Who’s proposing a ban on hunting rifles? Well,I’m not, anyway.
Hunting rifles have a legitimate use. Banning them would have a very significant social cost. A Bushmaster M4 is not a hunting rifle.
Since I have no children, live alone, and have the gun locked in a quick-access safe underneath my bed (which I can literally open in about 5 seconds, in the dark), why shouldn’t I keep it loaded? No one but me has access to it.
You’ve inadvertently given a perfect example of why overly-detailed storage recommendations don’t make sense. “Store your gun in a safe when you’re not using it” is about the most you can say about storage without knowing the particulars of the owner’s living situation.
Now you understand why I store my weapon loaded. Congratulations!
Guns also serve a useful function: they allow a person to stop an aggressor who is larger and stronger than they are (or to stop a group of aggressors).
And we had cities long before we had private automobiles. We could easily do away with private automobile ownership entirely while keeping ambulances and firetrucks (which are driven by professionals, and community owned). Specialized professionals who have a genuine need for motorized vehicles could have them; everyone else could use their feet, a bicycle, a Segway, etc. Would it be as convenient? No, but it would save lives.
Automobile ownership offers convenience, but at a fearful price. I find it interesting that you cling to it so.
Just curious - how many guns are in an arsenal?
What do you propose to do about the abundance of badly regulated firearms? Go door to door collecting them after making them illegal (and thus fulfilling that paranoid right-wing fantasy you discount)? Use transporters to beam them out while people sleep? Expect gun owners to turn them all in peacably?
You can’t get rid of the guns. They’re here to stay. But you CAN do something to deal with the mental sickos who use them to kill people. Adequate mental health care/screening/treatment.
Treat the sickness, not the symptoms.
Context is everything…plucking a line is…well, plucking a line.
So, since disturbed teenage boys can’t get mum’s arsenal (because there would be none), they would just put a smile on their face and and go to the local pool hall and become snooker champs? Ummmm…no, because disturbed teenage boys (without psychological intervention) will brew and simmer into disturbed adult men who eventually will think of some other way to carry out their acts of terrorism…guns or no guns. Knives or no knives. Molotovs or no molotovs. Chainsaws or no chainsaws. Poison or no poison. Bombs or no bombs. The “Nutters” will find a way (or die trying) unless psychological intervention gets there first, not a weapons ban.
What if the murderer didn’t have access to guns and instead learned to build bombs? He definitely had the brains for it. How many kids and teachers in adjacent rooms that were hiding would have survived a blast?
So, go ahead and ban guns (I don’t have any)…it would not have stopped this guy for long. Instead, had they (mom, father, authorities, social workers) acted on the potential murderer’s queues before the act was carried out, then those kids would be alive today…with or without guns being banned. It’s our mental health system that needs more attention rather than another half-ass weapons ban.
Think this through, man.
Fucked up and pathetic? No.
Twisted? Yes.
American history was virtually born and raised on a large and steady diet of guns of every shape and size. A short 250+ year history that was violent, cruel, and downright unjust at times. But nonetheless, our history. Half of the American population would need to be reprogrammed somehow to unlearn that history and to give up their romance with guns. Good luck with that.
A gun buy back scheme was the main method used in Australia. The most obvious thing, though, is to stop the increase of guns, or at least to reduce the rate of increase, and then destroy the proscripted ones that come to light over time. They are durable goods, true, but even durable goods wear out and break down.
That’s a very breezy suggestion. Since you’re pointing out practical difficulties, how would you go about treating unidentified mental issues in an unknown number of people who do not wish to be identified, and who are hidden in a vast population? Once you have identified them, how do you propose to ensure they receive treatment they don’t want? I presume a large tax increase to pay for new social programs would be just a starting point, followed by a change to the law allowing people suspected of being dangerously unbalanced to be committed or at least forced to enter a treatment program. How would you then justify the expense and privacy infringements when the inevitable happens and men who have passed their psychological tests (or whatever it is you have in mind) go on a rampage?
You reject a difficult problem-- reducing the number of guns in the US-- and suggest solving by addressing an even more difficult one, by, in effect, predicting insanity. I’m sure that doing something to help men with mental problems-- and it is men who do these things, I don’t know of a single woman spree killer in recent years-- is part of an answer to an American national shame. Evidence from the histories of the UK and Australia show that restrictions on guns will directly address the problem and have a definite impact.
You know, on second thought, I guess it might be an idea to introduce a bunch of new social programs aimed at curing insanity or whatever Werekoala has in mind and exclusively fund them from taxes on the sale of firearms and ammunition.
So…gun enthusiasts, what kind of gun control laws do you think would reduce gun crime? I’m seeing a lot of ‘this proposed law is stupid because of ’, but not ‘I would change that law to say [y] because it makes more sense’. Or do you believe that there shouldn’t be any laws regarding gun control?
First, let’s ditch all the dumbass laws we have that mandate prison time for a lot of stuff of a non-violent nature. Let’s free up some court time and some prison cells. Next, let’s look at all those laws we already have on the books about all the horrible things that are supposed to happen to people who commit crimes with a gun or to felons who are found in possession of a gun and just enforce the holy living shit out of them. Committing a crime with a gun automatically adds 5 years? Then you really, truly actually spend every day of those 5 years inside. Felon with a gun? Back to the stoney lonesome for a nice long stay. We have some pretty stringent laws in place, but what with plea bargaining and all they aren’t enforced as they could be.
We also need to examine our whole way of handling mental health issues here in the US. Troubled people ought not to be locked away, necessarily, but letting them careen through life until something tragic happens isn’t working out as splendidly as they thought it would back in the late 70’s and early 80’s.
There are millions of unbalanced people in the US, some of them unstable but functional. Not even a percent of a percent of those people visit mayhem upon others, and it is quite difficult to assess the real risk these people pose. For that matter, an individual might be OK when they start amassing their armaments, then experience some kind of trauma that is enough to push them over the edge. Addressing the nutcases is simply not sufficient.
Really, the problem to me looks like a classic chicken/egg question. I know that when I pick up a gun, I am not the same person that I was. Perhaps even having a gun in the house may affect who I am, and I strongly believe that this is not unique to me. A gun in hand changes one’s outlook and behavior.
The fundamental issue is the desperate nature of these kind of acts. What drives a person to that point? Millions of sanity-challenged Americans go all the way through their lives without going over the edge like this, and when one does, all we see is bullets, blood and maniacal laughter (as it were), not even giving any consideration to how the rest of us might reshape society in general to rein in this sort of desperation. Because, you know, it is SEP.
Is this a trick question? How about we focus on the violence behind the thousands of murders that happen every year, rather than the 25 or so that make for great tragedy porn.
People who snap would suddenly be forced to carry easily concealable guns that are excellent for killing a lot of people at close range. Hell, a bAn on semi-autos might increase the number of deaths. The most effective mass shootings were carried out with pistols. Ability to reload extremely quickly is the bigger problem, in my opinion.
Are you just messing with me at this point? You’re arguing both sides of the same argument as it suits you.
Wouldn’t bother me, but it wouldn’t matter much if you retain the ability to reload almost instantly.
That’s implied when I say strict registration.
Yep. All for it.
Because I’m opposed to bans on items for no good reason.
Most of the gun crime in America is between young urban criminals, who are associated with the drug trade (and often gangs). So I’d say ending the idiotic War on Drugs and legalizing marijuana (and possibly cocaine and heroin as well) would be a good start.
Improving Americans’ access to mental health care would also help.
Hey, if you think you can get a gun out of a locked safe underneath your bed in the dark while still half-asleep and still have time to stop an intruder…wake up and smell the coffee, mr rambo wannabe.
Or you could, you know, just get a security alarm system. Fairly cheap and AFAIK, no security alarm system accidentally murdered curious little kids, killed its owner in a cleaning accident, or killed someone due to a case of mistaken identity.
Although I can kinda see why you live alone.
It’s pretty easy to get into a biometric safe that is kept next to your bed. Place your fingertip on the reader and you’re done.
Or you could, you know, get a security alarm system for your house that actually stops the bad guys from getting in the house in the first place?
I can. I’m not a heavy sleeper. I wake up quickly when I hear “unusual” sounds in my house.
Already have one. Security systems are good for raising an alarm. They do nothing to actually keep an intruder out if they’re determined to get in.
Do you, you know, actually have any experience with home alarm systems? They aren’t designed to be on all the time.
Here’s the list for the UK:]
I don’t think it’s made any difference. Bombing is typically the work of terrorist organisations, shooting sprees are typically the work of insane loners - I don’t see any reason why there would be such a correlation, or indeed any evidence that there is one.
Frankly, she doesn’t seem to have much experience with anything being discussed in this thread. Doesn’t keep her from spewing her uneducated opinions and insulting everyone more knowledgeable than her, though.
The funny thing (well, not funny-ha-ha) is that even if it *were *feasible to accurately detect rampage-prone-crazy in advance… gun laws and gun control measures are still so lax in most places, it wouldn’t matter one bit. Short of keeping the potential crazies confined or closely monitored forever (on what grounds ? Pre-crime ?) they would still have easy access to piles of guns.
[QUOTE=Werekoala]
Treat the sickness, not the symptoms.
[/QUOTE]
I know this is just you spouting clichés without really thinking about them, but interesting point of fact: most of modern medicine actually consists in treating the symptoms. We have no idea how to cure the common cold, but we do know what to give people so that the negative symptoms of the common cold disappear or become manageable until such time as the body’s immune system does its thing ; and keep on looking for better, more efficient, less side-effect prone medication to do that.
Do you also think we should stop all efforts in that direction until such time as a laser-precise way to eradicate the hundreds of common cold viruses for good ?
Same goes for cancer, for a more dramatic example. We know how to excise tumours, shrink them sometimes, keep them from spreading or slowing down the spread in some cases. We don’t know how to prevent cancer from presenting at all, or to re-occur once the immediately life-threatening symptoms have been treated.
And yet, much fewer people die of cancer today as 10, 20, 50, 100 years ago ; or at least they can live with it a lot longer. Treating the symptoms is already progress.
Of course I do, sweet heart. Be pretty hard to have them on during the day when you’re walking around the house - 'course, that gun doesn’t do you much good either if it’s locked under your bed when you’re at home when the big baddy storms in during the day (when most burlgeries happen) - so I guess you walk around the house armed the entire time?
And I love it how every gun owner insists that they would rather have a gun instead of a home alarm system at night because ‘I’m totally a light sleeper, I’d totally wake up and be ready for action in a split second’ and ‘I could totally unlock my gun from its secure locked casing in the dark in like 3 seconds and would totally be ready to blow a hole in the bad guy before he could shoot me’.
Nice to know you’d rather trust in how quickly you’ll wake up over an alarm system. Hint: bad guys tend to run away when lights and alarms go off. In fact, just having a home security sign posted is more than sufficient deterrent. What are you up to that you’re so concerned about big bad guys being ‘so determined to get in’?