Ermm.
I had to identify myself to vote and its about the most fundamental right in a democracy.
True but in this case, the identification is meant o allow cops to differentiate between the “law abiding sport hunter” and the “psycho gun hoarder” Otherwise, why have those pinholes?
Changing the imprecise wording of the 2nd Amendment, or establishing a binding precedent that restricts assault rifles* to police and military, could go a long way to inconveniencing mass shooters and not legitimate hunters/sportsmen/home defenders. There must be some solution, since no other developed nation in the world seems to have this problem on our scale.
*And don’t trot out the bullshit trope that there’s no way to legally define “assault rifle.” Rifles generally associated with game hunting can’t be converted to full automatic, whereas Bushmasters, AK-47s, AR-15s et al are good for little else.
The problem with being ignorant about something while you propose limiting rights about that thing is that it makes you look… well… ignorant.
Remember that pro-life guy that said that you can’t get pregnant when you get raped. That level of ignorance made him really hard to take seriously. In the gun rights debate, the ignorance is mostly on the gun control side and some of the ignorance is really really fundamental. Its not rocket science, people can learn, but the folks on the gun control side for the most part are not really interested in learning a lot about guns, they just want to get rid of them.
Almost everyone I know that is into guns has at least a handgun, a shotgun, and a rifle. Most people have at least two rifles, many have three. Among friends that collect guns (whether intentionally or due to a lack of willpower), 20 is not unusual. Good gun safes tend to start at around a 22 gun capacity (and that’s for long guns). What question would you ask of the person buying his 21st gun? What do you think someone is going to do with his 21st gun that he wouldn’t do with his first gun?
I think you are confusing all sorts of issues here. What are you trying to achieve by having total ownership limits? Most gun purchase limits are aimed at reducing straw purchases. Licensing and registration is better but it is far easier to pass laws limiting the number of guns you can buy in a month. But a rule like yours would be much harder to pass. Your rule would probably require registration to keep track of how many guns you own and if you have registration the rest of it is superfluous.
That’s what you think.
Could congress limit how many newspapers you own? Could congress limit how many words you print? Probably not because these laws would probably not pass intermediate scrutiny.
If the second amendment is subject to the same standard of review as the first amendment (and this is probably the most likely result), you would have to give a good reason for a law limiting the size of someone’s armory. So what do you think someone will do with their 21st gun that they cant do with their first 6 guns?
What does the fact that judges are locally elected have to do with anything?
I never said you are a freak just really flip with the rights that you don’t particularly care about but probably really really protective of the ones you do care about.
And if I read the article correctly the guy is a criminal and did not legally come into possession of all those firearms.
5000 is a lot more than 20 but still, if he had legally purchased all those firearms, why should you give a shit?
With that said, I like this quote: “This has completely changed our definition of an ass-load of guns,” Chesterfield County Sheriff Jay Brooks told Reuters. “I don’t know if there’s ever been [a seizure] this big anywhere before.”
I agree. that is an assload of guns.
Wow, way to miss the point. I wasn’t accusing you of cowardice. For the record, I am not using my legal name either. My point is that there are MANY MANY rights including the most fundamental of them, the right to vote, where anonymity is in fact respected. Same with many forms of free speech.
I think a common sense law is that make gun owners are responsible for their piece . I grew up in the country around guns.
The broad strokes (and let’s not nit pick away please) are:
- firearm liability insurance is mandatory. It’s somewhat akin to private automobile insurance.
- firearms are registered to an owner, who is then responsible for that piece until there is a clear transfer of ownership. In other words, you loan it to your cousin and it’s used illegally by your cousin (or your cousin’s “friend”), then you have criminal and/or civil liablity. If you transfer registration then of course the new owner is the one that is liable. Of course there will be some outlandish scenarios that might need an exception but the OP is for common sense
- No one tells you how to secure your piece in your home. However, you are criminally and/or civilly on the hook if there is a gun accident in your home. Or if there is a young child tragedy. Or if your piece is just lying next to the bedroom and it’s stolen, you have some kind of responsibility as you didn’t properly prevent it from being stolen. Again, not here to dictate what is safe or how to store it in your home, but no free pass if tragedy happens. I think that’s a fair deal. You’re confident the piece is “secured” (however you define it) and if it’s not then it’s on you.
IMHO the above is a pretty American solution. You own a piece, you are personally responsible. Full stop. Yu have to have insurance so there is at lease some coverage if your piece causes a tragedy. If you use your piece to defend your home, property or person in a legal manner, then of course there is no liability.
Okay. Should gun ownership or possession be among them? Like the post before this one, I think gun owners should be more and not less responsible for their property, but I’ll entertain counter-arguments if you want to make one.
I don’t know for sure, and you don’t know for sure. One real possibility is that he or she is going to sell it to a stranger met on the Internet, or in a gun show parking lot, with no background check. As I said, I don’t know for sure, but I think it is much more likely that a 21st gun will be sold, with or without a background check, during the owner’s lifetime, than with a first gun.
If he or she doesn’t sell it, in a personal sale or through a dealer, and maintains the firearm in a reasonable condition, that 21st gun will become part of the estate. If the heir is someone like me, it will then be destroyed by our local police. But, in most cases, it be transferred to another owner, and then transferred to another owner, and then transferred to another owner, until it either becomes permanently non-functional or used to shoot someone.
Would the gun buyers buy new if a used one wasn’t available? Not necessarily, because the large number of used guns on the market keeps down their price. Cheaper guns mean more gun owners.
And the more guns in a society, the more people who are likely to be shot. This is bad news for future generations of Americans:
The average gun owner now owns 8 guns — double what it used to be
In a mass-shooting scenario–and we have those–a lot of theatre-goers or students or other people who rightly expect not to get shot that day are having their rights curtailed by (often) a man with multiple firearms with him. In my worldview, the unarmed many’s rights are a little more compelling than the excessively-armed one’s. This makes me “ignorant”?
There is a point you cross where you stop being a hunter/sportsman and start being an armed menace, just like there’s a point where you stop being a cat lover and start being of legitimate concern to your neighbors and the health department. For gun owners, where is the limit? More than six and less than 5000, but where? I don’t know where the line should be drawn, but you seem pretty sure that such a line should not exist.
The FCC limits, for instance, how many local radio and television stations you can own in a single market and takes a dim view of monopolies among publishers in towns with multiple newspapers. So in a sense, yes, no, and maybe, respectively.
Quite a bit. In this country, how you feel about gun control depends a lot on where you live, and the judges you elect reflect the standards of your community. Judges elected in big cities, and in the North and Northeast, would tend to favor limited gun control measures. Judges in rural areas, and in the South and Southwest, would tend to oppose such measures.
If I sell a gun, do they unpoke a hole in my driver’s license? Do I go to DMV and get a new license, and they poke n-1 holes in the new one? How does DMV know I sold a gun? Do I need to bring them the receipt?
I can currently renew my DL over the web - I give DMV a credit card number, they mail me a new and updated license. How would this work under your proposal?
Who exactly would poke the hole? The dealer? The Police? DMV?
What business does DMV have knowing if or how many guns I have?
What would you propose to be the penalty if I have more guns than holes?
If I have to show an ID to cash a check at the grocery store, would they be allowed to refuse it if I had too many holes? Why or why not?
If you have fifty holes on your license during its ten-year cycle–signaling ten guns bought, regardless of how long you held on to each gun, made by a federally-licensed gun dealer–you may need a personal wake-up call. If the police examine your license in regards to a local shooting, that might be the wake-up call you need.
Gun owners tend to frame this as a dispute between law-abiding citizens and insane criminal madmen whose actions cannot reasonably be predicted. Gun control advocates frame it as a conflict between people who do and don’t own guns–and you guys are doing all the fucking mass murders!
Okay, that was excessive. I’m going to walk away from this discussion for a few days.
That’s good, because I suggested no such thing. Instead, I suggest you leave it to the federal constitution.
I disagree that upper limits are a reasonable accommodation.
Sure it does. When you impose any limit on the number of firearms I can own, you infringe on my right to keep and bear arms.
Moreover, the federal Constitution limits the powers of the federal government. It’s not I that needs to identify the place in the federal constitution that grants me rights until you first identify the place that grants the federal government the power you seek to exercise.
Now, the states have plenary legislative power, true enough. But their exercise of that power is constrained by the Second Amendment, made applicable to the states by incorporation via the Fourteenth Amendment.
In another way of looking at it, neither the federal or state government can tell Stephen King he’s written too much, and must ask a judge before he continues to exercise his First Amendment rights.
Is it your belief that state judges are, universally, locally elected?
ALL homicides where rifles of ANY type, not just your assault rifles, are used total around 300 annually and have remained consistently so for years. For anyone to take your proposals seriously, how about you target the weapons that are actually used in most of the “mass shootings”?
If loaning your piece out to the wrong person means there is a risk of losing your house and having wages garnished for the rest of your life if lax control of your weapon enables a Sandy Hook, then IMHO there would be a decline in straw buyers and “responsible” gun owners might even become more responsible than is the case today. It also wouldn’t matter if it’s a Saturday Night Special, AK47 or a hunting rifle.
Straw purchases are already illegal and have been since 1968, but it’s not actually prosecuted most of the time. Again, why does anyone think that it’s ‘common sense’ advocate for more, new laws that will likely not be enforced instead of pushing to enforce existing laws against straw purchases? Why is it not common sense to lock up people who are already acting illegally instead of trying to create a whole new category of far reaching liability on law abiding people, especially since experience shows that said liability will end up being badly applied? And especially, where is the sense in pressing for a scheme that groups like the NRA will fight tooth and nail when there is an alternate gun control option that the NRA actually consistently supports? It seems pretty sensible to advocate for things that can be passed without opposition instead of tilting at windmills.
There appears to be a distinct lack of ‘common sense’ in ‘common sense gun control’.
Ummm, you have a cite for alternative gun control option that the NRA actually consistently supports? I’m not being snarky, but IMHO haven’t seen anything that the NRA supports that in any way shape nor form falls into a definition of gun control.
I’m a simple guy. As of today, there isn’t much, if any prosecution, if a “responsible gun owner” is not actually in fact responsible. In fact, seems like there is less responsibility to owning a firearm than there is to owning a passenger vehicle or for that matter an attractive nuisance like a trampoline in the back yard.
If you secure your piece, then everything is kosher. If you sell your piece on the internet, at a gun show, at a swap meet, to your “cousin”, well then you’re an enabler, NOT a responsible gun owner, and should not get a free pass. Again, I’m not here to tell you how to secure your weapon, but if shit happens and your weapon ain’t secure, well then *you *need to pay a “substantial” price. I think that is eminently sensible, and in line with common sense.
With all due respect, if you’re not in compliance with existing guns laws on the books that are not prosecuted, well you’re actually not law abiding. Jus’ sayin’
Look up Project Exile.
The NRA supported it both with words and funding. It had excellent results and was something both HCI and the NRA supported, the prosecution of gun crimes.
One a day?
Or are you including criminal violence in that total because before recently noone ever really gave a shit about that sort of violence until they could use it to inflate the number of "mass shootings to give the impression that there is a Sandy Hook type event almost every day.
Most of the mass shootings that Horatio is referring to could be described as street crime/gang violence.
Enforcing the laws we already have would be a good start.
I think licensing and registration could make a signfificant difference.