Jason Alexander on gun control

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/if2nht

by stevenleeg • 14 years ago

7 13 14 years ago

jmcguckin• 14 years ago

Jason's numbers are incorrect. Brady (the most anti-gun lobby) states that firearms related homocides are 12,778 for the year they have statistics for.

netpenthe• 14 years ago

he wrote a correction, saying the 100k was for gun related incidents, not just deaths..

13k deaths/year is still a lot

rsanchez1• 14 years ago

Yes, George Costanza is the most authoritative voice on gun control laws.

dusit2• 14 years ago

You know, trolls are not welcome here.

Go away.

MrEnigma• 14 years ago

I think the hardest part about this, is like Jason here a lot of people think it's ok for people to own guns, but not get crazy about it.

Unfortunately there isn't great qualifications for defining what an assault rifle is. You can do specific models, which then require lots of updated and political maneuvering to keep updated. Length, speed, etc all end up catch too many other guns.

We could do federally what california has done, and prevent magazines over 10 rounds, or do like Illinois and require a permit to buy ammunition, unfortunately incidents still happen, and legitimate owners get upset over what they perceive as draconian rule.

Ultimately I think banning something like semi-automatic weapons would be the best in theory. But with 300+ million guns out there, with many of those being semi-automatic, it might be kind of an issue. If you grandfather them in, then you just drive the price up for these weapons. If you make it illegal 'overnight' you may make felons out a lot of people unknowingly.

One of things that has been going around, mostly because of Ebert bringing it up. Is the idea that gun rights advocates say that these incidents can be prevented by concealed carry, but Ebert points out none of the people in the cinema shot back. Unfortunately the argument, and for the situation, that specific theater specifically does not allow concealed weapons. Unfairly, and I believe incorrectly gun rights advocates say that it happened there because he knew everyone would be unarmed.

It's a very tricky situation. I think ultimately we need a better algorithm to detect and flag situations like this. Which would also require massive databases and registrations which people seem very against.

If these guns were illegal to obtain, it would also mean that he would have had to actively be doing something illegal, unfortunately as it stands, if he would have been stopped on the way to the theater, he would have been found suspicious, but ultimately legal (assuming his guns were cased and such).

dusit2• 14 years ago

Check out his twitter feed, and especially his retweets of critics... I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

realize• 14 years ago

Those of us in the rest of the world really think America is crazy about this issue. Perhaps Americans need to understand that the constitution is not a holy document, it is the work of men and was created for a different time. The 2nd amendment doesn't make sense in a modern world.

cultureulterior• 14 years ago

No we don't. You don't speak for me.

punee• 14 years ago

Those of us in the rest of the world (since I, too, speak for the rest of the world) don't really think America is crazy about anything. Perhaps those of us in the rest of the world need to stop trying to lecture other nations about what they should "understand."

beej712• 14 years ago

The Constitution is not holy, but changing it is very difficult by design. There is approximately zero chance we'll see the Second Amendment removed in the next 20 years, and virtually zero chance beyond then.

beej712• 14 years ago

It's my understanding that the definition of "militia" and what anyone thinks the Founding Fathers meant by the Second Amendment is now largely irrelevant. Didn't DC v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago settle this?

lotides• 14 years ago

I guess I'll be the voice of opposition here. Unlike a lot of you, I live in Georgia and own guns. My family, friends and co-workers also own guns.

I currently only own a small 9mm handgun. I'm licensed to carry it concealed on me and do frequently. To get that license, I had to have a clean record, be signed off by a judge and have my fingerprints filed with the GBI and FBI from the local sheriffs office. I've been vetted similarly to what any police officer has gone through.

In the past I've owned a Bushmaster XM-15 E2S, a so-called AR-15 style "assault weapon" probably very similar to what was used in the shootings. I know a lot about weapons and the AR-15 platform in particular. To non gun owners, they do look like scary black military rifles but they're only semi-automatic (one round each time you pull the trigger) and are classified as "varmint" guns for civilians. That means it's illegal to hunt large game (like deer) with them a lot of places because they don't have the stopping power. The reason our military uses the same round (5.56 NATO/.223 civilian) is because they decided it was easier to give our troops a small round they can carry more of than train them all to be proficient marksmen.

To be truthful, your average deer hunting rifle has a lot more stopping power than an AR-15 and a skilled shooter can fire even a bolt-action rather rapidly. It's a misconception that the AR-15 platform is any more deadly just because of its appearance.

When politicians have tried to ban the AR-15 platform, they did it by picking out features at random and trying to regulate any weapon with those features. It's kind of a mess. For some reason they chose things like the handguard to pick on, which keeps that barrel from burning your hand after its been fired and the retractible stock which does nothing but allow you to adjust the rifle to be more comfortable for different shooters body types. It's about what you would expect when someone tries to regulate something they've made no attempt to understand.

I can argue about gun from a million different angles but it comes down to these things for me:

— Every living thing on this planet has some form of defense. We as humans use tools. I don't see how you can possibly consider it smart to take away our only method of defense without providing an adequate alternative. The last time we called the police it took over 5 minutes for them to arrive and they aren't responsible for protecting individuals (Warren v. District of Columbia). That means you are responsible for yourself.

— Criminals will always be able to access the things we "ban" (see: drugs, prostitution, et. al.) so any laws would only have an effect of disarming law-abiding citizens.

— It's too late. We have as many guns in the U.S. as people. It would cost billions in law-enforcement work to even collect a fraction of those. It would also probably lead to a number of unnecessary violent encounters.

— It's treating the symptom. Humanity will always have violence but if you really want to reduce these incidents we would work on the cause. We don't know a lot about the most recent incident yet but we do have huge issues with access to mental healthcare (and healthcare in general) in this country. We also have large problems with poverty and cultural issues.

bradleyland• 14 years ago

I'm a gun owner. I don't own any "assault weapons" -- which is just a label by the way, many hunting rifles are far more powerful and deadly than an AR-15 -- but for a long time I've been in support of the broad interpretation of the 2nd amendment. When tragedies like Aurora happen, it's hard for me to rationalize my support of the 2nd amendment, because all the arguments I hear from fellow supporters sound apocryphal. The problem is, all the arguments I hear from detractors are just as bad.

Protection from, and ability to overthrow, the government is a pretty laughable justification for firearm ownership these days. Let's ignore for a moment the fact that gun owners would have to take a page from Al Quaeda to have any meaningful chance against even a single branch of the U.S. Military operating on their home turf. We can ignore that, because the government doesn't need force to operate as they please. Since the beginning of civilization, government has been about control, and a large part of control is money. If the events of the last 8 years haven't convinced you that the US government can do whatever they want with regards to monetary policy, I don't know what to tell you.

There is a solid argument to be made that guns don't kill people, people kill people. Switzerland comes close (not really, but they're one of the closest) to the US in terms of guns per person, but they're still not quite at our level. The Swiss have approximately 46 guns per person, where the US has 90 (Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_ownership_rate). Yet, the Swiss have a small fraction (less than 1/5th) of the gun crime that we do. If you look at that list, you can see that there is either no apparent correlation between gun ownership and violence, or that data is just all kinds of wrong. I think it's the former.

So, let's accept that guns don't kill people, people kill people. We're left to reach only one conclusion. America is has a disproportionately high rate of murderous psychos. Let's throw away the Constitution for a moment (stop laughing, I'm serious) and look at it from a strictly rational, problem solving perspective. If you were presented with two groups of people, one group had a low rate of murderous psychos, and the other had five times the number of murderous psychos, would you arm the group with 5x the psychos? This is a serious question, and there are two schools of thought with serious answers. Both of these scenarios below grant that the measures taken will be 100% effective, which is a pipe dream, but let's play the game anyway.

Gun school: arm everyone. A murderous psycho is apt to think twice before going on a murdering rampage if he's certain that everyone in the room is carrying a gun as well. There is a near 100% chance that someone in the crowd will fight back and the psycho will end up dead. Even if the psycho decides to go on a rampage, they'll be stopped quickly and won't be able to harm many people.

Anti-gun school: make it impossible to get guns. The murderous psycho will have to resort to other means of killing people, like a knife or an axe. Because these tools are cumbersome and require a close range to use effectively, the number of people harmed is limited.

In reality, neither school is "right".

The gun school of thought has several problems, not including the fact that most gun owners couldn't deploy their weapon effectively, even if they had one. And no, I'm not talking to you gun buddy who practices at the range and in IDPA, etc. I'm talking about the statistical likelihood in a population where everyone carries, which is a necessity for the gun school line of thinking. Colorado has very permissive carry laws, but no one contested the shooter on that day in Aurora. Other problems include the fact that there would undoubtedly be collateral damage, and the fact that many murderous psychos take their lives at the end of their rampage, so the threat of death isn't an assured deterrent.

The anti-gun school faces the problem that there are 88 guns per 100 people in the US right now. Do you really think that this many lawful gun owners are going to just hand over their guns? Really? Stop for a moment, please.... Really? Even if they do, contraband weapons will remain a reality in the US for a very, very long time. Then we end up back at the problem that guns don't kill people, people kill people. Make guns hard to get, and people will start improvising other means. The murderer in Aurora already exhibited the ability to manufacture bombs. You can't outlaw everything.

So I see it this way: we have to arrive at a common goal. That common goal is not going to be outlawing firearms, no matter how obvious it seems to you or your favorite celebrity. It seems reasonable, but it's impractical and politically impossible. You have to accept it.

If you want to accomplish something, you have to be clear about your goals, then adopt methods that have the greatest likelihood of success. Clearly, our goal must be to reduce the amount of violence in the US. Now we must decide on the method. Taking away firearms is impractical and ineffective because A) you can't expect to reduce the number of firearms in the US on any kind of reasonable time scale, and B) murderous psychos will find other means to kill lots of people. The only rational goal can be to have a hard look at why there are so many murderous psychos and work together to reduce them.

I know lots of gun owners, and let me tell you, they're some of the most caring and helpful people you could ever hope to meet. They own a gun because they feel that it's the responsible thing to do. I have no doubt that would any one of them have been in that theater, they would have stood up, drawn their weapon and opened fire on the murderous psycho that day. That act would have surely drawn the fire of the gunman, but they would have done it anyway. These are not the people you should persecute. We should find a way to work with gun owners, not against them.

The term "murderous psycho" is not meant to be hyperbole or some kind of joke. The people who commit these crimes are often psychopaths, by clinical definition. They often go untreated, although not unidentified, until something like Aurora happens. James Holmes' mother was not surprised when contacted by authorities. Does this not seem like the most broken aspect of this situation? And I'm not suggesting a witch hunt for psychotics. That won't work any better than the war on drugs, or the war on firearms for that matter. We have to open up the dialogue about mental illness. We have to start talking about it as more than the punchline of a joke. A person who is sprialling out of control needs to feel comfortable that they have somewhere to go and receive help, not imprisonment.

Jason Alexander on gun control

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