It seems so logical that gun are safer for adults than children, but one should trust data above intuition. And data says children, even in their teens, are far less likely to shoot themselves, or others, than adults.
For data, see:
Are guns a good idea for children? No. But they are an even worse idea for adults. The main reason I want to keep guns away from kids is the same reason I want to keep cigarettes away from kids – if they start early, they are liable to stick with it.
It’s big news when someone less than 15 or so murders - because it is quite unusual. And the mean age of homicide offenders (per above link) is just over 28. Willing to wait that long? I think it unreasonable, and I’m anti-gun.
As for demonstrating sanity, this is almost impossible. You can demonstrate insanity, but the pro-gun extremists actually have a good point there: You shouldn’t take away a legal freedom without due process. And therapists have an obligation to keep medical records confidential except if there is an imminent concrete threat.
I don’t know about the federal ban, but the Connecticut ban includes many pistol models:
Fewer guns in the US and/or smuggled into Mexico mean, among other things, fewer successful suicides. I suspect such a ban won’t stop any American from buying their first pistol, but it should reduce the number of guns cycling through the hands of people who repeatedly buy and sell what seem to them the latest and greatest. Such a ban won’t be a big factor, and banning assault weapons isn’t my favorite idea for how to make guns less popular. Law is a rough and imperfect instrument to achieve social goals. There are borderline situations where almost any law can be shown to be absurd. And substantial changes in gun ownership, up or down, more often stem from voluntary decisions of potential gun owners than from changes in the law. But I think the Connecticut ban sends a good message about what we as a society, at least in Connecticut society, value.
I have no way of knowing, but this sounds plausible.
And the reason your idea is stupid is the same reason abstinence-based sex-ed is stupid. Keeping the kids ignorant is likely to get more people killed, not less. It would make far more sense to take a few hours out of every term to educate them on how to not accidentally kill someone.
If you banned everything but revolvers it would have very little impact on gun suicides.
If you want to change the culture of guns in America then bans are not the way to do it. I would bet every dollar I own that there are more people who own assault weapons today than there would be if noone had proposed an AWB. I would bet every dollar I have that there are more new gun owners over the last 4 months (since Newtown) than in any other 4 month period during this administration.
They oppose it for much of the same reason, they think exposure will encourage activity.
People who make a mistake with a car are held responsible for what ever happens, they have insurance to help with the monitory part.
Look at Iraq. so many have guns, so many are killed. And it seems to me that no matter how many laws we have on the books people that (of that mind to kill someone) find away. In all my years on this earth I have never known so many people who do not take responsibility for their actions, wither it is driving their car or anything where personal responsibility was used. Of course the Majority of people are responsible, but even 1% can cause a lot of harm.
The gun owners should not be sent to prison, that is not my point, Just that they should do all in their power to keep anything dangerous away from others. I also believe it will not stop all crime. Nor do we know how many people even those who past every test, may snap and kill others.
And indeed Mrs. Lanza paid the highest price for a gun she bought for a good reason(protection) so in a case like that the gun did her more harm than any stranger would have done.
My point is that the ammunition was apparently available, had that been the case the gun would not have been able to be used against her, A gun seldom solves a problem. In all my years I have personally known several people who have been killed or killed others with their gun.
Since you apparently like the idea of an armed populous, I should be forgiven for not taking your evidence-free certainties at face value. But you still could be right. Perhaps going from legal to banned to legal to threatened ban does ramp up the gun culture. That’s a price we pay for a democracy in which no political decision is ever final.
I don’t know how to change people’s hearts when it comes to possessing guns intended for use against other people. If I had to look for a model, it would be the battle against cigarettes. Physicians advising their patients against cigarettes have probably helped, and pediatricians advising parents against guns in the house probably help (from my anti-gun POV) as well. Laws regulating cigarette ads and packaging probably help as well. Because of the possibilities you say are certainties, I’m more enthusiastic about keeping the gun controls we already have in low-gun-death states such as Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts than in enacting big new ones.
If we could ban the types of guns most likely to be smuggled into Mexico, that would be worth a bit of domestic blowback. Yes, I know, it’s not happenning.
Liking an armed populace has nothing to do with it. What I like is the idea of preserving the bill of rights. I am defending one of those rights against peiople who seem determined to destroy it.
The only evidence I have is anecdotal because we do not have a gun registry but anecdotally speaking, I don’t know anyone that sold their last AR-15 and I know several who bought their first one during this last 4 months.
Its the price we pay for having stupid politician propose a ban that didn’t reduce gun violence the last time we tried it.
It is more likely that we will strike down some of the gun restrictions we have in place and enact almost no new ones. I don’t know if its dawned on you yet but the inertia is on the pro-gun side. You are not going to be able to negotiate the same way the Republicans did in 2003 and 2004. If you want any change at all, youa re going to need a large part of the pro-gun side to peel off and either stay out of the fight or come over to your side because the senate is never going to get 60 votes in favor of big new gun regualtions without some sort of compromise from your side.
As for the analogy between guns and smoking, I agree that this is your best bet but smoking and guns are different in the sense that the health risks associated with smoking are fairly well established. The negative impact of owning a gun (not guns in society but owning a gun) is much less so.
Worth it to who? Would you be willing to give up the white house and the senate to ban some weapons being smuggled into Mexico? Would you be willing to hand the Republicans a supermajority in teh senate to achieve this goal?
Are you under the impression that Mexican drug gangs would throw up their hands and start engaging in knife fights if they couldn’t get their hands on AR-15s? Or do you think it is more likely that they will move to a functionally equivalent firearm?
The bill of rights wasn’t handed down from a mountain top. It was crafted after a bunch of men 200+ years ago negotiated, debated, and agreed to a certain verbiage. They lived in a very different time, with different morals and values, and circumstances than we have today.
You should value preserving something because it has value, not because it’s part of a certain document.
Does this particular right serve to make our society, our country, a better place to live? Liking (or disliking) an armed populace fits into how one should approach answering this question.
I don’t see how that is terribly different. If Lanza’s mother were required to keep her ammunition locked up, the same objections apply. Lanza takes her key and gets the gun and the ammunition (or breaks the lock).
I think you miss my point, I think there is value to protecting civil rights even if some people don’t like it. Especially if some people don’t like it. I would bet you feel the same way about a lot of other civil rights we have.
We literally let guilty people go free because someone found some evidence without a warrant. We are willing to let murderers back on the streets to protect those civil rights. How much value is there to that?
But if you feel that the second amendment shouldn’t apply any more and causes more trouble than its worth, then repeal the amendment if you can get 2/3rd the house and senate and 3/4 of the states to agree with you. Unless you think this is the one instance in our history when we need to ignore the amendment procedures of the cosntitution?
In today’s day and age I don’t think repealing the second amendment would serve any good purpose other than to leave a disarmed citizenry to the tender mercies of armed criminals.
But what if she had to keep the gun AND the ammo at a federally approved armory, where she could only view the gun through several inches of armored glass? Perhaps with a smell tube so she could get a whiff of gun oil? What then??
These silly what ifs just get ridiculous. There is no way, short of disarming the entire population that you could prevent something like this, regardless of the ridiculous hoops people speculate that someone who owns a gun should jump through. It’s like saying ‘well, if you locked up the liquor so that no one could get at it, this would have prevented a family member from getting drunk and killing a car full of kids’. That’s true enough, but it’s just not realistic or meaningful to try and use hindsight to prevent every tragedy.
The first amendment was debated, but I don’t think the second was.
Agreed. Actually, the parts disagreed with, everyone, including the strict contructionists, ignores. You don’t see NRA members all over the internet complaining about how the Supreme Court totally ignores the 20 dollar clause of the seventh amendment. Why? Likely because they care about guns, and don’t care about the right to a jury trial for small civil matters. Claiming it’s about standing up for the constitution is almost as hypocritical as the Supremes finding a right to keep and bear arms on the streets of Anacostia but not in their courtroom.
I think inertia is overrated. We could just as easily see regression to the international mean.
I don’t think the political fallout is great or predictable. And what if it was? We have rotation in office. When one party wins big, it puts the other on the road to bounce back. And – gasp! – I am not a partisan of either party. And the political part of the issue is not what most interests me. I’m for voluntary disarmament.
Even if was almost all the second, human lives make up the difference between almost all the all. Most Americans, this month, seem to agree that even four lives matter.
The current and past Mexican presidents don’t agree on much, but they do agree that the smuggling makes their situation worse. Considering some of the injustices the US has done to Mexico, I think we owe them this much.
Now, your gun licensing proposal might have a bigger positive effect on smuggling than restrictions on what can manufactured. I just didn’t take it seriously because it’s seemed to me the least likely, of all imaginable proposals, to pass. It’s all theoretical, because nothing can pass until public opinion shifts a bit.
I don’t see how that is terribly different. If Lanza’s mother were required to keep her ammunition locked up, the same objections apply. Lanza takes her key and gets the gun and the ammunition (or breaks the lock).
Regards,
Shodan[/QUOTE
Not if he didn’t know where she had it, It surely didn’t protect her, her son or 25 other totally innocent people. I personally would not have a gun where it could be used by some one in my family who was mentally ill, or if some stranger came in in the night and could kill himself or others, I would rather take my chances with out owing a gun. apparently having a gun doesn’t insure one they can be 100% safe.
It seems almost every night one sees on TV where someone came in and killed another person or a whole family. The second amendment was not meant to be used in the way it is. It was to protect the people from having a despot take over the nation. The odds of the now are slim here. And one can look to Syria to see how much good a gun is doing.
I do believe a person has the right to own a gun in this country and if they do then they should realize it could also be used against them and even by and in many cases by another family member who went crazy.
Yeah, those uppity civilians would still be doing whatever Assad’s military tells them to instead of trying to get a say in their government. If the man in charge says you should die, just die like a man! Or woman. Or infant.
I think you miss my point, which is that “civil rights” are not some sort of magical concept that deserve protection just because they’re “civil rights”. Civil rights are worth protecting when they actually deliver value to our country. If they cease to deliver positive value, if they start to be come a drag on our society, they’re no longer worth protecting.
Yes, the need for warrants allows criminals to occasionally get away with crimes. It also allows me to live my life without an ever present threat of the police searching my home and car at their personal whim. Net… positive value. If this wasn’t the case, and criminals were operating like the Mexican Drug Cartels, because of the need for warrants, I think it would be reasonable to reassess these rights.
If you believe the 2nd amendment is net positive for our country, that’s a fine reason to defend it. However, you then have to take ownership of the negatives and the positives.
