Are you saying that sales at gun shows between private parties are regulated in the same way that you describe above? If so, why the outrage at gun shows?
Doesn’t Switzerland, the country of neutrality, have a militia made up of all male citizens?
A very well trained militia, and a strict control of ammo.
It’s not a militia. It’s a conscript army. They do have a militia too but it doesn’t do anything.
Sort of akin to closing the gate after the horse has bolted, isn’t it?
Even if you amended tomorrow, laid down country wide restrictions, withdrew almost all carry permits, or outright banned guns or ammo, by the end of the week. I don’t think it’s really going to make a change for the foreseeable future.
Not only are there already a shit load of guns already out there, people have been allowed to acquire virtual arsenals for personal use. Much more importantly gun culture runs wide and deep through the American culture and psyche. It won’t be as simple as changing some words on paper.
The people who have armed themselves are the very ones least likely to surrender or abide by any restrictions. It’s all too easy to think that maybe this is how your great social experiment ends. That whole ‘cold dead hands’ mentality, doused in blind patriotism and all set aflame by the craven polarization experienced, (nay perfected, for profit mind you!), over the last couple of decades seem to have brought you to a place where no compromise is ever possible, between the drawn sides.
Part of me thinks people who have guns want to use them, and will, when they feel threatened. And they already feel threatened. In their eyes their very way of life, marriage, fetus’, Christmas, Christianity, are all being actively attacked.
I’m just saying, even with a compromiser in the White House, you still got nothing happening on things as important as the fiscal cliff. The right might soon feel justified in pulling out it’s guns to start fighting for it’s life like a treed animal. It could get real ugly.
Your cousins to the north weep to see this horror afflict you.
You don’t seem to know much about handguns, do you?
Can you give me an example – in your mind – of a normal handgun?
In 1791, “The Press,” was not distributed to millions electronically at the touch of a few buttons.
Is that also up for discussion?
Informative and pretty at the same time - in case you miss it, there’s also a drop down at top left:
Sure, it’s up for discussion. If you want to argue that the Constitution needs to be amended so that freedom of the press is defined as only covering the written word, have at it. (Although to be polite, you should start a separate thread for that discussion.) One thing I think the authors of the Constitution were quite clear on was that they expected future generations to update the Constitution.
Personally, I’d counter-argue that the changes in firearm technology is not equivalent to the changes in media technology. While television, radio, and the internet have greatly changed the reach of the “press” I don’t feel they’ve changed its fundamental function from what the press did in the eighteenth century. But I don’t think a fire-arm in 2012 has the same meaning that it did in 1789 - I feel that fire-arms technology has changed so radically that the fundamental function of fire-arms is no longer the same as it was when the Second Amendment was enacted and that the Second Amendment should be repealed to reflect this change.
Yes, just like drugs.
Oh, wait.
I hate this argument. You can grow drugs in your backyard, in your garage, hell, in your bedroom closet. It’s much, much harder to manufacture firearms–and doing so on a huge scale is really hard to hide.
I really hope the Democratic Party runs on this in the next election. They’ll be voted out in record numbers, gridlock in Washington will be over, debt reduction/tax reform will go forward, and liberals won’t be in power for another 30 years. Maybe longer.
One well placed bullet would have ended that shooters rampage at the school. Security guards are becoming more common at schools. I wish that school would have had them.
Taking away guns doesn’t stop highly disturbed people. China had 22 kids injured yesterday by a sicko attacking a school using a knife. Disturbed people will find some weapon even if it is just a tree branch.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/man-attacks-22-kids-knife-china-school-article-1.1220230
An interesting quote from an op-ed in the NYT: “Every country has a sizable contingent of mentally ill citizens. We’re the one that gives them the technological power to play god.”
The worst mass murder committed in the United States was the Happyland social Club where 87 people were murdered. He used a container he found on the street, which he filled with gasoline.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Land_fire
You don’t need sophisticated weapons if you want to kill a lot people.
There is no real reason to change the second amendment, people saying that are ignorant of the constitutional situation and are blaming an intractable political/cultural problem on a legal document.
We could adopt the exact same gun control laws as Germany, or even the United Kingdom and it would not run afoul of the Second Amendment. Heller just said there is an individual right to gun ownership and we can’t prohibit it with blanket bans, it did not say you couldn’t regulate gun ownership. In fact it specifically said it wasn’t saying you couldn’t regulate gun ownership.
Now, if we actually adopted say, United Kingdom style gun laws which very tightly control gun ownership I can’t predict how a court would rule. But there is no compelling precedent that strict regulations are unconstitutional, only that blanket bans are.
There is no evidence control such a degree is materially beneficial over more reasonable gun control. Germany, Norway, United Kingdom, Canada etc all have very, very low gun homicide rates and allow reasonable gun ownership (I’d argue the UK isn’t quite reasonable, but more reasonable than complete bans.) Really in the Western world I do not know of any country that has a complete ban. Most complete ban countries are dictatorships or in Asia.
I don’t know fuck all about guns, and I have no urge to. What I know is that legally obtained guns can hold too many bullets and fire them too quickly.
Is there a way that (legal) guns can be limited to six bullets, require a skilled artisan one minute to reload an additional six bullets, and a skilled artisan can fire those bullets at no more than one per ten seconds? Anything more than that becomes illegal. Let’s start there.
What percent of cocaine sold in the US is grown in someone’s backyard in the US?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but mass killings like this happen in much of the Western World, no? The unique thing about the US is killings in street fights or other type of “one-on-one” violence where the victim and killer often know each other.
Only if you have a time machine, magic powerful enough to change the laws of physics, and a nation of idiots to vote you into power.
Fortunately, none of those things exist, and the Second Amendment does. So your radical agenda is largely an exercise in pissing in the wind.