What laws protect me from liability if you get shot by a criminal? Why would I need the protection? Why would I be responsible for your getting shot?
Nope, society doesn’t have to protect my right. Just get 2/3rds of both houses of congress and 3/4ths of the states to repeal the second amendment and then you can petition your government to change the laws any way you want. I will do the same and the democratic process will determine a result.
Your premiums are directly affected by how good or bad a driver you are.
You sure you know how insurance works?
Probably the person who owns the home. Not securing a gun when toddlers are around is criminal. But I don’t think anyone has problems with insurance covering something like this. They have problems with the notion that they have to pay premiums to pay for drug dealers killing each other in drive by shootings.
No. If you can fire more than one shot with a single trigger pull, that is automatic. What you are talking about is frequently referred to as burst fire.
Perhaps we should back up and examine what you think you know before we proceed.
Because semi-automatic means that after one round if fired, the action on the gun will load and ready the next round for fire.
Revolvers accomplish much the same objective by rotating the cylinder so that an unfired cartridge is under the pin.
Remember when Hurricane Ditka said “double action revolver”?
Well there is such a thing as a single action revolver. A double action revolver allows you to pull back the hammer and fire the cartridge with one (fairly long heavy) trigger pull. A single action revolver requires you to cock the hammer before you can release the hammer by pulling the trigger to fire the cartridge.
…and by how good or bad other drivers are. That’s why you need insurance regardless of your driving record. Especially given that most people over-estimate their skill at driving.
I have a private bet. When you attempted to take the moral high ground there and assert your obvious moral superiority did you post that with your nose up and righteous fire in your eyes? Just curious.
Want to bet? I bet you are more likely to be killed in a drunk driving accident than murdered by a gun in the US. We won’t even bother with the odds of you being killed by someone for drug money or killed in a gang shooting over drugs or anything about drugs. Just alcohol. Want to take that bet?
As a hint, people are really bad at risk assessment, and you too.
True…but more people die of smoking by a large margin than are killed by guns, even if you want to include suicides. More people die of alcohol as well, though alcohol isn’t nearly the killer tobacco is.
That said, we could do more about guns if we could simply compromise. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be in the cards.
What’s the cost and what are you proposing? I assume you are aware that there are state and local taxes on guns and ammo already, and I assume you are talking about higher taxes on both.
I’d bet that’s more likely as well - I don’t have a gun in my house. None of my family members or family friends have guns in their houses. I have well-built home with secure doors, a home security system and a dog.
I have no idea what point you’re trying to make.
I don’t know what the costs would be. Maybe the CDC could research it.
Sure, higher taxes on guns and ammo seems like a good start. Maybe exemptions for hunting and sport rifles and such; I’m sure the details could be worked out.
Why is that a big deal? I don’t smoke so don’t know the details, but people around me that do or did smoke all say cigarette taxes have gone up a lot.
And smoking rates are down. Maybe it’s a coincidence, I don’t know.
Remember when a comparable minority of US citizens insisted it was a basic violation of their human rights and of divine law to take away their slaves? That didn’t mean that Grant & Sherman were wrong. It didn’t make the liberation of slaves not worth doing.
We’re not “performing” so much as arguing. We hope to convince some of you; that you are ready to surrender your weapons when the hammer falls, rather than die with them because Charlton Heston told you to. Of course it will require a civil war to end the kind of anti-social, reckless, individualist firearms culture we now see in the USA. Ironically, parts of that war will likely be fought with firearms. But it will fill fields with the blood of “gun owners,” and then we will have to dismantle the factories that make their rifles, and the institutions that preach their nonsense. It will hurt like hell, and it will be highly ironic.* That doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing.*
At some point it’s less about guns in a general sense than about terror. Paddock, Mateen, Lanza, & Holmes were terrorists of a kind, and the NRA is terroristic for insisting that we are not allowed to try to prevent their actions. Do you think Americans might support a war on terror? Have we gone back to running airports the way we used to?
LOL! “when the hammer falls” :dubious: This “hammer” you speak of consists largely of the police / military, correct? Do you imagine that police officers and soldiers fall more generally into the camp of “gun owners” or “non-gun-owners”?
Or are you and the latte-sipping brigade going to pick up rifles yourselves to “fill fields with the blood of gun owners”?
Try to bear in mind that most of the gun owners, and most of the police, and most of the military are on the same team (Hell, in a lot of cases they are the same person!), and it’s not your team. So don’t go yearning for people to choose up sides and start filling fields with blood.
No. Framed that way, it’s pretty clear which side many of the police are on, just as it was pretty clear which side the military and government in Dixie were on in 1860. But Sherman and Grant weren’t from there. Dixie was crushed because it was exporting slavery to the rest of the USA. Maybe the USA will fall when someone with enough power to respond gets sick of us, after too many incidents of the USA exporting its brand of terror and chaos to the rest of the world. Or maybe, in sixty years, some states will invade other states to shut down their firearms factories, and trained soldiers will mow down punks and pukes who know how to shoot a beer can off a fence but nothing of tactics.
Does Canada have a military? Does Mexico? And yet they have tighter gun laws than the USA. Not full bans, no. There is no contradiction between having a military and having gun control.
This is even more delusional than I first thought. I’m just trying to wrap my head around what you’re imaging here. Are you picturing something like the California National Guard invading Arizona to shut down the Ruger factory in Prescott? And when you picture this contingent of CA NG, you imagine that the typical Guardsman is someone who is staunchly opposed to the right of the people to keep and bear arms? Someone who would merrily “mow down punks and pukes” over a firearm factory in another state? And the “punks and pukes” you think gun owners are, you don’t think any of them are former or current military? All those guys that are serving in the CA NG and the AZ NG and the active-duty Army, they don’t have privately-owned guns in your worldview? When they get out, nary a one of them joins the “punks and pukes” in building up a gun collection?
Or are you saying that your fantasy isn’t a civil war between “gun owners” and non-gun-owners in America, but a foreign invasion by Canada / Mexico / “someone with enough power to respond” (which sure as hell excludes Canada or Mexico) to “the USA exporting its brand of terror and chaos to the rest of the world”? What, specifically, is the USA’s “brand of terror and chaos” in your mind?
What I’m saying is that this is the U. S. of A., and constitutional reform of the kind we are proposing has to be accomplished with violence, because violence is the bedrock of our constitutional system. What I’m saying is that such violence is not illegitimate.
This fight is not about “guns.” It’s about weapons of mass terror in the hands of random loons. Those who shut down the NRA may be using firearms themselves. It’s not really a contradiction to send armed law enforcement to shut down armed fringe elements. We did it in living memory. Then people felt bad, so we stopped. We can easily start again.
But if we don’t do it now, and internally, well, maybe it takes longer. And given the direction of political flow in the USA today, we’re not going to be prosperous enough to be the dominating nation in the world in fifty years’ time. Those who deplore science and education aren’t doing American global hegemony any favors. Someone from the outside is going to have to come in and put down the USA like a rabid dog, after you and I are dead. It’s not that hard to imagine reasons why. We are on the same kind of road to political self-destruction Germany was on a hundred years ago, and we’re bigger pieces of trash already.
It sounds like, to you, spree killers like Paddock and Mateen, fringe religious groups preaching race war and Armageddon, shop owners who keep a shotgun behind the counter, hobbyist shooters, all police, and even the military, are unified and on the same team, since they are “gun owners.” Which implies that you have never served either in the police or the military. That’s kind of nuts.
Or maybe you think that’s what I, a vocal opponent of the Second Amendment believe. Well, I’m sorry for giving that impression. Maybe I have unfairly conflated people who have guns for some useful purpose with “sportsmen” and gangsters.
But in reality, police agencies have been sent to take illegal weapons away from would-be revolutionaries. It was a whole big controversy a generation ago. And police chiefs were known, not very long ago, for being big supporters of gun control.
Now you want to pretend the cops are on your side? Well, sure, some are. But you will not be protected by some Brotherhood of All Gunpowder-Stained Hands.
Realistically, workable disarmament will have to be slow. It will have to start on the manufacturing end, shrinking supply. It will mean repudiating the NRA and their propaganda line.
And I believe in disarmament because I want to reverse this arms race on our streets. I want police to stop shooting dumb kids for doing dumb kid things, speaking as a onetime dumb kid.
Who are “those” going to be? And how are they going to “shut down the NRA”? You imagine some police chief or governor is going to order the cops under his control to … what exactly? Raid the NRA annual meeting and arrest everyone present? For what? Being NRA members? You think the cops are likely to comply with this command?
I suppose they can try.
Not at all. I used the word “most” repeatedly, and never used the word “all”. And I don’t think Paddock is on anyone’s team. He was just nuts. Here’s a crazy statistic for you: roughly 1/3 of gun owners voted for HRC.
The key word here would seem to be “illegal”. Most guns are possessed legally.
I’m protected by the law. And if, like in your fantasies, that ceases to be the order of business, I’m not terribly concerned about what the tree-huggers in CA or the pajama boys in NY are going to do if things devolve to jungle rules.
There are maybe a half a billion guns in civilian hands in America today. We’ve got more guns than people. What makes you think that “shrinking supply” by “start[ing] on the manufacturing end” is going to have a noticeable effect in any realistic timeline? And how do you plan to “start on the manufacturing end” when it’s perfectly legal to produce and sell firearms? Are you going to make it illegal? Good luck with that. In the 50+ years that Gallup has been asking the question “Do you think there should or should not be a law that would ban the possession of handguns, except by the police and other authorized persons?” the gun ban side has shrunk from 60% down to 23%. And in the 20 years they’ve been asking “Are you for or against a law which would make it illegal to manufacture, sell or possess semi-automatic guns known as assault rifles?” the “for” side has shrunk from 57% to 36%. (cite)
The argument that we’re a democratic society that can change the laws we want at anytime is a compelling one on the surface. However, the reality is that well-organized lobbying interests, gerrymandering, and plain old dirty politics can be road blocks in the system. In theory, yes, if the people decide that gun restrictions are so important that they should have happened yesterday, then we can just vote the bums out. In reality, people’s attention spans are divided among any number of political issues, and we’ve become conditioned to violence in our society. The fact that we don’t vote people out of office on the basis of a single issue alone doesn’t invalidate arguments for more restrictions against firearms. Rather, it’s a sign that our political process doesn’t respond to the interests of people. So we will in all probability continue to just gradually accept that one man having a midlife crisis can kill 50, 60, 75, or more people and injure 500 to 1000 more and there’s just not much that can be done about it. Again, other societies who are probably a little more advanced in thought than ours figured out a while ago that this is not necessarily true.
Why is it that a homeowner must be more scared of the liability from his swimming pool than that of his firearms?
How about steeper and steeper insurance coverages and fees with each gun you want to add to your collection? You can’t defend yourself with 3 guns at a time, much less 44.
When I get a speeding ticket in some communities there is a “head injury surcharge” in addition to the $10 per mph figure. You can attach a surcharge to gun violations. it isn’t any more onerous or a stretch to do it with guns.
I have a question for the gun fans. Do you have two guns in your bedroom, in case an intruder gets ahold of one, and you are going to need to duel or standoff with him to protect yourself?