Are you speaking for yourself? You’re obviously not speaking for the millions of firearms owners and “2nd Amendment is an individual right” supporters. Who are you speaking for? Bloomberg? Pelosi? Boxer? Biden? Reid? Durbin? The DNC?
No, I think piles of dead kids are an element in the pro-regulation philosophy. The presumption that tighter gun regulations lead to less gun violence may be a tad shaky with numerous qualifiers, but it’s not the wholly arbitrary thought process you suggest nor do I think it fair to assume that someone who thinks guns should be regulated (or even banned) does so just because they hate guns or gun owners.
I’m sure you can find some extremists who just say “Ban guns!” over and over, or who assume that all gun owners are wannabe survivalists or whatever. In fairness, I’ve ridiculed the opposite stereotype (“I need my guns to fight off tyranny!”) in this thread several times. I still recognize the existence of hunters and people with legitimate concerns about personal safety, though.
Well, damn, in that case I’d better go out and buy a second or even third car, as no doubt Obama and his gestapo will be on knocking on my door any second, trying to take my car away from me.
But you don’t seem to believe the answers.
I’m not an American, the issue is largely of academic interest for me. Relatively speaking, Canada is more “utopic” than the U.S. because we have a lot less gun violence and yet have as much or more freedom. What we don’t have is casual access to concealed-carry permits (they exist, but are very rare) and yet gun violence (and violence in general) remains unusual. I live in a city with a population a little smaller than Houston’s and slightly higher than Philadelphia’s, but I’ll gladly match Montreal’s violent-crime stats against either. Possibly we have more stolen cars…
That said, I’ve no problem recognizing that our long gun registry (and your “assault weapon” ban) were complete wastes of time and resources that should have been spent hiring, training and equipping cops.
Cruikshank and Miller were decisions related to the 2nd Amendment (as is Heller) is all, the point being that the application of the 2nd is not simply a matter of reading the text of the 2nd, but also referring to SCOTUS rulings that are subject to later revision. Heller is no exception - the issues can (almost certainly will) be revisited and the benchmarks altered. I’m not holding my breath, of course - it may take a few decades. Possibly a case will come about stemming from someone using a 3D printer to make his own gun, of a quality level indistinguishable from current factory production.
Truth be told, I’m pretty satisfied with the current state of Canadian gun regulation. There’s very little violence in my city, and I could get a rifle or shotgun if I wanted one without too much trouble, and a handgun (with a little bit of trouble). I couldn’t get (or I’m just extremely unlikely to get) a CCW, but I don’t see why I’d need one since I don’t live in fear of being assaulted.
The long-gun registry annoyed me for doing very little (that I could see) to reduce crime while being an absurdly expensive boondoggle. I’d rather that money, if it had to be spent, be spent on improving the RCMP and the provincial and municipal police forces.
None of the above. Nor are you speaking for them by saying “registration is the first step to confiscation,” an idea that only exists in your paranoid fantasies.
Nobody’s coming for your guns. I hope this comforts rather than disappoints you.
There is a big difference between licensing/registration and banning/confiscation.
We’ve had a registry for machine guns for 80+ years. Why haven’t we confiscated guns that even gun groups don’t rush to protect?
I don’t think that this country confiscates guns at the national level EVAH!!!
The fact that California confiscated guns when the attorney general was running for governor isn’t very relevant to national politics. I would rather have a national gun registration and licensing regime that superceded all state and local laws than have the largest state in the country subject to these ridiculous gun laws while other states have such lax gun laws that criminals experience almost no impediment to acquiring guns.
So you don’t think that gun registration does any good? Or do you think that handgun registration can be useful?
And what if you were poor and lived in a neighborhood where you did live in fear of crime?
If you could only register one thing, it would be handguns but the pro-lifers won’t give up dreams of banning all guns so they never strive for the achievable.
It has happened many times throughout history and a couple of times here in the USA, never at the federal level though. And there are plenty of cases here in the US where long standing registries did NOT lead to confiscation.
It depnds on where he lives. If he’s living in California, they might be coming for his guns one day unless we can get national gun laws that supercede state and local laws.
Yeah. So?
Handgun regulation is useful, or at least the relatively low number of crimes in Canada involving handguns suggests so. Long-gun registration doesn’t strikes me as all that useful for preventing crime, since long guns are rarely used in crimes, even less so than handguns. More specifically, spending $1 billion (not an exaggeration) to register long guns is a waste since even if it worked with 100% efficiency, spending that money instead on general policing would have a greater effect in reducing overall crime.
Personally, I’m okay with fairly minimal regulation of long guns, while maintaining fairly strict regulation on handguns.
Okay, if things were different, they wouldn’t be the same. Let’s assume I lived in Prince George, BC, arguably the most violent per-capita city in Canada, and thus had a different view about the likelihood of being a victim of crime. Suppose you lived in Montreal where the chances of being the victim of violence were fairly minor and your attitude was different as a result?
Well, I was kidding about the “pro-lifer” label, but if you’d rather debate strawmen than me, be my guest.
Hahahaha. You’re aware that California confiscated guns. California confiscated the guns that California had previously forced the owners to register. Registration was the first step to those confiscations.
This country doesn’t have a national registration but it wasn’t for a lack of trying. The voters, from all walks of life and political persuasion, have a tendency to unelect those politicians who reject the idea that people shouldn’t be allowed to defend themselves from criminal intruders and that the 2nd isn’t an individual right. The recent recalls in Colorado resulted to two fewer Democrats in the State Legislature (almost three but the last one resigned in order to allow for a Democrat replacement appointment). The Colorado recalls also seems to have had an effect on California Governor Moonbeam Brown, who subsequently vetoed many of the anti-2nd bills just passed by the State legislature.
You could probably purchase a machine gun (assuming you’re not a felon or looney) and can afford the $200 fee for yourself and the $200 per each machine gun plus the $45,000+ cost of the firearm and agree to submit to an annual, unannounced inspection by the BATFE. (Alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and explosives. Did anyone bring sandwiches?)
doorhinge, do you think felons or the mentally ill should be allowed to possess firearms?
Felons gave up many of their individual rights when they became felons. No firearms for them unless they apply to the State to reinstate their rights.
Generally-speaking, the mentally ill have their own problems. They might not know right from wrong or suffer from delusions or vote Democrat (just kidding 
). Society decided that certain individuals (it’s always on an individual basis) need to be protected from society and society from them. No firearms for them unless they have received a clean bill of normalcy from a medical professional.
You should stop trying to be funny.
And also serious.
Okay. We broadly agree. Do you think then that felons and mentally ill people should have any firearms they have taken away?
As I stated above, “No firearms for them unless…”. I should probably add -dangerous chemicals, rope, cars (as the driver), airplanes (as the pilot), and knives to the list. I believe their rights should be restored, on an individual basis, if they can prove to the State that they are no longer a danger to themselves or society.
So, the original post was mostly about banning/confiscation wasn’t it? You can make an argument (and i have) that licensing and registration will reduce gun murders because it will dry up the pipeline of guns into criminal hands. You can’t make the argument that banning some subset of guns (like the retarded assault weapons ban) will have any noticable effect on guns. You will have a very tough time making the argument that taking guns only from the law abiding citizens (while leaving them in the hands of criminals) will have a net positive effect.
Unless you have the magical ability to make all the guns disappear, outlawing them will leave guns in the hands of criminals while leaving regular folks unarmed.
The pro-lifer approach seem to think either that their gun bans will magical ability to make all guns dissappea,; or that the guns will wear out (or something) in a reasonable period of time (a gun can shoot thousands of rounds before you have to replace some of the springs and tens of thousands of rounds before you start to lose longer range accuracy, my friend collects guns from WWI and WWII that are still working just fine).
I could be convinced to limit registration to handguns but for the fact that we have so many handguns in this country that I’m not sure how much money wwe would save by limiting registration to handguns. BUT, I could be convinced that a handgun only registry would eb a bettetr alternative to a general firearm registry. I would still want universal licensing, federal preemption of all state and local firearm laws, amending or getting rid of the NFA (I would get rid of all restrictions on anything other than machine guns (and maybe “other firearms”), I would reopen the machine gun registry, start selling surplus M-16s, and maybe increase the MFA tax for machine guns.
Many pro-gun states recognize that handguns are different than rifles and will allow an 18 year old to buy an “assault weapon” but require you to be 21 to buy a handgun. I think a registry of handguns doesn’t really infringe on the whole defense against tyranny argument because as marginal a weapon a rifle would be against tyranny, a handgun is virtually worthless.
I’m just saying that crime is not some remote risk for a lot of people.
Why is it a strawman? I asked what you want to be called (I still refer to pro-gun type people as gun nuts and they don’t seem to mind, why is gun grabber so much more offensive?) and pro-lifer is a good a designation as any. Is there some other descriptor you think would be more accurate to describe the people who want to reduce or eliminate gun rights?
Help, help. I’m being repressed.
- Monty Python
I didn’t even try to argue the assault weapons ban had a noticeable effect. Instead, I described it as a “waste of time”. But I gather you’re highlighting the distinction between:
-licensing/registration, which slows or stops people from getting guns, and
-confiscation, in which guns that were once legally possessed are taken away.
My “Yeah. So?” was in response to the rather obvious claim that these are distinct actions. Yeah, they are. So?
I have no doubts that significantly reducing the number of privately-owned firearms in the United States (assuming that was the goal) is a generation-long (or several generations-long) process.
Thing is, you’re not telling me anything that I don’t already know, isn’t already obvious, or I couldn’t readily learn with a few minutes’ googling.
And I have no specific objection to a personal defense argument (and have said so). It was the “defense against tyranny” concept I was specifically mocking and dismissing. I personally figure better policing is more useful at reducing crime than armed citizens, but in any event a Canadian homeowner can get a gun for home defense - the Canadian is just highly unlikely to get the equivalent of a concealed-carry permit for personal defense when not at home, and overall this has not been a major problem - sure, Canadians do get killed, raped and robbed, but concealed-carry doesn’t seem to be a solution, if the American example is any guide.
Well, for me personally, I like to be called “Bryan” or “Bryan Ekers”. I dislike the term “gun grabber” (and I’m not too fond of “gun nut”, unless the person has shown some actual fanaticism) if it’s meant to imply someone who wants to restrict or confiscate guns just for the sake of restricting or confiscating guns, while ignoring very legitimate concerns about crime and violence.
But labels… whatever. Use any term you want. I just won’t respond to someone who insists on calling me a “gun grabber” and uses that label as a premise, i.e. “so you want registration? Then you’re a gun grabber, and gun grabbers always want to take away guns, because gun grabbers secretly want the government to control everything” etc. It’s like arguing with a child.
Well, I offer up a challenge for you to make your next post in this thread a dead-serious, thoughtful, intelligent effort. If you can’t or won’t, then… bye.