Since when have laws been for prevention and not punishment?

Great Debates
81

A “gun ban”? That’s either intentional gross hyperbole that you’re trying to pass off as fact, which never leads to constructive discussion, or else you’re very sadly misinformed. Switzerland has about 46 guns per 100 residents, France and Canada 31, Austria, Germany, and Iceland each about 30. Try telling the residents of those countries that they’ve “basically banned guns”. :rolleyes:

The major difference in gun policy between the US and any other country in the civilized world is that all other countries have gun control laws that actually control guns, rather than either no laws at all (as in some states) or useless feel-good measures that do absolutely nothing, as just about every gun law at the federal level, such that raving maniacs with a history of mental health problems can buy a cache of semi-automatic weapons and handguns about as easily as they can buy a hammer (e.g.- Virginia Tech shooter, and pretty much all the rest).

No, other countries haven’t “banned” guns. They just have actual gun laws. The laws vary greatly but examples I’m familiar with would be things like: permit required for any kind of gun, with associated background check; different categories of permit for different classes of weapon and restricted weapons types that must be justified; tight regulations on handguns; tight regulations on how guns must be stored and transported; stiff criminal penalties for weapons violations.

Switzerland, for instance, has a lot of guns because ownership is actually required for those in the militia, as discussed before. But they have those kinds of laws, and a very disciplined and legally enforced attitude to the use of guns, and their gun death rates are very low compared to the US. Same in Canada, where lots of people own rifles for hunting, but with effective laws governing storage and transportation and where and how they may be used.

As I said before, try walking into a fast-food joint in Canada with your favorite Bushmaster assault rifle to demonstrate how much you love guns, as has been happening recently in Texas and elsewhere, and you’ll find yourself surrounded by a SWAT team and get your ass hauled into jail. It’s not an absence of guns that is the difference in other countries, it’s a meaningful difference in the law and in the different attitude toward guns that it engenders. And that’s why gun deaths are so much lower, not useless feel-good measures that do absolutely nothing. I don’t buy this “US exceptionalism” crap. The US is populated by people like any other country, people subject to emotions like any other – grief, rage, despair, and mental illness. The difference is they have a hell of a lot more guns with which to act out their feelings.

See above re: useless feel-good measures that do absolutely nothing.

82

If you can’t acquire one of the most common semi automatic rifles in the country how is that anything other than a gun ban?

Propose something you think would be effective. You were called on this dubious claim before but have failed to respond. You criticize laws as ineffective claiming we could do something - like what?

83

If the presence of a gun in the home causes suicide, why does the US have a lower suicide rate than Japan? Why is the suicide rate in the US no higher than other wealthy industrialized nations with lower rates of gun ownership?

Regards,
Shodan

84

And what sort of regulation are you suggesting that would not ban guns but prevent emotional people from having guns? It seems like you are advocating at least for reducing the number of privately owned guns (it sounds like you would do it through making gun ownership more onerous.

85

Here’s the claim you made, in case you forgot. Can you support this in any way?

86

First, I’m not necessarily suggesting a “ban”, but pointing out that one of the solutions adopted in most countries is a tiered system of permitting/certification. Second, just because something is currently common doesn’t mean it should remain common if it’s a hazard. This is how progress is made. Leaded gasoline was “common” some decades ago, now it isn’t. In 1998, the Consumer Product Safety Commission banned pointed lawn darts across the US after three children died. But hundreds of children and thousands of adults dying from gunshots is apparently OK.

My entire post #81 was about that, specifically the second and third paragraphs. What you appear to be saying is the you only recognize proposed restrictions that you happen to like.

You mean beyond the two times I’ve already discussed it? The claim was that in other first-world nations something like Sandy Hook would have been exceedingly unlikely. This was based on the fact that the required permitting for most of the weapons that were used would have, in practice, put them out of reach of an ordinary suburban mother with a young son, and the shotgun (the weapon that wasn’t used) is just something that elsewhere just wouldn’t be something you’d even think of as needing to have. The laws come first, culture changes follow gradually, and saving human lives is the synergy of the two. It may be completely a non-starter in the current sociopolitics of the US, and that’s a tragedy. Lord knows, I’m not trying to preach here and just pointing out the obvious, and frankly kind of tired of talking about it.

The other points that are being made by others are implicitly addressed by the above, or have already been responded to.

87

OK, not “ban” guns. Try “regulate virtually out of existence”, the way Washington DC tried to say that you could “own” a gun, in the sense of having some disassembled pieces of metal not able to actually fire a bullet. In a thread I started a while back asking Is it inevitable that someday guns will be banned in the US?, Argent Towers speculated:

Most gun owners would consider that level of restriction a ban for most practical purposes.

IMHO, it comes down to a fundamental difference in philosophy: do people have an inherent right to possess weapons for personal and collective self-defense, that can only be infringed for the most immediate and vital reasons? Or are guns fundamentally incompatible with a peaceful civil society, and they should be limited as much as possible? In absolute theory our nation was founded on the former premise, but in practice the latter premise has been followed to varying degrees at different times and places.

88

The counter to this, that many pro-gun people don’t seem to get, is that the outlawing of guns, or certain types of gun, makes committing a crime with one harder on average. Lazy rebuttals about criminals using their special criminal status to obtain illegal guns, as if criminals are some monolithic group of people who were born into the trade and all have criminal friends to get them whatever they want, don’t cut it.

89

So it’s not a “ban” but it simply “put[s] them out of reach” for a regular citizen? I can own a gun in some sort of abstract way but not physically possess one? Sounds like a ban to me.

90

I misinterpreted what you were trying to say in that post. If those represent your actual proposals, then I can read it with that in mind. Though paragraph 2 seems more like commentary than any actual suggestion. Let’s take a look at the third paragraph:

You are describing California. Permits are required for all firearms (save C&R), background checks are required for all purchases and transfers (save for some interfamilial), there are different types of permits and some firearms that fall under the NFA must be justified (generally none are ever approved), “tight” is subjective, but only those on an approved list can be sold, and no new handguns are being added to the list because they have now added an impossible requirement, there are regulations on storage and transport, and there are stiff criminal penalties for violations, like if you put the wrong kind of stock on a rifle you are guilty of comitting a felony.

How do these things prevent Sandy Hook? We have mass shootings in CA too.

But you don’t consider that a ban? We must be using these words differently then. A law that puts out of reach the ability to own an effective weapon for self defense is a ban in my eyes.

I fully accept that outlawing guns would make committing a crime with that type of gun more difficult. It would also make defense more difficult.

91

Do you think a situation where everyone has a gun is safer than one where no one does? Does your ability to defend yourself with a gun outweigh the higher risk of getting shot?

92

It’d be worth a try; I’d like to see a gated community or HOA of like-minded gun owners establish an all-armed enclave. Granted this would be a pre-selected group rather than the general population, but I’m sure it would go ok. I’d wager they’d have vanishingly few burglaries. :wink:

As for no one having guns, that’s not technically possible. The police even in a place like the UK would have to have at least an armed response unit; and presumably there’ll always be some level of illegal gun ownership. The only question would be whether outlawed guns would be rare or commonplace, and that would depend on social circumstances that the laws could only weakly influence. ETA: And the social circumstances would primarily consist of how useful people would find owning guns were, not whether society promoted a “gun culture” or not.

93

I suspect the same would apply to a group of like-minded people who didn’t own guns, too.

Besides which, if we could all live in enclaves, we wouldn’t need to compromise and any debates on guns would be pointless.

But that’s not what I asked.

I don’t think the two are that different. It’s apparent that a lot of people in the US do consider guns useful in some way or other, whereas here most people would wonder what remotely likely use they could have for one. I would put that almost entirely down to culture.

94

At this point it is starting to become clear that despite all the protestations that “noone wants to ban guns” this is exactly what people want. They ignore the argument that when you make guns illegal then you are reducing gun ownership among private citizens but not reducing it among criminals.

95

Because it’s a poor argument.

96

(my bold)

It seems like that is exactly what you asked. Was it misinterpreted?

I reject the choices available that include one where everyone has a gun or no one has a gun. Both are unrealistic. My take is that I enjoy greater utility if I have a gun, independent of what anyone else is doing. This is the calculus that all gun owners have made in some fashion or another. The benefit they derive outweighs the potential costs, for them.

You would have to quantify the higher risk.

In a magical world with no guns, my risk of getting shot would essentially be zero. If I introduce one gun in the world, mine, my risk would incrementally increase since now I own the only gun in the entire universe. The chances of that gun being used to shoot me, all other things being equal (assuming I’m now not the target of the Illuminati), while increased, are effectivley the same as they were before. My potential for defense has increased signficantly. So yes the ability for defense outweighs the non-zero insignificant risk presented.

Ultimately, anything that makes defense more effective generally makes offense more effective too.

97

How is that a poor argument? Your argument sucks if that is all you have. If we banned and confiscated all guns tomorrow, do you think we would succeed in significantly reducing gun ownership among criminals?

98

(my bold)
This is a poor argument.

If guns were illegal, it’s not true that gun possession would not be reduced among criminals. One source of illegal guns are straw purchases exectued through presumably legal channels. At a minimum, some non-zero decrease of gun possession among criminals would occur. It’s debateable what the magnitude of that would be, but simply saying that making guns illegal would have no impact on criminal possession is not realistic.

99

I wasn’t asking if it’s possible. I was asking a “yes or no” question. The point was to break the issue down into less complicated pieces that help with reasoning. It was also to work out at what point my views diverge from those of people who are generally pro-gun. The point of that particular question was something you brought up yourself:

True. The question is whether guns are a greater advantage to law-abiding defenders or law-breaking aggressors. That’s taking out the issue of people who were law-abiding until they decided to shoot someone in a cinema, accidental deaths, etc.

Personally, it seems obvious to me that a gun offers a greater advantage to an aggressor. A law-abiding, responsible gun-owner, especially one with a family to protect, is not going to have their gun lying around and loaded. Pro-gun arguments often hinge on this idea of sensible gun-owners who wouldn’t dream of using their gun unsafely or illegally. On top of this, someone planning to attack you with a gun knows their intentions - you do not. It seems to me that both these factors would generally give a gun-toting aggressor the advantage over responsible gun-owners.

Where do you think all the illegal guns come from, originally? A severely reduced legal market for guns will make guns rarer and more expensive. Many criminals with limited capital to invest in their business will find it harder to access a gun, harder to afford one and less important to own one, if they don’t expect their victims and rivals to be packing. If guns are higher value, it’s also less convenient to just shoot someone and dispose of the weapon. Severe penalties for gun ownership would make it more trouble than it’s worth for many criminals to bother, as carrying a gun is carrying evidence of your criminal status. It’s also important to remember that no one starts out as a criminal - the current situation makes it considerably easier for a previously law-abiding person to start robbing people at gunpoint or shoot someone in anger.

As a bonus, police will be able to stop assuming everyone they encounter has a gun, and there might be fewer unnecessary police shootings.

100

As has been mentioned, gun control is tough because, in a vacuum, ownership of a firearm is legal and doesn’t necessarily say anything good or bad about the owner. He might be a fine, upstanding citizen who hunts, or he might be a gang banger.

Crafting good criminal laws is tough in general because so much of it is incremental and reactive.

To give a concrete example, Illinois requires residents to apply for a firearm ownership ID (FOID) card to purchase or possess firearms and ammo. This allows the state police to run a background check to try and weed out criminals and the mentally ill. It’s $10, and can take longer than the 30 days it’s supposed to take to process. And the law is rife with loopholes and enforcement issues. It has no force for gun purchases in surrounding states. And what happens if someone has a FOID card, but then is denied a renewal? Is he going to throw his guns away?

Because gun possession is an aggravating factor is numerous other criminal laws in the state (and not necessarily using the gun in the commission of a crime, merely possessing it when busted), I think the practical effect of the FOID law tends to be its use as an additional cudgel to beat criminal defendants over the head with and increase their prison sentences, and a source of funding for Illinois state police and wildlife management. It may be that the FOID requirement has had a positive effect on crime, but that’s difficult to evaluate in isolation. So for law-abiding gun owners, it strikes them as an unnecessary imposition. I can sympathize with that position.