Side story on the recent gun spree

[slapout9]

Slap,

I think you are falling in the pit of the image d'Epinale about Europ, just as other are about USA.
I do not see where the right to own a M60 at home is a valid argument in the debat about are you free or not to think and believe what you want.

My only contribution will be that in most (if not all) western europ countries you can send your kids to school without worrying about is there or not a crazy guy with a gun who will kill him. And I believe that is, in Europ but also in USA, what a vast majority of the people are looking for.
That said the internal/domestic debat in the US over fire armes looks quite surreal seen from where I am, in the dark heart of Africa...

Hi M-A Lagrange,

The trap that needs to be avoided is the one where we accept some of the most intrusive searches ever devised in order to be safe on our Airlines but refuse to propely fund and train an armed security force for our schools. It is this course of action that is being recommended by the same people who have their own children protected by armed secuity forces, that is the trap that needs to be avoided. Hope you are having a good time over there in Africa.

[jmm99]

I expect there will be some action regarding background checks and "gun" databases in general. These are solely my thoughts and solely based on political factors (which may be totally different 6 mos. from now):

1. The ATF should not be in the firearms record keeping business. It should be an investigative and enforcement agency. Regardless of how pristine one thinks the ATF will be, another will think the opposite. Save some lives and create an independent agency, with appropriate firewalls for inquiries and referrals for investigations and prosecutions - the devil will be in those details.

2. Get the criminal records, "terrorist" records, and mental health records into that database. The criminal records and "terrorist" records will be easy; the mental health records, many absent from the present system, will be more difficult. The devil again will be in the details, especially as to appropriate firewalls for inquiries and referrals for investigations and prosecutions - and for expungement of incorrect or antequated records.

3. Enforcement of existing laws is obvious; but a review of existing laws is needed. Some "gun" laws are stupid or obsolete; some violate Heller and McDonald. Get rid of those. Take a look at proof requirements for "straw buyers". I've not looked at those statutes. Way back when (I was a young man), cases charging receipt of stolen goods, especially at the end of a chain, were easy to defend. I expect "straw purchase" chains are similar. But, problems like that are usually solvable.

4. Someone has to pay for all this. Over the last 50 years, I've seen bunches of criminal law and mental health programs proposed, with some enacted but not really implemented. Both Federal and state governments are strong on mandates and weak on providing funding for the mandates.

5. As an example, polls indicate that very high percentages (constitutional majorities or better) want criminal and mental background checks on all sales and transfers of firearms, components (e.g., mags) and ammunition. Again, the details matter; but here the details really matter as to the exact process to be used and the funding to be allocated for it. The regulations have to be in the bill. Regardless of how pristine one thinks the agency will be in drafting regulations which it puts in effect, another will think the opposite.

6. My experience (the 1968 statute and after) is that "gun control" proponents tend to overshoot - that is, they tend to insert added provisions which make the bill unacceptable to "gun control" opponents. Currently, I'd suggest that Sens. Feinstein and Shumer, and Congresswoman McCarthy, have the floor. They might accept points 1 through 5 as part of a bill, but will still want "assault weapons", "super magazines" and "universal background checks" included.

7. Thus, if I were the NRA honchos (I'm not), I'd not introduce any legislation; but simply push for the "gun control" legislation to have full hearings (no last minute 2000-page bills), and then be brought up for an up or down vote. We would then see how many NRA A-rated legislators do not have wobbly knees. Points 1 through 5 are not really my cause. When they are combined with the adverse "assault weapons", "super magazines" and "universal background checks" (I need the details on that one) provisions, I'd ask my congressman, Dan Benishek, to vote against the hypothetical "Feinstein-McCarthy" package.

Benishek's announced position on the Second Amendment (25 Jan 2013):

“I oppose the Obama Administration’s plan to limit the Second Amendment rights of law abiding gun owners in Northern Michigan. Attacking our constitutional rights will not make our society any safer. We must ensure that citizens in Northern Michigan - and throughout this nation - have the ability to protect themselves and their families,” said Dr. Benishek, an avid sportsman, gun owner and lifelong resident of Northern Michigan.
...
“Like many Americans, I believe we need to have a national conversation about ways to prevent violence in our society. But I don’t believe this is done by disarming good people. As a doctor, I believe we need to look at mental health issues in this country. I think we can make important steps to stop criminals from hurting innocent people without taking away anyone’s Second Amendment rights,” added Dr. Benishek.

Regards

Mike

[slapout9]

jmm99,

This past weekend the NRA spokesman said there are already 9,000 laws and regulations dealing firearms on the books but they are seldom enforced because the prosecutors just don't want to do it. Your expert thoughts on this?

[motorfirebox]

I think it's fair to say that both sides overshoot. I mean, preventing a permanent director from being appointed for six years? What's that about?

[jmm99]

We're both staying up too late.

I've no real SMEese on the statitics re: firearm laws and regulations. 9,000 laws and regulations sounds a plausible number to me. Anyway the number is not that material. The laws and regs are already divided into classes for the most part. So, general paradigms can developed for each class: delete, amend, leave as is. After that, it's basically legal scut work.

The stats on prosecutions are from TRAC at Syracuse Univ., which I linked in an earlier post here. I know what its database knows.

I live in a back-woods, conservative, populist, gun-owning county. We do not have that many gun problems. We are neither Detroit nor Milwaukee. I'd say that a felony + gun (using gun in commission) = enhanced penalties, as also a felon + gun (no other felony) = enhanced penalties. Other violations (say of conservation weapon regs) would likely be soft-pedeled. I've looked (a little bit) for Detroit and Milwaukee stats on illegal weapons prosecutions (Fed and state), but came up empty.

A couple of months ago, Ed Flynn (Milwaukee CoP and a "gun controller plus") stated there were just south of 12,000 illegal firearms seized in Milwaukee over the last 4-5 years. He didn't say how many cases (if any) were prosecuted. Last week, Dave Clarke, the Milwaukee County sheriff (pro-gun), advised every citizen to purchase a firearm and become proficient in its use; to which Chief Flynn responded.

Milwaukee County Sheriff: 'You Have A Duty To Protect Yourself'.



Milwaukee Police Chief says Sheriff Clarke trying to 'terrorize' city



So, all sorts of controversy between the "gun controllers" (Mayor Barrett & Chief Flynn) and the "gun rightser" (Sheriff Clarke). I'll stand with the sheriff, who keeps Justice Thomas' McDonald opinion well in mind.

BTW: the City of Chicago and a suburb paid the court-ordered $1.4 million in McDonald legal costs to the NRA - Chicago payment checks signed "Raum Emmanuel".

Thought you might enjoy this sidebar - which proves there's a lot of division 350 miles south of us.

Regards

Mike

[jmm99]

provide the links pro and con for this:

... preventing a permanent director from being appointed for six years? What's that about?

and I'll read them.

Regards

Mike

[J Wolfsberger]

I think it's fair to say that both sides overshoot. I mean, preventing a permanent director from being appointed for six years? What's that about?

The Obama administration keeps trying to appoint gun control activists. There's some concern about how that would work out.

On different note, you cited some firearms statistics earlier. Have you run across any data on firearms smuggled into the U.S.?

[slapout9]

We're both staying up too late.
Thought you might enjoy this sidebar - which proves there's a lot of division 350 miles south of us.

Regards

Mike

Yea we are staying up too late but that is about all I can do anymore(see PM). Really did like the sidebar and I think it is very revealing. Sheriff's are usually elected and have their own constituencies where as Police Chiefs are appointed by elected Mayors. Been my experience at least down here that Sheriffs are more open and direct with the population where a Police Chief is going to toe the party line of the elected Mayor and often ends up just like your sidebar Sheriff vs. Police Chief. And so it goes

[Stan]

I actually read the Spiegel article when it was published. It's citing a official report. The numbers have been similar in earlier years.
We're a nation of 80+ million people for whom needing guns to solve anything is such an exception that it's almost a rounding error. We've found better ways even for dealing with violent criminals.
I consider this a success.

Fuchs, indeed success... I agree. My point was also just how the BPOL and BGS perform their jobs and the way they intimidate (look) with an H&K dangling from their necks with hand on weapon and index finger at the ready. Only an idiot would beg for trouble. Behind the scenes is yet another matter.

Strange. Bundespolizei and Bundesgrenzschutz are the same, for the latter was renamed into the former several years ago. I assume you thought of some state police.

Back when I first went to school with the Germans, the Border Guard was a separate entity. When we restructured in 2005 so did the BPOL and BGS. At my age we tend to remember how things were before some politician decided on restructuring what already worked. As my BGS instructor told me, "we simply have more responsibilities and the same pay".

[Stan]

The standard script for a Manila coup d'etat used to be that the rebellious soldiers would occupy a piece of urban real estate, the loyal soldiers would surround them, and at some point they would conduct what was called "acoustic warfare", which meant firing vigorously over the heads of the nominal antagonists. The law of gravity being what it is, this was not always a healthy thing for the surrounding neighborhoods.

Talk about a walk down memory lane circa 1985 in then Zaire. The louder, the better. Fierce looking Presidential Division soldiers (DSP) would down load hundreds of rounds with nearly every round a tracer... Independence day Zairian style

My garage had a cement roof and even our dog knew that was a safe bet with armageddon on the way.

Deep Sigh !

[Stan]

Discussing "gun control" and "gun possession" in Central Africa in this thread would take it far beyond its reasonable limits

Moi Mikka,

Mitä kuuluu ?

I would add (albeit dated info from the 90s) that genocide in Africa has very little to do with firearms. Of the estimated 800,000 in Rwanda and Zaire, most suffered far worse fate at the blade of a machete than that of any firearm.

There are barely any gun controls and firearms possession outside of the military and even then, are limited to the very elite, and they have no clue how to operate said.

Kopel argues that the UN tools in place are ineffective. Couldn't agree more. But he also likes to inject that "human rights" thing as if the players even cared. No good reasons to preach international law to people that never made it past 6th grade, dictator or otherwise.

We then wander off into what a State's obligation is regarding human rights.

They contend it seems that, civilians under no controls, possess firearms. Anyone that has been in Sub-Sahara can tell you that civilians do not possess anything and the military arm of the regime possesses and controls everything.

Regards, Stan

[Fuchs]

Stan, the GSG9 guys are only a tiny part of the German police special team s realm.

The police in German cities has what's known as MEK and SEK, with SEK being remotely similar to GSG9 (though not tasked to care about cases like kidnapped airliners, for example) while MEKs are a kind of reinforcement for arrests and also mobile observation units (for lengthy observations).
MEKs do their arrests when the suspect is moving in the public, while the SEK does so if much resistance is expected and in static (barricade, hostage) situations.

Again, the very existence of the MEK shows that German police work isn't much about guns. A MEK policeman can spend years in such a unit without ever needing to draw his weapon and aim at somebody.
Their surprise arrests are more about Ju Jutsu (a German-collected, Japanese-named collection of unarmed close combat techniques including plenty submission techniques; official German police sport) than about pointing guns.

The American approach is much more loose in regard to pointing guns at people (and more), and it shows in the quantity of shots fired at people.
This is mirroring the civilian approach, and I consider this reliance on guns very unsatisfactory, to say the least.

[jmm99]

considering that, 12 Jan my driveway was bare concrete and half of the front yard was green. Since then near 100 inches of snow; it's great for Michigan Tech's Winter Carnival this week, though.

Cheers

Mike

[carl]

Theft from legal, private owners accounts for a tiny share of criminal weapons--around 1%, depending on which source you pick (I often reference Following the Gun: Enforcing Federal Laws Against Firearms Traffickers--a 2000 report, from back when the ATF was still allowed to do their job). The primary sources are corrupt FFL dealers, gun show/flea market purchases, and straw buyer rings.

I checked the report you referenced. It is a report that covered 1,530 firearms trafficking investigation done by the ATF during the period July 1996 to December 1998. Of that number 1,470 investigations resulted in the recovery of 84,128 firearms. Page 41 of the report states that at least 500,000 firearms are stole annually from residences, on top of which you have to add weapons stolen from gun stores and common carriers. So in that 2 1/2 year period during which the investigations that are the subject of the report recovered 84,128 firearms, about 1 1/2 million firearms were stolen from just residences, according to that report

Now here is a link to a report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub...bopc0510pr.cfm

The press release for the report states that during the six year period from 2005 to 2010 about 1.4 million firearms were stolen during household burglaries and other property crimes.

In 1998 and 1999:

more than 27,000 firearms were reportedly stolen from licensed gun dealers and more than 3,700 hundred stolen from common carriers who transport guns.

That comes from a fact sheet done by the Bloomberg School of Public Health.
http://www.jhsph.edu/research/center.../publications/ (go down to 2003. I don't know how to put a link directly to a pdf on my computer.)

And this reference
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=1861&page=269

states that:

Theft—from licensed dealers, from residences, and from other criminals—is an important source of firearms used in felonies. Moore (1981) reports the results of manufacturer-to-user traces by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms of 113 handguns used in Boston felonies during 1975-1976. Of the guns whose histories could be traced, 40 percent were stolen at some point: 12 percent of those used in assaults, and 56 percent of those used in other crimes, which presumably were more likely to involve advance planning.

And then we have this
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/dis...firearms-part1

This is a story about illegally obtained guns on the streets of Minneapolis. It is interesting because on the one had an ATF guy says:

Most guns used in crimes are obtained through straw purchases or from traffickers..

And on the other hand the the Minny police chief at the time said:

the bulk of guns used in crimes are stolen from lawful gun owners.

So from all of this I conclude that stolen guns comprise far, far more than 1% of guns used in crimes. The problem with using ATF stats like the ones in the study you cited is that the ATF is only interested in guns that violate federal laws and in that study federal trafficking laws specifically. If guy steals a gun from a home, and the homeowner reports it but didn't know the serial number of the gun and then the thief is found with that gun and says nothing about how he got it, that gun is invisible to the ATF. Most stolen guns recovered are most likely recovered by local and state police. But there is no way to know because, take this from personal experience, most victims don't know the serial numbers of their firearms. That is the key, the serial number. Unless that is reported by the victim of theft, if or when that weapon is recovered it is just a weapon in limbo.

When you look into all this, there isn't all that much known that is concrete. Hoods are going to lie. Without a serial number, the ATF can't trace anything. Domestic violence criminals who use firearms are going to skew the data and on and on. The big thing for me is, hundreds of thousands of guns are stolen each year. Those guns are most all going to go into the criminal underworld. One of the reasons criminals like guns is it makes it easier to do crime. Ergo,...

You have to be careful when using ATF reports.

[slapout9]

Ted Nugent tells off refugee news reporter Piers Morgan that he will never understand!!!! God Bless Ted!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkjIM...ayer_embedded#!

[Stan]

Stan, the GSG9 guys are only a tiny part of the German police special team s realm.

The police in German cities has what's known as MEK and SEK, with SEK being remotely similar to GSG9 (though not tasked to care about cases like kidnapped airliners, for example) while MEKs are a kind of reinforcement for arrests and also mobile observation units (for lengthy observations).
MEKs do their arrests when the suspect is moving in the public, while the SEK does so if much resistance is expected and in static (barricade, hostage) situations.

Fuchs,
Those are in fact who we work with now, but on a much smaller scale under the guise of the European Bomb Techs network. We are not part of a commando unit, but by law, we support the commandos here (very similar to your SEK). A strange relationship that requires cooperation if we are to succeed. All of us carry government issued firearms and most of us have at least one personal firearm.

Again, the very existence of the MEK shows that German police work isn't much about guns. A MEK policeman can spend years in such a unit without ever needing to draw his weapon and aim at somebody.
Their surprise arrests are more about Ju Jutsu (a German-collected, Japanese-named collection of unarmed close combat techniques including plenty submission techniques; official German police sport) than about pointing guns.

MEK seems to be more of a specialized SWAT support team and their skills are certainly in high demand and perhaps a bit expensive to operate. Just my opinion. My brother in law has been with the Capital police EOD for over 20 years and also acknowledges that SWAT teams as well as under cover CID form an intricate part of many sting operations that often work out without the outward use of firearms. Regarding martial arts: generally speaking you can have no way of knowing how you will actually react during a reside position. I spent a year with Koreans on the MDL practicing tae kwon-do and it's not as simple nor effective as drawing a weapon - especially when you already have an AK pointed at you.

The American approach is much more loose in regard to pointing guns at people (and more), and it shows in the quantity of shots fired at people. This is mirroring the civilian approach, and I consider this reliance on guns very unsatisfactory, to say the least.

We may disagree on this point and so be it.
I look back on instances in the USA such as the 1997 shootout in Hollywood and 2007 Virginia Tech massacre where everyday patrolmen were simply outgunned and had to wait for SWAT to come in. German police would have perhaps tackled this situation differently and we can argue that til the dogs come home. To no avail, we will simply disagree !

I conclude we have a much larger, and, at times, more severe problem with gun-related criminal incidences than some of Europe experiences (having lived abroad more than 35 years). The examples above involved some real firepower and the police were simply outgunned. It's no surprise that our law enforcement and public are more apt to pulling a firearm than taking self defense classes.

[Fuchs]

I spent a year with Koreans on the MDL practicing tae kwon-do and it's not as simple nor effective as drawing a weapon - especially when you already have an AK pointed at you.

Unarmed defence is intricate (see PM), but I submit that someone pointing an AK at me would shoot me if I drew a handgun. Don't see how that helps.

[Firn]

A functional integration of various groups/levels of police force could and should certainly increase the efficiency and effectivness. It is of course of great importance that the 'right' group is able to get there in time to do the required job. Utoya sadly docet.


I did reflect a bit on the 'hot spot' approach to policing which was brought up in the cited NYT article. The idea behind it might be surprisingly simple and quite easy to model.

Think of a crime hot spot as an efficient market of crime, where the costumer meets the supplier and the competitor the other. Staying out of that area of criminal exchange will hurt your bottom line or make it harder to get your drug or sex fix. If the police starts to turn up a lot at irregular but often narrow intervals and interrupts that efficient exchange of goods and violence it will induce some criminals to stay away and to shift away to another spot.

The key success from a police point of view is that this disrupts many supply chains and criminal nets which take some time (if at all) to reach the old efficiency in new hot spots. When you look at the big picture with many hot spots forced to undergo this process it is clear that those drops in efficiency can lower the overall crime rate by a good degree.

(Some violence, like inter-gang one, might increase after the shift away from the hot spot, as they might fight over the new territory. It depends of course on the relative gains and falls. )

[Stan]

Unarmed defence is intricate (see PM), but I submit that someone pointing an AK at me would shoot me if I drew a handgun. Don't see how that helps.

Fuchs,
Yes, the age old theory of Tae Kwon Do is unarmed defense and under the circumstances from 1955 that may have applied well in Korea. There are however limitations to an art that never evolved or took into account scenarios following the 1950s or America.

I would see many more instances of weapons pointed in my face when it was clear I had a side arm. I believe (since I am still alive) that by being armed presented my opponent with a situation he was not mentally prepared for, and backed down.

PM received. Thanks.

[Steve Blair]

This is one interesting look at what might be a contributing factor in the uptick in violence in Chicago last year. The article deals with Memphis, but Chicago was doing away with some of its housing projects in the 2010-2011 timeframe. It's a long article, but worth the read.