Obama supports new bid to ban assault weapons.

[BraveUlysses]

Decided to respond in this thread instead of cluttering up the gun thread with debate.



First off, I do not know this guys position on gun control and the lengths at which he wants to restrict ownership beyond him being anti-gun. Is he anti gun to any degree, or does he favour stricter control? Is he truly a hypocrite because he owns a gun, or is he showing that guns are necessary in a particular situation such as home defence? Again, it entirely depends on his exact position. If he's anti CCW and for tighter restriction, that doesn't make him a hypocrite for owning a gun and keeping it in his own home.

My point for making this post is to question whether or not this justifies ownership, or does it just highlight the problem with America?

I for one am on the fence to how the situation can be resolved. I'm against the thought process of a gun being necessarily carried everyday, however I acknowledge that the prevalence of guns makes it likely that a gun would be involved in an otherwise not so hostile confrontation. Overall, a very shitty situation which I believe to be self-inflicted.

Here's all you need to know: since vdubbin posted it, he most certainly didn't do a basic search about the person in question.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/soles.asp

[Farbin Kaiber]

I guess you missed where I posted that right after he posted it, didn't ya?

[BraveUlysses]

no, i saw that. doesn't change anything about my post.

[cale]

Here's all you need to know: since vdubbin posted it, he most certainly didn't do a basic search about the person in question.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/soles.asp

Shocking, truth swept under the rug to make delivery to a target audience that much smoother and effective.

[mrsleeve]

Little gem I found trolling around on English version of the Russian Communist Party news paper (now owned by some greeks)

its worth the read

http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/28-12-2012/123335-americans_guns-0/

[rwh11385]

How about you leave? you're the one with unreasonable demands in this discussion.

Indeed. It lacked logic or real solutions besides "deal with it". Continued attacks on who legally own guns don't really help either.

If I sell a firearm though a private sale, I take 2 forms of ID and make copies for my file. I also have them sign a statement saying they are breaking no laws when purchasing the firearm. I keep that in my safe just in case the firearm is ever tracked back to me.

Sounds like a basic and reasonable approach as one would do with a bill of sale on a car. Speaking of which, cars can be highly deadly but we still manage to include them with society through responsibility.

I thought this was interesting:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/12/gun-control-0

The National Rifle Association already offers "excess personal liability and self-defence" coverage to its members, and according to their website it seems $100,000 worth of insurance costs just $165 per year; $250,000 worth is $254.

Maybe NRA can expand its leadership or devise a similar strategy to not just defend rights and access to legal persons, but help control problems so a bunch of people aren't limited in their rights by poorly targeted policies.

I think we should talk about these issues and figure out what we can do to reduce the 'nanny state' and increase personal responsibility..

I think it really would have to be a third-party, private effort since gun-owners (sleeve, vdub) don't trust the government as guns are a protection from a government encroaching on their rights. [As is the logic behind Second Amendment] Obviously owners should be responsible (well trained, properly locked, etc.) but I think the NRA and other private organizations can take more proactive moves (I think they said they would work on such) instead of simply defending. (Help remove issues to protect proper use) Kinda like how Racers Against Street Racing helped to validate legal sport. The NRA has a reputation that doesn't help it sometimes, and there's also a bit of anti-gun liberals... but maybe mutual understanding and working together for good responsibility can help more.

[rwh11385]

Little gem I found trolling around on English version of the Russian Communist Party news paper (now owned by some greeks)

its worth the read
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/col...ricans_guns-0/

Not bad article. Worth it. Also trained gun owners make foreign invasion pretty challenging - not only due to our military but avid enthusiasts and hunters as well.

As has been mentioned earlier, banning guns does not make criminals obey and often the scene of bad gun violence still. Also, handgun ownership cannot be banned and these are the lion's share of weapons used in gun crime. Therefore, most of the talk of banning troublesome "assault rifles" is missing out on the real problem - criminals with handguns, not law-abiding citizens with rifles.

And comparison with other nations which don't have guns and only looking at gun crimes isn't fair. I lived in the UK where even some police don't carry and you're just scared of someone with a knife with no possible defense. Look at Finland and Switzerland for nations with lots of guns and also lots of responsibility for them. Comparing ourselves with them, rather than nations with far fewer guns is much more fair and possibly a room to get ideas on how to improve.

I didn't see this in the thread and only posted two days ago. A friends shared it and pretty balanced look with lots of facts and good perspective.

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-riddle-of-the-gun

It is reasonable to wish that only virtuous people had guns, but there are now nearly 300 million guns in the United States, and 4 million new ones are sold each year. A well-made gun can remain functional for centuries. Any effective regime of “gun control,” therefore, would require that we remove hundreds of millions of firearms from our streets. As Jeffrey Goldberg points out in The Atlantic, it may no longer be rational to hope that we can solve the problem of gun violence by restricting access to guns—because guns are everywhere, and the only people who will be deterred by stricter laws are precisely those law-abiding citizens who should be able to possess guns for their own protection and who now constitute one of the primary deterrents to violent crime. This is, of course, a familiar “gun nut” talking point. But that doesn’t make it wrong.

In the vast majority of murders committed with firearms—even most mass killings—the weapon used is a handgun. Unless we outlaw and begin confiscating handguns, the weapons best suited for being carried undetected into a classroom, movie theater, restaurant, or shopping mall for the purpose of committing mass murder will remain readily available in the United States. But no one is seriously proposing that we address the problem on this level. In fact, the Supreme Court has recently ruled, twice (in 2008 and 2010), that banning handguns would be unconstitutional.

Nor is anyone advocating that we deprive hunters of their rifles. And yet any rifle suitable for killing deer is just the sort of gun that will allow even an unskilled shooter to wreak absolute havoc upon innocent men, women, and children at a range of several hundred yards. There is, in fact, no marksman on earth who can shoot a handgun as accurately at distance as you would be able to shoot a rifle fitted with a scope after a few hours of practice. This difference in accuracy between short and long guns must be experienced to be understood. Having understood it, you will in no way be consoled to learn that a madman ensconced on the rooftop of a nearby building is armed merely with a “hunting rifle” that is legal in all 50 states.

The problem, therefore, is that with respect to either factor that makes a gun suitable for mass murder—ease of concealment (a handgun) or range (a rifle)—the most common and least stigmatized weapons are among the most dangerous. Gun-control advocates seem perversely unaware of this. As a consequence, we routinely hear the terms “semi-automatic” and “assault rifle” intoned with misplaced outrage and awe. It is true that a semi-automatic pistol allows a person to shoot and reload slightly more efficiently than a revolver does. But a revolver can be reloaded surprisingly quickly with a device known as a speed loader. (These have been in use since the 1970s.)[4] It is no exaggeration to say that if we merely had 300 million vintage revolvers in this country, we would still have a terrible problem with gun violence, with no solution in sight. And any person entering a school with a revolver for the purpose of killing kids would most likely be able to keep killing them until he ran out of ammunition, or until good people arrived with guns of their own to stop him.

According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, 47 percent of all murders in the U.S. are committed with handguns. Again, only 3 percent are committed with rifles (of any type). Twice as many murderers (6 percent) use nothing but their bare hands. Thirteen percent use knives. Although a semi-automatic rifle like the one Adam Lanza carried in Newtown offers a terrifying advantage over a handgun at distances beyond 20 yards or so, I see no reason to think that the children he murdered would be alive today had he been armed with only a pistol (he is reported to have shot them repeatedly and at close range). The worst mass shooting in U.S. history occurred at Virginia Tech in 2007. Thirty-two people were killed and seventeen injured. The shooter carried two handguns (a Glock 9 mm and a Walther .22) of a make and caliber that will remain legal and ubiquitous unless all handguns are banned. (Again, this is not going to happen.)

It was certainly a horrible tragedy and has gotten people talking. But people should talk with logic, reason, and facts to base their arguments on, not fear (on either side).

Rather than new laws, I believe we need a general shift in our attitude toward public violence—wherein everyone begins to assume some responsibility for containing it.

He makes a lot of points about what he thinks about stricter policies and regulations while feedback on how he reads the Second Amendment. The piece is worth the read and in the middle with balance from both sides. If more conservation can occur with this type of discussion instead of panic (on either side) or short-sighted Facebook shares, maybe we could get somewhere and be better off.

[mrsleeve]

Whats the old saying, Opening day of deer season in PA, MI, MN, WI, alone when we all take too the woods to hunt wild game, would dwarf every major world powers army combined. All armed with high powered rifles and shotguns with Telescopic sights (eeeekkkk Sniper rifles ) and 99.99999999999999999% return home with out a gunshot wound.

[naplesE30]

Rwh along the line of an opposing military invasion. I remember years ago reading an article with the Japanese admiral in charge of the pearl harbor attack. He was asked about a land assualt and said it was never explored due to an opposing rifle in every home as he put it.

[mrsleeve]

Ahhh the Yamamoto quote. While there is little official evidence to support he actually said this, I have little doubt that he would have said something similar behind closed doors or in a private meeting off the record so to speak. Yamamoto lived in the US for several years before the war and was a brilliant man in his own right, he knew out culture and our customs, he knew his cause was a lost one form the beginning, thats one of the reasons this quote is so widely accepted as one of his and why it may be miss attributed to him

"You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass." - Isoroku Yamamoto

[slaterd]

Conspiracy? I've always thought there was something going on to promote gun control for Marshall's Law in the future. Since the shooting in the theatre last year public shootings have gone up drastically, or the government has forced the media to promote such events to rally citizens for high gun control which would leave us defenseless. I didn't get much of it but I heard a lot of talk about something for Marshall's Law last year....we're all fucked and we got played.

[rwh11385]

I forgot to include an argument that maybe Corvallis and Sleeve can agree on:

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/t...dle-of-the-gun

Our misguided war on drugs is surely an important factor where gangs are concerned. This is another vicious circle: Like Prohibition before it, the war on drugs renders the sale of illicit drugs extraordinarily profitable while requiring that drug dealers function outside the law, protecting their investment and turf with guns. If we ended our war on drugs, the money that finances most gang activity would disappear, as would one of the primary reasons for gang violence. No doubt, gangs would remain. But with the war on drugs abandoned, our police, courts, and departments of corrections could focus on the real problem of violent crime.

And this from a left-leaning source:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/12/the-single-best-anti-gun-death-policy-ending-the-drug-war/266505/

The Single Best Anti-Gun-Death Policy? Ending the Drug War
Universal gun confiscation is impossible, and even aggressive gun control might not dramatically reduce gun-related deaths. But ending our ridiculous and expensive war on drugs could.

Most of those 9,000 gun murders are of the more mundane, but no less deadly variety -- drive-by shootings, gang wars, personal quarrels, and other easily comprehensible crimes.

And if we really care about those 9,000 souls who are shot to death each year, there is an extremely effective policy that we could enact right now that would probably save many of them.

I'm talking about ending the drug war.

A DRUG-WAR POLICY, NOT A GUN POLICY

Reliable statistics on the number of drug-related murders in the United States are hard to come by. A 1994 Department of Justice report suggested that between a third and a half of U.S. homicides were drug-related, while a recent Center for Disease Control study found that the rate varied between 5% and 25% (a 2002 Bureau of Justice report splits the difference).

This is a straightforward result of America's three-decade-long "drug war." Legal bans on drug sales lead to a vacuum in legal regulation; instead of going to court, drug suppliers settle their disputes by shooting each other. Meanwhile, interdiction efforts raise the price of drugs by curbing supply, making local drug supply monopolies (i.e., gang turf) a rich prize to be fought over. And stuffing our overcrowded prisons full of harmless, hapless drug addicts forces us to give accelerated parole to hardened killers.

Ending the drug war would involve reducing all of these incentives to murder. Treating addicts in hospitals and rehab centers, instead of sticking them in prisons, would reduce demand for drugs, lowering the price and starving gangs of income while reducing their incentive to wage turf wars. Decriminalization would relieve pressure on our prison system, allowing us to focus on keeping violent people off the streets instead of pointlessly punishing drug users for destroying their own health. And full legalization of recreational marijuana -- which is already proceeding quickly among the states, but is still foolishly opposed by the Obama administration -- is an obvious first step.

http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2012/12/the-historic-connection-between-prohibition-guns-and-drugs/

In 1919, the passage of the 18th Amendment ushered the nation into the era of Prohibition. The restrictions on the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol had a marked affect on criminal activity. With the advent of bootlegging, organized crime spread outside of the nation’s ethnic enclaves and became a dominant economic force in urban centers across the country.

As underground profit margins surged, gang rivalries emerged, and criminal activity mounted. The homicide rate across the nation rose 78 percent during Prohibition. In Chicago alone, there were more than 400 gang-related murders a year. According to scholar Edward Sullivan, writing in 1929, Prohibition resulted in “the greatest crime record ever attained by a nation.”

In 1933, the legislature passed the 21st Amendment, effectively bringing an end to Prohibition; in its aftermath, the government passed the National Firearms Act of 1934, the first federal regulation on guns in U.S. history. With the epidemic of alcohol-related violence and the sensationalized run of such criminals as John Dillinger, Al Capone, and Bonnie and Clyde, American lawmakers saw a pressing need to regulate the spread of weapons into the general population.

The law, which levied sharp regulations and high taxes on gun sales, focused on weapons generally associated with gangster violence: “A shotgun or rifle having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length, or any other weapon, except a pistol or revolver, from which a shot is discharged by an explosive if such weapon is capable of being concealed on the person, or a machine gun.”

In response to the law’s passage, the National Rifle Association (NRA) formed its legislative affairs division, what would become the organization’s powerful lobbying arm.

Nearly 50 years later, in 1982, Ronald Reagan ushered in his famous “war on drugs.” The federal government embarked on a massive anti-drug campaign, with strict regulations and harsh penalties. Between 1980 and 1984, funding for FBI anti-drug initiatives ballooned from $8 million to $95 million.

In the years that followed, new technologies, political and military alliances, and immigration patterns coalesced to create a rapidly expanding drug trade in the United States, particularly in the nation’s inner-city communities, where deindustrialization resulted in rampant unemployment.

By 1987, the rate of industrial employment among black workers had dropped to 20 percent, down from roughly 70 percent as late as 1970. With few opportunities for legal employment, an underground drug economy blossomed.

And just as Prohibition created the space for organized crime to grow in the 1920s, the war on drugs bred gun-related violence throughout the nation.

Ending the war on drugs would improve the country by more areas than simply reducing gun violence, but by reducing the money spent by the government to police drug trade and focus on other things, reduce prison populations of nonviolent users, improve the GDP by reducing the black market, increase tax revenues by no longer have such trade go untaxed, etc.

The underground economy is 10% of GDP based on this study: http://www.csub.edu/kej/documents/ec...2011-11-28.pdf
With weed alone representing $142 billion.


But the government doesn't always make decisions based on liberty, common sense, or logic - does it? Sometimes it is impressing its personal beliefs on others with failed practices. Kind of like an assault gun ban when the problem (gun violence) is rarely done with one.

[mrsleeve]

that is obviously part of the problem, and I have said when you take all of out gang on gang / criminal on criminal shootings out of the picture our gun crime rate would be very similar to or lower than many other places where its Criminal on Law abiding mostly. while I take an odd stance on this one, personally dont like the ideal of legalization of all the illicit drugs out there, but I do totally agree with why they should be in principal.

Its one of those things for me ;)

[rwh11385]

that is obviously part of the problem, and I have said when you take all of out gang on gang / criminal on criminal shootings out of the picture our gun crime rate would be very similar to or lower than many other places where its Criminal on Law abiding mostly. while I take an odd stance on this one, personally dont like the ideal of legalization of all the illicit drugs out there, but I do totally agree with why they should be in principal.

Its one of those things for me ;)

Decrim all illicit drug use, legalize weed.

Treating addicts in hospitals and rehab centers, instead of sticking them in prisons, would reduce demand for drugs, lowering the price and starving gangs of income while reducing their incentive to wage turf wars. Decriminalization would relieve pressure on our prison system, allowing us to focus on keeping violent people off the streets instead of pointlessly punishing drug users for destroying their own health. And full legalization of recreational marijuana -- which is already proceeding quickly among the states, but is still foolishly opposed by the Obama administration -- is an obvious first step.

It didn't argue to legalize all illicit drugs - just stop treating addicts as criminals.

[mrsleeve]

No I know what you were saying Heeter, Just laying my personal point of view on the topic in general out there.

I largely agree our penal system is full of people it should not be from minor drug charges to tax cheats, and too go one further, our mental health facilities need to be brought back up to snuff, and put those that should be in them, in there and not in the prisons as well.