The gun control crowd’s vilification of the NRA has always struck me as odd. They seem to tacitly admit that they’re one of the most powerful political forces in the country, but then have this weird disconnect where they fail to recognize where their political power comes from.
Gun nuts. The USA has a shit load of gun nuts.
While some might object to the term “nut”, you’re basically right. The USA, as a nation, believes in (and supports) the RKBA much more strongly than Canada, Australia, England, or those other Western European nations that the gun control folks like to compare us to.
Then why (except for hunting) do they want to have a gun?
The whole idea of a gun for personal defense is to impose the firearms owner’s will on others they think are in the wrong. Here’s how that looks to folks like me:
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/defensive-gun-ownership-myth-114262.html#.VbbABvlViko
I’d love to see a poll on whether gun owners generally favor solving social problems with the most forceful options, such as long prison sentences, and capital punishment. If posters I see here are typical, gun owners tend, more than other Americans, to favor draconian prison sentences.
Also, earlier in #275, you wrote:
In other words, you want to force the states whose rules you don’t like to adopt yours.
Look at this chart:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6345a10.htm
Maybe the people in lowest suicide states (New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts) don’t want you to force then to have the wide-open handgun policies of the three states with the highest suicide rates (Wyoming, Alaska, Montana).
By the way, this is why I’m approximately as much against one of these grand national compromises on firearms laws as the gun lobby. I’d rather we continue the experiment of different gun laws in different states. Americans should have the right to, without emigrating, live in a place that doesn’t feel like an armed camp.
. If someone else is trying to assault, rape, main or kill you, self-defense is valid, as recognized by the laws of every state in the US.
The general principle is “no first use of force”, which responsible gun owners recognize as including not initiating aggression or escalating. Contrary to popular rumor, most gun owners do NOT take carrying as a license to throw one’s weight around and then pull a gun when it goes south. Another general rule is “when you carry, treat everyone else as if they were carrying”.
I wonder where Politico got the idea that there were only 3 million NRA members.
And what they think of as a “tragic myth” is admittedly a topic of debate, but it’s a debate your side is losing badly:
http://www.pewresearch.org/files/2015/04/FT_15.04.01_guns_Safer.png
Just in the last 15 years, many millions of Americans have gone from believing that having a gun in their home makes it more dangerous to believing that having a gun in their home makes it safer.
And many millions believe in the baby jesus or any number of bad ideologies.
Maybe they should all be sent to reeducation camps; you know, for the good of society.
Thank goodness for the Philosopher-Kings; why, without them who’d know what to think?
I forgive you for your folly.
[ul]
[li]The current system is…not effective. NICS reporting isn’t mandatory, some people get false positive hits nearly every purchase, and even those found to be prohibited are rarely prosecuted. [/li][li]Why not extend it? Because it’s unnecessary to concede anything. That’s not a real answer though, it’s just the strategic one. The real answer is there is a risk when you put the government as an intermediary between constitutionally protected transactions. If people really wanted universal checks, the system could be made available to all so we don’t need to go to an FFL to use it. I’m not sure the negatives on that one, but the less opportunity for the information to be centralized, stored, and abused, the better.[/li][li]Why would it have to be destroyed? Because at some point the records will be abused. Like lists of CCW permit holders being published, records being hacked, or even the local government coming to confiscate weapons during a natural disaster. It’s a sign of good faith that there is no intent to abuse the information. It’s not like there is any trust whatsoever.[/li][/ul]
First off, these are not good comparisons because they do not reflect enumerated constitutional rights. Would you be so sanguine about a registry of every book you ever read or everything you ever wrote? I wouldn’t be (I know it’s being done already in some form). For property and cars, there is a non-nefarious reason to maintain this information. Property rights are hard to enforce if there is no record of property. It’s also much harder to tax. Driving cars on public roads is a privilege, one which we enjoy in exchange for paying taxes, and complying with various laws and rules.
What is the value of a registry of my guns? Sure then straw purchases may be able to be curtailed, if every gun were registered and tracked. I’d prefer to employ other less invasive methods first - one which doesn’t provide the means to confiscate them, or otherwise abuse that information.
Not sure what point you’re trying to make with the Politico article. Perhaps you can elaborate.
In any case, here you equivocate the initiation of force between a person on offense and defense. Not sure where you heard the idea that personal defense is about imposing the firearm owner’s will on others, but that’s close to the opposite of what it is.
I’m not sure how those unrelated issues are relevant, perhaps you could elaborate on the point you’re trying to make. In any event, I think some prison sentences should be longer, some shorter. I’m against capital punishment as it’s implemented in the US. How does that rate in your poll?
Yes, I’d like states to be forced to respect the constitution and each individual’s civil rights. Although in this scenario, it’s not forcing in the typical sense of the word, it’s through the legislative process. Through our elected representatives we can choose some measures of how we are governed. State preemption of local gun laws is one way that can happen. Combine that with constitutional carry and you eliminate the ability of local jurisdictions to violate people’s constitutional and civil rights. A novel concept, I know.
If that’s what the people in those states want, then they can speak through their legislature. You aren’t suggesting people shouldn’t be able to do that, are you? In any event, I know you’re main focus lately is on suicide. The problem is, constitutional carry has very little to do with suicide - do you think it does? And even so, suicide prevention is not a persuasive reason to support gun control - I can’t imagine gun control that would impact suicide that wouldn’t also be draconian. Focusing the argument on suicide is a red herring tactic that leads to more severe gun control.
You do realize that 40 (is it 41 now?) states in the union are shall issue or constitutional carry, right? Are you thinking that the remaining 20% or so are the only places that don’t feel like an armed camp? That’s a nonsensical construction.
Civil rights shouldn’t be subject to experimentation by state. The 2nd amendment is incorporated against the states - just like free speech and protections from unreasonable search. This is also like other civil rights like the right to marry who you choose, these things should not be subject to experimentation. Do you see the right to self defense as a civil right? I do.
We don’t have to - we’ll just take away your guns, and then the ravening hordes of violent thugs who apparently are waiting just outside your house at all times for you to be unarmed so that they can burst in and mutilate your family will take care of all that.
I mean, the pro-gun side keeps mentioning them, so I assume they exist.
Going to paint a peace sign over the lintel of all the right thinking people so as to keep societies little angles of death from your houses? Well, I’d say liberals have bigger problems, since after spending years saying how awful the police are I’m curious who you think is this ‘we’ who will take the guns away from all the bad, evil Americans who have guns. When you say ‘we’ I assume you don’t propose that you and other like minded folks will dirty YOUR hands with the task, right? 
My thanks to the various posters who have made it clear why it is pointless to consider compromise with the anti-gun factions. You have made the case much better than I could.
Regards,
Shodan
Hysteria about crime is now the province of the gunphobes, who have their followers convinced that crime is on the rise in the U.S. and there are legal gun-owners just shooting everybody all the time.
Nice try, but hysteria about evil criminals who will kill your whole family if you’re not armed is standard rhetoric for many gun advocates, and playing upon that fear puts a lot of money in the NRA coffers.
(Not that my post was anything more than tongue-in-cheek, but Haberdash’s usual reality-free kneejerk reaction deserves a :rolleyes: nonetheless.)
We’ll get some guns and take yours. And then we’ll be the gun owners so you’ll have to get some more guns and take ours. We’ll just keep taking turns. It’ll be fun.
Well, I see a couple of obviously flaws in the ointment here. First off, just getting guns wouldn’t be enough…you’d need to know how to use them. You’d need to train with them. You’d need to be familiar with them. Once you go down that path, some non-zero number of the faithful who you’ve armed are going to think ‘hey…you know, some of these gun control laws WERE kind of stupid after all!’. Some of them will say ‘You know, I kind of like these gun thingies! I think I’d kind of like to keep mine, now that I’m desensitized to the scarwy!’. So, the plan might start falling apart right from the get go. In addition, if it played out the way you say, I’m unsure the former gun owners would WANT to take away the former gun-grabbers new found guns, since that would sort of be counter productive, having gotten their guns back. Well, ok, some of the gun-grabber types really should have their guns taken away, for their own safety…but not all.
The end result would be MORE people would have guns in the end. :eek: And this could spread throughout the world and possibly into the sidereal universe as we know it, possibly to other dimensions and through time and space! Do you really want to unleash something like that with the unintended consequences that every man, woman and fur-less hominid on the planet through all time would have a gun of their own??? I think not, so why not just let those gun owners keep their guns for now? It will save a lot of trouble…
No, not everybody and not all the time. :rolleyes: That sort of childish language does not help you.
Nevertheless, there are about 30 gun deaths every day in the US, roughly 30 times more than the “defensive gun uses” the Second Commandment absolutists hold so dear. Some of those 30 are illegal, sure, but many are not. The latest guy to shoot up a theater was legal, for instance, despite being seriously mentally ill. For just one instance notable mainly for the death toll.
This is all about the value of human life. Some things are more important than that to some people, and it doesn’t help those people be persuasive to discuss the matter at the level they do.
There’s no misconception. Their power comes from money, money raised mainly from the gun and ammo manufacturers but also from the members they keep prodding into a state of fear about their guns getting taken away and the Bad Guys invading their homes if they don’t donate all their disposable income, and not incidentally into buying more guns and ammo from the manufacturers, who then “invest” in keeping the cycle continuing. That money turns into buying votes, including those used to frustrate Manchin-Toomey and any similar proposals despite overwhelming public support.
[QUOTE=ElvisL1ves]
Nevertheless, there are about 30 gun deaths every day in the US, roughly 30 times more than the “defensive gun uses” the Second Commandment absolutists hold so dear. Some of those 30 are illegal, sure, but many are not. The latest guy to shoot up a theater was legal, for instance, despite being seriously mentally ill. For just one instance notable mainly for the death toll.
This is all about the value of human life. Some things are more important than that to some people, and it doesn’t help those people be persuasive to discuss the matter at the level they do.
[/QUOTE]
Naw, it’s not about the value of human life, unless with a straight face you can tell me you campaign equally against every other thing that society sanctions that causes death. What it is is that this sanction you don’t agree with, so therefore you are all ‘think of the children’ on it, using stats to underscore how terrible and scary it is, while you probably never give a moments thought to other things that you don’t care about, don’t think about or even agree with that cause more deaths and have societies sanction (or don’t).