Please look at this statement made by you LOUNE
CCW permits are for handguns. That’s it. Did you know that?
So as a concession for banning handguns, you are fine with a law that allows people to carry handguns.
Your words.
I’m not even that pro gun. But I’m getting more and more every day.
Okay, so what’s the problem?
I’d like for them to be outlawed. As a concession, the legal way to have a handgun is to have a CCW permit. Am I not being clear or something? No CCW permit, no handgun.
Am I being whooshed here?
I don’t want to speak for anyone else but I think the confusion stems from the statement (in relation to handguns)
If you allow handguns to be carried by CCW holders you’re not really asking for handguns to be outlawed. You’re outlawing posession of a handgun without a CCW permit.
I may have started this thread over semantics but it’s just this kind of imprecise approach to gun laws that have plagued gun owners for years. When the original CCW law was passed in Ohio it became virtually impossible for a gun owner to legally transport a firearm in a motor vehicle without a CCW permit. I forget the exact circumstances but the way the law was worded made it so that a firearm was considered loaded if the ammunition and firearm where in the same vehicle, even if they were in separate boxes.
That’s one of the reasons people usually want you to precisely define your limits, precisely define ‘military grade’ because it’s very difficult to craft a definition of military firearms that doesn’t cover most civilian firearms as well.
LOUNE wants handguns banned.
However, he is willing to compromise with allowing people who apply for a CCW license to own them, said CCW test being ‘more restrictive’ than it is currently.
Y’know, it’s something like 150 a year for me to even own a pistol in NY, as it is.
LOUNE. So the compromise you have agreed to is to allow automatic weapons? Frankly I and I bet most gun owners could care less about full autos. And anyway, if I had the money, I could get a legal one now. Sure, removing the restrictions would lower the price, but I sure wouldn’t be interested.
The other compromise is that you would allow handguns with a CCW. I don’t see that as a compromise. It’s just another restriction. I suppose it was my mistake to bring up registration.
I stated that I would consider registration if I would be guaranteed that the guns would never be banned, and the registration would not be used to confiscate said guns. Good luck with that.
When anti-gun folks say outright that they want to ban or outlaw guns, but registration would be OK, that sounds many, many warning bells.
Registration is mandatory to own a handgun in Chicago, but they no longer register them. That kind of tactic makes me suspicious of all anti-gun folks.
It most certainly is a slippery slope, and the ant-gun folks have not given me any reason to trust them.
If I’m reading LOUNE correctly, this is how he sees things as a win-win if gun people give him his way on handguns:
Correct me if I’m misreading you, LOUNE.
You’re on the right track, Scumpup. If we’re looking to drop violent crime, and gun crime specifically, let’s target the guns that they use. You guys have (understandably) been mistaking me for a rabid anti-gun nut. You get the effect right, but definitely not the motivation.
You’re also not giving up your rights. We’re giving up our rights in order to (presumably) get the guns out of the hands of the criminals.
enipla: You’re right about that potentially slippery slope. that’s why I’d have the CCW rules strict, but consistent from state to state so a law-abiding citizen that wants to have a handgun can get that handgun.
And… then what happens? Yes, VTech used pistols, but the mall shooting was a rifle, and Columbine was all kinds of stuff.
Seriously. So… if we give up a right… then… then…
Why does gun crime decrease?
Criminals are not known for being law abiding… it’s part of the definition of being a criminal. This is probably why gun laws tend to not target the guns criminals use… and rather target the guns of people who obey the law.
If you want to have much steeper penalties for using a gun to help you commit crimes, you’ll probably find more support and more success. Target the crime rather than the gun.
If our goal is to decrease the proportion of guns in the hands of criminals, this could also be achieved by getting more guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens. Statistical tricks aside, arming would-be victims also seems to decrease crime rates. Sounds crazy, but apparently criminals get concerned for their own safety and actually commit fewer crimes.
I provided a government cite earlier that said that the vast majority of gun crimes are committed with a handgun. Also, it’s disingenuous to have to guard against crazy.
Yes, some crimes are caused with rifles. The number of crimes committed with rifles would probably go up, but not by a considerable amount (I’d figure). Are you arguing that rifles should be heavily controlled and not handguns, or was that just more of a rhetorical point?
1010011010: If what you said was true, the death penalty would be the ultimate deterrent. It’s not, so it’s not.
No, I’m asking what you think would change.
Let’s assume that 9 of of ten law-abiding people turn their pistols in to the government to melt down.
Then what?
LOUNE -
How would needing a CCW to buy a handgun keep guns away from criminals? Background checks where put in place to prevent that. How would the CCW requirement change that?
What tighter restrictions would you like to impose to get a CCW?
What penalties would you put in place for existing owners of handguns that don’t get a CCW?
I support CCW. It seems that permits are drawn by serious gun enthusiasts that feel they may have a need for a defensive weapon on their person.
I’m a gun owner. I have never purchased a gun though. I don’t think that the average Joe like myself needs a CCW. If I did, I’d get a CCW. Seems to be a good system. If I was forced to get a CCW to own my handguns, I would. Grudgingly.
I do think that if every handgun owner was required to get a CCW, then a lot of gun owners would exercise their privilege to carry all the time when they really don’t have a reason to. I think this would be a natural reaction to being forced to pay the expense, and jump through the extra hoops. This would be a “fuck you” response to the anti-gun folks for creating even more regulations. I don’t think the anti-gun folks would be too happy with that. I wouldn’t be too happy with it either.
I don’t think you have thought this all the way through.
I hate to use a meme like this, but so far your argument is this –
Jeez, Enipla, I was going to talk LOUNE through this, one step at a time. I was saving the ‘always carry’ for a later date.
Most crimes don’t have the death penalty as an option… the handful that do, don’t usually exercise it. Even if it looked like the DA was going that way, criminals know they can probably plea bargain. A criminal is separated from the death penalty by being identified, caught, indicted, standing trial, conviction, and sentencing. They’re pretty familiar with the criminal justice system, being criminals and all.
During the actual commission or planning of a crime, “the death penalty” is too abstract to work as a deterrent. Capital punishment doesn’t make the crime itself more dangerous or risky. “Can this person fight back?” is a pretty right-there-in-the-moment concern when selecting a victim.
Ethically, i don’t believe in owning guns. Mostly people own guns to put holes in people/things, which seems like a pretty base and immaterial freedom to have, albeit a freedom nonetheless. It almost seems silly to have a billion-dollar special interest that involves some of the largest lobbyists in America to preserve the right to shoot things, and yet here we are…
However, the arguments for gun control are weak and ineffective. Usually it will boil down to “because it will make me feel safer”. It’s an arbitrary desire on both parts, but from a strictly rights-oriented thinking, there are no good reasons to outlaw guns in America.
First off, there is legal precedence set by the most prevailing body of law in the land in the form of the 2nd amendment. The fact that this law is in place on a national scale makes the burden of proof on anti-gunners, making it an uphill battle already.
Second off, the giant guy’s t-shirt in Happy Gilmore is more or less correct: Guns don’t kill people, people do. You can argue the purpose of a gun until the cows come home, but violence exists inherently in the mind of the perpetrator, gun or not. Violence didn’t begin with the advent of guns, and it won’t end with the death of them.
Third off, banning guns will not decrease the violence of the aforementioned criminals. I’ll analogize this with marijuana. Guns are used recreationally and also abused. Currently a ban of marijuana is severely depressing the recreational use of marijuana, but those who are “abusing” marijuana are not affected at all. A ban of guns will have an effect even more 2 sided than marijuana because recreational users are more prone to become abusers than recreational gun users taking their guns to hold up the local 7-11.
Lastly, the school shootings argument, as heartless as it may sound, are extremely isolated pockets of violence where guns were the deciding factor of whether or not the crime would be perpetrated. In fact, those are the only cases where the difference of owning a gun or not affected the outcomes of those crimes. A jealous husband would just as soon stab or strangle his cheating spouse as shoot her. A bank robber would have access to a gun regardless of a ban. The crips and the bloods would also have access to black market guns just like they have access to black market drugs. That only means guns would only contribute to violent crimes for people without access to the black market that would could not have happened with other weapons. It is a very narrow slice of the violent acts pie, and anti-gun supporters would do well to devote their energy to other causes more worthwhile causes than this.
p.s. and to whoever cited that cars killed more people than guns… no sh*t. How often do you go out and shoot things compared with driving? How long do you shoot things for compared to hrs spent on the road? how many other people are out there with you shooting? do you shoot things while someone else on your left is shooting right back at you? do you shoot things at night? do you run around corners at night shooting? do you run around blind corners at night, drunk, shooting things knowing that someone might be running around that same blind corner shooting back at you?
now that we’ve established that driving is dangerous… what is more important? the right to drive or the right to a gun?
so… wouldn’t car safety be a much more worthwhile cause? Why then does the NRA have more money than AAA?
Then that’s 9 out of 10 pistols out of possible circulation.
enipla: Fine. Carry all the time, then. If you’re a law-aiding citizen and you’ve already gone through hoops to get your CCW, wear it when you’re scooping out kitty litter in the garage.
Now, as far as what the tighter restrictions would be, I’m not entirely sure. We’d have to work through that.
Again, you sort of have to be able to follow along with why the comparison is made in order to understand what they are getting at. It’s all about risk assessment and what the comparison demonstrates is that people are really bad at assessing personal risk.
Here is the crux…there are as many guns in the US as there are cars, and as many gun owners as there are car owners. Yet many more people are killed while driving than while using a firearm.
It SHOULD tell you what people should actually be more worried about in their day to day lives. But like the fear of flying, people are always worried about exotic or improbable threats than they are about day to day threats.
It’s important because of what it demonstrates about human psychology and how people assess risk in their lives.
Why does it have to be an either or proposition? Why can we either drive OR have a gun but not both? Since alcohol causes a large percentage of accidental and intentional deaths with both cars AND firearms, how about if we abolish that instead of either guns or cars? I mean, what’s more important? Your right (or privilege) to a drink or to be able to drive or own a gun? Why should or shouldn’t we abolish alcohol use in the US if it’s so dangerous? How is owning a gun different in your estimation? Why is one better or worse than the other?
Car safety IS a worthwhile cause…which is probably why we pour so much money into it, ehe? Firearms safety is also a worthwhile cause…but instead of pouring money into it, instead folks want to just ban away. See the difference? Similar analogies can be made with alcohol and I actually think it works better for comparison sake to guns than cars do…and we ALREADY have that little example last century of how well it worked out to attempt to ban alcohol (for the good of the people of course) right?
-XT
Well, my original purpose was to illustrate that it was obvious that cars killed more people than guns simply by the sheer number of hours spent operating a car vs a gun, and that the settings under which a car was operated is vastly more dangerous than those of operating a gun. After that i was just musing about the differences between the two.
After reading your reply, I’d contending that driving is more important to people and that despite the higher risk of mortality, outlawing it simply isn’t an option. It would be just as futile to outlaw fatty foods, prolonged exposure to the sun, or chemical additives (for inducing cancer).
It’s the fact that firing a gun is not as important to day-to-day activity makes it seems a more preventable cause of death than driving. This would be especially true to those people who don’t own guns to think that gun ownership is an unnecessary component to American society whose frivolous entertainment value is outweighed by the deaths they cause. A rough equation would show the pro’s and cons of gun control to be: #of people who use guns * utility gained by shooting at targets and game < # of people killed * utility lost by the loss of life.
Then consequently, i think the purpose of my original musings can be picked up, gun control is more important than car safety if you followed the previous logic. The mentality would be - cars will kill you more often than a bullet will… but you need that car so what are you going to do about? just don’t make things worse by toying around with that gun.
Is it? I never said any of the illegal pistols would be turned in. There’s good odds that at least some of the confiscated pistols would be fenced directly to criminals, too. (Had that happen in my home town a few times.)
Right now, you’re looking at a situation with fewer legal pistols and at least the same amount of illegal pistols.
Plus… since the people with legal pistols have CCW licenses, they’re much more likely to wander around with said pistols. So the amount of pistols on the street will increase greatly.
Since, as things are, it takes extra effort to get a CCW license, the people who get one are the people who need one. In this case, even though the requirements are higher, the pool of people applying is significantly greater.
Do you feel this will increase or decrease the gun violence in our cities, where currently CCW is essentially restricted to police?