Ya, I saw that. However, SF is the most liberal city in the country if I were to guess. It's so far leaning in that direction, it's not of any surprise. However, I have to say ... nicest place on the West Coast. I can only compare it to Toronto during the summer!

I don't think SF is even the most liberal city in the Bay Area, much less the entire country.

California actually has the 2nd fewest gun stores per capita of any state (New Jersey has fewer). Although even California grew 10% in the last 5 years.

California also has among the most aggressive anti-gun laws in the country. Actively & wantonly making it difficult to sell (and own) a product does tend to discourage businesses.

Part of that is California's particular political history, where for a long period of time both major parties on the state level were pro-gun-control. The public displays of firearms by the Black Panthers in Oakland in the 1960s scared suburban white conservatives into calling for gun-control laws, which were enacted under Reagan's governorship with bipartisan support in the state legislature [1]. As the state has swung more solidly Democratic in subsequent years, they've retained and gradually strengthened such laws. The state Republican party has now turned towards pro-gun viewpoints, but no longer holds a lot of offices.

[1] The first one, which effectively outlawed both open carry and concealed carry of loaded guns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulford_Act

And yet California has the most gun related deaths annually [1], even though it has one of the lowest percentages of gun ownership [1].

It just goes to show (in part) that legal gun ownership isn't really the main issue we have.

We forget to include the 2/3 of national gun related deaths that are suicides [2]. These people need help; surely many of those victims would still have committed suicide had they not obtained a firearm.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...

Guns make suicide attempts more deadly. Places with fewer guns do have proportionally more deaths from other types of suicide attempts, but the overall suicide levels are still substantially lower. Suicide ruminations may be frequent, but suicide attempts are often impulsive.

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazine-features/guns-and-suici...

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2013/1...

Your point about CA having the most gun deaths falls flat: CA has far and away the most people in the US. Gun deaths per capita is the interesting, relevant statistic. California is actually pretty high here too; it has more gun deaths per capita than Texas, though gun ownership rates are far lower in CA. Anyone know why? My best guess is that the gun ownership rates rely on legal sales, but gun homicide rates don't. So California, because of strict rules, has proportionately more illegal guns (perhaps purchased in lax states, like Texas).

I'd also like to see statistics on how many of those guns used in crimes are from other states. If there is a successful gun control program but the state is bordered by states with more lax gun control, then that confounds any gun statistics.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/12/us/gun-traffic...

That's my thinking - larger amount of illegal sales for use by those involved in gangs/drug game.

> It just goes to show (in part) that legal gun ownership isn't really the main issue we have.

It doesn't show that.

You linked to a page that specifically had per capita murder rates (link [1]) and intentionally ignored it to make a point (since your point makes no sense if you look at per capita rates).

What the links show, is that suicide is the real problem the United States has.

Two thirds (2/3) of all gun related deaths in the United States are suicides. That's roughly 20,000 gun related suicides annually. The odds of being killed in a mass public shooting are about 1 in 7,800,000[1]. Compared to your chances of being struck by lighting (about 1 in 1,000,000)[2], this is exceedingly rare.

Legal gun ownership is not our problem. Suicide clearly is, and we cannot be so naive to believe reducing the number of guns in the country will have any real effect on reducing the number of suicides.

Sure, we'll see a decrease in gun related suicides... but the suicides will still occur, just with an alternate method.

These people need help, yet we're ignoring them because it's far easier to get riled up about people owning guns than it is to care about some faceless person committing suicide.

[1] http://www.psychlawjournal.com/2013/01/school-shootings-what...

[2] http://discovertheodds.com/what-are-the-odds-of-being-struck...

> Sure, we'll see a decrease in gun related suicides... but the suicides will still occur, just with an alternate method.

Suicide attempts by any method might be practically constant; alternate methods of suicide tend to be less successful however, so the rate of completed suicides would likely go down.

> alternate methods of suicide tend to be less successful however, so the rate of completed suicides would likely go down

I don't see how that could be measured as a success. You still have mass amounts of people attempting to end their life every year.

Essentially we're all busy trying to treat the obvious symptoms, but we're ignoring the real cause of our problems.

Reducing legal gun ownership merely shifts the problem to another metric, but does not solve it.

Solve our suicide problem in the United States, and we've solved our gun problem (among others). (this hinges on the fact that there is some level of annual deaths that society considers reasonable and acceptable, as-is with any activity)

FWIW, the ratio of people:firearms in this country has a clear link to firearms crime(homicides included) and suicides, as established here: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and...

Legal firearm ownership isn't the real issue, yes. The problem that we just have so god damn many firearms and we continue to crank them out en masse whilst stoking fears of a tyrannical government instilling martial law and rounding people up into concentration camps(and by extension, our firearms are the only thing stopping this from happening). A sizable portion of the population all but worships firearms.

The fact that we are basically overflowing with firearms plays a huge part. Guns routinely go missing from gun stores. One of the rifles used by the Beltway snipers was amongst around 150 guns that went missing from one store in WA. Where do you think the black market guns(that bad guys will get their hands on anyways) come from in the first place? They were produced under legitimate pretenses that they were going to sell.

  as established here: (HSPH site)

Item 1: no link to study or data sources stated there, but data is at least 11 years old

Item 2: data well over 20 years old

Item 3: data 18-27 years old

Item 4: data 12-14 years old, and guns in circulation have more than doubled since then

And, ironically, all of this dates from when the Feinstein bans were still in effect.

You're right. The concentration of firearms can in no way affect the rate of gun crime in this country.

> Sure, we'll see a decrease in gun related suicides... but the suicides will still occur, just with an alternate method.

Citation needed; that's not the evidence I've seen.

Mass shootings are extremely rare, but non-mass crime is not; guns are also a big factor in whether disputes over e.g. property (particularly drugs) become lethal.

Most of the victims of guns are not particularly sympathetic. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to prevent their deaths.

These days we've done most of the easy/cheap things we can do to prevent human deaths; there are few low-hanging fruit left. So anything we can do to save lives will be expensive and/or involve sacrificing useful things. IMO gun laws are one of the cheaper ways to save lives that remain available (I'd also advocate making driving tests stricter, repealing jaywalking laws and adding an assumption of liability when a driver injures a pedestrian).

It seems odd to argue that ~10,000 murders/accidental deaths per year is not a problem...

As to suicide rates, there are a lot of 'unsuccessful' suicide attempts. And many people do back out after taking pills for example. Which is why access to a gun does increases the risks of successful suicide.

IMO, this does not say much about the gun debate. But, https://xkcd.com/386/

> It seems odd to argue that ~10,000 murders/accidental deaths per year is not a problem...

It's about whatever level is acceptable to society.

We currently accept about 57,000 annual deaths caused by the common flu[1], a totally preventable and treatable illness. Heart disease claims over 600,000 lives annually in the US. [2]

Compared to other top killers, if we could reduce gun related deaths to ~10,000 annually, that's a huge victory. That equates to about 0.001% of our population annually, and at that rate it would take about 33,000 years to kill us all.

In no reality are we going to be able to make that number be zero. There must be some level that is acceptable (and arguably we've crossed that acceptable threshold currently).

[1] http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/us_flu-related_deaths.h...

[2] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm

> It's about whatever level is acceptable to society.

I agree, you can see the US ranks fairly low on these statistics which may be good enough or a problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r... My point is saying something bad is at a tolerable level is different from saying it's not bad.

Spending more money promoting gun safety would likely save lives. As far as I can tell the cost benefit on that is simply money and would not impact freedom so the NRA may even approve. But, it's easy for people to look at things emotionally and say that's a waste of money because there is no problem.

PS: Your flu statistic is off. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm Influenza and Pneumonia: 56,979 Just Pneumonia is listed at 53,282 So Influenza is much lower than 57,000 http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/pneumonia.htm

Though many of these deaths are complications not direct causes, you can die from AIDS and Pneumonia.

> Spending more money promoting gun safety would likely save lives

This is something I could fully get behind, and I believe it would have real positive effects for the general population.

I had the privilege to have grown up in a military family, and was active in Cub Scouts and then later Boy Scouts -- so I grew up around guns and was introduced at a very early age.

Gun safety needs to start early. In scouts, we had it beat into us how to treat a weapon, and how to be safe with one. It was taught the weapon was to be respected and treated as loaded even when you knew it was not.

Unfortunately, many gun owners don't have such training, and are unknowingly careless with their firearms. This includes people leaving loaded firearms in places where children can gain access, or showing off for their buddies, etc. Too often I've been at the local gun range and witnessed a new gun owner looking down the barrel or casually walking around with the gun's action closed and barrel "sweeping" bystanders. It's not their fault, they literally don't know any better... it's the lack of mandatory safety training (and at most ranges, you'll find staff and customers alike harshly coming down on these offenders in attempt beat into them some core safety rules).

Gun ranges are actually good examples of gun safety done right (most of the time). In the rare occasion where I've felt unsafe around a fellow shooter, the range staff have taken quick action. In general, even with all the guns at a gun range, it's one of the safest places to be around firearms.

It's 1/10 of the population of the country. It does more of almost everything than other states.

The gun murder rate is in the top half, but solidly middle of the pack.

Don't your two points contradict each other? You say that legal gun ownership isn't the main issue, using homicide statistics as the basis, then say that most gun deaths are suicides, and in another comment say that suicide is the real problem.

Legal gun restrictions may not affect homicides much (I'm skeptical of this view, but it is an obvious fact that criminals don't always obey the law) but I would think that they would affect suicides a lot.

I don't think a comparison of suicide rates in Western democracies would support that. And regardless, the fact that people kill themselves is no reason to ban guns. With that logic, we should be banning burgers, soda, sweet cars, ice-climbing, and motorcycling. In a free society, individuals are free to harm themselves.

The US suicide rate is about 12 per 100,000 per year, the UK's is about 6, Canada's is 10, Germany's is 9, France's is 12, looks like we are on the high end even if it's not totally consistent.

As for banning burgers and the rest, that's a totally separate question. One of the major problems with the American gun control debate is that all sides completely fail to separate questions of fact from questions of principle. The question of what effect a particular gun law will have is completely separate (although it may inform) the question of whether enacting that law is the right thing to do.

To say that it's better not to certain gun laws even though it would save lives, because the freedom is more important, is perfectly reasonable. But we have to actually figure out the "it would save lives" part first to get to that point in the discussion. If the law doesn't even work then you might as well not bother with the rest.

I can't back it it with data but I suspect that many of the gun owners in California do not report their gun ownership, contributing to the low number.

Huh? I don't know if you've realized this, but California is the most populous state. If you want to make your analysis more relevant (and less totally idiotic) you need to look at the rate per capita.

California doesn't fare much better even with per capita rates. The notions stands, reducing legal gun ownership has little effect on reducing gun related homicides.

Gun related suicides are the real problem (~20,000 out of the total ~30,000 annual USA gun related deaths). Nobody is focusing on that issue.

The idea that 20,000 deaths per year is a "real problem" while 10,000 per year is not is disingenuous at best.

If the US had the same amount of gun violence in a day that the UK experiences in a year, it would be worldwide news.

Your premise is only applicable to US states.

It is not applicable to nation-states which demonstrate considerable effect in reducing gun-related homicides. Even more so when discounting individual lone-wolf attacks of a terrorist nature (Brevik, Norway).

I could post sources but they are beyond dispute at this stage. (United Kingdom, Japan, Australia and most of the Western world).

Evidence is also lent by the nation-states with lax gun control legislation which dominate the league table of gun-related homicides, of which, the USA is one.

Please describe some of these cruel regulations.

There is an effective ban on selling any new pistol designs in CA due to a dubious microstamping requirement. Manufacturers are unable to change their current designs that are on the roster (even color!) without triggering a recertification process that cannot be passed. This also means that new, safer designs cannot be sold in CA as things stand now.

That doesn't explain the employment of the word "wanton". I'm much more concerned here with the abuse of the language than with the rights of the people to buy guns.

I suppose it depends on your perspective. To some, passing laws with an overt goal of "making people safer" (but not actually doing so), with the covert goal of regulating a product out of existence, is a wanton act against our democratic system.

If your premise is that less guns does not make people safer...

...then you inversely arguing that more guns does not make people unsafer.

Which is not true. More firearms makes for an inherently more dangerous society. Less firearms does indeed equal greater safety.

So does not allowing the majority to vote and handing voting rights to a few selfless individuals who will do what is best for society overall.

Even killing a person for their organs if it saves more people is a net gain in safety and health.

It's not a net gain for the populace since they will live in perpetual fear of being the next harvesting target.

False analogy; not even close to the same thing.

So now we include fear. So what about the fear that if one right is stripped from us then our other rights are also at risk.

Rights are taken all of the time.

This is not a Libertarian issue which loves to take major policy issues and apply niche cases to decide them.

Your right to steal property has been removed; it does not automatically threaten your right to vote.

Debate the main issue on the main points otherwise you are simply bikeshedding.

You said organ harvesting would be a net benefit to society; my argument is that it would not since we are killing a member of society purposefully.

confiscating an assault rifle would not instill the same fear as the Government killing your neighbor for his liver.

"Wanton" means 'deliberate,' but regarding a cruel act. (OED: 1 (of a cruel or violent action) deliberate and unprovoked: sheer wanton vandalism.) I see this as an expression of ctdonath's opinion that California's actions passing the regulations is cruel, not that the regulations themselves are.

If microstamping is cruel, then so are license plates on cars.

Not only have you missed the point (that passing the law is cruel, not the law itself), you're arguing the opinion on cruelty of the situation with the wrong person: I'm neither supporting nor opposing his opinion on the matter.

Well, license plate "technology" has existed for ~100 years. Microstamping exists as a single parent which has never actually been demonstrated or implemented in a commercial product.