Gun rights proponents: what would society look like if the laws surrounding guns were to your liking?
What percent of people would carry guns on a regular basis?
Would people carry guns openly or concealed?
Would you restrict carrying guns in courthouses, schools, bars?
Who, if anyone, would you prevent from owning a gun: felons, the mentally ill, children?
Would you place any restrictions on guns: fully auto, large caliber, guns disguised as cell phones?
And please, gun control proponents lets not turn this into a debate on guns. We’ve had plenty of those.
That would be their option. A Carry permit would permit either.
Courthouses: unsure. Possibly.
Schools: No - I would encourage teachers (who are entrusted with protecting their pupils) to carry weapons.
Bars: Permits would have an Alcoholic Consumption clause. If you drink - any - you don’t carry.
Violent Criminals, no matter the severity of the crime. Certain, less serious, violent crimes would be treated with more leniency. A felony conviction, in itself, would not bar you from owning a firearm - plenty of people get felony convictions for embezzlement or insider trading and show no propensity towards violence.
No, no and no.
My world would be relatively simple: You have a right to own a firearm in much the same way you have the right to own an automobile. You do not, however, have a right to expose others to your automobile without first being properly licensed; you do not have a right to carry your weapon in public without first being properly licensed.
Drivers Licenses are Shall Issue, and in my world, Carry Licenses are Shall Issue. Basic tests are still required, proficiency and prudence, of course.
I don’t believe it’s necessary, or prudent, to license each firearm individually. Nor do I think it’s necessary or prudent to register them / take ballistic imprints of them (for practicality and expense).
I think an important question missing in the original post is “what, if any, licensing requirements would you like to see for a person to carry a firearm?” Todderbob was kind enough to answer it without being asked, but I’m curious to see how others answer it.
What percent of people would carry guns on a regular basis? Whomever qualified and wanted to. Permits would be "Shall Issue."
Would people carry guns openly or concealed? Concealed Only
Would you restrict carrying guns in courthouses, schools, bars? Yes
Who, if anyone, would you prevent from owning a gun: felons, the mentally ill, children? Yes
Would you place any restrictions on guns: fully auto, large caliber, guns disguised as cell phones? None (You’d even be allowed “the thing that goes up” )
What percent of people would carry guns on a regular basis?
Don’t actually care. More interested in the fact that people would be able to carry guns from place A to place B without harassment.
Would people carry guns openly or concealed?
I wouldn’t mind both options. If only because of the fact that sometimes things get a bit hinky about open carry and, say, wearing a coat that may or may not cover said gun.
Would you restrict carrying guns in courthouses, schools, bars?
Probably a really good idea. Note that having one in the trunk of your car in said location, not restricted.
Who, if anyone, would you prevent from owning a gun: felons, the mentally ill, children?
Children is iffy. Owning, yes, strictly speaking, the parent would own the gun, but I see no reason someone as young as 8 couldn’t go hunting.
Would you place any restrictions on guns: fully auto, large caliber, guns disguised as cell phones?
No, don’t see why, offhand. Heck, I’d join a private militia if I could. It’d be good exercise. And patriotic. Without having to worry about Uncle Sugar activating me.
Personally I don’t think society would be radically changed from what it is now. Yes, I’m a proponent of the people’s right to bear arms, but I don’t see firearms as a cure all for societies crime problems. Having more liberal gun laws isn’t going to make bad neighborhoods safe. At least not alone. So I’ll go out on a limb and say that there won’t be any big changes to society if gun laws were more to my liking.
Though I have to say that for the most part gun laws are to my liking. At least they were in Arkansas and Texas.
Actually, it’s a quote from a congresscritter, attempting to explain what a… I think Barrel Shroud is, while actually describing… uhm. A collapsible stock, maybe?
You can’t disguise a decent gun as a cell phone, but maybe a .22 or .177 could be crammed in.
I don’t want to broaden the debate - but I will observe that the phrase “end game” is far more closely associated with those that oppose firearms than those that favor them.
I don’t oppose reasonable restrictions on firearms use - barring them from courthouses and their possession from felons and the mentally ill. I think children should use them only under close supervision. Regarding schools I think the current system is too strict - in my youth schools still had shooting clubs and teams on site. I see no reason why this should be banned everywhere, but I’d let individual communities decide this.
I would force no law abiding citizen to own a gun, but for those that wished to do so, there should be few restrictions on this right.
This sounds emminently reasonable. Alcohol and guns don’t mix.
But in that world, knowing that you were free to carry guns everywhere EXCEPT in a bar, wouldn’t it make criminals, who don’t care about the law to begin with, more likely to carry there? Wouldn’t it mean that if there was a barfight and one side had an illegal gun and the other was unarmed, the one with the gun was at a distinct advantage? The criminal knows this. Wouldn’t it make sense to carry a gun yourself so as to remain on par with the criminal?
It would look much like it looks today (though hopefully more economically prosperous). There would be less stupid and knee jerk regulation of firearms and more thoughtful and worthwhile regulation. The left wingers would finally have given up on this crusade to save us from the evils of guns (and perhaps gone on to save us from the evils of meat or something else) and would no longer be looking for every chance or sneaky ploy to chip away at gun owners rights with the ultimate goal of banning everything they can.
Everyone. It would be mandatory for every citizen, especially those who are pre-disposed to fear and hate guns, to carry one on their person at all times. In fact…perhaps they would have to carry two.
As a compromise the would carry semi-concealed. But since everyone would, by law, have to carry a gun, it wouldn’t really matter so much anymore.
They would carry them everywhere…courthouses, schools, bars, sporting events, tea parties, to the bathroom. There would be a clause in the law that would require them to be worn to bed and during sex as well.
It would make Presidential speeches much more exciting events in the future, to say the least. Too bad Bush won’t be president when this happy day arrives.
As a concession to the left, mentally ill children who are felons would only be required to carry a single small caliber gun, and they would be exempt from carrying it during shock treatments or while wearing straight jackets.
No one can accuse us gun proponents of not being willing to bend over backwards to work with the other side.
I think that the guns would be restricted to whatever the citizen can handle (except in the above case of a restriction on mentally ill children who are felons). A 100 year old granny will probably not be able to handle a mini-gun, for instance, and must limit her two guns to much smaller calibers. As yet a further concession to the left I would have no problem keeping nukes out of the hands of private citizens as well.
I haven’t read every post, but I did read the one in which Todderbob felt it was OK for certain teachers to carry.
How easy it would be for high school (even juniot high school) thugs to disarm
a teacher and do what they want with the weapon.
And at least one of you thinks carrying in court houses is fine and dandy. This is a swell idea, so long as you’re not the judge, or in any way associated with the proceedings, who would/could be targets in the mind of the pistol packing person.
Then again, you could be an innocent bystander in that courthouse who ends up taking a shot to the heart from a disgruntled gun toter, who, exercising his constitutional right to bear arms, first packed, then pulled out his weapon and began firing it about.
There’s a good point. The term ‘end game’ really has no meaning here. There’s nothing to be working towards. Stuff to be working against, like further restrictions on a Constitutional right for insufficient reasons, for example.
It’s not that I’m against gun control. I’m certainly against symbolic gun control, like the AWB, and I’m against gun control that isn’t enforced, and I’m against gun control that is a grevious restriction on a constitutional right.
Enforcing and eliminating loopholes on one law would have made it much harder for the VT shooter to get his guns, for example. The laws were in place, just not functional.
I can live just fine with how things are right now, more or less. I wouldn’t mind if the severe restrictions in NY were scaled back a bit. (NY, not NYC), and I wouldn’t mind having a full-auto gun, either. Don’t need it, but, you know, every life needs awesome.
I’d probably use it for nothing more than shooting old computer equipment that really, really ticked me off before I decommissioned it, mind you.
… I wonder if I can write off ammo as a business expense if I use it to wipe hard drives with. We are mandated to protect client data.
you mean the same person that also said in the same paragraph that guns should be carried by everyone even whilst having sex? Are you sure they were being serious about that?
It sort of seems like your just taking the most extreme example, and one that in this case may very well have been sarcasm, and arguing against that as if it were the majority opinion.
I’ll give you points for adding a nice layer of subtlety to your strawmanning, but it doesn’t make it any more valid.
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