No kidding. Forever is a really long time.
I would say you know better, except I’m not at all sure that you do.
But the question of good and bad guys is irrelevant. You think making it harder for people in general to obtain or carry firearms for their own protection is a good thing. Most Americans disagree. They think it’s good to prevent bad guys from obtaining guns (for whatever their personal definition of “bad guy” is, including, for some of them, “black guys” or “Muslims”), but that making it harder for the general public to get them is a bad thing.
That’s where we get these ideas about balancing rights and weighing costs and benefits. If you don’t think people should own guns, there are no rights to balance and no costs to consider, and of course things like massively increasing the price of ammo or banning superficial features like barrel shrouds is hunky dory.
And as far as I can tell, that’s the whole point of Scumpup’s question. You’re on the side that takes gun laws that make it harder for decent people to own them as a good thing. So participating in a discussion about costs and benefits and balancing rights is disingenuous, when you don’t believe there are any costs to gun control and no rights to balance.
Yes. Exactly right.
No. Bad guys still get guns, and they’ll still get them if every gun purchase is required to have a background check.
What’s more, when someone who cannot own a gun tries to buy one at a dealer and is rejected, usually nothing happens to them. My brother and I have owned a dealership for over 30 years and the times we’ve reported that a felon or someone with a domestic violence conviction have tried to buy a gun nothing ever happened to them. And in 34 years as a LEO I’ve never been sent to a call of a prohibited person trying to buy a gun.
The Brady bunch can squawk about the gun buys their law has prevented, but what they can’t say is how many of those attempts lead to prosecutions. And how those people who were denied ended up getting a gun anyway, usually by buying a stolen one on the street or by straw purchase.
The background check is just another law that makes antis feel good about themselves, but it hasn’t really prevented any prohibited people from arming themselves.
So what is *your *proposal? Got any ideas?
The very rhetoric the absolutists use is irrelevant?
Even granting “most”, those who think so are still wrong. It hasn’t worked that way anywhere else, has it?
Yes, it never seems to occur to any of them that the “bad guys” might include themselves.
And that’s where the idea that some amount of killings should be considered “acceptable” in return for enabling fantasies about resisting tyranny comes into it.
And it’s quite an inadequate one, starting as it does with its premise about good guys, aka “law abiding citizens” (a mythical beast, as already mentioned). The world doesn’t work that way.
There’s another euphemism that has no more meaning than the others.
Passing by your strawmanning: What costs and benefits do *you *think we should consider, then? What number of deaths do you claim we should accept in return for, well, what benefits? **Scumpup **can’t answer that, but can you?
You know, I did not use the term “good guys” in this thread. To the best of my recollection, I’ve never used it in a gun thread. You, ElvisL1ves, have used it repeatedly and carried on considerably about my “binary” thinking as if it were my words, not yours. That is not honest debating.
That, your preferred “law-abiding citizen”, and DrCube’s “decent people” are all effectively synonyms in this context, as well as all mythical constructs. They all reflect the same binary mindset, one in which oneself is defined as one of the “good”, and there are “bad” people who simply deserve to be killed. Isn’t that pretty much how you view it?
Pretending to have a point when you can’t, or refuse to, even explain what you mean is far less honest than using synonyms.
What do you call the vast majority of people who are not violent criminals?
I urge everyone to read this excellent piece on gun control. It is generally consistent with my views.
Myself, I love how the right considers itself fiscally conservative (hello George W.). But to your point, I would also rather see violent criminals get appropriate sentences.
Is that a political thing, cause I’m pretty sure it happens under Republican governments, too. I don’t think judges work for the Democrats.
If you can’t argue against what I actually said, you have no argument.
That’s what you’re hiding behind now? 
Okay, simply find/replace “good guy” with “law-abiding citizen” and then provide an actual substantive response. Can you do that without help?
Sure, background checks are not an absolute bar to access to guns by criminals. But if EVERY gun sale is subject to a background check then how do criminals replenish the stock of guns in criminal hands? AFAICT gun thefts are not nearly high enough to cover the number of guns that leave criminal hands.
That is a matter of enforcement not an issue of whether or not the law works. I (like you) am perplexed by gun control folks who want more gun control laws but then balk at enforcing them. It just boggles my mind when we bring up the lack of enforcement and gun control folks tell us that it would only crowd the jails if we enforced the laws or that they chase criminals not paper.
Well its not an absolute bar but universal registration and licensing seems like it would create a significant barrier.
Indeed, this is a well balanced thoughtful approach to the issues at hand. I agree that the two extreme (and loud) positions disrupt any discussions on common sense and moderate solutions to the actual problems.
I also agree that the commercial media tend to be completely clueless, the irate husband caps his wife and her lover and this is somehow as bad as Stalin’s purges. On the one side we have the president in tears and the other screaming gun-grabbers, when all we needed was a ten day waiting period and the husband would have had to use the baseball bat instead. If one should argue this was more difficult than using a gun, then the whole point is completely missed … we still have two dead peoples.
AR-15’s are just rifles, no more no less. Every rifle has some method of ejecting the spent cartridge and inserting a new one; level-action, pump-action or pneumatic-action; it’s still just a simple rifle. It’s not designed for the military, never has and never will. Does the military use them, yes, they’re damn good rifles. The military used S&W .38’s as well, damn good handgun.
Oh … movies get it wrong too …
You’ve already answered in your own obstinate way, but to be clear: Do you consider making legal ownership of guns more difficult for the vast majority of people who aren’t violent criminals a bug or a feature?
As far as costs and benefits, do you consider repealing the right of 300 million people to defend themselves against violence worth potentially saving 5000 murder victims’ lives, many of which will still be killed by knives or blunt objects anyway? Assuming, for a moment, that you could magically disappear all 300 million guns in this country, rather than just make ineffectual legislative gestures ostensibly towards that end?
I read it. Most of his commentary was useful and quite well put. Some of his gun regulation recommendations at the end were dumb. Requiring additional CCW training? Why? It’s not like poorly-trained CCW holders are a significant slice of the gun violence in this country. He understands this concept so well when it comes to AWB, but then totally forgets it when its time for him to recommend his preferred gun regulation schemes. Disappointing.
ETA: Same thing for liability insurance. I’m guessing a bit because he doesn’t offer many details, but most of those that want liability insurance are for cases where the gun is stolen and misused by the thief. He spends a couple of paragraphs dismantling Clinton’s opposition to the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, but then appears to take a position that gun owners who get robbed should be liable for what happens with their stolen gun. That’s inconsistent, to put it mildly.
Our murder rate is over three times most of them. List of countries by intentional homicide rate - Wikipedia
I say first world democracies because third-world shitholes would reasonably have more murders, due to poverty and inept policing. Wanting to rate the US against those is utterly dishonest.
My point in this thread is that if it were technically feasible and not overly expensive, it would be a good idea. If police could say, detect microscopic RFID tags disbursed by the gunshot, and tie that tag to say, a specific purchase, or a specific store, that would be amazingly useful in prosecuting crimes. It would also have a pretty good deterrent effect.
That said, I’ve specifically said that if the cost is too onerous, or the technology not feasible, of course it isn’t a good idea. I think you misunderstand my position, because you want to reflexively attack anyone who is for any gun law at all. I get it. Guns are important to you. I like shooting, myself.
If you read my posts in this thread, you’d see that isn’t my position. Please don’t mischaracterize it.