Yes they favor them when asked a question over the phone, that doesn’t mean they care.
This thread is definitely a fun read.
You do realize you’re asserting the facts are actually contrary to the evidence, don’t you?
This sort of personal attack is not moving the discussion forward.
Stop it.
These sorts of personal attacks are also counter-productive. (And accusations like “make shit up” come too close to accusations of lying for this forum.)
Knock it off.
[ /Moderating ]
Polling out today shows Obama and the Democrats becoming more popular and the Republicans reaching near historic lows.
This is after the gun bills were voted down and filibustered. Therefore they are the cause of the Republican losses.
I was thinking that all firearms owned by criminals originate with legal owners because legal owners include manufacturers, wholesalers, and dealers, as well as – and this is the great majority – individuals.
However, yes, there are some guns that were never legally owned by an individual, because there was a straw purchase of a new gun, straight from the retailer. But if it wasn’t for the business from legal gun owners, those shops couldn’t survive.
Also, while you don’t consider straw purchasers “law abiding,” they often are considered as such by law enforcement: Straw purchases made outside of federally regulated dealerships are not illegal unless the gun is used in a crime with the prior knowledge of the straw purchaser. [1]
And:
Right. And even if recently purchased from a licenced retailer, that doesn’t mean the licensed retailer is the first owner. Lots of their guns come from trade-ins.
I’ve read people right on this board who admit to selling guns they legally bought to people they don’t even know. And they see zero problem in owning a gun without provision for destruction at time of their death.
100 percent? Maybe that was hyperbole. But guns used by criminals typically start out not just from legal dealers, but also from legal individual owners. The more guns law abiding people buy, the more they will be passed from owner to owner until they wind up in criminal hands.
Your registration plan would slow down this process by reducing the percentage of gun transfers that go to people who shouldn’t have them. So maybe you yourself realize that the legal owner is the main source of guns for criminals. The problem with your proposal, besides that it’s an attempt to spread gun-toting nationwide, is that it now has no chance of passage. By contrast, people voluntarily choosing not be be armed is consistent with long-term trends and thus has a better chance of happenning.
The only thing that would make your registration proposal politically possible is fewer gunowners. That’s what we should, in a moderate way, strive for.
Are you talking to me? Lol. Do you not realize the difference between telling a pollster what policy you prefer and actually acting to make that policy reality? Nobody cares. Where are the pro gun control rallies? Groups? Activists? They are virtually nonexistent. Gun control is a top down scheme. Always has been, always will be. Gun rights is a grassroots movement. Anyone who cares about gun control is against it.
This 1000x’s! NRA convention had tens of thousands of attendees (and a few dozen protesters).
I support universal background checks and it doesn’t really bother me that the Manchin Toomey bill failed. I think this is true for a lot of gun owners.
This is largely because the push for the AWB made us at least seomwhat indifferent to any other gun control measures that your side threw against the wall.
Yes, they virtually all start out being legally owned by someone and at some point they are transferred into the hands of criminals. I think it makes more sense to try and prevent that transfer from legal owner to illegal owner. I don’t think it makes any sense to try and prevent the sale of a particular type of gun with particular features but are no more lethal than any of the other semi-automatic rifles out there.
The majority of straw purchasers purchase their guns from or through gun shops.
I don’t know what they mean by average in this case but “time to recovery” is different than “time to crime”
Yes but the purchaser still has to pass a NICS check.
Why would anyone do that? I intend to leave my guns to my kids to sell or keep or sell as they please, I don’t have the most extensive gun collection but its probably worth at least $25,000, more if you count all the optics and crap.
Or they get passed from colector to collector. For example. There are hundreds of thousands of machine guns out there. They have been out there for decades. They have changed hands many times, and yet, they don’t seem to fall into the hands of violent criminals with too much frequency.
Yes I fully realize that virtually every gun in criminal hands was once in law abiding hands. And it is the transfer to criminal hands that I think we should focus on.
And the problem with an AWB is that it is ineffective, less likely to pass and more obnoxious to gun owners, than licensing and registration. In fact it galvanizes gun owners at least as much as licensing and registration does while serving no useful purpose other than vilifying gun owners and rubbing the NRA’s nose in it.
Or better education on the gun control side. When the “go to” legislation on the gun control side is banning guns, you never get to things like licensing and registration and recent history has shown that you don’t even get to gbackground checks anymore.
With that said, I think a bit more education on the gun nut side of the debate would make registration and licensing a bit more palatable (you are never going to ease the concners of the government usingn the registry to confiscate guns, at least not while there’s a black dude in the white house).
A lot of folks i know in Pennsylvania are apolitical except if there is a gun grabber on the ticket, then they just go out and vote for the other guy. But over the years, they have noticved a trend that the gun grabbers all seem to come from one side of the aisle. This is not an impression the Democtratic party can afford to let stand. They could lose states like Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Virginia and Pennsylvania.
You really don’t see the contradiction there, do you? You claim, yet again, to support them, yet you opposed a bill that would have created them. You *opposed *it. You’re only kidding yourself with this, no one else.
AWB was taken out of the bill, as you know. You opposed it anyway. That is no one else’s responsibility but your own. Your own. The consequences of *your *actions fall on you.
Are you kidding?! Gun control is the Achilles heal of of the left. Even if what you say is true, it has zip point shit to do with this failed bill.
This is uncalled for.
Did you read the very next sentence in that post? It is possible to support something but for other reasons not be bothered that it didn’t pass.
I never opposed it Manchin Toomey.
Don’t you understand how the AWB proposal poisoned the well for any sort of gun regulation. The AWB was the centerpiece of the gun control legislation. Don’t fool yourself, it will not serve you well in future attempts at gun control to ignore the lessons you can learn from this fiasco.
If you don’t want to learn from this experience, thats up to you. Your side could have had universal background checks if they hadn’t been stupid enough to reach for an AWB first.
If you want to keep believing that there is nothing you could have done differently to change the outcome we have today, then keep believing that. If you want to keep blaming your failure on the NRA’s propensity to be the NRA, then you might as well give up now, because the NRA is never going to have an “AHA” moment where their beliefs are going to line up with yours. If you made all the right moves and you sstill can’t even get a watered down background check after an event like Newtown, then you might as well just fucking give up right now.
I think that the left can get gun control passed, they just can’t keep getting the same ineffective gun control passed. If the Democrats had proposed the Manchin Toomey in January, they could have had it but instead they spent months trying to to put lipstick on that pig of an AWB and ended up with nothing.
Its not like this sort of shit hasn’t happened before. LBJ had an opportunity for real and significant gun control legislation after the assassination of RFK and MLK and instead of going with licensing and registration like LBJ wanted, they spent months trying to sell gun bans that died in committee and by then it was too late to get the licensing and registration.
Well, you’re right of course. Not all gun nuts are racists but there seems to be an elevated level of concern among gun nuts about Obama’s presidency than there was during Clinton’s presidency. Hell Clinton even passed two obnoxious pieces of gun regulation including the first AWB. I’ve been a gun nerd since 1992 and I don’t recall the current level of personal invective directed towards Clinton. He was just another gun grabbing Democrat but noone thought the world was going to end. maybe gun owners weren’t as partisan back then but I think some of it has to do with race.
Post mortem gun control debate? Post what, exactly? Newtown?
Why not call it what it really is: a pre mortem of the next massacre. And the one after that. And the one after that.
Its a post mortem of the horrible failure of the gun grabbers to get even the mildest forms of gun control passed in an environment when it seemed almsot certain that SOMETHING would pass. My argument is taht the gun grabbers largely did it to themselves.
You’re gloating over its defeat, though. Don’t kid yourself. Yes, you’re conflicted about that, obviously, and it hasn’t helped you yet to have that conflict pointed out.
It doesn’t matter how many times you repeat that, you have no evidence for it other than your own unsupported opinion. I do understand that you have to cling to that view in order to throw the blame elsewhere, but it ain’t working.
AWB was not in the bill. :rolleyes:
I’m not blaming the NRA and never have. I blame the gutless, foolish Congresscritters who voted against their constituencies and their consciences, and the number of single-issue fetishists who have no sense of responsibility for their actions who induced them to vote that way.
You still are having trouble with this concept of responsibility, aren’t you? If even doing everything right in the wake of an incident so horrible wasn’t enough to overcome the fearful obstructionism of fanatics such as you are defending, then the conclusion can only be that there is no benefit to trying even to talk with those fanatics. Your own statements are an admission that you are part of the problem and are determined always to be, and are therefore an obstruction to be overcome rather than a partner to be negotiated with. As if the civilized world didn’t all know that already.
Did you ever think that perhaps not using the term “gun grabbers” every 3 seconds could help when it comes to discussing these matters?
The successful filibuster of the majority-supported Manchin-Toomey amendment that would have implemented universal background checks. Except that it isn’t *mortem *or even *post *- given the intense blowback against the Senators who opposed it, and all the damage that has been done to their re-election prospects, and given the strong possibility of senate rules changes in July, following the immigration bill, that would limit the filibuster abuse the GOP has indulged in routinely for years such as on this bill, it is highly possible that it will be brought up for another vote, even strengthened, and passed, against the howling of the single-issue fanatics.
The vote **DA **is gloating over can better be seen as part of the process, actually helping ultimately pass effective gun control legislation, by way of exposing to all doubters the implacability and irresponsibility of the gun lobby and its enthusiasts, and showing that they need to be dismissed rather than feared.
From your lips to the Ears, but has that time arrived?
I’m an optimist but I really do think so. Attitudinal changes in society do seem to advance slowly, then rapidly, like a dam that gradually forms cracks and suddenly lets go. Afterward, the advanced condition somehow seems natural, and we are incredulous that there was so much resistance for so long. The gun fetishists are on the wrong side of history just as they are on the wrong side of reason and the wrong side of morality, and the wrong side does eventually lose, it’s just a matter of time.
But if not, then at least the time is closer than ever, and gets closer still with every such shock and every such reaction.