Political Roundtable Cosmic String of Cataclysm - Part V

[dobrojim]

'preciate your agreement on the numbers

Please excuse me if I don't completely share your belief that the
deterrent effect is that large. Even though as a country, we are
much more heavily armed than other more typical first world countries,
the chances of someone packing outside of their home is not that great.
(so that's the case of attacks outside the home)

(in the case of attacks on the home)
And burglers tend to look for houses that are NOT occupied when they
are contemplating a break-in so actual deterrence might not be nearly
as high as you are suggesting.

Another factor in assessing the deterrent effect might be looking at
how well armed we are as a population vs the rate of crime. My totally
seat of the pants guess is that we have BOTH a relatively high crime rage
as well as likelihood of a given citizen somewhere being armed.

[dobrojim]

re congressional pensions

went to wiki and what it seems to say is that congress-critters are operating
in the same pension system that many other feds are operating in which is
known as FERS.

in FERS, the basic outline is that your pension is determined by the years
of service. For each year of service, you get 1.0% of your 'high-3' salary
(the avg of your highest 3 years of earnings as a fed). Once you are over 20 years of
service, there is a 10% bonus, ie you get 1.1% rather than 1% of your high 3 per year of service.

One typically becomes eligible to retire at age 62 and you need 5 years of service
to fully vest in the system.

According to wiki, a congress-critter who retires after 22 years of service
would be due an annual pension of ~$55K. Some might consider that a bit
on the generous side. OK. But I will go on to say that I've seen emails and
FB posts from some of my friends on the right (yes I do have some), that
make pretty outrageous and largely unfounded claims that pensions for
congress-people are WAY higher than this. We should rest assured that
these are not so.

A couple of highly paid fed pensioners are/were :

Gerald Ford - served as POTUS and VPOTUS, as well as minority leader for an extended period.
As such, he got a very generous pension.

Dick Cheney - VPOTUS, SecDef, long time high ranking member of Congress.

In each of the above cases, their pensions were positively augmented by their service
in very high ranking positions thus driving their high 3 through the roof. Combine
that with a long career prior to retirement and you get a nice check.

On the whole though, I think it's hard to argue that their pensions are that
big a deal. A person serves 5 terms as a congressman, s/he gets 10% of their
salary at age 62 assuming that is the entirety of their fed service. I see that as no biggee.

I'm a whole lot more outraged by the scandal of congress-critters AND staff
being allowed to do insider trading. There is no justification for this. It needs
to stop. AFAIK, both parties are guilty of colluding to maintain this outrage.

[nate33]

Thanks for clearing that up, dobrojim. I had heard that Congressmen get their full pension once they serve for 5 years. Looking at politifact.com, that's not entirely true. Yes, they are eligible for benefits after 5 years, but not "full" benefits. A congressman that served 6 years (3 terms in the House) would get a pension of roughly $17,000 a year starting at age 62. That's rather generous, but seems reasonably in line with what I would expect.

[dobrojim]

the main reason it's so high is because their high 3 is pretty high...

something like $170K/yr

much less of a scandal than being exempt from insider trading statutes

face it, they can make FAR more money from that than any pension
they might get would provide.

[popper]

Yeah, I skipped ahead. Only data source that distinguishes between handguns and rifles is the homicide data, which says handguns are the primary problem. Assume suicides and accidents are primarily handguns as well. The previously cited article shows that proposed restrictions on rifles are silly, and would not have affected the high profile shootings.

The main conclusion I get from all this data is that the extraordinary prevalence of handguns in the U.S., combined with a normal level of violence, results in a disproportionate level of fatalities -- someone tries to murder you with a gun (rather than a knife), you are more likely to die (I'm assuming your average assailant is an imbecile -- I'm aware that someone who knows to stab rather than slash is just as likely to kill you, but that's unfairly assuming above average "intelligence," I think). If you try to kill yourself with a gun, more likely to die. If your kids start playing around with guns and have an accident, more likely to die.

Earlier in this thread I compared the problem to a bathtub that is constantly being filled with blood. A bathtub that is filled to the brim with blood and has a constant stream of blood being dumped into it is going to spill a lot of blood into your house.

Since the root cause of this problem is the extraordinary prevalence of handguns, the solution is to lower the extraordinary prevalence of handguns. How do you do that? First, you have to choke off the stream of blood being dumped into the tub, either by banning the production and import of guns or taxing the bejeezus out of them. Next you have to somehow drain the blood out of the tub. You don't have to get all of the blood out, just lower the amount enough that it is not constantly slopping out. You do that with a buyback program. Now the problem is that at first, most of the people with guns will be criminals. To get the strategy to work, you have to drain more blood out of the tub than is being dumped into it. Cops are allowed to have guns, so once the number of handguns floating around in circulation is comparable to the number of guns the cops have, I imagine at that point we will be better off.

Zonk - I don't understand how an inanimate object can be the root cause of anything unless we're talking about a meteorite striking earth or something. If I'm not mistaken, the root cause of most mass murders can be attributed to the mental health of the perpetrators. The root cause of the carnage caused by the Mass. bombers was jihad as I understand it. The root cause of most gun violence in the U.S. is drug and gang related activity rooted mostly in urban areas.

We could explore the anomie that exists in these urban areas and the policies that have promoted this sickness but it wouldn't be politically correct. Same goes for how mentally ill people roam the country freely (whereas when I was a kid they were mostly institutionalized). We could also explore the religious tenets of Islam but the media and many politicians will punish anyone who dares to analyze root causes when it touches upon some favored constituency or sacred cow.

[dobrojim]

the root cause of a mass attack is some mental defect but the ability
of a perp to actually carry out an attack relies in their ability to access
some means of inflicting great harm. Many but not all guns fit that
bill pretty well. I see nothing wrong with attempting to focus regs on
those things that are especially well suited to killing a lot of people
quickly.

[Benjammin]

Yeah, we need to do background checks on anyone who buys a pressure cooker, no doubt.

[dobrojim]

pressure cookers without the explosive material are pretty benign

there are lots of good substitutes for the function that pressure cookers
provided in Boston, far fewer subs for the functional aspects of explosives.

[Induveca]

Guns provide a sense of protection for those who grew up around uneducated hordes who abided weaponry, never words.

Projectile weapons have been around as long as humans, just part of our nature. Allows an individual to "feel" as if they have some control over their final moments if an attacker breaches their perimeter.

For many US citizens/residents who grew up overseas this is more than just a possibility, it's a reality......

That being said, I'd never live without a gun in the Dominican Republic. However in New York there is no need due to competent police protection.

Rural Oklahoma? I'd need a gun.

[Benjammin]

Fireworks too, we need background checks for them. Fertilizer also. And definitely remote controlled toy cars. Cell phones really might not be a bad idea either for background checks.

[dobrojim]

rural OK you'd have little need for firearms due to the unlikelihood
of interactions with people in general, criminals in particular.

[dobrojim]

Fireworks too, we need background checks for them. Fertilizer also. And definitely remote controlled toy cars. Cell phones really might not be a bad idea either for background checks.

saying we can't do anything about anything because we can't prevent everything
is not going to work this time. People are smarter than that. Limited common
sense reforms are coming. Get on board or get washed over.

[popper]

Fireworks too, we need background checks for them. Fertilizer also. And definitely remote controlled toy cars. Cell phones really might not be a bad idea either for background checks.

saying we can't do anything about anything because we can't prevent everything
is not going to work this time. People are smarter than that. Limited common
sense reforms are coming. Get on board or get washed over.

Jim - it will be the innocents that get washed over with irrational polices. To restate the obvious, gun violence is primarily perpetrated by inner city drug and gang activity where guns are already illegal. If you want to mitigate that you have to come up with a solution that addresses that population. Mass murder is primarily perpetrated by those with mental illness. The gun bill that just failed addressed neither of those problems.

[pineappleheadindc]

^
Speaking of data, does anyone have statistics on gun murders vs gun murderers with mental illness?

[Zonkerbl]

Assuming the propensity to violence/insanity is the same worldwide, Popper, then the extreme prevalence of/easy access to guns in the U.S. is why our average propensity to violence/insanity is highly more likely to result in death. Furthermore, the high prevalence of guns means the average number of suicide attempts will result in more deaths in the U.S., and there will be a higher than average number of kids accidentally killing themselves by playing with guns. In all those cases, the high prevalence of guns is the cause of higher than average violent deaths. There are too many guns in the U.S., many more than are necessary to satisfy our right to own arms. So many that it is infringing on our rights to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Just as polluters impose costs on other people against their will, owning a gun imposes costs on other people against their will. Your obsession with guns increases the violence and mayhem in the U.S., which affects me. I think it's only right that purchasers of guns bear the full costs that their decision imposes on society. If guns result in 30,000 deaths per year, gun purchasers should pay for that. Borrowing the EPA's "statistical value of a life" of $7.5 million, gun purchasers impose a cost of 30,000*$7.5 million = $225 billion on the rest of us each year, entirely against our will. There were 16.8 million applications for guns in 2012 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog ... ny-guns-us), so $225 billion/16.8 million = $13,000 of costs per gun purchased. I think it's only fair to pay a $13,000 tax on every gun purchased.

You could then use that tax revenue to lower the debt by $2.2 trillion over the next ten years... Raise another $1.8 trillion imposing a $26/ton tax on carbon emissions and you could lower the debt by $4 trillion. Now that's what I call a "double dividend."

http://www.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/institut ... tion02.pdf

[Induveca]

Fireworks too, we need background checks for them. Fertilizer also. And definitely remote controlled toy cars. Cell phones really might not be a bad idea either for background checks.

saying we can't do anything about anything because we can't prevent everything
is not going to work this time. People are smarter than that. Limited common
sense reforms are coming. Get on board or get washed over.

Jim - it will be the innocents that get washed over with irrational polices. To restate the obvious, gun violence is primarily perpetrated by inner city drug and gang activity where guns are already illegal. If you want to mitigate that you have to come up with a solution that addresses that population. Mass murder is primarily perpetrated by those with mental illness. The gun bill that just failed addressed neither of those problems.

You bring up an interesting point, why the need for federal gun laws in general? NYC has done quite well simply by declaring guns illegal long ago....

Enforce the local preference at the local level. No need for pointless ideological fights at the federal level between reps of NYC and reps of Des Moines Iowa.

Their constituents are steadfastly opposed ideologically, while neither ideology threatens the existence of the other. It's become a pointless tug of war with no gain for either side other than a "win" for a political party.

[pineappleheadindc]

.
My dos centavos on gun control. It will come in several parts over several days b/c of work load. But here goes.

Part I - The Constitution, jurisprudence, and your (citizen) REAL rights under the Second Amendment.

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

(Sorry to highlight the part about the "well-regulated militia". It's just that everyone ignores those words, including the Supreme Court, that they get lonely. So I wanted to show them some love to soothe their hurt feelings.)

The meaning of the Second Amendment has been debated for a long time. Ultimately, its meaning has been determined via jurisprudence, the most recent ruling in the Supreme Court's Heller ruling. It established, for the first time (in 2008) that the Second Amendment was an *individual* right versus all of that pesky militia stuff. So think about that - within the framework of the American justice system, you've only had an individual Constitutional right to bear arms for the last 5 years. Wow.

That being said, we all agree -- whether you are self-aware enough to know it or not -- that even with the Heller ruling, the Second Amendment is NOT a blanket means for individuals to own any kind of arms unfettered by government oversight and, yes, even government restriction.

Item 1: Let's go to the words of Justice Antonin Scalia in the Heller ruling.

Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court's opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. Miller's holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those "in common use at the time" finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons. Pp. 54-56

Item 2: Let's talk about your own personal views on this issue relative to the Second Amendment.

Do you wish to allow nuclear weapons or weaponized anthrax (e.g., "arms") out on the open market for anyone to get? (Note: that the Second Amendment notes only a right to "arms", not "guns". And don't go down the road of the framers never having a concept of an atomic bomb or I'll go into a long discussion about the only "arms" awareness being a single-shot, barrel-loaded musket. And I'd be correct). Anyway, no, you don't wish that these "arms" which are weapons of mass destruction, be allowed in the open to anyone who claims a Constitutional right to them. Ergo, you already cede that government control is okay and, in this instance, good.

Cool. It actually means that despite what people think about gun control, in all honesty, the gun control people and Antonin Scalia are not too far apart. Really.

I start here to establish a baseline, hopefully, of our group understanding of the Second Amendment.

And, if you're still with me (and Antonin Scalia), then for every post in the future, let's all resolve to NOT throw out "Second Amendment Rights" in any post or phrase as a synonym to a world where the government has no role in gun control. That is factually untrue (as Antonin Scalia notes) and as you personally believe vis a vis weapons of mass destruction. Fact is, gun control -- "arms" control -- is, in some forms, legal and, moreover, you want it.

OK - so to be redundant: Second Amendment: Some individual rights to own "arms", but government has a role to play in control. The Supreme Court says so and you say so (via your feelings about open nuclear weapon purchases). Cool. So next, then where should the line be and how is the line determined?

[Zonkerbl]

Here's a project on wikipedia attempting to provide comparable statistics on gun-related death rates for different countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... death_rate

Here's a listing of guns per capita:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_ ... by_country

Holy cow Switzerland!

For overall gun related deaths, the U.S. is 11th out of 75 with 10.2 gun-related deaths per 100,000 people. The median is 1.61. Germany: 1.1. Australia: 1.05. France: 3. Switzerland 3.84.

Among countries that reported statistics for gun-related suicides, the U.S. has the second highest: 6.3. France: 2.33. Switzerland 3.15.

For homicides, the U.S. is 17th with 3.2. France has 0.22. Switzerland 0.52.

So the strongest correlation between per capita gun ownership and gun related deaths is suicides.

[Zonkerbl]

Ah, ok, let me clarify my stance a little:

I think the silly, marginal gun control measures that were recently defeated, that I had previously gotten so upset about, are, now that I know more about them, stupid, meaningless, and trivial. They would not have prevented any of the mass shootings, focus on restrictions of guns that are only minor factors in gun violence, and are just plain poorly thought out and stupid.

The data shows that gun deaths from suicides are about twice as prevalent as gun deaths from homicide. Furthermore, about a quarter of gun deaths from homicides are the result of arguments, not the commission of a felony.

Further furthermore, the correlation between per capita gun ownership and homicides is non-existent over the entire sample collected on wikipedia, although much stronger among developed countries, where the U.S. is a CRAZY outlier.

So if you hate guns and the associated death and mayhem that result, and you want to do something about it, you should really be focusing on suicides. The number of gun related deaths from suicides is consistently many times higher than deaths from homicides in developed countries, and the correlation between gun ownership per capita and suicides is very high.

So I think all the discussion about the effect of gun control laws on crime is a complete red herring. We should restrict the number of guns owned in this country to help keep our teenage kids from killing themselves with them. That should be our highest priority above all else. Reducing the prevalence of guns (handguns in particular) will save teenage lives with enough statistical evidence to call it a virtual certainty. Reducing gun ownership may also somewhat reduce the homicide rate, although the statistical evidence is much less powerful. Certainly there is no evidence at all that reducing gun ownership will increase the homicide rate.

[dobrojim]

Fireworks too, we need background checks for them. Fertilizer also. And definitely remote controlled toy cars. Cell phones really might not be a bad idea either for background checks.

saying we can't do anything about anything because we can't prevent everything
is not going to work this time. People are smarter than that. Limited common
sense reforms are coming. Get on board or get washed over.

Jim - it will be the innocents that get washed over with irrational polices. To restate the obvious, gun violence is primarily perpetrated by inner city drug and gang activity where guns are already illegal. If you want to mitigate that you have to come up with a solution that addresses that population. Mass murder is primarily perpetrated by those with mental illness. The gun bill that just failed addressed neither of those problems.

explain to me what's irrational about a background check or limits on clip size?

My overall point remains, if you're against ANY/ALL reasonable attempts at reform
because you can shoot some hole in it proving that it won't work perfectly, it is
incumbent on you to come up with something better. Or become irrelevant
to the conversation. The only real question is how quickly this happens.