Mega-Thread: Gun Control Thread

[Cthulhu 2020]

I'm not a right winger but I'll take a shot. Convicted murders, rapists, and terrorists cannot legally own a firearm in the US. Why do you think they can?

You're right, it is illegal. I think the question here is why is the right blocking any attempt to stop guns from making their way into the hands of these people?

[araine]

Gun control legislation doesn't have an impact on certain kinds of gun violence, because certain kinds of gun violence are perpetuated by criminals against criminals, so why would new laws have an impact on gun violence committed by criminals? Criminals have a disposition to break the law, in case it is not fully understood by the people of this thread.

So when talking about gun control legislation, it behooves you to not talk about gun violence as a whole, but rather to break it down to the subsets of gun violence which you are seeking to lower with this new gun control legislation. Of course, because gang violence is such a large proportion of gun violence in this country, your attempts to legislate your way into a better tomorrow rings somewhat hollow.

Obviously you dont see the benefits with cutting down the supply of guns in the society. remember ALL guns in the hands of criminals have entered the market as a LEGAL gun never never never forget that fact. Since no guns have been sold directly from the assembly line to the drug dealer on the street corner. Why do folks keep ignoring this FACT of life is beyond me.

The key issue is we have LEGALLY purchases guns that make up all the CRIMINALLY owned guns. So it is blatantly obvious where the problem is. We dont have to worry about drug dealers buying bulk shipments of AR-15 Bushmasters from Bushmaster.com Instead we have LEGALLY purchased guns that ends up in the hands of criminals due to our terribly bad gun laws, Why do the far right always fail to grasp this simple fact is beyond me

[lockedout]

You're right, it is illegal. I think the question here is why is the right blocking any attempt to stop guns from making their way into the hands of these people?

Think about what you're saying.
Why is the right blocking any attempt to stop guns from making their way into criminals hands.
Key word is criminal.
We have laws in place that both sides agree on.
If criminals are the ones we are trying to stop from having guns and there are already laws in place, what will more laws do for someone who doesn't follow them in the first place?

[araine]

You're right, it is illegal. I think the question here is why is the right blocking any attempt to stop guns from making their way into the hands of these people?

It is illegal, but when you do NOT enforce background checks to see if they are in the groups that shouldnt own a gun, you are effectively legalizing the purchases by MURDERERS, RAPISTS and TERRORISTS.

So why do the extreme right wingers block common sense actions like keep it out of the hands of TERRORISTS?

[Extrazero8]

I'm not really sure you realize what insensitivity is. I realize all of the above, that still doesn't make a gun rally any less insensitive when a city is in mourning for a gun massacre.

What did you expect? That the gun owners in that area would take some kind of ownership of that event simply because they own firearms?

Yes, there was a massacre near the town where the rally was going to be held. I don't see why the people that had nothing to do with that event should have changed their planned rally because some people placed some of the blame on the weapons used and not just the two people that did it.

[Grizzly Willy]

What did you expect? That the gun owners in that area would take some kind of ownership of that event simply because they own firearms?

Yes, there was a massacre near the town where the rally was going to be held. I don't see why the people that had nothing to do with that event should have changed their planned rally because some people placed some of the blame on the weapons used and not just the two people that did it.

Incident happens where guns are involved. Community has a temporary aversion to guns as a result. Respectful thing to do would be to not celebrate guns in their vicinity. It's just being respectful.

[Deleted]

How is it insensitive? Was the rally in favor of school shootings?

Am I really having to really spell this out to you or are you just playing dumb like a true NRA advocate? You have a child who died to another child who had a gun at a school, where they should be safe. A week later, I come to your house, stand at your doorstep and tell you to your still weeping face that I have guns at home and that I have the right to use them to kill things as and when I please. Just imagine that, for one moment, if you can...

[Deleted]

I agree with you that automatic firearms are pretty high up on the most deadly list but there's a breakdown in your logic right here.
Why do you assume that, by making a specific type of weapon harder to obtain, people who would kill would suddenly lose motivation to kill rather than simply use another type of weapon? It is illogical to assume that such a law would make people decide not to commit/continue committing violent crime.
And another note of the same issue: what of all the automatic weapons that are already in the hands of citizens, law-abiding or otherwise? Maybe some upstanding citizens will freely hand over their expensive rifles if possession is outlawed, but I doubt most will and I KNOW not all will.
You say such a law would mean less guns (of a certain type) in the country but simply outlawing their sale does little to address the ones already obtained, legally or otherwise, and making their possession illegal is hardly enforceable on a national scale outside of voluntary events where citizens can turn in now-illegal weapons.

A knife is a lot less lethal than a gun. Most knife victims probably survive attacks where as gun victims usually die in comparison. As for your arguement that people won't stop killing i'm gonna go ahead and say you're wrong. If you put up enough barriers for people to bypass at least some of those people will give up and not commit the violent crime. As for the weapons already in circulation you simply ignore those but only regulate on NEW weapons. Eventually the old weapons will break or get lost.

I don't understand why americans feel that their gun laws have to be virtually non-existant, what is wrong with having to jump through a few hoops to prove you're a responsible person?

[Svifnymr]

He also held NRA rally's in towns who had just experienced a school massacre. The man was all heart...

Yeah, it's not like the guy could have realised how insensitive it would look and cancel it in advance ...

The annual meeting was booked many months ahead of time when the shooting occured. All events were canceled except for the annual meeting/ vote which is required by law.

So you appluad them for doing what you say they should have done? Because the way you phrased it, it sounds like you think they're wrong for it.

That besides your use of the plural which is just totally a fabrication.

If you mean the "cold dead hands" speech, that wasn't at that meeting, that was at a different rally, was specific to a gifted musket and was used as part of Michael Moore's soundbite in a work of fiction, so I guess you're wrong there too...

[Nadiru]

Obviously you dont see the benefits with cutting down the supply of guns in the society. remember ALL guns in the hands of criminals have entered the market as a LEGAL gun never never never forget that fact. Since no guns have been sold directly from the assembly line to the drug dealer on the street corner. Why do folks keep ignoring this FACT of life is beyond me.

The key issue is we have LEGALLY purchases guns that make up all the CRIMINALLY owned guns. So it is blatantly obvious where the problem is. We dont have to worry about drug dealers buying bulk shipments of AR-15 Bushmasters from Bushmaster.com Instead we have LEGALLY purchased guns that ends up in the hands of criminals due to our terribly bad gun laws, Why do the far right always fail to grasp this simple fact is beyond me

So, because people ignore laws that have to do with keeping legal guns on the books and registered, you want to get people to cut down the supply of guns in our society, by...writing more laws? The guns are already extant, writing laws isn't going to stop the warehouses full of weaponry from existing. How do you think a legal gun becomes an illegal one, just out of curiosity? Or did you decide to ignore that "FACT of life" because it makes your position completely untenable? I don't have to be far right to be pro-gun, I just have to be anti-stupid, and perhaps a little less emotionally swayed than you.

[Svifnymr]

Incident happens where guns are involved. Community has a temporary aversion to guns as a result. Respectful thing to do would be to not celebrate guns in their vicinity. It's just being respectful.

As I just mentioned, they canceled everything of their week long convention except for their annual meeting. The annual meeting is when the votes are taken and such, and it's required by law that they have it.

[Deleted]

If criminals are the ones we are trying to stop from having guns and there are already laws in place, what will more laws do for someone who doesn't follow them in the first place?

It will make guns less readily available in obviously stupid public facilities like supermarkets and banks for one thing. I mean, I know you guys love your guns, but to equate them as something as arbitrarily available while doing your weekly food shopping is just plain stupid. Correct me if I am wrong but that is just asking for trouble. But then when something happens as a result of this availability it's the good old "The guns didn't have a choice in how they were being used" straw-man that's hauled out. Talk about burying your heads in the sand.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Think about what you're saying.
Why is the right blocking any attempt to stop guns from making their way into criminals hands.
Key word is criminal.
We have laws in place that both sides agree on.
If criminals are the ones we are trying to stop from having guns and there are already laws in place, what will more laws do for someone who doesn't follow them in the first place?

Think about what you are saying.

How are universal background checks, funding and empowering the ATF, and registries blocking rights?

They aren't.

[Svifnymr]

Because almost all guns illegally possessed in the US were legal guns at some point.

And I'm sure many criminals are on the street due to the 4th, 5th and 6th amendments as well. It all comes down to how much punishment should the law abiding tolerate in response to the actions of the criminal?

[Deleted]

Think about what you are saying.

How are universal background checks, funding and empowering the ATF, and registries blocking rights?

They aren't.

The ATF?

Oh you mean these people who did sold US made guns to Mexican cartels?

Yeah you should totally trust these dudes about being the most competent people to figure out if anyone has the right to own a gun.

[Svifnymr]

It will make guns less readily available in obviously stupid public facilities like supermarkets and banks for one thing. I mean, I know you guys love your guns, but to equate them as something as arbitrarily available while doing your weekly food shopping is just plain stupid.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. When you go grocery shopping at Walmart and buy an AR15, they do a background check, so what's your point?

Correct me if I am wrong but that is just asking for trouble.

You're wrong.

But then when something happens as a result of this availability it's the good old "The guns didn't have a choice in how they were being used" straw-man that's hauled out. Talk about burying your heads in the sand.

Well, it's simple really. When you're saying that "guns cause crime", you're ignoring that 99.9% of guns do NOT cause crime. If you manage to come up with a test to see which guns are evil from the start, I'm all for banning them.

Until then, kindly rephrase the arguments into something else. Try to avoid "common sense" as an argument too, because there's no such thing as common sense. Maybe we should ban all firearms in areas under a certain financial line, since so much of the gun violence is there?

No one seems to actually debate the "gun show loophole" laws here though, even though I live in an area that has these laws already in place and can see how utterly useless of a restriction it is.

---------- Post added 2013-04-28 at 05:29 PM ----------

How are universal background checks,

Depends on the system proposed really. The bill presented was not a UBC, it was a "go outside" law, requiring folks at gunshows to go outside to conduct business and of course banning private sales on the internet, with no means for ATFE to actually enforce such a law, but okay then.

funding and empowering the ATF,

They should get more funding, they should also have someone go over their spending to justify why they spend their "limited funding" on giving strike teams tactical suits and AR's for a purely investigative branch.

But really, as a side-discussion, why do we need the ATFE at all? Shouldn't the FBI be in charge of all federal investigations anyway?

and registries blocking rights?

For a registry to be useful in an investigation, it would entail investigating people whose only "crime" is the possession of a specific type of firearm. Even then of course, they would need the actual gun to know what to look for.

But, I guess, as a counterpoint, is there anything online that shows the effectiveness of a registry in assisting police in the jurisdictions that DO have gun registration?

They aren't.

I believe we disagree on what infringing means, for me it means reducing, including through hindering the swift exercising of a right through arbitrary processes.

[lockedout]

Think about what you are saying.

How are universal background checks, funding and empowering the ATF, and registries blocking rights?

They aren't.

I didn't say they are blocking rights.
I said criminals don't follow laws.
So making MORE laws will do what exactly?

[Extrazero8]

Incident happens where guns are involved. Community has a temporary aversion to guns as a result. Respectful thing to do would be to not celebrate guns in their vicinity. It's just being respectful.

No one is forced to go those events. The people that didn't want to go didn't have to and the people that still did could.

They also cut out the majority of the planned events for the meeting and instead of it being several days long it was cut to just one. Respect was given to those people in that community, but you also have to keep in mind there were people in that same community that did not have that same aversion to guns.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Charlton_Heston
Charlton Heston's Speech at the annual NRA Convention

I also want to applaud your courage in coming here today. Or course, you have a right to be here. As you know, we've cancelled the festivities, the fellowship we normally enjoy at our annual gatherings. This decision has perplexed a few and inconvenienced thousands. As your president, I apologize for that.

But it's fitting and proper that we should do this. Because NRA members are, above all, Americans. That means that whatever our differences, we are respectful of one another and we stand united, especially in adversity.

I have a message from the mayor, Mr. Wellington Webb, the mayor of Denver. He sent me this and said don't come here, we don't want you here. I said to the mayor, well, my reply to the mayor is, I volunteered for the war they wanted me to attend when I was 18 years old. Since then, I've run small errands for my country, from Nigeria to Vietnam. I know many of you here in this room could say the same thing. But the mayor said don't come.

I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry for the newspaper ads saying the same thing, don't come here. This is our country. As Americans, we're free to travel wherever we want in our broad land.

They say we'll create a media distraction, but we were preceded here by hundreds of intrusive news crews. They say we'll create political distraction, but it's not been the NRA pressing for political advantage, calling press conferences to propose vast packages of new legislation.

Still they say don't come here. I guess what saddens me the most is how that suggests complicity. It implies that you and I and 80 million honest gun owners are somehow to blame, that we don't care. We don't care as much as they do, or that we don't deserve to be as shocked and horrified as every other soul in America mourning for the people of Littleton.

Don't come here. That's offensive. It's also absurd because we live here. There are thousands of NRA members in Denver, and tens upon tens of thousands in the state of Colorado.

NRA members labor in Denver's factories, they populate Denver's faculties, run Denver corporations, play on Colorado sports teams, work in media across the Front Range, parent and teach and coach Denver's children, attend Denver's churches and proudly represent Denver in uniform on the world's oceans and in the skies over Kosovo at this very moment.

NRA members are in city hall, Fort Carson, NORAD, the Air Force Academy and the Olympic Training Center. And yes, NRA members are surly among the police and fire and SWAT team heroes who risked their lives to rescue the students at Columbine.

Don't come here? We're already here. This community is our home. Every community in America is our home. We are a 128-year-old fixture of mainstream America. The Second Amendment ethic of lawful, responsible firearm ownership spans the broadest cross section of American life imaginable.

The thoughts of the people in that community were considered. They cut down on the time they were there for those people in that community that felt anger towards guns and for those that didn't they had a one day meeting.

[belfpala]

And I'm sure many criminals are on the street due to the 4th, 5th and 6th amendments as well. It all comes down to how much punishment should the law abiding tolerate in response to the actions of the criminal?

Alright. I'm thoroughly convinced gun rights folks run on a 14 year-old mentality and the argument is essentially "Nya nya nya-nya nya!"

So, prove me wrong...

How is it punishment to law abiding folk if there has to be a background check before anyone gets a gun from a dealer? How is it punishment if that gun has to be registered? How is it punishment if you have to go to a registrar to sell that gun to another, like I have to do with my car in my state? None of that infringes on your right to own a gun. None of it.

[lockedout]

like I have to do with my car in my state?

Driving a car/having a drivers license is a privilege.
Bearing arms is a right in the constitution.
can't really compare the two.

I could understand your argument if these law abiding citizens were the ones committing the crimes with their guns but they aren't.
Making it harder for them to own a gun will do what exactly to deter someone who has no intention of obtaining a firearm legally?