Mega-Thread: Gun Control Thread

[Skroe]

I think you forgot that the government doesn't have the power to repeal the 2nd Amendment.

You can repeal an Amendment by writing a new Amendment which voids it. This is why the 21st Amendment is one of my favorites: it explicitly repealed the 18th (Prohibition). So yes, the country can repeal the Second Ammendment, by replace it with something new.

And before you say "impossible", people said the same about the 18th Amendment for years too. And that happened.

Except you can't enact any laws that make gun ownership "unbearable" because those violate the 2nd Amendment. Sure, you can restrict gun ownership in reasonable ways... but making "a day at the range cost as much as a cruise" is laughably far from "reasonable". Such an action strikes beyond the pale when it comes to infringing on the 2nd Amendment and it would, thankfully, never happen.

It's clear you are far beyond reason when it comes to our civil liberties. I wonder what your feelings are on our rights to freedom of speech or freedom from enslavement.

Oh, and by the way, the huge majority of gun murders would still occur even if every gun were single-shot derringers. Most gun violence involve cases where there is one victim. Cases like Sandy Hook are EXTREME outliers and if you get 1-per-year you've had a lot.

In fact, the primary reason we have gotten more than one is because law enforcement psychologists have pointed out the fact that media coverage of the first killing serves as an impetus for further killings... each one getting more heinous.

Nothing I said violates the Second Amendment. You can still own guns.
But looking at the 2nd Amendment, there is nothing in it about it being easy or cheap.

Let me put it this way: if you have an ultra liberal government who legislated that guns will cost a hundred billion dollars each, it would be perfectly legal, because there is no law saying "guns can be affordable", just that ownership is permitted. Well sure, ownership is permittable, you just have to have a hundred billion dollars to own one.

This is the exact same thing: you can own your guns, but you'll be sacrificing your children's college fund to own them.

Oh and its funny you mention "enslavement", because I view Gun Owners exactly the way Abolitionists viewed those who defended Slavery. Abolition of Gun Ownership in this country should take the exact same tactics and slay the same "Gun Culture" dragon by going after their owners all the same.

And furthermore, I don't care about Sandy Hook being an "extreme outlier". That excuses it to someone with a 6th grade education. I care about the idea - a future where America joins the developed world and is free of the blight of the gun. It works for our peers. It will work for us. We need a gun no more than your average Australian or Average Japanese citizen does. And they're just fine.

When it comes down to it, Gun Owners just like their hobby and they don't want to see it go away. Everything else is an insincere dressing up. Well I don't care for their hobby and I want them to be stripped of their guns.

[Laize]

I never said it was fair or logical.

I want to win. I don't want to be nice. I want anti-gun people to fight pro-gun people on so many fronts, and so hard, it's utterly exhausting and they lose because they can't stop and win every fight.

I want to end a culture of a gun and take everyone's tools of death away, and I don't want to be nice about it. You may not like my position, but there it is. I view the gun for what it is, and I view their owners for what they are. And I want to deprive them of their toys and smile while doing it.

AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!

There's a reason gun advocates have always and will always win when it comes to the second amendment.

Several reasons, actually.

First, is the NRA... obviously... then there's the ACLU (A group which no one really wants to get on the bad side of).

But most importantly there's the simple fact that gun advocates have far more passion about the subject than people who oppose guns. It's been found over and over again that guns are almost always an issue to avoid in Presidential and Congressional elections.... especially if you were anti-gun. Why is that? Well, pro-gun advocates, as mentioned, are very passionate about it and whether or not a candidate supports guns heavily influences whether they will vote for that person.

Anti-gun advocates? Nah. Even people who say they're vehemently anti-gun will almost always place firearms policy lower on their list of priorities when it comes to voting for a politician than a pro-gun advocate.

Lastly we have the Constitution on our side. And unless you can get 38 states together to repeal the 2nd Amendment (and you can't....not as long as the South is part of this country... and even several blue states would oppose such a repeal) it's going nowhere. Not in our lifetime. Not in our children's lifetimes and not in THEIR children's lifetimes.

Your end goal is hopeless and you'll likely have been dead for 100 years before it's even conceivable that culture will have changed enough to allow it.

[lockedout]

Oh it's easy. You just repeal the second Amendment with a new Amendment. Could take years, but you gotta start somewhere. And before then you can take legislative action.

Imagine for example, if gun manufacturers were made liable for deaths from gun violence? It's hard for a industry in bankrupcy from a torrent of lawsuits to be putting products on shelves to buy. Nevermind they'll go out of business just by being uninsurable.

There's about a hundred different ways we can take big steps to zeroing gun ownership in this country before doing the right thing, by ending the Second Amendment.



Thousands. And I'd ban hunting rifles too. I'd ban all guns. Every last one of them. No exceptions. I'd declare war against the very idea of private gun ownership.

And there is two ways to do it. The smart way and the dumb way. The dumb way goes after the gun itself. The smart way goes after people. You make laws that target gun owners.

So let's have guns, but lets make gun ownership so unbearable for gun owners they'll be less inclined to do it. And then you do it in the most populous parts of the country and drain the swap that way. Like here is one idea: lets require every gun, every single one past and present to have a big, obnoxious smartphone sized licence plate on it. All of a sudden concealed carried becomes basically impossible too. Here is another one: required mandatory annual inspection for compliance - make gun owners take have to take every single one of their guns down to the police station once a year for inspection (just like a car in a sense). If they fail inspection, they get seized without appeal. And a third one - tax the hell out of ammunition. A 10 rounds should cost about $400. A day at the range should be as expensive as a cruise.

That's how you beat gun ownership. You make the hobby so hilariously expensive people will drop it just by being massively inconvenienced. Imagine how many guns will be taken off the street if a state legislature minorly changes the laws year to year, so that every year more guns are seized during annual inspection for not being in compliance?

You do these laws - and each and every one of these laws is in the pipeline somewhere, over years the pro-guns side loses, and repealing the 2nd Amendment will be even easier.

---------- Post added 2013-02-03 at 06:14 AM ----------



You know why this is funny to me?

You make the exact same argument the "brains" behind Al Qaeda, the educated leaders, made / make to their uneducated rank and file... the uneducated rank and file that get Droned by the dozen every week. It's their duty, as muslims and men, to take on the western infidels.

So how exactly is that going for them?

Meanwhile the unarmed smart people behind Al Qaeda keep their heads down for years because they know idiots with big balls armed with guns don't win wars.

You are very ignorant. I honestly don't know where to start.

Infracted: Please do not insult others

[Skroe]

How much should they be liable for and why? It feels like some people want more people to blame, just because it makes themselves feel better that SOMEONE is blames. If I bought a gun after passing every background check, having never broken a law previous, then murdered someone, how many people SHOULD be liable other than me? The manufacturer? The gun store owner? My parents? Video games? Music? The internet? Television?

---------- Post added 2013-02-03 at 01:23 AM ----------



I guess we should do the same with all knives as well too then? People murder using knives as well.

Certain types of knives, yes certainly. But a knife is self-evidently more a tool than a gun in. All guns are designed to kill. A knife is designed to cut, everything from meat on a plate to paper.

Things like "war knives" and switchblades of course an those. But people aren't exactly killing thousands of other people a year with Sarrated Edged Dinner Knives bought at Target.

But how many guns has Walmart sold that has killed people? Gun sellers should be liable for gun-related deaths too. Care to bet how fast Dicks and Walmart stop selling guns when they become uninsurable? It would happen overnight.

---------- Post added 2013-02-03 at 06:32 AM ----------

You are very ignorant. I honestly don't know where to start.

There there champ. I know you don't like what I'm saying, but absolutely nothing I've said can be construed as ignorant. Very in-your-face about how I want to take your guns away with a smile on my face. But ignorant? What other flavors you got?

[Laize]

You can repeal an Amendment by writing a new Amendment which voids it. This is why the 21st Amendment is one of my favorites: it explicitly repealed the 18th (Prohibition). So yes, the country can repeal the Second Ammendment, by replace it with something new.

And before you say "impossible", people said the same about the 18th Amendment for years too. And that happened.

*snicker*

Alcohol has been a part of human culture for thousands of years. It was a foregone conclusion that you couldn't ban alcohol.

Nothing I said violates the Second Amendment. You can still own guns.
But looking at the 2nd Amendment, there is nothing in it about it being easy or cheap.

Oh but it does! See, making ownership of firearms prohibitively expensive absolutely infringes on 2nd Amendment rights.

Moreover, since it's a civil liberty, doing such a stupid thing would amount to taxation of civil liberties. And then you've successfully opened the Pandora's Box that would permit Congress to tax other civil liberties... like our rights to a trial by jury or a speedy trial.

Let me put it this way: if you have an ultra liberal government who legislated that guns will cost a hundred billion dollars each, it would be perfectly legal, because there is no law saying "guns can be affordable", just that ownership is permitted. Well sure, ownership is permittable, you just have to have a hundred billion dollars to own one.

This is the exact same thing: you can own your guns, but you'll be sacrificing your children's college fund to own them.

Oh and its funny you mention "enslavement", because I view Gun Owners exactly the way Abolitionists viewed those who defended Slavery. Abolition of Gun Ownership in this country should take the exact same tactics and slay the same "Gun Culture" dragon by going after their owners all the same.

And furthermore, I don't care about Sandy Hook being an "extreme outlier". That excuses it to someone with a 6th grade education. I care about the idea - a future where America joins the developed world and is free of the blight of the gun. It works for our peers. It will work for us. We need a gun no more than your average Australian or Average Japanese citizen does. And they're just fine.

When it comes down to it, Gun Owners just like their hobby and they don't want to see it go away. Everything else is an insincere dressing up. Well I don't care for their hobby and I want them to be stripped of their guns.

You have no idea what actually constitutes "infringement" and you even more clearly have no idea that just as many liberals actually LOVE the second amendment as hate it.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

Certain types of knives, yes certainly. But a knife is self-evidently more a tool than a gun in. All guns are designed to kill. A knife is designed to cut, everything from meat on a plate to paper.

Things like "war knives" and switchblades of course an those. But people aren't exactly killing thousands of other people a year with Sarrated Edged Dinner Knives bought at Target.

But how many guns has Walmart sold that has killed people? Gun sellers should be liable for gun-related deaths too. Care to bet how fast Dicks and Walmart stop selling guns when they become uninsurable? It would happen overnight

Actually, a study in England said they should ban all sales of pointed kitchen knives, because they are used in murders. You would support this ban as well?

Why should they be liable for that? If I murdered someone with a serrated kitchen knife from Walmart, should Walmart be liable for that too?

[Wells]

How much should they be liable for and why? It feels like some people want more people to blame, just because it makes themselves feel better that SOMEONE is blames. If I bought a gun after passing every background check, having never broken a law previous, then murdered someone, how many people SHOULD be liable other than me? The manufacturer? The gun store owner? My parents? Video games? Music? The internet? Television?

That's for courts to decide, not congress. Gun manufacturers enjoy a level of protection no one else gets.

What could they possibly be liable for?

The same things other companies get held liable for when their products kill a lot of people.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

That's for courts to decide, not congress. Gun manufacturers enjoy a level of protection no one else gets.

The same things other companies get held liable for when their products kill a lot of people.

No one else gets as in what? Knife manufacturers? McDonalds?

[Wells]

No one else gets as in what? Knife manufacturers? McDonalds?

Nope, not really. NRA successfully got gun manufacturers special legal protection.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/21/politics/21guns.html

[Skroe]

AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!

There's a reason gun advocates have always and will always win when it comes to the second amendment.

Several reasons, actually.

First, is the NRA... obviously... then there's the ACLU (A group which no one really wants to get on the bad side of).

But most importantly there's the simple fact that gun advocates have far more passion about the subject than people who oppose guns. It's been found over and over again that guns are almost always an issue to avoid in Presidential and Congressional elections.... especially if you were anti-gun. Why is that? Well, pro-gun advocates, as mentioned, are very passionate about it and whether or not a candidate supports guns heavily influences whether they will vote for that person.

Anti-gun advocates? Nah. Even people who say they're vehemently anti-gun will almost always place firearms policy lower on their list of priorities when it comes to voting for a politician than a pro-gun advocate.

Lastly we have the Constitution on our side. And unless you can get 38 states together to repeal the 2nd Amendment (and you can't....not as long as the South is part of this country... and even several blue states would oppose such a repeal) it's going nowhere. Not in our lifetime. Not in our children's lifetimes and not in THEIR children's lifetimes.

Your end goal is hopeless and you'll likely have been dead for 100 years before it's even conceivable that culture will have changed enough to allow it.

Oh, you are so hilariously mistaken. Time is not on your side. Not in the slightest.

Have you ever wondered why diverse cultures from Japan to the United Kingdom to France to Spain have all arrived at the same conclusion and nearly banned gun ownership? How do such diverse democracies arrive at the same conclusion?

It's because their populations live far more in cities than ours. In Many parts of Europe, the wealthy and powerful, the educated live in cities while working class folks live in the rural areas. In the US, its the other way around.

When you have more people in a concentrated area, public safety becomes a priority. People don't want to get shot walking home at night. So gun control goes up the importance queue.

And this is where you lose: the US is getting more urban, very very quickly. Urban sprawl has accelerated in the last twenty years. What was once "the suburbus" are now vital parts of major metropolitan areas. In another 20 years, todays suburbs will be tomorrow's college-sections of cities. With our growing American population, all of it in urban areas and suburbs becoming the refuge of the old, you will see a lot of young people, with families, who place their safety in these crowded areas as their highest priority.

And that is how guns are defeated once and for all in this country. Because the day will come when a highly urban future America places saftey of living in cities so high, these laws are passed easily, because people living in apartments in the city won't own guns, or be too far from the open spaces to go hunting or too a range.

That is how you lose: so long as Americans keep having kids, and Americans keep moving to cities, your hobby dies.

Let me ask a speculative question: what proportion of Americans owned a gun in the 1980s, when we were predominantly rural, compared to today? I bet you it's vastly lower. Because people in urban areas... Americans, Japanese, British... do not buy guns.

Time is in no way shape or form on your side. And it could take a century to win, as you say, but you still lose. And people like you will be looked at a century hence like how modern Americans look back at those who defended slavery 150 years ago.

So grats on being on the losing side. But at least you have your hobby.

[gr4vitas]

That's for courts to decide, not congress. Gun manufacturers enjoy a level of protection no one else gets.

The same things other companies get held liable for when their products kill a lot of people.

So car manufacturers are reliable when someone intentionally drivers a car through a crowd of people with the intent to kill them?

[Laize]

That's for courts to decide, not congress. Gun manufacturers enjoy a level of protection no one else gets.

Oh? Please explain.

The same things other companies get held liable for when their products kill a lot of people.

I don't think Volkswagen would be held responsible if I got in my Jetta and drove down the sidewalk mowing down everyone in my path.

Companies are not, and should never be held liable for the deliberate actions of the end-users of their product.

Now if someone were simply holding a gun with the safety on, and it went off and killed someone despite the trigger never being pulled and safety engaged? That would be reason for holding the company liable.

Except that simply doesn't happen. In fact, most ideas of guns being dangerous without the user are complete myths. Guns going off when you drop them? Doesn't happen... in fact it happens so little (if ever) that the expert recommendation is to let a gun simply fall to the ground rather than attempt to catch it.

[lockedout]

Certain types of knives, yes certainly. But a knife is self-evidently more a tool than a gun in. All guns are designed to kill. A knife is designed to cut, everything from meat on a plate to paper.

Things like "war knives" and switchblades of course an those. But people aren't exactly killing thousands of other people a year with Sarrated Edged Dinner Knives bought at Target.

But how many guns has Walmart sold that has killed people? Gun sellers should be liable for gun-related deaths too. Care to bet how fast Dicks and Walmart stop selling guns when they become uninsurable? It would happen overnight.

---------- Post added 2013-02-03 at 06:32 AM ----------



There there champ. I know you don't like what I'm saying, but absolutely nothing I've said can be construed as ignorant. Very in-your-face about how I want to take your guns away with a smile on my face. But ignorant? What other flavors you got?

Your ignorance and condescending attitude is borderline stupidity. Your views albeit your own are very extreme and would never happen. Hopefully you can see and understand that your way of thinking would never come to reality.

(user would have) received infraction (if he/she wasn't banned at this time). These kinds of posts won't be tolerated.

~Badpaladin

[Grizzly Willy]

I meant, Murder has an obviously great reason to be banned. banning 30 round clips won't save anywhere near as many lives as banning murder. It just hasn't been shown that banning 30 round magazines would save lives.

Which is why I offered other laws. The effect is the same. Criminals will always break the law, obviously. Saying that we shouldn't have a law because criminals won't obey it is faulty reasoning.

[Wells]

So car manufacturers are reliable when someone intentionally drivers a car through a crowd of people with the intent to kill them?

They can be if the people filing the suit can argue a compelling reason why they should be. Advertising is a common way they do. A company advertising their product being used in an unsafe manner can get in some hot water if its then used that way for instance.

Point is if you're trying to sue the gun manufacturers you won't even get to court, because the NRA made sure you couldn't.

Companies are not, and should never be held liable for the deliberate actions of the end-users of their product.

Agreed, which is why I'm not talking about criminal court.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

Nope, not really. NRA successfully got gun manufacturers special legal protection.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/21/politics/21guns.html

Mr. DeLay issued a statement calling the gun bill an important step toward revamping the nation's tort law system. On Wednesday, the House passed another measure, the so-called cheeseburger bill, which protects the restaurant industry from obesity-related lawsuits. Taken together, Mr. DeLay said, the bills "protect America's legal system for genuine plaintiffs."

So what are you comparing this to? How do they get special treatment? They aren't killing people, and McDonalds isn't making people fat, and both are protected.

[Skroe]

Your ignorance and condescending attitude is borderline stupidity. Your views albeit your own are very extreme and would never happen. Hopefully you can see and understand that your way of thinking would never come to reality.

Read above about population. What I wrote is pretty much the "Americanization" of what has happened everywhere else.

And consider this country has followed, almost to the letter, the same path our First World peers have on abortion, on health care, on public pensions, on intra-government oversight, on economics (service economies). On oh so much be follow a well beaten trail. At our own pace sure, but follow it we do.

And you propose somehow, despite our population trend ending up exactly where THEY are now, our position on guns is supposed to be different? Do you realize how delusional that sounds? Let me put it clearly to you: future Americans who grow up, live and die in cities, who don't own guns will never care about guns. People will not care about something they don't have and it will in any case be less important than public saftey.

And away goes the Second Amendment.

So I wouldn't bet against me.

[Wells]

So what are you comparing this to? How do they get special treatment? They aren't killing people, and McDonalds isn't making people fat, and both are protected.

So its not special legal protection if someone else has that same special legal protection?

[Skroe]

Actually, a study in England said they should ban all sales of pointed kitchen knives, because they are used in murders. You would support this ban as well?

Why should they be liable for that? If I murdered someone with a serrated kitchen knife from Walmart, should Walmart be liable for that too?

If it was found that such items were leading to murders, yes I'd go for a ban.

After all, who likes eating tough steak?

And yes Walmart should be. There is nothing more profane in the world than ending an innocent life, and any enabler should be held to account.

I think though there is a very specific difference: guns have one purpose, to cause a small explosion that propels a projectile in order to kill. Guns only purpose is to end life. It could be the life of a deer, or the life of a bird or the life of an enemy soldier, or the life of an innocent child in a school. But their only purpose is kill from a distance.

You can't say that for knives. They can be USED like that certainly, but a knife meant for cutting steak is clearly designed for cutting steak and not for cutting paper or killing.

That contrasts with a gun. Your favorite hunting rifle can be used to kill a deer, a bird, a man or a child all the same. They are tools of bringing death at a distance, and nothing more.

[gr4vitas]

They can be if the people filing the suit can argue a compelling reason why they should be. Advertising is a common way they do. A company advertising their product being used in an unsafe manner can get in some hot water if its then used that way for instance.

Point is if you're trying to sue the gun manufacturers you won't even get to court, because the NRA made sure you couldn't.

Agreed, which is why I'm not talking about criminal court.

Car manufacturers are only liable when there car malfunctions, so unless the gun malfunctions and kills someone as a result of that malfunction the gun manufacturer can't be held responsible, just like cars.

Just the same as if I went and beat someone to an inch of their life with a keyboard, they couldn't try to sue the keyboard company for being beaten up with it.

The NRA made sure people couldn't go sue the gun manufacturer because they pointed it at someone and accidentally pulled the trigger or had a negligent discharge. Because as you can imagine, that would be silly. They can't be responsible for user error.