Mega-Thread: Gun Control Thread

[PhaelixWW]

800 or so inspectors, I am more than open to reform but it is obvious they aren't doing their jobs. The US congress passed a law barring them from using computers for certain tasks which would make tracing the sale and origin of a gun much easier and more efficient.

How is it obvious that they're not doing their job? They audit FFL's paperwork. That job is done as well as needs to or can be. There's not some widespread FFL malfeasance going on that they're failing to catch. And using a computer wouldn't make tracing a firearm any easier. Tracing a firearm is about making a number of phone calls, really.

They were never released nationwide, any gun shop that carried them was quickly descended upon by the NRA dogs. You can't say there wasn't a market for it since it was never given a shot.

By "NRA dogs" do you mean "gun owners"? The same people who would make up this supposed market? I have no data, surely, but neither do you. And I'd wager everything I own that the percentage of people willing to buy a "smart" gun would be very, very small.

[Najnaj]

Why has this gone for 2k+ pages when this debate is an almost perfect mirror of what happened in Australia in the late 90s (early 00s?). The exact same arguments were thrown around, guns don't kill peo.... , criminals will still get weap.... bla bla bla. When all was said and done, before the Aussie gun ban you had a lot of gun violence/mass shootings and after you have very little.

...and no, other types of crime did not increase. Noone went on a mass knifing. Shooting someone is a very unique way of killing. Just because you can pull a trigger 20 yards away does not mean that you will be able to take a knife and slit someones throat. It might mean that you could poison someone but then you would have to plan it out and think a bit...and probably change your mind.

[Draco-Onis]

How is it obvious that they're not doing their job? They audit FFL's paperwork. That job is done as well as needs to or can be. There's not some widespread FFL malfeasance going on that they're failing to catch. And using a computer wouldn't make tracing a firearm any easier. Tracing a firearm is about making a number of phone calls, really.

You do know that they have to do physical inspections of the guns shops right?

By "NRA dogs" do you mean "gun owners"? The same people who would make up this supposed market? I have no data, surely, but neither do you. And I'd wager everything I own that the percentage of people willing to buy a "smart" gun would be very, very small.

I mean people who blindly attack when the NRA tells them to, the NRA stopped being a organization that represented the will of gun owners a long time ago. You can wager all you want but there is enough data set for you to say there is no market.

[PhaelixWW]

Why has this gone for 2k+ pages when this debate is an almost perfect mirror of what happened in Australia in the late 90s (early 00s?). The exact same arguments were thrown around, guns don't kill peo.... , criminals will still get weap.... bla bla bla. When all was said and done, before the Aussie gun ban you had a lot of gun violence/mass shootings and after you have very little.

If you seriously think that Australia and the US are an "almost perfect mirror" of each other, then you clearly haven't done your homework. By the by, did you know that Australia now has more firearms than they did before the ban? Still, that's orders of magnitude less than the US has.

...and no, other types of crime did not increase. Noone went on a mass knifing. Shooting someone is a very unique way of killing. Just because you can pull a trigger 20 yards away does not mean that you will be able to take a knife and slit someones throat. It might mean that you could poison someone but then you would have to plan it out and think a bit...and probably change your mind.

And yet violent crime dropped by a larger margin in the US during the same time than in Australia.

- - - Updated - - -

You do know that they have to do physical inspections of the guns shops right?

I work at an FFL. I've dealt with ATF inspections before. I know what they entail. There's almost no physical inspection going on; it's virtually all about auditing paperwork for compliance.

I mean people who blindly attack when the NRA tells them to, the NRA stopped being a organization that represented the will of gun owners a long time ago. You can wager all you want but there is enough data set for you to say there is no market.

I can say there's no market all I want. I can't back it up in any meaningful way, but there's zero evidence to contradict me, either. Honestly, I've personally talked to hundreds to thousands of firearm owners, (this is California, too, so it's not a GOP bastion), and I have yet to hear any single one of them express an interest in a smart gun, and plenty of them express on opposite opinion. This is all obviously anecdotal, but in the absence of anything else, I feel pretty confident in my assessment.

[Draco-Onis]

snip

I think we should have prefaced this debate with a simple question. Do you think the current state of affairs is and should be normal and not much should be done? if so then there is no point in a debate and you all can go back to posting pictures of your newest guns.

[Svifnymr]

Why would a government agency use non federal funds for something only the government would have the most data on? As I understand the wording of language made it very difficult for them to even gather the data since it can be interpreted in different ways and violation would rather be easy.

There's other agencies also that do similar studies. The CDC thing is often quoted because they like to misrepresent the ban on a specific line of research.

800 or so inspectors, I am more than open to reform but it is obvious they aren't doing their jobs. The US congress passed a law barring them from using computers for certain tasks which would make tracing the sale and origin of a gun much easier and more efficient.

The inspectors don't need to do yearly inspections just because. Spot checks, sure, but yearly is pointless for the most part. But they do them, and they're not behind. Most of the FFL's are small time folks that take 10 minutes to check.
You're conflating "centralized database" and "recording barred information" with "can't use computers for stuff". It's not a big problem. The inspectors are also note the investigators that handle actual criminal cases, so it's beside the point.

They were never released nationwide, any gun shop that carried them was quickly descended upon by the NRA dogs. You can't say there wasn't a market for it since it was never given a shot.

There have been two attempts that I know of, both sucked. The one is currently still made, afaik, it's a 22lr costing $2k that works with a watch and was spoofed within 5 minutes of release. No one is keeping them from market, there is simply no market for them!

- - - Updated - - -

Why has this gone for 2k+ pages when this debate is an almost perfect mirror of what happened in Australia in the late 90s (early 00s?). The exact same arguments were thrown around, guns don't kill peo.... , criminals will still get weap.... bla bla bla. When all was said and done, before the Aussie gun ban you had a lot of gun violence/mass shootings and after you have very little.

They had a brief spat of high profile cases, they didn't have a lot of gun violence. Afterwards it went down, though as repeatedly mentioned their crime rate dropped less than the USA during the timeframe. The USA was higher before and after, but the drop was larger percentage wise.

...and no, other types of crime did not increase. Noone went on a mass knifing. Shooting someone is a very unique way of killing. Just because you can pull a trigger 20 yards away does not mean that you will be able to take a knife and slit someones throat. It might mean that you could poison someone but then you would have to plan it out and think a bit...and probably change your mind.

Actually it was mostly a reaction to mass shootings. Following the bans, mass-arson became the mass-murder of choice for a while. No schools got hit though, so it didn't really go anywhere.

[Hooked]

I would be in favor of registered democrats, not being allowed to own weapons. They seem to commit most of the crime with or without guns.

[Svifnymr]

You do know that they have to do physical inspections of the guns shops right?

There are different kinds of people working for ATF. The inspectors aren't cops, they can't carry guns. They travel to FFL's for routine checks which entails verifying inventory against the books as well as looking through forms for paperwork errors. They are not the ones that handle traces or investigations.

I mean people who blindly attack when the NRA tells them to, the NRA stopped being a organization that represented the will of gun owners a long time ago. You can wager all you want but there is enough data set for you to say there is no market.

I'd hazard to say you're not in touch with the gun owners enough to judge. Granted, my experience with customers in a gun store may not be absolute, but the NRA is demonized and misrepresented continuously in these debates. The power of the NRA comes from the people they represent, just like AARP, but the idea that NRA members blindly follow the NRA just because they don't know any better is misguided.

- - - Updated - - -

I think we should have prefaced this debate with a simple question. Do you think the current state of affairs is and should be normal and not much should be done? if so then there is no point in a debate and you all can go back to posting pictures of your newest guns.

I do not think the Vegas shooting could have been avoided by any law that wouldn't severely restrict the rights of an inordinate number of innocent people. Even if you had banned guns last year, he had been buying guns for decades.

I also think that it's emotion based to focus on a mass shooting when discussing gun laws, since they are actually the anomaly. There's a lot of gun-crime that occurs and the situations should be addressed, but the conversation is about socio-economics more than "can someone have a 15 round magazine instead of a 10 round magazine".

And of course, it is tiresome to see gun laws drafted by people that have no idea how guns work or what the differences are. The debate about Silencers is a perfect example, along with the "assault weapon" nonsense. Reducing gun crime starts with prosecuting straw purchasers.

[Najnaj]

If you seriously think that Australia and the US are an "almost perfect mirror" of each other, then you clearly haven't done your homework. By the by, did you know that Australia now has more firearms than they did before the ban? Still, that's orders of magnitude less than the US has.


And yet violent crime dropped by a larger margin in the US during the same time than in Australia.

- - - Updated - - -

Australia has more rifles and less handguns and no, the murder rate in the US has not dropped more than Australia. The US spiked in the 70s and 80s and then dropped a fair bit. In the same time as Australia's rates have almost halved the US rates has gone down by a small margin. They US numbers are still sky high btw.

The US also has 3 times more deaths from firearms than Canada which has a somewhat similar number of firearms (believed to be at least as the numbers of rifles are a little fuzzy) but again, very rifle heavy. Scandinavia has a lot of firearms when you reach the country side and very low rates of any gun violence, again rifles used for hunting.

Also, you are more than 4 times as likely to get killed by gun violence if you yourself have a gun and your gun is far more likely to kill someone you do not intend on killing than being used against an intruder etc. It is both dangerous for others and counter productive.

[PhaelixWW]

I think we should have prefaced this debate with a simple question. Do you think the current state of affairs is and should be normal and not much should be done? if so then there is no point in a debate and you all can go back to posting pictures of your newest guns.

Are you seriously saying "There's no debating with you if you don't already agree with me"? Because that's what that statement sounds like.

Regardless, I'm pretty much of the same mind as Svifnymr on this one. I'm not against gun control, per se. I'm for anything that meets the following criteria: a) It has a meaningfully positive effect on firearm crime reduction (which generally includes the understanding that it has to be enforceable), and b) It doesn't have a meaningfully negative effect on people's ability to use firearms for the purpose of self defense.

Unfortunately, almost every proposed gun control fails the first, the second, or quite often, both. Just about anything that would satisfy both of those criteria is already in place. I don't have a closed mind, though; I'm perfectly willing to evaluate any heretofore unheard suggestion for new gun control.

- - - Updated - - -

Australia has more rifles and less handguns and no, the murder rate in the US has not dropped more than Australia. The US spiked in the 70s and 80s and then dropped a fair bit. In the same time as Australia's rates have almost halved the US rates has gone down by a small margin. They US numbers are still sky high btw.

Allow me to quote myself:

Between 1995 (the year before Australia's gun ban) and 2012, Australia's homicide rate dropped 32.5%.

Seems like a 16-year ban on guns had some positive results, right?

Well, then consider that the during the same time frame, the homicide rate in the US dropped 39.8%. So... yeah.

Then you look at other statistics. During that same time frame, for example, Australia's violent crime rate rose 38.8% while the US violent crime rate fell 40.1%. And the sexual assault rate in Australia rose 12.7%, while the rate in the US fell 27.1%.

The US also has 3 times more deaths from firearms than Canada which has a somewhat similar number of firearms (believed to be at least as the numbers of rifles are a little fuzzy) but again, very rifle heavy.

Um... Canada has less than 1/3 the number of firearms per capita, and only about 1/10 the population, so they have about 1/30 of the number of firearms as the US.

Also, you are more than 4 times as likely to get killed by gun violence if you yourself have a gun and your gun is far more likely to kill someone you do not intend on killing than being used against an intruder etc. It is both dangerous for others and counter productive.

That quote is often bandied about, but it's so misleading as to be fraudulent. It should really be "You're far more likely to feel the need to keep a firearm for home defense if you live in an area where you're 10x more likely to be a victim of gun violence." And most successful home defenses using a firearm do not end in the intruder being shot but rather scared off, because the defender is not as likely to be trigger-happy as the attacker.

Conservative estimates for defensive gun use are about 1000x the number of justifiable homicides every year, which your argument quite simply ignores.

[Svifnymr]

Also, you are more than 4 times as likely to get killed by gun violence if you yourself have a gun and your gun is far more likely to kill someone you do not intend on killing than being used against an intruder etc. It is both dangerous for others and counter productive.

You should read how they come up with those numbers, it's a fairly good example of a biased study. If your intent is to show that guns are harmful to the person, you set up your parameters as "did the gun harm someone you know". Then you try to find crime scenes where a gun was, and try to link the people. Shot your estranged husband that broke in to kill you? You're in the "kill someone you know" camp. Shot the methhead son of some neighbor that you may have once met at the grocery store? Also someone you know.

Can't find a link? Inconclusive, discard that case until further information is found. To count as "someone you don't know", it needs to be conclusive that you never met them. Thus, "43 times more likely".

Other than that, we come back to your post saying "other countries are different, even when they have guns", which is why most of us say you can't compare raw numbers of US to EU for example.

To repeat an earlier thing, look at Chicago, which has tougher gun laws than the rest of it's county, and that county has tougher gun laws than the rest of the state. It's often repeated that Chicago's failing gun restrictions just illustrate that people buy guns elsewhere (illegally) and then bring them into the city, but the simple fact is that the city is the violence problem, not the guns. If it were the guns, then the problems would be where the guns are.

[TITAN308]

Something tells me I stand more of a chance being killed killed in my own car than if I didn't own a car.

I bet my chances of an accident with a chainsaw go up quite a bit than if I didn't own one.

So I won't really argue that owning a gun puts you at more risk for gun problems. However with that said, it doesn't mean jack shit in the totality of it all.

We all make risk assessments regarding our own lives every day.

There is a reason I own a truck instead of a 500hp corvette.

Choices. Who would have thunk.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh boy, first Pelosi spilling the beans and now Feinstein...

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-pre...-1065414723790

Host: Let me ask you this. Give me the slate of laws that, if you could wave your wand and have enacted, that could have prevented Vegas.

Feinstein: I don’t know. I would have to take a good look at that and really study it. I’m not sure there is any set of laws that could have prevented it.

TTAG Author: "No, Senator Feinstein hasn’t suddenly come over to the pro-gun side’s way of thinking where gun control legislation is concerned. What she just said is known as a Kinsley gaffe. The good senator inadvertently let the truth slip that nothing she or her hoplophobic compatriots in Congress can do will ever stop someone who’s determined to commit mass murder as Stephen Paddock was."

So first Pelosi out right saying "I hope bumpstock bans lead to a slippery slope of gun control" and now the legendary anti-gun Feinstein going woops "no we could probably not have prevented it with any set of laws".

Like fat kids outside of a candyshop they have gotten themselves so overexcited they are losing composure and their game face.

[Kellhound]

I cannot believe how screwed up the FBI's NICS is. I bought (or more correctly, tried to buy) a rifle and a handgun Wednesday from two different stores (great sale, but neither store had both guns I wanted). My background check for the rifle was "delayed", but 5 hours later the NICS for the pistol went right through. I am STILL waiting for the FBI to get back to the store on the rifle. If the FBI cant hand something as simple as this, it makes you wonder how they can handle anything....

[Deleted]

#Richard was here

[Ghostpanther]

I cannot believe how screwed up the FBI's NICS is. I bought (or more correctly, tried to buy) a rifle and a handgun Wednesday from two different stores (great sale, but neither store had both guns I wanted). My background check for the rifle was "delayed", but 5 hours later the NICS for the pistol went right through. I am STILL waiting for the FBI to get back to the store on the rifle. If the FBI cant hand something as simple as this, it makes you wonder how they can handle anything....

That sucks. And to think some believe here in the US it is always so quick and simple to buy any firearm. Like some have said, like buying a loaf of bread at Walmart. :P Hope you get your rifle soon.

[Svifnymr]

With NICS, it's always handy to have the most oddball name possible. The rarer your name, the less likely it'll flag something close. If the system was down, it wouldn't be a "delay" afaik. If you don't get them occasionally, then someone probably entered something wrong.

[kasuke06]

Something tells me I stand more of a chance being killed killed in my own car than if I didn't own a car.

I bet my chances of an accident with a chainsaw go up quite a bit than if I didn't own one.

So I won't really argue that owning a gun puts you at more risk for gun problems. However with that said, it doesn't mean jack shit in the totality of it all.

We all make risk assessments regarding our own lives every day.

There is a reason I own a truck instead of a 500hp corvette.

Choices. Who would have thunk.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh boy, first Pelosi spilling the beans and now Feinstein...

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-pre...-1065414723790



TTAG Author: "No, Senator Feinstein hasn’t suddenly come over to the pro-gun side’s way of thinking where gun control legislation is concerned. What she just said is known as a Kinsley gaffe. The good senator inadvertently let the truth slip that nothing she or her hoplophobic compatriots in Congress can do will ever stop someone who’s determined to commit mass murder as Stephen Paddock was."

So first Pelosi out right saying "I hope bumpstock bans lead to a slippery slope of gun control" and now the legendary anti-gun Feinstein going woops "no we could probably not have prevented it with any set of laws".

Like fat kids outside of a candyshop they have gotten themselves so overexcited they are losing composure and their game face.

well yeah. guns are a boogeyman for them, something to terrify their constituents into following because they don't know about them. they already know that the "bad guys" with guns couldn't give less of a shit about the laws.

Now that isn't to say that sensible gun control is bad(Honestly, what kind of civilian purpose does full-auto serve, outside of cartel country?) but trying to yank constitutional rights to make people feel safe while knowing that it's just pointless theater is the real evil here.

[TITAN308]

What is NICS? /s

I show my GWCL, fill out my paperwork, and leave. :P

You must live in a commie state that doesn't issue licenses. lol

[Millyraynge]

From a practical point of view I don't see any reason to have a gun at home. How often do you use your guns, how often happens something that you need to defend yourself with a gun. Maybe you have some fun shooting some cans or doing some other shooting practice.

How many people got killed by guns (from criminals, insane driven people, by accident etc) and how many people got safed by guns from home users. In how many cases was it necessary to pull a gun instead of an alternative to defuse a danger situation? You don't need to pull a gun if an unarmed / melee armed attacker threatens you.

[arandomuser]

right wing logic'

✓ eugenics -because different people are dangerous
✓ muslim -ban because muslims are dangerous
✓ abortion ban- because killing is wrong
BUT DONT limit my guns I LOVE FREEDOM
\

k