Thread by @RealSteveCox

@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn This is going to come across as a rant, but it’s something I’ve put a ton of thought and research into, so please allow me to get through this:

There are currently between 350 and 650 million guns here, depending on whose numbers you want to believe...
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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn The low number is *583 times* the number Australia turned in back in 1996. Today, they actually have more guns than they did in 1996. The gun ban in NZ happened quickly, but only about 2000 people have turned in any guns (out of like 700,000) and most weren’t semi-auto rifles.
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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn Also, rifles in general are used to kill fewer people per year than using no weapon at all (attached). It’s handguns that are the major problem. But when mass shootings occur without rifles, media stops talking about them in a day or so. It doesn’t fit the narrative.

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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn On top of that, 3D printing is a thing now, and doing it with metal will be affordable at home in <5 years. And already for decades now people have been building AR lower receivers at home with things called “80% lower receivers”.

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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn The lower receiver is the part that carries the serial #. It’s “the gun” as far as the govt is concerned. None of the rest of the rifle—barrel, upper, stock, magazines, sights, etc—have ever been, in any way, tracked by the govt. no serial # on any of those things.
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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn Canvassing for the 2018 election, I randomly ran into *two* different, unrelated people who had *each* built more than two dozen AR rifle lowers out of 80% lower receivers and gave them away as gifts to friends and family. This was random in one small city.

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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn Many years ago, I built an 80% lower receiver myself. I never finished buying the parts for the rest of the rifle. But it was the easiest thing you could imagine. It came with a jig and all you had to do was drill certain holes through the jig and hollow out the mag well.
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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn Do that and you have a completely untraceable rifle. And it’s legal because technically the 80% lower receiver isn’t a “gun part” until after you finish it yourself. It’s a paper weight. And we have no idea how many of those there are, but I’ll bet it’s in the millions.
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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn Then there’s the issue of bans in general. I don’t believe it’s possible to ban *anything* for which there is an active market. The bans that have been effective had near 100% popular support and participation, which means the markets were killed off first.
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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn But when you ban things for which there’s an active market, you get this (attached). That’s always true, from alcohol to drugs to prostitution, etc.

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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn We live in a country already where police kill over 100 civilians every month already (and I know you know who is most disproportionately killed by police here). I don’t want that number going up.

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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn The NRA is a massive part of this problem. But not in the way most people think. The NRA riles up the anti-gun people every time there’s a mass shooting, then the anti-gun people threaten gun bans, & that makes the NRA millions as people donate to ‘keep their guns’.

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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn And gun sales go through the roof every time this happens, too! Gun owners are just as scared of mass shootings as non-gun-owners are. They want to be armed to protect themselves and their families. You can argue the stats, but it doesn’t matter at the personal level.

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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn The EveryTown anti-gun lobby frequently cites countries in Europe (“peer countries”) and shows their relative lack of gun deaths vs ours, but their error (or dishonesty) comes from their failure to address anything outside of guns.
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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn But every single country on EveryTown’s list has much, much better socioeconomic equality than we do. *All* of them have universal (mental) healthcare, a much higher poverty line (and much lower rate of people below that line), better education, better social safety nets...
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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn This graphic (attached) I made is from an article in TheGuardian in 2012, where they listed every country’s official firearm-homicide rate and gun-ownership rate. It included an Excel file you can download yourself. There are many countries with a higher rate than ours.
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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn And 100% of the countries with a lower gun-homicide rate than ours have much better socioeconomics, and 100% of the countries with a *higher* gun-homicide rate have *worse* socioeconomics than ours. That can’t be a coincidence, IMO.
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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn And this doesn’t even get into the fact that AR-15-style rifles fire .223 (5.56mm) ammunition, which is the *least* powerful rifle round sold (next to .22LR). The AK used in El Paso is much, much more powerful, firing a 7.62mm round.
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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn Nor the fact that there are other rifles like the Ruger Mini-14 (pictured) that are functionally *exactly* the same as an AR-15, just made of wood instead of composite, which wouldn’t be banned if we successfully scapegoat “assault rifles”.
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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn Or the M-14 which would also not be scapegoated in an “assault rifle” ban, but fires a 7.62x51mm round (more powerful than the AK-47’s 7.62x39mm round—the number after the x is the powder capacity) that could go through an engine block. (Pictured, with an AR, and each’s ammo)
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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn I get angry because it’s lawmakers’ jobs to know this stuff, and I think many of them do. But they push this “evil gun” narrative *because* it divides the public. And if they expend the political capital necessary to ban these guns, it won’t stop *any* of these shootings.

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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn Pandora’s Box is already open. And yes, Trump’s narrative that illegals, or Muslims, or liberals, or anybody else, is exacerbating this problem. No question. He’s a shameful president and the narrative he pushes is deplorable.
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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn And then there’s this math: There are approx 100 million gun owners here and gun deaths have risen to 36,000 per year recently. As always, approx 2/3 of those deaths are suicide, 1/3 homicide, with a smattering of accidental shootings.
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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn But even if we include suicide, and even if we only allow (just for demonstration with this math) for each gun owner to kill 1 person (either themselves or someone else), at this rate of 36,000 deaths per year (every one of which is a tragedy)...
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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn At those rates and numbers, if they remained unchanged, do you know how long it would take for just 1% of gun owners to have killed a person?

Almost 28 years.

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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn The gun owners are never going to agree that disarming *them* will make them and their families safer. It’s not going to happen.

Here’s the next problem. There are 3810(!) areas here with DOUBLE the lead in their water of Flint.
Read this article:
mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/id…
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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn Lead is a known cause of psychosis.

Please read:

motherjones.com/kevin-drum/201…

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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn And there are scholarly studies showing the link between socioeconomic equality and gun violence as well:

luskin.ucla.edu/connection-pov…

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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn My fear is that these two parties will fight over gun bans, which I don’t believe will have *any* actual effect on gun violence. But this gun-ban fight serves two purposes:
1) Polarize the public.
2) Provide a short-term, feel-good, *ineffective* solution to the problem.
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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn But instead we should be fighting for the things that definitely *will* reduce gun (and all other) violence:
Reduced inequality
Universal (mental) healthcare
Addressing this massive lead problem it seems no one wants to talk about
End the drug war (addressing gang violence)
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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn End the foreign wars (8000 veterans commit suicide, mostly with firearms, per year, plus it sets the tone of our violent society [see attached])
End mass incarceration
Increase funding for social safety nets, education, etc
End predatory policing
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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn Every one of those things I listed will significantly reduce gun violence/deaths on their own. Every one.
And if we can come close to achieving *all* of those things, gun violence here would be on par with anywhere else in the world that has those same policies in place.
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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn Truly, the guns don’t *cause* these shootings. Our society does. And there are so many guns here, most of which are completely unregistered (so we have no idea where they even are) that bans are pie-in-the-sky thinking anyway.

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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn The problem is, the parties, their donors, and the powers that be (generally) exist and profit by using fear to divide the public and keep us fighting each other instead of fighting them.

And until we recognize that, I fear nothing will change.

Thanks for listening.
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@brettachapman @MichaelSkolnik @bardblackthorn I missed the attachment for post #31 in this thread. It’s here: