Usually the way it works, is you do your just asking questions thing - and for some reason people play along. For example, you asked a question in post #87. I answered in post #93. I ask questions in post #119, and you decline to answer. Shodan asked you questions in post #96 and again in #113 which you declined to answer in post #117.
I actually want to know. My post #119 has 3 legit questions. I fashioned it in the same manor you typically do in hopes that you’d understand that level of discourse. See, as I was posting you wrote this:
What tools do *you *think they ultimately should be allowed?
The takeaway from my post was meant to be that Australia is not the same as the United States. Your point seems to be that guns were confiscated in Australia and no major problems occurred, so therefore if we did the exact same things in the United States, the result would be the same.
I pointed out the differences in the two societies as to why it would not be the same. It is important to note that one of the reasons that the confiscation in 1996 was so successful is that most Australian states required gun registration beginning in 1987.
A smaller, homogeneous population with no tradition of armed resistance and a belief that the people should attempt to overthrown tyranny (whether that belief has a reasonable opportunity for success it does not matter), no Constitutional firearms protections, and one where the government already has a list of people who own guns is far more likely to be successful in an attempt to confiscate those guns.
Further, the confiscation cost $500 million AU in 1996. Imagine how much it would cost in the United States.
Even if we repealed the Second Amendment, and all agreed that confiscation was the appropriate course of action in the United States (which, again, your side repeatedly claims that you do not propose that at all) we would face far more difficult, nearly impossible, challenges, would be paying billions of dollars to take guns away from the law abiding, and would not be nearly as successful as Australia for the reasons I described.
What if we repealed the 2nd Amendment, replacing it with an amendment that left it up to the states to decide how much(if any) gun control would happen? I’m talking taking the Feds out of the picture entirely.
“Improve mandated-reporting laws so weapons can be temporarily confiscated (with due process) from people with psychiatric problems” is also vague, and you haven’t shown yourself willing to address the question of how far it should go either.
How specifically should the laws be improved, what due process are you suggesting, and what psychiatric problems?
You have pointed out differences. You have not shown how criminals are fundamentally different in Australia (presumably more nice) than they are in the US. I seriously doubt that is the case. In other words, why would US criminals and insane exploit the situation whereas Australian criminals and insane won’t?
We were not discussing methods of disarmament or how successful it would or would not be.
Seems to me the first step is figuring out if it is desirable or useful. I’d say yes on both counts. Figuring out how to do it would be the next step.
You posted them in this thread, you said you thought they were reasonable. Yet you either do not know or do not care what would be involved, how it could be carried out, or what the consequences would be.
Any other vague twaddle you would like to throw out there and refuse to debate?
This, for instance -
Is this somebody else’s proposal, or are you prepared to debate it?
Left to the states makes gun control of any sort meaningless on almost all counts. Kinda like fireworks laws. Fireworks are illegal in Illinois but right across the border in Indiana (minutes away) is a massive fireworks store. On the 4th of July it seems pretty much everyone has fireworks in Chicago.
Same would be true of guns (not that everyone would have one but that getting around your local state laws would be drop dead simple).
I didn’t intend to include suicide, but I was trying to include both this sort of mass shooting as well as the more typical sort of gun crime (armed robbery, gang violence, domestic violence, etc.) I’m not sure what the best catch-all term is.
I’m asking if it would be feasible, or even enforceable, for such an amendment to work. If so, people could choose to live in states with the amount of gun control they feel comfortable with. If there are holes in this idea, and there probably are, please point them out for discussion.
So you concede that you are not for “reasonable common-sense” gun control measures, but are for confiscation? At least you are being honest about it instead of the politicians on your side.
Your “reasonable common-sense” gun control measures are almost certainly different than mine and I have never seen your side ever push anything like a “reasonable common-sense” gun control measure of any sort.
How about we start with if you are on the “no-fly” list then you cannot buy a gun and have to turn in the ones you already have. Surely if you are deemed too dangerous to fly on a plane then you should not be trusted with guns.
My side is not the one claiming “reasonable common sense” proposals. We are against the new proposals entirely and believe that blaming guns for these mass shootings is wrong headed from the outset. It is not our side’s responsibility to give a counter proposal to something that we disagree entirely to begin with.
So, no guns for people on the “no fly” list? I might be for that if:
A person knows in advance what type of conduct, with reasonable specificity, will place him or her on the no-fly list.
If he is presented with a complaint that he has violated that standard of conduct and is allowed an opportunity to answer the complaint and be heard by duly enacted procedural rules.
He is given a fair hearing, with the opportunity to retain counsel, to contest the charges that he engaged in that conduct, cross examine witnesses, subpoena witnesses on his behalf, etc.
Has a right of appeal from an adverse decision.
All of this done in regular courts; no kangaroo administrative and secret tribunals.
Depending on how those standards work out, I might very well be in favor of it.
I think I’ve got second thoughts about this one: What does it take to get on that list, and how does one get off of it? Who has the authority to put people on it?
Right, you said it better than me. The no-fly list is bad enough that it prevents people from flying, let alone owning guns. Such a thing has no place in a free society unless it has procedural rules like I stated.
Does anyone exist today that you guys feel should not have the right to bear arms? If you don’t think anyone should have this right curtailed, then talking about what list is kind of pointless.
Other that the due process issues (which I agree with), the other big problem is that the no-fly list and other watchlists are a secret. You don’t find out you cannot fly until you get to the airport with a ticket, and you never find out if you’re on the other lists. Moreover, these days most people on the no-fly list are just given enhanced screening that could potentially be random or based on prejudice instead of being because of the list.
If you make it so that gun purchases are prohibited, then you provide a cheap and easy way to learn if you’re on a watchlist. In my view, that’s not too terrible because the lists are mostly stupid. But if you’re a fan of such lists as Democrats appear to increasingly be, then you probably don’t want terrorists to be able to figure out which of their crew is on them so easily.