Remember, they aren’t coming for our guns. Or so they keep telling us
One way to reduce gun deaths: restrict big bullets and guns
The bigger the gun, the deadlier it is. Or, rather, the bullet.
The Washington Post’s Christopher Ingraham on Friday highlighted a study published in the journal JAMA Network Open that found larger-caliber firearms are much likelier to kill a shooting victim than smaller-caliber ones. Caliber measures the internal diameter of the barrel of the gun, or how wide the bullet is.
Analyzing data on hundreds of shootings in Boston between 2010 and 2014, researchers Anthony Braga of Northeastern University and Philip Cook of Duke University discovered that on a bullet-by-bullet basis, shootings with larger-caliber guns were deadlier than smaller-caliber handguns, but they’re not more accurate. Shootings with a medium-caliber weapon were 2.3 times likelier to result in death than with a small-caliber gun; large-caliber guns increased the odds of death by 4.5 times compared to small-caliber guns.
Well, um, yeah. That’s kinda the way it works. I openly carry my Walther P22, which is a .22LR caliber weapons, as a deterrent, not necessarily to kill an attacker. I don’t want to have to pull the trigger. Having a gun pointed at your face will make most people stop. If you break in my home, I’m pulling the 9mm, though.
This is what they consider to be sizes
Actually, guns do kill people, according to a new study https://t.co/CUjjPGUbNR pic.twitter.com/hhlqmHQIna
— Barry Ritholtz (@Ritholtz) July 28, 2018
Notice anything missing? Where’s the .223/5.56 ammo, which is the predominant caliber in all those scary “assault rifles” like the Frightening AR-15? It’s almost like they left it out on purpose. It would most likely be classified as a medium caliber, or at least around the low end on large caliber
“Whether a victim of a serious assault lives or dies is to a large extent a matter of chance, rather than a question of the assailant’s intent,†Braga and Cook write. “The probability of death is connected to the intrinsic power and lethality of the weapon. That suggests that effective regulation of firearms could reduce the homicide rate.â€
In other words, having fewer big guns on the streets could make gun violence in America less deadly.
In other words, they want to grab the larger caliber weapons and bullets from the law abiding citizens, who use them to protect themselves and their families from criminals. I have to wonder, would these gun grabbers also restrict ownership from law enforcement, which has embraced the .40 and 10mm calibers? They’re guns are lost and stolen, as well.
If you are justified in shooting someone, you are justified in killing him. You should never shoot anyone or anything you do not intend to kill.
The problem isn’t the weapon, but people using weapons when there is no legal justification to do so.
“Caliber measures the internal diameter of the barrel of the gun, or how wide the bullet is.”
Well, close, but details have been omitted. Caliber is the designation of the round, which is related to the diameter of the barrel, at either the top of the rifling (lands) or bottom of the rifling (grooves), in most cases. But a bunch of rounds designated, say, 7.62mm are not at all the same caliber. Russian designs 7.62×25, 7.62×39, and 7.62x54R are not the same caliber! By the way, 7.62 is .30″ at the lands (.308 to .311 at the grooves), so 7.62×39 is small caliber, a bit smaller than a .32 Auto. It sends the bullet downrange a lot faster than a 32 auto of course, because its much longer case is packed full of gunpowder. The 5.56×45, often found in evil black rifles, is an even smaller bullet (between .22LR and .25 auto) and has even more powder.
Bigger caliber pistol rounds are more likely to kill because more momentum and energy are imparted to the target, so a hit is more likely to penetrate deeper and do critical damage. Still, shot placement is key.
A .22 long rifle slug in your head will kill you just as dead as a .50 caliber through your chest. All you need do is learn to aim.
I’;d have to look it up to find it, but years ago there was a Supreme Court case that ruled that you cannot restrict a right by what was called an “upstream activity.”
The case involved a town that wanted to ban an artist’s work and gallery. (He liked painting nudes.) They knew they couldn’t ban his paintings as they were protected by the First Amendment, so they banned artist oil paints within the town. The law made it illegal to own tubes of oil paint.
The SCOTUS said that was a non-starter because by restricting the ownership of oils, you were restricting the person’s First Amendment rights.
The same should hold true here. If you are restricting ammunition, you are in fact restricting an protected right.
“Whether a victim of a serious assault lives or dies is to a large extent a matter of chance, rather than a question of the assailant’s intent,†Braga and Cook write. “The probability of death is connected to the intrinsic power and lethality of the weapon. That suggests that effective regulation of firearms could reduce the homicide rate.â€
In other words, having fewer big guns on the streets could make gun violence in America less deadly.
actually, fewer assailants would reduce homicide rate. Assailants killed during the course of their own crime, if I recall correctly, are not counted in state’s homicide rates.
But, if victims are dying due to being shot by bad guys, then we need to make sure people are more protected against bad guys with guns.