Question For Folks Against Gun Control Laws

[1lluminated1]

Actually the last ban worked well. There was a significant drop in mass killings between 1994 and 2004 compared to afterwards.

 

What you don't have can't be stolen.

 

This last weekend was an eye opener to me. First, when I bought the 9mm's a month ago, there was no waiting period, which rather surprised me. At the gun show there wasn't even a background check and I saw someone that was recently denied at a gun shop because he couldn't pass the background check, buy a military weapon. Granted a WW2 bolt action, but he could have easily gotten a variation of the 308 AR-10. There was one for sale for 2500 bucks (side note, it was REALLY sweet).

 

You know, the next gun show I come across, I'm going to get drunk (being essentially a non-drinker that should be easy). Then I am going to have someone drive me there with 4k in my pocket. I'm going to have a look at one of those AR-10's and try to buy it, all the time bitching about the fact it cost FAR less than I have to pay my ex wife each month (actually true). I might even drop some 'slips' about needing to do something about that. Then I'm going to buy some ammunition at the next booth, special stuff if I can get it...you know what I mean. Something with colored paint on the tip.

 

If I am successful I'll have someone drive me to the range. Then, in the presence of a safety officer or two, I'll attempt to load the mag and zero the scope, and take out some balloons at 200 meters. That is a pretty easy shot for me, and if I am seeing double, I'll close one eye and that should be that.

 

And I'll film the whole thing as a documentary about firearm access in this country. Maybe 20/20.

 

What do you think the chances are I'll get the gun?

 

Dr. Bob

 

Bob you are losing it man! I don't understand you. If you are so morally outraged why are you bragging about your little danty escapade or fantasies?

 

I said the analogy and I'll say it again....

 

Thats like someone B!*chng about how degrading porn is to women, constantly, post after post..... Then a post later they're bragging about getting "barely legal teens 8," "cuz they can!"

 

Are those high capacity magazines and dual berrettas working out ok for you bob?

 

Do you really need that much fire power bob? We wouldn't want you to turn into a mad man with so much raaaawww powerrrr!!!!

 

Anways a man of your stature would be better suited with a single shot derringer. We wouldn't want him to be tempted with a dangerous "military style" weapon. He might go BANANAS!!

 

P.S. YOU WILL GET THE GUN!

 

P.S.S.: THANK YOU FOR LETTING US KNOW YOU MAKE AVERAGE TO DECENT MONEY!

[GregS]

doesnt the second amendment say "well regulated"?

 

ANyhow:

 

 

 

The Meaning of the Words in the Second Amendment

 

The Second Amendment:

A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

Militia

 

The word "militia" has several meanings. It can be a body of citizens (no longer exclusively...snip for brevity...the phrase as "unitary." In Emery's view, the keeping of arms is not necessarily connected "with citizen service in a government-organized and regulated militia."

 

Nice work Mal. This is the kind of important stuff that is ignored in the kneejerk arguments on both sides.

[GregS]

If a corporation is a person, does it have the right to bear arms?

[mrd]

I want to thank you for giving me the chance to practice medicine! Obviously since someone will commit fraud, then there should be no laws against it! Therefore there should be no lo laws against me practicing medicine without any qualifications.

 

After the weekend gun show you can bring your kids over to me and I am sure a regular dose of heroin will get them settled down and more compliant. No point in stopping me cause there is always going to be some criminal who will hang up a shingle saying they are a doctor. S,o since you can't stop everyone stopping someone like me is pointless! I am looking forward to my first surgery , any takers?

Edited February 5, 2013 by mrd

[Celliach]

What point are you trying to make restorium?

 

Right now people can go by meth and resell it to preschool kids!

 

Right now people can go whore themselves out for crack cokaine!

 

Right now US politicians can have sex with underage prostitutes!

 

Right now MS-13 gang members in Chicago drive by your house with high capacity magazines and kill your neighbors 7 year old daughter!

 

How are the millions laws in our twisted legal system stopping any of that?

 

I've got news for your buddy!!!!

 

CRIMINALS DONT GIVE A SH!#!!! WHAT THE LAW SAYS!

 

So how is punishing millions of law abiding peaceful gun owners gonna change anything!!!

 

If a single mother of 3 children needs an AR-15 to defend her farm from rapist thugs..... THATS HER BUSINESS!!!

 

Nobody is proposing any legislation that would punish anyone for owning a gun. You guys need to stop freaking out over things that aren't happening.

[Celliach]

What point are you trying to make restorium?

 

Right now people can go by meth and resell it to preschool kids!

 

Right now people can go whore themselves out for crack cokaine!

 

Right now US politicians can have sex with underage prostitutes!

 

Right now MS-13 gang members in Chicago drive by your house with high capacity magazines and kill your neighbors 7 year old daughter!

 

How are the millions laws in our twisted legal system stopping any of that?

 

I've got news for your buddy!!!!

 

CRIMINALS DONT GIVE A SH!#!!! WHAT THE LAW SAYS!

 

So how is punishing millions of law abiding peaceful gun owners gonna change anything!!!

 

If a single mother of 3 children needs an AR-15 to defend her farm from rapist thugs..... THATS HER BUSINESS!!!

 

...and today in the US many people are going to be murdered. Should we just make murder legal since people are going to do it anyway?

 

Again, please come up with a sensible argument for your debate.

[+washtenaut]

(Reprint from about 75 pages ago)

 

This argument that any gun solution won't stop all massacres is a little maddening to hear. What about trying to stop 1 massacre at a time, I'll take that if we can get it. Let's focus on a gun/ammo restriction that would help to keep wackos away from weapons of mass destruction.

 

I would be all for an immediate sales halt to civilians on automatic weapons and ultra large magazines - combat weapons. Over time that would help reduce the level of these in our society. Some sort of buyback program would be effective if we could afford it.

 

Please note : I AGREE THAT THIS WOULD BE INEFFECTIVE AT STOPPING ANY ATTACKS IN THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE.

 

Over time however, if there are less weapons of mass destruction lying around and available, there will be less mass gun killings by wackos. I'll take my chances against his fists or his sock o batteries.

 

Might that particular gun restriction stop an atttack by Cristine's truck? No. Would it stop an attack by Caveat's cold calculating killer that has developed a scheme to kill ? No. That does not make it a useless tactic however.

[Celliach]

So, wait, is it going to be illegal to possess these guns or not?

 

I highly doubt it. There's a minority in congress behind it. I think they will pass universal background checks though.

[OG Fire Beaster]

Universal background checks? Like when someone gets stranded on the no fly list for no reason. What database will they be checking against? What is in this database? Hearsay? Convictions in a court of law only? Very slippery slope.

 

When whatever new law passes and it does not work what then? Just give up a little more freedom at a time. Kinda like boiling a frog. turn the heat up slowly until it is too late.

 

100 rd drums on a semi auto weapon is not military or combat related. Fully automatic weapons have belts and large drums in the military because of the fire rate. If you are shooting a semi only in the military it is a designated marksmanship rifle and does not have a large magazine. Regardless of whatever Call of Duty presents to you.

 

At some point the exaggerations, half truths, and blatant fear mongering has to stop.

 

Your either free or your not. Far more people die from cancer, diabetes, and lack of health care. There is no problem and there is no solution. People have been killing each other since they started walking on this planet. Nothing will ever stop that.

[Celliach]

Universal background checks? Like when someone gets stranded on the no fly list for no reason. What database will they be checking against? What is in this database? Hearsay? Convictions in a court of law only? Very slippery slope.

 

When whatever new law passes and it does not work what then? Just give up a little more freedom at a time. Kinda like boiling a frog. turn the heat up slowly until it is too late.

 

100 rd drums on a semi auto weapon is not military or combat related. Fully automatic weapons have belts and large drums in the military because of the fire rate. If you are shooting a semi only in the military it is a designated marksmanship rifle and does not have a large magazine. Regardless of whatever Call of Duty presents to you.

 

At some point the exaggerations, half truths, and blatant fear mongering has to stop.

 

Your either free or your not. Far more people die from cancer, diabetes, and lack of health care. There is no problem and there is no solution. People have been killing each other since they started walking on this planet. Nothing will ever stop that.

 

....and this is exactly why you guys are losing the argument. Paranoid much?

[OG Fire Beaster]

Celliach

 

Paranoia? Hardly.

 

Ever had false information on your credit report because someone couldn't match a SS# properly?

Ever made a payment that was not credited to your account because of a data entry error?

Ever Turned in a homework assignment that a teacher then lost?

 

See I respect my rights and yours. I will not allow my rights to be infringed upon because they have become dependent on someone else doing their job properly.

 

Are you implying that a government employee has never made a mistake, lied, cheated, or demonstrated incompetence?

[Wild Bill]

Two Cautionary Tales of Gun Control

 

By JOYCE LEE MALCOLM

 

 

Americans are determined that massacres such as happened in Newtown, Conn., never happen again. But how? Many advocate more effective treatment of mentally-ill people or armed protection in so-called gun-free zones. Many others demand stricter control of firearms.

 

We aren't alone in facing this problem. Great Britain and Australia, for example, suffered mass shootings in the 1980s and 1990s. Both countries had very stringent gun laws when they occurred. Nevertheless, both decided that even stricter control of guns was the answer. Their experiences can be instructive.

 

In 1987, Michael Ryan went on a shooting spree in his small town of Hungerford, England, killing 16 people (including his mother) and wounding another 14 before shooting himself. Since the public was unarmed—as were the police—Ryan wandered the streets for eight hours with two semiautomatic rifles and a handgun before anyone with a firearm was able to come to the rescue.

 

Nine years later, in March 1996, Thomas Hamilton, a man known to be mentally unstable, walked into a primary school in the Scottish town of Dunblane and shot 16 young children and their teacher. He wounded 10 other children and three other teachers before taking his own life.

 

Since 1920, anyone in Britain wanting a handgun had to obtain a certificate from his local police stating he was fit to own a weapon and had good reason to have one. Over the years, the definition of "good reason" gradually narrowed. By 1969, self-defense was never a good reason for a permit.

 

After Hungerford, the British government banned semiautomatic rifles and brought shotguns—the last type of firearm that could be purchased with a simple show of fitness—under controls similar to those in place for pistols and rifles. Magazines were limited to two shells with a third in the chamber.

 

Dunblane had a more dramatic impact. Hamilton had a firearm certificate, although according to the rules he should not have been granted one. A media frenzy coupled with an emotional campaign by parents of Dunblane resulted in the Firearms Act of 1998, which instituted a nearly complete ban on handguns. Owners of pistols were required to turn them in. The penalty for illegal possession of a pistol is up to 10 years in prison.

 

The results have not been what proponents of the act wanted. Within a decade of the handgun ban and the confiscation of handguns from registered owners, crime with handguns had doubled according to British government crime reports. Gun crime, not a serious problem in the past, now is. Armed street gangs have some British police carrying guns for the first time. Moreover, another massacre occurred in June 2010. Derrick Bird, a taxi driver in Cumbria, shot his brother and a colleague then drove off through rural villages killing 12 people and injuring 11 more before killing himself.

 

Meanwhile, law-abiding citizens who have come into the possession of a firearm, even accidentally, have been harshly treated. In 2009 a former soldier, Paul Clarke, found a bag in his garden containing a shotgun. He brought it to the police station and was immediately handcuffed and charged with possession of the gun. At his trial the judge noted: "In law there is no dispute that Mr. Clarke has no defence to this charge. The intention of anybody possessing a firearm is irrelevant." Mr. Clarke was sentenced to five years in prison. A public outcry eventually won his release.

 

In November of this year, Danny Nightingale, member of a British special forces unit in Iraq and Afghanistan, was sentenced to 18 months in military prison for possession of a pistol and ammunition. Sgt. Nightingale was given the Glock pistol as a gift by Iraqi forces he had been training. It was packed up with his possessions and returned to him by colleagues in Iraq after he left the country to organize a funeral for two close friends killed in action. Mr. Nightingale pleaded guilty to avoid a five-year sentence and was in prison until an appeal and public outcry freed him on Nov. 29.

 

Six weeks after the Dunblane massacre in 1996, Martin Bryant, an Australian with a lifelong history of violence, attacked tourists at a Port Arthur prison site in Tasmania with two semiautomatic rifles. He killed 35 people and wounded 21 others.

 

At the time, Australia's guns laws were stricter than the United Kingdom's. In lieu of the requirement in Britain that an applicant for permission to purchase a gun have a "good reason," Australia required a "genuine reason." Hunting and protecting crops from feral animals were genuine reasons—personal protection wasn't.

 

With new Prime Minister John Howard in the lead, Australia passed the National Firearms Agreement, banning all semiautomatic rifles and semiautomatic and pump-action shotguns and imposing a more restrictive licensing system on other firearms. The government also launched a forced buyback scheme to remove thousands of firearms from private hands. Between Oct. 1, 1996, and Sept. 30, 1997, the government purchased and destroyed more than 631,000 of the banned guns at a cost of $500 million.

 

To what end? While there has been much controversy over the result of the law and buyback, Peter Reuter and Jenny Mouzos, in a 2003 study published by the Brookings Institution, found homicides "continued a modest decline" since 1997. They concluded that the impact of the National Firearms Agreement was "relatively small," with the daily rate of firearms homicides declining 3.2%.

 

According to their study, the use of handguns rather than long guns (rifles and shotguns) went up sharply, but only one out of 117 gun homicides in the two years following the 1996 National Firearms Agreement used a registered gun. Suicides with firearms went down but suicides by other means went up. They reported "a modest reduction in the severity" of massacres (four or more indiscriminate homicides) in the five years since the government weapons buyback. These involved knives, gas and arson rather than firearms.

 

In 2008, the Australian Institute of Criminology reported a decrease of 9% in homicides and a one-third decrease in armed robbery since the 1990s, but an increase of over 40% in assaults and 20% in sexual assaults.

 

What to conclude? Strict gun laws in Great Britain and Australia haven't made their people noticeably safer, nor have they prevented massacres. The two major countries held up as models for the U.S. don't provide much evidence that strict gun laws will solve our problems.

 

Ms. Malcolm, a professor of law at George Mason University Law School, is the author of several books including "Guns and Violence: The English Experience," (Harvard, 2002).

[phaquetoo]

The Sandy Hook shooter stole the weapons from his murdered mother, how would a background check have helped? The way I understand it the owner of the guns was a moral, sane, upright citizen.

 

Pity they were available for him to steal.... Perhaps if she hadn't been able to purchase those types of weapons they wouldn't have. That about closes the circle.

 

Dr. Bob

I say they should not let school teachers. nurses, bingo players or people who own sail boats not own weapons! they all fall under the same group of coo coo's lmao, I say that from experience and not hate! we may have to add dr.'s now, bawahahahahaha! I mean dr's have to deal with all of the above, it may rub off on em! I divorced my 1st wife before she became a nurse! lol, now im with a prison guard lmfao!

 

Peace

Jim

[Celliach]

Celliach

 

Paranoia? Hardly.

 

Ever had false information on your credit report because someone couldn't match a SS# properly?

Ever made a payment that was not credited to your account because of a data entry error?

Ever Turned in a homework assignment that a teacher then lost?

 

See I respect my rights and yours. I will not allow my rights to be infringed upon because they have become dependent on someone else doing their job properly.

 

Are you implying that a government employee has never made a mistake, lied, cheated, or demonstrated incompetence?

 

So what you're saying is that we can't trust the government because your credit company screwed you over??????

 

Again, paranoid much?

[Celliach]

Are you implying that a government employee has never made a mistake, lied, cheated, or demonstrated incompetence?

 

...and yet you trust them to issue a driver's license or MMJ card.

[Celliach]

I would point to the past four years of medical marijuana card production that incompetence is not unheard of in government bureaus.

 

That wasn't incompetence, that was foot dragging.

[Celliach]

I guess we should never start any project anywhere because some idiot is going to screw it up.

[OG Fire Beaster]

So what you're saying is that we can't trust the government because your credit company screwed you over??????

 

Again, paranoid much?

 

No. What I am saying is that my freedoms and rights are mine. Not something that might be mine, as long as somebody else filed the correct paperwork.

I do not trust my life and freedoms in the hands of another person.

[GregS]

Because a corporation is a person, as provided for in the law, can it keep and bear arms as a right?

 

I do not think this is a straw man argument, but speaks to specific and succinct terms in the conversation.

Edited February 5, 2013 by GregS

[OG Fire Beaster]

I guess we should never start any project anywhere because some idiot is going to screw it up.

 

If by start a project you mean give control of my rights to a governmental authority, then yes.

[OG Fire Beaster]

Because a corporation is a person, as provided for in the law, can it keep and bear arms as a right?

 

No idea. I do not think that corporations should be treated as a human.

They have the right to free speech for now.

I supposed an argument could be made that they do have a right to bear arms.

Corporations are able to own and possess firearms. Not sure if that is a right though.

[phaquetoo]

It is as absurd to suggest that it is useless to minimize gun availability because criminals will not obey the law as it is absurd to suggest that it is useless to post speed laws and laws against robbing banks and convenience stores.

You answered your own question!

 

"cujo, on 02 February 2013 - 10:57 PM, said:

 

ya I know japan has no guns and almost no murder. but look at England, they aren't supposed to have guns but they show up. and murder and robbery stats are not so low. japan is an exception. they are taught more respect or something. in Germany cops carry sub-machine guns and post office and banks have big sand bagged machine gun turrets and they are very effective. and one of those Scandinavian countries has a law that every one has to keep arms. that was said to be very effective. our own constitution says all adult men are to own modern military arms to protect us from our own government. yes that's in my own words I need to get a new copy of the constitution."

 

 

Yea as for Japan, alot of dif things willl happen when you have 2 atom bombs dropped on your country and you are not allowed to have a military because Uncle sam says so, the first time they used a navy ship was to help us keep the water ways clear during the iraq war yea the one that is still going on, japan is only allowed to have a police force, becuase We The People Said So! well our president and his minions said so! dont forget about pearl harbor, Japan at that time could have and was going to conqure china also! We got to see what our bombs do in live action, and we now own japan, but we will have to protect them from china if ever need be, and we hope china will put a tighter grip on norht Korea so we dont have to take that country out also! we are stuck, we are the most powerful super power in the world and now we have to keep it that way, we have to police the world, not steal any ones oil, boy if we got all of iraqs oil I dont think the prices would be so high, most of the taxes is a fed tax on gas as it is!

 

Peace

Jim

 

p.s sorry didnt mean to go off topic but some one mentioned that japan must have been raised better, nope they got bombed and know it can happen again!

Edited February 5, 2013 by phaquetoo

[Celliach]

If by start a project you mean give control of my rights to a governmental authority, then yes.

 

I hate to tell you but you have already given control of your rights to the government. That's what the Constitution is, a government document defining your rights.

[OG Fire Beaster]

Celliach

 

You seem to be saying that it is ok for us to trust all of the government workers but not ok to trust the rest of the population.

 

Is the following correct in your view?

The general pop can not be trusted with weapons that look scary.

The government bureaucracy can be trusted with our rights and freedoms.

 

Who has killed more people?

Who has wrongly incarcerated more people?

Does the name Ferguson sound familiar?

How about the thousands of people that got released after DNA proved their innocence years later?

You lack of faith in your fellow citizens is disturbing(Darth Vadar voice).

 

Your coming off kind of hypocritical.

[OG Fire Beaster]

I hate to tell you but you have already given control of your rights to the government. That's what the Constitution is, a government document defining your rights.

 

You are very wrong and lack a basic understanding of what a Constitution is.

 

The Constitution formed the government. It is a document of the people. Not the other way around.