I genuinely don’t understand this theory. Primarily because Americans have become significantly more squeamish than, say… right after World War II.
Hell, read what used to pass for kid’s literature, even if I don’t cheat and ask you to include the Old Testament.
Weirdly, this is where I part ways slightly from my left-wise peers. I don’t think people are immune to the cultural production of the society they live in, but I do think it’s possible to overstate the causal link between cultural products and problematic behaviors.
The problem with the pro-gun lobby is that ANY restrictions, be it licensing, registration, insurance, etc. is considered too much and a complete restriction on freedom. It is either all or nothing in these discussions because a single requirement is too much.
Yes, we have federal level restrictions now and look at how the NRA and gun owners scream bloody murder about them too. “I want my teflon coated bullets! I need them for target shooting and hunting and in 50 or 100 round magazines too!”
The irony is that if your reason for owning a gun is target shooting, we could follow the German (?) model and you would have a permit and training and be required to keep your gun under lock and key at the range where it is to be used, not in your home. After all, it is just for target shooting, not for people shooting, right?
Yeah - but you can’t always stop people from hurting one another in a free society. The CAUSES of violence remain even if you take away the tool.
Thanks for proving my point of misinformation. Teflon does nothing to make a bullet deadlier.
The 2nd Amendment makes gun ownership a right - so that is going to be hard to mandate licensing and registration beyond what we have now for NFA items. Registration has lead to confiscation so many times in history that I don’t think most gun owners will go along with it. And I don’t think it helps with most gun crime.
A mentally ill person who never has been in trouble who wants to go out in a mass shooting will register his gun. A criminal who isn’t supposed to have one won’t. Same with this silly idea of insurance. The 80 Million lawful, safe owners are to pay for what now? the 12 thousand who misuse them? The mentally ill person planning an attack will pay his insurance. The 17 year old or 25 year old criminal who shouldn’t have one to begin with won’t. I have looked at a lot of the statistics and these ideas are just not relevant to WHO is actually committing the majority of the crimes.
The sleeper crazy who hasn’t done anything wrong is EXTREMELY hard to stop. Unless they were crazy enough to be committed, they can get by and plan. Just like McVeigh and the Boston bombers did. Unless you have pre-cogs, you can’t possibly stop every crazy out there.
It is until we repeal the amendment. I figure another decade of children murdered in schools will do it. You really think that there will never be any public will to get rid of gun ownership when we have year after year of public murders of innocents? Just look in the shift in discussions over the last 20 years and extrapolate. Since gun owners are unwilling to accept any changes at all, only the most draconian will occur in the end.
Additionally, we could make any involvement of a gun in a crime a felony (like say class A) and we could require gun owners carry insurance. I bet that would get past any supreme court challenges. Zero tolerance for gun crimes and over the top draconian enforcement for them. I’m all in support of it.
Yeah - what about it? Where am I wrong? Or he doesn’t register it. Then what?
Unless someone is sick enough to be committed and restricted, or they have gotten in trouble in the past, they aren’t going to be blacklisted in a back ground check. If registration was part of owning a weapon, they would register it. Why not?
No private gun sales without paperwork. Failure to report makes the seller liable for any crime, same for failure to report a “stolen” gun. Think the second amendment will block that too?
There are easily dozen of places where we can ratchet down legally on how guns are bought and sold, how ammo is bought and sold, and liability around firearms and deaths with them.
I target shoot in the forest.* Not only is it cheaper than going to a range but it also simulates real hunting conditions. Even better, I don’t have to belong to a gun club filled with gun nuts, right-wing lunatics, and cops. Of course, I’d happily give that activity up if it could prevent this terrible day.
*Yes, I pick up my casings/targets and use bio-degradable-rated clays (and only in established shooting areas). I hate these fuck-nuts who trash my forests with gun-related detritus or other junk.
I grew up in a hunting family full of cowboys and shooters. It isn’t that I’m not sympathetic to the joys of gun ownership and to people hunting (hmm, that reads badly). I do understand. I ate mostly hunted meat during my late childhood and early teens.
If he hasn’t been in trouble, he would pass a background check at a store.
And WHO is failing to report stolen guns? I don’t know about you, but when my stuff gets stolen, I report it. Where is your data that is even an issue?
Criminals get their guns mainly from a network of friends and family. They have a cousin or a friend do a straw purchase. That is very hard for someone to prevent.
I recall in another thread that the cops in Australia (IIRC) come in and sit down and talk to you about renewing your gun license. Tell me, do you think the cops in say Furgeson should be the ones to determine who deserves a license or not? That’s the other thing we so quickly forget. There have been laws (and there still are in places) where the Sheriff has to sign off on a handgun permit. Those laws were straight out of Jim Crow to make sure only the right people got the permits.
I don’t support the media theory either, but the reality we lead the rich countries in guns but most of the world has guns and a lot of them have more murder than us too. We do have some leadership in “mass Shootings” a third of which don’t kill anyone and nearly all the ones that do kill people are mostly the end of long domestic violence problems and then some small number are these sorts of “individual snaps” kind of suicide by mass murder events.
Despite making headlines these things are freakishly rare in a population of several hundred million persons. Waiting periods and mental health resources would likely help…
So because the police system is fucked up beyond all reason in certain places, that means there;'s no point in trying to control access to killing machines?
I dunno, maybe the part where with rational gun ownership regulation this “hypothetical mentally ill person who wants to out in a mass shooting*” would have to:
apply for a license
attend and complete successfully a safety and training course
sit through a waiting period
purchase the gun (with a limited ammo capacity etc. etc.)
Where there are plenty of opportunities to spot that they are going to use the weapon for nefarious ends.
See, where I live, I can go and get a handgun license after 6 months probation at a gun club. If I want anything else like a rifle or shotgun, I need to show the need for owning it (mostly farmers and some sports shooters). I don’t even need to get a license if I want to shoot for fun. I can front up to a shooting range today and pay for a session.
No - but that is something you need to consider if you are making laws. The background check that checks for felonies and domestic violence isn’t going to give you prejudice backed refusals (well, other than the racism inherent in the system, but what can you do?)
Depends how crazy he is. High functioning, little weird, probably be fine. Make it too difficult and he will just use what ever has replace Silk Road.
I mean listen to yourselves. Weed is 100% illegal in most places. 100%! How hard is it to find something that is referenced constantly in magazines, music, TV, and movies? You really think you can make gun laws to weed out that 1 out of 1 million crazy person?
