I’m not so sure that would be a bad thing. Unlike guns, tobacco kills innocent people even when used as intended. (Yeah, so does fatty food, but in that case it’s just killing the person who eats it, not jumping down the throat of everyone in their vicinity.)
I’d like to see proof that second-hand smoke kills anyone. Makes them cough, maybe. Not die.
Inaccurate for two reasons. First, there is no constitutional right to drive. There is a constitutional right to free speech. As you are british, I will explain further: the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land. This means that anything that infringes a constitutional right is exposed to more critical scrutiny than other laws. It requires modifying the constitution to do so, which requires a two thirds majority of both houses of Congress, as well as three fourths of the states to agree on. (Or a constitutional convention to rewrite the whole thing.)
This is, to say lightly, a big honking deal.
Secondly, you do not require a driver’s license to drive. You need it to drive on public roads. There are private roads and there are racetracks. In point of fact, most guns are fired at the equivalent of private roads (private property) and racetracks (gun ranges). You can drive anything you want on a racetrack, from 1908 Hupmobiles to 2008 Atomic Roadster Kits. At speeds of up to 350 MPH.
Mario Andretti does not need a driver’s license. Colin McRae may not, as it qualifies as a closed course when he rallied.
I fail to see what a gun being turned into a nonlethal object has to do with anything. Cars are also lethal objects. It’s not their sole purpose, but they’re real good at killin people. A gun is a tool. It’s designed to move a projectile out of the barrel at speed. What you do with that ability is up to you.
Me, I turn small clay discs into powder at ranges of 100 yards. My gun is designed specifically to be adept at that task.
It can also kill people.
Fun fact: A flamethrower is also an assault weapon. Some people mount them in cars to do burnout demonstrations.
Colin McRae, unfortunately, is dead. (His helicopter crashed)
I’m aware, and sad.
Fire!
I don’t know precisely what research has been done on second-hand smoke, although I would expect there’s quite a bit.
What I do know is that it’s well established that the more cigarettes a person smokes, the more likely they are to develop lung cancer. I think it reasonable to assume this is due to the effect of inhaling smoke into the lungs, not the effect of having a cigarette perched on your lip. So if a non-smoker inhales cigarette smoke into his lungs, the effect would be the same as if a smoker inhaled an equivalent amount of smoke into his lungs.
Are you disputing this reasoning – that a given quantity of cigarette smoke entering your lungs affects you in the same way regardless of whose cigarette it came from? Or are you just suggesting that no non-smoker ever inhales enough smoke to have a non-negligible effect on his chances of getting lung cancer or otherwise having his lung function compromised?
For what it’s worth, even neglecting health considerations I don’t see anything wrong with a majority of people democratically deciding they’re sick of having to wade through a cloud of smoke every time they want a drink at a bar, and banning it. Why not ban a nuisance behavior, so long as it’s not trampling on anyone’s fundamental rights. (I certainly don’t think people have a fundamental right to cigarettes. I suppose you could make the case that banning people from smoking everywhere is excessively intruding on their right to privacy in their home, but that argument doesn’t apply to just banning it in bars or other public places.)
As people have said in other threads, the lungs process out smoke very quickly if you’re not a smoker. People who quit smoking even after many years, have healthier lungs in a remarkably short period of time. The lungs are hardy organs and they can bounce back quickly from a little bit of second hand smoke. As far as I know, nobody has ever been proven to get cancer simply by breathing in other people’s secondhand smoke.
The point is - it used to be a man’s world, and now it’s not. I know that’s hyperbole, and sloganeering, and a fairly meaningless term. And yet I still think it’s true. We live in a world of cowards today, where people are afraid of smoking, afraid of big bad evil guns, afraid of cars that go too fast or coffee that’s too hot or dodgeball because the poor kids could be hurt by having balls thrown at them, or whatever. There’s fucking low-carb beer. It’s gotten to the point where everything is sanitized and pussified.
I’m one of those. It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s that I don’t trust your successor or the local yahoos that are charged with carrying out what is intended to do one thing but can be easily abused for another purpose. I don’t support any new laws until old ones are wiped out.
It’d probably pass the Supreme Court, from what I understand of Heller. Except maybe the requirement that one carry a card with them when in possession of a firearm, since you didn’t specify “concealed”. Then again, Heller didn’t really say it would oppose a national firearms ID.
My mother died from emphysema many years after she quit smoking. the doctor told her that years of smoking damage just stays there. A little goes away but most is permanent. You can not fry am organ and expect much recovery.
In any case, the amount of second-hand smoke inhaled by people is not equal to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day or more. There is no proof that secondhand smoking causes cancer. I hate for this to get hijacked so much but it’s all part of the same problem, like I said - fear and ignorance. Everyone is thinking with their emotions and not with their brains.
Surely the same could be said of those who like to keep guns because they’re badass and because they fear the government will rise up against them in warfare?
If you’re going to argue for a pussificated world, i’d ask you who’s the more scared - the ones who think reasonable defensive behaviour is practiced with lawsuits, or the ones who think reasonable defensive behaviour is practiced at a shooting range?
How is owning guns because they are badass - in other words, you like them, and you enjoy firing them because it’s fun - connected to fear and ignorance?
Also what do you mean by reasonable defensive behavior?
Please excuse the drive-by, but my pro-gun thoughts are better articulated by others here.
I have one bit to add, that comes from a conversation with an anti-gun friend of mine:
“I will register all of my firearms and myself on one simple condition. The government posts a $1,000,000 bond. If ANY of my firearms are EVER taken, outlawed, etc. due to legislative changes (not due to me committing a felony), then I get the $1,000,000 tax free.”
If you are so positive that your new registration / tracking / monitoring / licensing scheme is NOT meant to nor will ever be used to take away my firearms - then put up the money (inflation adjusted, yadda yadda yadda).
Actually, that part was directed at the final part of your post - that people are thinking with their emotions and not their brains.
Well, you brought up second-hand smoke et al as examples of people being afraid of things and generally making everything “sanitized and pussified”. Now, this is certainly anecdotal evidence, but I was under the impression that generally people fearful of second-hand smoke, too fast cars, big bad guns, hot coffee and dodgeball deal with those fears through lawsuits and legal action. They seem to find that the reasonable response to what they fear involves cutting arguments and vicious paperwork. Whereas those that believe they have a right to own guns because the government might up and start killing seem to find that the reasonable response to what they fear is access to and know-how of guns.
It just seems to me that were I to look at one group whose fear response is legal action and another whose response is armed preparation for a governmental coup, I might not agree with you which side is the more scared.
Don’t assume that all gun owners are preparing for anything. That’s not what I’m trying to say. All this talk about preparation for an armed governmental coup by owning weapons, it’s not based upon anything that I’ve said in the past few posts, so don’t create a straw man.
I don’t assume that; not all gun owners do so because of a fear of government takeover (or re-takeover, I suppose). I’m merely pointing out the irony of suggesting we are now in a recent “world of cowards” by pointing out that some people react to their fears with legal action while you yourself are in a group where some respond to their fears with arming themselves. It just seems like an odd set of examples to pick, in contrast.
Likewise I don’t recall calling you a coward, or attributing that opinion to you. It is only a straw man if there are no people who own guns in order to defend themselves should the government attempt a coup of some kind; is that so? Are there no such people?
Not to continue the hijack, but -
I am definitely in favor of that. As an instructor, I’d rake in more money 
I’d also like your program to offer advanced courses which allow possession of more advanced weapons. IOW, want to own a machinegun, take the class and get certified. You’d have to meet some other requirements, I’d say too. Maybe all people in the ‘household’ over 5 would have to attend a family course. You’d need to have a safe, something like that. Meet a couple of those requirements for safety and training, and get rid of the 86 ban on civilian purchases of domesticly manufactured machineguns. No reason why Jonny Office Manager should have to pay $5000 for an 800 dollar M4 Carbine. That’s silly.
I would also recommend more involvment on all levels of government to stop the demonization and scare tactics. Promote the Civilian Marksmanship Program and its competitions (a program mandated by federal statutes, btw) a hell of a lot more. Most people aren’t even aware of it. Fuck, I WISH I had known about that growing up!! Encourage knowledge, training, and safety. Punish the criminals (who break the current laws) more harshly. Allow (or maybe REQUIRE) programs like Eddy Eagle in elementary schools.
Anyway. I’m all for your mandatory training and safety.
Well, I think the Founding Fathers were probably in that group. Isn’t the purpose of the Second Amendment really ultimately about limiting government’s power and putting more power into the hands of civilians?
Anyway, with all the people massacred by their own governments in the 20th century alone, it hardly seems unreasonable for some people to fear it. Everyone thought Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were going to be paradise, until the bodies started piling up, and once that happened, it was already too late for the population.
Out of either being tortured and or killed by my own government, and having to walk through a puff of cigarette smoke on the sidewalk, the former is a little bit more scary. I happen to have family members only a few generations removed who were killed by fascist governments. The whole paternal side of my father’s family in Greece were killed by the Albanian division of the Nazi SS in Salonika.
I almost agreed to this, but then I couldn’t help but think that this would be a ban through attrition. The requirements are nothing for someone who’s already interested in firearms, but over time, I suspect less and less people will bother. It also prevents the time-honored tradition of taking a friend to the range, running over the safety rules and procedures a number of times before shooting, and then keeping an eye on them as they do some shooting. Until they realize how fun it is, they’re a lot less likely to sit through an 8 hour course.