[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not a “kneejerk” or even slightly unusual thing for people to want to ban something that kills lots of people.
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Except that the reality is it doesn’t kill ‘lots of people’, depending on how you define ‘lots’. Incidents like the one that has sparked the anti-gun feeding frenzy we are currently suffering through kill less people than die from tooth pick ingestion each year. It’s spectacular and horrifying, but the numbers are tiny. So yeah…it IS a jerking of the knee. Par for the course.
Again, didn’t say that. You ARE on a roll tonight with the straw men though. But even if we include all deaths due to fire arms, it’s hardly going to be at the top of the slaughter list. Alcohol, for instance, kills many, many more people…as does tobacco (and that’s even with all of the attempts to use taxes and bannings to curtail it’s use). You can hand wave all of that away, no doubt, but the facts is the facts…and the facts are that even counting suicides (which would probably happen at a similar rate even if you banned all guns in the US…see Japan as an example), the death rate simply isn’t as high as you and others try and make it out to be, not in a country of over 300 million, with over 300 million guns and literally 10’s of millions of gun owners. But as soon as we start talking about guns, evil guns it’s like all of the analytical skills of people go right out the door, as is any semblance of an ability to look at real, actual risks. It’s sad that on a board dedicated to the fighting of ignorance that this gets handwaved away.
Which is pure mental masturbation for liberals. It won’t happen, and any serious attempt to make it happen will see the idiots who propose it voted out of office in record numbers.
You’re telling me that I can own a fully functionaly tank with live ordinance… and fire it? I can own a B-25 bomber with bombs in it… and fly it over things? I know what I’m asking Santa for.
Regardless, the list of no-nos is immaterial to my point; feel free to substitute something else that is functionally illegal and reply in those terms.
Which is pure mental masturbation for liberals.
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Were you under the impression that the SDMB is a policy making organization? Most everything in this forum is “mental masturbation”.
Seriously. The motto for this place should be something more like, “Bloviating on the internet because meatspace is bored with us.” And mental masturbation is no bad thing if you can maintain perspective.
Oh I didn’t say you could own the shells. that’s been a very unpopular option with the government. But you can install and fire fully automatic guns in your P-51 Mustang (but not while flying).
The problem with your argument is that you want the violence to go away which is what I want. As I’ve posted before, we could bring knives and guns to school when I was a kid and there weren’t any mass killings at schools. It’s not the gun or an absence of gun laws. We have more gun laws now then when I was young and the violence has increased.
If the goal is to reduce the killings then the change in society that drives people to commit such crimes needs to be addressed.
And of those who do: How did Ice-T put it? “I’ll give up mine when everybody else gives up theirs.”? Some people have guns to keep up with other people with guns.
I think a well-crafted program to dramatically slow the sale of new firearms, and to confiscate and destroy firearms used in crimes, could win support and work.
We can grandfather in your existing weapons so long as they are not resold nor used in a crime.
In fairness to me, I have to point out that my initial post did specifically and delberately qualify tank ownership in terms of shells because the gun aspect of the tank was of interest to me:
I’m not making an argument so much as I’m implying one. But I really do have a sincere desire to understand the extent to which the line between legal and illegal arms is arbitrary.
I agree completely. Though I may be somewhat unimaginative because I can’t really conceive of a satisfactory way to address the aspects of American culture that give rise to this foolishness directly. Well, no way that wouldn’t really upset people who already feel the government is too intrusive in our lives. That said, I think it’d be nice to raise the bar on who can and cannot own a gun considerably and also find some way to address secondary markets that allow people to buy essentially any weapon they can afford w/ no legal oversight whatsoever.
I don’t understand how people contort the 2nd Amendment to mean anything other than the right to bear arms. Any change to the 2nd Amendment should be done via ratification by Congress and the States. Congress should not have the authority to arbitrarily limit access to firearms; I’m puzzled how the Supreme Court allowed them to ban them in the first place. The 2nd Amendment can’t be any clearer and claims to its ambiguity must be attributed to bias or unfamiliarity with the English language. This is coming from someone who does not own a gun, will never own a gun (although a combat-ready flamethrower would be awesome).
Honesty
P.S. Though I shouldn’t make note of this observation, I feel it’s instructive for posterity: Isn’t it curious that when white people commit heinous crimes, there’s no talk of the involvement of white culture in producing it? I mean, look around, where are any cites of white gun ownership rates? Where’s the accusation that Adam Lanza was a gun-totting, uneducated, gun-shooting thug? Where are the blocks of blue-hyperlinked texts to pdfs of white single-parent household ratios stretching from Newtown, CT to Appalachia? Where is data on depression and mental illness rates in white suburbia? Nope, instead, you (general you) discuss what can be done to prevent it from occurring again. This is what should be done. Here’s hoping when the next Jena Six occurs, your (general your) collective memory will remember the productive fruit of discussion which have been beared from this thread.
In many (most?) other countries, those “minor, ancillary” uses of guns are the only legal reason to own them. The US is, I believe, largely unique in the English-speaking world for allowing people to readily have lots and lots of guns expressly for self-defence purposes.
The reason is that originally the Bill of rights was thought to only apply to the federal government. It wasn’t thought to apply to state Government. After the passage of the 14th amendment, the rights were gradually expanded to apply to the states. The 2nd Amendment wasn’t expanded to include states until the District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008.
It can be. I think it’s probably kneejerk that we have to take off our shoes in the airport because of one crazy dude with shoe bombs.
But that cuts the other way, too. After all, we have to take off our shoes in the airport because of one crazy dude with shoe bombs. That looks an awful lot like giving up a right so that people are or feel safer. Why is it okay in the case of airports and not okay in the case of guns, especially considering that you could argue people are assuming the risk when they fly more than a kid going to school is assuming the risk. (Counter, of course, is to say that you’re voluntarily giving up rights in order to fly, but I think that opens up a whole new can of worms about what it means to “volunteer” to give up rights. Maybe you “volunteer” to give up rights if you want to leave your house, etc.)
I’d say that the levels of security theater at airports and some federal buildings are very much not ok.
However, there is no constitutional right to board an airplane or enter a federal building without being subject to security screening. There is a constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
There’s a constitutional right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures without probable cause. You’re just arguing that they are waiving that right by boarding an airplane or by entering a federal building. Someone else could argue that you are waiving your right to bear arms by doing any number of things, maybe leaving your house. Maybe giving a funny look. Maybe having more than one gun.
You justify the burden on your rights based on what rights you consider to be more important and what goals you consider more worthy. Everyone does the same thing.
Good. You get partial credit for knowing that. The full credit response would include reference to the fact that security screening at airports and federal buildings is not considered an unreasonable search in the eyes of the law. To the contrary, it is considered quite reasonable, with some justification. I happen to think it is unnecessary and in many cases a royal pain in the ass, but it is clearly not a 4th Amendment violation.
One question for our gun-banning friends. I keep seeing the word “arsenal” being used to describe the number of guns owned by some private citizens.
How many guns is an “arsenal” in your estimation?
Or is it a dog-whistle, something like “high-powerd pistol” (what is a “low-powered” pistol, exactly, and how come they never get used in these things?) and “high capacity magazine” or “assault rifle” or “military-style” - in an effort to make guns and their owners sound even scarrrrier?