here in the US.
Tam's illustration of our current situation was just spot on. The number and frequency of these mass shootings have gone UP, and not down, with the ever increasing bureaucratic crap that the rest of us have to go through in order to buy firearms, all, supposedly, to make it harder for the sickos to get them, yet it hasn't.
Makes me think that the others side doensn't have a solution, mostly because they don't actually understand the problem, methinks.
The other side doesn't want a solution.
They will always be able to hire guards, or send their kids to private schools and Unis, where nutters are all removed.
Nutters are just a good excuse to disarm us peasants. Peasants with weapons are much more dangerous to them than nutters or bandits.
"The other side doesn't want a solution."
Exactly, only the appearance of one.
There's a sticker to slap up on Gun Free Zone signs:
Almost*
small text: * This sign does not actually indicate an area where firearms are not present, but expresses a hopeful wish that people of good nature will take to heart
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