John Stossel on 20/20 ... 10 myths about gun control

The link below is a great piece that is an eye opener. Especially when he interviews prison inmates.
It was done a while back but is still very relevent today.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyoLuTjguJA

 

I have been looking for this video for a while. Thanks for linking it.

 

Unfortunatly, all us who can see reality through the bull crap screen cannot get through to the people who have tunnel vision and are focused on guns. You will never dry up the gun supply through gun control because the illegal market keeps a steady stream flowing inwards. But when you try and tell them that or any other point they just bring up some gun violence graph or stat stating gun violence and homicide are high. Yes we got that point, but they will never get the point about fixing the person behind the gun, not the gun itself.

 

Actually, I do get that. Everyone agrees that crazies, morons and criminals shouldn't have guns.
Any idea how to legislate against those individuals without the law being called discriminatory and thrown out by SCOTUS?
Do you seriously believe "the illegal market" could supply guns as quickly or cheaply as the 129,817 LICENSED gun dealers we currently have?

http://www.businessinsider.com/more-gun-stores-in-america-than-grocery-stores-2012-12

 

I doubt they could, but do you think that FFLs sales are only sold to bad people? Did you know that automatic weapons are bought illegaly? Scince automatic weapons have been illegal scince the 30's, how are people still getting there hands on them? Only 10% of total gun crimes involve a gun that was stolen from a legal gun owner, while gun crimes by a legal owners are unheard of. So I guess what I'm trying to ask is where are all these guns coming from if not from FFLs? The illegal market isn't a place you can go to, walk down the aisle and put a kilo of cocaine and a fully automatic AK-47 in your black market shopping cart. The black market is all around us.

 

Full auto's, SBR's, and SBS's have been heavily regulated since the the 30's, but buying a new manufacturer FA gun wasn't illegal until the Firearms Owners Protection Act in '86. You can still purchase full auto weapons, but they must have been made and sold before March '86 I think. There are other ways around this, but are equally regulated.

 

You need a special lisence to be able to aquire a fully auto, which is near impossible to aquire. Wether it is pre ban or not.

 

No you don't. You buy the F/A weapon, and then submit what is called a Form 4 and fill in the blanks. You then wait for the tax stamp to come back, and then you can take possession of the weapon.

http://www.atf.gov/forms/download/atf-f-5320-4.pdf

ETA: If you are talking about getting a SOT, or special occupation tax, then you need to become at least an 01 FFL so you can deal with NFA Title 2 weapons. If you become an 07 FFL and a SOT, then you can manufacturer full auto and SBR/SBS weapons, but are restricted in what you can have in your shop at any one time, who you can sell it to, special considerations on how to store the equipment, etc. Those are harder to get, but not impossible. I would say total time from application to 01 FFL, 60 days due to some law that I can't remember right now.

ETAA:Here is a lower selling for $10,500.

http://www.ar15.com/archive/topic.html?b=7&f=118&t=490489

They are out there, they just cost an arm and a leg and you have to jump through the hoops to get one.

 

Dude, even if it was true that people could not currently legally purchase automatic weapons (which it isn't), you do realize that the vast majority of mass shootings are not committed with automatic weapons? I guess those regulations must have some effect....

As for 10% of gun crimes involving a gun that was stolen, I'd take a 10% reduction in gun crime any day!
You avoid mentioning that the majority of gun crimes involve a straw purchase. Weapon registration would end this.

 

Registration would end this straw purchases problem, I have already stated this. I have also stated that within the flip of a lightswitch, it could lead to easy confiscation, as they will know exactly what guns they are taking when they are on there way to take them. It is within a responsible gun owners best interest to keep a healthy buffer zone from that. There can be other ways around straw purchases, a collective action instead of one absolute action. For starters, the idea that any private transfer goes through an FFL, a harsh punishment for those who attempt to buy a gun for someone who can't, and mind you that is JUST for starters, not a complete idea.
A 10% decrease in gun crime involving a gun stolen from a legal owner would just be offset by a small increase in other weapon related crimes because criminals will just use whatever they can get there hands on.
Assault rifles can be purchased, but it is extremely difficult and expensive. They are far easier to obtain on the illegal market.

 

Because punishments for using full-auto weapons is more severe, they are not used that much here in the US. The real problems with crime and murders are in the urban jungles. Much of the killings are gang and drug related. If laws were passed that had the same punishment for people caught using guns in connection with any drug dealing or criminal gang activity---as it is for having machine guns---then crime would go down at least 50%, as long as the local corrupt urban justice systems are taken out of the loop.

The cost of housing 250,000 new inmates would be a wonderful investment, and pay huge dividends in public safety. However, Obama & Co. would never allow their most loyal supporters in the hoods to become upset at seeing large numbers of their own hauled to prison.

 

OOPS...
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/01/pro-gun-myths-fact-check

- - - Updated - - -

You do understand that Obama won by majority vote, right? And that not all black people live "in the hoods"?
I wonder why conservatives get labeled racist?

 

I remember reading somewhere that some states were thinking about changing the way they distribute electoral votes from a winner take all to a district by district collection. They said that if those states changed to that Romney would've won the election.

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/opin...ans-should-leave-electoral-college-alone.html

Liberals your days are numbered.

 

Yeah, that plan would effectively make rural voters have greater representation than urban voters... Sounds like an admission that conservatives have given up on ever representing the will of the majority of Americans.

In other words, those conservative states believe the only chance they have to actually win an election is by cheating and manipulating the system. Pathetic.

 

There is nothing cheating about wanting your representatives to represent the district that they are supposed to govern.

 

There is "something cheating" about making sure that some votes are worth more than others. That's why - in various reapportionment cases decided by the Supreme Court in the 1960s ( such as Wesberry v. Sanders, Reynolds v. Sims, and Baker v. Carr) the court ruled that districts for the United States House of Representatives and for the legislative districts of both houses of state legislatures had to contain roughly equal populations.

In other words, this proposal by conservatives will never happen, and only acts to illustrate that they've given up on legitimate elections.

 

Notice none of the resident anti-gun folks have come forth to argue any of Stossel's points.

 

Fine... Let me know if I missed any. It's not like any of this is rocket science:
- The fact that gun control in a city is not comparable to gun control on a national level is obvious and has been covered a million times in these boards.
- There is no evidence to support that the number of lives saved by guns is remotely close to the number of lives taken by guns.
- Criminals need to obtain weapons before they can carry and use them illegally. Police regularly seize their guns, but the status quo makes it too easy for the to get replacements. Gun control is about making it more difficult for those criminals to get their hands on new guns while continuing to seize the ones they use currently.
- Showing or using a tazer is just as likely to stop a criminal as showing or using a gun, and tazers don't kill hundreds of people a year through "accidental shootings".
- "equalizing unequals"... I agree this is true, which is why a skinny 11 year old can be a dangerous gangbanger. Guns empower ANYONE who handles them, not just the good guys. Even if it did just empower good guys, they make mistakes too.
- If 20 people all pull guns and run to the scene of a school shooting from various directions, how do they know not to fire on each other in the heat of the moment? How do the police know who the good guys are? How many more shootings could this result in?
- How many people have become victims only because the criminal was armed? Shouldn't the goal be to disarm the criminals?

 

How many times has this happened so far?

 

How many times has what happened? Seriously, I'll have to ignore your questions if you're the only one who knows what you're asking.

 

According to Time magazine, hardly a right-wing voice, guns are used in self-defence 180,000 times a year in the US.

(read it in the doctor's office)

 

Your'e Correct... its a GOAL, no I'm wrong.. its an EFFORT. A goal can be achieved.
Considering many violent criminals already have guns, and use the same ones over and over, till they get caught, and in the hood they are almost as easy as drugs to buy, and there are 300 million of them to choose from in the U.S. It is a lofty effort at best. Until criminals are disarmed, I won't have my ability to protect my family diminished in any way.

 

If you ideas about gun control arn't working in urban areas, then focus on the people in the urban areas, not the guns.

You want to diarm the criminals by disarming honest citizens?

Why not demand federal punishments for any urban gang banger caught using a gun?

 

How, by not selling guns in urban areas? How many "law abiding gun owners" will that punish, while doing nothing about people purchasing guns from OUTSIDE the urban area and bringing them in... It's not like there's a border with customs officers surrounding every city.

Who said anything about taking people's guns away? Gun control isn't necessarily gun banning.

Not a bad idea, but you can't demand federal legislation that targets only a single demographic, that's called "discrimination" and is frowned upon by SCOTUS because it's against the Constitution... Why do you hate the Constitution so much?

 

I don't think you grasp the fundamental problem here. Places like Chicago have already banned handguns that are used in some 85% of the murders there. None of the guns have been manufactured or sold there for years. Probably every last one of the guns used in the murders there were brought in very easily and illegally---just like every ounce of cocaine and heroin. Guns can just as easily be smuggled into urban areas from South and Central America as the narcotics are. It wouldn't make a bit of difference if every handgun or "assault" weapon were somehow made unavialible by your fantasy legislation.

Why do insist on worthless gun control laws that are a complete failure? Punishment of felons IS the workable answer, not worthless gun control measures.

I didn't say anything about the race of the urban gang bangers---but unless you live in a cave---you already know that virtually all these thugs are not Jewish, Native American, Korean, or European Whites.

It is the Dept. of Justice and the local urban DA's and Courts that are discriminitory. THEY allow these people to kill themselves and commit crimes with little intervention BECAUSE of the demographic status of the gangs. Leftists are the ones who are intolerant of the Constitution and equality of justice. To understand the bigotry of leftists, look at the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of hate groups. Not a single racist Latino or Black street or prison gang is considered to be a hate group. White and Christian groups are almost the only ones on the list.

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/hate-map