I think you misunderstood my point. If we are wishing for thing here then add 10,000 more troops on my side of the line with M-60s. My point was that were you faced with an angry mob rushing at you and you had a choice between pulling your M-16 or your M9-Beretta which way would you go?
If you’re 5 feet away from your ‘enemy’, guns holstered and assuming equivalent training you’d rather pull an SKS than (say) an M9-Beretta? I admit I’m no expert here but it seems to me the M9 has an advantage to be brought to bear more quickly than the SKS. Whether the shooter hits anything at that point is a matter of training and maybe luck. I’d still want to be the one to fire first though.
t-keela:
I agree that you will never be able to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals 100%. That doesn’t mean you can’t make it a LOT harder for them to obtain. A few will always get them but most will have to do without. Countries with extremely rigid anti-gun laws still see some gun violence but it is MUCH lower than you see in the US (as my previous statistics point out). As a result a case can be made for tighter restrictions on firearms without pretending that you will get 100% of the weapons off the street.
The US did not start out as a gun culture either. In colonial times guns were somewhat rare items and most people did not have them (guns were expensive for one thing). We certainly evolved a gun culture but I do not think it was a foregone conclusion and has nothing to do with our age as a country.
Have you considered that we are a more violent people because violence is easier with a gun? Killing someone with a gun is somewhat less ‘personal’ than killing them with a knife or your barehands. While there will always be some people who will kill in any way they can manage I’d wager that fewer homicides would happen if the attacker only had a knife instead of a gun at their disposal.
I plead ignorance here, having never purchased more than one firearm at the same time. Are you saying that a separate background check must be run for each weapon purchased (or, as I would prefer, transferred)? If so, that’s stupid. I’m guessing that’s not so, however.
Second, what’s the cost of a background check? As far as I know, it is completely free to both the seller and the purchaser. It is, as I understand it, a cost absorbed (and rightly so) by the government.
Third, the utility of doing a background check on your sister is determining whether she is legally permitted to own that 16 ga. shotgun. For all I know, the girl is a drug-addicted felon with a history of mental illness and a half dozen restraining orders taken out on her. And I have no intention whatsoever of taking your word for it that she’s not.
That seems easily enough gotten around…just don’t ask the person anything and conclude the deal. Sounds to me like the people you know are the ones you should worry about more. If your law-abiding sister buys a gun from you and then blows-away her cheating boyfriend a few days later police might start asking you if you thought it was a good idea to sell a gun to your sister. Maybe you won’t get busted but who knows these days…you might get sued too. Seems better to sell to the guy you know nothing about.
Maybe it’s just be but that sounds like it takes some of the skill out of the sport. It would be easier to shoot fish in a barrel then go out and actually fish but to me the act of fishing is part of the whole point.
I haven’t read up on Project Exile but you and a few others have mentioned it so I will. Till then I can’t really say good or ill of it. If it is as good as you all seem to think it is I wish the NRA or media or someone would do a better job of promoting it. This thread is the first I’ve ever heard about it (and I do pay attention to the news).
The few hundred dollar transfer fee sucks for you in this case but it’s a price I’m willing to accept ;). Seriously…it does suck for you but there are lots of silly gotchas like this in our society. If a broader good is served these annoyances just have to be tolerated.
If your sister wants to buy a gun form you then she should be properly checked out by the Feds. You might know she is ok but that’s not the point. Society wants to know she is ok. Even if you know your sister is an excellent driver the state won’t give her a driver’s license till she meets the state’s requirements.
No, I’m saying that for an FFL dealer to get involved in that, there’s going to be a pretty hefty fee for his or her time and effort. They do not act as intermediaries for free.
Cost varies depending on the dealer doing the charging, but it’s certainly never been free. The last time I had to pay for one it was $20 for a three minute phone call.
Nor any reason to think that she is. Or are you saying that someone with a clean criminal history such as myself (so clean that I can honestly state I’ve never had so much as a speeding or parking ticket) would run right out and commit a felony?
No way on earth would I do that. I’m not selling a gun to anyone unless I can be as sure they won’t kill someone with it as I am that I won’t kill someone with it. The last thing I need to do is find out that some crack dealer killed one of his customers with a gun that, because I had a recalled part fixed on, is traceable to me. I haven’t gone this long being conscientious and law-abiding to do something that ass-stupid.
Even with a laser sight, it’s still extremely difficult. The sight itself does nothing to keep the gun steady, and the laser just gives you a dot to look at through the scope. It’s not like on TV or in the movies were a laser sight automatically makes a person a perfect shot.
The point is, if I sold a gun to her and she’s not 100% legal, I’m going to prison anyway.
Huh? Where did this FFL come from? I thought we were talking about you selling a shotgun to your sister?
It’s very simple. Susanann comes to you with cash in hand and offers to buy your shotgun. You accept, but before you can transfer the shotgun to Susanann, you call up the background check dudes in your state, and they find out that Susanann is a convicted felon with a smack habit and a half dozen restraining orders. End result: No sale, or you both go to jail.
Not to dispute this, but do you have a cite, please? Seriously, I just have no clue what the costs are or how they’re assessed.
Damn straight. I ain’t takin’ your word for it either. That’s why we have background checks.
See previous response.
That’s complete crap. As the law is written now, it is only a crime if you know the person you’re selling it to is not legally entitled to possess it.
And this is where you lose me. I would not sell a gun to Susanann.
What do you want me to do, try to find an itemized recipt from the dealer, scan it and email it to you? I’m not even sure I’ve got an itemized recipt. I do know that my $279 pistol cost me $317 out the door, because I do have the original tag to the pistol and the charge on the credit card. It’s 6% sales tax in that county in PA, which means I was taxed on $299. Of course you’re not going to believe me anyway.
Then again, I’m still waiting for you to enumerate these so-called ‘risks’ and provide your basis for them.
It’s great that you are conscientious in this respect. Everyone should be but I suspect there are people out there who aren’t and that’s my point. To paraphrase Minty ignorance is a legal protection for someone who sells a gun. If the gun seller knows the person to be a criminal than he/she is legally liable for having sold the weapon. What they don’t know can’t get them in trouble so why would they bother asking? Seems like a loophole big enough to drive a howitzer through to me.
No sweat, bdgr. Remember that whole cost/benefit thing. Baseball is America’s Pastime, and baseball bats are not particularly deadly, and they are used in crime with an infrequency that dwarfs the infrequency of machine guns. Beer is more problematic, since its social costs are staggering, but we already know that the social cost of banning it is even more staggering. In either event, benefit outweighs cost.
Please define ‘more crimes’. How so? Are you saying more people are bludgeoned to death by baseball bats than shot? This web page shows that homicides by gun far exceed homicides than by any other weapon…in fact more than all the other weapon types put together ( 63.4% in 2001 ). If you include baseball bats breaking things then maybe but I’m not as concerned about getting my windshield smashed as I am my head getting smashed.
If for the beer you mean things like drunk driving related deaths then they are on par with firearm homicides…around 16,000 each per year (see links above for firearm homicides at 15,980… 16,000 - 17,000 alcohol related auto fatalities ). However, I would wager that many of those drunk driving fatalities were people who killed themselves rather than killed someone else. Not that it makes it much better but if you’re dumb enough to drive drunk and kill yourself that’s your own problem (note I didn’t include suicides by firearms). It’s the drunk driver swerving into my lane about to kill me that bothers me more just as some psycho taking pot shots at me would.
In any case your numbers for beer and bats don’t bear scrutiny in being worse than firearms. I’ll still support you on tougher drunk driving laws though…the bat thing I just don’t see at all.
Never mind. I found my own cite. Pennsylvania apparently charges only $2 for an instanct check. If I were you, I’d get seriously indignant, march down to the guy who sold you that gun, and demand your $18 back.
Were not talking about guns, were talking about scary looking weapons…Assault weapons covered in this ban were talking about…
Personally, I know a dozen people or so that have been beaten by baseball bats…Only myself that has been shot.
And were not just talking about drunk driving. A very large percentage of crimes are achohol related. Drunk driving, domestic violence, assaults, public intoxication, and on and on. Over half the people in prison are there becuase of alchohol related offenses(I dont have a cite for this, my father the shrink told me this…and that was a few years ago).
So beer, being the most popular form, is involved in crime much more than “Assault Weapons”. If we make it illegal, criminals wont have it becuase it will be too expensive…thats what happened in prohibition right? Thats what Minty said, if its illegal, it gets too expensive.
Consider what might have happened if those people with baseball bats had scary looking guns on them.
I’m sticking to getting killed in this thread. Anything else is a lesser issue IMHO. BTW the alcohol and domestic violence link is a myth (a common myth but a myth…my ex-wife worked for an abused women’s shelter and she had to beat me over the head with stats to get this but the evidence is there…that’s another thread though).
If beer were illegal it would probably get slightly more expensive…maybe (no taxes to worry about on their sale). Our country’s experiment with prohibition suggests that beer would be easily obtainable and highly sought after (which was responsible for seriously bolstering organized crime).
The economics of illegal beer do not equate to guns if guns were outright illegal (all types). Beer is FAR easier to produce and produce in quantity. Further, far more people would seek to obtain beer than guns making it more profitable to take the risk to make illegally. While some people might be able to make their own guns the price of guns would rise drastically. Mass production of guns can’t be done in a basement of a house. Obtaining the parts would also be far harder than the components of beer (a dozen or more precision milled steel parts vs. water, hops and yeast).
Would some people produce or obtain guns and sell them illegally? No doubt but the price rise would preclude most people from getting them. It might take a decade or two to wash out all the existing guns but eventually they’d disappear to very minimal numbers.
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But they didnt, and they werent banned back then. Thats my point, people are more likely to use a baseball bat in comitting a crime than a scary looking gun.
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I’m sticking to getting killed in this thread. Anything else is a lesser issue IMHO. BTW the alcohol and domestic violence link is a myth (a common myth but a myth…my ex-wife worked for an abused women’s shelter and she had to beat me over the head with stats to get this but the evidence is there…that’s another thread though).
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If beer were illegal it would probably get slightly more expensive…maybe (no taxes to worry about on their sale). Our country’s experiment with prohibition suggests that beer would be easily obtainable and highly sought after (which was responsible for seriously bolstering organized crime).
The economics of illegal beer do not equate to guns if guns were outright illegal (all types). Beer is FAR easier to produce and produce in quantity. Further, far more people would seek to obtain beer than guns making it more profitable to take the risk to make illegally. While some people might be able to make their own guns the price of guns would rise drastically. Mass production of guns can’t be done in a basement of a house. Obtaining the parts would also be far harder than the components of beer (a dozen or more precision milled steel parts vs. water, hops and yeast).
Would some people produce or obtain guns and sell them illegally? No doubt but the price rise would preclude most people from getting them. It might take a decade or two to wash out all the existing guns but eventually they’d disappear to very minimal numbers. **
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I think it would take a century or two. I think also the results would be very similar to prohibition. Hey, prohibition, for all its flaws, reduced the overall minor crime rate…and it went back up as it was repealed.
Gus would be easy to make, cheap to smuggle in, and would be very available to criminals. No, you dont need a dozen or more precision milled parts. You can make a sloppy but functional gun in your basement pretty easy, with tools you can buy at sears. and only a few parts.
bdgr:
I know this is a complete hijack but if you’d clarify the following two statements you made I’d appreciate it as they seem at odds with each other.
“Most domestic violence is not caused by booze. That much is true.”
“Many Many people become very violent on alchohol though and often will comit acts of violence on their family that they would never do if they did not drink.”
Countries that have extreme restrictions on firearms don’t see this. Certainly a few criminals possess and use guns in those countries but the vast majority do not.
I dunno…maybe they just have nicer criminals than we do. Either that or smuggling and producing guns illegally is harder than you suspect such that illegal gun trafficing isn’t a worthwhile pursuit for criminals to engage in.
I’m not sure since I haven’t been following this thread that carefully.
I really would be curious to know however, the following things from the “antis” in this thread:
First, do you agree that in the US, nothing should be banned without a compelling reason? If yes, then what compelling reason is there to ban “assault weapons”?
Or do you believe that any dangerous instrumentality should be banned absent a compelling need? Or am I offering a false dichotomy? If so, what standard would you propose to decide whether or not something should be banned?
They can have my nuclear anthrax bomb when they pry it from my cold, dead hands.
It all goes back to the cost/risk-benefit analysis I was talking about above, luc. The overall benefits of essentially unrestricted assault weapon ownership are miniscule, while the cost is real and the threat just as real. Put all those things on the scale and it comes out, in my estimation, on the side of serious restrictions for assault weapons.
I didn’t drink the Tequiza, just the tequila. Have a good Memorial Day weekend.