As stated in other threads. It’s already illegal to go to another state to buy a gun without going through a dealer to complete the transfer including a background check. The federal law is strong and consistent. The problem is people break it.
Sorry, I meant consistent State regulations…
Many states don’t want those regulations.
My point is that there are already federal laws in place to do exactly what you want, control gun transfers from state to state. There are legal ways to do it, and illegal ways to do it. I’m not sure that making it more illegal will make a difference.
I’m a gun owner . Growing up on the family ranch I have been around guns all my life . I have never seen or heard of any gun doing magic . If one of mine were to do a magic trick, I’d toss it in the river and replace it with a normal one ,quick like .
Mental illness does not run in either sides of my family tree and I don’t subscribe to paranoia .
Oh and prying a gun from an owners cold dead fingers ,is not the only way to take their gun , I had one of mine stolen once ,
So I’m not sure who you are talking about when you generalize while stereotyping ’ people who own guns 'as mentally ill and paranoid" just lurking around waiting for their chance to do a mass murder . << not a direct quote <<
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I have no answers or solutions to the problem of crimes involving guns . But I know for sure and certain that takeing legal fire arms away from legal owners , will have no effect on controlling the guns in the criminals hands .
What is the very first source of the guns used in gun crimes? Where do these firearms originate? I would think a non-insignificant percentage originate as legal sales and then end up, thru whatever means, in the hands of criminals. Is this not the case?
Then that’s kind of going to be a problem. The US is never going to be gun free. There are nearly as many guns in the US as people. If, tomorrow, the gun grabbers and banners got their fondest wet dream and there was a fiat ban on guns across the US, what do you suppose would happen? Do you think that Americans would, like Australians, just turn in the guns for a small cash fee? Heck, how would the US pay for a small cash fee for the hundreds of millions of KNOWN guns in the US? :dubious:
The thing about this is that I’ve been hearing this about how though there is strong regulations and even gun bans (ranging from types to anything that shoots) in major cities in the US, it doesn’t work because people can just bring in guns from somewhere else…which means we need to have gun bans everywhere! But then I look at the illegal gun trade and the staggering numbers of guns (and this all leaves aside the actual political reality) and think…yeah, no way guys. Not gonna happen if you need to rely on across the board, state to state, sea to shinning sea gun bans.
Myself, I think that we will always have guns…and always have gun violence. But that the guns don’t really create the violence. The make up of the American population and mind set creates it. In the news last night I was watching the trial of 3 young hispanic kids. Their crime? For fun, they beat to death an old homeless man. With a table leg. If guns were banned tomorrow, that homeless guy would still be just as dead. And, at a guess, most violent murders in the US would still happen…as would most, if not all of the suicides, which I think are a ‘sunk cost’ in the US and actually make up a lot of the numbers when folks talk about gun deaths here.
The other thing, though, is that I also think that gun ownership, if left to it’s own devices, will slowly drop in the US over time. The gun control folks, IMHO, stir up the gun rights people (and even those on the fence) every time they start seeming to go back to their grabbing ways…or, hell, when the gun rights nuts THINK that they might be, or THINK that the new president might be looking at them funny. Look at the run on ammo when Obama was elected, for instance…or how they clutch their guns harder every time he comes out with stuff like his recent statements for what has us all riled up right now. But it’s like when you try and force someone to change their religion or tell them they can’t worship a certain way…they will fight you tooth and nail. Just leave them be, however, and you get the difference between Europe during the Catholic vs Protestant clusterfucks (or any of the other various bloody religious wars and centuries of slaughter in Europe) and Europe today, where most folks seem to be nearly secular and headed more and more in that direction. JMHO of course…YMMV.
Doesn’t really mean much in the grand scheme, but it’s interesting to me that every once in awhile there’s a mass shooting with a shotgun or a rifle but none of them come close to the body count of Virginia Tech (33 dead), which was done by one guy with two pistols.
Really most of the killing at Virginia Tech was done with a single Walther P22 (.22 caliber, 10-round mags, it’s exactly the sort of virtually-harmless gun that many gun-banners will tell you should be legal, while everything more exotic, scary-looking, larger-caliber, higher-capacity, differently-colored, or newer should be banned). If you were to get every make and model of gun, and sort them by “most dangerous” to “least dangerous”, the Walther P-22 would be sitting way over on the “least dangerous” side, right next an Elmer-Fudd style pop gun. It really is one of the last guns anyone would ever want to ban.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton;18907828
We won’t begin to get a handle on this until the 2nd Amendment is either repealed or reinterpreted to allow for some heavy regulation of handgun ownership/possession.[/QUOTE]
The 2nd amendment has nothing to do with with gun collecting, hunting, target shooting, or even mass murder. It has to do with we, the people, being able to defend ourselves against a tyrannical government. Do you really want to be in a position where the people have no defense? It is not as far fetched as one might think.
Majority of handgun deaths in the US are suicides.
That same year - 2012 - 64 percent of firearm deaths were suicides, up from 57 percent in 2006, according to the report.
Personally, I think the 2nd amendment referred to local militia but YMMV. A tyrannical government with the 82nd airborne would wipe out 99%+ of resisting gun owners with at best minimal losses. The argument that gun owners are the only thing standing between the US government and tyranny is not one that I agree with. Again, YMMV
The 2nd amendment is not the ONLY thing between the US Government and tyranny. It is only one of the things. The primary thing that protects us is the right to vote. It seems, however that we seem to elect stupid, stupid politicians. The 2nd amendment was created, however, with tyranny in mind.
I seem to recall that the citizens of Washington D.C. also made their views on guns very clear. How’d representative democracy work out for them in that case?
Two wolves and a sheep don’t get to vote on what’s for dinner in any society that values civil rights. Do you think civil rights should be up for popular vote? BG subscribes to the theory that not all rights are equal - and of course I’m sure he’s comfortable picking. Not so good if you are in the minority - or are a minority.
Sure, but we’re talking about owning guns, not civil rights. Gun ownership is a hobby. And as evidence of that, I point you to the very comparison you just made. Civil rights laws protect people from being denied housing, denied livelihoods, denied the protection of the law itself.
Gun rights laws protect people from being denied guns.
Self defense is a civil right. As much as you may desire that not to be the case, the law recognizes that it is so and not some second class right as compared to our other constitutionally protected rights.
Just fine.
Because, of course, they recognize they are part of the United States, and the same process in which the citizens of every state that passed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage were forced to surrender that restriction to their laws operated to deny the citizens of DC their wish to curtail gun rights: namely, that the federal constitution is the supreme law of the land, and where it commands, mere local legislation cannot contravene.
Go back to Russia, commie.
Regards,
Shodan
They’d probably need to go to China these days…
But the “tyranny in mind” was the tyranny of a large standing professional army – something the FFs saw as an instrument of monarchical rule in Europe, and of course they had had their own experiences with the redcoats. Therefore, the U.S. national-defense model should be a small army backed up, in wartime, by a large militia. The purpose of the 2nd Amdt. was to make sure there would be an adequate number of men with muskets at home for that model to work. But, it’s obsolete now.
Certainly the militia was never conceived as a countervailing autonomous armed force against the government – after all, the Constitution expressly authorizes the president to command the militia.