i will strongly agree the private sales gunshow loophole should be eliminated, s a law abiding gun owner it doesnt effect me
the point is if no guns existed, these islamic jihadists would use cars or bombs, as said or drunk elephants it dont matter they will find a way to kill us
Actually everyone in Saddam’s Iraq had guns. Somehow it didn’t stop him.
Similarly, gun control laws were much looser under Hitler than under Weimar Germany, other than them being forbidden for Jews.
You might want to check your facts.
We’ve been over this many times.
There is no “gun show loophole.” It’s a lie. Just like there is no “federal ban on gun research.”
To the original question; “Did Something Change?”:
Yes. Two things, the first more than the second.
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“Reasonable gun control” is dead. California has the strictest gun control in the nation, and it failed. Assault weapons ban, magazine capacity limit, universal background check, no shall-issue concealed carry, gun-free zones all over. It failed. The common-sense gun controllers need now to put up or shut up, and admit what many always knew was true: they don’t want “reasonable” gun control. They want a total ban.
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More and more people are realizing that bad things can happen, with causes foreign and domestic. And when they do, the best bet isn’t hiding under a desk, screaming like a girl, and hoping that no law-abiding citizens have a gun.
Ha! So, your assertion is, that dictators and totalitarians DON’T generally disarm the common people? The millions of people slaughtered by their governments didn’t happen? That’s absurd. They certainly have in the past, too many examples to list. It’s not even debateable.
The fact that you know who prohibited certain people from owning firearms is exactly what I’m referring to, so I would suggest it is you who is not recognizing the facts.
Firearms ownership doesn’t guarantee freedom from despotism or dictators. Without them it generally means Bad Things follow. I wish it weren’t so.
If you are serious about it never being used for mayhem, you must have arranged for its destruction after your death.
Have you?
You’re not helping your argument there.
I’m going to assert that no one knows what percentage of dictators and totalitarians disarm the common people. What I do know is that friends of American gun culture repeatedly bring forward historical examples pointing in the opposite direction of what they say.
No one said, or implied, that.
Saddam might not have killed millions, but there is strong evidence he murdered hundreds of thousands of his own nationals, as well as evidence that most of his subject owned guns. See:
and
LOL! Exactly. When a government prohibits owning firearms, that’s pretty much a red flag, whatever they have in mind must not be very nice.
I’m certain that every gun owner who ever lived and died has said something like that about every gun he’s ever owned. Yet strangely, guns end up being used for mayhem resulting in death an average of about 31,000 times in the US every single year. I don’t know if the Sandy Hook shooter’s mom actually said those exact words, but it’s clear by her actions that she certainly believed them.
First of all, no modern advanced democracy anywhere in the world “prohibits owning firearms”. However, no advanced democracy anywhere in the world permits the kind of idiotic unrestricted access that the US does. Consequently gun-related fatalities are very dramatically lower in every civilized country in the world.
But if you want to equate effective gun control with outright prohibition for purposes of hyperbolic straw man argumentation, I have to wonder what sort of “red flag” this is and what awful things are bound to follow when guns are restricted. When I look at countries around the world including my own that are advanced democracies with effective gun control, and try to see what horrible things they’ve inflicted on their citizens that the US has not, the only really significant difference I can see is that they have universal health care. Now I understand how much Republicans hate the idea of UHC and how you might therefore consider it “not very nice”, but trust me, not having to worry about health care costs is actually pretty nice, and not having to worry about getting shot is also pretty cool.
Wow! Way to totally lose the point, bash republicans, and put in a plug for socialized medicine. Jeeze Louise.
Let’s back up. My assertion is what has happened in the past.
Totalitarians do not want the common people to have the means of self defense, the means to resist. This is a recurring theme throughout history.
If you want to argue that millions of dead people at the hands of their government is “hyperbole” you’re nuts, and there is no further reason for discussion. Is it your contention that Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, et al, did not kill millions of people?
Those weren’t “straw men” that were slaughtered. It really happened, years ago I always wondered what/how had happened in Germany or Japan for everyone to go seemingly nuts overnight.
Not anymore.
“Maniacal Muslims Slaughter Innocents for No Reason.” Feels vaguely familiar, yes. Not enough to blame Islam itself, though. Let’s not get Nazi-draconian about it.
Yes, point totally lost. By you. You have a whole world full of examples of modern developed countries with democratic systems of government that have had strong gun control for a long time. What horrible things have happened in any modern postwar democracy due to gun control? Name them.
But I have no trouble listing the horrible things that have happened in the US due to the absence of gun control. I posted some of the stats here.
And what the hell does Hitler or Stalin have to do with anything? They controlled the world’s largest military forces. What do you think you or your popgun could have done against them? It would have had exactly the same effect that you and your popgun would have if you decided to attack the US government: except for you ending up in jail, it would have zero effect on anything. The idea that they can overthrow the federal government is one of the more amusing delusions of gun advocates.
And BTW, I’m not plugging “socialized medicine” or anything else. I’m just expressing astonishment at values that say that the right to get shot is more important than the right to have health care, or values that deny that there’s any correlation between gun violence and the fact of being swamped up to the eyeballs with guns.
It’s almost like Canada and the US are two totally separate countries with different laws and cultural underpinnings! Holy shit totally new information!
Protip: grouping homicide and suicide to inflate the death figure is persuasive to no one not already inclined to agree with you.
You don’t get to change MY argument. Your cherry picking and exclusions make YOUR argument meaningless.
My assertion was, that totalitarian governments in the last century (within living memory) prohibited firearms ownership by the common people, and eventually killed millions and millions of people. This has nothing to do with republicans today, or Obamacare, or anything else.
Are you denying the holocaust? Mao’s purges? Lenin’s “liquidation” of the kulaks?
But I have no trouble listing the horrible things that have happened in the US due to the absence of gun control.
The US has all kinds of gun control are you serious?. Admittedly, Vermont is pretty lax. Is that what you meant? Probably not.
And what the hell does Hitler … have to do with anything?
Well you brought him up! He outlawed firearms for Jews, right? Don’t you think that was kind of a red flag? Please don’t bring up republicans or Obamacare, OK, we’re trying to stick to the subject here.
Ibn Warraq and I already gave evidence that some of the most frequently cited examples of the theme are mistaken.
Here is some more:
As previously noted, Saddam Hussein ran what was, from a gun rights standpoint focused on the average/common man, one of the best nations on earth. At the same time, Japan was, then as now, from an American gun culture standpoint, just about the worst. In which one did the “common people” have the power to resist governmental power? Of course, the answer is Japan. When it comes to maintaining human rights, a free ballot, in the hands of the common man and woman, is powerful. An AK-47 in the hands of the same man is not.
By the way, I didn’t just advocate Japan’s gun laws for America. I doubt gun laws have any strong connection with totalitarianism one way of the other.
If you’re going to deny basic, factual history - the holocaust, kulaks slaughtered, Maos purges, Pol Pot and his killing fields, etc etc etc, nearly all within living memory - and then cite Salon as your argument, it’s clear there’s no common basis for a rational discussion.
Let’s try, one more time - because this is a website about fighting ignorance.
- Would you agree, or disagree, that in the 20th century, various governments around the world slaughtered millions of their own people?
Yes ___
No ___
I suspect we will be seeing more Muslim based mass murders in the US in the coming months and years, then the political narrative will change that we have to learn to accept that as the price of democracy and immigration.
The gun control part of the debate will not change. It will be more to the front when it is some random white person, less when is immigrant Muslim based type.
So if we’re going to be fighting ignorance, why do you post such utter bullshit that was clearly shown in the prior cite to be completely and rather dangerously irrelevant, since in no case was gun control in any way a contributor or guns in any way a remedy to the situations that ensued? And instead you hurl ad hominems at Salon, whereas in fact they’re quoting a scholarly and factual paper in the Fordham Law Review. Whereas your own position seems to be supported only by the likes of the NRA, Fox News, Alex Jones, spam emails, Joe the Plumber, and Gun Owners of America.
As the article cites, Hitler’s 1938 gun law revisions completely deregulated the acquisition and transfer of rifles and shotguns, as well as ammunition, that had been in place since the days of the Weimar Republic. Many more categories of people, including Nazi party members, were exempted from gun ownership regulations altogether, while the legal age of purchase was lowered from 20 to 18, and permit lengths were extended from one year to three years. The NRA – not for the first time – managed to get the facts exactly backwards.
Hitler controlled arguably the world’s most powerful military and it took the combined efforts of the western Allies and the Soviet Union to take it down. The idea that you and your popgun would have been able to take it down is as ludicrous as the rest of your rambling assertions.
Just like the idea that you and your popgun could possibly have any effect on the US government is more than just laughably absurd, it’s dangerous both because of the implication of terrorist-style violence against a democratically elected government just because you don’t like it, and because it ignores and denigrates the real power that people have in a democracy, the power of the ballot. The US has by far the highest rate of gun ownership in the industrialized world but among the very worst voter turnouts. The power of democracy is at their disposal but they can’t even bother turning out to vote, and some of the ones who do are clueless about what they’re voting for – but they feel happy and secure as long as they have their guns. How’s that for irony?
Yes X_
No ___
Would you agree that Cambodia, after eight years of civil war, was a highly armed society when the Cambodian Genocide began in 1975?
Yes __
No ___