“That’s true, but the '97 and '04 law changes didn’t actually ban all guns, just a couple of types (semi-auto centrefire rifles, mainly), and required guns to be licenced and registered.”
Well no but it also seems to have changed things from ‘I want a gun, certainly sir, here are the licensing processes to do so’ to ‘why do you want a gun anyway?’ and having to make more of a case in order to get one, with a much smaller percentage of the population owning one as a result.
To me thats a pretty big mindshift in regards to gun ownership and more what the person is talking about rather than the idea that noone could own a gun at all for any reason.
I think it depends where you are as to whether The Authorities’ response to “I want to own a gun” is “Sure, sign here” (Queensland/Victoria/NT), “Why?” (NSW/TAS/SA) or “LOL No” (Western Australia/ACT).
You’re right about the percentage changes, though. Most people just can’t be bothered with the paperwork and the safety course and shooting club membership and the secure storage requirements and all the other stuff involved in legally owning a firearm in this country. It’s understandable, but sad, IMHO.
As much as some people like to talk about massive gun seizures, police going door to door, “SHTF scenarios,” and various other black-helicopter type situations where the big bad government will be confiscating peoples’ firearms, the honest truth of the matter is that the “war on guns” will be won, through attrition, over a long time, by the anti-gun crowd. And it’s going to be as much a product of things that, on the surface, have nothing to do with guns, as it is of legislation specifically targeting firearms.
As I said before, the issue here really isn’t guns, it’s the fact that people are becoming more citified and urban sprawl is taking over everything. Nowadays I think most Americans probably didn’t grow up hunting or plinking at cans with a .22 on a farm, but most DO have a grandfather or uncle who did, and maybe passed down the knowledge of guns and shooting to the next generation. As fewer and fewer people grow up with guns, the next generation and those afterwards won’t have those older people to hand down the traditions of hunting, shooting, etc.
The other way that knowledge of firearms is passed down through generations is through military service. Again, nowadays most Americans haven’t served in the military, but the majority have older relatives who did. As the military becomes a professional class, those numbers will continue to dwindle.
Since when is hunting the main source of gun ownership? I know plenty of people (myself included) who own guns solely as a self-defense aid and has never (and probably will never) hunt. To say that future generations’ lack of hunting will cause a deficit in gun ownership is a little extreme IMO. As long as there is crime and the desire to protect one’s life, there will be a desire to own firearms in my opinion…
Hunting is NOT the only source of gun ownership. You are absolutely correct. However, it is to politicians. Face it, you never hear even conservative politicians ever talk about self-defense when they talk about the second amendment. It’s always sportsman this, sportsman that, etc. Unfortunately, they only seem to view guns in those terms. So when only 10 percent of Americans have any experience with hunting or target shooting, nobody will object when they ban guns because “they’re not necessary anymore.” That’s the side of it that’s a matter of time simply running its course and the shifting demographics of America. The other side of it is the legislative side - the fact that, in many places such as NY, guns are extremely difficult to own for self-defense. (Don’t think that Heller will change anything - it’s just as likely to be struck down by the SCOTUS.) When legislature has made it near impossible to obtain a gun for self-defense, the only other reason for having one is hunting. And when hunting is an obsolete practice in America, the only other reason for having one is…nothing.
So “Target Shooting” and “Historic Collection” aren’t reasons to own guns? They’re only for shooting animals or shooting people?
Come on, Argent, you know that’s not right, even though you’re not the first person I’ve heard neglect target shooting and collecting as reasons to own a gun.
Does no-one in the US shoot at paper targets? It certainly seems that way from some of the discussions I see on the 'net.
The status of blackpowder weapons here in the US has not been made entirely clear in this thread. They are not considered guns for purposes of commerce, which is why they can be bought and sold mail order and without background checks.
For purposes of criminal law, they are still considered weapons.
I suspect Argent Towers is correct regarding the long-term fate of gun ownership here in the US. This is why it would behoove every gun owner to take a non-owner shooting. The more of them we get interested in shooting, the better.
Oh, they do; but the target-shooting overlaps with the same people who hunt and/or keep guns for self-defense. Also frequently overlaps with people who served in the military.
Random middle-class white-collar people living in cities and suburbs, who have no prior exposure to guns, rarely just get up one day and say, “hey, I’d like to buy a gun and shoot it at targets!” Sure, a few people do, out of interest, but even these people are usually inspired by a friend who already does it. A regular suburban person, nowadays, has to join a shooting club or use a shooting range (both of which are dwindling in number) whereas it used to be that you could go shoot on public land, garbage dumps, a farm, whatever. The simple act of going shooting just used to be simpler and more hassle-free. And - schools used to have shooting teams or marksmanship classes; both of those things are utterly unthinkable today.
As guns get vilified more in the media; when the ONLY news stories about them are spree killings and school shootings, and never defensive uses (pretty much how it is now); when schools push anti-gun rhetoric and when the talking heads and writers continue to blame the gun and not the criminal; guns, as objects, will be seen as SO EVIL that even collecting them for historical reasons will seem insane.
Honestly the biggest reason I don’t think private firearm ownership will ever be banned is because it is becoming less popular per capita. The few people who have guns, the less of an issue it will become. Due to Second Amendment issues it will be an extremely lengthy, complicated and difficult thing to actually implement a general ban on all firearms. If it could happen relatively quickly, in the time span of the next 10-20 years I could see it happening. But otherwise the slowness of our government system (as compared to that of the British, who can overturn parts of the English Bill of Rights through simple legislative majority) most likely will mean any legal changes to gun ownership would come so slow as to not be effected before gun ownership itself becomes a rare thing.
Once guns are primarily just owned by people who are viewed as hobbyists I don’t really think there will be as much interest in banning them. What I do think, and what we have seen historically, is that as newer firearms technology is created it will not be available to the public. Fully automatic weapons have been around for over a hundred years but they have been prohibited for civilian ownership since 1934.
In 200 years the guns of today will be akin to black powder rifles, only hobbyists will want them, criminals will have no interest in them, and thus there will be no real push to ban them. Just as there is no push to ban ownership of black powder weapons, Medieval weaponry and et cetera.
What you’re failing to take into account, is all the criminal use of guns. Criminals will ALWAYS have guns in America; this is a given. When the law-abiding, gun-owning portion of society dwindles down to nothing, BUT the criminal element of society is still as well-armed as it’s always been, it will be very, very easy to ban guns completely. Because only criminals “need” guns, right? I know it’s ridiculous but that’s the logic they’ll use.
Not quite. They believe that, if civilian ownership of guns is prohibited, the pool of firearms from which criminals arm themselves will disappear. If there are no guns to be had, then criminals won’t have guns either.
This is, of course, to laugh. Apparently they never heard of that favorite of criminals and insurgents alike, the zip gun.
Guns didn’t always have such an “evil” connotation back when more people understood them and had experience with them. It used to be they were just basically another tool, and were treated as such. I mean, even as late as 1970, David Crosby is nonchalantly holding a small-bore shotgun across his lap in the band photo on the cover of Deja Vu. They’re sitting in the woods - there’s a dog there with them - presumably the gun is for shooting small game, or just plinking. (Obviously it’s a staged photo and they weren’t really out camping in the woods, but it’s plausible that they could be.) Nowadays would any band have a firearm being held by one of the members, right on the cover? And CSNY is a total peacenick band, as left-wing as you can get - but I’ll bet David Crosby still knows how to use a gun. Men of his generation just did, and there wasn’t anything horrific about holding one.
I think gun control didn’t really become a prominent left-wing party platform until the late 1980s and early 90s, when the “inner cities” became extremely violent over crack wars, and liberals thought the best way to end the violence was to enact incredibly strict gun laws in LA, DC and NY. (It worked really well, obviously.) :rolleyes: I also think that gun control coincides with larger numbers of women in politics; for better or worse, the people pushing hardest for gun control over the years have mostly been women. Sarah Brady, Carolyn McCarthy, Dianne Feinstein and Hilary Clinton - those are probably the four biggest anti-gun forces right now, and they’re all women. I think part of it just comes from the fact that women are less likely to understand guns and have any kind of experience with them, so they’re more likely to irrationally fear them. (It shouldn’t be so - I think that all women as well as men should know how to shoot.)
You’re absolutely right and I agree completely with you. Almost all the women I’ve tried to introduce shooting to don’t like it, not because of a moral or philosophical objection, but because “Guns are loud and noisy and dirty!”
I really don’t know what can be done about it, unfortunately. It’s almost like trying to get heterosexual males to read the Twilight novels or something equally polar-opposite-of-how-we’re-hardwired-to-work.
There are some cultures where women are expected to be familiar with guns - Israel and Russia are probably the two best examples - but in the Western world, and that includes Australia for all intents and purposes, I guess women are “supposed to” be afraid of firearms. Most of it is just social conditioning. Obviously women have the ability to shoot, when their society expects it of them.
Interesting that you say the “Mommy” angle. There’s also the fact that the two biggest forces in the anti-gun movement - McCarthy and Brady - are both basically women who are trying to force their views on the whole country, because of a personal incident. In McCarthy’s case, she wrote and pushed the “Assault Weapons” ban because her husband was killed by spree-shooter Colin Ferguson (who did NOT use an “assault weapon”) and Sarah Brady because her husband was paralyzed by the bullet of David Hinckley, the would-be killer of Ronald Reagan. This is totally a “mommy” thing to do - it’s like, “I’m going to tell YOU what you can and cannot do, because of something that traumatized ME in the past.” It’s like, “You’ll put your eye out,” or whatever. There’s something about the whole thing that’s extremely selfish and self-serving.
