Two very interesting articles today at The Trace

[flamin lib]

http://www.thetrace.org/

One is about the current gun death rate of 32,000 people a year and how can it be reduced. The other is tangential to it and deals with suicides which make up a large portion of the 32,000 deaths.

The first asks:
Can the U.S.’s 32,000 Annual Gun Deaths Really Be Cut in Half?
http://www.thetrace.org/2015/09/yearly-gun-death-united-states/

The answer is a qualified yes over ten years if the proposed regulations in Martin O'Malley's detailed proposal (or something like it) can be enacted and if the congress has to will to act. O'Malley's memo here: http://martinomalley.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/OMalley-Gun-Violence-Prevention.pdf

From the Trace article:

“If you compare the U.S. to other high-income western democracies, and account for all the different metrics, we are not a more violent nation,” Daniel Webster, the Director of the John Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, tells The Trace. “Our teens don’t get into more fights. There’s not more bullying, or substance abuse, or more general urban crime. What makes us unusual is our homicide rate, which is almost seven times higher. And that’s because our gun homicide rate is about 19 times higher. So if we could get anywhere closer to the norm of those high-income countries, we’d have well more than a 50 percent reduction,” Daniel Webster, the Director of the John Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research.

The second is about Suicide and how gun regulations can affect it:
Why Suicide Prevention Depends on Gun Restrictions
http://www.thetrace.org/2015/09/suicide-prevention-gun-research/

As the Brady report points out, most suicides are impulsive actions, with 71 percent of suicide attempts occurring within an hour of the decision to commit the act. This means that even small barriers can help prevent suicides, and prevent them for good: Ninety percent of people who survive an attempt do not try again.

But few people survive a suicide attempt with a firearm. Such attempts are successful more than 85 percent of the time, compared with a success rate of 3 percent or less for overdosing and wrist-cutting, two of the most common suicide attempt methods.

Considering that up to 66% of deaths from gun are suicides I would think that a good part of any solution to reducing deaths by gun and suicides in general. Gun rights supporters will say that if not a gun then a suicide will choose some other method but that is clearly not true.

There are 24 different studies that show a failed suicide attempt is only 10% likely to try a second time. The issue with guns is that they are so effective on the first attempt.

The most recent evidence comes from a 2015 study by Daniel Webster and several colleagues at the John Hopkins Bloomberg school of Public Health. Examining data from Connecticut passing a Permit-to-Purchase (PTP) law in 1995, and Missouri repealing it’s PTP law in 2007, Webster found that firearm suicide rates dropped by 15.4 percent in Connecticut, but rose by 16.1 percent in Missouri. While suicides by methods other than firearms also dropped in Connecticut, in Missouri, there was no change in suicides by other means — what’s known as the substitution effect.
====
Backed this overwhelming research, some groups are experimenting with policies and programs that can reduce the prevalence of suicide by limiting a depressed individual’s access to firearms. The clearest example is the “Perfect Depression Care” initiative created by the Henry Ford Health System, a large scale suicide prevention program caring for nearly 200,000 high risk patients. This pioneering program initiated a number of policies, including asking patients about weapons (particularly firearms) in the home and strongly recommending that they be removed. The results were staggering. Before the initiative began in 2001, the patient group was suffering a suicide rate of 89 per 100,000 (much higher than the general population). By the end of the study period in the first quarter of 2010, the patient group hadn’t experienced a single suicide since 2007. The program’s policies limiting access to firearms likely saved hundreds of lives.
====
“Patients have come to us and said, ‘It’s a good idea that you had me take the gun out of my house; some nights I’d sleep with it on the pillow beside me.’”

So it appears that something can be done about gun violence in America and without violating the Second Amendment or imposing undue restrictions on gun ownership. It just takes us, all of us who want to reduce gun violence, calling and writing and emailing our congress persons to let them know that what the Gun Lobby has in money we have in votes. And we can take them away.

[Hoyt]

1. Sadly, 97% of gun fanciers don't care about deaths, accidents, wounds, intimidation, and

other avoidable gun incidents.

[flamin lib]

2. I think 97% is a bit high for the population at large.

At your average gun rights discussion group yes, but not most gun owners. 85% of NRA members support some form of regulation in addition to the existing laws.

Even so, only 32% of households admit to having guns. I'm sure that 32% votes with the same abysmal rate as non gun owners but assuming that everybody votes, if 15% of that 32% vote, the foam-at-the-mouth gunz nutz only accounts for 5% of the vote. (125,000,000 households x .32 = 40,000,000 x .15 = 6,000,000 possible foam induced votes). That's assuming that every foaming mouth household member votes the same way.

Like Saul Alinsky said, they (the gun lobby) have the money, we have the people.

[jimmy the one]

3. not without a trace

flaming lib: Two very interesting articles today at The Trace

I just signed up to receive their email today, then got directed to the website. I don't care for O'Malley (tho his guncontrol policies are fine), since I saw him on TV & when asked a specific question he diverted onto a planned speech about something entirely different for 2 minutes - was wondering why the interviewer didn't reply 'I'll take that as non responsive'. He is obviously imo just in it to gain experience for a possible (but hopefully not) future effort, or to gain attention or publicity. I doubt he will ever be president.

Here was a good one from the Trace (Bloomberg's Everytown for Gun Safety magazine; go get the nra bums:

sep 15, 2015: NRA Campaign Contributions Under Investigation in Connecticut Following Activists’ Probe
..he Connecticut State Election Enforcement Commission (SEEC) is launching a formal investigation into whether the National Rifle Association violated the state’s campaign finance law. The probe comes just weeks after a group of young activists filed a complaint with the SEEC alleging that the gun group had directed thousands of dollars from its national political action committee to state-level campaigns. In certain states - Connecticut being one - such tactics are illegal.
The Trace’s Mike Spies reported on the Connecticut complaint in August. The unlikely muckraker spearheading the charges: Sam Bell, a Brown University doctoral student who just two years earlier dredged up nearly identical irregularities with the NRA’s political contributions to lawmakers in Rhode Island. That investigation resulted in a $63,000 fine for the gun group, and inspired Bell to follow up on the number of “fishy things” he discovered in the process of his work.
One of the complainants leveled nearly-identical accusations last year in the neighboring state of Rhode Island. In the summer of 2013, Sam Bell, a Brown University doctoral student in geology and the state coordinator of the Rhode Island Progressive Democrats, was searching for answers to what he deemed an illogical turn of events: Bell had been part of an effort to pass an assault weapons ban in his state, which is overwhelmingly Democratic, and it had failed spectacularly. The mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, was still a recent memory, but local politicians could not be swayed. Bell, 26, heard the NRA had donated significant funds to state officials, and decided to investigate.

In Rhode Island, campaigns and state PACs are not required to report the sources of donations worth less than $100. The average campaign finance disclosure form therefore shows a mix of higher dollar donations, along with the names of their donors, and amounts below the $100 threshold with their provenance not listed. Bell noticed that the NRA’s state affiliate, which had given money to many elected officials, did not report the names of any of its donors at all.
The total reliance of anonymous donors, to Bell, suggest a stream of dollars coming from outside the state: By staying under the $100 mark, the NRA could obscure its use of outside money — cash from people who live elsewhere in the country — to influence elections and legislation in Rhode Island. It was also able to skirt the state’s campaign finance laws, under which, as with those in Connecticut, the practice is illegal.
Bell checked the campaign finance report of NRA’s federal political action committee, The NRA Political Victory Fund. Then he analyzed the report of its Rhode Island affiliate. He found that both committees had recorded donations of the same dollar amounts to the same candidates. But a look at the candidate’s report showed only one NRA-affiliated donation, which, according to Bell, indicated that the money had originated with the federal PAC and been transferred to the state organization before being given to the state campaigns. The discovery prompted Bell to file a complaint with the Rhode Island Board of Elections. In 2014, the regulatory body fined the gun lobbying group $63,000.
Bell was curious about whether the NRA had broken similar laws in other states... they discovered what they believe is evidence that the NRA may have committed the same violation in Connecticut, and quickly moved to file a complaint.
http://www.thetrace.org/2015/09/nra-connecticut-campaign-finance-violation/

[jimmy the one]

4. ABA legislation to repeal SYG laws

THE BULLETIN: SEPTEMBER 29, 2015
More from the American Bar Association's Stinging Report on Stand Your Ground

Yesterday, we brought you the story behind a bill that would give shooters who claim self defense even more legal protection in Florida.... the legislation was filed just as the American Bar Association was preparing the final draft of a report recommending the repeal of Stand Your Ground laws.

Today we take a closer look at that report, which will become public later this week. (The Trace viewed an advance copy.)

If our aim is to increase criminal justice system costs, increase medical costs, increase racial tension, maintain our high adolescent death rate and put police officers at greater risk, then this is good legislation. But if we are to use science and data and logic and analysis to drive sensible public policy, then there is no reliable and credible evidence to support laws that encourage stand your ground and shoot your neighbor.
For more details from the report, including a breakdown of the ABA's suggestions for reforming Stand Your Ground...
http://thetrace.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ede67bec056d768ad181c8db1&id=8b6703233b&e=51348b1b85