What is your definition of gun control

The funny thing to me is that we've already had the exact ban that people keep pushing for, an assault weapon ban and a "large capacity magazine" ban....we had it in 1994 and it did nothing. In fact, the rifle related homicides actually went up during the years of the ban and went down after it lapsed. This is just another example of ignorant people wanting a feel good, yet ineffective, measure passed to make them feel like they did something....even if it was something stupid.

Honestly the best thing that ever happened to curtail violence was the legalization of abortion. Not surprisingly about 20 years after Roe vs Wade the homicide numbers in the 18-24 age bracket fell off a cliff and that was the primary driver of high homicide rates. If we want to prevent crime, we should be creating incentives for low income people to abort as many of their potential children as possible. The fewer children they have, the better everyone is.

 

That is exactly what it is. Those mean guns are brainwashing those poor mentally ill people to go on mass shootings.

Please name one mass shooting that would not have happened if gun production was drastically reduced?

 

Are people pushing for the exact same ban, or a modified version which addresses the loopholes in the prior one?

Do you have any thoughts on why the previous ban was not effective? Also, would you be in favor of it if it was effective, or are the extra lives saved still not worth giving up the freedom to own those weapons in your view?

 

The correlation between guns and gun violence holding steady at 100%. It appears we have our first disputer.

The answer ot your question is that no mass shooting would occur without a gun. Hence the name.

 

The previous ban was a ban on assault rifles and high capacity magazines...and now they are calling for a ban of assault rifles and high capacity magazines...

The reason it was ineffective was because only a tiny fraction of murders are caused by assault rifles or high capacity magazines.....and those who would kill people using them won't abide by the law in the first place. The rifles used in California in this most recent terrorist shooting were already illegal I don't see how making them double secret illegal would change anything especially considering we're not talking about a weapons confiscation program, there will still be untold thousands of assault rifles in circulation plus all of those that will still flow into the country illegally. If prohibition has taught us anything it is that if there is a desire for a product, it'll get in to the country.

Basically my issue with it is that it takes away from the public without even so much as a positive result, in fact just the opposite happened, there were on average more murders with rifles during the assault rifle ban then there have been since it lapsed. I'd still be against taking away from the public even if there happened to be a positive result, but at least the case for it would be a lot stronger.

As a general rule, I don't support surrendering freedom for the illusion of security.

 

I'd support that too. If we offered young people a one time payment of 50K to undergo a procedure that would permanently prevent them from being able to have children, the benefits would greatly outweigh the cost.

 

Well yeah, it's like a difference of 300 something for all rifles combined and 6,000 to 8,000 a year for handguns. Focusing nearly all efforts on the 300 would be laughable if it wasn't so sad.

 

Of the following proposals, which would have the greatest positive impact on gun deaths (ie result in the greatest decrease in gun deaths per annum):
- a ban on "assault weapons", "high" capacity magazines, increased background checks with no "gun show loophole", increase in mental health treatment, ending all mandatory minimum sentences, national registry of firearms

or

- disarm all black people, subject to search with or without warrant or probable cause, punishable by imprisonment for 5 years

Which one will be supported by the Constitutional rights must take a back seat to public safety crowd? Note: I do not support either proposal.

 

Population
Texas: ~27 million
California: ~39 million

 

You can disarm purple people if you like but the bad apples will still get their guns and they are gonna have plenty of reason to do so if they are discriminated against. At least you will have disarmed the law abiding purple people....

 

Very true, the populations are different but factor in that California has the strictest gun laws in the country while Texas is middle of the pack and yet Texas still has a lower gun violence rate per 100K people (3.2 for Texas vs 3.4 for California).

 

Yeah I was using the numbers from 2010 rather than directly neutralizing the 2014 numbers but it's still a similar result as you've shown.

 

for some reason the cities in California are doing very well though, LA, SF etc have much much lower murder rate than Houston, Dallas etc

 

Jumping in a bit late, but my opinion of gun control or what it should be-

I believe that violence sometimes is unavoidable for those who are bad enough people to resort to violence. That violence can be used with a gun, knife, corkscrew, or household chemicals. You aren't going to rid the world of tools for violent people to use as weapons.

That being said, for these specific mass killing incidences, can we find ways to make it impossible to obtain automatic or semi-automatic weapons? While violence might be unavoidable, you might be able to limit the amount of carnage if the shooter only has 6 rounds, or has to constantly keep loading shells. Then better police and emergency response protocol can improve on getting where they need to get faster to stop the violent situation from going further. There is no need whatsoever for you, I, or anyone else to own these weapons unless we are in law enforcement or in service in the military. The only use for this would be as a hobby weapon at the gun range.... is this hobby THAT important to you???... REALLY??

Then again the bigger problem would be how to pursue how automatic weapons are falling out of the right hands into the wrong hands, and how they might be getting smuggled in from arms dealers, etc. Then you have the issue of all the people who have them now in grandpa's closet from years ago, and are forgotten about until the angry grandson get's ahold of it. How does THE GOVERNMENT know what's in Grandpa's closet, or how can they police that when they can't go into Grandpa's closet???

Its an issue... no doubt... with no real great solution. But yes... I do support the restrictions that Obama wants to impose now which is pretty damn basic... like people that are currently on the "No Fly List" can actually go buy a semi-automatic weapon if they want to even though they can't fly because they are being investigated for terrorist ties... that is completely nuts that you really should check yourself against if you argue against just for the sake of your "constitutional rights"....whatever that means nowadays.

Constitutional rights, or just plain Right or Wrong... there is no law that was written down by our forefathers CENTURIES ago that overwrites your ability to change decisions based on what is morally correct NOW, and what common sense NOW dictates.

 

Being on the no-fly list doesn't mean your being investigated in any way. It just means you found yourself on a list created by ?? that has the ability to restrict your ability to travel by air. At this point the no-fly list does not have the ability to restrict your constitutional rights.

As far as I know there have been no mass shootings utilizing an automatic weapon.