In 1960, only machine guns were heavily regulated. For all othe guns, the following was true:
They had no serial numbers stamped on them.
There were no registration requirements.
There were no prepurchase background checks performed.
There were no waiting periods.
There were no limits on the number of guns a buyer could purchase at one time.
Firearms could easily be purchased across state lines.
Firearms could be purchased by mail, and shipped directly to the buyer.
The per capita crime rate today is essentially the same as it was in 1960. The crime rates in the 1970s through the 1990s were higher than they were in 1960. So what reason is there to believe that all the “sensible regulations” passed between 1960 and today had any effect either way on crime rates?
I’m not sure we will, if we can return some common sense to our criminal justice system. I saw a trailer today for a new documentary about the War on Drugs. One part of the trailer featured several prisoners talking about their drug sentences. One unlucky schlub got caught in possession of 3 ounces of methamphetamine. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison! That asshole in upstate New York who shot those firefighters only spent 18 years in prison after beating his grandmother to death with a hammer. Something seems seriously out of balance here.
Maybe if we didn’t lock up so many druggies and other nonviolent offenders for such long periods of time, we’d have enough room in our prisons for the violent folks?
Sounds good to me. For the life of me I can’t understand how we ever got to the place where violent offenders get sprung so soon as it is, let alone sprung in favor of keeping non-violent offenders in jail. Far more people have been killed in this country by violent offenders prematurely sprung from prison than have ever been killed by wackos with automatic weapons or homeowners with handguns, yet all the focus is on getting rid of the weapons while the problem of people being raped, robbed and killed by violent criminals who serve only a fraction of their time is utterly ignored. This also does not seem sensible to me.
So, all that evidence piling up about the lack of deterrent effect that harsh punishment has on the people who commit crimes means what to you?
I’d agree with you 100% if not for that simple fact. I just don’t think that harsher penalties are gonna cut it by themselves. Gun violence won’t go anywhere without a major societal shift. The whole country needs a new mindset towards guns.
I really think there needs to be something that will never happen - wholesale confiscation. Wage war on the guns. Delete the 2nd amendment. Don’t renumber the rest of them, as a permanent reminder of the biggest woops the constitution ever had. The innocent law abiding citizens who get swept up in the mix are an acceptable casualty in order to accomplish a major societal shift.
Get all the guns out of the hands of non police/military.
Then slowly permit guns to be sold in limited forms. Like bolt-action only, for hunting. Then limit ammunition like a motherfucker. Anyone found with more than 3 rounds gets mega penalties. Hunters do not need more than 3 rounds to drop a deer, squirrel, or whatever. Want to target shoot? The range has more ammo for you. Want to target shoot at your house? Too bad. Walking down the street with a gun? Nope. “But I need to defend myself from the boogymen!” Too bad. The weak will die, the strong will figure out a way to defend themselves without guns.
And since that pipe dream will ***never ***happen, there’s never going to be anything done about guns that makes anyone happy.
You gotta admit it, it’s just the “wow I’m uber cool and my sexy guns are gonna make me strong” factor that drives people to accumulate arsenals. It’s either showing off, lust for power, or plain old sexiness that gets guns sold nowadays.
That is one of the most abhorrent attitudes I’ve seen on these boards. What else will you apply that to? State religion? Abortion? Free press/speech? What comes next?
Drugs? You know, that movie trailer I saw today for the House I Live In had me pretty upset, and I was certain that seeing the movie would have me even more upset. But now I can see that destroying the lives of millions of inner-city niggers and rural redneck trailer trash is just the acceptable price we have to pay if we’re going to accomplish a major societal shift to Save Our Childern From the Horrors of Pot!
What it says to me is that anyone making such an argument is either relying on specious or flawed data, or they simply don’t know what they’re talking about. Examples of the deterrent effect of harsher penalties abound, as do examples of their greater deterrent effect the more harsh they are. Our entire system of assigning crime by degree of offense and assessing penalties accordingly relies upon it. For example ask yourself which has the greater deterrent effect, a $100 penalty for speeding 10 mph over the limit or an $850 fine for driving 25 mph over the limit? Or which carries the greater penalty, shoplifting or armed robbery? Stealing an unoccupied car or hijacking it at gunpoint? Assaulting someone in a bar or assaulting a cop? Etc., etc., all the way up to murder.
Now ask yourself which of those crimes occur less frequently and why. Is there really any question that without the deterrent effect of the harsher penalties each of those more serious crimes would happen much more often? The degree of a crime’s seriousness and the danger it poses to society has been used as a determinant for punishment for thousands of years and in every society, and in every case the harsher penalties are intended specifically for their deterrent effect. It’s a simple fact of life that the more painful the consequence the more the behavior that leads to it is to be avoided. I can’t think of a single crime that wouldn’t occur more frequently in the absence of a penalty than occurs with it. Can you?
And if not will you therefore agree with me that the harsher the penalty for being illegally in possession of a gun the less likely it is to occur, and therefore we should focus on getting guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them in the first place rather than trying to take them away from everyone else instead?
The fact remains that you were given an article that gave the facts, and you failed to read them and came to the wrong conclusion about what it was saying. Try to justify it all you want, but you look like an imbecile.
I get that open carry is legal. I’m just not sure it’s a good idea. Our most recent spree killings have been committed by people who could have owned or did own the guns legally. They were perfectly fine right up until the moment they started shooting other people. Now we have people trying to make it acceptable to carry weapons openly? Seriously?
It honestly blows my mind. We won’t be able to tell the good guys with guns from the bad guys with guns until they start shooting.
I hear you. And you’re making sense. But the really out there whackos who commit mass murder aren’t deterred at all by harsh penalties. They also use legally obtained guns.
Harsher penalties might start to cut down on the relatively minor offenses people commit with guns (relatively I said, relatively) like a single murder or a burglary with a gun. I don’t think though that it’s going to have an impact on the types of crimes that got this debate heated up again in the first place.
So while I agree with you, I don’t think there’s any way to achieve a society in which mass murderering crazy people don’t have access to guns/ammo to the extent that they do now without going to the obviously unacceptable extremes that I outlined in my hypothetical.
A hypothetical which I realize nobody wanted to think about - and made people go all “That guy’s obviously crazy and his words hold no merit”. Truthfully - I don’t see any other way to get from here to there. “There” being a society where guns aren’t the norm, where you don’t need guns to defend yourself from other people who have guns. The thinking of politicians and the majority of voters would have to be just like I mentioned (“The innocent law abiding citizens who get swept up in the mix are an acceptable casualty in order to accomplish a major societal shift.”) for us as a country to get there, and everybody knows that’s just not gonna happen.
As has been pointed out many times on this board, the weak and cowardly are the ones without guns.
Which explains the old movie trope we’ve all seen a million times: mortal enemies preparing for a no-holds-barred, hand-to-hand combat to the death… “I’ve waited so long for this day!” “THIS ENDS… HERE!” Et cetera… followed by a 10-minute intermission while they run in opposite directions to fetch their shotguns and pistols from their respective car trunks.
Which is why we’ll need to use different approaches to reduce (not eliminate - that’s not possible) these shootings, as opposed to the tactics which work on “normal” criminal-on-criminal shootings (which make up the majority of gun murders in the US). And those changes are going to need to make it easier for mental health professionals to report patients they believe are dangerous to the NICS database, and a change in the way the media reports these crimes (so they don’t seem so “glamorous” to the next would-be shooter).
Toning down our media’s infatuation with violence might help us get there. But there’s that pesky First Amendment in the way.
I do think the cultural change you imagine is possible, but it’s going to be a long, slow battle to get there. And education’s going to have to play the major role, as it’s impossible to use force to change hearts.
One might level such at me; I used to be a real nasty bitch to people on here who didn’t deserve it, back when I was sick.
I did modify my views on gun rights and ownership over time. When I first started debating it on here 12 years ago my stance was “no new laws, loosen existing ones.” But several things have modified my stance:
In the endless Sisyphean debates which have rampaged back and forth across this message boards, there has been that occasional 1 in 1,000 pro-gun-control posts which made me think. Not many, but given there have been surely tens of thousands of such, I’ve nonetheless had ample material to consider.
I’ve grown older. I’ve been on this message board an incredible 45% of my adult life (starting counting from age 18). A lot happened to me in 12 years. Time passes, seasons change, and so do people. I’ve had in my life an accumulated experience which is very large, of people abusing and misusing guns, having accidents with guns, and generally being dangerous, unstable assholes with them. I’ve also seen far too many people who are so mentally unstable they should never, ever, be allowed a knife, let alone a gun - but because they are undiagnosed and not “in the system,” these loons can go and buy anything they want which is legally available.
And to be blunt, some of them really scare me.
I went through a major life change this last year which changed me. It changed my thought processes as well, washed away 30+ years of horrible depression, and made every day the best doggone day of my life. I don’t approach debates with a “must destroy idiot fucktard” attitude, I want to listen more, and sit and think, and appreciate the argument. I don’t get angry any more, or only very rarely. I don’t drink any more. I love life and I think everything is absolutely awesome, and so I try to listen more to people, or else politely tune them out if they insist on being rude.
I proposed on my board a system of owner licensing (not gun registration) which was 4-tiered and which would be guaranteed to reduce the availability of all firearms by requiring a basic Tier 1 license at a minimum which would be similar to a hunter safety course, with more and more restrictive tiers. Handguns and semi-automatic weapons capable of accepting high-capacity removable magazines (since I know from long experience calling these “assault weapons” is factually incorrect, but I hate typing that long qualifier…) would require a much higher bar to own. I would also ban firearms ownership based on any violent misdemeanors including juvenile offenses (it’s long past time to stop hiding the crimes of violent teens).
It would be give and take, however, in that the Tier 3 and 4 licenses would effectively be a national carry license, and Tier 4 would give a police-level of carry ability. I would also end the 1986 ban on new NFA weapons for NFA licensees.
In short, I propose “register the owner, not the gun” and “restrict, reduce, but do not ban.”
Thus far, no anti-gun or pro-gun person on my board thinks my system is good, which probably means it sucks…well, it’s an idea, what can I say?
As a petite woman who was raped once and could have easily prevented it had she been allowed legal access to a gun (not possible at the time), I am strongly pro-self defense. Bans cannot abide in my opinion until the anti-gun folks who happen to be in favor of such can convince me of an effective form of self-defense a 100-pound woman can use against a 250-pound man who wants to rape, torture, and kill her. It’s not a solution for all women - an annoying large number of women, IME, are simply not mentally ready nor able to use a firearm to defend themselves, and I cringe every time I hear another woman say “I’d be afraid of having a gun…the man would just take it away from me and use it on me.” Well first off sister, good for recognizing that yes, you definitely should not have a gun at this time if the “majesty of the man” cows you so much. And second, guess what, if the man can take the gun from you he can also probably kill you in a variety of inventive and nasty ways.
And tasers, pepper spray, Judo and Jujitsu…not for everyone, and not nearly as effective. While I have successfully used my unarmed combat skills once against a very large male recently in a bar, that’s the exception, and I was trained in that specific technique by my weapons master for weeks - not any 2-hour community college class in “rape escape.” It takes hard work, bruises, and repetition to get the instincts and ability to immediately break free of the grab, pull distance, and punch the motherfucker in the side of their neck such that they run like their feet were on fire and their ass was catching. And I was lucky, I was in a well-lit place, solid footing (OK, 4-inch heels, but still, it wasn’t like on the grass) with half a dozen of my girls around me who had my back.
And I’m also mildly anti-hunting, which alienates me from most of the pro-gun folks on this message board. I’m not a prohibitionist, but I am definitely not a fan and want some more restrictions on lead in the environment and protection of predators such as mountain lions.
So yes I am firmly in the camp of firearms ownership in terms of self-defense, made available to a large majority of persons. But like myself my opinions have changed, and like myself are likely to change further.
And I was lucky, I was in a well-lit place, solid footing (OK, 4-inch heels, but still, it wasn’t like on the grass) with half a dozen of my girls around me who had my back.