Tag: umpqua community college
‘Good Guys With Guns’ Don’t Make Much Of A Difference, Research Shows

‘Good Guys With Guns’ Don’t Make Much Of A Difference, Research Shows

In the wake of the mass shooting at Orlando’s Pulse gay nightclub, Donald Trump joined a chorus of conservative voices suggesting that the attack could have been prevented by allowing club goers to carry hidden firearms.

“If some of those wonderful people had guns strapped right here—right to their waist or right to their ankle—and one of the people in that room happened to have it and goes ‘boom, boom,’ you know, that would have been a beautiful sight,” Trump said on Friday night last week.

On the Howie Carr Show on Monday, Trump further explained that “it’s too bad some of the people killed over the weekend didn’t have guns attached to their hips where bullets could have thrown in the opposite direction. Had people been able to fire back, it would have been a much different outcome.”

He said the same thing after the Paris attacks — a coordinated, military-style assault involving multiple actors and explosive devices — took the lives of 129 people. And following the October shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, he made a similar argument against the college as a “gun-free zone.” 

“If you had a couple of the teachers or somebody with guns in that room, you would’ve been a hell of a lot better off,” he said at a rally in Tennessee soon after.

Republicans have infamously prohibited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from conducting any gun safety-related studies. But the research that does exist on gun control, however, demonstrates that allowing concealed carry is anything but the answer in order to prevent more horrific, violent incidents.

A study out of Texas A&M University found that there is no observable relationship between the number of concealed carry permits and changes in the crime rate.

In four states that collected data on so-called “Right to Carry” legislation — which would force states to recognize concealed carry laws from other states — these laws did nothing to reduce (or increase) the amount of crime statewide.

Another study, conducted by researchers from Harvard and the University of Vermont, found that what some GOP lawmakers have called “defensive gun use” — that is to say, potential victims using guns for self-defense while under attack violent — does little to fight their own risk of injury.

What’s more, though, is that such incidents of “defensive gun use” are a lot more rare than some Republicans say they are. Contrary to a popular book from the 1990s, John Lott’s More Guns, Less Crime that claimed guns are used for this purpose 2.5 million times a year, the real number is in fact less than one percent of that.

While the book argues that the drop in crime over the past few decades results from an increase in guns, a study from NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice in fact concludes that this crime drop cannot be explained by one factor alone—and definitely not more guns alone, either.

In short: We can blame “gun free zones,” or we can blame guns. The research that does exist on gun violence supports the latter.

 

Photo: Gun enthusiasts look over Sig Sauers guns, including the Sig Sauer MCX rifle at top left, at the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) annual meetings & exhibits show in Louisville, Kentucky, May 21, 2016.   REUTERS/John Sommers II 

Clinton Vows To Take On Gun Lobby, Pledges Tighter Restrictions

Clinton Vows To Take On Gun Lobby, Pledges Tighter Restrictions

By Amanda Becker

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (Reuters) — Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton pledged Monday to take on the powerful U.S. gun lobby, saying she would pursue expanded background checks and take steps to hold manufacturers accountable for crimes committed with their weapons.

Clinton was at a town hall in Manchester, New Hampshire, to unveil her plan to curb gun violence just days after a gunman killed nine people and wounded another nine last week on the campus of Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon.

At times on Monday, Clinton’s voice cracked as she talked about the toll gun violence has taken on U.S. schools, movie theaters and other public spaces. She asked Nicole Hockley, an audience member whose 6-year-old son Dylan was killed along with 19 other children and 6 adults in a 2012 shooting at a Connecticut school, to speak briefly.

“How many people have to die before we actually act, before we come together as a nation?” Clinton asked the audience at the New Hampshire community college, which she said was similar to the Oregon campus.

At the top of Clinton’s list are expanding background checks, repealing legislation that protects manufacturers and dealers from liability, and strengthening punishment for straw purchasers who buy firearms for others.

Clinton has not minced words in recent days, saying she wants to build a “national movement” to counter the influence of the National Rifle Association, the nation’s top gun-rights advocacy group.

The NRA is among the biggest spenders on U.S. politics. The organization dumped $28 million into the 2014 election cycle to pay for communications promoting the right to bear arms, the candidates who support it and against candidate who favor restrictions, according to OpenSecrets.org.

Clinton questioned in Manchester whether there was a better way to preserve the constitutional right to bear arms while also getting “military-style assault weapons” off streets.

“What I would love to see, is gun owners, responsible gun owners … form a different organization and take the Second Amendment (of the U.S. Constitution) back from extremists,” Clinton said of the NRA to applause.

The NRA did not respond to a request to comment on Clinton’s remarks and proposals.

Clinton’s campaign on Monday released detailed proposals about what she would do to curb gun violence if elected to the White House in November 2016.

Clinton would use presidential executive authority to close a “loophole” to ensure people purchasing firearms at gun shows and online face the same background checks and sales taxes as buyers from traditional retailers.

Clinton would push Congress to prohibit domestic abusers, including stalkers, from purchasing guns and close what she called the “Charleston loophole,” referring to a June shooting at a predominantly black church in South Carolina that left nine dead.

If a background check is not completed within three days, a sale can proceed. The alleged Charleston shooter could buy his gun because of this loophole, as did 2,500 people in 2014, Clinton’s campaign said.

Clinton also said she would pursue the repeal of a 2005 law that she voted against as a U.S. senator representing New York. The legislation prevents victims of gun violence from holding negligent manufacturers and dealers accountable for crime committed with their guns.

“Nobody else is getting that immunity — and that just illustrates the extremism that has taken over this debate,” Clinton said.

Demand for firearms surged in the past when consumers feared gun control legislation was coming. On Monday afternoon, Smith & Wesson shares were up 5.1 percent at $17.44, and Sturm Ruger & Co. had risen 2.7 percent to $57.99.

Clinton said her proposals were not new: “There’s nothing unique about them, other than I am so determined to do everything we possibly can.”

 

(Reporting by Amanda Becker; Additional reporting by Emily Stephenson; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Lisa Von Ahn and Jonathan Oatis)

Photo: U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton listens as she is introduced at a campaign town hall meeting in Manchester, New Hampshire October 5, 2015. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

‘Stuff Happens’: Jeb And Trump Talk Down Gun Control

‘Stuff Happens’: Jeb And Trump Talk Down Gun Control

The two biggest-name Republican candidates clearly don’t like each other very much, but in the wake of the tragedy in Roseburg, Oregon they do appear to agree on one thing: There’s nothing we can do about mass shootings.

During a phone interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Trump was asked what measures he would advocate for in order to prevent these events, such as more stringent background checks for gun purchases.

“Well, first of all, you have very strong laws on the books — but you’re always going to have problems,” Trump answered. “I mean, we have millions and millions of people, we have millions of sick people all over the world. It can happen all over the world — and it does happen all over the world, by the way — but this is sort of unique to this country, the school shootings. And you’re going to have difficulty no matter what.”

Upon some further questioning by panelist Willie Geist, as to whether Trump was saying that people will simply “slip through the cracks,” Trump agreed with that phrasing: “You are going to have difficulties. You are going to have difficulties with many different things — not just this. And that’s the way the world works — and by the way, that’s the way the world always has worked, Willie.”

So who could possibly outdo Donald Trump in his blasé reaction to mass murder? Why, none other than his establishment GOP arch-nemesis, Jeb Bush.

At a conservative forum in South Carolina on Friday, Jeb had this to say, after an audience member complained about liberals’ insistence on gun control. (The questioner also lamented that there weren’t prayer vigils at schools before these events happen — since that would be a more useful way to prevent school shootings.)

We’re in a difficult time in our country, and I don’t think more government is necessarily the answer to this. I think we need to reconnect ourselves with everybody else. It’s just — it’s very sad to see. But I resist — I had this challenge as governor. We had — look — stuff happens — there’s always a crisis. The impulse is to do something, and it’s not always the right thing to do.

The short version, “Stuff happens,” quickly went viral online.

Here is video that’s been posted online. (Note: Audio quality is poor, with very low volume.)

When asked afterward whether what he had just said was a mistake, Bush stood by it: “No, it wasn’t a mistake — I said exactly what I said. Why would you — explain to me what I said wrong… Things happen all the time — ‘things,’ is that better?”

Well, at least it’s good to know that someone named Bush thinks it’s wrong, after a terrible crisis, for the government to take a drastic, unconsidered action simply to satisfy the impulse to do something.

At President Obama’s press conference Friday afternoon, Jonathan Karl of ABC News read back a key part of Bush’s response, and then asked Obama for his reaction.

“I don’t even think I have to react to that one,” Obama answered curtly, to laughter from the press corps. “I think the American people should hear that, and make their own judgments, based on the fact that every couple of months we have a mass shooting. And they can decide whether they consider that ‘stuff happening.'”