Does any gun control make sense?

[Hunter Customs]

I voted #1 on your survey as I'm a staunch supporter of the 2A., and do not support any type of compromise of the 2A.

That does not translate to me being hard hearted and having no concern for the children and adults being killed.

Back in my day right and wrong was taught at home and no amount of gun control laws will ever replace that, it may be best if we get back to those basics.

Best Regards
Bob Hunter
www.huntercustoms.com

[NavyVet1959]

The problem is that (as history has shown numerous times), any sort of compromise that we reach with the leftists is then just used by them as a new staring point to further take away our 2nd Amendment guaranteed rights. The time for compromise is over! We need to put THEM on the defensive for a change. Instead of letting them slowly nibble away at our rights, we need to take them back.

We can start by trying to repeal NFA34 and GCA68. The leftist will balk, so we'll "compromise" and agree to just unregulate suppressors.

Next year, try to repeal them again and then "compromise" and agree to just unregulate short barreled rifles and shotguns.

Each year, shoot for the moon, but settle for something a bit less. The main point is that we take back ground that the clueless idiots before us (including the NRA) allowed the leftists to take.

[40-82]

I voted against any gun control, but I will make one concession. Say a healthy adult chooses to appear in public without a concealed weapon, I would leave that to him and not charge him with a safety violation the way we would if he operated a motor vehicle without using his seat belts or a motorboat without life jackets on board.

When gun control people talk reasonable restrictions what they really mean is that they're talking political realities. They lie about not wanting total prohibition of firearms, and they're just trying to keep the issue alive by prohibiting something, figuring that if I often hunt with a single shot rifle that I won't fight too hard when they try to restrict extended magazines. Reasonable restrictions are important because even the most liberal contributors might balk at donating to organizations fighting for a total firearms ban because such a measure will pass nowhere in the United States in the immediate future, but they can hope that a restriction on a type of weapon or accessory that most shooters don't use has a chance of sneaking through while nobody is looking.

Same problem with competency tests, I might recognize that a given individual may lack either the character or the training to handle firearms safely and competently. My solution is to avoid him. If I accept that testing this kind of competency is within the government's purview, I have just surrendered all of my rights.

The ultimate difference between the two camps is that some people believe that they have individual rights; whereas, others believe that the power of government extends to anything that the government chooses to take an interest in.

Gun control makes sense from one point of view. If as mayor of New York, and high sovereign over the United States of America, if you were going to send one of your public health workers to take the sugary soft drink out of my hands wouldn't you want first to make sure that another agency had already relieved me of my guns, knives, and all other pointed tools?

[44 AMP]

What gun laws do you not see being enforced?

How about the laws where a prohibited person commits a crime when they try to purchase a firearm? For one.

Politicians claim "thousands" of denials, saying the system works, because of that, and implying they are personally responsible for the "good" that does, because they put the law in place.

But when confronted with the (verifiable) fact that out of those "thousands, only a handful of those people have been prosecuted, and (at the time) NONE had been convicted, from his own lips, our Vice President said,

"We don't have time for that..."

Or how about the "mandatory sentence" laws for committing a crime using a gun? They aren't really working, either. Why? Simply because criminals seldom actually face those charges in court.

They are being used, mostly, as bargaining chips. Often the deal is, dropping the gun charge for a guilty plea to the main charge.

SO, they do have an effect, BUT not the intended effect. I don't think a crook avoiding 10 years on a gun charge by pleading guilty to 3-5 for assault (or whatever) is what the people who created those laws had in mind.

Also the laws requiring "ballistic fingerprinting" (another made up BS term), or a fired case from the gun. Millions of dollars spent, hundreds of thousands of man hours that might have actually been used for something useful, wasted. And to date, not a single conviction as a result of all the effort and money.

Some places have abandoned these programs, finally admitting they were a waste of resources, but not all have..yet.

There are other examples, if you look.

Some of the laws simply do not do what they are claimed to do. Others are not being applied in a manner that allows them to do what they were intended to do. And others are simply not enforced at all, or with barely lip service.

If you can look past the slogans and emotions, you can see this is the case. Calling for more laws, seems, to me, like drilling holes in the bottom of a leaky boat, to let the water out...

[cryogenic419]

Honestly, I think there are far too many gun laws as is, the need for more just seems to be reaching for a solution which cannot be obtained through more legislation, I'll explain further in.

The background check system has been a hot topic in the last few years. I know this is going to be a broad stroke here but I think the system works in that it does block felons from buying a gun from a licensed gun dealer. Adding mental health data seems like a logical next step to make sure it is as thorough as can be, but I think the dilemma for a lot of people is this...what would be classified as a mental disqualifier? Would someone who's entire family was killed in a car crash and they are taking anti depressants and seeking therapy, even if they are only on the medication and getting therapy as a result of the horrible accident and in no way are a danger to anyone be put on the "no gun" list? If so, how long are they on it, is there any way to dispute being placed on that list in a timely manner. What about vets who are suffering from PTSD? Are they on that list forever? What about police officers who are in high stress environments everyday? If they seek any sort of counseling would that automatically put them on that "no gun" list? I think there are ALOT of questions that need answered before they just add a mental health disqualifier to the NICS system. I am not willing to give anyone a blank check to just add that to the NICS system and be told "we'll fill in the details later".

I don't think a safety class should be required, I do think that since we pay an excise tax on firearms and ammunition a voluntary safety class should be made available if one so chooses and paid for from the taxes that are collected from the sale of these items. If such a class were made available I think there would need to be a national standard curriculum on what is taught in the class. Would you mandate a parenting class before people are allowed to reproduce? A class before people are allowed to vote? There are some people who probably should not have children but it's their right to do so. I think its safe to say some people's poor parenting has done far more damage than me or my guns will ever cause.

You mention drivers licenses, perhaps I am just old school but I was raised that driving is not a right, it is a priviledge. I think concealed carry licenses should auto-renew the same as a drivers license. You could kill someone with your car while drunk with a pound of cocaine in the trunk, and after your jailtime has been served you can actually apply to get your drivers license back. Funny how the same forgiveness is not afforded to gun ownership.

Registration, another fiery topic in the last few years. With registration comes licensing correct? You mention that we have to register our cars and boats. Would guns be afforded the same treatment as a car, meaning I could go state to state with my firearms and not be subject to some of their laws. With a car, you can live in a state that does not require front license plates, travel into a state that does, but because your car is registered in a state that does not require them you are legal to drive around without a front plate. Would the same logic of "its legal in the state where it is registered" apply to guns as well. It would also trouble me that I would end up having to pay some sort of fee for registering anything to exercise my right. You can't charge folks to register to vote, if I remember correctly they call that a poll tax and its illegal. The same rule should apply to firearms if they were to start up some sort of registration scheme but lets be honest, we know that they would find some way around it just so they can dig a little deeper into our wallets. Perhaps I wouldn't be so against registration and a little more open to the idea if I knew that firearms would be given the same treatment as cars and boats. Licensing probably ties into this as well, just because the registration for a gun says it belongs to John Doe doesn't mean you are the John Doe it belongs to, do you have your firearms owners license proving you are the John Doe it belongs to. Again I am troubled at the amount of hoops I would have to jump through to exercise my rights. Perhaps if we were to apply the licensing aspect to exercising other rights I would feel a little more comfortable with this. No free speech without attending a special class and obtaining a special ID card stating you have completed said class. Showing ID at the voting booth so we can make sure you are who you say you are. It sounds reasonable to me.

Open carry. I think some of these folks are doing it just to get attention. I get it, but at the same time I think they are coming across as "extremists" which usually gets a lot of negative attention. If they just went about their day with a gun openly carried I don't think it would be an issue. Its when 20 of them decide to go get breakfast at a Dennys with AR's across their backs, it freaks people out. Yes it's legal, but its freaking people out and perhaps isn't the best way to get your point across.

I mentioned in the beginning about too many gun laws as is. Politicians and anti gun groups feel the answer to so many of the problems out there is more laws. We have laws out there right now which are not being aggressively enforced, ok to hell with aggressively enforced, there are laws just plain out not being enforced at all. We have jail systems that are overcrowded, court systems which hand out lightweight sentences for violent crimes. Then everybody scratches their heads and wonder why things are getting so out of hand. People who should be in prison are wandering the streets, they've seen firsthand that there really are no consequences to their actions. If there are no consequences, whats to stop them from doing whatever they want.

I'm in no way advocating turning things into a police state at all, nor am I advocating locking people up just because they spit on the sidewalk. How about we find a way to deal with violent criminals that gets them off the streets. The quick and easy answer is more prisons so that courts can actually give out sentences with some teeth. Unfortunately its not the fix all solution and it would not be long before the costs associated with this would eat us alive. We could build enough prisons to effectively house a million new criminals and it would not be long before those places would be at max capacity. I think deterrence is part of the solution. Not all criminals start out with big crimes. If the punishment for the smaller crimes had teeth and being imprisoned was a miserable experience would we see a reduction in repeat offenders? If word got out that we have the capacity to house prisoners and that if you commit the crime, you're doing the time and its not going to be a fun journey would that possibly make some folks think twice? I don't know the answer to that. In my head it seems logical, but I am also not of that mindset so I don't know how somebody who thinks its ok to rob a gas station would view it.

How does enforcing existing laws and the ability to effectively punish lawbreakers and criminals tie into no more gun laws. You can put out all the new laws you want, criminals will not follow that. Drugs are outlawed, yet the criminals never really seem to have issue getting what they want do they? If you ban those evil black rifles or deadly high capacity magazines, or put in place only 1 gun a year laws, or run background checks so deep that your little league baseball coach from 30 years ago gets a call asking if he thinks you should be allowed to own a gun, do you truly believe its going to make a difference to criminals? I think fixing the problems is a multi tiered approach. Background checks are already in place and if somebody can't pass the thing they aren't walking out of the gunshop with a firearm. Next is enforcement of laws. We don't need to pass anything...its already law. Its illegal to be a straw purchaser or knowingly sell firearms to a felon. How about we start there? Investigate the crimes, arrest the suspects involved. Next it goes to court where the judicial system sees the evidence and decides guilty or not guilty, and when needed hands out the sentences. Holy crap it might actually work, lord knows we've tried just about everything else and guess what, we already have these things in place, no need to pass new laws, no need to further burden law abiding folks with more rules and regulations because of the actions of a few bad apples. Seems people think that adding more rules and laws will fix the issue when a HUGE part of the problem is that we simply aren't following the ones that are already in place.

Sorry for such a long post, I know it seems to go on and on, but I've had a lot of coffee this morning.

[Tom Servo]

I'm sorry Tom, but if the spat of recent mass shootings is not enough proof for you, I don't know what would suffice.

Again, that's a cheap rhetorical tactic used by the other side. The fact that we've had a few heinous public shootings does not prove we need more restrictions on the law-abiding. It doesn't prove anything other than the fact that crazy people sometimes engage in mass shootings.

By that logic, a spate of DUI fatalities on the highways following Memorial Day weekend proves we need to lower speed limits and restrict automobile ownership.

I am not the anti-gun lobby. Do you feel that mass shootings are the norm and that we are powerless to prevent or reduce them?

More cheap, manipulative emotional rhetoric. The problem is, it's behind the curve. I've heard it already. Whether it starts with "I'm a gun owner, but..." or not, it's fairly transparent.

Law abiding gun owners didn't shoot those people. Law abiding gun owners didn't tell families and law enforcement to drop the ball. I have no obligation to do anything.

Even when gun owners do make a suggestion, it's derided as clueless and insulting if it involves anything besides restricting gun ownership. No thanks.

What gun laws do you not see being enforced?

The most common are straw purchase charges being pled out and dropped. It's supposed to be a ten-year felony. The defendants who do get convicted of it usually get probation for less than two years.

The same goes for felons in possession of firearms. The excuses are that the DA doesn't have the time, the jails are too full, or they have bigger fish to fry.

Ensuring that guns are properly and securely stored would have certainly prevented Lanza from gaining access to his mother's guns.

Really? "Certainly" is certainly a fuzzy word. What evidence do you have that Lanza certainly could not have breached whatever storage our imaginary law dictates? Bear in mind this is a person who was willing to kill his own mother, then go on to kill 20 children and himself. Tell me a steel lockbox would have stopped him. Go ahead.

I believe secured guns would have prevented Columbine as well.

You might want to do some better research on that. One of the guns used in the Columbine shooting was a pistol acquired through a straw purchase. The others were acquired by the girlfriend of one of the shooters. She actually became something of a celebrity on the gun-control circuit for a bit after that.

How many children bring guns to school and accidentally shoot other children because of unsecured guns?

Then go prosecute the parents of those kids for negligence. The law provides for that. Don't throw that blanket over all gun owners, because...

The problem is that police cannot go from home to home and ensure guns are securely stored.

Yeah, there it is. You are aware of the 4th Amendment, right? Or is the mission of gun control so righteous that little things like that can go out the window?

Oh, but it's for the children? Heard it. Try again.

[wogpotter]

The term "sensible" to the anti-gun crowd may be to ban everything, but let's not get caught up on semantics here.

Unfortunately semantics is the name of the game so we have to get involved.
I'll tell you what.

You itemize the full list of what you consider "reasonable" or "Sensible" & then I'll know what you are thinking so I can respond.

[Evan Thomas]

Originally Posted by stephen426

My purpose for this thread is not to "appease" the anti-gun lobby. I believe that the mass shootings should NOT be the norm and that we are NOT POWERLESS to reduce them. I know prevention may well be impossible, but a significant reduction would be a great start.

It's absurd to say that mass shootings are the norm. They are a tiny, tiny fraction of (theoretically) preventable deaths in this country, and the amount of energy and money spent on trying to find ways to prevent them could be far better spent.

From the CDC report on firearms violence released last year:

According to the Congressional Research Service, public mass shootings “have claimed 547 lives and led to an additional 476 injured victims” since 1983 (Bjelopera et al., 2013, pp. 7-8). Mass shootings are a highly visible and moving tragedy, but represent only a small fraction of total firearm-related violence. (p.31)

Over 30 years, that averages to just over 18 deaths per year. The numbers vary widely from one year to another (as you'd expect when the totals are so small). While some studies suggest that the number of incidents per year is increasing (Active Shooter Events from 2000 to 2012), others show they've been relatively consistent over the last 30 to 40 years (Why Can't Anyone Agree How Many Mass Shootings There Have Been In 2013? ); this discrepancy is due largely to the fact that different authors have defined "mass shooting" in different ways. But no matter which set of data one looks at, the number of yearly deaths from mass shootings is very small compared to the overall number of murders, on the order of 1% of the total.

And compared to other causes of "excess mortality," mass shootings are a miniscule source: according to an article from Scientific American, recent studies show that deaths from medical mistakes in US hospitals total between 210,000 and 440,000 per year, which makes them the third leading cause of death in the US. Comparing the two, deaths from mass shootings are 0.001% to 0.003% of that number. (Yeah, that's thousandths of a percent.)

One wonders why Moms Demand Action isn't demanding action on that.

The whole issue is a howling waste of time and money.

[Brian Pfleuger]

The start of making gun control "reasonable" is the repeal of every current law and regulation and reversal of every executive order related to firearms.
Then we can talk. Until then, we're already way past "reasonable".
Google "LawDog cake gun control"

[SHR970]

stephen426 I would like to point out as few things.

Regarding the argument "Shall not be infringed", do you truly believe that means everything goes? When the constitution was ratified in 1791, flint-lock guns were still being used. The Colt revolver wasn't even invented for another 44 years. Fast forward to modern day weapons with high capacity magazines and fully automatic weapons. The destructive force is exponentially greater than what the founding fathers probably could have ever imagined.

And newspapers were slow to print and distribute. The radio, television, and internet were far from even a dream. Now we have the ability to destroy a persons reputation internationally, nearly instantaneously, and permanently with them having little ability to clear their names as sensationally as they were destroyed. Yet when the subject of restrictions on the "press" are brought up (paparazzi laws as one example) the howl and cry makes the progun crowd seem like mutes. There is no "shall not be infringed" clause on the 1st Amendment nor any other of the BoR. Amazingly I can thinkl of few of the BoR that have been restricted as much as the 2nd. And funny how only in the 2nd so many of the populace and "our betters" think that The People does not refer to us the individual but rather the collective.

Do you honestly believe that fully automatic weapons should be readily available to anyone? What about explosive devices?

These things were commonly available to the general public. Full auto by mail order if you wanted it up until 1934. And the SCOTUS case used to uphold the NFA can be torn to shreds based on the majority opinion basing things on military usefulness and the current military limited issue weapons. I am referring to the short barreled shotgun.

Dynamite was still fairly available until the Oklahoma City incident for use in removing stumps and other legitimate uses. You could get it at the local farmers co-op.

Why not make nukes available to anyone if you don't want your rights infringed upon?

Now you are in the territory of needing Bill Gates levels of money to just afford one. The market place pretty well covers that. And the difference of making something like Ricin and weaponizing Ricin is also a matter of cost. Making mustard gas or one of many other like substances is not all that hard if you have some knowledge of chemistry. The chemicals needed are not really that hard to buy. But risk / reward handles that too. Since a variety of incidents have been brought up; how many people recall that in Columbine that the young men made and planted numerous bombs? Things would have been a lot worse if the bombs had gone off as per the plan.

Since we are going to the far side, how about artillery? Did you know that many of the cannon used by the Continental army were privately owned? Did you know that if you wanted one and could afford it that you too could own one unrestricted until the NFA? Did you know barring state laws, that you too can currently own a 20 mm cannon? Who needs a 20 mm Lahti anti tank gun? How about a 75 mm cannon? There are some functioning guns in current circulation. How about a tank? Yes I mean a functioning tank....there are more than a handful in private hands this very day. One gentleman in N.California has a rather extensive collection.

Oh, and what about children's rights? Should they not have the right to keep and bear arms since they are less capable of defending themselves against a full grown adult?

Easily into the 70's if not the 80's kids took guns to school in their vehicles to go hunting after school. Having "children" banned from having access to guns, child proofing laws, etc. are recent legislative contrivances.

stephen426: I do enjoy the thought you have brought to this discussion. Though I disagree with your premise; I have enjoyed reading the thought you have put into it. I have also enjoyed the thought that many responders have put into their points / counterpoints. An enjoyably civil discourse.

[kilimanjaro]

What makes sense to me:

Concealed carry permits
NICS system for commercial sales
NICS system at gun shows
Felons and aliens not allowed guns
Five or ten years prison time for crimes with a gun
Adjudicated mentally ill not allowed guns
NFA licenses and checks

Beyond that, it's political nonsense.

[jersurf101]

I believe the only sensible road for us to take is negotiating to get bad laws off the books for those that make more sense. For instance getting suppressors out of NFA and beefing up NCIS backround checks. But this is scary territory because when you involve the Federal Government there typically nobody or the right people do not win. Common sense seems to be severely lacking in our federal governing bodies.

We could rearrange some laws to ease the hearts and minds but it would need to be quid pro quo not just giving ground to the antis.

[Ruger480]

I personally think we are looking at this the wrong way. I do not think gun control/laws are the answer. Fixing the situation much more difficult than just writing some new laws into effect or changing the current ones.

I believe that the real problem is society itself. To be more specific, we have a problem with societal decay but the magnitude of the effort to reverse it is so daunting that people shy away from it as unrealistic. It is then that they look for the easy answer, like gun control.

So, I'm voting for no gun control. I don't thinks guns are the problem

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Originally Posted by stephen426

So what types of "controls" would you, my fellow TFL members, feel is reasonable and would prevent some of the senseless tragedies that have been occurring way too frequently? I know that law abiding citizens are the only ones who will abide by gun laws and that they are not the ones perpetrating these crimes.

I have zero interest in making any concessions while there are still so many nonsense gun laws on the book. Just to give one example, if I buy a rifle with a 14.5" barrel, it takes over a year, $200, and a background check designed in 1934 before I can own it - because that rifle is "too concealable". If I buy a Tavor with a 16" barrel that is actually shorter than the above rifle, I can walk out the door the same day with a same day background check that was designed in the 1990s.

One more example, do you realize that one of the "concessions" that the antis offered in 2013 to pass more gun control was to stop prosecuting gun owners who had to stay overnight in NY or NJ due to an unplanned forced layover. We are talking prosecutions of otherwise law abiding people who didn't even plan to be in those states, let alone overnight, in spite of the. 1986 FOPA designed to protect against this. Think about that for a second, what would you say to someone who told you they were going to keep prosecuting non-criminals who tried to comply with the law for owning a gun unless you accepted even more gun control?

I would like to see a strengthening of NICS to allow doctors to report patients they feel are mentally unstable.

You are OK with allowing ANY unelected doctor to deprive a citizen of an express right described in the Bill of Rights without a hearing in front of a judge? Do I understand that correctly?

This could have prevented Cho in the VA Tech shootings as well as Holmes in the Aurora, CO theater.

No, your facts are wrong in both these cases. Cho had been in front of a judge and had a hearing. He was not reported to NICS because Virginia did not intend that hearing to remove his Second Amendment rights and Virginia did not report such info to NICS in any case. The NRA and the Brady Campaign worked together to fix this by passing the NICS Improvement Act in 2007. This law not only gave states money to report mental defectives to NICS, it also required any state that took the money to set up an appeals process. So far, only 22 states have used it.

In Aurora, the letter to the psychaitrist explaining his plans wasn't discovered until after the shooting.

I believe that all gun owners should be required to take some sort of gun safety class. This just seems like common sense to me. This class should also go over the legal issues including safe storage of guns and the legal use of deadly force. In Florida, you can get a concealed weapons permit without proving any sort of competency at all. The courses are very inconsistent and practically useless. Should I be allowed to carry a gun in public without proving I can hit the broad side of a barn (from the inside) or demonstrate safe weapons handling? I personally don't believe so. While drivers licenses allow for automatic renewals, I believe that carry licenses should require a re-certification period of maybe 5 years.

By the lowest estimate ever made, 146,000 people a year use a firearm in self-defense successfully every year. Should those people be forced to be crime victims because they lack the proper license? Look at my earlier example where states were prosecuting declared firearms at airports - what do you think the licensing process will look like there? Fair?

On the flipside, by VOLUNTARY concealed handgun licensing, the NRA has been more successful in getting gun owners licensed and trained than any anti-gun group has.

I know that gun registration is a highly volatile topic, but how can the police prove that a gun is stolen if it isn't registered?

The same way they prove a thousand other items are stolen that aren't registered?

Considering how registration has been used to enable confiscation of firearms numerous times in history, why would any gun owner WANT registration? And that doesn't even include the places like D.C. and other locales where registration is used as a barrier to prevent people from owning guns.

If it were up to me, YOU wouldn't be allowed to own guns because you clearly don't appreciate how fragile that right is. Maybe something to think about when you are setting up an apparatus that allows unelected bureaucrats to deny a basic human right, yeah?

Honestly, I think you are incredibly naive in assuming that the people pushing gun control are going to give up once they have "reasonable" gun control. There are dozens of examples all over the world and they all play out the same way. Trying to appease those people will not work; because they aren't dealing with you in good faith.

[sfwusc]

I don't think anyone should be allowed to own a nuke. After that I think allowing everything else with some form of guidance is reasonable.

If you own a huge ship using to transport goods, then I thin it would be reasonable to be able to arm it with weapons to defend that piece of property. That said I don't think international law allows it. This is why we have piracy.

Should people be allowed to own fully auto weapons? Why not. They are for the most part a waste of ammo if you are going for accuracy. I am sure some people can fire them accurately, but most people couldn't. Most crimes are done with hand guns.

I guess the question is what good are you doing with each law passed or currently on the books? Most of them are hurting citizens and not helping them. I prefer CWP to come into my place of business as we are at a risk of being robbed. At least someone might be able to put the bad guy down if needed. I can't carry as it is against company policy. Is that fair? I agreed to work for them and I knew that policy when I agreed to it. I gave up that right for the pay check. The right wasn't taken from me.

I am ok with the background checks for new purchases, but I do like the fact private purchases are easy breezey. Some people ask to see a CWP (I do if I am selling), but a lot of people don't care. Could a bad guy get a gun this way? I guess, but they could break into someone's home and get one too.

People in SC fussed about allowing guns in bars. They aren't smart enough to understand that people are drinking then driving. Why not, ban parking lots if you really want to protect the public.

[kilimanjaro]

"I know that gun registration is a highly volatile topic, but how can the police prove that a gun is stolen if it isn't registered?"

Simple, provide the police with copy of their report of the burglary along with the make, model, and serial number.

No registration required.

By the logic presented by the question, nearly 400 million guns in this country cannot be proved to be stolen, if there was some kind of a massive national burglary, as most states don't register them.

I guess police reports, sworn statements, receipts and business records don't constitute evidence of ownership anymore.

[guruatbol]

This is good discussion.

However I have read a few things I don't like.

1- comparing the right to have and use firearms to the privilege of driving is apples and oranges.

2- the endless banter back and forth about a politician needing to do something is IMHO worthless.

Politicians and government have taken way too many liberties with my life and my God given liberties already.

If you want to come up with a what to do next law, not that I think there needs to be any, but if that were the case, I would suggest very strongly that the current laws be enforced and see if any of them are working.

I suggest they don't. I suggest that the shootings which seem to be happening more and in reality are not, will not be stopped.

The very real fact is gun violence is in decline. The media jumps on it more and since there are 24 hour news channels that did not exist when I was a boy, it just seems to be more.

Reality is that many of these shootings were committed by people that broke the law to get the weapons they used in the first place.

I have to say that I would oppose any new legislation, no matter what.

I had more thoughts, but I can not type on my phone fast enough to get them here before I forget my thought path.

Mel

[Sierra280]

Lots of good points and thoughts on this thread. Now a couple of my own.

All gun control measures in the United States have (and have always had, historically) 1 goal. To keep guns out of the hands of the poor (especially minorities). The arguments that can currently be applied to expanded voter registration laws can VERBATIM be applied to gun control laws (ie, impoverished people can't afford the transportation or fees or time away from work, for more registration/licensing/training/etc; kind of like banning the sale of ammo in one county, sure people can still drive to by it, but it limits the poor) It's an interesting bit of social engineering. But let's not forget, our constitution was written by what we would now call elitists.

Any reasonable look at our country's history of gun control should make us be against it. Not on a bill of rights basis, but on a equal rights basis.

[bt380]

This whole gun control fiasco is nothing more than an attack on my rights.
-
They are approaching gun control like the illegal immigration policy...all backwards....
-
Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

[44 AMP]

I don't think anyone should be allowed to own a nuke.

Does that include governments?


In the broadest sense, we all own nukes. In the US, we own our government. At least, that was the plan, once upon a time....

We control it, but it controls us, a curious balancing act, not always properly done, intended to provide the greatest freedom for the people as a whole.

Whenever someone brings up unrestricted ownership, someone else always takes to nuclear weapons. (help me out, scholars, what is the latin..reducto ad absurd..something or other...)

Taking an argued point to ridiculous extremes, and using that extreme as basis for claiming the original point is invalid....

"nukes" are not something one can just pick up on the market with enough cash. But lets play a game for a moment, and say that there were no absolute legal prohibitions against "anyone" owning a nuke.....

SO what? Just because you might legally be able to own it, doesn't mean you can actually get one. You might get a tactical nuclear handgrenade in your HALO game, but you aren't going to find one at Sportsman's Warehouse or Walmart. The people that make nukes are rather picky about who their product goes to. And don't even go to black market nukes sold out of car trunks, or straw purchase nukes, unless you are writing for a bad TV show.

ok, if you had the legal right to a nuke, and you could build it all yourself, including digging the ore, and refining it, from, and all on your own land (AND in compliance with all environmental laws and regs), MAYBE you could get one, (this is a game, remember).

But just being rich enough? not all by itself. Also,govt could say, "sure, you can own one, but you can't import one!" Sorry, no stolen foreign nukes from the international arms dealers..not legal to import. Sure, you can own it...over there....

Lots of ways to blow holes in that extreme argument. Game Over.

Because, no matter how its dressed up, or how it is ignored, the bottom line is NO LAW stops anyone willing to break it.

Which brings us back around to gun control. And the base argument that "why should those who harm no one and obey the laws be made to suffer ever increasing restrictions on what they may, or may not do, or own, because other people break the law?"

AS far as I can see those pushing gun control would, IF they answered honestly, say "because we can". They won't ever say that, of course, they say whatever it is that they think will get them what they want.

[JimDandy]

Some Gun Control is fairly sensible. The Prohibited Person criteria for example. While it could and should always be under the microscope to be refined and improved I suspect very, very, few of the 30ish people who said they're against all gun control think Charles Manson should be allowed to keep an armory in his prison cell.

With that said, the paradigm for gun control is blindingly bad. If you look at the homicide rate state by state, neither lax nor strict gun control states show any sort of overwhelming answer to the problem. There are outliers on the strict side like Hawaii but most of those strict states don't rank very well. Many of the lax states also rank poorly.

Geography, far more than legal bent, has more in common with homicide rates. Those East and Gulf Coast states, along with southern border states with a port of entry for illegal drugs are often at the top of the list. Going North and/or West from there ends up with lower homicide numbers.

The illegal drug trade doesn't get nearly enough "credit" for our crime numbers. Nor are our crime numbers especially distressing. Or homicide rate has been trending down for more than 20 years. It was at a 50-ish year low recently. That's right, it was higher in the latter half of the Leave It To Beaver 60's than it is today. We just have more news reporting the same events longer and more often today so we're more conscious of it.

Based on estimates from Gallup/Pew Research polls somewhere around 80 million people in the US today own at least one firearm. At 11K homicides, 20K suicides, and 0.6K accidents for about 32K deaths, if every single death was the result of a legal gun owner (assuming only the legal gun owners admit to owning one in a phone poll) that's only 0.04% of them responsible for all the gun death in the US. You need to find what? 2500 gun owners? to find ONE that would be responsible for a death next year- and that's more likely to be a suicide. The risk is exceptionally small when you start looking at the numbers.

As for requiring classes- Keeping and Bearing Arms is a fundamental right. Are you also in favor of requiring a literacy test for voting? Some level of education required on the candidates and issues before every election?

Will you require a multi-faith catechism class to attend church, so that people looking to worship in some way can make an informed choice on which church to attend? Will you also require this class for people who profess atheism or agnosticism so they, too, make an informed choice?

How about Freedom of the Press? What classes will you require to ensure this right of the people is exercised responsibly? All newspapers must meet government requirements for unbiased and trustworthy sources? Liberals may not watch Fox News and Conservatives cannot subscribe to MSNBC? Or vice versa, and they may ONLY watch the oppositional "news" channel?

I shudder to think of what sort of background check would be required for the freedom to assemble. Imagine having to call up the cops for permission so you can talk to your neighbor over the fence about that tree dropping leaves in your yard before the multi-family barbeque for the Fourth of July.

[sm]

I voted No.1 on the poll.

Others are more eloquent than I, therefore allow me to share the work of Dennis Bateman, Metal and Wood.

http://thefiringline.com/Misc/librar..._and_Wood.html

[Sierra280]

Prohibited persons and background checks aren't gun control, they are criminal control. BTW, a felony conviction takes away lots more than 2a rights, once convicted basically all rights are gone forever.

[OuTcAsT]

Are you also in favor of requiring a literacy test for voting? Some level of education required on the candidates and issues before every election?

A poll on this would be interesting.....just sayin'

[Tom Servo]

Literacy tests for exercising rights have a dark an unconstitutional past, and they're not the point of this thread.