This is why we need to stop being such douchebags about gun violence research

[MadBurgerMaker]

There were 372 mass shootings in the US in 2015, killing 475 people.  A 5% reduction means 24 people aren't dead.  That sounds pretty good to me.

It does sound good, but those probably weren't all by dickheads with 30 round magazines in their rifles.  Most of them were probably by dickheads with handguns.  Still, that would mean, what, 2 or 3 more people survived this last attack?  That's not a bad thing, no matter how you look at it.  Again though, as you say, it would have to be a full ban, not just saying new ones can't be made but you can still buy the old ones.

[OttoVonBismarck]

How many lives would a national 55 mph speed limit save? I'm not sure 24 dead is enough of a reduction to ban anything.

[Barrister]

How many lives would a national 55 mph speed limit save? I'm not sure 24 dead is enough of a reduction to ban anything.

55? That's ridiculous! Sure, it'll save a few lives, but millions will be late!

[derspiess]

In states that have enacted their own Assault Weapons Bans, like Massachusetts, pre-ban magazines and pre-ban scary looking rifles with flash hiders and bayonet lugs are legal to own.  So you kind of need to label them pre-ban there so people know it's legal for them to have them.

I don't think California allows these things at all, or at least not without some huge license.  I think I'd have to remove some stuff (grenade launcher and bayonet) from my SKS to make it legal over there, even though that has zero effect on anything unless I wanted to perform a bayonet charge or get nailed by ATF for trying to buy NATO rifle grenades.

Yeah, I think California has a more severe ban.

[MadBurgerMaker]

How many lives would a national 55 mph speed limit save? I'm not sure 24 dead is enough of a reduction to ban anything.

55mph?  Road rage through the roof. 

As far as the number goes, yeah it's statistically tiny (and they did apparently say "no more than" 5%, so it could go lower), but meh.  10 vs 30 everywhere you're doing legal stuff with it doesn't seem like a yuuge meaningful difference. Although that's just like my opinion man.

[Razgovory]

but even then they noted they "expect" the difference between 10 and 30 round magazines might represent no more than a 5% difference in number of fatalities in a mass shooting event.

Well 5% is not exactly insignificant when we are talking about human lives...

Eh, at societal scale "5% of mass shooting fatalities" is pretty much nothing. How many people die in a "mass shooting" each year? It's estimated we might have 5% less deaths of that number.

Edit: You can't just use "human lives" to justify everything. If every car in America was required to have an ignition interlock device (like drunks get after they have too many DUIs) I bet we'd save thousands of lives a year. But there's a cost to that as well (the cost of the device) and the hassle, to people who have not actually ever driven drunk and may view it as an unfair imposition.

There were 372 mass shootings in the US in 2015, killing 475 people.  A 5% reduction means 24 people aren't dead.  That sounds pretty good to me.

Is that how the percentages work?  I wasn't sure.  I that if someone shoots you have a less then 10% of dying (about 9.7), I wasn't sure how the 5% would fit in there.  I'm not good at math.

[11B4V]

What is really frustrating is that at the same time the gun fanatics will argue that there isn't any "real data" about how laws effect outcomes, at the exact same time they also make it certain that the efforts to collect data will fail, even if the anecdotal data is clear, and demands more study.

There is plenty of wounding data, ballistic tests, etc, that have been done since WW2. Pull open youtube and look at various ballistic gel test on penetration/expansion, hydrostatic shock, and wound channels of various types of handgun and rifle bullets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZIYMTlf19A

How someone can argue that studying gun violence is an attack on individual rights is baffling.

It isn't of course

[Siege]

Facts are dangerous, they might lead to people changing their minds.

Right back at ya.

[Siege]

In 2004, a law known as the Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired. It had restricted the number of bullets that a magazine could legally carry to 10. Since then, more criminals have carried weapons that can shoot continuously and inflict even more damage, Spitzer said.

This is a bit misleading.  The AWB did not ban "large" capacity magazines that were manufactured prior to the ban.  And there was such a glut of magazines before the ban that you had no difficulty finding them for reasonable prices through 2004.  I would imagine if you were going to go shoot someone, a superficial 10 round magazine limit wasn't going to get in your way and you'd get a hold of higher capacity magazines pretty easily.  So I dispute the notion that the AWB had any practical limit on the number of shots fired.

Besides, criminals don't care about obeying the law, so black market magazines, stolen from the military, would provide the holding capacity they wanted.

Not that you need large capacity mags. I can reload in under a second. If my old ass can do that anyone can with a little practice.

[Valmy]

Besides, criminals don't care about obeying the law, so black market magazines, stolen from the military, would provide the holding capacity they wanted.

Not that you need large capacity mags. I can reload in under a second. If my old ass can do that anyone can with a little practice.

Yeah but the thing everybody is wringing their hands about are not criminals or trained pros but random losers who just shoot up a bunch of people. I don't think anybody thinks organized crime types are ever going to be disarmed. Even in Britain.

Again not that it really matters. The Right to Bear Arms is a Constitutional right, backed up by USSC precedent.

[Malthus]

Eh, I somewhat agree with berkut, somewhat agree with derspiess. There's no good reason to block studies, information is always good.

I would genuinely like to know why GSWs are becoming more lethal, because as a pretty gun savvy guy I'm not aware of any technological changes in the past 20 years that would cause this. It makes me wonder (and again, as berk points out, we have no data) that shooters may be more lethal in intent these days. I.e. they're may be some cultural reasons they're making sure they finish the job for sure, but I don't know why that would be.

In terms of lethality size of the bullet and composition of it are the largest factors, and the most deadly rounds aren't anything new--high caliber hollow point, they make big holes and break up inside the body and do horrific damage. Probably the most lethal round widely available at least at 25 yard range or so would probably be 00 buckshot, and that's 100 year old technology.

Most newer/exotic rounds are more about weird use cases, armor piercing stuff, etc. But those can actually be less lethal against a target not wearing armor.

I will say that as a gun owner who would be fine with more restrictions, every AWB ban that's been proposed since Newtown, and the one in effect from '94-2004 are stupid and will do little to prevent gun deaths. Plus they focus on something that in aggregate doesn't matter. The gun debate we do focus more on spectacle than reality. There's some 33,000 odd gun deaths a year, the vast majority are suicides (20,000), and I think the vast majority of those are with handguns. I think of the 8000 or so homicides, most of those are with handguns too. Rifles are responsible for I believe less than 1k fatalities a year, and only a subset of those fatalities is ascribed to "semiautomatic scary-makes Dianne Feinstein cry" type guns affected by proposed AWBs.

As for being on a FBI watchlist, the reality is he wasn't. He was in a database sometimes called a watchlist, but it's easy to get on that--and there's no due process at all. I'd be very hesitant to infringe on someone's rights because of the result of a process that involves no due process. To be honest both things they investigated him for were nonsense. He made some dumb statements and got looked at in 2013 and he basically admitted he was mad and said something stupid. Then in I think 2014 he said he knew a guy who was a suicide bomber in Syria. They investigated and found while he had had contact with him, it was extremely minimal. I'm not really sure what the FBI was supposed to do at that point, none of the things mentioned are criminal, or would even warrant charges. He wasn't even on the no-fly list.

On the other side, he was a licensed security guard and had gone through a lot of hoops for that purposes, and even worked as an armed guard at a courthouse. I think there was little ability or reasonable way to stop Mateen without some draconian measures (like blanket deep surveillance of any "angry Muslims") that itself would raise serious constitutional concerns.

The issue in the article at least isn't that new tech is involved - it is in the types of guns criminals are using. At least according to the article, criminals even 15-20 years ago were more likely to rely on .38 "Saturday Night Specials". Now they are more likely to be using better quality automatics with large capacity magazines.

The handguns people use now have more of an ability to create severe tissue injury than the typical .38 Special injuries we used to see 15 or 20 years ago," Moore said. "And if you have weapons that deliver a multitude of bullets, allowing the shooter to continue shooting, (that) is far more damaging than the amount of energy delivered by a single bullet."

On call last week, Moore treated a patient shot six times. "It's not uncommon anymore. Not at all," he said. And he hears that from trauma teams across the country.

"A key difference today in these mass shootings, and even in your bank robberies and assaults, is that now, individuals have these weapons that shoot multiple bullets without delay," Moore said. "It can be a challenge with that many bullets in that many body parts, and the damage is extensive."

None of the tech is new, it would seem: it is merely a change in patterns of use. At least, allegedly.

[garbon]

How many lives would a national 55 mph speed limit save? I'm not sure 24 dead is enough of a reduction to ban anything.

55mph?  Road rage through the roof. 

As far as the number goes, yeah it's statistically tiny (and they did apparently say "no more than" 5%, so it could go lower), but meh.  10 vs 30 everywhere you're doing legal stuff with it doesn't seem like a yuuge meaningful difference. Although that's just like my opinion man.

So as I asked, what's the upside of having those 20 people die when the downside simply seems to be - people can have a little less fun with guns?

[DGuller]

There were 372 mass shootings in the US in 2015, killing 475 people.  A 5% reduction means 24 people aren't dead.  That sounds pretty good to me.

There are probably thousands of government policies can save more than 24 people a year at a lesser cost (political and monetary).

[MadBurgerMaker]

So as I asked, what's the upside of having those 20 people die when the downside simply seems to be - people can have a little less fun with guns?

I don't know.  You'll have to ask someone who would care about 30 round magazines being banned. vOv

[garbon]

So as I asked, what's the upside of having those 20 people die when the downside simply seems to be - people can have a little less fun with guns?

I don't know.  You'll have to ask someone who would care about 30 round magazines being banned. vOv

Aren't you the one who just said 20 lives isn't a meaningful difference in your opinion?