Well, to follow your analogy, do you agree that the umbrella is having no measurable effect? If so, then why not toss it?
I’m not sure what a “larger roof” would be analogous to. Maybe building more prisons?
Do you think the NRA would get behind it?
I have no idea.
Do we know for a fact that gun control laws have no measurable effect? Is there an area in the U.S. that once had gun control. got rid of it, and the murders stayed the same or went down?
I haven’t looked at any studies lately, but it’s my general sense. If you want to make the case that some state or the United States had a significant reduction in crime rates after enacting some gun control measure, I’m happy to consider it.
Here’s a short article analyzing the effects (or lack thereof) of waiting periods for handgun purchases in California:
http://www.claytoncramer.com/cawait2.html
Well, a lot of states have relaxed their gun control laws by enacting nondiscretionary CCW. My understanding is that this has had little or no impact on murder rates. And that very few CCW holders have unlawfully shot anyone.
The only numbers that come to mind is the states that passed concealed carry laws, where they saw no appreciable increase in crime once law abiding citizens were allowed to “pack heat.” Lott covers this in his books and peer-reviewed research.
Here in Virginia, the program that had the most effect was Project Exile, which fully prosecuted gun crimes in Richmond in the federal courts. People who committed street crimes with guns would face on long stretches of federal prison time far from their families, and could count on hardly seeing them during their incarceration.
Gun crime in Richmond dropped dramatically, and the program was expanded to other parts of the country.
It was supported by the NRA.
There is a general principle in American law that significant threats to public health and / or safety trump individual liberties. For example, the state and federal govornments have a right to involuntarily quarrantine perfectly law-abiding persons with smallpox, tuberculosis and other serious infectuous diseases who decline or attempt to evade treatment, despite the 14th Amendment.
There are many, many things that you, I and the public at large do not have a legal right to own; pretty much anything that has been deemed to pose a public safety hazard is restricted to a greater or lesser extent. Assault rifles, machine guns, and other firearms designed solely and specifically to kill lots of people quickly and efficiently and which have no peaceful use besides making their owners feel macho definitely fall under the “threat to the public safety” rubric.
For almost all regulated substances there is provision for general access to specific formulations for specific purposes. The public at large can freely purchase low concentrations of phenol in the form of anesthetic throat sprays. We are not permitted to buy 100-gallon tanks of the stuff without a pile of paperwork. Similarly, there should be a distinction between the conditions for access to a gun suitable for potting racoons and the conditions for access to “general-purpose machine-guns, medium machine-guns, and hand grenades”.
JRB
Good, because if the logic behind that reply was the same as the logic used in this one, it would be a total waste of electrons. Exactly where, I ask you, did I ever say “Why bother having laws at all?” I merely pointed out the huge hole in your concept of reality, ie that there is some way to make guns go away. There isn’t. Even if you could convince every law-abiding person in the country to turn in thier guns, there would still be millions of them out there, becuase criminals don’t follow laws. Wishing away guns is like wishing away gravity. So gun control laws can’t and won’t work unless they take that fact into account. Bans are useless. You yourself admit that guns enter areas where they are banned from the outside. Where do you stop defining something as “outside?”
Actually, it’s a pretty good argument for attacking the violent crime problem in DC. Unchecked gang influence, police corruption, and the fact that citizens can be almost completely relied upon to be unarmed probably have something to do with this.
We already have standardized federal gun laws - felons can’t have guns, the insane can’t have guns, nobody can have a machine gun without a federal background check and a tax stamp. There’s really nothing more you can restrict without violating the rights of citizens. For that matter, I think that the national gun laws we have now are an unwarranted expansion of federal power - constitutionally, this is a matter that should be left to the states.
I’m sorry-did I mistakenly say I wanted all guns to disappear? Hmm, no…can’t find that anywhere in my posts.
I’m curious - what legal authority establishes this principle?
In any case, trying to expand emergency powers to non-emergency situations is a classic tool of the tyrant. After all, who can be against safety? But the difference is clear: In the case of a smallpox infection, the infected person himself represents an immediate threat to others. A gun in the hands of a private citizen must be presumed to be a threat to no-one.
Yeah, hand grenades should probably require a license. 
Assault rifles - no such thing. This is a term that was made up, and has no real engineering or practical definition.
machine guns - heavily regulated already, possibly in violation of the 2nd amendment.
“firearms designed solely and specifically to kill lots of people quickly and efficiently and which have no peaceful use besides making their owners feel macho definitely fall under the “threat to the public safety” rubric.” This is rhetoric with no meaning. ALL firearms are designed to be very efficient at propelling something downrange. Given that they are shooting something that is measured in it feet per SECOND, they ALL qualify as “quick.” ALL firearms can make you feel macho (hell, a well made knife makes me feel good).
There are.
Thing is, there is much (generally friendly) debate by people that really, really know their guns and ballistics about what is the best round for what.
If experts can’t come to agreement on what round is best and reasonable, I really don’t trust novices to do so.
A big game rifle is also a target rifle. It has to be. I have large and small caliber rifles and pistols and I enjoy target shooting them all.
A .22 can be a target rifle or a small game rifle. A .308 can be a target rifle or a large game rifle. Either can be used against varmints, or used for self defense.
Does a sporting rifle need a higher capacity than a ‘Deer’ rifle? Well, 99% of hunters go by the one shot one kill rule. So, it’s not very important to have many rounds in a ‘Deer’ rifle. It can be nice in a sporting or target rifle though. You shot a hell of a lot more rounds.
But heck, I have a single shot .22 that’s fun to shoot. I also have a 10 round .22 semi auto that’s fun to shot. The anti-gun folks would like to draw a line, and paint things black and white. It can’t be done.
It seems that many pro-control folks will support any kind of laws to restrict ownership of guns. That’s not pro-control, that’s anti-gun. And like the DC law that only makes non-permitted guns illegal (and then won’t issue permits) it’s dishonest.
There’s a great paper on that very topic here (you must create a free account).
(It isn’t obvious by the abstract, but trust me that the paper addresses in depth the question of why significant government interests can trump fundamental rights.)
So sport shooting and / or varmints require the “general-purpose machine-guns, medium machine-guns, and hand grenades” that are part of E-Sabbath’s list? (yes, I know he copy-pasted it from Wikipedia…)
Well, if it’s just sitting there, it’s perfectly safe. 
Several books on American Indian history and other events of the 18th century mention people maimed or killed by misfires and exploding guns when the bores became blocked. Muskets seem to have been particularly troublesome, although that may simply be because they were more common. I can’t find any contemporary statistics on injuries caused by gun failures, but Brian Given’s book “A Most Pernicious Thing: Gun Trading and Native Warfare in the Early Contact Era” cites a 40% misfire rate for muskets.
JRB
No, those are the “arms” of someone in the militia.
There are at least 5 categories of legal firearms use:
- Self Defense (when mobile)
- Home Defense
- Hunting
- Shooting Sports
- Militia
The 5th is the one protected by the 2nd Amendment. The 3rd is the one that gun control people like to pretend to care about (“We don’t want to take away your hunting rifles!”). The first 2 are often argued regarding their effectiveness vs. chance of accident. The 4th is ignored, because ANYTHING can be a sport - including throwing hand grenades.
Whht! Moving the fenceposts! Penalty, ten yards! First down!
Sorry, but those things ain’t been legal without a very specific and expensive license since 1930. (one of the dates I chose earlier, and that’s why.) (Note that assault rifles, eg, the M-16A2, are not the same thing as ‘assault weapon’, which is an essentially meaningless term)
Personally, I disagree with that law’s constitutionality, but hey, that’s life. (Cops have them. I knew a cop who claimed he had a LAW in his trunk. I still don’t know why. Cops are dangerous with guns.)
Assault weapon has no definition. Assault rifle has a perfectly good definition. Selective fire or automatic rifle firing bullets at a slightly lower velocity than a battle rifle.
Staying honest is important. JR Brown got the term right, if probably accidentally. (Judging from his knowledge of guns.)
Maybe they do, and maybe they don’t, but in my opinion, the burden should be on you (or whoever wants to ban them), at a minimum, to make a compelling case for your position. For example, by showing that we’d be significantly better off in terms of crime rates.
Machine guns per se have never been illegal to own in the United States in general. There hasn’t been a significant crime problem with machine guns, as far as I know.
It’s not enough (in my opinion) to show that nobody NEEDS such things. Nor is it enough to show that there is no legitimate (whatever that means) purpose in possessing such a thing. (Actually, I believe that killing other people efficiently is potentially a legitimate reason to own a weapon)
It’s just my opinion, though.