"I am not anti-guns. I am anti-bullet holes in my patients."

In My Humble Opinion
302

Of course the SC disagrees, it’s utter insanity to allow people to freely own fully automatic weapons.

The question is, whether or not banning them violates the letter of the 2nd amendment, and there’s no possible reading of the actual words of the amendment that allows for the banning of military grade weaponry.

It mentions the importance of the Militia, a military organization, the security of the State, and the importance of people owning arms to achieve that goal. How you get from that to allowing a complete ban on ALL military grade armament, is beyond me. Even the Miller case mentions (incorrectly) the lack of military use for a sawed off shotgun as a reason the ban was constitutional.

The only reason the SC would uphold the law is that it is insanity to overturn it. It has nothing whatsoever to do with constitutionality.

We all admit up front that allowing people to freely own fully automatic weapons is lunacy, the only question is why we haven’t all admitted to ourselves that it applies to semi-automatic weapons as well.

303

Well, Ok, let us look at banning semi-automatic weapons. They account for about half of the guns in the USA, that is 150 million guns. So let us say you passed a law making them illegal to possess. You’d have to buy them back, and that would cost $60,000,000,000.

Then of course some 10% of the gun owners wouldn’t turn them in on time, requiring the imprisonment of 10 Million citizens, whose only crime is owning a gun that Mr Cheesesteak thinks should be banned. That’s five times the current capacity of our prison system, requiring trillions in costs to build, staff & maintain all those prisons.

Some small %, lets say 1/10th of 1% would resist violently. That tiny % would mean 10,000 Ruby Ridges and thus the death of 10,000 LEOs. And 20,000 citizens, many of whom would just be innocent family members. But that’s Ok, eh?

Not to mention you’d have to hire 100000 or more new ATF agents. That many new, inexperienced agents would mean more deaths on both sides. And a general suspension of civil rights, like search warrants, might be necessary.

But during that time violent crime by gun would decrease- but likely not enough to cover the 30,000 new gun deaths caused by the ban.

However, criminals would adjust easily, and just turn to shotguns and revolvers. Or just kill cops and take their semi-autos.

Even after every semi-auto was off the streets, the violent crime rate would be back to normal in a decade or two.

However, yes, mass shootings would decrease in lethality. Of course a trained shooter can do as much damage with a level or bolt actions plus a revolver or two plus speed loaders. And you won’t believe how fast a shooter can reload a double barreled shotgun.

So we’d have to ban revolvers, bolt & lever actions, and double barrels- leaving single shot guns.

So, trillions in costs, tens of thousand of deaths, millions incarcerated- and the end result would be “Mass shooter kills 6” instead of “Mass Shooter kills 8”. Or even double that range, sure maybe.

Boy, that would be cost effective, no?

304

Whoa, hang on. So these are the law-abiding responsible legal gun owners you are talking about who are going to kill 10,000 LEOs? That right there is a gun control argument if I ever saw one.

305

It can’t be. Because they would be criminals, and criminals don’t purchase their guns legally. Except for all the people who commit crimes with legally purchased guns.

306

Sure, but 1/10th of 1% of just about every population contains nutjobs. Hell 4% of the population are sociopaths.

Ban anything that popular and you will have a certain % resisting violently. It is just that **100 Million Americans **own guns.

307

I bet if CNN was banned, nobody would resist violently.

I bet if Islam was banned, nobody would resist violently.

I bet if black people were banned from voting, nobody would resist violently.

Hell, if illegal search and seizure was suddenly allowed, I bet nobody would resist violently.

308

The Black Panthers would disagree about voting.

Islamic terrorist attacks are by no means rare.

309

DrDeth, it would be very costly indeed to ban guns in the stupidest way possible. Thank you for pointing that out.

I feel it necessary to point out that the tens of thousands of deaths in your “nightmare scenario” is equal to 1 year of firearm related deaths in our country. The total lives lost in the pathetic violent fantasy you cooked up as a worst case scenario, would be the number of lives saved EVERY YEAR if we reduced our firearm death rate to the UK’s.
Am I supposed to be shocked and say “dear me, let’s not do THAT!” What I am is wondering how you can gin up this ridiculous scenario, claim that 30,000 dead is some sort of argument winning downside and not realize that 30,000 is the number of lives we throw away every single year by doing nothing.

310

More people in the US have been killed by toddlers with guns than by Islamic terrorists this year. Seems pretty rare to me.

311

This year. In the USA. So far.

312

If you count suicides.

Now sure, you can make a case that dumping semi-autos would reduce mass shootings. But not gun suicides.

And of course only a tiny % of the 10000 gun murders each years is committed with assault weapons.

313

How many people were killed by Islamic terrorists in the USA last year? And how many were killed by toddlers with guns?

314

Do you expect something to happen in the next six weeks that would affect the balance of that ratio?

315

You’ve convinced me, all the guns have to go. 20,000 suicides a year is something that should be addressed.

Thanks, I was a bit on the fence there.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

316

Shootings by toddlers go up in the holiday season. Something about “new toy stress” or something.

317

That’s ok, because we’ve convinced millions of our countrymen that you’re wrong.

318

NM

319

Without getting into the side discussion, just a few context things here. That 30k deaths include a large number of suicides, which are, IMHO anyway, a sunk cost. IOW, a county the size of the US is going to have a certain percentage of suicides a year, and even WITH guns we have a fairly low one wrt the rest of the world. Meaning if you somehow, magically got rid of all the guns, folks who want to kill themselves will find ways to do so. After all, the country with the highest suicide rate per capital is Japan…and they have extremely tight gun control. All you’ll do is shift the approximately 20K suicides due to guns to something else.

Also, again merely for context, we allow alcohol use, and the CDC estimates nearly 90K folks die of excess alcohol use each year. Tobacco is even worse…nearly half a million. Over 40K estimated from second hand smoke, which is more than all the gun deaths combined. I point this out merely to attempt to demonstrate that societies often allow behaviors or the use of things that WILL, for sure, kill a large non-zero number of citizens. Oh, and many countries that ban guns throughout the world actually have even more of their citizens die, per capita, due to alcohol or tobacco. So, while their gun deaths are non-existent or miniscule, they often have higher per capita deaths in other things.

320

Why “have to”?

321

Well…how else would you propose getting them out of the public’s hands? :confused: That’s what Australia did, after all, and they are generally the yardstick used in these debates. How would you do it? Genuinely curious here, no snark intended. I can’t think of an alternative that doesn’t involve kicking in the doors of, literally, 10’s of millions of houses which doesn’t seem very realistic or legal (or Constitutional).

I guess you could just wait until the guns popped up on the official radar and arrest anyone with them, but that seems like it would work about as well as the war on drugs has worked in keeping drugs off the streets.