Wayne LaPierre, the leader of the National Rifle Association of America who served for decades as a fierce protector of the Second Amendment, advocating for firearms owners and manufacturers, is resigning days before his civil trial is set to begin.
The NRA announced Friday in a statement LaPierre is stepping down as executive vice president and chief executive officer, effective January 31.
Andrew Arulanandam, an NRA executive and head of general operations, will become the interim CEO and executive vice president of the organization, the NRA said on its website.
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New York Attorney General Letitia James in 2020 filed a lawsuit to dissolve the NRA, claiming the organization violated laws for non-profit groups and took millions for personal use and committed tax fraud. The case is set to go to trial on Monday.
A Defensive Gun Use, or DGU, is were a lawful gun owner uses a legally owned firearm to stop or prevent a crime. The overwhelming majority of DGUs (90+%) end with no shots fired; the criminal sees the gun and runs away.
You raise an interesting metric that expands the conversation. However, that metric introduced cannot be considered without its counter. If the majority of DGU results in no shots fired (non-discharge DGU events), and therefore contributes to the unreported positive influence of guns, the opposite must be introduced.
That being: crimes where a gun is brandished by the criminal as a means of coercion, but not discharged; non-discharge Offensive Gun Use events
I’m not even sure what statistics, if any, exist to capture enough data to draw a conclusion, but I would guess (with nothing to back up that guess) that non-discharge OGU events would outweigh the benefits of non-discharge DGU . At that point its also a subjective discussion.
How many non-discharge DGU events are enough to counter the non-discharge OGU events?
OGUs as you call them are almost certainly tracked, if only because they are almost all reported to the police and a crime has actually occurred so a record will be kept. I would be interested in looking at those numbers if you have any? I may search for that myself later on.
However when considering how to address this, we must keep in mind that laws don’t affect everybody equally. For example, if somebody is drag racing on public streets, lowering the speed limit from 45mph to 35mph will have no effect on them because they will continue to ignore the speed limit while driving at 90mph. But the law abiding people trying to get to work who follow the speed limit will be slowed down. Thus the good people are restricted and the criminal is unaffected.
Same is true with guns. The person who commits the OGU is already breaking the law, both in committing their crime and in using their gun to do it. You can make concealed carry illegal for example, but do you think that is going to reduce the number of criminals who carry guns? I don’t. It will however reduce the number of their law-abiding victims who are armed.
So when we consider what gun policy we should have, it’s helpful to remember that we’ve been trying to keep drugs out of criminals hands for about 50 years now, we’re spending tens of billions a year on it, and we’ve little progress to show for it. Drugs are still widely available. Guns are easier to make than drugs. Drugs require growing certain crops, processing them in a lab, etc. This takes weeks or months of grow time and specialized equipment and chemicals that don’t have legit ‘day shift’ uses. In comparison, schematics for just about any gun are available online, and any decent machine shop can turn out a workable copy. Unlike the drug lab, that machine shop has a legitimate ‘day shift’ use and can operate in the open.
Point being, I don’t think that you can prevent criminals from having guns by restricting the ability of law abiding citizens to own or carry them. Didn’t work with drugs, doesn’t work with guns either.
OGUs as you call them are almost certainly tracked, if only because they are almost all reported to the police and a crime has actually occurred so a record will be kept. I would be interested in looking at those numbers if you have any? I may search for that myself later on.
I don’t think it likely that every time a person brandishes a gun or shows a holstered gun during a crime that it is reported to the police.
However when considering how to address this, we must keep in mind that laws don’t affect everybody equally. For example, if somebody is drag racing on public streets, lowering the speed limit from 45mph to 35mph will have no effect on them because they will continue to ignore the speed limit while driving at 90mph. But the law abiding people trying to get to work who follow the speed limit will be slowed down. Thus the good people are restricted and the criminal is unaffected.
Same is true with guns. The person who commits the OGU is already breaking the law, both in committing their crime and in using their gun to do it. You can make concealed carry illegal for example, but do you think that is going to reduce the number of criminals who carry guns? I don’t. It will however reduce the number of their law-abiding victims who are armed.
You’re making a very good argument for a repeal of the 2nd Amendment and banning guns completely. I wasn’t thinking about going quite that far, but you’re starting to convince me.
Guns are easier to make than drugs. Drugs require growing certain crops, processing them in a lab, etc. This takes weeks or months of grow time and specialized equipment and chemicals that don’t have legit ‘day shift’ uses. In comparison, schematics for just about any gun are available online, and any decent machine shop can turn out a workable copy. Unlike the drug lab, that machine shop has a legitimate ‘day shift’ use and can operate in the open.
This must be why Europe, Japan, Australia and dozens of other nations with gun bans are awash with illegal guns, mass shootings are a regular event, and incidents of firearms used in the commission of other crime are so common in those nations…except they aren’t.
The assassination of former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe was killed with a firearm made in a machine shop equal to an commercial grade weapon…except it was this instead:
This uses black powder obtained by from fireworks with with only two shots before lengthy reloading process would be required. It would also have all of the flaws and failures of the primitive firearm it is allowing intervention of the shooter in many cases.
If the this homemade gun is the result of laws controlling the mass spread of firearms, then I think they would be considered a resounding success.
Point being, I don’t think that you can prevent criminals from having guns by restricting the ability of law abiding citizens to own or carry them.
How is it nearly every other nation on the planet is able to largely accomplish this but you claim its impossible?
