Oh, yea everybody! we're safer here than in Swaziland and El Salvador and (just barely) even than in Mexico! Whew. Let's make sure we have the gun laws of one of them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate The person you insult with roll eyes was doing what most adults do: comparing the US to other fully industrialized nations not on the verge of civil war. But I'm glad you prompted looking up the full list, because it is full of sad surprises. Ottomaton, you made a very good post. Do you have a strong opinion of the benefit to the owner of a high-capacity magazine, for instance? The benefits of gun ownership, in my view, are many: recreation, hunting, and personal safety / sense of personal security. There is also a cultural value that I myself enjoyed with my dad and uncles growing up -- I appreciate that. None of those benefits is significantly affected by a lack of 30-round magazines or more extensive background checks, in my humble opinion. Just for an example. What do you think?
try homicide rates Bob. Not death rates. Common sense. NO he looked at 4 countries....... as opposed to all countries. That's what bad scientists and dishonest people do.
Just a reminder, Supernaut is terrified of plainly answering Major's straightforward questions- How far down the wingnut rabbit hole do you have to be, to refuse to take a position on these issues?
He eventually admitted that he does not indeed support that position, but it took an amazing amount of prodding for him to do so (because he knows it cripples his argument. This whole convo is in that thread. Entertaining stuff
So apparently research about gun violence is anti second amendment also.... http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/01/executive-order-nra-should-fear-most/61004/ In 1996, some members of Congress tried to completely defund the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, which was doing gun research, Live Science explains. Instead, lawmakers stripped $2.6 million from the CDC's budget -- the exact amount it had spent on gun injury research the year before. Congress forbade research that might "advocate or promote gun control." In 2003, Kansas Rep. Todd Tiahrt forbid the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from giving researchers data about guns used in crime. Last year, the National Institutes of Health was blocked from funding gun research. The efforts have had impressive results. According to a letter to Biden signed by 100 researchers, the NIH has funded just three studies on gun injuries in the last 40 years. Hey, that's three whole studies, right? Hardly censorship! Well, the researchers point out that guns have killed 4 million people since 1973, while four infectious diseases have killed just 2,000 -- and the NIH has funded almost 500 studies on them. The letter protests that "legislative language has the effect of discouraging the funding of well-crafted scientific studies." This was a direct result of National Rifle Association lobbying, NPR's Carrie Johnson explains. Former Emory University researcher Art Kellermann told NPR that while at Emory, he found that a gun kept at home was 43 times more likely to be used in the death of a member of the household than it was to be used to defend the household from a bad guy. The National Rifle Association pressured Emory to stop Kellermann's research, but it didn't. Kellermann told NPR, "[T]hey turned to a softer target, which was the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], the organization that was funding much of this work. And although gun injury prevention research was never more than a tiny percentage of the CDC's research budget, it was enough to bring them under the fire of the NRA."
QUESTION: How do we eliminate all murders? To a point . . . we really need to start looking at reducing the will to murder If the only tool in our holster is to make killing harder . . . well . . . .we are avoiding the main issue Rocket River
For example, addressing mental health in this country (especially for poor parents) instead of gun control. I completely agree. The largest mental institutions in the country are part of prisons (Twin Towers county prison, Los Angeles County Jail, Rikers Island Jail in New York City, and Cook County Jail in Illinois).
Well several posters have cited the 2nd Amendment as their counterargument to any arguments regarding gun control. I am just asking then if they see this as an absolute right that would extend to things like RPG's.
So you would then draw the line at explosives? How so? By rate of fire alone would make fully automatics more dangerous than semi-automatics. Anyway if semi's where more dangerous why does the military use fully automatics machine guns and rifles?
or nukes? I don't think anyone thinks the 2nd amendment is all encompassing. Both sides of the argument must draw that line though (the limit for the 2nd amendment), not just anti-gun-regulations people. If I cared enough, I would study history and try to get a better idea of what was and wasn't conceivable when the founding fathers wrote the 2nd amendment. This would tell me what the 2nd amendment was meant to protect. Many people on this board claim founding fathers couldn't have envisioned assault rifles, but I am not sure that's true. Shooting more at a faster rate isn't some radical concept.
If you read the Federalist Paper #29 while not specifically dealing with type of arms it does help explain the Founders thinking regarding the militia and probably why the Second Amendment is written the way it is. Under Hamilton's reasoning the purpose of the militia is primarily for defense of the states. Under that reasoning without a permanent standing army the states could call upon citizen militia. Under that view the 2nd Amendment isn't there as an individual right but as a collective right meaning that regulation of type is certainly feasible whether the founders envisioned assault rifles or not.
Sounds like you draw the line at nothing. The federal government can ban any firearms it wants? That interpretation doesn't ring true to me.
Things like torture, extrajudicial detention were big issues at the time of the Founders. Consider that many of the American Revolutionaries used tactics that would be considered terrorism both then and now while the British also had to determine how to treat American militia who were not formerly military these were issues that were very real to them. I think you bring up a good point regarding utility but in any type of debate regarding regulation utility is always going to be an argument. For example if we have a debate about raw milk. Unpastuerized milk clearly has much more pathogens than Pasteurized milk but many would argue that it taste better and also has more nutrients than pasteurized. Does the potential harm outweigh the potential good? In the case of guns the logical question is what is the benefit of things like high capacity magazines and semi-automatic rifles versus what is the potential harm? I think that can be quantified in regard to that for things like hunting and personal self-defense those can be accomplished without the use of high capacity magazines or semi-automatic rifles. What we more frequently see are those type of things creating harm than hey are good. Note before someone cites warfare I am talking about a civilian context.
Following Heller it can't ban firearms completely but I do believe that it could regulate the type of firearm. Theoretically this could be as far as just allowing muzzle loading guns.
All firearms are of a type. They can all be classified. This obviously is not what the founding father's intended when they wrote the 2nd amendment. The interpretation must be wrong.
No, Svpernaut has these thing called a job, and a life. Sorry, if you guys add multiple pages to a thread since the last time I was here, I don't have the time to go back and read it unless I have time.... and if it isn't the weekend, I don't. ONCE AGAIN, I'VE STATED MY STANCE ON GUNS IN FAR MORE DETAIL THAN THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE IN THIS FORUM. USE THE SEARCH FUNCTIONS, I'VE HAD THE SAME STANCE AND SAID THE SAME THINGS SINCE DAY ONE... I'M NOT SAYING IT AGAIN, AND THAT IS THE REASON I SAID IN THE VERY FIRST PAGE OF THIS TOPIC I WASN'T GETTING IN TO A PISSING CONTEST ON A TOPIC THAT HAS BEEN DISCUSSED FULLY. Get this straight, I'm not here to appease anyone, or answer anyone's question. I'm here for entertainment if and when I have the time. I'm sorry, I have far more important things going on in my every day life to give a damn what you think of me on a forum... and the fact that you EXPECT me to address every question Ad nauseam is flat out r****ded.
I don't believe it cripples my position, and thank you for not being too damn lazy to want to know my opinion and FIND where I said it already. My stance has and always will be that I want as many freedoms as the Constitution affords me, and if and when the government tries to pick away at those freedoms I will fight it every step of the way. Will I lose some battles? Yes. But I will keep fighting. Will I eventually lose more freedoms than I can handle? In my life time it is doubtful. We live in a democracy, so if I lose the people I stand with and I didn't work hard or smart enough. Simple as that. That's the motto I live by. You can judge me for it. You can call me a moron. You can call me a right-wing nut job, I don't care. I believe the founding fathers were BRILLIANT men, and I IMMENSELY respect the foundation they laid for us. So yes, I will fight any legislation that comes up that tries to remove a freedom, whether it be to own a semi-automatic rifle or to buy a large Coke. Nuclear weapons and tanks and all kinds of other crap were outlawed long before my lifetime, and I have a hard enough time fighting to keep my current freedoms then to try to win back others that were lost long before I was around. I'm a Christian Conservative who thinks the war on drugs is flat out r****ded. I'm a Christian Conservative who thinks that people should be able to marry whomever the hell they want to marry. I'm a Christian Conservative that is fine with people killing themselves if they want to... why? Because I think God gave us all free will, and you can do whatever you want as long as you don't hurt others, and I shouldn't judge you for that and my country sure as **** shouldn't. There, I've done a dance for you all like a monkey... so you can all go **** yourselves.
The effort Supernaut is exerting to avoid answering a couple of simple, straightforward questions is quite revealing. He's even resorted to caps-lock.
