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Originally posted by Bugger:
Speaking of murderers, some sick **** opened fire at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin.

The part that makes me the angriest is the bitter knowledge that it's STILL not going to lead to a change in gun control laws.

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One direct and straight forward question to you hammr:

"How many of our congress/senate/president read and fully understood the healthcare bill before they passed it?"

Give me some documented facts on that.

$50,
Jesse

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Originally posted by oneofchaos:
So take away their guns so they can find new ways to kill people? I don't understand why a few nutjobs have to force a change in policy. You must have had many many teachers who punished the class for one person misbehaving.

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In a word? Uh, YES. Yes, I do think we should do away with high-capacity magazines and hold more stringent psychological evaluations and waiting periods for the purchasing of a firearm. There exists no valid argument for why weapons with characteristics grossly disproportionate to the requisites for effective game hunting should be readily available. And no, "to defend ourselves from the army" is not a valid argument, it's an absolute joke.

I think it's insane that anybody can sit there and think "nah, we shouldn't take any steps to prevent mass shootings", especially w/r/t instituting a ban on high-capacity magazines, which as an ex-armed-forces member on these very boards pointed out, the safest time to neutralize these kinds of gunmen is when they're reloading.

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Originally posted by oneofchaos:
So take away their guns so they can find new ways to kill people? I don't understand why a few nutjobs have to force a change in policy. You must have had many many teachers who punished the class for one person misbehaving.

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Until, and I pray it never happens, one of yours get blown away by a 'random' nutjob.

think of the dozens, if not hundreds of lives you will save by enforcing way stricter laws on guns. If you make it harder (let alone nearly impossible) for the 'random nutjob' to get a gun, I bet a large number of those wackdoodles will forget about it. If they really want to kill/shoot people they will always find a way, but you can't pave the road for them like the situation in the US is now.

__________________
/Thunder in the wind/No rain/Peace mourns its passing/

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Originally posted by hammr7:
Please read your history. The housing bubble broke in 2006, and by that time virtually all the sub-prime mortgages and credit-default swaps had already been issued. By early 2007 housing was crashing, and by later in 2007 the stock market and job market followed suit.

And by the way, what legislation in 2007 did George Bush want and not get? By 2008 the economy was in free-fall, and George Bush (and all the other Republicans) had no answers. I shutter to think what would have happened if John McCain had won.

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Come on hammr, you're normally more on top of these things. The housing bubble bursting was a separate event. You could argue it was what triggered the economy to go bad (and you'd probably be right), but if you check your dates you'll see it wasn't until October of 2008 that the market took a dive and people started losing jobs. It didn't matter what Bush did at this point; he was a lame duck with no time left.

And if we're really intent on playing the blame game here, I could just as easily point to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which was heavily enforced by the Clinton administration, compelling the big banks to make these sub-prime loans to higher risk borrowers will little to no money down. While it certainly is not entirely to blame for the mortgage mess, it did significantly lower the lending standards, which was a necessity to this crisis. Sure, we could probably now go point-counterpoint about securitization being the real culprit, but it's peripheral to this discussion. The point is, we can find blame and fault in the actions of both parties, probably even as far back as Carter and Reagan, so it isn't fair to put the onus entirely on Bush.

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Originally posted by oneofchaos:
So take away their guns so they can find new ways to kill people?

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Like this guy a few days ago?

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Originally posted by Bugger:
In a word? Uh, YES. Yes, I do think we should do away with high-capacity magazines and hold more stringent psychological evaluations and waiting periods for the purchasing of a firearm. There exists no valid argument for why weapons with characteristics grossly disproportionate to the requisites for effective game hunting should be readily available. And no, "to defend ourselves from the army" is not a valid argument, it's an absolute joke.

I think it's insane that anybody can sit there and think "nah, we shouldn't take any steps to prevent mass shootings", especially w/r/t instituting a ban on high-capacity magazines, which as an ex-armed-forces member on these very boards pointed out, the safest time to neutralize these kinds of gunmen is when they're reloading.

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But there are common sense ideas that could limit the carnage that makes headlines. They are somewhat parallel to what the US did to lower traffic fatalities. The US didn't ban cars, but did modify speed limits, improved equipment (auto) safety, enhanced driver training, and imposed harsh penalties, both criminal and financial, on impaired and reckless drivers.

Unfortunately, sane discussion is lost because of polarizing screeds and sometimes irrational fears among gun owners. It has gotten to the point where the holy grail for many completely-law-abiding gun owners is one or more unregistered firearms. They truly believe having unregistered weapons is the only way to protect their "second amendment rights" when big brother shows up to confiscate all of their registered weapons. Among the truly paranoid, like those who listen to NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre, this will happen in 2013 if Obama is reelected.

With such fears as normal expectation among sane individuals, there is no hope to keep weapons out of the hands of those who have lost touch with sanity. When everyone is a conspiracy theorist, how do you ferret out the wacko conspiracy theorists? And how do you stop criminals from walking in to gun shows and making private purchases without background checks. Not only can the crazies and criminals get guns, in most states you can legally purchase virtually anything short of land mines and rocket launchers.

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Originally posted by hammr7:
Guns, for better or worse, are a part of American culture. There is no way you are going to control them to the extent most other countries do. Nor is there a need.

But there are common sense ideas that could limit the carnage that makes headlines. They are somewhat parallel to what the US did to lower traffic fatalities. The US didn't ban cars, but did modify speed limits, improved equipment (auto) safety, enhanced driver training, and imposed harsh penalties, both criminal and financial, on impaired and reckless drivers.

Unfortunately, sane discussion is lost because of polarizing screeds and sometimes irrational fears among gun owners. It has gotten to the point where the holy grail for many completely-law-abiding gun owners is one or more unregistered firearms. They truly believe having unregistered weapons is the only way to protect their "second amendment rights" when big brother shows up to confiscate all of their registered weapons. Among the truly paranoid, like those who listen to NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre, this will happen in 2013 if Obama is reelected.

With such fears as normal expectation among sane individuals, there is no hope to keep weapons out of the hands of those who have lost touch with sanity. When everyone is a conspiracy theorist, how do you ferret out the wacko conspiracy theorists? And how do you stop criminals from walking in to gun shows and making private purchases without background checks. Not only can the crazies and criminals get guns, in most states you can legally purchase virtually anything short of land mines and rocket launchers.

Nothing will change until regular gun owners get less worried. And that won't happen as long as the Wayne LaPierre's of the world make big money by advocating paranoia. And having the huge dollars to back up their threats to politicians.

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This, sadly.

it also doesn't help that strawmen are used so vehemently on both sides, or the fact that those entities which you've briefly outlined above so readily encourage employing those strawmen to whip self-described "second amendment advocates" into failing to see that there are a thousand shades of gray which fall in between ALL OF THE GUNS EVERYWHERE FOREVER and NO GUNS ANYWHERE EVER.

This is relevant to the conspiracies which we're currently discussing, but apply to all such discussions at some level or another, which is the point that nothing in this country is all black or all white. Any piece of controversial legislation on a controversial topic is going to exist as a compromise somewhere. That's literally the only way it's ever shaken out, ever. Believing that reelecting a given candidate inevitably leads to zero guns everywhere is sheer lunacy, and people who think the stakes are that high display depressingly poor critical thinking skills.
This is true for conspiracies of many stripes in the context of political discussion, I'm just using an example relevant to the topic at hand.

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Originally posted by oneofchaos:
At least you acknowledged nutjobs are the problem and not the guns. Yea screen people better but realize no matter the size of the magazine it takes somebody to empty it.

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We're not going to get into that argument again, just because it's not relevant to the discussion at hand. I understand you want a strawman to (if you'll pardon the morbidly appropriate metaphor) shoot full of holes, but nobody here is going to resurrect the infernally stupid "guns kill people" v "people kill people" debate. Please understand that so we can move on.

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Originally posted by Bugger:
We're not going to get into that argument again, just because it's not relevant to the discussion at hand. I understand you want a strawman to (if you'll pardon the morbidly appropriate metaphor) shoot full of holes, but nobody here is going to resurrect the infernally stupid "guns kill people" v "people kill people" debate. Please understand that so we can move on.

That being said, you haven't actually rebutted or raised contrary facts to anything in my statement, so pending any lengthier post on the topic, I'm assuming you essentially agree with me?

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Originally posted by oneofchaos:
Sorry hammr covered it better than I ever could have hoped. Guns aren't the problem, people are. Want to reduce gun crime? Make gun owners not paranoid is certainly step one. Step two is probably trying to screen people a little better perhaps different screenings for different weapons. Step 3 is admitting that isolated rampages are an issue with the shooters as opposed to faulty gun laws.

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Agreed. Isolated rampages are an issue with the shooters that can be mitigated by sensibly modifying gun laws.

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Originally posted by Bugger:
That being said, you haven't actually rebutted or raised contrary facts to anything in my statement, so pending any lengthier post on the topic, I'm assuming you essentially agree with me?

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Originally posted by caquaa:
]The current system couldn't have easily spotted multiple purchases together or anything of the such.

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Well then, seems pretty astoundingly logical to conclude that the current system is insufficient, which is kind of sort of exactly my contention.

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From my understanding both Obama and Romney do not want additional gun laws, just the ones we have to actually be properly used. As much as I'd hate to agree w/ Romney, it seems to make sense.

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Originally posted by Bugger:
Well then, seems pretty astoundingly logical to conclude that the current system is insufficient, which is kind of sort of exactly my contention.

And how do you propose to teach rational gun care to irrational shooters, exactly?

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The system in place is fine, but not operating the way it should. Its like previous TSA stuff just letting whatever through. Tighten things up after something tragic and it works better, but will of course never be perfect.

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Originally posted by coasterdude84:
Come on hammr, you're normally more on top of these things. The housing bubble bursting was a separate event. You could argue it was what triggered the economy to go bad (and you'd probably be right), but if you check your dates you'll see it wasn't until October of 2008 that the market took a dive and people started losing jobs. It didn't matter what Bush did at this point; he was a lame duck with no time left.

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Didn't see this post!

The Housing market decline began in 2006, and the market was in full retreat by 2008.

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

The S&P 500 peaked in October, 2007. It was down 10% by the end of 2007, and in full retreat by mid-2008, before bottoming in 2009.

http://www.nyse.tv/s-and-p-500-history.htm

According to the US Bureau of Statistics, the non-adjusted, non-farm payrolls peaked in November, 2007 at just over 139 million workers. December 2007 saw a drop of 200,000. Thereafter, every month showed decreasing employment so that by the time Obama took over in January 2009, that number of workers had dropped to 131.6 million. It continued to drop (below 130 million) through the middle of 2009 before stagnating into 2010. As of this summer the number has recovered to 133 - 134 million.

The seasonally-adjusted numbers show pretty much the same thing, although they push back the beginning of the decline by one month, to January 2008.

These values are actual employment tops. Whichever values you use, job growth lost the ability to keep up with population well before the end of 2007.

http://www.bls.gov/ces/cesbtabs.htm

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Originally posted by coasterdude84:
And if we're really intent on playing the blame game here, I could just as easily point to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which was heavily enforced by the Clinton administration, compelling the big banks to make these sub-prime loans to higher risk borrowers will little to no money down. While it certainly is not entirely to blame for the mortgage mess, it did significantly lower the lending standards, which was a necessity to this crisis. Sure, we could probably now go point-counterpoint about securitization being the real culprit, but it's peripheral to this discussion. The point is, we can find blame and fault in the actions of both parties, probably even as far back as Carter and Reagan, so it isn't fair to put the onus entirely on Bush.

But again, this is history, and distracting from the point at hand. My interest is the here and now, and Obama hasn't shown he can fix the economy, and I don't like his plans to attempt it. Everything else is irrelevant.

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We've already been through arguments related to the Community Reinvestment Act. Its a red herring. Sub prime was a huge growth industry for Wall Street. When the housing market tanked, non-conforming loans originated by Wall Street (which bypassed the entire Housing regulatory system) had grabbed huge percentages of mortgage originations in problem states (Nevada, California, Arizona, and Florida). You can read the gory details in the link below, but virtually everyone outside of conservative talk radio agrees CRA wasn't the reason.

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

I reject your analysis we can find fault with both Bush and Carter.

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Originally posted by Bugger:

And how do you propose to teach rational gun care to irrational shooters, exactly?

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Originally posted by caquaa:
The system in place is fine, but not operating the way it should.

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Then the system obviously isn't "fine", it's broken.

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Tighten things up after something tragic and it works better, but will of course never be perfect.

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But that doesn't happen.

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The problem is you don't know which are irrational. Gun safety would breeze right over someone planning something malicious.

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I never said gun safety classes would limit the malicious use of firearms. You seem to have confused me with those who believe that the "solution" is to keep the access to assault weapons and firearms of all stripes the way it is now - or even more lax - and then childishly assume that "safety education" will cover the gap.

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Any law or restrictions as well. Your solution

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one of my proposals. I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I also don't pretend that there doesn't need to be an answer.

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was to limit the amount of ammo a single gun carries, which recent events show thats easily over come by bringing more guns.

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And as you said yourself, somehow this guy buying a ****load of weapons in a short time frame raised no eyebrows. Maybe it should have, hmm? Last time I checked, the only way you'd need more than a standard clip's worth of ammo from a single firearm to repel a home invasion is if it's a literal invasion or something.

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There isn't a real solution to irrational people doing irrational things. If someone claims they have one that 100% works, they are wrong.

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Agreed. But since when does "oh, there's no silver-bullet-ideal-solution-that's-painless-and-perfect, we should just do absolutely nothing at all" make any goddamned sense? Nothing in this world is painless and easy and 100% guaranteed to deliver maximum results. And yet the story of human civilization is that we try anyway. And for the most part, we're successful.

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Most extreme would be to make owning a gun illegal... so now they illegally kill people w/ their illegal gun. Doesn't make things better, does it?

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This is the tangent where I first state flat-out that I am not advocating the wholesale, blanket banning of firearms of all shapes and sizes. I know I have to spell this out, because folks with poor reading comprehension and critical thinking skills and a killer urge to strawman will try to jump on this and twist my words around.

So long as we're in hypothetical land, no, your point still falls flat on its face. Making a firearm illegal makes it a hell of a lot more difficult to acquire. And this brings us back to the tangent of the discussion in the PfS when the other shooting within the past four weeks prompted it, which is the cold reality that opportunity affects motive. So, actually, yes, in your hypothetical no-guns-land, the significantly limited access to firearms by nutjobs would result in a decrease in shootings.

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Originally posted by oneofchaos:
You know I was starting to respect you until you said making guns illegal would decrease shootings. Ever hear of this little town called Chicago? Go tell them that. If 80% of gun crimes are with an illegal firearm best case scenario is you would decrease gun crime by 20%. Realistically more people will get mugged, attacked, because who can stop them aside the police?

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Of course, the one base I forgot to cover in my spelling out for people who like to inject their own opinions between the lines of my words would be misunderstood. I was speaking, and still am, of shootings of the "lone, crazed gunman" variety. Not every type of violent crime.
I'd have patience for you of you weren't so eager to shove your own conclusions about what you thought I said into my mouth. I'm spitting them out because theyre not my words, they're yours.

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Originally posted by Bugger:
Of course, the one base I forgot to cover in my spelling out for people who like to inject their own opinions between the lines of my words would be misunderstood. I was speaking, and still am, of shootings of the "lone, crazed gunman" variety. Not every type of violent crime.
I'd have patience for you of you weren't so eager to shove your own conclusions about what you thought I said into my mouth. I'm spitting them out because theyre not my words, they're yours.

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I would say anyone who commits a gun crime is a nutjob...

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Originally posted by oneofchaos:
I would say anyone who commits a gun crime is a nutjob...

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Good for you! But, see, your definition of what something means doesn't automatically decide what my definition of those same things means. So because you seem to equivocate an armed assault on a street corner with blindly spraying bullets into a crowd with the intent of hurting as many people as possible, doesn't mean that I do too.

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Simply don't own one if you are so opposed.

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That's an insultingly stupid statement. We live in a society where our actions affect each other. When something has the very real (defined here as "within the reasonable realm of possibility) chance of bringing harm and/or suffering to me and mine, you better believe my opinion counts. That's the basis of human civilization, and it's different than saying that you are free to marry someone of whichever gender you choose, or stroll around your house naked with the shades drawn, because your floppy dick and/or the genetalia of your spouse don't have the same kind of chance of putting me and mine in danger.

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And magazine size doesn't really impact much. Are there any legit studies showing decreased mags lead to less violence? I would believe studies that showed lower bullet capacity leads to more frequent reloading.

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I don't know, but it seems to me to be fairly basic logic. If you wish to kill 20 people, but have a gun which can only carry clips with a six-bullet-capacity at a time, you would need to either:
a) stop and reload four times, or
b) buy four different guns, load them in advance, and bring them to use one after another

It seems to me straightforwardly rational to make option b) as unattractive as possible then, by making it prohibitively expensive (ie any unemployed/low-paid lunatic would have to spend a year saving the extra cash up to buy a redundant supply of weaponry) or prohibitively bureaucratic for their purposes (ie six-month waiting periods, etc).

EDIT: to put that last topic in a less pointlessly-confrontational tone, I would be very surprised and curious if there were produced studies which found no link between limiting access to weaponry and ammo and a decrease in random shootings.
Having taken some Criminal Justice courses and given a background introduction to the world of crime statistics, I can say I know the situation is horribly messy and complex, and it's very hard to point to any singular factors to make any points about crime, violent crime, sexual crime, demographics, etc. For pete's sake, there's not even a unified theory behind what factors make someone a criminal.

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Originally posted by hammr7:

Didn't see this post!

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Almost missed this too! We seem to be caught between Bugger and chaos. Anyway:

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Originally posted by hammr7:
The Housing market decline began in 2006, and the market was in full retreat by 2008.

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Agree on the housing market. Many analysts had stated though that it was simply the real estate speculation bubble bursting, and that we were simply normalizing housing prices. It wasn't until 2008 sometime when they realized what was really going on. As for the market, in May of 2008, the market was still up 4.7% from where it had openned in 2007, so once again, it wasn't really identified as "full retreat" but rather a correction. It didn't really take a dive till September, but we're really just arguing symantics as this point, so I'll drop it from here.

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Originally posted by hammr7:
We've already been through arguments related to the Community Reinvestment Act. Its a red herring. Sub prime was a huge growth industry for Wall Street. When the housing market tanked, non-conforming loans originated by Wall Street (which bypassed the entire Housing regulatory system) had grabbed huge percentages of mortgage originations in problem states (Nevada, California, Arizona, and Florida). You can read the gory details in the link below, but virtually everyone outside of conservative talk radio agrees CRA wasn't the reason.

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

I reject your analysis we can find fault with both Bush and Carter.

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I must have missed the CRA discussion, so forgive me if I dig it up again. And don't get me wrong, it was galling to read the Bush administration hacks complaining about the CRA when the administration had gone hog-wild for the program to expand home ownership.

But the case for exonerating the CRA doesn't stand up to the evidence. Regulators charged with enforcing the CRA required banks to adopt many of the loan practices that turned out to be toxic. Everything from 100 percent loan-to-value ratios to no down payment loans were part of the package that banks used to satisfy the demand of regulators.

Could the banks have used other lending methods to meet CRA requirements? Perhaps. But no one can say for sure that these would have made regulators happy or have produced enough loans to low-income and minority borrowers. What worked was what the banks actually did, and so they kept doing it. The lax lending standards were a proven method of satisfying regulators, and they were fully approved by regulators. More than approved: the regulators lavishly praised banks that adopted these innovative lending strategies.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Minnesota attempted to absolve the CRA by claiming that only a small percentage of subprime loans were related to the act, but this is just academic hooey. In reality, once banks lowered lending standards to attract CRA borrowers, they found that they had to lower lending standards across the board. It simply wasn't possible or legal (thanks to anti-discrimination laws) to offer the lax standard loans only to the targeted borrowers. In short, if a bank wanted to raise the number of CRA loans, it had to lower standards across the board. The broader subprime market was basically a creation of the CRA.

The way the CRA was enforced guaranteed that the bad lending practicies would spread like wildfire across the country. Banks that were found to be in compliance with the CRA were granted permission to acquire other banks. Banks that were not in compliance could not make acquisitions, which often meant they couldn't grow at all. The only known method of compliance was lax lending standards. This means that banks that lowered their lending standards grew through acquisitions, while banks that kept their standards high got acquired or stayed small. This process went on for years, creating a kind of perverted financial Darwinism. It was survival of the lax-ist.

When market processes began to counter-act this regulatory Darwinism, the politicians stepped in to keep it going. The basic check on regulatory Darwinism was the riskiness of the loans, many of which couldn't be securitized because Fannie and Freddie wouldn't touch them. But once the proper political pressure was brought to bear, Fannie lowered its own standards and we got securitized subprime. Under the directive of HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo, Fannie and Freddie promised to buy $2 trillion of “affordable” mortgages. The government was intentionally decreasing the risks to the original lenders in order to increase loans to low-income borrowers, and minorities in particular. Now banks could meet their CRA obligations while passing off much of the risk to others.

Again though, I'm not stating the entire problem is the fault of the CRA. Financial systems are far more complex than to be able to simply state the problem stems from a singular source. This certainly doesn't absolve the greedy and corrupt lenders, the bubble-headed securitizers, the blundering ratings agencies, or the careless MBS investors, but it does show the government played a strong hand in creating the mortgage products that we regard as the problem.

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Originally posted by oneofchaos:
@Bugger, I don't care how big somebody's magazine is, if his intention is only to fire one bullet. Keeping ANY size magazine out of somebody's hands who wants to wrong is more important than asking those properly following gun laws to downsize.

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That's a sentiment I can agree with. But I understand that achieving more success in the former (or rather, in minimizing the chances of the consequences of the former occurring) may come at some degree of expense at the latter.

There's no perfect system, but the real question just comes down to where each of us draws the line. And for my liking, I think our current situation could be improved.