I really don’t see people having a need for an assault weapon. Handguns, okay. Hunting weapons, sure. But assault rifles? They have no other purpose other than killing large numbers of people.
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Half of all guns in the United States are owned by people making incomes in the six figures, and much of the working class that does own guns are current or former military and police. There have been multiple studies on this through the few places that can self-sustain collecting this data (like the Harvard Injury Control Research Center).
Guns are expensive and maintaining the hobby is also extremely expensive, so of course people with more money have more tied into it. The NRA itself has membership dues only make up half its income anymore, with their private income sources and individual donations on the rise.
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Aha, you got me!
Ok, yes, there are cases of people who are poorly trained or irresponsible or prone to rash decisions killing people with guns. But I don’t see the evidence this is a significant number. Digging into crime stats of large cities, it appears the two main reason for murder are criminals killing each other, usually over arguments, and domestic violence.
Certainly you can find other examples of road rage or heat of passion murders. Training may or may not have stopped those, as even those who “know” what they are doing is wrong, they may not stop in the moment.
To be honest, I don’t know if more training would have helped that lady or not. I don’t know what she was going through or the situation that lead up to it. To be honest I had an ulterior motive to continue to spread the word about the Pink Pistols, because I know of LGBQT people who have benefited from having them as a support group and for their resources.
Woah, that is like one of those Dagwood sandwiches full of words you are putting in my mouth. I never said that. However, preventing CRIME and preventing SUICIDE are two different things with two wildly different approaches. What law can you craft to keep a lawful gun owner from killing themselves (I guess removing all guns would reduce this, but I was told that isn’t what people want.)
As a sufferer of depression I have some insight on how it works. One can be fine for years and one day decide they can’t take it anymore. I had an acquaintance do just that last year. He owned that gun for over a decade. His wife and sister in law are both medical doctors, and he tried to OD on a medicine the week before. If anyone had a chance at having warning signs spotted and getting help it was this guy. And yet it still happened.
So while I am all for suicide awareness and prevention, I don’t see how you are going to craft laws that are going to prevent it. I’d be interested in hearing an idea that would.
OK, a teaching moment. And this right here highlights the frustration I and others have with people wanting to craft laws and they don’t have the knowledge to even know what they are dealing with.
Ok - all of them are bolt actions. You have to work the bolt handle to fire a round each time. All of them have “magazines” and depending on the size of the bullet, will hold 3-6 rounds allowing you to work the bolt and shoot 3-6 times before needing to reload. The bottom two have removable magazines and can be loaded quicker by swapping the magazine. They also can hold more, depending on the caliber, up to 10. The top two you shove the rounds into the magazine from the top (which is slower, but you can get quick at it.)
If scopes make it a “sniper rifle” then that includes the top item with a scope attached, which makes the majority of deer rifles “snipe rifles”. And hey, they actually do have similar functionality to an Army M24, and looks actually similar to the 2nd one, and they don’t actually have removable magazines. But I was told people aren’t after hunting rifles, so no worries.
Nope. Bottom two have adjustable stocks, that’s it. The top part adjust the cheek weld, allowing your eye to better align with the scope, and the back part can move forward or back to adjust the length of pull, depending on your body size and arm length. They don’t affect rate of fire.
I hope to have highlighted that other than the magazines being easier to swap, they actually have identical behaviors. A scope is an accessory that can be swapped to any rifle. They also can be in a variety of calibers from small varmint rounds, to medium deer rounds, to larger elk rounds. Thus their use can vary greatly.
So wait, we should listen to hysterical know-nothings when crafting policy? 
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The VAST majority of gun homicides are hand guns. If you magically removed all the “assault rifles” tomorrow, the next mass shooter will pick a modern hand gun, like the VT shooter. We are focusing on the sensational and most horrific cases which are statistically incredibly rare.
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If you read my post above, and this was just about a BOLT ACTION rifle commonly used for hunting, you can see just how difficult classification can be. How does one classify what an “assault rifle” is? There are CA compliant ARs being sold in California who work more or less identically to the one I have, but it requires a tool to swap out a magazine, and they have a limit on the number of rounds.
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Clearly with things like PCC and three gun and long distance shooting as well as hunting and plinking, people have found lots of uses for AR-15s and the like that don’t involve killing people. (And to head off any comments, no you don’t hunt with 30 rounds in a magazine - except maybe feral hogs.)
OK, there are 80 million ish gun owners in the US. What percentage of them are in the six figure bracket? I agree that the rich own more guns. Just like they own more money. So a middle class guy has 3 or 4, and a rich guy has 20. I am fairly confident there are a lot more lower to middle class people with a few fire arms, vs rich people with a bunch. Just like rich people have more cars or house or boats too.
Please link to your data, I have interest in knowing. Thanks.
Doesnt’ mean we should ignore them though, or that it’s not a problem that we can’t deal with effectively. A hand gun is going to kill less people than a high capacity, rapid fire weapon. And you’re expecting some perfect answer in order to have any meaningful change.
Should we let people walk around with M-16s? Assault rifles are weapons of war. The AR-15 isn’t technically an assault weapon, but what purpose does it serve, other than killing people?
Then why do you need them?
Such as?
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Those are just a few examples. The fact there are millions out there and like 500 RIFLE homicides (all types of rifles, not just assault rifles), means most people have found other uses for them.
And that means we can’t have ANY regulation? That just doesn’t follow.
You seem to be under the assumption here that calls for some regulation means the end of citizen gun ownership, and that doesn’t have to be the case. The NRA just refuses to entertain ANY sort of regulation and it’s not about your right to own a gun, I’m afraid. It’s really about gun manufacturers and their interests.
There are a variety of positions that can include protecting the second amendment and some form of regulation. But the gun rights maximalists refuse to even have that conversation. The SCOTUS has already deemed some regulation constitutional, so it’s legal to regulate arms. But we’re not going to get anywhere if we can’t have a conversation that starts with the position that we can’t have ANY sort of regulation because second amendment. That horse is already out of the barn. It would be nice if gun owners would actually come to the table and help figure out a solution that includes regulations instead of refusing to do so. Some gun owners are already there, of course, but the NRA and those they’ve come to represent aren’t willing to do so, because they are playing out their role in the culture wars in order to keep growing the market for guns in the US.
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Honestly, if the Second Amendment is ever repealed it will mostly be due to gun rights absolutists’ insistence that any meaningful gun regulation would require changing the Constitution.
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And SCOTUS has already ruled that some regulation is constitutional, of course.
And to be fair, I don’t think that @Mister44 is off the mark regarding there being other issues playing in to gun violence - but then again, I don’t think anyone here at least has ever said otherwise. I don’t think anyone has ever suggested that gun regulation is a, if you’ll pardon my turn of phrase, magic bullet, but it certainly SHOULD be on the table with regards to the larger issues.
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What would you say the root cause of the issue is? What is the issue?
I think these are the points that everyone debating this in the US never bothers to try to agree on. See this thread.
Some people are arguing the problem is “military style” weapons being too easily available, others say that’s not the problem, most firearms deaths are caused by handguns and what are military style weapons anyway.
Some say the problem is preventing mass-shootings, others say most deaths are not mass-shootings but criminals shooting each other.
It seems to me as an outsider that US people have a greater propensity than other countries towards reaching for a gun for whatever reason.
I see threads here where people talk about having guns with them when hiking because they’re worried about people who’ve hassled them for drugs on the trail or if a raccoon attacks their children and as a European I’m lost.
That appears to me to be the real issue. Why do Americans need guns and why do so many Americans decide the way to deal with whatever their problem is, is to use guns?
Are they actually more likely to use guns than people in other countries or is that just an artefact of reporting or greater gun control in other countries?
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We have regulation. Lots of it. I am fine with NICS. I think we should beef it up to make it better and quicker. Make it accessible to everyone, even.
When it comes to regulation, I guess one needs to be specific, because if it affected primarily criminals and not law abiding owners, then OK. I have picked apart many schemes, but I admit I can’t wave my hand and dismiss all of them.
People keep saying that, but the paying base for the NRA is large. Their power is the calls and email sent in an organized matter. The lobby money with the PACs do probably influence some, but if this was just a money game, there are LOTS of rich liberals who could buy a vote that way. But it isn’t just about money, it is the votes.
I have been assured that people don’t want to ban all guns, so manufactures would just keep making guns that fit what ever laws there are. Manufactures aren’t hurt by things like licensing schemes or other road blocks. Just the people. I concede there is some influence by manufactures probably, but not as much as one would suppose. In fact, god help a manufacturer that concedes to the government. There are still people who won’t buy certain products for sins of past CEOs, past company policies, or in the case of Troy hiring a former FBI sniper who shot Weaver’s wife at Ruby Ridge as a consultant.
Again - we have TONS or regulation. I guess one needs to get specifics on what more they want, why, and how that regulation will affect “X”.
To turn your question around of “Why do I need an AR-15?”, when I present the very low numbers of them used in crimes, what rational reason can one give me that I shouldn’t have one? Is it merely the POTENTIAL?
I do agree that some elements of the NRA are playing to the whole Meme battles and culture war and I find it distasteful. I have said many times this isn’t an issue that is firmly liberal or conservative. It makes zero sense that it is, but that is how it has played out.
That probably has some truth to it. Again, it would depend on the law. There are many laws on the books that are deemed constitutional. Something too broad would be contested and thus yes, you would have to change the constitution.
We’re not going to get that until the NRA comes to the table and agrees to work out specifics. None of us (as far as I know) are ourselves policy makers, but we are voters, and we need to express our views to our elected officials on this topic. The actual specifics should be worked out by lawmakers, not us here in a forum.
You say you’re for regulation, but you also always deny it will be effective, too, and just sort of argue against almost anything people suggest here.
It may be, but this is an organization that is willing to deny one of the larger employers in my state (and possible the SE region) a tax break ( which is a GOP article of faith!) because they stopped a dozen people from getting a club discount! It’s ideological, and the only logic in their actions I can see (especially in regards to the constant race baiting) is that they want people to be afraid enough to buy more guns - hence they’re really working for the gun manufacturers. Even if you like their products, we have to constantly remind ourselves that corporations are not our friends. They exist to enrich themselves and their shareholders, not to make the world a better place.
Who do you think is the primary beneficiary to getting certain people elected? None of us are naive enough to think that corporations aren’t buying votes - what do you think makes the NRA and gun manufacturers any different from any other industry?
Of course, some people do want a blanket ban and a 2nd amendment repeal. Some gun enthusiasts want to be able to freely buy with no regulation literally any kind of weapon that they can think of, for whatever reason they want. Most of us are in the middle of these extreme positions, I imagine. I live in the south, yeah? And I know hunters and gun owners, and most are responsible. It’s a part of our culture down here, even in the city.
I think it’s the type of crimes they’re used in.
The right basically started the whole culture wars as a way of winning white voters from the Democratic party. The Dems have (mostly) been on the defensive and more than willing to concede ground on these issues.
I agree, but the NRA doesn’t see it that way at all, at least in terms of the public rhetoric.
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Hey, congrats, so do I!
See, if it were me, I’d say that a suicide attempt should absolutely be a reason not to be allowed to own a gun. That’s a reasonable regulation (IMO) that would keep people who have already illustrated a lack of due care for themselves from having access to an easy and often immediately-successful means of ending their life (and possibly the lives of others as well) in a fit of despair. To be honest, I’m not sure why nobody took your friend’s gun away from him, since “tried to OD on pills” is a pretty damn big warning sign that they might do something extremely drastic, given the opportunity.
There is no regulation that will prevent all suicides, by gun or any other means. But we do have a track record of doing things to mitigate people’s ability to kill themselves. Things like fencing in sidewalks on bridges and observation decks on tall buildings, or eliminating coal gas ovens, or odorants in chemicals like natural gas, or doing what we can to minimize CO output from car exhaust. Even if the impact on suicide is incidental to the intent of those changes, they’re still good changes. If there were even just actual enforced regulations on things like proper care and safe storage of firearms, it could help to eliminate some of the most rapid-impulse suicides that are enabled by pulling a loaded gun out of a bedside drawer. (It could also prevent things like friends impulsively shooting their roommates when they arrive home unexpectedly late at night and fail to announce themselves.)
Of course, simply making gun ownership contingent on need rather than desire might also help by cutting down on the number of handguns in people’s homes (if you want to shoot one, go rent one at a range), but I suspect needing to justify the purpose of firearm ownership is a bridge well too far beyond reasonable for you.
Perhaps I should have been more clear: the NRA can either contribute their expertise, or regulation will be crafted without it. Since the NRA’s stance seems to be that nobody outside the NRA has any understanding whatsoever about guns and is merely reacting and creating incompetent policy out of emotional and irrational fear of guns, they are actively marching themselves into a scenario where regulation will be crafted by the very people they most fear will craft it.
Does that mean we can digitize the NICS database and let the ATF join the 20th century so that we’re not relying on distributed and error-prone paper record searches to enforce background check requirements? That’d be another nice thing that the NRA is absolutely dead-set against allowing, since then Teh Gubmint Will Know Who Owns The Guns!
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Obviously many of us disagree with you on what constitutes “very low numbers.” 4 out of the 5 deadliest mass shootings in modern American history were committed with AR-15 style rifles, with dozens of people killed over short periods of time by lone gunmen. Due to the insanely high numbers of normal day-today shooting victims in the US every year maybe you just see these events as a rounding error, not worth responding to. But these are real people’s lives.
You’re explicitly saying that responding to these terrible tragedies by suggesting that people should have to demonstrate some sort of reason to own these demonstrably efficient killing machines is not “rational.” Would you say the same if people wanted similar justification for ownership of any other consumer product that had killed dozens of people at a time on multiple occasions over the last few years?
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I can’t reply to everything right now, but the overdose was explained as an accident. I am 100% sure if his wife thought it was a suicide attempt she would have hidden or gotten rid of the gun, at the very least have someone hold on to it for awhile. (And to paint a full picture, she was an occasional shooter who viewed herself as above average and who often voiced her onion for more regulations as well as an atheist liberal - so not your typical image of a gun owner.)
I don’t recall what he ODed on, but it was explained he must have just goofed up and took too many, and lied about how many he took. (ie. I must have taken a double does, vs a quad dose). I recall that the levels were the drug were higher than expected for just an extra dose or two, but was explained away as “people metabolize drugs at different rates”. And then he continued to lie about having no desire to hurt himself etc.
For individuals with young children, parents with dementia, or people suffering from severe depression I 100% agree one should take as many prudent precautions one can take. But as my example shows, many times people simply don’t realize something is wrong until it is too late. Like I said in this case his wife and his sister in law are both MDs. (In a related story, I know a guy who has several foster kids, most of them victims of abuse at a young age, and even though he was trained to recognized signs, found out after months that one of the kids was abusing his siblings. This dark shit is just hard to root out.)
The tragic thing is the guy was one of those people who literally was one of the nicest people you will ever meet. I mean that in a literal, non hyperbole sense. If you met him, odds are you walked away feeling better about yourself. And I didn’t know at the time, but a lot of this stemmed from being laid off work and being jobless for over year or so. Had I known that I am like 90% sure I could have pulled a favor and gotten him a job, while not perfect, at least in his field. Personally I know how hard being jobless is on ones psyche and once I finally found one, my depression greatly improved.
Just wondering if you had heard about this?
And all of this?
"Through its media outlet NRATV, the nation’s leading gun group promotes racist hosts and spreads fear that movements like Black Lives Matter present a physical threat to white people. NRATV personalities portray people of color generally and African Americans in particular as dangerous individuals who can’t stop killing each other and who will make this violence spill over into white neighborhoods.
After the New York Times reported that “some 30 people are victims of gun homicides” every day in America, future NRATV host Grant Stinchfield said that we should “blame minorities killing each other not law abiding conservatives.”
When a Boston Globe piece argued that more guns will likely lead in more people of color being killed, the NRA’s sole African American host, Colion Noir, likened the piece to a “negro pity party.” (Noir’s given name is Collins Idehen. His chosen last name, “Noir,” is the French word for black.)
“Blacks commit murder at 11 times the rate of whites alone,” NRATV host Bill Whittle claimed on his show.
Two days after Donald Trump took the oath of office, Chuck Holton, who co-hosts an NRATV show with disgraced Iran Contra figure Oliver North, celebrated by suggesting that having a black man in the White House defiled the nation.
The notion that violent, armed criminals will come for you and your family if you are not armed is a longstanding theme of the NRA’s rhetoric. Witness, for example, a 2013 NRA ad claiming that “law-abiding average people” need high-capacity magazines to defend against “the madmen, drug cartels and home-invading killers.” Or an NRATV interview last May featuring, of all people, the male model Fabio — who claimed that California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) will soon release a wave of “pedophiles, child molester [sic] and rapists” upon the people of his state.
Now, in the age of Trump, the NRA’s propaganda often casts Black Lives Matter in the role of the dangerous external threat that must be resisted with armed force.
In a July video, for example, Stinchfield and Holton claim that “white families are being tortured and killed almost every day in racist violence” in South Africa and argue that the same thing could happen here in the United States. They warn of “the parallels between what’s happening in South Africa and the blatant racism and violence we’re seeing from people like the Black Lives Matter crowd.”
South Africa, a nation where white supremacist rule was displaced not too long ago, is “kind of a warning for what could happen in the United States,” they continue, if America is taken in by “this racial hatred that is being forced on the American culture by the Black Lives Matter crowd.”
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I’d implore you to watch the whole interview. OF COURSE they took a sound bite and used it against the kids march. Not saying that is right, but this is standard operating procedure in our meme-tastic world.
In a follow up interview Killer Mike takes the route we should all be taking - he disagrees with their views on the subject, but is 100% for protest, speaking your mind, and organizing.
I really would love to discuss this interview and see what people think. I pretty much agree with his points 100%. Colion Noir is probably more right leaning, but Killer Mike is a radical socialist who is very blunt about race relations, pointing out America is only 10 years out of apartheid.
The problem is, no one wants to sit through 45 min and listen to someone talk about what they disagree with, even though you are going to learn something from another person’s perspective. He even says he doesn’t agree with the NRA or anyone 100% of the time, but for the most part they see eye to eye when it comes to his rights. He early on points out this shouldn’t be a political issue where Rs are for one thing and Ds for another.
I guess I could try to summarize, but I’d implore you to put this on in the background and listen to their perspective.
No, it isn’t. This isn’t just about memes or sound bites and slimy tactics, which many organizations manage to steer clear of. I’m specifically referring to the racist rhetoric that the NRA employs.
They took his quote out of context and used to disparage March for our Lives in an appeal to their base. He got played. That isn’t the actions of a group that values black voices.
Ultimately, Mike recites most of the NRA talking points, but in the context of police violence and high crime instead of government violence and rural life, and ignores mass killings and all of the racism within the NRA. I didn’t see anything terribly new insightful in the interview.
All I can say is it looks like shilling for the NRA in an an “End Racism” T-Shirt.
Edited to correct my mistake.
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Mike had to sort of walk this back a bit after this came out. He apologized for calling out the protesters specifically. He’s still pretty pro-gun, though, and is unapologetic about that, but there is also a history of black gun owner ship for good reason - so he’s not entirely wrong about that. I still think he got used here, and it’s unfortunate.
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I don’t disagree there, and there isn’t anything wrong with that. I’m most disturbed by the interview and how he was used. A lot of people see it as a betrayal given the not-so subtle racism of the NRA. It really complicates things for pro-gun POC to say the least.
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Actually, I finally saw the thing people complained about. I thought it was like a 30 - 60 minute preview where they take a pull quote out of context. That isn’t what happened. The interview was supposed to be cut up and released in chunks, like many interviews out there (i.e. Tune in tomorrow for part 2 of our interview with such and such.) So no, the quote was not out of context, but part of a 6 minute portion, with a very short intro by Noir. But it wasn’t directly “used” to attack anyone or really directed at any one. Noir’s intro did have some direction, so one could blame him, but even if you watched the 6min section and not the whole thing, I think you have to really stretch to reach this conclusion.
He got a lot of unfair criticism for this forcing him to make some back tracking. It is like people pulled the quote from the interview and got upset about it.
I am going to assume this was just a typo on your part and you did watch the whole thing. I have listened twice and I don’t recall any part of the 6min or 45 min video referencing BLM. There was a reference of the upcoming Parkland march, which Mike did make a glib comment about. IMHO after watching it all, I don’t feel his comments should have taken as much heat, but whatever, YMMV.
While he acknowledged in the interview that he doesn’t agree with everything the NRA does, if the NRA was as racists in their rhetoric as some people claim, why do you think he would appear on one of their channels? Even if he was friends with Noir he could have said, “Hey man, I want to do this with you, but we gotta do it on my show.” He doesn’t strike me as a person willing to put up with too much racist bullshit. Though he does list some occasions where the NRA could do better. He lists even MORE occasions where the white liberal progressive allies could do better. So are the Democrats as racist as the NRA because they don’t do as much as they could for black rights?
Maybe they are more Pro-Rights talking points. What 2 or 3 points did you most disagree with? Where there any you did agree with?
Except he wasn’t shilling. As he said, he sees them as an ally. That doesn’t mean they have to be best friends, but they agree on a common issue.
