Another major school shooting today ... Newtown, Conn

BillRM is correct. It is not MASS shootings which are the cancer on our society, it is the person-to-person "gun in pants" conflicts which endanger us all in the USA.

From Slate
Off-the-books gun sellers say Obama’s proposals will just boost their trade.
By Sudhir Venkatesh|Posted Tuesday, Jan. 22, 2013, at 9:24 AM ET

How would gun and ammunition sellers react to President Obama’s proposals to combat gun violence? I decided to find about by asking people who operate out of the so-called “secondary gun market,” where those without federal licenses to distribute weapons ply their trade. About 40 percent of guns reach people via this off-the-books route, including many of the guns that reach young people.

I spoke to three gun sellers who work in and around Chicago. I was prepared for defensive reactions, given the 30-plus legislative recommendations and executive actions on the table. Instead, they were skeptical when I read them Obama’s proposals. One summed up the general sentiment: “Not going to change one thing I do, thank the Lord.”

That response makes sense when one looks closely at gun markets, which are a bit quirky. The three Chicago brokers I spoke with don’t own gun stores or sell over the Internet. They make their money in the illegal, secondary market in three ways: They sell guns directly; they find customers for suburban gun dealers, who pay them a finders’ fee, and who then sell the gun off the books; and they match sellers with gun sellers in alleyway gun shows. Ninety percent of these sales are handguns, as opposed to assault rifles and shotguns.
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Obama’s proposals, by contrast, deal forcefully with legal gun markets where the assault or assault-like rifles and high-capacity ammunition are sold, but not with the secondary gun market, nor with the handgun trade. Consider a cornerstone of Obama’s plan: the bans on armor-piercing bullets and high-powered assault rifles, and limits on large magazines. These products mimic the weapons one finds in the military—and they grab headlines when they appear in tragedies like Columbine and Newton. But guns used in armed combat make up only a small part of what appears on American streets. Focusing on mass shootings and assault weapons doesn’t match up well with the current contours of common gun violence, which are rooted in new and second-hand handguns, sold among friends or via brokers, and likely to be fired in inter-personal conflicts, not premeditated, mass public shootings. As Bill Scher wrote in 2011, 6,000 homicides were caused by handguns while 300 were caused by rifles. A comprehensive gun policy would need to take on the illegal market for handguns. Obama’s proposals don’t address this at all.

The Chicago traders also operate outside the world of background checks, another cornerstone of Obama’s proposal. They are like a small cartel with their own self-imposed customs for denying guns to certain people—for example, they will turn down customers who seem unstable, and most of them never sell to children. In any given region, they know each other and replicate each other’s customs. In fact, counter intuitively, illegal gun traders are more cooperative than competitive: they generally respect one another’s territory, they will collaborate to keep out gangs and other newcomers, and if they don’t have your desired weapon, they’ll send you to a competitor. This creates a solidarity that’s hard to attack. Background checks at legitimate gun stores may only end up sending more customers to these illegal markets, unless we find ways to constrain them simultaneously. A far better approach would be (simultaneously) to support regional law enforcement initiatives, like FBI or ATF taskforces, which dismantle these trading networks.

In dismissing Obama’s proposals, the sellers exaggerated when they said nothing at all would change for them. In fact, they anticipated three ways in which their business might shift in the months ahead, none of which bode well for the public. First, they predicted a rising demand for “guns in pants”— small pistols and handguns that people want to hold while they travel. This is dangerous. Citizens walking around armed and in fear pose a risk, given that the most have little training or experience. Even criminals and violent types understand that cops will go harder on them if they are holding a weapon, so they often leave them at home.

Second, expect stockpiling of ammunition. More people with handguns means rising demand for ammo, so illegal traders are buying up ammunition, to resell, as fast as they can.

Third, expect the marketplace to grow more violent: New intra-state gun-runners are challenging the old guard. That’s because background checks slow legal sales, which make the illegal marketplace hotter. Since demand is increasing, and people generally fear any kind of background check, they will drift to the secondary market. This means more sellers willing to cross state lines to fulfill orders of several dozen weapons, which is the amount that most brokers on the street purchase. Look for gun prices to rise, and for more friction in the as new players enter the scene to compete.

In offering these three predictions, the traders were thoughtful and realistic. They conceded that Obama’s proposals would probably slow down legal gun sales. But, from their perch, they see another world of weapons trading, one that the media has not given much attention or scrutiny. Unless gun policy tilts toward dealing with this informal sector, there won’t be much change on the horizon in the day-to-day conditions that many Americans face— not only in and around metropolitan areas with high gun violence rates, but also in small towns and rural communities where informal, off-the-books gun trading thrives.

Which lays bare the question: What might work to dismantle the secondary gun market? In the long run, Obama’s approach—go after the low-hanging fruit of assault weapons—may widen the door for future legal curbs on the sale of handguns. If that happened, then fewer guns would reach the off-the-books markets, eventually putting some these traders out of business. But this is far away, and in the shorter term, we should be building a national campaign to raise awareness in the places where many guns circulate—among youth at school, in social gatherings (at bars and clubs), and even in homes where showing off a weapon is an American tradition. Just as changing the discourse on alcohol helped reduce drunk-driving deaths, it is reasonable to assume that a similar victory might be won by changing the norms around the use of guns in interpersonal conflict. Stopping the sale of military-style weapons and ammunition aren’t enough to get us there.

Joe(Shut down the handgun markets now.)Nation

Did you notice, izzy, the similarities between the inauguration ceremony yesterday in Washington and the one that took place a while ago in North Korea.

Can you imagine David Cameron addressing a crowd in the Mall of half a million happy smiling upturned faces, and just as many little flags vigorously waving, with a spoutful of generalities so vague that their only use is to sound good in the particular context. And what vanity in that "one last look" remark.

The idea is ludicrous. He would have to offer free beer to generate that sort of enthusiasm.

At least the North Korean throng made it obvious they were acting.

When Mr Cameron was appointed by Her Majesty in the "kissing of hands" ceremony in the Palace, causing Her to have to record Coronation Street, he returned to Downing Street to start running the country in a limousine driven through the London traffic, stopping at all the red lights and Zebra crossings, with no escorts, with half the nation watching via the camera in the Sky News helicopter. One pedestrian recognised him when the car was stuck in a queue turning right at the head of which was a stalled lady driver in a nondescript "S" reg town runabout, and gave him the thumbs up. He might have been waiting for the Clapham Omnibus.

There is a problem in these cases because driving to the Palace the candidate is not yet Prime Minister. So he, or she, ( a regrettable incident unlikely to be repeated in our lifetimes) is not entitled to the Prime Ministerial car and motor-cycle escort. After the "kissing of hands" the Prime Ministerial car and escort are at his, or her, disposal. And they were ready.

If I remember correctly Mr Cameron dispensed with the privilege because he couldn't wait to get back to the steps of No 10 and kiss his wife. I thought he might carry her over the threshold but he didn't.

I don't know of any other leader who would do that. Or could do.

Stendhal reported that members of Congress in the early 19th century conducted their deliberations armed.

One poster, on another thread, has just used the expression "essential (government) programs for the middle class".

That's real freedom.

LOL not only that but Famerman is willing to be a damn liar as my comment were under some very special conditions a person armed with a knife can be in more deadly then a man armed with a gun and that is back up by statements of experts in close combat conditions.

Not that a knife overall is a better weapon then a gun.

When my comment is that more children in a single school attack, had been killed by explosives then in any single attacked by firearm and I ask him to name one single school attack that killed more children then the one using explosives in 1927.

Once more farmerman is a damn liar willing to knowingly misquote others

And where exactly does anyone find this fact?

It doesn't exist because it seems the NRA got congress to shut down any studies of homicide rates and gun ownership.

The fact that it is not a fact is not important to Bill, Parados. Apparently it is only important that he is asserting it is a fact.

T

People are getting confused concerning who said what about what it would seems.

Not help with poor quoting and people who do not take the time to read the postings in a careful manner.

Jeez...you wrote it. I would have bet that you would not be confused. And why are you referring to yourself as "people?"

I did not write the above comment................it was a quote from an oralloy posting that I quoted.

You are absolutely correct on that, Bill...and I was absolutely wrong.

Thanks you.............

You may not have said it but you certainly agreed with it.

arrested.
Good.
Terror threats not allowed
http://gawker.com/5977690/armed-nevada-assemblyman-arrested-for-threatening-to-shoot-assembly-speaker

You a mind reader?

An my position on that subject happen to be complex as large numbers of guns in private hands by itself does not raised the murder rates however conditions that results in firearms being in the wrong hands at the same time as restricting gun ownership in the rights hands can have a very bad impact on murder rates.

The main problem however is sitting up conditions such as the war of drugs or before that the prohibition that cause resources to pour into criminal gangs who can not settle business disputes in courts but only on the streets.

forget about 1927 - it's over

The issue - a millenium later - is people in America being comfortable with the fact that their fellow citizens are being killed, let alone with guns.

Do you have any suggestions to help make America a less violent country?

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2012/12/gun_death_tally_every_american_gun_death_since_newtown_sandy_hook_shooting.html






the map is disturbing to look at - some regions do seem disproportionately dangerous - I guess it could help with travel planning

Another dose of irony is that America is top of the league for locking up its citizens with 730 prisoners per 100,000. We're 92nd with 154.

Locking up more people isn't the usual measure of a free society.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate

You don't have much of a mind to read, you're entirely predictable.

Ok let forget the Newtown shootings as that is over also by that logic?



Once more what is special about being killed by guns instead of all the other means that humans had come up with for doing the same thing? Is the school children in China any less dead due to their mentally sick killers using knives instead of guns?

Is the problem the safety of society from mentally ill killers or just mentally ill killers who used guns?