By the way, I’ll remind you that I did not support the AWB so any attempt to find deficiencies in my own expertise will reveal nothing about supporters of the ban.
- Exactly.* “Someone you know” includes fellow gang members, and even members of another gang that aren’t strangers to you. Around here, gang killings are by far the #1 souce for murder. And they count as “someone you know”. Thus, here in the Bay area, since 80% + of the killings so far have been gang-related- they would likely all be counted as 'someone you know". :rolleyes:
Murder is- by a large majority of %- commited against someone you know. I’ll point out that even perfectly legit home defence situations- such as when the "someone you know is a drug dealer that hangs out regularly in your ally, or the teen crackhead son of the famlily across the block, or the registerd sex offender living in the cheap hotel on the corner- even if you shot one of them in a completely legit home defense situation, it’d “be someone you know”. :rolleyes:
They really weren’t talking about your immediate family. You are far more likely to 'scare off" a bad guy that you are to shoot your wife or kids. Setting aside two classes: stupid people with unsecured firearms in houses with small children, and suicides- a “home defense gun” is very safe in the hands of your average law abiding citizen with at least minimal training.
Personally, I don’t think suicides should count as “crime statitics” for this purpose.
Suicides aren’t being counted as crimes in these statistics, they’re only being counted as injuries.
Cite? Evidence? Proof?
Well, “creepy” is obviously fairly subjective, but are you denying that (a) there is a gun culture, and (b) it’s somewhat fetishistic? Your comparison will be apt the day that someone organizes the first “abortion convention” in which people come from all over the countries, with aborted fetuses in little racks in their trucks and bumper stickers saying “doctors don’t kill fetuses, I kill fetuses” and hear rousing speeches about how you can take my cold dead partial-birth-aborted-fetus from me when you pry it out of my cold dead hands.
(a) so do you agree with the supreme court’s decision?
(b) this definition still strikes me as utterly vague. So if, due to technological advances, the national guard’s standard issue personal weapon in the year 2020 is a gun with a fully automatic setting, or, heck, a phased plasma rifle in the 30 watt range, does that automatically mean that that is now a “individual weapon carried by the militia”? And can’t all the arguments that people make about wanting to own guns because they’re fun to shoot recreationally also apply just as well to things which presumably are NOT legal, such as machine guns and bazookas?
They could, but the thing is this: those weapons have been banned/controlled since 1934. There is no institutional memory of ever being able to possess those weapons with impunity. Since they’re long gone it’s as if they never existed, although a select few with a lot of ducats can get an automatic weapon if they’re willing to jump through the myriad of hoops to get it. But nobody’s rattling sabers about it because you can get one if you so choose and anyone who lost their rights over that law is either dead or on their way.
Compare that to today, where one day an AR-15 is legal, the next day it’s banned, but you can still get a .223 Remington semi-automatic that doesn’t look ugly. It’s the equivalent of allowing someone to buy a Buick Rendezvous but not a Pontiac Aztek because one is hideous, even though they are mechanically exactly the same. Like I said before, nobody really thought it would stop at appearance and minor functionality quirks. There was an attempt to ban centerfire ammunition a few years ago as it was “armor piercing”. All we saw was attack after attack with no end. Then, suddenly, it ended. Inexplicably. So now we’re wary. We’ve seen the way down the path and we don’t want to go that way.
First of all, it’s NOT a strawman, at least not in the context I brought it up. A strawman would be “hey, some of those pro-gun arguments could also be used to support private ownership of nukes. Why, the pro-gun crowd must support private ownership of nukes! Those nutcases!!! Let’s point out how silly a position that is and feel superior…”. What I was saying is “some of those pro-gun arguments could also be used to support private ownership of nukes, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what you actually believe, so please explain to me what the difference is, and how it is that your arguments don’t, in fact, support private nukes”. See the difference?
In any case, a lot of the arguments people have made in, for instance, the discussion of those big .50 calibre rifles could also be applied to (to be a bit more down to earth than nukes) private ownership of tanks with live cannons. So presumably someone who makes such an argument either (a) supports private ownership of tanks with live cannons, or (b) can explain to me where the line between .50 calibre rifles and tanks should be drawn, and why. And if the line is basically somewhat arbitrary (ie, “we know a crew serviced non-individual weapon when we see one”), then there’s no particular reason why, say, .50 calibre rifles shouldn’t fall on the other side of that line.
So your objection is not based on the rightness or wrongness of the plan, but the implications of the plan in the current political climate? (Not that that isn’t necessarily a valid position…) If you had 100% assurance that there was no slippery slope or any sort involved, what would your opinion be?
What about making such classes (or demonstration of pre-existing knowledge and proficiency) mandatory for gun ownership?
I’m glad to see that you’re not reflexively toeing the NRA party line. Why, it’s almost as if not everyone who is pro-gun is a rabid foaming at the mouth AK-toting nutcase. No, wait, that can’t be right…
Reading this thread does not seem to support that assertion.
(a) why can you not support a national registry?
(b) even ignoring that, there are a few ways around this apparent dilemma:
(1) Accept that the situation is a bit stupid, but decide that it’s worth it
(2) If you show up at a gun shop with a gun and a receipt and a license, then you can buy another gun, but no national registry is involved
(3) There’s a voluntary national registry. If you think you’re going to be buying guns every month, then register yourself so you can buy more guns quickly. If you want to own your gun without anyone having a record of it, you can do that too.
I’m so insitent on this issue because it’s one of the few parts of this whole topic where the Right Answer actually seems somewhat obvious to me. The upsides of such a law seem, to me, to drastically outweigh the downsides…
Or you could get a Concealed Carry Permit (assuming the state you live in allows them).
They already tried that, it was a disaster.
It doesn’t say it at all. It has never been the “policy or intent” in the US to say the government can do whatever it wants to unless specifically forbidden. The underlying “philosophy” has been that to restrict or control something, there must be a valid reason, and a law.
Otherwise, Uncle Sam could do anything to anyone and simply say no laws forbid it. And I think it is covered in the Fourth, and maybe the Fifth.
Anyway, I’m glad the sun has set on this useless “feel good” law.
Why can I not support a national firearms registry? Short version: Too costly to achieve too little in the way of benefits to the public. Long version: Read the thread I linked previously. A registry provides no benefit that isn’t there through current law. Currently law forbids the federal government from maintaining a permanent national registry of guns and/or gun owners. Currentl law does, however, mandate that a licensed firearm dealer maintain in perpetuity a record of all guns bought and sold as well as from/where they went. These records have to be made available to the authorities by court order.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb...ead.php?t=54764
Your option 2 is something I’ll have to give some more thought to. On the surface, I’m not opposed outright. I would like to know what you mean by “license” though. If you’re speaking of a state issued identification card, such as a driver’s license that’s one thing. But if you’re speaking of a federal gun owners id card, that’s an animal of entirely different stripe.
Your option 3 seems, well, kinda weird. If it’s okay to sell guns to people who’ve, in effect said, “I want my gun now,” what’s the advantage of making others wait? The background check required of every gun transaction that goes through a FFL holder (and many that are sold at gun shows) is nearly instantaneous. I guess maybe I just don’t understand what a waiting period, however implemented, is supposed to accomplish. If it’s a “cooling off” period, to prevent so-called crimes of passion, what does a few days accomplish that the couple hours to run down to the gun shop and make a purchase won’t?
I know that and it was ludicrous to believe it would have ever worked so proposing that amendment was an act of consumate irrationality. That was my point; to underscore the fact that we cannot expect laws to passed with rational—and sober, heh—judgment. I was being cynical.
Well, first of all, maybe it’s not that hard for someone who has tools and knows how to use them. I’m pretty sure that building anything more complicated than a potato gun would defeat me and my non-handy-ness.
But, to me, the question is a three-fold weighing of:
(a) how many people can you randomly kill
(b) how hard is it to randomly kill that many people
(c) how many non-random-killing-related uses does this item have
So, for instance, a grenade can kill a lot of guys, with very little work, and has almost no other uses. So grenades are definitely right out. But all the materials and tools necessary to BUILD a grenade can still kill a lot of guys, but only after a lot of work and with a lot of tools, and those tools and materials have many other uses and applications.
So I think there’s a big, relevant difference.
Note that I’m not arguing that the AWB was in any way a good law. I’m just trying to explore and discuss the theoretical underpinnings of this whole situation.
As for the things that have been banned/controlled since 1934, do you think that whatever law it was that was passed in 1934 is correct? If your argument is that it’s OK to ban bazookas because they’re already banned, well, isn’t that a bit circular?
Honestly, I have no desire to get into precise debates about precise points of two hypothetical ideas that I randomly tossed into the ring. The point was not “ooh, these are flawless ideas”. The point was to respond to your claim that a waiting period could not possibly work by pointing out that there are various ways around it. (If you DO want to actually debate the precise merits of any of those suggested ideas, I’d be happy to do so, but I hope you can see where I’m coming from… the point is just that avenues of potential solution do, in fact, exist.)
Just from my naive reading of human nature, it seems to me that the kind of white hot fury that would cause someone to (to use the canonical example) kill their wife after catching her in bed with another man might well last a few hours, certainly long enough to drive to gun store and buy a gun, but not a week. I may well be wrong about that, and could be convinced if someone shows me actual research into the issue.
However, it DEFINITELY seems to me that none of the various legitimate uses of firearms are particularly hampered by a waiting period. You like hunting? Fine, you have plenty of notice. You like target-shooting? Fine, you have plenty of notice. The only exception might be a situation where you suddenly need to buy a gun for self defense due to threatening phone calls (or something), in which case it seems the police ought to be involved, etc.
Okay. That seems a fair enough position to take for a lousy Pit thread. I’ll agree to table the discussion on the nuances of your ideas until a more appropriate time.
I guess . . . but to it doesn’t seem to me like many crimes are particularly hampered, or defeated, by implementation of a waiting period. In your example (which I take to be representative of an entire class of passion crime) of a guy who kills his wife because he’s found her in bed with another guy, if the guy is enraged enough to kill, it would seem more likely that he’s gonna use, or try to use, whatever is immediately at hand. But, like you, I don’t have anything other than a gut feeling to support that. Dunno.
I was agreeing with you. Politicians sway with the breeze of “expediency”, in the hope of pleasing some nameless constituent or patron. It has nothing to do with common sense or right headed clarity of thinking.
Gotcha, Steve.
I wish we had some good research on this topic. But I’d speculate that attempted murders with knives probably kill the intended victim less often than attempted murders with guns. If nothing else, it takes a lot more rage to continue to stab someone at close range, seeing the blood and all, than it does to point a gun and pull a trigger.
(The real question, of course, is how the Candlestick compares to the Lead Pipe.)