My compromise for gun control

Anyway my compromise offer has not changed. If they want to make a law only flintlocks are legal for both the people and the government I am cool with that.

Its all about balance of power.

 

"Pretty much" is the operative phrase. Obviously, you can't say that you're going to blow up the white house without getting a visit, but my point is, the 1st amendment isn't limited to the technology that was available at the time of it's ratification and neither is the 2nd.

 

Mac

When you said you had been a police officer I though ok - I don’t know your circumstances but maybe you have reason to believe your lifer is specifically at risk and that fulfils the criteria of have a good reason for having a gun. And presumably you got the training as part of your job, were vetted and had background checks made before been allowed to be a police officer.

But you said you didn’t want to make this personal, it is about gun ownership in general and that is why I have talked about Joe Blogs the accountant and the other guy, the dentist, people who have no enemies and live in quiet suburbs but who however feel they want to own guns even assault type weapons for self-protection or to bring down the government.

It seems to me that they don’t seem to fulfil the criteria of having a good reason. It therefore becomes a matter of consumer choice and so why shouldn’t they have the responsibility of gun ownership related to public safety whatever the ‘burden’ might be?

You talk of having a first aid kit, tourniquet and knowing CPR but none of those are a lethal weapon even a knife is not specifically a weapon, I carry a penknife (but I think I’ve used the corkscrew and scissor attachments more often that the knife) and I don’t carry it around because I fear getting attacked (it would be a very poor ‘weapon’ anyway).

But you wish to allow easy access to guns so many people can just carry around lethal weapons, first aid kits aimed at helping the injured but something specifically designed to cause death.

 

Mac

The motive is the fear and hatred of the ‘enemy’.

The means is the lethal weapons they can so easily have ownership of.

And where isn’t there an opportunity if they decided to act?

I mean you have Shoe just above extolling the virtues of shooting police officers and there are others liking his views.

 

Shoe

Where is that quote from?

What people? What government? What is considered ‘tyranny’ by the gun owners?

Remember the majority of gun owners lean politically to the right and many further to the right.

As said the majority of Americans don’t have guns so does the minority of gun owners decide what governments are tyrannical and which not?

Was there liberty for black people in those states were black people were getting lynched?

There were certainly a lot of people that owned guns in those states why didn’t they do anything to protect their fellow black citizens?

So the gun owners helped imposed and supported a tyrannical form of government, but didn’t you say that wouldn’t happen because gun owners would not allow that?

 

6

But there were many people with guns why didn’t they help their fellow black citizens and tear down the tyrannical governance and bring to and end the segregated society?[/quote]

 

To repeat

Just owning a gun does not mean you will fight against evil or tyranny because you might actually support that evil, that tyranny

 

The 1st amendment

It should be remembered that the US establishment have basically suspended the 1st amendment in the past so that it could punish what it saw as its political enemies and the gun owners didn’t rise up to stop it because in general they agreed with the move.

In fact LOL the Sedition Act of 1918 (an extension of the Espionage act of 1917) would have basically seen most people on this forum locked away as - It forbade the use of "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces or that caused others to view the American government or its institutions with contempt.

Many of those jailed appealed their convictions based on the U.S. constitutional right to freedom of speech, but the Supreme Court voted that the limits on free speech were constitutional.

But the thing was that the Acts were part of the Red Scare of the time and were aimed at lefties socialist and communists and probably the most famous person jailed was Eugene Debs the leader of the Socialist Party of America (who stood for president from jail).

Again just owning a gun does not mean you will fight against evil or tyranny because you might actually support that evil, that tyranny

 

As I stated before, I'm for vetting people to make sure they aren't a threat. What I'm against is unnecessary hurdles that hasn't been shown to work. For example, most of the EU get along just fine without banning so called assualt weapons and certain pistols. Switzerland gets along just fine without requiring a mental evaluations.

We can look to those countries and implement and taylor some of the laws that actually proved to be effective to the US. A gun buy back program in the US has proved to be a dismal failure, even when it's mandatory. For better or worse, there are simply too many firearms for it to be effective in any significant amount.

This article explains that the three best laws to prevent gun violence are universal background checks, may issue permits, and prohibiting violent felons. As I said from the beginning of the thread, it's not the type of firearms out there that is the problem, it's who gets them. I'd be for may issue if it doesn't result in states like Hawaii and California where hardly anyone has a carry permit.

The 3 Gun-Control Laws That Work Best in the U.S. - CityLab

 

Is the AR-15 even available in an automatic?

 

The would be gun owners were not allowed to own them https://www.sedgwickcounty.org/media/29093/the-racist-origins-of-us-gun-control.pdf

I wasn't there but I am sure bed sheet dudes ran the gun stores too.

 

The state is the group of people with the "authority" to do violence to members of a community. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence

After the population is disarmed how do we keep in check state violence ?

Look at the way they treat people now.

 

Gun control proposals

Here is an edit list of something I’ve posted a few times on the forums that was formed from a couple of lists me and MeAgain had presented at differing times.

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Educate people about what the new legislation is about and would entail (Not taking away all guns, the goal is to reduce harm by limiting easy access to the criminal and irresponsible)

Reinforcing, enhancing, and mandating back ground checks for the purchase of a gun.

Immediate destruction of any weapon, ammunition, etc. used or acquired illegally.

Limiting the amount of legal ammunition that can be bought and retained.

Buyback programs - to get rid of or lower the number of midnight specials, assault weapons, etc.

All gun owners would need to pass a test of competence and responsibility to get a gun licence (part of which would be to pass a psychological evaluation)

A gun owner would need an up to date licence and insurance to carry on owning a gun (been found owning a gun without these will result in fine or and been banned from owning a gun).

Mandatory records of all sells or transfers of all firearms and immediate destruction of any that are discovered to be not recorded.

Any gun kept at home, place of work or in a motor vehicle would have to be held in a secure manner (eg safe or other secure locking system).

People that didn’t have an approved system would not be allowed to own a gun.

If a person loses or has their gun stolen, and it is shown that they did not show due diligence in securing their weapon they would be subject to a fine and/or banned from owning a gun.

Any guns would have to be presented for inspection 6 months after purchase then again one year after purchase and then every five years after that. Not presenting the gun would result in a fine losing the owner’s gun license (to deter straw purchases)

If the gun has been lost or stolen and that has not been reported that would result in a heavy fine and/or custodial sentence.

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These would be national laws the same through all the states and a Federal department would be set up to monitor them and make sure they are been enforced equally throughout the country.

The fines raised and a tax on firearms manufactures would be used to offset cost of these programmes.

*

These are just suggestions and if people think of improvements please post your ideas.

 

Mac

We have already been through these already – it’s just above can we try and not go around in circles, we’d just end up repeating ourselves.

Ok we have already established that the EU has minimum laws (many states have more stringent regulations) and one main requirement is to have a good reason for owning a gun a discussion we are still having in viz-a vis the accountant and dentist.

I’ve mentioned the social difference in that many EU countries have universal healthcare systems, a lower equality/poverty levels, more generous welfare systems and penal systems based on rehabilitation (Prison populations per 100,000 - France – 101, Germany – 80 Switzerland - 81 US - 655)

We have also seen that the Swiss have a conscription/militia system covering a adult males that – ‘checks for irresponsibility, criminal behaviour and mental fitness’ and that some 20% of those conscripted are rejected per year. You rejected having this system for the US.

We are also in discussion over what are ‘unnecessary hurdles’ or burdens when this is a matter of public safety does inconvenience trump public safety when gun ownerships seems to be basically a personal consumerist choice (that the majority of Americans don’t take up).

 

Mac

Again we have been through this already – not every country or situation is the same and so regulations and laws have to be tailored to place and situation

You yourself highlight the problem with a society so awash with guns compared to other places.

The US has certain systematic problems basically unique to itself.

But you seem to be saying that therefore it shouldn’t even be tried - which seems both defeatist and self-serving (in that you seem to be opposed to many of the measures suggested).

 

Mac

And as I hope I’ve made clear this approach seems totally inadequate to the task which is to try and lessen the likelihood of guns falling into the hands of the criminal or irresponsible, basically stopping guns from getting into the wrong hands.

So it’s not just been about been able to buy a gun and own one it is also about been responsible for it afterward.

As I’ve mentioned already the majority of guns that get into the hands of criminals or the irresponsible are

-Through a gun been stolen (either by the criminal or been sold on after been stolen by that crininal to another criminal)

-By straw purchase – where someone that can buy a gun gets one for someone that can’t (by gift or through sale)

-Illegal gun transactions, where criminals get guns from legally licensed but corrupt at-home and commercial gun dealers.

Thousands of guns are reported stolen or lost each year and there are probably thousands more that are not reported (in 2016 -18,394 lost or stolen firearms were reported from federal firearms licensees alone)

As you can see from the list above of gun control proposals ideas have been put forward to address these concerns, such as mandating gun safes/locks, the proper tracking of guns and regular checks on gun ownership etc.

 

Shoe

Sorry but you are missing the point – I don’t know if you are doing it deliberately or because you have not read my posts correctly.

I repeat

It’s the same argument that if only the German Jews had had guns then the holocaust would not have happened – here is something I posted years ago when someone said that and that it would have stopped blacks been lynched.

The problem is that the German people had been taught the Jews were dangerous. So what if some of them had fired on the police that had come to take them away, do you think the German people would have seen this as justified and come to their defence or just seem it as proof the Jews were indeed dangerous and needed locking away?

Think about US history, did the Native American that fought back, get the support of the American citizenry? What if the US citizens of Japanese descent had resisted the unconstitutional internment imposed on them, and what if they had shot at the police would they have got general popular support? What about these hauled in front of McCarthy, would people have rallied to them if they had refused to go before such witch hunts and opened fire on those that came to take them?

The question being why didn’t the decent and good white people of those areas (where the lynching’s took place) protect the black people being abused, they had access to guns, they had votes, they filled juries, they could have done a lot to stop what was happening, why didn’t they?

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What if black Americans had shot and killed White Americans do you think that then the white Americans would have just shrugged at gone ‘that’s justified’?

The thing is that the white people of those areas had not only been taught that black people were sub-human but also that they were dangerous (an enemy). They saw serrations as a good thing. So what if some Black citizens had fired at white people and white police officers that had come to abuse them, do you think the white people of that area would have seen this as justified and come to their defence or just seem it as proof that black people were indeed dangerous and deserved what they got?


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The gun owning argument is that gun owners will stop ‘bad’ government, what I’m asking is what do these mainly right wing gun owners see as ‘bad’ and what do they see as ‘good’, who they view as their political enemies and when would they begin attacking those enemies?

 

After the usual walls of text the core aspect remains, criminals don't follow any aspect of gun regulations. For them getting a gun is far easier than it is for the law abiding. It's the same for most of the aspects of their criminal careers.

So adding restrictions to law-abiding citizens has no effect on the lives of criminals. Except of course that they encounter fewer victims who can protect themselves.

Now, please provide another wall of redundant text.

It's a simple, logical issue that will not be solved by "feelings" .

 

Panic

So you want to do nothing and just let criminals and the irresponsible easy access to guns?

Everything you say has been raised and found wanting but because you are too lazy to bother doing the reading or the research you seem to be the one that prefers falling back on your feelings.

Have you actually any rational arguments to counter what’s been said I mean if you have nothing of substance to offer why bother posting?

 

Panic

I mean duh - if criminals have easy access to guns why not try and stop that – it doesn’t even take a person of below average intelligence to work that one out.

Many gun owners including Mac realise that restrictions work, why is it so hard for you, or are you feeling getting in the way LOL.

Easy access to guns doesn’t seem to have any effect on general crime rates it does have a huge increase in the number gun related deaths and injuries.

Is that TOO many words for you to digest or do you only speak in grunts