• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?

Kal'Stang

Banned
DP Veteran
Joined
Jan 10, 2009
Messages
42,744
Reaction score
22,569
Location
Bonners Ferry ID USA
Gender
Male
Political Leaning
Independent
I came here to post that it would reduce them some, but not nearly as much as anti-gun idiots would like to think. Certainly not enough to forsake our basic human right to keep and bear arms.
 
It wouldn't matter to me if it completely eliminated those things. It would be flat unconstitutional, and that's the end of it. There is a good reason the Second Amendment is placed right after the First, but leftist authoritarians don't give a damn about either one. The Supreme Court has made clear that all the rights protected by the First Amendment and the right protected by the Second are fundamental. In fact it is only because the right to keep and bear arms IS fundamental that it applies to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010). Any law or other government action that restricts a fundamental right violates the constitutional guarantee of due process, unless the government can show it is necessary for a compelling government interest. That is the "strict scrutiny" standard, and in practice it is almost impossible to meet.

That is how basic and revered that right is--up there with the freedoms of speech and religion--and yet again and again on these forums, I see it casually dismissed--"We should do _________ with firearms, because it will make us all safer." These people all have their pipe dream solutions, and to hell with whether government has the authority to implement them. They sound like they are all sweetness and light, with their nice talk about safety. But it's an illusion. They are dangerous, and their impulses are totalitarian. I'll take my chances with armed criminals, rather than let these collectivist mutts trash one of the most important rights we enjoy.
 
It would increase the homicide rate dramatically, because somebody's got to collect all those guns and many of them aren't going along quietly.
 
I came here to post that it would reduce them some, but not nearly as much as anti-gun idiots would like to think. Certainly not enough to forsake our basic human right to keep and bear arms.

enforcing a gun ban would probably cost more lives than would be allegedly saved by the full imposition of said law
 
It would increase the homicide rate dramatically, because somebody's got to collect all those guns and many of them aren't going along quietly.

lefties need men with guns to get rid of guns
 
To be completely accurate, strict scrutiny applies to government actions that restrict fundamental rights in both due process AND equal protection challenges. The general rule is that if a fundamental right is denied to everyone, it is a substantive due process problem. If it is denied to some people but not others, it is an equal protection problem. The two landmark Second Amendment decisions by the Supreme Court, Heller and McDonald, are pretty recent--2008 and 2010--and the Court has not yet made clear that the "strict scrutiny" standard applies to laws which deny the right to keep and bear arms. Logically, it should, and that's the way the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals saw it in a decision earlier this year.

That is a very big question, because if strict scrutiny does apply, the people drafting gun laws will have to be awfully careful about how far they restrict the right--just as with laws that restrict the freedom of speech. Doesn't mean the right to keep and bear arms is absolute, any more than the freedom of speech is. Defamation and obscenity, for example, have never been protected by the First Amendment. But it would probably mean that restrictions that are very different from the ones that were widely recognized as legitimate in 1791 (right did not apply to felons and insane people, concealed weapons, guns in courthouses, etc.) would not pass muster.

But all this may not last much longer. Unfortunately, strong protection of the right to keep and bear hangs on a single vote on the Supreme Court, and it may well vanish if either Trump or Clinton becomes president. The principle that the right is individual, which Justice Scalia established in Heller, could disappear, and the new interpretation be that as long as a gun law didn't threaten the existence of militias, it could restrict almost without limit. Clinton would certainly want more Sotomayors and Kagans, and I don't believe Trump would care enough to insist all that strongly on more Scalias or Thomases or Alitos. Ted Cruz is the only candidate I am sure would hold out for that, but millions of people who say they support the Second Amendment don't seem to be taking this question very seriously.
 
It wouldn't matter to me if it completely eliminated those things. It would be flat unconstitutional, and that's the end of it. There is a good reason the Second Amendment is placed right after the First, but leftist authoritarians don't give a damn about either one. The Supreme Court has made clear that all the rights protected by the First Amendment and the right protected by the Second are fundamental. In fact it is only because the right to keep and bear arms IS fundamental that it applies to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010). Any law or other government action that restricts a fundamental right violates the constitutional guarantee of due process, unless the government can show it is necessary for a compelling government interest. That is the "strict scrutiny" standard, and in practice it is almost impossible to meet.

I can find nothing in the constitution that indicates government can find a reason to limit the 2A, in fact quite the opposite. It says shall not be infringed and I would say that is pretty clear what it means. Out of interest the courts do not determine what the constitution is supposed to mean to anyone. They have no power to do so. These are the peoples laws government must OBEY and officials swear to do exactly that.

That is how basic and revered that right is--up there with the freedoms of speech and religion--and yet again and again on these forums, I see it casually dismissed--"We should do _________ with firearms, because it will make us all safer." These people all have their pipe dream solutions, and to hell with whether government has the authority to implement them. They sound like they are all sweetness and light, with their nice talk about safety. But it's an illusion. They are dangerous, and their impulses are totalitarian. I'll take my chances with armed criminals, rather than let these collectivist mutts trash one of the most important rights we enjoy.

That they are dangerous to safety and freedom is not in doubt, few realise it though and treat gun control as some kind if irritation that may just be right.
 
Last edited:
I came here to post that it would reduce them some, but not nearly as much as anti-gun idiots would like to think. Certainly not enough to forsake our basic human right to keep and bear arms.

OK I'll bite how will it reduce them some? I'm the kind that likes to know how things work as that to me ensures the people proposing any law understand the functional mechanism, it is repeatable and results are guaranteed. I believe no government should be instituting laws with public money that have no chance of working. Government is not expected to waste our money.

Could you explain how this reduction works?
 
I can find nothing in the constitution that indicates government can find a reason to limit the 2A, in fact quite the opposite. It says shall not be infringed and I would say that is pretty clear what it means. Out of interest the courts do not determine what the constitution is supposed to mean to anyone. They have no power to do so. These are the peoples laws government must OBEY and officials swear to do exactly that.

I wouldn't go so far as to claim courts may not interpret the Constitution. It's about as basic in constitutional law as it gets that the Supreme Court may do that, the principle having been established in Marbury v. Madison more than 200 years ago. At the same time, I think it's clear the Court does not have the final word on what the Constitution means. There are several ways for the other two branches, especially Congress, to limit the power of federal courts--including the Supreme Court. Congress is made up of legislators the people have elected, so the ultimate power to say what the Constitution means remains with the people. IF enough people wanted it badly enough, Congress could impeach and remove a Supreme Court justice, make a law reversing a decision by the Court, remove the Court's jurisdiction to hear cases involving a particular matter, and so on. But drastic measures like that are very unlikely.

I agree that it's pretty clear what "shall not be infringed" means. What the text of the Second Amendment does not say is just what the right that phrase refers to consists of. I believe Justice Scalia cleared that question up well in D.C. v. Heller, when he described exceptions to the right to keep and bear arms that were already widely acknowledged by 1791. The right that is codified in the Second Amendment is not a right to carry any firearm anyplace, at any time, any more than the right to free speech codified in the First Amendment is a right to say anything anyplace, at any time. No serious person would claim, for example, that the Constitution protects a right to defame a person, or to drive a sound truck through a residential neighborhood at 3 A.M., blasting loud messages. And no serious person would claim the Constitution protects a right for a mental patient or a felon to bring a machine gun into a courtroom.
 
If I wanted to kill someone, I'd find a way. If I wanted to kill myself, I'd find a way. Guns only work when a person pulls the trigger. So if people kill, why do away with guns?
In summary, the notion that less guns mean less violence is just absurd. Sadly, the ones who think that a piece of metal is at fault will never be convinced otherwise.
 
It wouldn't matter to me if it completely eliminated those things. It would be flat unconstitutional, and that's the end of it. There is a good reason the Second Amendment is placed right after the First, but leftist authoritarians don't give a damn about either one. The Supreme Court has made clear that all the rights protected by the First Amendment and the right protected by the Second are fundamental. In fact it is only because the right to keep and bear arms IS fundamental that it applies to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010). Any law or other government action that restricts a fundamental right violates the constitutional guarantee of due process, unless the government can show it is necessary for a compelling government interest. That is the "strict scrutiny" standard, and in practice it is almost impossible to meet.

That is how basic and revered that right is--up there with the freedoms of speech and religion--and yet again and again on these forums, I see it casually dismissed--"We should do _________ with firearms, because it will make us all safer." These people all have their pipe dream solutions, and to hell with whether government has the authority to implement them. They sound like they are all sweetness and light, with their nice talk about safety. But it's an illusion. They are dangerous, and their impulses are totalitarian. I'll take my chances with armed criminals, rather than let these collectivist mutts trash one of the most important rights we enjoy.

Well stated! :thumbs::thumbs:

It would increase the homicide rate dramatically, because somebody's got to collect all those guns and many of them aren't going along quietly.

Correct. And after that, all the "unarmed people" can be victims of crime.

enforcing a gun ban would probably cost more lives than would be allegedly saved by the full imposition of said law

Yes indeed.

lefties need men with guns to get rid of guns

A paradox, if ever there was one.


They could give it a crack with women with guns..

Is that a play on words?
 
If I wanted to kill someone, I'd find a way. If I wanted to kill myself, I'd find a way. Guns only work when a person pulls the trigger. So if people kill, why do away with guns?
In summary, the notion that less guns mean less violence is just absurd. Sadly, the ones who think that a piece of metal is at fault will never be convinced otherwise.

Exactly!

Raping, pillaging and wholesale slaughter, went on for centuries before the gun was invented, taking away guns will not change the human proclivity toward violence.
Although, the Tinker Bells of the world, want to have a conversation on solutions.

KEZI.com | Local Leaders Hold Gun Violence Forum in Eugene

KEZI.com | UO Students Team with Facebook in Gun Violence Campaign
 
One handy thing about citing studies nearly 9 years old? It's already been debunked and/or its sources contradicted. Numerous times.

FALSE: Harvard University Study Reveals Astonishing Link Between Firearms, Crime and Gun Control : snopes.com
A huge international study of gun control finds strong evidence that it actually works - Vox
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazine-features/guns-and-suicide-the-hidden-toll/
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazine/guns-and-suicide/

In short, the Kates/Mauser stuff is not worth the bits on your screen.

• Neither have any association with Harvard
• The "Journal" was a student publication
• They did no original research
• It's riddled with factual errors and misrepresentations

If that's the best y'all can come up with, then that is a bit sad.
 
There is a good reason the Second Amendment is placed right after the First, but leftist authoritarians don't give a damn about either one.
1) The order of amendments is completely and utterly irrelevant.
2) Right-wing authoritarians also don't care about various rights enumerated in the Constitution.... or human rights, for that matter.


The Supreme Court has made clear that all the rights protected by the First Amendment and the right protected by the Second are fundamental.
If you say so

Of course, we should take a moment to note that the core right in question is self-defense, from which the right to bear arms is largely derived (see McDonald -- "Heller points unmistakably to the answer. Self-defense is a basic right, recognized by many legal systems from ancient times to the present, and the Heller Court held that individual self-defense is “the central component” of the Second Amendment right."). However, the right to self-defense does not entail firearm ownership, as you certainly do not need to own a gun to exercise that right, especially if you live in a nation where gun ownership is highly restricted and ownership rates are very low (e.g. Japan, UK etc)

Anyway. From a practical perspective, the 2nd Amendment is not going away. From a strictly constitutional perspective, there is absolutely no reason why the 2nd Amendment could not be revoked with a new amendment.


That is how basic and revered that right is--up there with the freedoms of speech and religion--and yet again and again on these forums, I see it casually dismissed--"We should do _________ with firearms, because it will make us all safer."
Or, not so casually.

I don't think it is a slam-dunk that outlawing guns will make the US safer. However, there is no question that people right across the political spectrum are happy to restrict or even remove rights when they believe doing so will increase their safety.

E.g. If I go to the airport, and assert I have a right to protection from unreasonable search and seizure, along with rights of privacy, and on that basis I refuse to submit to government-mandated searches of my person and luggage before boarding? I'm gonna lose. No matter how fundamental my right to privacy, no matter who claims that right to privacy should be inalienable, we have traded that specific right, in that specific situation, in exchange for collective safety.

And you yourself dismiss rights to due process, rights to counsel, right to remain silent, right of association etc when it suits you.

We should also note that the SCOTUS has routinely asserted that gun control is constitutional; the problem only arises if those laws are so strict that they effectively prevent gun ownership altogether (as exhibited in Heller). The few people who do want to truly ban guns fully understand that the only way to do that is by overriding the 2nd Amendment with a new amendment.


They are dangerous, and their impulses are totalitarian.
Funny, that's what leftists say about the far right. Go figure.
 
Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy ~ Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?

The PDF won't let me copy/paste so you'll have to read it yourselves. The obvious answer of course is "No, banning firearms will not reduce murder and suicide".

Here's another PDF worth looking at.

Will Gun Control Make Us Safe? Debunking the Myths

Enjoy!

A ban wouldn't have much effect, not immediately anyway. You'd have to engage in major confiscation of firearms before you'd have an effect.
 
To be completely accurate, strict scrutiny applies to government actions that restrict fundamental rights in both due process AND equal protection challenges. The general rule is that if a fundamental right is denied to everyone, it is a substantive due process problem.
That's a bit more like it... much better

Anyway:

That is a very big question, because if strict scrutiny does apply, the people drafting gun laws will have to be awfully careful about how far they restrict the right.....
Yes, I think they are well aware of the legal restrictions. However, as often happens with lawmakers on the right as well as the left, they are likely to push the line and let the courts hash it out.

Given that we now live in a "Vetocracy," chances are that any law passed on any remotely controversial topic will face a court challenge. Meh.


But all this may not last much longer. Unfortunately, strong protection of the right to keep and bear hangs on a single vote on the Supreme Court....
Not really. Ultimately, it depends on the will of the people.

Heller set a fairly strong precedent, and justices are typically loath to overturn precedent. Broad public support for gun ownership also essentially ensures that it will continue for the foreseeable future.

Things like assault weapons bans, central databases of gun owners, closing the gun show loophole, and universal background checks, states restricting concealed carry, waiting periods, storage requirements etc -- things that make gun righters launch epic temper tantrums -- almost certainly would have survived court challenges if Scalia were still alive. It's even possible that banning private gun sales altogether would survive.

As badly as the Gunners hate the above ideas, the slippery slope argument ultimately does not work in this case. Even combining all of the above would ultimately not deprive citizens of legal ways to procure, own and use firearms. It'd be less convenient, to be sure, but "inconvenience" is nowhere near the same thing as a total ban.

The only way to produce the results that the Gunners so desperately fear (total ban on private gun ownership) is to pass an amendment, and that is not happening any time soon.
 
If I wanted to kill someone, I'd find a way. If I wanted to kill myself, I'd find a way. Guns only work when a person pulls the trigger. So if people kill, why do away with guns?
Very few people are genuinely advocating total bans. There are definitely some people like that out there, but most people are more interested in restricting ownership.

Anyway. One issue with guns is that they are really, really good at killing people. Pulling a trigger is substantially easier than stabbing someone. Knives, clubs and spears are far less effective than guns.

Another issue is impulse control and escalation. Many homicide victims know their killer (about half iirc), and a high percentage are a result of domestic violence. What can easily happen is that an argument begins, and it escalates. In many cases, people will grab whatever weapon is at hand, and use it; if that's a gun, the incident is far more likely to end up as a homicide rather than an assault.

It's not clear how many homicides are impulsive, or whether gun ownership rates are a genuine causal factor for homicides.

In contrast, gun ownership is a substantially bigger issue for suicide, which is well understood to be a product of impulse. Note that it is not that the gun causes or induces a suicidal impulse. Rather, what happens is that the person has the suicidal impulse, and are much more likely to follow through on that impulse if the means are readily available. Thus, if you happen to have a suicidal impulse, and you happen to have ready access to a gun, you are much more likely to follow through on that impulse, and to succeed in the attempt.

In contrast, if you drive 20 minutes to a bridge, only to find it has suicide barriers, you're much more likely to give up the suicide attempt altogether, rather than drive 20 minutes to some other bridge.

In this case, it may make a lot of sense to empower a court to temporarily remove guns from a person who is at high risk of suicide.


We should also note that claims of crime rates skyrocketing without citizen access to guns are fairly easily refuted. In particular, Japan has very strict laws and rock-bottom rates of gun ownership, yet very low crime rates and very low homicide rates. Similarly, big cities like New York and San Francisco have strict laws, and crime / violent crime / homicide rates have fallen there for well over 20 years. Meanwhile, states and cities with high rates of gun ownership rates, concealed carry laws etc don't exhibit unusually low crime rates; in fact, most Southern states have higher rates of both gun ownership and homicide than other regions.


In summary, the notion that less guns mean less violence is just absurd. Sadly, the ones who think that a piece of metal is at fault will never be convinced otherwise.
And yet, it's the ones who think that "a piece of metal is at fault" are usually the ones demanding more data -- and being stopped by those who don't want the slightest restrictions on gun ownership. Go figure.
 
I wouldn't go so far as to claim courts may not interpret the Constitution. It's about as basic in constitutional law as it gets that the Supreme Court may do that, the principle having been established in Marbury v. Madison more than 200 years ago. At the same time, I think it's clear the Court does not have the final word on what the Constitution means. There are several ways for the other two branches, especially Congress, to limit the power of federal courts--including the Supreme Court. Congress is made up of legislators the people have elected, so the ultimate power to say what the Constitution means remains with the people. IF enough people wanted it badly enough, Congress could impeach and remove a Supreme Court justice, make a law reversing a decision by the Court, remove the Court's jurisdiction to hear cases involving a particular matter, and so on. But drastic measures like that are very unlikely.

I agree that it's pretty clear what "shall not be infringed" means. What the text of the Second Amendment does not say is just what the right that phrase refers to consists of. I believe Justice Scalia cleared that question up well in D.C. v. Heller, when he described exceptions to the right to keep and bear arms that were already widely acknowledged by 1791. The right that is codified in the Second Amendment is not a right to carry any firearm anyplace, at any time, any more than the right to free speech codified in the First Amendment is a right to say anything anyplace, at any time. No serious person would claim, for example, that the Constitution protects a right to defame a person, or to drive a sound truck through a residential neighborhood at 3 A.M., blasting loud messages. And no serious person would claim the Constitution protects a right for a mental patient or a felon to bring a machine gun into a courtroom.

An interesting take on the constitution but the 2A once again is specific, the right of the people can hardly be misinterpreted. Scalia hit a complete miss with that and Heller is simply a judges jaundiced view. Neither of these referred to the words and meanings of those word but to some polluted interpretation of what they think they mean. Unfortunately the checks and policing now seems have been given to government as good citizens abdicate their duty. Why they bow to court decisions over their laws they and heaven alone know why. Is it to much trouble to ask of citizens that they protect their laws and guarantee of rights instead of looking to government to do that for them?
 
OK I'll bite how will it reduce them some? I'm the kind that likes to know how things work as that to me ensures the people proposing any law understand the functional mechanism, it is repeatable and results are guaranteed. I believe no government should be instituting laws with public money that have no chance of working. Government is not expected to waste our money.

Could you explain how this reduction works?

For suicides, it's the same principle as replacing gas ovens. The less convenient your means of suicide, the less likely you are to commit suicide-- it's typically an impulsive decision that people, if they have to take more than five minutes to execute, frequently change their minds about. Note that I do not consider this a valid reason to suspend gun rights.

As for homicides, there is a portion of homicides committed by people who had, otherwise in their lives, been law-abiding. Typically crimes of passion or mass killings. Since these are law-abiding citizens, taking away their legal guns would actually leave them without guns to commit their crimes. Of course, I would argue that the decrease in defensive shootings would be greater than this decrease... but that was not the question being asked.
 
In this case, it may make a lot of sense to empower a court to temporarily remove guns from a person who is at high risk of suicide.

Emphasis on "temporarily". And even then, I would argue this should only be at the person's request.

If we have the "right to life", surely we have the right to decide to end our own lives. Otherwise, it's not really our life, is it?
 
A ban wouldn't have much effect, not immediately anyway. You'd have to engage in major confiscation of firearms before you'd have an effect.

From whence would this claimed effect come from, pray tell? Could you describe the principle of operation?
 
Back
Top Bottom