Guns and the defense of liberty.

Great Debates
181

I am a gun owner and I support the second amendment’s explicit right to bear arms at least as much as I support the “penumbra” right to an abortion.

I interpret the second amendment to give every citizen a right to effective self defense.

I also interpret the militia language as a continuance of the requirement on the States in the Article of Confederation to maintain a well regulated, disciplined and equipped militia.

To the extent that there is a defense against tyranny component in the Articles, it is a defense made by the states not by individuals despite the fact that a couple of the founding fathers expressed their belief that it did.

I don’t think the federal government can deny a citizen of a state any weapon that they could not deny a state unless the state would deny that weapon to their citizens. California can’t buy tanks or nukes so neither can its citizens. California can buy machine guns SO if California decided that its militia (however California defines it) can have machine guns then they can but machine guns are not necessary to effective self defense so the state of California can ban machine guns. They CANNOT however ban all firearms because that would infringe on the natural right to effective self defense.

I think that the federal government CAN regulate interstate commerce and that includes a national registry, background checks and licensing requirements. I do not think they can ban anything to the individual that they cannot ban to the state in which they reside (I would argue that you could ban more stuff to states that have a history of insurrection when their candidate loses an election but thats just me, I still wonder why they didn’t disarm the south (except for the freed slaves) after the Civil War.

Thats just my take, YMMV.

I think that a lot of gun control folks treat gun owners like some conservatives treat homosexuals. They conflate homosexuality with pedophilia a bit, they make all sorts of assumptions about them and simply don’t like them or their lifestyle.

Then does it make sense for you to take strong positions on technical aspects of firearms does it?

X and Y are meaningless unless you are talking about machine guns. If you’ve ever watched westerns, you know that you can empty a revolver in no time flat. There is NO DIFFERENCE between the firing speed of a revolver and an “assault weapon” The only real difference is magazine capacity.

If you ABSOLUTELY MUST ban something to make yourself feel safer about random events like mass shootings, then go after high capacity magazines. It takes me (and I’m not quick) less than 3 seconds to change magazines in a deliberate manner where I will not fumble a magazine, people who practice this stuff can do it in less than a second.

I suppose restricting grains of powder in ammunition might reduce lethality but that will just lead to people making their own ammunition. Of course those folks tend to be among the more responsible gun owners so maybe its not such a bad idea.

And it usually happens with a handgun. While handguns account for 33% of all firearms in America they account for over 90% of all firearm murders. Rifles also account for about 33% of all firearms in America and they account for 4% of all firearm murders in America. So if reducing gun violence is your objective, and you think that banning some sort of firearm is the answer then why focus on the firearm that is one of the least frequently used for gun murder? Its not even used in the preponderance of mass shootings

182

There wasn’t that many people who died from Anthrax back after 9/11, can we make jars full of that available to the general public too? – I mean, if they promise to be really careful with it, of course.

183

I don’t know if this kind of ignorance stems from watching too many Hollywood movies or the Brady Campaign or somewhere else. You really should try to gain a better understanding of defensive gun uses. One shot, even if you hit the bad guy, usually isn’t fatal. It usually won’t even incapacitate someone immediately, which means that if someone breaks into your home and is trying to stab your child, you want something with “high capacity” and “rapid fire”. You want a semi-auto gun. Why? Because you’ll probably have to fire multiple times to stop a determined bad guy. If the bad guy has accomplices, you’ll definitely have to fire multiple times.

Yes, we probably have the votes to stop Feinstein’s AWB bill, and we’ll certainly do everything we can to see it stopped. Why does this seem crazy to you? If you could actually concot a proposal that was minimally-intrusive on gun owners and would save a bunch of lives, we could probably get on board with it and support it. The problem is you guys have it bass-ackwards. You concot massively-intrusive proposals that save very few (if any) lives. Why would we support something like that?

184

Oh, really? Please explain what crime you don’t trust me not to commit with my gun.

Once you’ve finished that, explain why are not worried about me committing any crimes with my kitchen knives, my car, my pilot’s license, and my chainsaw.

185

I think You forgot the swimming pools…

Not really sure what You’re saying. Do You mean without that ban there would’ve been more of these rampages?

How about if You could actually concoct Your own proposal that would save a bunch of lives and be minimally-intrusive on gun owners. Why wouldn’t We support something like this?

Damn, maybe I should start hoarding kitchen knives, cars, pilot’s licenses and chainsaws just to be safe.

186

Don’t put words in my mouth. I have not said any of these things, and I have repeatedly explained in this thread and others that I think the NRA’s position is infantile and ridiculous, and explained what gun control measures I would support.

I think any attempt at gun control that depends on attempting to ban certain types of guns considered “especially dangerous” will fail, because all guns that are remotely useful for legitimate purposes are dangerous in the wrong hands. Since these attempts will fail, they will be followed up by more demands to ban more classes of guns, which will continue to fail, and ultimately, the right to legal gun ownership will be effectively eliminated. It is absurd to call it paranoia to realize that many gun control advocates realize this and consider this an acceptable and desired outcome.

I would support a strict gun owner licensing system that operated similarly to driver’s licenses - everyone is entitled to a license, barring specific disqualifications, but they must pass a test, renew it every few years, etc. I would support strict liability laws, that make it illegal to possess, operate, or handle a gun without insurance that will pay the full cost of any crime committed with the gun, including the cost of compensation to the victims and the overall cost to society (e.g. police time). Let the insurance companies figure out what guns are risky and which ones are not, as opposed to a bunch of grandstanding politicians and uninformed activists. Almost any gun control proposal you want to name, I would support: except bans, and things that would make a ban easier (like a gun registry).

I think bans are contrary to freedom and should be avoided whenever possible. I am not convinced that approximately 100 people dying each year as a result of mass shootings is justification for the dramatic restriction on freedom that would be required to eliminate it, or even significantly reduce that number. The fact that it is a freedom you don’t care much about should be irrelevant to you. It matters to a lot of people.

If you don’t care about the right to legal gun ownership, fine. But it’s very easy to be liberal, tolerant and inclusive and all that shit when the other person is someone you like who votes the same way you do. The real test of your tolerance is how you put up with people you disagree with. Your attitude - “fuck your rights, fuck what you want, fuck what you think, I don’t care about what’s important to you, do what I say” is exactly what you accuse conservatives in so many circumstances.

187

It was sarcasm. I was pointing out that the CT AWB didn’t stop Newtown, and the federal AWB didn’t stop Columbine. AWB’s aren’t going to stop rampages.

Any proposal I would concot (and I have concocted a few here in Utah) would be to ease the burdens on gun owners. You wouldn’t support them, I promise.

188

It comes from the position that all guns should be banned. They don’t really care to fight their own ignorance on guns. They’re like some conservatives and homosexuality or evolution.

+1. propose some of the ideas that are presented by the gun rights side of the argument on this board and you will reduce gun violence but you will not reduce the number of guns in society and that is simply not an acceptable solution for some people or they can’t fathom how you can reduce gun violence without reducing the number of guns. It sort of reminds me of anti-abortion activists who are so focused on making abortions illegal that they refuse to focus on contraception which would further their goal of fewer abortions.

189

How the hell should I know. I didn’t know what Nancy Lanza’s kid was going to do with her guns either.

That’s the attitude that drives me crazy. “I’m special. I’m super-duper-careful. You can trust me. I’ll never lose my cool and shoot someone I don’t like. No one will ever steal anything I own. I’ll never have an accident with my guns, for I am special.”

I don’t buy it. Shit happens. And when shit happens with guns, it’s usually more deadly than when shit happens with pilots license and butter knives.

190

So propose some, I’m all ears. But if you’re going to stamp your feet and say banning guns are the answers, then I’m sorry, you’re not contributing to the debate, you’re poisoning it. That was easy.

This is only true if you ignore all defensive gun use. And with it, reality.

Of course, I can see no corresponding benefit of smoking, and similar negative societal effects. Would you support banning cigarettes? I wouldn’t.

191

Bah, missed the edit window. Didn’t properly delete all the other text from Yog’s post.

192

You talk as though removing these weapons would actually drop the death rate by 1%; this is far from the truth. Assault weapons are already the least frequently abused class of guns, despite there being many millions of them in private hands, but the number of shootings in which fire rate or magazine size actually matters is even smaller still. Hell, even most mass shootings are carried out with handguns, not rifles, including the Virginia Tech massacre, the deadliest school shooting in the nation’s history. Seung-Hui Cho used small-caliber handguns and ten-round magazines.

“Assault weapons” are such an absolute bogeyman of an issue that nobody who critically analyzes the facts can credibly support a ban. The only reason Feinstein et al even make an issue of them is because they know they can exploit the fear and ignorance of people like you to drive a wedge into gun rights in general.

Why yes, “use your knowledge to tell us how we can better infringe your rights.” That sounds like a fine and fair proposal to me.

“In a very small way” is where you’re wrong. We don’t consider being treated preemptively like criminals and stripped of our rights to be a “very small” effect. That your proposed measure would do about as close to nothing as it is possible to imagine from any legislative answer to gun violence is just adding insult to injury.

Ah, so we can’t just ban black males from owning guns, even though that would save six or seven thousand lives every year? Well, you’re absolutely right. We can’t and we shouldn’t. But perhaps, if you understand that, you can approach an understanding of our point of view, which after all is based on the same principle that rights should be upheld not only when it’s safe to uphold them.

You misunderstand. The argument isn’t exceptionalism. It’s due process. If you look at everything from the point of view that we just don’t know who might commit a crime next, you can justify almost any infringement of rights. Much the same thinking has been used to justify countless measures of dubious legality in the “war on terror.” Can you try to understand our disgust on that score? We happen to think that it’s important to uphold due process even when lives are at risk. I’m sorry if that bothers you, but the reality is that it’s a very small risk to bear. I think you are overreacting.

193

I don’t believe I’m over-reacting at all. I’m reacting, sure.

But here’s the deal … weapons are dangerous things. They only do one thing; they fuck shit up. Society has every right - hell, an obligation - to regulate them. I’m not going on and on about let’s melt them all down. I’m going on about, you don’t friggin’ need a rifle that can kill 20 kids in a minute. You don’t need a 30 round magazine. You don’t need a crate of AK-47’s. You and your AR-15 are not going to defend against tyranny and their tanks and rockets, and if you need a damned uzi to defend your hearth and home, I’d suggest moving out of Somalia because shit like that is overkill.

There are many, many sensible regulations that would not cause a wrinkle in the 2nd amendment, but noooooooo, can’t do any of that, because some dick won’t be able to have his toy now.

And, hey, I’m all for due process. And I think that due process ought to have some sensible regulations laid on top of it so maybe, just maybe, we can do something about the outrageous amounts of gun-deaths we experience in this country.

194

And you don’t need a car that can go faster than 25 miles per hour. Anything else we don’t need, while we’re on the subject? Your need for speed kills far more people than my rifle. And that rifle doesn’t have to be able to shoot down an Apache to be useful to me, whether for sport or for defending my family in an emergency.

Oh, you’re absolutely right; there are lots of reasonable regulations that might help reduce the amount of violence and would not violate the second amendment. An assault weapon ban fails both of those tests pretty dismally, though: it wouldn’t reduce violence by any measurable amount, and it would proscribe the single class of weapons the second amendment is most concerned with protecting. Read U.S. v. Miller sometime.

If you want to do something about the outrageous number of gun deaths we experience in this country, why are you talking about rifles? I’m really curious.

195

I hope you have some factual basis for this claim. I’d be interested in seeing it.

196

Since this is the “defense of liberty” thread, I thought I’d address this sentence.

First off, the Syrians seem to be doing a decent job of defending against “tyranny and their tanks and rockets”, and you’ll never guess what they’re using to do it: http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/16/middleeast/gallery/syria-unrest/index.html

As for the Uzi to defend hearth and home, I think you ought to be able to use whatever firearm you can lawfully purchase and feel most comfortable with to defend home. For a lot of people that’s a semi-auto handgun with gasp a 15-20 round magazine. This arbitrary 10-round limit, which NY has turned into an arbitrary 7-round limit, is asinine.

197

Again, why are you going after rifles if that is your goal? The small ones are being used to facilitate the outrageous numbers of gun deaths, not the long ones.

198

Mass shootings - which are the only type of gun crime that could conceivably be reduced by limits on magazine size - killed 88 people in 2012.

A casual reading of the list (http://www.thenation.com/blog/171774/fifteen-us-mass-shootings-happened-2012-84-dead#) suggests that a national 10-round magazine limit might have eliminated perhaps 20 or 30 of those deaths, and that’s being generous.

Each and every one of those deaths was a tragedy. But we are a country of 300,000,000 people. Tragedies happen. You do not appear to be all that perturbed by any of the myriad other things in this country which kill more than 30 people each year. What is so damn special about high-capacity magazines, other than the fact that they have all the characteristics that make up a great political football?

Yes, 16,000 people each year are killed by guns in general in the US (I am excluding suicide). But these are not mass shootings and they would not be prevented by a ban on high-capacity magazines or “assault rifles”, etc. I am in favor of gun control laws that might actually make a difference in that number. But 30 deaths a year, no matter how tragic they may be on an individual level, is nothing when evaluated at the scale of the entire country.

199

The DOL argument does seem to be basic to much of the heated debate over weapons. Those who make the DOL argument are proposing armed insurrection to overthrow the government of the US. That is illegal.

Weapons that support the DOL should be illegal since a basic requirement of an orderly society is that force is the monopoly of the government.

I agree with Absolute as far as requiring liability insurance for weapon ownership. However, weapons should be permitted for a specific purpose and licensed annually for that purpose only. Also there needs to be strict requirements for weapon storage and access limited only to the owner.

Crane

200

While I agree 100% with the sentiment of your post, I think this number is off. According to the FBI, homicides with firearms have been on the decline, from 10,129 in 2007 to 8,583 in 2011.

According to the CDC’s WISQARS in 2010 there were:
[ul]
[li]11,078 “gun murders”[/li][li]606 fatal gun accidents[/li][li]344 legal interventions with a firearm that resulted in a death[/li][li]19,392 suicides using a firearm[/li][/ul]

I can’t even begin to explain the discrepencies between the FBI and CDC except with the old “close enough for government work.” Anyways, either one is well below the 16K figure you listed, but still sizeable and of concern.