Can I borrow your soapbox when you are done? Jeesh…:smack:
I would say that no one is wrong yet. Words mean things, yet they are still words.
Thought experiment for you:
Let’s say that absolutely nothing else happens during the Obama administration regarding guns. Ten years from now, would you say that the Obama administration “made an attempt at gun control”?
If you say yes, I’d say that you and I don’t use the English language the same way.
If you say no, I’d say that’s evidence that the cart is about a mile away from the horse right now, and picking up speed.
Where am I wrong? Where in here has any gun advocate suggested that this or that regulation would make sense or offer one of their own?
Freedom of speech is a Constitutionally protected right too and it has restrictions on it. Why is it so far out-of-bounds to ask for rational curbs on gun ownership? Ones that make sense?
Or is it because there can be none in this area? Nevermind that such cherished rights as freedom of speech have restrictions on it that most agree with.
Guess guns are more special. :rolleyes:
See, everyone told me they wouldn’t even TALK about gun control. They said they wouldn’t make an issue of it AT ALL, “especially not in the first years of the presidency,” when they’ll be “too busy fixing the economy.” So right away they’re wrong on one level.
I sure as hell hope that’s the only level they’re wrong on.
Only time will tell.
Have you considered that maybe we’ve already enacted just about all the possible “reasonable” restrictions? Not many are going to argue with prohibiting sale to minors, violent felons, the mentally unstable, and so on. Even the FFL sales records and instant background checks aren’t considered a burden by most.
But what really comes across as offensive is your apparent idea that my rights don’t matter, and that you have some divine prerogative to make me into a criminal for daring to possess a piece of sheet metal with a spring inside it. There are quite a few problems with that proposal, any one of which would be a fatal objection:
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It’s a violation of my rights. I don’t have to justify my possessions to you, and your idea of what I “need” and “don’t need” don’t even enter into the equation.
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It won’t work: there are so many millions of “high-capacity” magazines already in existence, and they are so trivially easy to manufacture, hide, and smuggle that criminals will have no difficulty obtaining them if they have such a desire.
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It doesn’t address a real problem. There are very few high-profile crimes in which magazine capacity is an important factor for the criminal. Read this statistics report from the DOJ. By far the most common handguns to show up in ATF criminal traces are revolvers or inexpensive, small-caliber pistols like the dirt-cheap Raven Arms MP25, with magazine capacities of around 6 shots.
If you want I will dig up a 2nd Amendment debate we had here a few months ago. Pretty sure you participated and I know I did and I argued that the 2nd was not as absolute as you would have it.
Of course others disagreed which is all well and good. GD afterall. But I do not think your 2nd Amendment protection is as all encompassing as you would like. Many constitutional guarantees are circumscribed (freedom of speech for one as noted above). While the SCOTUS may be on your side lately there is ample evidence that our “rights” are not as absolute as you might have it. Another court, another day may see it differently than it is now.
I’m sorry, but that doesn’t make sense. It was on Obama’s website. How is that not talking about it?
Here’s a gun regulation that “makes sense.”
No felon shall be allowed to own a gun.
It “makes sense.” Until you think about it for two seconds, and realize that felons are already eminently able to acquire guns.
This same concept applies to any restriction on firearms.
I mean, it’s illegal to murder someone, but people do it anyway. What makes you think those same people would ignore a measley restriction on the number of rounds their goddamn magazine can hold?
When I pointed out that that was on his website, I was roundly criticized (and called some very bad names 
), and was effectively told that that was just a “campaign position” and not to be taken seriously by anyone other than paranoid gun nuts who were afraid that they were going to have to reliquish their substitute phalli.
I never saw you ask it, nor is in the spirit of my OP. Get off your box and start a new thread if you want to talk about acceptable restrictions We’ve all been there and done that, but feel free to ask again.
Because your curbs are more bullshit in a long stinky line of 70+ years worth of it. Feel good legislation like the AW ban didn’t accomplish ANYTHING other than to curb our rights. You don’t care, because you weren’t affected.
Pretty much what Stealth Potato said: the reason you don’t see any pro-gun folks in these threads proposing “reasonable” restrictions, Whack-a-Mole, is that pretty much all the reasonable restrictions are already in place:
- special federal licensing to purchase fully-automatic firearms
- restrictions on gun ownership for the mentally incapacitated
- FFL records for new gun purchases
- background checks
- restrictions on purchases by minors
Where would you like to go next? Restrictions on .50-caliber and larger? Why? There are legitimate reasons collectors might like to have such firearms…
High-capacity magazines? Why? Some historically-important guns (to collectors) are worthless without the high-capacity magazines with which they were manufactured…
Someone made mention earlier, “you can have your muskets…” Very true - considering the public had access to the same technology as the organized militaries at the time - merchants could arm their ships as well as ships of organized navies at the time…
Do I think everyone should have access to nukes, too? No - and using that hyperbolic line every time this comes up is disengenuous. Of course, there can be something said about the fact that making a nuke requires fissionable material, which is VERY difficult to obtain…and there are some congresspersons taking that same logic and applying it to ammunition and ammunition materials in some legislation that has been proposed in the past.
This is something you either get or you don’t, and in my experience nine times out of ten, it’s an issue of someone simply not having had the pleasure of going to a firing range and firing a few magazines from an AR-15 or an AK or whatever - because once you’ve done that, and you realize there’s absolutely nothing inherently evil or dangerous about these type of firearms, it’s impossible to still be on board with “assault weapon” bullshit. The people who are against evil scary assault weapons, pretty much to a man, are people who either do not own guns, have never used guns, or have only had experience with hunting rifles/shotguns or with a common handgun like a .38. Their only knowledge of “assault weapons” comes from movies like “Heat” and from televison…and from the claptrap of deceitful politicians.
Once in a great while there will be the anti-gun person who served in the military in the past and so has some experience with M16s or whatever, but is still anti-gun. But these types are rare.
It’s really hard to actually fire an “assault weapon” and then believe they should be banned.
While that may be so, and I’m completely uninterested in defending or attacking what unspecified others might have said at some point, it doesn’t answer my question.
From my perspective, there are some awfully peripatetic goalposts in this thread.
Can you SERIOUSLY not see the difference between one sentence on a webpage, and an official statement by the Attorney General of the United States?
I am NOT moving the goalposts, I have stated my position quite clearly, over and over.
Explain the difference.
And yes, I’m afraid it does look a lot like goalpost shifting when you keep changing what precisely it is that’s being done and what precisely it is that all of these people claimed wouldn’t happen.
You didn’t reply to my thought experiment, by the way.
I’d like to divert for a moment on “rights”. Gun advocates seem to have a religious fervor when it comes to their “rights” to own a gun.
In my view (read that again) certain rights are inherent to the human condition. The right to life and liberty for instance (hope that sounds familiar). The right to own a gun is a temporal right, one granted in our Constitution. Make no mistake I hold the Constitution in high regard but that is an odd “right” in there. It is the only one to have a right to a “thing”. We have no right to a house or food but we do to a gun. Seems out of place to me.
So whence comes the religious fervor to protect it? It has been noted in this thread and others here why gun advocates weren’t fervent when Bush shit all over a variety of other rights. Most here responded that they hated that too but honestly the righteous indignation was lacking. Indignation they show in spades when someone suggests a gun restriction.
I submit gun owner priorities are fucked up but that is just me. YMMV
That said it is in our Constitution and part of our laws so we deal with it but this is in no way some inherent right all humans possess akin to the right to freedom and so on.
Your right to have a gun opens the door to bad guys getting guns. That steps on MY rights to life and liberty. In my book life and liberty trump you having a gun.
This is one of the problems of any society. Where do we draw the line between your rights and mine when they conflict? Not an easy task to sort out. Gun owners position seems to be as long as someone has a gun then they need a gun to protect them from those who have a gun. Sounds like Iran wanting nukes albeit on a lesser level. If our perceived bad guys have nukes then we need nukes to protect us from those who have nukes and are out to get us (which is really anyone with nukes…nice circular arguement).
Leaves us with a nice world huh?
So don’t start is that it? Assume global warming is real and caused by pollution. There is so much pollution there is really no point in trying to curb pollution.
Is that reasonable or smart?
This comes up over and over. “Everyone else will have one therefore I need one!” Ratchet that one up and we are back to a world where everyone should have nukes. Same argument, different scale.
You have to start somewhere. Yes there will be an imbalance at the outset. In time however the big mags will wash out of the system.
And I do not think they are as trivially easy to manufacture as you would have it. Sure they are simple but mass production? You need a factory and I am willing to bet the ATF would notice. Make a few hundred in your basement maybe if you have equipment that is not ubiquitous (at least I do not have metal presses and cutters in my house nor does anyone I know).
In time they would be semi-rare and expensive. Certainly some would make them and run that risk. If there is a demand someone, somewhere will supply it but they would be pricey. As noted pot is incredibly easy to produce. Its cost far outstrips its manufacture cost because it is illegal. Same mechanics would apply to magazines.
I addressed this earlier with an attempt as best I could at real numbers.
According to what I cited, and assuming (big assumption I admit but I think it was suitably conservative) those numbers are correct 2,300 fewer people a year would get shot. 700 fewer dead.
Are you ok with two people a day dying so you can’t be arsed to swap a mag at the firing range?
If they outlawed motorcycles, a hell of a lot more than 700 people would not die every year. And there is NO reason whatsoever to have a motorcycle. A car can get you anywhere a motorcycle can. Should we outlaw motorcycles?
And by the way I am absolutely FINE with 2 people dying every day (who are, I am guessing, most likely criminals killing each other, not innocent little children being shot to death by eevil boogeymen with 20-round magazines) if that means that I have the security of knowing that I am going to have enough rounds to stop someone trying to hurt ME and MY FAMILY.
Riding a motorcycle is YOUR choice. You accept the risk. Have fun.
You having a gun is a threat to ME.
Big difference.
Nice.
To be sure some getting killed by high capacity mags are scumbags we will not miss.
Want me to dig up cites to some little girl catching one in the head when rival gang members have it out on the streets and spew bullets willy-nilly?
That may not happen a lot but honest question here…how many people, innocent people, is it ok to have get shot so you do not have to swap a magazine as often while hunting or at the firing range?
Please answer…I am genuinely curious where this line is drawn between your rights to have less of a hassle pursuing your hobby trumps someone’s life.
And by the way, even if high capacity magazines were not just outlawed but somehow made completely non-existent - if they all just vanished into the ether - why the hell do you assume that all the crimes that just happen to be committed every year using hi-capacity magazines simply wouldn’t happen at all, instead of, like, happening with guns that don’t have high capacity magazines?
These statistics only say that a certain number of killings HAPPENED to involve high-capacity magazines…not that the few extra shots in the magazine are what made the difference between life and death.
Take away the high capacity magazines and all those shootings will still happen, just with low-capacity magazines.
Am I really the ONLY one to see the logic here?
No, there is no difference. You phrased it simply in terms of lives lost each year. But - fine - what about all the pedestrians hit by cars? You don’t need to have a car - you can get anywhere by biking or by walking. You having a car is a threat to ME when I’m walking down the street. If we outlawed cars, hundreds of pedestrians would not die each year.
Fine, dig up a cite. I don’t give a fuck. I don’t give a flying fuck how an innocent person is killed, I care THAT they are killed. I hate the killer, not the tool by which the killer kills them. I really don’t give a flying fuck. It’s already been proven that high capacity magazines (and “assault weapons”) make up only a small portion of total crimes committed with guns so your hypotheticals mean absolutely nothing to me.
Who the hell said anything about hunting or practice shooting…I want hi cap mags because I WANT TO BE SURE I HAVE ENOUGH ROUNDS TO STOP SOMEONE WHO IS THREATENING ME. Nothing, nothing at all, is going to make me think it’s acceptable to relinquish MY RIGHT to protect myself with the most effective type of firearm. I don’t care how many CRIMINALS happen to use hi cap mags…I’m not a criminal.
All your hyperbole is typical “blame the gun, not the criminal” crap.