http://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/pdfs/publications/Firearms...
It only took about 5 minutes of googling the gun debate before I gave up and started googling for actual statistics. Some of the blogs that google returned were just biased in either direction to an amount that was almost parody.
Give me the numbers. I'll sort it out myself, ya biased lot!
The other points I'd like to make that I feel are somewhat relevant is that you should very much read up on DC v Heller, which is the most recent Supreme Court decision on the matter (except for Heller II) that specifies weapons "in common use" as a protected class of weapon from government bans.
I would go further to suggest that I honestly believe (though I cannot substantiate) that the AR15 is able to be categorized as 'evil' because of its use in some of these high profile, but otherwise unlikely mass shootings, but what I really think is that they're most likely being used because they are just so popular. The AR15 is the most popular rifle being sold in the United States, and has been since 1994.
After I finished playing with the FBI's data, I started to wonder if the ban was not to stop the kind of day-to-day gun crime, but to prevent the mass shooting, High profile, high fatality events like the recent school shooting, or the Aurora movie theater shooting, or any similar event.
So, I pulled the data from that collection, and could find absolutely no correlation between rifle involvement in a mass shooting and the number of fatalities. Our worst shooting, with (going from memory here) 33 fatalities was the Virginia tech masacre. It involved absolutely no rifles, or shotguns, just the lowly handgun. I'll have to double check all the numbers tomorrow, but if I believe that in the 10 most dealy mass shootings in our history, of the 22 or so weapons used, only 4 or 5 of the were rifles. To my number crunching, rifle usage was pretty inconsequential in the number of fatalities -- which I'll admit was pretty damn unintuitive. But that's what the data shows, so given all that information, it's tough for me to figure out a reason for the administration pushing for the ban.
I made a detailed visualization of it @ http://www.caerusgeo.com/surveys/299/public
Here's a fun statistic though, since you're in the process of number crunching -- every mass shooting in the US since 1950 (except for perhaps that Gabby Gifford shooting in Arizona) has occurred in a 'gun free zone', where the shooters had the highest probability of completing their shooting sprees with the least fear of being stopped.
Of those, most telling (to me at least) is the Aurora, CO shooting, because while Colorado is generally a fairly well armed state, the shooter bypassed six other theaters that were closer to his home, including the largest theater, where he could have done the most damage, in lieu of taking his gun into the one nearby theater that specifically disallowed guns from being carried inside.
From my understanding the mall in Clackamas is a posted "gun free zone," but the posted signs don't actually carry any legal weight.
But aren't we walking a fairly narrow line here? In order for this to be a meaningful distinction, we have to assume that mass shooters a) plan their attacks, b) are smart enough to choose gun free zones, and c) are dumb enough not to know that a gun free zone isn't necessarily free from guns?
Calling mass shooters stupid is, I think, a naive assertion. They're obviously flawed, but not necessarily in a way that makes them less effective at planning or committing violence.
And while 'c' is potentially valid, I think that what you'd find is that, as most citizens tend to fall into the 'law abiding' category, where there are signs posted disallowing guns, you'd find that most citizens won't carry them. So even if the 'gun free zone' is not found to be 100% devoid of guns, you are almost certain to find it less armed than if signs weren't posted.
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?398679-62-Mass-S... is I think my final point here; it's a sympathetic gun rights advocate who went to the trouble of tracking and linking local ordinances where possible. He's only proven the case in about half the incidents. I know John Lott claims he researched all of them. If you happen to know where his supporting documentation is I'd be sincerely interested.
I might be looking at a full on amendment here, or there may have been more statistical jiggery pokery that somehow excludes findings incongruent with the expected results. Either way, I'll do more research and get back. Thanks for the correction -- while the link you posted isn't necessarily conclusive, it did spur me to freshen my data sets at the very least.
If we looked at drunk driving incidents, and from those, were somehow able to determine that the Honda Civic was used in a higher percentage of them than other cars, it would be a mistake to conclude that Honda Civics were in some way more appealing to drunk drivers, or that they more easily facilitated drunk driving, while excluding overall ownership on the whole.
Further, much of the legislation being considered (at least in Feinstein's bill) is akin to saying "Okay, the Honda Civic is used by drunk drivers. The Honda Civic has 17" tires and cup holders. Let's ban cup holders and 17" tires. No, let's ban all cars that have some combination of 17" tires and cup holders."
The legislation around gun bans seems to based on what could possibly happen, and not what's been demonstrated to happen. There seems to a be a "scary" factor, or maybe a public appeal, or maybe even just a future politicking angle when it comes to weapon bans. (i.e. what if the terrorists get 'em!?)
I had a "let's get caught up on current events" night last week, and decided to dig into the proposed rifle ban (of which I hear about constantly from my family). So I read through Obama's Now is the Time plan, and the only thing that stuck out like a sore thumb was the ban on Assault Rifles (Barring that, and two of the other items, I actually think it's a pretty good approach).
I remember when Clinton's ban was set to expire, and the media exclaimed that it would be like the "Wild West," and then it happened, the bill expired, and rifles went on sale.. and.. everything was exactly the same. It was actually reminiscent of Bill Hicks' bit:
>"War, famine, death, AIDS, homeless, recession, depression, war, famine death, AIDS…"
>Then you look out your window it's just: (Birds chirping)
>Where is all this shit happening, man? Ted Turner is making this shit up!
This fear of these weapons seems based on, well, a characterization that doesn't line up with reality. Yes, they have great lethality, but when you look at the stats, the data that you would need to see to justify a ban just isn't there.
When checking all this stuff out, I pulled the [FBI's Uniform Crime Reports](http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/c...) so I could investigate everything for myself. Here are some fun stats:
* Of the total gun related felonies, only 3.8% of them involved rifles. One unfortunate bit about the available info, is that all rifle types are lumped together. So there's no way to tell if the weapon used was of the "assault" class, or a simple hunting rifle. However, I'd wager, that "assault" rifles make up only a small proportion of the rifle category -- but that's pure assumption; back to the data!
* You're actually slightly more likely to be murdered with someone wielding a shotgun, than one wielding a rifle (though only marginally so at 4.1%)
* You're 2.3 times as likely to be punched or kicked to death than to meet the same fate by riles.
* You're Five times as likely to be stabbed to death than to meet the same fate by rifles.
So, as I looked through all the stats, I was left with this feeling of "What the F* is the point?" Banning rifles just seems based on terrible, fear based, reactionary logic.