Gun Control

^ How I see it.

American gun laws are way too lenient. There is no way that one needs an 'assault weapon' to defend themselves. In the past year, I can think of two very high-profile shootings (Aurora & Newtown) both in which an assault rifle was used. I would have to say that even one shooting is bad, but two?

 

^ How I see it,

Republicans Outraged at Obama for [insert completely interchangable reason]

 

The argument behind favoring the ownership of assault weapons is that they can be used to defend oneself against the government, like in the case of the American Revolution. You don't stand really stand a chance as a civilian with a handgun. The argument goes beyond "personal defense" against another individual and into the politics and militarization of a nation in order to defend one self. (Which I find is ironic since you would effectively be using the 4th(?) amendment of the very nation you're fighting against, but I digress.) Although I disagree with this conservative thinking and lean more towards the banning of such lethal weapons, I won't write off a person for feeling the need for such a weapon. Regardless, I think the process to get a gun needs to be more extensive and require something along the lines of annual psychological and sensory (particularly vision) tests/evaluations (by a third-party) in order to access those firearms.

Then, it can be argued that the requirement of those documents are unconstitutional similarly to how states are ruling that the Driver's License requirement to vote is unconstitutional in that a privilege is required to access a citizen right. It would also be comparable to black codes used to prevent African Americans from voting. My solution would require some polish and re-working I guess. I'm just rambling now so I guess I'll just shut up.

 

Well.. I think there should be regular psychological evaluations of gun owners, as Furry mentioned, and we should stress the point that many mentally ill individuals aren't being treated as well as they could be. I read an article recently about an autistic kid who, when he went on violent streaks (which ranged from swearing at his mom to threatening to kill her), he would be cuffed away by the police, and that was about it.. The basic premise of the article was that the best way to bring attention to a violently mentally ill individual today in America is to build up a rap sheet instead of getting them help, which leaves many potentially dangerous psychologically disturbed people either in prison or in your neighborhood.

Also: assault weapons.... really not necessary imo.

 

Then there will be just what happened in Newtown. Guy robs house, steals guns, does **** with guns that aren't his. To be fair, it was a family member, but nothing is stopping someone from breaking into a house and perhaps stealing guns other than a gun safe. I wouldn't feel safe under the "if" in regards to gun safes.

 

*2nd.

Also, the framers of the constitution wanted people to have guns to be able to defend themselves from the tyranny of the federal government. By that I mean the 2nd amendment was meant to ensure that states could maintain their sovereignty.

My point is, as long as each state militia (the national guard) is well regulated and maintained, then the constitution is not violated.

Another thing, the overwhelming majorities of gun murders in this country are committed with pistols. If anything, we should be taking pistols off the streets, not focusing all of our attention on "assault weapons".


All of my points have already been said in this thread. Sorry if I wasted your time.

 

Panda, you do realize the alternative to trying something is to do nothing. As we've mentioned before, gun control laws are not to stop all gun related crimes, they are more of a trend and a statement then anything else. Finding statistics about which guns kill more often than others really doesn't help your case other than to suggest not doing anything about assault weapons because they don't kill people "as often".

This is not about numbers, even 1 person being killed somewhere is not a crime statistic, that is someone's life.

 

They have. Cities have the most gun laws on the books. Obviously they aren't doing enough. Part of the problem is any law passed that has the potential to do something gets undercut by red tape due to laws the NRA has local mayors, and state senators pass. Laws that stop the ATF to keep a registry of who buys guns and to track gun sales from known shady places.

This isn't an "all of one and none of the other" thing. We do want the current laws to be enforced. No one is saying they shouldn't be. This is a complex problem which needs to be tackled on many fronts. We are arguing in favor of one of those fronts. You are arguing for the status quo, which doesn't move anything forward.

By saying, "we should enforce the laws we have" that is saying nothing. Since that isn't what is on the table right now saying it for the sake of something to say is basically saying nothing.

 

Imho, i don't see why anyone even needs a weapon for protection. I understand maybe a tazer, or a knife, or mace, but having an ArmaLite-15 (Model used alot of recent shootings) is overkill. Sure a pistol, but who needs anything overr .22 caliber (if that) to stop an intruder or confrontation.

Personally, i think only bolt-action, muzzle loaders, and shot guns should be sold to people with valid hunting licenses.

Theres really no purpose for those high-powered weapons other than for hunting.

And the assault rifle thing is just dumb, makes no sense to sell guns meant for assault.

I agree that modified weapons should be illegal, but not a pistol grip, like turning a simple semi-auto pistol into full auto

 

The argument against an assault rifle ban that I've seen is apparently people think they need them to protect themselves from the government?

Now that is all kinds of crazy. Mostly because if the US military was to go after people, having outdated assault rifles wouldn't do jack against the air force, attack helicopters, heavy ordinance, tanks, etc. It's one of those arguments you see and instantly face palm. So we must have assault weapons to somehow balance ourselves against our own military...who is allowed to have muuuuch stronger weapons. But we don't care about those weapons, we just need the ones that shoot a lot real fast.

 

Know what's crazy is Canada has more guns per capita than we do and they have less gun related death per year.

 

You guys know there's already an assault rifle ban right? The media keeps talking about assault WEAPONS.

I.E. a made up buzzword for guns that LOOK like assault rifles. Machine guns aren't legal in the US unless you have some really high level license that requires a huge back ground check.

"But gun prohibitionists continue to target so-called assault weapons—not because these firearms have any inordinate capability, but because the anti-gun lobby has invested more than two decades convincing the American people that "weapons of war" must be banned, regardless of whether such a ban would have a measurable impact on public safety, and despite the fact that real weapons of war have already been banned for nearly three decades."

The Truth About Assault Weapons

(Here's some quotes from the page, but you may want to read the whole thing.)

"Nevertheless, the Assault Weapons Ban's passage was aided by the fact that many Americans thought they were banning machine guns and "weapons of war", something that had, in fact, already been banned.
...According to the Department of Justice, the firearms that the AWB would ban were used in only 2% of gun crimes.
...In order to secure enough votes to pass the bill, a "sunset" provision was added. After ten years, the AWB would expire.On September 13, 1994, the Federal Assault Weapons Ban went into effect.
... In 2004, the Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired. It was not renewed.
...The AWB had failed to have an impact on gun crime in the United States. A 2004 Department of Justice study concluded:
Should it be renewed, the ban's effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement. [Assault weapons] were rarely used in gun crimes even before the ban.
..At Virginia Tech in 2007, Seung-Hui Cho once again showed the futility of regulating magazine capacity when he carried nineteen ten- and fifteen-round magazines in his backpack as part of a carefully planned massacre...
Cho used seventeen of the magazines and fired approximately 170 rounds—or ten rounds per magazine—from two handguns before killing himself...
Like Eric Harris before him, Cho demonstrated that a magazine's capacity was incidental to the amount of death and injury an unopposed murderer could cause in a "gun-free zone"
... Although the Virginia Tech massacre was and remains the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, calls for new gun control were relatively scarce in its aftermath, possibly because so-called assault weapons were not used."

"According to Senator Feinstein, so-called assault weapons have been used in 385 murders since the AWB expired in 2004, or about 48 murders per year.
But there were 8,583 total murders with guns in the United States in 2011, meaning so-called assault weapons were used 0.6% of the time.
This represents a decrease in murders from so-called assault weapons compared to the decade when the AWB was in effect, even though such weapons are more common today."

"Further illustrating the small role so-called assault weapons play in crime, FBI data shows that 323 murders were committed with rifles of any kind in 2011. In comparison, 496 murders were commited with hammers and clubs, and 1,694 murders were perpetrated with knives."

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/uc....-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-11

 

So you'd be in support of more stringent mental health screening for prospective gun owners, requiring proof of secure storage, a 28 day waiting period, and issuing Firearms Licences for the purposes of controlling feral animals, hunting, target shooting, and collecting only (i.e, not self-defence).

Because those restrictions would save lives. A lot of lives.

I prefer The Truth About The Moon Landing and The Truth About Peanut Butter.

 

And countries like Australia and England who have gun bans have higher home invasion/gun related robberies/gun crimes. Than they did before they banned guns?

Also the fact that the right for Americans to own guns is to protect ourselves from the government not actually to protect ourselves from each other. If countries citizens can't have guns then they cant keep the government in line because they'd have nothing to revolt with they tried to push everyone over.

 

Oh Ady...not you too.

^ What I said a few posts up.

Please don't give that excuse, it hurts my brain every time I hear it. It has to be the poorest reasoning on the face of the earth. No...just no. People don't need guns to protect themselves from the government. Maybe in third world countries where the military has the same firepower as can be obtained anywhere else but not in countries where assault weapons don't even come close to tanks, helicopters, the air force, etc.

You know what, the government gets tanks. I want a tank now. It should be my right under the 2nd amendment to own a tank. It's just a well armed vehicle and I certainly have the right to own vehicles and be armed right?

 

Crime is on the increase, that is why gun crime is on the increase in the UK, not because they banned guns.
Oh, I guess you could say that gun crime jumped from none to a lot the moment they banned it.
There are a hell of a lot of illegally imported things in the UK, and it's not strictly guns.
I'd like to point out the 2nd ammendment is only valid in america, as are at least 95% of gun-based high school massacres.
Now that isn't a valid point, but its the same kind of point as the one made.

I also don't approve of the way labelling things gives them inherent meaning, I'm not accusing anyone in this thread but "2nd Ammendment" does not justify your argument, the fact some people in a place (as people often are) a few centuries ago said everyone has the right to own a gun does not mean everyone has a right to own a gun, as subjective as rights are.

To anyone against the new gun control (which if anything seeks to seal loopholes)
Why do you want to own a gun?
Why does your gun have to be a military grade assault rifle?

I won't accept "to protect myself" as a valid response for obvious reasons.


added note:
"we need guns to rebel against the government"
Uh
Are you sure you're in the right thread?

 

Rights are subjective?

Source for this? Wikipedia tells me otherwise.

 

While I don't own any guns and don't believe I have to defend myself from the government I can at least understand where those people are coming from. Our government has had quite a history of corruption, just like any other government. The weapons wouldn't necessarily be a means to overthrow the government but rather to escape them in the event that they did do something unruly. You think you would have the same likelihood to survive if you had a revolver vice a shotgun?

With paranoia propagated from our own government, the same firearms can be used to defend ourselves from an invasion -- whether it be from China, zombie attack, robot uprising or any kind of attack on the US. It's not just about fighting our own government, it can be about fighting any government, entity, organization, or what have you in the time of need. I think you are confusing defense with the word, offense.

Like I said, I don't particularly feel this way but it is the way it has been explained to me from peers and family (who aren't all conservative republicans ). I don't write them off as idiots just because we have different perspectives. -__-