The AWB is a ban on firearms that are involved in a minuscule amount of crimes. Banning them will accomplish nothing. From the gun owner’s perspective, how is that a compromise? Where is the win-win?
Even the 1986 FOPAhad some good outcomes for gun owners while closing the full auto firearms registry. Perhaps your idea of compromise is that I should be happy that AWs are all that are being banned by the latest legislation?
I agree the AWB is flawed, but it’s a compromise because it affects a small number of guns and only applies to the future manufacturing of those guns and doesn’t affect ownership of existing ones at all. You’ve been proclaiming to the high hills that “anti gun” people want much, much more than that. The provisions about background checks and other issues are reasonable and you can still own an unlimited number of guns as long as your record is clean and you wait a few days. And did you just say compromise has to be a win-win for gun owners to approve?
I think that the essence of compromise should being about a win win for both sides. Simply limiting what one party is trying to take from another is not compromise, especially when you yourself have admitted that they have no chance of passing the AW bill. Instead of compromise, they are attempting to make it look like they are doing something. That’s all.
A good compromise for implementing background checks on all sales is to offer a national concealed carry program. Permitted users would agree to a background check and a nation wide standard of testing to insure they qualify for such a privilege. This permit would be renewed on a regular basis, perhaps every couple of years. By holding the permit, the user would skip any background check at time of purchase. This is very similar to the way BG checks are handled in my state today. Few gun owners complain.
While that is in place, all other gun transactions would need to have a BG check record made. In the end, all other gun sales require a BG check, and a class of owners are identified by the .gov and granted a special privilege because they stood up and did the “reasonable” thing by subjecting themselves to registration and further testing to prove their merit.
In my opinion, that is true compromise and entirely reasonable.
Press conferences on CSPAN, interviews on NPR radio, and spots on 60 minutes were held by those looking to further curtail gun rights. If that is not proclaiming to the high hills what their goals are I don’t know what it. Of course, in your mind, you already dealt with that.
Press conferences on CSPAN, interviews on NPR radio, and spots on 60 minutes were held by those looking to further curtail gun rights. If that is not proclaiming to the high hills what their goals are I don’t know what is. Of course, in your mind at least, you already dealt with that.
You can call it that, or you can say a compromise is when two parties both want something and neither gets exactly what they want but both get something they can live with. The idea here is that changes in the laws will make it easier to track and prevent crime using guns and make the registration process more sensible, and a well done AWB might reduce these kinds of spree killings or make them less deadly (without guaranteeing that these incredibly rare events won’t happen again). All of that is done without major infringements on anybody’s privacy and without taking or criminalizing the ownership of any guns or even limiting the ability of 99+% of people from owning guns. That does sound win-win to me.
Interviews and press conferences don’t curtail anyone’s rights. The laws that are being debated and passed do not do the things you say “anti gun” people want to do. So in what way are the “anti gun” advocates refusing to compromise?
Agree, and you are seeing the that a large group of pro-gun folks cannot live with (figuratively speaking) banning weapons based upon cosmetics, not lethality, not rate of fire, or anything else. We’ve been down that road before, it didn’t make a difference. There is nothing in the currently proposed legislation again that will take a single gun or high capacity magazine off of the street. Except this time, it doesn’t expire.
Which is a far cry from any AW ban that has been proposed.
The only way a “well done” AW ban would have some teeth is if it had confiscatory language in it. You keep reminding me that I don’t need to worry about that however. More on that later…
What do I get out of it again? How 'bout a little quid pro quo? you’d be amazed how the tracks would get greased if gun owners actually could walk away with something instead of the constant take take take that has been proposed.
I smile when I see the administrator of this ignorance fighting message board tell me, with what I assume is a straight face, that I need not concern myself with what grandstanding politicians say. Instead, I should only be worried about what they think they can get through the legislative process. Please keep it up. It brightens an otherwise dull winter day.
Show me one bone that has been thrown to gun owners with regards to compromise in this congressional session, and we can talk. (We only want to take some of your stuff instead of all of your stuff isn’t compromise. FYI)
What I’m getting from this is that compromises don’t count unless you say they count, and you wouldn’t personally sign off on a bill unless it gives you something. And tell me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like a more logical registration policy and steps toward better control of illegal guns don’t count as giving you anything - I’m not sure if that’s because it’s part of a broader package of proposed gun laws and not the AWB or because it does not personally do anything for you.
I asked you to show me where true compromise exists in the current legislation. Perhaps I am jaded, but I have not seen anything that looks like compromise except for taking things off of the table that they know cannot pass.
Making me jump through more hoops than I do today to buy the same thing tomorrow does not give me anything. You are correct. Here is what I would suggest:
Allowing me 50 state reciprocity for concealed carry in return for universal background checks when buying or selling guns gives me something in return and earns my support.
Remove the restrictions on NFA weapons in return for full and complete registration of firearms and I would stand arm and arm with Ms. Feinstein as the President signed the bill into law.
That’s what I am looking for. Win win. It’s not that hard of a concept.
I did, and your response appears to be ‘those aren’t true compromise.’ I also explained earlier that even Feinstein understands gun confiscation is a non-starter, and your response seems to be ‘you’re telling me I should ignore politicians and I’m laughing at it.’ Correct me if I’ve misunderstood, but in that last post it sounds like you wouldn’t even support universal registration of guns unless concealed carry were allowed everywhere and even more types of guns were made legal. This does give me a pretty clear idea of your attitude toward compromise and toward gun regulations in general. Were we both in Congress, there is absolutely no way I would accept that deal because it is patently awful. You’re demanding large concessions in return for something 90% of the public supports.
So you want to take away our rights, and when we say we don’t want our rights taken away you say we should compromise but just having some of them taken away?
I want better gun laws that replace the loophole-ridden and intentionally dysfunctional system that currently exists. If you insist that everything from registration to tracking to regulating specific types of guns takes way your rights, you can say until the end of time that your rights are being taken away. But I assure you I won’t take that complaint seriously and I don’t think most other people would either. After all, we keep hearing about how plain the text of the Second Amendment is, and while the words “well regulated” are in there, the words “no background checks” or “no registration” or “untracked sales” are not.
The assault weapon ban certainly infringes my rights. That was part of the compromise you suggested wasn’t it? You want to infringe on my right to buy another AR15 or AR10 don’t you?
You don’t have the right to buy an AR15. You have the right to bear arms, but you don’t have the right to any particular type of gun and you’re already not allowed to own plenty of types of guns.
Say’s who? Bear arms is plural is it not?
Doesn’t that fly in the face of our current Federalist system where States have lots of States rights? Isn
t that an overreach of government? The feds grabbing power?
Yes. And? I never said you’re only allowed to one gun or one kind of gun. I said you don’t have a right to own any particular type of gun. You have a right to own guns, but you have no particular right to an AR-15. As probably 50 posters have mentioned at some point in the many SDMB gun control threads over the last few months, you already can’t own a machine gun, for example. I am pretty sure nobody has ever successfully challenged that law (or any gun control law) on the theory that “bear arms (plural)” means the state can’t ban any type of gun, so I will say that the courts don’t agree with you and I also think very few non-judges would accept that interpretation. You have no right to an AR-15, AR-10, or whatever other type of gun you care to name. So the manufacture of AR-15s were banned (and I’m not arguing they should be), your rights would not be curtailed. You would be unhappy and maybe personally inconvenienced, but that’s a far cry from a violation of your rights.
Says who?
I have five.
A perfect example of slippery slope.
The word “bear” must mean something in the 2nd. The second is already applied against st the states through McDonald. Guarnteeing fundamental rights is the role of the federal government. Just as it would not be proper for two wolves and a sheep to vote on what’s for dinner - it would not be appropriate for a state to vote Way fundamental rights.
Kachalsky or Moore will decide that.