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Why sell guns to 21-year-olds anyway?

Posted: Jul 10, 2015

So he had a drug charge, and they should not have sold it to him, but did, by a glitch in communication. The guns shouldn't be available in the first place. http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/suspected-charleston-shooter-could-buy-gun-due-to-background-check-mix-up-fbi/ar-AAcOUIJ;

Available? - to criminals but not to law-abiding citizens...

[ In Reply To ..]
I have yet to figure out how that works.....

Well, there are things that are illegal to - everyone-so most don't acquire them

[ In Reply To ..]
Say drugs, for instance. Sure some people buy them anyway, but they are not readily available.

With the psychoses of the mass killer mentality, some of them really "get into" the fact that the means by which they have to kill people is COMPLETELY LEGAL, up until the act itself. It is almost as though they are being invited to kill people.

To give the impression of something being wrong, it would have to be determined illegal. A first step is making the tools illegal.

(Sigh) Read how well your idea works where - it has been tried.

[ In Reply To ..]
I won't go into the history of how successful it has been to "make things illegal" - though I could start with the history of such efforts from the period before the Revolution on through Prohibition and "the war on drugs" - and go on talking for 3 hours by the Shrewsbury clock.

Let's stick with guns. Follow the link below and see how well a near-total ban on guns has worked where it's been tried: Australia. Short version: 17 years after their gun ban, we find them mounting special operations to try to get guns off the street - where, incidentally, they are (just as you would suspect), primarily in the hands of criminals.

You and I could be bookends! The second amendment - is #2 for a reason. NM

[ In Reply To ..]
NM

Math, statistics and other complicated stuff - sm

[ In Reply To ..]
My favorite example is "Murder is up by 100%"--there were 2 last year and 4 this year. Percentages just really aren't particularly good unless you dig a little further into the details.

I would take Australian gun violence stats for our country ANY DAY over what we have going on.

Australian Guns

Claim: Statistics demonstrate that crime rates in Australia have increased substantially since the government there instituted a gun buy-back program in 1997.

image: http://www.snopes.com/images/content-divider.gif

image: http://www.snopes.com/images/mixture.gif
MIXTURE OF TRUE AND FALSE INFORMATION

image: http://www.snopes.com/images/content-divider.gif

Example:[Collected on the Internet, 2001]

From: Ed Chenel, a police officer in Australia.

Hi Yanks,

I thought you all would like to see the real figures from Down Under.

It has now been 12 months since gun owners in Australia were forced by a new law to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by our own government, a program costing Australia taxpayers more than $500 million dollars.

The first year results are now in: Australia-wide, homicides are up 3.2 percent, Australia-wide, assaults are up 8.6 percent; Australia-wide, armed robberies are up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent!). In the state of Victoria alone, homicides with firearms are now up 300 percent. (Note that while the law-abiding citizens turned them in, the criminals did not and criminals still possess their guns!)

While figures over the previous 25 years showed a steady decrease in armed robbery with firearms, this has changed drastically upward in the past 12 months, since the criminals now are guaranteed that their prey is unarmed.

There has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the elderly. Australian politicians are at a loss to explain how public safety has decreased, after such monumental effort and expense was expended in "successfully ridding Australian society of guns."

You won't see this data on the American evening news or hear your governor or members of the state Assembly disseminating this information.

The Australian experience proves it. Guns in the hands of honest citizens save lives and property and, yes, gun-control laws affect only the law-abiding citizens.

Take note Americans, before it's too late!

Origins: Although the old adage says that "Figures don't lie, but liars figure," those who seek to influence public opinion often employ a variety of means to slant statistical figures into seemingly supporting their point of view: • Percentages by themselves often tell far from a complete story, particularly when they involve small sample sizes which do not adequately mask normal fluctuations or the potential influence of a number of extraneous factors affecting the phenomenon under study. A statement such as "The number of deaths attributable to cancer increased by 2% between 1973 and 1983" is probably much more significant if the number of cancer deaths increased by twenty thousand among a population of one million than if they increased by two among a population of one hundred. (In the latter case, for example, two people who already had cancer could have moved into an otherwise cancer-free small town, but it's far less likely that immigration would completely account for an increase of twenty thousand cancer cases amidst a city of one million.)

• Context is especially important, and percentages alone don't provide context. A statement such as "The home run total in the American League jumped by an astounding 50% between 1960 and 1961" sounds misleadingly impressive if you don't know that after 1960, the American League expanded by two teams and increased the length of its schedule, thereby adding two hundred more games to the season.

• Most importantly, percentages don't establish cause-and-effect relationships — at best they highlight correlations which may be due to any number of factors. If (to continue our previous example), the total number of home runs hit by all teams increased by 30% from one year to the next while the number of games remained the same, a great many people might claim that the baseballs used in the latter year had obviously been "juiced" (i.e., manufactured in such a way as to cause them to travel farther when hit). But a number of other unconsidered factors (individually or collectively) might be responsible for the increase, such as an abundance of warm weather, or an expansion in the number of teams which brought more inexperienced and ineffective pitchers into the league.
In the specific case offered here, context is the most important factor. The piece quoted above leads the reader to believe that much of the Australian citizenry owned handguns until their ownership was made illegal and all firearms owned by "law-abiding citizens" were collected by the government through.

buy-back program in 1997. This is not so. Australian citizens do not (and never did) have a constitutional right to own firearms — even before the 1997 buyback program, handgun ownership in Australia was restricted to certain groups, such as those needing weapons for occupational reasons, members of approved sporting clubs, hunters, and collectors. Moreover, the 1997 buyback program did not take away all the guns owned by these groups; only some types of firearms (primarily semi-automatic and pump-action weapons) were banned. And even with the ban in effect, those who can demonstrate a legitimate need to possess prohibited categories of firearms can petition for exemptions from the law.

Given this context, any claims based on statistics (even accurate ones) which posit a cause-and-effect relationship between the gun buyback program and increased crime rates because "criminals now are guaranteed that their prey is unarmed" are automatically suspect, since the average Australian citizen didn't own firearms even before the buyback. But beyond that, most of the statistics offered here are misleading and present only "first year results" where long-term trends need to be considered in order to draw valid cause-and-effect conclusions.

For example, the first entry states that "Homicides are up 3.2%." This statistic is misleading because it reflects only the absolute number of homicides rather than the homicide rate. (A country with a rapidly-growing population, for example, might experience a higher number of crimes even while its overall crime rate decreased.) An examination of statistics from the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) reveals that the overall homicide rate in Australia has changed little over the past decade and actually dipped slightly after the 1997 gun buy-back program. (The chart found at this link also demonstrates how easily statistics based on small sample sizes can mislead, as when the homicide rate in Tasmania increased nearly eight-fold in one year based on a single incident in which 35 people were killed.)

Then we have the claim that "In the state of Victoria alone, homicides with firearms are now up 300 percent." This is another example of how misleading statistics can be when the underlying numbers are not provided: Victoria, a state with a population of over four-and-a-half million people in 1997, experienced 7 firearm-related homicides in 1996 and 19 firearm-related homicides in 1997 (an increase of 171%, not 300%). An additional twelve homicides amongst a population of 4.5 million is not statistically significant, nor does this single-year statistic adequately reflect long-term trends. Moreover, the opening paragraph mixes two very different types of statistics — number of homicides vs. percentage of homicides committed with firearms. In the latter case, it should be noted that the Australia-wide percentage of homicides committed with firearms is now lower than it was before the gun buy-back program, and lower than it has been at any point during the past ten years. (In the former case, the absolute number of firearm homicides in Australia in 1998-99 was the lowest in the past ten years.)

Other claims offered here, such as the statement that "While figures over the previous 25 years showed a steady decrease in armed robbery with firearms, this has changed drastically upward in the past 12 months" and "There has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the elderly" are even more difficult to evaluate, because they don't offer any figures or standards of measurement at all. Do they deal with absolute numbers, or percentages? Do they reflect all incidents of crime, or only those committed with firearms? How much of an increase constitutes a "dramatic" increase? According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the proportion of armed robberies involving firearms has actually declined over the last several years:

1995 - 27.8%
1996 - 25.3%
1997 - 24.1%
1998 - 17.6%
1999 - 15.2%
2000 - 14.0%

The ABS does report that the number of assaults on victims aged 65 and over has increased over the last few years, but hardly in a proportion one would describe as "dramatic":

Number of victims of assault aged 65 and over:
1996 - 1474
1997 - 1662 (12.8% increase from previous year)
1998 - 1663 (0.06% increase from previous year)
1999 - 1793 (7.8% increase from previous year)

The main point to be learned here is that determining the effect of changes in Australia's gun ownership laws and the government's firearm buy-back program on crime rates requires a complex long-term analysis and can't be discerned from the small, mixed grab bag of short-term statistics offered here. And no matter what the outcome of that analysis, the results aren't necessarily applicable to the USA, where laws regarding gun ownership are (and always have been) much different than those in Australia.

Last updated: 21 July 2011

Read more at http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/ausguns.asp#EFdL1UegCg6UPeB1.99

Criminals get guns stolen from "law-abiding" - citizens that are sold on black market.

[ In Reply To ..]

I was a cop when I was 21 and (horrors!) carried a gun - both on duty and off. What's your point?

[ In Reply To ..]
I've even known places where they brought in new police officers younger than 21. And if you bother to check, you'll find lots of kids who are taught how to handle firearms much younger than that.

We used to take our guns to school for shooting class - (showing my age). Never had a

[ In Reply To ..]
problem.

We've been through a cultural revolution in this country.

There are few things more deadly than the combination of - malicious intent and incompetent,

[ In Reply To ..]
irresponsible government. Time and time again it's been shown more gun laws do not help, we already have over 25,000 on the books. Only law abiding citizens obey them. Dylann Roof could have used a pressure cooker like the Boston Marathon bomber or set a fire. Evil people are going to find a way regardless of any restrictions placed on every day people.

Back in the 1920, Andrew Kehoe blew up a school in Michigan with dynamite, killing about 38 people. Look at Ted Kaczynski the unibomer, and the Mad Bomber of New York in the 1950s.

Once again, judging laws that were only allowed - to be half-baked by the restrictions

[ In Reply To ..]
As usual, the stalemate in our law-making process has provided us with willy-nilly gun laws. I wouldn't even begin to judge if gun laws work by the nonsense we have enacted.

Enter San Francisco at your own risk, gun laws or - not. nm

[ In Reply To ..]
nm

San Fran is no longer a friendly place for families either. - sm

[ In Reply To ..]
It should be renamed Smut Francisco.

Oh, and guess whose congressional district it is. The Queen of Immorality, that's who.

Would it be okay for a city to declare sanctuary for - traditional marriage? nm

[ In Reply To ..]
nm

uh, sure, sanctuary protects but - does not prohibit

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major problem with conservative thinking is that they propone that every guideline is made to PROHIBIT something from happening. It's always a PERSECUTION theory and FEAR that someone is TAKING something from them.

Good. Stay out of SF. We hate bigots, too. - nm

[ In Reply To ..]

Dear illegals, please go to sanctuary cities and leave the - rest of us alone. Map

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attached. I had no idea there were so many.

Go to Connecticut. I'm sure Yale would love it - How ironic, the Constitution State, nm

[ In Reply To ..]
nm

Remember that intern, Chandra Levy, she was murdered by an - illegal who had already

[ In Reply To ..]
been convicted of assaulting women.

Levy's the one who had an affair with that congressman from California.

Remember when Romney was mocked by the media for - warning about Chinese hacking threats?

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I no longer trust the MSM or the govt for that matter.

It has also been agreed that Romney was right with regard - to Russia being biggest threat.

[ In Reply To ..]
Yeah, we know. He didn't win. SissyPants won because of the _______ who put him there.

I happen to think Romney is "the _______ who put him there." - State the obvious

[ In Reply To ..]
Romney's horrible candidacy won Obama a second term. Truth. Not everyone who votes is actually voting for a candidate but sometimes against another. As far as foreign policy chops, Romney was a horrible candidate. Romney took a trip abroad to prove what a great diplomat he would make. During Romney's first stop in London, he enraged the whole of Great Britain by questioning their readiness to host the Olympic Games. Even David Cameron grabbed a mic and roundly criticized him. The UK media ripped him to shreds, and rightly so; "Mitt the Twit," they called him in huge headlines including scathing editorials.

Romney then went to Israel where he explained to a packed room full of wealthy donors why Palestinians were generally poorer than Israelis due to their inferior "culture." This enraged both the Israeli and Arab press, calling the remark racist followed by more scathing headlines and editorials.

On to Poland where the reporters who had traveled from the U.S. with the Romney campaign for a cumulative 10,000 miles and having gone 6 days without being able to ask Romney a single question the entire time, and a Romney campaign spokesman told a group of reporters to "kiss my ass" when they tried to shout their questions at Romney as he left Pilsudski Square in Warsaw. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that the people who have followed you 10,000 miles and are writing the articles about your candidate are not people you want to make angry.

You said: "It has also been agreed that Romney was right with regard to Russia being biggest threat."

No, not everyone agrees that Russia is our "number one geopolitical foe," as Romney claimed, and this is a case of hindsight being 20/20. At the time Romney made that claim, he was totally wrong, and he even went on CNN to walk back his statement later.

Wolf Blitzer: "The last time you and I spoke in an interview, you told me that Russia was America's No. 1 geostrategic foe. Do you still believe that?"

Mitt Romney: "There's no question but that in terms of geopolitics -- I'm talking about votes at the United Nations and actions of a geopolitical nature -- Russia is the No. 1 adversary in that regard. That doesn't make them an enemy. It doesn't make them a combatant. They don't represent the No. 1 national security threat. The No. 1 national security threat, of course, to our nation is a nuclear Iran. Time continues to pass. They continue to move towards nuclearization. This is more and more disconcerting and dangerous to the world. But Russia -- particularly look at a place like Syria. Russia has supported the Assad regime even as it has been attacking its own people. Russia likewise has been slow to move to the kinds of sanctions that have been called for in Iran. Russia is a geopolitical adversary, but it's not an enemy with, you know, missiles being fird at one another or things of that nature."

So you can parse words like "geopolitical foe" and "enemy" and "adversary" and "number one national security threat," but it's a much more complicated issue than saying "Romney was right about Russia" because at the time he made that statement he was wrong and backtracking and clarifying then, and at the same time he was running around the globe looking like a complete idiot in regards to foreign diplomacy, pissing off Great Britain, Israel, Palestine, Spain, you name it.

I personally don't think Russia is now or was then our number one geopolitical foe or biggest security threat. The U.S. and Russia disagree on Syria, Crimea, and.... big deal, so what; that doesn't make them any more of a threat than any other country like China, North Korea, etc. I think a greater threat to the United States right now is actually a small group with a single nuclear weapon or single big bomb versus a large country with a faltering economy. Seriously, that nutcase out there with a single bomb, maybe even domestic terrorists are a greater threat to national security than foreign ones.

I also think it's dangerous to feel like we need to define a "biggest boogeyman" that we need to defeat in a battle of "good versus evil" and "good guys versus bad guys." Facts are not quite that simplistic. Russia agrees with us on many issues and disagrees on others, same as many other nations. Whereas the U.S. might be Russia's or Iran's greatest foe, would that automatically make them our greatest foe? Honestly, due to the sheer size and power of the United States military, I don't really think we have a "number one" geopolitical foe, just a long list of equal threats out there where none stands out as a greater threat than any other, in my opinion, and that's a good thing.

Another...responsible gun owner....shot with - their own weapon

[ In Reply To ..]
http://freakoutnation.com/2015/07/maine-man-took-womans-gun-then-fatally-shot-her/

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