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The Spectacle Blog
Coming to you directly from the Hart Senate Office building where the Senate Judiciary Committee is conducting the first hearing on gun regulation since the Newtown Mass Shooting, entitled, “What Should America Do About Gun Violence?”
As the hearing wraps up, with many of the senior committee members having long since departed for other more pressing matters such as lunch, it is interesting to note that two facts went unmentioned during the proceedings. The first is that long guns are involved in less than 3% of all violent gun incidents. The second is that mass shootings are exceedinly rare and mass shooting deaths have been flat in the last decade or so, including the last year in which incidents at Aurora and Newtown prompted a critical revisitation of our nation’s gun control policies and politics, and 2011 when Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head. If mass shootings constitute a crsis, it is not a recent one, and many other crises that meet the same standard.
The question of gun violence has no clear, easy answer. There are myriad opinions yet no formally established causal relationship between gun ownership and violent crime, at least in the United States. Politicians on both sides of a debate have little incentive to dismiss it when a consumed public demands answers and action. The gun regulation debate is set to continue, and will intensify as legislative proposals are made. Moving forward, it would behoove us to consider expert witness Dave Kopel’s assessment of the last assault weapons imbroglio: “It took public debate away from measures that might have been more effective and life-saving.” If he is right, one can only hope that tragedy does not repeat as farce.
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More Blog Posts by Luca Gattoni-Celli
http://spectator.org/blog/2013/01/30/live-from-senate-judiciary-5
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AllAmericanAmerican| 1.30.13 @ 7:30PM
The question is flawed.
What should American do about gun violence, eh? I dunno what should we do about knife violence? Or blunt instrument violence? Or rope violence? Or fist violence?
The question should be more along the lines of "What should America do about violent people," shouldn't it?
This whole thing isn't even serious and worthy of any media attention. "Gun violence?" Hell this regime ARMED VIOLENT MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS, resulting in hundreds of deaths including American Border patrol agents!!!!! They just sent arms to the frigging Muslim Brotherhood for pete's sake. Democratic policies have CREATED generation after generation of govt-dependent, angry victim groups who lash out with---wait for it---VIOLENCE.
What do you mean "gun violence?" Democrats WANT violence. They NEED mayhem. They REQUIRE feeble sheeple baaah-baaaaaahing to them to protect them, to keep them safe.
You want to stem violence?
Close the borders.
Execute convicted violent criminals.
Lock up the mentally deranged.
That would probably stop 50% of it at least.
Kingofthenet| 1.30.13 @ 9:25PM
We don't need any universal background checks, when I am at the gun show as a private citizen selling an AR-15 I have slung over my shoulder with a for sale sign. I make sure the prospective buyer has his stuff in order, FIRST it has to be Cash, no checks or credit cards, second to make sure I ain't selling to no Violent Felon or Mental Case, I ask them "You ain't no criminal or psycho are you? If they answer yes, I won't sell it to them, otherwise I do.
spike59| 1.31.13 @ 5:25AM
Queenie, why would anyone need a background check to buy your Nerf gun?
dumba$$
AllAmericanAmerican| 1.31.13 @ 8:33AM
All you have to ask for is a DL and a voter registration card or CCW permit. Felons can't get those, dumbass.