I remember this poll. It was taken at the height of the AWB discussion. It was meant to counter the silly statments by police chiefs of places like Milwaukee (where I think you’re from).
It was not released in a vaccuum, it was mostly about the AWB. That was the msot widely cited statistic from that poll.
Question 10 shows a majority of police officers support a training requirement before being allowed to buy a gun (42% think that the training should be required for anypone who wants to buy a gun and 14% think that it should only be required for some guns). All the other qwuestions are related to things like gun buybacks and gun bans.
Like I said, most cops I know support better gun control (as opposed to the stuff that gun control folks seem to advocate like gun bans and gun buybacks).
That may be true and maybe the differences between our experiences are regional but the poll you cited above shows much less consensus about requiring things like mandatory safety training before buying a gun than things like an AWB or gun buybacks.
So, your experience is that almost all cops would not want to impose safety training requirements as a condition to gun ownership and my experience is that they mostly would impose such requirements and your poll shows that a slim majority would like to see safety training requirements.
I think its pretty clear that neither of our anecdotal data is dispositive but the polling data tends to support me. This is especially true given emotionally charged atmosphere when this poll was conducted that I think would have pushed cops to be more defensive of gun rights than they might othewise be.
The SCOTUS has approved every power the federal government currently exercises. They know con-law better than you do.
I swear, when I hear some RWs talk, especially the Tea Partiers, it’s like they want to roll the federal government back to its role and functions before the New Deal.
And some want to go further and make it what it was before the Federal Reserve and the income tax.
And some want to go further still and make it what it was before the Civil War.
None of that would be any good for America, and none of it is going to happen in your lifetime or your grandchildren’s.
No, but if the buyers melt down the guns, that reduces their resale value to scrap-metal value. (Not that I object; reducing the number of guns in circulation is a thing well worth spending taxpayer money on.)
Maybe I’m restating a point made earlier in this thread, but …
Destroying guns that are in the possession of the authorities (so they can’t be sold to civilians) reduces the total number of guns in the hands of criminals to about the same degree, I would think, as destroying cars destined to be auctioned by the Police reduces the number of vehicles available to said criminals. They’ll just get guns and cars elsewhere … there are plenty of both.
The action of destroying any functioning weapons that are available for purchase simply punishes the weapons for “being weapons” and by extension, punishes anyone who doesn’t hate weapons for being wrong-headed. It doesn’t actually make anyone safer. It’s a symbolic gesture. A better question would be: “Destroying guns for no reason: What’s the point?”
Didn’t we already establish that most of the guns involved only had scrap value anyway? Getting that scrap metal out of the attic and into the smelters’ has economic value, even if only slightly.
No, it doesn’t. On the linked poll you’re making the mistake of adding the numbers of 2 parts of the question together instead of putting them individually against the polling number that shows more cops than not oppose mandatory training. **
Not that mandatory training is in itself a form of gun control, but the antis would make it so by trying to make the training so difficult few could pass it! This is the biggest reason to oppose it.**
Every part of that poll along with every other poll I could link to clearly shows a large majority of law officers oppose restrictions for law abiding citizens to bear arms.
But to the anti-gun owner crowd it’s irrelevant because they don’t care what anyone thinks. They want a completely disarmed populace. We got a look at their agenda during the 3 attempts to get concealed carry legalized in Wisconsin (the 3rd time being successful). The Wisconsin Professional Police Association, the Deputy Sheriffs Association, and the Troopers Association all supported the law. But the Sarah Brady crowd continue to scream that it would endanger law enforcement officers. During one of the attempts to get the law passed I spoke with someone at the Wisconsin Anti Violence Effort and asked her why they kept making this claim when the majority of cops and their groups supported the law.
She pissely snapped at me that police officers don’t know what’s for their own good for keeping themselves safe! :rolleyes: Yeah, but that aging hippy does, right?
One of the few Sheriffs who isn’t a complete tool, David Clarke has been airing public Service announcements telling people to arm themselves and ruthlessly fight back against criminals.
This is an appropriate message from a law man. Is just too bad he’s a total shit to work for!
And here is a fine example of how many of the gun-rights types *claim *to support “reasonable, responsible etc.” measures to reduce the murder rate, but in reality will just make up some shit to justify actually *opposing *them when they have a chance of becoming real.
Words or actions, which to believe, hmm? :dubious:
Property was destroyed. The money that was exchanged in connection with this destruction is still there, doing as much good as it did before ,but valuable property has been destroyed, leaving the economy poorer by the value of that property. The economy is not helped by destroying wealth; it is only helped by creating wealth. What benefit you might see from the money that has changed hands does not make up for the loss of the destroyed property.
Think of the “literacy tests” and “poll taxes” that were once used to selectively deny voting rights, predominantly to Negros. It’s well worth noting that the earliest gun control laws were also used selectively to deny Negros the right to keep and bear arms, and were most strongly supported by groups like the Ku Klux Klan who didn’t want Negros to be able to fight back. Then there was New York’s infamous Sullivan Law, the forerunner of most modern gun control laws—openly authored by a violent criminal, for the benefit of violent criminals. Modern gun control advocates are not nearly so open about their true motives, but they are not nearly as far removed from their predecessors as they wish to have us believe.
Come on now. :rolleyes: The safety training would be for the dumbass killers, not the criminal ones. Surely you don’t deny they exist. Or do you?
Come on now. :rolleyes:. See the various voting threads.
The sky is blue and the water is wet. Trust me. :rolleyes:
You are actually *opposed *to requiring safety training as a condition of possessing an instrument capable of causing death, meaning you’re in favor of allowing people to get killed out of stupidity, just because of some boogeyman you’ve created for the purpose of being scared of. Infuckingcredible.
This is what we’re up against here in the States. Pity us.