Oh, dear. Did I fail in my inference that this is not such an occasion? My bad, I kinda thought it obvious.
Why can’t we just for once actually enforce the damn gun laws we have in place right now before we go making new ones?
When Mayor Nutter made some handgun laws in Philly, everybody in Pennsylvania shrugged because Pennsylvania has preemption and as such the laws had no force even in Philadelphia.
Also, I was surprised to see this come back up. I thought that it was a dead issue. Well, give it a little while and it will be.
The necessity of a superseding authority that can bring state laws and federal laws into alignment?
Some folks are pressing for a nationwide CCW rule, I’ve no doubt you’ve heard. If anyone hasn’t, I’ll oversimplify: if Texas says your cool to carry a concealed gun, and gives you a license, and you go to Connecticut, they are obliged to regard you as equally licensed. (If I am mistaken in my understanding, I invite correction, with every confidence it will be forthcoming…)
And then there’s the linguistic problem, definitions, what is, and what is not, an “assault weapon”. Bear in mind, I am not offering to argue the point, I’d rather clean my eyeballs with a toothbrush. But the problem exists, and it is a tough one. If we are to make laws, it is only fair that anyone can know whether or not he is breaking that law, we must be specific.
There’s a lot must be done if gun regulation is to amount to anything more than legalistic masturbation.
Oh, I do hope this law applies to ALL handguns in California (with no exemptions for the police).
It doesn’t, as you knew it wouldn’t.
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There’s this outfit called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. They’re the outfit in charge of enforcing the Federal gun laws. It hasn’t had a director in 7 years.
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If there’s anything more analogous to the Maginot Line than the existing Federal background check law, I can’t think of it.
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Gun violence is more of a public health problem than anything else. Many gun deaths are accidents, and a hefty percentage of gun murders and other violence are committed by people who had the legal right to own a gun, and had only minor stuff if anything in their criminal and mental health history.
At any rate, the California approach of tougher gun laws seems to be working. Over the past couple of decades, gun deaths have been dropping faster in California than in the rest of the country. Maybe we should go with the states-as-laboratories-of-democracy approach, and see if it keeps on working there.
nobody gives a shit. pointing out that something is a bad idea doesn’t require an alternative, especially if it’s not been demonstrated that there is a problem that actually needs solving.
I know you are trying to insinuate that the office of the director is “empty,” but it isn’t.
So? Are you under the impression that there has to be someone (permanently) in charge of a law-enforcement organization for laws to be enforced?
Aside from pre-crime, there’s no better way, and the ACLU would have a problem with that. What do you propose?
That’s the trouble with laws, we can’t deal with crime until it’s been committed.
Is this your recommendation for guns only, or for everything else? Abortion, same-sex marriage, drug and alcohol policy, etc., are they also fair game?
If you want to make liberal hypocrisy a salient point, you are certainly welcome to try. Kinda wish you wouldn’t, but that’s just me.
But some accommodation will have to be found. On the one side, the pressure multiplies every time something dreadful happens. If that is met with nothing but determined resistance, sooner or later push comes to shove. That would not be a good day.
Rather than see us torn by such rifts, I would have preferred the “Fuck it, keep the goddam things if they mean so much to you!” But I think that falls on deaf ears, nobody cares about that, if there ever were a time for that, that time is gone. Whether I keep that position or not, makes no difference, I might as well go pick wildflowers.
So I am left accepting that something is going to happen. The laws will change and they will become more restrictive. Is it too much to hope that we can do that sanely? Or do we refuse all compromise until the pressure reaches boiling?
For starters we can discuss the characteristics of an “assault weapon”, as a means to define what is and what is not acceptable. I see no reason on God’s green earth why civilians should have access to military weapons. Sure, you can hunt deer with a Kalashnikov, why would you want to? If you don’t want people making stupid laws, you’re going to have to participate in making those laws, you will have offer your expertise…not because you like it, but to prevent something worse from happening.
I didn’t make it about politics. I kinda wish you hadn’t made it about politics, but that’s just me.
no we can’t, seeing as “assault weapon” is a term coined by people looking for things to ban.
you might have noticed that by-and-large we don’t. I can’t go buy a select-fire M16, or M4, or AK-47. I can buy semi-auto-only versions of the same, but since they’re functionally equivalent to a Ruger Mini-14 which is not a “military weapon” then I don’t see the point of a ban against them. I mean, if you want to fight to ban things so you can pat yourself on the back because you think you’ve “done something,” well, go you or something.
I wouldn’t, because 1) in the area I hunt, it’s shotgun or bow only, 2) the 7.62x39mm cartridge fired by the classical Kalashnikov pattern has a dearth of appropriate loadings for deer hunting, and 3) whether or not I can use it to hunt deer is not a reasonable test on whether or not I can own one.
Except when we do, we get excoriated in the press as “hating children” or some other such offensive tripe.
I guess it’s too much to expect our lawmakers to know what the fuck it is they’re trying to legislate for/against. Shame.
No, but it does make a difference. An organization without an official director tends to drift and lose direction.
Do you recall what the problem was with the actual Maginot Line?
It was a line of fortifications along the France-Germany border. However, that border did not stretch all the way from Switzerland to the sea. Belgium wanted to maintain its neutrality, and France, undecided as to whether to extend the line along its border with Belgium, or wait for Belgium to come to its senses so the line could be extended to the sea with Belgium inside the fortified line, never finished the line.
What we have is a system that is almost exactly analogous, with the background checks in gun stores as the built part of the Maginot Line. One could strengthen that piece of the line, as Sens. Flake and Ayotte would have us do, but the Germans can still go through Belgium, or rather, the people who would be prevented from buying guns by background checks can still go to gun shows or buy guns in private sales, and buy all the guns people will sell them, with no check.
The solution is left as an exercise for the reader.
And that’s the strength of a public health approach, which tries to prevent disease, and not just wait until people get sick.
It’s what we’re doing with all of the above except drug policy, whether it’s my recommendation or not. And drug policy will probably join the crowd in the next few years.
What difference does it make who coined it. Words don’t have cooties. My point being this one needs either a definition or to be abandoned. At any rate, your opening negotiating position is that you get to define the vocabulary? Might work. Weirder things have happened.
Yeah, I have. Know what else I’ve noticed? I’ve been educated on it by my opponents, they tell me that scary black gun over there isn’t really any sort of assault weapon, they just make them to look that way. For all the Ramobesque look, not that much different than my uncle’s .30-.30.
Why do they make them to look like that? Because they sell more of them when they do? I think that’s it, I think its about money. I think its about promoting the fear and then profiting on curing it. I’m also told that purchasing a weapon is a wholly rational choice, unreliable emotion doesn’t enter into it, nobody buys a gun because its scary looking. How very reassuring. So, why do they keep making them like that?
Maybe, maybe not. Personally, I find a hunter’s need for a long gun entirely reasonable, its a perfectly legitimate sport. But as I’m sure you know the hunter’a plight is often flung into these conversations as the surest victims of the gun-goblins. Which is a pointless annoyance, since people far more “anti-gun” than I’ll ever be agree with such an exemption. Of course.
But I’m reasonable. If you won’t negotiate with the reasonable, and you are outnumbered, sooner or later you negotiate with the unreasonable.
I guess you’re right, but we put 'em there, so the shame is us. And their craven subservience to the NRA and its money is a blight on them. But here’s the thing about whores: their allegiances are highly malleable. When the gun-goblins can outvote and outspend the NRA, the whores will join the choir.
Be a good time to think about what you really gotta have, and what you can chuck overboard.
It does have a definition. A luridly precise one, in fact:
It was defined this way for the purpose of banning them. The above was based on California’s Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Control Act of 1989. The people who pushed the ban and got it passed were the people that defined them as such. If you can’t agree with this bear in mind that you’re arguing with your own people, not with gun-rights advocates. We have no obligation to help you make up a definition out of whole cloth.
I’m with you.
Your OP said ‘Regardless of your position on guns, this is a stupid idea. I shall explain in detail why it is stupid.’.
The thread has now become a standard pro and anti gun debate.
To be fair, my OP was also from 6 years ago. While I still think microstamping is stupid for all the same reasons as before and I still hope that it never shows up where I live, my personal opinions on politics have evolved quite a bit since then.
What, “my own people”? Whatsamatta you? How many times have I said that: keep the goddam things. That’s my preferred position, I don’t think this is worth the fight. But my position is untenable, I may was well not even have it, because events have moved past me.
However much you may have disdain for the ignorant gun-goblins, fact remains there are more of them every time something like Newtown happens. Now, if it continues to happen, the trajectory is pretty clear. Nobody could be more pleased if it stops happening, but frankly I doubt it.
The set of laws recently defeated were mild and reasonable compared to what you might expect if the “pro gun” people continue to march with the NRA’s never give an inch agenda. This stubborn resistance is ultimately empowering the very people you most despise.
And no, I am not “one of them”. I very much want to move my people away from a rancid culture of violence, but I have no faith in the power of law to accomplish this. I am not your enemy, but don’t worry, they will be more apparent. They’ll make me look like a day at the beach. After the next Newtown, or maybe the one after that. You will end up outvoted by the stupid because you wouldn’t compromise with the reasonable.
Maybe it will never happen again. I’d love it, so would you. Ya think its likely?
Well, that’s the status quo, isn’t it? Roe v. Wade permits a variety of abortion policies in the third trimester and subsequent SCOTUS decisions permitted variety in parental approval laws. Same sex marriage is a patchwork among states at the moment. Ditto for drug and alcohol policy.
The idea is that first you experiment, see how things go, then consider federal action. As opposed to throwing up your hands and deciding that an elevated US murder rate is a-ok-with-U.
Didn’t Airman Doors actually say that? Please don’t put a Pittsburgh Steelers fan’s words into my mouth, even if I agree with them…it’s yucky!
