A few question for the anti gun side.

Maybe also go after folks who buy a dozen guns a year and then report most of them "lost or stolen."




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what current gun laws do you support and what additional ones do you want imposed federally

 

The problem is how vague all this is. Inset the word "I'll" in this sentence and you sound like a presidential candidate. "I'll go after (ISIL, big banks, gun runners, etc.)"

It's all pie in the sky talk. It has about as much substance as a politician's campaign promise. If you are serious about this, then take a crack at proposing legislation to do what you want...legislation that would be Constitutional as well (unless you can't be bothered with limiting yourself too what the constitution allows...and we have enough of those politicians already).

So how about it...you got a law you want to propose or is this just wishful thinking?

 

Sure. Then we can put them in jail for a year to help them make more criminal contacts, then let them out and rearrest them the following year for the same thing.

Laws will not solve any problem in this country when our prison and legal system is a revolving door.

 

If I had a solution for you, I'd be working on it and not entertaining myself on a political opinion website. I don't have one, wish I did. Best I can suggest is people work harder on building businesses that make sense to run from within the U.S.

I do think a big part of our crime problem (violent and otherwise) is because of the frustration so many people feel about not accomplishing anything with their lives. If we can start enabling people to be productive... well, folks generally want to be constructive. Opportunities might allow them to redirect a lot of the wasteful effort that occurs in the form of theft, hate, and rampage into something useful.




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Despite what you claim above, we aren't having a problem with law-abiding gun owners shooting people either accidentally or negligently. The problem is with people who are committing other crimes (and using the gun as a tool).

 

Exactly. I saw an old car parked at the mall. My wife and I looked into the interior--no seatbelts. (and I live here in Florida).

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Exactly. I own ammo that I bought about 20 years ago. My dad probably has 40 year old ammo. Also, it's hard to trace ammo. Anybody asks me about ammo, and the answer is "I shot it."

 

Depends on whether the drug dealer fears incarceration or sudden death by his customers/competitors more. I bet that the drug dealers will remain armed.

 

Really? Yesterday a three year old shot and killed her sister because the grandfather did not know how to safely store his gun. This happens DOZENS of times a year.

 

Also yesterday probably 20 people died in car accidents across the USA.

 

And at least 20 people saved their own lives with a gun

 

Did not know how, or simply did not care?

 

Children are killed more often by bicycles than guns.

People die to extremes of heat and cold almost twice the rate of firearm accidents.

http://www.projectchildsafe.org/sites/default/files/2014_InjuryIIR_2015.pdf

 

Yes, but this isn't so much a gun issue as a negligent parent situation. Tens of thousands of children get exposed to poison and many die, every year, many household items and even plants. Children drown in bathtubs (more than accidently die accidently from guns every year and many times more in swimming pools. Thousand overdose or have adverse reactions from pilfered prescription drugs. Some get access to matches and burn. Children are injured in such ways every day and the problem? Not the presence of guns, but negligent parents. You can't ban everything that might be dangerous to children but you can educate parents of the dangers faced by children and parents must do their best as keeping children from accessing these things and a better job of monitoring their children. Nothing can be enforced that can force parents to not be negligent, not mandating safes, not mandating trigger locks, nothing, if they are unwilling, there is no way to monitor it. We can remove children from parents who put children at risk, but usually that requires someone to intervene if something is noticed or, as in many cases, after the fact. In the case of intervention before a child becomes a victim, too often, people look the other way.

Parents should be responsible, proactive, active, aware, and continually monitor their children's behavior. Such things as above with children rarely happen out of the blue, if a child is capable of that kind of violence, it can usually be spotted early and the parent should pony up and work to manage it.

 

Now see I think you are on to something here. I believe we do not have a gun violence problem in America so much as we have a violence problem in general. If you look at violence in America, you will see we have a much higher per capita rate of violent crime than many other nations—regardless of the weapon used. None of us are proud of this. Many of us, myself included, do everything we lawfully can to fight against it. But we know there are no evil little voices calling out from firearms saying “shoot me, shoot that guy with me.” We know the presence of the weapon does not incite the violence. We know from experience that more guns does not equal more violent crime, and less guns does not equal less violent crime.

This is how I believe a free people should deal with violent crime. We hold those who are at fault accountable—the person who chose to commit a wrongful act through an unjustifiable motive, be it anger, hatred, revenge, greed, etc. I believe in holding accountable the person who knew right from wrong, who understood the nature and consequences of his actions, and who made a conscious choice to take someone’s life without a shred of legitimate excuse or justification. We don’t punish the innocent for the crime of the guilty by taking away their rights.

It is not a difficult concept. It is the foundation of our criminal justice system. Gun bans are founded on a desire to get rid of all gun violence—and the desire is so strong it overrides the above principle that is a foundation of our liberty. Oh, I confess it is true that I do not claim any greater powers of discernment into the heart of my fellow man than the average governmental minister. I dare say that neither one of us can look at two people and intuitively guess which one secretly lacks the moral compass that tells us it is wrong to kill our fellow man absent the necessity of self-defense or defense of others.

What I object to, however, is anyone who tells me that because he (or the government) cannot distinguish “good” citizens from those who might become “bad” ones, then the proper course is to presume they are all potentially bad and deny everyone a fundamental right.

I believe it was the Papal Legate Arnaud Amalric’s comment (preceding the sack of Beziers during the Cathar Crusade) in response to the supposed difficulty in telling which members of the town were Catholics and which ones were detested Cathars: "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius,” which translates roughly to: “Kill them all. For the Lord knoweth them that are His.”

If you reword this in context of gun control it becomes: “deny them all the freedom to possess firearms, for not even the Lord himself knows which ones might make an ill use of them.”

I believe a gun ban by its very nature is an admission of failure. A failure to understand and deal with the social and economic issues that lead to violence. A failure of the mental health screening system. A failure to adequately punish violent offenders. A failure to address a moral system that glorifies violent criminals.

The gun control answer to these failings is to blame the instrument for the hand that wields it—to allow politicians to cover up their failure to address the problems of violence by blaming the object instead. Ban the tool and we ban (or at least cover up) the underlying anger, hatred, revenge, envy, etc. that fuels the violence. It’s far easier than actually addressing the underlying social issues that drive crime.

My natural inclination is to recoil from such thoughts. I was born to my freedom and raised to respect it. I was not cast off from my mother’s apron strings as a toddler only to seek them out again as an adult in the form of a paternalistic government seeking to tell me it knows what is best for me—that it must presume to deny me a right to protect me from myself and from my fellow man.

I believe the choice of firearm ownership is a fundamental natural right of a free people. The right requires no justification. The right carries with it no governmental preconditions that must be met before it can be exercised. This is my belief.

I also believe that the right comes with a concurrent duty of peaceful exercise. This is the only condition for the free exercise of the right—that all who do so respect the social contract to live peaceably with their neighbors—that they do not engage in or threaten to engage in acts of violence. It is a right of peaceful, lawful possession and use. There is not, and never has been, a right to use any weapon to harm another without the socially accepted justifications of defense of self or others.

To put it simply, I believe that every person has a right to choose whether or not to have a firearm, and making the choice to have a firearm brings with it the duty of peaceful possession—with the full knowledge that we can also choose to forfeit that right (and our very liberty) by our conduct. So long as a free citizen is capable of obeying this duty, then in my opinion no government (and no person) has the moral authority to deny him the right.

Are there persons who, (for example) are mentally ill and should not have access to firearms? Yes. But the only proper way to handle this is by dealing with that individual’s issues—by giving him due process before we deny him a fundamental right. We are capable of this. We do it every day in the context of emergency detention orders and longer term commitment orders—where not just their RKBA but their very freedom is taken from them.

In sum, I believe the 2nd Amendment recognizes an individual RKBA unassociated with militia service. I believe the Constitution when read as a whole clearly says this, and I believe SCOTUS has correctly ruled this to be the case.

And so, while I support efforts to reduce violent crime, I would say the responsible action of a government is to find ways to mitigate crime (or terrorism, NSA?) without violating a provision in the very charter that justifies its existence. And I believe any proponent of any law has an affirmative duty to show not only how that law is designed to address a particular issue, but also how that law does not violate the constitution in doing so.

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"False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils, except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Can it be supposed that those who have the courage to violate the most sacred laws of humanity, the most important of the code, will respect the less important and arbitrary ones, which can be violated with ease and impunity, and which, if strictly obeyed, would put an end to personal liberty--so dear to men, so dear to the enlightened legislator--and subject innocent persons to all the vexations that the guilty alone ought to suffer? Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. They ought to be designated as laws not preventative but fearful of crimes, produced by the tumultuous impression of a few isolated facts, and not by thoughtful consideration of the inconveniences and advantages of a universal decree."--Thomas Jefferson, Commonplace Book, 1774-1776, quoting with approval 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria from his work, On Crimes and Punishment, 1764.

 

Dozens of times in a country with 350 million guns in approximately 100 million households is fairly small to those of us who understand numbers. The gun accident death rate is about half of what it was 20 years ago.

 

Very well done and well written. There is nothing there to which I can disagree; the 2nd Amendment is an unambiguous protection of an existing right.

I will add to the statement above concerning "concurrent duty of peaceful exercise". While the RKBA is unambiguous, I was raised that along with the freedoms we carry is a moral responsibility not to use those freedoms to impose on the freedoms of, or injure others, but also, to protect those freedoms for all. As part of a personal moral code, my decision to own and carry firearms is accompanied by the acceptance of an awesome responsibility. It is my responsibility to do make sure I maintain for the safety of others relative to my conduct with guns which covers everything from firearm knowledge, safety protocols, training, understanding the law, understanding when and when I can morally use a gun for defense, etc.

It is also my personal responsibility to do what I can to keep the wrong hands from finding my guns whether they be criminal, children, or someone potentially dangerous to themselves and others. I also have accepted the responsibility that if a criminal (or animal for that mater) is providing an immediate threat of great bodily harm or death to me, or anyone else, it is my moral responsibility to end the threat, anything less put not only any bodies immediate life in danger, but if the threat isn't stopped, will potentially extend the threat to others in the future.

None of the personal responsibilities I just listed nor the moral code I maintain for myself can be legislated, for instance, keeping guns in safes, having trigger locks, etc. as there really isn't a way to monitor or enforce these things, except after the fact. You can't, for instance legislate that people won't be negligent or careless, you can't control behavior. If I fail to uphold my responsibilities or my code and and someone is injured, then, I am accountable and there are potentially personal, criminal and civil consequences. My self imposed responsibilities and my moral code has other elements I didn't enumerate and are the product of what was handed down to me, and then expanded over the year are part of a gospel I frequently preach; some people already subscribe, some listen and adopt some elements, and some, exercising their freedom, don't.

 

And?... Unfortunately there is NOTHING you can do to stop stupidity. How do you keep the 3 year old from getting into the bleach and drinking it? Oh, you put it where they can't get it. How do you keep a child from getting into the cough medicine and drinking it? Oh, you put it where they can't get it. If that's what the Grandpa says, he's lying to make himself look less incriminating. What would your training do in that case? Would training have told the grandpa that guns were dangerous? Would the grandpa have learned that guns can kill? Maybe that they should pay attention to their guns? I'm pretty sure the grandpa already knew of all of this and was just a careless moron. You can't fix stupid. I get that you're one of those "save everyone" kind of person, but you can't. You need to try to think of something that will work, that is realistic. No law you come up with will take away the stupid factor. Training IS NOT going to do anything.

 

The title of this thread is decisive and it serves no purpose in discussing the gun issue. It is a one sided approach to a problem that does not include the vast majority of people in the discussion. I am one f those people. I have always owned guns, hunted and even worked for twenty years where a gun was a necessary part of my job.

There is a huge segment of us that are not anti gun. We are anti "wrong people getting guns" The second amendment like all of the bill of rights, is not absolute. Statements like this try to make it sound like, if you are for reasonable regulation, you are against guns. Making sure that only those who are law abiding have a gun is easy. It is practiced in countries that have needs for self protection more then anyother....countries like Israel with terroism and Canada with abundant wildlife and many others. So, it can be done and yo need not regulate or register any gun because legal owners should be free to buy guns legally and even sell them to other legal owners anywhere in the country.

A suggestion.....
You want to have a gun at home to protect the homestead, no problem. But, if you want to carry a gun in your possession anywhere outside of your home, you need a state issued permit that also conforms to federal regulation that you can use to carry a gun anywhere in the US. That would make a gun carrying violation without a permit a federal offense at the discretion of the state you were in for an offense. It would scare the s.h.i.t. Out of most criminals like federal gun laws do now and put a handle on interstate sales. It would also allow permit holders to carry a gun in any other state.

You would need to show your permit to buy any gun.....or ammo. Simple versions of this are used in other countries and everyone seems happy cause anyone who can pass a check can own a gun. The state laws could be more severe and the Fderal laws could just be fines only except in specific cases as the are now. I am not anti gun and discussions and options like this should be discussed instead all or nothing propositions.

 

Years ago, Ford offered safty devices in cars including air bags, long before they were mandated. Technology has reached a stage that guns could be made that only fire while in the hands of a designate person.
I would like to see gun makers given tax incentives to test market these items to gun owners and ultimatly offer them as options.

When Ford offered safty devices on cars, the buying public soaked them up and mandatory devices in cars, contrary to popular belief, are as much a benefit to the car maker as it is to the consumer. In other words, we need to come up with better safty alternatives and let the free market Decide. But, they need to be more owner friendly and reliable. Govt. rebates toward the purchase of the guns could be instituted too.

 

The NRA crowd will fight them to the death if they are mandatory.

 

That's because it goes against the second amendment to require something to exercise your right.

 

I need a permit to assemble and to speak publicly.

 

In this country, it violates the Constitution to require a permit from the government before you exercise your rights at the most basic level.

 

Please cite the supreme court decision that says this. Otherwise you have simply offered a legal opinion which I disagree with