You didn’t get into this situation overnight and you’re not going to get out of it overnight either. There needs to be an ongoing effort over a period of years to make gun ownership more difficult and less attractive.
Talk to other countries. Find out what classes of guns they ban or restrict and why, and how that’s working out for them. Cherry pick the most effective bits from their gun laws. People keep demanding to know how you define this or define that without excluding the wrong things but other countries have introduced gun control and they’ve probably put some time and energy into figuring this stuff out. Use their experience. Take what works, leave what doesn’t.
Ban the importation or sale of the classes of guns you’re trying to control, effective immediately. Require all gun sales or transfers of ownership be conducted only through a licenced agent.
Require all guns be registered. Have an amnesty period, but once that is up introduce harsh penalties for possession of an unregistered weapon that includes seizure of that weapon.
Increase the yearly registration fee steadily, so it becomes cost prohibitive, especially to stockpile many weapons.
Offer generous cash compensation, no questions asked, to anyone who brings in the targeted class of firearms. Destroy the guns that are handed in.
Offer generous rewards for information leading to the seizure of unregistered weapons.
Whittle that mountain of guns down slowly, don’t try to take them all at once.
Another idea is to require liability insurance for every gun, just as is required for cars since pro gunners like to compare it with cars so much. If anything should ever happen with your gun, like a shooting, your insurance will cover all liability costs of any kind.
Let the insurance rates settle who will own what kind of guns and how many. I’m sure those semi-automatics meant for nothing other than killing will be pricier insurance than a bolt action hunting rifle. Watch ownership rates of guns drop. If you do own a gun you better make sure it is very secure from theft.
Who do you think pays for the police/fire for these shooting incidents? The bill is often extremely high since it demands such a huge response from SWAT, FBI, forensics, etc etc etc. The local government (fire or police agency) gets stiffed with the bill. Really, the gun owner should be responsible.
Which ones are those? A link to a manufacturer’s website where this is explained, or a glowing description of how singularly suited to killing a particular gun is from the NRA, or perhaps something from the patent office where the gun’s designer explains it is deserving of patent protection due to its unique method of killing would really just be tits.
You know what would bore me and make me write off your opinion on the whole matter? Some drivel about how you* feel.*
This is a great solution because it would quickly illustrate just how irrelevant the gun control debate is.
Let’s say you required that every gun had to be covered by such a liability policy in order to be legal. This policy would pay out $1,000,000 for each person the gun killed, excluding suicides. I don’t think this is the form such a policy would take in practice - it would likely exclude valid self-defense use, and it wouldn’t have to pay the full $1,000,000 if a gun were used by one crackhead to kill another, etc., but on the other hand it might pay more than that for certain cases, so I think it is a good starting point.
I will use 13,000 non-suicide gun deaths per year as an assumption, and 300 million guns in the country.
This insurance would cost approximately $45 / year / gun, plus a bit more for insurance company profit, etc.. That’s the cost of approximately an hour or two of ammunition at the firing range. That’s nothing.
Obviously, the cost will differ for different guns. It will be highest for handguns, because these are statistically far likelier to kill someone than any other type of gun, including the dreaded “assault rifle”. In fact, insurance for assault rifles will probably be quite cheap. And insurance for fully automatic weapons will be ridiculously cheap, because in the past 60 years in the US I don’t think anyone has ever been killed by a fully automatic weapon operated by a civilian.
The point is, we are a big country and there are lot of people in it. The current rate of gun violence is just not that freaking high and gets a disproportionate amount of media coverage.
This is just drivel, by the way. Semi-automatics are no more specifically meant for killing than any other gun. The idea that a semi-auto handgun is meant for nothing other than killing but an actual hunting rifle is not is patently absurd.
Fair enough. I wasn’t thinking of flash suppressors and silencers as being one in the same.
Though a handful of those 39 don’t allow civilian possession if I am not mistaken. Mostly though ignorance fought. I am from a state that they have always been illegal to posses. Assumed it was a federal rather than state mandate.
Muzzle brakes accomplish the same thing with regard to recoil and accuracy. I see little need for weapon mounted silencers. Sound mitigation at recreational shooting ranges can be controlled through environmental means.
Clearly then THIS should be the minimum level of regulation and certification required to own a firearm. :rolleyes:
You presume incorrectly. My response here is in direct reply to the question the OP raised.
Agreed, but without increasing the due diligence required to obtain a weapon, you will do little to reduce the number of idiots leaving them on the coffee table.
And sadly, if this oft quoted study is to be believed having a single handgun NOT under lock and key is the statistically safest way to have a firearm in the house.
you will find no disagreement from me here.
How about this novel idea. Let’s do both. Do more to identify the crazy people before they do the crazy things, AND do more to reduce the crazy peoples easy access to things that allow them to horrifically crazy things.
No comment on your attempts to mover the goal posts.
I am not your enemy. The 21st century is not 1950’s America. Things will change. You can be part of the change in firearms regulation and help guide it in a way to preserve the legacy and sport, or you can continue to stick your head in the sand and see it changed for you without any input.
Well sure, I have strong anti-gun opinions, but that doesn’t matter - in my proposal the private insurance companies could decide what rates to charge for particular guns. Let them decide based on the risk they are willing to take.
So, what is a typical semi automatic gun designed for? What purpose does it have? If killing through shooting multiple bullets quickly isn’t a big part of it why don’t armies equip themselves with single shot rifles instead? Do a lot of hunters like to put 20 shells into their kill? Or maybe they like to kill 10 deer at a time.
Let’s stop here. A sporting semi is designed for convenience and ease of use. No tricky or awkward bolt to work. More easily operated by those with a physical handicap or restriction (such as arthritis).
I would say the answer is no to all of these. Armies like a high rate of fire. being able to keep the enemies head down is as or more important than weather you can put one or ten holes in him.
I have hunting rifles that are muzzle load, bolt action, and semi-automatic. I actually like hunting with the muzzle loader the best. It is a modern in-line design and more than accurate enough for the kind of ranges I encounter. However it is a lot of work to shoot and maintain. Like anything in life we covet convenience. The semi-auto is the McDonald’s hamburger to the muzzle loaders home cooked meal.
You are responding to a different point from what I was making. I was responding to your gross hyperbole: a semi-auto gun is not meant for “nothing but killing”, any more than any other gun is.
Primarily, guns are designed for recreation and protection. The number of civilians who buy guns for the express purpose of killing massive numbers of people is negligibly small and not worth bringing up in any conversation about gun owners and gun control in general.
A semi-auto gun is more convenient for recreational use, because you don’t have to keep re-cocking it, and safer for self-defense use, because if you miss your first shot you can immediately try again. These are the only benefits that matter to 99.9999% of gun owners. No one, other than perhaps 10 nutcases each year, go into a gun store and buys a gun because of how many people it will allow them to kill.
I own a gun. I do not intend to ever use it to kill anything. It’s just fun to go the range and shoot it. It’s a big solid hunk of metal and it makes a nice loud noise. Everything else in my life is a cheap piece of imported plastic. I bought a semi-auto gun because re-cocking the gun after every shot is a pain in the ass. I didn’t go to the gun shop and salivate over the semi-auto gun because I was dreaming of how I could more efficiently kill people.
When you terminology like you did, you just demonstrate that you have no respect, appreciation or understanding for the tens or hundreds of millions of peaceful, law-abiding people who own and enjoy using guns safely, and no interest in developing any understanding. Which leads people to just dismiss your opinions out of hand.
You can get upset about gun owners fantasizing about shooting criminals if you want, because that certainly happens. But this attitude that all or even most gun owners are just sick freaks who massage their egos by buying guns because they are capable of mass murder is just offensive. And you are not doing the cause of gun control any favors, because it just reinforces the perception that gun control proponents are irrationally overreacting out of ignorance to a problem that doesn’t exist.
The area of law is evolving. The Supreme Court did not even address the individual vs. collective rights issue definitively until Heller.
Of course, you’d perhaps be surprised to learn that this is not unheard of; the idea that if state police search your house without a warrant, the evidence seized is inadmissible was not created by theSupreme Court until 1964.
Well, I don’t have any respect or admiration for the gun sport/hobby, so feel free to dismiss my opinion out of hand. I also don’t care for baseball or stamp collecting by the way.
However, myself and the society I live in is directly impacted by the existence of your sport or hobby. This school in Connecticut had security measures installed, as do other schools across the country. This was paid by taxpayers like myself to protect kids because the gun sport exists. Besides the incalculable cost of the lost lives, taxpayers also pay for many other costs including the police/fire/counseling many are going to need. In addition to this I need to live in fear that my 2 or 5 years old will be the next victim of some deranged guy who gets his hands on a gun that is readily available so people can continue the gun hobby/sport.
So, dismiss me because I don’t care to take time out of my day to appreciate your ‘thing’. But know that your thing indirectly impacts pretty much everyone in a negative way emotionally or at least financially. Baseball and stamp collecting, not so much.
Even at home the shotgun isn’t something I’d use as a defensive weapon. Probably damage my hearing firing it indoors, likely to bang into stuff and maybe get the trigger caught running down a dark hallway, If I miss the first shot the burglar shoots or knives me while I’m pumping up a second.
