So, where you (and she) live the criminals prey on the strong? How odd. My experience as a private citizen, as a deputy sheriff, and in working at a treatment center for sex offenders is exactly the opposite.
If you find that to be provocative and/or “shit,” then I don’t know what to tell you.
What’s “shit” is when you treat her like she disagrees with your statements, when her replies in this thread have indicated the opposite, simply because you think she MIGHT not support universal gun ownership as much as you do. I say again, she’s on your side of the debate relatively speaking and you’re busting her metaphorical balls because she’s not fanatic enough.
This is typical of a certain class of gun rights fanatics–it’s happened to me in other threads where I’ve been shouted at as a confiscator and closet ban supporter because I dared suggest that firearms ownership should involve training, testing, and licensing no more difficult than that of a driver’s test.
Quit trying to make this about you and your martyrdom at the hands of gun fanatics.
I do not see this this “agreement” on her part of which you speak and I have not addressed universal gun ownership.
Another problem I see is that a society with very open, unfettered access to handguns will tend to end up with a greater number of handguns in the possession of people (criminals) who should not have them. If there are lots of guns about, theft and break and enters can be a problem. Also, if there is virtually no tracking, it becomes trivial for a person to buy guns legally, and then resell them for a profit to those who cannot legally obtain them. Illegal guns started off being legal guns.
Indeed, in the Greater Toronto Area, it’s estimated that 50% of the handguns used in crimes came from the United States.
I will echo **Shot from Guns **comment:
And add; “how do we ensure that legal guns do not fall into the wrong hands”
I don’t believe you. That would imply that restricting guns in Canada actually works, and that people have to go to areas that have weaker gun laws to obtain guns. That would be like saying that gun restrictions in NYC would mean that people would go to Georgia to buy guns. That’s just crazy talk. That would mean that gun restrictions would need to be done on a national basis to be effective. I hope you see where that sort of reasoning leads.
Or it could just be me responding to hyperbole with more hyperbole. But you go ahead and pick the option that makes you feel better about yourself, dear, if that’s what you need. Could I maybe get you a juice box or something?
If they have the gun, they still also have their fists, do they not? If this person is categorially and demonstrably unwilling to use unjustified lethal force, however, then I don’t care if they have a gun. Perhaps you could put together some sort of form that someone could sign and have witnessed, which they could they brandish at me along with the gun.
We test and license people to drive cars, and they’re merely *peripherally *lethal. (I.e., that they can and do kill people is an aside to their intended purpose of transportation.) I just want to know that somebody who owns a gun has been through a process at least as rigorous as Driver’s Ed.
Very true. But the point of the stupid hypothetical was this: guns are the most lethal weapon the average person can get their hands on. It’s much easier for someone with a gun to kill you than for someone who’s unarmed to kill you. Also, not only are they designed to kill efficiently, they’re designed to kill efficiently at range.
Yup. WTB Magic Crystal Ball of Responsible Gun Ownership.
Nah, I like it in the Pit, where I can snark back.
Thanks for actually paying attention to what I’m saying. 
Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!
See, now here I go defending you, but you gotta smart off. Can we agree that a reasonable substitute for said magic crystal ball might be a comprehensive testing (use, storage, safety, maybe even shoot/no-shoot decision making), registration, and licensing system?
Fight that hypothetical! Note: brandishing a gun is using lethal force (specifically the threat of lethal force).
You have a gun and your fists. Are you going to use your fists?
Observation for you: You are not required to have a license to own a car. The driver’s license is for operating a motor vehicle on public streets. “Point and click” jokes aside, I’d also observe that the generic operation of a motor vehicle is much more difficult than the generic operation of a firearm. I’m not sure what “Shooter’s Ed” would cover that’s not getting into the details about the operation of specific types firearms (and thus, useless information and wasted time for people not operating that type of firearm).
It’s also easier for a victim with a gun to stop their attacker than for a victims who is unarmed to defend themselves. You don’t actually have to wait for an attacker to get close enough to possibly be able to disarm you before you can defend yourself. It works at range, too.
Sure, a criminal with a gun can kill me more easily than an unarmed criminal. Then again, an unarmed criminal can kill me more easily than I could stop a criminal in self-defense.
If you put an unarmed me against an unarmed criminal, I’d put my money on the criminal. If you give us both knives or clubs or pointed sticks, I’d still put the money on the criminal simply because the criminal would probably choose someone he thought he had a good chance of being able to beat in that sort of fight. Victims, OTOH, don’t get to choose their attackers, but they can choose not to give criminals the advantage of an unarmed victim.
That was an honest wish, because it would elimate all of the stupid debate. You’re telling me you wouldn’t want a magic ball that could absolutely 100% of the time tell you who would be a responsible gun owner and who wouldn’t?
Yup.
If it was non-snarky, hell yes. Put it next to my pony.
Thanks for that.
I know it wasn’t directed at me, but what I’d advocate:
Rifles/shotguns (primarily hunting/target/recreation weapons):
[ul]
[li]Basic marksmanship with either a loaner gun or one’s own weapon.[/li][li]Ability to (with a manual) load, unload, safe, disassemble for cleaning, and clean an example rifle/shotgun.[/li][li]Pass a written test on safe storage laws and best practices.[/li][li]Provide proof of ownership of at least the minimum legally required safe storage devices (which I would say should be EITHER a safe OR a trigger/action lock if there are non-licensed gun users in the same residence.)[/li][/ul]
Handguns and shortbarreled shotguns/rifles (primarily defense weapons, weapons able to be concealed in reasonable street clothing):
All of the above plus
[ul]
[li]Advanced marksmanship, including something similar to a tactical pistol course with draw-fire-safe-holster components, fire and move components, and shoot/no-shoot decision components.[/li]li Non-intrustive psychological testing on the order of that given to typical police job candidates.[/li][/ul]
I’d also permit ownership of machine guns and/or true assault rifles with passing of something akin to a basic infantry course (see also: well-regulated in the military sense) in the appropriate weapon, plus retraining at intervals.
**Zeriel’s **suggestion sounds pretty sensible to me.
I have agreed to this before, with the following conditions:
An oral exam must be offered for those who cannot read, in the same manner that literacy is not a condition for voting. Additionally, the test must be provided on a regular basis, not just on the 3rd Sunday of the 5th full moon of years that end in odd numbers following a leap year. Requiring a test and then not offering it is a loophole big enough to drive a truck through.
If you are going to mandate trigger locks it should be provided at the counter by the seller and included in the purchase price, none of this Gun-$500, Trigger Lock-$1000 nonsense.
The threshold for passing cannot be USMC Expert Pistol.
There’s no such thing as non-intrusive psychological testing, so this is problematic at best.
Given the cost of entry to this club, the extensive background checks that are required, the BATFE tracking of these weapons, and the fact that there has been only two murders since 1934 with these types of weapons (one of which was committed by a police officer), this is pointless.
Oh, and registration cannot be denied except to felons and other people currently ineligible, a public law must be in place that the list will not be used for door-to-door confiscation should that ever happen (as in New Orleans during Katrina), the registration fee must not be intentionally prohibitive (Like it is currently in DC), and the process must not be intentionally onerous (Ditto).
Meet me halfway. Promise me there will be no abuse of the process and guarantee it in law and we have a deal. See how easy it can be?
How do your suggestions (sensible though they may be) reconcile with the fact that similar sorts of restrictions, e.g. on the right to vote, have been struck down as unconstitutional?
If an illiterate person fails the written test, what then? Does the marksmanship practical take into account folks in wheelchairs or with cerebral palsy (or both)? Do your range safety officers speak Spanish?
Also, if someone has no intention of using a safe or trigger lock, what’s the point of making them buy one? That additional cost might price some people out of exercising their rights. OTOH, you could achieve much the same effect (i.e., encouraging people to follow safe storage guidelines) by making safe storage a defense to liability if someone uses your gun without permission and negligently injures themselves or others. “Oh, he accidentally cracked the safe, picked the trigger lock, and then shot the neighbor’s dog… right.”
And these are just the problems when we assume we can trust the program to be run in good faith. Which is an assumption that history has shown is not a safe one to make.
Easily acceptable in toto. Also, all permits granted by a state agency for firearms are honored in all other states/localities, similar to driver’s licenses. Actually, as far as I’m concerned, all of your statements above are common sense–the purpose of my proposal is to find a set of regulations that works well enough for the sane-and-nervous gun-control types so that it’ll pass Congressional muster while expanding options and retaining ease of licensing for us responsible, safe gun owners.
I’m thinking a system similar to my long rifles, where the trigger locks were included and added perhaps $25 to the cost.
I’m less interested in this testing one’s ability to hit the X ring and far more interested in testing correct shoot/no-shoot decisions and not shooting wildly while on a timed course–that is, it should be considered a pass to shoot relatively slowly or hit mostly glancing shots, but a fail to repeatedly miss targets entirely or make incorrect shoot/no-shoot decisions. The goal here is to test “will you be a danger to others if you have your gun in a stressful situation”, not “are you an expert marksman”.
Yeah, I know. I’m hoping someone comes up with something that will at least screen out the most apt to go randomly shooting without annoying people like you and me.
Part and parcel of the idea here for me is to open up legal ownership of these weapons for costs less than they are now under the NFA restrictions, while still making sure that the owners of these weapons (as a concession to the people worried about wider availability) are 100% aware of the firepower these weapons bring–the goal is that the requirements will weed out the “hurr hurr I have a machine gun, boys!” types while allowing people who are serious recreational shooters and/or serious about the well-regulated militia thing to have appropriate arms. In an ideal world, this requirement would entirely replace the NFA rules and allow ownership of battle rifles and machine guns to anyone willing to do some standardized amount of training (in perhaps the 24-48 class hours range, costing perhaps $1200 to $2400–in other threads, I’ve used a Commercial Driver’s License analogy.) Even adding in the cost of the rifle itself, this will still weigh in underneath the typical $10,000+ I see NFA-legal automatic arms going for.
While we’re dreaming, you want a pony? sigh
I’ve addressed the sense if not the specifics of most of the rest of your points in my response to Airman Doors, but in the case of this one in specific, there is a practical reason, a Constitutional reason, and a political reason. The first two reasons are admittedly weak.
Practically–guns can cause accidental or purposeful injury/death, and voting really can’t except in the most indirect ways.
Constitutionally–it’s entirely plausible that “well-regulated” in terms of “citizens should know how to operate their arms” should mean something, regardless of the awkwardness of the phrasing.
Politically–Baby steps. There is no question that the US leads the civilized world in both firearms ownership and firearms deaths, and I think the experiences of expanding concealed-carry licensing in the last ten years show that we can reduce the latter without affecting the former just by making people go through some small formalized processes. I think that in order to open up gun regulations and gain back ground (especially in our cities and among the type of people who see guns as an unmitigated bad) we need to set up a compromise position where we give up a little (anonymity of firearms ownership, ability to own a defense weapon with absolutely no assurance you have any idea what to do with it) and gain a lot (free-er nationwide laws on carrying rules and permits). I characterize giving up anonymity as a small price because most of us enthusiasts have already done that to get our CCW.
Actually, on the wheelchair/palsy thing, I think we have a potential impasse because I believe as a matter of public policy that we should consider denying firearms ownership to anyone physically unable to put rounds on their intended target. I may well be influenced by my dad nearly getting shot by a Vietnam vet in his hometown, to whom he was making a requested delivery from the general store, who had a .410 Taurus revolver leveled in his general direction by said vet who is blind. I can’t see any sane reason for public policy that lets a literally blind person legally own that kind of firepower, perhaps barring the case of a person who lives alone and is not permitted to leave the residence with the firearm, but I’m open to being convinced here.
Actually, it’s sense that’s not so common, which is why we constantly have this argument. Look at what the Brady Campaign or the VPC have to say about “common-sense legislation” and you’ll immediately recognize the inherent conflict.
All joking aside, I think that the 2nd will be incorporated soon. The current circuit split is likely to go to the SCOTUS (really, it has to), and based upon DC v. Heller they’ll either have to reverse themselves and look like chumps or they’ll have to uphold the 9th Circuit’s decision that incorporates the 2nd. I bring this up because some of these things that you suggested and I conditionally agreed to above may end up being moot anyway if the 2nd is incorporated.
I don’t think there’s any evidence that the Brady Campaign or the VPC possess any common sense whatsoever.
Not sure what kind of advocate it makes me that I worry about this causing a backlash of federal-level clowning with firearms laws in a bad way.
There some reason poor people couldn’t “be serious about the well-regulated militia thing”?