I decided to try and end it after this post, as it was very clear that both our mind sets were different and no matter how I tried to re-word my arguments so that he could understand them, it wouldn't make a difference.
Friend wrote:
What do you mean child? The guy was 20. If it takes an adult to secure them then it takes an adult to unsecure them. It wouldn't have been that hard for him to know where the key to the locks that keep the guns are in a house hes been living in for 20 years. For all we know he probably shot them regularly and was in charge of keeping them locked up himself.
You are missing my point, you are taking what I say and only hearing part of my argument. Her "Child" was her son, she KNEW he was unstable, she KNEW the dangers and yet she made it so that her firearms were easily accessible. If she had them in a safe and stowed appropriately then she would have gone through all the appropriate precautions that any responsible gun owner should do in order to prevent the illegal acquisition of their firearms. Will a safe have ensured that her firearms were not stolen? No, not if they individual was determined enough, in this case, I imagine it may not have made a difference since obviously the young man was willing to murder his mother to get his hands on her guns, but it would have been much much harder for him to get them if they had been locked up in a quality safe of some sort.
Friend wrote:
You can try to equate guns to alcohol and cars but they simply aren't the same thing and this isn't the issue at hand. Besides, semi automatic guns with magazines are not used by nearly as many people as alcohol or box cutters or cars and those things all have purposes besides putting many holes in a lot of objects in a small amount of time.
Yet all the things I've mentioned kill more people on a daily basis than guns in this country do over the course of a year or two or three.
Alcohol, cars, and blades are not protected by the BoR, it expressly states "The right of the people to keep and bare arms shall not be infringed" You are trying to ban a specific type of firearm, one that is used in less than 1% of violent crimes in America, "Shall not be infringed" is pretty clear cut IMO.
"But that was written so long ago, and they were using muskets back in the day, modern weapons are far more deadly and need to be regulated"
I never said they don't need to be regulated, but the fact is, the Musket and rifles at the time were also used by the military, all the same. They were the pinnacle of infantry weapons technology for the period, and thus I'd say we should have at least the right to own firearms that are equally as effective as our US servicemen. Does this mean that I think every family should be allowed to own a machine gun? Not necessarily, but the 2A' express purpose is to allow you and me to, heaven forbid, to have the ability to fight back against a government that has become corrupt and wishes to oppress us.
Friend wrote:
As far as I know you already have to register your guns. Looking at the records and making a distinction of the ones that are semi auto wouldn't be a huge extra step. If officials can come to your house to make sure your car is registered or your pool has a fence around it or your taxes are paid I don't think it would be a constitutional issue to have people come and ask you if your guns are registered.
No, you do not, not everywhere. In the state of Arizona, you do not have to register your firearm, they do a background check, but you are not logged anywhere as "owning" the firearm. They might be able to track that you had purchased the firearm from that said store but nothing more. If you sold it or gave it to a friend, they would not know.
What's to stop people from lying to the federal agent or LEO? Not all firearms as I have mentioned are serially tracked. What about those purchased from a gun show, those are not serially tracked and registered either at least in Arizona.
You are essentially asking for the government to create a department and go from house to house, asking each individual if they have firearms and if they are registered. Do you realize how much money that would cost, not just in man power but the cost of setting up a working database and have people catalog all that?
Furthermore, your car and other pieces of property are NOT protected by law, they may be taken from you, while your rifle, your pistol are protected by law unless you give the government a reason to believe you are disqualified from owning a firearm.
How do they verify that you indeed do not own a firearm in states where they do not require registration of the ones you already possess?
That would require them to search your place of residence which falls under the 4th amendment in which they are not authorized illegal searches and seizures without a proper warrant.
The first step in any governments desire to oppress the people is to confiscate their weapons. This starts with finding out who has what, how do they know who has what gun? That's right, registration. The anti gun crew have made it very clear that they eventually wish to have firearms banned in their entirety, a complete abolition of the 2nd Amendment.
This is exactly what happened during WWII in Nazi Germany, all firearms were registered and they show who owned what and exactly where they lived, from there he confiscated every firearm that they could use to oppose with from the Jewish population.
He systematically disarmed the targeted demograph that he ultimately wanted to destroy.
James Eagen Holmes, the nut job that decided to walk into a theater in Aurora brought with him a S&W M&P AR15 with a 100 round magazine, Glock 22 and a Remington 870 12g shotgun. After thirty rounds the AR15 jammed and him not knowing how to clear said jam abandoned the firearm and still managed to kill 12 and injure 58. This was in a crowded theater, no one else was armed, and Mr. Holmes was not a military vet, nor was he exactly the most physically fit. There were hundreds of people there, they could have easily overpowered him and taken his shotgun away right?
Friend wrote:
If the gun hadn't jammed more people would have died; him using the pump action probably lowered his ROF and thus allowed more people to escape before being shot.
Yet before, you had argued before that with said slowed rate of fire as if he was using a pump action shotgun or perhaps a hunting rifle the civilian populace could have overpowered someone like him.
Friend wrote:If all his mom had was a bolt action hunting rifle then maybe someone would have been able to over power him between shots, or at the least it would give the kids more time to run away when he started shooting.
Friend wrote: Pump action is slower than semi automatic. Just because there are still ways to kill people doesn't mean we should keep anything more deadly legal.
There were hundreds of people in that theater there was only one of him. It's not like he came in with a posse and started shooting up the place. He was alone, well armed but still only one man. According to you, due to the slow fire rate of his given weapon, the populace should have easily been able to stop this from occurring, instead we had mass panic and terror with everyone running for cover. Shotguns are scatter guns, with a good amount of spread, they are great for crowd control, which is partially why they are excellent in CQC environments and why riot police use them
By your logic we should ban those as well because
I quote
Friend wrote: This is a trained sniper in a church tower. His weapon of CHOICE was a bolt action rifle. If he was in a shopping mall or an elementary school then it wouldn't have been a bolt action weapon because they suck for crowd control, which is the point of banning weapons that are good for crowd control.
By the way, Charles Whitman was NOT a trained sniper, he qualified as a marine sharpshooter, meaning he exceeded the accuracy requirements while he served, the sharpshooter status does not mean he was trained in any way to be a "sniper" or even a "Designated Marksman"
So whats the answer here, if he had never had the AR15 or the Glock with a 10+ round magazine and decided to walk in just with that shotgun, is the answer to ban tube fed, pump action shotguns? If it means we can save lives, we should right?
We have firearms that date back to the civil war that are still functioning to this day, some firearms are even older. Magazines that were in use since the Korean war that are also still functioning. Magazines are simply molded plastic or stamped aluminum or steel sheet metal with a spring inside them. They are not exactly complex pieces of hardware, they are simply to fabricate and repair if necessary. As I had mentioned before, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how to make a spring, anyone with some basic knowledge and basic tools could probably fabricate new springs for their magazines if they so desired making this argument practically a moot point.
A good example of how long firearms last is the Mosin Nagant M1895 double action revolver invented in Soviet Russia. These handguns can still be found on the surplus market, this is a handgun that's been around for 118 years that still functions to this day!
Friend wrote:
Buying from the surplus market would be illegal if the further sale is illegal. Take the guns when the owner dies as well. Should be a lower amount of them sitting around in homes within a few generations.
So when all of them are gone and we still have these shootings occurring with Bolt action hunting rifles and pump action shotguns our solution is to start having those registered and eventually banned as well? Because I guarantee you it will happen, there will be another tragic shooting that will occur, and the same old tired argument of "If we didn't have X, then Z will never have happened, ergo we should ban X to prevent Z from happening again"
Okay, so we ban certain types of alcohol. You know, here in Utah the sale of alcohol that has an alcohol content of greater than 3.2% from being sold in commercial grocery stores. If you want to buy a bottle of Jack Daniels for example, you must go to a liqueur store to do so. Furthermore, restaurants, bars and other locations/venues that allow the purchase of said alcoholic beverages are prohibited from selling them before 11:30AM and no later than 1:00AM. Does this stop accidents caused by individuals whom are intoxicated? Does this prevent some of the more shady establishments from selling alcohol outside the legal time limits? No they don't, I hear about people getting drunk all the time and doing stupid things all the time, both of legal and illegal drinking age.
Friend wrote:This doesn't make any sense. The point you made was that banning alcohol just ended up in al capone. my counter point is that only banning a small minority of alcohols (equivalent to banning a small portion of guns and very few people use guns to begin with) would not end up in al capone. My point was not that banning some kinds of alcohol removes the danger from all kinds of alcohol.
You're targeting one type of firearm, as you had mentioned is akin to targeting only one type of alcohol.
Let me explain this another way.
You ban one type of alcohol, the particularly potent kind (I.e. Semi auto magazine fed firearms)in an effort to stop people from getting drunk and causing problems, yet you go and exclude the rest of the alcohol that you deem to be "Not as dangerous (I.e. Bolt action rifles and pump action shotguns) So by your logic, lets say it takes four shots of Jack to get slap happy drunk, and it takes eight shots of say Captain Morgan to do the same, you ban the purchase and consumption of Jack Daniels in an effort to to stop people from abusing alcohol.
What have you accomplished? People are still going to get drunk, the risk that they'll do something stupid is still there, it just now takes them four more shots of a slightly less powerful liqueur to fall into a drunken stupor.
So again, the argument is "Let's ban or heavily regulate Captain Morgan, because if you ensure that the public does not have access to such a dangerous beverage, the chances of someone raping, murdering, robbing etc. an innocent will go down" However "Lets exclude beer, because it's less likely to cause you to get as drunk as Captain Morgan, it takes 12 cans to get you equally as drunk so it's okay to let that slide"
Eventually you'll come to a point that you completely banned/regulated something that it effectively becomes banned in its entirety.
Which is exactly how this would work, the anti's view the banning of magazines, or semi auto rifles and pistols as a stepping stone to their ultimate goal. The complete abolition of our rights to keep and bare arms.
To stop the horrors involved with crimes that are committed while being intoxicated you would have to ban Alcohol in its entirety, but society won't accept that, after all, what gives the government the right to say that I don't need alcohol in my life. That's like saying you and me are too irresponsible to be trusted with such a dangerous beverage. We wouldn't want to risk other peoples safety based on what we MIGHT do while being intoxicated right?
Friend wrote:
We tried this and it was prohibition, it didn't work, because everyone loves alcohol. Not everyone loves semi automatic guns and there isn't enough people who use them and would care about them enough to keep using them though they were illegal to cause a prohibtion esque flagrant disregard and counter productive view of the law.
Quite the contrary, 50% of this nation supports the RKBA, the gun culture has exploded over the course of two decades, and believe it or not, there are many who opposed the AWB that narrowly passed back in 1994. The result of the passing of said legislation had the Senate and House completely cleaned out by those who supported the RKBA and opposed the AWB which banned "High capacity magazines" among other "evil Assault weapon" features.
knives bombs etc
Friend wrote: I don't really think there's any conclusive evidence that people who can't let out their anger by shooting people will instead build bombs and commit much worse atrocities.
Nor is there evidence that the banning of high capacity magazines and limiting your options of firearms would make the chances of a mass shooting less likely to occur.
A person like Adam Lanza has the dedication and the will to drive them to kill their mother to obtain a tool, what's to stop him from using something else to carry out his heinous acts. If you want to kill someone and want to expedite the process as much as possible and you have the options of using your bare hands or an axe, you'll use the axe because it's the most efficient means of carrying out your actions.
So we ban axes, but that axe was not the only thing that you can use to kill someone with, you also have pipe wrenches sledge hammers etc. available to you. Sure some of those may take longer to kill someone, but they are all tools that are lethal. So it takes you one extra swing to kill someone, that didn't stop you did it?
let's put this in a different setting. Pariah has a collection of exotic swords and daggers. Swords and daggers are the cream of the crop in weapons technology, American citizens have the right to keep and bare swords and such.
The sword has been involved in hundreds of mass killings in the past decades, and are considered a very lethal weapon. So we ban the production of new swords and daggers, and ban only a specific type of sword in the process, lets say it's an English long sword. However we leave short swords and Katana's alone because they are deemed to be "Less lethal".
It may take one or two extra swings to completely kill someone with a different blade, but you are not doing anything to stop the killers from carrying out their crimes.
You are only lessening their options, which impacts the situation very little.
In Chicago, the murder capitol on the country, the populace was essentially banned from having high capacity magazines, they were not allowed to carry let alone concealed carry, and despite having the gun laws in the country, they have the highest homicide rate in the country, while on the flip side, Phoenix Arizona, where gun laws are more "lax" the violent crime rate associated with firearms is the lowest in the country.
By your logic, how is this possible? We have a very active shooting enthusiast community, and you'd think that with so many "High capacity semi automatic assault weapons" that we'd be the murder capitol of the country considering how accessible these "assault weapons" are in this. That applies to Texas, Utah, Indiana and many other states with "lenient" gun regulations.
There is nothing "Easy" about this problem,
Friend wrote:
Moving a mountain is easier than draining the sea; I didn't say easy I said easier.
I reiterate, so you are looking for a simple solution when there is none. Guns are a peripheral problem, you are essentially saying.
"I can't change society enough to make it feel like I made a meaningful impact" it sounds like to me, you are frustrated, you find yourself powerless to stop these people from carrying out their acts of evil.
Friend wrote:In this kind of situation it isn't making sure stuff is locked and stowed so the baby doesnt get into the guns, you might even be trusting the kid who does the violent acts to keep stuff locked and stowed, it just comes out of nowhere from somepeople.
Since you can't stop them, and can't predict when evil will rear its ugly head, you decide to go after the one thing you can contribute and will feel will make a significant impact.
Guns, assault weapons and high capacity magazines, you have the ability to influence a major decision that can affect the masses if you were to support and vote on legislation that would ban these items. Regardless of what it may do to our rights, down the line,
You advocate that we register all semi auto firearms and those that are magazine fed, which, could only be enforced by forced search and seizure a violation of the 4A
But this is ultimately fine and dandy because
Friend wrote: Anything is better than nothing.
What it sounds like to me is that you're willing to not only sacrifice the 2A in a futile effort to solve a problem that cannot be solved through laws and legislation while also willfully violating the 4A. in a quest to avenge the dead and injured.
This is an emotional reaction, you sound as if you need to bring justice to the actions that this man and many others have committed against the innocent masses with a complete disregard for who might be affected down the line.
I'm not trying to be condescending here or accusing, but that's what I'm perceiving you desires are.
It's a knee jerk, feel good action. "I at least did something" is essentially what it sounds like you're going for. Even if it doesn't actually accomplish anything, at least you did something and contributed to "Making a difference"
bombs explosives etc
Friend wrote:
Again, I don't really think there's any evidence that guns are a convenient buffer keeping people from using more damaging bombs to commit terrorism. And again, just because there are things that people can do to do more damage it doesn't mean everything less dangerous should automatically be legal because of it.
As I have stated before, there are things out there, that even if guns were completely abolished, these killers would find a means to carry out their crimes. As I had mentioned before, AZ the most lenient in their gun laws has the lowest crime rate in the country, how is that. Please provide me with a valid explanation, while Chicago, New York, LA, San Francisco all of which have very strict gun laws have far higher crime rates, especially those involving firearms.
How is that possible? It makes absolutely no sense by your logic.
I think that in of itself is a pretty good indication that civilians that are allowed to be armed help lower crime.
Why? Because they're not an easy target. The Aurora shooter, Holmes, had several theaters that were much closer to his place of residence and yet he chose the one theater, which was much further away. Why?
That was the only theater that didn't allow concealed carry. He CHOSE a location in which presented the least amount of resistance.
Friend wrote:
Most of these psychos kill themselves during the act. They don't care about the consequence.
Friend wrote:
No you'd think that the crazy kid would find the non semi auto guns and use those to do his crime with, and because of the slower nature of the guns, a few more people might get away with their lives and the only consequence is a small group of gun aficionados don't get to have quite as much fun on the firing range.
Did you know, that the last game that Adam Lanza played was Mass Effect? There are those pushing to ban the production of "Violent media". They are blaming video games, movies etc. for influencing the actions of the Sandy Hook shooter. So, we ban these games, movies etc. It's okay because the only consequence is that a small demograph of society can't have much fun on their Xbox or watching a film at a movie theater.
It's okay because we're making a difference right? We're taking actions to prevent these nut jobs from being influenced to carry out their heinous crimes because again
Friend wrote: Anything is better than nothing.
Are you willing to sacrifice your favorite movies, books or games for the "Betterment" of society even if such things have absolutely no correlation with truly affecting crime rates in America?
Again, guns are an equalizer and a tool for the law abiding, a weapon and tool for chaos and anarchy for those who are not.
Friend wrote:
Statistically, most fatal home invasions occur when someone escalates the situation by trying to defend themselves with a gun against the criminal invading. You're actually better off being undefended unless you value your tv more than your life.
So you'd rather be victimized and be left to the mercy of an unknown assailant in the sanctuary of your own home, disarmed, and unable to fight back in the event that you are assaulted.
So you have a daughter, she is home alone. Two men decide to break into your home to try and steal some of your valuables. She's a very attractive young lady, and they decide they have some plans for her and brutally rape her. She wasn't trying to defend your flat screen, she was just minding her own business listening to some music or doing her homework when evil came knocking.
You're out jogging, and suddenly come across a group of four or five hoodlums, all carrying knives. The outnumber you, some of them easily could dominate you if it came to a fist fight.
what do you do? you're alone, if you try to run, they'll chase you down. If you try to fight, they may stab or beat the crap out of you, and even if you didn't fight back, they may still kill you so that you can't report anything to the cops.
You would rather the police explain to your family why you were murdered over your wallet? or how you are now crippled or grievously injured because of such a thing.
It's your prerogative to arm yourself or not, but you know I'll fight tooth and nail against anyone that feels that they have the right to disarm me when I am willing to obey the law and would only use my firearms in self defense in the defense of another who could not do so themselves.
"It's the job of the police to protect us, we don't need guns. Let them do their job"
Assuming you are even given the opportunity to call for help the police are but a small fraction and with the ever shrinking budgets they too are making cuts in order to cope. It's pretty clear that despite us having so many LEO' out there that they simply cannot be everywhere at any given time. There are times when we must fend for ourselves, and when the bad guys are many, when seconds count and the cops are minutes away, I'd put my trust into my semi auto "High Capacity Assault" pistol or my "High capacity Assault Rifle" to keep me alive and then have to explain to the cops why there is a dead man in my living room with several holes in them.
TL;DR
It is extremely clear where you stand on this subject, and despite what I say, what facts I present to you, how many times I challenge your arguments you will not be convinced. Nor will you ever convince me that what I think you advocate is wring and in violation of our basic human rights.
In that respect, I will agree to disagree with you. I bare you no ill will, and I hope that you will never ever find yourself in a situation where you are in need of a firearm, high capacity or otherwise.
Best of wishes to you, and please take care.
Really really sad and goes to show that people will kill with what every they can get their hands on if their heart is set to it. It just that a gun is the most convenient it doesn't mean they can't kill in high numbers with something else. A car is a 1 ton bullet essentially... For crying out loud.
