Clearly we learned in the movie Tin Cup all one needs to win is a 7 iron. What do you need a 4,5,6 iron for anyway? The game would move a lot faster if you guys weren’t always changing clubs.
Right, again with the “if it doesn’t prevent 100% of the crimes, it shouldn’t be restricted at all”
I want them to carry three 10-round magazines. Because maybe they’ll fumble about while trying to load them and get tackled like Jared Lee Loughner, or maybe they don’t have one gun with 30 rounds and another gun with 30 rounds so that they can just finish shooting one gun and pull out another. In fact, how about we add some weight to the guns, increase it by 10 pounds or so. Sure, anyone who really wants to shoot up a school is going to easily be able to stand that weight, but maybe the guy who brings 4 guns has a little trouble with 40+ pounds of metal on him. Add that to the extra magazines he has to carry and maybe the guy will only be able to get off a few dozen shots instead of a few hundred
Small victories are still victories. Sure, none of these things by themselves are going to stop any one specific massacre. But you know what? It makes it harder to carry out, and that’s a good thing. And I would bet that if you ask most reasonable people about it, they will say that a limit on magazine capacity, or an increase on weight, or a safety lock, or background checks don’t come close to the kind of nightmare for gun nuts where all their guns are banned. Those laws are good things. 10 rounds is a good limit. It doesn’t have to stop every criminal, but making it more difficult to shoot up a school isn’t something any of us are against and we shouldn’t be opposing it
No, pull the trigger three times and you have fired three bullets. Pull the trigger ten times, and you have to reload. A semiautomatic fires one round per trigger pull.
If you’re unlucky enough to be facing several opponents and it comes to shooting, you’re going to wish you had more than ten rounds loaded.
Wrong again. You don’t seem to understand law – not every word-gamey pun you can wrangle out of a sentence has a legitimate place in the interpretation of a legal text.
You, sir, know almost as much about guns as Senator Carolyn McCarthy.
Like Sueng-Hui Cho, who fired ten rounds per magazine and killed 32 people in the deadliest mass shooting in the nation’s history?
Small victories are small victories, but some are so small that they don’t warrant even minor encroachments on constitutional rights. Magazine size restrictions fall into that category. And adding weights to guns? You’re kidding, right?
And yet here we stand, opposing it. Either we’re terrible people, or we’re trying to point out that 1) you greatly overestimate the safety utility of the proposed measure, and 2) no, a nonzero increase in safety is not automatically justifiable, it must be weighed against impacts on liberty and convenience. It’s not valid to say “we must do something, and this is something, therefore we must do this,” and it doesn’t bolster your argument to suggest that anyone who opposes your measure supports kids getting shot.
It’s starting to look like the proposed “Assault Weapon Ban” may get watered down to just increased registration and background checks. But even if that’s all that’s going to happen, a lot of people are going to acquire and keep unregistered weapons. The gun owners of America are not going to forget anytime soon that the moment the gun-control crowd thought they had a mandate, they tried to push through draconian restrictions on guns; and as a result gun owners are not going to volunteer to conveniently register their guns.
These restrictions would be, taking all in all, less than in countries like Israel and Switzerland that you often seen put forward, by the gun lobby, as positive examples of firearms freedom.
No one expects gunowners to voluntarily register their weapons. I have no gun, but I do have a car, and I only register that because of a legal requirement. Even in Canada, the national gun registry is tremendously controversial and unpopular among gun owners.
The difference in the US is not that gun owners have memories. It’s that we have a large group of gun owners who are threatening to kill anyone who would take away their assault weapon. To find examples, look at any gun thread at freerepublic.com. While I’m not a pacifist, the benefits of what you are calling draconian restrictions, and I would call modest ones, are insufficient to risk an insurrection. So getting universal background checks for gun transfers may be as far as we should go at this time.
But it’s shameful we have put 30 bullet magazines into the hands of millions, thousands of whom sell them no-questions-asked in private transfers.
A bit of a coincidence here. Not so long ago, such guilt-by-association personal attacks were known as – McCarthyism :smack:
No, there is also an INDIVIDUAL right recognized in Heller to self defense. The state would be limited by this individual right. But the federal government is limited by both the individual and the state right.
And bolt action rifles are less useful for self defense than handguns.
President Obama (who I voted for twice), VP Biden, Senator Feinstein and a bunch of other senators, a laundry list of congressmen. Do you need a cite?
I would require license and registration for every firearm from the full auto Uzi in the hands of a collector to the cricket 22 you get on your 10th birthday.
Also defined as: An encroachment, as of a right or privilege.
A good way analyze the right to bear arms is to look at the way we analyze the right to free speech.
Maybe they can limit the round capacity of a firearm but any such limitation is subject tot he same constitutional standards as restrictions on any of the other constitutional rights.
If I miss the first ten times.
Maybe a round capacity might pass constitutional muster but you’d still have to pass constitutional muster.
Or their high cap magazine would jam (like the Aurora CO shooter), both situations are unlikely (admittedly a magazine jam is probably more unlikely than fumbling a magazine in the heat of the moment).
None of those things sound unreasonable out of the gate to me but the well has been poisoned by talk of another assault weapons ban. If Obama had come out with license and registration requirements, things might be different right now. The gun lobby really would look irredeemably nuts but as nuts as they are being, they wave their hands and say “SEE I TOLD YOU THEY WANTED TO TAKE AWAY OUR GUNS!!!” And you lose the high ground.
[quote=“Anonymous User, post:239, topic:648423”]
Actually, they could ban all the guns in the United States if they wanted to. It doesn’t say that we have the right to “bear firearms”, but it says we have the right to bear “arms”. Any weapon is an “arm”. So technically we could ban all the guns and still allow the right to “bear arms”.
Limiting magazines doesn’t even come close to violating the second amendment. It doesn’t say anywhere that we can’t limit the use of these arms. It just says we have the right to “bear arms”.[/.quote]
The Supreme Court disagrees with your interpretation of the second amendment.
Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t. I think it might pass constitutional muster but I haven’t heard the argument that would get us over that hurdle yet.
Your ignorance undercuts your credibility. I don’t mean that in a bad way but if your not familiar enough with guns to know what the phrase semi-automatic means then you are arguing based on faulty assumption.
Semi-automatic means one round fired for every pull of the trigger. FULL AUTOMATIC or select fire will fire more than one round per trigger pull and there is already a ban on sale of these to civilians. Every assault weapon is SEMI-automatic, meaning one trigger pull equals one round fired, no faster than a revolver. That may not change your position on the issue but in the interests of fighting ignorance… ignorance fought?
Do you have any idea what the hit ratio is during a gunfight in the middle of the night? It isn’t like target shooting at a range, these target move and sometimes they shoot back.
If we hadn’t tried the AWB, we might have gotten a little bit more. maybe not licensing or registration but right after Sandy hook there was almost a resignation to limits on magazine capacity among a lot of gun owners until the blowback on the AWB made all the restrictions seem unreasonable.
And speaking of McCarthyism, people keep citing how the majority of NRA members favor a lot of these proposals and then these same people proceed to paint all gun owners as gun nuts.
Yeah, just like him. Or like Jared Lee Loughner, who tried to kill a lot of people but failed because he had to reload. Cho’s rampage doesn’t disprove my point about how the pro-gun side seems to think that if a law doesn’t stop 100% of the targeted types of killing, it is useless. I’m giving you an example of a time when a small capacity gun DID result in less deaths. That such an example exists is justification enough. If you want to argue not anecdotes but TRENDS, in which a significant amount of impact is registered, then fine, but don’t pretend that you’re not trying to counter the 100% argument with one example that refutes my point for all time
It is definitely NOT an encroachment. Pro-gun people see any restrictions or modifications as an encroachment. Take the example of Smith and Wesson, who worked with the government to add possible safety measures. Gun people called that some slippery slope infringement, but nothing about the 2nd Amendment says a gun manufacturer can’t make changes to how its own products are made. Its like people crying about censorship. Remember, the 2nd Amendment applies only to the government. If all gun manufacturers decided tomorrow for no reason to not make any more guns, that has zero impact on the 2nd Amendment at all. What you call encroachment should rightly be deride as paranoia. You have no right to have guns stay the way they are for any length of time. You have no reason to demand that there would be no safety measures, harder-to-pull triggers, extra weights, etc. on guns. That does not infringe on your right to own one. If all guns were crappy products and broke apart after 3 shots, that still doesn’t impact the 2nd Amendment. So call it what it is: a selfish desire amongst gun people to retain the lethality of their weapon to a degree in which they are comfortable with. Nothing in the 2nd Amendment says they can’t force guns to conform to certain standards of safety, nothing
And the weight thing was hyperbole.
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That seems like the only defensible point. If you don’t agree with how safe it would be, then suggest something safer. Politics may limit our hand, but we are well past the point where doing nothing is the preferred course of action. I asked in another thread about what you people would like to see to increase safety. That’s a non-loaded question. Just increase safety, what do you want? Or are you like Wayne LaPierre, who thinks that more guns equal more safety? If that’s your response, no wonder people don’t care for gun people’s opinions on this
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When we’re talking about manufacturer changes, then yes, its justifiable. There’s no impact on the 2nd Amendment, as I’ve demonstrated, so liberty is not an issue. As for convenience, we want to make it less convenient for people to use because as of right now, it is way too easy. Any small hindrance is justifiable. No, I suppose it doesn’t bolster my argument to tar the opposition as kid corpse lovers. So suggest something then, add to the conversation instead of trying to stop it
I think the well has been poisoned long ago by gun supporters, who, let’s face it, shout down any microscopic increase in regulations, or even voluntary changes to increase safety, as a slippery slope to Hitlerville
p
Loughner was using 30 rd magazines. Which caused a jam as they often do. So he wasn’t reloading, but trying to clear a malfunction. If he had been limited to highly reliable 10 rd magazines he would have been anticipating a magazine change and likely kept shooting until his supply was exhausted. Gabby Giffords ca likely credit high capacity magazine availability with her survival.
So your example
Emphasis added. You cannot keep using this as the standard response when people object to a ban. Damuri Ajashi has already given his suggestions, and so have others. I personally would support almost any gun control measure you can think of, except:
- Bans.
- Registration of individual firearms.
I believe a gun owner licensing, training, and liability/insurance scheme is the best approach.
I am a fan of these as well.
If the insurance company required serial numbers would you still be a fan? Some do and I have heard it described as ‘registration’.
It seems to me that if you’re touting the defect as a life-saving by-product, we should be making these into guns purposefully. To put it another way, if 10 round magazines don’t malfunction, and 30 rounds do, maybe we should make 10 rounders less reliable. Then again, you were going to say more, and before I
I have a problem when people refuse to discuss or entertain the idea of a type of ban because of some slippery slope argument. If that is not your intention, then I apologize for bringing it up. But for the much emphasized purpose of self-defense, certain guns are not necessary, or have functions too often not used for its intended purpose, and causes harm in great enough capacities that a ban should be considered. That’s why I support the AWB, however flawed, because such things fall under the criteria I’ve just mentioned.
I didn’t read every response in the thread, since there has been so many gun threads and they’ve been so long. Which post by Damuri Ajashi would you like me to respond to? Because the usual suspects are in these threads and more often than not I do not see people offering real solutions, that’s why I may have replies often with the bolded part of my quote. I’ll go on the record and say that LaPierre’s gunman’s paradise solution is simply a non-starter for me. I may like debate and have to do it sometime, but there is no reason to give every point equal play. LaPierre, and those like him, as we have seen in many conservative Republican topics in the past few years, have absolutely crazy ideas. Its just that with guns, I’m in the minority. If we were talking about teaching science in classrooms, nobody would listen to a guy wanting creationism to be taught side by side with evolution. You may object to the comparison, but to suggest more guns is to me such a laughable point that it deserves no consideration. If gun people want to offer solutions, then suggest something rational
As for your 2 pet peeves, I believe I’ve addressed point 1, but point 2 seems to me like paranoia. Nobody’s going to come take your guns away. Registration for an object that is so dangerous seems like a reasonable step to ownership, as long as we keep it from running afoul of the 2nd Amendment.
We have had an AWB before and the impact of the ban on gun violence was not measurable.
Of course it is. The question is whether or not that encroachment is permissible or not, it is obviously an encroachment YOU are willing to live with but your willingness to live with it is not the constitutional standard.
Try to analyze gun rights in the same way you might analyze free speech. You would (and should) regard ANY restriction on your right to free speech as an encroachment but some of those encroachments are permissible and some others are not.
And the first amendment allows me to boycott S&W (I didn’t just as much as it allows me to boycott Papa Johns (I do).
But when you talk about an AWB and magazine limits that are being imposed on manufacturer’s that IS government action.
You have to make the constitutional argument that it doesn’t unecessarily infringe on the second amendment. If they imposed a $350 safety feature to all guns, I bet it would be struck down as unconstitutional.
National gun registry
National gun licensing (which includes a background check) with renewals every couple of years.
As long as the manufacturers do it on their own without any coercion from the government, yeah, I got no problem with it. Some other manufacturer will come along and make what I want.
The people poisoning the well on my side of the argument are clearly fruitcakes and gun nuts. The people poisoning the well on your side of the argument are POTUS, the VP and a bunch of senators and congressmen.
And the gun supporters have become radicalized more in recent decades. It wasn’t that long ago that Wayne La Pierre advocated for background checks as a form of reasonable gun regulation. Now, he is paranoid and thinks that you’re coming to get his guns and when you try to take away his guns it kind of reinforces that paranoia.
I’m pretty sure you’re talking about the Aurora CO shooter. I think the Tuscon shooter fumbled his magazine and dropped it, which gave a 74 year old army veteran, Bill Badger (who had already been shot) and others the opportunity to tackle him.
The point is that it would be supremely ironic, and a perfect example of how even well-intentioned government interference can fuck things up, if a proposed magazine limit actually increased deaths in mass shootings, by forcing psychopaths (who would otherwise buy an unreliable 30-round magazine without knowing any better) to buy 3 reliable 10-round magazines instead and practice swapping them.
How many lives would an AWB have saved last year? I’ll say 50. How many people’s rights would an AWB have infringed last year? 300,000,000. How many of these people cared about those rights? Perhaps 100,000,000.
By comparison, how many lives would have been saved if the mental health system had stopped just the Aurora shooter and Sandy Hook shooter, to say nothing of hundreds of other small-time psychopaths? Around 50. How many people’s rights would be infringed by a better mental health / background check system? A lot less than 300,000,000.
My proposal is gun license along the same lines as a driver’s license. It should be illegal to possess or operate a gun without a license, and illegal to sell to someone who does not have a license. I think creating strict liability laws requiring insurance for gun owners would help as well - if assault weapons really are so ridiculously dangerous, their insurance rates should be sky-high as well. Of course, they’re not, and the rates would be affordable.
It is impossible for you to prove this. Gun confiscation has happened in other countries, like Britain, and there are plenty of people in the US who would welcome it. There are plenty of people on this board who happily proclaim that they could ban and confiscate all guns other than single-shot hunting rifles and not violate the 2nd Amendment. I am not interested in agreeing to anything that makes it easier for these people. I am willing to compromise on other matters, but not on that.
The frequent invocation of the near-sacred US constitution, by both left and right, is a bit much for me.
If you really believe the SCOTUS would strike down a $350 gun safety feature, then why waste the energy arguing against it? You should be glad to see your political opponents wasting their capital on a dead end.
In actuality, we don’t know what would happen, because it so depends on the composition of the Supreme Court, which in turn rests on the unpredictability of the human lifespan, and the unknowability of future election results. However, precedent I read is that the SCOTUS is OK with infringing on the right to keep and bear arms, they just have a problem with removing it completely.
Taking the second amendment literally stops the federal government from infringing on rights to nuclear weapons, much less automatic weapons. And yet, in many decisions, the Supremes have been OK with laws that regulate AKA infringe the right to keep and bear arms.
And also taking the constitution literally, the first amendment stops the federal government from passing laws respecting establishments of religion, such as Connecticut and Massachusetts had well into the nineteenth century (no synagogues allowed in CT until 1843). Did the 14th amendment thus do a 180 on the meaning of the first amendment, changing it from a protection of a state’s right to discriminate to its opposite? Not clearly, and certainly not on purpose. It’s all a matter of interpretation.
Britain’s Court of King’s Bench managed to strike down domestic slavery in 1772 without any written constitution. Freedom comes from the character of a people and its representatives, not from grandiloquent “parchment promises” (a phrase Madison once used to describe bills of rights).
Huh?
The 14th applied the federal bill of rights to the states. So pretty much. And yeah, it was on purpose.
Well, I don’t think so - a nuke isn’t an “arm” by any reading.
Still, your point is more explicitly mad in DC v. Heller:
I haven’t thought about insurance long and well enough but I don’t see what insurance does to reduce crime that licensing and registration doesn’t do.
Just an FYI, 30 round P-mags are incredibly reliable and with thousands of rounds fired and having gone through hundreds of 30 round magazines, I have never had a magazine feed malfunction. I think it is probably more likely that someone fumbles a magazine while trying to reload a magazine standing up.
I think there is “some” merit to the notion of lower capacity magazines but I have not heard a convincing argument yet. It might take a study or some research.
I don’t see why we need insurance. I’m not sure what it adds other than adding a cost to gun ownership.
because there are things I think would be useful and would work that I think would require significantly less political capital. I don’t want them blowing their wad on gun control instead of a bunch of other stuff where I think the political capital could be better spent.
Heller stands for more than that. Creating a $350 floor on the cost of owning a firearm can be a prohibitive regulation for a lot of people.
Its a good thing the courts have never done that with ANY of the rights. But they’ve always required a pretty good reason to infringe on that right.
Did, you know the very first case in modern history where a federal law was overturned despite reliance on the commerce clause was a gun case? It was a federal ban on carrying firearms within 100 yards of school property. They overturned that and it changed the landscape of constitutional law. until then it was thought the federal government could use the commerce clause to do whatever the fuck it wanted.
Umm the 14th amendment did almost exactly that. It applied all the amendments to the states, this was not previously the case.
Not so much about reducing crime as dealing with the costs of crime. I see liability insurance as providing two things.
- A way for society at large to recover some of the costs of gun violence and possibly reduce taxes. Various studies put the cost of gun crime at tens of billions of dollars per year, almost always paid for by general tax revenue. If an insured gun is used in a crime or causes an accident the insurance will help individuals and communities defray the cost.
- For example, if Mrs Lanza had carried insurance, the police in Newtown could recover some of the costs they incurred from her insurance rather then relying on general tax revenues.
- As an extra incentive for responsible ownership and transfer of firearms. Careless owners would doubtless pay higher rates.
- This could help reduce crime by encouraging legal sales.
All the usual caveats about criminals not following this apply.
For this to be true, the Republicans would have purposefully wanted to assure southern militia members the right to keep and bear arms. I’d like to see a cite for that. Or any contemporary statement about how the 14th amendment was going to prevent states from limiting gun rights. Or even a cite for a clear 1866-68 general statement about the Bill of Rights applying internally to every state.
Actually, the purpose of the 14th amendment was to nullify the Dred Scott decision and keep white southerners from reversing the results of the Civil War. And the federalization of the Bill of Rights was the result of a long series of rulings increasingly tending in that direction.