Is now a good time to talk about gun safety laws?

Great Debates
101

Sure, criminals in that they broke a law. Lock 'em up? Nah. Impose a nominal fine? Yes.

Parents may not know their children as well as they think. He thinks he knows his son, he doesn’t think he needs to do a background check. I don’t know his son, I need him to do one.

And what is your cutoff here? Maybe a parent does know their 18 year old. Do they know their 21 year old, their 25 year old, their 35 year old?

It should also be registered that that gun is now owned by the son, and not the parent.

Parents who involve their kids with firearms should take safety and responsibility seriously. Registering your first firearm could be a great bonding experience and right of passage. A demonstration that this is a family of responsible gun owners that help in our fight against gun violence.

Right, but I’m in favor of all gun transfers having not only a background check, but also a change of ownership registered. Allowing loopholes creates loopholes to be exploited.

For one instance, maybe. “I forgot” is a pretty pathetic excuse for law breaking, and a moderate fine would be appropriate to help them to remember. Info getting lost is possible, but unless the agency in charge of keeping track has a track record of losing info, not really all that believable. In any case, Bob should also keep a record for himself of the transfer, just in case the registration does get lost by the relevant agency. Having two points of proof of proper registration should cover all but the most unlucky of circumstances. And I don’t know why it has to go to a jury trial. For a single instance would be a fine, a misdemeanor.

Two instances, Bob is quickly losing the benefit of the doubt here.

But, as I asked earlier, how many guns from straw sales are actually recovered and traced back to the original seller? Bob could be selling 50 guns a year, and as long as less then a quarter of them get recovered and traced, he wouldn’t be afoul of your proposal.

One gun sold without proper registration should be enough to give Bob a fine, and to put him on both LEO and FFL’s radar. Next time he buys a gun, the FFL he buys it from should say, “Hey, make sure that if you resell this gun, you properly transfer ownership. Here’s a card with the website and easy to follow instructions. If you “forget” again, the next time will be a much bigger fine, and I won’t be allowed to sell you guns anymore.”

And if we only nail him in 11 guns a year used in violent felonies? Do you think it should make a difference if they are actually used in a felony, or simply recovered from someone who shouldn’t have it?

102

So, the US isnt civilized? :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

However, most Western Euro nations simply ban gun ownership or put heavy limits on it.

Within the scope of the US Constitution, what measures would you suggest?

103

You seem to have missed the last eight words of what you responded to. Wolfpup did not say that we are not civilized, he said that we do not have a handle on gun violence.

104

Gun registration is a very bad idea, and pretty well useless for crime fighting. SCOTUS has ruled that criminal do not have to register their guns.

Gun registration could lead to a state or city going crazy and implementing door to door gun bans and confiscation. Three cities and one state tried to ban all handguns you know. And yes, SCOTUS would knock that law down. But it took 4 years for Heller to get to the Supreme Ct. Four years of otherwise law abiding gun owners in jail, their guns taken, melted down or dumped in the ocean.

Next- Government databases are not secure. They would be hacked. People with expensive gun collections- people who dont even shoot their guns maybe- would be targeted for burglaries or worse- hime invasion, where the wife is tortured until the Husband give up the safe combo.

Then some political activists would “out” some gun owners that they didnt like.

So you have all those issues- and almost zero crime prevention or help to law enforcement.

Exactly what use would it be? Crook is found with a unregistered gun- he is Ok, due to SCOTUS. We track who he got it from, they say “stolen”. Or they say we sold it to him and did the check. In either case- then what?

The FBI doesnt want gun registration, they have never lobbied for it.

105

Your sneering disapproval of the gun control measures in every first-world country on earth is duly noted. So what you’re really asking is, what are my proposals for reducing US gun violence to the same rates as all those other countries, without implementing any of the measures that have actually achieved the results in all those other countries? In short, you want to know how it can be done while still allowing virtually unrestricted access to almost every imaginable kind of gun.

Well, I’m sorry, but you’re asking how to fix the gun problem without changing the underlying causes of the gun problem. Which is why your own “proposals” are worthless.

106

So we can’t do it because of paranoid delusions. Good to know.

Just like people are targeted for their rare car collections, eh?

I’m curious as to what SCOTUS ruling you are talking about here, but anyway…

That is why we would need registration. If a stolen gun is reported, then we can work on methods to prevent such theft. If we have a record of registration, then we know if they did a check or not.

You keep saying that we should stop straw sales, but keep putting up loopholes that would keep straw sales moving along just fine.

The FBI isn’t a lobbyist group. They follow the laws that are written, they don’t make them.

107

I get collecting guns. I used to collect anime figurines. I had an illuminated glass case and everything.

If anime figurines were causing tens of thousands of deaths, and other nations had laws that made it more difficult to own anime figurines, and had orders of magnitudes fewer deaths… I think I’d support a background check / registration of my Asuka from Evangelion figure.

If I had a thousand figures, the government would know that, and I’d be okay with them knowing. If I sold my Kaneda from Akira figure (on his motorcycle), I’d be okay with needing to transfer ownership at a dealer. I mean, these things are dangerous, and thousands of Americans are needlessly dying.

It astounds me that I’d be okay with all this, and many gun owners would not. It seems like a sociopathic level of entitlement.

108

So, and quoting @DrDeth’s question, what are your proposals? I’m a gun owner, and I laid out my thoughts earlier on what I would do if given sufficient political support. You have felt that the options discussed to date are ineffective. Taking into account the current composition of the SCOTUS, I don’t see it likely to see support for more restrictive interpretation for the next 20 years or so.

If we had a constitutional amendment to remove or restrict the 2nd amendment, I would comply, but again, don’t see that there is sufficient political support for than anytime in the next several decades.

So again, I direct the question to you, what specific points, keeping in mind the existing legal framework would you want to campaign for?

109

No, no sneering. Those measures work for them. They never had the 200 year long customs of common gun ownership.

No, what I was proposing and discussing is workable, possible solutions that should reduce violent crime and homicides. Yes, they are sorta mild, but in line with what the President seems to want. He also wants to ban “assault weapons” and I dont think that is a bad idea, but it wont change the violent crime rate at all.

What solutions do you suggest? I would like to hear them. You dont like my suggestions, and spend you posts saying how bad they are, which is fine, but I would like to read your ideas.

Now, if you want to discuss politically impossible, pie in the sky ideas, like Repealing the Second Ad, well, that’s fine, but as i just said that is totally politically impossible. So you can say that is what you want, but there is little use in debating it, is there?

110

Loading two dozen cars in the back of your getaway car is a little hard. And people have been targeted for their HELOC loans, based upon databases being accessed. Not to mention victims who have been found out they have large amounts of cash in their house or valuable jewelry are also targeted. Dont you read the news?

Haynes v. United States

I have made real world suggestions that could pass congress.

A couple Dem presidential candidates proposed doing exactly that with “assault weapons” - banning them, voluntary buyback then house to house confiscation. So, radical ideas, yes, but hardly a paranoid delusion.

111

So, the criminals go after the people that they know are armed. Guess that aren’t so smart. If anything, if they hacked such a database, they’d be more likely to go rob the houses that don’t have a registered gun.

You said criminal, not a convicted felon. If someone is holding up your store, they are a criminal, that doesn’t not mean that they are a convicted felon. The SCOTUS decision did not say what you claimed that it said.

As far as whether or not felons have to register guns, under the 5th amendment, they cannot be required to incriminate themselves. That still doesn’t mean that they are allowed to have them. They will be charged with unlawful possession. I really don’t get your point here.

Well, to be honest, I don’t think that anything will pass congress, as there are quite a number of single issue voters that will take any sort of gun restrictions, even the feckless ones that you suggest, as draconian measures and they will come out in droves to vote against what they are told are a step towards draconian measures. But, we are moving the bar, we were not speaking of what is politically feasible, but what is constitutional.

And what are your suggestions exactly? If 12 or more guns that are used in violent felonies are traced back to having been sold to a single person over the course of a year, you will “go after” them.

Of course, your arguments of “I forgot” or “I did a check” will hold up just as well with that jury as they would in your hypothetical about my proposal. Moreso, as you are, I assume, proposing a felony conviction and imprisonment, and I am merely proposing a fine.

Without registration, there is no way to track or prevent straw sales.

See what I mean? Even though those candidates lost, and lost badly in the primaries, showing that their views were not reflective of the vast majority of the party, gun rights advocates still use those views against the entirety of the party. It’s a form of nutpicking that is an extremely bad faith argument, but it motivates the gun nuts to indulge in their paranoia.

112
113

modnote: Another example of snipping posts and taking the context out. This was a day after you were warned for snipping and removing context. Then you challenged a poster for words he wrote but out of context.

This needs to stop.

114

Mod note: They didn’t say that. He said, “civilized countries that do have a handle on gun violence”. Don’t quote out of context. No warning.

115

I apologize if I misunderstood you but why the phrase "civilized countries " here then? It confused me.

And like here where you use the phrase “first-world country” but apparently exclude the USA? Or did you mean to say “every first-world country on earth except the USA”?

Sorry if I misunderstood, perhaps you could clarify this for me?

116

I would personally use that descriptor so that we aren’t trying to compare US murder rates to those of countries that are incompetently or corruptly led and utterly ineffective in dealing with crime so as to make the US appear unremarkable. This has happened in the past, where we’re told how much better our murder rate is than Honduras, or something, and we should be grateful.

Also to add, as noted above, the descriptor is deliberately modified with “that do have a handle on gun violence” to indicate wolfpup’s reference point is not generic “civilized countries” but countries that are both civilized AND have reduced gun violence.

117

Though I doubt my absence here is notable, I feel like, as the OP, I should explain it. Early on I abandoned the discussion because of one participant’s bullying dishonesty and refusal to cede any oxygen in the debate to other viewpoints. This thread is no longer a conversation about reasonable, forward-thinking ideas and solutions; it has become a platform for a single booming voice that drowns out all other input with the same dusty old talking points that represent the refusal to allow discussion that I referred to in the OP. I understand that I can’t control who participates in a thread I started, but I can exit the sandbox when the neighborhood bully declares it his turf by pissing all over it.When sand is saturated with piss it becomes unmalleable; solid; so when everyone else has gone the bully is left alone to do the only thing you can do with hard packed sand: pound it.

118

I agree. So let’s look at the year 1925 when anyone, even someone who just got out of prison, could order by mail a fully automatic Thompson sub machine gun through the Sears & Roebuck catalog. We didn’t have mass shootings then of civilians against other civilians for seemingly no purpose.

Then compare that to today where there are far greater restrictions on the purchase of guns and we do have these mass shootings. Doesn’t that tell us that access to guns isn’t the issue? Isn’t that basic problem solving: when there is a change, you hold things constant that have not changed and look at was has changed as possible causes of the problem and eliminate as possible causes the constants?

119

If they wanted to spend about 10% of the average worker’s annual income on it, sure.

Compare that to an AR-15 today, and one only needs to spend a quarter of the purchasing power.

So, it was primarily organized crime who could afford them, and they did use them to great effect.

In 1925, a gun store was a fairly rare thing to see on the street corner. If you wanted a gun, you pretty much had to order it from a catalogue, then wait 3-4 months to get it.

In 2021, there are more gun stores, by far, than there are McDonald’s. There are 3 within easy walking distance of me right now, and I can put a couple of rifles on my credit card and be off on a killing spree within an hour.

No, it doesn’t. Since the restrictions in place didn’t prevent these mass shooters from getting guns, it only tells us that the restrictions that we have are not effective in preventing mass shooters from getting guns.

120

In Portland, there are five McDonald’s and ten gun stores.