Is gun control a cure worse than the illness?
Gun sales have plummeted because there is less fear of new gun control regulation under Trump then Obama. In fact it is driving some gun manufacturers into bankruptcy. Here are a few snippets from Bloomberg:
Remington, which was founded in 1816, announced it would file for bankruptcy earlier this week.
Vista reported sales of $581 million, an 11 percent decrease from the previous year
Shooting Sports recorded third-quarter sales of $286 million, down 21 percent from $361 million in the prior year quarter
Firearms companies face declining sales, falling stock prices and tremendous debt.
Smith & Wesson, has seen its stock plummet by almost half, compared with 2017
According to data collected by the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, a barometer for firearms sales, January 2018 was the slowest in gun purchases since 2012.
Bloomberg goes onto explain:
Republican control in Washington has helped slow purchases by gun enthusiasts who once feared tighter restrictions under Democrats.
With Republicans in control of Washington, there’s little chance of firearms regulation—even in the face of Wednesday’s massacre in Florida. When Barack Obama was president or Democrats controlled Congress, gun sales would generally rise after a mass shooting for fear of more restrictive laws. The gun lobby pushed these worries despite a lack of significant legislative effort by the Obama administration. Now that Donald Trump is in the Oval Office, fear of new gun laws has receded, industry executives said. And so have sales, hurting both retailers and manufactures such as Remington.
So if we believe less guns means less gun deaths - then gun control legislation may not be the best way to achieve it.
This is important if we want to focus on effective solutions that actually work.
Does this data sound correct to you?
if we believe less guns means less gun deaths, then we have not looked at the numbers.
The data you presented about sales makes sense. Barack Obama was the greatest gun salesman in history, during his term the gun maker stocks he personally owned went up 750% during his term. Obviously at some point there has to be a market correction.
What is sad is that we know already which things are effective and which are not.
all of the laws that address which guns are legal and who may possess them and where do not work at all. they only affect the law abiding who don't often commit gun crimes.
Now if you want to actually reduce gun crime we also know what works, laws that target individuals who actually commit gun crime, habitual gun offenders. These individuals, about 1 in every 10,000 people, commit over 90% of all gun crime.
So there are two effective ways to reduce gun crime by targeting those individuals, the one way that works very well is to lock them up for long periods. Instead of one year or less for a felon using a gun in a crime give them 10 years. That way they are out on the street way less and commit far fewer gun crimes.
The other thing that works quite well is to pay gun criminals to stay out of trouble and give them the support to do that.
Those two policies can reduce gun crime like 80% or more. The gun control policies people offer do not reduce gun crime at all.
Can you explain "pay gun criminals to stay out of trouble"?
Wouldn't that encourage people to commit gun crime so they can then collect a pay check?
No, because it's not very much and it's only for those who have already served their sentences and committed multiple gun crimes. Essentially they identify those people who are repeat gun offenders, the population that commits 90%+ of gun crimes, and after they go through the criminal justice system they offer them a choice of entering this program where they get like $1000 a month as long as they don't commit crimes and participate in counseling and job skills and make a life plan and such. In a large city with a bad gang problem this is a total of 50 individuals. When they implement this program gun homicides drop by like 80%. about 1 in 10,000 people qualify.
Those are amazing results. Do you know the links to any articles where I can read more about these types of programs?
pick your poison:
https://www.bing.com/search?q=richmond+ca+gun+violence+program&form=EDGTCT&qs=PF&cvid=09f23b7657f847e4b83ab9d7303e3ae7&refig=f04a08885d934a6bcfe2a4ab79893b4b&cc=US&setlang=en-US&PC=DCTE
These two articles give a lot of info and perspective:
http://www.nccdglobal.org/sites/default/files/publication_pdf/ons-process-evaluation.pdf
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/06/richmond-california-murder-rate-gun-death/
From reading them, I am not sure if it scalable or it is dependent on unique circumstances and people.
I am going to read some more.
I think the idea of identifying those tiny fraction who do almost all the gun crime and locking them up for a while and also offering them some way out of that lifestyle makes a lot of sense, otherwise they will just keep shooting people, I think it's a lot cheaper too in the long run. Dead bodies and murder cases cost money. We will have to see how it works in Sacramento, that's a city of 500,000.
That's an interesting perspective, but I don't see how you can possibly get rid of guns without gun control. It sounds like the THREAT of gun control causes panic and big sales, but there really hasn't been any ACTUAL legislation to compare against from what I'm seeing here.
There has been plenty of legislation at a state and local level.
It is a difficult problem - but knowing what does not work can help us find what does work.
I do not have the answer - just sharing what I find as I research the problem.
To the question in your title, my Magic 8-Ball says:
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