Read what you wrote. Logically, if someone illegally possesses a firearm would they not have had to obtain it illegally as well?
As far as I know, it’s illegal to sell a firearm to someone who may not possess one. Again, we should enforce laws we have; not make new ones.
And what does this have to do with the AWB?
Possibly but the issue is it is too easy to evade what controls exist to obtain illegal weapons.
It is my understanding individual-to-individual sales of firearms are not covered by firearm regulations (so called “Gun Show Loophole”). Seems a loophole large enough to drive a truck through.
Nothing directly but indirectly if there are decent regulations that close things like the gun show loophole then I think there is less incentive to chase evil black rifle owners as most of them would be the sort of people who are responsible with their guns. Certainly some would always trickle through to bad guys but not enough to get in a twist about.
No, I said that some in prior debates had talked about total bans and mass confiscation, presumably using shock troops (or the National Guard, or the Girl Scouts, or the Teletubbies, or whatever). Something I personally do not see happening even in the worst-case scenario.
FWIW, I’m slowly coming around to support a “NCIS background check on EVERY transfer” philosophy, which would, as you say, close the so-called “gun show loophole.” It would result in an inconvenience, but I would avoid the direct cost aspect by simply having the police, sheriff, etc. - or some central State agency - do the check for “free” (as in, funded from the tax revenue).
Wow. 3 Republicans in a traditionally anti-gun area passed and enacted local legislation? You really destroyed my point where I listed SIXTEEN (16) Democrat Senators who voted against a measure to stop the confiscation of legally owned firearms.
“No one will be able to be armed. Guns will be taken. Only law enforcement will be allowed to have guns.” – Police Superintendent Eddie Compass (appointed by Nagin)
There’s also evidence in the filing for an injunction to stop the confiscation that indicates Nagin had a hand in things.
If the “gun show loophole” is closed, though, they’ll have to find something else to rally against. Who knows what that might be?
So are you one of those people who opposes any regulation on the premise that it is a slippery slope to nickle and dime you to death till guns are flatly illegal everywhere?
First, that simply isn’t so – cocaine (and illicit drugs generally) have unique chemical natures that make them readily detectable by sniffers (animal or electronic).
Second, smuggling isn’t necessary; a reasonably skilled metalworker with a good machine shop can make firearms. To enforce a ban, you’d have to put metalworking tools under the sort of controls applied to photocopiers in the old USSR.
Cocaine has a wholesale price of about $13,000/kilogram today. That makes it a much more attractive option for an illegal operation. However, pistols that cost ~$10,000+ each (wholesale) would probably dampen the illegal market for them.
I also suspect someone making guns by hand in his basement is not going to be making guns cheaply…not even close. Likely that same guy would make more growing pot in his basement with less effort. If they move to mass production they become far easier to track for law enforcement (buying all that metal and having it trucked in would leave a nifty and easy to follow trail).
Basically. Although I think the restrictions we have right now - background checks at gun stores - are pretty much fine.
If they close the “gun show loophole,” they’re not going to just be happy with that and stop. They’ll view it as a great victory on the path to more gun control restrictions and it will increase the morale of the anti-gun movement to go ahead and push more legislation, which will happily be signed by Mr. Change.
The same thing happened with smoking. I witnessed it in my lifetime. First, you can’t smoke anywhere you like, but you can smoke in a designated smoking area. Then, you can’t smoke in a designated smoking area anymore, you have to go outside and walk 30 feet away from the door. (This happened here in my town.) Then, you can’t smoke outside at all if you are on campus property. (Happened here too.) You can’t smoke in a bar here, although you’re free to demolish your liver with whiskey. Then, what’s next? You can’t smoke in your own car? You can’t smoke in public at all? Where is it going to end?
Probably with the complete and total banning of tobacco someday.
My take on it is this: the fact a weapon might be abused by persons with criminal intent is not a good reason to deny its possession to law-abiding citizens.
Contrary to what you seem to believe, people don’t have a “right” to have every whim that floats through their head come true. The individual rights we hold dear in the United States are all about protecting citizens from interference in their private affairs. It’s all about the idea that if somebody isn’t hurting somebody else, their business should be their own. It’s nobody’s business but mine what I read or write, what religion I adhere to, what substances I consume, or what gender(s) of people I prefer to have sex with. And it’s entirely my business if I want to keep a pistol, or a shotgun, or a semiautomatic rifle, in my closet.
If I cause harm with my weapons, or my car, or anything else, either through criminal intent or sheer negligence, then I have violated the rights of others and should be punished for it. That’s the root of the problem here: it’s not the fact that we have a lot of guns, it’s the fact that there are alarmingly large numbers of people who are perfectly willing to hurt and kill their fellow human beings to get what they want. Those people aren’t going to go away just because we pass some law restricting possession of the most expensive types of weapons.
It’s been pointed out plenty of times already: criminals prefer weapons that are cheap and concealable. Aside from the Constitutional objections, aside from the privacy objections, that is a simple reason why “assault weapon” bans are bunk: the vast majority of guns used in crime are dirt cheap, low-capacity pistols. People look at military style weapons and get all hysterical about how frightening they are, but even if their argument of “you don’t need that so we can ban it” held any water (on either account), they are seriously overstating the menace of these expensive “enthusiast” guns.
And while we’re on the subject of over-inflated hysteria: people keep talking about semi-automatic weapons as though they are especially formidable weapons for spree shooters or other homicidal wackos. I’ve got news for you: every gun is formidable against a crowd of unarmed people. There are precious few firearms that you couldn’t go on a shooting rampage with and do some serious damage.
I have a Mosin-Nagant M44 carbine in my safe. It’s a Soviet bolt-action rifle from World War II. It has a 5-round fixed magazine and fires the 7.62x54R cartridge, a cartridge that has been in use since 1891 and has more killing power than any “assault weapon” cartridge in existence. It is accurate out to several hundred yards. One person with a sack full of stripper clips and a modest amount of practice could produce an aimed rate of fire of about one shot every two seconds, even counting the time it takes to open the bolt and ram in a new stripper clip every five shots. In a crowded area, every shot could conceivably result in multiple injuries or fatalities. If the shooter maintains steady fire and keeps his distance from other people, who is going to get up the courage to charge and tackle a man with a weapon that sounds like thunder every time it fires and has a foot-long steel bayonet at the end?
There are no “nice” weapons. This is a fact of life. That people in the United States have the right to keep and bear arms is also a fact. It is also true that there are too many people who are willing to abuse that right to harm others – but the possibility for abuse is one cost of freedom; and surely we can find a better way of dealing with crime and violence than to seize every citizen’s liberty.
After all, there are so many politicians these days who are asking us to throw aside our other liberties, and principles of justice, in the name of public safety. They talk about the necessity of the “War on Terror” while doing their best to ensure that everyone is so frightened they will gladly give up their rights of free speech, peaceable assembly, privacy, and so on, all so we can keep bagging and torturing “terrorists.” It amazes me that so many people will rail against that kind of fear-based logic when we’re talking about habeas corpus, but will gleefully swallow it up when we’re talking about scary-looking guns.
It is not central. The idea that lethality is somehow a justification for a ban is entirely a distraction.
Really? My guns? Last time I checked, my AR-15 was still sitting in the safe. I guess I’d better check – oh, yep, there it is. Nope, not threatening anybody.
This particular mindset is probably what I object to the most: the idea that it’s okay to punish everybody for the crimes of a few. If some criminal is threatening your safety, isn’t that criminal the problem, and not me or any item of property I possess? It’s not just that gun control measures aren’t especially effective: it’s that saying “you can’t have X. You might be a criminal who will abuse it” is anathema to the whole foundation of our justice system wherein a person is held to be innocent until proven guilty.
The fact that property control measures disproportionately affect the law-abiding just adds insanity to the injustice.
For the record, let me state my opinions regarding licensing, safety training, registration, et cetera:
First and foremost, I do not have any objection to the idea that a person who owns firearms should be competent and properly trained. I don’t think any sensible person would object. However, I start to have a problem when you begin talking about establishing legal requirements and giving the government power over gun purchases and possession in order to enforce that requirement. It’s not that training isn’t a good idea: it is. But I do not think the benefits of mandatory training would outweigh the costs in terms of expanded government power, arbitrary bureaucracy, and the potential for abuse.
As for registration, I oppose that on grounds of privacy. Why should I, as a lawful individual, submit to be entered into what amounts to a “potential criminals” database? “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” is not an answer. As we saw in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there are plenty of authorities who will happily use an emergency as a pretext to begin confiscating weapons. Why give them a handy starting point?
But quite aside from that, it wouldn’t be effective. By and large, criminals aren’t really too keen on the idea of walking down to the police station to register their guns. Some localities (such as New York) even go all the way, requiring registration and “ballistic fingerprinting” of all new handguns sold, nominally to make it easier to trace crime guns. New York’s ballistic fingerprinting program, known as CoBIS, has been operating since 2001 at tremendous taxpayer cost, despite the fact that the data collected has never been used to secure a conviction for any crime. Similar programs in other areas are just as ineffective. This page has more information and cites, including actual police reports admitting the uselessness of such programs.
I more or less fall into this camp, too. And after all, why shouldn’t I? We already have more regulations on guns than we have ever had in history, and there are still people screaming for more. Why should I compromise on even the things I can agree are sensible, when there are groups out there only too eager to take every inch I give and stretch it into a mile? The extremists (and the people who follow the extremists in their ignorance and fear) have made compromise a losing proposition for me.
Actually, this is exactly the sort of thing our particular “Rule of Law” is supposed to prevent. Individual rights are protected so that the whims of a majority cannot oppress a minority.
If a majority of people were to “democratically” pass a law taking the vote away from black people, or Jews, or any other group you care to name, you wouldn’t think that was right, would you? Or if a majority of people decided that Christianity should be the mandatory state religion? How about if they passed a law requiring that all handicapped people be sterilized? Even if a majority of people wanted these things, they would not be right, and it would be the right and prerogative of the oppressed to fight back with whatever means they had.
Some things are just not the government’s business, no matter what a majority of the people may say. That’s why our Constitution was written the way it was, to explicitly define what the powers of a just government should be, and to (redundantly) enumerate some things that the government may not do. You are certainly mistaken if you think the key concept of our system of government is “if a majority says it’s right, it’s right.”
Meh. That was a lot more than I originally intended to write. TLDR version: It would be more effective to come up with real solutions to fight crime instead of guns. Keep yer grubby paws off mine, and don’t try to make me beg permission from a bureaucrat to exercise my rights. And gerroff my lawn! 
SSSSSHHHHHHHH!!!
Keep talking like that and they’re going to take my beloved MN away…
:eek:
What I really meant to say was that the Mosin-Nagant is actually a kind of sewing machine. Yeah. That’s it. No guns here, just sewing machines. And puppies.
How about not affecting ‘bad’ guys at all? Since the AWB does not affect bad guys, why is it pursued?
The SDMB has gone around and around about this. The reason that the average person can own a gun is because they are (or can be) part of the militia.
From where I sit, that’s because the anti-gun folks will grab for anything that they can get to pass. It’s born of fear, and a nearly complete lack of knowledge of guns. This creates the slippery slope.
Bolding mine. So, you think that sensible restrictions do nothing to keep guns away from ‘bad’ guys? I agree. What’s the point? Why do you consider this sensible? All more restrictions will do is punish legal gun owners.
If you think that in your words “they do absolutely zero to keep guns out of the hands of bad guys” why do you think this is sensible?
Draconian restrictions might help keep some of them out of the hands of some bad guys. By making everyone a bad guy, even the fellow that likes to target shoot. It simply is not worth it.
You are comparing apples and bazookas. The repubs actually passes legislation and enacted it. That requires a lot of legislators. You don’t just decide to do a law. it requiresa majority of votes. Note the plural. Your point has been totally shot up.
Nagin was not alone. He would not have been able to pull it off without much bigger help. Think national.
Ye-ah, in a return to some sanity here, let me ask a rhetorical question of pro-gun folks.
It’s Una World, where some things can be guaranteed absolutely. A proposal is up to mandate that no one may own, possess, use, buy, borrow, rent, or sell a gun unless they have attended and passed an 8-hour firearms safety and usage class. In this perfect world, this proposal is not part of a slippery slope and is independent of any other gun control proposals which are floated. The class costs a modest fee ($50) but with free classes available for low-income folks. This is a one-time class, but with 2-hour refresher courses every 5 years. No gun registration is involved, although all who pass the course must carry a card stating they have passed the training if they possess a weapon on them at the time.
Are you opposed to, or in favour of, this scheme? And IYO, would it pass Constitutional muster under the current Supreme Court? My answers are “in favour” and “yes.”
If you can guarantee that this course won’t be limited to two people at a time, won’t be offered one time a year only during a blizzard at 3 a.m., and an exception is made for immediate purchases where the gun owner can take the course later if it is not offered conveniently but can still complete their purchase pending completion of the course.
If you can guarantee that in addition to the remainder of your proposal I’m for it.
Sounds good, though I don’t myself know how long a reasonable period of time the classes should be. And I don’t think they would be unconstitutional.
Yes, my question is meant to assume that the courses are readily available and not being used as a scheme to ban ownership (although realities might mean that a specific night might be full up, or you might have to drive 10 miles to get to a course, you know, no different than anything else).
The reason I’ve asked is that in my life I’ve known a lot of pro-gun folks who are absolutely against anything like this, and I was trying to see how many on the SDMB fell into one bin or the other.
No, I wouldn’t object to that in principle either, if there were any way such guarantees could actually be furnished.
I figured that the breaking point is trust - given the past history of gun control, how does anyone trust that there is no “next sensible step”? It’s a conundrum. I so want the average gun owner to be safer and have some training, but how do we do that and get most everyone on-board?