cars are more efficient weapons of mass destruction.
Cars also serve a purpose that isn’t a weapon. Hell, even knives do - ever cut a steak with a gun?
Although, even if we allow your shitty analogy…
To own and operate any car, I have to first pass a rigorous written exam as well as show that I can operate the vehicle through a driving test. If I move to another state, very often I have to pass those same tests again. If I fail either of these tests, there is a waiting period before I can even attempt to pass them again. I have to prove that my vision is within acceptable parameters and I can be denied a license to drive if I have other physical ailments that the state feels might cause me to be a danger to myself or others. In many states, older residents have even more stringent follow-up tests to ensure that they are still able to operate a vehicle with advancing age. I have to pay for all of this.
In order to own a car, I have to prove to my state of residence that the car I own is in good mechanical shape and not a hazard to the environment and I have to do this every year. I have to register my car with the state and pay every year to renew that registration. I am responsible for paying for any and all repairs and maintenance that is needed to comply with these state regulations.
I have to provide insurance in my state that covers at least the costs those around me would have to bear if I cause an accident. Without insurance, I am unable to keep my car and even a lapse in coverage can cause this to be taken away from me. Insurance companies can refuse to sell me a policy for a myriad of reasons and/or can make their rates prohibitively expensive. If that happens, I am unable to drive legally.
I can have my license to use my car revoked by the state at any time for a variety of things. Although most of them pertain to unsafe usage of the car, it can also involve improper storage while not in use (i.e. parking tickets) or simply not having proper documentation while driving. And there are ways that a person can have their license to drive permanently revoked regardless of how this affects that person’s ability to keep gainful employment and can be for non-felonies and even in cases where there is no jail time.
Some of these may have comparable regulations for being licensed to shoot and own a firearm. But many of them do not.
Even more importantly, I cannot go to a used car dealer or someone on Craig’s List and circumvent a bunch of regulations that I would be subject to with the purchase of a new car through a new car dealer. The regulations are consistent no matter from whom or how I purchase my car.
So yeah, do compare cars to guns some more please. But when you do, don’t forget that one of them is "well regulated’ while the other only says it shoudl be in the Constitution.
Now, to address those who will say that driving is not a right but the ability to own a gun is. That’s another debate but I will say here that there is justification that some court rulings have said that driving is a right however those citations come from wackadoos (lots of those free citizens nut-bags, in many cases) who want to use that information as a way to circumvent the above regulations. Something can be a Constitutional right and still regulated. This goes for speech, marriage, the right to vote, it goes on and on.
We can debate where the line is drawn when we regulate a right, but nobody seems to think that there should never be a line drawn ever… Well, except for a vocal minority of Second Amendment supporters.
Only if you operate that car on public property. You can buy and operate any car on private property without a drivers licence or registration.
But driving is not an enumerated right either.
(not that I think the car/gun analogy works)
Having grown up shooting I have used a firearm to poke holes in pieces of paper from a distance for many hours. At no time did I ever envision this as anything but entertainment. I have also used it to put steaks on a table in the past so I guess I have enabled knife usage with a firearm.
I never willingly carried one with the intent of using it on a human although I was forced for about 2 years to do so due to the actions of a very violent person.
To use that firearm as protection on public property I had to obtain a concealed weapons permit which was about as difficult as getting a drivers licence.
No, ever kill the steak you’re eating with a knife?
It wasn’t an analogy, shitty or otherwise. A car is a 3500 lb tool capable of great destruction. I simply pointed out the obvious. The shooter used a much more efficient weapon to drive to the school to use the less efficient weapon. He then had to break into the school to use it.
the shooter didn’t own the guns used. He was stopped from purchasing them.
Actually, if you keep you car garaged, and only drive it on private property, or like at Car Shows or Race Tracks (in other words, if you use you car for a Sport or as a collection) then you usually dont need to do any of those things. It’s true that if you take your car out onto the public roadways you do have regulations- *very similar regs to having a Concealed Weapons Permit or a Hunting License. *
Not a good analogy for the anti-gunners.
in addition to the fact that the shooter didn’t have legal access to guns how is your statement that licensing of cars (or guns) a solution for the use of either as a weapon?
This is what the debate comes down to. It’s not the tool. It’s the person using the tool. If you created a 100 hr licensing program for cars (or guns) how will that change the ability to use them to kill people?
I’ve been following the varied reactions to this latest shooting in the USA and the variety of reactions is amazing.
Let me say off first, I live in Australia.
We have no “right to bear arms” either constitutionally or otherwise, the concept is foreign to me and as such I struggle to relate to how emotive some (many?) people seem to get about any possible infringement on this right.
Australia has never had a hand gun culture. The only people allowed to carry handguns are Police and Security. You can legally own one if it’s for target shooting at a registered club, but it stays at the club. You can’t take it home with you and you sure as hell can’t walk around with it in your pocket or handbag.
We have also never had legal access to fully automatic rifles.
Back in the late 1980’s and early 90’s, apart from the laws about handguns and full automatics, the rules were a little lax and varied on a state by state basis. And we had a few notable instances where people decided to kill a number of others. The last one of these was called the Port Authur Massacre.
Following this, in 1996, the new Prime Minister introduced new federal gun laws, binding on all states.
Apart from the previous arrangements, semi automatics were banned, national gun registration and licence testing was introduced along with mandatory waiting periods and storage requirements.
There was also a massive gun buy back with an amnesty period, where people could take guns they owned to local police, be paid an amount for them and they were then destroyed.
I am a licensed shooter, I am legally allowed to purchase weapons. They must be stored in a locked gun safe at home and the ammunition stored separately and also locked.
the fact that I can’t buy automatic or semi automatic weapons for hunting doesn’t faze me. If you need one of those you must be a crap hunter in the first place, and I genuinely don’t understand why people need to have these things in their house in suburbia unless they’re a hunter or club target shooter.
Since the new laws came in, I can’t recall a single mass shooting of any scale.
There will always be a number of factors in how and why people do things like kill each other, but if that bloke had walked into the primary school armed with a knife because he couldn’t get easy access to guns, there wouldn’t be that many people dead.
I think society does have an obligation to curb gun violence, but there are seemingly insurmountable problems with each method.
- Regulate guns.
The populace wants to regulate guns, and the populace also wants to deregulate drugs.
What is the right extent of regulation? If we regulate guns, will there be a dangerous, underground gun market created, akin to the current illegal drug market?
- Background checks.
Won’t would-be criminals be encouraged to obtain guns via illegal means? And if a person is determined to be unfit to own a gun … then what? Will all of the unfit persons live with the fact they can’t legally own guns or will some of them obtain guns nonetheless?
My comment had nothing to do with Canada. I was referring to the USA. Your gun laws are your problem.
If I felt that most gun advocates in particular and conservatives in general honestly advocated this, I would say “let’s hold and give them a chance, see what happens.” I am willing to acknowledge that YOU may honestly feel this way but I simply do not believe it of the groups I have cited. It’s just a distraction they wave about when gun control is called for … you can tell, because they never make any attempt to follow through when the focus goes away from gun bans. If the NRA were to spend even a tenth of the effort it spends to prevent gun bans on attempts to improve mental health care and reduce systemic racism and poverty, much headway would get made. But I laugh even at the thought of them doing so. And hence, at your proposals.
the NRA doesn’t exist to promote mental health issues.
Simple fact is this: If you talk about mental health, you can probably get a fair majority in this country at this time, and the NRA will sit out because at worst they simply don’t care.
If you go for a gun ban, all you’re going to do is hurt progressive chances in other areas until the national mood changes–which it can do quickly, no doubt, see how gay marriage affected ballots in 2008 vs. 2012. Whether that’s in the offing from this particular incident, well, I’m not gambling either way at that.
And frankly, I don’t speak for the NRA, and they don’t speak for me. I’m just trying to give you a proposal that A) will help significantly and B) won’t cause yet another Tea Party resurgence.
How much of it’s budget does HCI or the Brady Center spend on “improving mental health care and reducing systemic racism and poverty”?
Absolutely. That’s why here in the UK we barely dare step outside our front doors for fear of being eaten alive by wolves or trampled to death by giant roaming hordes of deer of various hues.
Some may dismiss this as anecodotal evidence, but there was a post on a separate thread which I can’t find now, about an academic research study done on Australia’s gun ban that showed pretty conclusively that it worked.
There’s plenty of shotguns and hunting in the UK.
Yes. And that hunting proceeds with heavily licensed and police-checked individuals not armed with AR15’s and Glocks. In my opinion gun laws are still too lax in the UK (witness the Cumbrian nutter this year) but not being able to legally kit yourself out like a one man army has certainly helped keep our massacres down to an absolute minimum.
Guns are hard to come by and our criminals have to make do with converted starting pistols and the like.
Well, there have been no more mass shooting. But *“The total firearm deaths, firearm homicides and firearm suicides had been falling in the 18 years preceding the new gun laws..”
*
Aslo the main decrease counted was in firearm suicide, but simply, dudes just turned to other forms to kill themselves.
That study has been considered bogus due to Chapmans know anti-gun bias, etc:
wiki:*In 2006, the lack of a measurable effect from the 1996 firearms legislation was reported in the British Journal of Criminology. Jeanine Baker (a former state president of the SSAA(SA)) and Samara McPhedran (Women in Shooting and Hunting) found no effect detectable with ARIMA statistical analysis of the data.[43] Weatherburn described the Baker & McPhedran article as “reputable” and “well-conducted” and stated that the available data are insufficient to draw stronger conclusions.[44] Weatherburn noted the importance of actively policing illegal firearm trafficking and argued that there was little evidence that the new laws had helped in this regard.[45]
A study co-authored by Simon Chapman argued that reduction in firearm numbers had prevented mass shootings because in the 18 years prior to the Port Arthur massacre there were 13 mass shootings and in the decade since 1996 there have been none.[46] The 2002 Monash University shooting of seven people, two of whom died, is ignored by Chapman because the usual definition requires four deaths. Data interpretation of trends in this study differs from other authors, while clearly being based on the same data.
Media reports gave Chapman wide publicity while failing to note his long history as an anti-gun lobbyist, which continues to this day.[47] Since then, evidence to a Senate Inquiry showed that Chapman’s research was fast-tracked for publication by the journal Injury Prevention, which bypassed the standard peer review process.[48] The original emails between Chapman and Pless, and reviewer comments, are contained in the Senate Inquiry submission.
Despite the documentation demonstrating this breach of academic protocol, Chapman insists that the emails sent from his University of Sydney account to the then-Injury Prevention editor Barry Pless, and the disclosed reviews that highlight concerns with Chapman’s paper, should be ignored. He states in a 2012 revision to this Wikipedia article: “…that ‘evidence’ was completely wrong because the paper was fully reviewed and Chapman has the reviews, the revision and all correspondence with the editor, Prof Barry Pless, and is amused at the purile(sic) efforts of some to insist otherwise.”[49]
Baker and McPhedran have also published a meta-study pointing out that differing authors’ conclusions were based on the same data, but that interpretations diverged.
A 2008 study on the effects of the firearm buybacks by Wang-Sheng Lee and Sandy Suardi of Melbourne University’s Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research studied the data and concluded, “Despite the fact that several researchers using the same data have examined the impact of the NFA on firearm deaths, a consensus does not appear to have been reached. In this paper, we re-analyze the same data on firearm deaths used in previous research, using tests for unknown structural breaks as a means to identifying impacts of the NFA. The results of these tests suggest that the NFA did not have any large effects on reducing firearm homicide or suicide rates.”[50]*
I was arguing against the point that guns- any gun, all guns- have no other purpose other than the murder of humans. Hunting is a much more major purpose of guns that murder is.
But yes, thank you for supporting my argument.