Exactly that, make it difficult and expensive to own them in the first place. I’ve been pretty clear about that. Less gun ownership and more responsible gun ownership is better.
Is that clear enough?
Yes. Your motivation is clear and concise.
It is also unjustifiable, inasmuch as you make no effort to distinguish the vast majority of responsible gun owners from the small minority of irresponsible gun owners. Until you make more than a token attempt to account for the lawful and non-harmful use of something which you personally deplore, your plan should be entirely ignored.
Thanks for what has been a doubtless frustrating conversation for us both!
It occurs to me that “thanks for what has been a doubtless frustrating conversation for us both!” could be interpreted as sarcasm. That was not my intent.
That’s the way that society works. I believe there are people out there who are able to manage the use of Class A drugs responsibly. Is it unfair to limit their access to those just because some people can’t?
And that’s the answer that is trotted out after each massacre. A council of despair. Do you have a better gun safety plan?
It is always worth testing your arguments against the opposite view otherwise how will you know what the deficiencies are?
ETA - no, no problem, I didn’t take it sarcasm (as I hope my final sentence above conveys).
Any cite for the “responsible” being a “vast majority”? Police officers are often cited as trained and responsible users of lethal weapons, yet there is plenty of evidence that a small minority even of them are irresponsible.
And — relevant to the thread — what’s your stand on paying teachers to arm themselves? Sure, a majority of them will be responsible. But … how many children do you need to see maimed or killed by a “small minority” of overzealous or bullying teachers before you admit that Trump wasn’t “playing with a full deck” to propose this “plan”?
I can if the fees are arbitrary and capricious. And recurring.
Yes.
I get it: guns are scary, they are dangerous, and you don’t understand people who like them.[sup]1[/sup] As a consequence you think no one should be allowed to have them. But the mere fact that you don’t like something is not, in my view, sufficient excuse to try to take it away from someone who does not misuse it.
Now, if you had a stated goal of reducing gun violence, that would be one thing - I can support that, and I can work with you on that. But that’s not your goal. Your goal is to get rid of guns, whether misused or not. And that goal is not something I can support, any more than I support banning alcohol because some people drink too much.
As I said, I think a gun license is the way to go. Not fully formed thoughts, but these are basically what I think:
[ul]
[li] The license must be easily affordable. Fund it in part by a tax on the sales of firearms and/or ammunition, if you like. But we cannot price people out of exercising their constitutionally guaranteed rights. If you want to make it difficult or impossible to obtain a gun, do it the honest way and amend the Constitution first.[/li][li] Obtaining the license would require a background check and passing a gun safety course.[/li][li] The license would be valid for a certain number of years, after which it would have to be renewed. Renewing the license to be accompanied, again, by a background check, along with passing a gun safety test.[/li][li] The license would be photographic and must be presented whenever someone wants to purchase a firearm, whether through a dealer or through a private party. It would, however, permit the licensee to buy any kind of firearm it is lawful to buy. Again, we are not in the business of using regulation to vitiate an enumerated right. [/li][li] If you want to require an additional background check at time of purchasing, I would at least consider it, but notionally that’s what the license is for in the first place.[/li][li] Possession without a license would be punishable by law.[/li][li] Upon being convicted of a felony, the license must be surrendered.[/li][li] If a temporary restraining order or the like is taken out against a licensee, there should be a hearing to determine whether his or her license should temporarily be surrendered. The presumption should be against (perhaps unfortunately), because again, we’re talking about an enumerated right, and a person should not be placed in the position of needing to prove that they are allowed to exercise a right that the government has, in fact, already guaranteed them.[/li][li] As it’s a federally guaranteed right, it’s the federal government’s job to administer the whole thing and set the standards. I presume Congress can make up some weak handwavy nonsense via the Commerce Clause.[/li][/ul]
I’m sure there are all sorts of weaknesses. I object to septimus’ scheme principally because he advocates leaving an enumerated constitutional right in the hands of the states, with no federal oversight, when it’s beyond obvious that some of the states would immediately abuse this power.
I would add that I would support laws requiring a gun owner to report the theft of a firearm within a reasonable amount of time, for example, and I think the criminal use of a deadly weapon should be a sentencing factor.
It’s not hard to look up how often people get hurt using guns and compare to how many people have guns. If you do, it should be obvious even to someone with an agenda that the overwhelming majority of people who have guns don’t use them or misuse them in such a way as to injure or kill someone else.
There are about 100,000 injuries or fatalities with a gun every year. Personally, I would exclude suicide from this number, but let’s leave it in to be thorough (but do remember that the significant majority of gun deaths each year are suicide).
It’s hard to get exact numbers, but there are something like 80,000,000 gun owners in this country (obtained by noting reported gun ownership rates of ~ 25% . Thus, in any given year no particular gun owner has more than 1 chance in 800 of using his gun irresponsibly, by the metric of causing an injury or death with his gun.
I recognize that this is simplistic, but if a person has 1 chance in 800 of causing an injury or death in 1 year, he has something like an 8% chance of causing an injury or death over a lifetime. Which suggests that indeed, the vast majority of gun owners never hurt anyone else with their guns.
Perhaps you find this logic unconvincing. That’s fine. I’m not terribly interested in convincing you of anything, because I don’t think you’re terribly interested in being convinced of anything.
It’s insane.
[sup]1[/sup] For the record, neither do I! I neither own nor desire to own one.
Nice try but nobody is buying it. Your very first post in this thread:
Bolding mine. If you want to back away from it, fine, but you can’t pretend you didn’t write what is there for everyone to see.
Regarding the following, you’ve no need to worry about accusations of being an actuary. You cannot actually show that they pose a comparable danger to me.
Mind your denominators.
Because the purpose of those regulations is to reduce death by accidental injury (not to mention property damage), of which vehicle accidents are second after accidental poisoning*. Falls come next. Not surprisingly, anti-accident regulations are not heavily applied to a subcategory that’s only 0.03% of the whole.
Again, the purpose of those regulations is to prevent accidents. Not to apply a glib “that’ll cost you” to legal ownership. Not to make sure only rich people have cars. I’m sure increasing the cost of vehicle ownership would decrease ownership, driving, and accidents. Because poor people will switch to other means of transportation. We do it for cigarettes. Maybe you want to treat guns like cigarettes, not cars.
*Yet accidental poisoning does not pose a greater or even comparable danger to me than vehicle accidents. Again, mind your denominators.
no, I think less people should have them and that the ownership of guns should be discouraged so that only those who really need them, have them.
The end goal of a reduction in gun violence goes without saying. And no, I don’t support a ban on guns. I support much more strict regulation. I do not and would not support a blanket ban on all firearms. Guns are tools and have their legitimate uses.
And I think those are all sensible, I’d go further on some but as a starting point for a discussion I see no problem.
OK, it feels like you’re being flat out dishonest now. Cropping my words and stripping them from the context of their response. You know, I know and every who chooses to read the exchange will see what you tried to do here. You said…
to which I responded
Which is unambiguously responding to the “billion-dollar fee” not the “treat cars”
I’ve long since realised that when a poster chooses start doing things like you have above there is absolutely no point carrying on the discussion. I could be wrong, you may have done it in honest error but that’s for you to consider. So I’ll leave it there.
Then don’t quote it if you aren’t responding to it.
You are proposing a plan to provide an economic disincentive to firearm ownership. You haven’t given us any quantification and have left that up to our imagination. The low extreme does nothing. The high extreme is a de facto ban. And somewhere in between just satisfies the people who are scared of poor people with guns. I did not state that your plan is any particular one of those options. We can’t know because you haven’t provided us with any numbers. I.e. the plan isn’t even half-baked. But those those options make up the sliding scale you’ve set for us.
People with the willfully ignorant POV of equating some perceived lack of gun control with violent crime need a serious reality check. If you fear being a victim of a gun crime and live in an area with very strict gun laws, you should move because you are also statistically in an area with higher crime rates. The states/cities with the tightest gun laws also tend to have higher incidents of gun-related crimes (CA, IL, NY, NJ, MD …). If you are worried about gun crime in our schools, look at facility security. That is the only sure, effective way to address the problem. If you think there is even the remotest chance of legislating this issue to a satisfactory conclusion you are delusional.
Cite?
Cite?
Cite?
Cite?
It feels like you’re trying to test the limits of the 'no accusations of lying rule. Don’t do that - test the limit or appear to accuse others of lying.
[/moderating]
Fair enough. Correction accepted. I believe this (setting up a state of affairs such that only those who need guns have them) is a complete nonstarter from a legal standard, at least until we get around to changing the Constitution. I think it’s also a complete nonstarter from a moral standard, because in my view we should not make it unduly difficult for a person to obtain anything – guns, alcohol, tobacco, cars, whatever – provided that they can reasonably be relied upon to do no harm to others with these objects. The goal should be keeping guns out of the hands of people who will misuse them, not keeping guns out of the hands of everyone except people who need them badly enough that they are willing to jump through the various hoops we place in their path. But I think we’ve been down that road before!
And fair enough!
Let me add: I think there’s a lot more we could be doing on gun control, and I don’t believe it is impossible to curb the violence while still making it possible for people who want guns (rather than people who need guns) to have them.
But it may be that ultimately the only way to stop the gun violence is, as you suggest, trying to arrange things so that only people who really need guns have them. If that’s what we have to do, that’s what we should do. But we should start by amending the Constitution, rather than by pretending the Second Amendment isn’t there.
In the present political climate, it would be impossible to pass any constitutional amendment involving controversy or having partisan value. Pretending otherwise is disingenuous.
The real hope is that Justice Kennedy or Roberts can grasp that Jehovah’s “well-regulated militia” does not condone the arming of mentally unstable teenagers. Apparently they can — California and other states have passed laws that, if passed in Florida, might have prevented Cruz from owning a gun.
In any event, the thread is being hijacked., The topic is “Does everyone agree that Trump’s arm-the-teachers plan is the stupidest idea ever presented by anyone impersonating a U.S. President?” What do Tweedle-Pence and Tweedle-Ryan think about it? Have top GOP intellectuals like Sean Hannity or Steve Bannon taken a stance? What do right-wing Dopers think?
Not immediately. But the first step in getting something done is to get it under consideration. Before repeal can occur, it first has to come up for discussion. That’s how minds get changed.
Taken in isolation, perhaps, although there’s lots of competition. But that bit o’ nonsense too has the effect of getting people to think about it, and if that helps break loose the intransigent from their slippery-slope intransigence, it will have served a positive purpose.
There are many teachers who believe that talk of money spent to arm teachers could be much better spent on resources instead.
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Do your own research. Commonly knowable information is obviously not your strong suit.