Gun control

[Judah14]

Dillon, that's about the most balanced commentary on the issue I have ever seen. I'm impressed.

I'm from the UK, a country which abhors gun ownership and gun fetishisation. Yet I remain impressed by many of the points you make. I still think the USA's obsession with guns is sick, but if more like you stood up and said similar, some form of accommodation might be found.

If you are really obsessed with guns, and the laws in your area are strict, try airsoft instead. Airsoft is a fun sport and you can go on a shooting spree with your friends without actually hurting someone (if proper safety measures are observed of course). No wonder why airsoft is popular in countries where real firearms are heavily restricted, such as Japan.

[r.m.anderson]

Just don't be a casualty of a drive-by-distracted mission shooting your nerf from a moving vehicle !
Getting hit by one of them airsoft projectiles - aw that's teasing ! Crashing your car - now that hurts !

[Judah14]

Just don't be a casualty of a drive-by-distracted mission shooting your nerf from a moving vehicle !
Getting hit by one of them airsoft projectiles - aw that's teasing ! Crashing your car - now that hurts !

Of course what I meant is a game with your friends involving a scenario, such as shooting zombies.

[Pdxfashionpioneer]

In the 80's I helped found an organization advocating reasonable and effective gun legislation. In the course of that activity I did a lot of research on gun violence and SkirtedMarine you're mistaken on a couple of points. Dillon's essay was not a rant at all; he was reasoned, measured and backed up his assertions with facts.

The knock on gun legislation is that it isn't effective. Not so. The Firearms Act of the 30's was not watered down from a ban for fear of violating the 2nd Amendment; no, Roosevelt was concerned that banning machine guns and submachine guns would result in the law being struck down by the Supreme Court for overstretching the Commerce Clause, which could have endangered ALL of the New Deal legislation. Roosevelt advocated for strong controls on submachine and machine guns to prevent another massacre like the one that had occurred in New York City while he was Governor of New York State. A number of children had been caught in the crossfire of warring gangsters and several killed. He wanted to prevent that happening again. To shorten a long story, because of the passage of that and successive laws, NONE of our relatively frequent mass shootings have been done with a machine gun or submachine gun. So gun legislation is effective in reducing mayhem, even here in the gun-crazy United States where best estimates say there is a firearm in civilian possession for every man, woman and child. Btw, 2/3 of them are in the South and the adjoining areas of the Midwest.

SkirtedMarine you are also mistaken about New Orleans have a high homicide rate and strict gun laws. Au contraire, Louisiana and Texas have the some of most lax gun laws and some of the highest homicide rates.

The King County Coroner a number of years ago tracked down gundeaths where a firearm kept in the home was involved. 2/3 were suicides -- as Dillon pointed out an act of impulse wear the lethality of firearms ups the number of self-inflicted deaths enormously -- of the homicides most were between family and friends, and a whopping 0.01% were situations where a resident took out an intruder who was a stranger. His study was published in the either the New England Journal of Medicine or the Journal of the AMA. If you don't want to take my word for it, look it up.

Mass shootings are quite common, in fact, since the Sandy Hook, CT shooting there's been, on average one per week at a school or college in this country. And yes, as you suspected, military-style semi-auto rifles were the weapons of choice. It's the macho man mystique they portray and their simple efficiency.

As both Dillon and SkirtedMarine, and I suspect plenty of others of you know, the first assault rifle (so named because it was first used by German storm or assault troops) was designed by the German Staff between the world wars as a classic clean sheet of paper exercise to figure out how best to equip the reemerging German Army. They reasoned that the 22 caliber short rifle round was sufficient to kill a man, as was its quarter mile range because that was about as far as an enemy soldier could be spotted and identified. With such small rounds a soldier could reasonably be expected to carry enough ammunition to keep a semi/full auto weapon like that loaded with large magazines. In addition, the recoil and rise would be reasonable to control, etc. etc. Hitler scotched the idea because as a former infantry man he believed he knew better what a real rifle was -- the bolt-action Mauser he had carried during the Great War. There's lots more to the story, but the point is that unlike previous military rifles, it wasn't derived from the current sporting rifles; it was designed from the ground up to be the most efficient machine German ingenuity could come up with to slaughter human beings. Period.

So what's the answer, put such firearms under the same kinds of restrictions as machine guns and submachine guns, including adjusting the Depression Era licensing fee of $150-200 for inflation. (That would make it $3,500.) Set up a universal system of firearms licensing and registration for all firearms similar to what we do with automobiles complete with an insurance requirement and absolute liability. That is, if a firearm does harm to life or property that last registered owner bears the financial responsibility. This last will clearly need some kind of transition mechanism, but once it's in place it will dry up the black market faster than a glass of water in Death Valley.

Just as one has to prove proficiency and knowledge of the basics of the motor vehicle law to get a driver's license, one should have to show some proficiency of using the firearm and knowledge of the basics of the laws around the use of deadly force. Concealed carry permits would only be issued on a show-cause basis and a vague "it's a jungle out there" would not suffice. And don't worry, if insurance companies have to underwrite the risk, they'll soon get to the bottom of how much of a benefit v. hazard privately held firearms are. They'll also make sure that firearms are as safe as American ingenuity can make them. (It was the insurance industry that pushed through the original electrical codes and founded Underwriters' Laboratories, you know the folks who issue the UL label for all legal electrical materials and equipment.) The additional expense will probably deter folks from buying or keeping firearms who aren't serious about it.

And would-be gun owners should take their responsibilities seriously. A person who owns a firearm has the power of life or death over anyone s/he meets.

While it's not gun-legislation per se, those pointless "stand your ground laws" should also be repealed. All they have done is drive up the homicide rate.

At least those are the conclusions I've drawn from my years of research and contemplation.

[dillon]

I just think it's time to modify - update or replace - the Second Amendment with something that preserves the right of the individual to own firearms but allows Congress and the states to impose reasonable limits on the type, capability and capacity of weapons. Then we let elected officials decide what is and isn't appropriate weaponry to have out there in our homes and communities. Then let the courts sort it out, which is pretty much where we are now, except we'll have institutionalized the common understanding that we, as a society, recognize that these aren't the post-Revolutionary days any more, and that times and weapons have changed.

[crfriend]

I just think it's time to modify - update or replace - the Second Amendment with something that preserves the right of the individual to own firearms but allows Congress and the states to impose reasonable limits on the type, capability and capacity of weapons.

Many states already strictly regulate issues like the ones listed above. The problem, however, is that criminals and those who would commit criminal acts by definition do not obey the law. So what ends up getting meted out strongly resembles "collective punishment" where the overwhelming number of law-abiding citizens gets hammered for the actions of a criminal few.

Interestingly, from an entirely constructionist point of view, the Second Amendment to the Constitution of The United States only authorises the private ownership of arms in the context of a "well regulated militia". If there was sufficient interest in it, that amendment could be swept away rather trivially and the USA could become like the UK or possibly even worse. Moreover, the Constitution is now to all intents and purposes a dead document and is only recognised in name but not in body, intent, or spirit. The "Bill of Rights" (the first set of Amendments) is even deader with precisely only one Amendment that seems to be fully operable, and that's the one about billeting soldiers in private homes during times of peace; all of the rest have been either gutted or are being ignored.

Letting "elected officials" -- or worse, the courts -- sort it out is a fool's errand as the "elected officials" will do precisely what they're told by their paymasters, and the courts will do whatever they feel like because there's no accountability. The average citizen has no say in the matter any longer, and hasn't for going on 20 years.

There are a lot of moving pieces to this problem, and an outright ban on weapons won't solve anything for however long it takes the extant weapons to rust to the point where they won't work and where ammunition is absolutely unobtainable and cannot be fabricated -- let's say 100 years or so at a guess (although I used to have one that was over a hundred, and whilst it was in pristine and operable condition, ammunition hadn't been available for it since before I was born). More to the point, I suspect, are more common societal issues that the place is facing at the moment, e.g. being awash in hyper-violent media imagery that blunts the obscenity that lethal violence really is, a really serious blurring of the line between fantasy and reality, and a society that is growing increasingly hopeless as the personal and familial wealth of the bottom 99.99% of population is bled from them. Stemming even one of those three would likely make a huge difference -- and not just in the amount of violence in society today; everything else would benefit from a restoration of national sanity and hope.

[Uncle Al]

OK - I've stepped into this fracas before and backed out.
Now I'm stepping in again.


Get your head out of the sand and take your blinders off
Not everyone is "Mr/Ms Goody Two-Shoes".

R. Lee Ermey Has Some Advice For Americans On Firearms–And Liberals Are Sure To Hate It

Then there's California - California Governor Jerry Brown Guns Down the Constitution

I give major kudos to the Governor of Georgia - Ga. governor signs 'guns everywhere' into law.
The video starts as soon as the web page is loaded due 'auto-play'.

The city with the highest gun related crime rate is CHICAGO followed by Detroit,
Washington, DC etc. Chicago has the strictest gun laws in the nation. Yet, with
these restrictions/laws, Chicago still has the highest gun related crime rate - PERIOD
Criminals DO NOT OBEY LAWS They will get a gun to commit their crimes with,
any way they can.

The "Liberal Left" on the west coast is a DISGRACE to our country.
In all of the dialog in this thread, I've read so much Hot Air being
spewd out, it can't compare to, or compete with, a manure spreader
on a farm.

Based on gun control/crime, the safest country to live in is Switzerland.
The safest state in the U.S. to live in is Vermont. Virginia ranked #3,
Wyoming raked #4. Some say that Wyoming has a high rate but this
is due to the low population versus crime rate. Idaho and Utah are
approaching inclusion as some of the safest states due to their more
liberal gun laws.

The Governor of Georgia is heading to make his state much safer
with the passage of the state of Georgia's new gun law.

I can agree, to some extent, making the license process stricter but
to completely remove a persons 2nd Amendment rights is ludicrous.

Some people say that the Constitution of the United States is a dead document.
We, the people, have allowed our governing bodies to kill this document.
In the last 60 years that I've understood what our country stands for, I've witnessed
the slow erosion of America by the "Elected Leaders".

WE, THE PEOPLE, have been on the losing end of the stick far to long. If I had to
choose between living in Texas and living in Illinois, or the city of Chicago, I'll take
Texas - with open carry - any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.
Our gun-related crime rate is going down since 'open carry' was signed into law.
The 'bad guys' don't want to chance getting hurt or killed when they see a person
'open-carry'. If you advertise an area or location as a "Gun Free Zone/Area" you're
inviting criminals in the front door. I love what was placed on a sign in front of a
school - 50 % of the staff have CHL's. You figure out who they are

EVERYONE, PLEASE REMEMBER - GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE
Guns are tools. When used properly, they will protect your family. Should we ban
baseball bats, tire wrenches or crow-bars Many crimes have been committed
by people wielding baseball bats, tire wrenches, and crow-bars, some resulting in
the death of individuals. Yet baseball bats are used in a game, tire wrenches are
used to get the lug-nuts off your car to change a tire and crow-bars are used in
construction work. They are all 'tools' but when not used for their intended purpose,
they have been deadly to many crime victims.



Uncle Al

[Gordon]

Uncle Al..... touche'

If more honest citizens carried, the crime rate would be lower.

[Uncle Al]

Uncle Al..... touche'

If more honest citizens carried, the crime rate would be lower.

Thank you Gordon

Uncle Al

[Ray]

Another sensible post from Dillon. Come on, USA. Mature a little, won't you? Please stop fetishising guns. Be like Switzerland if you want guns. Or the UK or Australia if you don't.

[Jim]

If more honest citizens carried, the crime rate would be lower.

So we just need an honesty test before issuing a gun permit, right?

[Jim]

[crfriend]

Before this spirals completely out of control, I'd like to see the numbers of "gun-related deaths" revised with suicides removed. With suicide included, the statistics do not relate to the actual rate of inter-personal crime, which is what most of the furore is about.

This is also not a problem that lends itself to sound-bites and "infographics". This is an issue that's going to take intellect, compassion, understanding, and empathy to solve -- as well as a healthy dose of realism. The root of it is almost entirely likely to be lurking someplace that we've been diverted from looking at.

[Ray]

Not sure that gives you an accurate picture, Carl. Having guns in the house makes suicide a lot easier. It's still death by the use of a weapon. Perhaps include but distinguish these numbers?

I was reading an article on the issue. Fear was mentioned. This is, according to the article, driven by fear. Thoughts?

[crfriend]

Not sure that gives you an accurate picture, Carl. Having guns in the house makes suicide a lot easier. It's still death by the use of a weapon. Perhaps include but distinguish these numbers?

Distinguishing the numbers would be a start, but ideally the figures from suicide should be removed completely as being irrelevant to the problem of inter-personal violence. Suicide is a strongly individual choice and usually does no harm directly to others. Indirectly, it can be argued, yes, that harm may be done, but in most cases others are not directly harmed during the act. Of note here is the fact that I regard suicide as a basic human right as a form of self-determination.

I was reading an article on the issue. Fear was mentioned. This is, according to the article, driven by fear. Thoughts?

The question in this case would be, "Fear of what?" I rather doubt that fear is a controlling factor in the behaviour of a mass-murderer. There must be other factors in play. Unfortunately, the current "wisdom" ("wisdumb"?) is to kill the individual involved; this saves the cost of a trial but is also an absolute guarantee that nobody can ever get inside the perpetrator's head to figure out what snapped. Thus the cycle continues -- if not accelerating in the process due to copy-cat crimes.

I'm not downplaying this problem at all, but I happen to think what we're seeing isn't the disease but rather a symptom of something else. I don't have an answer to precisely what, but I'm willing to bet that further erosion of personal liberty is not the answer, and may, in fact, make matters worse in the long run.

A very good -- and simple -- start from a societal perspective would be de-romanticising violence. Physical violence is sometimes necessary, but it should be viewed as a last resort for when one has run out of all other options not as the first go-to "solution". Unfortunately, violence -- like sex -- sells.