Does any gun control make sense?

[kilimanjaro]

What makes sense to me:

Concealed carry permits
NICS system for commercial sales
NICS system at gun shows
Felons and aliens not allowed guns
Five or ten years prison time for crimes with a gun
Adjudicated mentally ill not allowed guns
NFA licenses and checks

Beyond that, it's political nonsense.

 

[jersurf101]

I believe the only sensible road for us to take is negotiating to get bad laws off the books for those that make more sense. For instance getting suppressors out of NFA and beefing up NCIS backround checks. But this is scary territory because when you involve the Federal Government there typically nobody or the right people do not win. Common sense seems to be severely lacking in our federal governing bodies.

We could rearrange some laws to ease the hearts and minds but it would need to be quid pro quo not just giving ground to the antis.

 

[Ruger480]

I personally think we are looking at this the wrong way. I do not think gun control/laws are the answer. Fixing the situation much more difficult than just writing some new laws into effect or changing the current ones.

I believe that the real problem is society itself. To be more specific, we have a problem with societal decay but the magnitude of the effort to reverse it is so daunting that people shy away from it as unrealistic. It is then that they look for the easy answer, like gun control.

So, I'm voting for no gun control. I don't thinks guns are the problem

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

So what types of "controls" would you, my fellow TFL members, feel is reasonable and would prevent some of the senseless tragedies that have been occurring way too frequently? I know that law abiding citizens are the only ones who will abide by gun laws and that they are not the ones perpetrating these crimes.

I have zero interest in making any concessions while there are still so many nonsense gun laws on the book. Just to give one example, if I buy a rifle with a 14.5" barrel, it takes over a year, $200, and a background check designed in 1934 before I can own it - because that rifle is "too concealable". If I buy a Tavor with a 16" barrel that is actually shorter than the above rifle, I can walk out the door the same day with a same day background check that was designed in the 1990s.

One more example, do you realize that one of the "concessions" that the antis offered in 2013 to pass more gun control was to stop prosecuting gun owners who had to stay overnight in NY or NJ due to an unplanned forced layover. We are talking prosecutions of otherwise law abiding people who didn't even plan to be in those states, let alone overnight, in spite of the. 1986 FOPA designed to protect against this. Think about that for a second, what would you say to someone who told you they were going to keep prosecuting non-criminals who tried to comply with the law for owning a gun unless you accepted even more gun control?

I would like to see a strengthening of NICS to allow doctors to report patients they feel are mentally unstable.

You are OK with allowing ANY unelected doctor to deprive a citizen of an express right described in the Bill of Rights without a hearing in front of a judge? Do I understand that correctly?

This could have prevented Cho in the VA Tech shootings as well as Holmes in the Aurora, CO theater.

No, your facts are wrong in both these cases. Cho had been in front of a judge and had a hearing. He was not reported to NICS because Virginia did not intend that hearing to remove his Second Amendment rights and Virginia did not report such info to NICS in any case. The NRA and the Brady Campaign worked together to fix this by passing the NICS Improvement Act in 2007. This law not only gave states money to report mental defectives to NICS, it also required any state that took the money to set up an appeals process. So far, only 22 states have used it.

In Aurora, the letter to the psychaitrist explaining his plans wasn't discovered until after the shooting.

I believe that all gun owners should be required to take some sort of gun safety class. This just seems like common sense to me. This class should also go over the legal issues including safe storage of guns and the legal use of deadly force. In Florida, you can get a concealed weapons permit without proving any sort of competency at all. The courses are very inconsistent and practically useless. Should I be allowed to carry a gun in public without proving I can hit the broad side of a barn (from the inside) or demonstrate safe weapons handling? I personally don't believe so. While drivers licenses allow for automatic renewals, I believe that carry licenses should require a re-certification period of maybe 5 years.

By the lowest estimate ever made, 146,000 people a year use a firearm in self-defense successfully every year. Should those people be forced to be crime victims because they lack the proper license? Look at my earlier example where states were prosecuting declared firearms at airports - what do you think the licensing process will look like there? Fair?

On the flipside, by VOLUNTARY concealed handgun licensing, the NRA has been more successful in getting gun owners licensed and trained than any anti-gun group has.

I know that gun registration is a highly volatile topic, but how can the police prove that a gun is stolen if it isn't registered?

The same way they prove a thousand other items are stolen that aren't registered?

Considering how registration has been used to enable confiscation of firearms numerous times in history, why would any gun owner WANT registration? And that doesn't even include the places like D.C. and other locales where registration is used as a barrier to prevent people from owning guns.

If it were up to me, YOU wouldn't be allowed to own guns because you clearly don't appreciate how fragile that right is. Maybe something to think about when you are setting up an apparatus that allows unelected bureaucrats to deny a basic human right, yeah?

Honestly, I think you are incredibly naive in assuming that the people pushing gun control are going to give up once they have "reasonable" gun control. There are dozens of examples all over the world and they all play out the same way. Trying to appease those people will not work; because they aren't dealing with you in good faith.

 

[sfwusc]

I don't think anyone should be allowed to own a nuke. After that I think allowing everything else with some form of guidance is reasonable.

If you own a huge ship using to transport goods, then I thin it would be reasonable to be able to arm it with weapons to defend that piece of property. That said I don't think international law allows it. This is why we have piracy.

Should people be allowed to own fully auto weapons? Why not. They are for the most part a waste of ammo if you are going for accuracy. I am sure some people can fire them accurately, but most people couldn't. Most crimes are done with hand guns.

I guess the question is what good are you doing with each law passed or currently on the books? Most of them are hurting citizens and not helping them. I prefer CWP to come into my place of business as we are at a risk of being robbed. At least someone might be able to put the bad guy down if needed. I can't carry as it is against company policy. Is that fair? I agreed to work for them and I knew that policy when I agreed to it. I gave up that right for the pay check. The right wasn't taken from me.

I am ok with the background checks for new purchases, but I do like the fact private purchases are easy breezey. Some people ask to see a CWP (I do if I am selling), but a lot of people don't care. Could a bad guy get a gun this way? I guess, but they could break into someone's home and get one too.

People in SC fussed about allowing guns in bars. They aren't smart enough to understand that people are drinking then driving. Why not, ban parking lots if you really want to protect the public.

 

[kilimanjaro]

"I know that gun registration is a highly volatile topic, but how can the police prove that a gun is stolen if it isn't registered?"

Simple, provide the police with copy of their report of the burglary along with the make, model, and serial number.

No registration required.

By the logic presented by the question, nearly 400 million guns in this country cannot be proved to be stolen, if there was some kind of a massive national burglary, as most states don't register them.

I guess police reports, sworn statements, receipts and business records don't constitute evidence of ownership anymore.

 

[guruatbol]

This is good discussion.

However I have read a few things I don't like.

1- comparing the right to have and use firearms to the privilege of driving is apples and oranges.

2- the endless banter back and forth about a politician needing to do something is IMHO worthless.

Politicians and government have taken way too many liberties with my life and my God given liberties already.

If you want to come up with a what to do next law, not that I think there needs to be any, but if that were the case, I would suggest very strongly that the current laws be enforced and see if any of them are working.

I suggest they don't. I suggest that the shootings which seem to be happening more and in reality are not, will not be stopped.

The very real fact is gun violence is in decline. The media jumps on it more and since there are 24 hour news channels that did not exist when I was a boy, it just seems to be more.

Reality is that many of these shootings were committed by people that broke the law to get the weapons they used in the first place.

I have to say that I would oppose any new legislation, no matter what.

I had more thoughts, but I can not type on my phone fast enough to get them here before I forget my thought path.

Mel

 

[Sierra280]

Lots of good points and thoughts on this thread. Now a couple of my own.

All gun control measures in the United States have (and have always had, historically) 1 goal. To keep guns out of the hands of the poor (especially minorities). The arguments that can currently be applied to expanded voter registration laws can VERBATIM be applied to gun control laws (ie, impoverished people can't afford the transportation or fees or time away from work, for more registration/licensing/training/etc; kind of like banning the sale of ammo in one county, sure people can still drive to by it, but it limits the poor) It's an interesting bit of social engineering. But let's not forget, our constitution was written by what we would now call elitists.

Any reasonable look at our country's history of gun control should make us be against it. Not on a bill of rights basis, but on a equal rights basis.

 

[bt380]

This whole gun control fiasco is nothing more than an attack on my rights.
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They are approaching gun control like the illegal immigration policy...all backwards....
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Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

 

[44 AMP]

I don't think anyone should be allowed to own a nuke.

Does that include governments?


In the broadest sense, we all own nukes. In the US, we own our government. At least, that was the plan, once upon a time....

We control it, but it controls us, a curious balancing act, not always properly done, intended to provide the greatest freedom for the people as a whole.

Whenever someone brings up unrestricted ownership, someone else always takes to nuclear weapons. (help me out, scholars, what is the latin..reducto ad absurd..something or other...)

Taking an argued point to ridiculous extremes, and using that extreme as basis for claiming the original point is invalid....

"nukes" are not something one can just pick up on the market with enough cash. But lets play a game for a moment, and say that there were no absolute legal prohibitions against "anyone" owning a nuke.....

SO what? Just because you might legally be able to own it, doesn't mean you can actually get one. You might get a tactical nuclear handgrenade in your HALO game, but you aren't going to find one at Sportsman's Warehouse or Walmart. The people that make nukes are rather picky about who their product goes to. And don't even go to black market nukes sold out of car trunks, or straw purchase nukes, unless you are writing for a bad TV show.

ok, if you had the legal right to a nuke, and you could build it all yourself, including digging the ore, and refining it, from, and all on your own land (AND in compliance with all environmental laws and regs), MAYBE you could get one, (this is a game, remember).

But just being rich enough? not all by itself. Also,govt could say, "sure, you can own one, but you can't import one!" Sorry, no stolen foreign nukes from the international arms dealers..not legal to import. Sure, you can own it...over there....

Lots of ways to blow holes in that extreme argument. Game Over.

Because, no matter how its dressed up, or how it is ignored, the bottom line is NO LAW stops anyone willing to break it.

Which brings us back around to gun control. And the base argument that "why should those who harm no one and obey the laws be made to suffer ever increasing restrictions on what they may, or may not do, or own, because other people break the law?"

AS far as I can see those pushing gun control would, IF they answered honestly, say "because we can". They won't ever say that, of course, they say whatever it is that they think will get them what they want.

 

[JimDandy]

Some Gun Control is fairly sensible. The Prohibited Person criteria for example. While it could and should always be under the microscope to be refined and improved I suspect very, very, few of the 30ish people who said they're against all gun control think Charles Manson should be allowed to keep an armory in his prison cell.

With that said, the paradigm for gun control is blindingly bad. If you look at the homicide rate state by state, neither lax nor strict gun control states show any sort of overwhelming answer to the problem. There are outliers on the strict side like Hawaii but most of those strict states don't rank very well. Many of the lax states also rank poorly.

Geography, far more than legal bent, has more in common with homicide rates. Those East and Gulf Coast states, along with southern border states with a port of entry for illegal drugs are often at the top of the list. Going North and/or West from there ends up with lower homicide numbers.

The illegal drug trade doesn't get nearly enough "credit" for our crime numbers. Nor are our crime numbers especially distressing. Or homicide rate has been trending down for more than 20 years. It was at a 50-ish year low recently. That's right, it was higher in the latter half of the Leave It To Beaver 60's than it is today. We just have more news reporting the same events longer and more often today so we're more conscious of it.

Based on estimates from Gallup/Pew Research polls somewhere around 80 million people in the US today own at least one firearm. At 11K homicides, 20K suicides, and 0.6K accidents for about 32K deaths, if every single death was the result of a legal gun owner (assuming only the legal gun owners admit to owning one in a phone poll) that's only 0.04% of them responsible for all the gun death in the US. You need to find what? 2500 gun owners? to find ONE that would be responsible for a death next year- and that's more likely to be a suicide. The risk is exceptionally small when you start looking at the numbers.

As for requiring classes- Keeping and Bearing Arms is a fundamental right. Are you also in favor of requiring a literacy test for voting? Some level of education required on the candidates and issues before every election?

Will you require a multi-faith catechism class to attend church, so that people looking to worship in some way can make an informed choice on which church to attend? Will you also require this class for people who profess atheism or agnosticism so they, too, make an informed choice?

How about Freedom of the Press? What classes will you require to ensure this right of the people is exercised responsibly? All newspapers must meet government requirements for unbiased and trustworthy sources? Liberals may not watch Fox News and Conservatives cannot subscribe to MSNBC? Or vice versa, and they may ONLY watch the oppositional "news" channel?

I shudder to think of what sort of background check would be required for the freedom to assemble. Imagine having to call up the cops for permission so you can talk to your neighbor over the fence about that tree dropping leaves in your yard before the multi-family barbeque for the Fourth of July.

 

[sm]

I voted No.1 on the poll.

Others are more eloquent than I, therefore allow me to share the work of Dennis Bateman, Metal and Wood.

http://thefiringline.com/Misc/library/Metal_and_Wood.html

 

[Sierra280]

Prohibited persons and background checks aren't gun control, they are criminal control. BTW, a felony conviction takes away lots more than 2a rights, once convicted basically all rights are gone forever.

 

[OuTcAsT]

Are you also in favor of requiring a literacy test for voting? Some level of education required on the candidates and issues before every election?

A poll on this would be interesting.....just sayin'

 

[Tom Servo]

Literacy tests for exercising rights have a dark an unconstitutional past, and they're not the point of this thread.

 

[born2climb]

I personally think the idea of a felon not owning a firearm is stupid. Unless he has killed/robbed/raped/etc, why can't he own a firearm? Does the Constitution not apply to him? If he has committed something so bad he cannot own a firearm, then kill him and get it over with.

 

[Winchster]

I personally think the idea of a felon not owning a firearm is stupid. Unless he has killed/robbed/raped/etc, why can't he own a firearm? Does the Constitution not apply to him? If he has committed something so bad he cannot own a firearm, then kill him and get it over with.

Exactly, either they're square with the house or they're not.

 

[JimDandy]

Prohibited persons and background checks aren't gun control, they are criminal control.

If Gallup and Pew Research conducted a poll of every American, would the majority label them gun control, or criminal control? You have a point, and a valid one, but it's also something of splitting hairs when common usage has those as the two most common forms of gun control in the US.

BTW, a felony conviction takes away lots more than 2a rights, once convicted basically all rights are gone forever.

Not even most rights in most states. Some rights, such as the right to travel get returned automatically at some point once whatever incarceration, probation, parole etc. conditions are met.

Some rights are never lost, for example 8th amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

Some states require some form of petition to rejoin society at large for other rights to be returned like Voting.

Literacy tests for exercising rights have a dark an unconstitutional past, and they're not the point of this thread.

I agree Tom, and I wasn't trying to side track into that, merely using that as an example of an extreme we should be trying to avoid.

Exactly, either they're square with the house or they're not.

There is, theoretically, a way to get "square with the house" after such a conviction in most places. That way may need to be funded or eased somewhat, that's (mostly) up to the voters in the jurisdiction involved to decide.

The line for who gets prohibited and who doesn't could certainly use refining and careful attention and maintenance, especially when disparate jurisdictions like the individual States and the United States converge in laws that weren't written to interact with each other specifically.

Unless he has killed/robbed/raped/etc, why can't he own a firearm?

Isn't that the point I was just making? There is some level of restriction we're almost all comfortable with. Violent Criminals and the Adjudicated Mentally Defective are slam dunks most of us can get behind.

 

[Sierra280]

No, actually the constitution does not apply to felons. They have broken our laws (social contract) and are no longer held as equal to other citizens. Felons cannot own or posses firearms, vote (most states), and are subject to searches of their persons or residences at LEO's will (no more 4A). They are coerced into self incrimination, and generally used however the police care to.

To suggest that we should just put to death all felons is pretty absurd, many become productive members of society after release.

If you want to talk absurd, let's look at life imprisonment. For each year of a life sentence our society pays the amount of money it takes to send 2 kids to college for a year. From a societal point of view life imprisonment makes ZERO sense, either kill these heinous offenders or put them to some sort of use.

And I don't see how lifetime imprisonment (with no hope of release), that is living in a cage until you die, is not cruel and unusual.

 

[JimDandy]

I'm pretty sure you're wrong. Can any lawyers chime in?

Are prison guards allowed to strap soaking wet prisoners to car batteries to interrogate them? That should be the 5th and 8th amendments.

Can a felon 20 years past his last arrest, parole, and probation obligation refuse to allow police to search his home without a warrant? 4th amendment.

As voting varies from State to State, here's a link that breaks it down state by state. In ONLY 11 states is it POSSIBLE for a felon to lose the franchise indefinitely after their sentence is over. Even then, many of those states allow for the restoration of the franchise. The other 39 states and DC as a quasi-state allow for an automatic restoration or don't disenfranchise at all.