I keep looking through the data, http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr63/nvsr63_03.pdf, and it seems like cars still beat out guns by a good margin. They even say in the article most of the gun deaths are by suicide. Just the few numbers I grabbed says you're still 3 times more likely to be killed by or in a car. I looked again at the article and they don't even list the numbers because it conflicts with the story they WANT to have. The proper title is "The forecast for ways you might die in the next 5 years if you remain in the 15-24 age bracket shows a higher change of being killed by a gun, or killing yourself with a gun, than by being killed in or by a car."
Assault (homicide) by discharge of firearms 11,068
Accidental discharge of firearms 591
Discharge of firearms, undetermined intent 248
Motor vehicle accidents 35,303
Unless you're taking your own life:
Intentional self-harm (suicide) by discharge of
firearms 19,990
> They even say in the article most of the gun deaths are by suicide.
It says "suicides, accidents or domestic violence." These are all vital statistics in determining the deadliness of guns.
Gun advocates have been arguing here that suicides shouldn't be counted, which doesn't make sense. Access to an effective suicide method is one more consequence of a gun-owning society. It should be acknowledged, analyzed, and discussed.
It seems as though advocates are arguing that the statistics should be filtered to make guns appear less statistically deadly. That's nonsense. This is a comparison of deadliness; a gun death is a gun death. Despite a decline in gun ownership, gun deaths are trending upward, and the NRA opposes smart-unlock features like thumbprint identification that contrast with the myriad safety controls placed on vehicles.
How many people reading that headline do you think actually think of suicides when they read it?
The reason for determining the deadliness of guns is to know whether they should be banned or not. And we're arguing that since suicides don't justify prohibition, it's not fair to include them in "deadliness". Suicides don't justify prohibition because I as a person should have the right to choose to own a gun at the small risk that I may commit suicide with it. It is not the governments place to protect me from that small risk.
It seems as though advocates are arguing that the statistics should
be filtered to make guns appear less statistically deadly.
And the other side is doing the same thing, inflating the statistics with deaths that we believe should not affect the policy decision.
If this were epidemiology, we would talk about "total morbidity." If I develop a flu vaccine that 100% stops flu deaths but kills 10% of patients via heart attacks, I have not improved the situation. A troll or person otherwise committed to a narrative that my flu vaccine should be foist on everyone might say "a flu death is a flu death" but it's not what matters.
About half of American households have access to a gun while about half of suicides are done via gun. The US is within 10% of most other first world countries in terms of suicide rate. The real world evidence is that if you got rid of guns in an attempt to stop suicides, the strong majority of those who want to commit suicide would find another method.
I'd argue that domestic violence shouldn't be separated in that, and to my point the word domestic doesn't appear in the data. It is suicide, homicide, or accidental. As for suicide prevention, removing the instruments of death only makes people more creative, and isn't the right focus. http://clinicalpsychreading.blogspot.com/2014/12/suicide-by-...
A gun death is not necessarily a gun death. For many people who commit suicide, they will find a way. If there is a gun available they will use it, if there isn't they'll do something else. Contrast that with someone who wants to go postal, with a gun they kill a someone, without a gun perhaps they toss a computer monitor off the desk.
> By contrast, safety features on firearms—such as smartguns unlocked by an owner’s thumbprint or a radio-frequency encryption—are opposed by the National Rifle Association, whose allies in Congress also block funding for the sort of public-health research that might show, in even clearer detail, the cost of America’s love affair with guns.
Can someone explain the NRA to me? At this point they come across as cartoon villains, senselessly evil for no apparent purpose. Why can car companies be persuaded to invest in safety features but somehow the NRA works against its own interests to make guns as dangerous as possible? I feel like I must be missing some side of the story, because from the stuff I read, they're literally twirling their mustachios while cackling right now.
Accepting the premise that it's a good thing that the population at large can own guns, their argument is that they're thinking a few steps ahead:
If smartguns become popular, the government can then outlaw non-smartguns without too many people caring (they can still own and fire guns).
Then the smart-stuff is leveraged to "enhance" security - transferring ownership, for an example, could be made subject to a government permit, which can then be used, explicitly or implicitly - imagine a "no fly list" for guns, with the same opacity - to prevent large groups of people to own guns (well, specifically, to fire them).
Further not-very-fantastical "enhancements" could include remote-disabling of guns, initially for law enforcement use, but quickly extended to much broader use.
All this, of course, while the criminals (who are already obtaining guns illegally) keep using "dumb" guns and aren't affected by this.
These are the simple, practical reasons - there's also the ideological reason founded on the historical reason for the 2nd amendment: A government can't turn on it's own people if said people is armed. If the government can effectively control the guns of the people, that stops being a factor.
Is the "keep the government in line" thing really a reason that anybody actually believes anymore? Like, if things got so bad that the government was "turning on its own people" with weaponry, somebody really thinks some guys with guns from Wal-Mart are going to be what stops them?
The simpler objection is that smartgun technology - being a brand new thing - is likely to be expensive and complicated, which makes the guns that use it expensive and complicated. Forcing people to install it anyway is like a tax - it makes gun ownership more painful and expensive. If you care that lower-income people should be able afford guns for personal defense and that guns should be easy to use, you ought to oppose smartgun mandates as a matter of reflex. At least until the technology in question actually exists so we can see just how expensive and complicated it turns out to be, and probably well past that point.
Another practical reason where pro-gun vs. anti-gun traditionally do not see eye-to-eye is proximity/availability of police forces.
In the city, where most people are anti-gun, the police are often very close by, and rhetoric often talks about how guns are not needed because of the police.
In the country, where most people are pro-gun, the police can easily be very far away. I have co-workers who live at least an hour from the closest police station. Naturally, rhetoric covers the fact that the police very likely cannot help you.
This is just a variation of the slippery slope argument except this slope doesn't seem very slippery to me. Gun rights have been getting stronger in the US not weaker, courts in recent years have decided that the 2nd amendment is an individual right and that it is incorporated against the states.
I don't see how a libertarian, as many gun advocates but certainly not all, can make a rational argument for preventing a private company from selling smart-guns to individuals.
Well, among the key facts necessary to understand that is that the "safety features" are not pure cost-free benefit, and the NRA believes the costs outweigh the benefits. They have some decent arguments for the existence of the costs; reasonable people could disagree about the relative degree of each.
It is also not generally the case that guns are always "bad"; guns are also significantly used in self-defense, usually without even being fired. Those who present "oh, just remove the guns" as a cost-free move are being disingenuous; again, people can reasonably disagree about the relative nature of the costs and benefits but those who present this as a zero-cost transaction are trying to pull one over on people.
It is also worth remembering that even as the number of guns have increased, the death rate has, as the article pointed out, gone down, and crime has significantly dropped in the past couple of decades. This is not exactly a set of circumstances that leads a rational person to leap to the conclusion that the presence and ownership of guns is an obvious root cause... and, yes, again, there may be confounding variables at play, but it still provides a bound on what you could even hope for if guns were entirely removed.
When you find yourself completely unable to understand how anyone could possibly believe something, that's usually a sign that you've been exposed to only the propaganda of one side. Note that I said understand, not agree with or believe. I understand many points of view I do not agree with. Some of them I even had to go chase down, in accordance with the principle I just gave, because I could tell I'd just been fed one side of the propaganda.
> Well, among the key facts necessary to understand that is that the "safety features" are not pure cost-free benefit, and the NRA believes the costs outweigh the benefits. They have some decent arguments for the existence of the costs; reasonable people could disagree about the relative degree of each.
Sure. Advanced safety features in cars probably cost a lot to develop, too, and I'm sure there's a lot of people who think seatbelts are lame and cars would be cooler without them. But car companies actively work to promote safety while the NRA seems to actively undermine it.
> It is also worth remembering that even as the number of guns have increased, the death rate has, as the article pointed out, gone down
That's actually the direct opposite of what the article says. The very first paragraph states: "Deaths by guns, though—the great majority suicides, accidents or domestic violence—have been trending slightly upwards."
> When you find yourself completely unable to understand how anyone could possibly believe something, that's usually a sign that you've been exposed to only the propaganda of one side. Note that I said understand, not agree with or believe. I understand many points of view I do not agree with. Some of them I even had to go chase down, in accordance with the principle I just gave, because I could tell I'd just been fed one side of the propaganda.
I agree. That was the premise of my question. Unfortunately, I haven't seen too much clarification yet :(
These "safety" features make guns less deadly, in the sense that they make guns less reliable in the first place. If you're using one to defend yourself, your family, or your home, that might actually make the gun less safe in the sense that it won't work when you need it. This defeats the entire purpose of having a gun.
Guns also have safety features that protect against accidental discharge, namely the trigger safety. Some guns have an additional trigger safety that triggers if the gun is pressed against something (or someone). Since these features don't reduce the reliability of a gun when it is intended to be used, the NRA doesn't have any problem with them, and at least the trigger safety is standard on all guns.
The NRA also does a lot of work to teach firearms safety to children (which basically boils down to "don't touch it and tell an adult if you find an unexpected gun somewhere"). For those who do shoot, the NRA is also good with basic safety principles.
Easy. Each weapon is a tool that will likely never be used, but if it is must be 100% reliable and quickly deployable while under extreme stress. "Smart" guns introduce a new feature that would impact both speed and reliability.
No implementation of a TouchID-like system for guns would be perfect and so the gun owner must weigh the potential benefits and risks. I don't think the NRA's members want to take that choice away from the gun owner, but even having a commercial solution come to market means some states will require it's use. IIRC one state has laws on the books to mandate the use of the technology once it's commercially available.
There was a documentary on them just a few days ago.
I didn't watch it, but heard the producers talking on the radio. In the 60s NRA was basically a sports/ gun safety organization. At some point they pivoted to be a gun rights organization.
Politicians fear them, because they have money and get out the vote power. There is some thought that the NRA cost Al Gore his presidential run.
Its complex, because a lot of the US (The more rural parts mostly) have a much stronger gun culture. There is some distrust of government and any regulations.
Within 50 years quality 3-d printed guns will make a lot of regulations moot anyway.
It makes sense, they became political when guns came under political threat.
As a side note, it's funny to see that parts of the media still mechanically repeat LaPierre calling the ATF "jack booted government thugs" in 1995 like it was a bad thing, after the full-on liberal awakening over police militarization via the Boston Marathon Bombing and Ferguson, MO. The NRA was 20 years ahead of the curve on that.
Didn't see the Frontline episode, but the NRA's history is quite interesting. The organization was quasi-governmental in that it administered the government's civilian marksmanship program (this was a war preparation thing) and it ran shooting tournaments and did other educational programs. It's interesting to read about the gun control debates of the 60s (leading to the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968) because people at the time thought that the debates were very heated but, compared to today, the NRA's position was pretty moderate. The organization was supportive of certain elements of the '68 act, including banning mail-order guns (one of which killed JFK) and Saturday Evening Specials.
After '68 there was a huge split in the organization between hardline types who wanted to focus on politics and lobbying and traditionalists who wanted to focus on shooting sports. At one point the NRA was even going to move from the DC area to Colorado and essentially give up politics altogether. In 1977, the political types took over the organization and purged the organization of sportsmen types.
Interestingly, the new head of the NRA was a former chief of the US Border Patrol who had shot and killed someone when he was a teenager. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlon_Carter
The organization grew exponentially in membership, budget and political influence. Interestingly, they went through a few cycles of purging people who were even more hardline than their leadership.
There was a law in New Jersey that basically said as soon as smart gun technology was for retail sale in any part of the country, a general ban on non-smart guns would go into effect:
Effectively, allowing smart gun technology would cause a bunch of other guns to get banned, so based on their values system it was logical for the NRA to oppose the tech. There have also been complaints that the tech is not reliable. I looked into this myself and frankly, I would not trust my life with it. Also, in most cases it's using passive RFID technology which is a joke for "security" (there is one company that's using a challenge response system though.) I can think of half a dozen ways to disable or clone most of these systems, but they are sold like they are a panacea.
Thing many people are missing, I think, is that the position of the NRA is not necessarily based on the merits of that particular issue. It is based on the STRATEGIC view of the political battle to restrict and eliminate firearm ownership.
The gun control side claims they "don't want to take away your guns" or they "don't want to take away all guns" but when you look at DC and Chicago, where they have the most power, they completely banned private ownership of handguns. This demonstrates their goal, and this is what the NRA is fighting against.
It is much harder to repeal a gun control law than to pass it (if you look at things on the scale of decades and/or centuries), partly because this is a demographic issue and the pro-gun demographic is smaller and shrinking.
So the NRA has absolutely no incentive to concede ground in the battle for private gun ownership. I've never heard a gun control proponent suggest "OK if you give us background checks, registration and capacity limits, we will loosen gun laws in states where they are more strict and promise never ever to go further." That would be compromise. I've never heard it, neither has the NRA.
That is why they are absolutists, because ultimately so is the other side. (Their leadership anyway, which is what counts, not the moderate "let's split the difference" voter who only cares about the issue when its a major news item.)
As I understand it, the NRA oppose these safety features as it provides a stepping stone to the full control/ban of guns. ie once you have a mechanism to restrict guns to an individual, it's easier to extend that (technically/politically) to a wider restriction or total ban.
What the NRA is really against is the legislating of these safety devices. They certainly don't care if a manufacturer wants to sell a gun like this. The other argument is that technologies like this (microstamping is another) aren't effective, thus why force them on people?
Also keep in mind that a lot of NRA folks are rural. They have almost no local gun crime and have (what they feel) are legitimate reasons for owning a gun (self-defense, hunting, etc). Their opinion is why should they give up their guns because the city folks have a problem?
Actually, the NRA really is against any manufacturer creating them, because a few states have passed laws saying (in a lot more words) "once smart guns are on the market, you can only buy smart guns." They view the creation of this technology the way some people on HN feel about porn-filtering technology: if it exists, a corrupt government will use it.
(I don't count myself in either of those camps but I listen to them enough to be able to explain their arguments.)
There are good reasons to oppose expensive ineffective gimmicks. Gun lobbyist sometimes look like 'cartoon villains' because people draw them that way.
The notion of "smartguns unlocked by an owner’s thumbprint or a radio-frequency encryption" is a recipe for making guns - an inherently quite simple tool - into something vastly more complicated, expensive, and failure-prone. The NRA doesn't actually oppose the development of "safety features on firearms", but they do oppose the legal requirement that guns should all include features that don't yet exist and haven't been proven to work.
Imagine that people were regularly being killed by hammers. Or better yet, baseball bats. Now somebody comes along and claims that if we spent an extra $500 per baseball bat to bolt some complicated new mechanism onto the side of the bat, that would prevent some deaths. Said mechanism hasn't been invented yet, hasn't been proven to work, hasn't been proven to prevent any deaths, and is guaranteed to inconvenience every normal law-abiding user of baseball bats - from now on people would have to spend extra money for a feature they don't want or need. Congress proposes legally mandating this mechanism. Shouldn't the bat-making equivalent of the NRA oppose it?
Do you have an iPhone that unlocks via thumbprint? Have you noticed that the (otherwise quite impressive) sensor doesn't work when your hands are wet, or sticky, or greasy, or you're wearing gloves? If you thought you might need a gun for self defense, would you rather have one where pulling the trigger simply fires the gun, or one where you have to have clean bare hands to work and occasionally it stops working reliably and you need to spend a few minutes figuring out how to retrain it?
As for that "public-health research that might show...", our public health organizations have already supported a large number of truly terrible politically-motivated studies on the subject. Do we really need to fund more people like Kellerman to give us more nonsense stats supporting positions they already had going in?
The NRA is against anything which gets in the way of a patriot and their duty. RFID and similiar 'safety' features can be used by the government to identify gun owners, confiscate weapons and suppress the public's right to revolt against their tyranny. Americans have a sacred right enshrined into the Constutition to be able to bear arms in order to respond to the presence of government with deadly force.
It's no different the the argument people here sometimes make that black markets and TOR are necessary for freedom of speech and civil liberties, even if having them means enabling criminal activity - because the greater threat is always the threat of a government which can't be spoken up against. In the case of guns, the greater threat is always a government which can't be put down.
Why couldn't me and my buddies go to the range and all shoot the new gun I just got? DRM for software is bad enough, lets not extend it to the physical world.
I guess unlimited "Gun Admins" would be an okay compromise.
As for the safety features, I think the opposition is because some of the states have mandated that if a safety feature become available then all guns in the state are required to have it. Given that the technology would no be 100% reliable there is obvious opposition. If the laws were not there then I think the NRA membership would be more open.
Essentially, once a smart gun becomes available for sale in the US, all guns sold in New Jersey must be "smart" within 30 months. I wouldn't be surprised if other jurisdictions had similar laws in place. This dramatically increases the cost of legal firearms while doing very little to impact firearm murder or suicide rates.
Not a one of the NRA's members/funders wants smartguns. Just another thing to go wrong with it, in their eyes. Traditionally a good gun was about as complicated as a shovel or pickaxe.
The NRA is not opposed to the development of smart guns. They are opposed to legislation that bans the sale of non-smart guns once smart guns are available on the market.
Such a law already exists in New Jersey and was proposed at the federal level by Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts.
Guns are a political issue for American conservatives. Attempts to regulate guns are seen as an attack on their freedoms. The more extreme members maintain a fantasy of government overthrow (see the Cliven Bundy standoff).
the NRA is also in part defined by its members. These members are, for the most part, highly conservative and see technology like that as making guns worse. They don't worry about safety; after-all, the point of the gun is power and something that is dangerous feels more powerful.
The other reason people oppose them is because it would reduce the gun-owner's ability to re-sell the gun to criminals with no difficulty or government intervention. It would remove some control from the gun owners.
One man's safety feature is another man's oppressive inconvenience.
Most gun owners I know are like Unix programmers, in that they favor the simplest solution that could possibly work. A safety feature that makes a gun significantly more complicated—and therefore possibly less likely to work when needed—is a non-starter for most gun owners.
Furthermore, most gun owners have firearms at least in part because of the criminal element. I find the argument that a significant number of gun owners want to be able to resell their firearms to criminals to be patently absurd.
> somehow the NRA works against its own interests to make guns as dangerous as possible?
In an ideal world, cars are designed to be as safe as possible, as they are transports and getting people home safely is their most important aspect.
In an ideal world, guns are designed to be a dangerous and murderous as possible, as they are killing devices and efficiently turning people into corpses is their most important aspect.
The NRA does exactly what it should: advocate for murder device efficiency and access.
Of course, whether easy access to highly efficient murder devices should be allowed is a public policy question, but in the US, the answer is yes, and the NRA's strategies are a rational move based on that policy. The problem here is that advocating for easy access and efficiency of murder machines kinda looks bad.
Scary title, but I think I'll mark this one up as a victory for auto safety. Especially considering a good chunk of death by firearms are (tragically) suicides.
It is also worth noting that according to their graph that the critical point to be made is that both rates of death have been on a decline since their starting point of 1990. Cars are indeed getting safer, but apparently something is being done right in the firearm area as well.
Gun ownership has been in decline for decades (along with hunting). In response, the industry shifted from hunting and home defense toward civilianized combat weaponry like the AR-15. There's a large accessory and customization market for these things. It's essentially a toy for military hobbyists and gadget-lovers.
As a European it seems blatantly obvious that your gun laws are absurd in the States. (I am assuming you are from the States from the fact you see the argument that way around, correct me if I am wrong).
Most of the perceived absurdity comes from disingenuous framing of the issues. Here are some examples:
Over half of all quoted gun deaths are suicides. [edit: removed mention of suicide survivability as I don't have a reference handy. But remember: The most likely person to shoot you is yourself.]
Let's remove suicide from the discussion and talk about violence. The primary driver for violence is socioeconomic. The US has a huge wealth and education disparity problem, exacerbated by a drug war which focuses primarily on the lower economic classes. Most political rhetoric surrounding gun violence focuses on denying lower-class individuals access to firearms and is inexorably linked to institutionalized racism [ cite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_night_special#Economic... ]
What these stats don't show is the EXTREME socioeconomic skew involved in violent crime. If we look at gun deaths by wealth quadrile we find that the upper 40% have very, very few gun deaths -- on par with the nicer areas in Europe. Our inflated gun death statistics come almost entirely from the lower 40%. That is, gun deaths are emblematic of America's class divide.
The right to self defense is a convenient target for politicians to score easy wins. Constructively addressing the USA's violence problem is a very different issue and frankly is almost entirely unrelated to firearm legislation.
Just making suicide slightly more difficult dramatically reduces suicide rates. It's difficult to stop someone determined to kill themselves, but most suicides are impulse decisions, so removing the opportunity often prevents the suicide. That's why suicide barriers on bridges actually reduce suicide rates rather than changing the method.
I agree with you generally… but in this specific case, do regions with very strong and effective gun control have dramatically lower suicide rates than the US? My understanding is that suicide rates in Europe aren't dramatically lower, though they do appear to be a bit lower in western europe and higher in eastern… I can't tell if this might be handgun related, is the delta large enough?
I don't have any information on the suicide rates by gun in each country, though it would be useful information from a public health standpoint (especially if, as you pointed out, the accessibility could be reduced).
But you're doing that at the cost of denying all non-suicides the right to own a gun. The government's mandate is not to eliminate all deaths at all costs. It is to balance a wide variety of conflicting issues. And many people who wish to own firearms do not believe that the very small chance that they may commit suicide justifies the government preventing them from owning a firearm.
gun owners place a high value on agency. I have wondered if one reason they tend to not see suicides as legitimate in gun death stats is because they tend to see suicide as a willful act that a person also has a right to. Just a speculation...
I can't read the article, but I would assume that they have not included the suicides happening at home using the car (by inhaling exhaust in a closed space), and have only counted the deaths on the road.
It's important to note that, according to the chart, both are on the decline. Auto deaths are simply declining further.
Gun ownership is an important civil liberty in the USA, but one that comes with danger.
The Economist is recommending a technological approach to mitigating that danger. Research and development has been done in this department, and many technologies have been applied to modern firearms. Better safeties that prevent accidental discharge, better safes, ammunition that prevents over-penetration, etc.
We have yet to see a simple and trustworthy technology that limits who can fire a gun. When we do, it will start to be used.
For such a technology to work, the user needs to feel in complete control of it. There can be zero risk that an authorized user won't be able to fire the gun due to system failure or low battery.
Ultimately, though, no technological solution will prevent suicide. For that, a different approach will be necessary, and I don't have an answer for that.
Ironically, many gun control advocates still argue against civilian ownership of ammunition that doesn't overpenetrate. In some California cities hollow point ammunition is illegal to buy. In New Jersey it is illegal to carry hollow point ammunition outside the home. The Brady Campaign still to this day calls hollow points "cop killer bullets" despite the fact that every law enforcement department in the country uses them.
Ignoring the click-bait headline implying that guns have become more dangerous than cars - what we actually see are that deaths from both have declined. Car deaths slightly more quickly than gun deaths.
I find that incredibly encouraging. Nothing about guns or gun ownership has changed dramatically in the United States over this period. Perhaps this signals that the bizarre, and often fetishized, culture of violence in the United States is on the wane. I hope so.
Readit News
Assault (homicide) by discharge of firearms 11,068
Accidental discharge of firearms 591
Discharge of firearms, undetermined intent 248
Motor vehicle accidents 35,303
Unless you're taking your own life: Intentional self-harm (suicide) by discharge of firearms 19,990
Dead Comment
It says "suicides, accidents or domestic violence." These are all vital statistics in determining the deadliness of guns.
Gun advocates have been arguing here that suicides shouldn't be counted, which doesn't make sense. Access to an effective suicide method is one more consequence of a gun-owning society. It should be acknowledged, analyzed, and discussed.
It seems as though advocates are arguing that the statistics should be filtered to make guns appear less statistically deadly. That's nonsense. This is a comparison of deadliness; a gun death is a gun death. Despite a decline in gun ownership, gun deaths are trending upward, and the NRA opposes smart-unlock features like thumbprint identification that contrast with the myriad safety controls placed on vehicles.
The reason for determining the deadliness of guns is to know whether they should be banned or not. And we're arguing that since suicides don't justify prohibition, it's not fair to include them in "deadliness". Suicides don't justify prohibition because I as a person should have the right to choose to own a gun at the small risk that I may commit suicide with it. It is not the governments place to protect me from that small risk.
And the other side is doing the same thing, inflating the statistics with deaths that we believe should not affect the policy decision. Not according to the graph in the article: http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecac...About half of American households have access to a gun while about half of suicides are done via gun. The US is within 10% of most other first world countries in terms of suicide rate. The real world evidence is that if you got rid of guns in an attempt to stop suicides, the strong majority of those who want to commit suicide would find another method.
> By contrast, safety features on firearms—such as smartguns unlocked by an owner’s thumbprint or a radio-frequency encryption—are opposed by the National Rifle Association, whose allies in Congress also block funding for the sort of public-health research that might show, in even clearer detail, the cost of America’s love affair with guns.
Can someone explain the NRA to me? At this point they come across as cartoon villains, senselessly evil for no apparent purpose. Why can car companies be persuaded to invest in safety features but somehow the NRA works against its own interests to make guns as dangerous as possible? I feel like I must be missing some side of the story, because from the stuff I read, they're literally twirling their mustachios while cackling right now.
If smartguns become popular, the government can then outlaw non-smartguns without too many people caring (they can still own and fire guns).
Then the smart-stuff is leveraged to "enhance" security - transferring ownership, for an example, could be made subject to a government permit, which can then be used, explicitly or implicitly - imagine a "no fly list" for guns, with the same opacity - to prevent large groups of people to own guns (well, specifically, to fire them).
Further not-very-fantastical "enhancements" could include remote-disabling of guns, initially for law enforcement use, but quickly extended to much broader use.
All this, of course, while the criminals (who are already obtaining guns illegally) keep using "dumb" guns and aren't affected by this.
These are the simple, practical reasons - there's also the ideological reason founded on the historical reason for the 2nd amendment: A government can't turn on it's own people if said people is armed. If the government can effectively control the guns of the people, that stops being a factor.
I wish the public at large could understand these are largely parallel to the arguments FSF makes (at least to me, they are)
In the city, where most people are anti-gun, the police are often very close by, and rhetoric often talks about how guns are not needed because of the police.
In the country, where most people are pro-gun, the police can easily be very far away. I have co-workers who live at least an hour from the closest police station. Naturally, rhetoric covers the fact that the police very likely cannot help you.
I don't see how a libertarian, as many gun advocates but certainly not all, can make a rational argument for preventing a private company from selling smart-guns to individuals.
Deleted Comment
It is also not generally the case that guns are always "bad"; guns are also significantly used in self-defense, usually without even being fired. Those who present "oh, just remove the guns" as a cost-free move are being disingenuous; again, people can reasonably disagree about the relative nature of the costs and benefits but those who present this as a zero-cost transaction are trying to pull one over on people.
It is also worth remembering that even as the number of guns have increased, the death rate has, as the article pointed out, gone down, and crime has significantly dropped in the past couple of decades. This is not exactly a set of circumstances that leads a rational person to leap to the conclusion that the presence and ownership of guns is an obvious root cause... and, yes, again, there may be confounding variables at play, but it still provides a bound on what you could even hope for if guns were entirely removed.
When you find yourself completely unable to understand how anyone could possibly believe something, that's usually a sign that you've been exposed to only the propaganda of one side. Note that I said understand, not agree with or believe. I understand many points of view I do not agree with. Some of them I even had to go chase down, in accordance with the principle I just gave, because I could tell I'd just been fed one side of the propaganda.
Sure. Advanced safety features in cars probably cost a lot to develop, too, and I'm sure there's a lot of people who think seatbelts are lame and cars would be cooler without them. But car companies actively work to promote safety while the NRA seems to actively undermine it.
> It is also worth remembering that even as the number of guns have increased, the death rate has, as the article pointed out, gone down
That's actually the direct opposite of what the article says. The very first paragraph states: "Deaths by guns, though—the great majority suicides, accidents or domestic violence—have been trending slightly upwards."
> When you find yourself completely unable to understand how anyone could possibly believe something, that's usually a sign that you've been exposed to only the propaganda of one side. Note that I said understand, not agree with or believe. I understand many points of view I do not agree with. Some of them I even had to go chase down, in accordance with the principle I just gave, because I could tell I'd just been fed one side of the propaganda.
I agree. That was the premise of my question. Unfortunately, I haven't seen too much clarification yet :(
Guns also have safety features that protect against accidental discharge, namely the trigger safety. Some guns have an additional trigger safety that triggers if the gun is pressed against something (or someone). Since these features don't reduce the reliability of a gun when it is intended to be used, the NRA doesn't have any problem with them, and at least the trigger safety is standard on all guns.
The NRA also does a lot of work to teach firearms safety to children (which basically boils down to "don't touch it and tell an adult if you find an unexpected gun somewhere"). For those who do shoot, the NRA is also good with basic safety principles.
No implementation of a TouchID-like system for guns would be perfect and so the gun owner must weigh the potential benefits and risks. I don't think the NRA's members want to take that choice away from the gun owner, but even having a commercial solution come to market means some states will require it's use. IIRC one state has laws on the books to mandate the use of the technology once it's commercially available.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections...
Politicians fear them, because they have money and get out the vote power. There is some thought that the NRA cost Al Gore his presidential run.
Its complex, because a lot of the US (The more rural parts mostly) have a much stronger gun culture. There is some distrust of government and any regulations.
Within 50 years quality 3-d printed guns will make a lot of regulations moot anyway.
As a side note, it's funny to see that parts of the media still mechanically repeat LaPierre calling the ATF "jack booted government thugs" in 1995 like it was a bad thing, after the full-on liberal awakening over police militarization via the Boston Marathon Bombing and Ferguson, MO. The NRA was 20 years ahead of the curve on that.
After '68 there was a huge split in the organization between hardline types who wanted to focus on politics and lobbying and traditionalists who wanted to focus on shooting sports. At one point the NRA was even going to move from the DC area to Colorado and essentially give up politics altogether. In 1977, the political types took over the organization and purged the organization of sportsmen types.
Interestingly, the new head of the NRA was a former chief of the US Border Patrol who had shot and killed someone when he was a teenager. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlon_Carter
The organization grew exponentially in membership, budget and political influence. Interestingly, they went through a few cycles of purging people who were even more hardline than their leadership.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/06/24/325178...
Effectively, allowing smart gun technology would cause a bunch of other guns to get banned, so based on their values system it was logical for the NRA to oppose the tech. There have also been complaints that the tech is not reliable. I looked into this myself and frankly, I would not trust my life with it. Also, in most cases it's using passive RFID technology which is a joke for "security" (there is one company that's using a challenge response system though.) I can think of half a dozen ways to disable or clone most of these systems, but they are sold like they are a panacea.
The gun control side claims they "don't want to take away your guns" or they "don't want to take away all guns" but when you look at DC and Chicago, where they have the most power, they completely banned private ownership of handguns. This demonstrates their goal, and this is what the NRA is fighting against.
It is much harder to repeal a gun control law than to pass it (if you look at things on the scale of decades and/or centuries), partly because this is a demographic issue and the pro-gun demographic is smaller and shrinking.
So the NRA has absolutely no incentive to concede ground in the battle for private gun ownership. I've never heard a gun control proponent suggest "OK if you give us background checks, registration and capacity limits, we will loosen gun laws in states where they are more strict and promise never ever to go further." That would be compromise. I've never heard it, neither has the NRA.
That is why they are absolutists, because ultimately so is the other side. (Their leadership anyway, which is what counts, not the moderate "let's split the difference" voter who only cares about the issue when its a major news item.)
Also keep in mind that a lot of NRA folks are rural. They have almost no local gun crime and have (what they feel) are legitimate reasons for owning a gun (self-defense, hunting, etc). Their opinion is why should they give up their guns because the city folks have a problem?
(I don't count myself in either of those camps but I listen to them enough to be able to explain their arguments.)
Imagine that people were regularly being killed by hammers. Or better yet, baseball bats. Now somebody comes along and claims that if we spent an extra $500 per baseball bat to bolt some complicated new mechanism onto the side of the bat, that would prevent some deaths. Said mechanism hasn't been invented yet, hasn't been proven to work, hasn't been proven to prevent any deaths, and is guaranteed to inconvenience every normal law-abiding user of baseball bats - from now on people would have to spend extra money for a feature they don't want or need. Congress proposes legally mandating this mechanism. Shouldn't the bat-making equivalent of the NRA oppose it?
Do you have an iPhone that unlocks via thumbprint? Have you noticed that the (otherwise quite impressive) sensor doesn't work when your hands are wet, or sticky, or greasy, or you're wearing gloves? If you thought you might need a gun for self defense, would you rather have one where pulling the trigger simply fires the gun, or one where you have to have clean bare hands to work and occasionally it stops working reliably and you need to spend a few minutes figuring out how to retrain it?
As for that "public-health research that might show...", our public health organizations have already supported a large number of truly terrible politically-motivated studies on the subject. Do we really need to fund more people like Kellerman to give us more nonsense stats supporting positions they already had going in?
It's no different the the argument people here sometimes make that black markets and TOR are necessary for freedom of speech and civil liberties, even if having them means enabling criminal activity - because the greater threat is always the threat of a government which can't be spoken up against. In the case of guns, the greater threat is always a government which can't be put down.
Unlocked by owner's thumbprint? Tough luck, police officer wearing gloves. Unlucky, dear soldier with muddy hands.
Unlocked by radio-frequency? Rob a bank after installing a radio-frequency jammer.
I guess unlimited "Gun Admins" would be an okay compromise.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/06/24/325178...
Essentially, once a smart gun becomes available for sale in the US, all guns sold in New Jersey must be "smart" within 30 months. I wouldn't be surprised if other jurisdictions had similar laws in place. This dramatically increases the cost of legal firearms while doing very little to impact firearm murder or suicide rates.
Such a law already exists in New Jersey and was proposed at the federal level by Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts.
The other reason people oppose them is because it would reduce the gun-owner's ability to re-sell the gun to criminals with no difficulty or government intervention. It would remove some control from the gun owners.
One man's safety feature is another man's oppressive inconvenience.
Furthermore, most gun owners have firearms at least in part because of the criminal element. I find the argument that a significant number of gun owners want to be able to resell their firearms to criminals to be patently absurd.
Dead Comment
In an ideal world, cars are designed to be as safe as possible, as they are transports and getting people home safely is their most important aspect.
In an ideal world, guns are designed to be a dangerous and murderous as possible, as they are killing devices and efficiently turning people into corpses is their most important aspect.
The NRA does exactly what it should: advocate for murder device efficiency and access.
Of course, whether easy access to highly efficient murder devices should be allowed is a public policy question, but in the US, the answer is yes, and the NRA's strategies are a rational move based on that policy. The problem here is that advocating for easy access and efficiency of murder machines kinda looks bad.
More info: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/business/the-ar-15-the-mos...
Over half of all quoted gun deaths are suicides. [edit: removed mention of suicide survivability as I don't have a reference handy. But remember: The most likely person to shoot you is yourself.]
Let's remove suicide from the discussion and talk about violence. The primary driver for violence is socioeconomic. The US has a huge wealth and education disparity problem, exacerbated by a drug war which focuses primarily on the lower economic classes. Most political rhetoric surrounding gun violence focuses on denying lower-class individuals access to firearms and is inexorably linked to institutionalized racism [ cite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_night_special#Economic... ]
What these stats don't show is the EXTREME socioeconomic skew involved in violent crime. If we look at gun deaths by wealth quadrile we find that the upper 40% have very, very few gun deaths -- on par with the nicer areas in Europe. Our inflated gun death statistics come almost entirely from the lower 40%. That is, gun deaths are emblematic of America's class divide.
The right to self defense is a convenient target for politicians to score easy wins. Constructively addressing the USA's violence problem is a very different issue and frankly is almost entirely unrelated to firearm legislation.
> The U.S. Department of Justice reports that approximately 60% of all adult firearm deaths are by suicide, 61% more than deaths by homicide. [1]
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Stat...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_ra...
I don't have any information on the suicide rates by gun in each country, though it would be useful information from a public health standpoint (especially if, as you pointed out, the accessibility could be reduced).
Why?
By contrast, 53,000 die from the flu, 27,000 from falls, 36,000 from accidental poisoning, and 600,000 from heart disease.
Table 10: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr63/nvsr63_03.pdf
Gun ownership is an important civil liberty in the USA, but one that comes with danger.
The Economist is recommending a technological approach to mitigating that danger. Research and development has been done in this department, and many technologies have been applied to modern firearms. Better safeties that prevent accidental discharge, better safes, ammunition that prevents over-penetration, etc.
We have yet to see a simple and trustworthy technology that limits who can fire a gun. When we do, it will start to be used.
For such a technology to work, the user needs to feel in complete control of it. There can be zero risk that an authorized user won't be able to fire the gun due to system failure or low battery.
Ultimately, though, no technological solution will prevent suicide. For that, a different approach will be necessary, and I don't have an answer for that.
Ironically, many gun control advocates still argue against civilian ownership of ammunition that doesn't overpenetrate. In some California cities hollow point ammunition is illegal to buy. In New Jersey it is illegal to carry hollow point ammunition outside the home. The Brady Campaign still to this day calls hollow points "cop killer bullets" despite the fact that every law enforcement department in the country uses them.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm
I find that incredibly encouraging. Nothing about guns or gun ownership has changed dramatically in the United States over this period. Perhaps this signals that the bizarre, and often fetishized, culture of violence in the United States is on the wane. I hope so.
Deleted Comment