Gun control advocates weaken their position when the ignore that a) gun violence is actually decreasing b) “aasault weapons” were never used in more than 1% of gun crimes b) Lott’s work
The rationale of a wacko bent on homicide is not an argument against the 2nd. It is more along the lines of the anecdotal evidence upon which the gun control advocates rely. This severly weakens their arguments in my mind, but seems to carry weight weight with those that would make policy based on sorrow rather than reason.
I have never seen a $20 pistol in a gun shop. I am assuming teh you are referring to stolen guns sold on the street. And I am sure that you are aware that full autos have been illegal without a permit since 1934. So what you are saying is that empirial proof that people will break gun laws repeatedly is proof that we need more gun laws.
With all due respect, Mr. Zambezi, your comments illustrate my point. I’m not arguing a position, I’m making an observation.
This is not a rational argument. This is a “yeah, same to you” rejoinder.
I don’t understand your objection. Are you saying that a concern that it seems very easy to for any idiot to get assault weapons and handguns is unreasonable on its face? Are you saying that Colorado, Arkansas, and the other school shootings in this country are not at all worthy of the concern of reasonable people?
Let me reiterate: I am not claiming that this issue per se rationally justifies gun abolition. I’m saying this issue is rational and important. If gun owners merely ignore or attempt to obfuscate it, they will eventually be excluded from its resolution.
Sigh… ridiculing someone simply for saying, “hey, here’s a real issue, are you going to take it seriously?” merely makes one appear paranoid, fanatical and impervious to reason.
Since some people apparently cannot understand simple English, I will restate this particular point more explicitly. When existing laws fail to effectively correct or abate a legitimate problem, a democratic society corrects its laws.
Perhaps this explains the number of new concealed-carry and shall-issue permit laws being enacted. The populace has spoken and they’ve said, strict regulations appear to be fruitless, it’s time to try something else."
I guess maybe you should tell us how you’ve arrived at the conclusion that the U.S. has a “legitimate problem.” And maybe how you’ve determined that the general populace, or at least a critical mass, agrees with with you.
In your posts, you seem to be citing a failure on the part of Law Enforcement for the lack of prosecution of gun crimes (everything other than assaults and murders).
The failure is in the criminal justice system; Illegal Possession, Ill. Carry, Ill. Transport, are all almost universally plea-bargained away; they’re not considered “sexy” for prosecutors.
Any DA worth their salt would much rather get a Murder-1 conviction, with a life sentence, for the accused, than a conviction on a list of gun charges (still felonies, but considered “minor league”) with total 10 year sentence.
Factor in over-crowded prisons, necessitating revolving-door paroles to keep the prisons from exploding into riots, and you have a felon who knows that he can do IT, again-and-again, and not have to seriously worry about hard time.
I’m not an expert on criminal corrections, and as such I have no answers on how to solve the problem.
Zero-tolerance and Truth-In-Sentencing may solve the problem in the short-term, but in the long run, it’s only going to create a whole 'nother set of problems, or rather severely exacerbate an existing one.
How many prisons are we going to build? And how many tax hikes will we support to fund them?
We would have plenty of prison space, ExTank, if our government would abandon its useless, oppressive “War on Drugs.” Quit jailing citizens for the heinous crimes of smoking and selling marijuana, and you will have plenty of room for the thugs who need to be in prison.
[End of hijack]
May the American people forever have the Second Amendment, one of the keys to our freedom.
It is important to note, that access to guns does NOT significantly increase (or decrease)the violent crime rate. Thus, WHY any ban on guns? Rather than asking “why not?”, we should ask “why”, and there is no good reason. Sure, you could use the old (and tired) “if just one life” arguement, but that same arguement can be used to MUCH greater effect in argueing a ban on tobbaco, alchohol, and cars.
Next, you can’t get a gun for any $20 on the street. Chief Landsdown told us a 9mm was running a cool $200+.
Twenty bucks might conceivably buy you a small .38 revolver with a broken hinge on the cylinder and no handgrip.
Joe Malik: why argue for restrictions on gun ownership, which for the most part only burden the law-abiding, rather than supporting a proven program such as Project Exile? Under Project Exile, armed criminals are denied bond and receive mandatory minimum sentences. Richmond, Virginia’s agressive PE program lowered their murder rate by 65% in one year. Furthermore, the NRA and most gun owners I know support Project Exile completely.
Why go after the guys who are already obeying the laws and being good citizens? By all means, put the criminals away, but leave the rest of the population alone.
I’m not going to respond to anyone specifically (that’s already been covered rather well by others), so I’ll just grab one of my favorite issues and respond:
Armed citizenry as deterrent for tyrannical gov’t: The standard anti-gun-esque response to this seems to be, “Pooh, we wouldn’t stand a chance, better to just give up,” followed by examples of how tanks and F-22s would obliterate an armed mob on the battlefield. While this is true (heck, a single well-placed missile can kill hundreds), the notion of tyranny-prevention is just that: prevention. With an armed and informed populace, no governmental or military force would have a chance to even start a war… or, rather, they wouldn’t dare. Can you imagine the losses?
In addition, the political atmosphere necessary to provide the possibility of a dicator rising to power needn’t be prevalent here and now… it can happen twenty years from now, or fifty, or a hundred. But, given events in the past century alone (the Nazi takeover in Germany being the favored, though not only, example), I think it’s evident that an attempted militaristic takeover isn’t as far-fetched as some would think.
Now, I (and I doubt anyone else on this board) hardly believe that Clinton or Gore are seriously considering sending troops into Pittsburgh or Cleveland. In fact, I doubt if any gun-control bigwigs are trying to ban guns for the purpose of instilling a tyrannical dicatorship. My stance, and I would assume the stance of many others, is to ensure that such actions would have little-to-no chance of ever coming to light.
(I would like to point out that, as I began writing this, an “infomercial” from the NRA came on TV, almost at the exact instant that I pressed the Reply button. Small world, huh?)
I was think mostly of rural West Virginia and Tennessee, where I spent time as a boy. Some of these places redifine ‘squalor’. I’ve seen fairly recent tv news peices about West Virginia folk living without electricty. It is true that the U.S. has one of the richest, widest-ranging food distribution networks in the world, but we still have some folks living in poverty.
To date, all Joe Malik has proposed is that “measures to restrict access to serious weaponry to criminal, insane and dangerous people is a matter of pragmatic political reality.”
Nope, not even the NRA. The NRA and other pro-gun groups have supported such measures, and they have been enacted but rarely enforced. It’s isn’t sophistry to point it out, and it doesn’t suggest that law enforcement or the justice system are “pervasively corrupt”; it’s simply a fact.
Any measure which attempts to restrict access as described, but which has a net effect of burdening the law-abiding more than the criminals, especially in relation to an expressed (rather than an implied) Constitutional right, is, IMHO, irrational.
Before I spend time digging up cites, are you arguing that the perceived ease of access to weaponry to anyone, including kooks, nutjobs, people with medical history of violent insanity and convicted felons, is not widely regarded as a problem? If so, I will be happy to back up my assertion.
ExTank:
Whatever. If the laws are not “sexy” enough, make them sexier. My point is that to put a social problem outside the solution of corrective legislation (even if the correction is reducing legislation or legislating spending) essentially puts the problem outside of democratic debate. Also, if you’ve got the guy for life on murder-one, it seems trivial that a lesser offense is not officially enforced. I don’t see a substantive objection to my point here.
The Peyote Coyote:
Right on!
Danielinthwolvesden:
There are lots of good reasons, on both sides. There are also lots of bad reasons, again on both sides.
Ok. I’m not an expert in obtaining guns. That was a rhetorical assertion (i.e. guns can be had cheaply and easily). But it does seem that there is little economic restriction for criminals obtaining guns.
Recent legislation, however, mandating serious prison sentences for felons merely possessing guns does seem to have reduced at least one component (criminals) of this issue. A case of more legislation having a positive effect without restricting the rights of the vast majority of responsible, law-abiding gun owners.
Max Torque:
I do support Project Exile (see above).
Show me one sentence where I have argued for restrictions on gun ownership. Show me a case where I have considered problematic gun ownership by other the insane, criminals and obvious morons and whackos. Are you making the counter-argument that such people should be allowed access to heavy weaponry?
SPOOFE Bo Diddly:
The Armed Citizenry argument fails not because it is false but because the Unarmed Citizenry argument has equal weight; it is the unity of the citizenry that prevents or overthrows dictatorship, not the prevalence of arms. If you have real unity, you don’t need arms. If you do not have real unity, your armament is irrelevant.
It bears repeating that I’m critiquing the argument, not the policy. It irks me to see people repeating refutable arguments, whether I agree or disagree with their position.
Gary Kumquat:
Actually I have not even gone so far. I have merely stated that a substantial group of people, myself included, consider their perceived ease of access widely a problem. I do however, indeed agree that some method of restriction seems a reasonable possibility for the correction of that problem.
pldennison:
Cites please, preferably from neutral sources, and predating the enactment of such legislation.
It’s only irrational if the relative burden is obvious, the conscious intent is to restrict the legitimate rights expressly granted under the constition, and the argument does not include amending the constitution.
IMHO the policy (law?) allowing the president to assume command of state militias abuses the Second Amendment far more specifically and intentionally than does regulating individual gun use, since the phrase “well regulated” does appear in the text of the amendment.
Irrationality is a far more serious charge to lay on your opponent than mere disagreement. You have claimed he has abandonded reasoned argument, rather than claiming he has allowed a flaw to creep into his deduction, or is assuming propositions not in common with his opposition.
[quote]
Before I spend time digging up cites, are you arguing that the perceived ease of access to weaponry to anyone, including kooks, nutjobs, people with medical history of violent insanity and convicted felons, is not widely regarded as a problem? If so, I will be happy to back up my assertion.
[quote]
Perceivedease of access? I’m certainly willing to suggest that we enact no laws on the basis of someone’s, or a group’s, perception. Why don’t we determine if there’s really a problem before we begin removing individual rights on the basis of perception? I suggest a law should be based on reality, rather than an impression. Anyway, what kind of question are you posing? It’s already illegal for these types of people to own many firearms.
There is evidence that it is easy for a kook to buy a gun only 30 minutes work away from fully automatic. The perception is that it’s too easy. When we’re talking about values, substantially shared perception is a relevant fact in and of itself. Not authoritative but certainly relevant.
Simply declaring that something is illegal is not necessarily a substantive deterrent to an undesirable activity. For instance it is illegal to sell me a car if I don’t have a driver’s license. I must test my car for acceptable emissions levels and prominently display its certification before I may legally drive it. Again, it bears much repeating that I am not advocating a particular solution. I am merely saying that simply to dismiss or trivialize the perception of a serious problem weakens your credibility. Committed opponents of gun control are not even a sufficiently large minority to disregard persuasion of the undecided.
In my (admittedly liberal) positions regarding gun control (which I have not yet shared here), I try to take into account that gun owners are, on the whole, reasonable, intelligent people with important and substantive interests that flow from their values. Their considerations must be respected to reach an effective compromise. I expect the same consideration from intelligent gun owners.
It is unfortunate (but natural) that much of the debate has become polarized; as with abortion, the two sides have demonized each other so much that even the most obvious compromise is viewed as abject submission. It is my hope that I will find less mindless partisanship here than in other venues.
I urge the libertarian-like to remember that they represent a disproprotionally large group of netizens; their unconditional support is not nearly as pervasive as one might infer from the internet.
Not if the unarmed (presumably this is a reference to the gun-control proponents) citizenry are wrong. Much the same logic was used by plantation owners to justify their continued enslavement of blacks.
There was a lot of unity in Prague, in August, 1968. Didn’t see too many guns, though. I did see a lot of Soviet tanks. That might explain why the last Soviet troop didn’t depart until '91.
Unity is great for fighting oppression. Unity and firearms are even better.
If a substantial group of people perceived a Flat Earth, it wouldn’t change the spherical nature of our planet one iota. The “method of restriction”, as you put it, has been in place since 1968; clearly delineated in the letter of the law, with penalties and fines included.
If/when that law is regularly enforced, and we still have a real (not perceived) gun-crime problem, then, and only then, might further restrictions be warranted. At least IMHO, and I think I stand in good company here.
I find it ironic (and that’s putting it mildly, lest we devolve into something Pit-worthy) that, since violent crime is at pre-1968 levels, people are agitating for more gun-control. ?WTF?
Pure idealistic rubbish. Joining hands and singing “We Are The World” won’t stop pilots from climbing into their Apache attack helicopters. A signed petition won’t stop a mad rogue Admiral from sending his private, loyal battalions off to smash a city. Outrageous examples, I know, but I’m exaggerating for the sake of brevity (otherwise, this reply would be ten pages long).
If you have arms, you won’t NEED “real unity” (which is hard to get). If you do not have arms, no amount of “real unity” won’t stop stormtroopers from kicking in your doors to take your food and rape yer wimmin (again, exaggerating for the sake of brevity).
Oh… big thanks to ExTank up there, by the way.
“Hey, they broke one rule, so let’s break the other rules, too!”
I seem to recall the 2nd Amendment saying something along the lines of the Right To Bear Arms Shall Not Be Infringed. “I have to wait a month to get a gun? I can only have the kinds of guns that Big Daddy Gov’t wants me to have? I can’t have any ammo for my gun, rendering it completely useless?” Seems like those rights have been infringed plenty.
And this evidence is… what, now?
I believe that’s the point behind “enforce the laws we have, don’t make new ones”. See, if people started getting nailed BIG TIME for comitting a crime with a gun, THEN you’d have a substantive deterrent to an undesirable activity.
To claim that there’s a problem (or a perception of a problem) without any evidence to back up that claim not only weakens your credibility, it shatters it into little pieces and sweeps it into the trashcan.
What other components are there in this issue other than preventing criminals from having guns??
As I recall…The founding fathers did not have unity on their side. I know this was way before we had daily, weekly and trending polls, but I have always heard that support for the American Revolution was between 20-40% of the people.
So much for unity. Also…Check out Seattle for another demonstration of Unity VS. the Government.
Are you reffering to the National Guard? The National Guard is not the milita.
After participating in many gun debates, and reading even more here, I have noticed that many anti-gunners reveal that they are motivated more by propaganda than by facts.
I am sure that is not a surprise to any of the pro-second amendment types out there. Here are the 6 sentences that prove to me that the people who wrote them have VERY LITTLE IF ANY actual gun experience. IMHO these are views that could only be held by people who have 99% of their gun knowledge from TV, movies and HCI propaganda.
Freedom 2, You’ve seen fit to post a question I posed as proof that I had little experience of firearms, namely:
First, I’d like to know how that question reflects at all on my level of knowledge of guns? Secondly, I’d be deeply interested to see your answer to it. Absolutely right, never touched a firearm - other than Sig, Beretta, FN, S&W, Mossberg, Ruger, Franchi, H&K, Browning and a few others I’ve owned. Sorry, but I’ve been shooting since nine, and :- handguns, rifle, shotgun and even a few semis - so please don’t make assumptions, it reflects rather badly on your powers of reason.
Now, did you have anything to contribute to this topic?
Here are the 6 sentences that prove to me that the people who wrote them have VERY LITTLE IF ANY actual gun experience. IMHO these are views that could only be held by people who have 99% of their gun knowledge from TV, movies and HCI propaganda.