I hope you’ll pardon my ignorance as a foreigner from a virtually gun-free and certainly gun-fearing land, but exactly what kind of a restriction is this one-per-month thing? It’s not as if these are single-use items.
I can see that the restriction would prevent be buying a family-size economy pack of guns to equip my gang or vigilante squad all at once, but as far as personal use is concerned, one-per-month seems (to my foreign perception) like no restriction at all - could someone enlighten me?
Airman, I think we’re a lot closer in agreement that we would have thought. Some states do limit numbers of purchases per month, others don’t. If all the states did as Pennsylvania and Virginia do, gun trafficking would be much more problematic. My main point is that there are common sense things that could be done to improve public safety without compromising hunters and those who perceive of a need to defend themselves.
We can argue laws all day. Guess what, though - determined gunmen typically ignore these. I see that the guns this shooter used had filed off serial numbers - that’s definitely against Virginia law, and probably violates federal law as well.
BobLibDem wants us to have long range rifles and not high-cap pistols, which would prevent this tragedy, I suppose, but wouldn’t stop Lee Harvey Oswald, Charles Whitman, or the Beltway Snipers.
I think we all need to be a bit careful about trying to shoehorn a tragedy like this into our little worldview and make it fit. Tragedies aren’t built for that purpose. Likewise, I’m skeptical about those people who are shouting about the need for the campus to have been locked down after the first shooting, as if your town is ever locked down any time someone is murdered there. Virginia Tech is bigger than many towns.
Rushing in after this with new laws and regulations might be just the wrong approach. Carefully considering things in the clear light of history and evidence would be the way to go.
Given the behavior of politicians of both parties, I don’t expect it.
So I should return my little semi-auto Remington .22? Or give back the raffle tickets for that nice Benelli semiautomatic shotgun I bought a week or so ago?
You know nothing about the firearms hunters use, do you?
I would like to see a citation that these pistols were ‘high cap’, and I’d like to see what laws could be put in place that would have avoided this.
I should point out that the 9mm pistol, semi-automatic, is a military sidearm, and thus protected under the Constitution. Furthermore, switching it to a revolver would probably not have lowered the death toll noticeably, it being possible to reload one of those quite quickly.
Note: Trap and skeet shooters have reasons to have semi-automatic shotguns, as do bird hunters. My pump is not quite fast enough for competition.
I think that much of it is about pop culture. Rambo is a hero - a guy who takes the dispensing of ‘justice’ into his own hands. There are lots of American films and TV shows based on the idea that some hero must battle ‘the forces of evil’ all by himself.
Add to that the whole ‘it’s my right to have a killing machine in my home and even on my person’ idiocy. Sure, guns don’t kill people, but they make it a hell of a lot easier to kill someone when you’re in a rage. Yes, you can stab someone to death, but you have to get close to them to do so and sometimes they can fight back. You can’t do a mass killing using a knife because, again, you have to get close so others could jump you while you’re killing someone.
There is too much admiration of belligerence in the US. Witness the Pit threads there have been where some of us suggest that people are perhaps a little overly vicious when the Pit people - such temerity is rewarded with equivalent viciousness.
I think there’s a lot of hostility in general in the US and I don’t know all the reasons. But I know that there is definitely a difference between the US and Canada and the rest of the world in attitudes toward violence.
I think violence is boorish. I don’t get the sense that it’s as admired here asmuch as it is there.
Go back one more year, to SDSU, 1996. A graduate student was defending his thesis and suddenly pulled out a hand gun and shot the three professors present. Talk about a defense!
To heck with hunting. The Constitution doesn’t protect hunting weapons. It protects weapons for the purpose of a milita. Tell me why we shouldn’t own the guns the Constitution says we can.
Semi-Automatic: Fires a bullet each time you pull the trigger, fed from a clip (as opposed to a revolver)
Basically, any rifle designed since the late Civil War. And pretty much all pistols. The ‘scary’ bent clip ones and the ones with only four or five shots, all semi-automatic. Is the word ‘automatic’ scary to you?
*To make a quick follow up shot if needed to insure a humane kill of an animal.
*Personal preference
*A hunter with disabilities unable to cycle a typical bolt action rifle
*A semi auto rifle can manage recoil better for smaller hunters
I think you answered yourself in that bit. Guns are an efficient means to kill another person. Would murders still happen if guns magically disappeared overnight? Most certainly. Would someone be able to go on a rampage and kill 30+ people in one go with a fire poker? Probably not.
I believe guns allow for a greater disconnect between the attacker and the victim. Stabbing someone is up close and personal as is choking them and in most cases the victim may have some better chance at defending themself.
The common mantra from gun advocates is that “guns do not kill people, people kill people”. Nevertheless when you have such an efficient tool for that job in the form of a gun and that tool makes the weilder feel empowered and they can get you at a distance I believe the step from “merely pissed off” to “homicidal” gets dangerously shortened.
Speed limits vary. Besides I rarely adhere to them anyway.
Hunting is anything but humane. I have no beef with it but it’s silly to pretend you have consideration, compassion or sympathy for what you’re about to kill only because you enjoy doing it.
Of course they don’t. But let’s be clear: Guns are weapons specifically designed to kill and injure others. Guns are so well-designed that even kids can pick them up and use them with relative ease. The use of a gun requires relatively no skill or formal training.
I agree to some extent. The Second Amendment in the United States is applied too narrowly. I want a friggin’ flamethrower and I think its unfair that I can’t have legal access to one. Far as I am concerned, the Second Amendment entitles me to all sorts of arms and munitions, not just weaponry that most resemble the arms available in 1776.
A coworker of mine, back a few years ago got a phone call at work. Her entire extended family, fifteen or twenty people, were hacked to death with knives. They were among more than fifty victims. It didn’t happen in the United States. It didn’t make the news in the United States. (Other than a tribal news letter published in Maryland.) They don’t have gun control in the country where it happened. They don’t have knife control either.
At the time, two other coworkers, from different countries, discussed mass murders in their homelands, dating back several decades. None of them were in the paper in the United States. Then the discussion spread to matters of whether the people felt safer in the US than that had at home. Some said yes, some said no.
It makes it more difficult to be a black or gray market gun dealer. Also lowers the bar on what has to be proven to revoke licenses of dealers who provide multiple gun lots to gangs or black market dealers, and allows fairly easy ways to bring criminal penalties to them as well.