What is the opposite of “a politician proposes a bill so as to get elected”? Is it “a politician proposes a bill so as NOT to get elected”?
No, but when some isolated incident (Columbine, et al) occurs, it raises “concerns” about guns… and this heightened concern results in either A: more people demanding stricter controls, B: more politicians using the tragedy in question as a means of riding into office, or C: idiots like Rosie O’Donnell screaming “Think of the children!” while failing to properly arrange a million-person march.
Who’s exaggerating? Who’s denying the middle ground? The NRA certainly walks in this “middle ground”… contrary to popular belief, they DO support certain controls (talk about “exaggerations”… the NRA gets demonized far more than any other group in the Gun Control issue).
I’ll allow one of my other Gun-Nut colleauges answer this one (I took this information from other Gun Control threads, anyway). If nobody gets the law cites in the next day or so, I guess I’ll go back through all the old Gun threads and find the cites for you (I’m not doing it right now since the Boards aren’t running very quickly… a search would take hours!)
I am probably the adamant gun owners worst enemy. Because. quite frankly, I don’t care. Not much, anyway.
I grew up around guns. I’ve used guns for plinking and such. To me it’s just another gadget. Never hunted, never needed a gun to defend myself, never developed a love of firearms. I do know quite a bit about the issues involved from friends, from reading, and from these boards. I’ve learned a lot reading these threads.
However, I understand that a ban would really upset a lot of perfectly responsible people. Justifiably so. But it’s simply not a great issue with me. There are many problems in our society that rank higher in my personal “care about it” book.
I (please don’t yell at me) don’t see the second ammendment as an important protection. And I still don’t accept that it say’s what exactly what the gun ownership advocates say it does. Repeal the second? If such a thing were on the ballot, I’d probably vote no. But I wouldn’t march in protest of the idea.
I do feel there are too many guns out there, but I think that the excess guns are those in the hands of the wrong people. How to get rid of them? I don’t know.
Maybe the pros and the antis should get together and try to resolve the real problems of gun ownership.
I have to take exception to this, at least in the arena of light fully-automatic firearms. The Thompson Submachine Gun wasn’t available at all until 1919, and was only available during World War II in limited quanitities. It was not until the invention of the Grease Gun in the 1940s that fully-automatic rifles became inexpensive enough to be issued to every soldier in the field. Full-auto firearms as compact as the Uzi were not available until even later. Finally, the modern small-round assault rifle didn’t come onto the scene until the adoption of the M-16 in the 1960s.
Yes, the technology existed to build any of these guns at the turn of the 20th century, but they weren’t actually produced – and thus subject to potential legal scrutiny – until later.
Here we go again. This is a lie from the anti-Second Ammendment advocates (not accusing you personally of lying, flowbark, but you’re passing on a lie)
There is NO such thing as a “Gun Show Loophole”
In most states, private sales are legal everywhere else in the state and don’t require background checks.
If private sales are legal else in the state and don’t require background checks, then there is no “loophole” if private sales are ALSO legal in Gun Shows and don’t require background checks. (I will grant that if there is a state where background checks are required for all private sales, except for those at gun-shows, you’d have a loophole. But I don’t believe that that situation exists.)
This is a perfect example of the slippery slope: Anti-Second Ammendment advocates realize that the public won’t accept a ban on private sales or the unworkable restriction that all private sales need to run a background check, so they’ve tried to impose their restrictions in one venue. I believe that their goals are first to require background checks on all private sales and when that inevitably fails to work (and it will), they’ll try for a total ban of private sales (if you’re trying to sell a gun to your friend, you have to sell your gun to a gun dealer who in turn will sell it to your friend. I have heard that California has a system similar to this.)
I note that the day after Colorado passed it’s “Gun Show Loophole” law, there was a letter one paper and a guest editorial in the other (The Denver Post, I believe) from the anti-gun group S.A.F.E. stating that now that the “gun show loophole” was closed, they had to close the newspaper ad loophole (where people are allowed to advertize guns for sale in the paper).
I firmly believe that most anti-Second Ammendment organizations like S.A.F.E. and HCI do have as their ultimate goal the banning of firearms. I can’t prove it, I don’t have any evidence, but I do believe it.
Fenris
PS: Flowbark if Tek-9s have “so much recoil that they are likely to hit unintended targets”, then probably half the policemen in the country should be shooting unintended targets every day. Tek-9s fire 9mm ammo. The same ammo that many cops use. But cops use handguns which are lighter than the Tek-9, therefore they have more recoil, not less. And yet I don’t see a rash of recoil related deaths.
I am very strongly against any move towards fooling around with any portion of the Bill of Rights. I hold the opinion that those are sacred and untouchable, as they protect essential liberties. It will be a sad day when any of the original ten amendments are changed or repealed, because once a precedent is set (on the Second, for example), it won’t be difficult to repeal others. My guess is that either the 4th or 3rd will be next to go, since the 4th Amendment is an “obstacle” to law enforcement, and the 3rd is considered useless and unnecessary (how many soldiers are quartered in your home?). But the point is that the original ten are special. Even the 2nd.
What is the reasoning here? You want to deprive people of liberty (constitutionally protected liberty, at that) without due process? You want to penalize law abiding people by taking their guns without their having committed a crime? What’s wrong with punishing people who do commit crimes? If I’ve done nothing wrong, you don’t get to punish me preemptively, just in case I might do something wrong.
Current law also allows you to drive a car that may run off the road and crash. It also allows you to drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes that may kill you. It is not the job of the Government and the Law to babysit you. It’s your responsibility to weigh risks vs. benefits and take care of yourself. Yes, the Tec-9 is a piece of crap. It’s a poorly manufactured weapon that jams constantly. But beyond that, there’s nothing magical or scary about it. It’s just a “scary” looking autoloading pistol. No GUN causes recoil. Recoil is a function of the ammunition.
People, PLEASE get informed before you go spouting opinions like this.
Wrong. If I felt like spending the money for a class 3 firearms license, I could go out and buy all the machine guns I could afford. They are not banned, nor should they be.
And you want to ban something without even knowing what it is, because…?
You realize that hunting rifles and assault rifles are similar, but you don’t know what an assault rifle is? Interesting.
As Fenris already has pointed out, there is no such thing as a “gun show loophole”.
If somebody steals your car and runs over somebody, should you be held liable? Ridiculous. All these licensing and insurance and administrative fees sound an awful lot like a poll tax and the so-called “saturday night special” ban (a law banning inexpensively manufactured handguns, with no discernable effect beyond restricting access based on income).
This is the first true and meaningful thing you’ve said on this whole post. Guys, he’s right about this. We need to think long and hard about how to overcome this attitude. People like this are the ones who support new measures and favor every new gun control law to come down the pike.
The worst enemy is not Rosie O’Hypocrisy, not Diane Feinstein, not Bill Clinton, not HCI. It’s this attitude. Without people like this, they are impotent.
Wait a minute … I thought there were Federal laws that required ATF registration of all firearm purchases in any state, and that these ATF registration procedures included a background check done at the Federal level.
I think flowbark was thinking of a Tek-9 fired on full autofire, i.e. as a machine gun. On full-auto, the recoil of any gun is going to be severe enough that it will spoil your aim unless you have a lot of experience with it.
Then again, Tek-9s capable of fully automatic fire are almost totally illegal. The Tek-9s sold to civilians have all the parts that allow for full-autofire removed, so that they can only be fired in a semi-automatic mode (i.e. each pull of the trigger fires one and only one round). I wouldn’t be surprised if flowbark wasn’t aware of this fact, though, considering that he said “Ban assault rifles, whatever the hell they are.”
Nope, not as far as I know. I could look in the paper today, find someone with a gun for sale and buy it with no paperwork whatsoever. IIRC, the Brady Law specifically provided that private sales are exempt from backgroud checks (mainly because it would have killed the bill if they required it and because it’s impossible to enforce without gun registration, which would also have killed it)
I also note that Colorado’s anti-Gun Show law has had three effects: 1) Lots of people are now just “Making friends” and “meeting people” at gun shows, but there’s quite the brisk business in private gun sales that ‘just coincidentally’ take place after the show. 2) Commercial Gun Dealers, who used to do background checks (if a private party wanted them) at a gun-show for $10.00 are now charging $30-$40 since the checks are mandatory, thus further encouraging after-show sales.
Let me clarify something. Flowbark knows that he is only partially-informed in the gun control debate. So he mangles facts.
The purpose of my post was to set out the most extremus position of a confused US gun control advocate; I believe that I succeeded admirably.
The Point: Although I have advocated a rather large change from the US status quo, gun owners can still keep their rifles. In fact, what I’m advocating isn’t all that different than the status quo in the great majority of advanced democratic industrial countries, all of which sport less criminality (and less punitive judicial systems) than the US. In fact, it appears that I am more gun-tolerant than Australians are, judging from reports of their legal environment.
-> Those wishing to view the bottom of the slippery slope need only look to Europe, Japan or Australia.
HCI: Sure, they’ll try to morph into something else if handguns are banned. That’s in the nature of for-profit interest groups. And their financial support would dwindle. Remember, the NRA has a commercial constituency of gun sellers. The HCI only has a concerned citizenry. (I’m not saying the NRA’s only supporters are commercial ones though.)
If the US gun laws were comparable to those of other advanced countries, it would be difficult to make them more stringent. Criminologists would then turn to other methods of crime reduction.
I will not respond to the other points made here, as they do not address the post, which is about the nature of this particular not-so-slippery slope. (I don’t blame other posters for responding to me though.)
Well, if I leave my car unlocked, on a hill, and the parking brake not set, and some little kid gets in and it rolls down that hill, sure I would be responsible. I know this isn’t what you said, Joe, but I think it’s an important distinction.
As to your point about sns’s; let them eat cake, eh?
Peace,
mangeorge
Not really a pro/con type of debate, BF. Almost an IMHO candidate, except that the subject is politically charged.
Flowbark: in keeping with the OP, I understood what you were saying. And I agree that it is probably generally representative of the various pro-control groups. I wasn’t dinging your position (even though I do disagree w/it).
Minty, Wierd-Al: I am also under the impression that America is somewhat unique in the “high gun ownership/industrialized nation” category; Switzerland is a possible close second, maybe Germany (even though Germany is quite more strict than America, gun ownership and shooting sports are a lot more prevalent than in her EU neighbors)
Did anyone catch the “Gun Debate” special on Lifetime last night? It was touted as one of the most balanced pieces, supposedly accurately representing both side of the issue. I switched off after about 10-15 minutes, when it turned into severely lopsided duelling soundbites between Chuck and Rosie (w/Rosie getting the lion’s share of coverage)
If this so-called news piece was supposed to be “balanced”, is it any wonder as to why us gun nuts are so cranky?
Yes but what about gun ownership in the past? I was under the impression that industrialized countries had higher levels of gun ownership before they were industrialized, as I understand that people in rural areas simply have more use for a gun. But I don’t know.
I saw it, and was pleasantly surprised. It was biased of course, but not as badly as I thought it would be, especially considering the source. They did interview Suzanna Hupp(sp?).
Ex Tank? Cranky?
No way.
Anyway, us middles (on this issue) aren’t quite so blind as to buy into all that stuff. Rosie ain’t so bad. She’s got a cause, and she’s gonna run with it. She’s no worse than any extremest on either side.
Actually, I fear that the “slippery slope” may be greased more by the pro-gun extremists than by the antis. Some of those dudes are pretty scary.
Peace,
mangeorge
Actually, ExTank, I was being disingenuous with that last post. I noticed that there seemed to be a significant lack of anti-gun support based on UncleBeer’s criteria.
As for Rosie, she’s the classic example of do what I say, and not what I do. Nuff said.
So, given a week (although we all should certainly have been thinking about this far longer than a week) to come up with end game goals and legislation packages to achieve those goals, we have one serious proposal with one seconding? ONE? That’s it? And even that proposal is simply a package of enhanced restrictions; it contains no mention of the supposed ills it purports to cure. I’m gonna assume, xenophon, you wish to decrease the number of gun accidents and deaths. Without stating your goals though and telling us how each portion of your package would target those goals, it would be just as easy for me to assume your package has no purpose other than just adding restrictions to a hated product.
Frankly, I’m not terribly surprised at the lack of showing, though. Dismayed, but not surprised. After arguing gun control in front of two city councils and a board of county commissioners, I’ve come to believe that many of the loudest gun control advocates simply wish to enact more, and greater, restrictions simply for the sake of restrictions. They just want to be seen as “doing something.” A lot of the logic I see from the public figures can be reduced to “death is bad, guns cause death, therefore guns are bad.” Most of these folks seem to have no real idea of what they wish to accomplish or how to accomplish what their few stated wishes are. The failure of the large gun control organizations to also state their intentions simply reinforces the opinion I hold. In the face of this near complete void of focus, in my oh so arrogant opinion, it’s extremely difficult to refute the “slippery slope” argument.
Nor does the lack of showing from our own pro control members do anything to convince me they are much different from the politicians and other public figures that represent their views. Please excuse my disdain, but the lack of response here can lead me no other direction, unless it would be outright scorn.
This is another myth that kills me every time I hear the NRA marginalized. The NRA IS member supported. What makes HCI members “concerned citizenry” while NRA members are the devil’s spawn?
I invite you to help get to the bottom of this myth. I have opened a thread in GQ.
I would also throw in a mandatory school based safety course about firearms. For grades K-7(?) I would want it similiar to what they teach about fire safety. Then I would want it to include hands on experience at a range, once a year. They could shoot single shot .22 rifles until their last year, then I would want them to have a hands on safety course with a pistol and a revolver.
If it makes sense to have sex education, then it makes sense to have a firearms safety course.
Let parents remove their children from the program if they don’t like it. Although, if they really are that concerned with their child’s safety, I would imagine they would want their child prepared in case they “found” a firearm.
