Though I would decline to use the word “penalize,” the answer to your question is yes. We should take away certain guns from people because of what they might do with them, in that the potential harm of misuse dramatically outweighs any benefits associated with their continued private ownership. I’m glad you’re starting to see the light.
I want it noted for the record that it was a pro-gun person who first analogized guns to penises in this thread. God, how I’ve striven to resist that analogy.
As for the rest of your penis story, I would point out that the owner of every penis in the nation is already registered and assigned a number. The government knows you’re male, and they know your SSN, right? On a more serious note, the benefits of penis ownership clearly and substantially outweigh their detriments to society (though Andrea Dworkin would take issue with that). Guns, not so much.
I don’t get it. All I said is that we should take gun control proposals on their own merits rather than reflexively reject them all.
Nah, it would work much better. Drugs are far more profitable, easier to manufacture and smuggle, and very few people have $500/day gun habits.
Sure, I remember Luby’s. But where did I argue that concealed carry was a bad thing?
The proposition SenorBeef was trying to establish was that the largest gun control group in the country supported the total elimination of private gun ownership. Those quotes don’t establish the proposition, I’m afraid. It’s no surprise that some folks want to get rid of all guns, but not even the VPC wants to ban all guns, according to that quote–just handguns. They’re clearly tilting at windmills, but they’re not the biggest group and they’re not tilting at that particular windmill.
No. Have you ever read anything Sarah Brady has written? It’s hysterical. It’s clear how she feels about guns, and doubt that she’d settle for some level of “reasonable gun control”. I’ve also read things that she’s said that have flat out stated that she, and HCI, advocated gun bans - but this was before they turned down their rhetoric to draw in more moderate people.
I couldn’t find the quote, sorry. And so it’s reasonable for you not to believe me. But I have no doubt in my mind Sarah Brady would stop for anything but an all out ban.
Gun ownership is a specifically enumerated Constitutional right, whereas the others are not. Does this also give the state powers to license gun owners - and therefore the power to reject those who it does not favor?
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Australia and England are the too most recent examples. If you need full cites and everything, I’ll have to do them tomorrow, I’m pretty tired.
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Eh, I fundamentally disagree, but you know that by now. Gun control has little effect on crime.
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Yeah, we all want that sort of power in government hands.
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Figured.
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Not true, there are around 300,000 of them currently out there. Not exactly one per home, but not exactly small change, either.
Additionally, “semiautomatic assault rifles” are a meaningless term. You show intellectual dishonesty in using it. Please stop.
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Why don’t we give the State total powers to do that? I mean, we all know how effective and unbiased they are.
Yes, the state may license gun owners and reject those it does not favor, provided the basis for the rejection is not discriminatory. As a matter of fact, the state can do exactly as it pleases when it comes to gun control, for the Second Amendment applies only to the federal government.
I’d be happier with American examples. We’re rather different countries, after all.
300,000 highly regulated, difficult-to-obtain, fully automatic weapons out of 300,000,000 easily-purchased and not very regulated guns? Oh, and cite on the 300,000?
BTW, didn’t those two L.A. bank robbers go full auto? The ones who were armed to the gills, with all the helicopter footage of their shootout with the police? Indeed, they did. So you were falt-out wrong when you claimed such weapons hadn’t been used in a crime since 1934.
Nope, sorry, ain’t gonna change the English language just to work with your desire to control the terms of the debate.
Minty:
I try to limit my involvement in gun threads to just providing cites and links in an effort to at least remove some of the rhetoric and show facts. And you are not the first to say I don’t believe you.
As an opposing viewpoint, your rational arguements are good, however, IMHO, they are completely wrong. And I know that there is no rational discourse that would change your mind, no matter what links or cites I can provide.
As a long time owner of firearms (I am a competitive shotgun shooter and former youth rifle champion) I have seen (to affirm SenorBeef’s assertion) the VPC, and the Brady Bunch (especially in their original incarnation, the HCI) and the new kid on the block, AGS, espouse time and again that their goal is to remove ALL guns from ALL private ownership. I do not dismiss them as an annoyance, or ignore them. I follow their press releases and literature as closely as I follow the NRA’s. It has only been since the last presidential election that these three have modified their rhetoric in order to prevent losing members. Their new strategy is one law at a time, chipping away our freedoms until one day we turn around and realize that they’ve achieved their goal. These organizations have absolutely nothing to do with stopping crime or preventing accidents.
And I think that this is a valid strategy. In the early 90’s, my father and I resigned our NRA membership due to our perception that the group was being taken over by extremists. Only in the last five years have we returned to the fold so-to-speak, after seeing the lengths that the “other side” seemed to be going to, including the disinformation and junk science statistics that have proliferated in poli-speak prior to the last election. You may find it hard to believe, but there are many firearms owners in the US who feel that the NRA is a sellout. Even though the NRA is growing and is close to five million members, there are other organizations that are growing at a huge rate because they feel that the time for compromise is over. You may dismiss them as delusional paranoids worshipping an anachronistic icon, but they live and work in your neighborhood.
Fair enough, BF. I just don’t recall HGI ever coming out in favor of a complete ban, and I think gun-rights folks have been complaining about an alleged “incrementalim” strategy for at least a decade. But I appreciate and thank you for your comments.
Sorry minty, the statement was that no legally held machine guns have been used in the commission of a crime. The machine guns used in the North Hollywood bank robbery were not legally obtained.
Good. That just proves that the strict federal licensing and registration requirements for private ownership of machine guns works very well, in that nobody the government has licensed has committed a full-auto crime.
I disagree. To me, it is the same as licensing someone to write an editorial.
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Er, doesn’t the 14th amendment force states to comply with rights written into the federal Constitution?
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NYC confiscated a lot of the firearms (primarily long arms) that it forced people to register, and had garunteed that the registration would not lead to confiscation. That’s the only one I can think of off the top of my head.
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Over 68 or so years, we’ve had hundreds of thousands of machine guns trade over probably millions of hands. The fact that not one has been used to commit a crime is significant.
(Actually, a police officer used a full auto lent to him from the department to commit a crime, once, but I don’t know if that counts as “civilian-owned NFA firearm crime”.
Aren’t we quick to assume? I said legally owned fully automatic firearms. You hurt your case by bringing this point up. The weapons used in the L.A. shoot out were Chinese military arms (I believe) smuggled illegally through Mexico. A good example of why gun bans are ineffective. So we regulate full auto weapons, and so they just smuggle them in. Same thing that would happen with [insert next banned firearms here].
An assault rifle is “A select-fire capable weapon of carbine length firing an intermediate cartridge, serving a role between that of a full power rifle and a submachine gun.”
That is a military definition of such a weapon, and I doubt you could find a soldier who’d disagree. The fact that Brady, et al, wanted to scare people and try to exploit the similarties in appearance between real assault rifles and stripped versions does not change their meaning.
“Assault weapons… are a new topic. The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully-automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons – anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun – can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.” – “Assault Weapons: Analysis, New Research and Legislation” Josh Sugarmann, March 1989 - Sugarmann is the head of VPC
It’s fairly clear that they invented the term “semiautomatic assault rifle” to fuel fires for the ban. To scare people who are ignorant about guns. The term was intentionally created to be deceptive, and used only by the ignorant.
Since you are not ignorant of this, as I just explained it to you, it would be dishonest of you to continue using the term. You are still insisting on using a deceptive word to associate “scary machine gun!” with neutered assault rifles. If you must, continue, but know that you are being dishonest.
At the cost, of course, as you said, of being “almost regulated out of existance.”
If the cost of federal licensing and regulation leads to only a small percentage of the population being allowed to own guns, then we’ve completely raped the whole idea behind the second amendment.
Even in your (I believe incorrect) assessment of the second amendment, you believe the government cannot create gun restrictions or bans that would harm a well-regulated militia. Well, licensing and controlling the people who own arms - and therefore can oppose the government - is entirely counterproductive and definitely would harm a well-regulated militia. So licensing would be against even your idea of the second amendment.
Besides, I’d guess that well over 99%, probably over 99.8%, of legally owned firearms are never used in a crime. That’s a pretty low rate to justify a licensing which would have guns “almost regulated out of existance.”
Then taking away the freedom of speech of someone who advocates, say, revolution would also be perfectly okay, since his potential harm to society is much greater than the benefit.
Rights are not subject to a cost/benefit analysis. This is why they’re rights, and not privileges.
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:rolleyes:
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Of course, there are those who consider self defense a sin…
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We still give them some merit and analysis, but not as much as we used to. We understand, as I’ve covered before, that most gun control lobbys are pushing for outright bans, and are taking any “reasonable gun law” step they can get support for.
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Not at all. Guns can be extremely profitable with prohibition, because it’s worth a lot to a criminal to be the only one armed. Guns are pretty easy to manufacture, too, especially if you go for some of the simpler ones. And very few people have $500/day drug habits, either - most of the population are occasional $40 pot smokers. But for some odd reason, pot still gets smuggled in…
Well, I’m sure we’ll have a productive discussion.
Only some of them. Federal courts have invariably held that the Second Amendment only applies to the federal government. Check out the findlaw.com text of the Second Amendment and read the annotations following.
[The Dude]
Well, that’s, like, your opinion, man.
[/The Dude]
No basis in law for that one, I’m afraid. “Rights” are balanced all the time, including the right to free speech that you keep analogizing to.
Nope. As discussed back around page 2 or 3, the well-regulated militias of the several states already have plenty of weapons. Restricting private ownership would therefore have zero impact on the well-regulated militia, and would therefore be perfectly consistent with the entirety of the Second Amendment.
As much as we’d like to “creatively interpret” the Constitution and what the founding fathers said today, it seems pretty clear to me that the basis of our country was that rights were inalienable and not subject to any whim or cost/benefit analysis.
You’re speaking of * select militias *, like the national guard. Those are run, essentially, by the federal government. They are a division of the army, with weapons on loan from the federal government, prosecuting tresspassers under federal law.
There is no way in hell that the founding fathers meant that the militia meant to allow the people to keep the government in check is, indeed, run by that government.
The unorganized militia is not the national guard, and the second amendment refers to the unorganized militia. Having the federal government license and decide to have arms most certainly hurts the unorganized militia.
Because it says that people have the right to bear arms. You’ve presented your opinion as to why it doesn’t mean what it clearly says, and now you act all confused because we don’t accept that. If you’re going to ignore what it says in favor of what you want it to say, at least have the decency to acknowledge the other side’s arguments.
US Code 10.(whatever) makes reference to 2 legal militias: The organized militia, consisting of the national guard and naval militia, and the unorganized militia, consisting of all males, aged 17-45, and veterans up to 65.
The second amendment, of 1780s, did not refer to the national guard, created in the 1910s.
And the second amendment doesn’t say “well organized”. I thought you might’ve caught on to that, giving that whole battle over grammar we were having.
Let me ask if this makes sense to you:
The militia is established so that the whole of the people have potential physical force to contest the physical force of the government, therefore the people can bear arms. However, since the government now has tons of weapons, it no longer refers to the militia created to potentially oppose the government, but actually refers to armed agents of the State itself.
Therefore, the safeguards put in the Constitution, an armed citizenry capable of opposing the government, is invalid, because the army has enough guns of it’s own, therefore doesn’t need the guns of the base of citizens which might be called on to oppose it.
Fine. If it makes you feel any better, I will correct my unintentional error thusly: How on earth can you claim 2nd Amendment refers to the unorganized militia when it specifically describes a well-regulated militia?
We’ve been through what “well-regulated” means in 18th century terminology.
There was also a social structure that was more conducive to having rugged, armed men who were capable citizen-soldiers than that of today. In fact, if you train in fighting these days, you run the risk of being arrested by certain states for violating anti-“paramilitary training” laws. Learning to be a marksman was a celebrated sport, as well as important training, not something you felt you had to hide from your neighbors, as you sometimes have to now.
A citizenry at large can still be well armed and capable as a fighting force, without any sort of rigid organization. Those who say “tanks, big, noisy, civilians have no chance!” have not studied war.
Point being, the founding fathers considered the militia the whole of the people, not specific select militas, chosen and run by the state. In fact, they specifically warn against select militias, because how is an arm of the state going to be relied upon to keep the power of the state in check?
The national guard was formed 150 years after the second amendment was written. Are you going to honestly suggest that that’s what they had in mind? An arm of the state is supposed to be our last defense against the state - and because of that, we shouldn’t be able to defend ourselves?
