Hold on I did some similar math to this the other day…
How many gun owners become mass shooters? Lets see, 333,287,557 people, 50% (generous, it isn’t quite 50 but for easy math) ownership for 166,643,778.5 people owning guns, and I’ll be generous and include gang shootings (because I know the number) at 547 for the year, turns out, 547 is 0.00032824507756826% of 166643778.5, meaning 0.00032824507756826% of gun owners are likely to pull off a mass shooting in any given year.
S’not exactly what you asked but we have almost no way to ever figure out the answer you seek. We’d need to know how many range trips they make and count their ammo off video surveillance, assuming we can get the angle, and they never shot off camera on private land or something. Or look at their ammo purchases, find a roundcount from their shooting, find out what’s at home, and the difference is the estimation. That stuff just isn’t tracked like that.
How many drunk drivers end up killing people? Considering how often I see the parking lots of bars full, I’d say the vast, vast majority don’t. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make drunk driving illegal.
I don’t think guns should be illegal, but that’s not a good argument.
Your making this into an argument about what the legal status of guns should be, and that is a good and separate argument to have, but the entire point of my original comment was just pointing that the article’s use of the words “sole purpose” is opinionated and inflamatory (and objectively wrong). “Sole” means “one and only” and so that’s obviously ludicrous given that the vast majority of gun owners aren’t using them for their supposed “sole purpose”.
Of course, murder is illegal, I wasn’t suggesting we legalize it. I’m saying we don’t need to ban alcohol simply because some people drive drunk, and we don’t need to ban guns because .0003% of people who have them “mass shoot.”
And I’m saying we regulate cars and part of that regulation is taking away people’s right to use a car when they do reckless things with it. That is becoming less true of guns with virtually every high court ruling. I would say that most Americans do not want guns completely banned, we want them to be out of the hands of people who would go out and kill innocent people with them. And that can be mitigated with regulation.
And we also take people’s guns for doing reckless things with them. Hell, if you are reckless enough with your car to get a felony they’ll take your guns about it, and they don’t take your car if you have a negligent discharge with your gun.
Which is illegal. The failure to put it into the NICs system or confiscate isn’t a failure of “needing new laws,” it’s a failure of “not using the ones we already have.” Did your parents ever say “eat the cereal we have at home before I buy you a new one?” It’s kinda like that, “enforce the laws you already have before we get new ones.”
Yes, I’ve heard this many times, “enforce the laws we have.” Somehow we enforce other violent crime laws. I wonder why the police might not enforce the gun laws? Hmm…
Well, they actually do enforce some but some are enforced by federal agencies (namely the BATFE) often with assistance from the local PD. The failure to report to NICs is probably “because paperwork is boring,” seeing as that’s what reporting to NICs entails.
Hold on I did some similar math to this the other day…
How many gun owners become mass shooters? Lets see, 333,287,557 people, 50% (generous, it isn’t quite 50 but for easy math) ownership for 166,643,778.5 people owning guns, and I’ll be generous and include gang shootings (because I know the number) at 547 for the year, turns out, 547 is 0.00032824507756826% of 166643778.5, meaning 0.00032824507756826% of gun owners are likely to pull off a mass shooting in any given year.
S’not exactly what you asked but we have almost no way to ever figure out the answer you seek. We’d need to know how many range trips they make and count their ammo off video surveillance, assuming we can get the angle, and they never shot off camera on private land or something. Or look at their ammo purchases, find a roundcount from their shooting, find out what’s at home, and the difference is the estimation. That stuff just isn’t tracked like that.
How many drunk drivers end up killing people? Considering how often I see the parking lots of bars full, I’d say the vast, vast majority don’t. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make drunk driving illegal.
I don’t think guns should be illegal, but that’s not a good argument.
Your making this into an argument about what the legal status of guns should be, and that is a good and separate argument to have, but the entire point of my original comment was just pointing that the article’s use of the words “sole purpose” is opinionated and inflamatory (and objectively wrong). “Sole” means “one and only” and so that’s obviously ludicrous given that the vast majority of gun owners aren’t using them for their supposed “sole purpose”.
Of course, murder is illegal, I wasn’t suggesting we legalize it. I’m saying we don’t need to ban alcohol simply because some people drive drunk, and we don’t need to ban guns because .0003% of people who have them “mass shoot.”
And I’m saying we regulate cars and part of that regulation is taking away people’s right to use a car when they do reckless things with it. That is becoming less true of guns with virtually every high court ruling. I would say that most Americans do not want guns completely banned, we want them to be out of the hands of people who would go out and kill innocent people with them. And that can be mitigated with regulation.
And we also take people’s guns for doing reckless things with them. Hell, if you are reckless enough with your car to get a felony they’ll take your guns about it, and they don’t take your car if you have a negligent discharge with your gun.
And yet we keep having stories about reckless people getting ahold of guns, even if they have been diagnosed as mentally ill.
Which is illegal. The failure to put it into the NICs system or confiscate isn’t a failure of “needing new laws,” it’s a failure of “not using the ones we already have.” Did your parents ever say “eat the cereal we have at home before I buy you a new one?” It’s kinda like that, “enforce the laws you already have before we get new ones.”
Yes, I’ve heard this many times, “enforce the laws we have.” Somehow we enforce other violent crime laws. I wonder why the police might not enforce the gun laws? Hmm…
Well, they actually do enforce some but some are enforced by federal agencies (namely the BATFE) often with assistance from the local PD. The failure to report to NICs is probably “because paperwork is boring,” seeing as that’s what reporting to NICs entails.