With all the talk about guns after the shooting at Sandy Hook, it seems to be boiling down to two things. (1) Simi Automatics that hold more than 10 shots and (2) Back ground checks for people who purchase guns at gun shows. To make this a little more logical, I thought that I would resort to some 4th grade math, here goes.
Just for the record, they guy at Sandy Hook would not be affected by anything that is currently under discussion except for an armed guard in the school and even that would not be more than about 75% affective. I just want to remind everyone that the only thing we can do is to "reduce" the number of kids killed, not totally stop the killing.
We already have tight controls on full automatics and to my knowledge, there has never been any mass murders done with any full automatic rifles obtained under current law. For that simple reason, I do not see any need for further discussion about full automatic rifles, except for the enforcement of current law. No new laws would help the situation.
My numbers may not agree with those of some of yours, so if they don't just apply your numbers and I think we will both end up in the same place. I do not see any of the new laws being discussed affecting the number of guns now in the hands of people. If that is the case, these new laws can only affect "first time legal buyers". Further, they will have no affect on "first time illegal buyers". As you can see, we are down to just "first time legal buyers". To get some idea of just how big of a group this is, let's run a few numbers.
We now have back ground checks and waiting periods for guns purchased from licensed gun dealers. The two areas where we do not now require background checks is for sales at gun shows and private sales. It is a fact that we are never going to be able to enforce background checks on private sales. I say this because, we have not been able to stop private drug sales and there are a 100 times more of them. We can't even keep drugs out of our prisons, so I rest my case on this point. That leaves only the gun shows.
Now, who buys guns at gun shows? 99% of the people already own one or more guns. Some own hundreds. By far the most guns purchased at gun shows are by collectors who already own several guns so that I estimate that no more than 1% of the guns purchased at gun shows are "first time buyers". Next, I estimate that no more than 2% of all guns sold are by way of gun shows. Most guns are sold by licensed gun dealers and Wal-Mart is the largest of those. Now comes the math. We said earlier that these new laws only really affect "first time buyers", so what do we have? If 2% of all guns are sold at gun shows and only 1% of those are to "first time buyers", what percentage of guns sold are we really going to affect. It works out to the fact that we are going to affect 2 guns out of 10,000 sold. That is the number.
Now, how much do you think that is really going to affect our safety? The number is "zero". Like most actions, there is another side. What is it going to cost for what ever benefit we think we are going to get? It is really not "zero", but it is very close. The way you calculate this one is to find out what it cost for each gun and divide that by the number of problem guns or people identified. If it has a cost of $10 to do a back ground check, and we spot 2/10,000, then the cost per each problem we find is $50,000. You know and I know that there is no way that we can do a good back ground check for just $10, so the cost is much more. Finally, we have to ask, "is it worth it?" That answer is easy. No!!!
PS--- When you divide any number by "zero", the cost of any benefit that you get is "infinite". Even a "one-mover" can figure out that if the cost is "infinite" that it is not worth doing. Just remember that.
