There, fixed that for you. Unless you were under the impression that @Brainspore was crafting legislation in this comment section.
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Yeah, I don’t think the primary reason Australia got gun control laws was that their populace was better versed in the precise terminology used to describe various kinds of firing mechanisms.
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And only a hand-cranked printing press is covered by the first, while the fourth only applies if your home is roofed with thatch.
Seriously?
That’s a terrible argument.
Well, if you modify a gun you will need to practice. Automatic gunfire tends to be loud.
Like most crimes, somebody needs to report it.
He’s arguing for legislation. knowing what the thing you are arguing for actually is is a good start to any debate, I find.
Yes. Yes I am.
Are you going to suggest that gun control is the only thing that is lobbied against by powerful interest groups? Of course not. ACA was lobbied against, and lo and behold it got passed and is proving to be immortal.
DADT got repealed. It got lobbied against.
Even some semblance of a bank regulatory bill has been passed (I’ll count it as a quarter-victory) despite being lobbied against viciously.
So why is gun control a dead issue? Well looking outside-in, as it were, the key element seems to be that the people advocating for it are uniquely bad at it.
The people opposing are pretty terrible, too, what with the paranoia and all, but in an equal contest of incompetencies, inertia wins.
No, Australia got gun control laws because the people arguing for it managed to win over the opposition.
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That was, kind of, my point.
Take bicycles. In the UK no law restricts who can ride a bicycle. Basically, if you can make the thing go down the road you can ride it. If it has an electric motor, it’s limited to 200W and 12mph (EU law says 250W but once we’ve left that repressive fascist EUSSR the police will be checking the output of every electric bike. But I digress.)
If you want more than that you have to take tests which depend on the size and so on of what you want to drive. If you want to drive a 44 tonner, you can so long as you can convince people you are safe to do it. Me, 7.5 tonnes, cars and unrestricted bikes is enough.
So why cannot the US get round that whole right to bear arms thing by saying that anybody can own a muzzle loading rifle of the type available at the time of the Amendment, with the same rate of fire, charge and so on, because that was what the drafters understood by bearing arms; but if they want more than increasingly onerous tests must be passed?
I know why; I was being ironic and immediately started up a usual suspect. We’re seeing the first steps in the downfall of the American Empire, and like the Roman empire one of the signs is the wide distribution of arms. People feel threatened. It’s like people who feel threatened by the big SUVs on the road so buy themselves the biggest truck they can get - and you have an arms race.
But just as the UK is incapable of having an adult political discussion about its actual place in the world and where its interests lie, the US seems incapable of growing up either on guns or vehicles.
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Well, you think so presumably because you have bought into a written constitution. I happen to think it is an argument against a written constitution which makes overly specific laws. For an example of how to do it right, look at the German Grundgesetz.
Unfortunately the US as a whole is very prone to Protestant thinking, and setting up a written Constitution as the third volume of the Bible is a good example.
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CBS is reporting “least 23 firearms in his hotel suite”. Did he have a lot of golf bags, and did he bring them up gradually or have a bellhop do it with a cart? And what did he tell the maid service? “Don’t bother dusting the ammo cases…”
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You appear to be obfuscating others’ positions when you refuse to accept nuance between “all” and “nothing.”
Regarding confiscation: if people spent money on something, how would it be legal to just take it away? A better proposal: instead of increasing military spending by $700B/yr, how about we use that money to buy back private military weapons? As it has been pointed out before ad nauseum, it worked quite well in Australia.
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Australia also doesn’t have an analogue of the NRA* spending ridiculous amounts of money to convince citizens and lawmakers that third-world levels of gun violence and the occasional mass shooting are a reasonable price to pay for the freedom of unfettered access to firearms.
*They do have the NRAA (National Rifle Association of Australia) but that organization actually concerns itself with sport-shooting and firearm safety. Imagine that!
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(OK, OK, that’s probably a little over the top. But it does establish precedent of sorts.)
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OK, I looked that up. It was weird… get destroyed by world war, and have a bunch of elites meet on Mad King Ludwig’s palace on the Island of Men to create a “temporary” constitution with no public input or voting… that becomes permanent.
Thanks, though! Much food for thought in there.
That seems to be one of those big misconceptions. The atf is pretty strict. And keeps a close eye on certain things. But they mostly do their jobs by monitoring sales, transfers and dealer paperwork. And then criminal/intelligence investigations in concert with other law enforcement.
Individual licenses and registrations what have are handle by local PD and Sherifs.
Almost all of the routine tracking, enforcement and regulation is based on transfer and sales.
There really isn’t anyone out there checking up on individual guns or gun owners. Its not like you need to have these things inspected on a schedule. Or get recertified every so many years. Hell where I’m at I’m reasonably sure I don’t need a license and don’t need to register a long gun. Shotguns or rifles, including assault rifles. If I pay cash in a background checkless private sale or gun show. Well there wouldn’t even be a record of me owning the damn thing so there wouldn’t be any way of following up anyway.
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Thank you for bringing the thread back on topic.
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Sadly the general dysfunction you describe above applies to a whole host of issues.
War on drugs, healthcare reform, climate change, tax reform, etc.
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Mass cowardice? Wtf?
Ha ha, you so clever and funnnnny. 
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Roseanne Cash has written a heartfelt and striking op-ed for the NY Times calling on country music artists to reject the NRA, stating flatly that they “fund domestic terrorism”.
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“Panic” and “cowardice” are not the same thing. Nor is panic an irrational reaction when the people around you start bursting open from machine gun fire.
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I watched some of the “toughest” guys in my unit cower and be completely frozen when under fire.
It is a rare breed of person who doesn’t react in what most people would label as “cowardly” or “Panic”.
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