What is 'Common Sense' or 'Reasonable' Gun Control?

Great Debates
41

I’d love to see some data too. I was intentionally squishy, but I’d be willing to bet that most or nearly most firearms homicides (for instance) are committed with legally owned guns. Crimes of passion, killers know their victims, etc.

Amend that to state that even one net firearm death prevented is worth it, and I think you have an unassailable argument. The tough question, of course, is whether the restriction saves more lives than it loses. You know, balancing tests and all that.

With regulations that are pretty much analogous to the ones I posted above. You know, licensing, registration, strict safety regulations, etc. See RTFirefly’s excellent post above refuting the cars:guns analogy.

That’s why you’re my favorite pro-gun poster. :slight_smile:

Deterrent plus incarceration, of course. I actually think incarceration is rather more important than deterrent. I am decidedly not the sort of soft-on-crime gun-hater who haunts the nightmares of Mr. Heston.

Another analogy that doesn’t work so well, IMHO, in that (a) guns are much harder to manufacture and smuggle than drugs, (b) guns are not addictive in any sense of the word that makes a lick of sense, and (c) drug and alcohol prohibition clearly reduces (but obviously does not eliminate) drug and alcohol consumption. Prohibition had a profound effect on alcohol consumption, cutting it roughly in half, IIRC. A 50% decline in gun crime would be out-freakin’-standing.

I am indeed a lawyer. And I’m far less concerned with the criminal mind-set than I am with crime prevention and crime solving. Bad guys are far less likely to commit serious crimes if they’re not armed with guns.

Sure. Increased prices mean decreased purchases. I have no problem with that.

RiboFlavin: I didn’t know that post-1986 machine guns were illegal per se. Hopefully, my posts made it clear that I was referring to the general licensing and taxation requirements for a federal machine gun license, not the arbitrary expiration date provision.

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You avoided the question. What are the mechanisms?

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Which, of course, assumes that no democratic republic that provides due process of law and legal protections for matters of individual conscience can ever devolve into something more tyranical. End stop.

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You probably don’t have the education on this subject to form a proper military mindset.

We have millions of hunters in this country who own very accurate, scoped, powerful hunting weapons. They also own camoflague matching their native regions, an intimate knowledge of their home areas, and a multitude of woodland skills. A small percentage of the US military is actually fieldable in combat. Let’s say they can scrape up 500,000 soldiers for actual combat… spread over the entire U.S.

The force, assuming civil unrest, would be spread very thin to queel any uprisings. If the hunter-snipers started hitting the enemy at extended ranges and running, they’d likely not be found. And if this happened regularly, you’d start chipping away at the structure of this already thin-stretched army.

In the cities, civil unrest due to an occupying army would quite potentially incite local retaliation. The fighters would live among the supportive populace, and blend in.

“But the military has lots of high tech weapons!” you’ll say. So what? Are you going to nuke detroit? Carpet bomb L.A.? Run over houses with tanks? Well, have fun… you’ll just recruit more enemies.

This assumes, of course, that every member of the military and national guard commits treason and decides to fight it’s citizens, which is unlikely.

Millions (and maybe tens of millions) of gun owners, supported by the general population, against a relatively tiny army who can’t use their high tech equipment will result in atrocious loss rates for said army.

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I like how you completely ignored the question preceeding it.

So you’re equating gun ownership to yelling fire?
To follow that analogy, your posession of a tongue is a crime.

Your statement could analgously read:

“You have a right to bear arms. Now go murder someone and see what happens.”

Owning a gun = having a tongue.
Yelling fire = commiting murder.

In both cases, it’s not the freedom that’s being pre-emptively taken away (prior restraint), but someone being punished for commiting a crime.

If you truly believe that simply OWNING a gun is a criminal, malicious act, akin to yelling in a crowded theater, you have some issues.

43

The question was stupid. The answer was implicit in my example: hold a constitutional convention. States do it every once in a while to create new constitutions, and there’s nothing in the world to prevent one from happening at teh federal level.

I assume no such thing (though the possibility is highly remote, IMHO). Rather, it simply makes the twin judgments that your Rambo militia fantasies are an absolute, utter crock and that the actual power of democratic action is far greater than any phantasm of dictatorial tyrrany you can imagine.

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Oh no, wevets, I’m not pissed at your post, and I congratulate you on actually reading some of the NRA stuff. I have a hard time with broad generalizations made about the NRA when that information is provided by CBS, NBC et al., or from one of the Brady bunch.

And hey, youse guys and gals, get back to the OP already. All that other crap has flogged that donkey into atoms…

45

Oh, and it makes the further judgment that the actual, quantifiable costs of essentially unrestricted gun ownership are far greater than the speculative, de minimis benefits of preventing tyrrany–especially when one considers that the Evil Tyrranical Dictatorship is at least as likely to be installed by armed civilians as it is to be prevented by armed civilians. And I’m not even talking about any significant restriction on the deer rifles your fantasy depends on, either, so relax already.

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What is this fantasy world you are living in? First of all, the situation you describe could only be the result of the following:

  1. A foreign power invades the US and defeats our military - Unlikely however such a foreign power would not care about razing cities and killing civilians. In any event, if a modern professional army couldn’t stop them, what makes you think a bunch of hunters could?

  2. A civil war - Once again, more likely to involve state National Guard units and the US Military. Not yahoos with hunting rifles.

  3. A complete collapse of the US government - No more law and order. Now you may turn to your personal weapons stash since the country has now become just like Afghanistan, Somalia, or Bosnia.

I have more to say on this, but I have to go to lunch now

47

What do you think the ‘general licensing and taxation’ requirements for MGs are? I have no idea what sort of scheme you’re proposing, because you’re saying that you didn’t even know about one (possibly two, you didn’t mention the import ban) of the 3 major federal restrictions on MG ownership. The NFA requires that you pay a $200 tax and fill out a registration form for a machine gun (or other NFA weapon), and the BATF requires a signature from the local CLEO on a form before they will accept the tax. There isn’t the ‘licensing’ requirement that I think you think there is; if you can legally buy a gun, get the signature, and the $200, you can get the MG.

48

You left out the FBI fingerprinting part, etc., that entails purchasing an MG IAW the NFA.

49

My recollection is that one must also hold a federal firearms dealer license to own a machine gun. It’s been a while since I looked at the statute. Is my recollection mistaken?

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NFA at the BATF.

51

And I’m simply asking you to tell me what those guns are - I haven’t argued with ‘no purpose’ comments or anything of the sort, I’ve simply asked you for what objective criteria you would use to decide which ones would be banned. You talked about how high powered rounds can penetrate bulletproof vests in the discussion on ‘military’ weapons; I pointed out that ‘bolt acrion hunting rifles’ do that better than a number of military arms.

And it’s really asinine for you to make comments like ‘don’t be thick’ when you’re the one making factual errors and refusing to answer even the most basic questions about your position - you still haven’t said whether ‘military weapons’ as you use the includes the AR-15 (one of the main items in ‘assault weapon’ laws, but not fully automatic and not AFAIK used by the military). If you think I’m being too nitpicky, remember that it’s ‘common sense’ gun control laws that make it so that if I were to put a stock with a pistol grip on my Garand, I might or might not be commiting a felony by making an ‘assault weapon’ depending on whether the court uses the technically correct or the common definition of ‘detachable magazine’.

52

assault rifle : any of various automatic or semiautomatic rifles designed for military use with large capacity magazines

Looks pretty wide-open to me, but it certainly applies to the M-16, AK-47, Uzi, and all their variants. I am not familiar with the AR-15 specifically, but its manufacturer advertises that it is “Fully interchangeable with GI mil-spec parts” and notes its “Standard mil-spec A2 sight system.” That strongly implies it is “designed for military use,” regardless of whether any military actually uses it.

Or, more sensibly, we could just recognize that these things fall along a continuum, and do our best to regulate accordingly. If a line must be drawn, it is not an argument against the existence of the line to state that some things on one side closely resemble some things on the other side. That’s just an argument for drawing the line elsewhere.

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** You consider that a ‘revolution’?

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Are you trying to say, in school textbook style, that obviously rebellion is bad because the Child Raping Confederates tried to break off on their own?

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An overbearing sufficiently tyranical that it inspires a general uprising in the population.

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Nice, the insult was subtle.
I disagree. See my previous post.

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No. Somalia has been in a constant state of civil war, and clearly is not an example of that. Afghanistan was also partially in a state of tribal warfare.

What’s your point in asking? Are you suggesting that civilian gun ownership leads to anarchy?

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You were saying they’d have the law on their side. I think that if they were so clearly tyranical that they inspired a general uprising, the laws they made would clearly be unConstitutional, and therefore void.

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I’m not being “thick”.

You were trying to do 1 of 2 things (or both):

Scare people about ‘assault weapons’, conveying the idea that they’re powerful enough to rip apart bulletproof vests and suggestion other weapons aren’t.

Suggesting that the ability to penetrate a bullet proofvest is relevant in judging whether a weapon should be banned, but then completely ignoring the fact that most “PC” weapons are far more capable than the “ugly” weapons of penetrating vests.

Either way, you’re being dishonest. I’m pointing that out.

I think that defending yourself and your family is a right. Is there some artificial force restricting that to fists, or harsh words? One has the right to defend himself and his family with the best tool available.

54

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This dictionary.com definition is incorrect. I’ve told you this, but you continue to use it. No military in the world would even consider that definition as accurate.

If it’s true, you better tell the Germans that they weren’t the first to invent the assault rifle, because the Americans and Russians beat them with the garand and tokarev respectively. It also says stuff like FN FALs, HK G3s, and other such battle rifles are “assault rifles”, which they certainly are not.

I can go on and on, if you’d like, about what guns that definition covers that are not assault rifles.

That definition came out of some PC soccer mom, not anyone that has any knowledge of military weaponry. It is dishonest to use it to determine what qualifies as a military assault rifle.

I haven’t even brought up the point that acknowledging that these rifles are somehow taboo or worthy of banned is COMPLETELY contradictory to the idea of the second amendment. It does not protect our right to own hunting rifles, it protects most our ability to own the current military arm of the day. Because that arm has moved from the Brown Bess to the AR-15 is not relevant, unless, of course, we can start restricting the internet because it’s not a manual printing press.

55

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I guess. There’s no mechanism in the Constitution to replace it, which I thought was what you were saying. You can just ignore it totally and make a new one, I guess.

Firstly, you ignore the deterrence effect. If a potential tyrant knows that any oppressive moves will be countered by an angry, armed citizenry, he’s less likely to do so.

Secondly, do you deny that populations have been oppressed in the history of mankind? Do you see no possibility of that in the future? Do you see an unarmed, helpless populous somehow being equal, in chances of staying oppressed, as an angry, armed populace? At which point actually do you disagree with the idea?

56

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Really? Well, as a citizen of the 20th century, you were something like 40 times more likely to be killed by your own government than by a criminal.

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I think you’re trying to say ‘armed non-military agents’, where a small subset of the population is armed and acts to install a government of it’s own interest. If the entirety of the populace is capable of bearing arms, then the government installed will be one chosen by a majority.

Not now. And besides, I, personally, don’t care about deer rifles. Other weapons would be useful in fighting an oppressive government, I just used them as an example off the top of my head. In any case, we will never achieve “reasonable” gun control - there will always be something new that’s “reasonable” after we enact the current set of laws. Perhaps this isn’t descriptive of you, but the anti-gun movement as a whole won’t stop until we’re disarmed.

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Massive civil unrest under a tyranical government is a fairly common thing in the world.

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And I’ve already told you that you don’t write the dictionary, which reflects common usage, not SenorBeef usage. Your nitpick is also irrelevant, because it doesn’t matter what term is applied to the weapons I’m talking about regulating there. Call 'em Magic Thundersticks, if it makes you happy, but the legal restrictions would remain the same.

Then take it to a Second Amendment thread. As you are undoubtedly aware by now, the courts and I both have very different takes on yours.

No, in point of fact, I even mentioned the “deterrence effect,” which I labeled speculative and illusory, if memory serves.

In order: of course not, of course not, of course not, and at the point where the chances of such “oppression” become so small as to be outweighed by the continuing social costs of unrestricted gun ownership. More specifically, the possibility of the Evil Dictatorial Tyrrany descending upon the U.S. is vanishingly small, and the social costs of gun ownership are quite significant, so I support the eminently reasonable measures described in my post at the top of the thread.

Meaningless nonsense. We’re talking about USA 2002, not USSR 1935 or Cambodia 1975 or Germany 1937. What is “reasonable” gun control depends entirely on the circumstances of the particular society where those controls are to be enacted.

Now this next one is definitely my favorite:

Aside from the bloodbath that so fascinates you, what do the guns accomplish that would be any different from, oh, say, DEMOCRACY ITSELF?

I already said that wasn’t my goal, which I’m glad you’re at least acknowledging. But since support for a complete disarming of the populace in America is basically negligible, why bother to raise that boogyman at all? It ain’t gonna happen, so it ain’t an argument against “reasonable gun control,” whatever that may be.

It is by no means “a fairly common thing” in America or any other democracy with due process of law and legal protection for matters of individual conscience. Once again, we’re talking about “reasonable gun control” in America, not Bosnia or Burundi.

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There is no requirement, though it’s a common misconception (I used to think that it was). However, if that was what you believed was required to own a machinegun, then it seems that your ‘pain in the ass’ comment was a bit of an understatement. While a series of checks, fees, paperwork, waits, etc. would be the sort of thing I’d consider ‘a pain in the ass’, requiring that someone run a firearms business in order to own new semi-automatic guns seems a bit beyond the usual use of the phrase.

(There are a variety of FFLs available, but the only one someone who doesn’t operate a gun business (store, gunsmith, manufacturer, etc.) can get is a Curios and Relics license, which only applies to old (generally >50 years) guns, and so would still not allow purchase of new guns).

60

Like I said, a major pain in the ass. I have no problem with that.