Not that I was asked, but I agree completely. The system worked fine and then got completely jacked up in 1986 for no reason whatsoever. No mass shootings, no whackos running around with tommy guns spraying down rival gangs in back alleys. Just some back door politics at its finest that has served to be one of the best rallying cries for the “slippery slope” crowd.
This would be a perfect trade off for expanded background checks by the way. Opening of the registry. Promotes good will on both sides by giving gun controllers what they think will help, and also rights a wrong commited over 30 years ago.
As Lumpy responded first, the NFA of 1934 was not technically a ban. It is now effectively a ban on manufacture. I would like machine guns and NFA items to be treated like other firearms. If I was allowed to purchase one, I would. The likelihood of that seems extremely slim and is not a priority for me. Though as I identified upthread, there is currently a proposal to eliminate suppressors from the list of NFA items so you never know.
Did you following the link to the supposed source of this incendiary claim that, if true, would be major news? The source is a paraphrase – not a quotation – in an opinion column in a small-circulation newspaper (Aspen Times).
It’s difficult, in New York City, to obtain a handgun regardless of your race. That’s part of the reason why the firearms death rate in New York City is less than half the US national average.
IMHO, another big part is that most New Yorkers are sensible enough that they wouldn’t arm themselves regardless of legal considerations.
I’d be satisfied to see manufacture and sale of toy-appearance guns stop, but I can see myself saying that toy-look guns should be banned. This doesn’t mean I want to ban all guns.
I definitely want anti-aircraft guns banned. Hopefully you agree, even though there is nothing in the second amendment text, or history, limiting it to small arms.
Minnesota and California have similar firearms death rates, despite California having much more restrictive gun laws. Factor out just the high-crime neighborhoods of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and the rest of Minnesota has a rate as low as Canada.
I’m curious about this, because often with stats like this, rates by population actually ars higher when the population is lower. So, getting rid of the larger population areas often reduces the denominator more than the numerator.
So, if you wouldn’t mind, what are those actual rates that you allude to above. Do you have a cite?
She wanted to confiscate all “assault” weapons- meaning guns that were put on a list because they were scary looking. Thank God the AWB had a sunset clause.
Maybe it could be illegal to sell them that way, but how do you prevent people from customizing their guns? Just what paint schemes meet the standard of “toy appearance”?
Heavy ordnance is technically legal but heavily controlled by federal NFA laws. Most people wouldn’t buy heavy weapons if they could, but the idea that citizens should be limited to “allowed” guns per Feinstein is way down the slippery slope.
Note: Hennepin and Ramsey counties are where Minneapolis and St. Paul are. The high rates for some rural counties are due to low overall populations where a small number of incidents inflates the rate per 100,000.
If it were possible to view gun deaths in the entire state down to neighborhood scale, I suspect the worst parts of Minneapolis and St. Paul would stand out like a skyscraper in the middle of a desert.
Your pair of states shows that the gun ownership rate (roughly double in Minnesota compared to California), and gun control, are not the only important factors in how many people are shot to death.
Other important factors are harder to put a number on. Some are cultural. Some of what I hear about Minnesota personality traits, on Prairie Home Companion, could be true.
It is unfortunately necessary to point out that African-Americans overall both commit and suffer higher gun homicide rates than the average. The map of Minnesota reflects the fact that most of the state is lily-white except for the urban concentrations in the Twin Cities.
Sure, Brietbart isn’t a stellar source, but realistically does it matter? Thing Fish in post #483 asked for a cite that Obama, Feinstein, and Bloomberg wanted to ban guns. I take it as obvious that these things are true, but a cite was requested so one was presented. Do you really contest the fact that Bloomberg wants to ban guns?
In any event, your assessment isn’t accurate. It’s a paraphrase, but only just so. The original source was not an opinion column, but alive interview panel held by the Aspen Institute (I’m unfamiliar with this organization). And based on audio that Bloomberg tried to suppress, the paraphrase is pretty accurate:
And yes, the link is to the Daily Caller. It does however contain an embedded youtube video that has the audio. It’s an abridged version - the full version is easily searchable. So yes, Bloomberg wants to ban guns. Also, bears shit in the woods.
Do you really think that’s persuasive to anyone who doesn’t already agree with you? She doesn’t want to ban all guns, just all of them that can fire more than 1 bullet (hyperbole). She’s a gun banner. And not just assault weapons which is obvious. I’m not sure how you can parse,* “If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them – Mr. and Mrs. America, turn them all in – I would have done it.”* to mean anything other than a ban.
But in case that isn’t enough, in 1982 while Feinstein was Mayor of San Francisco, the city passed an ordinance that, wait for it…banned all handguns. The Handgun Ordinance stated “It shall be unlawful for any person to possess, within the City and County of San Francisco, any handgun” and that one violating the ordinance “shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and, upon conviction thereof, shall be punished by imprisonment in the county jail for not less than thirty (30) days nor [136 Cal. App. 3d 512] more than six (6) months.” Of course, the ordinance was struck down because CA has preemption when it comes to certain gun laws. The case striking down the ordinance was Doe v. City and County of San Francisco.
Putting aside the constitutional arguments, the argument that guns in the hands of law abiding citizens are not harmful, and admitting for the sake of argument that gun control is a good thing, there is simply no way to stop access to guns.
Guns last a long time. I have an old Winchester rifle that was owned by my *great-great *grandfather. It still fires well. I have a picture of him in a saloon in Helena, Montana with the rifle leaning against the wall behind him, taken in 1913. We are talking about items that can last in serviceable condition for 100-200 years.
So let’s say that the gun control advocates’ fantasy comes true and the government outlaws the sale of new guns and orders all private firearms to be turned in and destroyed. Who will comply? Bob and Jane, the law abiding couple living in the suburbs will. Jimmy the gang banger will not. So the immediate effect of the law is to keep all criminals armed while disarming those who are the most likely not to commit crimes with them.
And again, this isn’t like the drinking age where we know that minors can get their hands on booze every once in a while, but the overall effect of the law keeps them from drinking any time they want. All it takes is one single time to steal a gun from someone and a criminal has it not only for his life, but his grandchildren’s lives.
I realize that we are not talking about a full ban, but each iteration of these proposed laws does nothing but affect those who are unlikely to be a problem anyways. Mentally disturbed people can simply steal guns if they cannot buy them from an FFL or a private party. It has no effect on them, but creates an additional burden on law abiding people who have to jump through greater hoops.
This fact makes us on this side of the debate fear that these “common sense” gun laws are merely a ruse to enact a total ban. The laws are clearly insufficient to solve the problem, so why the need to enact them at all?
Neither do speeding laws; scofflaws will speed anyway. I guess we don’t need them, or any other law that criminals ignore.
Besides, comprehensive background checks don’t require the cooperation of the criminal/crazy buyer. It only requires the cooperation of responsible gun dealers/sellers. It is not intended to prevent all guns from getting into the hands of any criminals. It will reduce the number of guns that get into the hands of criminals and the insane, at little or no inconvenience to responsible, law-abiding gun owners.
That’s my point. You speed one time and you get away with it. If you want the benefits of speeding again, you must break the law again. Eventually you get tickets, your insurance goes up, and you keep your speed more reasonable.
If we analogize speeding to guns, imagine if you got away with speeding one time and that gave you a license to speed for the rest of your life and your children and grandchildren likewise had the same license. That is how it is with guns. Fail 99/100 background checks and as long as you get a gun one time, you are set for life (and so are your children and grandchildren).
Any step must be absolutely foolproof or else it won’t work.
Speeding tickets are effectively a road tax levied at random upon people who speed. It makes money for the system and some people judge the risk of paying a fine as low enough that they’ll take their chances.
A law can be so ineffective, so difficult and expensive to try to enforce, its penalties so draconian, and the behavior it seeks to ban so minimally harmful that it just isn’t worth it- look at Prohibition. We’re starting to think the same about marijuana. A few even propose that simply letting addicts have prescriptions for drugs would be cheaper in the long run than the War Against Drugs.
As for background checks and registration, I myself don’t see anything inherently wrong with them… IF that well hadn’t been so thoroughly and completely poisoned that figuratively you could drop dead just from walking within 20 feet of it.