Is it time to talk about guns?

I don't know what his has to do with anything...but Randy Weaver, of Ruby Ridge, was associated with the Aryan Nation, sold illegal shotguns, refused to appear in court on that charge, refused to surrender after a warrant was issued for refusing to appear at two different court hearings, refused to return phone calls to his legal U.S. Probation Officer, or legal representative and was therefore considered a fugitive.

He was offered several chances to surrender, but refused.

After three Federal Marshals identified themselves while in the woods surrounding the Weaver cabin ordered the Weavers to stop and not approach, Sammy Weaver did approach with his dog. The dog was shot by the marshals wherein Sammy shot at the marshals. A gun fight ensued between Sammy and Kevin Harris in which Sammy and a Federal Marshal were killed.
The Weavers still refused to surrender.
An order was given to shot on sight the next day.
Vicki Weaver was short by a sniper.
They still refused to surrender.
After three days they still refused to surrender.
On the fourth day the shoot to kill order was rescinded.
They still refused to surrender.
After 8 days Randy Weaver, who had been wounded, surrendered.
The rest still refused to surrender.

Finally after 9 days the rest surrendered after given an ultimatum that if they did not surrender a tactical assault would ensue.

So after all that you can see that this is not a typical case of the government wanting to take your guns, and if the Randy Weaver had just appeared at his court hearing for selling illegal guns, regardless of how the government reacted, nothing would have happened.

 

The bottom line is they were enforcing a law agaisnt a criminal who was a fugitive.

 

They did the first time,

He was released on bail and returned to his cabin, which he then refused to leave.

Vicki Weaver was not a target, but was shot by a bullet aimed at Randy Weaver as she was on the other side of a door.
The shot was later determined to be unjustified, although allowed by the rules of engagement.

Again all the deaths would have been avoided if Randy Weaver had simply not sold illegal guns and attended his court hearing.
Simple. He was found guilty of missing his court date and violating his probation and served less than 16 months.
A small price to pay for causing the deaths of three individuals.

 

First of all I don't know what independent sources are or what they are independent of, but be that as it may let's look at the studies in your Wikipedia source:

This is from Changes in US mass shooting deaths associated with the 1994–2004 federal assault weapons ban: Analysis of open-source data and is a compilation of: "Mass shooting data for 1981 to 2017 were obtained from three well-documented, referenced, and open-source sets of data, based on media reports." The principle author is part of the Department of Surgery, Division of Trauma and Critical Care Surgery (C.D., J.A., C.B., M.B., J.F., M.K., N.S., M.T., S.F.), New York University School of Medicine, New York, New York. Eight others participated in the research.
I would presume they are independent.
Findings, sizable effect.

Rand found a significant reduction.
Now Rand is highly respected internationally as a non profit organization that has existed for over 60 years and has employed 30 Noble Prize winners.
Maybe this is one of the researchers that are not considered independent, for some reason?

Quinnipiac University is nationally know for its research and surveys and is cited by many major sources in Europe and the U.S.including FOX.
Quinnipiac found a significant reduction. Independent source?

This is from the Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice. "The Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice publishes scholarly and practitioner-based research which examines how criminal justice institutions engage with the community and non-criminal justice agencies."
Couldn't find much else on them but they a small decrease followed by an increase. I would say they are independent of whatever.

This is a paper published by the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, a private independent German group that runs the largest research organization in the world.
Cross-Border Spillover: U.S. Gun Laws and Violence in Mexico
Findings, sizable effect.

From Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy with Evidence and Analysis Quote from the paper: "A new law similar to the old ban
will have little impact on most gun crimes, but it may prevent some shootings, particularly those involving high numbers of shots and victims. It may thus help to reduce the number and severity of mass shooting incidents as well as produce a small reduction in shootings overall."
Koper is a Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University, and a senior fellow and co-director of the evidence-based policing program in the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy. Does he qualify as independent?
Findings, sizable effect in mass shootings.

From an arm of the Justice Department paper titled: Updated Assessment of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003.
This is interesting as it points out that crime overall is not effected but..."the ban has been successful in reducing crimes with AWs" (assault weapons)....the grandfathering provision of the AW-LCM ban guaranteed that the effects of this law would occur only gradually over time. Those effects are still unfolding and may not be fully felt for several years into the future, particularly if foreign, pre-ban LCMs continue to be imported into the U.S. in large numbers." From the summery.
Findings, effect on mass shootings.

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I'm going to have to stop here as I'm running out of time and I haven't really proof read the above.
I'll get to the others when I get to them, but so far we see that every study has shown the ban was effective.

These to be checked out later:

 

Okay I'm back, let's look at these other studies.

This is from a paper titled, First Reports Evaluating the Effectiveness of Strategies for Preventing Violence: Early Childhood Home Visitation and Firearms Laws, put out by the CDC appointed independent Community Preventive Services Task Force.

It concerned a study done to determine the effectiveness of "early childhood home visitation on violence by visited children," initiated in the first two years of age.
The violence looked at was "violence by the visited child, against self or others; violence against the child (i.e., maltreatment that includes all forms of child abuse and neglect); violence by the visited parent, other than child maltreatment and intimate partner violence; and intimate partner violence. Violence by crime, mass shootings, suicide, etc. by outside agents was not addressed, at least in the paper provided by the link.

Now lets look at what they found in regard to insufficient evidence.
They had insufficient evidence of the effectiveness of:
early childhood home visitation in preventing violence by visited children and between adults.
early childhood home visitation in preventing violence by visited children.
early childhood home visitation in preventing violence by visited parents.
early childhood home visitation in preventing Intimate partner violence.

I couldn't find anything specifically about firearms in the link provident, other than the title.
But what does insufficient evidence of the effectiveness mean? Looks look at the Recommendations section.
"A finding of insufficient evidence to determine effectiveness should not be interpreted as evidence of ineffectiveness but rather as an indicator that additional research is needed before the effectiveness of the intervention can be determined."

So findings: Insufficient evidence was collected to determine the effect of gun laws on preventing violence in general on or by children who have been home visited in their first two years of age. However, insufficient evidence should not be interpreted as evidence of ineffectiveness.

 

Next up.

From a paper titled, Firearms and Violence: A Critical Review, from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
So let's look at the statement, "did not reveal any clear impacts on gun violence outcomes," (in regard to the assault weapon ban). Clearly the assault weapon ban only effected assault weapon shootings, not all gun violence. So it's just a clarifying statement that points out that you can illimitable all assault weapons and you will still have gun violence due to other guns. Duh.
In regard to violence that involved assault weapons it goes on to state that in the short term the rise in cost of grandfathered assault weapons due to the ban may have lessened their ownership by criminals. Which is good.
However the effect was short lived becasue of the rise in production of assault weapons prior to the ban, making more available after the ban, and the ease of substituting assault weapons which were unspecified in the ban, and the ease of altering legal weapons into assault weapons.

And the ban and study didn't last long enough.

Finding: The AWB did have an effect in limiting access to guns by criminals, however loopholes and failure to continue it diminished its effectiveness, and you can eliminate all assault weapons and you will still have gun violence due to other guns.

 

See above post. Same paper and I addressed it there.

I didn't buy the book, but this part again is saying that banning assault weapons (and the enactment of other gun laws) doesn't stop murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assaults. Well no shit Sherlock!
It also won't stop people from cheating on their taxes, speeding, embezzling funds, cheating on their spouses, bad hair cuts, and excessive tattoos.

Finding: a complete lack of logic.

From An examination of the effects of concealed weapons laws and assault weapons bans on state-level murder rates.
We need go no further than quoting from the Abstract: "It was also found that assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level," and "Using state-level data from 1970 to 1995, the authors found that the Federal ban had little to no effect on homicide rates associated with firearms and on gunshot wounds per victim." Yeah, people still murder people. The point is how easily, quickly, and effectively they do that.
It also states: "Laws may be ineffective due to loopholes and exemptions."

Findings: Even if assault weapons are banned, other guns can still be used to murder people. So instead of trying to limit the type of guns used to kill and thus lessen the danger, don't ban any guns at all. (Which I assume would include machine guns as the murders committed by guns is still high even though machine guns are highly restricted.)

Yeah, so what?