Eh? We're talking about the US here, there is no prospect of a people's revolution - there is a lot of preventable homicide caused by the proliferation of guns. Just get on with it.
Gun control
- Thread starter ukbob
- Start date
How am I being unreasonable? I'm part of the 90% and I'm sure Gannicus is too but you have to understand that the loopholes aren't that big of a deal and if you look at the link I posted, even NRA members agree with stronger background checks. When people get a phone call asking them if they'd support stronger restrictions on background checks, any sane person says yes. Nobody actually does anything about it because the background checks are already there. There really is nothing more they can do with them. Colorado recently implemented new laws getting rid of the loophole and people are for the most part ignoring it. If nobody knows what guns you have, they have no way of knowing what guns you've sold.
In case you don't know what the loophole is, if I buy or sell a gun privately, I don't need a background check if I believe the person I'm buying or selling from is legal and can legally own the rifle or shotgun in the state he/she resides in. Pistols, even in a private sale, can only be bought and sold to people from the same state or they have to be shipped through an FFL in the buyers state and have a background check. Its strange that the loophole got associated with gunshows because all the people at them are dealers so they have to do background checks to sell anything. I have personally never seen a private sale at a gunshow.
Another one, this time at a VA Hospital in El Paso TX. Three reported shot, including the gunmen, no reports on deaths.
EDIT: Last report, gunmen dead, 1 Doctor wounded
EDIT: Last report, gunmen dead, 1 Doctor wounded
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Yeah it's off topic as I said. It just appears as if there are a few parallels.
Regarding the politicians (and still off topic, sorry guys): I find it laughable how at any given time the USA have people running for president, being senators or a high ranking judges etc. who wouldn't even be considered in many other places. It's usually the religious guys though. I suppose it would be the same elsewhere had religion played a bigger part in society.
My point is that:
with no explicit mention of property defence/hunting in the 2nd amendment, and with an explicit mention of militia which is anachronistic to modern society, the SC had enough legal basis to be able to use its common sense in re-interpreting that amendment for this century of widespread gun violence.
Of course the ideal situation is one where a majority forces the government to take action (which after the Heller decision can be restricted to tightening background checks, keeping a registry, stopping bullshit loopholes, perhaps, using the Court's own "common use" principle, stricter limits (are any present at all?) the amount if ammunition and weapons allowed per person.)
Maybe in an under developed nation with a weak or outdated military. The United States is neither. The only hope armed militias or a general civilian uprising would have, is the military either refusing to mow them down, or the military opting to support the movement. Otherwise, you might as well be shooting spitballs. Not to mention trained soldiers with all the advantages US soldiers enjoy, would have absolutely no problems fighting militia units many, many times their size. Even if those militia units were comprised almost entirely of vets.
As Jim Jefferies says in the video posted earlier, the civvies would be bringing guns to a drone fight.
To be very clear, the Second Amendment does not guarantee a right to hunt, or even fish. States and localities are perfectly free to regulate hunting as they wish and even ban hunting altogether. I assume, for example, that one cannot legally hunt within the city limits of New York City or Washington, DC. No one is talking about the "the right to hunt", anyway, as the fundamental basis of the Second Amendment.
The right in question is the "right to keep and bear arms", not the right to do anything you wish with those "arms".
The language of the Second Amendment clearly is not constructed to constrain the "the right of the people" to only those people who are active members of a military force. The Heller decision makes it absolutely clear that the government has the constitutional power to place all kinds of restrictions on the ownership and use of firearms. Semiautomatics, no problem. Public places, no problem. Felons, no problem.
The better argument than misconstruing the intent of the Second Amendment is the one that the Second Amendment is an anachronistic relic of the past, that the circumstances of 21st America are vastly different than those of the late 18th Century. The remedy for that anachronism -- we dealt with the anachronisms (and abomination) of slavery with the 13th Amendment, we dealt with the unequal protection of the laws with the 14th Amendment (although it took the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a century later to give real force and effect to the 14th Amendment) and we took care of the right of women to vote with the 19th Amendment -- is an amendment to the Constitution, for which there is an orderly process prescribed in the Constitution itself...in Article V.
There's no doubt that a significant part of the rationale for the Second Amendment is to allow the people to resist tyranny as well as the collective defense of their community and state. White Americans specifically prohibited blacks from owning weapons when the the "Slave Laws were in effect and the "Black Codes" were later adopted. The intent was to disarm blacks, thus making them prey to an oppressive regime. In 1844, the North Carolina State Supreme Court upheld a statute that prohibited free blacks from owning firearms on grounds that they were not citizens, and thus had no rights. The doctrine that blacks, free or slave, had no rights -- including the right to keep and bear arms -- which a white man must respect which was repeated by various courts and ultimately "reaffirmed" in Roger Taney's outrageous opinion in Dred Scott. The point of referring to the injustices against blacks is that by white men denying blacks their right to keep and bear arms, it was a snap to oppress them.
What some of you can't get your head around, and I fully understand why, is the right to keep and bear arms (among other rights) was considered to be an indispensable right of free men in a republic. The Framers understood rights to be inalienable (well, at least inalienable for white men), not the gift of a benevolent government, although their hypocrisy on the full reach of "individual rights" can never be overlooked.
Do that -- repeal the Second Amendment -- and your concerns with the Second Amendment go away!
But don't listen to me. After all, I'm just a random poster who for all you know could be one of the Koch brothers or a Klansman. Let us consider instead the words of a prominent liberal constitutional lawyer and scholar from Harvard by the name of Laurence Tribe:
Laurence Tribe, American Constitutional Law 902 n. 221 (2000): "Perhaps the most accurate conclusion one can reach with any confidence is that the core meaning of the Second Amendment is a populist / republican / federalism one: Its central object is to arm 'We the People' so that ordinary citizens can participate in the collective defense of their community and their state. But it does so not through directly protecting a right on the part of states or other collectivities, assertable by them against the federal government, to arm the populace as they see fit. Rather the amendment achieves its central purpose by assuring that the federal government may not disarm individual citizens without some unusually strong justification consistent with the authority of the states to organize their own militias. That assurance in turn is provided through recognizing a right (admittedly of uncertain scope) on the part of individuals to possess and use firearms in the defense of themselves and their homes -- not a right to hunt for game, quite clearly, and certainly not a right to employ firearms to commit aggressive acts against other persons -- a right that directly limits action by Congress or by the Executive Branch and may well, in addition, be among the privileges or immunities of United States citizens protected by 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment against state or local government action."
A Harvard liberal has reduced it down to one paragraph much better than I ever could have.
The links you posted aren't even from Democrats but from the left wing nuts and as far I know nobody was in panic just because everybody could walk with a gun but because the black panthers are a racist organization with criminals in their ranks.
The sole purpose of a firearm is to kill. No advanced society should allow its members to carry these weapons - doesn't matter what legal guff you dress it in.
Get a group of black men and women out there doing what Clive Bundy did or what these "patriots/policing the police types" and we'll see how quickly tunes change about open carry and/or how law reacts. Because you know, a black person with a gun is obviously a criminal or up to no good. White people with guns are patriots!
I'm assuming you are assuming, I go to a range shooting my hand gun and sometimes we have a few blacks (very few) shooting and nobody calls the cops, only because some red necks make some noise people always stamp everybody the same (democrats very smart people and republicans stupid).
Even you can spot the difference in 'gun range' and 'open carry in public settings' like parks, malls, shopping districts, etc. I know bubbles can become very cloudy but I have belief you can see through it.
I don't know about you but if I see someone walking with a gun to a store black or white, I will call the cops and get out as fast I can.
If there were some way to magically make all weapons -- all weapons, including the ones of mass destruction -- disappear into thin air I'd be all for it. Anyone who can patent such technology would go down for all time as the greatest of great men.
Sadly, firearms exist. Pretending they don't would be folly.
That said, I will never own a firearm. I have my reasons, but they are my reasons and mine alone. But I would not deny you your right to decide for yourself whether to own a firearm or not. And by "firearm" I do not mean bombs, semiautomatics or other weapons which can cause mass casualties -- I'm only referring to weapons which would enable to defend yourself in the event you are confronted by someone who isn't quite as civilized in "advanced society" as you or I.
The California legislature hastily passed a law restricting public display of firearms after several Black Panthers marched around town with loaded shotguns.
http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-...-about-gun-violence-have-a-lollipop-1.2059058
I guess the content of this article shouldn't be a surprise but it really brings the reality home. What a fecked up place to rear kids.
Kind of ironic that the right to bear arms was supposed to make individual Americans feel safe but it's actually created a culture of fear so pervasive that 6 year old children are being taught that strangers might come to their school and start killing everyone.
I guess the content of this article shouldn't be a surprise but it really brings the reality home. What a fecked up place to rear kids.
Kind of ironic that the right to bear arms was supposed to make individual Americans feel safe but it's actually created a culture of fear so pervasive that 6 year old children are being taught that strangers might come to their school and start killing everyone.
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From the end of that article:
Are the numbers posted in one of the comments below the article true?
Seriously? How stupid can one be?
Are the numbers posted in one of the comments below the article true?
Surely the bolded part can't be true? Does non-homicide gun-fatality rate mean, those are all accidental shootings?
Accidents and suicides, I'd imagine.
Forgot about suicides, I guess if they make up a huge part of those numbers, then it isn't as crazy as I thought it would be. Still crazy though.
Of course there's a lot of evidence that ease of access to efficient means of suicide can increase the overall incidence of suicide.
I'm not being a smart ass here but does this actually really happen? Do people regularly get attacked on the street or in their home and whip out a gun like John McClane?
Always wondered if there were any figures demonstrating how much "protecting" guns actually do in the real world.
Shit happens all the time, even in California. Just a few months ago four houses down from my house there was a home invasion. The homeowner was at home, the fukkers broke in and had a gun, ransacked the house and the dude was helpless. I live in what is regarded as a very nice neighborhood.
In my judgment, and I hope everyone is clear about what I'm actually saying, the homeowner was right not to keep a firearm at home. Most of us do not have the emotional nous to actually use a firearm properly to confront an aggressor. If it ever happens it will happen only once and there's no way for most of us to contain the adrenalin, the fear, anxiety and other emotions at the moment you have to decide whether to pull the trigger and actually gun down an assailant.
About 20 years ago a very good friend of mine who was maybe 23 or 24 years old, living about 6 blocks away from at the time (I moved about a year later), was assaulted in his own home by two crazed fukks. They strangled him, tied him up inside his own car and left the engine running in his own garage. It was not an instant death. James had nothing worth stealing, nothing worth killing him for.
Should James have armed himself? Whether he should or should not have armed himself is an open question, but that's his call, not anyone else's.
Yes, there's gobs of violence out there that most of us never deal with and yes, individuals who are trained in the use of a firearm do indeed protect their lives and property with one.
Most of the deaths in US are gang related and the number of deaths by firearms are together with murders and criminals (and innocents) killed by police. Most of us here in the forum live outside the cities so the gangs fights you see on tv we see on tv as well.
The only figures we have are from surveys which are unreliable, gun owners especially like to exaggerate things when talking about guns. The estimates vary massively, the highest Is 2.5 million defensive gun uses per year and the lowest I've seen is 65,000. According to the FBI there is only about 200 justifiable homicides in the US every year, I find it hard to believe that hundreds of thousands of 'defensive gun uses' would only lead to 200 deaths.
He lived to tell the tale though didn't he? If he had a gun and and in his panicked state decided to use the second amendment and confront these men with a gun he'd more than likely be dead now, given the fact that there was more than one of them and they were armed. Your argument, if anything, supports an anti-gun position. I know if I was in that man's position I would co=operate wholeheartedly. Let them take all my stuff, hell, let them tie me up if they want, even hit me a few punches and kicks if they of that disposition. My bruises will heal, my stuff will be covered under house insurance and I end up a little shaken, but alive.
Intruders into your home want your stuff. It's an aeful lot harder to benefit from stealing your stuff if they are being hunted for murder. 99.99% of them (clearly a made up statistic, but I'd imagine a good guess) want to get in and out with your belongings without even being noticed or confronted, nevermind having to shoot someone and in all likelihood, end up in prison. I would guess the majority of shootings in home invasions are when the home owner decides to defend his home with his hun.
As for your friend in the second story. That is an horrific story but again I would argue that the percentage of home intruders who come in to do something like that is tiny. Most don't want confrontation. And had your friend been armed, it's possible he'd still be alive, but it's also possible he'd have been shot and killed anyway, if he confronted two armed men. Unless he was James Bond, it's very hard to keep your cool to confront and shoot two armed men when you're in a state of panic, I'd imagine.
All true. And I've made up my mind that not having a gun in the home, and welcoming intruders to whatever material possessions they would like, serves my personal safety far better than facing them down with a gun.
The United States has a problem with violence. Always has, always will. Guns are a big part of that problem, but there is no law we could possibly design that would preclude criminals from obtaining -- and keeling the ones they already have -- guns. I suppose we could ban the manufacturing of ammunition so that one day we'd all run out of ammo, but that seems like fantasy.
On a pure policy level, we know from the data that strict gun control laws do not reduce homocide rates. What it all really comes down to is whether we believe James should or should not have been allowed to choose for himself whether to arm himself with a simple firearm (no bombs, semiautomatics, etc). He might be dead either way, but with a firearm he might have scared off the punks who assaulted him.
I say it's the right of every man to make that choice for himself and you say he has no right to make that choice for himself. Both are honorable beliefs.
Firstly, I'd like to apologise for my spelling in that post that you quoted. I've just re-read it. That's what I get for trying to make sense at 7.34am.
Secondly, yeah, you're probably right. They law is there now, so they have the right to make the choice and that's fair enough. To say that I believe that a he has no right to make that choice it sounds bad because, who am I to decide what another man should choose to do? But it is a choice I don't think people should be allowed to make. A gun's function is to kill, at it's simplest, so for that reason I would be of the opinion that they should be banned. But has you say, both sides of it are just beliefs and opinions.
Firstly, I'd like to apologise for my spelling in that post that you quoted. I've just re-read it. That's what I get for trying to make sense at 7.34am.
Secondly, yeah, you're probably right. They law is there now, so they have the right to make the choice and that's fair enough. To say that I believe that a he has no right to make that choice it sounds bad because, who am I to decide what another man should choose to do? But it is a choice I don't think people should be allowed to make. A gun's function is to kill, at it's simplest, so for that reason I would be of the opinion that they should be banned. But has you say, both sides of it are just beliefs and opinions.
I didn't even notice the typo, which I think I read at about the same time in the morning in my time zone!
A gun's function isn't necessarily to kill. It can be used to injure another human being, stopping them in their tracks. Police aren't armed with guns for the purpose of killing people, are they? If a policemen believes he must kill you, he will (or try), but his training is such that the use of a gun is intended above all to intimidate the crime suspect into submission, not to kill him. But if intimidation into submission doesn't work, he is prepared to shoot to kill if necessary.
In other words, guns are also meant to act as a deterrent to crime, not merely to kill people.
But as I've stated before, most of us will never face that kind of confrontation and even the few of us who will not be properly trained in the use of a firearm. And for that reason the smart choice for most of us is to voluntarily disarm ourselves. But where you and I disagree is in who gets to make that choice. I say each of us does and you say society at large does. That's a fair disagreement.
Yes, it often is. Of course, it might not always killed, but you've got to be extremely skilled in order to ensure you can take a shot and do it without killing. You may choose to voluntarily disarm yourself, but there's a lot of people out there who may not be as intelligent and rational as you presumably are.
"Often" is not the same thing as "necessarily is", which is what I think Rex was really saying. Just brandishing the weapon alone can easily deter midnight home burglars, whom are actually usually unarmed.
A gun can be used to kill, but it can also be used to prevent a killing. Do you not concede this point?
True, the world would be a better place if guns did not exist, but if somehow guns did not exist it would also likely be the case that bad people did not exist. Sadly, guns and bad people do exist and there's no way to wish them away. And since we can't wish them away, we have to deal with the inescapable reality of their existence.
As for my "rationality", I have made what I consider to be the rational choice of disarming myself because I doubt my ability to use a firearm effectively in a confrontation. (And, of course, there are risks in just having a firearm lying around in the house, which factored into my thinking.) Others may have more confidence in their own ability to use a firearm; some wrongly so, some rightly so.
I would not tell you that you may not have a gun in your own home to protect yourself and your family.
It can be used to prevent a killing, but ultimately, it's main purpose is to kill. Even though it can be used to prevent a killing, very few members of the general public will be skilled enough to be able to use guns in that particular manner where they can take a shot knowing they will not kill the intended target.
Guns do exist, and I'm not denying that. I can even understand that within America, completely banning them right now would be an unwise move because they're just too prevalent for it to realistically work. I do think, however, that the US should try to move forward into a position where it's very hard for the average citizen to obtain a gun, and eventually into a position where average citizens do not have guns.
I understand that gun ownership is a choice - but it's not the choice for those on the end of the massacres we've seen, and other gun incidents. I know that these are isolated incidents in a wider context, but they're much, much less isolated than gun incidents in the UK. Sure, you can say it boils down to a choice, but if citizens cannot be responsible with guns, it becomes much bigger than that mere choice.
Of course, firearms exist but the first step to reduce their prevalence would be to ban them.
I think someone has watched too many films. Shoot to wound and you stand a very good chance of hitting an artery and them bleeding to death. And why would you shoot to wound anyway. Either your life is in imminent and extreme danger in which case you aim for the big bit to make sure or your life isn't in imminent danger in which case why are you shooting at all?
That's...largely what I'm saying. Very few people would actually have the skill to shoot at someone without risking killing them. I was arguing that, since Gannicus said guns can also be used to prevent killing.
And you haven't mentioned different bullets either.
One statistic rarely mentioned, and not sure how outdated it is now, was that an individual is about 3x more likely to die in a home where he/she has a firearm than over another individual that has no firearm within their home. This statistic did include suicide in addition to homicide.
But there would still be the problem of illegally trafficked weapons into the United States even if they were "banned" by law.
Whatever the details of France's gun control laws, it appears to be the that they are very strict, among the most strict among the western democracies. Yet somehow French civilians still obtain guns and use them for criminal purposes, such as last week's killing spree at Charlie Hebdo and the kosher restaurant.
As the data undeniably demonstrate, gun control laws do not result in lower homicide rates. The presumed overriding rationale for gun control laws is to reduce the incidence of homicides -- and perhaps accidental deaths as well -- but if the data show us that this is not the case at the very least we have go on a hunt for a new rationale for banning private gun ownership. Unfortunately, the only rationale left is preventing accidental deaths. That's a pretty respectable rationale, but does it really outweigh the right of adequate self-defense? Probably not.
Which is 100% relevant here because this is a thread about gun control.
Great stat, thanks for posting, but why do you say outdated? Do you have any links?