NOT Gun Control

[zukiphile]

I think we are in agreement that nut-jobs should [not] have access to guns. What better group of individuals to see the warning signs than family members and those closest to the disturbed individual?

Link to article from the National Review (a conservation publication) discussing GVROs.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/...consider-grvo/

French's proposal has merit. The greatest virtue is the potential for due process and it being so narrowly tailored to address the problem that it could survive strict scrutiny.

My state recently introduced temporary protective orders (something unlike traditional injunctive relief with a TRO and preliminary injunction prior to the final order). There are enough problems with it that some jurists doubt whether aspects meet constitutional standards.

The idea behind these TPOs is that someone who feels threatened could file a protective order against the person from whom they feel the threat. These are almost always filed pro se with some assistance from a social worker or legal aid attorney.

An ex parte hearing (a hearing in which the alleged threat isn't present in court) is held. An order typically issues with some kind of prohibition against the absent party. Police officers may collect items pertinent to the order. The matter is set for hearing within several weeks. I've defended only one. It lacked any merit, but was granted until the later hearing. In the meantime, my client had the keys to her rental properties taken and her rights as a landlord violated.

One judicial anxiety is that a TPO would be used by a criminal gang prior to executing someone.

If an angry girlfriend seeks vengeance and obtains such an order against you, how will the police store your arms? Will they file a number across the top of your trap gun? Will you get them back? How much time and money it take to get them back?

Does the grant of an initial meritless TPO show on your public record so that you need to have it expunged so it isn't an issue in every subsequent background check, including NICS?


These aren't fatal flaws in French's proposal, but should suggest that implementation will require due consideration and safeguards against abuse.

 

[zukiphile]

But an actual compromise involves both sides getting something. Give me half of what you got and I won't take it all isn't a compromise.

Bart, the argument I see being made is essentially for a settlement. We tell clients to make a settlement so they control the terms rather than gamble on total victory with a stranger who may also hand the client a total defeat. We tell clients how smart they are to fashion a settlement that preserves what they really need.

In this context, what that argument misses is that political resolution is never a final settlement of an issue between two parties. In this context, the argument is the one to be had until the next argument. Give a point away in this argument and you just have less for the next round. There are no fixed points or permanent resolutions.

 

[NateKirk]

Here, you've equated a fee to the government for the mere exercise of the right to the price of the materiel involved in the exercise of the right.

Practically speaking it's the same effect. If everyone is free (of cost and control) to own a printing press but paper is taxed to the point of absurdity then the right is still suppressed. However, that is not what I'm talking about.

What I am talking about is raising the standard for firearm ownership. More and better training and education and more stringent background checks, accomplished through a process to obtain a license to own a firearm (probably similar to drivers training) would raise the standard. If a fee must be implemented for the license to offset the cost of the more in depth background checks and personnel then so be it. Firearms would be in the hands of less ignorant and unstable people, and all the people have to suffer is the inconvenience of educating themselves on the lethal weapon they wish to purchase.

 

[Bartholomew Roberts]

Texas already has Temporary Protective Orders that serve much the same function and include a broader class of persons with standing than French's proposal. There is no cost to the person seeking the Order either.

A Magistrate can also order an emergency protective order in some circumstances even without family members seeking one, since one of the common problems is the people who need them most often refuse to seek one.

One distinction is not all Texas protective orders limit access to firearms, so just knowing a person has one doesn't tell you if they are a prohibited person. So even if it got reported to NICS, I could see some potential for confusion.

 

[zukiphile]

Here, you've equated a fee to the government for the mere exercise of the right to the price of the materiel involved in the exercise of the right.

Practically speaking it's the same effect.

Different things can have a similar effect, yet still be different.

What I am talking about is raising the standard for firearm ownership. More and better training and education and more stringent background checks, accomplished through a process to obtain a license to own a firearm (probably similar to drivers training) would raise the standard. If a fee must be implemented for the license to offset the cost of the more in depth background checks and personnel then so be it. Firearms would be in the hands of less ignorant and unstable people, and all the people have to suffer is the inconvenience of educating themselves on the lethal weapon they wish to purchase.

Let's apply this to voting.

What I am talking about is raising the standard for voting. More and better training and education and more stringent background checks, accomplished through a process to obtain a license to vote (probably similar to drivers training) would raise the standard. If a fee must be implemented for the license to offset the cost of the more in depth background checks and personnel then so be it. Voting would be in the hands of less ignorant and unstable people, and all the people have to suffer is the inconvenience of educating themselves on the issues on which they vote.

Not everything that is unconstitutional is a terrible idea; it just isn't constitutionally viable.

 

[BBarn]

School shootings were very rare 50+ years ago, while at the same time, gun laws were generally more lenient. It would be very effective to look at what major changes have occurred in the education of children and the activities of adults in the last fifty years. But society would rather look at guns than consider it's own mistakes.

 

[BarryLee]

I’m not sure I understand how additional licensing and training requirements would stop crimes committed with guns. The issue seems to be the fact that the Government is not managing the current system properly.

If memory serves the USAF failed to report the Texas Church shooter’s criminal acts properly. The Colorado movie shooter was reported by his Psychiatrist to the Police, but nothing happened. The VaTech shooter was actually found by a Judge to be a danger, but the court failed to process the information properly.

The bottom line is we don’t need new licensing reequipments we need to require our government to enforce current laws correctly.

 

[TomNJVA]

As others here have stated, it is estimated that there are over 300 million guns in circulation in the USA. All the bad guys have guns, the criminals have guns, the gang-bangers have guns, the drug dealers have guns, and many sick people have guns or access to them. Laws don’t affect these folks as by definition they don’t obey laws. Laws only affect the law-abiding citizens, and they are not the problem.

Sure it would be nice to some if there were no guns at all in the USA, but you are 230 years too late. You’ll need to go back to the 1780s and try to convince our founding fathers that an armed populace is a bad thing. Good luck with that after they just secured their freedom through an armed populace. If you want to ban all guns, start with the bad guys. After you disarm all of them, send me an email and you can have mine as I won’t need them anymore. In the mean time I need mine to protect my family from the very element that you allow to have guns through ineffective enforcement of existing laws.

It would also be nice if sick people could not just walk into a store and buy a gun, but that presents a few problems:

1. Who defines sick?
2. How do you recognize them?
3. Unlike the privileges of flying or driving, the rights encoded in our constitution are sacred, apply to all citizens, and cannot be infringed without due process of law.

It would also be nice if all of the world’s leaders got together, laid down their arms, hugged each other and sang Kumbaya. Dreaming, hoping, wishing, and praying will not remove evil from our midst. We must acknowledge it, face it, and defeat or contain it while preserving the rights and freedoms of the rest of us. A complex problem to be sure, and although there are no fast and easy solutions, the kind of intelligent discussion presented in this great forum is a step in the right direction.

 

[NateKirk]

Different things can have a similar effect, yet still be different

Exactly. Which is why your use of changing what I would propose to a scenario concerning the right to vote isn't relevant. We're not discussing the right to vote, we're discussing the right of the people to own tools that can directly end ones life, be it theirs or others.

More abstract, broader rights don't have the hard ability to do this like this specific one does. I think it is reasonable that an ignorant public be educated first in order to exercise this potentially dangerous right. The people are free to exercise their rights so long as they don't harm others while doing so. Guns are dangerous and the potential for accidental and unintentional misuse is high, be it from ignorance or carelessness.

Not everything that is unconstitutional is a terrible idea; it just isn't constitutionally viable.

That's for the courts to decide I suppose. However, I think that for the preservation of the right to bear arms, compromises like this must be made relatively soon. Constitutions can be amended, all it takes is a convenient lineup of politicians. With today's polarization that isn't an infeasible situation.

 

[zukiphile]

Different things can have a similar effect, yet still be different

Exactly. Which is why your use of changing what I would propose to a scenario concerning the right to vote isn't relevant. We're not discussing the right to vote, we're discussing the right of the people to own tools that can directly end ones life, be it theirs or others.

You may only want to discuss the 2d Am., but when you set about abridging peoples' rights a number of them can come into play directly (note the utility of suspending the 4th Am.), and exploring the reasoning behind the abridgement is reasonable. Is it genuinely your desire to discuss any tool that can directly end one's life, or just firearms?

More abstract, broader rights don't have the hard ability to do this like this specific one does. I think it is reasonable that an ignorant public be educated first in order to exercise this potentially dangerous right. The people are free to exercise their rights so long as they don't harm others while doing so. Guns are dangerous and the potential for accidental and unintentional misuse is high, be it from ignorance or carelessness.

Does the potential for harm really distinguish the 2d from the 1st and 4th Amendments and voting. I knew people in school during the Cold War who voted for Gus Hall. That seems potentially quite harmful. Walter Duranty used his 1st Am. rights to conceal the deaths of millions of people while it was happening. Surely the NYT could suffer the mere inconvenience of vetting its articles with the government first, right?

Or is that sort of government intrusion exactly what the BOR were written to protect against?

Not everything that is unconstitutional is a terrible idea; it just isn't constitutionally viable.

That's for the courts to decide I suppose. However, I think that for the preservation of the right to bear arms, compromises like this must be made relatively soon. Constitutions can be amended, all it takes is a convenient lineup of politicians. With today's polarization that isn't an infeasible situation.

Which is also true of all your other rights. I agree that courts have a role in protecting us against unconstitutional imposition. I think people who would call for that sort of imposition do too.

What do you think of David French's idea?

 

[Chainsaw.]

How about we stop pumping our children full of drugs who side effects are SUICIDAL AND HOMICIDAL THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS? We've had ARs and AKs etc since what? At least the 80s but only in the last 10 years have we had this harsh up swing in mass KILLINGS. Guns weren't the initial issue and still are not. Stop drugging people to oblivion.

 

[Colorado Redneck]

Drugs

The mention in several posts about rx drugs needs a response. Over the years I have seen many posters allude to psychotropic drugs as catalysts that initiate or exacerbate violent or self destructive behavior. My opinion of those comments is, unless you are a medical doctor or pharmecuticals expert, chances are you are taking a bit of information and extrapolating to make a statement about these drugs. That is inappropriate.

 

[Buzzcook]

Did they have problems like this in 19 century?

Similar, but not the same.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-mass-shooting-20160614-snap-story.html

Rock Springs massacre: In 1885, a group of white men and women fatally beat and shot at least 28 Chinese immigrant laborers during a riot at a coal mine in southwestern Wyoming. Historians say the riot was sparked by growing displeasure over the mine’s practice of hiring Chinese workers and paying them a lower wage than American citizens.

Tulsa race riots: A white mob attacked black residents in Tulsa, Okla., in 1921 and burned down the Greenwood neighborhood, which was then the wealthiest black business district in the United States. Modern estimates place the death toll at 50 to 300 people, many of them shot.

Elaine massacre: Black men in Elaine, a small town in eastern Arkansas, met in the fall of 1919 to discuss how to collect more money for their cotton crops. During the meeting, a white man who was deputized was shot. In the riot that followed, as many as 200 black people were shot and killed.

People have been getting mad and shooting other people for many years.

 

[ATN082268]

One could also ask themselves what doing nothing does to make things better or safer. Obviously it does nothing.

Actually doing nothing can be better than doing something if that something doesn't effectively deal with an issue/problem; When you do something, that something will infringe on someone else's rights/freedoms. If you infringe on someone's rights/freedoms but can't show a policy as being effective in combating a serious problem, then the cost obviously outweighs the benefit.

Besides, the choice doesn't come down to doing nothing or having more gun control. And as far as past gun control measures go, we might be better or safer than in our current mess if we did nothing and they never existed...

 

[44 AMP]

Like I said earlier, this is a debate between the right to bear arms vs. the right to live.

No, it's not.

And, its not even close.

By framing the debate in those terms, you are equating the right to bear arms with committing murder. This argument brands ALL gun owners as murderers, automatically, as a prerequisite.

it is not accurate, it is not factual, it is not honest. It is stereotypical bigotry, and would be immediately dismissed as crap if it were applied to any other subject.

but it does make a good sound bite, doesn't it? Propaganda usually does. Doesn't change the fact that it's a lie at the heart of the matter, all that matters is that people hear the lie, over and over. Its the Big Lie in action, in a convenient package for media exploitation.

I understand people are scared. And after the initial fear and shock wears off, they get angry that they were scared. That anger demands someone be punished for scaring them. Someone should be made to suffer. They demand that "something" be done.

If a mass killer kills themself, or is killed by police, there is no one left alive to blame. If they are caught, then they are in the hands of the legal system, and many believe that the legal punishment isn't enough.

So they focus on who ELSE they can brand as guilty, responsible, or a contributor to the situation, and whether or not those people acutally had anything to do with what happened is irrelevant to them. All they need is some kind of connection, some kind of correlation between those who actually committed the crime and the people they wish to include in their blame game.

The fact that both the criminal killer and the innocent law abiding citizen have guns is enough for them.

Note how this kind of transference is only acceptable to them when it concerns guns. They see it as entirely ok to lump all gun owners together with gun using criminals. Yet when the exact same logic is applied to lumping all the followers of a particular religion in with the criminals who follow the same religion, we are told it is wrong to do that. When everyone with a particular skin color or ethnic identification is lumped in with the criminals who share those same identifiers, we are told it is wrong to do that.

Those who do that get labeled bigots or racists, how is it that people who do that to gun owners (who cross all religious and ethnic identifiers) do not get named bigots or worse???

We are constantly told that the evil actions of a few must not be used to vilify and punish the many, but many of the same people who tell us that, do exactly the opposite when it comes to gun control. What is gun control but the restriction of the many because of the actions of a few???

 

[DaleA]

Mildly sensible article about making decisions actually based on empirical analyses.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/18/whats-missing-from-the-gun-debate-217022?lo=ap_f1
Glenn E. Meyer in post #96.

Thanks for the link to this article.

Given the way the CDC was headed back then, IMhO, I’m glad they got slapped with the restriction they got slapped with.

What I found really interesting in the article was this:

The third shot was fired by CDC itself, when the agency director fired the person most closely identified with the gun violence prevention research. (That person was me.) Soon, the CDC’s research effort was reduced by more than 90 percent.

It was kind of cool to read an article from the person himself that was the head of the CDC’s gun violence section especially to hear him give lip service to the gun rights side of the argument. I like the fact that he listed other reasons besides the so-called Dickey amendment for the CDC giving up on researching 'gun violence'. And again, this is from a person who should know, he was there, it was his job.

Again, thank you for posting the link to this article.

 

[adamBomb]

Like I said earlier, this is a debate between the right to bear arms vs. the right to live.

Why are we so illogical? Want to know why nothing gets done in Washington? Because of statements like these.

We are constantly told that the evil actions of a few must not be used to vilify and punish the many, but many of the same people who tell us that, do exactly the opposite when it comes to gun control. What is gun control but the restriction of the many because of the actions of a few???

Banning a people is NOT what the gun control supporters are trying to do at all...otherwise they would be banning all white males. When 9/11 happened we passed new laws, even started a whole new gov agency. When a mass shooting happens...nothing. Essentially since columbine we have done nothing. Nothing doesn't appear to be working.

 

[LogicMan]

Practically speaking it's the same effect. If everyone is free (of cost and control) to own a printing press but paper is taxed to the point of absurdity then the right is still suppressed. However, that is not what I'm talking about.

What I am talking about is raising the standard for firearm ownership. More and better training and education and more stringent background checks, accomplished through a process to obtain a license to own a firearm (probably similar to drivers training) would raise the standard. If a fee must be implemented for the license to offset the cost of the more in depth background checks and personnel then so be it. Firearms would be in the hands of less ignorant and unstable people, and all the people have to suffer is the inconvenience of educating themselves on the lethal weapon they wish to purchase.

Never could agree to this. It would be abused by politicians for one and also, it isn't going to do anything to stop the mass shootings that have been occurring as of late. What it WILL do is to inhibit law-abiding citizens from exercising their right. We do not have a problem with people accidentally shooting themselves so much.

While we're at it, why not require special licenses to drive SUVs and pickups and vans? That way, we could reduce all the Sally Cellphones in their big tank SUVs from driving around getting into accidents that can kill people. And a special, special license for ownership of a sports car? Or maybe even limit all cars to 50 hp and four cylinder engines with a top speed of 50 mph and a max 0-50 acceleration of no less than 10 seconds, only law enforcement and the government will have the powerful V8-engined cars that can go fast.

This would inhibit all the morons who drive huge vehicles and super-fast cars that shouldn't and stop the high-speed chases, right?

That's for the courts to decide I suppose. However, I think that for the preservation of the right to bear arms, compromises like this must be made relatively soon. Constitutions can be amended, all it takes is a convenient lineup of politicians. With today's polarization that isn't an infeasible situation.

Amending the Constitution requires a lot more than just a simple lineup of politicians. The gun controllers do not want compromise. They want us to give up more of our rights, and their idea of "compromise" is that they promise not to take away as much of the right as they initially propose. That isn't a compromise.

 

[zukiphile]

We are constantly told that the evil actions of a few must not be used to vilify and punish the many, but many of the same people who tell us that, do exactly the opposite when it comes to gun control. What is gun control but the restriction of the many because of the actions of a few???

Quite the cherry pick. Banning a people is NOT what the gun control supporters are trying to do at all...

A ban on people with an inherent right to keep and bear arms?

When 9/11 happened we passed new laws, even started a whole new gov agency. When a mass shooting happens...nothing. Essentially since columbine we have done nothing. Nothing doesn't appear to be working.

In 2008, the NICS process was altered to include information on adjudicated incompetents.

After each murder, quite a lot happened. The circumstances surrounding each event were studied. Where the perpetrator of the murder survived, he was processed through the criminal justice system.

It is understandable to want to pass a new law after something happens to give an appearance of "doing something", but it isn't categorically reasonable.

As for how "doing nothing" is working, we've had a steady decline in violent crime rates for a couple of decades.

 

[Al Norris]

RKBA vs. [Right to] Life?

That's an absurd notion. Why?

Because the Supreme Court has stated that the right to own firearms is precisely the right to protect life. Unless or until the Court backs away from that idea, conflating the two as being separate and opposed to each other is a non-starter. They are in fact, the same thing.

When looking at adding new laws that would abridge a fundamental right, it is in fact instructive to see how similar fundamental rights could be likewise abridged and whether or not we would be fine with more restrictions of those other rights.

Failure to take notice of such restrictions on other fundamental rights is to reduce the right to self-defense to a secondary, and therefore lessor, class of rights.

Many people consider that the Second Amendment to be different from other rights, because it seems to protect a "thing", unlike our other rights. Hogwash!

Can the government ban pens; pencils; ink; paper; or printing presses? Those are all things, are they not?

Before we can express ourselves, either by speech, writing an opinion or printing a paper, shouldn't the government be able to license us? Can't the government make us take a test to ensure that our spelling and grammar are good enough to express what we want to say?

But guns are different, you say. They not only kill people, that's what they are designed for; their sole purpose!

I'll grant you that, but only because that is the purpose for owning a gun for self-defense: To kill the other person, if need be, before they can kill me. No, it is not politically correct to say that. But in the final analysis, that's what it boils down to, should the need ever arise.

Various pundits say that there are 300 million guns in the hands of 100 million civilians. And we see only a minuscule number of deaths, in comparison. So let's beat the drum and impose more restrictions on those 100 million citizens who have committed no wrongdoing, instead of examining what is currently wrong with the system, and fix it, before we attempt to impose more sanctions. Sanctions that we have no way of knowing if it will stop the madness.

But we have to do something!

Actually, no we don't. Legislation passed in the heat of emotion have never, ever worked.

What is needed is to study the current laws to determine why they are not working as passed, and fix them. Then we study it even more to see if these laws then work. If they don't, scrap them when we calmly decide what will work.

Of course the danger here is that we may find no amount of law, old or new, will curb the conduct of the unlawful.