The Topic of Gun Control and How it Relates to Recent Mass Shootings

B-bob, Fisher, Judoka, Franchiseblade, DonnyMost and others ...I appreciate the dialogue and debate. You know guns are a great part of my hobby, and enjoyment and just so you know...you bring up valid arguments. In reality, I'm more understanding than you know of the rationale on further gun control,...it just doesn't mean I will like that. More than anything at the end of the day, our children is most important...as a parent, life IS your kids. It gives me greater meaning about living and being a better person for them and examining how we can provide them better than this is only right. I'm out on this thread, but this is my true feelings. Have a great day, and best wishes on the upcoming Holiday for you and your families.

 

Here is an interesting piece of info for those who want to reinstate the Federal Assault Weapons ban of 1994. Connecticut still has their own variant of this law still in place. http://www.jud.ct.gov/JI/criminal/glossary/assaultweapon.htm

The kicker? The Bushmaster .223 does not fall under this ban.

Just imagine if the Oregon shooter used his pistol instead of AR-15. There certainly would have been more deaths.

 

Come again?

 

No freedom is absolute. None.

Why should i trust your judgement with a deadly weapon? Why should you have the ability to kill me instantly with a deadly weapon? Where is my right to my life and liberty?

 

As someone who isn't an American, can someone explain to me why the 2nd Amendment is used as an argument? Infallible truth?

 

In the same way religions use it as infallible truth, no need for proof that it's a good idea. Frankly, it has not been as bad as one would think. There are plenty of good reasons to enforce some gun control, but these mass shootings are the worst and make for an easily dismantled argument.

Having said that, a constitutional amendment is probably something for which you should require the most scrutiny to change.

In this case the argument is specifically for civilian disarmament and one side believes that being armed might actually protect them in case the most powerfully armed group in the history of mankind decides to turn on them. But this is what you get when the leaders of that group have injected their followers with heavy doses of nationalism and imaginary heroic aggression. The other side is a bit more rational asking at least for improved healthcare and quasi-licensing procedures. Oddly they do not spend any time considering that civilian disarmament should logically result in less government intrusion and abuse of civil liberties - I find this odd because this is something which would appeal to both sides and could be a path to agreements. It also makes me wonder who drives the agenda for discussion points, and I think most agree that it is at most partially the general population.

It's also understandeable in the context of having a military wing of the government which effectively falls out of the supervision, scrutiny and to a large extent control of the people. This wing of the government routinely disregards various parts of the constitution and does things behind its people's backs which could very well face valid opposition if put up for scrutiny. It's understandeable to not trust them, especially when the commander in chief is the head of the other half of the party.

What makes this more interesting is that the group which wants to maintain/increase the secrecy and military power of the government wing is the same group which wishes to protect the second amendment. This is not logical, therefore the argument has nothing to do with rights or morality, and peculiarly aligns with the specific interests of weapons manufacturers. That's just speculation, I don't know if there is any real evidence to support that - though I suspect a decent argument can be easily made.

In short: freedom in everything unless you convince the other side to give them up. To convince the other side you need a good reason and a common purpose. I don't think this has been achieved, and I don't think it's due to a lack of effort by the people as much as it is the regurgitation of the same anecdotal evidence with no development in the last 40 or so years by media outlets who pick and choose when to blow a certain gun crime up. If you take something by force, as with everything in life, you better kill the other side or expect an equivalent reaction in some other shape or form.

 

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This should be required viewing for all journalists. Everyone should watch it regardless of their stance.

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Around 4 minutes in he shows the differences when shooting. At 5:20 seconds he shows you that the hunting rifle and the semi-automatic "assault rifle" are actually the exact same weapon, just cosmetically different. Around 6 minutes, he shows how you can transform a .223 hunting rifle to look like an assault rifle with a simple cosmetic change. At 8:30 seconds a member of the ATF speaks before congress regarding "assault rifles" and why they are hard to define. At 9:45 an LAPD officer says that his unit had recovered more than 50,000 rifles and had NEVER recovered a semi-automatic rifle that had been converted to automatic.

So those of you that look at the evil Bushmaster .223 that the shooter uses and ask, "Why would you ever need a gun like that for hunting?" Well, a .30-60 rifle is FAR more power than a .223 and is the most popular "hunting" rifle caliber on the market. Long action calibers include .270 Winchester and .30-06 are both far more deadly than the .223 found in AR-15s. The way a weapon "looks" means nothing, the caliber, rate of fire and muzzle velocity are what matters. A .223 has a muzzle energy of 1,291 foot pounds, while a .30-06 has a muzzle energy of 2,820 foot pounds, or 2.18 times more.

You have every right to be anti-gun or pro-gun, but be educated regardless of stance.

TL,DR - Banning assault rifles does nothing, as assault rifles are fully automatic and ALREADY illegal. By definition the term "assault rifle" means that a rifle has selective fire states of automatic and semi-automatic - so the rifles used by military and police. Banning rifles like the AR-15 or .223 does nothing, as the vast majority of hunting rifles are far more powerful and have the exact same rate of fire. How a weapon looks, means nothing.

 

When the founders created the constitution, the felt that these amendments were so important that they made them very very difficult to change, whether to add or to remove them.

The two most common are the 1st and 2nd, which give freedom of speech and right to arms. They had enough foresight to understand that voters and politicians often voted based on emotions rather than long term insight.

If guns do become a serious enough of a problem, there will be change. But for now, a handful of mentally ill people are not going to give up the rights of all. Do we need to protect ourselves from rogue elements of the military right now? Of course not. In a 100 years...who knows. But a weak governing document allows a small group of people to slowly erode the rights of the people over many many decades. The time will come, whether its in our life time or in a couple centuries, we will have given up our rights and eventually a tyrant will take power. This isn't a willy nilly prediction; This is how all countries have risen and fallen through time.

 

I watched this video and what I got out of it is that having hunting rifles which function as semi-automatics is a bad idea and a manufacturing and distribution law that needs to be changed. If a weapon is to be classified as a "hunting" rifle, it should need to be cocked and/or reloaded after each round, IMO. Cosmetics are meaningless, this speaks to the lethality of the weapon, which is the most important part, and our laws need to speak to that.

 

Did you comprehend anything that I wrote?

Why should I trust you driving on the road? Chances of me shooting you are about as remote as you running me over. Where is your right to liberty? Well sounds like your willing to give that up. but that's sounds like a personal decision.. not my issue to deal with. Who are you to say what I do with my firearms if they aren't affecting you? That is my inalienable right to bear arms. Sorry 2nd amendment says it is a freedom. here it is for your perusal.

 

There's a constitutional right to travel (privileges and immunities clause)that covers driving that was recognized LONG before your right to bear arms existed (2008).

And only a complete idiot with no background in constitutional law (which, sadly, tends to me most of the pro-gun forces) would be ignorant enough to pronounce this right as inalienable and absolute, as you just did. It's not, not under Heller or any rational interpretation thereof. It's really people like you that serve as the intransigent, "cold dead hands" faction of the gun lobby that's going to doom it in popular opinion and help us get regulations through, so by all means please keep this up.

This car-gun analogy is incredibly stupid on so many levels. Even if there was a rational linkage between the two (there's not at all), on a cost benefit basis, cars do a lot more good than guns so much so that it's not even a contest.

Further, as I've said many times, if you want to make the argument that guns are like cars and driving - fine, let's make them like cars and driving, which are strictly regulated with an intensive, mandatory licensing, insurance, inspection regime, and with certain types of cars that aren't allowed on teh streets by civillians - let's do the same for guns. Now.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1223193/Culture-violence-Gun-crime-goes-89-decade.html

 

And remember folks, those 9000 annual gun-related crimes of the 60 million people in the UK are probably about the same as an average month in Houston, Texas.

 

U.S murder rate by firearm: 0.003%
UK murder rate by firearm: 0.00007%

You are over 40 times more likely to be killed by a gun in the U.S. than the UK in 2012

Yeah, gun control makes no difference what so eva!!!!

http://fleshisgrass.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/us-and-uk-murder-rate-and-weapon-updated/

 

your little point is not that hard for me to understand.

There we go again, all you can come up with is an analogy to drving cars. Equating owning guns to owning cars is just stupid without any logic force.

Here is a news for you, there is a little right for me in the constitution called pursuit of happiness. If you take your freedom over everyone else's, there shall be no regulatuion over one's right to bear arms. That's not the law of the land. Thats not how the legislators feel about it right now, thats not majority of us think what you should have. Your little constittuional right will be eroded, bit by bit.

 

Gun violence has increased in the UK since they were banned.

In the US, not so much.

AWB expired in 2004.

Murder rate per 100,000 inhabitants:

2005: 5.6
2006: 5.7
2007: 5.6
2008: 5.4
2009: 5.0
2010: 4.8
2011: 4.7

 

As compared to pre-gun-ban era in UK? Where's your data? Care to show us?

Why are you citing stats showing comparison among periods when assault weapon is not regulated? Pulling numbers doesn't make you look smart automatically, and certainly doesn't make your argument right. Seeing your numbers, i have a more reasonable conclusion than yours: the murder rate without assault weapon regulation is high and has remained high in the last 7 years.

Last, here is one stats for you: 27 innocent people were killed by registered guns that fell into a wrong hand, 20 of them being little kids, little kids that harm nobody.

 

Doesn't matter if it's cars, video games, bad parenting, firearms, alcohol, high cap mags, mental illness.. are there any good analogies? No one is taking responsibility of the real issues.. but instead knee jerk into reactions.

I hope they come out and say this guy trained his skills on video games.. this way they can bring up regulation to ban that also. I think video games are harmful to todays youth and desensitizes them to violence. I dont' play games so it doesn't matter to me if they ban them. I am sure there are gamers that feel differently. Either why not look at the real issues? Because it will eventually come to infringe on something you partake... regardless if it doesnt now.

We also also NOT the UK. How about people compare apples to apples. How about Chicago? They've banned guns in Cook county.. how'd that work out? I know exactly how that worked out.. I lived there. NY? how about there? Bloomberg travels with armed guards? Why? I thought firearms were banned in NY. Gun control not working or something over there?

The UK analogy is about as bad as the car analogy.. how you you propose the US disarms all citizens of their firearms? Pay for them like australia? We don't have that much $$$.. and pandora's box is never going to be closed..